The 2008 coal ash spill was among the biggest industrial disasters in U.S. history. In a new book, Jared Sullivan recounts the accident, the lawsuits and the lasting damage. ...Hundreds of American coal-powered stations have shuttered since the Kingston disaster, and during the Biden administration the Environmental Protection Agency has initiated regulation of coal-ash dump sites. But their legacy lives on: in the cancers of coal country residents, the air that tastes of aluminum foil, the pine trees drained of their colors, the riverbeds of radioactive sludge, the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and on the consciences of those who continue to say, This is unbelievable. We did not expect this.
Pizza Party begins at 5 in JUB 202: I propose that we adjourn to the party around 5:15. If our presenters are not both finished at that time, we'll conclude today's presentations on Tue 22d.
Why are heavy industry emissions hard to abate? 260
Why doesn't CCS work well, even "when it works"? In what world is it a failure? 262-3
What conversation must we have, in order for decarbonization to happen fast enough? 264
How much worse than rail travel can a long flight be? 267
International aviation and shipping emit as much CO2 as ___? 269
What do we all need to rethink? 270
If transport were fully electrified immediately, how soon would fossil fuels disappear from this sector? 271
What quantitative difference would it make in emissions if we lowered speed limits? What else can reduce emissions quickly? 273
What should we focus on, rather than car ownership? 274
McK
With what dystopian prediction does McK associate Philip K. Dick? 451
Who was first to walk the entire Grand Canyon? 454
By what analogy does Buckminster Fuller say we've neglected our planet? 466
What kind of "pragmatism" did Stephanie Mills call false, nearsighted, and shallow? What perspective did she say would free us from it? 471
What form of understanding has Gary Snyder explored? 473
Denis Hayes said we've been stealing from who? 481
Joseph Lelyveld compared the first Earth Day to what? 486
Your comments please
PH
1. Shouldwebe teachingmanaakitanga? 116
2. Is indigeneity compatible with cosmopolitanism? 117
3. Why do you think language diversity correlates with biodiversity? 118
4. Might the 30 by 30 movement be a success even if it fails to achieve its stated objective? 119
5. Why haven't we heard more about Lake Chad and other scenes of rapid climate change? 121
6. What's your favorite part of Nemonte Nenquimo's letter? 122-3
7. What would Wendell say about that soil core from Kentucky? 125
8. Were you taught in grade school that "human beings are meant to be a keystone species"? 126 What were you taught about our relation to the rest of living nature?
9. Is it a coincidence that extractive agriculture has been male-dominated? 129 In general, do you think women have a more community-oriented approach? (And if so, how do we account for the political success of so many women who evidently do not?)
10. Do you think the Soul Fire Farm project can be an effective model for cities across the nation, in ending "food apartheid"? 132
11. Are you surprised by the impact of clean cookstoves? 134 Should we all be moving toward cleaner electrical cookstoves?
12. Is it shocking that educating girls and women is still such a battle? 136-7 Is that finally going to change in most places around the world (considering, for instance, the present ferment in Iran)?
13. Will you declare an ARK in your yard? 138f.
14. What does it mean to you to call the human component of work the most important? 143
15. Do we rely too heavily on the beneficence of philanthropists? 144f. Should we be against philanthropy when it supplants social responsibility more generally? *
16. Can the divestment movement succeed?
* Would the World Be Better Off Without Philanthropists? Critics say that big-time donors wield too much power over their fellow-citizens and perpetuate social inequality. But don’t cancel Lady Bountiful just yet.
Organized philanthropy, like most things, looks different on the inside than it does from the outside. “Philanthropy” comes from the Greek for “love of humanity,” and public perceptions of it have usually centered on donors and how humanity-loving they really are. The good guys are generous rich people who give to causes we all approve of, like combatting climate change; the bad guys give in order to launder their reputations (like the opioid-promoting Sackler family) or to advance unsavory goals (like the anti-environmentalist Kochs). Either way, the salient questions about philanthropy, for most people, have to do with the size and the quality of a donor’s heart and soul.
