The spotlight is a weekly, categorized compilation of links and excerpts from environmentally related posts at Daily Kos. Any posts included in the collection do not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of them. Because of the interconnectedness of the subject matter, some of these posts can be placed in more than one category.
CLIMATE EMERGENCY & EXTREME WEATHER
The Great Disruption - Part 1 - Climate Migration by Philip S Wenz. This is the first part of a series on what Australian author Paul Gilding, in his 2018 book on the climate catastrophe, has called “The Great Disruption.” Gilding’s thesis, and that of this series, is not that we are necessarily headed toward the end of the world, or even the end of civilization, but toward a significant disruption of our economic and social systems caused by the biosphere’s loss of much of its resilience, and large swaths of the planet becoming unproductive or uninhabitable. In this series, we’ll examine disruption caused by climate migration, flooding, droughts and other environmental shocks to the planetary system, and discuss how these impacts can overlap each other, disrupting many of global civilization’s functions. Climate change this century is going to alter economic geography… — Gaia Vince, “Nomad Century” Can migrating to escape unlivable climate conditions be a good thing? According the book “Nomad Century” by British environmental writer Gaia Vince, the answer is yes — if we view migrations as an economic opportunity, change our definition of nation states and their borders and smoothly relocate most of the world’s population north of the 50th parallel. In her book, Vince tell us, correctly, that coastal lowland flooding, excessive heat, extended drought and so on will push billions of people out of their homes in the coming century. (The U.N. estimates that there will be 1.2 billion climate migrants by 2050, three billion by 2100.)
Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Global Warming Speeding Up Time? by boatsie. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) today hosted the Global Summit on Extreme Heat to call attention to the probability of a “mass-fatality heat disaster.” This comes on the heels of 2023’s “record-shattering temperatures, when 3.8 billion people – half the world’s population – sweltered in extreme heat for at least one day,” the Guardian reports. The summit discussed the idea of naming heatwaves to garner them the attention other extreme disasters receive and explored projects such as tree planting and reflective roof coverings which can lower temperatures indoors. It also called for the development of heat action plans by national and local governments as well as corporations, schools, hospitals, and humanitarian groups. Jagan Chapagain, the IFRC secretary general, drew comparisons to Kim Stanley Robinson’s apocalyptic novel Ministry for the Future, which opens with a deadly heatwave in India that kills millions of people, some of whom are poached alive in a lake they hoped to cool off in.
Climate Crisis -- How Will You Deal With Flooding? by birches. This week’s question is: How Will You Deal With Flooding? Where I currently live, there are 4 different possible flood sources, the first two of which I’ve already experienced here. They are 1. flooding from precipitation; 2. flooding from storm drains and sewers overflowing; 3. flooding directly from storms and storm surge; and 4. flooding from sea level rise. 1. Climate chaos is already causing extreme precipitation events — like the floods in China in 2021, in Germany and Belgium in 2021, in Missouri and Kentucky in 2022, the 2022 Pakistan monsoon, the flooding in Death Valley in 2023, the flash flooding in Libya in 2023, and the flooding in Vermont and New York in 2023 — and these types of extreme precipitation events are forecast to increase. The storm that made a lake in Death Valley flooded us here, and did so astoundingly quickly. 2. San Francisco is saddled with a storm drain system that empties into the sewer system. When it rains, the runoff can overwhelm the sewer system and we get releases of mixed untreated sewage and runoff into the bay, into the ocean, and sometimes on the streets. Even “normal” large rains can trigger this, so we’ve had this kind of flooding as well, frequently.
Sponges Tell the Story of Climate Change by Alan Singer. Chemical variations in the spine of Caribbean sclerosponges show that between 1700 and 1790, ocean temperatures were stable. Between 1790 and 1860, there was some cooling, probably because of volcanic eruptions that blocked sunlight and created a worldwide cooler planet. These included major eruptions in modern day Indonesia and periodic, but smaller, eruptions of Mount St. Helens in Oregon. In the mid-1860s, the Caribbean Sea began to grow warmer. By the middle of the 20th century, sponge records suggest that the amount of global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels was actually about half a degree Celsius (about 1°F) greater than scientists estimated using conventional methods.
