Steve Bull's Blog, page 42
May 3, 2024
24 ORGANIZATIONS AND EXPERTS CALL ON GOOGLE TO STOP AMPLIFYING AND PROFITING FROM CLIMATE DENIAL CONTENT
Climate groups and academics call on Google to extend its climate disinformation policy, demonetize and stop amplifying climate denial content, and collaborate with NGOs and academic experts to update its policies.
In a letter to Google’s CEO Mr. Sundar Pichai, 24 organizations and academics call on Google to demonetize and stop amplifying climate denial content.
Organization signatories:The Center for Countering Digital HateAssociation québécoise des médecins pour l’environnement (AQME)Centre for Citizens Conserving Environment & Management (CECIC)The Climate CoalitionClimateMamaÉquiterreFriends of the EarthFriends of the Earth (England, Wales & Northern Ireland)Global Action PlanKairos FellowsOne Earth SanghaStand.earthTexas Campaign for the EnvironmentTIAA-Divest!QuotaClimatThe Working Class Climate Alliance350 Conejo / San Fernando ValleyIndividual signatories:Constantine Boussalis, Trinity College DublinJohn Cook, University of MelbourneMarie-Eve Carignan, Université de Sherbrooke / Chaire UNESCO en prévention de la radicalisation et de l’extrémisme violentsMirjam O. Nanko, University of ExeterSander van der Linden, University of CambridgeStanley Rothbardt, Climate Reality ProjectStephan Lewandowsky, University of Bristol
Oklahoma tornadoes: Aerial footage shows trail of destruction
Oklahoma tornadoes: Aerial footage shows trail of destructionAerial footage shows the scale of the devastation in Oklahoma after tornadoes tore through the US state.
Buildings were destroyed and tens of thousands of residents were left without electricity.
The storm killed at least four people, including a young child.
Clean-up operations have been taking place in the town of Sulphur, where the storm flattened buildings, flipped over cars and tore off roofs.
On a visit to Sulphur, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt said it appeared that every business in the town had been destroyed.
A state of emergency has been declared in 12 counties. The White House said President Joe Biden had offered the full support of the federal government.Read more: At least five dead after tornadoes hit central US
…click on link above to view the video…
Analysis: How low-sulphur shipping rules are affecting global warming
In 2020, international regulations to reduce air pollution from shipping imposed strict limits on the sulphur content of marine fuels.
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) rules have had some success in improving public health. Global emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO2) – a health-damaging air pollutant – have dropped by about 10% as a result.
But the shift to low-sulphur shipping fuel has had an additional consequence.
Sulphur particles contained in ships’ exhaust fumes have been counteracting some of the warming coming from greenhouse gases. But lowering the sulphur content of marine fuel has weakened the masking effect, effectively giving a boost to warming.
Some researchers have proposed that the drop in SO2 as a result of the IMO’s clean air regulations could be behind a recent spike in global sea surface temperature.
Carbon Brief analysis shows that the likely side-effect of the 2020 regulations to cut air pollution from shipping is to increase global temperatures by around 0.05C by 2050. This is equivalent to approximately two additional years of emissions.
While this will contribute to warming and make it even more difficult to avoid exceeding 1.5C in the coming decades, a number of other factors are likely contributing to the ocean heatwave.
These include a massive eruption of an underwater volcano in the south Pacific, an unusual absence of Saharan dust and a growing El Niño.
Phasing down
Nearly all SO2 emissions today are a by-product of fossil fuel combustion.
Globally, SO2 emissions from marine fuel increased from around 6 million tonnes (MtSO2) per year in the 1970s to more than 10MtSO2 per year in the 2000s and 2010s.
SO2 emissions from fossil fuels have long contributed to severe health impacts through the formation of particulate matter known as PM2.5.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
We’re Watching The Elite Panic in Real Time
Avian flu has been spreading for months in cattle, and none of our government institutions can tell us anything except, “Don’t panic.”
It’s pathetic.
According to STAT News: “The United States even has some H5 vaccine in a stockpile that it believes would offer protection against the version of the H5N1 virus infecting dairy cattle, though there would not be nearly enough doses for the entire country.” Yes, they believe it would.
They don’t know?
I mean, it’s their job to know. We pay these people a third of our money, and that money is specifically meant for them to know these kinds of things and prepare for them. Instead, what do we get?
“Don’t panic.”
Bird flu was spreading all last year, working its way up the mammalian food chain. Our politicians were too busy worrying about TikTok and Chinese weather balloons. They completely dropped the ball on this one.
We’re told that bird flu isn’t spreading among humans “at this time,” but it “could” at some point in the future. Well, it’s been jumping to every other mammal, including a dolphin.
Even a story in U.S. News has to admit that “no studies have ever been done on the effects of pasteurization on bird flu virus in milk.” They say, “Experts believe pasteurization… should kill the virus.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
May 2, 2024
Irish Villagers Attacked and Pepper Sprayed by Police. Conflict Over Hundreds of ‘Unvetted Migrant’ Centres Being Planted Throughout Ireland and the UK
The Irish government is now at war with its own people as clashes grow between police and Irish citizens who are protesting against over thousands of unchecked/unvetted migrants literally being ‘forced’ into their small communities. Government statistics show that 87% of the migrants are intentionally destroying their passports upon entry to avail of ‘asylum seeker’ status, therefore nobody know who these people are and whether, or not, they have a criminal record. Furthermore, most of the migrants seeking ‘asylum status’ are from countries that have no war. The migrants are eligible for free accommodation, free social welfare, free medical care, food, clothes, and various other perks. Whilst at the same time that the Irish government is facilitating mass immigration there are 14,000 Irish homeless people on the streets, and the Irish face a very serious accommodation crisis as the cost of renting has sky-rocketed. Make no mistake about it this could turn very nasty.
The following shocking video of Irish villagers being attacked and pepper-sprayed by government police is an example of what is happening throughout Ireland (and the UK) as the Irish government, which for years has been little more than a puppet of the EU, turns, yet again, on the Irish people. Irish people, renowned for their friendly nature of ‘100,000 welcomes’ have in general been very welcoming to migrants. However, now after years of blatant ‘unvetted’ migration, increased crime, and a serious accommodation crisis for Irish people, it appears many Irish have simply had enough.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Flooding Will Come “No Matter What”
The complex, contradictory and heartbreaking process of American climate migration is underway.
This article is an excerpt from the book “On The Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America,” about climate migration in the U.S. For more, see abrahm.com.
Another great American migration is now underway, this time forced by the warming that is altering how and where people can live. For now, it’s just a trickle. But in the corners of the country’s most vulnerable landscapes — on the shores of its sinking bayous and on the eroding bluffs of its coastal defenses — populations are already in disarray.
A couple of miles west of downtown Slidell, Louisiana, and just upstream from the broad expanse of Lake Pontchartrain — the 40-by-24-mile-wide brackish estuary separating what is now the mainland from New Orleans — a five-room shotgun house sits on a plot of marshy lawn near the edge of Liberty Bayou. Colette Pichon Battle’s mother had been born in that house. Colette, bright-eyed and ambitious, devoutly Catholic, a force on the volleyball court, was raised in the house until the day she left for college. The family’s very identity had grown from the waters of the marsh around it. From a humble rectangle of wood, framed onto brick stanchions that kept it hovering several feet above the ground, shaded by the long beards of Spanish moss hanging from the limbs of towering oaks and a hardy pine, a family was born. Its Creole heritage near the acre of low-lying land goes deeper than the trees, deeper than the United States as a nation, to around 1770. Those roots withstood the tests of centuries: slavery, war and more than their share of storms.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Here’s what record-breaking temperatures looked like around the globe
(Photo credit: Anthony Quintano / CC BY 2.0 DEED)You probably know that 2023 was a very warm year for our planet — and that this heat is continuing into 2024. And you likely know some effects of this heat in your own region or continent — in the U.S., for instance, the Canadian wildfire smoke that covered the U.S. East Coast, the Midwest’s unusually warm winter, or the recent million-plus-acre wildfire in the Texas Panhandle.
If you live in the U.S. and happen to get most of your news from national broadcast channels ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, these big stories may be most of what you know about recent climate events. During the record-smashing year of 2023, these four TV stations spent less than 1% of their news time addressing climate change.
If you get your news from other sources, you’ll likely know more. For instance, you may have seen this stunning comment from the Deputy Director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, Samantha Burgess: “2023 was an exceptional year with climate records tumbling like dominoes. Not only is 2023 the warmest year on record, but it is also the first year with all days over 1°C warmer than the preindustrial period. Temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years.”
Still, you may sometimes lose sight of the global picture — and the critical fact that the whole planet’s climate is under stress. It’s not just the heat itself, either, but also the droughts and floods that can come with higher temperatures.
