Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[Vice-Regent]

1 hour ago, LibertyBell said:

Aren't those windfarms supposed to be computer controlled so the blades on an individual turbine would stop if a bird was going to hit it?

I think birds dying by window impacts might be more common.

Always a solution for something. It's the cumulative impact overtime and once it scales there are sure to be more in the pipeline.

I have just lost faith in civilization. I may be bitter but I can afford to walk away I could cut my electricity tomorrow and still be fine. Collapse early and avoid the rush. Saying we are going to depend on a highly complex technology with many moving parts such as a wind farm is not in line with a good life.

You want to be as self-sufficient as possible and reduce your dependence on technology where it is convenient.

[LibertyBell]

8 minutes ago, Vice-Regent said:

Always a solution for something. It's the cumulative impact overtime and once it scales there are sure to be more in the pipeline.

I have just lost faith in civilization. I may be bitter but I can afford to walk away I could cut my electricity tomorrow and still be fine. Collapse early and avoid the rush. Saying we are going to depend on a highly complex technology with many moving parts such as a wind farm is not in line with a good life.

You want to be as self-sufficient as possible and reduce your dependence on technology where it is convenient.

On another topic I wanted you to have a read about this

https://www.ft.com/content/69d94162-8580-4001-96ea-42675739d483

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/04/898853311/it-took-a-pandemic-mystery-of-windsor-hum-is-solved

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-persistent-mystery-of-the-kokomo-hum
 

[Vice-Regent]

15 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

On another topic I wanted you to have a read about this

https://www.ft.com/content/69d94162-8580-4001-96ea-42675739d483

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/04/898853311/it-took-a-pandemic-mystery-of-windsor-hum-is-solved

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-persistent-mystery-of-the-kokomo-hum
 

It's worth considering we all depend on technology but when it's disruptive to our communities we must live with the cost. We are left holding the bag per se.

Before our cities were designed around the automobile you could easily live within walking distance of your business or occupation. Now we are forced into additional complexity and personal expense as for most people owning an automobile is absolutely necessary. This also includes it's own variety of domestic disturbances and noise pollution.

[LibertyBell]

1 hour ago, Vice-Regent said:

It's worth considering we all depend on technology but when it's disruptive to our communities we must live with the cost. We are left holding the bag per se.

Before our cities were designed around the automobile you could easily live within walking distance of your business or occupation. Now we are forced into additional complexity and personal expense as for most people owning an automobile is absolutely necessary. This also includes it's own variety of domestic disturbances and noise pollution.

Musk needs to be tortured

 

https://twitter.com/search?q=Neuralink&src=trend_click&vertical=trends

[LibertyBell]

1 hour ago, Vice-Regent said:

It's worth considering we all depend on technology but when it's disruptive to our communities we must live with the cost. We are left holding the bag per se.

Before our cities were designed around the automobile you could easily live within walking distance of your business or occupation. Now we are forced into additional complexity and personal expense as for most people owning an automobile is absolutely necessary. This also includes it's own variety of domestic disturbances and noise pollution.

It's interesting that once you start hearing these sounds, they seem to get worse and worse-- like some kind of horror story.

 

[LibertyBell]

2 hours ago, Vice-Regent said:

It's worth considering we all depend on technology but when it's disruptive to our communities we must live with the cost. We are left holding the bag per se.

Before our cities were designed around the automobile you could easily live within walking distance of your business or occupation. Now we are forced into additional complexity and personal expense as for most people owning an automobile is absolutely necessary. This also includes it's own variety of domestic disturbances and noise pollution.

This is an embarrassment, this guy won a lawsuit against Chevron and is still being punished for it.

Chevron needs to be treated as a hostile power with sanctions leveled against them.

 

[LibertyBell]

2 hours ago, Vice-Regent said:

It's worth considering we all depend on technology but when it's disruptive to our communities we must live with the cost. We are left holding the bag per se.

Before our cities were designed around the automobile you could easily live within walking distance of your business or occupation. Now we are forced into additional complexity and personal expense as for most people owning an automobile is absolutely necessary. This also includes it's own variety of domestic disturbances and noise pollution.

Pardon this guy already, he's being "punished" because he dared go up against Chevron and won a class action.  Chevron needs to be treated as a hostile power and the judge in this case (in the pay of Chevron, I might add) needs to be sent to prison himself.

