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--- catastrophes [2017/10/28 23:08]
Richard Greeman
+++ catastrophes [2018/05/19 05:28]
Richard Greeman
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 ===== Catastrophes =====
-=== Team ===
-Fred, Brian, David, Richard (ex-officio): Please join!
-=== Source Readings ===
-Please post under appropriate subtopic using this citation formula (See example in "Climate Crisis" below):
-YOUR NAME
-FILENAME of source document placed in dropbox
-AUTHOR/TITLE
-SHORT DESCRIPTION (INCLUDING LENGTH)
-PROPOSED PAPER IN "Add to Wiki" DROPBOX FOLDER (?)
 === Subtopics ===
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 RG- www.truth-out.org/news/item/42309-our-summer-of-fire-and-the-fires-to-come
 “The smoke and fires this summer were a wake-up call about how quickly things can change in the natural environment and how large the stakes are. But is this devastating summer just the beginning of much worse things to come? And if this is the harbinger of the future, what will this mean for the health of humans and ecosystems?”
-FOUR ARTICLES ON PUERTO RICO to summarize
-India_SW.docx
 == Food Crisis ==
@@ Line 44: / Line 19: @@
 A recent landmark study that investigated alarming loss of insects is leaving scientists dumbfounded, deeply troubled, potentially the biggest-ever existential threat, risking ecosystem collapse too soon for comfort. In contrast to global warming, this may be much more imminently dangerous across-the-board to terrestrial life. An enormous loss of insect population, almost decimation in some parts of the world, threatens the life-giving structure of the ecosystem. This is a deadly serious problem!
+RG- THE FOOD CRISIS - based on Holt-Gimenez-Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty.pdf Abstract: "The current global food crisis—decades in the making—is a crushing indictment against capitalist agriculture and the corporate monopolies that dominate the world’s food systems. The role of the industrial agrifood complex in creating the crisis (through the monopolization of input industries, industrial farming, processing, and retailing) and the self-serving neoliberal solutions proposed by the world’s multilateral institutions and leading industrial countries are being met with skepticism, disillusion, and indifference by a general public more concerned with the global economic downturn than with the food crisis. Neoliberal retrenchment has met growing resistance by those most affected by the crisis—the world’s smallholder farmers."
-RG- THE FOOD CRISIS (in Add to WIKI) based on Holt-Gimenez-Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty.pdf
-Abstract: "The current global food crisis—decades in the making—is a crushing
-indictment against capitalist agriculture and the corporate monopolies
-that dominate the world’s food systems. The role of the industrial
-agrifood complex in creating the crisis (through the monopolization of
-input industries, industrial farming, processing, and retailing) and the
-self-serving neoliberal solutions proposed by the world’s multilateral
-institutions and leading industrial countries are being met with skepticism,
-disillusion, and indifference by a general public more concerned
-with the global economic downturn than with the food crisis.
-Neoliberal retrenchment has met growing resistance by those most
-affected by the crisis—the world’s smallholder farmers."
 FRED - **Moore-Food and Negative Value.docx** - Jason W. Moore, //Capitalism in the Web of Life//, excerpts from ch. 10 - “RoundUp Ready crops are not protecting yield so well, either. “Superweeds,” especially but not only in GMO soy, have evolved to survive the onslaught of the famed herbicide. 161 These superweeds stand in for a much more radical shift—the transition from surplus value to negative-value—that we explore in the next section. What became clear, by the late 2000s, was that the agro-biotech expansion was actively limiting the space for a new agricultural revolution. The superweeds’ dramatic, if still-regional, negative impact on labor productivity points towards a broader set of forces undermining neoliberalism’s Cheap Food regime.”
@@ Line 68: / Line 31: @@
 == Nuclear Threats ==
 BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS - The lowest point for the Doomsday Clock was 1953, when the clock was set to 2 minutes until midnight after the U.S. and the Soviet Union began testing hydrogen bombs. In the years after, the clock’s time has fluctuated from 17 minutes in 1991 to 3 minutes in 2016.[14] Rise of nationalism, United States President Donald Trump's comments over nuclear weapons, the threat of a renewed arms race between the U.S. and Russia, and the expressed disbelief in the scientific consensus over climate change by the Trump Administration.[5][22][23][24][25] This is the first use of a fraction in the time, and the Clock's closest approach to midnight since 1953.
