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July 9, 2024 Readings

July 9, 2024

July 9, 2024 Readings

The meme that is destroying Western civilisation Part V–Steve Keen

Food Ecomodernism And The Emptying Of Politics, Part 1–Chris Smaje

Global News Round-up: Let them Eat Bugs–Robert Malone

After Leftist Lobbying, German Bank Kills AfD Donation Account–Armageddon Prose

Weak Data Says a Recession Has Already Started, Let’s Now Discuss When – MishTalk

Corporate Media Is An Unreliable Narrator–Matt Orsagh

This Civilization Is Not Interested In Saving Itself–The Honest Sorcerer

OMG Haaretz Is Hamas Propaganda Now! – by Caitlin Johnstone

Alaska’s top-heavy glaciers are approaching an irreversible tipping point–Bethan Davies

‘I had to downgrade my life’ – US workers in debt to buy groceries–BBC News

The Public Cost of Private Science–Nautil.us

No Reform or Leader Is Going to Save the Status Quo–We’re On Our Own–Charles Hugh Smith

NOTHING ELSE MATTERS – The Burning Platform

It’s All MMT: The Fraud Of ‘Monetary Policy’ | ZeroHedge

Master Class On Strategic Organised Resistance: Class 1–Collapse Curriculum

From Prosecutor to Censor: Barbara McQuade’s Call to Erode Free Speech–Reclaim The Net

100 Miles South Of Salt Lake City, A New Type Of Off-Grid Community | ZeroHedge

US Farmers Hoard Corn Like It’s 1988 | ZeroHedge

Science Snippets: Water Disappears as Earth Warms

June 12, 2024

Science Snippets: Water Disappears as Earth Warms

Draft script:

The title of this video makes an obvious statement. As Earth or any part of Earth warms, evaporation accelerates. As a result, surface water evaporates and goes into the atmosphere. Considering Earth is in the midst of the most rapid environmental change in planetary history, we must accept evaporation to be at an all-time high. This short video describes examples of our rapidly drying planet.

From CNN comes a story titled The world’s highest navigable lake is drying out. The story was published 3 September 2023. Here’s the lede: “Water levels at Lake Titicaca – the highest navigable lake in the world and South America’s largest – are dropping precipitously after an unprecedented winter heat wave.” The first paragraph concludes with this sentence: “The shocking decline is affecting tourism, fishing and agriculture, which locals rely on to make a living.”

The article published by CNN goes on: “Visitors have long been attracted to the blue waters and open skies of South America’s largest lake, which straddles more than 3,200 square miles across the border of Peru and Bolivia.

Sometimes described as an ‘inland sea,’ it is home to Aymara, Quechua, and Uros indigenous communities and sits at an altitude of around 3,800 meters (12,500 feet) in the central Andes mountain range, making it the highest navigable lake in the world. The extreme altitude also exposes the lake to high levels of solar radiation, which enhances evaporation and constitutes most of its water losses.

More than three million people live around the lake, relying on its waters to fish, farm and attract tourists who boost the economy of an otherwise marginalized region.

Now the lake is at risk of losing some of that magic.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Science Snippets: Expect Extreme Weather Events

May 23, 2024

Science Snippets: Expect Extreme Weather Events

Draft script:

From Scientific American on 27 March 2024 comes this headline: Global Warming Is Slowing the Earth’s Rotation. Here’s the subtitle: “Drastic polar ice melt is slowing Earth’s rotation, counteracting a speedup from the planet’s liquid outer core. The upshot is that we might need to subtract a leap second for the first time ever within the decade.”

Oh, really? That’s the upshot? Not that anthropogenic global warming underlies the ongoing Mass Extinction Event. Not that anthropogenic global warming is destroying habitat for all life on Earth. Onto the important topic: “we might need to subtract a leap second for the time ever within the decade.”

A Harvard University geophysicist provides the bottom line of this article: “Do we continue … adding or subtracting seconds from our definition of a day, or do we accept this irregular difference as normal and give up the bother of continuously correcting?”

Onward, then, to issues of minimal importance relative to the article in Scientific American, at least according to the Scientific American author. I’ll start with an article at earth.com. Titled Strongest ocean current on Earth is speeding up and causing problems, this article was published on 31 March 2024.

Here’s the lede: “The Antarctic Circumpolar Current … is the most powerful current on Earth, encircling Antarctica and influencing the global climate.” The relevant question asked by the article comes from the two ensuing paragraphs: “Over the last few decades, observations show that it has been speeding up. Experts were uncertain whether this was a result of human-caused warming or a natural pattern.

