Image above: The gorge Cayuga Falls in western New York State reveals the history of shale formations that created the fossil fuels we have become addicted to. From original article.
Approaching the vernal equinox in the Fingerlakes region of upstate New York I am at the annual meeting of the International Society for Biophysical Economics
At the end of the first day we took a short pre-dinner tour to the other side of Cayuga Lake and Taughannock Falls, one of the highest east of the Rocky Mountains (66 meters).
The site provided an interesting metaphor because the waterfall and gorge are an example of a hanging valley, formed where the stream-carved valley meets the deeper, glacially-carved Cayuga Lake drainage. As the gorge retreats westward it exposes more of the Devonian shale near the fall’s base.
The Late Devonian extinction was second of the six major extinction events including the one now in progress, and eliminated about 19% of all families, 50% of all genera and at least 70% of all species.
While the shale is named for its discovery in Devonshire, England, that part of the world at that time was in the Southern Hemisphere, part of the supercontinent, Gondwana. The Caledonian mountains were growing across what is now the Scottish Highlands and Scandinavia, while the Appalachians rose over America, all on that supercontinent.
As the scientists gathering from China, Russia, England, Australia, Latin America, Africa and beyond peered from the overlook down into the gorge, they were staring back 400 million years to a time when there was widespread anoxia in oceanic bottom waters, corals died, the rate of carbon deposition shot up, benthic organisms were devastated, especially in the tropics, ice melted from the poles and sea levels rose.
The Devonian shares much in common with our present extinction event.
Another effect of those changes was the deposition of fossil hydrocarbons, largely because the lack of oxygen in the ocean allowed them to be trapped without decay. We are looking down into the formation of the fossil fuels and they are reaching up to pull us into their grave.
“We have to make the momentous choice between brief but true greatness and longer, continued mediocrity.”
In his conference invocation, Neil Patterson opened with Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen, “Words Before All Else,” the Haudenosaunee liturgy with a spoken refrain after each statement of truth, “and now we are of one mind.”
In the Tuscarora language he shared with us the gifts of each of our relations, and then reminded us that everything we need is provided for us and all we have to remember is to give thanks.
I am writing this from the back of the auditorium and the conference has only just begun but my guess is that nothing we will hear will be any wiser than that.
My own 30 minute talk in the first session was a biophysical critique of negative emissions technologies and a reminder that the Paris Agreement’s targets will require a 11 to 20 percent annual decline slope for energy and consumables for the duration of this century.
For those in this audience still struggling to imagine a future with the creature comforts of the late 20th century extended (or even enlarged) to a warming world of 10 to 12 billion humans, these concepts are incomprehensible. They would prefer to grasp at straws like nuclear power or clean coal to sustain the unsustainable.
“Dry heaves are just nature’s way of demonstrating negative marginal utility.”
— Kent Klitgaard, Wells College
“I don’t know how you would teach the dinosaurs to be optimistic about the asteroid.”
— Charles A.S. Hall
I am reminded of Col. Creighton S. Abrams famous words from the Battle of the Bulge, “They’ve got us surrounded again, the poor bastards.” Some of us were trying to design some way for civilization to cope at a lower level of complexity, returning to nature’s all-wise fold, while others were trying to tweak the built environments and pedagogy of the colleges where they teach in hopes the problem will be solved by some kind of fairy dust invented by the next generation, or the one after that. Queue the economics lecture on discounting present value.
“Systemic overshoot can’t grow its way into sustainability.”
— Kent Klitgaard
“The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off.” We can see in numerous ways how finite the biosphere is and how humans have been pushing beyond natural boundaries in what seems to be 100 years of miracles of engineering until we suddenly recognize we have been burning the 400 million-year-old furniture all this time and now the house has caught fire.
— Gloria Steinhem
“What we are seeing is just the outer bands of a shitstorm we are not prepared for.”
— James Howard Kunstler
By diminishing the capacity of nature we have been steadily been decreasing our own resilience, our margin for error, placing our own species in the queue for extinction. We can hope to build adaptive capacity but ultimately are limited by factors we are powerless to change, like the ability of mammals with sweat glands to cool their bodies after the world average temperature exceeds 7 degrees of change. Some millions of years from now we will be that dark layer at the bottom of the waterfall: the Anthropocene shale.
“Lest we forget,” Charles A.S. Hall said, “Cassandra was right.”
hieroglyphic stairway
it’s 3:23 in the morning and I’m awake because my great great grandchildren won’t let me sleep my great great grandchildren ask me in dreams what did you do while the planet was plundered? what did you do when the earth was unraveling? surely you did something when the seasons started failing? as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying? did you fill the streets with protest when democracy was stolen? what did you do once you knew? I’m riding home on the Colma train I’ve got the voice of the milky way in my dreams I have teams of scientists feeding me data daily and pleading I immediately turn it into poetry I want just this consciousness reached by people in range of secret frequencies contained in my speech I am the desirous earth equidistant to the underworld and the flesh of the stars I am everything already lost the moment the universe turns transparent and all the light shoots through the cosmos I use words to instigate silence I’m a hieroglyphic stairway in a buried Mayan city suddenly exposed by a hurricane a satellite circling earth finding dinosaur bones in the Gobi desert I am telescopes that see back in time I am the precession of the equinoxes, the magnetism of the spiraling sea I’m riding home on the Colma train with the voice of the milky way in my dreams I am myths where violets blossom from blood like dying and rising gods I’m the boundary of time soul encountering soul and tongues of fire it’s 3:23 in the morning and I can’t sleep because my great great grandchildren ask me in dreams what did you do while the earth was unraveling? I want just this consciousness reached by people in range of secret frequencies contained in my speech
Image above: Likely methane off-gassing from the breakdown of carbon in sediments below the lake, keeps the water from freezing in spots, outside Fairbanks, Alaska, October 21, 2011. From original article. Photo by Josh Haner.
A scientific study published in the prestigious journal Palaeoworld in December issued a dire -- and possibly prophetic -- warning, though it garnered little attention in the media.
"Global warming triggered by the massive release of carbon dioxide may be catastrophic," reads the study's abstract. "But the release of methane from hydrate may be apocalyptic."
The study, titled "Methane Hydrate: Killer Cause of Earth's Greatest Mass Extinction," highlights the fact that the most significant variable in the Permian Mass Extinction event, which occurred 250 million years ago and annihilated 90 percent of all the species on the planet, was methane hydrate. To see more stories like this, visit "Planet or Profit?"
In the wake of that mass extinction event, less than 5 percent of the animal species in the seas lived, and less than one-third of the large land animal species made it. Nearly all the trees died.
Methane hydrate, according to the US Office of Fossil Energy, "is a cage-like lattice of ice inside of which are trapped molecules of methane, the chief constituent of natural gas."
While there is not a scientific consensus around the cause of the Permian Mass Extinction, it is widely believed that massive volcanism along the Siberian Traps in Russia led to tremendous amounts of CO2 being added to the atmosphere.
This then created enough warming to cause the sudden release of methane from the Arctic sea floor, which kicked off a runaway greenhouse effect that led to sea-level increase, de-oxygenation, major oceanic circulation shifts and increased acidification of the oceans, as well as worldwide aridity on land.
The scenario that humans have created by way of the industrial growth society is already mimicking these eventualities, which are certain to worsen.
"The end Permian holds an important lesson for humanity regarding the issue it faces today with greenhouse gas emissions, global warming, and climate change," the abstract of the recent study concludes.
As the global CO2 concentration continues to climb each year, the threat of even more abrupt methane additions continues to escalate along with it.
