Tag: Global warming

IS Alt Energy The Answer?

I wrote this draft before the idiot won the election…..and Donny has a hard on for alt energy so this may be a moot point I will make.

We are bombarded daily by ads telling us the strives that big business is making to save the environment…..big oil, auto makers, bottlers, etc…..but are these forward looking business just blowing smoke up the consumers ass?

The latest report on CO2 emissions is not a good one (btw it may be the last report we get for at least 4 years)….

The Met Office has issued a dire warning: global warming is accelerating beyond control, pushing Earth off-track from meeting the 1.5°C (2.7°F) target set in the Paris Agreement.

The latest data shows a rapid rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and record-breaking temperatures – raising serious concerns about the future of our planet.

Scientists warn that without immediate and drastic action, we are heading toward a climate crisis that will be difficult to reverse.

The year 2024 officially became the hottest on record, with global average temperatures exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. This milestone highlights the increasing intensity of climate change and the urgent need for action.

https://www.earth.com/news/global-warming-is-accelerating-beyond-control-as-co2-levels-rise/

But the problem is the energy production…..trying to solve our energy problem we are embracing alt energy…..or are we?

Rising energy costs, unreliable power grids, and climate change continue to exacerbate the global energy crisis and its impact on both businesses and households.

To be sure, electricity access has been improving, the cost of solar energy has dropped by over 80% since 2010, and renewable energy installations have consistently outpaced fossil fuel developments. But even with all that progress, projections signal a rough road ahead for energy usage around the world—one that will continue to impact families struggling to pay bills, industries facing operational disruptions, and economies hindered by resource instability.

One major contributor to the calamity: the world’s reliance on centralized energy grids. Although centralized grids are pivotal to the generation and distribution of energy across many major cities of the world, a lot of these grids are getting old and outdated, overburdened, and ill-equipped to handle the demands of modern economies.

Fortunately, decentralized grids are emerging to help solve that problem. “The rise of decentralized energy solutions, like microgrids, is a direct response to the limitations of traditional grids,” Gil Kroyzer, CEO of Solargik, tells Fast Company. “Unlike centralized systems, decentralized solutions bring energy production closer to the end consumer, improving reliability and reducing infrastructure stress.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91257084/can-renewable-energy-really-fix-the-global-energy-crisis

There are no easy answers and kicking the can down the road at every opportunity will do nothing to save the planet.  Plus we have a new admin in DC that hates the environmental oversight and will work tirelessly to overturn any and all progressive we have made as little as it may be.

I am glad I am old and will not see the final destruction of the planet.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Climate Agreements

I have been following the climate debate for decades….it all started with Carter and just kept me interested…..I watched the timeline for clean environment pushed forward year after year until we are at the point where 2050 is the target date for a clean environment.

Not to worry there will be another climate summit to reassess that timeline and it will most likely be pushed yet again.

So what do you think of all this ‘kicking of the climate can’?

Personally I think these agreements benefit only one sector…..

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/25/climate-agreements-suck/

Climate agreements suck. There are no real enforcement provisions. Many signatories cheat. Some don’t rep0rt at all. Moreover, reported data is highly suspect. It’s a worldwide scandal recently exposed by YaleEnvironment360.

Evidence of cheating is found in the atmosphere: Global CO2 is on a rampage, skyrocketing upwards like never before, double-to-triple rates of only one year ago, see: CO2 Bursting into the Atmosphere. This is not supposed to be happening. It is twisting the planet’s climate system into a pretzel that doesn’t know which way to turn next. There are plenty of reasons to believe it is going to get much, much worse. The planet’s climate system is already so far whacked-out that it’s breathing fire.

Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions are skyrocketing in the aftermath of the much-touted climate agreement Paris ‘15 when 196 countries agreed to cut to net zero. Oops, wrong, many signatories are “net nothing.”

There is compelling evidence that signatory nations to Paris ’15 don’t give a damn about the agreement or care about Hot House Earth as they cavalierly undercount, when they do report, or they simply refuse to report. As a result, UN climate goals go straight into the trash, worthless.

