Diary Of The Last Age

It's not looking good for avoiding the impact of climate change.  However, science may step up and provide us with some solutions.  For example, The technology that turns CO2 into rock Iceland may have uncovered [a] truly safe method for carbon capture and storage. CO2 reacts with mineral-rich rocks to turn into a solid. [R]esearchers in Iceland have developed a method by which CO2 is dissolved in water before being injected into the island’s mineral-rich, basaltic rocks. Here, it turns into solid white calcite crystals in far less than 100,000 years — in fact, it takes just two years. This is not just theoretical or lab-based research. It has been happening on an industrial scale at CarbFix, part of the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant, near Reykjavik, since 2014. Waste CO2 is captured from the power plant’s steam, is dissolved into large volumes of water and injected into the basalt below, between 400m and 800m deep. There the basalt (which contains up to 25...

As I've posted, we need to mount a WWII level offensive against global warming. The only question that remains, however, is will this be in time to keep the worst from happening? During WWII, it took a few years to gain the confidence that Hitler would actually be undone. How long, if ever, will it be before we feel that way about global warming? Now that is what the supporters of the Green New Deal are saying The Green New Deal resolution introduced last week by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) states that fighting climate change requires “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II.” The world’s leading climate scientists agree. In 2015, for instance, they called for a sweeping mobilization — “a radical transition (deep decarbonization now and going forward),” as they described it — to avoid catastrophic impacts of climate change. And last October, the world’s nations unanimously agr...

The global warming deniers are mocking  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over her call for a Green New Deal, but those deniers are themselves in denial.  81% of American voters agree with her.    What is important to note is that even a majority of Republicans are in agreement.   [The]  new survey  published by the climate change communication programs at Yale and George Mason University (GMU) reports “an increase in Republican understanding of the reality of human-caused global warming, worry about the threat, and support for several climate policies over the past 14 months.” Republican members of Congress will have to realize that they are becoming out of touch with their own constituency.   Four years ago I made a similar point , that we need to treat global warming as our Pearl Harbor, that we need to mount a Manhattan Project, but I like the term Green New Deal a lot better.   Conservatives are upset about this propo...

For people who climate change matters most are unable to act.  The National Ski Areas Association has argued , for instance, that it needs friends on both sides of the aisle in Washington, and that some of these lawmakers have supported important initiatives like year-round activities at ski resorts and protecting water rights. My point is: They shouldn’t be giving any money to lawmakers who oppose efforts to slow or stop climate change. The time for soft-pedaling passed decades ago. At this very late stage in the game, the snow sports world needs decisive action.  Why are ski resorts unable to operate in their own interests. From the snow-dusted ridgelines of the Catskills to the rugged summits of the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevadas and Cascades, winter is slowly disappearing. And snow is receding with it. In Europe, the cradle of ski culture, the problem is even worse. Half the glacial ice in the Alps has already melted; a study published two years ago in The Cry...