Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[LibertyBell]

1 hour ago, WxUSAF said:

Great thread from Zeke about the positive trends toward clean energy likely averting the worst outcomes with still hope to keep total warming under 2C.

 

Yes-- 1.5C is a pipe dream but capping it at 2C would be really good.  I thought the center point of the research indicated that we're headed to 2.2C though.... what changed?  And how much of a difference would there be between 2C and 2.2C in terms of real world impacts?

 

[LibertyBell]

46 minutes ago, bluewave said:

The current policies will make it a challenge to keep warming below  +2°C to +2.5°C. The long wait for approval of renewable projects is greatly slowing the energy transition in the US. China is continuing to expand their coal production. But it’s possible that the damages caused by global warming over the next 50 years will become intolerable to the international community. So the chances of extreme warming scenarios above +3°C could be diminished. 
 

 

 

 

Not to mention that the animal farming industry needs to be sharply curtailed too.

 

[LibertyBell]

Great union of forces, the lawyer who beat Chevron and the union organizer who beat Amazon!

[WestMichigan]

Interesting visualization of Global Temperatures since the late 1800's.  Surprised some of the hot years like the 1930's were not higher.  Guess they were offset by other regions of the world.

[chubbs]

Good thread on what is needed for 1.5C. Top 15 solutions below. Nothing earthshaking. Mainly renewables, diet, and better stewardship of natural world.

Dr. Jonathan Foley on Twitter: "At Project Drawdown, we evaluated many different climate solutions -- for their potential size and cost. Here are the top solutions to get to 1.5˚C https://t.co/4DFKeoq68E" / Twitter

 

[bluewave]

7 hours ago, WestMichigan said:

Interesting visualization of Global Temperatures since the late 1800's.  Surprised some of the hot years like the 1930's were not higher.  Guess they were offset by other regions of the world.

Yeah, the dust bowl was a local event greatly magnified by human degradation of the land cover in the Plains. The rest of the world was much cooler during that era. The farming practices today are the opposite creating a localized zone with less summer warming relative to the rest of the US and world.
 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16676-w

The severe drought of the 1930s Dust Bowl decade coincided with record-breaking summer heatwaves that contributed to the socio-economic and ecological disaster over North America’s Great Plains. It remains unresolved to what extent these exceptional heatwaves, hotter than in historically forced coupled climate model simulations, were forced by sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and exacerbated through human-induced deterioration of land cover. Here we show, using an atmospheric-only model, that anomalously warm North Atlantic SSTs enhance heatwave activity through an association with drier spring conditions resulting from weaker moisture transport. Model devegetation simulations, that represent the wide-spread exposure of bare soil in the 1930s, suggest human activity fueled stronger and more frequent heatwaves through greater evaporative drying in the warmer months. This study highlights the potential for the amplification of naturally occurring extreme events like droughts by vegetation feedbacks to create more extreme heatwaves in a warmer world.

 

 

 

https://www.science.org/content/article/america-s-corn-belt-making-its-own-weather

 

The United States’s Corn Belt is making its own weather

By Kimberly HickokFeb. 16, 2018 , 12:05 PM

The Great Plains of the central United States—the Corn Belt—is one of the most fertile regions on Earth, producing more than 10 billion bushels of corn each year. It’s also home to some mysterious weather: Whereas the rest of the world has warmed, the region’s summer temperatures have dropped as much as a full degree Celsius, and rainfall has increased up to 35%, the largest spike anywhere in the world. The culprit, according to a new study, isn’t greenhouse gas emissions or sea surface temperature—it’s the corn itself.

[A-L-E-K]

we pop 80 degree dews on the reg now

[bluewave]

1 hour ago, A-L-E-K said:

we pop 80 degree dews on the reg now

Yeah, the record dewpoints and heat indices are much higher now than during the dry heat of the dust bowl. 

https://www.weather.gov/fgf/Top_Ten_of_the_2010s

Throughout the afternoon of July 19th, 2011, temperatures across much of the Northern Plains region climbed above the 90F mark.  With soils saturated from several days of widespread rain, and with area crops in full growth habit, the evapotranspiration rates were at their peaks.  Dewpoint temperatures surged above the 80F mark from southern Minnesota, throughout the Red River Basin of the Dakotas and western Minnesota, into and across southern Manitoba.  The 88F dewpoint reading in Moorhead MN set a new all-time statewide record for Minnesota, and the resultant Heat Index of 134F marked Moorhead as one of the hottest places on earth on that particular day!

