The Environmental Watchdog MasterThread

OccultHawk · 10-31-2020, 11:44 PM

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A super typhoon slammed into the eastern Philippines with ferocious winds early Sunday and about a million people have been evacuated in its projected path, including in the capital where the main international airport was ordered closed.

“There are so many people who are really in vulnerable areas,” said Ricardo Jalad, who heads the government’s disaster-response agency. “We’re expecting major damage.”

Typhoon Goni hit the island province of Catanduanes at dawn with sustained winds of 225 kilometers (140 miles) per hour and gusts of 280 kph (174 mph) — equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane. It was blowing west toward densely populated regions, including Manila, and rain-soaked provinces still recovering from a typhoon that hit a week ago and left at least 22 dead.

Goddamn

Next:
Murder Hornets are a serious invasive species threat

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They pose a serious threat to honeybee populations, especially in late summer and early fall. Murder hornets can decapitate thousands of bees and destroy hives in a matter of hours — known as their "slaughter phase" — which would also have a catastrophic effect on the crops that the bees pollinate.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbs...dication-nest/

And Finally... Plastics:

Not so fun fact:

Each year enough plastic is discarded to build an all plastic Great Wall of China

OccultHawk · 11-27-2020, 05:50 AM

Punishing hurricanes to spur more Central American migration (from @AP) https://apnews.com/article/f7071e362...8d06e9c4bb341f

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The hurricanes’ destruction comes on top of the economic paralysis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the persistent violence and lack of jobs that have driven families north from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in great numbers during recent years.

...

Among the hardest-hit areas was Honduras’ north, the country’s most productive agricultural region. The Sula Valley reported massive crop losses raising fears of food shortages. Damaged businesses mean fewer jobs.

Thousands of homes were destroyed and the infamous gang violence has not relented. Some residents around San Pedro Sula reported gangs charging a tax to boats trying to rescue people from flooded neighborhoods.

Mauro Verzeletti, director of the Casa del Migrante in Guatemala City, said the storms will increase poverty on top of the violence people already faced, forcing more to migrate.

Every hurricane season is worse than the last and there’s no end in sight. It’s an apocalypse down there.

Food insecurity has already become a serious problem in the US. African regions are on the cusp of famines that will rival the worst 20th century monsters.

But don’t worry the ingenious minds cultivated by capitalism have got this. They’re going to build a machine with computers and ****.

Apple and Google named in US lawsuit over Congolese child cobalt mining deaths

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.the...-mining-deaths

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The world’s soaring demand for cobalt is at times met by workers, including children, who labor in harsh and dangerous conditions. An estimated 100,000 cobalt miners in Congo use hand tools to dig hundreds of feet underground with little oversight and few safety measures, according to workers, government officials and evidence found by The Washington Post during visits to remote mines. Deaths and injuries are common. And the mining activity exposes local communities to levels of toxic metals that appear to be linked to ailments that include breathing problems and birth defects, health officials say.

Washington Post

Lisnaholic · 11-29-2020, 06:56 AM

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Originally Posted by OccultHawk

From about two weeks ago:

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Climate science denier appointed to top position at NOAA
David Legates, a longtime climate change skeptic, has been appointed by the Trump administration to help run the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency charged with producing "much of the climate research funded" by the government, The Washington Post reports.

Today:

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The chief of staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fired the agency’s acting chief scientist after the latter asked Donald Trump’s appointees to acknowledge NOAA’s scientific integrity policy, The New York Times reports. Craig McLean, the acting chief scientist at NOAA, sent an email last month to several new employees at NOAA who had been installed by the Trump administration requesting their acknowledgement of the agency’s rules that prohibit changing research and data to fit a political agenda. Dr. Erik Noble, the newly appointed NOAA chief of staff and a former White House policy adviser, wrote back, “Respectfully, by what authority are you sending this to me?” McLean said that his job as acting chief scientist entailed maintaining ethics across NOAA. Noble responded the next day, “You no longer serve as the acting chief scientist for NOAA. Thank you for your service.” In McLean’s stead, Noble hired Ryan Maue, a former researcher for a libertarian think tank. Maue has previously said scientists have made overly dire predictions about climate change.

Hurricanes are hoax! Fake news!
I know this old but it’s still astonishing. He extends the cone with a magic marker.

I honestly believe any previous president would have been impeached and removed from office on the grounds of incompetence and mental instability for that. With Trump it was like a half day news cycle. If Trump is re-elected I bet they’ll stop tracking hurricanes altogether. People on the Gulf Coast will claim hurricanes aren’t real even after their homes are destroyed. Think that’s ridiculous? We have people here who have lost a parent to covid and still call it a hoax. That’s the truth.

