Steve Bull's Blog, page 45
April 29, 2024
Our Final Destiny: Catastrophe or Rebirth?
Millenialism or renewalism?
The “Base Case” scenario of the first version of “The Limits to Growth” study, published in 1972. Note the shape of the curves: a slow growth is followed by a rapid decline, the typical “Seneca Shape.” Note also that the calculation shows a single cycle. Collapse, as seen in this scenario, is final and irreversible. Is it a “millenaristic” view of the future? Maybe, but we cannot exclude that the system will rebound in a farther future.
For decades after it was published, in 1972, the “Limits to Growth” was criticized with the accusation of being a “wrong prediction.” Remarkably, these accusations started immediately after the study was published, way before the main result of the calculations, the impending societal collapse, could be verified. It was a good example of the human attitude of thinking that what you don’t like cannot be true.
Today, more than 50 years later, the tide seems to be turning, and the study is being re-appraised; see, for instance, the book Limits and Beyond. Yet, we may be making the opposite mistake: turning a scenario into a prophecy and seeing collapse in the light of an unavoidable apocalypse for humankind.
It is not surprising. The history of human thought sees two attitudes going in parallel: “millenarism,” the idea that the world will go through a single cycle and then die, and the opposite one, which I might call “renewalism.” It sees death followed by rebirth in an infinite series of cycles, or at least a very long one.
The term “millenarism” is often attributed to Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC), who said that Roma would last one thousand years. It is typical of the Jewish tradition as expressed, for instance, in the Book of Daniel in the Bible…
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Coca-Cola responsible for more than half of worldwide plastic pollution, study says
ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) – Coca-Cola is responsible for more than half of the plastic pollution across the globe, according to a new study.
Researchers found that the Atlanta-based company is the largest branded contributor of plastic waste. In general, food and beverage companies are the largest polluters in the world.
The company is trying to do better. It is planning to collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one that they sell by 2030.
Survey finds that 60 firms are responsible for half of world’s plastic pollution
Study confirms Altria, Philip Morris International, Danone, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are worst offenders
Fewer than 60 multinationals are responsible for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution, with six responsible for a quarter of that, based on the findings of a piece of research published on Wednesday.
The researchers concluded that for every percentage increase in plastic produced, there was an equivalent increase in plastic pollution in the environment.
“Production really is pollution,” says one of the study’s authors, Lisa Erdle, director of science at the non-profit The 5 Gyres Institute.
An international team of volunteers collected and surveyed more than 1,870,000 items of plastic waste across 84 countries over five years: the bulk of the rubbish collected was single-use packaging for food, beverage, and tobacco products.
Less than half of that plastic litter had discernible branding that could be traced back to the company that produced the packaging; the rest could not be accounted for or taken responsibility for.
“This shows very, very, very well the need for transparency and traceability,” says a study author, Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, a plastic pollution researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. “[We need] to know who is producing what, so they can take responsibility, right?”
The branded half of the plastic was the responsibility of just 56 fast-moving consumer goods multinational companies, and a quarter of that was from just six companies.
The two tobacco companies Altria and Philip Morris International combined made up 2% of the branded plastic litter found, both Danone and Nestlé each produced 3% of it, PepsiCo was responsible for 5% of the discarded packaging, and 11% of branded plastic waste could be traced to the Coca-Cola company.
“The industry likes to put the responsibility on the individual,” says the study’s author, Marcus Eriksen, a plastic pollution expert from The 5 Gyres Institute.
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The Threat of a Solar Superstorm Is Growing—And We’re Not Ready
Someday an unlucky outburst from our sun could strike Earth and fry most of our electronics—and we’ve already had some too-close-for-comfort near misses
Powerful outbursts from the sun—like this bright, flashing solar flare and the adjacent eruption of hot glowing gas—can wreak havoc with Earth’s power grids, computers and telecommunications
The sun is ramping up for a big year.
In one sense it already had a big year, thanks to the April 8 solar eclipse. But that was a terrestrial phenomenon. What we’re gearing up for is a decidedly solar one—our star is nearing the peak of its magnetic activity cycle, which means more sunspots, more storms and, potentially, more danger to Earth.
The sun’s magnetic field is generated in its interior, where conditions are so hot that electrons are stripped from their host atoms, forming an ionized gas. A basic law of physics states that moving electric charges generate a magnetic field, and it’s this ionized-gas-induced magnetism that so profoundly affects the sun’s behavior.
Unlike Earth, which has a fairly strong and well-organized magnetic field similar to that of a single gigantic bar magnet, the sun is dominated by countless locally generated fields. Each one shapes its own parcel of the solar interior. The actual dynamics of this magnetism are fiercely complex, but to simplify, you can think of our star’s overall magnetic field strength as waxing and waning over a period of about 11 years—what we call the solar magnetic cycle.
