(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Weekly spotlight on DK climate & eco-diaries (10/8/23) oceanic pollution; climate resilience [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Daily Kos Staff Emeritus'] Date: 2023-10-08 The spotlight is a weekly, categorized compilation of links and excerpts from environmentally related posts at Daily Kos. Any posts included in the collection do not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of them. Because of the interconnectedness of the subject matter, some of these posts could be placed in more than one category. OUTSTANDING ECO-DIARY OF THE WEEK Amazon rainforest and South American monsoon show signs of imminent co-collapse by FishOutofWater. El Niño and the climate crisis are acting together to bring record drought to Brazil’s Amazonas province. In September over 100 Amazon endangered dolphins died in Lake Tefé in Amazonas fed by superheated 102ºF river water. But this year’s drought is not one of a kind. Extreme droughts have happened repeatedly since the El Niño of 1997 as the waters of the north Atlantic heat up and the forests of the Amazon are cut down. There were 3 “100 year droughts” in a single decade before the drought this year. The heating of the north Atlantic intensifies convective thunderstorms north of the equator and dry sinking air and strong drying trade winds over the Amazon in the months July to September. The cutting of trees removes the natural water pump that pulls water out of the ground, evaporates water vapor into the atmosphere and feeds the developing monsoon rains. The combination of deforestation and warming north Atlantic waters is extending and intensifying the dry season. A new scientific report, that builds on previous reports (that I have written about here), has found multiple warning signs that this combination of deforestation and a warming north Atlantic is about to bring about the coupled collapse of both the South American monsoon and the Amazon rainforest. THE OCEAN, WATER & INFRASTRUCTURE Under-reported oceanic pollution, increased death toll: ACM by NeverEverAgain. It all started with a trip to San Juan Island, WA a few weeks ago. Killer whales were sighted on our first day - a pod in the area known as "J-Pod". The day after, it was supposed to rain, so we decided to start the day with a visit to the Whale Museum. The 2015 video "Sonic Sea" inspired my story today: This two-minute trailer gives a good intro to this impressive video and its ability to pack so much understanding of this dire situation. Sonar and other underwater noise pollution is one of the least reported pollution of our air, land, waterways and oceans. The ocean is not void of sound, by any means. Sound waves travel farther and faster in the sea’s dark depths than they do in the air, disrupting much of marine life like whales, dolphins, fish and other sea creatures’ ability to rely on communication by sound to navigate, find food, and mate. The increasingly relentless barrage of human-generated ocean noise pollution is changing the underwater acoustic landscape, harming and often killing marine species. This devastation is happening all over the planet, but there are many things you can do to reduce or remove those oceanic “killer waves” of noise pollution. CA requiring cities to institute long-term water cuts (it's about time!) by birches. One year of flooding and a possible year of super El Niño do not a megadrought negate. California is a Mediterrnean climate at the coasts, dry to desert inland, and alpine in the mountains, without enough rainfall or snow runoff to support current water usage rates even in the wettest of times. And that’s before factoring in climate chaos. Which is why the state has finally decided that the water conservation practices we discovered over multiple droughts need to be implemented all the time. Specifically, a new regulation (the result of 2 bills signed in 2018, so you can’t accuse us of rushing things) will require water agencies across the state to cut back water usage by substantial amounts. The River Amazon Drought by birches. El Niño plus climate chaos equals a drought in the Amazon. There’s a great visual article by Deutsche Welle (DW). The Amazonian drought is hitting hard in the northwestern states of Amazonas and Acre. The Rio Negro is way down, there are mass fish die-offs, and at Manaus the water level has been dropping 30 cm a day since mid-September. At close to the same time, flooding in southern Brazil killed 40 and displaced thousands. The good news is that Lula is president and Bolsonaro is not. Lula has been working seriously on environmental issues since getting back in office, and he is getting results. The deforestation rate in Brazil has fallen 40% in a year, for example. There’s a lot more work that has to be done in Brazil, especially with regards to fossil fuels, but they as a nation are working with some urgency. CRITTERS & THE GREAT OUTDOORS Wood storks perched and waiting on the sunrise. Daily Bucket - Spoonbills and Wood Storks and Egrets "OH MY" by CaptBLI. I had to return to Wildcat Brake after finding the spoonbills there last week. I was positive that this was the year I would see wood storks. After three years of searching, my diligence paid off. The storks flew in (single file and in smaller groups) like Pelicans on the move. They joined a large flock of spoonbills that had claimed the cypress grove as a base camp. I learned larger flocks of storks will form “V” formations as well. I wish I had filmed them coming in. I saw a few other birds before the Spoonbills and Storks drifted down into the river channel to begin feeding. Wood Ducks squeaked at the over head commotion and scurried along the water’s surface. Hairy and Pileated woodpeckers ignored the cacophony and kept hammering away at dead snags (the different percussion tones mingled harmoniously). Dawn Chorus - Subtle Behavior of water fowl.by CaptBLI. Before I spotted the Great Blue Heron, I noticed a mated pair of Great Egret gliding into the receding pool nearby. After they landed, they began to stroll. This pair are obviously comfortable and in-tune with one another.