Southern Bookman

Wildfires sending smoke deep into space, WSJ science writer reports

A traveler through space can tell the earth is burning.

Super thunderstorms caused by massive wildfires send smoke clouds miles into the stratosphere, Wall Street Journal science writer Robert Lee Hotz reports in  his Science Journal column Tuesday.

While the long-term effects have not been determined, the smoke blocks sunlight on a planetary scale. The effect is similar to that of a volcano's erupting. Recent massive wildfires, of longer duration and intensity than in the past, are believed caused by climate change.

The Australian wildfires last January sent smoke 21 miles above the earth, Hotz reports. The smoke circled the globe twice before dissipating last April.

Despite such stories by the WSJ's reporters, the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper denies the reality of climate change on its editorial pages.

While not as long-lasting as carbon emissions into the atmosphere, wildifire smoke spewing into the stratosphere is an ominous sign of climate change.

As another hurricane stirs in the Gulf of Mexico, the Trump administration announced another final act of desecration, opening oil leasing in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. The oil companies can stake their claims to the pristine wilderness beginning Jan. 17, three days before the inauguration of Joe Biden. The Biden administration will have a difficult time reversing the action by the climate-denying, fossil fuel-supporting Trump administration.

Trump's plundering last days highlight the importance of the Senate runoff elections in Georgia. Victories by Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff will allow Biden to carry out his program to shift from a fossil fuel economy and eliminate carbon emissions. Republican control of the Senate will allow fossil fuel companies to continue ravaging the planet.

 

Random musings on Veterans Day

One more reason to worry: China's way ahead of the United States in rolling out 5G technology, according to a Wall Street Journal special report.

The Chinese can download a movie in 15 seconds, while it takes an American 15 minutes. Movies are censored in China, however.

China's huge lead in 5G technology seems like a major national security concern. But, as with climate change, there's no sense of urgency.

A strange Veterans Day, on the eve of the Masters beginning. A big story is how Augusta National's fall foliage compares with its usual April azaleas. Will players get a free drop from fallen leaves?

ESPN's College Game Day will broadcast Saturday morning from Augusta National's Par 3 course. Good the gang can talk about golf, with so many football games canceled because of Covid-19.

I never thought America would turn into Belarus. Trump in refusing to accept Joe Biden's election is acting more and more like Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.

Following Saturday's spontaneous street celebrations of Biden's victory, Americans now need to stage massive protests as the people of Belarus did.

Christmas TV commercials have arrived again. I'm puzzled at car companies recycling last year's ads. Haven't the models changed?

World War I  ended on this day 102 years ago, followed by a global flu epidemic. Now, Covid-19 is resurgent throughout the world.

On this somber day, let's remember those lost to our 21st century pandemic and hope that an effective vaccine arrives soon.

 

 

An ominious turn: United States officially abandons climate change treaty

Overlooked in the chaotic battle for the White House, the United States on the day after the presidential election officially left the Paris climate change agreement.

With millions voting for climate-change denier Donald Trump, the United States abandoned the global commitment to reduce carbon emissions.

Trump announced in July 2017 that the United States would leave the 2015 pact that seeks to limit global temperatures. But the treaty required a three-year waiting period for a country to withdraw.

If Trump takes back the White House, the United States, with 15 percent of global greenhouse emissions, will commit itself further to promoting fossil fuels.

Trump has relentlessly reversed President Obama's climate change efforts, from weakening auto-emissions regulations to promoting the coal and petroleum industries.

He has also begun steps to open petroleum drilling in Alaska's Arctic Wildlife Refuge and other long protected wilderness areas.

Democratic candidate Joe Biden, near a presidential victory, promises to return to the Paris agreement. If Biden is elected, the country would have a month to rejoin the treaty.

Biden calls for a massive effort to make buildings more energy efficient and developing wind and solar power to shift from a carbon-based economy.

The treaty seeks to keep global temperature increases this century to under 2 degrees celsius above pre-industrial averages. It calls for additional efforts to reach a 1.5c threshold.

Climate change has already advanced further than earlier projections, with soaring temperatures, drought, melting arctic ice, fires and hurricanes. Rising ocean levels will threaten coastal nations and cities.

The United States must rejoin the effort to reduce emissions if the world is to have any chance to limit climate change's devastation.

 

 

 

 

 

Looking for hope as election day looms

Halloween came early with Amy Coney Barrett's seizure of a Supreme Court seat.

I'm trying to raise my hopes that my worst fears won't be realized. But I'm finding it difficult.

Perhaps we can go to the moon - they've found water on sunlit areas there. But just molecules, not ice or liquid. Doesn't sound like much of a beach.

Joe Biden's lead in the presidential race is encouraging, but Barrett's presence increases my paranoia that Trump can steal the election through a Supreme Court-engineered coup.

