Friday 17th of May 2024
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Our environment is essential and necessary. In mathematics, it would be said to be "sufficient and necessary” conditional...



This seems to be a truism, but we treat our environment like a garbage dump. For many years, it seems we could get away with this attitude, because there was enough space and we recycled the bio-shit carefully. We had plagues nonetheless. Our gardens are still beautiful, our cities are more masterfully designed, the commanders of commerce have made resilient plastic crap to sell. This is mostly a whitish view of the planet. We often hide the other side of the coin: the poor, the rubbish, the pollution, the poisons, the global warming, the destruction of wildlife, the modern slaves, the wars, the ignorance, the superiority feeling, the disdain, the smart-alec idea that we could do better on planet Mars (as an elite of space-junkies eating red dust), the consolidation of capital which destroys the natural cycles, and us, the tourists… 

We will survive this rubbish, nonetheless.

Well, some of us will survive. In the end we all die. Some of us try to avoid paying taxes. So why fight the whatever that we cannot recycle anymore? Let it warm up...

Thus the smell of decaying flesh was overwhelming. Soutine was pouring old stale blood on half a decomposing beef in his apartment, to make it more repugnant. Chaïm Soutine, a Russian (another artistic one!) from Minsk, was painting. The other inhabitants of the apartments at 14, Rue Joseph-Barra in Montparnasse, Paris, were going to the police for an official complaint… 

Soutine was haunted by the concept of death, decay and poverty despite making money from his revolting works, though he never had any public exhibition. He painted from life… I mean he painted from death. He could have imagined, could he not?… Anything in a state of putrefaction was ideal: long dead old chooks, rotten tomatoes, putrid cadavers of venison. He was a friend of Chagall and Lipchitz… Soutine was a small man, thin like a rake, unshaven and badly dressed, with hair and eyes of a mad man. Soutine asked for a 24 hour delay from the other renters, painted his beef on canvas and threw the dead meat away. They lived near the abattoirs. 
When the Germans invaded France and took over Paris, Soutine burnt more than 300 works (worth more than $100 million in today’s value). He hated champagne, armchairs and money — one day losing a cheque for 25,000 francs (150,000 Euros in today’s cash) and not bothering about it. He died in 1943 under a different name — Mr Verdier. His works are still highly valued as they shook and shake the sense of what we see as beautiful and essential. Ephemerality and the smell of death was his caper. It’s ours as well, no matter how beautiful our gardens are, no matter how our cities are masterfully planned. 

China leads the way with an infection from a new virus. so far around 2,000 people have died worldwide and we panic, yet we tend to forget that 10,000 people have died in the US alone, from the ordinary flu in the last three months. But we know the flu. It’s more deadly but not as frightening as a virus we don’t know… Could it be germ warfare?… Conspiracies bloom. We’re good at this. We destroy human nature with germs and novichok… We invent new gut GMOs to protect our bees decimated by RoundUp… It may work. we don’t know… What will they think of next?...

So we are destroying/modifying our environment under the name of improvement. With poisons. We do it essentially in the name of the cash-god, the DOLLAR… This putrefaction — possibly started in Europe, mostly the UK as an industrial revolution before Brexit — is being perfected in the USA: GMOs, insecticides, herbicides, atmosphericides and plastic with their additives that can change males into females, are the centrepiece of our comfort in mass consumer evolution. The top of the tree is for the ruthless and the psychopaths. This is where we are headed, as our natural roots are rotting from our carelessness. If we climb high enough, we can escape the floods of blood… and the mad-cow disease. 

A rat has died under the house and a swarm of dumb flies has taken over the kitchen. Use the vacuum cleaner to remove them from the walls and the window panes… Safe. Hopefully the rat died of natural causes… Old age. 

Our environment is essential and necessary.

This seems to be a truism, but we treat our environment like a garbage dump that cannot recycle the shit anymore. Smelly dangerous things are piling up and our atmosphere is warming beyond a precise scientific estimate. Things are going to flip as they have done eons ago, but we don’t know exactly when. In our maximising desires for perfection, this is not good enough. So we ignore the estimates… We could not live in fear, could we?

We’re going to be slapped in the face… But some of us will duck — or die of old age beforehand… The kids will have have to deal with our shit… Nothing new. 


GL.

you cannot see the smell...

soutine's beef

 

 


of methane and other gases...

