We are still screwed: the coming climate disaster

It sounds like you made the classic mistake of confusing the United States with a first world country.

Reality, one might say is an inconvenient truth. Not a tenable position.

I’m 100% with you that, given human nature (my own included), the only path that has even the slightest chance of traction is world leadership mobilizing to leverage technology and resources to reduce CO2 producing electricity sources and transportation fuels. Let me know when that starts to happen.

I’d love to be surprised! I am quite active, despite my gloomy perspective. We had a lovely Climate Awareness March in my small town, preceded by poster making, and followed by educational seminars. I want to believe. The town is also thinking about passing a tax on garbage. Basically, anything non recyclable would only be picked up if it’s in a ‘town issued garbage bag’. That costs money. The idea is to encourage recycling, and composting, and developing awareness of the amount of waste you produce. Even the biggest trash producing households would probably be on the hook for less than $200/year, but it would help the town make ends meet, and possibly encourage more responsible thinking about consumption, recycling, etc. I’m for it.

[quote=“mono, post:3299, topic:70401, full:true”]
I don’t know what good/evil has to do with it. There’s smart or there’s a Darwin Award for humanity[/quote]

Global warming isn’t going to kill humanity. We’ll still be here.

A lot of people who can’t afford to protect themselves will likely die, and the rest will have a dramatically smaller standard of living, with a corresponding reduction in freedoms, but I haven’t seen anything that says it would be an extinction event for humans (plenty of other species, yes).

Now the resulting resource wars? Maybe.

The agency quietly forced out some members of the Board of Scientific Counselors just weeks after leaders told them their tenure would be renewed, said Robert Richardson, an ecological economist at Michigan State University and one of those dismissed.

The board is tasked with reviewing the work of EPA scientists and provides feedback that can be a powerful voice in shaping the agency’s future research.

[…]

There are two main science advisory boards at EPA, both of which can hold significant sway over policy and regulation. The Trump administration has proposed a major weakening of both.

The new section of the City of Chicago’s website, launched this weekend, pulls data from the archived Environmental Protection Agency page, noting, “while this information may not be readily available on the agency’s webpage right now, here in Chicago we know climate change is real and we will continue to take action to fight it.” Emanuel is promising to build the site out more in the coming weeks, using city resources.

“The Trump administration can attempt to erase decades of work from scientists and federal employees on the reality of climate change, but burying your head in the sand doesn’t erase the problem,” Emanuel said.

City of Chicago: Climate Change

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/10/527786637/senators-reject-effort-to-roll-back-greenhouse-gas-emissions-rule

(Cross-posting this in the “Optimism” thread.)

TheHill: Tillerson signs international declaration recognizing climate change

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed on Thursday a declaration acknowledging the threat posed by climate change to the Arctic and indicating the need for action to curb its impact on the region.

The move appears at odds with the Trump administration’s broad skepticism of climate change and comes at a time when President Trump is weighing a potential withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on fighting its effects.

Tillerson signed the Fairbanks Declaration in Fairbanks, Alaska at a meeting of the Arctic Council, a forum made up of indigenous groups and eight countries with territory bordering the Arctic Circle.

“In the United States, we are currently reviewing several important policies, including how the Trump administration will approach the issue of climate change,” Tillerson said at the meeting.

Via the U.S. Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs: Fairbanks Declaration 2017: On the Occasion of the Tenth Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council (PDF)

That article has a wonderful paragraph down at the end:

That’s the cycle the Politico piece describes: Trump the blank slate, led to and fro by grasping morons, protected from consequences by enablers. It’s a veritable layer cake of incompetence and mendacity.

[quote]Researchers in Antarctica have discovered rapidly growing banks of mosses on the ice continent’s northern peninsula, providing striking evidence of climate change in the coldest and most remote parts of the planet.

Amid the warming of the last 50 years, the scientists found two different species of mosses undergoing the equivalent of growth spurts, with mosses that once grew less than a millimeter per year now growing over 3 millimeters per year on average.[/quote]

There’s another bright side of anthropogenic climate change, along with the opening of the legendary Northwest Passage and the taming of Siberia. Why, there’s a whole continent we’ve barely plundered!

Mah homies!

If we kept an archive of seeds in an arctic Fortress of Solitude-like permafrost vault, we’d always have a backup if something happened to the environment or humanity, right?

The vault had a close one as the permafrost wasn’t as perma.

The vault already provided seeds recently, that would have been lost.

It seems we (humanity) need to build another vault somewhere else, since this one may not be in the best place (from the photo looks like near the ocean, and the ocean is going to rise).

The only places I can think of that would be colder than the Arctic might be Stephen Miller’s dead eyes and Mike Pence’s heart.

There is always Antarctica, but then again even that might not be safe for frozen seed vault:

We should have the occasional good news post around here.


Still all the usual caveats about barriers to adoption, but still, it’s good to see technology progressing on the clean uses of fossil fuels.

I had no idea there was that much solar capacity installed in the UK. That’s pretty encouraging, even if obviously we don’t get many days like today in a year.

Looks like someone may be getting fired soon: