In the December episode of Nature Bats Last Professor Guy McPherson and Kevin Hester interview Roger Hallam from the Extinction Rebellion movement. “We are joined today by Roger Hallam from Wales, who has been an organic farmer for the last two decades. He’s been an activist since his early teens some three-and-a-half decades ago. For the last four years, he has been conducting researcher as a Ph.D. candidate at King’s College in London, England. As an indication of his commitment to activism, Roger has been arrested ten times in the last year, he has conducted two hunger strikes, and he received a jail sentence for nonviolent direct actions.” Please bare with the minor audio glitches at the beginning of the show, the two hosts and guest were in three different countries!
Anson Nash and Kevin Hester continue their extinction dialogues discussing strategies for managing grief and doing meaningful work at the edge of extinction, including installing Penguin breeding nests on Rakino Island .
“Researching and writing about the impacts of runaway climate change, as I’ve been doing now for too many years, I’ve watched several patterns recur.”
“One of these is evident in a recent warning from the UN. Biodiversity chief of the UN Cristiana Pașca Palmer warned that if governments around the globe don’t work to bring a halt to the loss of biodiversity and succeed in implementing a plan to do so within two years, humans could face our own extinction.”
What on earth does anyone expect these opportunists to achieve in two years when in reality the situation deteriorates by the hour?
Dahr Jamail’s latest article which we discussed is embedded here; In the Face of Extinction, We Have a Moral Obligation.
Dahr will be publishing his latest book “The End of Ice” on January 15th 2019.
In July next year he will be coming to Australia and Aotearoa NZ on a book launch tour.
I’ll be co-ordinating the NZ leg with speaking engagements already planned at Mangarara Eco Lodge and I’ll be looking for venues and organisers in Wellington, Auckland and on the mainland, please contact me if you wish to be involved in any capacity. I will be interviewing Dahr Jamail on Nature Bats Last on The Progressive Radio Network on February 6th just after the book has been launched.
The show and the previous 121 episodes can be found in the NBL archives at PRN.FM
The issue of a nuclear winter being used to cool the overheating planet was discussed and has been covered previously on this blog here; The Inevitability of Nuclear War and Subsequent Nuclear Winter
“U.S. Military World’s Largest Polluter – Hundreds Of Bases Gravely Contaminated
Producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined, the U.S. Department of Defense has left its toxic legacy throughout the world in the form of depleted uranium, oil, jet fuel, pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange and lead, among other pollutants.”
“One of the most recent testaments to the U.S. military’s horrendous environmental record is Iraq.”
“U.S. military action there has resulted in the desertification of 90 percent of Iraqi territory, crippling the country’s agricultural industry and forcing it to import more than 80 percent of its food. The U.S.’ use of depleted uranium in Iraq during the Gulf War also caused a massive environmental burden for Iraqis. In addition, the U.S. military’s policy of using open-air burn pits to dispose of waste from the 2003 invasion has caused a surge in cancer among U.S. servicemen and Iraqi civilians alike.”
“The 20,000 tons of “stressors” mentioned in the EIS do not account for the additional 4.7 to 14 tons of “metals with potential toxicity” that the Navy plans to release annually, from now on, into inland waters along the Puget Sound in Washington state.”
“In response to concerns about these plans, a Navy spokeswoman said that heavy metals and even depleted uranium are no more dangerous than any other metal, a statement that represents a clear rejection of scientific fact. It seems that the very U.S. military operations meant to “keep Americans safe” come at a higher cost than most people realize – a cost that will be felt for generations to come both within the United States and abroad.” This story is continued at U.S. Military Worlds Largest Polluter
“Internal documents obtained by the Japan Times offer evidence that the contamination of local drinking water sources near a massive U.S. airbase in Japan is the result of years of repeated mishaps and “lax safety standards” by U.S. military forces.”
“The reports, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, “expose a spate of accidents at the [Kadena Air Base in Okinawa] during the past 15 years that have involved at least 21,000 liters of fire extinguishing agents—some of them toxic.”
