We're Toast 60

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 wall mural in Toronto's East Chinatown

• Running blind: The silencing and censoring of environmental threats to US national security. "Immediately after the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January 2025, his administration began purging these reports from the public record: removing environmental security studies from government websites or disabling those pages, cutting funding for environmental security studies, and requiring military and intelligence communities to suppress and censor references to climate change." Those who bury their heads in the sand will drown when the oceans rise.
• Trump Torched Decades of Science in Just 100 Days—and the Fallout Is Global. "In its first 100 days, the Trump administration has slashed federal agencies, canceled national reports, and yanked funding from universities. The shockwaves will be felt worldwide."
• Is This the Year We Doom Civilization? "We may be losing our last, best chance to limit climate change."
• Scientists flag disturbing trends emerging among large mammals: 'Animals are increasingly compelled ...' "These patterns highlight the role of climate as a significant regulator of movement ecology, influencing high-altitude habitat use," the authors wrote. "However, human-induced barriers, such as roads and settlements, present additional threats to these seasonal migrations." 
• It’s Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System. "Thanks to a new breed of chatbots, American stupidity is escalating at an advanced pace." Increasing stupidity is not a good evolutionary strategy. 
• Going Out With A Bang. "The legacy of Balthus' clients attitude that they 'know the world is doomed, so may as well go out with a bang' and the unsustainable AI bubble will be a massive overbuild of data centers, most of which will be incapable of hosting Nvidia's top-of-the-line racks. If the current cryptocurrency-friendly administration succeeds in pumping Bitcoin back these data centers will likely revert to mining. Either way, the Scope 3 emissions from building and equipping and the Scope 1 and 2 emissions from powering them with natural gas and coal, will put megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere, hastening the point where it is unlikely that 'us in the North, we're fine'." A long, rambling, well researched, and grim look at how AI's power demands are going to increase global warming and why the tech billionaires don't care. 
• Cancer-Causing Arsenic Is Building Up in the World’s Rice. "Rice feeds more than half of the world’s population. Climate change is loading the beloved grain with arsenic, creating a “scary” health burden."
• Polar Melt Down. "The Arctic’s ice cover has dropped to a record low this winter. It was 1.31 million square kilometers (506,000 square miles) below the 1981–2010 average. Arctic sea ice has permanently shrunk by over 60% and continues to decline year on year. The same thing is happening in Antarctica."
• How to deny climate change using the IPCC report. "The new Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, claims that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there has been no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or droughts – but Wright is wrong."