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<font size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b>February 23, 2023</b></i></font><font
face="Calibri"><br>
</font> <br>
<i>[ skirmish of dis-information ]</i><br>
<b>Republican Operatives Are Astroturfing Opposition to Solar Power</b><br>
A new report looks at a well-connected nonprofit that has been
helping grassroots groups across the country fight local solar
projects—with misinformation.<br>
By Molly Taft<br>
Feb 21, 2023<br>
Several grassroots groups opposed to solar projects in local areas
may have one thing in common: a Virginia-based group with powerful
GOP connections advising them on strategy. National Public Radio and
environmental news collective Floodlight published an expose Friday
on a group called Citizens for Responsible Solar, a nonprofit
founded in 2019, and its substantial influence in fighting renewable
energy across the country—and connections to polluters and prominent
climate deniers.<br>
<br>
The group, according to its website, says its purpose is to
“advocate for responsible solar policies that balance the demand for
renewable energy with the interests of counties and their
residents.” But as NPR reports, the founder of Citizens for
Responsible Solar, Susan Ralston, has a long resume in GOP politics
and relationships with conservative heavy-hitters—she worked for
both George W. Bush and Karl Rove. For her anti-solar groups work,
Ralston has hired staff members and consultants with similarly
strong ties to GOP political figures and dark money groups,
including Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative
Exchange Council...<br>
- -<br>
Some of the early advisors of this anti-solar group point to an
interest in spreading misinformation about renewable energy
projects. NPR reported that Ralston sought advice from well-known
renewable energy critic John Droz when setting up the Citizens for
Responsible Solar group. Droz is part of a Koch-backed climate
denial group and has been a longtime opponent of offshore wind,
drafting a memo in 2011 on PR tactics to push against renewables
that was shared at a DC meeting of anti-renewable energy interests;
the memo advised painting opposition to renewables as a
“groundswell” of local opposition rather than a coordinated
campaign. Echoes of misinformation detailed on Droz’s website is
presented on the Citizens for Responsible Solar site, including
unsubstantiated claims that solar projects ruin the land they’re
cited on.<br>
<br>
There’s been increasing scrutiny in recent months on who, exactly,
is paying for the pushback against renewable energy deployment.
Earlier this month, the newsletters HEATED and Distilled documented
some fossil fuel-funded forces at work in Michigan fighting against
renewable energy there. Meanwhile, groups like the Texas Public
Policy Foundation, which has long standing funding from polluters
and connections with climate deniers, has been helping to drive a
fight against offshore wind in—of all places—New England...<br>
- -<br>
“I think for years, there has been this sense that this is not all
coincidence. That local groups are popping up in different places,
saying the same things, using the same online campaign materials,”
Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center, told NPR and
Floodlight. “What that reflects is the unfortunate politicization of
climate change, the politicization of energy, and, unfortunately,
the political nature of the energy transition, which is really just
a necessary response to an environmental reality.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://gizmodo.com/citizens-for-responsible-solar-susan-ralston-npr-1850141936">https://gizmodo.com/citizens-for-responsible-solar-susan-ralston-npr-1850141936</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ Cotton, tampons, global warming, climate
meets economics. NYTimes ] </i><br>
</font> <font face="Calibri"><b>How Climate Change Is Making
Tampons (and Lots of Other Stuff) More Expensive</b><br>
Cotton farmers in Texas suffered record losses amid heat and
drought last year, new data shows. It’s an example of how global
warming is a “secret driver of inflation.”<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">By Coral Davenport<br>
Published Feb. 18, 2023<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">When the Agriculture Department finished its
calculations last month, the findings were startling: 2022 was a
disaster for upland cotton in Texas, the state where the coarse
fiber is primarily grown and then sold around the globe in the
form of tampons, cloth diapers, gauze pads and other products.<br>
<br>
In the biggest loss on record, Texas farmers abandoned 74 percent
of their planted crops — nearly six million acres — because of
heat and parched soil, hallmarks of a megadrought made worse by
climate change.<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">West Texas is the main source of upland cotton
in the United States, which in turn is the world’s third-biggest
producer and largest exporter of the fiber. That means the
collapse of the upland cotton crop in West Texas will spread
beyond the United States, economists say, onto the store shelves
around the world.<br>
<br>
“Climate change is a secret driver of inflation,” said Nicole
Corbett, a vice president at NielsenIQ. “As extreme weather
continues to impact crops and production capacity, the cost of
necessities will continue to rise.”<br>
<br>
Halfway around the world in Pakistan, the world’s sixth-largest
producer of upland cotton, severe flooding, made worse by climate
change, destroyed half that country’s cotton crop...<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">- -<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">Texas cotton offers a peek into the
future. Scientists project that heat and drought exacerbated by
