To Protect Fauci, The Washington Post is Preparing a Hit Piece on the Group Denouncing Gruesome Dog Experimentations
Glenn Greenwald
SUBSTACK.com
Typical of the corporate media: the WaPo steps forth to defend the status quo no matter how rotten it is.
Beagles are noted for their human-friendly characteristics.
Anger over the U.S. Government's gruesome, medically worthless experimentation on adult dogs and puppies has grown rapidly over the last two months. A truly bipartisan coalition in Congress has emerged to demand more information about these experiments and denounce the use of taxpayer funds to enable them. On October 24, twenty-four House members — nine Democrats and fifteen Republicans, led by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) — wrote a scathing letter to Dr. Anthony Fauci expressing “grave concerns about reports of costly, cruel, and unnecessary taxpayer-funded experiments on dogs commissioned by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases." Similar protests came in the Senate from a group led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).
The campaign to end these indescribably cruel, taxpayer-funded experiments on dogs has been underway for years, long before Dr. Facui became a political lightning rod. In 2018, I reported on these experiments under the headline "BRED TO SUFFER: Inside the Barbaric U.S. Industry of Dog Experimentation.” That article described “a largely hidden, poorly regulated, and highly profitable industry in the United States that has a gruesome function: breeding dogs for the sole purpose of often torturous experimentation, after which the dogs are killed because they are no longer of use.”
Along with the videographer Leighton Woodhouse, I also produced a two-minute video report which used footage from experimentation labs filmed by activists with the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) to show the graphic, excruciating horrors to which these dogs are subjected (the video, which is hard to watch, is appended to the bottom of this article). In our reporting, we noted the cruel irony driving how and why particular dogs are selected for this short life of suffering and misery and detailed just some of the barbarism involved:
The majority of dogs bred and sold for experimentation are beagles, which are considered ideal because of their docile, human-trusting personality. In other words, the very traits that have made them such loving and loyal companions to humans are the ones that humans exploit to best manipulate them in labs. . . .They are often purposely starved or put into a state of severe thirst to induce behavior they would otherwise not engage in. They are frequently bred deliberately to have crippling, excruciating diseases, or sometimes are brought into life just to have their organs, eyes, and other body parts removed and studied as puppies, and then quickly killed.
They are force-fed laundry detergents, pesticides, and industrial chemicals to the point of continuous vomiting and death. They are injected with lethal pathogens such as salmonella or rabies. They have artificial sweetener injected into their veins that causes the dogs’ testicles to shrink before they are killed and exsanguinated. Holes are drilled into their skulls so that viruses can be injected into their brains. And all of that is perfectly legal.
Most of these dogs, after being bred, are "devocalized,” which the advocacy group NAVS describes as “a surgical procedure which makes it physically impossible for the dog to bark.” Though entailing pain and suffering, the procedure prevents the dogs from screaming in pain. As we noted in that article, researchers acknowledge that few to none of these experiments are actually medically necessary. This 2016 op-ed in The San Diego Union-Tribune by Lawrence Hansen, a professor of neuroscience and pathology at the University of California-San Diego School of Medicine who once engaged in experimentation on dogs, explains why he is so ashamed to have participated given their medical worthlessness.
While numerous advocacy groups have been working for years to curb the abuses of these experiments, one group, White Coat Waste Project, has found particular success as a result of an innovative strategy. Advocacy groups know how polarized American politics has become, and that, as a result, a prerequisite for success is constructing a movement that can attract people from all ideologies, who identify with either or neither of the two political parties, but unite in defense of universally held values and principles.
White Coat has accomplished this with great success by fusing the cause of animal rights (long viewed as associated with the left) with opposition to wasteful taxpayer spending (a cause that resonates more on the right). The fact that love for dogs, and animals generally, has grown across all demographic groups further enables them to unite people from across the spectrum, including in Congress, in support of their cause. They routinely attract both Democratic and Republican members of Congress to sign on to their campaigns to end taxpayer-funded experimentation on animals, and are funded almost entirely through small-donor, grass-roots support that comes from the right, the left, and everything in between. Each year, they publicly award members of Congress “who have demonstrated outstanding leadership in the War on Waste, by exposing and stopping $20 billion in wasteful and unnecessary taxpayer-funded animal experiments,” and those honored are always a bipartisan group of lawmakers.
More than any other group, it is White Coat that has elevated the cause of stopping these horrific government experimentations on dogs and puppies into the mainstream political conversation. And numerous media outlets — led by The Washington Post — have spent years publishing flattering profiles on this group and its innovative bipartisan strategies. In November, 2016, for instance, The Post published reportingabout White Coat's activities — under the headline: “Should dogs be guinea pigs in government research? A bipartisan group says no” — which heralded the group and its activists for being one of those rare Washington success stories that unites both left and right around a common cause:
It’s no accident that the Congress members hosting the event are a bipartisan pair.White Coat Waste emphasizes that it is not a traditional animal advocacy organization, but one focused on what it says is government waste on testing — the kind of issue that could appeal to both fiscal conservatives and animal rights activists. Its founder, Anthony Bellotti, is a Republican strategist whose LinkedIn profile lists experience managing campaigns against Obamacare and federal funding for Planned Parenthood. [Vice President Justin] Goodman formerly worked for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
“We oppose taxpayer funding of animal experimentation. That’s it,” Bellotti said. “We don’t take a position on cosmetics testing any more than we do on vegan nutrition”. . . . In 2014, a Pew survey found that 50 percent of Americans oppose the use of animals in scientific research, with Democrats and political liberals slightly more opposed than Republicans and conservatives.
