Author Archives: Maria

Professor Peter Wadhams – The Fate of the Ice Sheet on the Top of the World

In early 2019 news about accelerated melting in Arctic and Antarctic made me return to trusted sources. For the Arctic I returned to Prof. Peter Wadhams, the UK’s most experienced sea ice scientist, professor of Ocean Physics, and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge.
As opposed to the Antarctic, a continent of mountains and valleys covered in ice, the North Pole is an ocean covered with an ice sheet that touched the coast lines of Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Siberia for 100.000 years. In only 30 years the retreat from the coast lines during the Arctic summer accelerated and an ice free Arctic in September may [ . . . ]

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NASA Scientist Eric Rignot on Melting Glaciers in Antarctica

A collaboration between Radio Ecoshock and TUC Radio archive Even mainstream media reported at the beginning of February, 2019, a sensation in sea level rise. NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, confirmed that a huge cavity — two-thirds the size of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet tall — has melted into the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. This glacier is about the size of Florida, and is currently already responsible for about 4 percent of global sea level rise.
Thwaites is sometimes called a culture changer since the collapse of that one glacier would raise the oceans by two feet, threatening so many centers of civilization that are built on the coast lines of the world.
Eric Rignot of [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Happy 16th Anniversary, Seniors for Peace

From the archives of TUC radio, recorded in 2003  I’m recording this introduction on January 29, 2019 after returning last night from a huge, heart-warming celebration of the Senior for Peace in Mill Valley, CA. They live in the Redwoods Retirement Community just North of the Golden Gate bridge. Every Friday from 4 to 5 pm, rain or shine, ongoing and for the last 16 years, they walk to the busy intersection with banners, posters and hand drums, Cymbals, guitars and a violin and amaze passing drivers and the student of the high school right across with their songs and message for peace and justice.
On their web site millvalleyseniorsforpeace.org they explain that they first came out in January 2003, when [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Mary Oliver

When the poet Mary Oliver passed in her 83rd year on January 17, 2019, the huge response revealed her as one of the most popular writers of our time. That despite her refusal to be famous or rich, and the rare interviews she gave. She wanted her poems to speak for themselves and came up with titles such as Owls and Other Fantasies, The Leaf and the Cloud, Wild Geese and the Truro Bear.
A dear friend wrote to me: “I can’t think of a contemporary poet who better than Oliver expresses such depth of feeling and thought about the natural world, and what it is to experience earth as an animal in the web of life. And I like the [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Ray McGovern – RussiaGate: The Absence of Evidence? (TWO of TWO)

Includes a clip from Noam Chomsky explaining his skepticism of the RussiaGate claims.
Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years, from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. His duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief to Ronald Reagan’s security advisers from 1981 to 1985.
After retiring he became a trusted source of information on the falsified intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that was used to bring the US into the disastrous war on Iraq.
For over two years McGovern has focused on what came to be dubbed RussiaGate and in part ONE you heard about his assessment of Julian Assange, and the so-called hacking of e-mails of the [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)

Ignacio Chapela: The Story of Corn -TUC Archives, October 2002 (TWO of TWO)

The contamination of the cradle of corn with genetically engineered seeds
Ignacio Chapela from the University of California, Berkeley discovered that genetically modified corn had contaminated the cradle of corn in the remote mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. The Zapotecan Indians have cultivated corn there for over 10,000 years.
In Part TWO Chapela questions why a biotech company can take out a patent on a living seed after making minor changes in the DNA. He also warns of horizontal gene transfer whereby an engineered gene from one organism may enter the genome of another species, including humans.
Ignacio Chapela is now (2018) associate professor of microbial ecology at UC, Berkeley.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)