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Infinite Powers – Steven Strogatz

by Myrna Posted on March 30, 2019

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Infinite Powers

How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe

Steven Strogatz

Genre: Mathematics

Price: $15.99

Expected Publish Date: April 2, 2019

Publisher: HMH Books

Seller: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company


From preeminent math personality and author of The Joy of x, a brilliant and endlessly appealing explanation of calculus – how it works and why it makes our lives immeasurably better.    Without calculus, we wouldn’t have cell phones, TV, GPS, or ultrasound. We wouldn’t have unraveled DNA or discovered Neptune or figured out how to put 5,000 songs in your pocket.    Though many of us were scared away from this essential, engrossing subject in high school and college, Steven Strogatz’s brilliantly creative, down‑to‑earth history shows that calculus is not about complexity; it’s about simplicity. It harnesses an unreal number—infinity—to tackle real‑world problems, breaking them down into easier ones and then reassembling the answers into solutions that feel miraculous.    Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves (a phenomenon predicted by calculus). Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes “backwards” sometimes; how to make electricity with magnets; how to ensure your rocket doesn’t miss the moon; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS.    As Strogatz proves, calculus is truly the language of the universe. By unveiling the principles of that language, Infinite Powers makes us marvel at the world anew. 

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Infinite Powers – Steven Strogatz

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U.S. banks pledged to fund renewable energy, but they still spend way more on fossil fuels

by MistyMcDowall Posted on March 30, 2019

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This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Each year since the Paris climate agreement, major world banks have increased their financing of fossil fuels, pouring $1.9 trillion into the industry from 2016 through 2018. And, it turns out, U.S. banks are the worst offenders, according to a recent report published by a group of environmental organizations.

“The sad reality is that the fossil fuel sector has only grown since Paris,” says Patrick McCully, climate and energy director for the Rainforest Action Network and one of the report’s authors. “The banks are following what the industry is doing, and the industry’s able to expand because it’s able to keep getting capital from the banks … It’s just this really alarming, really terrifying dynamic going on worldwide.”

The top four financial institutions supporting the fossil fuel industry are all American: JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, and Bank of America. Two more, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, aren’t far behind. This is despite all six of these major U.S. banks publishing a joint statement, in the months leading up to the adoption of the Paris deal, acknowledging the threat of climate change, pledging financial support for solutions, and calling for a “more sustainable, low-carbon economy.”

By far, JP Morgan Chase is the biggest funder among the 33 banks assessed, putting $196 billion into fossil fuels from 2016 through 2018. Its money represents 10 percent of the industry’s total financing. Notably, the highest spending year for Chase — and many other top banks — was 2017, the same year President Trump announced the U.S. would pull out of the Paris agreement.

In recent years, public pressure has mounted against banks financing oil, gas, and coal companies. These campaigns have been particularly coordinated and successful in Europe, and the World Bank announced in 2017 that it would no longer finance oil and gas extraction. The same year, France-based PNB Paribas committed to end support of shale and tar sands businesses, and last year, British multinational HSBC stopped financing offshore oil and gas projects in the Arctic.

“There’s new legislation and national legislation in European countries that are forcing banks to move in the right direction much, much quicker than the U.S. banks,” McCully says. “[U.S. banks] don’t feel the same sort of public pressure, and they definitely don’t feel the same sort of political pressure.”

Efforts and success in the U.S. have been more limited. The most pressure so far has come from activists, led by indigenous groups, that have targeted banks supporting the Dakota Access pipeline. Protesters have also rallied outside Chase and Wells Fargo over their fossil fuel funding in recent years. But the United States is home to several of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies, including Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, and the industry holds huge political influence, particularly since U.S. production of fossil fuels has surged over the past decade. In 2018, lobbying for oil and gas topped $124 million — more than double what it was 15 years ago — putting significant pressure on politicians to resist climate action despite dire warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the world has just over a decade to act to avert catastrophe.