“Finding effective ways to limit unnecessary and expensive animal tests is good for taxpayers and is good for our animals,” [Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA)} said in a statement sent to The Washington Post. “As a member of the Appropriations Committee that funds these agencies, I certainly welcome more analysis on what federal agencies are doing in terms of testing on dogs and other animals. I look forward to collaborating with a bipartisan group of my colleagues in Congress to address this problem.”
Throughout the Trump years, The Post continued to report on the group's work in flattering ways, always emphasizing its purely non-partisan agenda and their ability to bring together left and right. Though The Post once referred to them as “a right-leaning advocacy group,” White Coat has been described by the paper for years as an animal rights group uniting all camps by combating the use of taxpayer dollars for experiments most would find morally reprehensible. After all, during the Trump years, they were protesting experimentations done by agencies controlled by the Trump administration, so heralding their work aligned perfectly with The Post's political agenda of flattering the views of their liberal readers.
BELOW: Excellent explanation by Glenn why biomedical experimentation on non-human animals is morally questionable and most often useless or misleading.
One 2018 Post article on White Coat described how “a nonprofit animal rights organization filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the U.S. Agriculture Department, seeking information about experiments during which thousands of cats have been euthanized at a facility in Maryland.” A 2020 Post article described White Coat as “a small watchdog group that has generated bipartisan congressional opposition to [the Veteran Administration's] dog research by arguing that federal animal testing is a waste of taxpayer dollars.” A 2018 Post article on a similar campaign simply described it as “an animal rights group.” A 2017 Post article described White Coat's success in recruiting renowned British primatologist Jane Goodall to the cause of stopping cruel FDA experiments on primates, calling it “an advocacy group that says its goal is to publicize and end taxpayer-funded animal experiments.”
So The Post, like most major media outlets, has been reporting on the successes of the White Coat Waste Project fairly and favorably for years. Most people in Washington and in the media regard success in bridging divisions between the citizenry and ideological camps as a desirable and positive objective, and few groups have done that with as much success as White Coat. And thus, along with trans-ideological public support, the group has been lavished with positive media coverage — until now.
Now everything has changed. The government official who oversees the agencies conducting most of these gruesome experiments has become a liberal icon and one of the most sacred and protected figures in modern American political history: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and President Biden's Chief Medical Advisor. Many of the most horrific experiments, including the ones on dogs and puppies now in the news as a result of White Coat's activism, are conducted by agencies under Fauci's command and are funded by budgets he controls.
As we might expect from a media system that serves as a shield and enabler for a sociopathic order, the mainstream media show no compassion toward animals subjected to institutionalised human cruelty.
In other words, White Coat's activism, which had long generated bipartisan support and favorable media coverage, now reflects poorly on Dr. Fauci. And as a result, The Washington Post has decided to amass a team of reporters to attack the group — the same one the paper repeatedly praised prior to the COVID pandemic — in order to falsely smear it as a right-wing extremist group motivated not by a genuine concern for the welfare of animals or wasteful government spending, but rather due to a partisan desire, based in MAGA ideology, to attack Fauci.
In emails sent last week to the group, Post reporter Beth Reinhard advised them that she wanted “to talk about White Coat Waste and the #beaglegate campaign.” She specifically asked for a wide range of financial documents relating to the group's funding — far beyond what non-profit advocacy groups typically disclose. “May I request your 2020 filing with the IRS,” Reinhard first inquired. White Coat quickly provided that. On October 30, White Coat Vice President Justin Goodman provided even more financial documents — “attached are the Schedule Bs. I’ve also attached a breakdown of our funding sources from 2017-Q3 2021,” he wrote in an email to Reinhard — yet nothing satisfied her, because nothing in these documents was remotely incriminating or helpful to the narrative they were trying to concoct about the group's real, secret agenda.
After White Coat voluntarily provided more and more detailed documentation about its finances, it became obvious what fictitious storyline The Post was attempting to manufacture: that this is a far-right group that is funded by "dark money” from big MAGA donors, motivated by a hatred of science and Dr. Fauci. But in trying to manufacture this false tale, The Post encountered a rather significant obstacle: White Coat is funded almost entirely by small donors, grass-roots citizens who use the group's website to make donations.
Once The Post was repeatedly thwarted in its efforts to concoct the lie that the group is MAGA-funded, Reinhard continued to insist that there must be hidden right-wing funding sources, and even began demanding that White Coat take some sort of bizarre vow never to accept right-wing or "pro-Trump" funding sources in the future. On Monday, she sent them this flailing email:
In response, Goodman — who, prior to joining White Coat, had spent close to a decade as PETA's Director of Laboratory Investigations — pointed out the obvious: “We already have disclosed our largest donor, which is the grassroots, and it's been our largest funder for many years in Democrat and GOP Administrations.” He added: “we have not turned down, solicited or received a dime from any Pro-Trump or conservative groups, nor have any approached us before or during #BeagleGate.” While noting that “some of our other larger supporters, like LUSH Cosmetics, are already public,” Goodman detailed that little has changed in terms of fundraising as a result of this recent campaign targeting cruel experimentations on beagles: “Regarding fundraising, we estimate that Aug-Sep 2021 is approximately 31% lower than the prior period during 2020. And we estimate (and I stress estimate) that fundraising in October 2021 was approximately the same as Sept 2021, give or take."
