European Biofuel Criminals: Elected Democracy Doesn’t Work

Every day, the European propaganda machine tells us how good Europeans are, because they hate Trump so much. In the latest development, Trump kills Gaza baby by forcing his parents to expose their child to Israeli tear gas, so great was their indignation that Israel persists to have the same capital for 3,300 years, in spite of Muhammad having flown there on a winged horse, as all islamizing Muslims know.

However, by crucifying Trump all day long, the European legislators and their friends and employers, the lobbyists, are throwing gold dust in our eyes, it’s highly profitable, if not for orangutans, at least, to them:

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THE CRIMINALS IN OUR MIDST; THOSE IN “POWER”, POWERING THEMSELVES EVER MORE: THE CASE OF EUROPE AND PALM OIL FUEL

We are led by the corrupt. You could cut down the entire Amazon forest, ship all the trees to Europe and burn them, claiming you replace fossil fuel burning, and corrupt EU law and its corrupt judges and legislators would count that as a 100 percent greenhouse gas reduction

Many years ago, I campaigned on my sites against “biofuels”. The idea of turning food into fuel is a monstrosity: it’s putting locomotion above survival, it tells  us it’s OK to kill people, as long as we can move: a parody of the worst mass criminal imperialism. Yet, biofuels became Politically Correct. And now are a mass, biomass PC phenomenon.

Cuddle with the Orangutans not: Palm Oil Mass Criminal Eradication of the Biosphere: The 100% PC European Union Law is turning Indonesia (above!) Into Hell. Or, at least, fuel.

PALM oil is found in food and cosmetics, and the mass cultivation of palm is destroying the biosphere, rainforests, ecologies and orangutans. Besides, it’s bad for the cardiovascular system (epidemiology in places using palm oil has shown). In pathetic efforts some grocers and companies are halting the use of palm oil in some products.

Yet, the real problem with palm oil isn’t in your kitchen or bathroom. In Europe, it is in your car. Or, more precisely, its tank.

Half of all the palm oil imported by the European Union is turned into “biodiesel” and blended into conventional fuel to power cars and trucks. Mixing palm oil to “green” fuels crazily triples carbon emissions… instead of doing what it was advertised to be doing, reducing said emissions. And the palm oil addiction is subsidised by the European Union: taxpayers are legally forced to destroy rainforests, & accelerate the climate catastrophe!

“People don’t know that they have palm oil in their fuel tanks,” says Laura Buffet of Transport & Environment in Brussels, Belgium, which campaigns for cleaner transport in Europe.

How did we get there?

It’s always the same: a few self-important monkeys get to power, or were born that way, and they are promised lots more bananas, a better cages, business class travel, a nice retirement… if only they take whom the mightiest and wealthiest view as the right decisions.

Just like the Nazis, these leaders of ours shooting palm oil will be OK, if the misdeeds they commit are hidden from the general population. Thus they keep the general population in a carefully organized darkness. They will be even more OK, if, like the German population supporting the Nazis in 1930s, said population learn not to dig too deep to find out what is really going on.

Global palm oil production hit 65 million tonnes in 2017, with 20 percent used for biofuel, says data firm Palm Oil Analytics.

Under European rules, 10 percent of transport energy should come from “renewable” sources by 2020 (is rainforest “renewable”? No! It takes centuries to grow, especially on poor soils, as in Borneo). Thus countries are blending biofuels like palm-oil biodiesel with conventional fuels.

Transport & Environment calculates that using palm-oil biodiesel triples emissions versus burning fossil fuels, based on figures compiled for the EU.

This tripling in CO2, is not just from burning the fuel, but also from burning rainforests to grow oil palm, which releases lots of carbon. What’s more, there are vast stores of peat under many rainforests, which when drained decompose (methane!) and can release carbon for decades… They can catch fire, burn for months…

In January, the European parliament voted to end subsidies for palm-oil biodiesel from 2020. The vote has no force, though, as the European Parliament has no force: the dirty little secret of the EU is that governments decide, especially the big ones (Germany, France). Moreover, if the EU ends subsidies for palm-oil biodiesel, while keeping its overall biofuel targets, cars will be fuelled with soybean or rapeseed oil instead… and that’s much more destructive for the environment (palm is several times more efficient by surface unit). However, then the price of other vegetable oils will shoot up, increasing palm oil relative advantage… as happened in the USA.

Under its perverse self-declared “Democratic” leadership, the USA came to mandate that conventional fuels must be blended with biofuel… But the US hasn’t approved the use of palm oil because its carbon emissions are the highest of any vegetable oil. Hence, as more corn, and soybean were turned into biodiesel, bringing up the price of other vegetable oils, the US started importing large quantities of palm oil for use in food… as it is the cheapest.

There is a much better way to green transport: electric locomotion. Electric cars are already cheaper to run than cars powered by fossil fuels, produce hardly any air pollution and can be powered by solar or wind energy…. Solar and wind are now the cheapest UNSUBSIDIZED energy sources…

Bioenergy is an inefficient form of solar energy. Plants capture only a fraction of one percent of solar energy compared with 16 per cent for current solar panels. Solar panels as used on satellites have nearly 50% efficiency (OK, they are expensive)… and a combination of (the new) Perovskites and Silicon let us hope to get soon such efficiency on the ground, in cheap solar cells.

The challenge now is to persuade our corrupt government officials that they have run out of excuses to prop up the fossil and biofuel industry, which pays them under the table.

