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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
From my own extensive research, and from my 2060 remote viewing project, I have been warning my readers for almost 10 years that this was coming. We are going to have more pandemics that are going to change the earth’s matrix of life. Viruses and bacteria are going to mutate as the climate changes and the ecosystems change to accommodate those changes. And as a result millions of people are going to die until the earth’s matrix of life stabilizes. This isn’t even discussed by Republican politicians, although Independents like Bernie Sanders and Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren see it coming and are trying to get other politicians to pay attention.
Climate change can result in the spread of infectious diseases such as anthrax Credit: Getty
As temperatures shift, animals move to different regions and pathogens have more opportunities to jump between hosts. Could the next pandemic be fuelled by an unstable climate?
When temperatures rise, everything changes and disease arrives. As the thick ice melts and the seas and the air warm, so new life arrives in Arctic waters. Minke, bottlenose, fin and sperm whales are heading north, even as grizzly bears, white-tailed deer, coyotes and other animals and birds expand their range into boreal forests to the south.
But the geography of disease is also changing as novel pathogens affecting plants, animals and humans increase their range. New beetles are heading north and devastating Siberian forests, Alaskan mammals are struggling as new ticks arrive and human habitations in northern Norway are infested by new insects.
This article is an extract from Fevered Planet: How Diseases Emerge When We Harm Nature, by the late John Vidal, who was former environment editor for The Guardian newspaper. […]
Damian Carrington and Ben Stockton, Reporters - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
Yesterday I presented a story about how John Kerry was working with some seeming success at COP28 with the man selected as president of the conference, who is also chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company Adnoc, Sultan Al Jaber, seeking to find a way to exit the carbon era. Tragically, John Kerry seems to have miscalculated, and Al Jaber has revealed who he really is, and how he thinks. Once again greed trumps all other considerations, and humanity is going to pay a horrible price so these Muslim kingdoms that offer nothing else but oil to the rest of the world can stay ultra rich. May the future bankrupt them all.
Sultan Al Jaber: ‘There is no science out there that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C.’ Credit: Anadolu / Getty
The president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.
Al Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”.
The comments were “incredibly concerning” and “verging on climate denial”, scientists said, and they were at odds with the position of the UN secretary general, António Guterres.
Al Jaber made the comments in ill-tempered responses to questions from Mary Robinson, the chair of the Elders group and a former UN special envoy for climate change, during a live online event on 21 November. As well as running Cop28 in Dubai, Al Jaber is also the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil […]
I have warned you several times not to fall for the Medicare Advantage schemes that have and will plague every advertising break on any television channel until the 7th December. Don’t fall for these offers. Here’s why.
Medicare was founded in 1965 to end the crisis of medical care being denied to senior citizens in America, but private insurers have been able to progressively expand their presence in Medicare.Credit: Lev Radin / SIPA USA / AP
One of the biggest selling points of Obamacare was that it would finally end discrimination against patients on the basis of pre-existing conditions. But for one vulnerable sector of the population, that discrimination never ended. Insurers are still able to deny coverage to some Americans with pre-existing conditions. And it’s all perfectly legal.
Sixty-five million seniors are in Medicare open enrollment from October 15 until December 7. Nearly 32 million of those patients are enrolled in Medicare Advantage, a set of privately run plans that have come under fire for denying treatment and overbilling the government. Medicare Advantage patients theoretically have the option to return to traditional Medicare. But in 46 states, it is nearly impossible for those people to do so without exposing themselves to great financial risk.
It is happening all over the world. This is the story of the loss of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, but similar stories are happening in the U.S.. Consider The vanishing Great Salt Lake, or Lake Mead. Water is destiny, and humans just can’t seem to understand that. The result is going to be great misery.
Boats that once plied the Aral Sea are now stranded more than 75 miles from water. Credit: Sergey Ponomarev / The New York Times
Walking toward the shrinking remnants of what used to be the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan was like entering hell.
All around was a desert devoid of life, aside from scrubby saxaul trees. Dust swirled in 110-degree Fahrenheit heat under a throbbing red sun. I reached the edge of one of the scattered lakes that are all that remain of this once-great body of water. I took off my shoes and waded in. The water was so full of salt that it felt viscous, not quite liquid.
In the nearby town of Muynak, black-and-white newsreels in the local museum and pictures in the family photo albums of residents tell of better times. During the Soviet era, fishing communities like Muynak ringed the sea, thriving off its bounty: sturgeon, flounder, caviar and other staples of Soviet dinner tables. In the town I met Oktyabr Dospanov, an archaeologist who grew up along the Aral’s […]
I think Stan Cox makes a very important point in linking fascism with the denial to make the necessary changes to deal with climate change. We are producing the most oil in our history, and the corporations whose profits are tied to carbon energy are spending millions bribing politicians and buying misinformation ads on corporate media. And, if that were not bad enough, about 30 per cent of Americans support continuing carbon energy, and a similar percentage welcome fascism, because they think they will get some advantage.
