(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Kitchen Table Kibitzing: News Bytes [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-09-12 Earlier this week the Pacific Islands Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa submitted a proposal to make ecocide an international crime alongside genocide and other crimes against humanity. As The Guardian reported Tuesday: If successful, the change could allow for the prosecution of individuals who have brought about environmental destruction, such as the heads of large polluting companies, or heads of state. Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa have proposed a formal recognition by the court of the crime of ecocide, defined as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”. The idea is not a novel one. Belgium recently declared ecocide a crime; Mexico is considering doing so; and the EU recognizes ecocide as a “qualified” offense. Jojo Mehta, a co-founder of the Stop Ecocide International campaigning group, which is an observer to the ICC, told the Guardian the move by the three Pacific islands marked a “key moment” in the fight to have ecocide recognised. “Once it’s on the timetable of the ICC, it has to be discussed,” she said. “Up to now, member states have not been obliged to address the issue.” How the most precise clock ever could change our view of the cosmos Since the 1950s, researchers have been constructing atomic clocks, the very best of which are now so accurate they only lose a second in around 31 billion years. But these are about to be replaced by a new model: the nuclear clock. This promises to outperform its atomic counterparts both in terms of precision and accuracy. A nuclear clock would, in principle, only drop a second every 300 billion years. Why, you might ask, would we ever need something with such mind-blowing precision? Because it will be used for something much more exciting than simply telling the time. Nuclear clocks could help probe some of the deepest mysteries of the universe, including the nature of dark matter and some of the elusive fundamental forces that shape our cosmos. A bakery in Washington state is addressing climate change by making bread from a unique blend of wheat flour called “Climate Blend.” From NPR earlier this week: At the Breadlab, Jones wanted to test a hypothesis: that field-level diversity, in any number of realms from kernel shape to color to heat resistance, could help fields and farmers weather increasingly extreme climate conditions. “If we have a chaotic climate, our strategy is to have genetic chaos in the field,” says Jones. “To strike back, to fight chaos with chaos.” -snip- Keith Kisler and his wife, Crystie, run Finnriver Farm & Cidery and Chimacum Grainery in Chimacum, Wash., in a narrow, lush valley on the Olympic Peninsula. They grow 14 different grains on their 150 acres, most sourced from the Breadlab. In 2021, while crops across the region were wilting in the extreme heat, they barely saw a blip. Q&A: Why methane levels are rising with no ‘hint of a decline’ Levels of methane in the atmosphere have soared by record-breaking amounts since 2020, according to new research. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that locks in around 80 times more warming over the course of two decades than CO2, but fades more quickly from the atmosphere. As a result, cutting methane emissions is widely viewed as a crucial part of near-term efforts to tackle climate change. Trump Clings to Inaccurate Climate Change Talking Points But for the most part, Trump’s comments are firmly rooted in older tropes that deny or question the existence of climate change — or are far from new. As we recently detailed, this summer Trump has revived claims from 2019, repeatedly providing absurdly low estimates for sea level rise — and at times indicating that maybe even those tiny increases won’t happen at all — to argue that climate change isn’t a concern. That claim was again on display in a podcast episode that aired on Aug. 26, when he said “the oceans in 500 years will raise a quarter of an inch” and “the oceans will rise an eighth of an inch in 355 years.” As obsession grows with UFOs on Earth, one group instead looks for aliens across galaxies ...researchers at SETI aren't interested in the debate over whether UFOs sighted on Earth could be extraterrestrial in origin. For those astronomers, the best chance for humanity to answer the age-old question of whether we're alone in the universe requires turning our gaze beyond our own planet. And maybe even beyond our own galaxy. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2024/9/12/2269284/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-News-Bytes Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/