Ending subsidies for all food-based fuels and other “biofuels” would be a win for forests, climate action, taxpayers – and orangutans. And also for the air. Recently I flew (for family reasons) over the French Alps, Piedmont, Switzerland, Germany. The air above the Alps was clear, be they French or Swiss, one could see hundreds of kilometers in full detail. Piedmont was polluted significantly (all Italian industry is there, and there are high mountains, north, west and south). The pollution over Germany was astounding. A brown cloud obscured all beyond ten miles. Thank Angela Merkel lignite burning policy for that.

Ah the Germans… Do they ever learn? Friedrich Nietzsche: …”we are too open-minded, too malicious, too spoiled, also too well-informed, too “traveled”: we far prefer to live on mountains, apart, “untimely,” in past or future centuries, merely in order to keep ourselves from experiencing the silent rage to which we know we should be condemned as eyewitnesses of politics that are desolating the German spirit by making it vain and that is, moreover, petty politics.”

PM Angela Merkler wanted to prove she was ecologically correct by wasting nuclear power: nevermind that coal has killed thousands of Germans, a year, for generations, although nuclear power has not killed even one German. That’s PC for you. Just as she wanted to prove she was no racist by accepting a million Muslim refugees, all of a sudden (voters have sobered her up)…. (Just ask the French, who accepted 30,000 Chechen Muslim refugees, supposedly pursued for their religion by Putin, and now some of the youth so accepted kill French citizens in the name of Allah, because Allah, a friend of theirs, said so, or so say the famous epileptic analphabet caravan raider, and serial rapist… )

The Germans wasted much of Europe in the 1914-1945 period. They just didn’t think too well about they were doing, the human and cosmic angles were lagging… What of the Japs? Same idea, in the same period: follow orders, don’t think too much. So of this mood, all to present in Germany and Japan, the old Axis mood, still lingers all too much… All this CO2 emitted kills, and will kill much more, especially indirectly…

So the Tokyo Power company locates a nuclear power plant along the shore, at sea level, in an area notorious for super giant tsunamis, with warning signs 12 centuries old… And the reactors survive a nine Richter quake, but then get hit with a 34 meters wave. Oops, forgot backup power, some of the reactors melt down, explode, people nearly die, region evacuated. What to do? Make a bad situation worse: Japan has decided to replace nuclear power (bad, if badly done), by coal power (worse). Actually Japanese accountants have already computed that the few coal plants added already will kill the equivalent of 60,000 full human lives, from their pollution…

As I said, above, except in very high latitudes, the energy problem is solved: just use PhotoVoltaics…

Morality means sustainability, and it’s all very practical… but we will have to change our political system to direct democracy, if we want to remove the corruption element found in our present politics. The case of biofuels, burning food for greed, is a case in point.

Patrice Ayme

As Africa Gets Colonized, So Do We

Abstract: Formal “decolonization” worked splendidly… for global plutocracy (with few exceptions). Otherwise, decolonization is a myth. Worse: a crime the way it was accomplished, in all too many places. Nowhere is that more blatant than in Africa, where regimes after regimes are horror shows, and should be viewed as having run out of excuses. And therein a lesson for the whole planet. And in particular for the whole “left” and other pseudo-intellectuals of the simplistic type, who have been more busy collaborating with a system they set-up, rather than fighting it.

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On April 18, at 6;50 am, heading for Turin Airport, I headed towards the Montgenèvre  pass. Montgenèvre is probably where Hannibal crossed the Alps, as it is the lowest pass. However the famous general suffering huge losses at the hands of the uncooperative Natives, the Allobroges… He lost at least a third of his army, nearly all his elephants. Those Allobroges with whom the Romans, under Augustus, would draw a treaty, two centuries after Hannibal, making them part of the Roman empire… as an independent kingdom: Augustus was so proud of himself, he mad a gigantic monument, still overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. (The world owes to Briancon, the Roman Brigantum, the word “brigand”, depicting well the rapport between Rome and the Briancon area…)

In some places, all what is left are ancient baobabs, from desiccation, and abuse of the land. Baobabs like many African things, starting with the land itself, are enormous. Unfortunately, most of African ecology gets ravaged as we speak. The problem is not sourced just in Africa, we are all part of the problem, thus, the solution.

Along the road, suddenly ten Africans, Subsaharan African, black as charcoal, walking… All French speakers. They came, illegally, from south of the Sahara desert, crossed Libya, and the Mediterranean Sea, thanks to smugglers. Once in Italy, charities gave them clothes, addresses and cell phones, with subscriptions working in France and Italy. Train transportation was provided. From Sicily to deep inside the Alps, at the foot of formidable passes enjoying more than ten meters of snow over the last few months. Only one road goes through, passing in a tunnel below the Montgenèvre,  the world’s oldest ski resort. There are kilometers of tunnels on the “Italian” side. This is the road those outlaws took, obviously hidden in smugglers’ cars (the border between France and Italy is not enforced, but the French Gendarmerie has descended upon some technically Italian towns to make anti illegal immigrant raids, to loud protests from the Ligua Norte (a pseudo-independentist party)…. That whole area of “Italy” was French until Louis XIV gave it to the enemies he had created for himself by throwing 2 million protestants out, and making his grandson king of Spain… The fury of some Italian politicians is explained by their desire to see Africans go to France, instead of enjoying Italy.

