1,080 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2023
    1. Cap top 20% of energy users to reduce carbon emissions
      • Title
        • Cap top 20% of energy users to reduce carbon emissions
      • Publication

      • Summary -Consumers in the richer, developed nations will have to accept restrictions on their energy use

        • if international climate change targets are to be met, warn researchers.
        • The big challenge is to identify the fairest and most equitable way
        • that governments can curtail energy use,
          • a process known as energy demand reduction. -The research team analyzed several scenarios to identify a potential solution.
    1. Das deutsche Bundeskabinett hat den Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Klimaanpassung beschlossen. Das Gesetz verpflichtet Länder und Kommunen, Anpassungsstrategien zu entwickeln. Der Bund selbst muss bis 2024 eine Vorsorgestrategie mit konkreten nachprüfbaren Kennzahlen vorlegen. Die Kosten für die Anpassung bei Bund und Ländern werden bis 2030 auf 55 Milliarden Euro geschätzt. Die Verteilung der Kosten ist noch unklar. Entsiegelungsvorschriften fehlen.

      https://taz.de/Gesetz-fuer-Anpassung-an-den-Klimawandel/!5943821/

    1. First and foremost, where will a largely desert country source the water for electrolysis? Secondly, will Namibia export only hydrogen, ammonia, or some of the industrial products made with the green inputs? It would be advantageous for Namibia to develop a heavy-chemicals and iron-smelting industry. But from Germany’s point of view, that might well defeat the object, which is precisely to provide affordable green energy with which to keep industrial jobs in Europe.

      This is an interesting point - shipping the gas vs shipping the higher value products enabled by the gas

    1. Those improvements better come quick.
      • Overall demand for meat is expected to jump more than 70 percent by 2050
      • livestock farming currently represents about 15 percent of all current human greenhouse gas emissions (UN FAO).
      • To reduce meat consumption now requires a familiar dual approach:
        • provide alternatives available now
          • plant proteins are still the most viable alternative
        • degrowth
          • reduce our meat consumption rather than eliminate it entirely,
    1. Das Umweltbundesamt hat festgestellt, dass Österreich seine Klimaziele bis 2030 um 13% vor fehlen wird, wenn die bis einschließlich 2021 geschlossenen Gesetze umgesetzt werden. Auch wenn die Gesetze umgesetzt werden die 20 22 noch beschlossen oder vorbereitet wurden, werden die Emissionen 2030 über 35 Millionen Tonnen CO2 äquivalente betragen. Die Zahlen sind Bestandteile des aktualisierten nationalen Energie und klimaplans, den Österreich der EU-Kommission vorlegen muss. https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000177366/neue-zahlen-oesterreichs-klimapolitik-fehlen-noch-13-prozent

    1. Die taz fasst Grundinformationen zum deutschen Gebäudeenergiegesetz zusammen, das auch einer Entscheidung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts erst nach der Sommerpause im Bundestag verabschiedet werden kann. Die FDP hat so viele ausnahmeregeln durchgesetzt, dass ich die Pariser Klimaziele mit diesem heizungsgesetz voraussichtlich nicht werden halten lassen. Der FDP Politiker Frank schaeffler arbeitet weiterhin gegen das Gesetz.

      https://taz.de/Heizungsstreit-geht-weiter/!5943079/

    1. Eine vom bundesumweltamt in Auftrag gegebene Studie ergibt, dass nur eine wesentlich schnellere dekarbonisierung des gebäudesektors, als sie das zusätzlich noch verwässerte heizungsgesetz vorsieht, das Erreichen der deutschen Klimaziele bis 2030 sicherstellt. Außer der Umrüstung der Heizung ist auch ein Verzicht auf konventionellen n Beton notwendig. https://view.angebote.spiegel.de/?qs=08c03daf30ebc9f7b7695c3189365e936083c80faf5f6d352fed9b4fbd1b3332f4ad7cbfa495b3d420eb8b39b899ac4ce134ca891070033d4d19a628d5b51d28d866c70cec12bab5629e51c2c3ce4f48

    1. Waldbrände haben in Kanada 8 Millionen Hektar vernichtet. Die Folgen für die kanadische Wirtschaft (u.a. für die Holz-, Bau- und Tourismusbranche) lassen sich noch nicht genau berechnen; Fachleute rechnen mit 0,3-0,6% weniger Wirtschaftswachstum. Älteren Modellierungen zufolge wird die globale Erhitzung in Kanada bis 2050 500.000 Arbeitsplätze vernichten. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/03/business/economy/canada-wildfires-economy.html

    1. Vom nächsten Jahr an müssen in der EU börsennotierte Unternehmen und Unternehmen ab einer bestimmten Größe ausgehend von Key Performance Indicators über ihren Dekarbonisierungspfad und die Nachhaltigkeit der eigenen Tätigkeit berichten. Die Kennzahlen haben Folgen für die Finanzierung der Unternehmen durch Kreditgeber. Interview mit der Beraterin Katharina Schönauer von der KPMG. https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000177713/kpmg-beraterin-schoenauer-wir-hoffen-dass-durch-transparenz-ein-sog-entsteht

    1. 4-Jul-2023 — Transcript is translated from German by YouTube.

      Description (translated from German):

      The problem of a Bavarian farmer: his hops are thirsty and the energy transition is progressing too slowly. The solution: a solar system that provides shade over the fields - and a sustainable second source of income.

      • Title
        • Climate Majority Project
          • Helps projects to grow, get funding, and connect as many willing hands as possible
    1. Der britische Minister für internationale Umweltangelegenheiten ist zurückgetreten. In seinem Rücktrittsschreiben wirft er Premierminister Sunak vor, an Umweltfragen uninteressiert zu sein und die internationale Führungsposition Großbritanniens in der Umwelt- und Naturschutzpolitik aufgegeben zu haben.

      https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/30/zac-goldsmith-resignation-letter-in-full

    1. Vor der Pariser Konferenz zur Klimafinanzierung, bei der vor allem die sogenannte Bridgetown Agenda diskutiert werden soll, begründet Avinash Persaud, ein Berater der Premierministerin von Barbados, die Forderungen nach radikaler Veränderung und Aufstockung der Klimafinanzierung. Die Summen, die der globale Süden für klimaanpassung und Klimaschutz erhält, müssen potenziert werden, damit diese Länder der Klimakatastrophe wirksam begegnen können. Nicholas Stern und Vera Songwe beziffern den jährlichen klimafinanzbedarf des globalen Südens auf Billionen Dollar, etwa die Summe, die zurzeit für fossile Energien ausgegeben wird. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/18/countries-are-drowning-climate-expert-calls-for-urgent-rethink-on-scale-of-aid-for-developing-worldexpert:

    1. Beim Pariser Klima-Finanzgipfel wurden nur wenige Entlastungen für den globalen Süden beschlossen worden. Die Weltbank hat 100 Milliarden Dollar Finanzierung pro Jahr zugesagt. Einige Staaten bemühen sich um internationale Steuern zur Finanzierung von Anpassung und Klimaschutz. Ein Durchbruch bei der Verschuldung wurde nicht erreicht. In Einzelfällen wird auf die Rückzahlung von Schulden verzichtet. Ein Verzicht auf fossile Energien wurde nicht diskutiert.

      https://www.repubblica.it/green-and-blue/2023/06/23/news/cambiamento_climatico_e_poverta_alla_ricerca_di_un_nuovo_sistema_finanziario_macron_ci_prova-405523841/

