human actions, global climate change, global human solutions by 1kiki

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

human actions, global climate change, global human solutions

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Friday, July 11, 2025 08:34
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PAGE 21 of 21

Tuesday, April 8, 2025 10:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Arctic sea ice sets a record low maximum in 2025

THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2025

https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/analyses/arctic-sea-ice-sets-record-lo
w-maximum-2025

Arctic sea ice extent appears to have reached its annual maximum on March 22, 2025. This is the lowest maximum in the 47-year satellite record, with previous low maximums occurring in 2017, 2018, 2016, and 2015.
Quote:
I am frankly surprised this page has not been taken down, which is one reason I wanted to make a record of the data here. Angry Bear is fortunate to have it also.
https://angrybearblog.com/2025/03/arctic-sea-ice-makes-new-record-low-
annual-max
https://bonddad.blogspot.com/2025/03/arctic-sea-ice-make-lowest-ever.h
tml

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

When Flordia starts sinking, wake me up.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 11:37 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

When Flordia starts sinking, wake me up.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

Rush Limbaugh smoked for 50 years. All those years he said smoking does not cause cancer. Then he was dead from lung cancer. Keep burning fossil fuels, especially coal, for another 50 years and about as many people will be dead from climate change as will die over the next 50 years from cancer.

P.S. Trump gave Rush the Presidential Medal of Freedom for meritoriously lying during his entire radio career about all things all the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh#Health_problems_and_death

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, April 18, 2025 7:50 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump admin halts $5 billion NY offshore wind project mid-build

By Michelle Lewis | Apr 17 2025 - 12:01 pm PT

https://electrek.co/2025/04/17/trump-admin-ny-offshore-wind-mid-build/

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum gave no indication of what insufficiencies there were in the approval process for the fully permitted offshore wind project, despite Trump’s recent declaration of a national energy emergency that speeds up permitting processes.

The commercial lease for the 810-megawatt (MW) Empire Wind 1’s federal offshore wind area was signed in March 2017 during the first Trump administration.

Why? Trump: ‘We’re going to try to have a policy where no windmills are being built’
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5071767-trump-were-going
-to-try-to-have-a-policy-where-no-windmills-are-being-built/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 8:56 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The European Space Agency has launched the Biomass satellite to study the world's forests using the first space-based P-band synthetic aperture radar, aiming to accurately measure carbon storage and improve understanding of the global carbon cycle. CBS News reports:

Forests on Earth collectively absorb and store about 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually, the ESA said. That regulates the planet's temperature. Deforestation and degradation, especially in tropical regions, means that stored carbon is being released back into the atmosphere, the ESA said, which can contribute to climate change. There's a lack of accurate data on how much carbon the planet's estimated 1.5 trillion trees store and how much human activity can impact that storage, the ESA said.

To "weigh" the planet's trees and determine their carbon dioxide capacity, Biomass will use a P-band synthetic aperture radar. It's the first such piece of technology in space. The radar can penetrate forest canopies and measure woody biomass, including trunks, branches and stems, the ESA said. Most forest carbon is stored in these parts of the trees. Those measurements will act as a proxy for carbon storage, the ESA said. [...] Once the radar takes the measurements, the data will be received by the large mesh reflector. It will then be sent to the ESA's mission control center.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biomass-satellite-launches-weigh-worlds-t
rees/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, May 12, 2025 4:04 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Top-Earning 10 Percent Responsible for the Majority of Global Warming, Study Finds

May 12, 2025

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/05/study-top-earning-wealthi
est-10-percent-responsible-two-thirds-global-warming-research-paper/

In 2020, the global mean temperature was 0.61C higher than 1990. The researchers found that about 65 percent of that increase could be attributed to emissions from the global richest 10 percent, a group they defined as including all those earning more than $48,600 a year. That includes all those on the UK median salary for full-time employees, which is $49,760.

Wealthier groups bore more disproportionate responsibility still, with the richest 1 percent globally—those with annual incomes of about $166,450—responsible for 20 percent of global heating, and the richest 0.1 percent—the 800,000 or so people in the world raking in more than $608,090—responsible for 8 percent.

“We found that the wealthiest 10 percent contributed 6.5 times more to global warming than the average, with the top 1 percent and 0.1 percent contributing 20 and 76 times more, respectively,” the write in their paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Climate Change. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02325-x

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, May 13, 2025 3:54 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Top-Earning 10 Percent Responsible for the Majority of Global Warming, Study Finds

May 12, 2025

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/05/study-top-earning-wealthi
est-10-percent-responsible-two-thirds-global-warming-research-paper/

In 2020, the global mean temperature was 0.61C higher than 1990. The researchers found that about 65 percent of that increase could be attributed to emissions from the global richest 10 percent, a group they defined as including all those earning more than $48,600 a year. That includes all those on the UK median salary for full-time employees, which is $49,760.

