Month: May 2022

The Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) at the heart of Galaxy 1ES 1927+654 increased in brightness by over a hundred times for several months back in 2017. What can that tell us about the Supermassive Black Hole that powers the AGN?

The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is quiet right now, that is, it is not actively feeding on nearby gas and dust, to say nothing of planets and stars. All of the supermassive black holes in the galaxies close to ours are like that, quiet.

Astronomers are convinced that every large galaxy, this is Andromeda, has a supermassive black hole at their center. So in the early Universe did supermassive black holes form galaxies around them or do galaxies form supermassive black holes inside them? That’s one of the questions the new James Webb Space Telescope was designed to help answer. (Credit: Space.com)

As we look at galaxies further away, the picture changes. The supermassive black holes in distant galaxies are usually surrounded by an ‘accretion disk’ of matter that is slowly falling into the black hole. The energy released by all of that matter falling into the black hole causes the accretion disk to shine as brightly as thousands or even millions of stars. These radiating objects are technically known as ‘Active Galactic Nuclei’ or AGN and are among the brightest objects in the Universe.

Here’s a galaxy with a very active galactic nuclei. The energy released by matter falling into the supermassive black hole at this galaxy’s center is outshining the billions of ordinary stars in the galaxy itself. (Credit: Think Big)

 Now remember in astronomy the further away you look from Earth the further back in time the object you’re seeing is. The brightest star Sirius is about ten light years away so the light you see it by took ten years to reach your eye so what you are seeing is Sirius as it looked ten years ago. The same is true of the pole star Polaris, which is about 500 light years away. When you look at Polaris in the night sky you are seeing it as it was 500 years ago.

Every Boy Scout knows that to find Polaris, the pole star you use the front two stars of the Big Dipper. Now Polaris is about 500 light years away so the light we see at night left the star 500 years ago. Therefore today we see Polaris as it was 500 years ago. (Credit: BBC Science Focus Magazine)

So when astronomers see that the supermassive black holes in nearby galaxies are quiet, that is not feeding, while the supermassive black holes in more distant galaxies are more active it’s telling them that over time those black holes consumed all of the matter close to them and only stopped feeding because there’s nothing left nearby for them to eat. In this way astronomers have been able to model the life cycle of supermassive black holes going from actively feeding to quiet as they deplete the matter around them.

The various parts of an AGN. The Supermassive Black Hole pulling matter into itself powers the whole AGN. (Credit: NASA)

This transition from active to quiet takes a very long time, upwards of a billion years or more making supermassive black holes rather stable objects. It came as something of a shock therefore when in late 2017 the AGN at the center of galaxy 1ES 1927+654 suddenly increased in brightness by a factor of nearly 100 in the visible part of the spectrum. As stated by Nicolas Scepi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a member of the team studying 1ES 1927+654, “Normally we would expect black holes to evolve over millions of years.” So unusual was the change in that a large team of astronomers working across the electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves to X-rays was quickly assembled to investigate 1ES 1927+654 at every wavelength.

Image of the Galaxy 1ES 1927+654 (Credit: Poandpo.com

What the researchers found was that, even as the brightness of 1ES 1927+654 increased by a factor of 100 in both the visible and ultra-violet (UV) portions of the spectrum it decreased by a factor of 1000 in the X-ray spectrum. The observation that the intensity of UV and X-rays went in opposite directions was in itself a surprise, as the strength of X-rays and UV generally go hand in hand.

Some of the data taken of galaxy 1ES 1927+654 during the time when its AGN appears to have flipped its magnetic field. (Credit:

But that unexpected decrease in X-ray output was the clue that Doctor Scepi and his colleagues at the University of Colorado needed to solve the puzzle of 1ES 1927+654. In a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society the astro-physicists argue that the magnetic field generated by the charged particles making up the accretion disk around the supermassive black hole flipped its north and south poles causing the change in the AGNs brightness.

Now scientists already know of two astronomical bodies whose magnetic field flips their poles on occasion. The Sun’s magnetic field flips as a part of its eleven year sunspot cycle. The Earth’s magnetic field also cycles back and forth although the cycle is much longer, the best estimates being about every 200,000 years and we are now overdue for such a flip. See my post of February 8th, 2017 concerning evidence that Earth’s field is currently starting just such a flip. Whether or not other stars and planets, Jupiter perhaps, also flip their magnetic fields is the subject of active research among astronomers and astro-physicists.

