'Breaking Down: Collapse', etc.

 I haven't looked at this blog in awhile. It's been over 10 years since I posted. I noticed this old post: 

http://universaljellyfish.blogspot.com/2015/12/i-see-lot-of-conflict-that-is-going-on.html. 

Not much has changed except that the state of the world has gotten worse. Since July 2016, Trump was elected president twice (though indications are that he cheated), and pretended that he was elected another time. Several billionaire tech 'bros' are in cahoots with Trump to funnel money and resources into (their own pockets and) AI / 'Artificial Intelligence' and data centers. The data centers use outrageous amounts of water and electricity. The idea seems to be to replace people with AI & robots, and probably to keep tabs on everybody (who manages to survive). The suggestion is that creating the biggest, most comprehensive and powerful AI we can get is necessary for future wars, etc. Meanwhile, credible people are warning that AI could bring about an end to human civilization. 

Where some of the 'tech bros' (such as Bill Gates) used to voice concerns about global warming and environmental issues, now they don't care. Anything for the data centers. 

Trump and his administration has gone full authoritarian in his second term. Laws are ignored, daily, on purpose. Trump likes to model the idea that strong men do as they please. Trump is a known rapist, and many men in his administration are abusers of women. Trump takes pleasure in demeaning women and people of color. In his second term, he started by pardoning the people he had gotten to storm the Capitol when Mike Pence refused to call the election for him, and proceeded to fire women and people of color who managed to get prominent positions in the military. Trump has worked hard to create a military that primarily has people who support his lawlessness. 

Besides that, Trump has ripped up climate agreements, destroyed alliances with allies, and our own Environmental Protection Agency (originally begun under Nixon). Publicly, he calls global warming a hoax - but his actions suggest otherwise. His administration has attacked prominent Universities and eliminated various scientific studies and funding, and removed government data from the Internet. Since January of 2025, the idea seems to be to accelerate collapse.

One of Trump's main initiatives is to force immigrants to leave, to make the US a living hell for them. Some have been sent to horrible prisons in countries the people have never lived. Trump is great friends with dictators such as Putin. Many people figure that Trump is beholden to Putin and bases our foreign and domestic policies on what Putin wants. 

Overall, Trump seems intent on demoralizing anyone who isn't brainwashed into supporting him. 

----

A month ago or so, I started following the Reddit Collapse forum : https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/

I noticed that someone on there recommended the podcast 'Breaking Down: Collapse':

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-down-collapse/id1534972612

I have appreciated how Kory & Kellen have outlined and presented the various problems. I took their advice and listened to the the first 8-10 episodes. Now I mostly listen to the daily version now and then. Like this evening, as I made pesto. 

The first episodes discussed 'Complex Society', 'The Energy Crisis', 'Overshoot & Limits to Growth', 'Catabolic Collapse', 'The Financial System', 'Political Turmoil', 'Climate Change', & 'Feedback Loops'.

On the collapse reddit, I saw this journal article linked: The 2026 state of the climate report: challenges and opportunities  

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biag125/8836482?login=false

It starts out:

We are witnessing the rapid destabilization of the Earth’s climate system. This is no longer a warning for the future; it is a diagnosis of the present. Earth’s life-support systems are being pushed beyond stable limits, with changes unfolding faster than our ability to respond. Human activities are driving profound shifts in the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are higher now than any time in the last 2 million years (IPCC 2021). Across the globe, extreme heat, floods, droughts, storms, and wildfires are no longer rare events but defining features of a changing planet... 

There continues to be about 30% of the population who support Trump and what he is doing or give him a pass. They are convinced that the Democrats are worse. Many think that both parties are equally bad and they don't bother supporting either side. While I can see problems with both sides, the Republicans are the party that is being especially lawless and destructive of our democracy - our entire government system, and the ecosystems we depend on. It's beyond belief that Republicans continued to support Trump after he got a mob to attack the Capitol, who killed and injured guards and caused all sorts of destruction. The only explanation that I can see is that this is what the very wealthy want. A collapse of our government, chaos in the streets, and probably death and destruction globally. The wealthy have their bunkers. They seem to think that they are immune from the consequences they are the most responsible for creating. Maybe they think that if enough people die, the earth will get back to normal (more or less), and they (or their descendants) will rule. That's how it looks from here. 

"Scientists Find Out What Killed Millions of Starfish"

"A new study shows warmer ocean temperatures are likely responsible for the mass die-off, threatening the biodiversity of marine life from Alaska to Mexico."

