R's Daily Doom Report

[Richardus]

Climate change putting millions more people at risk from infection-causing fungi

Researchers from The University of Manchester have forecast there will be an increased risk of infection from fungi over the coming years, including a significant spread of some fungal pathogens across Europe, the extent of which will depend on global actions to mitigate climate change.
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news ... ing-fungi/

[Oofje]

Kan dit bericht hier?

Huis in VS doorboord door meteoriet die ouder is dan de aarde

Een opvallend natuurspektakel in de Amerikaanse staat Georgia. Op 26 juni zagen mensen op klaarlichte dag hoe een felle vuurbal sneller dan het geluid naar beneden raasde. Het doorboorde het dak van een huis. Na onderzoek concluderen wetenschappers: het ging om een meteoriet die ouder is dan onze planeet.

Er kwamen honderden meldingen van inwoners van Georgia en nabijgelegen staten over een harde knal en een vuurbal die door de lucht ging. NASA had al bevestigd dat er een meteoriet was ontploft.

Een aantal stukken raakten het gebouw. Ze gingen met zeker 1 kilometer per seconde door het dak.

Videoooos
https://www.rtl.nl/nieuws/buitenland/ar ... %20planeet.

[Richardus]

Hot mic catches Putin and Xi discussing organ transplants and immortality

The authoritarian strongmen Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have mused on how organ transplants might lead to immortality, during a brief exchange of small talk caught on a hot mic at a military parade.

As Putin and Xi walked at the head of a delegation of foreign leaders, state media aired live footage that captured parts of what appeared to be a private conversation. While they made their way towards a raised platform in Tiananmen Square, Putin’s interpreter could be heard saying in Chinese: “Biotechnology is continuously developing.”

After a brief inaudible passage, the interpreter added: “Human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become, and [you can] even achieve immortality.”

Xi, who was off camera, could be heard responding in Chinese: “Some predict that in this century humans may live to 150 years old.”

Putin confirmed later to reporters he had discussed prospects for significantly increasing human life expectancy with Xi.

Both leaders have shown little intention of relinquishing power in their lifetimes. In 2018, Xi abolished presidential term limits, paving the way for him to rule indefinitely. Putin has also changed Russian law to allow him to remain in high office.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/ ... mmortality

[Richardus]

Scientists have developed a new artificial intelligence tool that can predict your personal risk of more than 1,000 diseases, and forecast changes in health a decade in advance.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... ay-experts

[Richardus]

Astronomers have cast doubt on a Nobel prize-winning theory that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, suggesting that instead it may be slowing down.

If confirmed, this would have profound implications for the fate of the universe, raising the possibility that rather than expanding for ever, the universe could ultimately enter a reverse big bang scenario known as the big crunch. The astronomers behind the work say their observations also imply that dark energy – the mysterious force thought to be propelling the expansion of the universe – is weakening over time.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... obel-prize

[MarkS]

Welke taal is dit? Amish?

[Ysidorus Fuchs]

Low German (Platduits of Nederduits genoemd in het Nederlands) voor de doopsgezinden (Mennonites) in Alberta. Komt ook voor in het noordoosten van Nederland.

[Richardus]

De filminstelling Cinémàtheque Française in Parijs sluit per direct zijn zalen na de vondst van bedwantsen. Meerdere bezoekers zeggen dat ze begin deze maand werden gebeten tijdens een vertoning van scifi-horrorfilm Alien (1979).
...
Verdelgers gaan in vier zalen de strijd aan met de bedwantsen.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2592445-franse-f ... bedwantsen

[MarkS]

Revealed: Europe’s water reserves drying up due to climate breakdown
Exclusive: UCL scientists find large swathes of southern Europe are drying up, with ‘far-reaching’ implications

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... SApp_Other

[Richardus]

Ja



Al lang aangekondigd dat er al rap geen drinkwater meer is in Zuid-Europa. Gaat voor veel gedoe en klimaatvluchtelingen zorgen. Eerste golf. Als tipping point qua ijssmelt is bereikt gaan de overstromingen voor nog stuk meer gedoe zorgen.

Extremen, polariteiten ipv gemiddelden. Was in een Afrikaanse film dat een sjamaan zei dat de aarde de geestesgesteldheid van de mens weerspiegelt, en/of viceversa...?

[MarkS]

Een nieuwe mens in een nieuwe wereld: zo moeten we omgaan met de klimaatcrisis

Klimaatcrisis
Hoe moeten we omgaan met de opwarming van de aarde? Die vraag legde oprichter van Beste-ID Jos Baijens aan honderd wetenschappers, ondernemers en andere denkers voor. NRC selecteerde negen verrassende ideeën.

