/\ Time Lines /\
Skeptical Science - Peer reviewed discussions of what climate change is and debunking global warming misinformation; newcomers start here
Open Secrets: Climate Change Profile - "This online resource exposes the financial forces shaping energy and environmental policy, providing crucial insights into the influences driving America’s climate agenda."
IEA: Strategies for Affordable and Fair Clean Energy Transitions
Price of Oil: Fossil Fuel Subsidies Overview - US subsidies annually: $21 Billion. Internationally: $5.1 Trillion. See also The Hidden Costs of Fossil Fuels and US Spends $81 Billion Annually to Protect Global Oil Supplies
Center for Biological Diversity: Pursuing a Just and Renewable Energy System - Highlights: maximize energy conservation and efficiency, concentrate on distributed assets like rooftops for solar, and put someone in charge.
Wikipedia: 2003 European Heatwave - "The death toll has been estimated at more than 70,000."
Stop the Money Pipeline - Started by Bill McKibben
The Sacrifice Zone - Life in an industrial wasteland.
The Ecosocialist Green New Deal - Green Party, Howie Hawkins
4/28/21
Bill McKibben: Renewable Energy is Suddenly Startlingly Cheap - (see also 8/22/17) The new Carbon Tracker report: "The Sky's the Limit", is a complete game changer. From the report:
"Kingsmill Bond, Carbon Tracker’s energy strategist and report lead author, said: “We are entering a new epoch, comparable to the industrial revolution. Energy will tumble in price and become available to millions more, particularly in low-income countries. Geopolitics will be transformed as nations are freed from expensive imports of coal, oil and gas. Clean renewables will fight catastrophic climate change and free the planet from deadly pollution.”
“...with current technology and in a subset of available locations we can capture at least 6,700 PWh p.a. [petawatt-hours per year] from solar and wind, which is more than 100 times global energy demand.”
“The land required for solar panels alone to provide all global energy is 0.3% of the global land area. That is less than the land required for fossil fuels today."
“We have established that technical and economic barriers have been crossed by falling costs. It follows that the main remaining barrier to change is the ability of incumbents to manipulate political forces to stop change,” the report reads.
Bottom line: There are no more technological hurdles to 100% renewable energy supplying all of the world's needs now and for the foreseable future. Renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, and getting cheaper by the day. Converting to 100% renewables will create many more jobs than current fossil fuel jobs.
9/28/20
New Yorker: Biden Can Rise to the Challenge of Our Climate Emergency - I doubt it, but here’s hoping. On the one hand there is his $2 trillion climate plan, but on the other, the party refused to include a plank in the platform that would have even slightly reduced subsidies to fossil fuel companies, now at $5 trillion per year globally. The DNC refused to even hold a pre-nomination Climate Debate. But that’s just Democrats for you. They are the lesser of two evils so they can get away with a lot more.
7/14/20
NYTimes: Biden Announces $2 Trillion Climate Plan - This was one of his campaign promises. Here's another. “no more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period, ends, number one.”
8/22/19
Common Dreams: Protests Break Out After DNC Committee Votes Against Holding 2020 #ClimateDebate
8/22/17
In These Times: Bill McKibben: The Unimaginable Is Now Possible: 100% Renewable Energy. We Can’t Settle For Less - From the article: The price of renewables has now dropped - and continues to drop - so low that a 100% switchover makes economic sense. The intermittency problem has been solved. And Here. There’s nothing stopping us but politicians. Germany, China, the UK, Scandinavian countries, Chile, Holland, etc. are far ahead of the US in the transition to 100% renewables. Currently more workers are employed in the US solar industry than the coal industry. The Labor Network for Sustainability is proposing a law similar to the 1944 GI bill to help displaced coal workers get re-educated and job placement. The transition will turn us all from energy consumers to energy owners.
7/10/17
Guardian: Just 100 Companies Responsible For 71% of Global Emissions
CLIMATE CHANGE IN A NUTSHELL:
Climate Breakdown is an immediate and existential threat to all humanity.
Every candidate should have a plan to bring the US to 100% renewables by the year 2050, and a detailed and specific plan to make this happen. There are no more technical issues to solve. The only things stopping us now are political inertia and the influence of the fossil fuel industry.
Please ask each candidate to outline their specific plan to reach that goal.
tragic, disgraceful
Nature is not where you go on the weekends. Nature is where you live.
Nature does not need you. But you do need Nature.
************************************
350.org: Climate Science Basics - 1. It’s hotter, and rapidly getting more so; 2. It’s us; 3. We’re sure; 4. It’s bad; 5. We can fix it.
