Trump lies about wind energy

 

Speaking in Pennsylvania a few weeks before the 2024 election, Donald Trump repeated the standard gospel—wind, he said, “is the most expensive form of energy there is. You cannot get more expensive.” It won’t surprise you to learn he is wrong, indeed upside down.

McKibben, Bill. Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization (p. 81). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. 

In the first Trump presidency the Washington Post counted his lies which came to over 30,000. I don’t know if the WP is counting in the second presidential term but if so, it must be over 50,000.

Many of the thousands of lies are very harmful to the well being of Americans and people around the world. As we are discussing the development of renewable energy resources such as wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal, the Republican support for fossil fuels and disparaging of renewable energy resources seems all the more egregious in the face of the climate damage and economic costs of fossil fuel usage.

What circle of hell will Trump and his supporters descend to when their bodies die? Where will their souls go?

Solar and wind energy is delivered right to your community every day lost cost and climate friendly

 Forty percent of the world’s ship traffic, for instance, consists of moving coal and gas and oil back and forth across the ocean to be burned, a delivery job the sun accomplishes each morning as it moves across the heavens.

McKibben, Bill. Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization (p. 50). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. 

The fact that forty percent of fossil fuels are transported by ship traffic which themselves burn tremendous amounts of fossil fuel just to facilitate their delivery is significant when another source of energy, solar and wind, is daily delivered right to our door without any effort on human effort whatsoever.

As a side note, Ukraine may be winning the war with Russia because it has damaged the ports and shipping of Russian oil which was providing the funding for Russia’s war against Ukraine. Will the customers for that Russian oil now be motivated to change their energy sources from fossil to renewable energy?

Environmental sociology

What Climate Change Will Do To America By Mid Century, The Atlantic, December, 2025 also entitled “The Dead Zones” in the print magazine

There is no going back to previous temperatures on earth. There is only adapting to the new normal which means determining the truth of the situation by accurately labeling the problem(s), figuring out how to best manage the problems to minimize their negative impact and capitalize on whatever, if anything is positive, and being flexible and reengineering our ways of living. This area of study is a new discipline called “environmental sociology.”

The article, What Climate Change Will Do To America By Mid Century describes some of the changes which are already occurring, the major of which are increasing rates of home insurance, climate migration to higher ground and cooler weather leaving “dead zones” and ghost towns if they are above water, and submerged communities as sea levels rise.

A consideration not covered in the article is the increasing importance of services from the Federal government to manage interstate relocation and management of damage from weather events with which local communities and even state governments don’t have the resources to mitigate and transform. 

The role of the federal government has already become an issue in presidential administration 47 because of withdrawal of federal money from FEMA. the gutting of the weather service, and the politicization of Federal resource distribution to the states based on partisan considerations.

One thing is paramount - United we stand and divided we fall.

Possible questions for consideration and/or discussion:

1. What do you think some of the biggest changes are that will have to be made to live in a hotter climate? 

2. How will climate warming affect your community in the next 30 years? 

3. How will your children and grandchildren have to adapt?

Mother Nature and the moral compass

We are but a minuscule part of an interdependent multitude. The web of life is vast. And really, really cool. This innate sensibility tends to get muted as we “mature,” making it all the more important to revisit and rekindle those early sparks. That feeling of awe that rushes through us when we get up close to the natural world is a signal. Like all strong feelings in the heart and gut, it is telling us something about what matters—about where we can find joy and connection, about what is valuable and sacred, about how to orient a moral compass in a decaying world. In other words, it is telling us how to survive. As humans, it is maladaptive to lose touch with these feelings.

Johnson, Ayana Elizabeth. What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures (p. xviii). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

No person is an island. We are part of something much more vast than our individual ego. That “something much more” goes by many names. For this article, I am calling it “Mother Nature.”

In Unitarian Universalism one of its seven principles is to covenant together to affirm and promote the respect for the interdependent web of which we are a part.

Humanity has lost respect for the interdependent web and we have fouled our nest which now puts us in peril for survival and already has killed millions of other species of life forms on this planet.

