There is a weird phenomenon I've witnessed quite often in the climate discourse, and that I try to pin down in the essay linked below. Sometimes it feels like Westerners merely try to calm themselves by saying that they're not going to be the ones who will be affected the worst by climate change. Pure hopium, if you ask me. Everyone will be affected, just in different ways. But to think that the Global North will remain relatively unaffected while the Global South bears the brunt is a dangerous illusion, as this years' summer shows.

There is no ‘Safe Haven’ from Climate Change
https://animistsramblings.substack.com/p/safe-haven-climate-change

Disclaimer: if you’re suffering from eco-anxiety, solastalgia or a similar mental health issue perfectly reasonable reaction to the collapse of everything you hold dear, this article might be a trigger for you. Proceed at your own risk.

neal stephenson (popularni autor vedecke sci-fi) vydava roman, řeší tam síru

Climate change is real. It’s going to be devastating. It already is devastating, but it’s only getting warmed up,” says author Neal Stephenson, speaking from his home in Seattle on an especially hot day.

Global warming is at the heart of the 61-year-old science fiction author’s new novel, Termination Shock (Morrow, Nov.). The techno thriller is set in the not-too-distant future, when the effects of climate change—roaming droves of feral pigs, superstorms, global pandemics—have become so devastating that something drastic has to be done, immediately. Eccentric billionaire T.R. Schmidt, owner of a monstrously successful chain of truck stop restaurants, believes he’s just the man for the job. So, in an attempt to mitigate the problem, he builds a giant gun to shoot the cache of sulfur he’s been hoarding into space. That’s when things get weird.

..

For Termination Shock, though, Stephenson wanted to do more than predict a possible future: he wanted to shed light on an almost certain one—a future in which climate change has devastated the planet. Speaking just days after the UN released a report validating the novel’s premise—that humans are indisputably to blame for climate change and are also the only ones who can stop it—the author explained why writing about this topic felt so pressing.

“Climate change is going to lead to war,” he says. “It’s going to lead to refugee movements on a huge scale, and to mass extinctions, and all kinds of other disasters. These are all real possibilities that I think need to be kind of dragged out into the open and made part of our conversation.”

To ensure Termination Shock would have its intended impact, Stephenson chose the novel’s setting carefully. If it feels like the dystopia depicted could just as easily be tomorrow as a century into the future, that’s by design. Stephenson aims to set his stories in a sweet spot that feels futuristic yet contemporary.

...

With Termination Shock, Stephenson was faced with another balancing act. He had to juggle the overwhelming notion that we’ve essentially destroyed the planet beyond repair, while presenting a possible solution. To do so, he had to find a way to address, for the layperson, the potential benefits of using the solar geo-engineering technology discussed in the book. He wanted to distill the theoretical benefits of actually engaging that technology, and the potentially dire consequences of halting it.

As with all of the complex subjects Stephenson tackles, he was up for the challenge. “We’re in this predicament with climate change: it’s such a vast topic that it’s hard even for experts to wrap their heads around,” he says. “So to the extent that I can raise some questions and tell some stories around it, in a hopefully approachable way, maybe that has some value.”

Termination Shock: A Novel - Kindle edition by Stephenson, Neal. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0941WBTYL/

Arctic climate change may not be making winter jet stream weird after all
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/07/31/arctic-climate-change-jetstream-winter/

Screen and Blackport suggest that the connection between Arctic sea ice loss and extreme midlatitude events is real, but not necessarily causal. Instead, they argue, a third factor — most likely large-scale changes in atmospheric circulation that may not be permanent — is probably driving both the sea ice loss and the extreme winter events.

...

Mann said in an email, “I think the jury is still very much out. And I applaud both ‘camps’ for continuing to examine the best available data and models to get to the bottom of this. Eventually, this work will converge toward a scientific consensus.

