Brendanjones

Brendanjones, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to climate

Still can’t get over the fact that an editor of the Financial Times said that we need to do away with #capitalism in order to deal with the #climate. If that’s not a sign of mainstream economics/finance finally waking up to the reality of the situation we’re in, I don’t now what is.

edit to add link (thanks Boud): https://archive.ph/2023.06.29-113742/https://www.ft.com/content/86d71297-3f34-48f3-8f3f-28b7e8be03c6

Brendanjones, 7 months ago to Hydrogen

Emissions from computing are apparently higher than for air travel, and that’ll only go up in the coming decades.

“As a society we need to start treating computational resources as finite and precious, to be utilised only when necessary, and as effectively as possible. We need frugal computing: achieving our aims with less energy and material.”

https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.06642

#ClimateChange

Brendanjones, 10 months ago to Futurology

Not only will #Threads not be launching in the EU (presumably because it'll be sucking up so much personal data that they can't make it GDPR compliant), but now the The European Court of Justice has agreed with Germany’s anti-cartel watchdog that Meta can't share harvested personal data between Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. That ruling will also apply to Threads.

A great day for consumer protections.

https://www.thelocal.com/20230704/eu-court-deals-blow-to-meta-in-german-data-case/ #Meta

Brendanjones, 2 months ago to Trains

In ‘news that should surprise nobody but it’s nice to have it quantified’: high speed rail is less carbon intensive than short-haul flights, even when you take into account the full life cycle (including construction).

In other words, we should be banning short-haul flights and investing in trains.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S136192092300384X?via%3Dihub #trains #climateChange #rail #transport

Brendanjones, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to instagramreality

I really love the #filters here on #Mastodon. Unlike on previous corporate-owned platforms I’ve used, Mastodon filters allow me to hide one major source of traffic: the US.

English is my primary language and America and its culture floods the anglosphere.

I’m Australian and Dutch. I wish the best for Americans but I have no need to be kept up to date on every detail of the latest horrible thing happening in that country.

See the pics for a sample of my US filters.

Brendanjones, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to Bulgaria

Yes! Amazing news! The EU Parliament just voted through the EU Nature Restoration Law, which aims to restore our badly degraded ecosystems. The law will set legally binding targets for nature restoration in member states.

Next stop, writing it into law at a country level.

Suck it European People's Party, suck it European Conservatives. Some of us actually want #biodiversity.

https://www.politico.eu/article/parliament-backs-new-nature-rules-in-blow-to-eu-conservatives/

#EU #Nature #NatureRestoration #GoodNews

Brendanjones, 9 months ago to goodnews

Some climate #GoodNews: Solar and wind produced more electricity in the EU than fossil fuels for the first time ever this May.

https://ember-climate.org/press-releases/wind-and-solar-overtake-fossil-generation-in-the-eu/

#EU #ClimateChange #Solar

Brendanjones, 2 months ago to climate

Blimey, we just hit 21.2°C global average sea surface temperature. First time that's happened in recorded history.

#climate

Brendanjones, 11 months ago to climate

Are you in #academia? If you’ve got a moment, please take part in this survey: “Eco-Anxiety in Higher Education Staff and Their Beliefs About Institutional Responses to Climate Change: A global survey”.

Boosts appreciated!

The only requirement is that you are “employed to deliver teaching and learning, research or in academic leadership within a higher education setting, such as a university or college”.

https://cambridge.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5hgBPzkXJHc6fBA
#HigherEducation #climate #climateChange

Brendanjones, 1 month ago to climate

Fantastic. This is the kind of thing that'll directly drive reductions in fossil fuel projects.

"Zurich Insurance Group AG will no longer underwrite new oil and gas projects, and is cracking down on clients planning to expand in metallurgical coal mining."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-08/zurich-insurance-to-halt-coverage-of-new-fossil-fuel-exposures
#climatechange #fossilfuels

Brendanjones, 3 months ago to climate

Another reason to not like Threads: they consider climate to be political, and won’t suggest content from any accounts talking about it.

You can opt in to political suggested content, but how many will do that?

https://www.axios.com/2024/02/09/meta-political-content-moderation-threads #climateChange #Threads

Brendanjones, 4 months ago to climate

Massive climate win - it looks like Biden is halting the biggest fossil fuel expansion on earth.

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/um-i-think-we-all-just-won #climatechange

Brendanjones, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to science

Can I get some follow recommendations? I’m acutely aware that of the people I follow who post about our planet’s systems, most of them are climate people. I’d love to follow more people posting at a #systems level. Y’know, the people who distill down expert knowledge into consumable packets for the rest of us. Think #hydrology/ #freshwater/ #oceans, #biodiversity, #ecology, #biology, #agriculture, #energy, #economics, #geology #planetaryBoundaries … these kind of topics. Boosts appreciated!

