Climate Science Predictions and Realities

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Scientists Warn: February Melting Near North Pole “Really Extreme”
by Dahr Jamail - March 1, 2018
LINK: https://truthout.org/articles/scientists-warn-february-melting-near-north-pole-really-extreme/

TEXT: On February 25, temperatures at the North Pole rose above freezing.

While a single weather event is never solely attributable to anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), climate scientist Sarah Myhre tweeted about weather anomalies such as this: “Single weather events can also be used as exemplars — good examples — of what changes are characteristic of climate change, including heat events, fires, extreme storms, winter warming, the changing of seasonal timing, the redistributions of ocean ecosystems.”

Amelie Meyer, a researcher of ice-ocean interactions with Norway’s Polar Institute told The Age that to have these kinds of warm temperatures at the North Pole in February is “just wrong,” adding, “It’s quite worrying.”

Scientists around the globe are stunned by the event. Daily mean temperatures across the region were comparable to those usually seen in May. February 23 saw temperatures in northern Greenland at 43°F. The average high temperature there for that month is -20°F.

Climate science lecturer Andrew King at the University of Melbourne told The Age that these exceedingly warm temperatures at such high northern latitudes during the dead of winter “are really extreme.”

Why Is Greenland Warmer Than Europe?

King went on to add that “parts of Greenland are quite a bit warmer than most of Europe.” And he wasn’t the only climate scientist scratching his head.

On February 24 climate scientist Zack Labe tweeted: “Cape Morris Jesup (#Greenland‘s northernmost observation station) is now reporting temperatures well above freezing today… +6.1°C at the latest observation! Crazy!”

The average high temperature for that location in February is -20°F, making Friday’s reading a stunning 63°F warmer than average. This would be the equivalent of Denver seeing a 112°F day in February.

Across much of the rest of the Arctic in late February, these July-like temperatures — more than 45°F above normal — covered tens of thousands of square miles.

In another shocking development, Alaska’s Bering Sea lost a full one-third of its ice in only eight days.

All of these events underscore a warning issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in its 2017 Arctic Report Card.

The report, which was published in December, warned “the Arctic environmental system has reached a ‘new normal’, characterized by long-term losses in the extent and thickness of the sea ice cover.”

The NOAA scientists emphasized that recent warm temperatures are no aberration. They are part of a trend toward a radically different planet.

NOAA’s report concluded that the “Arctic shows no sign of returning to [the] reliably frozen region of recent past decades.”​

 

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The Arctic Is Melting Down as the Antarctic Food Chain Is Breaking
by Dahr Jamail - March 5, 2018
LINK: https://truthout.org/articles/the-arctic-is-melting-down-as-the-antarctic-food-chain-is-breaking/

TEXT: A draft UN report has warned that missing the 1.5°C warming target set by the Paris Climate Accords will multiply hunger, migration and conflict around the globe. The 1.5°C target means limiting atmospheric temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C above what they were prior to the industrial revolution when humans began emitting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

The report, slated to be finalized this coming September, provides several sobering points (the draft summary of the report can be read here):

• The UK’s Met Office predicts a 1 in 10 chance the global average will flicker over 1.5°C within five years, meaning, we’re already very close to the 1.5°C line, although the conservative estimate is that we could reach it by 2040.

• At 1.5°C tropical reefs are at “high risk” of no longer being dominated by corals, the Arctic could become nearly ice-free in September, and there will be “fundamental changes in ocean chemistry” that could take several millennia to reverse.

• 2°C warming brings with it an additional 10 cm of sea level rise by 2100, and increases the risk of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets collapsing, ensuring future generations will see multi-meter sea level rise.

Meanwhile, much evidence signals that catastrophic change is already upon us.

The average high temperature for northern Greenland in February is approximately -20°F, which is the equivalent of Denver seeing a 112°F day in February.

The average high temperature for northern Greenland in February is approximately -20°F, making recent readings from a weather station there a stunning 63°F warmer than average. This would be the equivalent of Denver seeing a 112°F day in February. Arctic sea ice levels are already at record lows for this time of year. Recently, Alaska’s Bering Sea lost a full one-third of its ice in only eight days, and even more recently, an area north of Greenland is already free of ice.

