Damian Carrington, Environment Editor - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: This story describes a really huge deal. The Gulf Stream is a critical part of the earth's climate system and essential to making the British Isles livable. I have said over and over again, that there are two constants to climate: The timeline keeps collapsing, and the outcomes keep getting worse. And this is a really bad one.
Human civilization is under threat and instead of preparing for and discussing the people of America have elected a mobster for president, and we spend our time talking about his renting the same room in Moscow as the Obamas, and bringing in prostitutes to piss on the bed; did he have an illegitimate child; and, how many adulterous relationships has Trump had, and how many people were paid off to keep them from talking about them. America has become the National Enquirer, and I find it disgusting. But more than that I find it ever more alarming that climate change is rapidly progressing and Trump's administration denies its existence.
Scene from The Day After Tomorrow showing the Statue of Liberty covered in ice. In the film a rapid shutdown of the Amoc current causes the temperatures to plummet overnight. In reality the change will be much slower, but still dramatic. Credit: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
The warm Atlantic current linked to severe and abrupt changes in the climate in the past is now at its weakest in at least 1,600 years, new research shows. The findings, based on multiple lines of scientific evidence, throw into question previous predictions that a catastrophic collapse of the Gulf Stream would take centuries to occur.
Such a collapse would see western Europe suffer far more extreme winters, sea levels rise fast on the eastern seaboard of the US and would disrupt vital tropical rains. The new research shows the current is now 15% weaker than around 400AD, an exceptionally large deviation, and that human-caused global warming is responsible for at least a significant part of the weakening.
The current, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), carries warm water northwards […]
Stephan: I am seeing more and more historians and political scientists vouchsafing these sentiments. It confirms what I have been saying, and convinces me that the November elections are going to determine the future of the American Republic. It is all going to come down to voting.
Why do I keep emphasizing this? Because currently Fivethrityeight reports Trump has a 40 per cent approval rating. If you watch Fox News even for half an hour you will see that in that world Trump is an honorable man being picked on by a secret cabal who want to bring him down, and give the country over to pedophiles, homosexuals, and pushy women who don't know their place.
The Republican leadership
A sociologist who predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11 attacks warns that American global power will collapse under Donald Trump.
Johan Galtung, a Norwegian professor at the University of Hawaii and Transcend Peace University, first predicted in 2000 that the “U.S. empire” would wither away within 25 years, but he moved up that forecast by five years with the election of President George W. Bush, reported Motherboard.
Now, nearly 17 years later, Galtung predicts that decline could come even quicker under a Trump administration.
“He blunts contradictions with Russia, possibly with China, and seems to do also with North Korea,” Galtung said. “But he sharpens contradictions inside the USA.”
Galtung’s biographer credits the sociologist and mathematician with correctly predicting the 1978 Iranian revolution; China’s Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989; the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989; the economic crises of 1987, 2008 and 2011; and the 9/11 attacks.
His predictions are based on a model comparing the rise and fall of 10 historical empires, […]
Stephan: I spent a good part of the day while I was working listening to the news on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox. The first two more or less deal with a fact based world. Fox is just basically a propaganda operation. More than anything it reminds me of the Soviet Union -- only worse.
But what is really concerning is the geopolitical impact of the sewage that is the Trump administration. Here are some facts.
Ratings of U.S. leadership fell in nearly every part of the world in the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, dragging median approval to a record-low 30%. Curious about the true depth of a “Trump effect” on U.S. leadership ratings, we created a model to estimate the change in the probability that a similar respondent who approved of U.S. leadership in Barack Obama’s last year also approved in Trump’s first year. The model revealed evidence of a Trump effect in all major demographics, but the effect was more acute among some groups than others.
Shifts in U.S. Approval Largest Among Educated, Higher-Income, Urban Dwellers
Approval of U.S. leadership dropped across all demographic groups during Trump’s first year, but groups that typically give U.S. leadership higher approval ratings — those with more education, those earning higher incomes and those who live in urban areas — registered the largest declines.
Holding other demographic variables at mean values, the probability that a respondent with a tertiary education (12 years or more of formal education) approved of U.S. leadership fell from 60.7% in 2016 to 40.8% in 2017, an absolute decline of 19.9 percentage points. Similarly, urban dwellers’ approval decreased 19.4 […]
Stephan: This is christofascism in the White House. Please note that Betsy DeVos can join the group but not teach... because she is a woman.
For the first time in at least 100 years, the US Cabinet has a bible study group. What do they learn? What does Donald Trump make of it? And why aren’t women allowed to teach?
Every Wednesday, some of the world’s most powerful people meet in a conference room in Washington DC to learn about God.
The location can’t be revealed – the Secret Service won’t allow it – but the members can.
Vice-President Mike Pence. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The list goes on.
In total, 10 cabinet members are “sponsors” of the group. Not everyone attends every meeting – they are busy people – but they go if they can.
Meetings last between 60 and 90 minutes, and members are free to contact the teacher after-hours. So who is the man leading the United States’ most-influential bible study?
Step forward Ralph Drollinger, a seven-foot tall basketball pro turned pastor. Or, as the 63-year-old describes himself: “Just a jock with some bad knees.”
Stephan: Here's the latest from the Republican Supreme Court on the rise of the American police state. Not good news, particularly if you are a person whose skin color is not White.
Credit: istock
In a decision handed down Monday, the Supreme Court made it even more difficult for victims of police violence to bring action against police officers who use excessive force. (emphasis added)
As the Los Angeles Times reports, the high court ruled in favor of an Arizona police officer who shot a woman outside her home because she was carrying a knife. In doing so, the Times notes, the court “effectively advises courts to rely more heavily on the officer’s view of such incidents, rather than the victims.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were the lone dissenters in the ruling, with Sotomayor delivering an impassioned opinion. Wrote Sotomayor about the court’s decision:
Its decision is not just wrong on the law; it also sends an alarming signal to law enforcement officers and the public. It tells officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct […]