(13 second film) x YouTube Video Back Yard Bird Race & The Daily Bucket - September edition by CaptBLI. I am proud to be today’s guest host and glad that you stopped by. I have compiled my list with some photos posted below. The Daily Bucket - diving Kaua'i and Ni’ihau by OceanDiver. Just returned from a trip to Kaua’i, the northernmost of the Hawaiian islands. We dived five days in nearshore waters and off the outlying island of Ni’ihau, and how different the marine world is there compared to the Caribbean! For one thing, the water is much rougher since it’s basically open ocean, with the islands exposed to swells and wind systems from many thousands of miles away. The water is cooler too. It made the diving more challenging. Quite a bit of surface chop and swells, with surge below. The Hawai’ian islands emerged quite recently (in geologic time) from the ocean floor as volcanoes, and once above the ocean surface were utterly barren of life until colonized from afar. The fish and invertebrates species found in Hawaiian waters came from the Indo-Pacific region (south and west) as far as six thousand miles away, or evolved from those animals. Animals, Souls, and Intelligence by McCrowlerr. I was raised on a small farm in rural Michigan and of course we had animals. Cows, pigs, chickens before the price fell out of the market, and of course dogs and barn cats. They were always there and just part of the environment. Farmers don’t think of animals in the same way as city folk do. Farm animals aren’t really pets and they exist for more than just giving and sharing affection. They have value as money and they have their names and quirks. I remember when milking cows, some of them would lean tight against me as I tried to get in to attack the milking machines as if trying to block me (though most of the liked to be milked; they were just being contrary, I guess.) They liked to be scritched on their heads behind their horns. That kind of thing. Being cruel to your animals was very much frowned upon and the basic rule was that a good farmer took care of his animals first. But when push came to shove, they were still just animals. Wanna Help The Biosphere? Sources of Info by birches. Here are a few sources for information, especially about actions, to take for the biosphere. CLIMATE CRISIS What the Hell Just Happened? by SninkyPoo. The answer to “what the hell happened in September” might not get 100% down-to-a-gnat’s-eyebrow scientifically resolved soon. But is is undeniable that this train is picking up speed. And it’s terrifying. So what now? Do we wait and see? Do we take this all under advisement and carry on with other tasks? Do we cluck concernedly and look away, hoping this terror just isn’t true – is overreach – is exaggeration for editorial effect? DailyKos is a site by and for Democrats. In other words, this is a safe space for the folks on the right side of most arguments. We’re feminists. We’re LGBTQIA+ allies. We stand with trans people everywhere. We fight the BLM fight, stand for unions, throw our time and money at efforts to curb gun madness, and more. We have a deep understanding of the evils of end-stage corporate capitalism. We’re the “good guys,” if you’ll pardon the gendered old expression.And on the climate? Well, we all seem to be on board with… something. Doing our own part. Recycling. Carpooling. Joining marches. Being little voices who will add up and amount to a lot. But at the risk of repeating myself (and getting shot down) I think it is time to do more. Sultan bin Ahmed Sultan al-Jaber Earth Matters: Slick talk from the fox in the COP28 henhouse; bringing back redwoods and grizzlies by Meteor Blades. Lisa Kudrow and Randy Rainbow are delightful proof the complaint voiced early in the 21st Century that politicians had killed parody was wrong. Self parody is also still going strong. Because, as many regular Earth Matters readers know, the 28th Conference of the Parties signatory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP28 for short, will meet for a couple of weeks in Dubai starting November 30. The delegates from 198 nations will gather again as they have done since 1992 to discuss the crisis that is a lethal byproduct of emitting greenhouse gases, 89% of them from burning and otherwise using fossil fuels. COP28’s presiding officer for this gathering will be Sultan bin Ahmed Sultan al-Jaber. He’s the Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology of the United Arab Emirates. He’s also the CEO of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). This may sound like parody, but it’s no joke. At COP26, at Glasgow in 2021, the 503 fossil fuel lobbyists counted there made up the largest contingent of official attendees, larger than any one country’s