“Our financial system is basically not responding to that threat at this point,” says Yossi Cadan, the senior global campaigner on divestment for 350.org. “The notion that politicians are not going to act is the current financial assumption. And if you think like that, and you say, OK, politicians are not going to regulate the extraction of fossil fuels … then we may be able to burn everything that we have and make a profit out of it.”

Still, banks have made very public commitments in recent years to finance sustainable companies and projects or to go carbon-neutral. Last year, Wells Fargo, the second biggest fossil fuel funder, committed $200 billion in financing through 2030 to projects and businesses focused on transitioning to a low-carbon economy. In 2017, the institution invested $12 billion in sustainable businesses — but it put more than four times that toward financing fossil fuels the same year.

Citi, Bank of America, and Chase have made similar pledges, all of which pale in comparison to their fossil fuel financing. In 2017, Chase announced it would be 100 percent renewable energy–reliant by 2020 and committed $200 billion in clean energy financing by 2025. But it has spent almost the same amount financing fossil fuels in just the past three years. And while Chase CEO Jamie Dimon publicly criticized President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement, the bank’s longest sitting board member is Lee Raymond, the former board chair and CEO of Exxon. Well known for his public skepticism of climate change, Raymond led Exxon during a time when it was pouring tens of millions of dollars into funding climate change denial.

The report also reveals that Chase is the top financier of three major categories of fossil fuel projects — Arctic oil and gas, ultra-deepwater drilling, and liquefied natural gas — and that it is also the top U.S. banker for two others: tar sands oil and coal mining. It is second only to Wells Fargo in financing fracking. Chase did not respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones.

The broad increase in fossil fuel funding comes as many people consider fossil fuels to be economically unsustainable. Oil and gas companies face the prospect of stranded assets if governments tighten environmental regulations, if energy demand shifts toward renewables, or if companies face litigation and increased scrutiny from concerned shareholders — all of which are currently underway. The coal industry in the U.S. is on its last legs, despite the Trump administration’s efforts to prop it up. About 75 percent of U.S. coal production is more expensive than solar or wind energy, according to a report released this week. And it’s getting harder for the industry in general to make money. Yet oil companies have continued to aggressively pursue fossil fuel development, and the world’s major banks are supporting them. Alarmingly, the new data shows that banks (again, led by Chase) put $600 billion behind the 100 companies most focused on expanding fossil fuel production, accounting for almost one-third of all fossil fuel financing.

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“Even if the bank thinks in seven years it might be a problem, they say, ‘Well, we’ll be out of here in three years,’” McCully says. “You say economically why would they do it, but even morally why would they do it? If they think they’re leaving this completely decimated world to their kids and grandkids, wouldn’t they want to do something about it? But it just seems like they’re unable to look beyond the next quarter, maybe the next year. They just don’t have long-term economic or moral vision.”

As banks become increasingly crucial to the future of fossil fuels, they could also play a particularly critical role in the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming. Without the support of banks, U.S. coal companies would be decimated since a lack of liquid assets makes them reliant on loans, Cadan points out. And while oil companies have enough assets to finance themselves for a while, it’s largely unsustainable long-term, especially because without financing, new investments are increasingly risky and costly. Banks “can determine the pace of how we combat climate change,” Cadan says. “It’s black and white. With the help of financial institutions we can easily be in a different space. If they take real action.”

“Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how many solar panels we have,” McCully adds. “If we’re still building lots more coal plants and oil fields, clean energy is not going to help.”

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U.S. banks pledged to fund renewable energy, but they still spend way more on fossil fuels

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TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline was flailing. Trump just revived it.

by StarlaHeidelber Posted on March 29, 2019

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Just a couple of weeks ago, it looked like TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline was in hot water. Decades of activism, protests, and court cases were paying off, big league, as delays harmed the financial viability of the project. On Friday, the president revived the project with a stroke of his executive pen.

TransCanada had been losing in U.S. courts for the past few years: Obama-appointed federal judge Brian Morris ruled in November that President Trump failed to consider climate change when he approved the pipeline in 2017. In response, TransCanada turned to the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to override the ruling, which had required the Trump administration to draw up a new environmental impact report. But that court sided with Morris, a decision that threatened to cause the company to miss out on the 2019 construction season.

