A notable satellite-telephonic call to colleagues in late October from Swedish scientist Örjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University briefly described a haunting discovery. On board the research ship R/V Akademik Keldysh, a 6,240-ton Russian scientific research vessel equipped with 17 on-board laboratories and a library, far off the coast of Russia, Dr. Gustafsson reported: “This East Siberian slope methane hydrate system has been perturbed and the process will be ongoing.” (Source: Sleeping Giant Arctic Methane Deposits Starting to Release, Scientists Find, The Guardian, Oct. 27, 2020)
That satellite call referenced a sleeping giant that has enough carbon firepower to adversely impact the world’s climate system. The expedition discovered methane (CH4) that had been securely frozen in shallow subsea permafrost waters forever, and ever, and ever, now “stirring.” Colloquially, “The Monster of the North awakened.” (Although, in fairness to accuracy, the ESAS has been perturbed and leaking/seeping into the atmosphere for some time… but, now it’s much worse than ever before, and terrifyingly, it’s more noticeable to passersby, like expeditions of discerning scientists).
After all, there are scientists who believe the East Siberian Arctic Shelf and neighboring Russian coastline continental shelf seas contain enough methane in frozen hydrates to change human history forever, unfortunately, not for the betterment of civilization.
The East Siberian Arctic Shelf, as well as other Arctic seas off Russia’s northern coastline, has been the subject of clashing opinions within the scientific community.
Over the years, mainstream science has “talked down the risks” of a massive methane breakout in Arctic waters which could start a vicious cycle of runaway global warming that would be devastating on several fronts for civilized societies, and uncivilized too.
Three years ago, the U.S. Geological Survey labeled Arctic hydrates as one of the world’s four most serious causation events of abrupt climate change. Yet, according to USGS geophysicist Carolyn Ruppel, who oversees the USGS Gas Hydrates Project: “After so many years spent determining where gas hydrates are breaking down and measuring methane flux at the sea-air interface, we suggest that conclusive evidence for release of hydrate-related methane to the atmosphere is lacking.” (Gas Hydrate Breakdown Unlikely to Cause Massive Greenhouse Gas Release, US Geological Survey, Feb. 9, 2017)
According to USGS calculations, sediments in the Arctic contain a huge quantity of frozen methane and other gases – known as hydrates. Along those lines, it’s important to note that methane (CH4) has a warming effect 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide over its initial 20 years. Meaning CH4 has a sharper, quicker impact on global warming than does CO2.
That USGS position (“no conclusive evidence”) about the risk of methane release is now three years old. Thus, this new discovery prompts a logical question: Does the current expedition provide conclusive evidence of a change? Meaning, what’s the likelihood of an abrupt shift in the planet’s climate system as a result of the new discovery?
Assuming a major CH4 release, or big burp, is it possible it could lead to planet-wide upheaval? Accordingly, the expedition team reported: “At this moment, there is unlikely to be any major impact on global warming, but the point is that this process has now been triggered.” (Gustafsson)
Therein lies the problem: “It has been triggered.”
Along those lines, a Latin proverb suffices: “Forewarned is forearmed.” Clearly, the results of the Akademik Keldysh expedition qualify as “forewarned,” no doubt about that.
All of which prompts a significant question: How will countries throughout the world respond to this newly discovered risk to climate systems with its potential to damage agriculture and coastal cities beyond recognition?
In that regard, and based upon the nations of the world failing to adhere to voluntary commitments to the Paris 2015 climate accord to reduce carbon emissions, which in fact increase (Oops) year-over- year, the answer is: “It’s not encouraging, not at all.” Indeed, it is questionable that any nation/state anywhere will actually “forearm” as a result of this new report signaling: “The East Siberian slope methane hydrate system has been perturbed.”
Furthermore, what does “forearmed” even look like? Realistically, how does a country prepare for an all-out assault on agriculture and coastlines by an out of whack runaway climate system? Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, according to the initial report from the 60-member team onboard the Akademik Keldysh expedition, the findings are only “preliminary.” The true scale of the discovery will be confirmed when full complements of data are analyzed and published peer-reviewed in a scientific journal.
