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Collapse of Industrial Civilization

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Collapse of Industrial Civilization

Tag Archives: Techno-Fix

Heads-Up! Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

26 Wednesday Jan 2022

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 321 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Adam McKay, Antarctic Ice Melt, Anthropogenic Mass Extinction, Arctic Ice Albedo, Arctic Ice Melt, Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Celebrity Worship, Chemical Pollution, Climate Change, Climate Change Feedback Loops, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Commercialization, Commodification of Nature, Cryosphere, Don't Look Up, Doomsday Preppers, Dr. Randall Mindy, Ecological Overshoot, Elon Musk, Fossil Fuel Industry, Global Forest Die-Off, Global Warming, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Interstellar Colonization, Janie Orlean, Jason Orlean, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Kate Dibiasky, Leonardo DiCaprio, Loss of Biodiversity, MAGA rallies, Mark Rylance, Meryl Streep, Persecution of Environmental Activists, Peter Isherwell, Planetary Boundaries, Prof Tim Garrett, Professor Harold R. Wanless, Sea Level Rise, Techno-Fix, Techno-Utopians, Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melt

“I’m telling you that we’re putting our kids onto a global school bus that will with 98% probability end in a deadly crash.” ~ Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director Emeritus of Potsdam Institute

I recently saw the movie ‘Don’t Look Up’ after avoiding it since its release and I must say, that movie mirrors the tragic state of our society to a T. When you see Dr. Randall Mindy (DiCaprio) finally losing his cool, raging against a shallow, celebrity-idolizing, commercialized society on some glib TV talk show, this was not a stretch for the actor (an ardent environmental activist) who simply had to replace the oncoming fictional comet with the asteroid of abrupt climate change currently bearing down on us. At first, no one will listen to the scientist’s warning, not even the President of the United States Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) who is more worried about her polling numbers and keeping her campaign contributors happy than being bothered by an existential threat to civilization. Once tech guru Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance) plants a bug in the President’s ear about how the comet could be exploited for its trillions of dollars worth of rare earth minerals, then all bets are off for deflecting the oncoming catastrophe. The creepy Techno-Utopist Isherwell reflects our own society’s blind worship of technology and consumerism as the answer to all its ills, when in reality they are only further alienating us from the natural world that underpins our survival. Throughout the movie, there are beautiful clips of nature that briefly flash across the screen, reminding me of what we are losing in our ongoing sixth mass extinction. Modern man and the havoc he is wreaking on the planet is happening in a microsecond when viewed in geologic time scales, but humans have trouble seeing it because we live an ephemeral existence, easily inured to an ever impoverished world.

Labeling the comet’s collision course with Earth as mere fear-mongering, politicians and TV talking heads manage to politicize the threat amongst the population, hence the title of the movie. Throngs of mindless people attending political rallies while wearing trucker caps with the slogan ‘Don’t Look Up’ reminded me of scenes from the MAGA crowd in thrall to their grift-scheming conman. Those who speak too much about the reality of the approaching comet are ziptied, blinded with a hood over their head, hauled off to an undisclosed location, and compelled to stay quiet by the authorities. In our real world, a fate much worse than that awaits those who oppose fossil fuel companies, miners, loggers, and others who are destroying the planet. Only when the comet and its long tail become clearly visible in the sky do people take the threat seriously, but by then it is too late. Back to reality, there’s no indication that such a tipping point in public consciousness has changed our trajectory towards ecological disintegration and collapse of civilization. Near the end of the movie as the planet-killing comet is colliding with Earth, Dr. Mindy’s family and a few of his colleagues are holding hands at their last supper and Dr. Mindy says, “We really did have everything, didn’t we?” The same can be said of what we are losing in today’s unfolding anthropogenic mass extinction. A thousand species a day, each a product of eons of evolution and designed for a specific purpose, being permanently erased from this planet along with any sort of stable and predictable climate means we are trashing Eden and descending into the hellscape depicted in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. This most recent study confirms past warnings:

“Drastically increased rates of species extinctions and declining abundances of many animal and plant populations are well documented, yet some deny that these phenomena amount to mass extinction,” said Robert Cowie, lead author of the study, in a press release. “This denial is based on a highly biased assessment of the crisis which focuses on mammals and birds and ignores invertebrates, which of course constitute the great majority of biodiversity.”…“Dedicated conservation biologists and conservation agencies are doing what they can, focused mainly on threatened birds and mammals, among which some species may be saved from the extinction that would otherwise ensue,” the paper said. “But we are pessimistic about the fate of most of the Earth’s biodiversity, much of which is going to vanish without us ever knowing of its existence.”…The researchers write that it is crucial to fight against the crisis and manipulating it is an abrogation of moral responsibility.

Of course the ones in charge, blinded by their greedy dream to profit from an oncoming disaster, surreptitiously escape Earth on a rocket ship, cryogenically preserved until they reach a distant Earth-like planet in the Goldilocks Zone of another solar system. This colonization of some other habitable planet by Earth-bound humans is a fetish amongst techno-optimists and futurists, but it is a pipe-dream not only because it is impossible due to basic biological constraints and technological infeasibility but also for the simple reason that if we cannot keep our house in order here on the planet that gave birth to us, we don’t deserve another chance. And for God’s sake, can Elon Musk stop ranting that humans have to get off Earth because all life will be snuffed out after the sun theoretically expands into a giant red star five billion years from now? Just as in the movie, our tech demigods will lead us over the cliff while planning their own getaway to a private underground bunker or second homes far away in some distant country. It is frightening to think that we are only seeing the beginning of this unfolding global ecological apocalypse that will affect every living thing on Earth. Nearly all past mass extinctions have occurred due to a disruption of the carbon cycle, only now it is happening at a rate of speed multiple times faster than previous ones and with humans serving as the architect of their own demise. In the last 500 million years, across 6 mass extinctions and the countless rise and fall of global temperatures and sea levels, the only time the climate changed faster was 66 million years ago when Earth got hit by a 10km asteroid that killed off 75% of all species. Mass extinction events turn freshwater bodies into toxic soup, and we’re seeing the same thing happen today. But fret not, technology will save us and stock prices are up this week, not to mention that our social media rankings are going gangbusters.

It has been said that when civilizations begin to die, they go insane. Perhaps Stoicism and Buddhism are the most useful philosophies in an age where the future is bleak and no one seems to be facing reality. After half a century of dire warnings from noted scientists, numerous Climate Action Inaction Summits (rigged to fail), revelations of decades-old climate studies from Fossil Fuel Corporations themselves proving all along that they knew, and worsening extreme weather events as well as the planet’s quickly disappearing cryosphere (what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic), here is where we stand today:

The world’s insatiable appetite for electricity is setting up a climate disaster

A report published Friday by the International Energy Agency found that global demand for electricity surged 6% in 2021, fueled by a colder winter and the dramatic economic rebound from the pandemic. That drove both prices and carbon emissions to new records.

The growth in demand was particularly intense in China, where it jumped by about 10%…

…Electricity generated by renewables grew by 6% globally last year, while coal-fired generation leaped 9% due to high demand and skyrocketing natural gas prices, which made it look like a more attractive option.

Carbon dioxide emissions from power generation rose 7% as a result, reaching an all-time high after declining the previous two years…

…The IEA found that emissions from the power sector will “remain around the same level from 2021 to 2024,” even though they need to decline “sharply” for the world to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the worst effects of climate change.

As physicist Tim Garrett has pointed out, “Any new energy source adds impetus to the conversion of raw resources into the stuff of civilization, accelerating growth and future demands for all energy types. Renewables add to the consumption, they do not replace.” Also, gains in energy efficiency are simply supplanted by more growth.

Keep in mind that even if we were to magically reduce our CO2 emissions overnight, the opposite of what is happening, we will never again see the climate we grew up in. It is never returning. Realize that the current level of CO2 equivalent GHGs already exceeds 500 ppm. The increased pace of extreme weather events we are now getting from climate change is shocking even those scientists who predicted it. The Arctic is greening with the treeline advancing northward 40 to 50 meters every year from what was once an annual increase of only a few centimeters. Adding yet another pernicious feedback loop to the climate crisis, beavers are moving into the warming Arctic in greater numbers and radically transforming the landscape with their dams, further accelerating the thaw of permafrost that releases methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A worrying new study shows Earth’s ability to reflect solar radiation is weakening — as the ocean is heating it is failing to generate clouds that reflect back sunlight. Astoundingly, half of that weakening has happened in the last four years:

“The albedo drop was such a surprise to us when we analyzed the last 3 years of data – many scientists hoped that a warmer Earth may lead to more clouds and higher albedo which would then help to moderate warming and balance the climate system But this shows the opposite is true”

If this trend of Earth dimming due to climate change continues, climate models will have to (once more) be significantly revised to include this additional net warming. We are headed for a Miocene climate during which the Antarctic ice volume was half of what it is today and the Arctic Ocean was ice-free in winter. Sea levels were 130 feet or higher and temperatures were about 5 to 8ºC warmer. Our ancestors were apes at that time. The European shoreline was 120 miles inland from today’s coast and dense swamp-forests resembling modern Louisiana clogged coasts and estuaries in Denmark and Germany. Nothing living in its region today is adapted to what will come. Remember those trees in the Pacific Northwest that sizzled in the heatwave of last year’s summer? A new study paints a dire picture for their future, as well as ours:

“By some estimates, it’s probably the largest scorch event in history,” Oregon State University researcher Christopher Still told OPB’s “Think Out Loud” on Monday. “I mean this is a new thing for us to be seeing on Earth, so it’s sort of a dubious milestone.”…

…“If this just keeps going, if these are happening every five or 10 years, it’s gonna be really grim I think for most of the forests of the Pacific Northwest.”

As the saying goes, “Lessons in life will be repeated until they are learned.” And so humans have yet to understand their place in the world, punch drunk on more than a century-long bacchanalia of fossil fuel burning. In the end, nature will put us in our place, and not in a good way. It is interesting to note that right around the peak of industrial civilization’s collapse, humans will have evidently lost their biological ability reproduce due to chemical pollution. We have saturated the Earth with so many and so much chemicals that we have breached another planetary boundary:

The cocktail of chemical pollution that pervades the planet now threatens the stability of global ecosystems upon which humanity depends, scientists have said.

Plastics are of particularly high concern, they said, along with 350,000 synthetic chemicals including pesticides, industrial compounds and antibiotics. Plastic pollution is now found from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans, and some toxic chemicals, such as PCBs, are long-lasting and widespread.

The study concludes that chemical pollution has crossed a “planetary boundary”, the point at which human-made changes to the Earth push it outside the stable environment of the last 10,000 years.

“There has been a fiftyfold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950 and this is projected to triple again by 2050,” said Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) who was part of the study team. “The pace that societies are producing and releasing new chemicals into the environment is not consistent with staying within a safe operating space for humanity.”

Pfft!!! Just another fancy-schmancy warning by some pedantic scientists for the world to ignore. No need to worry, we can live in hermetically sealed bubbles that filter out all that nasty stuff, can’t we? All of our socializing and entertainment take place indoors on digital screens anyway, doesn’t it? But wait, there’s more. The Doomsday Glacier is coming for us. The Thwaites Glacier is the size of Florida and it is cracking apart on the surface and melting from below, loosening its anchor on the undersea mountain that holds it in place. If this glacier goes, it could unleash much more ice from the West Antarctic ice sheet that is held in place behind it, causing an immediate and catastrophic effect (10 feet) of sea level rise. One scientist says it could go within a few years. This development falls in line with what another expert, Professor Harold R. Wanless, had said years ago about sea level rise and climate change—that sea level rise does not happen in a gradual and linear fashion but rather as sudden, large pulses. I blogged about him six years ago, and what he said back then in the context of what is happening now gives me chills:

…Subsequent ice melt was not a gradual acceleration and then deceleration process. Rather it was a series of very rapid pulses of sea level rise followed by pauses. These rapid pulses of rise, from three to thirty feet, were fast enough to leave drowned reefs, sandy barrier islands, tidal inlet deltas, and other coastal deposits abandoned across the continental shelf. That is what happens when climate change warms enough to destabilize some ice sheet sector. It rapidly disintegrates, resulting in a rapid rise.

Just a couple years ago, a study of ancient ice in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet showed that multiple meters of sea level rise occurred from less than 2ºC of warming at the beginning of the last interglacial period. As we are once again witnessing today, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is highly sensitive to collapse from slight temperature increases.

Circling back to the movie I was discussing earlier, there is a scene in which junior astronomer and Ph.D. student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) is with a group of disaffected youth who are discussing conspiracy theories regarding the global elite, and Dibiasky says in an exasperated voice, “You guys, the truth is way more depressing. They’re not even smart enough to be as evil as you’re giving them credit for.” Perhaps the truth is even more depressing than that. In the grand scheme of things, free will appears to be nothing more than a figment of our imagination. Like microbes proliferating in a Petri dish and dying off after overshooting their confines, humans are essentially replicating the same process albeit on a planetary scale. Evidently, we are biologically programmed to eventually crash and burn. Just as with all other species, humans have the imperative to expand their numbers, exploiting all resources until stopped by environmental constraints, and those limits to growth are fast approaching as we speak.

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Man In The Box

18 Sunday Jul 2021

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 88 Comments

Tags

Abrupt Climate Change, Aldous Huxley, Anthropocene Extinction, Atomization of Society, Chemical Pollution, Climate Tipping Points, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Dr. Peter Ward, Dystopic Future, Ecocide, Global Warming, Heat Dome, Loss of Biodiversity, Micro-Plastic Pollution, Ocean Acidification, Ocean Dead Zones, Pacific NW Heatwaves, Techno-Fix, Widespread Deoxygenation of Temperate Lakes, Widespread Ocean Anoxia

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”  ~ Aldous Huxley

The foundation beneath our house of cards is beginning to buckle and heave. For far too long, humans have poked the sleeping monster of abrupt climate change and it’s starting to awaken. Thus far, nearly a thousand deaths in British Columbia alone are likely attributable to hyperthermia caused by a persistent heat dome that has spiked temperatures to unprecedented levels. Take note that we are seeing these unreal temperature spikes at the end of a cooler La Nina cycle. When these heat domes form during the next warmer El Nino cycle, the results will be disastrous. We have now made such mass casualty events 150 times more likely with our heat-trapping gases which have doubled the earth’s energy imbalance in just the last 15 years. Over a billion sea creatures are estimated to have cooked to death off the western shores of Canada. “Eventually, we just won’t be able to sustain these populations of filter feeders on the shoreline to be anywhere near the extent that we’re used to,” says Chris Harley, a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia. This will have massive effects up and down many ecological networks. Remember last year when Australia’s mega-fires killed or harmed 3 billion animals? I thought that horrific trauma would be mankind’s epiphany on climate change, but it’s clear that as long as there is a dollar to be made there will be justification for genocide and ecocide. The planet’s last remaining natural resources and biodiversity are being liquidated at breakneck speed in order to maintain the colossal enterprise of industrial civilization. 

Modern society is more connected than ever digitally, but not emotionally or intimately. Too fragmented and dysfunctional to save itself, we exist not as human beings but as consumers and statistical numbers on a spreadsheet. Thus it is easy to write off the millions of deaths from industrial pollution as a cost of doing business, especially when the rules of the game are written for shareholders far removed from the damage being wrought. Our suicidal march into the abyss seems to be preordained because we have paid no heed to an endless stream of dire scientific reports and warnings that span decades. Like the collapse of the Surfside apartment building in Miami where the residents lived oblivious to warnings signs from decades ago, the collapse of industrial civilization will follow a similar response to anthropogenic climate breakdown. At this late stage, techno-optimists still cling to the belief that somehow we can adapt and thrive in an inhospitable and deteriorating post-Holocene epoch. At the same time, disinformation and propaganda continue to be spread by those who are outright denying the growing existential threat. The end result is the same, no matter which side prevails. Humans can’t even agree on what is reality, so how could they possibly organize a coherent response in time:

There is no escape from this cage modern man has constructed for himself. As lead scientist Dr. Robert Rohde at @BerkeleyEarth points out, 78% of humanity’s energy systems are powered by fossil fuels as of 2020. Oil and gas took 90 years to displace coal as the main energy source, illustrating that transitions take a very long time and ‘renewables’ remain a small fraction of total energy consumed. Scientists are becoming increasingly unnerved:

“We should be alarmed because the IPCC models are just not good enough,” Dame Julia Slingo of the @metoffice says.

“The obvious acceleration of the breakdown of our stable climate simply confirms that – when it comes to the climate emergency – we are in deep, deep s***!” says UCL’s @ProfBillMcGuire. “Many in the climate science community would agree, in private if not in public.”

“It blows my mind that we could get the temperatures that we’re observing here in the Pacific north-west, especially on the west sides of the Cascades that have that proximity to the ocean, that it could get that hot for so many days in a row,” said Nick Bond, Washington state climatologist. “I would have been willing to guess something like that in the middle of the century, in the latter part of the century.”

“The extreme nature of the record, along with others, is a cause for real concern,” says veteran scientist Professor Sir Brian Hoskins. “What the climate models project for the future is what we would get if we are lucky. The models’ behaviour may be too conservative.”

