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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.
Stephan: Could the criminality of Trump be any clearer?
Donald Trump; William Barr; Robert Mueller Credit: AP/Getty/Salon
Donald Trump has inflicted mass death on the American people through his malevolent, indifferent and willfully cruel response to the coronavirus pandemic. In the United States more than 5 million people have been diagnosed and 166,000 people have now died — and the true numbers are likely much higher. Public health experts predict that the final death toll may be as high as 250,000 to 300,000.
Trump’s pandemic response is not the same as Nazi Germany. It is not Rwanda. But Trump’s response is something that is well beyond a policy mistake. One hundred thousand people are dead. There are likely to be 150,000 or perhaps even 200,000 dead from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. The estimates are that two-thirds or more of the deaths could have been prevented. …
Moreover, it was premeditated. There were people in the White House and elsewhere warning Donald Trump, “People are going to die. We need to do something […]
Stephan: How deeply embedded is White racism in the American psyche? This story tells you the truth. We should be ashamed. This must change.
In the United States, racial disparities in human health can impact even the first hours of a person’s life, according to new research.
Black newborn babies in the United States are more likely to survive childbirth if they are cared for by Black doctors, but three times more likely to die when looked after by White doctors, a study has found.The mortality rate of Black newborns shrunk by between 39% and 58% when Black physicians took charge of the birth, according to the research, which laid bare how shocking racial disparities in human health can affect even the first hours of a person’s life.By contrast, the mortality rate for White babies was largely unaffected by the doctor’s race.The findings support previous research, which has shown that, while infant mortality rates have fallen in recent decades, Black children remain significantly more likely to die early than their White counterparts.
Stephan: There is an ignorant gun-obsessed minority in this country, racist, sexually disturbed, resentful, and prone to violence. Trump fosters their outrage and hate exactly as Hitler provoked an angry, resentful, anti-semitic minority in Germany.
Phil Robinson, a co-founder of the Michigan Liberty Militia, came to several anti-lockdown protests, in black cargo pants, a flak jacket, and tactical gloves, with a sidearm and a long gun. He sees himself as an impartial guardian of the Bill of Rights. Credit: Mark Peterson / Redux/The New Yorker
Early in the morning on May 11th, the neon “Open” sign in the front window of Karl Manke’s barbershop was dark. A crowd loitered in the parking lot. Spring had not yet arrived in Owosso, Michigan, a small town an hour and a half northwest of Detroit; people had on heavy coats and snow gloves, or sat in their trucks with the heater running. Michelle Gregoire, a twenty-nine-year-old school-bus driver and mother of three, looked unbothered by the cold. Wearing a light fleece jacket emblazoned with Donald Trump’s name, she smiled and waved a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag at the passing traffic. She said of Manke, “He’s a national hero.”
Seven weeks earlier, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, had added “personal-care services” to […]
Stephan: Our media is consumed with the insanity and incompetence of Trump, the racism and hatred he has fostered; his rejection of climate change. The ignorance and racist hatred and resentment of his followers. But as big as that story is it is being overwhelmed by a story that is getting almost no attention: The Great Melting. So today's edition of SR is devoted to that.
Stephan: My regular readers will find this a familiar trend. I have been talking about the collapse of the Himalayan hydrology for a decade because this trend is going to impact 1.4 billion people directly and primarily and every other human on earth secondarily. Yet it is happening in front of us with almost no attention directed to it.
Glaciers in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan, in the High Mountain Asia region. Credit: Université Grenoble Alpes/IRD/Patrick Wagnon.
The ice in one of the world’s highest concentrations of non-polar glaciers could see significant melting before the end of the century, potentially affecting sea levels around the globe, according to a new computer model from the NASA Sea Level Science Team.
The region, known as High Mountain Asia, could see ice loss run from 29 to 67 percent, depending on the level of greenhouse gas emissions over the period modeled.
According to the study, water flow in monsoon-fed river basins, driven largely by melting glaciers, could hit its peak by 2050 – potentially reducing runoff beyond that time and forcing changes in how water is consumed, or forcing communities to find other water sources. Understanding the coming changes in such flows is critical to proper planning for hydropower, irrigation, and water supplies.
