Your Fault: Dragonflies Are Losing Their Wing Colors

You just had to take that fossil fueled trip to get an Evil burger, eh? Thanks

Dragonflies are losing their wing color because of climate change, study shows

As the planet warms, a study found that male dragonflies are losing a crucial feature they typically use to attract female mates: the ornate black patterns on their wings.

The new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that male dragonflies are adapting to a warming climate by shedding more of their darker wing patterns.

Researchers worry that female species may no longer recognize their male counterparts without their intricate wing patterns and, thus, won’t be able to reproduce as temperatures get hotter.

“Our research shows that males and females of these dragonfly species are going to shift in pretty different ways as the climate changes,” Michael Moore, lead author of the study and an evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told CNN. “These changes are going to happen likely on a much faster timescale than the evolutionary changes in these species have ever occurred before.”

What did dragonflies do during the previous Holocene warm periods, several of which were warmed and no one was driving fossil fueled vehicles?

“This is evolution and adaptation in real time, but will they be able to adapt quickly enough?” Black, who is not involved with the study, told CNN. “The climate crisis is happening at a speed that is really unprecedented in human history. It’s all of these animals potentially adapting to be able to move to a climate or habitats that are able to support them.”

 

 

Read: Your Fault: Dragonflies Are Losing Their Wing Colors »

If All You See…

…is a hazy day from too much carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Not A Lot Of People Know That, with a post on ‘climate change’ to threaten Wimbledon. Soon!

Read: If All You See… »

Miami’s Heat Officer Gets To Work On Climate Justice Or Something

I briefly mentioned Miami’s Heat Officer, let’s check in, shall we?

City Heat is Worse if You’re Not Rich or White. The World’s First Heat Officer Wants to Change That

Jane Gilbert knows she doesn’t get the worst of the sticky heat and humidity that stifles Miami each summer. She lives in Morningside, a coastal suburb of historically preserved art deco and Mediterranean-style single-family homes. Abundant trees shade the streets and a bay breeze cools residents when they leave their air conditioned cars and homes. “I live in a place of privilege and it’s a beautiful area,” says Gilbert, 58, over Zoom in early June, shortly after beginning her job as the world’s first chief heat officer, in Miami Dade county. “But you don’t have to go far to see the disparity.”

A mile or two inland, in lower income, mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods like Little Haiti, Little Havana and Liberty City, tree cover can be as little as 10%, compared to around 40% in upscale coastal areas, according to Gilbert. Residents wait for buses on unshaded benches. Many can’t afford to buy or run an AC unit. “You can’t be outside for more than five minutes without feeling faint because there’s no shade. Then inside a lot of homes, the buildings haven’t been fixed up in a very long time, so you get holes in the wall and mold,” says Stibalys Gomez, a 24-year-old community organizer and amateur boxer. “We have a lot of older people here, older Hispanics with respiratory problems, including my grandmother. I’m really worried about them this summer.”

Wait, wait, back up, she lives in a swanky area near the coast? Why isn’t she moving inland in order to avoid sea rise? It couldn’t be because it is a bunch of mule fritters?

Gilbert’s job is to redress those imbalances in Miami and get all areas of the local government working towards a cooler county. Working under Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, she’ll plant new trees, create better infrastructure for heat emergencies, and inform people about their needs and rights during the heat.

So, spend a lot of money, involve the city in people’s lives whether they want it or not, and just be a general nag.

When Gilbert relocated to Miami from the northeast in 1995, the tropical heat was “a big part of the draw,” she says. She grew up in Connecticut and studied environmental science at Barnard College in New York. But after graduating in 1987, she quickly realized her “system just does better” in warmer climes, and spent several years doing work around Central and South America, first as an assistant producer on a documentary series about solutions to deforestation, and later as a consultant assessing environmental health risks. She made her home in Miami, and spent two decades working in human rights and community development, before becoming Miami Dade’s first chief resilience officer in 2016, overseeing efforts to adapt the county to climate change..

So, she’s not worried about sea rise and doom from heat?

