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

[China]

Gianforte Ends Montana's Climate Change Coalition Membership

 

Gov. Greg Gianforte has discontinued Montana's membership in a coalition of two dozen states dedicated to fighting climate change.

 

The U.S. Climate Alliance is a nonpartisan group committed to achieving the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement and avoiding the worst impacts of climate change. Democratic former Gov. Steve Bullock joined the alliance in 2019. The alliance is made up of nearby Western states, including Colorado, Washington and Oregon.

 

Evan Westrup, of the U.S. Climate Alliance, said Gianforte did not respond to the organization’s invitation to continue Montana’s membership, Montana public radio reported.

 

Gianforte spokesperson Brooke Stroyke said in a statement that the governor believes the solution to climate change is unleashing American innovation, not overbearing government mandates. She added that the Paris Agreement punishes the U.S., while letting countries like China off the hook.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Trouble in Alaska? Massive oil pipeline is threatened by thawing permafrost

 

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline, one of the world’s largest oil pipelines, could be in danger.

 

Thawing permafrost threatens to undermine the supports holding up an elevated section of the pipeline, jeopardizing its structural integrity and raising the potential of an oil spill in a delicate and remote landscape.

 

The slope of permafrost where an 810-foot section of the pipeline is secured has started to shift as it thaws, causing several of the braces holding up the pipeline to twist and bend.

This appears to be the first instance that pipeline supports have been damaged by “slope creep” caused by thawing permafrost, records and interviews with officials involved with managing the pipeline show.

 

In response, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources has approved the use of about 100 thermosyphons — tubes that suck heat out of permafrost — to keep the frozen slope in place and prevent further damage to the pipeline’s support structure.

 

“The proposed project is integral to the protection of the pipeline,” according to the department’s November 2020 analysis.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Study suggests that the top 10 percent of gasoline-using drivers consume one-third of all the gas

 

Research from alternative energy non-profit group, Coltura, finds that the top 10 percent of gasoline consuming drivers burn nearly one-third of all the gasoline used by vehicles.

 

According to the study, so-called “Gasoline Superusers” consume more gasoline than the bottom 60 percent of gasoline users combined.

 

The study found that these gasoline superusers typically use more than 1,000 gallons of gas annually, drive larger vehicles, and drive three times as many miles as the average driver.

 

“Getting gasoline superusers into [electric vehicles] as quickly as possible is critical to hitting our climate goals because they consume a third of U.S. gasoline,” said Matthew Metz, the lead author of the report and founder and co-executive director of Coltura.

 

After finding that superusers spend three-times as much of their household budget on gasoline as an average driver, researchers at Coltura believe revising electric vehicle policy to focus on the biggest gasoline users will shift focus to rural, lower and middle-income drivers and away from the wealthier people on the West Coast and in the Northeast who have historically taken most advantage of electric vehicle incentives.

 

“The current flat [electric vehicle] incentives are being used primarily by higher-income drivers who tend not to use much gasoline,” said Janelle London, co-author of the report. “The people who use the most gasoline are more evenly spread across the income spectrum, and many lower-income gasoline superusers spend upwards of 20 percent of their household income on gasoline.”

 

In addition to policy incentives, researchers recommended that manufacturers begin to target the gasoline superuser market when they design new electric vehicles. The study claimed that the superuser demographic is more likely to drive pickups and SUVs, and to live in rural areas.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[NoCalMike]

Anyone catch Abby Martin on Rogan?  I am very selective about my Rogan listening these days but she has a doc coming out about the U.S. Military's empire effect on the climate and health.  

[Larry]

"New study reveals that, if you sort a group of people according to characteristic X, the people who use the most X use more X than the people who use the least X do."

[China]

America Will be Remembered as the Country That Killed the Planet

 

North America, on fire. Massive floods in Europe and Asia. Siberian permafrost melting. Even climate scientists are shocked by it all. It’s happening too fast and too ferociously. We appear to be crossing the threshold into runaway global warming now.

