More deadly than asteroids

Nature Bats Last: "I’m often told Earth can’t possibly be responsive enough to climate change to make any difference to us. But, as the 27 May 2014 headline at Skeptical Science points out, “Rapid climate changes more deadly than asteroid impacts in Earth’s past.” That’s correct: climate change is more deadly than asteroids."

Cars kill

One of only 80 Amur leopards left in the wild survives being hit by car: https://t.co/vSCQMDQWUY pic.twitter.com/raKFnTB54Z

— Extinction Symbol (@extinctsymbol) December 17, 2017

Civilization is a heat engine

Heat vs Emissions

The earth receives energy from the sun. The energy not reflected away is stored, or converted to heat and sent back out. There is a top limit to how fast energy can be sent back out -- a fixed amount based on area of the surface and the rate of heat transfer.

Carbon in the atmosphere reduces the amount reflected, so more energy has to be stored or sent back out.

Even if humans add no carbon to the blanket, the earth will still get warmer if animal life turns energy into heat faster than the rate of sending out.

If humans can reduce carbon in the atmosphere, more energy will be reflected instead of trapped. But reducing emissions is not exactly the same as reducing carbon. To reduce carbon, emissions must be negative. Negative means that more carbon must be taken out than added. Reducing emissions to any rate greater than or equal to zero does not reduce trapping. And if the process of reducing those emissions requires increased use of energy, that energy generates heat which must be subtracted from the supposed benefits of reducing trapping.

Privatized Transport: Social Inequalities and the Neglect of Public Transit

Global Research: "The basic ability for people to get from one place to another – whether for work, family or leisure – has been totally gutted in recent decades. We’re now almost entirely reliant on the neoliberalized ‘solutions’ of privatized cars and airplanes, marked by rabid union-busting in the workplaces, the emitting of massive amounts of greenhouse gases and considerable financial costs to people who have no other reasonable option available to get around."

Abrupt #climatechange is here

Stopping emissions would help, but we won't even do that

https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2

Global warming has reached the point where direct death from heat is already killing us in significant numbers. Temperature/humidity combinations that are deadly range from 35C/100% to 47C/50%.

Stopping human carbon emissions is not enough. We have already started feedback loops that release naturally stored carbon.

Meanwhile all human activity, regardless of fuel source, generates heat: vehicles, roads, buildings, stainless steel, cement, etc, and that heat will continue to be generated for maintenance, even if all done by wind and solar.

One can argue that if we stop emissions and growth, the amount of heat from human metabolism is a very small percent. But we cannot even get to that argument because we have not even slowed the growth of emissions, let alone stop them.

Seoul to provide free public transport, depending on fine dust level

koreaherald : "Seoul Metropolitan Government will be providing free public transportation to citizens starting in November amid rising health concerns due to heavy fine dust saturation within the metropolitan area.

Free public transportation during commuting hours will be provided starting on Nov. 20, depending on the fine dust level in the city. "

Town in France finds #freepublictransport a big success

CityLab : "In 2015, Vergriete’s administration launched free weekend service. It was a popular move: Saturday ridership increased by 30 percent, and Sunday ridership by some 80 percent. People loved it, telling local media that they saved money and time by avoiding the stress of parking."

Why are we doomed?

We humans, along with most complex life, are going extinct soon.

We are locked into capitalism and growth.

With fossil-fuel, we have built a lot of roads, vehicles, ships, planes and buildings. Creating and maintaining our things requires energy and releases it as heat. This is true no matter what source of energy.

The amount of heat already generated has fired the clathrate gun. Methane is being released. We are no longer in control of green-house-gas emissions.

All we can do now is seek justice and try to care for each other.

Go big or go home, The Case for Free Public Transit

torontoist : "I say, go big or go home: In 2009, the economist Irwin Kellner argued in a MarketWatch column that public transit should be free. The sociologist Eric Olin Wright has made the same case. Free. Now we’re talking.

Kellner argued that we shouldn’t think of transit as a business that needs to recover its costs from its income. Public transit is not a closed system. It’s a service that feeds the entire economy and enables a society to thrive, because it provides that essential urban good: mobility."

Fund public transport, not highways

Opinion | host.madison.com: "Dear Editor: As a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I organize my life around a set of priorities. At the top of that list is education, slightly below is affording that education, then food, sleep, friends, and so on. Potentially shockingly, owning a car is not on that list at all.

In Madison, I spend most of my travel time biking, some walking, a small portion busing, and almost no time travelling in a car. This transportation lifestyle is possible because of the highly functioning systems of bike lanes, walking paths, and public buses in and around the UW-Madison campus, but without these systems, getting from place to place would be stressful, time consuming, and much more expensive.

Last week a plan to expand three miles of the I-94 highway is Milwaukee was cancelled. If you’d asked what I thought about this decision before I’d moved to Madison I would have had no opinion, but now I am glad that the project was halted. The community would be much better served by a whole-scale expansion of public transportation options than by wasting $1 billion to expand just three miles of road. Not only would this reduce transit times, but it would also make transportation less expensive and more accessible to everyone regardless of socioeconomic class, age, or physical ability.

I prefer public over private transportation and I hope the money intended for the highway expansion will, instead, be put toward creating transportation options that will benefit all people."

Free public transit a growing global movement

rcinet.ca : "He says it all began with the example of Bologna, Italy.

Following the Second World War, the city council was keen to engage the citizens and rethink the role of the automobile.

“It was through these public consultations that they embarked on about a year and a half experiment in free public transportation as part of a battery of other things they did to really return the city-centre, this beautiful old city-centre, to the people and to the pedestrians and bicycles and anything but automobiles.”

Prince says it was this model that worked in Bologna that was then exported to many cities around the world, including Montreal, which began pushing the idea in the 1970’s.

The demand for free public transit is renewed now due to the combined developments of growing inequality and urban poverty as well as the climate crisis and the dependence on fossil fuels."



'via Blog this'

Arctic News: Extreme weather is upon us

Arctic News: "Extreme weather is upon us. Global warming is increasing the intensity, occurrence, size, duration and impact of many catastrophic events, including wildfires, droughts, heat waves, cold snaps, storms, lightning, flooding and seismic events such as earthquakes and associated tsunamis."

Americans use chemcial weapons in Deir-ez-Zor

Seemorerocks: "Syria has confirmed that the US led coalition whose very presence in Syria is illegal according to international law, has recently dropped white phosphorus munitions over a village in Deir ez-Zor."

US strategy in MENA backfiring badly, will get worse

US has used Kurdish nationalism to maintain access to Iraq oil. It has allowed Islam to prop up Saudi Arabia. It has cultivated an aura of human rights by appearing to care about civilians.

Things aren't working so they are flipping the chess board and scattering the pieces. The KRG will be sacrificed, the KSA will become a brothel, and they have already unleashed maximum civilian killing by the military.

They are desperate. They will spend all their political capital and printed money and last of their good will and lose.

China is waiting impatiently. 

US wildfires not getting much corporate media coverage

Seemorerocks : "Unusually bad wildfires have been blazing in the Western United States, leaving areas across Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Wyoming choking on harmful levels of smoke and shrouded in a cloudy haze."

Extreme weather video

Human grain supply sensitive to temperature rise

Seemorerocks: "Increased temperatures from climate change will reduce yields of the four crops humans depend on most—wheat, rice, corn and soybeans—and the losses have already begun, according to a new meta-study by an international team of researchers.

Humans depend for two thirds of their calories on these four staple crops, but yields of wheat are expected to decrease by 6%, rice by 3.2%, maize by 7.4%, and soybean by 3.1%."

Here are the numbers on exponential temperature rise

Arctic News:: "How much could temperatures rise? As the image shows, a rise of more than 10°C (18°F) could take place, resulting in mass extinction of many species, including humans."

