HERE AND NOW (NPR) had a story about climate change and its impact on us in the immediate future:
A new study predicts how much warmer 541 cities in the U.S. and Canada will be by 2080. If climate change continues at its current rate, New York City will feel as warm as northern Arkansas, and Miami's climate will resemble southern Mexico's.
Here & Now's Robin Young speaks with the study's lead author, Matt Fitzpatrick, associate professor at the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Sciences.
"So you're talking about sort of the average urban dweller today," Fitzpatrick explains, "they would need to get in a car, on a train and drive about 500 miles to the south to find a climate today like we expect in their city in 2080."
On the East Coast, cities will become warmer and wetter, Fitzpatrick says. Washington, D.C., which is normally super muggy in the summer months, will feel more like Mississippi. So what does that mean for Mississippi?
"Mississippi is becoming more like Mexico," he says.
If you go to this link you can look to see what it will be like for various cities in the US in 80 years. Let's pair the NPR story with one from Jen Christiensen (CNN):
If you like to take a walk in the woods in the United States or you prefer to decorate a Douglas fir at Christmas, you should know that climate change is making both of those activities a lot harder.
Looking at two ecologically and economically important species -- the Douglas fir and the Ponderosa pine -- scientists found that fires and drought exacerbated by climate change make new growth difficult, especially in low-elevation forests, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Some forests in four regions in California, Colorado, the Northern Rockies and the southwestern part of the United States have crossed "a critical climate threshold for postfire tree generation," the study says.
Climate conditions over the past 20 years have accelerated changes that would have otherwise taken decades or even centuries to play out across broad regions of the country. This is leading to the abrupt decline of trees and making these lands increasingly unsuitable for tree regeneration.
Climate change is endangering our forests now, not just in some distant future.
Hard to believe just how much we are destroying our home. And how little we care.
Some people care and some really care. Elle Hunt (GUARDIAN) reports:
As soon as Blythe Pepino got together with her partner Joshua two years ago, she felt “this overwhelming urge to create a family with him”, she says. “I think it was the fifth day after having met him, I said: ‘I’ve got to meet your parents.’ He was like: ‘You’re mad.’”
Then, late last year, she attended a lecture held by the direct action group Extinction Rebellion, which set out starkly the catastrophic reality of the changing climate. That galvanised Pepino, an activist and musician (she is the former singer of Vaults, now Mesadorm), to do research of her own and, eventually, to have a series of sad conversations with Joshua.
“I realised that even though I wanted to have a family at that point, I couldn’t really bring myself to do it,” she says. “I had to say to him: ‘I don’t know if I can do this, considering what we know – if there isn’t a political will to fix this, we really don’t stand much of a chance.’”
Pepino, who turns 33 today, found that other women – especially those in climate-conscious circles – were struggling with the same question, but were “too afraid to talk about it” for fear of judgment or ridicule. The US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave voice to their concerns last month, pointing to the increasingly dire scientific consensus and widespread government inaction: “It does lead young people to have a legitimate question: is it OK still to have children?”
Good for them for their convictions. How sad that it has to come to that. Our governments have betrayed us around the world.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Tuesday, March 12, 2019. The Iraq War continues -- and Tulsi Gabbard brings some reality to late night TV.
NEW: Speaker Pelosi on impeachment: "They wanted me to impeach President Bush for the Iraq War. I didn’t believe in it then, I don’t believe in it now. It divides the country. Unless there is some conclusive evidence that takes us to that place."
Nancy Pelosi didn't end the Iraq War. She didn't impeach Bully Boy Bush, She didn't do much of anything. She spoke a lot in front of the media. Most of the time, the media covered for her. Even in 2007, she had huge cognitive problems (we covered the time Rahm Emanuel had to rescue her publicly). Adam Schiff and others are wasting time with investigations and wasting tax payer monies. Impeachment will not happen under Nancy.
She didn't want accountability for the Iraq War and if something that monumental goes unanswered for, nothing else will be.
Part of Nancy's reasoning, as we've explained before, is the timeline issue. Impeachment attempts will take you right into an election cycle at this point. And an impeachment attempt, she fears, will energize the Republicans (not just the base) where as it will alienate swing voters and some Democrats.
