Notices by Julian Oliver (julianoliver@mastodon.social)

What happened when the boss of COP29 (host Azerbaijan) was approached by an activist pretending to be a rep from a fictitious energy investment firm?

Caught on camera, he talks up potential deals with state fossil fuel giant Socar (whose board he's on), Azerbaijan's plans to increase gas production, & otherwise excitedly betrays the entire COP charter.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmzvdn9e18o

#climate

You're on a ship hurtling through space and your crew's best engineers report that critical sub-systems - from water filtration, through to HVAC and food pods - are all failing. Evidence of sabotage. What do you do?

World's governments:

"Governments failed to reach a consensus [...] Many were forced to leave the talks early to catch flights, and negotiations were suspended at 8.30am when fewer than half of the countries were present"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/03/cop16-ends-in-disarry-and-indecision-despite-biodiversity-breakthroughs

#biodiversity

@aral Looks great. Let me know when you update it and I'll give it a push.

Another PSA that Google uses its fonts to track traffic to other people's websites. Google has no business knowing who visits other people's websites. If you want to use Google hosted 'free' fonts in your site, let your visitors know, or learn to host them locally on your server.

For instance:

https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/how-to-self-host-google-fonts--cms-34775t

To use Big Tech is to feed it. There are other ways.

While liberating a Pixel phone I came across this poetry, and on the day Google is convicted of illegal market monopoly in the US: the power button itself, the interface to switching off a device one supposedly owns, is intercepted by a Google 'AI' product. The device can not be powered off, even using buttons as described, without first downloading software from the company.

This domineering and invasive interface culture has to be stopped.

"[...] if this year’s rate of warming persists, it would give us two full degrees of extra warming by 2034. Add the warming we have already caused (1.5 degrees), and the average global temperature 10 years from now would be 3.5C higher."

Good piece by Gwynne Dyer on the current crazy warming anomaly, in advance of her new book.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/350229370/climate-anomaly-making-scientists-scratch-their-heads

No need to paraphrase. First paragraph says it all:

"Claims that artificial intelligence will help solve the climate crisis are misguided, with the technology instead likely cause rising energy use and turbocharge the spread of climate disinformation, a coalition of environmental groups has warned."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/07/ai-climate-change-energy-disinformation-report

Antarctic research expedition, comprised of Aotearoa New Zealand and Italian scientists, finds sea ice melting at rate far faster than expected.

"The changes to the sea-ice indicate that in the coming decades coastal cities will need to be reconfigured because of sea level rise." - Dr. Craig Stevens, leader of NZ research team.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/510696/signs-found-of-worryingly-fast-antarctic-ice-melt-new-zealand-expedition

As anticipated, it looks like we've officially failed the Paris Agreement, and so thereby future generations of all life.

Yes, "we", because we all played a part in that outcome, some vastly more than others of course - the rich countries in particular.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/509936/humanity-marks-first-year-under-a-1-point-5c-rise-eu-climate-service

“When our children and grandchildren look back at the history of human-made climate change, this year and next will be seen as the turning point at which the futility of governments in dealing with climate change was finally exposed [...] Not only did governments fail to stem global warming, the rate of global warming actually accelerated.”

- James Hansen, former Nasa scientist now at Columbia University’s Earth Institute in New York.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/29/world-will-look-back-at-2023-as-year-humanity-exposed-its-inability-to-tackle-climate-crisis

Finally putting my x230 to rest, the last `sudo poweroff`. Hardware is failing beyond the point that makes continuing to repair it worthwhile.

On this laptop I deployed nearly 60 servers (most for at risk groups), 12 tech art projects (solo & collab, some toured worldwide), & gave many lectures & workshops.

If there was ever a loyal and electric steed, it was this x230. It ran #Debian & was good.

I bought it in 2015, for EUR145 on the German eBay, 2nd hand.

#permacomputing #righttorepair

Very useful list, The Eight Stages of White Settler-Colonial Denial.

This very process is playing out with precision to this day in countless colonised lands, as seen recently with the Indigenous Referendum in Australia, in right wing and center-right political rhetoric in LATAM countries, North America, and sadly also here in Aotearoa New Zealand

Excellent short article by an ecologist on how the biophysical demands we have placed on this planet make 'degrowth' inevitable, whether we like it or not.

"Access to fossil fuels has allowed us to temporarily overshoot biophysical limits. This lifted our population and demands on the biosphere past the level it can safely absorb. Barring a planned reduction of those biosphere demands, we will experience the same "adjustments" as other species."

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/495938/critics-of-degrowth-economics-say-it-s-unworkable-but-from-an-ecologist-s-perspective-it-s-inevitable

The IPCC said the Gulf Stream System wouldn't collapse this century. New analysis suggests it could occur as early as 2025, if not in the coming decades, on our current trajectory. Shutdown of the Atlantic circulation system (Amoc) is one of the primary planetary boundaries which scientists agree we must never cross "At all costs".

“This would be a very, very large change. The Amoc has not been shut off for 12,000 years.” - Prof Ditlevsen, University of Copenhagen

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/25/gulf-stream-could-collapse-as-early-as-2025-study-suggests

@thor Yes, it would freeze over. Much of the East Coast of the US too.

Since the birth of the plastic industry in the 1950's, this petrochem material has touched every corner of our home Planet. It's in our bodies, rain, soil, the air, animals both wild & domesticated. But perhaps the habitats most poisoned are oceanic.

Special filters placed on boats traveling in a race through some of the most remote stretches of ocean collected between 92 and 1884 particles of microplastic in *every* cubic meter studied.

We have ushered a Plastisphere.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/05/microplastics-found-in-every-sample-of-water-taken-during-ocean-race

Auckland was just brutalised by flooding, now the whole North is in the thick of it again, mere days later.

We're getting precisely the violently disturbed weather patterns that countless activists and scientists - increasingly people that are both - told govs we would get if we didn't do what we had to.

And now we kneel at the feet of what was and wasn't done.

Going to be a rough couple of days. Kia kaha to folk up north. We're bolting down here in the Valley.

A nine-month investigation undertaken by the Guardian, Die Zeit and SourceMaterial found that 90% of rainforest offsets from the world's biggest provider are worthless "phantom credits". Bought by the likes of Disney, Shell, easyJet and Gucci, it seems they may even do more harm to our environment than good.

Videos taken by residents in Peru showed forced evictions, and their homes cut down with chainsaws for an offset project.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe

The Dunning-Kruger Effect describes a phenomenon whereby those that know relatively little about a subject will be quick to develop strong opinions, often with convincing arguments.

Learning more about the given subject however soon makes that confidence & those convictions far less certain.

With more experience and knowledge some of the initial confidence may return, but ongoing concerns & uncertainties will persist.

People at each of those levels will rarely understand each other

Maybe degrowth includes art. Maybe degrowth means making less.