In real life, the interaction between big-money philanthropy and philanthropy-reliant institutions like universities, charities, and museums is more of a business negotiation than a morality play. Philanthropists rarely make the large, unrestricted gifts that the receiving institutions really want, and so the two parties bargain: over the purpose and the control of a gift, over the form of credit, over how much the institution has to raise from other sources as a condition of the gift’s being made. In the world of philanthropy, all this is just another day at the office. Yale recently formed a committee to study its relations with donors. That came after the director of its celebrated “grand strategy” program resigned in protest when two major donors tried to exercise what appeared to be a contractual right to create an advisory board for the program. It would be a mistake to view this case as evidence that such requests are rare, or that universities rarely agree to them... (continues)
Weather experts say the spiraling falsehoods, especially claims that the government is creating or controlling storms, have gotten out of hand.
A meteorologist based in Washington, D.C., was accused of helping the government cover up manipulating a hurricane. In Houston, a forecaster was repeatedly told to "do research" into the weather's supposed nefarious origins. And a meteorologist for a television station in Lansing, Mich., said she had received death threats.
"Murdering meteorologists won't stop hurricanes," wrote the forecaster in Michigan, Katie Nickolaou, in a social media post. "I can't believe I just had to type that."
The news that 'Wildlife populations have dropped 73% in 50 years' is making headlines, but inside the report it states that this decline is "driven primarily by the human food system".
It is without a doubt that one of the most impactful things anyone can do is to adopt a plant-based diet.
==
“I realized that the answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated question of what we should eat wasn’t so complicated after all, and in fact could be boiled down to just seven words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
1. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. "When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can't pronounce, ask yourself, "What are those things doing there?" Pollan says.
2. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.
3. Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad.
4. Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. "There are exceptions -- honey -- but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren't food," Pollan says.
5. It is not just what you eat but how you eat. "Always leave the table a little hungry," Pollan says. "Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, 'Tie off the sack before it's full.'"
6. Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It's a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. "Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?" Pollan asks.
7. Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.
And:
“Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs, and other mammals].”
“If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.”
“If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you’re not hungry.”
Friday, October 11, 2024
Remember when 'Cosmos'
host Carl Sagan debunked flat Earthers with a piece of cardboard?
Tod Perry
Over the past few
years, there has been a growing number of people who believe the Earth is
flat. A recent YouGov survey
of more than 8,000 Americans found that as many as one in six are "not
entirely certain the world is round."
Maybe there wouldn't be so much scientific illiteracy in this
world if we still had Carl Sagan around.
Sagan hosted the original version of TV's "Cosmos" in
1980. It would be revived in 2014 with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson at
the helm.
In the first episode of "Cosmos," Sagan easily proved
the Earth was a sphere using a piece of cardboard, some sticks, and the work of
an ancient Libyan-Greek scholar, Eratosthenes.
"How could it be,
that at the same moment, a stick in Syene would cast no shadow and a stick in
Alexandria, 800 km to the north, would cast a very definite shadow? Sagan
asked.
"The only answer was that the surface of the Earth is
curved," he added. "Not only that but the greater the curvature, the
bigger the difference in the length of the shadows."
Considering the distance between the two cities and the lengths
of the shadows they produced, Eratosthenes was able to determine that the Earth
had a seven-degree curve. He used that calculation to speculate the Earth was
25,000 miles in circumference.
These days we know that the earth is 24,860 in circumference, so
Eratosthenes was 140 miles off, not bad for over 2,000 years ago.
World's
first resealable can aims to tackle plastic pollution: 'Changing the direction
of industry'
Story by Susan Elizabeth Turekmsn.comOctober 9, 2024
Canovation has
developed a resealable aluminum can for those who want to reduce plastic
pollution but fear their bubbly drinks will go flat in containers with
wide-open, stay-on tabs.
According to the
Florida-based company's website,
the surprisingly simple yet groundbreaking solution could work not only for the
beverage sector but also for pharmaceutical storage, pet food packaging,
household products, and more.
Daniel Zabaleta, whom
Miami's Local10.com described as "the brains" behind the Fort
Lauderdale company, told the ABC affiliate that making a resealable aluminum
can required a threading technique.
