We are back to warm weather and rain…..the garden will be happy but MoMo is not……the weekend is a time for reflection and meditation……(not really just time to do those honey dos)…..
Climate change has returned to the national dialog……especially since the introduction of the Dems “Green New Deal”…….I posted a couple of articles on this “plan”…….https://lobotero.com/2019/02/21/that-green-new-deal-2/
After that plan I found another plan to help with climate change….ever hear of “geoengineering”?
Nope?
Now you have……
Harvard’s Gernot Wagner wants to save the world from global warming. His method? Develop a new type of plane that will fly more than 4,000 missions a year dumping particulates into the stratosphere.
Wagner and his colleague Wake Smith call the proposed plane “SAI Lofter (SAIL).” Anonymous individuals at “Airbus, Atlas Air, Boeing, Bombardier, GE Engines, Gulfstream, Lockheed Martin, NASA, Near Space Corporation, Northrup Grumman, Rolls Royce Engines, Scaled Composites, The Spaceship Company, and Virgin Orbit” provided input.
Estimates for SAIL’s design and operation seem sophisticated but are fabricated. Wagner and Smith admit, “No existing aircraft design—even with extensive modifications—can reasonably fulfill [their] mission.”
Wagner and others believe that scientists can calculate how many particulates will be needed to cool the Earth to a desired temperature.
At least this is a plan as is the Green New Deal….all are heads above any plan the GOP may have (BTW they have NOTHING to offer in the fight with climate change)
That is about all I have on this Sunday….I am being prodded to get off my butt and go for that delayed walk…..MoMo is persistent if not anything…LOL
The Dem “old guard” is warming to the deal but I am not so sure that they can be trusted…….
Environmental activists received a reality check when newly empowered Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives pushed aside demands for an environmental economic transition program— a Green New Deal, in favor of reviving a toothless committee to ‘study’ the problem. A transition program is needed to mitigate the economic dislocations that will result from resolving the multiple environmental crises currently underway.
The move by Democrats virtually guarantees that the political support needed to move such a transition forward will be undermined by the day-to-day needs of the economically precarious majority. Recent evidence in this direction comes from the French gilets jaunes (yellow vests) whose rebellion allegedly began in response to an environmental gasoline tax. The rebellion was opportunistically framed as against environmental resolution rather than who pays for it.
I read that the Senate Repubs wants a vote on the plan because they want the Dems on record before the 2020 elections so it can be used against the Dems…….the House Repubs are following suit……will the Dem leadership back away from any deal to protect their candidates and keep their donors?
Once again politics trumps the good of the country….political games and political cowardice will rule the day.
Now is the time for these brave freshman reps to build a coalition in favor of the “Green New Deal” to counter the games the Repubs are playing…….
“The only solution that matches the scale of our multiple crises, including global warming, corporate control of our food system, income inequality, and the general decline of our environment and our democracy”
Progressive organizers are mobilizing behind the Green New Deal resolution—unveiled last week by Rep. Alexandria Ocastio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)—with renewed energy to build “an unprecedented political coalition” to radically transform the nation’s energy system and address the climate crisis while also facilitating a just transition to a new, greener economy.
Since initial backers hailed the introduction of the historic resolution as a huge accomplishment on Thursday, a growing number of labor, economic justice, racial justice, indigenous, environmental, and community organizations have lined up behind the bold proposal and vowed to pressure lawmakers to pass it. The youth-led Sunrise Movement, which has spearheaded grassroots organizing in favor of the deal, is planning more than 600 congressional office visits this week to garner support.
There are five goals, which the resolution says should be accomplished in a 10-year mobilization effort:
Achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers
Create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States
Invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century
Secure for all people of the United States for generations to come: clean air and water; climate and community resiliency; healthy food; access to nature; and a sustainable environment
Promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (“frontline and vulnerable communities”)
Now is the time for action….I salute those that have signed on to this plan….it can only do good for the country and its people.
I know if you are on the Right then you probably think that the whole climate change thing is just so much hysteria by the Left……and if you are on the Left then it is important but not that important that it deserves a lot of attention.
Well the new Dems in the House are not going to let climate change go the way of the Do-Do…..
If the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is to be believed, humanity has just over a decade to get carbon emissions under control before catastrophic climate change impacts become unavoidable.
The Republican Party generally ignores or denies that problem. But the Democratic Party claims to accept and understand it.
The problem is not with the policy…the problem is that corporate slugs will fight this….including the MSM…they will not talk about this proposal so that the people will learn about it and possibly support the creation of the Green New Deal…..and when they face re-election and the money pours in they will make a “one time” exception…..work on getting money out of our elections!
