Podcasts

Independent Radio on CDs, DVDs and the Internet

Prof. Jim White: Sea level rise and the melting of sea ice and glaciers (TWO of TWO)

By MariaMarch 15, 20172017, Newest PodcastsArctic

Dr. Jim White turns his attention to ice. The accelerated melting of the Arctic sea ice and the ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica.
Concentrations of carbon dioxide – after water vapor the most important greenhouse gas – are measured in parts per million. The organization 350 dot org expresses in its name that – to be safe from catastrophic climate change – we should not go over 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. However in late 2016 the measurements at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, went over 400 ppm for the first time in modern history. (And on March 9, 2017 the reading was 405 ppm)
When a visionary scientist, Charles Keeling, began daily readings for CO2 concentration from Mauna Loa in [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:58 — 19.9MB)

Prof. Jim White – How to respond to climate change deniers (ONE of TWO)

By MariaMarch 8, 20172017, Newest Podcasts

When the Weather and Climate Summit was established in 1985 the goal was to bring together weather-casters and meteorologists from the U.S. and Canada with scientists and researchers. Their annual summit of 2017 was held in Breckenridge, Colorado, from January 8 to 12. One of the many topics at the summit was to prepare for the incoming Trump administration that was to include outspoken climate change deniers.
Dr. Jim White teaches at the University of Colorado. He specializes in Global change, paleoclimate dynamics, and the human impact on climate.
In a very entertaining and easy to understand way he addressed the five topics climate change deniers most often bring up:
2. How can we insignificant humans change the climate?
3. How can something like [ . . . ]

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

Michael Parenti: Theocracy VS. Democracy – The Political Uses of Religion

By MariaMarch 1, 20172017, Newest Podcasts

One 29 minute program (no Part TWO)
Michael Parenti says that democracy can’t survive under religious rule – whatever that religion may be. Parenti’s warning in this archival recording is as timely and urgently expressed as it was when this speech was first given on April 12, 1987, during the second term of the Reagan administration.
This talk is also very funny. Parenti explains how God may be considered as a “founding father” and why Woody Allen calls him an underachiever. It is easy to extend this timeless analysis to the present circumstances.
With roots in a working class Italian district of New York City and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale Michael Parenti has become an internationally known writer and lecturer. [ . . . ]

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

Michael Parenti: Fascism, The False Revolution, TWO of TWO

By MariaFebruary 22, 20172017, Newest Podcasts

The overwhelming response from those who heard part ONE of this program was disbelief – how can an analysis made in 1995 be so relevant for 2017!
In this conclusion Parenti addresses: How western capitalist states have cooperated with Fascism as they saw Fascists as bulwark against communism. He reminds us that US corporations such as Dupont, Ford, GM, ITT, had factories in fascist Germany and after the war collected money from the US tax payers for damages incurred in Allied bombing raids.
Parenti says that we might do well to stop thinking of Fascism as either or condition. To insist that you don’t have Fascism until every vestige of constitutional government is destroyed and the jackboot is on our necks is [ . . . ]

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

Michael Parenti: Fascism, The False Revolution, ONE of TWO

By MariaFebruary 15, 20172017, Newest Podcasts

A talk given by the political analyst and author Michael Parenti in 1995 sounds almost as if it was given in 2017 in the context of European and US elections. In his 50 plus years of lecturing at major universities Parenti returned to the important connection between capitalism and fascism many times. Actually over 32,000 times if you believe the search engines.
Fascism, as Mussolini said “..should be more properly called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.” And history, as told by Michael Parenti, shows that in all fascist societies, be it Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain, and into the present, corporate power increased. And that gain in power such as tax cuts, deregulation, subsidies for extraction [ . . . ]

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

Michael Parenti, The Supremely Political Court

By MariaFebruary 8, 20172017, Newest Podcasts

Archival, updated to reflect Trump admin.
In February, 2017 the name of Michael Parenti and references to his 23 books and countless lectures are flooding the Internet. It appears that his writings on history, the demise of US democracy, capitalism and the rule of the one percent, fascism, patriotism and US First-ism that span the decades from the late 1960s to 2014 were meant to be read and used today.
Michael Parenti was born into a working class Italian family in East Harlem, New York City. He went on to receive his Ph.D. in political science at Yale in 1962. His academic career was cut short by his dismissal after he was arrested for protesting the US war on Vietnam. Parenti became [ . . . ]

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

What climate change data can tell us about the emergence and spread of diseases

By MariaFebruary 1, 20172017, Newest Podcasts

Dr. Howard Frumkin
On January 24, 2017, Marketplace, the American Public Media radio program, reported that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) abruptly cancelled a long scheduled three day Climate Change Summit that was set to take place in February in Atlanta.
On the same day Breitbart News – formerly run by the senior Trump advisor Steve Bannon, wrote: The CDC cancelation of their climate change event “is unquestionably a result of the Trump Effect: the CDC is one of many US federal agencies which have been forced rapidly to adjust their priorities…. the CDC’s job is to protect public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease… What does climate change have to do with this? Nothing. … The evidence that man-made climate change [ . . . ]