    1. Hintergrundinformationen zum Pariser Gipfel zur Klimafinanzierung, der in dieser Woche stattfinden wird. Wichtig ist vor allem, ob bei dieser Konferenz tatsächlich Schritte in Richtung auf eine Reform der Finanzierung der Länder des globalen Südens unternommen werden, wozu ein Schuldenerlass und eine Veränderung von Kreditvergabe ebenso gehören wie eine neue Definition der Rollen der Weltbank und des internationalen Währungsfonds.

      https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/17/paris-talks-focus-funding-poor-countries-tackle-climate-crisis

    1. Vor dem Klimafinanz Gipfel in Paris ruft Kristalina Georgieva, Chefin des internationalen Währungsfonds, dazu aufgerufen, die Kreditbedingungen für Länder des globalen Südens, die von der Klimakrise betroffen sind, zu verbessern. Eines wichtiges Element seien Klima-Swaps, bei denen ein Teil von Zinsen oder Rückzahlungen für Maßnahmen gegen die Klimakrise verwendet wird. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/20/climate-crisis-hit-poor-countries-should-have-debt-relief-says-imf-chief

    1. Für eine neue Studie wurden die Klagen gegen climate washing, also gegen falsche Angaben von Unternehmen und Organisationen über die von ihnen verursachten Emissionen, erfasst. Global haben diese Prozesse in den letzten Jahren enorm zugenommen, wobei die Zahl der Prozesse etwa zum Ende der Amtszeit von Donald Trump in den USA am schnellsten wuchs. Die Verurteilungen, zu denen es bereits gekommen ist, führen aufgrund der mit ihnen verbundenen Kosten zu Veränderungen bei den Unternehmen.

      https://www.liberation.fr/environnement/climat/de-plus-en-plus-de-plaintes-contres-des-entreprises-et-des-gouvernements-pour-leurs-engagements-climatiques-trompeurs-ou-insuffisants-20230629_B447RVPNDFADBDY44XDJR2KDDI/

  2. Jun 2023
    1. Das von der britischen Regierung selbst eingesetzte Climate Change Committee hat die Klimapolitik Großbritanniens als völlig unzureichend kritisiert. Das Land habe seine führende Position bei der Dekarbonisierung verloren und handele in einigen Bereichen (z.B. Verkehr, Heizungen, Dekarbonisierung der Industrie, Propagierung einer emissionsarmen Lebensweise) in einer völlig inakzeptablen Weise.

      https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/28/uk-has-made-no-progress-on-climate-plan-say-governments-own-advisers

      Bericht des Climate Change Committees: https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/2023-progress-report-to-parliament/

    1. Die Klimawandel-Leugnung verlagert sich in konservativen Medien zunehmend vom evidence scepticism, der die Tatsache der menschlich verursachten globalen Erhitzung in Frage stellt, zum response scepticism, der die soziale Verträglichkeit der Maßnahmen gegen die Klimakrise bezweifelt. In den Mainstream-Medien sind Klimawandel-Leugnung und false bias*, die neutrale Gegenüberstellung wissenschaftlicher und klimaskeptischer Positionen, in den letzten Jahren stark zurückgegangen Der Standard stellt zusammenfassend wissenschaftliche Arbeiten zur Klimawandel-Leugnung in Massenmedien dar.

      https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000175977/die-leugnung-des-klimawandels-in-den-medien-ging-stark-zurueck

    1. This a summary of the conference, and the key takeaways for me are:

      • lack of local adoption: **climate alerts and news in general is often in English, and indexes assume a European norm, so for a hotter place it's hard to tell when things are much worse than normal. A as result they're not used so much,
      • climate killing the least vulnerable water bornes diseases are increased by flooding, and the leading cause of child deaths ends up being amplified
      • downscaled climate models are helpful not not widely available there is a lack of infra to use them
    2. Dr Sokhna Thiam, from the African Population and Health Research Center in Nairobi, Kenya, added that water-borne enteric diseases are among the “primary expected health impacts” of climate change.

      Basically climate changes makes the leading cause of child deaths much worse

    1. Die FDP vertritt bekannte Positionen der Gegner wirksamen Klimaschutzes. Sie sind inspieriert von libertärer Propaganda, wie sie die Koch-Brüder und andere in den USA sehr wirkungsvoll betrieben haben. Besonders der FDP-Politiker Frank Schäffler, der mitentscheidend für die Blockade des deutschen Heizungsgesetzes war, gehört zu einem Netzwerk, das mit den US-Netzwerken zur Verhinderung von Klimaschutz kooperiert und ähnliche Finanziers hat. Christian Stöcker stellt die Hintergründe in diesem Spiegelartikel dar.

      https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/klimaschutz-die-heimlichen-herrscher-der-fpd-kolumne-a-d0defee9-85ea-4cdb-adac-93e49e3539de

    1. Die deutsche Bundesregierung hat das abgeschwächte Klimaschutzgesetz beschlossen, über das nun der Bundestag befinden muss. In dem Gesetz geht man vor allem auf Druck der FDP von den verpflichtenden Zielen für einzelne Sektoren, etwa den Verkehr, ab. Die Sektorziele waren bei Verkehr und Wohnen bisher nie erreicht worden. Außer bei der Verantwortung der einzelnen Ministerien für Emissionsreduktionen gibt es auch laxere Regeln beim Monitoring und den vorgeschriebenen Reaktionen auf Unterschreitung von festgesetzten Zielen. https://taz.de/Beschluss-des-Kabinetts/!5939063/

    1. Bei der Frühjahrstagung der Weltbank und des internationalen Währungsfonds ist die Klimakrise ein zentrales Thema. Die Reformvorschläge vor allem für die Weltbank gehen voraussichtlich nicht weit genug, um ärmeren Ländern einen wirksamen Kampf gegen die globale Erhitzung zu erlauben. https://taz.de/IWF-und-Weltbank-auf-Fruehjahrstagung/!5924846/

    1. Die britische Energy Transition Commission hat errechnet, dass jährlich 130 Milliarden Dollar nötig sind, um die Abholzung der am meisten bedrohten Regenwälder wirksam zu stoppen - zusätzlich zu wirksamen Verboten. Zur Zeit werden aber nur 2-3 Milliarden Dollar dazu ausgegeben. Das Geld ist vor allem für wirtschaftliche Alternativen nötig und konkrete z.T durch CO2-Steuern aufgebracht werden. Auf Dauer würde ein wirksamer Waldschutz, der nötig ist, um die Erhitzung der Erde zu stoppen, eher eine Billion Dollar erfordern. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/19/dont-fool-yourself-billions-more-needed-to-protect-tropical-forests-warns-new-report-aoe

    1. For now, we haven’t included emissions relating to loans and investments in our Scope 3 carbon footprint breakdown as these are worked out separately with the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF). We were the first UK digital bank to join PCAF, which asks members to calculate emissions from loans and investments by following industry best practice

      so this something like induced carbon emissions from the activity enabled by the investment?

    1. In vielen Ländern, außer in Deutschland unter anderem in Spanien und in Großbritannien, werden Meteorologen, die über das zunehmend wärmere Wetter und seine Folgen und Ursachen berichten, Opfer von Hass in sozialen Medien, der bis zu Morddrohungen gehen kann. https://taz.de/Drohungen-gegen-Meteorologinnen/!5937563/

    1. China’s power market remains primarily coal-fueled. Coal made up 61% of electricity generation in 2022, while wind and solar power – despite making up a growing proportion of power capacity – accounted for only 14% of generation.

      Even with all the massive growth in solar, renewables make up only about a 6th of the grid generation

    1. The average price for a solar panel delivered in the United States was 38 cents per watt as of June 7, which is double the global average, according to BloombergNEF and PV InfoLink. The U.S. price has been about the same, going up or down just a penny or two, since last fall.

      Wow, so much more?!

