Octopus Overlords

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Wed Aug 02, 2023 11:28 pm And someone will call for us to go back to high-sulfur fuel.

Zaxxon wrote: ↑Thu Aug 03, 2023 8:18 am Because we definitely have time left for sensible discussion and debate.

Kraken wrote: ↑Fri Aug 04, 2023 11:29 pm Do we have a global warming thread in EBG? I didn't find one. Should we? I'd say >75% of what we post here isn't political unless one believes that the very existence of GW is a hot potato, and I don't see anyone on OO believing that. I think it's silly to still be posting science stories in R&P because science is a liberal plot.

I'll refrain if you think an EBG thread would quickly get political. Just tossing out the idea.

A Montana judge on Monday sided with young environmental activists who said state agencies were violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by permitting fossil fuel development without considering its effect on the climate.

The ruling following a first-of-its- kind trial in the U.S. adds to a small number of legal decisions around the world that have established a government duty to protect citizens from climate change.

District Court Judge Kathy Seeley found the policy the state uses in evaluating requests for fossil fuel permits — which does not allow agencies to evaluate the effects of greenhouse gas emissions — is unconstitutional.

Judge Seeley wrote in the ruling that "Montana's emissions and climate change have been proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana's environment and harm and injury" to the youth.

However, it's up to the state Legislature to determine how to bring the policy into compliance. That leaves slim chances for immediate change in a fossil fuel-friendly state where Republicans dominate the statehouse.

Kurth wrote: ↑Mon Aug 14, 2023 8:09 pm things are feeling even bleaker than usual.

It has been a grueling summer, with relentless heat breaking multiple records in many places around the world. In fact, June through August was the planet’s hottest documented three-month period, with July ranking as the hottest month ever recorded. A new analysis by the nonprofit organization Climate Central finds that more than 3.8 billion people were exposed to extreme heat that was worsened by human-caused climate change from June through August, and at least 1.5 billion experienced such heat every day of that period. Nearly every person on Earth saw high temperatures that were made at least twice as likely by global warming.

The G20 is meeting this weekend in India. At the briefing, Otto said that as long as these countries continue to burn fossil fuels and subsidize the fossil fuel industry, “they kill their populations; they kill the vulnerable populations in the world. We have to stop burning fossil fuels.”

It is clear this summer is a harbinger of things to come. Not every summer will be as hot as this one, but today’s record summer heat will be the average in a few decades. “This is not a problem that’s going to go away,” Pershing says. “We know it’s going to get worse.”

Kraken wrote: ↑Fri Sep 08, 2023 3:24 pm All hands are not on deck. It's a good thing all of us will be safely dead before then.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Sep 08, 2023 8:50 pm

Kraken wrote: ↑Fri Sep 08, 2023 3:24 pm All hands are not on deck. It's a good thing all of us will be safely dead before then.

Our children won't. Our grandchildren won't.

I can't let myself feel relief at not having to deal with this at its worst when I know that my kids are going to be living with a potential nightmare scenario.

More than 3,000 people are believed to have died in devastating floods across eastern Libya, the country's health minister said Tuesday.

Another 10,000 people are believed to be missing, according to Tamer Ramadan, Libya envoy for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

ATHENS/LONDON, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Storm Daniel, which wrought devastation across the Mediterranean in the past week, killed 15 people in central Greece where it dumped more rain than previously recorded before sweeping across to Libya where over 2,500 died in a huge flood.

As the storm moved along the North African coast, Egypt's authorities sought to calm its worried citizens by telling them Daniel had finally lost its strength. "No need to panic!" Al Ahram newspaper wrote in its online English-language edition.

But global warming means the region may have to brace in future for increasingly powerful storms of this kind, the Mediterranean's equivalent of a hurricane known as a "medicane".

"There is consistent evidence that the frequency of medicanes decreases with climate warming, but the strongest medicanes become stronger," said Suzanne Gray from the meteorology department at Britain's University of Reading, citing a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2023 2:03 pm

ATHENS/LONDON, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Storm Daniel, which wrought devastation across the Mediterranean in the past week

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2023 2:03 pm We now have "medicanes". Sigh.

No civilian injuries have been reported from the North Attleborough flooding, but a firefighter was injured overnight and was in stable condition, Coleman said Tuesday.

She also said the massive flooding that hit various regions of Massachusetts “severely impacted” two dams, damaged railroad tracks and forced a number of seniors to be evacuated by boats in the middle of the night.

“One of those dams has been shored up already and the other will be shored up by the end of the day,” said Healey, who toured the damage on Tuesday.

More than 5,000 people are presumed dead and 10,000 missing after heavy rains in northeastern Libya caused two dams to collapse, surging more water into already inundated areas.

