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  • The John James Newsletter 155

    The John James Newsletter 155

    To subscribe or unsubscribe email John
    What the US government is doing in Syria is tantamount to a war of aggression, which, according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, is the worst possible crime a State can commit against another State
    Father Miguel D’Escoto
    People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster
    James Baldwin

    South Florida’s Rising Seas – Sea Level Rise Documentary 

    we all need to plan for this future. Florida keys is only a few feet above SLT, just like Barmagui another parts of Australia.

    Earth Under Water – Worldwide Flooding | Sea Level Rise 

    Everywhere exposed cities and agricultural land will be flooded. Meltwater Rie pulse 1A 5m+ or 16 feet in a century. By 2100 coastal cities will nkow they are doomed.

    Antarctic contribution to meltwater pulse 1A from reduced Southern Ocean overturning

    Giant iceberg poised to break off from Antarctic shelf 

    Predicted to be one of the largest break-offs ever recorded, separation of iceberg could trigger breakup of most northern major ice shelf, Larsen C. A thread of just 20km of ice is now preventing the 5,000 sq km mass from floating away, following the sudden expansion last month of a rift that has been steadily growing for more than a decade. “It just makes the whole shelf less stable. If it were to collapse there would be nothing holding the glaciers up and they would start to flow quite quickly indeed.”
     
     

    Is that a Black Hole or a hole in the data?

    How to quickly spot dodgy science.
    To spot false information
    The US government is creating a new $160 million bureaucracy to shut down information that doesn’t conform to U.S. propaganda narratives, building on the strategy that sold the bloody Syrian “regime change”

    Most Important Videos Uploaded In December 2016

    *  Peter Wadhams interview Farewell to Arctic Ice
    *  Mark Jacobson presentation How the Future of Energy Impacts the Future of Our Cities
    *  Paul Beckwith video Abrupt Climate Disrupting Arctic Changes
    *  Peter Wadhams also in video interview for ExtinctionRadio
    *   Guy McPherson presentation 22 December.

    Earths past was much hotter

    Today global land temperature stands at 14.8C where the most common has been 7C hotter – far too hot for us

    Morality vs Ethics: the problem with trolleys 

    Many people – even many philosophers – think that morality and ethics are the same thing. But they are not. Morality is primarily about making correct choices, while ethics is about proper reasoning. Should you kill the fat man?
    and

    Fresh doubt over global warming ‘pause’

    When the researchers corrected the data to take the “cold bias” into account, they concluded that the oceans had warmed 0.12C per decade since 2000, nearly twice as fast as previous estimates of 0.07 degrees. The warming experienced in the first 15 years of the 21st Century was “virtually indistinguishable” from the rate of warming between 1950-99, a time generally acknowledged to have seen significant rates of warming from human emissions of CO2. The study did not go down well with climate sceptics and US House of Representatives subpoenaed the author’s emails which Noaa refused to hand over.

    Population growth masking weak economy, making households worse off

    One of the economic arguments that has been used to support current immigration rates has been that it helps offset an ageing population. However, the Commonwealth Bank report noted that this is only “kicking the can down the road”, with the current working age migrants themselves ageing and leaving the workforce 20, 30 or 40 years from now.

    When hoping for population decline

    It is worth remembering what happened to the numbers of the St Matthew Island reindeer herd in the late 1960s.

    Record-breaking extreme weather in Australia in 2016 devastates ecosystems

    Bureau of Meteorology’s annual climate statement cites unprecedented bushfires in regions that don’t usually burn and worst coral bleaching on record, and has been attributed as the cause of damage to vast tracts of crucial kelp forests, oyster farms and salmon stocks across southern Australia.

    A well-kept open secret: Washington is behind India’s brutal experiment of abolishing most cash

    In early November, without warning, the Indian government declared the two largest denomination bills invalid, abolishing over 80 percent of circulating cash by value. Amidst all the commotion and outrage this caused, nobody seems to have taken note of the decisive role that Washington played in this. That is surprising, as Washington’s role has been disguised only very superficially.

