Climate Dominoes

When world leaders periodically muster up enough courage to take on the issue of climate change, they do it with great timidity. They approach it in the context of political numbers only loosely connected to science and then chase those doubtful targets with even more hapless measures that rarely venture beyond gestural tokens of good intent. To put it bluntly, it's hogwash.

Proof positive is blatant in everything they omit which is pretty much everything except man-made greenhouse gas emissions. That's not to say that man-made climate change isn't a huge problem, it definitely is. Forty years ago that might have been enough but not today.

We have brought a new player to the party. Let's call her "nature." This once placidly sleeping giant has been awakened. It brings an array of issues we call "natural feedback loops." Some of them are well known, things such as the loss of Arctic sea ice, the retreat of glaciers and ice caps around the world, the worsening acidification of our oceans, the melting and release of once safely frozen methane from the tundra, Arctic lakes and seabeds.

These feedback loops, we're warned, could massively eclipse the worst that mankind has managed to inflict. They could tip the planet into runaway global warming.

Hard as we've made it for our leaders to tackle man-made climate change, they haven't a clue what to do about these natural impacts, the feedback loops, sometimes called "tipping points." There's your problem. Our political caste is focusing on the grease fire in the kitchen, to the extent they're focusing on climate change at all, but they're ignoring the flames consuming the rest of the house, the tipping points.

Now we learn that these feedback loops may have a "domino effect."

Policymakers have severely underestimated the risks of ecological tipping points, according to a study that shows 45% of all potential environmental collapses are interrelated and could amplify one another. 

The authors said their paper, published in the journal Science, highlights how overstressed and overlapping natural systems are combining to throw up a growing number of unwelcome surprises.

...The study collated existing research on ecosystem transitions that can irreversibly tip to another state, such as coral reefs bleaching and being overrun by algae, forests becoming savannahs and ice sheets melting into oceans. It then cross-referenced the 30 types of shift to examine the impacts they might have on one another and human society. 

Only 19% were entirely isolated. Another 36% shared a common cause, but were not likely to interact. The remaining 45% had the potential to create either a one-way domino effect or mutually reinforcing feedbacks.

Among the latter pairings were Arctic ice sheets and boreal forests. When the former melt, there is less ice to reflect the sun’s heat so the temperature of the planet rises. This increases the risks of forest fires, which discharge carbon into the air that adds to the greenhouse effect, which melts more ice. Although geographically distant, each amplifies the other.

...The deforestation of the Amazon is responsible for multiple “cascading effects” – weakening rain systems, forests becoming savannah, and reduced water supplies for cities like São Paulo and crops in the foothills of the Andes. This, in turn, increases the pressure for more land clearance. 

Until recently, the study of tipping points was controversial, but it is increasingly accepted as an explanation for climate changes that are happening with more speed and ferocity than earlier computer models predicted. The loss of coral reefs and Arctic sea ice may already be past the point of no return. There are signs the Antarctic is heading the same way faster than thought.

Co-author Garry Peterson said the tipping of the west Antarctic ice shelf was not on the radar of many scientists 10 years ago, but now there was overwhelming evidence of the risks – including losses of chunks of ice the size of New York – and some studies now suggest the tipping point may have already been passed by the southern ice sheet, which may now be releasing carbon into the atmosphere. 

“We’re surprised at the rate of change in the Earth system. So much is happening at the same time and at a faster speed than we would have thought 20 years ago. That’s a real concern,” said Peterson. “We’re heading ever faster towards the edge of a cliff.”

Can a climate cascade be stopped or reined in? We'll never know if we don't try but we'll never try unless we acknowledge what's happening and muster the resolve to come to grips with these threats. If we insist on playing the neoliberal game that has blinded us to our predicament for more than 40 years, we're probably done.  Neoliberals place economic growth above all else, perhaps even ahead of the survival of human civilization. Is your country's leader a neoliberal? Mine is.

T'was the Eve Before Blackness

There'll be no white Christmas for Vancouver Island. In fact, unless these high winds stop and allow the ferries to run normally again, for some it won't be much of a Christmas at all.

A post from a fellow blogger who recently moved to the island focused on the rain. Some of us call it the "rain festival" because it seems to run from October or November until April or May each year.  We get a lot of rain, much of it coming in the form of squalls off the Pacific. They can bring pretty high winds, the sort that cancel ferry sailings.

The wettest place in North America is Henderson Lake, an inlet between Port Alberni at the head of the Alberni Inlet and Ucluelet, a fishing port on the west coast. There's a fish hatchery on the lake that operates as a weather station, keeping track of, what else, rain.

On average, Henderson Lake logs just over 270 inches of precip annually. In 1997 it set a record of 366 inches of rainfall for the year. For a little perspective, Toronto averages 31 inches per annum; Calgary, 16.5 inches of precipitation; Montreal, 39 inches of mixed precip; and even soggy Halifax, neck and neck with Vancouver, just 55 inches.

We've been getting hammered by squalls. Apparently el Nino has triggered another "pineapple express" with warm, extremely wet currents out of the southwest. These translate into a ripple effect of powerful storms that sweep through creating havoc with ferry sailings and toppling trees that leave thousands without power.

We had such an event yesterday around 10 a.m. A complete blackout. For some reason most of the homes in my area are all electric. Electric lights, electric baseboard heat, electric appliances - fridge, stove, water heater, etc. When the power goes out you're akin to a squatter.

This can be difficult enough for younger people. It is an order of difficulty worse for most of my neighbours, retirees, and especially the widows.  Fortunately we're carefully groomed on emergency preparedness - the "Big One" to be specific. That's the category 9+ mega-quake that we're warned to expect somewhere between the next 50 minutes to 50 years. We're encouraged to be moderate preppers - generous stocks of fresh water, dried and tinned foods, first aid kits and such. Oh yeah, and plenty of batteries, scads of the things.

I'm a bit more fortunate than most. I have two gas appliances - a stove and a hot water heater. Both function in the blackout. I also have a high-efficiency wood stove/fireplace that generates a terrific amount of heat out of a minuscule supply of firewood.

Timing, as they say, is everything. Yesterday was the second shortest day of the year. With heavy storm clouds overhead it was pitch black by 4:30. Total darkness.  When you illuminate your watch to discover that it's only 6:15, not something closer to midnight, the heart sinks. Today, of course, is the shortest day but we were favoured with clear skies although darkness still closed in by 4:50.

Then the miracle happened. The lights came back on. My house, toasty from a slow but steady supply of firewood during the day, was no longer plunged into darkness.  My phone service was restored. My fridge and freezer got straight to work reversing the effects of the past 36 hours.

The restoration of power was indeed an early Christmas gift. At the same time the outage confirmed how prepared we were for this increasingly common event and where we needed to up our game.

I can't credibly blame the past two days on climate change but climate change will be delivering more severe weather events of increasing frequency, intensity and duration.  With each one you learn to adapt just a little bit better, to rely less on things that can quickly turn unreliable.

On this, the shortest day of the year, it will be a long night. We will not endure it in total darkness.

