***https://fore.yale.edu/event/%E2%80%9CReturning-to-Mt.-Sinai%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%94-A-Prophetic-Call-for-Climate-Justice-and-Ceremony-of-Repentance “Returning to Mt. Sinai” — A Prophetic Call for Climate Justice and Ceremony of Repentance.
November 13, 2022
Mount Sinai
In parallel with the COP 27 UN Climate Conference
Coordinated by the Elijah Interfaith Institute, the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, and the Peace Department.
We come to Sinai in a movement of repentance and quest. We seek a new vision for humanity and its endangered existence, and we seek to receive and amplify a message of life-sustaining living and habits that humanity needs to hear today. In this spirit, the project partners brought together premier religious leaders from the world’s major religions to put forth a prophetic interreligious call to action: “Ten Universal Principles for Climate Justice.”We are not seeking to create one religion, but rather to bring religious institutions from many different faiths together in joint action for protecting God’s creation.
https://interfaithsustain.com/returning-to-mt-sinai/
https://climaterepentance.com/the-spiritual-principles/
10 Spiritual Principles for Climate Repentance
The Elijah Board of World Religious Leaders
Introduction
The leaders of the world are presently gathered in Egypt, during this time of great international tension and conflict, for the Cop-27 meeting. We support them with our deepest prayers and meditations. Theirs is the urgent work of addressing the practical challenges of climate change and for negotiating between nations, in an attempt to help humanity resolve the climate crisis. As religious leaders we offer our voice as a contribution to the gathered leaders and to humanity. Ours is a voice of hope and unity, grounded in a spiritual vision. From this vision, offered as common ground between diverse religions, an positive attitude to life is derived that can inform practical decisions and negotiations. It can also give hope and meaning to individuals struggling under the burden of climate anxiety, who seek to find their place and identify their responsibility at this time of crisis. We must also confront honestly the destructive habits which continue to limit the possibilities and the hopes of human beings, in a call for wake up and self-examination. With the following ten principles we seek to initiate a process of climate repentance, broader understanding, and effective action. Many practical consequences can be derived from the vision set forth here, as well as from the individual principles we offer. Our call is a call to action; and a call to return to a correct vision of the creation, the creator, and the harmonious relationship of humanity with creation.
God and the world – the Nature of Being
- Creation is not our possession. The human person must recognize this and find his/her rightful place in relation to this fundamental fact. For some of us, this leads to a sense of gratitude for God’s gifts and for the gift of life itself, wherein humanity takes its rightful place as partner and co-creator, in advancing the life of all creation. For others, creation itself is sacred.
Therefore: We recognize human responsibility to love and protect nature. - Creation is not simply external to God. It is, in significant ways, permeated by God’s presence and being, manifesting the divine agency and reality. Such understandings are found in all traditions, whether as the universal view or as one voice among others. Alternatively, nature is permeated by the spiritual, manifesting ultimate reality in every particle.
Therefore: We must treat all of life with reverence. - Within creation, and between humans and other parts of creation, as well as among religious communities, there is interdependence. All are part of a greater whole wherein each element both receives and gives influence, impact, love, and growth.
Therefore: We must care for each other and the planet.
Humanity and Its Responsibilities
- The distinctive task of humanity is to nurture and serve this interdependent life-giving, and so to resist the temptation to exploitation, waste, and harm. Acting in the interest of human well-being cannot be something pursued in separation from working for the well-being of the whole created order. This finds two prominent expressions:
a. Commitment to not harm creation, and the responsibility to protect it.
b. Commitment to serve, advance, and aid in the growth and evolution of all parts of creation.
Therefore: We recognize that we are responsible for the wellbeing of all life today, as well as for future generations. - The human person has capacities that are conducive to the realization of this vision, as well as forces that are destructive. Ego, self-centeredness, greed, arrogance, and more are negative traits stemming from a limited sense of the human person. These have the potential to destroy humanity and creation. The soul, or the higher aspects of the human person, have the capacity to realize the fuller vision of humanity’s role in the broader scheme of the meaning of life and creation.
Therefore: A disciplined spiritual life is helpful in overcoming the challenges of climate change. - There is an inherent relationship between the human person (within) and nature and objective reality (without). Thoughts, speech and action have the capacity to bring harm or to heal. Therefore: Use thought, speech and action only for the good.
- Based on this understanding of the human person and his/her role in creation, the processes of growth, transformation, return and repentance are fundamental to human existence. Therefore: The human person is benefitted by the ongoing effort to purify, raise, and transform himself, in view of a higher vision.
Living in Spirituality and Responsibility
- There are reactions when we harm the earth and others. Actions have consequences and no action can be ignored. The weight of our actions and their short and long term consequences lead us to find ways of mitigating harmful actions and to work for the good.
Therefore: Act knowing that every action counts. - Empowered by mind, reason and spiritual understanding, we adopt a mindful and attentive view of the natural world.
Therefore: take seriously the lessons and observations that humanity has reached by application of its mind in scientific study and through common reason. - The life of attentive, intelligent love is embodied in compassion: in openness to the pain and vulnerability of the world. Care for the other is expressed in love and compassion as fundamental spiritual principles. These are to be applied to other humans, human communities, and other parts of creation. Compassion means suffering with others – to feel the pain of the earth, of the poor, and of those who suffer the consequences of climate change. Opening our hearts to their pain will lead us to change.
Therefore: Be sensitive to the intolerable insecurities and injustices in which so many of our fellow-humans live.
12/1/22//
https://interfaithsustain.com/jerusalem-interfaith-climate-declaration/
**Jerusalem Interfaith Climate Declaration
We, religious clergy and membersof faith communities based in Israel, gathered here at the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem on November 3, 2022, hereby make the following declaration to people of faith across the Earth, and to the governments, UN entities, civil society, and all stakeholders of COP 27 now opening at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
The impacts of climate change are being increasingly felt in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, with more days of extreme heat than any time in the recorded past. Drought has been seen as a cause of war in our region, while wildfires, storms and flooding have intensified.
Inspired by the values and principles of our belief systems, faith, values, and ethics, we recognize that the climate crisis is caused by unrestrained human activity. We have failed to protect Earth’s capacity to support life, impacting especially the poor and marginalized. As people of faith, we must with humility challenge greed, instant self-gratification, and short-term thinking. Abusing and degrading God’s creation for current and future generations is sinful behavior. We must urgently adopt a new development paradigm that integrates our common moral and spiritual values towards a new one of sustainable well-being.
We affirm the power of religion to lead an essential transformation in human society, action, and behavior. We call upon our faithful to act in accord with our shared beliefs:
- The one living God created Earth as one interdependent life-supporting whole. All of us are called to care for, love, protect and glory in God’s creation. We shall not worship idols of greed, consumption, and consumerism and shall make time for sacred rest, to gratefully embrace in joyous awe all of creation.
- Humankind shall act with justice and awareness, using and allocating Earth’s resources wisely and equitably. At this crucial moment, we must responsibly protect the purity of air, soil, and water as sources of human life and flourishing.
- Respect Earth’s capacity for sustainable growth, living in ecological harmony and balance. We call upon humanity to safeguard, respect and bless all life, as human and non-human biodiversity are sacred. You shall not steal from others and future generations. Honor, cherish and respect ancestors, the entire human family, all species, and future generations.
We call upon all religions, governments, UN entities, civil society, as well as our own constituencies to act urgently to address the root causes of the climate crises, to repair our world based on our common spiritual and cultural values of justice and ethics.
We commit ourselves to lead by example, toact and practice what we preach, and to become protectors of this earth, to strive to live in balance, harmony, and sustainability, through our daily lives and actions.
Climate Repentance
10 Spiritual Principles and Repentance Ceremony
Between November 6th and 18th, 2022, the UN climate conference COP 27 will take place on the Sinai Peninsula, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Religious communities and religious leaders have a key role to play in addressing climate change and climate justice, which requires deep transformation within society. The knowledge of what changes are critically needed to diminish long-term harm to the planet is readily available. However, bringing about change in action demands deeper changes in attitude, a change of heart. This has been the domain of religions for millennia. Religions are sources of inspiration for the transformation of heart and the ensuing changes of attitude.
To support, challenge and inspire discussions during COP 27 at Sharm El Sheikh, Elijah, in collaboration with the Peace Department and Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, will be holding a meeting of the Elijah Board of World Religious Leaders (the 10th in number) and releasing messaging, resources and content that seek to complement practical conversations a the COP with a spiritual, interreligious vision. Drawing our inspiration from Mount Sinai and using Mount Sinai as anchor for the present initiative, Elijah leaders will release the fruit of the consultation of Elijah leaders.
Echoing the notion of the ten commandments, given at Sinai, Elijah leaders have formulated 10 Principles for Climate Repentance. “Returning to Mount Sinai – 10 Principles for Climate Repentance” is a document featuring spiritual principles, drawn from all faith traditions, that provide a spiritual vision that should frame our actions and attitudes to creation. Our attitudes have direct consequences for climate justice. This document, the fruit of consultation among close to 50 Elijah affiliated religious leaders, offers a synthetic spiritual vision that positions man in relation to God, nature (creation) and the other. A full vision of what it means to be human, in relation to creation, opens the door to action that is in line with the higher vision that all religions share.
Every coast in the U.S. is facing rapidly increasing high tide floods. NASA says this is due to a “wobble” in the moon’s orbit working in tandem with climate change-fueled rising sea levels.
The new study from NASA and the University of Hawaii, published recently in the journal Nature Climate Change, warns that upcoming changes in the moon’s orbit could lead to record flooding on Earth in the next decade.
Through mapping the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) sea-level rise scenarios, flooding thresholds and astronomical cycles, researchers found flooding in American coastal cities could be several multiples worse in the 2030s, when the next moon “wobble” is expected to begin. They expect the flooding to significantly damage infrastructure and displace communities.
*******2/17/20 https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3050876/coronavirus-singapore-confirms-three-new-cases-taking Coronavirus: Singapore religious groups cancel worship services as clusters (of infected sick people) emerge.
Bow before the Lord God Almighty! In the name of Jesus Christ I pray, Father, for your forgiveness of our sins, transgressions and iniquities. We will lose a lot of souls forever. We ask in the name of Jesus Christ you will hear our request for forgiveness. End the scourge of sickness, locusts, evil standing around us and wanting more deaths. Father, we have not bowed before you to worship you or acknowledged your almighty terrible power. You are our only God and King and Jesus is your Son whom you have anointed to be our Only Way to Salvation. Those of us who believe are standing on your promises of Christ our King, through eternal ages let His praises ring! We await the moment you translate us into your Kingdom for eternity. Oh Lord our Father, Mercy, Grace on all who bow before you and Call on the name of Jesus for salvation to live eternally with you. We pray we will be in your Paradise with all the Holy Ones (Saints) in glory. Amen Amen Amen
CLIMATE CHANGE, Global Warming
Is climate change the beginning of the end in revelation?
‘Climate Change’ is a hoax! Are these days the last days? Yes!
How does the Sun effect the earth?? 11 year cycles effect whether or not we have hurricanes??
http://www.iflscience.com/space/the-sun-is-about-to-enter-the-solar-minimum/
https://www.windows2universe.org/sun/effect_on_earth.html
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150923-the-sun-creates-space-weather-that-affects-us-all
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/nyc-police-sergeants-association-blasts-mayor-de-blasio-after-his-crazy-oped-with-sadiq-khan-on-global-warming/ NYC Police Sergeants Association Blasts Mayor de Blasio After His Crazy Oped with Sadiq Khan on Global Warming
12/20/19 https://7news.com.au/news/social/world-population-at-775-bln-by-year-end-c-616688?utm_source=wnd&utm_medium=wnd&utm_campaign=syndicated Earth’s population set to soar to 7.75 billion people by New year’s Eve.
