Saturday, March 16, 2024

How the ‘fight against antisemitism’ became a shield for Israel's genocide

Another excellent and deeply important article. It is vital, I believe, for growing numbers of us to see the larger pictures of this day by day genocide ― the consciousness of which can then inspire and empower us to act on behalf of those suffering these atrocities and to dismantle any unknowing complicity we may have absorbed in the mass murder of countless Palestinians. ― Molly

Pro-Israel supporters protest in Trafalgar Square, London, 14 January 2024 (Henry Nicholls/AFP)
Western capitals no longer treat Israel like a state, a political actor capable of slaughtering children, but rather as a sacred cause. So any opposition has to be a blasphemy


If you read the establishment media, you might conclude that a serious battle is being waged by Israel and its most ardent supporters to tackle an apparent new wave of antisemitism in the West.

In article after article, we are told how Israel and western Jewish leadership bodies are demanding our concern, and outrage, at a rise in anti-Jewish hate incidents. Organisations such as the Community Security Trust in the UK and the Anti-Defamation League in the US produce lengthy reports on the relentless increase in antisemitism, especially since 7 October, and warn that action is urgently required.

Undoubtedly, there is a real threat of antisemitism, and as ever it comes largely from the far right. Israel’s actions – and its false claim to be representing all Jews – only help to stoke it.

This moral panic is transparently self-serving. It directs our attention away from the pressing, all-too-concrete evidence that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza - one that has slaughtered and maimed many tens of thousands of innocents. 

It redirects our attention instead towards tenuous claims of a deepening antisemitism crisis, one whose tangible effects appear limited and for which the evidence is all too clearly exaggerated. 

After all, a rise in “Jew hatred” is all but inevitable if you redefine antisemitism, as western officials have recently done via the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s new definition, to include antipathy towards Israel - and at the moment when Israel appears, even to the World Court, to be carrying out a genocide.

The logic of Israel and its supporters runs something like this: many more people than usual are expressing hatred of Israel, the self-declared state of the Jewish people. There is no reason to hate Israel unless you hate what it represents, which is Jews. Therefore, antisemitism is on the rise.

This argument makes sense to most Israelis, to its partisans, and to the overwhelming majority of western politicians and career-minded establishment journalists. That is: the very same people who interpret calls for equality in historic Palestine - “from the river to the sea” - as demands for a genocide against Jews.

The singer Charlotte Church, for example, found herself accused of antisemitism by the entire establishment media after a "pro-Palestinian chant" to raise money for Gaza’s children being starved by an Israeli aid blockade. The offending song had included the lyric “From the river to the sea”, calling for the liberation of Palestinians from decades of Israeli oppression. 

At the weekend, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt once again suggested marches calling for a ceasefire were antisemitic because they supposedly "intimidated" Jews. In fact, Jews are prominent at those marches. He was referring to Zionists who excuse the slaughter in Gaza. 

Similarly, in the wake of George Galloway’s overwhelming byelection win "for Gaza" in Rochdale last week, a BBC reporter berated former Labour MP Chris Williamson for using the word "genocide" to describe Israel’s actions. 

The reporter was worried that the term “might offend some people”, despite the World Court finding the accusation of genocide plausible. 

A ghoulish phenomenon

But the ambition of these Israel zealots runs much deeper than mere deflection. Israel’s leaders and most of its citizens are not ashamed of their genocide, it seems, and neither are their overseas backers. 

If my social media feeds are any guide, the slaughter in Gaza is not discomfiting these apologists, or even giving them pause for thought. They appear to revel in their support for Israel as the world looks on in horror. 

Every Palestinian child’s bloodied body, and the outrage it provokes from onlookers, fuels their self-righteousness. They entrench, they do not retreat. 

They appear to be finding a strange reassurance - comfort even - in the wider public’s anger and indignation at the extinguishing of so many young lives.

It mirrors very precisely Israeli officials’ own reaction to the International Court of Justice's verdict that there is a plausible case Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. 

Many observers assumed that Israel would seek to placate the judges and world opinion by toning down its atrocities. They could not have been more wrong. In defying the court, Israel became even more brazen, as attested to by its horrifying assault on the Nasser hospital last month and its lethal attack on Palestinians scrambling to reach an aid convoy last week. 

Israel’s war crimes - broadcast on every social media platform, including by its own soldiers - are even more in our faces than before the World Court ruling.

This phenomenon needs explaining. It looks ghoulish. But it has an internal logic that shines a light on why Israel has become an emotional crutch for many Jewish people, both inside the country and abroad, as well as for others. 

