A question about climate change/global warming.

Still, at least the Trump admin will be gone soon, and Biden has appointed a true fighter for the environment to be the White House liaison between business and "climate change activists".

During his 10 years in Congress, Rep. Cedric Richmond has received roughly $341,000 from donors in the oil and gas industry — the 5th highest total among House Democrats. That includes corporate political action committee donations of $50,000 from Entergy, an electric and natural gas utility; $40,000 from ExxonMobil; and $10,000 apiece from oil companies Chevron, Phillips 66 and Valero Energy.

Richmond has raked in that money while representing a congressional district that is home to 7 of the 10 most air-polluted census tracts in the country.

Richmond has repeatedly broken with his party on major climate and environmental votes. During the climate crisis that has battered his home state of Louisiana, Richmond has joined with Republicans to vote to increase fossil fuel exports and promote pipeline development. He also voted against Democratic legislation to place pollution limits on fracking — and he voted for GOP legislation to limit the Obama administration’s authority to more stringently regulate the practice.

Studies in the last decade have suggested that global warming is exacerbating the effects of El Niño and La Niña events.

Today the Bureau of Meterology announced Australia is facing three-times the normal threat level of deadly rain and cyclones to end 2020.

― erratic wolf angular guitarist (sic), Wednesday, August 19, 2020 7:21 AM (three months ago)

welp

Byron Bay Beach is almost gone, as Parts of QLD and NSW continue to be battered by wild weather, with warnings of king tides, damaging winds and heavy rainfall. Authorities are warning people to stay home as the worst is yet to come. pic.twitter.com/w4Jk3hOGbl

— The Project (@theprojecttv) December 14, 2020

https://i.imgur.com/LKKQ4st.png

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/15/china-scaling-up-weather-modification-programme-we-should-be-worried

It's a slim nothing of a piece but why is it that this geoenginnering programme is attacked when it's China carrying out the project?

China having the capacity to do it is not so much the problem as is the question of whether the decision whether to use that capacity will be a joint decision of the world or a unilateral decision of the Chinese government. Making massive investments in a technology usually leads to using it. See also: every weapons program ever.

That's not part of the worry of the writer which seems to be worrying about it because it's China. Its not that far removed from anti-China conspiracy that we've seen this year, even if the tone is libersl-style cincern.

And it's not like it has to be a joint decision. Countries pursue their own weapons programs all the time no matter how dangerous that might be.

*liberal-style concern

Countries pursue their own weapons programs all the time no matter how dangerous that might be.

And I'm sure you can't see how any problems can come of that.

whenever I read about weather manipulation, geo-engineering, etc. by any state or body the only thing I think is "come the glorious kaczynskian revolution, death to technophiles"

It's a very Silicon Valley solution, at first. but that isn't even the tone The Guardian is taking, and I wonder what the difference would be in coverage with the couple of geo-enginnering projects I've read about that are based in the West.

And I'm sure you can't see how any problems can come of that.

― Respectfully Yours, (Aimless), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 bookmarkflaglink

There are problems with doing nothing. It's pretty clear the Paris accord isn't enough and that kind of long drawn out negotiation can't be the only way either. Whether you and I have a problem isn't the issue. China is doing it and the West can't do much about it, they won't throw sanctions like they could if Iran was doing it instead.

AFAICT from the article, China isn't stratospheric albedo engineering. They're experimenting with the same cloud seeding they used to help clean up the air, and prevent event delays, for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This perhaps also has some application in reducing tropospheric particulate pollution,

Stratospheric albedo engineering is a much harder problem. Only in the Arctic/Antarctic is the tropopause at a low enough elevation for commercial jets to deposit sulfates, and while that may help with sea-ice loss/Arctic amplification, the places that will want geoengineering later this century are the nations at tropical latitudes, as they'll be starving. I'm sure places like India and Brazil are looking at papaers like this one for their gameplan.

Called it 😎 https://t.co/e1kSLeTahE

— Ketan Joshi (@KetanJ0) December 15, 2020

DID YOU KNOW a girl from the sunrise movement in philly was a contestant on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? This is what she had to say about driving: https://t.co/faA5cPOst7 pic.twitter.com/kH1zqeQ40k

— N I C 🌨 L E (@nicoleamurray) December 16, 2020

She's right? If that's supposed to be a gotcha, it's pretty weak bullshit

I don't think that was supposed to be a gotcha, it think it's just a boost for a smart way to talk about climate change - putting the focus on the largest companies who generate GHGs, rather than the individual actions of billions of people, all in different socioeconomic circumstances.

