2024 Eco-Watch: Hot Times and Plastic Bottles
Yes, we’re all going to die. Eventually. It’s part of life. Evidence continues to mount that our continued existence is going to be increasingly unpleasant.
Two news stories currently making the rounds add to the knowledge we have about our march toward mass extinction, one about global temperature increases and the other about water in plastic bottles.
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Last year has been officially declared the hottest year in the last 150 years (since temperatures were able to be measured); it’s estimated that the last time the planet saw equivalent temperatures was over 100,000 years ago.
Via the New York Times:
Global temperatures started blowing past records midyear and didn’t stop. First, June was the planet’s warmest June on record. Then, July was the warmest July. And so on, all the way through December.
Averaged across last year, temperatures worldwide were 1.48 degrees Celsius, or 2.66 Fahrenheit, higher than they were in the second half of the 19th century, the European Union climate monitor announced on Tuesday. That is warmer by a sizable margin than 2016, the previous hottest year.
To climate scientists, it comes as no surprise that unabated emissions of greenhouse gases caused global warming to reach new highs. What researchers are still trying to understand is whether 2023 foretells many more years in which heat records are not merely broken, but smashed. In other words, they are asking whether the numbers are a sign that the planet’s warming is accelerating.
James Hansen, the former Nasa scientist credited for alerting the world to the dangers of climate change in the 1980s says this year’s El Nino weather patterns will by May push temperatures to as much as 1.7C (3F) above the average experienced before industrialization.
So yeah, 2024 looks to be a sizzler. Average temperatures will rise and fall in coming years as they always have, but the overall trend is upward. And collateral damages caused by a warmer planet will increase in frequency.
A study published last year used a supercomputer to model climate and land use changes and their impact on plant and animal species concluded that the pace at which the climate is changing is accelerating.
The results predicted 10% of all plant and animal species will disappear by 2050, and 27% of vertebrate diversity will vanish by 2100. Even more alarming were the predictions about damages to the food chain.
Via Popular Mechanics (which has outstanding reporting on science)
In some of the worst simulations, up to half of the connections in the food webs between species disappeared. The larger the species, the higher up the food chain and the more vulnerable they became to effects following extinctions.
One bittersweet example currently in progress is the rising price of sugar: in the US the increase amounted to 8.9% in 2023 and a 5.6% increase is expected for 2024, according to the Department of Agriculture.
The number two and three exporters of sugar (India and Thailand) have seen sharp drops in yield due to droughts, as weather patterns are moving the increased moisture in the atmosphere in new patterns.
So your ding-dongs and ho-hos will cost more. That could mean less obesity. And it also could mean less food will be affordable in countries where up to 40% of income is spent on food.
Via the Guardian:
Studies have shown that global heating will seriously hamper the ability of countries like China to grow rice at current volumes, while researchers have found that global production of corn could slump 24% by 2030. Changes in temperature and rainfall patterns could, meanwhile, help some other crops like wheat thrive in places such as Russia and Canada, where it is currently too cold to grow.
Rising planetary temperatures are proving to be bad for one’s health in another way. Published research shows that climate change’s higher temperatures and heavy rainfall are linked to an increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This rise poses a serious challenge to the effectiveness of modern medicine.
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The introduction of mass produced plastic bottles for beverages began in the late 1970s. Pepsi and Coke switched from refillable glass bottles to PET plastic and Americans cheered the convenience of the new packaging.
Plastic bottles are made from petroleum, so the climate change deniers at Dirty Energy companies also cheered.
The onus on dealing with used bottles switched from the manufacturers to consumers. And it turns out that this packaging can take hundreds of years to make its way back into the ecosystem.
Public relations programs designed to encourage recycling take the form of deposits and separating plastics in waste disposal. The process of breaking down bottles is fraught with issues of declining integrity with each melt down. Vast amounts of these products are simply dumped into landfills and bodies of water.
Today’s front page story in the Los Angeles Times is about the discovery of vastly larger amounts than expected of nanoplastics in bottled water.. The studies quoted add to the body of knowledge that says these tiny pollutants and their chemical predecessors are everywhere, even in newborn babies and sea creatures at the bottom of the ocean.
The incredibly small size of nanoparticles allows them to behave differently than larger pieces of matter, said Beizhan Yan , a Columbia environmental chemist and a co-author of the study.
Pollutants and pathogens can be carried on the surface of a particle, and the smaller a particle gets, the larger its surface area-to-volume ratio becomes.