“There is no ice where there is almost always ice,” The Washington Post’s weather experts tweeted February 26. “There is open water north of Greenland where the thickest sea ice of the Arctic used to be,” Lars Kaleschke, a German physicist, explained in a tweet. “It is not refreezing quickly because air temperatures are above” freezing.

While no single weather anomaly can be attributed to anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), what is happening in the Arctic is so far off the charts scientists are aghast.

Worldwide, the years 2014, 2015 and 2016 were each a record warm year for Earth, with 2017 a close second place behind 2016. A report in Anthropocene Magazine recently showed that if carbon emissions remain unchecked, such multi-year global record temperature surges, along with their accompanying coral bleaching events, droughts, polar ice loss, storms and floods, will likely become routine by 2100.

A draft UN report has warned that missing the 1.5°C warming target set by the Paris Climate Accords will multiply hunger, migration and conflict around the globe. The 1.5°C target means limiting atmospheric temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C above what they were prior to the industrial revolution when humans began emitting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

The report, slated to be finalized this coming September, provides several sobering points (the draft summary of the report can be read here):

• The UK’s Met Office predicts a 1 in 10 chance the global average will flicker over 1.5°C within five years, meaning, we’re already very close to the 1.5°C line, although the conservative estimate is that we could reach it by 2040.

• At 1.5°C tropical reefs are at “high risk” of no longer being dominated by corals, the Arctic could become nearly ice-free in September, and there will be “fundamental changes in ocean chemistry” that could take several millennia to reverse.

• 2°C warming brings with it an additional 10 cm of sea level rise by 2100, and increases the risk of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets collapsing, ensuring future generations will see multi-meter sea level rise.

Meanwhile, much evidence signals that catastrophic change is already upon us.

The average high temperature for northern Greenland in February is approximately -20°F, which is the equivalent of Denver seeing a 112°F day in February.

The average high temperature for northern Greenland in February is approximately -20°F, making recent readings from a weather station there a stunning 63°F warmer than average. This would be the equivalent of Denver seeing a 112°F day in February. Arctic sea ice levels are already at record lows for this time of year. Recently, Alaska’s Bering Sea lost a full one-third of its ice in only eight days, and even more recently, an area north of Greenland is already free of ice.

“There is no ice where there is almost always ice,” The Washington Post’s weather experts tweeted February 26. “There is open water north of Greenland where the thickest sea ice of the Arctic used to be,” Lars Kaleschke, a German physicist, explained in a tweet. “It is not refreezing quickly because air temperatures are above” freezing.

While no single weather anomaly can be attributed to anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), what is happening in the Arctic is so far off the charts scientists are aghast.

Worldwide, the years 2014, 2015 and 2016 were each a record warm year for Earth, with 2017 a close second place behind 2016. A report in Anthropocene Magazine recently showed that if carbon emissions remain unchecked, such multi-year global record temperature surges, along with their accompanying coral bleaching events, droughts, polar ice loss, storms and floods, will likely become routine by 2100.

A recent report described the future of San Francisco’s East Bay area as looking “a lot like Los Angeles – only with parts of it underwater.

Satellite images show that planetary warming is further accelerating the melting of the Greenland and Western Antarctic Ice Sheets, which is ramping up already-accelerating sea level rise.

Our world has changed. Massive parts of the biosphere are collapsing before our eyes. This is our new reality, and each of us must ask each day, “How then, shall I live my life?”

Earth
Across terra firma, there are stunning warning signs of abrupt ACD.

A recently published study from the UK’s Newcastle University warned that ACD will “push European cities towards the breaking point.” The study showed how floods, droughts and heat waves will cause cities across the UK to be more heavily impacted by ACD than previously believed. Even the most optimistic scenarios, for example, showed 85 percent of cities located near rivers in the UK will face increased flooding. The lead author of the study, Selma Guerreiro, told The Guardian: “Although southern European regions are adapted to cope with droughts, this level of change could be beyond breaking point.”

Meanwhile in Africa, a recent report linked increasing violence to ACD across two regions that encompass 26 countries on that continent. The UN Security Council’s report showed that ACD was a driver of conflict across West Africa and the Sahel, and showed that water scarcity and desertification were causing resources to dwindle, hence fueling increased conflict.

Mercury trapped in permafrost since the last Ice Age is now being released into the biosphere.

