A 7.3 magnitude earthquake hit Japan near the north-east coast of Fukushima Wednesday March 16. According to Reuters one fatality has been reported along with 69 injuries. Authorities have issued a tsunami warning with residents in costal areas told to evacuate.
More than 2 million homes lost power, as reported by NPR, The Japanese Meteorological Agency said the quake hit at 11:36 P.M. at a depth of 36 miles below the sea.
One person is reported dead and dozens of people are believed to have suffered injuries.
In some areas it was reportedly too forceful for people to stand, and buildings rattled in the Tokyo, according to AFP.
The quake jolted the region just a week shy of the anniversary of the devastating 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that happened back in March 2011.
“Climate change is here and now,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. “If a 1,200 year mega-drought isn’t enough to make people realize that, I don’t know what is.”
The megadrought which has gripped western U.S. states including California and Arizona over the past two decades has been made substantially worse by the human-caused climate crisis, new research shows, resulting in the region’s driest period in about 1,200 years.
Scientists at University of California-Los Angeles, NASA, and Columbia University found that extreme heat and dryness in the West over the past two years have pushed the drought that began in 2000 past the conditions seen during a megadrought in the late 1500s.
“We’re sort of shifting into basically unprecedented times relative to anything we’ve seen in the last several hundred years.”
The authors of the new study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, followed up on research they had conducted in 2020, when they found the current drought was the second-worst on record in the region after the one that lasted for several years in the 16th century.
Since that study was published, the American West has seen a heatwave so extreme it sparked dozens of wildfires and killed hundreds of people and droughtconditions which affected more than 90% of the area as of last summer, pushing the region’s conditions past “that extreme mark,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
The scientists examined wood cores extracted from thousands of trees at about 1,600 sites across the West, using the data from growth rings in ancient trees to determine soil moisture levels going back to the 800s.
They then compared current conditions to seven other megadroughts—which are defined as droughts that are both severe and generally last a number of decades—that happened between the 800s and 1500s.
The researchers estimated that the extreme dry conditions facing tens of millions of people across the western U.S. have been made about 42% more severe by the climate crisis being driven by fossil fuel extraction and emissions.
“The results are really concerning, because it’s showing that the drought conditions we are facing now are substantially worse because of climate change,” Park Williams, a climate scientist at UCLA and the study’s lead author, told the Los Angeles Times.
In the region Williams and his colleagues examined, the average temperature since the drought began in 2000 was 1.6° Fahrenheit warmer than the average in the previous 50 years. Without the climate crisis driving global temperatures up, the West would still have faced drought conditions, but based on climate models studied by the researchers, there would have been a reprieve from the drought in 2005 and 2006.
“Without climate change, the past 22 years would have probably still been the driest period in 300 years,” Williams said in a statement. “But it wouldn’t be holding a candle to the megadroughts of the 1500s, 1200s, or 1100s.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said the new research must push the U.S. Congress to take far-reaching action to mitigate the climate crisis, as legislation containing measures to shift away from fossil fuel extraction and toward renewable energy is stalled largely due to objections from Republicans and right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
“It’s time for Congress to act by making meaningful investments into climate action—before it’s too late,” she said.
Climate change is here and now.
If a 1,200 year mega-drought isn't enough to make people realize that, I don't know what is. It's time for Congress to act by making meaningful investments into climate action — before it's too late.https://t.co/jExzMKUXxr
The drought has had a variety of effects on the West, including declining water supplies in the largest reservoirs of the Colorado River—Lake Mead and Lake Powell— as well as reservoirs across California and the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 96% of the Western U.S. is now “abnormally dry” and 88% of the region is in a drought.
“We’re experiencing this variability now within this long-term aridification due to anthropogenic climate change, which is going to make the events more severe,” Isla Simpson, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who was not involved in the study released Monday, told the Los Angeles Times.
The researchers also created simulations of other droughts they examined between 800 and 1500, superimposing the same amount of drying driven by climate change. In 94% of the simulations, the drought persisted for at least 23 years, and in 75% of the simulations, it lasted for at least three decades—suggesting that the current drought will continue for a number of years.
Williams said it is “extremely unlikely that this drought can be ended in one wet year.”
“We’re sort of shifting into basically unprecedented times relative to anything we’ve seen in the last several hundred years,” Samantha Stevenson, a climate modeler at the University of California, Santa Barbara who was not involved in the study, told the New York Times.
Originally published on Common Dreams by JULIA CONLEY and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license
‘Seaspiracy‘ was met with a suspicious amount of criticism in the media…
Above: photo / Netflix Seaspiracy
Which, for some, can be added reason to view it anyway, with open eyes, and judge for oneself. The same goes for many of the films show here below. It’s understandable that we are all still recovering (many in a literal sense) from the year long emergency crisis related to the novel coronavirus, and “crisis fatigue” has put the climate out of mind, to a degree.
