[TheClimate.Vote] August 6, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/August 6, 2018/

[Federal funds]
*Trump administration approves disaster declaration for Carr Fire 
<http://abc7news.com/trump-administration-approves-disaster-declaration-for-carr-fire/3887988/>*
A Presidential Major Disaster Declaration helps fire victims with 
unemployment assistance, food aid and legal and mental health counseling 
among other federal programs.
http://abc7news.com/trump-administration-approves-disaster-declaration-for-carr-fire/3887988/
- - - -
[one good thing]
*California's destructive summer brings blunt talk about climate change 
<http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-california-july-hot-20180805-story.html>*
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-california-july-hot-20180805-story.html

[NYTimes controversy]
*The GOP and Big Oil can't escape blame for climate change | Dana 
Nuccitelli 
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/aug/06/the-gop-and-big-oil-cant-escape-blame-for-climate-change-dana-nuccitelli>*
The New York Times magazine blames 'human nature,' but the true culprits 
have already been fingered
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/aug/06/the-gop-and-big-oil-cant-escape-blame-for-climate-change-dana-nuccitelli


[classic essay from July]
*Summers Are Getting Hotter Faster, Especially in North America's Farm 
Belt 
<https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19072018/global-warming-evidence-summer-record-temperatures-crops-agriculture-climate-change-data>*
Four decades of satellite data confirm man-made global warming and find 
seasonal warming trends that could threaten crops.
Sabrina Shankman
BY SABRINA SHANKMAN
Santer and his team found that at the mid-latitudes in the Northern 
Hemisphere, from about 40 degrees North (close to the Kansas-Nebraska 
border) to about 60 degrees North (mid-Canada), there is a gap between 
how much temperatures are rising in summer compared to how much they are 
rising in winter. That gap grew by roughly a tenth of a degrees Celsius 
each decade over the 38-year satellite record as the summers warmed faster.
The reason for this, the study explains, is that much of the world's 
land is in the Northern Hemisphere, as opposed to the Southern 
Hemisphere, which has more ocean. Ocean temperatures don't fluctuate as 
much and are slower to reflect change.
The mid-latitudes are also where many of the world's crops are grown, 
and as the temperature rises and the soil dries out, that could have 
major implications for food sources.
Above 60 degrees North latitude - going into the Arctic - the scientists 
saw the trend reverse. There, the winters are getting warmer faster, 
giving seasonal sea ice less time to regrow each year...
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19072018/global-warming-evidence-summer-record-temperatures-crops-agriculture-climate-change-data
- - - -
[Research Article]
*Human influence on the seasonal cycle of tropospheric temperature 
<http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6399/eaas8806>*
CONCLUSION
Our results suggest that attribution studies with the seasonal cycle of 
tropospheric temperature provide powerful and novel evidence for a 
statistically significant human effect on Earth's climate. We hope that 
this finding will stimulate more detailed exploration of the seasonal 
signals caused by anthropogenic forcing.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6399/eaas8806


*Capitalism Killed Our Climate Momentum, Not "Human Nature" 
<https://theintercept.com/2018/08/03/climate-change-new-york-times-magazine/>*
Naomi Klein
August 3 2018,
THIS SUNDAY, THE entire New York Times Magazine will be composed of just 
one article on a single subject: the failure to confront the global 
climate crisis in the 1980s, a time when the science was settled and the 
politics seemed to align. Written by Nathaniel Rich, this work of 
history is filled with insider revelations about roads not taken that, 
on several occasions, made me swear out loud. And lest there be any 
doubt that the implications of these decisions will be etched in 
geologic time, Rich's words are punctuated with full-page aerial 
photographs by George Steinmetz that wrenchingly document the rapid 
unraveling of planetary systems, from the rushing water where Greenland 
ice used to be to massive algae blooms in China's third largest lake.
The novella-length piece represents the kind of media commitment that 
the climate crisis has long deserved but almost never received. We have 
all heard the various excuses for why the small matter of despoiling our 
only home just doesn't cut it as an urgent news story: "Climate change 
is too far off in the future"; "It's inappropriate to talk about 
politics when people are losing their lives to hurricanes and fires"; 
"Journalists follow the news, they don't make it  -  and politicians 
aren't talking about climate change"; and of course: "Every time we try, 
it's a ratings killer."