Vlad Says: US Out of Syria, UK Out of EU.

All Vlad Putin wants for Christmas, the Americans to pull their forces out of Syria and Britain to go ahead and quit the European Union. Apparently he'll take care of those pesky Ukrainians himself.

Oh yeah, and rap music. Vlad hates the rap:

“Why do we need that?” the Russian president asked. “It’s the degradation of the nation – do we want that? It was fashionable at one point to promote suicide, does that mean we should all go hang ourselves? Count me out.”

Vlad took time out of his year-ender to tutor the Brits on the fundamentals of democracy.

“The referendum was held,” the Russian president said from Moscow during his annual press conference, which is broadcast on national television. “What can she do? She has to fulfil the will of the people expressed in the referendum.” 

Britons may see some irony in a lesson on democracy from a fourth-term president who has co-opted or crushed any substantial opposition in his home country. In a statement, the former foreign secretary David Miliband, who has backed a second referendum, said it was “an insult to the United Kingdom that he should be lecturing us on our democratic process”. 

Russia is seen as a possible beneficiary of the UK’s exit from the EU, and a prominent financial backer of the leave campaign, Arron Banks, met Russian embassy officials repeatedly during the run-up to the referendum in June 2016.

Putin found Trump's decision to pull US forces out of Syria pleasing if not somewhat unconvincing.

Putin also backed Donald Trump’s sudden announcement of a troop withdrawal from Syria, calling it the “right decision”, but added that Russia had not yet seen evidence of a drawdown. 

“The United States has already been in Afghanistan for 17 years, and almost every year they say they’re withdrawing their troops,” he said.

Merry Christmas, Vlad.

Alan Greenspan - "Run for Cover"

Former fed chairman, Alan Greenspan, the guy who could do no wrong until he could do no right, is adding his voice to the choir of investment types who see a bad moon rising for the American economy.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned on Tuesday that the U.S. could be headed into "stagflation" and that it was unlikely the current market would go higher. 

“It would be very surprising to see it sort of stabilize here, and then take off again,” Greenspan said in an interview with CNN. Markets could still go up, but “at the end of that run, run for cover.”

Trump, who hasn't missed a chance to credit himself with America's skyrocketing markets is already positioning himself to be able to blame fed chief Jerome Powell for the looming collapse.

In the CNN interview, Greenspan said the U.S. could be headed into “stagflation,” an economy characterized by high inflation and high unemployment such as was seen in the 1970s. 

“How long it lasts or how big it gets, it’s too soon to tell,” said Greenspan.

Be Careful What You Ask For, Alberta

There's plenty of grumbling out of the oil patch these days, angry muttering about western separation.  They're fed up with waiting for a pipeline to tidewater, something they pin on Justin Trudeau even though he's advanced the idea unlike his Tory predecessor, Steve 'Beelzebub' Harper, who did essentially squat.

The problem these would-be separatists have is that an independent Saskberta or Albersask would have even less clout with the real West, British Columbia, than those provinces have right now.  No Ottawa, no federal cudgel to menace B.C.  No Ottawa, no Canada to pick up the quarter-trillion dollar tab for Athabasca remediation when the Bitumen Barons pack up and steal away in the night.

Judge Giving Flynn a Rough Ride at Sentencing Hearing. Flynn Counsel Gets Adjournment.

The judge presiding over the sentencing of former Trump national security advisor, Mike Flynn,  wasted no time revealing his contempt for the retired three-star general.

A federal judge blasted former national security adviser Michael Flynn during his sentencing hearing on Tuesday, saying he couldn't hide his "disgust" with the retired Army lieutenant general. 

"Arguably, you sold your country out" by working as an unregistered foreign agent, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan told Flynn in court Tuesday.

In answer to a question from the judge, prosecutors said they did not consider charging Flynn with treason. The sentencing hearing is ongoing as of noon on Tuesday.

...Sullivan highlighted the sentencing memo from Flynn's attorneys, which suggested that FBI agents may have acted improperly in their interview of Flynn and entrapped him into lying. But in court, Flynn said he would not challenge his guilty plea nor the circumstances under which he was interviewed. 

“I was aware” that lying to the FBI was a crime, Flynn told Sullivan, adding that he accepts responsibility for his false statements. 

"This is a very serious offense," Sullivan said. "A high ranking senior official of the government making false statements to the federal bureau of investigation while in the White House."

Update:

Sensing their client was unlikely to get a slap on the wrist, Flynn's counsel sought an adjournment so that, as the judge suggested, Flynn could dish up even more "cooperation" to the Mueller investigation.

As Flynn and his counsel prepared to exit the courtroom, Judge Sullivan wished them "happy holidays."

Is the Monroe Doctrine Dead?

For almost two centuries, America has considered the Americas, especially Central and South America, off-limits to foreign meddling. At first the concern was ambitious European states.  The US pledged not to meddle in European affairs in exchange for the Euros reciprocating in the Americas. This resulted in the spread of American hegemony from its border with Mexico to Tierra del Fuego. The Latins would still have plenty of meddling, just not from Europe. We know how that turned out.

Now the Monroe Doctrine is imperiled, not by any European state, but by China. While America snoozed, disinterested, China has been pursuing a little hegemony of its own - in Asia Pacific, South Asia and the Middle East, Africa and even South America. It's said that the two largest banks in South America today are both Chinese.

But what about Central America? Well, since you ask, there's news. Mexico, tired of being roughed up by Trump, is openly tossing around the idea of a Chinese option for dealing with Central America's endless troubles.

Instead [of constant bickering with Trump over migrants], they want to change the focus of the conversation to developing the economy of Central America, creating jobs there so people do not have to stream north in the first place. 

And how does López Obrador's new government hope to convince Trump that he should care about investing in Central America?
Enter China, or at least the perceived threat to the United States posed by its growing engagement in the region.

While it is unclear whether Chinese interests would include supporting a plan to curb migration out of Central America, in recent years the country has increased its presence there, funding infrastructure projects, tightening ties with governments and even convincing a handful of Central American nations to switch their diplomatic recognition of Taiwan to China — a sticking point with the United States. 

By privately raising the prospect of China assisting in the new regional development plan, Mexico is trying to leverage the region's changing reality in its favour, given that it cannot take cooperation with the United States for granted.= 

"For a long time there has been this competition within Latin America for influence, where China is willing to invest billions in infrastructure and energy that the United States simply isn't," said Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Centre. 

The approach is also a reflection of the distinct personalities of López Obrador and Trump: Both are mavericks — albeit on opposite sides of the political spectrum — and both are willing to break with long-established conventions. 

"Partly because of Trump and partly because of Andrés Manuel, there is an opening there," Wood said.

Unlike his predecessor, López Obrador is willing to chart an independent course in his response to the Trump administration — partly because of Trump's hard line on migration and partly out of a conviction that the only way to tackle the issue is to go after its root causes.

... "If nothing else, it is a good bargaining chip," said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, of the idea that China could increase its investment in the region. "Both sides are laying down their frameworks and their points of view as to how they should they proceed." 

The idea that China could increase its influence in Mexico emerged even before López Obrador came into office. 

