A Titanic Moment In History

It continues to astound what we as a species ignore as the tsunami heads straight toward us! The evidence and the solution are in front of us.

A Titanic Moment In History

This is a Titanic moment in history! We as species are going through the greatest challenge in the history of humanity with climate change, resource depletion, mindless resource wars, threat of a nuclear winter, ethnic and communal strifes, environmental degradation to name a few of the threats we are facing. The saddest part is that we are going to bring the whole edifice down and about to destroy all life forms on earth. This is the reality. But the question is, are WE aware about this reality? A few of Countercurrents readers may be aware of this and working hard to challenge this existential threat. What about the wider world, those 7 Billion others who are walking towards perdition, led by the pied pipers of Mainstream Media?

The myth of endless growth, and the all pervasive culture of greed has driven us to this predicament. With fast depleting resources, stalling the engine of growth, the hound dogs of capitalism has gone mad. They are forcing ever more wars upon us, starving the poor, destroying lives, occupying the land and the homes, they are curbing our freedom with the threat of a bogeyman called 'war on terror', snooping into our privacy, driving us literally from our homes and our work places, controlling and manipulating our lives with a pimp called Mainstream Media. Where do we go from here? We have only two ways left, 1. to go down without a trace 2. to fight and try to reverse this trend, so that our children will not say we didn't try. I chose the second path. That's why Countercurrents is here, and it will be here, no matter what, until "THE LIGHT GOES OUT OF MY LIFE."

If you listen you'll hear the voices of rebellion and resistance from the Dongria Kondh's of Niyamgiri hills of Odisha, India who rejected mining giant Vedanta's efforts to mine in their sacred hills, from the Chiapas mountain ranges of Mexico, of Zapatista resistance movement, and from Cairo and New York of the stories of Occupy spirit, of transition movement from Totness, UK and the stories of compassion from the streets of Kabul, Baghdad and Gaza. These stories need to be TOLD and RETOLD to inspire people to rise up as a whole to demand justice, not just for humanity and our future generation but for all species on this earth and their future progenies. How do we do this?

We don't own NewYork Times, or CNN. We can not hope that these outlets will ever tell these stories in their TRUEST SPIRIT. Our only hope is that to build and nurture independent media outlets like Countercurrents to tell these stories and do our part to help these stories reach a wider audience.

As you may well know our resistance movements are also hijacked by capital. They do this in two ways, by co-option and subversion. They want us to go begging for their advertisement crumbs falling off their table. You'll NEVER EVER see a Coca Cola advertisement on CC pages. The other way is subverting and controlling the resistance by doling out money through their foundations thereby moderating and controlling the message, palatable to the dominant classes. Countercurrents will not go either of these ways. CC will survive by the collective support of its readers and the sweat of my hard labor. We want CC to be funded 100 % by you - our readers! For that we have developed a unique subscription programme.

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Binu Mathew
Editor
Countercurrents.org

'Worst' Of Climate Predictions Are The Most Likely

By Jon Queally

01 January, 2013
CommonDreams.org

 

Groundbreaking research on cloud behavior and global warming says 'catastrophic' increase of 4°C or more by 2100 should be expected

 

New research by a team of scientists looking at the impact of cloud behavior on planetary climate change says that "the worst" and "catastrophic" predictions offered by previous studies on the rate of global warming this century are much more likely than the less severe scenarios offered by others.

 

According to Dr. Steven Sherwood, lead author of the study and a specialist in climate and cloud formations at the University of New South Wales in Australia, cloud patterns in an increasingly warming world are likely to exacerbate global temperature increases overall, not mitigate warming as some models have suggested.

 

"This study breaks new ground twice," Sherwood explained in an interview with the Guardian. "First by identifying what is controlling the cloud changes and second by strongly discounting the lowest estimates of future global warming in favor of the higher and more damaging estimates."

 

The research predicts that global temperatures will likely rise at least 4°C by 2100 and potentially more than 8°C by 2200 if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced and serious actions by governments and society are not taken.

 

Such drastic increases, Sherwood told the Guardian would be "catastrophic rather than simply dangerous."

 

Specifically, the study looked at how already warming temperatures impact the ability of clouds to form at high altitudes, because that ability can greatly impact the way in which large clouds help the planet reflect or absorb the sun's heat. One of the long-acknowledged shortcomings of other climate computer models—which drive much of the work of climate change predictions—is the difficulty of accurately projecting cloud behavior under complex, future conditions.

 

By tackling that problem, say Sherwood and his colleagues, their research "cracks open one of the biggest problems in climate science."

 

As the Syndey Morning Herald reports:

Will Steffen, an adjunct professor at Australian National University and a member of the Climate Council, said the paper was ''right out on the forefront of the sort of research we need to do on clouds''.

''The more we get research like from [Professor Sherwood] and his group, the more confidence we'll have in being able to say where in that range [the temperature increase] is likely to fall.''

The CO2 level of the atmosphere in 2012 was 393 parts per million, or 41 per cent higher than in pre-industrial times, the World Meteorological Organisation said. The level is rising at an accelerating rate - more than two parts per million a year - as humans burn more fossil fuels and cut down forests.

Global temperatures have risen about 0.8 degrees since about 1880, with system lags and air pollution reflecting sunlight partly explaining why the rise has not been higher.

''We've been hoping for the best and not planning for the worst,'' Professor Sherwood said.

''And now it's looking like the best is not very likely.''

In 2012, a study by the World Bank—an institution not typically known for sounding the alarm over industrial, human-caused global warming—also said that a 4°C temperature rise was not only possible, but likely if humanity did not change course. According to Kim Yong Kim, the bank's president, the resulting impacts of a planet that warm would likely "make the world our children inherit a completely different world than we are living in today."

 

And those kinds of warnings only mirror the consistent and nearly unanimous consensus of the international scientific community when it comes to temperature increases that exceed the 2°C increase that world governments have set as the benchmark not to exceed this century. The problem, of course, is that no agreements or promises have resulted in actual emission reductions. In fact, annual global emissions continue to increase even as the warnings escalate

 

 

http://www.countercurrents.org/queally010114.htm

 

 

The rest of CounterCurrents:

 

Dear Friend,

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In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org


Biggest Threat To World Peace: The United States
By Sarah Lazare

http://www.countercurrents.org/lazare010114.htm

Over 12 years into the so-called "Global War on Terror," the United States appears to be striking terror into the hearts of the rest of the world. In their annual End of Year survey, Win/Gallup International found that the United States is considered the number one "greatest threat to peace in the world today" by people across the globe


From Egypt To Afghanistan : Who Is My Enemy?
By Hakim & Sherif

http://www.countercurrents.org/hakim010114.htm

Who is my enemy? Satan? Terrorists? ‘The other person' of ‘another' faith or ethnicity?


Why Activism Needs The Sacred
By Carolyn Baker

http://www.countercurrents.org/baker010114.htm

Cherishing the sacred in our activism and in our visions of revolutionized communities and cultures increases the likelihood that we will resist from our hearts and not simply from our heads. As a result, the new paradigms out of which our visions are realized will engender authentic transformations with more enduring resilience as opposed to reinventions of formerly oppressive systems


Every Person Has A Name
By Neve Gordon

http://www.countercurrents.org/gordon010114.htm

In Israel illegal immigrants from Africa are not given even the basic human right of a name