Global warming

[pbrower2a]

(11-09-2022, 07:14 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(10-08-2022, 12:56 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I'm cheering for some blizzards here in Michigan.  Agriculture is the #2 business here in Michigan, and farmers need blizzards to supply and protect groundwater. If I married some rich widow who has a second home in Florida I would be leery of going to Florida in September and October. My pretext would be to see the beautiful fall foliage in Michigan.

Blizzards aren't fun, but if you wimp out because of them there is a spelling for relief. F-L-O-R-I-D-A. I can't run as fast as I used to, and I certainly don't want to get caught in my car in floodwaters. December to early April... Florida is OK.

Florida? A place that votes 17-20% margins for looney culture warriors and covid and election deniers is not the place to go or live for anyone but fools. And they are voting for the hurricanes that hit them over and over again, and they never learn. And older white people like the lady in the picture you posted above are the most likely to vote for what she experienced. Did she learn, and vote Democratic? Probably not. The new Hurricane Nicole is one of only two in recorded history that have happened this late in the season. Will Floridians learn? Not on your life. They'd rather drown than vote for the Party that can reduce these disasters by boosting renewable energy and electric cars (or even more nuclear power; something needs to be done to reduce greenhouse has emissions!). They'd rather vote to prohibit people from saying "gay" or reading about their history. Shame on Florida. God damn Florida. May it sink into the sea.

Florida is politically rotten. It is effectively a dictatorship now due to a political machine that has made opposition irrelevant.

Florida is the state in which rigid enforcement of environmental laws, including those against the importation of giant snakes, is most important. This state, which has resisted oil refineries to protect its beaches (tough luck, Floridians -- you will need to sacrifice some beaches if you want some modestly-priced gasoline) has political leaders who have sold out to the fossil fuel interests and the electrical power monopoly. If one does generate electricity through solar power, then one must effectively pay a tax to the electric company for the lost revenue.

Academic freedom is nearly as shattered in Florida as in its neighbor to the South (Cuba), if for different reasons. If you teach any social study (especially economics) in a public university, then the Koch syndicate has dictated what is permissible. All hail Lord Mammon!

De Santis practically has a Trump-like or Castro-like cult of personality behind him. He has his "Florida Way of Things" to offer to the USA as a whole. Should that succeed, then I hope that Michigan secedes and joins Canada. 

Michiganders have long gone to Florida to escape the bleak winters and nasty blizzards. The problem with Florida is in part snakes that are now eating alligators. Alligators at least have a healthy fear of us. Pythons and boas have no such fear. (Thank you, Marco Rubio, whose family was involved in the importation of exotic animals!)  

I'd rather go to Costa Rica, anyway.

[Eric the Green]

Southern poverty gets the United Nations' attention
By Junior Walters, July 11, 2018
https://www.facingsouth.org/2018/07/sout...-attention

Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty, recently toured parts of the U.S., including impoverished communities in Alabama, Georgia and West Virginia. Released last month, his report holds the U.S. government responsible for creating so much poverty — and for fixing the problem.

In a report presented to the United Nations' Human Rights Council last month, the U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty called attention to the tremendous scale and consequences of poverty in the United States — and particularly in the U.S. South.

Philip Alston, who is also a law professor at New York University, pointed to a combination of political, social, and economic discrimination that keeps 40 million Americans below the official poverty threshold, with 5.3 million living in conditions of absolute poverty that resemble those of undeveloped countries.

"My report demonstrates that growing inequality, and widespread poverty which afflicts almost one child out of every five, has deeply negative implications for the enjoyment of civil and political rights by many millions of Americans," he told the council during a June 22 presentation in Geneva, Switzerland.

Alston toured the U.S. for 10 days in December 2017, and much of the report is based on his findings in the South. He visited Alabama, Georgia and West Virginia, where he witnessed the consequences of poverty in both urban and rural contexts. He also visited California, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.

He was particularly struck by the rural poverty he witnessed in Alabama. In his presentation to the Human Rights Council, Alston called for swift government action in the state as he referred to the sewage that "poured into the gardens of people who could never afford to pay $30,000 for their own septic systems in an area remarkably close to the State capital."

Everywhere he went, Alston was greeted by community leaders, activists and organizers. They included Catherine Coleman-Flowers, rural development manager at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, and founder of the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise. Coleman-Flowers invited Alston to Lowndes County, Alabama, to see rural poverty in the Southern Black Belt region.

"I wanted him to meet and talk to families that are living in what has been described as Third World conditions in America," Coleman-Flowers told Facing South in an e-mail. She said she showed Alston "raw sewage and the conditions that have yielded evidence of tropical parasites."

Lowndes County ranks among the poorest in the U.S., with a median household income under $30,000 and poverty rate of over 30 percent — double the national average. Its most impoverished communities have become notorious for their poor environmental conditions and lack of adequate sanitation. Raw sewage often pools outside of homes, dramatically increasing the risk of parasitic infections such as hookworm, which was once thought to have been eradicated from the U.S.

African Americans account for 70 percent of the population in the 18 counties that are part of Alabama's Black Belt, and about a third of them live in poverty. The region includes Dallas County, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began the famous marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, partly as a protest against the economic challenges facing African-American sharecroppers.

