Climate Disruption Dispatches "Even if we can't escape its consequences, it is not too late to escape the mindset that brought us here." - Alice O'Keeffe, reviewing This Is Not a Drill. The country of Iceland has held a funeral for its first glacier lost to the climate crisis. The once massive Okjokull glacier, now completely gone, has been commemorated with a plaque that reads: "A letter to the future. Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it."

This reality is reverberating across the globe, far beyond Iceland. Even when no literal funeral is being held, we are, in a sense, witnessing an ongoing funeral for the world we once knew.

July was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth since record keeping began in 1880. Nine out of the 10 hottest Julys ever recorded have occurred since 2005, and July was the 43rd consecutive July to register temperatures above the 20th century average.

In Greenland, scientists were stunned by how rapidly the ice sheet is melting, as it was revealed the ice there was not expected to melt like this until 2070. The melt rate has been called "unprecedented," as the all-time single-day melt record was broken in August as the ice sheet lost a mind-bending 12.5 billion tons of water in one day. It is worth remembering that the Greenland ice sheet contains enough ice to increase global sea levels by 20 feet, and it is now predicted that it will lose more ice this year than ever before.

Also, earlier in the year than ever before, Alaska's sea ice has melted completely away. That means there was no sea ice whatsoever within 150 miles of its shores, according to the National Weather Service, as the northernmost state cooked under record-breaking heat through the summer.

Earth

A recent UN report estimates 2 billion people are already facing moderate to severe food insecurity, due largely to the warming planet. The other contributing factors are conflict and economic stagnation, but extreme weather events and shifting weather patterns are a large and growing contributor to this crisis, which is sure to escalate over time.

Another recent study, titled "Adaptive responses of animals to climate change are most likely insufficient," showed that many animals are no longer able to adjust quickly enough to the climate crisis. While birds are laying their eggs earlier as temperatures and conditions change, and are doing what they can to coax their chicks to hatch sooner, it is still not enough to keep apace with the dramatically shifting climate. Many more extinctions are on the horizon.

Speaking of, Beluga whales in the Arctic are now clearly in a downward spiral toward their demise, due largely to climate crisis impacts, according to another study. Warming waters, lack of food, and pollution are taking their toll on the embattled whales. Over the past 20 years, their growth rates have been declining, which means their ability to forage for food is now also compromised.

It is interesting to see even mainstream outlets like People now reporting on climate grief, which the medical community has already been doing for quite some time, and expects to see a dramatic ramping up of climate-disruption-related mental health issues in the future.

In Greenland, residents are already traumatized by climate impacts, as they are coping with the reality that their traditional ways of life are clearly on the way out. Courtney Howard, board president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, told The Guardian that she believes the climate crisis is causing worsening states of mental and physical health around the world, and says these issues will become some of the most important of our time. "Temperature change is magnified in circumpolar regions," she told The Guardian. "There is no question Arctic people are now showing symptoms of anxiety, 'ecological grief' and even post-traumatic stress related to the effects of climate change."

In the financial realms, a leading economic historian warned recently that the climate crisis could very well become the trigger for the next global financial crisis by way of causing instability and massive disruptions in markets.

Distressingly, a recently published study warned that a new superbug which erupted at the same time on three continents may well have been brought about from warming temperatures. The study pointed out how a drug-resistant fungal disease has now been made more prevalent by existing on a warming planet.

A recent report from Canada warned that British Columbia could see "catastrophic" consequences from climate disruption-related events in the next three decades. These include more severe wildfire seasons, increasingly intense and longer heat waves, water shortages, and storm surges across the province.

Speaking of Canada, that country's Pediatric Society recently warned that children's health is expected to be increasingly negatively affected by climate-disruption impacts, including things like air pollution and heat stress.

Water

Drought-induced blackouts are now besetting the people of Zimbabwe, where some places are seeing 18 hours per day without electricity. Imagine that in the summer heat. Dams providing hydropower lack water. Power blackouts are spreading.

In Harare, Zimbabwe's capital city, the taps have run dry, affecting more than 2 million people, who have been trying to cope with not having access to municipal drinking water.

In India, a stunning 1 million people were displaced and at least 270 killed by severe flooding from heavier than usual monsoon rains.

Back in the U.S., New York City's summer has served as a preview of things to come, as an extreme heat wave coupled with flash flooding beset the iconic city.

On the other end of the water spectrum, a recent study published in Science Advances warned that megadroughts will likely beset the U.S. Southwest within decades. The study stated that the megadroughts are "almost assured," and will be on a scale not seen since medieval times.

