While our "leaders" continue to fiddle... World News Record-Shattering India Heat Wave Scorches Wheat Crop As Reserves Are Strained “I am afraid the worst is yet to come." Aniruddha Ghosal Apr. 29, 2022, 10:05 AM EDT NEW DELHI (AP) — An unusually early, record-shattering heat wave in India has reduced wheat yields, raising questions about how the country will balance its domestic needs with ambitions to increase exports and make up for shortfalls due to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Gigantic landfills in India’s capital New Delhi have caught fire in recent weeks. Schools in eastern Indian state Odisha have been shut for a week and in neighboring West Bengal, schools are stocking up on oral rehydration salts for kids. On Tuesday, Rajgarh, a city of over 1.5 million people in central India, was the country’s hottest, with daytime temperatures peaking at 46.5 degrees Celsius (114.08 Fahrenheit). Temperatures breached the 45 C (113 F) mark in nine other cities. More...
Lake Powell officials face an impossible choice in the West's megadrought: Water or electricity By René Marsh, CNN Updated 1:03 PM ET, Sat April 30, 2022 Lake Powell, the country's second-largest reservoir, is drying up. The situation is critical: if water levels at the lake were to drop another 32 feet, all hydroelectricity production would be halted at the reservoir's Glen Canyon Dam. The West's climate change-induced water crisis is now triggering a potential energy crisis for millions of people in the Southwest who rely on the dam as a power source. Over the past several years, the Glen Canyon Dam has lost about 16 percent of its capacity to generate power. The water levels at Lake Powell have dropped around 100 feet in the last three years. The West's megadrought Why the Great American Lawn is terrible for the West's water crisis Southern Californians told to reduce outdoor watering in 'unprecedented' order Lake Mead plummets to unfathomable low, exposing original 1971 water intake valve Experts say the term 'drought' may be insufficient to capture what is happening in the West The Colorado River irrigates farms, powers electric grids and provides drinking water for 40 million people. As its supply dwindles, a crisis looms. Bob Martin, deputy power manager for the Glen Canyon Dam, pointed toward what's called the "bathtub ring" on the canyon walls. The miles of white rock represent this region's problem. "That's where the water has bleached out the rock -- and that's how high the water was at one point," Martin told CNN. As water levels decline, so does hydropower production. The dam harnesses the gravitational force of the Colorado River's water to generate power for as many as 5.8 million homes and businesses in seven states, including Nevada and New Mexico. Bryan Hill runs the public power utility in Page, Arizona, where the federal dam is located, and likens the situation to judgment day. "We're knocking on the door of judgment day -- judgment day being when we don't have any water to give anybody." As water levels decline in Lake Powell, so does hydropower production. Forty percent of Page's power comes from the Glen Canyon Dam. Without it, they'll be forced to make up that electricity with fossil fuels like natural gas, which emits planet-warming gases and will exacerbate the West's water crisis. Loss of power at the dam would also mean higher energy costs for customers as the price of fossil fuels skyrockets. Lake Mead plummets to unprecedented low, exposing original 1971 water intake valve "If nothing changes, in other words, if we don't start getting some moisture for Page, in particular, we are looking at an additional 25 to 30% in power costs," Hill told CNN. Arash Moalemi, the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority's deputy general manager, told CNN a loss of power at the Glen Canyon Dam would be devastating for the Navajo community. "We have 40% unemployment, and our per capita income is a little over 10 thousand dollars," Moalemi said. "Higher energy prices could mean some people aren't able to heat or cool their homes." The federal government -- which technically owns the hydropower flowing through federally managed dams -- sells the electricity to states for what is often far less than the commercial market price. In a worst-case scenario, the Interior Department projects the dam could stop producing power by January. The agency is now weighing an emergency action that would buy the dam more time. If the water level falls another 32 feet, Glen Canyon Dam will no longer produce electricity. In a letter to seven Western states this month, the Interior Department recommended releasing less water from Lake Powell to downstream states this year. The proposal calls for holding back the equivalent of 42.6 billion gallons of water in Lake Powell, which will mean deeper cuts to the amount of water people can use in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. More than 110 billion gallons of water have already been held back so far this year. Why the Great American Lawn is terrible for the West's water crisis This impossible choice comes as new images show that Lake Mead -- Powell's downstream neighbor and the country's largest reservoir -- has dropped to such historically low levels that one of the lake's original 1971 water intake valves is now exposed above the water line. Inside the Glen Canyon Dam, the current water level is still producing energy. At the dam's power plant there are eight generators. The force of water traveling through 15-foot diameter pipes hits and spins turbines which then generate power. If water levels at Lake Powell drop just another 32 feet, those generators will stop spinning. The climate crisis is forcing both federal and state governments to make tough choices and take drastic measures just to keep both power and water flowing to Americans in the Southwest. The Interior Department is expected to make a final decision on how to handle the dire situation at the dam by early May.
