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Patrick's avatar

I used to worry that I was one of the few who was noticing what was really happening in the world until I became a subscriber here on Substack. So yea, I feel a lot better seeing this 😃

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Rose_Anne's avatar

Kinda renews my faith in Americans' ability to think for themselves!

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AJfromLA's avatar

I don’t know. I think most of them are now using TikTok.

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Rose_Anne's avatar

Pretty funny AJ.

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Stephen Heins's avatar

David, I am 79, so I will never forget Russia.

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NTX Oilman's avatar

We have hope!

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Sharon Campbell's avatar

Thanks for the great news! I honestly can’t believe they’ve lasted this long.

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Stephen Heins's avatar

Here is why:

Global Warming

Daily update ⋅ February 5, 2024

NEWS

The coming climate catastrophe - The Express Tribune

The Express Tribune

Unless nations transform their economies and rapidly transition away from pursuing the activities that cause global warming, unraveling of global webs ...

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Warning of global warming - Chinadaily.com.cn

China Daily - Global Edition

Extreme weather and global warming need attention ... Warning of global warming. By Song Chen | China Daily | Updated: 2024-02 ...

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Back from COP28, California climate leaders talk health impacts of warming - News-Medical

News-Medical

Wildfire smoke. Drought. Brutal heat. Floods. As Californians increasingly feel the health effects of climate change, state leaders are adopting ...

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Rapid Climate Change Causes Greenland's Bedrock To Rise Forming Small Islands

Eurasia Review

The impacts of global climate change are becoming evident on Greenland's bedrock, which is rising at an increasing rate, reshaping the country's ...

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Scientists propose ambitious project to mitigate global warming effects

Global Village Space

... global warming. The proposal involves sending a swarm of space umbrellas into orbit to block a fraction of the Sun's radiation and prevent the ...

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It's time to talk about methane removal - C&EN - American Chemical Society

C&EN - American Chemical Society

Efforts to curb global warming have mostly focused on carbon dioxide. Methane has long been the elephant in the climate conference room, even ...

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Dangerous climate tipping points will affect Australia. The risks are real and cannot be ignored

The Conversation

Cutting fossil greenhouse gas emissions is the most important thing we can do to limit warming and the risk of triggering tipping points. The faster ...

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The Global Warming-Impact Causes and Prevention - Kashmir Images Newspaper

Kashmir Images Newspaper

Global warming is mostly caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels for energy and transportation. When we burn them, a large amount of ...

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From Rising Seas To Rising Tensions: How Climate Change Is Eroding The Pillars Of Democracy

HumAngle

The ability of democracies to adapt to climate change and mitigate its adverse impacts continues to be tested.

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Climate change denial: What's really behind it? - Earth.com

Earth.com

Significant amount of people deny climate change. According to the authors, human activities caused the recent warming of the Earth. Despite the near- ...

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David Blackmon's avatar

Don't forget:

Russia Collusion!

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Geary Johansen's avatar

The NYT recently showed a graph which showed that forest fires had increased since the 1980s. Unfortunately for them, there are similar graphs which show that forest fires haven't increased globally over a longer time frame, since the beginning of the Twentieth century.

Climate change is real, it is mostly man-made and the data has only been skewed by a very small amount for increased urbanisation and aircraft traffic around data collection points. But here's the problem- most of the net effect thus far has been a little bit on the positive side for human flourishing.

Increased CO2 has increased crop yields globally by 10% to 15%, despite occasional local disruptions to water systems. Far from increasing desertification increased CO2 is reversing it, with plants at the borders of deserts able to open their pores less to breathe and thus more easily store what scarce water is available. In Europe, cold deaths from extreme weather outnumber heat deaths from extreme weather by 10 to 1, so by this metric incremental warming is good. The same is true of India, where cold deaths outnumber heat deaths by 8 to 1.

There is even good news on the main potential Black Swan event- the one with the highest risks of a tipping point effect. Recent research has revealed that coastal methane hydrate release, a substantial source of global methane, is heavily influenced by the cycles of the moon. This means that even the moderate predictions of global sea level rise from the IPCC of 0.8 metres to 1.5 metres will have a profound effect on decelerating climate change, rather than the reverse.