So here are some quick snapshots and summaries of what these hot months have meant around the world. In many cases, the headlines alone tell the basic story.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Dangerous and Chaotic Military Escalation: How will The Kremlin Respond to the EU/NATO’s “Total Hybrid War” Against Russia?
Russia is a big bite. In fact, it’s such a big bite that all of its enemies and invaders choked on it, while many have suffocated as a result, incapable of ever regaining their superpower status.
The political West has been the most stubborn in its attempts to subjugate the Eurasian giant.
However, it has never done so in such a united manner as is the case nowadays.
It can even be argued that the belligerent power pole is waging a sort of hybrid total war against Moscow. This aggression is as multifaceted as it could possibly be and it keeps escalating as the United States and its vassals and satellite states are simply refusing to acknowledge that Russia has red lines just like any other sovereign country. In fact, the US-led political West has not only completely ignored the Eurasian giant’s basic national security interests, but has actually been hurting them intentionally to provoke a more direct response from the Kremlin.
To that end, in the last 10-15 years, NATO and its geopolitical pendant, the European Union, established institutions tasked with conducting the aforementioned hybrid war against Russia. And just like the world’s most aggressive military alliance poses as a “defensive organization”, these institutions serve the purpose of “cyber and disinfo defense”. In reality, nothing could be further from true. Namely, NATO established what is officially known as Centers of Excellence (COEs) that are given various tasks. Officially, there are 28 of them, although, in reality, there could be several times more, particularly as the EU itself has similar institutions with overlapping responsibilities…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Permian Shrugs Off Below-Zero Natural Gas Prices in Texas
Permian producers are not shutting in oil wells with associated natural gas despite the fact that the Texas regional gas price has been stuck at below-zero levels since early March.
Major pipeline operators in the Permian basin haven’t yet seen any effect of the negative gas prices at the Waha hub in West Texas on activity as producers are look to maximize oil realizations at West Texas Intermediate crude prices at above $80 per barrel.
But the U.S. natural gas benchmark, Henry Hub, has been depressed below $2.00 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) since early February due to weak winter demand amid milder weather, record output at the end of 2023, and higher-than-average natural gas stocks.
Natural gas prices at the Waha hub slumped to a negative value of -$2.00 per MMBtu in April as the recent rise in oil prices prompted producers to bring drilled but uncompleted wells online. The Waha hub prices remained below zero for most of March and April amid high production and not enough takeaway capacity.
The price at the Waha Hub rose by $1.25 in the latest reporting week, from -$1.18/MMBtu to $0.07/MMBtu on April 24, only the second day the price was above zero since April 1, per EIA data.
The negative Waha gas prices and the supply glut are creating a problem for Permian producers regarding how they should dispose of part of the excess natural gas output.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
California’s Perpetual Drought Is Manmade and Intentional
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) last week released its next five-year plan for the State Water Project—Update 2023. After years of meetings, California’s premier water agency has decided to focus on “three intersecting themes: addressing climate urgency, strengthening watershed resilience, and achieving equity in water management.”
Water supplies for California’s 40 million people and the planet’s most productive agriculture have third- to fifth-level priority.
There is nothing new here, except to publicly admit to betraying the public trust. Really?
Over several decades, the public has been deceived into voting for water bonds that have little new water in them—phony promises to build new water storage and aqueducts. About 12 percent of bond funds are spent on new water storage. The rest of the bond funds have been squandered on scores of local and special-interest environmental projects, e.g., tearing down four Klamath-area dams—killing fish to save them—and opposing substantial new water projects, e.g., raising Shasta Dam and building Auburn Dam.
Further, by California law, water must be equitably distributed, pumped “equally”—half to human beings (if you count agriculture) and half to fish (the water-short Pacific Ocean, 187 quadrillion gallons). During the big rains of 2024, about 90 percent of the water was flushed to the Pacific through the gills of perhaps a half dozen delta smelt.
Farmers call it a manmade drought.
The politicos halted humans “taking” water, “diverting” it, from fish. Under the U.S. Constitution, the taking of private property requires just compensation—not mass confiscation. Water rights are a complex species of property.
“Our findings show that atmospheric river activity exceeds what has occurred since instrumental record keeping began,” said Clarke Knight, a U.S. Geological Survey research geographer.
Still, DWR scheduled 2024 meetings of the Drought Resilience Interagency & Partners (DRIP) Collaborative for April, July, and October.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