12/12/19 https://www.wnd.com/2019/12/100-scientific-papers-co2-minuscule-effect-climate/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=wnd-breaking&utm_campaign=breaking&utm_content=breaking 100 scientific papers: CO2 has minuscule effect on climate. Increasing evidence destroys primary claim of alarmists.
9/30/19 https://www.wnd.com/2019/09/top-climate-scientist-breaks-ranks-consensus/ Top climate scientist breaks ranks with ‘consensus.’ ‘Our models are Mickey-Mouse mockeries of the real world.’
An MIT-trained scientist who has specialized for nearly 25 years in abnormal weather and climate change has published a book explaining why he believes the data underpinning global-warming science are unreliable. Mototaka Nakamura, who earned a doctorate of science from MIT, has conducted his work at prestigious institutions such as MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and Duke University, reports the website Electroverse. In his book “The Global Warming Hypothesis is an Unproven Hypothesis,” Nakamura explains why global mean temperatures before 1980 are based on “untrustworthy data.”
“Before full planet surface observation by satellite began in 1980, only a small part of the Earth had been observed for temperatures with only a certain amount of accuracy and frequency,” he says. “Across the globe, only North America and Western Europe have trustworthy temperature data dating back to the 19th century.”
Last week, a group of 500 scientists and professionals in climate science wrote a letter to the United Nations contending there is no climate crisis and that spending trillions on the issue is “cruel and imprudent.”
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For politicians, it’s power and money. For activists, it’s money for their organizations and “confirmation of their near-religious devotion to the idea that man is a destructive force acting upon nature.”
For the media, Lindzen says, it’s ideology, money and headlines.
“Doomsday scenarios sell.”
2/28/19 https://www.westernjournal.com/hermancain/house-dems-scheduled-hearing-climate-change-barely-showed-gop-killed-4-mins/ By now, you know the truth. Climate change is the single greatest calamity facing mankind. Because there’s a Republican in the White House, Democrats have ramped-up the scare tactics to a fever pitch, and they can’t seem to get through a single presser without mention the fact that we’re all doomed. The oceans are going to rise, super-storms are going to decimate the coasts and, in the words of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, we’re all going to be dead in 12 years. So… you would think that Democrats would be eager to attend a House subcommittee hearing on the subject. After all, if they don’t do something, Guam is going to tip over and Al Gore’s $9 million ocean view mansion is going to wash away.
So why, if this is such a grave threat, did only two Dems bother to show up to their own hearing?
Via the Politico: House Republicans managed to quash Democrats’ hearing on climate change on Tuesday by outvoting the majority party at the poorly attended event, forcing it to adjourn only minutes after it began.
The hearing of the House Natural Resources panel was to be the latest to dive into climate change since Democrats took control of the House last month, bringing new attention to the issue they complained Republicans had ignored during their eight years leading the chamber. The hearing was designed to probe the “denial playbook” that Democrats say fossil fuel backers have copied from cigarette companies — the same tactics used by opioid makers and the National Football League to dispute strong scientific evidence.
Apparently, a meeting designed to forestall the end of the world wasn’t important enough for Democrats to attend. With only 2 Democrats appearing, Louie Gohmert and three other Republicans killed it in just a few minutes.
9/11/18 https://www.foxnews.com/science/scientists-may-accidentally-make-it-rain-in-the-sahara-desert Researchers developed climate models based on the temperature, precipitation and vegetation changes that would occur if the entirety of the Sahara – 3,500,000 square miles – was covered with solar and wind farms. A project this size could create up to 79 terawatts of electrical power – four times the 18 terawatts the world used in 2017, according to the study. “We found that the large-scale installation of solar and wind farms can bring more rainfall and promote vegetation growth in these regions,” Eugenia Kalnay, one of the co-authors of the paper, told the University of Illinois. Specifically, it could double the Sahara’s, and neighboring Sahel’s, precipitation and help increase vegetation by 20 percent, research showed.
8/20/18 https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2018/08/20/Australia-reins-in-climate-change-plan-over-lack-of-support/6321534772740/?sl=2 Aug. 20 (UPI) — In a surprise move Monday, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said his government will back down from plans to reduce climate change goals set out in the nation’s energy plan.
The announcement means Turnbull’s energy proposal — the National Energy Guarantee, which is focused on sustainability and lowering energy prices — will go forward without regulations for a 26 percent cut to greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. (Hmmmmmmm did they forget to take this sentence out????)
The change doesn’t withdraw commitment to the United Nations climate change talks, but it delays indefinitely an attempt to legislate the 26 percent target until it has majority support.
The change follows a revolt by conservative members of parliament against Turnbull’s energy policy, and some Liberals have threatened to cross the party line. It also comes at a time Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has been asked to challenge the prime minister for the party’s leadership.
Turnbull said he wouldn’t push for the climate change target now simply because it wouldn’t pass.
Absent the climate change targets, Turnbull’s energy policy will still work toward keeping electricity prices down by capping default prices and increasing financial penalties for the three largest energy suppliers, AGL, EnergyAustralia and Origin.(?)
6/8/18 https://www.wnd.com/2018/06/study-mystery-of-man-made-lunar-warming-solved/ A new study says that the moon got warmer after astronauts walked on it, reports Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
It’s because their footsteps disturbed the rock and dirt, and the impressions were darker than the rest of the terrain.
Those darker areas then reflected less sunlight and got warmer.
4/26/18 http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/04/26/brazils-indigenous-protest-to-defend-their-rights-lands.html
“Never, in the past 30 years, has the Brazilian state opted for a relationship so completely adverse to the rights of indigenous people,” the Coalition of Indigenous People of Brazil said in a statement earlier in the week.
The rule change was backed by Congress’ so-called “rural caucus” — a group of lawmakers representing the interests of rural landowners who have been allies of Temer in Congress. The group typically argues for more land to be opened up to economic activity, saying that’s the only way to bring development and jobs to remote areas of Brazil.
2/11/18 https://www.wnd.com/2018/02/feds-to-give-all-your-health-data-to-researchers/ Even assurances given regarding the future use of DNA data are not reliable, because in a federally funded project, Congress can simply change the ground rules.
A recent report concerning artificial intelligence in the medical field noted, “An aspirational goal for health and health care is to amass large datasets (labeled and unlabeled) and systematically curated health data so that novel disease correlations can be identified, and people can be matched to the best treatments based on their specific health, life-experiences, and genetic profile.”Of course, to accomplish that among the factors that would need to be evaluated would be economic stability including employment and income, housing, parks and playgrounds, language and literacy, hunger, social integration and discrimination, and quality of health care.Genetic information also must be included in this enterprise.
“To gain a complete picture of health, data from genetics, health care delivery and outcomes, and the social determinants of health should be integrated. This could include, for example, data on exercise, addictions, diet, the reporting and sharing of family history, treatment experiences, and social consequences associated with a chronic disease, and the widespread collection of health-relevant information from wearable devices and smart technology platform apps,” that report explained.
The NIH explains among its goals is finding correlations between activities, physiological measures and environmental exposures.
An advisory panel for the program just last month opened its meetings, which are scheduled to continue next in August.
Project director Eric Dishman says more than 14,000 participants already have been enrolled and says access to electronic health records will be key – in fact, mandatory.
2/9/18 https://www.wnd.com/2018/02/environmentalists-demand-degrowth-for-successful-countries/ ENVIRONMENTALISTS DEMAND ‘DEGROWTH’ FOR SUCCESSFUL COUNTRIES. ‘To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability.’
A new report published in Nature magazine that looks at how nutrition, sanitation and electricity can be provided to the more than 7 billion people on earth “without destabilizing planetary processes” is being skewered by a Climate Depot commentary as a recipe for billions “to remain mired in poverty.”
“The environmental movement wants to make the rich West much poorer so that the destitute can become richer,” said Climate Depot Editor Marc Morano.
“Rather than improve the plight of the developing world through such crucial projects as constructing an Africa-wide electrical grid, environmentalists say significant progress will have to wait until the improvements can be sustainable – meaning that billions will have to remain mired in poverty to ‘save the earth,’” he said. “Having ruled out substantial growth for our destitute brothers and sisters, we are told that we will have to substantially redistribute the wealth of the West to the poor, so that the entire globe can live in a substantially lower (for us) but relatively equal standard of living.
“In other words, forget creating a world with freedom of opportunity, but tilt at Utopian windmills to force equal outcomes: To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability.”
1/5/18 http://www.wnd.com/2018/01/what-bible-says-about-arabian-desert/ WASHINGTON – Science has lots of ideas about the ancient catastrophic climate change that almost all agree occurred to create the world’s biggest desert in Arabia.
There are as many theories about what happened as when it happened.
What’s not very well-known even by Bible scholars is what the Bible says – or at least suggests.
The Book of Isaiah chapter 21:13 references “the forest of Arabia shall ye tarry all night, even in the ways of Dedanites.” The Hebrew word behind the English “forest” is ya’ar, which generally means forest. Most every older Bible translation renders it “forest,” while some modern ones translate it to “desert” or “thicket” – probably because they can’t imagine there was once a forest in Arabia.
Yet, many scientists, including secular ones, are not only acknowledging that as a fact, some are suggesting it could have been so only a few thousand years ago.
That raises the question as to whether it was indeed a forest in the renowned Isaiah’s time. Even more interesting is the fact that another biblical prophet, Jeremiah, who lived about 100 years after Isaiah, has this to say in Jeremiah 3:2-3: “Lift up thine eyes unto the high places, and see where thou hast not been lien with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian in the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness. Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain; and thou hadst a whore’s forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed.”
In other words, Jeremiah, quoting what God spoke to him, wrote that the Arabian forest of Isaiah’s time became a desert because of a Divine judgment. And it’s not the only well-known, sprawling desert in the world that was previously forested.
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Jeremiah suggests rainfall in Arabia stopped in his time or before. Could the destruction of an Arabian forest have occurred only 2,700 years ago? Is this biblical evidence of just such a possibility?
One recent scientific paper suggests there could have been an Arabian forest instead of desert between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago.
It sparked popular news stories with 2015 headlines like this by the BBC: “Arabia was once a lush paradise of grass and woodlands.”
Other scientists are jumping in to support this conclusion, including the idea that there were lakes and rivers in Arabia thousands of years ago.
And others still say the climate change that brought about the Arabian desert occurred over millions and millions of years – not thousands. Some Christian scientists and theologians, however, have long believed what the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah said about the Arabian desert in their times was true. Bodie Hodge, a speaker, writer and researcher for Answers in Genesis, explains why.
“After the Flood, the Earth was obviously well watered,” he told WND.” Regrowth should have been abundant over most of the globe. Furthermore, the heat from which the Lord used to burst the springs/fountains of the great deep (Genesis 7:11), had to be a tremendous heat source. Couple this with continental scale movements, this generates immense heat, warming the oceans. Warm oceans produced more precipitation in the early years after the Flood to continue vegetation growth in places we normally wouldn’t see.”
Hodge continues: “This warming would have been the trend until the ice peaked in the Ice Age, with exceptions of course. Calculations by weather experts like meteorologists Mike Oard and Dr. Larry Vardiman put the peak of the Ice Age at about 500 years after Noah’s Flood. This would have been about 400 years after Babel. At this time, Arabia, the Sahara, Negev, and many other places were likely still highly vegetated. Many science articles have reported on the previously lush regions of Arabia, the Sahara, Negev and even Antarctica.”
Speaking of the Negev, today a vast desert, is also referred to as a forest in the underlying Hebrew in Ezekiel 20:46-48. The prophet ministered in the early 600s B.C., around the same time as Jeremiah and about a century after Isaiah.
While the King James Version of the Bible doesn’t specifically refer to the Negev by name, southern Israel is almost entirely desert today, completely occupied by what we call the Negev or Judean Desert. Here’s what Ezekiel wrote in his time about this vast desert: “Son of man, set thy face toward the south, and drop thy word toward the south, and prophesy against the forest of the south field; And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the Lord; Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein. And all flesh shall see that I the Lord have kindled it: it shall not be quenched.”