Those smugglers through that one French Alps’ pass don’t view themselves as smugglers, but as friends of man, as charities. Yet, ultimately they are the accomplices of horrible regimes in Africa, themselves set-up by global plutocrats and the Western governments which served them (no relief to be obtained from China, which is arguably doing worse, under the guise of helping, as French and US politicians recently pointed out).

Of course, should I be stuck in Subsaharan Africa (as I used to be), I would also walk through the desert, and swim across the sea. Why?Far from the pleasant land I used to know, Subsaharan Africa is in danger of becoming a vast “shithole”, as Trump may have noticed in private… we are well into the process of following it down the toilet. And this we will presently address.

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A superficially absurd question in Quora, which turns out to be very deep:”Why aren’t the French colonies in Africa liberated? Why don’t they ask for their independence?

My answer:

Silly question, superficially: there are technically no colonies in Africa, at the present time. Or pretty much anywhere else. However, the reality is just the opposite. “Independence” and decolonization was pretty much a sham. It was more of a delegalization, and the creation of a wild west, with Natives to exploit freely, far from law and prying eyes.

Indeed, it’s not France, the French Republic which has the colonies (as it used to be). The truth is worse. Much of the world has been colonized. By global plutocrats, immensely wealthy men (typically men), conspiring with local leaders (“elected” or not).

When the French Republic was in nominal control of much of Africa, there were laws, rules and regulations, of a Republican, democratic character. Roads, trains, schools (mandatory, secular) were built, covered the land. Through Subsaharan Africa, one could find an hospital every one hundred kilometers, in populated areas (which was ruinous for France, from the point of view of some pro-independence French politicians… Most of Africa didn’t ask for independence, it was hurled at them by French racists).

For example, most of the Ivory Coast forest was protected from destruction. After nominal “independence”, very wealthy men came from the north, made deals with the local potentates, and freely exploited the African environment.

They were free, the rest were enslaved. Not just diamonds for Al Qaeda in Sierra Leone, forest in Ivory Coast, oil off Nigeria and Gabon, etc.

Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabists, decided to extend their influence worldwide with a Salafist project flushed with oil money. This completely changed the nature of Islam in Subsaharan Africa, sending the (gigantic) region into a turmoil that profited the Saudis, version 1970s… but few other people besides. Subsaharan Africa became partly a mental colony of Saudi Arabia, with disastrous consequences for economy, society, peace, wisdom, and knowledge.

Sadly, degradation is contagious. As exterior individuals became free to plunder Africa, African natives themselves duplicated the plunder, all the more as the top leaders were part of the conspiracy (consider the assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in Congo, to be replaced by CIA pawn Mobutu). The later example shows it’s not just the French and the Saudis. For example the (quasi) dictatorship in Rwanda intervened in Congo, to grab rare earths, with discrete, ignored US support, bringing the death of 5 million Congolese citizens (and cheaper electronics for the rest of the world, and the fortunes of many a US plutocrat).

The problem was ignored: individuals such as Bernard Henri Levy, who became a billionaire by plundering African forests, is also an influential intellectual in Paris, or Morocco, and respected not just by left wing but right wing presidents… who financed him. He also controls (nearly) all media.

Worldwide plutocrats own most media, so they colonize us all. After they have made up our minds, the way they like it, we are free to opt to serve them further.

Just as the plundering of Africa, post “independence” has been contagious, and the natives have joined in the plundering, so it is, worldwide: the more the hyper wealthy plunder the planet and control minds, the more average people don’t care. That’s how the sense of citizenship was lost when the Roman Republic became Augustus’ dictatorship (the Roman “empire”, or, technically, “Principate”).

For the preceding to happen, it was necessary that the self-described “left” or “progressive” be completely blind to the preceding. Worse: much of the naive “left” is controlled by plutocracy.

Is there hope? Just a little. French billionaire Vincent Bolloré, a ten billion dollar billionaire, was arrested and detained on Tuesday near Paris over allegations that he indirectly influenced election outcomes for governments in West Africa and secured lucrative port contracts for his company in return. A Bolloré Group subsidiary allegedly undercharged for work, helping two African presidents win power in return for lucrative contracts.

According to a report by the BBC, Bolloré, 66, who is the head of the Bolloré Group, was taken into custody as part of an ongoing investigation into how his company obtained contracts to operate the Lome and Conakry ports in Togo and Guinea respectively. Now he has been charged. All, I repeat, all, billionaires who had to do with Africa, should be charged. That may not seem fair, not according to the “state of law” but all billionaires have overridden the legal process in the last few decades (at least in Africa). (Weirdly, Trump, whose pseudo-progressives love to hate, to change the conversation, gets a pass for now, being the less bad of them all, as he tries to change things, and didn’t become wealthy from corruption, as, say, Xi, Putin, Berlusconi, and an immense cortege of those lurking in the swamp between politics and greed…) 

The spirit of the law, worldwide, has been confiscated by the .1%. It’s not just Africa. We are all been colonized, or, more exactly, possessed (much of French Africa was more administered than colonized, in the sense that few “colons” ever came).

It’s high time to do something about ourselves becoming the property of others (consider the social networks and the virtual slavery they exploit us with). Because otherwise our future will be as bad, or worse, than the worst colonization (and there were very bad colonies, for example Congo, personal property of the Belgian king, where millions were enslaved).

Ah, a few technical points to finish: the French military interventions in Africa, from Rwanda to Mauretania, were, and are, not akin to “colonialism”: just the opposite (they tend to be all UN approved). They are efforts to free Africa from outrageous exploitation and plunders by (“religious”) gangs, or the likes of Gaddafi (who tried to physically invade Subsaharan Africa, before being stopped by the French military).

