Saturday, December 7, 2019
Greenland ice melt feeds glacier instability
December 6th, 2019, by Tim Radford
https://climatenewsnetwork.net/greenland-ice-melt-feeds-glacier-instability/
In a runaway effect, the Greenland ice melt lets surface water gurgle down to the bedrock – and at unexpected speeds.
LONDON, 6 December, 2019 – British scientists have caught a huge ice sheet in the act of draining away, with significant effects on its surroundings: they have seen what happens to the water created by the Greenland ice melt.
For the first time – and with help from drones – researchers have witnessed water flowing at a million cubic metres an hour from the surface of ice sheets through caverns in the ice and down to the glacial bedrock.
The study does not change the big picture of increasingly rapid melt as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere, and ever more of the northern hemisphere’s biggest ice cap flows downhill to raise global sea levels.
But it does throw light on the mechanisms by which glaciers turn to sea water, and it does suggest that many estimates of melt rate so far might prove to be under-estimates.
Greenland is the planet’s second largest ice sheet and the biggest single contributor to global sea level rise. Researchers have been alarmed for years about the increasing rate of summer melt and the accelerating speed of what had once been imperceptible glacial flows.
“These glaciers are already moving quite fast, so the effect of the lakes may not appear as dramatic as on slower-moving glaciers elsewhere, but the overall effect is in fact very significant”
And researchers from the universities of Cambridge, Aberystwyth and Lancaster have now been able to put a measure on water surface loss.
They report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they used custom-built aerial drones and complex computer modelling to work out how fractures form below vast lakes of meltwater that collect on the surface of the Store Glacier on the island’s northwestern sheet.
They watched splits form in the glacial ice, to suddenly open up an escape route for the supraglacial pool. As they watched, such fractures became caverns called moulins, down which in one case five million cubic metres of water – think of 2,000 Olympic swimming pools – flowed in just five hours.
The ice of the glacier is typically a kilometre thick, so the scientists may have observed the planet’s longest waterfall. And as the ice drained away to the bottom of the ice sheet, it may have served as a lubricant to speed up glacier flow over the bedrock.
The ice sheet lifted by half a metre, presumably in response to the sub-surface flood, and four kilometres downstream glacial speed picked up from a speed of two metres to more than five metres a day.
Daily billion-tonne loss
“It’s possible we’ve under-estimated the effects of these glaciers on the overall instability of the Greenland ice sheet. It’s a rare thing to observe these fast-draining lakes – we were lucky to be in the right place at the right time,” said Tom Chudley, of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, one of the authors.
Until now, scientists have been able to estimate glacial flow and surface melt only by satellite studies – which reveal little of the detail – or direct on-the-ground measurement under conditions that are difficult even in good weather.
But even with these constraints researchers have been able to calculate the shrinkage of the Greenland ice sheet at the rate of a billion tonnes a day, as temperatures rise in response to ever-increasing use of fossil fuels around the globe.
The next step is to deploy drilling equipment for a closer look at how the water gets below the glacier to reach the bedrock, and calculate how the ice sheet may change not just over hours but over the coming decades as well.
“These glaciers are already moving quite fast, so the effect of the lakes may not appear as dramatic as on slower-moving glaciers elsewhere,” said Poul Christofferson, who led the project, “but the overall effect is in fact very significant.” – Climate News Network
Amazon Abuses Workers and the Climate Because It Can
DEC 05, 2019
OPINION|TD ORIGINALS
Sonali Kolhatkar
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/amazon-abuses-workers-and-the-climate-because-it-can/
While online shoppers were busy taking advantage of bargain prices on Black Friday, retail workers in various European cities were walking off their jobs in anger. Hundreds of Amazon workers in six German cities protested, saying that their employer’s demands were making them ill. Similar protests were held by Amazon workers in France, aimed at the environmental cost of Black Friday, and in the U.K., members of the union GMB held signs saying pointedly, “We are not robots.” Here in the U.S., workers picked up on that theme as dozens gathered outside Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’ Manhattan apartment to insist that they are “human beings, not robots.”
