Wednesday, December 25, 2019

EU SEES CLEAR SIGN OF LOOMING CLIMATE EMERGENCY

Wolf 'snatches pet kangaroo' 

from Belgium home

Avon Valley National Park wild Kangaroo in West Australia (stock image)Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image captionNo remains of the kangaroo have been found 

A wolf has reportedly taken a privately owned kangaroo from a family's garden in Balen, north-east Belgium. 
Jan Loos, a wolf expert, was called to the property by the owners and said he had found wolf prints at the scene.
Mr Loos told AFP the kangaroo is "probably dead" having been eaten by the animal. He said a second kangaroo had also been wounded in the attack. 
Wild wolves used to live in much of continental Europe, but their numbers have been depleted by hunting.
In recent years, sightings of the animals have been on the increase and in 2018 one was recorded in Belgium for the first time in more than 100 years.

Sunday, December 22, 2019

WILL YAK EXTINCTION IMPERIL DUNG BEETLES OF TIBET?

Climatic Change volume

Pastoral yak rearing system is changing with change in climate: an exploration of North Sikkimin Eastern Himalaya

    Climatic Change 

Friday, December 20, 2019

     SOCIAL ECOLOGY COMRADES DENOUNCE PROLETARIAN
                    DISPOSESSION BY JACOBIN GEOENGINEERS

       GEOENGINEERING         MONITOR

        WHY SOCIALISTS

         SHOULD OPPOSE    

       GEOENGINEERING

by Keith Brunner

This article originally submitted to Jacobin in response to an article by their editorial board member, Peter Frase, but Keith has not received any response from them.  Reposted here with permission from the Institute for Social Ecology.
A Socialist Case Against Climate Geoengineering
... Geoengineering has also found a supporter in Jacobin editorial board member Peter Frase. In an article from the “Earth, Wind, and Fire” issue, Frase raises the “prospect of geoengineering in a left context…as part of a larger portrait of eco-socialism” – calling on leftists to embrace geoengineering...

Far from bringing about an ecological transition, allowing the ruling class to gain control of the global thermostat would more likely result in new commodity frontiers and capitalist expansion, along with the development of new weapons to be used against opponents of empire – as the US attempted in Vietnam through weather modification. A review of the most prominent geoengineering technologies reveals that the impacts of deployment would disproportionately fall on peasant and poor communities in the Global South. Socialist support for geoengineering would be a striking reversal for a political tradition based on international solidarity with the oppressed and exploited...
BECCS.... is likely to generate speculative investment in arable land, accelerating a land grab that has led to the dispossession and proletarianization of peasant and Indigenous communities in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia... leading courageous struggles for Indigenous land rights and popular agrarian reform, land defenders often face severe repression and criminalization. US and European leftists should be aiming to build links of solidarity with these movements, rather than providing support, if indirect, for the reactionary forces arrayed against them.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

                         EX AFRICA SEMPER ALIQUID NOVI

WHAT DO COTE IVOIRE, BENIN, BURKINA FASO, NIGER, ZIMBABWE,  UGANDA,  GUINEA,   THE  DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO, & SENEGAL HAVE IN COMMON?
LARGER COP-25 DELEGATIONS THAN
THE US, CHINA, RUSSIA,OR THE EUROPEAN UNION.

Saturday, December 14, 2019

 HOW WARM DID IT BLOW, AND WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT?

GREEN STATES MAY SUE
BIG WIND FOR CONCEALING  CLIMATE RISKS
OLD VERMONT WIND DOCUMENTS MAY THROW MONKEY WRENCH  INTO NEW FOSSIL FUEL LAWSUITS:
 WILL VESTA & G-E  BE ACCUSED OF FEIGNING THERMODYNAMIC IGNORANCE TO EARN TAX CREDITS?
  • Wind power reduces emissions but climatic impacts include warmer temperatures
  • Warming effect strongest at night when temperatures increase with height
  • Nighttime warming effect observed at 28 operational US wind farms
  • Wind's warming can exceed avoided warming from reduced CO2 for a century


Summary

We find that generating today's US electricity demand (0.5 TW e) with wind power would warm Continental US surface temperatures by 0.24°C. 

Warming arises, in part, from turbines redistributing heat by mixing the boundary layer. Modeled diurnal and seasonal temperature differences are roughly consistent with recent observations of warming at wind farms, reflecting a coherent mechanistic understanding for how wind turbines alter climate. 

The warming effect is: small compared with projections of 21st century warming, approximately equivalent to the reduced warming achieved by decarbonizing global electricity generation, and large compared with the reduced warming achieved by decarbonizing US electricity with wind. 

For the same generation rate, the climatic impacts from solar photovoltaic systems are about ten times smaller than wind systems. Wind's overall environmental impacts are surely less than fossil energy. Yet, as the energy system is decarbonized, decisions between wind and solar should be informed by estimates of their climate impacts.