Yet heat has failed to compete for media and government attention with Miami’s other major climate challenge: sea level rise…

And she lives right on the coast? Huh. Anyhow, the article goes on to demonize air conditioning. Will it be removed from all the public buildings for Miami?

In Miami, Gilbert will co-chair a Climate and Heat Health Task Force made up of local health experts, business figures and academics, among others, that will study the health impacts of heat across the county. Based on their work, the city will come up with campaigns to inform residents about the symptoms of heat-related illnesses. They will also reach out to outdoor workers and businesses to make sure they understand both the legal right to a safe workplace and solutions to heat: keeping drinking water available, taking shade breaks, or changing work schedules. Across the city, Gilbert will create “resilience centers” where residents can go to cool off and hydrate during heat waves, particularly when there are power blackouts at the same time.

Campaigns? In Miami? Like people don’t already know this? How much is she getting paid to do this silly stuff?

Climate experts have long warned that the impacts of climate change—driven by the high-emitting activities of wealthier people and countries—would fall most heavily on poorer people and countries that don’t have the resources to deal with them. In Miami, activists like Gomez and Cruz have fought to convince local authorities to pony up resources to adapt to the climate issues that most affect vulnerable groups. Their efforts finally appear to be paying off. “I think we’re starting to see that shift. I think Jane’s appointment probably starts to mark the change in the tides,” Cruz says. “Pun intended, I guess.”

Show us the money.

Anyone getting the idea that the people who push this don’t really believe it, and are just using it to push for free money and all sorts of left wing policies?

Read: Miami’s Heat Officer Gets To Work On Climate Justice Or Something »

Bummer: ‘Climate Change’ Will Create Two Classes Of People

Would this be the class of scientists who aren’t shady and the ones who fraudulently obtain documents? That would be Peter Gleick, who authors this piece on climamoonbattery

The climate crisis will create two classes: those who can flee, and those who cannot

A few years ago, after I gave a talk on water and climate change, I had an Arizona rancher come up and ask me if there would be enough water in the future for their livestock or if they should sell out and move north. This week, I received an email from a retiring doctor, who, acknowledging both their privileged economic situation and the personal nature of the decision, nevertheless asked if it “would it be more advantageous/safe to consider moving to coastal Oregon or Washington, rather than staying in southern California” because of rising seas, extreme heat and the growing threat of wildfires. At an Independence Day party this weekend, a couple asked me if they should move from Colorado to Michigan because of growing drought and water shortages in the western US.

I get these questions regularly and am both encouraged and dismayed by them. Encouraged because it suggests that the message about climate risks is finally getting out and people are beginning to reflect on the personal implications of those risks. Dismayed by the realization that the climate crisis is going to produce two classes of refugees: those with the freedom and financial resources to try, for a while at least, to flee from growing threats in advance, and those who will be left behind to suffer the consequences in the form of illness, death and destruction.

Sherman Potter Bull Cookies

Worldwide, nearly 700 million people now live in low-lying coastal zones vulnerable to sea-level rise and coastal storms. That number could reach a billion by 2050. Island nations like the Maldives, Seychelles, Kiribati and others could be completely wiped out by rising seas and storms. Even a rise of only a meter (39in), almost certainly unavoidable now, will displace millions of people in Florida and along the Gulf coast, causing trillions of dollars in damages and property loss.

Weird how so many big shot Warmists continue to move near the coasts, eh? 39 inches is, of course, over 3 feet of sea rise, which Gleick is alluding to happening in 30 years, when we haven’t had that in over 150 years of the Modern Warm Period. This is what they call “science”.

How bad will it get? I don’t know because I don’t know how long our politicians will dither before finally dealing with the climate crisis. I don’t know because there are natural factors that could slightly slow or, more likely, massively speed up, the rate of change, causing cascading and accelerating disasters faster than we can adapt. But we know enough now to invest in reducing the emissions of climate-changing gases and to begin to adapt to those impacts we can no longer avoid. These changes are coming and the costs, especially to those left behind, will be beyond anything our disaster management systems have had to deal with in the past.

