The Most Vegetarian Countries Around The World - Do You Agree? [1706x3898]

The nomination of unqualified non-scientist Sam Clovis is a powerful illustration of the Trump administration’s hostility both to science and to the rule of law.

Dr. Peter G. Lurie, President of Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).  Read the release.  (via climatetruth)

2,000-Year-Old Killer Whale Geoglyph Found in Peru Desert

Archaeologists rediscovered a giant geoglyph of a killer whale, etched into a desert hillside in the remote Palpa region of southern Peru, after it had been lost to science for more than 50 years.

The 230-foot-long (70 meters) figure of an orca — considered a powerful, semimythical creature in ancient Peruvian lore — may be more than 2,000 years old, according to the researchers.

They said it may be one the oldest geoglyphs in the Palpa region, and older than those in the nearby Nazca region, which is famous for its vast collection of ancient ground markings — the Nazca Lines — that include animal figures, straight lines and geometrical shapes.

Archaeologist Johny Isla, the head of Peru’s Ministry of Culture in Ica province, which includes the Palpa and Nazca valleys, explained that he saw a single photograph of the orca pattern for the first time about four years ago. He’d seen it while researching studies of geoglyphs at the German Archaeological Institute in Bonn. Read more.

Drilling Through Ice in the Hunt of Celestial Life

More good news from this nightmare in which we are living…

Trump Poised to Shrink Two National Monuments

Trump is expected to eliminate nearly 85 percent of Bear Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, cutting more than 1 million acres from its current boundaries. He’s also set to halve the nearly 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (E&E News PM, Nov. 30).

The move is being praised by Republicans who have long argued that the Antiquities Act—the 1906 law that allows presidents to set aside public land—is being used unlawfully to lock up tracts of federal land. On the other side, Democratic allies have vowed to take any monument reductions to court.

Scientists who have studied the region, especially Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, say redrawing its boundaries could be detrimental to scientific research and discoveries.

“The monument has been demonstrably a very, very important scientific laboratory to learning and understanding on many realms,” said Mike Scott, a retired U.S. Geological Survey researcher.

Scott and his colleagues have spent time in Grand Staircase-Escalante studying how different management policies and activities on rangelands—there are many different kinds across the ecologically diverse monument—affect the health of those ecosystems. Rangeland activities include anything from how grazing affects soil quality to the health of different soil types.

As climate change brings warmer, drier conditions, understanding how to keep soils and grassland ecosystems healthy in arid landscapes is crucial to avoid desertification, Scott said. Grand Staircase-Escalante has been “a really critical living laboratory,” he said.

NASA released a simulation of all 2017s Hurricanes -

Massive whale faces extinction with just 100 breeding females remaining

Despite legal protection, North Atlantic right whales keep getting struck accidentally by fishing boats and entangled in gear.

For decades, whaling ships targeted right whales. Now that they’re protected, they are still victims of human activity, and it may be too late to save them. The WWF says that their population shows no sign of recovery.