References

Baidya Roy S. Traiteur J.
Impacts of wind farms on surface air temperatures.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2010; 107: 17899-17904
View in Article

Harris R.A. Zhou L. Xia G.
Satellite observations of wind farm impacts on nocturnal land surface temperature in Iowa.
Rem. Sens. 2014; 6: 12234-12246

Hasager C.B. Vincent P. Badger J. Badger M. Di Bella A.
Peña A.Husson R. Volker P.
Using satellite SAR to characterize the wind flow around offshore wind farms.
Energies. 2015; 8: 5413-5439



WHERE THE GROUND TRUTH IS A MILE UNDERGROUND

THE WEIGHT OF THE ICE ATOP ANTARCTICA HAS PUSHED THE UNDERLYING LAND DEEP INTO THE EARTH'S CRUST

Thursday, December 12, 2019

 PBS TO RECYCLE BILL MOYERS'  THE POWER OF MYTH

REMAKE WILL OPEN WITH WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY & CLIMATE IMPRESSARIO'S WORLD-SAVING 1964 TV SPOT AD
AND SEVERAL LEGENDARY TIME COVERS
TIME, Editor Edward Felsenthal notes that while the Person of the Year franchise  "is rooted in the so-called Great Man theory ":
... In this moment when so many traditional institutions seem to be failing us, amid staggering inequality and social upheaval and political paralysis, we are seeing new kinds of influence take hold...
ALL  SLOGANS GUARANTEED REAL BY THE DUTCHESS OF WINDSOR SUSSEX










Wednesday, December 4, 2019

THAT'S ABOUT PAR FOR A BREITBART CORRESPONDENT

Watch  Delingpole: The UN’s Madrid Climate Conference Is a Sick Joke

MADRID, Spain — 

I’m in Madrid for the latest UN Climate Conference – COP25 – and literally no one cares.

              DID THEY SWIM FROM THE ARCTIC TO MADRID,

   OR DID HEARTLAND UBER A NUCLEAR SUBMARINE?

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ANGRINESS MAKES COP-25 DEBUT

18 MARCH

UN Secretary-General appoints      Red from the Angry Birds as     Honorary Ambassador for Green on        the International Day of Happiness

“We are proud to give Red a reason to go Green. There is no better way to mark the International Day of Happiness than to have our animated ambassador raise awareness about the importance of addressing climate change to create a safer, more sustainable and happier future for all,” 

3 DECEMBER

Greta Thunberg: People underestimate 'angry kids'

Science editor, BBC News website

Responding to a question from a journalist who said some adults viewed her as "angry", Ms Thunberg said:
 "We are angry, we are frustrated and it's because of good reasons.
"If they want us to stop being angry, maybe they should stop making us angry." 

Friday, November 29, 2019

THE  COP-25 CLIMATEBALL SUPERBOWL SLOGAN CONTEST

Thursday, November 28, 2019

                            WE'RE  VOTING LABOR,  BECAUSE
     GIANT PURPLE FROGS ARE NOT EATING MANCHESTER

The “my front room” c omments policy

This site is intended to promote discussion about human society and its interaction with nature. It is written from a socialist standpoint. The focus is on ideas and interpretations: it is not a news or campaigning site. 

One key theme is that ruptures and breakdowns in the relationship between people and nature... should be seen not as the result of human activity in general, or the result of there being too many humans, but as the result of human activity carried out in particular social relations.

It is the capitalist social relations of the early 21st century that are producing the unsustainable economic madness.

Another key theme is that the way that capitalism may be superceded by movements towards socialism – without which the ruptures in the people-nature relationship are unlikely to be overcome – needs to be rethought, not least by socialists themselves...

The site aims to provoke discussion among socialists, but hopefully it is presented in such a way that others will read it too.

Discussion wanted
Please... treat the comments sections as you would my front room. Say what you think; tell us where you don’t agree.  Bigots of all types: get lost.

Climate science deniers, creationists and people concerned that giant purple frogs are eating Manchester: I don’t have the time.Take it elsewhere. Everyone else: let’s have a good conversation...

Comments that don’t conform to the “my front room” policy are deleted.

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

A PRONOUNCED BOUQUET OF GALACTIC COSMIC RAYS

Bottles of Bordeaux Headed to the
 International Space Station for Aging Experiment
Researchers hypothesize one year in orbit could have an effect on the wine.
By Jelisa Castrodale

A couple of years ago, NASA conducted a first-of-its-kind study to help the agency understand how (or if) the human body could both adapt to and recover from a year spent in space...
Last week, a French entrepreneur and his Luxembourg-based startup literally launched their own NASA-approved study, but instead of splitting up a set of twins, they've divided two dozen bottles of wine, sending half of them to the ISS, while the other half stay here. The general idea is the same, though: Space Cargo Unlimited will wait twelve months, and then compare the wine that aged in space to the wine that didn't.

Both sets of bottles will be kept at a near-constant temperature of 64 degrees Fahrenheit, and they'll be untouched for the full year. The researchers have hypothesized that when the bottles are finally opened, there will be subtle taste differences between the two.

