Climate Change / Global Warming Discussion

[cpa]

Yeah, well, the bottom line is staying in power. Whether Manchin pursuing personal wealth at the expense of the environment or Biden's administration trying to cajole various interests by treading water on this issue, it is about winning elections and re-elections.

The majority of people just don't give a damn about long term consequences. They are more concerned with the here and now. Two-fify gasoline and "cheap" coal and natural gas for electricity is comforting when many people have $1,500 saved up for the proverbial rainy day.

I've been in the tax dodge for forty years. It never ceases to amaze me how many of my clients as they are sliding into retirement age(empty nesters) have less than 100K in their 401(k) or IRAs. Yet these same people make easy six figures per year. Their after-tax investments produce maybe $1,000 of investment income. They have no DB plans to bail them out. But, they have a nice $600,000 home with 20 years left on their mortgage, a boat, ATV, or snowmobiles, a new car (with debt) every five years, and so on. Small wonder that people ignore the future when they are worrying about today.

Then we get into the structure of capitalism. Companies are loath to spend a lot of money on something that is innovative, better in many ways when the same-old, same-old works just fine thankyouverymuch.

We are painting ourselves further into the corner. The question remains whether we have crossed the Rubicon or not. (Apologies for mixing my metaphors.) This time it might to too late for the powers across the country, combined with risk taking capitalists to repair the damage.

 

[ggies07]

I'll be supporting her by buying it.

Greta Thunberg to publish a ‘go-to source’ book on the climate crisis

The Climate Book will include contributions from scientist Katherine Hayhoe, economist Thomas Piketty and novelist Margaret Atwood

www.theguardian.com

Hell yes! Damn straight.

“To me, hope is not something that is given to you, it is something you have to earn, to create. It cannot be gained passively, through standing by and waiting for someone else to do something. Hope is taking action. It is stepping outside your comfort zone. And if a bunch of weird schoolkids were able to get millions of people to start changing their lives, just imagine what we could all do together if we really tried.”

 

[mspohr]

Why is Biden boasting about drilling for oil? Our planet demands we stop now | Peter Kalmus
Putin’s unprovoked and atrocious invasion of Ukraine has laid bare many things. One of these is our society’s precarious dependence on fossil fuels. Another is a burgeoning climate-driven food crisis. It’s time to phase out fossil fuels and industrial beef production with wartime resolve.

Global food systems present an interconnected dimension of concern. Russia and Ukraine together produce 30% of the world’s wheat; 50 countries, including many in the global south, depend critically on Russia and Ukraine for grain. Putin’s war leaves them especially vulnerable. We are entering a new epoch of energy and food price volatility and increases, which will hurt the global poor and working class most of all; shifting away from meat, especially beef, would act as a shock absorber. Beef requires 20 times the land area and creates 20 times the climate impact of plant-based protein. There is no place for industrial beef on a planet in a deepening food and climate crisis.

 

[DrLOAC]

Extremes of 40C above normal: what’s causing ‘extraordinary’ heating in polar regions?

The main concern is a weakening of ice shelves, extensions of ice sheets that float over the ocean. They play an important role in restraining inland ice. “Once we lose ice shelves, grounded ice that sits inland would flow out faster … go to the ocean and cause sea level rise,” Mackintosh said.

Oooh I Know I Know!

Is it the extra 3.5x10^23 joules of heat we’ve dumped into the oceans over the last 50 years? I mean it’s only 70% of the energy from the Chixulub impactor that killed the dinosaurs 65million years ago but it’s got to have some effect right?

 

[mspohr]

Dire warning on climate change ‘is being ignored’ amid war and economic turmoil

The third segment of the landmark scientific report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – which could be the last comprehensive assessment of climate science to be published while there is still time to avoid the worst ravages of climate breakdown – will be published on Monday, warning that the world is not shifting quickly enough to a low-carbon economy. But the previous instalment of the vast report – known as working group 2 of the IPCC – was published a month ago, just as Russia invaded Ukraine, and received only muted attention, despite warning of catastrophic and irreversible upheavals that can only narrowly be avoided by urgent action now. Scientists told the Observer that Monday’s fresh scientific warning must spur governments to belated action.Th

Saudi Arabia, India, China and a few other countries have sought to make changes that would weaken the final warnings, the Observer understands. Some governments are anxious to avoid policy advice such as cutting subsidies to fossil fuels, even though these are widely espoused by leading authorities.This process of refinement – which has also been a complaint in the previous chapters of the IPCC assessment – is defended by some, as producing a document that all governments must “own”, as they have all had input. But many scientists are growing increasingly frustrated, as it produces a conservative and sometimes watered down document that many feel does not reflect the urgency and shocking nature of the threat.