An epidemic swept across North America’s West Coast three years ago, but most people hardly noticed.

That’s because the disease targeted starfish—millions of starfish.

From Alaska to Baja California, starfish populations have been decimated by sea star wasting syndrome, a disease that turns the darlings of the tide pool world into heaping piles of goo within days of exposure.

Scientists have observed wasting events hitting coastal starfish populations before, but nothing like this epidemic, which researchers are calling the single largest, most geographically widespread marine disease ever recorded.

Sea stars, or starfish, are what’s known as a keystone species, important to maintaining biodiversity in marine environments. But an epidemic that swept across the West Coast killed millions of the multi-limbed animals—wiping out up to 95 percent of populations in some regions. Now, a new study is showing warming ocean temperatures might make mass die-offs more severe.

Without starfish to keep mussel populations in check, the sharp-shelled bivalves would push out other marine species, damaging the biodiversity of habitats along the West Coast.

The team analyzed water temperature records taken before, during, and after the wasting episode at locations around the San Juan Islands and Puget Sound in Washington state. They found that as water temperatures rose across the region, so did the risk of infection for sea stars. Sites where water temperatures rose the most left sea stars at highest risk of infection.

Researchers also placed sea stars in aquarium tanks set to temperatures ranging from 54 degrees to 66 degrees Fahrenheit. The hotter the tank, the more quickly starfish succumbed to wasting, Harvell said.

“That confirmed that water temperature can affect mortality,” she said.

With ocean temperatures steadily increasing thanks in part to human-induced climate change, the future of sea stars could be threatened.

The sheer size of this latest wasting event has scientists concerned. Melissa Miner, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said sea star populations are still decimated across nearly all of the West Coast...

On a walk amid tide pools in Newport Beach’s Crystal Cove State Park last week, this reporter did not spot a single starfish. In October 2014, scientists found 191 starfishalong the same rocky reef. Now, there appeared to be an abundance of mussels lining the rocks—the ochre starfish’s favorite meal.

COP21 & the USA

Much Of The World Perplexed That Climate Debate Continues In U.S.

http://www.npr.org/2015/12/09/458930580/rest-of-the-world-perplexed-that-climate-debate-continues-in-u-s?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=202709

COP21 site:

http://www.cop21.gouv.fr/en/

Connections of Conflicts

I see a lot of the conflict that is going on in the world as a reaction to global warming, it’s effects, and people’s (probably mostly unconscious) reactions to perceived future effects. This can be seen in the reaction against population control, against environmentalism, anti-regulation in pro-gun advocacy, and with the demonization of those who are outside of one’s group. Nearly everything that the Republicans stand for is in staunch denial of Global Warming and it’s effects.

The Population Bomb was published in 1968 by Stanford University Professor Paul R. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne Ehrlich. “It warned of the mass starvation of humans in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth.” Birth control was not legalized for all Americans until 1972. Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in 1973. The pro-environmental idea at the time was that it would be best for parents to not have more than 2 children - as a way for people to voluntarily participate in population control. While the drastic effects of overpopulation did not happen within the time line that the Ehrlich’s laid out - the effects have been gradually developing. (Detractors use the time inaccuracies to discredit the whole thing).

Anti-abortion fanaticism may be a form of radical denial & stem from worry that society’s concern about over-population will reduce their group and therefore their security. The old idea was that there is security in numbers - more possible warriors, more power in being the majority, etc. Which is not altogether untrue. Such an argument could be reasonably made as long as there are not catastrophic Global consequences. Such an argument breaks down with the Global Warming problem - where over-population / over-consumption cannot be sustained, but will result in mass death and destruction. 

If honest, some might say, but our group needs to the be the biggest, and it’s all the others who should reduce their numbers. And they may intend to enforce that idea with a large military. They had better use drones at that rate.

One or a few small groups could get away with massive consumption. But in the past few decades, American consumption has exploded, and China, India, and many other countries with many more people and groups are trying to catch up. It is not sustainable globally - it would require many more planets and resources. Meanwhile, many corporate executives and stockholders are making fortunes off of the increased consumption of people both within the USA and around the world.

The anti-abortion POV is pushed that ‘we must have more and more babies, we must deny that having more people & more people is a problem.’ I doubt that most anti-abortion people are thinking about societal or group security consciously. But such a POV does explain, what seems inexplicable about anti-abortion arguments, which is the anti-birth control stance. If the desire was to lessen abortions, then of course, people should use more birth control. However, if the desire is actually for women (that is - women within their group) to have more children (for ‘security’, power, or whatever), then, of course, birth control as well as abortion, must be fought against. 

