Real World Event Discussions

human actions, global climate change, global human solutions

POSTED BY: 1kiki
UPDATED: Monday, September 14, 2026 13:16
VIEWED: 61787
PAGE 10 of 12

Thursday, October 3, 2024 2:51 AM (P)

The science of prophecy

By Joel Eissenberg | October 1, 2024 8:49 am

https://angrybearblog.com/2024/10/the-science-of-prophecy

The existential threat to humanity in this century is climate change. It is estimated that upwards of half a billion people will be displaced by flooding, fires and desertification due to global warming.

But such frightening predictions are based on climate modeling. How reliable are these models? It turns out, remarkably reliable:

“Climate change doubters have a favorite target: climate models. They claim that computer simulations conducted decades ago didn’t accurately predict current warming, so the public should be wary of the predictive power of newer models. Now, the most sweeping evaluation of these older models—some half a century old—shows most of them were indeed accurate.”

*snip*

“The researchers compared annual average surface temperatures across the globe to the surface temperatures predicted in 17 forecasts. Those predictions were drawn from 14 separate computer models released between 1970 and 2001. In some cases, the studies and their computer codes were so old that the team had to extract data published in papers, using special software to gauge the exact numbers represented by points on a printed graph.

“Most of the models accurately predicted recent global surface temperatures, which have risen approximately 0.9°C since 1970. For 10 forecasts, there was no statistically significant difference between their output and historic observations, the team reports today in Geophysical Research Letters.”

Much more at: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

Study debunks idea that older models were inaccurate

By Warren Cornwall | 4 Dec 2019

https://www.science.org/content/article/even-50-year-old-climate-model
s-correctly-predicted-global-warming


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, October 3, 2024 3:13 AM (P)

Bill Nye the Bachelor's Degree Guy & Science Fetishization



--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, October 7, 2024 4:19 PM (P)

Before Hurricane Helene, A Perfect Storm Of Climate Denialism

North Carolina was once a climate leader, but more than a decade of Republican and corporate obstruction left the state ill-prepared for the historic disaster.

In the years before Hurricane Helene ravaged North Carolina last week, the state’s Republican lawmakers and corporate interests continually fought climate adaptation and mitigation measures that could have helped communities withstand the storm’s tidal surge, hurricane-force winds, and widespread flooding.

While North Carolina was once a national leader in renewable energy and climate change resiliency policies, that changed in the early 2010s when Republicans secured control of both chambers of the state’s legislature and a former utility company executive moved into the governor’s mansion. Since then, GOP politicians and their big-business allies have sabotaged climate resiliency projects, delayed plans to embrace renewable energy, and stonewalled efforts to prepare the state for stronger storms and a rising sea.

More at https://www.levernews.com/before-hurricane-helene-a-perfect-storm-of-c
limate-denialism
/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, October 7, 2024 4:21 PM (P)

Believe Me, Climate Change is a Chinese Hoax -- Trump

An editorial in The Charlotte Observer:

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article293483114.html

Western North Carolina is trying to pick up the pieces left behind by Hurricane Helene, which decimated the region, leaving communities destroyed and a death toll in the triple digits.

This is not a situation to capitalize on for political gain. But former President Donald Trump has politicized the situation at every turn, spreading falsehoods and conspiracies that fracture the community instead of bringing it together.

The worst example is a social media post Trump made on Monday, in which he accused the federal government and Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper of “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas. MAGA!” That same day, Trump also posted that the Biden administration has “left Americans to drown” in North Carolina and other states.

Then, in an interview with his former adviser Kellyanne Conway, Trump doubled down on his claim, saying the government is “going out of their way to hurt” Trump voters in Western North Carolina.

“They’re not getting water, they’re not getting anything,” Trump said.

Trump has also said that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp couldn’t get President Joe Biden on the phone to help his state with hurricane relief — a claim that Kemp himself debunked — and falsely claimed that the government doesn’t have enough money to respond to the disaster because “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants.” He’s called it “the worst response in the history of hurricanes” and suggested it would be the Biden administration’s own Hurricane Katrina.

There’s no evidence to support any of those ridiculous claims. And by every indication, state and federal agencies have been working to help people in need. They’ve been airlifting food and other supplies to affected areas. Helping families get information about missing loved ones. Providing monetary assistance to folks whose homes were destroyed. Working to clear and repair roads and get critical infrastructure back up and running.

It may not be enough, because this is one of the worst disasters our state has ever seen. It will take months and years to rebuild, and we still won’t be able to recover everything that was lost. But the people of North Carolina have not been left out to dry. Their government has not abandoned them. The Republican governors of Georgia and South Carolina have expressed satisfaction with the federal response.

Trump knows that. So does Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who accused Cooper and Biden of not doing enough to prepare for and respond to the storm. Robinson has used the tragedy for photo ops and posts on social media and predicted he will be called a “hero” for his efforts to help victims, despite the fact that he missed a key vote to declare a state of emergency in preparation for the storm. Trump’s claims are as hypocritical as they are harmful. POLITICO’s E&E News reported this week that, as president, Trump could be “flagrantly partisan” in times of disaster and “on at least three occasions hesitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile or ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states.” According to the report, Trump was hesitant to send disaster aid when California was ravaged by wildfires in 2018 until he learned the affected part of the state was saturated with Trump voters.

Let’s be clear: Western North Carolina is not a political football. This is not a campaign opportunity. The most unhelpful thing any politician — or anyone else — can do right now is spread misinformation and tell people that their government isn’t doing anything to help them.

Sowing the seeds of political division is always an unnecessary and tiresome endeavor. But doing so in times of great need, when unity is paramount, is particularly shameful.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https:

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, October 8, 2024 4:30 AM (P)

In a survey, 90% of Floridians said they believe that climate change is happening.
But less than half of all respondents (48%) said they would be willing to pay $10 a month to strengthen Florida’s infrastructure to weather hazards.

https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/climate-resilience-survey

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, October 8, 2024 5:34 PM (P)

Who’s Taking Out the Ashes?

By Monte Davis | Tuesday, Oct 8, 2024 5:00AM

https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/10/whos-taking-out-the-ashe
s.html


Fossil fuels aren’t pure carbon, of course, and combustion rarely burns every bit of what there is, so the emission ratio varies. Coal typically yields 2.1 times its mass in CO2; firewood, 1.6 to 1.8 times; gasoline, 2.3 times; natural gas, about 2.8 times.

Picture Georgia Power’s 3.5-gigawatt Plant Scherer, near Macon, the largest coal-fired power plant in the US. It came on line in the 1980s, and at peak output required up to five trains a day, 100 coal cars or more long, from the Powder River basin in Wyoming. In 2018 it burned on the order of 9 million tons of coal, with CO2 emissions of 20 million tons.

Now, picture that 20 million tons of CO2 not drifting invisibly away from the smokestacks, but being dealt with: Stored in a giant tank farm. Pumped into pipelines or long trains of tank cars. At the end of its journey, forced down large numbers of dedicated shafts by powerful pumps. And that is what’s going to happen to nearly all of it, because while there is a market for CO2 in industrial processes, it’s trivial compared to supply on this scale. So nearly all that new investment and operating cost is economic dead weight: 20 million tons of former “externality” turned into the utility’s red ink. Even if coal-fired generation weren’t already under a lot of pressure from cheaper oil and gas, its economics can’t possibly survive that burden.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, October 8, 2024 11:00 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Believe Me, Climate Change is a Chinese Hoax -- Trump

Another one of those policies where Trump and I part ways. It's too bad that the one Presidential candidate who has a record of caring about America... as opposed to caring about transnationals and financialists ... also happens to be blowhard salesman with ADHD.

Quote:

An editorial in The Charlotte Observer:

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article293483114.html

Western North Carolina is trying to pick up the pieces left behind by Hurricane Helene, which decimated the region, leaving communities destroyed and a death toll in the triple digits.

This is not a situation to capitalize on for political gain.

Dood. EVERY crisis, real, imagined, or something in between, has been turned by the DNC and deep state in an oppty for more power. "Never let a good crisis go to waste" ring any bells?

Quote:

But former President Donald Trump has politicized the situation at every turn, spreading falsehoods and conspiracies that fracture the community instead of bringing it together.
Which means .... what, exactly? Does this hamper rescue and aid efforts? The WH's best publicity is an effective, coordinated effort.

Quote:

The worst example is a social media post Trump made on Monday, in which he accused the federal government and Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper of “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas. MAGA!” That same day, Trump also posted that the Biden administration has “left Americans to drown” in North Carolina and other states.

Then, in an interview with his former adviser Kellyanne Conway, Trump doubled down on his claim, saying the government is “going out of their way to hurt” Trump voters in Western North Carolina.

“They’re not getting water, they’re not getting anything,” Trump said.and

which is true. So, why aren't they?

Quote:

Trump has also said that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp couldn’t get President Joe Biden on the phone to help his state with hurricane relief — a claim that Kemp himself debunked — and falsely claimed that the government doesn’t have enough money to respond to the disaster because “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants.” He’s called it “the worst response in the history of hurricanes” and suggested it would be the Biden administration’s own Hurricane Katrina.
I dont know if it's the worst response, but it's certainly not very good.

Quote:

There’s no evidence to support any of those ridiculous claims.
there's evidence that FEMA'S response is flat footed, somewhere between dysfunctional and counterproductive.

If FEMA is doing such a great job, why aren't we hearing about it? Its ok to take credit for a job well done!

Quote:

And by every indication, state and federal agencies have been "working to help" people in need. They’ve been airlifting food and other supplies to affected areas. Helping families get information about missing loved ones. Providing monetary assistance to folks whose homes were destroyed. Working to clear and repair roads and get critical infrastructure back up and running.
Well, by gosh! It's good to know they've been "working on it"!

Any metrics as to how they're doing? Timelines? Areas assisted and areas remaining?


Quote:

It may not be enough,...


Apparently it isn't.

But the WH, and Congress, would rather send a few hundred billion to Ukraine and a few more billion to Israel, instead of preparing for disaster.

The main point is that WH's and Congress' priorities are fucked up, and someone should un-fuck them.
Looks like a case of AMERICA LAST.

MAGA.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, October 9, 2024 4:04 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Believe Me, Climate Change is a Chinese Hoax -- Trump

Another one of those policies where Trump and I part ways. It's too bad that the one Presidential candidate who has a record of caring about America... as opposed to caring about transnationals and financialists ... also happens to be blowhard salesman with ADHD.

Before Trump came along, every Republican I knew in the hydrocarbon industry was saying anthropogenic climate change is fake, will always be bogus, and can never be the truth. To be a leader of the GOP, Trump has to follow the wisdom of the mob he is nominally leader of. Therefore: Climate Change is a Hoax. For Trump to take a different direction than the mob is heading would be as absurd as Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, worrying about the plight of slaves and calling for emancipation. The Confederates would have abandoned Jeff. The oil & gas executives would abandon Trump if he changes.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, October 9, 2024 9:28 AM (P)

Better to have a President who cares about America, no matter how mistakenly, than a President who would sell us down river.

We can always correct mistakes. It's much harder to fix deliberate corruption.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, October 10, 2024 11:27 AM (P)

Some are saying that with Hurricanes Helene and Milton as October Surprise in Election Year, Geo Tech is becoming too obvious.

But I've been hearing The Ministry of Truth openly scoff at and denounce Geo Tech and Agro Tech, even amidst Helene and Milton.

But apparently Monsanto Bayer (big investor: Billy boy Gates) is making gobs of $$ from their Weather Insurance Department right now. Must be coincidence.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, October 11, 2024 4:45 PM (P)

Hurricane Helene isn’t an outlier. It’s a harbinger of the future.

By John Morales | September 30, 2024

https://thebulletin.org/2024/09/hurricane-helene-isnt-an-outlier-its-a
-harbinger-of-the-future
/

Something’s shifted. And it’s not just the climate.

Even before being named a tropical storm, I knew that what would become Mean Helene was set on a mission to be yet another multibillion-dollar disaster. I knew that it would undergo rapid intensification and become a catastrophic hurricane. And I knew that a calamitous rainfall event would unfold in the Southeast many hours after landfall.

So, I did what I’ve done during my entire 40 year career—I tried to warn people. Except that the warning was not well received by everyone. A person accused me of being a “climate militant,” a suggestion that I’m embellishing extreme weather threats to drive an agenda. Another simply said that my predictions were “an exaggeration.”

But it wasn’t an exaggeration.

More at https://thebulletin.org/2024/09/hurricane-helene-isnt-an-outlier-its-a
-harbinger-of-the-future
/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, October 11, 2024 4:55 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Better to have a President who cares about America, no matter how mistakenly, than a President who would sell us down river.

We can always correct mistakes. It's much harder to fix deliberate corruption.

Signym, you are out of touch with reality. A "caring" Trump or a "caring" JD Vance will be too late to correct their mistake.

When the Arctic Melts

By Elizabeth Kolbert | Oct 7, 2024

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/when-the-arctic-melts

The story of climate change is generally told in terms of human action, and for good reason. The almost two trillion tons of CO2 that people have pumped into the atmosphere have changed the planet in ways that every day become more apparent. Last year, average global temperatures set a new record, and by a wide margin. Canada experienced record wildfires; the Caribbean saw record ocean temperatures, which devastated its coral reefs; and Libya was hit with record rainfall, which led to a dam collapse that killed more than five thousand people. This year’s global temperatures will almost certainly surpass last year’s. Among the many climate-related disasters of 2024 so far have been a heat wave in Mecca that killed thirteen hundred pilgrims during the hajj and Hurricane Helene, which caused at least twenty billion dollars’ worth of damage. How people—or governments and corporations, run by people—respond to the mounting losses will have repercussions that will last, for all intents and purposes, forever. As no less an authority than the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put it, upon releasing its latest scientific assessment, “The future is in our hands.”

But, like so many stories that get told, this one doesn’t tell the whole story. The future depends on how humanity reacts to global warming, and it also depends on how the Earth does. Owing to advances in everything from satellite altimetry to deep-sea drilling, a great deal has been learned in the past few decades about the planet’s history. Much of the new science suggests that the climate is, all on its own, unstable, prone to dramatic and sometimes sudden shifts.

The history of Greenland is a case in point. During what’s known as the Last Glacial Maximum, some twenty thousand years ago, an ice sheet stretched more or less continuously from Greenland across Ellesmere and Baffin Islands and down over Canada and much of the northern United States. So much water was tied up in the ice that sea levels were four hundred feet lower than they are today, and it was possible to walk not just from Siberia to Alaska but also from Australia to Tasmania and from England to France. When the ice began to recede, around fifteen thousand years ago, large swaths of the world experienced catastrophic flooding. During one particularly sodden period, known as meltwater pulse 1A, sea levels rose by more than a foot a decade.

