Some jokes that did not quite make the cut but which I have on Video! Click on Image to Watch
Green New Deal Pizza
The
Pre-Reading for Show-
- There is an annual climate comedy contest called “Inside
the Greenhouse” hosted by some professors at
the University of Colorado. There are also some examples of books on the
topic.
- I
Want a Better Catastrophe: navigating the climate crisis
with grief, hope, and gallows humor
- Stay Cool: Why
Dark Comedy Matters in the Fight Against Climate Change
- Greta-Thunberg,
the famous Swedish activist who started the School Strikes for Climate
movement back in 2018, is on the autism spectrum and describes it as her “Superpower”.
- The Minneapolis
City Council passed a climate emergency resolution on
December 13th, 2019. Within a few years, 16 other Minnesota Cities joined in
passing their own resolutions.
CLIMATE SCIENCE BASICS
- Much
of the shortwave radiation that comes from the sun (but not all) is in the
visible light part of the spectrum.
- The Earth’s
surface emits thermal radiation that is far longer in wavelength than what comes from the sun – far beyond the
spectrum of visible light in the infrared direction.
- The balance between the Longwave Radiation leaving the earth and
the shortwave radiation from the sun determines whether the
Earth is experiencing global warming or global cooling.
- Radiating this heat into outer space is the only way that our planet
can cool down.
- Greenhouse
gasses allow solar radiation to pass through the atmosphere but stop some
of the infrared thermal radiation from going back out into the atmosphere,
sending some of it back to the surface.
- Too many greenhouse gasses causes
an increasing amount of heat to be trapped near the earth’s surface – aka
global warming.
- There are
some organizations elsewhere in the country that are working at the intersection of LGBTQ+ and climate activism from
their own unique angles, some of which are compiled here. But not any that are known in the twin
cities.
- More on the
intersectionality: To Survive Climate Catastrophe, Look to Queer and
Disabled Folks
- Psychologists have studied the mystery behind what causes resistance
to green behavior.
- Some of the
insightful findings involve associations to sexual identity and orientation
that are largely perceptions and not how reality had to be.
- There have been
some groups of Conservatives who Vocally Support
Clean Energy such as Debbie
Dooley who led the Green Tea Party in coalition with the Sierra Club.
- Nitrous Oxide,
abbreviated as NO2 and also known as laughing gas, is the third most
well-known greenhouse gas. Carbon Dioxide, abbreviated as CO2 is the most
well known and methane, abbreviated as CH4 is the second.
- Former
President Donald Trump asked
oil industry executives to donate $1 billion to aid his campaign to retake the White House, three
people familiar with the conversation told POLITICO — a request that
campaign finance experts said appeared troubling but is probably legal.
- During the Trump Administration,
we saw
·
The authorities reprimand a park head after tweeting about climate
·
The authorities cover up a Chemical health assessment (goes
beyond climate)
·
“631 federal scientists were ordered to omit the phrase “climate change”
from their work. According to the same survey, 703 federal scientists chose to
self-censor and keep a low profile rather than risk the wrath of the
administration.”
·
Even More Stories!
·
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/08/florida-banned-terms-climate-change-global-warming
·
https://grist.org/article/scientist-who-resisted-censorship-of-climate-report-lost-her-job/
- Ron DeSantis, known for supporting a “Don’t Say
Gay” law, has also signed a bill removing climate references
from state law.
- Don’t Say Gay bills have been going through state legislatures
for over a decade
- The acronym FLICC is used to help us recognize, identify and call out climate
denialist messaging points. It was co-created by the Skeptical Science website
- In response to an interview
question about what moves one from despair into action about climate, Greta Thunburg responded “The best
medicine against that concern and sadness is to do something about it, to
try to make a change.”
- The trapped air bubbles in ice that scientists take
cores, or samples of, provide a way to calculate how modern amounts of
carbon dioxide and methane compare to those of the past, since there is a
way to tell how long ago an air bubble was trapped. Scientists then compared past concentrations of greenhouse gases to
temperature and found a strong correlation.
- Because
trees are sensitive to local climate conditions, such as rain and
temperature, they give scientists some information about that area's local
climate in the past. For example, tree rings usually
grow wider in warm, wet years and they are thinner in years when it is
cold and dry.