As has been pointed out before, but which is still not accepted let alone understood by the vast majority, is that even if we employed techno-fixes such as Bill Gates’ Solar Radiation Management Company, it would not stop climate change’s evil twin, ocean acidification, which is threatening to collapse the entire marine ecosystem. A recent paper by marine biologists and environmental consultants has warned that human society faces extinction if nothing is done to reverse the destruction of the oceans:

Over the last 70 years since the 1950’s and the production of toxic forever chemicals and plastic, more than 50% of all marine life, including plants and animals under 1 mm in size, have been lost from the world’s oceans, and that decline continues at a rate of 1% year on year…Over the next 25 years, pH will continue to drop from pH8.04 to pH7.95, and carbonate-based life forms will simply dissolve. This will result with an estimated 80% to 90% loss of all remaining marine life when compared to the 1950’s. Becoming carbon neutral will not stop the pH from dropping to 7.95, and even in the unlikely event of the world achieving Net Zero by 2030 it will not stop the pH dropping to less than pH7.95. Coupled with the micro-plastic and toxic chemical stressors on marine life, the GOES team believe there will be a trophic cascade collapse of the entire marine ecosystem.

Adding to this warning is another recent study showing that freshwater lakes are losing oxygen at a rate 9.3 times that of the oceans:

That matters, because not only do we get much of our drinking water from lakes and use them for recreational activities, but they support an extensive variety of species. “These substantial declines in oxygen potentially threaten biodiversity, especially the more oxygen-sensitive species,”…Rose identified a second problem too: Deep water is becoming less clear because of a host of factors including erosion, algal growth, and fertilizer runoff from nearby agricultural fields and residential developments. Murkier waters make plants less likely to survive, which means less photosynthesis and less oxygen down below. And that, of course, is bad news for the lakes’ creatures. “Just like humans, every complex life form on the planet depends on oxygen,” Rose says. “In water, that’s in the dissolved form.”

There was a study a few years ago which concluded that deoxygenation of the world’s waters from a warming world is what really drove the end-Permian mass extinction. The lead author is quoted as saying:

“This study shows that we’re on that same road toward extinction, and the question is how far down it we go.”

Keep in mind that we don’t have to reach the same elevated levels of CO2 in past geologic extinction events for things to get really nasty, causing modern civilization to crumble. Remember also that the Anthropocene Extinction has multiple prongs such as chemical and plastic pollution, deforestation, and other manmade pressures on the environment that did not exist in Earth’s history. According to paleontologist Dr. Peter Ward, all major extinctions occurred when CO2 levels exceeded 1000ppm. Past extinction events took hundreds of thousands to millions of years to play out, but our current rate of change is 25,000 times faster than the last known event (Paleocene Thermal Extinction) which took a million years for CO2 to increase by 100ppm. We are on track to reach 1000ppm within a century, but we’ll never get there of our own volition because our civilization will be toast long before then; however, once tipping points in the climate system are breached, positive feedback loops will have been set in motion that will propel CO2 levels upward beyond our control. For instance, the Amazon is now emitting more carbon than it is absorbing. In an interview four years ago, Dr Ward gave this warning:

“…we really are going to have unintended consequences and much more rapid heating than even the models say — for the simple reason that the [IPCC] models are highly conservative, too conservative.”

You may be asking yourself when humans will finally wise up and end this madness. Henri L Vichier-Guerre, a reader of this blog, recently posted a quote from a very good book entitled Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change by Clive Hamilton in 2010:

…even with the most optimistic set of assumptions – the ending of deforestation, a halving of emissions associated with food production, global emissions peaking in 2020 and then falling by 3 per cent a year for a few decades – we have no chance of preventing emissions rising well above a number of critical tipping points that will spark uncontrollable climate change. The Earth’s climate would enter a chaotic era lasting thousands of years before natural processes eventually establish some sort of equilibrium. Whether human beings would still be a force on the planet, or even survive, is a moot point. One thing seems certain: there will be far fewer of us.

As Henri L Vichier-Guerre points out, none of those optimistic things have happened in the intervening years. On the contrary, the ecological destruction has accelerated and the chances of anyone at all surviving grows more remote with each passing year. Henri goes on to quote the following on why no one in any significant seat of power is talking about our impending doom:

Not everyone believes we should be completely forthright with the general public about the depths of our crisis, including many of those in our Government.

Because it’s far too late to do anything to mitigate the crisis.

Far too late to avoid a global environmental, ecological and economic catastrophe.

This may go some way to explaining why the general public is still not being told the truth by Governments around the world.

It may go some way to explaining why many of the super-rich have already set up lavish underground ‘doomsday bunkers’ where they and their families can bug out when the shit hits the fan.

We have plenty of bread and circus distractions to keep us preoccupied until the very end. Television did not get its name ‘The Boob Tube’ for nothing. Now we have the infinite scroll of websites to hypnotize and control the masses. Click that ‘Like’ button. Sophisticated social media algorithms feed you what you want to see and hear 24/7. Cognitive biases are reinforced and facts no longer matter in a world suffering from severe truth decay. Aldous Huxley’s vision of a world driven by absolute consumerism that sacrifices human values and controls the masses with a non-stop supply of diversions via mindless entertainment and sensorial stimulation has become a dystopic reality. Just as in his book, it’s all happening in broad daylight with the tacit acceptance of everyone as we watch the world burn.

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We’re All Just Temporary Passengers on Spaceship Earth.

23 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by xraymike79 in Peak Oil

≈ 46 Comments

Tags

Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Donald J. Trump, Ecological Overshoot, Entropy, Ernst Mayr, Evangelical Right, Fossil Fuel Dependency, Global Pandemic, Global Warming, Haber–Bosch Process, Human Exceptionalism, Jevons Paradox, Joe Biden, Joseph Tainter, Mass Extinctions, Omnicide, Prof Tim Garrett, QAnon, Second Law of Thermodynamics, Sedition, Techno-Fix, White Nationalists, White Supremacists, William Catton

I recently asked a scientist on Facebook how he copes with the knowledge that we are destroying the planet within the geologic blink of an eye. Here is his answer:

Pot helps! 🙂 But psychologically, I reread Catton’s Overshoot recently, where he talks about how once humans started burning fossil fuels, we evolved (devolved?) into detritivores, species that depend on dead organic matter for our sustenance. This led me to think about Human Exceptionalism. The classic view is that humans’ assumed superiority has caused us to not consider the welfare of other species and blinded us in our ignorance to how our lifestyles were jeopardizing life support systems worldwide (including for us); I agree with this view. But I’ve also come to challenge another view of Human Exceptionalism; namely, that we have the intelligence and capacity for compassion to override what is every species’ imperative (humans and all other species): that is, to continuously consume available resources with no concern for future sustainability, with its concomitant and inevitable population boom and bust. Thus, I try to cope by accepting, with sad resignation, that we’re not any more special than other species – we’ve just lacked apex predators to keep our population in check and have used hundreds of millions of years of stored solar energy (i.e. fossil fuels) to temporarily shield ourselves from our population crash. This final kicking us off our superiority pedestal has helped me “let go” and inspired me to aspire to be more in tune with natural processes (such as organic gardening, which also helps on a very small scale to restore the soil biodiversity we’re regularly destroying with the Haber-Bosch process). How do you cope? 🙂

I replied later that day…

To cope, you first must know the truth. Our modern global civilization is a heat engine, subject to the second law of thermodynamics just as every civilization that came before. Our massive burning of fossil fuels has not only blanketed the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases and acidified the oceans, it has given humans the unfortunate ability to disrupt all the major biochemical processes of the planet, thus making the current civilizational collapse one of global proportions. There is no putting that genie back in the bottle and the environmental disorder it has unleashed. Thus we are firmly in the grips of entropy and no amount of techo-fixes, such as walls to hold back the rising sea or geoengineering schemes to blot out that fiery orb in the sky, will change this stark fact. As Jospeph Tainter argued, further complexity only brings more unforeseen problems that must be solved. Higher efficiency only leads to increased consumption (i.e. Jevons paradox). As you say, humans are no different than any other organism in that they will expand to consume all available resources until reined in by environmental limits. Our superior problem-solving capabilities have allowed us to dramatically overshoot the planet’s natural regenerative systems. And so it seems that Ernst Mayr was correct when he said human intelligence is a fatal mutation in the evolutionary process. According to Mayr, intelligence is a double-edged sword, serving as a tool for our survival or rapidly carrying out our own annihilation. How do I cope with all that? Other than adopting a stoic attitude towards our predicament, there is no coping. It is what it is. Find simple joys in nature while nature is still around. I love hummingbirds and watch them at the feeder when I am home. Live in the moment when you can. Enjoy mankind’s ability to create beautiful art. Be kind to your fellow human and nonhuman. We’re all just temporary passengers on Spaceship Earth.

Now that America’s wannabe dictator has vacated the White House, maybe we can get back to pretending we’re doing anything of significance about climate change and the ghastly future bearing down on us. I’m sure we’ll get right on that existential crisis as soon as we tamp down the current global pandemic, sort out Trump’s QAnon and white nationalist seditionists, and bring together a country where half the population believes their cult leader’s endless lies and the evangelical Right idolize Trump as a vessel anointed by God. So much for heeding warnings against idolizing false prophets. Despite all those minor details, we’ll all be on the same page, right? Well won’t we???

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Weekend Funnies for the Depressed Collapsitarian #11

14 Friday Jun 2019

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Ecological Overshoot

≈ 30 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Climate Breakdown, Extreme Weather Events, Fossil Fuel Industry, Greta Thunberg, Techno-Fix, Technocapitalism, The Anthropocene Age

It’s been a while since I’ve published one of these dark humor posts, but I think that as the catastrophic flooding, heat waves, and other extreme weather events continue to multiply and intensify and as more and more people start losing their minds, all we can do is laugh at the absurdity of our self-inflicted predicament. As has been said many times before, the Anthropocene carbon spike is just one of many symptoms from an overpopulated technocapitalist-driven world chasing too few resources, whether it be wild fish, potable water, rare earth minerals, or arable land. No one is putting the breaks on this race towards the abyss because no one is truly in charge, except for the cold and amoral calculator of corporate profits and stock market returns. In an age of “worse than expected” and “faster than anticipated”, the true cost of environmental collapse cannot be fully appreciated because humans have never existed in a world that is 500ppm CO2e and accelerating. One thing is certain —most of Earth’s mass extinctions were caused by a disruption in the carbon cycle which happened slowly over a much longer time span compared to today and without all the other human-forced pressures on the planet. All the technological advances and creature comforts we value today came at a rising environmental cost which is now impossible to repay since we have essentially ‘sold the farm’ in terms of the stability of the Holocene and the biochemistry of the planet. There’s no techno-fixing our way out of this mess. We didn’t build a durable civilization; we built a superficial and fleeting one blinded by delusions of technological grandeur and human superiority. So as we all slowly arrive at the fifth stage of grief, here’s a toast to humans before the party ends…

And this cartoon is becoming more accurate as time passes and oil executives mourn for the loss of future profits…

Earth will be fine. Humans?…not so much 🤣

No need to plan for retirement, the beach will come to you…

I’m sure Greta Thunberg would have something to say…

Do as I say, not as I do…

And lastly…

A Final Warning to Planet Earth

15,364 scientists from 184 countries issue a ‘warning to humanity’ and present a radical agenda to protect planet Earth. We, the billions of people believing in human exceptionalism, categorically reject this agenda and issue in return a stark warning to planet Earth…We officially summon planet Earth to abandon its intransigent attitude and accept the inevitable: an extension of its biological and physical limits. Should planet Earth stick with its hardline ideological stance, it needs to be aware that mankind will never compromise and that we will seek a second planet. The universe is like our ambition: limitless…

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Evolutionary Dead-Ends

19 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 95 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Arctic Blue Ocean Event, Capitalism, Carl Sagan, Climate Change, Collapse of Civilizations, Donald Trump, Dr Charlie Veron, Ecological Overshoot, Elizabeth Kolbert, Herman Daly, Jared Diamond, Micro-Plastic Pollution, Noam Chomsky, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Stephen Boyden, Svante Arrhenius, Techno-Fix, U.S. National Climate Assessment, Wealth Inequality, William Rees

“It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.” ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

Have things improved since I wrote my last essay a year ago for this blog? Have we miraculously transformed our entire energy system into one that does not poison and degrade the natural world? Have we slowed the onslaught of plastic pollution choking the planet’s rivers, lakes, and oceans? Have we done anything meaningful to halt the deterioration of the planet’s biodiversity toward mass extinction? Has this global, hi-tech civilization done anything significant to avert its own demise? Despite a constant flow of warnings from the scientific community and even a letter signed by more than 20,000 scientists, the simple answer is no. We have failed to address the complexity of our rising population and a degrading environment. Yes, we are self-conscious and thus able to recognize the fact that we are destroying the only home we have, but will the end result differ much from a population overshoot of bacteria in a Petri dish? Dependent on a continuous stream of finite resources imported from across the globe, modern megacities contain the seeds of their own destruction and that of all other life forms upon which humanity depends for its survival. The exponential growth of modern civilization ensures that one of the next doubling times will produce an absolute increase in overshoot that tips the world into unavoidable collapse. Enough damage may well have already been done; we’re just waiting for inertia to catch up to the impacts.

2017 set a global record for the most skyscrapers built in a single year and 2018 is predicted to eclipse it. The fossil fuel energy spent to construct those concrete and steel buildings translates into a melting cryosphere. Not to mention the fact that the carbon footprint of some of the world’s biggest cities is 60% bigger than previously estimated. “Renewable energy” still only comprises a tiny fraction of global energy consumption and plans for a total transition will take decades, if it’s even possible. Any growth in ‘renewable energy’ has been offset by increased consumption of fossil fuels in the developing world. 2017 marked a new record high in CO2 emissions with 2018 set to break that record. Global CO2 emissions have yet to peak, and the UN has warned that we are on course for a 3C world. It doesn’t help that the current U.S. administration plans to cut funding for alternative energy R&D, with the Energy Department expecting no drop in the U.S. carbon footprint through 2050. Having embedded itself in the U.S. government over a century ago, the fossil fuel industry has consistently worked to block climate change action and undermine environmental laws. A UK shipping executive recently admitted his industry is guilty of doing the same to protect their bottom line. The utilities companies knew the dangers as well. Like most corporations, the viability of their business model depends on perpetuating an unsustainable way of life. With warnings ignored since the late 1800s starting with the work of Svante Arrhenius, it should be obvious by now that intelligence without sapience has produced deadly results. A new study finds “the most accurate climate change models predict the most alarming consequences.” The recently released U.S. National Climate Assessment has similar findings:

While climate models incorporate important climate processes that can be well quantified, they do not include all of the processes that can contribute to feedbacks (Ch. 2), compound extreme events, and abrupt and/or irreversible changes. For this reason, future changes outside the range projected by climate models cannot be ruled out (very high confidence). Moreover, the systematic tendency of climate models to underestimate temperature change during warm paleoclimates suggests that climate models are more likely to underestimate than to overestimate the amount of long-term future change (medium confidence). (Ch. 15)

In a new ominous research finding, the evil twin of climate change(ocean acidification) is threatening the base of the marine food chain by disrupting the production of phytoplankton. This is yet another positive feedback loop increasing the rate of global warming. Climate feedback loops and ice sheet modeling are two weak areas of climate science, which means many unpleasant surprises. This is why researchers are constantly astonished. Adaptation is not a luxury most organisms have at the present rates of change. Techno-fixes are but a pipe dream.

A diet reliant on animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases, biodiversity loss, and oceanic dead zones, yet global per capita meat consumption is increasing rapidly in both developing and industrialized countries. Investments have been made to increase global plastic production by 40% over the next decade, even as all the world’s natural bodies of water become inundated with microplastics. Coca Cola alone produces 110 billion throwaway plastic bottles every year – an astounding 3,400 a second. Plastic waste from the military is another massive contributor that cannot be overstated. Half of all plastics have been made in just the last thirteen years. Over 90% of the so-called purified bottled water sold to the public has been shown to be contaminated with hundreds and even thousands of microplastic pieces. A byproduct of petroleum and the epitome of our throw-away society, plastics have truly become ubiquitous in the environment, entering the food chain at every level.

A study published last year pulls no punches by describing the mass extermination of billions of animals in recent decades as a “biological annihilation.” Extinction risks for many species are vastly underestimated. Insects, the base of the terrestrial food chain, are faring no better. With the steep loss of invertebrates, multiple studies indicate the world is “on course for an ecological Armageddon”. Trees are dying at an unprecedented rate from extreme weather events, portending profound effects to Earth’s carbon cycle. Coral bleaching events are now happening four times more frequently than a few decades ago. Dr Charlie Veron, a renowned scientist specializing in corals and reefs, said this last year:

“Half of all coral colonies on the Great Barrier Reef died over the past two years due to coral bleaching,’’ Dr Veron said.

“It’s going to be a horrible world. Young people now are going to curse the present generation for what we’ve done. We’ll have left them a planet in dire straits.’’

“Between a quarter and a third of all marine species have part of their life cycle in a coral reef. Taking away the reefs precipitates ecological collapse of the oceans. It’s happened twice in the past due to volcanoes releasing carbon dioxide and lava flows, but that was nothing like the amount of carbon dioxide being released now.’’

