|
Post by jdredd on Nov 7, 2018 15:44:18 GMT -5
I've heard it claimed that climate change was actually an issue in some places on the East and Gulf coasts affected by hurricanes and storms. That would be a first. The environment has never been a vote getter before.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Dec 6, 2018 12:25:14 GMT -5
I was going to post an article on the continuing increase in CO2 emissions, but ya know, climate change is really boring. Yes, as the cliche goes, we could be like frogs in a slowly heating pot of water (do they really not jump out before the pot is boiling? I don't know. I don't think humans could jump out of the Earth pot even if they wanted to), but it's still boring day-to-day. And what can you do about it anyway? We're probably doomed, as Vision said.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on May 20, 2019 23:43:40 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/opinion/australia-election-climate-change.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"It is certainly discouraging that so many voters in a democratic society could choose to shut their eyes to the obvious and immediate danger of climate change. The election gave added evidence that climate wars have become an adjunct of the politics of grievance that have brought populists to power in America, Europe and elsewhere, and have rent electorates into bitterly opposed camps of urban and provincial, young and old, activist and cautious." I voted the environment for 40 years, still I am amazed it has finally become an issue in elections. Then again it was inevitable.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Jun 5, 2019 17:17:27 GMT -5
Headline in today's LA Times: "Climate change is Democrat's hot issue." Well, 50 years late is better than never, I guess. But a lot of bad stuff has flowed under the bridge since the hippies brought the issue up.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Aug 28, 2019 12:26:27 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/climate/fire-amazon-africa-siberia-worldwide.html"In South America, the Amazon basin is ablaze. Halfway around the world in central Africa, vast stretches of savanna are going up in flame. Arctic regions in Siberia are burning at a historic pace. While the Brazilian fires have grown into a full-blown international crisis, they represent only one of many significant areas where wildfires are currently burning around the world. Their increase in severity and spread to places where fires were rarely previously seen is raising fears that climate change is exacerbating the danger. Hotter, drier temperatures “are going to continue promoting the potential for fire,” said John Abatzoglou, an associate professor in the department of geography at the University of Idaho, describing the risk of “large, uncontainable fires globally” if warming trends continue." The billionaires can buy off politicians but they can't buy off wildfires.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Sept 3, 2019 15:17:53 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/opinion/hurricane-dorian-climate-change.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"The frequency of severe hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean has roughly doubled over the last two decades, and climate change appears to be the reason. Yet much of the conversation about Hurricane Dorian — including most media coverage — ignores climate change. That’s a mistake. It’s akin to talking about lung cancer and being afraid to mention smoking, or talking about traffic deaths and being afraid to talk about drunken driving. Sure, no single road death can be attributed solely to drunken driving — and many people who drive under the influence of alcohol don’t crash — but you can’t talk meaningfully about vehicle crashes without talking about alcohol. Climate change, likewise, doesn’t cause any one hurricane on its own, but it’s central to the story of the storms that are increasingly battering the Atlantic. Why are we pretending otherwise?" Awwww...too bad. The weather is getting tougher for all those folks living on former hurricane damping swamplands stolen from the Seminoles (and others).
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Feb 27, 2020 1:24:59 GMT -5
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/25/anti-greta-teen-activist-cpac-conference-climate-sceptic"A German teenager dubbed the “anti-Greta” – climate sceptics’ answer to the schoolgirl activist Greta Thunberg – is set to address the biggest annual gathering of US grassroots conservatives. Naomi Seibt, 19, who styles herself as a “climate sceptic” or “climate realist”, will this week address the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near Washington, joining speakers including Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence. Seibt is in the pay of the Heartland Institute, a thinktank closely allied with the White House that denies established science showing humans are heating the planet with dangerous consequences. CPAC will be the biggest stage yet for Seibt, a so-called “YouTube influencer” who tells her followers Thunberg and other activists are whipping up unnecessary hysteria by exaggerating the climate crisis."
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Mar 1, 2020 2:59:25 GMT -5
Yes, the righties hired their own adolescent cutie to debunk climate change.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on May 27, 2020 13:13:12 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/opinion/michigan-edenville-dam.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"We won’t be able to say we weren’t warned. The federal government offered a stark message in its national climate assessment in 2018, cautioning that aging and deteriorating dams and levees “represent an increasing hazard when exposed to extreme or, in some cases, even moderate rainfall.” The report noted that heavy rainfalls led to widespread dam or levee failures in 2005, 2015, 2016 and 2017. “The national exposure to this risk,” the report said, “has not yet been fully assessed.” But here is what we do know. A majority of the roughly 90,000 dams in the United States are older than their nominal design life of 50 years, the point when they become increasingly more difficult and expensive to keep safe, assuming they’ve been properly maintained in the first place. The National Inventory of Dams includes about 25,000 dams considered high or significant hazards if they failed." My question is: Why do we have so many dams?