Significantly, and tellingly, the discovery includes six monitoring points over a slope area of 150km (93 mi.) by 10km (6 mi.) with “clouds of bubbles released from sediment.” It should be noted that “clouds of bubbles” obviously implies one helluva lot of methane erupting from the seafloor. In point of fact, some measurements registered “methane concentrations 400 times higher than should be seen if the sea and the atmosphere were in equilibrium.” (Gustafsson)
By way of comparison to planetary distances, “400xs higher than equilibrium” is a trip to Pluto.
Robert Hunziker, MA, economic history DePaul University, awarded membership in Pi Gamma Mu International Academic Honor Society in Social Sciences is a freelance writer and environmental journalist who has over 200 articles published, including several translated into foreign languages, appearing in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He has been interviewed on numerous FM radio programs, as well as television.
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“The worst case scenario is a new pandemic, starting all over again out of Denmark,” came the words of a grave Kåre Mølbak, director of the Danish health authorities, the State Serum Institute. According to the Institute, COVID-19 infections were registered on 216 mink farms on November 6. Not only had such infections been registered; new variants, five different clusters in all, were also found. Mink variants were also detected in 214 people among 5,102 samples, of whom 200 live in the North Jutland Region.
A noticeable tremor of fear passed through the public health community. It was already known that mink are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. On April 23 and 25, outbreaks linked with mink farms were reported at farms in the Netherlands holding 12,000 and 7,500 animals respectively. The mink had been infected by a farm worker with COVID-19 and, like humans, proved to be either asymptomatic, or evidently ill with symptoms such as intestinal pneumonia. In time 12 of the 130 Dutch mink farms were struck. What interested researchers was the level of virulence in the transmission of the virus through the population. “Although SARS-CoV-2 is undergoing plenty of mutations as it spreads through mink,” writes Martin Enserik for Science, “its virulence shows no signs of increasing.”
The Danish discoveries, however, fuelled another concern: the possibility that the virus from cluster 5, as identified by the Institute, was more resistant to antibodies from humans infected with SARS-CoV-2 when compared to other non-mutated SARS-CoV-2 viruses. Potential vaccines, in other words, could be threatened with obsolescence. “This hits all the scary buttons,” claimed evolutionary biologist Carl Bergstrom.
In her November 6 briefing, Tyra Grove Krause, head of the department of infectious disease epidemiology and prevention at the SSI, did not wish to strike the doomsday register. But she was none the less abundantly cautious. “We definitely need to do more studies on this specific variant and its possible effect on future vaccines, but it takes a long time to do these kinds of studies.” But she was in no mood to wait to “get all the evidence” given the possible risks. “You need to act in time to stop transmission.”
The World Health Organization is attempting to provide some reassurance, and while this is welcome, that body’s public image has been often unjustly frayed by its initial approach to the novel coronavirus. In a statement to National Geographic, the WHO admitted concern “when a virus has gone from humans to animals, and back to humans. Each time this happens, it can change more.” But Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO’s chief scientist, refrained from drawing any conclusions from the current crop of revelations from Denmark. “We need to wait and see what the implications are but I don’t think we should come to any conclusions about whether this particular mutation is going to impact vaccine efficiency.”
Francois Balloux, director of University College London’s Genetics Institute, is also making his own infectious disease wager, thrilled by this “fantastically interesting” scenario. “I don’t believe that a strain which gets adapted to mink poses a higher risk to humans.” This comes with qualification, of course. “We can never rule out anything, but in principle it shouldn’t. It should definitely not increase transmission. I don’t see any good reason why it should make the virus more severe.”
In Denmark, no scientific chances are being taken on either the issue of virulence or the matter of vaccine effectiveness. The entire mink herd of 17 million is being culled. The Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, attempted to see the problems of her country and its mink industry in humanitarian terms. “We have a great responsibility toward our population,” she explained on Wednesday, “but with the mutation that has now been found we have an even greater responsibility for the rest of the world as well.” Residents in seven areas in North Jutland have also been told “to stay in their area to prevent the spread of infection …. We are asking you in North Jutland to do something completely extraordinary. The eyes of the world are upon us.”
