The Gulf Stream

I would like to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Guy McPherson, Paul Beckwith, Sam Carana, Robertscribbler, and others in helping me to write this.

This refers to a phenomenon that is likely to be regional (affecting Britain most of all) and temporary. In the end Heat will trump.

An 'Ice Age' coming?

The weakening Gulf Stream

Seemorerocks

Yesterday the above picture was posted, of Atlantic ocean currents. It elicited the following comment from nuclear scientist Prof Chris Busby. 

“Gulf stream seems to failing. i have noticed increasingly the depressions get stuck in mid – Atlantic. we have had stuck depressions mid Atlantic since November and a continuous high over Scandinavia which means high winds and rain in England and cold easterlies [...]

Although he is not a climate scientist he is sufficiently tuned-in for some of us to take this seriously and for me to seek out some expert opinions.

This from Robertscribbler

“Absolutely true. Writing an article based on this, among other things, right now. The Gulf Stream is very weak and continues to weaken....

...The Gulf Stream has decreased in strength by about 10 to 15 percent since 2004. This is largely due to increasing melt outflows from Greenland and due to ocean current changes in the Arctic and extreme North Atlantic. Greenland melt is likely to continue to increase over the coming decades. So we should see a continued weakening and southward diversion of the Gulf Stream.”

Sam Carana of the Global Methane Emergency Group had a slightly different take

"What's important is that the Gulf Stream keeps pushing warm salty water into the Arctic Ocean, contributing to methane erupting from the seafloor of the Arctic ocean, threatening to escalate into runaway warming."

I've got no argument with either point-of-view really, but in general I am in favour of explanations that can fit in multiple explanations rather than reduce everything down to one single cause.

The Global Methane Emergency Group are doing stirling work and I cannot argue with anything other than their firm advocacy of geoengineering as a techno-fix. 

Their science is 100 per cent sound in my very humble opinion.

However, they are looking at just one positive, self-reinforcing feedback mechanism - methane release: there are many feedbacks that have been identified by Guy McPherson (I have lost count of how many - at least 25).

One of these is the weakening of thermohaline circulation.

There is today more confirmation that heat is the thing that will kill us all in the end, bringing to an end to conditions that are capable of supporting life, let alone agriculture and other aspects of human civilisation.

However, as the Arctic ice melts (and I suspect the next tipping point may be the disappearance of Arctic summer ice, replaced by dark water that absorbs, rather than reflecting sunlight) - we are sure to see a further weakening of the Gulf Stream, as well as in other areas such as the Antarctica.

This could indeed lead to a regional and temporary "ice age" before the heating takes over the entire globe.

This takes me back to the early 2000's - 2003 in particular when this scenario was first raised that melting of the Arctic ice would change the balance needed for the return of warm air to the north, giving rise to cold conditions in North America and Northern Europe.

This gave rise to a Hollywood blockbuster movie, The Day After Tomorrow which envisaged just such changes taking place, but in real time.  It was rubbished at the time on the grounds that such changes would take decades.

Now that changes in the Arctic have been unleashed and we are seeing accelerated ice melt and associated climate change, we are, to all intents and purposes, seeing changes in real time. Months and years, not decades.

The Day after Tomorrow no longer seems SO ridiculous to those of us that are capable of embracing the truth.

The problem is that, in general we have such short memories.  Most people can only remember what happened yesterday - not much further back than that.

Back in 2003 two scientists, Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, published a paper, An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security.

This laid out the scenario of abrupt climate change for the first time.

Below are several articles, from the redoubtable the Guardian,  dating from 2003, discussing in terms that are understandable the scenario of a rapid shutdown of the Gulf Stream

Will global warming trigger a new ice age?

If climate change disrupts ocean currents, things could get very chilly round here, reports Bill McGuire

the Guardian,
13 November, 2003

If you can remember back to the bitter winters of the late 1970s and early 80s you might also recall that there was much discussion in scientific circles at the time about whether or not the freezing winter conditions were a portent of a new ice age.

