Jan 21, 2023
Climate Change Update
‘Super-tipping points’ could trigger cascade of climate action
Small interventions on electric cars and plant-based meat could unlock rapid emissions cuts, say experts
Three “super-tipping points” for climate action could trigger a cascade of decarbonisation across the global economy, according to a report.
Relatively small policy interventions on electric cars, plant-based alternatives to meat and green fertilisers would lead to unstoppable growth in those sectors, the experts said.
But the boost this would give to battery and hydrogen production would mean crucial knock-on benefits for other sectors including energy storage and aviation.
Urgent emissions cuts are needed to avoid irreversible climate breakdown and the experts say the super-tipping points are the fastest way to drive global action, offering “plausible hope” that a rapid transition to a green economy can happen in time.
The tipping points occur when a zero-carbon solution becomes more competitive than the existing high-carbon option. More sales lead to cheaper products, creating feedback loops that drive exponential growth and a rapid takeover. The report, launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said the three super-tipping points would cut emissions in sectors covering 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Speedy action is vital to help avoid triggering disastrous tipping points in the climate system. Scientists said recently that global heating had driven the world to the brink of multiple tipping points with global impacts, including the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap and a key current in the north Atlantic.
“With time running out, there is a need for action to be targeted,” said Mark Meldrum, at the consultancy Systemiq, which produced the report with partners including the University of Exeter, UK. Each super-tipping point crossed raises the chance of crossing others, he said. “That could set off a cascade to steer us away from a climate catastrophe.”
The tipping point for electric vehicles is very close with sales soaring, the report says. Setting dates around the world for the end of sales of fossil-fuel powered vehicles, such as the 2030 date set for new vehicles by the UK and 2035 in China, drives further growth, the report adds.
This scale-up means the batteries used will become cheaper and these can be deployed as storage for wind and solar power, further accelerating the growth of renewables. More green energy means lower electricity bills, in turn making heat pumps even more cost-effective.
The second super-tipping point is setting mandates for green fertilisers, to replace current fertilisers, which are produced from fossil gas. Ammonia is a key ingredient and can be made from hydrogen produced by renewable energy, combined with nitrogen from the air.
Governments requiring a growing proportion of fertiliser to be green will drive a scale-up and cost reductions in the production of green hydrogen, the report says. That then supports long-distance aviation and shipping, and steel production, which will rely on hydrogen to end their carbon emissions. Mandates are being considered with India, for example, targeting 5% green fertiliser production by 2023–24 and 20% by 2027–28.
The third super-tipping point is helping alternative proteins to beat animal-based proteins on cost, while at least matching them on taste. Meat and dairy cause about 15% of global emissions. Public procurement of plant-based meat and dairy replacements by government departments, schools and hospitals could be a powerful lever, the report says.
Increasing uptake would cut the emissions from cattle and reduce the destruction of forests for pasture land. A 20% market share by 2035 would mean 400m-800m hectares of land would no longer be needed for livestock and their fodder, equivalent to 7-15% of the world’s farmland today, the report estimated. That land could then be used for the restoration of forests and wildlife, removing CO2 from the air.
Tipping points already passed within countries include electric car sales in Norway and the plunge in coal-powered electricity in the US in the past decade.
“We need to find and trigger positive socioeconomic tipping points if we are to limit the risk from damaging climate tipping points,” said Prof Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter. “This non-linear way of thinking about the climate problem gives plausible grounds for hope: the more that gets invested in socioeconomic transformation, the faster it will unfold – getting the world to net zero greenhouse gas emissions sooner.”
Jan 20, 2023
Ukraine
The war won't last forever. Russia will leave Ukraine. Putin will be dead or hiding.
Radio Free Europe - Russian atrocities
There will be a reckoning - of sorts. Probably not to the satisfaction of all who've suffered great loss, but it will be something. And assholes with dreams of empire, and ambitions for conquest will be pushed down again for a while.
'Twas ever thus, and ever thus 'twill be.
Radio Free Europe - Russian atrocities
COVID-19 Update
But being closely in touch with my Inner Asshole, I have to admit a smile will flash briefly across my psyche when this kind of news presents itself.
“Proud boy” leading member, Aaron Laigaie, died from Covid
Aaron Laigaie, one of the founders of the Proud Boys and a Covid denier and anti vaxxer has died of Covid.
Aaron Laigaie, one of the founders of the Proud Boys and a Covid denier and anti vaxxer has died of Covid.
According to a post that was published online by Geoff Guenther, Aaron Laigaie has unfortunately passed away. Coronavirus was the cause of death for Aaron Laigaie. According to the reports, Aaron Laigaie was a Trumpzi who asserted that he had “natural resistance” to COVID.