According to this account, the Negev went from being a vast forest to becoming a desert because God burned it in judgment.
“At the time of Abraham and Lot, the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea region, where Sodom and Gomorrah were located, were well-watered and lush with vegetation,” said Hodge. “I would suggest some deserts were already forming in Abraham’s day around 2,000 BC, and others much later, including into Isaiah and Jeremiah’s day. Today, the Dead Sea region is very desert-like. Sometimes deserts form relatively quickly. But that takes a significant catastrophe and long-term changes of climate. It makes more sense that deserts form in waves as different areas within the larger forest diminish and as other parts still have sufficient ground water (i.e., the oasis affect) and enough rain to sustain, until further weather changes occur. But the final desertification may take a little time. The Yatir desert in Israel is at the edge of the Negev desert. This shows how one area can be devastated into a desert while an area right next to it can remain lush.”
The specific area mentioned in Jeremiah and Isaiah may pinpoint the precise time for the formation of the desert of Arabia Petraea. Dr. John Gill, commentator and Hebraist in the 1700s, published notes on Isaiah 21:13 along these lines as have other well-known commentators. They all insisted the Arabian forest was no mere grove of trees, or a “thicket,” as some modern translations put it, but a thick wooded forest. Some modern translations have even “corrected” Isaiah by changing the word “forest” to “desert.”
“As Arabia no longer has such a place (a forest), this change had to occur since Isaiah’s day,” says Hodge. “It is reasonable and even scriptural to suggest that it happened within the 100 years to Jeremiah’s day.”
By the way, both Saudi Arabia and Israel are actively reforesting their respective deserts.
11/21/17 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-radiation-levels-986-times-higher-increase-toxic-cloud-power-plant-accident-rumoursrussia-a8066611.html Russian radioactivity recorded 986 times higher than usual as toxic cloud sparks nuclear accident rumours.
Russian officials had previously denied any knowledge of a nuclear accident – but now the country’s meteorological service admits finding traces of an isotope only produced by splitting atoms in a reactor. Russia has said it found “extremely high” concentrations of a radioactive isotope in some parts of the country in September, amid reports of a nuclear accident.
The announcement confirmed findings earlier this month by a French nuclear safety institute, the IRSN, which detected a cloud of radioactivity above Europe.
Russian officials had previously denied any knowledge of a nuclear accident that could have caused the cloud.
The isotope was found in Tatarstan and southern Russia and had reached “all European countries starting in Italy and toward the north of Europe” from 29 September, it said.
The service did not specify where the pollution originated, but a concentration 986 times the natural background level was found at Argayash, a village close to the Russian border with Kazakhstan and around 20 miles from the Mayak nuclear facility.
An explosion at Mayak in 1957 exposed at least 272,000 people to dangerous levels of radiation. Mayak now serves as a site for reprocessing nuclear fuels.
8/10/17 http://www.christianheadlines.com/columnists/breakpoint/a-christian-response-to-science-that-uses-animal-and-human-cells.html One hundred and twenty years ago, H.G. Wells wrote a novel, “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” about what happens when a scientist, in a mad pursuit for knowledge, creates human-animal hybrids. In a word—what happens is chaos. Wells called the book “an exercise in youthful blasphemy.” He may have said the same about the National Institutes of Health today.
The NIH, under the leadership of professing Christian Dr. Francis Collins, is proposing lifting a ban on taxpayer funding of experiments that splice human stem cells with animal embryos, creating human-animal chimeras.
Proponents, of course, downplay any ethical concerns related to creating new life forms using human genetic material—for either the humans or the animals involved. They’re committed to the practical benefits of this kind of research, hoping to create animal models of human diseases in order to prevent and treat illnesses. A more ambitious goal is the production of sheep, pigs, and cows with human hearts, kidneys, livers, and pancreases to use in transplants. Proponents assure us that additional restrictions and ethics panels will prevent hybrid horrors, or chimeras, with too-human brains or with the capacity to breed.
“It’s very, very welcome news that NIH will consider funding this type of research,” says Pablo Ross of the University of California, Davis. “We need funding to be able to answer some very important questions.”
However, if you think such research crosses a moral Rubicon, you wouldn’t be alone. Rod Dreher summarized what is happening in an article with the somewhat hyperbolic title, “Christian-Run Agency Embraces Pig-Man.” “It’s pretty clear,” Dreher wrote, “that this is just a prelude to something that’s a fait accompli. Besides, who is going to stand in the way of Science™ over a trivial matter like basic human dignity?”
8/5/17 http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/08/how-green-energy-will-help-slow-nuclear-proliferation/140006/?oref=d-channeltop Today, renewables can play a similar role. More investment in green energy would create more effective devices with lower price tags, making these technologies easier and easier to use. But if the Trump administration chooses to cede U.S. leadership in clean energy to China, Germany, and other, it will expose America to the security risks of climate change, squander the political and economic dividends paid by the surge of clean energy investments in emerging markets, and miss out on the opportunity to create thousands of well-paying green jobs at home. It will also impede progress towards what could be definitive solution to the problem of nuclear proliferation.
7/12/17 https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15955742/anti-crispr-cas9-protein-acriia4-genome-editing-jennifer-doudna This DNA-mimicking protein can make gene editing more precise and safe
It switches off CRISPR-Cas9’s molecular scissors
Scientists have discovered a virus-made protein that can block the powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 from cutting DNA. The protein allows researchers to better control CRISPR so that it doesn’t snip unintended pieces of genetic code. In the future, the technique could be used to make gene editing more precise — and safe.
The protein, called AcrIIA4, switches gene editing off by mimicking DNA: it basically acts like a decoy, fooling CRISPR’s molecular scissors into thinking they’re cutting actual DNA. Scientists at several institutions — including CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna at the University of California, Berkeley — showed that the protein could reduce undesired gene changes in human blood cells. The findings were published today in the journal Science Advances.
CRISPR-Cas9 is based on a defense mechanism bacteria use to ward off viruses — cutting off bits of viral DNA. Scientists have engineered that naturally occurring mechanism to reorder bits and pieces of the genetic code, and have used it to create unusually muscular beagles, for instance, and mosquitoes that don’t transmit malaria. Recently, scientists have discovered that viruses have their own anti-CRISPR counter-measures: they produce proteins that can turn off that deadly genetic snipping. And now, researchers are trying to use this molecular “arms race” to better control our own tweaked CRISPR systems.
6/29/17 http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/822838/Pesticides-causing-decline-of-honeybees THE world’s most widely used pesticides neonicotinoid causes the long-term decline of both honeybees and wild bees, two new field studies found.
The first pan-European field study near oilseed rape crops treated with the chemical in Germany, Hungary, and the UK found it harmed bees.
The chemicals led to bee population declines by reducing overwintering success of honeybee colonies in Hungary and the UK but not in Germany.
But surprisingly the neonicotinoid contaminated pollen collected by the honeybees came not from crops grown from treated seeds, but plants growing in areas adjacent to those crops.
This suggested the water soluble chemical is washing out to neighbouring untreated fields lingering and contaminating the land.
It also found neonicotinoids became more dangerous when mixed with a common fungicide boscalid making it twice as toxic.
Professor Valerie Fournier of Laval University who collaborated with the York team added: “The effect of neonicotinoids on honey bees quickly turns from bad to worse when you add the fungicide boscalid to the mix
“The researchers found that field realistic levels of boscalid can make neonicotinoids twice as toxic to honeybees.” Both studies were published in the journal Science.
6/2/17 https://sputniknews.com/science/201706021054223104-x-ray-laser-black-hole/ Incredibly Powerful X-Ray Laser Creates ‘Molecular Black Hole’ in Lab.
California physicists fired the most powerful x-ray laser ever constructed at an iodine molecule, tearing the molecule apart in the process – and briefly causing the iodine molecule to exhibit black hole-esque behavior.
The team used Stanford University’s LCLS x-ray laser at the SLAC National Accelerator Observatory. The beam packs unimaginable power: it uses a two-mile-long linear accelerator to generate literally billions of times more power than older lasers.
When you have something that powerful, you want to shoot it at stuff. The physicists used the LCLS laser on a single iodine atom that was bound to a methyl molecule (comprising one carbon and three hydrogen atoms), firing a beam 1,000 times thinner than a human hair at it. They weren’t sure what would happen to such a molecular formation when struck with a laser of this magnitude.
The x-ray radiation stripped away the electrons from the atom, as expected. But the huge amounts of energy hitting the atom caused the iodine to violently pull electrons away from the methyl group to replace the ones it had lost.
The physicists didn’t think that was going to happen, according to study co-author Daniel Rolles at Kansas State University. He compared the iodine atom’s activities to a “molecular black hole” in a Wednesday statement about the experiment.
“The situation we have observed is similar. The high-intensity x-ray pulse causes the iodine atom… to lose a considerable number of its electrons. The highly positively charged iodine atom now behaves like a black hole: It uses its extremely strong electric pull to suck in electrons from the rest of the molecule.”
If it was a black hole, it was one on the smallest possible scale. It involved a single molecule and occurred in a teensy fraction of a time: 30 femtoseconds, or 1/33 trillionth of a second. The force also was an electrochemical pull, rather than the powerful gravity exhibited by black holes in space.
This is a useful and powerful technique, the only problem being that, “when you do [it], you damage the structure you want to look at,” said Rolles. “Our study tries to quantify this radiation damage on the microscopic level.”
Electron theft like this doesn’t happen in nature because of the outrageous amounts of power needed for it to happen. “For any type of experiment you do that focuses intense X-rays on a sample, you want to understand how it reacts to the X-rays,” Rolles said in a press release. “This paper shows that we can understand and model the radiation damage in small molecules, so now we can predict what damage we will get in other systems.”
5/20/17 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/this-isnt-a-cicada-year-so-why-are-they-now-showing-up-across-the-mid-atlantic/2017/05/19/51c00890-3bef-11e7-a058-ddbb23c75d82_story.html?utm_term=.8e2d69cf8030 Cicadas overwhelm tree branches across the Mid-Atlantic once every 17 years, like clockwork. But something — some suspect it’s climate change — could be sounding their alarm clocks four years early.
In recent days, the red-eyed, nugget-shaped insects have been spotted crawling out from beneath trees from Northern Virginia to Bel Air, Md., in large — though not overwhelming — numbers. The phenomenon is confusing entomologists, who weren’t expecting to see many of the screeching insects in the region until 2021.
Small numbers of cicadas can sometimes grow fast enough to emerge four years early. But there were 1,000 reports of cicadas up and down the Interstate 95 corridor on just two recent days, more than scientists expected.
Cicada lovers are wondering whether the numerous reports are simply a sign of how easy the Internet has made it to track the periodic rite of spring — or whether climate change is nudging more cicadas to venture aboveground early.
Scientists are asking residents to help them figure it out, using online reporting tools that didn’t exist during earlier cicada cycles. They’re collecting reports of cicada activity, which could continue for the next month, and also memories of how those conditions compare to past cicada seasons.
The data could help scientists investigate what is, for now, just a hypothesis: that longer growing seasons linked to climate change may have shortened the life cycle of many 17-year cicadas and could end up creating new cycles of timekeeping broods.
“You could see many more individuals coming out four years early, and eventually those could become so numerous that they’re self-reproducing,” said Chris Simon, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut.
Cicada swarms are impossible to miss when they arrive in earnest every 17 years, numbering in the billions or trillions, according to Mike Raupp, an entomologist at the University of Maryland at College Park.
A group known as Brood X last covered tree branches — and eventually sidewalks — across Maryland in 2004. A separate class, Brood VI, is now blanketing parts of the Carolinas and Georgia.
Cicadas spend nearly all of their lives underground, feeding on tree roots. Scientists suggest they have some sort of biological clock that counts the trees’ annual cycles of growth and hibernation. Once it hits 13 or 17 years, they emerge to reproduce, then die within about a month.