Over the past couple of decades such warnings have been drowned out by the great global warming debate and by consideration of how society might cope in future with a sweltering planet rather than an icebound one. Seemingly, the fact that we are still within an interglacial period, during which the ice has largely retreated to its polar fastnesses, has been forgotten - and replaced with the commonly-held view that one good thing you can say about global warming is that it will at least stave off the return of the glaciers.

Is this really true, or could the rapidly accelerating warming that we are experiencing actually hasten the onset of a new ice age? A growing body of evidence suggests that, at least for the UK and western Europe, there is a serious risk of this happening - and soon.

The problem lies with the ocean current known as the Gulf Stream, which bathes the UK and north-west Europe in warm water carried northwards from the Caribbean. It is the Gulf Stream, and associated currents, that allow strawberries to thrive along the Norwegian coast, while at comparable latitudes in Greenland glaciers wind their way right down to sea level. The same currents permit palms to flourish in Cornwall and the Hebrides, whereas across the ocean in Labrador, even temperate vegetation struggles to survive. Without the Gulf Stream, temperatures in the UK and north-west Europe would be five degrees centigrade or so cooler, with bitter winters at least as fierce as those of the so-called Little Ice Age in the 17th to 19th centuries.

The Gulf Stream is part of a more complex system of currents known by a number of different names, of which the rather cumbersome North Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Namoc) is probably the most apt. This incorporates not only the Gulf Stream but also the cold return currents that convey water southwards again. As it approaches the Arctic, the Gulf Stream loses heat and part of it heads back to warmer climes along the coast of Greenland and eastern Canada in the form of the cold, iceberg-laden current responsible for the loss of the Titanic. Much, however, overturns - cooling and sinking beneath the Nordic seas between Norway and Greenland, before heading south again deep below the surface.

In the past, the slowing of the Gulf Stream has been intimately linked with dramatic regional cooling. Just 10,000 years ago, during a climatic cold snap known as the Younger Dryas, the current was severely weakened, causing northern European temperatures to fall by as much as 10 degrees. Ten thousand years before that, at the height of the last ice age, when most of the UK was reduced to a frozen wasteland, the Gulf Stream had just two-thirds of the strength it has now.

What's worrying is that for some years now, global climate models have been predicting a future weakening of the Gulf Stream as a consequence of global warming. Such models visualise the disruption of the Namoc, including the Gulf Stream, as a result of large-scale melting of Arctic ice and the consequent pouring of huge volumes of fresh water into the North Atlantic, in a century or two. New data suggest, however, that we may not have to wait centuries, and in fact the whole process may be happening already.

So that the warm, saline surface waters of the Gulf Stream can continue to push northwards, there must be a comparable, deep return current of cold, dense water from the Nordic seas. Disturbingly, this return current seems to have been slowing since the middle of the last century. Bogi Hansen at the Faroese fisheries laboratory, and colleagues in Scotland and Norway, have been monitoring the deep outflow of cold water from the Nordic seas as it passes over the submarine Greenland-Scotland ridge that straddles the North Atlantic at this point. Their results show that the outflow has fallen by 20% since 1950, which suggests a comparable reduced inflow from the Gulf Stream.

Although there is as yet no direct substantiation of this, and his colleagues point to reports of the cooling and freshening of the Norwegian Sea and to temperatures that are already falling in parts of the region as possible evidence of contemporary Gulf Stream weakening.

It also seems that it is not only the intensity of the outflow of cold water that is changing. Bob Dickson of the Centre for Environment, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Science at Lowestoft, and colleagues, have reported a sustained and widespread freshening of returning deep waters south of the Greenland-Scotland ridge, which appears to have been going on for the past three or four decades.

Already the freshening is extending along the North American eastern seaboard towards the equator, in the so-called Deep Western Boundary current.

One of the scariest aspects of the current dramatic changes occurring in the system of North Atlantic currents is that the deep, southward-flowing limb of the Namoc can be thought of as representing the headwaters of the worldwide system of ocean currents known as the Global Thermohaline Circulation. The possibility exists, therefore, that a disruption of the Atlantic currents might have implications far beyond a colder UK and north-west Europe, perhaps bringing dramatic climatic changes to the entire planet.