delegation. This year in Dubai, they’ll have to publicly identify themselves. But such belated transparency is hardly a big deal when one of their pals will be in charge of the whole affair. Don't let latest news of record-breaking heat numb us into looking away or curling up in the corner by Meteor Blades. Ever since James Hansen brought knowledge of global warming out of scientific papers and into the public eye with his congressional testimony 35 years ago, climate hawks have been told to be realistic and be patient. But there are two realities: One is the razor-thin partisan margin in Congress that allows one senator to enable the dozens of outright climate science deniers elected to that body. The other reality comes from the 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment of Climate that labels our current situation “code red for humanity.” Right now, funding efforts to prevent, adapt to, and ameliorate the impacts of climate change are running at just 4% as much as we fund the Pentagon. And even that is too much for congressional Republicans to stomach. Just one moronic measure they want to pass is slashing an extra $1 billion from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The Republican Party is in serious disarray and the long knives are unsheathed in their internal struggle. Consequently, over the next 13 months, Democrats will have a solid opportunity just as we did in 2022 to replace a bunch of the 149 Republican climate science deniers in the House and Senate. However, those replacements need to do more than merely tell us they accept climate science. We need to find out in the upcoming primary elections which ones really mean it. Because, I am very sorry to say, some of them don’t. One Decade, That Is How Quickly Climate Can Transition by greenandblue. Burning fossil fuels is altering Earth’s energy balance and forcing climatechanges. We know that we are increasing global heat, collapsing glaciers, rising sea levels, redirecting ocean circulation, and intensifying droughts and storms. We don’t know how much or how quickly.Many, including me, ask how long changes will take. Will there be centuries of gradual and smooth transitions to new steady state temperatures, precipitation, ocean currents and sea levels? Or, will the transitions be punctuated by large changes in some years? Research published by Nisbet, et al. in July, 2023 show that past glacial-interglacial transitions were punctuated by large changes occurring within a few decades. They observed that past transitions have been marked by rapid bursts of methane from natural sources, and since 2006, we have been catalyzing methane release from natural stores along with the methane we release in fossil fuel extraction. To Help Your Climate Anxiety, Just Follow Paul by leftcoast ron.It’s really depressing to contemplate our current setup: we have rampant capitalism even in the most open, democratic nations, there are totalitarian dictatorships covering most of Asia (and would-be dictators appearing almost everywhere), and sociopathic “edge-lords” heavily manipulating their positions controlling various types of economic resources. Imagining how these unaccountable forces might react to even more disruptive heat waves, floods and fires brings us a lot of anxiety. And what happens when we reach even worse possibilities like 6-ft sea level rise creating hundreds of millions of dispossessed migrants, or the failure of major food systems like wheat or rice crops, or the East Pacific fishery? So we need a simple memory device to help us deal with our climate anxiety. I have been advising folks on staying whole and grounded while involved in political activism since the “90’s, and I think I’ve hit on a simple memory device that should already be fairly well-implanted in a lot of people. It’s something that Paul sang to us, in one of the Beatle’s greatest hits. Specifically, it’s the advice in the last two lines of the first bridge in Hey Jude. Here’s the whole four lines. “And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain/Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders/For well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool/By making the world a little colder.” The southern Ronne ice shelf's grounding line can migrate up to six miles from changing tides by Pakalolo. Antarctica's glacial border migrates for miles with the tide. "We typically think of ice sheet change as being very slow, taking place over decades, centuries, or even millennia. But our findings highlight that some processes are operating over minutes to hours that may have significant impacts," Bryony Freer, Lead author of the British Antarctic Survey study and glaciologist at the Centre for Satellite Data in Environmental Science at the University of Leeds. Antarctica's grounding lines are the boundary point where the land ice meets the floating ice shelf. The Ronne ice shelf is the larger area of the Ronne-Filchner ice shelf, the second largest in Antarctica; only the Ross ice shelf is larger. British Antarctic Survey glaciologists have been monitoring a 170-mile-long chunk of the ice shelf in the far South of the Ronne shelf located in the warming Weddell Sea for five years. Using lasers from the ICESat 2 satellite that can measure the ice height up to mere inches, the team determined how the floating Ronne ice shelf rose and fell with the tides. That information was used to calculate the changing position