Thread by thread we're picking the fabric of Life apart, the resource threads, the regenerative threads. When those are gone, we're gone. Put another way, we're cannibalizing Life Support to augment the Holodeck—destroying the ship itself for the sake of a more intense dream... Another marine resource in peril... Alaska's snow crab season canceled for second year in a row as population fails to rebound "Gabriel Prout is grateful for a modest haul of king crab, but it's the vanishing of another crustacean variety that has the fishing port in Kodiak, Alaska, bracing for financial fallout; for the second year in a row, the lucrative snow crab season has been canceled. "We're still definitely in survival mode trying to find a way to stay in business," he told CBS News. When the season was canceled last year, there was a sense of confusion among the Alaska crab fisher community. Now, a sense of panic is taking hold in the state's fisheries, which produce 60% of the nation's seafood. "It's just still extremely difficult to fathom how we could go from a healthy population in the Bering Sea to two closures in a row," Prout said. And while he is barely holding on, others — like Joshua Songstad — have lost almost everything. "All of a sudden, now I'm at home with no income and really not much to do," Songstad said. The crisis first began in early 2022, after biologists discovered an estimated 10 billion crabs disappeared — a 90% plunge in the population. "The first reaction was, is this real? You know, we looked at it and it was almost a flat line," said Ben Daly, a research coordinator with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. A recent survey of the species showed little sign of a rebound. "Environmental conditions are changing rapidly," Daly told CBS News last year when the snow crab season was canceled for the first time ever. "We've seen warm conditions in the Bering Sea the last couple of years, and we're seeing a response in a cold-adapted species, so it's pretty obvious this is connected. It is a canary in a coal mine for other species that need cold water." According to new research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a marine heat wave linked to climate change impacted the snow crabs' food supply and drove them to starvation. Biologists hope this second round of suspensions will give the remaining snow crab population time to bulk back up. But with the climate threat only growing, there's concern the snow crabs, along with the industry that depends on them, will continue to shrink. "I'm a fourth-generation fisherman," Songstad said. "I would like to say that this is gonna be here for my kids, but the reality is we're a dying breed and if we keep going the way we're going, there's not going to be any of us left."
Not only does "nothing we think is disposable actually ever go away", but all efforts to solve the problem itself must necessarily use still more energy and materials... Billions of pounds of microplastics are entering the oceans every year. Researchers are trying to understand their impact Panama City — A team of international scientists working on a research vessel off the coast of Panama is looking for something you might think would be hard to find. "We are exploring the unexplored," Alvise Vianello, an associate chemistry professor at Aalborg University in Denmark, told CBS News. "…It's like, you know, finding the needle in the haystack." In this case, the needle is microplastic, and the ocean is drowning in it. An estimated 33 billion pounds of the world's plastic trash enters the oceans every year, according to the nonprofit conservation group Oceana, eventually breaking down into tiny fragments. A 2020 study found 1.9 million microplastic pieces in an area of about 11 square feet in the Mediterranean Sea. "Microplastics are small plastic fragments that are smaller than 5 millimeters," Vianello said. The researchers are trying to fill in a missing piece of the microplastic puzzle. "I want to know what is happening to them when they enter into the ocean. It's important to understand how they are moving from the surface to the seafloor," said researcher Laura Simon, also with Aalborg University. About 70% of marine debris sinks to the seafloor, but we know little about its impact as it does. A study published in March by the 5 Gyres Institute estimates there are now 170 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean — more than 21,000 for every person on the planet. Vianello explains that some of the fish we eat, like tuna, swordfish and sardines, could be ingesting these microplastics. He says the data collected by these researchers could help us better understand how microplastics are affecting everything from the ocean's ability to cool the earth to our health. The scientists are conducting their research on a ship owned by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, a nonprofit that is funded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy. The Schmidts let scientists use the ship at no cost — but there's a catch. They must share their data with other scientists around the world. "And all the knowledge gained during these years about plastic pollution, I think, it's starting to change people's minds," Vianello said. It may be because a lot of what we think is disposable never really goes away.