Wealthier groups bore more disproportionate responsibility still, with the richest 1 percent globally—those with annual incomes of about $166,450—responsible for 20 percent of global heating, and the richest 0.1 percent—the 800,000 or so people in the world raking in more than $608,090—responsible for 8 percent.

“We found that the wealthiest 10 percent contributed 6.5 times more to global warming than the average, with the top 1 percent and 0.1 percent contributing 20 and 76 times more, respectively,” the write in their paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Climate Change. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02325-x

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Of course.

This is news??

When ppl think of global warming, they thinnk of overpopulation... Africa, Bangladesh, Pakistan.

In reality, those people aren't the problem.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Thursday, May 15, 2025 7:23 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

China makes thorium-based nuclear energy breakthrough using past US work
https://www.mining.com/china-makes-thorium-based-nuclear-energy-breakt
hrough-using-past-us-work/

A Thorium Reactor in the Middle of the Desert Has Rewritten the Rules of Nuclear Power
https://www.yahoo.com/news/thorium-reactor-middle-desert-rewritten-180
000024.html

China Fires Up World's First Thorium-Powered Nuclear Reactor
https://futurism.com/china-thorium-nuclear-power

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Friday, May 16, 2025 7:16 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

This is news??

When ppl think of global warming, they thinnk of overpopulation... Africa, Bangladesh, Pakistan.

In reality, those people aren't the problem.

When the little people refuse to stop polluting the world because they feel poor, the big, rich guys can justify their actions as doing what everyone is doing. Either everybody stops or nobody will stop polluting.

Then Came A Miracle

By Paul Krugman | May 14, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/is-this-the-year-we-doom-civilizati
on

. . . Then came a miracle: Dramatic technological progress in renewable energy, making it drastically cheaper, especially but not only as a way of generating electricity. The International Renewable Energy Agency has a striking chart showing how the cost of electricity generation from various renewable sources has plunged compared with the cost of generation from fossil fuels:

Source: IRENA

This technological miracle suddenly made an alternative climate strategy possible, one that was all carrots, no sticks. Instead of using carbon prices or regulations to force people to stop burning fossil fuels, policymakers could subsidize and promote renewable energy, nudging us toward an electrified economy with wind and solar — plus, probably, nuclear, which has its place — providing the electricity. Instead of telling people to eat their spinach, we could be advertising job-creating investments.

Given how cheap renewables have become, the subsidies probably wouldn’t have to be that large. Wind and solar have been taking off on their own:

Source: Energy Information Agency

More at https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/is-this-the-year-we-doom-civilizati
on

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, June 16, 2025 7:49 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Why we’re barely keeping track of this growing climate problem

Fossil fuel sites can emit a powerful greenhouse gas long after they shut down.

By Umair Irfan | Jun 16, 2025, 6:15 AM CDT

https://www.vox.com/climate/416470/methane-emissions-climate-natural-g
as-pollution-leak-coal

Odorless and colorless, methane is a gas that is easy to miss — but it’s one of the most important contributors to global warming. It can trap up to 84 times as much heat as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, though it breaks down much faster. Measured over 100 years, its warming effect is about 30 times that of an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide.

That means that over the course of decades, it takes smaller amounts of methane than carbon dioxide to heat up the planet to the same level. Nearly a third of the increase in global average temperatures since the Industrial Revolution is due to methane, and about two-thirds of those methane emissions comes from human activity like energy production and cattle farming. It’s one of the biggest and fastest ways that human beings are warming the Earth.

But the flip side of that math is that cutting methane emissions is one of the most effective ways to limit climate change.

In 2021, more than 100 countries including the United States committed to reducing their methane pollution by at least 30 percent below 2020 levels by 2030. But some of the largest methane emitters like Russia and China still haven’t signed on, and according to a new report from the International Energy Agency, global methane emissions from energy production are still rising.

Yet the tracking of exactly how much methane is reaching the atmosphere isn’t as precise as it is for carbon dioxide. “Little or no measurement-based data is used to report methane emissions in most parts of the world,” according to the IEA. “This is a major issue because measured emissions tend to be higher than reported emissions.” It’s also hard to trace methane to specific sources — whether from natural sources like swamps, or from human activities like fossil fuel extraction, farming, or deforestation.

Researchers are gaining a better understanding of where methane is coming from, surveilling potential sources from the ground, from the sky, and from space. It turns out a lot of methane is coming from underappreciated sources, including coal mines and small oil and gas production facilities.

The report also notes that while there are plenty of low-cost tools available to halt much of this methane from reaching the atmosphere, they’re largely going unused.

