THE BRIEF [Mar 13-19’23]
Arctic and antarctic sea ice peaks, floatovoltaics, food waste emissions represent 50% of food emissions, fossil think tank uses AI generated image in fake story.
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Weekly Climate 🎉
References: [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5].
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‼️News you can’t miss
Here’s one important scary/bad (🙀), good (😻), interesting (😼) and fossil (💩) news item.
🙀 Arctic and Antarctic sea ice is very low this year, again.
😻 Floatovoltaics has a big potential to power cities around the world
😼 Food waste emissions are on the level of global emissions of US and EU combined
💩 Fossil think tank in Texas uses AI generated image in fake story
This week’s highlights
[#seaweed] — Here’s a detailed look at the potential wonders of seaweed when it comes to climate change, from replacing plastic to carbon neutral cattle feed, but it also looks at the many unknowns about using seaweed like this in a large scale.
[#oceans] — Here’s a deep dive into the new High Seas Treaty and it’s role in limiting the effects of climate change. Due to our careless managing of oceans, some coastal ecosystems such as mangrove forests that acts as carbon sinks are deteriorating badly.
[#agriculture] — One of many bad things about modern agriculture is the use of weed killers. In particular one weed killer known as “Roundup” has been particular successful because it has been touted as “safer than salt”. Well.. A new study has found a link between Roundup and liver and metabolic diseases in kids.
[#carbonoffsets] — Recently a Guardian investigation found that one of the primary carbon credit/offset certifiers known as Verra’s credits were close to worthless. Most global corporations buy credits that are Verra certified. Here’s an interesting discussion piece on the role of voluntary carbon markets in the midst of the chaos that ensues the market. I’ve been pretty vocal here about my disbelief in carbon credits/offsets as they’re nothing but a way for polluters to keep on polluting.
That’s it for this week folks!
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See you all next week 👋
Hey there,
I like keeping up with who’s doing what about the climate crises, so I thought, “What can I do, personally?”
So I decided to write a song, a “call to action” to address the crisis.
I’m old, but after reading something in Bill McKibben’s “The Crucial Years” newsletter on SubStack, about how our kids are pissed off by promises and inaction, I took a couple of my old friends into the studio and recorded “We Were Thieves.” I entered it into NPR’s “Tiny Desk Contest,” and included subtitles.
It’s rock and roll from a 3-piece who’s ages total 212 years, but we wanted to do our bit. I’m hoping you will share the following link with your subscribers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JPNKdwLR2s
Thanks, and keep up the fight!
Charles Williams
Hey Michael, I started my page, finally, then had to reload the sound on the music because it was distorted...I'll work out all the kinks on my next "song of the week." I would love to hear your music, but I get how busy you are...keep up the fine writing!