Thousands without power in Boyle Heights, other LA neighborhoods amid intense heat

abc7.com: "BOYLE HEIGHTS, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Thousands of people in Boyle Heights and surrounding Los Angeles neighborhoods were without power Wednesday afternoon amid an intense heat wave sweeping across the Southland."

What is Antifa?

Antifa is a name adopted by police in several countries as a cover for provocateur activities. When there is a protest, they dress up in black and throw objects or set cars on fire, or break windows.

This is a very important police task. The billionaire elites desperately need a bunch of "left" thugs to allow them to say they are addressing violence on "both" sides.

Be aware of Antifa. If you attend a protest, keep your distance. 

Supplying Lithium for the Electric Revolution Is Getting Harder

Bloomberg: "Producers everywhere have struggled to keep up with demand as electric cars went from almost no sales a decade ago to more than half a million vehicles last year. The battery in a Model S from Musk’s Tesla Inc. uses about 45 kilograms (100 pounds) of lithium carbonate. More mines are planned, but difficulties at Olaroz -- the first new South American lithium mine in two decades -- are limiting funding for new ventures in Argentina, home to the world’s third-largest reserves.

“The uncertainty on the supply side is driving prices up and making investors nervous,” said Daniela Desormeaux, CEO of Santiago-based lithium consulting firm SignumBOX. “We need a new project entering the market every year to satisfy growing demand. If that doesn’t happen, the market will be tight.”"

Guy McPherson leaving the public stage?

Nature Bats Last: "I doubt indifference can be overcome with additional education. The abundant evidence indicating the near-term extinction of our favorite species is widely available. Yet very few people have responded in any way, suggesting that few are impacted by evidence. This is not surprising within a purposely dumbed-down culture dominated by a willfully ignorant populace, as I’ve indicated repeatedly in this space. My ineffectiveness at promulgating the most important message in history is one reason I’ll be greatly reducing my attempts to continue my educational efforts in the near future. I’ll be largely exiting the public stage by 1 September 2017, as I’ll explain in an essay in this space between now and then."

ArcticTemperature Rise

Arctic News:: "How much could temperatures rise by 2026? The above image shows how a rise of 10°C (18°F) could occur by the year 2026, based on temperature anomalies from 1750 for February and on progressive growth of warming elements. The image below shows the same rise in another way."

What is the true cost of cars and sprawl

Those infants with acute malnutrition at #alSabeen Hospital in Sanaa, #Yemen taken by Maad alZikry.
February 8,2017. pic.twitter.com/XKEEKgjESq

— AEJ خليل ้้้้้็็็็🔵 (@AEJKhalil) August 15, 2017

Energy is needed for life. But in our current system, energy is wasted by an inefficient auto-and-sprawl (autosprawl) system.

Waste generates profits. Each building is separately heated and cooled. Spread-out homes use many consumer products: cars, leaf-blowers, lawnmowers, home-entertainment centers, snow-blowers, ladders, hand tools, etc.

The world is divided between energy have/have-nots. But those who have are mainly wasting it driving around.

The war in Yemen is to protect shipping, especially oil, through the Bab al Mandab pinch point. The war is chaotic and complicated. Civilians are suffering.

All this so some people can drive an SUV to the cheeseburger window.

Methane release is faster than expected

EurekAlert! Science News: "The rate of vertical degradation of subsea permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) is 18 cm a year over the past 30 years, which is greater than previously thought. Scientists from Tomsk Polytechnic University received this data after the comprehensive study of subsea permafrost not only in the Russian Arctic but also in the Arctic as a whole."

World GDP in current US dollars peaked in 2014

Our Finite World : "What has been concerning for the last couple of years is that World GDP on this basis is no longer growing robustly. In fact, it may even have started shrinking, with 2014 being the peak year."

#abruptclimatechange

Weather girl goes rogue

How, and how soon we will go extinct

Nature Bats Last : "The Great Dying wiped out at least 90% of the species on Earth due to an abrupt rise in global-average temperature about 252 million years ago. The vast majority of complex life became extinct. Based on information from the most conservative sources available, Earth is headed for a similar or higher global-average temperature in the very near future. The recent and near-future rises in temperature are occurring and will occur at least an order of magnitude faster than the worst of all prior Mass Extinctions. Habitat for human animals is disappearing throughout the world, and abrupt climate change has barely begun. In the near future, habitat for Homo sapiens will be gone. Shortly thereafter, all humans will die."

Arctic sea ice may well be gone by September 2017

Arctic News: : "The low sea ice volume means that there is very little sea ice left to act as a buffer this year. Therefore, a huge amount of heat will not be able to be consumed this year in the process of melting ice and will instead speed up warming of water of the Arctic Ocean.

Less sea ice additionally means that less sunlight will be reflected back into space, and this heat will instead further speed up Arctic warming.
"

The slow warming of the oceans guarantees our end

On Being: "The warming is not immediate. Delays are built into the system: there are different forms of inertia here. The air warms first, then the land, then surface winds mix the shallow surface layer of the sea and finally the abyssal reaches of the ocean. The heat slowly trickles down to the deep, churned by slow overturning ocean currents. The ocean is slow to warm, but it will receive the message in time."

Stranded in our own communities: Transit deserts make it hard for people to find jobs and stay healthy

San Francisco Chronicle: "This is a large-scale problem. In San Antonio, the seventh-largest U.S. city by population, some 334,530 people – nearly one-fourth of the population – need access to public transportation in a city that doesn’t even have rail service. In Chicago, where there are high levels of transit dependency all across the city, just three of the transit desert neighborhoods that we identified house approximately 176,806 residents. Even in a city as progressive as Portland, Oregon, thousands live in transit desert neighborhoods."

Corporate US knew and lied about #climate. Big surprise.

eneryandpolicy : "Scientists had begun to warn electric utilities about climate change by 1968, and by 1988 the industry’s official research and development organization had acknowledged that, “There is growing consensus in the scientific community that the greenhouse effect is real.”

Despite this early knowledge about climate change, electric utilities have continued to invest heavily in fossil fuel power generation over the past half a century, and since 1988 some have engaged in ongoing efforts to sow doubt about climate science and block legal limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants."

The Next Financial Crisis Is Not Far Away

Our Finite World: "In fact, affordability is the key issue. When the world economy is stimulated by more debt, only a small part of this additional debt makes its way back to the wages of non-elite workers. With greater global competition in wages, the wages of these workers tend to stay low. The limited demand of these workers tends to keep commodity prices, especially oil prices, from rising very high, for very long."

Capitalism and overpopulation

Yemen's cholera epidemic is the worst on record, with more than 360,000 suspected cases: @Oxfam https://t.co/rNp6Rj15FQ pic.twitter.com/1IJPU9zaSK

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 21, 2017

It may seem confusing that capitalism is always pushing for more babies, but at the same time allows starvation and disease.

People are just another resource. Of those educated, healthy, and mobile, they want more. Poor or self-sufficient are worth little to them.

The system is caught in a vise, because birth rates are falling fast in the group of which they want more. This forces them to increase immigration in some areas. But they are careful to make sure the immigrants are abused and kept second class so there is no upward pressure on wages.

The people of Yemen are suffering because the capitalists don't need them. The war in Yemen is mostly about protecting oil shipments.

So we are seeing a massive, preventable, epidemic of cholera.

Oil wars and oil glut, no contradiction

There has not been a good price for oil since conventional (easy-to-get) oil peaked in 2005. Any price is too high for consumers and too low for producers.

Oil still is the blood of capitalism. There is no easy substitute. Trillions of dollars of infrastructure and systems are dependent. Things like millions of square miles of sprawl can not be converted quickly enough.