It is not just that Jews and non-Jews who strongly subscribe to the ideology of Zionism identify with Israel. It runs deeper still. They are utterly dependent on a worldview - long cultivated in them by Israel and by their own community leaders, as well as by oil-grabbing western establishments - that places Israel at the centre of the moral universe. 

They have been drawn into what looks more like a cult - and a very dangerous one at that, as the horrors of Gaza are revealing.

Albatross, not sanctuary

The claim they have internalised - that Israel is a necessary sanctuary in a future time of trouble from the supposedly innate, genocidal impulses of non-Jews - should have come crashing down on their heads over the past five months. 

If the price of reassurance - of having a “just-in-case” bolthole - is the slaughter and maiming of many tens of thousands of Palestinian children, and the slow starvation of hundreds of thousands more, then that bolthole is not worth preserving. 


It is not a sanctuary; it is an albatross. It is a stain. It must go, to be replaced by something better for Jews and Palestinians in the region - “from the river to the sea”. 

So why have these Israel partisans not been able to reach a conclusion so morally self-evident to everyone else - or at least those not suborned to the interests of western establishments? 

Because like all cults, hardcore Zionists are immune to self-reflection. Not only that, but their reasoning is inherently circular. 

Israel, Zionism’s creation, is not in the least concerned with providing a solution to antisemitism, as it professes. Quite the reverse. It feeds on antisemitism and needs it. 

Antisemitism is its lifeblood, the very reason for Israel’s existence. Without antisemitism, Israel would be redundant, there would be no need for it as a sanctuary. 

The cult would be over, and so would the endless military aid, the special trading status with the West, the jobs, the land grabs, the privileges and the sense of importance and ultimate victimhood that allows for the dehumanisation of others, not least the Palestinians. 

Like all true believers, Israel’s partisans overseas - who proudly call themselves “Zionists” but are now pressuring social media platforms to ban the term as antisemitic, as the movement’s goals become more transparent - have too much to lose from self- and communal doubt.

The fight against antisemitism means nothing else can take priority - not even genocide. Which, in turn, means no greater evil can be acknowledged, not even the mass murder of children. No bigger threat, however pressing, however urgent, can be allowed to come to the fore.

And to keep the doubt at bay, more antisemitism - more supposed existential threats - must be generated. 

Racism in new garb

In recent years, the biggest difficulty facing Zionism has been that the true racists - on the right, often in power in western capitals - have also served as Israel’s strongest allies. They have dressed up their traditional racist ideologies - that once fed antisemitism, and could again - in new garb: as Islamophobia. 

In Europe and the United States, Muslims are the new Jews. 

Displaced Palestinian children wait to receive food in Rafah, Gaza Strip, 19 February 2024 (Mohammed Abed/AFP)
Which is ideal for Israel and its partisans. A supposed “global, civilisational war” - ideological cover to justify continuing western domination of the oil-rich Middle East - always places Israel, the regional attack dog, on the side of the angels, firmly alongside the white nationalists. 

Because Israel and its apologists cannot expose the true racists and antisemites in power, they must create new ones. And that has required changing antisemitism’s definition beyond recognition, to refer to those who oppose the colonial domination project into which Israel is profoundly integrated.

In this upside-down worldview, one that prevails not only among Israel partisans but in western capitals, we have arrived at a nonsense: to reject Israel’s oppression of Palestinians - and now even its genocide of them - is supposedly to reveal oneself as antisemitic.

Palestinians dehumanized

This was precisely the position in which Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, found herself last month after she criticized French President Emmanuel Macron. 

Israel has, as a consequence, declared it is banning her from entry to the occupied territories to record its human rights abuses. 

But notably, as Albanese pointed out, nothing has changed in practice. Israel has excluded all UN rapporteurs from the occupied territories for the past 16 years, during its siege of Gaza, so they cannot witness the crimes that foregrounded the attack on 7 October.

Last month, Macron made a patently preposterous statement, though one promoted by Israel and treated seriously by the western media. He described Hamas’ attack on Israel as the “biggest antisemitic massacre of our century” - that is, he claimed it was driven by hatred of Jews.

One can criticize Hamas for how it carried out its attack, as Albanese has done: undoubtedly, its fighters committed many violations of international law that day in killing civilians and taking them hostage. 

Exactly the same kind of violations, we should note in the interests of balance, that Israel has committed day in, day out for decades against the Palestinians forced to live under its military occupation.