It is thought the cycles give the cicadas a biological advantage, rarely lining up with cyclical peaks in the numbers of their predators.
But scientists say there are always small subsets of the 17-year cicada broods that don’t wait the full cycle before emerging. These experts think cicadas “count” in fours, and if they are big enough after 13 years, some crawl out sooner.
It’s possible that climate change is helping more of them grow faster, Simon said.
“If the conditions are really good, then a lot of them will come out,” she said. “The longer the growing season, the higher the chance that a very large number will be ready four years early.”
Entomologists began crowdsourcing cicada sightings from across the country about a decade ago at Magicicada.org — a site whose name references periodical cicadas’ biological genus. The reports provide richly detailed data points mapping the density and breadth of 15 distinct cicada broods across the eastern United States.
But this is the first chance they have to so closely monitor Brood X. The last time any members of that brood emerged early was in 2000, so data is more anecdotal and localized.
It’s still early in the season to get a good gauge of the insects’ numbers. They don’t emerge until soil reaches 64 degrees, so entomologists expect more to come out as temperatures surge into the 80s and 90s.
5/11/17 https://sputniknews.com/environment/201705111053482058-ocean-oxygen-levels-rapidly-lowering/ New research on the deoxygenation of the world’s oceans has found that levels are dropping at unnerving speed, and seemingly faster than the corresponding rise in water temperature.
It’s a basic fact of chemistry: cold water holds dissolved oxygen better than warm water.
Heat agitates molecules, spacing them out and allowing oxygen (which is lighter than water) to escape, while cold water holds its oxygen in better. Dissolved oxygen makes water more conducive to life, which is why icy arctic waters teem with fish while clear tropical waters are comparatively barren.
A warming ocean leads to a release of dissolved oxygen, which is bad for oceanic life – and for humans who rely on the ocean for food. In 2013, marine scientists claimed that oxygen levels in the oceans could fall between 1 and 7 percent by 2100.
4/7/17 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-dobson-/issues-paris-climate-agreement_b_8482406.html
A recent UN expert dialogue of more than 70 scientists, experts and climate negotiators led to a report that confirmed that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees remains technically possible, and that — surprise! — keeping temperature rise as low as possible was a good idea. The question, therefore, is very simple: how much warming are you comfortable with?
While carbon budgets are calculated estimates rather than definitive numbers, they do provide a very useful way to translate the idea of “limit warming to 1.5 degrees” into a concrete message that the global energy system can understand and respond to — and budgets are being calculated with ever-increasing rigor and specificity. If we are going to have an agreement that sets out clearly the changes we need to make, therefore, it would be a good idea to include a global carbon budget. Right?
Well, almost. While setting out a precise budget in terms of GHG emissions seems unlikely, the G7 countries, in a communique earlier this year, voiced support for IPCC recommendations of a 40-70 percent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions below 2010 levels by 2050, and a “decarbonization” of the global economy over the course of this century. While the current draft text contains an option that includes these targets, it also includes a competing option, which simply states:
Parties aim to reach long-term global low-emission transformation, in the context of sustainable development and equitable access to atmospheric space.
That’s it — no percentage reductions, no timetable to achieve them and nothing stronger than a statement that parties “aim to reach” a low-emission transformation over the long term. Despite many countries (and businesses) recognizing the importance of a concrete, long-term emissions goal, it remains possible that the final agreement will only include this vague acknowledgement that reducing emissions, by some indeterminate amount at some indeterminate point in the future would be a nice idea.
4. Are we seriously not going to update our emissions targets again until 2025
The agreement adopted in Paris will not take effect until 2020, and many countries’ current plans contain targets they won’t need to achieve until 2030. Now, the consequences of climate change appear to be continuously getting worse faster than anyone expected, and the cost of renewable energy alternatives like wind and solar are continuously getting cheaper, faster. So it might be useful to get everyone back to the table before 2020 to consider the adequacy of targets countries have set and possibly to update them. Paragraph 18 of the draft agreement has two options that reflect this:
Option 1: [Decides][Invites the President of the COP] to convene a facilitative dialogue among Parties to take stock of the collective efforts of Parties in [2018][2019] in relation to progress towards the long-term goal referred to in Article 3, paragraph 1 of the Agreement, and in order to inform the preparation of intended nationally determined commitments pursuant to Article 3, paragraph 6, of the Agreement;]
Option 2: No such facilitative dialogue prior to 2020.
Options don’t get much clearer than this! Whether or not large international “dialogues” are an effective way of addressing something like climate change, the political attention on the Paris meeting this year has seen more than 150 countries, which account for more than 85 percent of global emissions, submit national plans to combat global warming — an unprecedented level of international buy-in. The targets are, by general agreement, not strong enough, and an international dialogue in 2018 or 2019 would provide an excellent opportunity to strengthen them.
So is it a good idea to include a provision in the upcoming agreement that ensures such a dialogue be scheduled for a few years from now?
Governments prefer secrecy — true enough, but one should add that indifference, distraction and cynicism can do the same job just as well. But if ever there was a moment that cried out for a comprehensive, informed, global conversation — across borders, platforms and vernaculars — then surely, this is it. Every word, number and comma of this agreement will be fought over in the next two months, and every word, number and comma will matter.
4/4/17 http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/787836/Mediterranean-sea-creatures-disappearing-shocking-rate-extinction Over the past 50 years, almost half the sea’s mammals have been lost along with more than a third of its fish population.
Experts say that 93 per cent of the fish stocks are exploited, with several on the verge of depletion.
Only a few months after an “obituary” was written for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef because of coral loss, the planet’s most used and abused sea is now in a parlous state.
A new report by scientists from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) warns that although as many as 12,000 marine species inhabit the Mediterranean its “extraordinary biodiversity is in grave danger” as it is threatened by pollution, climate change and overfishing.
The JRC, the EC’s science and knowledge service with experts to carry out research to provide independent scientific advice and support to EU policy, is warning these pressures might push the Mediterranean ecosystem “beyond the point of no return” and says delays could cause the collapse of key fishing stocks.
Looking at historical changes in the sea’s “food web”, scientists have concluded it has lost 41 per cent of the marine mammals and 34 per cent of the total amount of fish since the mid-1960s.
Largest reductions were in the Western Mediterranean and Adriatic Sea with 50 per cent declines. The loss was far less in the Ionian Sea.
A report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature – guardians of the Red List of endangered species – painted a worrying picture of the Mediterranean’s marine mammals five years ago, warning that six of the nine resident species were threatened with extinction.
The most critically endangered is the monk seal with as few as 350 individuals, while the sperm whale and short-beaked common dolphin were also revealed as being in danger of dying out.
Fin whale, bottlenose dolphin and striped dolphin were classed as vulnerable.
4/3/17 https://sputniknews.com/science/201703041051253549-new-matter-form-supersolid-laboratory/ What did you do at work today? If you are a physicist, you might have invented a new state of matter. Working independently, teams at MIT and ETH Zurich simultaneously announced that they have both synthesized a supersolid, a state of matter previously thought to be hypothetical. Supersolids combine properties of solids with superfluids.
4/3/17 https://sputniknews.com/asia/201703041051253985-robots-cannot-handle-fukushima-radiation/ Radiation from the failed reactors at Fukushima is causing clean-up robots to malfunction and fail. Naohiro Masuda, head of decommissioning for Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the plant’s operator, has called for the robots to be redesigned so they can withstand the lethal conditions inside the nuclear power plant.
In the aftermath of a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami in 2011, three of Fukushima’s six reactors suffered a meltdown, forcing nearly 100,000 people living nearby to be relocated. Roughly 19,000 people were recorded as killed or missing in the disaster.
In the largest nuclear incident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, radiation levels are so high that every robot sent to examine the site has failed.
Last month one of these robots aborted its mission after it was blocked by what appeared to be deposits of debris and melted fuel. There have been at least two similar incidents in the past, with one robot abandoned after not being able to find fuel for several days, and another failing after falling into a gap.
3/4/17 https://sputniknews.com/environment/201703041051254698-un-global-extinction-event-biodiversity/ A United Nations expert on human rights and the environment has warned that human activity is well on its way to causing a global extinction event that will harm humans and animals equally.
John H. Knox, professor of international law with Wake Forest University, and UN Special Rapporteur, is set to formally present a report to the United Nations Humans Rights Council on March 7. Ahead of that, he has spoken at length about how “The rapid loss of biological diversity around the world should be setting off alarm bells.”
2/16/17 http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/oceans-are-losing-oxygen-posing-growing-threats-to-marine-life-research-says-20170215-gue13s.html The amount of oxygen in oceans around the world has declined, a long-predicted result of climate change, scientists have revealed.
Research, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, found a decline of more than 2 per cent in ocean oxygen content worldwide between 1960 and 2010.
This could have severe consequences for marine organisms if it continues, warned oceanographer Dr Sunke Schmidtko, who conducted the research with Lothar Stramma and Martin Visbeck, all from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany.
However, the loss showed up in some ocean basins more than others. The largest overall volume of oxygen was lost in the largest ocean – the Pacific – but as a percentage, the decline was sharpest in the Arctic Ocean, a region facing Earth’s starkest climate change.
When it comes to ocean deoxygenation, as climate change continues, this trend should also increase – studies suggest a loss of up to 7 per cent of the ocean’s oxygen by 2100. At the end of the current paper, the researchers are blunt about the consequences of a continuing loss of oceanic oxygen.
“Far-reaching implications for marine ecosystems and fisheries can be expected,” they write.
2/6/17 http://conservativetribune.com/scientist-global-warming-fraud/ A high-level whistleblower at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently disclosed that the organization published falsified data in a 2015 climate change report to influence world leaders who met at the United Nations climate conference in Paris in the same year.
John Bates, a top NOAA scientist, said in an interview with the U.K. Daily Mail that the agency violated its integrity when it claimed that a slowdown in global warming since 1998 never existed and that world temperatures had been increasing faster than scientists expected.
The NOAA 2015 report, titled “Possible Artifacts of Data Biases in the Recent Global Surface Warming Hiatus,” was based on two new sets of temperature data that were never subjected to the organization’s evaluation process, a process Bates devised.
12/2/16 http://www.wnd.com/2016/12/feds-to-spend-27-billion-on-global-warming-in-2017/ Gov’t Spends $27 Billion Annually On Global Warming — How Much Will Trump Cut?
By Andrew Follett
Reprinted with permission of the Daily Caller News Foundation
President-elect Donald Trump said he’s looking to cut back federal global warming programs, which he claims are hurting U.S. competitiveness.
He’s got a lot of work ahead of him: Federal agencies plan to spend $27 billion on global warming-related programs next year.
The White House reported to House Republicans that 18 federal agencies combined spend about $22 billion on global warming activities in 2013, but this defined global warming much more narrowly than the agencies themselves.
Federal agencies want to spend $12 billion on global warming programs in 2017, according to Salon, but the left-wing news site only factored in six of 18 agencies with such programs. The government plans to spend closer to $27 billion on global warming.
The Department of Energy planned to spend $8.5 billion next year on global warming-related research on energy efficiency, basic science and energy research.
The Department of the Interior would have spent another $1.1 billion supporting climate research, teaching students about global warming, and managing landscapes for “climate resilience.”
The Department of State plans to spend $1 billion on global warming programs, and EPA wants to spent about $1.1 billion as well.
The National Science Foundation dedicates about $1 billion of its 2017 budget to global warming. Other agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) spend more than a hundred million dollars on global warming, which ultimately accounted for about $12 billion reported by Salon.
NASA’s budget includes more than $2 billion for global warming and earth science, which is specifically allocated to improve climate modeling, weather prediction and natural hazard mitigation.
In comparison, NASA’s other functions, such as astrophysics and space technology, are only getting a mere $781.5 and $826.7 million, respectively, in the 2017 budget proposal.