Part of the disaster that Subsaharan Africa has become has to do with demographic explosion (itself a consequence from the lack of intelligent administration, education and good healthcare). Many countries went from six millions in the 1960s (when the French administration left), to 45 millions now. In many countries, women have eight children (many to be tempted by violent Jihadism)

No ecology can sustain this, especially one which was borderline to start with. Thus, now dozens of millions of Africans from Subsaharan Africa are plotting to go to France, and try to do it at immense risks of lives and limbs (most of them fail, raped, drowned, eaten by Saharan hyenas, enslaved, or desiccating in the desert… but thousands a month make it to France…)

Something needs to be done, something drastic, and it won’t come from the old playbook…

Patrice Aymé

 

Real Danger: Natural Runaway Warming Triggered By Man-Made Warming

When one looks at climate change, one should not look back, and whine that there was always change, as silly deniers do. One should look forward, ponder how bad it’s going to get, all too soon, and see the necessity for a carbon tax (or, more exactly, set-up worldwide carbon cost compensation).

Yes, so far we have only seen directly-man-induced global warming: the CO2 percentage went from 280 parts per million until 410 ppm (In truth, 490 ppm, as I have long explained, and will, again, below). In any case, 280 ppm up to 410 ppm, that’s an increase of 130 ppm. 130/280 = 46%. if one supposes that the obstruction CO2 presents to infrared light is proportional to its presence, then the “forcing” of the greenhouse effect should have been augmented by 46%. 

Moreover, indeed, one has to add to this man-made gases which have a greenhouse effect up to 100,000 times greater than CO2. That means they capability to block infrared radiation, and so to confine heat in the lower atmosphere instead of letting it escape to the cosmos is 10,000 times greater than CO2. 

Talking only CO2, while forgetting CH4 and NO2, is unscientific. Not to say stupid and criminal. Criminal in the sense of ultimate mass destruction.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data

Those greenhouse contributions of NON-CO2 manmade greenhouse gases amount to 25% of the total anthropomorphic contribution. So the real CO2 equivalent ppm is 490 ppm, not 410 ppm. An augmentation of more than 61% since 1789 CE. (And even that is an underestimate: because it overestimates the NO2 contribution in 1789 CE, say. In 1789 CE, there already was man-made methane, CH4, in the air, from massive pastoralism in the last 7000 years (some think that prevented a glaciation!). However, in 1789 CE, there was no NO2 whatsoever: NO2 is created only at high temperature, say by a diesel engine, when gases get hot enough to burn nitrogen in the combustion chamber!).

This is not a music the blissfully ignorant commons want to listen to. But they should:

https://phys.org/news/2017-01-earth-global-temperature.html

To put all of this in perspective, the genus Homo has not evolved under such circumstances. Antarctica ice cores, 800,000 years old, show a density of CO2 of only 185 ppm.

In any case, 490 ppm, guaranteed to be 500 ppm in CO2 equivalent is well above the point at which Antarctica loses, or gains, its beech forests. 500 ppm is well above the Antarctica equilibrium point. The melting of the West Antarctica ice shield is thus guaranteed. The serious scientific question is now whether West Antarctica will melt within decades, as I believe, or centuries. That incoming disaster was long obvious. Only at the Paris Climate Conference, the IPCC, the United Nations Panel in charge of studying climate change admitted that I was right, and they were wrong, the temperature rise should be limited to ONLY 1.5 Centigrade, not to two degrees Centigrades:

Unfortunately last year, in 2016, the rise was 1.2 C, that is 80% of the way up to 1.5C… 2017, so far, runs close behind.

Exponential rise now in evidence (at last)? Look at the last few years…

(It used to be that scientists well-financed by those who loved fossil fuels, and their admirers in academic management, including university boards, and fuel plutos addicted governments pretended that the stability of West Antarctica was guaranteed for 5,000 years. Serious scientific papers full of gravitas, ladies and gentlemen, used to pontificate that no ocean would seriously rise for 5,000 years. Just like that. After all, why not say whatever, like Valley Girls, since it kept them greedsters rich and esteemed by the best with power (aristo-crats)? Scientists used to believe in the stability of the Holy Trinity, after all…)

It is strongly scientifically suspected that the last time Earth had comparable levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide that we have today was at least three million years ago, during the mid-Pliocene (then of course there was no CH4 in level in level comparable to what we see today, as cattle was less abundant, thanks to all too many lions, and no NO2 whatsoever).

Back then, global average temperature was about 3.6–5.2°F (2–3°Centigrade) warmer than it is today. Ocean level was much higher, by about 15–25 meters. So this heat and this sea level rise are now unavoidable. Already.

Back then there were camels in the high Arctic, as far north as one can go without swimming: https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/camels-in-the-highest-arctic-again-soon/

The global density of carbon dioxide increased rapidly in the past couple of years, thanks in part to a strong El Niño which, lasted around two years (that unusual situation is a consequence of the strong planetary warming). El Niño patterns generally shift the location of tropical rains, often leaving tropical forests dry, thus more susceptible to fires — fires that, in turn, release a lot of stored carbon into the atmosphere. But direct human activities — like the burning of fossil fuels for transportation or electricity, or the conversion of forests and grasslands into developed areas or farmland — have also contributed to the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide at a rate never seen before.