Why progress is so slow, or in reverse... What links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump? The shadowy network behind their policies George Monbiot The Atlas Network’s dark-money junktanks are behind neoliberal policies around the world. And you may find its leaders on a resignation honours list near you There are elements of fascism, elements borrowed from the Chinese state and elements that reflect Argentina’s history of dictatorship. But most of the programme for government announced by Javier Milei, the demagogic new Argentinian president, feels eerily familiar, here in the northern hemisphere. A crash programme of massive cuts; demolishing public services; privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest; restricting the right to strike. Anything ring a bell? Milei is attempting, with a vast “emergency” decree and a monster “reform bill”, what the Conservatives have done in the UK over 45 years. The crash programme bears striking similarities to Liz Truss’s “mini” (maxi) budget, which trashed the prospects of many poor and middle-class people and exacerbated the turmoil that now dominates public life. Coincidence? Not at all. Milei’s programme was heavily influenced by Argentinian neoliberal thinktanks belonging to something called the Atlas Network, a global coordinating body that promotes broadly the same political and economic package everywhere it operates. It was founded in 1981 by a UK citizen, Antony Fisher. Fisher was also the founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), one of the first members of the Atlas Network. The IEA created, to a remarkable degree, Liz Truss’s political platform. In a video conversation on the day of her “mini” budget with another member of the institute, its then director general, Mark Littlewood, observed: “We’re on the hook for it now. If it doesn’t work it’s your fault and mine.” It didn’t work – in fact, it crashed spectacularly, at great cost to us all – but, thanks to the UK’s media, the BBC included, which continue to treat these fanatical corporate lobbyists as purveyors of holy writ, they’re off the hook. Last year, the IEA was platformed on British media an average of 14 times a day: even more often than before the disaster it helped inflict on the UK. Scarcely ever was it challenged about who funds it or whom it represents. The three peers nominated by Truss in her resignation honours list have all worked for or with organisations belonging to the Atlas Network (Matthew Elliott, TaxPayers’ Alliance; Ruth Porter, IEA and Policy Exchange; Jon Moynihan, IEA). Now, like US supreme court justices, they have been granted lifelong powers to shape our lives, without democratic consent. Truss also put forward Littlewood, but his reward for wrecking people’s lives was blocked by the House of Lords appointments commission. Argentinians protest against new president Javier Milei's deregulation decree – video Nothing has been learned: these corporate lobby groups still mould our politics. Policy Exchange, which, as Rishi Sunak has admitted, “helped us draft” the UK’s vicious new anti-protest laws, is also a member of the Atlas Network. We might describe certain policies as being Milei’s or Bolsonaro’s, or Truss’s or Johnson’s or Sunak’s, but they’re all variations on the same themes, hatched and honed by junktanks belonging to the same network. Those presidents and prime ministers are just the faces the programme wears. And who, in turn, are the junktanks? Many refuse to divulge who funds them, but as information has trickled out we have discovered that the Atlas Network itself and many of its members have taken money from funding networks set up by the Koch brothers and other rightwing billionaires, and from oil, coal and tobacco companies and other life-defying interests. The junktanks are merely the intermediaries. They go into battle on behalf of their donors, in the class war waged by the rich against the poor. When a government responds to the demands of the network, it responds, in reality, to the money that funds it. The dark-money junktanks, and the Atlas Network, are a highly effective means of disguising and aggregating power. They are the channel through which billionaires and corporations influence politics without showing their hands, learn the most effective policies and tactics for overcoming resistance to their agenda, and then spread these policies and tactics around the world. This is how nominal democracies become new aristocracies. They also seem to be adept at shaping public opinion. For example, around the world, neoliberal junktanks have not only lobbied for extreme anti-protest measures, but have successfully demonised environmental protesters as “extremists” and “terrorists”. This might help to explain why peaceful environmental campaigners blocking a road are routinely punched, kicked and spat upon, and in some places run over or threatened with guns, by other citizens, while farmers or truckers blocking a road are not. It might also explain why there is scarcely a murmur of media coverage or public concern when extreme penalties are imposed: such as the six-month prison sentence handed in December to the climate campaigner Stephen Gingell for slow-marching along a London street. 