[LibertyBell]

Not voting for Biden again, Satan can become president, idc.

[LibertyBell]

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/chevron-firm-which-hounded-donziger-has-allies-in-the-biden-administration/

 

The unprecedented revenge campaign waged by Chevron against human rights lawyer Steven Donziger reached a new low last Friday, when the environmental justice activist was sentenced to six months in federal prison on criminal contempt charges by U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska. How has Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) allowed this miscarriage of justice, amid rising calls from members of Congress, Nobel laureates, and human rights organizations to investigate the case? Perhaps part of the answer lies in the fact that Biden has hired several lawyers from Chevron’s law firm to fill key roles across the executive branch.

For those unfamiliar with the case, here’s the gist: Shortly after Ecuadorian courts ordered Chevron to pay Donziger’s clients (over 30,000 Ecuadorian farmers and indigenous people) $9.5 billion in damages for dumping toxic oil waste in the Amazon in 2011, the fossil fuel giant filed a baseless countersuit against him in the U.S. and vowed to fight the settlement tooth-and-nail. In 2014, SDNY Judge Lewis Kaplan — a former corporate lawyer with ties to Chevron — invalidated the Ecuadorian judgment and charged Donziger with criminal contempt for refusing to hand his electronic devices over to Chevron (an order that would have violated Donziger’s attorney-client privilege). After the SDNY U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute Donziger, Kaplan took the unprecedented step of appointing private law firm Seward & Kissel (which represented Chevron as recently as 2018) to lead the prosecution and selected Judge Preska, a member of the Federalist Society (which receives Chevron donations), to oversee the case. Preska’s confinement of Donziger to nearly two years of house arrest during the trial — more than four times the maximum sentence that was handed down on Friday — was found by a UN panel of human rights experts to be a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Legal experts have also deemed the Chevron-aligned private prosecution of Donziger a version of a SLAPP suit, intended to silence and intimidate those who stand up to corporate wrongdoing by burying them with legal defense costs. 

Of particular note is the role that Chevron’s current law firm, Gibson Dunn, has played in leading the company’s decade-long legal offensive against Donziger: according to The Intercept, Gibson Dunn has “hired private investigators to track him, created a publication to smear him, and led a team of hundreds of lawyers to fight him”. In a report this May, my colleagues Andrea Beaty, Ella Fanger, and Zena Wolf noted that Gibson Dunn not only has a history of representing oil giants like Chevron, but also helped staff the Trump administration with pro-corporate alumni like Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and EPA General Counsel David Fatouhi. It was likewise an influential feeder firm for DOJ hires during the Obama administration, and its prolific political influence may also explain why several high-profile New York Democrats have remained silent on Donziger’s case: the firm employs Representative Jerry Nadler’s son as an associate and has donated over $190,000 to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and her PAC. 

Gibson Dunn’s revolving door has also extended into the Biden administration, concurrent with the firm’s ongoing representation of Chevron. As noted in our Revolving Door Report on Gibson Dunn, at least three Gibson Dunn alumni who previously represented fossil fuel companies — including two who represented Chevron — joined the Biden administration in 2021: 

• Jose Fernandez, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment: Fernandez, a Biden campaign donor who previously served as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs during the Obama administration, was confirmed by the Senate on August 6th, 2021. In between his stints in the Obama and Biden administrations, Fernandez was a partner at Gibson Dunn’s New York City office, where financial disclosure forms reveal he represented oil giants Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, SK E&P, and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. In his new perch in the Biden administration, Fernandez will be tasked with “leading the State Department’s environmental and economic growth policies abroad.” 

• Stuart Delery, Deputy White House Counsel: Delery, who previously served as acting Associate Attorney General from 2014 to 2016, was named Deputy White House Counsel to President Biden in December 2020. While working as a partner at Gibson Dunn from 2016 to 2021, Delery provided legal services to fossil fuel company Energy Transfer Partners, a major backer of the Dakota Access Pipeline that has routinely filed SLAPP suits against the project’s opponents. Delery also represented utility giant Southern, the company behind the Kemper coal plant in Mississippi, which promised to be the first “clean coal” plant but was a yearslong legal and environmental debacle.