The Methane Time Bomb
The methane hydrate situation has, for years now, been referred to as the Arctic Methane Time Bomb, and as been studied intensely.
"significant increases in methane emissions are likely, and catastrophic emissions cannot be ruled out.… The risk of rapid increase in [methane] emissions is real."
A 2011 study of the Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS), conducted by more than 20 Arctic experts and published in the Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences, concluded that the shelf was already a powerful supplier of methane to the atmosphere.
The conclusion of this study stated that the methane concentration in the atmosphere was at levels capable of causing "a considerable and even catastrophic warming on the Earth."
Of course, that level of planetary heating would likely extinguish most life on the planet, so whatever the economic costs might be would be irrelevant.
"Highly Possible at Any Time"
The ESAS is the largest ice shelf in the world, encompassing more than 2 million square kilometers, or 8 percent of the world's total area of continental shelf.
In 2015, Truthout spoke with Natalia Shakhova, a research associate professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks' International Arctic Research Center, about the ESAS's methane emissions.
"These emissions are prone to be non-gradual (massive, abrupt) for a variety of reasons," she told Truthout. "The main reason is that the nature of major processes associated with methane releases from subsea permafrost is non-gradual."
Shakhova warned that a 50-gigaton -- that is, 50-billion-ton -- "burp" of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost beneath the ESAS is "highly possible at any time."
This, Shakhova said, means that methane releases from decaying frozen hydrates could result in emission rates that "could change in order of magnitude in a matter of minutes," and that there would be nothing "smooth, gradual or controlled" about it. She described it as a "kind of a release [that] is like the unsealing of an over-pressurized pipeline."
In other words, we could be looking at non-linear releases of methane in amounts that are difficult to fathom.
A study published in the prestigious journal Nature in July 2013 confirmed what Shakhova had been warning us about for years: A 50-gigaton "burp" of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost beneath the East Siberian sea is highly possible.
Such a "burp" would be the equivalent of at least 1,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide. (For perspective, humans have released approximately 1,475 gigatons in total carbon dioxide since the year 1850.)
The UK's Met Office considers the 50-gigaton release "plausible," and in a paper on the subject added, "That may cause ∼12-times increase of modern atmospheric methane burden, with consequent catastrophic greenhouse warming."
The waters of the Pacific off the California coast are transparently clear. Problem is: Clear water is a sign that the ocean is turning into desert (Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA).
From Alaska to Central America, and beyond, sea life has been devastated over the past three years like never before. Is it Fukushima, or nature running its own course, or some kind of perverse wrath emanating from global warming? For a hint, scientists refer to the lethal ocean warming over the past few years as “the Warm Blob.”
After all, global warming hits the ocean much, much harder than land. Up to 90% of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming is absorbed by the ocean, which is fortuitous for humans.
Just imagine the chaos if the situation were reversed: Mobs of regular ole people morphing into maddened gangs striving for food, huddled in far northern latitudes while Mid America scorches brittle crops in sandy soil, a dystopian lifestyle.
“Upper ocean heat content has increased significantly over the past two decades” (Source: Climate Change: Ocean Heat Content, NOAA, Climate.gov, July 14, 2015). More than 3,000 Argo floats strategically positioned worldwide measure ocean temps every 10 days.
Scientists classify the Warm Blob phenomenon as “multi-year ocean heat waves,” with temperatures 7° F above normal and up to 10°F above normal in extreme cases. How would humans handle temperatures, on average, 7° to 10°F above normal? There’d be mass migrations from Florida to Alaska, for sure.
As it happens, sea animals do not do well. They die in unbelievably massive numbers; all across the ocean… the animal die-offs are unprecedented. Scientists are stunned!
After years of horrendous worldwide sea animal die-offs, 2016 was a banner year. Is this out of the ordinary? Sadly, the answer is: Yes.
The numbers are simply staggering, not just in the Pacific, but around the world, e.g., the following is but a partial list during only one month (December 2016):
Tens of thousands of dead starfish beached in Netherlands;
Six-thousand dead fish in Maryland waterway;
Ten tons of dead fish in Brazilian river;
Tens of thousands of dead fish wash up on Cornwall, England beach;
Schools of dead herring in Nova Scotia;
One 100 tons of fish suddenly dead in Indonesia;
Massive fish deaths ‘state of calamity’ in Philippines;
Thousands of dead crayfish float down river in New Zealand;
Masses of dead starfish, crabs, and fish wash ashore in Nova Scotia, and there are more and more….
In fact, entire articles are written about specific areas of massive die offs, for example: “Why Are Chilean Beaches Covered With Dead Animals?” Smithsonian.com, May 4, 2016. Chilean health officials had to resort to heavy machinery to remove 10,000 dead rotting squid from coastlines earlier in the 2016 year.
Over 300 whale carcasses hit the beaches and 8,000 tons of sardines and 12% of the annual salmon catch… all found dead on beaches, to name only a few! You’ve gotta wonder why?
According to Nate Mantua, research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, California: “One of the things that is clear is there’s a lot of variation from year to year along the Pacific Coast, and some of that is tied into natural patterns, like El Niño,’ Mantua said. ‘But what we saw in 2014, ‘15 and the first part of ‘16 was warmer than anything we’ve seen in our historical records, going back about 100 years” (Mary Callahan, Year in Review: Ocean Changes Upend North Coast Fisheries, The Press Democrat, Dec. 25, 2016).
Fishermen bitterly claim the ocean is changing like never before. Meanwhile, scientists study those weird changes but do not fully understand the problem.
Unfortunately, the general public does not see changes hidden within water; otherwise, they, the general public, might organize and demand their politicians in Washington, D.C. fight climate change/global warming.
According to John Largier, professor of coastal oceanography at UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, “Climate change syndrome is definitely having an impact,” Ibid.
As it happens, the world climate system is interconnected, interwoven such that climatic stress originated at sea spills onto land, e.g., the Warm Blob was first observed and linked to a high-pressure ridge stationed over the north Pacific in 2011.
This ridge diverted winter storms, thereby exacerbating California’s drought meanwhile weakening winds that ordinarily absorb ocean heat and stir up the cold water necessary for immensely productive Northern Coast breeding grounds for marine wildlife.
Morosely, too-warm ocean water serves as breeding ground for the infamous deadly “red tide,” a bloom of single-celled organism that thrives in warmer waters, producing a neurotoxin called domoic acid, resulting in enormous numbers of sea lion fatalities and massive destruction of Dungeness crab fisheries and all kinds of other trouble.
Too-warm water also contributes to the collapse of bull kelp forests, which are the ocean’s equivalent of the tropical rain forest; meanwhile, purple urchins thrive and multiply in explosive fashion in the poisonous environment, devouring remaining plant life. Thereby, out-competing hapless red abalone, the shellfish that people love.
Collapsing food chains are evident up and down the Pacific Coast earmarked by large die offs of Cassin Auklets, a tiny seabird, as well as massive numbers of Common Murres. The sea lions and fur seals suffer from starvation and domoic acid poisoning. In early 2013 scientists declared the sea lion die-off an “unusual mortality event.”
Nursing sea lion mothers are unable to find enough forage like sardines and anchovies. Pups, searching for food, strand on beaches filled with curious sunbathers with a natural proclivity to cuddle the hapless cuties that could easily result in fierce attacks. As it happens, lifeguards run along sandy beaches warning beachcombers beware!
