Detroit Free Press (August 12)
“After a spring of wishful thinking, a summer of flimflamming, and 48 hours of confusing, closed-door debates, the Big Ten has finally canceled its fall sports season, which to most fans means: football.” This was no surprise and “shortly thereafter, the Pac-12 did the same…. All the other conferences should follow suit.”
Tags: Big Ten, Canceled, Conferences, Confusing, Fall, Football, Pac-12, Sports season, Spring, Summer, Surprise, U.S., Wishful thinking
Bloomberg (July 26)
“Countries around the Mediterranean Sea were praying that a glimpse of tourism would get them through the summer before the cold snap drives people indoors and ushers in a second chapter to the pandemic. Now,” with resurgence in Spain and France, “it appears the spread of the virus may not wait for the winter months.”
Tags: Cold, France, Indoors, Mediterranean, Pandemic, Resurgence, Spain, Summer, Tourism, Virus
Boston Globe (July 24)
Baseball’s return “resonates so strongly in this time of pandemic, one that channels the basic gratitude we feel for the one sport that has always made summer feel like summer.” But bringing it back isn’t easy. It’s a fragile achievement that raises competing priorities. “It’s good to have baseball back, but it’s complicated too.”
Tags: Baseball, Complicated, Fragile, Gratitude, Pandemic, Priorities, Resonates, Sport, Summer
LA Times (October 6)
“The Arctic is transforming more rapidly than anywhere else on Earth, with temperatures rising at twice the rate seen elsewhere.… Nobody can be certain when the Arctic sea ice will be gone, but scientists agree that we are on a precarious downward spiral. The loss of nearly all Arctic sea ice in late summer seems inevitable, and an ice-free Arctic Ocean will probably arrive within decades, if not sooner.”
Tags: Arctic, Downward spiral, Earth, Ice-free, Inevitable, Sea ice, Summer, Temperatures
South China Morning Post (September 2)
“Hong Kong will have to endure more of the protest-ridden heat as the unrest continues beyond summer. And it’s going to heat up indeed. So the question remains… how long before Beijing runs out of patience?”
The Economist (April 29)
“Those who doubt the power of human beings to change Earth’s climate should look to the Arctic, and shiver…. In the past 30 years, the minimum coverage of summer ice has fallen by half; its volume has fallen by three-quarters. On current trends, the Arctic ocean will be largely ice-free in summer by 2040.”
Los Angeles Times (October 4)
“The United States experienced the warmest July in its history, with more than 3,000 heat records broken across the country.” Globally, it was 36th year in a row that temperatures in July have exceeded the average of the 20th century. There’s one good thing about all the heat. “The increasingly powerful evidence of a long-term warming trend is making climate-change denial more difficult to defend.”
Tags: Climate change, Denial, Global warming, Summer, Temperatures, U.S.
The Guardian (September 17)
“Sometimes, the future arrives with alarming speed.” In 2000, scientists warned urgent action was needed; otherwise summer sea ice would disappear from the Arctic Ocean by 2050. The actual results have been “far more dramatic….The summer Arctic could be an open sea within a decade.”
Tags: Arctic Ocean, Climate change, Sea ice, Summer
The Economist (September 24)
Arctic ice is disappearing faster than previously thought. The ice is now estimated to be just half as thick as it was 1979 “and there is probably less ice floating on the Arctic Ocean now than at any time since a particularly warm period 8,000 years ago, soon after the last ice age.” Models had predicted that summer ice would disappear by century end. Instead “at current rates of shrinkage… this looks likely to happen some time between 2020 and 2050.”
Arctic ice is disappearing faster than previously thought. The ice is now estimated to be just half as thick as it was 1979 “and there is probably less ice floating on the Arctic Ocean now than at any time since a particularly warm period 8,000 years ago, soon after the last ice age.” Models had predicted that summer ice would disappear by century end. Instead “at current rates of shrinkage… this looks likely to happen some time between 2020 and 2050.”
http://www.economist.com/node/21530079
Tags: Arctic, Global warming, Ice, Summer
Wall Street Journal (July 1)
Summer jobs have long been a rite of passage for teenagers, but the percentage of 16-19 year-olds working has dropped to the lowest level since records began in 1948. “Only 24% of teens, one in four, have jobs, compared to 42% as recently as the summer of 2001.” This is due to partly to recession, partly to changing parent expectations, but the Wall Street Journal lays most of the blame on the minimum wage which Congress raised to “$7.25 an hour in 2009 from $5.15 in 2007.” As a result, “millions of kids will spend the summer playing computer games or hanging out” instead of “learning valuable job skills.”
Tags: Job skills, Minimum wage, Summer, Teenagers, Unemployment