The United States, the world’s third largest methane-emitting country, has seen its methane emissions slowly decline over the past 30 years. However, the Trump administration is pushing for more fossil fuel development while rolling back some of the best bang-for-buck programs for mitigating climate change, which will likely lead to even more methane reaching the atmosphere if left unchecked.

Where is all this methane coming from?

Methane is the dominant component of natural gas, which provides more than a third of US energy. It’s also found in oil formations. During the drilling process, it can escape wells and pipelines, but it can also leak as it’s transported and at the power plants and furnaces where it’s consumed.

The oil and gas industry says that methane is a salable product, so they have a built-in incentive to track it, capture it, and limit its leaks. But oil developers often flare methane, meaning burn it off, because it’s not cost-effective to contain it. That burned methane forms carbon dioxide, so the overall climate impact is lower than just letting the methane go free.

And because methane is invisible and odorless, it can be difficult and expensive to monitor it and prevent it from getting out. As a result, researchers and environmental activists say the industry is likely releasing far more than official government estimates show.

Methane also seeps out from coal mines — more methane, actually, than is released during the production of natural gas, which after all is mostly methane. Ember, a clean energy think tank, put together this great visual interactive showing how this happens.

The short version is that methane is embedded in coal deposits and as miners dig to expose coal seams, the gas escapes, and continues to do so long after a coal mine reaches the end of its operating life. Since coal miners are focused on extracting coal, they don’t often keep track of how much methane they’re letting out, nor do regulators pay much attention.

According to Ember, methane emissions from coal mines could be 60 percent higher than official tallies. Abandoned coal mines are especially noxious, emitting more than abandoned oil and gas wells. Added up, methane emitted from coal mines around the world each year has the same warming effect on the climate as the total annual carbon dioxide emissions of India.

Alarmed by the gaps in the data, some nonprofits have taken it upon themselves to try to get a better picture of methane emissions at a global scale using ground-based sensors, aerial monitors, and even satellites. In 2024, the Environmental Defense Fund launched MethaneSAT, which carries instruments that can measure methane output from small, discrete sources over a wide area.

Ritesh Gautam, the lead scientist for MethaneSAT, explained that the project revealed some major overlooked methane emitters. Since launching, MethaneSAT has found that in the US, the bulk of methane emissions doesn’t just come from a few big oil and gas drilling sites, but from many small wells that emit less than 100 kilograms per hour.

“Marginal wells only produce 6-7 percent of [oil and gas] in the US but they disproportionately account for almost 50 percent of the US oil and gas production-related emissions,” Gautam said. “These facilities only produce less than 15 barrels of oil equivalent per day, but then there are more than half a million of these just scattered around the US.”

There are ways to stop methane emissions, but we’re not using them

The good news is that many of the tools for containing methane from the energy industry are already available. “Around 70 percent of methane emissions from the fossil fuel sector could be avoided with existing technologies, often at a low cost,” according to the IEA methane report.

For the oil and gas industry, that could mean something as simple as using better fittings in pipelines to limit leaks and installing methane capture systems. And since methane is a fuel, the sales of the saved methane can offset the cost of upgrading hardware. Letting it go into the atmosphere is a waste of money and a contributor to warming.

Capturing or destroying methane from coal mines isn’t so straightforward. Common techniques to separate methane from other gases require heating air, which is not exactly the safest thing to do around a coal mine — it can increase the risk of fire or explosion. But safer alternatives have been developed. “There are catalytic and other approaches available today that don’t require such high temperatures,” said Robert Jackson, a professor of earth system science at Stanford University, in an email.

However, these methods to limit methane from fossil fuels are vastly underused. Only about 5 percent of active oil and gas production facilities around the world deploy systems to zero out their methane pollution. In the US, there are also millions of oil and gas wells and hundreds of thousands of abandoned coal mines whose operators have long since vanished, leaving no one accountable for their continued methane emissions.

“If there isn’t a regulatory mandate to treat the methane, or a price on it, many companies continue to do nothing,” Jackson said. And while recovering methane is ultimately profitable over time, the margins aren’t often big enough to make the upfront investment of better pipes, monitoring equipment, or scrubbers worthwhile for them. “They want to make 10–15 percent on their money (at least), not save a few percent,” he added.

And rather than getting stronger, regulations on methane are poised to get weaker. The Trump administration has approved more than $119 million to help communities reclaim abandoned coal mines. However, the White House has also halted funding for plugging abandoned oil and gas wells and is limiting environmental reviews for new fossil fuel projects. Congressional Republicans are also working to undo a fee on methane emissions that was part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. With weaker incentives to track and limit methane, it’s likely emissions will continue to rise in the United States. That will push the world further off course from climate goals and contribute to a hotter planet.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, June 16, 2025 11:25 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Good.