• Avi Garbow, Former Senior Counselor to the EPA Administrator: Garbow, who previously served as the EPA’s general counsel during the Obama years, returned to the agency on a temporary basis earlier this year after a stint as a Gibson Dunn partner from 2017 to 2019. According to his LinkedIn profile, Garbow served as Senior Counselor to the EPA Administrator from January to June of 2021 while on a six-month leave from his employer Patagonia. While at Gibson Dunn, Garbow served as part of Chevron’s legal defense team in several municipal lawsuits concerning the firm’s role in exacerbating climate change, including those brought by the cities of New York and San Francisco.

Biden’s hiring of these three Gibson Dunn alumni over the past nine months is part of a larger alarming trend of tapping fossil fuel industry allies to staff the executive branch. Other Big Oil-connected personnel in or nominees to the Biden administration include Treasury Department nominees Neil MacBride and Elizabeth Rosenberg (ExxonMobil); Deputy Interior Secretary Tommy Beaudreau (Dominion Energy, BHP); Deputy Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi (Callon Petroleum, Midstates Petroleum); Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco (ExxonMobil); State Department advisor Amos Hochstein; and Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice (who holds investment stakes in Enbridge, ExxonMobil, and Chevron). Likewise, Attorney General Merrick Garland has resisted calls from ethics watchdogs to close the revolving door between the DOJ and fossil fuel-aligned corporate law firms.

For a president who campaigned on urgently addressing the climate crisis and has pledged to put “science over fiction,” Biden’s stacking of the executive branch with Big Oil’s allies is a betrayal of the climate-concerned voters who helped him defeat Donald Trump. Also appalling is the Biden administration’s failure to review Chevron’s highly fraudulent case against Donziger, despite months of calls to do so by human rights groups and members of Congress. As the appeals process continues, the DOJ should (as Donziger himself has suggested) not waste another minute and heed the UN panel’s advice: investigate the Chevron-tainted prosecution, remove Chevron’s hand-picked judges from the case, and demand Donziger’s immediate release.

The Trump administration failed to hold Big Oil accountable, regularly letting corporate polluters evade accountability and welcoming a coterie of industry lobbyists and consultants into high-ranking executive branch positions. If Biden is serious about restoring public faith in government, he must stand up to Big Oil’s efforts to purchase the justice system and free Steven Donziger. 

[LibertyBell]

https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/for-the-us-judiciary-corporate-interests-outweigh-human-rights-51444

The arrest of environmental lawyer Steven Donziger is yet another example of an ongoing pattern of corporations using the US legal system to intimidate advocacy organisations and activists.

A gaping toxic wound of oil waste the size of the island of Manhattan stretches across the northern Ecuadorian Amazon, leaching cancer-causing toxins into the local waterways every day. It has been there my entire lifetime and has caused thousands of deaths while setting a horrific precedent of environmental destruction replicated elsewhere in the rainforest.

That deadly wound has created another type of damage thousands of miles away. The "infection" has spread northwards and exposed a level of US corruption and corporate criminality that shakes the foundation of the US judicial system.

From 1964-1992, Chevron (under its Texaco brand), the first oil company to drill in the Amazon, deliberately dumped over 16 billion gallons of toxic oil-drilling waters into 916 open-air unlined pits in the rainforest. Subsequent efforts by Chevron to use every means at its disposal to avoid paying for a clean-up have proven to be a dire threat to the environmental movement. 

In 2011, after Indigenous and farmer communities won an epic legal victory spanning 18 years, Chevron refused to pay the $9.5 billion Ecuadorian judgement. This, despite its arguing for eight years in US courts that Ecuador was the proper venue and committing to respect its court's decision.

Two weeks before the 2011 Ecuadorian decision, Chevron filed a civil RICO suit (an anti-racketeering law created to go after the mafia) specifically designed to prevent the evidence of its admitted crimes in the Amazon from being introduced in US court. 

The fact that the US judiciary, in the very same district that denied the Ecuadorians the right to seek justice, would then permit Chevron to preemptively file RICO charges preventing enforcement, reveals a fundamental lack of respect for justice in favour of corporate interests.

[Vice-Regent]

6 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

Musk needs to be tortured

 

https://twitter.com/search?q=Neuralink&src=trend_click&vertical=trends

Definitely don't want that in my body. People are catching on to the terrors of technology.

