2023 was once again the warmest year on record

Water theft laws and penalties in the Murray-Darling Basin are a dogs breakfast. Heres how we can fix them

Revue de presse du moi d'avril : .

Having NewClimateParty !

It is unfolding in front of our eyes, but still not enough to make us act decisively...

Billions in magical spending questioned as coral reefs fail around the world

Climate change has been singled out as the leading cause of bleaching across the worlds coral reefs.

Pakistan: Lightning and unusually heavy rain kill dozens Once-in-a-century rain

We had 4 seasons until a decade ago. Due to climate change, we now have two, a summer and a mild winter. Once the winters were long and cold with a lot of snow and the earth was clean and healthy in the spring, the frost killed everything harmful in it.
Now we are faced with the emergence of various types of diseases in animals that were once very rare, because single-celled organisms survives the winter.

Periodic reminder: chaotic weather related to is already here and is killing people. We really should be changing our systems to stop adding to it.

Pakistan: Lightning and unusually heavy rain kill dozens

I still have not seen a single user case for AI that's worth using drinking water for. Not even porn.

...can we cool AI clusters with sewage Seems fitting.

"Hog hotel". Sadness.

Radio news bulletin this morning giving a nice ad for a company introducing *electric cement trucks*. Softball question on the pointlessness of such a gesture from a concrete company. No mention of whether the drivers of these oxymoronic vehicles will break road traffic laws like their combustion engine equivalents regularly do across the fleet.

Weird. Temperatures hit 29C last Sunday...in not quite mid ! Theoretically, they then dropped by 10C except it doesn't feel like it here in . It's not quite 9am and I'm already sweltering.

Masses of scalloped hammerheads have returned to one of Australias busiest beaches. But we dont need to panic

Seagrass meadows face uncertain future, scientists say

Seagrass meadows worldwide are facing escalating threats, according to a study. These vital ecosystems, crucial for coastal protection and , are highly vulnerable to climate change. Urgent action, including enhanced management strategies and global cooperation, is needed to safeguard their future amidst increasing human and environmental pressures.

ECHR Blog Special Webinar: Climate Change in Strasbourg

On the Duarte Agostinho Decision by Corina Heri

Along coastlines from Australia to Kenya to Mexico, many of the world's colorful coral reefs have turned a ghostly white in what scientists said amounted to the fourth global bleaching event in the last three decades.

Songs for a Free World

Trying to make your family members care about climate change Nasa's Climate Legacies generator is here for you!

Here is mine - my grandad, my mum, myself, and my nephew, all growing up and living in different worlds.

Great adaptation of and that signature figure!

- bleaching: Fourth global mass stress episode underway - US scientists

New article in on how Andropogon gerardii and Schizachyrium scoparium differ in their physiological mechanisms and resilience to drought.

Full

Global heating has pushed the worlds coral reefs to a fourth planet-wide mass bleaching event that is on track to be the most extensive on record, US government scientists have confirmed.

Coral reefs are rich in biodiversity and provide habitat to a quarter of all marine species.

A recent paper surveyed 59,000 people across 63 and found that 86% said they believed in that action was needed, caused it, it was a to , and/or a . Even in the country with the lowest agreement, 73% still agreed it was a serious threat.

I'm hearing about methaneSAT, a satellite is dedicated to providing publicly accessible data on methane emissions. A quick search told me it can see a few parts per billion methane with a resolution of 100x400m. In some areas this could be enough to find leaks in individual houses. The data isn't available yet it seems though, and I'm not sure what areas it will cover entirely.

This could be a major opportunity for mutual aid though. Natural gas leaks are horrible both for individuals health and the environment. Being able to let your neighbor know they have one before they realize could help a lot. Could also help you with finding abandoned houses and shit, who knows

There goes one of those feedback loops I was always screaming into the void about. For 20 years I tried to talk sense into anyone that would listen.

Exactly
Arrogance is Australias blatant ignorance (ignoring) of the 2023 IPCC report calling for drastic action to avoid 1.5 degrees of warming.
Arrogance is wilful blindness to the suffering of the Pacific Islands as they experience rising sea levels, floods, droughts, tropical storms, and a lack of fresh water.
Arrogance is overbearing pride, which the Commissioner exhibits as he calls Coco and Co selfish when their protest was one of the most selfless acts seen on national television this year.

What does he think hes going to do, charge THE SUN with a public nuisance order when we reach 1.5C of warming

this is something everyone should be worried about, and everyone should be angry about, frankly - NOAAs Coral Reef Watch coordinator Derek Manzello

Meandering ocean currents play an important role in the melting of Antarctic ice shelves, threatening a significant rise in sea levels...

Pension funds are risking the retirement savings of millions of people by relying on economic research that ignores critical scientific evidence about the financial risks embedded within a warming climate.

It has landed!
Please, please do share as wide as you can.

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Download The Manifesto .  This year, 49% of the world goes to the polls in 64 countries. As , 2024 is not just AN election year. Its perhaps THE election year. The outcomes of these elections will hugely shape the world and our future, most importantly of all is the US Presidential election which could see Donald Trump returned as President, which would unleash what as . In most cases, voters are being asked to choose between deeply unimaginative manifestos, all firmly wedded to a business-as-usual economic model that is clearly and dangerously failing around the world. 