You lose again.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Monday, June 16, 2025 12:56 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Methane capture makes sense, and it's not one of those get-rich-quick schemes that the wealthy are always promoting. I've already pencil-whipped a 30% reduction in CO2 emissions using current technology. Actions that benefit America now and in the future, like regenerative farming, coal to gas conversion, forest management, etc. Add methane capture and that's already a big step in the right direction. If done properly, it will help American production.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 6:53 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

False claims are obstructing climate action, say researchers

By Damian Carrington | Thu 19 Jun 2025 07.00 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/19/climate-misinforma
tion-turning-crisis-into-catastrophe-ipie-report

Rampant climate misinformation is turning the crisis into a catastrophe, according to the authors of a new report.

It found climate action was being obstructed and delayed by false and misleading information stemming from fossil fuel companies, rightwing politicians and some nation states. The report, from the International Panel on the Information Environment (Ipie), systematically reviewed 300 studies. https://www.ipie.info/research/sr2025-1

The researchers found climate denialism has evolved into campaigns focused on discrediting solutions, such as the false claims that renewable energy caused the recent massive blackout in Spain.

Online bots and trolls hugely amplify false narratives, the researchers say, playing a key role in promoting climate lies. The experts also report that political leaders, civil servants and regulatory agencies are increasingly being targeted in order to delay climate action.

Climate misinformation – the term used by the report for both deliberate and inadvertent falsehoods – is of increasing concern. Last Thursday, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change, Elisa Morgera, called for misinformation and greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry to be criminalised.

Donald Trump, who has called climate science “a giant hoax” and “bullshit”, is identified as a key influencer, “whose logical fallacies, unfounded claims and cherrypicking of findings were heavily” reposted by other social media users, including many bot accounts.

Much more at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/19/climate-misinforma
tion-turning-crisis-into-catastrophe-ipie-report

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 6:56 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
False claims are obstructing climate action, say researchers

This is quickly becoming the only topic you have left to talk about.

How strong you feeling about this mattering to anyone if we start drilling and opening up the coal mines and letting that natural gas flow and prices for everything start dropping on top of all the other wins that have come our way?

I think that would make this just another 80/20 issue that you're on the wrong side of, buddy.

The world you thought you were living in 6 months ago no longer exists.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 7:03 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

Thorium seemed good, you cant really make a bomb from it and more clean and 'Green' for the environment

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Saturday, June 28, 2025 5:23 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Thorium seemed good, you cant really make a bomb from it and more clean and 'Green' for the environment

. Good in theory, but too many obstacles for material science so far. Thorium reactors would run as a molten salt, and would need a material that withstands molten salt but also passes neutrons.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Saturday, June 28, 2025 5:24 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Eco-Hypocrites Take Hundreds Of Private Jets To Bezos Wedding

Saturday, Jun 28, 2025 - 08:40 AM

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Around a hundred private jets carrying celebrities have descended on Italy to deliver eco-hypocrites including Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates to the wedding of tech billionaire Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, June 29, 2025 7:06 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Stalled Global Circulation Signals "Stout Heat Dome In July"

Sunday, Jun 29, 2025 - 06:55 AM

For readers waking up across the Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City metro areas, conditions remain gloomy with overcast skies and mild temperatures hovering in the mid-70s°F—quite a change from triple-digit heat that gripped the region earlier last week, straining power grids and sending electricity prices soaring.

However, a new outlook from private weather forecaster BAMWX warns that the heat dome may return in force next month.

"I would recommend none of us sleep on this trend ahead into next week, esp heading into Holiday markets," said BAMWX meteorologist Kirk Hinz.

Hinz noted, "Simply put - the global circulation/momentum has HALTED ... Translation - there will be a stout Heat Dome in July, question is just "where"...stay tuned."

Quote:
Heat Domes Are Hotter and Lingering Longer—Because of the Arctic

A rapidly warming Arctic is driving long-lasting summer extremes, such as this month’s sweltering temperatures, new research suggests

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heat-domes-are-hotter-and-l
ingering-longer-because-of-the-arctic/

Not so new. The northern jet stream is driven by the temperature difference between the Arctic and the equator. Since the Arctic is undeniably warming, and warming much faster than the equator, the jet stream slows down, makes big loops, and stop precessing. This isn't a model, it's observation.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 6:49 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Electric vehicle manufacturers need to revisit the days of the Model T

Jun 24, 2025

https://www.wired.com/story/this-is-why-high-end-electric-cars-are-fai
ling/

Legacy automakers are losing out to China, at least in those countries where Chinese EVs are sold. Which is most places except the US.

According to a new report from the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), global EV sales will surpass 20 million in 2025, accounting for more than a quarter of cars sold worldwide. In the first three months of 2025, electric car sales worldwide were up 35 percent over the previous year. And, adds the IEA, market share is on course to exceed 40 percent by 2030 as EVs—smaller, cheaper ones, mainly—become increasingly affordable in more markets.

