Stephan: Climate Change is upon us, whether the Republican Party believes in it or not. The clock is ticking, and Trump and the Republicans are responding to climate change the same way they did with Covid-19 -- utterly inadequately.
Channels of warm ocean water melting the ice from below threaten the stability of Thwaites glacier in western Antarctica. Credit: AFP/Getty
British scientists have mapped cavities half the size of the Grand Canyon that are allowing warm ocean water to erode the vast Thwaites glacier in the Antarctic, accelerating the rise of sea levels across the world.
Like decay in a tooth, the channels of warm water are melting the ice from below, threatening the stability of a glacier that is larger than Great Britain.
Using an aircraft, ship and robot submarine, the British Antarctic Survey and a US team traced the seabed terrain and the bottom of the ice shelf to measure the gaps that have opened between previously grounded sections of the glacier.
They measured two old cavities that were roughly six miles (10km) across and 800 metres deep, which allow warm water to seep under the ice. These have formed over at least 10,000 years. In addition, they mapped several new, thinner fissures that have branched off from these main trunks amid the warmer temperatures of the past 30 […]
Stephan: I have been writing about climate change migrations in the U.S. and internationally (see SR archive) for years. There should be an international effort to prepare for what is coming both internationally and internally in the U.S.. But it is not happening at anything close to the level that will be needed.
A woman walks past destroyed houses on May 13, 2019, on her way to an aid distribution center in the coastal village of Guludo on Ibo Island, in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, in the aftermath of a devastating cyclone. Credit: Zinyange Auntony/AFP/Getty
An analysis released Wednesday by an international think tank warns that as the world’s population continues to climb toward and possibly surpass 10 billion by 2050, ecological disasters and armed conflict could forcibly displace roughly 10% of humanity—or about 1.2 billion people.
“Ecological change is the next big global threat to our planet and people’s lives, and we must unlock the power of business and government action to build resilience for the places most at risk.” —Steve Killelea, IEP
The inaugural Ecological Threat Register (ETR) was published by the Sydney-based Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), known for producing the Global Peace Index and Global Terrorism Index. The new report (pdf) analyzes the risks of population growth, water stress, food insecurity, droughts, floods, cyclones, and rising temperature and sea levels as well as the degree to which countries and territories worldwide are prepared to handle extreme […]
Stephan: If you have watched the news today, you know that what was hidden has now become explicit, and it is clear that it is not that Trump didn't know about the reality of Covid-19, or was incompetent, instead he knew and chose to put himself first and the country second. It is on tape in his own words. As I watched and read the news today, what I kept thinking was can we actually get rid of this monster and his orcs in November? I'm not sure. I watched FOX the most watched network and I did not see a single honest story. Therefore, I know that millions of Americans see everything that is happening as the unfair persecution of Trump as depicted by FOX. I looked at fiveThirtyEight and it shows 42.8% of voters still support Trump and his administration, and I simply cannot imagine what this country would look like after four more years of Trump. My wife and I are not even sure we could live in such a country.
Watergate reporter Bob Woodward’s new book is coming out next week — and the leaked excerpts in it contain multiple damaging bombshells for President Donald Trump.
The new book, entitled “Rage,” contains multiple revelations on a wide variety of topics ranging from the president’s handling of the novel coronavirus to his relationship with the American military to his strange affection for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
1.) Trump said that he knew the novel coronavirus was five times more deadly than the seasonal flu — then admitted to playing it down in public.
Audio recordings show that Trump told Woodward in early February that COVID-19 spread through the air and was much more deadly than the flu. Despite this, he continued to downplay its significance in multiple public statements.
Just over a month after that, Trump admitted to Woodward that he deliberately downplayed the virus because he didn’t want to create a “panic.”
Shane Harris, Nick Miroff and Ellen Nakashima, - The Washington Post
Stephan: As you probably already know today has been one horror story of Trump criminal deceit after another. I am not going to do most of them because they are already so widely covered they don't need SR. But this one stood out for me because it so directly affects the security of the country, and so clearly illustrates that Trump is in some way compromised and under the control of Putin. History, I think, is going to reveal that Trump from the day he became a candidate has been a traitor.
Today I watched CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and FOX. It was fascinating. The first three networks told variations of the same stories. FOX reported another reality entirely. The only mention they made of the stories covered in the previous article was why didn't Bob Woodward publish this book earlier? It was all his fault. And they do this with a straight face, knowing perfectly well that they are lying and promoting disinformation.
President Trump, flanked by Attorney General William P. Barr and acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf, speaks in Kenosha, Wis., on Sept. 1. Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty
A senior Department of Homeland Security official alleges that he was told to stop providing intelligence reports on the threat of Russian interference in the 2020 election, in part because it “made the President look bad,” an instruction he believed would jeopardize national security.
The official, Brian Murphy, who until recently was in charge of intelligence and analysis at DHS, said in a whistleblower complaint that on two occasions he was told to stand down on reporting about the Russian threat and alleged that senior officials told him to modify other intelligence reports, including about white supremacists, to bring them in line with President Trump’s public comments, directions he said he refused.
On July 8, Murphy said in the complaint, acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf told him that an “intelligence notification” regarding Russian disinformation efforts should be “held” because it was unflattering to Trump, who has long derided the Kremlin’s interference as a […]
Stephan: What many people fail to realize is that there is a cost, a big cost, when gatherings of people do something stupid. like not practicing social distancing or wearing masks, and the Sturgis biker rally illustrates that point very clearly.
Note that the public cost, that is the cost you and I pay for public programs to remediate stupidity like the Sturgis rally, is in the billions.
Sturgis, south Dakota biker rally, a glaring example of mass stupidity
The inevitable fallout from last month’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, an annual event that packed nearly 500,000 people into a small town in South Dakota, is becoming clear, and the emerging picture is grim.
According to a new study, which tracked anonymized cellphone data from the rally, over 250,000 coronavirus cases have now been tied to the 10-day event, one of the largest to be held since the start of the pandemic. It drew motorcycle enthusiasts from around the country, many of whom were seen without face coverings inside crowded bars, restaurants, and other indoor establishments.
The explosion in cases, the study from the Germany-based IZA Institute of Labor Economics finds, is expected to reach $12 billion in public health costs.
“The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally represents a situation where many of the ‘worst-case scenarios’ for super-spreading occurred simultaneously,” the researchers wrote, “the event was prolonged, included individuals packed closely together, involved a large out-of-town population, and had low compliance with recommended infection countermeasures such as the use of masks.”