[LibertyBell]

On 4/19/2022 at 2:59 PM, bluewave said:

Yeah, the record dewpoints and heat indices are much higher now than during the dry heat of the dust bowl. 

https://www.weather.gov/fgf/Top_Ten_of_the_2010s

Throughout the afternoon of July 19th, 2011, temperatures across much of the Northern Plains region climbed above the 90F mark.  With soils saturated from several days of widespread rain, and with area crops in full growth habit, the evapotranspiration rates were at their peaks.  Dewpoint temperatures surged above the 80F mark from southern Minnesota, throughout the Red River Basin of the Dakotas and western Minnesota, into and across southern Manitoba.  The 88F dewpoint reading in Moorhead MN set a new all-time statewide record for Minnesota, and the resultant Heat Index of 134F marked Moorhead as one of the hottest places on earth on that particular day!

aren't cornbelt farming practices now leading to higher humidity and more severe weather though?

dry heat is a lot better than humidity.

 

[csnavywx]

22 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

aren't cornbelt farming practices now leading to higher humidity and more severe weather though?

dry heat is a lot better than humidity.

 

We're building ourselves a bit of a trap with agricultural climate effects. Summertime temps are kept down by the increase in humidity, offsetting warming. However, this cannot continue indefinitely. Plateauing crop density and water evaporation will lead to eventual temp rises that will begin to put pressure on the crop, eventually causing this effect to fail and warming to snap back pretty quickly in a few decades.

[A-L-E-K]

dislike^

[LibertyBell]

8 hours ago, csnavywx said:

We're building ourselves a bit of a trap with agricultural climate effects. Summertime temps are kept down by the increase in humidity, offsetting warming. However, this cannot continue indefinitely. Plateauing crop density and water evaporation will lead to eventual temp rises that will begin to put pressure on the crop, eventually causing this effect to fail and warming to snap back pretty quickly in a few decades.

That's what I've been thinking too, and eventually these higher temps will lead to massive crop failures as that region will no longer be fertile for growing crops.  I see similar effects in the northeast, where we will eventually hit 100 degrees regularly every year even with more rainfall and an onshore flow.

[LibertyBell]

9 minutes ago, A-L-E-K said:

dislike^

corn subsidies need to go bye bye

 

[bluewave]

The concern is that the Western drought  expands  east to the Plains in the future resulting in lower crop yields and desertification.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201013124158.htm

The first Dust Bowl

In the 1930s, a drought blanketed the Great Plains, from Mexico to Canada. This wouldn't have been such a big deal except that in the 1920s Midwestern farmers had converted vast tracts of grassland into farmland using mechanical plows. When the crops failed in the drought the open areas of land that used to be covered by grass, which held soil tightly in place, were now bare dirt, vulnerable to wind erosion.

"The result was massive dust storms that we associate with the Dust Bowl," Lambert says. "These dust storms removed nutrients from the soil, making it more difficult for crops to grow and more likely for wind erosion to occur." After years of drought, dust and hardship, rain finally began to fall again, bringing the Dust Bowl to a close.

"But the damage was already done to the soil," Lambert says. "Some areas have still not fully recovered."

Around the 2000s, the growth in demand for biofuels spurred renewed expansion of farmland to produce the needed crops. In an echo of the 1920s, this expansion replaced stable grasslands with vulnerable soil. Over five years, from 2006 to 2011, 2046 square miles (530,000 hectares) of grassland in five Midwestern states became farmland -- an area a little smaller than Delaware.

At the same time, parts of the Great Plains experienced longer and more severe droughts in the 20th century. The future of drought in that region is, so far, uncertain, but the potential for a warmer, drier Great Plains has Lambert and co-author Gannet Hallar, associate professor of atmospheric sciences, bringing up the word "desertification" in relation to the potential future of the region.

All together, the data cover years from 1988 to 2018. Dust, they found, is increasing in the atmosphere over the whole of the Great Plains by as much as 5% per year.

"The amount of increase is really the story here," Hallar says. "That 5% a year over two decades, of course, is a hundred percent increase in dust loading. This is not a small signal to find."

