30 July 2019 — Counter Currents
“The University of Alaska Fairbanks (“UAF”) is a hub for Arctic climate research, and a magnet for top scientists and international collaborations— and it’s in trouble.” (Source: Sabrina Shankman, A Death Spiral for Research: Arctic Scientists Worried as Alaska Universities Face 40% Funding Cut, Inside Climate News, July 19, 2019)
17 November 2018 — BBC
[This from the BBC. It takes acts of ‘civil disobedience’ for the BBC to report such events, when it’s about climate change. Extinction Rebellion]
Image copyright AFP Westminster Bridge is one of the five bridges that has been blocked by protesters
Protesters have blocked off five major bridges in central London as part of a so-called “rebellion day”.
7 November 2018 — Climate & Capitalism
Of all the fossil fuels ever consumed, more than half were burned in the last 50 years
In ‘Burning Up’ Simon Pirani shows why fossil fuel consumption has grown so fast, and argues that only radical social change can prevent climate disaster now
Luke Neal is an activist who lives in Berlin.
Simon Pirani
BURNING UP
A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption
Pluto Press, 2018
reviewed by Luke Neal
23 October 2018 — Climate & Capitalism
In past warming events, atmospheric CO2 rose too fast for many species to adapt. Today it is rising 10 times faster than at any time in 66 million years.
Katrin Meissner is an Associate Professor and Kaitlin Alexander is a PhD Candidate at the Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales.
15 October 2018 — Climate & Capitalism
“I don’t think it’s a hoax. I think there’s probably a difference. But I don’t know that it’s man made.”
137 words and two graphs. A climate scientist demolishes the world’s leading climate science denier
24 September 2018 — CounterCurrents
Current temperature trajectories are on par with or exceed the IPCC’s dangerous projections (Figure 1). Acting as the lungs of the biosphere, over tens of millions of years the atmosphere developed an oxygen-rich carbon-low composition, allowing the flourishing of mammals. The anthropogenic release to the atmosphere to date of more than 600 Gigaton of carbon (GtC) is reversing this trend, threatening to return the Earth to conditions which preceded the emergence of modern life forms, including humans. Climate projections for the mid to late 21st century by the IPCC (models A1B and A2) indicate mean global temperatures rising to near 3 to 4 degrees Celsius above mean 1880-1920 temperatures. Concomitantly a transient cooling occurs in high latitude oceans due to flow of cold water from melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. These developments would lead to un-inhabitability of large parts of the Earth and to a further rise in extreme weather events, not least from hurricanes around the Pacific Rim and Caribbean island chains.
7 August 2018 — Countercurrents
In a key paper titled “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene“,published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Science (6.8.2018),a group of 17 climate and environment scientists (Will Steffen, Johan Rockström, Katherine Richardson, Timothy M. Lenton, Carl Folke, Diana Liverman, Colin P. Summerhayes, Anthony D. Barnosky, Sarah E. Cornell, Michel Crucifix, Jonathan F. Donges, Ingo Fetzer, Steven J. Lade, Marten Scheffer, Ricarda Winkelmann, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber) have issued a stern warning to humanity with regard to the future of advanced life on Earth (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/07/31/1810141115)
1 August 2018 — Global Research
The rate of global species extinction is today roughly what it was 66 million years ago, after an asteroid six to nine miles across careered into south-eastern Mexico, quickly wiping out the dinosaurs and much else. The force of the asteroid, which struck the planet at the end of the Cretaceous period, was over a billion times stronger than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Now, the human species is approaching the destructive equivalent of this asteroid. Due to expanding human activity, scientists estimate that each day extinction is being inflicted upon 150 to 200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal.
1 August 2018 — Media Lens
What will it take for society to make the deep-rooted changes required to prevent the terrifying and awesome threat of climate breakdown? This summer’s extreme weather events are simply a prelude to a rising tide of chaos that will be punctuated by cataclysmic individual events – floods, heatwaves, superstorms – of increasing severity and frequency. How long before people demand radical action from governments? Or, and this is what is really needed, how long until citizens remove corporate-captured governments from power and introduce genuine democracy?
24 July 2018 — Global Research
As the summer moves on, the world is literally burning under intense heat due to ever worsening climate change, mainly as a result of government impotence under corporate sway. Areas near Tokyo have just experienced a record temperature of 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41.1 Celsius), with beleaguered residents fleeing to avoid the sun. Across Japan, this unprecedented heat wave has already killed dozens of people.
8 May 2018 — NEO
Andre Vltchek & John Cobb Jr
There is no time for long introductions. The world is, possibly heading for yet another catastrophe. This one, if we, human beings will not manage to prevent it, could become our final.
The West is flexing its muscle, antagonizing every single country that stands on its way to total domination of the Planet. Some countries, including Syria, are attacked directly and mercilessly. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people are dying.
15 November 2017 — Common Dreams
Yikes.
Over 15,000 scientists hailing from more than 180 countries just issued a dire warning to humanity:
“Time is running out” to stop business as usual, as threats from rising greenhouse gases to biodiversity loss are pushing the biosphere to the brink.
4 June 2017 — TRNN
Prof. Subhankar Banerjee, Editor of “Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point,” talks about the effect President Trump’s climate policies will have on the Arctic and on the rest of the planet
19 March 2017 — Climate & Capitalism
The Anthropocene Formula
For four billion years, one formula summarized global change. That has changed in just four decades, and if we don’t act quickly, human civilization may not survive.
Owen Gaffney is co-founder Future Earth Media Lab, and Director of media at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Will Steffen, former Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program, is now an Adjunct Professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University.
