WTF Climate Change News

[Tigger]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Yes, reconsider. In about 80 years time when the last human dies we want that last person to be able to bake to death secure in the knowledge that their grandparents didn't break any laws.

Clearly the protesters did reconsider, though, possibly because some of them realised that what they planned was so serious a criminal offence that, if convicted and they don't have already have children, they probably wouldn't need to worry about having any grandchildren either. Do you say they were mistaken, or do you say the police should enforce laws selectively for political reasons?

Since we learned from the experience at Gatwick last Christmas how easy it is for a couple of people with drones to cause serious disruption at airports, that last one is a serious question -- if you say that, because of the importance and urgency of the cause, the cancelled protest should have been allowed to go ahead, how do you say they should react to the next threat to close Heathrow, perhaps because, this time, some drone enthusiast thinks it equally important and urgent that abortion be banned or that Muslims should not allowed to enter the country?

 

[Beebo Brink]

Protests of these kinds are largely ineffective except as publicity ploys to bring attention to a cause. And if they result in injury or death to passengers, the publicity is actually counter-productive to the movement.

 

[danielravennest]

Interesting approach to solar (and in line with my personal goals):

Solar Power's Great Land Use Responsibility

Solar developer Silicon Ranch has launched a holistic solar land management program Regenerative Energy. The group’s hoped for outcomes include:

• Sequestered carbon, biologically active soil, and improved soil formation and stabilization
• Improved air and water quality and increased water quantity
• Increased biodiversity and enhanced overall ecosystem functions
• Established pollinator habitat and endangered species habitat
• Direct and indirect local job creation, job training, empowered community participation, distributed economic impacts, and reciprocal knowledge transfers
• Generational equity, community resiliency, and volunteer opportunities

 

[Sid]

Are parts of India becoming too hot for humans?

Intense heat waves have killed more than 100 people in India this summer and are predicted to worsen in coming years, creating a possible humanitarian crisis as large parts of the country potentially become too hot to be inhabitable.

edition.cnn.com

Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say that even if the world succeeds in cutting carbon emissions, limiting the predicted rise in average global temperatures, parts of India will become so hot they will test the limits of human survivability.
"The future of heat waves is looking worse even with significant mitigation of climate change, and much worse without mitigation," said Elfatih Eltahir, a professor of hydrology and climate at MIT.

 

[Beebo Brink]

This article was published in 2018. Nothing has changed in the intervening year. Tick tock, tick tock.....

Why It's Misleading To Say We Only Have 12 Years To Avert Dangerous Climate Change

So, forget about deadlines. The simple truth is that stopping climate change gets harder if we leave it later.

It's like putting off paying your credit card bill. The interest just keeps mounting and the total bill gets ever worse. There is no cutoff point, except bankruptcy - which is best avoided.

 

[Beebo Brink]

'We Are in a Climate Emergency, America': Anchorage Hits 90 Degrees for First Time in Recorded History

"This is unprecedented. I tease people that Anchorage is the coolest city in the country—and climatically that is true—but right now we are seeing record heat," said Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz

www.commondreams.org

 

[Tigar]

Sorry, this is not the thread I thought I was posting in. Sorry.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Alberta looks for new dying, volatile industry to tie economy to

CALGARY -- One of the United Conservative Party’s first acts is to create a brand new task force to find a replacement for the oil sands as the erratic, short term linchpin of Alberta’s economy.

www.thebeaverton.com

 

[Sid]

Sorry, this is not the thread I thought I was posting in. Sorry.

There you go: The one guy makes mistakes as well.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide:
ESRL Global Monitoring Division - Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network
June 2017: 408.88 ppm
June 2018: 410.79 ppm
June 2019: 413.92 ppm

Arctic sea ice volume anomaly just hit the lowest value ever:
PIOMAS July 2019

 

[Beebo Brink]

Glacial melting in Antarctica may become irreversible

Thwaites glacier is likely to thaw and trigger 50cm sea level rise, US study suggests

www.theguardian.com

Recent research found the rate of ice loss from five Antarctic glaciers had doubled in six years and was five times faster than in the 1990s. Ice loss is spreading from the coast into the continent’s interior, with a reduction of more than 100 metres in thickness at some sites.

The Thwaites glacier, part of the West Antarctic ice sheet, is believed to pose the greatest risk for rapid future sea level rise. Research recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal found it was likely to succumb to instability linked to the retreat of its grounding line on the seabed that would lead to it shedding ice faster than previously expected.

