The Life Slant - Page 8

Fossil Fuel Retribution: Climate Hurricanes

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The heat from fossil fuel and wood pellet combustion stored within the oceans (equivalent to dropping five Hiroshima atomic bombs every five seconds nonstop) is supercharging these god-awful climate hurricanes and climate fires.

Climate Hurricanes
Climate Hurricane Iota decimated life in its wake. It was a record 30th named tropical storm within the Atlantic during 2020. 
Image credit: Luis Guillermo Ferrebus/AP

Today, tropical storms are rapidly intensifying into hurricanes and typhoons. In addition, global heating is slowing down these tempests, which means they have become more torrential, violent and deadly.

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‘Beeautiful’ Buzzing Sistren

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Gen Zs (<26 year olds) are rescuing and breaking new ground within the queendom of our sistren, the bees.

Honeybees have a remarkably complex language. It includes dancing, headbutting and scaling vibrations. Each intriguing maneuver conveys specific and precise meaning. For example, when honeybees encounter giant Asian hornets their vibrational dialect quickly pulses up the scale. That is, the higher the pitch, the greater the peril.

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Honeybees can communicate danger better than any other of the 900,000 or so kinds of insects. That’s why scientists are paying close attention to the bees because they spotlight toxicity within the environment. It’s high time for the lawmakers globally to ban all these deadly nerve poisons that are killing bees and birds, e.g., neonicotinoids, sulfoxaflors, flupyradifurone and chlorpyrifos.

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Your #GlobalHeating Battle Line

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From climate fires and insect epidemics to megadroughts and climate hurricanes, man-made global heating is terrifying! All hands on deck.

This Monday evening, satellite data from Hurricane Eta revealed sustained winds of 190 mph (306 kph) at its core. This climate hurricane in the North Atlantic was the strongest storm so far recorded, and the only Category 5 hurricane ever to form in the Atlantic during November.

Global Heating
Eta was the twelfth hurricane and the record 28th Atlantic storm in 2020. Image Credit: Tropical Tidbits

On Tuesday, Eta delivered an unsurvivable 21-foot (6.4 m) storm surge to northern Nicaragua and southern Honduras. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), nearly 500,000 children (Gen Zs) were in danger of becoming climate refugees.

Global Heating
The Saopin Bridge along highway CA-13 in Atlántida, Honduras, buckled and then collapsed from an extreme deluge of 40 inches (1016mm) of rainfall on Wednesday (Nov. 4, 2020). Image Credit: Twitter/Policia Honduras

Meanwhile, Eta has left the ravaged landfall and is drawing energy from the warm Caribbean Sea while moving slowly northeast towards the Florida Keys.

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Nature’s Harbinger of Heat

Why has Earth’s climate changed so radically in such a short span of time? The elephant in the living room is combustion heat from fossil fuels and wood pellets chopped up from old-growth forests. That accumulated heat is being stored deep within the oceans. Over the previous 25 years, that heat is the equivalent of dropping 3.6 billion Hiroshima atom-bombs. The oceans drive Earth’s climate, which has become unstable with both higher highs and lower lows.

Even to the untrained eye, the effects of climate instability are highly conspicuous across western North America’s cold tolerant and hardy coniferous forests.

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Age of Extinction: Massacring Sharks Won’t Rid COVID-19

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The pharmaceutical gold rush to invent an antidote for the highly infectious airborne coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has set its sights on devouring the most perfect fish to swim the seas: the shark.

Some of the 176 coronavirus vaccine trials are using an oily animal hydrocarbon found in deepsea shark livers called squalene. Squalene is believed to improve the human response of the antigen (toxin) within the dose.

Sharks and Covid-19 vaccine
Great white sharks are the largest predatory fish on Earth.
Image credit: Michael Muller
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Trump Greenlights Destruction of America’s Amazon-like Rainforest

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Nestled along 500 miles of Alaska’s verdant Inside Passage there are spellbinding skyscraper Sitka spruce, giant western hemlocks, colossal  western redcedars and weathered 1,800-year-old yellow cedars. The hallowed old-growth temperate rainforest is ruled by the monarchs of nature, three-quarter ton grizzly bears. Altogether, some 17 million dripping, breathing, climate-making Mother Earth forested acres are guarding a whopping eight percent of all the carbon held in the United States. The Tongass National Forest is America’s Amazon rainforest. It contains about one-third of the sanctified old-growth temperate forests left on our man-besieged planet. That priceless rainforest is every American (and planetary) Gen Zs birthright, and Donald J. Trump, the chief promoter of extinction, has just signed off on the death warrants for more than half of it, some 9 million acres.