“The reporting cites several such instances, including a three-day period in 2001 when 17,000 liters of fire extinguishing agents were released and “attributed by base officials to mechanical and electronic malfunctions.”
“It also cites an incident in 2015 when “a drunk U.S. Marine activated a firefighting system. It filled a hangar with more than 1,500 liters of JET-X 2.75 percent—a foam classified by the U.S. government as hazardous. It contains chemicals known to cause cancer, and neurological and reproductive disorders.” That foam made its way to local waterways, but the base did not notify Japanese authorities.”
“Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.”
A forty fold increase in just 14 years in just the human species. This ecological and genetic destruction will also be cascading through the non-human species as well.
A constant disconnect I have witnessed in 40 years of activism is the failure to link ecological activism and anti-war activism. Every war is a war on the biosphere and all it’s inhabitants. It’s not particularly complex, it’s the Military Industrial Complex;
WAIHOPAI SPYBASE PROTEST Aotearoa New Zealand
January 25-27, 2019
“In light of the disastrous Trump Presidency – why is New Zealand still an active and willing part of the US Empire? The US intelligence and nuclear war machine controls the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau. The GCSB is now legally allowed to systematically spy on New Zealanders; as well as routinely spying on any number of other countries, on behalf of the US National Security Agency (NSA). And the NSA spies on everyone. More pressure must be put on the Government to end the anti-democratic and destructive activities of this NZ spy agency.” Anti-Bases Campaign
On the December 2018 episode of Nature Bats Last, myself and Professor Guy McPherson will interview Roger Hallam from the Extinction Rebellion movement where I intend to address this disconnect. The show will be uploaded to the archive with the previous 121 shows which are embedded at the following link; Nature Bats Last on The Progressive Radio Network.
“The WFP has warned that Yemen is on the brink of a full-blown famine, with 18 million of its 29 million population food insecure, 8.4 million severely so.”
The war on Yemen is being conducted by the monsters in the House of Saud who recently murdered and dismembered Jamal Kassahoggi, a former journalist with the Washington Post.”A campaign to remove Saudi Arabia from the UN Human Rights Council has been launched by a group of British lawyers, who argue the desert kingdom’s membership of the body is “contradictory and ironic”.Saudi Arabia should be dropped from UN Human Rights Council, say British lawyers
Soon the living will envy the dead, the time we have left is infinitely less than most realise or are prepared to accept.
“At the edge of extinction, only love remains”.
I’ll leave the last word to the late great Bob Marley who I had the honour of seeing play in Aotearoa N.Z. in 1979. Almost no one listened to the message Bob, sorry.
I’m always disapointed and or angry when I read about one or other of these now almost daily mega disasters when they report 1, 10, 100 or whatever number of (human) deaths. They never point out that thousands, tens of thousands or millions of other species have been exterminated in these anthropogenic infernos and floods.
In one of the recent fires in California, I heard a commentator say that the region had been sterilised, meaning everything in the fire zone had been killed. Bugs, mice, butterflies, rabbits, baby birds in nests, lizards, insects,you name it, they were incinerated in their millions perhaps billions.
The situation is always much worse than we know or are being told. In pictures: The animals caught in California’s wildfires
The official statistics from 2010 are that between 150 and 200 species go extinct every day. Thats 200 important branches of evolution lost forever, daily. Since 2010 that rate of extinction will have accelerated like the climate crisis in a non linear fashion.
“According to the UN Environment Programme, the Earth is in the midst of a mass extinction of life. Scientists estimate that 150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours. This is nearly 1,000 times the “natural” or “background” rate and, say many biologists, is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago. Around 15% of mammal species and 11% of bird species are classified as threatened with extinction.” Protect nature for world economic security, warns UN biodiversity chief
Lets start with the North Carolina Floods;
“The North Carolina Department of Agriculture said Wednesday that the historic flooding from Florence has killed about 3.4 million chickens and turkeys and 5,500 hogs.” They even used a slang name for a pig! Disrespect much? “The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) was similarly “heartbroken” over the deaths.”
