Saturday, February 25, 2023

                  THE NEXT BIG THING IN BAD CLIMATE IDEAS


No Heartland Institute International Conferences on Climate Change is complete without an attempt to blame global warming on underwater volcanoes , a meme Geophysicists discount as quantitatively akin to trying to melt an iceberg with a match: seawater outweighs submarine lava a hundred million to one.

The attempt none the less resonates with  Heartland's cardinal principle : don't give up the grift—if  eyeballs roll skyward at mention of sunspots and cosmic rays, just correlate last year's earthquake number's with next year's temperature rise while denying that there is one.


 I wish this years instant submarine  vulcanology expert would  stick to his last Before enlisting in the climate wars, Christopher Monckton ran a shirt company.

His Heartland colleague Willlis Eschenbach has other ideas. Forget underwater eruptions. He maintains that parrotfish are the true cause of rising seas in the South Pacific.

             THE CLIMATOLOGY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

LRB : Oliver Cussen

Affluence and Freedom: 
An Environmental History of Political Ideas 

by  Pierre Charbonnier, translated by Andrew Brown.
Polity, 327 pp., £19.99, July 2021, 


By the middle​ of the 18th century, the French colonists of Quebec were convinced that the climate was getting warmer. The winters that had shocked earlier settlers now seemed less harsh: frosts arrived a little later in the year, snows thawed a little earlier, and harvests were more abundant. Quebec soon became an improbable cause célèbre of Enlightenment climatology. 
The French naturalist Buffon... saw in the changing weather the possibility of not just continental but planetary improvement:developments in the New World showed that a new geological ‘age of mankind’ was underway, with the spread of civilisation from Europe reversing the otherwise inevitable cooling of the Earth. By cutting trees, draining marshes and tilling the soil, European colonists had inaugurated an era of global warming that would save the planet. 


Buffon was probably alone among his contemporaries in anticipating the Anthropocene.  But theories of man-made climate change were widespread in the 18th century... The Harvard minister Samuel Williams went round New England collecting plant specimens, plunging thermometers into deep-water wells and tracking the migratory patterns of birds, in order to confirm his theory that the arrival of Christianity and industry on the continent had induced a more temperate climate – a view shared by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. 
Gibbon read meteorological reports from the colonies and drew a parallel between 18th-century Canada and ancient Germany, where, before the bogs were drained, forests cleared and the soil exposed to the warming effects of the sun, the climate had been equally unforgiving... Edward Long envisaged an agroindustrial ecotopia where the climate would be warmed by the ‘fires and smoke of ten thousand crowded cities hereafter to be built, and by a general subjection of the soil to agriculture, carried on to the Arctic circle’.

... not every Enlightenment thinker believed that the climate was changing, or changing for the better. Some subscribed to Buffon’s theory that the planet was losing heat without sharing his faith that the process could be delayed, still less prevented, by the spread of civilisation; for them the apparent creep of glaciers down the valleys of Chamonix and Grindelwald portended the apocalypse."



Wednesday, February 22, 2023

TIMES & POST MAY COMPOST EDITORS IN NET ZERO DRIVE

Michael J. Coren    WASHINGTON POST        FEB.21
 
I have not composted a horse. But Amy Landers has.
In this week’s Climate Coach column, the founder of Gardens That Matter… advised me on the latest science of composting whether you live in a studio apartment or out in the suburbs.

What’s the best composting setup..?

Small vertical worm farms with several trays fit under the sink or in a closet.

Your affinity for invertebrates will probably dictate if this is for you.     
One benefit? It’s the world’s best houseplant fertilizer.

APOLOGIES TO TARA JACOBY FOR PARODIED POST ILLUSTRATION  
 






 

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

                99 Word Climate Committee Sentence Crashes GPT Server

Integrating the Human Sciences to Scale Societal Responses to Environmental Change

March 23-24, 2023  WORKSHOP  National Academy of Sciences

"Workshop discussions will identify the socio-emotional and behavioral changes that are entailed in responding to climate change; specific gaps in current practices, tools, and knowledge to empower the collective capability of communities to problem-solve; knowledge, practice, tools, methods, and innovation to realize the social climate and civic capacity society need to humanely navigate and endure the Anthropocene; community's capability to problem-solve and implement necessary change as well as sustain mutually reinforcing emotional wellbeing and social ties; holistic and integrated ways that may build capacity for the transition to net zero in ways that are feasible, humane, healthy, and just."