Indeed, the UN report did not shy away from drawing a connection between racial discrimination and poverty. It noted that African Americans are more likely to live in poverty, more likely to be unemployed, and, when employed, are likely to make less than white Americans.

"These shameful statistics can only be explained by long-standing structural discrimination on the basis of race, reflecting the enduring legacy of slavery," the report said.

The report also addressed the stigmatization of the poor in U.S. culture, expressed in both the welfare and the criminal justice systems. It pointed to government officials' allegations that people seek to "live high on the welfare hog" and accusations of welfare fraud often made against people with disabilities, a phenomenon Alston particularly noticed in West Virginia.

The report also accuses the U.S. of using criminalization to conceal the underlying poverty problem.

"In many cities and counties, the criminal justice system is effectively a system for keeping the poor in poverty while generating revenue to fund not only the justice system but many other programmes," the report said.

Alston placed the responsibility for poverty on the U.S. government — both as the cause and the solution. "The persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power," he said in the report....

My Note: And who puts who in power in the USA? The voters. Who keeps the system of elections and their financing the way it is? The voters. Or those who don't vote.

I live in San Jose California, and we just elected a new business/real-estate oriented former tech entrepreneur as mayor (but who says he's a Democrat), who used the homelessness and other similar issues and people's fears to get elected by a 52-48 margin. I am ashamed of my city's voters, and not for the first time. I ride my bike around town and I see some homeless camps along river trails, and some homeless people hang out in downtown parks. But this is a tiny fraction of the people who live here, and a tiny fraction of the city's area. Santa Clara County CA is probably the world's most expensive place to live, and you have to be rich or double up on space a great deal to live here. It is expensive because of the high paying jobs here in "Silicon Valley", of which San Jose is the "capitol". The universities in northern CA, many of them state supported and even free back before Reagan, one of which I attended, are one reason for the high tech culture that dominates the economy here. But it's too expensive for many who may be stuck here for one reason or another.

Another aspect of San Jose is the high degree of ethnic diversity, and the different ethnic groups are somewhat spread out across the city. But of course people jealous of our free lifestyle, our near-perfect weather and our cultural richness here in NorCal knock Democratic-voting California, but they should look at their own places instead. How people vote, and for which Party, has a large influence on the quality of life and opportunity in each state, although it's not the only factor. Among those states who vote for the wrong Party, the Republicans, those in the south and border regions rank lowest on all measures among "red" states, while some in the mountain and plains west are less awful by comparison. There are good people in all regions, and the margins between states are not huge among these measures of quality of life, health and so forth. But the USA as a whole has the worst record of any developed country, and the South is one reason because it drags the rest of the country down-- not the least because of how it votes. Besides a small minority of Democratic House seats in the big 2 states of FL and TX, it's hard to find any Democrats in congress representing these states these days. And back to the thread topic, the South is probably the most vulnerable region in the USA to the disasters of global warming, but is by far the region most culpable for it in the world; again, because of how they vote. Check that scorecard again if you doubt this fact. https://scorecard.lcv.org/members-of-congress

[JasonBlack]

(11-09-2022, 07:36 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: You are forgetting a lot because you put your prejudices (calling those who don't hold them "woke") ahead of policies that actually help the people avoid disasters. Or you believe neoliberal trickle-down economics that says the government should not restrain greedy owners with rent controls, or believe conspiracy theories or slogans that deny that health measures needed to be imposed collectively and not just individually in order to stop the spread of an extremely dangerous, contagious disease. No right winger could possibly enable an environmentalist movement. Neoliberalism precludes any collective action and puts all responsibility on each one of 7 billion individuals to make a decision to go against what is convenient to buy.

And you call the coasts, and not your own southern swamplands, "disaster zones", even though those Dixie swamp lands are the least developed and most prejudiced, poor, backward, deceived region in the entire developed world, and more backward even than many regions of the less-developed world. And people there vote for this. It costs more money to live in the coastal blue states because it is the most desirable and lucrative place to be in the USA, so housing prices rise and homelessness has to be dealt with. These areas are desirable largely because we vote correctly, and your area does not.

Keep in mind it was right wingers who brought us the Environmental Protection Agency. Business conservatives do not make up the entirety or even the majority of the right, and even among those, a good percentage are skeptical of corporate overreach and would support various measures to curb lobbying, provide grants or financial relief for small businesses or close tax loopholes exploited by larger corporations.

A lot of those poverty statistics don't mean much to me, because they tend to use a single threshold income, rather than considering the ratio of income to local cost of living. Ex: many people get by just fine on $20,000 a year in Georgia, when people in California often make over twice that much and still live in crippling poverty on account of rents, food prices, etc

[Eric the Green]

(11-10-2022, 03:56 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(11-09-2022, 07:36 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: You are forgetting a lot because you put your prejudices (calling those who don't hold them "woke") ahead of policies that actually help the people avoid disasters. Or you believe neoliberal trickle-down economics that says the government should not restrain greedy owners with rent controls, or believe conspiracy theories or slogans that deny that health measures needed to be imposed collectively and not just individually in order to stop the spread of an extremely dangerous, contagious disease. No right winger could possibly enable an environmentalist movement. Neoliberalism precludes any collective action and puts all responsibility on each one of 7 billion individuals to make a decision to go against what is convenient to buy.

