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20 votes
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Earth Day 2024 megathread
It's Earth day again, and we haven't had a post about it yet in ~enviro. Let's use this space to collect and discuss news articles or other postings that are relevant today.
17 votes -
Farmers reduce methane emissions by changing how they grow rice in Vietnam
14 votes -
Startups want to geoengineer a cooler planet. With few rules, experts see big risks.
15 votes -
Two years to save the planet, says UN climate chief
53 votes -
Zacklabe: a site for great up-to-date visualizations regarding climate change, especially about Arctic and Antarctic
Zacklabe is a site, created by the climate scientist and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher, Zachary Labe, that has many great visualizations of data regarding climate...
Zacklabe is a site, created by the climate scientist and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher, Zachary Labe, that has many great visualizations of data regarding climate change, especially about the Arctic and Antarctic. It gathers its data from scientific observations, which are cited. You can access the visualizations following this link. Here are the visualizations, with many graphics for each entry.
Arctic Climate Seasonality and Variability
Arctic Sea Ice Extent and Concentration
Arctic Sea Ice Volume and Thickness
Arctic Temperatures
Antarctic Sea Ice Extent and Concentration
Climate Change Indicators
Climate model projections compared to observations in the Arctic
Global Sea Ice Extent and Concentration
Polar Climate Change FiguresNote: I briefly created a similar topic, but it was only about a single link from here. I deleted because I realized it's much better to create a thread about the site in general.
8 votes -
Is climate change driving the global rise in populism? If so ... how? If not ... what is?
Preamble ... this is another rambling, jumbled soliloquy that may or may not make any actual points ... or, you know, sense. "Climate Change is causing the rise in populism". That is a theory I...
Preamble ... this is another rambling, jumbled soliloquy that may or may not make any actual points ... or, you know, sense.
"Climate Change is causing the rise in populism".
That is a theory I have entertained for many years -- going back to before the 2016 US Presidential election. And--confirmation bias being what it is--since I believe the theory, I keep seeing anecdotal evidence all over the place connecting the two.
But, thinking about it this morning, looking at it logically ... I still think there is probably a connection, but I'm not really sure. It may well just be a coincidence of timing. And even if there is a connection, I'm just not quite sure what it is. If it is true ... why? What is the actual connection?
So ... why do countries keep electing populist "Trump-like" leaders?
That's already a hard question to answer clearly, without quickly descending into personal attacks and ad hominems and such.
Plus, of course, generalization is problematic ... we're talking about different countries, different cultures, different histories driving each vote. It's not all the same. And yet, over and over again, election after election, it sure looks the same.
I think the main reason is a tribal "fear of invaders" reaction, mostly against the rise of immigration, particularly immigration from (to paraphrase Trump) "the shit-hole countries". Maybe it's an even more basic "fear of change" reaction. But I definitely think, in the US, the rise of Trump was a direct result of the illegal immigration issue -- not exclusively, but that was a big piece of the puzzle. In particular, Trump equating Muslims with terrorists, and Mexican immigrants with criminals, etc.
Here in the EU, immigration -- particularly the 2015 refugee crisis caused by the wars in the Middle East -- was probably the top reason for Brexit, as has been most of the populist surge over here since then. One country after another here keeps electing right-wing leadership based on the "we'll keep out the dirty immigrants" campaign promises. Hungary, Italy, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, the list just keeps going. I live in Germany these days, and I gotta tell you, there is nothing scarier than seeing a huge surge in popularity in the German far-right.
The other top reason that seems to be driving it is some kind of sense of nationalistic self-determination. People feeling like their country--their home--is being changed by Outside Forces, and trying to lock it down, trying to find a way back to the good old days when the white people ran things and the brown people cooked and cleaned for them.
In Hungary, Orban routinely gets massive support with his constant rants about "Brussels" (meaning the EU) trying to force their gay liberal anti-Christian agenda down the throats of decent God-fearing Hungarians, and I see variations of that theme in most of the populist movements.
Right now, I want to say the populist trend is a response to (or rather, a denial of) the consequences of Colonialism and resource depletion. I think (again, over-simplified), people here in the Industrial Western World do not want to hear that the problems in the rest of the world are our fault, and that we have a responsibility to the people there, to try to help address some of the problems we've helped cause ... and instead, people are electing leaders who tell them the rest of the world is going to hell but it's not their fault and if they just lock down their borders, everything will stay "nice" in their country.
Something like that, anyway.
Okay ... so, resource depletion and a backlash against the consequences of Colonialism.
Does that seem like a fair and reasonable generalization of what is driving the rise in populism?
Because none of that is really connected to Climate Change. Sure, it depends on "which" resources we're talking about, but even in a magical hypothetical world where burning fossil fuels doesn't cause the planet to heat up ... wouldn't we still be seeing just about the same results from the Colonialism-and-resource-depletion issues?
But then again, at a global level, everything is pretty much connected to everything else. I feel like, coming at it from that angle, I could make a fairly good argument that Climate Change and resource depletion are pretty closely related, regardless of which resources you're talking about.
Oh yeah ... one more wrinkle. I'm primarily talking about populism in the US, Canada, UK, EU. I actually know a lot less about the situations in other regions. Asia. Latin America. Bolsonaro. Millei. I know there are others, but names elude me at the moment, and I don't have an understanding of why they are getting elected. Are they part of this trend? Do they blow a hole in my logic? IDK.
tl;dr
Okay ... I guess that's my new thesis -- populism is primarily being driven by a denial of the consequences of Colonialism and resource depletion ... which may or may not be closely related to Climate Change itself; I'm still just not sure.
Or, more broadly, more Climate-Change-inclusive -- populism is about people seeing that the world is dying, and electing leaders who A) tell them it's not their fault, and B) promise to save their country, even as the rest of the world burns.
Thoughts?
21 votes -
Is collapse coming for us?
7 votes -
The true cost of offshore wind (and its crisis): what can we learn?
6 votes -
Natural gas is scamming America
25 votes -
They grow your berries and peaches, but often lack one item: insurance
9 votes -
Joe Biden administration commits $6B to cut US emissions from high-carbon industries
19 votes -
Joe Biden administration announces rules aimed at expanding US electric vehicles
22 votes -
Potty trained cows are no joke for the climate (2021)
21 votes -
A startling rise in sea-surface temperatures suggests that we may not understand how fast the climate is changing
50 votes -
Melt rate of Greenland ice sheet can predict summer weather in Europe – location, extent and strength of recent freshwater events suggest unusually warm and dry summer
14 votes -
European Commission will open office in Greenland, made strategically important by rare resources and melting ice
7 votes -
Hydropower can be an environmental and human disaster – but do the risks have to be so big?
10 votes -
Analysis: Donald Trump election win could add 4bn tonnes to US emissions by 2030
11 votes -
Green corridors - How a Colombian city cooled dramatically in just three years
17 votes -
Climate deniers don't deny climate change any more. They do something worse.
65 votes -
Norway gives Arctic foxes a helping hand as climate change and habitat loss disrupt food chains and lead to starvation
9 votes -
EU countries already hitting some of their sustainable energy targets for 2030 – Study finds ‘systematic progress’ achieved in 2010s with some states reaching targets a decade early
20 votes -
UCLA and Equatic to build world’s largest ocean-based plant for carbon removal
13 votes -
One of the world’s biggest cities may be just months away from running out of water
22 votes -
The country that’s sinking itself
8 votes -
The rise of arboviral diseases is closely connected to environmental degradation and climate change
7 votes -
Reduce, reuse, redirect outrage: How plastic makers used recycling as a fig leaf
45 votes -
The spiralling cost of insuring against climate disasters – rising home premiums are a de facto ‘carbon price’ on consumers as extreme weather events become more frequent
30 votes -
Interactive: The impacts of climate change at 1.5°C, 2°C and beyond
18 votes -
Atlantic Ocean circulation nearing ‘devastating’ tipping point, study finds
45 votes -
Category 6 hurricanes have arrived
30 votes -
EU fossil fuel CO2 emissions hit sixty-year low
11 votes -
Greta Thunberg and four other climate activists are due to appear in court today after being arrested at a protest outside a gathering of fossil fuel bosses in London
22 votes -
Norway hit by hurricane-force winds – is climate change making Europe's extreme storms worse?
12 votes -
A shift towards a more sustainable global food system could create up to $10 trillion of benefits a year, improve human health, and ease the climate crisis
17 votes -
The $2.6 billion experiment to cover up Europe's dirty habit – Norwegian project to bury carbon waste under the sea is getting backing from Germany
8 votes -
Oil firms forced to consider full climate effects of new drilling, following landmark Norwegian court ruling
9 votes -
Has anyone else noticed a difference in their winters?
I moved to a place with an "actual" winter just over a decade ago -- snow, freezing temperatures, etc. In the first couple of years, I got what felt like a genuinely solid winter. Lots of...
I moved to a place with an "actual" winter just over a decade ago -- snow, freezing temperatures, etc. In the first couple of years, I got what felt like a genuinely solid winter. Lots of blisteringly cold days. Snow that fell in large amounts and stuck around for most of the season. I love winter, so this was great for me.
In recent years, however, the winters have been milder and milder. When we do get snow, it's only around for a bit because days above freezing are now frequent enough that it's able to melt between snowfalls. Also, the snowfalls themselves are more intermittent. This year specifically we've actually had more rain than snow. I don't remember getting rain in January when I first moved here.
It irks me a bit because the shift has been so stark and noticeable in such a short period of time. There's a part of me that thinks that it's not a big deal and maybe my first years here were unnaturally cold and snowy for the area, so what I'm seeing now is simply the other side of the mean, but then there's another part of me that feels like that's simply a comforting lie I can tell myself in the face of the obvious effects of climate change.
Is there anyone else here that feels like they're missing their winters?
56 votes -
'Smoking gun proof': fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954, documents show
28 votes -
A new kind of climate denial has taken over on YouTube
31 votes -
Norway's Arctic deep sea mining plan will inevitably sink – industrialising the ocean floor in the middle of a climate crisis is not only reckless, it's cruel
9 votes -
Oil companies will soon pay fees for emitting a climate ‘super-pollutant’
11 votes -
See how 2023 shattered records to become the hottest year
9 votes -
Saudi Arabia’s secret plan to keep us hooked on oil
29 votes -
Cobalt-rich Congo votes with crucial role in climate change
7 votes -
Why we need degrowth
7 votes -
Developing countries emit 2/3 of the world's carbon: they can't afford the lending terms of renewable projects
38 votes -
Nations at climate summit agree to move away from fossil fuels
24 votes -
Denmark, Finland and Panama aim to remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they emit – that will take giving nature a boost
12 votes