One of the planet’s most important carbon sinks is revealing its secrets
5–7 minutes
The Southern Ocean plays a central role in moderating the rate of climate change, absorbing an estimated 40% of the total amount of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions and 60-90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
I'm reading the paper in Nature associated with this news release, and all I can say is "we are so fucked". This is a brutal scientific read.
Fig. 1 sums it all up. We are literally going to boil the frogs bathing in cold water by heating up the pan.#ClimateChange#ClimateEmergency
I wish, I wish, I wish… that this was all just a very bad dream I could wake up from.
"Microplastics Detected Entering The Brain Just 2 Hours After Ingestion"
A new study on mice reveals that microplastics can cross the blood-brain barrier and enter the brain shortly after being ingested. The brains of mice fed micro- and nano-plastics (MNPs) were found to contain them just two hours after ingestion via a mechanism previously unknown to science, suggesting that the tiny plastics found almost everywhere could be even more worrying than previously thought.
Once there, the researchers believe the MNPs could increase the risk of an array of serious diseases. “In the brain, plastic particles could increase the risk of inflammation, neurological disorders or even neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s,” said Lukas Kenner, one of the lead researchers of the study, in a statement.
Microplastics are everywhere. A sad reality of the use of plastics in almost every single aspect of daily life, microplastics and nanoplastics are being found in animals across the globe and have even been discovered in the human placenta, indicating that there may be nowhere left to hide from them.
Such particles can enter the human body through drinking water from plastic bottles and food packaging, and it is estimated that 90,000 plastic particles can enter a single human drinking bottled water each year.
Temperatures in the world’s oceans have broken fresh records, testing new highs for more than a month in an “unprecedented” run that has led to scientists stating the Earth has reached “uncharted territory” in the climate crisis.
The rapid acceleration of ocean temperatures in the last month is an anomaly that scientists have yet to explain. Some scientists fear that the rapid warming could be a sign of the climate crisis progressing at a faster rate than predicted.
"What the Climate Emergency Looks Like: Extreme Heat Busts Records Across Asia"
Hundreds of millions of people throughout Asia are suffering as a deadly heatwave turbocharged by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis continues to pummel large swaths of the continent, with little relief in sight — reigniting calls for immediate action to slash greenhouse gas pollution.
Record-high temperatures have been observed in several Asian countries this month, including at 109 weather stations across 12 Chinese provinces on Monday. Scorching heat in India, meanwhile, has killed more than a dozen people and forced school closures this week.
Last Friday, Bangkok-based climatologist and weather historian Maximiliano Herrera described the ongoing predicament as the "worst April heatwave in Asian history." Since then, additional records have been shattered in Southeast Asia.
Over the weekend, temperatures in Thailand surpassed 45°C (113°F) for the first time in recorded history. The Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka saw its hottest day in decades when temperatures soared past 40°C (104°F) on Saturday, causing road surfaces to melt. On Monday, temperatures in Myanmar surged to 44°C (111°F), a record for April. Laos is among the latest Asian countries to set a new all-time high, reaching 42.7°C (109°F) on Tuesday.
It's not an excuse, and China should be condemned for relying so heavily on coal as a power source.
BUT — it's also important to remember what the country is doing with all that power. A large part of it supports the manufacturing and shipping of cheap products to satisfy the insanely high demand of consumers in the US, Canada, and Europe. We can't require the Chinese to change their ways unless we're willing to change ours first.
"China approves coal power surge despite emissions pledge"
China has approved a major surge in coal power so far this year, prioritising energy supply over its pledge to reduce emissions from fossil fuels, Greenpeace said Monday.
The world's second-largest economy is also its biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases driving climate change, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), and China's emissions pledges are seen as essential to keeping global temperature rise well below two degrees Celsius.
China relied on coal for nearly 60% of its electricity last year.
The push for more coal plants "risks climate disasters... and locking us into a high-carbon pathway," Greenpeace campaigner Xie Wenwen said. "The 2022 coal boom has clearly continued into this year."