At the same time, by 2050, another report warned that "snow droughts" will become far more common across the western U.S. This is critical, in that it compounds the aforementioned impending drought crisis, as mountain snowpack is vital to providing water into the spring and summer.

One quarter of the total global population is already affected by extreme water stress. A recent and critically important study showed that one quarter of the total global population across 17 countries is already affected by extreme water stress. Lebanon, Qatar and Israel/Palestine top a list of places with the worst water shortages, as the growing climate crisis threatens more "day zeroes" - days where major cities will literally run out of water.

Meanwhile, sea levels continue their inevitable and accelerating rise. In the U.S., a recent report showed how 21 beach towns, including Miami Beach, Galveston, Atlantic City and Key West, will soon be underwater.

Speaking of Galveston, the state of Texas is looking toward Dutch expertise for assistance in how to construct what would be the nation's most expensive and most ambitious coastal barrier for protection against intensifying hurricanes. The Netherlands has been devising ways to protect massive parts of its low-lying country against the ocean for centuries. Now the skills it has cultivated are, soberingly, increasingly relevant worldwide.

Meanwhile, the oceans continue to warm as they absorb the brunt of the heat human activity is adding to the atmosphere, and the warming waters are literally pushing Pacific salmon to the brink of their ability to survive, according to another report.

Distressingly, a recently published study showed that unexpected marine heat waves are now becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Alpine mountaineering routes are disintegrating as glaciers and icefields melt in the Alps. The ice-reliant climbing routes in the mountains are tumbling down and melting away faster than anyone expected.

Greenland experienced a record heat wave in the middle of this summer, which dramatically accelerated the melting of the ice sheet, meaning its contributions to sea level rise are in the process of accelerating as well.

The country of Iceland is now preparing for how it will cope without any more ice. Meanwhile, scientists have expressed alarm and shock about the fact that the permafrost across the Canadian Arctic is thawing out 70 years sooner than previously predicted.

Things are so dire in the icy realms of Earth that the country of Iceland is now preparing for how it will cope without any more ice … something that country relies upon for its identity, businesses, government and very existence.

Fire

These stunning satellite photos show an Arctic burning up in front of our eyes. In Alaska alone, at the time of this writing, at least 1.6 million acres have burned from at least 100 wildfires this summer. Wildfires in Siberia could well burn into October when the first snows fall, as at least 6.7 million acres have burned across Russia.

Another report showed that, due to climate disruption, wildfires in California have already become 500 percent larger than they were since the 1970s.

Canadian media are reporting that forests that have been scorched in the Pacific Northwest are not growing back as expected. This brings into question numerous species of trees' ability to regenerate as the fires get increasingly hot, burn longer, and scorch longer areas.

At the same time, another report reaffirmed the fact that even the rainy Northwest is now facing the inevitable increased risk of wildfires due to higher temperatures, increasing drought and lower humidity.

Air

By 2050, Florida will have more days that feel like 100 degrees Fahrenheit (100 F) than any other state in the U.S., according to a recent study. Washington D.C. currently averages one week per year of 100-degree days, while by 2050 that could rise to two months. The same study warned that climate disruption will expose millions of people across the U.S. to "off-the-charts" extreme heat.

Meanwhile, Europe sizzled under a record-breaking heat wave this summer, as heat from the Sahara baked the continent and temperature records toppled en masse. There are far too many records to name from that heatwave, but notable was the fact that Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands recorded their highest temperatures ever during Europe's second major summer heatwave.

In Canada, the far northern community of Nunavut saw warmer temperatures than the city of Victoria, far to its south. According to CBC News, "the source of the Arctic beach weather is a large current of air that somehow found its way north from the U.S. southeast" - a much more common occurrence as warming intensifies.

Denial and Reality

Ever busy denying the crisis, in the last month the Trump administration buried a large climate disruption response plan, as revealed by Politico. The outlet revealed how the Agriculture Department prevented the release of an already completed and sweeping plan about how the government should best respond to the climate crisis.

Meanwhile, in what could have been a slip of the tongue, Trump's Energy Secretary Rick Perry said during a recent nationally televised interview, "The climate is changing. Are we part of the reason? Yeah, it is. I'll let people debate on who's the bigger problem here."

It's not just the Trump administration that's fueling denial. It was also revealed how DNC Chair Tom Perez introduced a resolution in an attempt to kill a climate debate among the Democratic presidential candidates.

Nevertheless, reality has a way of not going away, despite human efforts at denial.

A recent report showed that the climate crisis is already well along in causing childhood deaths and the stunting of growth in Australia and across the Pacific. Other impacts on kids include lowered cognitive capacity and higher susceptibility to the spread of diseases.