Net zero by 2050 will hit a major timing problem technology can’t solve. We need to talk about cutting consumption Published: April 27, 2022 3.59pm EDT Author Mark Diesendorf Honorary Associate Professor, UNSW Sydney Disclosure statement Mark Diesendorf has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council. Many climate activists, scientists, engineers and politicians are trying to reassure us the climate crisis can be solved rapidly without any changes to lifestyle, society or the economy. To make the vast scale of change palatable, advocates suggest all we have to do is switch fossil fuels for renewable power, electric vehicles and energy efficiency technologies, add seaweed to livestock feed to cut methane and embrace green hydrogen for heavy industries such as steel-making. There’s just one problem: time. We’re on a very tight timeline to halve emissions within eight years and hit net zero by 2050. While renewables are making major inroads, the world’s overall primary energy use keeps rising. That means renewables are chasing a retreating target. My new research shows if the world’s energy consumption grows at the pre-COVID rate, technological change alone will not be enough to halve global CO₂ emissions by 2030. We will have to cut energy consumption 50-75% by 2050 while accelerating the renewable build. And that means lifestyle change driven by social policies. Renewables must be built at a much faster rate. Shutterstock The limitations of technological change We must confront a hard fact: In the year 2000, fossil fuels supplied 80% of the world’s total primary energy consumption. In 2019, they provided 81%. How is that possible, you ask, given the soaring growth rate of renewable electricity over that time period? Because world energy consumption has been growing rapidly, apart from a temporary pause in 2020. So far, most of the growth has been supplied by fossil fuels, especially for transportation and non-electrical heating. The 135% growth in renewable electricity over that time frame seems huge, but it started from a small base. That’s why it couldn’t catch fossil fuelled electricity’s smaller percentage increase from a large base. As a renewable energy researcher, I have no doubt technological change is at the point where we can now affordably deploy it to get to net zero. But the transition is not going to be fast enough on its own. If we don’t hit our climate goals, it’s likely our planet will cross a climate tipping point and begin an irreversible descent into more heatwaves, droughts, floods and sea-level rise. Our to-do list for a liveable climate is simple: convert essentially all transportation and heating to electricity while switching all electricity production to renewables. But to complete this within three decades is not simple. Even at much higher rates of renewable growth, we will not be able to replace all fossil fuels by 2050. This is not the fault of renewable energy. Other low-carbon energy sources like nuclear would take much longer to build, and leave us even further behind. Do we have other tools we can use to buy time? CO₂ capture is getting a great deal of attention, but it seems unlikely to make a significant contribution. The scenarios I explored in my research assume removing CO₂ from the atmosphere by carbon capture and storage or direct air capture does not occur on a large scale, because these technologies are speculative, risky and very expensive. The only scenarios in which we succeed in replacing fossil fuels in time require something quite different. We can keep global warming under 2℃ if we slash global energy consumption by 50% to 75% by 2050 as well as greatly accelerating the transition to 100% renewables. Individual behaviour change is useful, but insufficient Let’s be clear: individual behaviour change has some potential for mitigation, but it’s limited. The International Energy Agency recognises net zero by 2050 will require behavioural changes as well as technological changes. But the examples it gives are modest, such as washing clothes in cold water, drying them on clotheslines, and reducing speed limits on roads. Read more: Affluence is killing the planet, warn scientists The 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on climate mitigation has taken a step further, acknowledging the importance of collectively reducing energy consumption with a chapter on “Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation”. To do this effectively, government policies are needed. Rich people and rich countries are responsible for far and away the most greenhouse gas emissions. It follows that we have to reduce consumption in high-income countries while improving human well-being. To smooth the transition, governments will need to guarantee jobs. Steven Saphore/AAP We’ll need policies