Amazon

Friday August 30, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 30, 2019

Trump floated the idea of using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes headed for US

President Donald Trump has floated multiple times the idea of thwarting hurricanes headed for the US by bombing them, including by dropping nuclear bombs on hurricanes to disrupt their course, Axios reported Sunday, citing conversations with sources who heard Trump’s comments and were briefed on a National Security Council memo that recorded the comments.

September 23, 2005

In an early Monday tweet, Trump denied the Axios’ report, claiming that he “never said” what was in it. CNN has not been able to independently verify the report.

According to Axios, the President has suggested the idea several times to senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they look into the idea of using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the US. A source who was at a hurricane briefing at the White House told the outlet that the President once said of hurricanes, “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?”

The source, who paraphrased Trump’s remarks to Axios, said that the President said, “They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?” Asked by Axios how the briefer responded to the President’s suggestion, the source said he “said something to the effect of, ‘Sir, we’ll look into that.’”

April 6, 2017

The President then asked how many hurricanes the US may be able to stop and reiterated his suggestions, according to the source, which caused the briefer to be “knocked back on his heels.”

“You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, ‘What the f—? What do we do with this?'” the source told Axios.

According to the outlet, Trump also raised the idea of using bombs to stop hurricanes during a 2017 conversation with a senior administration official. A source briefed on a NSC memo describing that conversation told Axios that the document does not contain the word “nuclear.” According to sources the outlet spoke to about that conversation, despite Trump’s interest in the idea, it “went nowhere and never entered a formal policy process.”

April 11, 2017

The idea of using nuclear bombs “to counteract convection currents” was floated during the Eisenhower administration, Axios reported, and has continued to resurface even though government scientists have said it will not work.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in an online fact sheet titled “Tropical Cyclone Myths Page, detonating a nuclear weapon over a hurricane “might not even alter the storm,” and the idea “neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems.” (CNN)  

 

Wednesday August 28, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday August 28, 2019

Bolsonaro’s ego stands in the way of saving the Amazon

December 18, 2009

“Did I say that? Did I?” That was Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro talking to reporters on Tuesday morning, apparently denying what his office had told CNN exactly one hour earlier, that he would reject a $20 million pledge from the G7 countries to help fight the fires consuming the Amazon. It was a touch of gaslighting, Bolsonaro style.

The Amazon fires are scorching the Earth’s most vital ecosystem at such a voracious rate that by the time you read this, thousands more trees will have turned to ashes. Brazil’s space research agency calculates that one-and-a-half soccer fields worth of rainforest burns every single minute. That destruction includes more than trees — it is engulfing everything that lives in the forest and cannot escape.

December 4, 2007

As the flames spread, the scale of the devastation could reach a point where the damage may become irreversible. Amid rising pressure from abroad, and from inside Brazil, Bolsonaro has instead busied himself with a childish (and sexist) dispute over whether he has a more beautiful wife than French President Emmanuel Macron and posturing that efforts to help from abroad amount to an assault on Brazilian sovereignty. Meanwhile, more rainforest burns.

Brazil should receive help not only because what happens in the Amazon will affect the entire world, but because it should not bear the cost of preserving the Amazon all alone. Whether or not Bolsonaro feels he has something to prove, Brazilians have much to be proud of. They have a spectacular country, and they have shown in the past that they are capable of protecting it. There is no shame in accepting assistance from a world that is eager to help. They have every right to run the operation. It is their country. But their problem is affecting everyone. If everyone wants to help, why not let them? The obstacle, as often happens with demagogues, is their president. It’s a perfect — perfectly awful — example of what happens when nationalist demagogues take power.

June 2, 2017

It is hardly a surprise that Bolsonaro has been described as the “Trump of the Tropics.” There’s much about his political style that echoes the US President, including his approach to the environment.

Urged by foreign leaders to fight the fires — which open up more land for powerful Brazilian ranchers and miners to graze cattle and extract mineral wealth — Bolsonaro declared, “You have to understand that the Amazon is Brazil’s, not yours.”

It was not unlike what President Donald Trump said in his press conference three days later, when he was asked if he is still skeptical about climate change. In his rambling answer, he said he is an “environmentalist,” and went on to describe precisely the opposite, saying, “I feel that the United States has tremendous wealth. The wealth is under its feet,” adding, “I’m not going to lose that wealth; I’m not going to lose it on dreams.”

The nationalists’ creed is centered on some version of MAGA, Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan, which is at its heart a call to mistrust cooperation with other countries and to reject the prospect of sacrifices for a common good shared with other nations. (Continued: CNN)