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<font size="+1"><i>August 6, 2018</i></font><br>
<br>
[Federal funds]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://abc7news.com/trump-administration-approves-disaster-declaration-for-carr-fire/3887988/">Trump
administration approves disaster declaration for Carr Fire</a></b><br>
A Presidential Major Disaster Declaration helps fire victims with
unemployment assistance, food aid and legal and mental health
counseling among other federal programs.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://abc7news.com/trump-administration-approves-disaster-declaration-for-carr-fire/3887988/">http://abc7news.com/trump-administration-approves-disaster-declaration-for-carr-fire/3887988/</a></font><br>
- - - -<br>
[one good thing]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-california-july-hot-20180805-story.html">California's
destructive summer brings blunt talk about climate change</a></b><br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="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</a></font><br>
<br>
[NYTimes controversy]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="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
GOP and Big Oil can't escape blame for climate change | Dana
Nuccitelli</a></b><br>
The New York Times magazine blames 'human nature,' but the true
culprits have already been fingered<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="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">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</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
[classic essay from July]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19072018/global-warming-evidence-summer-record-temperatures-crops-agriculture-climate-change-data">Summers
Are Getting Hotter Faster, Especially in North America's Farm
Belt</a></b><br>
Four decades of satellite data confirm man-made global warming and
find seasonal warming trends that could threaten crops.<br>
Sabrina Shankman<br>
BY SABRINA SHANKMAN<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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...<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19072018/global-warming-evidence-summer-record-temperatures-crops-agriculture-climate-change-data">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19072018/global-warming-evidence-summer-record-temperatures-crops-agriculture-climate-change-data</a></font><br>
- - - -<br>
[Research Article]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6399/eaas8806">Human
influence on the seasonal cycle of tropospheric temperature</a></b><br>
CONCLUSION<br>
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.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6399/eaas8806">http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6399/eaas8806</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/08/03/climate-change-new-york-times-magazine/">Capitalism
Killed Our Climate Momentum, Not "Human Nature"</a></b><br>
Naomi Klein<br>
August 3 2018,<br>
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.<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
That's also why it is so enraging that the piece is spectacularly
wrong in its central thesis.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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?)<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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...<br>
- - - -<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
(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.")<br>
<br>
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?<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>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:</b><br>
<blockquote> 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."<br>
</blockquote>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/08/03/climate-change-new-york-times-magazine/">https://theintercept.com/2018/08/03/climate-change-new-york-times-magazine/</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
AUGUST 3, 2018<br>
<b><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/03/the-end-of-the-line-a-climate-in-crisis/">The
End of the Line - A Climate in Crisis</a></b><br>
by ROBERT HUNZIKER<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Hence, the premise for Professor Jem Bendell's brilliant seminal
work,<b> "Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy,
July 27th 2018." (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf">http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf</a>)</b><br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Bendell carefully reviewed the scientific literature as well as
accessing<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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'."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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)."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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!<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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!<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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…."<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
The Deep Adaptation Agenda is discussed in detail starting on page
18 of Bendell's dissertation, which is readily available at: <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf">http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf</a>.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
In short, the impending breakout of a full-blown climate crisis in
full living color will be all-inclusive, leaving nobody behind.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/03/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/</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
<font size="+1"><b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/extreme-heat-evidence-global-warming-11346623">This
Day in Climate History - August 6, 2010</a> - from D.R. Tucker</b></font><br>
August 6, 2010: "ABC World News Tonight" reports on the link between
extreme heat and human-caused climate change. <br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/extreme-heat-evidence-global-warming-11346623">http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/extreme-heat-evidence-global-warming-11346623</a></font><br>
<br>
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