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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: The Magas of South Carolina will probably vote true to form in November, which is to say they will vote entirely on their emotions and prejudices with no reference to any actual facts, and will thus elect morons like Lindsey Graham. Earth doesn't care, and has its own agenda. Because of the stupidity and greed of humans like Graham and the damage they have done to the Earth's meta-systems, South Carolina is rapidly going to become a very different state. Boohoo Magas.
Aerial view of the Sampit River in South Carolina. As saltwater encroaches due to rising sea levels and climate change, the vast cypress forests have been ravaged by high salinity, leaving only skeletons of a once thriving freshwater system. Credit: Mac Stone/ProvidedMac Stone
The oldest living tree in the eastern continent has stood for more than 2,000 years in a cypress swamp just over the North Carolina border.
Seventy miles to the south, young cypress trees are dying from salt intrusion on the Sampit River in Georgetown.
The contrast is just that stark between how the vibrant South Carolina coast looks today and how it could largely look not so far into the future — skeletal patches of drowning seascape and dying wetlands.
The outer barrier islands in the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge already are getting overrun by tides. The sand needed to create new islands and beaches has been blocked by lake dams, coastal groins and jetties.
The 400,000 or so acres of marsh in the South Carolina estuaries — the miles of sweeping grasses that are a vital water […]
Stephan: Here we see yet another Maga state that is going to be pulled out of its Trumpian racist fantasies. I expect Louisiana will vote for Trump and his climate change denial in November, even as the Earth changes the ground beneath their feet. We will see how these Maga states deal with that. This article may be considered the Best Case Scenario, and I do not think it is accurate. Schwartz' Law says when it comes to accounts of climate change the reality will come quicker and be much worse than predicted.
So what will Louisiana do over the next couple of decades? My prediction is Louisiana will become even more than it currently is less a state and more a third world country, and they will look to the federal government, which will use the largesse of the Blue states to bail them out. All these Red states already get more back than they put into the federal treasury.
As a nation just as with the pandemic we are idling away the time with our leader playing golf instead of planning. It is all in the prep, and we are unprepared.
Aerial view of Louisiana wetlands Credit: Times-Picayune
Because of increasing rates of sea level rise fueled by global warming, the remaining 5,800 square miles of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands in the Mississippi River delta will disappear. The only question is how quickly it will happen, says a new peer-reviewed study published Friday in Science Advances.
“This is a major threat not only to one of the ecologically richest environments of the United States but also for the 1.2 million inhabitants and associated economic assets that are surrounded by Mississippi Delta marshland,” the report concludes.
The new study reviewed the rates of sea-level rise that caused wetlands to disappear along Louisiana’s coast during the 8,500-year history of the current Mississippi River delta. It found that at rates of relative sea level rise — the combination of rising water and ground subsidence — of between 6 and 9 millimeters a year , ancient coastal marshes would turn into open water within 50 years. At rates of 3 millimeters a year, it would take a few centuries.
The globally averaged rate of sea-level rise between 2006 […]
Stephan: The thing about climate change is these forces care not a whit about national borders. Indeed the conceits of national borders work against humanity's ability to remediate what we have done to produce climate change. Will humanity be intelligent enough to recognize that the only way to deal with climate change is to cooperate and deal with it on a planetary level? With enflamed nationalism a growing trend probably not.
Siberian temperature map
Siberia is experiencing record high temperatures that are nearly 40 degrees Fahrenheit above average. To put things in perspective, The Washington Post writes that some areas are hotter than Washington right now. Snow cover is disappearing, sea ice is melting, and in 2020 fashion, we now have “zombie blazes” — really intense fires that are raging.
Just to show you how hot it’s been in some areas of Siberia, several stations in North Central Siberia recorded temperatures that climbed well into the 80s! That is south Louisiana temperatures. Khantanga, a town that is located north of the Arctic Circle, recorded 78 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday. The normal temperature is 32 degrees.
Image courtesy Berkeley Earth
Regarding those zombie fires, Russian officials are expecting that the summer will be the hottest the region has ever seen. They think there will be an unusually destructive fire season — last year, the fires burned 7 million acres of Siberian forests. So far this year, 1.5 million acres have burned.
Regarding the sea ice melting in the Kara Sea, Labe noted that it recently reached […]
HAL BRANDS and JAKE SULLIVAN, Henry A. Kissinger distinguished professor of global affairs at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies / Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. - Foreign Policy
Stephan: Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo are so outclassed by the Chinese leadership, I am not sure they even understand what is happening geopolitically. I have been following this for years and have been amazed at how amateurish the Trump administration's choices have been. People who do understand what is going on see a major power realignment occurring amongst the world's nations, with the United States being greatly diminished. Here is a good assessment of the situation, one in which we are all, one way or another, going to be affected.
Be clear, this is not going to be like the Cold War with the Soviets. Russia had no trade power -- did you ever know anyone who bought a Russian laundry machine -- and, even today, the Russian economy is little more than oil-based, and that is a declining economic sector. China, in contrast, comes into its power struggle with the U.S. as a major trade partner with all the nations of the world. And then there is the trillion-dollar debt the U.S. owes China.
Xi Jinping’s China is displaying a superpower’s ambition. Only a few years ago, many American observers still hoped that China would reconcile itself to a supporting role in the liberal international order or would pose—at most—a challenge to U.S. influence in the Western Pacific. The conventional wisdom was that China would seek an expanded regional role—and a reduced U.S. role—but would defer to the distant future any global ambitions. Now, however, the signs that China is gearing up to contest America’s global leadership are unmistakable, and they are ubiquitous.