of the grounding line. Map of the Weddel Sea, peninsular Antarctica, and the Ronne and Filchner ice shelves. What the Hell Just Happened? by SninkyPoo. The answer to “what the hell happened in September” might not get 100% down-to-a-gnat’s-eyebrow scientifically resolved soon. But is is undeniable that this train is picking up speed. And it’s terrifying. So what now? Do we wait and see? Do we take this all under advisement and carry on with other tasks? Do we cluck concernedly and look away, hoping this terror just isn’t true – is overreach – is exaggeration for editorial effect? DailyKos is a site by and for Democrats. In other words, this is a safe space for the folks on the right side of most arguments. We’re feminists. We’re LGBTQIA+ allies. We stand with trans people everywhere. We fight the BLM fight, stand for unions, throw our time and money at efforts to curb gun madness, and more. We have a deep understanding of the evils of end-stage corporate capitalism. We’re the “good guys,” if you’ll pardon the gendered old expression.And on the climate? Well, we all seem to be on board with… something. Doing our own part. Recycling. Carpooling. Joining marches. Being little voices who will add up and amount to a lot. But at the risk of repeating myself (and getting shot down) I think it is time to do more. Do Doomers Doom Us? by mikeymikey. Prediction, has always been and remains a ‘fool’s errand’, particularly in our present situation which is without precedent. Environmental collapse is such a vast multi-faceted topic, comprising a sea of information, which in it’s entirety is so beyond the grasp of even those specialists subsumed by it, that their abilities to project outcomes are reduced for the most part to educated guesses. Due to interconnectivity, there are countless possible interactive outcomes, as well as, known and unknown variables, including the unforeseeable. If you had all the information in the world, these last would make prediction moot. Broad-brushing the rationale behind “Doomerism” lends itself to the just criticism of stereotyping and doing prejudicial harm. Clearly, not all “Doomers” are the same. Considering the circumstances in which Doomerism has taken root, there are valid causes that at least partially justify it. Every person grappling with hopelessness has their own mix of reasons for adopting doom as their reality, though I suspect that many of them wouldn’t be able to accurately explain what they are. The human mind is complex and often our subconscious impulses direct actions that are at cross purposes, frequently in ways that can be self-defeating. NPR Doing a Week of Climate Solutions by birches. To be stored in the “better late than never” column, from Oct 2-8 NPR is doing a week of climate stories under the general title NPR’s Climate Week: A Search For Solutions. I heard the first story this morning, a 4:22 bit justifying taking the time out of their regular reporting for this series by pushing back on climate doom and despair without really referencing why it exists in the first place. They mentioned some solutions and the various levels of the issues involved — personal to international — but it was all a reporter talking about the reporting to come, no experts and no data. Stories available in connection to this series are on seaweed, healthcare’s carbon footprint, a kid’s guide to climate change, and 6 experts giving solutions in 3:55. So it’s a linked set of singular stories, but not the comprehensive tying of all things to the biosphere crisis that the situation demands. Whose Planet Are We On? by Tom Englehardt. As it happens, industrializing countries first began to, in essence, make war on our world in the late eighteenth century, but had no idea they were doing so until deep into the twentieth century. These days, however, it should be anything but a secret that humanity is all too knowingly at war — and there’s nothing “cold” about it — with and on our very own world. Sadly enough, however, in the United States, the leading politicians of one of the two major political parties seem remarkably intent not just on refusing to recognize that reality, but on supporting the release of carbon into the atmosphere in ever more major ways. Its presidential candidates, especially Donald Trump (whose last presidential campaign was heavily financed by the fossil fuel industry) and the failing, flailing Ron DeSantis, are, in fact, remarkably eager to deny the reality of our present world. Worse yet, they seem hell-bent on encouraging the further development and use of coal, natural gas, and oil on a staggering scale, while shredding what regulations exist to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, from the heart of Texas oil country, as the New York Times recently reported, DeSantis announced a plan he called “the freedom to fuel.” He promised “to remove subsidies for electric vehicles, take the U.S. out of global climate agreements — including the Paris accords — and cancel net-zero emission promises. He also vowed to increase American oil and natural gas production and ‘replace the phrase climate change with energy dominance’ in policy guidance.” Catching Up On Two Weeks Of Climate Disinfo by ClimateDenierRoundup. ProPublica dropped another damning Clarence Thomas piece , detailing how the Koch network has been schmoozing the Supreme Court justice. And, much to our surprise, it turns out the case Koch influence operation changed his