We're Toast 21

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. It is part of an ongoing series of posts.

Climate Change and Environment

• Cancel Earthworms. "The 'crazy worms' remaking forests aren’t your friendly neighborhood garden worms. Then again, those aren’t so great either."
• America’s Radioactive Secret. "Oil-and-gas wells produce nearly a trillion gallons of toxic waste a year. An investigation shows how it could be making workers sick and contaminating communities across America."
• Mayfly numbers drop by half since 2012, threatening food chain. This is not good news for the Great Lakes.
• A Surge of New Plastic Is About to Hit the Planet. A world awash in plastic will soon get slammed by more, as major oil companies ramp up their production.
• A Hotter Climate Will Kill Americans in Unexpected Ways, Study Finds. Some of the impacts of a warmer climate are not obvious at first glance.
• How Thawing Permafrost Is Beginning to Transform the Arctic. "This thawing, which could release vast amounts of greenhouse gases, is already changing the Arctic landscape by causing landslides, draining lakes, and altering vegetation."
• Are economists globally understating or overstating the cost of climate change? The higher increases in temperature could be very bad for the economy. 
• Climate Change: It’s a Buzzkill for Bumblebees, Study Finds. "Hot temperatures linked to climate change, especially extremes like heat waves, are contributing to the decline of these fuzzy and portly creatures, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science."

Politics 

• Lindsey Graham Is Quietly Preparing a Mess of a Bill Trying to Destroy End-to-End Encryption. Big Brother WILL be watching you.
• Trump has intentionally rendered our pandemic response incapable. Because Obama. 
• How the Trump administration is putting public records under threat, so history may never know the awful things they did.

Technology

• Snow and Ice Pose a Vexing Obstacle for Self-Driving Cars. Most testing of autonomous vehicles until now has been in sunny, dry climates. That will have to change before the technology will be useful everywhere.
• The Iowa Caucus Tech Meltdown Is a Warning. "t underscores just how much can go wrong when you lean on unnecessary, untested tech."