An investigation into America’s increasingly bitter, divided and toxic politics. Part One of the documentary traces how Barack Obama’s promise of unity collapsed as increasing racial, cultural and political divisions laid the groundwork for the rise of Donald Trump.
An investigation into America’s increasingly bitter, divided and toxic politics. Part Two of the documentary examines how Donald Trump’s campaign exploited the country’s divisions and how his presidency has unleashed anger on both sides of the divide.
Nearly 150 people were arrested on Capitol Hill Friday in a climate protest led by Academy Award-winning actor and activist Jane Fonda. Fonda has been leading weekly climate demonstrations in Washington, D.C., known as “Fire Drill Fridays,” since October. For her last and 14th protest, actors Martin Sheen and Joaquin Phoenix, indigenous anti-pipeline activist Tara Houska, journalist Naomi Klein and dozens more lined up to get arrested as they demanded a mass uprising and swift political action to thwart the climate crisis. Fonda then marched with supporters down Pennsylvania Avenue to a Chase Bank branch where environmentalist Bill McKibben and dozens of others were occupying the space to draw attention to the bank’s ties to the fossil fuel industry. Ten, including McKibben, were arrested. The day of action was the launch of “Stop the Money Pipeline,” a campaign to halt the flow of cash from banks, investment firms and insurance companies to the fossil fuel industry. “Let us remember that we are not the criminals,” Naomi Klein told a crowd of protesters. “The criminals are the people who are letting this world burn for money.”
The Trump administration is filled with “egregious liars” who are knowingly lying about the threat posed by top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani to justify his assassination in a U.S. drone strike earlier this month. That’s according to Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, now an outspoken critic of U.S. military interventions. To say that Soleimani was “an imminent threat” is “laughable,” Wilkerson says. “These guys are supposed to be experts in the very fields that they’re talking about. They’re anything but experts. They are warmongers.”
Retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, says the escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Iran today is a continuation of two decades of U.S. policy disasters in the Middle East, starting with the 2003 run-up to war with Iraq under the Bush administration. “America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret 19 straight years of war and no end in sight? It’s part of who we are. It’s part of what the American Empire is,” says Wilkerson. “We are going to cheat and steal to do whatever it is we have to do to continue this war complex. That’s the truth of it. And that’s the agony of it.”
When humans are under stress they do not act upon what they know but rather upon what they have come to believe. Fundamentalist traditions are on the rise on all continents, in all cultures and within all religious traditions whether Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Hebrew or Buddhist, etc. The one feature that all these many and varied fundamentalisms have in common is the structure of “exceptionalist belief.” Whatever else is happening to the world out there and to all the “others” beyond our group (so their narrative tells them), “we” will be “exceptions” to these events and follies because we are the “exceptions” — the “chosen people,” those set apart from the rest of the great unwashed because of our fundamental religious beliefs. Fundamentalisms everywhere are based on this structure of exceptionalist belief.
For their part scientists the world over are re-asserting their own forms of fundamental truths as well. But unlike the numerous religious traditions these fundamental truths are not located in sacred texts or privileged narratives of divinely designated “chosenness.” Rather their truths affirm basic laws of physics and biology including:
water runs down hill,
no population can outlive its food supply,
animals do not photosynthesize,
ice melts at approximately 32-degrees Farenheight,
no organism can live for long in an environment composed uniquely of its own waste,
infinite growth of any population in a finite system is not possible,
etc. etc.
In this sense, the fundamentalism of science is just the opposite of that affirmed by most religious traditions because it affirms that humankind is not exceptional and belief systems based on human exceptionalism are profoundly misguided. The fact is that scientists affirm again and again that humans are notapart from nature but but rater a part of nature. Hominid exceptionalism will inevitably prove fatal as all other delusional exceptionalisms have in the past. Scientists now affirm simply that we had better learn fast to learn, absorb and behave with that awareness if we wish to survive much longer in Earth’s complex and ever-changing species mix.
Spaceborne instruments provide evidence the climate is changing, from vanishing sea ice and rising seas to changes in soil moisture and more. The European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative have compiled a decade worth of imagery and satellite data and it has been animated by graphics producer Planetary Visions.
This visualization begins by showing the dynamic beauty of the Arctic sea ice as it responds to winds and ocean currents. Research into the behavior of the Arctic sea ice for the last 30 years has led to a deeper understanding of how this ice survives from year to year. In the animation that follows, age of the sea ice is visible, showing the younger ice in darker shades of blue and the oldest ice in brighter white. This visual representation of the ice age clearly shows how the quantity of older and thicker ice has changed between 1984 and 2016.
Download video: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4616
Transcript: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000…
In my previous two videos I discussed how the reflectivity of the Arctic region reduced from 52% to 48% between 1979 and 2011, with global average warning 0.21 W/m2 (1/4 that of CO2). Now I explain the newest science from 2019 on how a Blue-Ocean State (zero Arctic sea ice) in summer would heat the overall planet 0.71 W/m2 with expected cloud invariance (or 2.24 W/m2 with clear skies, or 0.37 W/m2 if overcast). This equals 1 trillion tons of CO2 or 25 years of warming. i.e. global food shortages.
In this video I continue to explain the latest cutting edge science from late 2019 on how a Blue-Ocean State (zero Arctic sea ice) in summer would heat the overall planet 0.71 W/m2 if cloud behaviour stays similar to now. If clouds behave differently, one extreme case would have heat forcing of 2.24 W/m2 with completely clear skies; the other extreme case would be 0.37 W/m2 if the Arctic skies were all overcast (over 95% cloud coverage; similar thickness (optical depth) to now. The middle case (most likely?!) with 0.71 W/m2 is equivalent to 1 trillion tons of CO2 or 25 years of warming. i.e. global food shortages.
Join Climate One for a special evening honoring Robert Bullard with the ninth annual Stephen Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communications. Often described as the father of environmental justice, Bullard has written several seminal books on the subject and is known for his work highlighting pollution on minority communities and speaking up against environmental racism in the 1970-1980s.
Established in honor of Stephen H. Schneider, one of the founding fathers of climatology, the $15,000 Schneider Award recognizes a natural or social scientist who has made extraordinary scientific contributions and communicated that knowledge to a broad public in a clear, compelling fashion.
“I am truly humbled and honored to be receiving the 2019 Stephen Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication,” says Dr. Bullard. “This award recognizes the importance of working across multiple disciplines, sectors and social groupings. More importantly, it also validates my core values and guiding principle of giving back, reaching out to diverse communities, and training the next generation of environmental and climate leaders.
The quest for climate justice is an intergenerational thing. The time for growing diverse leaders and diverse messengers is now.”
Bullard will be joined by fellow equity expert Adrianna Quintero, director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the Energy Foundation, in a conversation about communicating climate change in an engaging and inclusive manner.
Immediately after the conversation, fellow Schneider Award winner Michael Mann will present the 2019 award in a short ceremony. Reception with wine and hors d’oeuvres to follow
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
This weblog explores the transition to a sustainable future on our finite planet. It provides links to current news, key documents from government sources and non-governmental organizations, as well as video documentaries about climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice concerns.
The links are listed here to be used in whatever manner they may be helpful in public information campaigns, course preparation, teaching, letter-writing, lectures, class presentations, policy discussions, article writing, civic or Congressional hearings and citizen action campaigns, etc. For further information on this blog see: About this weblog. and How to use this weblog.
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