Wednesday, February 5th, 2020
Julia Conley, Staff Writer - Common Dreams
Stephan: More bad news, and further assurance that climate change is going to wreak havoc on coastal cities. Current estimates are that 13 million people in the U.S. alone will become climate migrants over the next 30 years. The impact on the cities and towns they are leaving is only part of it. There is also the impact on the cities and towns to which those migrants go.
The melt rate of West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier is an important concern for climate scientists, because this glacier alone is currently responsible for about 1% of global sea level rise. Credit: Stuart Rankin/Flickr
A study by British and American scientists revealed that a massive sheet of ice known as the “doomsday glacier” is melting faster than experts previously believed—edging the world closer to a possible sea level rise of more than 10 feet.
Researchers at New York University and the British Antarctic Survey drilled through nearly 2,000 feet of ice in the Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica, to measure temperatures at the 75-mile wide ice sheet’s “grounding line,” where the ice meets the ocean.
The water just beneath the ice was found to be 32º Fahrenheit—more than 2º above freezing temperature in the Antarctic region.
The findings have “huge implications for global sea level rise,” NYU scientist David Holland said in a statement.
350.org co-founder and author Bill McKibben was among the climate action campaigners who expressed alarm over the new study.
“Oh, damn,” McKibben wrote on social media.
The […]
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Wednesday, February 5th, 2020
Oliver Milman, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: In the previous story you saw what the scientific community is saying about sea rise; in this piece you see what civil authorities in coastal cities are having to do to deal with what the scientists are predicting.
I think the truth is Miami is doomed, and will disappear under the sea.
About 61,000 tons of sand is being dumped on Miami Beach to counter rising sea levels as highest rate of rise was recorded along the Gulf of Mexico shoreline. Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty
The pace of sea level rise accelerated at nearly all measurement stations along the US coastline in 2019, with scientists warning some of the bleakest scenarios for inundation and flooding are steadily becoming more likely.
Of 32 tide-gauge stations in locations along the vast US coastline, 25 showed a clear acceleration in sea level rise last year, according to researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (Vims).
The selected measurements are from coastal locations spanning from Maine to Alaska. About 40% of the US population lives in or near coastal areas.
The gathering speed of sea level rise is evident even within the space of a year, with water levels at the 25 sites rising at a faster rate in 2019 than in 2018.
The highest rate of sea level rise was recorded along the Gulf of Mexico shoreline, with Grand Isle, […]
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Wednesday, February 5th, 2020
Andrea Germanos, Staff Writer - Raw Story
Stephan: Whenever there is a nuclear accident it ain't over... ever. Here is the latest on Fukushima, still in crisis eight years later.
Credit: Common Dreams
The Japanese government told embassy officials from nearly two dozen countries that releasing the water into the ocean was a “feasible” approach that could be done “with certainty.”
As cleanup of the 2011 Fukushima disaster continues, the Japanese government made its case to embassy officials from 23 countries Monday that dumping contaminated water from the nuclear power plant into the ocean is the best course of action.
According to Kyodo News, officials from the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry claimed releasing the water and evaporating it are both “feasible methods” but said the former could be done “with certainty” because radiation levels could be monitored.
There’s more than one million tons of contaminated water already stored at the plant, with 170 tons more added each day. Utility TEPCO says there will be no more capacity for tanks holding contaminated water by 2022.
As Agence France-Presse
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Wednesday, February 5th, 2020
Stephan: A first datapoint on the U.K.'s post-BREXIT trend has just been published. It is not good.
Credit: Bloomberg
The U.K.’s worst productivity slump in a quarter of a millennium may be caused by a “perfect storm” of three factors, according to a study to be published this week.
Productivity was almost 20% below its pre-2008 path in 2018 — the worst slowdown since 1760-1800, as the Industrial Revolution took hold. The present-day malaise may have been caused by the end of the information and communications technology boom, the financial crisis, and Brexit.
It’s a “shockingly bad” performance, said Nicholas Crafts, who co-authored the paper with Terence Mills, researchers at the University of Sussex and Loughborough University. The findings will published by the National Institute Economic Review on Feb. 6.
Though technology gave a substantial boost to productivity around the turn of the 21st century, it contributed less than a quarter of that in the decade since 2008.
A new revolution may be on the horizon with artificial intelligence but this has yet to have a significant impact, the economists said.
At the same time, Brexit has meant top managers have had to […]
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Tuesday, February 4th, 2020
Ben Jackson, Writer and Veteran - Boston Globe
Stephan: Criminal Trump has now made the United States of America a national war criminal. There is no vileness to which this man will not sink, and he taints all of us. I cannot believe this is what America has become.
Landmine victims Phan Van Ty, Truong Uu, and Hoang Thi Luu read books about farmers who became landmine victims in Vietnam.
Credit: Nhac Nguyen/AFP/Getty
Last week, in the middle of this dark night for America, the Trump administration pushed through a variety of dangerous and unpopular policies. President Trump rolled out funding changes that will make it harder for those in need to get Medicaid. He added more countries to his vile Muslim travel ban. But perhaps the most evil of these changes, the one with the deadliest consequences, was this: He rolled back Obama-era restrictions on the United States’ use of land mines.
I am a veteran. From 1993 to 1997 I served in the Seabees, a ground-combat-ready part of the Navy. While I was lucky enough to serve during a time of peace, I was ready to go to war on behalf of my […]
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