A little history….the first worldwide climate summit was in 1979….the mandate was “a better understanding of the climate system and the causes of climate variability and change” and “to determine the predictability of climate; and to determine the effect of human activities on climate”.  In practice, the program aims to foster initiatives in climate research which require or benefit from international coordination and which are unlikely to emerge from national efforts alone.

And that agreement has been sliding down the toilet ever since.

So yeah climate agreements suck because it means nothing to the polluters because government will have their backs….until the bitter end.

And that end is not that far away…..but the profits will flow and the planet will eventually burn.

I know a bit dramatic….but what the Hell someone had to say it.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is Litigation Good For The Climate?

There have been many attempts to solve the problem of climate change….protests do little…..debate does nothing….but could litigation be the answer?

Recently in Montana there was a climate trial…..

Young environmental activists have scored a huge victory in Montana, where a judge has agreed that the state violated their constitutional right to “a clean and healthful environment.” In the first-of-its-kind Held v Montana case, District Judge Kathy Seeley ruled that it was unconstitutional for the coal and oil-producing state to allow fossil fuel development without considering the effect on the climate, the AP reports. The 16 plaintiffs in the case, ages 5 to 22, argued in June that the state was violating its own constitution—and destroying their future. Rikki Held, the plaintiff the case is named for, said climate change was hurting her family’s ranch.

Experts say the win could “energize the environmental movement and reshape climate litigation across the country,” per the Washington Post. Julia Olson, an attorney representing the young Montanans, describe the ruling as a “game-changer that marks a turning point in this generation’s efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human-caused climate chaos.” “This is a huge win for Montana, for youth, for democracy, and for our climate,” said Olson. She is the founder of the Our Children’s Trust nonprofit, which has filed similar lawsuits on behalf of young people in every state since 2011.

This was the first such case to go to trial, though a district court ruled in June that a federal case brought by the group can proceed to trial, the Guardian reports. Another case in Hawaii is expected to go to trial in June next year. The Montana victory sets an important precedent, experts say, though since bringing the law into compliance with the state constitution will be left to the GOP-controlled state legislature, it’s not clear whether it will lead to major changes, the AP notes.

With this small win could it be a template for further activism?

On this front, various efforts have been made to call for the acceleration of climate actions around the world. In the past years, advocacy campaigns, strikes, public demonstrations, and activists’ protests have been increasingly reported across media platforms, lobbying for countries to fulfil their climate pledges. Although some progress has been made, they are not enough to catch up with the fast-rising global temperature.

Increasingly individuals and non-governmental organizations are turning to climate litigation as part of the social movements, using human rights law as a strategic instrument to enforce climate actions.

Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, the number of climate change-related lawsuits has doubled from just over 800 cases (1986 -2014) to over 1,200 cases (2015 – 2022), with most cases based in the Global North (particularly in the US) and a growing number of cases from the Global South.

Human rights law offers strong grounds for litigation against states as states hold the primary responsibility and duty to protect human rights. At the European Court of Human Rights, three climate cases are pending before the Grand Chamber of the Court.

Among others, the climate cases were made on the grounds of the human rights violations of the right to life (Article 2), and the right to respect for private and family life (Article 8) as enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights.

(ipsnews.net)

Is this the way forward?

Keep in mind that here in the US SCOTUS will have the last word and we all know how corruptible these political hacks can be, right?

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Memories Of An ‘Eco-Commie’

The hot topic these days in blogs is that of the climate change persuasion….everyone is predicting and debating the end times for the planet….but where was all this concerned 10 years ago….5 years ago….even last year?

‘Eco-Commie’?

WTF?

I will explain that term shortly….but first….

After Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast I lost most of my saved earlier work but it was whisked away by the storm until the other day when I found a plastic bin that had been saved that I had forgotten about and in this bin were some writings I did on the environment and such.

Now for the Eco-Commie thing….after Vietnam I became deeply involved in the antiwar scene and by extension I also was a protester for the environment and because we were so animated some starting calling us ‘Eco-Commies’ because back in those days if you protested oil companies and other polluters you were anti-American.