A study published in the journal Science showed that melting Arctic sea ice is making it more difficult for predators, such as the iconic polar bear, to consume enough calories to survive. The research showed that polar bears require many more calories to survive than previously known, and this coupled with rapidly diminishing sea ice has left them in a struggle to survive. An ecologist affiliated with the study showed that the already-declining bear populations could shrink by another 30 percent over the next 40 years.

Water
A recent Pentagon study showed that half of all US military bases have been reporting climate extremes and threatening weather. Extremes, such as storm surges, wildfires and droughts, along with sea level rise, have become prevalent among hundreds of the bases, and more than 780 military sites have reported drought conditions.

To see more stories like this, visit “Planet or Profit?”

The southern Louisiana region is already locked into losing somewhere between 1,200 and 2,800 square miles of coastal zone by 2067. Even if the state funded the full $92 billion for all the mitigation projects it would require to save parts of the coast from sea level rise, erosion and hurricanes, it would lose approximately 1,200 square miles of coast. This is due to the fact that the bottom one-third of the entire state of Louisiana has an average elevation of only 2.5 feet, and sea levels are expected to rise far higher than that. In fact, another recent study showed that even if the Paris climate accord goals were met, Earth is already set to see roughly one meter of sea level rise in the next two centuries.

Out on the US West Coast, a mid-February report described the future of San Francisco’s East Bay area as looking “a lot like Los Angeles – only with parts of it underwater,” due to worsening drought and sea level rise. Studies have long since shown that the Bay Area will become much drier as global temperatures continue to increase, and of course, high levels of sea rise are already locked in, no matter what kind of mitigation measures are taken.

Meanwhile in New Zealand, warm weather is causing that country’s “water tower” glaciers, those which communities rely upon for sustaining the flow of some of their major rivers, to melt at dramatic rates. Scientists there are describing the changes to the glaciers they are witnessing as “striking,” and warned that New Zealand’s hydropower generation, irrigation and agriculture will be impacted in the future, and water availability will become a major issue.

The Bering Sea recently lost fully one third of its total sea ice coverage in a mere eight days.

Back to the cryosphere, a recently published study found that mercury trapped in permafrost since the last Ice Age is now being released into the biosphere as permafrost is thawing and then melting. “This discovery is a game-changer,” Paul Schuster, a hydrologist at the US Geological Survey and lead author of the new study, told Science Daily. This is particularly worrisome, as the study found that permafrost soils are the single largest reservoir of mercury on the planet, containing nearly twice as much mercury as all other soils, the oceans and atmosphere combined.

“There would be no environmental problem if everything remained frozen, but we know the Earth is getting warmer,” Schuster said. “Although measurement of the rate of permafrost thaw was not part of this study, the thawing permafrost provides a potential for mercury to be released — that’s just physics.”

The Arctic is displaying some of the most shocking impacts of abrupt ACD that we have seen anywhere else in the world.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Arctic is currently undergoing the fastest decline in sea ice in at least the last 1,500 years.

Furthermore, the Bering Sea recently lost fully one third of its total sea ice coverage in a mere eight days.

In a sign of the times, this December saw an LNG tanker cross the Arctic during the winter without an icebreaker escort — the first time this has ever occurred during winter months.

Other signs of big trouble in the oceans abound.

In the Antarctic, major declines in krill are now threatening most of the wildlife there, including whales, leopard seals and penguins. Industrial fishing and ACD are the primary causes, as krill populations have dropped by 40 percent in some areas of the Antarctic.

In the Antarctic, major declines in krill are now threatening most of the wildlife there, including whales, leopard seals and penguins.

Lastly in this section, another recently published study showed that coral reefs are at risk of dissolving due to oceans becoming increasingly acidic. Scientists warned that global reefs could begin dissolving by 2100, as CO2 continues to form a weak acid in seawater and begins to dissolve reef sediments. Reef sediments are 10 times more vulnerable to acidification than the tiny coral animals that build the stony skeletons that form the reefs.

Coral reefs are home to roughly one-quarter of all marine life.

Fire
In February, a wildfire raging in southern Australia was large enough to be seen from space. The area burned in the fire was larger than Singapore and New York.

Meanwhile, scientists from Columbia University once again confirmedthe link between ACD and increased incidence and ferocity of wildfires. They estimated that between 1984 and 2015, ACD had caused an additional 4.2 million hectares of forest to burn: an area approximately three times the size of the state of Connecticut. Previous studies had already shown that ACD had contributed to the fact that the area impacted by forest fires in the American West has doubled in just the last 30 years alone.