Karl, the rest of the thread makes it clearly a gotcha

haha, that's sad, on my part. I actually did read more of that thread, and even retweeted the little cartoon she did a few posts later. i guess what's confusing me is that the way the sunrise movement person who happened to be on queer eye talked about climate change strikes me as a reasonable way to talk to some people about climate. you use different messages for different people. also, the environmental movements have spent 60+ years trying to get people to think about personal consumption choices. i am all for that, and i am all for personal responsibility and try to practice it myself to the degree that i can. but regardless, doing that alone has been a failure. so i actually think it's smart to focus on the producers of GHG, even though obviously we all as consumers we have a role to play as well.

honestly, though, i am having a lot of trouble these days understanding what people are actually saying or what they mean. especially when sarcasm is involved. when i point a finger at other people there are three pointing right back at me, i mean, i spend 90% of my ilx time playing a character that isn't me (there is no me), and i have willingly confused people here literally hundreds of times in the pursuit of making myself laugh, which is fucking crazy. so yeah, 3 fingers back at me. but still, the pointer finger pointing, outwards, at the world

also, this show is sponsored by a car company, w/c is trying to sell cars, a transportation system which is unsustainable. "driving is fine, actually," is a really good slogan for the fossil fuel industry which would love to sell you more gas.

— N I C 🌨 L E (@nicoleamurray) December 17, 2020

also, not a criticism of big don or good ol' @nicole for posting that, but pulling up an old episode of queer eye which includes a person that's affiliated with an environmental org doesn't really...mean anything? who is that girl? is she the leader of the philly chapter? or is she assistant vice-treasurer? are activists expected to be greta thunberg in all contexts and always get the messaging perfect for nicole?

eh, it's a good conversation to have (one i've had a million times), but i can't get worked up over a rando activist not speaking perfectly on a tv show that isn't about the environment. if the goal is to capture a moment of hypocrisy in the environmental movement (she's on a show that is sponsored by a car company, telling people it's ok to drive!) then great, i have a new idea for a massively popular social media account where i will capture moments of hypocrisy in the environmental movement. each day will start out with an examination of how i myself am hypocritical. then i will get up and walk into my kitchen and capture the hypocrisy in my purchasing decisions. then i'll get on ilx and say something that wasn't perfect, and i'll call that out. then i'll walk outside and capture all the hypocrisy, everywhere, all around us, on every single hectare in the country. even the squirrels in the deepest woods will be interrogated, and they are far from innocent

i just hope there aren't any other environmental activists who haven't said the right thing according to everyone else

It’s indicative of how way too broadly and readily people still will reference that “100 corporations are responsible for it all” talking point from an article a few years back. Even putting aside the fact that some of those companies are state owned it’s probably bad to eliminate consumers from the dynamic.

yeah, i don't know. it still seems ridiculous to me. don't get me wrong, i'm not crying too much for this rando that got picked on by another rando named nicole, but i'm imagining having that same level of scrutiny from some internet rando named @nicole, honed in on me, and then spread across the world to conversations like this, and how angry i would be. like, i think if nicole picked on me for not being perfect in my messaging i'd be tempted to tell her to fuck off for life.

and all of ^that^ x10000000 when the "criticism" is actually very subjective and not at all clearly correct

has nicole ever spoken imperfectly? maybe she should be the focus of a viral tweet

since every week i must bring up my parents in an unrelated context, i think:

- when i repeatedly called out my dad for being a wannabe neo-eugenicist, a bigot, a homophobe and an active promoter of hatred against LGBT+, as well as dangerously dumb, hypocritical evangelo-fascist (a term carefully applied, as my dad believes that bernie sanders is an "islamofascist", his only defense was "you should think about not being so hard on me". i did think about that, and decided yes, i should be very hard on him. incredibly hard.
- later, it made me think about who i should NOT be hard on. i should not be hard on people whose hearts are in the right place, who are trying to do the right thing, who are still trying to learn.

that doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize language or messaging or tactics or whatever, but the whole twitter call-out thing gets especially gross when applied against true randos who are on the right side. i mean, go for it, but make sure you spend the other 99.5% of the time calling out the people and organizations and systemic infrastructure that are actually the problem

i think a version of this has probably already played out on the sanders/biden threads, re: the value of intra-left squabbling, so i guess i'm not saying anything useful. it would just be cool if @nicole would go take a shit on exxon instead