And, to keep all of this in perspective, as a final reality check, carbon emissions rose at their highest rate for seven years last year, according to oil giant BP.

For perspective on the rate of acceleration now baked into the system, half of all fossil fuels used by humans have been burned since just 1990. Many more consequences are lurking just around the corner: It takes at least 10 years before we begin to see the impacts of the CO2 once the fuels are burned.

Correction: The original headline and text of this article stated that 2019 was the first time in recorded history that Alaska's sea ice has completely melted. The article has been corrected to reflect the fact that the ice completely melted once previously in 2017, but in 2019 it melted completely earlier than it ever has before. In addition, a change has been made to clarify that, according to a BP report, carbon emissions rose at their highest rate for seven years last year.

(c) 2019 Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last 10 years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.

Donald Trump said he believes the Constitution lets him do "whatever I want as President." In over two and a half years, Trump has been a serial violator of the Constitution, unmatched by any president in American history. Just about every day he is a constitutional outlaw.

Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein has documented twelve categories of major constitutional transgressions. Some are also statutory crimes. Many of these involve Trump overpowering the critical separation of powers that our founders rigorously established to assure that the president does not become a monarch like King George III.

The framers were very clear that Congress and only Congress can appropriate monies for the Executive branch to spend; that only Congress can declare war; that the president must faithfully execute the laws; and that the Congress has the full authority to investigate the executive branch for abuses, irregularities, illegalities, or the need for new laws. Trump totally defies Congressional subpoenas for documents and witnesses. That grave overthrow of constitutional government is alone enough for eviction from office.

When he is not openly violating the Constitution, Trump lies and commits impeachable offenses.

The most recent violation was in seeking from a foreign power-Ukraine-assistance in influencing our presidential election in his favor by investigating a major challenger-former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son. He dangled a $250 million military aid package (maybe more) to Ukraine by suspending it before speaking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the telephone.

This "betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections," in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's words, finally moved the reluctant House leader. After being AWOL on all the other serious, repeated flouting of constitutional behavior, she is now focusing on Trump and Ukraine.

Much has been reported about Trump's chronic lying. He lies daily, sometimes hourly, with his tweets and public blather. The Washington Post has catalogued over 12,000 prevarications and false statements since January 2017. Not enough, however, has been made of the aggregate effects of such lying as a living. Trump creates illusions about himself, about his alleged achievements, and about conditions in the United States and world. He spreads constant lies and transmits the lies of others. Often these are monstrous lies, which slander innocent people and trick his supporters into believing him because they think no president could possibly lie like that to them. These are dangerous obsessions for a president.

Trump says he wants everyone to have "beautiful" health insurance, yet he pushes Congress to change Obamacare, stripping twenty million people of health insurance without any substitute program.

Trump brags about consistently defying Congressional statutes by dismantling federal agencies established to protect all Americans where they live, work, and raise their families.

Trump says we have the cleanest air and water ever, yet his henchmen are running these agencies into the ground and repealing or weakening life-saving pollution controls. The result is more toxic air in your lungs, more child asthma, and dirtier drinking water.

Trump lies about voter fraud, about not using his office to enrich his business, and about all the new factories coming to the U.S. He even lies about the weather, damaging the credibility of the National Weather Service. He denies his sexual exploits and hush money payments. He rejects without evidence ten serious obstruction of justice actions documented in the Mueller Report.

Trump denies that his cuts in food stamps will leave over half a million children without a free school lunch. He denies that his tax cut overwhelmingly benefited the super-rich and major corporations.

Trump says his nominees are extremely qualified. In reality, whether it is the EPA, the public lands agency, the Department of Labor, or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Trump has chosen lawless people whose main qualification was urging the abolition or weakening of these federal law enforcers against corporate crimes and abuses.

Trump falsely says that climate disruption is not scientifically established, but a "Chinese hoax," while our country in plain sight is being battered by record breaking heat waves, hurricanes, floods, droughts, and tornadoes.

Trump says coal, oil, and gas are better for America than wind power (which he says causes cancer) and solar energy, which are cheaper and safer.

Trump is actually increasing deadly greenhouse gases as a result and worsening the climate crisis that the Pentagon calls a national security risk.

Trump keeps promising to control soaring drug prices while refusing to get that job done.

Trump lies about the massiveness of his wealth, yet opposes any release of his tax returns.

Trump says brutal dictators are doing great for their people, ignoring the obvious facts.

Trump operates in a vast cocoon of falsity and refuses to read and consult with people who are not sycophants. This is an egomaniacal, narcissistic illusionist who could start wars, has his hand on the nuclear trigger, and believes he is about the law and Congressional controls.

