Links

July Is Over – Rowers Have Completed One Tenth Of Their Journey | Real Science

The weather will turn sour in about a week, and the rowers are stuck on a tiny island with 90% of the journey left to go.

What Killed The Aztecs? A Researcher Probes Role of 16th Century Megadrought | Public Health

The wild swings in weather that are expected to become commonplace as the planet gets warmer—more frequent and severe droughts, followed by drenching rains—change ecosystems in a way that awaken and expedite the transmission of once dormant diseases. Intriguingly, this type of weather pattern may be what led to the fall of the once mighty Aztec Empire in the early 16th century–and not as is commonly held, by the invasion of European colonialists, who brought with them diseases like mumps, measles and smallpox for which the native populations lacked immunity.  [Wait, if the weather was so bad in the early 16th century, and if the global warming signal emerged in the 1980s, why should we think that eliminating any alleged global warming signal will prevent bad weather?]