Yeah I see what you’re saying, I think that’s fair. Especially since the follow up posts go into the show’s corporate sponsorship. The producers role and editing decisions is probably where the initial focus should probably be if we’re criticizing the highlighting of a message to a broad audience like that.

yeah, definitely. who knows what the activist said before or after that clip that was edited out. if you hung out with me all day, you'd get 100 different "of course if there was better investment in public transport and smart city planning, we wouldn't have to be so reliant on cars still" and "yeah, they should hold a 'top 70 companies' party and then send that party to the bottom of the ocean lol" soundbites which would never be aired on whatever network owns queer eye. but you might also catch a couple sentences where i say something like @nicole's tweet above, something that feels good and comforting to the everyday person watching the show who isn't anti-environment, exactly, while also allowing the activist to get a "message" across that is vague enough to make it through network censors looking to scrub anti-corporate messages.

Just to clarify that I think the queer eye person was right and Nicole is wrong.

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't think about consumer choices, but tbf, it seems pretty absurd and cruel to blame people who are just trying to survive for their own sad fates that will be the result of catastrophic climate change.

No Nicole is right in the sense that the “100 corporations are entirely responsible for it” talking point is dumb.

God you're such a tiresome waste of fucking space.

"objective reality is dumb because I want to shift blame from corporations onto consumers" gtfoh with that absolute bullshit

"X corporations" is the 99% vs 1% of climate change iow it's not totally true but it's a slogan not an analysis. it's at least better than calling for more ethical consumerism. of course the real problem is capitalism but people turn off as soon as you say that

what is the point about some of the companies being state owned supposed to mean?

we did it!

"The rate of ice loss is now in line with the worst-case scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading authority on the climate." https://t.co/lq1IqMdW0e

— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) January 25, 2021

lol 👏 we're 👏 all 👏 gonna 👏 die

The seven hottest years on record are the last seven years.

This is a really powerful article about two of my college singing friends:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-climate-crisis-is-worse-than-you-can-imagine-heres-what-happens-if-you-try

Good article - also apparently your college friends live a couple miles away from me.

And me!

The price of solar electricity has dropped 89% in 10 years

In 2009, building a new solar farm was 223% more expensive than building a new coal plant. Now, it’s flipped.

then again

CHEVRON OIL SPILL: State emergency officials say a pipeline containing a mixture of oil and gasoline is leaking 5 gallons a minute into the San Francisco Bay. #oilspill https://t.co/B3osX1POEN pic.twitter.com/pkJ5W90dzM

— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) February 10, 2021

not good, of course. was just looking up BP Horizon, and i believe it came out to around 1000 gallons per second, for the 5 months before the leak was first sealed.

sorry 1000 gallons/minute, i meant, not per second. but yeah, it's crazy to look at what 5 gallons/minute does and imagine the scale of BP Deep Horizon

love 2 be in the little poo-colored river that is "normal temps"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuXj0cYXcAYwAaI?format=jpg&name=small

A gas tanker & icebreaker made it from China to Yamal in the 1st transit of the Northern Sea Route in February, "confirming that year-round safe navigation is possible," Russia says. There's no multi-year ice left there. @BarentsNews https://t.co/57fCekHYZL pic.twitter.com/PgO45fjN9V

— Alec Luhn (@ASLuhn) February 21, 2021

Reminder that oil companies have been preparing for this moment, redesigning tankers, drilling equipment, and offshore platforms for a melting Arctic since the 1970s. A quick thread of their patents: https://t.co/qMX2Vls7BI

— Amy Westervelt (@amywestervelt) February 21, 2021

finding a lot of stuff about a "new cold war" with china and maybe russia over these resources... all expansion / extraction already being justified because the other guys are doing it anyway and we can't be outcompeted (i can imagine environmental or human rights arguments being brought in for audiences less receptive to that cynicism)

not as much stuff about this as colonialism although some pro-exploitaion types are explicitly calling it a frontier

so when is that massive wave of ecoterrorism they were fearmongering about for decades going to kick in, because it will but it's very late

Australia has adjusted emissions records to reflect (some of) the greater warming impact of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. It added the equivalent of an extra six months' worth of national CO2 emissions to the accounts overnight. https://t.co/lsCSG8GSc5

— Adam Morton (@adamlmorton) February 26, 2021

https://everestpipkin.medium.com/but-the-environmental-issues-with-cryptoart-1128ef72e6a3

lol we're all going to die