    Changing the Global Food Narrative

    The dominant story about the future of the world food supply is logical, well known and wrong. Changing Diets, Not Population Growth, is the Dominant Driver of Food Demand

    Climate change is going to be very bad for the global economy

    But by analyzing temperatures alone we have more precise estimates of how climate change could affect the economy. It turns out that temperature has a surprisingly consistent effect on different economic inputs: labor supply, labor productivity, and crop yields all drop off dramatically between 20°C and 30°C.

    Nearing exit, Obama seeks to tie Trump’s hands

    Obama has also permanently banned oil and gas drilling across large swaths of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, closed off 1.6 million acres of Western land to development and scrapped the last vestiges of a registration system used largely on Muslim immigrants.

    ‘The Greatest Single Step’ to help Elephants

    In ‘game-changing’ development, China announces it will ban all domestic ivory trade by end of 2017.

    History suggests Australia could be left behind by the next industrial revolution 

    There’s a new industrial revolution just around the corner, driven by artificial intelligence and robotics. Deterioration within the key institutions of suffrage, education, and land policy indicate that Australia may be left behind this time.

    NATO’s Playbook Of Proxy Wars In The Middle East

    Since the times of the Soviet-Afghan jihad, during the eighties, it has been the fail-safe game plan of the master strategists at NATO to raise money from the oil-rich emirates of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Kuwait; then buy billions of dollars’ worth of weapons from the arms’ markets of the Eastern Europe; and then provide those weapons and guerilla warfare training to the disaffected population of the victim country by using the intelligence agencies of the latter’s regional adversaries. Whether it’s Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Libya or Syria, the same playbook has been executed to the letter.

    What Kerry Did

    What set off the firestorm was that Kerry dared to publicly and forcefully criticize Israeli policy. And that was what the overreaction intended to snuff out. The standard Israeli approach used in situations of this sort is to launch a campaign of intimidation designed to pummel the offender into submission and to discourage others from taking similar course.

    2016 was a great year for wind and solar, even if nobody noticed.

    Renewable energy’s gains this year were incremental and unglamorous. In the US, the amount of residential solar installed rose, with no limits in sight. Utilities built solar projects in record-breaking numbers.

    The future of nuclear power runs on the waste of our nuclear past

    The conventional nuclear power method involves inserting radioactive rods into a reactor core where their fissionable material is converted into energy. Problem is, it’s not particularly efficient. Over the four years or so that a rod will remain in use, only about three percent of its available nuclear material is expended, leaving 97% as “waste.” And since nobody seems particularly willing to just fling it into the Sun, this waste must be disposed of in a nuclear repository. Over the past forty years or so, the US has generated 67,500 metric tons of the stuff—enough to cover a football field with spent fuel rods to a depth of seven yards. But what if there were a way to recycle the waste and recapture the remaining energy?

    Preview YouTube video Earth Under Water – Worldwide Flooding | Sea Level Rise (SLR)

  • Arctic tipping points break more records

    Arctic tipping points break more records

    skinnypolarbearThe Arctic continues to break records for warm winter temperatures and low coverage of sea ice.

    There was less than one million square kilometres of ice at the end of November, the lowest amount on record and less than half the long term average for this time of year.

    Temperatures are ten degrees Celsius above average compared to twenty degrees above average in October.

    Large increases in snow fall and colder temperatures have been recorded in Finland and Russia raising fears that the warmer Arctic ocean may deposit its snow and ice over Europe.

    http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

    /?s=arctic

    http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/08/thin-polar-bear-kerstin-langenberger_n_8106620.html

    /sea-level-rise-accelerates-as-ice-sheets-melt/

  • The John James Newsletter 152

    The John James Newsletter 152

    John James, author, healer and publisher
    John James, author, therapist and publisher

