The John James Newsletter 192
12 August 2017
Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work though difficult problems.
Gever Tulley
We live in a time when science is validating what humans have known throughout the ages: that compassion is not a luxury; it is a necessity for our well-being, resilience, and survival.
Joan Halifax
Greenland hit by largest wildfire on record – GREENLAND ???
Greenland – a place more commonly associated with ice rather than fire – has been hit by exceptional wildfires this year, according to satellite images. Professor Stef Lhermitte, of Delft University in the Netherlands, reported that the largest blaze ever recorded had broken out on the island. easured by pixels from the satellite images, wildfires have been at least twice larger or more prolonged than any year since 2002 when the first pictures were taken and more than four times every year apart from 2015 and 2016. Prof Lhermitte tweeted: “Wildfires have occurred in the past over Greenland but 2017 is exceptional in number of active fire detections.”He said wildfires were not unknown in Greenland with reports of a major one taking place in 1966, but there was no way of knowing how large this was. “This year’s main fire is a big one,it’s not a typical wildfire, it’s a rare and unusual event,” Prof Lhermitte told The Independent. “This one is the biggest one in the satellite record that we know of.”
Google Is Committed To The Suppression Of Free Speech
Writing in Global Research, Graham Vanbergen lists 13 websites arbitrarily branded by Google as fake news or conspiracy sites whose readership Google has managed to reduce between 19 and 67 percent:
- wsws.org fell by 67 percent
- * alternet.org fell by 63 percent
- * globalresearch.ca fell by 62 percent
- * consortiumnews.com fell by 47 percent
- * socialistworker.org fell by 47 percent
- * mediamatters.org fell by 42 percent
- * commondreams.org fell by 37 percent
- * internationalviewpoint.org fell by 36 percent
- * democracynow.org fell by 36 percent
- * wikileaks.org fell by 30 percent
- * truth-out.org fell by 25 percent
- counterpunch.org fell by 21 percent
- theintercept.com fell by 19 percent
It is completely obvious that none of these sites are fake news or conspiracy sites. These sites are under Google censorship because they question the official lies that are used to control the explanations given to the people.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/08/08/google-committed-suppression-free-speech/.
2° Celsius Rise In Global Temperature Is Climate Change “Best Case Scenario”
Average temperature rise will most likely be 3.2 degrees Celsius by 2100. They say 2°C is the “best case scenario.” In fact, they say there is a 90% chance that global temperatures will increase between 2° and 4.9° Celsius. That upper number is equivalent to just under 9° Fahrenheit.
Denying the Storm
Climate Change Report Findings the Trump Administration Doesn’t Want You to Know Abou.tThe report carries with it a monumental scientific gravitas. A level of credibility that Trump, even in his wildest fantasies, couldn’t hope to achieve. It includes a culmination of research coming from thousands of peer-reviewed studies resulting in the accumulated work of tens of thousands of scientists. It includes numerous key advances in understanding which we will take a shot at briefly highlighting for you here.
For the Times draft
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/climate/2017/climate-report-final-draft-clean.pdf
Changes in temperature in Northern Hemisphere
Devastating toll of hunger on US school children
Among children in low-income families, 59 percent said they had gone to school hungry. In the richest country in the world, with the largest concentration of billionaires, one in six children faces hunger, some 13 million in all. The survey found that 59 percent of the parents reported that their food ran out before they could buy more; 48 percent couldn’t afford to buy enough food each month; and 23 percent had been forced to cut the size of their children’s meals because of a lack of money.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/08/hung-a08.html
15,000 Palestinians booted from Jerusalem
the frequent revocation of Palestinians’ residency permits — in addition to home demolitions and restrictions on Palestinian construction in the city — had served to increase the number of illegally-built Jewish colonies in occupied East Jerusalem.
Israel is restricting growth of the occupied Palestinian population,” the report states.
http://gulfnews.com/news/mena/palestine/15-000-palestinians-booted-from-jerusalem-hrw-1.2071449
Old teeth from a rediscovered cave show humans were in Indonesia more than 63,000 years ago
Our results indicate that the human teeth were laid down in the cave between 73,000 and 63,000 years ago, implying that modern humans were living on the landscape at that time. A rainforest route The evidence from the fossils in the cave suggests that the modern humans were living in a rainforest environment. This is surprising because the oldest previous evidence of rainforest use by modern humans in Southeast Asia was from 45,000 years ago.
Loss of Fertile Land Fuels ‘Looming Crisis’ Across Africa
Climate change, soil degradation and rising wealth are shrinking the amount
of usable land in Africa. But the number of people who need it is rising fast. Population swells, climate change, soil degradation, erosion, poaching, global food prices and even the benefits of affluence are exerting incredible pressure on African land. They are fueling conflicts across the continent, from Nigeria in the west to Kenya in the east
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/29/world/africa/africa-climate-change-kenya-land-disputes.html
Researchers shut down AI that invented its own language
An artificial intelligence system being developed at Facebook has created its own language. It developed a system of code words to make communication more efficient. Researchers shut the system down when they realized the AI was no longer using English. The advanced system is capable of negotiating with other AI agents so it can come to conclusions on how to proceed. The agents began to communicate using phrases that seem unintelligible at first but actually represent the task at hand. If AI-invented languages become widespread, they could pose a problem when developing and adopting neural networks. There’s not yet enough evidence to determine whether they present a threat that could enable machines to overrule their operators.
NT community puts diesel on back-burner, with 1MW solar + 2MWh battery storage
showing how renewables could cut remote communities’ reliance on costly and polluting diesel fuel. The solar and battery installed at Daly River are expected to power half of the town’s energy needs, reducing the community reliance on diesel by 50 per cent, and cutting its consumption by 400,000 litres of fuel a year. As battery costs reduce over the next few years, solar and battery technology will become more and more economically compelling as an alternative to traditional ways of powering remote communities
https://onestepoffthegrid.com.au/nt-community-puts-diesel-back-burner-1mw-solar-2mwh-battery-storage/