 Wikipedia - Health in Belarus and Ukraine has shown disturbing trends following the Chernobyl disaster. In Belarus, incidence of congenital defects had risen by 40% within six years of the accident, to the point that it became the principal cause of infant mortality.[159]:52[unreliable medical source?] There was a substantial increase in digestive, circulatory, nervous, respiratory and endocrine diseases and cancers, correlated with areas of high radioactive contamination, and in one especially contaminated district of Belarus, 95% of children were in 2005 reported to have at least one chronic illness.[157]:129, 199[better source needed] The Ukrainian Ministry of Health estimated in 1993 that roughly 70% of its population were unwell, with large increases in respiratory, blood and nervous system diseases.[115]:27[unreliable medical source?] By the year 2000, the number of Ukrainians claiming to be radiation 'sufferers' (poterpili) and receiving state benefits had jumped to 3.5 million, or 5% of the population. Many of these are populations resettled from contaminated zones, or former or current Chernobyl plant workers...Poor or inaccessible statistics has meant that causal connections are very difficult to make in both Belarus and Ukraine. It has been observed that Belarus in particular actively suppresses or ignores health-related research...Under Soviet rule, the extent of radiation injury was systematically covered up.[citation needed] Most cases of acute radiation sickness (ARS) were disguised as ‘Vegetovascular dystonia’ (VvD), a Soviet classification for a type of panic disorder with possible symptoms including heart palpitations, sweating, tremors, nausea, hypotension or hypertension, neurosis, spasms and seizures: symptoms which resemble the neurological effects of ARS.
@@ Line 75: / Line 38: @@
 (weapons and powerplants)
 wikipedia - "On 5 July 2012, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) found that the causes of the accident had been foreseeable, and that the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), had failed to meet basic safety requirements such as risk assessment, preparing for containing collateral damage, and developing evacuation plans. On 12 October 2012, TEPCO admitted for the first time that it had failed to take necessary measures for fear of inviting lawsuits or protests against its nuclear plants....In 2014 Japan enacted the State Secrecy Law. The Fukushima incident falls under this law and, as a "state secret", independent investigations and reports are forbidden by law.
  == pandemics ==
 ==== NARRATIVES ====
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 === Then ===
-RG-
+RG- A century ago, in October 2017, journalist Dahr Jamail sadly observed: “The Earth is unraveling due to human-forced warming. We've changed the composition of the atmosphere, and are acidifying the oceans. The cryosphere is melting before our very eyes, and the seas are rising. Global wildlife populations have decreased nearly 60 percent since just the 1970s, and the current extinction rate of species is 1,000 times the normal background rate. Functional coral reefs could be completely gone by 2050, and oceans could be completely free of fish by 2048 due to anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), overfishing, pollution and habitat loss. And there is nothing to indicate that governments around the globe are doing anything remotely serious enough to mitigate ACD impacts, in order to prevent the worst-case scenarios from unfolding.That there will be a massive die-off of humans seems inevitable, and the extinction of our species is very much a possibility. This is terrifying, heartbreaking, enraging information to take in.”
-A century ago, in October 2017, journalist Dahr Jamail sadly observed: “The Earth is unraveling due to human-forced
-warming. We've changed the composition of the atmosphere, and are acidifying the oceans. The
-cryosphere is melting before our very eyes, and the seas are rising. Global wildlife populations have
-decreased nearly 60 percent since just the 1970s, and the current extinction rate of species is 1,000
-times the normal background rate. Functional coral reefs could be completely gone by 2050, and oceans could be completely free of fish by 2048 due to anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), overfishing, pollution and habitat loss. And there is nothing to indicate that governments around the globe are doing anything remotely serious enough to mitigate ACD impacts, in order to prevent the worst-case scenarios from unfolding.That there will be a massive die-off of humans seems inevitable, and the extinction of our species is very much a possibility. This is terrifying, heartbreaking, enraging information to take in.”
 Indeed, ACD was progressing dramatically and abruptly. In 2017 Hurricane Harvey led to the single largest rain event in US history, which was then followed in short order by Hurricane Irma, the most powerful Atlantic Ocean hurricane ever recorded by satellites. In Canada, rapidly thawing permafrost was already releasing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere which fuels a positive feedback loop of ACD: The warming atmospherecauses the permafrost to thaw and release CO2, which warms the atmosphere further, and the cycle feeds on itself. (There is twice as
 much carbon locked up in the permafrost as there is in the atmosphere.
