Guest post: Exploring the risks of ‘cascading’ tipping points in a warming world

Spread the love

Original article by Dr Nico Wunderling and Thilo Körkel republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license

Huge wave in the Atlantic Ocean. Credit: mauritius images GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo

Tipping elements within the Earth system are increasingly well understood

Scientists have identified more than 25 parts of the Earth’s climate system that are likely to have “tipping points” – thresholds where a small additional change in global warming will cause them to irreversibly shift into a new state.

The “tipping” of these systems – which include the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the Amazon rainforest and the Greenland ice sheet – would have profound consequences for both the biosphere and people. 

More recent research suggests that triggering one tipping element could cause subsequent changes in other tipping elements, potentially leading to a “tipping cascade”.

For example, a collapsed AMOC could lead to dieback of the Amazon rainforest and hasten the melt of the Greenland ice sheet.

However, the interactions between individual tipping elements – and the ways they might trigger each other – remain largely underexplored.

In a review study, published last year in Earth System Dynamics, we unpack the current state of scientific understanding of the interactions between individual tipping elements. 

We find that scientific literature suggests the majority of interactions between tipping elements will lead to further destabilisation of the climate system. 

Existing research also indicates that “tipping cascades” could occur even under current global warming projections.

Scientific understanding of individual tipping elements is continuously improving, but more research on their interactions is needed.

An emerging field 

The history of tipping elements as an object of investigation is relatively short. As a result, they are only partially accounted for in current climate models

For the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the possibility of abrupt changes in the Earth system was first mentioned in its third assessment report in 2001. At the time, climate scientists expected these changes only in scenarios where temperatures rose to 4-5C above pre-industrial levels

The term “tipping elements” was first used in the context of the climate system in 2008, in a foundational paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Since then, significant progress has been made on tipping element research. 

For instance, the 2023 global tipping points report – co-authored by more than 200 researchers from 90 organisations in 26 countries – recognised that five “major” tipping elements –  the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, the warm-water coral reefs, the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre and global permafrost regions – are already “at risk of being crossed due to warming”. 

However, tipping elements have so far largely been studied in isolation. Most research has neglected the interactions between different tipping elements which could further destabilise the climate system – and eventually even lead to tipping cascades. 

Tipping cascades

Interactions between tipping elements clearly exist. 

For example, we find robust evidence that an influx of freshwater into the North Atlantic caused by the disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet would destabilise the AMOC and could trigger its slowdown. (This, in turn, could result in the ocean currents moving less heat from equatorial regions to higher latitudes, leading to significant cooling in Europe.)

In worst-case cascading scenarios, the tipping of one system directly leads to the tipping of another. In less dramatic cases, it only reinforces destabilisation of other systems.

So, what additional effects are to be expected from these interactions?

The map below shows how 13 out of 19 tipping element interactions analysed in our review study are expected to lead to further destabilisation. The arrows indicate destabilising (red), stabilising (blue) or competing (grey) effects, while the dashed lines show where there is only limited evidence for a connection.

A prominent example of a tipping point that leads to further destabilisation is the impact of changes to the AMOC. The weakening or collapse of the system of ocean currents may lead to accumulation of warm ocean water in the Southern Ocean, which could, in turn, contribute to a destabilisation of the West Antarctic ice sheet. 

It has also been suggested that a weaker AMOC could promote El Niño events by increasing the temperature difference between the equator and the poles, which would strengthen trade winds. (While the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is not a tipping element, it may play an important role as a propagator of disturbances.)

There are also a few examples – two out of 19 interactions – where a tipping point can help stabilise another system. For example, the weakening of AMOC could lead to an interrupted flow of warm water from equatorial to the polar Atlantic regions. This would drastically cool large parts of the polar region and could therefore stabilise the Greenland ice sheet. 

Map of interactions between tipping elements.
Map of interactions between tipping elements. Stabilising effects are shown in blue, destabilising effects in red, and unclear effects in grey. Effects with very limited evidence are denoted by dashed lines. Credit: Wunderling et al. (2024)

A conceptual model

While scientists have gathered evidence for tipping points from observations, models and proxy data from the distant past, we still need more research to study interactions.

Our ongoing research aims to quantify the risk of tipping cascades using a conceptual computational model. 