Thus we see the real problem: manmade warming, from all these gases triggers supplementary effects which, by themselves, augment the warming. For example, the more ice and snow melts in the polar and mountainous areas, the more those areas absorb sunlight into the ground, augmenting the melting and warming, year around.

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/2-c-is-too-much/

Man-made warming, which has been just a bit more than linear, is in danger of waking up strong exponential warming driven by natural phenomena which human activity would have triggered.

Once those strong natural exponential have been triggered, the warming will be runaway, and out of human hands. The analogy is being in a very dry forest full of deliciously smelling plants waving happily in a very hot wind. If one light a match, it will contribute to the warming, but not that much. Drop the light on the ground, watch the bushes catches fire: at this point natural warming is launched. Soon the fire gets to the crowns of the trees, an unstoppable inferno arises.

https://phys.org/news/2017-01-earth-global-temperature.html

Some deniers anxious to win their daily bread, will insinuate that I am claiming that Earth will turn into Venus, without proof. No, not quite. What I am saying is subtle, and it’s experimentally backed-up by what happened in the past.

First of all, we have seen it all before, indeed, during the Permian-Trias mass extinction, 252 million years ago (more on that some other day, when, like today, I am travelling, and I have time only for an obvious essay…). Secondly, the runaway effects on Earth tend to be strongly limited after a while: if it gets way too hot, for example, there will so many clouds, from the steaming oceans, that the ground will be in permanent darkness, and, thus will cool off.

Moreover, the cause of the problem, humanity, would have been put to death, humanely or not, so Earth will have just to wait a millennium or two before enough CO2 will have been recombined in volcanic, and other soil to be removed from the air.

The present rise in CO2, and the rises of temperature and ocean acidity it brings can only be transient, on geological time scale. But it will rush, quasi-instantaneously, on such a scale, to a new equilibrium.

The carbon intense countries are playing with fire. There is so much European countries can do: France is down to 5.1 ton of CO2 emission per capita per year (and much more drastic measures have been taken, such as making carbon burning cars unlawful). The USA, Canada, Australia are above 16 tons per capita, per year. They have to be persuaded to cease and desist. The rest of the world will follow.

Burning Trump himself,  for real or in effigy, may feel good, yet it is neither recommended, nor sufficient, helas…First of all, burning such a mass of decomposing carbohydrates would noticeably augment the CO2 level globally. Secondly, there has been enough words, and empty insults. It’s time for action.

The only really significant action is a global carbon tax. Even Trump, who globally ridiculed himself by rejecting the Paris Climate Accord, like a bloated brat having a fit, could regain some of his lost honor, if he blurted on the international scene, that he has understood only a carbon tax would work, and promote it.

Patrice Ayme’

Antarctica Breaks Apart, In The Middle Of Winter!

It’s not just what, where, but when. In the depth of winter. Even in the depth of winter, Antarctica breaks apart. Larsen C Iceshelf, a vast 5800-square-kilometre iceberg more than a quarter the size of Wales, weighing more than a trillion tonnes, has now calved. It was detected by Nasa’s Aqua MODIS satellite instrument.

The calving reduces the size of the Larsen C Ice Shelf by around 12 per cent and will change the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula forever.  

As the iceshelves disintegrate, the feeding glaciers, overland, accelerate and the sea warms further. The Larsen C break forked like a snake tongue, 2 months before breaking. (Meaning more is coming soon!)

Iceshelves are part of Antarctica’s glaciers. They are glaciers which have separated from the rockbed, and start  floating on the sea. Some are 800 kilometers (500 miles) wide, and 800 meters (half a mile) thick.

Just a bit of math: an iceshelf 1000 kms wide extending 1000 kms in the sea, and a kilometer thick weights: 10^6 10^6 10^3 = 10^15 tons, that is one thousand trillion tons. It’s obvious that such an object in the way, especially when anchored here and there to rocky islands, is hard to move. So the iceshelves slow down the interior glaciers of Antarctica, force them to bunch up (thus to receive more snow).

Thus 12% of the Larsen C iceshelf in Antarctica just broke this week. In the middle of Antarctica’s winter. The whole  Larsen C, three times as large as Wales, could well follow…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3nZbIRi7WM

To this a denying insect responded: A. D.. Jordan ridiculously screeched on the Internet: “Perhaps you should complete your story on the Larson [sic] C Ice Shelf story. Scientists who study such things say it will take many years of study to determine if this event was due to what you assert. Fear mongering based on no factual information has been the biggest black eye the Man Made Climate Change folks have suffered.”

When a plane, and, a fortiori, a planet, crashes, one does not wait for “Scientists”, whatever a “scientist” is supposed to be, years from now to deliver a verdict (Darwin, certainly a scientist, was no official “scientist”: he had no serious degree, let alone a “scientist” job… My grandfather, who drew the geological maps of Algeria, had no official geology degree, his “real” job was something else… The point is that good science is what good scientists do, and a tool they use is having a good hunch, or skill; not being corrupt helps.).

The Larsen A and B iceshelves previously disintegrated in a similar fashion. By chance, there an automated weather station in the area of the Larsen B iceshelf when it collapsed into a zillion tiny bergs (all of which Zuck sucks). The disintegration happened in the polar night too. For four days, incredibly warm and powerful foehn wind blew at temperatures exceeding 50 Fahrenheit (and actually 15 Centigrades!)