2023 was the year governments looked at the climate crisis – and decided to persecute the activists Owen Jones Read more But the worst is yet to come. Donald Trump has never developed a coherent platform of his own. He doesn’t have to. His policies have been written for him, in a 900-page Mandate for Leadership produced by a group of thinktanks led by the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is – you got there before me – a member of the Atlas Network. Many of the proposals in the “mandate” are, frankly, terrifying. They have nothing to do with public demands and everything to do with the demands of capital. When Friedrich Hayek and others first formulated the principles of neoliberalism, they believed it would defend the world from tyranny. But as the big money poured in, and an international network of neoliberal thinktanks was created to develop and articulate its demands, the programme that was supposed to liberate us became a new source of oppression. In Argentina, where Milei has stepped into the vacuum left by the gross misrule of his predecessors and is able to impose, in true shock doctrine fashion, policies that would otherwise be fiercely resisted, the poor and middle classes are about to pay a terrible price. How do we know? Because very similar programmes have been dumped on other countries, beginning with Argentina’s neighbour Chile, after Augusto Pinochet’s coup in 1973. These junktanks are like the spike proteins on a virus. They are the means by which plutocratic power invades the cells of public life and takes over. It’s time we developed an immune system." https://www.theguardian.com/comment...sunak-javier-milei-donald-trump-atlas-network
Transport Shipping Chaos Set to be ‘New Normal’ Amid War, Climate Change January 6, 2024 Shipping giants are bracing for significant disruptions to affect key routes like the Panama Canal and knock complex vessel schedules out of sync Workers look on as a ship uses its crane to unload containers at a terminal at the Red Sea port of Hodeidah. Photo: Reuters The climate of turmoil that has overshadowed the flow of trade between Asia, Europe and the US in recent weeks is likely to weigh on global ocean shippers all through 2024. Shipping giants like Maersk are expecting significant disruptions — from wars to droughts — to affect key routes like the Panama Canal and knock complex vessel schedules out of sync. The disruptions will affect giant container ships, fuel tankers and other commodity haulers, resulting in longer delays and higher costs for retailers like Walmart, IKEA and Amazon, as well as food makers such as Nestle. “This is seemingly the new normal,” said Jay Foreman, CEO of Florida-based Basic Fun, who sends toys from factories in China to Europe and the United States. “These waves of chaos that seem to rise and fall. Before you get back to some level of normalcy another event happens that sort of throws things out of whack.” Geopolitical troubles Maersk, the world’s largest shipping firm, joined other major ocean carriers on Friday in rerouting ships away from the Red Sea to avoid missile and drone attacks by Yemeni Houthis. The sea leads to the vital Asia-Europe Suez Canal route, which handles more than 10% of total ocean shipments and nearly one-third of the world’s container trade. Armed men stand on the beach as the Galaxy Leader commercial ship, seized by Yemen’s Houthis last month, is anchored off the coast of al-Salif, Yemen. Photo: Reuters Iranian militants have been attacking vessels in the area in a show of support for Palestinian Islamist group Hamas fighting Israel in Gaza. But as the conflict continues to deepen, freight carriers face the risk of a possible expansion of Red Sea attacks to the Arabian Gulf, which could affect oil shipments. Further souring of China-Taiwan relations could also affect important trade lanes, said Peter Sand, chief analyst at freight data provider Xeneta. Meanwhile, Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to affect the grains trade since it invaded its neighbour in 2022. Spiking shipping costs While tankers carrying oil and fuel supplies for Europe continue to pass through the Suez Canal, most container ships are rerouting goods around Africa’s southern tip — a much longer and costlier route. Suez Canal diversions have sent ship owners’ fuel costs up by as much as $2 million per round trip. The Asia-Europe spot rate has also more than doubled from 2023’s average to $3,500 per 40-foot container. The increased costs could translate into higher prices for consumers, considering the shipping industry handles 90% of global trade. Goldman Sachs said on Friday, however, that the inflation shock should not be as bad as the 2020-22 pandemic chaos. “The first quarter is gonna be a little crazy for everybody’s books” when it comes to costs, said Alan Baer, CEO of OL USA, which handles freight shipments for clients. Graph: Reuters Climate change in the mix Meanwhile, increasingly frequent severe weather events are having a more immediate effect on the shipping industry than political tensions. Crossings through the Panama Canal — a Suez Canal alternative — are down 33% due to lower water levels, according to supply chain software provider project44. Such restrictions helped send dry bulk shipping costs for commodities like wheat, soybeans, iron ore, coal and fertilizer sharply higher in late 2023. Brazil also suffered a double-whammy of a historic drought on the Amazon and excessive rains in the north of the country that contributed to a longer-than-usual ship queue at the port of Paranagua in late 2023 just months ahead of peak soybean shipping season. “You can always say, ‘It’s a one-off event,’” said John Kartsonas, managing partner at Breakwave Advisors, the commodity trading advisor for the Breakwave Dry Bulk Shipping ETF. “But if the one-off events happen every other month, they’re not anymore one-off events.” Reuters, with additional editing by Vishakha Saxena https://www.asiafinancial.com/shipping-chaos-set-to-be-new-normal-amid-war-climate-change
This is a political discussion regarding climate change. Why has it been moved to Chit-Chat instead of remaining in Politics where it belongs.
The contents are mainly copied from somewhere else, and pasted here. Moving the thread to Copy & Paste looks more appropriate.
Have to agree. This has been an important thread to post an opposing view. No hysteria,easily fact checked. Good work Ricter.Keep it up.