None of the excuses can mask the dereliction of duty. It has always been 
possible for major media outlets to decide, all on their own, that 
planetary destabilization is a huge news story, very likely the most 
consequential of our time. They always had the capacity to harness the 
skills of their reporters and photographers to connect abstract science 
to lived extreme weather events. And if they did so consistently, it 
would lessen the need for journalists to get ahead of politics because 
the more informed the public is about both the threat and the tangible 
solutions, the more they push their elected representatives to take bold 
action.

Which is why it was so exciting to see the Times throw the full force of 
its editorial machine behind Rich's opus  -  teasing it with a 
promotional video, kicking it off with a live event at the Times Center, 
and accompanying educational materials.
That's also why it is so enraging that the piece is spectacularly wrong 
in its central thesis.

According to Rich, between the years of 1979 and 1989, the basic science 
of climate change was understood and accepted, the partisan divide over 
the issue had yet to cleave, the fossil fuel companies hadn't started 
their misinformation campaign in earnest, and there was a great deal of 
global political momentum toward a bold and binding international 
emissions-reduction agreement. Writing of the key period at the end of 
the 1980s, Rich says, "The conditions for success could not have been 
more favorable."

And yet we blew it  -  "we" being humans, who apparently are just too 
shortsighted to safeguard our future. Just in case we missed the point 
of who and what is to blame for the fact that we are now "losing earth," 
Rich's answer is presented in a full-page callout: "All the facts were 
known, and nothing stood in our way. Nothing, that is, except ourselves."

Yep, you and me. Not, according to Rich, the fossil fuel companies who 
sat in on every major policy meeting described in the piece. (Imagine 
tobacco executives being repeatedly invited by the U.S. government to 
come up with policies to ban smoking. When those meetings failed to 
yield anything substantive, would we conclude that the reason is that 
humans just want to die? Might we perhaps determine instead that the 
political system is corrupt and busted?)

This misreading has been pointed out by many climate scientists and 
historians since the online version of the piece dropped on Wednesday. 
Others have remarked on the maddening invocations of "human nature" and 
the use of the royal "we" to describe a screamingly homogenous group of 
U.S. power players. Throughout Rich's accounting, we hear nothing from 
those political leaders in the Global South who were demanding binding 
action in this key period and after, somehow able to care about future 
generations despite being human. The voices of women, meanwhile, are 
almost as rare in Rich's text as sightings of the endangered 
ivory-billed woodpecker  -  and when we ladies do appear, it is mainly 
as long-suffering wives of tragically heroic men.

All of these flaws have been well covered, so I won't rehash them here. 
My focus is the central premise of the piece: that the end of the 1980s 
presented conditions that "could not have been more favorable" to bold 
climate action. On the contrary, one could scarcely imagine a more 
inopportune moment in human evolution for our species to come face to 
face with the hard truth that the conveniences of modern consumer 
capitalism were steadily eroding the habitability of the planet. Why? 
Because the late '80s was the absolute zenith of the neoliberal crusade, 
a moment of peak ideological ascendency for the economic and social 
project that deliberately set out to vilify collective action in the 
name of liberating "free markets" in every aspect of life. Yet Rich 
makes no mention of this parallel upheaval in economic and political 
thought...
- - - -
WHEN I DELVED into this same climate change history some years ago, I 
concluded, as Rich does, that the key juncture when world momentum was 
building toward a tough, science-based global agreement was 1988. That 
was when James Hansen, then director of NASA's Goddard Institute for 
Space Studies, testified before Congress that he had "99 percent 
confidence" in "a real warming trend" linked to human activity. Later 
that same month, hundreds of scientists and policymakers held the 
historic World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere in Toronto, where 
the first emission reduction targets were discussed. By the end of that 
same year, in November 1988, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel 
on Climate Change, the premier scientific body advising governments on 
the climate threat, held its first session.

But climate change wasn't just a concern for politicians and wonks -  it 
was watercooler stuff, so much so that when the editors of Time magazine 
announced their 1988 "Man of the Year," they went for "Planet of the 
Year: Endangered Earth." The cover featured an image of the globe held 
together with twine, the sun setting ominously in the background. "No 
single individual, no event, no movement captured imaginations or 
dominated headlines more," journalist Thomas Sancton explained, "than 
the clump of rock and soil and water and air that is our common home."

(Interestingly, unlike Rich, Sancton didn't blame "human nature" for the 
planetary mugging. He went deeper, tracing it to the misuse of the 
Judeo-Christian concept of "dominion" over nature and the fact that it 
supplanted the pre-Christian idea that "the earth was seen as a mother, 
a fertile giver of life. Nature  -  the soil, forest, sea  -  was 
endowed with divinity, and mortals were subordinate to it.")