"I heard from senior Mexican officials during the transition that if the United States is not going to treat Mexico with respect, don't be surprised if you see a Chinese submarine in a Mexican port," said Juan Gonzalez, who was an adviser to Vice President Joe Biden on Central America. 

"I think it was hyperbolic," he said of the outgoing officials' warning before adding, "I think Mexico sees increased political risk coming from the political process in the United States and they are diversifying their interests."

It is an inevitable aspect of dominant power transitions that the rising power displaces the reigning power abroad, something the United States is now realizing.

Beginning in 2007 Washington realized that it was in danger of losing hegemony over Africa.  To this end the Pentagon set up a new command, AfriCom.

A week after Chinese President Hu Jintao began a high-profile, eight-country African tour, during which he signed more than 50 cooperation agreements and pledged to double China’s assistance to Africa by 2009, Bush announced the creation of AFRICOM.

The Chinese moves have Bush's neo-con faithful doing it in their pants. The neo-con Heritage Foundation issued this warning: “The United States must be alert to the potential long-term disruption of American access to important raw materials and energy sources as these resources are ‘locked up’ by Chinese firms.”

The US projects that African petroleum could make up 25% of America's oil imports by 2015. That is unless China gets that oil that it too desperately wants locked up before then.

Now, as for AFRICOM, US officials have said it "..isn’t about chasing terrorists around Africa”; “AFRICOM isn’t going to be used to protect natural resources”. Strangely enough, they haven't actually said what AFRICOM is about. Go figure.

In 2008, the United Nations said the supposed humanitarian focus of AfriCom was nonsense.

The United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs, in a move destined to set the Pentagon and White House wolves howling, has come right out and said that AfriCom's focus is military, not humanitarian: 

In a key briefing to Congress on 13 March, General William “Kip” Ward, head of the US Command for Africa, AFRICOM, devoted only 15 seconds of his four-and-a-half minute opening remarks to a possible humanitarian role.

Focusing instead on military training, security and counter-terrorism, his remarks came in sharp contrast to a year ago when officials announced that the command would concentrate on humanitarian assistance, alarming many aid agencies, which were concerned that US military involvement in humanitarian aid would undermine their neutrality. 

The UN is concerned about AfriCom stepping on the toes of humanitarian NGOs operating in Africa. Many African leaders, however, are more worried about AfriCom stepping on their necks.

Now, with its fracked oil and gas bounty, the United States military presence is limited to a forlorn base in a container port in Djibouti situated immediately alongside a similar military base, this one Chinese. The Washington Post recently asked whether China could bump US forces out of that solitary toehold.

The good news is that Trump has sparked an overdue debate about America's place in the world.

To be sure, discussions about the waning of the United States as the world’s sole superpowerpredate Trump. But two years of his tumultuous presidency have intensified Washingtonian angst about the future of American power and how America should seek to lead a more fractured planet — or whether it should try at all. 

“It’s historical fact that great nations and empires all have a beginning and an end,” said James Jones, a retired U.S. general, former national security adviser to President Barack Obama and outgoing chairman of the Atlantic Council, speaking Friday in Washington at a forum hosted by his think tank. “There’s a naive belief in our country that there’s some sort of destiny, that the primacy of the United States is ensured for some reason forever. I don’t think that’s the case.” 

To that end, the Atlantic Council, an organization deeply invested in the furtherance of American leadership, is planning on floating a new set of principles to safeguard the “rules-based order” — the euphemism often used to explain the status quo authored by the United States more than half a century ago. It wants to “revitalize” and “defend” this order, not just from the rising authoritarian might of China, but in the face of Trump’s own nationalist and protectionist agenda and those of his ilk. 

At the forum, speakers warned of the White House’s disregard for “values-based” foreign policy — seen both in Trump’s cynical accommodation of figures such as the Saudi crown prince as well as his demagoguery over migrants and refugees coming to the United States. Washington, they feared, was seeing its credibility evaporate among allies. 

...That the United States is almost inexorably lurching into a great-power confrontation with China ought to be a concern, suggested Emma Ashford and Trevor Thrall of the libertarian Cato Institute. “The growing consensus on China is troubling. Having identified China as America’s biggest strategic challenge, neither party has identified a clear goal,” Ashford and Thrall wrote. “Nor have they articulated how a new approach to China would provide a foundation for a broader vision of American foreign policy . . . The risk of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy on China — through confrontation without purpose — is real.” 

Analysts liken the febrile moment to an earlier era of 19th century politics, when Europe’s industrializing, imperial powers entered into alliances that ultimately convulsed the world into conflict. 

“What we are seeing today resembles the mid-nineteenth century in important ways: the post — World War II, post — Cold War order cannot be restored, but the world is not yet on the edge of a systemic crisis,” wrote Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

A century ago, that crisis arrived. This time, the current crop of American politicians — Trump included — can still stave off calamity. 

“Now is the time to make sure one never materializes, be it from a breakdown in U.S.-Chinese relations, a clash with Russia, a conflagration in the Middle East, or the cumulative effects of climate change,” Haass continued. “The good news is that it is far from inevitable that the world will eventually arrive at a catastrophe; the bad news is that it is far from certain that it will not.”

The End of an Era

It's a controversy that dates back to the day when Brian Mulroney was prime minister and a soon to be prime minister, Kim Campbell, Mulroney's defence minister.  At the time, Campbell wanted to replace Canada's then aging Sea King anti-submarine helicopters with a costly European design, the EH-101. When Campbell's brief premiership was ended by Jean Chretien, the Liberals canceled the helicopter contract, leaving the Sea King fleet to soldier on long after their intended retirement date.

As I was sitting in my study just before noon, the house began to shake a little from the unmistakable sound of rotor blades.  There, overhead and really quite low, passed a tight formation of four Sea Kings with a fifth well behind in trail. They headed north and then, several minutes later, passed by again this time heading south.

It turns out this was the farewell fly-past of these venerable CH-124 Sea Kings. They certainly have done yeoman's service with the Canadian navy since 1963. After today it's thought they'll be scrapped for parts.

Once the Politicians Stop Patting Themselves on the Back

To hear Canada's environment minister, Catherine Mckenna, tell it, the Katowice climate summit was a great success.

It wasn't. It was the opposite of success. It was a failure. And, unless the global leadership comes to grips with that very quickly it may turn out to be a critical failure.

Johan Rockstrom, director designate at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said: “My biggest concern is that the UN talks failed to align ambitions with science. We continue to follow a path that will take us to a very dangerous 3-4C warmer world within this century. Extreme weather events hit people across the planet already, at only 1C of warming.”

Nicholas Stern, the former World Bank chief economist and author of a seminal review of the economics of climate change, said: “It is clear that the progress we are making is inadequate, given the scale and urgency of the risks we face. The latest figures show carbon dioxide emissions are still rising. A much more attractive, clean and efficient path for economic development and poverty reduction is in our hands.”

A rulebook. That's what our politicians achieved at Katowice, a rulebook.