I kinda liked the label to be honest.

Now to flesh out why I am writing this post…..

I have heard people ask just how did this become a problem unforeseen.

It was not unforeseen.

Back in 1977 during th early days of the Carter administration a memo was passed around.

n 1977 Star Wars hit movie theaters, New York City had a blackout that lasted 25 hours, and the Apple II personal computer went up for sale. It was also the year that a remarkable one-page memo was circulated at the very highest levels of US government.

Years before the climate crisis was part of national discourse, this memo outlined what was known – and feared – about the crisis at the time. It was prescient in many ways. Did anyone listen?

memo

Click to view the full memo.

Did they see this coming?

“Fossil fuel combustion has increased at an exponential rate over the last 100 years. As a result, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is now 12 percent above the pre-industrial revolution level and may grow to 1.5 to 2.0 times that level within 60 years. Because of the “greenhouse effect” of atmospheric CO2 the increased concentration will induce a global climatic warming of anywhere from 0.5 to 5°C.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/14/1977-us-presidential-memo-predicted-climate-change

Carter signed 14 major environmental bills as he foresaw climate change coming.

Jimmy Carter Signed 14 Major Environmental Bills and Foresaw the Threat of Climate Change

I would say they were ahead of the curve.

Carter was the first world leader to recognize the coming problem.

No one was listening…..and then in 1981 with the formation of the Heritage Foundation the battle was on between facts and misinformation.

Gains made under Carter’s presidential leadership in the early 1980s might have bought the planet precious time. Instead, for the next 12 years, under Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the U.S. government would view global warming as largely unworthy of study, much less action. Then came 25 years of stop-and-start efforts under administrations of both parties, followed by a return to denial under Trump and, then, re-entry into the Paris process under President Joe Biden.

Then there was the environmental summit of 1992.

I located some of me notes from this summit…..

178 nations sent delegates to the environmental summit of 1992….it was billed as ‘coming together to save the earth’….that did not work out so well now did it?

On the agenda was forest protection,biodiversity and climate change….

On climate change the industrialized nations agreed to try and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000….they failed miserably.

The US held out so they could force a treaty without specific levels of greenhouse gases and as usual the US never ratified the treaty….and as they say….here we are today scorching and sweating our asses off.

Some in the US have tried numerous times to head off the coming doom but each time the government did what it does best kick the can down the road and that has lead us to where we are today.

Every administration has issued this attempt or that and thanx to the silly notion of ‘bi-partisanship’ nothing has been done….and every year the situation got worse and worse until….BANG!  Here we are today with dire results of all that inaction.

For instance we just lived through the hottest month on record and yet BP made $2.6 billion in profit….so are they doing their part to help the situation…..NOT a chance!

The people can also shoulder some of the blame for they have ignored the warnings and in turn have let the government do little to nothing…..and once again….BANG!  Here we are today sweating our asses off.

If only someone had taken us ‘eco-commies’ seriously we might be talking about some other problem.

There you are the history of inaction and the results of an uncaring people.

Maybe you should have listened when you had the chance.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Don’t Forget Your Umbrella

That would be sage advice for my friends in the UK……but I do not believe they need to be reminded.

Since the rising heat on earth and the fact that this topic is generating a lot of  post and Chatbot writings I would offer a post on how to ‘cool’ the planet down.

The ‘umbrella’ I am speaking about is plan for our space projects and a way to help control our climate change.

Scientists think they have come up with a new approach to mitigating global warming: put up a giant “umbrella” in space to protect the Earth from excess sunlight.

István Szapudi, an astronomer at the University of Hawai’i Institute for Astronomy, said a workable design for a solar shield could be ready in decades.

“In Hawai’i, many use an umbrella to block the sunlight as they walk about during the day. I was thinking, could we do the same for Earth and thereby mitigate the impending catastrophe of climate change?” he said.

According to ongoing temperature analyses, the average global temperature on Earth has increased by at least 1.1 Celsius since the Victorian era. It has led scientists to pursue new ways of reducing the effects of climate change.

