Category: Climate Crisis

Look here to see how climate is being changed and what that means to us.

  • A really bad piece of 2021 legislation in Virginia – ‘Advanced Recycling’

    The 2021 Virginia legislature passed a really bad compromise piece of “environmental” legislation. They swapped a styrofoam ban for extremely polluted air, water, and land. Instead of styrofoam microbeads in our air and water, on the land and in our food, we get to have our air polluted and our lungs further damaged from heavy metals, mercury, lead, and other wonderful things. What a compromise!

    It’s been estimated that we will have 5 or 6 of these extremely polluting incinerators, now governed by waste management regulations, moved over to a “manufacturing” category.

    Who regulates these new factories? Who ensures that they don’t spew toxic fumes all around us?

    “Advanced recycling” is a way to hide pollution. and to keep the fossil fuel industry in the plastics business. So they can continue to make plastic things, then burn them, to continue profiting on extracting fossil fuels for all sorts of places. Think Exxon Valdez, Gulf of Mexico, Africa, and all the other places on this planet that have been despoiled.

  • 100% Renewable Energy Is Feasible and Affordable

    A new study by Stanford University researchers have developed detailed plans for each state in the union to move to 100 percent wind, water and solar power by 2050 using only technology that’s already available. It is feasible, and cost effective, and doesn’t rely on dramatic energy efficiency changes, fossil fuels, or nuclear power. The proposal is straightforward: eliminate combustion as a source of energy, because it’s dirty and inefficient. Power all vehicles by electric batteries or by hydrogen, where the hydrogen is produced through electrolysis rather than natural gas. High-temperature industrial processes would also use electricity or hydrogen combustion. Allow existing fossil-fuel plants to age out and be replaced with renewable power sources.

    http://singularityhub.com/2014/03/08/100-renewable-energy-is-feasible-and-affordable-stanford-proposal-says/

     

  • Radioactive Fracking waste winds up in landfills, or worse

    Oilfields are spinning off thousands of tons of low-level radioactive trash as the U.S. drilling boom leads to a surge in illegal dumping. The waste is a byproduct of drilling, as it unlocks naturally occurring radium from shale rock formations, during fracking. This  waste is often buried at the extraction site, dumped illegally, or sent to local landfills.  The extraction process displaces radium-tinged subterranean water that comes up through the wells, where it can taint soil and surface equipment. Radiation levels can build up in sludge at the bottom of tanks, pipeline scale, and other material that comes in extended contact with wastewater.

  • Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change – How bad will it become?

    This report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) talks about how bad climate change will become, if we don’t do something now. It talks about projected temperature increases of 4 to 5 C (1.8 * 4 = 7.2 to 9 degrees Farenheit), which will risk damaging food supplies and water, will cause the exterminateon of 20-30% of all wildlife, cause a permanent rise of sea levels so that many islands and coastal areas will flood or become completely submerged, and other rather unpleasant consequences of inaction. There is hope, however, that much of the damage can be prevented, if we act now to limit greenhouse gases.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/leaked-climate-change-report-scientific-body-warns-of-devastating-rise-of-45c-if-we-carry-on-as-we-are-9256708.html