No Such Thing As Global Warming?: A Lake Twice the Size of Los Angeles Has Evaporated—and It May Never Return

Lake Poopó was Bolivia's second largest lake.

By Samantha Cowan
Fish skeletons, dead birds, and fishing boats sit abandoned on the desiccated stretch of land that was once the second-largest lake in Bolivia. Lake Poopó is now practically bone-dry, leaving species decimated and hundreds of people without jobs.

The lake—once twice the size of Los Angeles—has shrunk down to just 2 percent of its previous size, The Associated Press reports. It was officially declared evaporated in December.

Officials cite a drought fueled by El Niño weather patterns as the primary culprit for the lake’s disappearance. Located in the semiarid Andean plains at 12,000 feet above sea level, the 977-square-mile lake has dried up and rebounded in the past. But this time, experts don’t believe it will recover.

“I don’t think we’ll be seeing the azure mirror of Poopó again,” Milton Perez, a Universidad Tecnica researcher, told the AP. “I think we’ve lost it.”

That’s because El Niño weather events are becoming stronger and more frequent because of rising global temperatures, leaving the lake little time to replenish itself after a dry season. “It’s only going to get worse,” Perez said. The area has seen a temperature increase of 0.9 degrees Celsius over the past 60 years, causing water from the lake to evaporate roughly three times as fast, according to Perez.

As the water has disappeared, so have the people who depended on the lake as a source of livelihood. More than half of the people living in the nearby village of Untavi have left in the past three years.

While climate change has fueled the lake’s disappearance, locals also point to the government’s mismanagement of water sources.

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Revoke ExxonMobil's Corporate Charter: Their Scientists Discovered the Connection Between Fuel Emissions and Global Warming in the 1980's - The Company Hid the Facts

Capitalism is Not Patriotism: Not only did the Exxon Corporation know that fuel combustion effects on climate change could lead to "catastrophic events" — it made a concerted effort to convince the public that climate change wasn't even real.

Exxon's own research in the 1980s indicated that without major reductions in fossil fuel combustion, "[t]here are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered." (Photo: Luc B / Flickr)

By Marjorie Cohn
More than 50,000 people from around the world came together in Paris in December 2015 to address the single biggest threat to the survival of the natural world - the climate crisis. There is virtual unanimity among scientists that the burning of fossil fuels is causing the warming of the planet, and if critical steps are not taken, a habitable world will cease to exist.

RELATED STORY: Exxon's Oil Industry Peers Knew About Climate Dangers in the 1970s, Too

But there are entities that stand to lose if alternative sources of energy overtake coal, oil and natural gas. They are huge corporations, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and Texaco.

Indeed, from 1990 to 2005, Exxon - now called ExxonMobil - spent millions of dollars in a sophisticated campaign to cast doubt on the science of climate change. The oil giant knew better.

Exxon's Scientists Confirm Climate Change

In 1977, James Black, an Exxon senior scientist, told a meeting of powerful oil company executives, "There is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from burning of fossil fuels." The following year, Black wrote: "Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical."

During much of the 1980s, Exxon conducted cutting-edge research on climate change. In 1982, its environmental affairs office prepared a corporate primer labeled "not to be distributed externally." It said that preventing global warming "would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion." If that didn't happen, the primer read, "There are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered." It added: "Once the effects are measurable, they may not be reversible."

RELATED STORY: Big Oil Braced for Global Warming While it Fought Regulations

In 1989, Duane Levine, Exxon's manager of science and strategy development, told the board of directors that scientists largely agreed that the burning of fossil fuels would release gases that could raise temperatures between 2.7 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit by the middle of the 21st century. Glaciers would melt and sea levels would rise, Levine declared, "with generally negative consequences."

When James Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist, testified before Congress in 1988 that global warming had begun, Sen. Tim Wirth (D-Colorado) said, "Congress must begin to consider how we are going to slow or halt that warming trend."

As calls for reductions in carbon dioxide from fossil fuels increased in the United States and around the world, Exxon realized the severity of the threat to its bottom line. Brian Flannery, Exxon's climate expert, wrote in an internal newsletter that such regulations would "alter profoundly the strategic direction of the energy industry."

Exxon Begins to Sow Doubt About Climate Change

Exxon made a strategic decision to publicly sow seeds of doubt about climate change while internally confirming it. A far-reaching investigation by Columbia University's Energy and Environmental Fellowship Project and the Los Angeles Times, and another by InsideClimate News, revealed Exxon's fateful shift.

An internal draft memo dated August 1988, called "The Greenhouse Effect," set forth the "Exxon position." It advised that the corporation should "emphasize the uncertainty."

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The Anthropocene Epoch — It Has Begun: Human-Made Epoch of Nightmares Is Here: Beyond Global Warming

"The changes are as big as those that happened at the end of the last ice age," says a study author. "This is a big deal." (Photo: Ligorano Reese/flickr/cc)

By Deirdre Fulton
There's no question about it. A new epoch—the Anthropocene—has begun.

