Category Archives: Science

Diese Woche in der Zeit

Die Zeit 24/2017: Anthropologie: Erster! “Neue Funde zeigen: Der moderne Mensch ist viel früher entstanden, als Forscher bislang dachten. Und er hat Wurzeln in ganz Afrika.” Von Ulrich Bahnsen.

“Sie sind die Prototypen unserer Spezies, die allerersten modernen Menschen, von denen jemals Überreste entdeckt wurden – und sie lebten offenbar vor mehr als 300.000 Jahren dort, wo heute Marokko ist. Forscher um Jean-Jacques Hublin vom Leipziger Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie haben Fossilien, darunter Reste eines Schädels und eines Unterkiefers, untersucht, die zusammen mit Steinwerkzeugen und anderen Spuren menschlichen Lebens entdeckt worden waren – in einer eingestürzten Höhle in Marokko. Die Forscher halten die Knochen für 100.000 Jahre älter als alles, was man von Homo sapiens bisher an Fossilien gefunden hatte. In der Fachwelt wird der Fund, der aktuell im Magazin “Nature” präsentiert wird, als Sensation gehandelt. Denn wenn diese Datierung stimmt, muss die Geburtsstunde der Menschheit zurückdatiert werden.”

Trump: “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris”

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO): . (YouTube, 20:57min) “Donald Trump plans to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement on climate change. That’s bad news for anyone who happens to live on this planet.”

President Trump: “The Green Fund would likely obligate the United States to commit potentially tens of billions of dollars, of which the United States have already handed over $1 billion. Nobody else is even close.”

John Oliver: “It would have been equally as accurate for him to say “Compliance with the Paris agreement would likely require all ducks to wear jean shorts and that it would potentially cost each and every American citizen five fish and a dump truck full of hamsters.”

Is he stupid or simply a liar?

NPR: Trump’s Speech On Paris Climate Agreement Withdrawal, Annotated.

Trump: “For example, under the agreement, China will be able to increase the emissions by a staggering number of years – 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. Not us. India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries. There are many other examples but the bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair at the highest level to the United States.”

Comment:”Under the Paris Agreement, China has pledged to halt the growth in its carbon emissions by 2030, 13 years from now. But China is on track to beat that target date by many years, according to the Climate Action Tracker. India is also ahead of schedule in meeting its Paris commitments.”

Trump: “We have among the most abundant energy reserves in the planet, sufficient to lift millions of America’s poorest workers out of poverty. Yet under this agreement, we are effectively putting these reserves under lock and key, taking away the great wealth of our nation. It’s great wealth. It’s phenomenal wealth. Not so long ago, we had no idea we had such wealth. And leaving millions and millions of families trapped in poverty and joblessness. The agreement is a massive redistribution of United States’ wealth to other countries.”

Comment: “During the campaign, President Trump regularly blasted the Obama administration for holding back domestic oil and gas production with excessive regulations. The fact is the United States extracts more oil and gas than any other nation in the world. That’s been the case every year since 2012, and is largely due to a domestic oil and gas boom powered by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Solar and wind energy has surged as well, due to government incentives, as well as increasingly cheap production costs.”

Thanks, Trump, for ruining the planet for all of us.