Air
Record warm temperatures continue to be set around the globe.

Even the Arctic, where the sun is not shining at all during winter months, saw the warmest December on record.

On that note, the northernmost weather station on Earth, located on Cape Morris Jessup in Greenland only 400 miles from the North Pole, experienced above-freezing temperatures for two days in a row.

The Arctic wasn’t the only place experiencing record-warm temperatures during the winter. The US East Coast saw numerous temperature records across several states while portions of the central US and Midwest, from Texas to the Great Lakes, were facing flooding from record-setting precipitation.

Washington, DC, saw its earliest 80-degree day on record … in February. Pittsburgh saw a 78°F day which beat the previous record by 10 degrees. Meanwhile, high-temperature records were set this February from Atlantic City to Manchester to Wilmington, among dozens of other cities. An even longer list of cities saw record highs for the entire month of February set as well.

In February, a wildfire raging in southern Australia was large enough to be seen from space.

South Bend, Indiana, saw a 500-year flood event, meaning a flooding event extreme enough that it is estimated to have only a 1 in 500 chance of occurring. The Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes regions were beset by flooding as well, due to snow melt and ongoing major precipitation events.

Scientists warned that these anomalies are likely a glimpse at what we can expect more broadly as the planet continues to warm.

In an interview with Piers Morgan aired on Britain’s ITV, President Donald Trump, when asked point blank about his stance on ACD, stated amazingly, “The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they’re setting records.”

Needless to say, as has been made all too clear in this dispatch, among dozens of others, the opposite is true: Ice, both on land and in the sea, is actually melting at record rates.

But then, Trump has never let facts stand in the way of his own warped version of reality. His administration is now seeking large cuts to the country’s ACD research infrastructure, including satellites, science centers and education, via his budget proposal.

News also came out recently that fossil-fuel-lobbyist-turned-EPA-chief Scott Pruitt was closely involved in the scrubbing of the EPA’s climate websites, according to emails that have surfaced.

Speaking of Pruitt, he recently had the gall to say that ACD could be good for humanity. During an interview with Michael Barbaro of The New York Times, Pruitt was criticizing scientists warning of the dangers of ACD when he said, “I think it’s pretty arrogant for people in 2018 to say, ‘You know what, we know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100.'”

Multiple prestigious climate scientists resoundingly rebuked Pruitt’s absurd claim. He was also contradicted by the government’s own Climate Assessment Report.

Meanwhile, Alaska Senator and fossil fuel lobbyist Lisa Murkowski has on the one hand stated that it is time for her Republican party to take ACD seriously, while at the same time salivating over the fact that more than a million acres in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are now set to be opened for drilling.

High-temperature records were set this February from Atlantic City to Manchester to Wilmington, among dozens of other cities.

More news on the reality front comes from US intelligence agencies. While the Trump administration continues its denial antics, the agencies have warned that ACD is bound to fuel disasters and violent conflicts around the world. In their recently released annual summary of global threats, the agencies warned that ACD and other associated environmental trends “are likely to fuel economic and social discontent — and possibly upheaval — through 2018.”

Also on the reality front, Michigan utility Consumers Energy has announced it will phase out its electrical production from coal by the year 2040 in an effort to slash emissions of greenhouse gases.

While it is always a positive sign to see at least some government agencies, politicians and companies acknowledging the reality of ACD and the need to work toward mitigation, anything short of a massive, global, government-coordinated, immediate, full-scale effort will not be enough to sufficiently confront the climate crisis.​

 

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Eerie silence falls on Shetland cliffs that once echoed to seabirds’ cries
Climate change has caused a catastrophic drop in the numbers of terns, kittiwakes and puffins
by Robin McKie - June 3, 2018
LINK: Eerie silence falls on Shetland cliffs that once echoed to seabirds’ cries

TEXT: Sumburgh Head lies at the southern tip of mainland Shetland. This dramatic 100-metre-high rocky spur, crowned with a lighthouse built by Robert Louis Stevenson’s grandfather, has a reputation for being one of the biggest and most accessible seabird colonies in Britain.

Thousands of puffins, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and fulmars gather there every spring to breed, covering almost every square inch of rock or grass with teeming, screeching birds and their young.

