CAN GENDER POSITIVE SOLAR CREMATION ECLIPSE THE ANTINOMY OF TRANSGENDER SUTTEE?

 

Abstract

India is undergoing a rapid transition to renewable energy; the Gujarat Solar Park typifies this transition... drawing on literature from feminist political ecology, this paper demonstrates how the modalities of solar park development represent an antinomy of a nature-society relation.

New configurations of labor under the political economy of solar have produced a gendered surplus population of landless peasants ... 

despite mandates of ‘gender positive’ outcomes... one such scheme for female empowerment was reserved for only women of middle-to-high class status and those of dominant castes, thereby reproducing class and caste-based social power asymmetries. 

Female (dis)empowerment eclipses ‘gender positive’ guarantees of the solar park...

Will Man In A Bear Suit Be Last Trump Climate Science Czar?

  BEAR OF SMALL BRAIN JOINS P-R FLACKS OF LOW BROW
 AT CLIMATE HUSTLE DEBUT
CENTER ROW LEFT TO RIGHT: 
MARC MORANO, LORD MONCKTON, FRED SINGER WILLIE SOON

Trump White House recruited climate science critics to work at NOAA

By Scott Waldman, E&E NewsSep. 28, 2020 , 2:00 PM

A documentary that was released last week and features Legates provides a window into the scientific priorities he might bring to NOAA.

The film Climate Hustle 2  connected to CFACT, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow...

It cycles through a familiar miasma of debunked and cherry-picked scientific claims that paint the relatively small number of researchers who doubt the extent of human-caused climate change as Galileo-like figures...

The movie is introduced by “Mini AOC,” a girl dressed to resemble Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

“Like, I hope you learned a lot about climate change in this movie; I know I did. Like, I used to not believe in climate change either. Like, I thought it meant Mother Nature was transgendering into Father Nature,” 

[Former Delaware political appointee David] Legates features prominently in the film, which compares those who want more aggressive climate policy to the authoritarian government of George Orwell’s “1984”... The film also features Legates’ co-author ...Willie Soon, who claims the sun is fueling global warming.

Soon says he cried after The New York Times exposed that his research was secretly funded by energy companies and suggests that climate activists should be jailed...

[ You aren't seeing things-  the film's star used to play Hercules on TV]

Cutting down on carbon emissions would mean that developed nations “would head toward the undeveloped world, and we would bring everybody down to the lowest common denominator,” Legates says in the film. He says teaching young people about human-caused global warming is indoctrinating them into believing a “lie.”

EXPLODING CO2 PUTS NAPA FRUIT BOMBS AT RISK

 

THE ONLY BREW FOR THE BRAVE AND TRUE CAPTURES CO2 IN NACHOS

DANES TREMBLE AS ELEPHANT BREWERY PONDERS CARBON CAPTURE IN NACHOS

Restprodukt fra ølbrygning bliver til chips og dip

Fødevarer, fisk og landbrugFødevareproduktionFødevareteknologi

ONSDAG 24 JUN 20

|

Af Miriam Meister

Kontakt

Tino Rabe Tønnesen

Founder, CVO

Science Brew 

31 51 61 12 

Hvad kan være bedre end den klassiske kombination af øl og chips? Det skulle da lige være, hvis der er tale om bæredygtige chips lavet næsten udelukkende af restprodukter fra produktionen af miljøvenlig øl.

I hvert fald hvis man spørger ølentusiasterne fra Science Brew, som i deres jagt på at producere en cirkulær øl – Zero Waste Beer – hvor miljøregnskabet går i nul, har opfundet netop den idé.

Science Brew er en DTU spinout virksomhed fra DTU Bryghus i DTU Fødevareinstituttet. 

Restprodukter bliver til beerchos og dip

Efter at have brygget et parti øl står virksomheden – som alle andre bryggerier – tilbage med store mængder af restproduktet mask, som indeholder en del protein, sukker og antioxidanter. Masken fører de gennem en filterpresse udviklet på DTU Bryghus, som deler den i en væske- og en tørstofdel.