opinion on is Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo — the fishing industry case that our fisherman-turned-lobbyist friend Jerry Leeman knows all about. And speaking of industry-backed legal lobbying, disinformation outlet RealClearEnergy published the latest on how polluter-protecting propagandists are using the " Major Questions " doctrine to undercut climate policy. Elsewhere in disinfoworld, The Washington Times ran an op-ed by Richard W. Rahn promoting Judith Curry 's latest book, and in true denier fashion, Rahn manages to misrepresent the basics of Curry's career. Climate Disinformers Love To Pretend The Problem Is The Solution by ClimateDenierRoundup. What, then, are the solutions these critics are proposing? Well that's where things get fun, because apparently the solution to environmental problems is to let those causing them just keep doing their thing, and then the environment will go away, and we'll have no problems! For example, at the Washington Examiner , the Maui wildfires weren't a result of colonialism and capitalism turning a verdant paradise into tinderbox, but a consequence of stopping one particular instance of the colonial-era, capitalism-driven monocropping of sugar. "Had the 145-year-old sugar plantation been able to continue to manage the land," wrote Jeff Stier, "the fire, whatever caused it, certainly wouldn’t have been fueled to burn as destructively as it did." Of course! If only all our land was being farmed by international conglomerates for the profit of shareholders, then climate change-influenced wildfires would simply disappear! The hall of historic Waiola Church in Lahaina and nearby Lahaina Hongwanji Mission are engulfed in flames along Wainee Street, Aug. 8, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. Kiyan Kassam At The Federalist Rips Off A Trio Of Bjørn Lomborg Op-Eds Without Even Naming Him by ClimateDenierRoundup. Yesterday we pointed out how lazy RealClearEnergy is in ripping off other people's content to drive clicks to its Chevron-sponsored page. Today, we see that even that level of work ethic isn't as low as it goes. For that, we turn to The Federalist, where on Monday Kiyan Kassam ("a conservative writer," according to a very sparse contributor bio ) published " 3 Facts To Arm You Against Global Elites' Biggest 'Climate Crisis' Lies ." A more honest headline would have been "3 Climate Disinfo Talking Points From Old Bjørn Lomborg Op-Eds," because that's literally all it was. Overnight News Digest: Climate change models likely severely underestimate economic damage by Magnifico. Have some economists severely underestimated the financial hit from climate change? Recent evidence suggests yes. From The Conversation: Scientists say severe climate change is now the greatest threat to humanity. Extreme weather is expected to upend lives and livelihoods, intensifying wildfires and pushing ecosystems towards collapse as ocean heatwaves savage coral reefs. The threats are far-reaching and widespread. So what effect would you expect this to have on the economy in coming decades? It may surprise you, but most economic models predict climate change will just be a blip, with a minor impact on gross domestic product (GDP). Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Oct. 5 by boatsie. Climate change: Pope Francis warns world 'may be nearing breaking point': Pope Francis has warned the world is "collapsing" due to climate change and may be "nearing breaking point." The pope criticised global decision-making bodies for being ineffective, as well as calling out climate deniers. His strongly-worded intervention has been published in a major new update to his landmark 2015 paper on the environment.. He described some damage from climate change as "already irreversible." Thing 1 and Thing 2 Two rarely discussed Climate change actions that could help bend the curve by fiatlux. I continue to be increasingly alarmed about the climate chaos that seems to be accelerating nearly unchecked. It reminds me of the movie “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3” where in a New York subway train is hijacked for money and after the hijackers leave the train, they override the dead mans switch so it continues to pick up speed, barreling towards a certain bad end unless and until automatic override safety measures kick in. In the case of the climate, it has been hijacked by the fossil fuel industry (primarily), they are holding us all hostage while the temperature rises. In this case however, there are no automatic safety switches to shut this process off- other than earth will eventually start over if we don’t act now. While it is vitally important that we do all we can to reduce the use of fossil fuels to get back control of the runaway train, there are at least two things that I notice are rarely discussed as actions that can be helpful. They may not be the biggest things, but that does not make them unimportant. ENERGY & TRANSPORTATION Newsom signs Orphan Well Prevention Act, AB 1167, vetoes SB 842, bill weakening price gouging law by Dan Bacher. Climate, environment, consumer and labor organizations celebrated a victory today after Governor Newsom signed AB 1167, the Orphan Well Prevention Act authored by Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo. The Orphan Well Prevention Act will require oil companies to take out full bonding to cover the clean up cost of idle and marginally-producing wells when they