Climate Situation is Dire. But there is real hope. Read on...

@jeannemayell

This is a link to a video by a "genius inventor" who proposes the most hopeful climate change intervention I have heard about to date. Heretofore, I have been adamantly opposed to geoengineering. Geoengineering refers to human efforts to cool the planet and as unintended consequences are always a concern, I have had a knee-jerk negative reaction. The most commonly discussed geoengineering method is to distribute substances in the atmosphere that would partially block sunlight in order to reduce the amount of radiant energy or incoming heat.

When atmospheric dust or aerosols were discussed, I pictured a grey atmosphere instead of blue skies which depressed me no end. However, this fellow says that we only need to dim sunlight by 1% to help cool the planet, which is invisible to the human eye. (I have not verified his assertions) He mentions this idea far into this video but my adblockers wouldn't allow me to watch it again. Anyway, Jeanne, this is a hopeful bit of information.

Jeff Goodell, author and consultant to NASA, notes that there is no international law that would prohibit a rogue intervention. I proposed that this idea needs to be researched, subject to international governance and perhaps implemented as soon as possible to reduce the amount of heat reaching the earth's surface. We have at least 30 more years of warming otherwise, which we cannot afford.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-19/video-this-genius-inventor-is-taking-on-dinosaurs-global-warming-and-pizza

California just banned the sale of new gas heaters beginning 2030.  That is a huge deal and is on top of their new law going into effect in a few years mandating electric vehicles. 

This is a really big deal.

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/23/1124511549/california-plans-to-phase-out-new-gas-heaters-by-2030

@lovendures This IS a big deal, especially because California is the fifth largest economy in the world. It goes like this for world economies; U.S., China, Japan, Germany, and California. 

Back in 2013, I posted a prediction for the 2020's, that California would become close to being a separate country from the U.S without seceding. I don't know how they manage to be so progressive. But they give us all hope. 

@lovendures @jeanne-mayell

CA is on track to ban gas from all new construction or projects, in fact I believe right now if you are doing new construction you cannot do gas lines for anything except heat and hot water.

For example, if you have a gas fireplace, stove, or dryer, you are allowed to replace or repair them. Eventually the goal is to have new construction that is not even hooked up to the gas lines. Everything will be electric, including heat, with sustainable sources (wind, solar). We have a gas dryer here, which we never had back East, and it's old, so when it breaks, we plan to cap off the gas to it and go electric. Same for my stovetop (wall oven is electric already). The only thing we plan to keep is the gas fireplace. It only gets used maybe 10 times a year and is more eco-friendly than using wood, so I don't feel bad about that.

I wish CA would also ban lawns and golf courses. Next week we are desert-ifying all of the front of our property.  One of you had asked about which plants - so here is a list:

• desert willow tree
• jacaranda tree
• moroccan mound cactus
• pink muhly grass
• hopseed bushes
• agave
• yucca
• barrel cactus
• whales tongue
• indian mallow
• palo verde

Just because they're desert plants doesn't mean they are not colorful or pretty. There are old rose bushes in the flower beds, which we are keeping because they are a type that is drought tolerant and they don't require much water. (Also- budget limitations.)

There's also a crepe myrtle to the side of the driveway, also uses little water so not cutting that down. Of note - this summer has been so hot for so long here I observed about half of the crepe myrtles in our development (most of the trees are pepper and crepe myrtle) have died.

@laura-f your yard sounds like it is going to be beautiful w all of those different plants.   My neighbor has pink muhly grass, and when it blooms it looks like a pink haze floating above the grass- very cool effect.

 Couldn't agree more about golf courses needing to be banned.  They are so destructive to the environment.  And what good are they, anyway? Nobody but rich republicans in ugly clothes ever uses them. That land would be better to turn back to natural areas- or maybe public housing. Almost anything would be a better use.

@laura-f     

It's hard for me to know what to do about the gas appliance situation.

We have gas heat on the lower floor of the house.  And a gas stove and gas on-demand water heater. 

I much prefer cooking with gas so I would not want to give that up, even though I would if necessary. 

The water heater is on-demand so it's pretty energy efficient--- and so I'm not sure how bad it compared to electric. 

