Merrill
Merrill
We are not talking violence but making the dodos in our government wake up, it might take protests.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Climate Change / Global Warming Discussion
- Thread starter Raffy.Roma
- Start date
-
- Tags
- Energy Environment Policy
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
US GHG reductions were due almost entirely to shifting from coal to gas. Our action level needs to be at ~11. Right now we're at a ~2. How was slavery ended? How was civil rights achieved? Buckle up.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
Not optimistic, realistic. Our government has been corrupted by fossil fuel money. I'm not advocating violence but often that is what it takes to get attention. (Unfortunately, often unpredictable results.)
The small progress that has been made is pathetically inadequate.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
Great article by Naomi Klein on the Green New Deal
The Game-Changing Promise of a Green New Deal
I realize that it may seem unreasonably optimistic to invest so much in a House committee, but it is not the committee itself that is my main source of hope. It is the vast infrastructure of scientific, technical, political, and movement expertise poised to spring into action should we take the first few steps down this path. It is a network of extraordinary groups and individuals who have held fast to their climate focus and commitments even when no media wanted to cover the crisis and no major political party wanted to do anything more than perform concern.
It’s a network that has been waiting a very long time for there to finally be a critical mass of politicians in power who understand not only the existential urgency of the climate crisis, but also the once-in-a-century opportunity it represents, as the draft resolution states, “to virtually eliminate poverty in the United States and to make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone participating in the transformation.”
The ground for this moment has been prepared for decades, with models for community-owned and community-controlled renewable energy; with justice-based transitions that make sure no worker is left behind; with a deepening analysis of the intersections between systemic racism, armed conflict, and climate disruption; with improved green tech and breakthroughs in clean public transit; with the thriving fossil fuel divestment movement; with model legislation driven by the climate justice movement that shows how carbon taxes can fight racial and gender exclusion; and much more.
The Game-Changing Promise of a Green New Deal
I realize that it may seem unreasonably optimistic to invest so much in a House committee, but it is not the committee itself that is my main source of hope. It is the vast infrastructure of scientific, technical, political, and movement expertise poised to spring into action should we take the first few steps down this path. It is a network of extraordinary groups and individuals who have held fast to their climate focus and commitments even when no media wanted to cover the crisis and no major political party wanted to do anything more than perform concern.
It’s a network that has been waiting a very long time for there to finally be a critical mass of politicians in power who understand not only the existential urgency of the climate crisis, but also the once-in-a-century opportunity it represents, as the draft resolution states, “to virtually eliminate poverty in the United States and to make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone participating in the transformation.”
The ground for this moment has been prepared for decades, with models for community-owned and community-controlled renewable energy; with justice-based transitions that make sure no worker is left behind; with a deepening analysis of the intersections between systemic racism, armed conflict, and climate disruption; with improved green tech and breakthroughs in clean public transit; with the thriving fossil fuel divestment movement; with model legislation driven by the climate justice movement that shows how carbon taxes can fight racial and gender exclusion; and much more.
Thanks for the link. I can only imagine the forces that will be brought to bear against these "radical" tree hugers.
Of course the forces the green deal are trying to stop are much much worse.
We really only have one choice ...we MUST at least try to keep warming below 2.0 degrees
mspohr
Well-Known Member
And Yanis Varoufakis calls for international organizations to spearhead an International Green New Deal
We shouldn't rush to save the liberal order. We should remake it
We shouldn't rush to save the liberal order. We should remake it | Yanis Varoufakis and David Adler
---
The heyday of western internationalism came immediately after the second world war, as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal went global. On the back of the remarkable Bretton Woods system – the global monetary system established at a 1944 conference in New Hampshire – international institutions were designed to prevent the return of another Great Depression and the subsequent collapse of liberal democracy.
However, once the Bretton Woods system died out in the early 1970s, these international institutions turned against the very principles on which they were founded.
The International Monetary Fund, created to help struggling governments stay solvent, morphed into the enforcer of harsh austerity upon the weakest. By the end of the 1990s, to the people of Africa, eastern Europe and south-east Asia, the acronym IMF had become synonymous with ruinous cuts in public education, public health and social security. More recently – and against the better judgment of its own staff – the IMF assisted the European Union in extending Greece’s insolvency while dismantling protections for the neediest.
Our new international movement will fight rising fascism and globalists | Yanis Varoufakis
Similarly with the other Bretton Woods-era institution, the World Bank. Instead of acting, in accordance with its original remit, as the engine of development in the interests of those lacking access to investment funding, the World Bank worked closely with the IMF to implement the infamous Washington Consensus, spreading the gospel of liberalized financial markets, privatized natural resources and trade agreements that prioritized free movement of capital and goods – though never, of course, of people.
Then, there is the International Labor Organization. Established in the aftermath of the first world war, the ILO brought 44 nations together in a shared commitment to improving working conditions around the world – a radical vision of internationalism and the first of its kind. “Poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere,” the ILO’s constitution proclaims, “and must be addressed through both national and international action.”
We shouldn't rush to save the liberal order. We should remake it
We shouldn't rush to save the liberal order. We should remake it | Yanis Varoufakis and David Adler
---
The heyday of western internationalism came immediately after the second world war, as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal went global. On the back of the remarkable Bretton Woods system – the global monetary system established at a 1944 conference in New Hampshire – international institutions were designed to prevent the return of another Great Depression and the subsequent collapse of liberal democracy.