Still, wildlife die-offs are an ancient phenomenon, mentioned by Aristotle in his Historia Animalium (4th Century B.C.). In the U.S. in 1884, hundreds of tons of dead fish bellied up in lakes around Madison, Wisconsin. This knowledge of the past gives one pause when considering whether an all-out alarm is warranted this time around. After all, isn’t it nature’s way?
No, this time it is different, much different. The all-out alarm is warranted with bells clanging! Yes, of course part of nature’s cycle over the eons involves wildlife die-offs. That’s nature, but nowadays nature is out-of-whack! Ring the bells; blast the sirens!
As published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Recent Shifts in the Occurrence, Cause, and Magnitude of Animal Mass Events, Vol. 112, no. 4, Aug. 5, 2014) it was found that worldwide animal die-offs are increasing in both number and magnitude, even after statistically correcting for the fact that mass deaths are now more likely to be documented than in the past.
“Every biologist I spoke with who is researching mass-mortality events said that many wildlife die-offs today really could be signals of serious problems with the ecological fundamentals of the planet” (Source: J.B. MacKinnon, On Animal Deaths and Human Anxieties, The New Yorker, April 21, 2015). That is the worst possible news you can ever hear.
As for only one example amongst many, the typical number of bird deaths per reported die-off was about 100 in the 1940s. Today it is 10,000 and reported much more frequently than 75 years ago.
Bottom line, the ocean ecosystem is under fierce attack, and it is real, very real indeed with too much global warming, too much ag runoff, too much heavy-duty massive overfishing, likely too much nuclear radiation.
The ocean absorbs anthropogenic CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, similar to the upper atmospheric The ocean absorbs 90% of the heat that is generated CO2. Thank your lucky stars for that… but only temporarily!
There is deadly acidification in the ocean caused by excessive CO2 concentrations (already damaging pteropods at the base of the marine food chain).
As stated by the Environmental Defense Fund: “Oceans are at the Brink”- For decades, the ocean has been absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) dumped into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. It has absorbed a lot of the extra heat produced by elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. But even the ocean has limits!
Going forward, how will the Trump administration confront this messy, possibly fatal and very complex situation, since fossil fuels are the main driver behind climate change/global warming?
Will the Trump administration initiate a nationwide renewable energy plan, similar to Communist China? Accordingly: (Michael Forsythe, China Aims to Spend at Least $360 Billion on Renewable Energy by 2020, New York Times, January 5, 2017)
Image above: Flames along the south side of California State Route 138 in Phelan, California, on August 17, 2016. As climate disruption intensifies, wildfires will be burning well into winter. Photo by Andrew Cullen for The New York Times. From original article.
This is the first anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) dispatch to be written since the election, which heralded the arrival of a president-elect who will become the only western leader who is an ACD denier.
While President Obama remained clearly in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, with his unwillingness to take the radical actions necessary to mitigate (if even nominally) the already-dire impacts of ACD, he was, at least, willing to admit we live in a crisis never seen before.
As if underscoring the specter of Trump -- and Obama's failure to take appropriate measures, as the proverbial Titanic gurgles ever downward -- the Arctic has been especially warm over the last few weeks. During the second half of November, temperatures at the North Pole were a shocking 36 degrees warmer than normal.
During a time when winter usually sets in and the Arctic sea ice freezes up, ice has been melting instead of freezing. Temperatures in late November were akin to what they normally are at the end of August.
It was Gaia sending yet another unmistakable message, and it was profound enough that Bob Henson with the WeatherUnderground said, "There are weather and climate records, and then there are truly exceptional events that leave all others in the dust. Such has been the case across Earth's high latitudes during this last quarter of 2016."
For perspective, add 36 degrees to whatever your weather is right now, wherever you are. How normal is that? Think about how plants and animals in your area would or wouldn't adapt to that. What would happen to your food and water supply?
To give you another idea of how dramatically things have already changed in the Arctic as the region is in the midst of an ecological disintegration, Captain Cook's records of the region from 1778 reveal a literally different world. His expedition was stopped from sailing north of the Bering Strait by "ice which was as compact as a Wall and seemed to be ten or twelve feet high at least," according to the captain's journal.
In continued attempts to sail further north, Cook's ships followed this ice edge all the way to Siberia, but to no avail.
Meanwhile, back in the 21st century, longtime climate scientists are emphasizing that we're currently seeing an unprecedented situation.
Two days after it was revealed that temperatures at the North Pole were 36 degrees above normal, Walt Meier, a research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who has tracked sea ice data going back to 1979, announced, "It looks like, since the beginning of October, that for the first time we are seeing both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice running at record low levels."
According to the recently released annual "Emissions Gap Report" from the UN's Environmental Program (UNEP), current Paris Climate Agreement emissions cuts will still result in 3.5C of planetary warming by 2100. "Current commitments will reduce emissions by no more than a third of the levels required by 2030 to avert disaster," two UNEP leaders warned in the report's introduction.
Recently published research in a prestigious scientific journal shows that ACD is likely already progressing so rapidly that scientists are warning it could well already be "game over." Because the research shows that Earth's climate could be far more sensitive to greenhouse gases than previously believed, they are warning of a temperature rise that is on the "apocalyptic side of bad:" more than 7C within one lifetime from now.
Less importantly, but still shocking and useful to consider (especially since plenty of people seem to believe economics are more important than a habitable planet): Another recent report estimates that the world economy will lose $12 trillion due to ACD damages alone.
A recent report in Bloomberg News lays out the fact that Americans around the US (Florida, Louisiana, East Coast island areas, Alaska, etc.) are already being forced to move due to ACD impacts like storms, erosion and rising seas.
Meanwhile, the global immigration crisis caused by ACD continues apace. A recent report shows that global military leaders have warned of an "unimaginable" global refugee crisis if business as usual persists, and, of course, there is no real sign of it abating.
Brig. Gen. Stephen Cheney, a member of the US Department of State's foreign affairs policy board and CEO of the American Security Project, said, "We're already seeing migration of large numbers of people around the world because of food scarcity, water insecurity and extreme weather, and this is set to become the new normal."
An example of this within the US comes in the form of record-setting wildfires that have been burning across vast swaths of the southeast well into November. You'll find more on this below in the "Fire" section, but it's crucial to note that one of the wildfires scorching Tennessee is the largest in a century, and perhaps in the history of record-keeping. At least a dozen people have died across the southeast from the November wildfires, which are continuing to burn at the time of this writing.
The overview of the oceans continues to grow ever more bleak.
A recent report indicates that ocean life is literally suffocating from low oxygen levels caused by ACD. The report shows that oceans, coastal seas, estuaries, and many rivers and lakes are experiencing dramatic declines in dissolved oxygen levels, and this phenomenon is occurring at a global level now.
As a whole, 2016 has been bleak news for anyone interested in the future of the planet. The World Meteorological Organization recently announced that this year is already "very likely" to be the world's warmest ever. 2015 was the previous hottest year on record, and at that time it was the hottest year since record-keeping began.
Earth
Die-offs of planetary flora and fauna continue to increase in scope and frequency.
A recent report revealed how rising sea levels are pushing saltwater further into US wetlands across the coastal southeast, as well as along parts of the east coast, killing trees from Florida all the way up to New Jersey.
Meanwhile in California, a US Forest Service official recently called the ongoing die-off of what is now over 100 million trees there "unprecedented," and blamed the brunt of it on the ongoing ACD-fueled drought afflicting that state.
Similarly, a recent study published in the journal Global Change Biology showed that yellow cedars in Alaska and British Columbia, trees that can live for 1,000 years, are now dying off over vast areas due to warming from ACD.