Correlating with crop timing

The researchers further found correlations between dust in the atmosphere and crop timings. In Iowa, where soybeans have been a major expanding crop, increases in dust appeared in June and October -- planting and harvesting months, respectively, for soybeans. In the southern Great Plains states, where corn is a more dominant crop, dust increases appeared in March and October -- again correlating to corn planting and harvesting seasons.

That was remarkable," Hallar says, "in the sense of how clear the signal was."

Are we seeing the beginnings of the second Dust Bowl?

"I think it's fair to say that what's happening with dust trends in the Midwest and the Great Plains is an indicator that the threat is real if crop land expansion continues to occur at this rate and drought risk does increase because of climate change," Lambert says. "Those would be the ingredients for another Dust Bowl."

"This is an example of the need for the agricultural community in the U.S. to think about adapting and mitigating to a changing climate," Hallar says. "So if we become more arid we will need to think about the impacts of land degradation in that changed climate. What we did in the past isn't necessarily what we can do in the future."

 

[Silver Meteor]

On 4/15/2022 at 8:59 AM, LibertyBell said:

Not to mention that the animal farming industry needs to be sharply curtailed too.

 

Seems most everything you espouse comes straight from the World Economic Forum. I hope you're not so naive as to believe any of those globalists give a rat's ass about you or the billions of other "peasants" across this planet (or even the planet itself.) They want money and power, everything else is a side show. 

Putting the planet under the control of a bunch of central planners "who know what's best for us" is not the solution unless your target is a dystopian future where humans become effectively slaves or robots. ("You will own nothing and you will be happy.")

Free market capitalism is the best mechanism for advancement humanity has ever devised. Unfortunately it's been under attack since the 1960s with misguided policies and ever increasing government control over every aspect of life (regulations reaching the point of fascism - crushing the individual and small business.)

Note too, the "thought police" are already here. Been here for a long time actually (it started carefully with the invention of the "hate crime.")

 

[SnoSki14]

Free market capitalism is just replacing government with corporations except corporations have a profit motive. 

[LibertyBell]

18 hours ago, SnoSki14 said:

Free market capitalism is just replacing government with corporations except corporations have a profit motive. 

Corporations suppress free thought too.  Including the New York Times

https://fair.org/home/action-alert-nyt-ignores-two-year-house-arrest-of-lawyer-who-took-on-big-oil/

The Times has not covered Chevron’s bizarre conflict with Donziger since 2014. Why has the paper kept silent for seven years?

Donziger pointed out on Twitter (3/17/21) that billionaire “Robert Denham sits on the boards of both Chevron and the NYT.” Later, noting that his apartment is just a 30-minute walk from the Times‘ offices, Donziger (Twitter, 6/24/21) added that the paper’s “main outside lawyer on press issues, Ted Boutrous Jr., also works for Chevron.”

Boutrous of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher was one of the lead lawyers representing Chevron in the Chevron v. Donziger proceedings. Regardless of whether the paper’s lawyer has had any influence over its Chevron reporting, the fact that the paper has retained the corporate lawyer to handle its freedom of the press issues reflects its priorities as a news organization.

Scores of environmentalists, activists and lawyers have called for an end to this ongoing persecution.

Investigative reporter Sharon Lerner (Intercept, 1/29/21) described the legal assault on Donziger as “one of the most bitter and drawn-out cases in the history of environmental law,” adding that Chevron hired

private investigators to track Donziger, created a publication to smear him, and put together a legal team of hundreds of lawyers from 60 firms, who have successfully pursued an extraordinary campaign against him.

To choose a judge to preside over Donziger’s prosecution, Lerner reported, Kaplan “bypassed the standard random assignment process and handpicked someone he knew well, US District Judge Loretta Preska, to oversee the case being prosecuted by the firm he chose” (Intercept, 1/29/20). The Frente de Defensa de la Amazonia (FDA)—a grassroots organization in Ecuador’s northern Amazon region that has sought to hold Chevron accountable—pointed out in a blog post (12/31/20) that Preska is affiliated with the Federalist Society—“a pro-corporate society of lawyers and judges to which Chevron is a major donor.” The FDA (4/7/21) later complained that Preska “denied all Zoom access” to Donziger’s trial, which would proceed with “a biased judge, no jury and a private Chevron prosecutor.”

