What Happened: The Chinese leader expressed his concerns about a possible visit by the U.S. House of Representatives SpeakerNancy PelositoTaiwan, which China claims as its own,according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
“Those who play with fire will perish by it,” the Chinese foreign ministry quoted Xi as telling Biden in their fifth call as leaders.
“It is hoped that the U.S. will be clear-eyed about this.”
Lawmakers and foreign policy experts weighed in on the greatest threats facing the United States, and those that may be overlooked, with a focus on China, Russia, Iran and climate change.
potential aspirations in the South China Sea and with Taiwan that
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Lawmakers and foreign policy experts weigh in on the greatest threats facing the United StatesUnmute
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, noted that despite near-term threats like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the long-term threat was China.
“Through technology, through their militarization of other areas, port activities, the Belt and Road Initiative … there are so many things China will engage in as a way to move around the globe unfettered, and that, I would say, is the largest threat facing the United States right now,” Ernst told Fox News…
Anew U.S. strategy for countering Chinese aggression in the Pacific region has been outlined by a top official in President Joe Biden’s administration.
Tension is also sky high in the South China Sea where Beijing’s territorial claims overlap with those of no fewer than six of its neighbors, resulting inregular confrontations.
Ely Ratner, U.S. assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, discussed the situation in a speech this week to the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington D.C.
Austin native Sam Greiner spent the last few years guiding big game hunts in Idaho and Montana, until he was struck by a train on a solo hunt with his dog at the end of January.
The accident caused him to lose his right arm and right leg. But he’s already back in the saddle — Greiner recently harvested a mature axis buck in the Rocksprings area while on a hunt with his buddies, Stephen West and Noah Thompson.
While coming down the mountains with Goose, his black lab, in Montana, Greiner slipped while crossing some icy train tracks. He was knocked unconscious and hit by a train.
Together, the researchers say this evidence paints a picture that Sars-Cov-2 was present in live mammals that were sold at Huanan market in late 2019. They say it was transmitted into people who…
(CNN)In June, the World Health Organization recommended that scientists continue to research all possible origins of theCovid-19 pandemic, including a lab leak. Two newly published studies take totally different approaches but arrive at the same conclusion: The Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan,China, was most likely the epicenter for the coronavirus.
The studies wereposted online as preprintsin February but have now undergone peer review and were published Tuesday in the journal Science.
Inone, scientists from around the world used mapping tools and social media reports to do a spatial and environmental analysis. They suggest that although the “exact circumstances remain obscure,” the virus was probably present in live animals…
The U.S. Forest Service team that arrived in the Santa Fe National Forest April 6 had a plan. They would set a small fire and burn away accumulated brush that might fuel a more destructive blaze. Such controlled burns are a key tool in minimizing the risk of raging wildfires, and the Forest Service reported success in 99.84% of its prescribed fires.
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New Mexico wildfire becomes largest in state history, destroys more than 1,000 homesUnmute
But on this day, the team’s time-tested plans and near-perfect track record meant nothing.
Years of drought and hot, windy conditions had sucked moisture from the trees, decaying pine needles and fallen limbs. Logs that typically would have been soaked with water from the previous winter’s snowpack…
Imagine, for a moment, that Nancy Pelosi, en route to Taiwan, is confronted by Chinese fighter jets in the skies near the island. Taiwan scrambles its own planes to her defense. A game of chicken ensues. Who blinks first?
This scenario would be a Cuban-missile-crisis moment, with the United States and China staring at a potential conflagration. And based on Beijing’s strident reaction to the House speaker’s possible visit to Taiwan, it’s not all that far-fetched. “China will act strongly to resolutely respond to [Pelosi’s visit] and take countermeasures,” a foreign ministry spokespersonwarned. “We mean what we say.” Hu Xijin, a former editor of a Communist Party news outlet, appeared to threaten violence. “If the US can’t restrain her, let China…
Advocates of combating climate change are increasingly invoking doomsday scenarios to pressure President Biden to take unilateral action to lower greenhouse gas emissions, despite a history of such claims falling flat.