Monday, February 20, 2023

GUARDIAN CAFE TO FEATURE CARBON-OFFSET BEYOND TOFU


 



 

                         HAWKING THE HEARTLAND EFFECT

What is the Heartland Hawkmoth Effect?

While The Butterfly Effect” refers to sensitivity to initial conditions leading to catastrophic dynamical instability, the Hawkmoth Effect implies that even good approximation in  climate models may not accurately predict future climate: 

The advertising industry  has overcome the constraints these effects impose on climate policy by hawking the Heartland Hawkmoth Effect, which divorces  hypotheses & model parameters from policy formulation by simultaneously ignoring all aspects of both problem and solution to generate the perceptual policy trajectories Heartland Institute clients desire:

PR flacks drawn like moths to the flames of fossil fuel funding drove the evolution of the Institute's systematic inversion of the IPCC process to create its annual climate-science free "ICCC", or International Conference on Climate Change, which next convenes near Disney World on February 23rd.

Sunday, February 19, 2023

DOES GLOBAL WARMING CAUSE PSYCHOSIS AND NECROSIS                                IN THE FUNGUS AMONG US

As the climate warms the planet and
 temperatures rise, some fungi are figuring out how to exist at higher temperatures than they normally like. Enter zombie concerns.

Some real-life fungi are already gruesome, including one that turns ants into zombies. Could it soon jump to humans, an evolution fueled by a warming world? That's the plot of HBO's popular show "The Last of Us."

And while scientists aren't worried about that particular scenario, they say climate change could usher in a new wave of fungal infections in humans.

"Maybe it becomes easier for them to adapt to even higher temperatures and become pathogens in humans," 

said Dr. Thomas Chiller, chief of the Mycotic Disease Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Saturday, February 18, 2023

          NOW  A FEW WORDS  FROM LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY


A London Trial Balloon:

France gave us the ton; and as yet we have not come up to our model. Their monarch is so struck with the heroism of two of his subjects who adventured their persons in two of these new floating batteries that he has ordered statues of them…

 All this may be very important: to me it looks somewhat foolish. Very early in my life, I remember this town at gaze on a man who flew down a rope from the top of St. Martin’s steeple; now, late in my day, people are staring at a voyage to the moon. The former Icarus broke his neck at a subsequent flight; when a similar accident happens to modern knights-errant, adieu to air balloons...

Well! I hope these new mechanic meteors will prove only playthings for the learned and the idle, and not be converted into new engines of destruction to the human race, as is so often the case of refinements or discoveries in science. 
- - Horace Walpole 1783

Thursday, February 16, 2023

         ONE STEP FOR A MAN, ONE GIANT STEP
                 BACKWARD FOR MEGAFAUNAKIND

 PNAS RESEARCH ARTICLE


OPEN ACCESS

Ice and ocean constraints on early 

human migrations into North America

along the Pacific coast

 
Growing evidence for a human presence in the Americas prior to 15,000 y ago—when ice sheets blocked transit through the continental interior—imply a Pacific Coast route was the more likely pathway for dispersals from Beringia into North America between ~26,000 and 14,000 y ago. The feasibility of coastal migration at various times depended on the extent of Cordilleran glaciers, sea ice, the strength of ocean currents, and the productivity and availability of marine and terrestrial resources. 
Based on paleoclimate records and climate models, we estimate that 24,500 to 22,000 and 16,400 to 14,800 y ago were the most environmentally favorable time windows for a coastal migration during the period when the interior route was blocked.

Sunday, February 12, 2023

             WHAT DOES YOUR AI THINK ABOUT AGW?

                                     CUE INDIGNATION FROM  HUMAN CHATBOTS ON FOX AND ELSEWHERE:


Saturday, February 11, 2023

  CULTURAL APPROPRIATION ACTIVISTS CONDEMN VEGANS
                         FOR THROWING PEPPERONI PIZZA

Hard Truths: Can an Activist

Smear Food on Art Without Consequences?