Earth’s magnetic field is very messy right now with a big piece of the north pole in the south while bits of the south are poking out of the north. Are these signs that the field is getting ready to flip? (Credit: Extreme Tech)

For the accretion disk of an AGN to flip its magnetic field was unexpected however. The theory put forth by Scepi and his colleagues suggests that new matter being pulled into the accretion disk possesses the opposite orientation of the existing magnetic field, weakening and then flipping it. The team’s calculations showed that the result of the flip would be an increase in the visible and UV spectra at the expense of X-rays, exactly what was observed in 1ES 1927+654.

The light our eyes can see is only a small portion of the Electromagnetic Spectrum. When galaxy 1ES 1929+654 grew in brightness in the visible and ultraviolet parts it also lost intensity in the X-ray portion so the total energy output remained pretty constant! (Credit: NOAA)

If one AGN can flip its magnetic field can’t others. The behaviour exhibited by 1ES 1927+654 may actually be fairly common, astronomers simply haven’t been looking for it. But they certainly will be now that they know what to look for. I think before long astronomers will have found few more oddly behaving AGN and they will provide more data to help the theorists refine their models of their magnetic fields.

Imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope project, the same team that obtained the first picture of a black hole, here is the Supermassive Black Hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy known as Sagittarius A. (Credit: CNN)

Even as I was writing this post the Event Horizon Telescope, the same group who gave us the first picture of a black hole back in 2019, see my post of 17th of April 2019, have accomplished the same feat with the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The black hole, known officially as Sagittarius A, is quiet now, its accretion disk is very small. Nevertheless the information gathered from the new image will tell us a great deal as we continue to try to understand the mysteries of Supermassive Black Holes.

“A Mote it is to Trouble the Minds Eye.” (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1): Physiologists discover external physiological indications of the strength of a Person’s Imagination.   

I’m lucky enough to have a very vivid imagination. If I just shut my eyes by an act of will I can see, and hear President Kennedy giving his ‘…landing a man on the Moon…” speech. And for an image that I see every day, like Washington on a dollar bill, I don’t even have to close my eyes and I can see George’s face superimposed on everything that’s actually there. Back in Shakespeare’s time the imagination was known as ‘the mind’s eye’ because of the images it can conjure up, hence the quote from Hamlet in this post’s title. 

The Mind’s eye is the world of the imagination, where anything, real or unreal can be visualized! (Credit: YouTube)

My imagination can even let me see things that I’ve never actually seen in real life. For instance whenever I’m reading a good novel my imagination goes into overdrive visualizing things that may have never have even existed. Consider Arthur C. Clarke’s novel ‘Earthlight’ for example. I haven’t read that book in at least ten years but I can see the battle sequence in my mind any time I want, that’s the impression it made on my mind’s eye.

In the Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Earthlight a battle takes place on the Moon. Obviously no such battle ever took place so it only existed in Clark’s imagination, and then mine! (Credit: Amazon.com)

As a scientist and engineer having a good imagination is definitely a benefit. I can often visualize what should be the results of an experiment, or a circuit, before I begin any testing and if something isn’t right I know it immediately. And any time I’m doing one of those math ‘word problems’ that everyone hates I can visualize what the problem is really about making it much easier to solve.

Growing up I had a lot of friends who hated word problems but I always loved them. I just never had any problem visualizing what the problem was about! (Credit: Made by Teachers)

Not everyone has such a vivid imagination. For some people trying to conjure up images from their own past life, the face of a deceased parent say, requires a considerable mental effort. There are even a small percentage of people, estimated at 1-3% of the population, who are simply incapable of forming mental images of any kind, people who have no minds eye at all.

When you imagine a rainbow in your mind how vivid are the colours. If you don’t see a rainbow easily you may suffer from aphantasia. (Credit: Cindy deRosier)

Such a condition is medically known as aphantasia and can usually only be detected by long a series of psychological tests, tests that are inherently subjective and can often lead to an ambiguous result. Now however a new study has been published in the journal eLife by researchers at the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia that details a direct, physiological technique for diagnosing aphantasia.