Most scientists believe that ice ages—there have been at least ten of them over the past two and half million years—are initiated and terminated by periodic shifts in the Earth’s orbit, caused by, among other factors, the tug of Jupiter and Saturn. But orbital shifts produce only slight changes in the amount of sunlight that reaches different parts of the globe at different times of the year. Such slight variations are insufficient to explain the growth and subsequent retreat of massive ice sheets. Rather, it seems, the orbital shifts act like a trigger, setting off other processes—feedbacks—that greatly amplify their effect. One relatively straightforward feedback features albedo, from the Latin word for “whiteness.” Ice and especially snow have a high albedo. They reflect lots of sunlight back to space. Thus, as an ice sheet grows, the planet absorbs less energy. This has a cooling effect, which encourages the buildup of more snow and ice, which results in more reflectivity, and so on. Start to melt an ice sheet and the same cycle spins in reverse.

Today, feedbacks are, to put it mildly, a growing

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, October 14, 2024 4:02 AM (P)

A top energy strategist is optimistic about climate change. And he has the data to back that up.

The Associated Press | October 7, 2024, 6:00 AM

Q: You said there were 24 key technologies. What are the top five?

A: So let’s say that it’s 38 gigatons of (CO2) emissions that you need to mitigate. Solar photovoltaic alone will mitigate 11 gigatons. Batteries and EVs separately are the next important, which is about 5.5 gigatons each. And CCUS (carbon capture, utilization and storage) also has the potential to mitigate 5.5 gigatons. The fifth is wind, which is also like 5.5 gigatons. (11+5.5+5.5+5.5+5.5 = 33 gigatons)

Q: What’s the one technology no one has heard about yet?

A: For instance, high temperature energy storage. One is called “the sun in the box,” this big block of graphite, or black carbon, and you can heat the block to 2,000 degrees, and you do that when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining.

You can have solar panels inside producing electricity from the wavelength radiation from the block, and you have pipes into it with super hot high pressure water, so you can choose whether you want to take out the energy as electricity or as hot over-pressurized water, for instance for metal production... Just one example of a new long duration storage technology.

Q: Are you an optimist or a pessimist about holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century?

A: Some people call me climate optimistic but I’m quite fact-based on this. It is possible, for CO2 alone, to limit emissions to 650 gigatons, which corresponds to 1.6 degrees warming, and if you do something with methane on top of that, 1.5 degrees is still within reach.

The iPhone disrupted the media, and solar and batteries will be such a disruptive technology, because they’re cheaper and better. People underestimate how fast it will go. In 1945 it was all steam locomotives and by 1960 they were all diesel electric, only 15 years to change a gigantic system, because the new technology was cheaper and better.

https://wtop.com/news/2024/10/a-top-energy-strategist-is-optimistic-ab
out-climate-change-and-he-has-the-data-to-back-that-up
/

https://eedition.houstonchronicle.com/infinity/article_popover_share.a
spx?guid=8a5b78c2-86cf-44e3-a16e-cd3d216f3412&share=true


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, October 14, 2024 4:36 AM (P)

Well that's just it.

Until you actually make it cheaper and better don't expect one ounce of your research to ever amount to anything.

Don't waste time taking interviews for idiots to read. Get your ass back to work and figure it out.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, October 25, 2024 11:20 PM (P)

World on track for catastrophic 3 degrees Celsius warming, UN warns

October 24, 2024 4:01 pm CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/united-nations-emissions-gap-global-wa
rming-data-climate-change-report
/

The world is already 1.3C hotter than before the Industrial Revolution, and planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to rise, increasing by 1.3 percent last year compared with 2022.

As a result, limiting warming to the relative safety of the Paris targets has become more difficult, requiring even steeper annual emissions cuts of 7.5 percent or 4 percent by 2030 for 1.5C or 2C, respectively.

With the policies currently in place across the globe, the world is heading for 3.1C of warming by the end of the century, the report says. Measures outlined in current NDCs, which haven’t been fully implemented, would bring that down to between 2.6C and 2.8C.

Even the best-case scenario of 2.6C, however, represents “catastrophic” warming with “debilitating impacts to people, planet and economies,” the U.N. warns.


Progress among the G20 is a mixed bag: China’s emissions grew 5.2 percent in 2023, while the EU’s fell 7.5 percent; and while China is much more populous, its per-capita emissions in 2023 were 11 tons to the EU’s 7.3 tons.

U.S. emissions fell by 1.4 percent, but American per-capita emissions remain the second-highest at 18 tons after Russia’s 19 tons.

Full report is here: https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2024

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, October 26, 2024 2:54 AM (P)

Capturing Carbon From the Air Just Got Easier

By University of California - Berkeley | October 25, 2024

UC Berkeley graduate student Zihui Zhou, the paper’s first author, said that a mere 200 grams of the material, a bit less than half a pound, can take up as much CO2 in a year — 20 kilograms (44 pounds) — as a tree.

“Flue gas capture is a way to slow down climate change because you are trying not to release CO2 to the air. Direct air capture is a method to take us back to like it was 100 or more years ago,” Zhou said. “Currently, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is more than 420 ppm, but that will increase to maybe 500 or 550 before we fully develop and employ flue gas capture. So if we want to decrease the concentration and go back to maybe 400 or 300 ppm, we have to use direct air capture.”

https://scitechdaily.com/berkeleys-magic-material-capturing-carbon-fro
m-the-air-just-got-easier
/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, October 26, 2024 3:37 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Capturing Carbon From the Air Just Got Easier

By University of California - Berkeley | October 25, 2024

UC Berkeley graduate student Zihui Zhou, the paper’s first author, said that a mere 200 grams of the material, a bit less than half a pound, can take up as much CO2 in a year — 20 kilograms (44 pounds) — as a tree.

“Flue gas capture is a way to slow down climate change because you are trying not to release CO2 to the air. Direct air capture is a method to take us back to like it was 100 or more years ago,” Zhou said. “Currently, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is more than 420 ppm, but that will increase to maybe 500 or 550 before we fully develop and employ flue gas capture. So if we want to decrease the concentration and go back to maybe 400 or 300 ppm, we have to use direct air capture.”

https://scitechdaily.com/berkeleys-magic-material-capturing-carbon-fro
m-the-air-just-got-easier
/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two



I'm looking forward to Thunderf00t debunking these claims, like he always does. Maybe it will get him to focus on something other than Elon Musk. That dude obsesses over Elon more than Second and Ted obsess over Trump.

The media really needs to stop reporting on magic that breaks the laws of thermodynamics until it's tested and proven to be viable.

Anybody remember the Theranos debacle?

Or our very own "Solar Freakin' Roadways"?

"Waterseer"? The "Hyper Loop"? How about a nanotube skyscraper/elevator held up by a satellite that would allow us to get spaceships out of the atmosphere without
burning 2 Million times per second what you use while driving your car?

I'm glad that we're trying to figure things like these out. I wish the reporting on them was a LOT better than it is though. Everybody is so busy chasing waterfalls that they forget to actually fact check claims that are almost always proven to be unfounded in hindsight.

That's a very expensive lesson that the international auto-industry found out the hard way when they realized nobody wants their shitty 1st generation electric cars, and the low number of early adopters they did con into it will evaporate once they realize that there is no used car market for them and your car is headed to the junkyard for $500 when the battery dies.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, October 28, 2024 3:00 PM (P)

World on pace for significantly more warming without immediate climate action, report warns

https://www.newsday.com/news/nation/climate-change-chaos-warming-15-po
llution-carbon-k56947


Carl Sagan calmly told Congress what would happen to our climate

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, October 28, 2024 9:53 PM (P)

Greenhouse gases surged to new highs in 2023, warns UN weather agency

28 October 2024 | Climate and Environment

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/10/1156186

New data released by the UN on Monday indicating that greenhouse gases have hit a record high shows once again that urgent action and not words is needed from the world’s major polluters to protect us all from climate change, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) insisted.

The WMO report pointed out that from 1990 to 2023, radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate from greenhouse gases increased by 51.5 per cent. CO2 accounted for more than 80 per cent of this increase, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Annual Greenhouse Gas Index.

Toxic relationship

“As long as emissions continue, greenhouse gases will continue accumulating in the atmosphere leading to global temperature rise,” the UN agency said. “Given the extremely long life of CO2 in the atmosphere, the temperature level already observed will persist for several decades even if emissions are rapidly reduced to net zero.”

Asked about whether the UN climate conference might be expected to yield tangible commitments from countries, the WMO Deputy Secretary-General noted that politicians worldwide do reference the latest scientific climate findings and forecasts in their public declarations. “So I do think they are listening, the question is to what degree will we see that manifest at COP29 in action,” she said.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, October 30, 2024 4:46 AM (P)

Two major laws passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden provide new money and new requirements for reducing potent methane emissions, including those coming from abandoned oil and gas wells. Now the federal government has started awarding some contracts for capping those wells. But the election could impact whether this work will continue, since former President Donald Trump wants to reverse many rules and recently referred to climate concerns as a scam.

MILES O'BRIEN: Methane traps about 80 times more heat during a 20-year lifetime than carbon dioxide. It is responsible for about 30 percent of human-caused global warming, and about 8 percent of methane emissions in Pennsylvania are linked to orphaned and abandoned wells.



The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, November 1, 2024 12:25 AM (P)

EU greenhouse gas emissions down 8 percent in 2023
Accelerating rollout of renewable energy sources drives stunning drop.

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-greenhouse-gas-emissions-down-8-per
cent-in-2023
/

The European Union’s greenhouse gas output plummeted 8.3 percent in 2023, a flagship report released Thursday revealed.

It's an annual drop not seen in decades, the EU said, driven by the accelerating rollout of renewable energy sources across the Continent.

https://climate.ec.europa.eu/document/download/d0671350-37f2-4bc4-88e8
-088d0508fb03_en


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

THG
Saturday, November 2, 2024 6:37 AM (P)

T

Climate Change Will Be Different for Everyone

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, November 2, 2024 6:45 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
T


Climate Change Will Be Different for Everyone



A little chilly for some. A little warm for others. Depending on where you live you might want to opt for shorts in some cases, but wear a jacket in other places or you might catch a cold.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, November 7, 2024 4:37 PM (P)

some 'Art'

Unhappily Ever After: Meet the artist placing Disney characters in dystopian situations

https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/entertainment/unhappily-ever-
after-disney-dystopia-jeff-hong-412961

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, November 9, 2024 10:11 PM (P)

The climate crisis

This is the overwhelming challenge facing humanity, and Trump’s gaslighting — dismissing it as “a hoax” — has been astonishingly effective in keeping it off the political stage. For all our scientific and technological capacity, we simply have no way to comprehend how the climate crisis will damage human civilization over the long term. More immediately, tens of millions of people are already climate refugees, and hundreds of millions more surely will be.

Climate is arguably the main reason that Central Americans have replaced Mexicans as the largest population seeking entry to the U.S. since Trump first took office, so gaslighting on climate change was essential to making his “immigrant crime” narrative work. Hurricane Helene presented the perfect opportunity for bringing the climate crisis into the campaign. The damage done was almost 1% of U.S. national GDP, far exceeding annual government spending to combat climate change. It was the moment for a supremely important public policy discussion, but Trump’s gaslighting helped keep it entirely off the agenda.

There are thousands of pages of documents making clear that the fossil fuel industry has known about the dangers of climate change for decades, and lied about them. But Trump of course claims the exact opposite: the scientists, or perhaps the Chinese, are pulling off “a hoax.” It’s classic gaslighting.

https://www.salon.com/2024/11/09/six-big-lies-that-won-the-election-ho
w-donald-gaslit-america
/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 11, 2024 5:05 PM (P)

How the existential terror of hurricanes can fuel climate change denial

October 30, 2024 8:40am EDT

https://theconversation.com/time-to-freak-out-how-the-existential-terr
or-of-hurricanes-can-fuel-climate-change-denial-242390


Many people deny that climate change is a worsening threat or that it exists at all. As its impacts grow more visible and destructive, how is this possible?

One answer lies in a unique facet of human psychology – specifically, in how people manage the fear aroused by existential threats. For many people, denying the existence of a climate crisis is not only convenient but may feel psychologically necessary.

Terror Management Theory

The Pulitzer Prize-winning anthropologist Ernest Becker put it this way: “The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else … to overcome it by denying it in some way is the final destiny for man.”

In plain terms, he was saying that most people struggle to accept their mortality and take pains to distort their perception of reality to avoid confronting it.

In the 1980s, social psychologists developed “terror management theory,” showing the lengths people go to deny death. Hundreds of experiments have tested its implications. In a common method, participants reflect on their own death, while control groups consider less threatening topics, like dental pain. The key question: What does death awareness do to people?

After writing about death, people tend to quickly move on, pushing thoughts of it from consciousness with distractions, rationalizations, and other tactics. Healthcare professionals see this every day. For example, people often dodge screenings and diagnostic tests to avoid the frightening possibility of discovering cancer.

But here’s the rub: Terror management theory suggests that when people are not thinking about death, it nevertheless holds influence. The unconscious mind lingers on the problem even after people have used strategies to quiet the fear by pushing it from awareness.

Social psychology experiments show that people often cope with the specter of death by attaching themselves to cultural ideologies, such as religious, political, or even sports fandom. These worldviews imbue life with meaning, values, and purpose. And that can ease the terror of mortality by connecting people to an enduring and comforting web of ideas and beliefs that transcend one’s own existence.

When people are made aware of death, those systems of meaning become even more critical to their psychological functioning. Existential threats make us cling even tighter to the meaning systems that sustain us.

Climate Denial as a Defense Mechanism

Much like a terror management lab experiment – or the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic– natural disasters like hurricanes Helene and Milton trigger death anxiety.

Rising sea levels, warming oceans, and intensifying storms– all tied to global warming fueled by human actions– represent an existential threat.

From our perspective, it is not surprising that climate-related disasters disappear from the public consciousness almost as soon as they have passed. Google Trends data exemplifies this: Incoming storms instigated an uptick in searches for “climate change” and “global warming” in the days before Hurricane Helene made landfall on Sept. 26, 2024, and Hurricane Milton on Oct. 9, 2024. Then, those searches quickly declined as people shifted their focus away from the threat.