    To subscribe or unsubscribe email John

    Once to every man and nation
    Comes the moment to decide,
    In the strife of truth and falsehood,
    For the good or evil side
    James Russell Lowell 
    People are lazy. With television you just sit – watch – listen. The thinking is done for you
    Roger Ailes
    A Manifesto for The Platform
    There is a deep despair growing among good people as Trump promises to dismantle seventy years of Social Justice reforms and Environmental Safeguards. We have struggled and devoted our lives to implement worthwhile policies over our lifetimes, and they could be gone in a trice. I sense a forlorn hopelessness growing among us. Instead, The Platform offers an alternative. The Manifesto does not aim at concentrating all our efforts on fighting the polluters. We accept that so much heating is now built into the system that it does not matter what we do we will still suffer massive sea level rise and droughts, food scarcity and deaths. The Manifesto offers the positive message that we can make life better now and in the future, and that we, the people of Good Will, can succeed at this. The Manifesto for Our Platform offers the promise that we can do something, in place of succumbing to numbing despair.
    This is the amateur film I assembled for the October Forum “Tomorrows World”- A climate change potpourri
    Alarm Over “Witch Hunt” 
    Trump demands list of Civil Servants who worked on Climate Policy under Obama. “This action should not be viewed in isolation, The Trump transition team is teeming with individuals with a proven history of attacking climate scientists and undermining climate science. Several members now overseeing federal agencies have harassed scientists based on their research and have long signaled a desire to dismantle federal climate science research.”
    Flynn’s Wacky Worldview
    Skepticism about Michael Flynn’s fitness for the position of national security adviser appears to be growing as more media outlets are paying closer attention to his (and his son’s) core beliefs about the world. Such scrutiny also appears to be more relevant since President-elect Trump may be relying more heavily on Flynn than on the CIA or other government intelligence agencies for his own assessment of world events.
    It is the people who will be paying the price. 
    Trump will use the media to sugarcoat, falsify, distract, intimidate, glorify and massify the millions of people who believed, once upon a recent time, that he would “Make America Great Again.” As the profiteers of Wall Street and the war hawks blend with the corporate statists, the super-confident Trump is telling us what their products will be like and that he’ll be their salesman. If you think all this sounds predictable, there are going to be more than a few “black swans” (to use Nassim Taleb’s best-selling book title) coming over the horizon. It is time to mobilize as citizens in the Paul Revere mode.
    The December 19 Electoral College Vote : Anti-Trump Coup Attempt Underway?
    Trump won 306 Electoral College votes to Hillary’s 232, her’s heavily concentrated in the northeast, mid-Atlantic and west coast. He won 30 states to her 20 – 270 EC votes needed to be elected. It would take 37 electors, from states he won, to deny him their vote, thereby throwing the process to House members to elect the president.
    Methane has just spiked at 2436 ppb
    Methane levels over the Arctic Ocean were as high as 2436 parts per billion on the afternoon of December 5, 2016, with most rising from the water. Pre-industrial level was ~720 ppb and each molecule is 20 times more potent than C02. Add that up!
    Start-up company breathes new life into old tyres
    A biofuel from old rubber tyres that can run turbo-charged diesel engines while reducing emissions by 30 per cent.’We have zero waste from the tyre’
    CEFC backs 270MW Sapphire wind farm, in vote of confidence for merchant market
    A consortium between Vestas and Zenviron will deliver the project, with Vestas supplying and commissioning the turbines, and Zenviron delivering the balance of plant. TransGrid will build, operate and maintain an on-site substation connecting the Sapphire project to the national energy grid.
    FBI v. Assange
    Former Icelandic minister claims US sent ‘planeload of FBI agents to frame Assange’ during mission to the country in 2011.

    The startling rise in oral cancer in men, and what it says about our changing sexual habits

    Oral cancer jumped 61% from 2011 to 2015. HPV infects cells of the skin and the membranes that lines areas such as the mouth, throat, tongue, tonsils, rectum and sexual organs. Transmission can occur when these areas come into contact with the virus. HPV is a leading cause of cervical, vaginal and penile cancers. Younger men are more likely to perform oral sex than their older counterparts and to engage with more partners.
     