The model is “conceptual” in the sense that it is not grounded in physical or chemical processes, such as heat transfer or circulation patterns. Instead, a range of measurements  – such as global average temperature, tipping temperature and temperature overshoot trajectory – serve as “modelling parameters” that can be varied to study a large range of possible scenarios. 

To date, the model is limited to simulating the Amazon rainforest, the AMOC and the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets – tipping elements whose respective interactions are relatively well established. 

However, using this model we can investigate – among other things – tipping risks under different so-called temperature “overshoot” scenarios. 

This is where global warming peaks at a certain temperature level – for example, 2C – before declining to a lower long-term stabilisation temperature. (The subsequent decline is assumed to be the consequence of a global roll-out of negative-emission technologies, as assessed in several recent publications.). The difference between the peak temperature and the long-term stabilisation temperature is the overshoot.

Evaluating millions of scenarios, our model calculates “tipping risks” for fixed combinations of a particular overshoot and stabilisation temperature.

The main finding of the research is that long-term tipping risks are in the order of 15% if warming peaks at 2C and then stabilises at 1C. 

In contrast, in a scenario where the peak warming reaches 3C and stabilises at 1.5C in the 22nd century, there is a 66% probability that at least one of the four modelled tipping elements would lose stability.

The figure below shows tipping risks where warming peaks at between 2C and 4C (“peak temperature” on y-axis) and takes 100-1,000 years to stabilise (“stabilisation time” on x-axis). 

The figure on the left shows tipping probabilities where temperatures eventually stabilise at 1C and the figure on the right where temperatures settle at 1.5C. Darker colours represent higher tipping risks.

The figure shows how tipping risks increase with higher peak and stabilisation temperatures, as well as with longer stabilisation times.

Tipping risks under global warming overshoots for peak temperatures
Tipping risks under global warming overshoots for peak temperatures (between 2C and 4C) and overshoot durations (stabilisation time of 100 to 1,000 years) for stabilisation temperatures of 1C (left), and 1.5C (right). Credit: Adapted by the authors from figure 3 in Wunderling et al. (2023)

While solidly calculated and based on recent scientific literature, our results can not count as projections of future climate due to the conceptual nature of our underlying model. 

Nevertheless, the findings are useful and complement findings from traditional climate models, known as General Circulation Models (GCMs). 

GCMs have only started to fully address the dynamics of tipping elements and their interactions. For example, most do not yet feature fully interactive ice-sheet dynamics, nor their interactions with global oceans. 

In a paper published last November, we used our conceptual model to show that neglecting interactions between the Greenland ice sheet and the AMOC can alter the expected number of tipped elements by more than a factor of two.

In addition, the high cost of running GCMs means researchers cannot run large “ensembles” of multiple model simulations to account for uncertainties in knowledge of key parameters. Our simplified conceptual model, on the other hand, can account for this uncertainty.

By drastically reducing physical complexity, we are able to compute several million – and up to a billion – ensemble members in large-scale Monte Carlo simulations.

Historical tipping events

While our results need to be confirmed by more complex Earth system models, such as GCMs, they hint at the need for scientists to examine interactions between tipping elements and potential tipping cascades more closely. 

The study of abrupt climate changes of the distant and not-so-distant past is critical to convince researchers of the existence and significant impact of tipping cascades. 

A potential candidate for investigation is the Eocene–Oligocene transition. This took place roughly 34m years ago and led to the formation of a continent-scale ice sheet on Antarctica which buried the region’s forests. 

The transition likely involved the interaction of several tipping elements, including global deep-water formation, the Antarctic ice sheet, polar sea ice, monsoon systems and tropical forests. The monsoon-like climate of the Antarctic content at the end of the Eocene would have had to change drastically – or tip – to allow for glaciation during the transition to the Oligocene. 

Since the events at that time were also linked to a major loss of mammal species, mostly in Europe, the Eocene–Oligocene transition might even have involved a climate-ecology tipping cascade. 

Heinrich events, which took place in the last ice age – around 120,000 to 11,500 years ago – as well as the mid-Holocene, could also be especially revealing around what we can expect in the near future.