I'm also optimistic about the Democrats taking control of the Senate, passing legislation to reverse the reactionary court's bad decisions. But I remain uneasy.

Those long lines in early voting boost my faith in American democracy.

I hope the republic prevails.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thomas Friedman pushes another dubious corporate utopia

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman took a break from presidential politics Wednesday to fashion one of his fantasies about the brave new economic world.

Friedman once again served as the mouthpiece for one of his favorite corporate pals, Infosys President Ravi Kumar, who gave Friedman his "world is flat" theme.

Infosys, founded in India but now based in covid-19-staggered New York City, is one of those new age consulting companies that help other corporations squeeze out profits more efficiently by ramping up "worker productivity."

Kumar filled Friedman's mind with visions of the post-pandemic world, in which workers will need constant refurbishing of unnamed skills so that they can toil at home carrying out some kind of corporate "modular" projects. The column didn't say what kind of tasks would be done by these happy domestic workers.

Sounded like corporate feudalism. In other words, an expansion of the contract worker model, without corporate benefits. Presumably, government health care would replace private insurance plans.

Friedman quoted Kumar as saying that unidentified technical skills are now more valued than university degrees, and that Infosys and other companies are investing in their own education programs, bypassing colleges.

Sure, Infosys still hires plenty of university-trained engineers, but the company also likes some kind of self-taught savants. All you need is to push a button on the robot assembly line, I suppose. Those rosy scenarios were sweetened by vintage Friedman chestnuts like "adaptive coalitions."

After this endorsement of technical education, Friedman made the contradictory assertion that corporations still will need workers who possess the kind of creative thinking traditionally developed by college liberal arts educations.

Perhaps old-fashioned degrees will have a place after all. Left unsaid was what kind of role public education will play.

Nor did the column say anything about the future of artificial intelligence, one of Infosys' main consulting areas. With robots doing more and more jobs, what will humans do in their cozy home workplaces?

Also missing was any mention of climate change, a curious omission since that's become a major Friedman theme.

Friedman's acclamation of Kumar's corporate utopia left huge gaps. The vision of workers constantly learning new skills to carry out the corporate agenda sounded more oppressive than liberating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Massive bird deaths sound alarm about disappearing plant, animal species

Birds dying by the thousands in the American Southwest give tragic confirmation to the latest UN alarm that biodiversity is collapsing.

For centuries, birds have migrated from Alaska and Canada to Central and South America at the end of summer in the northern hemisphere. Now, large numbers of flycatchers, swallows and warblers are falling out of the sky in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska, dying far short of their destinations, according to the Guardian.

That distressing news follows a United Nations report warning that the world is failing to halt the extinction of plant and animal species. Out of 20 goals set in 2010 to reverse humans' destruction of wildlife by 2020, only six have been met, and those partially, according to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The new findings follow an earlier UN report that 1 million plant and animal species are in danger of extinction.

The rapid decline in species since 1970 threaten  human existence, the UN says. Urbanization, the growth of agriculture, the loss of forests, plastic pollution, carbon emissions, climate change and invasive alien species have disrupted natural habitats. Overfishing and industrial wastes spewing into waterways have distressed the earth's oceans.

Climate change, and the wildfires in the Western United States, appear the main cause of the birds' deaths. The fires forced the birds away from pathways where food is plentiful, leaving them too undernourished to complete their journey.

Bird species are also threatened by climate change in Canada and the loss of their South American habitats to deforestation. A similar process is reducing the number of monarch butterflies.

New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert's Pulitzer Prize winning "The Sixth Extinction" warned in 2015 about the threat to humanity from the loss of plants and animals. But even as awareness of climate change grows, the loss of diversity receives little attention.

The UN report contained some good news: deforestation has lessened, more ocean and natural areas have received protection, and progress was made to halt invasive species. But lately, fires have spread across Brazil's Amazon jungle and Pantanal wetlands, as the western United States burns.

As with the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions, the world is running out of time to protect species that share the earth with us.

 

 

Temperatures quickly approaching threshold set by climate change treaty

As wildfires rage across the globe and heat records tumble, high temperatures are soaring rapidly toward the apocalyptic zone.

The world is pushing toward a 1.5-degree Celsius increase in temperatures over pre-industrial averages, the strictest limit set for this century by the Paris climate change agreement in 2015, according to a new report issued by the United Nations World Meterological Organization and other groups.

There's a 25 percent chance that the world will exceed the limit of 2.7 degrees Farenheit in the next four years, the Associated Press reported in an article published on the Huffington Post news site. The Paris treaty also set an upper goal of 2 degrees Celsius for the world to avoid climate change's worst effects.