The owners of this infrastructure have decided to squeeze it until the last dollar and if the biosphere goes down, oh well, too bad. They don't really have much choice given they are locked in a dog-eat-dog system of competition.

There is still some conventional oil in Iraq, under Kirkuk. So war is raging over that. All the profits have been borrowed-against, but the oil is needed just to keep the whole debt-ridden system working for another decade.

It's no longer about profit, it's about interest on debt -- survival of the billionaires.

Leading the Public Into Emergency Mode: A New Strategy For the Climate Movement

The Climate Mobilization: "The climate crisis is an unprecedented emergency. It is, far and away, the United States’ top national security threat, public health threat, and moral emergency. Humanity is careening towards the deaths of billions of people, millions of species, and the collapse of organized civilization. States under severe climate stress, such as Syria, are already starting to fail, bringing chaos, violence, and misery to the region and political instability to Europe. America’s political system is also starting to convulse as the two-party system is showing signs of fragility.

How we react to the climate crisis will shape centuries and millennia to come. Given the stakes, and the extremely short timetable, it is imperative that we strive to maximize the efficacy of our actions — from ourselves as individuals, from our nation, from the global community of nations, and from the organizations that are trying to avert this catastrophe. "

Staving Off the Coming Global Collapse

The Tyee: "The biophysical evidence — that is, reality — shows that material consumption and waste production are still increasing with population and GDP growth. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide is accumulating at accelerating record rates in the atmosphere and the years 2014, 2015 and 2016 sequentially shared the distinction of being the warmest years in the instrumental record.

There is little question that the immediate drivers of overshoot are overpopulation and excess consumption, so there is widespread support for the idea of “clean production and consumption.” What only a few realists are willing to state out loud is that this must soon translate into less production/consumption by fewer people."

People trying to stop the exploitation of nature are being murdered

Global Justice Ecology Project: "Nearly four people were murdered every week in 2016 whilst protecting their land, forests and rivers from mining, logging and agricultural companies, a new report from Global Witness reveals."

1989 - U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked

ap: "UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ''eco- refugees,' ' threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.
He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.

...The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth's temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.

...He said even the most conservative scientists ''already tell us there's nothing we can do now to stop a ... change'' of about 3 degrees."

The Inevitability Of DeGrowth

Investing.com: "Humans can print currency (money) but we can’t print fresh water, energy, wild fisheries, etc. If one unit of currency currently buys one liter of petrol, printing 10 more units of money doesn’t create 10 more liters of fuel. --Creating currency out of thin air isn’t free in our system: all new currency is loaned into existence and accrues interest. As a result, all currency is a claim on future earnings. If we borrow enough from the future, and earnings remain flat or decline, eventually there’s not enough income left to support the debt service and the expanding consumption the status quo needs to keep itself glued together."

Basically correct, but leaves out the fact that most of the energy we use is wasted on stupid things like autos and sprawl.

End, don't mend, the auto system

People are struggling with the hell caused by the private auto. They call for

• tougher enforcement of infractions
• campaigns against distracted driving
• lower speed limits
• more bike/ped infrastructure
• more subways
• traffic calming

These are not solutions. They are weak attempts to beg for mercy. We need a strong campaign to get back to bikes and walking by breaking the monopoly of the subsidized auto. The best path is fare-free buses.

How harsh #degrowth will play out over next ten years

The future will look like the present... but with the bad things getting worse and the good things getting to fewer and fewer people.

The dollar will be protected through energy wars to the bitter end. Nukes will be used, if necessary, but in a "limited" way.

100's of millions of poor people will die from heat, drought, flood, starvation, and disease, though the focus will be on drowning refugees and suicide attackers.

The 10% energy-haves, who use 50% of the energy, will get electric self-driving cars and batteries and such.

Corporate media propaganda will take over more and more of social media.

Reducing carbon emissions not enough to save us

theconversation : "It’s possible that even as emissions decrease, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will continue to increase. The warmer the planet gets, the less carbon dioxide the ocean can absorb. Rising temperatures in the polar regions make it more likely that carbon dioxide and methane, another greenhouse gas that warms the planet, will be released from storage in the frozen land and ocean reservoirs, adding to the problem."

Hopes of mild climate change dashed by new research

businessgreen : "But the new work, using both models and paleoclimate data from warming periods in the Earth's past, shows that the historical temperature measurements do not reveal the slow heating of the planet's oceans that takes place for decades or centuries after CO2 has been added to the atmosphere."

Scientists ring more alarm bells, call for immediate action

Arctic Methane Emergency Group: "You will have received an increasing number of warnings from scientists about the seriousness of climate change and therefore how important it is to reduce CO2 emissions.   We take the logic further, using the latest scientific evidence about the current situation and observed trends.  Our conclusion is that interventions must be taken immediately to reduce the forcing agents that are driving climate change, especially in the Arctic.  At minimum, CO2 must be taken out of the atmosphere and the Arctic cooled."

Environmental supply-siders

If supply is the water coming over the falls, demand is gravity. In economics demand is everything. There is a lot of writing about how people are brainwashed in to being consumers. But think about it. That is a wealthy-persons outlook. Poor people do not need adverts to tell them they need heat in winter.

Just as gravity drives the waterfall, demand drives the economy.

If you believe that supply-side is "voodoo" economics, then would you support supply-side environmental action?

Yet that is what all the Big Enviro orgs are doing. Trying to block or stop the water falling down.

Let's look for what policies or actions take away customers.

Let's make cities car-free and attractive and encourage birth rates to drop faster.

Two-party system perfect for false dichotomies

The GOP wants to grow the economy by increasing carbon emissions.

The Dems want to grow the economy by investing in renewables.

Both wrong, growth means more heat.

This is the standard false choice system used in the US. People are given a choice between the red poison and the blue poison.

#abruptclimatechange

Electric auto-autos

By now you have heard about how self-driving (auto-autos) will run on batteries and with crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding and moore's law, etc will put an end to the private auto.

How much lithium mining will be needed? How much heat will be generated? Will all the "savings" go into more growth?

Answer. We got where we are by over-growing our numbers and over-using resources. All the technological progress simply made us more efficient at destroying the biosphere. We have smart phones and smart bombs, but we are just racing to extinction faster.

The answer is in the second law of thermodynamics. Energy used for life is just passing through from sun to space. Human activity puts that energy in the form of heat. Plant activity stores it. 

Why arctic ice is so important

As long as there is ice, the water nearby is freezing temperature. The ice is absorbing energy from the sun and nearby water to break down its solid structure, so nearby water stays cold.

It takes 80 calories to melt a gram of ice. When that gram becomes water, it is still at freezing temperature. Then next 80 calories will then raise it to 176F degrees.

So the solar energy coming into an ice-free arctic will more quickly warm the water. A few hundred meters down on arctic coastal shelves there is methane that if exposed to a few degrees above freezing, will melt and bubble up. This is already happening.

Methane for its first 10 years in the air, is 100 times as strong as carbon dioxide for trapping energy. It takes about a year to spread around the earth.

Solar panel and battery prices falling fast

But even if free, they cannot save us.

The Jevons principle tells us that as long as there is demand, all energy savings are consumed in growth.

Assuming capitalism ends, then there is the second law of thermodynamics which tells us that all human activity generates heat.

That leaves degrowth as the only way to reduce heat and green-house gas emissions.

Degrowth is upon us already and is harsh.

Rapid elimination of wasteful systems, such as cars, might ease the pain.

