well this is interesting. was doing some reading up on the Palestine region and it’s history and came across this link in it’s Wiki, about an arifidification of the region around 2200BC which reads as if it wiped out an entire civilization during a 100-yr drought… 4.2ka would put us right around… now???
Global distribution of the 4.2 kiloyear event. The hatched areas were affected by wet conditions or flooding, and the dotted areas by drought or dust storms.[1]
The 4.2-kiloyear (thousand years) BParidification event (long-term drought), also known as the 4.2 ka event,[2] was one of the most severe climatic events of the Holocene epoch.[3] It defines the beginning of the current Meghalayan age in the Holocene epoch.
Well yes, but that’s because it is referring to an event that was 4,200 years ago, not a cyclical event. I did find it interesting that there may have been an anthropological element to it. If the smaller population and primitive technology could have changed the climate then, imagine what we are doing now?
I wonder if anyone remembers burlap, or paper bags…
I find it funny, most stores here charge 25c per plastic bag now (thanks Trudeau) but that has now transitioned to paper.
But, they haven’t stopped selling plastic garbage bags yet. so before, we used to REUSE grocery bags as garbage bags. Now, we have to purchase garbage bags for a one-use-only thing.
fucking shortsightedness in this country. banned plastic straws, so now they give you a paper straw to put into the PLASTIC cup with the PLASTIC lid.
Some households are indeed buying single use plastic bags, but total sales are nowhere near the 15 billion per annum that were used for checkout bags. There isn’t any real question that the total amount of plastic has been reduced.
Manufacturers and fast-food restaurants lobbied on the basis that paper cups are not viable at this time for many drinks, but paper straws were possible.
Really wish it was the reverse, I dislike the paper straws.
Now if you want to talk really bad Canadian climate policy, the elimination of the carbon tax on heating oil only (the worst heating source in common use in Canada) is remarkably bad. You know when you have the oil patch and Greenpeace both saying it is terrible policy, you have done something special. This Liberal government is just worn out.
taxing carbon-based products isn’t going to fix the problem. it just causes inflation of cost-of-living. The system is fucking broken. The only way out of it, is to live partially off-grid and become self-sufficient which is increasingly difficult these days.
Taxing does have a direct effect - the BC carbon tax has been quite effective in altering the trajectory of BC’s emissions. The whole point of the change in cost of living is to incentivize different choices, and that will appear as inflation. Which is why a pause on the tax for the worst emitting heating fuel is a disaster. If you were considering switching to any alternative in Halifax right now, your incentive to do so just got wiped out. Even an income-based rebate would at least preserve that incentive.
I give it a few weeks before stories comparing low-income Westerners using natural gas with the carbon tax paid by high-income Maritimers hit the media.
What you are seeing is the difficulty of reducing overall emissions with an increasing natural gas industry, a growing economy and increasing population. The downward trajectory from 2010-2015 is quite clear, and compares very favourably to much of the rest of the country. The 2020 low is undoubtedly artificial in part, but the 2021 data shows a continued decline.
In the absence of that carbon tax, BC’s trajectory would have looked a lot more like AB’s.
again, I call bullshit. the Carbon Tax has nothing do do with the GHG emissions. since 2005 you’ve seen a HUGE increase in fuel economy in passenger vehicles…
By 2016, the new measures will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles by 25 per cent from 2008 models. New standards will require 2016 model-year vehicles to meet a fuel efficiency target of 35.5 miles per gallon — or 6.6 L/100 km — combined for cars and trucks, an increase of nearly 10 miles per gallon over current standards. The average Canadian car consumes 8.6 litres of fuel in 100 kilometres.
as the saying goes. “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit”
Damn…in the wildfire smoke this past summer, we had about a 2 hour interval where it reached those sort of numbers, and it was absolutely awful. Visibility was ~ 40 meters. Whole days at those numbers must be devastating for the population to live on, especially with minimal HVAC and filtration.
All space exploration is willy-waving nonsense. The billions wasted could be put to far better use addressing problems here on Earth, such as improving education and health globally, as well as tackling climate change.