Martin Garbus, Donziger’s defense attorney, filed a motion on June 22 alleging that   appointment of a private prosecutor in Chevron v. Donziger was unconstitutional (citing the recent US Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Arthrex). In the filing, Garbus described the “prosecutorial crusade” as “deeply troubling” (Twitter, 6/23/21).

https://fair.org/home/why-does-a-climatologist-need-to-explain-economics-to-joe-nocera/

When Joe Nocera was given his own New York Times op-ed page column, we noted (FAIR Blog, 3/2/11) that his Times business column had been responsible for some embarrassing corrections. For example, he had written a piece (6/26/10) about how offshore oil drilling had an “astonishing” safety record, having lost only 1,800 barrels of oil to accidents between 1964 and 2009. The actual number, a subsequent correction (7/1/10) admitted: 532,000 barrels.

We expressed hope at the time that Nocera was the kind of writer who learned from his mistakes, but—not so much.

Nocera is a big fan of the Keystone pipeline, despite the fact that climate scientists say the exploitation of the Alberta tar sands it’s intended to facilitate will have a devastating impact on efforts to curb global warming. Not to worry, says Nocera (2/18/13)—assuring us that “the climate change effects of tar sands oil are, all in all, pretty small“—that link going to a Congressional Research Service report that compares the greenhouse impact of burning tar sands vs. burning the same amount of other sorts of petroleum, not the impact of burning the 2 trillion barrels of tar sands oil (roughly 170 billion of which are currently extractable) vs. leaving it in the ground.

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/steven-donziger-chevron-sentencing/

You can’t understand this latest injustice without looking back at Chevron’s long campaign against Donziger, who won a landmark pollution case against the oil giant in Ecuadorian courts in 2013. Chevron was ordered to spend $9.5 billion to clean up a contaminated area the size of Rhode Island, and to pay for the health care of the 30,000 plaintiffs whose communities have seen a rising number of cancer cases. Instead of following the legal order, Chevron launched a case in New York, and in 2014, a federal judge, Lewis Kaplan, found Donziger and some of his Ecuadorian allies civilly liable for racketeering, bribery, and fraud. Then, Kaplan asked the federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York to put Donziger on trial for “criminal contempt” connected to the original conviction. The federal prosecutor refused, so Kaplan handpicked an attorney from a private firm, Rita Glavin, to prosecute—a nearly unprecedented legal maneuver.

 

As Chevron’s vendetta continued, international outrage grew. Just before sentencing, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued an opinion in Donziger’s favor, ruling that his two years of house arrest was illegal under international law and that he had been denied the right to a fair trial. A panel of five prominent jurists called that confinement “arbitrary” and said that both judges, Kaplan and Preska, had shown “a staggering lack of objectivity and impartiality.” In court, Preska briefly acknowledged the UN findings only to dismiss them.

Once again, the mainstream media is largely ignoring Chevron’s campaign of retaliation against Donziger. The New York Times, Donziger’s hometown newspaper, reported nothing in the two days after the verdict, and has barely mentioned the case for the past seven years.

Only a corporation like Chevron worth billions could have financed such a prosecution. The oil giant paid for a disgraced former judge named Alberto Guerra and his family to move to the United States. Chevron’s lawyers rehearsed Guerra’s testimony with him 53 times before he went on the witness stand, where Guerra claimed that Donziger and an Ecuadorian lawyer had offered him a $500,000 bribe and that the pair had ghostwritten the final judgment against Chevron. Donziger and his defense team estimate that Chevron has spent $2 billion on legal fees and other costs. (Chevron’s designated spokesman, James Craig, declined to give the corporation’s own figure for how much it has spent on the case. Craig also declined to say if Chevron is still paying Guerra or if he is still living in the United States.)

Chevron’s attacks against Donziger did not stop after it won the racketeering verdict. The current contempt case began when the oil corporation petitioned Kaplan for access to Donziger’s personal computer and cell phone. Donziger declined, arguing that his electronic communications would give Chevron’s lawyers “backdoor access to everything we are planning, thinking, and doing.” He said he would wait until the US Court of Appeals heard his argument, and if it required him to, then he would hand over his electronics. Preska dismissed his defense and convicted him in May—again, without a jury.

