Global Climate Change Science News

[Brian Peacock]

I think your last point is more on point, but at the same time if maintaining the planets tropical forests is a necessity for the survival of all then can it truly be said to belong to the countries where it grows? The again, the same argument might be applied to any vital natural resource, like oil say, or cobalt etc.

Who does the environment belong to exactly?

[pErvinalia]

Australia's coal reserves are a similar issue. Our government acts like it's our right to dig it up and export it, but that act is putting the world at danger through its contribution to global warming.

[DRSB]

Imagine if Europe would say: we open the doors to everybody, come over, leave the forest at peace. But no, if people have to feed themselves where they are, guess how their priorities lie!

[Hermit]

Imagine if Europe would say: we open the doors to everybody, come over, leave the forest at peace. But no, if people have to feed themselves where they are, guess how their priorities lie!

Much of the clear-felling in the Amazon occurs to create grazing land. The locals see little of the beef. Most of it is sold to hamburger chains in North America.

[Brian Peacock]

The native peoples of the Amazon region are the one's suffering the consequence of logging, ranching, and having their traditional lands doused in glyphosate from the air - a practice which has only increased since the Brazilian health department concluded that gylphosate products did not cause cancer in humans, only in laboratory animals.

[Tero]

I tried some roundup on some mulberry bushes, an invasive mulberry here. It rained right after that afternooon. Had better luck with bush killer spray. It does not killl the grass underneath.

[Sean Hayden]

The teenage activist has made it to NY.

--//--

Why Georgetown’s green energy gamble didn’t pay off

https://www.statesman.com/news/20190223 ... nt-pay-off

If you really, really don't mind being sick this morning give this a read:

'Green New Deal' preview? Texas town's lofty environmentalism leaves residents with a nightmare

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/green-n ... uck-devore

[Tero]

They need one of them modular nuclear reactors. Good for 30 years. Just shop around. Delivery to any city.

[Sean Hayden]

Like I said, "think tanks", "public policy" groups that are nothing more than PR are first against the wall.

[Tero]

The Onion..has it somewhat right.

[Seabass]

Not the nation. Just the Republicans...

[Brian Peacock]

"My message is that we'll be watching you.

"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!

"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

"For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.

"You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.

"The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

"Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

"So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences.

"To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise – the best odds given by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on Jan. 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.

"How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just 'business as usual' and some technical solutions. With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 1/2 years.

"There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

"You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.

"We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

"Thank you."

Interesting piece in The Atlantic in response to today's events at the UN, which ends thus...

Why Greta Makes Adults Uncomfortable

...

“This child—and she is a child—has been scared and her parents are letting her be controlled by that fear,” writes the right-wing commentator Erick Erickson, who blames her parents for “depriving her of a sound education so she can lecture grownups.” Jonathan Tobin, at The Federalist, worries that the shoe is on the other foot: Thunberg has “forced her parents to adopt a vegan diet” and “bullied her mother to give up her career because it involved air travel.”

These may seem like exaggerated concerns, but Erickson and Tobin are really just engaging in a great American tradition: In this country, even before we greet you, we ask whether you’re being parented wrong.

Other arguments against Thunberg’s rhetoric can and should be made; if she wants to participate as an adult citizen, she should be criticized like one. But in The New York Times, the journalist Christopher Caldwell takes maybe the oddest line of all, claiming that Thunberg’s message is antidemocratic. “Democracy often calls for waiting and seeing. Patience may be democracy’s cardinal virtue,” he wrote. “Climate change is a serious issue. But to say, ‘We can’t wait,’ is to invite a problem just as grave.”

I want to thank Caldwell, because he reminded me of my own childhood. About 20 years ago, I was at a restaurant with my parents, reading a kid’s science magazine below the table. In a small box at the bottom of the page, it mentioned something called the greenhouse effect, caused by cars and factories. The effect could eventually screw up the entire planet’s environment.

My head jolted up. I interrupted my parents’ conversation, which was about something boring, like real-estate prices or which highway to take home.

“Is this real?” I asked, pointing at the magazine.

Oh yeah, definitely, one of them said.

“Is it getting fixed?” I said.

No, no, people don’t really know how to fix it.

And then I remember feeling something constrict in my chest. It was like the adult feeling of learning that a loved one is in danger, of seeing the comfortable world teeter on its axis. There was a problem with the entire planet, and everyone was just allowing it to go on?

In 1999, Caldwell was older than I am now, and the United States had virtually no national climate policy. Since then, I have gone to middle school and high school, graduated from college, moved across the country twice, spent years as a technology reporter, and covered climate change for four years. Since then, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has soared from 364 to 415 parts per million. But since then, the United States still has passed virtually no new national climate policy.

Caldwell is right that patience is a democratic virtue. But sloth is a cardinal sin. Perhaps only the young can tell the difference.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... ns/598612/

[Seabass]

Insolent, delusional child! The real threat to the world is gender pronouns and brown immigrants!

[Sean Hayden]

It makes me crazy that environmental science is a left/right issue. That's stupid. I blame the media!

But seriously, would it kill them to challenge guests with something other than the usual political talking points? For example, if a guy claims climate alarmists aren't lead by scientists, then challenge his scientific credentials ffs. Ask him questions that require a familiarity with the science, even better, that require him to reason on the spot. Avoid the talking points.

If your people can't do that then hire talking heads that can.

[Sean Hayden]

BTW at 16 you couldn't tell me nothing.

Maybe we're getting a glimpse of the helplessness these guys felt at 16...still pleasing a perfect daddy at 50.