    1. This move was heavily pushed for by the three-party coalition’s smallest member, the Free Democrats who are in charge of the transport ministry. This means if a target in one sector such as industry, transport, or buildings is missed, another sector can compensate for it.

      Everything I read about the FDP basically seems like they're absolute wreckers when it comes to climate Actiom, just so rich people can keep driving their petrol powered porches.

    1. Im ersten Jahr nach der Invasion der Ukraine im Februar 2022 hat Großbritannien für 19,3 Milliarden Pfund Öl und Gas aus anderen autoritären Petrostaaten als Russland bezogen. Eine Analyse von Desmog ergibt, dass Großbritannien in diesem Jahr für 125,7 Milliarden Pfund fossile Brennstoffe importiert und damit zum ersten Mal die 100-Milliarden-Grenze überschritten hat, obwohl eine Reduktion des Verbrauchs von Öl und Gas dringend nötig ist. Trotz des Embargos verkaufte auch Russland eine Rekordmenge an Öl in diesem Jahr. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/09/193bn-of-fossil-fuels-imported-by-uk-from-authoritarian-states-in-year-since-ukraine-war

    1. Ultimately, I’m reminded of the umbrella organisation Stop Climate Chaos that formed in 2005. By 2009, all that its diverse membership could agree on (and this after much negotiation) was a march called the Wave which happened in December to coincide with the UN climate summit in Copenhagen. The numbers on that march? In the same ballpark as the Big One: about 50,000 people. And after the Wave there was only a trickle, for many years.

      What happened to these and why? my guess is that it was hard to breakthrough to the broader public on a complex long-term topic.

    1. ble to pay $170tn in climate reparations by 2050 to ensure targets to curtail climate breakdown are met, a new study calculates.

      Eine neue Studie hat erstmals berechtigt, wieviele Klima-Reparationen die Industrieländer, die die meisten Emissionen verursacht haben, an Staaten des globalen Südens bezahlen müssten. In der Summe sind es 170 Billionen US-Dollar. Berechnet wird, welchen wirtschaftlichen Verlust ärmere Länder ausgleichen müssen, weil ihnen fossile Energien nicht mehr zur Verfügung stehen. Daei wird der Verbrauch seit 1060 zugrundegelegt. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/05/climate-change-carbon-budget-emissions-payment-usa-uk-germany

    1. it is beyond an emergency it's the biggest thing we need to do today it's bigger than climate change that the former Chief business Officer 00:01:04 of Google X an AI expert and best-selling author he's on a mission to save the world from AI before it's too late
      • claim
      • AI dilemma is bigger problem than climate change
  3. crsreports.congress.gov crsreports.congress.gov
    1. Is That Climate Change? The Science of Extreme Event Attribution

      Congressional Research Service R47583 June 1, 2023

  4. May 2023
    1. This is how wealthy individuals or corporations translate their economic power into political and cultural power
      • This is how wealthy individuals or corporations
        • translate their economic power
        • into political and cultural power
      • quote
    2. Climate Denialism funding

    1. Auf Twitter werden seriöse Limawissenschaftler:innen gezielt angegriffen und diffamiert, oft von bezahlten und deshalb höher getränkten Accounts aus. Elon Musk hat die Bemühungen, vertrauenswürdige Inhalte erkennbar zu machen, gestoppt und die Zuständigen entlassen. Der Guardian hat bedienende Wissenschaftler:innen Interviewt und berichtet über eine Global Witness-Studie.

  5. Apr 2023
    1. Click on any folder to view all translated documents in that language or request a new language below!

      Climate Cardinals

    1. Bericht von Bloomberg Green über grüne Investitionen von Venture-Kapitalisten. Im Vordergrund stehen - oft mit öffentlicher Beteiligung - nicht mehr die schon eingeführten Technologien zur Energieerzeugung sondern Elektrifizierung neuer Bereiche und auch das Speichern von CO2. 2022 würden ca. 70 Milliarden USD venture Capital und insgesamt 652 Milliarden in Climate Tech investiert. Der International Renewable Energy Agency zufolge müssen sich die Investitionen jährlich vervierfachen. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-climate-tech-startups-where-to-invest/?srnd=green&leadSource=uverify%20wall

    1. Here I estimate the global inequality of individual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between 1990 and 2019 using a newly assembled dataset of income and wealth inequality, environmental input-output tables and a framework differentiating emissions from consumption and investments.
    1. We connect you with grassroots climate change solutions.
    1. The most efficient route toward enacting such policy, the authors argue, lies not in convincing deniers to believe in climate change but in galvanizing those who already do.
    2. In a 2015 study published in PLOS One, Maibach and colleagues found that telling people that experts agreed on climate change increased the chances that those individuals would accept that climate change was happening, was human-caused, and presented a real threat. Extra encouraging: That strategy was also particularly influential on Republicans, though liberals might also need a nudge.
    3. For many skeptics, Neha Thirani Bagri has written in Quartz, delineating the myriad potential harms of unmitigated climate change is not an effective strategy. Instead, it can be more productive to illustrate the potential benefits that mitigation may carry. She writes:A comprehensive study published in 2015 in Nature surveyed 6,000 people across 24 countries and found that emphasizing the shared benefits of climate change was an effective way of motivating people to take action — even if they initially identified as deniers. For example, people were more likely to take steps to mitigate climate change if they believe that it will produce economic and scientific development. Most importantly, these results were true across political ideology, age, and gender.
    4. research has found that conservatives are more likely to support a pro-environmental agenda when presented with messages containing themes of patriotism and defending the purity of nature.
    5. the best predictor of whether we agree with the science is simply where we fall on the political spectrum.

      Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist at Texas Tech University

      the referent "the science" is "the [climate] science" in this context

    1. According to the researchers, proximity was tied to certainty. The farther away a climate-related event was perceived to be, the less certain viewers were that humans were causing it. That made them feel less responsible for doing something about it and “lowered their own perceived ability to influence global climate change outcomes,” says Tsay-Vogel, a COM assistant professor of communication.
    1. Recommended Source

      Under the "More on Philosophies of Copyright" section, I recommended adding the scholarly article by Chinese scholar Peter K. Yu that explains how Chinese philosophy of Yin-Yang can address the contradictions in effecting or eliminating intellectual property laws. One of the contradictions is in intellectual property laws protecting individual rights while challenging sustainability efforts for future generations (as climate change destroys more natural resources.

      Yu, Peter K., Intellectual Property, Asian Philosophy and the Yin-Yang School (November 19, 2015). WIPO Journal, Vol. 7, pp. 1-15, 2015, Texas A&M University School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 16-70, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2693420

      Below is a short excerpt from the article that details Chinese philosophical thought on IP and sustainability:

      "Another area of intellectual property law and policy that has made intergenerational equity questions salient concerns the debates involving intellectual property and sustainable development. Although this mode of development did not garner major international attention until after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the Yin-Yang school of philosophy—which “offers a normative model with balance, harmony, and sustainability as ideals”—provides important insight into sustainable development."

    1. Das Interview mit dem UAE-Ölminister, #Adnoc-Chef und #COP28-Präsidenten Sultan Al Jaber ist ein Paradebeispiel dafür, wie die Fossil-Branche den Kampf gegen die durch sie verursachte Klimakatastrophe hijackt. Dazu gehört es auch - verkörpert durch diesen Minister, der gleichzeitig Firmenchef ist - das hochpolitische Öl- und Gasgeschäft als Business-as-usual auszugeben.

