Climate Change Thread

[UnkNuk]

Chinese Tesla rival BYD says its new hybrid cars can go 1,250 miles without stopping for gas or charging

 

That's nearly twice the range of some rival hybrids in the US.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/byd-new-hybrid-cars-1250-miles-nonstop-gas-charging-2024-5

[UnkNuk]

The Right Kind of Tipping Point

 

Amid a deluge of terrifying headlines about destructive tornadoes, blistering heat waves and DVD-sized gorilla hail, here’s a surprising bit of good news: Global carbon dioxide emissions may have peaked last year, according to a new projection.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/climate/carbon-emissions-falling-global.html?u2g=i&unlocked_article_code=1.wE0.WKMa.rS37gw47INOg&smid=url-share

[the destroyer of worlds]

1 minute ago, UnkNuk said:

Chinese Tesla rival BYD says its new hybrid cars can go 1,250 miles without stopping for gas or charging

 

That's nearly twice the range of some rival hybrids in the US.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/byd-new-hybrid-cars-1250-miles-nonstop-gas-charging-2024-5

Even if in the real world that car only get 60% of the claimed range, that still puts it at 750 miles.  Still pretty good.

[Jack Gordon]

 

[Gurn]

Mexico- hot enough the zoo is providing popsicles to the monkeys and lions.

In the vid just under the first one

Howler monkeys are dropping dead, out of the trees.--at least 86 so far.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/offbeat/in-mexico-lions-and-monkeys-are-fed-popsicles-as-heat-wave-rages-on/vi-BB1nQeHA?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=14e05097356c4e119c8f4ee8dd29ba1e&ei=24

 

 

[The Lock]

On 5/30/2024 at 9:48 PM, UnkNuk said:

Chinese Tesla rival BYD says its new hybrid cars can go 1,250 miles without stopping for gas or charging

 

That's nearly twice the range of some rival hybrids in the US.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/byd-new-hybrid-cars-1250-miles-nonstop-gas-charging-2024-5

 

I've noticed in a lot of industries, there's a lot of quality Chinese products coming out these days. There's obviously still the knockoffs and poor quality stuff still happening coming from there, but some stuff is of high quality.

[Sharpshooter]

On 5/30/2024 at 11:36 PM, Jack Gordon said:

 

Explain this please, before I Moderate. 

And I am going to. 

[Jack Gordon]

5 hours ago, Sharpshooter said:

Explain this please, before I Moderate. 

And I am going to. 

Go ahead, I have forgottwen about it, whatever it was.

[Sharpshooter]

1 hour ago, Jack Gordon said:

Go ahead, I have forgottwen about it, whatever it was.

[JoeyJoeJoeJr. Shabadoo]

Trees make a pretty good cabon sink I hear, unless, of course, they are on fire.

 

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are surging "faster than ever" to beyond anything humans ever experienced, officials say

One of the major drivers of the exceptional heat building within Earth's atmosphere has reached levels beyond anything humans have ever experienced, officials announced on Thursday. Carbon dioxide, the gas that accounts for the majority of global warming caused by human activities, is accumulating "faster than ever," scientists from NOAA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego found. 

"Over the past year, we've experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record, and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms," NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press release. "Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/carbon-dioxide-levels-surging-faster-than-ever-noaa-scientists/

[Gurn]

[the destroyer of worlds]

Deniers:  Why do anything?  China, India something something. 

 

China opens world's largest solar farm.

 

Deniers:  No.  Not like that.

 

Here's that solar farm.

[Satchmo]

I really don't think this is the answer to all our problems.  Still, it's interesting science and could be of some help if they can work out the kinks.

 

The cement that could turn your house into a giant battery

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240610-how-the-concrete-in-your-house-could-be-turned-into-a-battery

[Gurn]

John Oliver's "This Week tonight' show, on Sunday, was mostly about deep sea mining- the benefits and the risks.