The solar shield plan would require an exceptionally large structure to prevent solar radiation, and it would need to be heavy enough not to blow away. Therefore, the study published recently in the journal PNAS proposes using a captured asteroid as a counterweight.

Researchers said they wanted the “umbrella” to reduce the impact of solar radiation on Earth by about 1.7 per cent to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperatures.

Using a tethered counterbalance, such as an asteroid, would reduce the weight of the shield to 3.5m tons. That is light as a feather compared to previous estimates without a counterweight, which were about 100 times heavier.

Even the largest rockets in operation today can only lift about 50 tons to a low Earth orbit, however.

Looks like we’ve got a little time to wait before we get our giant interplanetary parasol.

https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/space-umbrella-climate-change

We could speed up the process by making it a massive profit generating program….that would bring Musk out of the woodwork.

Anyway….good idea or BS?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What Is The ‘Cost’ Of Climate Change?

The big fad on blogs these days is the debate about climate change and the weather….something I have been writing about for about ten years and until today no one could be bothered or for that matter could give a crap….and now all of a sudden it is BIG news.

Here is my attempt from 10 years ago to start a dialog….a failure by the way….

Climate Change Debate

But that was then and this is now……

We all know just how hot it has become….we all know that it is dangerous to be out and about during mid-day sun….we all know…

But what do we know?

Do we ever stop to ask what the ‘cost’ of climate change is or will be?

So I attempt to keep your head from exploding at trying to figure out the possibilities….just my small way of making your life a little easier.

How many people are dying due to climate change? How does climate cause death, and what are the omissions, deceptions, and confusions about this interaction of climate and death? In the U.S., climate-related deaths are narrowly classified as heat-related, so googling this question came up with 106 deaths for 2022. On the other hand, vector-borne diseases that proliferate due to heat, like malaria, dengue, zika, account for 700,000 deaths/year. Monbiot wrote that the burning of Indonesia’s tropical forests for biofuels (alternative to coal) from sugar cane/palm oil plantations, caused air pollution leading possibly to 15,000 child deaths. And the U.S. oil war for fossil fuels and the UN Iraqi oil-for-food program led to millions of deaths, including ½ million child. In 2021 the Guardian reported that extreme temperatures kill 5 million people/year and that deaths were on the rise. There is the question about accuracy: the World Mortality Database found that the number of people dying in the 2015 Egyptian heat wave was 20,000, not the reported 61, and that in 2022, heat waves in Europe killed more than 61,600 people. “Two decades ago, 71,000 excess deaths were recorded in Europe after intense summer heat” but this was not enough to jar any changes, and this is just about European deaths.

On July 13, 2023, James Hansen wrote that the Earth is heading into a new frontier of global climate in which “the moisture extremes are more important than the temperature extremes.” It is unclear how this affects ground-level humidity and human life; Hansen writes that “higher absolute humidity and deeper penetration of moist convection cause a larger portion of the rainfall to occur in intense thunderstorms.” Rarely mentioned in the news are the inevitable, unpreventable deaths due to wet-bulb conditions that occur when relative humidity is above 95% and temperatures are at least 31.1°C (88°F), a wet-bulb temperature of 35°C . When the wet-bulb temperature reaches 35 C, it crosses a threshold at which humans can no longer lose internal body heat and cool themselves. But research shows that even wet-bulb temperatures lower than 35 C can be fatal. That was the case in 2010, when Russia experienced a deadly heat wave, where wet-bulb temperatures didn’t pass 28C. In Iran, “a combination of heat and humidity this week pushed the heat index at the Persian Gulf International Airport to 152 degrees Fahrenheit, with a dew point above 90°. That’s close to the limit of what the human body can survive, but there is no information about fatalities.