However, scientists have discovered that this oceanic powerhouse is getting even stronger. What does this mean for our planet’s future?”

The article at earth.com refers to a peer-reviewed, open-access paper published in Frontiers in Marine Science published on 22 February 2024. It is titled Revisiting the multidecadal variability of North Atlantic Ocean circulation and climate.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tree rings reveal summer 2023 was the hottest in 2 millennia

May 19, 2024

A photo taken in May 2024 shows three women shielding themselves from the scorching sun with a cloth in Mumbai, India. (Image credit: SOPA Images / Contributor via Getty Images)

Last year’s summer was the hottest in 2,000 years, ancient tree rings reveal.

Researchers already knew that 2023 was one for the books, with average temperatures soaring past anything recorded since 1850. But there are no measurements stretching further back than that date, and even the available data is patchy, according to a study published Tuesday (May 14) in the journal Nature. So, to determine whether 2023 was an exceptionally hot year relative to the millennia that preceded it, the study authors turned to records kept by nature.

Trees provide a snapshot of past climates, because they are sensitive to changes in rainfall and temperature. This information is crystalized in their growth rings, which grow wider in warm, wet years than they do in cold, dry years. The scientists examined available tree-ring data dating back to the height of the Roman Empire and concluded that 2023 really was a standout, even when accounting for natural variations in climate over time.

“When you look at the long sweep of history, you can see just how dramatic recent global warming is,” co-author Ulf Büntgen, a professor of environmental systems analysis at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., said in a statement. The data indicated that “2023 was an exceptionally hot year, and this trend will continue unless we reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically,” he said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Al Gore Said the Ice Caps would be Gone by 2014 – Yes 2014!

May 18, 2024

Al Gore Said the Ice Caps would be Gone by 2014 – Yes 2014!

The Press REFUSES to hold all of these failed Climate Change forecasts to test. All they do is keep moving the date for our doom, all due to CO2. In fact, the real crisis is the continued weakening of the magnetic field, which leads to pole shifts about every 43000 years – yes, that conforms to the ECM frequency. The major shifts we discovered from the data scientists provided us came out to be 720,000 years. Either way, they both seem to be lining up in our lifetime. We are headed more into a pole shift than a climate change thanks to CO2. The fact that they are targeting farmers when we should be stockpiling food now is either the most idiotic human decision in history or intentional with hopes of reducing the population.

If I keep forecasting every year that the stock market would crash by 90%, I think they would call me a nut-job and laugh after ten years of perpetual failed forecasts. But with the climate, they just love to keep the fraud going. After June 6th, they are whispering about restricting travel to reduce CO2 this summer. They want to deprive you of your vacation this year as well.

Tracking toward mass extinction

May 14, 2024

Tracking toward mass extinction

Where “Two plus two equals five if the party says so” (George Orwell)
and when drilling methane wells reduces global warming

Having turned a blind eye to climate science, ignoring the evidence that extreme atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) rise and ocean acidification have led to mass extinctions of species through time, humanity allows an exponential growth of carbon emissions to track toward a global suicide marked by false pretexts and betrayal by the powers that be. The evidence suggests unabated global warming will lead to 3.4 million Deaths Per Year by Century End, fatal consequences calling for a preemptive Nuremberg-like trial exposing the crimes leading to the looming climate suicide.

Note the future estimates of CO₂ levels.

[ Figure 1. Historic CO₂, by Owen Mulhern, image from Forster et al. (2017) ]

Note the sharp current and near-future temperature rise.

[ Figure 2. by Glen Fergus, from: Wikipedia – Temperature of Planet Earth ]

The rise in CO₂ in the atmosphere and oceans and the rise in ocean acidity (decline in pH).

[ Figure 3. As human activities have increased CO2 levels in our atmosphere (red line),
about a third of that CO2 has been absorbed by the ocean (green line), and
ocean pH has decreased (blue line). Adapted from NOAA by UC Museum of Paleontology. ]

According to the IPCC, as stated by the late Prof Will Steffen, Australia’s foremost climate scientist, if the exponential rise in greenhouse gas emissions continues we will already have crossed the upper limit that gives us a two-thirds chance of limiting warming to <2.0°C. Other scientists estimate that we have already missed the boat.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Abrupt permafrost thaw found to intensify warming effects on soil CO₂ emission

May 8, 2024

Abrupt permafrost thaw found to intensify warming effects on soil CO₂ emission

Abrupt permafrost thaw intensifies warming effects on soil CO2 emission — Thermokarst landscape on the Tibetan Plateau. Credit: Wang Guanqin

According to a recent study published in Nature Geoscience, scientists have found that soil carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are more sensitive to climate warming in permafrost-collapsed areas than in non-collapsed areas.