No one thought that ecosystems such as The Great Barrier Reef would be circling the drain this soon. How these changes are affecting flora and fauna as well as human societies is critical, but it’s like trying to predict the outcome of a high speed car crash as it’s happening. Hindsight is 20/20, but it only serves a purpose if you are still around to learn from it. Abrupt climate change is happening now and we’re not prepared for it. Fighting to protect the very life support system we all share, environmentalists are under attack worldwide and being murdered in record numbers. The problem of poaching is so bad that scientists are advising people to scrub all GPS data from their nature photos before publication to help protect endangered species from being ransacked. The voracious consumption and defilement of the planet continues unabated, despite clear signs the once-stable biosphere that enabled the establishment of human civilizations is quickly unraveling(Puerto Rico, Houston, never-ending wildfire seasons, melting Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, widespread glacial retreat, shrinking lakes, and many other signs of a destabilized climate). The following picture taken in Oregon last summer illustrates my point; seemingly oblivious to the massive wildfires raging in the background, a group of golfers continues playing a round…“We’re trading a habitable climate for a few generations of easy living.”

Climate change is just one of many factors in mankind’s planetary overshoot. We even have a day designated in recognition of our oversized ecological footprint which comes earlier every year, with nary a mention of it in official economic reports. As Herman Daly has explained, the global economic system treats the earth as a business in liquidation. The destruction of the natural world is enshrined in our positive economic indicators, i.e. rising GDP. And if need be, those numbers will be massaged to meet expectations. On a subconscious level, the growth imperative applies to all species including humans:

Humans share two behavioral traits with all other species that are critically important to (un)sustainability. Numerous experiments show that unless or until constrained by negative feedback (e.g., disease, starvation, self-pollution) the populations of all species:

• Expand to occupy all accessible habitats.

• Use all available resources.

Like mindless bacteria bent on their own success, humans are victims of their own DNA and ingenuity. Any civilization that develops energy harvesting technologies allowing for rapid population growth will generate entropy which will in turn almost certainly have strong feedback effects on the planet’s habitability. Our exponentially growing economy is on a collision course with an immovable ecosphere.

The end of the world is coming for the naked ape, not by a cabal of bankers or any sort of cockamamie conspiracy tale like chemtrails, but by us –the entire human race– and the economic system we have developed. We’ve become hostages to the complex structures and ever more intricate specialization of an economic system designed to exploit diminishing resources. Pollution and waste are of little concern for capitalism until they become a significant drain on overall profitability and new frontiers to exploit are exhausted. When profitability on a global scale is finally threatened by climate change, it will be far too late. The response will be militarized and authoritarian.

On a more insidious note, capitalism is driven by a deep instinctive drive to accumulate which was a very survival-positive compulsion during our several million years of evolving into Homo sapiens to overcome dry periods and other threats. Capitalism hits on this genetic proclivity, and when we get a clear opportunity to grab a big time accumulation, get rich and all, social good be damned. Our big and powerful cerebral cortex is hard-pressed to find a cure.

“I am rather pessimistic. The maladaptive assumptions of prevailing cultures are deeply ingrained. The notion that economic growth must take precedence over all other considerations and general ignorance of biological and ecological realities do not augur well for the future.” ~ Professor Stephen Boyden, human ecologist

In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond found that a common factor was the myopic and self-serving decision-making of elites who believed they could insulate themselves from the consequences of societal disasters. As the elites reaped the rewards, the resulting damage to everyone else built up over time until calamity struck. The grim reality is that history has proven such cycles of extreme wealth inequality have only been broken by catastrophes –plagues, revolutions, massive wars, and collapsed states. The U.S. has now reached a degree of wealth disparity unequaled in history:

Overall, the highest-ever historical Gini the researchers found was that of the ancient Old World (think Patrician Rome), which got a score of .59. While the degrees of inequality experienced by historical societies are quite high, the researchers note, they’re nowhere near as high as the Gini scores we’re seeing now…”it is safe to say that the degree of wealth inequality experienced by many households today is considerably higher than has been the norm over the last ten millennia,” the researchers write in their paper.

The crisis of civilization is planet-wide this time. We’ve turned a utopian world of plenty into a dystopian world of fascist-leaning governments, industrial disasters, collapsing ecosystems, and technological addiction. We have a Commander in Chief who tweets bizarre debunked conspiracies at 3 am, gets his intel briefings from right-wing TV shows, dismantles any remaining hindrances to unbridled capitalism, and doesn’t know the difference between weather and climate. Public discourse has been dumbed down to the level of Fox news talking points and tribal groupthink. Those who can discern actual ‘fake news’ from scientific fact are left to watch in horror as mainstream scientific projections continue to prove overly optimistic. Not only are regulations being cut left and right, they are not being enforced. Government science advisors are being purged and replaced with mouthpieces for industrial polluters. In fact, this administration is actively working to delegitimize and destroy government institutions. A sizable population of low information voters supports such actions, but it’s only to their own detriment. Although both major parties are under the sway of corporate power, Trump and company represent an exceptionally predatory class of people. The Union of Concerned Scientists is monitoring the current administration’s war on science and public health; their latest report is here:

The administration’s one-year record shows an unprecedented level of stalled and disbanded scientific advisory committees, cancelled meetings, and dismissed experts. The consequences for the health and safety of millions of Americans could be profound.

We live in an age of unparalleled technological advancement, while at the same time we turn a blind eye to the disintegrating natural world that gave birth to us, having forgotten that our destiny lies in our relationship with the earth. Like Icarus who, in his exuberance, ignored his father’s warnings and flew too close to the sun, modern man with his technology has ascended to great heights without heeding sound advice.

“We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.” ~ Carl Sagan

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The Trumpocene: Darkness Gathers

22 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by xraymike79 in Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Cyber-Warfare, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 44 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Automation, Biological Diversity, Capitalism, Carl Sagan, Climate Change Denial, Conspiracy Theorists, Coral Die-Off, Corporatocracy, Cyber-Warfare, Deforestation, Donald Trump, Endocrine Disruptors, Fairness Doctrine, Fake News, Free Market Ideologues, Gary Kasparov, Gaslighting, Martin Luther King, Michael E. Mann, Micro-Plastic Pollution, Ocean Acidification, Overthrow Project, Peak Net Energy, Rush Limbaugh, Slave Labor, Techno-Fix, The Global Elite, The Trump Wall, Trumpocene, TV Sensationalism

“The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” – Gary Kasparov

With each passing day, the mental stability of our narcissistic, megalomaniacal president is increasingly being called into question by those unnerved from his erratic behavior. The unhinged press conferences, comically embarrassing meetings with world leaders, and uncensored tweets reveal just how illiterate, delusional, and divisive America’s first reality TV president truly is, and the consequences won’t be confined to the imaginary world of a television screen. The irony is that the very news media networks whom the president disparages on a daily basis were instrumental in getting him elected, allowing Trump’s circus to hog the headlines in an ‘issues free’ campaign. Trump received $1.9 billion in free media coverage, 190 times as much as he paid for while the major networks made tons of revenue off Trump’s theatrics. Driving this symbiotic relationship is the fierce competition for ratings determining the advertising revenue and bottom line of these corporate-owned news networks. The media exploited Trump’s sensationalist behavior for profit, helping to drive his campaign to the top of this money-grubbing pyramid scheme. We are, as Neil Postman mused, amusing ourselves to death. Most of these networks are now busy trying to contain the monster they helped create. The other great irony is that America is getting a taste of its own medicine after having meddled in other country’s elections for decades; the CIA was one of the early developers of cyber warfare and is one of the world’s most ruthless practitioners of it.

Of the many Trump lies glossed over by corporate media, the most dangerous one is that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. The Trump administration is riddled with like-minded Flat-Earthers bent on dismantling the EPA and stoking fossil fuel consumption. In Trumpland, alternative facts are as valid as any empirical evidence. Scientists are being muzzled and the masses are being gaslighted. Conspiracy theories, hearsay, and pure fantasy have replaced meaningful public discourse. We have a demagogue working to blind everyone to what scientists are telling us and our own eyes can see. A civilization which cannot discern the truth cannot make rational decisions for the future, let alone the present. Trump’s kleptocracy will flourish in such an environment while repeating the mantra, “It’s all about the American people.”

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance” ~ Carl Sagan

The loss of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 was an important milestone in America’s decline towards a “post-truth” culture, paving the way for the “outrage industry” and talk radio demagogues like Rush Limbaugh. Twitter is the new bully pulpit for a tyrant-aspiring charlatan, and his antics serve as a useful tool for distracting the public from the right-wing agenda of extreme deregulation and privatization, otherwise known as the Overthrow Project. The biggest danger of wealth inequality is capture of the political system by the elites. This has already happened in America and abroad to the extent that there is now a new globalized elite who have more fealty towards each other than their country of origin, completely lacking positive feelings and loyalty towards their own native lands. The existing oligarchy is being strengthened at the expense of an already polarized and economically disenfranchised society. The Trump regime is corporatism on steroids.

As the famous saying goes, “There’s a sucker born every minute” and Trump is just the latest huckster to exploit them. His rhetoric appeals to people’s emotions and raises their dopamine levels, but facts have a tendency to get in the way of a good story. Trump’s base of supporters, however, appear immune to facts that contradict their leaders’s disinformation. One of his big campaign pledges was to bring back the manufacturing base of the U.S. and revive the Rust Belt, but this promise rings hollow in the age of techno-capitalism. Machines have taken over manufacturing and Trump’s protectionist policies will in all likelihood accelerate this process. AI promises to bring even more radical disruption to the job market:

At a time when the Trump administration is promising to make America great again by restoring old-school manufacturing jobs, AI researchers aren’t taking him too seriously. They know that these jobs are never coming back, thanks in no small part to their own research, which will eliminate so many other kinds of jobs in the years to come, as well…

In the US, the number of manufacturing jobs peaked in 1979 and has steadily decreased ever since. At the same time, manufacturing has steadily increased, with the US now producing more goods than any other country but China. Machines aren’t just taking the place of humans on the assembly line. They’re doing a better job. And all this before the coming wave of AI upends so many other sectors of the economy.

Trump’s fake stance on protecting American workers will not unwind decades of globalization, unrelenting automation, or the machinations of corporate capitalism. His promise to reignite the coal industry is yet more empty rhetoric; independent energy experts at BNEF dismantle his claim:

Coal power is just too costly and inflexible, explains BNEF: “Super-low-cost renewable power — what we are now calling ‘base-cost renewables’ — is going to force a revolution in the way power grids are designed, and the way they are regulated.”

When you add the revolution in cheap fracked gas — which Trump has pledged to double down on — it’s no surprise the country shut down over 40 gigawatts of coal-fired power stations since 2000…

It’s also being driven by a collapse in the export market, as countries from Europe to Asia also move away from coal because of its economic and human cost…

So Trump won’t be bringing back the domestic coal industry. And even if he could, he can’t bring back the jobs because it’s the coal industry itself that wiped out most of those jobs through productivity gains from “strip mines and machinery”…

Conveniently ignoring the harmful environmental impacts and the fact that illegal immigration has been on the decline for the past decade, the proposed Trump Wall is an expensive monument to xenophobia and misguided fears. No wall will prevent those determined to circumvent it, but if you listen to the engineers and experts who actually have experience working at the border, then it’s not a solid continuous wall(projected to take 16 years to complete) but a partial fence that would be more effective and feasible, and that’s if you believe that Americans will take the place of those millions of migrant farm workers who leave their homes every year to plant, cultivate, harvest, and pack America’s fruits, vegetables and nuts, in addition to the millions of other low-skilled and low-paying jobs that immigrants perform. Capitalism thrives on the back of cheap labor, but even these jobs are not safe from machines.

What kind of world is going to support all this labor-saving, hi-tech gadgetry when its creators are too short-sighted to maintain the habitability of the planet for their own descendants? There is no deus ex machina to prevent catastrophic collapse of the oceans nor is there one to stop catastrophic climate change. Industrial civilization is a one-hit wonder for which there are no solutions that scale up to the mountain of problems it has created. Dealing with the environmental costs of fossil fuels is the classic “prisoner’s dilemma” whereby the incentive to cheat for short-term economic gain prevents the cooperation needed by everyone. The economic, legal, and moral framework to tackle climate change simply does not exist. The invisible hand of the “free market” has turned into the boot of environmental catastrophe.

Primates, mankind’s closest biological cousins in the animal kingdom, are in steep decline because they have the “misfortune of being concentrated in areas rich in certain resources precious to their sapient but ravenous cousins.” Not even our fellow human beings can escape war and death when they live atop coveted resources, so what chance does any other species have?

“People have argued that we only have to worry about human-caused extinctions if we do something that causes the loss of 80 or 90 percent of species on the planet,” said UC Berkeley environmental scientist James W. Kirchner.

“Our analysis shows that even if the human impact is much smaller than that – 20 or 30 or even 50 percent of species – it’s still going to take 10 million years for the Earth to recover. That is well past the expected life span of the human species, or even of the genus Homo.” – Link

The study quoted above was from the year 2000 and has the usual hopeful spin:

“It is not preordained that high levels of human-caused extinction have to happen,” Kirchner said. “Our future depends on what we choose to do on a national and international level, as a society. Those decisions are critical because they will have very long-lasting consequences.”

Not surprisingly, we have failed to heed that advice. Scientists say our rampant road building has dissected the Earth’s land into 600,000 fragments too small to support significant wildlife. A new study covering 130 countries finds deforestation rises with incomes in developing economies and never reverses. This is particularly troubling because Africa is a developing continent with some of the world’s largest tracts of remaining undisturbed forests and biodiversity hotspots. Biodiversity loss is an existential threat comparable to climate change. The glaring warning from all these studies is that the Western way of life exported across the entire planet has brought us to a point of cataclysmic overshoot. Business-as-usual only exacerbates the crisis:

Real-world CO2 emissions have tracked the high end of earlier [IPCC] emissions scenarios, and until the currently wealthy countries can produce a large decline in their own emissions per capita, it is dubious to project that emissions per capita in the less developed countries will not continue on a trajectory up to the levels of currently wealthy countries…[The top 10% of the economically wealthy in the world produce almost as much total GHG emissions as the bottom 90% combined]… – Link

Trump peddles the false hope of regaining material wealth for a collapsing middle class with his slogan “Make America great again”, but after being elected, is giving more power and riches to those who have created this environmental and social catastrophe. Capitalism is, as Martin Luther King observed, “socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.” Nonetheless, in the bigger scheme of modern civilization’s looming collapse, the ‘Trumpocene’ amounts to nothing more than polishing the brass on the Titanic.

A time is coming when what we do to Earth is completely overshadowed by what Earth does to us. We have already condemned the planet to an ice-free Arctic and no amount of techno-fixes will return it to its former state. Were humans to disappear today from the Earth, the after-effects of our massive fossil fuel binge would reverberate for aeons. The last time there was an ice-free Arctic was during the Eemian period 125,000 years ago at the height of the last major interglacial period, but the CO2 levels of today are much higher now and causing the climate to change at a rate that is 170 times that of natural forces with much more warming to come. According to a new study, manmade global warming is replicating conditions that triggered an abrupt sea level rise of several meters in the ocean around Antarctica some 15,000 years ago. The damage done is irreversible not only on a human timescale or a civilizational time scale, but a species timescale. The total global carbon dioxide emissions load from the onset of the industrial revolution is enough to push the next ice age back by 100,000 years and only deep geologic time will significantly remediate the chemistry of a CO2-spiked atmosphere. The same is true for ocean acidification. The natural process of continental rock weathering to neutralize all of the CO2 from human activity that is entering the oceans would take hundreds of thousands of years. Plankton blooms, a key part of the entire marine food web and the biological carbon pump, are being disrupted by warming, acidifying oceans. The Great Barrier Reef is expected to be completely dead within the next two decades and 98% of all reefs around the world gone by mid century. The latest research indicates ocean acidification is much worse for corals that previously thought.

Manmade persistent organic pollutants(POPs) such as PCBs and flame retardants can be found in the most remote places on Earth such as the 36,000-foot-deep Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean where researchers tested crustaceans and found them to contain 50 times more POPs than crabs living in one of China’s most polluted rivers. Once these endocrine-disrupting compounds settle into the sediments, they can remain there for thousands of years before being disturbed and recirculated into the environment once again as a contaminant. Microplastics less than 5mm in size are ubiquitous in the environment, having been documented in the waters of both the Arctic and Antarctic and recently found on 73% of Britain’s beaches.

The irrational ramblings of a demagogue won’t change a shifting earth laying waste to a once rich ecosphere and grinding to dust the landmarks of modern man. Delusions and protestations have no bearing on the laws of chemistry and thermodynamics.

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Some Fun Facts for a Dystopic Future

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 62 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Abrupt Climate Change, Antarctic Ice Melt, Arctic Blue Ocean Event, Arctic Sea Ice Melt, Capitalism, Donald Trump, Dr. James Orbinski, Geoengineering, Greenland Ice Sheet Melt, Hillary Clinton, James Hansen, Mass Coral Bleaching, Overpopulation, Planetary Boundaries, Professor Harold R. Wanless, Sea Level Rise, Techno-Fix, The Great Barrier Reef, The Limits to Growth

“When you cannot feed your children, you will do anything, even if it means going to war. This is the reality of climate change.” ~ Dr. James Orbinski

80% of the world’s productive agricultural land is in river deltas which are vulnerable to flooding from storm and tidal surges as well as salt penetration inland –as much as 20 km in some cases. Just 1 meter(3.28ft) of sea level rise(SLR) would threaten one third of this food-producing land and render nearly all the barrier islands of the world uninhabitable. (Overly-)Conservative estimates from the IPCC in 2013 predicted 1m of SLR rise by 2100, but the last two decades have seen global sea level increase more than twice as fast as it did in the 20th Century and only recently have scientists realized the true rate of SLR has been grossly underestimated(here and here). James Hansen (et al) has argued all along that 5 meters of sea level rise by the end of the century is possible, taking decades to happen rather than centuries. They conclude that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates. The last time CO2 levels were at 400ppm was during the Pliocene Era when sea level was 5 to 40m higher (16-131ft); unfortunately, Earth is warming 50 times faster than when it comes out of an ice age. Professor Harold R. Wanless who has studied the geologic sedimentary record says that we are in for a nasty surprise within this century:

Most of the models projecting future sea level rise assume a gradual acceleration of sea level rise through this century and beyond as ice melt gradually accelerates. Our knowledge of how sea level rose out of the past ice age paints a very different picture of sea level response to climate change. At the depth of the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago, sea level was some 420 feet below present level as ice was taken up by large continental ice sheets. Subsequent ice melt was not a gradual acceleration and then deceleration process. Rather it was a series of very rapid pulses of sea level rise followed by pauses. These rapid pulses of rise, from three to thirty feet, were fast enough to leave drowned reefs, sandy barrier islands, tidal inlet deltas, and other coastal deposits abandoned across the continental shelf. That is what happens when climate change warms enough to destabilize some ice sheet sector. It rapidly disintegrates, resulting in a rapid rise.

