A Fantasy World Where an Existential Threat is a “Hoax”
by Professor Bruce E. Johansen
As with many of his cronies, Donald J. Trump has a very, very difficult time integrating his sense of fantasy with a reality that stares him in the face. He is blind to reality and soon to be the most powerful single human being on our planet; he seems intent on dragging the rest of the human race, and very likely every other living thing, down with him.
One would think that a person who can build a strategy to become the most powerful person on the planet (and do it twice) could broaden his vocabulary about our most threatening existential threat past one word (HOAX!). We should be so lucky.
Maybe we may need to get nasty. Teach DJT et al. some humility under the eyes of Nature. We are waiting for a Category 5 hurricane to move up the east coast of southeastern Florida, just far enough offshore to feed it from a record-warm ocean—88 F. would be nice. Bring the wind off the ocean at perhaps 130 miles an hour, erode the beach, and then swallow Mar a Lago. Do it on a king tide, please. Do it while DJT is having dinner with a bankroll of his cronies. Chain the entire dinner bankroll to the floor, please.
Before that, however, give DJT and his cronies an hour or so of real science. No good meal would be worth it without appetizers.
This lecture comes in five parts:
Arctic sea ice retreated to near-historic lows in the Northern Hemisphere this summer, likely melting to its minimum extent for the year on September 11, 2024, according to researchers at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The decline continues the decades-long trend of shrinking and thinning ice cover in the Arctic Ocean.
The amount of frozen seawater in the Arctic fluctuates during the year as the ice thaws and regrows between seasons. Scientists chart these swings to construct a picture of how the Arctic responds to rising air and sea temperatures and longer melting seasons over time. Over the past 46 years, satellites have observed persistent trends of more melting in the summer and less ice formation in the winter.
Sea ice in the southern polar regions of the planet was also low in 2024. Around Antarctica, scientists tracked near-record-low sea ice when it should have been growing extensively during the Southern Hemisphere’s darkest and coldest months.
The meager growth in 2024 prolongs a recent downward trend. Before 2014, sea ice in the Antarctic increased slightly by about 1 percent per decade. Following a spike in 2014, ice growth has fallen dramatically. Scientists are working to understand the cause of this reversal. The recurring loss hints at a long-term shift in conditions in the Southern Ocean, likely resulting from global climate change.
“While changes in sea ice have been dramatic in the Arctic over several decades, Antarctic sea ice was relatively stable. But that has changed,” said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NSIDC. “It appears that global warming has come to the Southern Ocean.”
In both the Arctic and Antarctic, ice loss compounds ice loss. This loss occurs because while bright sea ice reflects most of the Sun’s energy back to space, open ocean water absorbs 90 percent. With more of the ocean exposed to sunlight, water temperatures rise, further delaying sea ice growth. This cycle of reinforced warming is called ice-albedo feedback.
Overall, the loss of sea ice increases heat in the Arctic, where temperatures have risen about four times the global average, Kurtz said.
Record dry conditions in South America have led to wildfires, power cuts, and water rationing. The world’s largest river system, the Amazon, which sustains about 30 million people across eight countries, is drying up.
Julie Turkewitz, Ana Ionova, and José María León Cabrera. New York Times, Oct. 19, 2024 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/19/world/americas/south-america-drought-amazon-river.html.
Electricity cuts across an entire nation. A capital rations water. A mayor encourages people to shower together to save precious drops. A record-breaking drought that is well into its second year is punishing much of South America, including the Amazon rainforest. It is upending lives and local economies and providing an alarming glimpse into the future as the effects of climate change become more apparent. Long sections of the Amazon River have turned into dry, brown beaches, and officials are dredging sections to make them deeper.
In Brazil, wildfires fueled by searing heat and prolonged dry conditions have consumed vast swaths of forest, wetlands and pastures, with smoke spreading to 80 percent of the country. It has led to canceled classes, hospitalizations, and black dust coating the inside of homes. To the south, in Paraguay, the Paraguay River has hit new lows. Ships are stranded, and fishermen say their most valuable quarry—including the enormous surubí catfish—has all but disappeared, forcing many people to look for work elsewhere to feed their families.
With much of South America dependent on hydropower, electricity production has plunged. In Ecuador, people endure energy cuts of up to 14 hours per day, knocking out the internet and sapping the countries’ economies.
In Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, the government regularly cuts water to residential homes, and the mayor has suggested that people “bathe as a couple” to reduce water consumption.
In Mar a Lago, meanwhile, King Orangepate I still lives in a world in which deporting 10 million undocumented “aliens” will be good for the United States economy, when the effect will be the opposite, and where an existential threat is a HOAX! And where leadership has a fifth-grade reading level.
Bruce E. Johansen has written and published several books on this climate change during the past 25 years, the most recent of which will be Nationalism and Nature: War and Warming, due out in October from Springer publishers in Frankfurt, Germany.