“HSUS is heartbroken by the reports of the catastrophic numbers of farmed animal deaths resulting from the flooding related to Hurricane Florence,” the organization told EcoWatch via email, adding that the animals “needlessly lost their lives.”
“Having an emergency plan, regardless of the numbers of animals at your home, facility, or farm, is the responsibility of the humane steward caring for their welfare,” HSUS added. “If the sheer number of animals makes evacuation extremely difficult or impossible, then a hard look needs to be taken at the number of animals being cared for and the opportunity for them to be considered in an emergency plan. The cost of not doing so, as we can see here, has a devastating impact on the community, the environment and the animals, and are further examples of why we need to reduce the reliance on these massive factory farms.” 3.4 Million Chicken, 5500 Hogs Killed in Flornce’s Flooding
These millions of animals rate a mention only because they exist on a corporations balance sheet somewhere. Around them, untold numbers of wild animals and shamefully abandoned ‘pets’ have succumed to our crack like addiction to carbon.
“New jaw-dropping peer-reviewed science paper: farmed poultry makes up 70% of all birds on Earth, with just 30% being wild. Even worse: 60% of all mammals are livestock, like cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals. Humans have decimated life everywhere on Earth, including remote regions like the poles and deep oceans.”
“One poll after the devastating 2006 storm found that 44 percent of people who chose not to evacuate did so because they didn’t want to leave their pets behind. But still, plenty of animals were abandoned – more than 100,000, according to the Louisiana SPCA. As many as 70,000 died throughout the Gulf Coast. On Tuesday, the ASPCA issued a plea to pet owners, asking them to evacuate their animals, too, and gave them instructions for doing so.”
“We can’t stress enough how important it is to incorporate pets into evacuation plans to keep families together and pets safe,” Dick Green, head of the ASPCA’s disaster response unit, said in the statement.”
Imagine if or more correctly when refugees escaping the unfolding chaos abandon 100,000 ‘family members’. What the hell is a domestic pet if it’s not a family member? It’s just another form of prisoner, the first to be sacrificed when the shit hits the fan.
“Meteorologists marveled at the “gut-wrenching” rate of spread Thursday’s fires exhibited. At one point, the Camp Fire was consuming 80 football fields worth of land per minute, fueled by winds of up to 50 mph. That fire grew more than 20-fold in about six hours just before it overtook the town of Paradise, home to about 27,000 people. By nightfall, the fire had expanded in size to 70,000 acres, and was just 5 percent contained. A reporter’s video caught a fire tornado on camera, an exclamation mark on a truly hellish scene:” Quote from Robin Westenra’s blog post; Views from Armageddon
How on earth could terresterial vertebrates escape from that?
“Bark beetles probably exacerbated the fire that ravaged Lake County over the weekend, he said. Experts called the Valley fire’s rapid spread unprecedented; the blaze, which began Saturday afternoon, grew to more than 40,000 acres in fewer than 12 hours.
Professor Guy McPherson and I will continue to chronicle the unraveling of the biosphere as long as Industrial Civilisation holds together on our radio show Nature Bats Last on the Progressive Radio Network.
Good luck everyone, we’re all going to need it, soon the living will envy the dead.
In the November episode of Nature Bats Last returning former host and founder of the show Professor Guy McPherson and co-host Kevin Hester discuss the unfolding ecological armageddon, the convergence of the re-rise of fascism with the unraveling of the biosphere and the potential for a nuclear war to be used as a geoengineering ‘tool’ to cool our over-heating planet and endangered biosphere.
This months episode is embedded here;
I have covered the issue of a nuclear war leading to a nuclear winter previously on this blog; The Inevitability of Nuclear War and Subsequent Nuclear Winter
Below is a quote from an article published by Scripps that I mentioned on the show titled; “Study:Oceans have absorbed 60 Percent more heat than previously thought”
“The result significantly increases the confidence we can place in estimates of ocean warming and therefore helps reduce uncertainty about climate sensitivity,” Keeling said.
