Global heating continues unabated. While decarbonizing our energy sources is certainly important, it is too late to prevent global disaster. Coastal flooding, desertification, wildfires will continue to increase, driving vulnerable populations to migrate and igniting resource wars for fresh water and arable land. It’s already driving migration and violence in the Middle East and Central […]
One of the climate change denialist memes is that, since plants inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen during the day, then increased CO2 will be *good* for trees. Setting aside the facts that increased desertification and increased coastal flooding are decidedly *not* good for trees, a recent study suggests that it more CO2 doesn’t necessarily […]
Another stupid climate change denialist troll trick is to point out that volcanos also emit carbon dioxide and therefore volcanos, not human activity, are the cause of the current climate change crisis. While vulcanism has shaped the climate during earth’s history, it is not a significant contributor today. Human activity-associated CO2 generation dwarfs volcanos. Again, […]
According to legend, King Canute tried to order the tide not to come in. Needless to say, he failed, divine rights of kings nonwithstanding. Back when we lived in North Carolina, we visited the Outer Banks a few times. There were many expensive homes on the shoreline. These were often casualties of hurricanes that would […]
“Using the Joint European Torus (JET) — a huge, donut-shaped machine known as a tokamak — the scientists sustained a record 69 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds, using just 0.2 milligrams of fuel. That’s enough to power roughly 12,000 households for the same amount of time.” Progress, yes, but incremental. “And myriad challenges […]
In my early days of following Angry Bear, there was a climate change denialist troll whose handle was “CoRev.” Most of the stuff CoRev posted was standard denialist fare that had been debunked. At the time, one favorite denialist claim was the “hiatus,” a period between 2001 and 2014 during which warming seemed to “pause.” […]
by David Zetland (originally published at The one-handed economist) Climate loss, grief and migration The climate we grew up with is leaving. International action to slow climate chaos is not really working. National action and market innovations are having some useful impacts, but they are far too few on the mitigation side and far too […]
Lifted from notes from David Zetland’s news letter Interesting Stuff: Climate chaos
Angry Bear Michael Smith’s post The Future of Farming reminded me that food and water supply issues need regular updates and highlighting. This report caught my eye since we here in Boston are experiencing very dry conditions with hot day temps. The U.S. could see a new ‘extreme heat belt’ by 2053: The report, released […]
SCOTUS is moving to limit the power of congressionally legislated Agencies to write Regulations and Rules as delegated by Acts of Congress. The decision forces actions normally taken by empowered legislative Agencies back into Congress where they can be challenged. SCOTUS is picking on the EPA, restricting various regulations and rules it dislikes using the […]