Trump and Kim Jong-un Bring the Heat

Only took Donald Trump six months in office to bring up the N-word... nuclear. Hillary and Barack raised questions about Donald's fiery, impulsive temperament not being well-suited to the Commander-in-Chief job. Then he got elected. From Celebrity Apprentice to the nuclear code of the most powerful nation on earth. The United States used the atomic bomb twice. After Hiroshima and the deaths of 140,000 did not get the Japanese to issue a surrender, Truman calmly stated:

"If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware. ”

The Japanese did not respond and another bomb dropped on Nagasaki killed 70,000 more people three days later.

Truman's words help remind us of the context-- the war between American and Japan had raged for 3 1/2 years. The goal, defeat of Japan with as few additional American lives lost, had been clearly established and understood by the American people and our Allies. Only under these extreme circumstances did Truman make the decision to drop a first atomic bomb, incinerate 140,000 people and then warn the Japanese that a second bomb would follow. Truman chose powerful words to characterize a moment blighted with terror. Compare that to the present situation.

Trump pulls out the rhetorical blowtorch and talks about "fire and fury" being unleashed on North Korea, a small country on the border of China being run by a ruthless, tinhorn dictator. Trump's defenders descry the annoying dictator in Pyongyang with his missile tests and insane saber rattling rhetoric. Sounds like a lot of sound and fury has been generated by both Trump and Kim Jong-un, both men sporting unusual haircuts.

Meanwhile, more heat is the last thing we need: 

• Europe is burning under the influence of a heatwave nicknamed Lucifer.
• European glaciers are melting.
• A US climate report, produced by 13 government agencies, gets leaked to the New York Times out of fear that report will be suppressed by the Trump administration.
• Donald Trump hires General Kelly to manage the White House staff. Then Trump goes to a golf course in New Jersey on vacation. 
• Maybe Mr. Trump wanted to escape any chance of being managed himself? Issues a bunch of tweets from NJ!
• We should always be suspicious of somebody claiming to go to New Jersey on vacation. 
• The Kennedy's had Hyannis Port. The Bush family went to Kennebunkport. And even Bill Clinton and Barack Obama could afford the trip to Massachusetts, hanging out with the Eastern media moguls on Martha's Vineyard.

It's getting so hot in here-- now that's something to fume and fulminate about.

Climate Change Initiatives-- building an Ark in the 21st Century

Dear Friend,

Thanks for the link to New York Magazine article on rising waters. I like the insights about people's resistance to imagining the unpleasant. I've noticed how much we deny the obvious in these matters.

I mentioned to you that FEMA gave home owners on Long Island with waterfront property lots of money to lift their houses after the destruction caused by Super Storm Sandy. Some homeowners raised their homes to weird heights-- and then found some difficulty in reselling their houses. I'm sure it was a boon to the construction industry to fix up and build new houses along the shoreline and on the canals.

And in Manhattan I notice that the apartment on West End Ave is in close proximity to the Hudson River on the west. The east-west thoroughfare, West 79th St, takes a big rise as the land moves from Riverside Park up into central Manhattan. So I guess Riverside Park would be underwater before West End Ave. Maybe we would have riverfront property-- though our apartment faces away from the river.

I've never really been able to get my head around the rise in ocean levels. I'm a big believer in the validity of most climate change warnings. I guess water level rise is something we can actually do something about-- move further inland.

The stuff that I wonder most about it are the changes in rainfall, temperature etc. that I experience more directly. Just watched a video clip on NY  Times website, an interview of Obama. He points out that Chinese leaders were most motivated to cooperate on Climate Change Initiatives-- due to their concerns about the political stability of their nation. If it gets much harder to breath in Beijing you could have a riot on your hands-- or something along those lines is how I pictured it. Maybe I'm way off base-- and their afraid of food riots or something else?

Thanks for sending the New York Magazine article--  better to discuss it than put our heads back in the sand.

Thanks,

John

Doesn't take a weather man...

From ABC news... Jan. 5, It hasn't been this cold for almost two decades in many parts of the country. Frostbite and hypothermia can set in quickly at 15 to 30 below zero.

Mind boggling cold weather in the Midwestern United States. Cold that threatens lives. Cold beyond the wildest imagination of men. What weather does Mother Nature have in store for us-- in the days weeks, months and years to come? 

Mankind makes a silly presumption; we presume Nature will operate according to the patterns of the past, simply because we like those patterns, we expect them and understand them. Nature owes us nothing and cares even less about our expectations. Climate is a reality of physics, indifferent to human emotion but very much connected to human behavior. If you put horrendous amounts of garbage, spew carbon into the atmosphere with unrelenting fury, as industrial man has done with nary a care about poor old Mother Nature... well then. 

Don't tread on me states the motto on the yellow flag from the American Revolution-- just below a coiled rattlesnake. We tread on Mother Nature to our own detriment.