Unfortunately, climate change isn’t going away, no matter how hard anyone tries to deny it.

While climate denial allows people to protect themselves from feelings of distress, terror management theory suggests that denying death is just the tip of the iceberg. For some people, accepting the reality of climate change would necessitate reevaluating their ideologies.

Terror management theory predicts that individuals whose ideologies conflict with environmental concerns may ironically double down on those beliefs to psychologically manage the existential threat posed by climate-related disasters. It’

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, November 13, 2024 12:41 AM (P)

Biden just finalized a major climate rule. This one could be tricky for Trump to dismantle

By Ella Nilsen | Tue November 12, 2024

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/12/climate/methane-rule-biden-trump/index.
html


The new methane rule charges companies a fee for leaking or flaring methane into the atmosphere instead of capturing it.

The Environmental Protection Agency just finalized one of the Biden administration’s only outstanding climate rules, aimed at cracking down on leaks of methane — a potent planet-warming gas with an outsized impact on the climate.

The rule, proposed nearly a year ago, was mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act, which could make it more difficult for the second Trump administration to dismantle.

The new rule charges high-emitting oil and gas producers a fee for wasting methane above a certain threshold by venting or flaring it into the atmosphere instead of capturing it. The methane fee will be charged by the federal government until the companies fix the leaks.

This fee was paired with financial incentives for oil and gas companies to fix leaky pipelines or infrastructure.

Methane is an odorless and invisible gas that has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide. Methane is the main component of the gas that heats our homes and powers our stoves, and it’s one of the main byproducts of oil and gas drilling.

It’s also dramatically warming the planet. An international body of scientists has concluded that the concentration of methane in the atmosphere is higher now than any time in at least 800,000 years. It’s responsible for as much as a third of the global warming the planet has experienced so far, according to the EPA.

The rule could prove tricky for the incoming Trump administration to overturn because the program was included in Biden’s climate law, which passed Congress in 2022. Undoing it would take another act of Congress; while not impossible if Republicans take the House of Representatives, it could be an uphill climb and take longer than if the Trump administration were acting on its own.

“EPA has been engaging with industry, states, and communities to reduce methane emissions so that natural gas ultimately makes it to consumers as usable fuel instead of as a harmful greenhouse gas,” EPA administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.

According to the EPA, this rule alone would prevent 1.2 million metric tons of methane from polluting the atmosphere – the equivalent of taking nearly 8 million gas-powered cars off the road for a year.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, November 13, 2024 1:12 AM (P)

I always get a laugh out of them, but then I kind of get a little pissed off when I see the neverending torches burning alongside the roads in Joliet, IL. Those are methane relief pipes they needed to install everywhere since the entire city was built on a landfill.

Can't we harness that energy somehow instead of just letting it uselessly burn 24/7?



--------------------------------------------------

Trump is fine.
He is also your current President.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, November 13, 2024 4:39 PM (P)

Donald Trump was warned not to pull out of Paris climate agreement — by the CEO of oil giant Exxon Mobil

https://fortune.com/2024/11/12/donald-trump-elon-musk-climate-change-p
aris-agreement-exxon-oil
/

Donald Trump’s thumping re-election threatens to upend the business of an industry he’s sworn to protect: Big Oil.

Should his incoming administration follow through on plans to once again pull the United States out of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement — as a way to loosen regulations on fossil fuel companies — it could actually end up hurting companies like Exxon Mobil, according to the oil giant’s CEO.

Two years after Obama first helped pave the way for the Paris Accords, which seek to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, Trump led the country out of the agreement. Upon assuming office, Biden reversed this decision on Day One, going on to spur record investment in clean technology. If Trump once again pulls the U.S. out of Paris, it will have marked the fourth straight administration with diametrically opposed energy and climate policies.

“I don’t think the stops and starts are the right thing for businesses,” Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Tuesday. “It is extremely inefficient. It creates a lot of uncertainty.”

The Exxon Mobil boss was in Azerbaijan to attend COP29 in Baku, the second straight time that a city rich from exploiting its fossil fuel deposits played host to the United Nations climate conference after Abu Dhabi last year.

Trump has promised to “drill, baby, drill”, but this constant backtracking on agreed policy has made it difficult for companies with long term investment horizons that can end up stuck with stranded assets — such as oil companies. Woods said it was unhelpful for businesses “to have the pendulum swing back and forth as administrations change”.

He assured Exxon would not deviate from its strategy, which includes investments in controversial carbon capture technology, just because of Trump’s election. But he did not deny that adjustments may need to be made should government policy change materially.

In August, while campaigning for Trump, Musk trivialized the issue of climate change and argued there was no need at all for society to make hard choices since things would naturally work out on their own more or less. Accelerating the transition to clean energy was no longer urgent when viewed against the greater priority of reinstalling Trump in the Oval Office.

“We still have quite a bit of time, we don’t need to rush,” Musk said, “If, I don’t know, 50 to 100 years from now we’re mostly sustainable, I think that’ll probably be okay.”

Meanwhile, Trump, a climate change skeptic, argued rising sea levels was a good thing, since it meant “more oceanfront property”. Trump did not address the destruction of existing oceanfront real estate by rising sea levels.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, November 13, 2024 6:22 PM (P)

Carbon emissions from fossil fuels hit record highs in 2024

Global fossil-related CO2 emissions are expected to increase by 0.8% this year to 37.4 billion metric tons. (Compare 37.4 billion metric tons to 2.1 billion for the entire world's solid wastes. https://www.google.com/search?q=solid+waste+world )

This is higher than the average annual growth rate seen during the last ten years.

Carbon dioxide emissions tied to burning fossil fuels are now 8% higher than they were in 2015 when the Paris Agreement was first negotiated.

https://www.axios.com/2024/11/13/carbon-emissions-fossil-fuels-record-
high


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, November 16, 2024 9:11 PM (P)

“Given that we will need to process gigatons of CO2 annually to combat the CO2 challenge, we really need to think about solutions that can scale,” Varanasi says. “Starting with this mindset enables us to identify critical bottlenecks and develop innovative approaches that can make a meaningful impact in solving the problem. Our hierarchically conductive electrode is a result of such thinking.”

MIT engineers make converting CO2 into useful products more practical

A new electrode design boosts the efficiency of electrochemical reactions that turn carbon dioxide into ethylene and other products.

https://news.mit.edu/2024/mit-engineers-make-converting-co2-into-produ
cts-more-practical-1113


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, November 17, 2024 12:21 AM (P)

And ... how do you power the electrode? 2nd law of thermodynamics says you'll have to use more energy than you might get out of the product. Altho in this case, the product (ethylyne) is a useful precursor to a lot of things, including plastics and detergents.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, November 17, 2024 12:32 AM (P)

Alt economist Steve Keene weighs in on climate change.

"We're going to destroy civilization by 2050"



I have listened to Keene on economics. He delves deeply into mathematics for analysis, and he solves complex math far beyond my ability to grasp.

At around 3 minutes is the data that concerns him.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, November 17, 2024 12:43 AM (P)

Alt economist Steve Keene weighs in on climate change.

"We're going to destroy civilization by 2050"



I have listened to Keene on economics. He delves deeply into mathematics for analysis, and he solves complex math far beyond my ability to grasp.

On the opposite side is David Collum, Cornell Chemistry professor.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, November 17, 2024 1:15 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And ... how do you power the electrode? 2nd law of thermodynamics says you'll have to use more energy than you might get out of the product. Altho in this case, the product (ethylyne) is a useful precursor to a lot of things, including plastics and detergents.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


The world emits 37 billion tonnes of CO2 per year, but only 2 billion tonnes of solid waste. I see garbage trucks hauling away that 2 billion but there is nothing much being done about the 37 billion tonnes. Why is that? Because people can see garbage but are blind to transparent gases. If they can't see and can't imagine, 37 billion tonnes of waste can't be a problem.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+co2+emissions+per+year
https://www.google.com/search?q=world+solid+waste+per+year

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 18, 2024 5:17 PM (P)

Biden says ‘nobody can reverse’ his climate agenda. But Trump is poised to try.

In a speech from the Brazilian rainforest, the president didn’t mention his successor by name, but urged him to build upon a “strong foundation” of clean-energy policies.

11/17/2024 04:07 PM EST

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/17/biden-trump-amazon-rainforest
-climate-speech-00190049


Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” is likely to pull out of the Paris accord, roll back environmental protections and increase production of oil and gas — which is already at an all-time high. Trump’s transition team is reportedly discussing ways to eliminate the electric vehicle tax credit championed by Biden. And he’s already stacking his Cabinet and West Wing with officials eager to rip apart federal programs aimed at reducing air and water pollution.

Trump on Saturday announced he’d selected Chris Wright to lead the Energy Department. Wright, the head of a Denver-based oilfield service company, has disputed the role of climate change in causing extreme weather.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 18, 2024 6:34 PM (P)

Satellites spot methane leaks – but ‘super-emitters’ don’t fix them

Governments and companies almost never take action when satellites alert them about large methane leaks coming from oil and gas infrastructure

By James Dinneen | 15 November 2024

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2456488-satellites-spot-methane-l
eaks-but-super-emitters-dont-fix-them
/

Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas to address, behind carbon dioxide, and a rising number of countries have promised to slash methane emissions in order to avoid near-term warming. At last year’s COP28 climate summit, many of the world’s largest oil and gas companies also pledged to “eliminate” methane emissions from their operations.

The world has more ways than ever to spot the invisible methane emissions responsible for a third of global warming so far. But according to a report released at the COP29 climate summit, methane “super-emitters” rarely take action when alerted that they are leaking large amounts of the potent greenhouse gas.

“We’re not seeing the transparency and the sense of urgency that we require,” says Manfredi Caltagirone, director of the United Nations Environment Programme’s International Methane Emissions Observatory, which recently launched a system that uses satellite data to alert methane emitters about leaks.

Today, a growing number of satellites are beginning to detect methane leaks from the biggest sources of such emissions: oil and gas infrastructure. That data is critical to holding emitters to account, says Mark Brownstein at the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental advocacy group that recently launched its own methane-sensing satellite. “But data by itself doesn’t solve the problem,” he says.

The first year of the UN methane alert system illustrates the yawning gap between data and action. Over the past year, the programme issued 1225 alerts to governments and companies when it identified plumes of methane from oil and gas infrastructure large enough to be detected from space. It now reports that emitters only took steps to control those leaks 15 times, a response rate of about 1 per cent.

There have been some successes. For instance, the UN issued several alerts this year to the Algerian government about a methane source that had been continuously leaking since at least 1999, with a global warming effect equivalent to half a million cars driven for a year. By October, satellite data showed it had disappeared.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 18, 2024 6:40 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And ... how do you power the electrode? 2nd law of thermodynamics says you'll have to use more energy than you might get out of the product. Altho in this case, the product (ethylyne) is a useful precursor to a lot of things, including plastics and detergents.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


The world emits 37 billion tonnes of CO2 per year, but only 2 billion tonnes of solid waste. I see garbage trucks hauling away that 2 billion but there is nothing much being done about the 37 billion tonnes. Why is that? Because people can see garbage but are blind to transparent gases. If they can't see and can't imagine, 37 billion tonnes of waste can't be a problem.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+co2+emissions+per+year
https://www.google.com/search?q=world+solid+waste+per+year

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two



And we think fish are stupid bc they shit in their own "air"!

While we do the same.

Yep, SECOND, people can be stupid. But they can be equally stupid (or greedy znd corrupt) about how to fix the problem.


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, November 21, 2024 3:35 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Yep, SECOND, people can be stupid. But they can be equally stupid (or greedy and corrupt) about how to fix the problem.

Fixing this waste problem is not hard to understand, but how many people would be bothered to understand it? About 1 person in a 1,000? In 10,000? That's why 1 person in 100 (or 1 person in 10?) who is greedy and corrupt can get away with your money without doing the job properly. Since Signym is an exemplary 1 person in 10,000, here is a short excerpt from a much longer article:

Reality check on technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the air

Study finds many climate-stabilization plans are based on questionable assumptions about the future cost and deployment of “direct air capture” (DAC) and therefore may not bring about promised reductions.

By Nancy W. Stauffer | November 20, 2024

https://news.mit.edu/2024/reality-check-tech-to-remove-carbon-dioxide-
from-air-1120


The cost per tonne of CO2 removed is inevitably high. Recent modeling studies assume DAC costs as low as $100 to $200 per ton of CO2 removed. But the researchers found evidence suggesting far higher costs.

To start, they cite typical costs for power plants and industrial sites that now use carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to remove CO2 from their flue gases. The cost of CCS in such applications is estimated to be in the range of $50 to $150 per ton of CO2 removed. The far lower concentration of CO2 in the air compared to power plant flue gases will lead to substantially higher costs.

The DAC units needed to capture the required amount of air are massive. The capital cost of building them will be high, given labor, materials, permitting costs, and so on. Some estimates in the literature exceed $5,000 per tonne captured per year.

Then there are the ongoing costs of energy. Removing 1 tonne of CO2 requires the equivalent of 1.2 megawatt-hours of electricity. If that electricity costs $0.10 per kilowatt-hour, the cost of just the electricity needed to remove 1 tonne of CO2 is $120. The researchers point out that assuming such a low price is “questionable,” given the expected increase in electricity demand, future competition for clean energy, and higher costs on a system dominated by renewable — but intermittent — energy sources.

Then there’s the cost of storage, which is ignored in many DAC cost estimates.

Clearly, many considerations show that prices of $100 to $200 per tonne are unrealistic, and assuming such low prices will distort assessments of strategies, leading them to underperform going forward.

Much more at https://news.mit.edu/2024/reality-check-tech-to-remove-carbon-dioxide-
from-air-1120


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, November 21, 2024 5:48 PM (P)

Since I worked on the compliance side of air pollution, i was often part of the rule- making process, from internal meeting with "stakeholders" (i.e. industry reps. To the best I can recall, evironmental groups were never present) to public hearings.

The driving questions were always "how?" and "how much will it cost?"

For EFFECTIVE pollution control you need a few things:

First, you need to know the current ambient concentration

Then, you need to estimate the cost of that pollutant, in terms of things like illness and death, agricultural loss etc. For CO2 that's tricky, but there certainly are things like heat related deaths. So without forward projection, the slowing and looping of the jet dtream causing extreme, stagnant weather patterns and damage losses, excess heat deaths; excess air conditioning costs (for example, needing tonupgrade schools with AC); lost productivity during excess heat events etc. This would have to be done by comparison to some previous time, say, the 1950s when fog was a common occurence in coastal CA.