However, once the Bretton Woods system died out in the early 1970s, these international institutions turned against the very principles on which they were founded.
The International Monetary Fund, created to help struggling governments stay solvent, morphed into the enforcer of harsh austerity upon the weakest. By the end of the 1990s, to the people of Africa, eastern Europe and south-east Asia, the acronym IMF had become synonymous with ruinous cuts in public education, public health and social security. More recently – and against the better judgment of its own staff – the IMF assisted the European Union in extending Greece’s insolvency while dismantling protections for the neediest.
Our new international movement will fight rising fascism and globalists | Yanis Varoufakis
Similarly with the other Bretton Woods-era institution, the World Bank. Instead of acting, in accordance with its original remit, as the engine of development in the interests of those lacking access to investment funding, the World Bank worked closely with the IMF to implement the infamous Washington Consensus, spreading the gospel of liberalized financial markets, privatized natural resources and trade agreements that prioritized free movement of capital and goods – though never, of course, of people.
Then, there is the International Labor Organization. Established in the aftermath of the first world war, the ILO brought 44 nations together in a shared commitment to improving working conditions around the world – a radical vision of internationalism and the first of its kind. “Poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere,” the ILO’s constitution proclaims, “and must be addressed through both national and international action.”
mspohr
Well-Known Member
Portrait of a planet on the verge of climate catastrophe
Portrait of a planet on the verge of climate catastrophe
Looks like we're toast
Portrait of a planet on the verge of climate catastrophe
Looks like we're toast
mspohr
Well-Known Member
Protests in Paris now are a good example of failed neoliberal policies. Capitalists do well but everyone else pays the price.
I don't address the data? Lol. Pot, meet kettle. The Heller post is all about the data and I might add that you have posted no data of your own to refute it. If you can't do better than that then I'm out of here. You can start by telling me - specifically - what is wrong with the data I referenced. Any objective scientist can see that the empirical data blows away the theoretical TOBS argument. Even better, you can go check it yourself. It is readily available on govt. FTP servers. I downloaded it myself. I look forward to you doing that, analyzing it, and then enlightening me but I think I'll be waiting a while on that.
Here's your answers:
1) True! But the raw temperature data shows almost no warming during this apocalyptic CO2 rise that you guys are so upset about.
2) I have no idea and could not care less. It has little or no relevance to global climate.
3) Total nonsense or at the very least not proven by any one (theoretical models don't count as proof).
Let’s go public then. Join me online as I’ve repeatedly offered. It’ll be broadcast live, so you can flex your triple degrees.I don't address the data? Lol. Pot, meet kettle. The Heller post is all about the data and I might add that you have posted no data of your own to refute it. If you can't do better than that then I'm out of here. You can start by telling me - specifically - what is wrong with the data I referenced. Any objective scientist can see that the empirical data blows away the theoretical TOBS argument. Even better, you can go check it yourself. It is readily available on govt. FTP servers. I downloaded it myself. I look forward to you doing that, analyzing it, and then enlightening me but I think I'll be waiting a while on that.
SDRick
Active Member
I guess it would depend on your definition of toast. Thermo nuclear war would also get us there, albeit faster, with greater certainty and more painfully.
cpa
Active Member
Generally, yes. I have spent my entire six-plus decades in California. (Cali is in Colombia, by the way.)
We have basically two distinct types of wildfires--the forested wildfires like the Camp Fire and the scrub--chaparral--brush fires like the one near Malibu. Each type presents its own unique set of circumstances for sustaining a large fire.
I think what compounds our situation here is the fact that the rainy season is becoming shorter. It used to be that we would get enough precipitation by mid-to-late October with the last good drenching in late April. Nowadays, (without researching) it seems that the rainy season starts about a month later and ends about a month sooner.
Then, many of our storms more recently are "Pineapple Express" type storms that come from Hawai'i--snow levels are 6,500+ feet, and they are much warmer with larger drops of rain that tend to run off rather than percolate. Classic winter storms come from your neck of the woods and are cold with lower snow levels and with smaller raindrops that will percolate due to their smaller size. The longer moisture is retained in the soil, the longer the underbrush stays green and growing. There have been wet years where the hills stay green until late June because a lot of moisture remained in the ground. Similar wet years but with more runoff turns the same ground brown and dry by mid-May.
I am not a climate scientist, obviously. But from reading accounts from alleged experts over the years, I have gleaned that while rainfall totals may be large, all precipitation is not necessarily created equal. Combine that with a more abbreviated rainy season, and therefore a longer and warmer dry season might contribute to the increase in wildfires here.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
Slow or fast. I think the path we have chosen for slow toast will be more certain and more painful.
SDRick
Active Member
The droughts and wildfires we are experiencing in California do not necessarily provide clear cause-and-effect data points. According to tree ring research over the last 2000 years, California has experienced far more severe mega-droughts lasting hundreds of years. The dustbowl of the 30s would be another example to a lesser scale. The Sahara desert another example.
Many of the largest fires in the United States happened early last century. So while climate is changing many of the extremes we are witnessing are not unique to our time.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
True. Unless you count temperature, droughts, max rainfall events, low humidity or wind speeds......
Similar threads