Luckily for TransCanada, the company has a friend in the White House. Trump just signed a presidential permit that allows it to sidestep the courts and “construct, connect, operate, and maintain” the line between the U.S. and Canada, in addition to maintaining a facility in Montana that will ship tar-sands crude oil into the United States.

Like many Trump administration decisions, the move is considered highly unusual. If Trump’s decision holds up, it revokes a previous permit granted by Trump — the one that had been found insufficient by Morris — and reissues it.

“Our first response upon seeing this White House communication was that it must be an April Fools joke,” a spokesperson for the Northern Plains Resource Council, a plaintiff in the ongoing lawsuit against Keystone XL, said in a press release. “This new effort appears blatantly illegal on its face and is an unprecedented effort by a United States president to supersede the judicial branch of the United States government.”

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TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline was flailing. Trump just revived it.

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ACLU sues South Dakota over new pipeline protester law

by PayoneerMastercardReview Posted on March 29, 2019

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Even if you don’t live in South Dakota, you could be held liable for supporting pipeline protesters there, according to a newly signed state bill. While at least nine states have passed legislation this year cracking down on demonstrations against fossil fuel infrastructure, South Dakota’s new rule gives unprecedented power to penalize groups and individuals even indirectly involved in anti-pipeline actions.

The bill, signed by Republican Governor Kristi Noem on Wednesday, allows state and local governments to seek civil damages from activists or groups engaging in “riot boosting,” a term which the state defines as someone who “does not personally participate in any riot but directs, advises, encourages, or solicits other persons participating in the riot to acts of force or violence.”

“My pipeline bills make clear that we will not let rioters control our economic development,” Noem said. “These bills support constitutional rights while also protecting our people, our counties, our environment, and our state.”

State officials in both North and South Dakota have clashed with several activist groups including Native American tribes over the Dakota Access Pipeline and Keystone XL pipeline, but the states are taking slightly different approaches to pipeline penalties.

In North Dakota lawmakers also passed a bill this week that would reinforce penalties for anyone who tries to block pipeline operations and other fossil fuel infrastructure projects. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, however, has yet to say whether or not he intends to sign the bill into law. The North Dakota bill is based on one passed in Oklahoma in 2017 that imposed punishments of up to 10 years in prison and $100,000 in fines for individuals who interfere with a pipeline or other “critical infrastructure.” Under the law, organizations could also be made to pay up to $1 million in penalties if they are found to be “co-conspirators.”

So how is a North Dakota “co-conspirator” different than a South Dakota “riot booster?” The term “riot booster” can be applied out-of-state. The definition of “riot booster” is also vaguer, which is a problem, according to Vera Eidelman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “I think [South Dakota’s definition of ‘riot booster’] poses a unique threat to speech and appears to be targeted at protests,” she told InsideClimate News. “It uses words like ‘encouraging’ and ‘advising’ that are very broad and refer to a category of protected speech.”

On Thursday, the ACLU of South Dakota filed a federal lawsuit against state officials on behalf of several Native American tribes and environmental advocates.

“No one should have to fear the government coming after them for exercising their First Amendment rights,” said Courtney Bowie, legal director of the ACLU of South Dakota. “That is exactly what the Constitution protects against, and why we’re taking these laws to court. Whatever one’s views on the pipeline, the laws threaten the First Amendment rights of South Dakotans on every side of the issue.”

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ACLU sues South Dakota over new pipeline protester law

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Dear white people: We need to talk about your diet’s carbon footprint

by greenenergy4 Posted on March 29, 2019

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When it comes to emissions, our food choices carry some serious weight. And according to a new study, white individuals’ eating habits contribute more on average to climate change-related emissions than other demographic groups.

The study, published Monday in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, examined the “food pipeline” — the production, distribution, and waste associated with the products we eat — to assess the environmental impacts of three different demographic groups, “Blacks, Latinx, and Whites.” Using data from the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, researchers found that the typical diet of a white American includes more foods that require more land and water — and emit more greenhouse gases — than the typical diets of black and Latinx communities.