I’ve embedded the link above from my Facadebook wall as moments before the show Professor McPherson clicked on the link and noticed it has been removed/deleted from the Scripps website after it had shared from my wall 92 times! I have emailed Scrips for an explanation and will add their response to the comments section of this blog when, if ever, I receive a reply.
A quick search of the quote brings up a similar article to the one that has ‘disappeared’ quoting aspthe same Scripps science paper. It is embedded here;
“On average, eelgrass meadows stored 27.2 tons of organic carbon per hectare, although the variation between the regions was considerable (from three to 265 tons per hectare). Hotspots for carbon sequestration were identified especially in the Kattegat-Skagerrak region, and southern parts of the Baltic Sea where the organic carbon stocks were over eight times higher, than in the Archipelago Sea of Finland.”
Check out the new resistance movement Extinction Rebellion
Where are we currently in the rapidly unfolding climate crisis and where are we heading? The answer is we have already hurtled off the cliff.
On the 03/11/2018 I was interviewed by James Cox
The interview is embedded here;
In the interview above I mentioned the “Aerosol Masking Effect” otherwise known as “Global Dimming”. and the possibility of the psychopaths in Washington launching a nuclear war with the express objective of cooling the planet with a nuclear winter !!! If you think that’s too dystopian, have a look at the small, grasping hands holding the White House that Slaves built Ipad, the one with the nuclear codes! I have covered this probability previously on this blog; The Inevitability of Nuclear War and Subsequent Nuclear Winter
During the interview I mentioned the radio show I co-host with Professor Guy McPherson on PRN.FM The show airs at 3pm EST on the first Tuesday of the month, the archive can be found here; We welcome your toll-free call during the broadcast: 888.874.4888 (from outside the United States, call 0116055625119).
James asked me what I did to maintain my sanity whilst bearing witness to the great unraveling and I mentioned that I volunteer at the Rakino Island Nursery
and I quoted Edward Abbey the desert anarchist “Action is the antidote to despair”.
Also mentioned was the forthcoming book “The End of Ice” written by Dahr Jamail staff reporter at Truthout.org , a link to Dahr’s “Climate Dispatches” is embedded here;
Dahr and I will be touring Aotearoa N.Z. in July next year if things hold together that long and I will be interviewing Dahr on Nature Bats Last on the 5th of February about the book, his research generally and his “Antidotes to despair”.
Evangelical Christians have captured the White House that slaves built and with a steady supply of cheeseburgers and ego-massaging they have control of the “Twitterer in Chief”. These lunatics believe in “The Rapture” and hastening it’s arrival. “Just like many other Christian brothers and sisters, I eagerly long for the second coming of the Lord Jesus. We abide by the following passage from the Bible: “Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1Ts 4:17). For this reason, we foolishly look up to the skies longing for the day that Jesus will return and take us up into the clouds so that we can be with the Lord.””The Lord is trustworthy. The Lord promised that He would take us into the heavenly kingdom in the last days. The Lord’s promise certainly will be accomplished and fulfilled.”
These psychopaths and sociopaths see climate change as ‘Gods will’ and fossil fuels are his gift to power the rapture. At the time of writing, the momentum to impeach is building relentlessly (so much for the democratic process!!! ),with the fundamentalist Mike Pence ready and waiting to step into the breach the minute the twitter in chief has an ‘accident’. “But there may be another secret to Pruitt’s tenacious grip on the agency that he’s busy undermining. Like several other members of the constantly churning Trump Administration who’ve managed to hold fast—Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, and Vice-President Mike Pence—Pruitt is an evangelical Christian.” Are Evangelical Leaders Saving Scott Pruit’s Job Climate Scientist Katharine Heyhoe is another case in point;”She’s an evangelical Christian. Her husband is an evangelical pastor, even, in a faith whose followers are largely skeptical of climate science.” Texas scientist and evangelical takes to the web
How on earth could you trust a scientist who believes in an ‘Immaculate conception’ and creationism??