War is never questioned, apparently, just used to turn out votes for both of the two major political parties. Jason Ditz (ANTIWAR.COM) reports:
As had been previously reported late last week, President Trump has unveiled a budget plan which, in addition to cutting social spending across the board, would seek a huge increase in military spending, centered almost entirely on war funding.
US military spending is always by far the largest on the planet, several times the amount of the next highest spending, China. But while other nations like China and Russia are scaling back their budgets, the Pentagon’s budget, as ever, continues to rise.
Trump’s proposal would bring the overall defense budget for 2020 to $750 billion. This includes a $544 billion base-line defense budget, which is not in and of itself a huge increase. But on top of that will be a nearly $100 billion in the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) Fund, and a $9 billion “emergency” funding request meant to make up for the money already taken from the military to build the border wall.
And it goes beyond just the US.
What Wikileaks reveals about the Blair and Brown governments – next 3 tweets.
1/ Wikileaks file show how the UK govt made promises to the US to “protect your interests” in the Chilcot enquiry into the Iraq war. bit.ly/2TBVBHx
2/ Wikileaks file shows how US and UK rigged the International Criminal Court to stop it being able to hold Blair and Bush accountable for the crime of aggression over Iraq bit.ly/2TBVBHx
3/ Wikileaks file shows UK International Development Secretary under Brown and soon-to-be-appointed MI6 chief working with the US to prevent reform of the world financial system. bit.ly/2TBVBHx
WIKILEAKS crime, never forget, was reporting the truth.
US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: "I served in a war in Iraq, a war that was launched based on lies and a war that was launched without evidence."
Some are supporting Tulsi because they believe she would be a great president. Some are supporting her to get her onstage at the debates because they know she will expand the conversation.
She expanded it for late night comedy talk shows last night.
Stephen Colbert: Why do you want to be president of the United States?
US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard: Because as a soldier I know the cost of war and the most important job the president has is to be commander in chief.
Stephen Colbert: Do you think that the Iraq War was worth it?
US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard: No.
Stephen Colbert: Do you think that our -- Do you think that our involvement in Syria has been worth it?
US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard: No.
Stephen Colbert: Do you believe that -- Do you believe that ISIS could have been defeated without our involvement and support of the local troops there?
US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard: There are two things we need to address in Syria. One is a regime change war that was first launched by the United States in 2011, covertly led by the CIA. That is a regime change war that has continued over the years that has increased the suffering of the Syrian people and strengthened terrorist groups like al Qaeda and ISIS because the CIA was using American tax payer dollars to provide arms and training equipment to these terrorist groups to get them to overthrow the government. So that is a regime change war that we should not have been waging --
Stephen Colbert: So but if --
US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard: The second --
Stephen Colbert: -- someone like Bashar Assad [cross talk] or engages in War Crimes against his own people, should the United States not be involved.
US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard: The United States should not be intervening to overthrow these dictators and these regimes that we don't like, like Assad, like Saddam Hussein, like Qaddafi and like Kim Jong Un. There are bad people in the world but history has shown us that every time the United States goes in and topples these dictators we don't like, trying to act as the world's police, we end up increasing the suffering of the people in these countries, we end up causing a loss of life -- both American lives and the lives of people in these countries, we end up undermining our own security. [. . .] to speak of the trillions of dollars spent on these wars that we need to be using right here at home.
In Iraq, Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran, continues his visit (it's expected to be a three day visit).
Iraq and Iran signed several preliminary trade deals as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani held his first visit to Iraq,
Iran-Iraq Summit, Day 1:
Met Pres, PM, Speaker+political & business leaders
Agreed on:
-Inclusive regional security
-No-fee visas
-Connecting railways
-Dredging border river after 43 yrs
-Joint industrial zones
-Energy cooperation
-$20B in trade
-PTA
2 more days; 2 more cities
Margaret Griffis (ANTIWAR.COM) notes of yesterday's violence, "At least four people were killed, and six were wounded; 15 bodies were found."
AP has changed their headline on yesterdy's trash so we're ignoring it.
New content at THIRD:
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- Editorial: Reasons?
- TV: Truth and lies
- From The TESR Test Kitchen
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- DiFi goes beserk
- International Women's Day Tweet
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