Temperatures this summer reached 130 degrees in Death Valley, Calif., and 100 degrees in Siberia. As another heat wave pushes temperatures higher, wildfires continue in California, Washington and Oregon.

In Brazil, not only is the Amazon burning with worst fires than last year. Wildfires are also devastating Brazil's Pantanal, the world's largest wetlands, the New York Times reported.

Rising temperatures also bring worst hurricanes. Most of Lake Charles, La., remains without power after Hurricane Laura struck Aug. 27. The hurricane was the most powerful to ever strike the state, frequently ravaged by hurricanes.

Without major emissions reductions, temperatures could blaze far above the 1.5 Celsius threshold, making much of the world unlivable.

 

 

 

 

 

ANWR oil drilling plan fans flames of climate change

Oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve would be the finale of the American frontier.

Donald Trump's Interior Secretary David Bernhardt on Monday opened the pristine 19-million acre ANWR to oil company leasing. The admnistration's act of vandalism sacrifices the sacred home of polar bears and caribou to corporate greed.

The action opens the entire 1.56-million acre coastal plain of the ANWR to leasing. Showing that the Trump administration will keep wreaking mischief even if it loses the election, Bernhardt wants the leasing done by the end of the year, making it difficult for Joe Biden to halt drilling. If Trump steals the election, oil wells will cover caribou nesting grounds.

Environmental groups will file suits to stop the action, and market forces might preserve the wildlife area. With the drop in oil prices and the technical difficulties of drilling in the ANWR, petroleum companies have expressed reluctance to bid on leases. Banks won't be eager to give loans for drilling.

Millions of barrels of oil reportedly lie beneath the ANWR, but those estimates might be understated. More seismic tests are required to determine the exact amount of petroleum there, but Bernhardt is pushing ahead anyway.

With the world reeling from climate change, the Trump administration pours more fuel on the fire.

 

 

Antarctic ice shelves melting at alarming pace

Goodbye to the Antarctic ice shelves.

Antarctica has lost 4,000 megatons of ice in the last 25 years, according to a Wall Street Journal article Tuesday, based on a report in the journal Nature Geoscience.

That's enough water to fill the Grand Canyon, the British newspaper The Independent said. If the melting continues at the present rate, the Grand Canyon might really be filled with water some day.

Thousands of years old, the ice shelves are melting faster than they can be replenished. Floating on the ocean, the shelves form on the edges of the ice sheets that cover Antarctica and Greenland.

While the ice-shelf melting doesn't directly contribute to rising sea levels, the shelves are a buffer to underground ice moving out to sea, which increases sea levels. The shrinking ice shelves mean more of the subterranean ice is heading to the oceans.

Research has just begun into the effects of the Antarctic's loss of ice, according to the WSJ piece. The ice loss can change global weather patterns, the WSJ said.

Unlike Greenland, where the loss of ice is on the surface, the Antarctic melting comes from below, the article said.

If the entire Antarctic melts, sea levels could rise 200 feet, the Independent said, submerging coastal areas.

 

 

Jazz pianist Bill Charlap returns to performance

A New York Times article about jazz pianist Bill Charlap's return to live performing left me longing for the pre-pandemic days of open culture.

Charlap after canceling a full summer schedule decided to give a solo concert at the rustic Deer Head Inn, "the oldest continuously running jazz club in the country," according to its web site.

After initially declining to perform at the Deer Head Inn, Charlap decided to travel to the hotel in Delaware Water Gap, Penn., in the Poconos Mountains near the Appalachian Trail. The club, which has drawn a stellar list of jazz artists, boosted Charlap's career when he started out.

Charlap performed alone  and wore a mask throughout his two sets. His audience was more than six feet from the stage, and practiced social distancing. But Charlap still took a risk in returning to live performance.

John Marhese's article stirred my nostalgia for the days when we could attend concerts, plays, movies and art exhibits without fear. In that now vanished era, my wife and I saw Charlap's trio perform at the Atlanta History Center in the spring of 2019 during the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival. Earlier, we saw Charlap's wife, Renee Rosnes, play at the Village Vanguard in New York City.

We also saw one of Charlap's most notable musical partners, Tony Bennett, in concert at Atlanta Symphony Hall in February, which turned out to be our last public gathering before the covid-19 shutdown. We had been scheduled to see Wynton Marsalis and the Atlanta Opera's "Porgy and Bess."

Such public events appear more and more distant as the virus surges across the country, and the Trump administration gives little hope of controlling the outbreak. The Times also had an article about the Boston Symphony's canceling of its Tanglewood  summer concerts, a New England tradition.

Unlike in the United States, Western Europe has reopened without a resurgence of the coronavirus. Here, events like Charlap's Deer Head Inn performance appear increasingly endangered.