“Well this is where hope is, right here in this room, ah it’s with us”. Then we have the erudite Chris Hedges who one day challenges the fact that ‘Hope’ is unimpeachably good, then the next moment opens a presentation with the ridiculous comment above and looks like he is on the brink of crying at the 1m 50s mark! Generally I enjoy Chris Hedges writing and presentations but every analysis from him is clouded by his belief in a (presumably?) white guy on a surf board flying around in the clouds, who is supposedly omni-potent but stands aside watching as the military industrial complex rains bombs down on the people of Yemen, Syria and Gaza and surfs blithely by as we exterminate 150 to 200 species daily.
Discussing her “ministry” to the U.N. last year, Bachmann claimed that “the return of Jesus Christ is imminent,” and noted that “the clock is striking 11:59 on God’s time clock and as history is culminating in as read in Revelation.”
Bachmann explained the supposed importance of her new mission:
I believe that God is starting a new thing, and because the time is short before Christ comes again to this earth, He is giving everyone one more chance.
“First thing in the morning on April 5, before a meeting chaired by Representative John Shimkus and another with the Solar Energy Industry Association, Energy Secretary Rick Perry headed to the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a copy of Perry’s schedule obtained by Fusion. There, Perry was scheduled to meet for an hour-long “Cabinet Member Bible Study. He has praised the new administration for its power to “change the course of America in ways that are biblical.” “It is safe to say that God is a Capitalist,” Drollinger once wrote, “not a Communist.” In a January radio interview, Drollinger praised then-senator Jeff Sessions, who “hungers and thirsts for the Scripture,” “Vice President Mike Pence, HUD Secretary Ben Carson, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, nominee for Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, HHS Secretary Tom Price, and Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, have all sponsored the Capitol Ministries Cabinet Bible study, according to literature put out by Capitol Ministries.” “Drollinger also argues that climate change is impossible because God promised after The Flood never to do anything like that again. Drollinger preaches against “radical environmentalism” and that to believe that human activity could have devastating impact on the environment is not just mistaken, but the result of godless pride: “To think that man can alter the earth’s ecosystem—when God remains omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent in the current affairs of mankind—is to more than subtly espouse an ultra-hubristic, secular worldview relative to the supremacy and importance of man,” Drollinger wrote recently. “It follows that we can all rest assured and wholly rely on God’s aforementioned promises pertaining to His ability and willingness to sustain our world’s ecosystem.” Many thanks to political analyst John Steppling for the lead to the link; The Trump Cabinet Has It’s Own Weekly Far Right Biblical Study Group
This is the level of Insanity and Delusion existing in the US administration as we rush headlong towards annihilation.
A common characteristic at the end of an empire is that many of the empires subjects and victims are aware of the coming collapse, whilst the hedonistic ‘Emperors’, rulers, dictators and those closest to them who benefit the most from the exploitation of their subjects, the living planet and all it’s species, seem oblivious or in denial.
The standard response after a civic official or a military commander works up the courage to tell the emperor of the impending chaos and the inability to sustain the unsustainable, is the knee jerk reaction to “Shoot the Messenger”.
The small community on the planet who have come to understand the severity of the multiple crises we are facing and accept our impending extinction, become the latest and soon to be last messengers to be shot. Many of the readers of this blog have “Taken one for the team” due to their commitment to pointing out the extinction elephant in the room. Don’t underestimate the role that you are playing, the youth deserve the truth.
All the scientists who have been appointed to the IPCC collect substantial salaries and research grants from either governments, corporations or tertiary institutions funded by the very same economic order that is literally grinding the living planet into dust. Only the most courageous and honest are capable of talking about the end of everything when the first thing they will lose is their salaries and research grants.
As a generalisation, another thing they have in common is being middle and upper class. You won’t find many class warriors in the IPCC with a few exceptions from the developing world who are bearing the brunt of the collapse now, not long off in the future.
The IPCC repeats the mantra “If we just start now” or some such nonsense that fails to understand the pathology of capitalism and the military industrial complex. The cognitive dissonance at the edge of extinction is an amazing case study in psychology.