So says an international group of geoscientists, in a paper published Friday in the journal Science. They point to waste disposal, fossil fuel combustion, increased fertilizer use, the testing and dropping of nuclear weapons, deforestation, and more as evidence that human activity has pushed the Earth into the new age that takes its name from the Greek anthropos, or human being.

Some argue the new era began in the 1950s, the decade that marks the beginning of the so-called "Great Acceleration," when human population and its consumption patterns suddenly speeded up, and nuclear weapons tests dispersed radioactive elements across the globe.

Formalizing the Anthropocene era—a designation that must come officially from a separate body known as the International Commission on Stratigraphy—they write, "expresses the extent to which humanity is driving rapid and widespread changes to the Earth system that will variously persist and potentially intensify into the future." The scientists are likely to present their findings to the Commission later this year.

"What this paper does is to say the changes are as big as those that happened at the end of the last ice age," Colin Waters, principal geologist at the British Geological Survey and an author of the study, told the Guardian. "This is a big deal."

As Smithsonian magazine notes, "The new study is not the first to propose a formal establishment of an Anthropocene epoch—Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin of the University of College London made a similar recommendation last year—but it is one of the most comprehensive to date."

Among the tell-tale signs that the Anthropocene has started, according to reporting on the study:

• Über-industrialization. "More than half the earth's surface has been transformed into settlements and cities, agricultural land, mines, waste dumps, baseball diamonds, and beyond," writes journalist Eric Roston at Bloomberg. What's more, he adds, "Mineral mining moves three times more sediment every year than all the world's rivers."


• Plastics everywhere. "Even most mud samples taken from remote ocean beds now contain plastic fragments," academics Mark Williams and Jan A. Zalasiewicz write for The Conversation. "Buried in sediment, these materials may be preserved over geological timescales, forming new rocks and rapidly-evolving 'technofossils' for our descendants to marvel at."


• Biologic changes. "We've pushed extinction rates of flora and fauna far above the long-term average," the Guardian reports. "The Earth is now on course for a sixth mass extinction which would see 75% of species extinct in the next few centuries if current trends continue."


• Nuclear fallout. "Our war efforts have left their mark on geology," notes New Scientist. "When the first nuclear weapon was detonated on 16 July 1945 in New Mexico, it deposited radionuclides—atoms with excess nuclear energy—across a wide area. Since 1952, more explosive thermonuclear weapons have been tested, leaving a global signature of isotopes such as carbon-14 and plutonium-239."


• Greenhouse gas levels. As Common Dreams has reported extensively, and the geoscientists point out, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are higher than they've ever been. "Depending on the trajectory of future anthropogenic forcing, these trends may reach or exceed the envelope of Quaternary interglacial conditions," the study authors write—in other words, conditions could become more extreme than in previous ice ages.

Still, as damning as this evidence is, observers have cautioned against a simplistic view of geologic shifts. "Anthropocene is...suspect because—to the extent that 'we' wish to name the new epoch after a force, it generically identifies that force as humanity as a whole, rather than the identifiable power structures most responsible for the geological Anthropocene traces," wrote Kieran Suckling, founding director of the Center for Biological Diversity, in 2015.

Indeed, Ian Angus, editor of the ecosocialist journal Climate and Capitalism, argued last year: "An ecosocialist analysis of the Great Acceleration will build on the decisive issues of class and power that are shaping the Anthropocene and will ultimately determine humanity’s future."

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

Fox News Keeps You Dumb: Latest In A Series of Studies Prove Fox Viewers Are Most Misinformed

Authoritarian people have a stronger emotional need for an outlet like Fox, where they can find affirmation and escape factual challenges to their beliefs.

By Chris Mooney
In June of 2011, Jon Stewart went on air with Fox News’ Chris Wallace and started a major media controversy over the channel’s misinforming of its viewers. “Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers?” Stewart asked Wallace. “The most consistently misinformed? Fox, Fox viewers, consistently, every poll.”

Stewart’s statement was factually accurate, as we’ll see. The next day, however, the fact-checking site PolitiFact weighed in and rated it “false.”In claiming to check Stewart’s “facts,” PolitiFact ironically committed a serious error—and later, doubly ironically, failed to correct it. How’s that for the power of fact checking?

There probably is a small group of media consumers out there somewhere in the world who are more misinformed, overall, than Fox News viewers. But if you only consider mainstream U.S. television news outlets with major audiences (e.g., numbering in the millions), it really is true that Fox viewers are the most misled based on all the available evidence—especially in areas of political controversy. This will come as little surprise to liberals, perhaps, but the evidence for it—evidence in Stewart’s favor—is pretty overwhelming.

My goal here is to explore the underlying causes for this “Fox News effect”—explaining how this station has brought about a hurricane-like intensification of factual error, misinformation and unsupportable but ideologically charged beliefs on the conservative side of the aisle. First, though, let’s begin by surveying the evidence about how misinformed Fox viewers actually are.