Science Brew kan derefter male tørstofdelen til mel, som de blander til en dej med lidt af væsken fra masken, nogle krydderier og noget majsmel. Dejen ruller de ud i trekanter og bager. Resultatet er chips, der på mange måder ligner og smager som nachos, og som de derfor kalder ’beerchos’.

CLIMATE HAWKS RUFFLE DUCK & PEACOCK FEATHERS

Facebook suspends environmental groups despite vow to fight misinformation

Oliver Milman

 @olliemilman

Tue 22 Sep 2020 03.30 EDT

Facebook has suspended the accounts of several environmental organizations less than a week after launching an initiative it said would counter a tide of misinformation over climate science on the platform.

Groups such as Greenpeace USA, Climate Hawks Vote and Rainforest Action Network were among those blocked from posting or sending messages on Facebook over the weekend. Activists say hundreds of other individual accounts linked to indigenous, climate and social justice groups were also suspended for an alleged “intellectual property rights violation”.

___________________________________________________________

WE ARE CLIMATE HAWKS

Our Mission:  To identify, train, and elect individual climate hawk leaders, while generating a political environment in which those leaders have the power to advance policies needed to address climate change.

Climate hawks recognize that climate change is the greatest challenge facing ours and future generations and not just another Democratic issue.

                                                                We don’t support those who duck or waffle when it comes to the climate, whether it be about climate disasters, Arctic drilling, or coal exports.  We also don’t support climate peacocks who pretend to support climate protection, but don’t vote that way.

We are working to make taking campaign money from coal, oil, and gas companies unacceptable, given their business model is to exploit the vulnerable and cook the planet.

____________________________________________________________

The suspended people and groups were all involved in a Facebook event from May last year that targeted KKR & Co, a US investment firm that is backing the Coastal GasLink pipeline, a 670 km-long gas development being built in northern British Columbia, Canada.

The suspensions, the day before another online action aimed at KKR & Co, has enraged activists who oppose the pipeline for its climate impact and for cutting through the land of the Wetʼsuwetʼen, a First Nations people.

“Videos of extreme violence, alt-right views and calls for violence by militias in Kenosha, Wisconsin, are allowed to persist on Facebook,” said Delee Nikal, a Wet’suwet’en community member. “Yet we are banned and receive threats for permanent removal, for posting an online petition.”

Many of the accounts have now been restored, but a handful are still blocked, with no fuller explanation coming from Facebook.

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said: “Our systems mistakenly removed these accounts and content. They have since been restored and we’ve lifted any limits imposed on identified profiles.”

THE CHINA SYNDROME

Hong Kong is not the only place on the far side of the world that is suffering from the decay of freedom of expression.

NATURE reports  on a 2019 survey of " Two-hundred and twenty scientists in Australia.. organized by the Ecological Society of Australia": 

Source: D. A. Driscoll et al. Conserv. Lett. e12757 (2020)

THE RIVER IN THE OCEAN

Few recall 17th century accounts of the Gulf Stream. Benjamin Franklin sketched its course at sea as he sailed back and forth from Philadelphia to London on the eve of the American Revolution and, being Postmaster, publicized  his results in hope of speeding the Transatlantic mails.

Stefan Rahmsdorf writes at RealClimate:

 In 1987, the famous US oceanographer Wally Broecker titled an article in the scientific journal Nature “Unpleasant surprises in the greenhouse”. Even Hollywood took up the subject in 2004 in the film “The Day After Tomorrow”by the German director Roland Emmerich. However, there were no measurement data that could prove an ongoing slowdown.

Only since 2004 has there been continuous monitoring at 26°N in the Atlantic (RAPID project)... 

Two new studies now provide further independent evidence of this weakening. In August a paper by Christopher Piecuch of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on the Florida Current – the part of the Gulf Stream system along the Florida coast – was published. Although continuous measurements of the current have only been available since 1982, Piecuch was able to reconstruct the strength of the Florida Current over the last 110 years from measurements of the sea level difference between the two sides of the current. To do so, he used 46 tide gauge stations in Florida and the Caribbean as well as a simple physical principle: the Coriolis force deflects currents in the northern hemisphere to the right, so that the water on the right side of a current stands higher than on the left. The stronger the current, the greater the difference in sea level. Comparison with measurements since 1982 shows that the method works reliably.