The two-week-long UN talks in Poland ended with clarity over the “rulebook” that will govern how the Paris agreement of 2015 is put into action, but the crucial question of how to lift governments’ targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was left unanswered.

Since [the 2015 Paris climate summit], the warnings have grown clearer and scientists have eliminated the possibility that the global warming observed in recent decades has been due to natural forces. It is a manmade problem arising from the use of fossil fuels, which has poured the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

On current national emissions-cutting targets, the world would reach more than 3C of warming, scientists say. Two months ago the world’s leading body of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, found that even 1.5C of warming would cause sea level rises, coral reef die-off, extinction of species and droughts, floods, storms and heatwaves that would threaten the world’s stability. 

Levels of warming greater than that would devastate parts of the globe, wiping out agricultural productivity, melting the Arctic ice cap and rendering many areas uninhabitable.

What's most infuriating is that politicians like Mckenna act as though time is not a problem, much less a critical problem. They're wrong, it is. Best case scenario: we have until 2030 to cut global carbon emissions by half if we're to have a chance of avoiding runaway global warming.

Cutting carbon emissions by half in less than a dozen years won't be easy. It will be very, very, extremely hard to achieve. It will require a major restructuring of national economies. Sacrifices will be necessary and they won't be borne equally.  Some will have to give much more ground than others.  Sorry, Alberta. New clean-energy infrastructure will have to be designed, constructed and put in place in a breathtakingly brief interval. A dozen years is nothing.

In the meantime we also have to address numerous other environmental problems just to keep the foundation intact so we can try to tackle climate change. These are Rockstrom's "nine planetary boundaries" we must not cross.

As for Mckenna:

"Today demonstrates that multilateralism works to tackle a clear global problem—climate change. Three years ago almost to the day, some 200 countries came together to land an ambitious Paris Agreement. Over the last few weeks, the world gathered once again in Katowice, Poland, for the 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24) where our team worked hard throughout the negotiations to find common ground between developed and developing countries.

"I am pleased countries around the world came together to agree to rules for transparently reporting how all countries are fulfilling their commitments to reduce emissions and tackle climate change. To increase our ambition for climate action, we need clear and transparent rules."

I hope that gives you hope and confidence.

A "Target Rich Environment"

There's a discernible sea change underway in America's right wing media. When it comes to reliably pro-Republican opinion, the National Review ranks in the first tier. Which is why it was notable that NR published two anti-Trump articles.

Andrew McCarthy dismembered the recent Republican meme that Trump national security advisor, Michael Flynn, was set up by the FBI and should never have been charged with lying to investigators.

It is an article of faith among ardent Trump supporters not merely that Flynn should not have been investigated, but that he is innocent of the false-statements charge to which he pled guilty.

This has become impossible to buy — and not just because, to believe Flynn told the agents the truth, you must believe that (a) he lied to the court when he pled guilty and (b) he is still lying to the court in his sentencing memo, in which he claims that sharp FBI practices hoodwinked him into lying.

...You can say the government was putting enormous pressure on him, but it is hard to believe a man like Flynn would plead guilty to lying unless he had lied. Note, moreover, that to argue that he did not lie to the agents necessarily means he lied to the judge when he pled guilty, and is continuing to lie to the judge in his sentencing memo (where, again, he admits lying but says he was pressured into doing so).

...Flynn was a longtime intelligence pro who led the Defense Intelligence Agency. Could he get one or two things wrong? Maybe . . . but multiple inaccuracies about important communications with a rival foreign power? It is hard to believe that someone of Flynn’s high-level intelligence background could do that innocently.

Of greater importance to the Trump administration and Republicans generally is an essay by David French, "Republicans, Don't Fool Yourselves - Donald Trump is In Serious Trouble."

In response to the emerging evidence that Donald Trump directed and participated in the commission of federal crimes, all too many Republicans are wrongly comforting themselves with political deflection and strained legal argument. The political deflection is clear, though a bit bizarre. The recent wave of news about Trump’s porn payoffs is somehow evidence that investigators and critics are “shifting focus” from the Russia investigation to alleged campaign-finance violations.

It’s almost as if the campaign-finance news is taken as some sort of evidence that Mueller’s core investigation is faltering, so the media and investigators have to find something to use to attack Trump. 

But the campaign-finance investigation has little to do with Mueller. It’s run by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, and — besides — what do we want federal prosecutors to do when they discover evidence of unrelated crimes when engaged in a different investigation? Let bygones be bygones? Or refer that evidence to the proper jurisdiction — as Robert Mueller’s office did — for further investigation and potential prosecution? 

The current wave of news reports is largely driven by court filings, and those court filings don’t represent a shift in law-enforcement focus on Trump but rather an arena of additional inquiry. The sad reality is that the Trump operation was a target-rich environment for any diligent investigator.

The article points out that the lies Flynn gave the FBI weren't novel. In fact he was only repeating the same lies he had told three times earlier to others. All he gave the FBI were well-worn falsehoods.

NBC News offers further grim tidings to the Republican faithful in the form of a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll that finds 62 per cent of Americans polled believe Trump is not telling the truth in the Russia probe.

“The dam has not burst on Donald Trump,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, whose firm conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “But this survey suggests all the structural cracks [that exist] in the dam.” 

The NBC/WSJ poll — conducted Dec. 9-12 — comes after new developments in the Russia probe and other investigations involving the president, including evidence and allegations that: 

Trump and his team were offered “synergy” with the Russian government. 

Trump directed an illegal campaign-finance scheme to make payments covering up two alleged affairs in the last days of the 2016 campaign. 

Former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort continued to communicate with Trump administration officials well after his indictment. 

Former Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen was sentenced to prisonfor three years.

Respondents also expressed a preference for congressional Democrats to take the reins in shaping American policy.

A month after the results from the 2018 midterm elections, 48 percent of Americans say they want Democrats in Congress to take the lead role in setting policy for the country, versus 21 percent who want congressional Republicans to take the lead and 19 percent who want Trump in charge.

What Country Poses the Gravest Threat to Canada?

Is it Iran? How about North Korea? Russia maybe? Or could it be the United States of America?  Could America really be the greatest threat we're facing? I think you can make a pretty good argument for that.

Washington has pretty much derailed the fight to tame climate change. It began when Trump took the US out of the Paris climate pact, a move that encouraged others, such as Russia and Australia, to follow suit.  The consensus is in tatters.

I think before long we'll look at 2018 as a turning point in how the world lost the fight against climate change. Look what what's coming out of the Katowice climate summit - precious little.  A rule book on how nations are to report their greenhouse gas emissions that comes into effect in 2020. That's it. A rule book. 2020.

To put that in perspective, the world is on notice that we must slash fossil energy emissions by half by 2030.  It initially was set at 45 per cent but emissions have begun increasing again over the past two years. We're heading in the wrong direction - fast. A rule book governing emissions reporting is a far cry from the Herculean chore of radically slashing emissions in an astonishingly short window.

Trump has made our slim chance of meeting these severe emissions cuts far worse by gutting environmental regulations; promoting the gamut of fossil fuels including coal; giving "moral cover" to other leaders intent on a high carbon future; and "souring goodwill" between the have and have-not nations and reneging on America's $2 billion pledge to the Green Climate Fund.

