Possible evidence of climate change, related discussion

@roger,

Oh Roger, you may be quite right of course. I would have expected expressions of sympathy and support for her family and friends. I missed it all. She was admired here by many of us. I thought her..daughter (?) posted when things took a turn, but I always hoped...

Years ago now...my god. My sense of chronological time sucks.

I do appreciate knowing now though.

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@roger,

I only saw her radio thread. She stopped posting two days before Irma made landfall in Florida, saying "pray for us, we need to evacuate". So I always wondered if she wasn't a victim of Irma.

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Feeling Sad About the Amazon Fires? Stop Eating Meat

The growing demand for meat around the world is directly linked to the Amazon fires.
by Edoardo Liotta
23 August 2019

The struggle with “Climate Despair” is real. That is anxiety and depression caused by news of environmental degradation. Right now, for example, many have shared feelings of helplessness amid the ongoing forest fires in the Amazon. This disaster has been going on for weeks, and the fires have gotten so bad that the state of Amazonas declared a state of emergency earlier this month.

The problem, however, is not totally out of people’s hands. Studies have shown that the fires aren’t caused by natural occurrences, but by humans--our love for meat, to be exact.

The fires are caused by burning fallen trees to make way for cattle ranching, a growing industry in Brazil and the wider region. Data from the Institute of Environmental Research in Amazonia (IPAM) show that the top ten municipalities in Amazonia with the most fire occurrences also had the biggest deforestation rates this year.

The most practical solution people can adopt to help is to reduce--or stop--their meat intake.

Cameron Ellis, Senior Geographer at The Rainforest Foundation told VICE that because cattle require open spaces to feed and grow, ranchers clear vast lands by burning forests. These fires often get out of hand and “escape into surrounding forest, much of which is suffering from drought.” The fires grow and end up consuming areas with trees that have not been cut down.

Although logging (both legal and illegal) and other activities also drive deforestation in the Amazon, animal agriculture is the leading cause by far. The World Bank reported that cattle ranching occupies 80 percent of all converted lands in the Amazon rainforest.

But it doesn’t end there. The animals on these farms need to eat, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) also links the rainforest fires to the production of cattle food through soy farming.

Soy is the most important protein in animal feed, with 80 percent of the world’s soybean crop fed to livestock. So while soy may not destroy as much forest as cattle ranching, it is part of the underlying cause by enabling grazing. [...]

https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/bjwzk4/feeling-sad-about-the-amazon-fires-stop-eating-meat

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

What if we're able to purchase meat from local sources where grazing animals play an important part in the biological web of a well-managed farm? Boycotting meat from the Amazon and from big factory farms makes a lot of sense. But just telling people to "stop eating meat" is not the answer.

1 Reply

@hightor,

It's a bit simplistic but there value in translating global concerns into things people can do to reduce them. Globally, livestock rearing causes about 15 % of GHG emissions, mainly due to cattle rearing for meat and milk. That's a big percentage and the fastest way to reduce it is to reduce consumption.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41337815

Excerpt:
The low-lying Caribbean islands inhabited by Panama's indigenous Guna people are threatened by rising sea levels and increasingly unpredictable weather. But unlike many island communities facing such problems, the Guna have an escape plan.
The tiny port of Carti on the mainland of Panama is the jumping-off place for day trippers who come to swim, splash and snorkel around the idyllic-looking islands that dot the horizon. Motor boats buzz in and out carrying smiling visitors wearing life jackets and sun hats. It's one of Panama's premier tourist destinations.
The islands - almost one for every day of the year - make up the Guna Yala autonomous region, together with a strip of territory on the mainland.
Most Guna communities live on the archipelago, and have done for centuries, after they were driven offshore by disease and venomous snakes. But now many believe that only a move back to the mainland can secure their future.

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Island life changing along with the climate

https://www.google.com/amp/s/earther.gizmodo.com/the-puerto-rican-town-left-to-stew-in-toxic-waste-1824949208/amp

Excerpt:
ARECIBO, PUERTO RICO—In the six months since Hurricane Maria, 67-year-old Aileen Román Rodríguez has struggled to rebuild, to re-establish her routine, and to regain a sense of security. Her one-story, concrete-walled home in the seaside town of Arecibo remains largely uninhabitable. Up and down Rodríguez’s street, other residences appear abandoned and rundown.

But Rodríguez’s community is dealing with more than the wreckage left by a powerful Category 4 hurricane. Two and a half miles east of her home lies the Battery Recycling Company Superfund Site, a 16-acre former lead-smelting facility that shut down in 2014, after the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed its 20 years of operations had resulted in toxic levels of heavy metals at and around the site. It flooded during Hurricane Maria, too.