BEN MISSED A FEW THINGS

The result: the Florida current has weakened significantly since 1909 and in the last twenty years has probably been as weak as never before. Piecuch’s calculations also show that the resulting reduction of heat transport is sufficient to explain the ‘cold blob’ in the northern Atlantic.

This Monday, in Nature Climate Change a further study appeared, of researchers of Peking University and Ohio State University (Chenyu Zhu and Zhengyu Liu). For the first time, their paper provides evidence for an AMOC slowdown based on data from outside the North Atlantic. Model simulations show that a weakening of the AMOC leads to an accumulation of salt in the subtropical South Atlantic. This is due to the fact that strong evaporation in this region constantly increases the salinity, while the upper branch of the ocean circulation drains the salty water northwards, continually bringing in less salty water from the south. When this current weakens, the water in this region becomes saltier. This is exactly what the measured data show, in accordance with computer simulations. The authors speak of a “salinity fingerprint” of the weakening Atlantic circulation.

Video animation of ocean currents in the CM2.6 climate model of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab in Princeton: 

In addition to these oceanographic measurements, a number of studies with sediment data indicate that the Gulf Stream circulation is now weaker than it has been for at least a millennium.

These current changes also affect Europe, because the ‘cold blob’ out in the Atlantic also influences the weather. It sounds paradoxical when you think of the shock frost scenario of the Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow: but British researchers found that in summer the jet stream in the atmosphere likes to take a route around the south side of the cold blob – this then brings warm winds from the southwest into Europe, leading to heat waves there, as in the summer of 2015. Another study found a decrease in summer precipitation in northern Europe and stronger winter storms. What exactly the further consequences will be is the subject of current research.

However, the latest generation (CMIP6) of climate models shows one thing: if we continue to heat up our planet, the AMOC will weaken further – by 34 to 45% by 2100. This could bring us dangerously close to the tipping point at which the flow becomes unstable.

This article appeared originally in German in Der Spiegel: Das Golfstromsystem macht schlapp

ROME WAS NOT SACKED IN A DAY

A  Grauniad  critical theorist hails the acceleration of structural change in climate communication:

"[A]fter years of languishing outside the mainstream, climate activism Extinction Rebellion looks a lot like green groups of years past, but where those earlier protests were perhaps too polite, ER has enthusiastically embraced disruption"

Postmodernity began when Gesaric lead a diversified band of Vandals and Visigoth social entrepreneurs from Africa to Rome to cancel Pre-PoMo Postclassical culture:

 EX AFRICA SEMPER ALIQUID NOVO

 

 

DELAWARE LAME DUCK IS LATEST TRUMP CLIMATE QUACK

NPR: Longtime Climate Science Denier Hired At NOAA

REBECCA HERSHER

Twitter

JOE PALCA

TwitterFacebook

David Legates, a University of Delaware professor of climatology who has spent much of his career questioning basic tenets of climate science, has been hired for a top position at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration

Legates confirmed to NPR that he was recently hired as NOAA's deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction. The position suggests that he reports directly to Neil Jacobs, the acting head of the agency that is in charge of the federal government's sprawling weather and climate prediction work.

Neither Legates nor NOAA representatives responded to questions about Legates' specific responsibilities or why he was hired. The White House also declined to comment. Legates has a long history of using his position as an academic scientist to publicly cast doubt on climate science.

Myron Ebell, the former head of President Trump's EPA transition team and the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute said this shows that 

"Trump wants to do more than roll back climate policy by actively trying to reshape climate science... Legates could play a significant role in shaping the next National Climate Assessment.

It's a very good sign that after sitting on their hands for three-and-a-half years, the administration is finally going to inject some science into official climate science...This is the kind of thing we have been pushing for since before Trump was elected, to get real science into the assessment, instead of junk science, which NASA and NOAA have been doing for years."

