I want to sue the republican party for willful denial of scientific evidence about climate change.

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

9 hours ago, visionary said:

Hurricane Laura is heading directly for Lake Charles, Louisiana, a majority Black city with metro area population of 225,000. The per capita income is $22,855.

Whooooo wants PAPER TOWELS?!?!?!

[LD0506]

I hate when this thread gets buried on Pg 4

 

[China]

How SUVs Conquered the World—and Ruined the Environment

 

They are the hulking cars that have conquered the world. Spreading from the heartlands of the US to a new generation of eager buyers in China to dominate even the twisting, narrow streets of Europe, the sports utility vehicle, or SUV, has bludgeoned its way to automobile supremacy with a heady mix of convenience and marketing muscle.

 

The rise of the SUV as the world’s pre-eminent car has been so rapid that the consequences of this new status—the altered patterns of urban life, air quality, pedestrian safety, where to park the things—are still coming into focus.

 

But it’s increasingly clear that SUVs’ most profound impact is playing out within the climate crisis, where their surging popularity is producing a vast new source of planet-cooking emissions.

 

Last year, the International Energy Agency made a finding that stunned even its own researchers. SUVs were the second largest cause of the global rise in carbon dioxide emissions over the past decade, eclipsing all shipping, aviation, heavy industry and even trucks, usually the only vehicles to loom larger than them on the road.

 

Each year, SUVs belch out 700 megatons of CO2, about the entire output of the UK and Netherlands combined. If all SUV drivers banded together to form their own country, it would rank as the seventh largest emitter in the world.

 

Climate activists may hurl themselves in the path of new oil pipelines and ladle enough guilt on to flying that flygskam, or “flight shame”, has spread from Sweden around the world but a mammoth, and growing, cause of the climate crisis has crept up almost unnoticed around us.

 

“The global rise of SUVs is challenging efforts to reduce emissions,” Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, admitted.

 

SUVs raced to a new milestone in 2019, surpassing 40 percent of all car sales worldwide for the first time. The world’s roads, parking lots and garages now contain more than 200m SUVs, eight times the number from a decade ago. SUVs’ share of car sales in the UK has tripled over the past 10 years, in Germany last year one in three cars sold was an SUV.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[NoCalMike]

SUVs entering the suburbs has been a plague.  Soccer moms convinced they need "sports utility" vehicles when mini vans can accomplish all the same things.   Guys watching commercials of these things driving over rocks, yet their shiny new metal coffin never leaves city streets. 

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

This is a new one.

[China]

The future has arrived. These explosive fires are our climate change wakeup call

 

Like millions of people in the western United States this week, I woke up to deep red, sunless skies, layers of ash coating the streets, gardens, and cars, and the smell of burning forests, lives, homes, and dreams. Not to be too hyperbolic, but on top of the political chaos, the economic collapse, and the worst pandemic in modern times, it seemed more than a little apocalyptic.

 

Too much of the western United States is on fire, and many areas not suffering directly from fire are enveloped in choking, acrid smoke.

 

While fires in the west are not unusual or unexpected, these fires are different: they’re earlier, bigger, and hotter than usual. They are expanding explosively, overwhelming towns and firefighting resources. And there’s no getting away from them. As of Thursday evening, five of the ten largest wildfires in California’s history are burning. Seven of the 10 largest fires have occurred in the last four years. This isn’t normal.

 

What’s different now? Human-caused climate change.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

 

[China]

https://www.cnn.com/videos/weather/2020/08/28/natural-disasters-climate-change-project-planet-weir-orig.cnn/video/playlists/project-planet/

[China]

2020 could actually be one of the best years this century!

 

Unfortunately for us, it won’t change for good but it will take a turn for the worse. Strangely but not surprisingly, 2020 will be both one of the hottest so far and one of the coldest in this century! That all this is happening is not the surprise, but just that this is happening already is of big concern. It is as if an invisible crank has been turned up, ratcheting up all disasters to suddenly become much higher in both scale and intensity resulting in impacts that were not expected for a couple of more years at least. Needless to say, 2020 has been an eye-opener of a year to all those who were blind to the urgency of climate crisis. Before I give you the reasons for why it’s going to get worse, let’s do a quick roundup of damning developments in 2020.

 

Records broken in 2020:

• Earth reached its hottest reliably recorded temperature ever at 54.4°C in Death Valley, USA on August 16, 2020 [*].

• The 2020 Atlantic Hurricane season was so intense and active that the World Meteorological Organization has run out of names, only second time on record [*].

• A Siberian town in Arctic recorded its highest temperature ever of 38°C on 20 June 2020, all of 18°C higher than the average maximum daily temperature in June [*].

• The Americas[USA*, Pantanal*, Amazon*] and Arctic[*] are on record breaking fires, shockingly worse than previous years in scale, intensity and likelihood.

• Africa and Asia were battered by record setting rainfall and flooding[*].