 

So whose fault is it? Who should fix it? Who can fix it?

 

Americans often ask me: “what can I do about all this?” — in that particularly weird, narcissistic, comic-book-hero way (I,” not “we,” as if, yeah, you can fix a whole planet). I’m here to answer that question, in a particularly distressing and uncomfortable way, at least for them.

 

Let me begin with a question.

 

What is America going to be remembered for? Americans are weaned on myths of exceptionalism. America’s the first democracy, the land of the free, history’s most important nation, and so on and so forth. It’s all nonsense. America wasn’t even remotely a democracy until 1971, when Jim Crow ended. Until then, it was the world’s largest apartheid state. Americans are hardly free — they can’t even quit their jobs over basic healthcare.

 

So what is America going to be remembered for? Just being a dysfunctional country that lapsed into fascism — like so many others, from Nazi Germany to modern-day Afghanistan? I suspect it’ll be something much, much darker than that.

 

America will probably be remembered as the country which killed the planet. Ushered in an age of runaway global warming. Led a civilisation to implode. Altered the balance of life as we know it on earth in utterly fatal ways.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

BTW, I object to the title of this piece.  The planet won't be killed.  The planet will keep going regardless.  It may be rendered uninhabitable by/for humans and perhaps some other species, but it won't be killed.

[PeterMP]

2 hours ago, China said:

America Will be Remembered as the Country That Killed the Planet

 

North America, on fire. Massive floods in Europe and Asia. Siberian permafrost melting. Even climate scientists are shocked by it all. It’s happening too fast and too ferociously. We appear to be crossing the threshold into runaway global warming now.

 

So whose fault is it? Who should fix it? Who can fix it?

 

Americans often ask me: “what can I do about all this?” — in that particularly weird, narcissistic, comic-book-hero way (I,” not “we,” as if, yeah, you can fix a whole planet). I’m here to answer that question, in a particularly distressing and uncomfortable way, at least for them.

 

Let me begin with a question.

 

What is America going to be remembered for? Americans are weaned on myths of exceptionalism. America’s the first democracy, the land of the free, history’s most important nation, and so on and so forth. It’s all nonsense. America wasn’t even remotely a democracy until 1971, when Jim Crow ended. Until then, it was the world’s largest apartheid state. Americans are hardly free — they can’t even quit their jobs over basic healthcare.

 

So what is America going to be remembered for? Just being a dysfunctional country that lapsed into fascism — like so many others, from Nazi Germany to modern-day Afghanistan? I suspect it’ll be something much, much darker than that.

 

America will probably be remembered as the country which killed the planet. Ushered in an age of runaway global warming. Led a civilisation to implode. Altered the balance of life as we know it on earth in utterly fatal ways.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

BTW, I object to the title of this piece.  The planet won't be killed.  The planet will keep going regardless.  It may be rendered uninhabitable by/for humans and perhaps some other species, but it won't be killed.

 

This is a bit absurd.  The Chinese (and really the rest of the world) have the ability to NOT make things to sell to others, including the US.  It isn't like we're threatening a nuclear war if they stop producing cheap junk.  The Nazis went to war and killed lots of other people because they believed they were superior to everybody else.  We're buying too much junk that other countries are more than happy to produce as cheaply as possible and sell to us.

 

What would happen if China (and other stopped selling us stuff) is that millions (and maybe billions) of more people's standard of living would decline (drastically).  They (the Chinese and many other countries) have made the decision that the short term positive economic is more beneficial than the longer terms impacts of climate change.

 

If a civilization implosion does happen as a result of climate change, I don't think the result will be a general cursing of Americans.  Certainly, we will be looked on as a failed empire that wasted resources (like essentially every other empire in the history of the world).

 

Any comparison to Nazis is a bit absurd.

 

(I'm generally dubious of the idea that climate change is going to cause human extinction too.  But it is a possibility.  Collapse of society as we know it is more likely than extinction.

 

And I will point out his graph looks even worse if you do it per capita.)