- “Tar Sands” are
referred to as an unconventional fossil fuel because they are much more
difficult to extract than conventional fossil fuels and also cause much
greater environmental destruction where they are extracted as well as in
oil spills, because they are mixed with toxic chemicals to flow through a
pipe.
- Back in 2013 and 2016, the vast
majority of actively publishing climate scientists – 97 percent – agree
that humans are causing global warming and climate change. The number is
even higher today.
- Exxon disputed climate findings
for years. Its scientists knew better. Hashtag #ExxonKnew ExxonMobil has bankrolled front groups who push messages
claiming that the science of climate change is still too uncertain
with an intention of making it into an excuse to not take any action on
it. However Exxon’s own internal scientists not only knew about it
decades ago but predicted climate change with chilling accuracy.
See the 1982 Memo to Exxon Management
about CO2 Greenhouse Effect.
- Climate
models calculate the physical interactions between the
earth’s atmosphere, land, ocean, and sea ice based on
several inputs to best predict the impacts of climate change in coming
years. Climate models are so high resolution and so
sophisticated that you need the
world’s fastest supercomputers to run them and even then it can take them
months to run a single simulation!
- A floe is a smaller chunk of ice floating in a large body of
water that broke off from a larger body of ice.
- The hottest
years on record have all been recent. There has not been a cooler than
average year since 1985.
- Gas Utilities around the country, including CenterPoint right here
with their Builders Club North program, have been giving bribes and
kickbacks to installers of gas
appliances in newly constructed housing.
- The fossil gas (aka Natural gas) industry has for decades promoted
gas as ‘a bridge fuel to a renewable future because gas plants can change
their output quicker than coal and nuclear plants to better match up with
variable wind and solar.
- When there is
no pipeline to capture natural gas that occurs near oil drilling sites, it
is burned as a flare which shows up in nighttime satellite
images.
- If even a small amount of fugitive methane unintentionally leaks out
pipeline infrastructure, natural gas could cancel out the climate benefits of retiring coal
plants.
- “James Hanson – A Climate
Scientist who testified to congress in June of 1988 and turned global
warming out of obscurity and into common discussion.
- James Lovelock” – postulated Gaia theory of earth as a living
being.
- Around 2019- 2021, there were
reports that we had only 11 years left to prevent irreversible damage from
climate change. It does not mean that the world will turn instantly
apocalyptic at that point but means it will hit a tipping point.
- A basic rule of
climate science is that the atmosphere can hold more
moisture as it warms.
- There have been
efforts to stop Nestle from privatizing groundwater resources. Nestle
extracted groundwater in California during a drought as well as in the Columbia
River Gorge in Cascade Locks Oregon, and even spotted near Flint Michigan
of all places, pumping 200 gallons of fresh water every minute.
- In a
true conspiracy, the fossil fuel, forestry, and plastic industries have purposefully marginalized the potential of industrial hemp.
- The
ocean conveyor belt, also known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning
Circulation (AMOC), transfers heat from
the warm tropics to the cold polar regions
like Norway. If the currents in the ocean conveyor belt were to
stop completely due to global warming, then the average temperature of
coastal Europe would cool 5 to 10 degrees Celsius. This was the plotline
of the climate disaster popular film, the Day after Tomorrow.
- In
the 1970s, scientists discovered that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), a
chemical used in many products including aerosol sprays, were accumulating
in the environment and depleting the ozone layer. As a result, ozone-depleting
chemicals have been banned from consumer aerosol
products made in the U.S.
- Permafrost is a thick subsurface layer of soil that remains frozen throughout the
year, occurring chiefly in polar regions. A
thawing permafrost layer from global warming causes trouble for soil,
plants and vegetation above it. As permafrost thaws, microbes begin
decomposing this material. This process releases greenhouse gases like
carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere.
- The Business-As-Usual (BAU) scenario describes
the development of the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions in the
atmosphere under the assumption that no further efforts to reduce
emissions will be made.
- The Seventh
Generation Principle is based on an ancient Haudenosaunee (Iroquois)*
philosophy that the decisions we
make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the
future.