Hot material inside the sun rises to the surface and, once cooled, sinks again in a process called thermal convection, in a very similar way to water in a boiling teakettle…
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‘Washout winter’ spells price rises for UK shoppers with key crops down by a fifth
Analysts say impact on wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape harvests means price rises on beer, bread and biscuits and more food imported
UK harvests of important crops could be down by nearly a fifth this year due to the unprecedented wet weather farmers have faced, increasing the likelihood that the prices of bread, beer and biscuits will rise.
Analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) has estimated that the amount of wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape could drop by 4m tonnes this year, a reduction of 17.5% compared with 2023.
The warnings come as farmers have borne the brunt of the heavy rainfall and bad weather experienced over the winter, with the UK experiencing 11 named storms since September.
In England, there was 1,695.9mm of rainfall between October 2022 and March 2024, the wettest 18-month period since records began in 1836.
This has resulted in planted crops either being flooded or damaged by the wet weather, or farmers not being able to establish crops at all.
View image in fullscreenA flooded field of brussels sprouts at TH Clements and Son Ltd near Boston, Lincolnshire. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PATom Lancaster, a land analyst at ECIU, said: “This washout winter is playing havoc with farmers’ fields leading to soils so waterlogged they cannot be planted or too wet for tractors to apply fertilisers.
“This is likely to mean not only a financial hit for farmers, but higher imports as we look to plug the gap left by a shortfall in UK supply. There’s also a real risk that the price of bread, beer and biscuits could increase as the poor harvest may lead to higher costs.
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Notes from the edge of civilization: Apr. 28, 2024
No one wants EVs, but governments keep subsidizing them; Canada’s economy is being zombified; Education — higher and otherwise — is still woke, but not awake; and, cursive as cure.
TRUTH IN ADVERTISING: Even Ford’s own marketing materials admit that EVs are a product “drivers really want… but just don’t know it yet.”Last week Ford announced its electric vehicle (EV) division, known as Model e, lost $1.3 billion in the first quarter of 2024. That translates to a loss of $132,000 per vehicle for the 10,000 units the company managed to sell. Ford anticipates the losses will continue to mount for the rest of the year, with a projected annual loss of $5 billion.
The world’s largest EV maker, Tesla, is also hemorrhaging profits. The company’s adjusted earnings for the first quarter fell by 48%, underperforming even the lowered expectations set by most Wall Street analysts.
But governments are still pouring in massive amounts of taxpayer dollars to subsidize a product that consumers don’t want to buy.
On Thursday, Canada announced a $5 billion corporate welfare package for Honda to build an EV battery plant and manufacture EVs in Ontario. When Justin Trudeau released a video about the new deal on X over the weekend, the comments were not kind:
DeTocqueville14: You bribing Honda with money stolen from taxpayers isn’t them betting on you.
govt_corrupt: Justin Trudeau bribes Honda. Buys 1k jobs for $5B and bets on an industry with declining sales and rising inventories. Govt ‘investing’ at its finest…
jpkiekens: 5 million $ per job subsidy for an industry plagued with a huge oversupply of vehicles and with insufficient electric energy supply in most provinces. Bravo. It’s genuine theatre. But a very bad play.
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April 28, 2024
Climate change supercharged a heat dome, intensifying 2021 fire season, study finds
Evolution and strength of the 2021 PNW heat dome. Credit: Communications Earth & Environment (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-024-01346-2As a massive heat dome lingered over the Pacific Northwest three years ago, swaths of North America simmered—and then burned. Wildfires charred more than 18.5 million acres across the continent, with the most land burned in Canada and California.
A new study has revealed the extent to which human-caused climate change intensified the extraordinary event, with researchers theorizing the heat dome was 34% larger and lasted nearly 60% longer than it would have in the absence of global warming. The heat dome, in turn, was associated with up to a third of the area burned in North America that year, according to the study, published in Communications Earth & Environment.
“What happens is you get a stagnated weather pattern—it’s very hot and very dry,” said study author Piyush Jain, research scientist with Natural Resources Canada. “And it dries out all the vegetation and makes whatever is on the ground extremely flammable.”
The study adds to a body of literature documenting how the fingerprints of climate change can be detected in events such as heat waves, droughts and wildfires.
Jain was living in Edmonton in late June 2021 when the mercury in North America’s northernmost million-resident city topped 100 degrees. “I was blown away,” he said. “I’d never experienced those temperatures anywhere I’d lived.”