Based upon my research, I have located seven separate studies that support Stewart’s claim about Fox, and none that undermine it. Six of these studies were available at the time that PolitFact took on Stewart; one of them is newer.

The studies all take a similar form: These are public opinion surveys that ask citizens about their beliefs on factual but contested issues, and also about their media habits. Inevitably, some significant percentage of citizens are found to be misinformed about the facts, and in a politicized way—but not only that. The surveys also find that those who watch Fox are more likely to be misinformed, their views of reality skewed in a right-wing direction. In some cases, the studies even show that watching more Fox makes the misinformation problem worse.

So with that, here are the studies.

Iraq War

In 2003, a surveyby the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland found widespread public misperceptions about the Iraq war. For instance, many Americans believed the U.S. had evidence that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had been collaborating in some way with Al Qaeda, or was involved in the 9-11 attacks; many also believed that the much touted “weapons of mass destruction” had been found in the country after the U.S. invasion, when they hadn’t. But not everyone was equally misinformed: “The extent of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news,” PIPA reported. “Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions.” For instance, 80 percent of Fox viewers held at least one of three Iraq-related misperceptions, more than a variety of other types of news consumers, and especially NPR and PBS users. Most strikingly, Fox watchers who paid more attention to the channel were more likely to be misled.

Global Warming

At least two studies have documented that Fox News viewers are more misinformed about this subject.

In a late 2010 survey, Stanford University political scientist Jon Krosnick and visiting scholar Bo MacInnis found that “more exposure to Fox News was associated with more rejection of many mainstream scientists’ claims about global warming, with less trust in scientists, and with more belief that ameliorating global warming would hurt the U.S. economy.” Frequent Fox viewers were less likely to say the Earth’s temperature has been rising and less likely to attribute this temperature increase to human activities. In fact, there was a 25 percentage point gap between the most frequent Fox News watchers (60%) and those who watch no Fox News (85%) in whether they think global warming is “caused mostly by things people do or about equally by things people do and natural causes.”

In a much more comprehensive study released in late 2011 (too late for Stewart or for PolitiFact), American University communications scholar Lauren Feldman and her colleagues reported on their analysis of a 2008 national survey, which found that “Fox News viewing manifests a significant, negative association with global warming acceptance.” Viewers of the station were less likely to agree that “most scientists think global warming is happening” and less likely to think global warming is mostly caused by human activities, among other measures.

Health Care

In 2009, an NBC survey found “rampant misinformation” about the healthcare reform bill before Congress — derided on the right as “Obamacare.”It also found that Fox News viewers were much more likely to believe this misinformation than average members of the general public. “72% of self-identified Fox News viewers believe the healthcare plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79% of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69% think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75% believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly,” the survey found.

By contrast, among CNN and MSNBC viewers, only 41 percent believed the illegal immigrant falsehood, 39 percent believed in the threat of a “government takeover” of healthcare (40 percentage points less), 40 percent believed the falsehood about abortion, and 30 percent believed the falsehood about “death panels” (a 45 percent difference!).

In early 2011, the Kaiser Family Foundation released another survey on public misperceptions about healthcare reform. The poll asked 10 questions about the newly passed healthcare law and compared the “high scorers”—those that answered 7 or more correct—based on their media habits. The result was that “higher shares of those who report CNN (35 percent) or MSNBC (39 percent) as their primary news source [got] 7 or more right, compared to those that report mainly watching Fox News (25 percent).”

"Ground Zero Mosque”

In late 2010, two scholars at the Ohio State University studied public misperceptions about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”—and in particular, the prevalence of a series of rumors depicting those seeking to build this Islamic community center and mosque as terrorist sympathizers, anti-American, and so on. All of these rumors had, of course, been dutifully debunked by fact-checking organizations. The result? “People who use Fox News believe more of the rumors we asked about and they believe them more strongly than those who do not.”

The 2010 Election

In late 2010, the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) once again singled out Fox in a survey about misinformation during the 2010 election. Out of 11 false claims studied in the survey, PIPA found that “almost daily” Fox News viewers were “significantly more likely than those who never watched it” to believe 9 of them, including the misperceptions that “most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring” (they do), that “it is not clear that President Obama was born in the United States” (he was), that “most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses” (it either saved or created several million), that “most economists have estimated the healthcare law will worsen the deficit” (they have not), and so on.

It is important to note that in this study—by far the most critiqued of the bunch—the examples of misinformation studied were all closely related to prominent issues in the 2010 midterm election, and indeed, were selected precisely because they involved issues that voters said were of greatest importance to them, like healthcare and the economy. That was the main criterion for inclusion, explains PIPA senior research scholar Clay Ramsay. “People said, here’s how I would rank that as an influence on my vote,” says Ramsay, “so everything tested is at least a 5 on a zero-to-10 scale.”

