Link Blog
There are radical, yet pragmatic, solutions to our crises. But fear of what will happen if we don’t act is imprisoning people in a mindset that makes alternatives seem unthinkable. I am frequently told my solutions are unrealistic and will never happen; that people would rather fight each other in wars than adapt to share food and land, for instance. We make our own future, even if it’s hard to see the process. So let me try to make the case for hope.
The US already has all the technology needed to rapidly bring down carbon emissions. The trouble is finding enough people to install it all.
The Inflation Reduction Act, passed last summer, allocates $370 billion toward energy security and climate action….
The solar industry could grow from 230,000 to 400,000 employees this decade and will have to exceed 900,000 by 2035 to reach the Biden administration’s goal of 100 percent clean electricity…
Drastically reduce emissions first, or carbon dioxide removal will be next to useless.
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is what puts the ‘net’ into ‘net zero emissions’. All pathways to limit global warming to 1.5–2 °C above pre-industrial levels that have been assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change require rapid decarbonization to start now. But they also require the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere because we won’t be able to eliminate carbon emissions entirely…
Carbon dioxide removal is not a current climate solution — we need to change the narrative
The temperature of the world’s ocean surface has hit an all-time high since satellite records began, leading to marine heatwaves around the globe.
“The current trajectory looks like it’s headed off the charts, smashing previous records,” said Prof Matthew England, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales.
Three years of La Niña conditions across the vast tropical Pacific have helped suppress temperatures and dampened the effect of rising greenhouse gas emissions.
‘Headed off the charts’: world’s ocean surface temperature hits record high | The Guardian
Livestock make up 62% of the world’s mammal biomass; humans account for 34%; and wild mammals are just 4%.
A diverse range of mammals once roamed the planet. This changed quickly and dramatically with the arrival of humans. Since then, wild land mammal biomass has declined by an estimated 85%.
Humans are now the dominant species.
We see this when we look at the distribution of mammals across the world today.
Wild mammals make up only a few percent of the world’s mammals - Our World in Data
I have some bad news. Civilization is going to collapse. Not in 1000 years, not in 100 years, but within the lifetimes of most people alive today.
It doesn’t necessarily mean humans will go extinct, but at the very least, billions of people are going to die from disease, violence, starvation, dehydration, natural disasters, and war.
How do I know this? Because it has already begun.
Our global industrial civilization has been headed for collapse for at least 50 years…
Overshoot: Why It’s Already Too Late To Save Civilization | Medium
Off the coast of Antarctica, trillions of tonnes of cold salty water sink to great depths. As the water sinks, it drives the deepest flows of the “overturning” circulation – a network of strong currents spanning the world’s oceans. The overturning circulation carries heat, carbon, oxygen and nutrients around the globe, and fundamentally influences climate, sea level and the productivity of marine ecosystems.
But there are worrying signs these currents are slowing down. They may even collapse.
Torrents of Antarctic meltwater are slowing the currents that drive vital ocean overturning
Trump may be the first former president to face criminal prosecution, but that fact in and of itself is a damning condemnation of the U.S. system of impunity that has long permeated our system of American exceptionalism.
This case against Trump would be a mere footnote of history, albeit a wild one, if the U.S. actually believed in holding presidents and other top officials accountable for their crimes, including those committed in office.
A four-part, independently produced docuseries looking under the hood and into the operations of mutual aid efforts across North America.
Struggling to build in a collapsing system, hear the perspectives of over a dozen groups who explore the origins, structures, healing ways, and logistics of collective organizing.
The expanded alliance supporting e-bikes reflects an evolution in the priorities of environmental groups. After focusing largely (some might say myopically) on electrification as a pathway to decarbonize transportation, many climate advocates are ready to lobby for less driving, period—not just less gas-powered driving.
Transportation has long been a major source of greenhouse gases in the United States, with cars and light trucks producing more than half of such emissions.
E-bikes credit: How the environmental groups finally learned to see a future with less driving.
The Greenland Ice Sheet covers 1.7 million square kilometers (660,200 square miles) in the Arctic. If it melts entirely, global sea level would rise about 7 meters (23 feet)…
“The first tipping point is not far from today’s climate conditions, so we’re in danger of crossing it,” said Dennis Höning, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research who led the study. “Once we start sliding, we will fall off this cliff and cannot climb back up.”
The Greenland Ice Sheet is close to a melting point of no return - AGU Newsroom
Forest-nesting songbirds were found in increased numbers in urban parks. Eventually it became clear that city lights were reshaping migration, especially in autumn when young birds on their first migration were being drawn by artificial urban light, which is “visible to a flying bird from as far away as 190 miles.”
Protecting migratory birds in Missouri can be as easy as flipping a switch • Missouri Independent
Scientists have delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world’s leading climate scientists, set out the final part of its mammoth sixth assessment report on Monday.
Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late | The Guardian
From elephants to tigers, study reveals scale of damage to wildlife caused by transformation of wildernesses and human activity.
The total weight of Earth’s wild land mammals – from elephants to bisons and from deer to tigers – is now less than 10% of the combined tonnage of men, women and children living on the planet.
‘A wake-up call’: total weight of wild mammals less than 10% of humanity’s | The Guardian
It’s brown, it weighs millions of tons, it stretches over 5,000 miles and it is headed for Florida’s beaches. An enormous clump of seaweed circulating the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic is set to coat beaches in a spongy goop, bringing with it a pungent odor similar to rotting eggs.
This is one of the many, many details that people don’t think about in regards to climate change. So many things will change going forward.
Florida beaches brace for 5,000-mile blob of seaweed to deposit rotting goop | The Guardian
Apparently debunking iPad misinformation has become one of my hobbies. Sometimes I’m able to just walk away but the lure of “someone is wrong on the internet” is strong. So, here I am. The latest is Michael Gartenberg at Business Insider.
These articles really are just filler text for clicks, all repeating the same narrative and offering little in the way of actual thought. And they get paid for this. Let’s get this over with…
The After School Satan Club says it is a secular organization and its members do not actually believe in or worship the devil. According to their website, the club “does not believe in introducing religion into public schools and will only open a club if other religious groups are operating on campus”.
By contrast, the Good News Club, an organization sponsored by a local evangelical church devoted to spreading the word about the Bible, is allowed to host meetings on public school property.
Diabolical liberty: after-school Satanists club threatens to sue district over ban | The Guardian
There is something very wrong with global food production. From farm to fork, the food system as it currently exists is the most environmentally destructive of all human activities. More than half of the Earth’s habitable land is used for agriculture, and the replacement of natural ecosystems with farms and ranches has devastated biodiversity. Over the past 50 years, the average size of wild animal populations has decreased by nearly 70 percent.
To Tackle Climate Change, Stop Farming the Planet to Death - James Dyke
Reports that the JWST killed the reigning cosmological model have been exaggerated. But there’s still much to learn from the distant galaxies it glimpses. The galaxies’ apparent distances from Earth suggested that they formed much earlier in the history of the universe than anyone anticipated. (The farther away something is, the longer ago its light flared forth.)
No, the James Webb Space Telescope Hasn’t Broken Cosmology | WIRED