If all iceshelves of the Antarctic Peninsula disintegrated, we would not need “scientists” to tell us what is going on. Many scientists are on the take: Google will pay “scientists” up to 400,000 dollars to sing the right tune. This methodology, of paying “scientists” was long practiced by the drug industry (of tobacco leaves).

The 180-kilometer-long crack threatening one of Antarctica’s largest ice shelves had branched out, before the break. Radar mapping shows that a second crack has split off from the main rupture like a snake’s forked tongue, the Antarctic Project MIDAS reported May 1. That second branch, which stretches around 15 kilometers, didn’t exist on radar maps taken six days earlier, the scientists say.

Denying the facts of anthropomorphic climate change is dishonest, or ignorant, or both. The map of Antarctica will have to be redrawn, smaller, that’s a fact. The fact that the iceshelf broke in the Antarctic winter is itself telling: that means there is warming even when there is no sun (there can be foehn in the dark, and also the warm circumpolar current is undermining the ice from below; this was long hypothesized by your truly, and it’s increasing becoming a demonstrated fact: warmer water is denser.).

West Antarctica is mostly a huge iceshelf and giant icesheet grounded on rock most of which is way below sea level, as deep as the Grand Canyon (much fun is to be had when warm ocean water sneaks below). It’s also one of the fastest warming region on Earth (more than twice the global rate, that is in excess of 2.5 C, where the average is 1.2 C…) Soon the gigantic icesheet which constitutes most of West Antarctica will turn into an iceshelf, and the denial insects will migrate to higher land from flooded Florida. 

Iceshelves are goners, admire while they last…

In the last ten years, the speed of sea rise, worldwide, has augmented by 50%. It’s already clear that much of Florida will go below the waves (no dam can save it, as the limestone there is porous), very soon. The debate, increasing, is whether we will be able to limit sea level rise in the next few centuries, to 20 meters.

More can be done, like repelling the Donald Trumps at the heart of Anglo-Saxon imperialists. By “Anglo-Saxon imperialists” I don’t mean the British The British, as the good Europeans they are, emit only b. Great Britain has reduced its CO2 emissions by 40% since 1990!

High CO2 emissions have, arguably, to do with the nastiness of a country: Luxembourg, an obnoxious tax haven hidden in plain view inside the European Union, recently emitted 21.4 tons of CO2 per person per year (Luxembourg does not have the excuse of high fossil fuels production, as Qatar, Emirates, Trinidad & Tobago have).

The CO2 emissions, per capita, per year of the EU 28 (European Union including rogue Britain) were less than seven (7) tons in 2015 (and decreasing strongly). By the way, the added value of manufacturing in the EU 28 was on a par with China, and 30% larger than that of the USA. (So the USA can’t retreat behind a cloud of smoky justification that America is Great Again, and has been emitting a lot…)

French CO2 emissions per capita in 2015 were only 5.1 ton (France has the greatest number of nuclear reactors functioning… in the world, even more than the USA).

Australia crows that it didn’t have a recession in 20 years. That’s true, but it’s also true that Australia is a massive producer and exporter of CO2 generating substances. The CO2 emissions per head in Australia are 18.6 tons, mostly from coal used in power generation. Natural gas is frantically exported to other countries, which made the city of Adelaide recently go without electricity, when the gas ran out…  

Canada, with its boyish heir to the throne, Trudeau, is paying lip service to climate change, all cosmetic: in spite of giant hydropower in some states, for example Quebec, the country is a miserable 15.5 tons per capita per year in CO2 emissions. Mostly because Canada selfishly, not to say dementedly, insists to produce and export the world’s most polluting fuel, tar sands. I guess, when you have killed nearly all the Indians and French-Indian metis, you may as well try to kill the rest of the planet too. Good things have come out of these massacres… (I feel, that, as Putin himself had the impudent honesty of recognizing, higher-ups in Canada believe that global warming is a good thing. Some of Trump’s advisers have expressed the same feelings, long hidden at the top of America…)

A few months ago, during the Austral summer, a French expedition pushed towards the Totten glacier, not far from the Dumont Durville station. They dived along the massive cliff of the iceshelf.

The French have the only autonomous scaphander tech to dive in subfreezing waters: the equipment weights hundreds of pounds and is figured as cover story in National Geographic, July 2017. The entire swimsuit has several layers, one of them being electrically heated… The report is fascinating:

“Deepest Dive Ever Under Antarctica Reveals a Shockingly Vibrant World. 
Our special report offers a rare look at life beneath the frozen continent—where penguins, seals, and exotic creatures thrive.
Tendrils of ice-covered brine, or brinicles, leak from sea ice near East Antarctica’s Dumont d’Urville Station. Ephemeral and seldom seen, they form when trapped, supercooled brine escapes from the ice and freezes less salty seawater…”

Notice the hanging tentacles of ice…

The French scientists dived next to a towering cliff, and expected the ice to go deep, hundreds of meters deep. Instead, it mysteriously stopped, sort of right away. The scientists were floored by this discovery. In my humble opinion, it seems the ice is just hanging there from a cantilever effect. That would explain why the iceshelves so readily disintegrate… It also mean the ice is melted from below by the warm circumpolar current, irresistibly gnawing, preparing to spring a nonlinear trap, onto a humanity in denial…

Global warming is a fact, not just a theory! Yet, it gives us the occasion of drawing conclusions about national moods…

Patrice Ayme’

Glacial Warm-Up Not Cool

Nietzsche, following others, notably Hinduism, believed in the “Eternal Return of the Same”. Nothing could be further from the truth: wherever we look, we see change. Even our sun is a second (or more) generation star. This means the Sun is (partly) metallic, and metals are crucial for life as we know it (or can imagine it). And even for creating a magnetically shielded Earth.