He was infected with COVID. Aaron was a COVID denier all the way through. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is the infectious agent that causes the disease known as coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
According to Google, the majority of people who become ill with COVID-19 will have symptoms that range from mild to moderate and will recover without the need for any special therapy. On the other hand, some of them will become gravely ill and call for medical assistance.
Aaron Laigaie’s refusal to get the COVID19 shot has come to light thanks to a number of people on social media. He was one of the original members of the MT Baker Proud Boys. The Proud Boys are an all-male, neo-fascist, far-right organization with its headquarters in the United States. They are known for their participation in political violence and for encouraging others to do the same. It has also been called a street gang, although the governments of Canada and New Zealand have classified it as a terrorist organization.
The Proud Boys are a well-known organization that criticizes left-wing and progressive groups and is well-known for its backing of former US President Donald Trump. Another Trumpzi who claimed to be “naturally immune” (from brains, I should guess) has passed away with COVID, Geoff Guenther said on Facebook. Aaron Laigaie, a proud boy, is no longer with us.
A review and meta-regression of 26 studies shows that hybrid SARS-CoV-2 immunity provides the highest level of protection against the Omicron variant, researchers reported yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The authors say the finding of the study, the first to estimate the durability of protection conferred by hybrid immunity—the antibody response developed through a combination of SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination—could provide guidance on vaccine timing at both the individual and public health level.
Hybrid immunity highly protective against severe outcomes
Of the 26 studies reviewed by a team led by researchers from the University of Toronto and the World Health Organization, 11 reported on the protective effectiveness of previous infection, and 15 reported on protection from hybrid immunity; 7 reported on both. The studies looked at protection against reinfection, hospitalization, and severe disease caused by Omicron.
The effectiveness of previous infection against hospital admission or severe disease at 12 months was 74.6% (95% confidence interval [CI], 63.1% to 85.3%], with effectiveness against reinfection waning to 24.7% (95% CI, 16.4% to 35.5%) at 12 months. For hybrid immunity, protection against hospital admission or severe disease was 97.4% (95% CI, 91.4% to 99.2%) at 12 months with primary series vaccination and 95.3% (95% CI, 81.9% to 98.9%) at 6 months with the first booster shot. The effectiveness of hybrid immunity against reinfection waned to 41.8% (95% CI, 31.5% to 52.8%) at 12 months, and to 46.5% (95% CI, 36.0% to 57.3%) following the first booster shot at 6 months.
Further analysis of the 7 studies that reported on both types of protection showed that hybrid immunity conferred a significant gain in protection compared with previous infection alone—whether subjects with hybrid immunity had received the partial primary vaccine series, the full vaccine series, or the first booster shot.
The authors say the findings indicate that the protection conferred by previous infection should not detract from the need for vaccination, because infection-induced immunity wanes rapidly and vaccines increase the durability of protection. In addition, they suggest the results can be used to tailor guidance on the number and timing of SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations.
'Substantial durability' of hybrid immunity
"Our findings make clear the substantial durability of hybrid immunity and could help inform the timing and prioritisation of vaccination programmes in populations with high rates of past infection," the study authors wrote. "Policy makers can use these findings to project population protection from local vaccination and seroprevalence rates, helping to inform the use and timing of COVID-19 vaccination as an important public health tool."
They add that further analysis is needed to determine effectiveness of hybrid immunity against hospitalization or severe disease over a longer duration.
"A first-generation vaccine is still an excellent option when offered as a primary series in areas with a high rate of previous infection."
In an accompanying commentary, researchers with Brazil's Universidad Federal de Bahia say the findings demonstrate that the focus of first-generation vaccines should be prevention of severe disease.
"For this purpose, a first-generation vaccine is still an excellent option when offered as a primary series in areas with a high rate of previous infection, or with boosters, if a low infection rate has been observed," they wrote.
"For this purpose, a first-generation vaccine is still an excellent option when offered as a primary series in areas with a high rate of previous infection, or with boosters, if a low infection rate has been observed," they wrote.
More Good Stuff From CIDRAP:
- First-wave COVID patients had much higher risk of death for 18 months
- More than 65 million people around the world may have long COVID
- Feds probe possible stroke link to new Pfizer COVID booster
- Spanish hospitals spent $1.33 billion on COVID patients in 2020
- Convalescent plasma may cut risk of death in immune-impaired COVID patients
- Almost a fourth of air passengers screened from China had COVID-19, report reveals
- Paying people to take COVID vaccine worked well, study finds
Jan 19, 2023
Bye Bye Jesus?