Alex Robel, an assistant professor at the US Georgia Institute of Technology and the study’s leader, said if instability was triggered, the ice sheet could be lost in the space of 150 years, even if temperatures stopped rising. “It will keep going by itself and that’s the worry,” he said.

 

[Beebo Brink]

More triggers.

Breaching a “carbon threshold” could lead to mass extinction

Today’s carbon dioxide emissions may trigger a reflex in the carbon cycle with devastating consequences, according to a new MIT study.

news.mit.edu

Rothman looked through these geologic records and observed that over the last 540 million years, the ocean’s store of carbon changed abruptly, then recovered, dozens of times in a fashion similar to the abrupt nature of a neuron spike. This “excitation” of the carbon cycle occurred most dramatically near the time of four of the five great mass extinctions in Earth’s history.

“We already know that our CO2-emitting actions will have consequences for many millennia,” says Timothy Lenton, professor of climate change and earth systems science at the University of Exeter. “This study suggests those consequences could be much more dramatic than previously expected. If we push the Earth system too far, then it takes over and determines its own response — past that point there will be little we can do about it.”

 

[Brenda Archer]

 

[Brenda Archer]

Content warning: this is all kinds of super sad.

There's An Environmental Disaster Unfolding In The Gulf of Mexico

 

[Sid]

Content warning: this is all kinds of super sad.

There's An Environmental Disaster Unfolding In The Gulf of Mexico

What can there go wrong if more then 30 states use the same river to get rid of their nasty stuff?
We know all about it. NL being the delta for the Rhine and the Meuse. Thank God both rivers have improved in water quality over the last decades. After sixty years of absence, the salmon is back in the Rhine, so things are improving.
But it takes/took a lot of negotiating with our neighbors and our own industry to get things improved.

 

[Beebo Brink]

A Glacier the Size of Florida Is Becoming Unstable. It Has Dire Implications for Global Sea Levels

Thwaites glacier in Antarctica might be past the point of no return.

time.com

 

[danielravennest]

Regulators order Georgia Power to Double Its Solar

Georgia Power has been required to solicit 2.21 GW of solar and 80 MW of energy storage to come online over the next five years. This is the largest single acquisition of solar in Georgia’s history and will double the state’s installed capacity.

Its interesting that the *Republican* members of the state Public Service Commission pushed for this. Note that Georgia Power is also half-owner of the only nuclear plant still under construction in the US. Atlanta is growing so fast, they need all the power they can get.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Iain Martin, in The Times, argues that the Extinction Rebellion activists in the UK are, by the very nature of their radical -- and quite possibly vitally necessary -- project are in conflict with parliamentary democracy -- and, given the hammering parliamentary democracy has taken in the UK over the last 3 years, that doesn't bode well:

Democracy and progress are facing extinction

Democracy and progress are facing extinction Iain Martin Climate activists are bossy extremists who feel they have the right to wreck the economy without even consulting voters Extinction Rebellion wa...

www.evernote.com

 

[Beebo Brink]

Iain Martin, in The Times, argues that the Extinction Rebellion activists in the UK are, by the very nature of their radical -- and quite possibly vitally necessary -- project are in conflict with parliamentary democracy...

Or, to frame it in another way, parliamentary democracy is in conflict with the need for extreme climate mitigation. By its nature, democracy takes time to build a consensus -- sometimes many decades -- and a deeply unpopular and uncomfortable policy may never garner enough support in a democracy to enable forceful action. Add profit-based capitalism into the mix, and you have a recipe for not only inaction, but for downright obstruction.

Radical activists will piss everyone off because they rip off the emotionally-comforting bandaids of gentle green technologies coming to the rescue. They will raise their voices to strident levels and disrupt the public order trying to demand real action from politicians and populace who have more immediate priorities: whether it's getting to a dying parent's bedside or buying a condo on the beach. Activists will insist these are luxuries in a world headed for an apocalypse and people will get very very tired of them. which will result in even more inaction.

When conditions get bad enough -- which they undoubtedly will by the end of the century -- society will convulse. The populace that has dug in its heels to resist voting for drastic change will turn around and blame democratically elected officials for not having acted before, conveniently overlooking the fact that there was absolutely no wide-spread support for unpalatable sacrifices.

Unfortunately, most autocrats who rise to power and have the means to enforce drastic change are probably the least likely to care about saving humanity.

So it's a lose-lose situation, no matter how you cut it.