Yet again, this highlights the fact that global warming, for which we have only ourselves to thank, is nothing more nor less than a great planetary experiment, many of the outcomes of which we cannot predict. Wallace Broecker, an ocean circulation researcher at New York's Lamont-Doherty Earth observatory, described the situation perfectly when he pointed out that "climate is an angry beast and we are poking at it with sticks". Let's hope that when it truly turns on us, its teeth don't match its outrage.

· Bill McGuire is Benfield Professor of Geophysical Hazards and director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at University College London. He will appear on BBC2 Horizon's The Big Chill tonight

Alarm over dramatic weakening of Gulf Stream

The powerful ocean current that bathes Britain and northern Europe in warm waters from the tropics has weakened dramatically in recent years, a consequence of global warming that could trigger more severe winters and cooler summers across the region, scientists warn today

Interactive guide to the Gulf Stream

the Guardian,

1 December, 2005

Researchers on a scientific expedition in the Atlantic Ocean measured the strength of the current between Africa and the east coast of America and found that the circulation has slowed by 30% since a previous expedition 12 years ago.

The current, which drives the Gulf Stream, delivers the equivalent of 1m power stations-worth of energy to northern Europe, propping up temperatures by 10C in some regions. The researchers found that the circulation has weakened by 6m tonnes of water a second. Previous expeditions to check the current flow in 1957, 1981 and 1992 found only minor changes in its strength, although a slowing was picked up in a further expedition in 1998. The decline prompted the scientists to set up a £4.8m network of moored instruments in the Atlantic to monitor changes in the current continuously.

The network should also answer the pressing question of whether the significant weakening of the current is a short-term variation, or part of a more devastating long-term slowing of the flow.

If the current remains as weak as it is, temperatures in Britain are likely to drop by an average of 1C in the next decade, according to Harry Bryden at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton who led the study. "Models show that if it shuts down completely, 20 years later, the temperature is 4C to 6C degrees cooler over the UK and north-western Europe," Dr Bryden said.

Although climate records suggest that the current has ground to a halt in the distant past, the prospect of it shutting down entirely within the century are extremely low, according to climate modellers.

The current is essentially a huge oceanic conveyor belt that transports heat from equatorial regions towards the Arctic circle. Warm surface water coming up from the tropics gives off heat as it moves north until eventually, it cools so much in northern waters that it sinks and circulates back to the south. There it warms again, rises and heads back north. The constant sinking in the north and rising in the south drives the conveyor.

Global warming weakens the circulation because increased meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic icesheets along with greater river run-off from Russia pour into the northern Atlantic and make it less saline which in turn makes it harder for the cooler water to sink, in effect slowing down the engine that drives the current.

The researchers measured the strength of the current at a latitude of 25 degrees N and found that the volume of cold, deep water returning south had dropped by 30%. At the same time, they measured a 30% increase in the amount of surface water peeling off early from the main northward current, suggesting far less was continuing up to Britain and the rest of Europe. The report appears in the journal Nature today.

Disruption of the conveyor-belt current was the basis of the film The Day After Tomorrow, which depicted a world thrown into chaos by a sudden and dramatic drop in temperatures. That scenario was dismissed by researchers as fantasy, because climate models suggest that the current is unlikely to slow so suddenly.

Marec Srokosz of the National Oceanographic Centre said: "The most realistic part of the film is where the climatologists are talking to the politicians and the politicians are saying 'we can't do anything about it'."

Chris West, director of the UK climate impacts programme at Oxford University's centre for the environment, said: "The only way computer models have managed to simulate an entire shutdown of the current is to magic into existence millions of tonnes of fresh water and dump it in the Atlantic. It's not clear where that water could ever come from, even taking into account increased Greenland melting."

Uncertainties in climate change models mean that the overall impact on Britain of a slowing down in the current are hard to pin down. "We know that if the current slows down, it will lead to a drop in temperatures in Britain and northern Europe of a few degrees, but the effect isn't even over the seasons. Most of the cooling would be in the winter, so the biggest impact would be much colder winters," said Tim Osborn, of the University of East Anglia climatic research unit.

