Tag: collapse

What will actually happen when the so-called ‘Doomsday Glacier’ disintegrates?

Has the word ‘doomsday’ lost all meaning?

Ice entering the ocean might look like this. Credit: Getty / Posnov
Ice entering the ocean might look like this. Credit: Getty / Posnov

As many climate change activists are pointing out lately, the “doomsday” implied in the term “Doomsday Glacier” — the nickname given to the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica — may be coming soon. But what will that day actually be like?

As noted in a scary new paper in the journal Nature Geoscience by a team led by geological oceanographer Alastair G. C. Graham, the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica may be closer to a major disintegration event than previously thought.

Here’s what’s new in our understanding of this situation: This new study involved analyzing ridges on the sea floor. These rib-like formations reveal strong evidence of the glacier’s location for centuries as the tide nudged it each day. This is different from previously gathered data about the glacier, which was pulled from satellite maps of the ice as it edges further and further toward a total (or near total) collapse into the ocean,

LINK TO ARTICLE

STARK: How the Rich Destroy Democracy and Cause Collapse

STARK: How the Rich Destroy Democracy and Cause CollapseIn this episode, I interview political commentator, former congressional candidate, and now regenerative farmer Haven Scott McVarish, author of LAST CHANCE TO SAVE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. Haven talks about his favorite novel, STARK by Ben Elton, a dystopian comedy thriller about how corporations and the wealthy cause a global ecological collapse. Haven also discusses the novel’s themes in relation to his own book about the current, ongoing collapse of U.S. democracy. We talk about how to save our imperiled democracy as well as what ordinary people can start doing now to prepare for collapse via local community building and restorative agriculture.

LINKS:

https://thisistheend.net/e/stark-how-the-rich-destroy-democracy-and-cause-collapse/

Last Chance to Save American Democracy by Haven Scott McVarish https://amzn.to/3eqPxxB
Stark by Ben Elton https://amzn.to/3wY6dD2
5 Journeys (Haven Scott McVarish’s non-profit organization) https://www.5journeys.org/

World on brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points, study finds

Giant ice sheets, ocean currents and permafrost regions may already have passed point of irreversible change

The collapse of the Greenland ice cap is one of the tipping points that may already have been passed. Photograph: Ulrik Pedersen/Getty Images
The collapse of the Greenland ice cap is one of the tipping points that may already have been passed. Photograph: Ulrik Pedersen/Getty Images

The climate crisis has driven the world to the brink of multiple “disastrous” tipping points, according to a major study.

It shows five dangerous tipping points may already have been passed due to the 1.1C of global heating caused by humanity to date.

LINK TO ARTICLE: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on-brink-five-climate-tipping-points-study-finds

Suitcase nuclear device

H-912 transport container for Mk-54 SADM
H-912 transport container for Mk-54 SADM

A suitcase nuclear device (also suitcase nuke, suitcase bomb, backpack nuke, snuke, mini-nuke, and pocket nuke) is a tactical nuclear weapon that is portable enough that it could use a suitcase as its delivery method.

H-912 transport container for Mk-54 SADM
Both the United States and the Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons small enough to be portable in specially-designed backpacks during the 1950s and 1960s.[1][2]

Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union have ever made public the existence or development of weapons small enough to fit into a normal-sized suitcase or briefcase.[3] The W48 however, does fit the criteria of small, easily disguised, and portable. Its explosive yield was extremely small for a nuclear weapon.[4][5]

In the mid-1970s, debate shifted from the possibility of developing such a device for the military to concerns over its possible use in nuclear terrorism.[6] The concept became a staple of the spy thriller genre in the later Cold War era.[7]

More: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuclear_device

A ‘doomsday glacier’ the size of Florida is disintegrating faster than thought

Thwaites Glacier, known as the “doomsday glacier” for the risk it poses to global sea levels, is retreating faster than previously thought, study shows

