Free Republic

Today I trekked out to Brooklyn to testify at a public hearing on New York’s plans to achieve “net zero” electricity by 2030 or so, and a “net zero” economy by 2050. Actually, it wasn’t much of a trek — the hearing took place at an auditorium in Brooklyn Heights, near the first subway stop on the other side of the East River. The organization holding the hearing was the New York Climate Action Council. This body was created under New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (Climate Act), and is tasked with figuring out how to...

A new NASA climate simulation suggests that extremely large volcanic eruptions called “flood basalt eruptions” might significantly warm Earth’s climate and devastate the ozone layer that shields life from the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation. The result contradicts previous studies indicating these volcanoes cool the climate. It also suggests that while extensive flood-basalt eruptions on Mars and Venus may have helped warm their climates, they could have doomed the long-term habitability of these worlds by contributing to water loss. Unlike brief, explosive volcanic eruptions such as Pinatubo or January’s Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai that occur over hours or days, flood basalts are regions...

Some of the biggest companies in the world, including Facebook and Google, are planning to spend almost $1 billion on a new climate change strategy. It's not renewable energy or planting trees. It's pulling carbon dioxide emissions right out of the air. The world has moved so slowly over the last 40 years to rein in greenhouse gases that scientists are now finding that cutting the use of fossil fuels alone may not be enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change. The world is on track for increasingly destructive heat waves, floods and storms. That means heat-trapping...

The promises arrived at a rapid clip over two weeks in Glasgow last fall. There, along the banks of the River Clyde, leaders from nearly 200 nations vowed to do more — and move faster — to combat climate change. But nearly six months later, no large nation has come forward with a bolder climate plan, and none of the world’s top emitters has committed to doing so this year. “What we have seen so far is very, very little,” said Niklas Höhne, a German climatologist who created the Climate Action Tracker, which monitors the commitments and policies of countries,...

A proposed California desalination plant that would produce 50 million gallons of drinking water per day failed a crucial regulatory hurdle on Monday, possibly dooming a project that had been promoted as a partial solution for sustained drought. The staff of the California Coastal Commission recommended denying approval of the Huntington Beach plant proposed by Poseidon Water, controlled by the infrastructure arm of Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management. The commission’s staff said the project was more susceptible to sea-level rise than was understood when it was first proposed more than two decades ago. The plant is expected to produce 50 million...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Satellites have detected methane emissions from belching cows at a California feedlot, marking the first time emissions from livestock - a major component of agricultural methane - could be measured from space. Environmental data firm GHGSat this month analyzed data from its satellites and pinpointed the methane source from a feedlot in the agricultural Joaquin Valley near Bakersfield, California in February. This is significant, according to GHGSat, because agricultural methane emissions are hard to measure and accurate measurement is needed to set enforceable reduction targets for the beef-production industry. GHGSat said the amount of methane it detected...

An innovative face mask for cows, designed to reduce methane emissions and slow down climate change, has won a prestigious design award. The wearable device for cattle, created by UK-based design group Zelp, was one of the four winners of the inaugural Terra Cart Design Lab competition. Prince Charles, who launched the competition as part of his Sustainable Markets Initiative, hailed the ground-breaking design as "fascinating" at an awards ceremony in London on Wednesday. The design, a smart harness for cows, converts methane into carbon dioxide and water vapor. Cows expel significant quantities of methane, an odorless greenhouse gas, which...

“Those Cuban-CIA men (Bay of Pigs vets) were as tough, dedicated and impetuous a group of soldiers as I’ve ever had the honor of commanding,” wrote legendary anti-communist mercenary “Mad Mike” Hoare, commander of the “Wild Geese,” in his book Congo Mercenary. ''This is the history of a failure,'' said the oddly frank opening lines of Che Guevara’s Congo Dairies. “I stood above Che Guevara, my boots near his head, just as Che had once stood over my dear friend and fellow 2506 Brigade member, Nestor Pino. ‘We're going to kill you all," Che said to Pino.’ Now, the situation...

Marine animals could die off at a level rivaling the biggest mass extinctions in geologic history if people don’t curb greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the takeaway from a study published Thursday in the journal Science, which found that many ocean creatures could face conditions too warm and with too little oxygen to survive if we don't turn things around. The more warming, the fewer species are likely to survive, the results show. The new analysis applies what the research team previously learned about the "Great Dying" 252 million years ago — when more than two-thirds of all marine life in...

Researchers studying Dublin Bay have said recent sea level rise there has happened at “approximately double the rate of global sea level rise”. The study examined sea level trends over eight decades and confirmed elevated rates in recent years. Researchers at the Hamilton Institute and ICARUS Climate Research Center at Maynooth University found that the Dublin sea level rose by an estimated 1.1 mm per year between 1953 and 2016. Researchers said the overall sea level rise is “in line with expected trends”, but large variability across many decades has led to higher rates in recent years. The research published...

Ten red states, led by Louisiana, asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to block a Biden administration rule for figuring the costs of greenhouse gas pollution when the government makes decisions affecting the environment. A January 2021 White House executive order directs an interagency working group to generate estimates for the societal costs of increased emissions of carbon, methane and nitrous oxide. The estimates are to be used to figure the monetary value of changes in these emissions resulting from government actions. The states said the federal formulas inflate the estimated costs of oil and gas leasing and a host...

Climate change will result in thousands of new viruses spread among animal species by 2070 — and that’s likely to increase the risk of emerging infectious diseases jumping from animals to humans, according to a new study. Researchers, who published their findings Thursday in the journal Nature, used a model to examine how over 3,000 mammal species might migrate and and share viruses over the next 50 years if the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), which recent research shows is possible. They found that cross-species virus spread will happen over 4,000 times among mammals alone. Birds...

US Climate Envoy John Kerry warned Wednesday that world leaders will blow through a critical climate-change threshold unless they dramatically accelerate the transition to clean energy. "Let me be absolutely clear: we're heading to well over 2 degrees right now -- 2.7, or something like that," Kerry said, speaking at Foreign Policy magazine's Climate Summit.

For too long, sunlight reflection has been the third rail of climate change politics, a relegation that has severely crippled its basic research and discussion in diplomatic circles. This situation, however, is starting to change as the devastating implications of a fast-warming planet become impossible to ignore. Today, the Council on Foreign Relations released a new Special Report on the topic: Reflecting Sunlight to Reduce Climate Risk: Priorities for Research and International Cooperation. It calls on the United States to launch a robust sunlight reflection research program and spearhead international negotiations to advance multilateral scientific assessments of and collective decision-making...

As worsening drought conditions in California and the West take a heavy economic toll on agriculture, state legislators are considering a plan to pay farmworkers $1,000 a month to help them cover the cost of necessities. The bill is meant to assist farmworkers who have fewer crops to tend as climate change limits the window for each growing season and cuts the Golden State's water supply. Under the $20-million program, eligible workers would receive a $1,000 stipend for three years. It's unclear how many farmworkers would qualify. Farmworkers would need to meet requirements to qualify for the program: - Have...

A disaster-weary globe will be hit harder in the coming years by even more catastrophes colliding in an interconnected world, a United Nations report issued Monday says. The number of extreme heat waves in 2030 will be three times what it was in 2001 and there will be 30% more droughts, the report predicted. It’s not just natural disasters amplified by climate change, it’s COVID-19, economic meltdowns and food shortages. Climate change has a huge footprint in the number of disasters, report authors said. People have not grasped how much disasters already cost today, said Mami Mizutori, chief of the...

Every day you read how the “climate crisis” is real, and rapidly getting worse. Humans burning fossil fuels to support out-of-control consumerism have brought the earth to the brink of disaster. Droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and plagues of every sort are proliferating. Of course, you are feeling all the natural human reactions: fear, dread, not to mention overwhelming guilt at your own role in causing the crisis through the grave sin of enjoying your life. In short, you have entered the state known to the experts as “climate anxiety.” The New York Times, as usual, was way out front...

Link only - https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/wind-power-s-colossal-market-failure-threatens-climate-fight

Meeting the European Union's Green Deal goal of climate neutrality by 2050 will require 35 times more lithium and 7 to 26 times the amount of increasingly scarce rare earth metals compared to Europe's limited use today, according to a study from Belgian university KU Leuven. The independent KU Leuven study is the first to offer EU-specific numbers related to the International Energy Agency's warning in 2021 of looming supply challenges for the enabling metals needed to help end fossil fuels. The study says that by 2050, Europe's plans for producing clean energy technologies will require annually: 4.5 million tons...

A climate activist who died after setting himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court on Earth Day is a buddhist who hinted at his future self-immolation with a fire emoji under a Facebook post from 2020. Wynn Bruce, 50, of Boulder, Colorado, lit himself on fire on the court's plaza at around 6.30pm Friday. He suffered critical burns and was pronounced dead at a local hospital on Saturday. On October 30, 2020, he shared a link to an online class on climate change offered by edX, a free online course platform created by Harvard and MIT. Last April,...