Politifact Swings and Misses

In attempting to fact-check Jon Stewart on the subject of Fox News and misinformation, PolitiFact simply appeared out of its depth. The author of the article in question, Louis Jacobson, only cited two of the studies above--“Iraq War” and “2010 Election”—though six out of seven were available at the time he was writing. And then he suggested that the “2010 Election” study should “carry less weight” due to various methodological objections.
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Greenpeace Sting Exposes Climate-Denying Academics-for-Hire

Professors from major U.S. institutions agreed to write reports promoting the benefits of CO2—and said they did not need to disclose fossil fuel funding

Princeton University Professor William Happer, agreed to write a report for a Middle Eastern oil company on the benefits
of CO2 and to allow the firm to keep the source of the funding secret. (Photo: James Loesch/flickr/cc)

By Deirdre Fulton
As climate change deniers face growing scrutiny and skepticism, a new undercover investigation by the environmental group Greenpeace shines new light on academics-for-hire, who are willing to accept secret payments from fossil fuel companies to sow doubt about global warming.

The sting operation publicized Tuesday involved two Greenpeace UK employees posing as representatives of oil and coal companies, and asking U.S. academics to write papers touting the benefits of rising carbon dioxide levels and the benefits of coal use in developing countries.

Professors from Penn State and Princeton University "agreed to write the reports and said they did not need to disclose the source of the funding," according to reporting by Greenpeace Energydesk, a journalistic arm of the international environmental organization.

Energydesk reporters Lawrence Carter and Maeve McClenaghan continue:

Citing industry-funded documents—including testimony to state hearings and newspaper articles—Professor Frank Clemente of Penn State said: “In none of these cases is the sponsor identified. All my work is published as an independent scholar.”

Leading climate-sceptic academic, Professor William Happer, agreed to write a report for a Middle Eastern oil company on the benefits of CO2 and to allow the firm to keep the source of the funding secret.

Among the exposé's other findings:

• US coal giant Peabody Energy also paid tens of thousands of dollars to an academic who produced coal-friendly research and provided testimony at state and federal climate hearings, the amount of which was never revealed.
• The Donors Trust, an organization that has been described as the "dark money ATM" of the US conservative movement, confirmed in a taped conversation with an undercover reporter that it could anonymously channel money from a fictional Middle Eastern oil and gas company to U.S. climate skeptic organizations.
• Princeton professor William Happer laid out details of an unofficial peer review process run by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a UK climate skeptic think tank, and said he could ask to put an oil-funded report through a similar review process, after admitting that it would struggle to be published in an academic journal.
• A recent report by the GWPF that had been through the same unofficial peer review process, was promoted as “thoroughly peer-reviewed” by influential columnist Matt Ridley—a senior figure in the organization.

Happer, the Princeton professor, was invited to speak on Tuesday before the U.S. Senate at a 'Data or Dogma' panel organized by GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Greenpeace investigator Jesse Coleman cornered him there to ask about the revelations.

Watch the video below:

Late last month, Happer—who has said "more CO2 would benefit the world"—appeared at a climate skeptic summit in Texas, Energydesk reports. There, he defended CO2 production saying: "Our breath is not that different from a power plant." He went on to say, "If plants could vote, they would vote for coal."

As Carter and McClenaghan point out, the Greenpeace investigation follows recent reports showing fossil fuel companies burying the truth about climate change, while funding spurious research to cast doubt on the scientific consensus and make it "difficult for ordinary Americans to even know who to trust."

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

THIS is the Republican Party: House Republicans Say They Won't Fund Climate Deal — Before A Deal is Even Done

Photo by Takver

By AP
U.S. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy says the House will not go along if President Barack Obama tries to commit taxpayer money to support a climate accord reached in Paris.

He says Congress has the authority to decide how to spend U.S. taxpayer dollars, "and I don't think that's the best use of our money."

McCarthy suggested that a must-pass year-end spending bill currently in the works could become the vehicle for language blocking any such expenditure.

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Temperatures in the Middle East Will Become Too Hot for Human Habitation — Within 80 Years (Or Sooner)

Photo by Paul.

Climate change could soon push Persian Gulf temperatures to lethal extremes, report warns

By Joby Warrick
The region that gave birth to civilization six millennia ago could soon witness a grim milestone in the history of urban development: the first cities to experience temperatures too extreme for human survival.

A scientific study released Monday predicts that parts of the Persian Gulf could see lethally hot summers by the end of the century, thanks to human-induced global warming that is already contributing to soaring temperatures around the globe.

RELATED STORY: Climate Change — The End May Be Nearer Than You Thought - Pt 1: 165F Temperatures in Iran

The report’s authors say coastal cities from Dubai to Iran’s Bandar Abbas could experience summer days that surpass the “human habitability” limit, with heat and humidity so high that even the healthiest people could not withstand more than a few hours outdoors.

Other Middle Eastern cities could approach the lethal threshold, including the Saudi holy city of Mecca, a destination for millions of Muslim pilgrims every year, according to the report in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change.

RELATED STORY: Climate Change — The End May Be Nearer Than You Thought - Pt 2: Millions of Fish Cooked Alive in US Rivers and Streams

Scientists have long maintained that parts of the planet could experience extreme temperatures if global warming continues at current rates. But the suggestion that major world metropolises could cross the “habitability” threshold in the 21st Century surprised some climate experts.