We are already witnessing the demise of the Great Barrier Reef, the oldest and largest living organism on the planet, which continues to suffer the lethal effects of a warming and acidifying ocean. We’ve destroyed the planet’s air conditioner in the Arctic and set the stage for an impending Blue Ocean Event where 24 hours a day of summer sunlight penetrating the uncovered dark Arctic waters will create another tipping point for runaway climate change. The Arctic climate is changing so fast science can barely keep track of what’s happening or predict global consequences. On top of this, nature’s carbon sinks have been severely weakened over the last few centuries, hindering the ability of the planet to absorb ever-increasing greenhouse gases. And these things are happening before a large destructive pulse of SLR hits the planet.

History has proven considerably worse than the Club of Rome’s projections. The original report made only passing reference to some of the most critical environmental problems of today. In response to this, the Stockholm Resilience Centre identified a set of nine ecological processes regulating land/ocean/atmosphere and their accompanying boundaries within which humans must stay to avoid biospheric collapse. In 2015, researchers found that four of these planetary boundaries had already been breached: biodiversity loss, damage to phosphorous and nitrogen cycles, climate change and land use. None of these critical boundaries were picked up by the original Limits to Growth report. We have destroyed the stability of the Holocene Epoch and continue to wreak havoc with every passing day. In other words, there are many other environmental crises too numerous to list that are coming to a head, and catastrophic sea level rise is just the icing on the burned cake. The last time Earth had such a disruptive species, cyanobacteria altered the atmosphere and killed off all the anaerobic life forms including itself. Ironically, oxygen was the byproduct of the cyanobacteria that proved lethal to those ancient lifeforms and paved the way for the rise of photosynthetic organisms. The cyanobacteria had a 500 million year run, but modern man has only been around for 0.01% of that time. Our large brain has made it possible for us to destroy ourselves in record time.

Global warming is happening 5,000 times faster than a major food source can adapt. As the global monoculture food system breaks down and leaves vulnerable Third World countries to fend for themselves, I expect the last remaining vertebrates to be hunted to extinction in short order while wealthy nations carry out land grabs in an effort to keep their citizens fed. Humans are pushing all other life off the planet; the ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ is not a metaphor.

So you would think that these stark facts laid out before us would be causing panic in the global markets and seats of power around the world because, clearly, no one is safe from this unfolding apocalypse. In what many call the ‘most powerful nation on Earth’, surely a leader must be on the verge of taking the helm of this sinking ship. In any rational world, they would be compelled to battle this planetary emergency with the war-time urgency it demands. In the election year of 2016 there are only two prospects in our corporatocracy, one of whom is so frightening that hundreds of the world’s scientists felt compelled to issue a warning against his possible election. The other candidate seems much more palatable on the surface, but her record and recent emails illustrate just how tortured her positions are on environmental issues. Anyone who has studied the numerous practices that make modern civilization truly unsustainable, the depths of corruption and waste in its global socio-economic system, and how predatory one has to be in order to survive and “succeed’ in it realizes in the end that it wouldn’t matter much who fills that figurehead position. Toeing the line of the dominant culture is a prerequisite for the job. That’s one reason why nations are building walls in response to climate change refugees and putting faith in unproven and unrealistic techno-fixes to save themselves while at the same time drilling for new oil, financing new coal plants, allowing climate goals for corporations to add up to only a quarter of the amount needed to limit warming to 2°C, and giving the shipping industry a pass on curbing its emissions(if shipping was a country it would be the world’s 8th biggest carbon polluter).

Meanwhile, CO2 levels continue to climb at breakneck speed and recent paleoclimate research indicates today’s greenhouse gas levels could produce a ‘game over’ warming of 7°C within our lifetime. We already have no carbon budget left for a 1.5°C warming limit from 2017 onwards. We’re betting our species’ future on vaporware, and no country on Earth is taking the 2°C climate target seriously. Celebrity breakups get more attention than real threats to the continuation of our species. Apocalypse tourism has become a ‘thing’.

The biosphere is collapsing under the weight of 7.5 billion people living off the combustion of a one time endowment of ancient carbon energy, from the factory-farmed produce they eat to the petroleum-based medical supplies that keep them alive. And global population growth may be accelerating at an even greater rate than recent predictions. As Germany has shown, “renewable energies” are nothing more than ‘fossil fuel extenders’ still wedded to fossil-fueled extraction processes for the production and maintenance of those technologies. It’s a shell game of sorts. Industrialized countries will say their carbon footprint has gone down without telling you they’ve moved their dirty industrial operations to Third World countries. Developing countries will make promises of “green growth” while their state-owned banks and companies expand fossil fuel production overseas. We’ve been fooling ourselves for a very long time about what is truly sustainable and will continue to do so as the system falls apart, geoengineering fixes are applied, interstellar space colonization fantasies are dreamed up, and wars are fought for what remains. Humans have constructed a reality incompatible with the well-being of the natural world and the stability of the biosphere, but we won’t be able to escape the rules of physics, chemistry, and biology. We’ve spent generations making the bed we’re going to be lying in, never realizing it’s also our death bed. Time is not on our side.

Most are not listening and our leaders are misleading, so it bears repeating: ‘The Oil Age’ made us all confident idiots with short attention spans. To both candidates: runaway, catastrophic climate change resulting in loss of habitat and mass starvation is our biggest threat.

 

Update 11-10-2016:

The proles have now elected a man who has put a climate science denier in charge of his EPA team, vowed to kill the Paris climate deal, end all efforts to help other countries deal with climate change, stop domestic climate action, reinvigorate coal, and zero out all climate science research & clean energy, but physics doesn’t really care who was elected.

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The Stark Realities of Baked-In Catastrophes

02 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 45 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Antarctic Ice Melt, Anthropogenic Climate Change, Arctic Sea Ice Melt, Capitalism, Climate Change Denial, CO2 Emissions, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Economic Hitman, Environmental Collapse, Intensified Hydrologic Cycle, Mangled Jet Stream, Noam Chomsky, Sea Level Rise, Sustainability, Techno-Fix, The Unsustainability of Mega-Cities, Warren Buffett

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In a civilization gone mad with delusions of grandeur, we’re left with tatters of human sociability held together by rancid mythologies.

Despite human fossil fuel burning recently reported to be “flat”, CO2 levels have been on a tear for the last six months, reaching new worrying levels which have some wondering whether permafrost melt may be contributing to the unusually high spike if no decline happens soon. The giant holes in Siberia serve as an ominous sign. Considering that the current El Niño is contributing only 10% to what we are now seeing, runaway global warming may be accelerating worldwide. But don’t worry, Warren Buffett says climate change is no more of a problem than the Y2K bug and will be profitable through increased premiums and inflation.

Ever dire studies continue to reaffirm worst case scenarios, making clear to anyone paying attention that Earth in the next century will be unrecognizable from its current state. Basic planetary geography and atmospheric conditions will be altered through warming oceans and rising sea levels which are now increasing faster than at any time in the past 2800 years. On average, sea levels were between 50 and 82 feet higher the last time CO2 levels were at 400ppm. Glaciologist Jason Box expects ice melt from the West Antarctic to become the biggest contributor to sea level rise in the coming decades due to a feedback loop not in the climate models. CO2 levels have been increasing around 3ppm per year, a twentyfold increase since pre-industrial times when the highest recorded increase was 0.15 ppm per year. We’ve long since passed the tipping point of melting Arctic summer sea ice; 300-350 ppm of CO2 was the threshold for many parts of the climate. These changes are irreversible on a timescale of human civilizations. Even if all human industrial activity magically ceased today, the footprint man has already left will be felt for eons.

In our warming world, the hydrologic cycle is changing and creating extreme weather; crop-destroying droughts and floods are becoming more frequent. The Jet Stream is transforming into something different, becoming wavier with higher ridges and troughs prone to stagnating in the same region. As global temperatures rise over time, hotter air will be trapped under these layers of high pressure from a mangled Jet Stream, cooking everything to death. Rising winter temperatures are beginning to destroy the “winter chill” needed for many fruit and nut trees to properly blossom and produce maximally. Climate change is also disrupting flower pollination and pushing fish toward the North/South poles, robbing poorer countries at the equator of crucial food resources. In a new study, marine scientists are surprised to find a disturbing trend in the increasing numbers of a specific type of phytoplankton, coccolithophores, which have been “typically more abundant during Earth’s warm interglacial and high CO2 periods.”

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Homo sapiens have only been on the planet for the equivalent of a few seconds in geologic time but have managed to overwhelm and foul up all of earth’s natural processes and interdependencies, leaving a distinct layer in the sedimentary record. There is nothing modern humans do that is truly sustainable. Here are a few glaring examples:

  • Techno-fixes are built into the IPCC’s projections for maintaining a habitable planet for humans.
  • Money megacities spend for adapting to climate change is linked more to protecting valuable capital than vulnerable people (Capitalism is doing an outstanding job of converting the planet into dead dollars.)
  • Nuclear Power: “Even if there were no issues like meltdown or waste proliferation, the cost and time for planning, permitting, and constructing nuclear plants is prohibitive. The Arctic ice will already be gone.
  • Japan prime minister: We came within a “paper-thin margin” of nuclear disaster and the evacuation of 50 million people in 2011
  • Germany’s carbon dioxide emissions increased by an estimated 10 million tonnes from 2014 to 2015, in a blow to the country’s claims to climate leadership.
  • New study published in the journal Environmental Pollution shows that urban soil can emit up to 72% as much CO2 as fossil fuels burned within a city and at a rate of up to twice that of rural soils.
  • 90% of Indigenous in Brazil’s Amazon Suffer Mercury Poisoning: A new study shows that water and food sources for 19 Indigenous communities have been massively affected by illegal mining.
  • Satellite images suggest tropical forests from the Amazon to the Philippines are disappearing at a far more rapid pace than previously thought, a University of Maryland team of forest researchers say.
  • African elephants ‘killed faster than they are being born’
  • Desertification in China is a major problem for Beijing, as the country’s deserts are growing, threatening environmental, economic, and political stability.
  • The environment is now being destroyed by corporations in the name of green growth. Sham greenwashing projects are created, funded, and enforced by the IMF and World Bank.
  • Unknown continental-scale process is dumping phosphorus into streams and lakes across the U.S.
  • According to a new study, efforts to curtail world temps will almost surely fail: “A person living today uses about four times as much energy as a person did in the early 1900s.”
  • Greenpeace says China increasing coal-fired capacity: “There is a very rapid and accelerating net increase in coal-fired generating capacity”
  • UN envoy warns of environmental activist murder ‘epidemic’
  • Remember this headline from 2013?: Arctic methane release could cost economy $60 trillion -study. Our response was to go on a fracking binge which increased our methane emissions by some 30%.
  • While the resource intensity of GDP may be falling (less resources needed to produce 1$ worth of goods/services), the absolute decoupling of resource use, emissions, pollution, etc from GDP growth is the only thing that matters and that is not happening. If the world’s population continues to grow as projected and current lifestyles do not change, global resource consumption will increase anywhere from 2 to 5 times by 2050. It defies logic that a continually growing economy would be able to reduce its resource intensity down to near-zero to achieve a sustainable ecological footprint.
  • According to recent research, even if we converted 100% of farmland to reforestation projects it would only lower temperatures 0.45C by the end of the century. Converting half of global farmland to reforestation would result in just a 0.25C drop. Other recent studies have come to the same conclusion:

No amount of reafforestation or growing of new trees will ultimately off-set continuing CO2 emissions due to environmental constraints on plant growth and the large amounts of remaining fossil fuel reserves,” Mackey says. “Unfortunately there is no option but to cut fossil fuel emissions deeply as about a third of the CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 2 to 20 millennia.

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Relying on machines for answers to the existential problems of a species run amok with planet-destroying tools and weaponry is rather ironic and tragic. We’re locked-up inside a complexity trap of our own making. The human propensity for tool-building coupled with our discovery of fossil fuels has created a set of living arrangements in which we are now enslaved to those machines and tools. The globalized capitalist economy externalizes its destruction and atrocities, keeping the masses in a state of ignorance and denial. Our corporate overlords are not conscientious citizens, but mindless organizations whose sole purpose is to grow profits no matter the external damage done to society and the environment. Between the economic oil hitmen who ensure that profits flow smoothly and GOP politicians who openly espouse their science illiteracy, a hospitable climate for future humans seems remote. Hopeful delusions have given way to the stark reality of our predicament as scholars like Noam Chomsky who originally started his career fighting for a modicum of social justice have now set the bar at just the chance of human survival. Despite the best efforts of scientists, environmentalists, and activists, the wealthy countries most able to do something won’t “get it” until famine, disease, and war come to their country. All is being left for the almighty ‘free market’ to sort out at the same time that climate change, a conflict multiplier, ramps up.

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The sixth mass extinction gathers steam and climate inertia works to catch up to the catastrophic ecological collapse already baked-in. All the while, modern man engages in the spectacle of tribal politics(building walls, exuding military strength, recapturing past glories of their nation) and presidential candidates discuss the size of their penis.

For those who come to understand modern man’s predicament, it can either be the ultimate mind fuck or an epiphany that helps a person appreciate the fragility of life, the urgency of living in the here and now, and the grand cosmic joke of a global, hi-tech civilization that arose from the burning of ancient fossil remains only to have those fumes become a deadly curse, extinguishing any trace of our lofty accomplishments…

The fossil record, Plotnick points out, is much more durable than any human record.

“As humanity has evolved, our methods of recording information have become ever more ephemeral,” he said. “Clay tablets last longer than books. And who today can read an 8-inch floppy?” he shrugged. “If we put everything on electronic media, will those records exist in a million years? The fossils will.”
– Link

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No One Gets Out Alive

02 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 52 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Alternative Energy, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, Authoritarianism, Big Oil Propaganda, Capitalism, Carbon Sequestration, Climate Chaos, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate Trade Agreements, Cryosphere, Ecocide, Ecological Collapse, Ecological Overshoot, Energy Bail-Outs, Eric Zencey, Exxon's Climate Cover-Up, Fascism, Financialization of the Economy, Geoengineering, Jeb Bush, Johan Rockstrom, Keeling Curve, Mass Die Off, Michael Mann, Oil Price Crash, Overly Conservative IPCC Estimates, Overpopulation, Peak Fish, Peak Oil, Philanthrocapitalism, Planetary Boundaries, Planetary Tipping Points, Plasticizing the Planet, Techno-Fix, Techno-Optimists, The Age of Oil, The Global Elite, Zika Virus

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As China’s appetite for resources wanes with the bursting of its real estate bubble and America’s shale oil boom fueled by easy credit comes to an end, floundering petrostates are beginning to queue up for bail-outs. Financialization appears to have exacerbated the collapse in oil prices. Of course none of this capitalist boom-bust cycle negates the fundamentals of peak oil; prices will swing upwards again in a few years as marginal producers get weeded out. After all, the world still consumes nearly three million gallons of oil per minute, and only a relatively thin margin separates surplus from a shortage. Most of our energy usage does not involve electricity which is what alternative energies like wind and solar produce. Electricity comprises just 18% of the total global energy consumption of which alternatives make up a tiny sliver. 250 new human beings are added to the planet every minute; each born into a world of depleting resources and mounting pollution; each scrambling to secure the necessities of life. The black stuff will remain the primary fuel supporting this growing population of a globalized technological civilization.

A recent study estimates that if we are serious about implementing alternative energies to satisfy the goals of the Paris climate accord, then upwards of 12 trillion dollars will have to be spent over the next 25 years. This price tag is an investment that is 75% more than current growth projections. At a time when governments have spent their last ammo pumping more electronic money into the economy to try to stimulate economic growth, the prospects of decarbonizing the entire global energy system appears daunting, especially considering the many shortcomings of alternative energies. Time constraints on a planet indifferent to our energy needs are also bearing down on us:

CO2 levels must now be kept below 405ppm(where we’ll be in under 3 years at current emission rate) to avoid 2C warming.