Trees across 1,500 square miles are now undergoing a die-off linked directly to ACD, and the forecast for them is grim, since approximately half of the forested area that is currently considered suitable for the yellow cedars will no longer be so by 2100 due to ongoing temperature rise and shifting of winter precipitation from snow to rainfall.
Another disturbing report showed that the world has hundreds of millions fewer birds than it did just a few decades ago, thanks to ACD impacts, dwindling habitat, hunters and pollution.
In the Arctic region of Russia, more than 80,000 reindeer have died as a result of retreating Arctic sea ice.
In a massive new study in the journal Nature, scores of international authors have documented a climate "feedback loop" that they say will likely make ACD considerably worse in upcoming decades. The study addresses the soil-carbon loop in the climate system, which deals primarily with Earth's soils.
Soils store a massive amount of carbon in their plants, and the roots of plants that have lived and died there. Scientists have long since warned that as warming increases, microorganisms living in soils would naturally respond by increasing their respiration rates, a process that then releases more CO2 or methane into the atmosphere. The new study shows that this process is already happening.
Water
As usual, the impacts of ACD across the planet are the most pronounced and obvious in the watery realms (which are increasingly losing their water).
A recently published study showed that, due to dramatically changed vegetation across the Mediterranean region, Spain could be a desert by the year 2100.
Across Africa, ongoing drought is destabilizing countries as it persists. It is the worst drought in 35 years, and has left more than 21 million people in need of food assistance. Unfortunately, yet not surprisingly, the United Nation's Special Envoy Macharia Kamau told journalists in Mozambique recently, "The crisis has yet to peak."
Drought continues plaguing large sections of China. In one region, China's largest freshwater lake is rapidly turning into prairie, as it has neared low-level lines nearly two months earlier than it has done historically.
Meanwhile in Bolivia, President Evo Morales has told people to "prepare for the worst" as the small Andean Mountain country is wracked by a historic drought. Reservoirs that supply water to Bolivia's largest city are now nearly empty.
The drought is primarily fueled by vanishing glaciers across the country, which are a key supplier of water during the dry season. Of course, the glaciers are melting away at record rates due primarily to ACD.
Closer to home, in Utah, recent NASA satellite imagery reveals that the Great Salt Lake is drying up rapidly, as five years of drought have seen the lake's area decrease by 40 percent.
Meanwhile, yet another study was published recently tying US western states' record low snowpack to ACD.
The climate has warmed so much in Canada, that the city of Montreal has invested $7.3 million to save its ice skating rinks. Incredibly, the money will be used to buy refrigerated ice skating rinks.
Looking further north, Russia, China and other countries are rapidly stepping up plans to exploit melting Arctic sea ice by making preparations for their large cargo ships to use the soon-to-be new shipping lanes. Once shipping begins, it will only be a matter of time before the inevitable environmental disasters start to occur in the Arctic.
In Antarctica things continue to worsen, as odd rifts in the middle of the ice shelf of that continent's Pine Island Glacier might be a sign of a new mechanism that could lead to that glacier's collapse, as well as the collapse of other glaciers.
Sea level rise continues apace. A recently published study shows us that ACD is set to cause the most rapid of sea level rise ever experienced in human history, which will make it challenging, to say the least, for megacities on the coasts to adapt. So far, several island and coastal towns facing sea level rise in the far north have had to relocate entirely.
On that note, the first female head of a Pacific Island nation, Hilda Heine of the Marshall Islands, recently told the press that ACD is a "matter of life and death" for her country.
Lastly in this section, a sign of things to come: In the wake of Hurricane Matthew, the town of Nichols, South Carolina was damaged so heavily by flooding that it is an open question as to whether it will be rebuilt at all.
Fire
Wildfires across the US continued to burn far into November, another sign of how far along we are, in terms of ACD impacts. Increasingly, there is no longer a contained wildfire "season," as the planet continues to warm apace.
From the southern US all the way up to New England, November saw fires burning across the country.
By late November, thousands of firefighters had mobilized to fight fires across the southeast, an area that rarely sees wildfires beyond the end of summer. At least 15 major wildfires across the region had, at the time of this writing, burned in excess of 15,500 acres -- including more than 15,000 acres in Great Smoky Mountains National Park -- and have led to several deaths.
Also in November, wildfires were burning across parts of New York, North Dakota and New Hampshire as well.
Welcome to the future of the US, where wildfires will be burning well into winter.
Air
Temperature records across the planet continue to be set at a record pace.
In the US, November saw several stunning examples of this. The mile-high city of Denver, Colorado saw 78 degrees well into November, while Dallas, Texas saw 88 degrees in the middle of that month.
As aforementioned, the Arctic saw stunningly warm temperatures in November, when one day in the latter part of that month several locations saw temperatures spike well over 36 degrees above average.
Meanwhile, global "weirding" continues, as a recent study showed that the polar vortex is shifting due to ACD, which means winters in eastern North America will be longer. The polar vortex is a zone of frigid air that encircles the Arctic and makes its presence known the most during the winter months.
Also in the Arctic, as that region warms, another recently published study showed that more ancient diseases that were buried deep in the permafrost will be released, posing increasing threats to humans and wildlife. Last summer, anthrax killed a 12-year-old boy in a remote area of Siberia, and at least 20 others in Siberia were diagnosed with the disease. (Twenty may not seem like a large number, but bear in mind that this is an extremely lightly populated area.) Scientists are expressing concern over the fact that infectious microorganisms are now emerging from their deep freeze as permafrost across the entire Arctic continues to melt at unprecedented rates.
Lastly, and quite alarmingly, another recent study showed that the planet is far more sensitive to greenhouse gas levels than previously believed. It showed that climate models are likely underestimating how sensitive the planet is, due to the fact that the greenhouse effect will be amplified the more temperatures increase.
This means the pace of ACD is about to accelerate.
Denial and Reality
Almost needless to say, the most important act of denial over the last month was the US electing an ACD denier into the highest office in the country. President-elect Trump now actively threatens to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreements, eviscerate the EPA and appoint fossil-fuel loyalists into key government positions.
Steve Bannon, who has emerged as Trump's chief strategist, has extreme views on many subjects, including ACD, which he calls an elaborate hoax. He refers to renewable energy as "a scam." Bannon is known for helping influence Trump's "views" on ACD and has called environmentalists "greentards" and "totally fucking wrong on climate change."
As is now well known, Trump has claimed that ACD is a "Chinese hoax." Inconveniently for Trump, during the recent UN Climate Summit in Morocco, China's vice foreign minister, Liu Zhenmin, told reporters that Trump is wrong to have accused China of portraying ACD as a "hoax."
"Look at the history of climate change negotiations, in fact [they were] launched in the late '80s under the administration of Republican President Reagan and George Bush, supported by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)," Liu told reporters, according to Bloomberg and reports from within the Chinese media.
The Republican Party, which continues to remain the only major political party on the planet that denies the reality of ACD, continues to be funded, backed and heavily controlled by the fossil fuel industry, hence its denial of ACD in order to protect profit-making.
Meanwhile, there is more news on the reality front than is even possible to keep up with.
The government of Australia's New South Wales recently unveiled a plan by which it aims to reach zero CO2 emissions by the year 2050 in order to work towards mitigating the worsening impacts of ACD as best as it can. It will do so primarily by making a concerted effort to shift over to renewable energies and increase battery storage capacity.
On a sobering note, a recently published study showed that the average American is responsible for melting 538 square feet of Arctic summer sea ice each year.
The UN's World Meteorological Organization announced in November that the past five years were the hottest ever on record, and that greenhouse gas emissions have increased the risks of extreme weather events by as much as tenfold.