Trump regularly calls legislators investigating him "sick," "treasonous," "crooked," and "low-IQ." Truthfully these are descriptions of him.

Trump, unlike Clinton who was impeached by the House in 1998, has successfully resisted testifying or being questioned under oath. He is a many sided fugitive from justice, one or more steps above of the law.

Pelosi is making a mistake if she doesn't go forward with the full articles of impeachment against Trump. Relying on the Ukraine betrayal is not enough to counter the attack by Trump's avalanche of lies, phony distractions, and possibly a "wag the dog," desperation overseas.

Once the Bernie Sanders threat has subsided, Elizabeth Warren will be required to further neuter herself to allay the fears of billionaire Democratic donors.

Once upon a time not so long ago the U.S. corporate media was a livelier place, where the rich people that owned the presses argued among themselves about the destiny of the nation and the world through the pages of their publications and allowed some leeway for lowly reporters to disseminate pertinent facts, even if such information sometimes tended to favor politicians, movements and countries disliked by the ruling classes. Of course, "Reds" were always demonized and Black public opinion disregarded unless backed up by Molotov cocktails. But elements of truth could eventually be found between the lines and in stray articles of corporate media, providing more reason to read the New York Times and the Washington Post than simply to find out what the ruling classes were thinking and planning.

The War of/on Terror and Russiagate - both involving mass psychological warfare operations to stamp out domestic resistance to the global U.S. imperial offensive - signaled that the Lords of Capital's tolerance for dissent was approaching zero. The contradictions of late stage capitalism and the increasing precariousness of U.S. empire squeezed all vestiges of liberality out of the boardrooms, as was reflected in the content of their ever-consolidating media.

Finally the Internet, that vast digital outback where the Left's survivors had sought refuge from corporate monoculture, was targeted for political cleansing. McCarthy-era censorship was resurrected, with publications like Black Agenda Report at the top of the blacklist. However, it's not just us real radicals that have been rendered non-persons in the headquarters nation of the "free" corporate-ruled world. Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator, has joined the ranks of those whose name will not be spoken by corporate media, except in the negative.

Sanders' mission is anything but revolutionary: it is to "sheep-dog" back into the Democratic Party fold the millions of stray, leftish Americans that despair of the duopoly electoral system. Sanders believes that the "more inclusive" half of the corporate duopoly will allow itself to become the vessel that will enact single payer health care, free higher education, a dignified minimum wage and confiscatory taxes on billionaires, whom he proclaims "should not exist." But the billionaires that actually control the Democratic Party's structures have decreed that it is Sanders whose existence will not be acknowledged in the pages of their properties, unless it is to pillory him.

Corporate media vengeance against Sanders has been fierce, and comprehensive - approaching the anathema that has been heaped on Trump, the overtly racist billionaire that took over the GOP and made it a purer White Man's Party, and who converted the previously bipartisan Deep Imperial State into Deep Blue Democrats with his questioning of U.S. regime-change and "free trade" policies. The Democrats and their corporate media partners thought Trump would be easy to beat in 2016 - and to make sure he was the Republican nominee, they provided him with billions of dollars in free air time.

The GOP, an imperial and "free trade" party like the Democrats, tried to mob Trump. They threw every party notable and vote-getter into the primaries, 16 in all - precisely as the Democrats would do to head off Sanders' second bid for the presidency, four years later, with 26 contenders assembled with the party's blessing. Joe Biden, the consummate but rapidly fading corporate shill, was their Great Hope, but they had plenty of minions in reserve.

It would also take a unified corporate media to stop Sanders, who in 2017 was the most popular politician in the United States, eclipsing all others in favorability. His core policies were backed by two-thirds of all voters and even larger super-majorities of Democrats. But the rich man's press was up to the challenge. Having been drilled for three years in the daily delivery of a unitary, Democrat-spook concocted Russiagate scenario, the corporate media had been disciplined to the task of no-holds-barred political assassination.

It was a blitzkrieg. Every minor Democratic presidential contender in the Party-summoned menagerie had a more interesting story for the press to tell than Sanders, who was buried at the end of articles, most often in a negative context, or not mentioned at all despite his long-time second-place ranking to Joe Biden. CNN and MSNBC hated Sanders 24/7 - as if he were Trump - with MSNBC permitting its legal analyst, Mimi Rocah, to exclaim that Sanders "makes my skin crawl." Polls were rigged, in that few of them were capable of reaching statistically viable numbers of the under-40 voters that strongly favored Sanders but use only cell phones - a fatal professional flaw often acknowledged in the fine print, but pollsters then made up numbers, anyway, to Sanders' detriment.