leading to large scale consumption changes We all know the technologies in our climate change toolbox to tackle climate change: renewables, electrification, green hydrogen. But while these will help drive a rapid transition to clean energy, they are not designed to cut consumption. These policies would actually cut consumption, while also smoothing the social transition: a carbon tax and additional environmental taxes wealth and inheritance taxes a shorter working week to share the work around a job guarantee at the basic wage for all adults who want to work and who can’t find a job in the formal economy non-coercive policies to end population growth, especially in high income countries boosting government spending on poverty reduction, green infrastructure and public services as part of a shift to Universal Basic Services. You might look at this list and think it’s impossible. But just remember the federal government funded the economic response to the pandemic by creating money. We could fund these policies the same way. As long as spending is within the productive capacity of the nation, there is no risk of driving inflation. Yes, these policies mean major change. But major disruptive change in the form of climate change is happening regardless. Let’s try to shape our civilisation to be resilient in the face of change.
The insect apocalypse: ‘Our world will grind to a halt without them’ Illustration: Observer design/Alamy Insects have declined by 75% in the past 50 years – and the consequences may soon be catastrophic. Biologist Dave Goulson reveals the vital services they perform Dave Goulson I have been fascinated by insects all my life. One of my earliest memories is of finding, at the age of five or six, some stripy yellow-and-black caterpillars feeding on weeds in the school playground. I put them in my empty lunchbox, and took them home. Eventually they transformed into handsome magenta and black moths. This seemed like magic to me – and still does. I was hooked. In pursuit of insects I have travelled the world, from the deserts of Patagonia to the icy peaks of Fjordland in New Zealand and the forested mountains of Bhutan. I have watched clouds of birdwing butterflies sipping minerals from the banks of a river in Borneo, and thousands of fireflies flashing in synchrony at night in the swamps of Thailand. At home in my garden in Sussex I have spent countless hours watching grasshoppers court a mate and see off rivals, earwigs tend their young, ants milk honeydew from aphids, and leaf-cutter bees snip leaves to line their nests. But I am haunted by the knowledge that these creatures are in decline. It is 50 years since I first collected those caterpillars in the school playground, and every year that has passed there have been slightly fewer butterflies, fewer bumblebees – fewer of almost all the myriad little beasts that make the world go round. These fascinating and beautiful creatures are disappearing, ant by ant, bee by bee, day by day. Estimates vary and are imprecise, but it seems likely that insects have declined in abundance by 75% or more since I was five years old. The scientific evidence for this grows stronger every year, as studies are published describing the collapse of monarch butterfly populations in North America, the demise of woodland and grassland insects in Germany, or the seemingly inexorable contraction of the ranges of bumblebees and hoverflies in the UK. In 1963, two years before I was born, Rachel Carson warned us in her book Silent Springthat we were doing terrible damage to our planet. She would weep to see how much worse it has become. Insect-rich wildlife habitats, such as hay meadows, marshes, heathland and tropical rainforests, have been bulldozed, burned or ploughed to destruction on a vast scale. The problems with pesticides and fertilisers, she highlighted, have become far more acute, with an estimated 3m tonnes of pesticides now going into the global environment every year. Some of these new pesticides are thousands of times more toxic to insects than any that existed in Carson’s day. Soils have been degraded, rivers choked with silt and polluted with chemicals. Climate change, a phenomenon unrecognised in her time, is now threatening to further ravage our planet. These changes have all happened in our lifetime, on our watch, and they continue to accelerate. Few people seem to realise how devastating this is, not only for human wellbeing – we need insects to pollinate our crops, recycle dung, leaves and corpses, keep the soil healthy, control pests, and much more – but for larger animals, such as birds, fish and frogs, which rely on insects for food. Wildflowers rely on them for pollination. As insects become more scarce, our world will slowly grind to a halt, for it cannot function without them. More...