The climate change movement has long warned that, as global temperatures rise, we run the risk of releasing vast reserves of trapped methane into the atmosphere and bringing about the end of days. New research says: probably not.

Researchers at the University of Rochester in New York studied methane emissions from a period in Earth's history which bears many similarities to our current climate, examining ice cores taken from the last period of deglaciation some 8,000 to 15,000 years ago.

By closely examining air samples extracted from these frozen ice cores, the researchers found that even if the methane in these vast stores is released, it won't actually reach our atmosphere. 

“Our data shows we don't need to be as concerned about large methane releases from large carbon reservoirs in response to future warming,” said Vasily Petrenko, a professor of Earth and environmental sciences at Rochester. “We should be more concerned about methane released from human activities.” 
When carbon-based life (plants and animals) decays, the remains freeze and the carbon contained within becomes trapped in the permafrost seen across regions including vast swathes of Siberia, Alaska and northern Canada.


Later, when the water in this permafrost melts, the soil becomes waterlogged and creates the ideal breeding ground for microbes that consume the newly-thawed carbon and produce methane. 


Meanwhile, in the oceans, methane hydrates – formed under immense pressures at low temperatures – are found in sediments on the ocean floor along the subaquatic borders of the continents. If ocean temperatures rise, the current theory goes, these hydrates will destabilize and release the methane gas into the atmosphere, wreaking havoc around the globe. 

The team took ice core samples from the Earth's past to see just how much methane from these ancient deposits is actually released during periods of warming, and found that the actual amount of emissions from ancient carbon reservoirs was quite small. 

“The likelihood of these old carbon reservoirs destabilizing and creating a large positive warming feedback in the present day is also low,” said Michael Dionysus, a graduate student involved in the research.

Read more:
https://www.rt.com/news/481389-doomsday-prophecies-methane-reservoirs-wr...



Yes… "Probably not" is not good enough… but we won’t worry about this yet. Meanwhile:


Oil and gas production may be responsible for a far larger share of the soaring levels of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in the earth’s atmosphere than previously thought, new research has found.

The findings, published in the journal Nature, add urgency to efforts to rein in methane emissions from the fossil fuel industry, which routinely leaks or intentionally releases the gas into air.

“We’ve identified a gigantic discrepancy that shows the industry needs to, at the very least, improve their monitoring,” said Benjamin Hmiel, a researcher at the University of Rochester and the study’s lead author. “If these emissions are truly coming from oil, gas extraction, production use, the industry isn’t even reporting or seeing that right now.”


Atmospheric concentrations of methane have more than doubled from preindustrial times. A New York Times investigation into “super emitter” sites last year revealed vast quantities of methane being released from oil wells and other energy facilities instead of being captured.

The extent to which fossil fuel emissions, as opposed to natural sources, are responsible for the rising methane levels has long been a matter of scientific debate. Methane seeps from the ocean bed, for instance, and also spews from land formations called mud volcanoes.

To shed light on the mystery, researchers at Rochester’s Department of Earth and Environmental Studies examined ice cores from Greenland, as well as data from Antarctica stretching back to about 1750, before the industrial revolution.


They found that methane emissions from natural phenomena were far smaller than estimates used to calculate global emissions. That means fossil-fuel emissions from human activity — namely the production and burning of fossil fuels — were underestimated by 25 to 40 percent, the researchers said.


Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/climate/methane-flaring-oil-emissions...

Underestimated by 25 to 40 per cent? No good enough as well… We need to be more observant. But if one well can be seen to emit 25 per cent more methane than admitted and another does 40 per cent, should we test a statistical sample we should be able to announce 32.5 per cent of methane leakage is not reported, with an error margin of ± 2 per cent.

Methane is a warming gas with more potential than CO2. 

As well the speed at which the defrost is happening might interfere with the bio-process that turns methane hydrate into… carbon into CO2? Or releasing NOxes (nitrite oxydes, far more warming than CO2 and methane)...


———————————
So the “climate change” movement which is basically people who have understood or been alerted to the science of global warming, can worry about all these findings…  This is what we have SERIOUSLY faced since the early 1980s. Our sustainablity is compromised because, despite what we would hope or wish, the environmental factors are GOING TO CHANGE MORE as they have changed since our industrial revolution. We would be idiots not to recognise that ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS HAVE CHANGED. Under global warming conditions brought on by our burning of fossil fuels, these environmental factors are changing and will change our comfort settings. Note to Australian Labor: selling or burning coal is equivalent in the destruction of the system.