• Critical Antarctic[*], Canadian Arctic[*] and Greenland[*] ice shelves/glaciers experienced record disintegration this summer.

• The Arctic had such a warm summer that it had a record melt season, bringing the Arctic sea ice expanse to a 2nd lowest minimum in its 42-year satellite observation history.[*]

• Earth reached its highest carbon dioxide CO2 concentration ever in May 2020[*]!

• July 2019 - June 2020 tied as the hottest 12-month period ever on record with August 2015-September 2016 period.[*]

• Northern hemisphere had its hottest summer(Jun-Jul-Aug 2020) ever![*]

• Record setting locust invasion plagued Africa, Middle East and parts of Asia through 2018-19, peaking in 2020 as of now[*].

• A lot of other heat and rainfall records must be broken in southern hemisphere too but I can’t find consolidated data anywhere because no one is extra bothered about the poor Global South.

Click on the link for the full article

[LD0506]

[China]

A Farewell To Ice Fishing? Climate Change Leads To Less Lake Ice

 

Max Holmes grew up near the shores of Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay. He recalled playing on the frozen lake as a kid — ice skating, which he hated, and ice fishing with his family, which was a lot more fun.

 

But as the world warms, winters on Grand Traverse Bay — and many other lakes — aren't what they used to be. The bay recently had two ice-free years in a row, a change that Holmes — now a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Woods Hole, Mass. — called "dramatic."

 

"I certainly know from all the work I do that climate change is happening, but this brought it home in a little bit different way," said Holmes, who primarily studies climate change in the Arctic. "This lake that I grew up on used to freeze, now it doesn't. You're losing something."

 

Grand Traverse Bay was one of 122 lakes worldwide included in a new study on disappearing lake ice. Researchers at York University in Toronto looked at nearly 80 years of lake-ice data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, and counted the ice-free years. (If a lake did not have 100% ice cover for at least one day, the researchers considered it an ice-free year. The study did not account for the thickness or duration of the ice.) They found the number of ice-free winters among the lakes had more than tripled since 1978.

 

Click on the link for the full article 

[LD0506]

[FuriousD]

Watched David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet last night.  VERY sobering and sad but that being said, what a treasure that man is! 

 

Attenborough is hopeful for the future but so much damage has already been done and it seems much of the international leadership either myopic or just plain ignorant.

[China]

Farmers Are Warming Up To The Fight Against Climate Change

 

Just over a decade ago, the American Farm Bureau Federation declared war on legislation to slow down global warming. The organization, a lobbying powerhouse, argued that a "cap-and-trade" proposal making its way through Congress would make fuel and fertilizer more expensive and put farmers out of business.

 

Farmers swarmed Capitol Hill wearing caps with the words "Don't Cap Our Future." And it worked. The legislation died, derailing the boldest plan Congress had crafted to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Now, the Farm Bureau might be changing course. This week, it announced that it had formed a coalition that plans to push the government to adopt dozens of policy changes that would make it easier for farmers to reduce emissions from agriculture.

 

"We're going to have a real common sense, science-based discussion about how we protect the climate, and our farmers want to be part of that," said Zippy Duvall, president of the Farm Bureau.

 

The proposals don't entail regulation or mandatory cuts to agricultural greenhouse gases. Instead, they are voluntary and sometimes involve paying farmers to reduce emissions. Still, the new Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance brings together groups that have often butted heads on environmental policy, from agricultural lobbies, like the Farm Bureau and the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, to climate advocates, like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Nature Conservancy.

 

"It feels like in the past eighteen months, the conversation has just really shifted," says Pipa Elias, director of agriculture for The Nature Conservancy.

 

The shift is happening for several reasons. Many big food companies have promised to reduce their greenhouse emissions and they're pushing for changes on the farm — and sometimes paying for such changes.

 

Meredith Niles, a specialist on farming and the environment at the University of Vermont, says that farmers also are reacting to their direct experience. "We see more and more farmers acknowledging climate change, actually being affected by it, through droughts or floods or other impacts," she says."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

Detective Ivanka on the case to figure out what has changed this year. 🕵️‍♀️

[LD0506]

[Cooked Crack]

Gas powered leaf blowers apparently really bad

[JCB]

Yeah, we switched to battery-powered about a decade ago. Slightly less efficient but a whole lot better on the conscience.

[Dan T.]

5 hours ago, JCB said:

Yeah, we switched to battery-powered about a decade ago. Slightly less efficient but a whole lot better on the conscience.

 

I got an EGO battery powered lawn mower, and it's the best thing I ever bought.  Every bit as powerful as a gas mower, and a hell of a lot quieter. No more messing with gas and yanking the damn starter cord fifteen times to get it going. Plus I can act all virtuous.  Mrs. Dan T. then bought EGO hedge clippers so now i have two batteries to shuffle.

 

Anyway, I highly recommend the EGO lawn mower.

