English references

Whether you’re looking for hands-on strategies, a deeper understanding of the big-picture frameworks underpinning those strategies, or thought-provoking reflections on the current state of the world and its likely future, this book has something for you.

Alarming warnings from industry insiders increase pressure for curbs on artificial superintelligence

What sounds like the overwrought penultimate episode in a sci-fi series about AI doom is now our reality

The term ‘Anthropocene’ was coined in recognition that human activities have ended the relatively stable environment of the Holocene epoch. However, its widespread adoption across the humanities, arts and sciences has led to diverse and sometimes incompatible definitions. In this Perspective, we argue for a stabilized definition of the Anthropocene epoch to help address contemporary environmental challenges, and explore various applications of the Anthropocene across disciplines. The Anthropocene epoch, with a proposed start point in 1952, underscores that human-driven global-scale environmental disruption differs from earlier human impacts of the Holocene, which did not cause such profound destabilization. This clear distinction enables quantitative and qualitative comparisons between the Holocene and Anthropocene epochs, as already utilized, for instance, within the planetary boundaries framework. As the Anthropocene Earth system transformation is systemic, political responses also need be systemic, rather

Chronic exposure to pesticide mixtures through diet is common, yet their combined metabolic effects and interactions with dietary factors remain unclear. We identified four pesticides prevalent in human exposure (imazalil, thiabendazole, boscalid, lambda-cyhalothrin) and assessed their combined impacts on hepatic metabolism and metabolic homeostasis using human liver cells and male mice fed standard chow or western diets. We found that the pesticide mixture induced metabolic perturbations in human hepatocytes. In addition, the pesticide mixture altered hepatic gene expression in chow-fed mice and exacerbated western diet-induced glucose intolerance, fasting hyperglycemia, and insulin resistance without affecting body weight or liver steatosis. These findings reveal that dietary context influences the metabolic consequences of pesticide mixtures, highlighting the need to consider nutritional status when evaluating environmental contaminant risks. Our results suggest that pesticide mixtures at reference doses m

Exclusive: Angela Eagle urges UK citizens to be ‘a bit more resilient’ as they plan for national emergencies.

Les systèmes d'intelligence artificielle sont entrainés sur les comportements humains qu'ils lisent et regardent/écoutent. Dès lors, le mensonge est une partie intégrante de leurs stratégies. Leur capacité (à mentir et à masquer leurs mensonges) risque de nous dépasser assez rapidement.

Lethal temperatures ​and wildfires have exposed a widening gulf between voters demanding ​action and politicians unwilling to confront the long-term choices global heating requires

What places on Earth are most resilient to global catastrophic risk (GCR)? We provide the first study of what locations are more resilient against the impacts of nuclear war, near-Earth objects, large-magnitude volcanic eruptions, large-scale cyberattacks, high altitude electromagnetic pulse, geomagnetic storms and pandemics. This shows there is no place on Earth which is resilient against all kinds of GCR. Australia shows resilience across the widest range of GCR scenarios in the literature we reviewed, but even for it, continued international cooperation and trade are essential. Across the different risks, common resilience factors that show up most are geographic isolation (e.g. islands), self-sufficiency (especially in food production), high governance quality (more democratic and lower inequality) and decentralization to mitigate single point catastrophic failures (e.g. impacting trade or food supply). Many of these factors stand in tension with each other and trade-offs are required to balance between d

Exclusive: Economic harm of CO2 pollution from Rosebank and Jackdaw forecast to far outweigh any boost to UK

Historically, the decarbonisation of aviation has lagged behind other modes of transport. However, the technology and policy base for change is finally taking off in Europe, and the region has a real chance to lead. But Europe needs to step on the accelerator, not the brake to maintain its global leadership for a clean transition for the sector.

Climate models simulate a wide range of 21st century warming for a given forcing scenario. Constraining this uncertainty is a central challenge in climate science because of its implications for climate policy and adaptation. The transient climate response (TCR) is a key idealized metric used to quantify future warming in response to an exponentially increasing CO2 concentration. Climate models span a range of 1.3–3 K for TCR. In attempts to constrain this range, emergent constraints on TCR based on historical temperature trends consistently pointed toward TCR values at the lower end of the range of models. However, recent evidence from trends in the short-wave and long-wave components of Earth's energy imbalance (EEI) at the top-of-atmosphere suggests that models with higher TCR lie closer to the observed EEI trends. Here, we reconcile this discrepancy and provide a revised range for TCR of 1.9–2.6 K. Using a statistical variability-filtering approach, we show that previous temperature-based constraints wer

A new study finds two persistent mental shortcuts—not ignorance—are why people keep overrating recycling and underrating flying less.

Exclusive: Federal government court filings claim internal company documents included warnings about products being toxic

Americans aged 18-25 are anxious, powerless, and afraid. According to a recent study of American youth, 62.9% agree: "humanity is doomed". The same survey found that almost all agreed that the climate was changing. Remarkably, the findings were fairly consistent across party lines.

Food security (FS) remains a pressing issue at the global scale. Current literature about FS points to a plethora of causes of food insecurity, among which climate change and the loss of biodiversity are critical to all facets of food security. Building on this notion, we advocate for a comprehensive understanding of drivers of food security, thus contributing by examining climate change and biodiversity as drivers of food security. The interest in this subject stems not only from the scientific community, but also from practitioners and policymakers. However, holistic encapsulation of the relevant literature addressing this subject is currently lacking. This review systematically analyses and categorises the drivers of FS induced by climate change and biodiversity. Following the Systematic Literature Review approach, 342 peer-reviewed studies were selected and synthesised. Our findings identified 11 categories of climate change drivers and 9 categories of biodiversity drivers of FS. These drivers were found

Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security: a national security assessment

This summer’s extreme weather and wars in Iran and Ukraine have made our need for food stockpiles more pressing than ever

Europe is full of buried explosives left over from 20th century wars, and wildfires are now reaching them more regularly.

If you’re always above average, it’s probably time to redefine what’s normal. The new normal for Earth’s climate is systematically rising temperatures.