A question about climate change/global warming.

The first two parts of a four-part series from a nightly Australian current affairs programme, viewable online and transcript embedded:

https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/climate-change-part-1:-how-climate-change-is/13309038

For generations, Indigenous Australians have thrived on the islands in the Torres Strait but rising sea levels, more extreme weather and coastal erosion are devouring some of the 17 inhabited islands in the region and threatening their way of life

https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/climate-change-part-2:-how-climate-change-will/13310690

The Black Summer bushfires gave us a taste of what we can expect if the world warms 1.5 degrees. The science tells us that every fraction of a degree that global temperatures rise will make future cyclones, floods and bushfires more severe.

Former defence chief Chris Barrie says the black summer bushfires exposed weaknesses in how we prepare for climate-related disasters: “It would seem to me a surprise that it took so long for the ADF to be out there helping our communities who are clearly in need.”

“On many occasions we were instructed ‘don’t call it climate change’ because that’s politically unacceptable, which to me was one of the most abhorrent things I encountered in the public service.” – Cheryl Durrant from the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group

“You’re much more likely to be kneecapped by your own party before you even have a chance to go out and argue your climate change credentials to the electorate.” – Rebecca Huntley, social researcher

The Climate Solution Actually Adding Millions of Tons of CO2 Into the Atmosphere

New research shows that California’s climate policy created up to 39 million carbon credits (one-third of the entire program) that aren’t achieving real carbon savings. But companies can buy these forest offsets to justify polluting more anyway.

May 17th:

Australian government commit commit $2.3 billion in subsidies.3 billion in subsidies to two petrol companies to keep their oil refineries open.

May 18th:

Even the International Energy Agency Thinks It’s Time to Stop Drilling New Oil Wells

A bombshell new 227-page report from the International Energy Agency on paths to avoiding climate catastrophe doesn’t mince words: 'Beyond projects already committed as of 2021,' its authors write, 'there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our pathway, and no new coal mines or mine extensions are required.' Put simply, the Paris-based intergovernmental organization declares—in big, bold text—what for American politicians is unthinkable: 'There is no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply.' Drillers, the IEA suggests, will have to rely on 'existing assets.'

This isn’t a group of lefty climate activists making the case for a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels but a body founded by Henry Kissinger to provide a geopolitical counterweight to OPEC.

https://newrepublic.com/article/162432/international-energy-agency-iea-fossil-fuels

May 19th:

The Australian government announces a $600 million spend on a new gas-fired power plant, against the advice of three separate expert boards that it has established to advise itself on energy policy, and protests by existing energy companies.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-18/federal-government-commits-600m-for-kurri-kurri-gas-plant/100147956]
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/government-at-odds-with-industry-over-power-plant-plans-20210504-p57ops

This is largely in spite because the actual energy retailers see issues with Morrison (and his millions-$ fossil-fuel-billionaire-led panel)'s notion that them mining natural gas and selling it to citizens will drive prices down and therefore repair the COVID-generated recession.

https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/morrison-steps-on-the-gas-20200914-p55val

Average Household Carbon Footprint by Zip Code: The suburbs are killing us

Here's the eastern seaboard pic.twitter.com/sc5cbYpEzI

— Carl Gershenson 🏘️ (@cgershenson) May 18, 2021

So, the heat wave in Canada was so strong that it created extreme wildfire conditions, and when the fires started the heat plumes were so strong they created severe thunderstorms, which are so strong they're creating lightning that's sparking new fires https://t.co/fXBIGSZhtW

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) July 1, 2021

Senior Exxon lobbyist captured on video names 11 senators "crucial" to company: Capito, Manchin, Sinema, Tester, Hassan, Barrasso, Cornyn, Daines, Coons, Kelly and Rubio.

Calls Manchin "Kingmaker" and says speaks with office weekly. https://t.co/c3TOGaICgi

— Anthony Adragna (@AnthonyAdragna) June 30, 2021

The fire feedback loop is scary stuff.

There was one map I saw, can’t find it now, but it appeared to show temperatures close to 40 C even near the Arctic Ocean. For one thing, that would also mean this is causing melting of the permafrost. That could lead to amplifying feedback loops involving the albedo effect, as well as methane emissions.

This is getting speculative but I wonder if it’s possible that localized increased methane concentrations in arctic Canada could have played a role in causing the heat wave there too. (Methane is significantly more powerful of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, although methane has a much shorter lifespan in the atmosphere. There has already been a significant amount released from melting permafrost and sea ice from previous years.)

Like I said that last part is speculative so don’t hesitate to call me out if it seems like I’m way off base.