And you call the coasts, and not your own southern swamplands, "disaster zones", even though those Dixie swamp lands are the least developed and most prejudiced, poor, backward, deceived region in the entire developed world, and more backward even than many regions of the less-developed world. And people there vote for this. It costs more money to live in the coastal blue states because it is the most desirable and lucrative place to be in the USA, so housing prices rise and homelessness has to be dealt with. These areas are desirable largely because we vote correctly, and your area does not.

Keep in mind it was right wingers who brought us the Environmental Protection Agency. Business conservatives do not make up the entirety or even the majority of the right, and even among those, a good percentage are skeptical of corporate overreach and would support various measures to curb lobbying, provide grants or financial relief for small businesses or close tax loopholes exploited by larger corporations.

A lot of those poverty statistics don't mean much to me, because they tend to use a single threshold income, rather than considering the ratio of income to local cost of living. Ex: many people get by just fine on $20,000 a year in Georgia, when people in California often make over twice that much and still live in crippling poverty on account of rents, food prices, etc

Ha ha, you are going well back before neoliberalism took over to give credit to "right-wingers" for the EPA! Nixon was in many ways a moderate, he specifically embraced environmentalism, and the main problem with him was his violent imperialism and his own defensive ruthless ambitions for power. Today's right-wingers are almost unanimous in their total, ruthless and passionate opposition to environmentalism. Again, check the record: https://scorecard.lcv.org/members-of-congress
I note that the Republican conservatives in the southwestern district of Colorado have almost thrown out their Trumpist fanatic Lauren Boebert, who has a 0% record on this issue. This was not expected by the pundits and political trackers. The race is still not called with over 95% of the vote counted.

I do think that some corporations are coming around to at least some recognition of their responsibility to the planet and the people, because it has or will affect their bottom line. CA is forcing the car companies to come around because of CA's big portion of the car market. But a large portion of these corporations are still wedded to and support the Republican Party and its neoliberal policies of money and profit uber alles whatever the cost to the people might be, and they poured millions into Wisconsin and Ohio to successfully keep the Senate red. They all still benefit greatly from the trickle-down economics of neoliberalism.

The stats cover the whole range of quality of life, social equality and health and take account of the cost of living I am sure.
Again, see:

https://philosopherswheel.com/health_and...ntries.jpg

[pbrower2a]

DAWWAYAH, Iraq and ILISU DAM, Turkey (AP) — Next year, the water will come. The pipes have been laid to Ata Yigit’s sprawling farm in Turkey’s southeast connecting it to a dam on the Euphrates River. A dream, soon to become a reality, he says.

He’s already grown a small corn patch on some of the water. The golden stalks are tall and abundant. “The kernels are big,” he says, proudly. Soon he’ll be able to water all his fields.

Over 1,000 kilometers (625 miles) downstream in southern Iraq, nothing grows anymore in Obeid Hafez’s wheat farm. The water stopped coming a year ago, the 95-year-old said, straining to speak.

“The last time we planted the seed, it went green, then suddenly it died,” he said.

The starkly different realities are playing out along the length of the Tigris-Euphrates river basin, one of the world’s most vulnerable watersheds. River flows have fallen by 40% in the past four decades as the states along its length — Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq — pursue rapid, unilateral development of the waters’ use.

The drop is projected to worsen as temperatures rise from climate change. Both Turkey and Iraq, the two biggest consumers, acknowledge they must cooperate to preserve the river system that some 60 million people rely on to sustain their lives.

But political failures and intransigence conspire to prevent a deal sharing the rivers.

The Associated Press conducted more than a dozen interviews in both countries, from top water envoys and senior officials to local farmers, and gained exclusive visits to controversial dam projects. Internal reports and revealed data illustrate the calculations driving disputes behind closed doors, from Iraq’s fears of a potential 20% drop in food production to Turkey’s struggles to balance Iraq’s and its own needs.

“I don’t see a solution,” said former Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi.

“Would Turkey sacrifice its own interests? Especially if that means that by giving more (water) to us, their farmers and people will suffer?”

Turkey has been harnessing the river basin with a massive project to boost agriculture and generate hydroelectricity. Under its Southeast Anatolia Project, or GAP by its Turkish acronym, it has built at least 19 dams on the Euphrates and Tigris and several more are envisaged for a total of 22.

It aims to develop the southeast, long an economic backwater and the wellspring of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, a Kurdish separatist movement that Ankara considers a terrorist organization.

For the farmer, Yigit, the project will be transformative.

Until now, his reliance on well water only permitted half his land to be irrigated.

But in June, the irrigation pipes finally reached his farm in Mardin province. Next year, his entire 4,500 acres will be watered via the Ataturk Dam on the Euphrates River.

Lower water availability forced a revision in the area that GAP will irrigate, down to 1.05 million hectares, from an original 1.8 million. Half the reduced goal has been met. The rest depends on how quickly authorities can install infrastructure linking villages to the dams.

Farmers benefitting from GAP must use advanced irrigation techniques that Turkish authorities say use two-thirds less water.

But for an anxious Iraq, every drop of water diverted for irrigation means less downstream.

Still, in Yigit’s world, the future is finally bright.

“Next year, the canals will be open.”

(snip -- read the article yourself)

In the famed Chibayish marshes, the carcasses of water buffalos float along the riverbanks, poisoned by the salty water.

Herders circulate the iconic wetland, fabled to have been the biblical Garden of Eden, looking for trickles of fresh water to save their animals.

Over the past two years, the lush greenery of the marshes has degenerated and yellowed, killed by salinity building up from two years of insufficient fresh-water inflow.

It is a haunting vision of the future. Along with dying livestock, harvests are declining for a second year in a row; both are the principal employers in rural Iraq. At least 62,000 in south-central Iraq have migrated to congested urban centers due to drought, the U.N. reported in September.

https://apnews.com/article/iran-middle-e...b812fa1fca

When agriculture fails, the overall economy suffers. Farmers driven off by foreclosures, bad harvests, or perverse policies head for non-existent jobs in the cities. Food prices skyrocket in the cities. Nobody is happy, Just because the much hated Saddam Hussein is in Hell does not mean that Iraq is in good shape.

[margrate]

(05-12-2016, 10:27 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: An open Arctic would have huge climatic effects throughout middle and high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. Most of the Arctic is open-water surface, and where open water replaces ice, the open water becomes a very absorbent surface instead of a reflective surface. Should the Arctic be open in the early summer, then even the North Pole becomes intensely warmed in the summer.

 


Such would drastically change the ocean currents, rainfall patterns, and wind regimes.

yes offcourse there would be no problem at all to open Arctic region during early summer 
[/url][url=https://mboutiqueau.com/]https://mboutiqueau.com/

[Eric the Green]

The warming Arctic also probably is to blame for the increased cold and stormy weather all year in the Eastern US and Canada that seems to be an unfortunate new normal, because this pushes the Jet Stream south dipping down from the Arctic.

[pbrower2a]

Then came the California floods as the Siberian air mass took a rack over the northern Pacific Ocean, with front-like pulses forcing flooding rains in northern California.

Eric, how are you doing?

An ice event sealed my car shut so that I could not open the car door. I would not have taken the risk of breaking the window. I had a plastic bottle of a diet cola in my car that I somehow ignored... and it exploded.

I basically stayed put. There was no compelling place to go except to a Christmas Eve party that my cousin threw about ten miles west of where I live. Ten miles to the west of that was a blizzard warning. The road was horrible. My brother was driving, and I commented on how rough the road was. He said that it was slippery. On a road with a 55-mile speed limit we went about 30 mph, and even that seemed a bit sketchy.

Well, the team that I have mocked for a few years as the Detroit Cocker Spaniels is starting to play some interesting football for the first time in about twenty years.

[pbrower2a]

Is it any surprise? Economic ineq

[pbrower2a]

Is it any surprise? Extreme economic inequality tends to reinforce itself by allowing those already rich to buy the system from the mass media to politics to religion to educational institutions to law enforcement. If infrastructure is built, then it well serves the rich and only them -- and the poor get to pay for it with high taxes. Laws might enforce something close to peonage, and arrests for minor offenses may lead to convict leases that may never pay off a hefty fine for such an offense as vagrancy. (Convict have been illegal since World War II in America since FDR outlawed them because such practices imitated what the fascist Axis Powers were doing with people under occupation or pariahs within their countries).  

Universities and colleges might become propaganda houses on such topics as economics and other social sciences; professors may know that if they are to hold a chair at a post-secondary institution that they are wise to say exactly what the economic elites want them to say (such as that economic inequality and crony capitalism are themselves the only ways to prosperity, that poor people deserve to be poor because of their personal faults, that high margins and low volumes of commerce are better than 'unruly' competition,  and that workers need to work harder and longer, showing "love" for their employers so that they can deserve more pay. K-12 teachers know enough to insert mandated material praising plutocracy into their lesson plans, and preachers who preach that Jesus demanded that elites treat the poor with dignity that they will preach no more. News media are honeycombed with ads praising capitalism at its harshest, and journalists well know the taboos. Law enforcement enforces subordination in all things. 

Poverty itself takes away even the hope of improved lives in This World. Poor kids might be unable to stay in school because their labor might be critical to keeping families from starving. Tough luck on schooling!

It is worth remembering that however the Great Depression was infamous for destroying wealth at its inception, most of it was a time of economic growth and social improvement. The 40-hour workweek and the minimum wage became the norm. In part because minimum wage laws improved the lot of bread-winners of the time and effectively made the hiring of child labor impossible (child labor is infamously unproductive), teenagers started graduating from high school and were better prepared to work. Minimum wages and Social Security also forced plenty of old people into retirement. Yes, old people today, well educated and still competent, can do highly-responsible jobs well... but they are unproductive, accident-prone people in industrial work. They and children were disproportionate shares of people killed or maimed on the job.  

Neoliberal economics have yet to return America to the Second Gilded Age of the 1920's which of course imploded due to a speculative boom to be expected in a time of maximal inequality), but they have reversed social and economic progress. Real wages ended up lower than they were in the 1970's. Education and medical care became fiendishly expensive. Privatization of infrastructure has made it far more expensive to use (just think of the lease arrangement of the Indiana Toll Road). Tolls increase automatically or in accordance with per capita income or the consumer price level -- whichever is higher. I try to avoid the Toll Road, and I can avoid two-lane sections of US 20 (which is full of Amish buggies).

(Optimal tolls on rural expressways are zero because of reductions of vehicle crashes and injuries and deaths therefrom. Urban routes? Toll the Hell out of whatever is  inside some ring road (like I-465 near Indianapolis) so that people have a strong incentive to use mass transit). 