Palestinian prisoners, seized by an occupying Israeli army in the middle of the night, 
held in military jails and denied proper trials, are no less hostages. 

But to ascribe antisemitism as Hamas’ motivation is intended to scrub out those many decades of oppression. It airbrushes out the very abuses faced by the Palestinians that Hamas and the other Palestinian militant factions were established to resist.

That right of resistance to belligerent military occupation is enshrined in international law, even if the West rarely acknowledges the fact. 

Or as Albanese put it: "The victims in the October 7 massacre were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israeli oppression.”

Macron’s ridiculous remark also wiped out the past 17 years of the siege of Gaza - a slow-motion genocide that Israel has now put on steroids. 

And he did so precisely because western colonial interests - just like Israel’s interests - must rationalise the dehumanisation of Palestinians and their supporters as racists and barbarians, in the West’s pursuit of domination and old-fashioned resource control in the Middle East. 

But it is Albanese, not Macron, now fighting to save her reputation. She is the one being smeared as a racist and antisemite. By whom? By Israel and the genocide-supporting leaders of Europe.

Sacred cause

Israel needs antisemitism. And armed with a ludicrous redefinition adopted by western allies that classifies as Jew hatred any opposition to its crimes - any rejection of its bogus claims of “self-defence” as it crushes resistance to its occupation and its oppression of Palestinians - Israel has every incentive to commit more crimes. 

Every atrocity produces more outrage, more resentment, more “antisemitism”. And the more resentment, the more outrage, the more “antisemitism”, the more Israel and its supporters can present the self-declared Jewish state as a sanctuary from that “antisemitism”.

Israel is no longer treated as a state, as a political actor capable of committing crimes and slaughtering children, but as an article of faith. It is transformed into a belief system, one immune to criticism or scrutiny. It transcends politics to become a sacred cause. And any opposition must be damned as wicked, as blasphemy.

Which is precisely the state to which western politics has devolved. 

This battle against “antisemitism” - or rather, the battle being waged by Israel and its partisans - is to turn the meaning of words, and the values they represent, on their head. It is a fight to crush solidarity with the Palestinian people, and leave them friendless and naked before Israel’s campaign of genocide. 

It is a moral duty to defeat these “antisemitism” warriors and assert our shared humanity - and the right of all to live in peace and dignity - before Israel and its apologists pave the way to an even greater slaughter. 

Joseph Campbell: Our Society Is the Human Race

So beautifully and wisely said. Thank you, Joseph Campbell. May the wisdom and deep truth here inspire and awaken us all. ― Molly

“We're in a period, in terms of history, of the end of national and tribal consciousness. The only consciousness that is proper to contemporary life is global. Nevertheless, all popular thinking is in terms of loyalties to the local communities to which all are members. Such thinking is now out of date.
What we face is a challenge to recognize one community on this earth, and what we find in the face of this challenge is everybody pulling back into his own in-group. I don't want to name the in-groups, but we all know pretty well what they are. In our country we call them pressure groups. They are racial groups, class groups, religious groups, economic groups, and they are all tangling with each other.
For any people to say, 'We are it and the others are other'— these are dangerous people. And there are religions still doing this. The new thing that is very difficult for people to realize is our society is the human race. And our little suburb is the globe. Spaceship Earth.”
Joseph Campbell
From Myth and Meaning: Conversations on
Mythology and Life

“Revolutionary Love”: Michelle Alexander on Gaza, Solidarity, MLK & What Gives Her Hope

Such an excellent and deeply important interview with Michelle Alexander. Deepest bow of gratitude, respect, and love. 🙏💜 Molly

Author and civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander’s new piece in The Nation reflects on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s April 4, 1967, speech in New York opposing the war in Vietnam and its lasting lessons for American society today. She describes “revolutionary love” as the transnational “connections between liberation struggles” around the world, and calls for anti-oppression movements in the U.S. to continue working to “end the occupation of Palestine and commit to the thriving of all of the people who have been subjected to endless war and occupation.” Revolutionary love, argues Alexander, “is the only thing that can save us now.”

From this interview 

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: But, for me, you know, what makes King’s speech essential in this moment is that he was arguing in that speech that if we, as a nation, do not awaken from our collective delusions, we are doomed. You know, he said we must rapidly shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. You know, he said when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, you know, the giant triplet of racism, extreme materialism and militarism will never be conquered. You know, if we fail to make this turn, if we fail to awaken, we are doomed. And he was right. Whether we’re talking about climate change, AI, mass deportation, mass incarceration, the wars in Gaza or the wars on drugs, he’s right, that if we don’t turn away from the corrupting forces of capitalism, militarism and racism, and embrace a truly revolutionary love for all people and all creation, we are doomed. Towards the end of that speech at Riverside, he said there is such a thing as being too late. You know, he said over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words “too late.”