"What we actually
developed was a way to add threads to the outside edge of a conventional
can," Zabaleta said. "That allows you to now screw in a cap, once the
can is fully filled and ready to go."
Moreover, production
is less expensive than traditional methods, so lower costs should eventually be
passed on to shoppers.
As the report points out, this innovation comes at a time when the
beverage industry is rethinking how it packages its products, with consumers
playing a significant role as awareness grows about the problem of plastic
pollution.
"It
is also changing the direction of industry," clean water advocate Dave
Doebler told Local10.com.
"We're using our purchasing power to tell [the] industry that we want plastic-free options."
Aluminum
is infinitely recyclable, but plastic is not, and that is ultimately
reflected in our environment.
Analysis
from 5 Gyres Institute cited by Local10.com estimates
that around 170 trillion plastic pieces are polluting Earth's oceans,
harming marine life and even
making its way into human bodies through seafood that has
ingested microplastic particles, according to research published in the
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
"Supercharged hurricanes are no longer outliers, freak disasters or storms of the century. Fossil fuel pollution has made them a fixture of life in the United States, and they are going to get worse," writes Porter Fox.
As the great Dr. Fauci reminds us, it's not just heat and hurricanes: "As climate change makes it easier for mosquitoes to proliferate in many places, West Nile virus disease as well as other mosquito-borne illnesses are emerging as greater threats in this country and elsewhere."
When I relied on a car for all my local errands, I had no idea how many enriching experiences I was missing. Trading four walls for two wheels opened my world.
Car culture keeps life at a distance. Leave it behind. Embrace what's around you.
What the fate of Greenland means for the rest of the Earth.
...The new airports will bring more visitors to Greenland to see the melting ice, and the increase in air travel will melt more ice—another potential feedback loop. No one desires this outcome—not the travellers and certainly not the Greenlanders, whose attachment to the ice is profound. But everyone pushes ahead anyway.
Climate change is not like other problems, and that is part of the problem. What it lacks in vividness and immediacy it makes up for in reach. Once the world’s remaining mountain glaciers disappear, they won’t be coming back. Nor will the coral reefs or the Amazon rain forest. If we cross the tipping point for the Greenland ice sheet, we may not even notice. And yet the world as we know it will be gone. Elizabeth Kolbert
The waters of the Atlantic Ocean have been abnormally warm, providing copious amounts of energy that can intensify storms.
The energy that supercharged Hurricane Milton into a Category 5 storm on Monday came from the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, which have been abnormally warm not just at the surface, but at depth, too.
For a year and a half now, the upper layer of the world's oceans has been at or near its hottest temperatures on record. The seas absorb most of the extra heat that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap near Earth's surface. So the same human-caused forces that have been bringing abnormal heat to towns, cities and landscapes are helping to warm the oceans...
People in Florida are evacuating before Hurricane Milton is expected to hit the state’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday evening, bringing tornadoes, high winds, a dramatic storm surge, and upwards of 15 inches of rain. Milton grew from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in a little over a day, fed by water in the Gulf of Mexico that climate change has pushed in some places to 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2.2 degrees Celsius) higher than normal. Veteran Florida meteorologist and hurricane specialist John Morales choked up as he called it “horrific.”
President Joe Biden has approved an emergency declaration for Florida, enabling the federal government to move supplies in ahead of the storm’s arrival, but the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has refused to take a call from Vice President Kamala Harris about planning for the storm. When asked about DeSantis’s refusal at today’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted that the president and vice president have reached out to give support to the people of Florida.
As for DeSantis, “It’s up to him if he wants to respond to us or not. But what we're doing is we’re working with state and local officials to make sure that we are pre-positioned to make sure that we are ready to be there for the communities that are going to be impacted. We are doing the job… to protect the communities and to make sure that they have everything that is needed." When asked about DeSantis’s snub, Harris answered: “It’s just utterly irresponsible, and it is selfish, and it is about political gamesmanship instead of doing the job that you took an oath to do, which is to put the people first.”
