A few more of the points I’ve been noting:
Plummeting insect numbers ‘threaten collapse of nature’
Climate and economic risks “threaten 2008-style systemic collapse.”
After 1989, [George] Soros’s foundation directed money toward social modernization in Hungary, funding, among other things, a hospice program, a school-breakfast program, and a book-restoration plan at the National Széchényi Library. In 1996, Soros created the Romaversitas Foundation, to provide educational assistance and mentoring to Hungary’s severely marginalized Roma population. The following year, the foundation launched a program to archive Carpathian Basin folk-music recordings. Nizak said there were years when the financing that the Soros Foundation provided to Hungarian newspapers was equal to that provided by the state.” (New Yorker, 2019 Jan. 14.) Is Hungary proud of Soros? In December 2018, he had to move his Central European University from Budapest to Vienna because he is so vilified by prime minister Viktor Orbán.
The world’s food supply is under severe threat from loss of biodiversity.
Why are insects in decline, and can we do anything about it?
Oceans are becoming stormier.
Antarctica’s ice sheets have thinned.
A cavity 6 miles long and 1,000 feet high has been discovered under Antarctica’s huge and fast-moving Thwaites Glacier. The 14 billion tons of ice that formerly filled it have melted in the past three years. Scientific American, May 2019, page 23.)
British Steel went bankrupt in May 2019, wiping out 5,000 jobs and threatening far more because of the dependence of industry on steel products. The major though not the only cause was Brexit, because of the imperilling of exports to Europe.
Robert Mueller, special counsel, on May 30: “The constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.” In other words, though he stated at least 10 instances of Trump obstructing justice, he was not allowed to bring charges; that should be done by Congress.
Because world temperature has risen, putting more energy into the atmosphere, there are more weather extremes; so people use more power for heating in cold and cooling in hot weather; so we put more carbon into the atmosphere – a feedback loop that accelerates global heating.
Governments are still investing in coal.
Climate disasters have started coming at one per week – not just the wildfires in America and Australia but many more in poor countries and out of the news. Worst affected are likely to be women, children, the elderly, the disabled, the displaced. So, adaptation and resilience are already needed.
Forests twice the size of Britain have been destroyed in the last decade. 80% of the cause is agriculture. Forests are cleared to make way for fodder monoculture to feed cattle, efficiency 15% – it takes about seven pounds of fodder to produce a pound of meat. Yet the rise of meat consumption is faster than any of the other trends in this article.
Therefore this is a major hope for people-level action to stop the slide to climate catastrophe: vegan “meat” and cultured meat. “Most meat’ in 2040 will not come from dead animals.”
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
I may become one of the people who is burning more energy to cool my home in the summer. Heat waves are becoming more frequent and severe here in San Francisco, which used to be famously cool and grey during the summer. Nobody used to need an air conditioner. But with my apartment 95 to 105 degrees F / 35 to 40 C for days on end, my trusty old fan isn’t enough. I’m seriously considering getting an air conditioner.
Some years ago scientists studied glaciers in Antarctica to determine why some move faster than others. Due to this study it was determined that beneath the So. Polar Continent a volcano exists. The heat from this volcano melts ice, glaciers, above it and that is why the Thwaites is moving faster than others.
Volcanism, not climatism is the reason ice melts from the inside out.
I saw glacial ice caves on the BBC’s nature programming. They are simply beautiful!
Charles, can you cite a reference for this? Preferably a publication in a reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal.
google mentions mt. Erebus an active volcano on Antarctica. I can’t think of any other way ice could melt from inside or below other a source of heat beneath.