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 26, 2021 by PeterMP

[China]

The world’s top climate scientists have a new warning for Washington

 

Congress is preparing to order the biggest U.S. investment in history for fighting climate change — hundreds of billions of dollars to clean up the power grid, fortify ecosystems and wean American drivers off fossil fuels.

 

But scientists say it won’t be nearly enough.

 

The latest warning is set to arrive Monday from the United Nation's premier climate science panel, whose findings land as wildfires ravage the West, droughts squeeze U.S. farmers, and heatwaves force power companies to ration supplies — and portend even more calamitous events in the coming decades. The document will be the sixth major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group consisting of the world’s leading climate scientists.

 

Lawmakers pushing for an aggressive climate offensive hope the report will finally jolt some action out of Washington. Democrats have managed to include some climate measures in the Senate’s $550 billion infrastructure compromise bill in the Senate and are calling for more sweeping efforts in their expected $3.5 trillion reconciliation package.

 

“This is why I’m anxious to see the IPCC report,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) said in an interview. "It seems as though it may point to tipping point disasters that could warn that we have far less time than previously thought."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Smoke from wildfires reaches North Pole for first time in recorded history

 

Wildfire smoke has made it to the North Pole for the first time in recorded history, NASA said, as multiple blazes continued to rage across Russia on Tuesday. One of the country's coldest regions has been especially hard hit, with smoke so bad that it blacked out the sun, the Guardian newspaper reported.

 

The Sakha Republic in Siberia is one of the coldest areas in the world and sits on top of permafrost. This year it has seen record high temperatures and drought, and vast swaths of its forests have burned.

 

"There have always been large fires in Siberia. It is a landscape evolved to burn," Jessica McCarty, an earth scientist at Miami University in Ohio, told NASA's Earth Observatory. "What is different because of climate change is that fires are burning larger areas, affecting places farther to the north, and consuming fuels that would have been more fire resistant in the past."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

 

[China]

Rain fell at the normally snowy summit of Greenland for the first time on record

 

For the first time on record, precipitation on Saturday at the summit of Greenland — roughly two miles above sea level — fell as rain and not snow.

 

Temperatures at the Greenland summit over the weekend rose above freezing for the third time in less than a decade. The warm air fueled an extreme rain event that dumped 7 billion tons of water on the ice sheet, enough to fill the Reflecting Pool at the National Mall in Washington, DC, nearly 250,000 times.

It was the heaviest rainfall on the ice sheet since record keeping began in 1950, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, and the amount of ice mass lost on Sunday was seven times higher than the daily average for this time of year.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

 

[China]

Climate change: World's Christian leaders release first joint statement demanding urgent action

 

The world's most prominent Christian leaders have joined forces to persuade people to urgently address the climate change crisis.

 

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew - spiritual leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church - released their first joint statement on Tuesday calling on everyone to "choose life" by "examining their behaviour" and making "meaningful sacrifices for the sake of the earth".

 

They suggested how people are already "paying the price" and warned how "tomorrow could be worse".

 

The religious leaders also described the "profound injustice" that the world's poorest people would suffer the most "catastrophic consequences" of humans abusing the planet, despite being "least responsible".

 

The joint statement said: "We call on everyone, whatever their belief or world view, to endeavour to listen to the cry of the earth and of people who are poor, examining their behaviour and pledging meaningful sacrifices for the sake of the earth, which God has given us."

 

"This is a critical moment," the statement added.

 

"Our children's future and the future of our common home depend on it."

 

Human beings had "greedily consumed more of the earth's resources than the planet can endure," the Christian leaders said, adding: "We stand before a harsh justice: biodiversity loss, environmental degradation and climate change are the inevitable consequences of our actions."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[LD0506]

[skinsmarydu]

I'm in the next state up...NO!!!

[Jabbyrwock]

30 minutes ago, LD0506 said:

 

I don't get it...I mean I used to live in Florida and I moved to another....

 

...hey...

 

 

[skinsmarydu]

Btw, I say that as a native Floridian.  Born in the land of Goofy. 

