As if a planetary system is going to pay an iota of attention to what Iowa thinks. New law says state regulations must ignore climate change!
The only people who will suffer will be those harmed by and dying from increasingly extreme weather events as a consequence of global warming from the fossil fuel industry’s continued contributions to Earth’s greenhouse layer.
Blind stupidity driven by boundless greed! You have to read the article to understand just how stupid and greedy some American legislators can be…
With action at the federal level stalled and their communities hit by drought and extreme heat, a growing cohort of down-ballot candidates are prioritizing climate policy. Donor and activists groups are taking notice and lining up to back them.
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Environmental groups say city and state leaders play a pivotal role in developing strategies to tackle the global climate crisis, even though they lack the broad power—and deep pockets—of the federal government.
“This problem is too big for any one area of government,’’ said Nick Abraham, state communications director for the League of Conservation Voters, whose 30-plus chapters across the U.S. endorse candidates in state and local races. “We’re going to all have to be pushing at the same time.”
Featured Image: Buoys that read ‘No Boats’ lay on cracked dry earth where water once was at Lake Mead, Nevada on July 23, 2022. Faced with drought, heat waves and wildfires, a growing number of state and local government candidates are prioritizing climate issues. Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images / From the article
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Results: Extreme single-day fire spread events >1,100 ha (the top 16%, >1 SD) accounted for 70% of the cumulative area burned over the period of analysis. The variation in annual area burned was closely tied to the number and mean size of spread events and distributional skewness towards more large events. For example, we identified 441 extreme events in 2020 that together burned 2.2 million ha across our study area, in contrast to an average of 168 per year that burned 0.5 million ha annually between 2002 and 2019. Fire season climate variables were correlated with the annual number of extreme events and area burned. Our models predicted that the annual number of extreme fire spread events more than double under a 2°C warming scenario, with an attendant doubling in the area burned.
Conclusions: Exceptional fire seasons like 2020 will become more likely, and wildfire activity under future extremes is predicted to exceed anything yet witnessed. Safeguarding human communities and supporting resilient ecosystems will require new lines of scientific inquiry, new land management approaches and accelerated climate mitigation efforts.
Featured Image: Hypothetical distribution of daily fire spread events during normal and extreme fire years. Increases in the annual area burned could potentially be accounted for by more fire spread events (number), larger event size (mean) and/or more large events (right skewness) / From the article
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by Rachel Duensing, 16/03/2022 in 17 News WNCN Raleigh
Sea-level rise creating ‘ghost forests’ in North Carolina: Imagine a forest the size of Raleigh and Durham. Now imagine a forest that size dying every single year.It’s an unfortunate reality that’s happening right now across the North American Coastal Plain, including part of our backyard here in North Carolina.
Featured Image: Atlantic white cedars dying near the banks of the Bass River in New Jersey. Credit: Ted Blanco/Climate Central / https://assets.climatecentral.org/images/made/9_13_16_upton_BassRiver-27_720_404_s_c1_c_c.jpg / From: ‘Ghost Forests’ Appear As Rising Seas Kill Trees, by John Upton, Climate Central
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Big Oil in the US hopes to pump a lot more oil for the EU to burn while the EU works to expand renewables
Inside Climate News explores what Russia’s oil and gas industries might have to do with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and how this involvement may affect people around the world and their industries and governments — especially where action on the climate emergency is concerned.
Putin’s war machine is fueled by Russian oil and gas. He turns the money from selling these resources into a powerful military capability to project his ego across the world. As did Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Qaddafi in Libya.
The oil and gas industry makes up as much as one-fifth of Russia’s Gross Domestic Product, which is relatively small, less than half the size of the GDP of the United Kingdom, even though it has more than double the population. Oil and gas accounts for 60 percent of the nation’s exports and 30 percent of federal budget revenue, giving Putin a large pot of money for which he is not accountable to citizen taxpayers.
From the article:
A convoy of Russian military vehicles is seen as the vehicles move towards border in Donbas region of eastern Ukraine on Feb. 23, 2022 in Russian border city Rostov. Credit: Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images via Inside Climate News
In addition to the immediate events of driving fuel prices through the roof, the US petrochemical industry is taking advantage of the situation to expand their export infrastructure in hopes to lock in future supply contracts (and the associated carbon emissions) for years to come. Putin has done them a great favor by creating marvelous new opportunities for their businesses.