Overnight News Digest: Capitalism is burning the planet by Magnifico. Extreme heat drives up food prices. Just how bad will it get? From Grist: Sometimes climate change appears where you least expect it — like the grocery store. Food prices have climbed 25 percent over the past four years, and Americans have been shocked by the growing cost of staples like beef, sugar, and citrus. While many factors, like supply chain disruptions and labor shortages, have contributed to this increase, extreme heat is already raising food prices, and it’s bound to get worse, according to a recent study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. The analysis found that heatflation could drive up food prices around the world by as much as 3 percentage points per year in just over a decade and by about 2 percentage points in North America. For overall inflation, extreme weather could lead to anywhere from a 0.3 to 1.2 percentage point increase each year depending on how many carbon emissions countries pump into the atmosphere. Though that might sound small, it’s actually “massive,” according to Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School. “That’s half of the Fed’s overall goal for inflation,” he said, referencing the Federal Reserve’s long-term aim of limiting it to 2 percent. The Labor Department recently reported that consumer prices climbed 3.2 percent over the past 12 months.
Thunderhead! by Desert Scientist. I have always liked thunderstorms. They make one feel alive and grateful. There is something profoundly exhilarating about them, but they are also quite dangerous. In the Southwest, where I grew up and lived most of my life, summer monsoons would start with a gust of wind, often followed by a layer of blowing dust and then a cloudburst, a toad strangler, which could often kill at a distance through flash floods. The commonest ways to die in the desert is by either thirst or drowning! But the latter is far more likely than the former! See: www.worldatlas.com/... Rattlesnake bite doesn’t even come close! Actually, I grew up in Yuma County, a very dry part of North America, with less than three inches of rainfall a year. We were ecstatic if rain fell and there would be a banner headline in The Yuma Daily Sun if a snowflake fell! Then I moved to Tucson to attend the University of Arizona. I soon became enamored of the majestic cumulonimbus clouds (thunderheads) that arose during the summer monsoons. The smell of the desert after a rain was fabulous- creosote and other desert plants perfumed the air with delicate and stronger scents that would enliven any day.
Still, rain storms in the Southwest could be dangerous. Drainage in Tucson was notoriously inadequate and one underpass was apparently called Lake Alice because a woman drove a car into it and drowned because she could not see the water. Streets could become torrents in minutes. But I reveled in driving over a pass in the mountains to see a gigantic thunderstorm ahead of me, for soon would come the life-giving moisture that the desert needed to bloom.
CRITTERS & THE GREAT OUTDOORS
A male Vermillion Flycatcher.
Daily Bucket: Friday Sequence;Belize-bedazzled by color and birds, some never seen before by Jeff Graham. The return from our trip to Belize was like many trips others have experienced. Ms. JG and I were amazed by the experience but glad to get home. The participants in our trip were all interesting and friendly (only nine total including us). The photo opportunities at Bird’s Eye View Lodge and Lamanai Outpost Lodge, including walking and boat excursions, were abundant, and we took advantage of them to the fullest. I will provide more background about the environment and location in future Buckets. Today’s Bucket will showcase a few of the birds we observed during the first couple of days. I took two memory cards’ worth of photos, each with about 4,000 photos and videos, a rich vault of memories of our trip. Join us as we take you along. Our first lodging was at Bird's Eye View Lodge, located in Crooked Tree, an hour away from Belize City. Many birds were visible without leaving the lodge and its waterfront.
Female Spicebush Swallowtail (you can tell by the orange tabs on the wings).