Human capitalism destroying the biosphere

EcoInternet: "The point is that while abrupt climate change may well become runaway, collapsing society, the economy, and the biosphere; it is but one of nearly a dozen means whereby humanity has overshot the carrying capacity of the Earth System. Consider this: nearly half of all topsoil has eroded, 90% of large fish are gone, 4,500 kids die from bad water a day, nearly a billion human-beings live in abject poverty, and daily an unknown numbers of species disappear forever."

What to do?

• The methane is releasing.
• The poles are melting.
• People are dying from heat.
• Floods are getting worse.
• Drought getting worse.
• Millions of climate refugees.

What are leaders doing? Fighting a war on #Islam to get control of oil.

Even if it is too late to save the human race. Let us at least go down with some dignity. How about we stop wasting energy on cars? Join your local public transit advocates.

Human population grows by 200,000 per day. Yes, per day.

The least painful way to reduce population is through falling birth rates. In some places the birth rate is below the replacement rate. Those places also usually have excellent public transit.

Good public transit makes urban living more comfortable. When people urbanize, they find out that education is more important than having more farm hands. They also find that raising children is very expensive. Birth rates fall.

Video on the importance of population reduction

Cooler heads have not prevailed

In the first half of the oil age, no matter how crazy the US government would get, there was always some cool heads who would prevail and save the system from itself.

Now it's the second half of the oil age and oil's net-energy falls every day. There is too much debt and too much infrastructure to make a change. Now the "adults" have left the room.

Ice-free arctic means rapid increase in heating

James Hansen in 2005, we have 10 years to do something and must stay below 1C

Why economics is just a physics problem

Garrett : "As a global organism, like these shipping vessels at an oil rig, our civilization collectively feeds on the energy in coal, oil, natural gas, uranium, hydroelectric power and renewables. Civilization continually consumes these resources to accomplish two things: the first is to propel all civilization’s internal “economic” circulations including our attention; the second is to incorporate raw materials into our structure in order to grow and maintain our current size against the ever present forces of dissipation and decay."

Larsen ice shelves, A - gone, B- gone, C .... soon.

Why US and Russia cannot beat #ISIS

Because they have nothing to offer to Muslims in its place.

The specifics of human extinction by 2025

Human extinction in ten years

Conversation Earth: "Award-winning scientist Dr. Guy McPherson has concluded that for human civilization, the end is near. He advises the rate of change of our climate is increasing far more rapidly than we are being told, and this puts us on his endangered species list.

In this 2017 interview, McPherson reveals why the International Panel on Climate Change, and even many individual scientists, understate the problem. He critiques our modern “living arrangement,” and the lies our culture promulgates to avoid admitting, “We are trashing this planet at an astonishing rate of speed.” He also shares his thinking about a “sane” living arrangement. You might be surprised – both at how soon he expects we’ll be extinct, and at his positive advice about how to respond to this crisis."

Direct death from heat, exponential growth expected

thinkprogress: "Extreme heat poses a serious threat to human health, particularly among the elderly, who are less able to regulate their body temperature, and among those who cannot afford air conditioning. Hot spells can prove deadly. As temperatures rise, heat-related deaths are projected to grow exponentially."

#2ndLaw says all human activity generates heat

Fossil-fuels have allowed exponential human growth. We have to reverse the growth, not just stop using fossil-fuels.

Human activity generates heat. Energy exists in many forms; when humans move, heat, cool, build, or repair things, potential energy is changed into heat. This happens regardless of fuel source.

We have to move quickly to less activity and fewer humans.

Make buses fare-free, make cities car-free, people will urbanize and birth rates will fall. Driving around in wasteful autosprawl is a massive heat-generator.

How will you keep cool when the ocean is 90F degrees

Arctic News: "As the image below shows, sea temperature was as high as 32.6°C or 90.6°F on May 28, 2017 (at the green circle), 1.8°C or 3.2°F warmer than 1981-2011."

Human extinction possible in 10 years

Nature Bats Last: "The Great Dying wiped out at least 90% of the species on Earth due to an abrupt rise in global-average temperature about 252 million years ago. The vast majority of complex life became extinct. Based on information from the most conservative sources available, Earth is headed for a similar or higher global-average temperature in the very near future. The recent and near-future rises in temperature are occurring and will occur at least an order of magnitude faster than the worst of all prior Mass Extinctions. Habitat for human animals is disappearing throughout the world, and abrupt climate change has barely begun. In the near future, habitat for Homo sapiens will be gone. Shortly thereafter, all humans will die."

Study finds hundreds of thousands of tropical species at risk of extinction due to deforestation

mongabay : "A 2015 study found that humans activities are driving species loss at a rate 100 times faster than historical baseline levels — which the researchers behind the study characterized as a conservative estimate. This finding fueled speculation that we’re currently witnessing a sixth global mass extinction event."

KSA on thin ice

The Islamic State has thwarted the best laid plans of oil barons and bankers around the world. It was inevitable that a crash would come between the massive debt and the falling net energy. But there was one patch of easy oil left and the bankers thought they had another 20 years to go.

That oil is under Kirkuk Iraq. But the IS stands in the way.

The only way they can get them out of the way is to massacre Sunni Muslims. But to do this they need the cover of the Muslim puppet leaders.

The KSA is the biggest and weakest of these puppets. Its power has three legs. Oil, US, and Islam. The oil is running out, the US is overstretched around the world, and the Islamic State is exposing them as false leaders of Islam.

As the ice disappears from the arctic, it is also cracking under the king.

Science is conservative, exponential change is not

Nature Bats Last: "Mainstream scientists minimize the message at every turn, with expected results. As we’ve known for years, scientists almost invariably underplay climate impacts (James Hansen referred to the phenomenon as “scientific reticence” in his 24 May 2007 paper about sea-level rise in Environmental Research Letters). A paper in 27 June 2016 online issue of Nature Climate Change reinforces the idea of scientific conservatism, pointing out that dependence upon historical records leads to missing about one-fifth of global warming since the 1860s."

Growth means more heat, regardless of fuel source

The work of Professor Tim Garrett shows that civilization is a heat engine. He found a direct correlation between matter formed and connected to civilization and energy needed. As human civilization grows the built infrastructure requires energy for maintenance. More growth means more energy. Activity for this maintenance, plus all other human activity, takes stored energy and turns it into heat energy. This principle holds regardless of the source of the energy. Building solar panels just adds to the growth.

Guy McPherson on #peakoil and system #collapse

Arctic warming accelerating

Arctic News: "As ocean warming continues, prospects for the sea ice in the Arctic are grim.

Warmer water is melting the sea ice from below. The image on the right shows ever less sea ice volume in the Arctic, reflecting huge thinning of the sea ice over the years."

Oil glut IS #peakoil

Easy-to-extract oil peaked in 2005. It is now declining at about 6% a year. Hard-to-extract oil is replacing some of the loss, but at a price that is too high for consumers and too low for producers. This is why the price seems to fluctuate out of control.

There is a hot war over one last large reserve of easy oil under Kirkuk, Iraq. More money will eventually be spent on this war than can possibly be recouped in profits -- but profits are just a small part of oil. Oil is blood to modern society. Whoever controls it has tremendous power.

So we are in the impossible situation that money is being borrowed and lavished on getting oil, while the market is in a glut.

You can imagine how threatened the bankers are with all the debt that is in danger of default if they don't get the easy oil, or if recession deepens and demand falls even more.

Here are some of their nightmares.