Disturbingly, a recently published study that surveyed more than 250 different plants and animals found that their ability to adapt to changes in rainfall and temperature cannot keep pace with ACD-generated changes in their environments. In short, this means that the climate is changing "too fast" for species, according to the report.
Not that validation from fossil fuel companies is necessary to confirm the reality of ACD, but it is indeed nice to have. On November 1, Simon Henry, the chief financial officer for Shell, the world's second-largest oil company, said demand for oil will begin dropping permanently in the next five to 15 years, according to an article in World Oil. He went on to admit that his company will focus on making money by focusing on natural gas and renewable energy.
To conclude this month's dispatch, it's worth quoting the UN, which in November provided a very apocalyptic vision of the future of ACD, painting a picture of a changed world filled with famine, war and disease.
"We will grieve over the avoidable human tragedy; the growing numbers of climate refugees hit by hunger, poverty, illness and conflict will be a constant reminder of our failure to deliver," the UN warned, via its Environment Program. The UNEP released a report that predicted the Earth's temperature is already set to increase by up to 3.4C (above the preindustrial temperature baseline) by 2100. This temperature change should take at least tens of thousands of years to occur naturally, but will have been attained by humans in just a little over two centuries.
It is worth remembering that the rapidly increasing global temperature has consistently outpaced even the worst-case predictions by the UN. Predictions of warming that reaches 8C by 2100 have not been uncommon, with some predictions reaching 12C. Bear in mind that humans have never lived on a 3.5C-warmed planet.
With phenomenal ingenuity and extreme folly, technically-advanced humanity has managed to conceive and implement a technology that has done much harm to life, and will do much greater harm to life, and that even threatens our extinction.
Whether suddenly through nuclear war, or through a pernicious slow motion assault on life's wondrous, intricate, amazing inner workings and accurate reproductive capabilities, nuclear technology is inherently, inescapably, anti-life. Given that the rest of the marvels of creation – that which has so far survived us – is also along for the ride, it's not just about us.
One might wonder, if the rest of creation were capable of hope, if it would be clinging to the fading hope that humanity at this late hour would transform itself into a species characterized by a decisively dominant strain of sane, careful, sensible behavior, or, if it would be hoping for our demise, the sooner the better, come what may. If we are to extricate ourselves from the trap into which we have placed ourselves, it will take much more ingenuity, and much reduced folly.
This piece is an incomplete overview of our situation, intended to boost general understanding of these subjects. Some reflections on essential reforms close out the piece.
“[In 1936] ... [Fatu Hiva's ocean pools and shorelines] literally teemed with life.”
From the book Fatu-Hiva, By Thor Heyerdahl. (He lived on the Polynesian Island of Fatu-Hiva in 1936)
“[In 2015] … everything [flora and fauna] is missing!” [along the shorelines and in the tidal pools of British Columbia]
Dana Durnford's words, after his 15000 mile odyssey along the west coast of Canada in 2014 and 2015
The unprecedented mass mortality of much life in the North Pacific Ocean in recent years has been given inadequate coverage by corporate mass media, and has not gained widespread public awareness.
In local media close to the 'situation', there have been many reports of unusual numbers of deaths, of strange diseases, of mass disappearances of life forms. And sometimes these reports appear in national and international media. But such reports are typically brief, sporadic, disconnected from each other, and often narrowly focused.
Poorly represented has been the scale and breadth of the devastation: But then, no one knows just how many whales and sea lions and walrus and sardines and sea stars and mussels and sea urchins and sea birds, and countless other creatures large and small, have in recent years died, starved, disappeared, ‘melted away’ in the water, rotted on the shores. And we mustn't forget humans' industrial scale ocean 'harvest'.
But when one puts together the many reports, the scale of the disaster over recent years is pretty mind-boggling. Kelly Ann Thomas has compiled one such list. [1]
A few examples from my own notes:
From National Geographic online, 2015: “...a die off of sea stars...largest marine disease outbreak ever recorded....”; “... no one is sure what is causing it ….” “... we think there's [also] a wasting event going on with [sea] urchins.” [2]
California Senator Mike McGuire in 2015: “We are facing a fishery disaster ….” “... historic crisis [in] the salmon and crab fisheries.” [3]
On March 15, 2015, New Mexico State U. Online, asked what was killing Baja's marine animals, and reported decomposing gray whales, sea lions, dolphins, turtles, and birds on the beaches of Baja. [4]
Feb. 26, 2016 “Sardines off the West Coast [are forecast to be in 2016] 93% lower than in 2007.” [5]
National Geographic from Jan. 24, 2015 offers the headline: “Mass Death of Seabirds in Western U.S. is Unprecedented” [6]
From Alaska Dispatch news, January 29, 2016: “Scientists Think Gulf of Alaska's seabird die- off is biggest ever recorded”; “...staggering die-off … something is awry in the Gulf of Alaska ....” [7]
In August of 2014 large numbers of whales and common murres [ seabirds] were reported as dying along the Alaska coast. [8]
Alaska Dispatch News published an article on August 20, 2015, about the unusual number of dead whales being encountered. [9]
From the Toronto Globe and Mail, Aug. 12, 2013: “...sockeye salmon returns [to British Columbia] plunge to historic lows.” “... scientists don't know why the return numbers are so low.” [10]
From ENE news, citing a document from the Alaska Marine Science Symposium of Jan. 20-24, 2014: “During summer of 2011 it became evident to [Alaskan] coastal communities and wildlife management agencies that there was a novel disease outbreak occurring in several species of Arctic ice-associated seals. Gross symptoms included lethargy, no new hair growth, and skin lesions....”
The paper mentioned concerns that the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in March of 2011 might be implicated. The pdf document that ENE cited appears to be no longer available on line. [11]
National Geographic in 2013 reported that the quantity of dead stuff on the Pacific Ocean floor had 'mysteriously exploded' recently in many locations. [12]
California Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham in 2015: “Something's going on in the oceans [that] doesn't fit our historical understandings .... numerous anomalies ….” [13]
From a May 24, 2015 Talk Radio Europe interview with experienced small-boat sailor Ivan Macfadyen, commenting on his voyage across the Pacific from Australia to Japan in 2013: “Ten years ago [on an identical route and at the same time of year]
I could catch fish every day.” Macfadyen noted that in 2003 there were lots of birds, dolphins, turtles, whales, sharks; [But in 2013] “The ocean is broken.” “... quite literally there isn't any fish. … [fish and other lifeforms] are just all gone.” [14]
And Macfadyen again, commenting on his 2013 voyage: “We [saw] a whale, … 1000 miles south of Japan … with like a big tumor on the side of its head ….” [15]
Japanese scientists in 2013 reported finding radioactive cesium, from the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, in plankton [a basic part of the food chain of the ocean] at all ten places tested in the Pacific. [16]
Nature.com on Feb. 4, 2016, published a report by Japanese scientists that they had found on the Pacific coast of Japan a “decline in inter-tidal biota after … the Fukushima nuclear disaster.” “... the number of species and population densities in the inter-tidal zones were much lower at sites near … Fukushima.” [17]
The most revealing description of the situation on the Pacific coast of North America has been compiled by intrepid Canadian sailor and former diver Dana Durnford. In 2014 and 2015 he journeyed over 15000 miles by small boat to document the decimation of life in the tidal pools and along the shorelines of British Columbia.
Durnford took many thousands of photographs and filmed underwater, proving, in his own words, “just about everything [flora and fauna] is missing.”
