Category Archives: Global Warming

They Really Are Insane

Posted on May 15, 2024 by Michael Froomkin

DeSantis Signs Law Deleting Climate Change From Florida Policy:

Florida’s state government will no longer be required to consider climate change when crafting energy policy under legislation signed Wednesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.

The new law, which passed the Florida Legislature in March and takes effect on July 1, will also prohibit the construction of offshore wind turbines in state waters and will repeal state grant programs that encourage energy conservation and renewable energy.

The legislation also deletes requirements that state agencies use climate-friendly products and purchase fuel-efficient vehicles. And it prevents any municipality from restricting the type of fuel that can be used in an appliance, such as a gas stove.

I guess they’re in a hurry to force the state under water?  Won’t take much….

Posted in Florida, Global Warming | 3 Comments

Before and After (Sort of)

Posted on November 23, 2021 by Michael Froomkin

According to the “AI-generated” photos provided by ThisClimateDoesNotExist, flooding caused by global warming could turn this part of the UMiami School of Law …

into this:

Alas, it doesn’t give the assumptions, nor how many degrees of warming or feet of sea level rise it would take, so I find it more a scare story than a meaningful warning.

Indeed, the fine print reveals that “This experiment is not an exercise in climate prediction. There is no correlation between the consequence chosen and the address entered. Our algorithm applies a systematic transformation regardless of the address.” So, yes, just a scare story. Technologically, the flood equivalent of putting a mask on a person’s photo.

Even so, we still have something real to worry about.

Posted in Global Warming | Comments Off on Before and After (Sort of)

Don’t Be a Dinosaur

Posted on October 28, 2021 by Michael Froomkin

(Click the arrow to play the actual video.)

Posted in Global Warming, Politics: International | 3 Comments

Should Have Used ‘Apocalypse Now’?

Posted on September 11, 2020 by Michael Froomkin

A video of San Francisco at 11am on September 9, 2020, set to the music of Blade Runner.

Posted in Global Warming | Comments Off on Should Have Used ‘Apocalypse Now’?

Panic Stations

Posted on February 10, 2019 by Michael Froomkin

Level of CO2 in the atmosphere: 413.69ppm

12 months ago: 407ppm

250 years ago, est: 250ppm

Posted in Global Warming | Comments Off on Panic Stations

These Are the Good Old Days?

Posted on October 20, 2017 by Michael Froomkin

Or will be if the gloomdogglers are right about the environment,

This is not to downgrade the danger presented by global heating – on the contrary, it presents an existential threat. It is simply that I have come to realise that two other issues have such huge and immediate impacts that they push even this great predicament into third place.

One is industrial fishing, which, all over the blue planet, is now causing systemic ecological collapse. The other is the erasure of non-human life from the land by farming.

And perhaps not only non-human life. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, at current rates of soil loss, driven largely by poor farming practice, we have just 60 years of harvests left. And this is before the Global Land Outlook report, published in September, found that productivity is already declining on 20% of the world’s cropland.

The impact on wildlife of changes in farming practice (and the expansion of the farmed area) is so rapid and severe that it is hard to get your head round the scale of what is happening.

It all sounds dreadful. Of course historically technical change and market forces overwhelmed Malthusian effects, so it’s possible that late capitalism still has rabbits in the hat….

Posted in Global Warming, Science/Medicine | 1 Comment