The anti-abortion groups are usually Christian, and generally, the sort of Christians who fight against abortion are mostly concerned about those in their group. Pro-choice advocates have said all along, that it is the people who are alive who must receive help and consideration. And weirdly, this does not concern most anti-abortion fighters. We see this in the reduced taxes on the wealthy and reduced services provided by the government for the needy. At the same time, people who are anti-abortion tend to be pro-military and advocate people in the military getting the help and consideration that liberals would want spread around to those in need. The effect of this is that the disabled and elderly poor, as well as marginalized minority groups, and even women, are left out of the security group. Those who are protected are the wealthy, healthy (men, esp.) and those in the military. 

Anti-environmentalism is similar - with the same people who are against abortion and who are pro-military - radically denying that people should care about the environment. The suggested idea is that people could only care about themselves and we could ‘never’ make the planet inhospitable to life - no matter how many toxins we add to the water, the land, & the atmosphere - and no matter how many eco-systems we wipe out. The level of animosity is bizarre which is hurled toward those who see the earth as an eco-system that life is dependent on, worthy of concern. Also the scorn and derision levied toward renewable energy makes no sense.

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was published in 1962. “The book documented the detrimental effects on the environment—particularly on birds—of the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation and public officials of accepting industry claims unquestioningly.” Since then we have more detrimental effects on people and animals - more cancers and various health problems. 

The Keeling Curve graph has been illustrating the effects of increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere since 1958. During the 70s, many people were connecting the dots that described the effects of fossil fuel use, over-population and consumption, overfishing & erasing of habitats, and pollution. National Geographic reported recently, “A study of catch data… grimly predicted that if fishing rates continue apace, all the world’s fisheries will have collapsed by the year 2048.” It was not difficult to predict that as weather events such as floods & droughts became more of a problem, as over-fishing and the erasure of habitats became more of a problem, that there would be refugees, there would be strife, there would be wars. 

By the year 2100 or even 2050, the effects of Global Warming and the resulting Climate Changes are expected to be drastic. Coastal areas are already having problems with sea level rise. Those problems are expected to get much worse as time goes on, with Southern Florida expected to be underwater before the century is over. We are seeing droughts as a problem in the farming areas of California. We have 1000 year storms and floods fairly frequently. There are often problems that are supposedly ‘worse than anticipated’. 

Many had been anticipating problems for quite awhile. Apparently much of the Carbon Dioxide was absorbed by the oceans over the years - making them more acidic. This will be a great problem for coral and shellfish. It was predicted long age that  the haves will want to hold on to their privileges, the have-nots will try to stay alive. It was be a mess. It will be like musical chairs - where chairs are being thrown out by the thousands, and people will fight over getting one before the bell rings. The wealthy hope that by buying many extra chairs, they will be safe.

Society has been anticipating problems - consciously by some, unconsciously by others. The more conscious ones live ‘Off the Grid’, and practice organic gardening, and encourage native habitats and healthy eco-systems whenever possible. Many (but not enough) live simply - avoiding over-consumption of meat, of mass-produced things, and fuel - even travel. Liberals have been trying to encourage mass transit, and renewable energy, which is sorely lacking in the USA.

The unconscious Republicans and large corporate interests have worked on getting people to be fearful, buy guns, buy Hummers, get pit bulls, think militia-like - and deny that there are any problems with American capitalism and mindless consumption. They also rail against regulations, against birth control & abortion, against environmentalists, and they say Global Warming is a hoax and the International Scientific community is lying. 

It takes regulations to reduce all the problems that need reducing to maintain a healthy planet - whether it’s overfishing, over-polluting, habitat erosion, and the use of fossil fuels. We have too much antibiotics in our meat and our milk. We have poisons in our make-up and in pet food that goes unregulated. The way it is now, you have to be fairly well off to afford food that is safe and not toxic. Without regulations - some groups take so much that habitats are destroyed, animals become extinct, land is worthless for farming and pollution makes (healthy) fishing impossible. Without regulations, some pollute more than the planet can tolerate.

Consumption could also be regulated - so that some don’t monopolize the resources and contribute more than their share to the problems. Here in the USA, most people, and esp. the wealthy, consume much more than necessary. Where once civilization and production grew and grew and grew - it needs to stop growing. Even if corporations can find and dig up the resources, we need to find peaceful ways to shrink, and to do with less. 