are transferred in ownership, helping to solve the growing orphan well crisis in California. according to a statement from a coalition of organizations. The bill’s signing took place as oil production in California has declined in recent years as the once huge crude oil reserves are being depleted. The state has decline from being the number three producer of crude oil in the nation to the seventh largest. Climate Justice Advocates Urge Governor Newsom to Sign the Orphan Well Protection Act, AB 1167 by Dan Bacher. On September 27, Assemblymember Carrillo and over a dozen advocates with climate, community and environmental justice organizations held a press conference to call on Governor Gavin Newsom to hold oil companies accountable by signing the Orphan Well Prevention Act, AB 1167, into law. On the day before, over 100 groups sent a letter asking the Governor to sign the legislation.The Orphan Well Prevention Act would require oil companies to take out full bonding to cover the clean up cost of idle and marginally-producing wells when they are transferred in ownership, helping to solve the growing orphan well crisis, according to a press statement from a coalition of climate groups. California oil regulators have issued 15,722 oil drilling permits since January 2019 by Dan Bacher. While Governor Gavin Newsom has received accolades from the media and environmental NGOs for his recent lawsuit against decades of deception by Big Oil, his administration has at the same time approved a total of 15,722 new and reworked oil wells since January 2019. This year CalGEM, the state’s oil and gas regulator, “has gone rogue,” approving hundreds of oil permits in vulnerable communities breathing poisonous emissions from both active and idle wells, according to a report by Consumer Watch and FracTracker Alliance. The two groups also revealed that regulator has worked to undermine AB 1167 in the legislature and with the governor. “AB 1167 (Carrillo) is a critical bill to raise billions in bonding from oil companies seeking to sell unproductive wells to ensure plugging costs are covered, Consumer Watchdog and FracTracker Alliance,” the groups stated. Marge Grow-Eppard, Miwok, begins the climate justice protest in Old Sacramento to end fossil fuels with a prayer on September 17. New Report Finds Spanish-Language Conspiracy Theories Now Influencing English-Speaking Kooks by ClimateDenierRoundup. The fossil fuel industry's propaganda machine began, and historically operates most heavily in English, so for the past decade as social media became the last thriving vector for climate denial, we saw that Spanish-language social media disinfo was often a translation of false claims from English. Not always, but often enough that it meant that if we could reduce the production of English-language disinformation, it would go a long way toward cleaning up digital information ecosystems outside the Anglosphere, because the professional denial would no longer be readily available to translate. Now, though, a new report from Green Latinos, Graphika, and Friends of the Earth found that (just a year after confirming the English-to-Spanish pattern ) the reverse has begun to happen. Aided by social media companies’ misinformation-amplifying algorithms , English-speaking conspiracy theorists are now reaching beyond the language barrier to amplify conspiracy theories in other languages, giving us yet another headache. The report specifically points to the false narrative that wildfires are being started intentionally in order to clear the way for wind farms. Renewable Tuesday 10/3 Living Even Further in the Future by Mokurai. Floating wind! Long-haul trucking! Electric tugboats! Drinking water from brine, cheaper than tap water! Utilities for net metering! (Well, some of them.) Renewable jobs! Grid batteries! Many millions of heat pumps! Battery backup on induction cookers! [Update: Carbon-negative eco-concrete!] I do love living in the future, on these and so many other fronts, including getting rid of poverty, dread diseases, oppression, and stupid wars. We Sell More E Bikes Than E Cars by Somchai. Last month I got an email from my state’s energy office. I’m a disgruntled climate wonk, mostly in the form of opinionated cynicism. My state was offering an $1,100 rebate for low and moderate income folks based on county level incomes. Also there was a lottery. I won. I think they gave it to the first couple thousand people, and they’ll have more through the year. Combined with a $700 discount from the biggest e bike company in the US, a tad of assembly, and I was mobile. I’ve been noticing tons of teens on them already, and I work in a place where Teslas are passe, and seemingly every auto company has some kind of e car. Volvo, Beemers, Nissan, they make a whirring noise. Like with everything there’s good and bad. Bikes use a fraction of the resources and electricity that a car does. They take up much less room on the road. Transportation is our largest source of CO2, if we can reduce it in any way, it’s a good thing. I should be able to do most repairs. Assembly took less than the estimated 2 hours. Our EV Future Should be Built by Union Workers by bgalliance. General Motors (GM), Ford, and Stellantis (which owns Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep) have raked in massive profits since the auto industry collapse in the late 2000s, when United Auto Workers (UAW) workers took huge concessions to try to spare the jobs of their fellow workers. Now, the industry has righted itself, sales and profit have skyrocketed, and CEOs and management of these Big Three automakers have gotten huge bonuses—but the autoworkers responsible for creating all this profit have gotten next to nothing. The people that gave the most got the least. That must change. Around the country, 150,000 members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) are now on strike or working without a contract. These workers are fighting for good, safe, family-supporting jobs and their fair share. As President Biden noted of the strike, the outcome of these negotiations should ensure that “record corporate profits mean record contracts.” All of this is happening against the backdrop of a generational industry transformation—the transition to clean and electric vehicles (EVs). BlueGreen Alliance staff join striking UAW workers on the picket line in Plymouth, Minnesota. PUBLIC LANDS Remember “Dampen the forests”? Now, the Deep South is choking, and wildlife is devastated in Canada by Pakalolo. Canadian wildfires are out of sight and out of mind for the most part. The fires only get press when the smoke affects human populations, particularly in the United States, such as New York City or Miami. Yes, all the way down to the Magic City. Before I share what is unreported, I was hoping you would watch a clip from Donald Trump recently speaking at a fundraiser in California. It indicates what we are up against regarding effective climate action versus ignoramus Republicans. Below is Trump blabbering on how to prevent forest fires. It is genuinely jaw-dropping for an individual who wants to become President again in an era of climate breakdown. ACTION & RESOURCES Energy (and Other) Events Monthly - October 2023 by gmoke. These kinds of events below are happening all over the world every day and most of them, now, are webcast and archived, sometimes even with accurate transcripts. Would be good to have a place that helped people access them. This is a more global version of the local listings I did for about a decade (what I did and why I did it at http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2013/11/what-i-do-and-why-i-do-it.html) until September 2020 and earlier for a few years in the 1990s (https://theworld.com/~gmoke/AList.index.html). A more comprehensive global listing service could be developed if there were enough people interested in doing it, if it hasn’t already been done. If anyone knows of such a global listing of open energy, climate, and other events is available, please put me in contact. Climate resilience: Greywater management follow-up by Gardening Toad. This is a follow-up to my previous diary Climate resilience: Greywater management. In the photo above you can see the kitchen sink greywater pipe coming from under the house, going underground, and leading to an outlet which is covered by a flowerpot saucer. The basin is filled with mulch and on the rain tank side is planted with two experimental subtropical edibles, Cherry of the Rio Grande and Katuk. The small vine is the decorative Dutchman’s Pipe, which is supposed to grow enormous and is host to our beautiful Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly. I’m planning to add a couple of Muscadine Grapes to grow up the tanks. Data Geek Out -- Strike for the Planet week 98 by birches. What about climate change’s impacts on the people of SF? • At least 10% of SF’s population was below the federal poverty level before the pandemic—that’s 88,000 people. However, if adjusting for the higher cost of living in SF, our population in poverty before the pandemic rockets up to around 20% (176,000 individuals) or 1 in 5 people. • Climate change hurts the poor the most and the quickest. How badly that population suffers is substantially impacted by sufficient and early government actions against climate change. • Children in SF make up a substantial proportion of the poor. • Climate change is also a racial justice issue. Covid-19 is a climate change-caused pandemic (the first of many). Looking at the Covid-19 case count and outcome data for SF, it’s clear who in SF is already being most hurt by climate change. Science, PP, and Resiliency -- Strike for the Planet week 97 by birches. Different populations are differently resilient based on resources and inherent vulnerabilities. Children, pregnant women, and the elderly have vulnerabilities that make them more susceptible to heat, reduced food and water access, disease, and displacement from climate change. The poor, those living in areas with few to no trees, those living in areas with aging or poor infrastructure, communities and individuals suffering from institutional racism, and women are all denied resources to cope with climate change and so are also disproportionally impacted. But wait! There’s more! Destroy the biosphere and everything goes down. Bay Area businesses are already starting to lose due to climate change. From agricultur to real estate, energy to tourism, construction to fishing, these losses are only the first of what will be a cascade of losses and failures to SF’s business community. Who Will Be Harmed? -- Strike for the Planet week 96 by birches. This week’s letter: Science, the Precautionary Principle, and Resiliency. To review, again: Climate change is human-caused and choosing to do nothing about it is both political and literal suicide because not only are humans causing