-A paper from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography
-published in mid-September 2017, warned of a small but distinct possibility that abrupt ACD
-could pose an "existential threat" to the survival of humans by 2050. Scripps went on to propose two new classifications for ACD: catastrophic (meaning that the majority of humanity would struggle to adapt to the change) and existential (meaning that humanity would not be able to adapt to the change.)
- == Earth ==
+A paper from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography published in mid-September 2017, warned of a small but distinct possibility that abrupt ACD could pose an "existential threat" to the survival of humans by 2050. Scripps went on to propose two new classifications for ACD: catastrophic (meaning that the majority of humanity would struggle to adapt to the change) and existential (meaning that humanity would not be able to adapt to the change.)
+== Earth ==
 It appeared that deforestation was having twice the negative impact on ACD as previously
@@ Line 115: / Line 64: @@
 storm weighed 275 trillion pounds.
- == Water ==
+== Water ==
 In the watery realms, there were also significant developments. For the first time in history, in late August 2017, a tanker crossed the northern sea route without an icebreaker. A 300-meter long Russian commercial liquefied natural gas ship carried the gas from Norway to South Korea in just six and a half days, setting the record. The ongoing and increasing loss of the Arctic summer sea ice was impacting the Atlantic Ocean water circulation system, altering the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a current that plays a major role in both regional and global climate systems. AMOC affects the climate of all of the countries on the Atlantic rim, especially those in Europe, but also has climate impacts far, far beyond those, including weather patterns around the entire globe.
@@ Line 122: / Line 71: @@
 In August 2017, flooding in India, Bangladesh and Nepal killed at least 1,200 people and displaced millions. Monsoon rains in India were so intense, a building inMumbai collapsed from them, killing at least 21 people and trapping more than a dozen. Thirty-two million people were impacted by the flooding in India, while another 8.6 million in Bangladesh and 1.7 million in Nepal also suffered. Since 145 million people were living less than three feet above sea level, flooding and rapidly rising sea-levels soon created multiple generations of climate refugees.
+== Fire ==
- == Fire ==
 The flip side of this was drought. This had social consequences, given that the extended bloody conflict in Syria has its roots in a multi-year drought that hit that country. (More examples needed)
@@ Line 129: / Line 77: @@
  scorched the picturesque Columbia River Gorge and rained ash and burning embers across communities several  miles away. At least 10,000 acres burned, sending hundreds of residents in the area to flee their homes. Heat and fire records were broken throughout the summer across the US and Canadian Wests.
- == Air ==
+== Air ==
 To be sure, climate scientists had long been aware of the capitalist-generated, man-made causes of this growing climate chaos, but their findings got little respect. The U.S. government was in the hands of climate-change deniers, and the media consistantly refused to use the phrases “global warming” and “climate change” on the specious ground that they had become “politicised” (by the very people who denied their existence!). In the wake of the two major hurricanes that struck the US this season, while Harvey was still besiegingHouston with record rains, climate scientist Michael Mann told ThinkProgress: "The kind of stalled weather pattern that is drenching Houston is precisely the sort of pattern we expect because of climate change." Mann had, earlier in 2017, co-authored a study that showed how ACD is changing atmospheric circulation, including the jet stream, in a way that causes an "increase in persistent weather extremes" during summers.
@@ Line 139: / Line 87: @@
 Meanwhile, the Trump administration continued to work feverishly and consistently to scrub any mention of ACD from government departments and websites.
-MORE TO COME HERE
+NOTE add RG material from "Fake News" article.
+== Cities ==
- == Cities ==
 Cities were the defining social and ecological phenomena of the twenty-first century: they housed the majority of humanity, they contributed the lion’s share of carbon to the atmosphere, and they were peculiarly vulnerable to climate chaos. By 2017 more than 50 percent of the world’s population were living within 120 miles of the sea; and it was estimated that this figure would soon reach 75 percent. In addition, urbanites all over the world were particularly vulnerable to deadly heat waves, whose intensity and frequency were increasing as a result of global warming, because of the “heat island” effect that makes urban areas hotter than their rural surroundings. For decades people had been migrating out of drought-prone areas in the developing world and into coastal cities that were prone to floods and cyclones. Anthropogenic climate disruption was dramatically altering the world’s cities, and that is where the effects of climate change were of most consequence.