Or at least they used to – for this year Sumburgh Head is a quiet and largely deserted place. Where seabirds once swooped and cried in their thousands, only a handful of birds wheel round the cliffs. The silence is uncanny – the result of a crash in seabird numbers that has been in progress for several years but which has now reached an unprecedented, catastrophic low.

One of the nation’s most important conservation centres has been denuded of its wildlife, a victim – according to scientists – of climate change, which has disrupted food chains in the North Sea and North Atlantic and left many seabirds without a source of sustenance. The result has been an apocalyptic drop in numbers of Arctic terns, kittiwakes and many other birds.


Puffin numbers on Shetland have fallen from 33,000 in early spring 2000 to 570 last year. Photograph: Alamy
“In the past, Sumburgh Head was brimming with birds, and the air was thick with the smell of guano. The place was covered with colonies of puffins, kittiwakes, fulmars, and guillemots,” said Helen Moncrieff, manager of RSPB Scotland’s office in Shetland.

“There were thousands and thousands of birds and visitors were guaranteed a sight of puffins. Today they have to be very patient. At the same time, guillemots have halved in numbers. It is utterly tragic.”

This grim description is backed by figures that reveal the staggering decreases in seabird numbers in Shetland, the most northerly part of the British Isles. In 2000, there were more than 33,000 puffins on the island in early spring. That figure dropped to 570 last year and there are no signs of any recovery this year, although it is still early in the season.

Similarly, Shetland’s kittiwake population plummeted from over 55,000 in 1981 to 5,000 in 2011, and observers believe those numbers have declined even further in the past few years. Only the lack of a properly funded census has prevented ornithologists from putting precise numbers on the devastation that is occurring.

“I went to check our sites at Dalsetter and Troswick last week to compare numbers of Arctic terns with those we counted during Seabird 2000, the last national seabird census carried out across Britain and Ireland,” added Moncrieff. “I found there were around 110 Arctic terns there last week compared with around 9,000 that were counted in the same area in 2000. That is the kind of loss we have sustained here.”

This point is backed by Euan Dunn, principal policy officer for the RSPB. “These are apocalyptic numbers,” he told the Observer. “We are seeing something very dramatic happening, something that has never occurred in the history of ornithology up there.”

The causes of these devastating declines are many, according to scientists – though most agree that the disappearance of food sources is the main reason. Seabirds rely heavily on sand eels for food, and this supply was severely depleted in northern waters by fishing – though this was eventually halted, allowing stocks to recover. However, these have now been disrupted again by global warming, triggered by rising carbon dioxide emissions from factories, cars and power plants that burn fossil fuels. Temperatures in the North Sea and North Atlantic have risen significantly as a result.

“This warming seems to be affecting the availability of plankton at the time when sand eels produce their larvae,” said Dunn. “There is less plankton and the larvae grow less well and survive less well.”

Not every coastal area of the UK is affected to the same degree, as has been highlighted in a recent project carried out by the RSPB. Groups of puffins, one of the seabirds worst affected by the current crisis, were tagged at two different locations: Shetland and the Shiant Islands, in the Inner Hebrides, where numbers have remained relatively stable in recent years. In the latter, the birds were found to travel on very short journeys of a few kilometres before they returned to their young with plenty of plump fish.

However in Shetland, the picture was found to be starkly different. One of its puffins was found to have to fly more than 400km (248 miles) to find food. “That is more than 10 times further than we thought they were flying,” added Dunn. “Journeys like that are hugely energy consuming and leave the birds very weakened. Not only that, they bring back fish that are much less nutritious than the ones they caught in the good old days when Shetland had plenty of puffins.”


Guillemots still flock on cliffs at the Sumburgh Head RSPB reserve on Shetland – but in far fewer numbers.
A similar story is provided by trackers fitted to guillemots and razorbills from nearby Fair Isle, which has also suffered serious seabird population losses. They too are having to travel hundreds of kilometres to find food. “It explains clearly why our colonies have foundered,” said Dunn.

In addition to the sand eel crisis that affects coastal areas of Scotland, there is the problem of plastic which builds up on beaches and is ingested by seabirds, with fulmars being particularly badly affected.

“We believe there is plastic in the stomachs of every Shetland fulmar,” said Moncrieff. “If you scaled up what you find in a fulmar’s stomach, it is the equivalent of having a lunch box full of plastic inside your own stomach. There would be no room left for proper food.”

