Tag: climate

The Resistance Fights Back

On By southwerkIn moral philosophy

The Climate web site whose staff was fired and operations halted is getting a second shot at life. This time as a private venture,  climate.us.

Anyone with any concern for our future on this planet should add this to their browser as a useful and important web site.

Rebecca Lindsey is quoted in the article linked to below as saying:

“What’s happening can feel so overwhelming that it’s easy to feel like you’re powerless to do anything about it,” said Lindsey’s team member. “But sometimes you have to just look out and see what’s within your reach. And this problem is within our reach, so we just see it as sort of doing our part.”

And she is right. Every day some new horror, some new obscenity, some new assault on justice, on knowledge, on actual Christianity is thrown out there like a stain on white silk by the current administration and it is easy to get exhausted by the flood.

Eric Holthaus writing for the Guardian wrote the following article: Scientists breathe new life into climate website after shutdown under Trump.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/30/climate-gov-website-trump

Earlier this summer, access to climate.gov – one of the most widely used portals of climate information on the internet – was thwarted by the Trump administration, and its production team was fired in the process.

…

Now, a team of climate communication experts – including many members of the former climate.gov team – is working to resurrect its content into a new organization with an expanded mission.

Their effort’s new website, climate.us, would not only offer public-facing interpretations of climate science, but could also begin to directly offer climate-related services, such as assisting local governments with mapping increased flooding risk due to climate change.

This is an important lesson, an act of defiance against the fools and charlatans running the current regime.

We must never give into hopelessness.

Our democracy is at stake.

We must fight. They are fighting for scientific knowledge and a respect for factual data. Look at their courage and hard work and realize that what we do matters.

James Alan Pilant

The Cold Blooded Republican Response to Climate Change

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I was looking at a poll the other day that found that 12% of the members of the Republican Party thought climate change was an important issue.

This is fascinating. I live in the middle of the United States. It is hotter than it has ever been and the weather more dramatic and powerful than it has ever been. You can literally feel climate change in the middle United States.

And yet, the great majority of one of the major political parties in the United States look at the thermostat and mutter, “Oh, no big deal.”

Looking at the news over the last few days, one sees that in the Philippines, it has gotten so hot that schools have been closed and classes moved online. India is in the grip of a huge heatwave.

And just today, now, here is a lead news article that indicates that thirty states are in the midst of record breaking heat wave.

“My Goodness” That looks surprisingly like objective evidence of climate change and maybe even a looming emergency.

So, surely Republicans will notice, right?

That would be nice. It would be part of the duty of a citizen in participative democracy to pay attention to facts and adjust their views accordingly but they will not change their minds. They live in a world where “owning the libs” is much of the meaning in their lives. And you can say, “James, that can’t be much of a life?” Well, yes, it is not much of a life. Thus there is just a ton of hysterical anger.

If you think I’m wrong. Look at the other stuff they are denying. They deny there is any significant racism in the United States (except against white people). Simply, reading the daily new should thoroughly prove that racism continues in America. It seems they don’t read. They deny the evidence of poverty and hunger in the United States to the point of refusing to supplement school lunch programs to feed children during the summer. And I could go on.

Florida has passed legislation removing climate change from consideration when making policy and abandoning a variety of green initiatives while also forbidding the construction of wind turbines on the coast.

To quote the governor of Florida:

“We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots,” DeSantis said in a post on the X social media platform.

The level of irony in the words of the governor are difficult to approach. Florida is in the middle of very serious heat wave, there are coral die offs all along the coast, and insurance companies are fleeing the state like so many rats from an overheated and perhaps burning ship.

I am concerned. Not about the Republicans, their current fantasies are really just silly. Saving them from nonsense is not something I can do. When you surrender your judgment to a cult, an online posting, the rants of hate radio or some weird conspiracy theory, the death of judgment and intelligence follows. What concerns me is that this nation where I make my home will probably be unable to deal intelligently and effectively with climate change. And because of our enormous economic power, we may doom much of the world with us.

It is the greed enshrined in our society’s goals and the way our corporations are set up solely to take money as their sole goal that will probably doom us and our future generations. It is very sad. We live in a nation developed in the ideas of the Enlightenment. We have the words of Lincoln and Thomas Paine to guide us – and all of that history or righteousness and glory is being denied, diminished and attacked.

Oh well, if I am to die of heat stroke or flooding or some other interesting element of climate change, I will die here in the United States. It is my home and I consider myself a patriot.

It is unfortunate that the limitations, foolishness and greed of a some Americans are going to do so much damage to so many.

James Alan Pilant

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tv-meteorologist-blasts-florida-don-152447336.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hot-mexico-howler-monkeys-falling-165619685.html

After Covid, now heat forces schools to go online in the Philippines | The Independent

‘Red alert’ in Delhi after temperature soars to 47C as heatwave grips India’s north (msn.com)

Meteorologist rebukes DeSantis for scrubbing climate change from state law: ‘Florida is on fire’ (msn.com)

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/terrifying-heatwave-map-shows-30-503037

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/16/1251769080/florida-desantis-climate-change-law

NOAA Makes It Official: 2011 Among Most Extreme Weather Years in History (via madaboutthenews)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Facts are facts. Whether about evolution or climate change, the data is going to just keep accumulating in ever larger stacks of hard to ignore facts.

It’s getting hotter. Now, tornadoes are not very get indicators of climatic change – too many variable. Hurricanes are a little better but not much. The best indicators are average temperatures over time and weather volatility.

However, with the rise of “intelligent design,” more and more science is a matter of opinion. Thus, the United States is gradually losing that key part of the democratic process, critical thinking. If we don’t like what science or history or sociology says, we just get together with a few other disgruntled individuals and rewrite history or science. It’s easy. Pretend there is a controversy, and that you are God’s seekers after truth.

Will we be burning witches soon? Or giving faith healing status to collect insurance for services rendered? I don’t know. Let’s watch. The 14th century awaits.

James Pilant

NOAA Makes It Official: 2011 Among Most Extreme Weather Years in History Just past the halfway point, 2011 has already seen eight weather-related disasters in the U.S. that caused more than $1 billion in damagesAmplify’d from http://www.scientificamerican.comEXTREME WEATHER: Halfway through, 2011 has already seen eight weather-related disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damagesThe devastating string of tornadoes, droughts, wildfires and floods that hit the United States this spring marks 2011 as one of the mo … Read More

via madaboutthenews

Dangers, Properties, possible Uses and Methods of Purification of radioactively contaminated (drinking) Water (e.g. in Japan) (via CrisisMaven’s Blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

CrisisMaven assures me that this is useful information for dealing with contaminated drinking water. So, I pass it on.

James Pilant

Most methods and tools being recommended here on the Internet such as purification by filtration will not lead to your desired result of decontaminating “radioactive water”. a) Radioactive contamination of drinking water in Japan at this point in time can come about in only two ways: 1) The source is actual surface water like lakes or rivers, possibly filtrated through river banks and thus came into contact with e.g. radioactive rain and/or dust. … Read More

via CrisisMaven’s Blog