Then you have to identify and focus on the largest emitters and start pencil whipping various control technologies. If you want to be successful yiu need to look at this in the most open minded way possible. Unexamined assumptiins and biases may close off fruitful areas of action.

One bad forest fire year undid 18 years of CA decarbonization

Then you start calculating cost prr ton.

Then slog thru the rule making process where everybody wuth a vested interest tells you how they're gojng to be ruined.

Assuming that you actually get a policy changed (eg. Federal forest management, bettrr land use planning, agricultural incentive for carbon capture farming, carbon tax) or command-and-control rules written, then you monitor the pollutant in question (both upwind and downwind of the control areal) to see if you're making a difference.

One thing has never worked so far, and that's any kind of "carbon market". The only thing pollution trading seems to have generated is a lot of scams. In theory its the perfect libertarian answer. In practice, it's impossible to implement.

There's generally no magic technology, no big breakthrough, just a lot of on-the-ground followup.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, November 22, 2024 2:28 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Since I worked on the compliance side of air pollution, i was often part of the rule- making process, from internal meeting with "stakeholders" (i.e. industry reps. To the best I can recall, evironmental groups were never present) to public hearings.

Why have rules when no problem can be solved?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene @RepMTG tweeted that climate change can't be solved so do nothing:

If you believe that today’s “climate change” is caused by too much carbon, you have been fooled.

We live on a spinning planet that rotates around a much bigger sun along with other planets and heavenly bodies rotating around the sun that all create gravitational pull on one another while our galaxy rotates and travels through the universe.

Considering all of that, yes our climate will change, and it’s totally normal!

There is no amount of taxes or carbon reduction that will stop or tame weather events or climate change.

But there are some very powerful people that are getting rich beyond their wildest dreams convincing many that carbon is the enemy and that if humans sacrifice enough energy producing things we can actually control the climate.

Don’t fall for the scam, fossil fuels are natural and amazing. They produce an abundance of energy that we all need to survive along with more products than you can possibly imagine.

9:52 AM · Apr 15, 2023 from Hapeville, GA
https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1647251668373839878

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, November 22, 2024 5:31 PM (P)

Climate proposal would see rich countries pay $250B a year

The draft agreement comes with many uncertainties about which nations will provide how much financing to poorer countries, especially with a new Trump era looming in the U.S.

By Zack Colman, Karl Mathiesen, Zia Weise and Sara Schonhardt | 11/22/2024 07:03 AM EST

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/22/climate-proposal-would-see-ri
ch-countries-pay-250-billion-a-year-00191216


BAKU, Azerbaijan — Organizers of the United Nations climate summit issued a draft agreement Friday that would see the U.S., EU and other wealthy governments provide $250 billion a year in climate finance to developing nations by 2035 — an amount that falls far short of the trillion-plus figure that the poorer countries had sought.

The agreement comes with many uncertainties about which nations would provide exactly how much money, especially with President-elect Donald Trump — who has scoffed at the reality of climate change and vowed steep cuts in government spending — about to take power in the U.S.

The finance question has been the main topic of contention at the COP29 talks in Azerbaijan’s capital. The new target is for money to help poorer nations green their economies and cope with the effects of a heating planet.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, November 23, 2024 5:41 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Climate proposal would see rich countries pay $250B a year

BAKU, Nov 23 (Reuters) - The European Union, U.S. and other wealthy countries at the COP29 summit have agreed to raise their offer of climate funding to $300 billion per year by 2035 to help developing nations grapple with climate change, sources told Reuters on Saturday, after a previous proposal was dismissed as insultingly low.

The summit had been due to finish on Friday but ran into overtime as negotiators from nearly 200 countries - who must adopt the deal by consensus - tried to reach agreement on a climate funding plan for the next decade.

A $250 billion proposal for a deal, drafted by Azerbaijan's COP29 presidency on Friday, was deemed woefully insufficient by developing countries.

It was not clear if the wealthy countries' revised position had been formally communicated to developing countries at the gathering in the Azerbaijan capital Baku, and whether it would be enough to win their support.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sustainable-finance-reporting/w
ealthy-countries-back-raising-cop29-climate-deal-300-billion-sources-say-2024-11-23
/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, November 23, 2024 7:21 PM (P)

Quote:

The European Union, U.S. and other wealthy countries at the COP29 summit have agreed to raise their offer of climate funding to $300 billion per year by 2035 to help developing nations grapple with climate change, sources told Reuters on Saturday, after a previous proposal was dismissed as insultingly low.


If we really wanted to blunt climate change we'd do something other than throw money at it.

Aside from our DoD and EVs, here's another waste of energy (and money)

Quote:

AI's Insatiable Appetite For Energy Threatens Ireland's Grid


It's just another ant-human get-rich-quick speculative frenzy for the ultrawealthy that nobody needs or wants.

Quote:

Google AI chatbot responds with a threatening message: "Human … Please die."

"This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe.

Please die.

Please."




Sounds like SECOND.
Hey, maybe SECOND is a bot, like REAVERBOT!
Somebody's experiment to see if people respond to a grab-bag of insults? "Trumptard", "Confederate", "Russia"?

That would explain a lot!


----------

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, November 24, 2024 12:38 AM (P)

This was REAVERBOT from "What's wrong with conspiracy theories" posted in 2021

Quote:

Originally posted by reaverfan:
You're a Russian troll. You are of no value to anyone, and you should kill yourself.


http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=60275

Wow, it really WAS a bot!

Well, SECOND? Are YOU a bot?


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, November 24, 2024 6:03 PM (P)

World agrees to climate deal on financial aid for developing countries after summit nearly implodes

The world agreed to a new climate deal at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Saturday, with wealthy countries pledging to provide $300 billion annually by 2035 to poorer countries to help them cope with the increasingly catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis — a figure many developing countries criticized as vastly insufficient.

At points there was fear the talks would implode, as groups representing vulnerable small island states and the least-developed countries walked out of negotiations Saturday. But at 2:40 a.m. local time Sunday, more than 30 hours after deadline, the gavel finally went down on the agreement between nearly 200 countries.

COP29 focused heavily on finance, a vital climate issue but one of the thorniest politically.

Rich countries, which are overwhelmingly responsible for historical climate change, agreed in 2009 to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to developing countries. That pledge, already viewed as woefully insufficient, was only met in 2022, two years past the deadline.

The task at Baku was to come up with a new number.

The new deal agreed to on Saturday requires wealthy countries, including the US and European nations, to provide $300 billion every year by 2035, made up of public and private finance.

While the agreement also refers to a wider ambition to scale up to $1.3 trillion, developing nations wanted rich countries to commit to taking on a much larger share of this, and for the money to come predominantly in the form of grants rather than loans, which they fear will trap them further in debt.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/23/climate/cop29-agreement/index.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, November 24, 2024 10:59 PM (P)

One November Day in 1984

Posted on Sunday, Nov 24, 2024 6:00AM by Mike Bendzela

https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/11/one-november-day.html

Ronald Reagan, at 73, is the oldest candidate ever to run for election — or, in this case, re-election — as President of the United States, against . . . What’s his name again? [Walter Mondale/Geraldine Ferraro] This election marks (I firmly believe) our last chance as a civilization to change course and sail toward a Green Future, an inkling of which we saw with President Jimmy Carter. I do not know if What’s-his-name is the answer, but we all know Reagan ain’t. One term could be a fluke. A second, collective suicide.

Several months hence, the great science communicator, Carl Sagan, said to the United States Senate, “If you don’t worry about it now, it will be too late later on.”* His talk is a plea to those in power to start controlling carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. The concentration of atmospheric CO2 in 1984 is 344 parts per million and the global temperature anomaly a barely noticeable +0.40° Celsius.* Carbon dioxide concentration MUST be kept below 350 ppm, or the planet will heat up, creating havoc. And there are other pollutants to worry about. And also oil depletion, deforestation, ocean acidification, wildlife habitat loss, over-population. A collapsing civilization does not seem far-fetched.

False alarm! It is Morning in America.*

During Reagan’s first term, when reporters shouted him questions about what he was going to do about AIDS, about the poor, about global warming, about environmental degradation, the President cupped his hand to his ear and tilted his head, as if to say, Damned hearing aids! He is an adorable old man who looks super on TV, and he is very upbeat and very, very popular.

At last, the final numbers are announced . . . “525 electoral votes for Reagan, and 13 for” —

I lean over and slap the OFF button of my clock radio.

November 6, 1984 is the exact day my faith in politics evaporates. There is no reason to pay attention to these fools anymore, now that they’ve committed us to a path of ecological catastrophe. I will still vote, and I will give scraps of attention to the perpetual smog masquerading as news, but I do not have a television and never will, and I count myself lucky to live as I wish, away from the cacophony, among my plants, my animals, and my sturdy husband. It’s easy to let go of those immense global issues that are so beyond an individual’s control. It’s a simple matter of remaining vigilant in tuning out the noise.

Every election since that time has seemed empty, the candidates shallow and unserious, the issues meager or beside the point (because they have nothing to do with preserving the planet), and the voters terribly misled. Reagan’s coiffured TV-talking-head of distraction has found its apotheosis in Trump, whose trick for monopolizing the vacuous gaze of the media is no secret: Plant your big, yammering face squarely in front of their faces, by any means necessary, leaving no room for the media to cover the global crisis. But we have not escaped Sagan’s admonition.

During the recent campaign, who bothered to bring up the 422 parts per million of atmospheric CO2 this year, a 23% increase since 1984, meaning the safe limit of 350 was breached long ago?

Who pointed out that a critical threshold has just been passed, a +1.5° C (2.7° F) global yearly average temperature anomaly, for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years?*

Which candidate addressed extreme North Atlantic sea temperatures, deranged jet-streams and consequent deluges, record low annual sea ice extents, escalating wildfires, and spiking methane emissions this year, forty years after Sagan’s warning?

Neither one. The campaign was all trash talk interspersed with happy talk.

If Sagan was right, these elections are all for naught. “Too late” means just that: There’s not a damned thing we can do about it.

When facing a bad time – and right now things aren’t looking

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 25, 2024 12:11 AM (P)

Solar energy payback: 1-3 years

https://www.energyscaperenewables.com/post/do-solar-panels-produce-mor
e-energy-than-they-consume


However, this is in areas that get a lot of sun. Solar panels don't make sense in large parts of the country.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 25, 2024 2:29 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Solar energy payback: 1-3 years

https://www.energyscaperenewables.com/post/do-solar-panels-produce-mor
e-energy-than-they-consume


However, this is in areas that get a lot of sun. Solar panels don't make sense in large parts of the country.




One to three years to get the energy payback. A lifetime to get any financial payback. And you fucked up your roof with an expensive system that needs a lot of regular maintenance. Good luck in hail storms. You'll need it.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump is fine.
He is also your current President.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 25, 2024 2:42 AM (P)

SECOND, you'll never convince people that there's a problem if the "solutions" you advocate are too expensive for the average family, and always seem to mean the poor get poorer and the rich, richer.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 25, 2024 2:58 AM (P)

Quote:

SIX:
One to three years to get the energy payback. A lifetime to get any financial payback. And you fucked up your roof with an expensive system that needs a lot of regular maintenance. Good luck in hail storms. You'll need it.



I would never advocate that YOU get solar. You don't get enough sunshine, your electricity rates are too low, and you're subject to damaging storms.

But I did my homework, pencil- whipped the numbers, and went solar. Why? Because I estimated our payback period - the time it takes to recoup the cost, after which it's all gravy - as 6.5 years. And since our rates went up about four years after install, the payback period got even shorter. Over the past 7 years since installation, we paid a grand total of about $1000 for electricity generation. $12 a month. I advocate solar to ALL my neighbors, and I'm no dummy.

AFA "expensive maintenance" .... that's the one thing in this older home that HASN'T cost us a crapton of $$$. I paid $150 for panel washing. And there's no roof damage.

You're just being a Karen now.


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 25, 2024 3:06 AM (P)

Just to make sure my point doesn't get lost.

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, you'll never convince people that there's a problem if the "solutions" you advocate are too expensive for the average family, and always seem to mean the poor get poorer and the rich, richer.



If people see the wealthy sacrificing, they're more likely to credit the idea of climate change. But as long as they see "prescriptions" coming from on high, from conferences where the fabulously wealthy take their private jets, and tell everyone else how the vast majority must sacrifice... well, that's not gonna get very far.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 25, 2024 4:01 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

SIX:
One to three years to get the energy payback. A lifetime to get any financial payback. And you fucked up your roof with an expensive system that needs a lot of regular maintenance. Good luck in hail storms. You'll need it.



I would never advocate that YOU get solar. You don't get enough sunshine, your electricity rates are too low, and you're subject to damaging storms.

But I did my homework, pencil- whipped the numbers, and went solar. Why? Because I estimated our payback period - the time it takes to recoup the cost, after which it's all gravy - as 6.5 years. And since our rates went up about four years after install, the payback period got even shorter. Over the past 7 years since installation, we paid a grand total of about $1000 for electricity generation. $12 a month. I advocate solar to ALL my neighbors, and I'm no dummy.

AFA "expensive maintenance" .... that's the one thing in this older home that HASN'T cost us a crapton of $$$. I paid $150 for panel washing. And there's no roof damage.

You're just being a Karen now.





I'm not being a Karen. This house already has tons of problems I've had to deal with that most homeowners have never had to think about in their lives. The last thing I need is to make a bunch of holes to bolt a bunch of glass panels into my roof where we get hail at least 4 times per year. Sometimes the size of golf balls.


How much did your setup cost? How much do you figure you're saving every month?

--------------------------------------------------

Trump is fine.
He is also your current President.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 25, 2024 2:35 PM (P)

IIRC about $19,000. But since there was a $3,000 tax rebate, $16,000. Since our AVERAGE bill was about $190/month (and no, we aren't profligate energy- wasters. But we do have electric range and convection oven, which is what the house came with.) Since we had it sized to generate our average KWH, we're saving our entire electric bill. So our payback period was estimated to be $190/mo * 12 mo/yr * 7 years = $15,960.

Since then rates have gone up, so, in a sense, we're saving more $ than I originallyb estimated. And, yanno, we did all those energy saving things too, ahead of time. When our house needed a new roof, lo these many years ago, I picked a "cool roof" and made sure they put enuf insulation in the attic. When we had to replace the central A/C I got a zoned system with the best SEER availavle at the time. Over the years, we replaced our single pane, steel frame windows with high efficiency double pane. When it came to replacing our range I picked an induction range

Solar turned out to be the best home improvement I ever made.