Sufficiency means degrowth By Timothée Parrique, originally published by Timothée Parrique blog May 6, 2022 It took me a while but I finally digested the 107 pages of Chapter 5: Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation in the last IPCC report on Mitigation of climate change. This chapter is worth the read if only because it’s the first one fully dedicated to demand-side strategies. What I find remarkable is its conceptual width, including a few ideas that are usually considered too radical in these kind of venues. But just like the rest of the report, it is long and – as academic writing too often is – full of abstract jargon and somnolent prose. What I want to do in this article is to explain why Chapter 5 is more radical (in the good sense of the term) that you may think. What does “demand” mean? The chapter uses a variety of demand-related terms like deep demand reduction, low demand scenarios, reduced demand, demand-side options, and demand-side measures. Before we get into the details, it is essential to grasp what this demand refers to. Back to economics 101: supply has to do with production and supply-side measures aims at changing patterns of production. In climate discussions, these often revolve around shifting to renewable energy, making production more resource efficient, and deploying carbon removal technologies. Demand, on the other hand, has to do with consumption and demand-side measurestarget lifestyle choices, institutions, and cultural norms. The report divides demand-side measures into three kinds: avoid, shift, and improve.[ii] Avoid consists in consuming less of something; shift means substituting one type of consumption for another; and improve is the greening of an existing type of consumption. If we’re talking about cutting the carbon footprint of food, I can avoid waste, shift to a vegan diet, and improve my cooking equipment. So, this is the central focus of the chapter: What can we avoid, shift, and improve in our consumption to reduce emissions? This question may not seem like much but it is. For several decades, the focal point of climate discussions was the decoupling of production and emissions. With hindsight, it seems rather silly we wasted that much time obsessing over the greening of a production that could have been avoided in the first place. After years of wrecking our brains on the design of hydrogen planes, electric cars, and cultured meat, we realise that it would have been much more effective to just fly less, use public transport more, and go vegan. This is how eureka-ish Chapter 5 is. Whose demand is it? The problem of the supply approach is that it invisibilises inequality. When we say that we should improve the carbon efficiency of a plane, we sideline the matter of who is actually flying and why. From the perspective of demand, however, the question of unequal levels of consumption becomes crucial. Forget about efficiency (for now) because climate mitigation is first and foremost of a question of sufficiency, namely “measures and daily practices that avoid demand for energy, materials, land and water while delivering human wellbeing for all within planetary boundaries,” as defined in the SPM. And that’s where the concept of basic needs and well-being for all within planetary boundaries takes all its revolutionary meaning. In an unequal world with a limited carbon budget, we should discuss who is entitled to consume what. If you think this question is too polemical or philosophical for an IPCC report, think again. Here is perhaps the one single most important paragraph from Chapter 5 (pp. 29-30), which I will split in five smaller parts. “The distinction between necessities and luxuries helps to frame a growing stream of social sciences literature with climate policy relevance (Arrow et al. 2004; Ramakrishnan and Creutzig 2021).” More...