The final impact of any cooling effect will depend on whether it outweighs the global warming that, paradoxically, is driving it. According to climate modellers, the drop in temperature caused by a slowing of the Atlantic current will, in the long term, be swamped by a more general warming of the atmosphere.

"If this was happening in the absence of generally increasing temperatures, I would be concerned," said Dr Smith. Any cooling driven by a weakening of the Atlantic current would probably only slow warming rather than cancel it out all together. Even if a slowdown in the current put the brakes on warming over Britain and parts of Europe, the impact would be felt more extremely elsewhere, he said.

Climate change: Gulf stream collapse could be like a disaster movie

The next Ice Age could take only weeks to engulf Britain. Scientists say the last great disruption to the Gulf Stream 12,800 years ago took only a couple of months to trigger a massive plunge in temperatures across Europe.

Robin McKie, Science Editor

,

the Observer,

29 November 2009

"It was as if Europe had been shifted 20 degrees north and Ireland moved to Svalbard," said Bill Patterson of Saskatchewan University.

In the Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, an Ice Age was set off in a single day when the Gulf Stream was disrupted. "That is silly," said Patterson. "It couldn't happen that quickly. However, previous estimates that it would take decades to switch off the Gulf Stream are not backed by our work. It could happen in a couple of months."

The Gulf Stream carries tropical heat from the Caribbean to northern Europe but is already being disrupted by meltwater pouring from the Arctic as global warming intensifies. One day it may switch off completely, say scientists.

Such an event occurred 12,800 years ago when a vast lake – created from melting glaciers at the end of last Ice Age – overflowed and poured into the north Atlantic, blocking the Gulf Stream. Europe froze – almost instantly, said Patterson.

His team analysed mud samples from Lough Monreagh in Ireland and discovered layers of white sediment made up of calcite crystals from algae. "Then abruptly the sediment turned black. This stuff contained no biological material." In other words, all life in the lake had been extinguished in less than three months. "It was very sudden," added Patterson, "and it could happen again."

New updates for earth.nullschool.net! Now you can see global ocean surface currents in near real-time. Just click here:


http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic


(A browser refresh may be required to pick up the changes.)

Earth & Space Research in Seattle, WA, produces this data every five days as part of the OSCAR project:

http://www.esr.org/oscar_index.html

Also see this - 

The Antarctic Half of the Global Thermohaline Circulation Is Faltering' (April, 2013)

The sudden cooling of Europe, triggered by collapse of the global thermohaline circulation in the north Atlantic and the slowing of the Gulf Stream has been popularised by the movies and the media. The southern half of the global thermohaline circulation is as important to global climate but has not been popularised. The global oceans' coldest water, Antarctic bottom water forms in several key spots around Antarctica. The water is so cold and dense that it spreads out along the bottom all of the major ocean basins except the north Atlantic and Arctic. Multiple recent reports provide strong evidence that the formation of Antarctic bottom water has slowed dramatically in response to massive subsurface melting of ice shelves and glaciers. The meltwater is freshening a layer of water found between depths of 50 and 150 meters. This lightened layer is impeding the formation of Antarctic bottom water, causing the Antarctic half of the global thermohaline circulation to falter

UK: High levels of radioactivity at Sellafield

_{UK nuclear workers told to stay home as radioactivity rises}

Britain’s Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site has told non-essential workers to stay home Friday due to the detection of abnormally high levels of radiation.

RT,

31 January, 2014

The radiation spike was detected by one of the monitors at the north end of the partially decommissioned site.

"Levels of radioactivity detected are above naturally occurring radiation but well below that which would call for any actions to be taken by the workforce on or off the site," Sellafield said in a statement.

Sellafield later tweeted that it had found no evidence of a nuclear event.

Sellafield management have sought to reassure the public that radiation levels are not high enough to warrant any emergency. Apart from the reduced staffing levels, the site is operating normally, the company said.

"In response to an operational condition on the Sellafield site a conservative and prudent decision has been taken, to operate the site at reduced manning levels, commensurate with safe operations," the company said in a statement.

UK Energy Ministry said it is in contact with Sellafield and sees no reason to believe that the incident is more serious than what the company says it is.

Britain's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said the source of the radiation could not be immediately established, but that actions were being taken in response to the incident.

Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site in Cumbria, northwest England, is currently undergoing decommission.

A Cold War legacy, Sellafield holds dozens of tons of plutonium waste from Britain’s nuclear weapons program. One of its buildings is dubbed "the most hazardous industrial building in western Europe."

The site attracts anti-nuclear campaigners, partially due to a number of radiation leaks the site has experienced over the decades.

Sellafield closure was announced in June 2012, following concerns over environmental damage and terrorist threats. It has cost British taxpayers at least £67.5 billion ($106 billion).

Climate records

Balkan countries destroy climate records

This picture is not from the Balkans, but from Cyprus

From Colorado Bob

Of particular note were the amazingly warm January temperatures in the Balkans. According to weather record researcher Maximiliano Herrera, “over 90% of all stations in the Balkans from Slovenia to Croatia to Bosnia to Serbia To Montenegro to Macedonia to Kosovo etc, have DESTROYED their previous record of warmest January ever (many locations have 100 – 200 years of data.) In many cases the monthly temperatures were 7 – 9°C (13 – 16°F) above average, and the new records were 3 – 4°C above the previous record. This is for THOUSANDS of stations, almost all of them. In Slovenia, for example, Mount Kredarica is the only station in the whole country not to have set its warmest January on record.” http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2624#commenttop Colorado Bob is a wonderful source of climate change- related articles

Ocean warming

Yet Another Large Jump in Ocean Warming

David Appell ,

20 January, 2014

The fourth-quarter result for 0-700 meter ocean heat content is in already, and it shows another large increase from a year earlier.

The 12-month increase is 2.38 × 10²² Joules, the largest jump since 3Q 2006. It works out to 1.48 W/m² over the Earth's entire surface area.

 A better indicator will be, as usual, the 0-2000 m OHC value, compromising the top half of the World Ocean.

Given this, though, it's difficult to understand Judith Curry's recent statement to the Senate EPW Committee that:

The stagnation in greenhouse warming observed over the past 15+ years demonstrates that CO2 is not a control knob on climate variability on decadal time scales.

Sure, climate models could do a better job of simulating short-term surface temperatures -- though long-term projections are far more important than short-term projections

Sea level rise

Rising sea levels prompt relocations in Fiji

Rising sea levels have prompted the Fiji government to relocate one of the country's most vulnerable seaside communities.

SBS ,

31 January, 2014

(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)

Rising sea levels have prompted the Fiji government to relocate one of the country's most vulnerable seaside communities.

Around 50 families have been relocated to higher ground to escape frequent flooding.

The government says it expects to carry out more relocations within the next decade to help communities adapt to rising sea levels.

Brianna Piazza reports.

Until only weeks ago, around 140 people lived in the seaside village of Vunidogoloa, on Fiji's second biggest island, Vanua Levu.

But rising sea levels have left the community's 50 families with little choice but to permanently move to higher ground just over two kilometres away.

Locals say rising tides were flowing into the village, damaging houses and destroying crops.

Senior government official Alipate Bolalevu, says more than 600 villages across Fiji have been identified as threatened by rising sea levels.

More than 40 settlements are expected to be relocated within the next 10 years.
Mr Bolalevu says relocating is a difficult decision for people who don't want to leave their traditional land.

He says it's also an expensive process, with the Vunidogoloa project costing about 600-thousand dollars.

"It is the first project of its kind in the South Pacific and for Fiji. The most important factor is the will of the people and if they are willing to relocate to another location given their spiritual attachment to their land where their ancestors have lived for some time."

Mr Bolalevu says those communities that can't be relocated will receive assistance to help minimise the risk.

This includes constructing sea walls and planting mangroves near the coast to limit erosion, which is compounded by rising sea levels.

Australian volunteer worker Kiri McGrath spent seven months living on Fiji's Motoriki Island.

She says recent years have brought more frequent floods to the island.
"The island is one of the smaller islands in Fiji with only about 200 people on it. 

People on the island live off the island and if they do have money it's from going to the main island to sell their produce or some of them work in the factories. So in the past five years the sea level had moved in by about five metres. It has come right up close to where all the houses are now, so some houses have actually had to be moved inland. If it's high tide when the kids are going to school their tracks are flooded so they can't always get to school and people can't get to the hospital."