Now, just to give you an idea where I personally draw the line ... I wasn't so interested in window replacement. It's a lot of $ for very little return. I would never, ever, spring $52,000 for a heat pump/ AC, which is recommended for our climate. But when it comes to re-roofing, I'd pick a cool roof all over again, since the extra cost is marginal but it saves $$.

It has to make household financial sense and have a reasonably short payback period.


*****

Before anyone thinks of solar, the first thing the solar engineers look at is your AVERAGE BILL. And before plunking $ down, people should check to see if doing something less expendive will save significant $.


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 25, 2024 2:45 PM (P)

That's why I get irritated when the uber-elites, swanning around the world from conference to conference in their private jets, start making pronouncements that "we" need to sacrifice.

When I see those m-fuckers SERIOUSLY cut back on their privileged lifestyles, THEN I'll know they're serious about climate change/ poverty/ democracy, or whatever cause they're wringing their hands over.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 25, 2024 4:25 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, you'll never convince people that there's a problem if the "solutions" you advocate are too expensive for the average family, and always seem to mean the poor get poorer and the rich, richer.

Firemen put out fires. Even if you are poor. Now imagine if it was an optional service, where each person could decide not to pay. Poorer people decide that having fire department is too expensive for them so when their house burns, it burns to the ground because the poor didn't pay the subscription fire department.

We going to have a whole world burning because almost everybody decided it was too expensive to have a fire department. Oh well. Too bad. But think of all the money saved, at least until the fire consumes your house with you burning inside, too! Most likely, you will deny that is a possible future so that you don't have to pay in all the years before the fire starts. And, Signym, you can virtuously complain about those greedy firemen being highly paid to do a job that you will never need because fire can't burn you since you are a special person.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, November 25, 2024 6:58 PM (P)

You make the stupidest analogies, SECOND. Is it really like that inside your head?

Imagine that you have a group of people who go around talking about fires, and then telling other people they have to pay the firestarters not to set fires.

That's not a firefighting service. It's not even fire insurance. It's a protection racket.





-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, November 27, 2024 3:23 AM (P)

Climate change mitigation.

California may ultimately get more rainfall due to climate change, but climate change may cause infrequent but severe rainfall and melt the snowpack - long term water storage- earlier.

Hence, the mighty beaver!
SNIP!

Quote:

California to Reintroduce Beavers to Help Manage Water Resources.
"Beavers expand and even form a wealth of water-rich habitats including wetlands, riparian areas, and meadows. Their contributions to the natural world range from recharging groundwater and reconnecting streams with floodplains to providing fire breaks and refuges for species during drought"


https://mavensnotebook.com/2023/05/03/feature-california-taps-beavers-
to-restore-watersheds
/

So, a creative low-cost action that both mitigates climate change effects (better long term water management) and helps prevent it (limiting the range of forest fires).

Also, a demonstration that biodiversity is like a game of Jenga ... start removing species and you may initiate changes, for good or ill.



-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, December 3, 2024 4:09 PM (P)

We need reality-based energy policy

By Matthew Yglesias | Dec 2, 2024

https://www.slowboring.com/p/we-need-reality-based-energy-policy

Climate issues have, to an extent, fallen out of the post-election discourse, probably because they didn’t play a large explicit role in the 2024 presidential campaign.

That’s fair enough. But they did play an extremely large role in Joe Biden’s presidency.

The Democratic Party trifecta of 2021-2022 put a lot of money into a lot of different things. But most of that was either deliberately structured as temporary pandemic relief or else written with built-in sunsets to reduce the cost (like the health insurance subsidies that are scheduled to expire next year) because it’s easier to extend a temporary program than to create one from scratch. But the easiest task of all is to avert the repeal of a permanent program, and the big thing that the trifecta made permanent was climate-related spending in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Which is just to say that climate was at the center of Democrats’ policy agenda, and it’s worth discussing both the decision to center it and also, given its centrality, whether the policy is being pursued in a reasonable way.

This receives less discussion than I think it deserves, because climate issues are less controversial among left-of-center intellectuals than things like trans rights or anti-Israel protests on campus. But way more people are directly, and tangibly impacted by energy policy than by Title IX rules governing school sports.

And I’m dwelling on the importance of this topic because while I think the adjustment Democrats need to make is relatively modest, I don’t want to suggest that the adjustment is unimportant. Small errors on a huge topic are a big deal, and even though the Biden-Harris administration mostly landed in a sensible place on this, they flirted with a lot of bad ideas along the way.

The guiding principle I included in my manifesto was, “Climate change — and pollution more broadly — is a reality to manage, not a hard limit to obey.”

This is to say, we should take environmental problems seriously. A real fact of the modern economy is that individuals and companies will, if we let them, generate more pollution than is socially desirable. This is bad. We need rules and policies to prevent it from happening. But we should prioritize anti-pollution measures that do, in fact, actually make people better off, rather than an arbitrary grab-bag of measures.

I found out last week that over on BlueSky (follow me!), I’m on a prominent blocklist for climate “deniers and trolls.”

I will cop to trolling on occasion. But this is not the first time I’ve been called a climate denier, so I really do want to say clearly:

• Carbon dioxide emissions are causing a wanning effect on our planet.
• The consequences of this are negative—to the extent possible, we should push for less climate change rather than more.

The only reason denialism ends up entering the picture is that a significant group of people have described climate change as posing an extinction-level threat to humanity or, at a minimum, likely causing the collapse of civilization. And these aren’t just fringe actors. In 2023, Joe Biden said, “I’ve seen firsthand what the reports made clear: the devastating toll of climate change and its existential threat to all of us. And it is the ultimate threat to humanity: climate change.”

This is not true, it’s pretty clearly not consistent with the Biden administration’s actual policies, and I don’t think Democrats should run around saying it.

Of course, the fact that something won’t result in the extinction of our species does not mean that it isn’t a serious problem. But the distinction here is important.
If the planet were in the path of an asteroid that stood a large chance of wiping out civilization, you'd be willing to do crazy, extreme things — even if your actions got hundreds of millions of people killed — to stop it. If the asteroid were smaller and risked wiping out a whole ci

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, December 4, 2024 3:21 AM (P)

Well, gee. Whooda thunk that if all of "your" plans to combat global warming involve making the poor poorer they would meet serious resistance?


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, December 4, 2024 5:57 AM (P)

When I see TPTB flying here and there in the cheap seats, eating beans instead of Wagyu steak, staying in youth hostels instead of exclusive resorts, and donating 90% of their wealth to things like sustainable farming... then I'll know they're serious about climate change. Failing that, they're just trying to extract more resources from 99.9999999% of everyone else.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, December 4, 2024 6:35 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, gee. Whooda thunk that if all of "your" plans to combat global warming involve making the poor poorer they would meet serious resistance?



This.


Remember... People like Stephen Colbert said he would be happy and proud to be paying $15/gal for gasoline 3.5 years ago and his idiot audience clapped like seals.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump is fine.
He is also your current President.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 3:08 AM (P)

Wildfires have turned the Arctic into a net carbon emitter. That’s bad news.

By Umair Irfan | Dec 10, 2024, 3:00 PM CST

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its annual Arctic Report Card this week, pooling research from the planet’s north. As what is likely the hottest year on record draws to a close, researchers have found the Arctic region is warming four times faster than the global rate.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/2024-arcti
c-report-card-documents-rapid-dramatic-change


While it doesn’t have the dense, fast-growing biomass of a tropical rainforest, its vegetation does breathe in about a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, about a fifth of humanity’s total annual output. Beneath the tundra, permafrost, a layer of soil that remains frozen year-round, keeps microbes at bay that would ordinarily decompose vegetation. The net result is that Arctic soils store enormous amounts of carbon, upward of 1.6 trillion metric tons across the region. That’s about double the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere.

But now that the climate is warming in the Arctic, that 1.6 trillion tons is being released back into the atmosphere, faster and faster as the climate gets warmer and warmer.

More at https://www.vox.com/climate/390530/arctic-tundra-carbon-sink-emitter-c
limate-change


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 6:47 PM (P)

NOAA Arctic Report Card: Update for 2024 - Tracking recent environmental changes, with 12 essays prepared by an international team of 97 researchers from 11 different countries and an independent peer review organized by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme of the Arctic Council. https://arctic.noaa.gov/report-card/report-card-2024/



The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 7:04 PM (P)

13 Misconceptions About Global Warming



The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 8:11 PM (P)

All very true and very disturbing.

Now. How about backing something besides high-tech get-rich-quick VC projects, and instead things that might actually improve people's lives?

Addressing rapid population growth with education for women..
Urban forests everywhere to cool down cities.
Replacing inefficient electrical grids with efficent ones.
Building renovation to improve energy efficiency
Solar panel rebates in sunny areas
Sustainable farming grants (cover crop, no till) with maximum per-farm amounts to benefit small and medium sized farms more.
Replacing coal burning power plants with natgas.
Better forestry practices including black-earth firebreaks and reintroducing the beaver
Capturing methane that's being flared off, and using that to generate electricity.
Strict CAFE standards.
Banning or makjng very expensive private jet flights.
Cutting the military budget 90%.
Strict CAFE standards

I even heard a proposal that I've been noodling on ever since: levying a hefty carbon tax, the proceeds of which are returned to the people in the form of a progressive rebate. (Instaed of using it to fund various government-to-corporation get rich quick schemes). This has two benefits: it skews consumption away from energy or carbon heavy items and reduces wealth/income inequality.

Dealing with global climate change isnt going to be about One Big Thing, but lots of medium-sized things.




-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 8:35 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
All very true and very disturbing.

Now. How about backing something besides high-tech get-rich-quick VC projects, and instead things that might actually improve people's lives?

Addressing rapid population growth with education for women..
Urban forests everywhere to cool down cities.
Replacing inefficient electrical grids with efficent ones.
Building renovation to improve energy efficiency
Solar panel rebates in sunny areas
Sustainable farming grants (cover crop, no till) with maximum per-farm amounts to benefit small and medium sized farms more.
Replacing coal burning power plants with natgas.
Better forestry practices including black-earth firebreaks and reintroducing the beaver
Capturing methane that's being flared off, and using that to generate electricity.
Strict CAFE standards.
Banning or makjng very expensive private jet flights.
Cutting the military budget 90%.
Strict CAFE standards

I even heard a proposal that I've been noodling on ever since: levying a hefty carbon tax, the proceeds of which are returned to the people in the form of a progressive rebate. (Instaed of using it to fund various government-to-corporation get rich quick schemes). This has two benefits: it skews consumption away from energy or carbon heavy items and reduces wealth/income inequality.

Dealing with global climate change isnt going to be about One Big Thing, but lots of medium-sized things.




-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


Signym, if you google "What is Trump's energy policy?", none of those things are imaginable. https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+Trump%27s+energy+policy

What would Trump 2.0 mean for coal?
https://www.eenews.net/articles/what-would-trump-2-0-mean-for-coal/
Trump's campaign insists the former president is poised to revive the sagging coal industry.

Alternatively, google "What is the Democrats' energy policy?" and nearly all of those things are possible.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 10:41 PM (P)

Who said I agree with Trump's energy policy???

You're such a turd.


Yanno, if you care so much about climate change, you would have advocated for something besides the globalist power-and-money-grab approach. Instead, you couldn't break from that mold and got the big fat rejection you deserve.

In future, advocate for something pro-human. You might actually have some success.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, December 14, 2024 11:30 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Who said I agree with Trump's energy policy???

In future, advocate for something pro-human. You might actually have some success.

Pro-human? I'm no mind-reader but that doesn't mean anything more than no carbon energy has to be cheaper for these unspecified human consumers than fossil fuel energy. Cost more? That is anti-human!

How much cheaper before your pro-human solution is acceptable to them? Ten percent cheaper? Fifty percent? Free energy? Once you pick a price, the pro-human solution has to pass their widely varying esthetics. Does everything (cars, buildings, landscapes) have to appear precisely the same as the fossil fuel versions? Can there be a slight amount of change? What if new power lines horrify them? What if they insist that only gasoline and diesel vehicles are what they understand, while battery power is incomprehensible to them? Do they hate solar power? Hate wind power? Fear fission and fusion power?

Then there are the people who stubbornly refuse to believe there is such a thing as climate change, and are psychologically indifferent to the consequences of their actions on other people, etc.

Why not wait until Star Trek technology is reality before choosing a pro-human solution, the best one? Surely the Earth can wait a few hundred years for the political process to settle on something? What is the hurry?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, December 14, 2024 11:30 PM (P)

Model predictions of global geologic hydrogen resources

Science Advances | 13 Dec 2024 | Vol 10, Issue 50

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ado0955

Abstract
Geologic hydrogen could be a low-carbon primary energy resource; however, the magnitude of Earth’s subsurface endowment has not yet been assessed. Knowledge of the occurrence and behavior of natural hydrogen on Earth has been combined with information from geologic analogs to construct a mass balance model to predict the resource potential. Given the associated uncertainty, stochastic model results predict a wide range of values for the potential in-place hydrogen resource . . .

--------------------------------------------------------------

Massive new energy source discovered hiding under Earth’s surface

Experts are divided over how useful it could be.

By Noa Leach | December 13, 2024 at 1:00 pm

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/geologic-hydrogen-reserves

Experts are unsure, however, if we should dedicate resources to extracting this. “To suck up hydrogen at a scale required to make a contribution to bringing down emissions and tackling the climate emergency would require an enormous global initiative, for which we simply don't have time,” Prof Bill McGuire, Earth scientist at University College London (UCL) who was not involved in the study, told BBC Science Focus.

“It would also need a massive amount of supporting infrastructure in terms of rigs, access roads, storage, transport and more. Furthermore, it seems to me that we might now know how much hydrogen there is, but that is not the same as knowing where it is.

There is more than enough free energy available from wind and the Sun alone, and the technologies are straightforward, well-tested and well-established, so I really don't see the need for exploiting what is, ultimately, another finite resource.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, December 15, 2024 12:45 AM (P)

SECOND, what is tbe purpose, the reason, for trying to limit climate change?

Is it to "save the planet"? Save the whales? Save the coral reefs, the nematodes, the birds, bees, the trees, and all of the creatures of the world?

Or is it to save the planet TO KEEP IT LIVABLE FOR HUMANS?

That's a critical difference in POV.

Now, personally, I'm of the second persuasion.