Durnford also noted a very great decline in bird numbers, and in insects. Until recent years, the tidal pools and shorelines were home to diverse abundance: thousands of species of flora and fauna. [18]
Note that it has been two experienced sailors, Durnford and Macfadyen, independent human beings who love the ocean and who have witnessed the disaster in the Pacific at close quarters, who have given us especially compelling descriptions of the situation.
One might think that Durnford would have been lauded, especially in Canada, for his amazing determination to document, and to tell the world about, the situation along the Pacific shores. He has been largely ignored, when he isn't being vilified.
Latterly, he has had criminal charges brought against him in Canada, for criminal harassment. Here is one journalist's defense of Durnford. [19]
Marine scientists have seemed stumped to explain unprecedented mass mortality and disease in and around the North Pacific. The scientists typically vary from distraught perplexity to stabs in the dark: musings range from we don't know what's going on, to climate change, fungi, bacteria, viruses, over fishing, cyclical ups and downs, acidic water, domoic acid, warm water and cold water.
In fumbling for explanations for unprecedented recent death in the Pacific, there has been an obvious reluctance by scientists to assign significant suspicion to the unprecedented industrial/technological catastrophe which began in Japan at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactor complex on the shores of the Pacific on March 11th of 2011.
Four large nuclear reactors were destroyed, melting down and blowing up, and have for over five years released massive amounts of dangerous radioactive elements into the biosphere.
A typical example of the marginal status given to Fukushima radiation: The Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, Feb. 2016: “... Fukushima-derived radionuclides [have been detected] in a variety of marine products harvested off the western coast of North America....” The abstract opined that the level of radioactivity found was not a health problem. [20]
Significant for what is happening now in the Pacific,a study published in 1971, authored by E. J. Sternglass, titled 'Fallout and Reproduction of Ocean Fish Populations', showed the huge impact that nuclear fallout from atomic bomb testing had on life in the oceans.
From the study's summary statement: “...very large declines of fish-populations after low-altitude nuclear tests … have been observed in the Atlantic and Pacific, strongly suggesting that the eggs of fish and the developing young are far more sensitive to internal radiation … than had been anticipated, very much as is the case of the human-embryo and fetus.” [21]
So what about Fukushima?
There have been various attempts to quantify the amount and types of radioactive elements that have been released from Fukushima into the biosphere, but these are all guesswork handicapped by an official and corporate policy dedicated to lying and censoring. [22]
Three reactors were destroyed by powerful explosions. [23]
The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear site contained in total over 4000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear fuel. [24] Reactor 3 at Fukushima Dai-ichi contained especially dangerous fuel rods, combining plutonium with uranium. Much material from the exploding reactors, including reactor 3, was ejected into the biosphere, some circling the planet. [25]
The total amount of radioactive cesium-137 alone, contained in the spent fuel assemblies at Fukushima, is estimated by Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Adviser at the US Department of Energy, in an extraordinary letter to the author of Allegedly Apparent Blog, Michael Van Broekhoven, to be roughly 85 times the amount released by Chernobyl. [26]
In desperation, a large amount of sea water was sprayed onto the wrecked reactors. It is questionable whether this did more harm than good. The creation of durable spherical radioactive clusters of materials – buckeyballs – has been reported to be among the fruits of this labor. Some highly radioactive water has been collected in many hundreds of steel tanks of dubious quality. Much water sprayed went wherever water was able to go.
But there is also a large natural flow of water under the destroyed reactors. Extremely radioactive material from the reactors has likely burned its way into the ground below the reactors, to a depth which is either unknown or if known we are not being told, adding to the radioactive contamination of guesstimated hundreds of tonnes of water daily discharging into the Pacific Ocean for near five years now. [26]
In Nov. 2014, for example, TEPCO admitted that 400 tons of radioactivity-contaminated water was reaching the Pacific daily, and that measures to prevent the discharge had been unsuccessful. [28]
It should be emphasized that TEPCO has earned a reputation for hiding and minimizing and distorting the actual situation. And the Japanese government has attempted quite successfully to suppress honest reporting of the situation at Fukushima.
The destroyed reactors continue, and will continue, far into the future, to contaminate the environment with dangerous radionuclides. There remain unapproachable areas, and horrific problems defying solution.
Desperately, millions of large plastic bags of questionable durability have been filled with radioactive material, and this massive effort has managed to temporarily confine a tiny fraction of the radioactive contamination emitted over the five-plus years since the catastrophe.
Robots sent in to inspect areas of high radioactivity have been destroyed by the radioactivity. The Japanese, five years into the catastrophe, are still trying to determine how to proceed. [29]
Arnie Gundersen in 2012 collected 5 random soil samples from Tokyo and all five were radioactive enough to be classified as nuclear waste, under United States standards. [30]
“... 70 percent of [Japan is contaminated by Fukushima radioactivity] … 20 percent [of Japan] including Tokyo, is contaminated with highly toxic radiation.” [31] [32]
But the worst may yet be to come. A German study has predicted that Strontium-90 levels would rise and remain at high levels for many years after a meltdown such as Fukushima, And there is evidence for ongoing out of control fission at the destroyed reactors: long after the initial melt down and explosions, short-lived radioactive iodine-131 has been found both in Japan and on the other side of the planet. [33]
Over the last months of 2015 and in 2016, Michael van Broekhoven's Allegedly Apparent Blog has shone a near solitary public light on evidence indicating that some globally significant nuclear catastrophe has occurred recently.
He also offers evidence that radiation monitors around the world are routinely used to hide, not reveal, high radiation readings, as well as evidence that the situation at, and radiation from, the nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima, far from winding down, may be worsening. His work deserves serious attention. [34]
The Fukushima catastrophe obviously merited, and now perhaps more than ever, merits extreme political, scientific, engineering, mass media and public attention, reflection, and concern, and our utmost intelligence in brainstorming; and, to what extent possible, an all out mitigation response.
But this has not happened. So, not surprisingly, countless people are not even aware of the Fukushima disaster. And of those who do know about it, many think that the problem has been resolved, or is not all that serious.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
It has not been easy, from the very beginning of the nuclear age, to find out what's actually going on with nuclear mishaps, generally, because dishonesty and censorship have been the default position for the nuclear military and nuclear industry since its inception.
So, for example, the World Health Organization, which cheerfully announced immediately after the beginning of the Fukushima catastrophe that no increased cancer risk was to be expected, made a secret agreement in 1959 with the nuclear lobby and promoter IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to give the IAEA control over WHO pronouncements pertaining to radioactivity and human health. [35] Since the beginning of the atomic age, humanity has been the victim of both nuclear-related deception and radioactive contamination.
And what about the health impact from Fukushima on the Japanese people? In Sept. of 2015, the Asia-Pacific Journal published a study by Eiichiro Ochiai titled 'The Human Consequences of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plants Accidents'. [36]
Ochiai's document includes the important point that damage from chronic exposure to radioactivity is strongly related to whether that exposure is through internal contamination. This critical difference between internal and external exposure to radioactivity has been largely ignored by 'official' bodies and pronouncements and standards regarding the health impact of radiation.
Another key defect in the conventional depiction of the dangers of chronic radiation exposure is that genetic damage, reproductive problems, mutations, chromosomal abnormalities and the like – the entire spectrum of DNA damage, which may endure for generations – is largely ignored. [37]
Cancer risk is highlighted, then minimized. Little mention is made of the hundreds of other serious ailments which increased exposure to artificial radionuclides is implicated as contributing to.