Plutocracy is an inhuman ideology for economic inequality and its immediate consequences, but it also imposes pervasive corruption.

[Eric the Green]

(01-04-2023, 07:07 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Then came the California floods as the Siberian air mass took a rack over the northern Pacific Ocean, with front-like pulses forcing flooding rains in northern California.

Eric, how are you doing?

An ice event sealed my car shut so that I could not open the car door. I would not have taken the risk of breaking the window. I had a plastic bottle of a diet cola in my car that I somehow ignored... and it exploded.

I basically stayed put. There was no compelling place to go except to a Christmas Eve party that my cousin threw about ten miles west of where I live. Ten miles to the west of that was a blizzard warning. The road was horrible. My brother was driving, and I commented on how rough the road was. He said that it was slippery. On a road with a 55-mile speed limit we went about 30 mph, and even that seemed a bit sketchy.  

Well, the team that I have mocked for a few years as the Detroit Cocker Spaniels is starting to play some interesting football for the first time in about twenty years.

I am fine and most people in CA have come through the storms fine so far, but another one has arrived, and some people were flooded out in a few places. Some trees down. We'll see.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati...994164002/

[Eric the Green]

According to the League of Conservation voters, this is the percentage of pro-environmental votes among southern and border Republicans.

member Party state district 2021 vote %, lifetime vote%
Carl, JerryR AL-01 4%4%
Moore, BarryR AL-02 4%4%
Rogers, Mike D.R AL-03 9%6%
Aderholt, Robert B.R AL-04 4%3%
Brooks, MoR AL-05 4%7%
Palmer, GaryR AL-06 4%1%
Gaetz, MattR FL-01 13%12%
Dunn, NealR FL-02 13%6%
Cammack, KatR FL-03 0%0%
Rutherford, JohnR FL-04 4%8%
Waltz, MichaelR FL-06 17%23%
Posey, BillR FL-08 13%7%
Webster, DanielR FL-11 9%6%
Bilirakis, GusR FL-12 14%10%
Franklin, ScottR FL-15 9%9%
Buchanan, VernR FL-16 17%23%
Steube, GregR FL-17 0%3%
Mast, BrianR FL-18 17%27%
Donalds, ByronR FL-19 4%4%
Díaz-Balart, MarioR FL-25 17%13%
Giménez, CarlosR FL-26 17%17%
Salazar, María ElviraR FL-27 19%19%
Carter, BuddyR GA-01 6%4%
Ferguson, A. DrewR GA-03 13%6%
Scott, AustinR GA-08 17%4%
Clyde, AndrewR GA-09 0%0%
Hice, JodyR GA-10 0%0%
Loudermilk, BarryR GA-11 4%1%
Allen, RickR GA-12 0%1%
Greene, Marjorie TaylorR GA-14 0%0%
Guthrie, BrettR KY-02 22%6%
Massie, ThomasR KY-04 9%10%
Rogers, HaroldR KY-05 9%8%
Barr, GarlandR KY-06 17%4%
Scalise, SteveR LA-01 13%4%
Higgins, ClayR LA-03 0%2%
Johnson, MikeR LA-04 4%3%
Letlow, JuliaR LA-05 13%13%
Graves, GarretR LA-06 13%6%
Kelly, TrentR MS-01 4%2%
Guest, MichaelR MS-03 0%7%
Palazzo, StevenR MS-04 4%3%
Wagner, AnnR MO-02 22%6%
Luetkemeyer, BlaineR MO-03 9%4%
Hartzler, VickyR MO-04 9%3%
Graves, SamR MO-06 9%4%
Long, BillyR MO-07 9%3%
Smith, Jason T.R MO-08 9%2%
Murphy, GregR NC-03 22%16%
Foxx, VirginiaR NC-05 9%4%
Rouzer, DavidR NC-07 13%5%
Hudson, RichardR NC-08 22%4%
Bishop, DanR NC-09 0%0%
McHenry, Patrick T.R NC-10 17%6%
Cawthorn, MadisonR NC-11 4%4%
Budd, TedR NC-13 0%3%
Hern, KevinR OK-01 4%3%
Mullin, MarkwayneR OK-02 9%2%
Lucas, Frank D.R OK-03 9%5%
Cole, TomR OK-04 4%7%
Bice, StephanieR OK-05 9%9%
Mace, NancyR SC-01 35%35%
Wilson, JoeR SC-02 9%3%
Duncan, JeffR SC-03 4%3%
Timmons, WilliamR SC-04 9%9%
Norman, RalphR SC-05 0%2%
Rice, TomR SC-07 4%3%
Harshbarger, DianaR TN-01 0%0%
Burchett, TimR TN-02 0%7%
Fleischmann, ChuckR TN-03 9%4%
DesJarlais, ScottR TN-04 9%3%
Rose, JohnR TN-06 4%5%
Green, MarkR TN-07 0%1%
Kustoff, DavidR TN-08 13%6%
Gohmert, LouieR TX-01 4%4%
Crenshaw, DanR TX-02 17%15%
Taylor, VanR TX-03 17%12%
Fallon, PatR TX-04 4%4%
Gooden, LanceR TX-05 0%3%
Wright, RonR TX-06 0%4%
Ellzey, JakeR TX-06 17%17%
Brady, Kevin P.R TX-08 10%3%
McCaul, Michael T.R TX-10 22%8%
Pfluger, AugustR TX-11 0%0%
Granger, KayR TX-12 10%6%
Jackson, RonnyR TX-13 0%0%
Weber, Randy K.R TX-14 0%2%
Sessions, PeteR TX-17 9%3%
Arrington, JodeyR TX-19 0%1%
Roy, ChipR TX-21 9%3%
Nehls, TroyR TX-22 4%4%
Gonzales, TonyR TX-23 22%22%
Van Duyne, BethR TX-24 13%13%
Williams, RogerR TX-25 9%2%
Burgess, Michael C.R TX-26 9%4%
Cloud, MichaelR TX-27 0%0%
Carter, John R.R TX-31 9%4%
Babin, BrianR TX-36 4%2%
Wittman, RobR VA-01 13%11%
Good, RobertR VA-05 0%0%
Cline, BenR VA-06 4%1%
Griffith, MorganR VA-09 9%6%
McKinley, DavidR WV-01 26%9%
Mooney, AlexR WV-02 9%4%
Miller, CarolR WV-03 9%11%