When people are discouraged they play the game of “Ain’t it awful.” We tsk tsk and blame others or circumstances and then in a depressed state give up and tell apocalyptic stories to entertain and profit as we submit to circling the drain.

Others deny the human impact on Mother Nature and say that the climate changes we are observing are the result of natural processes outside of our control. These climate change deniers usually have a hidden agenda which is to profit from business as usual no matter the longer term destructive consequences which destroy the very businesses they are lying to protect and they don’t care about the death and destruction their products are wreaking on the interdependent web.

The Noble eightfold path in Buddhism teaches that we should strive for wisdom which is right understanding, and right action which is abstaining from harming living beings.

Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson the author of What If We Get It Right? repeatedly reminds us that we, as humans, have choices. We are not doomed. There are things we can do and are doing already to be more respectful of the interdependent web and treat Mother Nature with the worth and dignity she deserves.

What are the most important things we can do to improve our caring for Mother Nature?

1. Inform ourselves to become more self aware.

2. Engage with others to work to create better environments for all things on earth.

3. Implement positive practices to nurture and facilitate healthy nurturing ecologies.

4. Evaluate the outcomes of our practices

5. Go back to step one and repeat the cycle.

If you are reading this post, you are already doing step one. Come along with us on Markhams Slow News as we study further the mitigation of negative human practices on climate change and learn to adapt in the most just  and equitable ways possible to the changes that are already occurring.

What will the climate be like where you live in 60 years?

The University of Maryland has created an interactive map that predicts what the climate will be like in different areas on the planet in 60 years. 

In Rochester, NY where I live it is predicted that in 60 years the summers will average 12 degrees warmer and 2% drier and the winters will be 12 degrees warmer and 20 % wetter. This will mean less snow in the winter and more rain, and more drought in the summer.

To use the interactive map click here.

Themes from The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024

 

The themes that have emerged for me from The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024  are:

1. The earth is getting warmer and having negative consequences for the ecological balances which we humans have become accustomed to.
2. This climate warming is having negative consequences up to and ending in death for many living things.
3. A small group of under-supported scientists are studying what's happening and their findings are largely ignored or dismissed by the decision makers except in a few instances.
4. Science journalism is one way of informing and educating people about what is happening to them which is outside their level of awareness because the changes are insidious except when they culminate in catastrophic weather events.

Some observers have noted that because of these four things social anxiety and tension has risen contributing to political polarization and the rise of autocracies exemplified by the "strong man" leader who promises to "fix everything" and make people safe and more secure. This political solution is delusional because it doesn't address the underlying problem which is human caused climate change.

What will help? A correct diagnosis of the problem causing the rise in anxiety and plans that are effective in addressing the creation and maintenance of the problem. This requires cooperation, collaboration, and joint efforts around the planet. Isolation and nationalism will not help, but only maintain and increase the problem. There needs to be a shift from the emphasis on private wealth and profit to a sharing and creation of health giving commons. This is a huge shift in values especially in the richest country in the world, the US. What will bring this shift in values in the US population? The worsening of circumstances until people have to find a better way to live if they are to survive. And then a transformation into cooperative, collaborative, mutually satisfying democratic processes.

PS - The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024 is the August 2024 selected read of the Allnonfiction Book Discussion Group. If you are interested in joining the Allnonfiction Book Discussion Group you can find more about it here.

New York States in top three in efforts to mitigate climate change.

 

Where the planet will become uninhabitable due to climate change.

 To see where climate change will hit the hardest and how on the planet click here.

Fixing stuff saves the earth

From Scientific American, February, 2022, p.11

Unlocking Section 1201 is an essential part of the broader right-to-repair movement, which aims to combat the measures that make it difficult or impossible to improve or fix electronics. Limiting the ability to repair a broken device destroys independent repair shops and encourages consumers to dispose of a machine instead of fixing it. This is bad for device owners, and it contributes to the rising tide of electronic waste around the world.

For more click here

Offshore wind farms becoming an increasingly bigger thing.

From the New York Times on 05/11/21:

Construction on the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm is expected to begin this summer, after the Biden administration gave final approval Tuesday to a project it hopes will herald a new era of wind energy across the United States.

