The worst ravages of climate change are on display around the world.

Wildfires have ripped through towns in Greece, floods have submerged parts of Laos, and heat waves have overwhelmed Japan. These are striking examples of climate change playing out in its deadliest forms, and they’re making the term “natural disaster” an outdated concept.

People in Greece were jumping into the Aegean to escape advancing wildfires, according to a report in the New York Times. More than 70 are confirmed dead so far, and some scenes are horrific.

“Greece is going through an unspeakable tragedy,” said Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, in a televised address to declare three days of national mourning.

This is already Greece’s hottest year on record. Although the last few weeks have been mild and wet, it’s nearly certain that warm weather has played a role in drying out forests throughout Europe, where the number of fires this year is 43 percent above normal. Longer summers, more intense drought, and higher temperatures are all linked to greater fire risk.

We’ve known enough about meteorology to link extreme events to their increased likelihood as they are happening for years now. Recent advances in extreme weather attribution can often tell us exactly how much.

Ample evidence links worsening fires with human activity. Greece and much of the Mediterranean region is projected to turn into desert over the next several decades, and there are signs that this shift has already begun. As the region’s native trees die off and urban areas expand into neglected forests, firefighting resources are becoming woefully overmatched. Regardless of ignition source — arson or lightning or human carelessness — massive wildfires will become more common as droughts intensify and heat waves get more common. Extreme winds, like those blamed for fanning the flames this week in Greece and during megafires in Portugal last year, can make an already dire situation uncontrollable.

It’s the hottest month of one of the hottest years in the history of human civilization, and unusual wildfires are sprouting up all over the map. Sweden has called for emergency assistance from the rest of the European Union to help battle massive wildfires burning north of the Arctic Circle. Across the western United States, 50 major wildfires are burning in parts of 14 states, fueled by severe drought. The wildfires burning in Siberia earlier this month sent smoke plumes from across the Arctic all the way to New England, four thousand miles away. Last year, big wildfires burned in Greenland for the first time in recorded history.

And then there are the rains. In Laos, after days of downpours, a hydropower dam that was under construction collapsed on Tuesday. Hundreds of people have been reported missing. Higher global temperatures increase the evaporation rate, putting more water vapor in the atmosphere and making extreme downpours more common.

In recent weeks, high temperature records have been set on nearly every continent. On Monday, Japan had its hottest temperature in recorded history — 106 degrees Fahrenheit — just days after one of the worst flooding disasters the country has ever seen.

Algeria has recorded the highest reliably measured temperature in Africa, 124 degrees Fahrenheit. In late June, the temperature never dropped below 108 degrees Fahrenheit in Oman — the highest overnight low temperature anywhere in the world.

Even in normally temperate places the air has been sweltering: Temperatures approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit hit parts of Canada, overwhelming hospitals in Montreal — where another heat wave is imminent this week.

According to calculations from climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, this year will likely be the world’s fourth warmest year on record globally, behind 2015, 2016, and 2017. With another El Niño on the way, next year could be even hotter.

All over the world, heatwaves are getting longer and more intense, the most well-documented and deadliest consequence of our failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions.


(GRIST)

The cult is falling apart, and a Clinton mega donor just happens to be one of the people involved in its activities.

Many people have pointed out that in the United States, it seems like there’s a very ‘us vs. them’ mentality when it comes to the ‘hallowed halls of power.’ For the average person, criminal conduct generally results in criminal charges. However, the elites, cloistered in their powerful clubs, covens and organizations, tend to be much freer from the consequences of their actions.

So it is with the Hollywood ‘sex cult’ NXIVM, which has found itself under fire from the federal government and its investigators yet again this week. One of Hillary Clinton’s mega-donors, who helped finance her 2016 presidential aspirations, has been arrested in connection to the club. Perhaps the most interesting twist is that she allegedly used her father’s emails to former Secretary of State Clinton to hack her email system. Still, the horrific claims of human trafficking and experiments are terrifying, and it will be interesting to see how the claims pan out.

Clare Bronfman, the person who allegedly sat toward the top of the disturbing cult, was arrested on Tuesday, along with other individuals from NXIVM.

Namely, the former Hillary Clinton megadonor was arrested alongside the co-founder of the strange cult, Nancy Salzman, as well as her daughter, Lauren Salzman. The federal government also managed to pick up their longtime bookkeeper in the same raid, Kathy Russell.

Bronfman will appear in the federal court in Brooklyn to answer for various charges. The other three will be arraigned in federal court in Albany, New York.

Bronfman has served as the operations director for the group, which calls itself a ‘self-help’ group and is known for its secrecy. She is an heiress to the Seagram’s liquor empire, and held a high position inside the cult.

Most interesting are the claims about what she was doing that got her arrested. The former Clinton megadonor was, to put it simply, doing strange things.

According to reports, Bronfman was a financier of the ‘club,’ which was led by Keith Raniere and Allison Mack, who have both already been charged with human trafficking.

Bronfman, instead, was involved in ‘human experiments’ on people, performed at the group’s ‘Rainbow Cultural Garden,’ according to claims from a former employee of the cult.

Allegedly, she had also used emails that her father, Edgar Bronfman, sent to Hillary Clinton, in order to hack the former Secretary of State’s emails.

NXIVM bills itself as a ‘multi-level marketing’ company, much like Amway.

However, the first inkling that something might not be quite right at the ‘marketing’ organization came in the form of an article published in October 2003, issue of Forbesmagazine.

The magazine had access to the very top ranks of the ‘marketing’ group, but the onecomment that seemed to stun ‘NXIVM’ and the people who were part of it was the comment from Edgar Bronfman, who said that “I think it’s a cult” to the magazine.

More claims about strange goings-on began to surface, with multiple accounts of the company being little more than a cult controlled by its founder, Keith Raniere.

In a 2010 article written in the Albany Times Union, former coaches in the organization described the “students” they taught as prey for the founder in the furtherance of his gambling or sexual goals.

Four years later, in 2014, Kristin Keeffe, the mother of Raniere’s child, left the organization, and suggested that all the worst claims about the group were true.

In 2017, the New York Times published an article about DOS, a “secret sisterhood” inside what was allegedly a marketing group, basically consisting of women who were treated as ‘slaves’ by the group’s founders.

Charges began to come forward in March 2018, with multiple members of the group being charged with crimes including sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, and other crimes.

The arrest of Clare Bronfman is interesting, because, after the first round of arrests concerning the organization, she made a number of posts on the ‘business’ website saying that she believed in the organization, supported its caused, and that the founders never abused or coerced anyone.

Currently, she is out on $100 million bond, and is awaiting an arraignment on charges including money laundering and identity theft in the furtherance of NXIVM goals.

She pleaded not guilty to the charges in her initial hearing, and continued to maintain that the organization never did anything wrong or mistreated anyone.

Cults made up of powerful individuals, often with political connections, tend to come apart in messy ways, and the fact that people like the 36-year old ‘equestrian’ Bronfmancan afford tremendous amounts of bail that boggle the mind of the average person suggest that this will be no different.

However, it will be interesting to see what comes of these cases, and of claim that the ‘multi-level marketing group’ was basically a depraved cult designed around pandering to the pleasures of its founders.


(conservativedailypost.com)