FIRST THEY CAME

Trump Hugging the Flag

Credit: nymag.com

First, they came for the news media, crying "fake news," promoting "alternative facts" and denying the reality of any unfavorable reports or evidence, and we did nothing.

Then they came for the "aliens" and immigrants, and though concerned, we did nothing.

Then they came for judges whose legal rulings prevented the separation and caging of migrant children at the border, and, though protesting, we did nothing.

Then they came for Homeland Security officials whose warnings of Russian election interference they rejected, and though surprised, we did nothing.

Then they came for the FBI Director who would not pledge complete loyalty, but it was 'complicated', and other concerns were cited, and we did nothing.

Then they came for the Attorney General whose required recusal opened the door for the Mueller Investigation, and who was no Roy Cohn, and, we did nothing.

Then they came for the Investigators themselves, accusing them of being "deep state"agents and labeling the investigation a "total hoax," and we did nothing.

Then they came for the "whistleblowers" who revealed corrupt dealings with a foreign power to undermine a potential political rival, and we, ultimately, did nothing.

Then they came for the Inspectors General in every Federal agency where questions were raised about administrative corruption, and we grumbled, but did nothing.

Then they came for the Public Health experts and officials, charging a "cabal" of scientists with undermining the President by promoting the "hoax" of a pandemic and the wearing of masks, and we've done nothing.

Then they came for peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors, smearing them as "subversives" and "anarchists" bent only on destruction, deserving of "retribution," and threatening to charge them with sedition, and we've done nothing.

Finally, they came for the Electoral System, claiming it to be "rigged," against them, suppressing voting, cutting short the census, shrinking the Postal Service, and undermining public faith in the integrity of the most basic mechanism of a functioning democracy, and so far, we've done..... 

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Les Adler

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This piece was inspired by Martin Niemöller, a prominent Lutheran minister and courageous opponent of Adolf Hitler. Niemöller survived seven years in Nazi concentration camps.

TRUMP TO ATTACK SANCTUARY CITIES

The New York Times reported today that the Trump administration is planning to deploy heavily armed border patrol tactical units to hunt down and capture undocumented people in sanctuary cities.

In normal times, these highly trained, heavily armed units are used near the border to deal with equally heavily armed, highly dangerous individuals or groups, such as gangs of drug or arms smugglers.

Coming soon to a sanctuary city near you

Credit: James Tourtellotte

Now, cities such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles that have defied Trump by declaring themselves to be sanctuaries for undocumented people, will see these tactical units working side by side with ICE to enforce Trump and Stephen Miller's draconian immigration policies.

There's no doubt that this will play well with Trump's base. Images of uniformed, armored squads "taking down" immigrants whom Trump's true believers have been conditioned to fear and hate will provide visceral proof that tough guy Trump is making America great again.

For me, it brings to mind the aphorism, attributed to psychologist Abraham Maslow, that if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. These special tactical units are hammers, trained and primed to strike. When they are deployed against ordinary people in the heart of our cities, innocent people will die. It's just a matter of time.

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REA

ARCTIC SEA ICE MELTDOWN--STRIKING 3D VISUALIZATION

The volume of arctic sea ice varies season by season and year by year. Unfortunately, the trend is clearly down, with current ice volume about one-quarter of what it was in 1980. That's not good news, since it's part of a vicious cycle of warming, melting and carbon dioxide release and that impacts the entire northern hemisphere.

NASA finds oldest and thickest Arctic sea ice is melting fastest

Credit: NASA Goddard

You can find more details plus a brilliant 3D visualization of the data -- thanks to physicist and climate expert Joe Romm andmulti-talented IT consultant Andy Lee Robinson -- at this URL.

The loss of Arctic sea ice cover does not only impact polar bears and Inuit communities. Scientists are becoming increasingly sure that a smaller temperature difference between the Arctic and the rest of the northern hemisphere makes for a much wobblier jet stream, which, ironically, can cause much colder winters, for example in the eastern U.S. and the U.K.

For another brilliant--and scary-visualization, check out Ed Hawkins' spiral map of global temperature change from 1850 to 2016. It's the most powerful anti-denial intervention I've ever come across.

Credit: Ed Hawkins

Vast underground ice sheet found on Mars

NASA image shows water ice fading between October, 2008 and January, 2009

I've just finished listening to a NASA press conference announcing that nearly half of Mars has a layer of nearly pure ice just under its surface.

The NASA scientists estimate that this represents about one million cubic kilometers of ice, or about twice the amount of ice that covers Greenland here on Earth.

The Martian ice was exposed to view by meteorites that blasted out small craters--a few meters in diameter and from half a meter to two-and-a-half meters deep--and, much to the scientists' surprise, revealed a layer of 99 percent pure ice that they think ranges from 1 to 10 meters (33 feet) thick.

These underground ice sheets appear to extend from the Martian poles to about 45 degrees north and south--that is, halfway from each pole to the Martian equator.

Three different instruments in orbit around Mars on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter allowed the scientists to detect five newly formed craters, photograph bright, bluish-white material in or splashed out around them, material that quickly faded away during the Martian summer, and finally identify that material as nearly pure water ice by its spectrum.

"We found a beautiful water ice signature," said Selby Cull, from the Compact Reconnaisance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars team. "Crystal-clear-no-doubt-about-it water ice."

The ice is amazingly recent--around 10,000 years old--the scientists say. It dates from a period when Mars was wetter and had much more water vapor in its atmosphere than it does today.

According to the researchers, the discovery sheds light on the recent climate history of Mars, during which water vapor has shuttled out from and back to the polar regions as the Martian climate has warmed and cooled due to changes in the amount of sunlight the planet receives.

This plus earlier studies have led scientists to conclude that Mars had far more water in the distant past--several billion years ago--but has cooled and dried out over time. Some of the water is now locked up in minerals, some has been lost to space, and some remains in the form of ice.

In contrast, Earth has managed to keep most of its water.

Mars is now too cold, and its atmosphere is too thin, to allow liquid water to exist at the surface. However, these new findings suggest that water may still percolate underground, coalescing to form these newly discovered underground ice sheets.

Ironically, the Viking II spacecraft landed in the region where this ice was found in 1976, and scraped down into the soil, but not quite deep enough to find the ice.

"If Viking II had been able to dig down a few more inches, we could have made this discovery 30 years ago," said Shane Byrne, with the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment.

The NASA scientists say they were not surprised to find ice under the surface of Mars, but were amazed to find that it was so pure. "We expected it to be a 50-50 mix of ice and dust," Byrne said. This has sent them back to their blackboards to try to explain what they found.

It may be decades or even centuries before humans set foot on Mars. The good news is that when we do get there, there will be plenty of water waiting for us just under Mars' cold and dusty surface.

Robert Adler
for the institute