Up to 90% of Lytton, BC, burned after authorities order evacuation

Lytton Mayor Jan Polderman signed an official evacuation order at 6 pm local time on Wednesday as “the whole town is on fire,” he told CBC News. “It took, like, a whole 15 minutes from the first sign of smoke to, all of a sudden, there being fire everywhere,” he added. According to the town's MP Brad Vis, 90% of Lytton has been destroyed by the fire, affecting 1,200 to 1,500 residents. Earlier this week, Lytton set a record-high temperature in Canada amid a heatwave that started last weekend.

if only BC was closer to California, where Dianne Feinstein solved climate change already

"Really horrifying": Fire clouds spark 710,117 lightning strikes in western Canada in 15 hours

Definitely feels like climate change is entering a new phase of acceleration.

if only anyone had forecast this

Biden said it’s getting real, and iirc even Pelosi admits it’s happening, so maybe in a few decades we’ll be ready to take some effective action to mitigate the worst effects.

Thank you for providing me with the space for this brief rant.

i just wish someone would have told me

The polar bears tried, but they’re all dead now.

I should clarify my remarks: Pelosi does not in fact control the weather in Canada. Shit, did I let it slip?

no one told me lightning can cause forest fires! if i had known that, i would have been against fossil fuel emissions the entire time!!!!!

Absolutely mind-blowing wildfire behavior in British Columbia.

Incredible & massive storm-producing pyrocumulonimbus plumes. pic.twitter.com/kH39IuX1ez

— Dakota Smith (@weatherdak) July 1, 2021

Ugh

anyone else having a lot of bad dreams involving climate change? it's fun haha

did you dream this one

The ocean is on fire in the Gulf of Mexico after a pipeline ruptured. Good system.

pic.twitter.com/5HK6VVfxOP

— Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) July 2, 2021

literal hellfire, cool

I beg your pardon Madame Bison, but it is decidedly uncool 🔥

Looks like Aimless was otm about the climate crisis leveling up.

Not sure if redundant to post from the Graun here but:

…the intensity of the heat in the north-west Americas this year and Siberia last year has taken many scientists by surprise and suggested extra factors may be involved in northern latitudes.

One theory is that the recent temperature spike might have been caused not just by global heating, but by slowing weather systems that get stuck in one place for an extended period, which gives them time to intensify and cause more damage…

Experts believe the rapid heating in the Arctic and decline of sea ice is making the jet stream wiggle in large, meandering patterns, so-called Rossby resonance waves, trapping high- and low-pressure weather systems in one location for a longer time.

This theory remains contested, but Michael Mann of Penn State said this week’s unexpectedly fierce heat at Lytton and elsewhere should prompt climatologists to consider additional impacts of human activity.

“We should take this event very seriously,” he wrote in an email.

“The temperature-sensing pandemic robot is malfunctioning because of climate change” is the most dystopian thing I’ve ever written. https://t.co/uxJgnfLWHy

— Tamara Hinz (@hinz_tamara) July 2, 2021

is this good

VIDEO: Large explosion in the Umid gas field in Caspian Sea. Cause currently unknown. - @Liveuamappic.twitter.com/uGtIhMzCQn

— Conflict News (@Conflicts) July 4, 2021

They’re claiming it’s from naturally occurring mud volcanos, a similar phenomenon as was observed in the region by Marco Polo on his travels.

No clue how credible those claims are tho.

Oh man the jokes about mud volcanoes just write themselves…

sounds like a load of mud volcanoes

lol more like asspian sea

5/7/21:

Sea levels in the Torres Strait are rising at twice the average global rate. These men are waging a battle to force the Australian government to act on climate change to save their land and their culture. pic.twitter.com/2OTj3UHNWV

— SBS News (@SBSNews) July 5, 2021

5/7/21:

A federal government credit agency has spent about 80 times more money on fossil fuel projects than renewables over the past 11 years. Research from Jubilee Australia has found Export Finance Australia provided up to $1.69 billion in financing to the fossil fuel industry compared to just $20 million for renewable energy projects between 2009 and 2020.

10/9/15:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGMrGlAHUq0

My conclusion: the Australian government is very very bad and should be voted out of office.