[Vice-Regent]

6 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

It's interesting that once you start hearing these sounds, they seem to get worse and worse-- like some kind of horror story.

 

It looks like severe tinnitus but that is the optimistic outlook for what is going on in regards to the hum phenomenon.

Many things can cause tinnitus that are also concerning or poorly understood and which are related to exposure to modern technology.

[LibertyBell]

4 hours ago, Vice-Regent said:

It looks like severe tinnitus but that is the optimistic outlook for what is going on in regards to the hum phenomenon.

Many things can cause tinnitus that are also concerning or poorly understood and which are related to exposure to modern technology.

so those factory sounds can cause it too

[LibertyBell]

11 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/for-the-us-judiciary-corporate-interests-outweigh-human-rights-51444

The arrest of environmental lawyer Steven Donziger is yet another example of an ongoing pattern of corporations using the US legal system to intimidate advocacy organisations and activists.

A gaping toxic wound of oil waste the size of the island of Manhattan stretches across the northern Ecuadorian Amazon, leaching cancer-causing toxins into the local waterways every day. It has been there my entire lifetime and has caused thousands of deaths while setting a horrific precedent of environmental destruction replicated elsewhere in the rainforest.

That deadly wound has created another type of damage thousands of miles away. The "infection" has spread northwards and exposed a level of US corruption and corporate criminality that shakes the foundation of the US judicial system.

From 1964-1992, Chevron (under its Texaco brand), the first oil company to drill in the Amazon, deliberately dumped over 16 billion gallons of toxic oil-drilling waters into 916 open-air unlined pits in the rainforest. Subsequent efforts by Chevron to use every means at its disposal to avoid paying for a clean-up have proven to be a dire threat to the environmental movement. 

In 2011, after Indigenous and farmer communities won an epic legal victory spanning 18 years, Chevron refused to pay the $9.5 billion Ecuadorian judgement. This, despite its arguing for eight years in US courts that Ecuador was the proper venue and committing to respect its court's decision.

Two weeks before the 2011 Ecuadorian decision, Chevron filed a civil RICO suit (an anti-racketeering law created to go after the mafia) specifically designed to prevent the evidence of its admitted crimes in the Amazon from being introduced in US court. 

The fact that the US judiciary, in the very same district that denied the Ecuadorians the right to seek justice, would then permit Chevron to preemptively file RICO charges preventing enforcement, reveals a fundamental lack of respect for justice in favour of corporate interests.

The national media doesn't cover this and they pretend it doesn't exist. The corruption of the fossil fuel cartels is about so much more than just climate change, they are criminal organizations as bad as the Colombian drug cartels ever were and will go to the same lengths to silence people and the government and its politicians and judges are their willing accomplices.

That judge needs to lose their license and prosecuted and imprisoned.

I see the UN also sanctioned it as a human rights violation, when are they going to grow a pair and start punishing the US with some type of sanctions?  Oh, that will never happen because the socalled superpowers basically run the organization?  They dont even have enough guts to punish Saudi Arabia for the bombing of hospitals and schools in Yemen (which is still going on)- with US and UK weapons, I might add.

[LibertyBell]

11 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/chevron-firm-which-hounded-donziger-has-allies-in-the-biden-administration/

 

The unprecedented revenge campaign waged by Chevron against human rights lawyer Steven Donziger reached a new low last Friday, when the environmental justice activist was sentenced to six months in federal prison on criminal contempt charges by U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska. How has Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) allowed this miscarriage of justice, amid rising calls from members of Congress, Nobel laureates, and human rights organizations to investigate the case? Perhaps part of the answer lies in the fact that Biden has hired several lawyers from Chevron’s law firm to fill key roles across the executive branch.