[Eric the Green]

The environment is not a partisan and regional issue now? I beg to differ. Now look at Democrats from coastal blue states:

member Party state district 2021 vote %, lifetime vote%
Huffman, JaredD CA-02 100%98%
Garamendi, JohnD CA-03 100%91%
Thompson, MikeD CA-05 100%94%
Matsui, Doris O.D CA-06 100%97%
Bera, AmiD CA-07 100%94%
McNerney, JerryD CA-09 100%95%
Harder, JoshD CA-10 100%99%
DeSaulnier, MarkD CA-11 100%100%
Pelosi, NancyD CA-12 100%94%
Lee, Barbara J.D CA-13 100%97%
Speier, JackieD CA-14 96%92%
Swalwell, EricD CA-15 100%92%
Costa, JimD CA-16 96%56%
Khanna, RoD CA-17 100%99%
Eshoo, AnnaD CA-18 100%97%
Lofgren, ZoeD CA-19 100%92%
Panetta, JimmyD CA-20 100%97%
Carbajal, SaludD CA-24 100%95%
Brownley, JuliaD CA-26 100%97%
Chu, Judy M.D CA-27 100%98%
Schiff, Adam B.D CA-28 100%98%
Cárdenas, TonyD CA-29 96%88%
Sherman, Brad J.D CA-30 100%97%
Aguilar, PeteD CA-31 100%97%
Napolitano, GraceD CA-32 100%91%
Lieu, TedD CA-33 100%92%
Gomez, JimmyD CA-34 100%98%
Torres, NormaD CA-35 100%96%
Ruiz, RaulD CA-36 100%95%
Bass, KarenD CA-37 100%89%
Sanchez, Linda D CA-38 96%94%
Roybal-Allard, LucilleD CA-40 100%96%
Takano, MarkD CA-41 100%99%
Waters, MaxineD CA-43 100%92%
Barragán, NanetteD CA-44 100%98%
Porter, KatieD CA-45 100%96%
Correa, J.D CA-46 100%94%
Lowenthal, Alan S.D CA-47 100%98%
Levin, MikeD CA-49 100%99%
Vargas, JuanD CA-51 100%96%
Peters, Scott H.D CA-52 100%94%
Jacobs, SaraD CA-53 100%100%
Larson, John B.D CT-01 100%94%
Courtney, JoeD CT-02 100%96%
DeLauro, Rosa L.D CT-03 100%95%
Himes, JimD CT-04 100%95%
Hayes, JahanaD CT-05 100%99%
Blunt Rochester, LisaD DE-AL 100%97%
Case, EdD HI-01 100%96%
Kahele, KaialiʻiD HI-02 100%100%
Pingree, Chellie M.D ME-01 100%97%
Golden, JaredD ME-02 91%94%
Ruppersberger, C.A. DutchD MD-02 100%89%
Sarbanes, John P.D MD-03 100%97%
Brown, AnthonyD MD-04 96%94%
Hoyer, Steny H.D MD-05 100%83%
Trone, DavidD MD-06 95%97%
Mfume, KweisiD MD-07 100%88%
Raskin, JamieD MD-08 100%99%
Neal, Richard E.D MA-01 100%93%
McGovern, JimD MA-02 100%99%
Trahan, LoriD MA-03 100%97%
Auchincloss, JakeD MA-04 100%100%
Clark, Katherine M.D MA-05 100%96%
Moulton, SethD MA-06 100%97%
Pressley, AyannaD MA-07 100%99%
Lynch, Stephen F.D MA-08 100%95%
Keating, BillD MA-09 100%96%
Pappas, ChrisD NH-01 100%99%
Kuster, Ann M.D NH-02 100%95%
Norcross, Donald W.D NJ-01 100%94%
Kim, AndyD NJ-03 100%99%
Gottheimer, JoshD NJ-05 100%90%
Pallone, Frank J.D NJ-06 100%97%
Malinowski, TomD NJ-07 100%99%
Sires, AlbioD NJ-08 100%92%
Pascrell, BillD NJ-09 100%94%
Payne, Donald M.D NJ-10 100%91%
Sherrill, MikieD NJ-11 100%97%
Watson Coleman, BonnieD NJ-12 100%97%
Suozzi, ThomasD NY-03 100%98%
Rice, KathleenD NY-04 100%94%
Meeks, Gregory W.D NY-05 100%90%
Meng, GraceD NY-06 100%98%
Velázquez , NydiaD NY-07 100%95%
Jeffries, Hakeem S.D NY-08 100%96%
Clarke, Yvette D.D NY-09 100%96%
Nadler, Jerrold L.D NY-10 100%97%
Maloney, Carolyn B.D NY-12 100%96%
Espaillat, AdrianoD NY-13 100%99%
Ocasio-Cortez, AlexandriaD NY-14 96%96%
Torres, RitchieD NY-15 100%100%
Bowman, JamaalD NY-16 100%100%
Jones, MondaireD NY-17 100%100%
Maloney, Sean PatrickD NY-18 96%91%
Delgado, AntonioD NY-19 100%99%
Tonko, Paul D.D NY-20 100%98%
Morelle, JoeD NY-25 100%96%
Higgins, Brian M.D NY-26 100%95%
Bonamici, SuzanneD OR-01 100%98%
Blumenauer, EarlD OR-03 100%96%
DeFazio, Peter A.D OR-04 100%92%
Schrader, KurtD OR-05 91%74%
DelBene, Suzan K.D WA-01 100%96%
Larsen, RickD WA-02 96%92%
Kilmer, DerekD WA-06 100%95%
Jayapal, PramilaD WA-07 100%97%
Schrier, KimD WA-08 100%99%
Smith, AdamD WA-09 100%92%
Strickland, MarilynD WA-10 100%100%