I hesitate to let Maggie Haberman into my little domain, and you'll see little bits of the reason why scattered through this piece.
It's mostly the use of the passive voice that bugs me, as if Trump and the radical Evangelistas are just another silly little faction in America's great big nutty system of politics, and it'll all come out in the wash anyway, and isn't it fun for me to sit way up high where I can pretend nothing bad could ever happen cuz I'll always have my job and if the rabble get a bit too uppity, all I have to do is unleash the mighty power of my rapier-like rhetorical flourishes and blah blah blah.
Haberman is Press Poodle Royalty because she plays the Both Sides Game so well.
I guess I could maybe stop calling her a Press Poodle, and go with The Chameleon Queen.
The former president, who relied on evangelical voters in 2016, has accused Christian leaders of “disloyalty” and blamed them for Republicans’ disappointing midterm performance.
On Sunday, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a longtime supporter of Donald J. Trump who has yet to endorse his 2024 White House bid, shared the stage at his Dallas megachurch with one of the former president’s potential rivals next year: former Vice President Mike Pence.
The next day, Mr. Trump lashed out at Pastor Jeffress and other evangelical leaders he spent years courting, accusing them of “disloyalty” and blaming them for the party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm elections.
While Pastor Jeffress shrugged off the criticism, others weren’t as eager to let it slide, instead suggesting that it was time for Mr. Trump to move out of the way for a new generation of Republican candidates.
The clash highlighted one of the central tensions inside the Republican Party as it lurches toward an uncertain 2024 presidential primary: wavering support for Mr. Trump among the nation’s evangelical leaders, whose congregants have for decades been a key constituency for conservatives and who provided crucial backing to Mr. Trump in his ascent to the White House.
If these leaders break with Mr. Trump — and if evangelical voters follow, which is by no means a certainty — the result will be a tectonic shift in Republican politics.
“When I saw his statement, I thought, ‘You’re not going to gain any traction by throwing the most loyal base under the bus and shifting blame,’” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical activist in Iowa and the chief executive of the Family Leader organization.
Mr. Vander Plaats said that while evangelicals were grateful to Mr. Trump for his federal judicial appointments and for moving the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, many thought that his time as leader of the party has passed given how hardened many Americans’ views of him are. Asked whether Mr. Trump would command support among evangelical leaders as he did in the past, Mr. Vander Plaats, who has criticized Mr. Trump in the past, said, “No way.”
Indeed, recent polls point to some Trump fatigue among Republican voters. But it is an open question whether evangelical voters will abandon him if prominent Christian ministers support other candidates. And Mr. Trump has previously had an ability to cleave various types of conservative voters from their longtime leaders, as he did during his unexpected Republican primary victory in 2016.
In a New York Times/Siena College poll in October, before the midterm elections, nearly half of Republican voters said that they preferred someone other than Mr. Trump to be the party’s 2024 presidential nominee. But the same poll showed that 54 percent of evangelical voters said they planned to support him.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump declined to comment. Paula White, the televangelist who led Mr. Trump’s evangelical advisory board while he was president, could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Trump tapped Mr. Pence to be his running mate in 2016 in part to assure wary evangelicals that a New York businessman could be trusted to keep his campaign promises.
Many evangelicals set aside their skepticism of Mr. Trump’s sometimes scandalous behavior and focused on a long list of policy pledges from the candidate, a thrice-married reality television star. In one memorable moment, Mr. Falwell celebrated his 2016 endorsement of Mr. Trump by posing for a picture with him in front of a Trump Tower office wall that included a framed copy of a 1990 Playboy cover featuring the brash real estate developer.
The uneasy alliance between Mr. Trump and evangelical leaders showed signs of strain during an interview he gave with Real America’s Voice, a right-wing streaming and cable network.
Asked about Pastor Jeffress’s neutrality in the 2024 race, Mr. Trump said he did not care, then declared that it was “a sign of disloyalty.” The former president pointed to the Supreme Court ruling last year overturning the federal right to an abortion — a decision led by three of Mr. Trump’s appointees — and said he was “a little disappointed” in some evangelical leaders who “could have fought much harder” during the midterms.
“A lot of them didn’t fight or weren’t really around to fight,” Mr. Trump said. “And it did energize the Democrats, but a lot of the people that wanted and fought for years to get it, they sort of — I don’t know — they weren’t there protesting and doing what they could have done.”
