Between The Lines - Steve Palumbi: Climate Change's Rising Ocean Temperatures Bleaching and Killing Earth's Vital Coral (Week Ending Jan. 13, 2017)

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

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The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

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THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

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Climate Change's Rising Ocean Temperatures Bleaching and Killing Earth's Vital Coral

Posted Jan. 4, 2017

Interview with Steve Palumbi, professor in Marine Sciences at Stanford University, director of the Hopkins Marine Station and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

Coral reefs worldwide have been experiencing some of the most visible signs of climate change, as coral formations struggle to adapt to warmer ocean water. A recent bleaching event devastated the northern area of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. Corals are an extremely important part of their ecosystems, as they are home to a great diversity of fish that provide food for other species, including humans. Due to bleaching events and other problems, scientists estimate that coral populations today are only 30 to 50 percent of what they were a century ago.

About two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef’s northern shallow-water coral, a previously pristine 430-mile stretch is dead. Only a cyclone that reduced water temperatures by up to three degrees Celsius in the south saved the lower section of the 1,400-mile reef, a United Nations natural World Heritage Site, from damage. Other global coral bleaching events occurred in 1998, 2005 and 2010.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Steve Palumbi, professor of Marine Sciences at Stanford University who serves as director of the university’s marine lab in Pacific Grove, California. Palumbi is an expert on the coral reefs around Palau, an island nation in the south Pacific. Here, he explains that corals are both an incredibly old and resilient life form, yet very vulnerable to human activities, and provide many benefits to the ecosystem that most of us don#x2019;t know.

STEVE PALUMBI: Coral bleaching is where corals spit out their internal colored symbions and they turn stark white – that’s why it#x2019;s called bleaching. And many of them die as a result of that. These bleaching events have pulsed through the global coral population, in some cases reducing it by 90 percent locally, in some cases, 50 percent.

BETWEEN THE LINES: I think I have some idea of the importance of corals, but can you elaborate on that? If they collapse, what is the impact on the rest of their ecosystems?

STEVE PALUMBI: Say you#x2019;re living in a coastal city and someone comes up to you and says they#x2019;ve just invented a self-repairing sea wall. And this wall will continue to grow, it will continue to fix itself over time, it will continue to get wider, and by the way it will also produce sand for your beaches. You#x2019;d look at those people and say, that#x2019;s ridiculous. There#x2019;s no way you can sell me a repairable, growable sea wall that makes my beaches for me. But that#x2019;s what corals do. They produce these walls in front of coastal villages, cities, towns, coastlines. They protect these coastlines from surge waves, from storms, from tsunamis. They produce the sand that beaches are made of in the tropics, and by the way, they also support almost a quarter of the marine species on the planet. They produce such an amazing volume and diversity of fish that hundreds of millions of people get most of their animal protein just from fishing on coral reefs. They#x2019;re stunningly beautiful; they inspire people all over the world, and they#x2019;re one of the most productive ecosystems on earth.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Is that all? Now, Steve Palumbi, can you clarify when bleaching kills corals and when it doesn#x2019;t?

STEVE PALUMBI: So what#x2019;s happening in this animal – corals are animals – there#x2019;s a thin film of living tissue over the skeleton that they#x2019;ve been building little by little underneath them. They are powered by internal symbions that are photosynthetic, so they take the profuse sunlight on tropical reefs and convert that to energy that the coral uses to live and grow. So when they bleach, the coral animal is alive, but the symbion is gone, so their ability to use this sunlight as energy is gone, meaning about 90 percent of their food supply, their energy supply, is now unavailable to them. That doesn’t kill them outright, but it starves them, and it doesn’t take very long for the coral to succumb, with all the other dangers that are out there on the reefs – all the other critters eating them, boring into them, growing over them, and all of that. In places where bleaching is really severe, it means the environmental insult that caused it – usually heating – is also severe, and so the death rate from bleaching is even higher – 90 percent, 95 percent of entire bleached reefs are dead right now in the northern Great Barrier Reef due to the last bleaching event that happened there.

The good news about all that is that those bleaching events, so far anyway, are transient. They happen over a week or two, the water cools back down, and the conditions are generally then okay for corals to grow. So, all else being okay and no other problems existing there, even an intensely bleached reef can recover. And we saw that after the 1998 bleaching in Palau and Australia and other places. A decade later, the reefs were beginning to regrow; they were coming back to a great extent; the diversity wasn#x2019;t quite as high. But reefs, like a lot of marine ecosystems, are incredibly productive and capable of regrowing if they have the chance.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Are any countries doing better than others at protecting coral? I suppose since oceans are global, it must be handled globally.

STEVE PALUMBI: There are aspects of it that can only be handled on a global level, you#x2019;re absolutely right. Practically everything we do as humans in our economy on the coast is detrimental to corals. Yet, they have been around on the planet for a quarter of a billion years and have survived at least two mass extinctions. On one level they seem really robust and survivors and on the other level, everything we do to them hurts them. Locally, cities, towns, villages, coastlines, have a lot they can do to support coral growth. They can prevent erosion; they can keep pesticides and fertilizers from going into the local water; they can limit over-fishing.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What does your research tell you about coral’s chances of survival as water temperatures keep warming?

STEVE PALUMBI: We’ve found that corals really are quite able to deal with high water temperatures, but just some of them are. There are some species that are very resistant to it, but even within species, some individual corals have the right genes and they have the right environmental history – they’re living in the right place so that their physiology is tuned to better resist high water temperatures.

Then there are the two creeping problems that come with climate change – that#x2019;s the ocean getting warmer and also the ocean getting more acidified than now. Those things are not going to be changed unless we fix the global emissions problem we have, and that requires a global solution to climate change and a global solution to throwing fossil fuels into the air.

Learn more about the urgent issue of coral bleaching by visiting Palumbi Lab at palumbi.stanford.edu/peoplea nd Stephen Palumbi at palumbi.stanford.edu/PeoplePages/Steve.