In my previous post there was a look at all the measures we must take, not just fighting climate change, if human civilization is to continue. The chief of the Potsdam Institute, Johan Rockstrom, details nine planetary boundaries we must heed before we'll have any hope of succeeding on climate change. The hard truth is that we're already out of bounds on a few of them and they're critical to the wellbeing of today's young and the generations that will follow them.  There's not much point in struggling with climate change if we don't deal with the rapid loss of biodiversity, the growing challenge of ocean acidification, our exhaustion of the world's farmland and our deepening contamination of our already inadequate freshwater resources. By the way, that's not an exhaustive list. In effect we're struggling to find the political will to put out the grease fire in the kitchen while doing nothing as flames consume the rest of the house.

Trump simply doesn't care about any of this. Not his problem.  His crass response to the 1,600 page National Climate Assessment produced by hundreds of scientists at 13 federal departments was, "Yeah, I don't believe it." The reality of climate change is whatever Trump believes it to be and Trump doesn't believe anything that contradicts his wrecking ball instincts.

It's not North Korea or Iran that troubles me. It's the United States of America. That is humanity's mortal threat.

What We're Really Up Against.

Climate change is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the future of humanity. It's just one piece of a far greater problem that won't be solved with a minuscule carbon tax.

For years I've argued that we can't hope to thwart climate change if we treat it as some standalone threat which is precisely what we've been doing. That cavalier approach could, probably will be our undoing.

Climate change is just one existential threat that is tightly interwoven with others. To sort even one we must sort them all. I have tried to lump them into three categories: climate change, overpopulation and over-exploitation of the planet's finite resources.

Johan Rockstrom, co-director of the Potsdam Institute, warns that when it comes to averting climate breakdown, eliminating fossil fuels is the easy part. He says there are nine planetary boundaries we must not cross if human civilization is to survive.

'(The framework) answers where are the biophysical processes in the Earth's system that regulate our ability to have a stable climate system and planet. And what you find is that it's not only about carbon, it's also about biological systems and processes. It is taking all the planetary boundaries seriously and (recognising that) they all interact with each other.'

'If you read the 1.5°C report carefully, it tells you that, yes, we have to basically decarbonise the world's energy system by 2045, 2050 by the latest, to stand a chance at 1.5°C. But the assumption is, and it's really a prerequisite to that feat, that the overall resilience of the planet is maintained, that carbon continues to be sequestered (stored) in all our natural ecosystems. 

'How we deal with natural capital and the living biosphere will be fundamental to whether we will fail or succeed with Paris (the Paris Agreement to limit global warming).'

'We focus all our attention on coal, oil and natural gas, but when you look at the agenda overall, that's the easier part of the climate challenge. The much more challenging part is water, soil, biodiversity, nitrogen, phosphorus, the bio dimension of the economy and of the climate challenge.  

'The key here is to take a systems approach (i.e. understand how ecosystems and climate interact) and to take a full life cycle approach, and then to look at the systemic challenges around all the aspects of the bioeconomy. If one does that, I think many solutions will emerge.'

So we have these planetary boundaries and our survival depends on staying within them. Which brings us to another line of argument routinely advanced on this blog - the need to shrink the global economy until it is safely within the finite limits of our planet's ecology.

'The first task is to define, through Earth system analysis, where the boundaries are. That's the task that I, and my scientific peers with me, have focused our attention on. The planet boundary framework is in no way a solution or a monitoring scheme. It gives you the boundaries within which we have a good chance of maintaining a stable planet.

'Then, of course, the exciting question is, where are we and how are we progressing over time against these boundaries? Now, can we measure that? Yes, we have increasing (measuring) capabilities ... based on data from, for example, global Earth observation systems.'

Then comes the hardest part - equity. Not only do we have to find a way forward that's not driven by perpetual exponential growth, we have to find ways to fairly allocate resources and budgets, nation by nation, sector by sector. It's an odd form of rationing among nations and we're either going to accept it or we're finished. It's that simple and that obvious.

'We are working very hard, as are very many research groups around the world, to develop methodologies of how to quantify the boundaries for different nations and for different sectors and in society. That is a challenge, definitely. It is possible, scientifically, to define, for example, that 10 million tonnes of phosphorous maximum are allowed to flow into the oceans each year. That's a global boundary number. 

'Now the question is, how do you distribute that between Germany and the US and China in a scientific but also in a transparent and equitable way - i.e. how is the global phosphorus budget to be distributed in quantitative budgets between nations?' 

Here's Rockstrom giving a TED Talk from way back in 2010 or, as I like to call it, "the good old days".

The "Trump Effect" - Bringing Climate Change Down on All Our Heads

How far has Donald Trump set back the fight to tame climate change? According to an opinion piece in Foreign Policy, Trump has derailed the efforts that came from the 2015 Paris climate summit.

To understand how damaging the Trump effect has been to global decarbonization, it’s important to understand how the Paris Agreement was supposed to work—and how important an actively engaged United States was to the effort. The overall goal is well known: to keep global temperatures “well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”

...The architects of the agreement hoped that meeting existing pledges—even weak ones—would catalyze faster deployment of green technologies, leading to economies of scale, reduced technology costs, and positive spillovers that all would benefit from. This may sound somewhat theoretical, but in fact it is how previous successful efforts at decarbonization have worked in practice. For example, Germany’s widespread deployment of solar photovoltaic technology in the 1990s and 2000s spurred dramatic cost reductions that have opened a door to decarbonization across the world, from Mexico to India. Meeting any pledges under the Paris Agreement could therefore open up new space for parties to take on more robust commitments over time.

At least that was the hope. There are three distinct channels, however, through which the Trump effect is damaging this institutional process.

First, the rollback of environmental regulations burdensome to the fossil fuel industry, including major Obama-era policies to fight climate change, has increased the attractiveness of investing in the dirtiest fossil fuels. The risk that these investments could be “stranded” by committed climate policy has been reduced. For institutional investors making judgments between different projects, this increases the attractiveness of the dirtiest projects vis-à-vis low-carbon alternatives.

We can already see the impact. Following the 2015 Paris deal, in 2016 there was a falloff of investment in the dirtiest fossil fuel projects, including coal and tar sands, as investors became increasingly concerned that global leaders were serious about meeting climate objectives. However, the Trump effect reversed this trend in 2017, as North American investors poured resources into carbon-intensive, financially risky, and environmentally destructive fossil fuel projects.

We can see the mirror image when it comes to investment in renewables: 2016 was a bumper year, but in 2017 the Trump effect reversed the momentum.

It is true as some have argued that market fundamentals—in particular cheaper renewables and gas—along with ambitious state and city efforts will ameliorate some of the damage of the Trump effect, but at the very least, one should expect years of stasis, litigation, and uncertainty. Given the size of the U.S. economy, slower deployment flattens learning curves for green technologies globally, making it costlier for other parties to the Paris Agreement to take on more ambitious pledges in the future.

