Tidbits

Teens ate my planet! According to the Daily Mail, “Younger generations might like to think of themselves as eco-warriors, but a new study suggests they have some of the biggest food-related carbon footprints. New research shows that Gen Alpha and Gen Z, aged 0-16 and 16-29, drive the highest climate emissions with their diets.” And you just know in Puritanland it’s lose-lose, as the killjoys add “Worryingly, these rising emissions are also linked to worsening diets, creating a ‘dual crisis’ of poor nutrition and accelerating climate change.” Now we’re happy that possibly this nagging will cause young people to be less reflexively climate alarmist, though to be fair they probably could eat a lot better. But it’s also characteristic of the strange mindset of alarmists that they really think the difference between what a 25-year-old eats and what a 45-year-old eats can have a measurable impact on what’s left of our planet after seniors, who apparently “produce the most dietary greenhouse gas emissions” because so many of them are cluttering the place up, are done gumming their veggies.
Speaking of killjoys, we also set aside an item in which the “Canadian/U.S. Coast Guard Leadership” told people not to take part in the Port Huron Float Down because it was unstructured fun and thus very dangerous, especially given “lack of life jackets, and alcohol consumption”, and giving instructions on how to bubble-wrap yourself if you did insist on having any guts at all. Hundreds turned up anyway, though fewer than in past years because of thunderstorm warnings (evidently private citizens have some residual capacity to judge risk) and no serious injuries seem to have been reported. But the reason we mention it is that the warning included material on “hypothermia”. In August in the Northern Hemisphere in the midst of runaway global heating. Who knew? We should probably be glad they didn’t also warn of wildfires.
Roger Pielke Jr. notes that in wealthier countries in particular, it seems humanity has passed peak CO2 generation per capita. Which isn’t actually all that surprising because of course people and firms are always looking to economize on energy costs. But it tends to suggest, also not surprising, that government policy isn’t really relevant. And also that what looks like a significant achievement has not lessened in any way the shrillness of alarmism, which isn’t very much oriented toward incremental real-world improvements so much as panicking people into drastic policy experiments.
In an otherwise persuasive column on the terrifying OpenAI hack into Hugging Face, David Wallace-Wells of the New York Times complains that people seem complacent about Skynet turning on us. And, he adds, “This is a pattern familiar to me from the culture wars over climate change: An early wave of anticipatory apocalypticism gives way, over time, to a period of widespread normalization, even as the alarming events continue to accumulate.” Or maybe people tune out even legitimate warnings because the punditry make endless shrill unfounded claims such as “the alarming events continue to accumulate” when it comes to a very gentle warming over a century or three without any measurable increase in bad weather or reduction in human well-being.
For instance, MSN peddles a piece “Where the rich are actually moving to escape climate collapse” insisting that “As the planet warms, entire regions are becoming unlivable - from drowned coastlines to cities that will bake under 110°F heat.” Since entire regions are not being abandoned by ragged caravans of rich people, it could cause a loss of reader faith in the press. Just saying.
In its ongoing mission to mention bad weather to create the impression of a crisis, nay a worsening one, Heatmap AM on August 20 wrote “Just a week after Tropical Storm Lala devastated the Big Island, a new tropical rainstorm is barreling toward Hawaii, threatening more flooding, strong winds, and choppy seas by this weekend • Forecasters reduced their estimates for the number of storms in this year’s Atlantic hurricane season as a particularly powerful El Niño’s effects ripple out from the Pacific and stir up winds that prevent hurricanes from forming”. It’s one way of portraying few hurricanes as a lot. But more importantly, when hurricanes were up, or at least predicted to be, the usual suspects called it proof of a man-made warming crisis. When they’re down, in addition to pivoting to wildfires if they happen to be up, or even if they’re not, the same suspects manage to make a lack of hurricanes proof of a man-made warming crisis, in this case because strong El Niño climate whatever whatever climate.
All conferences all the time. The UNFCCC emails us, presumably because we went to COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, that “Media registration for Climate Week 4 is now open. CW4 will be held from 7-11 September at the Baku Convention Center, in Baku, Azerbaijan/ Concurrent with the Baku Climate Action Week, this event is part of the UNFCCC Climate Weeks series, which supports the implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement by connecting intergovernmental processes with practical climate action. CW4 will bring together Party representatives and a wide range of stakeholders from the region and beyond, providing a platform for dialogue, collaboration, and the exchange of practical solutions.” Riiight. Except if they could walk that way, they’d have done it at COP29. Or COP30. Or they’d do it at COP31 in Tüûúrquiyaya or whatever it’s now called. Or at COP22. Or COP15. Seriously, it takes some gall to boast blithely of “connecting intergovernmental processes with practical climate action” while dragging, like Jacob Modeler’s ghost, a hideous spectral clanking chain forged over 30 years link by link of not managing to do so.

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