• reduced energy demand due to recession
• free transit (notice how quickly they shut down the idea in Paris)
• falling birth rates 
• rebellion (which they call terrorism)
• default 

Desperate oil troll trying to kill #publictransit

Metro Report: "‘The administration has made it clear that infrastructure investment is important for our country’s economic prosperity’, said Richard White, Acting President & CEO of APTA. ‘This budget proposal to eliminate public transportation infrastructure projects is inconsistent with addressing critical transportation needs and helping America’s economy prosper.’
APTA reports that the proposed infrastructure initiative would make $200bn available over 10 years to attract private-sector match funding worth up to $1tr. Yet there are no details on how that money would be prioritised or allocated, APTA warns.
‘Many of the public transit ballot initiatives that voters approved last year raised local and state dollars that would serve as a match to federal dollars’, explains White. ‘This significant cut in federal funding rejects the voters’ will because those projects were proposed with the expectation that the federal government would be a responsible funding partner.’"

Humans cannot survive 4 degrees rise in global avg temp

Nature Bats Last: "If you’re too busy to read the evidence presented below, here’s the bottom line: On a planet 4 C hotter than baseline, all we can prepare for is human extinction (from Oliver Tickell’s 2008 synthesis in the Guardian). Tickell is taking a conservative approach, considering humans have not been present at 3.3 C or more above baseline (i.e., the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, commonly accepted as 1750). I cannot imagine a scenario involving a rapid rise in global-average temperature and also retention of habitat for humans."

https://youtu.be/dU7iBM45mHQ

Abrupt #climatechange

Do you feel that we have entered the sharp turn of the exponential curve of warming? That there is no chance of turning back?

Ok. It is likely you are right. Now, what to do.

We should make our last years as painless as possible. Let's go into degrowth by stopping the waste and sharing what is left.

The private auto is probably the best example of waste. Not just because it is an anti-social wasteful consumer product. But because it promotes sprawl and growth. Let's abolish it.

#Heat or #Emissions?

The idea of reducing human carbon emissions is to reduce greenhouse effect and thereby reduce the temperature of the biosphere.

There are two ways to reduce human emissions. Stop producing them, or get energy from non-carbon sources.

The main problem with getting energy from non-carbon sources is that there is nothing about them that curbs growth. And as long as there is growth in human activity, there will be more heat. That heat will release stored natural carbon and generate more emissions, undoing all efforts.

We can address heat directly, and reduce human emissions at the same time by reversing growth, degrowth.

There is some low-hanging fruit for degrowth. The auto and sprawl system is very wasteful. It could be quickly and severely tightened up by abolishing the private auto. Along with this, comprehensive health care and education would accelerate falling birth rates.

Renewables and electric cars will increase carbon emissions

Cars promote sprawl. Sprawl wastes energy. Buildings are spread out. Each one needs separate heating, cooling, lawn-care, parking, sewer lines, roads, etc.

Sprawl is sacred to capitalism because it means growth. Even if that growth is mostly waste, capitalism doesn't care. More cars, more babies, more leaf-blowers... that is the goal.

All this waste. The people crowing about "renewables" are not suggesting ending the waste. They just want more fuel on the fire. To test this statement, ask them if they will openly advocate #freetransit as part of their "keep it in the ground" mantra.

There is nothing inherent to renewables that leads to degrowth. In fact, renewables contain fossil-fuels and depend on the fossil-fuel created system.

So, since renewables do not reduce growth, growth will continue in the new "green economy." Growth generates heat and heat melts clathrates. The carbon emitted from the clathrates will overwhelm any emission reduction from the renewables.

It can be said then, that renewables increase carbon emissions.

Melting soil in cold regions releasing long-held CO2

ScienceAlert: "That's an amount comparable to all the emissions from the US commercial sector in a single year.

The chief reason for the greater CO2 release was that as Alaska has warmed up, emissions from once frozen tundra in winter are increasing - presumably because the ground is not refreezing as quickly.

"The soils are warmer deeper, and as they freeze in the fall, the temperature of every soil depth has to come to zero before they hard freeze," Commane said."

Miles of Ice Collapsing Into the Sea

The New York Times: "A rapid disintegration of Antarctica might, in the worst case, cause the sea to rise so fast that tens of millions of coastal refugees would have to flee inland, potentially straining societies to the breaking point. Climate scientists used to regard that scenario as fit only for Hollywood disaster scripts. But these days, they cannot rule it out with any great confidence."

Adding up the feedbacks, biosphere goes over 22C by 2027

Nature Bats Last: "In total, Carana ends up with 10.02 C above baseline by mid-2026, or about 23.5 C. That’d be the highest global-average temperature on this planet during the last 2,000,000,000 years. Taking a conservative approach at every step, I conclude “only” an 8.71-degree rise in temperature by mid-2026. As a result, I conclude global-average temperature at that time will be about 22.2 C (13.5 C + 8.71 C). This is barely above 22 C, the temperature at which Earth has most commonly found itself during the last 2,000,000,000 years. I suspect it’s more likely, based on the conservative journal literature, that Earth will hit about 23 C in a decade. There is no reason to expect Earth to start cooling until the heat engine of civilization is turned off and dozens of self-reinforcing feedback loops are inexplicably reversed."

What's so great about #freetransit?

• saves money for riders
• saves money for city as a whole
• reduces bureaucracy
• immediate reduction in energy use
• easy to implement
• people love it
• makes buses more efficient
• leads to urbanization and falling birth rate
• reduces incentives for sprawl

the list goes on and on and on...
see more

Fast track to reduce #heat

Social and corporate media are full of ideas for human designed carbon-capture and renewable energy sources.

What is not understood is that according to physics, human activity generates heat. This happens no matter what the fuel is. So, if that activity is building a solar array, or a carbon-capture device, that activity generates heat.

The only way to reduce heat is to reduce activity.

One way is to address the biggest problems first. Ten percent of humans use half the energy. A lot of this energy is wasted by cars sitting in traffic jams. But cars are not even necessary. Humans have been on earth 200,000 years, but cars less than 150 years. We don't need them. There are many other benefits to ending cars besides the obvious reduction of fuel waste.

By abolishing the private auto, we can:

• reduce energy waste
• take away the major driver of sprawl and growth
• reduce inequality of energy use
• make cities attractive
• free up money for education and healthcare to make birth rates fall
• turn suburbs into permaculture carbon sinks

Natural carbon-capture destroyed by logging

World Economic Forum : "Forests have been removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing carbon for more than 300 million years. When we cut down or burn trees and disturb forest soils, we release that stored carbon to the atmosphere. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, one-third of all carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere from human activities have come from deforestation."

Our main problem is #heat, some scientists predicting human extinction

Arctic News : "How much could temperatures rise? As above image shows, a rise of more than 10°C (18°F) could take place, resulting in mass extinction of many species, including humans."

Autoautos are a hi-tech desperate attempt to save #autosprawl

CityLab: "But the dream of cheap, clean mobility in cities might run up against some harsh realities—soaring energy consumption, supercharged sprawl, and intensified traffic congestion—if AVs are simply deployed to encourage more driving."

Agriculture on the Brink

truth-out : ""In just one year, the equivalent of an entire population of Egypt is added to the world's population," he said. "Driving up demand for food in the face of severe limitations on agricultural capacity.""

Buses vs Cars

免費公共汽車在台灣:

• Buses bring customers to market
• Cars block access to the market
• Buses work 18 hours a day
• Cars sit 18 hours a day 
• Buses free up space
• Cars take up space
• Buses are safe
• Cars are dangerous
• Buses allow you to text
• Cars and texting are deadly 
• Buses help you make new friends
• Cars are anti-social, annoy pedestrians\

Can you add to this list?

When the permafrost melts, it won't matter how many windmills we have

InsideClimate News: "Soaring temperatures in the Arctic have triggered a huge seasonal surge in carbon dioxide emissions from thawing permafrost and may be tipping the region toward becoming a net source of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, a new study shows."

