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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>August 31, 2020</b></font></i></p>
[XR activism brief message ]<br>
<b>Climate Crisis, and Why We Should Panic voiced by Keira Knightley
| Extinction Rebellion</b><br>
Aug 28, 2020<br>
Extinction Rebellion<br>
Extinction Rebellion has relaunched a short animated film entitled
Climate Crisis, and Why We Should Panic. Written, directed and
animated by Miritte Ben Yitzchak and voiced by British actress Keira
Knightley, it urges us all to Act Now before it is too late.<br>
<br>
The animated short Climate Crisis, and Why We Should Panic, is the
second of a two-part explainer video series for Extinction
Rebellion, focusing on the climate and ecological crisis. Voiced by
Keira Knightley, it explains what's causing climate change, why
governments must enter crisis mode to tackle this issue, and what
will happen if we don't do something about it now. <br>
<br>
It follows the first part - Extinction Emergency, and Why We Must
Act Now - which focuses on the ecological crisis. Voiced by Naomie
Harris and scored by Brian Eno, it summarises the planet's
biodiversity loss, runaway consumerism and the ecological crisis
that now faces us, and how the consequences will affect millions of
lives around the world.<br>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXYr9jhRqK8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXYr9jhRqK8</a>
<br>
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[excellent video presentation 12 min]<br>
<b>Antarctica : What happens if the 'Doomsday' Glacier collapses?</b><br>
Mar 15, 2020<br>
Just Have a Think<br>
Antarctica is home to some of the world's largest ice sheets and
glaciers. They existed in a stable equilibrium of ebb and flow for
millions of years until global warming started to melt them faster
than the snow falls could replenish their ice. Now a new US / UK
research collaboration has discovered that the rate of melt is even
worse than scientists feared. What's driving this latest
acceleration, and can we slow it down?<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hax7EPFysqY">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hax7EPFysqY</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
[video]<br>
<b>Latest Science on The Absolutely Staggering Amount of Ice
Recently Lost From Earth</b><br>
Aug 29, 2020<br>
Paul Beckwith<br>
A new scientific "Review Article: Earth's ice imbalance" by Slater
et al. found that Earth lost a net 28 trillion tons of ice from 1994
to 2017. Breakdown in trillions of tons, largest to smallest, is:
Arctic sea-ice 7.6, Antarctic ice shelves 6.5, Mountain glaciers
6.2, Greenland ice sheet 3.8, Antarctic ice sheet 2.5, and Antarctic
sea-ice 0.9. 60% is from the Northern Hemisphere, 40% from Southern
Hemisphere. Rate of ice loss has increased 57% since the 1990's
(from 0.8 to 1.2 trillion tons/year). 68% is from atmospheric
melting, 32% is from oceanic melting. Overall, the ice melt has
taken up 3.2% of the global energy budget.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F86fvyalbPQ&t=192s">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F86fvyalbPQ&t=192s</a><br>
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<p>[pyroocene]<br>
<b>'We're drying the fuels': How climate change is making
wildfires worse in the West</b><br>
Ian James - Arizona Republic<br>
As flames tore through California's Santa Cruz Mountains, Craig
Clements drove toward the fire in a specialized radar-equipped
Ford pickup, watching the plume of smoke billowing from the
forest.<br>
<br>
Clements is a professor who leads San Jose State University's Fire
Weather Research Laboratory, and he chases wildfires to study
their behavior...<br>
- -<br>
In the mix of factors that have influenced California's fires,
Clements pointed out that the past winter brought little rain.<br>
<br>
He's seen the dryness while snipping off branches from plants at
three sites where he and his students take samples to monitor the
fuel moisture. Beneath the green foliage in early August, he saw
brush that was dying and gray.<br>
<br>
Analyzing samples from the living plants, they found the moisture
well below average for this time of year and on par with the
levels in 2014-2015 during California's severe drought. By this
July, the vegetation was already as dry as it typically is in
August, Clements said, "so we were a month ahead of the dryness."<br>
<br>
Then in early August came record-breaking heat across the
Southwest. The heat further compounded the drying.<br>
<br>
"That exacerbates the fuel moisture and causes it to decrease even
more," Clements said. "So, that sets the stage for higher
intensity fires."<br>
<br>
When the lightning storms struck, the dry vegetation was primed to
burn.<br>
<br>
Scientific research has shown that dryness has been intensifying