Doooooooom! Wankers.

Read: Bummer: ‘Climate Change’ Will Create Two Classes Of People »

COVID Today: Washington Post Calls For Lab Leak Investigation, Biden’s Coming Door To Door For Vaccination

I do remember the Washington Post editorial board, along with many opinion writers and opinion pieces disguised at straight news, slamming anyone who thought the COVID19 bug came from a lab leak

WaPo urges US to ‘get serious’ on COVID origins after calling Wuhan lab-leak theory ‘debunked’ ‘conspiracy’

The Washington Post editorial board is calling on the US to “get serious” about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic after the paper previously declared the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis a “debunked” “conspiracy theory.”

surprise surprise surprise“An impressive roster of political leaders and experts in science and public health have called for a comprehensive investigation of the pandemic’s origins and potential future dangers… Now is the time to turn all the talk into action,” the Post editorial board began its piece on Tuesday, listing President Biden, the G7, the Senate and the World Health Organization’s director-general among them.

The Post called the WHO’s first investigation into the origins “highly unsatisfactory” in part because of China’s “manhandling of the probe” and insisted that Biden’s ordered intelligence review is “hardly enough,” urging him to support an “independent commission” that Congression should join.

“The WHO is working on a Phase 2 investigation plan with its global partners. The WHO is a member organization and lacks muscle but has expertise and relationships. China’s intransigence is not going to disappear. But the WHO should try again,” the editorial board wrote. “It might usefully draw from the world’s best and brightest specialists, and seek to engage China at the level of science first, perhaps wrapped in a longer-term project to create a structure and incentives for global disease tracking and cooperation.”

The board continued, “If China continues to resist, then independent investigations should proceed without it. The more time that passes, the harder it will be to find the truth. No opportunity should be missed to draw lessons from a global catastrophe that has taken nearly 4 million lives.”

The Post previously had demeaned Tom Cotton and all those who were saying that a lab leak makes way more sense than someone eating a bat in a wet market. Funny how the WP has now changed their tune, eh?

Biden admin launching ‘door-to-door’ push to vaccinate Americans, sparks major backlash

The Biden administration is launching a new “door-to-door” effort to vaccinate Americans after falling short of its Fourth of July goal of having 70 percent of the adult population with at least one shot of the coronavirus vaccine.

Amid the administration’s ongoing concerns of a surge of the more contagious Delta variant of the virus, President Biden pitched his plan to boost the vaccinated population during remarks he made on Tuesday.

“Now we need to go community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood and often times door-to-door- literally knocking on doors, to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus,” Biden said.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki also referred to the “door-to-door” effort while listing the five objectives of Biden’s COVID response earlier in the day at Tuesday’s briefing, citing “targeted community door-to-door outreach” to “get remaining Americans vaccinated by ensuring that they have the information they need on how both safe and accessible the vaccine is.”

Well, that’s not going to go over too well, will it? Sure, it’s not as nefarious as it originally sounded, but, who wants some nag coming uninvited to their front door to yammer at them to get vaccinated? Do they think having some activist yahoo yap at them will change their mind? Also, where will they get the data from? Wouldn’t that rather be against a whole raft of laws? Does the state have the legal authority to share the data on the vaccinated with the federal government, whereby the federal government uses that list to determine which US citizens are not vaccinated? That does seem shady, and a massive breach of trust, does it not? A massive overreach of the Biden administration, eh?

Read: COVID Today: Washington Post Calls For Lab Leak Investigation, Biden’s Coming Door To Door For Vaccination »

The Climate Cult Cannot Afford To Be Optimistic On Climate Emergency Doom Or Something

Other than being optimistic on enabling Government authoritarianism, are they optimistic on anything? Or, is it primarily doom and gloom?