“The threats to human health may be much more severe than previously thought, and may occur in the current century,” Christoph Schaer, a physicist and climate modeler at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, Switzerland, said in a commentary on the study’s conclusions.

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Climate Change — The End May Be Nearer Than You Thought - Pt 2: Millions of Fish Cooked Alive in US Rivers and Streams

Fish are getting cooked in America's Northwest rivers and streaks before they even make it to the frying pan.
(Photo by Chris RubberDragon)

By Doyle Rice
Freakishly hot, dry weather in the Pacific Northwest is killing millions of fish in the overheated waters of the region's rivers and streams.

“We’ve lost about 1.5 million juvenile fish this year due to drought conditions at our hatcheries,” Ron Warren of Washington State's Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a statement. “This is unlike anything we’ve seen for some time."

Sockeye salmon losses in the Columbia River due to the heat are in the hundreds of thousands, said Jeff Fryer, senior fishery scientist with the river's Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. The fish were returning from the ocean to spawn when the "unprecedented" warm water killed them, he said.

Water temperatures in the Columbia River — part of which runs along the border of Oregon and Washington — reached the low 70s shortly after July 4, something that doesn't usually happen until August, if at all, Fryer said.

High temperatures — coupled with the low water levels — can be lethal to fish, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. With no end to the drought in sight, there could be additional fish die-offs, said Rod French, a fish biologist with the department.

Dead and distressed sockeye salmon found earlier this month in the Deschutes River in Oregon likely came from the Columbia River and were bound for other locations before they swam into the Deschutes in search of cooler water, the department said. Early pathology results suggest they died from columnaris, a bacterial infection typically associated with high water temperatures and/or low levels of dissolved oxygen.

In Idaho, "it's a tough year for all (migrating) fish, including sockeye," Mike Peterson, Idaho Fish and Game's senior sockeye research biologist, said in a statement.

Recreational fishermen in the region are also feeling the heat: Warm stream temperatures due to low flows and hot weather cause fish trauma, disease, and deaths, which has prompted the closing of streams to all fishing along the Washington Cascades, Richard Heim of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote in this week's U.S. Drought Monitor report.

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Climate Change — The End May Be Nearer Than You Thought - Pt 1: 165F Temperatures in Iran

Photo by Yuval Y.

By Siam Goorwich
People may be moaning about the disappointing summer here in the UK, but spare a thought for the residents of Bandar Mahshahr, in south-west Iran, where temperatures hit a totally unbearable 165F (74C) on the heat index (or ‘feel-like’ temperature) yesterday.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Iraq – where temperatures in the capital, Baghdad, hit 126F (52C) this week – authorities declared a mandatory four-day holiday and urged people to stay inside and drink lots of water.

The almost record-breaking heat index measurements (the highest ever recorded was 178F (81C) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 2003) is all due to a high pressure ridge, or ‘heat dome’, which has been over the Middle East since July.

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Civilization Will Likely Collapse Within 25 Years — Based on Scientific Model Supported by UK Government

New scientific models supported by the British government’s Foreign Office show that if we don’t change course, in less than three decades industrial civilization will essentially collapse due to catastrophic food shortages, triggered by a combination of climate change, water scarcity, energy crisis, and political instability.

Photo by Martin Cathrae.

By Nafeez Ahmed
Before you panic, the good news is that the scientists behind the model don’t believe it’s predictive. The model does not account for the reality that people will react to escalating crises by changing behavior and policies.

But even so, it’s a sobering wake-up call, which shows that business-as-usual guarantees the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it: our current way of life is not sustainable.

The new models are being developed at Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute (GSI), through a project called the ‘Global Resource Observatory’ (GRO).

The GRO is chiefly funded by the Dawe Charitable Trust, but its partners include the British government’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO); British specialist insurance market, Lloyds of London; the Aldersgate Group, the environment coalition of leaders from business, politics and civil society; the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries; Africa Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the University of Wisconsin.


Disruption risk

This week, Lloyds released a report for the insurance industry assessing the risk of a near-term “acute disruption to the global food supply.” Research for the project was led by Anglia Ruskin University’s GSI, and based on its GRO modelling initiative.

The report explores the scenario of a near-term global food supply disruption, considered plausible on the basis of past events, especially in relation to future climate trends. The global food system, the authors find, is “under chronic pressure to meet an ever-rising demand, and its vulnerability to acute disruptions is compounded by factors such as climate change, water stress, ongoing globalisation and heightening political instability.”

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Eritrea: Surviving Climate Disaster in Africa's Sahel

The small, fiercely independent nation of Eritrea has mobilized its entire population to combat the effects of climate change. “When the rains failed in 2013, we had enough to eat while in much of the rest of the Sahel hundreds of thousands starved to death.” Reforestation and reservoir-building are key to surviving drought in new climate disorder.