A Leap Forward in Glacier Modeling
The new “Python Glacier Evolution Model,” or PyGEM, uses extensive data sets, instead of less detailed estimates from isolated, […]
Stephan: It is not just the Himalaya glaciers that are melting. This is melting is going on all over the world. It's not in the news, more people are interested in Meghan and Harry's new house in Montecito, California, but this trend is changing your world very quickly.
Citation: “Ice thickness and volume changes across the Southern Alps, New Zealand, from the little ice age to present” by Jonathan L. Carrivick, William H. M. James, Michael Grimes, Jenna L. Sutherland and Andrew M. Lorrey, 7 August 2020, Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-70276-8
Comparison of Lyell Glacier in 1866 (A) and in 2018 (B). Image A: View from Meins Knob by Julius Haast. 1867. Full citation: (published 1867, painted in 1866): ‘Report on the headwaters of the River Rakaia, with twenty illustrations, a map, and three appendixes. Christchurch, 1867 Haast, Johann Franz Julius von, 1822-1887. View from Meins Knob looking West, the Southern Alps with the Lyell Glacier. Haast family: Collection. Ref: A-149-003. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23228534 Image B: Upper Rakaia catchment looking west toward Lyell Glacier while flying over Meins Knob during the Southern Alps end of summer snowline survey in 2018: Credit: A. Lorrey – NIWA. Credit: Julius Haast and A. Lorrey – NIWA
Glaciers in the Southern Alps of New Zealand have lost more ice mass since pre-industrial times than remains today, according to a new study.
Research led by the University of Leeds, in collaboration with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in New Zealand, mapped Southern Alps ice loss from the end of the Little Ice Age — roughly 400 years ago — […]
Stephan: All over the earth the temperature is rising, and this melting is going on. You don't hear about it, or read about it, unless you are actively trying to find out about it, but whether humanity acknowledges it or not the earth is changing in the most fundamental ways. In a few decades, nothing will be the same. Nothing you knew in your youth will be as it is becoming. Can you imagine when you lived without a computer, a smartphone, or the internet? Now multiply that a thousandfold; that's how big the change is going to be.
Greenland’s ice sheet may have shrunk past the point of return, with the ice likely to melt away no matter how quickly the world reduces climate-warming emissions, new research suggests.
Scientists studied data on 234 glaciers across the Arctic territory spanning 34 years through 2018 and found that annual snowfall was no longer enough to replenish glaciers of the snow and ice being lost to summertime melting.
That melting is already causing global seas to rise about a millimeter on average per year. If all of Greenland’s ice goes, the water released would push sea levels up by an average of 6 meters — enough to swamp many coastal cities around the world. This process, however, would take decades.Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.
“Greenland is going to be the canary in the coal mine, and the canary is already pretty much dead at this point,” said glaciologist Ian Howat at Ohio State University. He and his colleagues published the study Thursday in the
Stephan: And the melting ice means rising sea levels, which doesn't just affect the ocean coastlines, the rivers will also be severely altered. While we are dealing with a psychotic incompetent the world is changing faster than anyone imagined possible.
Citation: The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
River avulsions, which occur when a river jumps its course and forms a new channel, will become much more frequent as a result of sea-level rise. Researchers at Caltech found that the intensity of these hazards will depend on the rate of sea-level rise and the sediment load carried by the river.
Even though avulsions are a natural phenomenon, they can turn into catastrophic and deadly flooding disasters. For example, river avulsions caused the 1887 Yellow River floods and the 1931 China floods which collectively killed about six million of people.
“A river avulsion is a catastrophic flood that is also crucial for sustaining coastal land,” said study lead author Austin Chadwick. “But the question is: how will sea-level rise affect these catastrophic floods?”
A 2014 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected that the global average sea level could rise by as much as three feet by the end of this century. Scientists have been investigating how this would affect avulsions on deltas where a river meets an ocean or lake.
“Avulsions are the earthquakes of rivers,” said study co-author […]