As a result, Yan said, “even if they’re not that toxic at a larger particle size, when they become smaller they become toxic, because they can interfere in the cells, in the tissues, inside of the organelles.”
We’re basically still at the denial stage in terms of dealing with this environmental pollutant in humans. “More research” needs to be done before we jump to what will likely be unprofitable solutions for manufacturers.
Laboratory studies of fish and rodents have shown microplastics interfering with development, reproductive ability and health, gut health, hormone levels, immune responses, and the heart.
Remember that we’ve already had experience with a gasoline additive (lead) causing brain damage in children associated with more aggressive behavior and stunted learning development. And one side effect of eliminating it from the pumps in automobile gas stations has apparently been lower crime. Oh, the Dirty Energy industry is still mixing lead into piston-powered airplane fuel, so we’re not through with this disaster yet.
I’m not saying microplastics are the same kind of culprit –yet– but there do seem to be increases in autoimmune resistance and assorted other ailments that have remained a mystery until now. Research has already shown a connection between microplastics and hormones in rats, with exposure to aerosolized particles causing a notable decline in fertility.
One thing you can be sure of in 2024 will be a “plastic safety council” or some similarly named outfit running advertising designed to protect their products from consumer rejection. I can see a slogan now: “Plastics: It’s Not So Bad.” and/or the “Poor Plastic Workers, Destined for Poverty.”
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Trumpless Tuesday News Clips
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Well We Still Haven't Done Anything About the Electoral College By Hamilton Nolan in How Things Work
We still. Have in place this thing. That not infrequently makes the loser of the election the winner. That is not a detail! That is pretty fucking central to the entire proposition of democracy! And when it happens we all just kind of shrug?? And then just move on with no apparent fervor for reform?? And here we are once again in the same exact place?? FYI.
Just to properly frame what I am saying here: I do not mean to sound like a low-information voter who just discovered the existence of this electoral abomination and is therefore fretting like a rube over something that all of the savvy political people have long understood and factored into their strategic calculations. No. I am arguing that all of us should, to the utmost of our abilities, cultivate and nurture our ability to be shocked and outraged by the continued existence of the Electoral College, and that we take a moment to recognize that our collective failure to mount any real efforts to scrap this laughably counterproductive relic is very, very stupid. Very stupid indeed.
It is as if we all live in a house that was built with a trap door in the living room floor, into which one close relative or another plummets to their death every once in a while. And, when we notice that construction crews are busily building new wings on the sprawling house all the time, we say, “Maybe we should cover up that trap door?” And everyone rolls their eyes and ignores it. “It’s tradition,” they say. “Just learn to navigate the trap door properly! Idiot.”
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RFK Jr. Backs Out of His Own Birthday Bash After Celebrity Snub-Fest Via the Daily Beast
A not-so-star-studded fundraising gala for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is on life support, with the political scion abruptly bailing on his own party after a handful of allegedly invited A-listers publicly disavowed any knowledge of the event—and loudly promised that they would never, ever be caught dead backing him.
Kennedy’s press team told The Daily Beast in a statement on Monday that he would no longer be attending the Jan. 22 event, organized by a super PAC supporting his presidential bid.
The PAC, American Values 2024, announced the event on X last week, confirming a Daily Mail report that celebrities like Dionne Warwick, Martin Sheen, Mike Tyson, and Andrea Bocelli would all be there to wish Kennedy many happy returns.
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Abortion: It Keeps Getting Worse By Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse
One of the principles of our legal system is having clear laws so people understand their rights and responsibilities and have notice of their obligations and the consequences of violating them. The violation of that principle is what makes recent developments with abortion so sinister. We now live in a world where some states have outright or close to outright bans on abortion, and the extent of any exceptions is so unclear that using them is all but foreclosed.
That’s what happened to Brittany Watts in Ohio, who was pregnant when her water broke at 21 weeks. Her doctor sent her to the hospital to get an abortion, telling her she needed one to avoid maternal death, sepsis, or other serious complications. But because the fetus still had a heartbeat, she couldn’t get the procedure. She ended up passing the fetus, alone and at home. Prosecutors have asked a grand jury to charge her with abuse of a corpse.
Here’s the kicker. During her first visit to the hospital, Watts waited for eight hours while a hospital ethics panel met to determine whether it could end her pregnancy without legal ramifications for the hospital and the medical personnel involved. That’s the cost of the uncertainty created by poorly written laws designed to make abortion as inaccessible as possible. If the health of the predominately white, conservative male politicians who have put these laws in place was at stake, we know this would look completely different. It’s madness.