Facts (as of 1/15/20):
- Guardian: Climate Crisis: 2020 Was Joint Hottest Year Ever Recorded - Also a record 29 tropical storms in the Atlantic. The past 6 years have been the hottest 6. 20 out of the last 22 years have been the hottest on record.
- The past 5 years have been the hottest 5 ever and Here.
- 9 of the last 10 years have been in the hottest 10 years ever.
- The 10 hottest years have all occurred since 2005.
- 20 out of the last 22 years have been the hottest on record.
- Weather Channel: July 2019 Was the Hottest Month Ever On Earth
- January 2020 was the hottest January ever
- Weather Underground: June 2019 Was the Hottest June on Record
- WUnderground: 2019 Was the Second Wettest Year on Record
4/25/20 WUnderground: Earliest Tropical Depression On Record in E. Pacific
- At 410 ppm, CO2 is at its highest level in 3 million years, during the Pliocene epoch when seas were 60 ft. higher than today.
- The Arctic is nearly ice free. The last time that happened was at least 125,000 years ago.
- Glaciers around the world are disappearing.
- Because of climate change, wildfires are becoming more frequent, more deadly and they are burning larger areas.
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/07/wildfires-and-climate-change-whats-the-connection/
World wide, wildfires are becoming more and more destructive. The Camp fire (2018) was the most destructive in California history. $16.5 B, 85 deaths, 153,336 acres, 18,804 buildings destroyed. “Meteorologists are scrambling to make sense of a so-called fire tornado that lifted 39,000 feet from the fire that burned near the edges of the city of Redding, twirling for more than an hour and stripping the bark from trees.”
- Drought in California has depleted groundwater so severely that the land is sinking.
- Florida is planning to spend $4B to counteract the effects of sea-level rise.
- The 2019 floods in the Midwest have swamped a million acres of farmland, threatening the nation’s food supply. It is the longest lasting since the great flood of 1927.
- The Latest 9/19 IPCC report - 100 year floods will soon occur every year.
- Soon there will be so many climate refugees that the earth will become ungovernable.
- The US Defense Dept has started planning to deal with civil unrest caused by increasing numbers of climate refugees. See DOD 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap.
- Since 2004, hurricanes have become more lethal in terms of fatalities and devastating in terms of cost of damages, and Here. Examples:
Jeanne, Sept. 2004, $7.94B, 3,037 deaths; Caribbean, E. US,
Katrina, Aug. 2005, $125B, 1,836 deaths; destroyed much of New Orleans and the Gulf coasts of LA, MI
Stan, Oct. 2005, $3.96B, 1,668 deaths
Matthew, Oct. 2016, $16.5B, 603 deaths; Haiti, Grand Bahama, Fla., Ga. S. Carolina, Virginia,
Harvey, Aug 2017, $125B, 107 deaths; Houston
Irma, Sept. 2017, $77B, 134 deaths; entire Caribbean, including S. Fla., , first Cat 5 hurricane to strike the Leeward Islands, followed by Maria 2 weeks later. In Barbuda, Robert De Niro, with the help of corrupt officials and his criminal pals, exploited the completely destroyed island to steal the land away from the natives. Now he’s even richer and they have no place to live.
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/23/robert-de-niro-barbuda-hotel-hurricane-irma/
Maria, Sept. 2017, $96B, 3,059 official death count, but New England Journal of Medicine (table S4), calculated 4,645; entire Caribbean, including nearly complete devastation of Puerto Rico
Dorian, Aug 2019, $8.3B, 70 deaths, worst disaster in Bahama’s history, Cat 5 tying with 1935 Labor Day Hurricane for highest winds for an Atlantic hurricane ever recorded at landfall, also serious damages in Charleston
Imelda, Sept. 2019, $2+B, 5 deaths, Houston. Houston stayed flooded for days at a time when the city and surrounding area had still not fully recovered from Harvey
Hagibis, Oct. 2019, $9+B, 86 deaths, Japan, Mariana Islands, S. Korea, Russia, Alaska
7/10/15
UK Guardian: Pope Francis: “Unbridled Capitalism Is The Dung of the Devil” - "Let us not be afraid to say it: we want change, real change, structural change," the Pope declared, as he blasted a system of unbridled capitalism across the planet that "has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature." “This system is by now intolerable: farm workers find it intolerable, laborers find it intolerable, communities find it intolerable, peoples find it intolerable. The earth itself – our sister, Mother Earth, as Saint Francis would say – also finds it intolerable,” Referring to IMF policies in the 3rd world: “The new colonialism takes on different faces. At times it appears as the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain ‘free trade’ treaties, and the imposition of measures of ‘austerity’ which always tighten the belt of workers and the poor,” he said. He defended labor unions and praised poor people who had formed cooperatives to create jobs where previously “there were only crumbs of an idolatrous economy”.