in the West in recent years with climate change. As global
temperatures have risen, the heat has contributed to drier
conditions...<br>
- -<br>
Over the past few decades, people in Western states from Arizona
to Colorado have lived through fires that have grown bigger, more
destructive and costlier in lives and property lost. <br>
<b>A 'Fire Age'</b><br>
Since 2000, much of the West has been plagued by intense
heat-driven dry spells that have persisted for years.<br>
<br>
In a recent study based on tree rings in areas from Montana to
northern Mexico, scientists found that the 19 years from 2000 to
2018 ranked as the worst "megadrought" since the 1500s, and that
global warming has turned what would have been a period of
moderate aridity into one of the most extreme two-decade droughts
of the past 1,200 years. <br>
<br>
The dryness has put growing strains on water supplies,
contributing to the need for water cutbacks along the
overallocated Colorado River, and it has also stoked the fires.<br>
<br>
During the past year, drought has spread and worsened in Western
states from Oregon to New Mexico. As of this week, 83% of the
region is now classified as being abnormally dry or in drought,
according to the U.S. Drought Monitor website, compared to 28% a
year ago...<br>
- - <br>
Traditionally, some of the driest conditions fuel big fires in
September and October. That's when California's hot and dry Santa
Ana winds, or Diablo winds, often feed the flames.<br>
This fall, the National Weather Service's latest forecasts point
to continuing drought conditions in much of the West through
November, indicating the fire dangers will persist.<br>
<br>
And in the years to come, scientists predict the risks of large,
intense wildfires will continue to grow.<br>
<br>
As temperatures have risen, scientists have found the fire season
has grown longer on average. Researchers wrote in a 2016 report
for the organization Climate Central that with fires now occurring
during much of the year in the American West, the situation "is
approaching the point where the notion of a fire season will be
made obsolete."<br>
- -<br>
Stephen Pyne, an author and emeritus professor at Arizona State
University, has written that humanity is entering a "Fire Age." He
calls it the "Pyrocene."<br>
<br>
In an article last year, Pyne wrote that the warming of the planet
from burning fossil fuels "acts as a performance enhancer on all
aspects of fire on Earth."<br>
<br>
"What we are seeing is the cumulative effects of a fossil fuel
civilization aggravating it," Pyne said in an interview. He said
those effects include not only the heating of the planet but also
other patterns based on our reliance on fossil fuels, including
how people have fought fires and shaped the landscape and how
suburban sprawl -- enabled by gas-powered commuting -- has pushed
deeper into what previously were rural areas and wildlands.<br>
<br>
"Fire has no vaccine. We're going to have to live with it. And
right now, we're doing things to make it worse," Pyne said. "And
we could certainly be reversing a lot of that. This is mostly a
problem of our making. So, the good news is that it's possible for
us to begin unwinding things."...<br>
- -<br>
"There are things that we can and should be doing to address the
fire problem and fire risk in California, and to get ahead of it,
and to make ourselves more resilient," said Lenya Quinn-Davidson,
a fire adviser with the University of California Cooperative
Extension and director of the Northern California Prescribed Fire
Council.<br>
<br>
She said efforts should include landscape-level projects, such as
more prescribed burns or forest-thinning, as well as changes by
individual homeowners to reduce fire risks...<br>
- -<br>
Those risk-mitigation efforts, she said, range from forest
restoration programs to investments by homeowners' associations to
create firebreaks or install sprinklers. Individual property
owners, she said, can also make a big difference in reducing risks
around their homes. <br>
<br>
"Climate change makes it even more imperative that we are
restoring our fire-deprived systems, making room for prescribed
fire," Stasiewicz said in an email, "and doing everything we can
on private property to enhance the survivability of our homes."<br>
<br>
Those "home hardening" precautions can include a variety of
measures, such as pruning trees, clearing vegetation in a zone
around the house or cleaning out gutters that are filled with
leaves.<br>
<br>
When burning embers float in the wind, they can enter a house
through a vent and spark a fire inside. To guard against that,
Quinn-Davidson said, people can replace their vents with
smaller-mesh vents that meet new fire-resistant standards.<br>
<br>
"In the case of wind-driven fires, where there's a lot of embers
coming down, those things can really help," Quinn-Davidson said.