Why the left cannot afford to be optimistic about climate change

Two reports released this month communicated in stark terms that whatever we may once have hoped about the future, even as recently as 18 months ago, it will not now live up to its promise. The Committee on Climate Change’s report on the accelerating impact of global heating laid out in exhaustive detail the range and extent of the threats to Britain’s economy and society from worsening climate change, already noting “billions in economic losses and thousands of heat-related deaths during events such as the 2018 heatwave”. It makes an urgent call to ramp up adaptation to the changing climate, and criticises the government for leaving adaptation “under-resourced, underfunded and often ignored”. (snip)

The environment we inhabit is changing more rapidly than humanity has experienced since the foundation of the first cities. Adaptation to those changes is becoming essential, and either that adaptation will be fair, building on principles of social and economic justice, or it will – by default – reproduce and exacerbate the worst features of capitalist society. The Covid pandemic, notoriously, has seen the super-rich become richer across the globe as millions have died. Socially just adaptation would start to address these vast inequalities.

So, capitalism bad. So are rich people. Except those rich people who pay homage to the Cult of Climastrology (and build vacation homes at the seashore)

But while a scheme like retrofitting homes seems win-win, much of what we need to do to adapt to climate change will involve changing how we live, and here there will be costs and trade-offs. Working from home, for example, is broadly popular with those who have the option to do it. But many jobs obviously can’t be performed remotely, and if our city centres are drained of office workers, the jobs needed to serve them will disappear. And with reports of companies attempting to expand workplace monitoring into their workers’ homes, there is an urgent need to put in place clear controls and regulations over the conditions of home-working, in the same way they apply in the workplace.

So, they just want you to stay home and work, like during COVID lockdown. Sure, that might cause problems for some other people’s jobs, but, it’s a small price to pay

These are all questions about adaptation, and Covid has made them unavoidable. But most versions of the Green New Deal proposed so far, including Labour’s in 2019, have severely underplayed the necessity of adaptation. More recently, calls for a Zero Covid strategy have tended to radically underestimate the immense costs of the kind of restrictions on society that, for example, strict border controls and regular lockdowns create, and minimise the extreme improbability of ever eliminating Covid globally. This is another version of avoiding the question of adaptation.

Who forces all this adaptation to the doomsday cult’s beliefs?

If the left tries to base itself on optimism, it will find it is grossly out of step with the times we live in. We can achieve near-miracles with science and technology: the spectacularly rapid introduction of highly effective Covid vaccines over the last year is evidence of that. But the social system we live in – global capitalism – means we cannot distribute the vaccine fairly and quickly worldwide, and so we are dooming ourselves to life with Covid as new variants emerge among unvaccinated populations.

Oh, please, these are miserable people who only think of the negative. That’s their world.

Read: The Climate Cult Cannot Afford To Be Optimistic On Climate Emergency Doom Or Something »

If All You See…

…are horrible, evil, no good straws which are bad for climate, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is 357 Magnum, with a post on self defense in California.

Don’t forget to recycle and dispose of straws properly. You don’t have to be a Warmist to be environmentally responsible. Two different things.

Read: If All You See… »

What’s Better Than $15 Minimum Wage? Voice Recognition Drive Thru’s

We’ve seen workers replaced with self ordering screens. Companies are working on more and more automation to avoid paying workers in low skill positions more than the job is worth. Here’s a new one

A restaurant owner says raising wages to $15 would solve her labor shortage – but she’d have to hike menu prices. Instead, she’s turning to automated drive-thrus.

unintended consequencesA fast-food franchisee says she’s turning to automated drive-thrus to solve her labor shortage, rather than offering a $15 hourly wage to attract new staff.

Shana Gonzales, a Checkers franchisee who owns four restaurants in the Atlanta area, told The New York Times that she wanted to hire more workers, but that it wouldn’t be profitable. She said raising wages to $14 or $15 would allow her to fully staff her restaurants – but that she’d have to raise menu prices, which could deter customers.

Instead, she’s turning to automated technology, such as voice-recognition drive-thrus, to keep business booming, she said.

The US is suffering from a severe shortage of workers, and restaurants have been especially hard hit. The US Chamber of Commerce has called the shortage a “national economic emergency” and warned it could hold back the recovery from the pandemic.