  6. Mar 2023
    1. Title: How Alive Is 1.5? Part One – A Small Budget, Shrinking Fast

      Author: - Kevin Anderson - Dan Calverley

      Key Messages - For a 50:50 chance of staying below 1.5°C, we’re using up the remaining carbon budget at around 1% every month. - Following current national emissions pledges (NDCs) to 2030 puts the temperature commitments within the Paris Agreement beyond reach. - Claims that 1.5°C is now inevitable also assign “well below 2°C” to the scrapheap. - An ‘outside chance’ of not exceeding 1.5°C remains viable, but ongoing fossil fuel use is rapidly undermining it. - The few credible pathways for an outside chance of 1.5°C are not being discussed. This is an active choice by policymakers and experts, who have largely dismissed equity-based social change.

    1. This example illustrates the potential for an unintended consequence to move between categories and demonstrates that there are times when it is necessary to review and reflect. What is considered known and knowable changes over time: has the state of knowledge developed or an unintended consequence been identified?

      // - This is the critical question - Looking at history, can we see predictive patterns - when it makes sense to stop and take questions of the unknown seriously - rather than steaming ahead into uncharted territory? - We might find that society did not follow science's call - for applying the precautionary principle - because profits were just too great - the profit bias at play - profit overrides safety, health and wellbeing

    1. seeded properly

      It is vitally important to know what the Best Grass Seed is for your Region. Cool (Northern) Climate vs. Hot (Southern) Climate Grass Seeds are produced for the best results by specific regions.

    1. the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its “synthesis” report summarizing the findings of its sixth assessment (the last occurred in 2014). The findings are painfully familiar: the world is falling far short of its emission goals, and without rapid reductions this decade, the planet is likely to shoot to beyond 1.5 or even 2 degrees Celsius of warming this century (we are at 1.1 degrees now). We seem to be stuck in a doom-loop news cycle where scientific reports create headlines, and earnest climate commentators insist the new report represents a true “wake-up call” for action, and then . . . emission keep rising. They hit a record once again in 2022. The world of climate politics appears to exist in two completely different worlds. There is a largely liberal and idealist world of climate technocrats where science informs policy, and there is the real, material capitalist world of power.
      • A good observation
        • about the cognitive dissonance of the situation
    2. “I think we’re on the cusp of a massive transformation . . . ultimately, the market is going to make the decisions, not the government.”

      Indeed, - and the market could very well make the decision - that will exceed planetary boundaries - after all, the highest priorities are the lowest cost goods - those already well established in the market place by reliance on fossil fuels, - that can maintain an individual's life

    1. He said he and Arkush “went through every possible objection” and found no legal barrier for prosecutors to raise criminal charges against companies that he said have lied about their knowledge of the danger of burning fossil fuels. “What’s really probably stopping them is that no one has done it before,” Braman said. “The level of culpability and the extent of the harm is so massive that it’s not the kind of thing that prosecutors are used to prosecuting.”
      • Quote
    1. In addition, at least two justices have ties to the oil industry writ large. Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s father was a Shell attorney for nearly three decades and served in leadership positions with the American Petroleum Institute, and Justice Samuel Alito owns stock in ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 (Alito recused himself from the Baltimore case but Barrett did not).
      • The supreme court is tilted in favor of the fossil fuel industry through these appointments.
      • The battle to keep fossil fuel litigation away from state courts and in federal court is big oil's attempt to leverage their conservative allies
      • Title: Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Deaths

      • Author:

        • David Arkush
        • Donald Braman
      • Abstract

      • Paraphrase
        • Prosecutors regularly bring homicide charges against individuals and corporations
          • whose reckless or negligent acts or omissions
          • cause unintentional deaths,
          • as well as those whose misdemeanors or felonies cause unintentional deaths.
        • Fossil fuel companies learned decades ago that
          • what they
            • produced,
            • marketed, and
            • sold
          • would generate “globally catastrophic” climate change.
        • Rather than alert the public and curtail their operations,
          • they worked to
            • deceive the public about these harms and
            • to prevent regulation of their lethal conduct.
        • They funded efforts to
          • call sound science into doubt and
          • to confuse their
            • shareholders,
            • consumers, and
            • regulators.
          • poured money into political campaigns to elect or install
            • judges,
            • legislators, and
            • executive officials hostile to any
              • litigation,
              • regulation, or
              • competition
            • that might limit their profits.
        • Today, the climate change that they forecast
          • has already killed thousands of people in the United States,
          • and it is expected to become increasingly lethal for the foreseeable future.
        • Given the
          • extreme lethality of the conduct and
          • the awareness of the catastrophic risk
            • on the part of fossil fuel companies,
            • should they be charged with homicide?
        • Could they be convicted?
        • In answering these questions,
          • this Article makes several contributions to
            • our understanding of criminal law and
            • the role it could play in combating crimes committed at a massive scale.
        • It describes
          • the doctrinal and
          • social predicates of homicide prosecutions
        • where corporate conduct endangers much or all of the public.
        • It also identifies important advantages of
          • homicide prosecutions
          • relative to
            • civil and
            • regulatory remedies,
          • and it details
            • how and
            • why
          • prosecution for homicide may be the most effective legal remedy available in cases like this.
        • Finally, it argues that,
          • if our criminal legal system cannot focus more intently on climate crimes soon
          • we may leave future generations with significantly less for the law to protect.
    1. // - This article provides an intersectional study of: - climate change, - collective action research - terror management theory / mortality salience - it explains the beneficial impacts of non-rational relational ontology and recommends the use of ritual practices based on this as a way to promote pro-environmental behavior

      //

    2. Knowledge about problems on this scale brings paralyzing guilt, fear, and a sense of helplessness

      // in other words - presenting knowledge alone can trigger a host of counter-productive behaviiors

    1. Ads, Andrew and James discuss where the the climate movement is right now, how deep time plays into the effects we are having on the planet, when good people do bad things because of poor systems and what happens next if 1.5C fails.
      • 21:52 Carbon credits, carbon markets
        • it's a scam designed to perpetuate fossil fuel use, in a phoney war against the climate crisis
        • Offsets were designed to allow polluters to pay others to create schemes that would compensate or "offset" that pollution. The classic example WAS afforestation, the planting of trees that can sequester that carbon.
        • Carbon neutrality comes from this idea that you can keep polluting if you offset it and become "carbon neutral"
        • A company may decarbonize a lot of their supply chain but may struggle to get rid of airflights around the world. In that case, they use offsets. When companies analyze the very difficult choices, they take the easy way out and use carbon offsets
        • However, there is so much offsets for afforestation now that there isn't enough land on earth
        • Carbon markets are a recipe for grifting and fraud or zero impacts
        • This is the current state of offsets

      31:00 Shell oil carbon offset greenwashing scam - the sky zero proposal - Shell claims they can offset all the O+G emissions out of the ground - it is preposterous - there's not enough land on earth when you tally up all the carbon offset afforestation schemes

      • 32:30 Neo-colonialism

        • rich white man can offset his emissions by buying land from a developing nation. Now the indigenous people cannot use that land for any reason.
        • also, will require huge amount of water to grow those trees
        • we don't have enough land and we don't have 100 years, only 5 years.
        • nature-based solutions are an industrial, myopic approach
      • 37:00 Deferred Emission Reduction

        • a lot of carbon credits are called deferred emission reduction credits.
        • this is avoided emissions - ie. trees in a forest with 100 ton of sequestering potential
        • this is promise to not destroy the biosphere any further so it's not removing any existing carbon
        • maybe multiple people might own the same forest, or someone might come along and burn it down
        • Trees are vulnerable to climate impacts - ie. Microsoft bought a large forest in California that later burned down in a climate change intensified wildfire
      • 40:00 can we do anything within the extractive capitalist system?

