The Environment Thread

[bart]

On that note: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/clim ... hange.html

When China halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants this year, even as President Trump vowed to “bring back coal” in America, the contrast seemed to confirm Beijing’s new role as a leader in the fight against climate change.

But new data on the world’s biggest developers of coal-fired power plants paints a very different picture: China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.

These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries.

Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.

[Bi_3]

On that note: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/clim ... hange.html

When China halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants this year, even as President Trump vowed to “bring back coal” in America, the contrast seemed to confirm Beijing’s new role as a leader in the fight against climate change.

But new data on the world’s biggest developers of coal-fired power plants paints a very different picture: China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.

These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries.

Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.

Yup. The Paris climate deal means jack shit in the face of this.

Edit: Note: the 100 cancelled plants in China were cancelled to manipulate energy prices, not protect the environment.

[Stickman]

India plants 66 million trees in 12 hours

[Stickman]

Watch Al Franken, David Letterman Talk Climate Change in New 'Boiling the Frog' Series

[Stickman]

The Larsen C Crack-Up in Antarctica: Why It Matters

[run2death]

Very cool website that fact checks various media pieces on climate change.

https://climatefeedback.org/

With fully annotated notes from scientists. Pretty bad ass.

https://via.hypothes.is/http://nymag.co ... umans.html

[Bi_3]

Very cool website that fact checks various media pieces on climate change.

https://climatefeedback.org/

With fully annotated notes from scientists. Pretty bad ass.

https://via.hypothes.is/http://nymag.co ... umans.html

Glad they took that freaking ridiculous article in New York Magazine to task. Pure clickbait crap.

[Green Habit]

Very cool website that fact checks various media pieces on climate change.

https://climatefeedback.org/

With fully annotated notes from scientists. Pretty bad ass.

https://via.hypothes.is/http://nymag.co ... umans.html

Glad they took that freaking ridiculous article in New York Magazine to task. Pure clickbait crap.

[Stickman]

Scott Pruitt's Crimes Against Nature

[Stickman]

The Kids Suing Trump Just Got A Helping Hand From "Grandfather" Of Climate Change

[Bi_3]

The Kids Suing Trump Just Got A Helping Hand From "Grandfather" Of Climate Change

The legal ramifications of that lawsuit are pretty astounding.

[Stickman]

Government Scientist Blows Whistle On Trump Administration Then Resigns In Fiery Letter

[Bi_3]

The United States of Toxins

https://blog.odetoclean.com/the-united- ... 219e5a701f

[Bi_3]

Just one vehicle type, but you get the idea.

[Stickman]

The U.S. now stands alone

[McParadigm]

[Bi_3]

Spoiler: show

[simple schoolboy]

Just one vehicle type, but you get the idea.

There's been some talk of adding Cobalt to the Dodd-Frank list of conflict minerals. The electronics industry would not be pleased.

[McParadigm]

https://grist.org/article/antarctica-do ... ities/amp/

The glaciers of Pine Island Bay are two of the largest and fastest-melting in Antarctica. Together, they act as a plug holding back enough ice to pour 11 feet of sea-level rise into the world’s oceans — an amount that would submerge every coastal city on the planet. For that reason, finding out how fast these glaciers will collapse is one of the most important scientific questions in the world today.

A wholesale collapse of Pine Island and Thwaites would set off a catastrophe. Giant icebergs would stream away from Antarctica like a parade of frozen soldiers. All over the world, high tides would creep higher, slowly burying every shoreline on the planet, flooding coastal cities and creating hundreds of millions of climate refugees.

All this could play out in a mere 20 to 50 years — much too quickly for humanity to adapt.

“With marine ice cliff instability, sea-level rise for the next century is potentially much larger than we thought it might be five or 10 years ago,” Poinar says.

A lot of this newfound concern is driven by the research of two climatologists: Rob DeConto at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and David Pollard at Penn State University. A study they published last year was the first to incorporate the latest understanding of marine ice-cliff instability into a continent-scale model of Antarctica.

Their results drove estimates for how high the seas could rise this century sharply higher. “Antarctic model raises prospect of unstoppable ice collapse,” read the headline in the scientific journal Nature, a publication not known for hyperbole.

Instead of a three-foot increase in ocean levels by the end of the century, six feet was more likely, according to DeConto and Pollard’s findings. But if carbon emissions continue to track on something resembling a worst-case scenario, the full 11 feet of ice locked in West Antarctica might be freed up, their study showed.

Three feet of sea-level rise would be bad, leading to more frequent flooding of U.S. cities such as New Orleans, Houston, New York, and Miami. Pacific Island nations, like the Marshall Islands, would lose most of their territory. Unfortunately, it now seems like three feet is possible only under the rosiest of scenarios.

At six feet, though, around 12 million people in the United States would be displaced, and the world’s most vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map.

At 11 feet, land currently inhabited by hundreds of millions of people worldwide would wind up underwater. South Florida would be largely uninhabitable; floods on the scale of Hurricane Sandy would strike twice a month in New York and New Jersey, as the tug of the moon alone would be enough to send tidewaters into homes and buildings.

DeConto and Pollard’s breakthrough came from trying to match observations of ancient sea levels at shorelines around the world with current ice sheet behavior.

Around 3 million years ago, when global temperatures were about as warm as they’re expected to be later this century, oceans were dozens of feet higher than today.

Previous models suggested that it would take hundreds or thousands of years for sea-level rise of that magnitude to occur. But once they accounted for marine ice-cliff instability, DeConto and Pollard’s model pointed toward a catastrophe if the world maintains a “business as usual” path — meaning we don’t dramatically reduce carbon emissions.

Rapid cuts in greenhouse gases, however, showed Antarctica remaining almost completely intact for hundreds of years.

[Bi_3]

Oh no!!! I'll be able to bike to the beach in 20 years? It's a disaster!1!1!