Previous tests for aphantasia were subjective, asking the patient to make judgement calls rather than an objective measurement. (Credit: Avoid Boring People)

The test begins simply enough, the patients are shown a chart with a bright figure set against a gray background and told to stare at the bright figure. Just as in a bright room staring at the bright figure causes the subject’s pupils to respond by contacting somewhat, and the size of the contracted pupil is then measured. The patients are then shown a similar dark figure set against the same gray background. As the subjects stare at the dark figure their pupils will expand, as they would in a dark room. As before the size of the expanded pupil is measured and compared to the earlier contracted pupil size.

The New test begins with the patient staring at a bight block against a gray background. After a minute or so the size of their pupils are measured. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
Second, the patient then stars at a dark block against the same gray background. Again the size of their pupils are measured and the difference between the two measurements is calculated. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Now comes the interesting, even kinda weird part. The patients are now asked to imagine the bright and dark figures they were shown earlier and their pupils should react as before, although maybe not to the same extent. By comparing the second set of results to the first however gives a direct value for the patient’s ability to form a visual image in their mind’s eye.

Finally the patients are asked to imagine the light block and then dark block and the amount by which their pupils react is a measure of the strength of their ‘Mind’s Eye’! (Credit: Study Finds)

If you’re thinking that all this smacks of mind over body, well that’s what I think is so interesting. The very idea of our imagination causing actual changes to our body actually isn’t that hard to believe; after all just thinking about sex can certainly stimulate some organs. Still the notion that our eyes will react by our just visualizing bright or dark objects is really rather eerie.

Like most cute sayings that’s not always true. Nevertheless we can accomplish so much more if we just make up our mind’s to do it. (Credit: Pinterest)

There’s an old expression that ‘the eyes are the window to the soul’. Well what the scientists in Australia have found is a way to use our eyes to measure the strength of our Mind’s Eye.

Are the eyes the window to the soul, probably not but when I see a beautiful pair like these I like to think so! (Credit: Beyond Pink World)

Does our Universe have a twin, an anti-matter Universe that is running backward in time? It would answer a lot of the questions we have about this Universe.    

Physicists are always fascinated by symmetries in the world around us. For example there appears to be exactly the same number of positively charged particles as there are negatively charged particles. At the same time there are just as many north magnetic poles as south magnetic poles.

Our hands are of course the best example of symmetry. They look identical but in fact are exact opposites, mirror images of each other. (Credit: Charlie Fox Signs)
One of the most fundamental symmetries in the Universe is that all magnets have both a north and a south pole. (Credit: Northeastern University)

Another big symmetry appears when we look at the distribution of galaxies throughout the Universe as a whole. In whatever direction we look there are the same sorts of galaxies in roughly the same density. In terms of space the Universe appears to be very symmetrical.

The Hubble Deep Field Image. In whatever direction we look the Universe is filled with countless galaxies, a symmetric Universe. (Credit: Hubble Space Telescope)

Not so in time. We know that the Universe is expanding; Carl Hubble made that discovery more than 90 years ago now. So in the distant past, billions of years ago, all of those galaxies would have been much closer together than they are today. And going even further back all of the matter in the Universe would have formed one big, dense hot cloud, a big bang. So why should time be different from space.

Starting with the Big Bang itself the Universe has changed over time, evolved. The Universe may be symmetric in space but it definitely not symmetric in time. (Credit: Owlcation)

After all Einstein’s Theory of Relativity tells us that time should really be treated mathematically in the same way as space, a principal know as covariance. And all of the experiments we perform in big atom smashers like the ones at CERN or Fermilab confirm Einstein’s ideas.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is the world’s largest and most powerful scientific instrument. Smashing elementary particles together at tremendous energies accelerators like the LHC have taught us much about the way the Universe works. (Credit: Forbes)

Another big lack of symmetry that has physicists confounded is that between matter and anti-matter, those mysterious mirror particles that have the same mass but opposite charge of the matter particles that form everything we know. Another curious fact about anti-particles are that when they come in contact with their ‘normal’ matter counterpart the two annihilate each other becoming photons of light. Matter into energy, just as Einstein said. Again, both our theories and the experiments performed at high-energy physics labs all tell us that anti-particles should be generated just as often as particles, that there should be just as much anti-matter in the Universe as matter.