        • some people claim that as long as extractivist capitalism still persists, we cannot have system change
        • also a neocolonialist element - global north exploited the global south to create most of the emissions in the atmospheric commons
        • a number of people are beginning to see that an extractivist capitalist system is not in line with effectively addressing the climate crisis
        • wind, solar, etc has displaced electricity generation in a number of countries like in the UK. However, these are only a few countries.Renewables are helping increase overall energy production
      • 44:22: Stop burning fossil fuels

        • t doesn't matter if investments in renewables triple. It won't make a difference if we don't significantly stop burning fossil fuels at the same time.
      • 47:00 economic growth prevents real change

        • Insisting on 1, 2 or 3% growth, will limit the response to the climate threat to render it irrelevant
        • Climate change is still mostly an optimization problem. They are more concerned with economic damage.
        • Economists believe that anything that threatens economic growth cannot be accepted
      • 51:00 Degrowth making headway

        • Degrowth scholars are getting more attention on the need to decouple economic grwoth from climate policies
      • 52:10 Is there a positive future scenario - The role of solidarity

        • Solidarity is the greatest strength we can harness.
        • The success of Doughnut Economics gives me hope
        • The richest 1% must reign in their impacts and redistribute to allow the impoverished to live humane lives
        • We can all have good lives and we don't have to manufacture that wonder
        • This is what it is to be human
    1. From TED Countdown London 2022

      Abstract

      To restrain global warming, we know we need to drastically reduce pollution. The very next step after that: using both natural and technological solutions to trap as much excess carbon dioxide from the air as possible. Enter Orca, the world's first large-scale direct air capture and storage plant, built in Iceland by the team at Climeworks, led by climate entrepreneur Jan Wurzbacher. This plant is capable of removing 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year. With affordability and scalability in mind, Wurzbacher shares his vision for what comes after Orca, the future of carbon removal tech -- and why these innovations are crucial to stop climate change.

    1. Discussion on how to downscale the climate change boundary has now become a political and equity issue more than a scientific issue. For example, how does one decide the allocation of the CO2 emissions? Should the past emissions be considered? Should the amount of emissions account for the current welfare of the countries, allowing less developed countries to emit more? Or, is it sufficient to calculate a global per capita value that is the same everywhere?

      Classic issue

  7. Feb 2023
    1. At COP27, governments agreed to create a “contribution unit” as part of the establishment of new carbon markets under the Paris Agreement - a clear sign of support for this evolution in claims

      This is the first time I have come aceoss a "contribution unit"

    1. Auseinandersetzungen in Frankreich über die "Zonen mit schwachen Emissionen": Verbotszonen für Dieselfahrzeuge, die dabei nach Emissionsmenge klassifiziert werden. Die Rechten fordern den Verzicht auf diese Zonen, die Linken soziale Begleitmaßnahmen - wobei aber die Rhetorik teilweise ähnlich ist

      • Title: Faster than expected
      • subtitle: why most climate scientists can’t tell the truth (in public) Author: Jackson Damien

      • This is a good article written from a psychotherapist's perspective,

      • examining the psychology behind why published, mainstream, peer reviewed climate change research is always dangerously lagging behind current research,
      • and recommending what interventions could be be taken to remedy this
      • This your of scientific misinformation coming from scientists themselves
      • gives minimizers and denialists the very ammunition they need to legitimise delay of the urgently needed system change.
      • What climate scientists say In public is far from what they believe in private.
      • For instance, many climate scientists don't believe 1.5 Deg. C target is plausible anymore, but don't say so in public.
      • That reticence is due to fear of violating accepted scientific social norms,
      • being labeled alarmist and risk losing their job.
      • That creates a collective cognitive dissonance that acts as a feedback signal
      • for society to implement change at a dangerously slow pace
      • and to not spend the necessary resources to prepare for the harm already baked in.
      • The result of this choice dissonance is that
      • there is no collective sense of an emergency or a global wartime mobilisation scale of collective behaviour.
      • Our actions are not commensurate to the permanent emergency state we are now in.
      • The appropriate response that is suggested is for the entire climate science community to form a coalition that creates a new kind of peer reviewed publishing and reporting
      • that publicly responds to the current and live knowledge that is being discovered every day.
      • This is done from a planetary and permanent emergency perspective in order to eliminate the dangerous delays that create the wrong human collective behavioural responses.
    1. HOW CAN CLIMATE SCIENTISTS ALLOW THEMSELVES TO TELL THE TRUTH?
      • The author suggests 5 different steps that will enable and empower scientists to tell the truth at scale:
          1. Admit that rigid adherence to their academic methods, in this astonishingly rapid context, leads directly to their failure to communicate the truth. For one thing, it is widely held on the scientific community that staying under 1.5 Deg. C is no longer plausible.
          1. Form a unified global coalition. Work with communications and psychology experts to present as accurate and as current information as possible
          1. Coalition takes actions to announce a permcrisis requiring responding to new live information in real time, bot wait every 7 years for the next IPCC report
    1. Most future climate scenarios envisage large-scale deployment of so-called “negative emissions,” where we suck CO2 out of the atmosphere in order to keep warming below 2°C. One proposed method for achieving that is “enhanced weathering”—accelerated silicate weathering done by grinding up silicate rock and spreading it on agricultural fields to react with CO2 from the air and fertilize plants at the same time. Brantley’s work shows that for such efforts to be successful, those fields would need a good supply of water and—crucially—would probably need to be plowed regularly to expose fresh minerals to the air. “If you're not going to be turning it over, you'll start to precipitate secondary minerals, and… most of the surface area could be occluded from reaction,” said Brantley.

      So basically enhanced weathering is much less likely to help us, as it would largely scab over, rather than expose the rest of the minerals

    2. Over geological time, those landscape proportions have changed in response to shifting tectonic plates. This has changed how efficient silicate weathering has been at removing the CO2 emitted by volcanoes, thereby allowing high CO2 levels and warm climates at times, like in the Cretaceous, or lower CO2 levels and a cool climate when plate tectonics was building lots of “kinetic-limited” mountainous landscapes, like over the last few million years.

      Wow, so when there are more mountains, more CO2 is drawn down as there's more terrain to expose the rock for weathering

    1. The most telling real-world results came from the final stock count. For example, no Felix product is more beloved than its best-selling meatballs, yet with customers encouraged to make decisions on climate value, they remained on the shelves, whereas Felix’s new, plant-based meatball alternatives had sold out. Shoppers had learned that the classic dish they had eaten since childhood might not, after all, be the best option for their own children’s future.
      • the results that showed that
      • their Felix brand followers rejected their most popular product, the Felux meatball
      • once the CO2e was show,
      • shows the success of clear labeling of CO2e
      • and the gamification strategy
    2. The way in which shoppers were presented with practical climate information was repeatedly commented on as a brilliantly simple idea that people felt ought to be the norm in food retail. Plus, we saw repeat visits – parents so impressed by the concept’s educative value that they came back a second time with their children.As one shopper shared: “I didn’t expect this when walking in. The visuals with the three different bags explained everything so well. I learned so much more compared to, say, a lecture.”
      • campaign was highly successfully
      • customers learned so much from the simplicity
    3. The results told us Felix’s demographic really wanted to shop for climate-friendly food brands, but found the sustainability information too confusing and – perhaps as a result – believed sustainable grocery shopping to be too expensive.Our strategy was clear: Give shoppers better information on the climate impact of Felix products and, in the process, demonstrate how easy it is to make climate-friendly choices when products are clearly labelled. We called it The Climate Store (Klimatbutiken) – the world’s first grocery shop in which the ‘price’ of food would be based on its carbon footprint.
      • Climate Supermarket
      • Climate store
      • Survey showed consumers were confused by sustainability information
      • consumers were left with the belief that shopping sustainably was too expensive
      • One answer to simplify the complexity that was confusing people was uniform labeling of grocery products with their CO2e and a hard limit (18.9Kg CO2e) that consumer must stay under each week to meet Paris agreement
    1. a new and insidious tactic is threatening to undermine our efforts to build a more sustainable future: climate delay

      = climate delay - redirecting responsibility onto individuals - advocating non-transformative solutions - focusing on negatives of climate action - wokewashing and white saviorism - doomism - giving up

    2. dismissives

      = definition - dismissives - this is the most common form of climate denialism. - It isn't aggressive, but passive - dismissives are aware of climate change but - don't care - avoid it altogether

    3. Climate deniers are victims not villains
      • = Title:
        • Climate deniers are victims not villains
    1. Make the case that the status quo is inequitable

      Change is tough but needed. It may not directly help those who participate in surveys of campus climate.