A majority of American households are members of Amazon Prime. All we see with our eyes is the website that we make purchases on and the boxes that arrive on our doorstep a day or two later. Sometimes we may catch a glimpse of a delivery person rushing away to their truck to drop off the next package. But the worker protests that have plagued the company ought to deeply trouble us, as well as documented abuses in numerous recent studies and investigative reports.
As millions of Americans this holiday season have been doing, I too have been relying on the convenience of Amazon’s shopping experience to tick off the boxes on my list of gifts. In fact, I routinely count on it to meet the needs of my family. As a parent with a full-time job, I have barely 20 minutes of free time during the day to run errands, buy groceries, drive my kids to their extracurricular activities, and so on. When I see heavy rain in the forecast and realize with dismay that my child has outgrown his rain boots, it is far easier to order him the right pair of boots on Amazon in minutes than spend more than an hour driving to and from a store that may or may not have the size and price I’m looking for.
Online shopping has been a boon, especially for working mothers like me. I will admit, I have often thought of my reliance on the convenient online shopping experience as “self-care,” to use the parlance of the modern wellness movement. But each click confirming a purchase comes with a heavy bout of guilt, knowing what I know about how the workers who fulfill my order are treated.
Earlier this year Amazon surpassed Walmart to become the world’s largest retailer. Like Walmart, Amazon has reached its heights by cutting labor costs to the bone and faces a plethora of accusations of underpaying workers and violating their rights. But Amazon has gone further than Walmart could ever dream of in its quest to squeeze workers, ruthlessly spying on and tracking them to ensure they spend every second of their work day in service of the corporation.
Most Amazon customers are blissfully unaware of the appalling conditions behind their online shopping experience. The company paints a rosy picture of the warehouses where the bulk of work happens in translating orders into packages for delivery. According to Amazon, its warehouses are spaces where “magic” happens, where the temperature is always kept comfortable for workers, and where there are “orange robots balancing towers of goods twirling in what looks like a choreographed dance across shiny concrete floors, miles of conveyor belts and ramps carrying inventory across the building, and shipping labels practically flying onto boxes, blown by puffs of air.”
This fantasy has a dark underbelly, as a recent investigative report from The Atlantic and Reveal showed. Workers are under surveillance to ensure they do not waste even a single second and are often left injured so badly by the pace of the work that they can no longer find employment. Internal records obtained by reporters showed that Amazon’s worker injury rate is more than twice that of the industry average. The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health also placed Amazon on its “Dirty Dozen” list of most dangerous workplaces of 2019 citing grim statistics: “Six worker deaths in seven months; 13 deaths since 2013. Reports of a high incidence of suicide attempts; workers urinating in bottles and workers left without resources or income after on-the-job injuries.”
The company squeezes its workers so hard that they are forced to rely on public benefits in order to survive—an accusation that dogged Walmart for years when it was the nation’s top retailer. A new study by the Economic Roundtable focused on Amazon’s Southern California warehouses found that “For every $1 in wages paid by Amazon, warehouse workers receive an estimated $0.24 in public assistance benefits.” Additionally, “57 percent of Amazon warehouse workers live in housing that is overcrowded and substandard. There is direct and indirect evidence of significant homelessness among warehouse workers.”
Amazon relies on taxpayers subsidizing its workers’ livelihoods, but it also refuses to pay its fair share of taxes. A U.K.-based watchdog group called Fair Tax Mark claimed in a report last week that the so-called “big six” tech firms, all based in the U.S., are “aggressively avoiding” paying international taxes and that Amazon was the worst offender. Globally, the company paid only $3.4 billion in taxes over the past ten years. Microsoft paid nearly $47 billion during this same time period, despite the fact that Amazon’s profits were $80 billion more than Microsoft’s.
It’s not just that workers are mistreated and government treasuries fleeced, but also the fact that the impact of Amazon’s business model on the environment has been serious. With climate catastrophes unfolding around the world, our thirst for easily available products translates into a huge amount of transportation of packages to and from factories, warehouses and customer homes, and an immense amount of packaging material that is expended each year. Thousands of Amazon’s employees recently signed a letter addressed to the CEO, demanding he draw up a plan for the company to lessen its impact on the climate. When Mr. Bezos released a climate plan in response, critics pointed out that it was full of “gaping holes.”