Seems there is a proposal to 'vacumn up' small fists sized rocks off the ocean floor.

15,000 feet down east of Hawaii there is a huge amount of these stones.

apparently very, very, loaded with some rare minerals, that would be great for car batteries etc.

 

The down side- 5,000 new species discovered in this deep sea area, and a lot of them seem dependant on these stones, for shelter, food and ......

[Satchmo]

5 minutes ago, Gurn said:

John Oliver's "This Week tonight' show, on Sunday, was mostly about deep sea mining- the benefits and the risks.

Seems there is a proposal to 'vacumn up' small fists sized rocks off the ocean floor.

15,000 feet down east of Hawaii there is a huge amount of these stones.

apparently very, very, loaded with some rare minerals, that would be great for car batteries etc.

 

The down side- 5,000 new species discovered in this deep sea area, and a lot of them seem dependant on these stones, for shelter, food and ......

I watched that episode last night.  The risks seem largely unknown but potentially very dangerous.  My vote would go to better understanding the risks before proceeding.

 

I was reminded of this guy who had what seemed to be very good ideas at the time:

Thomas Midgley Jr. has been named a “one-man environmental disaster” for two big reasons. He was one of the early pioneers of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – compounds that became widely used in industry – and which were destroying the ozone layer. He also invented leaded gasoline and insisted that it was safe to use. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.

 

My other take is that Oliver is absolutely hilarious in some episodes and in others not so much.

 

[RupertKBD]

I'll preface this by saying that this is an opinion piece, but I think the author makes a lot of good points.....especially where it concerns politicians who chase donations and support from the fossil fuel industry at the expense of the environment. It also points the finger squarely at both of these groups for actively keeping the people most affected by CC in the dark about it....

 

The article is in spoilers, due to length.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/republicans-have-been-lying-to-their-voters-for-years-and-now-those-same-voters-are-dying-opinion/ar-BB1odZak?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=365a3bf46d7e43cb9e981920830286fb&ei=19

 

Spoiler

This is a climate change story that fossil fuel billionaires and their GOP lackeys would rather you didn’t know.

 

As more and more people are killed by extraordinarily severe weather in places where it used to be unusual it’s going to get harder and harder to keep Red State citizens from finding out how badly they’ve been screwed by the unholy alliance between Republicans and oil barons.

Severe weather in the United States is not only getting worse, it’s moving.

 

There’s a reason L. Frank Baum placed his 1901 novel The Wizard of Oz in Kansas: the worst and most frequent tornado activity in the world at that time was in the American Great Plains states — particularly Kansas.

 

Now that’s changing, as weather extremes are moving to the Midwest and the South. Recently, deadly tornadoes — some with wind velocities in excess of 200 mph — have ravaged Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio and Indiana.

This new burst of unusually extreme weather is driven by global warming and its impact on the Arctic, our oceans, and the Gulf of Mexico.

And it’s going to be America’s new normal, although in all probability this is just the beginning and over time it will get a lot worse.

 

America has always had the most extreme weather of anyplace else on Earth, according to Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina.

China has more people and a larger landmass than we do, but, Cutter told ABC News, “they don't have the same kind of clash of air masses as much as you do in the U.S. that is producing a lot of the severe weather.”

The severity of America’s Great Plains states’ historically extreme weather was the result of geography.

While there’s a massive amount of land on either side of the European/Asian land mass, the United States is bracketed by two giant bodies of water, the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. We also have a huge mountain range — the Rockies — that helps determine where turbulent air from the west ends up, particularly as it encounters colder air from the north and warmer air from over the Gulf of Mexico.

 

As North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello told ABC News, it’s because of “where we are on the globe,” adding, “It’s truly a little bit ... unlucky.”

But now, as the Gulf of Mexico is heating up faster than the oceans on either side of us, combined with “bomb cyclone” cold weather coming down from Canada because melting ice in the Arctic is making the Jet Stream less stable, that severe weather is moving to the Midwest and South.