    1. two social drivers actively impair global efforts to achieve 1.5 C. Those are corporate responses and global consumption patterns
      • two major social drivers prevent achieving 1.5 C.
        • corporate responses
        • global consumption patterns
    2. Most of them are, in general, moving in the right direction. They just aren’t aggressive enough yet to be consistent with the kind of transformative social change required to achieve the 1.5 C target.
      • climate change actions
      • Most of the climate actions are moving in the right direction.
      • but they just aren’t aggressive enough yet to achieve the 1.5 C target.
      • right direction, wrong speed
    1. To provide an indication of the projected timing of climate depar-ture under alternative greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, we havedeveloped an index that determines the year when the values of agiven climatic variable exceed the bounds of historical variabilityfor a particular location (Fig. 1a).
      • To provide an indication of the projected timing of
      • = climate departure
      • under alternative greenhouse gas emissions scenarios,
      • the authors have developed an index that determines
      • the year when the values of a given climatic variable exceed the bounds of historical variability
      • for a particular location
      • = ABSTRACT
      • = Ecological and societal disruptions - by modern = climate change - are critically determined
      • by the time frame over which climates shift beyond historical analogues.
      • This paper introduces a new index of
      • the year when the projected mean climate of a given location
      • moves to a state continuously outside the bounds of historical variability under alternative greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.
      • This index is called = "climate departure"
      • The study employs data from 1860 to 2005 as the historical period,
      • this index has a global mean of:
        • 2069 (618 years s.d.) for near-surface air temperature under an emissions stabilization scenario
        • 2047 (614 years s.d.) under a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario.
      • Unprecedented climates will occur earliest in the tropics and among low-income countries,
      • this highlights the vulnerability of global biodiversity and the limited governmental capacity to respond to the impacts of climate change. Our findings shed light on the urgency of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions if climates potentially harmful to biodiversity and society are to be prevented
    1. I agree as I have heard from many young people that they aren't voting because they don't trust the politicians. They hear their promises and then when they get elected they don't deliver on those promises, so young people feel helpless to change the system.
      • The young are alienated from voting
      • Q: What are their options?
    1. In the first edition of the Hamburg Climate Fu-tures Outlook published in 2021
      • = First Edition of Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook (2021)

        • : Question: Is it plausible that the world will reach deep decarbonization by 2050?
          • Answer: No
      • = Second Edition of Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook (2023)

        • : Question: What affects the plausibility of attaining the Paris Agreement temperature goals?
    2. Lacking thefeasibility of a robust probabilistic assessment, wehave developed an alternative framework to assessthe plausibility of climate futures (Chapter 2).
      • alternative method for assessing plausibility of = climate futures called the = social plausibility framework
    3. based on present knowledge of social drivers andphysical processe

      climate futures based upon: - social drivers - physical processes

    4. Hamburg Climate FuturesOutlook

      = Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook 2023

    5. Among the many possible climatic futures, not allare plausible.
      • There are a number of possible = climate futures
      • but not all are plausible
    1. Over 50% of people reported feeling powerless or helpless in the previously mentioned study.
      • = eco-anxiety
      • = climate change anxiety
      • 50% of people reported feeling helpless
    1. The survey — the largest of its kind — asked 10,000 young people in 10 countries how they felt about climate change and government responses to it.The results, released in a preprint on 14 September1, found that most respondents were concerned about climate change, with nearly 60% saying they felt ‘very worried’ or ‘extremely worried’. Many associated negative emotions with climate change — the most commonly chosen were ‘sad’, ‘afraid’, ‘anxious’, ‘angry’ and ‘powerless’ (see ‘Climate anxiety’). Overall, 45% of participants said their feelings about climate change impacted their daily lives.
      • = climate anxiety
      • = ecoanxiety
      • feelings of = helplessness, = powerless
    1. real-life situations can be much more complicated, the authors’ model allows for the exact 25 percent tipping point number to change based on circumstances. Memory length is a key variable, and relates to how entrenched a belief or behavior is.
      • 25% social tipping point threshold is adjustable
      • depending on the variables of the context
      • = question - how do we apply this adjustability for complex contagion such as climate change norms?
  8. Jan 2023
    1. Agreements are subjected to climate agreements and not the other way around that could be 00:53:10 an option

      !- policy recommendation : make all global trade agreements subject to legally binding climate agreements, not the other way around

    2. we have individual capitalists who try 00:48:45 to make the most profit and this is linked to their capital and productivity so to achieve more in less time and 00:48:57 productivity is linked to energy [Music] the only source of energy to increase profit is carbon oil and gas and this has resulted in a change in our 00:49:15 atmosphere we have to put an entities if we wish to live in our planet can our capitalism do this based on the current data we won't be able to do so 00:49:28 therefore perhaps we should do the following reflection if capitalism is unable to do so either Humanity will die with it or 00:49:42 Humanity will overcome capitalism so that we can live in our planet

      !- Urrego : Key Point - Can capitalism rapidly detour away from fossil fuels? The current data indicates no. So either Humanity does our it drops capitalism

    3. you've had problems in your area where you tried to get legislation and the oil and gas industry came in and fought you right in my state same thing every piece 00:44:08 of pro-climate legislation at the national level the regional level the local level Municipal level the oil and gas industry and the coal industry they come in and fight it tooth and nail and 00:44:21 they use their legacy network of political influence and wealth to stop progress the rest of us have to reform these International institutions so that the people of this world and including 00:44:34 the young people of this world can say we are now in charge of our own destiny we're going to stop using the sky as an open sewer we're going to save the future and give people hope we can do it 00:44:47 and remember that political will is itself a renewable resource

      !- oil and gas legislation : industry lawyers at every level

    4. you've got a climate denier in charge of 00:42:13 the World Bank so why are you surprised that the World Bank is completely failing to do its job

      !- world bank : leader is a climate denier

    5. we are today concluding that we're outside even of the just boundary on climate

      !- climate boundary : currently exceeding

    6. within the next decade we are at risk of pushing ourselves outside of the safe 00:10:15 boundary of 1.5 degrees Celsius

      !- 1.5 deg C boundary : at risk of exceeding in the next decade

    7. if we continue with our greenhouse gas emissions then by 2070 as many as 3 00:03:25 billion people will live in uninhabitable zones and mostly in poorer countries and this basically means that these people who probably have the least contribution to the climate problem have 00:03:39 been the ones that are most exposed

      !- quotable : 3 billion people at risk by 2070 - mostly people who has contributed the least to the problem

    1. can have a pretty outsized  carbon footprint and I'm wondering how   you reconcile the vast amount of computational  power necessary to accomplish this work and its   negative impact on the environment and whether  or not this is something you all are considering

      Question: has the project considered the energy impact?

    1. adrienne maree brown wrote not long ago that there is an element of science fiction in climate action: “We are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced. I believe that we are in an imagination battle.”