 

[mspohr]

Scientists urge end to fossil fuel use as landmark IPCC report readied

This is the third part of the IPCC’s latest landmark assessment, and the most contentious because it covers the policies, technologies and finances needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The Guardian understands that India has demanded key changes on issues including finance, along with Saudi Arabia which wants to see affirmation of a continued role for fossil fuels, while other countries including China and Ecuador also held out on some points. Russia has played a more muted role than some feared.

Nikki Reisch, the director of the energy and climate programme at the Center for International Environmental Law, said governments should be clear: “There is no room for more oil and gas full stop. [Some businesses] want to perpetuate the myth that we can carry on using fossil fuels. But we need a just transition away from fossil fuels, not techno-fixes.”

 

[mspohr]

IPCC: We can tackle climate change if big oil gets out of the way

Experts say criticism of oil and gas’s ‘climate-blocking activities’ cut from final draft, reflective of industry’s power and influence

www.theguardian.com

The role of the fossil fuel industry is highlighted throughout the report’s nearly 3,000 pages, but researchers note it was mysteriously absent from the “Summary for Policymakers” – traditionally the first part of the report that’s released and often attracts the most media attention. An earlier draft of the summary leaked to the Guardian, however, described the fossil fuel industry and others invested in a high-carbon economy as “vested interests” that have actively worked against climate policy, noting: “Factors limiting ambitious transformation include structural barriers, an incremental rather than systemic approach, lack of coordination, inertia, lock-in to infrastructure and assets, and lock-in as a consequence of vested interests, regulatory inertia, and lack of technological capabilities and human resources.”

 

[mspohr]

Germany unveils plans to accelerate green energy expansion

Germany's economy and climate ministry presented a package of measures on Wednesday to speed up the expansion of renewable energy, as the need to reduce the country's heavy reliance on Russian fossil fuels adds urgency to its green transition plans.

www.reuters.com

The package envisages green energy accounting for 80% of the power mix in Europe's biggest economy by 2030, up from about 40% now and a previous target of 65%.

The legislation includes a new clause acknowledging that the use of renewables is in the interests of public security.

The country's Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) also includes a goal for offshore wind energy to reach at least 30 GW by 2030 - equivalent to the capacity of 10 nuclear plants - and at least 70 GW by 2045, the sources added.

 

[eevee-fan]

With the sanction against Russian Oligarchs, I guess there would be interest in making their yachts solar/wind powered. No need to go into port... can the yacht be seized when in open sea?

 

[mspohr]

With the sanction against Russian Oligarchs, I guess there would be interest in making their yachts solar/wind powered. No need to go into port... can the yacht be seized when in open sea?

Here you go...

Soel Yachts unveils 62 ft solar electric catamaran with 564 kWh battery capacity and 'trans-ocean range'

Soel Yachts' new Senses 62 solar electric catamaran boasts large battery capacity for a yacht, providing what Soel calls "trans-ocean range."

electrek.co

 

[mspohr]

US and Europe behind majority of global ecological damage, says study

Groundbreaking report is first to assign responsibility for damage caused by 160 countries in past 50 years

www.theguardian.com

The US and Europe are responsible for the majority of global ecological damage caused by the overuse of natural resources, according to a groundbreaking study. The paper is the first to analyse and assign responsibility for the ecological damage caused by 160 countries over the last half century. It finds that the US is the biggest culprit, accounting for 27% of the world’s excess material use, followed by the EU (25%), which included the UK during the analysis period. Other rich countries such as Australia, Canada, Japan and Saudi Arabia were collectively responsible for 22%. While China overshot its sustainability limit to claim 15% of resource overuse, the poorer countries of the global south were en masse responsible for just 8%, the analysis found.

 

[mspohr]

Is the world’s most important climate legislation about to die in US Congress? | Daniel Sherrell

Tucked beneath the headlines on Covid and Ukraine, the most important climate legislation in US history – and thus, arguably, in world history – is still stuck in congressional purgatory. You’d be forgiven if you weren’t fully aware. It is not trending on Twitter. Joe Biden has mostly stopped talking about it. The enormous moral stakes have been brutally ablated by a broken, farcical and, above all, extremely boring legislative kludge known as budget reconciliation. The months-long saga has turned Biden’s original “Build Back Better” plan into the juridical equivalent of a Warhol soup can – a ubiquitous token evacuated of any original meaning.