This study, based on field warming experiments combined with laboratory incubation of soils from a large-scale sampling, provides new insights about permafrost carbon–climate feedback in the context of future climate warming.

Warmer temperatures have led to rapid permafrost thawing in high-latitude and high-altitude permafrost regions. Abrupt permafrost thaw, known as thermokarst, occurs in approximately 20% of the northern permafrost region, but this region stores about half of all below-ground organic carbon. This type of thawing can restructure land surface morphology, causing abrupt changes to the soil biotic and abiotic properties, which may significantly alter ecosystem carbon cycling.

Since both thermokarst and non-thermokarst areas are simultaneously experiencing ongoing warming, an important but so far overlooked consideration is whether the warming effects on soil CO₂ flux might differ between these two distinct landforms.

To fill this knowledge gap, a collaborative research group led by Prof. Yang Yuanhe from the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has investigated how thermokarst formation influences the responses of soil CO₂ fluxes to climate warming, using multiple approaches.

In a well-replicated warming experiment conducted simultaneously in thermokarst and non-thermokarst areas, the researchers found that the warming-induced increase in soil CO₂ release was about 5.5 times higher in thermokarst features than in adjacent non-thermokarst landforms.

They then analyzed over 30 potential drivers of the warming effects on CO₂ release using soil physicochemical analyses, solid-state ¹³C nuclear magnetic resonance, and metagenomic sequencing…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Analysis: How low-sulphur shipping rules are affecting global warming

May 3, 2024

Analysis: How low-sulphur shipping rules are affecting global warming

In 2020, international regulations to reduce air pollution from shipping imposed strict limits on the sulphur content of marine fuels.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) rules have had some success in improving public health. Global emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO2) – a health-damaging air pollutant – have dropped by about 10% as a result.

But the shift to low-sulphur shipping fuel has had an additional consequence.

Sulphur particles contained in ships’ exhaust fumes have been counteracting some of the warming coming from greenhouse gases. But lowering the sulphur content of marine fuel has weakened the masking effect, effectively giving a boost to warming.

Some researchers have proposed that the drop in SO2 as a result of the IMO’s clean air regulations could be behind a recent spike in global sea surface temperature.

Carbon Brief analysis shows that the likely side-effect of the 2020 regulations to cut air pollution from shipping is to increase global temperatures by around 0.05C by 2050. This is equivalent to approximately two additional years of emissions.

While this will contribute to warming and make it even more difficult to avoid exceeding 1.5C in the coming decades, a number of other factors are likely contributing to the ocean heatwave.

These include a massive eruption of an underwater volcano in the south Pacific, an unusual absence of Saharan dust and a growing El Niño.

Phasing down

Nearly all SO2 emissions today are a by-product of fossil fuel combustion.

Globally, SO2 emissions from marine fuel increased from around 6 million tonnes (MtSO2) per year in the 1970s to more than 10MtSO2 per year in the 2000s and 2010s.

SO2 emissions from fossil fuels have long contributed to severe health impacts through the formation of particulate matter known as PM2.5.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Here’s what record-breaking temperatures looked like around the globe

May 2, 2024

Here’s what record-breaking temperatures looked like around the globe

Climate change is affecting every continent and the oceans.

An orange sky in New York City. — (Photo credit: Anthony Quintano / CC BY 2.0 DEED)

You probably know that 2023 was a very warm year for our planet — and that this heat is continuing into 2024. And you likely know some effects of this heat in your own region or continent — in the U.S., for instance, the Canadian wildfire smoke that covered the U.S. East Coast, the Midwest’s unusually warm winter, or the recent million-plus-acre wildfire in the Texas Panhandle.

If you live in the U.S. and happen to get most of your news from national broadcast channels ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, these big stories may be most of what you know about recent climate events. During the record-smashing year of 2023, these four TV stations spent less than 1% of their news time addressing climate change.

If you get your news from other sources, you’ll likely know more. For instance, you may have seen this stunning comment from the Deputy Director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, Samantha Burgess: “2023 was an exceptional year with climate records tumbling like dominoes. Not only is 2023 the warmest year on record, but it is also the first year with all days over 1°C warmer than the preindustrial period. Temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years.”

