The West's "New Normal": Another Long Season of Volatile Wildfires

From:  Truth Out

Sunday, 21 August 2016 00:00

By Lyndsey Gilpin, High Country News | Report

This story was originally published on August 13, 2016 at High Country News (hcn.org).

The morning of July 23, the city of Los Angeles was covered in a dusting of ash. An apocalyptic haze muted the sun, and the sky was an eerie, unnatural pink. Just a day before, a wildfire had broken out on private land 30 miles northwest, near Santa Clarita. Within 24 hours, the Sand Fire scorched 20,000 acres, and in a week, it burned another 21,000 acres. At least 10,000 people had to evacuate before it was contained by early August.

The most volatile fire activity in the West this year has occurred in Central and Southern California -- from Big Sur to Carmel-by-the-Sea to San Bernardino -- causing the closure of the Pacific Coast Highway, the destruction of hundreds of homes, and the death of at least six people. According to experts, these blazes -- along with the 85 large fires currently burning across the country, many in the West -- offer a glimpse into the West's "new normal" wildfire season that has been intensified by climate change in recent years. Warmer temperatures, less snowfall and increased drought mean that fire season begins earlier in April and lasts longer, until November or December.

Last winter, California breathed a sigh of relief during El Niño, expecting it to drench the parched landscape after four years of drought. Northern California got more rain and remains relatively wet, but El Niño didn't deliver enough to prevent fires in the southern part of the state. "It's the legacy effect of the long-term drought: these large, volatile, fast-moving wildfires in California," says Crystal Kolden, fire science professor at the University of Idaho. By the first week of June, firefighters in the state had already tackled over 1,500 fires that burned almost 28,000 acres -- twice as many acres burned as in the first half of 2015.  MORE

Evidence Suggests the Oil Industry Wrote Big Tobacco's Playbook, Then Used It to Lie About Climate Change

From:  Truth-Out

Monday, 15 August 2016 00:00  
By Reynard Loki, AlterNet | News Analysis

(Photo: Huxley_slides)

A recent analysis of more than 100 industry documents conducted by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), a Washington, DC-based advocacy group, has revealed that the oil industry knew of the risks its business posed to the global climate decades before originally suspected.

It has also long been assumed that, in its efforts to deceive investors and the public about the negative impact its business has on the environment, Big Oil borrowed Big Tobacco's so-called tactical "playbook." But these documents indicate that infamous playbook appears to have actually originated within the oil industry itself.

If that is true, it would be highly significant -- and damning for Big Oil -- because the tactics used by the tobacco industry to downplay the connection between smoking and cancer were eventually deemed to have violated federal racketeering laws by a federal court. The ruling dashed efforts by Big Tobacco to find legal cover under the First Amendment, which just happens to be the same strategy that ExxonMobil and its GOP allies are currently using to defend the company against allegations of fraud. If the playbook was in fact created by the oil and gas industry and then later used by ExxonMobil, it ruins the company's argument of plausible deniability, making it highly likely that the company violated federal law.  MORE

 

Exxon’s Latest Campaign to Stymie Climate Action

From:  EcoWatch 

by Union of Concerned Scientists

By Elliott Negin

Recent press accounts report that ExxonMobil is now actively promoting a carbon tax. If true, that's big news. It would mean that, after nearly 20 years of blocking action on climate change, the world's biggest energy company has finally come to its senses.

 

Rex Tillerson is the chairman, president and CEO of ExxonMobil.

But wait a minute. If something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. So one might well ask: Is this anything more than a PR ploy?

Let's take a closer look.

As I reported earlier this year, ExxonMobil has paid lip service to the idea of a carbon tax since 2009 but, all the while, has continued to fund federal lawmakers who resolutely oppose it. In March 2015, for example, the Senate voted 58 to 42 to pass a budget amendment prohibiting a carbon tax. Thirty of the 40 senators who had received ExxonMobil campaign contributions since 2010 voted in favor of the prohibition. Meanwhile, in March 2013, 156 House members cosponsored a nonbinding resolution stating that "a carbon tax would be detrimental to American families and businesses and is not in the best interest of the United States." Ninety-three percent of the cosponsors were funded by—you guessed it—ExxonMobil.  MORE

Warren Buffett Is Wrong About Climate Change

From:  HuffPost 

Alexander C. Kaufman Senior Business Editor, The Huffington Post

Ben Walsh Business Reporter, The Huffington Post

Shahien Nasiripour Chief Financial and Regulatory Correspondent 

And here’s why it matters.