Meanwhile in Israel, nearly 10% of Israeli Jews (more than 550,000) live in the so-called “Occupied Territories” which basically no nation, not even the Israel’s official poodle, USA, recognizes as belonging to Israel. Palestinian society is crisscrossed by Israel security services, to the point all what Palestinians can do is grab a knife… The colossal rage therein has not found a bridge to the “Islamist State”.  All hell will break loose if it does.

Meanwhile, climate change is accelerating. Clearly, the same is not returning. In California, the glaciers are condemned. This below is Lyell glacier on the 4,000 meters high mountain of the same name, highest point of Yosemite National Park:

Similar Change At The Poles Is Baked In: Only Inertia Slows It Down

[Image National Park Service; Lyell, a breakthrough geologist, learned his science at the university of Edinburgh. With Charles Darwin. In Scotland, Lamarck’s discovery of the great age of the Earth, and his theory of evolution, was taught, and astounded the youngsters. As Lamarck’s studies of mollusk fossils’ gravely contradicted the Holy Book, they were not taught in England.]

It is likely that glaciers will be gone from the Sierra Nevada within five years (except for the Palisade glacier, which may hold out a couple of years more).

Evil is often born in the eye of the beholder. The Nazis found this out, the Israelis seem determined to find out. Yet, who can blame them? Greater forces are at work.

And what is the empire of goodness to do? Well, stay in shape. In military shape. In 1914, and again in 1940, the forces of goodness were taken by surprise, and the catastrophe of a really full holocaust of civilization was barely avoided: don’t forget that, in the end, the Nazis wanted to kill everybody… Including the Germans. After all, this is the method Stalin used with the Soviets, chuckling all the way (at least, according to Winston Churchill who was there… and according to a little of interpolation of historical facts). The most troubling aspect of Stalin’s mass murdering, human rights exterminating ways, is that it was the only method which could defeat the Nazis. Having to choose between certain death and ignobility at the hand of Stalin’s “blocking sections”, and taking their chances fighting Nazis, Soviet soldiers naturally opted for the latter.

Russian armed forces have been modernized, including very long-range cruise missiles (and Russian TV claims they can go all over Europe…)

The combination of climate warming and galloping demography is at work in Africa and the Levant.  It’s a microcosmos  of what will ambush all of humanity soon. One more reason to learn how to dominate it.

It will require mental force, and then physical force to dominate the situation. Mental force will have to be considerable. Because we erred so long the wrong way, deliberately confusing civilization and abomination. So now we have abomination (Islamist state, Saudi Arabia, Putinistan, etc.) parroting civilization.

As I see it, the largest scale historical evolution of the West went this way. In the last century, or so:

My basic, order zero explanation of the Africa-Levant mess is simple, I proffered it many times:

1) The USA, or rather, the powers that were, in the USA, used Islamism/”Anti-colonialism”, first incarnated by the Great Bitter Lake accord, as a weapon of de-Europeanization of the immediate neighborhood of Europe. (All the four present crisis zones are within four hours subsonic flight from Brussels.)

2) In the guise of “freeing” the people (that is, put them at the mercy of Wall Street/London supported dictators, from Morocco to Pakistan), European pseudo-intellectuals (Sartre, De Beauvoir and other collaborators, etc.) betrayed Europe and supported the USA plutocrats’ basic scheme (hiding their true purpose, taking their orders from Wall Street, below Marxist-Leninism mumbo-jumbo: who could have suspected anything?).

3) This has been, ultimately very bad not just for the Levant/Africa, but even for the USA, as it favored the rise of EVIL RULE (Pluto Cracy) there. As plutocracy rose, everything else went down, from the Middle Class, to freedom, economic and social opportunity, and the rate of scientific and technological progress.

4) Europeans are directly responsible, because, aside from yours truly, I have seen nobody bring forth this thesis. Instead collaborators such as De Beauvoir and Sartre were lionized, let alone comrade Stalin, and the now much reviled Kamerad Adolf.

One cannot fight what one does not understand what it is, whatsoever. Western populations and intellectuals have understood nothing to the plutocratic phenomenon. (Marx, Proudhon and other pro-socialist thinkers condemned capital, throwing the baby with the bath; Sade, Nietzsche focused on power so well, they were not taken seriously, except by their very pale, half-intelligent imitators…)

I agree many countries in Eastern Europe are racist, and that this is a moment of education for them. We should not hesitate to use force, starting with verbal force to make them understand that it’s high time to cut the racist crap. If they want to persist, help to the offenders (may Orban’s Hungary) ought to be suspended.

There is probably at least ten million people in France, or the French diaspora, of recent total, or part African/Levant origin. Most, including yours truly, are perfectly integrated in Western civilization (having seen the alternative), and often more French than even an old racist like the Catholic chauvinistic fanatic, De Gaulle (tolerance is French, contemplate those who elected Julian in 358 CE, or Clovis, a century later Charles De Gaulle’s racism and bigotry was not French, it had to do with the “white race” and lack of esthetic taste such as detesting minarets).

There is no return of the same. Yet, the progress accomplished is often less than imagined. It has definitively been established that Neolithic (“Prehistoric”) humans in Europe could perform limb amputation and trepanations. The prehistoric ones apparently mastered anti-septic, antibiotic and pain killing conditions enough to do so.