When I surveyed the climate news from this period, it really did seem 
like a profound shift was within grasp  -  and then, tragically, it all 
slipped away, with the U.S. walking out of international negotiations 
and the rest of the world settling for nonbinding agreements that relied 
on dodgy "market mechanisms" like carbon trading and offsets. So it 
really is worth asking, as Rich does: What the hell happened? What 
interrupted the urgency and determination that was emanating from all 
these elite establishments simultaneously by the end of the '80s?

Rich concludes, while offering no social or scientific evidence, that 
something called "human nature" kicked in and messed everything up. 
"Human beings," he writes, "whether in global organizations, 
democracies, industries, political parties or as individuals, are 
incapable of sacrificing present convenience to forestall a penalty 
imposed on future generations." It seems we are wired to "obsess over 
the present, worry about the medium term and cast the long term out of 
our minds, as we might spit out a poison."

When I looked at the same period, I came to a very different conclusion: 
that what at first seemed like our best shot at lifesaving climate 
action had in retrospect suffered from an epic case of historical bad 
timing. Because what becomes clear when you look back at this juncture 
is that just as governments were getting together to get serious about 
reining in the fossil fuel sector, the global neoliberal revolution went 
supernova, and that project of economic and social reengineering clashed 
with the imperatives of both climate science and corporate regulation at 
every turn.

The failure to make even a passing reference to this other global trend 
that was unfolding in the late '80s represents an unfathomably large 
blind spot in Rich's piece. After all, the primary benefit of returning 
to a period in the not-too-distant past as a journalist is that you are 
able to see trends and patterns that were not yet visible to people 
living through those tumultuous events in real time. The climate 
community in 1988, for instance, had no way of knowing that they were on 
the cusp of the convulsive neoliberal revolution that would remake every 
major economy on the planet.

But we know. And one thing that becomes very clear when you look back on 
the late '80s is that, far from offering "conditions for success [that] 
could not have been more favorable," 1988-89 was the worst possible 
moment for humanity to decide that it was going to get serious about 
putting planetary health ahead of profits.

RECALL WHAT ELSE was going on. In 1988, Canada and the U.S. signed their 
free trade agreement, a prototype for NAFTA and countless deals that 
would follow. The Berlin wall was about to fall, an event that would be 
successfully seized upon by right-wing ideologues in the U.S. as proof 
of "the end of history" and taken as license to export the 
Reagan-Thatcher recipe of privatization, deregulation, and austerity to 
every corner of the globe.

It was this convergence of historical trends  -  the emergence of a 
global architecture that was supposed to tackle climate change and the 
emergence of a much more powerful global architecture to liberate 
capital from all constraints  -  that derailed the momentum Rich rightly 
identifies. Because, as he notes repeatedly, meeting the challenge of 
climate change would have required imposing stiff regulations on 
polluters while investing in the public sphere to transform how we power 
our lives, live in cities, and move ourselves around.

All of this was possible in the '80s and '90s (it still is today) -  but 
it would have demanded a head-on battle with the project of 
neoliberalism, which at that very time was waging war on the very idea 
of the public sphere ("There is no such thing as society," Thatcher told 
us). Meanwhile, the free trade deals being signed in this period were 
busily making many sensible climate initiatives  - like subsidizing and 
offering preferential treatment to local green industry and refusing 
many polluting projects like fracking and oil pipelines  -  illegal 
under international trade law.

*I wrote a 500-page book about this collision between capitalism and the 
planet, and I won't rehash the details here. This extract, however, goes 
into the subject in some depth, and I'll quote a short passage here:*

    We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions
    because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated
    capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been
    struggling to find a way out of this crisis. We are stuck because
    the actions that would give us the best chance of averting
    catastrophe  -  and would benefit the vast majority  -  are
    extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold
    over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media
    outlets. That problem might not have been insurmountable had it
    presented itself at another point in our history. But it is our
    great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its
    decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when
    those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and
    intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s. Indeed,
    governments and scientists began talking seriously about radical
    cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in 1988  -  the exact year that
    marked the dawning of what came to be called "globalisation."

Why does it matter that Rich makes no mention of this clash and instead, 
claims our fate has been sealed by "human nature"? It matters because if 
the force that interrupted the momentum toward action is "ourselves," 
then the fatalistic headline on the cover of New York Times Magazine - 
"Losing Earth"  -  really is merited. If an inability to sacrifice in 
the short term for a shot at health and safety in the future is baked 
into our collective DNA, then we have no hope of turning things around 
in time to avert truly catastrophic warming.

