Failure to Slow Global Warming
How’s this for Karma on a global level? It is irrefutable that in nature, everything that occurs as an “effect,” has a “cause.” And further, that even if in this moment we are not able to identify the “cause,” we have assurance that at some point in the future it will get figured out by some scientist of that discipline.
It is the very reason why over the years since 1901, many Nobel Prizes have been awarded. It is the process by which answers that were previously unknown, become known!
This one has been dogging us for a long time. Have the excesses of humans messed with our planet to the degree that is becoming harmful to our very existence and if so, what to do about it. It is also a useful metaphor, for our own individual lives!
Failure to Slow Warming Will Set Off Climate ‘Tipping Points,’ Scientists Say
As global warming passes certain limits, dire changes will probably become irreversible, the researchers said, including the loss of polar ice sheets and the death of coral reefs.

NY Times By Henry Fountain
Sept. 8, 2022
Failure to limit global warming to the targets set by international accords will most likely set off several climate “tipping points,” a team of scientists said on Thursday, with irreversible effects including the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, abrupt thawing of Arctic permafrost and the death of coral reefs.
The researchers said that even at the current level of warming, about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, some of these self-sustaining changes might have already begun. But if warming reached above 1.5 degrees Celsius, the more ambitious of two targets set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, the changes would become much more certain.
And at the higher Paris target, 2 degrees Celsius, even more tipping points would likely be set off, including the loss of mountain glaciers and the collapse of a system of deep mixing of water in the North Atlantic.
The changes would have significant, long-term effects on life on Earth. The collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, for example, would lead to unrelenting sea level rise, measured in feet, not inches, over centuries. The thawing of permafrost would release more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, hindering efforts to limit warming. A shutdown of ocean mixing in the North Atlantic could affect global temperatures and bring more extreme weather to Europe.
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Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and one of the researchers, said the team had “come to the very dire conclusion that 1.5 degrees Celsius is a threshold” beyond which some of these effects would start. That makes it all the more imperative, he and others said, for nations to quickly and drastically cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases to curb global warming.
The research is in line with recent assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of experts convened by the United Nations, that beyond 1.5 degrees of warming, the threats of climate change grow considerably.
“It really provides strong scientific support for rapid emission cuts in line with the Paris Agreement,” said David Armstrong McKay, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter in Britain and the lead author of a paper describing the researchers’ work, published in Science. Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees “doesn’t guarantee we don’t see tipping points,” Dr. McKay said. “But it reduces the likelihood.”
And as with the U.N. panel’s assessments, overshooting the 1.5 degree target does not mean all is lost. “Every 10th of a degree counts,” Dr. Rockström said. “So 1.6 is better than 1.7 and so on” in reducing the tipping-point risks.
A crack in the Brunt Ice Shelf during a flyover by the British Antarctic Survey in January 2021.Credit…British Antarctic Survey/EPA, via Shutterstock
Countries have not pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to meet either Paris target, although the climate and energy legislation passed by Congress last month moves the United States much closer to its own goals. Current policies put the world on pace for nearly 3 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century. At that level of warming, even more tipping points would be set off, the researchers said.
The concept of climate tipping points has been around for decades. But it has also been accompanied by a high degree of uncertainty and debate, including about the threshold temperatures beyond which some changes would begin, and whether some of these events even meet the definition of changes that would be self-sustaining no matter what happens with future warming.
A major study in 2008 identified more than a dozen parts of Earth’s system that could reach a tipping point. The new research eliminated a few and added several more, identifying a total of 16 parts, including nine that would have global effects.
Among those eliminated, Dr. McKay said, was summer Arctic sea ice. Although ice extent has been steadily declining for decades, he said there was not any clear threshold beyond which the decline would become self-sustaining.
But the main goal of the new research, which reviewed studies that had used data from past climates, current observations and computer simulations, was to reduce the uncertainty about when the tipping points might be reached.
The study “puts temperature thresholds on all the tipping elements,” Dr. Rockström said. “That has never been done before.”