To get peace and economic security, Americans will have to give up cars

@realDonaldTrump Bush-led wars could've paid for:
✔️health insurance for *15 years* +
✔️wiped out student loan AND credit card debt +
✔️Fixed infrastructure

— Adam Khan (@Khanoisseur) May 7, 2017

This tweet shows that many Americans are fed up with hypocrisy and corruption of the GOP. But why does the GOP have so much power?

The American system is dependent on wasting energy. There are trillions of dollars worth of autosprawl infrastructure. Roads, highways, cul-de-sacs, refineries, pipelines, and massive military spending to protect energy sources and routes.

As long as there is sprawl, there will be Trumps.

So far, the alarmists have been right, time to listen?

Inhabitat : "Microbiologist Frank Fenner, whose work helped defeat smallpox, said in 2010 “humans will probably be extinct within 100 years, because of overpopulation, environmental destruction, and climate change.” Biologist Neil Dawe said it wouldn’t surprise him if the generation following him saw the end of humanity. Ecologist Guy McPherson went so far as to say humanity could be extinct by 2026."

All hell will break loose

For years, alarmists have warned that oil will peak and the biosphere will melt.

We were ridiculed and marginalized.

Now the systems are collapsing. But cognitive dissonance reigns.

Even the "resistance" does not see sprawl as a problem.

Another in the long list of polls shows Americans like #publictransit

HNTB Finds Americans Recognize Benefits of Public Transportation: "Almost nine in 10 Americans (88 percent) recognize public transportation systems provide a wide array of benefits to the communities they serve, according to a new HNTB Corporation America THINKS public opinion survey."

Arctic warming escalates, while humans escalate wars for oil

Nature : "“The take-home message is that the Arctic is unravelling,” says Rafe Pomerance, who chairs a network of conservation groups called Arctic 21 and was a deputy assistant secretary of state for environment and development under US President Bill Clinton. “The fate of the Arctic has to be moved out of the world of scientific observation and into the world of government policy.”"

US energy efficiency falling, not rising

Vox : "It’s important to put this waste in context. It is not mainly about personal behavior or inefficient energy end use — keeping cars idling or leaving the lights on, that kind of thing. That’s a part of it, but at a deeper level, waste is all about system design.

The decline in overall efficiency in the US economy mainly has to do with the increasing role of inefficient energy systems. Specifically, the years since 1970 have seen a substantial increase in electricity consumption and private vehicles for transportation, two energy services that are particularly inefficient. (Electricity wastes two-thirds of its primary energy; transportation wastes about three-quarters.)"

Raising infant survival rate causes birth rate to drop

Some of the most important means now available for reducing child deaths are also among the most powerful means of reducing births.

Exclusive breastfeeding has a demonstrably significant effect on fertility rates, and WHO studies show a clear relationship between the length of time a woman breastfeeds and birth intervals. In population groups with a contraceptive prevalence of less than 10 per cent, there is an almost linear relationship between the proportion of mothers who breastfeed for 18 months and birth intervals that are greater than 2.5 years.

Promoting knowledge about the importance of timing births and providing the means to act on it is one of the most powerful child survival strategies and also reduces birth rates. Most child deaths happen to mothers who are younger than 18 or older than 35, or who have had more than four children already, or who give birth less than two years after a previous delivery. Children born in developing countries at the end of a birth interval of less than two years are, on average, twice as likely to die in infancy as are children born after a longer interval. According to some studies, as many as a quarter of all infant deaths and a quarter of all maternal deaths could be prevented by the well-informed timing of births (see chart on the following page).

Female empowerment, particularly in terms of education, not only benefits women, but also improves child health and survival. Educated mothers are also more likely to opt for smaller families.

Infrastructure package must prioritize public transportation

TheHill: "Prioritizing public transportation is one of the best investments the federal government can make in our economic future. Not only does the transit industry account for thousands of jobs, but every dollar invested in public transportation generates approximately $4 in economic returns. A two-person household in our region can save nearly $1,000 a month by switching from driving to public transportation for their daily commute. And that’s $1,000 that can go back into the local economy through retail, restaurants and other commercial services."

Melting permafrost shows that #heat will undo all our #emissions efforts

arctic.ru : ""If current underwater permafrost melting trends, accompanied by large-scale methane emissions into the atmosphere, persist, this may cause even more substantial emissions. These emissions could cause hard-to-predict climatic consequences, including a hypothetical climate disaster," said Oleg Dudarev, a leading research associate with the Laboratory of Arctic Research at the Pacific Oceanological Institute of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences."

Don't be fooled by oil 'glut,' #peakoil is real

Cheap oil peaked in 2005. Since then, a re-definition of oil to 'liquid fuel' magically increased world production by 10 million bpd. Then massive debt-fueled investment raised "production" a little bit more. Now, we are in the falling net-energy trap for oil. Every day it costs more joules to get a joule. If all the externalities of oil are included net-energy is likely negative, especially in tarsands.

Negative net-energy means that it costs more than 1 joule to get 1 joule. How is that economic? Well, it's not. But transportation, and hence the developed economy, needs liquid fuel. So debt and oilwars will increase.

Currently there is a glut because of three things.

• price war for market share
• debt-fueled production in difficult areas
• weak economies in developed countries

The industry is stuck in the fallacy of composition. Each producer must maximize to keep cash flow and avoid default, or to avoid losing market share. All the agreements to cut back have failed and will continue to fail. 

Oil industry bullish on demand - electric cars no threat

ABO: "Forty years of social and political efforts to recycle packaging, for example, have only succeeded in eliminating one year of average global plastics demand growth. The growth in petrochemical demand alone is bigger than the reduction we expect to see from adding more electric cars. Taken together, this explains why, under current policies,  the outlook still sees robust oil demand growth for several years to come."

Et tu, Kos?

dailykos: "That alone would have created a big splash, but Musk was not done.  He followed up with a tweet stating that Tesla would be unveiling a pick-up truck in 18 to 24 months.  Since this has become an ever more important segment of vehicle sales and auto industry profits and is a segment currently devoid of production electric vehicles, this could have a huge impact and would, once again, place Tesla far ahead of the competition."

Autosprawl is collapsing because of falling net energy in oil. It costs more joules to extract and produce liquid fuel than joules gained. One way to extend the life of sprawl is to generate electricity from natural gas and run cars on electricity. This will keep sprawl going a few more years -- years that we desperately need to reduce sprawl and growth. Electric vehicles simply make more certain the arrival of heat disaster.

Once elected, Trump turns against #publictransit, standard US operating procedure

TheHill: "But somewhere between the campaign trail and the White House, President Trump’s understanding of the importance of public transportation got lost. 

Rather than investing in public transit, his proposed 2018 budget slashes support for transit projects in communities across the country."

Oil still in the driver's seat

Oil is still the blood of capitalism. Though you are being flooded with news of "alternatives" and "renewables," there is really nothing else that can keep the trillions of dollars of infrastructure going. 

It might have been possible to make a gradual change if we started 30 years ago, but now affordable oil is running out (yes, running out) and the current system is already unsustainable. 

Americans are living in a dream world where they can have both cars and democracy.

Americans are confused, angry

The rise of the internet and social media has not reduced the power of corporate propaganda in the US.

Too many Americans cannot make the connection between the traffic jams in their town and the bombing in the towns of others.

Are you ready for panic selling over sea-level rise?

The New York Times: "she was paying nearly $6,000 in flood premiums on top of her mortgage every year, nearly always more than she could make in rent. “I decided to cut my losses and get out,” she said. “The flood insurance kept going up, and I was drowning in it.” A real estate agent she consulted told her that she’d be lucky to sell the house for $180,000, barely more than half of what she paid for it and significantly less than what she still owed on the mortgage. Everyone looking at places near the river, the agent said, asked about flood insurance first. It wasn’t the risk of high waters that spooked buyers; it was the certainty of high premiums."

