Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Polish City of Krakow Offers Again Free Public Transport to Fight Pollution

Latin American Herald Tribune: "
WARSAW – The Polish city of Krakow, where high levels of air pollution have been reached in recent winters, offered on Tuesday free public transport to travelers in a bid to reduce the use of private vehicles, local authorities said on Radio Poland.

The city’s government also called on residents to go outdoors as little as possible due to high pollution levels.

Poland has 33 of the 50 most polluted cities in Europe, with worryingly high levels of airborne particles, according to a report by the World Health Organization published in 2017."

Saturday, January 20, 2018

An excellent resource about freedom from cars

Carfree Times: September 2017: ""If given just one word to describe climate change, then 'unfairness' would be a good candidate. Raised levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are expected to cause deadly heatwaves for much of South Asia. Yet many of those living there will have contributed little to climate change.""

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Imagine there's no cars

Seoul offers free public transport to tackle excessive air pollution

The Independent : "Emergency measures have been introduced in the South Korean capital of Seoul to combat a thick layer of smog that is covering the city.

Public transport is free during rush-hour as of Monday 15 January, in the hopes that car use will be reduced.

The measures were introduced after the average daily density of ultra-fine dust hit more than 50 micrograms per cubic metre, an amount that is considered harmful."

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Less than 10 years to human extinction, from mostly peer-reviewed submissions

Climate-Change Summary and Update – 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."

Saturday, January 13, 2018

#freetransit #freepublictransport - An international campaign

Here is how #renewables make things worse

Assume today all fossil-fuel use ended. The following heat and emission generators still exist.

Direct
  • human activity - moving, building, fixing, fighting, maintaining body temperature
Indirect
  • drying peat
  • melting permafrost
  • melting clathrates (ocean methane)
  • soil emissions from agriculture
  • forest destruction reducing co2 capture
  • wildfires
  • reduced ice melt latency
  • reduced ice solar reflection
  • tectonic activity from ice melt
  • tectonic activity from geothermal energy use
  • etc
All of these are doubling every 30 18 years.

Renewables do abolutely nothing to slow growth. Even without fossil-fuel we will cook the bioshere. Only degrowth reduces both heat and emissions.

Thursday, January 11, 2018

Reducing emissions is ambiguous

Let's leave aside the second derivative, the rate of growth of the rate of growth, or acceleration of emission growth.

The rate of growth, even if it were a steady percent, is still exponential. If emissions grow, for example, 2.3 percent per year, then the amount of carbon in the atmosphere will double every 30 years.

Let's say that emissions are brought to zero. The amount of carbon already emitted is still not being reduced. It stays the same. This is the state which China aspires to reach in 12 years. That means they plan to continue adding carbon until that time.

Many technofixers are saying X reduces carbon emissions. But people read it as X reduces carbon. This needs to be made clear.

Saturday, January 6, 2018

Unfolding Arctic Catastrophe

Arctic News: "Warm water will melt the sea ice from below, which keeps the water at greater depth cool. However, when there is little or no sea ice underneath the surface, little or no heat will be absorbed by the process of melting and the heat instead stays in the water, with the danger that it will reach sediments at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, as illustrated by the image below."