If, on the other hand, we humans really were on the brink of saving 
ourselves in the '80s, but were swamped by a tide of elite, free-market 
fanaticism  -  one that was opposed by millions of people around the 
world  -  then there is something quite concrete we can do about it. We 
can confront that economic order and try to replace it with something 
that is rooted in both human and planetary security, one that does not 
place the quest for growth and profit at all costs at its center.

And the good news  -  and, yes, there is some  -  is that today, unlike 
in 1989, a young and growing movement of green democratic socialists is 
advancing in the United States with precisely that vision. And that 
represents more than just an electoral alternative -  it's our one and 
only planetary lifeline.

Yet we have to be clear that the lifeline we need is not something that 
has been tried before, at least not at anything like the scale required. 
When the Times tweeted out its teaser for Rich's article about 
"humankind's inability to address the climate change catastrophe," the 
excellent eco-justice wing of the Democratic Socialists of America 
quickly offered this correction: "*CAPITALISM* If they were serious 
about investigating what's gone so wrong, this would be about 
'capitalism's inability to address the climate change catastrophe.' 
Beyond capitalism, *humankind* is fully capable of organizing societies 
to thrive within ecological limits."

Their point is a good one, if incomplete. There is nothing essential 
about humans living under capitalism; we humans are capable of 
organizing ourselves into all kinds of different social orders, 
including societies with much longer time horizons and far more respect 
for natural life-support systems. Indeed, humans have lived that way for 
the vast majority of our history and many Indigenous cultures keep 
earth-centered cosmologies alive to this day. Capitalism is a tiny blip 
in the collective story of our species.

But simply blaming capitalism isn't enough. It is absolutely true that 
the drive for endless growth and profits stands squarely opposed to the 
imperative for a rapid transition off fossil fuels. It is absolutely 
true that the global unleashing of the unbound form of capitalism known 
as neoliberalism in the '80s and '90s has been the single greatest 
contributor to a disastrous global emission spike in recent decades, as 
well as the single greatest obstacle to science-based climate action 
ever since governments began meeting to talk (and talk and talk) about 
lowering emissions. And it remains the biggest obstacle today, even in 
countries that market themselves as climate leaders, like Canada and France.

But we have to be honest that autocratic industrial socialism has also 
been a disaster for the environment, as evidenced most dramatically by 
the fact that carbon emissions briefly plummeted when the economies of 
the former Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s. And as I wrote in 
"This Changes Everything," Venezuela's petro-populism has continued this 
toxic tradition into the present day, with disastrous results.

Let's acknowledge this fact, while also pointing out that countries with 
a strong democratic socialist tradition  -  like Denmark, Sweden, and 
Uruguay  -  have some of the most visionary environmental policies in 
the world. From this we can conclude that socialism isn't necessarily 
ecological, but that a new form of democratic eco-socialism, with the 
humility to learn from Indigenous teachings about the duties to future 
generations and the interconnection of all of life, appears to be 
humanity's best shot at collective survival.

These are the stakes in the surge of movement-grounded political 
candidates who are advancing a democratic eco-socialist vision, 
connecting the dots between the economic depredations caused by decades 
of neoliberal ascendency and the ravaged state of our natural world. 
Partly inspired by Bernie Sanders's presidential run, candidates in a 
variety of races  -  like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York, Kaniela 
Ing in Hawaii, and many more  -  are running on platforms calling for a 
"Green New Deal" that meets everyone's basic material needs, offers real 
solutions to racial and gender inequities, while catalyzing a rapid 
transition to 100 percent renewable energy. Many, like New York 
gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon and New York attorney general 
candidate Zephyr Teachout, have pledged not to take money from fossil 
fuel companies and are promising instead to prosecute them.

These candidates, whether or not they identify as democratic socialist, 
are rejecting the neoliberal centrism of the establishment Democratic 
Party, with its tepid "market-based solutions" to the ecological crisis, 
as well as Donald Trump's all-out war on nature. And they are also 
presenting a concrete alternative to the undemocratic extractivist 
socialists of both the past and present. Perhaps most importantly, this 
new generation of leaders isn't interested in scapegoating "humanity" 
for the greed and corruption of a tiny elite. It seeks instead to help 
humanity -  particularly its most systematically unheard and uncounted 
members  -  to find their collective voice and power so they can stand 
up to that elite.