Still, you may sometimes lose sight of the global picture — and the critical fact that the whole planet’s climate is under stress. It’s not just the heat itself, either, but also the droughts and floods that can come with higher temperatures.

So here are some quick snapshots and summaries of what these hot months have meant around the world. In many cases, the headlines alone tell the basic story.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Great Experiment

April 30, 2024

The Great Experiment

Is stratospheric aerosol injection inevitable now?

The retired aircraft carrier Hornet juts into the frame against a bright blue sky. — A government test of solar radiation management (SRM) was conducted from the deck of the retired aircraft carrier, Hornet, the first of its kind, on April 2.

“Desperate times breed desperate measures.”

~ William Shakespeare

Democracy has been referred to as the Great Experiment. As it teeters from the threat of Trump and “righteous” Christian Fascism, we must not forget that climate change is also an experiment that can topple democracy. Frighteningly, the two could easily work hand in hand as the realities of global warming create ever-increasing disasters from droughts and floods, force migration, create shortages, and drive systemic inflation. These conditions unchecked can lead to social unrest, military law, resource wars and dictatorship.

The Paris Agreement under heat

In 2015, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21 was held in Paris. Because of indisputable evidence of global warming from ice core sampling, ocean probes and satellite data, 196 nations signed a legally binding international treaty on climate change. That treaty went into effect in 2016 with the agreement to limit global warming to 1.5°C. To achieve that goal, greenhouse gas emissions must decline 43 percent by 2030.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article..

Climate change supercharged a heat dome, intensifying 2021 fire season, study finds

April 28, 2024

Climate change supercharged a heat dome, intensifying 2021 fire season, study finds

As a massive heat dome lingered over the Pacific Northwest three years ago, swaths of North America simmered—and then burned. Wildfires charred more than 18.5 million acres across the continent, with the most land burned in Canada and California.

A new study has revealed the extent to which human-caused climate change intensified the extraordinary event, with researchers theorizing the heat dome was 34% larger and lasted nearly 60% longer than it would have in the absence of global warming. The heat dome, in turn, was associated with up to a third of the area burned in North America that year, according to the study, published in Communications Earth & Environment.

“What happens is you get a stagnated weather pattern—it’s very hot and very dry,” said study author Piyush Jain, research scientist with Natural Resources Canada. “And it dries out all the vegetation and makes whatever is on the ground extremely flammable.”

The study adds to a body of literature documenting how the fingerprints of climate change can be detected in events such as heat waves, droughts and wildfires.

Jain was living in Edmonton in late June 2021 when the mercury in North America’s northernmost million-resident city topped 100 degrees. “I was blown away,” he said. “I’d never experienced those temperatures anywhere I’d lived.”

Farther south, the town of Lytton, British Columbia, on June 29 experienced Canada’s hottest recorded temperature, 119 degrees, and was largely destroyed by a wildfire the next day..

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Emperor penguins perish as ice melts to new lows: study

April 28, 2024

Emperor penguins perish as ice melts to new lows: study

Paris (AFP) – Colonies of emperor penguin chicks were wiped out last year as global warming eroded their icy homes, a study published Thursday found, despite the birds’ attempts to adapt to the shrinking landscape.

The study by the British Antarctic Survey found that record-low sea ice levels in 2023 contributed to the second-worst year for emperor penguin chick mortality since observations began in 2018.

It follows a “catastrophic breeding failure” in 2022, signalling long-term implications for the population, the study’s author Peter Fretwell told AFP.

Emperor penguins breed on sea-ice platforms, with chicks hatching in the winter between late July and mid-August.

The chicks are reared until they develop waterproof feathers, typically in December ahead of the summer melt.

But if the ice melts too early, the chicks risk drowning and freezing.

Fourteen of 66 penguin colonies, which can each produce several hundred to several thousand chicks in a year, were affected by early sea-ice loss in 2023, said the study published in the Journal of Antarctic Science.

The result is “high if not total levels of mortality”, Fretwell said.

Yet 2023 “wasn’t as bad as we feared”, he said.

A record 19 colonies were affected the year before.

On the move

The study also found that several colonies, particularly those ravaged the previous year, had moved in search of better conditions onto icebergs, ice shelves or more stable sea ice.

While such moves offer a hopeful sign that the birds can adapt to the changing environment, Fretwell warned it was a “temporary solution”.