I believe we need to preserve our planet as a form of ENLIGHTENED SELF INTEREST. I'm convinced that we need to preserve biodiversity - instead of PRESIDING OVER ANOTHER EXTINCTION EVENT AS WE ARE CURRENTLY DOING- because biodiversity and redundancy (many species occupying similar but not exactly the same niche) keeps our environment humming along, robust and able to absorb various local, regional, and global shocks.

So, how do we best preserve our environment?

Well, first of all, REDUCE WASTE, starting with the biggest resource wasters: the extremely wealthy, war, and built-in obsolescence. AFA population growth, the most effective way to reduce population growth is to educate girls and women, give them legal rights, options besides making babies, and access to birth control.

I've posted dozens and dozens of EFFECTIVE actions, and pencil-whipped their potential carbon dioxide savings, leading to a 30% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and increased carbon dioxide storage. (Close coal fired power plants and convert to nat gas, sustainable farming, better forest management, reducing the DOD budget by 90%, outlawing private jets, pushing rooftop solar panels for sunny states etc etc)

There is no technological barrier to any of those.

Their biggest problem is, they step on the toes of the rich and powerful.

Well, let's get going. Instead of these carbon capture/storage schemes that are going nowhere (they won't work) and other high tech mirages, let's start doing what we can do.

And if they're politically unviable bc the rich, who spend so much time alternately wringing their hands about climate change and scolding "us" for using too many resources, block them ... well, they're not really concerned about climate change at all.
Are they?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, December 19, 2024 11:56 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Are they?

There is already a plan for the United States. But it is NOT your plan. Maybe Signym can convince Trump? Whoops! Trump is not open to anybody's plan. Trump promised to cancel all plans.

Biden just unveiled America’s ambitious new climate goal. Trump will assuredly undo it

By Ella Nilsen | Thu December 19, 2024

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/19/climate/biden-new-climate-goal-paris-tr
ump-climate/index.html


The ambitious new target aims to cut US climate pollution to 61-66% below 2005 levels by 2035.

The US will only be able to cut pollution 24-40% below 2005 levels in the next decade if Trump successfully repeals Biden’s climate law and unravels key regulations, according to the nonpartisan climate think tank Rhodium Group.

It is unclear whether Trump will be able to convince congressional Republicans to kill Biden’s clean energy law, which is pouring billions of dollars and thousands of jobs into GOP districts.

Trump has said he intends to drill for more oil and gas, shred federal climate regulations and seek to overturn Biden’s clean energy law.

A new target is required every five years by the international Paris Agreement, which Trump has promised to once again pull the US out of.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, December 20, 2024 2:29 AM (P)

There are at least two things where Trump and I disagree, and energy/ climate change/ environment is one.

You elitist, anti-humans only have yourselves to blame. If you (and that means you too, SECOND) had only advocated practical, humane policy changes instead of draconian "make the rich richer" schemes, you might have gotten buy-in from a majority.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, December 20, 2024 2:54 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
There are at least two things where Trump and I disagree, and energy/ climate change/ environment is one.

You elitist, anti-humans only have yourselves to blame. If you (and that means you too, SECOND) had only advocated practical, humane policy changes instead of draconian "make the rich richer" schemes, you might have gotten buy-in from a majority.

Buy-in? The only buy-in that will happen is solar and wind because both cost much less than fossil fuel. Price drives everything. But get Americans to use less energy? That ain't gonna attract any voters except cartoon characters such as Lisa Simpson when she is old enough.

Perhaps Trumptards in Texas are different than in your state, but from where I am standing, few of Trump's voters believe climate change will have any significant affect in the next few decades. Some think it can't happen because God will take control of the climate and prevent change. For those Texans who don't believe God will intervene if the change comes at all, eventual change will be in the far future, so why do anything new now? Why change long-standing habits of using as much energy as you want? Why impoverish Texas, which prospers from selling fossil fuel?

Trump perfectly adjusted to that attitude. That's how the winner won. Trump repeated back to his kind what they wanted to hear about themselves: you are the BEST! Don't ever change! You should have all the energy you need! And fossil fuel is where the future is going! Light the world on fire and dance in the glorious light of the flames.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, December 21, 2024 5:08 PM (P)

The newest Clean Jobs Midwest report shows how the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) gave clean energy jobs in the state an influx of employees, pushing the total past 73,000 and counting.

With Milwaukee ranking seventh in the Midwest for clean energy employment and a workforce deeply involved in projects like energy-efficient lighting and heat pump installations, Wisconsin positions itself as a key player in the region's clean energy transition.

This boom in employment has been growing at nearly four times the pace of Wisconsin's overall economy while investing billions into renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. Globally, an International Energy Agency report found that the energy sector added over 2.5 million jobs in 2023, bringing the total to 67 million globally.

https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/wisconsin-clean-energy-jobs
-investment-innovation
/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, December 21, 2024 5:09 PM (P)

When will electric airliners make sense?

Dec 14, 2018 article, six years ago but it is probably still true.

Electric aircraft only make sense economically with fuel at about $100/barrel or higher.
(The global average jet fuel price week ending 13 Dec 2024 is $89.23/bbl.
https://www.iata.org/en/publications/economics/fuel-monitor/ )

How all of this would affect air travel is very sensitive to the capacity of future batteries. The authors estimate that an effective range of about 1,100 kilometers would allow electric aircraft to cover 15 percent of the total air miles (and corresponding fuel use) and nearly half the total flights.

Upping the range to 2,200 kilometers would allow 80 percent of the global flight total to be handled by electric aircraft.

The one thing that's holding it back is technology, as batteries simply aren't close to the needed capacities. While we can't rule out a radical advance in battery chemistry, current rates of change mean we'll have to wait for more than 30 years before air travel no longer means a roar of jet engines.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/12/when-will-electric-airliners-m
ake-sense
/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, December 22, 2024 12:36 AM (P)

When will electric airliners make sense?

When pigs fly.


Seriously, this isn't a question of money, as SECOND seems to think. It's a question of battery technology. When batteries have the same energy density per pound as jet fuel, then it'll happen.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, December 22, 2024 12:48 AM (P)

Quote:

SIGNY: You elitist, anti-humans only have yourselves to blame. If you (and that means you too, SECOND) had only advocated practical, humane policy changes instead of draconian "make the rich richer" schemes, you might have gotten buy-in from a majority.

SECOND: Buy-in? The only buy-in that will happen is solar and wind because both cost much less than fossil fuel.

No, they don't. It very much depends on where you are. For us, with our very high electricty costs, it makes sense. But solar north of about 37deg N makes no economic sense. Windmills in windless areas? Heat pumps where winter temps reach 15F? You're joking, right?

Quote:

SECOND: Price drives everything.
No, it doesn't. Our fearless leaders waste a fuckton of money on stupid shit, like wars that don't affect our security. What drives our policies is PROFIT, and, specifically, how much $$$ our pols can pocket from their corporate sponsors.

Quote:

SECOND But get Americans to use less energy? That ain't gonna attract any voters except cartoon characters such as Lisa Simpson when she is old enough.
Which Americans, son? The homeless? The ones who can't afford AC or a more fuel efficient car? The ones who have to decide between heat and eat?

Yanno who won't reduce their energy usage?
Try wresting private jets from the hands of the wealthy.




-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, December 23, 2024 8:12 PM (P)

Methane emissions in the Permian Basin fell significantly in the past year, but the incoming Trump Administration's policies threaten to reverse this progress.

Dec 23, 2024, 6:59 AM CST

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Will-Trump-Policies-Slow-Methane
-Emissions-Cuts-in-the-Permian.html


The Biden Administration has enacted rules on reducing emissions from oil and gas operations, including a recently finalized methane fee that has been opposed by the industry.

Last year, emissions from the Permian fell by 26%, according to a recent study by S&P Global and Insight M Inc. Methane intensity declined even more, by over 30%, as absolute emission volumes fell while Permian oil and gas production continued to rise, the study found.

In a sign of what the energy industry can expect, Trump last month picked a shale boss, Chris Wright, chief executive of Liberty Energy, as his nomination to lead the Department of Energy.

However, analysts say that the companies are now unlikely to swerve from the path of cutting emissions as they continue to promote their efforts in producing more oil and gas with fewer emissions.

“They’ve made commitments to their shareholders, they’ve set a plan in place, they’ve allocated capital,” Kevin Birn, an analyst at S&P, told the Financial Times, commenting on the findings of the study on the Permian methane emissions trends.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, December 31, 2024 6:55 PM (P)

another year of climate records broken

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, December 31, 2024 7:37 PM (P)

When Risks Become Reality: Extreme Weather in 2024 is our annual report, published this year for the first time - 27 December, 2024

Every December, people ask us how severe the year’s extreme weather events were. To answer this question, we’ve partnered with Climate Central to produce a report that reviews some of the most significant events and highlights findings from our attribution studies. It also includes new analysis looking at the number of dangerous heat days added by climate change in 2024 and global resolutions for 2025 to work toward a safer, more sustainable world.

https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/when-risks-become-reality-extr
eme-weather-in-2024
/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, December 31, 2024 8:48 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
another year of climate records broken



Yes.

But don't expect TPTB to change their power hungry, profit-seeking, warmaking ways any time soon.



-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, January 1, 2025 3:46 PM (P)

The American Oil Industry’s Playbook, Illustrated

By Mark Olalde, illustrations by Peter Arkle | Dec. 30, 2024

https://www.propublica.org/article/oil-orphan-wells-cleanup-playbook-s
iana-tom-ragsdale


The question of who pays for cleanup remains unanswered. Time and again, oil companies have offloaded their oldest wells. Their tactics are not written down in one place or peddled by a single law firm — but companies follow an unmistakable pattern. The strategy, which is legal if followed properly, has become such a tried-and-true endeavor that researchers and environmentalists dubbed it “the playbook.”

Clark Williams-Derry, an analyst with clean-energy-focused think tank the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, studies fossil fuel companies’ cleanup costs. “There’s almost a cheerleading squad for shedding your liabilities, like a snake sheds its skin and just slithers away,” he said.

Should you want to become an oil executive and try this strategy yourself, here’s how it works …

As you launch your business, begin by collecting subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives from the government to guarantee you can pump oil and gas profitably. Globally, fossil fuel subsidies total in the trillions each year, according to organizations such as the International Monetary Fund. (Fossil Fuel Subsidies Surged to Record $7 Trillion in 2023
https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies
-surged-to-record-7-trillion
)

Next, start pumping and profiting.

As you set up your business, create layers of shell companies. Down the road, they’ll provide a firewall between you and your liabilities — key among them, cleanup costs.

Once oil and gas production slows, sell low-producing wells. Smaller drillers operating on thinner margins, known in the business as “scavenger companies,” will be happy to take them off your hands.

Rinse and repeat by selling wells as their profits slow to a trickle. They’ll be sold again to ever-smaller companies that teeter on the edge of insolvency. Maintenance and environmental stewardship will usually fall by the wayside as companies eke out a profit. Studies show that the number of environmental violations rises as wells pass to less-capitalized drillers. But these wells aren’t your problem any longer.

Pull any remaining profits before regulators hit you with violations and fines for your remaining wells that aren’t pumping and may be leaking.

Then, idle the wells — pausing production, but not plugging them or cleaning up — and walk away. Regulators are typically tasked with ensuring that as much oil as possible is pumped out of the ground, so rules allow wells to sit idle, instead of being plugged, in case prices surge and it becomes profitable to restart them. However, a study in California found that, after wells are inactive for only 10 months, there’s a 50-50 chance they will never produce again.

Regulators will likely grow tired of asking you to clean up your wells, but you can make the case for leaving them unplugged for now. Pitch grand plans, as other drillers have — maybe repurposing the wells for bitcoin mining, carbon sequestration or the synthesis of hydrogen fuel — that require the wells to remain open.

When regulators’ patience has reached its limit, remind them what will happen if they come down hard on you. Fines or other extra costs could force your business into bankruptcy, leaving your unplugged wells as orphans and taxpayers on the hook. Ask them if they want to be responsible for that catastrophe.

“The root of the problem is there’s no regulator of the oil industry across North America,” Boychuk said, adding that “the rule of law has never applied to oil and gas.”

When regulators finally act, declare bankruptcy. The Bankruptcy Code is meant to protect businesspeople like you who took risks. More than 250 oil and gas operators in the U.S. filed for bankruptcy protection between 2015 and 2021, according to law firm Haynes Boone. (Industry groups estimate there are several thousand oil companies in the co

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, January 7, 2025 2:52 PM (P)

Climate Models Can’t Explain What’s Happening to Earth

Global warming is moving faster than the best models can keep a handle on.

By Zoë Schlanger | January 6, 2025, 1:41 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/01/climate-models-ear
th/681207
/

Fifty years into the project of modeling Earth’s future climate, we still don’t really know what’s coming. Some places are warming with more ferocity than expected. Extreme events are taking scientists by surprise. Right now, as the bald reality of climate change bears down on human life, scientists are seeing more clearly the limits of our ability to predict the exact future we face. The coming decades may be far worse, and far weirder, than the best models anticipated.

This is a problem. The world has warmed enough that city planners, public-health officials, insurance companies, farmers, and everyone else in the global economy want to know what’s coming next for their patch of the planet. And telling them would require geographic precision that even the most advanced climate models don’t yet have, as well as computing power that doesn’t yet exist. Our picture of what is happening and probably will happen on Earth is less hazy than it’s ever been. Still, the exquisitely local scale on which climate change is experienced and the global purview of our best tools to forecast its effects simply do not line up.

Today’s climate models very accurately describe the broad strokes of Earth’s future. But warming has also now progressed enough that scientists are noticing unsettling mismatches between some of their predictions and real outcomes. Kai Kornhuber, a climate scientist at Columbia University, and his colleagues recently found that, on every continent except Antarctica, certain regions showed up as mysterious hot spots, suffering repeated heat waves worse than what any model could predict or explain. Across places where a third of humanity lives, actual daily temperature records are outpacing model predictions, according to forthcoming research from Dartmouth’s Alexander Gottlieb and Justin Mankin. And a global jump in temperature that lasted from mid-2023 to this past June remains largely unexplained, a fact that troubles Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, although it doesn’t entirely surprise him.

“From the 1970s on, people have understood that all models are wrong,” he told me. “But we’ve been working to make them more useful.” In that sense, the project of climate modeling is a scientific process that’s proceeding normally, even excellently. Only now the whole world needs very specific information to make crucial decisions, and they needed it, like, yesterday. That scientists don’t have those answers might look like a failure of modeling, but really, it’s a testament to how bad climate change has been permitted to get, and how quickly.