 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

You might not care whether insurance companies are thinking about climate change, but they’re a key piece of the puzzle when it comes to making the kinds of systemic changes we need to. 

 

Warren Buffett doesn’t want you to know how his empire is preparing to deal with the disastrous effects of climate change. In fact, he said in a letter released Saturday, he isn’t exactly sure this whole “climate change” thing is real, anyway.

In his annual letter to investors in his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, the billionaire investor fought back against a proposed shareholder resolution demanding his insurance subsidiaries measure and disclose the risks that climate change poses to their business and how the company is responding to the threat. Buffett compared fears over climate change to the brouhaha around apocalyptic Y2K predictions.

“It seems highly likely to me that climate change poses a major problem for the planet,” the 85-year-old wrote in the letter, released Saturday morning. “I say ‘highly likely’ rather than ‘certain’ because I have no scientific aptitude and remember well the dire predictions of most ‘experts’ about Y2K.” MORE
 

5 Things to Consider After 14 Months in a Row of Record Heat

From:  EcoWatch 

by Union of Concerned Scientists

by  Astrid Caldas

There is just so much to digest in the latest release of monthly global temperature data by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), I thought I needed to say something. I just don't know where to start, so bear with me, please, as this news of temperature records being broken (yet again) is profoundly sobering and worth understanding in detail. It is all hard to grasp and chew on, so I will try to go bit by bit here …

1. It Is Not Just the Numbers

June 2016 was 0.90 C (1.62 F) above the global 20th century average according to NOAA—not a huge amount compared to the previous months in 2016, which were all a record also. But it still beat the previous June record, set in 2015, which is to say yeah, temperatures are still rising. No surprise here.

NOAA

But look at the Arctic—it was hit hard. The darkest reds are up there. And what is in the Arctic, among other things? Arctic sea ice and Arctic vegetation. We will get to that further down. The Arctic is also extremely important for the Earth's climate and weather patterns, sea level rise and other things: what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic, as is well explained in this blog.  MORE

Fissures in the Empire — Paul Craig Roberts

From:  Paul Craig Roberts

by Paul Craig Roberts

If you have been wondering what all the terror events in France and Germany are about, here is the answer: http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/08/01/french-mps-visit-crimea-suggesting-early-end-sanctions.html

 

Washington has raised the cost of being a member of its Empire too high. Vassals such as France and Germany are beginning to exercise independent policies toward Russia. Observing the cracks in its Empire, Washington has decided to bind its vassals to Washington with terror. Most likely what we are witnessing in the French and German attacks is Operation Gladio.

Washington’s policy toward Russia, which has been imposed by Washington on all of Europe, benefits no one but the handful of American ideologues known as neoconservatives. Neoconservatives are crazed psychopaths willing to destroy Earth in behalf of American hegemony.

A delegation of members of the French National Assembly and Senate went to Crimea to participate in Russian Navy Day on July 28. Thierry Mariani, the head of the French delegation, addressed the parliament in Crimea and said that there are no reasons for France to continue to support Washington’s illegal sanctions on Russia. 

As the Strategic Culture Foundation reports, this “is part of a trend taking place in Europe.”

“On June 8, the French Senate voted overwhelmingly to urge the government to gradually reduce economic sanctions on Russia amid growing opposition to the punitive measures across Europe. The French National Assembly voted for lifting the sanctions in late April.”
See: https://www.rt.com/news/345898-french-senate-lifting-sanctions/ 

 

Politicians in Italy, Belgium, and Cyprus are taking the same tack. Politicians in Greece and Hungary have also questioned the sanctions.

So does Donald Trump, and that is why the servile American press is trying to drive him into unacceptability and out of the race. 

Democratic websites are spreading the rumor that Trump never intended to win the nomination. His goal was to come in second. His campaign was just an elevation of his name recognition to help him in his deals. But he and his advisors misjudged the disaffection of the voters from the Establishment parties and Trump won. 