We are using so much money, and resources on the Military - emitting massive amounts of fossil fuels, that it is obscene. A strong military becomes all the more necessary by those who want their country to have more than their share of fossil fuels, or metals, & whatever resources they desire - to maintain their lifestyle. The bloated military, USA, makes global warming worse and it makes strife around the world worse. 

One of the things we are seeing in the USA are Republicans who encourage people to be anti-community - if that community includes people ‘who are not like them’. They want to draw a circle around their group as ‘Christians’ and leave everyone else out. The argument is that if someone needs help, they should join a church (and follow the ‘rules’ - not be gay, for women to be submissive). 

Conservatives and some Libertarians have made people who sell hate and divisiveness, such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, rich. The latest is that Donald Trump, hate-monger in chief, is the front runner for the Republican primary elections. The hate and derision that is expressed already make violence more likely toward those the that Republicans see as ‘outsiders’ more likely. That includes violence against the LGBTQ community, as well as Muslims, and even women.

In my opinion, it is the creative, liberal people, who have, for the most part, been working on solutions. It has been the Republicans and conservatives who have been blocking, or trying to block) those solutions (though some have gotten through). We need to be more creative. We need to be more inclusive. We all need to live more simply.

"Giant jellyfish in 'record numbers'"

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-34006299?SThisFB

From the BBC

20 August 2015 Last updated at 19:48 BST 

Record numbers of "massive" barrel jellyfish have been reported in UK waters, according to the Marine Conservation Society.

The society said the apparent increases "can no longer be ignored", and called for more research to understand what it means.

Underwater cameraman Rich Stevenson took these pictures of barrel jellyfish off the coast of Plymouth.

Jellyfish Trends

Map of population trends of native and invasive species of jellyfish   Increase (high certainty)   Increase (low certainty)   Stable/variable   Decrease   No data
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellyfish / From April 2012

Sea Lions pups have also been dying off of the California Coast

From the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

Sea lions desperate for nourishment dying off in alarming numbers on California coast

Each day, dog crates with sick sea lions arrive here and at four other locations from San Luis Obispo to Fort Bragg in what’s alarmingly become a third year of massive sea lion pup dieoffs. And if the trend continues, marine biologists warn, it could deplete an entire generation of California sea lions. One desperate and hungry pup was found Wednesday beside busy Skyline Boulevard in San Francisco, more than 1,000 feet from the ocean.

Scientists say changes in the coastal California Current have pushed fish populations further from the sea lion rookeries in the Channel Islands, where the pups are born around June. And the diminishing number of sardines and anchovies have forced nursing mothers to switch to rockfish and squid. These changes are believed to have contributed to a lower quality of milk and higher number of malnourished pups.

“These pups should still be nursing. They don’t have the skills to catch food on their own,” said Shawn Johnson, director of the center’s veterinary science department....

"New and Ongoing Wildlife Mortality Events Nationwide"

National Wildlife Health Center

"Mass Death of Seabirds in Western U.S. Is 'Unprecedented'"

From National Geographic:

By Craig Welch

PUBLISHED JANUARY 23, 2015

In the storm debris littering a Washington State shoreline, Bonnie Wood saw something grisly: the mangled bodies of dozens of scraggly young seabirds.

Walking half a mile along the beach at Twin Harbors State Park on Wednesday, Wood spotted more than 130 carcasses of juvenile Cassin's auklets—the blue-footed, palm-size victims of what is becoming one of the largest mass die-offs of seabirds ever recorded.

"It was so distressing," recalled Wood, a volunteer who patrols Pacific Northwest beaches looking for dead or stranded birds. "They were just everywhere. Every ten yards we'd find another ten bodies of these sweet little things."

Cassin's auklets are tiny diving seabirds that look like puffballs. They feed on animal plankton and build their nests by burrowing in the dirt on offshore islands. Their total population, from the Baja Peninsula to Alaska's Aleutian Islands, is estimated at somewhere between 1 million and 3.5 million.

Last year, beginning about Halloween, thousands of juvenile auklets started washing ashore dead from California's Farallon Islands to Haida Gwaii (also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands) off central British Columbia. Since then the deaths haven't stopped. Researchers are wondering if the die-off might spread to other birds or even fish.

"This is just massive, massive, unprecedented," said Julia Parrish, a University of Washington seabird ecologist who oversees the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST), a program that has tracked West Coast seabird deaths for almost 20 years. "We may be talking about 50,000 to 100,000 deaths. So far."