[David Horn]

(01-05-2023, 02:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The environment is not a partisan and regional issue now? I beg to differ. Now look at Democrats from coastal blue states:

There is an obvious disconnect between personal and party identification.  Even Governor Own-the-Libs DeSantis knows that his state is teetering on the edge.  He can't say it, but he knows.  He wants the Libs to save him from himself so he can trash them continuously for his next political act.  Cynical? Absolutely!  Does it work? It does ... for now.

What's needed is a sea change in the country as a whole.  We may be seeing its beginnings in this last election.  We can only hope.  Ideological phases tend o run in 40 year cycles.  The Reagan cycle is due for a replacement ... a bit overdue, to be honest.

[pbrower2a]

New Zealand, whose two main islands are not tropical, experienced a lethal tropical cyclone:


Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced on 13 February that the Government would provide NZ$11.5 million to support the community response to the cyclone.[34][67] Transpower declared a grid emergency on 14 February after Hawke's Bay and Gisborne lost phone coverage, internet coverage, and electricity.[68] In addition to the states of emergency in place in Auckland, Northland, and Thames-Coromandel, additional regional states of emergency were declared in Gisborne, the Bay of Plenty, and Waikato on 13 February, with local states of emergency being declared in the Waikato, Hauraki, Whakatāne, and Ōpōtiki Districts.[34]
A regional state of emergency was declared in Hawke's Bay on 14 February, with local states of emergency being declared in the Napier, Hastings, and Tararua Districts,[48] before a national state of emergency was declared for only the third time in New Zealand's history later in the day.[69] Sittings of the House of Representatives were adjourned for a week.[70][71] On 17 February, Australia sent a team of 25 impact assessment experts to aid with disaster relief in New Zealand at the request of the New Zealand Government.[72][73]
By 19 February, Hipkins confirmed that 3,200 people were registered as uncontactable though he stated that the number was expected to drop. The official death toll rose to 11[74]. Hipkins also confirmed that 28,000 homes, mostly in Napier and Hastings, had no power. Police also arrested 42 people in Hawke's Bay and 17 in Gisborne for looting and dishonest offences. The National Emergency Management Agency deployed 60 Starlink Internet devices while the Royal New Zealand Navy dispatched the HMNZS Canterbury with supplies and equipment to build temporary bridges. The Royal Australian Air Force deployed a C-130 Hercules as part of the international relief effort. The New Zealand Government accepted an offer of help from Fiji.[75]

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Gabrielle

[pbrower2a]

The hot-summer, weak winter climate (Cfa -- like most of the southeastern USA) climate is projected to take over the North Island by 2070, largely supplanting the cooler long summer Cfb climate more typical of most of England or Ireland.

[pbrower2a]

Also posted in technology, as I could not figure whether it better fit here or there. It's relevant to both.

This Ultra-White Paint May Someday Replace Air Conditioning

Developed by researchers at Purdue University, the paint reflects 98.1 percent of sunlight
Smithsonian Magazine

   Sarah Kuta

Read when you’ve got time to spare.
freestar


Smithsonian Magazine
More from Smithsonian Magazine

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freestar


a paint roller with white paint



A new coat of paint is an easy way to freshen up your home’s curb appeal. Soon, it may also help keep your house cool.

Researchers at Purdue University have developed a new ultra-white paint that reflects 98.1 percent of sunlight and can keep surfaces up to 19 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than their ambient surroundings. This new paint, which may become available for purchase in the next year or two [this article was written in 2021], could someday help combat global warming and reduce our reliance on air conditioners.

The team of scientists in Purdue’s mechanical engineering department published the findings of their paint research, funded by the university’s cooling technologies research center and the Air Force’s scientific research office, in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

“Our paint only absorbs 1.9 percent of the sunlight, whereas commercial paint absorbs 10 to 20 percent of sunlight,” says Xiulin Ruan, a Purdue mechanical engineering professor and one of the study’s co-authors.