 

 

 

 

BTW, whatever happened to Mad Mike, who started this thread? 

[dfitzo53]

Yeah I have a mower, leaf blower and trimmer by Kobalt that all use the same batteries. I like them way better than gas. Plus, you can do things with it that a gas mower can't manage. You can fold the mower up to store it more easily, and you can turn it upside or on its side to clean and maintain it without worrying about the gas.

[Larry]

4 minutes ago, Dan T. said:

 

I got an EGO battery powered lawn mower, and it's the best thing I ever bought.  Every bit as powerful as a gas mower, and a hell of a lot quieter. No more messing with gas and yanking the damn starter cord fifteen times to get it going. Plus I can act all virtuous.  Mrs. Dan T. then bought EGO hedge clippers so now i have two batteries to shuffle.

 

Anyway, I highly recommend the EGO lawn mower.

 

 

 

 

BTW, whatever happened to Mad Mike, who started this thread? 

 

I have a chainsaw, that's really part of my hurricane preparedness package.  Maybe use it once every other year, but insist that I have to have it, because when you need one, then you really need one.  

 

Which also means that when I do need it, I have to deal with a gasoline engine that's got gas in it that hasn't been used for a couple years.  (I buy special gas for low-use chainsaws, with no ethanol and preservatives.  And costs like $10 a quart.)  And still, I have to buy new ones every so often, knowing that I'll maybe use it 2=3 times before it goes bad.  

 

I've already decided that the next one is going to be a Dewalt battery one, that can use the batteries from all of my Dewalt battery tools, and their chargers.  Yeah, a battery chainsaw probably won't have the run time of gasoline.  But I probably won't need to buy a new one, after 5 years and three uses.  

[TheGreatBuzz]

1 hour ago, Larry said:

Which also means that when I do need it, I have to deal with a gasoline engine that's got gas in it that hasn't been used for a couple years.  (I buy special gas for low-use chainsaws, with no ethanol and preservatives.  And costs like $10 a quart.)  And still, I have to buy new ones every so often, knowing that I'll maybe use it 2=3 times before it goes bad.  

 

After use, use a pair of hemostats to pinch of the fuel line and then let it run itself empty.  Then dump out the gas.

[Hersh]

2 hours ago, Dan T. said:

 

I got an EGO battery powered lawn mower, and it's the best thing I ever bought.  Every bit as powerful as a gas mower, and a hell of a lot quieter. No more messing with gas and yanking the damn starter cord fifteen times to get it going. Plus I can act all virtuous.  Mrs. Dan T. then bought EGO hedge clippers so now i have two batteries to shuffle.

 

Anyway, I highly recommend the EGO lawn mower.

 

 

 

 

BTW, whatever happened to Mad Mike, who started this thread? 

 

I'm gonna order one tomorrow. Which one you got?

[Dan T.]

11 hours ago, Hersh said:

 

I'm gonna order one tomorrow. Which one you got?

 

 

https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lawn-and-garden/lawn-mowers/push-mowers/7804909

 

Unless you have a real hilly yard, I don't think you need the self-propelled feature...

Edited November 30, 2020 by Dan T.

[China]

Greta Thunberg: 'We are speeding in the wrong direction' on climate crisis

 

The world is speeding in the wrong direction in tackling the climate emergency, Greta Thunberg has said, before a UN event at which national leaders have been asked to increase their pledges for emissions cuts.

 

Thunberg, whose solo school strike in 2018 has snowballed into a global youth movement, said there was a state of complete denial when it came to the immediate action needed, with leaders giving only distant promises and empty words.

 

The fifth anniversary of the Paris climate accord is on Saturday and should have seen countries set out new plans to keep global heating below 2C and close to 1.5C. Current pledges would mean a catastrophic 3C rise in temperatures.

 

But the planned summit has been postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic until next November and a virtual one-day UN meeting will take place instead, involving up to 70 world leaders. The European Union will also try to agree a new 2030 emissions target on Friday at a Brussels summit.

 

Thunberg has released a video which calls leaders to account for failing to reverse rising carbon emissions. “We are still speeding in the wrong direction,” she said. “The five years following the Paris agreement have been the five hottest years ever recorded and, during that time, the world has emitted more than 200bn tonnes of CO2.

 

“Distant hypothetical targets are being set, and big speeches are being given,” she said. “Yet, when it comes to the immediate action we need, we are still in a state of complete denial, as we waste our time, creating new loopholes with empty words and creative accounting.”

 

“We need to stop focusing on goals and targets for 2030 or 2050,” she said. “We need to implement annual binding carbon budgets today.”

 

Thunberg said recent pledges by the UK – to cut carbon emissions by 68% by 2030 compared with 1990 levels – and by China, Japan and South Korea to become net carbon zero were creating a sense of progress, and she added: “That is a very dangerous narrative because of course we’re not going in the right direction. We need to call this out.”

 

Click on the link for the full story