Farther south, the town of Lytton, British Columbia, on June 29 experienced Canada’s hottest recorded temperature, 119 degrees, and was largely destroyed by a wildfire the next day..
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Emperor penguins perish as ice melts to new lows: study
Paris (AFP) – Colonies of emperor penguin chicks were wiped out last year as global warming eroded their icy homes, a study published Thursday found, despite the birds’ attempts to adapt to the shrinking landscape.
The study by the British Antarctic Survey found that record-low sea ice levels in 2023 contributed to the second-worst year for emperor penguin chick mortality since observations began in 2018 © SARAH DAWALIBI / AFP/FileThe study by the British Antarctic Survey found that record-low sea ice levels in 2023 contributed to the second-worst year for emperor penguin chick mortality since observations began in 2018.
It follows a “catastrophic breeding failure” in 2022, signalling long-term implications for the population, the study’s author Peter Fretwell told AFP.
Emperor penguins breed on sea-ice platforms, with chicks hatching in the winter between late July and mid-August.
The chicks are reared until they develop waterproof feathers, typically in December ahead of the summer melt.
But if the ice melts too early, the chicks risk drowning and freezing.
Fourteen of 66 penguin colonies, which can each produce several hundred to several thousand chicks in a year, were affected by early sea-ice loss in 2023, said the study published in the Journal of Antarctic Science.
The result is “high if not total levels of mortality”, Fretwell said.
Yet 2023 “wasn’t as bad as we feared”, he said.
A record 19 colonies were affected the year before.
On the move
The study also found that several colonies, particularly those ravaged the previous year, had moved in search of better conditions onto icebergs, ice shelves or more stable sea ice.
While such moves offer a hopeful sign that the birds can adapt to the changing environment, Fretwell warned it was a “temporary solution”.
“Penguins are limited in the amount of adaptation they can do. There are only so many places they can go,” he said.
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Brazil’s AG and Supreme Court Reportedly Consider Shutting Down Access To X
According to reports out of Brazil, the country’s attorney general, Jorge Messias, and the Supreme Federal Court (STF) are trying to find a way to shut down X in that country.
The Gazeta do Povo newspaper says that it has had exclusive access to a 10-page document that Messias earlier this week sent to Alexandre de Moraes, an STF justice and president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), asking STF to suspend or completely shut down X, if there is proof that the company “prejudiced” STF and TSE investigations.
Messias also wants Moraes to share with his office any evidence from the ongoing investigation into X owner Elon Musk’s conduct, who is suspected of “obstruction of justice.”
And now a new, internal probe is being prepared by the attorney general regarding the alleged leak of confidential information from investigations conducted by Moraes, published as part of the Twitter Files.
This information, the newspaper said, concerns pressure exerted on X executives to censor accounts belonging to Brazilians. It was to support this investigation that Messias requested more evidence from Moraes.
Now, the X executives are considered to be criminally liable, while Messias thinks X’s Brazil branch, X Brasil Internet, should be treated as an entity involved in a harmful act “hindering the investigation or supervision of public bodies, entities or agents, or intervening in their activities.”
If proven, the fine would amount to 20% of revenue, however, Messias told Moraes that the punishment could be made much more severe. The AG then proceeded to quote the opinion of an internal department with his own office, that said a law would allow the authorities to go as far as suspend X or dissolve the local company.
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2023 Was Even Hotter Than Predicted, Raising Fears We’re in Uncharted Territory
Sea surface temperature anomalies for 9 April 2024. (NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio)Last year Earth warmed around 0.2 °C more than climate models predicted. While that may not seem like much in isolation, when you consider it’s a measure across an entire planet it amounts to a heck of a lot of unexplained heat.
“It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has,” writes NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt in an article for Nature.
“The 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago, when satellite data began offering modellers an unparalleled, real-time view of Earth’s climate system.”
Schmidt warns if this unexplained anomaly doesn’t settle by August, in line with previous El Niño fluctuations, then we will be in uncharted territory.
Several theories have been posed for the excess heat beyond what is expected from the El Niño and known rates of increasing CO2. These include a decrease in surface-cooling aerosols from shipping after regulation changes in 2020; an increase in heat-trapping water vapor from the 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai; and peak activity in the current solar cycle sending more heat our way.
But even combined these all don’t fully account for observed extra heat, Schmidt argues.
The concern is we’re missing something critical in our understanding of Earth’s climate systems, that would explain an accelerated rate of warming, such as a potential miscalibration in the start date of humanity’s impact on the climate.
Being ahead of schedule would explain why extreme climate consequences, including deadly floods, fires, and storms, have been whacking us so hard and fast already.
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