In the late 1800s, when steam ships were replacing sailing cargo ships, one of the last roles for the sailing ships was to carry coal around the world to supply ports where steamships wanted to go. A clean technology was essential to enable the growth of a dirty technology. And even today, fossil fuels aren’t magically just everywhere. A gigantic *** 40% *** of global shipping is just moving fossil fuels. So eliminating fossil fuel also drastically cuts global shipping emissions. #climate#ships
What's your preferred form of climate and environmental activism? Voting Green? Writing letters? Going to protests? Maybe blowing up pipelines?
Published at the beginning of 2021, "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" by Andreas Malm sent shock waves through the climate movement.
From 2018 onwards, Extinction Rebellion and the climate strike movement had brought tens of thousands on to the streets. But even as public opinion swung behind their calls for radical change, emissions and investments in fossil fuels continued to grow.
The problem, said Malm, was their absolute commitment to non-violent civil disobedience – the most stringent rule of XR, in particular – which left fossil capital nothing to fear from public opinion in bourgeois states where “capitalist property has the status of the ultimate sacred realm”.
Instead of disruptive protests and mass rallies, Malm called for a campaign of sabotage of fossil fuel infrastructure, to break the taboo against targeting property. Or, he contended in one of the book’s epigrams, “property will cost us the earth”.
As activists around the world take increasingly desperate actions against destructive projects, Malm told the Guardian he had not “a shred of hope” elites were prepared to take the urgent action needed to avert catastrophic climate change.
“If we let the dominant classes take care of this problem, they’re going to drive at top speed into absolute inferno,” Malm said. “Nothing suggests that they have any capacity of doing anything else of their own accord because of how enmeshed they are with the process of capital accumulation."
Emissions keep going up. Extinctions are on the rise. Nothing has changed.
So, is it time now for some of us to take a step over the line?
Would you commit a "crime" if you knew that doing so could potentially save thousands of lives?
Those are tough questions, and they are given thought-provoking and perhaps challenging answers in this piece...
The environmental movement has offered waves of demonstrations, petition drives, lobbying and other forms of protest. Yet, despite all that, Earth and its inhabitants are losing the war waged against us by capitalism. It follows that a reevaluation of strategy and tactics of the environmental movement is in order, including a closer examination of how nonviolence should be understood and practiced.
In this context, we need to ask ourselves whether the destruction of planet-killing machinery is necessarily an act of violence. The answer should be no, because it prevents violence against nature. But, as a whole, the environmental movement’s dedication to the strict avoidance of property destruction is extreme in comparison to virtually all other social justice movements.
The United States is the biggest oil and gas producer globally, and it is also the world’s dominant financial market. Fossil fuel companies from all around the globe raise capital in the US for their expansion plans.
As I said in a comment a few days ago on another thread, the USA is by far the leading bad actor in the climate and environmental crisis. The investment numbers shown below bear that out, and let’s not overlook the obscene carbon pollution index of the US military.
No matter what anyone else might do — Russia, China, India, Europe — nothing will fundamentally change unless and until the US capitalist empire is overthrown.
Facts and numbers don’t inspire people. Stories do
the real battle for mass action will not be won through enemy narratives… we need to find narratives based on cooperation, mutual interest and our common humanity
Meaning at the expense of truth
That’s because humans care more about meaning than truth
a disposable, non-recyclable, polluting plastic bottle made from fossil fuels
The bottled water industry is a juggernaut. More than 1 million bottles of water are sold every minute around the world, and the industry shows no sign of slowing down. Global sales of bottled water are expected to nearly double by 2030.
But the industry’s enormous global success comes at a huge environmental, climate, and social cost, according to a report published Thursday by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, which analyzes the industry’s global impacts.
Groundwater extracted to help fill billions of plastic bottles a year poses a potential threat to drinking water resources and feeds the world’s plastic pollution crisis, while the industry’s growth helps distract attention and resources away from funding the public-water infrastructure desperately needed in many countries.
And the problem may be even worse than the CNN article suggests. Because it fails to mention the HUGE profits oil companies accrue from making plastics, as revealed in a different article from last year...
We’re in the midst of an energy transition. Renewable power and electric vehicles are getting cheaper, the grid is getting greener, and oil and gas companies are getting nervous.
That’s why the fossil fuel giants are looking towards petrochemicals, and plastics in particular, as their next major growth market.
Plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, are set to drive nearly half of oil demand growth by midcentury, according to the International Energy Agency. That outpaces even hard-to-decarbonize sectors like aviation and shipping.
This will not stop. Capitalist owners of gigantic oil companies will continue pushing to make more plastics and more money. They will NEVER stop until we stop them.
Donald Trump, Andrew Tate, Michael Knowles, Andrew Bolt, Piers Morgan — these are only a few of the many powerful men who have chosen to attack Greta Thunberg (@gretathunberg) for her climate activism.
In a piece that might make you sad and probably will make you angry, female essayist Yael Wolfe (@yaelwolfe) says: "I Owe Greta Thunberg an Apology."
We’re talking about some of the most influential men on the planet with huge platforms and enormous power. And what do they choose to do with it? Fight for equal rights? Support efforts for climate justice? Or even just talk about something else, something they do support?
No. They decide to take aim at a neurodivergent, underage female activist, rallying their followers with their vile ableism and misogyny.
I knew about Trump’s attempt to bully Thunberg. I saw the inflated, overblown, melodramatic dig that Tate made at her for absolutely no apparent reason that I can discern.
Foolishly, I had no idea about the rest. Keep in mind, these are only a handful of examples of the constant ableist, misogynistic attacks she has had to endure as she selflessly gives of her time and energy to accomplish something that should be recognized as important enough to demand all of our participation. And I haven’t even mentioned the death threats she and her family have received.
I’m stunned by my own blindness. I have the tiniest fraction of her visibility, and I am attacked by men online almost every day. It’s exhausting. How could I be so stupid as to not realize what she was going through all this time?
I actually believed that her age gave her immunity. Sure, Trump swiped at her. There are no codes of conduct in his world. But everyone else, I believed, would respect the fact that a teenager was doing things most adults have never accomplished. Surely they would treat her with respect, or at least a bare minimum of human dignity.
But no. She might be young, but she is a young woman. A young woman with purpose, determination, independence, and confidence. And our misogynistic culture will not have that.
In an alarming article, Dillon Amaya, Climate Research Scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), tells us:
"El Niño is coming, and ocean temps are already at record highs – that can spell disaster for fish and corals"
During El Niño, a swath of ocean stretching 6,000 miles (about 10,000 kilometers) westward off the coast of Ecuador warms for months on end, typically by 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1 to 2 degrees Celsius). A few degrees may not seem like much, but in that part of the world, it’s more than enough to completely reorganize wind, rainfall, and temperature patterns all over the planet.
El Niño can wreak havoc on the many marine ecosystems that support the world’s fishing industries, including coral reefs and seagrass meadows.
Specifically, El Niño tends to trigger intense and widespread periods of extreme ocean warming known as marine heat waves.
Global ocean temperatures are already at record highs, so El Niño-induced marine heat waves could push many sensitive fisheries to a breaking point.
”I’ve got 5 minutes to talk to you about insects. I love insects, always have. Let me tell you a bit about them. Insects have been around for 480 million years, that means they are twice as old as the oldest dinosaurs. They’ve survived the previous 5 mass extinction events.
Sadly, insect populations are in rapid decline. In Germany, the biomass of flying insets fell by 76% over just 27 years. Here in the UK, insect abundance has fallen by 60% in 20 years. The ranges of butterflies have shurnk by over 40% since 1976.
More broadly, we are in the sixth mass extinction event, with species going extinct faster than they have for 65 million years, since a meteor wiped out the dinosaurs. Every day, every hour, species go extinct. Drip by drip, the lifeblood of our planet is draining away.
So what is our government doing about it? Nothing useful.
Our civilization, our children’s health and wellbeing, and the future of much of the life that remains on our planet, hangs in the balance. For at least thirty years it has been painfully obvious that we are heading for disaster, yet our response has been woefully inadequate. Successive governments have abjectly failed to grasp the importance of the threat we face.
It makes me sad, frustrated, angry. We live on a beautiful planet. It is unique. It gives us everything. There really is no planet B. Surely we have a duty of care for all the creatures that live on it, big and small. Looking after our planet must be our top priority. It should be our politican’s top priority. Without insects, without nature, there will be no economic growth, there will be no economy. Without nature, nothing else will matter.”