The Environment Thread

[blue_gold_84]

17 hours ago, Fatty Liver said:

NEW YORK – Flights heading towards New York’s LaGuardia Airport were temporarily suspended by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Wednesday due to decreased visibility caused by smoke originating from wildfires in Canada.

 

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/photos/canadian-wildfires-bring-apocalyptic-skies-to-u-s-cities-1.6868676

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

17 hours ago, Fatty Liver said:

NEW YORK – Flights heading towards New York’s LaGuardia Airport were temporarily suspended by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Wednesday due to decreased visibility caused by smoke originating from wildfires in Canada.

 

 

If you zoom in a bit, you can see Ryan Gossling.

 

[Mark F]

Town on west vancouver island is cut off by fires. nothing getting through.

 

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-island-fire-cut-off-access-tofino

[Mark F]

"A Saskatchewan farmer is blazing the trail when it comes to organic farming, attempting something that’s never been done before- at least in Canada.

Travis Heide built his farm in eastern Saskatchewan from the ground up four years ago. He started with 7,000 acres and since 2014 he’s grown his operation to 40,000 acres and counting.

Once he converts the entire operation to organic, it will be the largest organic farm in Canada, possibly North America.

“This year we’re about 50/50,” Heide said. “Next year, 75 per cent essentially of what we’re farming will be organic and the following year 100 per cent- but that’s if we don’t add anything more.”

https://globalnews.ca/news/4447635/sask-farmer-converts-40000-acres-into-canadas-largest-organic-farm/

[Fatty Liver]

https://breaking911.com/photos-texas-gulf-coast-beach-covered-as-thousands-of-dead-fish-wash-ashore/

[Mark F]

@Fatty Liver

looked this up.

 

"Hypoxia occurs most often, however, as a consequence of human-induced factors, especially nutrient pollution (also known as eutrophication). The causes of nutrient pollution, specifically of nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients, include agricultural runoff, fossil-fuel burning, and wastewater treatment effluent.

Hypoxia and Climate Change

Changes in both global and regional climates have the potential to make coastal and marine ecosystems even more vulnerable to hypoxic conditions. NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) carries out interdisciplinary research to advance understanding of the relationship between ecosystem function and climate change. This type of research will ultimately assist decision makers and resource managers as they address the challenges of protecting ecosystems in a changing climate."

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/hypoxia/

it is tough to share the planet with homo sapiens.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Mark F

[Fatty Liver]

24 minutes ago, Mark F said:

@Fatty Liver

looked this up.

 

"Hypoxia occurs most often, however, as a consequence of human-induced factors, especially nutrient pollution (also known as eutrophication). The causes of nutrient pollution, specifically of nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients, include agricultural runoff, fossil-fuel burning, and wastewater treatment effluent.

Hypoxia and Climate Change

Changes in both global and regional climates have the potential to make coastal and marine ecosystems even more vulnerable to hypoxic conditions. NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) carries out interdisciplinary research to advance understanding of the relationship between ecosystem function and climate change. This type of research will ultimately assist decision makers and resource managers as they address the challenges of protecting ecosystems in a changing climate."

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/hypoxia/

it is tough to share the planet with homo sapiens.

I believe hypoxia has been known to happen in Lake Wpg. as well.

[the watcher]

On 6/9/2023 at 6:48 PM, Mark F said:

"A Saskatchewan farmer is blazing the trail when it comes to organic farming, attempting something that’s never been done before- at least in Canada.

Travis Heide built his farm in eastern Saskatchewan from the ground up four years ago. He started with 7,000 acres and since 2014 he’s grown his operation to 40,000 acres and counting.

Once he converts the entire operation to organic, it will be the largest organic farm in Canada, possibly North America.

“This year we’re about 50/50,” Heide said. “Next year, 75 per cent essentially of what we’re farming will be organic and the following year 100 per cent- but that’s if we don’t add anything more.”

https://globalnews.ca/news/4447635/sask-farmer-converts-40000-acres-into-canadas-largest-organic-farm/

As a small organic farmer I'm a bit torn by this. Kudos to him for going organic but 40,000 acres ? Even by Saskatchewan size that's ridiculous. It's 2 townships . I'd love to know if he is environmentally friendly in other ways ( drainage, tile- draining, land clearing.....) . I have a neighbour right close to me who is moving into organics. He is also one of the group of farmers who remove every tree and drain every wet land and is currently tile draining ( my greatest environmental concern )every acre of his 8,000 acres farm. This article makes no mention of his general treatment of the environment just economic advantages for him.

