Tag Archives: climate change

goodbye my darling

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The Darling, a major river in New South Wales, Australia (where Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne are) has all but dried up. It’s not addressed in this article, but I recall that Australia’s political system has managed to anticipate and adapt to climate change reasonably well when it comes to drinking water for its major coastal cities. But one thing this article notes is that the country has gone from a net exporter to a net importer of wheat. It is also indigenous populations in the more rural areas who tend to bear the brunt.

Bill McKibben

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Bill McKibben has a new book called Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? In an interview with the Intercept, he expresses a lot of concern about climate change. Another interesting thing he talks about is the idea that genetic technology could mean that an individual human could become obsolete for the first time.

As things stand, these technologies will take the economic inequality presently in existence and encode it in our genes. This is so obviously going to happen if we continue down this path that no one bothers to argue otherwise. Lee Silver, a professor at Princeton University who is one of the leading proponents of genetic modification, has already said that in the future we will have two unequal classes of human beings: “GenRich” and “naturals.” He and many others have already begun taking such a future as granted.

how bad would a “small” nuclear war between India and Pakistan be?

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It would be really, really, really, really really bad, and not just for the region but for the whole world.

Simply put, soot would block about 20% to 30% of the Sun’s light, globally. That’s a decrease of about 30W to 60W per square meter of the Earth’s surface. For comparison, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo caused a decrease of 4W per square meter. The result would be a 2°C to 5°C (about 4°F to 9°F) global cooling. Temperatures would reach their lowest after about three years and maintain that level for another four years. Getting back to previous temperatures would take over a decade.

The cooling would slow the hydrologic cycle and decrease rainfall by 15% to 30% percent globally, with impacts varying in different regions. In India and Central China, for example, precipitation would drop to nearly zero. The Northeastern and Midwestern United States would see a decline of 50%.

The temperature, precipitation, and sunlight change would obviously impact photosynthesis on land and in the ocean. The model estimated a 15% to 30% drop in growth on land—known as Net Primary Productivity—and a 5% to 15% drop in the ocean.

If global warming gets really bad, maybe we can just blow up a nuke or two on some out of the way continent. Antarctica won’t work because there isn’t much combustible material there. So no, never mind, I never said that.

Koch propaganda techniques

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It’s human nature to adjust your beliefs to justify actions that benefit you. That’s why the Koch brothers probably don’t (didn’t, since one passed away recently) think they are evil. But here is how they conspired to murder your grandchildren, and my grandchildren, and possibly their own great-grandchildren, although of course the ultra-rich will tend to fare better in a world of storms, fires, floods and food shortages than the rest of us.

So when you look at this equation of what would happen if we put a price on carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions, the real threat is that that might reduce demand for fossil fuels going out five, 10, 20 years. If that happens, the sunk value of this massive, industrial, globe-spanning infrastructure, the value of it, declines dramatically. And I interviewed a Koch Industries attorney who worked in the lobbying shop back in 2009 who told me, you know, Koch saw the efforts to put a price on carbon emissions as an existential threat to the company.

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So here’s what they did. They created a fake non-profit group to organize fake grass-roots protests that lawmakers considering voting for the cap and trade bill would see. They basically paid people to attend.

They also created a fake research organization to do fake studies about cap and trade. Then they paid for political ads that cited the fake research done by their fake organization, and again targeted lawmakers who supported cap and trade.

And it worked. There was bipartisan support for cap and trade based on a real understanding of the science and risk represented by climate change. A concerted campaign of lies masquerading as a citizen movement was able to derail it, all in support of cynically maximizing profits for evil, mega-rich people at the expense of everyone else on the planet for generations to come.