There is the naval shipbuilding program, which put more vessels to sea between 2014 and 2018 than the total number of ships in the German, Indian, Spanish, and British navies combined. There is Beijing’s bid to dominate high-tech industries that will determine the future distribution of economic and military power. There is the campaign to control the crucial waterways off China’s coast, as well as reported plans to create a chain of bases and logistical facilities farther afield. There are the systematic efforts to refine methods of […]
Stephan: The American neoliberal vampire economic system was already coming unglued before the Covid-19 pandemic broke no matter what the stock market had to say. But the grotesque mismanagement of this crisis has brought that failure to create equitable economics into its own crisis. Consider unemployment; this report lays it out.
What should have happened, of course, is what happened during the Great Depression under Roosevelt: the creation of the Works Project Administration (WPA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and a host of other programs. Trump and those around him couldn't see this because they don't see the importance of social wellbeing. And so we have a depression level unemployment level with none of the Rooseveltian creativity and guidance. As a result, the virus crisis, I think, is just a first step in the restructuring of American economics. To me that's not the issue, it is going to happen. The question is: How long is this restructuring going to take?
Rectangles are painted on the ground to encourage homeless people to keep social distancing at a city-sanctioned homeless encampment across from City Hall in San Francisco, California, on May 22, 2020, amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. Credit: Josh Edelson / AFP / Getty
The rash of layoffs sparked by the coronavirus pandemic and statewide lockdowns are expected to increase homelessness by up to 45%, according to a new analysis by an economist at Columbia University.
The analysis estimates that about 250,000 people could be left homeless as a result of skyrocketing unemployment. The Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated that there were 568,000 homeless people in the country in January, before the outbreak.
Stephan: This is how I see the mask protest movement. First, Trump created a manliness issue and made mask-wearing its symbol. For men who overcompensate because of insecurity about their maleness it was irresistible, and they were joined by the women who choose to associate with such men. Second, when the anti-mask movement is combined with not believing in evolution, (40%), and believing in Biblical literalism (30%), we are being told there is somewhere between 30% to 40% of the American population who do not live in a fact-based world. The Great Schism Trend is on display.
In the last few weeks a spate of American stores have made headlines after putting up signs telling customers who wear masks they will be denied entry. On Thursday, Vice reported on a Kentucky convenience store that put up a sign reading: “NO Face Masks allowed in store. Lower your mask or go somewhere else. Stop listening to [Kentucky governor Andy] Beshear, he’s a dumbass.”
Another sign was posted by a Californian construction store earlier this month encouraging hugs but not masks. In Illinois, a gas station employee who put up a similar sign has since defended herself, arguing that mask-wearing made it hard to differentiate between adults and children when selling booze and cigarettes.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump finally caved and wore a face mask yesterday – something he didn’t want to “give the press the pleasure of seeing”. But while it is gratifying to see the emperor finally forced to wear clothes, you’ve got to wonder to what extent the virus will spread thanks to the actions of citizens insisting on protecting their “freedom” over the right of others not to […]
Stephan: At this point, I would say it is about a 60% / 40% chance as to whether we as a species overcome our greed, stupidity, and Abrahamic thinking that we have dominion over the earth, before the environmental shift we are creating becomes a catastrophe. Today I would say it was 60% we don't.
Brazilian rainforest clearcutting Credit: Charlie Rogers / Moment / Getty
As the COVID-19 virus was spreading around the world, deforestation in the world’s rainforests rose at an alarming rate, the German arm of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said in a study published on Thursday.
The study, which analyzed satellite data of 18 countries compiled by the University of Maryland, found that deforestation rose by 150% this March compared 2017-2019 average for the same calendar month.
Around 6,500 square kilometers (2,510 square miles) of rainforest were felled in March alone — an area seven times the size of Berlin, the WWF said.
“This indicates that we’re dealing with a coronavirus effect on the exploding rates of deforestation,” Christoph Heinrich, the head of nature conservation with WWF Germany, said in a statement.
Indonesia Forests Hit Hardest
The forests most heavily hit by deforestation in March were in Indonesia, with more than 1,300 square kilometers lost.
The Democratic Republic of Congo saw the second-largest forest loss with 1,000 square kilometers followed by Brazil with 950 square kilometers.
The Brazilian non-profit research institute Imazon told […]
Stephan: Donald Trump is worried about the upcoming election so he is doing everything he can to open churches this weekend in support of his willfully ignorant Magas, most of whom are Fundamentalist White Protestants. These are the folks you see defying common sense and their community responsibility by openly going around without masks. Like everything Trump does his interest in opening churches is entirely self-referential; he couldn't care less about the peasants in their anti-intellect churches.
In fact, as a result of the Maga churches opening, I predict you will see a marked increase in the incidence of Covid-19 in those communities. In the interest of full disclosure this is a pretty solid prediction because the data shows this is exactly what has happened in the past.
Summary
What is already known about this topic?
Large gatherings pose a risk for SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
What is added by this report?
Among 92 attendees at a rural Arkansas church during March 6–11, 35 (38%) developed laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, and three persons died. Highest attack rates were in persons aged 19–64 years (59%) and ≥65 years (50%). An additional 26 cases linked to the church occurred in the community, including one death.
What are the implications for public health practice?
Faith-based organizations should work with local health officials to determine how to implement the U.S. Government guidelines for modifying activities during the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent transmission of the virus to their members and their communities.
On March 16, 2020, the day that national social distancing guidelines were released (1), the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) was notified of two cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) from a rural county of approximately 25,000 persons; these cases were the first identified in this county. The two cases occurred in a husband and wife; the husband is the pastor at a local church (church A). The couple (the […]