Sorry I digress……
Then some are not so sure about this Deal……
A burgeoning save-the-climate effort called the Green New Deal, explains Vox’s David Roberts, “has thrust climate change into the national conversation, put House Democrats on notice, and created an intense and escalating bandwagon effect. … everyone involved in green politics is talking about the GND. … But WTF is it?”
Roberts goes on to give a good summary, but no one can fully answer that question until someone puts a complete plan down on paper. We do know that the vision as it’s being described by its fans (and it seems to have nothing but fans in the climate movement) explicitly draws its inspiration from the New Deal that the Roosevelt Administration launched eighty-four years ago in an effort to end the Great Depression.
A new analysis by one of the nation’s top public interest advocacy groups shows that even as the planet and humanity face an existential threat due to the climate crisis, most corporate media outlets in the U.S. have largely ignored the urgent need for a Green New Deal and the growing political movement demanding it.
Following the midterm elections in November, the youth-led Sunrise Movement flooded congressional offices and demanded that representatives back a Green New Deal and the creation of a House select committee that would be tasked with drafting legislation to create one, successfully convincing 45 members of Congress to support the proposal.
But despite the energy behind the plan, 82 percent of Americans in a Yale/George Mason poll said they had never heard of the Green New Deal, and researchers behind the new Public Citizen study are blaming corporate news networks for failing to educate the public about the proposal.
I support this and I think the more the American people see about this policy the they will support…..but as long as the MSM is helping tap down any enthusiasm the popularity will not be realized.
As long as we are talking about it….the corporate media refuse to talk about the policies that actually matter…..
A new analysis by one of the nation’s top public interest advocacy groups shows that even as the planet and humanity face an existential threat due to the climate crisis, most corporate media outlets in the U.S. have largely ignored the urgent need for a Green New Deal and the growing political movement demanding it.
Following the midterm elections in November, the youth-led Sunrise Movement flooded congressional offices and demanded that representatives back a Green New Deal and the creation of a House select committee that would be tasked with drafting legislation to create one, successfully convincing 45 members of Congress to support the proposal.
But despite the energy behind the plan, 82 percent of Americans in a Yale/George Mason poll said they had never heard of the Green New Deal, and researchers behind the new Public Citizen study are blaming corporate news networks for failing to educate the public about the proposal.
The American voter should DEMAND truth, honesty and accuracy in the report that the MSM feeds to the public…..then maybe we all can make the best decisions for the country.
Hey is it not time to actually have a conversation on climate change? Or is the term global warming? Matters not for something is on the horizon and we are sticking our heads in the sand and hoping it will all go away…..
Hint: IT WON’T!
The word is out and it does not look too promising…..
“The planet warmed more than we thought. It was hidden from us just because we didn’t sample it right. But it was there. It was in the ocean already.”
Offering a stark warning that humanity may have even less time to drastically cut carbon emissions than the United Nations suggested in its latest alarming report on the climate crisis, new research (pdf) published in the journal Nature on Wednesday shows that Earth’s oceans have retained 60 percent more heat each year over the past 25 years than scientists previously believed.
“We thought that we got away with not a lot of warming in both the ocean and the atmosphere for the amount of CO2 that we emitted. But we were wrong,” Laure Resplandy, a geoscientist at Princeton University who led the new study, told the Washington Post. “The planet warmed more than we thought. It was hidden from us just because we didn’t sample it right. But it was there. It was in the ocean already.”
Don’t believe a word of the new study! But instead take the word of some jack wad that gets his money from the industries causing the world’s problems for we would not want these greed turds to lose any money now do we?
The biggest threat is the threat of drought……these seem to be expanding yearly…..a bad drought will expand the hunger and the famines……
The most hazardous global warming risk for society at large is widespread loss of grain production because of a synchronized worldwide drought. It would be a colossal killer. It’s happened before, known as The Great Drought 142 years ago.
Unmistakably, droughts feed off global warming and world temps are heading up, not down. Thus, droughts are intensified by temperature increases. If the same conditions as the drought of 1876 recurs, it would likely be a nightmarish scenario.
For a couple of decades the world’s population has looked the other way when the subject of climate change is mentioned…..America’s are some of the worse…
Finally the population has decided that they cannot sleep there way to a cleaner safer world…..civil disobedience, environmental disobedience will return to the world stage……appears the UK may well lead the world in this new found empowerment…..a Declaration Of Rebellion (has a nice ring to it)…..