Despite the immediate and effective destruction of an industry, Mogens Jensen, Minister for Food and Fisheries, stated that this would be “the right thing to do in a situation where the vaccine, which is currently the light at the end of a very dark tunnel, is in danger.” Magnus Heunicke, the Minister for Health, also reiterated the point that “mink farming during the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic entails a possible risk to the public health – and for possibilities to combat COVID-19 with vaccines.”
The inevitably callous and brutal measure means that both the animals concerned and an industry, are being confined to history. Animal welfare advocates see mixed promise in the measure: cruelty in the culling, but hope in the eradication of a trade. “The right decision,” according to Animal Protection Denmark, “would be to end mink farming entirely and help farmers into [another] occupation that does not jeopardize public health and animal welfare.”
Joanna Swabe, the senior director of public affairs for Humane Society International/Europe, did express some pleasure at what was otherwise a grim end to Denmark’s mink population. As one of the largest fur producers in the global market, the “total shutdown of all Danish mink fur farms amid spiralling COVID-19 infections is a significant development.” She even went so far as to congratulate the Danish prime minister for the “decision to take such an essential and science-led step to protect Danish citizens from the deadly coronavirus.”
Fur lobbyists and traders, while accepting of the health risks, have had reservations at the absolute nature of the Danish response. Magnus Ljung, CEO of Saga Furs, noted how control of COVID-19 infections in mink populations was achieved in the Netherlands and Spain without a need to resort to mass culling. Mick Madsen of the Brussels-based industry group Fur Europe accepted that “public safety must come first” but urged Danish authorities to “release their research for scrutiny amongst international scientists.”
In the United States, mass culling is yet to take off. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention remains cool to any drastic measures, despite cases of contracted coronavirus at mink farms in Utah, Wisconsin and Michigan. Transmission to humans had yet to be documented, though spokesperson Jasmine Reed noted “ongoing” investigations.
Some scrutiny from international sources regarding Denmark’s decision has been forthcoming, though it is more in the order of modest scepticism. Marion Koopmans of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, recalling the research into mink outbreaks in Dutch mink populations, considered the claim on a resistant mutation a bold one. “That is a very big statement. A single mutation, I would not expect to have that dramatic an effect.” Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist based at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine in Bern, Switzerland, was also doubtful. “It’s almost never the case that it’s such a simple story of one mutation and all your vaccines stop working.”
After the great Danish mink massacre, it may well transpire that Prime Minister Frederiksen’s decision might have been less “science-led” as was presupposed. This does not dishearten Hodcroft, who warmly embraces the Danish approach to “take a step too far rather than a step too little”. Pity about the mink, then.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
At birth, all of us begin a journey that offers opportunities either to grow – not just physically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually – or to stagnate. The journey we undertake lasts a lifetime, but there are dozens of moments each day when we have a choice to make tiny incremental gains in experience, wisdom and compassion or to calcify through inertia, complacency and selfishness.
No one can be engaged and receptive all the time. But it is important to recognise these small opportunities for growth when they present themselves, even if at any particular moment we may decide to avoid grasping them.
When we shut ourselves into the car on the commute to work, do we use it as a moment to be alone with our thoughts or to silence them with the radio or music? When we sit with friends, do we choose to be fully present with them or scroll through the news feed on our phones? When we return from a difficult day at work, do we talk the issues through with family or reach for a glass of wine, or maybe bingewatch something on TV?
Everyone needs downtime, but if every opportunity for reflection becomes downtime then we are stagnating, not growing. We are moving away from life, from being human.
Dried-out husk
This week liberal Americans reached for that glass of wine and voted Joe Biden. Others did so much more reluctantly, spurred on by the fear of giving his opponent another four years.
Biden isn’t over the finishing line quite yet, and there are likely to be recounts, court challenges and possibly violence over the result, but he seems all but certain to be crowned the next US president. Not that that should provoke any kind of celebration. The rest of the world’s population, future generations, the planet itself – none of us had a vote – were always going to be the losers whichever candidate won.