In a report last year, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that sea levels would rise between 26 and 82 centimetres within the next century.

Most of the increase is attributed to the ocean expanding as it warms.
Coastal geomorphologist from Melbourne University Dr David Kennedy says many Pacific Islanders may be forced from their homes because of rising sea levels.

But Dr Kennedy says his own research in Fiji shows some may be able to adapt as sea levels increase.

He says that depending on an island's foundations, sand can sometimes shift to other parts of an island.

"Some islands with historical sea level rise can actually adjust if there's enough sediment around to do that. On the flipside, some of the islands may disappear a lot quicker. As we raise sea levels more waves can get across the reef. So some these islands might not necessarily disappear completely but even if you don't drown you'll still be losing your house because the island shoreline might be shifting 100 metres somewhere else."

The aid organisation, Oxfam, warns Pacific Islanders will be among the world's first people to be displaced due to sea level rise.

Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change project manager Taito Nakalevu says the international community's failure to reduce carbon emissions is unfairly burdening the Pacific Islands, which are poorer and have fewer resources.

"We need to have another agreement that should take over from the Kyoto Protocol that should be legally binding to ensure there is a reduction in emissions from our developed countries. It's been way over 20 years now and some countries are going back on their agreements. We as Pacific Islanders need to maintain our countries and we don't want them under water. We don't ever want to be climate refugees."

The demise of the monarch butterfly

The extinction of the monarch butterfly seems a done deal

Via Facebook,

31 January, 2014

The 2013-2014 overwintering population numbers for Monarch butterflies in Mexico were just released yesterday, confirming our bleak predictions from a few months ago: the situation is worsening.

Last year’s overwintering numbers were an all-time low, with monarchs occupying 1.19 hectares. The area occupied by monarchs this year is a frightening 0.67 hectares—a 44 percent decline in just the past year.

'Indonesia is a disaster in the making'

Jakarta floods: Nature is fighting back

Indonesia is a disaster in the making, or as some experts often put it, a time bomb. But it is not just a one-time explosive, but a device that goes off regularly.

Andre Vitchik

RT,

30 January, 2014

Nature is angry, it is furious. Water is pouring from the skies once again, and millions of people are in agony; many are now dying – in the capital city of Jakarta, as well as in so many small villages on remote islands of this sprawling and unfortunate archipelago.

Tragedies occur here with deadly regularity. And there is nothing mystical or supernatural about what is taking place, if one is at least ordinarily informed and educated. Everything here is scientifically, economically and politically explicable. But since the genocidal fascist massacres that took lives or freedom of almost all great Indonesian thinkers in 1965-66, both science and rationale have definitely had a great influence on the nation.

Now, at the end of January 2014, huge areas of Jakarta are under water. Debris is floating on the surface of the filthy rivers. Carcasses of animals are inflated. There are roofs and doors and garbage all over.

Over-excited, hysterical announcers of local radio stations are screaming to ether in unbelievable high-pitched voices: ‘Banjir lagi!’ (the floods again!)

No relief

It is all Kafkaesque: relief posts are empty, while people all over the inundated areas complain that there is hardly any help from the government. Or, when there is help, it is distributed inflexibly and randomly. One has to belong to an exact administrative area, or to a certain group.

Relief agencies and “posts” are almost exclusively self-promoting. Be they Muslim organizations, police, or even the most notorious military commandos responsible for massacres all over the archipelago. They are all boasting their logos and “coats of arms.”

But look closely, for instance, at the area of Kampung Melayu that is hard-hit this year, and you will see police and military playing games on empty beds, or sleeping “relief workers” on cots belonging to various religious organizations.
Inflatable boats are resting against the walls. Ambulances are idle, parked all over the place, with drivers gone missing.



Photo by Andre Vltchek


Police officer Nurasid, from Kampung Melayu Command Post, explained:
“It has been three weeks since police headquarters deployed us here. We do shifts, in the morning 20 people, and in the evening 10. This year’s floods are worse than those that hit Jakarta in 2013. We evacuated some people from the areas of Kg Melayu Besar and Gudang Peluru… We get no extra pay for this.”