Yellow cedar tree rings are living museums. They provide an unparalleled looking glass into the climate when the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great established his capital at Constantinople in 330CE (much later becoming Istanbul, Turkey).
Image Credit: Reddit
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Vengeance: Climate Fires

* As I’m writing, the air is putrid and acrid. A fog of death has cloaked Washington, Oregon and California. Climate fires have incinerated about five million acres – a once-in-a-generation-event – and they are far from over.

The enormity and ferocity of these man-made, global heating fires is gobsmacking. The climate has reached a planetary tipping point. The only unknown is how we survive it – especially with Republicans intoxicated on Trumpism, recklessly reassured by Rupert Murdoch’s science-denying talking heads.

Four hundred and fifty million honeybees were burned to death during the December 2019 Australian climate-driven bushfires. Image credit: ABC News

*My upcoming book Gen Z Emergency has chronicled the hideous 2019-2020, worst-ever, Australian climate fires. More than one billion of our brethren and sistren, the animals, were cremated. This does not include frogs and insects, which would have elevated that number into several billions.

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China Goes Viral

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China goes viral

*The global economy has suffered and enormous punch to the gut, and the economies of many nations are coughing and wheezing while dozens of their citizens perish. The culprit in this calamity is the Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. The origin of this pandemic (empowered by the global economy) has been traced to the city of Wuhan, in Hubei province, China, where it emerged in December of 2019.

Actually, according to Helen Davidson of “The Guardian,” COVID-19 was first detected on November 17 of 2019, and by March 13, 2020, had killed 4,702 people. The Chinese government only admitted that there was human-to-human contact on January 21 of 2020. Doctor Ai Fen of the Wuhan Central hospital lost four of her fellow doctors to the virus and is guilty of “criticizing hospital authorities for suppressing early warnings of the outbreak.” To further add to the global mayhem, Dr. Fen and whistleblower ophthalmologist Li Wenliang were risking their jobs as well as detention to reveal to the public about the conditions in Wuhan. The global economy advances (and kills) everyone equally, if not for the preparations by their nation. Keep Reading

Covid-19: The Chicken or the Egg

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*What came first is debatable when asked about the chicken and the egg. However, when we ask what happened first, labor or corporations, the answer is labor.

The president has claimed, “I am facing the biggest decision of my life.” He is referring to getting people back to work as our economy has taken a big hit because of the pandemic. Many of us were not around during the Great Depression when people were out of work; there were food shortages, confusion, health risks, and more. None of us want to repeat that era. As Americans, we must support cautious and well thought out legislation on the mobilization of our economy.

Living in a Democracy claiming freedoms has been one of the many issues creating issues on our health care providers, enforcement, getting to solutions, and understanding the impact and meaning of a pandemic. Keep Reading

Yellow Lanterns Welcoming Spring

*A magnificent plant called yellow lantern is flowering along the west coast. It’s a vibrant vernal beauty.

These western inhabitants thrive in rich mucky, wet swamps near red alders, Sitka spruce, western redcedars and grand firs.

Yellow Lanterns
It’s exhilarating to see these bursting Sitka oxygen-makers. Image credit: Reese Halter

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COVID-19: The Clear and Present Threat to Military Families During This Crisis is Not the Virus

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*Too many veterans and their families aren’t mentally, emotionally and spiritually prepared for the difficult days ahead. Since the spread of COVID-19, we’ve heard from hundreds of military families who are afraid – not of catching a virus – but of the long term damage this crisis will have on their lives.

They’re afraid they’ll turn to older ways of coping with their challenges as the stress of this crisis looms over them. Many nationwide closures have affected support groups such as alcoholics anonymous (AA), and other key outpatient services due to government action to limit large gatherings. People are overwhelmed with financial buckling, uncertainty, school cancellations affecting their children, and being closed off from normal routines. Keep Reading

A Sweet Story

*Science is exhilarating, challenging and rich with rewards. As a scientist, the bees have shown me many things.

Last week, the bees revealed a lesson on speed and stamina. At 230 wingbeats per second, on my bicycle, I clocked one gal soaring down the street at 27 miles per hour (mph)!

honeybees
An indefatigable worker on a nectar run. Image credit: Reese Halter

She had an empty load. When topped-up with nectar, pollen, water or tree resin (used to make propolis, or bee glue), a honeybee can reach an impressive 20mph. She can maintain that stamina for possibly a couple miles or more.

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When Ghosts Come a-Haunting – DNA Tests and You

*The following recounts true and recent events.  The names have been changed.

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Sally had spent scores and scores of hours researching her family’s lineage, an interest she had begun to cultivate after her youngest headed off to college.  By the time she finally got around to send a little spit off to a popular genealogy website she was certain about what the outcome would be – after all, she had memorized the family tree from her dad back to her great-great-Grandfather!