Also, we're so fucked it isn't funny.

i honestly don't think this whole (corrupt) system of propping oil producers and polluters will change just through political pressure. not until people are angry enough to drag politicians and business leaders (if they can get ahold of them) into the streets will significant change happen and it will be way too late at that point.
the world my kids will inherit will be fucked and i'm clinging to the hope that this is somehow correctable down the road when there is the willpower to take it seriously or that we can learn to exist on a fucked planet.

not until people are angry enough to drag politicians and business leaders (if they can get ahold of them) into the streets will significant change happen and it will be way too late at that point.

the pandemic killed off this idea, to me, the idea that at some point the tragedy would become clear and the "people" would rise up against to demand justice. yes, some people will do that. but we are outnumbered by the complete fucking ..fools. liars? whatever.

fox news is creating its own weather channel. soon even those kinds of once neutral topics and "facts" will come under the rightwing bubble. they like it in there. there's no one calling them a racist in there, and their kids aren't angry at them there either, or at least not in a way that is noticeable or troublesome

ya... you make a very good and sad point.

but we are outnumbered by the complete fucking ..fools. liars? whatever.

we're actually not outnumbered though, are we? batshit insane right-wingers are definitely less than half the country. it's just that our political system gives them more say.

harder to ignore a heat wave/fire/drought when you live through it, not sure if fox propaganda can drown out that factor. i guess anything is possible with these folks xxp

batshit insane right-wingers are definitely less than half the country.

The majority in the USA would appear to be people who simply continue to live their lives on auto-pilot, working their jobs, shopping and consuming as they always did, never really connecting climate change and these quotidian facts, partly out of inertia and partly out of reluctance to change because change is hard and life seems hard enough already. The batshit insane right-wingers add their weight to the mass that would have to be shifted by the climate activists and taken together the insane, the greedy and the blinkered are too heavy to budge very far.

Sad to say this is a really great piece:

https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/06/all-the-right-words-on-climate-have-already-been-said/

Is it?

I realize I could cite some data to support this but I’m not going to look anything up because I don’t want to know the truth. I’m comfortable with “It’s bad.”

I also just wanted to note that I really relate to Aimless’ perspective. When I first read it I struggled to put some positive light on the situation. Before last year happened maybe I could have but 2020 really took the wind out of my sails on these issues.

My main hope lies with the fact that at least the populace largely seems to be waking up to the fact that we are facing systemic crises that can’t just be resolved with incremental reform. It’s going to take revolutionary change in one form or another if we’re going to get through this with our civilization intact.

I’ve been watching the Americans again and the depiction of late-stage USSR strongly resonates with the current state of the USA to me.

My main hope lies with the fact that at least the populace largely seems to be waking up to the fact that

The entire villain plot of 1973’s Bond film is that oil companies will murder generations by blocking renewable energy (and ppl can get rich developing renewables that won’t be used) and half of the 1980s’ action flicks and children’s cartoons were about the need for the populace to unite to save the planet from tech companies and energy barons

The most pervasive current rhetoric from the far right through centrists to the ~moderate left~ is that the very concept of “waking up to” anything is pathetic

idk that the populace are gonna sort this one out anytime soon

In that case I wasn’t referring to the issue of climate change alone but more to how the main social and political trends of 2020 reflect on climate action, with an admittedly US-centric focus.

So my reference to waking up specifically to systemic crises there related to BLM as much as anything else. As far as speaking for the “moderate left”, that term seems entirely relative in the current political social media landscape but it seems that most folks here would be included in general, as well as most people I know and while my people in the Deep South of the USA are as usual behind the times, folks I know on the left coast seem to have had a great awakening over the past couple of years.

You do make a worthwhile point though, it wasn’t long ago that we were projecting the likely strategies of denialists in reaction to the increasingly obvious facts of the matter.

Anyway this is simply my best hope for now. Once we give up hope it seems like there’s not much point discussing these issues any more except as a psychological support group, and maybe another thread would be more appropriate for that.

really good piece. sums up how i feel. people knew. they should know. they were told, in a million different ways. it's too late.

here's what i always say - there are different degrees of bad. acting too late is better than acting too late at all.

i still think that's true. however, we're fucked, and we tried to tell people that in so many different ways. whatever. some people have already paid the cost; others will soon. most will never pay a cost at all, and worry about other things. fuck them!

it's good that there are young people, always. overpopulation is bad, but also the only hope we have is young people. everyone over the age of 35 can die immediately, we fucked up

the people that will feel good in the future are the people that can watch U.S. open round 3 in air conditioning in 1993 and 2043, and their experience was essentially the same because they were privileged. goood for them, fucked for everyone else

i wish there were a bunch more "honest" pieces like that, selfishly, but i'm glad that most people are strong and they don't show that part of themselves. it's demoralizing for most people, although, personally, to me, i see it as "real"

If we’re going to dwell on the sense of hopelessness I’d rather see a less blinkered view. More scientists who focus on data from objective sources; less journalists who read an article or two about how Miami is sinking and managed to connect the dots between that, the future real estate market there, and finally, when the fires reached their doorstep, how the crisis is immediately impacting their own region.

what are you talking about? is the one that prompted this revive common? are there are other articles i can read that are like that? please connect me to the journalists who are like the one who posted the essay posted above

there are literally 5.7 trillion articles written every single fucking day that tell everyone exactly what they needed to know to make the right decision

blinkered?

what?