Stephan: As I said in my comment before the previous article sea level rise plus coastal subsidence, are happening all over the world, the America Carolinas, for instance. I could pull up a dozen of these stories. It is happening and it is not, in my opinion, being given enough attention.
Coastal North Carolina Credit:Dare County Government Channel
Sea level rise is a real threat to the Carolinas and the rest of the U.S. coast in coming decades. A recent report by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration said the U.S. coastline will rise as much by 2050 as it has in the previous century. That amounts to around a foot by mid-century.
In North Carolina, the matter is made worse by a low-lying coastal plain behind the Outer Banks. That means the flood damage could extend past coastal properties. Farms could be damaged and septic systems could fail. NOAA is recommending communities begin to prepare for this now or face dire consequences.
There are also economic concerns. Beyond tourism, the Carolina coastline includes port cities like Wilmington and Charleston, South Carolina.
Stephan: This story, I think, is important because it signals an emerging trend, young Americans leaving the evangelical christofascist movement, a bloc of voters critical to the Republican Party. Particularly in rural America, and the Red states, if young Christians desert the party it will be in real trouble. If this trend continues I see it as good news for the country, and for Christianity, which in this country has become a White supremacist christofascist cult talking Jesus, but acting Trump.
Jared Stacey at the University of Aberdeen, where he is a chaplain. Credit: Duncan McGlynn | NBC News
Disillusioned with his church and the increasingly conservative and nationalist nature of the broader evangelical Christian community to which he had dedicated his life, he was prepared to move with his wife and three children 3,500 miles away to the weather-beaten northeast of Scotland for a new start.
With their bags packed, Stacy watched the riot unfold, recognizing some of the Christian and evangelical language and imagery wielded by some protesters. He said he saw it as further proof that then-President Donald Trump had taken on a saintly status among some evangelicals.
“When your God loses, you have to find a way to get him back on top,” he said. “The whole idea was his man was supposed to be in the White House. What do you do when your God loses?”
Stacy, 31, is one of a small but growing number of younger evangelical Christians who have left what they see as a religious community led astray from its faith by a […]
Annie Gowen,, - Anchorage Daily News / The Washington Post
Stephan: This story, in my view, is reporting on a trend that is a very big deal. There is nothing original about it, it is straight out of the standard authoritarian christofascst playbook. The American Republican Party is following in the steps of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin and, now Putin. These people, this party, does not want people to be educated, they do not want them to be able to access facts, they fear, and despise thinking. Why? Because facts and learning how to think reveal the universal inferiority of what the Republicans are advocating. The evidence is clear and unimpeachable, Red state governance is always inferior as proven by objectively verifiable social outcome data, and the same is true at the federal level.
In order for Republicans to get into office, they play on fear, fear of people with low IQs, poorly educated Whites that fear they are being replaced. Notice it is always left ill-defined. They play on the fear that the government is not to be trusted. They play on fear that manhood itself is threatened by uppity women who don't know their place. And to about 30 or 40 percent of Whites that fear and their ignorance is enough to get them to vote Republican.
This attack on libraries is something you can work against. Libraries are handled locally, and if you go to library board meetings and speak up against censuring books, you can make a difference. It is up to you.
The Llano library system in Texas has been going through internal changes after a group of citizens protested some of the books being carried. Credit: Sergio Flores / The Washington Post
LLANO, TEXAS – In early November, an email from a citizen dropped into the inbox of Judge Ron Cunningham, the silver-haired head chair of the governing body of Llano County in Texas’s picturesque Hill Country. The subject line read “Pornographic Filth at the Llano Public Libraries.”
“It came to my attention a few weeks ago that pornographic filth has been discovered at the Llano library,” wrote Bonnie Wallace, a 54-year-old local church volunteer. “I’m not advocating for any book to be censored but to be RELOCATED to the ADULT section. … It is the only way I can think of to prohibit censorship of books I do agree with, mainly the Bible, if more radicals come to town and want to use the fact that we censored these books against us.”
Wallace had attached an Excel spreadsheet of about 60 books she found objectionable, including […]
Stephan: Here is an aspect of climate change, that candidly I had never thought about. Warming changes nature's soundscape. I suspect there are going to be other previously unrecognized or considered climate change effects that are going to sabotage the wellbeing of earth and the beings living on it in ways no one predicted for foresaw.
Credit: Anadolu Agency/Contributor/Getty
Wander into nature and give a good shout, and only nearby birds, frogs, and squirrels will hear you. Although sensing noise is a critical survival strategy for land animals, it’s a somewhat limited warning system, as sounds—save for something like a massivevolcanic explosion—don’t travel far in the air. They propagate much better through water, with undersea noises traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles, depending on the conditions.
Those conditions are rapidly transforming as the oceans warm. Changes in salinity, temperature, and pressure change how the sea sounds, with unknown impacts on the life forms that depend on that noise to survive. Whales talk amongst themselves and navigate with Earth’s tones by listening to waves breaking on shorelines. Dolphins echolocate their prey with blasts of sound. Coral-dwelling fishes are born in the open ocean, but then use the noises of the bustling reef to find home. And joining the sounds of life are the sounds of Earth systems: Winds scour the surface of the sea, which takes an extra pounding during storms. Earthquakes […]
Stephan: Rupert Murdoch's Fox by careful design is a White supremacist obsessive male dominance disinformation propaganda operation. It is also the most watched news channel in the United States, which tells you something very important and very sad about Americans. I personally think it is long past time to make a legal difference between propaganda operations and news organizations.
November's election is going to give Democrats greater majorities in both houses so that they can set into law policies that will foster greater wellbeing in this country, or it will give control of Congress to the Republicans whose policies of fascism and fear will change America fundamentally. It is up to those of us who favor wellbeing to see that we vote and get all our family and friends to vote Democratic.
As Western leaders introduced sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, said seizing personal property from Russian oligarchs went too far.
“No American government had ever done anything like that before,” he said.
While the segment was aimed at Fox News’s conservative audience, it found another audience in Russia. The argument was parroted beat by beat by RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency, which wrote that “the average U.S. citizen is simply horrified by what is happening.”
The narratives advanced by the Kremlin and by parts of conservative American media have converged in recent months, reinforcing and feeding each other. Along the way, Russian media has increasingly seized on Fox News’s prime-time segments, its opinion pieces and even the network’s active online comments section — all of which often find fault with the Biden administration — to paint a critical portrait of the United States and depict America’s foreign policy as a threat to Russia’s interests. Mr. Carlson was a frequent reference for Russian media, but other Fox News personalities […]