It cannot be overstated how important methane is as a climate change source. The IPCC weights the gases effect because with methane decaying over 12 to 15 years naturally in the atmosphere, it's seen as a more temporary problem. This is mistake which profoundly effects climate models. Most conventional sources admit that methane is 80 times as potent as greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

This highlights another flaw in thinking institutions simply don't keep current with the science when to comes to recommended policy shifts. Most developed countries are still pursuing beef and dairy reductions. This is wrong on several fronts. First, recent research reveals that organic matter of some form is entirely necessary for locking nitrogen into the soil and preventing runoff. Beef is vital part of this cycle if mainly grass-fed. The impacts in terms of lost coastal fisheries and ocean biomass as sequestered carbon are staggering and most don't even know that the crude proteins in grass as a food source for cattle are so low it minimises nitrogen production as a source. Even an incremental shift from 13 to 11% in crude proteins cuts nitrogen in animal waste by 13% and even the best grasses in the world don't rate much higher than 5% crude proteins.

Second, the original analysis which showed shifting to a plant-based diet was flawed. To the authors credit, they both accounted for the greater transport requirements of plant-based, and quickly corrected their study once it was pointed out that they hadn't accounted for the additional carbon cost of making and maintaining the transport infrastructure. They were quite good about it and quickly issued a revised paper showing that switching to plant-based only reduced a Western individuals carbon footprint by 2% to 4%. But why hasn't this insightful update gone system-wide- because many people are too lazy or too ideologically committed to an austerity puritanism in which ordinary people have to be punished for their sins against Mother Earth.

None of this is to say that climate change won't become a much bigger problem as the century unfolds. The best predictions from the likes of the Nordhaus Model and the economic sections of the more detailed IPCC reports show that by the end of the century, the world will have to spend roughly 4% of revenue on climate mitigation and inevitably this will probably have to come from social spending which is already stretched to breaking point by providing care and pensions to a fundamentally older global population, but this is set against a world which even the most modest projections show will be 400% to 600% wealthier, with most of the gains going to the global poor in the developing world.

And this doesn't mean that we shouldn't change. We are a throwaway culture, where once things were built to last. It should be a relatively easy thing to do to find an energy efficient fridge which lasts twenty years, but most manufacturers resist this fairly simple and fair statutory requirement. People should be persuaded to use their cars less, especially for things like school runs, because the lack of socialisation from riding a bus with an occasional bully, is actually harmful, because developmentally the experience builds emotional resilience in all but the most chronic cases.

But currently the mood is to force people to change, through tax, pricing, regulations and outright bans. The is the reverse of a good solution because it simply won't work and it hurts people. The better option is to persuade people and actually furnish superior transport solutions. High speed rail may be a wasteful white elephant, but many people actually prefer cheaper short-range rail to the hassle of driving to work and parking.

Plus, where exactly is the persuasion, the incentives? Have you received your three days additional annual leave yet for taking socially responsible means of transport to work, or for remote work? I certainly haven't and I don't know anyone who does. Instead, government seems to want to reverse one of the positive things to happen in terms of individual carbon footprints and humanistic lifestyle choices, for no better reason than propping up a mode of office work to defend commercial real estate interests....

Funny how that always seem to happen. Those plant-based products are overwhelmingly supplied by Big Ag. The evidence proves that investments in innovation are several orders of magnitude more effective at tackling climate change than either wind and solar, although wind does make it onto the list of worthwhile sources of net goods- from both conventional economists and Project Drawdown- but only up until around 30% of optimum energy capacity, beyond which the costs of increased infrastructure and energy storage become prohibitive.

And the developed world simply doesn't want degrowth or climate austerity. It's why Africa and India are both shifting to China's camp, as are around 150 of the world's countries. Of the 10% of the world's climate scientists who are located in the developed world most are overwhelmingly in favour of a green growth agenda. There are smart ways of changing. More organic and humanistic ones, but deindustrialisation leads to a resumption of human squalor, poverty and starvation.

Best predictions put total climate change from human sources at a maximum of 3 degrees C by 2100, including the roughly 0.8 to 1 degree already experienced. Look up the assumptions built into RCP 8.5- that's what the IPCC is claiming is the 'business as usual' scenario and it's a complete fiction.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3

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Michael Magoon's avatar

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

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Jason P's avatar

Traditional news media can't expire fast enough.

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