“We have to confront those powers…” George Monbiot – Extinction Rebellion

Broken Arrows: How Many Nuclear Accidents Have We Had? | American Experience | Official Site | PBS

Radioactive contamination. Seizure, theft, or loss of a nuclear weapon. Accidental or unauthorized launching, firing, or use of a nuclear-capable weapon system. Public hazard, actual or implied. These are the kinds of events the military calls ”broken arrows.”

The Pentagon maintains that the United States has experienced 32 broken arrow accidents, including the 1980 episode in Damascus, Arkansas — the subject of the American Experience documentary Command and Control. However, there are many other incidents involving nuclear arsenal that don’t make that list.

Below are two documents. One enumerates the 32 official broken arrows; the other, a declassified document from the Defense Atomic Support Agency obtained by journalist Eric Schlosser, includes hundreds more. These events range from the fairly minor — the unexplained activation of a sprinkler system in an aircraft carrier’s weapons storage compartment (Accidents and Incidents During the Period 1 December 1982 through 28 February 1963, Incident #4) — to the significantly more serious — a weapon burning for approximately four hours with two low order detonations (Accidents and Incidents During the Period 1 July 1957 through 31 March 1967, Incident #23).

Download the document that outlines the 32 official broken arrows here. (1.4 MB)

There’s Snow on TV, so Trump’s Tweeting About Climate Change – The Atlantic

A poster supporting Trump during the 2016 Republican primaryScott Morgan / Reuters

Alas, a brief cold spell does not undo decades of scientific fact.

Robinson Meyer Jan 20, 2019

It’s something of an annual tradition for the president. On Sunday morning, as the eastern half of the country endured driving snow and frigid winter winds, Donald Trump asked on Twitter how climate change could be real if it was so cold outside.

“Be careful and try staying in your house,” he said. “Large parts of the Country are suffering from tremendous amounts of snow and near record setting cold. Amazing how big this system is. Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!”

Trump has raised similar concerns about that “good old fashioned Global Warming” nearly every year since 2012. If it snows near Manhattan, the president says he isn’t sure about climate change.

Read: Trump, climate change, and the future of U.S. democracy

Unfortunately, even as New York has occasionally been blasted with frozen precipitation, the world has kept warming. The past four years have been the four warmest years on record—a fact that NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were due to announce this past week, were the government not shut down. Earlier this winter, Washington, D.C., experienced a shocking 22 days of above-average temperatures, and the Northeast as a whole saw a balmy January. President Trump did not seize that opportunity to affirm that global warming was real.

…(read more).

See related:

• Record-Breaking Polar Vortex Grips the Midwest
• Deadly polar vortex hits swathes of US – BBC News
  and
• Scientists say Trump’s first 2 years have been fatal for a livable climate – ThinkProgress

American Sanity Magazine

 

Scientists say Trump’s first 2 years have been fatal for a livable climate – ThinkProgress

“Cause of death: the Trump presidency.”

Joe Romm Jan 18, 2019, 8:00 am

An activist prepares a balloon painted to look like planet Earth and decorated with orange hair in the likeness of U.S. President Donald Trump during a climate protest prior to a meeting of EU leaders on June 29, 2017 in Berlin. CREDIT: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Two years in, the presidency of Donald Trump has been a possibly fatal disaster for our livable climate, a number of climate and clean energy experts told ThinkProgress.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, countless climate experts voiced their concern about Trump, who had infamously called climate change a “hoax” and said it was “created by and for the Chinese.” Trump promised to undo Obama-era environmental laws, bring back coal power, and withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, in which the world’s nations unanimously agreed to start ratcheting down carbon pollution.

For all these reasons, climatologist Michael Mann wrote in October 2016 that Trump was “a threat to the planet.”

Two years after taking office, Trump has followed through on many of his promises to gut environmental regulations, promote the production of fossil fuels, kill U.S. climate action, and start withdrawing from the Paris accord.

…(read more).

ThinkProgress – Climate Progress

A worker uses a bobcat to clear snow from a sidewalk alongside Nantasket Beach during a winter storm that brought snow, sleet and rain to the area on January 20, 2019 in Hull, Massachusetts. CREDIT: Scott Eisen/Getty Images

Despite a year of dire climate impacts across the United States, President Donald Trump once again conflated weather with climate change in a holiday weekend tweet, touting a debunked argument rebutting global warming by citing cold weather.

In an early morning tweet on Sunday, the president referenced a major cold front playing out across parts of the country, implying the frosty weather offered a rebuttal to the phenomenon of climate change — an incorrect claim he has repeated several times in the past whenever there has been a snow storm.

“Be careful and try staying in your house. Large parts of the Country are suffering from tremendous amounts of snow and near record setting cold,” wrote Trump. “Amazing how big this system is. Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!”

…(read more).

See:

• ThinkProgress – Climage Progress

Socialist Richard Wolff Tells the Truth About the Chinese Economy

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Economist Richard Wolff Tells the Truth About the Chinese Economy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WKLskz1w9k

Study of Antarctic sea ice collapse warns of potential 10-foot sea rise – T hinkProgress

Pack ice melting in spring in Antarctica’s Weddel Sea. CREDIT: Planet Observer/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The faster the ocean warms, the faster key Antarctic glaciers will disintegrate.

Joe Romm Jan 15, 2019, 12:44 pm

A stunning new study on Antarctic sea ice collapse greatly raises the risk of a 10-foot sea level rise this century if President Donald Trump’s climate policies aren’t quickly reversed.

Warming ocean waters drove a 6-fold increase in annual ice mass loss from the Antarctic ice sheet between 1979 and 2017, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It’s been known for a while that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) was unstable and collapsing at an accelerating rate due to global warming. But the new study finds that parts of the vastly larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) are also disintegrating.

…(read more).

See related:

• Study Says We Could See 10 FOOT Sea Level Rise This Century From Climate Change