Flying The Not-So-Friendly Skies

One of the major disappointments I have lived to experience is the fragility of democracy. That democratic traditions, customs and practices are so vulnerable to dismantlement, often with either the passive acquiescence or full-throated approval of 'the people' is something I never would have anticipated.

The latest example of this devolution is to be found in an investigation conducted by The Boston Globe:

Federal air marshals have begun following ordinary US citizens not suspected of a crime or on any terrorist watch list and collecting extensive information about their movements and behavior under a new domestic surveillance program that is drawing criticism from within the agency.

The previously undisclosed program, called “Quiet Skies,” specifically targets travelers who “are not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base,” according to a Transportation Security Administration bulletin in March.

... some air marshals, in interviews and internal communications shared with the Globe, say the program has them tasked with shadowing travelers who appear to pose no real threat — a businesswoman who happened to have traveled through a Mideast hot spot, in one case; a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, in another; a fellow federal law enforcement officer, in a third.

The criteria for such surveillance are remarkably broad:

The teams document whether passengers fidget, use a computer, have a “jump” in their Adam’s apple or a “cold penetrating stare,” among other behaviors, according to the records.

Additional criteria include whether passengers go to the bathroom, use their phone, eat, or talk to other passengers.

Will this Orwellian nightmare, now that it has been exposed, provoke outrage? I doubt it. As you will see in the following NBC report (advance to the 5:15 mark), the TSA assures the public that "ordinary Americans" are not being surveilled. I take it that is code for white citizens. Ergo, if you are an 'old-stock' American, step back and let the authorities protect you.



In The Second Coming, Yeats writes, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity."

Applying that to today's sad state of democracy, I'd say he got that right.

My Catholic Upbringing

It is a long time since I believed in Hell, yet the following scenes are eerily reminiscent of what the nuns used to warn would be our destination if we weren't good Catholic boys and girls.

Advance to the 10:30 mark to watch the infernal action:



Meanwhile, the rest of the world, both Christian and non-Christian, isn't faring much better:

Sad Beyond Words

If you are at all familiar with Ansel Adams, you will know that much of the palette for his photographic genius was Yosemite National Park. Indeed, I have a framed print of one of his most iconic pictures, Yosemite Clearing Storm, hanging in my dining room.



To look upon his work is to look into the soul of a man with a deep and abiding affinity for the world of nature, a man who took great pains to interpret and depict that world through some very intricate photographic and printing techniques that conveyed both the majesty of nature and the awe that it inspired in him.

If you are unfamiliar with his work, I strongly encourage you to explore it.

It therefore pains me deeply to learn that Yosemite is now under threat. Although at this stage of my life I have learned to accept some bitter truths, this is one I would fain turn away from, if I could.

The report begins at the 4:40 mark:

The New Normal

Watch or don't watch the following; it really won't make any difference, as the trajectory is already firmly set, momentum is building, and catastrophe can no longer be averted:

Second Verse, Same As The First

The playlist is, I know, increasingly repetitive, but Earth-station has but a few records remaining on the turntable, and they will only be played louder and louder as the party winds down.





Meanwhile, the wildfires in Greece, fueled by heat and drought, have claimed more than 70 lives:

Further Down The Road

For those whose sense of weather peril is somewhat muted, the following picture of a London park, the top part showing it in May, and the bottom part as it appears today thanks to prolonged drought and heat, may help awaken the senses and cognition about how far down the one-way road of climate change we have travelled:



Still not convinced? Perhaps something a little closer to home will help:



Very soon, of course, these images will lose their power to impress, so common are they becoming. The new normal, indeed.

The Rising Tide

I have just begun a book called Extreme Cites, by Ashley Dawson. As I have discerned it thus far, its thesis is that the world's great coastal cities are destined for massive inundation and destruction because of rising sea levels. This likely now-irreversible fate is undergirded by the one of the central facts of contemporary capital: its rapacious appetite for continuous and unlimited growth. I won't bore you with the details except to recommend that you read the book.

Should you have neither the time nor the inclination, an article in The Guardian, about another book dealing only with American coastal inundation, can provide much useful information. It also explores the work of Harold Wanless, chair of the geology department at the University of Miami, who, in taking issue with the more conservative estimates of two to six feet sea-level rise over this century, has come to some damning conclusions about his city:

“The rate of sea level rise is currently doubling every seven years, and if it were to continue in this manner, Ponzi scheme style, we would have 205 feet of sea level rise by 2095,” he says. “And while I don’t think we are going to get that much water by the end of the century, I do think we have to take seriously the possibility that we could have something like 15 feet by then.”

Why?

Dig into geologic history and you discover this: when sea levels have risen in the past, they have usually not done so gradually, but rather in rapid surges, jumping as much as 50 feet over a short three centuries. Scientists call these events “meltwater pulses” because the near-biblical rise in the height of the ocean is directly correlated to the melting of ice and the process of deglaciation, the very events featured in the documentary footage Hal has got running on a screen above his head.

Fun fact:

From 1900 to 2000 the glacier on the screen retreated inward eight miles. From 2001 to 2010 it pulled back nine more; over a single decade the Jakobshavn glacier lost more ice than it had during the previous century. And then there is this film clip, recorded over 70 minutes, in which the glacier retreats a full mile across a calving face three miles wide. “This is why I believe we are witnessing the beginning of the largest meltwater pulse in modern human history,” Hal says.

A wealth of information and scientific studies demonstrates beyond doubt our headlong plunge toward disaster. Despite that, we argue incessantly over piddling and ineffective carbon taxes while ignoring the real work that mitigating disaster would require. It used to be said that knowledge is power. That is obviously no longer true as we choose to willfully, egregiously ignore that knowledge.

Our fate is all but sealed.