Ebell neglects to mention that the State of Delaware fired Legates for pushing junk climate science in 2011:

Controversial Delaware state climatologist steps down July 19, 2011

University of Delaware professor David Legates has stepped down as State Climatologist...

Back in February 2007, then Governor Ruth Ann Minner... asked him not to speak on behalf of the Governor’s office, since his views did not align with those of her administration... in an email sent to WHYY, 

Legates... writes, “I believe that... carbon dioxide is only a minor player in climate change. Minor to the point that very little evidence of climate change in the recent past can be attributed to rising carbon dioxide concentrations.” 

EVERY CHEMTRAIL HAS A SILVER LINING : 100 YEARS OF UNINTENTIONAL SOLAR RADIATION MANAGEMENT RESEARCH

They don't make chemtrails like they used to. Paranoid skywatchers who quail at the sight of  water vapor contrails must quake to see the spectacularly substantial smoke curtain Col. Billy Mitchell drew during his  famed 1923 Naval bombing demonstration. The fleet of doomed surplus battleships and prizes of war disappeared behind a

         THE  SCOPEX  EXPERIMENT THAT TIME FORGOT

thick veil of  titanium oxychloride smoke formed by the moist air hydrolysis of  ~10 kilograms of  titanium tetrachloride vapor sprayed behind a World War I biplane. Not for long, though - a squadron of Curtis bombers sank the dreadnought and three other ships shortly thereafter.  Mass produced TiCl4  became cheaply available in the 1920's as bright titanium oxide pigments began to displace toxic lead carbonate in white paint.

This WWII training film shows the1923 smoke curtain experiment more fully 

By 1942, specialized spray tanks allowed the controlled the dispersion of such liquids from aircraft , but while Roger Revelle  and Charles Keeling proposed bright particle dispersions to raise ocean albedo in their 1965 White House report on how to respond to warming from AGW, aerosols were not discussed. It apparently takes about a kilogram of TiCl4  to generate a hectare of curtain area

Just as this century old film may hold data of use in designing bright aerosol pigment  experiments like SCOPEX, it suggests that aerosol curtains  might slow surface melting of Arctic sea ice and Greenland snow exposed to the heat of the midnight sun.

Gavin Schmidt and other Goddard Center climatologists may have some skin in this game: besides inventing liquid fuel rockets, Dr Goddard patented the wing-tank sprayer seen in the 1942 film:

The rise of  battery powered  drones could change the game by lowering the cost, and carbon footprint of  cloud curtain generation. Before the internet, skywriting with cheap aerosols was the last word in mass advertising, and its low cost per view prefigured the economic attractions of stratospheric  geoengineering. The sky still makes a bully billboard, and swarms of Amazon delivery drones  could become an entry level technology for pixilated future skies driven by AI microclimate algorithms to simultaneously display ads and adjust sunlight to the weather on the ground below. 

Drones that deliver sixpacks of beer could just as well carry white skywriting ink, to become platforms for made-to-measure shade and microclimate delivery for outdoor events and gatherings of all sorts, anywhere from Singapore to the Greenland ice cap. Who knows- if anybody can figure out how to morph the externalities of smoke generation into a business model for Arctic albedo conservation, it's Jeff Bezos.

( Full disclosure: I once coauthored a Nature  Daedalus column with David Evans.)

RELAX -THE METER WILL RUN BACKWARDS TIL IT MELTS

ENERGYWIRE —   September 11, 2020

1.  WILDFIRES: Solar power plunges as smoke shrouds California Smoke from California's monstrous wildfires has turned the color of the skies into a doomsday reddish-brown — and slashed the output of the state's array of solar power installations, by far the largest in the nation. ELSEWHERE IN SMOKING NEWS: THE WALRUS Commodity of Doom  Andrew Marzoni

The contradictions Inherent to the history of the cigarette, from the moralistic biopolitics of the nonsmoking movement and the anti-government populism of tobacco’s remaining loyalists... reproduce a prophetic narrative of capitalism in miniature: of accumulation, growth, exploitation, and imminent self-destruction...