“Penguins are limited in the amount of adaptation they can do. There are only so many places they can go,” he said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

2023 Was Even Hotter Than Predicted, Raising Fears We’re in Uncharted Territory

April 28, 2024

2023 Was Even Hotter Than Predicted, Raising Fears We’re in Uncharted Territory

Sea surface temperature anomaly data on global map

Sea surface temperature anomalies for 9 April 2024. (NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio)

Last year Earth warmed around 0.2 °C more than climate models predicted. While that may not seem like much in isolation, when you consider it’s a measure across an entire planet it amounts to a heck of a lot of unexplained heat.

“It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has,” writes NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt in an article for Nature.

“The 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago, when satellite data began offering modellers an unparalleled, real-time view of Earth’s climate system.”

Schmidt warns if this unexplained anomaly doesn’t settle by August, in line with previous El Niño fluctuations, then we will be in uncharted territory.

Several theories have been posed for the excess heat beyond what is expected from the El Niño and known rates of increasing CO₂. These include a decrease in surface-cooling aerosols from shipping after regulation changes in 2020; an increase in heat-trapping water vapor from the 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai; and peak activity in the current solar cycle sending more heat our way.

But even combined these all don’t fully account for observed extra heat, Schmidt argues.

The concern is we’re missing something critical in our understanding of Earth’s climate systems, that would explain an accelerated rate of warming, such as a potential miscalibration in the start date of humanity’s impact on the climate.

Being ahead of schedule would explain why extreme climate consequences, including deadly floods, fires, and storms, have been whacking us so hard and fast already.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Science Snippets: Planting Trees in Some Locations Warms Earth

April 28, 2024

Science Snippets: Planting Trees in Some Locations Warms Earth

Draft script:

A paper in Phys.Org published 31 March 2024 is titled Planting trees in wrong places heats the planet: Study. The study referenced in the title appeared in Nature Communications on 26 March 2024. It was produced by 11 scholars.

One of the study’s co-authors was quoted in the Phys.Org article: “There are some places where putting trees back leads to net climate negative outcomes.” In fact, the peer-reviewed paper indicates that reforestation projects that failed to include albedo in the analysis overestimated the benefit to the climate by 20 to 80%.

Hot, humid environments such as the Amazon Basin and central Africa store abundant carbon with little change to albedo. These are ideal places for reforestation. On the other hand, temperate grasslands and savannas sequester and store relatively little carbon and can negatively alter albedo. As a result, promises of enhanced carbon capture tend to be overblown in these areas.

The co-author quoted above indicated in the Phys.Org article that even projects in the best locations were probably delivering 20% less cooling than estimated when albedo changes are included in the analysis. Although there are good reasons beyond carbon sequestration to plant trees, it is important to focus reforestation efforts in proper locations. Given the limited money available for reforestation projects throughout the world, the Phys.Org article and the peer-reviewed paper indicate the importance of prioritizing projects.

The peer-reviewed, open-access paper in Nature Communications is titled Accounting for albedo change to identify climate-positive tree cover restoration. It was published 6 March 2024. I’ll read the entire Abstract: “Restoring tree cover changes albedo, which is the fraction of sunlight reflected from the Earth’s surface. In most locations, these changes in albedo offset or even negate the carbon removal benefits with the latter leading to global warming…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘We were in disbelief’: Antarctica is behaving in a way we’ve never seen before. Can it recover?

April 27, 2024

A small boat glides around patches of sea ice in the water off Deception Island in Antarctica. Sea ice in the region grows from a minimum in summer to a maximum in winter, but in the last several years, the sea ice extent has been shrinking in summer. (Image credit: karenfoleyphotography / Alamy Stock Photo)

Look out over Antarctica in the summer, and time seems frozen. The South Pole’s midnight sun appears to hover in place, never dropping below the horizon for weeks between November and January.

But the Antarctic’s timelessness is an illusion. Only a decade ago, on summer nights across the coast, the sun would glide ever so slightly over the ocean, dusting its ice floes in golden light.

Yet today, much of this sea ice is nowhere in sight. And scientists are increasingly alarmed that it may never come back.

“Antarctica feels very distant, but the sea ice there matters so much to all of us,” Ella Gilbert, a polar climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, told Live Science. “It’s a really vital part of our climate system.”

Until recently, Antarctic sea ice fluctuated between relatively stable summer minimums and winter maximums. But after a record minimum in 2016, things began to shift. Two record lows soon followed, including the smallest minimum ever in February 2023 at just 737,000 square miles (1.91 million square kilometers).

As winter began in March of that year, scientists hoped the ice cover would rebound. But what happened instead astonished them: Antarctic ice experienced six months of record lows. At winter’s peak in July, the continent was missing a chunk of ice bigger than Western Europe.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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