These events, which involved the release of icebergs into the North Atlantic, resulted in a fresh water inflow that substantially weakened the AMOC. This, in turn, led to the drying of northern Amazonia and the retreat of the rainforest. Today’s melting of the Greenland ice sheet could have similar consequences for the AMOC. 

While these climate changes in the past happened through natural drivers, humans are potentially forcing these rapid changes now in the modern era through emissions of carbon dioxide, possibly on a much faster timescale. 

Updated climate models

The science of interacting tipping elements and tipping cascades is in its early stages – and there is significant debate within the scientific community on the topic. 

Some consider a global reorganisation of the climate system induced by tipping elements and cascades to be speculative, given that recent observations are not available and proxy data is scarce. 

Additionally, there is scientific uncertainty of how tipping processes may play out across different spatial scales, as well as how to increase the resilience of tipping elements against perturbations.

Therefore, significant work is underway to investigate tipping processes in complex Earth system models. The Tipping Points Model Intercomparison Project (TIPMIP) and European Union-funded projects ClimTIP or TipESM are among a raft of such initiatives.

Although these initiatives are largely looking at tipping elements in isolation, they will also shed more light on the interactions between these important parameters of the Earth’s climate system stability.

Original article by Dr Nico Wunderling and Thilo Körkel republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license

Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.

Wunderling, N. et al. (2024): Climate tipping point interactions and cascades: a review, Earth System Dynamics, doi:10.5194/esd-15-41-2024.

Continue ReadingGuest post: Exploring the risks of ‘cascading’ tipping points in a warming world

State of the climate: 2025 close behind 2024 as the hottest start to a year

Spread the love

Original article by Zeke Hausfather republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license

People brave heat wave conditions during a hot summer day in Uttar Pradesh, India. Credit: Anil Shakya / Alamy Stock Photo

Global temperatures in the first quarter of 2025 were the second warmest on record, extending a remarkable run of exceptional warmth that began in July 2023. 

This is despite weak La Niña conditions during the first two months of the year – which typically result in cooler temperatures.

With temperature data for the first three months of the year now available, Carbon Brief finds that 2025 is very likely to be one of the three warmest years on record.

However, it currently remains unlikely that temperatures in 2025 will set a new annual record. 

In addition to near-record warmth, the start of 2025 has seen record-low sea ice cover in the Arctic between January and March – and the second-lowest minimum sea ice extent on record for Antarctica. 

Second-warmest start to the year

In this quarterly state of the climate assessment, Carbon Brief analyses records from five different research groups that report global surface temperature records: NASANOAAMet Office Hadley Centre/UEABerkeley Earth and Copernicus/ECMWF

The figure below shows the annual temperatures from each of these groups since 1970, along with the average over the first three months of 2025. 

(It is worth noting that the first three months may not be representative of the year as a whole, as greater historical warming rates mean that temperatures relative to pre-industrial levels tend to be larger in the northern hemispheric winter months of December, January and February.)https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate/2025-04/records-with-2024-to-date.htmlAnnual global average surface temperatures from NASA GISTEMPNOAA GlobalTempHadley/UEA HadCRUT5Berkeley Earth and Copernicus/ECMWF (lines), along with 2025 temperatures so far (January-March, coloured dots). Anomalies plotted with respect to the 1981-2010 period, and shown relative to pre-industrial based on the average pre-industrial temperatures in the Hadley/UEA, NOAA and Berkeley datasets that extend back to 1850. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Starting with this state of the climate update, Carbon Brief will be showing a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) aggregate of the five surface temperature records, rather than highlighting any particular one, reflecting a single best-estimate across the different groups.

The WMO aggregate is calculated by averaging the different records using a common 1981-2010 baseline period, before adding in the average warming since the pre-industrial period (1850-1900) across the datasets  – NOAA, Hadley, and Berkeley – that extend back to 1850. 

The figure below shows how global temperature so far in 2025 (black line) compares to each month in different years since 1940 (with lines coloured by the decade in which they occurred) in the WMO aggregate of surface temperature dataset.https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate/2025-04/monthly-global-temp-anomalies.htmlTemperatures for each month from 1940 to 2025 from the WMO aggregate of temperature records. Anomalies plotted with respect to a 1850-1900 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief.