Just as the smoker’s identity is defined by a relationship with an object, space, and as Klein shows, time, the nonsmoker is born in relation to others who may be unhealthier, lacking in discipline or fear of death, guided by different values and allowances of privilege

If emphysema, cancer, heart failure, or stroke don’t get you, neoliberalism will, as was the case for Eric Garner and George Floyd, murdered by racist police under the pretense of unlawful trade: selling loosies without tax stamps, buying a pack with an allegedly counterfeit bill.

Like Zeno, neither could have recognized his final cigarette for what it was, nor the figurative resonance that would transform their famous last words into a rallying cry for victims of a disease that is social before it can be physiological, no matter how many coroners are brought in to say otherwise.

SOME HAVE NEVER BEEN TAUGHT; SEPP NEVER LEARNS

Science and Environmental Policy Project  

The Week That Was:  2020-09-05 (September 5, 2020)

Quote of the Week:

“A few days ago, a Master of Arts, who is still a young man, and therefore the recipient of a modern education, stated to me that until he had reached the age of twenty he had never been taught anything whatever regarding natural phenomena, or natural law.”
                                      – John Tyndall (1854)
Ocean pH:

Writers for the US National Academy of Sciences continue to insist that a slight lowering of the pH of an alkaline solution (the general oceans) reducing its corrosive capability by making it more neutral is acidifying it, increasing the corrosive capability.

This is logical nonsense. 

Now, they have imagined a new disease for coral reefs: Coral Osteoporosis. 

In humans, osteoporosis is a bone disease that occurs when the body loses too much bone. Now the Coral Reefs are losing too much Coral – by what standards?
       -- Ken Haapala President, SEPP (2020)

A VEGAN SOLUTION TO SEA LEVEL RISE?

Volumes have been written on capturing carbon in  trees, but not much on limiting sea level rise by sequestering water in crops. 

This may change,  for Salon suggests grafting watermelons onto Giant Pumpkin vines as the Next Big Thing in biogeoengineering:

Dr. Todd Wehner, a distinguished professor of Horticultural Sciences at North Carolina State... said so-called giant watermelons are technically defined as any watermelon weighing over 32 pounds that has been grown in a field. However, when growing these massive mutants... the process looks a little different.

Usually, it starts with a giant watermelon transplant... These transplants can be put on a non-watermelon rootstock —like a squash — to get a bigger plant. After growing several plants, a grower will decide which one is doing best, and thin them down to the one that looks most promising. As watermelons are native to the temperate regions of west Africa, they need warm temperatures during the day and a long growing season to succeed.

Key to the watermelon's size is its roots. The branch for the fruit can be rooted multiple times. Watermelons are notoriously heavy feeders, meaning that they require more nutrients than average plants...

Genetics play a role in the success of a giant watermelon's size, too. Similar to growing giant pumpkins, seeds that have been bred from giant watermelons carry the genetic code for enormity. Regulating the amount of water that goes to the plant is also moderated.

"Too much water will cause the fruit to split," Wehner says. "It's a very well cared for fruit."

In a twist that wouldn't surprise Sigmund Freud, the giant melon–ogling community is mostly "male-dominated," but there are some women growers like Susie Zuerner, a 62-year-old living in North Carolina. Like Dawson and Vial, Zuerner's interest in growing huge watermelons piqued after seeing them at the North Carolina State Fair. In 2010, Zuerner grew a 239-pound watermelon. She hasn't been able to match her record yet, but for her it's not about the competition.
Nicole Karlis is a staff writer at Salon. She covers health, science, tech and gender politics. Tweet her @nicolekarlis.

THE CHINESE FINGER TRAP OF THE MIND

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Much has been written about social media bubble culture--the semiotic self isolation of opposing

factions and cults that fall victim to a naive belief in their own jargon and memes.  Some prime examples include CO2 forcing pseudosceptics, and Extinction Rebellion in the Climate Wars.

Parallels are emerging in the Culture Wars, where in the Cancel Culture, Woke minds may display a level of semantic lockdown resembling a trance state.

When milennial militants steeped in critical theory display fugal behaviors like collective fist clenching, head nodding or chair throwing, liberating them from the consequences of their own semantic agression  may mean using the lingua franca of structuralism itself :