Democratic websites claim that Trump is trying to get himself so opposed by criticizing Muslim families of war heroes and women for abortions that he can withdraw, thus allowing the RNC to select a candidate that can rival Hitlery in appeal to the ruling oligarchs and pressitute media. 

Considering the degeneration of America, this could possibly be true.

But for now we must doubt it and ascribe it to the effort to undermine Trump with his supporters. The evil that rules in America is determined to have in the White House its own servant, and that servant is Hitlery.

Huge column of flame erupts from Woodland Hills gas main break

From:  LA Daily News 

By Ryan Fonseca, Los Angeles Daily News

and Susan Abram, Los Angeles Daily News

Posted: 08/03/16, 1:32 PM PDT

Los Angeles firefighters work on a burning natural gas main Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2016, at Shoup Avenue and Miranda Street in Woodland Hills. A backhoe hit a 4-inch main, sparking the blaze. (Photo by Gene Blevins/Special to the Los Angeles Daily News)

A fire fueled by a natural gas leak broke out near the Woodland Hills Recreation Center Wednesday after workers with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power accidently struck a 4-inch gas line with a backhoe.

The blaze, which was reported just before 1 p.m. at 5858 Shoup Ave. near Miranda Street, engulfed the backhoe and other equipment DWP workers were using for excavation, as well as adjacent trees and dry brush.

Flames could be seen rising high as black smoke swirled around the charred backhoe. Firefighters were concerned about burning embers floating into the neighborhood while some nearby residents were told to evacuate.   MORE

Photos: Huge column of flame erupts from broken Woodland Hills

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: HOW DEMOCRATS FOUND A RUSSIAN BOOGEYMAN IN HILLARY’S E-MAILS

From:  Paul Craig Roberts

PCR Interviewed by Katehon

http://katehon.com/article/american-horror-story-how-democrats-found-boogeyman-hillarys-e-mails

Bernie Sanders won the presidential nomination, but he was cheated out of it by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which is the operating body for the Democratic Party. The DNC helped Hillary win the nomination by the combination of vote miscounts with appointment of super delegates, who no one elected, to vote for Hillary. So, she won this nomination illegitimately. All of Bernie Sanders’ supporters know that. They have turned against Hillary, and it is unlikely that many of them will vote for Clinton.

When the email scandal hit, the Democratic National Committee, hoping to shift the blame elsewhere, asked: “Who do Americans dislike more than Hillary” and answered “the Russians.” Washington has been demonizing the Russians for last 3-4 years. So, the Americans are told to dislike the Russians. That’s why the DNC and the presstitute media blame Putin for the WikiLeaks release of the emails that showed that Democrats were cheating Sanders out of the presidential nomination. Putin was made the issue instead of Hillary.

Hillary is a crook in many ways. But she has escaped from prosecution, because she is too useful to the oligarchs. So they shift all that blame to Putin, saying that this is a Russian plan to get Donald Trump elected. But I don’t think it will fool many people. Only the stupid ones. It will play in the media, because the media is not honest, not independent. The American media is like the old Soviet Media – it has to answer to the Master and can’t say much independently. It’s not going to fool the American people that all this e-mail scandal is the work of Putin.

Democrats are looking for a boogeyman, for somebody to shift the blame away from them. They don’t even realize that their allegations make Russia look like a cyber superpower.  Well, Russia may be a cyber superpower, but we all know that Clinton’s e-mails did not reach WikiLeaks via Russia. It’s just something Clinton operatives made up. The media simply went along with it, reporting it without investigating it.

I don’t think that many people will believe that Putin is behind the leak of Hillary’s incriminating emails.  It just makes the Democratic National Committee look even more ridiculous. The DNC steals an election from the candidate that people wanted and tries to blame Putin for doing that.

Bernie Sanders, when he supported Clinton at the Democratic convention, discredited himself and demoralized all his supporters. Therefore, they turned from him too. That eliminates Sanders as a leader. He ruined it for himself. If he had gone to the convention and said: “You stole the presidential nomination from me! I am the one who won”, he would be the most popular American today. He could run as an independent candidate and win. But he didn’t have the courage to do that. He gave up, surrendered.  The oligarchs are accustomed to people surrendering to them. They think that Putin will surrender to them. And that China will surrender. And Iran.

