Climate

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

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New Delhi: Sales of induction cooktops and electric kettles have surged in the wake of cooking gas supply concerns due to the war in West Asia, according to industry players.

Tata Group's Croma said it has observed a threefold jump in demand for induction cooktops over the past few days, while Stovekraft Ltd, the company behind the popular kitchen appliance brand Pigeon, noted that its average weekly online sales have jumped four times.

"At Croma, we have observed a sharp and immediate uptick in demand for induction cooktops over the past few days. Our average daily run rate has surged significantly," Infiniti Retail Ltd (Croma) CEO & MD Shibashish Roy said.

Hilarious that India leaves the US behind, in terms of domestic technology.

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Lee Zeldin, the agency administrator, will address a Heartland Institute forum in April. The organization says speakers will challenge the climate crisis “narrative.”

For those who don't recognize the Heartland Institute, it was created to meet the shared need of the fossil fuels and tobacco industries to avoid the inconvenient science pointing to the harms of their products.

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The proposal, currently being considered by the Legislature during budget talks, would put off regulations for enforcing the law until 2030.

Never mind that shifting away from fossil fuels would cut costs.

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Gift link ,but requires registration. Not including an archive.is link because Hearst has lawyers who don't like that.

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Recent satellite monitoring revealed that actual emissions from the West Texas and southeast New Mexico basin are four times higher than official estimates.

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Sorry about the source here, but not seeing decent coverage elsewhere.

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New Stanford-led research traces a direct line from extreme weather to a massive dengue outbreak in Peru. The findings serve as a warning – and the seed of a possible solution.

In brief

  • Researchers traced Peru’s 2023 dengue outbreak to cyclone conditions, finding that 60% of cases stemmed from extreme rainfall and heat.

  • Climate modeling showed that conditions fueling the epidemic are now nearly three times more likely than in pre-industrial times.

  • Findings offer health officials quantifiable data to justify investments in mosquito control, vaccination, and urban flood resilience strategies.

The article: Extreme precipitation, exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change, drove Peru’s record-breaking 2023 dengue outbreak

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The party can lead by clearly explaining why electricity prices are rising and who bears responsibility, or they can surrender the narrative to corporate pundits and technocrats increasingly aligned with Big Tech.

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There is unfortunately a huge amount of harm we can do to the capacity of the Earth to support human life, even if we can't actually boil off the oceans like Venus.

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Last year, Southern California regulators rejected rules that would have phased down gas heaters after an industry-tied campaign generated 20,000+ critical comments.

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A new report suggests that the majority of people think new economic rules are required to curb climate change. The issue is that those majorities think they are a minority.

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The suit accuses the agency of illegally repealing the endangerment finding, the scientific assessment that required it to regulate greenhouse gases.

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The list, from the lawsuit

  • Commonwealth of Massachusetts
  • State of California
  • State of New York
  • State of Connecticut
  • State of Arizona
  • State of Colorado
  • State of Delaware
  • State of Hawai'i
  • State of Illinois
  • State of Maine
  • State of Maryland
  • State of Michigan
  • State of Minnesota
  • State of Nevada
  • State of New Jersey
  • State of New Mexico
  • State of North Carolina
  • State of Oregon
  • Josh Shapiro, in his official capacity as Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
  • State of Rhode Island
  • State of Vermont
  • Commonwealth of Virginia
  • State of Washington
  • State of Wisconsin
  • District of Columbia
  • United States Virgin Islands
  • City of Albuquerque, New Mexico
  • City of Boston, Massachusetts
  • City of Chicago, Illinois
  • City of Cleveland, Ohio
  • City of Columbus, Ohio
  • City and County of Denver, Colorado
  • Harris County, Texas
  • City of Los Angeles, California
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., County, Washington
  • City of New York, New York
  • City and County of San Francisco, California
  • And Santa Clara County, California
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Archived

Here is the full report (pdf).

The first-ever assessment and ranking of the climate commitments and actions of eight major supermarkets across four Asian countries—China, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore—by global environment organization Mighty Earth, finds three major supermarkets operating in China, DFI Retail Group and Sun Art Retail Group in Hong Kong, and Walmart, are failing to take action on climate pollution, specifically methane emissions from meat, dairy and rice supply chains.

[...]

DFI Retail Group scored 17 points in total, sitting in second place on the table behind AEON of Japan, which was just ahead with 20.5 points out of the 100 available points. Sun Art Retail Group Limited of Hong Kong and Walmart were nearer the bottom end of the ranking, scoring 6 and 4.5 points, respectively.

[...]

“Retailers in China risk losing face when it comes to tackling climate pollution embedded in meat, dairy and rice supply chains", says Meihua Piao, East Asia Manager for Mighty Earth

"Demand for beef in China is driving the super-polluting global trade, while massive methane emissions from rice cultivation are being largely overlooked.”

[...]

Methane is a short-lived but super-polluting greenhouse gas that is roughly 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20 year-period, making rapid cuts to methane emissions one of the fastest levers to slow near-term warming.

  • In 2023, methane emissions from Asia reached approximately 4.58 billion tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e). With the region warming at roughly twice the global average, climate impacts are already being felt across economies, ecosystems and societies.
  • Beef is the single biggest driver of agricultural methane emissions globally and is the second most widely consumed red meat in Asia after pork. According to the FAO/OECD, meat and seafood consumption in Asia is set to rise by 78% by 2050. In short, growing meat and dairy consumption is driving Asia’s methane emissions.
  • Asia accounts for approximately 90% of global rice production and consumption, with methane emissions from rice cultivation representing a major and persistent climate challenge in the region. Globally, approximately 60 million tons of methane is emitted each year from rice production — around 10% of global anthropogenic methane emissions.

[...]

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The New York Times now requires about 1/10 of people clicking a gift link like this one to register in order to access the article. You can either:

  • Register — you don't need to pay — but you do need to give up an email address
  • Open the gift link in a private browsing window
  • Use archive.is to skip the paywall entirely, but be aware that this archive site sometimes modifies archived pages, and generally fails to archive complex multimedia content.
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