WTF Climate Change News

[WolfEyes]

U.S. Glass Shortage Putting a Crack in CPG Sustainability Efforts | Consumer Goods Technology

There is something unique about the glass bottle beverage. It feels substantial — special. And somehow tastes just a bit better, or different, than the same drink in plastic or aluminum. Or maybe that’s just the mind at work.

It's not a trick of the mind.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/jul/15/packaging-spoil-flavour-food-bottle-water-plastic-tins

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Burning Man in Southern California has fallen: attendees are warned not to arrive due to flooding.

Burning Man is flooded thanks to tropical storm Hilary, attendees turned away

It looks a lot more like Flooding Man this year.

nypost.com

Chad :mstdn: (@chad@mstdn.ca)

Attached: 1 image Burning Man is shut down because - get this - flooding. #collapse #ClimateChange

mstdn.ca

 

[Beebo Brink]

We Are Witnessing the First Stages of Civilization’s Collapse | The Nation
Will our own elites perform any better than the rulers of Chaco Canyon, the Mayan heartland, and Viking Greenland?

In his 2005 bestseller Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, geographer Jared Diamond focused on past civilizations that confronted severe climate shocks, either adapting and surviving or failing to adapt and disintegrating. Among those were the Puebloan culture of Chaco Canyon, N.M., the ancient Mayan civilization of Mesoamerica, and the Viking settlers of Greenland. Such societies, having achieved great success, imploded when their governing elites failed to adopt new survival mechanisms to face radically changing climate conditions.

Bear in mind that, for their time and place, the societies Diamond studied supported large, sophisticated populations. Pueblo Bonito, a six-story structure in Chaco Canyon, contained up to 600 rooms, making it the largest building in North America until the first skyscrapers rose in New York some 800 years later. Mayan civilization is believed to have supported a population of more than 10 million people at its peak between 250 and 900 A.D., while the Norse Greenlanders established a distinctively European society around 1000 A.D. in the middle of a frozen wasteland. Still, in the end, each collapsed utterly and their inhabitants either died of starvation, slaughtered each other, or migrated elsewhere, leaving nothing but ruins behind.

The question today is: Will our own elites perform any better than the rulers of Chaco Canyon, the Mayan heartland, and Viking Greenland?

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The moderators asked the candidates in yesterday's Republican debate to raise their hand if they believed in human-caused global warming, which should be as simple as asking them if the Earth goes round the Sun.

None of them were willing so to do.

 

[Free]

Ramaswamy called climate change a “hoax" and that climate change policies were killing more people than climate change. He got a luke-warm reaction from the crowd on that.

 

[WolfEyes]

We Are Witnessing the First Stages of Civilization’s Collapse | The Nation
Will our own elites perform any better than the rulers of Chaco Canyon, the Mayan heartland, and Viking Greenland?

No. I expect it will be far worse.

 

[Free]

No. I expect it will be far worse.

You always were an optimist.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Ramaswamy called climate change a “hoax" and that climate change policies were killing more people than climate change. He got a luke-warm reaction from the crowd on that.

They're mocking and belittling a genuine threat that will kill thousands, perhaps millions, of their own voters.

 

[WolfEyes]

You always were an optimist.

That was a very long time ago. Nearly a lifetime.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

We Are Witnessing the First Stages of Civilization’s Collapse | The Nation
Will our own elites perform any better than the rulers of Chaco Canyon, the Mayan heartland, and Viking Greenland?

The moderators asked the candidates in yesterday's Republican debate to raise their hand if they believed in human-caused global warming, which should be as simple as asking them if the Earth goes round the Sun.

None of them were willing so to do.

I love how these two posts are so related.

 

[Beebo Brink]

They're mocking and belittling a genuine threat that will kill thousands, perhaps millions, of their own voters.

By the time millions of U.S. citizens are dying from climate change, I seriously doubt we'll still have a functioning democracy. We barely have one now.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

They're mocking and belittling a genuine threat that will kill thousands, perhaps millions, of their own voters.

But it'll also kill all "the libs," and the GOP's only agenda is to "own the libs."

 

[Soen Eber]

They're mocking and belittling a genuine threat that will kill thousands, perhaps millions, of their own voters.

I'm pretty sure that line has been crossed already

 

[detrius]

Smith River Complex fire jumps border into Oregon; ‘Be Set’ evacuations ordered

The blaze has burned more than 52,500 acres in California.

www.oregonlive.com

 

[Soen Eber]

Smith River Complex fire jumps border into Oregon; ‘Be Set’ evacuations ordered

The blaze has burned more than 52,500 acres in California.

www.oregonlive.com

Too long to watch, but did the builder explain the lack of a fire buffer? I'm assuming this was uninsured, because I can't understand why an insurer would get involved with this out of fire concerns.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Years After the Blob, the Pacific Still Doesn’t Look the Same | Hakai Magazine

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

They're mocking and belittling a genuine threat that will kill thousands, perhaps millions, of their own voters.

It's so sad....many republicans in America now believe denying climate change is part of their identity so they will never go admit they changed their mind. Looking at this thread I see how so many scientific sources talk about what's really going on in ecosystems. Meanwhile, a lot of the right wing media I see and get from my dad is just pure denial. Climate deniers are really good at cherry picking factoids that suit their views while ignoring any kind of big picture.

It's so weird, because many deniers seem to believe there is this great conspiracy of liberals and scientists to make it up for no reason other than to hurt the economy. Like... what is really more plausible? The conspiracy to hurt the economy just for fun or the fact corporations are funding denial because they don't want to deal with the fallout?

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Well my state's pretty much in the middle of all of this too of course. The last two months have seen the hottest temperatures on record for several days, including the longest continuous stretch of >100° days, and heat warnings that have lasted for weeks on end along with little to no rain during the same period making for a severe drought that is starting to impact natural water resources. The Louisiana state government banned most burns on August 7th, declared a statewide emergency due to the extreme heat on August 14th, and upgraded to a no-exceptions total burn ban on August 25th as the conditions have created an unprecedented level of fire threat in the state. Some residents primed by anti-mask rhetoric to casually throw up middle fingers at any and all government emergency and safety mandates because freedumb, have decided that the dam gummint ain't gon tell me wutta do on maown proppity and chose to burn trash or brush in their yards anyway, predictably kicking off several wildfires across the state that have strained firefighting and emergency resources and led to mandatory evacuations, including one massive fire in Beauregard Parish that has burned over 50,000 acres so far.

 

[WolfEyes]

I'm not going to say a word. Not a single word.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

This recent article from CNN suggests that many Republican legislators are perfectly well aware of the climate crisis but feel they can't say anything about it for as long as the Orange Deity still commands the devotion of their registered voters, since he's dismissed it as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party, and that's it as far as the faithful are concerned.

However, even when Trump is no longer around, there's still the problem that they can't offend the producers of fossil fuels, so they have to concentrate on efforts to mitigate the effects of their use (e.g. plant lots of trees) rather than on switching to alternative energy sources.

Why Republicans can’t get out of their climate bind, even as extreme heat overwhelms the US