Brendanjones, 2 months ago to goodnews

BREAKING: in fantastic news for life everywhere, the EU Nature Restoration Law was passed this morning.

Restoring the natural systems on which we live is the only logical action to take for anyone who wants human civilisation to continue. It’s also the logical option for the economy:

“The European Commission estimates that restoring natural environments would generate around €1,860 billion, at an estimated cost of just €154 billion.”

https://www.euractiv.com/section/biodiversity/news/contested-nature-restoration-law-passes-eu-parliament-despite-last-minute-revolt/ #GoodNews #EU #biodiversity

Brendanjones, 3 months ago to Energy

A tidal kite! Pretty cool to see new forms of renewable energy being developed and deployed.

It's of course not competitive on price yet, but it'll be interesting to see where this tech is at in 20 years.

https://newatlas.com/energy/minesto-tidal-kite/

#Renewables #energy

Brendanjones, 7 months ago to climate

If this isn't a perfect example modern #colonialism, I don't know what is. A company headed by a Saudi prince grabbing 20% of Zimbabwe and 10% of Liberia in order to sell carbon offsets that'll no doubt be used by firms to continue burning fossil fuels.

This isn't helping fight #climateChange, it's doing exactly the opposite.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-29/zimbabwe-uae-firm-sign-1-5-billion-carbon-credit-financing-mou #offsets

Brendanjones, 4 months ago to climate

Even though we needed zero extra reasons to completely ban bottom trawling what with the whole "marine deforestation that causes irreparable harm” thing, this is fairly shocking.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/18/carbon-released-by-bottom-trawling-too-big-to-ignore-says-study #climatechange #fishing

Brendanjones, 9 months ago to vegan

And we wonder why plant-based meat substitutes are sometimes more expensive than meat ...

"(from 2014 to 2020) livestock farmers in the EU received 1,200 times more public funding than plant-based meat or cultivated meat groups. In the US, the animal farmers got 800 times more public funding. The amount of public money spent on plant-based alternatives was just $42m (£33m) – 0.1% of the £35bn spent on meat and dairy."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/18/gigantic-power-of-meat-industry-blocking-green-alternatives-study-finds

#vegan #dairy #meat #agriculture #EU #plantbased

Brendanjones, 8 months ago to climate

Ew, the #livestock industry using the same PR tactics and PR agencies as the fossil fuel industry.

“the Protein Pact, an industry-funded campaign to market meat and dairy protein as necessary for “the people, animals and climate of tomorrow.””

Which is concerning when “meat production accounts for 57 percent of food-related greenhouse gas emissions, and is a leading driver of deforestation”.

https://sentientmedia.org/meat-industry-funded-protein-pact/
#climate #agriculture

Brendanjones, 10 months ago to fediverse

PSA: when sharing a Fediverse account with other Fedizens, the handle should look like this: @username

Then we can view and follow the account in one click.

If you use servername.com/@username, that’ll open in a new tab in your web browser, on that person’s server. And we all know how much it sucks to try following someone then!

So only use servername.com/@username if you’re sharing outside the Fediverse.

#Fediverse #Mastodon #FediTips

Brendanjones, 7 months ago to cycling

Who needs a fancy electric cargo bike? A bit of DIY ingenuity spotted on the streets of Utrecht, NL.

#cycling #bikes

Brendanjones, 5 months ago to Energy

2023 was the year that the EU produced a Petawatthour of electricity from renewables for the first time ever.

Source: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&c=EU&interval=year&year=2023

#Renewables #energy #EU

Brendanjones, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to climate

Why are we still pretending we’re going to stay below 1.5C? This article feels criminally misleading.

“The prospects of the world staying within the 1.5C limit on global heating have brightened owing to the “staggering” growth of renewable energy and green investment in the past two years”

We’re already periodically hitting 1.5C this year, so how long do we actually have to reduce emissions in order to stay under 1.5C?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/26/staggering-green-growth-gives-hope-for-15c-says-global-energy-head

#ClimateChange #climate #climatecrisis

Brendanjones, 3 months ago to fediverse

Help, I have an #Activitypub / #fediverse question: if you own your own domain, can you use that one domain for hosting accounts for multiple fediverse apps?

For example, if I owned bjones.com (alas, I do not), could I have mastodon@bjones.com, pixelfed@bjones.com, etc? #fedihelp

Brendanjones, 8 months ago to science

Oof, this is not good. Bad incentives damaging the scientific process via easy-to-use AI tools.

“one in fifty papers submitted for publication now come from paper mills”
…
“The barrier to faking has really dropped, because all you have to do is know the right prompts. You do a little bit of tidying up and bam, you’ve got a paper. It’s so quick and it’s much harder to detect because the prose is fluent and original each time.”

https://archive.ph/s2CQR
#science #elsevier #research #chatgpt #ai