And yet his message wasn’t a hopeless one. He was calling us to embrace a revolutionary movement, one that was grounded in an ethic of love. Just as bell hooks once said, you know, as long as we refuse to embrace love in our struggles for liberation, we will not be able to create a culture of conversion where there’s a mass turning away from an ethic of domination. And that, ultimately, is what revolutionary love is all about and why I believe it is the only thing that can save us now.

For the original interview and full transcript, please go here: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/13/michelle_alexander_revolutionary_love

Friday, March 15, 2024

Chelan Harkin: WOMEN

Photo by Molly

 WOMEN

Women, we have always been
too big for the patriarchy

We are the rivers
to its damns

even if we've been trained
to be quiet and timid
there's great, rushing power
within us

No matter the chainsaws
we are the forest
and there is simply no way
to keep Mother Nature
from growing back
again and again and again.

We are the sea,
the small boats
represent the conditioning
that ludicrously claims
it can contain us.

We've heard the demands
that the moon stay crescent
we are her great rebellion
of fullness 
and her delight
in taking up space.

We've never been
"too sensitive"
we are the frontierswomen of feeling
and sensitivity is where
our power lies
perhaps we've simply been
too powerful
for all the small models of thought
that have feebly tried to diminish us.

We are the wild
beneath every
tame trapping.

Our souls are sleeping dragons
made to awaken
to their full power
and the dawn is fast approaching.

We are the roaring thunder
just beneath the thin layer
of fake blue sky we've been taught
we must wear
like a veil
to cover our great and necessary storms.

We are the greatness
stuffed like a Universe
into a small space
before The Big Bang
explodes Her force
into power and life.

We are wild active volcanoes
in spite of the futile demands
we stay latent.

You can see why 
it takes the hyper vigilant effort
of every system
to pretend they're keeping
us down.

We are the irrepressible wholeness
humanity is growing into,

We are where evolution
is going.

― Chelan Harkin
From Let Us Dance: The Stumble and
Whirl With the Beloved


Chief Seattle: What Will You Teach Your Children?

Photo by Molly
What Will You Teach Your Children?

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

― Chief Seattle

Joanna Macy: Active Hope

Photo by Molly

Active Hope

Active Hope is not wishful thinking. 
Active Hope is not waiting to be rescued . . . . 
by some savior. 
Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life 
on whose behalf we can act. 
We belong to this world. 
The web of life is calling us forth at this time. 
We’ve come a long way and are here to play our part.
With Active Hope we realize that there are adventures in store,
strengths to discover, and comrades to link arms with.
Active Hope is a readiness to discover the strengths
in ourselves and in others;
a readiness to discover the reasons for hope
and the occasions for love.
A readiness to discover the size and strength of our hearts,
our quickness of mind, our steadiness of purpose,
our own authority, our love for life,
the liveliness of our curiosity,
the unsuspected deep well of patience and diligence,
the keenness of our senses, and our capacity to lead.
None of these can be discovered in an armchair or without risk.

 Joanna Macy
From Active Hope: How to Face the Mess
We're In Without Going Crazy 


EXCELLENT ― Robert Hunziker: Greenland Cascading 30 Million Tons Per Hour

This is such an excellent and deeply important article! These are the kinds of stories and facts that should be making the headlines and in-depth news coverage each and every day! And, tragically for us all, they are not.

I am so incredibly grateful for the strong voices of truth and continuous warnings illuminating the reality of where we are at and the long, long overdue and vital need for us to understand the climate emergency we are in and be inspired, not to plunge into despair, but to be motivated to do our part individually and collectively ― whatever that is ― to act to address this most profound crisis that humanity has ever faced.
For me, coming upon this article by Robert Hunziker, as chilling as it is, it is a breath of fresh air exactly because here is the truth, the truth that is imperative for us all to know! It is an antidote to things like an interview that I heard on NPR this morning that just infuriated me and filled me with disgust because of it's total and repeated abdication of its responsibility to bring us the larger pictures of truth about the climate crisis rather than white washing everything and perpetuating our inaction.
I look into the eyes of my six grandchildren, aged 2 months to 9 years, and I think of all of the children of all of the species everywhere and I am so outraged and horrified and heartbroken that our mainstream media and our politicians and policies continue to be wedded to the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street, the military industrial complex, and the imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy (bell hooks words) that has long been poisoning humankind, other beings, and our Earth Mother. THIS MUST CHANGE! ― Molly

Image by Annie Spratt.