The paint is a marked improvement from current heat-rejecting paints on the market. When struck by the sun’s rays, surfaces covered in today’s available white paints get warmer, not cooler. At best, these heat-combatting paints can reflect 80 to 90 percent of sunlight, says Ruan.

The new ultra-white paint, which the researchers say is the coolest on record, reflects nearly all of the sun’s rays and sends infrared heat away from the surface, providing an average cooling power of 113 watts per square meter. If painted onto the roof of a 1,000-square-foot home, that translates to a cooling power of 10 kilowatts, which is more powerful than most residential central air conditioners, Ruan says.

In tests conducted during sunny, midday hours on the roof of a campus building in West Lafayette, Indiana, the paint kept outdoor surfaces 8 degrees cooler than the ambient surrounding temperatures. At night, the paint kept surfaces 19 degrees cooler than their surroundings.

“Our paint can lose heat by its own emission—it emits heat to deep space,” Ruan says. “With such little absorption from the sun, our paint loses more heat than it absorbs. This is really exciting for us. Under the sun, it cools below the ambient temperature and that’s hard to achieve.”

Heat-rejecting white paints on the market now are typically made with titanium dioxide, which reflects certain wavelengths of sunlight—mainly, the visible light and near-infrared wavelengths—but absorbs the sun’s ultraviolet rays, causing the surface to heat up, Ruan says.

“Commercial white paints are cooler than the other, darker-colored paints, but they are still warmer than the ambient or surrounding temperature,” Ruan says.

These existing paints are better than nothing, but the researchers wanted to experiment with materials that could reflect, rather than absorb, the sun’s UV rays. They tested more than 100 different materials over the past seven years, eventually narrowing down their selection to barium sulfate, a known UV-reflecting compound that was already being used in cosmetics, reflective photo paper, oil paints, x-ray examinations and other applications. (Along the way, they also developed an earlier ultra-white paint made from calcium carbonate that reflected 95.5 percent of sunlight.)

Though barium sulfate was a good starting point, the researchers also took two novel steps to enhance the paint’s ability to reflect light and emit heat: They used a high concentration of barium sulfate particles—60 percent compared to the typical 10 percent in current paints—and they incorporated particles of varying sizes.

“We found that if you put different particle sizes in your paint, then each particle size can scatter and reflect different wavelengths and, all together, they reflect the entire spectrum of wavelengths in sunlight,” Ruan says.

The potential benefits of the ultra-white paint are two-fold. By keeping surfaces cool and reducing the use of air conditioners, which are typically powered by electricity, the paint may help decrease the burning of fossil fuels. What’s more, air conditioners typically work by removing heat from indoor spaces and pushing it outdoors, a method known as convection. This heat transfer, along with other causes, can contribute to the urban heat island effect, a phenomenon that occurs when cities become hotter than the surrounding areas, thus requiring even more air conditioning. The ultra-white paint, on the other hand, uses radiation to transfer heat, sending out types of electromagnetic waves that can pass through the atmosphere and into deep space.

“Air conditioners can cool your house, but they move the heat from inside the house to outside—the heat is still in the city, it’s still on the Earth, in our air,” Ruan says. “So even if you don’t care about the power bills you pay, it’s going to warm up the Earth anyway. Our paint does not use any power but, more importantly, it sends the heat to space. The heat doesn’t stay on the Earth, so that really helps the Earth to cool down and can stop the warming trend.”

Using statistical modeling, the researchers estimated that their ultra-white paint could reduce air conditioning use by up to 70 percent in hot cities like Reno, Nevada, and Phoenix, Arizona. In a rather extreme model, they also found that covering 0.5 to 1 percent of the Earth’s surface—buildings, roads, unused land, just about everything—with the ultra-white paint would be enough to stop the global warming trend.

“It’s a lot of area, but if one day we need to use this approach to help reverse the warming trend, it’s still affordable—the paint is not expensive,” Ruan says.

The researchers have applied for a patent, and they’re doing additional testing to understand the paint’s long-term durability and reliability outdoors as they work toward making the paint available to consumers. They haven’t yet determined an exact price for the paint, but Ruan says he expects the paint to be similar to those on the market now—roughly $30 to $40 per gallon.

In the meantime, it’s easy for sustainable building experts to envision the potential future impacts of this invention.

“When I first heard about it, I was imagining, ‘Wow, this could be utilized in all sorts of different urban conditions in the U.S. and internationally,’” says Elizabeth Thompson, a vice president with the U.S. Green Building Council. “Just that potential is so strong and compelling. It’ll be great to see how this evolves and how the researchers are able to develop its applications.”

The U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit that developed the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system for sustainable buildings, offers a heat island reduction credit for buildings working toward LEED certification levels.

One way buildings can earn that credit is to use materials or devices with an initial solar reflectance of 33 percent at installation or 28 percent over three years, Thompson says. With the ultra-white paint’s 98.1 percent solar reflectance, it far exceeds those requirements.

“This is just a whole different ballpark of cooling, which is very exciting,” Thompson says. “It’s hopeful. This is the kind of thing that we all hope scientists and researchers will help us to discover, opportunities that we didn’t know existed for how to live more sustainably.”

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.

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