Daily Bucket - Swallowtails in Mississippi by CaptBLI. The first large butterflies to emerge in Mississippi are Swallowtails. The prominent species to escape from cocoons, (flashing brightly as if sun beams were pirouetting on light breezes) are Eastern Tigers. Females have the nice extra dash of orange between the tips of their lower wings. The males lack this extra bit of color. There are Spicebush Swallowtails, with their dark wings and striking blue hues on top, that soon follow. Neither the Tiger or Spicebush migrate but survive winters tucked safely away as chrysalis. The pungent oils of aromatic plants attract the larva then serve as a host and winter habitat. The males of the Spicebush are like the Tigers in that they lack the orange tabs on the lower wings. The same orange can be found on the females like the Tigers display.
Daily Bucket - Northern Flicker's fortifications by CaptBLI. A stand was taken and the result is the nest site (formerly held by the long term resident Red-headed Woodpeckers) is claimed by the Northern Flicker couple. The piercing “yelps” (an excellent description of a Flicker’s alert call) are a clue that one or the other adult is approaching the nest. From my garage, I can see the movement of a head from the entrance as the calls intensify. Which ever adult is in the nest will poke a head out to listen and observe the approach of it’s mate. I filmed the activity of “House Cleaning” while the air was filled with drizzle. The Red-heads had left sunflower seed hulls in the bottom of the nest (a result of feeding while egg sitting). The male Flicker did a thorough job of cleaning up before his mate returned to check his progress. The following video is one of my longer films; 3-minute duration. I decided to decrease the time where the male is collecting and tossing debris from the entrance. That action lasted 30 minutes. I increased another segment (by slow motion) to show the male leaving and the female taking his place. The transition is smooth and fast but I wanted to highlight that detail.
The Daily Bucket - on Second Beach by OceanDiver. After two hot sunny days last weekend at the ocean, Monday dawned foggy, windy and cool. That turned out to be good for a beachwalk with few other people on Second Beach. And in the intermittently dense blowing fog it often felt like we were the only ones there. Second Beach is in Olympic National Park, reached by a ¾ mile trail. Low tide means a vast beach. I planned our trip for a few days when there would be low tides midday. I was able to walk all the way down to the end of the beach for the first time in years, and it was great to get there. The headland there has all kinds of cool things, accessible at a low tide. You must keep an eye on the time though. When the tide comes in it covers the beach fast.
Point Wilson on the Olympic Peninsula (pinned) is where the tweeters poster was seeing the birds going by. The ferry goes between Port Townsend and Keystone (under the W of Wilson).
Dawn Chorus: Whidbey Island Passersby by OceanDiver. Whidbey Island was not our destination a fortnight ago on our way out to the Olympic Peninsula but it turned out to have a few birdies passing by, which I can share today. Whidbey is the largest island in Washington, about forty miles long, and we cross just part of the northern end en route from where we live in the San Juan islands to get to the open ocean. A bridge connects Whidbey at its far north end but it takes a ferry to get over to the Peninsula (there’s another ferry linking the southern end to the mainland near the Seattle metro area).It just so happened that the morning we left home I read a posting in the University of Washington daily birdserv email feed “Tweeters” that thousands of marine birds were regularly flying north and south through the northern end of Admiralty Inlet, the section of the Salish Sea our ferry would be crossing in a few hours. Good to know! It would be worth standing out on the car deck for the 9-mile 35 minute crossing to see if I could catch any of that action, even though we’d be crossing in the middle of the day and the person posting the observations said the numbers peak early and late. I saw very few birds until we were more than halfway across, which explains why the Tweeters poster was stationed on the Peninsula side.
AGRICULTURE, GARDENING & FOOD
Most people eat beef--Does it make a difference on our Environment by nailkeg. In the last half of the nineteen fifties, I lived within 15 miles of King City MO. At that time it was known as the Blue Grass Capital of the World. They had a warehouse north of town, still standing and used, where they bought and distributed more bluegrass seed than anywhere else. As a youth in my teens, every summer fro a couple weeks in mid June, I would take a hand held bluegrass header and go along the roads collecting seeds. The hand held header was mostly heavy wood and it developed many of my muscles swing it across the tops of the grass stripping seed from the seed heads. The teacup full of seed I gathered with each swing was added to a gunny sack I pulled along with me. A gunny sack was a reusable sack made of jute or hemp and many were large enough to hold over one hundred pounds of potatoes. I would work long hours to collect 3 sacks for a few dollars. At that time all the pastures were seeded in Kentucky Bluegrass and the fields that hadn’t been pastured at that time of the year were harvested. The seed companies had a number of small tow behind contraptions which they allowed local farmers to use to collect seed from these unused pastures.