As the Keeling curve creeps irreversibly higher and the gap between rhetoric and reality widens, pipe dreams like geoengineering and carbon sequestration will become desperate Hail Marys for a species whose time is running out. The New York Times editorial by Piers Sellers, a NASA Earth Sciences director who has terminal cancer, perfectly sums up this techno-fix mindset: “…it will be up to the engineers and industrialists of the world to save us.” Keep calm, keep shopping, and await further instructions; the elites have it all under control. Jeb Bush’s recent comment that we should pin our hopes on “someone in a garage” fixing climate change illustrates the widespread delusion that technological innovation, good ol’ entrepreneurial spirit, and capitalist market-based solutions will be our saviours. Ironically, Jeb belongs to the political party hell-bent on defunding public education, a policy that would seem to make those plucky garage inventors even more implausible.

We cannot possibly rely on a system that profits from the very disaster it has helped to create, yet that is the dead-end feedback loop we are locked into. Mexico is a good example of how landscapes and communities are being carved up for alternative energy farms and carbon trading schemes that benefit only large corporations. Even philanthrocapitalism promotes the convenient myth that market forces and the whims of billionaires will solve systemic problems. The precautionary principle has been thrown out the window in the pursuit of short-term profits and power. We have only a vague inkling of nature’s rich complexity and interdependence. The scale of our ignorance is frightening considering our oversized impact.

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The truth of our predicament has been criminally concealed since the 1970s by the fossil fuel industry which all the while knew that an overheated Arctic would melt away, exposing fresh deposits of carbon for them to exploit. Unfortunately the bonanza they planned for has not materialized; melting permafrost wreaks havoc on infrastructure and exploration. The cryospheric regions of earth, key geographic features regulating the planet’s climate, were systematically dismantled within the geologic blink of an eye; such environmental changes are imperceptible to the real-time cognitive processing of humans, but in geological ‘deep time’ these events are cataclysmic and portend a dire future for humans. There are more signs that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is slowing down.

“We’re sitting on these planetary boundaries right now, argues Rockstrom, and if these systems flip from one stable state to another — if the Amazon tips into a savannah, if the Arctic loses its ice cover and instead of reflecting the sun’s rays starts absorbing them in water, if the glaciers all melt and cannot feed the rivers — nature will be fine, but we will not be.” ~ Johan Rockstrom, director of the Stockholm Resilience Center

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The time to avoid critical tipping points in those decades has passed. The projections from the IPCC were downplayed and underestimated in order to continue the destructive business-as-usual:

“…new scientific findings were more than twenty times as likely to support the ASC perspective [that disruption through AGW may be far worse than the IPCC has suggested] than the usual framing of the issue in the U.S. mass media. The findings indicate that…if reporters wish to discuss ‘‘both sides’’ of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate ‘‘other side’’ is that, if anything, global climate disruption may prove to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date”.

We’re in the early throes of economic and ecological system failure; headlines grow more alarming each year:

Plastic is projected to outweigh fish in the world’s oceans by 2050. This may happen much sooner since it was just discovered the number of fish remaining in the ocean has been grossly overestimated. We only recycle 5-10% of plastics today and many are not recyclable. It’s cheaper for industry not to recycle and the quality of plastic is degraded when it is recycled. No international body exists that can hope to regulate dumping in the oceans. International ships dump freely without consequence. Unenforceable legislation is heroically passed in bodies of government from time to time, but it remains ineffective. Waste is also shipped across borders to more “business friendly” countries where waste can be cost-effectively dumped.

The warming Indian Ocean is becoming an ecological desert. According to new research, rising water temperatures over the last half century appear to have reduced phytoplankton numbers, threatening to cascade through the food chain and crash the ecosystem. Climate change has been implicated in a rash of recent animal die-offs across the planet. The changes are too abrupt for animals to adapt. Today’s build-up of atmospheric CO2 and other heat-trapping gases is much, much faster than past hyperthermal events. In fact, scientists now fear climate change is happening faster than it has in all of Earth’s history.

Hot days are occurring 145 times more often over the last 10 years than just a few decades ago. Unique World Heritage Sites are being destroyed by climate change. The latest one, an ancient Gondwana ecosystem in Tazmania, burned down to the ground from fires sparked by dry lightning strikes, a direct result of climate change. A warming planet is also providing a growing range of favorable places for mosquitoes, the bane of mankind, to spread pestilence and disease. Our interconnected world can fast-track their dissemination with the help of a single intercontinental plane flight. At the moment, the Zika virus is grabbing headlines with its explosive expansion. Scientists are on the verge of confirming that it has jumped to the common mosquito and the WHO recently declared it an international health emergency. Microcephaly appears to be just the tip of the iceberg for the fallout of this virus. Normal-appearing newborns are suffering ill effects as well. It is believed that the Zika virus was introduced into Brazil during the World Soccer Cup in 2014 when an influx of tourists visited cities throughout Brazil. The 2016 Olympics in Rio will provide a perfect vehicle for the worldwide distribution of Zika.

The refugees fleeing from the war-torn Middle East are only a foreshadowing of the mass exodus to come from regions racked by climate chaos. With ethnic, religious, racial and ideological tensions simmering, we can already see the welcome mats being pulled up in host countries. Recent studies have shown a loss of freedoms for citizens and rise in authoritarian governments around the world over the last decade; this trend tracks with our net energy descent, deregulation, rollback of environmental protection, and pursuit of corporate trade agreements. It also follows historic patterns:

“…history tells us that civilizations experiencing dramatic declines in their net energy uptake usually develop authoritarian political systems in an effort to stave off collapse, but then crash and disappear anyway.” ~Eric Zencey

Historically speaking, the elite are last to feel the effects of their hubristic decision-making, insulated as they are in their positions of wealth and power. Modern ideals and virtues of human rights, social justice, and a strong American middle class have all been aberrations of a civilization built atop a surfeit of energy.

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The disparity between MSM news and real world problems like climate change, pollution, growing wealth inequality, the unraveling food chain, etc. are breathtaking. Wrecking the biosphere and bringing on a mass extinction leaves no one unscathed or in any position to survive long-term. Secret plans of survival by the “elite” are simply another myth. The wealthy may be buying up tracts of land in remote areas, but they are perhaps more delusional than anyone else because of how their wealth insulates them from hard realities. Without all those just-in-time supply chains operating seamlessly across a stable planet, no one gets out alive.

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Hollow Promises and Ugly Unspoken Realities

21 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Military Industrial Complex, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 82 Comments

Tags

"Make America Great Again", 6th Mass Extinction, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Capitalism, Celebrity Worship, Climate Refugees, Climate Sensitivity of Earth, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Comedian Tom Simmons, COP21, Corporate State, Deep State, Derrick Jensen, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Global Famine, Idolatry of Money, Interstellar Colonization, Mass Consumption, Mass Die Off, Mass Production, Mass shootings, meteorologist Eric Holthaus, Mike Lofgren, Military Industrial Complex, Neil Postman, Peak Oil, Plasticizing the Planet, Super El Niño, Techno-Fix, Technophelia, The Fossil Fuel Age, The Global Elite, War for Profit, War on Terror

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Another climate conference has once again come and gone, echoing hollow promises and ugly unspoken realities. I won’t waste anyone’s time analyzing the verbiage of this so-called agreement which failed to even mention the term fossil fuels, probably at the behest of those who financed the entire farce, i.e. the carbon-extraction companies. Suffice it to say that countries were approving fossil fuel exploration projects before the ink of the global climate agreement had fully dried. As long as corporations are able to push environmental and social costs off their balance sheets and onto the backs of the weak and defenseless, dirty coal will be burnt and the cheapest slave labor will be employed. Questioning root causes like our inherently unsustainable way of life is still very much taboo and will remain so even after our descendants are sifting through the wreckage. Sure, mainstream publications have expanded their coverage of man-made climate change and global warming, but these existential threats to life on Earth remain an enigma to the vast majority, a footnote in some obscure textbook.

Retailers on the East Coast talk about a crisis for winter clothing sales because the weather has been too unseasonably warm to attract buyers, but nary a mention of man’s role in influencing these abnormal events, such as a super El Niño amplified by global warming. As the developed world continues to roll the climate chaos dice, we now face a higher chance of turbo-charged El Niños every 4 to 12 years and all the destruction that they bring —mass coral bleaching events, die-offs of marine mammals, record flooding and drought, crop failure and famine, refugee crises, etc. This year’s El Niño is on track to becoming the strongest on record with meteorologist Eric Holthaus exclaiming, “Our planet’s climate has undergone a step-change this year.”:

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This climate “step-change” may also be indicative of a considerable underestimation of the Earth’s climate sensitivity. What should be painfully obvious by now is that the carbon footprint for everyone will have to decrease dramatically and quickly in order to slow emissions. In other words, the world’s richest will have to radically alter their lifestyles. That’s never going to happen in any variant of capitalism, a system so entrenched that it is inconceivable to imagine anything substantially different taking its place. Instead we get things like corporate greenwashing, carbon trading, decades of climate conferences, First World offshoring of manufacturing emissions into the Third World, and out-and-out fraud like the VW auto emissions scandal. The problem has been identified for nearly half a century, yet we continue to deceive ourselves with half-baked solutions and hypocritical indignation. The inertia of the system is simply too great and the dominant culture has a tendency to kill the messenger of bad news, so there is a strong incentive to sugarcoat things, but a deus ex machina is nowhere on the horizon. We’ll only change in response to the hard realities from an increasingly inhospitable planet. Sunken costs and material incentives built into our socio-economic system prevent radical change and fetishize the myth of the easy techno-fix, a yet-to-be-invented technology that will magically sustain modern civilization while at the same time keep the wolves of ecological collapse at bay. Even more delusional, a prominent tech magnate has urged humanity to pursue interstellar colonization before we render the Earth uninhabitable, but as an internet commenter quipped, “A post-nuclear war, global warming-baked and hyper polluted Earth will still be paradise compared to Mars.” Some technophiles admit the future actually looks rather grim:

…But the most worrisome threats are not merely anthropogenic, they’re technogenic. They arise from the fact that advanced technologies are (a) dual-use in nature, meaning that they can be employed for both benevolent and nefarious purposes; (b) becoming more powerful, thereby enabling humans to manipulate and rearrange the physical world in new ways; and (c) in some cases, becoming more accessible to small groups, including, at the limit, single individuals…

Just as technology is not neutral, so too is the economic system driving this technology. The institution of capitalism, which has been copied and exported all over the world since WW II, has established widespread acceptance for the condition of mass production, mass consumption, and waste at an ever accelerating rate, pushing the world deeper and deeper into ecological crisis. For example, the ubiquity of plastics now exhibits itself as microscopic pieces on every beach in the world and in our dinner with trillions more pieces in the oceans than previously thought. Scientists estimate that nearly all sea birds will be ingesting some sort of plastic by 2050. In spite of this growing evidence of a plasticised planet, the production of plastics has only increased while recycling remains an effort in futility:

For more than 50 years, global production of plastic has continued to rise. Some 299 million tons of plastics were produced in 2013, representing a 3.9 percent increase over 2012’s output. With a market driven by consumerism and convenience, along with the comparatively low price of plastic materials, demand for plastic is growing. Recovery and recycling, however, remain insufficient, and millions of tons of plastics end up in landfills and oceans each year – link

There’s no going back from this global complexity trap we’ve built around ourselves. All those bits of plastic will end up in the sedimentary layer of the Anthropocene along with elevated concentrations of CO2, radionuclides from nuclear fallout and waste, as well as novel metals and pollutants never before seen. Once underway, mass extinctions cannot be reversed, especially when driven by over seven billion pleasure-seeking, individualistic “consumers”. Materialism and greed, we are told, are natural human instincts, and they are all too eagerly rewarded by an economic system which reduces everything to a financial object and monetizes every aspect of the natural world. Today’s environmentalism is, as Derrick Jensen pointed out, similar to the palliative care given to prisoners in Nazi Germany death camps. The emaciated ecological ghosts of so many species are right before us, yet nearly everyone is blind to the unfolding catastrophe of the 6th mass extinction:

…we lose a huge chunk of the world’s diversity that will never come back. We lose the potential for communication with other lifeforms, with the only remaining ones eventually whittled down to domesticated animals or weed species that thrive in civilized man’s destructive footsteps. The conversation of life itself is turning into small talk, but the only recognition that seems to be made by this culture is how [biodiversity loss] “reduces carbon storage”. How trees and animals can provide “ecosystem services”, as if they existed for nothing more than to continue the existence of the mad king ape. – pathofraven

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Yes, we are pretty far gone when a four minute comedy routine makes more sense than anything broadcasted on the evening news. Corporate mass media-controlled public debates have degenerated into infomercial sound bites. In a society where success is measured by the key metrics of money and profit, it should be no surprise that a wealthy, xenophobic businessman is able to garner mass appeal by hogging publicity and playing on the fears and base desires of the populus. “Make America Great Again” is a catchy slogan for a society ignorant of the collapsing world around them and oblivious to the over-consumptive, profligate way of life that is proving to be their undoing. For a celebrity-obsessed culture whose world is falling apart, the next logical choice for its leader would seem to be a reality TV show star who says he can restore the illusion of the American dream and build a great wall to keep all the riff-raff out.

Snap 2015-12-21 at 12.43.45

A fascist right-wing administration might just provide that extra push that takes us all over the edge into collapse. With the Presidency largely serving as a figurehead position for the Deep State, I’m not convinced a different candidate would make a measurable difference in the grand scheme of things anyway. Our “democracy” is, after all, just one more illusion in a bread-and-circus election cycle:

“Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, as a metaphor of our national character and aspiration, its symbol a thirty-foot-high cardboard picture of a slot machine and a chorus girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment. Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.” – Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

image5

So while terrorism takes center stage in the overstretched Empire of Amnesia, remember this simple fact: 303 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks worldwide in the last decade while 320,523 Americans were killed because of gun violence in that same time period. Random mass shootings, capitalism’s “free market” genocides, the disruption of the Holocene’s stable climate regime by anthropogenic climate disruption, tipping points in the earth’s biosphere, terminal industrial disease, and many other things come to mind that pose a much bigger danger to the average American, but the War on Terror, conceived as open-ended, serves as a conveniently omnipresent boogieman for jerking the chain of the taxpayer and justifying the growth of an intrusive security state. What better way to control the masses as the wheels continue coming off the global economy and the biosphere becomes evermore threadbare. The rich will retreat into their luxury spider holes until the coast is clear.

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Who really pulls the strings?:

The megawealthy and Washington have become so symbiotic as to be a single entity. The bought-and-paid politicians sitting in Washington are simply the marionettes of the corporations and financial elite who are dictating public policy and regulations.

Preserving the Status Quo

There is no right wing or left wing, only the aristocracy and the serfs (a vertical paradigm). To know this is to be like a fish who has broken the surface of the water, realizing he was in water the whole time.

A Kabuki Play

"What we have, in what passes for US democracy in 2012, is a kabuki play that Cicero put to papyrus 1948 years earlier. All historical empires and war aggressors have used propaganda to claim their looting and police states were necessary and helpful to the 99%. Instead, a sorrowful history tells us they were almost always for the sole benefit of the 1%." - Albert Bates

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  • Modi’s model is at last revealed for what it is: violent Hindu nationalism underwritten by big business | Arundhati Roy
  • This is no ordinary spying. Our most intimate selves are now exposed | Arundhati Roy
  • ‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’: Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe – podcast
  • Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe: ‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’
  • Modi's brutal treatment of Kashmir exposes his tactics – and their flaws | Arundhati Roy
  • Arundhati Roy extract: 'The backlash came in police cases, court appearances and even jail'
  • Literature provides shelter. That's why we need it | Arundhati Roy
  • Amid arrests and killings, Bangladesh and India must fight censorship | Arundhati Roy
  • An exclusive extract from Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness
  • Edward Snowden meets Arundhati Roy and John Cusack: ‘He was small and lithe, like a house cat’

RSS Arundhati Roy Says

  • A perfect day for democracy
  • Arundhati Roy speaks about the issue of rape in India
  • We Call This Progress
  • ‘Those Who’ve Tried To Change The System Via Elections Have Ended Up Being Changed By It'
  • Roy Against the Machine
  • If we do not love people, what are we fighting for?
  • All roads lead to Sharjah book fair
  • ‘Fairy princess’ to ‘instinctive critic’
  • Arundhati Roy shuns 'activist' tag
  • State attacking tribals in name of Green Hunt: Roy

RSS ASPO – USA

  • On hiatus
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 23 October 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 17 October 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 10 October 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 3 October 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 26 September 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 19 September 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 12 September 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 5 September 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 29 August 2022

RSS Avedon’s Sideshow

  • You can't jump a jet plane like you can a freight train
  • Did you have to traumatize my kids?
  • And in your death's mask face there are no signs which can be seen
  • Don't let it slip away
  • And hope that my dreams will come true
  • You can not do that, it breaks all the rules
  • Twelfthnight
  • You just gotta call on me
  • There's too much confusion
  • But will it seem the same?

RSS Bad Astronomy

  • People Are Manipulating Their Family Photos in a Weird New Way. I Don’t Think They Should.
  • My Sister Is About to Get Hitched. Every New Detail About the Guy Is a Big Red Flag.
  • Help! My Wife and All of Her Friends Are Brilliant. I’m Just the Schlub.
  • In Defense of the Lawn
  • Who’s Having Sex on the Wienermobile?
  • The Way My Boyfriend Goes Down on Me Makes Me Die Inside
  • What Actually Makes Rock’s Most Perfectionist Band So Great
  • Your Boyfriend Didn’t Write You That Sweet Love Letter. These People Did.
  • Help! My Husband Wants a “Football Team” of Kids. Uh, That’s Going to Be a Big Problem.
  • I’ve Learned How My Niece Really Feels About Her Dad. Yikes.

