"In 2018...the 5bn YouTube hits for the viral song Despacito used the same amount of energy it would take to heat 40,000 US homes annually.
This is a hugely environmentally destructive side to the tech industry. While it has played a big role in reaching net zero, giving us smart meters and efficient solar, it’s critical that we turn the spotlight on its environmental footprint"
Mariana Mazzucato
"California has laid out admirable goals to reduce GHG emissions from transportation, which contributes the most to climate change in our state, but we’re still not moving fast enough to stop climate change before it’s too late. In fact, California continues to apply billions of dollars from its transportation budget to projects that increase greenhouse gas emissions. So CalBike has drafted a People-First Mobility Budget, an alternative transportation spending plan for California that gives residents more mobility options, improves health, increases equity, and helps us meet our climate goals."
CBS:Delhi temperature may break record for highest ever in India: 126.1 degrees. A temperature reading collected in Delhi, India's capital territory, may have broken national records as the country grapples with a blistering heat wave. The reading — 52.9 degrees Celsius or 126.1 degrees Fahrenheit — was preliminary and technically an outlier compared with others taken in Delhi on the same day, officials said. But, if confirmed, it would be the highest temperature ever registered anywhere in India. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/delhi-temperature-may-break-record-highest-ever-india-126-degrees/#delhi#india#climateemergency#heatwave
"One of the hottest countries on Earth has recorded its highest temperature ever.
India recorded a temperature of 52.3 degrees Celsius -- or about 126 degrees Fahrenheit -- on Wednesday afternoon at a weather station in Mungeshpur, a suburb of New Delhi, according to the India Meteorological Department."
Looking through the WX models for "Feels Like" temps in India. 124F/51C in this particular spot. Curious what the WGBT would end up being there. #India#heatwave#WX#climateemergency
Delhi temperature hits 50.5C as India’s capital records hottest day
"Authorities warn of water shortages as temperatures reach nine degrees higher than expected...
At the SMS hospital in Rajasthan’s capital, Jaipur, so many bodies of casualties of the heat have arrived at the mortuary that its capacity has been exceeded. Police in the city say many of the victims are poor labourers, who have no choice but to work outside, and homeless people."
Lesley Riddoch here arguing, essentially, that we all have to bite our tongues, haud oor whischt, and vote #SNP, because "they're the only parliamentary route to #ScottishIndependence. I count Lesley as a friend and as someone I greatly respect, but I think she's wrong here: there is no longer a parliamentary path to independence.
By the time #Starmer has frittered away his first term in government (as he will) on 'steady as she goes, don't frighten the #Tories' policies, the world will have reached the point where even mitigating the #ClimateEmergency will have become an impossible, cliff edge cost; and at that point there will be no space left for people of good will to do anything but put their shoulder to the wheel in the task of saving the planet.
Marketplace: "Mexico City is in the midst of a water crisis. Some experts have predicted the metropolitan region, which boasts the highest population of any metro area in North America at nearly 22 million people, may start to run out of water as early as June, a day described as “Day Zero.” And while there are options available to the city, larger issues with water infrastructure and management may be harder to remedy in the short term...."
"Yes, we can take good arable land which could grow human food, and use it to grow crops to use as feedstock to produce biofuel; but not much biofuel, because otherwise people starve. We can take surplus electricity that our grid can't yet handle and use it to split water to electrolise hydrogen; but not much hydrogen, because its an inefficient use of electricity which we're going to be critically short of anyway"
CNN: Temperatures in Pakistan cross 52 degrees Celsius — that’s more than 125°F
"Temperatures rose above 52 degrees Celsius (125.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh, the highest reading of the summer and close to the country’s record high amid an ongoing heat wave, the met office said on Monday.
Extreme temperatures throughout Asia over the past month were made worse most likely as a result of human-driven climate change, a team of international scientists have said. "
"Over the past two hundred years — but mostly, in fact, over the past fifty years — we've burned several hundred million years worth of stored sunlight. We've dug up and pumped out and burned so much of that stored mineral carbon, returning it to the atmosphere, that the planet is ceasing to be habitable; and if we don't stop doing that, completely, very soon indeed, the planet will have ceased to be habitable."
"none of the major parties currently canvassing for votes in England have any convincing and appealing vision of the future. I should say: this is not solely an English problem: I'm not aware of — perhaps because the kleptocrat-owned media chooses not to report on — any major party in any significant nation anywhere in the world which has such a vision"
"There's a vanity of small differences here. We'll say 'my country (which ever our country is) is more democratic than that other country.' And it may be true. Britain, where Lord Lebedev of Siberia has a permanent, unelected, lifetime seat in the legislature, may be 'more democratic' than the Russian Federation where he was born, and where his father served as a spy."
Destroying the planet we live on -- the only planet we can live on -- is of course totally legal and even supported and subsidised by governments around the world (including #Scotland's).
But PROTESTING against destroying the planet? That's illegal. That's very, very illegal. Don't even think about doing that.
@SpaceJellyfish Needless to say, I do already blog about the #ClimateEmergency. Not that I need to. Learned articles by people much better informed by me are all over the web, a moment's Google search from were you're sitting now.
But by all means I will avoid doing anything which might be at all effective in actually saving the planet we all live on if that will make you a tiny bit more comfortable.
@TomSwirly@SpaceJellyfish We are truly in an existential crisis. If we do not turn the whole world's political and economic systems around through 180 degrees THIS DECADE, then the vast majority of life-forms on the planet are going to go extinct -- almost certainly, including us.
This is not the time to sit back in your armchair and wait for your chance to vote for a choice between two equally useless political leaders once every five years.
@lienrag@TomSwirly@SpaceJellyfish It isn't as though the #ClimateEmergency -- serious though it is -- was the worst challenge we're facing. We're also pumping persistent biocides -- 'forever chemicals' -- into our environment at ever increasing rates. Novel toxins and microplastics are in the food we eat, in mother's breast milk, in our soils, in our seas.
And everywhere, life is already dying.
The dinosaurs never had to face anything like this.
@tshirtman@lienrag@pgcd@TomSwirly As to how we make the catastrophe as small as possible, we halt all air travel, and ban the pumping of all fossil fuels, not next year, not next month, not next week, but today.
We're way past out of time on this. There is no more room to play with.