For those unfamiliar with the case, here’s the gist: Shortly after Ecuadorian courts ordered Chevron to pay Donziger’s clients (over 30,000 Ecuadorian farmers and indigenous people) $9.5 billion in damages for dumping toxic oil waste in the Amazon in 2011, the fossil fuel giant filed a baseless countersuit against him in the U.S. and vowed to fight the settlement tooth-and-nail. In 2014, SDNY Judge Lewis Kaplan — a former corporate lawyer with ties to Chevron — invalidated the Ecuadorian judgment and charged Donziger with criminal contempt for refusing to hand his electronic devices over to Chevron (an order that would have violated Donziger’s attorney-client privilege). After the SDNY U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute Donziger, Kaplan took the unprecedented step of appointing private law firm Seward & Kissel (which represented Chevron as recently as 2018) to lead the prosecution and selected Judge Preska, a member of the Federalist Society (which receives Chevron donations), to oversee the case. Preska’s confinement of Donziger to nearly two years of house arrest during the trial — more than four times the maximum sentence that was handed down on Friday — was found by a UN panel of human rights experts to be a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Legal experts have also deemed the Chevron-aligned private prosecution of Donziger a version of a SLAPP suit, intended to silence and intimidate those who stand up to corporate wrongdoing by burying them with legal defense costs. 

Of particular note is the role that Chevron’s current law firm, Gibson Dunn, has played in leading the company’s decade-long legal offensive against Donziger: according to The Intercept, Gibson Dunn has “hired private investigators to track him, created a publication to smear him, and led a team of hundreds of lawyers to fight him”. In a report this May, my colleagues Andrea Beaty, Ella Fanger, and Zena Wolf noted that Gibson Dunn not only has a history of representing oil giants like Chevron, but also helped staff the Trump administration with pro-corporate alumni like Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and EPA General Counsel David Fatouhi. It was likewise an influential feeder firm for DOJ hires during the Obama administration, and its prolific political influence may also explain why several high-profile New York Democrats have remained silent on Donziger’s case: the firm employs Representative Jerry Nadler’s son as an associate and has donated over $190,000 to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and her PAC. 

Gibson Dunn’s revolving door has also extended into the Biden administration, concurrent with the firm’s ongoing representation of Chevron. As noted in our Revolving Door Report on Gibson Dunn, at least three Gibson Dunn alumni who previously represented fossil fuel companies — including two who represented Chevron — joined the Biden administration in 2021: 

• Jose Fernandez, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment: Fernandez, a Biden campaign donor who previously served as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs during the Obama administration, was confirmed by the Senate on August 6th, 2021. In between his stints in the Obama and Biden administrations, Fernandez was a partner at Gibson Dunn’s New York City office, where financial disclosure forms reveal he represented oil giants Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, SK E&P, and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. In his new perch in the Biden administration, Fernandez will be tasked with “leading the State Department’s environmental and economic growth policies abroad.” 

• Stuart Delery, Deputy White House Counsel: Delery, who previously served as acting Associate Attorney General from 2014 to 2016, was named Deputy White House Counsel to President Biden in December 2020. While working as a partner at Gibson Dunn from 2016 to 2021, Delery provided legal services to fossil fuel company Energy Transfer Partners, a major backer of the Dakota Access Pipeline that has routinely filed SLAPP suits against the project’s opponents. Delery also represented utility giant Southern, the company behind the Kemper coal plant in Mississippi, which promised to be the first “clean coal” plant but was a yearslong legal and environmental debacle.

• Avi Garbow, Former Senior Counselor to the EPA Administrator: Garbow, who previously served as the EPA’s general counsel during the Obama years, returned to the agency on a temporary basis earlier this year after a stint as a Gibson Dunn partner from 2017 to 2019. According to his LinkedIn profile, Garbow served as Senior Counselor to the EPA Administrator from January to June of 2021 while on a six-month leave from his employer Patagonia. While at Gibson Dunn, Garbow served as part of Chevron’s legal defense team in several municipal lawsuits concerning the firm’s role in exacerbating climate change, including those brought by the cities of New York and San Francisco.

Biden’s hiring of these three Gibson Dunn alumni over the past nine months is part of a larger alarming trend of tapping fossil fuel industry allies to staff the executive branch. Other Big Oil-connected personnel in or nominees to the Biden administration include Treasury Department nominees Neil MacBride and Elizabeth Rosenberg (ExxonMobil); Deputy Interior Secretary Tommy Beaudreau (Dominion Energy, BHP); Deputy Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi (Callon Petroleum, Midstates Petroleum); Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco (ExxonMobil); State Department advisor Amos Hochstein; and Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice (who holds investment stakes in Enbridge, ExxonMobil, and Chevron). Likewise, Attorney General Merrick Garland has resisted calls from ethics watchdogs to close the revolving door between the DOJ and fossil fuel-aligned corporate law firms.