It’s vital to recognize Chevron’s role in this legal persecution. Its attorneys show up at every Donziger legal case—even the ones that don’t directly involve the company. At the same time as Donziger was defending himself against the criminal contempt charge, he was also fighting the effort to take away his license to practice law in New York. The state bar association appointed a special officer named John Horan to preside over open hearings, and he found in Donziger’s favor. Horan, a former prosecutor, had harsh words for Chevron: “The extent of [Donziger’s] pursuit by Chevron is so extravagant, and at this point so unnecessary and punitive, [that] while not a factor in my recommendation, [it] is nonetheless background to it.

Putting Donziger in a federal prison for six months is more than vindictiveness. The $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron in Ecuador still stands, but the oil giant unloaded its assets there. That means the plaintiffs must collect in other countries where the corporation has holdings. Kaplan’s racketeering verdict specifically prohibited the Ecuadorians from forcing Chevron to pay the judgment in the United States. But there are promising possibilities in Canada and elsewhere. Donziger is forced to put those fights on hold while he tries to stay out of prison.

But there are signs that Chevron has gone too far, and that relentlessly pursuing a human rights lawyer is damaging its international reputation. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is only the latest sign of concern and anger. Sixty-eight Nobel Laureates have shown their solidarity; another 475 lawyers and human rights defenders have signed a letter that calls his prosecution “one of the most important corporate accountability and human rights cases of our time.” Representative Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said after the prison sentence that “it’s the executives at Chevron,” not Donziger, “who should be behind bars.”

What’s more, a movement to boycott Chevron is in the early stages. Big Oil is under scrutiny because of its role in the climate crisis, and divestment campaigns on college campuses and elsewhere are starting to have an impact. Large institutional investors may also start to pay attention. CalPERS, the giant retirement investment fund for California government employees, is headquartered in Chevron’s home state, and the teachers and municipal employees who contribute to it may ask why it holds $456 million of the oil giant’s stock.

Chevron must have hoped that its long retaliation campaign would force Donziger to abandon the fight for environmental justice—but it appears its aggressive strategy is backfiring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_Dunn#Controversy

• Gibson Dunn has hired private investigators to track Steven Donziger and created "a team of hundreds of lawyers to fight him".^[13] This resulted in a boycott launched in April 2021 by the student group Law Students for Climate Accountability.^[13][14]
• The firm represented George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore, the litigation contesting certification of Florida's results in the 2000 United States presidential election.^[15] Theodore Olsen, the partner who argued the case for Bush in the Supreme Court,^[16] went on to serve as solicitor general in the Bush administration.^[17]

[LibertyBell]

I found one of these paid shill Twitter accounts that uses an automated program to go after anyone who talks badly about Chevron or is pro Donziger.  Reported them about two dozen times on both Twitter and Youtube.  The "guy" is pro Russian too.

His handle on there is "sublimewow" ...I wont post his handle here because that somehow posts all his tweets and likes.  His timeline speaks for itself.

[LibertyBell]

I love this lowering of water vapor the last couple of springs, my allergies are gone and I can breathe normally again

We need water vapor reduction as well as carbon dioxide reduction both are greenhouse gases and both are pollutants.

 

I hope we can develop devices to get rid of both excess water vapor and excess carbon dioxide, the air feels so much cleaner without these pollutants.

 

[Wannabehippie]

On 3/18/2022 at 5:27 AM, LibertyBell said:

Lake Powell looks like it's not going to be functional as a reservoir for much longer.  Lake Mead looks like its water levels are going down too.

Overpopulation is a big problem but the population is starting to stabilize and the latest predictions state that it won't get over 10 billion, which is around the earth's carrying capacity.

Lake Mead water levels dropping have revealed a body in a barrel.  Police say it has been there since the 1980s. I wonder how many more bodies are yet to be revealed as the lake dries up from the extreme drought.

 

[LibertyBell]

33 minutes ago, Wannabehippie said:

Lake Mead water levels dropping have revealed a body in a barrel.  Police say it has been there since the 1980s. I wonder how many more bodies are yet to be revealed as the lake dries up from the extreme drought.

 

wow, murder.....

[Typhoon Tip]

16 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

wow, murder.....

Jimmy Hoffa

[rclab]

On 5/3/2022 at 12:46 PM, Typhoon Tip said:

Jimmy Hoffa

Judge Crater. As always ….

[Typhoon Tip]

Not to celebrate it but it is fantastic as an image ...  lots like this too around California and the surrounding west..

[LibertyBell]

6 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Not to celebrate it but it is fantastic as an image ...  lots like this too around California and the surrounding west..