I want to pause here, though, to express my absolute, stupefying outrage that it’s come to this. That not a single one of the Republican cowards who claim concern over climate change – Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham – is even considering voting for the bill. That its fate will be determined by a man who makes money hand over fist pumping carbon into the atmosphere. That Biden had to dispatch the head of the National Economic Council to go zip-lining with Manchin in West Virginia last weekend. That the fate of organized human civilization would at least partially depend on two grown men donning intricate safety harnesses and skimming across a river gorge (though I’ll admit that, compared with your typical round of golf, there was something weird and almost endearing about this particular political mating ritual).

 

[eevee-fan]

New Atlas: New technique uses plastic waste to capture CO2 emissions.

New technique uses plastic waste to capture CO2 emissions

Two of our biggest environmental problems are the tons of unusable plastic waste, and the tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) which are released into the atmosphere in smokestack emissions. A new process is claimed to use the former to trap the latter.

newatlas.com

 

[mspohr]

From Bill McKibben

Putin’s war shows autocracies and fossil fuels go hand in hand. Here’s how to tackle both

Democracies are making more progress than autocracies when it comes to climate action. But divestment campaigns can put pressure on the most recalcitrant of political leaders

www.theguardian.com

And beyond that, autocrats are often directly the result of fossil fuel. The crucial thing about oil and gas is that it is concentrated in a few spots around the world, and hence the people who live on top of or otherwise control those spots end up with huge amounts of unwarranted and unaccountable power. Boris Johnson was just off in Saudi Arabia trying to round up some hydrocarbons – the day after the king beheaded 81 folks he didn’t like. Would anyone pay the slightest attention to the Saudi royal family if they did not possess oil? No. Nor would the Koch brothers have been able to dominate American politics on the basis of their ideas –when David Koch ran for the White House on the Libertarian ticket in 1980 he got almost no votes. So he and his brother Charles decided to use their winnings as America’s largest oil and gas barons to buy the GOP, and the rest is (dysfunctional) political history.

Another way of saying this is that hydrocarbons by their nature tend towards the support of despotism – they’re highly dense in energy and hence very valuable; geography and geology means they can be controlled with relative ease. There’s one pipeline, one oil terminal. Whereas sun and wind are, in these terms, much closer to democratic: they’re available everywhere, diffuse instead of concentrated. I can’t have an oilwell in my backyard because, as with almost all backyards, there is no oil there. Even if there was an oilwell, I would have to sell what I pumped to some refiner, and since I’m American, that would likely be a Koch enterprise. But I can (and do) have a solar panel on my roof; my wife and I rule our own tiny oligarchy, insulated from the market forces the Putins and the Kochs can unleash and exploit. The cost of energy delivered by the sun has not risen this year, and it will not rise next year.

Putin’s grotesque war might be where some of these strands come together. It highlights the ways that fossil fuel builds autocracy, and the power that control of scarce supplies gives to autocrats. It’s also shown us the power of financial systems to put pressure on the most recalcitrant political leaders: Russia is being systematically and effectively punished by bankers and corporations, though as my Ukrainian colleague Svitlana Romanko and I pointed out recently, they could be doing far more. The shock of the war may also be strengthening the resolve and unity of the world’s remaining democracies and perhaps – one can hope – diminishing the attraction of would-be despots like Donald Trump.

 

[Beasts]

mspohr,
I wanted to enter both "like' and "informative" following your most recent post but I wasn't allowed to do that so here I am. And you do the same thing consistently! Your input encourages me, and my wife, to do everything that we can as individuals to make a difference, to set an example. If not us, who? If not now, when?
An example; India recycles 30% of its' plastic waste while the US recycles only 9%! There is no good reason why we can't do better. A few containers in the garage. A trip to the recycle facility every couple of months. I am encouraged by the long lines waiting to unload recyclables at our Litter Landing. Your "constant nagging" is providing the sense of urgency we need to convince people that we need to do everything we can, TODAY!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
A few ideas for everyone:
- use reuseable bags for shopping
- combine trips when possible
- compost if you can
- don't burn your trash
- move, even a little bit, toward lower meat consumption and more vegetables. It's healthier and consumes significantly less oil products and land use.
- drive an EV, preferably a Tesla of course
- you can recycle batteries, paper, newspapers, cardboard, glass, plastic, tin cans, metal, aluminum foil
- reduce chemical usage in the home, on lawns, on agricultural fields...
A few ideas. Not all of them are for everyone, of course, but please do what you can. And add to this list if you would like. A grass roots movement can be very powerful. But we need to lead by example. Gaia is gasping.