he Global Humanitarian Forum, under Kofi Annan, only lasted between 2007-2010 when the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs announced that it was over-indebted and needed to cease its activity. It issued a report to the 2009 Copenhagen climate meeting, stating that this was only the beginning of addressing the human impact of climate change. Its report estimated that since 1991, developing countries experienced 99% of the casualties, and that with the current global policies projected to result in about 2.7C warming above pre-industrial levels, there was an urgent need to address Loss and Damage. “If we do not reverse current trends by close to 2020, however, we may have failed. Global warming will pass the widely acknowledged danger level of two degrees, since there is an approximately 20 year delay between emission reductions and the halting of their warming effect.” This is one of many facts omitted from the carbon budget. As of 2009, the Report indicated that 315,000 lives/year were lost due to climate change, principally due to malnutrition, diarrhoea, malaria, and weather-related disasters brought about by climate change. It reported that women account for two-thirds of the world’s poor. The Report quoted many poor, uneducated people on the ground who were well aware of climate change and its consequences.

What is the ‘Cost’ of Climate Change?

The price we are paying now is from the inaction of governments and the lazy attitudes of the people for over 40 years.

People do not want to do anything but they will bitch about inaction…and this is what we get for that laziness.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

But What Will Happen?

Lots of noise on blogs about climate change and the extreme weather but very little about the news of a possible collapse of the Gulf Stream in about 2 years.

Why?

I few days ago I wrote about the report that the Gulf Stream was fading and could be gone by 2025….that’s right! We are talking about 2 years or so.

To remind you what was written….

There Is A Change A’Coming

If you more detail then this article may help….

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/gulf-stream-current-could-collapse-in-2025-plunging-earth-into-climate-chaos-we-were-actually-bewildered

Now for the meat of this post….if and when the current collapses what can we expect?

But what happens when AMOC runs amok? A sudden influx of freshwater from Greenland will inevitably stop the salt water from sinking as it usually does, causing havoc in the cycle. People living in Europe and the U.S. are likely to experience extremely unpleasant changes to their environment in addition to enormous sea level rises that could submerge East Coast cities like New York and Boston. Those not sweating it out due to rising temperatures will live in a frozen hellscape and all of us will be battered by unpredictable weather.

While you may associate climate change with increased warming — this is only part of the terrifying tale. A sudden disruption of the Gulf Stream’s helpful currents could cause a return to ice-age-like conditions in the world’s already chilly North.

You may remember this effect occurring in the silly but entertaining disaster flick “The Day After Tomorrow,” albeit in the film it happens way too quickly and in a sensationalized fashion. Still, sudden drastic changes could potentially happen quite quickly; when AMOC was last disrupted — during the last Ice Age — temperatures changed by 10 to 15 degrees in just 10 years (via CNN).

Europe is likely to be particularly severely affected because, in truth, the continent should be much colder than it is given its latitude. It is only the ocean currents that prevent Europe from being enveloped by icy cold conditions. The U.K., for example, is parallel with Northern Canada but doesn’t get particularly cold. In the worst-case scenario, the sea ice that currently blankets the Arctic would become a common sight much further south. Speaking to Vice magazine, climate scientist Peter Ditlevsen remarked “We would probably get a climate in Western Europe more like the climate in Alaska.” In the tropics, on the other hand, temperatures would continue to soar.

Read More: https://www.grunge.com/1350443/what-would-happen-to-earth-if-ocean-currents-collapsed/

Soirée to be a bummer but it is best you see for yourself and not depend on idiot politicians to try and make it sound less threatening than it is.

Hide your heads if you will but that solves nothing is just it easier for you to show your ass.

I do believe change is coming and you will have to deal with it whether you want to or not.

But hey….what do I know?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Are We Beyond Global Warming?

The hot (pun intended) topic of the week is that of global warming and the extreme weather we are all experiencing.

Since everyone on blogs is fascinated with this extreme heat I thought I would bow to social convention and focus on the weather as well.

We all are suffering somehow with the climate these days…..I live in the Deep South and for us it is extreme heat, 100-115, most days and the lack of rainfall.

And of course people ask the rhetorical question, will this agony ever end?

Is the answer for which you search?