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Sept 27, 2020 17:06:58 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/opinion/climate-change-us-companies.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"As the climate crisis intensifies, U.S. environmental policy has moved dangerously backward, with nearly 70 environmental rules reversed during this administration, and 30 more reversals in process. This intransigent, head-in-the-sand approach will not alter the reality of climate change, nor the risks and opportunities it presents the economy. The private sector understands this. Many large businesses and their investors, recognizing the urgency of the threat, are already attempting to protect their assets and investments from climate risks. As some continue to publicly question the science, they are shifting their capital to prepare for a future low-carbon economy. They know that a significant percentage of the U.S. equity market, as much as 93 percent by one estimate, is already exposed to harms from climate change, with this year’s intensified fire and hurricane seasons offering a devastating preview of more to come." Big Business feigns skepticism of climate change for short-term profit, but they know the truth. And their Trump-voting tools believe the lie.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Dec 29, 2020 15:13:13 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/opinion/biden-cabinet-climate-change.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"As President-elect Joe Biden rolls out his climate and environment team, it is worth recalling, if only to grasp the distance between then and now, the hopeless bunch President-elect Donald Trump presented us with four years ago. Mr. Trump tapped Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency, Ryan Zinke the Interior Department and Rick Perry the Energy Department. Mr. Pruitt, by common consent the worst of the mediocrities in Mr. Trump’s cabinet, helped persuade him to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change and set in motion the rollback of every important regulation approved by the Obama administration to reduce greenhouse gases. Mr. Zinke, in plain imitation of Teddy Roosevelt, rode a horse to work on his first day on the job, but within a year had ceded to the oil, gas and coal industries millions of acres of public land that Mr. Roosevelt would almost certainly have tried to protect. In Mr. Perry, Mr. Trump chose a man who back in 2011 recommended the abolition of the very department Mr. Trump was asking him to run." This will make 2021 for me, watching all of Trump's bozos hit the road.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Feb 16, 2021 14:55:23 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/climate/texas-power-grid-failures.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=HomepageHuge winter storms have plunged large parts of the central and southern United States into an energy crisis this week as frigid blasts of Arctic weather crippled electric grids and left millions of Americans without power amid dangerously cold temperatures. The grid failures were most severe in Texas, where more than four million people woke up Tuesday morning facing power failures. On Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott called for an emergency reform of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, saying the operator of the state’s power grid “has been anything but reliable over the past 48 hours.” "The crisis highlighted a deeper warning for power systems throughout the country. Electric grids can be engineered to handle a wide range of severe conditions — as long as grid operators can reliably predict the dangers ahead. But as climate change accelerates, many electric grids will face novel and extreme weather events that go beyond the historical conditions those grids were designed for, putting the systems at risk of catastrophic failure." Non-existent climate change strikes again.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Apr 22, 2021 12:25:02 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/climate/world-economy-swiss-re-insurance.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage"WASHINGTON — Rising temperatures are likely to reduce global wealth significantly by 2050, as crop yields fall, disease spreads and rising seas consume coastal cities, a major insurance company warned Thursday, highlighting the consequences if the world fails to quickly slow the use of fossil fuels. The effects of climate change can be expected to shave 11 percent to 14 percent off global economic output by 2050 compared with growth levels without climate change, according to a report from Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest providers of insurance to other insurance companies. That amounts to as much as $23 trillion in reduced annual global economic output worldwide as a result of climate change. Some Asian nations could have one-third less wealth than would otherwise be the case, the company said. “Our analysis shows the potential costs that economies could face should governments fail to act more decisively on climate,” said Patrick Saner, who is in charge of global macroeconomic forecasts for Swiss Re."
People won't believe the government on climate change. Will they believe insurance companies? Boomers are too old to change their ways, but I don't see Millennials changing theirs either, and they are the ones who will be here when the climate sh*t hits the fan.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Jun 29, 2021 12:28:59 GMT -5
Ha-ha! The heat blast in the Pacific Northwest, which may be a one-time fluke, nevertheless will agitate the drill-baby-drill types trying to defend burning as much oil as we possibly can. Is the sky falling? We'll see what panicked voters have to say. This might be a speed bump in the GOP licking its chops about an expected Congressional sweep in 2022. What will scare people more? Socialism or Global Warming?
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Oct 27, 2021 12:33:12 GMT -5
There is a seven minute animated rant by Greta Thunberg in the NYT today. Is she wasting her time? What else is there to do? Sadly, here in the USA we are looking at a “Red” wave in 2022, as the environment has never been a big issue and probably won’t be until it’s impossible to ignore. I won’t be around.
|
|