The first evidence for the existence of anti-matter. The streak in this could chamber is an anti-electron, also known as a positron. (Credit: Twitter)

But there isn’t, certainly not in our Solar System because since the solar wind touches every planet, moon and etc. we’d see the energy from matter anti-matter annihilation if say Jupiter were anti-matter. And that also means that our galaxy can’t contain anti-matter since the interstellar medium touches every star system and again, we don’t see any sign of matter anti-matter annihilation.

Matter and anti-matter don’t get along. Whenever a particle meets its anti-particle the two annihilate each other to produce photons of light, pure energy. (Credit: Center for Astrophysics and Supercomputing)

What about different galaxies you ask? Couldn’t some of them be composed of anti-matter? Well maybe, but astronomers have also seen a number of galaxies that are colliding with other galaxies and once more there are no signs of the type of energy release that would indicate matter and anti-matter in contact. That leaves physicists with the question, where is all of the anti-matter?

So physicists are faced with two instances of non-symmetry, in time and in matter / anti-matter. And since physicists are clever people it isn’t surprising that someone thought to use one problem to solve the other. You see back in the 1950s physicist Richard Feynman suggested that the best way to think about anti-particles, his paper was explicitly about anti-electrons, was to consider them as normal electrons going backward in time. That way when an electron, going forward in time, collides with an anti-electron, going backward in time they turn into photons who, according to relativity, do not travel in time, perfect symmetry.

Feynman diagram of electron-positron annihilation. The positron. the anti-electron is the e+ portrayed as going down, that is backward in time. (Credit: Physics Stack Exchange)

So let’s go with that thought, let’s assume that all anti-matter is just normal matter going backward in time. Then what happened to all of the anti-matter that should have been created by the big bang? Well it went backward in time and exists before the big bang. The Universe before the big bang was made up of an amount of anti-matter equal to the matter in the Universe after the big bang. Perfect symmetry.

The anti-matter Universe on the left perfectly balances the matter Universe on the right, restoring symmetry in both time and matter/anti-matter. (Credit: Semantic Scholar)

Time symmetry is restored as well because whatever the Universe looks like at a certain time t after the big bang the Universe looked exactly the same way, on a large scale at least, at the same time t before the big bang. This new model of the Universe uses its anti-matter component as a mirror to fully restore symmetry.

In ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’ by Lewis Carroll Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum are not twins but rather right and left versions of each other, perfectly symmetric. (Credit: Vanity Fair)

This is the basis of a new paper by physicists Latham Boyle, Kieran Finn and Neill Turok of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo Ontario in Canada along with the University of Manchester in the UK. In doing their calculations the physicists also discovered that their new, symmetric model of the Universe had a couple of other advantages as well. For one thing the period of rapid expansion called inflation immediately after the big bang proposed by Alan Guth back in the 1970s to account for the almost perfect flatness of the Universe is simply not needed. The model proposed by Boyle, Finn and Turok provides a flat Universe full of particles naturally, without the ‘ad hoc’ insertion of inflation.

In order to provide the flat Universe we see today Alan Guth invoked what he described as ‘cosmic inflation’, but no one has been able to determine exactly what caused the inflation. The new matter / anti-matter symmetric Universe doesn’t need inflation to be flat. (Credit: Medium)

Another feature of the model is that it requires a fourth type of neutrino, those mysterious ‘ghost’ particles that very rarely interact with more normal particles. The researchers think that their fourth neutrino species could provide the basis for the missing dark matter, maybe solving yet another problem in astrophysics.

In order to observe any neutrinos physicists have to build enormous chambers whose walls are covered with detectors. Such experiments capture maybe one or two neutrinos a day! (Credit: Nature)

So, how do we go about proving that this new model is the correct one? After all it seems like new models of the Universe are being proposed nearly every week. Well, finding that neutrino would be a good start but physicists have been looking for ‘sterile’ neutrinos for a long time now without success.