The U.S. Antarctic Program research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer working along the ice edge of the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf in February 2019. (Courtesy of Alexandra Mazur/University of Gothenburg) Listen 3 min
The U.S. Antarctic Program research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer working along the ice edge of the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf in February 2019. (Courtesy of Alexandra Mazur/University of Gothenburg

A large glacier in Antarctica that could raise sea levels several feet is disintegrating faster than last predicted, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The Thwaites Glacier — dubbed the “doomsday glacier” because scientists estimate that without it and its supporting ice shelves, sea levels could rise more than 3 to 10 feet — lies in the western part of the continent. After recently mapping it in high-resolution, a group of international researchers found that the glacial expanse experienced a phase of “rapid retreat” sometime in the past two centuries — over a duration of less than six months.

READ ARTICLE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/06/thwaites-doomsday-glacier-antarctica-disintegrating/

The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse

The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse
Time to bunker down… if you’ve got the cash. Photograph: Terravivos/Observer Design

Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers and hiring military security to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences

LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff

 

‘We’re going to pay in a big way’: a shocking new book on the climate crisis

In An Inconvenient Apocalypse, authors Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen write that society needs to be better prepared for an inevitable collapse

‘We’re going to pay in a big way’: a shocking new book on the climate crisisIn An Inconvenient Apocalypse, authors Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen style themselves as heralds of some very bad news: societal collapse on a global scale is inevitable, and those who manage to survive the mass death and crumbling of the world as we know it will have to live in drastically transformed circumstances. According to Jackson and Jensen, there’s no averting this collapse – electric cars aren’t going to save us, and neither are global climate accords. The current way of things is doomed, and it’s up to us to prepare as best we can to ensure as soft a landing as possible when the inevitable apocalypse arrives.

LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/31/an-inconvenient-apocalypse-climate-crisis-book

Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote SCUM (and Shot Andy Warhol)

Too drastic, too crazy, too “out there,” too early, too late, too damaged, too much—Valerie Solanas has been dismissed but never forgotten. She has become, unwittingly, a figurehead for women’s unexpressed rage, and stands at the center of many worlds. She inhabited Andy Warhol’s Factory scene, circulated among feminists and the countercultural underground, charged men money for conversation, despised “daddy’s girls,” and outlined a vision for radical gender dystopia.

Known for shooting Andy Warhol in 1968 and for writing the polemical diatribe SCUM Manifesto, Solanas is one of the most famous women of her era. SCUM Manifesto—which predicted ATMs, test-tube babies, the Internet, and artificial insemination long before they existed—has sold more copies, and has been translated into more languages, than nearly all other feminist texts of its time.

Shockingly little work has interrogated Solanas’s life. This book is the first biography about Solanas, including original interviews with family, friends (and enemies), and numerous living Warhol associates. It reveals surprising details about her life: the children nearly no one knew she had, her drive for control over her own writing and copyright, and her elusive personal and professional relationships.

Valerie Solanas addresses how this era changed the world and depicts an iconic figure whose life is at once tragic and remarkable.

DOWNLOAD 

 

Over half of known human pathogenic diseases can be aggravated by climate change

Over half of known human pathogenic diseases can be aggravated by climate change

Abstract

It is relatively well accepted that climate change can affect human pathogenic diseases; however, the full extent of this risk remains poorly quantified. Here we carried out a systematic search for empirical examples about the impacts of ten climatic hazards sensitive to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on each known human pathogenic disease. We found that 58% (that is, 218 out of 375) of infectious diseases confronted by humanity worldwide have been at some point aggravated by climatic hazards; 16% were at times diminished. Empirical cases revealed 1,006 unique pathways in which climatic hazards, via different transmission types, led to pathogenic diseases. The human pathogenic diseases and transmission pathways aggravated by climatic hazards are too numerous for comprehensive societal adaptations, highlighting the urgent need to work at the source of the problem: reducing GHG emissions.

Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01426-1