- The cryosphere
is the part of the earth's surface
characterized by the presence of frozen water; so it refers to earth’s ice in all its forms. Permafrost, in
contrast, is also often considered part of the geosphere because it
contains rocks and soils.
- The “Conference of the Parties” abbreviated as COP, is the supreme
decision-making body of the United
Nations Climate Change Conference often called global climate summits. It is when a Convention of representatives of all nations join to reach an
agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The COP meets every year, unless the Parties decide
otherwise. The first COP meeting was held in Berlin, Germany in March,
1995. The latest was COP 28 which took
place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from 30 November until 12 December
2023.
- Mercury expands and contracts in a mercury thermometer
as the temperature changes, causing the mercury to move up or down the
thermometer's glass tube. This is because mercury's particles vibrate
and move more when it gets hotter, increasing the distance between them
and expanding the volume of the material.
- The difference between 1.5-degrees of global warming and
2.0-degrees of global warming might not sound like a lot but it is.
- Carbon Capture and Storage CCS involves capturing CO2 where it is emitted and
then storing and burying it in a suitable deep, underground location. CCS
can also mean the removal of CO2 directly or indirectly from the atmosphere. https://watchwire.ai/carbon-capture-utilization-storage-pipe-dream-potential-solution/
- Fossil
fuel interests, and nations that have high consumption and extraction of
fossil fuels attempt to sabotage global climate deals that could save poor
nations that have done comparatively little to cause the problem and
undercut efforts to phase out dirty energy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/12/15/cop28-fossil-fuel-nations-sabotage-climate-deal-africa/
- An
increase in greenhouses gases like carbon dioxide leads to not just global
warming but a cooling in the upper atmosphere. This can cause
the ionosphere to shrink, similar to how a balloon shrinks when placed in
a freezer. This is because when air cools, it contracts.
- Internalizing
an externality is what economics call the process of
incorporating the external environmental costs or benefits of an certain
industrial activity into the decision-making process of the parties
involved. That way, the economic actor
who creates these caused had to pay them all. Environmentalists often refer to this as the Polluter
Pays Principle.
- Fossil fuel
divestment is not to be confused with completely stopping the burning of
fossil fuels. It is the shifting of money around. There are ongoing public
pressure campaigns to coax financial decision makers to dis-invest from
companies that are currently involved in fossil fuel extraction projects
to invest in renewable energy and to instead to accelerate the transition
to renewable power and fossil fuel projects often by stigmatizing the
fossil fuel companies. Fossil Fuel front groups like ALEC have tried to fight divestment
legislatively and punish banks who divest.
- The Heartland
Institute is an American conservative and libertarian 501(c)(3) nonprofit
public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific
consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking.
The Heartland Institute has held its own counterfeit climate summits to
bring together those who "dispute that the science is settled on the
causes, consequences, and policy implications of climate change"
starting back in 2008.
- Networked
Geothermal is an approach to renewable power that describes
the connection of several ground-source heat pumps to one another to form
a shared loop network. This means
connecting nearby homes and businesses together to form a system or
network of heat pumps. A
District energy system distributes thermal heating and cooling energy to
multiple buildings in a neighborhood. These systems typically consist of a
heating and cooling center, and a thermal network of pipes connected to a
group of buildings.
- Enbridge Energy
Partners LLC is a company that manages pipelines that transport tar sands
oil. Their slowness to respond to a ruptured pipeline caused a massive oil
spill near the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.
- Shortly after
his reelection in 2012, there was a prominent campaign to get President Obama to
deny the permit for the Keystone
XL tar sands pipeline called “Forward on Climate”
- A UN report warns that unless global greenhouse gas emissions
fall by 7.6 per cent each year between 2020 and 2030, the world will miss
the opportunity to get on track towards the 1.5°C temperature goal of the
Paris Agreement. That number goes up to 15% upon delay.
- Climate adaptation is the process of adjusting to the
current and future effects of climate change. Climate mitigation means
preventing or reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the
atmosphere to make the impacts of climate change less severe.
- The 11th Hour is a 2007 Climate
documentary featuring Leonardo DiCaprio.