Locals like Rodríguez, along with some scientists, worry the storm could have spread the facility’s pollutants far and wide. The EPA says everything is fine, but history shows that the agency doesn’t always exhibit the best judgment when it comes to this Superfund. Visiting the site on a recent trip, I left with more questions than answers.

What’s clear is that the Battery Recycling Company Superfund—and other industrial sites like it around Arecibo—continue to threaten Rodríguez and her community, in ways that natural disasters will only exacerbate.

Like much of Puerto Rico, Arecibo went dark during Hurricane Maria. Today, power’s mostly back, though the lights still flicker hauntingly here and there, whether you’re enjoying ensalada de pulpo along the beach or sopa de platano at a roadside bar. Restaurant bars, called chinchorros by locals, are pretty packed, especially on the weekends when folks gather to drink locally-brewed beers and unwind from a long week. Residents won’t let the latest disaster keep them from living. “La vida sigue,” they say. Life goes on.

Still, brave words can’t cover up the beachfront properties scattered with broken bricks, or the countless stray dogs wandering aimlessly, perhaps in search of one of the more than 135,000 Puerto Ricans estimated to have fled to the mainland. Driving through the city’s crumbling roads, you risk running into oncoming traffic to avoid the potholes that’ll land your car in a repair shop. That’s when you’re not stuck at an intersection with a dead streetlight, trying to figure out whether it’s your turn to go.

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I’ve been to Ocracoke twice. I wonder if it’ll ever be the same. I remember a graveyard of British soldiers, bands of wild horses, stately homes, herbalists, hemp clothing.

800 souls refused to leave.

Following their story.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1051006

Helicopters airlifted food and water to stranded residents of a North Carolina Outer Banks island Friday after it suffered “catastrophic flooding” as Hurricane Dorian swept up the coast, the governor said.

Dorian, a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph, was quickly moving away from the Mid-Atlantic states Friday night and heading for Nova Scotia, the National Hurricane Centersaid.

As of 8 a.m. ET Saturday Dorian was producing tropical storm force winds over portions of southeastern Massachusetts, the center said, with hurricane conditions expected in Nova Scotia later.

But the storm surge left behind inundated Ocracoke Island where about 800 people stayed during the hurricane, Gov. Roy Cooper said.

"Many homes and buildings are still underwater," he said.

The governor planned Saturday to visit counties along the coast to assess the damage.

“People on the ground who felt the effects of Dorian are our focus today,” he said in a statement. “Getting food, water and medical help to the people in need is the first priority."

The Ocracoke Village Fire Department was used as a command center Friday on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian.Connie Leinbach / Ocracoke Observer via AP
By late Saturday morning, about 57,000 statewide were without power, the governor's office said.

Ocracoke Island, with a population of about 940, is accessible only by boat or air.

Search-and-rescue teams were going house to house to provide care for anyone who may have been injured or in need of assistance.

Emergency officials brought food, water, generators and fuel trucks to the island, according to the governor.

Hurricane Dorian made landfall on Cape Hatteras, north of Ocracoke Island, at around 9 a.m. Friday as the storm, which devastated parts of the Bahamas and killed at least 43 people earlier this week, moved away from the U.S. East Coast, forecasters and officials said.

The storm also caused damage on Cape Hatteras and other parts of the Outer Banks, leaving them without power, Cooper said.

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I'm a conservative Republican. Climate change is real.

It's time to stop denying a crisis that our constituents are already seeing every day.

Quote:

I’m a conservative Republican and I believe climate change is real. It’s time for my fellow Republicans in Congress to stop treating this environmental threat as something abstract and political and recognize that it’s already affecting their constituents in their daily lives.

If we don’t change our party’s position soon, our voters will punish us.

It is well past time for Republicans to recognize the increasing costs and dangers associated with a changing climate. Scientific data empirically substantiates rises in sea and land temperatures which have materially increased over the past 20 years, increased acid in our air and seas, and rising sea levels, which have also increased velocity over the past 25 years. In the past few years, the U.S. alone has experienced record-breaking tornadoes and flooding, devastating hurricanes, and expansive wildfires. The doubling of the deep ocean heat content in the past 20 years portends significantly more severe storms and hurricanes in the future, creating more and more calls for “disaster relief.”

I’m from a coastal district that is directly affected by these issues every day. In fact, my home state of Florida is ground zero for the adverse effects of climate change. As these extreme weather events increase in frequency and intensity, Congress — especially my Republican colleagues — needs to recognize the costs, disruptions and global security risks that climate change will bring to both our domestic and foreign policy, and the federal budget.