....On some beaches the Cassin's auklet death toll was a hundred times greater than any bird die-off ever tallied there....

Bill Sydeman, a senior scientist at California's Farallon Institute, said he believes the most likely scenario is that the deaths are related to a massive blob of warm water that heated the North Pacific last year and contributed to California's drought and to 2014 being the hottest year on record.

That water was hotter and stayed warm longer than at any time since record-keeping began. It stretched across the Gulf of Alaska, where a high-pressure system blocked storms, preventing the water from churning to the surface and mixing with air. More warm water eventually moved inward along the coast as far south as California, altering how favorable the environment was for the zooplankton that many fish and birds, including Cassin's auklets, feed on.

That all happened in late summer—about the same time the young auklets began to fledge.

"Last Song for Migrating Birds"

Snips from an Article By Jonathan Franzen for National Geographic  from July 2013

To a visitor from North America, where bird hunting is well regulated and only naughty farm boys shoot songbirds, the situation in the Mediterranean is appalling: Every year, from one end of it to the other, hundreds of millions of songbirds and larger migrants are killed for food, profit, sport, and general amusement. The killing is substantially indiscriminate, with heavy impact on species already battered by destruction or fragmentation of their breeding habitat. Mediterraneans shoot cranes, storks, and large raptors for which governments to the north have multimillion-euro conservation projects. All across Europe bird populations are in steep decline, and the slaughter in the Mediterranean is one of the causes.

Italian hunters and poachers are the most notorious; for much of the year, the woods and wetlands of rural Italy crackle with gunfire and songbird traps. The food-loving French continue to eat ortolan buntings illegally, and France’s singularly long list of huntable birds includes many struggling species of shorebirds. Songbird trapping is still widespread in parts of Spain; Maltese hunters, frustrated by a lack of native quarry, blast migrating raptors out of the sky; Cypriots harvest warblers on an industrial scale and consume them by the plateful, in defiance of the law.

In the European Union, however, there are at least theoretical constraints on the killing of migratory birds. Public opinion in the EU tends to favor conservation, and a variety of nature-protection groups are helping governments enforce the law. (In Sicily, formerly a hot spot for raptor killing, poaching has been all but eliminated, and some of the former poachers have even become bird-watchers.) Where the situation for migrants is not improving is in the non-EU Mediterranean. In fact, when I visited Albania and Egypt last year, I found that it’s becoming dramatically worse…

Under the 40-year Marxist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, totalitarianism destroyed the fabric of Albanian society and tradition, and yet this was not a bad time for birds. Hoxha reserved the privileges of hunting and private gun ownership for himself and a few trusted cronies. (To this day the national Museum of Natural History displays bird trophies of Hoxha and other members of the politburo.) But a handful of hunters had minimal impact on the millions of migrants passing through, and the country’s command-economy backwardness, along with its repellence to foreign beach tourists, ensured that its wealth of coastal habitat remained intact.

Following Hoxha’s death, in 1985, the country underwent an uneasy transition to a market economy, including a period of near anarchy in which the country’s armories were broken open and the military’s guns were seized by ordinary citizens. Even after the rule of law was restored, Albanians kept their guns, and the country remained understandably averse to regulation of all kinds. The economy began to grow, and one of the ways in which a generation of younger men in Tirana expressed their new freedom and prosperity was to buy expensive shotguns, by the thousands, and use them to do what formerly only the elite could do: kill birds….

Unfortunately, the old communist joke still applies to forestry officials responsible for the protected areas: The government pretends to pay them, and they pretend to work. As a result, the laws are not enforced—a fact that Italian hunters, limited by EU regulations at home, were quick to recognize and exploit after Hoxha’s death. During my week in Albania I didn’t visit a protected area in which there were not Italian hunters, even though the hunting season had ended, even in unprotected areas. In every case the Italians were using illegal high-quality bird-sound playback equipment and shooting as much as they wanted of whatever they wanted.

Albania was once ruled by Italy, and many Albanians still view Italians as models of sophistication and modernity. Beyond the very considerable immediate damage that Italian tourist hunters do in Albania, they’ve introduced both an ethic of indiscriminate slaughter and new methods of accomplishing it—in particular the use of playback, which is catastrophically effective in attracting birds. Even in provincial villages, Albanian hunters now have MP3s of duck calls on their cell phones and iPods. Their new sophistication, coupled with an estimated 100,000 shotguns (in a country of three million) and a glut of other weapons that can be used opportunistically, has turned Albania into a giant sinkhole for eastern European migratory biomass: Millions of birds fly in and very few get out alive….