By Thomas C. Mountain

“By the time Eritrea won its independence on the battlefield in 1991 less then 2% of our forests remained.”

ASMARA – For over 30 years the great Sahel Desert region in Africa has been a harbinger of the coming climate disaster our planet is facing and surviving such has become a national priority here in Eritrea on the eastern end of the Sahel.

Remember Michael Jackson and the great Ethiopian drought and famine of the early 1980’s? That was just the beginning. In 2003 and 2004 we here in Eritrea next door to Ethiopia suffered the first two year drought in history, followed in 2008 and 2009 by another back to back drought. Including the failure of the rains in 2013, Eritrea suffered 5 years of drought in a single decade.

This isn’t climate change, this is climate disaster and science tells us that the world should be preparing for even worse things to come. Thanks to the mainly western countries contribution to rising CO2 levels heating up the planet droughts will test the very ability of our species to survive, something we here in Eritrea know all to well.

After the droughts of 2003 and 2004 the government here initiated a major water conservation plan that, along with reforestation and soil conservation, is a template for other countries to use to prepare for the climate catastrophe being predicted.

"Our school children spend a month every summer planting trees."

What this means is that, everywhere possible, micro dams, dams and major water reservoirs are being constructed to capture the rains that do fall and use them to irrigate our fields, beginning to break the age old dependence on rain-fed agriculture.

Disastrous drought interrupted by record breaking floods is what is being foretold by scientists and the only way to survive these man made disasters is recognizing what needs to be done – and then busting ass to see it gets accomplished.

This may explain why Eritrea’s president is away from his office for weeks at a time overseeing the construction of major water reservoirs around the country. And all this hard work being lead from the very top has paid off for when the rains failed in 2013 we here in Eritrea had enough to eat while in much of the rest of the Sahel hundreds of thousands starved to death.

Water conservation is critical but so is reforestation and soil conservation, for without trees to help absorb the water and hold the soil in place and terraces to catch the soil the floods wash away our water reservoirs, which will fill with silt and undo all our hard work. As a result our school children spend a month every summer planting trees and communities, alongside the national service army, regularly schedule work days to build stone wall terraces to trap the soil run off.

“Everywhere possible, micro dams, dams and major water reservoirs are being constructed to capture the rains that do fall.”

Colonialism and deforestation go hand in hand everywhere for forests are the natural sanctuary for rebels fighting their colonial masters. Therefore, whether in Haiti or Eritrea, cutting down trees became a weapon against insurgency by our western colonializers.

When the Italians began to colonize Eritrea in the 1880’s over 30% of our country was forested. By the time Eritrea won its independence on the battlefield in 1991 less then 2% of our forests remained. This man made environmental holocaust left Eritrea very little in the way of reserves to survive the CO2 driven climate disasters we have since faced and forced our leaders to sacrifice a lot of other development projects that would have raised the standard of living for our people in our need to prepare for worse disasters to come.

Some years back the Eritrean president was ridiculed in the western media for calling for ten years of grain reserves being kept in storage, but today his plan is making all too much sense. Only time will tell if all our hard work will be enough to prevent the worse climate disasters foretold from wreaking havoc on this country, but what choice do we have?

Hopefully Eritrea’s efforts will provide a role model for other countries around the world and help prevent untold suffering by our brothers and sisters internationally.

_______________
Thomas C. Mountain has been living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at gmail dot com or, when he is off in the field and away from the internet, which is much of the time, via mobile at 2917175665.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

Let's Kick Oil While the Price is Down — Says Naomi Klein (Video)

Smithsonian Mounts Climate Change Denying Exhibition Funded by the Koch Brothers

By Joe Romm
The Smithsonian risks damaging its reputation by having a polluter-funded science denier on the payroll and a wildly misleading Koch-funded exhibit that downplays the risks posed by human-caused climate change. It’s time for the world’s self-proclaimed “largest museum and research complex,” to live up to its mission — and its own climate statement — and cut ties with the anti-science, pro-pollution crowd.

Last month, a New York Times exposé revealed that Dr. Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers.” This included funding from Exxon-Mobil and “at least $230,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.” The Koch brothers have become an even bigger funder of disinformation on climate science than Exxon Mobil.

During this period, Soon has advanced a repeatedly-debunked theory arguing that humans are not the primary cause of global warming. In October, the Smithsonian itself put out a climate statement, which makes clear that such a view is simply anti-scientific. The Smithsonian explains, “Scientific evidence has demonstrated that the global climate is warming as a result of increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases generated by human activities.”

The newly uncovered documents show that “Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as ‘deliverables’ that he completed in exchange for their money.”

Even more shocking, the Smithsonian repeatedly signed off on contracts with Southern Company Services — a coal company and long-time funder of science denial — requiring the Smithsonian to provide the coal utility “advanced written copy of proposed publications … for comment and input.”

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Winter Wonderland - Silver and Clove Lakes Park after a Winter Snow Storm

A video by Ronald David Jackson for lovers of nature and cycling. A tour
of Clove and Silver Lake Parks after a winter snow storm featuring
music by Herbie Hancock, Marc Dorsey, Yes, and others.