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/11/28/ee ... Oyf_rnA-H0

Te lezen zonder betaalmuur.

[Richardus]

High levels of ‘forever chemical’ found in cereal products across Europe

High levels of a toxic “forever chemical” have been found in cereal products across Europe because of its presence in pesticides.

The most contaminated food is breakfast cereal, according to a study by Pesticide Action Network Europe (PAN), with average concentrations 100 times higher than in tap water.

The study found trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a chemical produced when pesticides containing Pfas chemicals break down into the soil, in breakfast cereals, popular sweets, pasta, croissants, wholemeal and refined bread, and flour.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (Pfas) are a group of chemicals that have been used in manufacturing and added to consumer products since the 1950s.

They are known as “forever chemicals” as they can take hundreds or even thousands of years to degrade after the products they have been used in are thrown away. This means that if they leak into the soil or water, which they often do, they could remain there for centuries. Their impact on human health and the environment is only just becoming clear, with new studies frequently emerging about some of the chemicals’ links to diseases such as cancer.

TFA is reprotoxic, which means it has the potential to harm human reproductive function, fertility, and foetal development. It has also been linked to adverse effects on thyroid, liver and immune functions. Campaigners are calling on governments to set a far more protective TFA safety limit and to ban all Pfas pesticides and other sources of TFA. Currently, governments do not monitor TFA in food.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... rope-study

[Richardus]

Tijgermug waarschijnlijk binnen vijf jaar permanent hier en dan niet meer uit te roeien

De kans is groot dat de tijgermug zich binnen twee tot vijf jaar blijvend in delen van Nederland vestigt. Het is dan het niet meer mogelijk om de exoot volledig uit te roeien, waarschuwt demissionair minister van Volksgezondheid Jan Anthonie Bruijn in een brief aan de Tweede Kamer.

De tijgermug komt oorspronkelijk uit Zuidoost-Azië en is via internationaal transport van bijvoorbeeld autobanden en Aziatische planten naar Europa gekomen. De afgelopen jaren komt de mug steeds vaker hier via auto's en vrachtauto's uit Europese landen met veel muggen zoals Italië, Spanje en Frankrijk.

De mug kan tropische infectieziekten zoals knokkelkoorts en chikungunya overbrengen. Permanente vestiging kan dus risico's opleveren voor de volksgezondheid, schrijft de minister.
...
De tijgermug prikt in tegenstelling tot andere muggen ook overdag
https://nos.nl/artikel/2593234-tijgermu ... -te-roeien

[MarkS]

Mm, toch maar een paar vissen in het vijvertje gooien dan.

[Richardus]

Genes capable of creating antibiotic-resistant superbugs have been detected in the UK’s largest lake, which supplies drinking water to about 40% of Northern Ireland.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -superbugs

[(klaz*)]

Ik ken iemand die op dit moment in Noord-Ierland is! Kleine wereld!

[MarkS]

Administration to Convene ‘God Squad’ With Power to Override Environmental Law
The meeting, planned for this month, will focus on oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.


Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called a meeting of the so-called God Squad. It will be the first gathering of the panel in three decades.

The Trump administration plans to convene the so-called God Squad, a high-level federal panel that has the power to override protections under the Endangered Species Act, for a meeting related to oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico.

The meeting, scheduled for March 31, will be the first time in three decades that the group, officially called the Endangered Species Committee, will gather.

Notice of the meeting was released on Friday and officially published in the Federal Register on Monday. The Gulf, which the administration calls the Gulf of America, is home to the critically endangered Rice’s whale, a species that exists nowhere else. According to the latest available federal estimates, around 50 of the animals remain on Earth.

Information in the notice announcing the meeting, called by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, is sparse.
“The Committee is meeting regarding an exemption under the Endangered Species Act with respect to oil and gas exploration, development, and production activities in the Gulf of America associated with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Program,” the notice states.

When emailed for additional information on what had prompted the move, the Interior Department declined to directly answer questions and repeated the published information. But President Trump has wanted the God Squad to convene since he returned to office last year.

Expanding oil and gas drilling has been a central goal of his administration. On Friday, it approved a $5 billion oil drilling project in deep Gulf waters.

Environmental law experts questioned the legality of convening the group in this instance.

To do so, the government must have received an application for an exemption to the Endangered Species Act, said Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School who, in the 1970s, helped write the legislative language that created the God Squad provision. He had not seen any application, he said. The notice in the Federal Register did not refer to one.

“There are rules about what has to be in the application and who can file it and I don’t see any of that,” he said.