@@ Line 160: / Line 107: @@
 There was no better place to bear witness to these contradictions and shifts than New York City... How New York City attempted to mitigate and adapt to climate change—and also to respond to climate justice more broadly – set key precedents nationally and internationally.
-MORE TO COME:
+=== How ===
+== The Fable of Noah We! ==
+by Sam Friedman
+Once  upon  a  time,  in  a  land  now  gone  below,  clouds  gathered,  and  rains  began.These  were  not  your  ordinary  clouds.  They  were  very  ominous  indeed.    The  rai  ndrops  were  the  size  of  golfballs  the  first  few  days.  But  as  the  days  passed,  they  grew  to  include  baseballs  andthen  even  basketballs.And  there  were  lots  and  lots  of  rain-balls.Day  after  day,  it  rained.  The  puddles  filled  the  roads.  Roofs  leaked,  then  gushed.  In  the  districts  where  the poor  people  lived,  roofs  collapsed.    After  a  week  or  so,  whole  tenement  buildings  began  to  fall  in.
-=== How ===
+It  got  so bad,  the  politicians  forgot  all  about  promising  tax  cuts,  monuments  for  their  pals,  and  new  prisons.The  Republicans  said  that  the  rains  were  a  sign  of  God’s  displeasure  at  tax-and-spend  government  and  atmolly-coddling  the  poor.  They  called  for  cutting  food  stamps  from  three  loaves  of  bread  a  month  to  two;  for stronger  umbrellas  for  police  on  riot  duty;  and  for  tax  incentives  to  spur  investment  in  galoshes  and reinforced  raincoats.    Just  to  show  how  seriously  they  took  the  threat  of  these  rains,  they  adopted  a  new emblem  for  their  party:  The  elephant  trunk  snorkel  as  a  symbol  of  self-reliance  under  all conditions.The  Democrats  scoffed  at  the  Republicans  and  their  callousness.  They  demanded  a  program  of  levees  or  the river  banks,  and  of  tarpaulins  and  tacks  to  fix  the  leaks  on  the  roofs  of  the  poor.  Of  course,  they  also  put forward  suggestions  for  tax  cuts  and  monuments  for  contractors  good  enough  to  provide  these  services  and products.    They  too  changed  their  party  emblem,  to  the  donkeys  who  hauled  all  that  sand.
+After  the  legislative  debates  and  compromises,  Democratic  and  Republican  officials  alike  hired  their  cousins and  contributors  to  do  the  job.    When  the  largest  of  these  companies,  End-Run,  provided  sandbags  held together  with  fishnets,  and  tarpaulins  of  chickenwire,  they  promised  a  thorough  audit  by  Under-Sand  andCompany.    They  also  got  lots  of  photo-ops  and  posed  beside  elephants  and  donkeys  who were  hard  at  work.Now,  the  common  people  were  fed  up  with  their  leaky  roofs,  collapsing  buildings,  and having  to  swim  to their  jobs.  By  the  twelfth  day  of  the  rains,  they  were  demanding  action.    Some  went  to  their  churches,mosques,  or  synagogues,  where  they  all  were  told  to  pray  to  the  lord  for  smaller  raindrops  and  su  nny  skies;and  to  sacrifice  a  scapegoat  or  two  to  make  their  prayers  effective.  And,  of  course,to  atone  for  their  sins  and think  of  Heaven,  a  nice,  warm,  dry  spot  far  above  the  rainclouds.    But  after  catching  and  burning  a  few workers  of  other  faiths,  and  praying  all  the  while,  the  rains  just  kept  falling.