The incumbent, Donald Trump, miscalculated, it seems, if he thought dismissing his opponent as “Sleepy Joe” would be enough to damage Biden’s electoral fortunes. True, Trump was referring to the fact that Biden is a dried-out husk of the machine politician he once was. But after four years of Trump and in the midst of a pandemic, the idea of sleeping through the next presidential term probably sounded pretty appealing to liberals. Most of them have spent their whole political lives asleep.
Four years ago, however, they were forcibly roused from their languor to protest against Donald Trump. They grew enraged by the symptom of their corrupt political system rather than by the corrupt system itself. For them, “Sleepy Joe” was just what the doctor ordered.
But it won’t be Biden doing the sleeping. It will be the liberals who cheerlead him. Biden – or perhaps Kamala Harris – will be busy making sure his corporate donors get exactly what they paid for, whatever the cost to the rest of us.
Anger and blame
In this analogy, Trump is not the opposite of Biden, of course. He represents stagnation too, if of a different kind.
Trump channels Americans’ frustration and anger at a political and economic system they rightly see as failing them. He articulates who should be falsely blamed for their woes: be it immigrants, minorities, socialists, or the New World Order. He offers justified, if misdirected, rage in contrast to Biden’s dangerous complacency.
But however awful Trump may be, at least some of those voting for him are grappling, if mostly unconsciously, with the tension between stagnation and growth – and not of the economic kind. Unlike most liberals, who dismiss this simplistically as “populism”, some of Trump’s supporters do at least seem to recognise that the tension exists. They simply haven’t been offered a constructive alternative to anger and blame.
Ritually disappointed
Unlike the liberals and the Trumpists, many in the US have come to understand that their political system offers nothing but stultifying stagnation for ordinary Americans by design, even if it comes in two, smartly attired flavours.
They see that the Trump camp rages ineffectually against the corporate elite, deluded into believing that a member of that very same elite will serve as their saviour. And they see that the Biden camp represents an ineffectual rainbow coalition of competing social identities, deluded into believing that those divisions will make them stronger, not weaker, in the fight for economic justice. Both of these camps appear resigned to being serially – maybe ritually – disappointed.
Failure does not inspire these camps to seek change, it makes them cling all the more desperately to their failed strategies, to attach themselves even more frantically and fervently to their perceived tribe.
That is why this US election – at a moment when the need for real, systemic change is more urgent, more evident than ever before – produced not just one but two of the worst presidential candidates of all time. We are looking at exactly what happens when a whole society not only stops growing but begins to putrefy.
Enervating divisions
Not everyone in the US is so addicted to these patterns of self-delusion and self-harm.
Large swaths of the population don’t bother to vote out of hard-borne experience. The system is so rigged against them that they don’t think it matters much which corporate party is in power. The outcome will be the same for them either way.
Others vote third party, or consciously abstain in protest at big money’s vice-like grip on the two-party system. Others, appalled at the prospect of Trump – and before him the two Bushes, and before that Ronald Reagan – were forced once again to vote for the Democratic ticket with a heavy heart. They know all too well who Biden is (a creature of his corporate donors) and what he stands for (whatever his corporate donors want). But he is slightly less monstrous than his rival, and in the US system those are the meaningful electoral options.
And among Trump’s supporters too, there are many desperate for wholesale change. They voted for Trump because at least he paid lip service to change.
These groups – most likely a clear electoral majority – could redirect the US towards political, social, even spiritual growth, if they could find a way to come together. They suffer from their own enervating divisions.
How should they best use their numerical strength? Should they struggle to win the presidency, and if so should it be a third-party candidate or should they work within the existing party structures? What lesson should they draw from the Democratic leadership’s sabotaging – twice over – of Bernie Sanders, a candidate offering meaningful change? Is it time to adopt an entirely different strategy, rejecting traditional politics? And if so, can it be made to work when all the major institutions – from the politicians and courts, to the police, intelligence services and media – are firmly in the hands of the corporate enemy?
Terrible reckoning
There is no real way to sleep through life, or politics, and not wake up one day – usually when it is too late – realising catastrophic mistakes were made.
