Reaping the wind has come quite a way from the windmills of yore that provided the power to grind grain. Wind power now consists of spindly propeller-driven turbines that generate electricity from gusts.
Category: Environment
Global warming is just one aspect of the man-made major mass extinction event underway but is the facet upon which the most attention has been paid. Here’s a summary of the modeling effort and a prediction of fate.
The demise of humanity from accelerating climate change seems certain before the next century dawns and may come within the next 50 years. Those who dispute this prediction are riding a legacy of dither and denial championed by the political establishment for the past 6 decades.
Though the cause of human self-extinction may be singularly attributed to unsustainable lifestyles, it involves so much more than just “climate change.”
The trend of global warming is baked in for decades because oceans absorb >90% of the thermal energy from greenhouse gas emissions. This heat atmospherically equilibrates over a 30+-year period.
Wildfires, which are becoming more intense and frequent, are accelerating global warming in a fierce feedback loop.
Concern about self-extinction via industrial pollution and the rape of Nature has been eased by falsities. Humanity is being doomed by bad data and irresponsible reportage.
The warmth of a planet partly depends on its albedo: how much of its starlight is reflected back into space (as opposed to absorbed). The higher the albedo, the cooler the planet. Earth’s albedo has been dropping.
Comparing 2019 to 2005 – a brief 14-year span – Earth trapped twice as much heat. Global warming is accelerating at a frightening pace.
When trying to solve a problem involving patterns, people think of adding but not subtracting – a bias with wide-ranging implications.
Countries and corporations are pledging to get to “net zero” carbon emissions in the not-too-distant future. The promise rings hollow.
For a half century, doomsters have predicted the end of the world. On the opposite pole, climate change deniers increasingly seem psychotic. But optimists still hold sway: that human ingenuity can solve what selfsame ingenuity created. When does a cliffhanger become a tragic fall – or a last-minute miracle salvation?
Driven by the wind, the gyres of ocean circulation play a vital role in the marine biosphere and regulating weather & climate. Global warming is changing the way ocean gyres work.
A mass extinction event is well underway, propagated by a burgeoning human population which has raped Nature with technological marvels in the name of ‘progress’.
2020 will mostly be remembered as the year of the covid-19 pandemic, but so much more served as a harbinger of the doom which lies ahead.
The first creatures to evolve on land, insects have a crucial presence on Earth. Their passing presages our own doom.
Cyclones are lasting longer on land and accelerating global warming.
Overfishing typifies the capitalist approach to natural resources: exploit until exhaustion. Governments subsidize the effort.
Climate change befell and extinguished ancestors of humanity.
The world’s largest river basin, Amazonia once had half of the world’s rainforest. The Amazon is quickly being reduced to wooded patches and scrub lands.
The world is rapidly hotting up. Heatwaves are frequenting in an accelerating trend. The toll on trees is severe, killing off the greatest terrestrial carbon sink.
Vehicles are a major contributor to polluting emissions which damage health and foster global warming. So too are the asphalt roads which they ride upon.
There is no simple formula for how fast Earth is hotting up. If there were, 2 key components in the equation would be greenhouse gas emissions and temperature sensitivity to those emissions. Those 2 factors suggest that Earth is racing toward hellish heat.
The hype that electric vehicles are environmentally preferable to petrol-powered cars is untrue.
The heat waves happening across the world this year are just a warming up of what’s to come. The most profound aspect of events is how nothing is being done to adapt.