To underscore the planetary emergency and denounce the U.K. government’s inaction on the climate crisis, a new group calling itself Extinction Rebellion rallied over 1,000 people to block Parliament Square in London on Wednesday. The direct action marks the launch of a mass civil disobedience campaign, with the group issuing a “Declaration of Rebellion” against the government because the activists “refuse to bequeath a dying planet to future generations by failing to act now.”
May we finally have some progress on saving this world before we go out looking for another one to screw up.
QAPLA!
After writing this draft I read another silly theory……
Brazil’s president-elect Jair Bolsonaro has chosen a new foreign minister who believes climate change is part of a plot by “cultural Marxists” to stifle western economies and promote the growth of China.
Ernesto Araujo – until now a mid-ranking official who blogs about the “criminalisation” of red meat, oil and heterosexual sex – will become the top diplomat of South America’s biggest nation, representing 200 million people and the greatest and most biodiverse forest on Earth, the Amazon.
My weekend is going nicely…cooler temps…..nice breeze from the North and a garden waiting for some winter seeds…then there is MO and her propensity for too much energy…..
Ever since she watched me plant some stuff in the garden she has helped by making holes all over the property……LOL
She is determined to wait for the UPS guy…..her new bed is in the mail…..
Let me go on….
We hear the pros and cons of Climate Change…..we have those that say we have less than a decade before we are too late to change the direction and then we have those silly little old white guys that say there is NOTHING to worry about……and somewhere in the middle of the debate is the story that needs more attention……
It’s been one week since a consortium of climate scientists released a dire United Nations report urging a global restructuring of energy industries within 12 years to prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change. While the report galvanized worldwide efforts to confront climate change, it was also met with apathy and denial from key leaders.
But a new study from Nature Plants might have identified the one climate-related issue that can unite people from myriad political backgrounds—beer. Led by Wei Xie, an agricultural scientist at Peking University, the paper finds that regions that grow barley, the primary crop used to brew beer, are projected to experience severe droughts and heat waves due to anthropogenic climate change.
It is bad enough that my waterfront property will be underwater soon and now my beer will be more expensive…..CRAP!
Dammit! I like my dark Lager once in awhile and now I am told it will be more expensive……CRAP!
Why not make those “hard soda pops” that the youngsters are drinking more expensive. I mean a true beer drinker would not touch one of these silly drinks with a pole.
Did you know that there is one that is “hard water”? That use to mean your soap would not lather but now it means……who knows for sure?
This news sucks!
Enjoy the rest of your day and have some rest and some relaxation…..be well, be safe.
Well the government has shut down and DC will draw to a stand still……but the weather NEVER stops…….
The last week it has been colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra…..even as far South as the Gulf Coast had snow, sleet and a week of below freezing temps….but with all the cold in 2018……but Moscow is the coldest…….
If Russian winters weren’t miserable and dreary, we wouldn’t have Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. In fact, the month of December 2000 saw just three hours of sunlight in Moscow, the New York Times reports. That benchmark was just shattered, however, with Moscow experiencing its “darkest December” ever, the paper notes, soaking in a whole six minutes of sun over all of last month. The average for December in the country’s capital is 18 hours. This followed an atypically wet and chilly summer, which prompted more than the usual number of calls to local mental health services and visits to psychiatrists. “When they hear about this, many people say, ‘It’s clear now why I was depressed,'” Roman Vilfand, the head of Russia’s weather service, says. Vilfand notes the bleakness was brought about by warm air masses sweeping in from the Atlantic and saturating the sky with clouds.
The lack of sunlight isn’t the only issue now that it’s winter. With the darkness comes extreme cold, with temperatures throughout Russia plummeting into deep-freeze territory. In Yakutsk (also spelled Yakutia), generally considered to be the country’s coldest area, temps have hovered at around minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit, the BBC reports. The Siberian Timesnotes it was so cold in Oymyakon, sometimes dubbed the coldest village in the world, that a new, recently installed electronic thermometer actually broke. To underscore the brutal weather, one local Yakutskian posted a picture of herself on Instagram showing her bundled up, her eyelashes crusted with ice. “This is nothing but a trip to work in [-52],” she posted. “Now, every girl in Yakutsk has a photo like this.” (It’s approaching Antarctic levels there.)
2017 has been one of the hottest on record…..
Earth last year wasn’t quite as hot as 2016’s record-shattering mark, but it ranked second or third, depending on who was counting. Either way, scientists say it showed a clear signal of man-made global warming because it was the hottest year they’ve seen without an El Nino boosting temperatures naturally. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United Kingdom’s meteorological office on Thursday announced that 2017 was the third hottest year on record. At the same time, NASA and researchers from a nonprofit in Berkeley, California, called it the second. The agencies slightly differ because of how much they count an overheating Arctic, where there are gaps in the data. The global average temperature in 2017 was 58.51 degrees, which is 1.51 degrees above the 20th century average and just behind 2016 and 2015, NOAA said.