From Ochiai's document: [“... as a result of the Fukushima accident”] “All indications are that incidence of many diseases is increasing not only in Fukushima but also all over Japan.” Ochiai shows charts based on data from Japanese hospitals for incidents of various diseases for the years 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
At the Fukushima Prefectural Medical School, data is for the years 2010 to 2012. Here are the figures for 2010 (before Fukushima) compared to 2012 (two years after Fukushima) : cataracts up 227%; angina up 157%; bleeding in brain up 300%; lung cancer up 163%; esophagus cancer up 122%; stomach cancer up 129%; cancer in small intestine up 400%; colon cancer up 297%; prostate cancer up 300%.
Ochiai included data from fifteen Prefectures re thyroid cancer. Rates went up in all areas, with Japan as a whole having a 148% increase from 2010 to 2013. Incidents of myocardial infarction increased in all 13 prefectures listed; Japan as a whole 151%. Acute leukemia increased 142% overall. The author comments that his data represents only the “tip of the iceberg”.
On Oct. 15, 2015, Japanese Professor Toshihide Tsuda announced the results of an epidemiological study of thyroid cancer in Fukushima prefecture since the catastrophe, and described the increase as “drastic”. The increase was 20 to 50 times 'normal', depending on the specific area and amount of contamination, and this increase was far beyond what the WHO had predicted.
And based on the Chernobyl experience, cited below, an estimated 1000 additional thyroid problems can be expected for every cancer, as a result of heavy radioactive contamination. Tsuda pointed out that preventative iodine had not been given to vulnerable people after the Fukushima disaster, which might have prevented many of the subsequent thyroid problems. [38]
In an interview published Mar. 18, 2016 Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds has disclosed that there has been “a huge spike in the death rates within Fukushima Prefecture for young children....” This information has been suppressed. [39]
One chronological retrospective on Fukushima is found at Modern Survival Blog. [40]
For extraordinary pertinent musical poetry from Japan, attend this video. [41]
Leaving Fukushima for the moment, what can we learn about the health repercussions from massive releases of artificial radioisotopes from the global nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl in 1986?
An extremely disturbing and illuminating work on the effects of serious and chronic human-created radiation exposure is the detailed examination of the impact of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the book: 'Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment'. [42]
The book has been largely ignored by corporate mass media, and when mentioned, attempts have been made to denigrate it, belittling its competence, methods, and conclusions. This denigration is due to the threat that the document poses to the nuclear delusion: The Chernobyl study is not a good news story.
The Chernobyl book above was based on approximately 5000 studies, but the authors point out that these were only a fraction of those available. Many of the studies were in the Russian language, and some have still not been translated.
The document notes that Chernobyl radiation harmed all life forms studied. And the authors assert that at the time of writing the document, the problems were increasing on the whole, not decreasing.
Here are a few examples of what was found:
Thirteen European countries had over half of their area contaminated, and some European countries have areas that remain contaminated, nearly thirty years later. For example, 10,000 farms in the United Kingdom were contaminated. [43] Four hundred million people live within significantly contaminated areas, and 5 million still live in areas of high contamination in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
The quantity of deposition of dangerous radioactive material varied greatly from place to place, over the entire northern hemisphere. Many different types of conglomerations of radioactive elements were emitted.
Marked increases in a myriad of non-malignant and malignant health problems, including damage to reproductive health and the immune system, have been observed and recorded in the populations exposed to Chernobyl contamination. Over vast areas and in diverse populations and in all age groups that experienced contamination, there has been greatly increased morbidity. In many instances this increase has worsened steadily over time.
Prior to Chernobyl, healthy children were the norm in all countries in question. After Chernobyl, especially in places of heavy contamination, healthy children became fewer, with some areas now reporting virtually no healthy children.
Contaminated areas of Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia have seen the percentage of ‘practically healthy’ children reduced from 80 or 90% of the child population prior to Chernobyl, to less than 20% more recently.
Markedly higher death rates, reproductive disabilities, low birth weights, and a wide range of illnesses and diseases, and greatly increased numbers of invalid children, were documented in areas of serious contamination. There was a continuing deterioration in the health of children exposed to serious radiation, even from the late 1990s into the new millennium.
There were increases in stillbirths, miscarriages, infant mortality and congenital malformations in many countries following the Chernobyl disaster.
The hundreds of thousands of people – the ‘liquidators’ - who worked in close proximity to the reactor site in the attempt to mitigate the disaster; have experienced extreme decline of well being and greatly increased morbidity. For example, for the Ukraine among liquidators about one in twenty remained reasonably healthy by 2004, and those suffering chronic illness increased 600%.
Russian men, young and healthy prior to Chernobyl, and who participated in cleanup and mitigation efforts, suffered a severe decline in health, leaving only 2% healthy by 1992. By 2004 nearly two thirds of Russian liquidators were disabled.
Accelerated aging was documented in both children and adults living in heavily contaminated areas. Diseases of the blood, circulatory and lymphatic systems increased markedly in populations living in areas of radioactive contamination, as did increases of chromosomal aberrations, mutations, and Down syndrome.
Thyroid problems increased greatly, with 1000 thyroid problems for every thyroid cancer. The damage by Chernobyl radiation to the endocrine system was far greater than previously expected, with millions seriously affected. Immune system impairment strongly correlated with exposure to radiation.
Marked increases in respiratory system problems were documented. A wide range of reproductive system disorders increased greatly in heavily contaminated areas. Serious radiation exposure was strongly associated with impaired brain function and mental health problems.
There have been many surprises: for example, Cesium-137 has been far more persistent than predicted; hot particles are breaking down quickly into a surprising melange of radioactivity; Highly soluble Strontium-90 and Americium-241 are moving through the food chain much more rapidly than had been predicted.
Levels of contamination in plants vary widely, even within species. There was increased and widespread genetic damage, tumour-like growth, and mutation in many plant species in areas of high contamination as compared to areas of low contamination.
Since Chernobyl, in heavily contaminated areas, all resident animal species studied have exhibited increased genetic abnormalities and increased mortality, and generally, the same damage that humans have suffered. This will continue far into future.
In less than half a year after Chernobyl, in heavily contaminated areas, marine species had decreased by up to four fifths of their pre-catastrophe numbers. Bird populations in heavily contaminated areas were greatly reduced.
So where are we? Even without Chernobyl and Fukushima, we were not doing well, us talented, foolish, war-making humans. Neither to ourselves or the rest of life on the planet. The oceans would have been in trouble without Fukushima.
And on land all the creatures that compete in any way with us, or whose death profits us – the lions and tigers and bears and elephants and giraffes and gorillas, etc – would have been in trouble at our hands had we never gone down the cursed nuclear path.
The more fragile creatures, the butterflies and birds and bees and the rest, would be in trouble given a human globe-spanning culture that combines dirty technology and 'living better with chemistry' with a chronic inclination for war, greed, and a too general insensitivity to nature; even if we were without one nuclear bomb or reactor.
But the atomic bomb and the nuclear reactor have introduced a new deadly circumstance. We have been teetering on the edge of nuclear weapons being used in a cataclysmic war since shortly after the second world war.
And nuclear technology, which creates, and spread around the planet, countless new alien atoms that are inherently inimical to life, is also a pernicious step too far, even if nuclear war were to be averted permanently.
As adjuncts to the bomb, many hundreds of nuclear power plants, civilian and military, have been built. There have been catastrophic accidents, with many accidents larger and smaller covered up, and lied about.