In northeastern Africa, unlike in the Balkans, there is also an ancient, rich, and continuous tradition of harvesting migratory birds of all sizes. (The miraculous provision of meat accompanying the manna from heaven that saved the Israelites in the Sinai is thought to have been migrating quail.) As long as the practice was pursued by traditional methods (handmade nets and lime sticks, small traps made of reeds, camels for transportation), the impact on Eurasian breeding bird populations was perhaps sustainable. The problem now is that new technology has vastly increased the harvest, while the tradition remains in place….

I visited Al Maghrah late in the season, but the oriole decoys (consisting typically of a dead male on a stick) were still attracting good numbers, and the hunters rarely missed with their shotguns. Given how many hunters there were, it seemed quite possible that 5,000 orioles were being taken annually at this one location. And given that there are scores of other desert hunting sites, and that the bird is a prized quarry along the Egyptian coast as well, the losses in Egypt represent a significant fraction of the species’ European population of two or three million breeding pairs. Enjoyment of a colorful species with a vast summer and winter range is thus being monopolized, every September, by a relatively tiny number of well-fed leisure hunters seeking natural Viagra. And while some of them may be using unlicensed weapons to kill orioles, the rest are breaking no Egyptian laws at all thereby.

At the oasis I also met a shepherd too poor to own a shotgun. He and his ten-year-old son instead relied on four nets, hung over trees, and they were mostly catching smaller birds like flycatchers, shrikes, and warblers. The son was therefore excited when he managed to corner a male oriole, splendidly gold and black, in a net. He came running back to his father with it—“An oriole!” he shouted proudly—and cut its throat with a knife. Moments later a female oriole flashed close to us, and I wondered if it might be the dead male’s distraught mate. The shepherd boy chased it toward a netted palm tree, but the bird avoided the tree at the last second and headed into the open desert, flying southward.

Most of the Bedouin I spoke to told me that they won’t kill resident species, such as hoopoes and laughing doves. Like other Mediterranean hunters, however, they consider all migratory species fair game; as the Albanians like to say, “They’re not our birds.” While every Egyptian hunter I met admitted that the number of migrants has been declining in recent years, only a few allowed that overharvesting might be a factor. Some hunters blame climate change; an especially popular theory is that the increasing number of electric lights at the coast is frightening the birds away. (In fact, lights are more likely to attract them.)…

The basic message of environmental “education” is, unavoidably, that Egyptians should stop doing what they’ve always done; and the concerns of a bird-smitten nation like England, whose colonization of Egypt is in any case still resented, seem as absurd and meddling as a Royal Society for the Protection of Catfish would seem to rural Mississippians.

Most Egyptian coastal towns have bird markets where a quail can be bought for two dollars, a turtledove for five, an oriole for three, and small birds for pennies. Outside one of these towns, El Daba, I toured the farm of a white-bearded man with a bird-trapping operation so large that, even after the families of his six sons had eaten their fill, he had a surplus to bring to market. Enormous nets were draped over eight tall tamarisk trees and many smaller bushes, encircling a grove of figs and olives; the nets were an inexpensive modern product, available in El Daba for only the past seven years. The sun was very hot, and migrant songbirds were arriving from the nearby coastline, seeking shelter. Repelled by the net on one tree, they simply flew to the next tree, until they found themselves caught. The farmer’s grandsons ran inside the nets and grabbed them, and one of his sons tore off their flight feathers and dropped them in a plastic grain sack. In 20 minutes I saw a red-backed shrike, a collared flycatcher, a spotted flycatcher, a male golden oriole, a chiffchaff, a blackcap, two wood warblers, two cisticolas, and many unidentified birds disappear into the sack. By the time we paused in the shade, amid the discarded heads and feathers of cuckoos and hoopoes and a sparrow hawk, the sack was bulging, the oriole crying out inside it.

Based on the farmer’s estimates of his daily take, I calculated that every year between August 25 and September 25, his operation removes 600 orioles, 250 turtledoves, 200 hoopoes, and 4,500 smaller birds from the air. The supplemental income is surely welcome, but the farm would clearly have thrived without it; the furnishings in the family’s spacious guest parlor, where I was treated with great Bedouin hospitality, were brand-new and of high quality.