Second, the U.S. decision to withdraw has created political and moral cover for further defections from the agreement. Russia and Turkey have abandoned plans to ratify, while Australia reversed a decision to implement measures to comply with its Paris pledge, all citing Trump’s withdrawal decision. Most significantly, the newly elected president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has promised to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, also pointing to the precedent established by Trump.

It is true that other major players including the European Union, India, and China remain committed to the Paris Agreement and are on track to achieve their pledges. But the critical question was always whether these three players would take on more ambitious commitments in 2020, which they already have the technical ability to achieve and had already hinted at a willingness to accept. They are unlikely to take the political risks of announcing a more challenging target in the absence of a similar commitment from the United States. In this manner, the Trump effect could be grinding the Paris “ambition mechanism” to a halt. 

Finally, the Trump administration’s behavior is souring goodwill between developing and developed country parties at ongoing negotiations. The Trump administration reneged on a pledge to the Green Climate Fund, leaving an outstanding liability of $2 billion, and has opposed stringent rules for reporting on financial commitments. These decisions have aggravated distrust between developed and developing countries.

The Trump Effect is a malignancy. One by one other nations follow Trump's lead. Consider that, since the Paris climate agreement of 2015, we have learned that our only hope of achieving the 2 degree Celsius target rests in cutting carbon emissions by half by 2030. That's an astonishingly brief window to achieve such a Herculean result.

Time is not on our side. Trump may be the nail in the coffin of our hopes. But, the threat America poses to the survival of humanity goes well beyond Trump.

... it’s equally a mistake to see withdrawal as the aberrant act of an unconventional president. In fact, it was widely supported across the Republican Party and the wider conservative movement and reflects broader and deeper structural factors within the U.S. political economy, including the entanglement of fossil fuel interests and politics. 

Furthermore, the U.S. withdrawal fits neatly into a pattern established by Republican administrations extending back nearly four decades: President Ronald Reagan famously declared open war on solar energy and was determined to reverse as many environmental regulations as possible in service of the drilling and mining lobbies; the George H.W. Bush administration delayed the agreement of a climate treaty in the late 1980s and at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit refused to commit to specific emissions reductions; and a decade later President George W. Bush renounced the Kyoto Protocol.

 

Trump's Pecker Problems Mount

David Pecker may be Donald Trump's longtime pal but he's not about to risk jail for the Mango Mussolini.  Pecker and his company, AMI (National Enquirer), have cut a non-prosecution deal with Team Mueller, a development revealed shortly after Trump lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years for his own Trump sins.

National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc. agreed to accept responsibility for its role in a $150,000 payment to silence a former Playboy Playmate about her alleged affair with President Donald Trump before the election. 

Under a non-prosecution agreement, the company admitted its purpose was to suppress the woman’s story and prevent it from influencing the election. According to the cooperation agreement with AMI, Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen and another campaign official met with AMI Chairman David Pecker about the scheme around August 2015. That official’s involvement has not been previously reported.

“As a part of the agreement, AMI admitted that it made the $150,000 payment in concert with a candidate’s presidential campaign, and in order to ensure that the woman did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election,” the prosecutors wrote in a statement announcing the deal.

Prosecutors have still not revealed the identity of the Trump campaign aide who accompanied Michael Cohen to meet with David Pecker to discuss how AMI could help bury negative stories about Trump during the campaign. It's been rumored that two other women "sold" their stories to Pecker's National Enquirer.

Curious, isn't it, that Trump's litany of woes seem to fall into just two categories: his pecker and/or the Russians.

Theresa May Struggles to Find a New Brexit Strategy

She reaches down deep to find her inner Gollum

When a Canadian Missile Almost Sparked World War III

I wasn't aware of this and I'll bet neither were you.

January 25, 1995. Norway, near the Russian border. A Canadian designed and built Black Brant, four-stage rocket is fired on a mission to study the aurora borealis.  Norwegian authorities had advised their Russian colleagues of the launch but...

What [Norwegian authorities] didn't know ...is that the Brant's radar signature looks just like a U.S. sub-launched Trident missile. 

The radar operators at Russia's Olenegorsk early warning station promptly reported the incoming missile to their superiors, but not a soul on duty within the military had been notified of Adolfsen's plans. 

The officers at Olenegork believed it could be the first leg of a U.S. nuclear attack. 

Four years after the Berlin Wall came down and Russia was in the throes of change, stable systems had been demolished and replacements had yet to fall into place. One thing that had gotten only more developed since 1991, however, was the Kremlin's mistrust of the United States.

So as the Brant streaked its way near Russian airspace, military officers had to decide if this was an electro-magnetic pulse attack that would disable their radar and allow for a full on American attack, and what they should do about it. 

The matter was decided when the Brant separated, dropped one of its engines, and fired up another. The radar signature now looked so much like a multiple re-entry vehicle (MRV), a missile carrying multiple nuclear warheads, that military officers no longer had any doubt. 

There were now five minutes during which the missile's trajectory would be un-tracked by Russian radar, and when it could strike Moscow; a slice of time that was devoted to deciding whether to launch a counterattack. 

Boris Yeltsin was alerted, and immediately given the Cheget, the "nuclear briefcase" that connects senior officials while they decide whether or not to launch Russia's nuclear weapons. Nuclear submarine commanders were ordered to full battle alert and told to stand by.

Apparently Yeltsin doubted the U.S. would launch a surreptitious attack and within five minutes, Russian radar came back confirming the missile was heading harmlessly out to sea.

Russian citizens didn't find about about the incident for weeks, and of course it's been reported in the U.S. news since. But the event never achieved the renown of the Cuban Missile Crisis, though it seems to have brought us even closer to the brink of nuclear war.

Theresa May Gets Taken to the Woodshed

The British prime minister, beset with Brexit bungling, reminds us why Westminster truly is the Mother of all Parliaments




After enduring this drubbing, May headed to Europe for what some are calling her "Desperation Tour" trying to find someone willing to renegotiate the Brexit deal that's a non-starter in Parliament. There's some agreement on the part of the EU to "clarify" terms but no apparent appetite for yet another deal.

One Time - Okay, a Typo. Two Times - That's Illiterate.

Not a hard word, "smoking." Signs everywhere read "No Smoking." They're inescapable. Just two syllables, real easy.

Unless you're America's twitmeister in chief, the Mango Mussolini himself, Donald "On the Run" Trump.

Yesterday, Trump the Lump tweeted to his faithful followers: “Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun… No Collusion.”

A Smoking Gun indeed. Mia Farrow responded with this:

Hostage?

It sure smells like a hostage-taking. 1) a Canadian, 2) in China, 3) Huawei CFO in custody in Vancouver facing extradition to the United States for allegedly violating US sanctions against Iran.

The hostage is Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat now with the International Crisis Group.

“International Crisis Group is aware of reports that its north-east Asia senior adviser, Michael Kovrig, has been detained in China,” the thinktank said in a statement. 

“We are doing everything possible to secure additional information on Michael’s whereabouts as well as his prompt and safe release,” it added. 