Mr. Trump’s interviewer, David Brody, who is also a longtime commentator for the Christian Broadcasting Network, appeared to sense the potential effect Mr. Trump’s comments could have on evangelical voters. He told the former president that some anti-abortion activists had taken exception to being blamed for midterm losses.
“Do you want to clear that up at all?” Mr. Brody asked.
Mr. Trump doubled down.
“It’s sort of what I explained to you,” he said. “I just didn’t see them fighting during this last election — fighting for victory for people that were on the same side as all of us.” He added, “The only rallies were the rallies I gave.”
In reality, Mr. Trump, a former Democrat who once called himself supportive of abortion rights, has often been uncomfortable discussing the issue, going back to his 2016 campaign. He privately viewed the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade as problematic for Republicans, and he rarely spoke about abortion during his 2022 campaign rallies.
Mr. Vander Plaats suggested that Republicans’ failure to win control of the Senate in November was due in part to Mr. Trump’s support for candidates like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, who did not make abortion a central focus of his candidacy.
“Having an instinct to go after a very loyal base that you’re going to need in the Iowa caucuses, in the Republican primary, that’s just a bad instinct or it’s really bad advice,” Mr. Vander Plaats said, adding that “it’s time to turn the page” and put Mr. Trump’s movement behind another candidate.
Evangelical leaders and voters may have several other Republican options. One of them is Mr. Pence, a longtime evangelical who has visited churches in various states and has been outspoken in support of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling. Another is Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state and C.I.A. director under Mr. Trump. There is also Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who a number of donors are hoping will enter the race.
Marc Short, a top adviser to Mr. Pence and his former chief of staff, suggested that faith leaders recognized that the former vice president “is one of them.” He said that Mr. Trump “confuses their appreciation for what he did” in office with “their commitment to Christ and their congregations, first and foremost.”
Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a conservative advocacy group, said Mr. Trump was right to be frustrated about the political response from conservatives after the Supreme Court’s decision in the abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Democrats had a plan to attack Republicans over the ruling, Mr. Reed said, while Republicans struggled to mount a political defense.
“Too many Republican candidates tried to stick their heads in the sand, ignore the Dobbs decision and talk singularly about inflation and gas prices, with predictable results,” Mr. Reed said.
“Trump is correct that if the party is going to succeed in 2024 and beyond, it has to own this,” he added. “We’ve got to have a plan, get on offense and portray the Democrats as the extremists.”
Pastor Jeffress said in an interview that he did not view Mr. Trump’s comments as a personal attack. The pastor of a 16,000-member church, Pastor Jeffress was one of the few political veterans who anticipated the sea change in conservative politics six years ago and was one of Mr. Trump’s early, prominent endorsers.
But, even now, he is hedging his bets in his neutrality.
After telling Newsweek in November that he was withholding an endorsement because “the Republican Party is headed toward a civil war that I have no desire or need to be part of,” Pastor Jeffress said on Wednesday that he had not endorsed a 2024 candidate in part because Mr. Trump had not asked.
Pastor Jeffress predicted that evangelicals would eventually coalesce around Mr. Trump, who, he said, “is most likely going to be the 2024 nominee.”
“I just don’t see the need for an endorsement right now — not because of any lack of enthusiasm for President Trump, but I think keeping my powder dry might be the best thing for the president,” Pastor Jeffress said. “Timing is everything, and I think it might be a little early to do that.”
Maybe the saving grace here - for us, not for Maggie Haberman - is that a lot of his followers have decided they can play Trump's divide-n-conquer game - or at least they're willing to take a shot at it. And maybe they're running up against another competing faction that wants to "get things back to normal".
Or or or.
Whatever it is, the thing that remains constant - for me - is this:
Plutocracy is definitely what we want,
we just had the wrong plutocrat.
Nerds Rule
It's the rebound that gets ya.
Stay with it - the demonstration at the end is a pretty good payoff.
Climate Change Stuff
Parts of Greenland now hotter than at any time in the past 1,000 years, scientists say
New research in the northern part of Greenland finds temperatures are already 2.7 degrees warmer than they were in the 20th century
The coldest and highest parts of the Greenland ice sheet, nearly two miles above sea level in many locations, are warming rapidly and showing changes that are unprecedented in at least a millennium, scientists reported Wednesday.
That’s the finding from research that extracted multiple 100-foot or longer cores of ice from atop the world’s second-largest ice sheet. The samples allowed the researchers to construct a new temperature record based on the oxygen bubbles stored inside them, which reflect the temperatures at the time when the ice was originally laid down.
“We find the 2001-2011 decade the warmest of the whole period of 1,000 years,” said Maria Hörhold, the study’s lead author and a scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany.