In the study, white Americans’ eating patterns had the highest per capita greenhouse gas and water impacts of any demographic group due to their consumption of “environmentally intense food items” such as potatoes, beef, apples, and milk. Black Americans’ diets had the highest per capita land impact “due to their consumption of land‐intense food items in the fruit and ‘protein foods’ food groups,” but had the lowest per capita greenhouse gas emissions of the three groups examined.

“If we are to draft policies related to food, they can’t be one-size-fits-all policies because different populations have different eating patterns which have their own unique impacts on the environment,” Joe Bozeman, a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago and first author on the paper, said in a statement.

Of course, how you eat depends on more than just your race. Individuals’ food habits vary depending on geographic location, socioeconomic status, age, gender, culture, religion, and personal preference, to say the least. But the study is just the latest piece of evidence that, on a population level, disparities exist between which demographic groups contribute to — and bear the burdens of — climate change.

According to research published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, people of color are exposed to higher levels of air pollution than what would be expected based on their own rates of consumption (a contributor to emissions). The PNAS study found that non-white Hispanics breathe in 63 percent more air pollution than caused by their own consumption, while black people are exposed to about 56 percent more than they cause. As for white Americans, the study found they breathe in 17 percent less air pollution than they cause.

“The approach we establish in this study could be extended to other pollutants, locations, and groupings of people,” said study co-author Julian Marshall in an interview with USA Today. “When it comes to determining who causes air pollution — and who breathes that pollution — this research is just the beginning.”

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Dear white people: We need to talk about your diet’s carbon footprint

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C-SPAN’s swamp creature unmasked! We talk to the activist in the confirmation meeting clip

by gerardoi54 Posted on March 29, 2019

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On Thursday morning, Irene Kim nervously filed into the Senate confirmation hearing of David Bernhardt, President Trump’s nominee to head up the Department of the Interior. The Greenpeace activist was directly behind Bernhardt as he faced questions about his time as an oil lobbyist and conflicts of interests. So Kim and a friend seized the moment and put on swamp creature masks in protest.

Kim was able to stay for the entire hour of the hearing — and then watched in amazement as the video of herself went viral across the internet.

I spoke with Kim about what it was like in the hearing, and why she decided to protest in this way. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

Q. Why transform into a swamp creature live on C-SPAN?

A. What we were trying to accomplish was to bring absurdity to this entire situation. Our reality right now is so absurd. To make sure that folks are paying attention, we wanted to make light of the situation.

I have a lot of climate despair right now. I’ve been feeling really discouraged by everything that’s happening, and I really wanted to do something fun. This was kind of an amazing way to do it.

Q. Talk me through that moment.

A. When I first got to the room, I knew it was going to be really serious. I knew I didn’t want to get arrested. I just wanted to make sure to pull this off in the simplest way possible.

I really wanted to position myself to be as close to David Bernhardt as possible. But that C-SPAN camera being there; that was pure luck. I saw C-SPAN’s tweet, and my face was perfectly aligned, so I thought to myself: “This is our opportunity. There’s nothing else to do right now except this.”

Q. What was going through your head? 

A. I think folks are focusing on saying that I looked really graceful and that I didn’t look scared or anything, but I was actually really scared doing this. I had a lot of nerves. I tried to channel as much fierce energy of all strong women and non-binary folks that I knew who are also out there fighting and resisting our administration. Resisting is scary, but once you’re able to do it, it’s so freeing.

My whole body was shaking, just because I didn’t know what to expect in the first few minutes of putting that mask on. I thought they were going to pull me two minutes in. To be able to stay for the full hour was really awesome.

Q. How did other people react?

A. It felt like some of the senators doing the questioning saw me and were talking amongst themselves, but no one really interacted with me.

I didn’t get arrested. I just received a warning, and was escorted out of the room. I really tried hard not to be a disturbance, because I know how Capitol Police work, and I’ve seen them in action when people are participating in protests like this. I really wanted to make sure it didn’t get crazy.

