Here’s a scene from the torrid surface of Venus.
No wonder it twinkles so bright above your evening horizon.
Pardon me, the scene is on a closer horizon: in Canada.
All temperature records are being exceeded, and exceeded again. The forests of Canada, the landscapes of Greece, are going up in flames. Ferocious heat is killing people in Italy.
Shell, Exxon, BP, Total announced pledges to cut production, reduce emissions, support renewable sources of energy. They did that so as to fend off regulation and windfall taxes on the obscene profits they got because sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine pushed up the price of gas. The dodge having succeeded, they now drop the funding of alternatives, plan instead to increase fossil fuel production massively and drill new oilfields.
Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion, and Greenpeace need to do more than inconvenience drivers and sporting events. Citizens’ arrests for officials who make decisions that lead toward global suicide?
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
No, we won’t destroy the planet, but we just might destroy our ability to live on it. George Carlin had a bit on it:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
Eventually, I think nuclear fission / fusion, geothermal, wind, hydro, and solar energy will replace our fossil fuel energy. Petroleum will still be needed for fertilizers, plastic, tires, asphalt, and lubricants.
Global warming not withstanding, the Omega weather pattern over the U.S. is causing Ohio and the the rest of the northeast U.S. to have a cooler than average summer.
Hottest since 1979 – when, for the FIRST TIME, an accurate global temperature could be taken by satellite. btw, I have a 96-year old friend who tells me of his parent’s tales of living through the HOT 1930s. One of my first jobs (1981) was to try to reconcile/match overlap local ocean data (taken in situ with diesel powered buoys!) with the new remote-sensing data; COULD NOT DO IT. Yup, it’s definitely warmed in the last 40 years.
#1 https://freebeacon.com/democrats/democrat-donor-arrested-for-starting-massive-fire-democrats-blamed-on-climate-change/ politics and fire
#2 https://www.dw.com/en/how-canadas-wildfires-really-started/a-65893778 fires and people and bears, oh, my
#3 https://news.yahoo.com/wildfires-canada-cause-explanation-climate-change-005844098.html east vs west Canda
To replicate Venusian reality we need to move the planet’s orbit, but alas we have not the technology for that. Hyperbole.
Kevan, I do understand your frustration. But unless and until we gain the ability to construct a Death Star, we will not destroy this planet. You’re giving the human race too much credit. We have this hubris problem, you see. We need to think and behave like nature and the planet do, and get over this inflated notion of control and the idea that we “rule the Earth.” Craig Childs has a concept he calls the “Everending Earth” that I think is most helpful. Below is an edited version of some of his thoughts from an interview. I’m putting them in quotes because they are his words, not mine. He is far more knowledgeable and eloquent:
“We have this concept that we can break the planet. And yes, we are changing everything, from individual species to global systems. But the Earth doesn’t just break and stop, like a machine.
Our planet is alive and kicking. It can absorb impacts, extinctions, alterations of air and ocean currents. This doesn’t mean the Earth is just happily soaking up everything we heap on it. It’s a living organism, squirming and wriggling – but, fundamentally, it can repair itself.
The whole planet is sacred. And that sacredness is creation. It’s where life rises and falls and rises again.
That creative energy – both building up and breaking down – drives everything. If there weren’t a dynamic that took things apart, this whole world would be in stasis. Nothing would change or be created.
Destruction and creation can’t be separated. The fact that they both exist means that the ball is rolling, the planet is moving forward.
And I’m amazed by the good we can do. We’re not just a devouring species, eating everything in our path. We are also a species that preserves ecosystems, that cleans up rivers, that puts seeds in the ground. We aren’t just destroyers. We are repairers too. Destruction and creation – it’s always both at once.”
This is a religious belief about the Earth – conceived as a Being – not an objective description. The human species has made large-scale, fundamental changes to the whole biosphere. This is most obvious when you stand inside one of the vast networks of steel, glass, plastic, and concrete, or look at miles of monoculture. There is no superhuman consciousness that will bring species back into existence by desiring to do so.
At least here in the US, I think (and hope) that this summer will be seen as a turning point in the politics of global warming and climate change. Nobody can assert that months of >110 F temperatures are normal.
Without explicitly renouncing their decades of disingenuous claims to the contrary, right wing pundits and politicians will tacitly admit that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the Earth, their legions of followers will fall in line, and the argument will shift to what to do about it. There will be increasing support for pie in the sky technological fixes, like carbon sequestration, atmospheric geoengineering, hydrogen, nuclear power, etc. — anything except immediately reducing the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels. The fight for the planet will continue, but at least on the Fox News and Republican congressional delegation front, the battle lines will shift in a more favorable direction.
Meanwhile, most federal agencies, state governments, local communities, and businesses will make pragmatic decisions to continue decreasing reliance on fossil fuels and increasing use of cheaper and healthier renewable energy.
Nothing will be done about it sadly it’ll just keep on getting worse and worse until the planet breaks down and the car industry and their associates have to stop because they have destroyed their only planet.