The trip was also recorded via Google GPS - which provides
aerial views of the parks during Summer.



(To watch the full-resolution HD version, go HERE
- Best viewed with Firefox or Chrome)

(In some segments the camera shake is dizzying - Due to riding on ice and snow)

Climate Change: New Research Predicts Epic, Never-Before-Seen Dry Spells for U.S. Southwest and Great Plains

If scientists' predictions hold true, vast swaths of the U.S. could be under water restrictions within the next 50-100
years. (Photo: Kevin Cortopassi/flickr/cc)

By Deirdre Fulton
Within this century, global warming will bring about disruptive, decades-long droughts in the U.S. southwest and Great Plains, exceeding even the driest periods of the last millennium, according to new research released this month.

The study, "Unprecedented 21st-Century Drought Risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains," was published in the inaugural edition of the journal Science Advances, put out by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It supports previous predictions, but suggests that future droughts could be even worse than scientists have said in the past.

In fact, it projects that some time between 2050 and 2100, extended drought conditions across the U.S. will become more severe than the mega-droughts of the 12th and 13th centuries. Such arid conditions would affect millions of people, placing stress on agricultural crops and increasing the likelihood and frequency of water shortages in urban areas.

"The coming drought age—caused by higher temperatures under climate change—will make it nearly impossible to carry on with current life-as-normal conditions across a vast swath of the country," the Guardian warned.

Jason Smerdon, study co-author and climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told the newspaper: "The 21st-century projections make the [previous] mega-droughts seem like quaint walks through the garden of Eden."

The researchers compared computer projections of 21st century climate with drought records of the past millennium, notably data in the North American Drought Atlas.

According to Scientific American, "The models consistently demonstrated drought worse than at any time during that epoch, and worse than the current drought out West, which has prevailed for 11 of the previous 14 years, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor."

As Brian Clark Howard explains for National Geographic, "[t]hat's because rising temperatures spurred by the greenhouse effect result in more evaporation and less precipitation for the region, which is already relatively dry."

On Thursday, the U.S. Drought Monitor released its most recent statistics, showing that a full 93 percent of the state of California is under 'severe drought.' While the numbers show that 'extreme' conditions dropped from 77 percent last week to 67 percent this week, mostly in Northern California, 'exceptional drought' in the state—the most severe classification—remained unchanged at nearly 40 percent.

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

What Will America Look Like if All the Icecaps Melt?: These Maps Show You

(Click image to see full-sized)
Island of Seattle.

By Chelsea Harvey
Sea-level rise is one of the most concerning consequences associated with global climate change, thanks to melting polar ice and thermal expansion caused by warming ocean waters — and we're already starting to see its effects on coastal communities around the world.

The US Geological Survey estimates that if all the world's glaciers melted, sea level would rise by about 80 meters, or more than 260 feet. This scenario could be thousands of years in the future, but it would render many of the world's best-loved coastal cities unrecognizable.

Jeffrey Linn, a Seattle man with a background in geography and urban planning, has created a series of maps of major US cities based on this doomsday scenario. He used actual geographic data from the areas to make the maps as realistic as possible.

(Click image to see full-sized)
San Diego Sea.

(Click image to see full-sized)
Portland.

(Click image to see full-sized)
Los Angeles.

(Click image to see full-sized)
New York City.

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Republicans Begged Obama Not To Do Anything On Immigration Yet — Then Pushed Through a Keystone Pipeline Bill

Photo fromTar Sands Blockade.

By Timothy Gardner
The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives approved the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, but a similar measure struggled to get enough support in the Senate and President Barack Obama indicated he might use his veto if the bill does get through Congress.

The legislation, approved by 252 votes to 161, circumvents the need for approval of TransCanada Corp's (TRP.TO) $8 billion project by the Obama administration, which has been considering it for more than six years.

House lawmakers were confident the Senate would follow suit and pass its version of the bill.

The bill's sponsor, Republican Representative Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, said before the vote the House would make it "as easy as possible for the Senate to finally get a bill to the president's desk that approves this long-overdue Keystone XL pipeline."

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Climate Change Will Never Be Tackled As Long As Big Media Presents The Issue As 'Open To Debate'

CNN Host: Climate Change Is Undeniable,
So Here's a Denier

By Peter Hart
CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter was refreshingly direct about climate change on his November 2 show:

I don't think there are two equal sides to climate change. The scientific consensus is that it's real. The debate is over what to do about it. And the press has to be careful about creating this notion of sides.

That's right, down with false balance!

Stelter said this, unfortunately, as an introduction to a debate about whether there's any such thing as global warming.

He introduced it as "a story you will see nowhere else this morning." That story is that one of the founders of the Weather Channel, retired TV weather forecaster John Coleman, thinks "climate change is a hoax."  And saying so got him invited on Fox News.