+Others  went  to  the  leftish  political  parties,  the  Social  Democrats  and  Greens.    These  parties  organized  a demonstration  where  the  party  officials  swam  around  the  legislature  with  signs  demanding  action.  (No workers  came  because  they  held  it  during  a  working  day.)    The  main  effort  of  these  parties  was  to  set  up re-call  petitions  to  hold  new  elections.  It  was  real  hard  work  swimming  door  to  door to  get  signatures,  and  the ink  on  these  signatures  kept  running  in  the  rain.    But  these  folks  were  determined  and  gutsy.    By  the  17th  day of  the  rains,  they  had  enough  signatures  to  demand  a  re-call  election.    And,  after  alot  of  legal  hemming  and hawing,  even  the  election  commission  had  to  agree  (on  the  25th  day).    So  new  elections  were  called  for  three months  (92  days)  later.  And  so  the  election  campaign  began.And  the  rains  kept  falling.    The  Democratic  and  Republican  officials  got  more  and  more  worried  about  what the common  people  might  do.    They  started  blaming  a  neighboring  land  they  called  the  I-Wreck-Ye’s  for  the rains.    They  gathered  an  army,  and  supplied  it  with  all  the  best  swords  and  spears  made  by  the  End-Run  and Boing-Boing-Blockhead-Marionetta  corporations.  And  the  army  waded  off  to  defeat  the  idolatrousI-Wreck-Ye’s  to  stop  the  rains.  But  within  three  days,  the  army  swam  back  home  again because  their  weapons were  too  rusted  to  use,  and  because  their  uniforms  (by  Oy-Veh!-Say-Low-Rain)  were  rotting  away.    TheDemocrats  and  Republicans  thereupon  cried  that  the  war  was  being  sabotaged  by  I-Wreck-Ye-loving  red  and green  terrorists,  and  called  upon  all  the  patriotic  citizens  to  put  out  flags  to  support  their  country.    But  within two  days,  these  flags  (by  the  Oy-Veh!-Say-Low-Rain  and  the  I’mGod  corporations)  had  molded  to  ruin.
+Now,  some  of  the  workers  in  the  shipbuilders,  seafarers,  longshore,  umbrella-makers,and  trash-haulers unions  were  getting  pretty  upset.  They  were  afraid  all  their  families  and  friends  would  drown  or  get  crushed by  falling  tenements.  They  called  a  meeting.    Many,  many  good  people  came,  including waist-deep  ecologists and  women  tired  of  pumping  basements  when  they  had  swum  home  from  work  (because  even then,  women’s work  was  never  done,  from  rainfall  dawn  to  pump  and  run.) They  named  themselves  the  Necessary  Organization  Against  Horrors  (NOAH,  for  short).Their  action  plan was  to  build mighty  ships.  The  trash-haulers  brought  lumber  and  nails  from  the  rubble  of  collapsed  buildings.  A  lot  of  the boards  and  doors  were  floating  in  the  roads  anyway.  The  sailors  brought  rope  and  tar they  just  happened  to find  on20the  piers.  The  longshore  workers  and  truckers  brought  boxes  of  food  and  jugs  to  catch  rainwater.(These  just  happened  to  get  dropped  as  they  swam  packages  to  ships  and  trucks.)  And  everybody,  women,men,  and  kids,  worked  dawn  to  dusk  and  dusk  to  dawn  (when  not  at  their  jobs)  to  build  ships  and  put  food  on them.    The  waist-deep    ecologists  swam  through  the  countryside  rounding  up  animals  and  seeds—snails,pussycats,  hyenas,  morning  glory,  cannabis,  even  a  few  donkeys  and  elephants,  and  lots  of  doves  to  seek  the land  of  peace  and  dryness.And  on  the  31st  day,  NOAH  and  the  common  people  went  to  their  ships  singing  and  praying.
+But  the  rich and  the  politicians  heard  about  it  because  a  few  over-their-head  ecologists,  who  had decided  that  the  human race  had  done  too  much  damage  and  should  drown,  ratted  out  NOAH’s  plans  to  the  cops.So  the  politicians and  the  rich  folks  and the  police  came  running  with  their  guns to  take  what  the  workers  had  made  for  their own  use.    They  had lots  of  practice  at  such  theft,  since  that  is  their  day  job.But  this  time,  their  plans  to  seize  the  ships  for  their  own  use  were  pretty  obvious,so  it  made  it  easier  for  the workers  to  know  what  to  do.  They  fought  back.    When  most  everybody  and  everything  were  on  board,  they sent  a  herd  of  aurochs  running  down  the  pier  to  shove  the  attackers  back.And  so  NOAH  sailed  off  with  great  hopes,  leaving  the  rich  and  the  politicians  beside the  collapsing  levees  in their  designer  galoshes  and  silken  raincoats—trying  to  make  life  jackets  out  of  bales  of  End-Run  stock.  After some  weeks  on  the  waters,  NOAH  and  the  people  and  animals  and  plants  landed.  They  built  monuments  to the  aurochs  for  giving  their  all,  and  to  the  workers  of  NOAH  for  saving  all  but  the  aurochs.
 === Now ===

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