Without meaning to, I've stumbled into reading several scifi books about the environment recently, & it was interesting to see the different approaches they took. So naturally I rambled on about it on the blog...
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."
A few shots from this weekend's "Big One" in #London where thousands of protestors from #ExtinctionRebellion marched outside government departments and parliament to demand more action on #climatechange.
“Near the middle of April, Fort Lauderdale Florida got about one third of their annual rainfall in just eight hours. Two feet of rain fell at the airport. Statistically, that is a one in a thousand-year event, but that is based on the old weather”
“The U.S. Northeast hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32C) in New York City. Nobody alive can remember April heat like that.”
Fighting climate change by focusing on carbon capture aka carbon dioxide removal is like fighting a flat tire by continually pumping air into it instead of fixing the puncture.
What do #children think about #climatechange? What do they worry about? What are they frustrated about? What do young people want us to know about their experiences with this often overwhelming topic? If you know a concerned kid, they should know they’re not alone.
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.