RSS Barbara Ehrenreich

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RSS BBC: Science & Environment

  • Precious cheetah cubs die in India national park
  • Deep-sea mining hotspot teems with mystery animals
  • COP28: Government defends oil boss Jaber to head talks
  • Brain implants help paralysed man to walk again
  • See tiny newborn meerkats explore zoo enclosure
  • Fast-growing chickens: Judge dismisses 'Frankenchickens' farming welfare case
  • Virgin Orbit: Branson’s rocket dream ends after mission failure
  • Bird flu: Brazil declares animal health emergency after several cases found
  • Ivory ban to extend to hippos and killer whales
  • Why is extreme weather killing fewer people?

RSS Big Picture Agriculture

  • BIG PICTURE AGRICULTURE'S LATEST NEWS
  • How to Stay Informed About Agriculture, Food, and Farming Issues
  • Dr. Walter Falcon's 2019 Iowa Farm Report
  • Agriculture Reading Picks
  • The Merits of Amaranth
  • Global Food and Agriculture Photos October 28, 2018
  • Unloading Livestock in Ohio 1938
  • Agriculture Reading Picks
  • Managed Rotational Grazing with Profitable Dairy in Minnesota
  • Global Food and Agriculture Photos October 21, 2018

RSS Bill Moyers

  • PODCAST: Dr. Bandy Lee Saw It Coming – The Violence Foretold in Donald Trump’s Election
  • Trump-Russia-Ukraine Timeline
  • Insurrection Timeline
  • Juneteenth: America’s Other Independence Day
  • March 30, 2021
  • Letters From an American: Heather Cox Richardson
  • The Pandemic Timeline
  • Racism in America
  • Bill Moyers On Democracy Podcast
  • Stop Attacks on Asian-Americans NOW!

RSS Bit Tooth Energy

  • Waterjetting 37e - Using Cavitation to disintegrate rock
  • Waterjetting 37d - Underground Drilling with Waterjets
  • Waterjetting 37c - A Drilling Diversion
  • Waterjetting 37b - How safe is it?
  • Waterjetting 37a - Removing Explosives
  • Waterjetting 36d - Going through more complex walls.
  • Waterjetting 36c - Cutting walls
  • Waterjetting 36b - Katrina anniversary and the power of water
  • Waterjetting 36a - Jet stripping of tires
  • Waterjetting 35e - A low cost version of the soil sucker

RSS Bizarro Blog

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RSS Brane Space

  • Solutions To Simple Linear Algebra Problems (2)
  • Attack On Amanda Gorman's Book Was Covert (And Overt) Racism Pure And Simple
  • The Hard Truth: Without Math Even 'Basic Concepts' In "Popular" Physics Books Are Meaningless
  • Newsflash, Mainstream Media! GOP Debt Ceiling Extortion Isn't About Spending OR Deficits!
  • Solutions to Simple Linear Algebra Problems (1)
  • Solving Simple Problems In Linear Algebra (2)
  • Mass Global Migration Will Never Be Stopped By Laws - Because It's Fueled By Overpopulation
  • Solving Simple Problems In Linear Algebra (1)
  • How Inadequate American History Education Prefigures Political Ignorance & Horrific Choices
  • Solutions To (Relatively) Simpler Tensor Algebra Problems

RSS Brave New World

  • Islam: The Overlooked Aspect of Rumi’s Poetry
  • Remembering Nur ad-Din Zengi: The Light of Faith
  • Francophobia Among Muslims: Just Another Myth?
  • A Year in Kazakhstan: Some General Observations
  • ‘Dirilis Ertugrul’ — A History We’ve Forgotten?
  • Almaty, Kazakhstan: City of Tourists and Mountains
  • Nur-Sultan City (Astana): A Young and Futuristic City
  • Tashkent, Uzbekistan: The City with 2200+ Years of History
  • Remembering Berke Khan, 1209-66
  • Tbilisi, Georgia — The City Where (Almost) Everyone Owns a Hotel

RSS Breaking the Set

  • Abby Martin Breaks the Set One Last Time
  • Never Stop Breaking the Set!
  • Cuba Part III: The Evolution of Revolution
  • Cuba Part II: Ebola Solidarity & Castro’s Daughter on Gay Rights
  • Why Are Americans Getting Their Medical Degrees in Cuba?
  • Cuba Part I: Revolution, Sabotage & Un-Normal Relations
  • Why the CIA Won’t Give Up on Venezuela | Interview with Eva Golinger
  • [531] Bayer Infects Thousands with HIV, Clinton's Shocking Bedfellows & Netanyahu’s Cartoon Lies
  • CIA Torture Whistleblower John Kiriakou: Wake Up, You’re Next
  • Abby Responds to John McCain Promoting Breaking the Set

RSS Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

  • Juan Manuel Santos: ‘[W]e will one day see the hands of the Doomsday Clock move backward’
  • Big hairy armadillos and COVID: A warning from the animal kingdom about our pandemic future
  • Q&A: How DARPA hacked a science writer’s brain and turned her into a sharpshooter
  • Canadian reactors that “recycle” plutonium would create more problems than they solve
  • ‘Right of boom’: Meet the experts who respond to nuclear disaster
  • Long shot research won’t fix what ails US health care
  • In Hiroshima, the G7 economies leverage global security gains
  • The nuclear death toll is still contested as the G7 meets in Hiroshima
  • Why the United States should prioritize autonomous demining technology
  • French activists protest climate crisis with fire

RSS Business Insider

  • How to win a grand prize of $10,000 for hunting pythons in Florida
  • AI can make anyone a programmer and has 'closed the digital divide,' Nvidia CEO says
  • State Farm will no longer offer new home insurance policies in California over wildfire concerns
  • LIVE Memorial Day sales 2023: 100+ deals and store highlights
  • Nvidia is up 167% in 2023. Here's why it's the clear winner in the AI race so far.
  • China's first homegrown large passenger jet took its maiden flight after 16 years in the making — check it out
  • Western supplies of weapons to Ukraine could escalate the war to a 'new dimension', Russia's ambassador to the UK says
  • Elizabeth Holmes reports to prison in a day. It'll be a drastic change from her life of luxury as a onetime billionaire.
  • Sitcom heroes, sports analogies, and rap parodies: How sassy floor charts have spiced up Congress
  • What to do if you see an alligator and how to survive an attack, according to a wildlife expert who keeps pet gators

RSS C-Realm

  • Automation and SJWs: A Conversation with James Howard Kunstler
  • It's official. The Age of Limits gathering is on hiatus
  • Three Conferences in Three Weeks
  • Mantra and Collapse
  • Dirty Pool: A Response to Guy McPherson
  • Interview with Dmytri Kleiner, Venture Communist and Miscommunications Technologist
  • Epochs and Applecarts
  • The Smell of Betterness
  • Descent in Anarchy?
  • Has Charles Mann Turned to the Dark Side?

RSS Cagle: Premium Cartoon News

  • ERDOGAN – FIVE MORE YEARS.
  • ERDOGAN – FIVE MORE YEARS.
  • DOUBLE TARGET
  • ERDOGAN WINS ELECTION
  • DESANTIS HAPPENS
  • NARCISSISTIC LINK
  • DEBT CEILING CLIFF
  • ERDOğAN VICTORY IN TURKISH ELECTION
  • ERDOğAN VICTORY IN TURKISH ELECTION
  • EUROPEAN DEFENCE SPENDING

RSS Cassandra’s Legacy

  • Cassandra is Dead. Long Live Cassandra!
  • Ugo Bardi's Latest Post on "The Seneca Effect": The Collapse of Saudi Arabia's Water Supply
  • Ugo Bardi's Latest Post on "The Seneca Effect"
  • Ugo Bardi's Latest post on "The Seneca Effect"
  • Ugo Bardi's latest post on "The Seneca Effect"
  • Ugo Bardi's Latest Post on "The Seneca Effect". The Hydrogen Myth
  • Ugo Bardi's Latest Post on "The Seneca Effect." The Tunnel Vision Problem
  • Cassandra has Moved
  • Censorship: How the West is becoming more and more like the old Soviet Union
  • Donald Trump: The Sacrifice of the Sacred King

RSS Censored News

  • Drugs and Weapons: Newspaper Spin Hides the United States Crimes at the Border
  • Ajo and Tucson Protests -- Justice for Raymond Mattia Tohono O'odham Murdered by U.S. Border Patrol
  • Statement from Mattia Family: Excessive and Deadly Force by U.S. Border Patrol
  • Ox Sam Grandmother: Paiute Shoshone have right to hold ceremony at Pee'zuh
  • Paiute Massacre Site -- Urgent Need for Attorneys to Fight Restraining Orders
  • Salt River O'odham Protecting O'odham Burial Grounds at Oak Flat
  • Ajo Border Patrol agents leave migrants to die in desert -- Phoenix police leaked e-mails
  • Paiute Protector Served with Restraining Order Defending Massacre Site at Thacker Pass
  • Arizona -- Partnerships with Israeli Defense Contractors Killing Palestinians
  • Paiute Shoshone Protectors at Ox Sam Camp at Thacker Pass

RSS Center For Biological Diversity

  • Biden Sacrifices Climate, Working Families in Debt Ceiling Deal
  • Estados Unidos podrá imponer un embargo a México por violar un tratado de vida silvestre
  • U.S. Finds Mexico Is Undermining Wildlife Treaty, May Impose Embargo
  • Court Overturns Federal Authorization to Kill 72 Grizzlies Near Yellowstone
  • Judge Rules Arizona Lawsuit Challenging Interstate 11 Will Move Forward
  • Legal Victory Moves Oregon Coast Tiger Beetle One Step Closer to Protection
  • Two New Groups of Wolves Confirmed in Northern California
  • California Supreme Court to Hear Arguments Thursday Over Monterey Oil, Gas Drilling Restrictions
  • Minnesota Bans Commercial Trapping of Wild Turtles
  • Report: Proposed Interstate 11 Would Worsen Arizona’s Water Crisis

RSS Center for Investigative Journalism

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RSS Center for Economic & Policy Research

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RSS Charles Eisenstein’s Blog

  • Peace-building
  • FASCHISMUS UND DAS ANTIFESTIVAL
  • Das Fest ist tot, es lebe das Fest
  • Die Erde als Tempel
  • Time to Push
  • The Rehearsal is Over
  • Some Stuff I’m Reading
  • Beyond Industrial Medicine
  • A Temple of this Earth
  • The Sacrificial King

RSS Chomsky

  • The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in, and What's Wrong with Libertarians
  • Upcoming speaking event in Boston with Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, and Jeremy Scahill
  • Violence and Dignity: Reflections on the Middle East (2013 Edward Said Lecture)
  • How Noam Chomsky is discussed, by Glenn Greenwald
  • Profile of Noam Chomsky in the Financial Times
  • Brief profile of Noam Chomsky in The Guardian (UK), by journalist Charles Glass
  • Rare video of Noam Chomsky interviewed with Gore Vidal in 1991
  • Complete videorecording of 1971 debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault
  • Noam Chomsky profile in the Financial Times
  • Additional video excerpt of Noam Chomsky speech at East Stroudsburg University, Pennsylvania

RSS Chris Hedges

  • Livestream Event Transcript for “Downstream Radioactivity: What on Earth Is Coming Out of the Pipes?”
  • Cinema for the Devil: Kenneth Anger, 1927-2023
  • A Tennessee County Misuses Opioid Funds
  • Bernie Sanders: What Joe Biden Must Do to Prevent Economic Disaster
  • Robber Barron Elon Musk Fully Embraces Authoritarianism
  • Ron DeSantis’s Censors Go After Inspirational Poem About Unity
  • Oil Companies Face Racketeering Laws That Took Down Mobsters
  • Is Generative AI Bad for the Environment?
  • Democrats Pass Momentous Legislation in Minnesota
  • Mexico’s Runaway Train

RSS Class Warfare Blog

  • Christian Nationalists are Trying to Enslave Women!
  • Florida Has Not Yet Gone “All In”
  • It Will Cost Up to $21.5 Billion to Clean Up California’s Oil Sites, But the Industry Won’t Make Enough Money to Pay for It
  • Real and Imagined Fears of AI
  • Alternative Spirituality?
  • Milch Madness
  • The War on Tenure Wages On
  • Wait, Walgreens Guards Have Guns?
  • Attackers to the Right of Me, Attackers to the Left of Me (Science)
  • Just Making Shit Up

RSS Cliff Schecter

  • After Turkey election win, what problems does Erdogan face next?
  • Palestinian Authority officer killed by Israeli forces in Jenin
  • Five key takeaways from Turkey’s pivotal election
  • Troubled Chelsea hire Mauricio Pochettino on two-year deal
  • ‘Hope never dies’: Venezuelan migrants disappear in Colombia
  • Photos: Memories of Nakba inspire Palestinian artist’s work
  • ‘Squandered goodwill’: How Buhari failed Nigeria a second time
  • ICC leaders in Pakistan to secure cricket World Cup participation
  • ‘Ultimate influencer’ Ronaldo’s mixed season in Saudi Arabia
  • US Senator Lindsey Graham on Russia wanted list after war remarks

RSS Climate and Capitalism

  • The ‘net zero’ hoax: Chevron’s fraudulent climate plan exposed
  • Ecological ruin or ecological revolution?
  • Global heat will hit new records in next five years
  • Has the ocean heat bomb been ignited?
  • Capital’s long war to dispossess the poor
  • Indigenous fighters resist forest destruction in Peru
  • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, May 2023
  • Land, sea and air: Climate change driving planetary crises
  • Insect Apocalypse in the Anthropocene, Part 4
  • Environment, class, and the fate of civilizations

RSS Climate Central

  • The looming threat for Maine’s iconic potato industry
  • Ellis Island, lighthouses among historic NJ sites flooding as seas rise
  • Still rare in Iowa, electric car powers Des Moines family’s home during blackouts
  • Storied Maine ski resort bets future on reining in high costs of warmer winters
  • Hardly any past Winter Olympic host cities will have the snow to host in 60 years
  • Data may be Colorado’s best bet to mitigate increasing wildfire risk on the Front Range
  • How sea level rise is affecting your commute to and around Atlantic City
  • ‘A moral imperative’: Monastic sisters in rural Midwest make faith-based case for climate action
  • As flooding amplifies along the East Coast, Buddhist and Jewish faith leaders join the climate fight
  • ‘Preach now or mourn in the future’: How Key West faith leaders are confronting climate change

RSS Climate Change: The Next Generation

  • Historic Greenland ice sheet rainfall unraveled
  • Flip Flop: Why Variations in Earth's Magnetic Field Aren't Causing Today's Climate Change
  • Let's call climate change deniers what they really are: CLIMATE LIARS!
  • Amy Westerfelt: The Reason COVID-19 and Climate Seem So Similar: Disinformation
  • Bill McKibben's response to Michael Moore's Planet of the Humans
  • WaPo: The Congo rain forest is losing ability to absorb carbon dioxide. That’s bad for climate change
  • Mark Carney of the Bank of England unveils climate stress test
  • Tropical forests may be heating Earth by 2035
  • Roger Harrabin, BBC: Bank of England chief Mark Carney issues climate change warning
  • Evidence that an ice-free Arctic Ocean allowed ancient CO2 and methane emissions

RSS Climate Citizen

  • Logging Native Forests in Victoria to end by 1 January 2024, saving 14 million tonnes of carbon by 2030
  • Submission on Synthetic Turf to Moonee Valley Council for JH Allan Reserve
  • Guest Post: Despairing about climate change? These 4 charts on the unstoppable growth of solar may change your mind
  • Australia ramps up funding for energy efficiency in Budget 2023. Baba Brinkman: Insulate it
  • Melbourne Protest at Korean Government agencies funding the Santos' Barossa Gas project
  • Australia talking renewables at Petersberg Climate Dialogue 2023 while new gas projects launch
  • Email to the Treasurer for Budget 2023: stop subsidising fossil fuels
  • Guest Post: Labor’s scheme to cut industrial emissions is worryingly flexible
  • Ozone action on track, helping avoid 0.5C of global warming by 2100 says UNEP
  • Chubb Review into the integrity of Australian Carbon Offsets sends mixed messages

RSS Climate Code Red

  • Are climate–security risks too hot to handle for the Albanese government?
  • [Articulating &] Reclaiming the Climate Emergency
  • The case for climate cooling, and some eye-watering charts

RSS Climate Connections

  • Climate Connections Update
  • CIC’s environmental and social justice photography contest open for entries
  • FBI Harassing Activists in Pacific Northwest
  • Global Justice Ecology Project Executive Director Anne Peterman on the GE American Chestnut
  • Zapatistas Host Festival of Resistance and Rebellion
  • GMO Chestnuts Draw Scrutiny this Holiday
  • Photo Essay: The Pillaging of Paraguay
  • Greenpeace Chooses Marketing Over Ethics in Peru Action

RSS Climate Denial Crock of the Week

  • DeSantis Perfecting Politics for the Age of Extinction
  • New Battery Tech: High Performance, no Cobalt
  • In Europe: From Energy Deficit to Negative Pricing
  • As Offensive Looms, Ukraine Girds for Russian Action at Nuclear Plant
  • In Texas, the Energy Empire Strikes Back
  • We Are NOT About to Break 1.5°
  • State Farm: No New Home Policies Due to Climate Risks
  • Backgrounder : The Potential for Geological Hydrogen
  • Energy out of Thin Air – Not the Solution to Everything, But Pretty Interesting.
  • Does Climate Movement Need more Jokes?

