The history of Earth is marked by at least seven major mass extinctions, including asteroid impact effects 580 million years ago, the end Ordovician glaciation, late Devonian asteroid impacts, end-Permian volcanism and ocean anoxia, end-Jurassic volcanism and Cretaceous-Tertiary asteroid impact—mostly associated with an extreme rise in atmospheric CO2. Currently the seventh mass extinction of species is taking place, mainly as[Read More…]

In a key paper titled “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene“,published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Science (6.8.2018),a group of 17 climate and environment scientists (Will Steffen, Johan Rockström, Katherine Richardson, Timothy M. Lenton, Carl Folke, Diana Liverman, Colin P. Summerhayes, Anthony D. Barnosky, Sarah E. Cornell, Michel Crucifix, Jonathan F. Donges, Ingo Fetzer,[Read More…]

There was a time when the contamination of drinking water constituted a punishable crime. Nowadays those who willfully ignore or promote the destruction of the Earth’s atmosphere and ocean acidification through the rise in emission of carbon gases (2014 ~36.08 billion ton CO2/year ; 2017 ~36.79 billion ton CO2/year), hold major sway in the world. Consequently the rise rate of[Read More…]

The heroic rescue of 13 young people from the flooded Chiang Mai cave in Thailand represents everything which is wonderful about humans cooperating and helping each other, and where they are at their best.By stark contrast the cover-up by the authorities and the media of the underlying reasons for the unfolding tragedy of the Hiroshima deluge, in which to-date more[Read More…]

In her new book “Fascism: A Warning” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I27X9L8rReo), Madeleine Albright’s states that the Fascism of a century ago was not atypical: “In hindsight, it is tempting to dismiss every Fascist of this era as a thoroughly bad guy or a lunatic, but that is too easy, also dangerous,” she writes. “Fascism is not an exception to humanity, but part of[Read More…]

“To ignore evil is to become an accomplice” (Martin Luther King) Humans are of the Earth, physically adapted to its range of climates, gravity, radiation, electro-magnetic field and composition of the atmosphere. Had there ever been a single critical issue science has conveyed, it is that altering the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere can only bearfatal consequences for nature and[Read More…]

  “Two plus two is five – if the party says so” (George Orwell). Should anyone record the history of the 20th and 21st centuries, they may report that, while temperatures and sea levels were rising, the human sense of reality has been clouded by electronic system, including television, the internetand smart phones, by science fiction, virtual realities, public circuses,[Read More…]

  A species which has invented combustion, electromagnetic radiation and nuclear energy orders of magnitude more powerful than its own physical potential, needs to be perfectly wise and in control lest it is overwhelmed by these powers. As tipping points in the Earth’s climate amplify, including hurricanes, snow storms and wildfires, it appears to be beyond human power to contemplate[Read More…]

 The current warming of Earth (Figure 1),manifest in the rise in extreme weather events (Figures 2 and 3), including collapse of polar ice sheets, melting of the Arctic Sea ice, penetration of snow storms into mid-latitudes, permafrost thaw and methane release, hurricanes and wildfires(Figure 4), manifestsa shift in state of the atmosphere-oceansystem, constituting an existential threat to humanity and much[Read More…]

Arctic ice breakdown As is well known to students of the history of the climate, once a temperature threshold is breached, abrupt events follow due to amplifying feedbacks, even within a few years, examples being (1) stadial[i] freeze events which followed temperature peaks during past interglacial peaks due to influx of cold ice-melt water into the north Atlantic Ocean[ii]; (2)[Read More…]

“Dear Caesar, Keep burning, raping and killing, but please, please spare us your obscene poetry and ugly music“(From Seneca’s last letter to Nero) Astrophysicist Greg Laughlin came up with a figure of €3000 trillion for the worth of planet Earth, given its breathable atmosphere—a shield from cosmic radiation. A close estimate is by Greg Laughlinas as US$5000 trillion. By contrast[Read More…]