    A Drive To Save Saharan Oases As Climate Change Takes a Toll
    From Morocco to Libya, the desert oases of the Sahara’s Maghreb region are disappearing as temperatures rise and rainfall decreases. Facing daunting odds, local residents are employing traditional water conservation techniques to try to save these ancient ecosystems.
    Is Sustainability Destroying the Earth?
    Only one-quarter of all consumption is by individuals. The rest is taken up by industry, agribusiness, the military, governments and corporations. Even if every one of us made every effort to reduce our ecological footprint, it would make little difference to overall consumption. If the lifestyle actions advocated really do keep our culture around for longer than it would otherwise, then it will cause more harm to the natural world than if no such action had been taken.
    Saudi Arabia’s Glass: Half Empty or Half Full?
    The people of Saudi Arabia have long accepted the bargain imposed by the founding king, Abdul Aziz al-Saud, in which they are disenfranchised but acquiesce in political powerlessness as the state provides them with security and a comfortable life. Now they are being asked to do more for themselves while the government does less, regardless of the price of oil.
    Congress Votes To Give Jihadists Anti-aircraft Missiles 
    The Senate passed a bill that puts every American who travels by plane at risk.  It is among the stupidest pieces of legislation ever written – to provide shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles to lunatic jihadists who will undoubtedly use them to take down American or Israeli jetliners. The argument that these Islamic militants are fully vetted is complete nonsense as both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have repeatedly shown. Rebel groups “have entered into battlefield alliances with the affiliate of al Qaida in Syria formerly known as al Nusra to render the phrase ‘moderate rebels’ meaningless.”
     
    The “Golden Arches” Theory of Decline
    One of the answers to Trump, Putin, Orban, Erdogan, Salvini, Duterte, Le Pen, Farage and the politics they represent is to rescue democracy from transnational corporations. It is to defend the crucial political unit that’s under assault by banks, monopolies and chainstores: community. It is to recognise that there is no greater hazard to peace between nations than a corporate model which crushes democratic choice
    A degree by degree explanation of what will happen when the earth warms
    At 2C temperature increase the hot European summer of 2003 will be the annual norm. Anything that could be called a heatwave thereafter will be of Saharan intensity. Even in average years, people will die of heat stress.
    Beyond 2C billions of people will face an increasingly tough battle to survive. To find anything comparable we have to go back to the Pliocene 3m years ago. There were no continental glaciers in the northern hemisphere (trees grew in the Arctic), and sea levels were 25 metres higher than today’s. In this kind of heat, the death of the Amazon is as inevitable as the melting of Greenland.
    Between 3 and 4C the summers get longer  as soaring temperatures reduce forests to tinderwood and cities to boiling morgues. Temperatures in the Home Counties could reach 45C – the sort of climate experienced today in Marrakech. Droughts will put the south-east of England on the global list of water-stressed areas, with farmers competing against cities for dwindling supplies from rivers and reservoirs. Air-conditioning will be mandatory for anyone wanting to stay cool and the abandonment of the Mediterranean will send even more people north to overcrowded refuges in Scandinavia.
    Between 4 and 5C it will be an entirely different planet. Ice sheets have vanished from both poles; rainforests have burnt up and turned to desert; the dry and lifeless Alps resemble the High Atlas; rising seas are scouring deep into continental interiors. Even in Canada and Siberia summers may be too hot for crops to be grown away from the coasts. When temperatures were at a similar level 55m years ago in the early Eocene, alligators were living in the Arctic.
    Between 5 and 6C at the end of the Permian, 251m years ago, 95% of species were wiped out. That episode was the worst ever endured by life on Earth, the closest the planet has come to ending up a dead and desolate rock in space. On land, the only winners were fungi that flourished on dying trees and shrubs.
    Arctic Warming at Least Twice as Fast as Rest of World
    Much of this melt was almost certainly driven by the record warm Arctic temperatures seen during 2016. And according to NOAA, this year shattered all previous high marks for Arctic heat by a big margin — hitting 3.5C warmer than 1900. Overall, this rate of warming is at least twice as fast as the rest of the globe.
    Change in the Arctic this year was unlike any ever seen, scientists say 
    The annual Arctic Report Card documented air and sea-surface temperatures are higher, sea ice is sparser and more fragile and ocean waters absorbing more carbon, thus changing their chemistry to more acidic levels, while warming tundra is now expelling more carbon than it is drawing in from the atmosphere.