Jeste k Planet of Humans:

A new documentary released by Michael Moore, Jeff Gibbs and Ozzie Zehner, Planet of the Humans, slots neatly into pre-existing demand for content that uses misinformation to frame humanity as a virus.
Part of reason it serves this purpose so well is that the density of falsehoods is incredible. Every re-encounter brings a new discovery. It is the gift that keeps on taking.
Since I published my first post on this, a litany of new errors, has emerged, partly covered here. In further interviews, the filmmakers botch the basic energy math even worse than the film. One scene, where it’s alleged solar enthusiasts ‘faked’ solar power for a festival was, it turns out, seemingly filmed in 2005 (two years prior to the release of Apple’s iPhone). Another, larger event presented as being falsely powered by a nearby solar field was in 2015 (Moore says it was ‘last year‘), and that solar field was only ever marketed by organisers as powering a small nearby pavilion.
One interviewee, Richard York, whose research suggesting renewables don’t displace fossil fuels was featured in the film, has since told media that “over the past decade, there have been more serious efforts”. The filmmakers had erased the date on the 2012 paper from the graphic on screen. Another interviewee, Richard Heinberg, revealed his interview occur.
...
They filmmakers complain that the mineral and mining footprint for things like electric vehicles is non-zero. This is true of any manufactured object, so their argument is, very simply, the disavowal of any technology, of any type, scale and ownership, for any component of climate action. Community owned wind? Not allowed. Rooftop solar? It’s made from quartz, so no. Low income electricity bill reduction through locally-owned batteries? Not a chance; lithium is mined by skinny kids. Didn’t you see the montage?
The oft-repeated gripe the filmmakers cite is “the story that climate change plus green technology equals were saved. It’s not the correct story”. But no one is telling this tale. They are shadowboxing their own imagined parody of environmentalism.
The only explanation for this weird faux-argument is that wind and solar were prominent in the early 2010s. Electricity is the fruit that hangs lowest on the list of climate actions, and wind and solar shot ahead of competitors around 2005 – 2010.
Everyone else moved on. A variety of tools form a major part of the plans of nearly everyone playing in this space. The International Energy Agency’s ‘Sustainable Development Scenario’ lays out one potential mix of actions to get us where we need here:



The great giving up (and the film that made it worse) – Ketan Joshi
https://ketanjoshi.co/2020/05/08/the-great-giving-up-and-the-film-that-made-it-worse/

TADEAS: TUHO:

The extreme oldness of this documentary stands out. In one instance, he tours a solar farm in Lansing, Michigan, in which a bemused official states that a large farm can only power ten homes in a year.
It is the Cedar Street Solar Array, a 150 kilowatt 824 (that’s small) panel farm in downtown Lansing. Guess when that bad boy was built? 2008. Twelve years ago – an absolute eternity, in solar development years.
As PV Magazine writes, “The film reports on a solar installation in Michigan with PV panels rated at “just under 8 percent” conversion efficiency. It’s difficult to identify the brand of panel in the film (Abound?) — but that efficiency is from another solar era”. Efficiency gains in solar have been so rapid that by leaving the dates off his footage he is very actively deceiving the audience. The site generates 64-64 MWh a year, according to the owner – a more recent installation in the same area generates around 436. The footage really is from another era. It’s like doing a documentary on the uselessness of mobile phones but only examining the Motorola Ultrasleek.
Later, they visit the Solar Energy Generating System (SEGS) solar farm, only to feign sadness and shock when they discover it’s been removed, leaving a dusty field of sand. In the desert. “Then Ozzie and I discovered that the giant solar arrays had been razed to the ground”, he moans. “It suddenly dawned on me what we were looking at. A solar dead zone”.
Which is a weird one, because the latest 2020 satellite imagery shows a site full of solar arrays, and a total absence of any “dead zones”. The damn thing is generating electricity.

Planet of the humans: A reheated mess of lazy, old myths – Ketan Joshi
https://ketanjoshi.co/2020/04/24/planet-of-the-humans-a-reheated-mess-of-lazy-old-myths/