And the gas heat... well it *is* Florida so I'm not sure how "evil" that is, either, since it's used less than it would be in the majority of the US.  (The AC on both floors, plus the upstairs heat, are provided via heat pump.)

It would be interesting to see just how "bad" that much gas usage is versus the environmental cost of the material and energy that would be needed to convert everything to electric.  I'm pretty sure I won't consider switching until the current gas units die.  

I've also wanted to put a gas burner in the fireplaces for Years and Years-- they are tiny coal-burners and are not safe to use as-is.   I've been having second thoughts about a gas burner lately.  The alternative is an electric "fire" but I haven't seen one yet that would work with these fireplaces.  Which leads me to wonder really how bad it would be to have a gas fire that was used a few dozen times a year for supplementary heat and ambience.  It's a dilemma.  (Right now I have alcohol burners in the fireplaces but other people who live here think they smell toxic even though I use very clean bio-ethanol.)

Finally--- One upside of gas is that it works even when the power lines are down after a hurricane, so we can still cook and have hot showers. This is very nice--- a fact emphasized when friends and neighbors are complaining about no hot water etc. 🙂 

@ana 

So, there is some interesting hot-off-the-press research on gas stoves from Stanford. It turns out, they leak methane even when they are turned off which is bad for global warming and especially bad for humans inhaling it.

https://news.stanford.edu/2022/01/27/rethinking-cooking-gas/

The good news is that the Inflation Reduction Act offers homeowner generous incentives to get rid of those stoves. Check the link to see what you might get. 800+ in some instances. And there are incentives for many other appliances, EV cars, etc. Biden means to jump start the shift off of natural gas which is methane, a powerful global warming gas. The leaks in mining and pipelines make it as bad as coal, for the most part.

I have cooked with gas (I cook a fair amount) but induction stoves are much better. Much faster boil time, take the pan off the stove and the heat stop because it is based on magnetism. Don't go real high end--just shoot for the middle-price stoves (still not cheap). Otherwise, simple electric glass tops work pretty well, too.

https://www.rewiringamerica.org/app/ira-calculator

https://www.electrificationcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/SAFE_1-sheet_Webinar.pdf

In terms of heating homes, the shift is to electric which will mostly be air-source heat pumps, or mini-splits. One can install ground source heat pumps but they are ~60K per household! If you insulate your home well and use heat sparingly, your money might be better spend elsewhere.

The most confusing appliance, in terms of which is most climate friendly, is the hot water heater. There are incentives for heat pump water heaters (which conserve energy) but they use a refrigerant that is a powerful global warming gas. They hope this gas will never escape into the atmosphere, but I am of the opinion that they probably will.  Most water heaters poop out at roughly 10 years so replacing them with newer electric ones will be more efficient. On-demand hot water heaters may or may not be efficient; it depends on how much hot water you use. Opt for cold water cycles in the washing machine and you are good to go.

If your refrigerator is over 10 years old, it is probably less-efficient than it could be. They are energy hogs, as are clothes dryers. Oh, it takes less energy to dry clothes on lower heat for several cycles rather than hot heat once. Plus, it is easier on your clothes. (The sun works, too.)

If you like the ethanol fireplace burners, keep them. They are cleaner than gas.

I think it is hard for the average consumer to know what choices to make; I wish we had a 1-5 green rating system.

The Arizona community I live in was built in 1994 and does not have gas.  It is a "Good Sense" energy efficient home. We are original owners of our house and there was no option for gas, just electric.  It was built to what was high energy efficiency standards at the time.

The home my parents bought in 1971 in a new California development was also all electric, no gas.  It was touted it back then as being a "Gold Medallion" home development.  As the article below mentions, yes, our doorbell had that medallion on it with the family holding hands. (Boy does this image bring back memories.) 

https://www.thespruce.com/gold-medallion-home-definition-1821516

One nice thing about an all electric home in California, you don't fear a natural gas leak after an earthquake. 