Documents provided by White Coat both to me and The Post demonstrated that the group's average donation in 2020 was $30.47, obtained by 81,805 individual donations (that includes all donations, including from groups). The group took no PPP bailout funds, and received, in its words, “$0 gifts from conservative aligned groups ever.” The spreadsheet they prepared shows estimated and approximate totals for 2021 along with detailed funding sources for the prior two years:
Funding sources of White Coat Waste Project, 2019-2021, prepared by the group
Even more disturbing was the telephone call which Goodman had on Monday with Reinhard and another Post reporter, Yasmeen Abutaleb, assigned to the health and COVID beat. During that call, Abutaleb in particular repeatedly demanded to know whether White Coat was concerned that the activism they were doing on these dog experimentation programs could end up harming Dr. Fauci's reputation and thus make him less able to manage the COVID crisis. They even suggested that by encouraging people to call the NIH telephone lines to protest this experimentation, they might be making it difficult for people with questions about COVID to get through. The obvious premise of the entire conversation was one completely antithetical to the journalistic ethos: it is immoral to do anything that reflects negatively on Dr. Fauci now, no matter how true or warranted it might be, because his importance is too great to risk undermining him. (Request for comment from Reinhard was not responded to as of publication of this article, but will be added if supplied).
In general, as this controversy has unfolded, media outlets have expressed almost no interest in the immorality and atrocities of these taxpayer-funded dog experimentations, and instead have acted as political activists with only one goal: protect Dr. Fauci. PolitiFact, for instance, purported to fact-check White Coat's campaign (laughably calling them “a conservative watchdog group”) by implying they were lying. Aside from citing (but not verifying) NIAID’s denial that they funded one of the experiments, they acknowledged that they did indeed fund others, but then pointed out that nobody could prove that Fauci personally approved the funding for these experiments. Yet that is a claim White Coat has never made and which, in any event, is as unlikely as it is irrelevant given that, for thirty years, Fauci has been the head of the agencies conducting these experiments which have long been the target of activist protest. It is simply impossible that he was unaware of these controversies.
After speaking with the two Post reporters, Goodman told me that “it’s clear based on my conversations with them that rather than investigating the horrific puppy experimentation being funded with our tax dollars by Anthony Fauci — about which they have asked virtually nothing — they are instead interested in attempting to discredit our organization and #BeagleGate campaign in order to run defense for Fauci.” He also described the sudden change in The Post's behavior in reporting on them: “in just five 5 years, the paper went from featuring our group as a model of bipartisanship in the animal protection movement and highlighting our winning campaigns to end taxpayer-funded animal testing to now trying to smear us a conservative front group that doesn’t really care about animals, all because we dared to criticize St. Fauci.”
Bellotti described The Post's sudden turnaround this way:
Having personally witnessed the horrors of animal testing, I founded [White Coat] to unite liberty-lovers and animal-lovers, Republicans and Democrats, Libertarians and vegetarians to fight against wasteful taxpayer-funded animal experiments. Widening the tent is how you win campaigns, and we’ve done this more effectively than any other organization, resulting in historic wins for animals, from shutting down the government’s largest cat experimentation lab to freeing monkeys from federal nicotine addiction experiments to bringing dog testing at the VA to record lows. This has all been done on a shoestring budget with overwhelming support from grassroots advocates and donors. Apparently for some though, disparaging Anthony Fauci for funding the abuse of puppies is a bridge too far. But, to suggest that we’re out to accomplish anything other the save animals from wasteful government spending and abuse is simply not true nor supported by any actual evidence.
Newspapers like The Post vehemently deny that they have any political agenda, insisting that they are devoted to non-partisan and apolitical reporting. Very few people believe this fraud any longer, which is why trust in journalism has collapsed so precipitously, but rarely do we see a test case that so vividly illustrates how they really function.
For years, The Washington Post reported fairly and truthfully on this group, because none of its activities threatened any government officials whom the paper wishes to protect. Suddenly, when the work they have been doing for years began to reflect poorly on a government official vital to American liberalism, The Post launched a campaign that is not even thinly disguised but nakedly clear in its goal: to smear this group by impugning its motives and distorting its agenda so that its work is immediately and uncritically disregarded by the paper's overwhelmingly liberal audience.
In addition to the White Coat Waste Project, another group — the Beagle Freedom Project — is devoted ending experimentations on beagles, and also works to rescue them and find them homes once their use in research labs is exhausted, so they can live the latter stages of their lives with love and companionship. You can read about and support that group's work here.
Correction, Nov. 2, 2021, 4:48 pm ET: This article was edited to reflect the fact that only Goodman, not Anthony Bellotti, was on Monday afternoon's call with the two Washington Post reporters.
ABOVE: Greenwald educating two journos about the ethical difficulties in animal experimentation.