President Barack Obama sent first $500 million of a $3 billion pledge to United Nation’s Green Climate Fund in March. The fund is supposed to help countries fight global warming.
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1/3/17 http://www.wnd.com/2017/01/report-on-arctic-sea-ice-unleashes-shock-waves/ A posting at Real Climate Science has delivered a body blow to the global-warming agenda – now called “climate change” since the globe doesn’t appear to be warming any more.
It shows the Arctic sea ice today is about the same thickness as it was 75 years ago.
That’s despite the massive spread of SUVs, the use of coal-fired power plants to generate heat for homes and gasoline-powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers.
The posting Tuesday from Steven Goddard, blogs under the pseudonym Tony Heller, featured the image of a 1940 Townsville Daily Bulletin report that “ice measurements were on an average only 6 ½ feet,” according to a just-returned expedition of Soviet explorers.
The blogger noted that in 1940, Arctic sea ice was two meters thick.
Then, alongside a posting of a New York Times image stating the ice was “only about seven feet thick” in 1958, he wrote it was “about two meters thick” then.
And he posted an image from the Danish Meteorological Institute, dated Monday, that shows much of the Arctic sea ice cover was some two meters thick or more.
12/20/16 http://www.upi.com/Science_News/latest/ ST. LOUIS, Dec. 19 (UPI) — New research undermines the consensus explanation for the Younger Dryas period, an interval of rapid cooling beginning 12,900 years ago. Scientists have previously hypothesized that the impact of one or more comets triggered the period.
The Younger Dryas period was one of several interruptions in the graduation warming of Earth’s climate after the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, 27,000 years ago. For roughly 15 millennia prior the the Younger Dryas period, Earth’s ice caps slowly receded and temperatures gradually rose. But 12,900 years ago, temperatures plunged once more.
Previous studies have pointed to a series of impact-derived nanodiamonds sourced from sediment dated to the beginning of the Younger Dryas as proof of the prevailing hypothesis. Other studies have detailed supposed evidence of continent-spanning wildfires caused by a massive, climate-changing impact.
But a pair of new studies, both published in the Journal of Quaternary Science, refute the evidence.
“Impact proponents report the rare form of diamond, lonsdaleite, that is usually associated with shock processing; however, we show that they misidentified polycrystalline aggregates of graphene and graphane as lonsdaleite,” Tyrone Daulton, lead author of one of the two papers, said in a news release. “Further, we show that the nanodiamond concentration measurements reported by impact proponents are critically flawed. There is no evidence for a spike in the nanodiamond concentration at the onset of the Younger Dryas to suggest that an impact event occurred.”
“The idea of a Younger Dryas impact was an interesting one that has drawn much attention; however, increasingly methodological research over the past few years has failed to corroborate that story,” added Andrew Scott, lead author of the second paper. “Our research has shown that many of the markers for such an event have been misinterpreted or misidentified.”
12/11/16 http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/742289/El-Nino-La-Nina-temperature-drop-global-warming-climate-change Global COOLING: World temperature DROPS as spikes NOT caused by man, scientists claim
AVERAGE global temperature has dropped after the natural weather warming phenomenon El Nino came to an end.
Met Office Hadcrut4 data has shown about a 0.5C drop in average surface temperatures between the spring and the end of October.
The fall in temperature coincided with the end of the El Nino effect, and start of the cooling La Nina effect.
El Nino is a natural weather cycle which happens every few years and causes sea water in the Pacific Ocean to rise by as much as 3C.
Climate change sceptics claim the latest El Nino, which began in 2015, was the reason for that year being the hottest on record, rather than man-made carbon emissions causing long-term global warming.
Science is divided over whether climate change from man-mad carbon emissions have heated the planet enough to mean that unnatural global warming also contributed to the record temperatures seen during the El Nino in 2015 and the first half of this year.
Dr Gavin Schmidt, head of Nasa’s climate division, says human-caused global warming is the primary factor.
He said 2015 would have been declared the record hottest year ever even if the El Nino had not taken place.
12/08/16 http://www.upi.com/Science_News/latest (UPI) — Scientists already knew soil in wet climes is generally acidic, while soil in dry climes is generally alkaline. But in the process of creating a global soil pH map, scientists realized the distinction was surprisingly stark.
12/2/16 http://www.wnd.com/2016/12/feds-to-spend-27-billion-on-global-warming-in-2017/ Gov’t Spends $27 Billion Annually On Global Warming — How Much Will Trump Cut?
By Andrew Follett
Reprinted with permission of the Daily Caller News Foundation
President-elect Donald Trump said he’s looking to cut back federal global warming programs, which he claims are hurting U.S. competitiveness.
He’s got a lot of work ahead of him: Federal agencies plan to spend $27 billion on global warming-related programs next year.
The White House reported to House Republicans that 18 federal agencies combined spend about $22 billion on global warming activities in 2013, but this defined global warming much more narrowly than the agencies themselves.
Federal agencies want to spend $12 billion on global warming programs in 2017, according to Salon, but the left-wing news site only factored in six of 18 agencies with such programs. The government plans to spend closer to $27 billion on global warming.
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The Department of Energy planned to spend $8.5 billion next year on global warming-related research on energy efficiency, basic science and energy research.
The Department of the Interior would have spent another $1.1 billion supporting climate research, teaching students about global warming, and managing landscapes for “climate resilience.”
The Department of State plans to spend $1 billion on global warming programs, and EPA wants to spent about $1.1 billion as well.
The National Science Foundation dedicates about $1 billion of its 2017 budget to global warming. Other agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) spend more than a hundred million dollars on global warming, which ultimately accounted for about $12 billion reported by Salon.
NASA’s budget includes more than $2 billion for global warming and earth science, which is specifically allocated to improve climate modeling, weather prediction and natural hazard mitigation.
In comparison, NASA’s other functions, such as astrophysics and space technology, are only getting a mere $781.5 and $826.7 million, respectively, in the 2017 budget proposal.
President Barack Obama sent first $500 million of a $3 billion pledge to United Nation’s Green Climate Fund in March. The fund is supposed to help countries fight global warming.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
11/27/16 http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/27/brown-water-beaver-battle-among-early-signs-water-woes-across-southeast.html ATLANTA – Beaver dams have been demolished, burbling fountains silenced, and the drinking water in one southern town has taken on the light brownish color of sweet tea.
Though water shortages have yet to drastically change most people’s lifestyles, southerners are beginning to realize that they’ll need to save their drinking supplies with no end in sight to an eight-month drought.
11/17/16 http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/733488/Reindeer-tragedy-80000-starve-death-catastrophe-linked-CLIMATE-CHANGE UP TO 80,000 reindeer starved to death in cruel twists of nature during the countdown to Christmas.
The iconic animals were left helpless when heavy rains froze over tundra pastures and left them locked away from their precious fodder by thick layers of ice.
Twice in recent years the reindeer have suffered major catastrophes by Arctic events that are now being linked to climate change.
New research reported by Oxford University reveals how nomadic reindeer herders in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug of West Siberia are also suffering because of early winter heavy rains.
Rain on snow in spring has no real impact on the balance of life in the harsh Arctic conditions but becomes disastrous in the autumn when it is turned into a thick, icy crust as temperatures plunge.
By looking at two reindeer catastrophes in 2006 and 2013, researchers have been able to chart how the thick ice crusts caused by these heavy rains are linked to sea ice loss in the nearby Barents and Kara Seas.
A paper published in the journal, Biology Letters, reveals scientists combined empirical data and modelling from the 2006 and 2013 heavy rain events that left them believing they were likely triggered by sea ice thinning in early November.
11/17/16 http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/17/13654424/plants-carbon-dioxide-global-warming-photosynthesis-climate-change Good news for those despairing at our rapidly warming planet: we can supercharge plants to help fight the effects of climate change. Scientists have found two ways to make plants better at turning carbon dioxide into energy — and these techniques could help plants help uscreate better biofuels and produce more food to save the world.
Two studies published today in Science show different ways that beefing up the process by which plants create energy — called carbon fixation, or photosynthesis — could lead to a better future. In one, scientists decided that the entire process of carbon fixation was too slow and created a new, and faster, cycle. In the other, researchers engineered plants so they could absorb more sunlight. These enhanced plants grew up to 20 percent bigger, which is a big deal for food supply.
Plants are some of our best allies in the climate change fight. Global warming happens because of too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and we add C02 through activities like burning fossil fuels for energy. Because plants absorb carbon dioxide, they suck up some of the extra C02 in the air and can even buy us extra time on global warming. But photosynthesis isn’t as efficient as it could be, so scientists are teaching plants how to do their jobs better to make our own lives easier. There may be other benefits besides locking down carbon: better plant growth means more food for a booming human population.
To make carbon fixation happen, organisms use molecules called enzymes. But the main enzyme doesn’t work very fast, says Tobias Erb, a synthetic biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology who is a co-author of one of the Science papers.
His team decided that they could design a way to make the process happen more quickly. They spent years figuring out which combination of enzymes would work together to get the job done. In the end, a combination of 17 enzymes fit the bill. These enzymes come from nine organisms (including e. coli bacteria and the human liver). Three of the enzymes were designed using a computer; that’s how delicate the balance is. When these enzymes are combined together, they can turn carbon dioxide into organic compounds better than plants and other organisms currently do.
This work is in very early stages — that is, inside a tube, because it hasn’t been tested in actual living organisms. In theory, it should work on all organisms that do photosynthesis because the cycle is the same for all of them. But in practice, things can get tricky. Think of the process like a heart transplant, says Erb. When you transplant a heart, you first have to suppress the immune system so that the body doesn’t reject the new organ. To transplant this new pathway into plants, Erb’s team also has to tinker with all the other plant processes — such as its metabolism — to make sure everything still works. “This paper is really pushing the technical boundaries,” says Christine Raines, a biologist at the University of Essex. “You’re designing a completely new pathway, and the big question is whether it’ll hold up in living organisms, but this is an interesting proof of concept.”
Plants are very complex, so Erb’s team will first focus on bacteria and algae, which also undergo carbon fixation. “The idea is first to create organisms that can make any compound from carbon dioxide — like making biofuels more efficient or making chemical building blocks for pharmaceuticals,” says Erb.
Instead of creating a new photosynthetic process entirely, you could take a shortcut by making plants’ existing energy processes more efficient, says Krishna Niyogi, a UC Berkeley biologist also affiliated with the Howard Hughes Medical Center and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He is the co-author of a separate study on photosynthesis.
The United Nations already said that we’re going to need to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 to feed everyone, and climate change is likely to cause food shortages. If this method becomes widely adapted, it could help us produce a lot more food without needing more land.
11/14/16 http://news.sky.com/story/how-simple-economics-could-change-trumps-attitude-to-climate-change-10657832 The warmest year on record and a climate sceptic elected to the White House; you would have every reason to be gloomy about the planet’s future.
The latest figures from the World Meteorological Organization show global temperatures are likely to be 1.2C above pre-industrial levels this year.
That is perilously close to the 1.5C that many scientists argue is the point where the climate starts to become unstable.
Of course one record-breaking year may be a fluke.
But the ten warmest years have all been since 1997 – a trend that points the finger at human activity.
There is some hope from another batch of figures, these from the Global Carbon Project.
They suggest carbon emissions have levelled off. For the third year in a row they have been around 36.4 billion tonnes.
It is the result of the slowing Chinese economy and a switch from coal to gas in the US.
But it is still a massive amount of carbon.
To stop the rise in global temperature emissions need to fall to zero over the coming decades. There is a long way to go.
Enter Donald Trump.
The US President-elect says climate change is a Chinese hoax designed to damage the US economy.
He says he will unpick the international climate deal agreed in Paris and revive the US coal industry.
It is the nightmare for climate scientists. But simple economics may actually win the day.