As explained in the article Putin’s War has a range of other effects on the American fossil fuel industry. What is not discussed in this article, is that the war is also providing additional incentives to replace fossil fuel power generation with renewable energy resources.
Rather than subsidizing still further expansion of the carbon emissions that are killing Earth’s biosphere, we should take advantage of the price differential between the increasingly costly production and transport of fossil fuels with the rapidly reducing costs of harvesting freely available renewable energy resources to totally eliminate requirements for burning fossil carbon.
Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has committed to mining coal, saying developing economies need Australian coal to grow, after a major report found Australia must keep 95% of its coal reserves in the ground to keep global heating below 1.5C. ‘We will keep mining the resources that we’re able to sell on the world market.’ [Presumably this also applies to gas in the “gas led recovery”.] Though he added: ‘We obviously anticipate that over time world demand for these things may be declining’. Morrison was also asked about news the British government gave up demands Australia make emissions cuts as part of its trade deal.’Well, it was about trade. It wasn’t a climate agreement,’ he said. / Guardian Australia 09/09/2022
To do this most effectively we need to replace our puppet governments and their fellow travelers working for the benefit of fossil fuel industries by electing intelligent and ethical people who are publicly committed to putting action against the climate crisis as their number one priority in Parliament. Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System is designed to provide you with information about candidates you can use to help you determine your preferences and quickly apply then on your ballot paper when you vote.
Featured image: Russian military weapons destroyed and seized by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. / Uploaded a work by Міністерство внутрішніх справ України from https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=324376199718036&set=pcb.324376259718030 / licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license / Attribution: Mvs.gov.ua
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.
CNBC sees possible rosy lining to the colliding black clouds of the Ukrainian War and attacks on nuclear power stations
The Canadian broadcaster, CNBC reviews progress of the nuclear power industry as a zero emissions supplier of energy in the context of the accelerating growth of the climate emergency driven by the greenhouse gas emissions of the fossil fuel industry.
Presently around 10% of the world’s electricity is produced by some 440 nuclear reactors with 55 more under construction. Almost all of these are products of China and Russia — and are pressurized water reactors that are a lot safer to operate than was the case for the unstable RBMK Reactor at Chernobyl that exploded under bad management.
Encouraged in the US by the Biden Government’s Infrastructure bill, nuclear energy projects are rapidly ramping up as driven by climate change concerns. This seems to be especially true in states with dying coal economies. There also seems to be substantial interest in developing inherently safe(r) modular reactor technology.
The Ukrainian War is adding impetus for ramping up nuclear power generation in the West as Russian aggression has disqualified the country both as a supplier of fossil fuels and of nuclear technologies. The US is also seeing the need to outdo the Chinese marketing of its nuclear technologies.
The CNBC article provides more details.
The Vogtle Unit 3 and 4 site, being constructed by primary contractor Westinghouse, a business unit of Toshiba, near Waynesboro, Georgia, is seen in an aerial photo taken February 2017. Georgia Power | Reuters
Featured image: Fuqing Nuclear Power Station a 6000MW CPR and Hualong one plant / CMG, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source: http://www.fujian.gov.cn/english/news/202201/120220104_5806821.htm / Author: CMG
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Two independent analyses completed this month have determined that the U.S. is now on track to deploy at least 30 GW of offshore wind generation by 2030, meeting a key goal established by the Biden administration.
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Wildfires currently troubling three quite disparate areas of the USA. This time of the year there is usually lots of snow on the ground!
Gracyn Gordon, 13/02/2022 in WAPT16abc – Mississippi: Dangerous wildfire conditions continue over weekend: WARREN COUNTY, Miss. — Firefighters worked hard battling more wildfires in Jackson on Saturday. Dry and windy conditions caused a high fire danger to start the weekend. Firefighters said the weather is not helping.
The Associated Press, 12/02/2022 in Fox 31 Local News: Colorado: Wildfire worries dominate discussion of Rocky Flats refuge: DENVER — December’s Marshall fire spared the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, an expanse of grasslands between Superior and Arvada that for 40 years was home to a facility producing triggers for nuclear warheads. But the prospect of a large refuge wildfire was the subject of a recent meeting of local elected officials and refuge managers. For those who believe the refuge isn’t safe due to residual contamination, the Boulder County fire was a wake-up call.
12/02/2022 in WYFF4: North Carolina: Firefighter injured while battling NC wildfire: MACON COUNTY, N.C. — Officials said crews have been battling numerous brush and wildland fires over the last several days. They said gusty winds and dry conditions caused the fires.
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