Ok then, why wouldn’t the large NGO’s like the Rockerfeller funded 350.org and Greenpeace tell us the truth?
The two I have mentioned above and many more have been corporatised and employ legions of dedicated climate warriors both paid and unpaid. Maintaining ‘cash flow’ in an NGO requires them to make compromises to appease their funders, often at the expense of their supporters and their scientific knowledge. Remember the days they all warned us about crossing tipping points? We never hear the them mentioning them now that we have over 6 dozen in the rear view mirror!
Recently the Greenpeace UK offices suffered the indignity of being picketed by climate warriors disgusted by GP’s downplaying of the crises. “Time is running out for the planet and Greenpeace just got a massive wakeup call”.
Massive kudos to the amazing activists from Extinction Rebellion who confronted Greenpeace.( @ExtinctionRebellion on Twitter).
In 2016 Professor Guy McPherson and I toured Aotearoa N.Z. for the second time together speaking to the public about the true severity of the crises we face and Guy was interviewed by a local journalist named Rachel Stewart, she seems to have had an epithany since meeting the good professor;
“Hope is useful. It keeps us going, and preserves a measure of mental health. Without it, we suffer enormously. Have I given up hope? Yes, some time ago. Do I feel better for it? In a weird way, I do. It’s a relief of sorts. Not because I don’t need to try any more – I’ll always push for action – but because accepting the blindingly obvious feels more real, and breeds another emotion that will be useful in the days ahead. Bravery; You can go a long way on bravery, courage, heart. It can ensure a clarity of thought, and a willingness to embrace what Buddhists have banged on about for millennia. That is, living in the moment.“Don’t say I didn’t warn you”
My response to the issue of ‘hope’ and the merits of facing the true severity of our predicament is summed up wonderfully by the amazing Joanna Macy in her December 2017 article “The Greatest Danger;
“Because of social taboos, despair at the state of our world and fear for our future are rarely acknowledged. The suppression of despair, like that of any deep recurring response, contributes to the numbing of the psyche. Expressions of anguish or outrage are muted, deadened as if a nerve had been cut. This refusal to feel impoverishes our emotional and sensory life. Flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstatic. We create diversions for ourselves as individuals and as nations, in the fights we pick, the aims we pursue, and the stuff we buy.”
Managing our grief and maintaining our sanity whilst incarcerated in the insane asylum known as industrial civilisation is and will continue to be one of our greatest challenges.
There are a number of courageous artists using their talents to deliver the news that none of us ever wanted to here. I’ll embed a few of them below, be sure to subscribe to these three You Tube channels venturing where few are courageous enough to go.
In no particular order;
How fast could this set of living arrangements disappear? A little known risk we face is that when industrial civilisation collapses we lose the “Global Dimming” or the aerosol masking effect. Almost as much warming as we are experiencing today has been filtered out by the pollution we have ejaculated into the atmosphere blocking out solar radiation from reaching the earths surface. When Industrial civilisation collapses we lose that dimming effect and within about 6 weeks we will have a doubling of the present day warming, this will wipe out crop production almost immediately.
Patrick Farnsworth will be interviewing Truthout reporter and author Dahr Jamail on Last Born in the Wilderness in the next few days and I will be interviewing Dahr on my and Professor McPhersons radio show Natur Bats Last in January when his latest book “The End of Ice” is published on January 15th . Dahr will be touring Aotearoa N.Z. with me speaking about the book and the journey writing it in July 2019 assuming this set of living arrangements and still staggering along.
I’d also recomend following Patrick Farnsworth’s blog and Facade Book page “Last Born in the Wilderness”
Soon the living will envy the dead, get living while you still can and refrain from dumping on the last generation of youth the burden of trying to fix the unfixable. Doing so is both cruel and immoral imho.