"We postulate that keeping these samples for a while on the ISS with this context of microgravity and micro-radiation could impact those bacterias and presumably it could have a positive impact," Professor Philippe Darriet, the experiment's science advisor and one of the University of Bordeaux-based researchers who will analyze the wine when it returns to earth, told Quartz.

Although these are the first bottles of wine to "boldly go…" and all that, it's not the first booze that has gone to space. Budweiser has conducted multiple experiments on the ISS, mostly to see how those conditions affect barley seeds during the malting process...

And in 2011, a vial of unmatured malt from the Ardbeg Scotch whisky distillery was sent to the ISS, and it ultimately spent three years in space. When Dr. Bill Lumsden, Ardbeg’s director of distilling, finally tasted it in 2017, it definitely sounded...uh...different, with notes of "antiseptic smoke, rubber and smoked fish," and an overall "meaty" aroma.

"When I nosed and tasted the space samples, it became clear that much more of Ardbeg’s smoky, phenolic character shone through—to reveal a different set of smoky flavors which I have not encountered here on earth before," 

Sunday, November 24, 2019

                       WHY DIDN'T WATTS THINK OF THAT ?

    LIVE FROM JUDITH CURRY'S BLOG,  THE AMAZING VOURNAS !

  1. The Fast Rotating Planet Earth
    So far we came to the end of this presentation. Its topic was to present the Planet-Without-Atmosphere Effective Temperature Complete Formula:
    Te = [ Φ (1-a) So (1/R²) (β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴ (K)
    This Formula is based on the incomplete effective temperature formula:
    Te = [ (1-a) S / 4 σ ]¹∕ ⁴
    And also it is based on the discovered of the Rotating Planet Spherical Surface Solar Irradiation Absorbing-Emitting Universal Law:
    Jemit = σΤe⁴/(β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ (W/m²)
    Here the (β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ is a dimensionless Rotating Planet Surface Solar Irradiation Warming Ability.
    Φ – is the dimensionless solar irradiation spherical surface accepting factor.
    Accepted by a Hemisphere with radius r sunlight is S*Φ*Ï€*r²(1-a), where Φ = 0,47 for smooth surface planets, like Earth, Moon, Mercury and Mars…
    β = 150 days*gr*oC/rotation*cal – is the Rotating Planet Surface Solar Irradiation Absorbing-Emitting Universal Law constant
    N rotations/day, is planet’s sidereal rotation period
    cp cal/gr oC – is the planet’s surface specific heat
    σ = 5,67*10⁻⁸ W/m²K⁴, the Stefan-Boltzmann constant
    The Rotating Planet Surface Solar Irradiation Absorbing-Emitting Universal Law is based on a simple thought. It is based on the thought, that physical phenomenon which distracts the black body surfaces from the instant re-emitting the absorbed solar radiative energy back to space, warms the black body surface up.
    In our case those distracting physical phenomena are the planet’s sidereal rotation, N rotations/day, and the planet’s surface specific heat, cp cal/gr oC.
    Conclusions:
    We had to answer those two questions:
    1. Why Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t affect the Global Warming?
    It is proven now by the Planet Effective Temperature Complete Formula calculations. There aren’t any atmospheric factors in the Complete Formula. Nevertheless the Planet-Without-Atmosphere Effective Temperature Complete Formula produces very reasonable results:
    Te.earth = 288,36 K, calculated by the Complete Formula, which is the same as the
    Tsat.mean.earth = 288 K, measured by satellites.
    Te.moon = 221,74 K, calculated by the Complete Formula, which is almost identical with the
    Tsat.mean.moon = 220 K, measured by satellites.
    Earth has a very thin atmosphere; Earth has a very small greenhouse phenomenon in its atmosphere and it doesn’t warm the planet.
    2. What causes the Global Warming then?
    The Global Warming is happening due to the orbital forcing. It is not happening because of the atmosphere. We have the prove – a newly discovered for the Rotating Planet Surface Solar Irradiation Absorbing-Emitting Universal Law:
    Jemit = σΤe⁴/(β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ (W/m²)
    And knowing that
    Jemit = Jabs
    And Jabs = [ Φ (1-a) So (1/R²) /4 ] (W/m²)
    Solving for Te we obtain the Planet without Atmosphere Effective Temperature Complete Formula:
    Te.earth = [ Φ (1-a) So (1/R²) (β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴ = 288,36 K
    The calculations made by the Planet without Atmosphere Effective Temperature Complete Formula also correspond to the next conclusion:
    The measured by satellites Earth’s mean temperature T = 288 K is the Earth’s surface radiative equilibrium temperature.
    And… what keeps the Earth warm at Te.earth = 288 K, when the Moon is at Te.moon = 220 K? Why Moon is on average 68 oC colder? It is very cold at night there and it is very hot during the day…
    Earth is warmer because Earth rotates faster and because Earth’s surface is covered with water.
    Does the Earth’s atmosphere act as a blanket that warms Earth’s surface?
    No, it does not.