[blue_gold_84]

Edited June 13, 2023 by blue_gold_84
content added

[Mark F]

49 minutes ago, the watcher said:

As a small organic farmer I'm a bit torn by this.

thanks, really good points.

 

40000 acre farm seems not good to me. Hard for me to understand the economics of it. I guess most of it is leased would't you think?

 

49 minutes ago, the watcher said:

. He is also one of the group of farmers who remove every tree

would make the thirties era farmers ill.

different thing.... I have a friend who worked on a cattle ranch (real cowboy, breaking horses, roping, branding,  herding cattle) in the early sixties in Saskatchewan... 52 sections.

talk about a hard job. 

part of the oxarart ranch I think.  

https://consulmuseum.ca/2016/05/04/michel-oxarart/

 

 

Edited June 13, 2023 by Mark F

[the watcher]

Mark F said 

40000 acre farm seems not good to me. Hard for me to understand the economics of it. I guess most of it is leased would't you think?

Personally I see no redeeming features or any benefits to society to have huge farms. It benefits the owners and that's about it. They can be extremely hard on local economys and local communities in general. Environmentally I find them worse if for no other reason that if they are run in an environmentaly damaging way it effects a larger area. It's very comparable to a small company vs giant corporation  situation. 

I'm not sure if this particular farmer rents/ leases alot or not. It's pretty hard to tell.

Edit:  I'll add this in . When land/ farms sell around here you end up in most cases with some beautiful yards generally in the 2 to 10 acre range that can be subdivided from the farmland and sold in the $150 to$ 300,000 range. Its really awesome as it seems the acreages are often bought by young people with families which is exactly  what is needed to keep small communities alive. Most small to mid range farmers jump at the chance to do this.  BUT often the big aggressive farms won't do it. Basically they would rather farm the land square than have a couple  of acres out of it. It's crazy but a quarter million dollars means less than having no obstacles to drive around.  Lol, when I write it out it sounds like BS but it's true. Another factor would be that don't want non farmer eyes watching what they are doing 

 

Edited June 13, 2023 by the watcher

[GCn20]

1 hour ago, Mark F said:

thanks, really good points.

 

40000 acre farm seems not good to me. Hard for me to understand the economics of it. I guess most of it is leased would't you think?

 

would make the thirties era farmers ill.

different thing.... I have a friend who worked on a cattle ranch (real cowboy, breaking horses, roping, branding,  herding cattle) in the early sixties in Saskatchewan... 52 sections.

talk about a hard job. 

part of the oxarart ranch I think.  

https://consulmuseum.ca/2016/05/04/michel-oxarart/

 

 

40000 acre farm is an extremely large farm. You won't see too many of them. However, small family farms went the way of the dodo bird decades ago. Large scale corporate farming is the norm, has been since the 80s. When I was young we ran a modest size grain/cattle farm. In order to afford the machinery which is in the millions now you gotta run land, and you have to run numbers in livestock. We had to upscale from a modest 100 head of cattle, to 500 and abandon most of grain operations because our equipment was old an unreliable and new tractors/combines etc were going to add close to million in overhead in the near future. Luckily, crown leases for pasture land were abundant at the time and we were able to upscale or else we would have had to sell to one of the large scale farms that were beginning to devour land at the time.

[Jpan85]

4 hours ago, the watcher said:

As a small organic farmer I'm a bit torn by this. Kudos to him for going organic but 40,000 acres ? Even by Saskatchewan size that's ridiculous. It's 2 townships . I'd love to know if he is environmentally friendly in other ways ( drainage, tile- draining, land clearing.....) . I have a neighbour right close to me who is moving into organics. He is also one of the group of farmers who remove every tree and drain every wet land and is currently tile draining ( my greatest environmental concern )every acre of his 8,000 acres farm. This article makes no mention of his general treatment of the environment just economic advantages for him.

Draining Class 3-5 wetlands in Manitoba is not allowed.

[Wideleft]

It's inevitable that there will be almost no small towns in 20 years.  So many are already essentially gone and we're not going to solve that problem with 40,000 acre farms of any kind.  