The October episode “The Case For Declaring A Climate Emergence” is embedded here; Paul Beckwith on Nature Bats Last
Due to connection issues the start of the interview is a bit chaotic, ironically like our climate system but I promise it gets better. Paul comes on at the 24 minute mark after I discuss a Dahr Jamail article (more details below) and the brief clip from Professor Guy McPherson
Paul and show host Kevin Hester discussed the increase in methane, tornados, seismic and storm activity which is directly linked to abrupt climate change;
Paul has recently created this presentation on the looming “Blue Ocean Event” in the Arctic;
“A NASA satellite is tracking flooding in the Carolinas after Hurricane Florence and its images show that rivers and streams near the coast and spilling dark, discolored water into the ocean.” This ‘water’ is heavily laced with numerous pollutants no doubt including ionising radiation from the 12 nuclear plants that have just been water blasted by Hurricane Florence;
“Thawing Arctic permafrost is a huge concern for climate scientists. Within these frozen sheets of past plant life, thousands of years of greenhouse gases are thought to lie trapped. As global temperatures rise and permafrost begins to melt, that gas is slowly released into the atmosphere. Researchers’ greatest fear is that this Arctic off-gassing will start a feedback loop: The more greenhouse gases released by permafrost today, the higher temperatures will climb and the more gases will be released tomorrow.” There is so much methane in this lake you can light the air on fire. Feedback Loops are Driving Runaway Abrupt Climate Change courtesy of Dahr Jamail at Truthout.org
“Across the Arctic, lakes are leaking dangerous greenhouse gases. And one lake is behaving very strangely.” Arctic Cauldron by Chris Mooney.
Due to a connection issue at the beginning of the presentation I asked the PRN studio to play a portion of this clip from Professor Guy McPherson titled; “Overview of Abrupt Anthroprogenic Climate Change;
Additional information from Dahr Jamail; Sixth Mass Extinction Ushers in Record-breaking Wild Fires and Heat
Dahr Jamail will be publishing his latest book “The End Of Ice” on January 15th 2019, I’ll be interviewing him on Nature Bats Last on February 5th alongside Professor Guy McPherson who resumes co-hosting duties from December, Dahr will tour both Australia and Aotearoa N.Z. in July 2019. Watch this space for more updates
“Assiduously researched, profoundly affecting, and filled with vivid evocations of the natural world. Jamail’s deep love of nature blazes through his crisp, elegant prose, and he ably illuminates less-discussed aspects of climate disruption. . . . A passionate, emotional ode to the wonders of our dying planet and to those who, hopelessly or not, dedicate their lives to trying to save it.”
-Kirkus Book Reviews
But Wait, there’s always more; “The Study on Collapse they thought you should not read -Yet” an incredible article and hypothosis by Professor Jem Bendell.
Hit the subscribe button if the cold, hard, truth doesn’t make you want to put your head back in the sand with the other 7.6 billion naked apes. I have found that this knowledge has set me free. Have your say in the space below;
In 1981 I was backpacking through South East Asia when I found myself on Freak Street in Kathmandu, Nepal also known as Jhhonchen tole.
I was staying in a $1/night back packers with a group of Kiwi friends.
In those days the electricity supply in Kathmandu was very erratic and came and went without warning, many times every day. If you wanted to have a hot shower you had to que for your turn at the communal bathroom, when the power was on. No electricity, no hot shower. If the power went off you had to decide to wait in the que until it came back on or go away and que again later.
I was in the que when a group of young Israeli’s from the Israeli Defense Force walked up to the door and took control of access into the bathroom.We were arrogantly told we’d have to wait until they were finished because they had just arrived on leave after being on patrol in the occupied territories in Palestine. and they had priority at the showers.
The people in the que began to complain and all of the soldiers became angry and argumentative. It was all about their (God given) rights and we had none.
After a few moments of heated discussion I triggered a thermo-nuclear response by foolishly spouting “Sometimes I think that the only thing Hitler taught you people was how to behave like fascists.” One of the soldiers turned purple, veins bulging in his neck and temples and charged at me. When I played rugby ( poorly) my position was half-back, one of the skills any half-back develops is the ability to avoid large opponents diving on you.The bigger they are, the harder they fall, on you!