During an El Nino year—when a warming of the central Pacific changes weather worldwide—the globe’s annual temperature can spike, naturally, by a tenth or two of a degree, scientists said. There was a strong El Nino during 2015 and 2016. But 2017 finished with a La Nina, the cousin of El Nino that lowers temperatures, reports the AP. Had there been no man-made warming, 2017 would have been average or slightly cooler than normal, said National Center for Atmospheric Research climate scientist Ben Sanderson. The observed warming has been predicted within a few tenths of a degree in computer simulations going back to the 1970s and 1980s, several scientists said. It has been 33 years since the last month that the globe was cooler than normal, according to NOAA.
We all have seen the horrific refugee crisis that the many wars in the Middle East has created….millions upon millions trying to find a spot that they can live without worry about their livelihood or their family.
Even if every war in the Middle East was cease today the refugee crisis would not be abated……
Plagued by heat and dust: Desert dust storms such as here in Kuwait could occur more often in the Middle East and North Africa as a result of climate change. In addition, temperatures on very hot days could rise to 50 degrees Celsius on average in the region (approximately 122 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. Credit: Molly John, Flickr, Creative Commons
The number of climate refugees could increase dramatically in future. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have calculated that the Middle East and North Africa could become so hot that human habitability is compromised. The goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees Celsius, agreed at the recent UN climate summit in Paris, will not be sufficient to prevent this scenario. The temperature during summer in the already very hot Middle East and North Africa will increase more than two times faster compared to the average global warming. This means that during hot days temperatures south of the Mediterranean will reach around 46 degrees Celsius (approximately 114 degrees Fahrenheit) by mid-century. Such extremely hot days will occur five times more often than was the case at the turn of the millennium. In combination with increasing air pollution by windblown desert dust, the environmental conditions could become intolerable and may force people to migrate.
More than 500 million people live in the Middle East and North Africa – a region which is very hot in summer and where climate change is already evident. The number of extremely hot days has doubled since 1970. “In future, the climate in large parts of the Middle East and North Africa could change in such a manner that the very existence of its inhabitants is in jeopardy,” says Jos Lelieveld, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and Professor at the Cyprus Institute.
Most people on WP have a cat or a dog and they post on their antics, moods, photos ……(I’ll get back to our furry friends in a moment)……
Awhile back there was a theory floated out there that the dinosaurs because of their immense size and their diet were allowing massive amounts of methane into the air….more simply…the did a lot of farting.
Then there was the theory that all the cows across the globe were farting constantly and thus the methane level was rising across the world.
Now back to the cats and the dogs……
A UCLA professor isn’t saying anyone who cares about the environment should get rid of their beloved pet dog and/or cat. But he’s not not saying that either. It’s widely accepted that eating meat is bad for the environment for a number of reasons, and it turns out our pets eat a whole lot of meat—in fact a country comprised only of the US’ cats and dogs would place fifth in global meat consumption, according to a press release. Professor Gregory Okin was interested in the environmental impacts of our pets and—in a paper published Wednesday in PLOS One—calculates that American cats and dogs create about 64 million tons of carbon dioxide per year due to eating meat. That’s equivalent to the yearly output of 13.6 million cars. “The numbers are surprisingly large,” he tells the Sacramento Bee.
All told, cats and dogs account for 25% to 30% of the environmental impact of meat consumption in the US. Okin says that’s “huge.” And yet, he’s “not saying people should go out and kill their animals or feed them something that isn’t appropriate”—like an all-veggie diet. Okin does identify a number of possible ways to lessen the problem: people could transition to vegetarian pets, such as hamsters, birds, and chickens (which have the added benefit of providing protein for their owners); the pet food industry could get more sustainable and find alternate sources of protein; and, according to the Santa Monica Mirror, pet owners can make sure they’re not over-feeding their dogs and cats.
If the climate is changing then these “scientists” want to blame our furry friends.
Does not matter to me….my two dogs may fart as much as they like….please just do it another room.
Time for some figs, bleu cheese and honey…..the grill will be busy today…..I will be making a hand made pizza….a meat lovers of course…….be well, be safe…..chuq
There is a debate going on about climate change…well there is a discussion because twats are denying there there is anything different….that nothing is changing and if it does it is only as nature wants.