When we bought our house here in AZ, our water bill was really cheep each month.  I remember paying well under $30 in the mid 1990's most months.  We now fall anywhere from low $200 to nearly $400 a month, depending on how many people are living at home/visiting and how hot the summer is as we have a pool and water evaporates quickly in summer heat. With the new Colorado River water restrictions being implemented this January, it will more expensive.  Our state will lose 21% of its water allotment.

My head hurts for so many different reasons just thinking about it.  

Posted by: @raincloud

Opt for cold water cycles in the washing machine and you are good to go.

and you don't have to separate colors when you wash in cold water, which helps make fewer loads (esp if you buy old clothes from resale shops- most of them have been washed a million times already, so not likely to color anything else in the laundry).

My house came with central gas heat, a gas stove, and a gas water heater.  I certainly have my concerns about the possibility of gas leaking into the house, and I haven't really done my research into the environmental impacts of it all.  I suppose since the gas is termed "natural gas" I assumed it was a relatively clean source of energy. 

I live in Virginia and according to a website called "Virginia Energy Sense" ( https://www.virginiaenergysense.org/energy-101/about-your-power/ ) 61% of energy in Virginia is made with natural gas anyway, 29% is nuclear, less than 4% is coal (I assumed much more), and the rest "comes from hydroelectric, renewables, petroleum and other sources." 

Other than concerns about gas leaks, I'm mostly indifferent about whether gas or electricity is better... but there are two major things I like about having gas appliances.  If the power goes out for an extended time for any reason, I can still cook and I still have hot water.  I remember living at a home with everything electric after Hurricane Isabelle in 2003.  We were without electricity for nearly two weeks.  During that time, I couldn't cook a decent meal (I vaguely remember eating cold ravioli directly from a can) and I had to take cold showers (brrr...).  Since the gas lines are underground, they are much less likely to be affected by falling trees, cars running into electric poles, transformers blowing in heavy storms, and other things that affect above ground power lines.  With more and bigger storms expected due to climate change, I fear our current electric system will become more vulnerable to outages.

Of course, I think the ideal would be for everyone to have self-contained solar panel systems for their own houses with backup battery supplies for rainy, cloudy days. 

... and we generally don't have to worry about earthquakes in Virginia so not the same threat to gas lines as California and other places.

Are we going to see more Helenes, more 117 degree days?  What is going on and what can we do for our earth, for our families at this point? 

Will the extreme events happen more frequently? Yes. In fact, their occurrence is speeding up.  Can we tell where they will happen?  There are places that are more likely to get hit than others, but Asheville was not one of them.  We are in a new era now and places some of us thought were safe, we now know are hot spots.

Climate change has always been accelerating, as the science had told us 20 years ago.  Now the acceleration is hitting a new level.

What can we do about it?

1.  High priority: Do everything you can to keep Donald Trump or any republican out of office. Do what you can to get a blue congress. Democratic candidates are a starting point for sustainability and climate protection. GOP candidates are keeping it worse. They are building a billionaire class who are in turn building bunkers for themselves, while they continue to get record profits for businesses that drive up global warming. A blue president and congress will also do something about SCOTUS. These are starting points. 

2.  Come up to speed on the science. Reading Bill McKibben (below) will help you understand in plain English how climate change works 

3. Understand how to protect your home. Let's start sharing ideas here. 

4. Let's talk about migration too, if that is a possibility for you. But we are dealing with new geo science in figuring out the most climate safe places.  I read a few years ago that Hawaii was safest due to deep water which could modify temperature extremes.  Then the Maui fire happened. Vermont was also considered a safe place after a thorough Propublica story. Now we see how the warming Atlantic dumps water on Vermont, which rushes down mountains and floods their rivers and valleys. So back to the drawing board.

I've followed McKibben since 2007 when he presented at my son's college. He is the best science writer on climate, and understands political strategy. Read him below and consider subscribing to his free emails:  

: https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/water?r=4ci0z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

"If you want to understand the horror still unfolding in Appalachia, and actually if you want to understand the 21st century, you need to remember one thing: warm air holds more water vapor than cold...

