December 1, 2019: Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere Highest in 3 Million Years

 

December 1, 2019: The first U.N. diplomatic conference to call for action to halt climate change occurred in 1992. So far, humanity has made almost no progress. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen from 358 parts per million to 418 parts per million. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that’s the highest level in…three million years. 

It’s safe to assume, President Trump doesn’t know NOAA exists , but if he did, he’d be too lazy to read any reports. 

Since 1993, there have been 212 major “weather disasters” in the United States, or 7.8 per year. These include F-5 tornadoes, record-setting floods, and massive forest fires. The total cost: 10,000 lives and $1.45 trillion. And the rate of weather disasters has more than doubled since 1980. Nine of the ten costliest hurricanes, adjusted for inflation, have hit the U.S. since 1992. In a five-year span, ending in 1992, 3.3 million acres of forest went up in flames yearly. By 2018, the five-year average was 7.8 million. 

The National Academy of Science reports that Greenland has lost five trillion tons of ice since 1992. 

Experts writing in the journal Nature put the loss of Antarctic ice at three trillion tons more.

 

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NUMBERS DON’T LIE, at least, according to mathematicians. Scientists have long warned that global temperatures would be rising much quicker, save for the fact that the oceans sop up most of the heat trapped in the atmosphere. Now, we have fresh evidence of trouble from Iceland. 

“Fish made us rich,” Gisli Palsson, a professor of anthropology at the University of Iceland, said recently. But in the last twenty years, water temperatures off the island have increased as much as 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That meant, this year and last, that Icelanders were unable to harvest capelin. A type of smelt, capelin are the second most valuable fish Icelanders net, worth an estimated $143 million in 2017. The cod catch, worth $1 billion, has also been affected, since cod feed on capelin. So, when one species disappears a chain reaction begins. 

What happened? Capelin “moved farther north where there are colder seas,” one fisherman explained. 

Capelin are disappearing.

 

Fish can’t vote. 

The signs of trouble are everywhere, save for the White House, where the Climate-Denier-in-Chief continues to tweet about cancer-causing windmills and mix up weather and climate. Sea bass, which normally like warmer waters off the mid-Atlantic coast, are showing up off Maine. Spanish hog fish, usually found in the Caribbean, are caught off North Carolina. 

According to Daniel Pauly of the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia, fish “need more oxygen when the temperature is higher.” But warmer water holds less oxygen. That means, as Jennifer Jacquet, an associate professor of environmental studies at N.Y.U., says, that fish are swimming for their lives. “They are moving in order to breathe.” 

Species found farther south may eventually replace capelin and cod off Iceland and help the fishing industry survive. Tropical nations, however, may be screwed as fish found offshore head for cooler climes and no species replace them. President Trump couldn’t care less because fish can’t vote.

 

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SEN. JOHN KENNEDY appears on Meet the Press, and tries to sell the Ukraine-did-it-too defense to viewers. 

Known for folksy humor, Kennedy makes the case that the Ukrainians helped Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. That would mean Trump had a perfect reason to demand that Ukraine investigate, or they’d get no military aid. 

Host Chuck Todd points out that U.S. intelligence agencies briefed senators just days before and told them the “Ukraine-interfered story” was bogus. Kennedy says he wasn’t briefed. Then he gets his feet tangled in facts. He’s talking about some story in The Financial Times and another in The New York Times, and how a Ukrainian court ruled that Ukrainian officials had meddled in our election. 

Sure, he admits, “Russia was very aggressive and they’re much more sophisticated. But the fact that Russia was so aggressive does not exclude the fact that President Poroshenko actively worked for Secretary Clinton.” 

“Come on!” Todd responds incredulously. 

“You realize, the only other person selling this argument outside the United States is this man, Vladimir Putin,” the host continues. A picture of the Russian autocrat appears on screen. “You’ve done exactly what the Russian operation is trying to get American politicians to do [emphasis added],” he tells Sen. Kennedy. “Are you at all concerned that you have been duped?” 

(See: Dr. Fiona Hill warning about “useful idiots,” 11/21/19.)

 

Todd points out that what Poroshenko did was criticize Candidate Trump for his stance on Crimea. That was after Candidate Trump said if he were elected, he’d remove the economic sanctions slapped on Russia by the Obama administration when they invaded Ukrainian soil. 

Kennedy gets upset about the poor treatment afforded President Trump by House Democrats and says the impeachment inquiry is “as rigged as a carnival ring toss and we both know it.”  

He does not try to explain why military aid was held up. Nor does he address the question of how that might have benefited U.S. security. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: What Edward Luce, editor of The Financial Times can’t figure out, is which article the senator was talking about. Monday morning, he appears on Joe Scarborough’s show on MSNBC: 

I’ve been wracking my brain, as have colleagues, as to which Financial Times reporting Sen. Kennedy is referring to in support of this really fanciful contention that Ukraine meddled in the elections and I can’t find it. I don’t know whether he did the same with the Washington Examiner and The Economist and so forth. But it seems like he just plucked those newspaper names out of thin air.

 

It is a corrupt country, but the idea that Ukraine intervened in the U.S. election specifically is not something Sen. Kennedy can point to The Financial Times as supporting.

I’m not too aware of any credible reporting on that subject. I think Fiona Hill was absolutely right when she said this is a conspiracy theory, an alternative reality that was cooked up in the Kremlin, and that, from farm to fork, is now coming out of Sen. Kennedy’s mouth.