Wiretap: Climate change closed down Mount Everest

 
Svati Kirsten Narula says in the Atlantic that this was the year climate change closed down Everest. She writes: “The deadly avalanche on Everest earlier this month wasn’t technically an avalanche. It was an ‘ice release’—a collapse of a glacial mass known as a serac. Rather than getting swept up by a rush of powdery snow across a slope, the victims fell under the blunt force of house-sized ice blocks tumbling through the Khumbu Icefall, an unavoidable obstacle on the most popular route up Everest. The worst accident in the mountain’s history has effectively ended the 2014 climbing season. And some see global warming as the key culprit.”

Smart guns draw wrath of – you guessed it – the gun lobby. Via the New York Times.

Chris Lehane says, proudly, that he was the author of the Clinton memo on the right-wing media conspiracy back in 1995. And he says it was true then and even more true today. Via Politico.

A Washington Post/ABC poll shows nothing but bad news for Democrats in November: Obama approval slips to career low, and generic Republicans dominate Dems in Congressional vote. Via ABC.

Southern red states that turn down Obamacare Medicaid money are, of course, the states that need it the most. Via Vox.

A Los Angeles Clippers fan’s lament: The villainy of Donald Sterling. Via the New Yorker.

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