There are dead fish in the dry area that was once Lake Mead

 

[LibertyBell]

https://grist.org/science/can-the-world-overshoot-its-climate-targets-and-then-fix-it-later/

 

Overshoot is a bad idea

 

[Typhoon Tip]

On 5/11/2022 at 11:54 PM, LibertyBell said:

https://grist.org/science/can-the-world-overshoot-its-climate-targets-and-then-fix-it-later/

 

Overshoot is a bad idea

 

 

"..., Overshoot is a future where the world does not cut carbon quickly enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels — a limit often described as a threshold of dangerous climate change — but then is able to bring the temperature back down later on. A sort of climate boomerang."

I am not entirely sure why the author uses 'boomerang' - she may be apropos with that metaphor, or has something in mind I'm missing?

But the whole 'overshoot' and then deal with it later, smacks as a passive engaging in 'bargaining psychology' - perhaps that's we are there as a species along the denial-acceptance arc, but that's optimistic too, if I'm asked...

In Psycho-babble vernacular, the behavior has a formal definition.  But for brevity.. it's basically when faced acceptance ugly realities, a human (or group thereof) will evade by relying on plausibility to ameliorate the angst they don't want to accept.  

At some point along the way the consensus of the science community ( and anyone else with arithmetic mentality ... ) came to the easy calculation, or intuitive awareness that 'Humanity will likely overshoot that ceiling'  ...above which we are shown the Fermian door ...

And that is when the machinery of bargaining kicked in.  Because overshoot doesn't sound like an ultimatum?  I sounds like room to negotiate for how much or little the overshoot can happen. 

That may be okay... by some even.  But that is not how it will work.  Humans don't do that.  You give them an inch, they take a mile.  That's what happens.  They'll push the overshoot further and further...

I agree that is a bad idea.  It's just my own op-ed

 

[LibertyBell]

1 hour ago, Typhoon Tip said:

 

"..., Overshoot is a future where the world does not cut carbon quickly enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels — a limit often described as a threshold of dangerous climate change — but then is able to bring the temperature back down later on. A sort of climate boomerang."

I am not entirely sure why the author uses 'boomerang' - she may be apropos with that metaphor, or has something in mind I'm missing?

But the whole 'overshoot' and then deal with it later, smacks as a passive engaging in 'bargaining psychology' - perhaps that's we are there as a species along the denial-acceptance arc, but that's optimistic too, if I'm asked...

In Psycho-babble vernacular, the behavior has a formal definition.  But for brevity.. it's basically when faced acceptance ugly realities, a human (or group thereof) will evade by relying on plausibility to ameliorate the angst they don't want to accept.  

At some point along the way the consensus of the science community ( and anyone else with arithmetic mentality ... ) came to the easy calculation, or intuitive awareness that 'Humanity will likely overshoot that ceiling'  ...above which we are shown the Fermian door ...

And that is when the machinery of bargaining kicked in.  Because overshoot doesn't sound like an ultimatum?  I sounds like room to negotiate for how much or little the overshoot can happen. 

That may be okay... by some even.  But that is not how it will work.  Humans don't do that.  You give them an inch, they take a mile.  That's what happens.  They'll push the overshoot further and further...

I agree that is a bad idea.  It's just my own op-ed

 

I'm not sure how many understand the whole concept of a runaway greenhouse effect or how a chain reaction works.  That's basically what's going to happen here.  Think of nuclear meltdown-- even if we somehow "boomerang" from that, the damage is already done, and in this case it's actually worse than a nuclear meltdown because on the scale of the planet, things will keep getting worse even after the meltdown stops....

It also reminds me of the chemical industry and Dow and the pesticide chlorpyrifos which damages developing brains.  Dow asked California to let them use more of it than regulations allowed, promising they would use less the following year and it would all even out in the end.  In typical corrupt corporate form, they never used less....and it had to be outright banned in CA (it's banned here in NY too.)

[Bhs1975]

We're supposed to be carbon neutral by 2050 but we are heading in the wrong direction fast. At this point I rather have nuclear war to reset everything.

[LibertyBell]

8 hours ago, Bhs1975 said:

We're supposed to be carbon neutral by 2050 but we are heading in the wrong direction fast. At this point I rather have nuclear war to reset everything.

Do any of these so-called "leaders" even understand how much they are messing the planet up?