I waiting for a plane yesterday and a pilot who was deadheading (and looked quite conservative) talked about how violent the weather has become. Even if you have conservative politics when your profession daily sees the result of climate change (and you’ve been doing it for 35 years) you cannot keep your head in the sand. Hopefully, he realizes their other lies.
Thailand posted a record breaking temperature of 114 last Friday, a first time ever temperature. They are having the worst Asian heat wave ever recorded. This heatwave has struck many Asian countries.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/04/17/historic-heat-wave-asia-thailand/#
As I have posted previously, I constantly suffer from "climate grief." Because there is inertia in the climate system, we are just now feeling the effects of emissions (that cause climate change aka global warming) that were put into the atmosphere 30-40 years ago. Which means that even if we stop emitting the gases (mostly CO2) that cause global warming today, we have 30-40 years of warming ahead (and we haven't stopped). Fasten your seat belts....
This is going to be interesting. Could oil companies be made to pay states for climate damages caused by Big Oil?
From NBC News:
The Supreme Courton Monday allowed lawsuits brought by municipalities seeking to hold energy companies accountable for climate change to move forward in a loss for business interests.
The court turned away oil company appeals in five cases involving claims brought by cities and municipalities in Colorado, Maryland, California, Hawaii and Rhode Island as part of efforts to hold businesses accountable for the effects of climate change.
The relatively narrow legal issue is whether the lawsuits should be heard in state court instead of federal court. Litigants care because of the widely held view that plaintiffs have better chances of winning damage awards in state courts.
Dang. I didn't know the climate challenge embedded in the debt ceiling fight; the renewable energy tax credits are at risk. Inside Climate News is a highly respected source of climate info.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21042023/why-the-debt-ceiling-debate-is-also-a-climate-fight/
I know the author of this article on Climate data; he has a steady-state personality, not ego driven and not ever someone I would describe as an alarmist.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/opinion/climate-change-excessive-heat-2023.html
@raincloud Thanks for sharing this! Great article. The part I liked the most was the hope that was mentioned towards the end. Important to keep in mind, even amidst the chaos of accelerating climate change.
"On that front, there is some reason for cautious hope. The world is on the brink of a clean energy transition. The International Energy Agency recently estimated that a whopping $1.8 trillion will be invested in clean energy technologies like renewables, electric cars and heat pumps in 2023, up from roughly $300 billion a decade ago. Prices of solar, wind and batteries have plummeted over the past 15 years, and for much of the world, solar power is now the cheapest form of electricity."
Some recent climate news.
New rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission will require sizable companies to disclose to the public how climate change could threaten their business.This will include information about their emissions. Not only will their carbon footprint be reviewed but also how climate change might put the business at risk.
Tiny Nanoplastics have been found in arteries and their presents in believed to be tied to strokes, heart attacks and death. This plastic can be inhaled, ingested or enter through the skin.
One in 50 people living in two dozen coastal cities in the United States could experience significant flooding by 2050, according to Virginia Tech-led research. 1 in 35 private property may be damaged.
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-thousands-coastal-residents.html
You can add something new that climate change is messing with.
TIME!
Yep. The rotation of the earth is beginning to slow, just a tad, and there are ramification for the world. Remember all the issues with Y2K? Well, this might be more challenging to fix!
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-climate-messing.html
Can eating a more healthy flexitarian diet help heal the planet?
Yes, it can according to a new study published in Science Advances which finds that a more sustainable, flexitarian diet increases the feasibility of the Paris Agreement climate goals in different ways.
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-food-healthy-diets-economic-physical.html
Not all cattle are the same when it comes to grazing. Some like to wander, while others prefer to stay close to water and rest areas.
Recognizing those personality differencescould help ranchersselect herds that best meet grazing needs on rangelands, leading to better animal health and environmental conditions, according to a new paper from the University of California, Davis, published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
"Cattle can actually be beneficial for the rangelands," said lead author Maggie Creamer, who recently earned her Ph.D. in animal behavior at UC Davis. "Vegetation in rangelands actually need these kinds of disturbances like grazing."
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-cattle-grazing-personalities-foster-sustainable.html
@lovendures once again, you lift up the collective mood w proactive and empowering data/developments. Grazie! Nothing will change unless we do!
