We're Toast 58

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. 

A thawing marsh

• An Economist’s Dire Forecast About Just How Much Climate Change Will Impact GDP. "As costly disasters multiply around the planet, some financial experts are raising alarms about what even more climate disruption could mean for the global economy decades in the future. Economic modeling by the University of Exeter and the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in the U.K., projects that proceeding with business as usual without sharply reducing emissions could cut global gross domestic product (GDP) in half as soon as 2070." It will be much sooner than that. 
• Trump’s FBI Moves to Criminally Charge Major Climate Groups. "The Trump administration is targeting climate organizations that received a Biden-era grant." Just mind boggling, how perverse and stupid this is. 
• Effects of microplastic concentration, composition, and size on Escherichia coli biofilm-associated antimicrobial resistance. "This study highlights the relationship between a widespread environmental pollutant, microplastics (MPs), and the rise of drug-resistant bacteria. While it is known that MPs facilitate resistance through several modes (biofilm formation, plastic adsorption rates, etc.), this study fills the knowledge gap on how different types of MPs are contributing to AMR."
• Real chilling effects. "A extraordinary pattern of government censorship and threats to speech." Stomping on critics and anyone who resists, one by one. 
• USAid cuts could create untreatable TB bug ‘resistant to everything we have’. "Projects to detect, treat and research new ways to fight TB among those disrupted by sudden funding freeze." And I read yesterday that the Walter Reed Institute, one of the world's top institutes for studying infectious diseases has been shuttered. Pure insanity. 
• What We Know About Covid’s Impact on Your Brain. "Scientists worry that persistent cognitive issues caused by Covid signal that a surge in dementia cases and other mental conditions is on the horizon."
• Scientists Pinpoint ‘Tipping Point’ for Greenland’s Melting Ice Sheet. "The vast landmass is melting quickly due to climate change, and may rapidly cause the complete loss of the island's ice."
• Plastic shards permeate human brains. "A study of microplastics and nanoplastics in brains shows an astonishing increase over time."