So you're the guy in jeans and two hoodies here?

No palm trees here.

The climate is changing, and we are the primary cause



https://thelogicofscience.com/2020/01/2 ... te-change/

EWG analysis: Climate crisis has already cost taxpayers billions in crop insurance payouts to farmers
Federal policymakers must require climate-smart practices for resilience, adaptation

Farmers received more than $143.5 billion in federal crop insurance payments from 1995 through 2020, with just under two-thirds paid out for crop damage from drought and excess moisture exacerbated by the climate crisis, according to EWG’s new crop insurance database.

The astronomically high payments are in addition to $103.5 billion in subsidies that went toward farmers’ crop insurance premiums.

These and other findings in the new database are part of our landmark Farm Subsidy Database, which tracks $425 billion in farm subsidies from commodity, crop insurance, disaster and conservation program payments.

The federal crop insurance program was first developed in 1938 following the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The program was not widely used by farmers until the Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1980 started subsidizing the cost of insurance policies for farmers.

The crop insurance program has been highly subsidized by taxpayers for many years, and farmers receive indemnity payments when ...

https://www.ewg.org/research/crop-losse ... ce-payouts

Satellite images reveal lake with water supply for 2 million people in Chile has dried up
Louise Boyle



A vast lake which supplied drinking water for nearly two million people in Chile has dried up in the course of six years due to a multi-year drought.

New satellite observations, published on Tuesday, reveal before and after images of the Peñuelas Lake, around 70 miles west of capital Santiago, in April 2016 and this month.

The branch-shaped lake, an expanse of dark blue water six years ago, is a now yellow-ish scar in the landscape and appears completely dried out.

The lake was one of the main sources of water supply for the Valparaíso region. Together with another lake, called Los Aromos, it was the water supply for ...

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/satellite-ima ... 27765.html

Cross posted from photos thread

I do not begrudge millionaires or billionaires their money - until - they can do so many worthwhile things and instead fritter away so much money for their own egos. It smacks of greed and is cringe worthy and sad, to me at least.

Can't read that Atlantic article about living in heat without subscribing. <sigh>

Good news for NJ!

Starting May 4, 2022, New Jersey retail stores, grocery stores and food service businesses may not provide or sell single-use plastic carryout bags and polystyrene foam food service products. Single-use paper carryout bags are allowed to be provided or sold, except by grocery stores equal to or larger than 2500 square feet, which may only provide or sell reusable carryout bags. After November 4, 2021, plastic straws may be provided only upon the request of the customer.

https://www.nj.gov/dep/get-past-plastic/

I'm sure you can imagine all the whining.

Try deleting any cookies relating to the Atlantic ...

Lake Powell officials face an impossible choice in the West's megadrought: Water or electricity

Page, Arizona (CNN)Lake Powell, the country's second-largest reservoir, is drying up.

The situation is critical: if water levels at the lake were to drop another 32 feet, all hydroelectricity production would be halted at the reservoir's Glen Canyon Dam.

More----> https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/30/us/west- ... index.html

I love using reusable bags. As a former grocery store worker I can tell you it's disgusting. People never wash them or wipe them off, if not washable. I wouldn't want to know the amount of bacteria thriving on them. Then there are the flimsy nylon ones so "they can fit in my purse", but are hard as hell for the clerk to pack. I reuse my grocery bags a garbage liners in my bath room. Hubby uses them to pack his lunch to work. So they are not "one use plastic". Glad and other companies will make a killing selling small garbage bags. Let's hope they are biodegradable.

Why give them the choice?

I'm not sure what you mean. At our local grocery stores, one doesn't use plastic bags at all and the other will discontinue their use once their supply runs out. Both have paper bags.

If you mean the Glad (or another) company, they can manufacture whatever the hell they want. People will buy and use them. Small garbage bags, big garbage bags, whatever. They only way to is to ban the manufacturing of non-biodegradable plastics. That won't happen, imo. Petroleum companies need to make money and with the push for electric cars, they will lose on that front.

Their (Glad and others) bags can be either biodegradable or banned. All it takes is legislation.

I wash them and agree they are disgusting - throw them in the washing machine and the water is as dirty as when I was pants that I've been wearing in the garden. Absolutely filthy - and I'm someone that washes them on a somewhat regular basis.

The city where I work has outlawed plastic straws and styrofoam and plastic clamshell take out boxes. Paper straws and paper boxes work fine and you can put the boxes right into the microwave.

The city where I live has outlawed plastic grocery bags. I am so happy because I hate those things. Someone told me to just take a laundry basket to the grocery store that fits easily in the cart and you can lift out to the trunk of your car. I thought that would be too heavy when full so I went to Target and got canvas 12 x12 boxes like people use for magazines or files or to decorate your dorm room and I use about 3 of them each grocery trip. Easy to carry and they hold a lot of stuff and your bottles and jars and cans don't fall out and crash like they did from plastic bags.

The two largest reservoirs in California are already at 'critically low levels' and the dry season is just starting

(CNN)Against the backdrop of the water crisis in the Colorado River Basin, where the country's largest reservoirs are plunging at an alarming rate, California's two largest reservoirs — Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville — are facing a similar struggle.

More---> https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/07/us/calif ... index.html

I do it all the time. In Chrome it's easy.

But if that doesn't work just use another browser. It won't look at your existing cookies.

One day in the 1850s, Eunice Newton Foote, an amateur scientist and a women’s rights activist living in upstate New York, put two glass jars in sunlight.

One contained regular air — a mix of nitrogen, oxygen and other gases including carbon dioxide — while the other contained just carbon dioxide.

Both had thermometers in them. As the sun’s rays beat down, Foote observed that the jar of CO2 alone heated up more quickly, and was slower to cool down, than the one containing plain air.

The results prompted Foote to muse on the relationship between CO2, the planet and heat. “An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature,” she wrote in an 1856 paper summarizing her findings.

https://www.mpg.de/18190093/eunice-newt ... r%20planet.

And here we are, 160 years later and we still have people who deny that there's a link between carbon dioxide and temperature.

For once, some good news

‘Extinct’ Leopards Last Seen In 1983 Spotted Alive In Taiwan



Formosan clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa brachyura), a rare species of large cat in Taiwan, thought to be extinct because it hadn’t been officially sighted since 1983. Taiwanese and U.S. zoologists also surveyed the region during the period from 2001 to 2013, but they failed to find even one leopard. So, this species was declared extinct in 2013.

However, these creatures have been reportedly sighted roaming around in the wilderness of Taitung County, Taiwan, by multiple witnesses alive and well in January 2019, inspiring a group of rangers to monitor the area. The rangers have now reported two sightings of ...

https://siamtoo.com/3649/