      This is how I've read SF for years, both near future and space opera. As mood board and thinking input.

      adrienne maree brown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_Maree_Brown in turn inspired by SF author Octavia Butler (have I read her xenogenesis trilogy?)

    1. The moral vocabulary that climate activists and public health professionals use is not able to activate the moral and political imagination that effective ecological and health governance require. To respond to the recurring crises that are coming, the governance of complex societies must be able to reach the tap roots latent in their own moral ethos, politics, and motivational structures.

      !- identification : of failings of current climate activists

    2. People newly faced with the precarity of future expectations and the loss of attachments to habitual ways of life tighten their grip on them, no matter how objectively unsustainable, and turn toward blaming the other, the victims, rather than extending empathy and solidarity toward them.

      !- good observation on psychology of confronting loss : climate change - when confronted with the loss of liberty (give me liberty or give me death), we tighten our grip<br /> - our climate denialism increases in proportion to the perceived degree of loss of liberty

    3. Much of what they do can be done without eliciting the ire of nation-states. Bike shares, pedestrian zones, insulated buildings, renovated port facilities, congestion fees, car emission limits, furnace specifications, fuel upgrades (from oil to gas to alternative energy) and white paint roofs, for example, are only some of the innovations city officials can promote to effect significant reductions in emissions and pollutants.

      !- cities actions : can be done without eliciting ire of nation state - bike shares - pedestrian zones - insulated buildings - renovated ports - congestion fees - car emission limits - furnace specifications - fuel upgrades - white paint roofs - cities are the right level for focusing on effective global climate action

    4. here states have grown dysfunctional and sovereignty has become an obstacle to global democratic action—as when the United States (or China, France, or Canada) refuses to compromise its sovereignty by permitting the international monitoring of carbon emissions on its soil—cities have increasingly proven themselves capable of deliberative democratic action on behalf of sustainability, as they have actually done in intercity associations like the C-40 or ICLEI. If presidents and prime ministers cannot summon the will to work for a sustainable planet, mayors can. If citizens of the province and nation think ideologically and divisively, neighbors and citizens of the towns and cities think publicly and cooperatively.

      !- claim : cities can mitigate corrupted democracy and foster global cooperation - ie. C40 or ICLEI (also Covenant of Mayors) - cities are not plagued by the problems of state actors who cannot reach any meaningful agreement at COP conferences

    5. A deliberative democracy in which competent citizens participate in policy decisions about the long-term challenges facing their society is an ideal setting for confronting the threat of climate change. Democratic deliberation is designed to help selfish individuals reformulate their interests in the language of the communities to which they belong—to allow them to move from “me thinking” to “we thinking” and to substitute long-term, future-minded thinking for the short-term, present-minded, special-interest thinking. It allows private opinion to be shaped by shared belief and the discipline of inter-subjective (“scientific”) knowledge.

      !- Key concept : deliberative democracy of competent, participative citizens driving long term policy decisions is ideal for confronting climate change - transform self-centered individual to group-centered - shift from Me to We (invert the M) - shift from short term to long term thinking - intersubjective scientific knowledge

    1. Environmentalists say bulldozing the village to expand the Garzweiler mine would result in huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. The government and utility company RWE argue the coal is needed to ensure Germany's energy security.Police officers use water cannons on protesters in Luetzerath on Saturday. (Thilo Schmuelgen/Reuters)The regional and national governments, both of which include the environmentalist Green party, reached a deal with RWE last year allowing it to destroy the abandoned village in return for ending coal use by 2030, rather than 2038.Some speakers at Saturday's demonstration assailed the Greens, whose leaders argue that the deal fulfils many of the environmentalists' demands and saved five other villages from demolition.What on Earth?Why the reversal of a decades-old coal policy sparked controversy in Alberta"It's very weird to see the German government, including the Green party, make deals and compromise with companies like RWE, with fossil fuel companies, when they should rather be held accountable for all the damage and destruction they have caused," Thunberg said."My message to the German government is that they should stop what's happening here immediately, stop the destruction, and ensure climate justice for everyone."

      Assuming the facts are correct and complete here, it's surprisingly naive of Thunberg to take this view. One unknown is whether the displaced villagers were suitably compensated for being evicted. Still, taking 8 years off the deadline to end coal use - that's a pretty massive win and could set the stage for even more in the future.

    1. Finally, statistics should reinforce the fact that any patterning found cannot be explained as accidental.

      It is possible that the variations in patterning may tell us about the relative timing of the data. Perhaps the earliest data points may have been anecdotal evidence that was improved over time.

      Of course it could be the case that migrations, births, etc. may have shifted somewhat over time.

      What does the general climate data from these areas and this time period show? Is there variability in this time period?

    1. i think climate change is going to put  a strong pressure in the sense that you know i   think when people see more and more catastrophic  climatic events you know i think attitudes toward   globalization and attitudes toward inequality in  general you know can change very quickly because   00:43:25 you know at some point i think people will  not find it funny at all to have all these   billionaires you know giving lessons using  their private jet doing your space tourism   et cetera you know at some point you know i think  nobody is going to find this funny at all and   there can be a very quick and and fast you know  complete change in attitude following this

      !- Thomas Piketty : climate change impacts on inequality - climate change extreme events can very quickly cause the public attitudes to the elites to deteriorate very rapidly

  9. Dec 2022
    1. While the average human is responsible for an estimated 5t 퐶푂2푒per year,2 the authors trained a Transformer (big) model [136] withneural architecture search and estimated that the training procedureemitted 284t of 퐶푂2. Training a single BERT base model (withouthyperparameter tuning) on GPUs was estimated to require as muchenergy as a trans-American flight.

      Energy consumption on NLP model training

      Training a model cost 57 times the annual CO2 emissions of a single person.

    1. Below, I pose four critical questions. How the Biden administration answers these questions will say a lot about whether Justice40 sets a new marker for environmental justice in the United States—or if the promise of Justice40 is squandered.

      Follow developments with Justice40 and implications for climate justice movement.

    1. Splooting, or more technically heat dumping, is a process through which animals stretch their hind legs back and lie on cooler surfaces to reduce their body heat. It’s commonly done by squirrels and sometimes, by dogs, and it’s no reason for concern, it’s just a sign that the animal is hot and trying to cool off.
    1. Rising greenhouse gas concentrations have resulted in detectable trends in average climate (particularly temperature), but also in changes in the timing of key seasons in some locations and in daily weather variability, including extreme weather and climate events like heat waves and droughts [10,11,12]. It is primarily through these changes in weather and seasonality, rather than through gradual, long-term trends, that climate change is likely to influence malaria risk. These impacts on malaria could occur both directly, as optimum climate ranges and critical thresholds for vector and parasite development are crossed, and indirectly, as society grapples with the disruptive effects of changes in weather patterns and seasonal cycles.
    2. Climate can influence malaria directly, through transmission dynamics, or indirectly, through myriad pathways including the many socioeconomic factors that underpin malaria risk. These indirect effects are largely unpredictable and so are not included in climate-driven disease models. Such models have been effective at predicting transmission from weeks to months ahead. However, due to several well-documented limitations, climate projections cannot accurately predict the medium- or long-term effects of climate change on malaria, especially on local scales. Long-term climate trends are shifting disease patterns, but climate shocks (extreme weather and climate events) and variability from sub-seasonal to decadal timeframes have a much greater influence than trends and are also more easily integrated into control programmes.
    1. Trends in some regions are clear, but insect biology, climate quirks, and public health preparedness will determine whether outbreaks occur.
    1. For effective vector control, the influence of climatic factors on vector-borne diseases should be studied since the mosquito vectors are also sensitive to the alterations in the climatic condition and the existing vector control approaches are inadequate to combat with the adverse effects of global warming.
    1. Undermining the Concept of Environmental Risk

      By the mid-1990s, the Institute of Economic Affairs had extended its work on Risk Assessment (RA). More specifically, the head of IEA’s Environment Unit Roger Bate was interested in undermining the concept of “environmental risk”, especially in relation to key themes, such as climate change and pesticides, and second hand smoke.

