WTF Climate Change News

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

avoiding the kind of social chaos that destroys the rule of law

Nah, the main problem here is in billionaires managing to make their security forces entirely dependent on them. Diabetics without access to the insulin vault? Exploding chips in the brain? The possibilities are endless!

 

[Kara Spengler]

So how does the news about the climate stuff here in DC today look from elsewhere?

I liked the irony when I was reading the local news on how to deal with any potential problems. It was advising people to take public transit. Which is probably one of the things the organizers want people to do anyway.

 

[Kara Spengler]

By the way talking about Greta Thunberg: how visible is she in the American media by now, since she arrived a few weeks ago in NYC?

In Europe she's been running all over, up and down most tv stations and newspapers; she became very popular and some kind of "climate Jeanne D'Arc". She leaves nobody cold, either people do like or hate her because she takes no prisoners and does not want to make compromises, but ensure the survivability of the human race, so there's not much in between right now.

The hype around her is amazing; but this is purely the politicians fault, who are just not taking climate change serious enough. If the politicians would have done that, she would be still an anonymous nobody school girl.

She is getting a lot of play on youtube but I have not seen her on the traditional TV yet. Well, she may have been on MSNBC but youtube is force feeding that to anyone watching independent news lately so I will count that as being on the net.

 

[danielravennest]

So how does the news about the climate stuff here in DC today look from elsewhere?

So on reddit, someone asked in a thread about IKEA pledging to be carbon-neutral by, I think, 2030, why they had seen all these stories recently - Google buying 1.6 GW of renewable power, Amazon ordering 100,000 electric delivery vans, etc. I explained about the climate strike and the UN summit. The corporations were making their announcements to tie into those events.

Google story

Amazon story

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

So on reddit, someone asked in a thread about IKEA pledging to be carbon-neutral by, I think, 2030, why they had seen all these stories recently - Google buying 1.6 GW of renewable power, Amazon ordering 100,000 electric delivery vans, etc. I explained about the climate strike and the UN summit. The corporations were making their announcements to tie into those events.

Google is an old story; they are preferring generating their own power using their own infrastructure since years, because it's cheaper.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Assuming for the moment that these people aren't just outright evil sociopaths (always a possibility), they have become so emotionally invested in climate denial that they are becoming unhinged by the rise of voices such as Greta Thunberg's. They're flailing to explain away her fervor, to see her as some unwitting pawn of her parents or of leftist zealots. When you think about it, that's a far less scarier scenario than the world burning around them, so they just continue to double-down.

 

[Ishina]

They are not even trying to hide how shook they are by Greta Thunberg.

 

[Ishina]

The President of the USA is casting shade on a 16 year old on twitter. I'm living in a Black Mirror episode.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

The President of the USA is casting shade on a 16 year old on twitter. I'm living in a Black Mirror episode.

 

[danielravennest]

Google is an old story; they are preferring generating their own power using their own infrastructure since years, because it's cheaper.

Google has been ramping up their renewable portfolio for years, but 2019 is their largest addition so far. Note that they generally don't own the power plants. Rather they sign a "power purchase agreement" to buy a fixed amount per year for something like 10 or 20 years. With a contract like that, the plant owner can get bank financing to build it.

 

[danielravennest]

They are not even trying to hide how shook they are by Greta Thunberg.

Rather than burning jet fuel to visit the UN, she crossed the Atlantic like a frikken Leif Eriksson on a solar-powered sailboat. They should be scared.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Rather than burning jet fuel to visit the UN, she crossed the Atlantic like a frikken Leif Eriksson on a solar-powered sailboat. They should be scared.

Add in a rock band and a rapper:

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Report: Self-entitled Generation Z wants to live past the age of 40

NEW YORK - A new report has indicated that the next generation of children are so entitled that they want to live past the age of 40 with no desire to perish in a climate apocalypse.

www.thebeaverton.com

 

[Free]

Evacuations, road closures set as Mont Blanc glacier nears collapse - UPI.com

Local authorities closed roads and evacuated homes on Wednesday on the Italian side on Mont Blanc, fearing the collapse of a portion of the mountain's glacier.

www.upi.com

Local authorities closed roads and evacuated homes on Wednesday on the Italian side of Mont Blanc, fearing the collapse of a portion of the mountain's glacier.

The mountain, 15,777 feet tall and the highest of the Alps, sits on the border between France and Italy.

The collapse of the Planpincieux glacier on the Italian side could involve the sudden movement of nearly 900,000 cubic feet of ice, officials said. The glacier sits astride the Grandes Jorasses mountain of the Mont Blanc massif, or complex of summits. Glaciers provide fresh water, and their rapid retreat is regarded as a symptom of climate change.

"These phenomena once again show how the mountain is going through a period of major change due to climate factors and, therefore, it is particularly vulnerable," said Stefano Miserocchi, mayor of the nearby town of Courmayeur.

Miserocchi closed local roads after warnings that the glacier's movement had accelerated by two feet per day. Scientists have been monitoring the glacier since 2013. The glacier has lost up to 90 percent of its volume of ice since 2006.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

lol

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Let me put it that way: the big achievement of Greta Thunberg and the movement around her is that she put climate politics on the table again. It became a too big thing for the politicians to be ignored just like in the last three decades, so at least the politicians pretend to be acting again. It's a global, peacful movement and this alone is something very valuable for us all, with her being the figurehead.

But she overdid at a lot in her UN speech when she claimed that her childhood was stolen. This is overdramatization, something a rhetoric element which might be valuable, but here it is just way over the top and plainly wrong, and damages her credibility a lot.

Boris Palmer of the Green party, mayor of Tübingen, and enfant terribile of his party, wrote an answer to this speech, to which I do agree: it's the biggest problem of the 21st century.

Fact is, that in the last few decades mankind on a global scale made drastic - in our countries often unnoticed progress and improvements - in important areas, namely e.g.:

* since 1970 the percentage of underfed people went down from 28% to 11%,
* during the 20th century over 100 millions died because of war, in the last two decades less than 2 million,
* life expectancy went from 30 years in 1800 up to 72 years today,
* the infant mortality rate in the same time frame went down from 44% to 4%.

She's right that something direly needs to be done; but nobody destroyed/stole her childhood. Panic, like she is displaying it, is never a good advisor. It needs to be discussed in a more constructive and calm manner.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

She's 16, overdramatic is the defining trait of a teen. And yet, she's still being accused of having her whole thing being handled by adults. And bullied, and picked on by people who ought to be old enough to know better.

 

[Ishina]

But she overdid at a lot in her UN speech when she claimed that her childhood was stolen. This is overdramatization, something a rhetoric element which might be valuable, but here it is just way over the top and plainly wrong, and damages her credibility a lot.

Among a minority of very dumb people, and those who were already heavily invested in denying climate change, sure. Credibility doesn't work like that among rational and fair-minded adults, though.