The Vineyard Wind project calls for up to 84 turbines to be installed in the Atlantic Ocean about 12 nautical miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Together, they could generate about 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 400,000 homes. The administration estimates that the work will create about 3,600 jobs.

The project would dwarf the scale of the country’s two existing wind farms, off the coasts of Virginia and Rhode Island. Together, they produce just 42 megawatts of electricity.

In addition to Vineyard Wind, a dozen other offshore wind projects along the East Coast are now under federal review. The Interior Department has estimated that by the end of the decade, some 2,000 turbines could be churning in the wind along the coast from Massachusetts to North Carolina.

For more click here.

Climate change and the environment is one of the topics that MarkhamsSlowNews tracks. To keep up with our articles subscribe to the blog to get daily notices when new articles are posted.

While US media focuses on Trump's refusal to concede the election, the planet is experiencing its six warmest years in history

 

From The Week on 12/03/20

U.N. chief: Report shows planet 'broken' by climate change

As the world's oceans heat up and long-frigid Siberia experiences triple-digit heat, 2020 is on track to be one of the three hottest years on record, according to the United Nations' State of the Climate report published Wednesday. "The state of the planet is broken," U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a speech at Columbia University. "Dear friends, humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal." The climate report, produced by the World Meteorological Organization and other U.N. agencies, concluded that 2020 and the five previous years will probably be the six warmest on record. This year could even beat out 2016 once December data is factored in and become the warmest on record. [The Washington Post]

How are fires in Australia and floods in Africa linked? Temperature of ocean currents.

What happens when permafrost is no longer permanent?

What will we call "permafrost" when the frost is no longer permanent? How will this affect climate change. For more click here.

98% of insects have vanished in 35 years from Puerto Rican rain forest

Scientist Brad Lister returned to Puerto Rican rainforest after 35 years to find 98% of ground insects had vanished

Damian Carrington Environment editor

 @dpcarrington

Tue 15 Jan 2019 01.00 ESTLast modified on Tue 15 Jan 2019 01.02 EST

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 El Yunque national forest in Sierra de Luquillo, Puerto Rico. Photograph: Stuart Westmorland/Corbis/Getty Images

“We knew that something was amiss in the first couple days,” said Brad Lister. “We were driving into the forest and at the same time both Andres and I said: ‘Where are all the birds?’ There was nothing.”

His return to the Luquillo rainforest in Puerto Rico after 35 years was to reveal an appalling discovery. The insect population that once provided plentiful food for birds throughout the mountainous national park had collapsed. On the ground, 98% had gone. Up in the leafy canopy, 80% had vanished. The most likely culprit by far is global warming.

“It was just astonishing,” Lister said. “Before, both the sticky ground plates and canopy plates would be covered with insects. You’d be there for hours picking them off the plates at night. But now the plates would come down after 12 hours in the tropical forest with a couple of lonely insects trapped or none at all.”

For more click here.

Symptoms of climate change in Australia 12/31/19

This month, January, 2020, there will be a focus on Climate Change. The book, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells will be frequently referenced.

 

It is interesting that Mark Carney from the Bank Of England is asking financial institutions to gather information from creditors about their involvement in activities that fuel climate change. This seems to be a systemic intervention in asking corporations to become more socially conscious and not just consider their bottom line. This is a significant change in emphasizing certain values in our capitalistic economic system.

Young People Marching - Raffi

Ice melt leading to rise in ocean levels irreversible

This appeared on The Week on 09/26/19

U.N. report says some impact from warming oceans irreversible

A landmark United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released Wednesday warns that sea levels are rising faster than previously believed, and that some ice melt could already be irreversible as many coastal areas face increased flooding. Even if countries significantly curbed emissions blamed for rising global temperatures and warming oceans, most of America's East and West coasts will face 100-year flood levels annually due to a one-meter sea-level rise. "This report highlights the urgency of timely, ambitious, coordinated, and enduring action," said IPCC vice chair Ko Barrett, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's deputy assistant administrator for research. "What's at stake is the health of ecosystems, wildlife, and importantly the world we leave our children." [The Hill]

How the Koch brothers run the United States and fight action on climate change