January 2021

Ocean Heat, An Elephant In The Living Room

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The oceans store more than 90 percent of all combustion heat. In 2020, record fossil fuel and wood pellet heat in the ocean was the energetic equivalent of detonating 315,536,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs. The energy within the oceans drives the climate, which is becoming less predictable and more violent.

Planetary ice is important for reflecting incoming solar radiation back to outer space. As the world’s temperature rises, planetary ice is in peril. In fact, Earth’s ice is melting 57 percent faster than in the 1990s. The world has lost 28 trillion metric tons of ice since 1994. That is enough meltwater to fill 10.2 billion Olympic swimming pools, or, cover the entire state of California in ~200 feet of water.

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Git-R-Done, Not Quite

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People are characterized by their actions more than their words. People have hidden agendas and different forms of communicating. Most underlings recognize when a boss or supervisors throws out a suggestion as simple as “the report will be helpful, it means “Git-R-done.”

Most agree with the premise that one is not guilty until proven guilty in court and each citizen’s entitlement to due process. Investigators know people found not guilty are guilty. The criminal trial of OJ comes to mind with technicalities, inaccurate testimony, judgment.

Officers, much like scientists, follow paths from events and witnesses seeking to prove or un-prove truth. Most investigators are happy to clear someone, as much as they are pleased to convict someone.

Trump and Bannon began their agenda with bigotry and distrust of persons, partisanship, and institutions. The Department of Justice (DOJ) nor the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) would be spared. Disbelief and doubt in State and Federal government institutions, judicial courts, governance, and the people honorably engaged with such institutions were quickly labeled “the swamp.”

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Battle with the Bureaucrats

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“After all, the chief business of the American people is business” is a quote from Calvin Coolidge in 1925. From 2016 to 2020 America had a president who was primarily a businessman. While many politicians would see the presidency as their ultimate achievement, there are plenty of politicians who will never attain that office, for various reasons. It seems that someone with only a business background and no political experience would have no chance of winning the office of the presidency. Yet, in 2016, we elected a president who had never held public office before.

When faced with a pandemic of enormous proportion, in nine months, the president via Operation Warp Speed motivated public officials and the private sector to concentrate their efforts and created two vaccines, in a speed that will go down in history. Not that the president will be remembered for that, though. In 2020 the American stock market roared back, to heights that exceeded Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom, while home sales and automobile sales swelled.

Impeachment 2.0
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Climate Victims: Whales And Sharks

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The year 2020 set another horrible heat record in the oceans, which make up 99 percent of the planet’s biosphere, or, where life can exist. Many billions of our brethren and sistren, the animals, are already dead. It’s simply too hot.

The ocean heat is in lockstep with burning fossil fuels and wood pellets. In 2020, the world’s oceans absorbed the equivalent heat to dropping 10 Hiroshima atom bombs every second of the year (20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 {sextillion} joules).

Climate Victims
Since the 1990s the heat in the oceans has taken off as the amount of fossil fuel combustion has more than quadrupled.
Image credit: Kevin Trenberth

Allow me to remind you that the oceans drive Earth’s climate. Hence we are amid a worsening man-made climate crisis. It is never just about humans though. We share this glorious blue planet with a couple of million other life forms. All life is interrelated and we need everything that is left, alive.

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Poisoned Great Barrier Reef, Gruesome Green Turtles

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I was taught to respect my elders. The world’s largest coral reef system, or, the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), is about 8,000 old. It is sacred, yet it has been horribly abused. Consequently, the GBR is terminally ill.

Great Barrier Reef
Burning fossil fuels and wood pellets and the resultant increased marine heatwaves are sweeping the planet and laying waste to reefs. Coral graveyards are expanding at a terrorsome rate. 
Image credit: Brett Monroe Garner
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