RSS Climate Progress

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RSS Climate Snapshot

  • "Carbon tsunami" lead by Enbridge Northern Gateway takes aim at BC
  • BC's tar sands? Thirteen proposed LNG projects equivalent to 13 times current BC emissions
  • Car Carbon series: cool new animation, plus the jaw-dropping impact it left out
  • Climate change fuels both California's record drought and "polar vortex" storms
  • Obama's Keystone XL delay forces Harper into the "choose first" hot seat
  • Four charts reveal gigantic climate impact from proposed Kinder Morgan mega-pipeline
  • Climate fail. Surging fossil fuels are leaving renewable energy far, far behind.
  • Twenty one ways America would destroy a safe climate -- and one way they won't: US govt. report
  • Fracking in America kills off clean energy, leading to higher emissions: EIA report
  • BP calls for global carbon price to avoid the "worst impacts of climate change"

RSS ClimateSight

  • Let’s hear more from the women who leave academia (Part 2)
  • Let’s hear more from the women who leave academia.
  • Talking, typing, and the social model of disability
  • We need your help! Share your views on climate change with us.
  • Ice sheet melting: it’s not just about sea level rise
  • How I became a scientist
  • How does the Weddell Polynya affect Antarctic ice shelves?
  • Climate change and compassion fatigue
  • The silver lining of fake news
  • Future projections of Antarctic ice shelf melting

RSS Club Orlov

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RSS ClusterFuck Nation

  • Memorial Service
  • Trial By Ordeal
  • Fade to Black in Ukraine
  • Dum-Da-Dum-Dum…Dah
  • Dirty Secrets
  • KunstlerCast 377 — John Michael Greer on Magic and the Reenchantment of Daily Life
  • The Smell of Goose Cooking
  • The Next Big Thing
  • May 2023
  • Pretend to the End

RSS Cocktailhag – FDL

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RSS Colin Tudge

  • Let's not bet the farm | Colin Tudge
  • Why the world needs a renaissance of small farming | Colin Tudge
  • Are modern British children suffering from 'nature deficit disorder'? | Colin Tudge and Aleks Krotoski
  • Let the country, not the City, drive the UK economy | Colin Tudge
  • Farming needs Adam Smith's invisible hand, not finance capitalism | Colin Tudge
  • Survivors by Richard Fortey - review
  • Why woodlands are wonderful
  • Fossil Ida's great big family | Colin Tudge

RSS Common Dreams: News

  • Climate Groups Slam Debt Ceiling Deal for MVP Approval and Other 'Polluter Giveaways'
  • Jayapal Says White House Should 'Worry' About Progressive Caucus Support for Debt Ceiling Deal
  • Progressives Condemn Biden-GOP Debt Ceiling Deal as 'Cruel and Shortsighted'
  • White House Says GOP Is Trying to 'Take Food Out of the Mouths of Hungry Americans'
  • 'Enormous Policy Failure': States Throw Hundreds of Thousands—Including Many Children—Off Medicaid
  • Democratic Senators Rip Corporate Lobby for 'Cheerleading' GOP Default Threat and Tax Cuts
  • Yellen Says US Will Run Out of Money to Pay Bills on June 5 Absent Debt Limit Deal
  • Congressman Proposes Bill to Block GOP States' Property Ownership Bans
  • Washington's $849 Million Capital Gains Windfall Shows 'Taxing the Rich Is a Really Good Idea'
  • 'We Don't Have a Plan B': Top Treasury Official Says Biden Won't Invoke 14th Amendment

RSS Consortium News

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RSS Consumer Energy Report

  • Death of the Florescent Shop Light – Energy Efficiency
  • Methanol VS Ethanol – Technical Merits and Political Favoritism
  • Bill Nye the Science Guy – Social Primate and Nuclear Energy
  • World’s Smallest Gasoline Engine – Technology Breakthrough
  • How Much Oil Does the World Produce? – Production Facts and Figures
  • World Sets New Oil Production and Consumption Records
  • What Makes Up the Cost of a Gallon of Gasoline? – Gas Price
  • Road Trip – Thoughts on the Satsop Nuclear Power Station
  • What Happened at Choren? – History & Events
  • Gasoline Prices Doubled Under Obama: True or False?

RSS Corp Watch

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RSS CorrenteWire

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RSS CorrenteWire – Quick Hits

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RSS Counter Currents

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RSS CounterPunch

  • Less Freedom, More Money: Tony Blair’s Vaccine Passport
  • The U.S. Dares to Criticize Israel
  • Gaza – Betrayed In Thought and Deed
  • Boeing Workers Take a Stand & Take the Heat
  • Bank Corruption Down Under
  • Europe’s Deadly Transition From Social Democracy to Oligarchy
  • What We Can Not See
  • The Sham of Homeland Security
  • Beauty from the Heart of Texas
  • Encountering Benazir Bhutto

RSS Crooked Timber

  • Sunday photoblogging: Girona
  • Misogyny and Violence in Michigan Politics
  • Ban LLMs Using First-Person Pronouns
  • Sunday photoblogging: cloister
  • Utilitarianism comes to benefit-cost analysis
  • Huntington, the woke, and Radicalization
  • Reviving “Post-post-Fordism”
  • Sunday photoblogging: Vegetables in Bologna
  • When crypto meant cryptography
  • Sunday photoblogging: Siena, Duomo

RSS Crooks and Liars

  • Confused Fox News Host Thinks Schools Using Covid Funds For Saunas
  • Let's Compare: Trump Vs. Biden's Memorial Day Message
  • Mike’s Blog Round-Up
  • 'Star Fleet Commander' Kari Lake Still Thinks She's Governor
  • Open Thread: Restoring Faith In Humanity, One Person At A Time
  • Lindsey Graham: Russians Are Dying... It's The Best Money We Ever Spent
  • Uh Oh! State Farm To Stop Writing New CA Homeowner Policies
  • Patriot Front Member Facing 30 Years On Child Porn Charges
  • Indian Official Suspended After Draining Entire Reservoir To Retrieve Cellphone
  • Biden, McCarthy Reach Agreement 'In Principle'

RSS Cryptome

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RSS Culture Change

  • Low Cost Polluting: The Real American Dream?
  • We Did It: Sailing Cargo in the Aegean
  • Cure for Depending on 90K Oil Spewing Cargo Ships: Sail Power Makes Inroads, Now in Mediterranean
  • The Trump Presidency: Celebration of the Little Boy, and Mass Awakening
  • Stepping Back from Trump's Election: Critique of underlying US Culture in a List - 25 Limitations
  • Dirty Fossil Fuel ‘Business-As-Usual’ Tactics Spew Out of the IMO at COP22
  • The Unconnected and Unrewarded in the New Divisive Dichotomy: Being Either Online Or Not
  • The Ameliorators: a possible coalition of progressives on (e.g.) NAFTA
  • It's the 21st, and this is what a growing movement is doing
  • Pro-Climate Actions - a community flier and poster

RSS Dahr Jamail

  • For a Worse Tomorrow
  • Covid-19’s Not Through With Us Yet
  • Living in a World in Which Nature Has Already Lost
  • Life in the US Has the Hallmarks of a “Low-Grade War Zone”
  • Fracking Company Has Made It Rain Toxic Water Upon New Mexico Without Penalty
  • Interview: TODAY IS BETTER THAN TOMORROW: A TIME OF ENDINGS; SHADES OF DENIAL W/ DAHR JAMAIL
  • Grieving My Way Into Loving the Planet
  • New York Times reviews The End of Ice
  • A Future Filled With Pathogens
  • Tested

RSS Daily Kos Comics

  • The accounting crisis
  • Cartoon: Beware of the Speaker
  • Cartoon: Negotiating with the Reborglicans
  • Cartoon: Don't want nun
  • Cartoon: Central-Normalized News—two truths for the price of one
  • Cartoon: Overreaching
  • Cartoon: WGA Strike
  • Cartoon: Other GOP threats
  • Cartoon: Hello it's me
  • Cartoon: Box office bombs

RSS Damn the Matrix

  • ERoEI, it depends…
  • Insanity rules….
  • Nuclear Fantasies
  • More Metabolic Syndrome news…
  • Empty Planet
  • On NOT joining the dots…
  • The Hydrogen fallacy explained
  • Yours Truly on the local FM radio station
  • Limits everywhere
  • Limbic Capitalism

RSS Dan Hagen

  • A Wit Called Wanda
  • Ethics Begins in Empathy
  • The Devil is in the Dumbasses
  • 'Succession' Dramatizes a Death Knell
  • CNN Parades Primal Resentment
  • We Like What He Knew
  • CNN Bellyflops into a Moral Sewer
  • 'Guardians 3:' Ya Gotta Have Heart
  • Song of Spring
  • Just Before Dawn

RSS Dangerous Intersection

  • A Proposal to Omit Demographics from News Stories
  • The Paradox of Human Connection
  • Back in 2020 When “No One Was Safe”
  • About “Race”
  • New Suit Alleges U.S. Government Censorship of People Claiming Vaccine-Related Injuries

RSS Dark Ages America

  • Healing
  • Beating a Dead Horse Dept.
  • A Grotesque Bulvan. However...
  • The Sopranos, William Golding, and Contemporary America
  • 7 million and going strong
  • Karma City
  • Muddy Waters
  • The Midterms
  • Meatball
  • Permanent War for Permanent Peace

RSS David Bollier

  • The Revelations of 'Black Earth Wisdom'
  • Foster & Iaione Probe Commoning in the City
  • Expanding Regenerative Agriculture through Open Source Technologies
  • Binna Choi of the Casco Art Institute: Curating Art through Commoning
  • John Thackara on Designing for Life
  • Joe Brewer's Bold Quest to Help Restore a Bioregion
  • David Sloan Wilson on Evolutionary Science and Prosocial Behavior
  • Cecosesola of Venezuela Wins Right Livelihood Award!
  • Greg Watson's Bold Campaign for a World Grid
  • Pirate Care, a Syllabus

RSS David Cay Johnston (Link – National Memo)

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RSS David Cay Johnston (Link – Tax Analysts)

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RSS David Harvey

  • Video: David Harvey on capital, theory, and becoming a Marxist
  • Reading Marx’s Grundrisse | Session 12
  • Reading Marx’s Grundrisse | Session 11
  • Reading Marx’s Grundrisse | Session 10
  • Reading Marx’s Grundrisse | Session 9
  • Video: David Harvey in Dialogue with Jean-Luc Mélenchon
  • Video: The Geography of Capital
  • Reading Marx’s Grundrisse | Session 8
  • Book Talk: Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World
  • Reading Marx’s Grundrisse | Session 7

RSS David Hilfiker

  • Welcome
  • Announcement
  • Racism in Our Small Faith Community?
  • Spirituality of Weakness
  • My Alzheimer's Disease
  • A Theology Out of my Life with Alzheimer Disease
  • More Than Surviving the Crisis
  • Facing Our Mistakes
  • Hope in an Environmental Wasteland
  • Geoengineering ... because we must

RSS David McNally

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RSS David Roberts

  • Seattle’s unbelievable transportation megaproject fustercluck
  • Please support Grist
  • There’s an emerging right-wing divide on climate denial. Here’s what it means (and doesn’t)
  • Everybody needs a Climate Thing
  • Jonathan Franzen is confused about climate change, but then, lots of people are
  • Turns out the world’s first “clean coal” plant is a backdoor subsidy to oil producers
  • A way to get power to the world’s poor without making climate change worse
  • “Climate change” vs. “global warming”? It really doesn’t matter
  • How American journalists deal with climate deniers
  • Nothing is nonpartisan any more

RSS Death by Car: Capitalism’s Drive to Carmageddon

  • Leading the way in preventing traffic accidents
  • Truck safety rate system 3 years
  • Traffic accident in the school zone
  • cerebral hemorrhage in a traffic accident
  • Uiseong-gun receives donations from children’s safety umbrella to prevent traffic accidents
  • 100% fruit delivery driver
  • a traffic accident
  • Prevention of traffic accidents on school buses for children
  • More than 80% of truck traffic accidents are “car-to-car” accidents
  • “Infusion truck”. Anger explodes. If you forget, you’ll get attacked again

RSS Decline of the Empire

  • Defending Reality
  • Fascism And The Uniparty
  • Apocalypse Now and Apocalypse Not
  • Fascism Marches On — Episode 1
  • There Is No Middle
  • The Elites And The Sheeple
  • For Your Own Good
  • America Is Finished, There Is No Way Out
  • The Whole World Is Watching
  • Glenn Greenwald Censored At The Intercept, Resigns

RSS Deep Green Resistence News Service

  • For the Sake of Nature
  • Ecosabotage: A Heroic Action Against Ecocide
  • Indigenous Women’s Camp Set to Block Water Supply to Peehee Mu’huh [Thacker Pass]
  • Call for Comments on Women’s Sex-Based Rights in Sports [Press Release]
  • Despite Warnings, Norway Proposes Deep Sea Mining
  • Tomorrow Is Ours
  • American Greed: A Corrupt Corporation is Destroying This Native American Sacred Site
  • Development Threatens Gozo Landscape
  • Adélie Penguins [Fight for Who We Love]
  • What’s Wrong With the UN High Seas Treaty?

RSS Deepak Tripathi’s Diary

  • Afghanistan Awaits Uncertain Future After US Withdrawal
  • UK’s Brexit Maze
  • Book Review: Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy
  • Book Review: How Democracy Ends
  • A Bloody Hot Summer in Gaza: Parallels With Sharpeville, Soweto and Jallianwala Bagh

RSS Democratic Underground

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RSS Democratic Underground – Breaking News

  • China Might Have 65 Million COVID Cases a Week by June. How Worried Should the World Be?
  • China plans to land astronauts on moon before 2030, expand space station, bring on foreign partners
  • Fire chief in Iowa says one person rescued overnight from building collapse in Davenport
  • North Korea notifies neighboring Japan it plans to launch satellite in coming days
  • Texas Republicans pass voting bills targeting large Democratic county
  • Manchin Gets Mountain Valley Pipeline Deal Into Debt Bill
  • Arizona man arrested after random shooting spree leaves 4 dead, 1 injured
  • George Maharis, TV Heartthrob of 'Route 66,' Is Dead at 94
  • Turkey's Erdogan prevails in election test of his 20-year rule
  • Liz Cheney urges graduates not to compromise with the truth in commencement speech

RSS Democratic Underground – Good Reads

  • A Small Town's Tragedy, Distorted by Trump's Megaphone
  • Venetian Grand Canal turns green: Police are investigation who is responsible - Al Jazeera
  • Here's What Happens When Your Lawyer Uses ChatGPT A lawyer representing a man who sued an airline re
  • This Day in History -- May 28, 1830, Andrew Jackson Signs Indian Removal Act
  • How does "GOP propagandist-owned" Twitter make money: Breaking Down the business model
  • I expected too much and was disappointed
  • 'The intensity is increasing': Ukraine says first steps in counteroffensive have begun
  • Experts warn of increased risk of US terror attacks by rightwing 'lone wolf' actors
  • How a $3.3M settlement against Texas AG Ken Paxton put him on path to impeachment vote
  • Boebert lives in a glass house and shouldn't throw stones.

RSS Democracy Now

  • Free Julian Assange: Noam Chomsky, Dan Ellsberg & Jeremy Corbyn Lead Call at Belmarsh Tribunal
  • Memorial Day Massacre: Chicago Cops Killed 10 During 1937 Steel Strike, Then the Media Covered It Up
  • Spike Lee on "Malcolm X" & How Hollywood Almost Prevented Landmark Film from Being Made
  • "Education Leads to Liberation": Nikole Hannah-Jones on The 1619 Project & Teaching Black History
  • Seditious Conspiracy: Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes Gets 18 Years in Prison for Jan. 6
  • Headlines for May 26, 2023
  • Oxfam: G7 Countries Owe the Global South More Than $13 Trillion in Development & Climate Assistance
  • Ukraine's Left Fights for a Future Free from Domination by Russian Tanks & Western Banks
  • "Governing by Distraction": Florida Union Leader Says Ron DeSantis Is No Friend of Workers
  • Headlines for May 25, 2023

RSS Derrick Jensen

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RSS Desdemona Despair

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RSS Desertification

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  • Geo explainer: How are deserts formed?
  • Murcia’s farmers fear for the future as Spain cuts water supplies from River Tagus
  • Spain’s desertification is pitting regions against each other
  • Desertification Threatens Mediterranean Forests
  • Progressive climate change: desertification threatens Mediterranean forests
  • Estanterías y contenedores de jardinería
  • CÓMO HACER LA HUERTA VERTICAL DE BOTELLAS DE PLÁSTICO
  • A LIVE TEEPEE GREENHOUSE FOR THE DRYLANDS
  • Dédié à mes amis francophones :

RSS deSmog Blog

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RSS Digbys Blog

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  • They can save the world by @BloggersRUs
  • Just drifting: R.I.P. Buck Henry By Dennis Hartley
  • It looks like he wants to take Iraq's oil money
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  • Let's not forget who worked with Suleimani's IRGC
  • You can't win if you don't show up to play by @BloggersRUs
  • Friday Night Soother
  • I'm just going to leave this here.
  • Who wants to be the next Andy McCabe?