LAND USE & PUBLIC LAND
ENERGY, EMISSIONS & TRANSPORTATION
3/26 Renewable Tuesday: Better! Faster! Cheaper! More! by Mokurai. Utah developer quadruples battery storage to meet demands: Here’s one way to accelerate the clean energy transition: quadruple the energy storage projects you’re already building. Salt Lake City–based rPlus Energies made this move with its Green River Energy Center in eastern Utah. Utility Rocky Mountain Power had awarded a contract from a 2020 proposal for 400 megawatts of solar paired with 200 megawatts/400 megawatt-hours of energy storage—a substantial battery, to be sure. But since then, electricity demand has switched into major growth mode to supply data centers, AI and electrification of vehicles and buildings. To deal with that, the utility asked for more from the Green River project. RPlus complied, and earlier this month, it announced it had amended its contract to include 1,600 megawatt-hours of storage capacity, four times the previously agreed-upon amount. It’s an unprecedented leap for a large-scale grid storage project, and it says a lot about the crucial storage market’s propulsive new era.
1000+ Individuals Call on Gov. Newsom for Fracking Ban to Address All Fracking Methods by Dan Bacher. Monday, March 25, over 1000 individuals across the state and country sent comments to Governor Newsom asking him to direct CalGEM to amend the ban to address all fracking methods used across California, particularly steam injection. “As they currently stand, the proposed rules will prohibit the state from issuing new hydraulic fracking permits. While they are a welcome follow-up on Governor Newsom’s 2021 promise to ban this devastating practice that increases greenhouse gas emissions and puts Californian’s people, animals, air and water at risk of contamination, they cannot be considered a full ban unless all fracking methods are included,” according to a press statement from Food and Water Watch. “In their comments, Californians and other individuals across the country alike expressed gratitude to Governor Newsom for taking this vital and necessary step to ban some methods of fracking, especially considering the urgency of the climate crisis we’re all facing. However, commenters noted that in order for Governor Newsom to be considered a climate leader, he must direct CalGEM to not only stop all fracking practices, including steam injection, but also begin to end all oil and gas drilling in California,” the group stated.
One Easy Shift to Solar by gmoke. Emergency electricity is technologically, economically, and practically trivial. You don't need to know how to build lightbulbs, batteris, PV cells... from scratch. They are all readily available for affordable prices as mass commodity products. If you get them now before the fertilizer really hits the ventilation system (which is as good a description of the greenhouse effect as any other, at least for me). If you also use them in your daily life, that will be another infinitesimal drop out of the flood of destruction and just might provide some personal security for yourself.A solar light with battery charging capability for at least AA batteries costs about $10 retail. That provides you with the light, the power for a cell phone or radio, and recharging when the batteries run down. I’ve used mine for years now and will probably get quite a few more years of use out it. This is also entry level electricity for the bottom billion. I’ve advocated for decades that cities like mine could do a bulk order for their citizens and help supply at least one of our sister cities around the world who needs such a program as well through a buy one get one program — solar civil defense at home and solar development abroad.