Bill Hare, who is the chief executive of Climate Analytics, a nonprofit research and policy organization, and who was not involved in the study, said, “It systematically puts together and synthesizes the state of scientific knowledge about critical Earth system tipping points.”
“It reinforces the urgency of the global community working together to halve emissions by 2030 and get to net zero by 2050,” he said.
Thomas Stocker, a climate scientist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who was not involved in the study, cautioned that much more research was needed on the subject of tipping points. “It’s not the ultimate word,” he said of the study’s findings. “It’s a contribution to an important conversation that is ongoing.”
What is needed, Dr. Stocker said, is a comprehensive analysis by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, perhaps as part of the next round of assessments, which is due in the second half of this decade.
Dr. Rockström agreed that more research was needed. “I’m hoping that the I.P.C.C. will take this scientific assessment on board,” he said.
The Potsdam institute and the University of Exeter are also sponsoring a conference next week designed to encourage more work on the subject. Among other projects, Dr. Rockström said, is one to improve modeling of these cataclysmic events.
“We’re in a much better position now than just a few years back to advance a real initiative on tipping point research,” he said.
Kirkus Reviews, the gold-standard for independent & accurate reviews, has this to say about
What Goes Around Comes Around:
A stable, positive, non preachy, objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre. A successful guide that uses anecdotes to reveal powerful truths about life.
~ Kirkus Reviews
“I’ve read a number of books that focus on sharing a similar message, including “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, “The Answer” by John Assaraf & Murray Smith, “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield, “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill, and I must say that I find Rob’s to be my favorite.” – Sheryl Woodhouse, founder of Livelihood Matters LLC
Failure to Slow Global Warming
Failure to Slow Global Warming
Here’s a head scratcher that I’m of two minds about as it relates to the subject in question, though either way it is a great, multiple illustration of “Cause & Effect” in action. On the one hand it is somewhat poetic that Jeff Zucker would have to fire Chris Cuomo for the “brother Andrew” matter, while he himself was hiding his own “peccadillo,” only to have that indiscretion revealed and have to “walk the plank” himself!
However, a rule is a rule is a rule and guess what? Yup! “What Goes Around Comes Around!”
One nuance of the situation for Jeff Zucker, was whether the fact that he was carrying around his own secret may be why he didn’t act more decisively on the Cuomo situation? Not to imply that it means he deserved the firing squad if it was true. But he had signed on to follow the rules and lead by example, which he was abusing at the same time that Chris was understating his role to help Andrew. But still, did he equivocate on Cuomo because in his own mind it seemed hypocritical? In the end, it is a small matter but interesting to contemplate nonetheless.
Colombo Family Crime Boss and 12 Others Are Arrested, Prosecutors Say
An indictment unsealed on Tuesday accuses the organization of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort a labor union.
By Rebecca Davis O’Brien
For two decades, the leadership of the Colombo crime family extorted a Queens labor union, federal prosecutors said — an effort that continued unabated even as members of the mob clan cycled through prison, the family’s notorious longtime boss died, and as federal law enforcement closed in.
Over time, what began as a Colombo captain’s shakedown of a union leader, complete with expletive-laced threats of violence, expanded into a cottage industry, prosecutors said, as the Colombo organization assumed control of contracting and union business, with side operations in phony construction certificates, marijuana trafficking and loan-sharking.
On Tuesday, 11 reputed members and associates of the Colombo crime family, including the mob clan’s entire leadership, were charged in a labor racketeering case brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
All but two of the men were arrested Tuesday morning across New York and New Jersey, prosecutors said. Another was surrendered to the authorities on Tuesday; another defendant, identified as the family consigliere, remained at large, prosecutors said.
The indictment accuses the Colombo family of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort an unnamed labor union that represented construction workers, using threats of violence to secure payments and arrange contracts that would benefit the crime family.
The charges are an ambitious effort by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take down one of the city’s five Mafia families. In addition to the union extortion scheme, which is the heart of the racketeering charge, the indictment charges several misdeeds often associated with the mob, including drug trafficking, money laundering, loan-sharking and falsifying federal labor safety paperwork.