The wheels of business and human food compulsions—often exacerbated by reactionary creeds— are implacable and totally lacking in compassion. This is a downed cow, badly hurt, but still being dragged to slaughter. Click on this image to fully appreciate this horror repeated millions of times every day around the world. With plentiful non-animal meat substitutes that fool the palate, there is no longer reason for this senseless suffering. And meat consumption is a serious ecoanimal crime. The tyranny of the palate must be broken. Please consider changing your habits and those around you in this regard.
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Super Seeps
This post is part of a series on humans' destruction of the natural world. Valeria Sukhova and Olga Gertcyk wrote an update on sea floor methane seeps. Scientists have been doing research in the Laptev and East Siberian seas, where there are large deposits of offshore permafrost and methane hydrates. Numerous seeps are releasing methane into the atmosphere. In the air above the water’s surface, methane levels are 16 to 32 ppm (parts per million). This is 15 times higher than the average methane content for the world atmosphere. Over a thousand large seep fields (super seeps) have been found so far. “They probably are not having a large impact on atmospheric CO2 or methane yet.” Meanwhile, the Arctic climate is rapidly warming, the ice continues melting, the water continues warming, and there are large deposits of seabed hydrates that have not yet thawed. Methane craters are massive holes in the tundra that are caused by methane explosions. As the climate warms, thawing permafrost leads to methane releases that can accumulate in underground pockets. The holes are also called gas emission craters, blowout craters, funnels, and hydrolaccoliths. Methane craters not the same as thaw slumps caused by subsidence, when the land surface softens and sinks due to thawing permafrost. Slumps sometimes fill with water, creating lakes or ponds. Anna Liesowska reported that methane craters are a recent surprise, appearing on the Yamal and Taymyr (Gyden) peninsulas of northern Siberia. The first one was discovered in 2014, by a plane passing over tundra in the middle of nowhere on the Yamal peninsula. Until this sighting, these craters were unknown. She mentioned this 2014 discovery in a July 2020 article that announced the discovery of the seventeenth methane crater. It was about 164 feet (50 m) deep. Her article included a number of stunning photographs. They included two photos of pingos, large mounds created by rising pressure. The Pingo article in Wikipedia will further illuminate your understanding. Pingos are only found in permafrost regions. There may be 11,000 of them on Earth. One region in Canada has permafrost that’s more than 50,000 years old. Richard Gray created an excellent article for the BBC. It is recent (November 2020), provides a deeper discussion of methane craters, and includes a number of dramatic photographs. Satellite images, taken over multiple years, indicate that the site of the seventeenth crater (2020) had previously been a pingo that first appeared in the autumn of 2013. In northwest Siberia, the exploding pingos are apparently created by concentrated pockets of methane, and they develop in a few years. They are located in regions located above deep deposits of gas and oil. The explosions can be very exciting. “Local reindeer herders reported seeing flames and smoke after one crater explosion in June 2017 along the banks of the Myudriyakha River. Villagers in nearby Seyakha — a settlement about 20.5 miles (33 km) south of the crater — claimed the gas kept burning for about 90 minutes and the flames reached 13 to16 feet (4 to 5 m) high.” In this region of northern Siberia, satellite images taken from 1984 to 2007 indicate a five percent change in the landscape, as the climate warms, and more permafrost thaws. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average, so permafrost will continue thawing in summer months, and more methane will be released. How many more craters will explode in the coming years? How much more methane will be released into the atmosphere? Also worrisome is that craters are exploding in a region of gas and oil extraction. There are many pipelines running across the land, and some are close to pingos. There is potential here for eco-catastrophes. Portia Kentish reported on impacts caused by the 2020 heat wave in Siberia, “where melting permafrost means the ground is no longer able to support structures built on it. For many, this raises particular concerns over the oil and gas industry, which is the primary economic sector in the Arctic Circle. Pipelines, processing plants and storage tanks on unstable and thawing ground become a serious threat to the natural environment.” In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report. It found that “45 per cent of oil and natural gas production fields in the Russian Arctic are located in the most hazardous and at-risk region. Moreover, areas of discontinuous permafrost could see a 50-75 per cent drop in load bearing capacity over the period from 2015-25 in comparison to 1975-85.” Stuff like roads, bridges, power grids, and towns are vulnerable. Nancy Bazilchuk reported on research in the Barents Sea, which is a region of the Arctic Ocean located between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters. In the 1990s, scientists discovered craters that blew out of the seafloor 12,000 to 15,000 years ago. Recent research has discovered hundreds more ancient craters. Some are 300 to 1,000 meters (328 to 1093 yards) in diameter, and blasted out of solid bedrock. Karin Andreassen and team have been doing this undersea research, and they published a very detailed paper. Over the eons, there have been numerous glaciations (ice ages). When regions freeze, methane is trapped beneath ice sheets, and solidifies into methane hydrates. When warm periods return, some of the frozen methane can thaw and be released. Releases can be gradual, in streams of bubbles, or they can be abrupt, with crater-making explosions. The incredible genius of humankind now allows us to cleverly disrupt the climate in a remarkable number of ways. Andreassen assures us that there are still enormous amounts