Almost half of all car sales in China last year were electric. Emerging markets in Asia and Latin America have also become new centers of growth, with total EV sales across these regions surging by more than 60 percent in 2024, according to the IEA. Meanwhile, EV sales grew by about 10 percent year-on-year in the US.

“Our data shows that, despite significant uncertainties, electric cars remain on a strong growth trajectory globally,” says IEA executive director Fatih Birol. “Sales continue to set new records, with major implications for the international auto industry. This year, we expect more than one in four cars sold worldwide to be electric, with growth accelerating in many emerging economies. By the end of this decade, it is set to be more than two in five.”

China accounts for more than 70 percent of global EV production.

Volkswagen’s luxury marques, including Porsche, Bentley, and Lamborghini, are reassessing their EV strategies. Porsche has scaled back plans for an all-electric lineup following a 49 percent decline in Taycan sales. Bentley has pushed back the launch of its first EV from this year to next, and extended its gas-engine phase-out deadline to 2035. Lamborghini has delayed its Lanzador EV until 2029 at the earliest.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, July 3, 2025 5:48 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump admin tries to kill the most indisputable evidence of human-caused climate change by shuttering observatory

By Andrew Freedman | Jul 1, 2025

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/01/climate/trump-cuts-mauna-loa-keeling

The president’s budget proposal would also defund many other climate labs, including instrument sites comprising the US government’s greenhouse gas monitoring network, which stretches from northern Alaska to the South Pole.

But it’s the Mauna Loa laboratory that is the most prominent target of the President Donald Trump’s climate ire, as measurements that began there in 1958 have steadily shown CO2’s upward march as human activities have emitted more and more of the planet-warming gas each year.

______

Warming depletes Arctic soil's nitrogen stores, irreversibly increasing CO2 emissions

July 2, 2025

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-depletes-arctic-soil-nitrogen-irreversib
ly.html

Half of the world's carbon is stored in the frozen soils of the Arctic and subarctic regions, covering territories such as Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia, Siberia and Iceland. Scientists were already aware that the microorganisms living in these ecosystems have become more active because of rising temperatures, consuming more carbon and releasing it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2).

However, the study published recently in the journal Global Change Biology, led by CREAF and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) researcher Sara Marañón, has revealed that warming also depletes nitrogen in soils.

Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for plants: Without enough of it, they grow less, absorb less CO2, and are unable to offset carbon emissions from the soil, leading to an unforeseen, irreversible increase in the overall balance. Specifically, for every degree Celsius of warming, between 1.7% and 2.6% of the nitrogen in soil is lost, resulting, according to the study's data, in a proportional loss of carbon (in the form of CO2) into the atmosphere.

The team behind the study made this discovery through a decade-long experiment conducted in Iceland, a natural laboratory where geothermal activity produces soil temperatures ranging from 0.5°C to 40°C above ambient temperature, allowing direct observation of how heat affects high-latitude soils.

"We already knew that climate change was causing Arctic soils to release more CO2, but we thought at least some of the emissions would be offset by plant growth, which increases slightly with warming," says Marañón. "But our study shows that this isn't the case. Nitrogen is lost and soil fertility decreases, preventing Arctic ecosystems from offsetting microbial CO2 emissions."

Under normal circumstances, Marañón explains, microorganisms are more active in spring and summer. They consume nitrogen and transform it into ammonium and nitrates, compounds that plants take up for nourishment. But warming affects the synchrony of the process: the microorganisms become active in winter, when plants are still inactive due to a lack of light and do not yet need the nutrients the microorganisms provide, resulting in supply outpacing demand.

The upshot is that the transformed nitrogen goes unused and is lost. Some of it may filter into groundwater as nitrates, and can contaminate aquatic systems; another part of it may be released as nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas nearly 300 times more potent than CO2. This, warns Marañón, is "a dangerous cocktail."

______

The ‘Great Dying’ wiped out 90% of life, then came 5 million years of lethal heat. New fossils explain why

By Laura Paddison | July 2, 2025 at 5:02 AM CDT

https://www.yahoo.com/news/great-dying-wiped-90-life-090025845.html

There is a sliver of hope: The rainforests that currently carpet the tropics may be more resilient to high temperatures than those that existed before the Great Dying. This is the question the scientists are tackling next.

This study is still a warning, Mills said. “There is a tipping point there. If you warm tropical forests too much, then we have a very good record of what happens. And it’s extremely bad.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, July 3, 2025 2:36 PM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Another story about the Arctic releasing billions of tons per year of CO2:

We Are Living in the Age of Fire. And It’s Only Going To Get Worse

By Stephen Maher | Jul 2, 2025

https://time.com/7299284/age-of-mega-wildfires-climate-change/

Mike Flannigan, who has been studying wildfires as long as Joe Gilchrist has been fighting them, is scared.