Bernie Sanders does not have the support of the oligarchs. The military security complex, Wall Street, and the Israel Lobby are not behind him. He is not their agent. His support came from the Democratic voters themselves. So he doesn’t have the power to prevail, unless he really takes the fight to Hillary. But he wasn’t willing to risk that. Bernie Sanders is considered as an outsider by oligarchs. They did not fund his campaign. His endorsement of Hillary has broken him as a political leader, and it is the end for him as a potential leader.

Hillary has chosen a war-mongering general as her vice-president.

The American media, which is bloodthirsty for war, will support Clinton and attack Trump. But the media has lied so much that the media has lost its credibility. Fewer people depend on the media, because it was lying so much and for so long. Much more important is how Trump handles himself. If he continues to say that he doesn’t want a conflict with Russia, that NATO is a problem and not a solution, and continues to denounce the offshoring of American jobs that have destroyed the middle class, Trump will win the presidential election regardless of the opposition from oligarchs and the media.  The fact that corporations moved the middle-class jobs offshore really hurts Americans and the American economy. Trump is against having tensions with Russia. He realizes that there is no real need for NATO. So, Americans are supporting him for these reasons. If Trump sticks to these issues – he will win, if the election is not stolen,

But the question is: what could he achieve, if he gets the office. It may turn out that he could do nothing, but he’s the only hope we have. Does Trump know who to appoint in order to achieve his aims, or will his government be appointed by the establishment who will “advise” him and thereby control him?

If a Trump victory seems in the cards, Democrats will try to steal the election by programing the electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail. So, whoever programs the voting machines can determine the vote outcome. And nobody will ever know that fraud has occurred.

Unless Trump has experts, who can ensure that the voting machines are programmed correctly, I suspect that the machines will be programmed to vote for Hillary. Trump cannot trust the Republican political establishment, because it is opposed to him. If Trump relies on them, they will cooperate with Hillary’s people and program the machines so that Hillary wins. There are no paper ballots to be recounted. This is the way a lot of elections have been stolen in recent years in the US.

The American Establishment is evil incarnate and will not accept an outsider as President. If Hillary becomes president, American violence against other peoples will increase.

Dow, S&P 500 close lower as oil prices drop

From:  Market Watch


By WallaceWitkowski, Reporter
Published: Aug 1, 2016 4:07 p.m. ET

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 Index closed lower Monday as oil prices slipped, while the Nasdaq Composite Index finished at its highest level in more than a year. The Dow industrials DJIA, -0.15% closed down 27.73 points, or 0.2%, at 18,404.51, weighed by more than 3% drops in shares of Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM, +0.16% and Chevron Corp. CVX, +0.04% The S&P 500 SPX, -0.13% declined 2.76 points, or 0.1%, at 2,170.84, as the energy sector dropped 3.3%. Oil prices CLU6, -3.65% settled down 3.7% at $40.06 a barrel. The Nasdaq SPX, -0.13% rose 22.06 points, or 0.4%, to close at 5,184.20, its highest close since July 21, 2015.  MORE

 



 

Climate Victims: Every Second, One Person Is Displaced by Disaster

From:  TruthOut

Sunday, 31 July 2016 00:00  
By Baher Kamal, Inter Press Service | Report 

Felix Condoni, Llapallapani's mayor and a former fisher, with a boat in the dry bed of Lake Poopo outside of Llapallapani, Bolivia, May 1, 2016. Lake Poopo, once Bolivia's second-largest, is now just a dry, salty expanse. Many of the Uru-Murato people, who had lived off its waters for generations, have left joining a new global march of refugees fleeing not war or persecution, but climate change. (Photo: Josh Haner / The New York Times)

Climate change and related extreme weather events have devastated the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of most vulnerable people worldwide -- by far exceeding the total of all the unfortunate and unjustifiable victims of all terrorist attacks combined. However, the unstoppable climate crisis receives just a tiny fraction of mainstream media attention. See these dramatic facts.

"Every second, one person is displaced by disaster," the Oslo-based Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) reports. "In 2015 only, more than 19.2 million people fled disasters in 113 countries. Disasters displace three to ten times more people than conflict and war worldwide."

As climate change continues, it will likely lead to more frequent and severe natural hazards; the impact will be heavy, warns this independent humanitarian organisation providing aid and assistance to people forced to flee.  MORE