For a president who campaigned on urgently addressing the climate crisis and has pledged to put “science over fiction,” Biden’s stacking of the executive branch with Big Oil’s allies is a betrayal of the climate-concerned voters who helped him defeat Donald Trump. Also appalling is the Biden administration’s failure to review Chevron’s highly fraudulent case against Donziger, despite months of calls to do so by human rights groups and members of Congress. As the appeals process continues, the DOJ should (as Donziger himself has suggested) not waste another minute and heed the UN panel’s advice: investigate the Chevron-tainted prosecution, remove Chevron’s hand-picked judges from the case, and demand Donziger’s immediate release.

The Trump administration failed to hold Big Oil accountable, regularly letting corporate polluters evade accountability and welcoming a coterie of industry lobbyists and consultants into high-ranking executive branch positions. If Biden is serious about restoring public faith in government, he must stand up to Big Oil’s efforts to purchase the justice system and free Steven Donziger. 

So much needs to be changed, this is way more than just about climate change, it goes to the very dysfunctional way this country (and world) is run.

 

[Vice-Regent]

On 2/12/2022 at 5:35 PM, LibertyBell said:

So much needs to be changed, this is way more than just about climate change, it goes to the very dysfunctional way this country (and world) is run.

 

Agreed brother LB.

It is just not manifesting in the way prior and current generations had hoped for. The rise of authoritarianism can lead to "negative" feedbacks in society.

[LibertyBell]

New IPCC report is out

https://twitter.com/i/events/1498348282447282181

 

and it's looking like things are a lot worse than we thought and happening faster than expected.

 

[LibertyBell]

and this is why the general public is so hard to convince...one, they didn't even do the conversion from C to F, and secondly they think the changes will be insignificant.

 

[Silver Meteor]

"...restoring faith in government." LOL Did someone just fall off the turnip truck? When money was real (gold and silver) perhaps, but those days are long gone. The government and its propaganda arm, the media, are enemies of the people.

With a "Fourth Turning" now well underway, climate concerns will fade away as the pendulum swings from globalization to decentralization. Food and energy concerns will be tantamount, and this across all continents. The storm clouds have arrived, delivered by our government and those who pull its strings. The rest of us are mere peons.

[skierinvermont]

17 hours ago, Silver Meteor said:

"...restoring faith in government." LOL Did someone just fall off the turnip truck? When money was real (gold and silver) perhaps, but those days are long gone. The government and its propaganda arm, the media, are enemies of the people.

With a "Fourth Turning" now well underway, climate concerns will fade away as the pendulum swings from globalization to decentralization. Food and energy concerns will be tantamount, and this across all continents. The storm clouds have arrived, delivered by our government and those who pull its strings. The rest of us are mere peons.

Good to know thanks keep us updated

[rclab]

On 3/1/2022 at 2:37 PM, LibertyBell said:

and this is why the general public is so hard to convince...one, they didn't even do the conversion from C to F, and secondly they think the changes will be insignificant.

 

Good morning Liberty. The extremes now occurring may invite the attention. Getting a sunburn on Wed and chipping ice off the walk on Fri? Watching the dirt dust caress your dying grass/shrubs one month seeing the plants carcass disappear in the ponding mud the next, perhaps. Enjoying the misty to showery rains in the warm season with a roll of thunder morph into wind driven beasts with the fearsome sound of a freight train approaching, where no tracks exist. The “show me” formula” may work or our companion species are showing us the way. A way which for them and us is becoming the only viable option. They are moving towards extinction. As always …

[LibertyBell]

17 hours ago, rclab said:

Good morning Liberty. The extremes now occurring may invite the attention. Getting a sunburn on Wed and chipping ice off the walk on Fri? Watching the dirt dust caress your dying grass/shrubs one month seeing the plants carcass disappear in the ponding mud the next, perhaps. Enjoying the misty to showery rains in the warm season with a roll of thunder morph into wind driven beasts with the fearsome sound of a freight train approaching, where no tracks exist. The “show me” formula” may work or our companion species are showing us the way. A way which for them and us is becoming the only viable option. They are moving towards extinction. As always …

Scientists say it's too late to stop the climate catastrophe we need to learn to adapt to it and relocate people as necessary.