The first three months of 2025 have been unusually warm, coming in in the top-three warmest on record across all the different scientific groups that report on global surface temperatures. This is despite the presence of moderate La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific, which typically suppress global temperatures.

January 2025 was the warmest January on record in the WMO aggregate, February was the third warmest and March was tied with 2016 as the second warmest.

When combined, the first three months of the year in 2025 were the second-warmest Q1 period in the historical record, just 0.035C below the record set in 2024 after the peak of a strong El Niño event, as shown in the figure below.https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate/2025-04/Q1-temp-plot.htmlQ1 temperature anomalies from 1850 through 2025 from the WMO aggregate of temperature records. Anomalies plotted with respect to a 1850-1900 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief.

The persistence of warmth after the end of the 2023-24 El Niño event – and through a weak La Niña – has been highly unusual by historical standards. In most prior cases, global temperatures returned closer to the long-term temperature trend following the return to neutral El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions in the tropical Pacific.

Weak La Niña conditions have faded over the past month, with ENSO-neutral conditions returning and expected to persist for most models through the remainder of the year. However, predictions of ENSO status are particularly uncertain at this time of year due to a phenomenon known as the “spring predictability barrier”.

The figure below shows a range of different forecast models for the ENSO for the rest of this year, produced by different scientific groups. The values shown are sea surface temperature variations in the tropical Pacific – known as the El Niño 3.4 region – for overlapping three-month periods.

ENSO forecast models for overlapping three-month periods in the Niño3.4 region (January, February, March – JFM – and so on) for the remainder of 2025.

ENSO forecast models for overlapping three-month periods in the Niño3.4 region (January, February, March – JFM – and so on) for the remainder of 2025. Credit: Image provided by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia Climate School.

On track to be a top-three warmest year

By looking at the relationship between the first three months and the annual temperatures for every year since 1970 – as well as ENSO conditions for the first three months of the year and the projected development of El Niño conditions for the remaining nine months – Carbon Brief has created a projection of what the final global average temperature for 2025 will likely be. 

The analysis includes the estimated uncertainty in 2025 outcomes, given that temperatures from only the first quarter of the year are available so far. 

The chart below shows the expected range of 2025 temperatures using the WMO aggregate – including a best-estimate (red) and year-to-date value (yellow). Temperatures are shown with respect to the pre-industrial baseline period (1850-1900).https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate/2025-04/Q1-2025-estimate.htmlAnnual global average surface temperature anomalies from the WMO aggregate plotted with respect to a 1850-1900 baseline. To-date 2025 values include January-March. The estimated 2025 annual value is based on the relationship between the January-March temperatures and annual temperatures between 1970 and 2024. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Carbon Brief’s projection suggests that 2025 is virtually certain to be one of the top-three warmest years, with a best-estimate approximately equal to global temperatures in 2023. 

However, this model assumes that 2025 follows the type of climate patterns seen in the past – patterns that were notably broken in 2023 – and to a lesser extent in 2024. Other recent estimates – such as one published by Berkeley Earth – give a higher probability of around 34% that  2025 will set a new temperature record.

The figure below shows Carbon Brief’s estimate of 2025 temperatures using the WMO aggregate, both at the beginning of the year and once each month’s data has come in. The estimate jumped notably after t2025 saw the  warmest January on record, but has been relatively stable over the past three months.

Carbon Brief’s projection of global temperatures based on the WMO aggregate at the start of the year, and after January, February, and March global surface temperature data became available.
Carbon Brief’s projection of global temperatures based on the WMO aggregate at the start of the year, and after January, February, and March global surface temperature data became available. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Record-low Antarctic and Arctic sea ice

Both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent spent much of early 2025 at record, or near-record, lows. 

The figure below shows both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent in 2025 (solid red and blue lines), the historical range in the record between 1979 and 2010 (shaded areas) and the record lows (dotted black line). 

(Unlike global temperature records, which only report monthly averages, sea ice data is collected and updated on a daily basis, allowing sea ice extent to be viewed up to the present.)https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate/2025-04/sea-ice-graph.htmlArctic and Antarctic daily sea ice extent from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The bold lines show daily 2025 values, the shaded area indicates the two standard deviation range in historical values between 1979 and 2010. The dotted black lines show the record lows for each pole. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Arctic sea ice saw a new record low nearly each day between January and March, recording a record-low winter peak extent in late March. Ice extent subsequently moved out of record-low territory in April. 