They get regular pay, of course, as anywhere else in the world. But they may not consider such rewards high enough. The entire scenario resembles similar “relief operations” in Sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or in Kenya, one of the places where I am based.

In the shelter, several men, women and children are resting on cots and straw matrasses. This group is well fed and taken care of. I ask randomly one of the women where she comes from. Proudly, she replies:

“My name is Esti, and I am daughter of the village chief, here at Kr. Melayu.”
“Are there people seeking shelter under the bridge, as in 2013?” I ask.
“No,” the group of women begins, waving their hands. “This year people are well taken care of.”

It is a lie, of course. We drive towards the flyover, just a few hundred meters from the shelter. Under the flyover, dozens of desperate people are parked on the grass, on dirt or makeshift mats. They are in terrible condition, surrounded by domestic animals, plastic bags, bundles and screaming children.


Photo by Andre Vltchek

Mr. Ilyas is from Kg. Melayu Kecil. He is so desperate; he does not hesitate to give his name, testimony and even his mobile number:

“We have been here for 10 days and except for some food, there is not much help. We were supposed to go to At Tahiriyah Mosque, but they said they are overburdened there. Other mosques refused to let us in, saying that we are ‘najis.’ There are 200 of us here. Not far from here is a police canteen, but they do not share food with us; they only feed their own men.”

‘Najis’ means filthy, dirty.

There are thousands of desperate people all over the capital, and their number is growing.

Last year, when I covered the Jakarta floods in depth, I stumbled on entire groups of politicians, public figures, police officers and military men, posing in front of desperate victims, promoting themselves on Twitter and Facebook. One group of “haves” even “hired” a huge fire truck, and then began driving it around, filming and photographing its “relief effort,” consisting of distributing meager food supplies.

Ruined nature and cities

Unbridled corruption, both moral and financial, has brought Indonesia virtually to a standstill. Infrastructure has collapsed, and there are almost no public works or any interest to prevent disasters or help the victims.

The country’s economy (loudly praised by Western media and political regimes) mainly consists of unbridled plundering of natural resources, from occupied and devastated Papua, to Aceh at the other geographic extreme, as well as high commodity prices on global markets.

The desire for enrichment in Indonesia is often absolutely grotesque, a result of pro-market indoctrination over the decades. As I clearly witnessed after the 2004 tsunami in Aceh, a horrendous disaster that took around 250,000 human lives, police and the army were diverting money away from NGOs, who were distributing drinking water to desperate survivors, and destroying plastic water deposits if the bribes were not paid.

Now, everything in Indonesia seems to be ruined: the nature is, and the cities are. Entire huge islands are deforested; some of them are as gigantic as Sumatra and Kalimantan. Black chemicals cover eerie and grotesque stumps, in those places where once, native trees stood tall and proud. Palm oil plantations are all over: they are cheap to create and easy to maintain, while yields are high. But to create them, all native vegetation has to be destroyed.

Greenpeace has listed Indonesia in the Guinness Book of Records as the nation that destroys its rain forests with greater speed than any other country on earth.
Rivers are clogged, polluted and impossible to navigate. Several Indonesian institutions had declared the Citarum River, passing near Jakarta, as the most polluted waterway anywhere in the world.

How bad can it get in the future? Can it really get any worse than it is now?
It can, of course. In Indonesia, anything can happen. It is designated (mainly by Western governments and corporation that are already plundering the country for decades) as a “capitalist paradise” and a future leader of Southeast Asia. 

Indonesia is also called the “largest Southeast Asian economy.” Well, not on a per capita basis, just in total numbers. Naturally, with 247 million officially recognized citizens (and 300 million claimed by some independent statisticians), its crippled tiny-per-capita economy is still much bigger than that of extremely rich but geographically tiny Singapore.



Photo by Andre Vltchek


Here, human beings have turned against Mother Nature, with tremendous irrational wrath and unpardonable spite, killing not only fauna, but also all creatures that emerged on their way, big as well as tiny. Why? Simply because nature is not bringing any great short-term profits and confused animals are once in a while fighting back when their territory is sprayed by chemicals or divided by barbed wires.