The catastrophe that has struck Shetland’s seabird population has been revealed just as similar crises are being reported from other islands round Britain. Puffin numbers have dropped dramatically on the Farne Islands, it was reported last month, while on St Kilda, one of the most significant seabird colonies in the North Atlantic, there has been a 99% reduction in kittiwake nests since 1990. Two years ago, in all the island’s monitored sites, only one pair bred –and that single chick died.

Yet as these crises have unfolded, the government has declined to fund a new national census, along the lines of those organised in 1970, 1985 and 2000, even though it is supposed to instigate one every 15 years. “Fortunately, it has now agreed to proceed with one, which we hope should be completed by the end of next year,” said Dunn. “Then we should have a better overall picture of what is happening and why these striking declines are happening in particular places.”

For Shetland, the catastrophic decline in many of its key seabird populations is an issue of real concern. The islands are famed for their bleak beauty and have become an important eco-tourism destination. The loss of many of its seabird colonies does not help that cause – though it still has many special attractions: its prehistoric houses and iron age towers, called brochs; a large population of otters (more than 10% of Britain’s otters live here); and increasing numbers of visits by killer whales.

Shetland Islands
As Moncrieff said: “There are still good reasons to come here, but equally the crisis that has hit so many of our seabirds is not something that we can continue to ignore.”

• Turtle doves used to arrive in large numbers in April to breed in the British Isles but have now disappeared from large areas of the countryside for a variety of reasons: lack of seed from arable plants; the parasite that carries trichomonosis; and hunting during their migration through southern Europe. As a result, the turtle dove has become the UK’s fastest declining bird and is now considered at risk of global extinction.

• Wader populations are declining worldwide thanks to the loss and degradation of habitats, increased predation, and a changing climate. In the UK, this has produced dramatic declines in curlew populations over recent decades – the species has been proposed as the UK’s most important bird conservation priority.

• Nightingales and pied flycatchers have declined in large numbers since monitoring of these woodland species began in 1994, leading to their appearance on the red list of endangered bird species in the UK. In total, there are now 16 woodland birds on the red list.

• One of five upland bird species that were moved on to the red list recently, the dotterel has declined severely in numbers since the 1980s. Causes for the drop include changes in grazing practices and atmospheric pollution, as well as the effect of climate change, to which mountain-dwelling species are especially vulnerable.​

 

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Dahr Jamail: Abrupt Climate Destruction and Navigating an Unstable Future

TEXT: "Dahr Jamail goes over the implications of the abrupt climate disruption currently underway on our planet, and what it means to be aware of these trends and what this ultimately entails for our species. The relatively stable climate our planet has experienced these past centuries has come to an end, and Dahr asks that we sit with this knowledge and work on methods of adapting to our unstable future. This is an excerpt episode #103 of Last Born In The Wilderness 'Death Spiral: Grappling With The Implications Of Global Climate Disruption w/ Dahr Jamail.' " Listen to full episode: https://goo.gl/LxixZL

 

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Death Spiral: Grappling With The Implications Of Global Climate Disruption w/ Dahr Jamail
LINK:

https://soundcloud.com/soundcloud.com%2Flastborninthewilderness%2Fdahr-jamail-complete

TEXT: In this episode, Dahr Jamail lays out the details of the current state of the global climate system and the massive catastrophic changes currently underway in our oceans, as well as the ongoing disappearance of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, the receding land ice on Greenland, and what this means for sea level rise in the upcoming decades. We discuss the implications of these very rapid shifts in our global climate system and what this means for the future of our species, and all life on this planet.

Dahr Jamail is a journalist who regularly reports on climate disruption and environmental issues for the online publication Truthout. Prior to his work reporting on environmental issues, Dahr was one of only a few unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the US led invasion in 2003. Dahr is the author of multiple books, including "The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan," "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq," and "The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible," co-written with William Rivers Pitt. Dahr is the author of the upcoming book "The End Of Ice," which goes more in depth into the subjects discussed in this episode.​

 

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Florida has more to lose with sea rise than anywhere else in the U.S., new study says
BY ALEX HARRIS June 18, 2018
LINK: Florida has more to lose with sea rise than anywhere else in the U.S., new study says
TEXT: "Florida stands to lose more homes — and real estate value — to sea level rise damage than any other state in the nation this century, according to a new study. By 2045, nearly 64,000 homes in Florida face flooding every other day. Half of those are in South Florida."