I’ve been arguing now for a year and a half that the enactment of bold new climate policies—bold enough to quickly drive US greenhouse-gas emissions down to zero—can succeed only if we defeat the looming threat of far-right authoritarianism. And today, the nation’s anti-democracy, fossil-fuel-loving political minority appears more determined than ever to gain enough power to turn us into a sweltering autocracy. We have just 11 months left to stop them.
But now, suppose for a moment that do succeed and thwart MAGA extremists’ attempt to gain power over the federal government’s three branches. The road from there to bold climate policies, and many other urgently needed measures, will remain as rough and twisty as ever. Groundswells of public pressure will still be required to convince the timid souls on Capitol Hill to defy corporate resistance and enact strong, effective policies. And even then, it will be a long, hard struggle.
And it won’t be a one-and-done victory. Especially with a goal like eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions, laws will have to be protected from repeal for decades, and policies pursued with little or no interruption. That will require defeating anti-climate, anti-democracy forces in the Electoral College every […]
ZACK COLMAN, KARL MATHIESEN and CORBIN HIAR, Staff Writers - Politico
Stephan:
I chose this article because it shows the complexity and difficult relationships that impact any attempt to exit the carbon energy era. John Kerry, I think, has been doing about as good a job as any American official could. It isn’t perfect, or even sometimes good, but he is at least leaning in the right direction. Given the wealth involved this is going to be a very painful and fraught transition. It would help a great deal if we have a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, and a Democratic president, since the Republicans are completely in bed with corporations in the carbon energy industries.
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry (left), and United Arab Emirates oil chief Sultan al-Jaber (second from left), attend the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 14. Credit: Karim Sahib / AFP / Getty
The Biden administration’s public embrace of the United Arab Emirates oil chief running the global climate talks brings political risks. Can it yield a deal to slash fossil fuel pollution?
Climate activists and progressive lawmakers unleashed their scorn when the CEO of one of the world’s most powerful oil companies got the job of helming this year’s global climate summit.
“Do you take us for fools?” former U.S. Vice President Al Gore asked. “Completely ridiculous,” Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said. Hundreds of green groups and 130 lawmakers in the EU and U.S. joined in.
But United Arab Emirates oil chief Sultan al-Jaber has a defender in his corner at the summit known as COP28, which debuts Thursday in Dubai: John Kerry, whose two and a half years as President Joe […]
MICHAEL LIPKA and ELISA SHEARER, Research staff - Pew Research Center
Stephan:
As I have reported Americans, particularly young Americans pay little or no attention to local newspapers and television. They get all their information from social media much of it politicized misinformation. This year researchers surveying this little discussed issue found that since 2005, the U.S. has lost nearly 2,900 newspapers and 43,000 journalists. Here is the data.
A declining share of U.S. adults are following the news closely, according to recent Pew Research Center surveys. And audiences are shrinking for several older types of news media – such as local TV stations, most newspapers and public radio – even as they grow for newer platforms like podcasts, as well as for a few specific media brands.
Pew Research Center has long tracked trends in the news industry. In addition to asking survey questions about Americans’ news consumption habits, our State of the News Media project uses several other data sources to look at various aspects of the industry, including audience size, revenue and other metrics.
For the most part, daily newspaper circulation nationwide – counting digital subscriptions and print circulation – continues to decline, falling to just under 21 million in 2022, according to projections using data from the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM). Weekday circulation is down 8% from the previous year and 32% from five years prior, when it was over 30 million. Out of 136 papers included in this analysis, 120 experienced declines in weekday circulation in 2022.
Boy, do I agree with Dominic Erdozain. The people of the United States are suffering from a national form of mental illness. We have a gun psychosis, and we are willing to see tens of thousands of us die from gunfire every year. What country other than the U.S. would tolerate that the largest cause of childhood death was a bullet in a child’s body? The American culture is sick in many ways and none of it is going to change until we individually change. Please go to my podcast, How To Be An Agent of Change With The Power to Create Individual, Social, and Planetary Wellbeing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsoXpkJzoE4 and it will teach you how to do this. If you don’t, your life and the lives of your family and friends are at risk.
Credit: Brennan Linsley / Colorado Public Radio
When does a crisis become a catastrophe? Last month, after a mass shooting in Maine left 18 dead, author Stephen King penned an essay as notable for its brevity as the bleakness of the message. “There is no solution to the gun problem and little more to write,” he began, “because Americans are addicted to firearms.” Americans love their guns, he said, and no suffering, no slaughter can loosen their grip.
Soon afterwards, we learned that Lane Murdock, the student who led the national school walkout after the Parkland mass shooting of 2018, has left the country. Burned out and disillusioned, Murdock now lives in Scotland, where freedom is a reality and nobody lives in fear of guns.
I appreciate the sentiment. But the picture looks different when you discover that almost everything we now live with, from assault rifles to stand-your-ground laws,is new. This crushing pattern of domestic armament is not the American heritage or the will of the people. […]
