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Showing results for tags 'environment'.
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Jamaica has a bobsled team. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/13/world-heading-into-uncharted-territory-of-destruction-says-climate-report The world’s chances of avoiding the worst ravages of climate breakdown are diminishing rapidly, as we enter “uncharted territory of destruction” through our failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions and take the actions needed to stave off catastrophe, leading scientists have said. Despite intensifying warnings in recent years, governments and businesses have not been changing fast enough, according to the United in Science report published on Tuesday. The consequences are already being seen in increasingly extreme weather around the world, and we are in danger of provoking “tipping points” in the climate system that will mean more rapid and in some cases irreversible shifts. Recent flooding in Pakistan, which the country’s climate minister claimed had covered a third of the country in water, is the latest example of extreme weather that is devastating swathes of the globe. The heatwave across Europe including the UK this summer, prolonged drought in China, a megadrought in the US and near-famine conditions in parts of Africa also reflect increasingly prevalent extremes of weather. The secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, said: “There is nothing natural about the new scale of these disasters. They are the price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction. This year’s United in Science report shows climate impacts heading into uncharted territory of destruction.” The world is as likely as not to see temperatures more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, within the next five years, the report found. Governments agreed to focus on holding temperatures within the 1.5C limit at the landmark UN Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow last November, but their pledges and actions to cut emissions fell short of what was needed, the report found. Since Cop26, the invasion of Ukraine and soaring gas prices have prompted some governments to return to fossil fuels, including coal. Guterres warned of the danger: “Each year we double down on this fossil fuel addiction, even as the symptoms get rapidly worse.”
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The answer: "ANY man-made substance which is REALLY CHEAP to produce and EFFICIENT AT TURNING SUNLIGHT INTO ELECTRICITY." You could put this CHEAP SUBSTANCE anywhere that catches sunlight, and CLIMATE CHANGE WOULD GO "POOF". WHO would be THE FIRST TO USE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO LOOK FOR THIS SUBSTANCE? The MASTERS OF CHEMICALS, AI AND SUPERCOMPUTERS - THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY. OIL AND GAS ALWAYS LOOK INTO POSSIBLE FUTURE ENERGY INVENTIONS FIRST, BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS A THREAT TO THEM. BONUS QUESTION: WHO WOULD IMMEDIATELY KILL ANYONE WHO EVEN ATTEMPTS TO FIND THIS SUBSTANCE? ANSWER: THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY. THEY MAKE THE EXPENSIVE SOLAR PANELS. THEY MAKE THE EXPENSIVE WIND TURBINES. THEY WILL ANNOUNCE AROUND 2045 THAT "INDUSTRIAL FUSION REACTORS ARE NOW POSSIBLE". THEY WILL CLAIM THAT FUSION REACTORS ARE "SO COMPLICATED TO BUILD" THAT THEY COST USD 10 BILLION OR MORE A PIECE. THEY WILL TRY TO LOOK LIKE THEY "SOLVED CLIMATE CHANGE". BETWEEN TODAY AND THEN, MANY ENGINEERS, SCIENTISTS AND INVENTORS TRYING TO "SAVE THE WORLD" BY CREATING BETTER ENERGY GENRATORS WILL INEXPLICABLY DIE. There will not be ONE MSM REPORT talking about POSSIBLE FOUL PLAY.
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What good news... /s https://phys.org/news/2022-08-rainwater-unsafe-due-chemicals.html#:~:text=Rainwater everywhere on the planet is unsafe to,to a new study by Stockholm University scientists. Rainwater everywhere on the planet is unsafe to drink due to levels of toxic chemicals known as PFAS that exceed the latest guidelines, according to a new study by Stockholm University scientists. Commonly known as 'forever chemicals' because they disintegrate extremely slowly, PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) were initially found in packaging, shampoo or makeup but have spread to our entire environment, including water and air. "There is nowhere on Earth where the rain would be safe to drink, according to the measurements that we have taken," Ian Cousins, a professor at the university and the lead author of the study published in Environmental Science and Technology, told AFP. A compilation of the data since 2010 that his team studied showed that "even in Antarctica or the Tibetan plateau, the levels in the rainwater are above the drinking water guidelines that the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) proposed", he said. Normally considered pristine, the two regions still have PFAS levels "14 times higher" than the US drinking water guidelines. The EPA recently lowered its PFAS guidelines significantly after discovering that the chemicals may affect the immune response in children to vaccines, Cousins noted. Once ingested, PFAS accumulate in the body. According to some studies, exposure can also lead to problems with fertility, developmental delays in children, increased risks of obesity or certain cancers (prostate, kidney and testicular), an increase in cholesterol levels. —Planet 'irreversibly contaminated'— Cousins said PFAS were now "so persistent" and ubiquitous that they will never disappear from the planet. "We have made the planet inhospitable to human life by irreversibly contaminating it now so that nothing is clean anymore. And to the point that's it's not clean enough to be safe", he said. "We have crossed a planetary boundary", he said, referring to a central paradigm for evaluating Earth's capacity to absorb the impact of human activity. However, Cousins noted that PFAS levels in people have actually dropped "quite significantly in the last 20 years" and "ambient levels (of PFAS in the environment) have been the same for the past 20 years". "What's changed is the guidelines. They've gone down millions of times since the early 2000s, because we've learned more about the toxicity of these substances." Cousins said we have to learn to live with it. "I'm not super concerned about the everyday exposure in mountain or stream water or in the food. We can't escape it... we're just going to have to live with it." "But it's not a great situation to be in, where we've contaminated the environment to the point where background exposure is not really safe."