Models simply can’t function on the scale at which people live, because assessing the impact of current emissions on the future world requires hundreds of years of simulations. Modeling the Earth at one-square-kilometer pixels would take “like a hundred thousand times more computation than we currently have,” Schmidt, of NASA, told me.

Trees and land are major sinks for carbon emissions, and that this fact might change is not accounted for in climate models. But it is changing: Trees and land absorbed much less carbon than normal in 2023, according to research published last October. In Finland, forests have stopped absorbing the majority of the carbon they once did, and recently became a net source of emissions, which, as The Guardian has reported, swamped all gains the country has made in cutting emissions from all other sectors since the early 1990s. The interactions of the ice sheets with the oceans are also largely missing from models, Schmidt told me, despite the fact that melting ice could change ocean temperatures, which could have significant knock-on effects. Changing ocean-temperature patterns are currently making climate modelers at NOAA rethi

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, January 7, 2025 2:59 PM (P)

2024 LNG Export Study: Energy, Economic, and Environmental Assessment of U.S. LNG Exports

https://fossil.energy.gov/app/docketindex/docket/index/30

The conclusions of the report are measured yet damning. The Department of Energy did not outright advise banning new exports of natural gas. But, as Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm wrote in a statement, the department found that “unfettered exports” of American gas would reduce supply domestically, potentially driving up wholesale gas prices in the U.S. by more than 30 percent. The report also found that increasing LNG exports could generate 1.5 gigatons of direct greenhouse-gas emissions a year by 2050. That’s equivalent to about a quarter of current annual U.S. emissions, and would more than eclipse the emission reductions the country has made since 2000. If the department’s predictions are correct, the U.S. would be essentially abandoning any pretense of trying to limit climate change. The LNG industry has long countered that it can use carbon-capture technology to counteract its emissions. But that technology is far from functional at any meaningful scale. Even when the Energy Department researchers factored in hypothetical “aggressive” use of carbon capture and storage, emissions were projected to rise.

In the report, the Biden administration also says that its original argument for LNG exports—that Europe needed the gas for energy security during the Russian war with Ukraine—has fallen apart. Demand in Europe is plateauing and is expected to decline, and instead, the increased exports from the U.S. would mostly go to benefit China, already the world’s largest LNG importer, Granholm wrote. This has long been pointed out by LNG’s opponents; it is striking to see the facts laid out by the federal government. The continued pace of LNG exports is “neither sustainable nor advisable,” Granholm wrote.

The DOE report makes clear that liquefied natural gas is neither a form of clean energy nor a bridge to a cleaner future. In fact, exporting more of it, Granholm wrote, would serve mostly to generate “wealth for the owners of export facilities.”

The report itself does nothing to block plans by Trump to lift the pause on LNG-export terminals on his “very first day back.” Proponents of these terminals say they are an economic boon to the places where they are built, and create jobs in regions that need them. (Most of these jobs are connected to constructing the terminals, and are temporary.) The American Gas Association condemned the DOE report as a means to justify the “mistake” of Biden’s LNG pause; the financial research firm S&P Global put out a report the same day that found that LNG exports contribute $400 billion to American GDP, and that the pause and other regulatory measures jeopardize an additional $250 billion in incremental GDP.

With Republicans about to control all three branches of government, though, he wouldn’t predict how the coming fight against new export infrastructure would go. Still, to justify issuing future permits, the Department of Energy must determine that each new export operation is in the public interest. And now the Department of Energy has made a case for why it isn’t.

More at https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/12/gas-lng-climate-tr
ump/681041
/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, January 8, 2025 5:35 PM (P)

The tourism video Arctic Wildlife in Greenland


Visit Greenland


that giant Ice Cube Glacier called Greenland a historical part of an expanding Danish Empire a Viking Dane Empire mostly gone today, some of the ice is now less than 10m 33ft thick, with radar and satellite mapping the ice is thought to sit on top of a giant island bedrock, recently scientists discovered Greenland's Grand Canyon or the possibility that Greenland might actually be three islands almost joined together with a big slab of glacier ice on top, the glaciers are melting twice as fast as they were five years ago.


France tells Trump to keep his hands off Greenland: EU will defend its 'sovereign borders'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14262207/France-Trump-EU-atta
ck-sovereign-borders-President-invading-Greenland.html


EU will not tolerate a Trump takeover of Greenland, says France
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/01/08/eu-will-not-tolerate
-trump-takeover-of-greenland-france
/

the scientists say it once had Dinosaurs Issi "cold" in Greenlandica plateosaurid dinosaur described in 2021 from the Late Triassic Fleming Fjord Formation of Greenland, is that 210 million years ago?
it contains one species, Issi saaneq; the full binomial name means "cold bone"

times when the Lands were in different places and Earth was warmer


but then Dinosaurs have even been found in the South Pole in Antarctica digs

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, January 11, 2025 2:03 AM (P)

Climate change is very close to its 1.5°C flashing red light level

By Kevin Drum | January 10, 2025 – 11:56 am

https://jabberwocking.com/climate-change-is-very-close-to-its-1-5c-fla
shing-red-light-level
/

The New York Times reports today that the world has officially warmed by more than 1.5°C. This is based on the Copernicus ERA5 estimate for 2024, which I'm unable to confirm because the Copernicus folks won't let me download their annual data unless I register with a 12-character password—which I did—and then respond to an email confirmation—which they refused to send. https://climate.copernicus.eu/climate-indicators/temperature

However, I can show you the more conventional NASA data:

According to NASA, we're at 1.28°C above the pre-industrial baseline and it will still be a few years before we hit 1.5°C.

How many years? That depends. If you extrapolate from long-term trends it looks like 2037 or so (and around 2050 to hit 2°C). But temps have been skyrocketing recently, and if you extrapolate from that we're only a few years away.

So it's anywhere between now and soon, depending on whose data turns out to be most accurate. Happy New Year.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, January 11, 2025 3:50 AM (P)

Earth records hottest year on record in 2024 and breached the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold

Last year’s global average temperature easily passed 2023’s record heat and kept pushing even higher.

It surpassed the long-term warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit ) since the late 1800s that was called for by the 2015 Paris climate pact, according to the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Service, the United Kingdom’s Meteorology Office and Japan’s weather agency.

The European team calculated 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.89 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. Japan found 1.57 degrees Celsius (2.83 degrees Fahrenheit) and the British 1.53 degrees Celsius (2.75 degrees Fahrenheit) in releases of data coordinated to early Friday morning European time.

American monitoring teams — NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the private Berkeley Earth — were to release their figures later Friday but all will likely show record heat for 2024, European scientists said.

The six groups compensate for data gaps in observations that go back to 1850 — in different ways, which is why numbers vary slightly.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/climate-change/earth-records-hottest
-year-on-record-in-2024-and-the-jump-was-so-big-it-breached-a-key-threshold/ar-BB1rdGMf


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, January 12, 2025 8:10 PM (P)

Warm Dry Weather, drained Lakes nobody collecting River Water running off mountains and hills


then mix in some Political Corruption


and sicko Arsonists are added to the mix


This is Malibu - one of the wealthiest affluent places on the entire planet, now it’s being burnt to ashes.
https://x.com/its_The_Dr/status/1876975165889814616


quote Elon Musk

DEI means people will DIE

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1878289952657560030#m

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, January 13, 2025 5:57 PM (P)

U.S. Natural Gas Power Plants to Flourish Alongside the AI Boom

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Jan 13, 2025, 5:00 AM CST

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Natural-Gas-Powe
r-Plants-to-Flourish-Alongside-the-AI-Boom.html


U.S. natural gas is set to be a big winner in the AI boom with several dozen new gas-fired power plants expected to be built in America by the end of the decade, according to analysts.

A total of 80 new gas power plants could be constructed by 2030, adding about 46 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity, per estimates from energy data provider Enverus cited by the Financial Times. This would be 20% higher than the gas capacity additions in the past five years.

Yet, five years ago expectations were that America’s power consumption may have already peaked and would only flatline going forward.

AI and the data centers have upended these forecasts and now U.S. power demand is expected to rise each year in the coming years.

The surge in U.S. power demand due to the AI advancements and data center construction is set to unleash a new boom in the build-out of natural gas power plants to provide reliable 24/7 electricity.

Big Oil is already proposing to help power the AI revolution and the enormous energy consumption with gas power plants. Chevron and Exxon are talking to power generators, energy providers, and data centers to provide what they describe as lower-carbon energy.

The incoming Trump Administration is expected to favor strongly natural gas to power America’s growing electricity demand and scrap some Biden-era environmental constraints on new natural gas generation.

Natural gas-fired power generation in the United States soared to a record high last year, driving up global gas demand.

In recent years, power demand in the United States, the single largest portion of which is delivered by gas-fired power plants, has surged and is expected to continue to soar with rising electrification and more electricity necessary to power and cool data centers.

U.S. power-generating companies are announcing plans for the highest volume of new natural gas-fired capacity in years as the AI boom is driving demand for electricity.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, January 13, 2025 6:11 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Warm Dry Weather, drained Lakes nobody collecting River Water running off mountains and hills


then mix in some Political Corruption


and sicko Arsonists are added to the mix


This is Malibu - one of the wealthiest affluent places on the entire planet, now it’s being burnt to ashes.
https://x.com/its_The_Dr/status/1876975165889814616


quote Elon Musk

DEI means people will DIE

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1878289952657560030#m

Elon Musk thinks this has never happened before. He could google and learn that he is in serious error:

#1 Spitting Hot Fire: Malibu Wildfires and the Santa Anas
By Ryan Reft | July 11, 2013
https://www.pbssocal.org/history-society/spitting-hot-fire-malibu-wild
fires-and-the-santa-anas


#2 A brief history of Malibu wildfires
November 25, 2007
https://malibutimes.com/article_be86d151-e381-5db5-9a85-66cc05586070

With today’s year-long fire season, it’s comforting to know that Malibu pioneer Frederick Rindge had the same experience with wildfires that we do.

In his 1898 book, “Happy Days in California,” the last owner of the Spanish land grant, Malibu Rancho, wrote about the “Great Drought of 1897” and a three-day wildfire resulting from dreaded Santa Ana winds.

He described a family putting wet blankets on buildings exposed to flying embers; escaping to a nearby creek; and community aid to survivors.

“The dry year and the mountain fire just about ruined one of the settlers…,” Rindge wrote. “But he had friends. From far and near they gathered together… and each was requested to bring something for a woodland feast in the great sycamore grove.

“Besides this, each one was asked to give a dollar toward a purse to be presented to the unfortunate family… it was pleasantly agreed that the recipients should organize a like benefit for the next man burned out; thus all feeling of being an object of charity was removed.”

Since 1929, there has been an average of two wildfires per decade [see list at bottom]. Neighbors help neighbors and response and recovery have become more institutionalized.

In his 1958 book, “The Malibu,” Broad Beach resident Lawrence Clark Powell wrote of the December 26, 1956, “Newton Fire,” which burned 26,000 acres, destroyed 100 homes and caused one death.

An operator at the “County Fire Station at Zuma” told residents to evacuate, Powell wrote. He and his wife carried a toy poodle and a cat to the beach. Neighbors brought the Powell’s horse and burro to the beach, and the other Powell cats came out of hiding to join them. The Powells joined neighbors in putting out small fires on the beach. A county engine came from Downey and called for backup to save homes in the path of flames from Encinal Canyon. Edison Company lineman blasted chemical foam on the brush. Deputy sheriffs sealed off roads to keep away looters. The Zuma Fire Station was the staging area for firefighters from San Diego and San Luis Obispo, Powell wrote.

In her 1950 book, “My Fifty Years in Malibu,” Carbon Beach resident Dorothy Stotsenberg described devastation from the 1970 “Wright Fire” (28,000 acres, 10 deaths, 103 homes destroyed) in Malibu Knolls, Malibu Road and Serra Retreat. A clothing center set up at Malibu Presbyterian Church after that blaze was the genesis of The Artifac Tree thrift shop founded by the late Honey Coatsworth, Stotsenberg wrote.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, January 26, 2025 7:25 PM (P)

Catastrophic tipping point in Greenland reached as crystal blue lakes turn brown, belch out carbon dioxide

Live Science reports | Jan 24, 2025

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/catastrophic-t
ipping-point-in-greenland-reached-as-crystal-blue-lakes-turn-brown-belch-out-carbon-dioxide


Thousands of Greenland’s crystal-clear blue lakes have turned a murky brown thanks to global warming — and the worst part is that they’ve started emitting carbon dioxide.

Record heat and rain in 2022 pushed the lakes of West Greenland past a tipping point, so rather than absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2), they began to emit it into the atmosphere, according to a new study.

The changes began in fall, which is normally a snowy time for Greenland. However, heat waves turned snow into rain and thawed the island’s permafrost — frozen ground that stores carbon, iron and other elements. The rains then washed these elements into lakes, turning them brown.

Less sunlight was able to penetrate the lakes as they darkened, which had a ripple effect on the microscopic plankton living in the water. The number of plankton absorbing CO2 through photosynthesis — the process of turning sunlight into energy — declined, while the amount of plankton breaking down and releasing carbon increased, according to a statement released by the University of Maine.

The lakes normally absorb CO2 in the summer, but by the following year they had flipped to become carbon dioxide producers. These types of widespread changes would normally take centuries. Researchers have observed the browning of lakes across the Northern Hemisphere, including the U.S., but it typically takes multiple decades — much longer than the transformation of Greenland’s lakes.

“The magnitude of this and the rate of change were unprecedented,” study lead author Jasmine Saros, a professor of paleolimnology and lake ecology at the University of Maine, said in the statement.

The researchers published their findings Tuesday (Jan. 21) in the journal PNAS. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2413855122

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, January 29, 2025 4:37 PM (P)

Trump tries to seize the power of the purse with ‘an illegal executive order’

‘It’s an Illegal Executive Order. And It’s Stealing.’

Trump wants to go around Congress and freeze enormous amounts of federal spending. Can he?

By Russell Berman | January 28, 2025, 10 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/01/trump-executive-o
rder-spending-congress/681484
/

Buried within one of the dozens of executive orders that President Donald Trump issued in his first days in office is a section titled “Terminating the Green New Deal.” As presidential directives go, this one initially seemed like a joke. The Green New Deal exists mostly in the dreams of climate activists; it has never been fully enacted into law.