So how does this all add up to something that deserves a segment on CNN? It's not clear; the CNN host only says that

Coleman's platform as a co-founder of a channel dedicated to weather is unique and so is the channel's declaration that it believes climate change is happening. So, this morning both players are here, Coleman and the CEO of the Weather Channel, David Kenny.

This would be precisely the type of climate debate that Stelter just said the media shouldn't have. Coleman, for his part, represented the climate change-denying side exactly as you'd expect: He accused CNN of bias, and claimed that the US government only gives research dollars to scientists who support climate change and hence the Democrats.

He added:

If you get down to the hard, cold facts, there's no question about it. Climate change is not happening. There is no significant manmade global warming now. There hasn't been any in the past, and there's no reason to expect any in the future. There's a whole lot of baloney and, yes, it has become a big political point of the Democratic Party and part of their platform, and I regret it's become political instead of scientific, but the science is on my side.

Or, the short version:  "Hello, everybody. There is no global warming."

Meanwhile, back in reality…. (cc photo: Brendan Cox / Oxfam)

The current CEO of the Weather Channel arrives next to affirm the channel's statement that it disagrees with Coleman. And, since the discussion mostly skipped over challenging any of Coleman's rhetoric, one could actually argue that there wasn't much of a debate at all.

What else happened the day of this segment? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which represents the work of thousands of scientists, released a new report. "UN Panel Issues Its Starkest Warning Yet on Global Warming," read the New York Times headline (11/2/14); "Effects of Climate Change 'Irreversible,' UN Panel Warns in Report," was how the Washington Post (11/2/14) played it.

It does not appear to have received any coverage on the Sunday chat shows–making this CNN segment, featuring the views of a former TV personality with a journalism degree and a media executive with an MBA, one of the few mentions of climate change in TV news that day.
It could be worse, I suppose–CNN could have had Ann Coulter on again to talk about climate change unopposed (FAIR Action Alert, 5/29/14).

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

ABC's 'Middle Ground' on Climate Change: Who Knows? — Plays Stupid While California Suffers Historic Draught and Southern States Flood

By Peter Hart
Yesterday ABC's This Week (10/26/14) profiled George P. Bush, a Texas land commissioner candidate who is a grandson and nephew of the more famous George Bushes. It was part of This Week's "Closer Look" series, which seems to be intended as a place for upbeat profiles of political heavyweights. But a brief exchange about climate change showed the limits of this kind of journalism.

Given its impact on land issues, correspondent Jonathan Karl had good reason to ask Bush about climate change.

KARL: As land commissioner, he'll oversee millions of acres of oil and natural gas reserves. But he also talks about the need for renewable energy and he attempts to stake out a middle ground on climate change. Well, sort of.

How big a threat is climate change to the Texas coastline?

BUSH: The Texas coastline is impacted by rising sea levels. And again, the question is whether or not that's man-made, and I'll leave that to the scientists. But, at least in Texas, the facts showed that on average, about 17 feet of wet beach is lost due to coastal erosion and so….

KARL: Which is a huge problem for Texas.

BUSH: It's a huge problem.

KARL: But you don't doubt that human activity contributes to climate change?

BUSH: Well, we'll see in terms of the science, there's a wide range that has been discussed. And, again, I'm not a scientist by any stretch. But everywhere from, you know, no impact at all to 100 percent.

So Bush's position is that coastal erosion is a problem linked to rising sea levels, but he's not sure that's linked to human activity. I suspect Karl's "sort of" quip is intended as a signal to viewers, but some clarity would be helpful. The position that Bush is taking–maybe humans are causing climate change, maybe they aren't–is not a "middle ground" in any sense. It's certainly a good position to take if you don't want there to be any action to stop climate change.

Are scientists right in saying human activity is causing ocean levels to
rise? "I dunno" is not a neutral position. (cc photo: Van Sutherland)

This isn't the first time Karl has been able to get a Republican politician on the record on climate change. In May of this year (FAIR Blog, 5/12/14), Karl interviewed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who gave him a nonsensical answer to a direct question about the scientific consensus on climate change. Rubio said that "natural disasters have always existed" and that scientists were taking "a handful of decades of research and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend." What was Karl's response to that?

It's talk like that that Rubio hopes will appeal to the conservatives he would need to win the Republican nomination.

In Karl's worldview, it would seem, Rubio's position is one that will appeal to the conservative base. And Bush, with his more rhetorically evasive version of scientific denial, is somewhere near the "middle." Both positions, of course, are outside the overwhelming scientific consensus–which should be the most important benchmark for journalists who are describing where a politician stands on the issue.

Climate change is rarely discussed on the Sunday talk shows. It'd be nice if when they did discuss it, the conversation was less about political positioning and more reality-based.

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

People's Climate March: Video and Over 100 Photographs

People's Climate March
Video

Video and Photographs by Ronald David Jackson and Rady Onabanjo.

People's Climate March
Slideshow
(Use the slider at the bottom of the slideshow, and your up down/left right arrow keys to navigate;
click on any image to view it or click on the button at the lower right-hand side for fullscreen)
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