In 1985, Flannigan gave his first talk predicting that climate change would lead to bigger fires. Audiences were skeptical, but he was confident that he was right. In 1991, he published a paper in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research predicting a 46% increase in annual area burned when the amount of carbon in the atmosphere doubled from pre-industrial levels, which measured 280 parts per million (ppm).

In 1991, when the atmospheric carbon levels measured 355 ppm , 2.5 million acres burned in Canada. This year, the level of C02 is 427 ppm ten million acres burnt by July 1.

Flannigan’s models were far too conservative.

“We—the modelers—have done pretty well with getting the temperature increases, but the impacts from those temperature increases has been grossly underestimated,” he says

He finds that disquieting. “It's happening faster than I would have thought, and there may be surprises coming—not just for fire—but for climate change, surprises that catch us all off guard.”

“Fire is always where people are,” Flannigan continues. “It goes with us wherever we go. But the genie is out of the bottle. Fire is now uncontrollable, and we're going to see more and more fire and more and more catastrophic fire.”

Flannigan thinks we are living in the pyrocene, the age of fire, an idea from Arizona environmental historian Stephen J. Pyne. By burning so much coal and oil, we have changed the climate and can no longer control the processes.

Canada’s forests—which make up 8.5%of all global forest area—were once a crucial storehouse of carbon, but because of the fires they have been a net carbon emitter since 2001. The fires of 2023 released 647 million metric tons of carbon, more than the total annual emissions of South Korea that year.

The fires are so hot that they are burning off the top soil in some places, which means some land that was treed will come back as savannah—grasslands which do not store as much carbon.

And the news may get much worse. Many of the trees in northern Canada spring from permanently frozen peat bogs, which contain enormous quantities of carbon. As the climate warms, and that permafrost melts, it becomes susceptible to fire, posing a horrifying climate risk: massive, unfightable northern fires spewing huge quantities of carbon into the atmosphere, which could push Earth past a climate tipping point that once crossed will cause a spiral-effect of endless warming.

“It's not a steady state,” says Flannigan. “It's not normal. We're on a downward trajectory. Sometimes I say we’re in Dante's circle of hell. I don't know which circle we're on, but I know which way we're going.”

Only one thing might stop the terrifying processes that humans have set in motion.

“The bottom line, until we deal with greenhouse gasses, fossil-fuel burning, we're going to continue to warm and we're going to continue to see more fire.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, July 6, 2025 7:18 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump’s plan to replace clean energy with fossil fuels has some major problems

The budget bill sabotages one of the biggest growth sectors of the US economy.

July 3, 2025

https://www.vox.com/climate/418563/trump-big-beautiful-bill-clean-ener
gy-fossil-climate

The first solar cell ever made was built in the United States. Tesla, based in the US, was once the largest EV manufacturer in the world. The lithium-ion battery was codeveloped in the US.

But today, China — not the US — is the largest manufacturer of solar cells and batteries. China’s BYD — not Tesla — is the largest EV manufacturer in the world. And China is starting to outrun the US on research and development investment.

The US has a long history of taking the lead in clean energy, and a long history of losing it. And President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which passed the House on Thursday and is heading for his desk, would again leave the US on the margins of a global clean energy revolution that it could have dominated.

For years now, clean power has been the largest source of new electricity in the US. Solar, batteries, and wind are on track to make up more than 90 percent of new electricity capacity on the US power grid this year. Wind and solar now produce more electricity on the US power grid than coal. Almost twice as many Americans work in clean energy compared to fossil fuels, and the sector is still growing.

But thanks to the bill, that may not be the case for much longer.

Some of the more extreme provisions in earlier drafts of the bill have been removed, like an excise tax targeting renewable energy. But the final version of the bill rolls back many of the investments from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the single-largest US investment to address climate change by giving the energy transition a boost. It calls for more rapid phaseouts of tax credits for wind and solar power, only allowing projects that break ground in the next 12 months or those that connect to the grid by 2027 to take advantage of these incentives. It also eliminates a $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of a new electric vehicle. The spending bill doesn’t just undo incentives for clean energy — it also creates a new tax credit for coal and encourages more drilling on public lands.

These provisions are in line with Trump’s longstanding antipathy toward renewable energy and disbelief in climate change. But they stand to hobble the US economy more broadly.

The US is facing significant load growth on the power grid for the first time in decades as the tech industry scrounges for electrons to power their electricity-devouring data centers. Energy demand is rising and the cheapest, most readily deployable supplies of energy are being throttled.