The next line of Trump’s order, however, made clear he is quite serious: “All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.” The president is apparently using “the Green New Deal” as a shorthand for any federal spending on climate change. But the two laws he targets address much more than that: The $900 billion IRA not only funds clean-energy programs but also lowers prescription-drug prices, while the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law represents the biggest investment in roads, bridges, airports, and public transportation in decades. And the government has spent only a portion of each.

In one sentence, Trump appears to have cut off hundreds of billions of dollars in spending that Congress has already approved, torching Joe Biden’s two most significant legislative accomplishments. The order stunned even some Republicans, many of whom supported the infrastructure law and have taken credit for its investments.

And Trump didn’t stop there. Yesterday, the White House ordered a pause on all federal grants and loans—a move that could put on hold an additional tens of billions of dollars already approved by Congress, touching many corners of American life. Democrats and government watchdogs see the directives as an opening salvo in a fight over the separation of powers, launched by a president bent on defying Congress’s will. “It’s an illegal executive order, and it’s stealing,” Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told me, referring to the order targeting the IRA and infrastructure law.

Withholding money approved by Congress “undermines the entire architecture of the Constitution,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told me. “It essentially makes the president into a king.” Last night, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Trump’s freeze on federal grants and loans “blatantly disobeys the law.”

The Constitution gives Congress the so-called power of the purse—that is, the House and the Senate decide how much money the government spends and where it goes. Since 1974, a federal law known as the Impoundment Control Act has prohibited the executive branch from spending less than the amount of money that Congress appropriates for a given program or purpose. During Trump’s first term, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the administration had violated that law by holding up aid to Ukraine—a move that became central to Trump’s 2019 impeachment.

Trump has argued that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional, and so has his nominee for budget director, Russell Vought, who had the same job at the end of the president’s first term. Vought also helped write Project 2025, the conservative-governing blueprint that attracted so many attacks from Democrats that Trump disavowed it during the campaign.

In his Senate confirmation hearings this month, Vought repeatedly refused to commit to abiding by the impoundment act even as he acknowledged that it is “the law of the land.” “For 200 years, presidents had the ability to spend less than an appropriation if they could do it for less,” he told senators at his first hearing. During his second appearance, when Van Holl

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, February 6, 2025 5:40 PM (P)

A transformer supply crisis bottlenecks energy projects

By Andrew Moseman | 11 Dec 2024

https://spectrum.ieee.org/transformer-shortage

The recent book Energy 2040 (Springer), coauthored by Georgia Tech’s Divan, lays out some of the staggering numbers. The capacity of all the energy projects waiting to connect to the U.S. grid amounts to 2,600 GW—more than double the nation’s entire generation capacity currently. An average estimate of U.S. EV adoption suggests the country will have 125 million EVs by 2040. The electricity demands of U.S. data centers may double by the end of this decade because of the boom in artificial intelligence.

Download Energy 2040 from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Energy+2040

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, February 20, 2025 6:15 PM (P)

Record-smashing global temperature findings

By Chloe Bryant | February 19, 2025

https://www.thecooldown.com/outdoors/record-smashing-weather-event-glo
bal-warming-climate-norm
/

As reported by The Weather Network, the dates of Jan. 14 through Jan. 22 saw record-high global temperatures, a feat even more alarming considering the arctic blast that pummeled much of North America over the same period.

Global temperatures peaked on Jan. 19, reaching 55.9 degrees Fahrenheit, a 1.7 degree increase from normal temperatures for the same time of year, according to data released by Copernicus.

Why is the record-breaking warmth concerning?

Though a warm January doesn't necessarily mean the rest of the year will follow suit, it does reflect an alarming trend of rising temperatures seen in recent years.

2024 was the hottest year on record, confirmed by scientists at NASA, and the previous 10 years have been the warmest 10 on record.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, February 26, 2025 11:25 PM (P)

EPA tells White House to strike down landmark climate finding

By Maxine Joselow | February 26, 2025, 11:41 a.m. EST

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/02/26/epa-enda
ngerment-finding-trump-climate
/

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has privately urged the White House to strike down a scientific finding underpinning much of the federal government’s push to combat climate change, according to three people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

The 2009 “endangerment finding” cleared the way for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act by concluding that the planet-warming gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. The Obama and Biden administrations used that determination to set strict limits on emissions from cars and power plants.

By repealing the endangerment finding, the Trump administration would be taking one of its most consequential steps yet to derail federal climate efforts. In recent days, the administration has also blocked work that is central to international climate research and barred federal scientists and diplomats from attending a major climate event in China.

EPA officials weighed whether to reverse the endangerment finding during President Donald Trump’s first term but opted not to do so.

Conservatives have argued that repealing the finding is critical to unraveling what they see as burdensome limits on emissions from various sectors of the economy. Environmentalists, in contrast, say the finding has justified stronger regulations that have yielded enormous benefits for the planet and public health.

On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order that tasked the EPA with reviewing the “legality and continuing applicability of” the endangerment finding. The order gave Zeldin 30 days to submit recommendations to Russell Vought, the head of the White House budget office.

EPA officials have not shared the recommendations publicly. EPA spokeswoman Molly Vaseliou declined to comment on the matter Tuesday, saying in an email, “EPA is in compliance with this aspect of the President’s Executive Order.”

Mandy Gunasekara, who served as EPA chief of staff at the end of Trump’s first term and wrote the EPA chapter in the conservative blueprint Project 2025, has been advising the administration on repealing the endangerment finding, according to the three individuals briefed on the matter.

Jonathan Brightbill, who was a top deputy in the Justice Department’s environment and natural resources division during Trump’s first term, has also provided legal advice, these people said. Brightbill recently served on the Trump transition team at the Justice Department and is a partner at the law firm Winston & Strawn.

Gunasekara and Brightbill did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The endangerment finding has sparked legal and political battles in Washington for more than 15 years. In 2007, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. In response, the EPA first issued the endangerment finding and then established the first-ever carbon limits for vehicles and power plants.

During Trump’s first term, skeptics of mainstream climate science filed a petition asking the EPA to repeal the determination. But agency lawyers rejected that petition on Trump’s last day in office in 2021.

Allies of the fossil fuel industry cheered the idea that the administration would revisit the issue.

“They unfortunately didn’t do this in the first term, so I’m pleased to see that they’re working on this in the second term,” said Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, an advocacy group for the oil and gas sector.

Myron Ebell, who led the EPA transition team during Trump’s first term, said nixing the endangerment finding could make

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, March 7, 2025 6:36 AM (P)

Quote:

Wy Are We Ignoring The Most Powerful Climate Solution?
Thursday, Mar 06, 2025 - 05:05 PM

Authored by Mollie Engelhart

Everywhere I look, I see people talking about climate change. There’s no shortage of solutions being pushed—electric cars, lab-grown meat, carbon capture technology—but almost none of these address the root of the problem. Meanwhile, the most powerful solution, one that is already proven to work, is ignored: regenerative agriculture.

I am a regenerative farmer. I don’t just believe in the principles of rebuilding soil, restoring ecosystems, and managing land in a way that sequesters carbon—I live it. Every day, I see the results firsthand: healthier soil, stronger crops, increased biodiversity, and livestock that thrive without chemical inputs. I also see how the current system actively works against this approach, prioritizing profit-driven, industrial solutions over simple, nature-based ones.

So why is regenerative agriculture ignored while flashy, high-tech solutions dominate the conversation? The answer is simple: There’s no money in it for corporations.

Regenerative Farming Doesn’t Fit the Profit Model

Industrial agriculture is built on dependency—on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically modified seeds. It thrives on monocultures that strip the land of nutrients, requiring even more chemical intervention just to sustain itself. Companies make billions selling these inputs, and governments subsidize the entire system. Regenerative farming, on the other hand, restores soil naturally—through cover cropping, rotational grazing, and composting. When farmers build fertility through natural cycles instead of synthetic inputs, chemical companies lose customers.

This is why you don’t see billion-dollar ad campaigns promoting regenerative farming. There is no corporate giant profiting from farmers planting cover crops or integrating livestock with row crops. Instead, money flows to industries that keep farmers dependent on fertilizers, patented seeds, and ever-expanding government subsidies.

The Climate Narrative

The same forces that created our industrial food system also control the climate narrative. It’s a lot easier to sell wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars than it is to fundamentally change the way we farm. The entire renewable energy sector has been built into a multitrillion-dollar industry, with subsidies, government incentives, and global investment pouring into its expansion.

Meanwhile, regenerative agriculture—the one approach that could actively reverse environmental damage and sequester carbon on a massive scale—is barely mentioned. Why? Because it’s nearly impossible for big corporations to monetize regenerative agriculture the way they can monetize other industries.

When a company sells an electric vehicle, a solar farm, or a wind turbine, they make money. When a farmer plants diverse crops, rotates livestock, and stops using chemical fertilizers, no one gets rich—except the farmer and the community that benefits from healthier land and food.

If climate change were truly about reducing emissions and restoring balance to our ecosystems, regenerative agriculture would be front and center. Instead, it’s pushed to the margins because it doesn’t generate profits for those who control the narrative.

Carbon Markets and Technocratic Fixes

Many of the climate solutions we hear about today—carbon credits, lab-grown meat, renewable energy offsets—aren’t about solving the problem. They’re about monetizing it. Instead of reducing emissions at the source, carbon markets allow big polluters to buy their way out of responsibility, trading credits rather than actually regenerating land.



MORE AT https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/why-are-we-ignoring-most-powerf
ul-climate-solution


-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nation

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, March 7, 2025 6:41 AM (P)

Quote:

DOGE Homes In On Shady Climate "Popup NGO Shell" That Received Billions From Biden

A noteworthy statistic from the National Council of Nonprofits reveals that NGOs employ 250,000 people in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. In the DOGE era, taxpayer funds for these nonprofits are under intense scrutiny, sending shockwaves across the Deep State.

The DOGE team appears to have set its crosshairs on a "popup nonprofit shell" company called Climate United Fund.

FOX Business' Elizabeth MacDonald wrote on X that the Climate United Fund received the largest nonprofit grant in history—a $7 billion award from the Biden-Harris regime to operate what has been described as a "massive climate slush fund." Just before the nonprofit shell received billions, it mysteriously blew through hundreds of thousands of dollars.

MacDonald provided more color on the shady Climate United Fund:

This is disturbing – Biden and Obama Democrats created a new beast, the "popup nonprofit shell" they suddenly launch to take in your taxpayer money supposedly for things like climate change and illegal immigration. Major front for taxpayer abuse with accusations of grift growing by the hour. Never saw it like this in decades covering IRS/taxes.

Check out the tax returns for one of these popup NGO shells, the Climate United Fund which got the biggest nonprofit grant in history out of Biden's massive climate slush funds.

Kamala Harris and Biden's EPA chief Michael Regan gave $7 billion total to the suddenly created Climate United Fund in April 2024 after it launched just five months earlier in November 30, 2022 when Its tax returns show it started with a tiny $547K in revs.

But it spent a massive $451K of that $547k in just two months in 2023, a quarter of that on legal fees and the majority $323K mysteriously blown on no one knows what because its tax returns don't say.

It has no stipulated plans for how it will spend your $7B in tax $$, just ephemeral solar projects in Idaho, Arkansas, and Oregon that amount to only about $50M total, a fraction of the $7B. It also gave money out of that $7b to Power Forward Communities linked to Stacey Abrams.

It has little to no details on how much its officers get paid that you typically see on NGO 990s, in fact virtually no details, red flags that it's a shell.

It supposedly is a partnership betw Dem insiders at investment firm Calvert Impact Capital, Community Preservation Corp. and a group called "Self-Help" (irony noted).

Beth Bafford is its CEO, a former "special assistant" in Obama's OMB and a regional field director for the Obama Campaign.

As we tweeted about a month ago, it has ties to Democratic Party of California chairman and California State Treasurer Phil Angelides, Obama's Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, United Farm Workers of America co-founder Dolores Huerta and Patrice Willoughby of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Judge Glock, the Director of Research and Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, noted on X that the Climate United Fund got your $7B after submitting a small 49-page report. That was all it took.


Jeff Carlson described the Climate United Fund as potentially "one of the primary vehicles to take advantage of the giant taxpayer-funded slush funds created by Biden—or whoever was running him."

"This is more than Grant Laundering. This is Program Laundering. And it looks like Obama's fingerprints are all over it," Carlson said.



MORE AT https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/doge-hones-shady-climate-popup-ngo-s
hell-received-billions-biden


-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, March 31, 2025 8:15 PM (P)

Arctic sea ice sets a record low maximum in 2025

THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2025

https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/analyses/arctic-sea-ice-sets-record-lo
w-maximum-2025


Arctic sea ice extent appears to have reached its annual maximum on March 22, 2025. This is the lowest maximum in the 47-year satellite record, with previous low maximums occurring in 2017, 2018, 2016, and 2015.

Quote:

I am frankly surprised this page has not been taken down, which is one reason I wanted to make a record of the data here. Angry Bear is fortunate to have it also.
https://angrybearblog.com/2025/03/arctic-sea-ice-makes-new-record-low-
annual-max

https://bonddad.blogspot.com/2025/03/arctic-sea-ice-make-lowest-ever.h
tml


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, April 9, 2025 7:52 AM (P)

Climate Change Is A Chinese Hoax (Trump is convinced)

US federal agencies to 'unleash' coal energy after Biden 'stifled' it: 'Mine, Baby, Mine'

'Misguided policies from previous administrations have stifled this critical American industry,' Energy Secretary Wright said of coal production

By Emma Colton, Diana Stancy | April 8, 2025 5:37pm EDT

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-federal-agencies-unleash-coal-ener
gy-after-biden-stifled-it-mine-baby-mine


Trump signed an executive order Tuesday afternoon that will cut through red tape surrounding the coal industry, including directing the National Energy Dominance Council to designate coal as a "mineral," end a current pause to coal leasing on federal lands, promote coal and coal technology exports, and encourage the use of coal to power artificial intelligence initiatives, Fox News Digital learned of the upcoming executive order.

The order also instructs the Department of Justice to identify every "unconstitutional" state or local regulation that is "putting our coal miners out of business," according to Trump.

"The value of untapped gold in our country is 100 times greater than the value of all the gold at Fort Knox, and we're going to unleash it and make America rich and powerful again under this order," Trump said Tuesday ahead of signing the order.

"Pound for pound, coal is the single most reliable, durable, secure and powerful form of energy," Trump said. "It's cheap, incredibly efficient, high density, and it's almost indestructible. You could drop a bomb on it, and it's going to be there for you to use the next day, which you can't say with any other form of energy."

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME