(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Weekly spotlight on climate & eco-diaries (10/29/23) Hansen issues new warning; climate triage [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Daily Kos Staff Emeritus'] Date: 2023-10-29 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. NOTE: Many fewer photos are included in the spotlight this week because of a glitch that screws up photo posting for some of us Kosacks. I hope that will get fixed this coming week. OUTSTANDING DIARY OF THE WEEK James Hansen Dr James Hansen Warns Climate is Heating up way faster than IPCC forecasts & he has the receipts by FishOutofWater. Dr. James Hansen is publishing a paper next week that warns of future warming at a much faster pace than the official IPCC forecasts. He has summarized his scientific paper In multiple recent communications, explaining the differences between his forecasts and those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC. The recent spike in global temperatures, coupled with rapidly declining reflected solar radiation and Antarctic sea ice extent support Hansen’s views. The IPCC has based its forecasts of warming solely on climate models. Dr. Hansen has taken a three pronged approach of forecasting using models, climate history going back into the geologic past, and ongoing observations. Because many of the changes observed in the geologic record were slow, IPCC scientists have not included those slow processes in their models. Scientists will continue to debate how to use paleoclimatology to improve models and predictions. What is clear from paleoclimatology is that sudden changes happen and our climate models may not be able to forecast those sudden changes. ENERGY, EMISSIONS & TRANSPORTATION Diesel Caught Fire And Deniers Say It's Bad News For EVs, Despite No Evidence by ClimateDenierRoundup. Hey can someone remind us if diesel is flammable? Does it ever catch fire? We've been too busy playing Fortnite and huffing Shell brand gas to remember if the defining feature of the internal combustion engine is combustion. We're wondering because of a recent JoNova post , in which the Aussie climate denial blogger points to a YouTuber named "Geoff Buys Cars" who desperately tried to blame electric vehicles for a huge fire in Luton, England that was actually caused by a diesel-powered vehicle , but came up empty in terms of evidence. Undeterred, he declared that because everyone was texting him to ask if EVs caused the disaster, this means that the fire at the Luton Airport "just KILLED the EV market." Nova even prefaces the quotes from the video essentially blaming EVs with a sentence pointing out that "in the end officials say it was a diesel, and Geoff couldn't definitively show it was or wasn't an EV." The Social Cost of Carbon by Groundnut. The Dice model expects a total climate damages as fraction of GDP equal to 0.00236T. In 2020 the increase in temperature was 1.1 degrees C (0.00285/WDP). In 2020 GWP was 84,894 billion dollars US. So total damages should be 242 billion dollars or 0.00285 as a fraction of the GNP. Us damages should be 60.1 billion. Weather disasters alone were 165 billion dollars in 2020 in the US and world wide disasters were 258 billion in 2020. In both cases the weather disasters alone are larger than the total damages expected by the official work, and as we know climate disaster costs are growing much faster than the WDP or the GNP. This years heat waves may have cost the world 0.6 percent of the WDP cite. The second highest source of damages in Zhao, water resource improvements, are also not in the EPA paper. It seems pretty clear that the economics profession has completely FUBARED the cost of global warming by a very large margin. Weather disasters, which when they were calculated were expected to be a small part of total damage, have exceeded the total damage calculations at this time. Activists painting a mural on the sidewalk during the End Fossil Fuels rally and march in Sacramento on September 17. CRITTERS & THE GREAT OUTDOORS The Daily Bucket. Hoarfrost edition by funningforrest. It’s getting cold for the autumn, up here in the northern California Sierra Nevada mountains. The title photo you see right there was taken at 10:00 a.m. and when I rode out on my bicycle the temperature outside my front door was not yet up in the 40s. In fact, yesterday morning was a new low outside my front door for Autumn 2023; 33f. As of typing this, 7:16 a.m. Oct. 28, 2023, my temperature monitor is showing 31°F out the door. In case you’re wondering, this is how I get my OSAT right here at my house: By the way, I used to be in the HVAC controls business, and it became everyday vernacular to say “oh-ess-ay-tee” (OSAT) to mean Outside Air Temperature. Now you know. Daily Bucket, Friday sequence - Bug of the Day by CaptBLI. Hay seed and I got together to go birding at Sardis Lake. We figured that since the lake level was low, we’d hike in to places we’d never been. We did find a “’first of season” species after a trek of a mile or more. There are Black Willow and River Birch trees lining the parking lot of the boat landing off Highway 7 where it crosses the Tallahatchie river (the source of Sardis Lake). The tree species (food sources) helped in identifying the mystery vessel. Daily Bucket - Yellowlegs ( < lesser) or (greater > ) by CaptBLI. Yellowlegs are found in nearly all of North America. People living in Canada get to see both the Greater and Lesser species in breeding plumage. I live in a migration zone and see adults in non-breeding plumage or juveniles. That makes it tough to ID the species. I recorded this video of a Lesser Yellowlegs (Tringa flavipes) and know I got the family correct (field ID) but I didn’t know the species until I got home. I gathered my other photos of Yellowlegs and decided to challenge myself on identification by the other markers of these two species. Here is what I have and I’ll provide my answers later. If you’d like to try for a visual exam, feel free to play along. Dawn Chorus - The ones that got away. by CaptBLI. There are birds that enter my area just a few weeks every year. I try to prepare for them and get lucky most of the time when they arrive. Some species have eluded me (the Bobolink is one) except for a fly by or voices from a tangle of brambles. Here is my 2023 list of missing fliers (unless I get lucky soon). byHere is my 2023 list of missing fliers (unless I get lucky soon). Morgan Freeman brings reality to The View and their viewers. No one appeared to disagree by Pakalolo. Morgan Freeman was recently on The View to discuss and promote his new Netflix series, Life on Our Planet (I Posted the Trailer at the end of the diary). Life on our planet tells the story of evolution from the age of the dinos to today. He looked them in the eye after greetings ended per Entertainment; he looked them " dead in the eye and told them the apocalypse is coming." Freeman has been an activist for wildlife and their habitat and a climate warrior for decades. Like many of us in the climate movement, we have repeatedly experienced the five stages of grief. We see his pain when he speaks. Those who believe we are unlikely to survive the consequences of anthropogenic global warming should feel that we are not alone in a world that does not see what we see, while the wise and soothing voice Of Morgan Freeman educates on the unspeakable. There is nothing wrong with us, no reason to judge or demean us as we all must go through the grieving process at some point. Some of us get there sooner than others. All of us just happen to be alive at this moment in time as catastrophe unfolds. byMorgan Freeman was recently onto discuss and promote his new Netflix series, Life on Our Planet (I Posted the Trailer at the end of the diary). Life on our planet tells the story of evolution from the age of the dinos to today. He looked them in the eye after greetings ended per Entertainment; he looked them " Daily Bucket - What a Difference a Summer Makes by cal birdbrain. This last weekend, I took my husband’s family who were visiting from Montana to Yosemite to see the beautiful valley and the spectacular waterfalls. In June, had taken my friends visiting from the Philippines to see these incredible waterfalls. I thought we would still have good waterfalls because of all the snow we had last winter. Boy was I wrong. While the waterfalls were a bit of a disappointment, we did see a lot of lovely fall color. The Daily Bucket: Life and Death in the Forest by BrownsBay. I came upon a pile of feathers a few days ago while walking my dogs through Hutt Park. Hutt Park is a small pocket of allegedly remnant old-growth forest no more than 2 acres in area nestled among a neighborhood of single-family homes in my town of Edmonds. The park does have some big western redcedar and Douglas fir, including one huge Doug fir with a broken top. Hutt Park is part of my standard dog walking loop of about 2 miles. I came upon this pile of feathers (title photo) in Hutt Park indicating that some hapless bird became the victim of a Cooper’s Hawk or maybe an owl. Let’s do a little detective work and figure out who was the victim. Come with me Dr. Watson. A thank-you to all those who leash their dogs while enjoying public parks and trails by JennaT. People really are nice. I’m reminded of that daily, and today was delightful affirmation as our aging shelter retriever mix and I went for a serene, soaking (it rained) walk in the woods. Along the 3 mile loop we probably passed 5 or so others with dogs, all on leash, and that is so appreciated. Common though in my area is that people always have their pets on leashes. Very rarely we will happen upon someone who does not have their dog on a line, and I always remind them gently that leashes are the law in the majority of our New Hampshire parks and nature trails. I hope others here have easy access to parks and nature trails to enjoy the great outdoors, especially this time of year. CLIMATE CRISIS New research: accelerated melting in West Antarctica inevitable no matter how much emissions are cut by Meteor Blades. In a new study published Monday in Nature Climate Change, the title just about says it all—Unavoidable future increase in West Antarctic ice-sheet melting over the twenty-first century. The researchers assessment is that the melting is locked in and chances are “dire” that this will produce colossal sea-level rise. If all the West Atlantic ice sheet completely melted, scientists calculate it would raise global sea levels by 5.3 meters (17.4 feet). The study indicates that, even if the world were to meet its 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) goal for global warming, the melting rate of the floating ice shelves of the Amundsen Sea will be three times what it was in the 20th Century. But there is still huge uncertainty about how fast sea level will rise as a consequence of those floating shelves breaking away from the ice sheet, thus allowing the land-based glaciers to flow into the sea faster. Lead author Kaitlin Naughten at the British Antarctic Survey told The Guardian: “Our study is not great news—we may have lost control of west Antarctic ice shelf melting over the 21st century. It is one impact of climate change that we are probably just going to have to adapt to, and very likely this means some coastal communities will either have to build [defenses] or be abandoned.” Oasis I created in San Antonio, TX, in place of a dead lawn. Climate Crisis: Desert or Oasis? by Gardening Toad. Many people have complained that the climate actions I propose do not solve the problem of climate change. They are correct, nothing we do will “fix the climate” at this point. What we can do, however, is improve the chances that life, even human life, may survive climate change. We can, if we feel like it, restore local ecosystems. A robust ecosystem is far better at withstanding and adapting to climate change than a degraded one.This is simple, easy work which can be done by almost anyone if they have a yard or access to land. If we feel like it, we can solve our food supply and food-related health problems at the same time. Likewise, if we feel like it, we can solve many of our water and waste problems. If we get really excited, we can use these same techniques to restore vast tracts of land degraded by human activity. None of this is complicated. It is simply a matter of us deciding whether we would rather live in a wasteland or in an oasis. Personally, I have chosen oasis, so I work on it every day. Senators, take steps NOW. Global warming is an emergency we must take drastic steps toward by PowerfulRights. This is a letter to Senators and Polar government officials. No word back yet, but going to keep chugging. If you are wanting to get involved with a movement that will have a measurable impact on the climate transition now, one you can see, and to give you access to be an early adopter in a community and network supporting that, — that’s what we will be building. If you want to work with me, donate, or have proposals, can edit, invest, etc Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Hurricane Otis' "Explosive Intensification" Over 100mph in 24 Hours by boatsie. A Yale Sustainability Q&A Yale Experts Explain Climate Anxiety provides insights from two researchers, Anthony Leiserowitz, the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at Yale School of the Environment, and Yale School of Public Health clinical psychologist Sarah Lowe, who was co-author of a research paper that showed how collective action could be a buffer against climate anxiety for young adults. According to Leiserowitz, “27 percent of Americans say they are very worried about climate change. This also is reflected in our Global Warming’s Six Americas research. We’ve been tracking how the size of different groups has been shifting, and people who are “Alarmed” about climate change have almost tripled in size over the past six years. We call them the Alarmed—but that does not mean eco-anxious.” ISRAEL v PALESTINE v climate change. Some of you are getting played by Peter Olandt. Don’t get me wrong, I/P has important aspects going on which need to be paid attention to and discussed in a healthy manner. But on the scale of problems it pales in comparison to the shit show coming down the pike from climate change if we don’t get our acts together. The I/P problem is one of water rights in a land without sufficient water. It’s about land rights in a place without enough land to go around. It’s about abject poverty in a place without sufficient social structures to help those pushed to the margins. Climate change will be bringing (and has been bringing) every one of those issues and more at much larger scales. If we continue to do so little about climate change we will quickly be ignoring I/P again. Not because it will have been solved, but because it will be dwarfed in comparison. By all means read up and argue about I/P. Just ask yourselves who benefits when it inappropriately distracts us from focusing on our bigger problems. Sultan Bin Ahmed Sultan Al Jaber, presiding officer of the COP28 climate summit in Dubai that begins November 30. He is also CEO of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. The Laptop-Throwing Oil Boss Hosting Climate Negotiations Has Benefited From 30 Years of PR by ClimateDenierRoundup. This year’s annual global climate negotiations, the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) or just COP28 for short, will be hosted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who heads the petrostate's oil and renewables companies. As we and others have noted, the UAE's been on quite a public relations (PR) kick, making use of bots on Twitter and accounts effusively praising the country on Reddit . The latest insights into the petrostate’s PR efforts come from Ben Stockton and Amy Westervelt, who provide The Intercept with a look " inside the campaign that put an oil boss in charge of a climate summit ." There's a lot of great history in the article, but here are excerpts of our favorite parts to entice you to go read the story in full! Deniers Use Cutting-Edge AI Tech To Be Stupid by ClimateDenierRoundup. Tom Nelson, poster-turned-podcaster, recently tweeted the results he got after twisting ChatGPT-4's arm to create climate disinfo by asking it, "what are some of the most compelling arguments made by climate skeptics?" After correctly noting "that the overwhelming majority of the scientific community supports the consensus that humans are significantly influencing the climate through the emission of greenhouse gasses," the bot then rattled off ten common denier talking points. From "Natural Climate Variability" to "Solar Radiation" and "Economic and Political Motives," the chatbot did as instructed and described ten common climate denial narratives , before again offering the reminder that "it's crucial when considering these points to understand that many have been extensively reviewed, critiqued, and often refuted or clarified by climate scientists.” The bot continued, “The consensus remains that anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is a real and pressing issue." You'll Never Guess Who's Debunking Deniers And Dunking On Disinfo Outlets Now by ClimateDenierRoundup. The author concludes, "It is no longer possible to doubt the human – 'anthropic' – origin of climate change." So, any guesses as to who wrote this fancy version of a disinfo debunking? Here's a hint: the writer felt "obliged to make these clarifications, which may appear obvious, because of certain dismissive and scarcely reasonable opinions that I encounter, even within the Catholic Church." Yes, the author of those quotes is none other than Pope Francis, Holy Father of the Catholic Church! His Holiness wrote those words in his Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum , a follow-up to his 2015 Encyclical Laudato Si’ , which implored Catholics to take climate change seriously and take action to stop it . It seems that even the Pope has had to come to terms with the fact that constand floods of disinformation create a major barrier to climate action, one that even the highest moral authority was unable to pierce through in his previous call to action. Throwing spaghetti at the wall of climate denial. Caressing,cajoling & ‘slaps’ can foster action by MikeyMikey. When we address environmental collapse and the subconscious road blocks to pro-action, we are attempting to move these cars and the difference here, is that with patience and tenacity, they are movable. A few people who have shed enough denial to be able to receive this message, will still find it forceful, but no longer perceive it as browbeating (which is a defensive perceptual overlay), because it no longer menaces their comfort zone. Instead, this ‘wake up’ falls into the enlightening perspective cast by a far greater threat, the threat to their survival. But they may not know they are ready until they hear our call to action and no longer react by ‘flight’ rather than ‘fight’. It also stands to reason that these are the strongest and biggest ‘fish’ and therefore the most potentially worthwhile to land. I know this first hand, as my more aggressive ‘apple cart upsetting’ efforts, have had the effect to free a number of people trapped by collective denial and they in turn have joined the fight for survival. We’re crossing the dangerous 1.5ºC global temperature threshold, and already feeling the impacts by Philip S Wenz. Considering the apparent “quantum leap” in the frequency and severity of impacts in the hot summer of 2023, the numbers do not bode well. If the rate of impacts roughly correlates with temperature change, earth systems such as the cryosphere (ice), ocean food productivity and global forests, as well as agriculture and possibly civilization itself, would likely cross irreversible tipping points toward collapse as early as 2035, and certainly by 2050. However, anticipating whether there is such a direct correspondence between temperature rise and impacts is difficult, if not impossible, because of the nonlinear, often random nature of impact occurrence and our limited means of quantifying and expressing overall impacts. Certainly one approach to measuring impacts is economic: Climate change will cost the global economy X dollars by the year Y. We will look at some projections in the upcoming articles on this topic, but we must keep in mind that economic statistics usually fail to express the costs in terms of human lives lost or impoverished, community dissolution, ecosystem damage and ecosystem service loss and so on. On Climate, Republicans have a Propaganda Problem, but Democrats have an Education Problem too by CorpFlunky. 51% of Republicans say that climate scientists do not even know “whether or not climate change is occurring”. Even more Republicans doubt that climate scientists understand how climate change affects extreme weather or know “the causes of climate change”. 89% of Republicans doubt scientists understand ‘very well’ whether the climate is actually changing. No amount of educational achievement seems to help Republicans with their judgement about the scientists. Presumably, these folks have done their own research online and by watching Fox News, which gives them confidence to dispute professional scientists with advanced degrees, fancy computers, and “math”. Makes you wonder why they think the scientists chose careers studying something that obviously will never be understood, like what kind of dinosaur Jesus rode or why the moon doesn’t collide with the sun. But, my smug fellow liberal democrats, before we congratulate ourselves for scoring 41 points higher on this existential test for humanity, I would point out that our side isn’t exactly passing with flying colors. Most Democrats who did not go to college also doubt whether scientists know ‘very well’ whether climate change is real. Overnight Science News Digest: Solutions outweigh dire climate news this week! by Besame. My science news roundups never begin with a theme in mind, it emerges as I organize the stories I collected because they caught my interest and seemed worthy of inclusion. This week’s theme is “Solutions,” and a welcome surprise because we all need positive news given the barrage of dire news climate change fires at us. Solutions to problems such as bird collisions with windows, skin cancer, childhood malaria, and dengue rates are encouraging, while other solutions involve future actions to mitigate climate change consequences made possible by answering questions like “why do hurricanes intensify rapidly” and “how can we motivate people to make dietary changes that help reduce atmospheric carbon.” Overnight News Digest for Weds October 25 (Welcome to Gilead, Speaker Johnson) by jeremybloom. The Hill — Regulators take first steps to head off a climate financial crisis On Tuesday, three major federal financial regulators released joint guidelines on the steps banks must take to prepare for a climatic assault on their balance sheets. The potential risks are dire, wrote representatives of the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The regulators focused on two ways that a warming climate could lead to financial upheaval. The first was physical damage from floods, fires and storms, while the second involved the “transition risk” related to broad economic changes and slow shifts away from fossil fuels. Overnight News Digest: West Arctic shelves melt 'unavoidable' by maggiejean. BBC: Increased melting of West Antarctica's ice shelves is "unavoidable" in the coming decades, a new study has warned. These floating tongues of ice extend from the main ice sheet into the ocean, and play a key role in holding back the glaciers behind. But as ice shelves melt, it can mean that the ice behind speeds up, releasing more into the oceans. The study's findings suggest that future sea-level rise may be greater than previously assumed. Overnight News Digest: Climate rushing to irreversible tipping points, civilization could collapse by Magnifico. Earth’s ‘vital signs’ worse than at any time in human history, scientists war. The Guardian: Earth’s “vital signs” are worse than at any time in human history, an international team of scientists has warned, meaning life on the planet is in peril. Their report found that 20 of the 35 planetary vital signs they use to track the climate crisis are at record extremes. As well as greenhouse gas emissions, global temperature and sea level rise, the indicators also include human and livestock population numbers. FANA ATTENDS EMERGENCY WORLD CLIMATE CRISIS SUMMIT FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLES by LauraZ. On October 5, 2023, The Polynesian Kingdom of Atooi Kingdom of Hawaii, The Federation of Aboriginal Nations of the Americas (FANA), and the International Council of First Nations held an emergency Zoom conference to address the World Climate Crisis Summit. FANA’s Ambassador and Attache to Mexico, Central and South Americas, Mr. Guadalupe Casas Acosta Mazatzin D. H. C, was instrumental in putting together this international emergency meeting to discuss how the changes in climate are affecting the Indigenous populations. He worked endless hours to pull this event together in a very short time. He reached out to a host of Indigenous Chiefs and Organizations. Thanks to his tireless efforts, attending this conference were FANA’s Minister of International Affairs and FANA’s Ambassador to the UN, Principal Chief Dr. Ronald Yonaguska Holloway; and FANA’s Director of Indigenous Affairs & Cultural Outreach to the UN, Marie Lorena Cosme were in attendance. There were representatives from Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Bolivia, Columbia, and the USA. AntiCapitalist MeetUp: testing our Climate Crisis Cynicism by annieli. A new article by Heidi Blake in the NewYorker is worth your time because is helps explain the massive capitalist scam (aka “perverse incentives”) that is is Cap & Trade and/or carbon emissions trading and how markets can be designed for (marginal) failure and evade the Climate Crisis goal. Her AES corporate example shows how international capital exploits energy markets in the greenwashed name of profits. The cliche of selling swampland as suburban estates in Florida still applies in the 21st Century. Rent and Rentiers run riot in neoliberal markets and pricing schemes are not the answer. Neither are offset markets, that can be no different than the auctioning of property rights. Major environmental concerns cannot be fully mitigated through emissions trading, much like a hydrogen-based energy economy will require fossil fuels. For example, carbon offsets in California's cap-and-trade program appear to deliver far fewer climate benefits than claimed. EXTREME WEATHER A hurricane flattened a city of one million, leaving no food or water and the dead to rot by Pakalolo. Climate is always on the back burner of coverage despite us being at the beginning of the greatest existential crisis life across the planet has ever faced. But Mexico is our neighbor; shouldn’t we know what happened to the victims left behind and discuss what we can do to help them? Where is the curiosity, the articles on suffering? Where are the Americans flying in to save the day? People had little or no time to prepare. When I lived in hurricane country, we had a few days of warning to prepare a week's worth of food and three gallons of water per person daily. With the rapid intensification of cyclonic storms like Hurricane Otis, that may become more difficult, as the Acapulco windstorm laying waste to Mexico’s State of Guerrero clearly shows.This diary is visual in order to get the attention of the media and shame them toward reporting on a climate crisis; it is necessary to show the destruction and suffering. Authorities have no way of moving the dead. The morgues are full, no electricity or communications, and roads are blocked with mounds of debris everywhere. Bodies are still being pulled out of the ocean. Relatives and neighbors are placing bodies in garbage bags and covering them to minimize the stench of the decay, Acapulco needs help, not hype by konina.There is a post currently on the recommended (trending?) list depicting an apocalyptic picture of Acapulco after the city was ravaged by hurricane Otis. There are two problems with this post. First, it lacks action links. If you are anywhere in Mexico, contact the local collection center. Links to collection center locations. How can you help if you cannot donate to one of these centers or get on the ground in the hurricane-stricken area? Donate to Mexican Red Cross. What is the second issue with the post I mentioned? I am one of the people thinking hyperbolic language does not help. The city is not “flattened,” as you can see from many images, there is a lot of damage, especially to the beachfront and harbor area, areas at higher elevation fared much better. The airport is running (not yet 24/7 — tower was damaged) with aid coming in and rescue flights going out. The total death toll is 40+ with 30+ unaccounted for, but there are no bodies decomposing in the streets. I think it’s better to donate some money to the victims of Otis than to light your hair on fire and run around. Hard to Find the Words as a Science Fiction Movie Hurricane Assaults Acapulco by Rule of Claw. I am not going to mince, nor overuse words on this subject. I don’t quite know what to make of this. This is the sort of thing that I would watch in a horror or science fiction movie hurricane. If we are going to look at the context of rapid intensification, we need to start with the fact that to qualify as rapid, a hurricane must gain 35 m.p.h. of sustained wind speed in 24 hours. Otis gained 115 m.p.h. and did it in 12 hours. We don't talk about Otis...? by Sidof79. I get we have had a busy week. There was a mass shooting or two, and we still haven’t caught one of the guys. The GOP elected a Christofascist to lead the House of Reps, meaning everyone needs to buy stock in unblended fabric manufacturers. World War III seems imminent. I suppose it’s understandable that nobody is talking about Otis. Hurricane Otis kills at least 27 in Mexico: T​ens of thousands of families sought refuge in shelters, parts of Acapulco were left in ruin and at least 27 people were dead. But the full scope of damage and injuries still remained unclear. Otis left Acapulco, a popular resort town, cut off from the rest of the country. Landslides and downed trees blocked roads, and phone service and other utilities were knocked out. O​n Thursday, a portion of the main highway was reopened and some utilities were being restored. But much of the city of 1 million people remained without power. Good News After Bad: 'BradCast' 10/26/2023 by TheBradBlog. Good news for striking autoworkers, as the United Auto Workers union announced on Wednesday night that they reached a tentative agreement with Ford. The new four-year contract, if approved by workers, will boost base pay by at least 25%, increase starting hourly wages to $28/hour and includes a myriad of other benefits sought by the labor union. It is hoped that the agreement will also pressure management for a similar contract at the other two "Big Three" automakers, G.M. and Stellantis, where the UAW also began its walk-outs about six weeks ago. Chalk up yet another in a series of very big wins for organized labor over the past year! Finally, both good news and bad, as usual, with Desi Doyen in our latest Green News Report. She has more on Hurricane Otis; more on our new climate denying U.S. House Speaker; More on Big Oil doubling down before the bottom falls out for industry; an encouraging projection from a normally very conservative international body for the beginning of the end of fossil fuels. Después de la tormenta by ontheleftcoast. The 3rd major hurricane to strike Mexico’s Pacific coast this month is gone. As of this morning Otis isn’t even a tropical depression. But since the 11th two Cat 4 storms (both of which fortunately weakened before landfall) struck Puerta Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas on the 21st. Then nature balanced the scales and took a Cat 1 storm and turned into a Cat 5 monster that plowed into a town of a million people unaware of what was coming. And in case you’re wondering, the Pacific hurricane season runs until November 30th. We’re likely to get hit again. A full list of the fatalities and damages from Hurricane Otis aren’t going to be known for some time. Infrastructure like power lines, roads, and more are heavily damaged. CFE, the national power company, reported that nearly 60 high voltage transmission towers (as shown here) near Acapulco are down. ACTION Triage is now our best Climate Strategy by Blue Notes. I believe we’ve now entered that catastrophic phase of climate disruption which means it may also be time to put our eco-optimism and faith in green tech solutions aside and adopt the attitude and practice of doctors and medical workers on the frontlines of today’s major and horrific wars in Europe and the Middle East, that being Triage, evaluating who and what we can save while there’s still time to act. As I recently wrote in The Progressive magazine’s special fall climate issue: Climate scientists studying ice core samples in Antarctica dating back 800,000 years realized that while we had long thought of geological climate change as being like a thermostat happening gradually over centuries and eons, more recent science has shown it’s more like a light switch that can change everything in a few decades. [Note: The climate strike action began at San Francisco City Hall in 2019. The following entries are excerpts from “letters” that were issued each week of the action. Although the strike was focused on San Francisco, many of the same issues affect countless U.S. cities.] RCP8.5 -- Strike for the Planet week 117 by birches. This week’s topic is: RCP8.5. The IPCC stands for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and is part of the UN’s mission. The IPCC was set up in 1988, and published assessments in 1990 with a supplement in 1992 , 1995 , 2001 , 2007 , and 2014. The Sixth Assessment Report [came] out in 2022. The IPCC does not do original research; it is an organization that gathers published sources to give governmental and NGO actors information on the current, most conservative scientific consensus. If you’re paying any attention to the environmental situation, you are likely hearing IPCC report information. Unfortunately, the information presented in the IPCC reports is both outdated by the time an assessment is released and very conservative in terms of timelines, amounts, and impacts. We are on the IPCC’s worst-case climate trajectory. IPCC RCP8.5 projection (Representative Concentration Pathway) is the “worst case” scenario. It is also the scenario closest in agreement with current total cumulative CO 2 emissions, making it the most likely outcome in the next few decades. Recipe For Disaster -- Strike for the Planet week 116 by birches. San Francisco is behind on everything. Blackwater recycling? The state’s been pushing it and SF isn’t doing it. Moving to all electric? Berkeley did it first and only then did SF sort of follow behind, and only after massive shaming from the SF environmental community. A locally controlled grid? Despite being a goal for decades it is still a pipe dream. Even our most touted environmental efforts are more likely to have happened by mistake. Which means things will get ugly real soon. Inaction and inadequate action cause disasters that generate news stories. Do you want a preview of what the reporting of a preventable catastrophe in SF will look like? Let’s use a Florida news article, with appropriate substitutions, to get a glimpse of your potential future press. Anything added or altered from the original article is in brackets. You Can't See A Forest Without Trees -- Strike for the Planet week 115 by birches. This week’s topic: You Can’t See A Forest Without Trees. SF needs to be planting more trees now! Why? Trees are a Racial Justice issueFormerly redlined neighborhoods are hotter than non-redlined neighborhoods. There’s a direct correlation between 1930s federal government Neighborhood Ratings and average neighborhood temperatures, with D (“Hazardous” or redlined) and C (“Definitely Declining”) neighborhoods up to 20° F hotter than B (“Still Desirable”) and A (“Best”) neighborhoods. Cities in the west, such as San Francisco, have the largest temperature differentials among such neighborhoods, and the redlined/D areas in San Francisco (and many of the C neighborhoods as well) remain predominantly poorer and communities of color. What did redlining do to cause this neighborhood temperature differential? It kept trees out of the neighborhoods where poor and BIPOC people were allowed to live. This tree disparity is nationwide, enormous, and growing larger. In SF, the correlation between neighborhoods that were labeled D and C and lack of trees is clear and deadly. Why deadly? If You Only Had The Nerve -- Strike for the Planet week 114 by birches.This week’s topic: If You Only Had The Nerve. To act in this existential crisis where our continued existence is in question. Current problems are already bigger than anything we as a species have ever faced. Ever. As a species. There are no precedents to this situation (unless you’re a dinosaur) so there are no political models to follow. To do your job now requires inventiveness, ingenuity, a spine, and an understanding that your political future isn’t worth a hill of beans because the future of the entire species is in doubt. Action is vital, and the actions needed are big, immediate, and very different from the politics of even 2 years ago. So that’s it. Your job is to ensure our survival, by hook or by crook, in any way possible. We’re in a Climate Emergency, and that means acting like we’re in an emergency, as opposed to acting like it’s business as usual, rah rah the rich. Megadrought! The Musical -- Strike for the Planet week 113 by birches. Opening Number and intro to the World of the Play — it’s hot and dry out here. How (you might ask if you weren’t paying attention during the prior 112 weeks of this strike) am I able to state categorically and with absolute assurance that we’re in a megadrought right now? Because it’s science! Cause and effect, testable hypotheses, multiple evidence strands…. You know, I think it’s time for the “I Want” number and to meet our hero/ine. What does San Francisco want? Poor little rich San Francisco, it just wants to keep on keeping on, making money for billionaires and their appendages while gutting housing, the commons, the neighborhoods and working and middle classes, underfunding transit and public schools, and destroying the regional watershed.3 So what is getting in the way of these noble goals?4 The Dying Commons -- Strike for the Planet week 112 by birches. This week’s topic: The Dying CommonsWait, what are the commons? They are resources, forms of wealth, or knowledge that belong to all, not to any one person or entity, and are accessible to all. They are community resources, natural or created, that cannot be owned. For example, the atmosphere is part of the commons; an individual is not. The hydrosphere is part of the commons; DNA is not. The plays of Aphra Behn are part of the commons4; the plays of Dominique Morisseau are not (yet). And the commons are being destroyed? Yup. Forest fires to sea snot, solid air to ecosystem rape, the commons are being ground up everywhere. It’s so common, it’s commonplace. Okay, but we aren’t in nature — we live in a city. The commons are in cities, too, and not only in parks. In addition to the nature stuff, urban commons include things with use value and low maintenance costs, where the needs and desires of citizens drive the use (instead of public authorities, private markets, or technologies determining what is available and what is good.) FOOD, AGRICULTURE, GARDENING “6 ways Mushrooms can help save the planet.” Mycelium is the mother of land based life by mikeymikey. A dear friend happened to send me a link to a Ted Talk given by Mycologist Paul Stamets, entitled “6 ways mushrooms can save the world,” which is the sort of thing that can lead to the ‘dangers’ of magic thinking—with the serendipity of “10 ways” vs “6 ways” reaching me within 1 day providing a jumping off point. But in this case there was no cause for concern, as these ‘ways’ were grounded in science and experimentation and in no way related to mushrooms dancing to the “Nutcracker” in Fantasia.” So when I went to view ‘6 ways’, the solutions presented by our advancing understanding of ‘mycelium’, provided a comforting bath of reassurance and invigorating rinse off of encouragement. These instantly reestablished my inner equilibrium, as well as verifying deeply held convictions about the current and ongoing revelatory rethinking of our ‘understanding’ of life. Through a veritable ‘pileup’ of epiphanies, our comprehension of life is being completely reshaped from the ground up as we shake off firmly held beliefs colored by our species ego and prejudicial thinking. It can be easy to forget in the face of the glamour of technological innovation, that our knowledge in other fields is morphing every bit as dramatically, with profound results, implications and most importantly, applications! Daff bulbs Saturday Morning Garden Blog Vol. 19.43 - Spring Forward! It's Bulb Season by Merry Light. By now there are big bags of spring bulbs in every nursery and big box hardware store across the country, with those beautiful photos on the front promising a colorful spring. It’s also time to get a bag of vermiculite to store the summer bulbs for the winter. Might as well do it all at once! I love planting bulbs in the fall and then forgetting where I put them, until they surprise me in the spring when they pop up unexpectedly in different spots in the garden. Some are so early you could miss them if the garden had a lot of bracken, as I tend to do, or if it’s been snowing and you don’t trek out there for a few days. There are the midsummer bulbs, such as lilies, that are so prolific that if you miss one tiny bulb when digging them up, you are overrun with them in two years. So pretty! One of my favorite flowers. So let’s plant some bulbs! Bear with me, I’ve got a lot. WATER & INFRASTRUCTURE Tribal, fishing and conservation groups file comments on 2023 California Water Plan Update by Dan Bacher. As a closure of salmon fishing on the state’s ocean waters and rivers continues to devastate fishing communities around California, a coalition of Tribal, fishing, and conservation organizations this week submitted official comments on the Department of Water Resources (DWR) on its 2023 Update of the California Water Plan (2023 Plan Update). The coalition includes the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the River, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Golden State Salmon Association, Restore the Delta, Institute for Fisheries Resources, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Save California Salmon, Sierra Club California, and Tuolumne River Trust. “DWR needs to drastically amend the 2023 Plan Update to bring water supplies and demands into balance to truly achieve equity for all, to strengthen watershed resilience, and create a plan for addressing climate urgency,” according to the comments. “The revised Plan Update 2023 must eliminate problematic policy proposals that undermine these goals such as the Delta Conveyance Project, Sites Reservoir, and the Voluntary Agreements and support the long-overdue update process of the Bay-Delta Plan.” MISCELLANY Energy (and Other) Events Monthly - November 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 until September 2020 and earlier for a few years in the 1990s. 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. “Community Fridges” Address Hunger, Climate Change, and Human Dignity by solarman55. When I started reading this I immediately wondered how they’re getting power. Turns out some are solar powered. All, as the article notes, reduce methane emissions from landfills. Read and enjoy. And get motivated to take your own actions. Excerpt from start of the article: Dan Zauderer and his in-laws had eaten plenty of pizza one evening in early October, and they still had seven slices left. What to do? “Well, we could just chuck it,” Zauderer thought. Instead, he and his fiancée wrapped the slices in plastic wrap, slapped labels on them with the date, and walked the leftovers a little more than a block down the road to a refrigerator standing along 92nd Avenue in New York City’s Upper East Side. That fridge is one among many “community fridges” across the country that volunteers stock with free food—prepared meals, leftovers, and you name it. Zauderer had helped set a network up in New York City during the pandemic as a way to reduce waste and fight hunger. The idea came about when he was a middle school teacher looking to provide short-term help to students whose families couldn’t afford food. A BETTER HUMAN STORY # 2: The Fate of Human Civilization by Andy Schmookler. I think a lot about the fate of human civilization these days. The subject worries me because, after a half-century of studying the destructive forces at work in the systems of civilization, my gut feeling is that it is no better than a toss-up whether, in the coming not-so-many-generations, humankind will get its act together well enough to prevent the human story culminating in some self-inflicted catastrophe. And I worry because it doesn’t seem that humankind, taken as a whole, is giving this uncertainty about the human future – which seems as consequential as anything could possibly be — nearly the kind of attention it deserves. (“Deserves”—when so much of what we hold sacred is under serious threat — from human well-being, to the beauties of this living planet, to our aspirations to have a human world ruled by Justice and the spirit of “Peace on Earth” and “Goodwill Toward Men”). Humans Worry Wrong: Compare Death Tolls & Take the Poll by CorpFlunky. Americans worry a lot, often about the wrong things. One rational way to judge the validity of worries objectively is to consider how often they are fatal. Economic concerns, which are top for Republicans, are not fatal for most people, but they are often fatal among the millions of ‘food insecure’ Americans. Estimates vary, but around 20,000 Americans die annually due to malnutrition, mostly poor, elderly people who do not eat enough healthy fresh food. This real economic concern is directly addressed through the federal program behind SNAP & nutrition assistance. Democrats support this program, but Republicans often do not. Worrying about economic concerns that are merely comfort issues for you, but not worrying about economic concerns that are fatal for others is unethical. Environmental Justice Q & A with Courage California’s Angela Chavez by Alan Kandel. AC: Communities on the frontlines of climate change – low-income communities and communities of color – are severely impacted because they are more likely to live in areas with oil wells, warehouses, and other sources of pollution; water, air, and land. This year our sister organization, Courage California Institute (CCI), conducted statewide polling to learn about the diverse experiences and views Californians have with climate change and found that these frontline communities have a higher belief in climate change, have noticed the effects become more severe, and see the effects more broadly, especially in pollution and health. Due to varying factors, Californians in these communities are more likely to hold jobs where they’d be exposed to the elements. For example, Latinx residents make up 39.4% of the California population, but make up 92% of farm workers here, according to the California Latino Legislative Caucus. They are more likely to experience heat stroke and other heat illnesses on the job, and with climate change, every summer gets hotter. Lastly, frontline communities are rarely at the table when the decisions are made that impact them most, including when elected leaders approve harmful projects despite community objections and demands. Marc Andreessen There is No "Tech" to be Optimistic About by angryea. It looks like we are going to do another round of “tech will save us, if you let rich people do what they want!” nonsense, and it is all so, so tiresome. The latest trigger for this is Marc Andreessen’s five thousand word Reader’s Digest version of Atlas Shrugged Techno Optimist Manifesto. It is nothing beyond the predictable middle-aged venture capital bros insisting that the last thirty years, the last three hundred years, really, haven’t actually happened. For those who don’t know, Andreessen wrote the Netscape browser and turned that bit of first to the market text parsing into a venture capital firm that made its money off investments in terrible companies like Facebook. Andreessen’s complaint, such as it is, is that the good forces of technology are being held back by its enemies, such as “trust and safety”, “academics”, (in the ivory tower, of course. One wonder if academics in their natural habitat of crappy cinderblock buildings are a threat, or if they only become dangerous after they have built their first tower out of ivory), and “tech ethics”. The whole thing is a childish rant (he claims he is on the “Hero’s Journey,” for crying out loud. Most fourteen-year-olds would be embarrassed by this tripe.) devoted to the idea that everything would be fine if society would just let people like him do what they want. It is a bog-standard libertarian fantasy, in other words, written in prose that most high schoolers would be ashamed to show their friends in the lunch-time cafeteria. Earth Matters: Administration celebrates launch of hydrogen hubs, but critics are seriously unhappy by Meteor Blades. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Friday announced her department’s seven choices for Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs. The government is investing $7 billion in the hubs to leverage a total of $50 billion in public-private partnerships. That is meant to deliver a hefty giddy-up to a nascent industry the administration says will ultimately employ tens of thousands of workers and be of major assistance in reaching net zero carbon emissions. In a statement, the White House said, “Collectively, the hubs aim to produce more than three million metric tons of clean hydrogen per year, thereby achieving nearly one third of the 2030 U.S. clean hydrogen production goal. Together, the seven Hydrogen Hubs will eliminate 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from end uses each year—an amount roughly equivalent to combined annual emissions of over 5.5 million gasoline-powered cars. The nearly $50 billion investment is one of the largest investments in clean manufacturing and jobs in history.” Another environmental victory, right? A trifecta, in fact: good jobs, a new, specialized clean industry, and less greenhouse gas. Not so fast, say critics, some gentle, some not. Earth Matters: Deforestation rose 4% in 2022; IEA says 50% of new energy will be renewables by 2030 by Meteor Blades. The latest edition of an annual report was published earlier this month by the Forest Declaration Assessment, which tracks pledges of forest conservation made by countries and private companies. The researchers found that 16.3 million acres of forest were cleared worldwide in 2022—an area the size of New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Delaware combined. That’s a 4% increase over the 2018-2020 baseline. And a big disappointment after a slight decrease in 2021. Calling this trajectory “off-track,” the report said the data makes it unlikely that the 145 nations who agreed at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021 to end deforestation across the planet by 2030 will meet that goal. In addition to the overall losses, the report noted that 10.1 million acres of tropical forests were lost, a level 33% higher than what is needed to stop losses by the turn of the decade. Research in 2021 found that tropical deforestation had do RECENT SPOTLIGHTS [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/10/29/2202244/-Weekly-spotlight-on-climate-eco-diaries-10-29-23-Hansen-issues-new-warning-climate-triage 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/