With a world in crisis and an art market spinning out of control, ace art-world consultants Chen and Lampert deliver hard truths in response to questions sent by Art in America readers far & wide:

                                                            Barbara Kelly
I'm inspired by the messaging and guerilla tactics of the climate change activists who’ve been smearing food on paintings. 
I want to do this same thing and already know what museum and artwork I want to attack, but to be honest, I’m scared. 
How much trouble could I really get in?

Activists are truly turning up the heat on museums with their push to get the public to chill the Earth before mass extinction. What’s the point of hoarding masterpieces when there won’t be anybody left to see them? 

That’s how much trouble we are actually in. Stop worrying about your personal safety and start perpetrating climate-action art spectacles that make a definitive difference.

 Perhaps you will find yourself: throwing warm sauerkraut at a Jordan Wolfson robot, Gorilla-Gluing your taint to a painting by Dana Schutz, splotching a cream cronut on a Chuck Close, or pointedly urinating on an Andres Serrano photograph. 

Keep your manifesto on-hand to shout at befuddled bystanders, or better yet: write it on your chest because you are about to be the main attraction at the museum.

— ART IN AMERICA                   January 19, 2023

                 FOX REPUBLICAN CONVERTS TO GREENPEACE

                                    TUCKER BLUBBERS ON

Tucker Carlson's skepticism of all energy sources unconnected to Texas or Russia at time rises to the level of demented majesty:  he thinks wind farms can't charge electric cars.

 His latest crusade, ably assisted by a 26 year old Delray Beach water department 'geoscientist' better known as a model, reptile wrangler,
 and tequila Brand Ambassador, aims to forge in the minds of Fox viewers 
 
a connection between ocean wind farms and stranded whales

 Despite  Miss Moore's fame for  viral video of a python that swallowed an alligator,  her interview with Carlson omits mention that as the wind farms he denounces remain unbuilt, they have thus far had had no impact  Northern Right  whale populations. Offshore winds do however figure in the Right Whales media profile , as they predictably blow the large floaty things on to lee shores  and into TV camera range when they die of natural causes, or are run down by oil tankers.Not a word  on the air as yet from Tuck on his last close encounter with the warming waters of Boca Grande

Thursday, February 9, 2023

HOW CHINA LOST THE FAST FOOD BALLOON SPACE RACE

IN 2017, XI'S BEIJING DUCK PROPAGANDA BUREAU 
RAN INTO THE YANKEE INGENUITY OF A KENTUCKY
 STRATONAUT WHO KNEW HOW TO USE 
THE THERMOSPHERE AS AN AIR FRYER
Yesterday, China’s ambassador to France, vowed American use of the 200 foot spy balloon to “smear China”, could become “a trigger point of conflicts” in bilateral relations.  

Today, well-censored Chinese Twitter clone Sina Weibo is awash with patriotic opinion leader videos ridiculing the United States:
“China must not swallow its anger and allow the US to throw dirty water all over us.
 China must dare to expose the US’ nasty deeds.
There is no need to give them ‘face’ any more,” 
said a stock analyst.
“A civil balloon has revealed the imperialist United State’s bottom line,” 
said another commenter.

It remains to be discovered how a balloon the size of the US Capitol dome passed over hundreds of millions of  Chinese cel phone users without anyone uploading selfie with this sign in the heavens in the frame



Monday, February 6, 2023

CLIMATE STOCKS RALLY AFTER NATIONAL ENQUIRER SALE

Former Presidential  climate tabloid The National Enquirer,  together  with its  sister  publications  Globe and  National Examiner   have been acquired  for $100 million by airport newsstand mogul James Cohen, but the deal did not include tabloid content providers Climate Depot and Weekly Heartland Gas Of Life News.





Thursday, February 2, 2023

NEW YORKER   RENAMES 6TH EXTINCTION GROUNDHOG DAY

Journal of Posthumanism

V. 1 , Number 1, 2021    

https://doi.org/10.33182/jp.v1i1.1349                                

The Pink Chicken Project highlights the unfathom-
able scale of industrial agriculture...to re-invigorate the public imaginary in an ecological discourse that must include issues of social justice in order to achieve the radical restructuring of society needed to break the death grip of the sixth extinction. 

Post-Anthropocene Era  Prognosticating Chicken, Punxatawny Pink

Framed as an activist campaign, this speculative suggestion reveals the intimate link between social and ecological justice… How does the violence of entire-species genetic modification compare to the violence already inflicted on  billions  of  chickens  in  factory farms?