"As Hurricane Helene swept in across a superheated Gulf of Mexico, its winds rapidly intensified—that part is really easy to understand, since hurricanes draw their power from the heat in the water. And as Jeff Masters points out:

Helene’s landfall gives the U.S. a record eight Cat 4 or Cat 5 Atlantic hurricane landfalls in the past eight years (2017-2024), seven of them being continental U.S. landfalls. That’s as many Cat 4 and 5 landfalls as occurred in the prior 57 years.

"But Helene also picked up ungodly amounts of water—about 7% more water vapor in saturated air for every 1°C of ocean warming. In this case, that meant the mountaintops along the Blue Ridge above Asheville were—according to Doppler radar measurement—hit with nearly 4 feet of rain. That meant that Asheville—listed recently by the national media as a “climate haven” and bulging with those looking for a climate-safe home—is now largely cut off from the world. The interstates in and out of the town were severed for a while over the weekend; the beautiful downtown is drowned in mud. It’s obviously much worse in the outlying towns up in the surrounding hills. People forget how high these mountains are—Mt. Mitchell, near Asheville, is the highest point east of the Mississippi (and, worth noting, the forests on its summit slopes have been badly damaged by acid rain).

"I know how this works, because my home state of Vermont is mostly steep mountains and narrow valleys. Once the rain drops, it’s funneled very quickly down the saturated hillsides; placid streams become raging torrents that fill up those bottomlands, covering farm fields with soil; when the water starts to drain, everything is coated with mud. These towns are going to be cut off for a while—our mountain hamlet in Vermont was effectively isolated for a couple of weeks last summer. And these are places where cellphones don’t work in the best of times. Things get pre-modern very fast.

"Were it happening just in one place, a compassionate world could figure out how to offer effective relief. But it’s happening in so many places. The same day that Helene slammed into the Gulf, Hurricane John crashed into the Mexican state of Guerrero, dropping nearly 40 inches of rain and causing deadly and devastating floods in many places including Acapulco, which is still a shambles from Hurricane Otis last year. In Nepal this afternoon at least 148 people are dead and many still missing in the Kathmandu Valley. Just this month, as one comprehensive twitter thread documented, we’ve seen massive flooding in Turkey, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Marseilles, Milan, India, Wales, Guatemala, Morocco, Algeria, Vietnam, Croatia, Nigeria, Thailand, Greece, Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, with the Danube hitting new heights across Central Europe. It is hard to open social media without seeing cellphone videos from the cars-washing-down-steep-streets genre; everywhere the flows are muddy-brown, and swirling with power.

"But all that water has to come from somewhere—the extra vapor in the air implies that in some places water is disappearing skyward, and those stories are at least as dangerous, if not as dramatic in a daily way. (How do we know that drought is on the increase? That’s easy—a new “drought emoji” of a dead tree is about to be approved).

Brazilian president Lula traveled to the Amazon last week to highlight the intense drought gripping the region; it’s fueled fires that have covered as much as 60 percent of the county with smoke. It used to be that Amazon fires were mostly the work of prospectors and would-be farmers, using the dry season to get rid of the forest; now, though, many of the fires are burning in pristine areas far from active attempts at deforestation. It just gets dry enough that the rainforest can catch fire. As Manuela Andreoni reported in the Times, Lula’s new environment minister, the highly credible Marina Silva, has cracked down on the bad guys, but it hasn’t been enough to stop the burning

“Maybe 2024 is the best year of the ones that are coming, as incredible as it may seem,” said Erika Berenguer, a senior research associate at the University of Oxford. “The climate models show a big share of the biome is going to become drier.”

In essence, the Amazon rainforest is an exquisite mechanism for passing moisture from the ocean to the interior, but as more of the forest disappears that mechanism is quickly breaking down—and with implications for regions as far away as California.

All of this is a way of saying something I’ve said too many times before: we’re out of margin. We’re now watching the climate crisis play out in real time, week by week, day by day. (117 Fahrenheit in Phoenix yesterday, the hottest September temperature ever recorded there, smashing the old daily mark by…eight degrees).