Biggest threat to humans is wishful thinking

The current economic system is racing us toward biosphere destruction and mass death. Those who profit from this system are still exuding optimism and easy solutions.

We humans would like to believe that there is a technology solution to global warming. We are being fooled, and we are going to pay a heavy price.

Thermodynamics tells us there is a limit to how much heat can be released into space. Currently we are generating heat faster than that. Negative CO2 emissions would help, BUT NOT SOLVE, the problem of heat.

What is worse, many people accept renewable energy as the way to reduce CO2 emissions. But renewables promote economic growth. Growth means more heat. Heat means more natural release of carbon. So renewables actually lead to more emissions.

Only by reducing human activity -- degrowth -- can we reduce heat. 

Sumatra -- 6.5M acres of peat and wildlife in danger. #methane

Alternet : "The Leuser Ecosystem (pronounced low-sir) is a vast tropical landscape on the island of Sumatra. Spanning over 6.5 million acres of lowland jungle, montane rainforests and teeming peat swamps, Leuser’s forests are among the most ancient on earth. This is a realm where volcanic eruptions, fluctuating sea levels and species migrations over uninterrupted millennia have enabled one of the most biodiverse landscapes ever documented to evolve.

... But today, Leuser’s forests are under constant and escalating threat. Despite being protected by Indonesian law, the Leuser Ecosystem is under siege for short-term profits. Corporate interests such as industrial pulp and palm oil plantations, mining and logging operations, energy projects, and all the roads and infrastructure that are built to support them, are eating away at every corner of the Ecosystem."

The Banality of the Anthropocene

ENTITLE blog: "Iowa is objectively one of the most ruined landscapes in the United States, but its ruination garners surprisingly little notice. Less than 0.1 percent of the tallgrass prairie that once covered much of the state remains. ... Between 1830 and 1910, Iowa lost a whopping 97 percent of its prairie acreage. At one time 85% of Iowa was covered by tallgrass prairie. Source: iowapublicradio.org.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. The reorientation of Iowa’s landscape toward capitalist agricultural production has resulted in the obliteration of worlds that once occupied it. The American Indians who carefully tended the prairie through burning and bison management have been forced out of the state. Nearly every acre has been privatized. Today Iowa ranks forty-ninth out of the fifty U.S. states in public land holdings."

Permafrost more vulnerable than thought: scientists

yahoo.com : "Even stabilising the world's climate at two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels -- the daunting goal laid down in the 196-nation Paris Agreement -- would melt more than 40 percent of permafrost, or an area nearly twice the size of India, they reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.

That could take centuries or longer, but would eventually drive up global temperatures even further as more gases escaped into the air."

Cars mostly just sit, and in the city, don't fit

Cities Today : "Political winds are also evolving to reflect citizens’ concerns about air quality and health, meaning a gradual shift away from car-focused urban development to policies favouring active transport.

For cities with long-established infrastructure, increasing space for cars is simply not an option. On average, private cars are parked 95 percent of their lifetime and when they are driven, are much less space-efficient compared to public transport, walking and cycling."

No progress on #climate. None.

25 years since the global summit on climate in Rio, there has been no progress. Not one bit. Car sales are up, air travel is up. CO2 levels are up. World governments have done nothing but make promises for you to believe while they fight wars to get and burn more oil.

Only 3 EU Countries Pursuing Policies In Line With Paris Climate Agreement | CleanTechnica: "Despite all of the fanfare that went on at the time, it seems that there are currently only 3 European Union countries pursuing climate policies that put them in line with the agreements made at the Paris Climate Change Talks, according to recent reports."

It is up to us. We can take action on the local level. To decide what is good action to take, ask some questions. What will reduce sprawl, growth, and energy demand? What things cause birth rates to fall?

Ending Energy Povery

Energy is unfairly used. A small percent of humans uses much more than their share. Reducing their use would be the most effective way to reduce heat and its damage to the biosphere.

So what is the plan of world leaders? They want to put roads and solar panels throughout undeveloped areas to eliminate "poverty."

Don't fall for this. Our problem is heat. It is caused by wasteful suburban autosprawl, the lifestyle of a relatively small percentage of world population. 

A lot of money being bet on Kirkuk oil and demise of Islamic State

Rosneft said to prepay about $1bn for Iraqi Kurdistan oil: "The Russian state-run producer’s trading arm will buy Kurdish oil from now until 2019, Rosneft said in February, without specifying how much crude it would take. At $1bn, Rosneft would account for about a third of the prepayment deals the Kurdish Regional Government negotiated with oil traders.
Rosneft’s press service didn’t immediately comment when contacted by phone on Thursday. An adviser to the KRG’s Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami didn’t immediately respond to a call and e-mail seeking comment.
The KRG is selling oil in advance to help finance government spending, including the military campaign against Islamic State, during a period of relatively low oil prices. For Rosneft, the deal brings a guaranteed flow of crude into its expanding trading business and is another example of its expansion into the Middle East following deals in Libya and Egypt.
Rosneft chief executive officer Igor Sechin said in February that the company will be “developing new markets worldwide for Kurdish crude oil.” Rosneft hasn’t previously worked with the KRG, which in recent years has struggled to maintain payments to international producers shipping oil from the region.
"

Overpopulation Denial

un-Denial: "If I am right, it is ironic that economic growth slowed due to the overpopulation related depletion of non-renewable resources which then required a further population increase to maintain some economic growth to avoid collapse. It’s analogous to the positive feedback loop of rising temperatures causing ice loss and methane release."

Thousands Of Trees Around The World Threatened By Extinction

Science World Report : "The researchers discovered that about 9,600 types of trees all around the world are at risk of extinction. Scientists blamed deforestation and global warming as the cause of the extinction."

Solution. Reduce human population. How. Falling birthrates.

What factors cause birth rates to fall?

• education - studies show consistently that education drops birth rate
• urbanization - people discover education more important than more farm hands
• health - child survival has immediate impact on birth rate

Make cities #carfree. Invest in education and health.

US attack on Syria a sign of weakness

The whole world wants the oil in Kirkuk, Iraq. It is the last major reserve of easy-to-get oil. The Islamic State stands in the way, hence the 60-something coalition attacking them.

Only problem, Syria is ripe for IS takeover. It almost happened in 2014, but Russia and the US intervened along with their clients and proxies.

The world powers cannot defeat IS. The more they bomb it, the more it grows.

The US wants to turn up the heat, but the 9-11 lie is wearing thin. Russia has already openly called it out a few times in their media. Fortunately for the US, Russia's credibility is low. So the US, after ignoring Syria regime atrocities for six years, now is playing up the latest one to create cover for more forceful intervention.

This plan will go on the pile of failed previous plans.

There is another way. While the world fights over oil, the clathrates are melting, the peat is drying out. The biosphere is in great danger. Why not leave MENA and focus on getting off oil?

People, including Trump voters, want #publictransit, Trump does not

theringer: "Together, these moves offer a window into the types of projects that the Trump administration may put on the chopping block. This matters now because at the same time Trump is choking off transit projects, urban dwellers are voting for some of the most ambitious public transportation expansions in memory. Seattle passed a $54 billion expansion to its light rail system, one of the largest local transit projects in U.S. history. Los Angeles voters agreed to a tax hike that will generate $120 billion for transportation projects. Around the country, voters in Atlanta, Charleston, and Raleigh also approved mass transit expansions. As cities swell with more people, urban dwellers are demanding more efficient transportation options, and are even willing to open their wallets to pay for them. “If you see a plethora of new transit initiatives, then that’s a reflection of what the sentiment is,” says P.S. Sriraj, director of the Urban Transportation Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago."