"Heat Islands Cooking U.S. Cities"

Hot and Getting Hotter: Heat Islands Cooking U.S. Cities From Climate Central:

Urban heat measured by satellite in Louisville, Ky. Click image to enlarge. 

Cities are almost always hotter than the surrounding rural area but global warming takes that heat and makes it worse. In the future, this combination of urbanization and climate change could raise urban temperatures to levels that threaten human health, strain energy resources, and compromise economic productivity.

Summers in the U.S. have been warming since 1970. But on average across the country cities are even hotter, and have been getting hotter faster than adjacent rural areas. (report continues below interactive)

With more than 80 percent of Americans living in cities, these urban heat islands — combined with rising temperatures caused by increasing heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions — can have serious health effects for hundreds of millions of people during the hottest months of the year.  Heat is the No.1 weather-related killer in the U.S., and the hottest days, particularly days over 90°F, are associated with dangerous ozone pollution levels that can trigger asthma attacks, heart attacks, and other serious health impacts.

Our analysis of summer temperatures in 60 of the largest U.S. cities found that: 

• 57 cities had measurable urban heat island effects over the past 10 years. Single-day urban temperatures in some metro areas were as much as 27°F higher than the surrounding rural areas, and on average across all 60 cities, the maximum single-day temperature difference was 17.5°F.
   
• Cities have many more searing hot days each year. Since 2004, 12 cities averaged at least 20 more days a year above 90°F than nearby rural areas. The 60 cities analyzed averaged at least 8 more days over 90°F each summer compared to adjacent rural areas.
   
• More heat can increase ozone air pollution. All 51 cities with adequate data showed a statistically significant correlation between higher daily summer temperatures and bad air quality (as measured by ground-level ozone concentrations). Temperatures are being forced higher by increasing urbanization and manmade global warming, which could undermine the hard-won improvements in air quality and public health made over the past few decades.
   
• In two thirds of the cities analyzed (41 of 60), urbanization and climate change appear to be combining to increase summer heat faster than climate change alone is raising regional temperatures. In three quarters (45 of 60) of cities examined, urbanized areas are warming faster than adjacent rural locations.
• 
  
• The top 10 cities with the most intense summer urban heat islands (average daily urban-rural temperature differences) over the past 10 years are:
   
• Las Vegas (7.3°F)
• Albuquerque (5.9°F
• Denver (4.9°F)
• Portland (4.8°F)
• Louisville (4.8°F)
• Washington, D.C. (4.7°F)
• Kansas City (4.6°F)
• Columbus (4.4°F)
• Minneapolis (4.3°F)
• Seattle (4.1°F)
   
• On average across all 60 cities, urban summer temperatures were 2.4°F hotter than rural temperatures.

"Science Shows How Climate Change is Baking Australia"

Science Shows How Climate Change is Baking Australia from Climate Central

As smoke billows from unnervingly early-season wildfires charring the Australian state of Tasmania, yet more dust is settling on the scientific discussion over how climate change contributed to last year’s deadly Australian heat.

Last year was Australia’s hottest on record. And each of a set of five research papers published Monday in a special edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society reached the same conclusion regarding the year of unprecedented heat. The research teams independently concluded — in two cases writing that they could do so with “essentially” 100 percent certainty — that climate-changing greenhouse gas pollution played a substantial role in fueling it.

Australia has left behind its climate of generations past and moved into an era where extreme heat waves and warm winter months, such as those of 2013, are more likely to occur, researchers concluded.

“They’ve left behind the climate that they used to have,” said NOAA research meteorologist Thomas Knutson.

Last year’s intense heat was perhaps most noticeable during summer, when temperatures of 120 degrees were recorded in some places. But the differences between recorded and average temperatures were greatest during the Austral winter and fall. Never in more than a century of record-keeping has the average Australian temperature reached last year’s level.

The high temperatures and frequent heat waves were the combined result of natural variation and human influence on the climate. Low rainfall that contributed to the hot conditions does not appear to have been caused by climate change, one of the research teams concluded. That natural phenomenon combined with unnatural climate change-juiced heat, however, leading to extraordinary temperatures. Heat waves killed hundreds of people, delayed play and injured players at Melbourne’s Australian Open, and caused 100,000 bats to spectacularly tumble from their perches, dead.

“We now have some very solid, quantitative work that says, ‘Hey, wait a minute, climate change is implicated in these things,’” said Australian National University professor Will Steffen, who was a climate commissioner until the new federal government terminated the nation’s climate advisory group. The former government agency has since reconstituted itself as an independent nonprofit....