According to the UN research we have moved past global warming and into global boiling……

July has been so hot that scientists calculate that this month will be the hottest globally on record and likely the warmest human civilization has seen, even though there are several days left remaining to sweat through. The World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service on Thursday proclaimed July’s heat is beyond record-smashing, the AP reports. They said Earth’s temperature has been temporarily passing over a key warming threshold: the internationally accepted goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius—2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Some scientists calculate that this month is the hottest in about 120,000 years.

Temperatures were 1.5 degrees higher than in pre-industrial times for a record 16 days this month, but the Paris climate accord aims to keep the 20- or 30-year global temperature average to 1.5 degrees. A few days of temporarily beating that threshold have happened before but never in July. This month has been so off-the-charts hot, with heat waves blistering three continents—North America, Europe and Asia—that researchers said a record was inevitable. The US Southwest’s all-month heat wave is showing no signs of stopping while also pushing into most of the Midwest and East with more than 128 million Americans under some kind of heat advisory Thursday.

“Unless an ice age were to appear all of sudden out of nothing, it is basically virtually certain we will break the record for the warmest July on record and the warmest month on record,” Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo told the AP. Scientists say that such shattering of records is a harbinger for future climate-altering changes as the planet warms. Those changes go beyond just prolonged heat waves and include more flooding, longer-burning wildfires, and extreme weather events that put many people at risk. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged world leaders, in particular of rich nations, to do more to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases. Despite years of international climate negotiations and lofty pledges from many countries and companies, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.

Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning,” Guterres told reporters in a New York briefing. “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.” Buontempo and other scientists said the records are from human-caused climate change augmented by a natural El Nino warming of parts of the central Pacific that changes weather worldwide. Copernicus calculated that through the first 23 days of July, Earth’s temperature averaged 16.95 degrees Celsius, 62.5 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s nearly one-third of a degree Celsius (almost 0.6 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the previous record for the hottest month, July 2019.

https://www.unilad.com/news/world-news/un-says-were-entering-the-stage-of-global-boiling-834409-20230728

With the news that the Gulf Stream could collapse by 2025 the news is not looking too rosy for the planet.

I hate to tell you(which is a lie) ‘I told you so’….but people like me have been saying this would happen and few listened especially politicians….they had rather bow to the slugs that throw money at them than care for the planet.

Are we getting what we deserve?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That 1972 Environmental Report

As per my usual stuff I just feel that I must inject a little history into the conversation on the Climate.

For the past couple of decades the climate has been the center of the debate on the future of this planet and its people…..but most everything that is happening these days with our climate was reported back in 1972….and no one wanted to hear it….especially our corporate controlled Congress……

For those too damn young to remember this report….I am here to help……

The computer modeling made it plain: If people continued to overextract finite resources, pollute on a massive scale, and balloon the human population in an unsustainable way, civilization could collapse within a century. It sounds like that modeling could have been done last week, what with climate change, water shortages, and microplastics corrupting every corner of the Earth. But in fact it dropped in the 1972 book The Limits to Growth, published by the Club of Rome, an international organization of intellectuals founded in 1968. 

The book sold millions of copies and was translated into at least 30 languages, attracting a storm of controversy. It was, after all, very early computer modeling—completed on a punch-card machine at MIT—and a highly simplified simulation of complex global systems. And it was making rather grand and consequential predictions. (As the old quip goes: All models are wrong, but some are useful.) That model spit out scenarios in which humanity either got more sustainable and equitable, and thus flourished, or continued letting capitalists plunder the planet and our civilization to death.

“What came from the simulations is that most of the cases—but not all, and it’s important to say not all—the evolution of a number of variables like population, production, pollution, was showing that around the mid-21st century, we would have a scenario of collapse of human civilization,” says Carlos Alvarez Pereira, vice president of the Club of Rome and co-editor of the new retrospective book Limits and Beyond: 50 Years on From The Limits to Growth, What Did We Learn and What’s Next? “The whole thing was framed into doomsday prophecy. We didn’t succeed in bringing the message that it was not about that. It was really about: We have the capacity to choose. We have, as humanity, the capacity to decide what kind of future we want.” 

https://www.wired.com/story/the-infamous-1972-report-that-warned-of-civilizations-collapse/

As you can see science has pointed to the position we find our planet in all those years ago……and yet we did nothing.

