Sapere Aude
Tag: climate
Fascinating. So much land wasted for shitty burgers.
33% of US land is used for pasture — by far the largest land-use type in the contiguous 48 states. And 25% of that land is administered by the federal government, with most occurring in the West. That land is open to grazing for a fee. There’s a single, major occupant on all this land: cows. Between pastures and cropland used to produce feed, 41% of US land in the contiguous states revolves around livestock.
in the decade that ran from 1979 to 1989, we had an excellent opportunity to solve the climate crisis. The world’s major powers came within several signatures of endorsing a binding, global framework to reduce CO2 emissions — far closer than we’ve come since. During those years, the conditions for success could not have been more favorable. The obstacles we blame for our current inaction had yet to emerge. Almost nothing stood in our way — nothing except ourselves.
As the only person not representing a country, Bloomberg, in his new role as the U.N.’s special envoy for climate action, seemed like a substitute for American leadership—an alternative to the climate-denying Trump Administration, which Bloomberg called “a meshuggener.” But he immediately brushed aside the idea that the federal government, in this country, at least, can have a major impact on fuel sources or climate policy. “Coal will go away in any place where there’s a free market, for sure, because the market just forces that, the economics force it. OK, the federal government can change some environmental regulations, but companies are going to put in the environmental safeguards anyway. Their stockholders are insisting on it, their employees are insisting on it, their customers are insisting on it, and, at the state level, they’re insisting on it.” Of greater concern are countries in which “the government has set the price for coal or whatever and is subsidizing it.” Last fall, McKenna and Perry founded the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which aims, in part, to help these countries adopt cleaner fuels. 60 nations, states, cities, and companies have so far joined its polyglot roster.
Water coursed over the escarpment through Noto Canyon, flowing at up to 160 kilometers per hour and spilling over a 1.5-kilometer-high waterfall into the Mediterranean’s briny eastern basin. The torrent boosted the sea level in the eastern Mediterranean by at least 10 meters per day, refilling the entire sea in just a few years.
China is planning the implementation of a large-scale weather changing project to ensure a consistent rain supply. The system is created from a network of solid fuel burning chambers that produce silver iodide, a compound with a structure much like ice that can be used in cloud seeding. Once in place, the system has the potential to increase rainfall in the region by up to 10 billion cubic meters a year. 10000s of the small burning chambers will be installed across the Tibetan Plateau in an attempt to increase rainfall in an area 3x as big as Spain
The regulation comes in 3 un-American guises: permitting, code and tariffs — and together they are killing the US residential market. Modernizing these regulations, primarily at the local and state level, is the greatest opportunity for US solar policy
Rooftop solar in the us costs 2x as much as in developed countries due to inconsistent, super-local “regulations”. why we can’t have nice things.
The non-stop, “never-seen-before” hurricanes of the last few weeks have given us a glimpse of what a climate-changed world will look like for humanity. If it seems like a scary vision, you should know that we’re only at the very beginning of this wild ride. Things are likely going to get harder. But what would it mean for us to deal effectively with the long-term planetary changes we’ve initiated? What would it look like if we could marshal our creativity to find a smooth landing for our cherished project of civilization?
rising co2 levels mess with plant nutrients, in a bad way.
Rising CO2 revs up photosynthesis, the process that helps plants transform sunlight to food. This makes plants grow, but it also leads to them pack in more carbohydrates like glucose at the expense of other nutrients that we depend on, like protein, iron and zinc.
This is one vision of what it might have been like to visit the world as it ended 250 ma BP during the end-Permian mass extinction—the worst moment in the planet’s entire history. There might have been turbocharged “hypercanes” of almost unbelievable intensity assaulting the supercontinent Pangaea—the result of runaway global warming. These mega-storms might have had 800 km/h winds, filled with poisonous hydrogen sulfide sucked out of a rotting ocean that topped 37 celsius.
Some of the fastest progress on clean energy is occurring in states led by Republican governors and legislators, and states carried by Donald J. Trump in the presidential election. The 5 states that get the largest % of their power from wind turbines — Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, Oklahoma and North Dakota — all voted for Mr. Trump. So did Texas, which produces the most wind power in absolute terms. In fact, 69% of the wind power produced in the country comes from states that Mr. Trump carried in November.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 