The researchers also propose another way. Theories of inflation all predict that the rapid expansion at the beginning of the Universe should have produced large amounts gravitational waves, waves that the scientists at LIGO and Virgo gravity wave observatories may soon be able to detect. But if inflation didn’t happen, if the Universe is symmetric instead, then the search for primordial gravity waves will fail.

It is hoped that soon gravity wave detectors such as Virgo here in Italy may soon be able to detect gravity from the early Universe itself. That data may provide evidence for the Matter / Anti-matter Universe. (Credit: ResearchGate)

Of course it would be so much simpler if we could somehow look back before the big bang to see if there was an anti-matter Universe back then. But that’s impossible! Isn’t it?

The latest Report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) details what humanity as a whole needs to do to avoid the worst effects of Global Warming. Is this in fact our last hope and is anything actually going to be accomplished this time?  

Back on August 9th of last year, 2021, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as directed by the Secretary General of the United Nations released two reports concerning first the causes and secondly the impacts that can be expected from Global Warming over the rest of this century, see my post of August 21st 2021. The possible impacts were analyzed for five specific scenarios of human activity ranging from eliminating carbon emissions immediately to we just continue increasing our carbon footprint without any regard for the damage it is doing to our planet. 

Front cover of the latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change it is advertised as a summary for policymakers. I wonder how many of the world’s ‘policymakers’ will actually read it? (Credit: UNEP)

Those reports, like everything that deals with climate change should have been a straightforward, empirically based assessment of the facts. Of course what did happen was that the report quickly became politicized with many nations insisting that the problem of climate change was not really urgent. In fact just a few months later at the COP26 climate conference held in October nations such as Japan, Australia and Saudi Arabia refused to accept any language calling for a reduction in fossil fuel emissions. The nation of India, the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, went so far as to state that it had no plans to even consider reducing its use of coal, the worst energy source for carbon emissions, until at least the year 2050.

After 50 years of talk the world’s governments still have no concrete plan for reducing the levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. (Credit: FutureLearn)

Now, on the 4th of April 2022, a third section of the IPCC report was published that deals with what we can do to solve the climate crisis. And if you listen to the scientists there’s no time to wait. As declared by Geoscientist Andrea Dutton of the University of Wisconsin, “We can’t kick this can down the road any longer.” In fact the scientists working on the IPCC report have identified five clear danger signs that will tell us when the worst outcomes of climate change have begun.

Even a dolt like Homer Simpson knows that kicking the can down the road gets you nowhere! (Credit: The Simpsons)

1. The Amazon rain forest becomes a savanna. The Amazon jungle has been called the planet’s lungs because of its enormous ability to absorb CO2. Both human encroachment and increasing drought in Brazil are slowly turning it into an arid grassland however. Without that absorption of greenhouse gasses by the Amazon the problem of climate change will only get worse.

Bit by bit the amazon rainforest is being stripped away for grazing land for cattle. Known as the world’s lungs its loss will only accelerate climate change. (Credit: Perdue University)

 2. Coral Reefs die. Coral is actually a symbiosis between a hydra like polyp and a species of algae, the polyp providing a home for the algae while the algae provides food for the polyp. If the water temperature rises too much however the polyp will often kick the algae out. This condition is known as bleaching and can lead to the death of the coral. Over the last ten years major portions of both the Great Barrier Reef and the Florida Keys have been subjected to periods of bleaching and it may only take a small additional rise in the world’s temperature to kill them off entirely.

Healthy coral (l) and bleached coral (r). As ocean temps warm we are seeing more and more bleaching, threatening one of the world’s most fertile habitats. (Credit: Vox)

3. Ice Sheets melt. Much of the world’s water is held captive in ice sheets and glaciers primarily in Antarctica and Greenland. Rising temperatures have already led to massive amounts of that ice melting, with the resulting rise in sea level. If the melting continues or even accelerates then every inhabited coastal area of the world is threatened.

‘My world is melting!’ And in our world sea levels are rising. It difference is that it’s our fault not his! (Credit: Daily Sabah)

4. Atlantic Circulation stops. The Gulf Stream was first discovered by none other than Ben Franklin back at the end of the 18th century and its effect on the climate of both the east coast of North America and western Europe have been well documented. Over the last few years however studies of the Gulf Stream have suggested that its circulation could be imperiled by rising temperatures, and even a modest reduction in the strength of the Gulf Stream’s flow could have a major impact on the climate of both the US east coast and Europe.