 

This appears to be one of the most consequential outcomes of climate change, severe weather-wise, for the United States.

As Victor Gensini, associate professor in the Earth, Atmosphere and Environment Department at Northern Illinois University, told The Chicago Tribune, the Midwest and South are replacing the Plains states as the epicenter of severe weather.

“That’s a really, really big deal for human exposure and vulnerability,” Gensini told Ezra Maille. “A tornado that goes through a wheat field in Kansas is not a big deal, but a tornado that goes through southern Cook County is a huge deal.”

 

He added that the Great Plains will probably continue to experience more and more severe drought while tornado activity is shifting toward the East and South.

The fossil fuel industry has known with a high level of certainty how severe weather was a probable outcome of America’s dependence on their products ever since the 1970s.

 

Yet for the fifty years since then — and continuing to this day — they fund phony “science” and shills to deny climate change or try to spin it as a positive, all while pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign coffers and personal bank accounts of mostly Republican politicians.

We’re at least 40 years behind where we should be in dealing with the fossil fuel/global warming crisis because giant oil companies have run massive disinformation campaigns while funding the political careers of hacks in Congress willing to lie to the public for them.

 

President Jimmy Carter declared a national crisis in 1979 and proposed legislation to create “this nation’s first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.”

FDR had sold bonds to the public to fund a government corporation that would develop synthetic rubber for fighter plane tires back in the day, and Carter wanted to do the same to end our dependence on fossil fuels:

“Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II,” Carter said, “so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war.”

In that same July 15, 1979 speech, he proposed the government issue bonds that would fund:

 

“[T]he creation of an energy security corporation to lead this effort to replace 2-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day by 1990. The corporation will issue up to $5 billion in energy bonds, and I especially want them to be in small denominations so that average Americans can invest directly in America’s energy security.”

But it all came crashing down 43 years ago when the fossil fuel industry’s candidate, Ronald Reagan, replaced Carter, killed the solar bank and the bond program, and even took Carter’s solar panels off the roof of the White House.

 

The big question now is how long the GOP will be able to keep up their climate change denial in the Red states currently being hammered by extreme weather before their citizens catch on to what’s happening and demand action to reduce our carbon emissions.

 

As Dr. Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM), told me yesterday:

“It is rather ironic that many of the states that are seeing the worst climate change impacts—Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida—are red states, with governors and legislatures that are far more interested in doing the bidding of polluters than representing the people they’re supposed to be representing.

“Unsurprisingly, these states are all among the lowest when it comes to per capita spending on public education. The alliance of rightwing politicians and polluters prefers a poorly educated electorate, ignorant of the environmental health damage being done to them.”

 

So, what can be done other than offering subsidies for electric cars?

 

Number one on the list is to put a price on carbon, which will bend market incentives toward green and renewable energy as a replacement for fossil fuels.

According to the World Bank, there are currently 70 carbon pricing programs in place around the world, covering a bit over 23 percent of all emissions. Some are outright carbon taxes, typically with a rebate program to low- and average-income consumers, and some are cap-and-trade type programs (like President George HW Bush put into place to deal with sulfur dioxide emissions).

 

Canada’s carbon tax, which they put into place in 2019, is working so well that they actually sped up the process of implementation this year.

The original plan called for the initial $10/ton carbon tax to go up $10 every year until it hit $170/ton. The money collected is then recycled back to low- and average-income consumers to compensate them for the extra costs they’ll incur driving and heating their homes. But the program has been such a success that Canada’s government announced this week they’re raising the carbon tax by a full $15 this year.

 

They can pull this off because the rebates represent, for most Canadians, far more money in their pockets than the cost of the carbon tax. The brunt of the tax is instead borne by Canadian businesses, which is the group that's been designed to push toward green -- and tax-free or even green-subsidized -- energy sources.