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Since warming has only continued since that time, the finding is probably an underestimate of how much the climate in the high-altitude areas of northern and central Greenland has changed. That is bad news for the planet’s coastlines, because it suggests a long-term process of melting is being set in motion that could ultimately deliver some significant, if hard to quantify, fraction of Greenland’s total mass into the oceans. Overall, Greenland contains enough ice to raise sea levels by more than 20 feet.
The study stitched together temperature records revealed by ice cores drilled in 2011 and 2012 with records contained in older and longer cores that reflect temperatures over the ice sheet a millennium ago. The youngest ice contained in these older cores was from 1995, meaning they could not say much about temperatures in the present day.
The work also found that compared with the 20th century as a whole, this part of Greenland, the enormous north-central region, is now 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer, and that the rate of melting and water loss from the ice sheet — which raises sea levels — has increased in tandem with these changes.
The research was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday by Hörhold and a group of researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute, the Neils Bohr Institute in Denmark and the University of Bremen in Germany.
The new research “pushes back the instrument record 1,000 years using data from within Greenland that shows unprecedented warming in the recent period,” said Isabella Velicogna, a glaciologist at the University of California at Irvine who was not involved in the research.
“This is not changing what we already knew about the warming signal in Greenland, the increase in melt and accelerated flow of ice into the ocean, and that this will be challenging to slow down,” Velicogna said. “Still, it adds momentum to the seriousness of the situation. This is bad, bad news for Greenland and for all of us.”
Scientists have posited that if the air over Greenland becomes warm enough, a feedback loop would ensue: The ice sheet’s melting would cause it to slump to a lower altitude, which would naturally expose it to warmer air, which would cause more melting and slumping, and so forth.
That this north-central part of Greenland is now 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in the 1900s does not necessarily mean the ice sheet has reached this feared “tipping point,” however.
Recent research has suggested that Greenland’s dangerous threshold lies at about 1.5 degrees Celsius or higher of planetary warming — but that is a different figure than the ice sheet’s regional warming. When the globe reaches 1.5C of warming on average, which could happen as soon as the 2030s, Greenland’s warming will probably be even higher than that — and higher than it is now.
Researchers consulted by The Washington Post also highlighted that the northern region of Greenland, where these temperatures have been recorded, is known for other reasons to have the potential to trigger large sea-level rise.
“We should be concerned about north Greenland warming because that region has a dozen sleeping giants in the form of wide tidewater glaciers and an ice stream … that awakened will ramp up Greenland sea-level contribution,” said Jason Box, a scientist with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
Box published research last year suggesting that in the present climate, Greenland is already destined to lose an amount of ice equivalent to nearly a foot of sea-level rise. This committed sea-level rise will only get worse as temperatures continue to warm.
The concern is focused on the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream, which channels a major portion — 12 percent — of the ice sheet toward the sea. It’s essentially a massive slow-moving river that terminates in several very large glaciers that spill into the Greenland Sea. It is already getting thinner, and the glaciers at its endpoint have lost mass — one of them, the Zachariae Isstrom, has also lost its frozen shelf that once extended over the ocean.
Recent research has also demonstrated that in past warm periods within Earth’s relatively recent history (i.e., the last 50,000 years or so), this part of Greenland has often held less ice than it does today. In other words, the ice stream might extend farther outward from the center of Greenland than can be sustained at current temperatures, and be strongly prone to moving backward and giving up a lot of ice.
“Paleoclimate and modeling studies suggest that northeast Greenland is especially vulnerable to climate warming,” said Beata Csatho, an ice sheet expert at the University at Buffalo.
In the same year when the researchers were drilling the ice cores on which the current work is based — 2012 — something striking happened in Greenland. That summer, in July, vast portions of the ice sheet saw surface-melt conditions, including in the cold and very high-elevation locations where the research took place.
“It was the first year it has been observed that you have melting in these elevations,” Hörhold said. “And now it continues.”
Four feet of sea level rise by 2100, just with the junk we've already dumped into the atmosphere.
600,000,000 people currently live near a coastline at less than 30 feet above sea level.
Think immigration is bad now? You ain't seen nuthin' yet.
Jan 18, 2023
No, Kyrsten
You are not "independent" - you are centrist.
You are not clear-eyed and pragmatic - you are coin-operated, and playing both ends from the middle.
And BTW, who the fuck dresses you? You look like some middle schooler trying to impress the other kids by showing up wearing après ski boots, to make sure someone asks about her weekend so she can brag about learning the Stem Christi turn at Vail on Saturday.
Brian Tyler Cohen
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