When the report arrived in the mail she opened it with pronounced anticipation and began to scan for Johansons. There were none.  More slowly this time, she again perused the list of relatives and still no Johansons.  She checked to make sure it was her report and not a case of mistaken identity.  Hers.  Wow!

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Androgyny’s Abrogation

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*Here’s the call:

Dispatcher: 911 what is your emergency?

Caller: I think we have a heart attack victim.

Dispatcher: OK please tell me the age and sex of the victim.

Caller: I can’t.

Dispatcher: You can’t tell me the age and sex of the victim?

Caller: About 40 years old, I guess, but I don’t know the sex.

Dispatcher: You don’t know the sex?

Caller: They’re androgynous. Keep Reading

Do You Love America’s Youth?

*More dead kids.  Another devastated town.  We mourn, we complain and we do nothing.  NOTHING!

As tiresome as it is to listen to NRA Nutz misquote, misinterpret and misuse the Second Amendment, and as badly as we need gun ownership regulation of some sort – as the Second Amendment dictates – gun control legislation is not going to stop these monstrous school killings; at least not any time soon.  Even if gun control legislation passed this afternoon it would take decades before guns weren’t readily available – if then. Keep Reading

Bogus Blaming of Baby Boomers

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*One Lyman Stone, in The Atlantic of June 24, 2019, blames the Baby Boomers for many of the problems in America, in an article titled “The Boomers Ruined Everything.” According to Stone, the younger Americans (Gen X, Millennials) are having a hard time, economically and otherwise, because of the acts and behavior of the Baby Boomers. The Baby Boomers ruined everything about America? Hardly. Stone’s universal generalization is the first key flaw in his argument. But let’s take a look.

To start off with, Stone begins with this gem: “The average U.S. state constitution is more than 100 years old. We are in the third-longest period without a constitutional amendment in American history: The longest such period ended in the Civil War.” What about our treasured Constitution needs to be changed? He offers no suggestions, so allow me to suggest one. Keep Reading

America’s Bees – 55 Billion Dead, Feds Drop Bee Survey

*America’s bees are in big trouble. Instead of protecting our important buzzing brethren and those who  faithfully tend to them, the Trump administration is overtly pandering to Big Chem, the makers of more deadly nerve poisons.

Normally, a beekeeper can expect to lose about 12 percent of a colony to overwintering deaths. Since 2006, U.S. beekeepers have lost around 30 percent of their hives each winter. The winter of 2007-08 recorded a death spike of 36 percent. Some beekeepers were forced into bankruptcy.

America's Bees
Image credit: Reese Halter

Since then, my colleagues have conducted hundreds of scientific studies on the deadly effects of a wide array of nerve poisons used in commercial insecticides e.g. neonicotinoids, sulfoxaflor, flupyradifurone, chlorpyrifos. When honeybees encounter less than a dozen parts per billion of these nerve poisons, they instantaneously exhibit the full strength symptoms of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. The Einsteins of the insect world lose their minds and shake to death.  Horrible. Keep Reading

Baking, Starving, Flooding, Goodnight Fossil Fuels

*June was the hottest month ever recorded. At the G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, U.S. President Donald Trump refused to sign a joint statement by the other 19 members on combating Man-made global heating. In the meantime, baking, starving and flooding are accelerating globally with vengeance.

Last week, France recorded its all-time hottest temperature, 114.6F (45.9C). Scientists reported that the recent European heatwave was at least five times more likely and 7.2F (4C) hotter due to global heating from burning planet-destroying fossil fuels. Keep Reading

Eavesdropping on Nature

*Go outside. Close your eyes. Listen. What do you hear? There’s a whole world around us that’s rich with Nature’s symphony, or, soundscape, that we are all inexorably linked to.

Do you suffer from anxiety, stress, depression, burnout or low energy? If so, spend 17 minutes each day quietly breathing in Nature, preferably next to big trees. It will miraculously recalibrate your brain and boost your autoimmune system.
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Australia, Canada Commit to Unlivable Planet

*The Great Barrier Reef and the Salish Sea have been thrown under the bus by Prime Ministers Scott Morrison and Justin Trudeau, Australia and Canada respectively, for more global heating subsidized fossil fuels.

What can be done to protect our only home from roasting to death?

Earth Roasting
A despondent malnourished polar bear scavenging the streets of the nickel-copper-palladium mining city of Norilsk, Russia. Image credit: Irina Yarinskaya/Zapolyarnaya Pravda/Reuters

It’s so hot that more starving Russian polar bears are entering into towns hundreds of miles away from the sea. On Monday, another heartbreaking report of a climate refugee with its paws caked in mud, emaciated, exhausted and frantically searching the streets of Norilsk, Russia, for food.

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