The John James Newsletter 212

20 January 2018

DURING THE BREAK I HAVE BECOME AWARE 

that over the past four years the small changes I have recorded each week

have been accumulating into a maelstrom.

The speed and scale of change beggars belief.

I have listed a few to press home the point, and the conclusion that

we really do not have much time – not any more.

You ask where is the good news, and there is so little compared to

our collective, seemingly unstoppable, obscene rush to self-extinction.

Yet I believe we do still need to be informed.

As I die I want to know why.

Most people don’t know what’s happening and they don’t even know that they don’t know

Noam Chomsky

We are destroying the life support system of this planet 

Andrew Glikson

Many born now will come to live in the terrifying conditions we are creating for them, where it will be impossible to feed everyone, water wars will be ongoing, major coastal cities will have long since flooded, and droughts and wildfires and megastorms will have become year-round events

Dahr Jamail

THE LIST THAT HAS NO END

The Doomsday Clock has just been moved 30 seconds closer to midnight, the closest to the point of global extinction since 1953

Methane levels as high as 2764 ppb were recorded in the Arctic, from a destabilised seafloor.

All over the world, habitats and species are collapsing before our eyes. The world population of wild vertebrates – animals with backbones – has fallen by 60% since 1970.

Animals that until recently seemed safe – ranging from lions to house sparrows – are now in danger.

Insect populations are collapsing, with untold implications for both humanity and the rest of the food chain.

If you’re under 40, you’ve never experienced a single year of below-average temperatures.

This week, the Australian Open has been hit with on-court temperatures rocketing to 69 degrees

AI-piloted drone ships are wiping out most of the last global fish stocks

We have destabilised the jet stream over our heads and the Gulf Stream under the water.

Simultaneous breadbasket failures threaten the sufficiency of global food supply

Despite fewer wars number of dead has trebled in ten years, from the intensification of violence

Soil is being stripped from the land, so that at current rates, the world has just 60 years of harvests left.

Ground water is being drained so rapidly that the world’s most important aquifers could disappear within a generation.

Extreme weather events cost the US $306 billion, which is more than the combined spending on transport, housing and community, international affairs, energy, the environment and science

Three men – Gates, Bezos and Buffet – own as much as half of the entire American people.

Resistance to the strongest antibiotics continues to spread with nothing new in sight

90% of the world’s population lives with polluted air

And here are three of the major causes

Watch population increase minute by minute.

http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock/

and this

real-time estimate of the global atmospheric CO2 level.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/carbon-clock/

and

the US Debt Clock

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Seeking something happy

This is the best I came up with, and it was filmed thirty years ago when we still had hope that the rich would support change.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/n6mbW-jMtrY?rel=0

2017 Shatters Records With $306 Billion In Damages From Climate-Linked Disasters

Sixteen $1 billion-plus weather- and climate-related events killed some 362 people.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/2017-natural-disasters_us_5a53b1aee4b01e1a4b183b9d

Wealth buys silence

On average, the 38 US Senate deniers have each received $732,788 from fossil fuel interests while science-believing senators each got only $182,902. On average, each House denier has received $272,536 from the fossil corporations while science-believing members each got only $80,095.

https://thinkprogress.org/the-anti-science-climate-denier-caucus-114th-congress-edition-c76c3f8bfedd/#.231g4hemd

The Global Risks Report 2018 prepared for the coming World Economic Forum in Davos

Shows in graphs the increasing risk from global warming, but hardly mentions it in the report itself. The extremely rich who pay $us55,000 to hob nob with each other are as badly starved of information as we are, it seems.

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GRR18_Report.pdf

IF YOU. HAVE READ THIS FAR, GO BACK

AND READ THE LIST AGAIN, CAREFULLY,

AND

PONDER THE CONSEQUENCES OF EACH ONE,

ESPECIALLY FOR YOUR CHILDREN.

The John James Newsletter 211

22 December 2017

I AM TAKING A BREAK. 

ENJOY YOUR HOLIDAYS, YOUR FAMILIES AND YOUR FRIENDS 

AND I WILL BE BACK NEXT YEAR.

We use 1.4 billion plastic bottles every single day, and only a fraction will ever be recycled, and once they get into the environment they take up to 1000 years to break down 

Avaaz

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all 

Dale Carnegie

Welcome To The New Arctic: The Region “We Once Knew Is No More”

Despite relatively cool summer temperatures, the region has reached a “new normal, characterised by long-term losses in the extent and thickness of the sea ice cover, the extent and duration of the winter snow cover and the mass of ice in the Greenland Ice Sheet and Arctic glaciers, and warming sea surface and permafrost temperature. This is not good news. The environment is changing so quickly in such a short amount of time that we can’t quite get a handle on what this new state is going to look like.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/12/20/welcome-to-the-new-arctic-the-region-as-we-once-knew-it-is-no-more/

Indigenous groups unite to make Chevron pay

The 25-year struggle of indigenous communities in Ecuador to get justice from Chevron for oil pollution have already won a $9.5 billion judgement in the Ecuadorean courts, but Chevron has refused to pay. The communities are now trying to collect in Canada, in a case that dates back to between 1964 and 1992 when Texaco, later acquired by Chevron, dumped at least 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into the rivers and streams of Ecuador’s Amazon basin and abandoned some 900 toxic waste pits in the rainforest. Indigenous communities were left with poisoned land and drinking water, suffered a cancer epidemic and birth defects throughout a 20,000- hectare zone that locals call the “Amazon Chernobyl.”

