”Science is clear. It says we need to stop burning fossil fuels. But Dutton's big donors, like Gina Rinehart, don't want that - it's clear who he's listening to”.
Skip the question if someone "believes" in climate change. Ask if someone *accepts* the evidence-based science or not. It’s not religion.
Monthly global climate data update from UAH for the month of March 2025.
Third hottest month of March since 1979.
#climate
Update. #Trump Administration Aims to Eliminate #EPA’s Scientific Research Arm"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/climate/trump-eliminates-epa-science.html
"The Environmental Protection Agency plans to eliminate its scientific research arm, firing as many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists, according to documents reviewed by Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology…The EPA’s plan… calls for dissolving the agency’s largest department, the Office of Research and Development, and purging up to 75 percent of the people who work there. The remaining staff members would be placed elsewhere within the EPA…Rep. Zoe Lofgren [D-CA],…the top Democrat on the science committee, said that without the Office of Research and Development, the EPA would not be able to meet its legal obligation to use the “best available science” when writing regulations and considering policy. She also said that the office was created by congressional statute and that dissolving it would be illegal."
Update. It's not enough for #Trump to …
* nominate #climate denialists to run key agencies like the #EPA and #NOAA
* remove climate-related words from govt web sites
* take down whole climate science sites and datasets
* defund climate research and researchers
* layoff scientists and civil servants with climate expertise
* repeal climate regulations
* eliminate 10 regional EPA offices, including the one in DC
* and plan to replace consensus climate findings with ideological cherrypicking as the foundation for policymaking …
… now his #FBI is freezing the assets of nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity, which have received EPA grants, alleging that they might be guilty of “possible criminal violations” including “conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/192660/trump-fbi-charge-climate-organizations
Update. "Strong Scientific Leaders Must Speak Out against the Trump Administration’s Science Denial"
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strong-scientific-leaders-must-speak-out-against-the-trump-administrations/
"We are proud to be members of the #NAS [National Academy of Sciences], but we are not proud of its present inaction. In these challenging and defining times, the National Academy of Sciences, of all scientific institutions, must speak up…The new #Trump administration is now making an unprecedented effort to prevent science from informing public policy. In his first day in office, President Trump signed executive orders withdrawing the U.S. from participation in the Paris Agreement on #climate change and from the World Health Organization [#WHO]. The new administration has subsequently acted to drastically limit support for climate and medical research performed by scientists in the federal government and in universities. In this emergency, it is not enough for the National Academy of Sciences to speak up from its grass roots, as in 2016 or 2018. It must now speak as an institution if it is to fulfill its responsibilities to the nation and maintain its relevance in the future."
The news has been more than a bit grim of late, so hooray for Carbon Brief providing some genuine and really meaningful **good** news: the UK's carbon emissions in 2024 were the lowest since 1872, because demand for fossil fuels just keeps decreasing.
Remember this important comparison when reading an article about a new breakthrough in carbon sequestration and storage:
Check whether the price per unit of atmospheric carbon stored is better than buying some coal and putting it in a hole.
Pro tip: It never is, and will never be. CSS is a scam. Coal in a hole wins every time. Hell, it STARTS in a hole. Just leave it there! Win/win!
People stand up for a reason.
A few excerpts here from an excellent op-ed piece by climate scientist Peter Gleick (@petergleick)...
____________________________________
It's not as though we weren’t warned. Scientists have been sounding the alarm about growing climate risks for decades. Despite repeated warnings, we have failed to adequately mitigate or adapt to climate change.
Incredibly, leading policymakers and pundits continue to deny scientific reality. In 2020, after an earlier series of devastating wildfires, then-president Donald Trump dismissed concerns over climate change, telling one California official “I don't think science knows” about global warming. “It'll start getting cooler, you just watch.”
Five increasingly hot years later, Trump is continuing to ignore the science during the Los Angeles disaster, preferring instead to point fingers at California water policy, diversity and inclusion efforts, endangered fish, and his political opponents.
These fires were unambiguously influenced by human-caused climate change. Global temperatures are accelerating upward — 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history, and all 10 of the hottest years have been in the last decade, continuing a century-long trend of warming.
Extreme hydrologic events, including floods and droughts, are accelerating, and Southern California is intensely dry. Los Angeles has received essentially no rainfall in over 10 months, with the driest start to a rainy season on record, parching soils and vegetation and setting the stage for extreme winds to intensify and spread the fires.
We know what’s coming, but we also know what to do. In addition to aggressively accelerating the energy transition away from fossil fuels, changing individual behavior, and reducing carbon emissions from other sources, we have to expand efforts to build resilience to unavoidable impacts.
_________________________
Yes, we do know what to do. But the question is — WILL it ever be done?
FULL OP-ED ➡️ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/los-angeles-fires-force-us-to-confront-our-dystopian-present/
💵 💵 Business As Usual 💵 💵
When the bottom line means more than the poverty line, when stock and bond futures are more important than our futures, when the investment climate counts for more than the actual climate, this is what you get…
➡️ https://www.dw.com/en/billionaire-wealth-growing-faster-than-ever-says-oxfam-report/a-71345320
Fascinating to see how fast Paris cleaned up its smog pollution.
Equally fascinating: how this same graphic has been making the round from French via German to now English meme status
Article link here for your ease of reference:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/4/24312002/ev-plug-and-charge-universal-protocol-sae-pki-roaming
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Fantastic news! A universal EV “Plug and Charge” interoperable protocol will roll out in 2025.
Say goodbye to the soup of EV charging apps. The goal: just plug in & have automatic, seamless secure payment processing.
Beyond cause for rejoicing by EV owners, this is an important step towards secure vehicle-to-grid & bidirectional charging too.
Jonathan Watts is not mincing his words when he (rightly) concludes that:
'The unnatural disaster in Spain – Europe’s deadliest flash floods in at least half a century – is evidence of two undeniable truths: the human-caused climate crisis is just starting to pick up ferocity & we need to quickly kill the fossil fuel industry before it kills us'!
We have been warned, yet still we do too little; this is can that can no longer be kicked down the road!
"Emissions generated by the lifestyles of 50 of the world’s richest people are greater than the emissions generated by 155m people combined.
"Oxfam has called for a ban, or punitive tax, on luxury consumptions — at 90% tax or above — such as private jets, superyachts, SUVs, and frequent air travel."
Latest comic on Big Tech's climate hypocrisy
i dont understand why these folks in #CancerAlley dont want the 15 jobs this ammonia plant will provide
Floods in Europe.
Google and Microsoft recently admitted their emissions are soaring as they build out data centers to power the AI boom.
But new analysis from The Guardian suggests the data center emissions of Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple are 662% higher than the companies reporting.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/15/data-center-gas-emissions-tech
I added a new 🌱 Damaged Earth Catalog🌿 entry, co-written with, and about the work of, @mordremoth
❤️ Disability Driven Development🛠️
https://damaged.bleu255.com/Disability_Driven_Development/
A direct link to Amelia's work: https://spoonstack.org/
What a set of headlines, can't get any more dystopian than that. The rich go into vanity trips into space, while the common people down below drown.
The climate review for summer 2024 in the Arctic is now posted in the Alaska and Arctic Climate Newsletter. Spoiler: warm and wet overall (but of course not everywhere). @Climatologist49
https://alaskaclimate.substack.com/p/arctic-summer-2024-climate-summary