Detention hearings for the defendants in Brooklyn federal court continued into the evening Tuesday, as they entered not-guilty pleas to the charges; prosecutors had asked the court to keep 10 of the defendants in custody.
“Everything we allege in this investigation proves history does indeed repeat itself,” Michael J. Driscoll, F.B.I. assistant director-in-charge, said in a statement. “The underbelly of the crime families in New York City is alive and well.”
Around 2001, prosecutors said, Vincent Ricciardo — a reported captain in the family, also known as “Vinny Unions” — began to demand a portion of a senior labor union official’s salary. When Mr. Ricciardo was convicted and imprisoned on federal racketeering charges in the mid-2000s, prosecutors said, his cousin continued to collect those payments.
Starting in late 2019, prosecutors said, the senior leadership of the Colombo family became directly involved in the shakedown, which extended to broader efforts to siphon money from the union: for example, manipulating the selection of union health fund vendors to contract with entities connected to the family, and diverting more than $10,000 each month from the fund to the family.
Andrew Russo, 87, who prosecutors describe as the family boss, is accused of taking part in those efforts, as well as a money-laundering scheme to send the proceeds of the union extortion through intermediaries to Colombo associates. He was among nine defendants charged with racketeering.
Mr. Russo appeared in court virtually from the hospital Tuesday; he is set to be detained upon his release, pending a future bail hearing.
The family’s infamous longtime boss, Carmine J. Persico, died in federal custody in North Carolina in March 2019.
Federal law enforcement learned of the extortion scheme about a year ago, prosecutors wrote in a court filing Tuesday; investigators gathered thousands of hours of wiretapped calls and conversations recorded by a confidential witness, wrote the prosecutors, who also described law-enforcement surveillance of meetings among the accused conspirators.
The authorities said they repeatedly captured Mr. Ricciardo and his associates threatening to kill the union official. “I’ll put him in the ground right in front of his wife and kids,” Mr. Ricciardo was recorded saying in June.
On another occasion cited by prosecutors in the memo seeking his detention, Mr. Ricciardo directed the union official to hire a consultant selected by the Colombo family, saying: “It’s my union and that’s it.” Prosecutors said his activities were overseen by a Colombo soldier and the consigliere who remains at large.
Much of the activity outlined in the indictment took place while the defendants were either in prison or on supervised release for prior federal mob-related convictions. Theodore Persico Jr., described as a family captain and soldier, was released from federal prison in 2020 and, despite a directive not to associate with members of organized crime, “directed much of the labor racketeering scheme,” prosecutors said.
Mr. Persico, 58, is set to inherit the role of boss after Mr. Russo, prosecutors wrote.
Several of the defendants were named in what prosecutors described as a fraudulent safety training scheme, in which they falsified state and federal paperwork that is required for construction workers to show they have completed safety training courses.
One of the defendants, John Ragano — whom prosecutors say is a soldier in the Bonanno crime family — is accused of setting up phony occupational safety training schools in New York, which prosecutors said were “mills” that provided fraudulent safety training certificates to hundreds of people.
In October 2020, prosecutors said, an undercover law enforcement officer visited one of the schools in Ozone Park, Queens, and received, from Mr. Ricciardo’s cousin, a blank test form and an answer sheet; weeks later, the agent returned to pick up his federal safety card and paid $500.
The purported schools were also used for meetings with members of La Cosa Nostra — the group of crime families commonly known as the Mafia — and to store illegal drugs and fireworks, according to the indictment.
Mr. Ragano wasn’t charged on the racketeering count, although prosecutors also sought his detention pending trial. In addition to the racketeering count, several defendants, including Mr. Ricciardo and his cousin, were charged with extortion, conspiracy, fraud and conspiracy to make false statements.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
Correction:
An earlier version of this article misstated the number of people identified in an indictment as members of the Colombo crime family. It is 11, not more than a dozen.