Dahr Jamail writes—As Climate Disruption Advances, UN Warns: "The Future Is Happening Now." An excerpt:
Each month as I write these dispatches, I shake my head in disbelief at the rapidity at which anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) is occurring. It's as though each month I think, "It can't possibly keep happening at this incredible pace."
But it does.
By late April, the Mauna Loa Observatory, which monitors atmospheric carbon dioxide, recorded an incredible daily reading: 409.3 parts per million. That is a range of atmospheric carbon dioxide content that this planet has not seen for the last 15 million years, and 2016 is poised to see these levels only continue to increase.
Recently, Dr. James Hansen, a former NASA scientist and longtime whistleblower about the impending dangers of ACD, published a paper with several colleagues showing that ACD will push sea level rise into exponential levels by the end of this century. Their paper shows how melting is actually compounding itself, generating dramatically fast increases in both melting and sea level rise. We may well see the current three millimeter per year sea level rise grow to nearly five centimeters by 2056, and continue to increase in a nonlinear fashion.
Scientists in Antarctica are now astounded at the rapidity of the disintegration of the massive Antarctic ice shelves: It turns out the ice in Antarctica is far more fragile and predisposed to melting than was previously believed.
The situation is already dire enough that the conservative UN warned recently, "The future is happening now," and called for more urgent measures to be taken to cut global carbon emissions.
"Many people now think that the problem is solved since we reached a nice agreement in Paris last year ... but the negative side is that we haven't changed our behaviors," Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, told the media recently. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2012—Georgia becomes the seventh state to cut off abortions at 20 weeks. No exceptions for rape or incest:
Acting on contentious legislation passed by the Republican-dominated state House and Senate, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R)signed a bill Tuesday that forbids abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy except when the woman's life is at risk. No exceptions are allowed for rape or incest. The bill, HB 954, effectively cuts six weeks off allowable time when abortions are now permitted in the state.
It wasn't the total victory the law's drafters had hoped for, however. In spite of vigorous opposition from forced-birther lobbyists, abortions will be permitted in cases where there are "irremediable" fetal congenital or fetal abnormalities "incompatible with sustaining life after birth." So hurrah for a small victory in two years' of the worst series of defeats for the women's reproductive rights since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide 39 years ago.
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On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Cr7z creeps us out, again. Annual WHCD bashing-of-the-comedian-they-hired. Greg Dworkin presents competing theories on the GOP Trump crisis. O’Keefe can’t resist the bathroom panic story. #GunFAIL defeats almost-perfect family protection ninjas.
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