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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17743
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Oct 28, 2020 9:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

If the truth is not on your side—censor it.

Quote:
Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's acting chief scientist Craig McLean was ousted from his position after requesting that new political employees in the agency respect NOAA's scientific integrity policy. While McLean remains at the agency, he has been replaced by former Cato Institute researcher Ryan Maue and several other new officials with histories of questioning climate scientists, in what people close to the Trump administration say is an attempt to undercut NOAA's National Climate Assessment. (The New York Times)


This is why gybe likes Trump.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17743
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 9:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Even with Trump pimping for big carbon—renewables are growing. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/business/renewable-energy-coal.html

“...renewables are likely to expand nearly 50% by 2025...”
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17743
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sat Nov 21, 2020 11:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://earth.stanford.edu/news/warming-world-cape-towns-day-zero-drought-wont-be-anomaly#gs.m1r4cx
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isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Mon Nov 23, 2020 4:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Biden's choice for climate change czar has changed from AOC (thank God) to that great scientist John "Let's make sure Iran develops nukes" Kerry. Kerry has reportedly listed as his top advisor -- you can't make this shit up -- that great scientist Leonardo DaVinci ... oh, wait ... DiCaprio.

Oh, hell, who cares? We'll all be dead in just ten short more years, according to AOC.
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swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Mon Nov 23, 2020 5:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually, like I've said before, you ought to go back to the days where you knew nothing about politics, and could really care less about who's running the country. If I recollect correctly, during those times you didn't even vote.

Why stress yourself out during these later, and likely very precious days of your life? No doubt, financially you're whole in the scheme of things.

Far right wing media will be ablaze non-stop with nonsense about the Biden Administration for the next 4 years. When you think about it, keeping up the hate will be taxing and not very happy business overall.

In the back of my mind, I dwelled on Donald Trump winning the election, and actually entertained the idea of just turning the nonsense off and focusing on what's important to me in my later years. Keeping things very local and centered on life.

For you moving ahead, I think it's a good way to go.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17743
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Mon Nov 30, 2020 2:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Only one of the many ways that the carbon industry rakes the profits off the top and transfers the costs to the rest of us.

Quote:
POLITICO

By ZACK COLMAN

11/30/2020 04:30 AM EST

With its lively parks and colorful bungalows, Hialeah, Fla., has been the gateway to the American middle class for thousands of Cuban immigrants.

Hialeah was the place where home ownership, an unattainable goal under the Communist regime of their homeland, became a reality. And as in many American communities — rich and poor, of every ethnic makeup — the American dream for families in Hialeah was helped along by the taxpayer-funded mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Their willingness to purchase the loans on homes in the area provides local lenders with a steady flow of cash to invest in the community.


But behind the vibrant life in Hialeah is a troubling reality: flooding. Heavy rains overran the streets this year, last year — almost every year. And the problem is projected to get worse: Some scientists fear the city could be underwater within the lifetimes of some current residents.


Despite that grim prognosis, the federal government keeps pumping mortgage money into Hialeah, as it does in hundreds of other communities now facing grave dangers from climate change. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hold the majority of home mortgages in some Hialeah neighborhoods. More significantly, federal taxpayers hold greater than 60 percent of mortgages on homes in some areas outside the specially designated federal floodplain, according to an analysis of federal data by Amine Ouazad, an associate economics professor at Canadian business school HEC Montréal.

That’s important because being outside the so-called “100-year floodplain” means homes aren’t required to carry flood insurance. Thus, if the homes are damaged sufficiently that their owners can’t afford to fix them, and must abandon the property, the federal government gets stuck with the house. That’s a relatively small risk in a time of rising real estate values, when families can use their home equity to take out repair loans, but a potential economic disaster if home prices start to plunge and owners can’t find ways to make repairs on houses that are worth far less than their outstanding debt. And there are compelling reasons to believe that climate risks are starting to catch up to the real estate market in Hialeah and beyond.



Buyers and lenders are now able to assess the risks of climate change damage by using simple apps — a technological revolution that is placing a warning label on millions of properties from seaside New England to low-lying areas vulnerable to hurricanes across the Southeast to the arid, fire-prone hills of California. And once buyers start refusing to pay top dollar for such homes — and insurers stop underwriting policies on them — the more than trillion-dollar Fannie-Freddie portfolio could take an enormous hit, big enough to knock the economy into recession or worse.

“It never reaches the point of people really kind of being forward-thinking about this until the crisis is upon you or about to hit you in the face.”
—CLIFFORD ROSSI, FORMER SENIOR RISK OFFICER AT BOTH FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC
“It just has not reached that level of concern. And it never does, right?” Clifford Rossi, a former senior risk officer at both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, told POLITICO. “It never reaches the point of people really kind of being forward-thinking about this until the crisis is upon you or about to hit you in the face.”

POLITICO interviewed federal officials in charge of housing policy, decision-makers at major U.S. banks, former chief operatives at Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, investors in fixed-income securities like mortgage pools, analysts building new products that measure climate risk, think tank experts and academics to understand the political, scientific, technical and social complexities that have left the taxpayer-backed mortgage market suspended in time, unwilling or unable to prepare for the inevitability of property- and wealth-destroying climate change.

Hialeah is just a tiny part of a much larger risk pool, but it encapsulates the conundrum facing policymakers. Homeownership rates in the city are relatively low, at less than 46 percent. Meanwhile, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a congressionally approved mandate to put more people, especially those from traditionally underserved backgrounds, in homes of their own.