I had a dream last night were I was standing on a sandbar (maybe 35 feet wide) looking through a partial arch at the ocean beyond (which was pretty calm but a disturbing dark color). The arch was connected to a wall or berm. I moved forward towards the ocean and realized I walked through what used to be an entrance to a building. I turned around to look behind me and saw a dark abandoned skyline of Miami FL. Then I realized I was standing on what was once Miami Beach. There seemed to be signs warning of things (I don’t remember what they were).
I don’t feel this scene was in the near future. Most dreams I’ve had cast a point in time at least a decade or more in the future.
It did remind me of another dream from a couple years ago. I saw the state of Florida from above. A black dot along the coast south of Miami got surrounded by water and turned red. I tried to find what that was and determined it as a Nuclear Power Plant.
If I combined the two dreams, did a storm OR rising sea levels cause a radiation leak at the plant forcing Miami to be evacuated and the area was left to decay naturally (from storms and rising sea-levels)? Other than Miami beach being destroyed the Miami skyline looked mostly intact compared to pictures I’ve seen of it.
It’s been at least 6 years since posted last. This morning I’m feeling we are beginning a mini ice age. I feel this winter it will start to show itself early. I feel that most will think of it as chaotic climate changes. What I am seeing is as we go higher in vibration and moving to 5d the cooler it is. If the earth is up to 5d it will be cooler too. Just like us, she is her own identity.
While yes we see hot and chaotic weather, it is birthing the new. In some ways the weather is reacting how we react. If we had calmness within, the weather would be calm too outside. Alot what we see is projections of ourselves.
The more we stay in survival mode and creating fear, it will keep some people from being up their vibration
I am not deny what we are putting in our environment, the pollution and etc. These things would only kill the human race off and the earth will clear herself through cycles and carry on.
@kim-k If you are just being in positive visioning state to help us rise, I love that! But the mini ice age thing is a GOP talking point, so it is triggering. Humans did create the warming, and so yes we are going to turn it around.I love the idea that our angers will cool things down. But I believe we need to respect earth and stop burning fossil fuels to get back to the planet garden of eden we were given.
It is possible that fluctuations may show a cooler winter, relatively speaking, although am not seeing it at this moment. But if it happens, it is likely due to changing ocean and wind patterns. The AMOC (Atlantic Meridian Ocean Circulation -- Gulf Stream) is slowing down due to global warming, and that will cause cooling in some places. The Movie, The Day After Tomorrow, was an unscientific highly exaggerated version of that theory, but it was just fiction.
Overall the planet is warming and there is overwhelming evidence is in that direction.
In the U.S. we need a democrat in the White House and a blue wave in the Congress to move more quickly towards a fossil fuel free world. I believe we will get that, and over the next five years, we will be racing towards curbing the warming.
I feel we will take proactive steps to send some of the sun's rays back to space. But we have to curb the burning of fossil fuels.
They may even come up with some new technology to pull the warming blanket out of the atmosphere in the quantities needed to curb warming. Although they haven't come up with it yet. The earth is too vast and we must stop the fossil fuel burning. They may also put the many billions of dollars necessary to stop the Thwaits Glacier from sliding into the ocean. I think they will do that at some point, but it's going to take a worldwide effort. They certainly are working on all of it!
Yes, Jeanne has the right of it. Hear is a scientific article from The most trusted source explained how polar vortexes, which cause extreme winter weather in the US, are caused by climate change/global warming (caused primarily by humans burning fossil fuels). Climate chaos, which includes blizzards, large snow dumps, etc., better describes what we are facing.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-51601-5
Some of you folks are likely well-informed about the mechanism by which burning fossil fuel warms the climate, but I would like to get all pedantic and explain some of the details, and some of the limitations of the science, so that it may help people explain the system to others who are completely clueless. ( Climate science is not my academic specialty, however I have BS and MS degrees in chemistry, and a PhD in geochemistry, plus several decades working in a geoscience department at a major university. We teach about this stuff in intro geoscience classes, plus I was first introduced to it in chemistry classes. And I have colleagues who work specifically in the climate science field. )
I hope this will be informative and not annoying:
Here goes:
It is very difficult to make accurate predictions about climate change. As in all branches of Earth science, we are dealing with an enormously complex system that we do not entirely understand.