China’s foreign ministry and ministry of public security did not respond immediately to questions faxed earlier about Kovrig’s detention. 

The exact reason for the detention was not immediately clear.

China has been demanding Canada release Huawei's Meng Wanzhou or face reprisals. This sure sounds like reprisal.

The March of the Dinosaurs

I remember the day when it arrived. We had prepared a special place for it in the file room. A sales rep brought it in, unpacked it, plugged it in and we all gathered around to witness its majesty. I had bought my first fax machine.

Back then I was determined to stay on the bleeding edge of office technology for small law firms. One of the first 'boutique' firms in the province to computerize, not only for the support staff, lawyers too. The productivity gain was enormous. It was a wonderful time, I think.

Today, however, the fax machine is the clerical equivalent of the dodo bird, an endangered species seemingly destined for extinction. Blame the Brits if you must.

On Sunday, Matt Hancock, the British health and social care secretary, banned the purchase of facsimile machines by the National Health Service effective Jan. 1, 2019. He also ordered that faxes be phased out completely in hospitals and physicians’ offices by April, 2020. 

Oh, but how Canada – a country even more in the poisonous grip of the fax than Britain – could use this common sense initiative. 

“We don’t underestimate the enormity of the challenge to remove all our machines in such a short time, but we cannot afford to continue living in the dark ages,” Mr. Hancock said in the release.

In my day so much has come and gone - bias-ply tires, drum brakes, plugs and points, carburetors, incandescent light bulbs, betamax and VHS, floppy disks, mini-cams, the once ubiquitous Walkman, corded tools and appliances of all descriptions, on and on and on.

Now it's the humble fax machine's turn to be put down. Such is the fate of the days when men were made of oak and ships were made of iron. Gone, gone, gone.

It's been said that our children are the mirror of our own mortality. Tell me about it. I have a son-in-law who works for Microsoft helping to develop something called blended or mixed reality technology. Apparently it has something to do with layering artificial reality atop normal reality, whatever that is.

Russia Must Stop Undermining American Democracy. That's the Republicans' Job.

The Republicans are masters at the dark arts of undermining America's inconvenient democracy. Today they're going far beyond the mundane tactics of gerrymandering and voter suppression although both are still flourishing.

In their unceasing quest to transform America into a one-party state, the GOP is getting no end of help from their corporate sponsors.

Former Wisconsin senator and partner with the late John McCain in the last desperate but failed attempt to implement campaign finance reform, Russ Feingold penned a Guardian op-ed yesterday describing how "Republicans are undermining democracy state by state."  They're throwing out the rule books, flouting democratic tradition and convention, no matter what anyone says.

This is not how democracy works, and these maneuvers in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina are not just power grabs. They are deliberate efforts to undermine democracy and our faith in it. And these efforts are getting more brazen and desperate every year.

Everything from gerrymandering to attempts at voter suppression have been long-term projects of the monied interests. But, like the white supremacists’ public actions and the attacks on the media in the age of Trump, Republicans making their power grabs around the country are particularly emboldened right now. The lame-duck session concept isn’t new either – it has just being taken to new extremes. Congress has used lame-duck sessions repeatedly for work that should have been conducted during the regular session. North Carolina Republicans showed Wisconsin Republicans how to mess with democracy back in December of 2016 when they successfully diminished the powers of the incoming Democratic governor Pat McCrory. A lame-duck session should only be for emergency measures. Too many people voting is not an emergency.

The infamous Koch brothers, Helmut and Gunter, are still at it, as ever. Only now they're spreading their filthy lucre into Britain.  George Monbiot describes how the Brothers Sinister are fueling the hard right cause in the UK.

Meanwhile TruthDig brings word from Reps.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) about how congressional freshmen are getting tuned up by corporate forces before they're even sworn into office.

...contrary to the ideologically neutral advertising—the private conference featured a heavy dose of speeches by corporate CEOs and completely shut out organized labor and members of the progressive community. 

“Our ‘bipartisan’ congressional orientation is co-hosted by a corporate lobbyist group,” Ocasio-Cortez noted, likely referring to the Koch-funded American Enterprise Institute, which is co-sponsoring the event. “Other members have quietly expressed to me their concern that this wasn’t told to us in advance. Lobbyists are here. Goldman Sachs is here. Where’s labor? Activists? Frontline community leaders?”

American democracy is on the ropes and, this time, it can't be blamed on the Russians. This time the country is being subverted from within by the GOP, decidedly not "the party of Lincoln" any longer.

Maybe Big Money Will Get Their Ear

Nothing perks up the ears of neoliberal politicians - like our very own - more than talk about money.  And, today at the climate summit in Katowice, Big Money is telling them their economies face losing a lot of money, a lot, perhaps as much as 23 trillion dollars - a year, if they keep cowering before the threat of climate change.

Global investors managing $32tn issued a stark warning to governments at the UN climate summit on Monday, demanding urgent cuts in carbon emissions and the phasing out of all coal burning. Without these, the world faces a financial crash several times worse than the 2008 crisis, they said. 

The investors include some of the world’s biggest pension funds, insurers and asset managers and marks the largest such intervention to date. They say fossil fuel subsidies must end and substantial taxes on carbon be introduced.

...“The long-term nature of the challenge has, in our view, met a zombie-like response by many,” said Chris Newton, of IFM Investors which manages $80bn and is one of the 415 groups that has signed the Global Investor Statement. “This is a recipe for disaster as the impacts of climate change can be sudden, severe and catastrophic.”

Investment firm Schroders said there could be $23tn of global economic losses a year in the long term without rapid action. This permanent economic damage would be almost four times the scale of the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis. Standard and Poor’s rating agency also warned leaders: “Climate change has already started to alter the functioning of our world.”

The good news is that prime minister Trudeau has promised to end Canada's subsidies (whatever that means) to the Bitumen Barons eventually. Then again, that's a Trudeau promise so you'll have to take it for whatever you imagine it's worth. Canada admits subsidies of about two billion a year. The IMF says what we're really bestowing on the fossil fuel industry is more than $34 billion a year.  Somebody is cooking the books and my money is on those building 60-year, multi-billion dollar bitumen pipelines.

Modern politics, however, is not concerned with the long term or your kids and certainly not your grandchildren. Their world is limited to the next electoral cycle, perhaps two at the outside. Trump speaks for many when he says, "yeah, I won't be here then." It's a contagion, like the 1918 Spanish flu. Funny how it sounds reprehensible coming out of Trump's mouth but we're fine with it so long as our leaders don't come right out and say it.

Paradise Revisited

The massive wildfire that devastated the town of Paradise, California last month might be just an introduction to our new normal.

Hell on Earth:

Ruth McLarty, an experienced surgeon, was fairly certain she was about to die in a particularly grisly way. Surrounded by a hellish inferno of burning trees and cars, McLarty reasoned the flames would engulf her long before the smoke could choke her to death. 

Trapped in nearby vehicles, some of McLarty’s colleagues made similarly macabre calculations. Two nurses, stuck in the back of a stalled police car, contemplated shooting each other. Another nurse rolled down her window and gulped in the smoke. McLarty edged her car away from a burning wreckage, fired off some final messages to her sister and called her daughter, who said she could hear the roar of the blaze over the phone.