It is worth noting that, as northern hemisphere winter conditions remain cold enough to refreeze sea ice, there tends to be less variability in extent year-to-year in the winter than in the summer, as the chart below illustrates.

Weekly Arctic sea ice extent from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Weekly Arctic sea ice extent from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Antarctic sea ice started the year within the historical range (1979-2010), before plunging to tie for the second-lowest minimum on record in late February. It has since recovered in April, and is currently on the low end of the historical range.

Weekly Antarctic sea ice extent from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Weekly Antarctic sea ice extent from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. Chart by Carbon Brief.


Original article by Zeke Hausfather republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license

dizzy: Trump is attempting to censor research and information like this.

Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes' concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country's economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Continue ReadingState of the climate: 2025 close behind 2024 as the hottest start to a year

As Israel Openly Declares Starvation as a Weapon, Media Still Hesitate to Blame It for Famine

Spread the love

Original article by Belén Fernández republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted that Republican officials at Mar-a-Lago “expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on March 2 that “Israel has decided to stop letting goods and supplies into Gaza,” where the ongoing Israeli genocide, with the loyal backing of the United States, has officially killed more than 51,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The announcement regarding the total halt of humanitarian aid amounted to yet another explicit declaration of the starvation policy that Israel is pursuing in the Gaza Strip, a territory that—thanks in large part to 17 consecutive years of Israeli blockade—has long been largely dependent on such aid for survival.

Of course, this was not the first time that senior Israeli officials had advertised their reliance on the war crime of forced starvation in the current genocidal assault on Gaza. On October 9, 2023, two days after the most recent launch of hostilities, then–Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” Two days after that, Foreign Minister Israel Katz boasted of cutting off “water, electricity and fuel” to the territory.

And just this month, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir proclaimed that there was “no reason for a gram of food or aid to enter Gaza.” Following an April 22 dinner held in his honor in Florida at US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, Ben-Gvir reported that US Republicans had

expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely.

Never mind that the hostages would have been brought home safely as scheduled had Israel chosen to comply with the terms of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas that was implemented in January, rather than definitively annihilating the agreement on March 18. It is no doubt illustrative of Israel’s modus operandi that the March 2 decision to block the entry of all food and other items necessary for human existence took place in the middle of an ostensible ceasefire.

‘Starved, bombed, strangled’

A year ago, USAID administrator Samantha Power (CNN4/11/24) said it was “likely that parts of Gaza, and particularly northern Gaza, are already experiencing famine.” 

While Ben-Gvir’s most recent comments have thus far eluded commentary in the US corporate media, the roundabout media approach to the whole starvation theme has been illuminating in its own right. It has not, obviously, been possible to avoid reporting on the subject altogether, as the United Nations and other organizations have pretty much been warning from the get-go of Israel’s actions causing widespread famine in Gaza.

In December 2023, for example, just two months after the onset of Israel’s blood-drenched campaign, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative, or IPC scale, determined that “over 90% of the population in the Gaza Strip (about 2.08 million people) was estimated to face high levels of acute food insecurity, classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse).” The assessment went on: “Among these, over 40% of the population (939,000 people) were in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and over 15% (378,000 people) were in Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5).”

A full year ago, in April 2024, even Samantha Power—then the administrator of the US Agency for International Development—conceded that it was “credible” that famine was already well underway in parts of the Gaza Strip. And the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs now warns that Gaza is “likely facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the 18 months since the escalation of hostilities in October 2023”—its population being “starved, bombed, strangled” and subjected to “deprivation by design.”

Disappearance of agency

Typically, even when outlets report sympathetically on hunger in Gaza, they fail to state clearly that it is the deliberate result of Israeli policy, as in this New York Times headline (6/25/24).

