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Thursday, 28 July 2022

Glaciers in the Alps are disappearing at record speed + Get your feet on the ground for a better mood

Good luck to Sid and the rest of the gang from Ice Age: The Alps’ glaciers could be on track for their biggest mass loss in at least 60 years of record tracking as climate change spells disaster, Reuters reports, citing glaciology data. The Alps saw two major heat waves this summer, with the elevation at which water froze measuring at 5.1k meters, compared with the normal summer level of approximately 3k meters to 3.5k meters. Mountain glaciers in the Alps remain the most susceptible to climate change due to their smaller size and little ice cover. Temperatures in the Alps are also rising at around 0.3°C per decade — nearly double the global average — therefore augmenting the risk of the glaciers disappearing altogether.

And if we continue with business as usual, the glaciers could lose over 80% of their current mass due to climate change by 2100, according to a 2019 report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Recent heat waves this year in several regions across the world are sparking worries that Alps glaciers may disappear sooner than predicted. “We are seeing model results expected a few decades in the future are happening now,” Matthias Huss, who heads Glacier Monitoring Switzerland, said. “I did not expect to see such an extreme year so early in the century.”


In case you needed more reasons to flee to Sahel this weekend (or any beach, anytime you can): While the fact that spending time in nature is good for us is hardly new information, it turns out that kicking off your shoes and literally keeping your foot on the ground — also known as grounding — can boost your immunity, reduce stress, and help improve sleep, research has shown. Grounding is when we make direct contact with the earth for at least 30 minutes, according to Kayla Barnes, host of the podcast Brain Biohacking. This includes walking barefoot in the sand, grass, or dirt. The Earth’s surface holds an abundant supply of mobile electrons, making most of the planet’s surface electrically conductive. This electrical potential has been found to hold many health benefits for humans. Through grounding, people can absorb electrons from the earth and neutralize freeradicals (which can damage cells), providing an antioxidant effect, Barnes explains to Vice. Grounding may also improve biological rhythms by reducing nighttime cortisol levels, leading to better sleep, less inflammation, and an improved mood.

So-called “black swan funds” are booming in popularity as markets sink: Black swan funds — designed for investors to make gains when markets tank — are gaining popularity as risk-management software booms and investors look for ways to cut risk and hedge against market turmoil, Bloomberg reports. Black swan funds have gained about 11.6% this year, giving them a rare positive position in the current market downturn — but just enough to make up for their losses over the past year’s losses during a bull market.

It’s unlikely that we’ll see a rerun of the 2020 black swan fund jackpot: Compared with the gains these funds made in the early days of the pandemic (which were around 24%), the rewards this time around have so far been negligible. This is because “the longer, the more protracted the drawdown, the less benefit you usually get from those strategies,” one analyst explains to the business information service, adding that sudden market crashes tend to be more profitable due to the specificity of wagers that contracts under these types of funds often make.

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