As individuals, we may face that terrible reckoning on our death-beds. Empires rarely go so quietly. They fall when it is time for their citizens to learn a painful lesson about hubris. Their technological innovations come back to haunt them, as ancient Rome’s lead water-pipes supposedly once did. Or they over-extend with ambitious wars that drain the coffers of gold, as warrior-kings have discovered to their cost through the ages. Or, when the guardians of empire least expect it, “barbarians” – the victims of their crimes – storm the city gates.
The globe-spanning US empire faces the rapid emergence of all these threats on a planetary scale. Its endless wars against phantom enemies have left the US burdened with astounding debt. Its technologies, from nuclear weapons to AI, mean there can be no possible escape from a major miscalculation. And the US empire’s insatiable greed and determination to colonise every last inch of the planet, if only with our waste products, is gradually killing the life-systems we depend on.
If Biden becomes president, his victory will be a temporary win for torpor, for complacency. But a new Trump will emerge soon enough to potentise – and misdirect – the fury steadily building beneath the surface. If we let it, the pendulum will swing back and forth, between ineffectual lethargy and ineffectual rage, until it is too late. Unless we actively fight back, the stagnation will suffocate us all.
This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.
The reality is that the Obama-Biden regime started more wars that even Bush Jr. Obama initiated wars in Libya, Syria & Yemen & carried on with the Occupation of Iraq & Afghanistan. Obama has dropped more bombs & undertaken more drone attacks than Bush Jr.
He also targeted both Venezuela & Bolivia with sanctions & carried on with the Corporate stranglehold over Haiti.
Obama though broke new ground on both Cuba & Iran, both of which Trump reversed. Here we could witness Biden going back to the Obama era, as will he on both healthcare & climate change.
On Palestine, Trump has created a disaster by recognising & gifting (which is not his to gift) Jerusalem to Netanyahu, which was again followed by gifting all of the West Bank, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights. The fact is that as always, the Judeo-Zionist lobby fund both the sides and here Sheldon Adelson emerged as his largest funder. That along with the Jared Kushner-Netanyahu-Salman triad, have created an alliance of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic extreme rightwing, supposedly termed as the Abrahaham accord. A travesty of justice, of every moral value!
Do note that Joe Biden himself is a self-declared and an avowed Christian Zionist & a proud one at that. Kamala Harris too is beholden to the Zionist lobby, so no leeway there either.
Here as is well known, both the Democratic & the Republican establishment are aligned to the US Deep State in their foreign interventionist policies. This was in fact challenged by Trump, who was openly attacking his own FBI, CIA to the Pentagon.
It was Pompeo, the US Sec. of State, who represented the War lobby, the US Deep State man in the Trump junta.
Trump really did improve the US economy and bring back manufacturing & jobs. If not for Covid19, Trump was a sure winner in 2020.
Trump miserably fell short on the Racial question and the fact that he never categorically condemned White Supremacism led to his downfall. Trump was highly insensitive during the entire Black Lives Matter movement and that was the time for a President to reach out and heal, but he decided to play the tough-guy-law-&-order-card, instead of addressing the systemic violence & discrimination that African Americans have to face on a daily basis.
Though do note that it was the Latino vote that led to his victory in Florida (Cuban & Venezuelan immigrants), whilst the same Latino vote led to his defeat in Arizona (Mexican, Central & South American).
The African American vote share actually grew for Trump, as the Democrats are known to have paid lip service to the African American community, taking their vote for granted.
Undoubtedly Trumpism strengthened the White Christian majoritarian tendencies & polarised US society vertically.
The real backbone of the extraordinary hardwork done by grassroot Democratic activists came from African-American women & young activists who went door to door to ensure the high voting percentages.
The Kamala Harris factor, her African-Indian heritage also helped to enthuse & mobilise the black & brown voters.
Biden also managed to break into the white working class vote this time, especially in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin & Pennsylvania, all of which flipped Blue this time around.
Most remarkably, unlike Modi, for the last 4 years, the overwhelming sections of the US media carried on with their anti-Trump reportage and they were relentless. Trump addresses press conferences, deals with difficult questions, gets insulted as well – unlike Modi. Can’t imagine this in the India of our times.
This was essentially a Referendum on Trumpism & he lost, but yet with record voting figures, both for Trump and the anti-Trump vote.
Feroze Mithiborwala is a social activist