The price of power from wind and the sun is falling rapidly. Soon it will be cheaper to build windfarms than burn fossil fuels.
So while Donald Trump the President may huff and puff about climate change, Donald Trump the businessman will see the sense of leaving oil and gas in the ground.
Perhaps there are reasons to be cheerful about the planet’s future after all.
11/13/16 http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/11/13/John-Kerry-US-to-advance-climate-change-pact-before-Donald-Trump-takes-office/2811479058905/ WELLINGTON, New Zealand, Nov. 13 (UPI) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry vowed to do “everything possible” to keep intact the international climate change agreement despite threats from President-elect Donald Trump to scrap the accord.
Kerry, speaking in New Zealand before traveling to Morocco to participate in climate talks, said he will not speculate on Trump administration plans for the historic deal, which requires participating countries to limit global warming temperatures to 3.7 degree F above pre-industrial levels and a move away from fossil fuels.
“I believe the evidence is clear, and the question now that we, this administration, are going to continue to address is how we will implement the Paris Agreement,” he said. “And until January 20th when this administration is over, we intend to do everything possible to meet our responsibility to future generations to be able to address this threat to life itself on the planet.”
“We will wait to see how the next administration addresses this, but I believe we’re on the right track, and this is a track that the American people are committed to because the majority of the American people believe climate change is, in fact, happening and want to see us address it,” he added.
Trump, who has called global warming a hoax, derided Environmental Protection Agency policies under the Obama administration as “a disgrace.” Trump has promised to back out of the Paris agreement, which has been ratified by 109 countries so far.
Trump has tapped Myron Ebell, a climate change denier, to head the EPA into the new administration.
11/11/16 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_ANTARCTICA_JOHN_KERRY_ASOL-?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-11-11-15-28-19 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry didn’t comment on President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory on Friday while visiting Antarctica, but did say that citizens who care about limiting emissions might have to march in the streets to push for more aggressive action.
Kerry became the highest-ranking American official to visit Antarctica when he landed for a two-day trip. He’s been hearing from scientists about the impact of climate change on the frozen continent.
Trump has called climate change a hoax and said he would “cancel” U.S. involvement in the landmark Paris Agreement on global warming.
“We need to get more of a movement going,” Kerry said when addressing several hundred scientists and staff at an evening event at McMurdo Station, the large base which is the hub for U.S. operations. “We need to get more people to engage.”
Kerry said there was a risk that much of Antarctica’s ice will eventually flow into the ocean, raising sea levels worldwide.
Kerry plans to fly next week to the Middle East for talks, and then onward to a global climate conference in Morocco, where he will give a major speech.
11/08/16 https://sputniknews.com/environment/201611081047167736-high-global-temps-new-normal/ A new research paper drafted by Australian scientists states that if our planet’s current carbon-emission trends continue to rise, “the hottest year on record globally in 2015 could be just another average year by 2025.”
The document was released the same day as the Paris Climate Change Agreement, a pact signed by the 193 UN member states to lower global emissions, comes into effect. It also reported that regardless of what action is taken, a “new normal” for average global temperatures is already firmly in place.
On Thursday UN Environment head Erik Solheim released a statement warning, “If we don’t start taking additional action now, beginning with the upcoming climate meeting in Marrakech, we will grieve over the avoidable human tragedy. The growing numbers of climate refugees hit by hunger, poverty, illness and conflict will be a constant reminder of our failure to deliver. The science shows that we need to move much faster.”
11/04/16 http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/728879/paris-agreement-climate-change-what-is-how THE Paris Agreement on climate change enters into force today, marking a historic step by world leaders to tackle global warming. The agreement is a landmark accord that aims to “significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”.
It was signed in December 2015 by world leaders from countries including the UK, China and the US.
The agreement has been hailed as a “hugely important achievement” by Lord Turner, former head of the Government’s advisory committee on climate change.
UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa and Salaheddine Mezouar, the foreign minister of Morocco, said in a joint statement: “Humanity will look back on November 4, 2016 as the day that countries of the world shut the door on inevitable climate disaster and set off with determination towards a sustainable future.” Each of the 195 signatories has committed to keep global warming below 2C and ideally below 1.5C.
Scientists believe that should global warming exceed 2C climate change will become irreversible and catastrophic.
In order to achieve the goal, leaders have pledged to cut greenhouse emissions as soon as possible.
There is an ambitious aim to offset the gases created since 2000, with a goal of zero net emissions this century.
11/04/16 http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/11/04/Ocean-glider-sets-sail-on-longest-journey-of-its-kind/4531478270809/?spt=inf&or=1 FREMANTLE, Australia, Nov. 4 (UPI) — An ocean glider named Challenger set sail for Sri Lanka on Friday, departing the Western Australia port of Fremantle on the longest attempted journey by an autonomous underwater vehicle.
The glider was designed and built by a team of researchers at the University of Western Australia. Its journey from Fremantle to Galle, Sri Lanka will take roughly 12 months. If successful, the mini sub will attempt to circumnavigate the rim of the Indian Ocean, a two-year endeavor.
Challenger is designed to travel in a saw-tooth fashion, zig-zagging at a pace of roughly 15 to 20 miles per day, or a little less than a mile per hour. Along the way, the glider will collect a variety of ocean data, including current, temperature and salinity measurements.
Researchers hope the data will give them a better grasp on climate change’s affects on the ocean.
“We want to collect data across the ocean basins and see how the temperature and salinity changes with depth,” Charitha Pattiaratchi, a professor of coastal oceanography at UWA, said in a news release. “We are then able to compare previous measurements taken 40 years ago and see how the ocean has changed.”
10/27/16 http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/725482/Global-mass-extinction-fears-global-wildlife-populations-plummet Global wildlife populations are set to have fallen by more than two thirds on 1970 levels by the end of the decade.
Assessment of 14,152 populations of 3,706 species of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles from around the world reveals a 58 per cent fall between 1970 and 2012 – with no sign that the average two per cent drop in numbers each year will slow.
By 2020, populations of vertebrate species could have fallen by 67 per cent over a 50-year period unless action is taken to reverse the damaging impacts of human activity, the Living Planet report from WWF and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) said.
10/26/16 http://www.timesofisrael.com/5-4-magnitude-earthquake-rattles-central-italy-rome/ 5.4-magnitude earthquake rattles central Italy, Rome
Centuries-old buildings shake in capital, two months after devastating quake destroyed Amatrice and nearby towns10/17/16 http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/10/17/New-Zealand-plankton-blooms-proof-of-global-warmings-oceanic-effects/9991476711078/?spt=hts&or=5
Blooms of coccolithophores off the eastern shores of New Zealand turn the seas a milky green. Photo by Jeff Schmaltz/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team/NASA/GSFC
WELLINGTON, New Zealand, Oct. 17 (UPI) — During coccolithophore blooms, the algae’s calcium-derived exoskeletons turn the ocean water a milky white. The microorganism’s proliferation can often be seen from space.
Satellites passing over New Zealand in recent months have documented a series of coccolithophore blooms off the island nation’s east coast. According to a new study published in the journal Global and Planetary Change, coccolithophore blooms and the microfossils they leave behind offer evidence of global warming’s oceanic effects.
10/15/16 http://www.timesofisrael.com/world-envoys-reach-deal-to-phase-out-super-greenhouse-gases/ US hails move to combat global warming as ‘one of the most important in our effort to save the one planet we have.’ “Last year in Paris, we promised to keep the world safe from the worst effects of climate change. Today, we are following through on that promise,” said UN Environment Programme (UNEP) chief Erik Solheim.
The US Environmental Protection Agency said, “this day will unquestionably be remembered as one of the most important in our effort to save the one planet we have.”
Under a timetable released on the website of the Montreal Protocol, rich will have to take action sooner than poorer nations.
10/14/16 http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/10/14/Australian-government-Great-Barrier-Reef-22-percent-dead/5951476472188/?spt=inf&or=1 CANBERRA, Australia, Oct. 14 (UPI) — A significant portion of coral on the Great Barrier Reef has died, the Australian government announced as its assessment of the area entered its second phase.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority began its follow-up investigation into the extent of coral bleaching in early October. The project aims to analyze the level of damage caused by the worst mass bleaching event on record.
An initial survey of the landmark revealed 22 percent of coral on the reef died as a result of exposure. Officials report 85 percent of this mortality occurred in the area between Cape York and Lizard Island.
Average coral reef mortality was found to be 50 percent in the Far Northern Management Area, 16 percent in the Cairns-Cooktown Management Area, and 3 percent in the Townsville-Whitsunday Management Area. No bleaching-induced deaths were found south of Mackay.
Officials note studies were completed in the Cairns-Cooktown Management Area in March, and mortality levels are likely higher than initially recorded.
Mass bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef has been linked to a sharp uptick in coral reef deaths. Australian researchers used a microscope, camera and smart tablet to examine how organisms in the area responded to the heat stress in August, marking the first time behaviors specific to bleaching were captured on film.
News of the coral deaths and subsequent investigation come as scientists refute viral claims the Great Barrier Reef has “died.” While experts concede the extent of the damage is severe, they note a large portion of the area remains intact.
10/14/16 http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/10/14/Australian-government-Great-Barrier-Reef-22-percent-dead/5951476472188/?spt=inf&or=1 TROY, N.Y., Oct. 14 (UPI) — A comet strike may have triggered a rapid global warming event roughly 56 million years ago, investigators at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute suggest.
10/09/16 http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/719307/Making-a-hill-out-of-mountain?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+daily-express-uk-news+%28Daily+Express+%3A%3A+UK+Feed%29 SOME of Scotland’s best-known mountains face being downgraded because of rising sea levels. Coastal waters have risen by up to a foot over the past century, meaning peaks could be reclassified as they are no longer high enough above sea level.
Beinn Teallach, near Fort William, could lose its status as a Munro – a mountain at least 3,000ft above sea level.
It would be demoted to a Corbett, a peak between 2,500 and 3,000 feet.
Mark Greaves, of mapping agency the Ordnance Survey, said: “If mean sea levels continue to rise, then the heights of hills would drop by the same amount and some hills would cease to be mountains.”
10/07/16 http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/10/07/Earthquakes-can-penetrate-deeper-than-previously-thought/2811475869172/?spt=inf&or=1 LOS ANGELES, Oct. 7 (UPI) –Scientists have found evidence of seismic activity at depths of 15 miles beneath Earth’s surface, proof that earthquakes can penetrate much deeper than previously thought. The findings, detailed in the journal Science, have implications for earthquake prediction and risk assessment models. Newport-Inglewood fault, or NIF..
10/07/16 http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Opinion/2016/10/07/A-military-view-on-climate-change-Its-eroding-our-national-security/9901475861044/ Climate change affects our security in two ways. First, it causes stresses such as water shortages and crop failures, which can exacerbate or inflame existing tensions within or between states. These problems can lead to state failure, uncontrolled migration and ungoverned spaces.
On Sept. 21, the National Intelligence Council issued its most recent report on implications of climate change for U.S. national security. This document represents the U.S. intelligence community’s strategic-level view. It does not come from theIntergovermental Panel on Climate Change, politicians of either party or an advocacy group, but from nonpartisan, senior U.S. intelligence professionals.
The NIC report emphasizes that the problem is not simply climate change, but the interaction of climate with other large-scale demographic and migration trends; its impacts on food, energy and health; and the stresses it will place on societies, especially fragile ones.
Simultaneously with the NIC report on Sept. 21, the White House released aPresidential Memorandum, or PM, on climate change and national security. This document formally states the administration’s position that climate change impacts national security.
Building on past executive orders and policies, it directs senior climate officials at 20 federal agencies to form a working group on climate change and national security, cochaired by the president’s national security adviser and science adviser. This working group will analyze questions such as which countries and regions are most vulnerable to climate change impacts in the near, medium and long term.
