Termites in the Support Beams: Ecosystem services and biodiversity loss

The chaos of the Trump administration has given us some insight to what it will be like to deal with the escalating crises of climate change. There is so much going on that a lot is getting lost in the desperate attempts of our media to report on everything. It seems to be an effective way to confuse public opinion, and could well be the soundtrack for the downfall of our attempt at something like a liberal democracy.

Likewise, as the planet warms, more and more attention will rightly be paid to big events – storms that push the rising seas farther inland than ever before, or killer heat waves, or the troubles of climate refugees, or the wars sparked by climate-driven desperation. As all of that is happening, however, there will be other problems with more subtle effects. We are surrounded by plants and animals most people never think about, and some of them play important roles in our lives without any direct interaction. [Read more…]

Hansen Was Right: Checking up on past predictions

One of the most persistent lines of misinformation about climate science has to do with how long the field has existed. In the interest of repeating accurate information and NOT repeating lies, the clearest”father” of climate science is Joseph Fourier, mostly for his work in the 1820s.

The chief rebuttal to this particular line of propaganda is simple and compelling. The theory of man-made global warming is, and always has been a predictive hypothesis based on hard data. Our understanding of the physics driving global warming predates the idea that our own activities could increase the planet’s temperature by 40 years or so (Tyndall’s work in the 1860s), and the idea that our activities could increase the temperature predates the detectable rise in temperature by around 90 years.

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Information Overload, Transition Town Edition: Well-behaved activists seldom make history

When Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote her famous quote in 1976, she was referring to the massive, under appreciated good done by women who will never get the credit they deserve. Time has showed the truth of her words, and I think they can be applied to people working for systemic change as well.

In this time of near constant over-stimulation, it’s easy to miss a lot of what is going on in the world. This point has come up a lot when pointing to the many layers of conniving, corruption, and cruelty in the modern Republican Party, but it applies to good things as well. Case in point: the Transition Town movement. [Read more…]

“If we’re going to invest billions of dollars in space, please let us do it intelligently?”

Rebecca Watson has a response to Trump’s “Space Force”, and it’s worth your time.

Transcript

Whatever they once were, the GOP has become entirely dependent on viewing other individual humans as the biggest danger to white men America, to the exclusion of all else. If you try to talk about dangers like climate change, the focus is immediately redirected away from anything that would require a change in the status quo to the scary terrorists illegal alie- Oh.

Has anybody checked to make sure that Trump doesn’t think Men in Black is a documentary?

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Presenting His Holiness Saint Ray the Cat

It’s hot and humid today, and my cat is cute. Please enjoy these pictures of him cuddling with his new favorite thing:

Apologies for the poor picture quality. Trust me when I say the blur makes my kitchen look better.

The picture shows His Holiness St. Ray the Cat snoozing with his paws on an ice pack. He is very cute and fuzzy.

His Holiness St. Ray the Cat

If you found this post useful or enjoyable, please share it, and please consider becoming a patron over at my Patreon page. Your donations make this blog possible, and even as little as one dollar per month adds up to make a difference. If you feel you can afford more than that, you can get access to all sorts of other content and perks! Your patronage allows me to put more of my time and energy into making this blog a useful resource. Thanks for reading!

 

“Even the gods were frightened by the Flood, and retreated, ascending to the heaven of Anu.”

The past is prologue. Our understanding of how CO2 levels relate to global temperature came out of 19th-century scientists studying the newly discovered Ice Age. In the generations since, our studies of how the last Ice Age ended showed us monstrous flooding as vast bodies of meltwater were released by crumbling walls of ice to rush across the planet carving out huge rivers, and global sea levels rose hundreds of feet in a matter of a couple centuries.

The past is prologue, and the ice is melting. The flood is coming, and we are not prepared.

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American Police Logic: Threaten to kill someone first if they try to kill themselves.

Montgomery County Police Department got a call that Chelsea Manning might be trying to kill herself. Because law enforcement is currently the ONLY tool we have to deal with this sort of thing, the police were sent to check up on her. So far so good enough. When she didn’t answer the door, they broke in. Again, I don’t really have a problem with this. If someone is in the process of dying, then breaking in to save them is a good idea. This is where things take a disturbing and depressingly familiar turn – when they got her door opened, they entered with three drawn guns and a drawn taser. Manning wasn’t home, but I have to wonder what the outcome would have been if she was. Again – they entered the apartment of someone they thought was suicidal with guns drawn and aimed ahead of them: [Read more…]

If satellites can see plants glow, why oh why can’t I?

One factor that’s not often discussed in the fight against the greed-funded climate denial campaign is photosynthesis. Well, I should qualify. Some deniers never shut up about photosynthesis, but they don’t really address the ways in which photosynthesis really matters to us with regard to climate change. Among its other roles, it can also be a tool for managing our impact on the planet’s climate system. Given enough water, plants are really good at pulling in CO2 and binding it in cellulose. If we were to really set ourselves to it, the machinery of industrialized agriculture could be put to work harvesting and sequestering CO2.

Even so, the much larger amount of photosynthesis in the natural world is more important, both as a CO2 sink, and as a potential source. This is just one reason why being able to accurately estimate the total photosynthetic activity of the planet helps us keep an eye on how the foundation for our existence is doing. I knew that scientists were using satellites to estimate photosynthetic activity, but what I didn’t know is that they’ve been doing it by measuring the glow given off by the process of photosynthesis: [Read more…]

This Week in “Free Market” Capitalism: Government-picked winners

It probably comes as no surprise to any of my readers, but the GOP has decided to order utilities to buy electricity from coal even if it’s more expensive than other sources of energy:

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