And learn to live with the consequences of our actions.

https://twitter.com/i/events/1501687248122753024

[rclab]

6 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

Scientists say it's too late to stop the climate catastrophe we need to learn to adapt to it and relocate people as necessary.

And learn to live with the consequences of our actions.

https://twitter.com/i/events/1501687248122753024

As you sow so shall you reap …… the drought ravaged ground will be too hard to dig a proper grave. As always ….

 

[Fantom X]

It's bad enough to get the government to start to take action while things are stable. Throw instability and war on the table, all of these climate change actions are thrown off the table. Choice between now or later...

[LibertyBell]

6 hours ago, Fantom X said:

It's bad enough to get the government to start to take action while things are stable. Throw instability and war on the table, all of these climate change actions are thrown off the table. Choice between now or later...

How can we fix climate change when we can't even get one rogue governor to stop doing this?

 

https://twitter.com/saltyve/status/1501979491266138125

[LibertyBell]

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/03/russia-economic-sanctions-wheat-oil/627004/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

 

1) The Green-Energy Revolution Goes Into Warp Speed Tech revolutions in the 21st century tend to be very fast. It took about a decade for the share of Americans with a smartphone to go from zero to 80 percent. But energy revolutions are lazier affairs, and the green-energy transition in particular has been torpid in the U.S. and Europe, which is perhaps surprising given the declining price of solar energy. The West has simply refused to build green-energy projects fast enough to decarbonize the grid.

Russia’s war could accelerate the green revolution in two big ways. First, it will increase political pressure on the U.S. and European governments to reduce reliance on Russian oil and gas. (The U.S. has already said it will stop importing Russian energy, and Europe is considering a similar ban.) In the short term, countries will lean harder on spare oil and gas sources to keep prices down. But over time, the boycott of Russian energy could raise the price of thermal energy enough that it compels countries to deploy significantly more wind and solar projects. For years, anti-growth fears, antinuclear sentiment, and vague NIMBYism have stood in the way of green-energy construction. The urgency of an external threat could melt away some of those anxieties. “We can not talk about renewables revolution if getting a permit to build a wind park takes seven years,” said Kadri Simson, the European commissioner for energy. “It is time to treat these projects as being in the overriding public interest, because they are.”

Second, rising energy prices will change consumer preferences, nudging more consumers away from gas-powered cars. Today less than 5 percent of the U.S. car market is fully electric. But the industry is pushing electric vehicles hard; nearly every automotive ad in the Super Bowl was for an EV. This marketing shift could combine with a painful spike in gas prices in a way that gets more Americans to buy EVs, which will encourage more automotive companies to invest in EV production, which could bring down the cost of EVs, which will increase demand. This possible shift from energy pain to energy progress has a historical precedent. In 1973, OPEC cut off the U.S. and other countries from access to its oil, raising gas prices. Although most Americans associate that period with economic stagnation, the crisis also led American car manufacturers to become more energy efficient. Actual fuel economy as measured in miles per gallon took off in 1973. Fifty years later, we could see the same dynamic play out: the shock of energy pain leading to decades of progress.

[etudiant]

5 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/03/russia-economic-sanctions-wheat-oil/627004/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

 

1) The Green-Energy Revolution Goes Into Warp Speed Tech revolutions in the 21st century tend to be very fast. It took about a decade for the share of Americans with a smartphone to go from zero to 80 percent. But energy revolutions are lazier affairs, and the green-energy transition in particular has been torpid in the U.S. and Europe, which is perhaps surprising given the declining price of solar energy. The West has simply refused to build green-energy projects fast enough to decarbonize the grid.

Russia’s war could accelerate the green revolution in two big ways. First, it will increase political pressure on the U.S. and European governments to reduce reliance on Russian oil and gas. (The U.S. has already said it will stop importing Russian energy, and Europe is considering a similar ban.) In the short term, countries will lean harder on spare oil and gas sources to keep prices down. But over time, the boycott of Russian energy could raise the price of thermal energy enough that it compels countries to deploy significantly more wind and solar projects. For years, anti-growth fears, antinuclear sentiment, and vague NIMBYism have stood in the way of green-energy construction. The urgency of an external threat could melt away some of those anxieties. “We can not talk about renewables revolution if getting a permit to build a wind park takes seven years,” said Kadri Simson, the European commissioner for energy. “It is time to treat these projects as being in the overriding public interest, because they are.”