A lot of low wage/low skill workers would rather stay on unemployment than get a job. We’re seeing them go back to work in the GOP states that have done away with paying out extra money from the COVID relief packages. The root cause, really, is demanding that they be paid too much. Overpay for the position, charge more for the menu, fewer customers, fewer profits, go out of business.

She turned to automation. In December, she started using technology from Valyant AI, a startup that makes voice-recognition systems for restaurants, to take orders at one of her drive-thru lanes. The technology takes orders, including noting modifications and suggesting add-ons, and feeds this directly to the kitchen and cashier.

Gonzales is planning to roll out Valyant’s technology at her three other restaurants, she said.

“We’ll look back and say why didn’t we do this sooner,” she told The Times.

And once again the Fight for $15 crowd is agitating to reduce the amount of jobs.

Read: What’s Better Than $15 Minimum Wage? Voice Recognition Drive Thru’s »

“America’s leadership on climate change will define its global standing”

You’d think that a retired Marine general would remember that America saved the world multiple time, from WWI to WWI to the Cold War, to providing protection for European and other nations, to spreading Freedom. But, no, Brigadier General Stephen Cheney, who has seemed to link himself to a hardcore leftist agenda and groups, has another idea

America’s leadership on climate change will define its global standing

As I celebrated this Fourth of July, I was grateful — grateful to spend time with my grandchildren, grateful to be moving on from an unprecedented year and a half of the pandemic, and grateful for normalcy. At the same time, our “new normal” will forever be changed. This year, more than any other time in recent history, showed us how vulnerable we are as a world to previously unknown threats.

In the military, we plan and plan again for contingencies. Weaknesses are unaccounted for vulnerabilities. In my time as the Commanding General of Parris Island, I worked with young Marines to prepare them for whatever the enemy threw at them. It was my job to protect our national security and protect our Marines by showing them the tools and tactics to prepare them for any scenario.

Looking ahead, we need to prepare ourselves for a different type of enemy. Natural disasters, forced migration, and regional instability all can be traced back to a single catalyst: climate change. Climate change acts as a threat multiplier, exacerbating ongoing conditions and spurring regional instability.

So, what, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes are ‘climate change’? How about big snow storms and cold snaps? Hurricanes, tropical systems, and the equivalent in the Pacific Ocean have occurred well before anthropogenic climate change.

Studying climate change as a national security threat is not new. We at the American Security Project have dedicated the better part of a decade researching the nexus of climate change and national security. Climate change increasingly has acted as the impetus for conflicts throughout the world. The Syrian civil war in part stemmed from an ongoing drought that spurred poverty and food scarcity. Sporadic rainfall near the Lake Chad region in Africa led to regional instability that became the breeding ground for groups such as Boko Haram. Melting sea ice in the Arctic has led to increased tension over new maritime routes and resource access. In the U.S., rising sea levels threaten the readiness of our military installations. Climate change is the greatest national security challenge we have faced.

Drought happens. It has caused lots of problems with many civilizations, well before the industrial revolution, fossil fuels, and “carbon pollution.” What caused that? The general was certainly around for the Soviet Union. That wasn’t a threat?

America’s leadership on climate change will define its global standing for years to come. We have made commitments to developing clean energy at home and financing clean energy in developing countries. Following through is imperative, as is encouraging our partners to follow through on their promises.

I haven’t made a commitment. Those were made by climate cultists in government. The same ones who refuse to modify their own behavior to accord with their beliefs. Let them lead in their own lives.

We do best when American business can lead by example. Congress rightly has recognized that competing with China requires investing in innovation, but that innovation must be just the start of a deliberate effort for the planet and U.S. national security. If we are to put this crisis behind us before another decade of Independence Days has passed, we must have American leadership, American investment and American ingenuity now.

In other words, more Big Government authoritarianism. Government dictating how citizens live. Funny it always comes down to that.

Read: “America’s leadership on climate change will define its global standing” »

CNN: It’s Just So Terrible That Republican States Aren’t Following Sleepy Joe’s Agenda

It is terrible, because Democratic Party run states totally listened to Donald Trump and followed his agenda, right?