RSS Disinfo – Ecology

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RSS Dispatches from the Underclass

  • China’s Saudi-Iran Peace Deal Is a Major Setback for US Empire, w/ Prof. Mohammad Marandi
  • EXCLUSIVE | Interview with Mexico’s Leading Presidential Contender Claudia Sheinbaum
  • Bombshell w/ Seymour Hersh: US Blowing Up Nord Stream Was ‘Act of War’
  • Exclusive Interview w/ Hezbollah’s Second-In-Command Sheikh Naim Qassem
  • UN Official Calls for Lifting ‘Illegal’ Syria Sanctions After Seeing Devastation First-Hand
  • Europe Self-Destructing for U.S. Proxy War In Ukraine, w/ Prabhat Patnaik
  • US Brings World to Brink of Nuclear Armageddon As Europe Self Destructs, w/ Ali Abunimah
  • Reality vs Propaganda: Understanding Iran’s Protests, w/ Navid Zarrinnal
  • How the US Used Saudi Arabia to Fuel Fanaticism & Fight Progressive Movements, w/ As’ad Abukhalil
  • Round 2: Lula vs Bolsonaro, What’s At Stake In Brazil?

RSS Dissent Magazine

  • Barcelona’s Experiment in Radical Government
  • Ultra Violence
  • The Lithium Problem: An Interview with Thea Riofrancos
  • Belabored: Reviving the Strike in Britain, with Morag Livingstone and Joe Rollin
  • The IRA Is an Invitation to Organizers
  • The Fight Against Cop City
  • A Web of Hidden Wealth
  • Structure and Solidarity
  • Eqbal Ahmad’s Internationalist Vision
  • Child Care Is an Organizing Tool

RSS Dissident Voice

  • “Free Trade” as Revealed in the China-United States Paradigm
  • What a Giant Pile of Unsold Clothing in the Desert Can Teach Us about Real Resistance
  • A Question about Censorship
  • Supremes Declare War on Wetlands
  • Urgent: CGL Causes Heartbreaking Damage to Our Rivers
  • Peace Dollars: Putting Our Economic House In Order
  • War and Friendship in a Time of War
  • China Suspends Sales of U.S. Company Micron
  • The US and Never-ending War
  • Henry Kissinger Turns 100

RSS Do the Math

  • Keeping Up On Appearances
  • Holiday Haikus
  • The Simple Story of Civilization
  • Finite Feeding Frenzy
  • A Random Fix to Polarization
  • The Cult of Civilization
  • A Climate Love Story
  • Death by Hockey Sticks
  • Limits to Economic Growth
  • The Ride of Our Lives

RSS Dollars & Sense Blog

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RSS Doug Stanhope

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RSS Douglas Rushkoff

  • Wired: Doug Rushkoff is Ready to Renounce the Digital Revolution
  • Team Human ep. 236: Fenton Bailey
  • Escape plans of the rich and famous
  • Cyber: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
  • Survival of the Richest
  • Duncan Trussell Family Hour Ep. 522: Douglas Rushkoff
  • In ‘Survival of the Richest,’ author Douglas Rushkoff examines the escape plans of the tech elite
  • Team Human ep. 213: Philip Rosedale
  • Team Human ep. 212: Lisa Lovebucket
  • Don’t Abandon People in Red States

RSS Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

  • The Medical Journal The Lancet Retracted the Fake Study that Prevented Use of a Known Cure for Covid-19
  • Jane Fonda declares that putting white men in prison is the only way to save the planet
  • Turkey’s Electorate Rejects LGBT
  • Don’t Shop at Target
  • The Covid Pandemic Demonstrates the Intentional Use of Fear to Destroy Liberty
  • COVID-19 Vaccinated Pregnant Women Continue to Die Unexpectedly From Perinatal Complications. Stillbirths, Blood Clots, Bleeding, Infections and More
  • Excess Deaths Are Exploding, Experts Remain Stumped
  • Lew Rockwell tells us what the Covid Plot was all about
  • AI Chatbot Is a Holocaust Denier
  • An Interview with Satan on the Eve of His Retirement

RSS Dredd Blog

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RSS Ear to the Ground – Truth Dig

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RSS Early Warning

  • New York Not Close to Exiting Lockdown
  • Is New York Containing Covid?
  • New York vs Italy
  • NYC Update - 46.5% increase Sunday over Saturday.
  • We Are About to Lose New York City to Covid
  • Containing Covid-19 (Or Not)
  • Covid-19 update
  • Covid-19 Infection Rates
  • Global Carbon Sink Holding Up So Far
  • The Wake-Up Call from David Buckel

RSS Earth First

  • “UNC Dildo-Boy” accosts homophobic preacher, releases anti-technology declaration
  • Subpoena caps bad week for fossil fuel
  • Less Than 60 Hours Left to Support Indigenous Land Defenders!
  • Shh! That Zookeeper Is a Total *&^%#!
  • Marcellus Shale Earth First! Aerial Blockade Celebrates 2 Weeks
  • Sabotaging the Badger Cull
  • Occupied Abenaki Lands Desecrated by 9/11 Memorial Protesters Intervene to Address U.S. Imperialism & Genocide
  • The Earth First! Newswire Has Moved
  • Massive Mine Proposed at Oak Flat, Sacred Tribal Land
  • Wharton Coal Prep Plant Spill Turns Boone County, WV River White

RSS Earth Observatory: Image of the Day, Natural Hazards, and News

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RSS Earth Observatory: Image of the Day

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RSS Earth Observatory: Natural Hazards

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RSS Earth Policy Institute Blog

  • Data Highlight - Wind Power Beats Nuclear Again in China
  • Data Highlight - Plastic Bag Bans or Fees Cover 49 Million Americans
  • Plan B Update - Fossil Fuel Development in the Arctic is a Bad Investment
  • Data Highlight - Geothermal Power Approaches 12,000 Megawatts Worldwide
  • Data Highlight - China’s Solar Panel Production to Double by 2017
  • Plan B Update - The Swinging Pendulum of Population Policy in Iran
  • Eco Economy Indicator - China Leads World to Solar Power Record in 2013
  • Data Highlight - Denmark, Portugal, and Spain Leading the World in Wind Power
  • Plan B Update - The Downfall of the Plastic Bag: A Global Picture
  • Plan B Update - Plastic Bag Bans Spreading in the United States

RSS Ecocide Alert

  • What is a Slot?
  • How to Choose a Sportsbook
  • How Playing Poker Can Improve Your Cognitive Skills
  • What is a Lottery?
  • How the Odds of Winning a Slot Machine Are Determined
  • What to Look For in a Casino Online
  • How to Choose a Sportsbook
  • Learn the Basics of Poker
  • What is a Lottery?
  • What Is a Slot?

RSS Ecohuman World

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RSS Eco-Shock News

  • Radio Ecoshock: On Fire Again
  • Radio Ecoshock: Extreme Heat #2: How It Kills (replay)
  • Radio Ecoshock: Jean-Marc Jancovici: Whistling Past the Graveyard (replay)
  • Radio Ecoshock: Making $$ from Endless Record Heat
  • Radio Ecoshock: Nomad Century & Bad Banks
  • Radio Ecoshock: The Dirt Behind Betrayal
  • Radio Ecoshock: Climate: A Big Change Emerges Down Under
  • Radio Ecoshock: What I Really Think Will Happen Is Happening Already
  • Radio Ecoshock: Avoiding the Doom Loop in the Age of Crisis
  • Radio Ecoshock: Why Normal Is Never Coming Back

RSS Ecological Headstand

  • Dilke, Chapman, and Dahlberg Pop-ups
  • For the Abolition of the Wages System!
  • The Incredible Shrinking Blog
  • Keynes "hadn't got round to it"
  • Napoleon Solow and the Phantom Mechanism
  • Mathiness, Growth and Increasing Returns
  • Viral Gyro Spiral
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  • Never Mind the Bollocks. Here's the Gyro.

RSS Ecological Sociology

  • Commons Enabling Infrastucture
  • A Short History of Progress: Book Review
  • Foucault, Power, Truth and Ecology
  • Democratizing Capital at Scale: Cooperative Enterprise and Beyond
  • Stanford: Climate Change Ten Times Faster than Previous 65 Million Years
  • Beyond Market and State: The Renaissance of the Commons
  • What Then Must We Do? The Next American Revolution
  • John Thackery: Limits to Resilience
  • Timothy Mitchell: Carbon Democracy
  • The Informal Economy Blog

RSS Ecologise

  • Ignored health risks, bungled pilot projects, bonanza for Dutch firm: Modi Govt. forces fortified rice on poor
  • Protests against Ratnagiri Refinery: Skeletons in the Development Closet
  • What will be the history of India without the history of its plant life?
  • We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction
  • [WATCH] We are living in a deluded world: Interview with Iain McGilchrist
  • The Avocados of Wrath
  • How Mr Miyawaki Broke My Heart
  • On International Forests Day: Reality of Forests in India
  • P.V. Satheesh, the Original Millets Man of India
  • It did not stop the dam, but is it a failure?

RSS Economic Hardship Reporting Project

  • Ithaca Bets on Heat Pumps in Mobile Homes
  • Republican Debt Ceiling Proposals Could See Neediest Americans Lose Benefits
  • Wrecking Women’s Healthcare
  • What It’s Like to Have an Abortion Denied by Dobbs
  • Belabored: Reviving the Strike in Britain, with Morag Livingstone and Joe Rollin
  • School Support Staffers Stuck Earning Poverty Level Wages
  • EHRP-Grist comic on Kentucky disaster relief distributed as educational tool
  • LGBTQ Students Face Barriers to Getting Student Loans Without Parents’ Participation
  • Need Food Stamps in New York? Come Back in a Few Months.
  • The Puerto Ricans Illegally Occupying Land to Resist Displacement

RSS Economic Undertow

  • Z Marks the Spot
  • The Death of Economics
  • Cars and More Cars …
  • Repost From 2015: Pied Piper of Dumb Money
  • The Arc of the Moral Universe
  • Meet the New Year, Same as the Old Year
  • David Graeber Dead …
  • Frieden In Unserer Zeit, Peace In Our Time
  • Doing God’s Dirty Work
  • The Numbers Game

RSS EcoWorldView

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RSS Empire Burlesque

  • Generation of Vipers: The Original Sin and Continuous Crimes of America’s Involvement in Afghanistan
  • Reich and Reality: Culture Wars of the Conquerors
  • On the 18th Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq
  • On the Acquittal of the Murderous Thug Donald Trump
  • Impeachment Cave-in: Dems Plumb New Depths of Perfidy
  • In Memoriam Richard Kastelein (1967-2021)
  • The Surrenderists: Dem Leaders Stand Down; No Consequences for Coup
  • Unwrung Withers: No Downsides for Trumpists From Their Coup Push
  • House of Death: Trump’s Endgame Plan to Kill Democracy
  • Brief note on a bleary post-election morning

RSS Empirical Magazine

  • From the Empirical Archives: Genius or Folly?
  • From the Empirical Archives: Nights Such as These
  • From the Empirical Archives: Second Time Foster Child
  • From the Empirical Archives: A Moment with Mary Nash-Pyott
  • From the Empirical Archives: In the Shade of a Cave
  • From the Empirical Archives: In Search of a Good Teacher
  • From the Empirical Archives: The Circle and the Pyramid
  • From the Empirical Archives: Why Human Rights Matter
  • From the Empirical Archives: Arizona
  • From the Empirical Archives: The Offer by Jennifer Hanno

RSS EmptyWheel

  • All GOP Horserace Analysis Is Useless without Consideration of Possible Indictments
  • Three Things: Crustpunk Nazi Bar Update, $42K Extortion Edition
  • OATHS BROKEN, OATH KEEPERS BOWED: Sentences for 2 more in marquee Jan. 6 conspiracy case
  • ‘NOTHING HAS CHANGED, MR. RHODES, NOTHING HAS CHANGED’: Seditious Oath Keeper Elmer Rhodes sentenced to 18 years
  • Stewart Rhodes: Yale Law Grad, Seditionist, Terrorist, and Ongoing Threat to Democracy
  • How CNN Inculpated John Durham While Purportedly Exonerating Trump
  • Long Live The Queen
  • RIP Riverboat Queen
  • Between the Annual Release of FISA Statistics and the Release of the FISA 702 Opinion, FBI Rolled Up Turla
  • ABC Reports that Sources Familiar Say 2 + 2 = 5

RSS End of More

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RSS Energy Balance

  • "Living the Change," Film Screening + post-film Q&A. 6 pm, April 17th (2023), Reading Biscuit Factory (Reading, UK).
  • "Living the Change," Film Screening + post-film Q&A. 6 pm, April 17th (2023), Reading Biscuit Factory (Reading, UK).
  • “The Oil Machine” and the Changing Climate.
  • Architects of Our Future: Energy and the Changing Climate.
  • The Energy War, and Climate Breakdown.
  • “Reading Hydro” – Microhydropower on the River Thames at Caversham Weir (Reading, UK).
  • “Four Meals From Anarchy” – We Must Grow More Food Locally.
  • Russia-Ukraine War and the Changing Energy Landscape.
  • Confronting the Changing Climate: COP26 - Scientists’ Warnings into Action, from Local to Global.
  • The Energy Crisis and the Climate Crisis.

RSS Environment & Food Justice

  • National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Statement on the Climate Crisis
  • La Lucha por La Sierra | Scion of Texas Oil Barons Seeks to Overturn Historic Use Rights to the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant
  • Biopiracy in Mexico | Foundation stealing wild beehives in Yucatán
  • Deep Seeds at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues | April 2018
  • Exclusive Update - Monsanto in Mexico | Corporate impunity and the beekeeper struggle against transgenic soybeans
  • Student Blogs | Race, Gender, and Settler Colonial Violence
  • Notas de Campaña | Por una Tortilla 100 ciento Nixtamalizada
  • Campaign Notes | For 100 Percent Nixtamalized nonGMO Tortillas | Part One
  • Maize: Our Identity, Our Food | Photo Exhibit of Indigenous Corn Farmers Featured at UN Headquarters
  • Protecting the Sacred in Corn | Seed Sovereignty Documents | Berenice Sánchez Intervention on the Protection of Indigenous Agroecosystems presented to the UNPFII-2018 | 1 of 2

RSS Envisionation Blog

  • Dr Jennifer Francis – 2023’s symptoms of climate chaos, El Niño, Ocean Heatwaves, and Arctic Sea Ice lows
  • Dr Natalia Shakhova (& Igor Semiletov) Vienna Interview 2012 UNCUT 42mins
  • “Leave Africa Alone” – Solidarity With The Voices Of The Voiceless: Ina-Maria Shikongo
  • David Spratt: [Articulating &] Reclaiming the Climate Emergency
  • Professor James Hansen – EGU, Vienna, 2012 Unedited Interview
  • European Parliament Proposes Including “ECOCIDE” In EU Law
  • Capture6 CEO, Ethan Cohen-Cole, talks: SVB bank, climate tech & being bullish on gigaton’s of CO2 removal
  • Sources of Water In A Drier World | Aquaseek | Marco Simonetti
  • Italy’s Drought – A Creeping Disaster
  • Cambridge Climate Lecture Series 2023 – Lecture 1 with Prof. Kevin Anderson

RSS Extraenvironmentalist Blog and Podcasts

  • [ Episode #95 // Economy of Things ]
  • [ Episode #94 // Rocking the Google Bus ]
  • [ Episode #93 // Climate Agreements ]
  • [ Episode #92 // Decrypting Cryptocurrency ]
  • [ Episode #91 // Age of Stagnation? ]
  • [ Episode #90 // Missing Out ]
  • [ Autumn 2015 Interlude // Archaeoacoustics ]
  • The Energy Transition Show – [Episode #0] – subscribe @ energytransitionshow.com
  • [ Episode #89 // How on Earth ]
  • [ Episode #88 // Resilience Imperative ]

RSS ExtraEnvironmentalist’s Videos

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RSS ExtraGeographic

  • Teary in Decathlon
  • What happened to Let’s Wrestle?
  • An Unsuitable Job for a Woman film
  • Covid-19 antibody test photo
  • Smartphone cartoon
  • The Shard / London Bridge photo gallery
  • David Bowie
  • DayZ: 36 hours in a foreign, familiar land
  • Photos: First 3D Printing Show
  • One Day in the Life of Television: 25 years on

RSS Facts for Working People

  • Water is a Human Necessity. We Should Own it. But What sort of public ownership?
  • Yes It's True. I Wish Bernie Sanders Would Just Bugger Off.
  • THE FIRE ANTS OF GUANTÁNAMO BAY
  • Why US and Global Capitalism Wants Julian Assange Dead
  • Greece: another chapter
  • There Are Many Black African Queens in History: Here's Two.
  • Erdogan’s Turkey: end of an era?
  • Stephen Hawking's Final Theory and the Origins of Time and Life
  • Jordan Neely: A Killing on the F Train
  • Amazon Labor Union Leader Admitted to “Choking” Ex-Girlfriend

RSS Fair: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

  • Montana TikTok Ban a Sign of Intensified Cold War With China
  • WSJ Worries Debt Limit Fight Could Jeopardize Military Contractors’ Profits
  • Sorry, Sulzberger—NYT’s Anti-Trans ‘News’ Is Neither True Nor Important
  • NYT’s Anti-Trans Bias—by the Numbers - A FAIR study comparing front-page transgender coverage in the New York Times and Washington Post
  • Ukraine’s ‘Press Freedom’ Score Increases Despite Martial Law, Banned Media
  • Media Crime Hype Helps Roll Back Reforms
  • ACTION ALERT: False NYT Spy Claim on Iran Nukes Needs Correction