September 2019 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: Most hopeful story:
  • I think Elizabeth Warren has a shot at becoming the U.S. President, and of the candidates she and Bernie Sanders understand the climate change problem best. This could be a plus for the world. I suggested an emergency plan for the U.S. to deal with climate change: Focus on disaster preparedness and disaster response capabilities, the long term reliability and stability of the food system, and tackle our systemic corruption problems. I forgot to mention coming up with a plan to save our coastal cities, or possibly save most of them while abandoning portions of some of them in a gradual, orderly fashion. By the way, we should reduce carbon emissions and move to clean energy, but these are more doing our part to try to make sure the planet is habitable a century from now, while the other measures I am suggesting are true emergency measures that have to start now if we are going to get through the next few decades.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
  • I mentioned an article by a Marine special operator (I didn’t even know those existed) on how to fix a broken organizational culture: acknowledge the problem, employ trusted agents, rein in cultural power brokers, win the population.

the climate town hall

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A blog called “DeSmogBlog” has a pretty good run-down of the Democrats’ “town hall meeting” on climate change. I have to admit, I have not watched the whole thing, or very much at all.

Here’s my take. First, there are short- to medium-term practical issues that need to be tackled immediately and simultaneously. The first is disaster preparedness and disaster response – storms, fires, floods, droughts. We need to be ready for a major earthquake, plague or terrorist attack too although we can’t blame the climate directly for these. The second is the long-term stability of the food system under projected temperature and water supply trends. The third is dealing with the systemic corruption that has allowed the fossil fuel industry to buy and control our politicians for decades.

I think Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren understand these issues best. I don’t think other candidates understand them at all. I think they divorce them from larger socioeconomic issues to a certain extent, and that is a mistake. It should be possible to take advantage of fluctuations in the economy, employment, and financial system to make the right investments at the right time and minimize the pain.

Beyond these, we need to deal with our interwined land use, energy, transportation, food, and ecosystem issues. It could be done in ways that would be a win for everyone. Invest in the right kinds of infrastructure, education and training for workers, and innovation. It is unlikely to be done because our education system does not provide the public with the mental tools needed to understand systems, and therefore we do not elect politicians who understand systems and have workable ideas on how to fix them. This will still be true even if the corruption issues can somehow be solved.

August 2019 in Review

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My work-life balance situation continues to not favor a lot of blog posts. Or is it work-life-family balance? Or is family part of life? Yes, I guess so. Anyway, what there is not a lot of time for is personal leisure activities like reading, writing, and thinking. Not that I don’t enjoy reading Green Eggs and Ham for the 50th time. I do. Anyway, here are a few highlights of the slim pickings that constituted this blog in August 2019. Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • Drought is a significant factor causing migration from Central America to the United States. Drought in the Mekong basin may put the food supply for a billion people in tropical Asia at risk. One thing that can cause drought is deliberately lying to the public for 50 years while materially changing the atmosphere in a way that enriches a wealthy few at everyone else’s expense. Burning what is left of the Amazon can’t help. 
Most hopeful story:
  • I explored an idea for automatic fiscal stabilizers as part of a bold infrastructure investment plan. I’m not all that hopeful but a person can dream.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

the Mekong

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Similar to the situation in India, the Mekong depends on a mix of snow/glacial melt from the Himalayas, and on seasonal monsoon rains. Both are becoming less reliable, and countries in the headwaters, including China and Laos, are going on massive dam-building binges. (Disclaimer: This website looks like a reputable source of journalism, but I am not familiar with it.)

The crisis began when critical monsoon rains, which usually start in late May in the Mekong region, failed to arrive. Dry conditions, driven by the El Niño weather phenomenon and exacerbated by climate change, persisted well into July. At that time, observers say, the situation was made worse by hydropower dam operators upstream, in China and Laos,withholding water for their own purposes...

Originating in the Tibetan highlands, the Mekong River flows through six Asian countries, including China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, before emptying into the South China Sea. The river basin is home to the largest inland fishery in the world and more than 60 million people depend on it for their livelihoods.

the role of drought in migration from Central America

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The Guardian has an article on the role that drought and climate change play in migration of people from Central American countries such as Guatemala to the U.S.

Central America remains one of the world’s most dangerous regions outside a warzone, where a toxic mix of violence, poverty and corruption has forced millions to flee their homes and head north in search of security.

But amid a deepening global climate crisis, drought, famine and the battle for dwindling natural resources are increasingly being recognized as major factors in the exodus.