CLIMATE NEWS
2015 State of the Climate: El Niño came, saw, and conquered
A record-smashing hurricane season in the central North Pacific. Water rationing in Puerto Rico. The biggest one-year jump in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations on record. Severe drought in Ethiopia. The hottest global surface temperature—by one of the largest margins—on record.
Those are just a few of 2015’s major climate happenings documented in the recently releasedState of the Climate 2015 report from NOAA and the American Meteorological Society. While the events were scattered across the globe, they all had one thing in common: they were all connected to one of the three strongest El Ninõs in the historical record.
A Pacific pattern with a global echo
El Niño is the warm phase of a natural climate pattern called “ENSO,” which is short for El Niño-Southern Oscillation. During El Niño, the prevailing winds near the equator in the Pacific relax. Surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific warm up. A major hotspot of tropical rainfall and convection (rising air) develops over the warm waters.
The warm up for the 2015 El Niño event actually began in 2014. Monthly sea surface temperatures in a key ENSO-monitoring region hit the El Niño threshold—0.5°C above average—in October 2014 and remained elevated through winter. But the atmosphere didn’t fully start cooperating until March 2015, when NOAA forecasters declared El Niño officially underway.
By December 2015*, however, disruptions in temperature, rainfall, and surface air pressure across the tropical Pacific were on par with two of the strongest El Niños in the historical record: 1982 and 1997.
UN to Probe Whether Iconic Secretary-General Was Assassinated
Newly discovered documents revive claim that Dag Hammarskjold may have been killed by South African agents backed by the CIA.
False Flags Fluttering in the Empire’s Hot Air
The good news for the US “deep state” is that Blacks in the US can very much accomplish the same function as the refugees do in Europe: they are a vocal, mostly deeply alienated minority, with a great deal of pent-up anger against the rest of society which can very easily be set-off to create riots and commit crimes. It is also rather easy to find a few crazies amongst them to start murdering policemen (the ideal symbol of the oppression) and create a sense of crisis acute enough justify the use of police, National Guard and, potentially, military forces to restore and uphold “law and order”.
The Coming War on ChinaJohn Pilger talks about China, Okinawa, and U.S. policy in Asia.
Sugar-Coated Lies: How The Food Lobby Destroys Health
Simply because the food industry is able to resist regulation. The CEO report notes that the food industry has vigorously mobilised to stop vital public health legislation