Maybe it’s just that we are all tired of being scared out of our wits? That makes sense for sure. However, the situation can only improve with increased awareness leading to action.
“Seaspiracy“, regardless of its possible shortcomings, many of which were very convenient to the industrial fishing interests that are exposed in the film, there is one theme that runs throughout that is the one that deserves more and more attention.
Forget the shocking facts and figures. That’s all obvious news by now in many areas including the challenges to the ocean and it’s ecosystem. The message is the overwhelming importance of both Industry and Government in solving a problem that has been, in essence, created primarily by those same interests and entities.
In the film there is a thread of awakening that occurred in the mind of director / author Ali Tabrizi. He explains how he was very focused on individual responsibility and issues like plastic drinking straws and how they end up polluting the ocean.
The awakening came about when he dug deeper, with hands-on research, detailed in the film, and found out that, basically, the straws were a tiny, infinitesimal percentage of the plastic destroying the ocean. The real causes, it turned out, of the huge and growing problem traced back to…. you guessed it Industry and Governments.
Likewise, the Kiss the Ground documentary (also below) presents a strong and eminently sensible case for a sure-fire way to reduce carbon in the atmosphere by massive amounts. The film has been popular but there are many more “tech” based ideas that are getting a lot of attention also, and it’s easy to imagine millions being pumped into some wacko expensive high tech “solution” when the real-world solution (such as outlined in the movie) is staring us all in the face.
Why? Because to implement the Soil Regeneration systems put forth in the film would require the support of… wait for it…. The huge Industrial Agribusiness Complex and Governments. To be fair the Biden administration has put forward a plan to reward farmers that are using regenerative soil systems and that is definitely needed. But will it be enough? Will it be blocked when it hits the Senate and Congress?
In the mean time it is these films, and more certainly to come, are a lifeline to real solutions, and in particular increasing clarity regarding where the actual, devastating problems lie. And they are essential in countering the “pro-pollution propaganda” that can be so cleverly disguised by organizations that are dedicated to getting “rich” by practices that amount to planetary suicide.
Passionate about ocean life, a filmmaker sets out to document the harm that humans do to marine species — and uncovers alarming global corruption.
Kiss the Ground is a full-length documentary narrated by Woody Harrelson that sheds light on an “new, old approach” to farming called “regenerative agriculture”
In celebration of Earth Day 2021, Apple TV+ will debut “The Year Earth Changed,” an original documentary special narrated by Emmy and BAFTA Award-winning broadcaster David Attenborough. “During this most difficult year, many people have reappraised the value and beauty of the natural world and taken great comfort from it,” said Richard Attenborough. “But the lockdown also created a unique experiment that has thrown light on the impact we have on the natural world. The stories of how wildlife responded have shown that making even small changes to what we do can make a big difference.”
What if confronting the climate crisis is the best chance we’ll ever get to build a better world?
Filmed over 211 shoot days in nine countries and five continents over four years, This Changes Everything is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change.
Directed by Avi Lewis, and inspired by Naomi Klein’s international non-fiction bestseller This Changes Everything, the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.
Presented by James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, Lewis Hamilton, Novak Djokovic and Chris Paul — a revolutionary new film about meat, protein and strength.
Cowspriacy
Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret is a groundbreaking feature-length environmental documentary following intrepid filmmaker Kip Andersen as he uncovers the most destructive industry facing the planet today – and investigates why the world’s leading environmental organizations are too afraid to talk about it.
Animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, water consumption and pollution, is responsible for more greenhouse gases than the transportation industry, and is a primary driver of rainforest destruction, species extinction, habitat loss, topsoil erosion, ocean “dead zones,” and virtually every other environmental ill. Yet it goes on, almost entirely unchallenged.
Chasing Coral
Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world.
The film took more than three years to shoot and is the result of 500+ hours of underwater footage, coral bleaching submissions from volunteers in 30 countries, as well as support from more than 500 people in various locations around the world.
A Plastic Ocean
When he discovers the world’s oceans brimming with plastic waste, a documentary filmmaker investigates the pollution’s environmental impacts. Starring:Tanya Streeter
In the center of the Pacific Ocean gyre researchers found more plastic than plankton. A Plastic Ocean documents the newest science, proving how plastics, once they enter the oceans, break up into small particulates that enter the food chain where they attract toxins like a magnet. These toxins are stored in seafood’s fatty tissues, and eventually consumed by us.
![Chasing Coral | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/b6fHA9R2cKI/hqdefault.jpg)