[Riggo-toni]

If you don't have time for the whole video, skip to about the 19 minute mark. Simple cheap solution to feed a growing population and bring carbon back to pre-industrial levels.  Or, there's a transcript in the link below.

https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertification_and_reverse_climate_change/transcript?language=en

 

[China]

Glasgow climate summit at risk of failure, UN chief warns

 

A critical meeting on climate change later this year in Scotland is at risk of failure due to mistrust between developed and developing countries and a lack of ambitious goals among some emerging economies, UN chief Antonio Guterres has said.

 

“I believe that we are at risk of not having a success in COP26,” Guterres told Reuters news agency on Wednesday.

 

The UN COP26 conference in Glasgow aims to wring much more ambitious climate action, and the money to go with it, from participants around the globe.

 

“There is still a level of mistrust, between north and south, developed and developing countries, that needs to be overcome. We are on the verge of the abyss and when you are on the verge of the abyss, you need to be very careful about what the next step is. And the next step is COP26 in Glasgow.”

 

A report published by a range of UN agencies on Thursday said the pace of climate change has not been slowed by the global COVID-19 pandemic, and the world remains behind in its battle to cut carbon emissions.

 

There is now a 40 percent chance that average global temperature in one of the next five years will be at least 1.5C (2.7F) warmer than pre-industrial levels, the report said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[EmirOfShmo]

I'm surprised at #8 on the list. Not shocked at the rest of these cities as I've seen the flooding in all of them over the years.

 

Cities are sinking due to climate change and human activity.

 

There’s no denying the fact that climate change is real. The sea levels are rising and the global temperature is increasing at an alarming rate. More than 200 medical journals have published a statement underscoring that the results of an increase in global temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius will be catastrophic. A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change warned that extreme sea levels will become more common by the end of the century around the world and the rise will be 1-2 meters by 2100. NASA predicts that high tide floods will also cause severe flooding in the U.S.’s coastal areas. The findings aren’t mere predictions; the U.S. has fought back-to-back extreme weather crises this year.

The Maldives—the world’s lowest-lying country—is at risk of disappearing, so it’s planning a floating city as a means of survival. But there are many other cities around the world that are facing this threat due to rising sea levels and subsidence (over-extraction of groundwater that makes the land sink). Here’s a round-up of what the world is facing losing by 2100 if things don’t change. 

 

https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/these-11-cities-are-sinking-they-could-be-gone-by-2100

 

[TheGreatBuzz]

20 minutes ago, EmirOfShmo said:

I'm surprised at #8 on the list.

 

I live here and am not surprised at all.  A strong morning dew causes flooding around here.

[Jabbyrwock]

5 minutes ago, TheGreatBuzz said:

 

I live here and am not surprised at all.  A strong morning dew causes flooding around here.

 

Move to the mountains!  We got no problems up here.

 

[China]

3 hours ago, TheGreatBuzz said:

 

I live here and am not surprised at all.  A strong morning dew causes flooding around here.

 

Yes, the Navy is well aware of the problem.

[China]

 

[China]

Chinese President ‘boycotts’ COP26 hinting he won’t comply with climate goals

 

 

The President of China is set to snub a crucial climate change summit hosted by the UK later this month, reports say.

 

The move would be a major blow to Boris Johnson’s government and intensify international fears that the COP26 conference in Glasgow will flop.

 

Xi Jinping’s presence at the event has been in doubt for some time, but now diplomats have told Boris Johnson that the Chinese leader will not attend, according to The Times.

 

The summit is seen as a critical moment in the battle against the climate crisis and well over 100 world leaders are expected to be there, including USA President Joe Biden.

 

On Friday morning, it was also confirmed that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a climate change sceptic, would attend, amid calls from Prince Charles for him to do so.

 

But action from China is widely seen as essential to stopping environmental meltdown and President Xi’s snub will raise fears that government there is not serious about the challenges ahead.

 

Click on the link for the full article