climate change will continue to shrink yields in the Southwest —
further driving up the prices of many essential items. A 2020
study found that heat and drought worsened by climate change have
already lowered the production of upland cotton in Arizona and
projected that future yields of cotton in the region could drop by
40 percent between 2036 and 2065.<br>
<br>
Cotton is “a bellwether crop,” said Natalie Simpson, an expert in
supply chain logistics at the University at Buffalo. “When weather
destabilizes it, you see changes almost immediately,” Dr. Simpson
said. “This is true anywhere it’s grown. And the future supply
that everyone depends on is going to look very different from how
it does now. The trend is already there.”...<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">- -<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">Barry Evans, a fourth-generation cotton
farmer near Lubbock, Texas, doesn’t need a scientific report to
tell him that. Last spring, he planted 2400 acres of cotton. He
harvested 500 acres.<br>
<br>
“This is one of the worst years of farming I’ve ever seen,” he
said. “We’ve lost a lot of the Ogallala Aquifer and it’s not
coming back.”<br>
<br>
When Mr. Evans began farming cotton in 1992, he said, he was able
to irrigate about 90 percent of his fields with water from the
Ogallala. Now that’s down to 5 percent and declining, he said...<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">- -<br>
“Since the 1930s, government programs have been fundamental to
growing cotton,” Dr. Sumner said. “But there’s not a particular
economic argument to grow cotton in West Texas as the climate
changes. Does it make any economic sense for a farm bill in
Washington, D.C., to say, ‘West Texas is tied to cotton?’ No, it
doesn’t.”<br>
<br>
In the long run, it could just mean that cotton is no longer the
main ingredient in everything from tampons to textiles, said Mr.
Sumner, “and we’re all going to use polyester.”<br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/18/climate/climate-change-cotton-tampons.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/18/climate/climate-change-cotton-tampons.html</a><br>
</font>
<p><font face="Calibri">- -</font></p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ see source materials ]</i><br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><b>Forum for the Future - Cotton 2040</b><br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.forumforthefuture.org/cotton-2040">https://www.forumforthefuture.org/cotton-2040</a><br>
</font>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
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<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ future examination of physical reality ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><b>Ecologists Find Unexpected Feedback Loops
Could Complicate Fighting Climate Change</b></font><br>
<font face="Calibri">They could make it impossible to reverse.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">WRITTEN BY JON KELVEY</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">FEB. 20, 2023</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">“Climate models may be underestimating the
acceleration in global temperature change because they aren’t
fully considering this large and related set of amplifying
feedback loops,” Oregon State University postdoctoral researcher
and study co-author Christopher Wolf said in a statement.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">In their paper, Wolf and his co-author, Oregon
State University professor of ecology William Ripple, led an
international team in examining 47 different types of feedback
loops that could affect future climate change, some of which
increase warming, and some of which create a cooling effect, and
some of which have uncertain effects.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">The overall result of these interacting loops
is too hard to predict at this point, but Wolf and Ripple worry
that warming feedback loops could push the Earth's climate past
one or more tipping points that could “result in tragic climate
change outside the control of humans,” they write.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Ripple and Wolf studied and created a table of
41 climate feedback loops, geophysical and biological processes
that are driven by climate and which, in turn, drive climate
change in one way or another.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">An example of a physical feedback loop might be
Arctic sea ice, where ”warming in the Arctic leads to melting sea
ice, which leads to further warming because water has lower albedo
(reflectance) than ice,” Ripple and Wolf write in the paper. The
pair consider permafrost thawing, which releases carbon dioxide
and methane, as a biological feedback loop.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Some of the major positive feedback loops
(positive here meaning something that amplifies, not something
that has a positive outcome) they examined, loops that increase
global warming, are the aforementioned loss of Arctic sea ice, the
loss of glaciers, increasing water vapor in the atmosphere —which
has a greenhouse effect itself — and sea level rise, which further
lowers Earth's albedo. They found 27 positive feedback loops in
total.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">There are some negative feedback loops (meaning
things that promote stability), primarily the Planck loop, where
the more infrared energy escapes Earth into space the warmer the
climate becomes. Chemical weathering of rocks occurs when
atmospheric carbon dioxide mixes with rainwater, acidifying it and
removing atmospheric carbon, and this increases with carbon
dioxide levels. Increasing rainfall in places like the Sahara
desert, and increasing carbon dioxide levels worldwide, can lead
to more plant growth, which in turn sequesters carbon dioxide.