Clearly something needs to be done. It is not enough for individuals to declare that they are canceling their Amazon Prime memberships. There is no formal boycott in place, and Amazon’s aggressively seductive business model will ensure that it keeps growing. The company pushes its workers to injuries, pays them so poorly and hurts our environment because it can—not because it must.
Workers are best protected when they have collective power, and that can only come through a union. Amazon has aggressively engaged in anti-union tactics in a country that has deliberately weakened labor laws and undermined the rights of workers to unionize.
Our climate is best protected when there are strict laws in place to regulate emissions and force companies to manage their environmental footprint. Yet year after year, even with climate catastrophe looming all around us, our federal government has only encouraged greater carbon emissions. So Amazon continues to offer free shipping on low-cost disposable items that have an outsize impact on the climate, not because it must, but because it can.
Our tax revenues are best protected and expanded when strict tax laws are in place to ensure companies and the wealthy pay their fair share. But corporate lobbyists and compliant lawmakers have chipped away so badly at our tax code that it has been entirely rewritten to favor the likes of Amazon. So why should Amazon not take advantage of what our laws enable?
Far more effective than individuals walking away from the company (although that doesn’t hurt), is collective action to change the laws that Amazon benefits from. Yesterday it was Walmart, today it is Amazon. And tomorrow it may be another company that earns the notoriety that comes with ruthless corporate behavior. Our system is designed to allow Amazon to flourish at the expense of workers and the environment. We have to change the system.
New York's Other Hopelessly Corrupt Candidate
Conor Lynch
DEC 05, 2019
OPINION|TD ORIGINALS
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/new-yorks-other-hopelessly-corrupt-candidate/
For better or worse, New York City has produced some of the biggest names in contemporary U.S. politics. From President Donald Trump and his conspirator-in-corruption Rudy Giuliani, all the way to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (the latter has spent most of his life in Vermont, of course, but is a New Yorker to the core), politicians from across the political aisle have hailed from the Big Apple.
And if there is one American city in this moment that can help us understand (and forecast) general trends in U.S. politics, it is New York.
The state’s notorious culture of corruption, for example, provides some insight into the deep-seated rot in Trump’s camp. As Jeet Heer put it in The New Republic last year, “It’s impossible to understand why Trump’s administration has been so scandal-wracked without appreciating where he comes from.” Heer calls New York “the most politically toxic place in America,” and in terms of corruption, this is undoubtedly true. A PolitiFact analysis from 2016 documented that between 2006 and 2015, the state endured 28 corruption scandals involving public officials, followed by Pennsylvania in second place with 24 corruption cases and New Jersey with 12 cases.
Going back at least three decades, New York has been home to the most corrupt officials of any state in the union. Of course, Trump has been one of the city’s most prominent figures throughout this period. The president epitomizes the sleazy amorality of New York’s elite, and rather than “draining the swamp,” he has brought the corrupt style of New York politics to Washington, turning the D.C. swamp into a giant sewer.
As if there weren’t already enough New York elites currently inhabiting Washington, Michael Bloomberg, Rudy Giuliani’s successor as mayor (and the richest man in New York), recently announced that he would be jumping into the Democratic primaries. Bloomberg entered the running just two months after the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, dropped out of the race.
Billionaire Bloomberg launched his campaign with the largest ad buy in history, spending a ridiculous $31 million on television ads in one week. On his campaign website, he played up his “unique set of experiences in business, government, and philanthropy,” calling himself a “doer and a problem solver” rather than a talker. “I’ve spent my career bringing people together to tackle big problems – and fix them,” his campaign statement continued, declaring that this has served him well in business and in running the country’s “largest, most progressive city.”
Calling New York the “most progressive city” in America is certainly a bold claim for a city that has been consistently ranked as one of the most unequal places in the country, but this reveals a lot about the kind of politics that passes for “progressive” these days in many top Democratic circles. As of 2018, New York boasted the highest concentration of billionaires in the world, with more than 100 living in the city, and for a neoliberal Democrat like Bloomberg, this is a sign of genuine progress.
“If we could get every billionaire around the world to move here, it would be a godsend that would create a much bigger income gap,” declared Bloomberg in 2013 during his final year as the city’s mayor. (Earlier, he had even mused about luring “all the Russian billionaires” to move to the city, which isn’t an opinion that would fly in today’s Democratic Party).