Just a few days ago I visited “the cruelest zoo on earth,” according to both local and international press; the zoo in the city of Surabaya.

While still in Japan, while working on my film about Okinawa, I read in both Indonesian and Japanese press online about several grisly murders, of an African lion that was hanged in his cage, of a mountain goat, and of other creatures.
Our own eyes soon confirmed what we read. After we entered the zoo, we saw the rotting carcass of a tiny kitten, doubled, hanging from the wall. And nearby, several local photographers were crawling around the cage inhabited by several gloomy-looking mountain goats.

“One just died yesterday… Yet another casualty,” explained one of the newsmen, laconically.

'Anti-people' society

Nature periodically strikes back. Terrible landslides, the results of logging and the destruction of original vegetation, are killing hundreds of people, often burying entire villages. Tsunamis devastate entire badly constructed (or constructed in totally the wrong places) neighborhoods of Indonesian cities and towns.

But floods are the most publicized events, as they occur in the capital and many other major cities of the country, and therefore they are impossible to ignore.
Professor Muslim Muin from prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) explained that one cannot blame what is happening now in Jakarta simply on the “ocean,” or on global warming. He was obviously referring to the recent statements of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was trying to blame the present situation in the capital solely on climate change.

“High and low tides of the ocean are normal right now, nothing extraordinary. The problem is that drainage system cannot cope with amount of water passing through it. And the same can be said about the rivers and channels of the capital,” Muin said.

The rivers are clogged with garbage and new, so-called flood channels, are not yet finished or well connected, to prevent devastation.

“It is said that the rain did not reach its maximum level, yet,” Muin said. “Then why are we having floods? The situation simply demonstrates that the water in Jakarta is not flowing well, and Jakarta administration once again mismanaged things… They should have performed hydrodynamic simulations. Then they would learn how wide and deep should be drainage system, and how powerful should be the pumps.”



Photo by Andre Vltchek

The problem is that public works are never funded or implemented, if they are really “public,” meaning non-profit, serving Indonesian society. After the US-sponsored the 1965 military-religious coup, Indonesia became perhaps the most “shamelessly capitalist,” profit-oriented and “anti-people” society on earth. Its infrastructure, from roads, railroads and airports to communications, (but also waste processing system and clean water supply) are all in a state of shambles, often below the level of those in Bangladesh or sub-Saharan Africa.

Flood channels and drainage systems are no exception. Flood prevention and control bring no “profits,” while annual floods actually give jobs to hundreds and thousands in the private construction companies.

It is the same logic as with the public transportation: as I was told two years ago by a leading Indonesian businessman who is presently living abroad: “Jakarta or any major Indonesian city will never build decent public transportation. The car lobby and other businesses will simply never allow it. And so the cities such as Jakarta, Surabaya, Medan and Makassar are choking in almost total traffic jams, with no metro or urban rail systems, trams or monorails.“

In Indonesia, there is simply no mechanism to force the political and economic regime of the country to serve the people. And a majority of the citizens simply give up trying. Everything is abandoned to the “market.” But market does not seem to care much about the people.

And so the ideas of humanism are fully abandoned here. Not even a hint that the economy is here to build the nation and to serve the people; that all that is done in the country should have only one basic goal and purpose: to improve the standard of living, and quality of life of its citizens.

This year 23 people died – victims of floods in the capital alone. This is an estimate, of course. Tens of thousands have become refugees. Hundreds of thousands will have to repair their houses. Most of them have no funds for such repairs, but they will have to find a way, so those few owners of the businesses could flourish. So the elites can become even richer, and send their offspring to even more expensive schools abroad. So they can buy even more Range Rovers (a great car for the floods) and even fancier condominiums in Australia, Singapore and the United States.

All other Indonesian cities are unlivable as well. Arguably, Medan and Surabaya are even worse than Jakarta. But who cares? All members of Indonesian elites have “second homes” or a “second country” somewhere outside this devastated archipelago. Indonesia for them is only good for plundering. And it shows. And there is nothing people can do anymore, it seems.