The next president will have a choice to make. One option is to continue down the path that the Obama administration has defined and develop policies, budgets, plans and programs that flesh out the institutional framework now in place. Alternatively, he or she can call climate change a hoax manufactured by foreign governments and ignore the flashing red lights of increasing risk.
The world’s ice caps will not care who is elected or what is said. They will simply continue to melt, as dictated by laws of physics. But Americans will care deeply about our policy response. Our nation’s security is at stake.
10/05/16 http://themeshreport.com/2016/10/obama-hails-climate-change-deal-as-potential-turning-point/ President Barack Obama welcomed the news Wednesday that the Paris agreement on climate change will take effect in a month, saying “this gives us the best possible shot to save the one planet we’ve got.”
The Paris agreement commits rich and poor countries to take action to curb the rise in global temperatures that is melting glaciers, raising sea levels and shifting rainfall patterns. It requires governments to present national plans to reduce emissions to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
Obama, speaking in the Rose Garden, said the agreement alone won’t solve the climate crisis, but it will help delay or avoid some of the worst consequences of climate change.
“Today, the world meets the moment,” Obama said. “And if we follow through on the commitments that this Paris agreement embodies, history may well judge it as a turning point for our planet.”
While the targets in the agreement are not legally binding, the treaty does require countries to report on emissions and their progress on reaching the goals in the national climate plans they submitted to the U.N. The countries are also required to maintain those plans, update them every five years and to pursue measures to implement their stated goals.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said the agreement will be “disastrous” for the American economy and throw away gains the U.S. has made in energy development.
“The abundant, low-cost energy that we have unlocked will now be shut in the ground, eliminating the economic growth and jobs that come with development,” Ryan said.
10/04/16 http://www.spiegel.de/international/tomorrow/electricity-and-energy-supply-an-interactive-quiz-a-1114771.html Medical ventilators in the intensive care unit, the train that takes you home in the evening, the refrigerator in your kitchen: Electricity is vital to our modernday lifestyles. Yet one in six people in the world don’t have access.
The United Nations, however, would like to see all that to change. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, at which SPIEGEL ONLINE has been taking a closer look as part of our Expedition BeyondTomorrow project, call for everybody in the world to have access to electricity by 2030.
It is to be both affordable and clean — because energy from renewable sources is a central pillar in the fight against climate change.
10/04/16 http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/climate-change-remedies-could-spark-war/ Really, really bad weather coming. Food shortages. Rising seas, Fights over water supplies, hot days and hot nights, really hot days and really hot nights, unstable national regimes, “climate discontinuities and secondary surprises.”
We’ve all heard and seen the warnings about what’s going to happen with global warming descending on earth like the dark of night, reports Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
But shouldn’t we also be worried about the political fights that are going to develop because of efforts to modify the climate through aerosol injections into the stratosphere or chemical processes that change the reflectively of the clouds?
The report, prepared by the National Intelligence Council, is titled “Implications for U.S. National Security of Anticipated Climate Change.”
“Climate change” is what global warming is now called since the globe doesn’t appear to be warming anymore.
10/04/16 http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/717559/Earth-ICE-AGE-sun-goes-blank-sunspot THE EARTH could be in for another Ice Age as the sun has repeatedly ‘gone blank’ this year, it has been revealed.
Analysis of the sun has revealed that there has been a sharp decrease in the amount of sunspots this year.
Sunspots release solar flares and vast amounts of magnetic energy.
For the fourth time this year, the sun has gone blank, which has led some experts to believe that a new Ice Age is on the horizon and could hit us by 2019.
According to SpaceWeather.com, the occurrence of a spotless sun is going to become more regular.
It said: “There will be lots of spotless suns.
“At first, the blank stretches will be measured in days; later in weeks and months.
“The current blank spell is the fourth such interval of 2016, so far.”
Meteorologist Paul Dorian believes that this is indicative behaviour of an approaching Ice Age.
He told the Daily Star: “If history is any guide, it is safe to say that weak solar activity for a prolonged period of time can have a cooling impact on global temperatures in the troposphere which is the bottom most layer of Earth’s atmosphere — and where we all live.”
He told the Daily Star: “If history is any guide, it is safe to say that weak solar activity for a prolonged period of time can have a cooling impact on global temperatures in the troposphere which is the bottom most layer of Earth’s atmosphere — and where we all live.”
10/04/16 https://sputniknews.com/environment/20161003/1045964498/say-farewell-to-arctic-ice.html The last of the Arctic’s summer sea ice will melt away completely within the next two years, a Cambridge University scientist predicts, leading to sea-level rise and an acceleration of global warming as the planet’s natural air-conditioning system weakens.
“Next year or the year after that, I think [the Arctic] will be free of ice in summer, and by that I mean the central Arctic will be ice-free,” Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, told the Guardian in August. https://sputniknews.com/environment/20161003/1045964498/say-farewell-to-arctic-ice.html
This will be the first time in 100,000 years the Arctic basin will be free of ice, the scientist said, and there will be dangerous regional and global effects. In his book, “A Farewell to Ice,” published in September, Wadhams wrote that an ice loss/global warming feedback loop in the Arctic is accelerating faster than predicted, and that the consequences will be serious.
Bright white Arctic sea ice reflects 80 percent of the sunlight that strikes it, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) explains. The dark water under the ice, on the other hand, absorbs 90 percent of the sunlight that reaches its surface, heating the ocean and pushing temperatures higher. The more ice is lost, the more rapidly warming occurs, and the rate of change of sea ice has increased from 3 percent per decade to 8 percent, Wadhams told Alternet, in an October 1 interview.
Ice loss from areas north of Siberia indicates that more methane could escape from the seabed as the permafrost melts, while the loss of ice around Greenland in the summer encourages warm winds over the Greenland ice sheet, speeding the melting process and contributing to sea level rise, Wadhams said. In one of the scenarios explored by Wadhams, a radical loss of methane could lead to a sudden 0.6C jump in global temperatures, a very large figure, and one he calls “frightening.”
9/26/16 http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/714557/Invasion-killer-shrimps-Conservationists-fear-mass-influx-ravenous-creatures-asian-hornet AN INVASION of killer shrimps is ready to wreak havoc along British waterways, fear conservationists.
9/29/16 http://www.smh.com.au/act-news/climate-change-stealing-rain-from-australia-by-shifting-winds-towards-antarctica-20160927-grpyq3.html A new study by the ANU and 16 other institutions revealed human-caused climate change is already harming parts of Australia by robbing vital rain and pushing south westerly winds towards Antarctica.
The ANU’s lead researcher associate professor Nerilie Abram said the hijacking of rain combined with 2015 being Australia’s fifth-warmest year on record and 2016 on track to be the hottest was an ominous mix.
9/29/16 http://www.ibtimes.com/united-nations-launch-first-space-mission-2021-2423758 The United Nations is set to launch its first-ever space mission in 2021. The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa) will participate in a 14-day flight to low-Earth orbit on board the Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC) 30-foot-long Dream Chaser space plane.
The announcement was made Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.
“One of UNOOSA’s core responsibilities is to promote international cooperation in the peaceful use of outer space,” Unoosa Director Simonetta Di Pippo said in a statement. “I am proud to say that one of the ways UNOOSA will achieve this, in cooperation with our partner SNC, is by dedicating an entire microgravity mission to United Nations Member States.”
9/9/16 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/09/09/world/africa/ap-af-nigeria-boko-haram-starvation.html These are kids that basically have been hungry all their lives, and some are so far gone that they die here in the first 25 hours.” Said Jean Stowell, an American doctor in charge of the center in Maiduguri, the region’s largest cicty. The 110-bed center has quadrupled in size in recent weeks, but each time it expands it rapidly fills.
Nearly a quarter of a million children are severly malnourished because Boko Haram has disrupted trade and farming, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Toby Lanzer warned at a meeting in Brussels on Thursday. About 2 million people in the region have not been reached, “and we can’t assess theier situation. We can estimate that it’s awful.”
8/31/16 http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/28825/ Three professors co-teaching an online course called “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age” at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs recently told their students via email that man-made climate change is not open for debate, and those who think otherwise have no place in their course.
“The point of departure for this course is based on the scientific premise that human induced climate change is valid and occurring. We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change, nor will the ‘other side’ of the climate change debate be taught or discussed in this course,” states the email, a copy of which was provided to The College Fix by a student in the course.
Signed by the course’s professors Rebecca Laroche, Wendy Haggren and Eileen Skahill, it was sent after several students expressed concern for their success in the course after watching the first online lecture about the impacts of climate change.
“Opening up a debate that 98% of climate scientists unequivocally agree to be a non-debate would detract from the central concerns of environment and health addressed in this course,” the professors’ email continued.
8/10/16 http://www.mirror.co.uk/science/apocalypse-way-scientists-fear-asteroids-7850630 Apocalypse on the way? Scientists fear asteroids, killer robots and deadly diseases could wipe out humanity. Sebastian Farquhar, director at the Global Priorities Project, told the Press Association: “There are some things that are on the horizon, things that probably won’t happen in any one year but could happen, which could completely reshape our world and do so in a really devastating and disastrous way.
“History teaches us that many of these things are more likely than we intuitively think.”Many of these risks are changing and growing as technologies change and grow and reshape our world. But there are also things we can do about the risks.”
7/26/16 http://therightscoop.com/ugh-the-epa-has-found-something-new-to-regulate-in-the-name-of-climate-change/ The EPA issued a final scientific assessment that concluded that carbon emissions from aircraft endanger public health and welfare, a legal prerequisite the agency must take before regulating those emissions.
7/22/16 http://www.space.com/33497-dark-matter-search-comes-up-empty-lux-detector.html?cmpid=514648 “the mysterious material that appears to make up more than four-fifths of the universe’s mass,”
The view from inside the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter detector, which is nearly a mile underground below the Black Hills of South Dakota. The upgraded detector just finished its 20-month run without finding dark matter activity.
Credit: Matthew Kapust. Copyright © South Dakota Science and Technology Authority
The incredibly sensitive LUX dark-matter detector, buried under a mile of rock, has come up empty on its 20-month search for dark matter — further narrowing down the possible characteristics of the strange substance.
Researchers presented the results today (July 21) at the 11th Identification of Dark Matter Conference (IDM2016) in Sheffield, U.K., which gathers together researchers seeking to understand dark matter, the mysterious material that appears to make up more than four-fifths of the universe’s mass, but which scientists have not observed directly.
“LUX has delivered the world’s best search sensitivity since its first run in 2013,” Rick Gaitskell, a physicist at Brown University and co-spokesman for LUX, said in a statement. “With this final result from the 2014 to 2016 search, the scientists of the LUX Collaboration have pushed the sensitivity of the instrument to a final performance level that is four times better than the original project goals.”
7/12/16 http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2016/07/12/BAE-develops-laser-airspeed-sensor/6311468334839/?spt=sec&or=bn CHELMSFORD, England, July 12 (UPI) — BAE Systems scientists in England have successfully tested a laser airspeed sensor for use in next-generation high-altitude aircraft, the company announced Tuesday.
The Laser Air Speed Sensing Instrument, or LASSI, can accurately measure velocity even at low speeds, which will increase survivability while improving performance and fuel efficiency, BAE said in a statement.
Airspeed is conventionally determined using pitot tubes, which protrude from aircraft and sense air pressure variations.
Those tubes are vulnerable to icy conditions and can be damaged by collisions with birds.