Sanders and his super-majority-supported issues must be defeated, because they represent the clearest threat yet to the 40-year-long bipartisan policy of "austerity" - which, in plain language, as I discussed last week, is the dragooning of the American workforce into the Race to the Bottom that capitalism has imposed on all of the global working class within its reach. The aim is to remove every social support that might allow workers to reject participation in the "gig" economy of low-paid, contracted, part-time jobs - the "shit" work that makes up the majority of "new jobs" under late stage capitalism and fuels the phenomenal growth of the billionaire class. Deindustrialization is austerity = Race to the Bottom. The Lords of Capital have no other strategy for the future, and neither do their minions in the Democratic Party. So, they reject Sanders, the social democratic reformer, like the plague. But Sanders' issues are not so easily slandered, sidetracked or buried.

The deliberately overcrowded Democratic primary field is designed to dilute the austerity-busting agenda introduced by Sanders, through the diversion of multiple personalities. When it became clear that Biden was not a good bet for the ruling class to stake its systemic life on, the corporate media fell in love with Sanders' mimic, Elizabeth Warren, who had already signaled her loyalty to "the Party" and an openness to gradualism on Medicare for All and the rest of her agenda. For the time being, until Sanders is effectively neutralized, that's reassuring enough to make Warren a favorite of much of corporate America and their media. Once the Sanders threat has subsided, however, Warren will be required to further neuter herself to allay the fears of billionaire Democratic donors who threaten to withhold their money, or even support Trump, if the capitalist boat is rocked. Every indication is that she will try to present as little problem as possible to the rulers.

Warren and the corporate Democrats were vastly assisted in their get-Sanders campaign by Alicia Garza, the Black Lives Matter name-holder and disburser of capitalist political philanthropy, who organized a shameful slander against Sanders after the Working Families Party board engineered an endorsement of Warren. Although Sanders and his campaign officials said nothing at all of a racial nature in response to the questionable actions by the WFP, 80 percent of whose board and membership backed him in 2016, and despite the fact that Sanders has polled consistently second to Biden in Black support - and has the most diverse backing of any candidate - Garza pretended that a racial crime had been committed. (See Margaret Kimberley and Danny Haiphong's articles on this travesty.)

Donald Trump, the Democrat's FrankenCracker who won the presidency partly on the strength of the billions in free air time the corporate Democrats guided his way ($5 billion worth, by Election Day), remains useful to the Party, which may be why Nancy Pelosi took so long to give the nod to impeachment proceedings. The Democrats still want to run against Trump and his roaring racism, just as they did in 2016, because it allows them to avoid economic issues. "Anyone Blue Will Do" is a corporate Democratic slogan designed to blunt resistance to the Race to the Bottom and to protect the billionaires.

Sanders' quest for the nomination is probably doomed if he continues to play by rules while the corporate media (and Warren) conspire in a dirty game against him. His best hope is to attempt to turn his campaign into a "movement" - to take to the streets with his rallies and march on the nearest iconography of the 1 percent; to make such noise and motion that the corporate media cannot ignore him. That, too, would be cause for shrieks from both the Party and the press, but at least Sanders' anti-Race to the Bottom message would be heard, and maybe a real movement would outlive his candidacy, organized outside the oligarchy's bought-and-paid for property: the Democratic Party.

For millions of people around the globe - especially young people - the pressing issue of our time is this: The world is on fire! On fire with climate change, creating a new and intensifying norm of deadly weather extremes that make a dystopian future a distinct possibility - constant wildfires, rising seas, desertification, global crop failures, widespread hunger, water shortages, etc.

Luckily, we are a sentient species with the scientific ability to know that the chief cause of this global destruction is not angry gods, but us - specifically humankind's massive extraction and burning of oil, gas, coal, and other fossil fuels. So, there's a rising chorus of people shouting "FIRE!"" And, sure enough, our national government is rushing to the scene to put it out.

Unfortunately, our president and his crew of right-wing fire-breathers in Congress are not directing the government's hoses at the corporate extractors, but at us, the people, scientists, environmentalists, and other activists who've dared to point to the flames and call for global action to stop the conflagration. They seem to think the problem will go away if they can make the protesters go away.

Worse, they're fanning the flames by turning the EPA into the PPA - the Polluters Protection Agency. They're slashing dozens of public restraints on the polluters, while also opening up our oceans and wilderness areas to their polluting greed and stalling the rational shift to a green energy future.

The good news is that the people are revolting (in the very best sense of that term!) against our corrupt leaders' rush toward climate catastrophe. Our hope is not in "leaders,"" but ourselves - as it has been throughout American history. From the Boston Tea Party forward, creative and gutsy public protest has been democracy's best friend.