The alternatives, however, are not likely to make up the gap in time. Fossil fuels take longer to ramp up. The US is currently the largest oil and gas producer in the world, but it can take years to site, permit, and acquire the materials to build power plants that burn these fuels. Since these are internationally traded commodities, their prices can fluctuate based on factors beyond the US’s control.

Right now, oil prices are at four-year lows and natural gas prices are falling, and when prices are low, it’s much harder to make the business case for more mining, drilling, and power plants, even with incentives. Trump may have some levers to pull — he can, for example, open up more federally managed lands for energy production — but many of those leases sit unused because energy companies don’t want to create a supply glut. Meanwhile, employment in the oil and gas industry remains volatile, while coal jobs are continuing their decades-long decline.

Energy Information Administration

“We’re in this moment of surging demand and you can’t build another gas turbine for at least five years beyond what’s already been booked,” said Robbie Orvis, senior director for modeling and analysis at the think tank Energy Innovation. “We have this demand growth that’s going to have to be met. The only thing you can build to meet it on the timeline needed over the next five to 10 years is solar, wind, or battery storage.”

The bill does extend tax credits and loan programs for nuclear energy and geothermal power. However, the cuts in the bill would also slow efforts to build up the domestic energy supply chain needed to bolster other zero-emissions technologies, from raw materials like lithium and rare earth minerals to battery factories. It would do little to relax the bottlenecks for connecting new power plants to the grid, which are adding years to project timelines. The US is also dismantling research and development that could yield the next energy breakthrough. On top of all this, Trump’s tariffs are raising operating costs not just for renewables, but also for the fossil fuels he loves so much.

The net result is a policy suite that will not only hamper clean electricity, but energy overall, making it more expensive for everyone across the country. According to Energy Innovation, the bill would reduce how much energy the US adds to the grid in the years to come compared to the current trajectory, thereby increasing household electricity prices on average by $130 per year, eroding almost a trillion dollars in economic productivity, and costing 760,000 jobs by 2030.
https://energyinnovation.org/report/updated-economic-impacts-of-u-s-se
nate-passed-one-big-beautiful-bill-act-energy-provisions/

While the US is putting clean energy in reverse, other countries are racing ahead. Clean energy technology investment is poised to increase to $2.2 trillion this year around the world. Renewables are on track to overtake coal as the biggest power source in the world this year. Wind, solar, and batteries are still getting cheaper. Effectively, the US is ceding one of the biggest growth industries in the world to China, particularly as developing countries industrialize and other wealthy countries look to decarbonize their economies.

The case for more clean energy — lower costs, faster deployment, fewer greenhouse gas emissions — remains robust. Even with all the deliberate obstacles the Trump administration is placing ahead, there are some wind, solar, and battery projects still poised to come online in the US as they work their way through the pipeline, albeit at a much slower pace than before.

But without continued investment, the US will lose ground to the rest of the world and condemn itself to dirtier, more expensive energy while worsening a problem that will extract a dear toll from the economy.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, July 6, 2025 10:28 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The push for electric vehicles is a big boondoggle. EVs don't generate new energy, and - ultimately- they're just a real long tailpipe that extends to the power plant smokestack. Not to mention the pollution they, and windmills and solar cells, create in their lifecycle.

The limiting flaw of "green energy" is ... still... energy storage. Carrying the grid through the hours ... days ... weeks ... even seasons, sometimes ... when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow enough (or blows too hard).

Until you solve THAT problem, you will still need fossil fuel generating capacity to meet 100% of need. You can reduce fossil fuel use by quite a bit, and beef up grid regional interchanges, but you will STILL need that fossil fueled capacity in reserve.

*****

I don't know how this would pencil out, but I see an oppty for capturing methane and boosting the power grid at the same time. One possibility is to compress the gas for sale elsewhere. Another possibility is to use some or all of the gas that would normally be flared off to run microturbines (distributed energy production) and either feed that directly into the grid or use it to power compressors, or both.

Is that more efficient than the big power generating plants? No. But it's more efficient than just flaring it off.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Monday, July 7, 2025 6:21 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Real Men Burn Stuff

The manosphere and the war on renewable energy

By Paul Krugman / Jul 7, 2025 at 5:09 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/real-men-burn-stuff

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” That famous 2011 quip from the venture capitalist Peter Thiel still resonates, even though Thiel himself has become a deeply malignant force in American politics. I’ll write soon about the madness of the Trumpist tech bros, but for today let me focus on Thiel’s original insight — that everyone, venture capitalists included, had come to focus far too much on digital technology, neglecting the possibilities of breakthroughs in technologies that deal with the physical world.

Yet here’s the irony: In the years since Thiel’s lament we have, in fact, seen revolutionary progress in one fundamental physical-world technology, energy production. Yet the people Thiel and his buddies helped put in power are doing all they can to reverse that progress and send America back into the energy Dark Ages.