And we are still doing NOTHING!

I am glad I am old and will not witness the total destruction of the planet by these total douches that answer to no one but the pigs that own them….the corporations.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Another Worthless Climate Deal

Just how long has the crisis with the climate been kicked down that endless road?

20 Years…..30 years….endless promise and spineless negotiating…..deal after deal…..and yet the corporations keep destroying the air……how long will this continue?

The new deal essentially does absolutely nothing!

Here is what we get after all the years…..

Negotiators from almost 200 nations reached an accord Saturday in the fight against climate change, acknowledging that the problem isn’t solved but setting up another attempt at more dramatic action next year. The Glasgow summit did not achieve the central goal of agreeing on action to limit the warming of Earth to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the Washington Post reports. So the planet then remains on course for increasingly severe damage and weather events. The nations did pressure each other to take greater action, and summit leaders say the agreement at least “keeps 1.5 alive”—a destination possibly to be reached soon.

As the UN climate conference wound down, progress was stalled over what to say about coal, per the AP. At the last minute, India pushed through a wording change saying the nations will “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal. The weakened commitment will make it harder to reach the 1.5-degree goal, a Swedish official said. Without the change, nations were still on track on that goal; the planet already has heated up 1.1 degrees. India received much of the blame. “India has long been a blocker on climate action,” an Australian climate scientist said, “but I have never seen it done so publicly.” Coal is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

John Kerry, the US envoy, was among those emphasizing the positive. “It’s a good deal for the world,” he said Saturday. “It’s got a few problems, but it’s all in all a very good deal.” There was a divide between richer and poorer nations in Glasgow, but they agreed in the end that wealthier nations should “at least double” financial assistance to nations most at risk from global warming by 2025. And there was agreement, per the New York Times, that everyone needs to do more. Nations were asked to return next year with more dramatic proposals for reducing their emissions, but there had been hope that issue would have been settled by now.

Personally I do not think this is the way to help the climate crisis…..but what can I expect from negotiators that are puppets of corporations to act….seriously John Kerry a huge corporate shill?

And apparently I am not alone….the Maldives has a similar view….

Small island nations are especially alarmed by the results of the UN climate conference, making the point that they don’t have time for small, incremental steps to slow global warming. The crisis has reached their homes. Negotiators declined to commit to taking immediate action to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celcius above preindustrial levels. “The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees is a death sentence for us,” Maldives’ environmental minister said. They plan to take the issue up again next year. “What is balanced and pragmatic to other parties will not help the Maldives adapt in time,” Aminath Shauna said, per the Washington Post. “It will be too late for the Maldives.”

Before it adjourned, the European Union’s climate chief had warned the conference that the situation is critical for some nations already, per US News & World Report. Frans Timmermans said there’s urgency for low-lying Pacific islands and other nations vulnerable to flooding now, “because you’re standing with your feet in the water.” That’s how Tuvalu’s foreign minister tried to get his message across to the conference, per the Sydney Morning Herald—sending a video of his speech delivered in a business suit while standing in ocean water past his knees. “We cannot wait for speeches,” Simon Kofe says, “when the sea is rising around us all the time.”

Tuvalu and other at-risk countries are preparing for the worst, even as they press their case to larger nations. Kofe talked about people having to leave behind their homes and incomes because of the changes. Tuvalu and other island nations are pursing legal and diplomatic paths to keep their homes sovereign countries even if they’re underwater in 50 to 100 years. The nations’ negotiators in Glasgow, many of whom traveled for several days to get there, are exhausted by their effort, per New Scientist. “We are a group of very small countries that don’t have a significant amount of political leverage,” said a negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, which includes 39 nations. “But we have strength in numbers and the moral high ground—though that’s sometimes not enough.”

This ‘summit’ would be laughable if it weren’t so damn pathetic….the planet suffers and the best they could come up with is allowing the corporations to continue to plunder.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”