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Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Pakistan "Grasping at Straws" by Mating Glaciers to Tackle Climate Change [1]
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Date: 2023-09-07
Farmers in Pakistan’s highlands are mating chunks from white and black glaciers to create baby glaciers to water their crops, according to an NPR story last week “A glacier baby is born: Mating glaciers to replace water lost to climate change.
"We are grasping at straws. Like a person drowning, we will try anything," says Shamsher Ali, a 65-year-old elder in the village of Machulo, where water theft is rife.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is looking to help residents of northern Pakistan adapt to climate change – leaning into the area's indigenous culture to find ways to replace the rapidly melting glaciers. Glacier mating is one of several unconventional strategies they are trying. The water shortages in this Himalayan district are also prompting farmers to adapt a neighboring Indian technique of building frozen water fountains. An engineer is trying to harvest avalanches. Then there's a group of women who call themselves the "water thieves."
Responsible for less than 1% of the global carbon footprint, Pakistan currently ranks as number five in the Global Climate Risk Index of climate-vulnerable countries. Along with extreme weather and a growing number of natural disasters, the country is also experiencing rising temperatures, changes in weather patterns, and, in the north, glacial melting.
Bias in how information is gathered by AI computer programs can have detrimental impacts on forecasting how climate change impacts countries in the global south and other under-represented regions, according to a new paper by researchers at the University of Cambridge, published in npj Climate Action.
The programs, which sort through information provided primarily by highly educated individuals in the Global North, represent their bias and limit the effectiveness of projections, the report noted.
The AI programs sort through complex data in search of information to predict patterns, the fact that information is missing from some regions, time periods, or “societal dynamics”
AI computer programs used for climate science are trained to trawl through complex data sets looking for patterns and insightful information. However, missing information from certain locations on the planet, time periods, or societal dynamics create "holes" in the data that can lead to unreliable climate predictions and misleading conclusions. phys.org/...
Bulldogs, pugs and other snout-less dogs will suffer as climate change worsens, experts warn
Bulldogs. Pugs. Boston terriers. French bulldogs. There is a term for these widely-loved pups who seem to lack snouts altogether, with their face instead appearing to have been smooshed in through years of inbreeding. That term is "brachycephalic," derived from the Greek for "short head." Whether you adore these animals or think their very existence is inhumane (a controversial subject indeed), experts from both the dog worlds and the climatology world agree on one thing: Brachycephalic dogs are going to suffer a lot more as climate change worsens. It all comes down to the science.
Email Assembly Speaker Rivas to Support the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (SB 253)
Take action to hold polluters accountable! Using the form on this page, send an email to California Assembly Speaker Rivas and urge him to support the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (SB 253). This bill is a huge win for climate justice in California – it requires all US-based businesses with over $1 billion in gross annual revenue, that do business in California, to measure and disclose their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory annually for public review. The email to the Speaker is already drafted and ready for you to send – just sign your name and click ‘send’ or make the changes to reflect your own words, if you prefer!
California’s Next Climate Frontier: Corporate Disclosure
Corporate sustainability is a mess. For consumers, investors, employees, and anyone else trying to wrap their heads around a business’ greenhouse-gas emissions, it’s hard to know where to look for information or how one company stacks up against another. The businesses that share data publicly do so on a number of different forums and in wildly different formats. Then there are still many that don’t disclose any info at all. “It's like a climate ‘Tower of Babel,’” Steven Rothstein, a managing director at the nonprofit Ceres, which advocates for market-based climate solutions, told me.
A huge solar + storage + EV project just launched at Dulles Airport
Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia is going to host a solar, battery storage, and EV project – the US’s largest clean energy project at an airport. The state of Virginia and Dominion Energy officials broke ground on the $200 million clean energy project yesterday. The solar farm will sit on 835 acres of Dulles Airport’s grounds between runways. The 100-megawatt (MW) solar farm will be made up of 200,000 solar panels and 50 MW of battery storage. The power will go to the grid and provide 37,500 households with power.
The problem with trying to get a high score to save the planet
… the problems of climate change and ocean preservation are urgent and worrying, and solving them has become gamified, turning complex problems into opportunities to make a high score of trees planted or pounds of ocean plastic retrieved. The best examples of how responding to these problems gets turned into a high score are the Team Trees and Team Seas projects led by YouTubers Mark Rober and Mr. Beast
Fossil Fuel Kills, Asians in particular
Bill McKibben writes:
New data last week from University of Chicago researchers showed that across South Asia, air pollution—mostly from burning fossil fuels—is robbing people of five years of life on average. Five years! If you live in Delhi, the most polluted big city on the planet, that number is an unimaginable 11.9 years. If you would have lived to 70, you died at 58. Thank about that. Across the region, “particulate pollution levels are currently more than 50 percent higher than at the start of the century and now overshadow” other health risks. Every breath that people take is killing them, every hour of every day.
MARCH
The Global Fight to End Fossil Fuels takes place in New York City on September 15 and 17 to coincide with Climate Week and the UN Climate Ambition Summit. Demonstrations are also planned across the country and internationally. Information on transportation is available on the site.
On September 15 to 17, millions of people around the world will take to the streets to demand a rapid, just, and equitable end to fossil fuels. This wave of global mobilisations will include the March to #EndFossilFuels fast, fair, forever in New York City on September 17, as world leaders attend the United Nations Secretary General’s Climate Ambition Summit. This historic mobilisation renews and reinforces the globally coordinated efforts focused on ending the era of fossil fuels. The scale of this mobilisation and the urgency of the moment underscore the devastating impacts of recent record breaking heat, deadly floods, and increased extreme weather events. The climate crisis is escalating and in response so is the global movement for climate justice. Across the globe, we are coming together to fight back against the fossil fuel industry and its enablers. Together, we are unstoppable as we build and imagine a fossil fuel-free world.
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