It was Ben Franklin who first recognized the existence of the Gulf Stream. Today we known that every ocean has circulatory patterns that influence the climate of nearby coastal areas. And as global warming effects the ocean currents so will it change the climates of the lands nearby. (Credit: NOAA – Ben Franklin)

5. The disappearance of the great northern forests. Just to the south of the Artic circle and spread across several continents lies the world’s last great forest. Actually composed of several forests stretching from Alaska, across northern Canada, Scandinavia and Russian Siberia like the Amazon these forest absorb a large fraction of the greenhouse gasses we are generating, helping to reduce somewhat the effects of climate change. And as with the Amazon jungle these forest are now under threat. The three main threats are heat, fire and bark beetles. In my post of July 14th 2021 I discussed the huge heat dome that formed over British Columbia last summer and which not only led to dozens of all time Canadian temperature records being smashed but which also triggered large wildfires, like the one that all but destroyed the little town of Lytton.

Like the Amazon the Great Northern Forests remove a huge amount of CO2 from the air. And like the Amazon we are bust destroying them! (Credit: Greenpeace)

And to make matters worse those higher temperatures are just perfect conditions for the spread of bark beetles that are devastating millions of trees. The trees killed by bark beetles then become fuel for further wildfires leading to more release of CO2 and more global warming, a vicious cycle.

This year we even had wildfires in Nebraska, in April! It’s just gettin’ crazy out there folks! (Credit: OpenDemocracy)

So what solutions have the IPCC scientists come up with that will hopefully prevent such massive damage to the Earth’s environment. Needless to say the first thing we must do as a species is reduce CO2 emissions by 43% before 2030, that’s just eight years from now. Right now renewable sources of power, primarily wind and solar, only produce about 10% of the energy we use, the rest is produced by burning oil, gas and coal. So a reduction of 43% in greenhouse gas emissions is going to require a huge effort, with an accompanying huge cost. In fact, instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions current projections predict a 14% increase in atmospheric CO2 by 2030.

There’s no secret to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We know what we have to do. It’s just going to be an enormous and costly effort and we don’t want to do it! (Credit: UCAR Center for Science Education)

But the scientists say even more is required. They say that in order to keep global temperature rise below a 1.5º rise since pre-industrial times, a goal that was agreed by nearly every country on Earth at the Paris climate summit in 2015, we must start to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

We’ve already pretty much reached the 1.5 degree Celsius rise in temperature and it’s beginning to look as if keeping the rise below 2 degrees is a fading hope. (Credit: WWF)

Scientists around the world have developed several different techniques for carbon removal, techniques that could, if adequately funded for a large, industrial implementation scale, really reduce the levels of CO2 in the air. Of course the problem is that phrase, adequately funded because we’re talking tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars and who’s going to pay for it. As you might guess there are few volunteers.

Technologies for removing CO2 from the air on an industrial scale have been developed but they are costly and would need to be deployed in huge numbers. Who’s going to pay for that? (Credit: State of the Planet – Columbia University)

So, what’s going to happen this time? Not much it seems. With the war in Ukraine along with inflation and crime and all of the other distractions few people are even paying attention to what is happening across the entire planet.

Did you ever wonder if maybe our leaders start wars like the one in Ukraine as a distraction so they don’t have to do the hard work of solving the real problems of the world? (Credit: YouTube)

Postscript: A conference of government officials from 153 nations has convened and the attendees are congratulating themselves on their pledges to reduce carbon emissions so that the global temperature rise will remain below 2ºC. I know what you’re going to say. Didn’t officials from those same countries pledge to keep the temperature rise below 1.5ºC just seven years ago in Paris?

In a sense it’s our own fault for letting them have the power. (Credit: Make A meme.org)

 They sure did, and now they are literally patting themselves on the back for trying to cover up their failure by making new, and equally meaningless pledges. I don’t think we can hope for our ‘leaders’ to do anything to tackle climate change until the planet is actually on fire.