The rhetoric is coming not only from progressive activists but also Democrats on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers, in particular, have intensified their doomsday predictions as hopes for a climate change deal have waned within the Senate in recent days.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., recently told supporters that if immediate action was not taken on climate change, an immigration and public health crisis was likely to appear by 2030.
“Thousands of people are dying,” said Sanders. “You’re going to see more mass migrations, more diseases … For the sake of future generations, our kids, our grandchildren, we have got to act.”
Concordia University echoed a similar message when publicizing its Climate Clock. Launched in 2020 to give world leaders a sense of urgency, the clock purports to denote the amount of time humanity has left to address climate change to avoid the most dangerous consequences of global warming.
At the moment, that figure stands at just under seven years. Activists say that is time left to avert disaster by limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Protesters gather outside the White House June 1, 2017, to protest President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the Unites States from the Paris climate accord. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
In 2019, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested the humanity would be done by 2031.
“Millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up and we’re like: ‘The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?’” she said.
Critics note that the doom and gloom is nothing new. They say it’s part of a long-running strategy that sees proponents of combating climate change lay out alarming predictions of global catastrophe.
“People have been proclaiming the end of the world since forever. All have been wrong,” said Steve Milloy, who advised President Donald Trump on staffing the Environmental Protection Agency after the 2016 election. “They make these End Times predictions for a variety of reasons ranging from ignorance to politics to personal aggrandizement.”
Some point to former Vice President Al Gore as the poster boy for the strategy. Gore has made millions and won a Nobel Peace Prize for his climate change activism.
But some of his major predictions have failed to become reality.
In 2006, Gore told audiences while marketing his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” that the world would reach a point of no return in ten years if the global economy did not transition away from fossil fuels. Likewise, Gore in 2009 cited evidence suggesting that there was a 75% chance that by 2013, the North Pole would start becoming “ice-free” for a portion of the summer.
Some experts say the reason why such predictions prove faulty, even when backed up by scientific studies, is because it’s difficult to gauge the economic and social impact of changes in temperature.
“It’s incredibly difficult to translate temperature increases into changing weather effects using predictive models,” said Myron Ebell, the director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s center for energy and environment. “Most of the time the data doesn’t line up or scientists assume a larger temperature increase will happen than actually does and that skews the entire prediction.”
Critics say that studies trying to analyze the impact of changes in temperature rely heavily on correlations, rather than causes
Doomsday predictions have only increased as climate legislation on Capitol Hill has stalled because of Democratic infighting.
Last week, 60 House Democrats echoed the message when calling on Biden to declare a national emergency on climate change. The move would allow the White House to mobilize emergency powers to lower carbon emissions.
“If we don’t really begin to lower emissions, this planet has no chance,” Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif, said recently. “We have a few years left and that’s it. The planet is dying.”
The Dave Johnson coal-fired power plant is silhouetted against the morning sun in Glenrock, Wyoming, July 27, 2018. (AP Photo/J. David Ake, File)
Democrats have also tried to capitalize on the recent heatwave besieging the East Coast as proof that climate change is getting worse and dire action is needed.
Milloy says such tactics ignore broader trends and data when it comes to the climate.
“Climate alarmists are trying to surf a heat wave to pressure Joe Biden into declaring a climate emergency,” he said.
National Trust rangers working on the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast have so far collected well over 3,000 dead birds for incineration.
But they fear that many thousands more have succumbed to the deadly disease and fallen off the cliffs into the North Sea.
The Farnes, which are looked after by the National Trust, are an internationally-important habitat for 23 species, including puffins, with 200,000 birds living there.
Cliff-nesting birds seemed to be the worst-affected by the bird flu outbreak, with guillemots, kittiwakes and young puffins known as pufflings among those recovered.
More than 3,000 birds have already died in the outbreak (
Image: PA)
Rangers working for the trust have donned protective hazmat suits and removed the birds’ carcasses to prevent further contamination.
Some of the casualties include an eight-year-old Arctic tern which would have flown from the Farne Islands to Antarctica and back eight times during its lifetime, covering 144,000 miles.
Also discovered was a 16-year-old kittiwake which was previously spotted and “ringed” on the islands in 2006.
Rangers are removing carcasses to prevent further contamination