"Things like that can really protect a lot of homes."<br>
Reach reporter Ian James at <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ian.james@arizonarepublic.com">ian.james@arizonarepublic.com</a> or
602-444-8246. Follow him on Twitter: @ByIanJames<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2020/08/28/how-climate-change-making-wildfires-worse-across-west/5643391002/">https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2020/08/28/how-climate-change-making-wildfires-worse-across-west/5643391002/</a><a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2020/08/28/how-climate-change-making-wildfires-worse-across-west/5643391002/"></a><br>
</p>
<p>- - <br>
</p>
[larger picture]<br>
<b>California and Colorado Fires May Be Part of a Climate-Driven
Transformation of Wildfires Around the Globe</b><b><br>
</b>Wildfires from Australia to Siberia are not just larger, hotter
and faster, but burning in areas and seasons where they were
previously rare.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22082020/california-colorado-wildfires-climate-change-global-transformation">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22082020/california-colorado-wildfires-climate-change-global-transformation</a><br>
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<p><br>
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[As we knew]<br>
<b>Rampant destruction of forests 'will unleash more pandemics'</b><br>
Researchers to tell UN that loss of biodiversity enables rapid
spread of new diseases from animals to humans<br>
- -<br>
"When workers come into rainforests to chop down trees they don't
take food with them," said Andy Dobson, professor of ecology and
evolutionary biology at Princeton University. "They just eat what
they can kill. So that exposes them to infection all the time."<br>
<br>
This point was backed by Pimm. "I have a photograph of a guy
slaughtering a wild pig deep in the Ecuadorian jungle. He was an
illegal logger and he and his fellow workers needed food so they
killed a boar. They got splattered with wild pig blood in the
process. It's gruesome and unhygienic and that is how these diseases
spread."<br>
<br>
However, not every emerging disease is caused by a single, major
spillover event, stressed zoologist David Redding, of University
College London. "In places where trees are being cleared, mosaics of
fields, created around farms, appear in the landscape interspersed
with parcels of old forest.<br>
<br>
"This increases the interface between the wild and the cultivated.
Bats, rodents and other pests carrying strange new viruses come from
surviving clumps of forests and infect farm animals - who then pass
on these infections to humans."<br>
<br>
An example of this form of transmission is provided by Lassa fever,
which was first discovered in Nigeria in 1969 and now causes several
thousand deaths a year. The virus is spread by the rodent Mastomys
natalensis, which was widespread in Africa's savannahs and forests
but now colonises homes and farms, passing on the disease to
humans....<br>
"The crucial point is that there are probably 10 times more
different species of viruses than there are of mammals," added
Dobson. "The numbers are against us and the emergence of new
pathogens inevitable."<br>
<br>
In the past many outbreaks of new diseases remained in contained
areas. However, the development of cheap air travel has changed that
picture and diseases can appear across the globe before scientists
have fully realised what is happening.<br>
<br>
"The onward transmission of a new disease is also another really
important element in the pandemic story," said Professor James Wood,
head of veterinary medicine at Cambridge University. "Consider the
swine flu pandemic. We flew that around the world several times
before we realised what was going on. Global connectivity has
allowed - and is still allowing - Covid-19 to be transmitted to just
about every country on Earth."<br>
<br>
In a paper published in Science last month, Pimm, Dobson and other
scientists and economists propose setting up a programme to monitor
wildlife, reduce spillovers, end the wildlife meat trade and reduce
deforestation. Such a scheme could cost more than $20bn a year, a
price tag that is dwarfed by the cost of the Covid-19 pandemic,
which has wiped trillions of dollars from national economies round
the world.<br>
<br>
"We estimate that the value of prevention costs for 10 years to be
only about 2% of the costs of the Covid-19 pandemic," they state. In
addition, reducing deforestation - which is a major source of carbon
emissions - would also have the benefit of helping the battle
against climate change, add the researchers.<br>
<br>
"The rate of emergence of novel disease is increasing and their
economic impacts are also increasing," states the group. "Postponing
a global strategy to reduce pandemic risk would lead to continued
soaring costs. Society must strive to avoid the impacts of future
pandemics."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/30/rampant-destruction-of-forests-will-unleash-more-pandemics">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/30/rampant-destruction-of-forests-will-unleash-more-pandemics</a><br>
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<p>[since 1996]<br>
<b> </b><b>Capitalism And Monopolies: How Five Companies Control
All US Media</b><br>
Aug 28, 2020<br>
Second Thought<br>
You're probably aware that Disney owns Marvel and Lucasfilm, but
do you really know how consolidated the American media landscape
is? In this episode, we're looking at how just five
mega-corporations control the entirety of US media. <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://youtu.be/A1_lCe3vyyc">https://youtu.be/A1_lCe3vyyc</a><br>
</p>
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[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
August 31, 1988 </b></font><br>
Vice President and GOP presidential candidate George H. W. Bush
declares that those who think people are powerless to combat the
"greenhouse effect" are forgetting about "the White House effect."
(Twenty-one years later, James Hansen would note in his book "Storms
of My Grandchildren" that Bush's chief of staff, John Sununu, tried
to have him fired from NASA.)<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://c-spanvideo.org/x1mc/">http://c-spanvideo.org/x1mc/</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://articles.latimes.com/1988-09-01/news/mn-4551_1_george-bush">http://articles.latimes.com/1988-09-01/news/mn-4551_1_george-bush</a><br>
<br>
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