Last year, a biological opinion by the National Marine Fisheries Service found that oil and gas activities in the Gulf are “likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the Rice’s whale.” However, the opinion included actions that the industry could take to continue operating without risking the whale’s extinction, including monitoring whales and developing a plan to leverage technological advances.

The American Petroleum Institute, a trade group, did not respond to questions about those actions, but an official applauded the convening of the God Squad.

​​“The directive from Secretary Burgum underscores that balancing conservation and energy production requires a more streamlined, coordinated federal approach,” Holly Hopkins, a vice president at the institute, wrote. “This action is an important step toward ensuring a workable path forward for safe, responsible offshore development while minimizing impacts on endangered species.”

Conservationists strongly disagreed.

“It’s reckless and unnecessary,” said Steve Mashuda, managing attorney of the oceans program at Earthjustice, an environmental nonprofit law firm. “There is no reason to give a free pass to the oil industry to cause the extinction of species to allow them to operate business as usual in the Gulf.”

Rice’s whales were recognized as a species only in 2021, after DNA analysis showed that they were distinct from Bryde’s whales, which have a similar outward appearance.
Scientists estimate that as much as 22 percent of the Rice’s whale population died as a result of the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010. Vessel strikes related to oil and gas activities are a major threat, according to the fisheries service, but the industry has pushed back on speed restrictions. The noise associated with oil and gas exploration, such as the use of seismic air guns, can also be harmful, overlapping with the hearing and call frequency range of Rice’s whales. The species is believed to rely on hearing to communicate and to find food and mates.

While Rice’s whales are the species most likely to be driven to extinction by oil and gas activities in the Gulf, other threatened and endangered species stand to be harmed, including several sea turtles, sperm whales and Gulf sturgeon.

The committee has ruled three times since it was created in 1978. It is led by the interior secretary and composed of five other senior federal officials: the secretaries of agriculture and the Army, the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, and the administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The members can decide that major economic factors outweigh obligations under the Endangered Species Act if a federal action is deemed to be in the public interest and is nationally or regionally significant.

Most recently, in 1992, it gave an exemption for logging that would harm the northern spotted owl, but environmental groups sued, arguing that the decision had violated legal procedures and was based in politics. The request for the exemption was ultimately withdrawn.

Catrin Einhorn covers biodiversity, climate and the environment for The Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/clim ... -ios-share

[Richardus]

Communicatiesystemen van hulpdiensten houden het niet langer dan acht uur vol bij een stroomstoring, daarna vallen ze uit. Communiceren met bijvoorbeeld brandweerwagens die aan het blussen zijn, is dan niet meer mogelijk. Ook kunnen veiligheidsregio's onderling geen contact meer leggen met elkaar. Meerdere veiligheidsregio's werken aan oplossingen, maar regie vanuit het ministerie van Justitie en Veiligheid ontbreekt, zeggen betrokkenen.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2607176-communic ... t-in-zicht

[(klaz*)]

Communicatiesystemen van hulpdiensten houden het niet langer dan acht uur vol bij een stroomstoring, daarna vallen ze uit. Communiceren met bijvoorbeeld brandweerwagens die aan het blussen zijn, is dan niet meer mogelijk. Ook kunnen veiligheidsregio's onderling geen contact meer leggen met elkaar. Meerdere veiligheidsregio's werken aan oplossingen, maar regie vanuit het ministerie van Justitie en Veiligheid ontbreekt, zeggen betrokkenen.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2607176-communic ... t-in-zicht

Als tussenoplossing gaat de Veiligheidsregio Zuid-Limburg het draadloos internet van Starlink gebruiken, het satellietennetwerk van Elon Musk.

Yep, we're doomed.

[Richardus]

het uiteenvallen van het radioactieve kalium in bananen zorgt ervoor dat er ongeveer elke 75 minuten een antimaterie-deeltje uit je fruitschaal schiet.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2607593-wetensch ... ntimaterie

[Richardus]

[MarkS]

Epic river migrations of fish rapidly collapsing, UN report finds
Vast journeys, among world’s great wonders, found to be under threat as freshwater fish populations crash by 81%

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... SApp_Other

[Richardus]

‘This feels fragile’: how a satellite-smashing chain reaction could spiral out of control

The current system only works as it relies on constant cooperation. Satellite operators move their craft daily to avoid collisions. If they stopped, McDowell warns it would take only days or weeks for the situation to spiral. “This feels fragile,” he says. “All you need is for two players to screw up on the same day.”

Prachtig gevisualiseerd: https://www.theguardian.com/science/ng- ... of-control