{"id":34581,"date":"2018-12-01T10:56:09","date_gmt":"2018-12-01T18:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=34581"},"modified":"2018-12-01T10:56:09","modified_gmt":"2018-12-01T18:56:09","slug":"everyday-erinyes-146","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/12\/01\/everyday-erinyes-146\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Erinyes #146"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto<\/strong><\/span>, Megaera<\/span><\/strong>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”<\/p>\n

Climate change is real. Climate change is a scientific fact. And I can’t believe I even have to say that. \u00a0The Fourth National Climate Assessment<\/a> was released last week, on Black Friday, deliberately, so as few people as possible would see it. However, many major news sources did cover it, simply because the bottom line was so grim: we have at most twelve years to turn around. Failing that – the planet will be fine, but human life and much other life will disappear.<\/p>\n

For us in the United States, that translates to, we will not turn around, we will keep pushing forward, for two years, at the end of which time we will have, at most ten years to turn around (and maybe only eight, since we will have two more years to overcome.) In case anyone missed it, Donald J. Trump issued a brief statement on this report. He said he does not believe it.<\/p>\n

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The same day, another related report<\/a> was also published: the Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR2)<\/a>. To summarize briefly, for hundreds of thousands of years that we know of, carbon in our atmosphere was in balance. It isn’t any more (earth’s levels of carbon dioxide are now the highest they have been in about fifteen million years.) Every year, over 2 megatons (one megaton is roughly 2.2 billion pounds) of carbon in North America alone is emitted into our atmosphere. Oceans, as well as forests and other vegetation, suck up about half of that. The other half remains in the atmosphere. The oceans, incidentally, when they suck up this much carbon,\u00a0 become more acidic.<\/p>\n

Scientists refer to oceans and vegetation as “carbon sinks.” What happens in your house if the tap is running twice as fast as the sink drains? Yup, mine too. (But don’t try a demonstration. We can’t afford to waste water.) In this case the tap is humans burning fossil fuels. And 80% to 85% of carbon emissions from this activity are produced by the United States.<\/p>\n

Katherine Hayhoe, an earth scientist, is one of the authors of the Fourth National Climate Assessment has a YouTube channel called “Global Weirding,” which features short videos on various aspects of climate change. Here’s one<\/a> on, among other things, some of the crap that scientists get, as compared to the truth. She’s easy to listen to (and there is CC) and easy to understand.<\/p>\n