Twenty-first-century New York is a city of haves and have-nots. During Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor, the former thrived while the latter were effectively excluded from the city’s growing prosperity. This was especially true for poor people of color, who suffered disproportionately under the mayor’s expansion of the racist stop-and-frisk policy.
Under Bloomberg, median rents in New York City skyrocketed while average incomes stagnated, and by the end of his third term, the homeless population had reached its highest level since the Great Depression. Overall, the three-term mayor’s reign was great for New York’s billionaires, millionaires and professional elites. For poor and working-class New Yorkers, “prosperity” and “progress” often meant being forced out of their neighborhoods due to gentrification.
While things have improved slightly in the five years since Bill de Blasio succeeded Bloomberg, class distinctions and disparities in wealth continue to divide New York into two cities. Today, the top 1% of earners take home 40% of the city’s income, while one in five New Yorkers lives in poverty. Fourteen percent of the United States’ homeless population lives in New York City, and a devastating report released last month revealed that 10% of public school students in the city are homeless (a 70% increase over the past decade).
Another study, from UC Berkeley, found that in 2016, over one-third of low-income households lived in neighborhoods “at risk of or already experiencing displacement and gentrification pressures.” Gentrification, the researchers note, is creating “islands of exclusion” throughout the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
In a brillient essay published last year in Harper’s, Kevin Baker observed that New York City is “approaching a state where it is no longer a significant cultural entity but the world’s largest gated community, with a few cupcake shops here and there.” For wealthy liberals like Mike Bloomberg and his Democratic (and perhaps some Republican) supporters on Wall Street, this is progress.
On the surface, New York is a liberal utopia: diverse, tolerant, innovative, socially progressive, and so on. But this is an exclusionary utopia, and much like the great infrastructure projects that Robert Moses oversaw in the mid-20th century, which by design destroyed working class communities and solidified racial segregation, the city’s development has exacted a high cost from the lower classes.
One of Moses’ greatest accomplishments was convincing everyone that his projects were the product of historical destiny. As the late urban theorist Marshall Berman put it, to “oppose his bridges, tunnels, expressways, housing developments, power dams, stadia, cultural centers, was — or so it seemed — to oppose history, progress, modernity itself. And few people, especially in New York, were prepared to do that.”
Today, neoliberal Democrats like Bloomberg (and virtually every Silicon Valley billionaire) see themselves as the new harbingers of progress. Those who stand in the way of their vision—whether they are poor minority families who can no longer afford to live in their own communities or factory workers losing their jobs in Michigan to automation and/or outsourcing—deserve very little sympathy. It is up to them to adapt and equip themselves with the education they need to survive.
To these wealthy visionaries, the grassroots opposition that mobilized earlier this year against Amazon opening one of its headquarters in Long Island City was both irrational and futile, a kind of neo-Luddite resistance to the inevitable tide of progress.
“The urban crisis of affluence,” Baker remarks in his Harper’s essay, “exemplifies our wider crisis: we now live in an America where we believe that we no longer have any ability to control the systems we live under.” Neoliberals not only accept this notion but are convinced that our current system is the best and needs only a few minor adjustments. On the other hand, left-wing progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who helped lead the successful fight against Amazon, increasingly oppose this conservative vision of progress. Instead, they advocate radical alternatives to the status quo.
Contemporary New York City politics presents a microcosm for the current divide in the Democratic Party. Though New York has always had its share of corruption and injustice, it has also been, as Heer points out in his article, “a hotbed of political reform.” While New York has given us corrupt reactionaries like Donald Trump and neoliberal elites like Bloomberg, it has also become the epicenter of the progressive revolt against both of these forces.
AOC, who endorsed Bernie Sanders during a rally in Queens last October, took on the notorious Queens Democratic Party machine last year and defeated the most powerful man in Queens County politics, showing that it was entirely possible for grassroots movements to challenge the establishment and win.
Bloomberg, who was a registered Republican for half of his mayoral career, wants to prevent the progressive revolt that is currently brewing in his own city from going national. In his heart, he would probably prefer another four years of President Trump over a President Sanders. No matter their differences, then, it seems the New York elite—and the American elite in general—will always have each other’s back when a real threat to their power presents itself.
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