I managed to avoid the assailant and ran for the exit hearing behind me a brawl breaking out and the screams of men and women from the que. Mea Culpa.
Down the stairs and out the door I scarpered and next minute I’m sprinting down Freak Street in rugby shorts a singlet and bare feet. No wallet, shoes, passport or money with members of the IDF in hot pursuit. I think it is fair to say I am lucky they weren’t armed.
I ran and ran and ran like Forrest Gump, with a posse from the IDF close behind. I had just returned from tramping in the Annapuna ranges where I had been treking at over 2000m in elevation. One of the things that happens when you have been at altitude is your blood becomes highly oxygenated and when you come down to lower levels you feel very fit and have hightened stamina. Added to the situation was the fact that I felt that I was running for my life. I suspect the altitude training may well have saved my life or at least a brutal beating.
Through markets, narrow streets and busy footpaths I sprinted with the IDF in hot pursuit. This went on for a few hours with me ducking and diving, slowing down to catch my breath and looking over my shoulder and in front of me expecting an ambush at any moment.
After a few hours of running, ducking and diving, I found that I had outrun the IDF. Now I had to decide what to do next. I knew I couldn’t just return to the hotel but we did have a local cafe where we as a group had eaten, so I cautiously made my way back there.
When I arrived at the cafe, low and behold there were my erstwhile friends, some with visible wounds.
After I had scarpered, the soldiers had beaten all the people who had remained. It was my first personal experience of collective punishment. My battered and bruised friends described the brawl as viscious with the soldiers applying all their training.
As you can imagine my friends were furious with me for starting a conflagration which left some of them battered and bruised and all of them on the street because it was made clear to them by the soldiers that they had to leave the hotel.
Fortunately for me, my friends had packed my bags,wallet and passport and had not abandoned me.
What this behaviour did to this 21 yr old was make him a life long supporter of Palestine and her people and challenged me to confront Zionism at ever opportunity. In both of the conflict zones I have lived in, draconian and reactionary totalatarian behaviour created more resistance, it never quelled it.
Collective Punishment;
The people of Palestine are always subjected to collective punishment. One person fires an ineffectual missile out of Gaza and the entire community are collectively punished, this is a war crime.
It is quite possible and even highly likely that many of those rocket attacks are false flags being hoisted by a fifth column in Gaza deliberately triggering a response from the apartheid state.
When I was in my mid twenties some 5 years later I arrived in Republican West Belfast in the occupied 6 counties of Ireland. Alongside amazing murals of our struggle I was proud to see beautiful murals supporting Palestine. Check out the work of my comrades at Gael Force Art for numerous examples.
I was always challenged when considering the issue of the armed struggle in Palestine, South and Central America, Africa generally and in my parents and ancestors country of Ireland.
The amazing woman below Patsy Marron convinced me that it wasn’t our choice because our community was under occupation and armed attack and we had a duty to defend our communities. The people of Palestine have exactly the same rights and duties.
In the photo below Patsy who is over 90 yrs old, was at a demo in her native West Belfast recently. Rock that!
Anyone who follows this blog ( hit the subscribe button) will know that I believe that we are in the early stages of runaway global warming leading to the collapse of industrial civilisation and the extinction of most if not all complex life on this belleagured planet.
Never underestimate the damage all of this imperialist and colonial warmongering has inflicted on the biosphere.
If your an environmentalist and not an anti-imperialist you’ve missed one of the major drivers of the sixth great extinction.
Kevin Hester is currently living on Rakino Island, a small island in the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland, New Zealand, monitoring the unravelling of the biosphere and volunteering at the Rakino Island Nursery is currently developing a proposal to create a marine reserve near by. The Island has no grid tied electricity or reticulated water. I catch my own water from the roof and generate my electricity from the ample solar radiation on the island.
My Submission to the Ministry of the Environment
Kevin Hester, Dropping Anchor in an Exponential World
Kevin Hester 