Climate
7/11/12 http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/australian-mangrove-die-off-blamed-on-climate-change/ Some 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres), or nine percent of the mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria, perished in just one month according to researchers from Australia’s James Cook University, the first time such an event has been recorded. The so-called dieback — where mangroves are either dead or defoliated — was confirmed by aerial and satellite surveys and was likely to have been the result of an extended drought period, said Norm Duke, a mangrove ecologist from James Cook University. “This is what climate change looks like. You see things push the maximums or minimums… what we are looking at here is an unusually long dry season,” Duke told AFP. “The reason that there’s dieback now is because of this drought. Droughts are normal, but not so severe, and that’s the difference,” he said. Local rangers told scientists they were seeing creatures like shellfish, which need the shade of the trees, dying and that turtles and dugongs that are dependent on the ecosystem could “be starving in a few months”, he added. Duke said researchers believe the event took place in the semi-arid region in late November or early December last year. “The dieback occurred synchronously across 700 kilometres (434 miles) in one month,” he said, which is about the distance between Sydney and Melbourne. He added that “by all accounts, the climate is going to become more erratic, so we can expect these type of events to become more common”. Some of the mangroves suffering “dieback” were defoliated, meaning they were not yet dead but had lost their leaves, and could recover. But most “won’t recover, and will be dead”, with satellite images matching ground surveys, said Duke.
7/10/16 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-energy-al-falih-idUSKCN0ZQ0EY Saudi Arabia’s energy minister said on Sunday the oil market was becoming more balanced and prices were stabilizing.
Khalid al-Falih said Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, would always strive to stabilize the oil market, a statement by the energy ministry said on Sunday.
“In doing so, the Kingdom secures the flow of oil supplies as it retains a spare production capacity,” the minister, attending a climate meeting in Berlin, was quoted as saying in the statement.
His remarks echo earlier comments made on Monday by the Saudi minister in the Saudi city of Dhahran at a meeting with newly appointed OPEC secretary general, Mohammed Barkindo.
**5/10/16 http://www.wnd.com/2016/05/3281334/ Russia is preparing to test-fire a nuclear weapon which is so powerful it could reportedly destroy a whole country in seconds.
The “Satan 2” missile is rumoured to be the most powerful ever designed and is equipped with stealth technology to help it dodge enemy radar systems .
This terrifying doomsday weapon is likely to strike fear into the hearts of Western military chiefs, as current missile defence technology is totally incapable of stopping it.
Its official name is the RS-28 Sarmat and it will replace aging Soviet R-36M missiles, which NATO military experts nicknamed “Satan”.
“In this sense, the Sarmat missile will not only become the R-36M’s successor, but also to some extent it will determine in which direction nuclear deterrence in the world will develop,” the Russian news network Zvezda reported .
The missile is expected to be capable of delivering up to a dozen warheads, allowing to effectively destroy an area the “size of Texas or France”, the broadcaster continued.
It is expected to have a range of 10,000 km, allowing Moscow to attack European cities including London as well as major cities on America’s west and east coasts.
12/12/15 http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35079532 The question of different demands on different countries, depending on their wealth and level of development – called “differentiation” at the talks – was said to be the root cause of the difficulties. Another major difficulty was transparency – richer countries want a single system of measuring, reporting and verifying the commitments countries make as part of this agreement. It is said to be crucial to the US, which wants to ensure that China is subject to the same sort of oversight as it is. China and India are not keen on this type of oversight. “They committed that their negotiating teams in Paris would continue to work closely together and with others to realise the vision of an ambitious climate agreement.” COP 21 – the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties – has seen more than 190 nations gather in Paris to discuss a possible new global agreement on climate change, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the threat of dangerous warming due to human activities.
The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative represents major producers including BP, Shell, Saudi Aramco and Total among others. However the group of 10 does not include major US oil companies such as Exxon and Chevron.
12/01/15 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/paris-climate-change-conference/12025836/Paris-climate-conference-10-reasons-why-we-shouldnt-worry-about-man-made-global-warming.html
Yesterday, President Obama and a phalanx of other world leaders joined 40,000 delegates in Paris for the formal opening of what has been billed as “one of the most important international conferences in history”.
Its aim is to win agreement on a plan that would halt global warming, by holding down temperatures to 2 degrees C above their pre-industrial level.
They want “a binding treaty” committing the world’s nations to make massive cuts in their emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2).
The story from most of the other major “developing countries”, such as Russia, Brazil, South Korea and Vietnam, is much the same. Not one of them has any intention of reducing its “carbon emissions”. The best they can offer is that, if Western countries want them to build more windmills and solar farms, we must be prepared to pay them to do so out of a “Green Climate Fund”, which the UN plans by 2020 to be handing out $100 billion a year. Pledges so far amount to just $700 million. We still have $99.3 billion to go.
However much the EU and President Obama may huff and puff, and however much they may end up with a meaningless fudge of an “agreement”, the binding treaty they want is simply not going to happen. Now or ever.
But don’t worry. This won’t have the slightest effect on the world’s climate. We shall just have to go on putting up with whatever nature sends us – as we have had to do throughout history before.
11/30/15 http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/30/europe/france-paris-cop21-climate-change-conference/ World leaders opened pivotal climate talks Monday in Paris saying the stakes are too high to end the conference without achieving a binding agreement to help slow the pace of global climate change.
Leaders of 150 nations, along with 40,000 delegates from 195 countries, are attending the conference, called COP21. COP stands for Conference of Parties, an annual forum to try to tackle climate change on a global political level.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/07/13/3679662/global-warming-speed-up-not-ice-age/
8/24/15 http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/08/24/california-sinking-faster-than-thought-aquifers-could-permanently-shrink/?intcmp=hpbt3 Thanks to images taken from both satellites and airplanes using a remote-sensing technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), which uses radar to measure elevation differences, researchers can now map changes in the surface height of the ground with incredible precision. Certain hotspots are shrinking at an astonishing rate — regions of the Tulare Basin, which includes Fresno, sank 13 inches in just eight months, they found. The Sacramento Valley is sinking about 0.5 inches per month. And the California Aqueduct — an intricate network of pipes, canals and tunnels that funnels water from high in the Sierra Nevada mountains in northern and central California to Southern California — has sunk 12.5 inches, and most of that was just in the past four months, according to the new study.
Mat 24:6 “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all [these things] must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7 “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. 8 “All these [are] the beginning of sorrows. 9 “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. … 11 “Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. 12 “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. 13 “But he who endures to the end shall be saved. 14 “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.
Luk 21:8 He said: “Take heed that you not be deceived. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am [He],’ and, ‘The time has drawn near.’ Therefore do not go after them. 9 “But when you hear of wars and commotions, do not be terrified; for these things must come to pass first, but the end [will] not [come] immediately.” 10 Then He said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 11 “And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven. … 25 “And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; 26 “men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 34 “But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. 35 “For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. 36 “Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.
*Isa 13:10 For the stars of heaven and their constellations Will not give their light; The sun will be darkened in its going forth, And the moon will not cause its light to shine. … 12 I will make a mortal more rare than fine gold, A man more than the golden wedge of Ophir. 13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, And the earth will move out of her place, In the wrath of the LORD of hosts And in the day of His fierce anger.Isa 29:6 You will be punished by the LORD of hosts With thunder and earthquake and great noise, [With] storm and tempest And the flame of devouring fire.
Isa 34:1 Come near, you nations, to hear; And heed, you people! Let the earth hear, and all that is in it, The world and all things that come forth from it.
2 For the indignation of the LORD [is] against all nations, And [His] fury against all their armies; He has utterly destroyed them, He has given them over to the slaughter. 3 Also their slain shall be thrown out; Their stench shall rise from their corpses, And the mountains shall be melted with their blood. 4 All the host of heaven shall be dissolved, And the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll; All their host shall fall down As the leaf falls from the vine, And as [fruit] falling from a fig tree. 5 “For My sword shall be bathed in heaven; Indeed it shall come down on Edom, And on the people of My curse, for judgment. 6 The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, It is made overflowing with fatness, With the blood of lambs and goats, With the fat of the kidneys of rams. For the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah, And a great slaughter in the land of Edom. 7 The wild oxen shall come down with them, And the young bulls with the mighty bulls; Their land shall be soaked with blood, And their dust saturated with fatness.” 8 For [it is] the day of the LORD’s vengeance, The year of recompense for the cause of Zion. 9 Its streams shall be turned into pitch, And its dust into brimstone; Its land shall become burning pitch. 10 It shall not be quenched night or day; Its smoke shall ascend forever. From generation to generation it shall lie waste; No one shall pass through it forever and ever. … 15 There the arrow snake shall make her nest and lay [eggs] And hatch, and gather [them] under her shadow; There also shall the hawks be gathered, Every one with her mate.Joel 2:10; The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining:
Joel 2:30 “And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth: Blood and fire and pillars of smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the LORD. 32 And it shall come to pass [That] whoever calls on the name of the LORD Shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be deliverance, As the LORD has said, Among the remnant whom the LORD calls.
Mat 24:29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.*to the earth. And a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.
Eze 38:16 “You will come up against My people Israel like a cloud, to cover the land. It will be in the latter days that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me, when I am hallowed in you, O Gog, before their eyes.” 17 ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: “Are [you] he of whom I have spoken in former days by My servants the prophets of Israel, who prophesied for years in those days that I would bring you against them? 18 “And it will come to pass at the same time, when Gog comes against the land of Israel,” says the Lord GOD, “[that] My fury will show in My face. 19 “For in My jealousy [and] in the fire of My wrath I have spoken: ‘Surely in that day there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel, 20 ‘so that the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the beasts of the field, all creeping things that creep on the earth, and all men who [are] on the face of the earth shall shake at My presence. The mountains shall be thrown down, the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.’ 21 “I will call for a sword against Gog throughout all My mountains,” says the Lord GOD. “Every man’s sword will be against his brother. 22 “And I will bring him to judgment with pestilence and bloodshed; I will rain down on him, on his troops, and on the many peoples who [are] with him, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. 23 “Thus I will magnify Myself and sanctify Myself, and I will be known in the eyes of many nations. Then they shall know that I [am] the LORD.” ‘
*Mal 4:1 “For behold, the day is coming, Burning like an oven, And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up,” Says the LORD of hosts, “That will leave them neither root nor branch.
*Rev 8:8-13 Then the second angel sounded: And [something] like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. 9 And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. 10 Then the third angel sounded: And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. 11 The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water, because it was made bitter. 12 Then the fourth angel sounded: And a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them were darkened. A third of the day did not shine, and likewise the night. 13 And I looked, and I heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, “Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!”
1/3 of sea blood, 1/3 creatures in sea, 1/3 of ships
*Rev 9:1 Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit. (See Rev 1:18; is this the same key?)
1st Beast revealed (Is he the leader of ISIS or Iran?)
5th Trumpet – 1st Woe Rev 9:1
Key to bottomless pit
Rev 9:2 And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit. Rev 9:11; 11:7; 12:3,9,13; 13:1; 17:3,8; 19:20; 20:3,10; (Isa 13:10; 24:17; Eze 32:7,8; Joel 2:30-32; Zech 14:6-7)
1st Woe
Rev 9:3 Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
[Rev 9:11 NKJV] 11 And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew [is] Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon.
Dan 11:24 And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. 25 And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify [himself] in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand. 26 And the vision of the evening and the morning which was told [is] true: wherefore shut thou up the vision; for it [shall be] for many days. 27 And I Daniel fainted, and was sick [certain] days; afterward I rose up, and did the king’s business; and I was astonished at the vision, but none understood [it]. (KJV)
(Dan 11:24 “He shall enter peaceably, even into the richest places of the province; and he shall do [what] his fathers have not done, nor his forefathers: he shall disperse among them the plunder, spoil, and riches; and he shall devise his plans against the strongholds, but [only] for a time. 25 “He shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the South with a great army. And the king of the South shall be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army; but he shall not stand, for they shall devise plans against him. 26 “Yes, those who eat of the portion of his delicacies shall destroy him; his army shall be swept away, and many shall fall down slain. 27 “Both these kings’ hearts [shall be] bent on evil, and they shall speak lies at the same table; but it shall not prosper, for the end [will] still [be] at the appointed time.) (NKJV)
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15789#.VL8UZ0fF-Sq
Giulio Meotti Published: Friday, October 10, 2014 11:10 AM
The caliphate is now at the “sublime door”
Revelation Last Day 