of methane stored in sea beds and terrestrial permafrost. “It is apparent that extensive sub-glacial hydrate accumulations exist beneath the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets today.” She expects more methane craters will explode. Life as we know it is moving into the rear view mirror. The Hot Age just got out of bed, yawning, making coffee. Nobody knows how hot it will get, how long it will last, and what it will remain when it’s over. Cheryl Katz discussed how oceans have been softening climate impacts by soaking up excess heat that has been trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases. By keeping the atmosphere a bit cooler for a while, this has delayed our inevitable head-on collision with reality. Currently, up to half of our CO2 emissions are absorbed into seawater. Also, heating up the oceans has accelerated acidification and deoxygenation (more on these below). Experts are learning that the surface waters are now warming faster and deeper than ever. The situation was worse than they thought. Heat gain had been underestimated by as much as half — too little attention had been devoted to the Southern Hemisphere, where 60 percent of ocean water resides. Most of the heat gain was happening well south of the equator. At the same time, the Arctic Ocean is heating especially fast, as its ice cover melts and shrinks. When water gets warmer, it expands. So, warmer oceans contribute to higher sea levels, as does the huge volume of water flowing out of melting glaciers and icepacks. The art of accurately predicting upcoming sea level changes has yet to be perfected. The world is far more complex and capricious than the programmers of computer models can imagine. There are limits to how much heat oceans can store. As their ability to absorb heat maxes out, they may stop absorbing heat, and begin releasing stored heat into the atmosphere. Paul Ehrlich and John Harte noted that in a warming climate, higher ocean temperatures can power more intense storm events, and the warmer atmosphere has the capacity to store more water, so rainstorms are more intense. Tierney Smith notes that oceans absorb between 35 and 42 percent of CO2emissions. They also absorb around 90 percent of the excess heat energy that results from the warming climate. This elevates surface temperatures, and a warmer surface will absorb less of our CO2 emissions. So, more carbon will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, further warming the planet. Timothy Lenton wrote, “Ocean heatwaves have led to mass coral bleaching and to the loss of half of the shallow-water corals on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. A staggering 99% of tropical corals are projected to be lost if global average temperature rises by 2°C, owing to interactions between warming, ocean acidification, and pollution. This would represent a profound loss of marine biodiversity and human livelihoods.” Todd Woody reported on the findings of the IPCC’s 2019 Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. It noted that the rate of ocean warming has doubled since 1993. Extreme flooding of coastal areas will likely occur at least yearly by 2050. Fish populations face collapse thanks to a combination of ocean acidification, loss of oxygen, and warming of the ocean’s surface, which blocks the flow of nutrients to and from the deep sea. Karin Limburg reported that oxygen levels in the oceans have been declining for about 70 years. This is gradually suffocating saltwater ecosystems (“oceans are losing their breath”). Low oxygen conditions exist in a number of coastal sites, semi-enclosed seas, and the open ocean. At the extreme, the Baltic Sea has regions of water with too little oxygen to measure (anoxic). More than 700 coastal sites are experiencing low oxygen conditions (hypoxic). They are overloaded with nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus, runoff from fertilizer and sewage. We call them dead zones, but they aren’t completely dead. They are home to large mobs of wee microbes that thrive in nutrient rich water. Algae (phytoplankton) are wee aquatic plants that feast on the nutrients, explode in number, and create algal blooms. In the process, they emit lots of oxygen. When the nutrients run low, the algae die and decompose. Then, blooms are often followed by a surge of wee aquatic animals (zooplankton) that feast on the rich stew of dead algae and absorb the abundant oxygen. Depleted oxygen = dead zone. Polluted water is not caused by climate change, it’s the result large swarms of untidy primates that dump staggering amounts of crud into waterways. Skanky water is one cause of deoxygenation. Another cause is climate change, which is affecting open waters that are not nutrient rich. Rising temperatures make water close to the surface warmer and lighter, which intensifies thermal stratification. This reduces the mixing of warmer surface water with deeper water that is denser and colder. Colder water is able to absorb more oxygen, but the warmer water above inhibits its exposure to airborne oxygen. Also, climate change is melting more and more ice, sending lots of freshwater into the salty sea. Freshwater is less dense than salt water, so it stratifies above colder, deeper water — another obstacle. So, compared to earlier times, less oxygen is now available in deeper waters. Some sea animals are able to survive in zones of minimal oxygen, others are forced to move. Animals having a high metabolism, like tuna or sharks, move to shallower depths, where they are more likely to be caught. Migration introduces some chaos into traditional food webs, as more species become crowded together. Cody Sullivan and Rebecca Lindsey of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) wrote about how oceans are being affected by human-produced CO2. Oceans are the only long-term sink for manmade CO2 emissions. Colder waters tend to absorb CO2, while warmer waters tend to release it back into the atmosphere. Since 2000, the overall net increase in CO2 absorption has been trending upward at a robust rate. Unfortunately, the higher uptake of carbon also encourages ocean acidification. Cheryl Katz studies ocean acidification (“global warming’s evil twin”). In the Arctic, and in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica, lots