"The actual number of farms in Manitoba continued to grow until 1941 and peaked at 58,024 when the average farm size was 291 acres. The decline in numbers has been relatively steady since 1941. In 2006, the most recent census year, there were 19,054 farms with an average size of 1,001 acres."

https://www.manitobaaghalloffame.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/MAHF-History-of-Ag-in-MB.pdf

 

"Number of Farms. The 2021 Census of Agriculture counted 14,543 farms in Manitoba, a moderate decrease of 1.7 per cent from the previous census, which reported 14,791 farms in 2016. Manitoba farm numbers rank sixth in Canada and account for 7.7 per cent of Canada’s 189,874 farms in 2021. The number of farms in Canada declined by 1.9 per cent, compared to 2016.

The average farm size was 1,177 acres in 2021, 1.3 per cent smaller than the 1,192 acres in 2016. Manitoba’s total farm area was 17.1 million acres in 2021 compared to 17.6 million acres in 2016, a decrease of 2.9 per cent.

The number of farm operators in Manitoba declined 3.4 per cent to 19,465 people in 2021. The ratio of farm operators to the number of farms was 1.3 for Manitoba, slightly less than the Canadian average of 1.4. In 2021, 43.2 per cent of farm operators in Manitoba worked more than 40 hours a week on average on agricultural operations, compared with 44.5 per cent in 2016. At the national level, this percentage was 36.9 per cent in 2021. More farmers worked off the farm in 2021, with 46.1 per cent of farm operators in Manitoba reporting an off-farm job, compared with 42.9 per cent in 2016.

https://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/markets-and-statistics/ag-census/pubs/census-manitoba-profile-2021.pdf

Edited June 13, 2023 by Wideleft

[the watcher]

2 hours ago, Jpan85 said:

Draining Class 3-5 wetlands in Manitoba is not allowed.

It's ignored alot. Or as I've heard from their very lips, " I don't care I'll pay the fine " .  A neighbor of mine lost a long rented  half section of land 4 years ago. He was  renting it as pasture as  it had 4 or 5 separate sloughs on it. All drained. Farmed corner to corner now. I have lots more examples. 

Edited June 13, 2023 by the watcher

[Jpan85]

Oh definitely I work for a watershed district and we see it all the time. Enforcement is a joke there are not enough water licensing officers the complaint process really makes it so no one is going to put in a complaint in. Funny part there is so much money available for producers now to implement environmental best management practices in the province and also pay a per-acre payments to protect these areas. 

 

 

[the watcher]

12 minutes ago, Jpan85 said:

Oh definitely I work for a watershed district and we see it all the time. Enforcement is a joke there are not enough water licensing officers the complaint process really makes it so no one is going to put in a complaint in. Funny part there is so much money available for producers now to implement environmental best management practices in the province and also pay a per-acre payments to protect these areas. 

 

 

So true.

[Mark H.]

52 minutes ago, Jpan85 said:

.Funny part there is so much money available for producers now to implement environmental best management practices in the province and also pay a per-acre payments to protect these areas. 

Inflated grain prices tend to take precedence over any of that. 

[WildPath]

6 hours ago, Wideleft said:

It's inevitable that there will be almost no small towns in 20 years.  So many are already essentially gone and we're not going to solve that problem with 40,000 acre farms of any kind.  

"The actual number of farms in Manitoba continued to grow until 1941 and peaked at 58,024 when the average farm size was 291 acres. The decline in numbers has been relatively steady since 1941. In 2006, the most recent census year, there were 19,054 farms with an average size of 1,001 acres."

https://www.manitobaaghalloffame.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/MAHF-History-of-Ag-in-MB.pdf

 

"Number of Farms. The 2021 Census of Agriculture counted 14,543 farms in Manitoba, a moderate decrease of 1.7 per cent from the previous census, which reported 14,791 farms in 2016. Manitoba farm numbers rank sixth in Canada and account for 7.7 per cent of Canada’s 189,874 farms in 2021. The number of farms in Canada declined by 1.9 per cent, compared to 2016.

The average farm size was 1,177 acres in 2021, 1.3 per cent smaller than the 1,192 acres in 2016. Manitoba’s total farm area was 17.1 million acres in 2021 compared to 17.6 million acres in 2016, a decrease of 2.9 per cent.