“Once you feel heat, you know that your car can’t last very long,” said McLarty, a slight, deliberate woman who, little over an hour previously, was in a hospital conducting a gallbladder operation when she was told to evacuate. 

“You can hear other people’s cars blow up. I grew up thinking that when people died in fires, they died from the smoke and so they didn’t really suffer. But I’m thinking ‘this is coming fast enough … I don’t think that I’m gonna die from smoke.’” 

As McLarty arrived at this grim conclusion, a bulldozer emerged from the sun-blotting pall of smoke and shoved an abandoned car off the road, opening an escape path for McLarty and a few others to dart to safety in a nearby field. “This poor man. I mean, he’s just driving to his death, and they cleared a path,” McLarty said. “It was apocalyptic.”

85 dead, dozens missing. 9 out of 10 homes mere ashes, some with bones still undiscovered.

The visceral trauma of having a town wiped off the map is the nadir in an astonishing burst of recent wildfires – of the 10 most destructive fires in California’s recorded history, five have occurred since October last year. 

“The landscape is changing into the appropriate climate zone that we are moving towards,” said LeRoy Westerling, a climate change and fire expert at the University of California, Merced, who attempts to work out how wildfires will spread as temperatures continue to rise. “The fires seem to be outpacing our predictions. The Camp fire shocked me by how fast it was.”

Along the west coast the wildfire season grows longer and longer, no longer just a seasonal affliction, fires reaching from the US-Mexican border into northern Alaska.

To the fossil fuel barons and their dutiful stooges in our legislatures and Parliament, this is what you're bequeathing us with your insistence on flooding world markets with the filthiest, highest-carbon ersatz petroleum on the planet.

Something on the scale of the Camp fire, where a funnel of flame seared through a town in a few hours, could’ve conceivably occurred 50 years ago but it would’ve involved a “very unlikely sequence of climate events you wouldn’t see again”, Westerling said. 

“Now we are seeing it happen again and again, year after year,” he added. “The climate will continue to warm and will continue to surprise us. No one alive today will ever see a stable climate system again. This is going to be changing for the rest of our lives.”

...“A whole bunch of fires have piled on to the top of each other and haven’t stopped,” said Scott McLean, deputy chief of Cal Fire, who oversaw crews working 24-hour shifts during the fight to save Paradise. “I grew up in this state and you’d never really get fires like this in November or December. We’re now fighting fire all year round. There’s no fire season any more. People are tired. It’s a constant battle.” 

...The situation is set to become worse. An exhaustive climate change assessment by the US government predicts the area of the western US consumed by wildfire annually is set to double, or even increase sixfold, within 30 years as the planet continues to warm.

America's Nero dismisses climate science out of hand with a curt, "I don't believe it." Canada's prime minister is quite the opposite. He says he gets it but then he goes back to driving a massive bitumen pipeline across the very lands of people who live under this new wildfire nightmare.

Top climate scientists have been clear about one thing for years. The only chance we have of averting runaway climate change lies in the "induced implosion" of the fossil fuel industry. Fossil fuels, especially the highest carbon stuff - coal and bitumen - must be left in the ground. What are the chances of that when our prime minister is bent on constructing a multi-billion dollar, 60-year pipeline from the Athabasca bitumen pits to "tidewater"?

With One Foot in the Bunker Already, Trump Needs a Tough-Minded Chief of Staff.

The "stable genius" of the Oval Office is shopping for a new chief of staff. The current placeholder, retired general John Kelly, is leaving in just a couple of weeks. It's hard to imagine Kelly being upset about taking his leave from the Asylum for One, a.k.a. the Trump White House.

Kelly, like former state secretary Tillerson, clashed with Trump, especially when the latter's instincts ventured into illegality.  Kelly also knew Trump's tendency to agree with whomever he last had his ear and built a corral around the dissolute beast to staunch unwanted access.

By many accounts, Trump has become something of a haunted man. He too senses that special counsel, Robert Mueller, is closing in. Perhaps Trump can feel Mueller's hot breath on his neck.

Now, more than ever, Trump needs a steadying hand but he's shown no sign of wanting that, just the opposite. Prudence was not foremost in Trump's mind when he brought the bellicose John Bolton aboard as his national security czar.

Who wants to bet what sort of chief of staff Trump wants next? Think he wants another disciplinarian, one who will keep his truly base instincts in check? What fun would there be in that?

UPDATE:  It's getting worse for that silly bugger all the time. Trump had his eye on Mike Pence's chief of staff, Nick Ayers, to fill Kelly's slot. Nick has turned Donald down. Apparently he's looking to get himself and his family out of Dodge, pronto. Betcha Trump wishes he could do the same.

Bleed the Fatted Calf. It's Only Fair.

Renowned economist, Thomas Picketty, and a posse of 50 other prominent economists, historians and former politicians, have a prescription to relieve the dangerous pressures building in Europe - TAX THE RICH.

A group of progressive Europeans led by the economist and author Thomas Piketty has drawn up a bold new blueprint for a fairer Europe to address the division, disenchantment, inequality and rightwing populism sweeping the continent.

The plan, crafted by more than 50 economists, historians and former politicians from half a dozen countries, includes huge levies on multinationals, millionaires and carbon emissions to generate funds to tackle the most urgent issues of the day, including poverty, migration, climate change and the EU’s so-called democratic deficit.

...the “manifesto for the democratisation of Europe” says EU institutions are stuck in “a technocratic impasse” that benefits the rich.
“Following Brexit and the election of anti-European governments at the head of several member countries, it is no longer possible to continue as before,” says the document. 

“We cannot simply wait for the next departures or further dismantling without making fundamental changes to present-day Europe.” 

The move underlines the gulf between the preoccupations of the UK and those across the Channel. While the UK is consumed by its tortuous EU exit process, Europe’s pro-EU political forces are concerned with avoiding losses to anti-European populists in next May’s European elections. 

The left-leaning authors criticise movements dedicated to “hunting down foreigners and refugees”, but also parties espousing what they call “hardcore liberalism and the spread of competition to all”.

This may sound radical. It shouldn't. It's Europe cleaning out the Augean stables of neoliberalism. Who else is neoliberal? Oh yeah, us.

The EU has been accused of failing to address the manifest unfairness of huge multinationals such as Apple, Google and Amazon channeling profits through member states where taxes are lowest. 

The budget would be worth 4% of the EU’s GDP – four times the current budget. Funds would be raised from four sources: an extra 15% levy on corporate profits, tax increases on individuals earning more than €100,000, a wealth tax on personal fortunes above €1m, and a tax on carbon emissions. 

Half of the proceeds would be returned to member state governments. A quarter would go to research, innovation and education. A fund to better manage migration and a fund to make agriculture and industry greener would also benefit.

(And, please, before you astutely point out that the photo is not of a calf, fatted or otherwise, but of a very pregnant cow, don't. And, yeah, I know, it's been Photoshopped.)