Facing Future.tv recently conducted an interview about spooky new developments in Greenland. The ice sheet is cascading/gushing at unheard of rates never dreamed possible at this stage of global warming, or at any stage for that matter.

The video opens with a statement by Peter Wadhams, professor emeritus Ocean Physics, Cambridge University, a leading authority on Arctic sea ice (A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic, Oxford University Press, 256 pgs): “Greenland’s rate of melt in summer was something that we knew about, and it was gradually increasing, then suddenly it’s multiplied itself by about 8 times; this is 30,000,000 tons an hour. When I was last up there it was more like 30,000,000 tons per day. That’s just something unheard of and so we’re really worried about what’s going on with Greenland.”

As it happens, Dr. Wadhams’ expression “worried about what’s going on with Greenland” is a very strong candidate for ‘understatement of the year’ or maybe of the century. The rate of melt he discussed is 720,000,000 tons per day versus previous analyses of 30,000,000 tons per day.

The Facing Future.tv 25:33-min video is entitled: Greenland: Ice Loss Accelerating, 30 Million Tonnes an Hour with Paul Beckwith and Peter Wadhams, Hosted by Dale Walkonen March 3, 2024.

Question by the host: “How serious is the situation in Greenland?

Answer (Wadhams): “Well, it’s very serious because it’s unprecedented that the rate of melt… Suddenly its multiplied itself by about seven or eight; it’s 30 million tons an hour, but when I was last up there it was 30 million tons per day… now gone to an hourly rate which used to be daily rate… when you’re up on the ice sheet you see big changes. There are always large meltwater streams, holes filling up with water. It’s a very dynamic scene but it’s not nearly as dynamic as it is now because everything is speeding up by a factor of about eight. It’s something unheard of… it’s not figured into the climate models used by the IPCC.”

According to Paul Beckwith, climate system scientist, University of Ottawa, the High Arctic has been warming 5-8 times the global average for some time now as many scientists and newspaper reports erroneously claimed it was only two-three times, not 5-8 times. The High Arctic directly influences Greenland, and he claims there’s good data on Greenland and Antarctica via gravity anomaly satellites, e.g., NASA’s GRACE, CyroSat, and Copernicus Sentinel-3, that show melt rates doubling every decade for both regions.

Regarding the new data: “People are going to be very surprised at the accelerated growth of sea level rise in the next decade, or two, let alone if all of Greenland melted, it would be 25 feet of sea level rise.” (Beckwith)

According to Beckwith: James Hansen (Earth Institute/Columbia University) some time ago said he would not be surprised if we had 5 meters (16 feet) of sea level rise by 2100. He said that years ago when the IPCC expected about one-half a meter by 2100.

It should be noted that current IPCC sea level rise statistics assume 1-4 feet this century, depending upon various input data.

Beckwith: We’re seeing huge acceleration in global warming, in ocean warming, estimates of sea level rise are going to be going up, up, up a lot, continually revised upwards. He believes Hansen’s 5 meters is an underestimate. If perchance that happens, what’ll it be by 2030 or 2040 or 2050? After all, Greenland’s melt rate is not static; it’s already off the charts at a baffling 30M tons per hour, formerly 30M tons by the day. Seemingly, that’s comparable to breaking the sound barrier at Mach 1.

Wadhams on Hansen: “I think Hansen is right in expecting a higher rate than models give; he always has a healthy contempt for models which I think is correct because nearly always, models are inadequate, especially the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC models.”

As queried by the host, since most people listen to what the IPCC says, for example, setting nation/state policies, where can people go for accurate information?

Beckwith’s response to ‘the dilemma of where to go for accurate information’: Scientists are individually willing to discuss their own research but reluctant to talk about research by other scientists and only make projections based upon computer models, but computer models are based upon history, often stale information by the time used.

Not included in climate modeling, major wildfires in Canada and Russia last year spewed massive amounts of ash onto Arctic ice which accelerated melting beyond expectations as dark background absorbs solar radiation rather than reflecting it to outer space.