This means that our political leaders are finally going to have to make hard choices (or not, which is its own way of choosing). Brazil, for instance, is hoping to drill for oil at the mouth of the Amazon—which at least, given Brazil’s relative poverty, is somewhat understandable, if still insane. America’s politicians, under much less economic pressure, are facing similar choices, some of them as soon as the lame duck session after the November elections. Expect, for instance, a renewed push to open up new permits for LNG export terminals along the Gulf Coast. Pausing those permits was the most important step the Biden administration took to rein in Big Oil, and Houston’s been outraged ever since; it’s why they’re pouring money into the Trump campaign. And it’s why they have their errand boys in the Congress—outgoing Senator Joe Manchin, Wyoming’s John Barrasso—proposing a trade: permitting reform that would make it easier to build renewable energy in America, in exchange for ramping up LNG exports that would undercut renewable energy in Asia.

The numbers on whether this trade “makes sense” are complicated and contentious. Here’s a report from Third Way arguing yes, here’s a set of charts from the veteran energy analyst Jeremy Symons arguing that it will dramatically raise gas prices for those American consumers still tied to propane. New peer-reviewed numbers from the gold-standard methane scientist Bob Howarth at Cornell make it clear that these LNG exports are worse than coal; that prompted 125 climate scientists to write to the administration asking them to “follow the science.”

In the end, this decision will likely come down to politics. It’s not just Big Oil that’s willing to make such a trade—New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich, in line to be Democratic leader on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee when Manchin yachts back to West Virginia, has come out for the trade, assuredly because New Mexico gets a large share of its government revenues from taxing the natural gas under its part of the Permian basin. Northeastern Democrats will vote against, fearing not just climate destruction but the rise in gas prices as we send the commodity abroad. Meanwhile, the good people of the Gulf suffer from the grievous local environmental impacts of these giant plants, and the amount of methane in the atmosphere keeps rocketing up.

If Trump wins, there’s no need for a deal—the LNG projects will be approved, and permitting reform for renewables will be dead. If Harris wins and the Dems hold the Senate, at least there’s a chance that environmentalists can make it easier to build solar and wind without yielding on the massive carbon bomb and EJ disaster that is LNG export. That’s why I’m in Montana today, trying in my small way to help Jon Tester in his uphill fight to retain a Senate seat. And it’s why I’m in the swing states most of the time between now and November 5. Thousands of Third Act volunteers are deploying themselves far and wide to win this contest—you can join us on the Silver Wave tour in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. (Please join us, even if you haven’t reached sixty yet—we don’t check IDs and we love working with young people).

The bottom line is, we’re in a terrible corner now. That’s what all those pictures of floating cars really means. We don’t have room left to make tradeoffs and deals; physics isn’t in a bargaining mood. Every battle is dishearteningly existential now. -- Bill McKibben 

Subscribe to McKibben here https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/water?utm_source=substack&publication_id=438146&post_id=149173414&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=4ci0z&triedRedirect=true

@lovendures @cc21 @bluebelle @deetoo @journeywithme2 @ana @tonyaw @dannyboy @thehappy medium @baba @seaholly @teriz @raincloud

This is great info @jeanne-mayell.  Thank you for this informative post. I will now head off to subscribe to McKibben.

@jeanne-mayell  it leaves me broken hearted when I think of it all . Today I celebrate my hero's and my birthdays. It's beyond regrettable that the GQP thwarted his second term.... he foresaw all of this years ago... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/

We, the people, were sold out a long time ago.... " the meek shall inherit the Earth" wasn't humanity I suspect.

@journeywithme2  Yes, your hero, Jimmy Carter, believed in science and when the first reports came out about the climate crisis, he took bold and brave action.  He is a true patriot.

I plan to do a climate future reading session soon, as soon as we get past the election crisis.  Our future will vary dramatically, depending whether we get T or Harris into the White House. Whoever wins, we must all focus on fortifying ourselves, moving away from climate hotspots, and making our homes more resilient.

Climate change is not linear.  Do not draw a straight line from the current climate into the future. It is exponential, accelerating, and thus curvilinear. The longer time passes, the more steep the acceleration of storms, heat, and drought. so 117 degrees in Phoenix last week could be 127 degrees down the road, and we do not yet know what the exponent is in this exponential equation.  What does that mean? Next post

There is hope... and research continues.

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