The United States Is Bombing First, Asking Questions Later

Wow. 9-11 is the legal basis of all the US killing in Syria and Iraq. What a wake-up call when people apply basic physics to the 9-11 event.

Foreign Policy: "All U.S. military strikes have been carried out under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress just days after the 9/11 attacks. The Pentagon says the same is true of the anti-Islamic State campaign, even though the group broke with and has fought al Qaeda. In Syria, the United States makes use of an expansive definition of so-called associated forces of al Qaeda — a phrase that was not included in the AUMF, but that has been adopted by the Pentagon and successive U.S. administrations. More than 15 years after 9/11, it could now apply to thousands of fighters in the Syrian civil war, many of whom may care little about striking the West."

In case you ask "what physics?" There is not enough potential energy in a building to bring it down and crush it into powder. Not even close.

All wars are for energy

Humans have fought each other over the years for power. But power for what? Power to control energy -- food, labor, resources -- all these are needed to provide joules for life.

Economists talk about energy as just a commodity but energy is actually above economics.

Today, many people are being killed, jailed, tortured, starved, and chased from their homes so that a few people can waste energy.

The system of cars and sprawl wastes energy by spreading things out and requiring a lot of running back and forth and individual heating and cooling of buildings.

Wouldn't it make more sense to stop the waste before killing to get more?

We have been taught that human tribalism was brutal and modern life is civilized. But can you imagine a tribe throwing all its food in the river and then attacking a neighbor to take theirs?

A hundred reasons for #freetransit

There are at least 100 reasons why you should advocate fare-free public transit/transport in your town.

First of all, your town saves money. because free is cheaper. It is currently spending a lot of money managing autos and supporting sprawl development. When buses are fare-free these costs can be reduced. Combined with heath savings, the money saved is much more than the lost fares.

Cities can become free of cars. This will attract people and as they urbanize birth rates will fall. When people move to the city, they find that education is more important than creating more farm hands.

To get started, eliminating fares would cost about $100 per person per year for a medium-size city in the US. A family that could reduce by 1 car could save $7,000 per year. Those who cannot sell one car would still benefit by the reduction of congestion.

It's really an obvious solution to problems of city budget, over population, and congestion. 

Fallacy of composition in oil market

Saudis Are Right Back Where They Started - Bloomberg Gadfly: "Effective cuts have been halved by non-compliance and rising output elsewhere"

Rising cost of finding and pumping oil

Our Finite World: "Oil companies tend to extract the cheapest and easiest to extract oil first. Eventually, they find that they need to move on to more expensive to extract fields–even with technology enhancements, costs are rising. "

Humans reaching peak water

BBC News: "The global market for foodstuffs is depleting water sources in many parts of the world quicker than they can naturally be refilled."

Warming earth threatens to release huge amounts of carbon

United Nations : "21 March 2017 – Rising temperatures could release massive amounts of carbon trapped in the Earth's soil, the United Nations agricultural agency today reported, warning that soil management could make or break climate change response efforts."

While many are focused on reducing emissions, heat continues to be generated by human activity. Living uses energy, converting it to heat. The source does not matter, if activity grows, heat increases. This heat now threatens to release tons of carbon. That will make of mockery of attempts to reduce emissions.

Bloomberg explains why #IslamicState must be fought

Bloomberg: "The semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government says the area’s reserves could total 45 billion barrels, more than Nigeria’s, and Kurdish crude is generally cheap to extract. When foreign investors tramped into the region’s oil fields after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the crude was so abundant it seeped from the ground beneath their feet. Tony Hayward, former BP Plc boss turned wildcatter, called Iraqi Kurdistan “one of the last great frontiers” in the oil and gas industry as his new company Genel Energy Plc started prospecting there in 2011. Ashti Hawrami, natural resources minister for the KRG, has spoken of increasing exports to 1 million barrels a day or more."

The faulty thinking behind "decoupling"

World Economic Forum: "But we would argue that what people are observing (and labelling) as decoupling is only partly due to genuine efficiency gains. The rest is a combination of three illusory effects: substitution, financialisation and cost-shifting.

...Many other factors that are not captured by GDP affect well-being. These include the distribution of wealth and income, the health of the global and regional ecosystems (including the climate), the quality of trust and social interactions at multiple scales, the value of parenting, household work and volunteer work. We therefore need to measure human progress by indicators other than just GDP and its growth rate.

The decoupling delusion simply props up GDP growth as an outdated measure of well-being. Instead, we need to recouple the goals of human progress and a healthy environment for a sustainable future."

Paris Accord Could Make the World Richer - and therefore hotter

Bloomberg Quint: "Investments in renewable power and energy efficiency will add about 0.8 percent to global gross domestic product by 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency, or Irena, said Monday in a report produced for the German government... "

Focus on emissions ignores heat. Human activity generates heat. Greenhouse gas emissions need to be negative, but renewables generate growth which means more human activity which means more heat. Efficiency runs into the Jevons problem -- it also encourages growth.

The only policy that addresses both heat and emissions is managed degrowth. We should encourage falling birth rates with:

• education
• child health
• urbanization

Make cities car-free, educate all children, and provide good healthcare.

People want #publictransit, Govt wants cars. #autosprawlsubsidy

masstransitmag: "The 2017 Infrastructure Report Card, released by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), gave U.S. public transportation a D- grade, even as it acknowledged the growth of demand for public transit."

Oil caught in fallacy of composition

There is no good price for oil. If high, economy slows and demand drops. If low, individual producers increase production to keep cash flowing, driving price below cost.

Why can't voluntary production cuts work? Two reasons.

1. No one wants to volunteer to lose money selling oil under cost.

2. Oil is the fuel of transport and sprawl, the essence of consumer capitalism. Trillions in infrastructure is dependent, and there is no easy substitute. Price hikes needed by producers trickle through the entire economy.

So the obvious solution is to get off oil.

But capitalism won't do it, can't do it. Because of its competitive nature, it will exploit any profit seam until collapse.

81% of Trump voters oppose #publictransit cuts

Trump Administration's 'Skinny Budget' Cuts Infrastructure Investment: "According to a recent APTA poll, most Americans, including President Trump supporters, would not support these cuts to public transportation. A 2016 poll showed that 3 out of 4 Americans support increased public transportation investment. Additionally, a November election poll found that 81 percent of Americans who voted for Donald Trump oppose any cuts to the current levels of public transportation investment."

The autosprawl industry has fooled voters for many years with various coalitions of racism, religious extremism, and phony fiscal conservatism. One elected, they resume the attack on public transit. Public transit, implemented properly, exposes the subsidy of the autosprawl system. Once people have choice of travel they see that subsidy of cars is an unnecessary burden.

China proving that #renewables mean #growth

ABO: "Today the country's total installed capacity from coal is over 900 GW, and another 200 GW will soon be added. According to Laura Cozzi, the IEA’s principal analyst, coal will continue to supply over half of Chinese energy consumption at least until 2030. Nonetheless, a new course is being charted for Chinese coal, with plans to cut 2,400 million t from obsolete plants by 2020 and develop "clean coal" through the use of carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) for an annual output of 500 million t. At the same time, the government is betting on renewables by bringing their share of China's energy mix up to 30% during the same period."

GOP to America, "Get in the car. Now"

Rail News : ""From San Diego to Los Angeles to numerous projects in the Bay Area, Californians across the state have benefited from a strong federal presence in public transportation,” said Michael Wiley, chair of the California Transit Association's Executive Committee and former general manager of the Sacramento Regional Transit (RT) District, in a press release. "Sacramento RT's south line light rail project, which was built in two phases, received two federal grants totaling $245 million. Without those funds the 15,000 people that ride that line daily to work, school, shopping and to the new Golden 1 Arena, would be stuck in traffic adding to congestion.""