of ice is busy melting away, exposing the water below. In cold polar waters, CO2is more soluble, so more of it can be absorbed. Some of it reacts with the water to form carbonic acid. Consequently, the frigid waters near both poles are becoming highly acidified. Conditions in the polar regions are getting close to a tipping point into extreme acidification. The area of increasingly corrosive water is expected to expand into the North Atlantic and North Pacific, impact the ocean food web, and threaten important fisheries. Already, oysters are dying off in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Shell-building organisms need carbonate minerals. In the past, carbonate ions in the water provided a buffer against the acids. As these ions are depleted, acidity is able to rise. Creatures with shells are having a harder time building and maintaining shells, because they corrode. Increasing ocean acidification is a severe threat to the planet. It is expected to have a big impact on fisheries in Alaska and throughout the Arctic. As waters warm, species like Atlantic cod are migrating toward the cooler Arctic, where acidification is high. Fish populations are likely to decline, impacting the global food supply for humans. Stephanie Dutkiewicz and team studied the impact of acidification on phytoplankton (algae), the tiny plants that are the foundation of the marine food web. They absorb CO2 and emit the life-giving oxygen that’s necessary for the existence of animal life. Oceans absorb about 30 percent of manmade carbon emissions, and this intensifies acidification. Their analysis concluded, “At the level of ecological function of the phytoplankton community, acidification had a greater impact than warming or reduced nutrient supply.” Dahr Jamail noted that “phytoplankton photosynthesis produces half the total oxygen supply for the planet.” Growing acidification will eliminate some species, and disturb vital ecological balances. Ocean current circulation is a very big deal. It has a major impact on regional climates, because it moves heat. In plain English, it’s called the global conveyor belt. In science speak, it’s called the thermohaline circulation (THC). The THC moves heat around the world via a long and winding pathway. Wikipedia provides a nice plain English description of the THC [HERE]. The flow of the current is driven by seawater density, which is determined by variations of surface temperature and salt content (salinity). Warm water is less dense than cold, so it rises to the top. Freshwater is lighter, less dense, so it stays close to the surface. Salt water is denser and heavier. Today, melting ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice are pouring huge amounts of cold freshwater into the ocean, which throws a monkey wrench into the traditional operation of the current. Global warming will increasingly have an impact on ocean circulation. These changes are expected to eventually alter the traditional patterns of the THC as we know it. Some experts are contemplating the possibility of a slowdown or shutdown of the THC. Wikipedia discusses the possibilities [HERE]. One segment of the global thermohaline circulation is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). As the name implies, this involves the currents moving north and then south in the Atlantic Ocean. The AMOC is fed by warm and salty water flowing past the cape of Africa, heading northwest to the Caribbean, then up the coast of North America, then northeast to Iceland and Scandinavia. In the far north, the current loses much heat, and sends cool water back down toward the South Pole. The segment of the AMOC that moves warm water from the Gulf of Mexico toward the Arctic is called the Gulf Stream. It keeps the climate of the eastern U.S. and northern Europe warmer than is typical at such a high latitude. This allows modern agriculture in these regions. Some worry that the melting arctic will increase the frigid freshwater flowing into the AMOC, and this could lead to a slowdown or shutdown of the current, and possibly a chillier future for the eastern U.S. and western Europe. Some have presented evidence that the AMOC is slowing down. Others don’t find this evidence to be compelling, and they don’t expect a slowdown in the near term future. Much is not known about ocean currents, and controversies abound. Scientists are far from full agreement on what is happening, and what might happen in the future. Nicola Jones wrote an easy to understand description of current AMOC research and debates. Undersea instruments that measure the current’s flow are indicating a significant slowdown. Experts aren’t sure if this is worrisome evidence of climate change, or simply reflects normal variations. “Should the AMOC shut down, models show that changes in rainfall patterns would dry up Europe’s rivers, and North America’s entire Eastern Seaboard could see an additional 30 inches (76 cm) of sea level rise as the backed-up currents pile water up on East Coast shores.” This hasn’t happened yet. For now, data collection continues, and the debates rumble on. David Wallace-Wells wrote that the five warmest summers in Europe since 1500 have all occurred since 2002. Rising heat will have the most dramatic impacts in the Persian Gulf and Middle East, where record temperatures have soared to frightening heights. In 2015, temps as high as 163°F (73°C) were recorded. Matthew Lewis described how rising numbers of people are dying because extreme heat events are becoming more common. “Deadly heat is cooking us alive.” When our bodies get too warm, we sweat, which helps us shed excess heat as it evaporates. If you’re lucky, this keeps your body temperature in the normal range. We evolved our ability to sweat on African savannahs, where the humidity is typically low (“dry heat”). So, we can survive for a few hours of 120°F (49°C) in Death Valley, California. It’s a different story in super-humid Florida, where “a single day of 120-degree temperatures in Palm Beach would be a mass casualty event. Dead bodies would pile up in the morgues, victims of hyperthermia, or heatstroke — cooked, alive, in their own bodies.” Alas, the cooling powers of sweating have limits. Tara Santora explored the maximum amount of heat that the human body can endure. Air temperature