We have progressed much. But not as much as we need. We need to progress much more, right away. Lest, of course, we prefer to live Israeli style, killing our fellow youth, just because it looks… Semite. The irony is impressive.

Patrice Ayme’

 

Non-Linear Cold Blob Rising Over North Atlantic

The reason life survived on Earth for so long, and blossomed into animals, and now mind, is that the planet is equipped with homeostatic mechanisms (homeo means similar in Greek, and stasis, standing still). However, those mechanisms tend to be geological.

Human civilization is now having an impact on the biosphere of a violence probably never seen before. The changes are faster than what geology, or even life, can accommodate.

Some will brandish the impact of the Yucatan asteroid, and claim that was worse; however that’s just a theory: the biosphere was clearly under stress at the time from the Deccan Traps eruptions, and had been under that stress for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions. At its worst, the Asteroid was just the straw which broke the Camel’s back.

2015 will be the warmest year since the end of the Eemian, 115,000 years ago. So why are record low temperatures appearing just south of Iceland? Yes, record lows, lower than ever recorded.

While The Rest Of Planet Is At Record Warmth, Off Iceland, Record Colds Are Achieved!

That was fully expected, and a demonstration of Non-Linearity of the incipient global warming. A phenomenon is linear when it looks like a line. Global warming is not going up like a line, as some places are warming at a rate ten times higher than the average, and some regions are cooling (and some are cooling spectacularly, off Iceland and some seas around Antarctica, for reasons related to warming).

The Dryas events were extremely fast and pronounced cooling events which happened several times during the period 10,000 years to 15,000 Before Present. Some lasted around a millennium, others, just a century. They vanished as fast as they came. They are named after a tundra flower, the Dryas. In Scandinavia forests were replaced by tundra graced with Dryas (hence the name). In Britain, average temperature collapsed to minus 5 degree Celsius, and glaciers formed at elevation.

These spastic events of drastic cooling, while, overall, de-glaciation was going on, long remained a mystery. Overall, the great glaciation which had brought glaciers down to New York, was on its way out, the planet was globally, irresistibly warming. So why would temperatures collapse in some places around Greenland by 15 degrees Celsius? The solution to the Dryas events’ spastic glaciation riddle? The same as always! Warming is non-linear.

What’s the theory? The details are uncertain, but we know that the Gulf Stream (aka the North Atlantic “Conveyor”) shorted, literally: analyses of deep sea sediments have shown this. The conveyor sends an enormous current of warm tropical waters northward.

When the warm tropical waters become very cold between Iceland and Spitzbergen, they sink to the bottom of the sea, and head south. This sinking, plus the pushing by trade winds in the tropics, is what provides the energy of the Gulf Stream.

However, if the warm tropical waters are capped by a very cold, but light sweet(er) water lid, they will get cold early, and sink before Iceland. This is what happened in the Dryas events.

And It Is Happening Again, Albeit On A Smaller Scale

Was it in response to a sudden influx of fresh water from Lake Agassiz and deglaciation in North America, and Greenland? Sudden freezing there would have removed the freshwater lid, hence the brutal switchback to warming after the brutal cooling. By the way, the sea level rising speed responded quickly, by a factor of three. After the typical Dryas cooling, oceanic rise rebounded to 18 millimeter per year right away (this shows that those who expect a slow rise of sea level rise are deluding themselves, or, more to the point, are trying to delude us!)

Nowadays a Dryas-like mechanism would have to rest on the melting of Greenland alone (that’s the only place with significant ice). This is, of course, insufficient, but summer 2015, cool and rainy over the northern North Atlantic is evidence that the effect is on. Scientific analysis confirms it. See: “Exceptional Twentieth Century Slow Down of Atlantic Ocean Overturning Circulation” (Nature, 23 March, 2015).

The exact nature of what is going on at this point is a matter of debate among experts. What is sure is that something is going on.

The Atlantic Conveyor Is A Subtle Thing, Yet Dominates Glaciation In The Arctic

A similar situation beckons in Antarctica, where ice shield melting creates a freshwater lid all around which in turn freeze, extending the ice cap in the Austral winter.

When considering nonlinearity, subtlety and surprises are of the essence. This is true in physics, as it is in psychology, history, or politics.

And the morality in all this? The USA has played god. The European Union made a honest to goodness effort to reduce CO2 emission, while the USA, paying lip service to the opposite of what it was doing went right ahead, with its factory, the Plutocratic Republic of China, to use and abuse fossil fuels as never before.

So now what? Is god still American, as usual? At first it seems so: the USA started to frack massively and massive amounts of fossil fuels were extracted from the USA’s generous soil. When American companies tried the same in Poland, it failed: the underground god (Pluto?) did not cooperate: Polish soil is adverse to fracking.

Here comes the punchline: sea level has been rising fast along the Eastern seashore of the USA.  Actually, three to four times faster than the world average. That’s more than one centimeter per year.

Why? Imagine a traffic jam. Or rather a crash ahead: things come to a halt, cars, water piles up behind. Maybe the Washington politicians will soon have to learn to swim, and not just against the tide of world public opinion.

The USA is going to be punished with its own instruments. Meanwhile 20 countries formed the V20, a group of twenty countries whose existence is immediately threatened by global warming, although they caused it not.

A Two Degree Celsius rise of temperature is indeed way too much: nonlinearity is upon us. Evil is always nonlinear.

Patrice Ayme’