Q. What’s been the response?

A. We did what we wanted to accomplish, but it turned out to be a lot more viral than we expected. People have been really, really supportive and uplifting what we did. It’s really amazing to see.

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C-SPAN’s swamp creature unmasked! We talk to the activist in the confirmation meeting clip

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Congress wants to know why the incoming Interior Chief is keeping his calendar secret

by Xavier2364 Posted on March 28, 2019

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This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The acting head of the Interior Department David Bernhardt says he has to carry a small card around to remind himself of the list of his former clients he should avoid, but the former oil and gas lobbyist insists that he does not need to keep a detailed daily calendar. “I have no legal obligation to personally maintain a calendar,” Bernhardt wrote in a letter to Congress in late February. “Further, no Agency guidance exists recommending that I create or retain one. I have not personally maintained a calendar for years, and I have no intention of suddenly doing so now.”

The fight over Bernhardt’s calendars signals one of the bigger controversies ahead in his tenure after his likely confirmation as Interior secretary. Environmentalists have charged Bernhardt, and his predecessor Ryan Zinke, of politicizing Freedom of Information Act responses, omitting calendar entries, and even stretching the boundaries of the Federal Records Act.

“It worries me a lot that that’s not being followed,” House Natural Resources Chair Raúl Grijalva (a Democrat from Arizona) tells Mother Jones. The calendar “is the window into decision-making.”

Calendars of public officials can help reveal who is influencing the policy and provide some measure of accountability when certain special interests appear to have a particular hold over the decision-making. Scott Pruitt’s early calendars showed his close coordination with oil industry executives, for example, as his EPA decided to reverse regulations on methane emissions. It’s also become more common for officials to keep secret calendars.

Since Bernhardt was first confirmed as the deputy secretary in the summer of 2017, the public has had relatively few details about how he spends his days while running an agency responsible for a fifth of the nation’s landmass. Most of the calendars that Interior has made available lack descriptions about who he is meeting with and calling. Bernhardt has more than two-dozen former clients and a wider net of industry contacts from a career spent in the lobbying sector.

As I noted in my profile of Bernhardt:

Bernhardt’s understanding of the department’s workings and the allies he’s installed in key political posts enable him to steer its complex network of decentralized offices while leaving few fingerprints. His calendars often have little detail in them; the environmental group Western Values Project has noted how few of his emails turn up in their frequent Freedom of Information Act requests to the Interior. “Kind of amazing that he can do anything without leaving a paper trail behind him,” said Aaron Weiss, media director of Center for Western Priorities, another conservation group.

On the eve of David Bernhardt’s Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday to lead the Department of the Interior, the House Natural Resources staff had 27,000 pages of internal documents that it had not yet processed or examined. Interior sent over the batch earlier this week in response to the committee’s repeated requests for more communications surrounding the acting secretary’s activities and decision-making, in an attempt to tease out how much of it has been influenced by his prior relationship with oil, gas, and mining industries.

“That’s a good example of what’s been a pattern under Zinke and now under Bernhardt, which is to basically to make it very difficult for people to get information.”

On Wednesday, Grijalva told Mother Jones that his staff is investigating the question of whether Bernhardt has circumvented maintaining an ongoing record of his day-to-day activities by relying on a Google Doc calendar for his detailed schedule that is overwritten each day. The matter is concerning for the chair because it raises questions about whether Interior is breaking a federal records law in deleting his daily schedule and claiming it falls outside FOIA’s purview.

House Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings (a Democrat from Maryland) pressed the question in a hearing earlier with an acting deputy FOIA director earlier this month.

“Is the calendar for the acting Secretary deleted at the end of each day, do you know that?” he asked. The deputy FOIA director, Rachel Spector, replied she didn’t, but acknowledged “that the solicitor’s office in the department is working with the records officer in the department to determine what’s occurred there, and whether it’s consistent.”

Interior’s political appointees have exerted more control over the FOIA process in recent months. At the end of 2018, a political appointee who is a former Charles and David Koch adviser took charge of responding to and fielding requests. Then, at a House Natural Resources budget hearing on Wednesday, Grijalva pointed to a March 14 email from a senior Interior official, whose name was redacted, asking that “any correspondence being sent to any Senator as well as Representative Grijalva NOT be sent until you have further direction.” Grijalva noted the timing of the instructions was significant: The next day the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee publicly announced Bernhardt’s confirmation hearing date.

Democratic senators plan to ask Bernhardt directly about his calendars in the Thursday hearing. Nonetheless, very little still stands in the way of his confirmation in the GOP-controlled chamber, after which Bernhardt will certainly face more questions from the Democratic House.

“Why go through all these machinations?” Grijalva asked. “Why deny me or the senators information if there’s not something you’re hiding and something you’re concerned about?”

Continued: 

Congress wants to know why the incoming Interior Chief is keeping his calendar secret

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Climate change could push tropical diseases to Alaska, according to a new study

by PNTImogengbpfbf Posted on March 28, 2019

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Nearly a billion people could be newly at risk of tropical diseases like dengue fever and Zika as climate change shifts the range of mosquitoes, according to a new study.

Since the life cycle of mosquitoes is temperature sensitive, scientists have long been concerned about how their prevalence might spread as the world continues to warm. The study is one of the first to examine in detail how that might happen by using an overlap of two disease-carrying mosquitoes’ range and projected monthly temperature changes under a variety of future warming scenarios.

In the most extreme scenario of more than 4 degrees C (7.2 degrees F) warming by 2080, certain tropical disease-carrying species of mosquitoes currently found only seasonally in the U.S. South and southern Europe could greatly expand their range, as far north as Alaska and northern Finland — north of the Arctic Circle. That would force a redefinition of the term “tropical” diseases.

The sheer enormity of people who could be exposed gave the lead author pause. “It’s rather shocking,” said Sadie Ryan, a disease ecologist at the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, in an interview with Grist.

In Europe alone, the number of people exposed to the dengue-carrying Aedes egypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes could roughly double within the next 30 years. In currently warm climates like the Caribbean, West Africa, and Southeast Asia, tropical disease incedence could actually decrease as those climates become so warm that they “exceed the upper thermal limits for transmission.” In other words: It will be too hot for the mosquitoes to effectively carry dengue.

On the whole, “climate change will dramatically increase the potential for expansion and intensification of Aedes-borne virus transmission,” according to the study.

“Climate change is one of the biggest threats to global health,” Ryan said. “There are many more vector-borne diseases out there that are temperature sensitive.” Ryan also cautioned that mosquitoes, ticks, bark beetles, and invasive fungus threaten animals and plants as well as human health, and climate change is making many of them worse.

Malaria, which was not considered in this study, already affects nearly half of the world’s population, according to the World Health Organization, killing more than 400,000 people each year — one of the leading causes of death for children in Africa. Previous studies have shown that hundreds of millions of people could be newly exposed to malaria by the end of the century, which is carried by a different species of mosquito. Dengue is one of the most common tropical diseases, but it is far less deadly than malaria — out of 100 million infections, it causes about 22,000 deaths each year.

According to the work from Ryan and her colleagues, Europe could be hardest hit because it sits on the leading edge of where mosquitoes can now survive. The worst-case scenario that Ryan and her colleagues explore is actually worse than business-as-usual — it’s a world where civilization doubles down on fossil fuels and planetary systems cause the world to heat beyond the 3.4 degrees C (6.1 degrees F) currently projected.

Ryan said her results should send a clear message to public health departments to boost their budgets in preparation.

There are countless reasons to be scared of climate change, and invading mosquitos might be one of the most tangible. Still, Ryan points out that it’d probably be among the least of our worries — sea-level rise, food shortages, mass migration, and financial collapse would probably pose a much greater risk to civilization.