is the scale of heat that a thermometer displays. Wet bulb temperature is produced by a thermometer covered in a water-soaked cloth. It takes into account both air temperature and the humidity level. She reported that the limit we humans can endure is a wet bulb temperature of 95°F (35°C). You probably wouldn’t last three hours. When the air temperature is 115°F (46.1°C) and humidity is 30%, the wet bulb temperature is 87°F (30.5°C). When the air temperature is 102°F (38.9°C) and humidity is 77%, the wet bulb temperature is 95°F (35°C). When the wet bulb temperature is close to your normal body temperature, you still sweat, but this doesn’t cool you. You can also overheat at lower temperatures if you are exercising and/or exposed to direct sunlight. As the climate warms, the risks of overheating increase. Janet Larsen noted that a warming climate is expected to increase the number and intensity of heat waves in the coming years. In 2003, a blast furnace heat wave caused the deaths of more than 52,000 people across Europe. It was the hottest weather in at least 500 years. Temperatures were over 104°F (40°C) for up to two weeks. Fatalities rose to 2,000 per day in France. The higher the humidity, the higher the death rate. City folks were most at risk, because urban areas are heat islands. Jean-Marie Robineand team did additional research and estimated that the actual mortality in 2003 was more than 70,000. John Gowdy added, “During the record heat in Europe in Summer 2003, maize production fell by 30% in France and 36% in Italy. A 2008 study found that southern Africa could lose 30% of its maize crop by 2030 due to the negative effects of climate change. Losses of maize and rice crops in South Asia could also be significant.” Extreme heat dries out the land, making it more flammable. Wikipedia noted that the 2003 European heat wave corresponded with a series of fires in Portugal that destroyed 1,160 square miles (3010 km2) of forest, and 170 square miles (440 km2) of agricultural land. In southern Portugal, the temperatures reached as high as 117°F (47°C). Deepa Shivaram reported on a heat wave that hit British Columbia in July 2021. Along the coastline of Vancouver, on one beach alone, the rocky shore was covered with hundreds of thousands of dead mussels. It also killed barnacles, clams, crabs, sea stars, and intertidal anemones. Overall, an estimated one billion sea creatures died from the heat. Other animals that depend on sea life for food were also affected. During the same heat wave, 180 wildfires ignited.
Written by Richard Reese
TITANIC LIFEBOAT ACADEMY
Methane Craters
Undersea Craters
Ocean Heating
Ocean Deoxygenation
Ocean Acidification
Thermohaline Circulation
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)
Overheating
Richard Reese lives in Eugene, Oregon. His primary interest is ecological sustainability and helping others learn about it. He is the author of What Is Sustainable, Sustainable or Bust, and Understanding Sustainability. Reese' blog wildancestors.blogspot.com includes free access to reviews of more than 196 sustainability-related books by a variety of authors both contemporary and historical, plus a few dozen of his own rants. The blog is searchable by author, title, or topic. Reese is working a new book titled Wild, Free & Happy, of which this article is the fifty-sixth sample from his rough draft. These sample chapters are not freestanding pieces. They will be easier to understand if you start with sample 01, and follow the sequence listed HERE — if you happen to have some free time. If you prefer audiobooks, Michael Dowd is in the process of reading and recording Wild, Free & Happy HERE.
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Immensely beautiful, the still wild Chilean Patagonia faces mounting challenges as it becomes integrated into the rest of the nation
Prefatory Note:
The road, formerly known as Carretera General Augusto Pinochet, runs about 1,240 kilometers (770 mi) from Puerto Montt to Villa O'Higgins through rural Patagonia, in Chile. Most of the road is unpaved, ranging from quite good quality to absolutely horrible. If you are driving, you will not need a 4WD but your car will be suffering. You will probably have to take a ferry or two to get in or travel along the road. The Carretera Austral area is pretty wild, with often wild weather extremes. This area is characterized by thick forests, fjords, glaciers, canals and steep mountains. It has endless stretches of empty dirt roads surrounded by forests, mountains, glaciers and lakes, with scenic villages, free campsites and hot springs along the way.
Chilean Patagonia (Photo: Carlos Villalobos)
On route 7 into the heart of Patagonia | DW Documentary
Spanish language subtitles
Rumbo al corazón de la Patagonia | DW Documental
Addenda
In terms of sheer labor inputs, and engineering difficulties, the Carretera Austral is in a class comparable to the "near miraculous" projects recently seen in China. We wonder indeed how long it would take the Chinese to build this highway across impossible fjords, glaciers, ocean expanses, and all. With their advanced machinery, proven skills, and legendary tenacity, who knows, maybe they would get it done in less time than anyone in the West would expect. Ironically, the "Carretera Austral" Project was pushed against all naysayers by Augusto Pinochet (the road was originally called Carretera Austral Gen. Augusto Pinochet), and may eventually serve to whitewash the dictator's innumerable crimes. Cynics claim Pinochet saw the project as a gigantic, bottomless pork barrel opportunity for his family and hangers-on. In any case, the ecological price of "developing" this fragile and precious environment is unquestionably bound to be high, perhaps prohibitive, even if the region is only kept as mostly a tourist reserve. The German documentary featured on this page suggests as much: the red tide ("marea roja") that killed hundreds and possibly thousands of whales, a mind-boggling number for an animal whose numbers remain fragile in the global oceanic ecosystem, is a tragic reminder that the human footprint should not be extended thoughtlessly. Incidentally, Pinochet tackled this project as a military campaign, ordering tens of thousands of conscripts to contribute their labor for nominal wages.
