Diary Of The Last Age

The world is increasingly at risk of “climate apartheid”, where the rich pay to escape heat and hunger caused by the escalating climate crisis while the rest of the world suffers, a report from a UN human rights expert has said.   International climate treaties have been ineffective, the report said. Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images  Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the impacts of global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life, water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of people, but also democracy and the rule of law. Alston is critical of the “patently inadequate” steps taken by the UN itself, countries, NGOs and businesses, saying they are “entirely disproportionate to the urgency and magnitude of the threat”. His report to the UN human rights council (HRC) concludes: “Human rights might not survive the coming upheaval.” Another example , rich people with coastal property endangere...

Extinction Rebellion , a movement of young people demanding action on climate change, has been demonstrating in Europe, in particular, London.  I've posted about them recently.  A Banksy has appeared at the Marble Arch in London, a declaration that the time for action is now, From This Moment On Despair Ends And Tactics Begin.    It speaks for itself.  Now is the time for action. 

I've posted many times before that what will really get everyone's attention about global warming will be rising seas.  It's happening now but the impact is very slow to show itself allowing people to fail to notice.  The problem is that when it finally comes to everyone's attention it will be too late to prevent some serious consequences.  Elizabeth Rush:  Thwaites Glacier A glacier the size of Florida is on track to change the course of human civilization Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica is enormous and is often referred to as the most dangerous glacier on Earth. It has also been dubbed the doomsday glacier. The glacier holds two feet of sea level but more importantly, it is the “backstop” for four other glaciers which holds an additional 10-13 feet of sea level rise. When Thwaites collapses it will take most of West Antarctica with it. This is not new information for those of us that follow the science, for example, Eric Rignot in 2014 , state...

I've wondered in the past when young people would begin to demonstrate against climate change like we did back in the 60's and 70's in opposition to the Vietnam war.  It appears to be happening finally. I believed that the anti-war movement didn't really begin until young people were being drafted to go to Vietnam.  It became very personal and the movement burgeoned.  The same thing seems to be happening now.  Climate change is become very personal for young people and they are now finally becoming active. It's possible to mark the beginning of the anti-war movement to the Mario Savio and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.  Today we have a new "Mario Savio", Greta Thunberg . She is becoming the inspiration for the young people's movement against climate change.  Greta Thunberg cut a frail and lonely figure when she started a school strike for the climate outside the Swedish parliament building last August. Her parents tried to dissuade he...

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...