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

Naomi Klein: Change the System, not the Climate

By MariaJanuary 25, 20172017, Newest Podcasts

Naomi Klein is best known for her book: This Changes Everything, Capitalism versus the Climate. She wrote: … it’s not about carbon—it’s about capitalism… [and] we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better.
An important document towards building a better future is the Leap Manifesto. <https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/> It calls for a restructuring of the Canadian economy and an end to the use of fossil fuels. The Leap Manifesto was initiated in the spring of 2015 at a two-day meeting in Toronto. Among those who wrote it were representatives from Canada’s Indigenous rights, social and food justice, environmental, faith-based and labor movements. And Naomi Klein gives a summary of the manifesto in this program.
Naomi [ . . . ]

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

The Story of Aaron Swartz – Film on Radio – ONE self contained 29 min. program

By MariaJanuary 17, 20172017, Newest Podcasts

ARCHIVE – On the fourth anniversary of Aaron’s death
The life and work of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden and Aaron Swartz are related around the question what the internet can be in our lives: an instrument of surveillance or of social change. And as the future of the internet and net neutrality and the role of the FCC all hang in the balance again in 2017 the extraordinary life and ideas of Aaron Swartz are worth remembering.
This program is based on the soundtrack of the 2014 movie: The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz. His death at age 26 on January 11, 2013, made the internet light up with grief and also anger at a judicial system that [ . . . ]

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

Ice Core Climate Records of the World: – Prof. Lonnie Thompson

By MariaJanuary 11, 20172017, Newest Podcasts

Lonnie Thompson is University Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University in the School of Earth Sciences and the Byrd Polar Research Center. He is the leading paleo-scientist who drilled and preserved ice cores from high mountain glaciers while others focussed on Greenland and Antarctica.
In 1952 the Danish geophysicist Willi Dansgaard made a discovery that opened up a completely new field of research. He found that the amount of heavy oxygen isotopes in rain correlates with the temperature at the location where the precipitation was formed. But more important in preparation for debates with climate change deniers is the record of CO2 that is also preserved in the ice cores. The correlation of temperature rise and decrease with increasing and decreasing [ . . . ]

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

Prof. Lonnie Thompson: Melting of the High Mountain Glaciers of the World

By MariaJanuary 4, 20172017, Newest Podcasts

Abrupt Climate Change and Our Future – ARCHIVE
This is a re-broadcast and partial update of one of the most appreciated and also rare programs by TUC. This program will be followed by two updates with Dr. Thompson.
Thompson issues a warning that the mountain glaciers he knows and loves are melting ever more dramatically within the last twenty years. He is the leading expert on glaciers with 30 years of on location research.
Thompson saw one of the first ice cores that was recovered from a glacier when he was in graduate school. He was fascinated by the amount of data on earth history, past climate and world changing events that can be read from these ice cores and made the exploration [ . . . ]

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

Press Conference from the Norwegian Young Sea ICE Expedition – N-ICE2015

By MariaDecember 28, 20162016

In the winter of 2015, an ice-bound Norwegian research vessel drifted with the shrinking Arctic ice for half a year while an international team of 70 scientists worked to better understand the effects of rising temperatures and changing sea ice.
It was the first wintertime Arctic Sea ice experiment to study the thinning ice pack. Data from submarines since 1958 and from satellites since 1972 had already shown that the frozen area in the Arctic is diminishing, the ice is getting thinner, multi year solid old ice is disappearing and the Arctic ocean is warming. However nobody had stayed with the ice for 6 months.
Since 1928 the Norwegian Polar Institute has done scientific research, mapping and environmental monitoring in the Arctic [ . . . ]

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

How does the melting Arctic affect the rest of the world?

By MariaDecember 21, 20162016Arctic, Climate Change

NOAA’s Arctic Report Card 2016
The Arctic is now warming twice as fast as the global average. That’s the finding in the 11th Arctic Report Card released on December 13, 2016, at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. NOAA’s Arctic Research Program Director, Jeremy Mathis, said about the year 2016: “Rarely have we seen the Arctic show a clearer, stronger or more pronounced signal of persistent warming and its cascading effects on the environment than this year.”
The Arctic Report Card, by a team of 61 scientists from 11 nations, lists the many ways in which the warming Arctic affects sea level rise, ocean and air circulation as well as weather in the Northern Hemisphere and beyond.
The warming Arctic [ . . . ]

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

Faster than forecast: The story ice tells about climate change – Professor Jason Box

By MariaDecember 14, 20162016

At years’ end 2016 denial of climate change is being promoted at the highest level of the incoming Trump administration in the US. This in spite of the fact that even the coldest parts of planet earth are now warming at an unprecedented rate.
Professor Jason Box is one of the world’s experts on the Greenland ice sheet. He is professor in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. He moved to Denmark to be closer to the one field of study that he is dedicated to with a kind of passion and sense of responsibility that is unusual for a tenured Professor. While working at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University from 2002-2012 he began [ . . . ]

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

Winona LaDuke on Standing Rock

By MariaDecember 7, 20162016Native Americans

The test of civil society
On her way home from one of many visits to Standing Rock, the Native American activist and author Winona LaDuke stopped in Chicago and gave a talk at the Newberry Library to a standing room only audience.
Winona LaDuke lives on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and is working on climate change, renewable energy, and environmental justice. She is the founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, and Program Director of Honor the Earth.
Winona LaDuke’s talk in Chicago was framed by her clear headed assessment of the extraordinary risk that the fracking oil boom and the network of pipelines pose to our survival she offered examples how to break free from our addiction to [ . . . ]

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