As with many of his cronies, Donald J. Trump has a very, very difficult time integrating his sense of fantasy with a reality that stares him in the face. He is blind to reality and soon to be the most powerful single human being on our planet; he seems intent on dragging the rest of the human race, and very likely every other living thing, down with him.
One would think that a person who can build a strategy to become the most powerful person on the planet (and do it twice) could broaden his vocabulary about our most threatening existential threat past one word (HOAX!). We should be so lucky.
Maybe we may need to get nasty. Teach DJT et al. some humility under the eyes of Nature. We are waiting for a Category 5 hurricane to move up the east coast of southeastern Florida, just far enough offshore to feed it from a record-warm ocean—88 F. would be nice. Bring the wind off the ocean at perhaps 130 miles an hour, erode the beach, and then swallow Mar a Lago. Do it on a king tide, please. Do it while DJT is having dinner with a bankroll of his cronies. Chain the entire dinner bankroll to the floor, please.
Before that, however, give DJT and his cronies an hour or so of real science. No good meal would be worth it without appetizers.
This lecture comes in five parts:
- A heat wave and drought are killing the Amazon basin.
- A heat wave that is melting what remains of the Antartic icecap.
- A heat wave that is melting the Antarctic icecap.
- And, the heat wave that is melting what’s left of mountain icecaps
- Ice that is growing anywhere [zero]
Arctic sea ice retreated to near-historic lows in the Northern Hemisphere this summer, likely melting to its minimum extent for the year on September 11, 2024, according to researchers at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The decline continues the decades-long trend of shrinking and thinning ice cover in the Arctic Ocean.
The amount of frozen seawater in the Arctic fluctuates during the year as the ice thaws and regrows between seasons. Scientists chart these swings to construct a picture of how the Arctic responds to rising air and sea temperatures and longer melting seasons over time. Over the past 46 years, satellites have observed persistent trends of more melting in the summer and less ice formation in the winter.
Sea ice in the southern polar regions of the planet was also low in 2024. Around Antarctica, scientists tracked near-record-low sea ice when it should have been growing extensively during the Southern Hemisphere’s darkest and coldest months.
The meager growth in 2024 prolongs a recent downward trend. Before 2014, sea ice in the Antarctic increased slightly by about 1 percent per decade. Following a spike in 2014, ice growth has fallen dramatically. Scientists are working to understand the cause of this reversal. The recurring loss hints at a long-term shift in conditions in the Southern Ocean, likely resulting from global climate change.
“While changes in sea ice have been dramatic in the Arctic over several decades, Antarctic sea ice was relatively stable. But that has changed,” said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NSIDC. “It appears that global warming has come to the Southern Ocean.”
In both the Arctic and Antarctic, ice loss compounds ice loss. This loss occurs because while bright sea ice reflects most of the Sun’s energy back to space, open ocean water absorbs 90 percent. With more of the ocean exposed to sunlight, water temperatures rise, further delaying sea ice growth. This cycle of reinforced warming is called ice-albedo feedback.
Overall, the loss of sea ice increases heat in the Arctic, where temperatures have risen about four times the global average, Kurtz said.
Record dry conditions in South America have led to wildfires, power cuts, and water rationing. The world’s largest river system, the Amazon, which sustains about 30 million people across eight countries, is drying up.
Julie Turkewitz, Ana Ionova, and José María León Cabrera. New York Times, Oct. 19, 2024 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/19/world/americas/south-america-drought-amazon-river.html.
Electricity cuts across an entire nation. A capital rations water. A mayor encourages people to shower together to save precious drops. A record-breaking drought that is well into its second year is punishing much of South America, including the Amazon rainforest. It is upending lives and local economies and providing an alarming glimpse into the future as the effects of climate change become more apparent. Long sections of the Amazon River have turned into dry, brown beaches, and officials are dredging sections to make them deeper.
In Brazil, wildfires fueled by searing heat and prolonged dry conditions have consumed vast swaths of forest, wetlands and pastures, with smoke spreading to 80 percent of the country. It has led to canceled classes, hospitalizations, and black dust coating the inside of homes. To the south, in Paraguay, the Paraguay River has hit new lows. Ships are stranded, and fishermen say their most valuable quarry—including the enormous surubí catfish—has all but disappeared, forcing many people to look for work elsewhere to feed their families.
With much of South America dependent on hydropower, electricity production has plunged. In Ecuador, people endure energy cuts of up to 14 hours per day, knocking out the internet and sapping the countries’ economies.
In Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, the government regularly cuts water to residential homes, and the mayor has suggested that people “bathe as a couple” to reduce water consumption.
In Mar a Lago, meanwhile, King Orangepate I still lives in a world in which deporting 10 million undocumented “aliens” will be good for the United States economy, when the effect will be the opposite, and where an existential threat is a HOAX! And where leadership has a fifth-grade reading level.
Bruce E. Johansen has written and published several books on this climate change during the past 25 years, the most recent of which will be Nationalism and Nature: War and Warming, due out in October from Springer publishers in Frankfurt, Germany.