Another new factor impacting Greenland’s ice melt that’s downright spooky is Hansen’s recent statement about Earth’s energy imbalance, which is completely out of whack with more energy than ever before coming into the planet as absorbed sunlight rather than going out as heat radiated to outer space. This imbalance has doubled within only one decade, according to a study by NASA and the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration  This may be, probably is, the biggest ‘bad news of the year’.

Earth’s energy imbalance or “sunlight in” versus “sunlight out” is currently running at a frightful rate @ 1.36 W/m(watts per square meter) as of the current 2020s decade, which is double the 2005-2015 rate @ 0.71 W/m2 (Source: James Hansen).

Beckwith highlighted another major concern for Greenland as the change in jet streams at 20-40,000 feet altitude is altered, as a result of loss of Arctic sea ice, into vast wavey troughs that trap heat over Greenland. This never happened in the past. Another new dynamic, according to Beckwith, is a lot of rain in the Arctic instead of snow, thanks to global warming. And atmospheric rivers, like those that drenched the West Coast, hitting Greenland, accelerating the melt process.

It’s an understatement to conclude that Greenland is in trouble and conventional views of sea level rise are way too conservative. Unfortunately, by extension of these new facts, coastal cities are more vulnerable to flooding than ever before.

According to Climate Central, widespread areas are likely to see storm surges on top of sea level rise reaching at least 4 feet above high tide by 2030, and 5 feet by 2050. Nearly 5 million U.S. residents currently live on land less than 4 feet above high tide, and more than 6 million on land less than 5 feet above. Portland’s high tide broke all-time records, reaching 14 feet at the same time as record-breaking floods hit the US East Coast, January 14th, 2024. NOAA expects sea levels along US coasts to rise as much over the next 10 years as they did over past 100 years.

But the Climate Central study doesn’t include calculations for Greenland’s 30M tons per hour or Antarctica suddenly losing sea ice extent at a record-setting pace 2022,2023, 2024 in succession. Once again, Earth’s climate system outmaneuvers climate science research, leaving scientists bent over at the knees, coughing in its dust. It’s too fast for scientists to keep up.

Bottom line, it’s nice to assume everything will be okay, “we’ll get through it, there’s still time to fix it,” blah-blah-blah, but several new earth-shattering indicators, especially at both poles, are not waiting for that illusive fixit.

Frankly, nobody knows how bad, how soon this worldwide melt-off develops as both poles, the Arctic and Antarctica, experience unbelievably rapid change in concert with land-based melt-offs in the Alps, Patagonia, Andes, Himalayas, Caucasus, and all other mountain ranges worldwide. Meanwhile many of Europe’s famous ski resorts closed in February, even snow cannons stopped working due to high temperatures.

For the record, here’s the James Hansen sea level projection, as mentioned by Paul Beckwith: “In what may prove to be a turning point for political action on climate change, a breathtaking new study casts extreme doubt about the near-term stability of global sea levels. The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields—concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, brings new importance to a feedback loop in the ocean near Antarctica that results in cooler freshwater from melting glaciers forcing warmer, saltier water underneath the ice sheets, speeding up the melting rate. Hansen, who is known for being alarmist and also right, acknowledges that his study implies change far beyond previous consensus estimates. In a conference call with reporters, he said he hoped the new findings would be “substantially more persuasive than anything previously published.” I certainly find them to be.” (Source: Earth’s Most Famous Climate Scientist Issues Bombshell Sea Level Warning, Slate, July 20, 2015)

Nine years later, increasingly it looks like Hansen will be right once again.

If he’s right about “at least 10 feet” within 50 years, which would be by 2065, then what will it be in 2050, 2040, or 2030? In rough numbers, sometime between 2030-40 it would surpass the IPCC highest estimate for 2100. That’s a big-time headache for every coastal city, right around the corner. Hopefully, a magic potion drops into Earth’s atmosphere and makes this go away like a bad dream.

And as long as the magic potion is around, why not use it to strip the world’s teeny-weeny percentage of the world’s population billionaires of some of their riches to buy renewable energy for the world marketplace and finance science projects to help combat Hot House Earth. It’s coming.

For the faint of heart, cheer up, there are plenty of respected climate scientists that disagree with the expectations stated in this article. Still, over time, somebody will be right; maybe it’ll be them but maybe don’t count on that, wondering what they’d say about Greenland’s turbo-charged 30 Million/Tons/Hour.

Nevertheless, one solution that can help solve global warming is “kill Citizens United” that allows corporate interests to spend unlimited funds to influence elections, politicians, and policy (they’ve made the worst possible choices) … before it’s too late to do anything, or is it?

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.