Changes on the way:

Rising sea level.
Melting of ice sheets.
Warmer atmospheric and ocean temperatures.
Greater range of minus and plus temperatures.
Extinction of flaura and fauna unable to adapt.
Stronger storms.
More fierce droughts and bushfires.
Maximal temperatures that will destroy ("cook”) plants and animals.
Weather patterns that will be erratic from 2032 onwards.
Average temperature of the planet increasing from 16.5 to more than 25.5 degree Celsius in 250 years.
Is this doom or what? It’s not “doom”. It’s just a MASSIVE CHANGE of planetary conditions.

Simple.

Are we prepared to take the leap?

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european hypocrites swallow the american farty gases...

On Feb. 12, the European Parliament voted to provide what could amount to over $26 billion in financing to 32 different natural gas projects, a decision one climate advocacy group called “climate hypocrisy.” The decision came just a week before a new study published in the journal Nature concluded that accounting for global methane emissions from oil and gas drilling has been underestimated by a whopping 25-40%.

The list of natural gas projects is known as Projects of Common Interest (PCI), with many proposals set to import gas obtained from hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the United States and move it to European Union markets. The Parliament weighed in 443 to 169 in favor of the plan, with 36 abstaining.

Energy projects on the PCI list are eligible to receive up to 50% of their financing from the Connecting Europe Facility.

“This climate hypocrisy has to end,” Colin Roche, an activist with Friends of the Earth Europe, said in a press release. “Following unprecedented disasters like Australia’s wildfires, history will look unkindly on those who today backed building more fossil fuel pipelines and terminals.”

Roche also called the prospect of the 32 new projects “incompatible” with the European Parliament’s Green New Deal. That Green New Deal however, explicitly includes natural gas as a bridge toward renewable energy.

 

Read more:

https://therealnews.com/columns/eu-gives-32-gas-permits-as-study-says-me...

 

Without this, the American gas industry would die:

 

As oil prices plummet, oil bankruptcies mount, and investors shun the shale industry, America’s top oil field — the Permian shale that straddles Texas and New Mexico — faces many new challenges that make profits appear more elusive than ever for the financially failing shale oil industry.

Many of those problems can be traced to two issues for the Permian Basin: The quality of its oil and the sheer volume of natural gas coming from its oil wells.

The latter issue comes as natural gas fetches record low prices in both U.S. and global markets. Prices for natural gas in Texas are often negative — meaning oil producers have to pay someone to take their natural gas, or, without any infrastructure to capture and process it, they burn (flare) or vent (directly release) the gas.

As DeSmog has detailed, much of the best oil-producing shale in the Permian already has been drilled and fracked over the past decade. And so operators have moved on to drill in less productive areas, one of which is the Delaware sub-basin of the Permian. Taking a close look at the Delaware Basin highlights many of the current challenges facing Permian oil producers.

Delaware Basin Producing More Gas Along With the Oil

The Delaware Basin is where most of the new oil production is coming out of the Permian. As a Bloomberg Wire story reported in December, “in recent years investments have shifted to the Delaware, where output is much gassier than in the historic Midland portion of the Permian.”

The last thing a Permian oil producer wants is to have natural gas coming out of the ground with the oil because, as Bloomberg notes, this persistent “nuisance” is “undercutting profits for explorers.” That's a generous assessment because many explorers have no profits to undercut, only losses to grow.

Shale wells become “gassier,” or produce more natural gas, as they age and oil production falls. And this problem hasn't improved for wells in the Delaware that are drilled closer together, compounding the Permian’s gas problem.

 

Read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/02/21/challenges-permian-shale-oil-conde...

 

Meanwhile the US has sanctioned the much cheaper Russian gas (NordStream2), to prevent it reaching Europe at any cost... Why PAY MORE FOR ENERGY? BECAUSE THE AMERICANS SAY SO... 

 

Meanwhile gas is not "clean" and while the US gas leaks from wells, the Russian gas leaks far less...

banking on global warming...

 

The world’s largest investment banks have funnelled more than £2.2tn ($2.66tn) into fossil fuels since the Paris agreement, new figures show, prompting warnings they are failing to respond to the climate crisis.

The US bank JP Morgan Chase, whose economists warned that the climate crisis threatens the survival of humanity last month, has been the largest financier of fossil fuels in the four years since the agreement, providing over £220bn of financial services to extract oil, gas and coal.