I totally agree with your sense of outrage here, OH. It's bewildering to me what Trump can get away with on the two fronts you mention:-
I. blatant, provable public lying On this topic, I read something about how the USSR operated in Stalin's era: that the point of Stalin's lies was not to get people to believe them, but that Stalin was saying, "This is how powerful I am; I can lie like this and there is no-one to stop me." And here's a description of Stalin's personality that sounds strangely familiar:

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Stalin was ruthless,[780] temperamentally cruel,[781] and ...He lacked compassion,[782].He was capable of self-righteous indignation,[785] and was resentful,[786] vindictive,[787] and vengeful, holding onto grievances against others for many years.[788]... he was also suspicious and conspiratorial, prone to believing that people were plotting against him and that there were vast international conspiracies behind acts of dissent.[789] He never attended torture sessions or executions,[790] although Robert Service (biographer) thought Stalin "derived deep satisfaction" from degrading and humiliating people and keeping even close associates in a state of "unrelieved fear".[716] Service suggested he had a paranoid or sociopathic personality disorder.[762]

II. Destroying the credibility of public agencies. The CDC, DOJ and NOAA have turned out to be so vulnerable when exposed to the simple process of putting a Trump guy in charge. Their reputations are now in shreds, and that item about McLean losing his job for insisting on scientific integrity is particularly chilling. It's happening now, people! Trump is waging war on the Scientific Method, which is what led us out of the dark ages into what we proudly consider the age of Enlightenment. Trump and his enablers are now turning back the clock, so we can expect this upcoming announcement from NOAA: During a recent storm, Satan came to earth and inseminated Joe Biden - that's how he won Georgia.

OccultHawk · 01-29-2021, 05:22 AM

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Globally, the abundance of oceanic sharks and rays dropped more than 70% between 1970 and 2018, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

And 24 of the 31 species of sharks and rays are threatened with extinction, while three species — oceanic whitetip sharks, scalloped hammerhead sharks and great hammerhead sharks — are considered critically endangered.

The AP

My first thought was that human encroachment was probably the cause but since over-population isn’t thing (we can fit 20 billion people in Montana don’t you know) I wonder wtf is happening...

OccultHawk · 02-07-2021, 07:12 AM

Indian authorities launched a search operation Sunday after part of a mountain glacier broke, sending a massive flood of water and debris slamming into two dams and damaging a number of homes. At least nine people were killed and 140 were missing.

The AP

https://www.google.com/amp/s/api.nat...-change-report

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Across the high mountain region, which stretches from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east, air temperatures have risen by nearly two degrees Fahrenheit since the start of the 20th century—and the cold temperatures have warmed up faster than in the rest of the world. In response, glaciers are retreating; permafrost is melting; and weather patterns are becoming more erratic, disrupting previously reliable water sources for millions and instigating more natural disasters.

Anteater · 04-30-2021, 11:56 AM

One of the best videos I've seen in awhile on this subject.

Psy-Fi · 07-13-2021, 02:58 AM

E.P.A. Approved Toxic Chemicals for Fracking a Decade Ago, New Files Show

Psy-Fi · 07-14-2021, 06:03 AM

US drilling approvals increase despite Biden climate pledge

~~jwb~~ · 07-14-2021, 06:38 AM

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Originally Posted by Anteater

One of the best videos I've seen in awhile on this subject.

video sucks bruh

Lisnaholic · 07-14-2021, 07:22 AM

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Originally Posted by Anteater

One of the best videos I've seen in awhile on this subject.

I personally wouldn't rate this video as highly as you have, Anteater, but it was certainly interesting: a sober look at some statistics, and a reminder that making climate projections is is a very difficult thing to do with any degree of accuracy.

They make a good case for the idea that 12 years, 2030 and 1.5° are not the fixed points-of-no-return that some politicians are suggesting. The UN report your video clip looks at shows that the science is more complicated than that, but of course it's in the nature of political discourse that public speakers are going to look for an easy-to-digest soundbite in among the statistics.

If 1.5° by 2030 is a worst-case-scenario, as your video suggests, I think it's still a valid enough figure to work to. After all, some kind of worst-case-scenario is the usual design parametre when it comes to matters that involve public safety: aircraft design, building design, etc.

I thought the argument presented in the video was at it's weakest on these points:-
(i) Too much reliance on the opinion of the one guy, Aaron Brown/ Bowen?
(ii) His idea that climate protection measures are going to do harm is partly based on his guess that governments are going to employ radical measures to keep below that much touted figure of 1.5°. He mentions the risks of using pellets to scatter sunlight, of injecting aerosols into the atmosphere. I'm not sure that's ever going to happen. To me, that sounds like a scenario out of a Superman comic in which the world acts in unison against a common threat. My own guess about how the world will behave? Paris Agreement or not, quick profit, self-interest and inertia will mean that any global response will continue to be slow and patchy.

If there's a choice between scaring people into action now, and a policy of don't-worry-so-muchism, I'm strongly in favour of the former on the issue of global warming, given that it is such a huge and unpredictable monster of a problem. Plenty of evidence of the up-coming disaster: the recent "heat dome" in western US/Canada, and the 20-year-drought that is hitting the Lake Mead reservoir are just two alarming examples.

Bottom line: my advice is better safe than sorry.