The sea-ice surrounding Antarctica is well below any previous recorded winter level, satellite data shows, a worrying new benchmark for a region that once seemed resistant to global warming.

"It's so far outside anything we've seen, it's almost mind-blowing," says Walter Meier, who monitors sea-ice with the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

"Are we awakening this giant of Antarctica?" asks Prof Martin Siegert, a glaciologist at the University of Exeter. It would be "an absolute disaster for the world," he says.

There are signs that what is already happening to Antarctica's ice sheets is in the worst-case scenario range of what was predicted, says Prof Anna Hogg, an Earth scientist at the University of Leeds.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet will continue to increase its rate of melting over the rest of the century, no matter how much we reduce fossil fuel use, according to British Antarctic Survey (BAS) research published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change. A substantial acceleration in ice melting likely cannot now be avoided, which implies that Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise could increase rapidly over the coming decades.

Kraken wrote: ↑Tue Oct 24, 2023 11:45 pm Ending carbon emissions can still save the larger and more consequential East Antarctic ice.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue Oct 24, 2023 11:49 pm

Kraken wrote: ↑Tue Oct 24, 2023 11:45 pm Ending carbon emissions can still save the larger and more consequential East Antarctic ice.

Narrator: But they won't

The year 2023 has been confirmed as the warmest on record, driven by human-caused climate change and boosted by the natural El Niño weather event.

Last year was about 1.48C warmer than the long-term average before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels, the EU's climate service says.

Almost every day since July has seen a new global air temperature high for the time of year, BBC analysis shows.

Sea surface temperatures have also smashed previous highs.

Instead of rejecting the fact that the Earth is warming, they’re now focusing on skepticism of climate solutions, as well as scientists and activists and altogether the idea that climate change will cause harm, according to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit organization that researches digital hate speech and misinformation.

The organization’s analysis suggests that the outright dismissal of climate change is no longer as convincing an argument, so climate skeptics are shifting the ideological fight to how seriously humanity must take climate change or what ought to be done about it. The report also claims that the content policies of YouTube’s parent company, Google — which are supposed to block advertising money from content that rejects the scientific consensus about the existence and causes of climate change — are ineffective and ought to be updated.

“A new front has opened up in this battle,” Imran Ahmed, the organization’s CEO, said at a news conference. “They’ve gone from saying climate change isn’t happening to now saying: ‘Hey, climate change is happening, but there is no hope. There are no solutions.’”
...
Kotcher said his research suggests that those interested in action on climate change agree with a set of key facts — that climate change is real, that humans are the primary cause, that scientists agree about those two ideas, that it has negative impacts today, that others care about it and that solutions exist today.

“Calling a truce on one of those key battlefields — just the existence of climate change — it does move the needle slightly farther in what I would argue is the right direction, getting people to have a more fact-based understanding of the issue,” Kotcher said.

those interested in action on climate change agree with a set of key facts — that climate change is real, that humans are the primary cause, that scientists agree about those two ideas, that it has negative impacts today, that others care about it and that solutions exist today.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed Jan 17, 2024 1:21 am

those interested in action on climate change agree with a set of key facts — that climate change is real, that humans are the primary cause, that scientists agree about those two ideas, that it has negative impacts today, that others care about it and that solutions exist today.

To be honest, I'm not convinced on the last one beyond the technical level. I mean, solutions absolutely exist, but it's been made abundantly clear that the world will not adopt those solutions, effectively rendering them irrelevant.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed Jan 17, 2024 11:19 am Sure, just like there is technically a simple solution to Gaza: Israel and Hamas hug it out, promise never to do it again, and rebuild hand-in-hand.

stessier wrote: ↑Wed Jan 17, 2024 11:44 am

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed Jan 17, 2024 11:19 am Sure, just like there is technically a simple solution to Gaza: Israel and Hamas hug it out, promise never to do it again, and rebuild hand-in-hand.

With that out of the way, could you tackle world hunger?

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed Jan 17, 2024 12:08 pm

stessier wrote: ↑Wed Jan 17, 2024 11:44 am

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed Jan 17, 2024 11:19 am Sure, just like there is technically a simple solution to Gaza: Israel and Hamas hug it out, promise never to do it again, and rebuild hand-in-hand.

With that out of the way, could you tackle world hunger?

Sure. The problem with world hunger is no longer about our ability to solve it, it's about the cost vs profitability. All you need to do is take the top 10% of wealth owners in the world, and have them place the good of humanity above their own interests. After that, between relocating surpluses, providing infrastructure, and creating high-yield crops suitable for different environments*, solving world hunger is just a matter of a few years.

*We'd also need to ask to the 'frankenfoods' people to stop interfering.