    1. Leaks show attempts to water down UN climate report, Greenpeace says Some countries tried to remove findings threatening their economic interests from an IPCC report, documents seen by Greenpeace have revealed. The report comes before a critical round of UN climate talks.

      Government lobbying (economic interests) to water down UN climate report

  10. Nov 2022
    1. A 2020 study by the European Union found that contrails and other non-CO2 aircraft emissions warm the planet twice as much as the carbon dioxide released by airplanes.

      From the intermediate linked blog post:

      Using a derivative metric of the Global Warming Potential (100), the GWP, aviation emissions are currently warming the climate at approximately three times the rate of that associated with CO2 emissions alone.

      pp. 35-36 of EASA report for European Commission, (2020). Updated analysis of the non-CO2 climate impacts of aviation and potential policy measures pursuant to the EU Emissions Trading System Directive Article 30(4). https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:7bc666c9-2d9c-11eb-b27b-01aa75ed71a1.0001.02/DOC_1&format=PDF

  11. Oct 2022
    1. Skatten på arbete sänks med inriktning på låg- och medelinkomsttagare, liksom skatten på pension. För att stötta hushållen ytterligare sänks skatten på sparande. Hushållen kompenseras för de höga elpriserna och drivmedelspriserna sänks kraftigt, bland annat genom att reduktionsplikten sänks till EU:s miniminivå.

      Den sista meningen är den enda som förklaras. Hur ska de förstnämnda sänkta skatterna kompenseras? Med andra ord, hur ska staten tjäna in pengar på skattesänkningarna?

      Dessutom, reduktionspliktens sänkning är oerhört farlig ur klimatperspektiv.

      Inget nämns om transporter.

    1. Naturskyddsföreningen är starkt kritisk till den tillträdande regeringens programförklaring. – Jag känner mig både besviken och djupt oroad. Utifrån vad som hittills framkommer så verkar det vara väldigt tunt med politik som tar itu med miljöproblemen. Istället riskerar problemen att förvärras med de åtgärder som läggs fram, säger Karin Lexén, generalsekreterare Naturskyddsföreningen i ett pressmeddelande. Enligt programförklaringen ska miljöprövningen av vattenkraft pausas. – Det är oansvarigt. Omprövningen av den svenska vattenkraften genomförs för att förse kraftverken med moderna miljövillkor, det är ett måste för att Sverige ska kunna leva upp till sina internationella åtaganden om skydd av biologisk mångfald och EU:s vattendirektiv. Sverige har vid upprepade tillfällen fått kritik från EU-kommissionen i frågan, säger Karin Lexén.
    2. Men förutom elektrifieringen nämns inget om transporter som står för en stor del av Sveriges nationella utsläpp, cirka en tredjedel. Det brukar lyftas fram som ett nyckelområde när klimatmål ska nås. – Jag är väldigt förvånad att transporter inte får ett enda ord i avtalet och närmast bestört över att det inte är ett av de sju prioriterade områden som lyftes fram, säger Mattias Goldmann, klimatexpert och en av grundarna till 2030-sekretariatet.
    1. In a recent paper published in Nature Climate Change, scientists found that major sea-level rise from the melting of the Greenland ice cap is now ‘inevitable’ even if the burning of fossil fuels were to halt overnight. Using satellite observations of Greenland ice loss and ice cap from 2000 to 2019, the team found the losses will lead to a minimum rise of 27 cm regardless of climate change.

      A great example of the lag that large, complex systems exhibit when responding to significant input changes.

      Lag is something that humans are woefully weak at recognizing and understanding. This, and other systems concepts are what we need to add to the curriculum at all levels of education, to change this very significant shortcoming of "common knowledge".

    1. Peter Kalmus, Data Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory: [Update 23 August 2019: This comment was updated for clarity.] What science projects under plausible scenarios of human courses of action is varying degrees of further disruption of fundamental planetary life support systems (e.g. water, agriculture, ecosystems) needed to support the nearly 8 billion humans currently living on Earth. This disruption poses some degree of existential risk to civilization as we know it—with the amount of risk likely still depending on how rapidly we reduce radiative and ecological forcings—but these degrees of risk are not quantified with any certainty. Ice models have had difficulty projecting the melting rate of the Greenland ice sheet; predicting the mechanism of the collapse of civilization and the number of lives lost as a result is a far more complex problem, and there is no scientific consensus that six billion lives will be lost. On the other hand, models have tended to underestimate ice sheet melting, and model projections in general have been systematically “conservative.” I unfortunately don’t see how the possibility of six billion deaths can be ruled out with confidence, especially when the intrinsically unpredictable but real possibility of climate-related war (which could include nuclear weapons) is considered. In other words, Hallam’s claim is speculative, but given the depth and rapidity of anthropogenic change, so is confidently ruling it out. While I don’t agree that “science predicts” the death of six billion people, in my opinion Hallam’s broader warning has qualitative merit and in the context of a lay translation of risk his use of “six billion” might reasonably be interpreted as figurative, an illustration of a worst-case scenario (again, that I don’t think can be ruled out). Whether to interpret this claim literally or figuratively is a question perhaps best left to humanists. Given this ambiguity I judge it “unrateable.”

      He is basically saying this is plausible. And his is the most sensible answer here by far IMO.

      The whole point of "bad case" scenarios is that they involve feedback effects and breakdown of "civilization" as we know it.

      This article as a whole is an illustration of the narrow, conventional thinking.

      NB: i came here via https://passivehouseaccelerator.com/articles/building-our-solarpunk-future where they are citing this as evidence future won't be too bad:

      For many of us, it’s all too easy to imagine the terrible, particularly as we witness the damage caused by just 1.2°C of global heating today. We’re also bombarded by Doomist messages.

      For example, Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, recently said this of climate change: “I am talking about the slaughter, death, and starvation of 6 billion people this century. That’s what the science predicts.”

      Only that’s not what the science predicts. According to the fact-checker website, Climate Feedback: “Research shows that continuing climate change results in a broad array of serious threats to humans and other species. However, counter to Hallam’s statement, published studies have not predicted 6 billion human deaths this century and there is no credible mechanism referred to justify how this could happen.”

  12. Sep 2022
    1. Leaving aside those far-right doubts about the existence of a climateproblem, any government that wanted to cut carbon emissions substantiallycould not avoid implementing much tougher emissions regulations andhigher business taxes. But any government that did so in advance of othergovernments would only force its corporations to move production andthousands of jobs elsewhere.

      !- example : DGC - also, Yellow jackets in France and working class in Sri Lanka paralyzed their respective country due to rising fuel costs - the precariat class is threatened and are also caught in the wicked problem

    1. Pollin: Neither negative emissions technologies nor nuclear power can likely contribute significantly to building an alternative global clean energy infrastructure. Indeed, it is more likely that they will create still more severe problems. Let’s start with nuclear.

      Notes on some problems with continuing to use nuclear power instead of switching to clean power.

    2. Renewable energy critics argue that wind and solar are not reliable sources because of their variability. Others argue that wind farms encroach on pristine environment and destroy a country’s natural habitat, as is the case with the installation of thousands of wind turbines on scores of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. How would you respond to such concerns, and are there ways around them?