We aren't losing earth  -  but the earth is getting so hot so fast that 
it is on a trajectory to lose a great many of us. In the nick of time, a 
new political path to safety is presenting itself. This is no moment to 
bemoan our lost decades. It's the moment to get the hell on that path.
https://theintercept.com/2018/08/03/climate-change-new-york-times-magazine/


AUGUST 3, 2018
*The End of the Line - A Climate in Crisis 
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/03/the-end-of-the-line-a-climate-in-crisis/>*
by ROBERT HUNZIKER
The world of academia is starting to pick up on the concept that 
humanity is unknowingly cruising on a train ride to doomsday, a surefire 
encounter with collapse of society based upon climate crises brought on 
by exponential climate change. The depth of the problem: It's inevitable 
and inescapable.

Nonetheless, people do not want to discuss and/or read about an 
impending disruption to society, especially on the scale of a collapse. 
Still, some academics consider it responsible and in fact necessary to 
communicate the issue on a pre-collapse basis in order for people to 
learn to support each other and to explore the radical implications well 
ahead of time.

Hence, the premise for Professor Jem Bendell's brilliant seminal 
work,*"Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy, July 27th 
2018." (http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf)*

Accordingly, at the opening of the essay: "It is time we consider the 
implications of it being too late to avert a global environmental 
catastrophe in the lifetimes of people alive today."

Seemingly, Professor Bendell is going out on a limb by calling for 
ecosystem catastrophes followed by social collapse within current 
lifetimes. Few, if any, academicians dare make such a prediction, and 
the few that do risk loss of jobs, grant funding, and renunciation by 
colleagues.

Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the prestigious Tyndall Centre for 
Climate Change Research in a live interview with Amy Goodman of 
Democracy Now! at Paris 15 admitted that climate scientists low-ball 
their findings, often times to protect grant funding.

Anderson: "Yet so far we simply have not been prepared to accept the 
revolutionary implications of our own findings, and even when we do we 
are reluctant to voice such thoughts openly… many are ultimately 
choosing to censor their own research."

Therein scientists unwittingly do the handiwork, in part, for fossil 
fuel companies and for America's entrenched global warming denial brand 
of politics, led by President Trump and the entire Republican Party. 
They do not believe in human-caused global warming.

Bendell carefully reviewed the scientific literature as well as accessing
research institutions to get to the bottom of the current status of 
climate change. What he discovered is basic to his conviction that 
society is headed for a train wreck of enormous proportions; thus 
diametrically opposite America's stated position on global warming.

After focusing on data, especially since 2014, it became crystal clear 
that the climate is undergoing a sea change like never before because of 
its non-linear credentials. To quote Bendell: "Non-linear changes are 
central importance to understanding climate change based on linear 
projections and that the changes no longer correlate with the rate of 
anthropogenic carbon emissions. In other words - 'runaway climate change'."

Bendell's research uncovered the chilling fact that several 
non-mainstream climate scientists of stature believe climate change is 
no longer simply change in the abstract. Rather, it is an ongoing crisis 
with real time dimensions and substance that is unavoidably dangerous 
for society. And, of utmost concern, it's possible, but not proven, that 
the dye is cast.

Bendell's Deep Adaptation is a wake up call for those who dismiss the 
dark side of the climate crisis. On the lighter side, it is only too 
evident that mainstream science is too slow and too conservative.

For example, Bendell references Peter Wadhams, one of the most eminent 
climate scientists in the world, when discussing the impact of an 
ice-free Arctic, which, according to Wadhams, will likely double the 
warming caused by CO2 from human activity. Whereas, "In itself, that 
renders the calculations of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change) redundant, along with the targets and proposals of the UNFCCC 
(United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)."

In other words, the leading authority on Arctic ice disagrees with the 
conclusions reached by the IPCC and UNFCCC, which serve as guidepost for 
nation-states to avoid the worst impact of the climate crisis.

Similarly, Bendell finds serious discrepancies in IPCC projections for 
sea level rise because of its commitment to linear change whereas 
non-linear is the course of action, especially based upon data over the 
most recent decade. The difference between linear versus non-linear is 
monumental and crucial to understanding the risks associated with the 
timing of climate crisis evolving into collapse of society.

A myth uncovered by Bendell is the 2C benchmark established at Paris 15, 
a temperature not to be exceeded or all hell breaks lose. Major problem: 
Many ecosystems will collapse and irreversible risks will be created 
along the way to 2C. In point of fact, it's a contrived number resulting 
from competing at-odds interests of industry, governments, and 
scientists. Not surprisingly, it's suspect!