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A home sits along West 15th Street in Hialeah, Fla., on Oct. 16, 2020. The area is known to flood during rain storms. Bottom left: Rain clouds fill the sky over a cafe along Palm Avenue. Bottom right: Local business along Palm Avenue.
A home sits along West 15th Street in Hialeah, Fla., on Oct. 16, 2020. The area is known to flood during rain storms. Bottom left: Rain clouds fill the sky over a cafe along Palm Avenue. Bottom right: Local business along Palm Avenue.

Officials at the FHFA, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, maintain that taxpayers are protected by flood insurance requirements. Parts of Hialeah, though, don’t fall into the floodplain, a result of outdated maps that do not consider future flood scenarios arising from climate change — a problem that, policymakers maintain, is replicated in communities across the country. But pricing climate change into mortgage terms would wreak havoc in the real estate market — a hit that, while protective of taxpayers in the long run, runs counter to the missions of the relevant agencies. Turning off the mortgage spigot in communities affected by climate change would disproportionately affect people of color, whose neighborhoods are more likely to be plagued by violent weather.

The result, many current and former federal housing officials acknowledge, is a peculiar kind of stasis — a crisis that everyone sees coming but no one feels empowered to prevent, even as banks and investors grow far savvier about assessing climate risk.

The result is a peculiar kind of stasis – a crisis that everyone sees coming but no one feels empowered to prevent, even as banks and investors grow far savvier about assessing climate risk.
“At some point, it’s going to crystallize and everyone’s going to pull out” of homes facing climate risks, said Ed Golding, a former Freddie Mac executive who ran the Federal Housing Administration during the Obama administration. “It will be a crisis that will have to get everybody to react.”



For now, however, “There’s a tendency not to want to address these hard issues and we allow a lot of capital to go in” to at-risk neighborhoods, added Golding, who is now executive director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Golub Center for Finance and Policy.

Fannie Mae did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Freddie Mac referred POLITICO to FHFA.

The mortgage giants appear to be taking fledgling steps to understand the true cost of climate-threatened loans on their books. In June, Fannie Mae hired a vice president of climate-risk analytics. The agency previously issued a request for proposals to analyze climate exposure to homes that are outside the 100-year floodplain, and therefore do not require flood insurance coverage, which was first reported by POLITICO.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17743
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 12:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This morning's feed from Morning Consult:

Quote:
Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service reported that last month was the world's warmest November on record, with the average global temperature being 0.8 degree Celsius higher than the average from 1981 to 2010. Copernicus said 2020's global temperatures are roughly the same as those in 2016, which was the hottest year on record, and that this year is likely to be tied with 2016 or potentially the warmest year on record by a slim margin. (The New York Times)

Denmark announced it will end new oil and gas exploration in the service of its goal to be carbon neutral by 2050. The oil-producing country's parliament said it will reverse its planned licensing rounds in the North Sea, with climate, energy and supply minister Dan Jorgensen saying Denmark potentially intends to use retired oil and gas fields to store carbon dioxide. (The Wall Street Journal)

Following in the footsteps of General Motors Co., Nissan Motor Co. has withdrawn its backing of the Trump administration in a lawsuit over California setting its own vehicle emissions standards. The automaker said in a statement that it expects the industry can have productive conversations with California and President-elect Joe Biden's administration to "deliver a common-sense set of national standards that increases efficiency and meets the needs of all American drivers." (Bloomberg)

Iran has instructed its oil industry to boost production and sale of crude within three months in preparation for Biden's inauguration and the potential lifting of U.S. sanctions on Iran's exports if it returns to strict compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal according to state media. (Reuters)
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nw30



Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast

PostPosted: Fri Dec 11, 2020 1:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A very interesting article~
https://www.sciencealert.com/some-small-islands-are-growing-bigger-in-the-face-of-rising-seas-not-being-swallowed?

This doesn't even mention the new islands that are being formed by volcanic activity that also displaces water.
The more we think we know, the less we may have it all figured out.

Another interesting article~
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9029805/Geology-Hot-rock-rising-beneath-central-Greenland-melting-ice-below.html
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17743
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2020 3:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

As battery prices get lower and lower, we get closer to the days when Exxon joins buggy whip makers on the funeral pyre of bygone technologies.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17743
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Dec 23, 2020 12:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

How fast is the Greenland ice sheet melting?

Quote:
y
Chris Mooney
Dec. 23, 2020 at 7:23 a.m. PST
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The scientists prepped for their descent into the maw of the Greenland ice sheet by drilling deep into the ice. They created two intersecting holes into the bed of a now frozen-over ice river, running a rope through them in the shape of a V to anchor their lines. It would be more than strong enough to carry their weight, but they drilled a second anchor as well — just in case.

Then Matt Covington, a geologist and cave explorer who has spent more than a year of his life beneath the ground, was ready. He began to lower himself into the vertical cavern that, in the summer, fills with the chaos of a waterfall — a moulin. The sharp crampons on his boots gripped the ice. The fact that it was October now made the moulin a little safer, but Covington could still hear running water somewhere.

Below him, as he backed over the edge and looked down the shaft, he saw white ice, then bluer ice, then darkness. The hole, scientists believe, ultimately penetrates more than a half-kilometer into the ice, joining a network of channels extending all the way to the base of the ice sheet.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/12/23/climate-moulins-greenland/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F2dd0404%2F5fe370329d2fda0efb91bde0%2F5976d6ccade4e26514ba9956%2F32%2F68%2F5fe370329d2fda0efb91bde0
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