An average taxpayer in Alberta province, for example, now gets a $386 check or bank deposit from their government every three months. It’s $340 quarterly in Saskatchewan, $328 in Newfoundland, $248 in Nova Scotia, and $264 in Manitoba.

 

This is a system that could work very well here in the US, if only there was the political will to make it happen. And, as we cut emissions and figure out new and better ways to pull existing carbon out of the air and oceans, we may be able to dial back on the increasing severity of storms that are ravaging Red states.

The obstacle to pricing carbon in the US is widespread ignorance of how severe our problem is and its origins in fossil fuel emissions. Fully 58% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters say climate change is “not an important concern” and a mere 17% believe human activities like burning fossil fuels “contribute a great deal to climate change.”

 

Hopefully the deadly disasters sweeping Red states now will wake up Republican voters and motivate them to demand their Republican politicians stop taking money from fossil fuel billionaires and do something now to stop climate change from getting any worse.

 

[Gurn]

India- hot enough to kill people

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/other/extreme-heat-in-india-has-killed-more-than-100-people-in-the-past-three-and-a-half-months/ar-BB1ozIYD?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=4c97db5ab681455289e90c11a83fd8ed&ei=46

"

NEW DELHI (AP) — A monthslong heat wave across swathes of India has killed more than 100 people and led to over 40,000 suspected cases of heat stroke in the past three and a half months, according to data from India's Health Ministry.

Between March 1 and June 18, 110 people in India died after suffering heat strokes, according to Health Ministry data provided to The Associated Press. Officials from India's Health Ministry and its subsidiary body, the National Centre for Disease Control, which compiled the figures, declined to comment."

[Satchmo]

^^^

Hundreds of Hajj pilgrims die as Mecca temperatures hit 120 Fahrenheit

 

Hundreds of people have died and thousands have been treated for heatstroke while performing the annual Muslim Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca amid extreme temperatures of up to 49 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit).

Some 165 Indonesians are among the dead, CNN Indonesia reported, citing the country’s Consulate General’s Hajj Management Office in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, at least 41 Jordanians, 35 Tunisians and 11 Iranians have died, according to authorities in each country.

A further 22 Jordanians are missing and 26 Iranians have been hospitalized, the Iranian Red Crescent said Wednesday, according to Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/19/middleeast/hajj-deaths-mecca-extreme-heat-intl-latam/index.html

[Satchmo]

All this indisputable evidence and Project 2025 maintains:

• Leftist "elites use the 'climate crisis' as a tool for scaring Americans into giving up their freedom."

[Gurn]

On 6/10/2024 at 8:07 AM, Gurn said:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/weather/topstories/extreme-weather-in-southern-europe-and-majorca-sees-meteo-tsunami/ss-BB1oEe86?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=ce0f6b06c6d046359650e8b412d67889&ei=28#image=3

 

11 pics and paragraphs.

 

[the destroyer of worlds]

Looking like this hurricane season is setting up to be a doozy.  

 

Nawww, everything is fine.

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/hurricane-beryl-has-become-very-dangerous-category-3-says-us-agency-2024-06-30/

Beryl, earliest Category 4 hurricane on record, brings perilous winds to Caribbean

[the destroyer of worlds]

Now a Cat 5 storm.  Earliest on record.

[Spur1]

22 hours ago, the destroyer of worlds said:

Now a Cat 5 storm.  Earliest on record.

But it is cold in Alberta. 

[The Arrogant Worms]

B.C. told to brace for heat wave as forecast shows 40 degrees C for Kamloops

VICTORIA — British Columbia residents are being told to brace for a coming heat wave that could send temperatures into the high 30s and beyond, with the government reminding people to check in on their neighbours.

 

https://www.timescolonist.com/national-news/bc-told-to-brace-for-heat-wave-as-forecast-shows-40-degrees-c-for-kamloops-9172455

[Gurn]

9 straight  days of 27 degree, and more for my area-starting tomorrow.  4  straight days at 30 or more, peak looks like 32 on Saturday and Sunday.