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/12/11/news/indigenous-groups-unite-make-chevron-pay

How to kill fruit flies

Fruit flies are annoying. So here’s how we get rid of them in my lab: We build a trap. It’s not perfect, but it’s OK.

https://theconversation.com/how-to-kill-fruit-flies-according-to-a-scientist-81740

November temperature was +1.15°C relative to 1880-1920

http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/

AI can figure out a place’s politics by analysing cars on Google Street View

More pickups trucks or sedans in a given city. With a greater number of pickup trucks, the urban area had an 82 percent chance of voting Republican, and with more sedans, there was an 88 percent chance it voted Democrat.

http://www.popsci.com.au/tech/computing/ai-can-figure-out-a-places-politics-by-analyzing-cars-on-google-street-view,478937

Weak energy target threatens 27GW of renewable projects 

27GW of large-scale renewable projects proposed, combined with the expected growth in rooftop solar, would mean just over half of Australia’s electricity supply could be met with renewables by 2030. Most of these projects will remain dormant until the government puts its long-term Paris agreement commitments into a legally enforceable policy.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/21/weak-energy-target-threatens-27gw-of-renewable-projects

Snowy Hydro 2.0 is viable but will cost billions more than predicted 

The current estimate for the project is between $3.8bn and $4.5bn, more than the $2bn estimated by Turnbull when he promoted Snowy Hydro 2.0. It involves boring 27km of tunnels linking the Talbingo dam, at an elevation of 552 metres, to the Tantangara reservoir, at 1,233 metres, so energy can be generated by pumping water uphill to the higher reservoir when energy is cheap (say, in the middle of the night) and releasing it back downhill when energy is in high demand and prices are higher.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/21/snowy-hydro-2-viable-government-backed-study

Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units 

The Tesla big battery is having a big impact on Australia’s electricity market, far beyond the South Australia grid where it was expected to time shift a small amount of wind energy and provide network services and emergency back-up in case of a major problem. Last Thursday, one of the biggest coal units in Australia, Loy Yang A 3, tripped without warning at 1.59am, with the sudden loss of 560MW and causing a slump in frequency on the network. What happened next has stunned electricity industry insiders

http://reneweconomy.com.au/tesla-big-battery-outsmarts-lumbering-coal-units-after-loy-yang-trips-70003/ C

Things Cruise Lines Never Tell You

Despite how the cruise pundits like to spin things, there are environmental costs to this controversial industry. The 16 major cruise lines generated over 1 billion gallons of sewage in 2014, much of it raw or poorly treated. One cruise ship can produce 13 million cars worth of CO2 in one day. Lax laws mean ships can dump sewage into international waters three miles offshore from the hot spots they promote as vacation destinations. These behemoth vessels often overwhelm small ports and undermine the very natural beauty and culture they’re trying to sell.

https://www.destinationtips.com/cruises/16-things-cruise-lines-never-tell-you/10/

Guardian to fight legal action over Paradise Papers

Offshore firm at heart of story, Appleby, is seeking damages and has demanded Guardian and BBC hand over documents. Appleby has also demanded that the Guardian and the BBC disclose any of the 6m Appleby documents that informed their reporting for a project that provoked worldwide anger and debate over the tax dodges used by individuals and multinational companies.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/18/guardian-bbc-legal-action-paradise-papers

What lies beneath the sea is very bizarre

From leafy sea dragons to monstrous worms, the world’s strangest sea creatures revealed. Many of these ocean-dwelling species have rarely been seen in the flesh by humans.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-5065469/The-world-s-strangest-sea-creatures-revealed.html

BHP Billiton, acknowledges climate change and quits Coal Group

It represents the latest example of a business that is largely built around traditional fossil fuels responding to investor and government concern over climate change – and it would spend $200 million to acquire a large stake in a solar power developer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/business/energy-environment/australia-mining-company-climate-change.html

With enough cameras we can know who you are and who you spend time with 

China has been building the world’s biggest camera surveillance network. 170 million CCTV cameras are already in place and an estimated 400 million new ones will be installed in the next three years. Many of the cameras are fitted with artificial intelligence, including facial recognition technology. The BBC’s John Sudworth has been given rare access to one of the new hi-tech police control rooms.

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-42248056/in-your-face-china-s-all-seeing-state

Ancient fossil microorganisms indicate that life in the universe is widespread

The microorganisms, from Western Australia, are 3.465 billion years old. Two of the species appear to have performed a primitive form of photosynthesis, another apparently produced methane gas, and two others appear to have consumed methane and used it to build their cell walls.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171218154925.htm

10 Indications the US is a dictatorship 

Today we are entering a nebulous world where our “enemy” cannot be defined, has no particular allegiance to one country, and is able to adopt new leaders at will.  Rather than encourage a sense of resilience and independence in its citizens, America has chosen to amplify the terror threat in order to concentrate power in the hands of the State.  The very first signpost on this historically familiar road to tyranny is an atmosphere of hate, suspicion, and vindictiveness.  It first begins as an outwardly directed aggression and then rather abruptly turns inward upon itself.

https://www.activistpost.com/2011/05/10-indications-united-states-is.html

From the Sierra Club

America is being turned into a third-world country. Poverty is everywhere, poverty of people and of the earth itself, of its plants and animals. And the rich are moving out, assuming that money will save them from the dragon their greed has unleashed.

https://newslettercollector.nl/newsletter/60-things(3)/