6178

Apparently it’s not something one can back out of instantaneously.

It’s nice to know that Trump’s nearly 3 years as President, with access to the top experts in the scientific community, have deepened his appreciation of the crisis.

6179
6180

For decades, most scientists saw climate change as a distant prospect. We now know that thinking was wrong. This summer, for instance, a heat wave in Europe penetrated the Arctic, pushing temperatures into the 80s across much of the Far North and, according to the Belgian climate scientist Xavier Fettweis, melting some 40 billion tons of Greenland’s ice sheet.

Had a scientist in the early 1990s suggested that within 25 years a single heat wave would measurably raise sea levels, at an estimated two one-hundredths of an inch, bake the Arctic and produce Sahara-like temperatures in Paris and Berlin, the prediction would have been dismissed as alarmist. But many worst-case scenarios from that time are now realities.

6181

So now we are going to blame science for not WARNING us hard enough?

Fuck NYTs.

6182

I don’t think scapegoating scientists is the primary thrust of the piece, if you read it. I think it’s more about calling for a course correction in how scientists communicate the urgency of the issue, which I suspect is something many scientists would agree with. Eugene is not moralizing so much as describing the ways in which the speed of climate change has caught scientists by surprise. I would also be much more inclined to say ‘fuck NYTimes’ over a piece which downplayed the dangers of climate change.

6183

I really need to start selling t-shirts. Couldn’t agree more.

6184

Okay, fair enough. But still fuck the Times for their editorial bullshit of late. And for employing Maggie Haberman.

6185

kzsCk

6186

I don’t think the author has any clue what scientists thought or what output they were producing. There have been many papers since the 90s detailing horrific possibilities. Climate models from their inception have presented a range of possibilities, including ones much worse than the median prediction that the media focused on. The IPCC and all climate scientists who had the bravery to engage with the world on this issue were under extreme pressure from politicians and media organisations to not sound ‘alarmist’, to try and be conciliatory to polluters to bring them on board, and to stick to predictions that they have absolute certainty about.

Do you guys remember the ‘pause’ on climate change that supposedly lasted over 10 years? This wasn’t a concept in the science literature, but ‘balanced’ media outlets like the NYT went on and on about it and gave up too much ground to the climate change denialists. Scientists were hounded for getting it wrong in the other direction, being too alarmist, and so on.

6187

I’m in total agreement with you. Their editorial board is awful. Maggie Haberman is awful. It’s a shame what’s happened to a once-great paper.

6188

Apparently not worth its own thread, but

6189

Deforestation in Bolivia has been bad, Evo had alot of problems but I just hope whoever comes next isn’t like a Bolivian Bolsonaro.

6190

Narrator: it will be.

(not that latin american “socialism” has been sane)

6191
6192

Yup, that’s some poetic justice right there.

Although I know the aqua alta has been a thing for a long time. Dunno if it’s getting worse (if the regional council building had never been flooded before, then sounds like yes).

6193

It’s getting worse, from what I understand. I saw a graph the other day showing the number of these floods occurring and it’s (not surprising) sharply up since the 70’s. Will see if I can turn it up, in a meantime here’s an article about the flooding.

6194

In case anyone is unaware, the east coast of Australia is having terrible bushfires at the moment:

There are a number of threatened species, including the Koala, that has had local populations decimated as the fire consumed them all. It’s really sad. It’s also very early for this type of thing to be happening, as it isn’t even summer yet!

The national debate around it has been interesting. There have been many outlets linking the bushfires to climate change, noting that higher temperatures make the land dryer (holding rain constant, there’s been a drought here the last few years) and extend the bushfire season. Of course the initial government reaction was to say that all talk of climate change is due to ‘woke inner-city hippies’ and to try and decry all attempts to ‘politicise’ the bushfires.

Fortunately, there’s been pushback to that line of argument. Rural town mayors who were hugely affected, along with many ex-fire chiefs, all came out saying that they believe climate change has brought unprecedented bushfires and that it is partly to blame.

There hasn’t been much talk about how deforestation in New South Wales and Queensland has significantly exacerbated the ecological impacts of the fires. With forests now smaller and much more fragmented, when fires burn local populations of animals there is no hope for animals to migrate back when the bush regenerates because it no longer connects to more forest. Deforestation makes the Koalas as a species more vulnerable to bushfires, and also why they may become extinct by 2050.

The right-wing argument at the moment is that the bushfires are actually the Greens fault for forcing emergency services to do less hazard reduction measures (like controlled fires, scrub clearing, etc.). Of course, this is absurd for two reasons: (i) the Greens are a minor party and don’t have power over any aspect of emergency services, and (ii) the Greens believe in hazard reduction in the first place. The reason why controlled fires have become harder to do in recent years is, you guessed it, climate change. With alot of dry hot and windy weather it’s very risky to do controlled burns as they can quickly go out of control and destroy property/habitat.

6195

Paper from stone

This is the sort of thing which still gives me some small hope.

6196

That’s OK, but I’ll reiterate something that I’ve posted before: The paper industry actually tends to act as a driver to keep large swaths of land covered in trees to use as crops. If it went away, that land would probably be converted to farmland, pastureland, or put to some other (likely less environmentally-friendly) use. Clear-cutting paper-tree woodland to turn it into, say, a soybean farm would result in a net increase of carbon in the air, and using it as grazing land would add all the cow farts.

What this process brings to the table is the ability to produce paper without all the chemical by-products (the article notes that they use compostable resins). The chemicals used paper production (bleach, dyes, etc.) tend to be a bit overblown since the industry tends to re-use the chemicals rather than dumping them into rivers, but getting rid of them might be a net positive.

6197

For a second I thought, yeah, Roger Stone is an asshole… but that is a bit much.