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Climate change could push tropical diseases to Alaska, according to a new study

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The vault holding humanity’s precious seeds is on thin ice

by meier.ap1976 Posted on March 27, 2019

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The Crop Trust — the organization tasked by the U.N. with preserving the world’s diversity of crops — has a slippery problem on its hands. Its most important effort, a global seed vault, is buried in an abandoned coal mine in the Svalbard archipelago, a chain of Norweigan islands several hundred miles from the North Pole. Kept at an icy 18 degrees C year-round, and insulated by layers of thick rock and permafrost, the seed tomb holds 968,000 varieties of crops and has the capacity to store 2.5 billion individual seeds.

The Crop Trust says “the Vault is in an ideal location for long-term seed storage,” in part because the surrounding permafrost provides a “cost effective and fail-safe method to conserve seeds.” There’s just one problem: Rising temperatures are melting that critical permafrost, jeopardizing the doomsday vault, the towns in the archipelago, and humanity as a whole.

A researcher at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute recently told CNN that Longyearbyen, the capital of Svalbard, “is probably warming faster than in any other town on Earth.”

A report published earlier this year by the Norwegian Center for Climate Services shows that the climate in Svalbard is going to change drastically by the year 2100. If humanity continues emitting greenhouse gases business-as-usual, Svalbard is looking at an annual air temperature increase of 10 degrees C (18 degrees F). Even under a medium emissions scenario where greenhouse gases are reduced, it could still see 7 degrees C (12.6 degrees F) of warming. Climate change is projected to increase rainfall in the region by as much as 65 percent by the end of the century, in addition to making avalanches and landslides more frequent.

Norway already committed to spending $13 million to upgrade the facility early last year after melted permafrost threatened to leak into the vault. New additions to the structure will include a concrete tunnel, backup power sources, and refrigeration. But after a frighteningly warm Arctic winter season this year, who knows how much more money will need to be spent to safeguard the vault against the myriad threats posed by climate change.

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The vault holding humanity’s precious seeds is on thin ice

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So what did California do with that $1.4 billion in cap-and-trade money?

by Alena9871307 Posted on March 27, 2019

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Think of California as a kind of green Robin Hood. For six years now, it has been taking money from polluters and spending it to slash greenhouse gas emissions. Last year, the state spent $1.4 billion on such efforts. So where’s did all that money go?

It went to electric car buyers, people who installed solar panels on their roofs, and local governments that added transit lines, according to the state’s annual report on its cap-and-trade program. The report, out this week, paints a mostly rosy picture of lots of ostensibly worthy programs. One takeaway: the state is ramping up its spending. That $1.4 billion last year is is a big chunk of the total $3.4 billion California has doled out since it started in 2012.

California Air Resources Board

And what does California get for the money? If you include the full benefit of all allocations so far — for instance, the gas a newly purchased electric bus saves over the course of its life — it adds up to a reduction of more than 36.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s like taking eight million cars off the road for one year.

It’s enough to make a real dent in the state’s emissions, but comes nowhere close to a solution. Just for reference, California has about 36 million vehicles on its many roads. By 2030, according to the figure from the report below, Californians will be living in a green wonderland of bikes, trains, and swoopy architecture. On the downside, everyone will have turned into stick figures.

California Air Resources Board

The programs that this cap-and-trade money paid for didn’t just reduce carbon emissions. These programs also scrubbed the air of of pollution that makes people sick — reducing particulate emissions by 474 tons in 2018. They’re reducing the amount of water that Californians use and planting millions of trees. Turns out, you can pay for a lot of stuff when you start taxing polluters.

California Air Resources Board

There’s some room for skepticism about the numbers. For instance, California has spent $626 million of its carbon trading money laying rails for a high speed train, more than any other single program. The report estimates that California’s high speed rail project will slash greenhouse gas emissions by more that 65 million metric tons over the first 50 years of its operating life. But it’s unclear if that rail line will ever span its planned route between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

California’s Governor, Gavin Newsom, has said he might shrink the project. “Right now, there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A.,” Newsom said last month. The report doesn’t consider the possibility that the rail line might just wind up connecting mid-sized cities in California’s Central Valley.

To reap the benefits described in this report, these projects need more than funding — they also need to work.

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So what did California do with that $1.4 billion in cap-and-trade money?

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