But, First of all, here is what we know for sure:
It is crystal clear that CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs heat (infrared energy), then lets it loose again (reradiates) it in all directions. The Sun warms the Earth. The Earth radiates much of the heat (infrared) energy back to outer space. On its way back to outer space, however, some of the infrared energy encounters CO2 molecules which absorb and reradiate some of the infrared right back to Earth. CO2 is basically a "return to sender" agent as far as heat goes. The more CO2 there is, the more heat doesn't get to escape to outer space. This is pretty much indisputable and fairly basic physical chemistry and is NOT under debate. (see https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/02/25/carbon-dioxide-cause-global-warming/#:~:text=As%20CO2%20soaks%20up%20this ,' )
Scientists have drilled into ancient glaciers and ice caps and obtained ice cores, which they quickly put in cold storage do they can be studied later. We know from analyzing bubbles in glacial ice cores that the concentration of CO2 in those bubbles stayed fairly constant for the last couple of thousand years until we hit the industrial age in the 19th century. (see https://www.co2.earth/co2-ice-core-data for a graph.) We also know that the "extra" CO2 is mostly of the isotope Carbon-12. The ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 began decreasing at the SAME TIME humans began burning coal, oil, and gas in massive quantities. Basically, Carbon-12 took over. And interestingly-- the temperature of Earth began rising at the same time as the CO2 levels increased.
To summarize, coinciding with the start if the industrial age, the AMOUNT of carbon dioxide increased, and the ratio of Carbon-14 to Carbon 12 Decreased, and temperatures increased. .
Hmm, a smoking gun or a random coincidence? Could the industrial age be to blame? To decide, first we need to know why we have so much more C-12 than was there before the year 1850.
Well, first we must consider where the Carbon-14 came from.
Carbon-14 is created in the atmosphere when cosmic rays from outer space hit Nitrogen-14 molecules in the atmosphere. Carbon-14 is radioactive. It has a half-life of 5730 years, which, in geologic terms, is pretty short. 5730 years after C-14 is created, half of it has decayed and is GONE. After two half-lives, only 1/4 of the original C-14 remains. Meaning, if you took a big plastic bag of CO2 out of the atmosphere today, and kept it isolated from cosmic rays (like underground), after 5730 years, half of the C-14 in that bag would be gone. But-- if you leave that C-14 in the atmosphere, photosynthetic plants and trees are eventually going to absorb it and incorporate it into their tissues. Plants, in effect, "eat" carbon dioxide. And, when an animal eats a plant, the animal is eating that plant's same carbon dioxide and also gets C-14 in its tissues. All living things have the same ratio of C-12 to C14 as the atmosphere had at the time they were living. But when a tree dies, or animal dies, the remains are no longer "eating" atmospheric carbon-14 When they die, they cease obtaining new C-14 and at the same time, the C-14 they had when they died is inexorably disappearing.
The longer something has been dead, the lower the ratio of C-14 to C-12 in its remains will be. (This is how radiocarbon dating works, but that is another topic. ) /
Ok now: fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas are created when organic (formerly living) material is buried under certain conditions of pressure and heat for a long time. By that time the dead material has lost all or nearly all of the C-14 it had when it was alive. The carbon in that material has become what we call "Dead Carbon"-- Carbon that contains little if any C-14.
Fossil fuels are Dead Carbon (C-12) . Burn that stuff and you end up with CO2 where pretty much all the Carbon is C-12. Send that C-12 -rich CO2 into the atmosphere and you end up with both higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, and since it's all C-12, the ratio of C-14 to C-12 will decrease.
Bingo. Smoking gun. No, you don't have a confession, or an eyewitness account, but the smoking gun is smoking pretty good. Burning fossil fuels leads to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere which, theoretically should cause Global Warming. This should be enough for intelligent persons to realize that there can be SEVERE consequences to burning fossil fuels, so why don't we take it seriously? Like, we wear seatbelts and such just on the small CHANCE we'll be in a wreck, so why doesn't due diligence indicate that maybe we better not be pumping CO2 into the atmosphere so we won't make the planet unlivable???. *sigh*
Caveats and limitations ...Continued in another post....