America’s partisan fireworks will be hard for anyone to put out

While July Fourth is the holiday that most directly celebrates Americans’ common heritage, this year it comes as their extreme divides underscore how difficult it has become for any president to set a unified direction for the country.

From vaccination rates to voting rights, from immigration policy to racial equity, blue and red states are hurtling in antithetical directions at staggering speed, even amid President Joe Biden’s persistent calls for greater national unity and his attempts to foster more bipartisan agreement in Washington. Across all of these issues, and more, Republican-controlled states are pursuing policies that amount to a wholesale effort to counter Biden’s direction at the national level — even as they look to block some of his key initiatives with lawsuits.

Seriously, where is Joe being bipartisan? The so-called bi-partisan infrastructure deal barely involved the White House, and, remember, Joe went off the reservation and yammered about forcing all the left wing garbage back into it immediately after a press conference with Republican and Democrat senators. Other than Joe’s apparent love of ice cream, what is he pushing that is bipartisan? Is it the amnesty for illegals? Opening the borders? Destroying the military with sweeps for right wing “extremists”, allowing the gender confused, teaching critical race theory, focusing the mission on ‘climate change’, etc? Nominating left wing extremists for executive office positions? Insert your own

In some ways, the red state recoil from Biden’s agenda echoes the “resistance” that exploded in Democratic-controlled states to Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency; in other ways, today’s actions in red states may constitute even greater evidence of the country pulling apart. Especially striking is that, as during last year’s lockdowns and mask mandates, the separation between red and blue America is occurring not only at the level of government policy, but also in individual behavior, with all studies showing Republicans are being vaccinated against the coronavirus at a much lower rate than Democrats.

See, blue states did this during Trump, but, it’s totally worse now. They don’t really say how, probably because it’s super mean to oppose Biden’s extremist agenda which he says is bipartisan. And, yeah, most Republican states avoided the authoritarianism of the COVID lockdowns.

Taken together, these centrifugal pressures call into question not only the ability of any president to unify the nation, but also his or her ability even to chart a common course for more than roughly half of the country — either red or blue America. This divergence, across a wide range of issues and personal choices, is rooted in the continuing political re-sorting that has divided the parties more sharply than ever along demographic and geographic lines and produced two political coalitions holding inimical views on the fundamental social and economic changes remaking America. And that destabilizing process shows no signs of slowing, much less reversing, even after Trump — who fomented division as a central component of his political strategy — has left the White House.

I distinctly remember CNN opposing everything Donald Trump. And George W. Bush. But, when Dementia Joe is in office (or Barack Obama), Republicans are suddenly supposed to follow the agenda.

“One of the most important reasons why Democrats and Republicans intensely dislike each other is that they intensely disagree on a wide range of issues including the size and scope of the welfare state, abortion, gay and transgender rights, race relations, climate change, gun control and immigration,” Abramowitz writes. “As long as the parties remain on the opposite sides of almost all of the major issues facing the country, feelings of mistrust and animosity are unlikely to diminish even if Donald Trump ceases to play a major role in the political process.”

Well, yeah. Let’s also not forget that a good chunk of Democrats loathe the United States and all her symbols. They want to change everything about the nation, rather than simply leaving. How is there possible agreement? Skipping to the end

The Declaration of Independence that Americans celebrated over the weekend begins with the confident assertion that it is “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” Today, it is unclear what set of principles, if any, America’s fractious 50 states might agree on across the widening red-blue divide.

Not to get all Political Theory, but, there was a reason why the federal government was simply supposed to be a unifying government on very, very specific issues, like national defense, immigration, monetary policy, and cross border economics: every state was different, every state had different concerns, and every state was pretty much the size of the old European nations, each of which had their own concerns. It’s why there is a 10th Amendment. Why senators were appointed by state general assemblies, to specifically do the business of the states, not the people nor the national parties. The notion of a national split is moving from a conspiracy theory to reality.

Read: CNN: It’s Just So Terrible That Republican States Aren’t Following Sleepy Joe’s Agenda »

Pirate's Cove