planetary devastation, we’re also making local choices that pile up the misery. Climate change is a killer. So we can’t keep choosing things that don't help or actively make SF’s situation worse, yet that’s exactly what you’re doing. How do we get out of this mess? How do we survive? We survive by acting, and we only act based on science, the precautionary principle, and resiliency. Water for SF, in Great Detail -- Strike for the Planet week 95 by birches. Hetch Hetchy is not a sustainable water source. And the sooner we get rid of it, the better things will be for all of northern CA. Don’t believe me? Let us count the ways in which Hetch Hetchy doesn’t work • By disruption and destruction, dams such as the O’Shaughnessy destroy forests directly during construction and eternally through ongoing ecosystem degradation. • Forests are vital components of CA’s hydrosphere; killing forests greatly reduces water in the system. • Dams destroy wetlands in place and downstream. And it just so happens that wetlands are our only buffer for sea level rise and storm surges, are huge carbon sinks, provide vital habitat to critically endangered species, and are key to the entire bay ecosystem. • Water storage by dams is an old, bad technology that no longer works. Energy for SF, in Great Detail -- Strike for the Planet week 94 by birches. SF must immediately change our energy sources. Why? Because if we continue as we are, we won’t continue. For instance, air pollution kills more people every year than all wars and violence combined. But guess what? As with everything else involving climate chaos, it turns out we have been grossly underestimating the damages. We’ve been undercounting the numbers dying from air pollution by about half. And that’s just the people being killed and just by air pollution. The vast majority of air pollution is from producing energy, for home and business uses and for transportation. We have to eliminate that pollution. FOOD, AGRICULTURE & GARDENING City Agriculture - October 2, 2023 by gmoke. Babylon Micro-Farms - for corporate dining, student dining, senior living communities, and event and hospitality venues now in 31 states. Green Shades - vegetal awnings. Festival of Debate 2023: Cities, farming, construction and greenspaces - series of 4 recorded webinars. City Farmer News - from Vancouver, BC, Canada with news of urban farming from everywhere Montreal street in transition from parking to community garden. NYTimes on Miyawaki Forests. My sources at Biodiversity for a Livable Climate report that this article brought many new members and attention to their great work. Urban oases combine roof gardens and solar panels Saturday Morning Garden Blogging: Vol. 19.40 - Saying Goodbye to the Northern Garden by CWalter. Goodnight peppers. Goodnight tomatoes. Goodnight beans, squash, cucumbers, raspberries and ground cherries. That said, I have some plants that perked up in the past week. Brassica plants, if established, like themselves some chilly weather. I've had green kale in December, here in South Dakota. I am also still growing some brussies and kohlrabi. Some heartier root crops, lower moisture veggies i.e. carrots, turnips and parsnips, are often sweeter if allowed to finish ripening in cooler temperatures (30's and 40's). Yet, hello snapdragons, sage and rosemary. I have another few weeks of a touch of color in my flower garden. So now I have a pile of peppers and tomatoes I rescued from the F-Word last night. What to do, what to do. The United States can export excess US Wheat to countries in Africa.This can solve crises of famine by blue sophie. If there is a shortage of wheat in Africa, the United States can buy some of the surplus wheat in the United States and ship it to Africa. The US has been doing this for decades. One advantage of buying surplus wheat to dump, er, give, to African countries is that then the price of wheat in the US goes up, and the USDA doesn't have to spend money on "crop reinsurance" to buy wheat from farmers that they otherwise would have sold on the open market. I think it is great that Ukraine can send wheat to Africa, but most leftist researchers of African agriculture would say that global institutions should be supporting the development of African internal agricultural markets and not destroying them by flooding them with low cost grain. Also, dumping crops like wheat in African agricultural markets suppresses the diversity of cultivation of local grains and tubers. Again, I recognize that there are geopolitical reasons for the way the story of Ukranian and Russian wheat is being told. It just doesn't match the reality of more than fifty years of research on US hegemonic control of agricultural trade. MISCELLANY Stanford Scientists' Recommendations for a "True" School of Sustainability by gmoke. A coalition of "Stanford scientists invested in helping the Doerr School of Sustainability achieve its full potential as a beacon of research excellence that accelerates the energy transition, with the speed and scale necessary to avert catastrophe" are making recommendations for a "true" school of sustainability: Here is a take on the subject coming from Stanford students filtered through Adam McKay’s Yellow Dot Studios; RECENT SPOTLIGHTS [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/8/2197454/-Weekly-spotlight-on-DK-climate-eco-diaries-10-8-23-oceanic-pollution-climate-resilience?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/