The number of farm operators in Manitoba declined 3.4 per cent to 19,465 people in 2021. The ratio of farm operators to the number of farms was 1.3 for Manitoba, slightly less than the Canadian average of 1.4. In 2021, 43.2 per cent of farm operators in Manitoba worked more than 40 hours a week on average on agricultural operations, compared with 44.5 per cent in 2016. At the national level, this percentage was 36.9 per cent in 2021. More farmers worked off the farm in 2021, with 46.1 per cent of farm operators in Manitoba reporting an off-farm job, compared with 42.9 per cent in 2016.

https://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/markets-and-statistics/ag-census/pubs/census-manitoba-profile-2021.pdf

I wonder if there is hope with a lot of remote work becoming available. Anecdotally, I know several people that have cast away from the city for places with lower taxes while still retaining jobs they can do remotely. Many also appreciate having space to raise kids and grow some of their own food as well.

[Mark F]

wish I could link to this nyt article.

David Foster Wallace author.

"Last year, according to analysis by Idea Smiths, existing wind and solar power reduced the state’s (Texas) wholesale energy spending by about $11 billion — almost three times the savings of the previous year. According to research by Energy Innovation, the green-energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act are poised to create more than 100,000 jobs in Texas by 2030 — which would add more than $15 billion to the state economy over that time.

The gains are estimated to be similar in Florida, where Energy Innovation projects more than 85,000 new jobs and $10 billion in state G.D.P. gains by 2030. But it’s not just a couple of red states: The logic of the energy transition has been transformed across the country.

A decade ago, after the collapse of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, it seemed intuitive to most Americans that without expensive political interventions and market manipulations, market forces and consumer preference would keep fossil fuels dominant in America, leaving green energy for the moralists and the saints. It was a caricature, even then, but a common one: that fossil fuels had every competitive advantage, and that green energy couldn’t thrive in the status-quo environment, requiring instead political interventions and market manipulations to clear a path toward viability.

Just a couple of years ago, when the progressive Squad in Congress first began touting a Green New Deal, the talking points on the right were the same: a green energy revolution would immiserate Americans, and bringing it about would require considerable and heavy-handed distortions to the energy market.

We live in a different world now, just a few years later. It is no longer clean energy that requires political interventions for survival. And increasingly it is fossil fuels flailing about for political lifelines to impede market forces. Partly because of the climate-forward interventions of the infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, and partly because of market and cultural momentum much larger than American energy legislation, the status quo has been effectively inverted.

A few months ago, after the passage of the I.R.A., I wrote that the wave of new investment could accelerate American depolarization over green energy, since so much of the money was flowing to red states and districts.

The path was never going to be smooth, and there were some brief digressions in that narrative; the Texas standoff is just one of the recent bumps in the road. There’s also been the transitory Republican threat in debt-ceiling negotiations to scuttle the I.R.A. tax incentives, and scattershot fights by state legislatures and attorneys general against socially conscious investments. But in the big picture it looks like these are just bumps along the same road.

The trend predates the impacts of the I.R.A. Solar power is already as much as 33 percent cheaper than gas power in the United States, according to an analysis from last year; onshore wind may be nearly 45 percent cheaper. And when American investors are drawn to opportunities, they find themselves overwhelmingly in red states like Texas. When Bloomberg analyzed green energy investment in the summer of 2022, before the passage of the bill, it found that of the 14 congressional districts with the most wind, solar and battery tech capacity, 13 were represented by Republicans and only one by a Democrat. This was, in its way, as logical as it might have seemed counterintuitive — more than two-thirds of American renewable potential today resides in mostly rural areas, which lean heavily Republican.

The I.R.A. turbocharged these dynamics. A bill originally estimated at $370 billion may ultimately yield a trillion dollars or more in federal subsidies, and the result is already an unprecedented manufacturing boom — with some measures of new construction almost doubling year over year and projections suggesting the trend will only grow. Nearly a hundred new clean energy manufacturing facilities or factory expansions have been announced since the bill, marking more than $70 billion in new investment, according to Canary Media. This is the rundown offered by the former director of President Biden’s National Economic Council, Brian Deese, last month:

Companies have announced at least 31 new battery manufacturing projects in the United States. That is more than in the prior four years combined. The pipeline of battery plants amounts to 1,000 gigawatt-hours per year by 2030 — 18 times the energy storage capacity in 2021, enough to support the manufacture of 10 million to 13 million electric vehicles per year. In energy production, companies have announced 96 gigawatts of new clean power over the past eight months, which is more than the total investment in clean power plants from 2017 to 2021."

 

I read elsewhere renewable investment is now triple that of fossil.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Mark F

[Mark F]

as wallace said in the article..... this started with the "wacko libruls"  Markey, alexandria ocasio cortez, the squad, who promoted the Green New Deal, which became Biden's inflation reduction ract.