Analysis of the 35 leading global investment banks, by an alliance of US-based environmental groups, said that financing for the companies most aggressively expanding in new fossil fuel extraction since the Paris agreement has surged by nearly 40% in the last year.

 

Using Bloomberg financial data and other sources to analyse loans, equity issuances and debt underwriting services from 2016 to 2019, the analysis is published on Wednesday in the Banking on Climate Change 2020 report.

It has been compiled by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, Reclaim Finance, and Sierra Club.

Although the last 12 months has seen many investment banks announce financing restrictions on coal, Arctic oil and gas, and tar sands extraction, the report warns that the business practices of financial institutions are not aligned with the Paris agreement.

Alongside JP Morgan Chase, the US banks Wells Fargo, Citi and Bank of America dominate financing for fossil fuels, accounting for nearly a third of the £2.2tn of financial services since the Paris agreement, according to the report.

The report said big banks overall have increased their funding in the four years since Paris to companies with significant Arctic oil and gas reserves.

Alison Kirsch, a researcher at Rainforest Action Network who led the analysis in the report, said: “The data reveal that global banks are not only ramping up financing of fossil fuels overall, but are also increasing funding for the companies most responsible for fossil fuel expansion.”

 

Barclays, which has been under increasing investor pressure over its environmental stance, has been the top European financier of fossil fuels in the last four years, the figures show. Last year, the London-based bank was the largest financier of Arctic oil and gas, according to the figures.

A group of influential shareholders are now urging the bank to phase out lending to fossil fuel companies, and have filed a resolution to be voted on at Barclays’ AGM in May.

Fracking has been the focus of intense business activity by investment banks since the Paris agreement, with JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America leading £241.53bn of financing, much of it linked to the Permian basin in Texas.

The Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto Dominion led financing for tar sands crude oil projects in Alberta, north-west Canada, which have caused widespread damage to ecosystems.

The big-four Chinese banks have dominated financing for coal mining and coal power since the Paris agreement and have no policies restricting business practices.

Kirsch said: “This makes it crystal clear that banks are failing miserably when it comes to responding to the urgency of the climate crisis. As the toll of death and destruction from unprecedented floods, droughts, fires and storms grows, it is unconscionable and outrageous for banks to be approving new loans and raising capital for the companies that are pushing hardest to increase carbon emissions.”

Ahead of the next major international climate talks, Cop26 in Glasgow this November, the UK government has sought to make the business and the banking sector the focus of tacking the climate crisis. Former head of the Bank of England Mark Carney has been appointed as a climate envoy, warning that businesses must improve how they disclose their impact on the environment or risk failing to meet climate targets.

Johan Frijns, director of BankTrack, an NGO which monitors the activities of major financial institutions, said it was time for bans to commit to phasing out financing for all new fossil fuel projects.

“In the last year, banks have been queuing up to proclaim support for the goals of the Paris Agreement. Both the Principles for Responsible Banking and the new Equator Principles, each signed by over a hundred banks, acknowledges the global climate goals. Yet the data in Banking on Climate Change 2020 show these laudable pledges making little difference, and bank financing for the fossil fuel industry continuing to lead us to the climate abyss,” he said.

“It is high time banks recognised that reaching the Paris climate goals requires an immediate end to finance for all new fossil fuel projects, and a rapid phase out of existing fossil finance. This should be the Global Glasgow Goal for all banks.”

The Guardian contacted JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America about the report.

JPMorgan Chase said the commitments it announced last month “reflect our ongoing efforts to help address climate change and promote more sustainable development”.

It added: “This includes financing to support climate action and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, backing market-based policy solutions to reduce carbon emissions, expanding restrictions on financing for coal mining and coal-fired power, and prohibiting project financing for new oil and gas development in the Arctic.”

The bank looked forward, it said, to growing “its impact over time”.

A Barclays spokesperson said: “We are working hard to help tackle climate change including facilitating £34.8bn of social and environmental financing last year. We continue to engage with ShareAction and other stakeholders on how we can make further progress.”

Wells Fargo told the Guardian that it believes that climate change is one of the most urgent environmental and social issues of our time, and is committing to a low-carbon economy. The bank said it is working to measure and report on the carbon intensity of its credit portfolio.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/18/global-banks-climate...

 

 

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