Whether from sabotage, from negligence, from stupidity, from natural disasters, from engineering faults, from war, from major coronal ejections that periodically strike earth, more reactors will go badly wrong. And at the best of times, and chronically, as part of normal operating procedure, nuclear reactors contribute to increasing levels of artificial, inimical-to-life radionuclides in the biosphere. [44]
At the dawn of the possibility of a new benign-energy age, at that moment in history when we have created the basis of a transition to a relationship with the natural world that is predominantly respectful and careful, some countries are building new nuclear reactors.
Those hundreds of nuclear power plants already built are aging, deteriorating, often leaking unannounced radioactivity, becoming more and more susceptible to breakdown, and are ever-present terrorist targets; and some are being re-licensed for financial gain in rickety old age, when it had been previously announced they would be 'decommissioned'. [45]
And we still don't really know what to safely do with the highly radioactive results of running nuclear reactors. Fukushima and Chernobyl have been and remain and will continue to be catastrophic problems. But apart from those two majorly lethal conundrums, massive amounts of highly radioactive waste in thousands of locations remain a permanent disposal problem and danger.
Future generations has been given the unwelcome and unasked for task of guarding, paying for, dealing with, being injured by, and having their lives and prospects and social options lessened by this most hellish means by which water is boiled to make electricity for us, and by which nuclear weapons' essential needs are met.
So, wherein does our best chance lie of reducing the harm and risk of our nuclear folly? How do we provide the basis by which we could begin to dismantle our folly and reconstruct cultures that are viable.
Those iconic personages Albert Einstein and Dwight Eisenhower are among the many concerned people who have located hope for policy sanity in an informed public:
Einstein found our “only hope” [regarding nuclear technology] in “an informed citizenry” [that] “will act for life and not for death.”
Eisenhower offered that
“only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Note well: they did not base their hope on experts or oligarchs or generals or silly people who are enthralled by the illusion of their own extraordinary intelligence. They based hope on a well informed us.
Implied in Einstein and Eisenhower's hope is that the broad public, well informed, has a far greater potential repository of creativity and common sense and decency and such – beneficent functionality - than any cult, tribe, institution or faction thereof.
If indeed an informed public is essential, then modern mass media is largely a hope destroyer: the current use of mass media is largely as a 'public perception management' tool on behalf of demented control freaks and oligarchic wannabees; most mass media is used to brainwash, sell, propagandize, censor, mislead, confuse.
Much of so-called journalism is a real-journalism-free zone. This is lethally dysfunctional and must be overcome. Significant steps in the right direction can be taken via intelligent political initiative, mandating and giving financial and legal aid to priority-sensitive free and full discourse and unfettered information in media.
The real world is challenging enough at the best of times. It requires all the realism and intelligence and heart we can muster. We cannot attain a cultural predominance of sensible public policy via lies and censorship.
If we are to salvage any kind of reasonably benign and propitious human prospect, we must achieve a dominant public discourse which is integrity and forthrightness based. Such honesty is the nemesis of criminals and tyrants, but the indispensable basis for sound public and personal decisions. Again, a fully well informed public is our best chance.
And we might use direct democracy mechanisms – that is to say – a fully politically empowered public - to override the pernicious dysfunctions and corruptions of so many institutions. From Paul Craig Roberts' discerning perspective, every public and most private institutions in the United States are corrupt. [46] The same problem is commonplace in most other countries.
Often the basic source of dysfunction in institutions lies at the executive and managerial level, with political and corporate appointees serving agendas other than the broad public interest.
Direct democracy procedures can be used to set primary policies, select real good leaders to executive positions, and to monitor them, and to replace the inadequate or corrupt people that have been appointed or have wormed their way into so many positions of power.
Local and national direct democracy, informed by honest and free and full public discourse, offers the possibility of achieving genuine public-interest and planetary-interest cultural reform.
We might also begin what has become a more and more desperate journey towards cultural sanity by recognizing the artificiality of all financial barriers for undertaking a full effort to fix deadly problems, especially the nuclear one: unlimited credit is just sane policy away. If trillions can be handed to criminal and dysfunctional banks, trillions can be endowed for beneficent and necessary public and earthly purposes.
The current global financial system is in effect and in fact a criminal system which predominantly serves narrow private interests, and oligarchic agendas and enterprises; and is parasitic upon the people of the planet, and egregiously, tragically disabling of the human prospect. To transform the current global private-interest-enabling financial system into forms that function as in effect public utilities, serving broad human and earthly interests, is necessary and possible. [47]
Another essential reform is to place corporations under, not over, the public and earthly interest. It is self-destructive madness to allow the narrow interests of corporations to trump essential human needs, and the well being of the biosphere. And those individuals who guide corporations and may reap great financial gain and social and political influence through corporate power, are largely immune from paying an appropriate personal penalty for corporate crimes committed and harm done. This too can and must be corrected.
The over-riding need is to transition to a global diversity of cultures that have in common the attempt to function in harmony with each other and the biosphere: Good people, clean air, good nourishment, good water, respecting and caring about all life on the planet. [48]
If we can't achieve essential basic improvements, but cling to a culture of deception, criminality, brutality and dysfunction, then the horrors of the last generations, such as the first and second world wars, the horrors of the war of aggression inflicted upon the innocents of IndoChina, the 2011 destruction of beautiful Libya, Chernobyl's disabled children, the Fukushima catastrophe, a terribly harmed North Pacific, and many more already achieved large crimes and big sorrows, are prelude to even greater horror.
“The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.” JFK, in his inaugural address.
Video above: A drone buzzes Fukushima temporary a seemingly endless storage facility for bags of nuclear waste shown on Russia Times. From (https://youtu.be/UCP7PFT9coU).
[23] It has been repeatedly reported that all the explosions at Fukushima were hydrogen explosions. But this is at best extremely dubious: In the cases of reactors 3 and 4, especially, the explosions were powerful enough to cause massive structural damage, including to heavily reinforced concrete walls. Here are photographs of the results: http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm ; here is a link to a video of the explosion of reactor 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7naSc81WSqA Note the yellow flash near midpoint of video, and the enormous detonation force. Among many who consider the hydrogen explosion theory dubious, Japanese reactor designer Setsuo Fujiwara has been quoted as offering that the explosion at reactor 3 gives clear evidence of being a nuclear explosion: http://enenews.com/reactor-designer-it-was-a-nuclear-explosion-at-fukushima-unit-3-plutonium-was-scattered-after-blast-abc-theres-willful-denial-and-lying-going-on-here-even-at-the-highest-levels How Reactor 4, which was not running at the time, was destroyed by a massive explosion also remains unclear. So much has not been explained; so many lies told: The melt down of reactor cores has been blamed on the failure of back up generators, but that doesn't explain the failure of the emergency systems for circulating cooling water, which were steam driven and not dependent on electricity.
[35] http://agreenroad.blogspot.ca/2014/05/who-is-iaea-what-does-iaea-do-who-funds.html For a lucid interview on WHO corruption re radioactive dangers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftU9BIclJrM To compound the difficulties of making sense of things nuclear, sudden high radioactivity readings around the planet often coincide with monitors being turned off and gaps in data, as independent sleuth Michael Van Broekhoven has repeatedly reported. https://allegedlyapparent.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/peculiar-radiation-spikes-in-europe-early-march-2016-suggest-mystery-radiological-emergency-is-ongoing/
[36] Eiichiro Ochiai also noted the consistent turning off of monitors in Japan to coincide with spikes in radioactivity. http://apjjf.org/-Eiichiro-Ochiai/4382
[44] Dr. Dr. Gofman Professor Emeritus, and pioneer in nuclear physics, at the University of California, Berkley: "Licensing a nuclear power plant is in my view, licensing random premeditated murder.” http://www.ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/nwJWG.html
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