They found seven of these negative feedback loops that act to
balance climate change.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">Other feedback loops are more uncertain in
Ripple and Wolfs’ analysis such as how much the ocean can absorb
carbon dioxide by acidifying, or the effects of human-created
aerosols and mineral dust in the atmosphere. Some other studies
suggest aerosols and dust cool the climate, but predicting future
dust levels is difficult and humans are reducing levels of
industrial aerosols in the air, otherwise known as pollution,
because they are unhealthy for us. The researchers found seven of
these uncertain feedback loops...</font><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font><font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">First, scientists need to get much better at
measuring and modeling all of the Earth systems involved in
climate change, an effort that will require major changes of
approach within the scientific community, according to Ripple.<br>
<br>
“We need a rapid transition toward integrated Earth system science
because the climate can only be fully understood by considering
the functioning and state of all Earth systems together,” he said
in a statement. “This will require large-scale collaboration, and
the result would provide better information for policymakers.”<br>
<br>
Second, the work needs to get serious about the wide-ranging
shifts in land management, agriculture, energy, and transportation
necessary to reduce emissions to slow the pace of climate change,
particularly since feedback loops could present us with unpleasant
surprises.<br>
<br>
“It’s too late to fully prevent the pain of climate change, but if
we take meaningful steps soon while prioritizing human basic needs
and social justice, it could still be possible to limit the harm,”
said in a statement.<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.inverse.com/science/ecologists-find-unexpected-feedback-loops-that-could-complicate-fighting-climate-change">https://www.inverse.com/science/ecologists-find-unexpected-feedback-loops-that-could-complicate-fighting-climate-change</a></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"></font>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ Sustainability Week -- video of an
enthusiastic gathering ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> </font> <b>Solutions to save a dying planet</b><br>
Grantham Imperial<br>
Feb 22, 2023<br>
On Imperial's Sustainability Week 2023's biodiversity day, Grantham
Institute brought together staff and student speakers from across
Imperial's four Faculties to discuss the state of our natural world,
why nature is so important to our mental well-being, how nature can
help cities both mitigate and adapt to a warming climate, how
greater financial investment in nature can be generated and what
happened at the recent international biodiversity conference, COP15.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4DsNFloqPI">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4DsNFloqPI</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><font face="Calibri"><i>[ </i></font><font face="Calibri"><i>video
</i></font><font face="Calibri"><i>WION report -- impact of
climate change on sea level 7:30 ]</i><br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><b>Antarctica's 'doomsday glacier' is
in trouble | WION Climate Tracker</b><br>
WION<br>
7.29M subscribers<br>
Feb 16, 2023 #DoomsdayGlacier #Antarctica #WIONClimateTracker<br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IGngEJq4">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IGngEJq4</a></font></p>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
<font face="Calibri"> <i>[ See the photos, and watch out for
rising waters ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><b>In Pics: Doomsday glacier to crumble anytime
now, will lift global sea level by 3 metres</b><br>
Feb 21, 2023<br>
A new study has revealed that Antarctica’s doomsday glacier can
crumble anytime soon which could lift the sea level by 3 metres.
The 192,000 sq/km Thwaites Glacier is holding on “by fingernails
today”, warns British Antarctic Survey marine geophysicist Robert
Larter. Its implications for the world population will be much
greater-than-expected due to the lack of satellite data and
scientific resources in developing nations. The glacier is
increasingly getting weaker as warm water reaches its cracks and
crevices half a kilometre below its surface. However, scientists
are not sure when will this catastrophe happen. <br>
<br>
The Thwaites glacier is expected to collapse anytime between the
next 5 to 500 years. And once this collapses, it will lead the sea
level to rise by 65 cm within 100 years. However, that would be
just the start of a much bigger problem. The collapse of the
glacier will likely set a chain reaction in motion that will
further lift the sea level by 3 metres...<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/in-pics-doomsday-glacier-to-crumble-anytime-now-will-lift-global-sea-level-by-3-metres-564228/#asia-and-africa-among-the-worst-hit-continents-564227">https://www.wionews.com/photos/in-pics-doomsday-glacier-to-crumble-anytime-now-will-lift-global-sea-level-by-3-metres-564228/#asia-and-africa-among-the-worst-hit-continents-564227</a><br>
</font>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"> </font></p>
<font face="Calibri"> <br>
<i>[The news archive - looking back at the moment when wildfire
funding became necessary]</i><br>
<font size="+2"><i><b>February 23, 2014</b></i></font> <br>
February 23, 2014: <br>
The New York Times reports:<br>
<br>
"President Obama’s annual budget request to Congress will propose
a significant change in how the government pays to fight
wildfires, administration officials said, a move that they say
reflects the ways in which climate change is increasing the risk
for and cost of those fires.<br>
<br>
"The wildfire funding shift is one in a series of recent White
House actions related to climate change as Mr. Obama tries to
highlight the issue and build political support for his
administration’s more muscular policies, like curbing carbon
emissions from coal-fired power plants. On Monday, Mr. Obama plans
to describe his proposal at a meeting in Washington with governors
of Western states that have been ravaged recently by severe
drought and wildfires."<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/us/obama-to-propose-shift-in-wildfire-funding.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/us/obama-to-propose-shift-in-wildfire-funding.html</a><br>
<br>
<br>
</font>
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