This article, from The Conversation, summarizes key findings of The Anthropocene Equation, a paper by Gaffney and Steffen that was published in The Anthropocene Review, February 2017. Continue reading
2 June 2014 — The Greanville Post
Perhaps the most under-reported important story of our time
Typical of our time, and where our species’ head is at (a very dark tunnel…) although on YouTube, and free to be viewed by one and all, it has gotten under 60,000 views.
By contrast, the stupid gangnam dance craze has just topped 2 billion views. Two billion visits, folks. Talk about a misled, miseducated, self-indulgent species. —PG
29 May 2013 — Media Lens
Sometimes we get so sick of the phrase ‘history in the making’ that the brain tends to switch off. What is it this time?, we sigh. A new high-tech piece of military technology that will boost US killing power? A big jump in a newspaper’s online advertising revenue? The world’s best footballer, Lionel Messi, joining ‘an exclusive list of adidas athletes to have their own signature product’? Sometimes the ‘history’ in question only stretches back a few years, maybe a century or two. Only very occasionally, if the claim is truly deserved, does it stretch back to the earliest era of written records.
14 February 2013 — Greg Palast
According to the transcript of the secretly recorded tape, Charles Koch was chuckling like a six-year old. Koch was having a hell of a laugh over pilfering a few hundred dollars’ worth of oil from a couple of dirt-poor Indians on the Osage Reservation.
4 August, 2010 — Information Clearing House
Obama Warned Israel May Bomb Iran
By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
We write to alert you to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26077.htm
Israel-Lebanon Tensions Flare After Skirmish Leaves Four Dead
By Robert Fisk:
For the Lebanese army to take on the Israelis, with their 264 nuclear missiles, was a tall order. But for the Israeli army to take on the army of one of the smallest countries in the world was surely preposterous.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26074.htm
19 June, 2010 – Dissident Voice
These are the realities on the ground (undersea floor), in the water (Gulf of Mexico & Seven Seas), and in the air (atmosphere) in the wake of the Oil & Gas Industry operations around the globe, as it has operated for well over 100 years. For illustration purposes let’s just focus on the northern Gulf Coast of Mexico, since that is where Mother Earth has directed our collective attention. We can do this quickly by consulting the following map of the oil and gas platforms that were in operation throughout the Gulf of Mexico in 2006 (per Wikipedia).
Please be aware that oil and gas exploration, drilling and extraction have been conducted for many decades in the Gulf. Therefore we know that there are an untold number of vast empty caverns which have been emptied of their oil and gas. We also know that, when a repository has been emptied very quickly, there is a shock of sorts to the system, or geological formations that exist around and contiguous to these prospects. One can easily imagine how the entire balance of the undersea ecosystem and sub-seafloor geology can be irrevocably affected by the relentless intrusions and profoundly invasive techniques conducted by this industry.
Let’s now contextualize this state of affairs by fast-forwarding to 2012. As Mother Earth rocks and rolls in preparation for her rejuvenation, we are all witnessing huge and unprecedented changes to her beautiful form. For instance we know there has been a dramatic uptick in the number of earthquakes and volcanoes, both on land and undersea around the world. We know that global climate change has been occurring for decades and has manifested in some places as global warming, others as global cooling, and still others as global deluges and global droughts, etc. Regardless of where you domicile, we can all agree that things are really changing. And very fast, due to the various accelerations and compression of time which occur during the final phase of the galactic creation cycle per Mayan calendrics and cosmogony.
15 April, 2010 — Bolivia Rising
An upcoming grassroots summit on climate change in Bolivia could mark a pivotal event in the fight against global warming.
Bolivian President Evo Morales was a leading voice of dissent at the global climate talks in Copenhagen last year. He accused wealthier countries of shutting out poor nations from negotiations and of offering only token, nonbinding reforms. Poor countries and small island nations deemed the accord a death sentence.
As Morales left the Danish capital, he promised to organize a bolder and more democratic initiative to address the climate crisis.
‘We have an obligation to save [all of] humanity and not just half of humanity,’ said Morales. He warned that if we don’t do more to curb global warming, ‘many islands will disappear and Africa will suffer a holocaust.’
In response, Bolivia is hosting the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth from April 19-22 in the city of Cochabamba. Around 15,000 people from across the globe are expected to attend, including some heads of state and delegations from about 100 governments, along with representatives from scientific bodies, nongovernmental organizations and indigenous groups.
‘Unlike Copenhagen, there will be no secret discussions behind closed doors,’ said Pablo Solon, Bolivia’s ambassador to the United Nations. Solon hopes that flexing some global grassroots muscle in Cochabamba will help generate alternative, actionable proposals and political momentum for the next round of climate talks slated for November in Mexico.
Working groups destined for Cochabamba have already begun discussions on a series of topics.
One of the bolder ideas is the creation of a global climate justice tribunal that could serve as an enforcement mechanism. And conference participants are already working on a ‘Universal Declaration of Mother Earth Rights’ meant to parallel the U.N.’s landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.
The grassroots summit will also pay special attention to the links between climate change and increased scarcity of fresh water. Bolivia is home to nearly a quarter of the world’s tropical glaciers. In recent years, these glaciers have lost 40 percent of their mass, leading to growing strains on local water supplies.
On April 10, the White House retaliated against Bolivia — the poorest country in South America — by suspending millions of dollars in climate aid, the Bolivian government said.
It’s shameful that the smallest, poorest and least powerful of the world are the ones leading the fight for a sustainable global future.
If the tide begins to turn, we’ll have them to thank. And if it doesn’t, the globe will be swamped — thanks to us.
Teo Ballve is a freelance journalist and editor specializing in Latin American affairs. He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.
Republished from The Progressive
The New Dark Age 