The Visionary
Onetime sporting clothes entrepreneur Douglas Tompkins may have permanently slowed down the development of Patagonia by creating national parks in the key northern segment of the region. Dedicated, and often heroic Chileans who shared his commitment to a pristine environment, helped him realise this vision.
Douglas Tompkins: Wild Legacy
Carlos Villalobos and the late Douglas Tompkins (r), visionary founder of Parque Pumalín. As a hands-on ecologist and key ranger, Carlos proved invaluable to the survival and success of this critical natural park.
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Patrice Greanville is this publication's founding editor. 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
All captions, quotes, annotations and pullquotes by the editors not the authors.
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Joaquin Phoenix Documentary Details Slaughterhouse Cow Rescue And Impact Of Animal Agriculture
In the short film, INDIGO, Phoenix proclaims: 'By our actions, we either have the choice to continue to destroy other beings and the environment, or we begin the process of reversing the damage that we've done'
Vegan actor Joaquin Phoenix rescued two cows from slaughter last year, and both now live at Farm Sanctuary Credit: Gary Smith
Vegan actor and animal advocate Joaquin Phoenix was featured in a short documentary detailing a slaughterhouse rescue he undertook last year.
Titled ‘INDIGO’, the Shaun Monson-directed film features Phoenix and his journey to rescue a cow and her calf from Manning Beef in California. Additionally, it includes Phoenix’s visit to the rescued animals which now live at Farm Sanctuary. It was released on Earth Day this week.
Joaquin Phoenix
Phoenix named the cows after his sister, Liberty, and nephew Indigo – who passed away several years ago.
The rescue came after LA Animal Save called the Joker star following his famous Oscars speech last year. In the film, Phoenix talks frankly about the rescue. He said: “The baby seemed kind of frozen in fear…
“You really get a sense of what they must be feeling – how terrifying their lives have been this far.”
He explained that once he dropped them off at Farm Sanctuary, the animals were nervous and skittish. However, he got the chance to meet some of the other rescued cows. And, the video shows him interacting with them. ‘There was clearly a unique soul in there’, he said.
Farm Sanctuary visit
‘It came as a great release in knowing they were rescued from this factory of death, that they’d be rescued from imminent slaughter. ‘And yet it felt a little bit unresolved because I wanted to see them completely liberated. I wanted to see them as free as possible’, he added in the film.
A year on, he revisited the cows with his sisters. He said ‘it was incredible to see them’ in their natural behavior.
Following the rescue, Joaquin Phoenix received a PETA major award for the ‘Most Inspiring Act Of Kindness To Animals’.
Animal agriculture
Phoenix explained the environmental detriment of animal agriculture is ‘undeniable’. He added: “It’s also an acknowledgment of not only the destruction they feel at our hands but the environment as a whole. “By our actions, we either have the choice to continue to destroy other beings and the environment. Or – we begin the process of reversing the damage that we’ve done.”
Phoenix in INDIGO
Joaquin Phoenix talks candidly in the film about the rescue from a ‘factory of death’ Credit: Gary Smith
Meat production is estimated to ‘double’ by 2050, it states. This is a vast increase on the already ’80 billion animals currently slaughtered every year’.
Moreover, it concludes: ‘Climate change is imminent if we do not adopt a plant-based lifestyle’.
You can find out more about Farm Sanctuary here
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Thank you for visiting our animal defence section. Before leaving, please take a moment to reflect on these mind-numbing institutionalized cruelties. 
The wheels of business and human food compulsions are implacable and totally lacking in compassion. This is a downed cow, badly hurt, but still being dragged to slaughter. Click on this image to fully appreciate this horror repeated millions of times every day around the world. With plentiful non-animal meat substitutes that fool the palate, there is no longer reason for this senseless suffering. And meat consumption is a serious ecoanimal crime. The tyranny of the palate must be broken. Please consider changing your habits and those around you in this regard.
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Goose love, in sickness and in health
Fred Dommer
Incidentally, while many hunters will tell you they hunt to eat the meat that is usually a less than honorable excuse. While no doubt in a nation with increasing numbers of poor folks some people will indeed hunt animals to eat, the vast majority of hunters spend sizable amounts —from hundreds to thousands of dollars (or far more than that when we talk about safaris to Africa, or other exotic places)—supposedly on a hunt for meat they could easily buy at the local supermarket. So, educate yourself about hunting.
Check out the links below:
• 9 Things No One Told You About Hunting
• Why Sport Hunting Is Cruel and Unnecessary
• Why Do Hunters Enjoy Killing Animals?
PS/ If you have a friend who is a "sport" hunter, do show him this story. Maybe this Fall he won't be joining the millions who go into the wild with shotguns and other implements of death to kill geese as if they were simply living targets.
Appendix
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Thank you for visiting our animal defence section. Before leaving, please take a moment to reflect on these mind-numbing institutionalized cruelties. The wheels of business and human food compulsions are implacable and totally lacking in compassion. This is a downed cow, badly hurt, but still being dragged to slaughter. Click on this image to fully appreciate this horror repeated millions of times every day around the world. With plentiful non-animal meat substitutes that fool the palate, there is no longer reason for this senseless suffering. And meat consumption is a serious ecoanimal crime. The tyranny of the palate must be broken. Please consider changing your habits and those around you in this regard.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
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