Here is what @Ricter is doing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent Watch and learn what folks like @Ricter are doing. Take notes
The Age of Extinction Is Here — Some of Us Just Don’t Know It Yet We’re Crossing the Threshold of Survivability — And There’s No Going Back Image Credit: NASA “Why do you think people are a little freaked out by what I’m talking about these days?” I was asking my kid sis. She laughed. “You’re basically telling them it’s the end of the world?” It was the night of the eclipse. A red moon illuminated the sky. 300,000 years had gone by since our kind walked the earth. And now it would never be the same again. Let me try and tell you how I’ve come to think of the Event, as I’ve begun to call it. The Cataclysm. Extinction. A different earth. My friends in the Indian Subcontinent tell me stories, these days, that seem like science fiction. The heatwave there is pushing the boundaries of survivability. My other sister says that in the old, beautiful city of artists and poets, eagles are falling dead from the sky. They are just dropping dead and landing on houses, monuments, shops. They can’t fly anymore. The streets, she says, are lined with dead things. Dogs. Cats. Cows. Animals of all kinds are just there, dead. They’ve perished in the killing heat. They can’t survive. People, too, try to flee. They run indoors, spend all day in canals and rivers and lakes, and those who can’t, too, line the streets, passed out, pushed to the edge. They’re poor countries. We won’t know how many this heatwave has killed for some time to come. Many won’t even be counted. Think about all that for a moment. Really stop and think about it. Stop the automatic motions of everyday life you go through and think about it. You see, my Western friends read stories like this, and then they go back to obsessing over the Kardashians or Wonder Woman or Johnny Depp or Batman. They don’t understand yet. Because this is beyond the limits of what homo sapiens can really comprehend, the Event. That world is coming for them, too. The analogy is often used to describe “climate change” of frogs in a boiling pot. It’s useful, but only to a certain degree. When the pot boils, they’re taken out and eaten. We were in a boiling pot, and now we’re at the stage where we’re about to get taken out and eaten. This is when things start to get really, really bad — really, really fast. The way that I’ve come to think of the Event — a species that’s been around for 300,000 years now having altered the climate in ways that haven’t happened for millions of years, triggering an Extinction Event — is this. Imagine a black hole. Humanity’s lined up before it. Everyone has to march through. Some are at the front of the line. They reach the other side first. Some are at the back of the line. They’re still laughing and joking and pretending, maybe. Nobody much hears from those who’ve gone through, because, well, it’s a black hole. But on the other side, nothing is ever to be the same again. This is where we are now. We are at the threshold of the Cataclysm. Some of us are now crossing over to the other side, of a different planet, one that’s going to become unlivable. This isn’t “going to happen” or “might happen,” it is actually happening now. Those are my friends, for example, in the Indian Subcontinent, where eagles are falling dead from the sky, where the streets are lined with dead things. Extinction. The Event. You can literally see it happening there. They are the first ones through the Event Horizon, if you like — the lip of the black hole. They are canaries in the coal mine, my Indian and Pakistani and Bengali friends. They are on the other side, and are experiencing the world in the Event. And that world is coming for us all. I don’t use the words “climate change” to describe any of this, because, well, they’re inadequate. The way that we tell that story has led to a kind of shocking sense of apathy and ignorance about the reality of what we face. People read the science, and think that if the temperature rises by one degree, two, three, what’s the big deal? Ha ha! Who cares? That’s not even a hot day? Wrong. A better way to tell that story is something like this. On average, when the temperature rises one degree, the seasons change by a factor of ten at equatorial regions. One degree, one point five, which is where we are now — the summers are ten to fifteen degrees Celsius hotter. Two degrees? Twenty. Three degrees? Thirty. We’re heading for three degrees. It’s already 50 degrees Celsius in the Subcontinent. Spain is bracing for an extreme heatwave, of about 40 degrees plus as is Europe, as is much of America. That’s at one degree or so of global warming. At two degrees? The Subcontinent hits 60 degrees Celsius. Spain and Europe hit 50. At three degrees? Equatorial regions hit 70 degrees Celsius or more. Spain and Europe hit 60. I’m sure that some will quibble with that interpretation, so go ahead and adjust however you like. It doesn’t really matter. At 50 degrees, which is where the Subcontinent is now, life dies off. The birds fall from the sky. The streets become mass graves. People flee and try to just survive. Energy grids begin to break. Economies grind to a halt. Extinction happens. This is the threshold. We are already hitting it. We can see it now in startling, grim, vivid detail. The Event is not some kind of abstraction or prediction. Extinction is now really happening in plain sight in places around the globe — and they are revealing to us the limits of what our civilization can survive. That limit is hit somewhere between 40 and 50 degrees. After that point, life as we know it comes to an end. My Western friends still don’t really grasp this at all. They imagine that as the seasons get exponentially hotter, they can simply…turn up the air conditioning. LOL. Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. Why not? Not just because energy grids will fail, or even because at a certain point even air conditioning just fails. It’s because of life. My Western friends don’t think these days. This fantasy of turning up the air conditioning and sitting in your apartment or house? They ignore the now obvious signs. Birds falling from the sky, Dead things lining the streets. What are you going to do, sit in your air conditioned home while everything else goes extinct? It doesn’t work like that. Those things, those beings — birds, cows, sheep, chickens, whatever — they provide us with the basics, too. They perish, we perish. Insects nourish our soil, birds eat insects, and on and on. My Western friends don’t understand that we are part of systems. Ecosystems, in this case. And as their foundations are ripped out, we can scarcely survive. The idea that you can sit in your air conditioned home in comfort while everything else goes extinct is a fantasy, a delusion. What will you eat? Who will turn the soil? Who’ll keep the crops healthy? Where will the basics of life come from? Our civilization collapses somewhere between fifty and sixty degrees Celsius. Bang, poof, gone. Nothing works after that point. Everything begins to die — not just animals and us in the case, but our systems which depend on them. Economics crater, inflation skyrockets, people grow poorer, fascism erupts as a consequence. You can already see that beginning to happen around the globe — but it’s just the beginning. Imagine how much worse inflation’s going to get when Extinction really begins to bite. Everything fails at the threshold we are now reaching. Our civilization doesn’t survive it. Democracy has its throat slit by fascism and theocracy, as people, afraid, angry, desperate, turn to fundamentalist religion or authoritarian brutality to give them answers — or just a meal. Economies become mechanisms for basic survival, not opportunity or prosperity. Society and community are destroyed by the bitter every-man-for-himself quest for self-preservation. This is the world we’re heading into, and you can see it now spreading, from America to India to Europe and beyond. What happens in such a world? Do people pull together to save it? Probably not. Inequality spirals even further — the rich finds ways to monopolize what few resources are left and profiteer. Covid gave us a vivid example of that. Governments, paralyzed, are captured by fanatical sects and factions, and nobody much arrives to help you when you need it. Covid, again. Culture becomes a war, between those who think of death, basically, as a good thing, a purification, and those who don’t. Think of America’s bitter “culture wars.” What happens in such a world? Society turns predatory, regressive, eats itself — which is what a civilization collapsing is. We are crossing the threshold now. Of Extinction. Of the Event. So far, it’s been invisible to us, and we’ve been living in ignorant bliss. The insects are dying off — who cares! Hey, did you see what Kim Kardashian wore to the Met Gala? The fish are dying off — so what, LOL, bro, let’s go watch a Marvel Movie!! The earth’s great systems are all reaching tipping points — the Amazon, the boreal forests, the ocean currents, the poles — of reinforcing a hotter and hotter planet. Dude, what’s your problem? Tucker Carlson says we’re the master race!! We are crossing the threshold now. Extinction is visible. The eagles fall from the sky, taking their last breaths on the way down to a burning planet. The streets are lined with death. We’re not frogs slowly boiling in a pot anymore. We’re being taken out of the pot, and we’re about to be eaten. My Western friends are still in denial that any of this will happen to them. Ignorance is bliss. This world is coming for us all. There is going to be no escaping it. The ones in India and Pakistan and Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are some of the first through the event horizon. But we must all cross it, because, well, we’re all on this planet. Extinction is something that happens to a planet. That doesn’t mean — my usual caveats — that everything dies off. It means it the way biologists use the term — a mass extinction, in which many, many things do, and life resets itself, probably, in new ways. After us, comes a new earth. 300,000 years of us — barely the blink of an eye. Life will survive. But our civilization won’t. The Event — the time in between civilizations — will be a dark age. You can see that dark age falling now. It’s in every bird falling from the sky, every animal dropping dead from the heat, every democracy being shredded by lunatics, in all the deaths we will never count. Our systems — all of them — economic, social, political — are beginning to fail. Because, my friends, this is Extinction. Some us just don’t know it yet. Umair May 2022 https://eand.co/the-age-of-extinction-is-here-some-of-us-just-dont-know-it-yet-7001f5e0c79a