MicroHawk's NewsScan

Arctic Sea Ice Shrinking at 'Unprecedented' Levels | Common Dreams

The recent loss of sea ice in the Arctic is greater than any natural variation in the past 1½ millennia, a Canadian study shows.

According to the leading science journal Nature, Arctic sea ice is disappearing on a pace and magnitude unlike anything the Earth has experienced in the past 1,450 years. (Photograph by: HO, Reuters) "The recent sea ice decline … appears to be unprecedented," said Christian Zdanowicz, a glaciologist at Natural Resources Canada, who co-led the study and is a co-author of the paper published Wednesday online in Nature.

"We kind of have to conclude that there's a strong chance that there's a human influence embedded in that signal."

via www.commondreams.org

Kazuhiko Takemoto: Education Is the Answer to Sustainable Development

Since I was born, the world's population has more than doubled, and we now find ourselves with the largest youth population in history. More people are using more resources -- but those resources are fast depleting. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations is predicting that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity. We encounter the same problems when we look at available food, minerals and other natural resources.

Yet this is not necessarily as ominous as it sounds. The Earth could actually support billions more people, assuming those people were making sound choices around resource production and consumption. This brings us to the heart of the issue: how do we convince individuals, organizations and governments to make the right choices, thus ensuring a sustainable future for us all?

via www.huffingtonpost.com

The invisible sex | Economic Policy Institute

A focus on the average retirement age misses the bigger story of how much more Americans are working and contributing to Social Security over the course of their lifetimes, thanks to women. It also ignores the fact that Social Security’s full retirement age is already increasing, so the ratio of working years to covered retirement years is roughly the same as it was in the early 1980s when the system was in balance. Last but not least, it ignores the fact that people are encouraged to continue working after claiming benefits. If you exclude people still working for pay as well as those who weren’t in the workforce to being with, such as full-time caregivers, the average retirement age is 65.5, not 62 as is often claimed.

via www.epi.org

Score One for the Open Internet: Resolution That Would Have Overturned Net Neutrality Rules Is Blocked in Senate | AlterNet

The Senate voted, 46-52, against moving forward with a resolution that would overturn federal regulations that govern anticompetitive behavior online....

Democrats opposed the resolution, arguing that the FCC’s rules are necessary to prevent large corporations from throttling Internet access.

via www.alternet.org