The United Nations says refugee agencies in north-west Syria are being overwhelmed as almost a quarter of a million people flee a fresh bout of fighting.

Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has ... written an open letter addressed to three senior officials in Britain: John Gardiner, Under Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the British government; Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England; and Chris Wormald, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and Social Security.

As a former commercial artist/advertiser guru for more than 55 years, Gus knows the pits of corporatism deception. Even great art has always been at the glorious service of kings and the Church.

 

   WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange languishes in a British prison awaiting probable extradition to the United States to stand trial for violating the Espionage Act of 1917.

   When it comes to carbon dioxide (CO2) and climate, the past is prologue. Barring radical change to humanity’s voracious consumption of fossil fuels, atmospheric CO2 is bound to go up and up, driving global warming. But it won’t be the first time that CO2 has surged. In Earth’s ancient atmosphere, scientists see the faint outlines of a CO2 roller coaster, climbing and dipping across deep time in repeated bouts of climate change. “Each little slice in Earth’s past is a replicated experiment,” says Dana Royer, a paleoclimatologist at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. “It helps us think about where we may be headed in the near future.” 

  From Gadfly...

There’s a carnival atmosphere at St Brutes (motto: Tabula in naufragio) as the end-of-year speech day gets under way.

Parents, boys and staff are assembled in a marquee on the oval. Professor Flint on the Wurlitzer falls silent as the headmaster, Mr Morrison, strides to the lectern, droplets of lunchtime pie and sauce on his chin catching the afternoon light. Pastor Houston is invited to say a short and meaningful prayer.

   The Federal Government has kept up its annual tradition of trying to hide its many climate failures by announcing—two days before Christmas and in the middle of a national bushfire emergency—that it will underwrite two new gas-fired power stations.

 

Elite sport is now prone to moments of self-awareness during times of crisis.

  There is scarcely a city where evidence of the destruction isn’t palpable.

   OffGuardian has an ambiguous — bordering on bitter silliness — article about global warming by John Steppling. In short Steppling tries to pass the concept of global warming as a fake-ish white man’s creation in order to fob off the rise of colourful races, and maintain white superiority, through a revitalised capitalism.

 

 

Twenty-three firefighters were also injured in the state, one seriously, and three trucks were destroyed. Five homes, 28 buildings and 16 vehicles had been destroyed.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he ‘deeply regrets’ any offence caused by his holiday in Hawaii and has cancelled his leave to rush back to Australia in the wake of the tragic death of two firefighters killed overnight.

   The Murdoch New York Post has gone hysterically historic. Its opinion pages are full to the rafters with damnation of the Democrats. The one thing the Democrats have not mastered yet, is a sense of humor. Political black humor.

The sky is blue in Blue Hawaii
not smokey brown from fires like in Sydney
Dreams come true in Blue Hawaii
there's no Climate Change on my hotel TV

Don't follow me, as I run away across the sea
to shelter 'neath the US Presidency
PM Screwed By Blue Hawaii
that's how history will remember me