Americans are experiencing these disasters firsthand, and these personal experiences are informing their views on climate change regardless of their age or party affiliation. According to a poll conducted by Monmouth University in 2018, 78 percent of Americans believe the world’s climate is undergoing a change that is causing more extreme weather patterns and sea level rise. That same poll showed that 64 percent of Republicans surveyed believe in climate change, a 15-point increase from poll results just three years earlier.

Further, research conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2018 showed that 59 percent of U.S. adults say the effects of climate change are affecting their local community, and 56 percent of U.S. adults say protecting the environment should be a top priority for the president and Congress in 2019. Clearly, there is broad support for action on climate change, but there is even more consensus among younger generations. Among millennials, 81 percent believe the planet is warming, and even the youngest members of this generation are now eligible to vote. As young people begin to make up an increasing portion of the electorate, the importance of climate change on the policy agenda will only increase as well.

As elected representatives, it is time to step up and respond to the American people.

It’s important to remember that Republicans have traditionally led the way on important environmental issues. President Teddy Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service and many national parks to protect our natural treasures, President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and enacted the Clean Air Act, and President George H.W. Bush implemented measures to combat urban smog and acid rain by improving the Clean Air Act. We need to reclaim our legacy of Republican stewardship of the environment.

We have finally begun to see some Republican members of Congress change their positions on this issue. Several of my fellow conservative members have become some of the strongest advocates for environmental policy. Recently several senior Republican committee chairmen and policymakers publicly acknowledged that climate change is a real threat and must be addressed. My colleague from Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz is one of these members, and we now work closely on the environmental issues affecting our state. Earlier this year, we sent a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to make permanent a current ban on drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico that is set to expire in 2022. The moratorium was enacted by Republican President George W. Bush, with the bipartisan support of both U.S. senators from Florida, Republican Mel Martinez and Democrat Bill Nelson.

Climate and the environment must be bipartisan concerns, but Republicans are lagging. Congress must work together to find solutions that will advance the goals of both parties and the best interests of the American people. Presidents of both parties have shown leadership on this issue: President John F. Kennedy said that “our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.”

We need to work together, in a bipartisan way, to find common ground. This is where the most effective solutions will be found. In the words of President Ronald Reagan, “If you got 75 or 80 percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later.”

If we want to show America that we’re the party of the future, then it’s time for all Republicans to return to their roots as champions of our environment.

Rep. Francis Rooney represents Florida’s 19th Congressional District.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/us-megadrought-worst-least-1200-years-researchers-say-rcna16202?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_mc&fbclid=IwAR1zhk6ZykUfE_CqxDGtlN03gmPyIaXuSM9hZiut1lVF4hAikAZscIrTb2s

News.

1 Reply

@Lash,

It's so horrible to watch this disaster slowly, steadily, and inexorably unfolding in slow motion.

Quote:

The Mouthpiece for War Criminals

The world is ending and I’m reporting the news.

Well, not the news, per se. More like a carefully selected narrative that omits any problematic subjects for my corporate employer.

I’m an anchor for a leading news network. It doesn’t matter which one; we all operate in the same way. Sure, our backers may vary on their underlying social ideology, but basically, we’re all the same. We protect the money.

But that’s just it. The world is ending, and soon, money won’t matter. This apocalypse will occur in less than twenty-four hours, and I’m supposed to keep you believing in our corrupt duopoly by explaining why this political party is better than that political party.

Tonight, I don’t think I will.

The world is coming to an end, and soon, I won’t work for anyone. So I might as well just come out and say it. Are you ready, folks?

“I’m your host, and I’ve been lying to you since the start. The truth is, you’ll be on the streets tomorrow, fighting for your family’s survival, and what I have to say won’t matter in the slightest.

You’ve all been apart of an extremely successful psychological operation, or psy-op, as they say in the industry. Our mission? To pit you against each other, distract you from what matters, and galvanize your vote. I’m the handsomely paid mouthpiece for a group of people that only care about two things: increasing profit margins and further cementing their power.

I’m sorry for participating in this experiment, and feeding you an endless diet of false narratives. If any of you make it out alive, for the love of God, please never listen to me again.”

substack

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Is Jimmy Hoffa in Lake Mead? We should know soon.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/05/09/us/lake-mead-human-remains-drought-climate/index.html

Tier One cutbacks are already on the chopping block by American farmers due to historically low water levels in the west. Some of our traditional winter crops that require regular irrigation have been scratched from production already due to recent, pronounced water losses.

I’m more than a little concerned.

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Areas in Central Florida, still submerged weeks after Hurricane Ian.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/11/weather/florida-flooding-st-johns-hurricane-ian-climate/index.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=news_tab

Hundreds of homes are already underwater, and this river is expected to stay flooded through Thanksgiving

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Possible evidence of climate change, related discussion

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