The rise of the far-right around the world is profoundly troubling, underpinned as it is by dystopian visions of the future and the need for strong leaders to protect us from those futures. But what would a Manifesto look like that was based on a positive vision of the future, one that is appropriately ambitious to the scale of the challenges the world is facing while at the same time bold, imaginative and audacious I would argue that the failure of progressive parties and movements to set out bold visions of the future has left the space for the far right to fill, and that getting better at bringing positive futures alive in peoples imaginations is vital. As political theorist :

We can refute the premises of these positions until the cows come home. But only a compelling vision of a less frightening and insecure future will recruit anyone to a progressive or revolutionary alternative futureor rouse apolitical citizens for the project of making that future. This vision must be seductive and exciting, and it must be embodied in seductive and exciting leadership and movements, hopefully oriented by an ethic of responsibility.

Since 2020, the fortnightly From What If to What Next podcast has invited two guests to time travel into the 2030 that resulted from our doing absolutely everything we could possibly have done, and to describe that world to the listeners. In late March 2024, I stopped the podcast at its 100th episode in order to focus on other projects, but it remains as .

Alongside the main episodes, Patreon subscribers also received bonus Ministry of Imagination podcasts, in which they were inaugurated as Ministers at the Ministry itself (part-Hundertwasser, part-Hogwarts, part-Yellow Submarine) and invited to choose 3 policies each that would rapidly accelerate our transition to a world in which those changes had happened. The result was over 600 deeply thoughtful, considered, audacious and ambitious policies covering everything from free art materials for all, to a Universal Basic Income and every company having to list all their failures as well as their successes in their annual reports.  

This year, perhaps now more than ever, we need a taste of what policymaking underpinned by the radical imagination looks like. Recognising how extraordinary and powerful this collection of possibility-infused policies from an eclectic mix of people from all around the world (including Brian Eno, Rutger Bregman and Kate Raworth ecologists, renegade economists, artists, prison abolitionists, somatic trauma therapists, printmakers, politicians, disability activists, rewilding practitioners, prison abolitionists and so many more) I felt it was important to collect them all in one accessible place. And so The Ministry of Imagination Manifesto: an imagination-based manifesto for times that need one was born. Weve painstakingly edited together all the policies, under subject headings, and the whole thing has been beautifully designed by Capella Andrean of . 

You can download it . 

Please share it far and wide. Send it to any policy-makers or politicians you know. Post it anywhere you can. Dont let the possible be constrained by the imaginative poverty of our current manifesto writers. The sponsorship we have has covered the cost of production, but wed also love some funds to cover creating some printed copies. If you find this inspirational and youd like to support it, please consider making a donation. Thanks.

As Ruha Benjamin in her 2024 book Imagination: A Manifesto puts it: 

A world without prisons Ridiculous. Schools that foster the genius of every child Impossible. Work that doesnt grind us to the bone Nave. A society where everyone has food, shelter, love In your dreams. Exactly

The Ministry of Imagination manifesto is supported by the good folks at Boomtown Festival, Wake the Tiger, Team Love, Bath Spa University, Moral Imaginations and Transition Network. My deepest thanks to Tamzin Pinkerton for her help with editing it, Capella Andrean, every single Minister at the Ministry of Imagination for their brilliant policy ideas, and every subscriber who made the podcast possible. Thanks. 

Rob would love to hear what you think of it. Do let him know in the on his website.

#climateChange #Democracy #Education #Environment #Farming #OWGF #Regeneration #Renewables #StrongTowns #Urbanism

WHY arent economics-driven governments acting on

HUGE GULF between and on global warming

Economists estimate that growth in global GDP will slow by just 20% if the planet warms 7 1
Scientists say that the future is "beyond catastrophic, including existential threats" if the planet warms by 5C 2.

Economics publications are refereed only by economists with no peer review from other scientists, and a level of warming that, to scientists, implies existential threats, is seen by economists as a minor impediment to continued economic .

1 "Climate Damage Estimates from (Howard and Sylvan 2021a, p. 23)
2 Xu and Ramanathan 2017, p. 10315)

Options for a Paris-Compliant Livestock Sector

All aspects of society must be radically transformed to align with the global temperature limits of
the Paris Agreement. Much of the political focus has been on the energy transition, however, a food
transition is also needed especially in highly emitting agricultural commodities from livestock production.

, ,

This report from the ABC today on the ongoing coral bleaching event will bring tears to your eyes. Growing up in Far North Queensland makes it impossible not to have a deep love for the reef, it is genuinely heartbreaking to see pictures of reefs glowing white.

The Guardian: Global heating pushes towards worst planet-wide mass bleaching on record

I don't think that the significance CATL's halving of battery pack prices this year has been understood.

Increasingly, new utility scale solar has been packaged with 4 hours of storage. Halving the cost of batteries means that for the same cost per MWh, we can have 8 hours of storage.

Night demand = roughly 1/3 of total demand, which means that solar will now be able to provide a whole day's electricity--at least in low to mid-latitudes, at the same cost.

One hurdle to driving an electric vehicle is range anxiety. The Indiana Department of Transportation and researchers from Purdue University are jointly addressing the fear of losing power on the road by installing underground copper coils on a stretch of highway. The coils will provide power to e-vehicles driving past. Wouldnt it really be something if we could just drive over the road and catch your charge for your vehicle as you drive across it INDOTs Blake Dollier recently told Inside Climate News. Read their article on this test that could eventually put a dent in greenhouse gas emissions.