Here's a facility that really should have solar panels on its roof and parking lots: the Pentagon by RandomNonviolence. If you’ve ever driven by the Pentagon, home of the US military and just across the Potomac River from the National Mall in Washington, DC, you may have noticed the gigantic parking lots. These lots cover 67 acres and have 8,769 parking spaces. The Pentagon itself houses 24,000 military service members and employees. Most certainly they consume vast amounts of electricity for lights, computers, and the heating/cooling (HVAC) system. Since the climate crisis is one of the largest upcoming threats to military security, the US military has made a commitment to seriously reduce its use of fossil fuels. Wouldn’t it make sense to start by covering the Pentagon and its parking lots with solar photovoltaic panels? Office buildings like the Pentagon tend to have a usage pattern that closely matches the electricity produced by the sun as it passes overhead so they are ideal consumers of solar power. Also, by siting the panels directly next to their use, the need to transport the generated power long distances is eliminated. Moreover, if the solar power, from panels mounted on overhead racks, could be fed to electric vehicle chargers below, Pentagon workers could charge up their cars while they are at work, also taking advantage of peak sunlight during the middle of the day.Solarizing the Pentagon would be a very visible model for managers of office buildings and parking lots everywhere for how to upgrade to green energy.
POPULATION, POLLUTION & PLASTICS
MISCELLANY
It’s simple. Stop taking ‘candy’ from strangers. Curb your consumption & the rest will follow… by mikeymikey. When I was growing up in the 1950s, most of us were taught not to accept candy from strangers—and not because candy isn’t good for you (that was a separate lesson). Nevertheless, in the world we are currently living in, without realizing it, we now do this all the time — irresponsibly purchasing whatever our hearts desire from people we don’t know and corporations that can’t be trusted. Parental fears are confirmed, for molest us they do — this ‘candy’ they offer us is frequently larded with all sorts of booby traps, like razor blades in Halloween apples. It pollutes the world, defiles our bodies and sullies our souls. Like children in a ‘playground’ we’ve become junkies, with pushers who ‘use’ as well. We are so out of control that we are literally consuming the planet and converting our desires into horrific atrocities which recklessly incite corrosive fear, further spiking our unassuageable desire. But as consumer sheep, when you allow desire to guide you through the forest, you’re going to get eaten by wolves.
Earth Matters: GOP 'energy week' blasts Biden on climate; taxes subsidize polluting plastic makers by Meteor Blades. Even though the administration watered down the new tailpipe emissions rule for cars and light trucks issued last week by Environmental Protection Agency, major environmental groups still cheered what they view as significant progress. The rule sets emissions targets that would result in 60% of new cars being electric in 2030, and 67% in 2032. Estimates put annual savings from lower fuel costs and the health and climate benefits at $100 billion, with 2,000 premature deaths and 7 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions avoided each year. Nevertheless, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska plans to introduce a Congressional Review Act resolution to blast the tailpipe rule into oblivion. Unfortunately, he may get a couple of Democratic votes—the retiring Joe Manchin and John Fetterman. The Pennsylvania senator said Wednesday that the emissions rule “seems aggressive, and I know a lot of American consumers are uncertain about EVs. … I understand why we want to migrate more towards that, but at the end of the day, perhaps it might be overly aggressive.” At the end of the day, failing to be aggressive on climate policy will guarantee us an even nastier payday than is already barreling down on us.
SC's serial liar and insurrection dissembler Nancy Mace blames Biden for Maryland bridge collapse by Meteor Blades. Mace voted against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in late 2021, condemning it as a “fiasco” and a “socialist wish list.” As with so many other Republicans who voted against the IIJA have done, however, she had nothing but praise last June for a South Carolina project funded with $26 million from the act—a regional transit hub designed to help the Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority transition to a fully electric bus fleet.Sometimes you have to wonder just how many elected Republicans being sworn into office simultaneously whisper a Hypocritic Oath under their breath. [...] It’s not that there aren’t things to criticize in the IIJA, something climate hawks have done since before it was approved. Which would make Mace’s attack on the law as “mostly Green New Deal" hilarious except that it’s part of the GOP playbook this season, which is relying heavily on complaints about Biden’s environmental moves for being part of his “radical climate agenda.” As someone who has been forced by decades of delay and deception to become a radical climate hawk, I can attest that, unprecedented as it is, Biden’s far better than expected environmental agenda isn’t radical. The only thing surprising about Mace’s numbskull complaint is that she didn’t assert that Biden intentionally knocked down the bridge just so he could get more money from Congress.