Nancy Pelosi, mocked them on this, and mocked the idea of renewable energy economy. pelosi , . thankful that she left the stage.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Mark F

[Mark F]

transition unstoppable now.

 

"Keir Starmer will pledge to “throw everything” at net zero and the overhaul of the UK’s energy system and industries, promising new jobs in “the race of our lifetime” to a low-carbon future.

The Labour leader will seek to regain the initiative on his plan for green growth on Monday, having rowed back earlier this month on a pledge to invest £28bn in a green industrial strategy, a figure that will not now be reached until the second half of a Labour parliament, as well as damaging rows with trade unions over the future of the North Sea.

Announcing a package of policies designed to decarbonise the energy system and industry, Starmer will say: “We’re going to throw everything at this: planning reform, procurement, long-term finance, R&D, a strategic plan for skills and supply chains … Pulling together for a simple, unifying priority: British power for British jobs.”

Labour’s plans include sweeping changes to the planning system that will allow onshore wind farms, electricity lines, transport links and other low-carbon infrastructure to be built quickly. All regulators will be given instructions to prioritise low-carbon projects, and companies will be given assurances on long-term policy to encourage investment.

Speaking in Scotland, Starmer will contrast the opportunities for investing in a low-carbon economy with the devastation of the UK’s industrial heartlands under Margaret Thatcher. “This cannot be a re-run of the 1980s,” he will say. “This is the race of our lifetime, and the prize is real.”

Labour’s plans for renewable energy, including a ban on new oil and gas exploration and development in the North Sea,"

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/18/keir-starmer-to-throw-everything-at-plan-to-get-uk-to-net-zero

no more oil drilling North Sea. 

[Tracker]

2 hours ago, Mark F said:

transition unstoppable now.

 

"Keir Starmer will pledge to “throw everything” at net zero and the overhaul of the UK’s energy system and industries, promising new jobs in “the race of our lifetime” to a low-carbon future.

The Labour leader will seek to regain the initiative on his plan for green growth on Monday, having rowed back earlier this month on a pledge to invest £28bn in a green industrial strategy, a figure that will not now be reached until the second half of a Labour parliament, as well as damaging rows with trade unions over the future of the North Sea.

Announcing a package of policies designed to decarbonise the energy system and industry, Starmer will say: “We’re going to throw everything at this: planning reform, procurement, long-term finance, R&D, a strategic plan for skills and supply chains … Pulling together for a simple, unifying priority: British power for British jobs.”

Labour’s plans include sweeping changes to the planning system that will allow onshore wind farms, electricity lines, transport links and other low-carbon infrastructure to be built quickly. All regulators will be given instructions to prioritise low-carbon projects, and companies will be given assurances on long-term policy to encourage investment.

Speaking in Scotland, Starmer will contrast the opportunities for investing in a low-carbon economy with the devastation of the UK’s industrial heartlands under Margaret Thatcher. “This cannot be a re-run of the 1980s,” he will say. “This is the race of our lifetime, and the prize is real.”

Labour’s plans for renewable energy, including a ban on new oil and gas exploration and development in the North Sea,"

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/18/keir-starmer-to-throw-everything-at-plan-to-get-uk-to-net-zero

no more oil drilling North Sea. 

The transition to renewable energy sources will be a fraught with dissent and lumpy at best. I recall reading newspaper articles from the 1910-1920 era which bewailed the movement from horses and oxen to gasoline-powered lives. Many were fearful and even hostile. 

[Mark F]

39 minutes ago, Tracker said:

The transition to renewable energy sources will be a fraught with dissent and lumpy at best

 

how many horse and buggy companies are ther now?

I Don't agree with you,   It is well underway, and unstoppable, renewable investment is now triple fossil. Big business is building factories in right wing states. they can complain, but they will take the investment, and jobs. renewable is now cheaper. end of story.

but also who cares about such stupid people? 

for instance Albertans? 

I don't.

They  can cling to oil, go broke.  then blame somebody else.

 

Edited June 19, 2023 by Mark F

[Wideleft]

22 minutes ago, Mark F said:

 

how many horse and buggy companies are ther now?

I Don't agree with you,   It is well underway, and unstoppable, renewable investment is now triple fossil. Big business is building factories in right wing states. they can complain, but they will take the investment, and jobs. renewable is now cheaper. end of story.

but also who cares about such stupid people? 

for instance Albertans? 

I don't.

They  can cling to oil, go broke.  then blame somebody else.

 

Throw OPEC in there as well.