"Lyme disease surges north, and Canada moves out of denial"

Article in the 'Daily Climate'

Scientists long expected climate change to harm human health. But one of the clearest signs of health risks in a warming world has emerged in one of the world’s most advanced economies, as Canada belatedly struggles to cope with Lyme disease's migration in North America. 

Canada should have seen this coming. In the United States, reported cases of Lyme disease have increased from fewer than 10,000 reported cases in 1991 to more than 27,000 cases by 2013. Canada was well-positioned to be affected by the spread of the disease. As early as 2005, modeling published by researcher Nicholas Ogden, then at the University of Montreal, indicated that the geographic range of the Lyme-carrying tick could expand northward significantly due to climate change in this century. 

Scientists long have anticipated that global warming would harm human health, and the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report highlights the risk for poor populations that don't have access to quality health care or other public services. For example, the risk of heat stroke is greatest in areas without access to power for air conditioning, and water-borne illnesses like cholera and intestinal viruses flourish in areas without safe drinking water. 

But one of the clearest signs of the changing health risks in a warming world has emerged in two of the world's most advanced economies, the United States and Canada, as Lyme disease spreads in North America. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this year added Lyme disease to its list of climate change indicators, a report meant to aid in public understanding of the effects of warming that scientists have been able to document....

'An emerging clinical problem'
The doctors presented their findings in April at an American College of Rheumatology symposium but declined to talk to The Daily Climate about their research until it is published in a medical journal. They are still working on finalizing their paper, an IWK Health Centre spokeswoman said. But in the abstract presented at that meeting, they called Lyme arthritis "an emerging clinical problem in Nova Scotia," with cases expected to continue to rise. 

Untreated, Lyme disease can spread to joints, the nervous system, and even the heart. Heart block due to Lyme carditis can develop in minutes or hours, and is a rare but fatal complication. A more common problem that causes even greater concern in the health community: Lyme patients with symptoms persisting long after antibiotic treatment. There's great controversy over how long antibiotic treatment should be continued in such cases and who should bear the costs. The issue underscores the importance of early detection. "Almost always the persistent cases are in patients who were not treated early," said the CDC's Beard. 

Robert Strang, Nova Scotia's chief public health officer, says one problem with diagnosis has been that Lyme involves "a lot of non-specific symptoms." Of the cluster of pediatric arthritis cases at IWK, he said, "that case series reminded us that there are joint and neurologic and cardiac ways that Lyme disease can present itself."...
 

Jon Stewart "Burn Notice"

On why people have to 'March' anyway (Republicans in the House of Representatives - Science, etc. Committee):

The Daily Show - Burn Notice

Excerpt from the 'hearing':

Bucshon: Is it true that this rule has no effect on the global temperature change?

Holdren: Can I take that? I’d like to respond to that.

Bucshon: There’s public comment out there that that question has been asked and answered saying no.

Holdren: You should look at the scientific literature [interrupted] rather than the public comments …

Bucshon: Of all the climatologists whose careers depends on the climate changing to keep themselves publishing articles? Yes, I could read that, but I don’t believe it.

from http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/17/3568923/bucshon-climate-scientists-money/

(Bucshon is the Representative from Indiana - from my district)

UN Climate Summit 2014

UN Climate Summit 2014 - live broadcast

Climate Summit 2014 - 1) Opening Ceremony 2) National action and ambition announcements, Plenary 3 (National Announcements and Heads of State and Government) 3) Joint conclusion of the morning National Action and Ambition Announcements

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has invited world leaders, from government, finance, business, and civil society to Climate Summit 2014 this 23 September to galvanize and catalyze climate action. He has asked these leaders to bring bold announcements and actions to the Summit that will reduce emissions, strengthen climate resilience, and mobilize political will for a meaningful legal agreement in 2015. Climate Summit 2014 provides a unique opportunity for leaders to champion an ambitious vision, anchored in action that will enable a meaningful global agreement in 2015.

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This is what inspired the NYC march and other marches / demonstrations around the world. There is hope that the various government representatives will work together to make changes to business as usual. It is a world-wide problem that takes world-wide solutions. 

I think we need rationing - at the individual and country levels. Plus industries need more controls - enforced regulations on emissions. There needs to be more requirements for large corporations to be efficient. Green energy needs to be promoted, of course - with an end to oil and gas subsidies and a limit on how much is extracted per year.