Well and good but I personally do not give a shit which side one cares to take….I am talking about what I see….you may dispute what I see that is your right as it is my right to think negatively……
I have a small orchard with plums, tangerines, satsumas, limes, peaches and olives and since we have NO winter to speak of here in my state these trees do not bear the way they should…so something is changing and not for the good…..10 years ago I was getting so much fruit I was having to can to keep from losing the crop…..these days I do get enough to make a good snack.
I then read an article about the change climate here in the South……
As the United States confronts global warming in the decades ahead, not all states will suffer equally. Maine may benefit from milder winters. Florida, by contrast, could face major losses, as deadly heat waves flare up in the summer and rising sea levels eat away at valuable coastal properties.
In a new study in the journal Science, researchers analyzed the economic harm that climate change could inflict on the United States in the coming century. They found that the impacts could prove highly unequal: states in the Northeast and West would fare relatively well, while parts of the Midwest and Southeast would be especially hard hit.
There is some good news for some states other than the South but since I live in the area mentioned I really do not give a crap about Ohio or New York or any state in the Northern quadrant….sorry about that just being honest.
Not good news for my orchard….the one upside is that the olive trees are doing well these days so there is that……
There is nothing I can do to change this….I need a winter of freezing weather for the fruit to set without it I got a tree…all this is sad because I do love my fruit…well maybe things will improve when my granddaughter inherits the house and land…..
Day is done……..I am off like a dirty shirt…..be well, be safe….chuq
There has been much speculation on what the prez will say on the Paris Agreement……we now have the answer….
President Trump announced Thursday that the US will immediately cease “all implementation” of Paris climate change accord standards, the AP reports. “In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord but [begin] negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction under terms that are fair to the United States,” Trump said, per CNN. “We’re getting out.”
While introducing Trump in the Rose Garden, Vice President Mike Pence said Trump is “choosing to put American jobs and American consumers first” with his announcement that the US will withdraw from the Paris accord. Pence praised Trump’s leadership and said Trump is “is choosing to put the forgotten men and women of America first.”
There has been applause and there have been sighs……but with all that what is next?
Here’s what else you need to know about Trump’s decision:
First, Fortune explains the Paris climate agreement. The gist is that countries agree to work toward keeping the global average temperature from rising 3.6 degrees over the pre-industrial average, at which point scientists believe the effects of climate change would be irreversible.
In a statement, Al Gore called Trump’s decision “reckless and indefensible.” But he adds the transition to clean energy will be continued by mayors, governors, the business community, and the American people.
Bill McKibben, writing for the New York Times, calls withdrawing from the agreement “our nation’s dumbest act since launching the war in Iraq” and one that hurts not only civilization’s ability to survive climate change but also civilization itself by undermining both diplomacy and science.
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry in the Week counters that outrage over the decision is “absolute nonsense” in that the agreement was weak and ineffectual, with countries left to set their own goals for reducing emissions. (Though he also says withdrawing from it won’t do anything to add jobs in the Rust Belt.)
President Obama says leaving the Paris climate agreement is a rejection of the future, leaving the countries that remain to “reap the benefits in jobs and industries created,” the Hill reports.
Elon Musk is leaving Trump’s presidential advisory council over the decision, tweeting, “Climate change is real.”
Weather.com was also, clearly, not a fan of the decision. Below a livestream of Trump’s press conference, it ran stories about “Antarctica turning green” and “California’s coast disappearing into the sea” in an effort to get the American public to care about climate change.
Finally, Quartz reports a US not fully committed to reducing emissions may have actually hurt the climate agreement more by staying in it. “It is a club for countries who are part of a global effort to tackle dangerous climate change … The US no longer meets these admission criteria,” says a member of Ireland’s Climate Change Advisory Council.
Now you have everyone’s opinion and now mine.
Trump pulled out with hope that the conversation would change from all the stuff about the Russian connection (it will fail)…..of course he invoked the magic word……you can sell the American people any stupid idea as long as you use the word…….”JOBS”.
The agreement was self-regulating by each country…..it is non-binding…..That means that it had NO regulatory teeth….just how sis this agreement hurt American jobs? This is not a big deal but it will take the US off the table and turn over leadership to some one else…..that in my opinion is not a wise decision.
What can the world do with trump’s newest decision…..
As I have previously written, under Trump the United States has ceded whatever lingering threads of global leadership it had not already shredded by pointless wars of aggression and financial doomsday devices; we are now something of a pariah state. On climate change, it now falls to Europe, China, and India to corral this blundering, addled elephant of a nation, until our janky political machinery can eject Trump and the Republican Party from power. Here’s how they can do it.