None of these details have escaped the pages and websites of corporate media outlets, although the media’s frequent reliance on ambiguous wordiness tends to distract readers from what is actually going on—and who is responsible for it. Take, for instance,  the New York Times headline “Gaza Famine Warning Spurs Calls to Remove Restrictions on Food Shipments” (6/25/24), or the CBS video “Hunger Spreads Virtually Everywhere in Gaza Amid Israel/Hamas War” (12/5/24). Even news outlets that intermittently undertake to spotlight the human plight of, inter alia, individual parents in Gaza losing their children to starvation remain susceptible to long-winded efforts to disperse blame. (As of April of last year, Save the Children confirmed that 27 children in northern Gaza had already died of starvation and disease.)

In an era in which news consumption often consists of skimming headlines, the phrasing of article titles is of utmost import. And yet many headlines manage to entirely excise the role of Israel in Gaza’s “hunger crisis”—as in CNN’s report (2/24): “‘We Are Dying Slowly:’ Palestinians Are Eating Grass and Drinking Polluted Water as Famine Looms Across Gaza.” Or take the Reuters headline (3/24/24): “Gaza’s Catastrophic Food Shortage Means Mass Death Is Imminent, Monitor Says.” Or this one from ABC News (11/15/24): “Famine ‘Occurring or Imminent’ in Parts of Northern Gaza, Experts Warn UN Security Council.”

It’s not that these headlines are devoid of sympathy for Palestinian suffering. The issue, rather, is the dilution—and even disappearance—of agency, such that the “catastrophic food shortage” is rendered as transpiring in a sort of vacuum and thereby letting the criminals perpetrating it off the hook. Imagine if a Hamas rocket from Gaza killed an infant in Israel and the media reported the event as follows: “Israeli Baby Perishes as Rocket Completes Airborne Trajectory.”

‘No shortage of aid’

NBC‘s headline (4/17/24) gives Israel’s denial of a problem equal weight with aid workers’ description of Gazans’ desperate situation.

Then there is the matter of the media’s incurable habit of ceding Israeli officials a platform to spout demonstrable lies, as in the April 17 NBC News headline “Aid Groups Describe Dire Conditions in Gaza as Israel Says There Is No Shortage of Aid.” The fact that Israel is permitted to make such claims is particularly perplexing, given Israeli officials’ own announcements that no aid whatsoever may enter the territory, while the “dire conditions” are made abundantly clear in the text of the article itself: “The Global Nutrition Cluster, a coalition of humanitarian groups, has warned that in March alone, 3,696 children were newly admitted for care for acute malnutrition” in Gaza.

Among numerous other damning statistics conveyed in the dispatch, we learn that all Gaza bakeries supported by the UN World Food Programme closed down on March 31, “after wheat flour ran out.” Meanwhile, the WFP calculated that Israel’s closure of border crossings into Gaza caused prices of basic goods “to soar between 150% and 700% compared with prewar levels, and by 29% to as much as 1,400% above prices during the ceasefire.”

Against such a backdrop, it’s fairly ludicrous to allow Israeli officials to “maintain there is ‘no shortage’ of aid in Gaza and accuse Hamas of withholding supplies.” If the press provides Israel with space to spout whatever nonsense it wants—reality be damned—where is the line ultimately drawn? If Israel decides Hamas is using wheat flour to build rockets, will that also be reported with a straight face?

Lest anyone think that thwarting the entry of food into the Gaza Strip is a new thing, recall that Israel’s blockade of Gaza long predated the present war—although the details of said blockade are generally glossed over in the media in favor of the myth that Israel unilaterally “withdrew” from the territory in 2005. In 2010, the BBC (6/21/10) listed some basic foodstuffs—pardon, potential “dual-use items”—that Israel had at different times in recent history blocked from entering Gaza, including pasta, coffee, tea, nuts and chocolate. In 2006, just a year after the so-called “withdrawal,” Israeli government adviser Dov Weissglas outlined the logic behind Israel’s restriction of food imports into Gaza: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

Fast forward almost two decades, and it’s safe to say that the “idea” has evolved; this is a genocide, after all—even if the corporate media refuse to say the word—and starvation is part and parcel of that. But on account of Israel’s extra-special relationship with the United States, US media have institutionalized the practice of beating around the bush when it comes to documenting Israeli crimes. This is how we end up with the aforementioned long-winded headlines instead of, say, the far more straightforward “Israel is starving Gaza,” a Google search of which terms produces not a single corporate media dispatch, but does lead to a January 2024 report by that very name, courtesy of none other than the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.