Most critiques of the One Big Beautiful Bill have focused on the way it explodes the budget deficit while imposing immense hardship on lower-income Americans. Yet energy policy is also an important component of the OBBB, which basically tries to roll back the rise of solar and wind power — sources that have accounted for more than half the worldwide increase in electricity generation since 2015.

To understand how self-destructive that effort is, you need to know three things about the economics of renewable energy.

First, there are powerful environmental reasons to favor renewables over fossil fuels where possible. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the most important, because climate change is an existential threat. But even aside from climate concerns, the air pollution created by burning fossil fuels takes a major toll on health and productivity, which solar and wind don’t.

Second, a transition to renewables, which might have seemed like pie-in-the-sky, hippy-dippy stuff a generation ago, is now not just feasible but the only sensible energy strategy. Here’s a chart showing estimates of the levelized cost of electricity generation (LCOE), adjusted for inflation, for a variety of renewable energy technologies, compared with the costs of power from fossil fuels. I’m aware that LCOE is an imperfect measure, but the results are still astonishing:

Source: IRENA
https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2024/Sep/
IRENA_Renewable_power_generation_costs_in_2023.pdf#page=21

We’re talking in particular about a 90 percent decline in the real cost of power from solar panels and a 70 percent decline in the cost of wind power. This isn’t just progress, it’s a revolution.

And — my third point — the revolution isn’t over. Some technological leaps involve one big idea, which takes time to implement but is basically a once-and-done deal — which seems to be the case, to take an example I’ve studied, for freight containerization. Progress in renewable energy, however, has involved a continual process of “learning by doing,” in which efficiency keeps rising and costs falling as the industry expands. This is exactly the kind of situation in which government subsidies — like the clean-energy tax credits instituted by the Biden administration — can accelerate progress and boost overall economic growth.

But the OBBB killed those tax credits. And the Trump administration has been taking executive action to stall renewable development, for example, by halting federal approvals for wind farms. In general, MAGA clearly wants to move us back to burning gas, oil and above all coal. Why?

Campaign contributions no doubt play a role. Fossil fuel industries donate almost exclusively to Republicans. But renewables are also big business these days, and especially in red states. Texas, in particular, is by far the nation’s largest producer of wind power and gets a larger share of its electricity from renewables than any other state. Why would the G.O.P. want to demolish a key pillar of economic success in its biggest source of electoral votes?

Honestly, I think this is a case where the usual logic of money-driven policy is trumped (Trumped?) by irrational, psychological — you might even say psychosexual — issues.

We know that Trump himself has a weird thing against wind power, insisting that wind turbines massacre birds and kill whales. This appears to stem from the refusal of the Scottish government to cancel an offshore wind farm he thought ruined the view from one of his golf courses.

But it’s not just Trump. There is, it turns out, a strong link between the manosphere — the online movement promoting “masculinity,” misogyny and opposition to feminism — and anti-environmentalism. For example, in 2023 Jordan Peterson convened a high-profile conference to declare that concerns about climate change are a “conspiracy run by narcissistic poseurs.”

If you think about it, this makes sense — not intellectually but emotionally. Don’t concern about the environment and advocacy of “clean energy” sound kind of, well, feminine? Real men burn stuff and don’t worry if the process is dirty.

And manosphere-type attitudes are clearly widespread in MAGA. One of the main arguments Trump officials and supporters have made for tariffs is that they will bring back “manly” jobs in manufacturing. (They won’t, but that’s another story.) The same notion underlies the doomed attempt to revive the coal industry.

But here’s the thing: MAGA and the manosphere may hate clean energy, but they won’t be able to stop the rise of renewables. All they can do, possibly, is stop the rise of renewables in the United States. Other nations, China in particular, are making huge investments in wind and solar power, because they understand what Trump and his allies refuse to acknowledge — that this is the only way forward.

So while MAGA’s attempt to strangle clean energy will increase the risks of global climate catastrophe, it will also increase the risks of U.S. economic stagnation, forcing our nation to remain wedded to obsolete energy technologies while other countries march into the future.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, July 11, 2025 8:34 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Is anyone who does not know that the Republican Party denies that there is climate change?

Climate change is making severe storms both more common and more intense.

U.S. rocked by four 1-in-1,000-year storms in less than a week

By Denise Chow | July 10, 2025, 4:09 PM CDT

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/climate-change/flood-storms-climate-ch
ange-1-in-1000-year-rainfall-rcna217863

First the river rose in Texas. Then, the rains fell hard over North Carolina, New Mexico and Illinois.

In less than a week, there were at least four 1-in-1,000-year rainfall events across the United States — intense deluges that are thought to have roughly a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year.

These events come and go in the news, and before you know it, we’re on to the next one.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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