 

[SDRick]

Don't forget solar. A Tesla (or any electric car) and solar is a great combination!
It's kind of like having your own oil well, refinery, pipeline, tanker truck and gas station!

 

[SilverString]

Is the world’s most important climate legislation about to die in US Congress? | Daniel Sherrell

Tucked beneath the headlines on Covid and Ukraine, the most important climate legislation in US history – and thus, arguably, in world history – is still stuck in congressional purgatory. You’d be forgiven if you weren’t fully aware. It is not trending on Twitter. Joe Biden has mostly stopped talking about it. The enormous moral stakes have been brutally ablated by a broken, farcical and, above all, extremely boring legislative kludge known as budget reconciliation. The months-long saga has turned Biden’s original “Build Back Better” plan into the juridical equivalent of a Warhol soup can – a ubiquitous token evacuated of any original meaning.

I want to pause here, though, to express my absolute, stupefying outrage that it’s come to this. That not a single one of the Republican cowards who claim concern over climate change – Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham – is even considering voting for the bill. That its fate will be determined by a man who makes money hand over fist pumping carbon into the atmosphere. That Biden had to dispatch the head of the National Economic Council to go zip-lining with Manchin in West Virginia last weekend. That the fate of organized human civilization would at least partially depend on two grown men donning intricate safety harnesses and skimming across a river gorge (though I’ll admit that, compared with your typical round of golf, there was something weird and almost endearing about this particular political mating ritual).

If the bill were not loaded with so much pork belly and pro-union fat it might just have a chance. The blame goes both ways.

 

[mspohr]

mspohr,
I wanted to enter both "like' and "informative" following your most recent post but I wasn't allowed to do that so here I am. And you do the same thing consistently! Your input encourages me, and my wife, to do everything that we can as individuals to make a difference, to set an example. If not us, who? If not now, when?
An example; India recycles 30% of its' plastic waste while the US recycles only 9%! There is no good reason why we can't do better. A few containers in the garage. A trip to the recycle facility every couple of months. I am encouraged by the long lines waiting to unload recyclables at our Litter Landing. Your "constant nagging" is providing the sense of urgency we need to convince people that we need to do everything we can, TODAY!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
A few ideas for everyone:
- use reuseable bags for shopping
- combine trips when possible
- compost if you can
- don't burn your trash
- move, even a little bit, toward lower meat consumption and more vegetables. It's healthier and consumes significantly less oil products and land use.
- drive an EV, preferably a Tesla of course
- you can recycle batteries, paper, newspapers, cardboard, glass, plastic, tin cans, metal, aluminum foil
- reduce chemical usage in the home, on lawns, on agricultural fields...
A few ideas. Not all of them are for everyone, of course, but please do what you can. And add to this list if you would like. A grass roots movement can be very powerful. But we need to lead by example. Gaia is gasping.

Thank you for your reply and suggestions. I sometimes feel that I'm nagging but I keep doing it in the hope that it will change just one person's behavior.
I do realize that I'm mostly preaching to choir here but we can all improve.

 

[mspohr]

If the bill were not loaded with so much pork belly and pro-union fat it might just have a chance. The blame goes both ways.

Labeling spending on clean energy investment as "pork belly" is not useful. The US spends far more on fossil fuel subsidies but that doesn't seem to trigger people.
As for unions, some people here have a deep seated fear of unions which is sad because the decline of unions has been part of the greatest decline in income equality since the gilded age. Unions give workers some power to gain better wages and working conditions against corporations. We need a strong middle class, not a nation of wage slaves.

 

[juliusa]

And beyond that, autocrats are often directly the result of fossil fuel. The crucial thing about oil and gas is that it is concentrated in a few spots around the world, and hence the people who live on top of or otherwise control those spots end up with huge amounts of unwarranted and unaccountable power. Boris Johnson was just off in Saudi Arabia trying to round up some hydrocarbons – the day after the king beheaded 81 folks he didn’t like.

Yes!! Precisely why we need to significantly increase ALL domestic energy production - so we no longer need to suck up to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela. Hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, biomass, oil, gas, coal. The planet does not care if we burn oil/gas/coal from the US or Russia, but geopolitics does. F "green energy matters". ALL energy matters.