In fact, some climate scientists say the temperature guardrail should be 
1.5C. But then again, some say we've already blown thru that level even 
though the prevailing opinion is that as of today we're at 0.8C above 
pre-industrial CO2. Whichever, no matter, the laundry list of impaired 
ecosystems is already a long one, indeed, Antarctica, the Arctic, 
Greenland, Patagonia, Andes glaciers, the Amazon, Tibetan glaciers, 
Siberian and Alaskan permafrost, the ocean, etc.

There is something unique about those "impaired or damaged ecosystems" 
located where nobody lives; nobody sees it happening, nobody knows, 
other than the occasional team of scientists on expedition. That is why 
it is so bloody difficult for people to grasp the challenge of the 
climate crisis. They do not see it happening!

In fact, most alarmingly, Bendell found a climate science expert that 
believes existing CO2 in the atmosphere "should already produce global 
ambient temperature rises over 5C and so there is not a carbon budget - 
It has already been overspent." This one projection seems beyond the 
pale vis a vis Bendell's most ambitious research results.

One can only hope that climate scientists that foresee the dark side of 
climate change prove to be overly pessimistic much as it is clear that 
mainstream science underestimates the downside risks. Over and over 
again, projections from yesteryear are crushed by altered ecosystems 
today; for example, Alaska's permafrost for the first time is emitting 
massive amounts of carbon in competition with human-induced CO2. 
Whereas, the IPCC projections do not allow for Alaskan permafrost carbon 
emissions, especially when Alaskan permafr0st emits as much carbon in 
two years as all U.S. commercial CO2 per annum. That's outlandishly bad 
news.

Bendell's dissertation delves into potential reductions of atmospheric 
carbon by natural and assisted biological processes as "a flickering ray 
of hope in our dark situation. However, the uncertainty about their 
impact needs to be contrasted with the uncertain yet significant impact 
of increasing methane release in the atmosphere."

The methane behemoth, he soon discovered, is a very contentious issue 
within the scientific community, i.e., factions that believe methane 
emissions are no problem for the foreseeable future versus factions that 
believe the East Siberian Arctic Sea could release gigantic surges of 
methane on a moment's notice, especially in lieu of its shallow waters, 
< 50-metre depth.

In fact, the most recent scientific data on methane belies the 
mainstream viewpoint, which claims, "… it is highly unlikely we will see 
near-term massive release of methane from the Arctic Ocean…."

Rather, "… report of subsea permafrost destabilization in the East 
Siberian Arctic sea shelf, the latest unprecedented temperatures in the 
Arctic, and the data in non-linear rises in high-atmosphere methane 
levels, combine to make it feel like we are about to play Russian 
Roulette with the entire human race, with already two bullets in the 
chamber."

Interestingly, Bendell provides a script of the likely outcomes, as if 
speaking to readers in a personal manner, to wit: "With the power down, 
soon you wouldn't have water coming out of your tap. You will depend 
upon you neighbors for food and some warmth. You will become 
malnourished. You won't know whether to stay or go. You will fear being 
violently killed before starving to death."

Maybe unintentional, but maybe not, by addressing the reader on a 
personal basis with worst-case scenarios of everyday life, Bendell 
essentially takes the reader's mindset into a real world setting of 
catastrophic societal collapse. He chose those words in an attempt to 
cut through the mistaken sense that the topic is purely theoretical. 
Mission accomplished.

The Deep Adaptation Agenda is discussed in detail starting on page 18 of 
Bendell's dissertation, which is readily available at: 
http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf.

As for his conclusion: "Disruptive impacts from climate change are now 
inevitable. Geoengineering is likely to be ineffective or 
counter-productive. Therefore, the mainstream climate policy community 
now recognizes the need to work much more on adaptation to the effects 
of climate change… societies will experience disruptions to their basic 
functioning within less than ten years due to climate stress. Such 
disruptions include increased levels of malnutrition, starvation, 
disease, civil conflict and war - and will not avoid affluent nations."
In short, the impending breakout of a full-blown climate crisis in full 
living color will be all-inclusive, leaving nobody behind.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/03/the-end-of-the-line-a-climate-in-crisis/


*This Day in Climate History - August 6, 2010 
<http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/extreme-heat-evidence-global-warming-11346623> 
- from D.R. Tucker*
August 6, 2010: "ABC World News Tonight" reports on the link between 
extreme heat and human-caused climate change.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/extreme-heat-evidence-global-warming-11346623

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