‘Starving as negotiation tactic’

Megan Stack (New York Times3/13/25): “Lately it feels as if the human beings in Gaza are increasingly lost from our understanding.”

That said, there have been a few surprises. The New York Times (3/13/25), for example, took a short break from its longstanding tradition of unabashed apologetics for Israeli atrocities in allowing the following sentence to appear in a March opinion article by Megan Stack: “Israeli officials are essentially starving Gaza as a negotiation tactic.” In the very least, this was a vast improvement, in terms of syntactic clarity and assignation of blame, over previous descriptions of Israeli behavior immortalized on the pages of the US newspaper of record—like that time the Israeli military slaughtered four kids playing by the sea in Gaza, and the Times editors (7/16/14) went with the headline “Boys Drawn to Gaza Beach, and Into Center of Mideast Strife.”

In the end, Israel’s starvation of the Gaza Strip is multifaceted. It’s not just about physically blocking the entry of food into the besieged enclave. It’s also about Israel’s near-total decimation of Gaza’s healthcare system: the bombardment of hospitals, the targeting of ambulances, the massacres of medical personnel (FAIR.org4/11/25). It’s about Israeli military attacks on humanitarian aid convoys and workers, including the April 2024 massacre of seven international employees of the food organization World Central Kitchen.

It’s about Israel razing agricultural areas, wiping out food production, devastating the fishing industry and depleting livestock. It’s about Israel bombing water infrastructure in Gaza. And it’s about Israeli troops slaughtering at least 112 desperate Palestinians queuing for flour on February 29, 2024 (FAIR.org3/22/24)—which was at least a quicker way of killing starving people than waiting for them to starve.

In his 2017 London Review of Books essay (6/15/17) on the use of famine as a weapon of war, Alex de Waal referenced the “physical debilitation of groups as a technique of genocide,” noting that “forced starvation was one of the instruments of the Holocaust.” It’s worth reflecting on the essay’s opening paragraph:

In its primary use, the verb “to starve” is transitive: It’s something people do to one another, like torture or murder. Mass starvation as a consequence of the weather has very nearly disappeared: Today’s famines are all caused by political decisions, yet journalists still use the phrase “man-made famine” as if such events were unusual.

As for the current case of the Gaza Strip, US establishment journalists appear to be doing their best to avoid the transitive nature of the verb in question—or any subject-verb-object construction that might too overtly expose Israeli savagery. And by treating famine in Gaza as a subject unto itself, rather than a “technique of genocide,” to borrow de Waal’s words, the media assist in obscuring the bigger picture about this very man-made famine—which is that Israel is not just starving Gaza. Israel is exterminating Gaza.

FAIR’s work is sustained by our generous contributors, who allow us to remain independent. Donate today to be a part of this important mission.

Original article by Belén Fernández republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Continue ReadingAs Israel Openly Declares Starvation as a Weapon, Media Still Hesitate to Blame It for Famine

Poor regulator driving soaring water bills, watchdog finds

Spread the love

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/poor-regulator-driving-soaring-water-bills-watchdog-finds

‘A wholesale betrayal of the people and our environment’

 Campaigners say privatised water has failed the public and the environment

REGULATORS have fuelled soaring water bills by not encouraging private companies to spend “what they need to deliver the performance expected,” a damning public spending watchdog report concluded today.

The National Audit Office (NAO) highlighted “inconsistent responsibilities” and gaps in oversight within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the sector’s regulators.

The watchdog examined the effectiveness of sector regulators — Ofwat, the Environment Agency, and the Drinking Water Inspectorate — as well as Defra, which sets policies for the sector in England.

It found that complex and lengthy regulatory frameworks have contributed to “worsening investor perception of the sector” which will need to attract “investment and spend at a rate not seen before” to meet its “significant environmental and supply challenges.”

NAO head Gareth Davies said: “Given the unprecedented situation facing the sector, Defra and the regulators need to act urgently to address industry performance and resilience to ensure the sector can meet government targets and achieve value for money over the long term for bill payers.”

Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/poor-regulator-driving-soaring-water-bills-watchdog-finds

Continue ReadingPoor regulator driving soaring water bills, watchdog finds