Second, rising energy prices will change consumer preferences, nudging more consumers away from gas-powered cars. Today less than 5 percent of the U.S. car market is fully electric. But the industry is pushing electric vehicles hard; nearly every automotive ad in the Super Bowl was for an EV. This marketing shift could combine with a painful spike in gas prices in a way that gets more Americans to buy EVs, which will encourage more automotive companies to invest in EV production, which could bring down the cost of EVs, which will increase demand. This possible shift from energy pain to energy progress has a historical precedent. In 1973, OPEC cut off the U.S. and other countries from access to its oil, raising gas prices. Although most Americans associate that period with economic stagnation, the crisis also led American car manufacturers to become more energy efficient. Actual fuel economy as measured in miles per gallon took off in 1973. Fifty years later, we could see the same dynamic play out: the shock of energy pain leading to decades of progress.

I hope your happy vision comes about, but don't see how it can without much pain.

Wind and solar are intermittent, they need backup, which implies massive capacity(expensive) on standby, in addition to the green energy conversion costs.

Simultaneously, cutting Russian oil really squeezes global fuel production, implying shortages, which generate higher prices.

So the consumer gets hit with higher priced gas and more costly electricity during the transition, which can't be quick.

If nuclear were not such a swamp of massive delays and cost overruns, this could be its moment to shine, but the still available workforce that is qualified for these projects is small and mostly old, so not a plausible option.

[chubbs]

9 hours ago, etudiant said:

I hope your happy vision comes about, but don't see how it can without much pain.

Wind and solar are intermittent, they need backup, which implies massive capacity(expensive) on standby, in addition to the green energy conversion costs.

Simultaneously, cutting Russian oil really squeezes global fuel production, implying shortages, which generate higher prices.

So the consumer gets hit with higher priced gas and more costly electricity during the transition, which can't be quick.

If nuclear were not such a swamp of massive delays and cost overruns, this could be its moment to shine, but the still available workforce that is qualified for these projects is small and mostly old, so not a plausible option.

There is going to be pain. That's the nature of fossil fuels, particularly oil. A commodity based on a resource that depletes. New field/wells are constantly needed to maintain current production. Now we are chasing oil sands, deep offshore, fracking etc. These are all expensive and need ongoing large investment just to maintain current production. Fracking is particularly problematic from a boom/bust standpoint,  because individual wells deplete rapidly.  Our current pain started in the pandemic when oil prices crashed, causing investment to slow. US oil production dropped giving OPEC more pricing power. At that point an oil shortage and price increase was inevitable. Putin is taking advantage of the commodity cycle just like Middle East oil barons did 50 years ago. Nothing new.

Too late to impact this crisis, but we could minimize the next. The resource base for renewables is larger than fossil fuels and more evenly distributed. Solar and wind are mass produced in automated factories. They can ramp quickly, doubling every 2-4 years recently.  Renewables and EV have finally reached the scale where one or two more doublings will have a big impact in reducing fossil fuel demand. Yes, a transition will take time, money and innovation. Target the bad actors from a geopolitical, economic and climate standpoint first.

A transition is going to happen anyway, as renewable, EV +storage economics are outpacing fossil/combustion.  Just a matter of whether its fast enough and targeted properly to minimize future geopolitical, economic, and/or climate pain.

[Buckeyes_Suck]

I’m sure someone has brought this up in this thread before but I wrote about this as the solution in college and still believe it’s where we should put most of our eggs. My argument in college was that climate change isn’t the issue but where we chose to live is.  The main reason I still support that stance is that while it’s 99% likely that we’re the cause of climate change what if we’re not? Then all the money we’re spending to prevent would have been wasted. 
 

They’re are other arguments to made about some of the horrible places we’ve decided to over populate as well, ie killing the Colorado river  

Thoughts?
 

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220310-the-illinois-town-valmeyer-could-be-a-model-for-relocation

[Typhoon Tip]

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/big-oil-and-gas-kept-a-dirty-secret-for-decades-now-they-may-pay-the-price?utm_source=pocket-newtab