tingilinde

take the train

France may ban air travel on routes that trains can cover in 150 minutes. It only impacts a few routes and France has a robust passenger rail network, but it's a start.

 

planting trees to sequester carbon

It isn't straightforward.

snip

...

The current focus on trees rather than grasses is partly a result of technological limitations: It’s far easier and cheaper to measure above-ground carbon held in vegetation than carbon held below-ground in soil. The repeated assessment of soil carbon stocks is currently too time-consuming and expensive to use at the scale that would be required to verify stocks for carbon credits. But excluding below-ground carbon from measurements biases the picture in favor of forests, which hold more carbon aboveground than grasslands do. Grasslands, especially waterlogged grasslands, can be shown to hold much more carbon than tree-covered landscapes if subsurface carbon is included in estimates

...

 

 

a new cone, a new drone

residential oil production

A serious health hazard that is common in California. 

snip

...

And unlike more rural oil-producing states, where oilfields might be uninhabited but for the people who work on them, drilling in California happens to a large degree in residential settings. In the Kern County town of Shafter, pump jacks hover over an elementary school. In Signal Hill to the south near Long Beach, drilling rigs butt up against playgrounds. In addition to drilling operations, refineries in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas, handle some of the dirtiest oil in the world, from Alberta’s Athabasca oil sands to the state’s own carbon-heavy crude. In both locations, refineries occupy space in neighborhoods.

A 2020 analysis by FracTracker Alliance, a nonprofit that collects data on the health consequences of oil and gas development, found that some 2.17 million people in California live within a half mile of an oil or gas well; another 5 million live within a mile. From 2015 through 2020, the state issued more than 25,000 permits for drilling new wells and redrilling older ones, more than 60 percent of them in Spanish-speaking communities.

...

 

a troubling cherry blossom record

The earliest full cherry blossom date in Kyoto in over 1200 years.

 

 

soil loss in the midwest

Probably worse than once thought..  via Yale360

snip

...

In late February, three geoscientists from the University of Massachusetts — Evan Thaler, Isaac Larsen, and Qian Yu — published a paper called, “The extent of soil loss across the U.S. Corn Belt.” Using high-definition satellite imagery, a recent soil carbon index, and soil spectral data, they were able to show that across the Corn Belt — which includes all of Iowa and parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana — A-horizon soil was essentially no longer present on convex slopes. What they found on those slopes was B-horizon soil — subsoil in other words, with minimal fertility, which is only exposed after A-horizon soil has been removed. What does that look like? The paper includes a satellite photo of a bare field near Clear Lake, Iowa. The low areas in the field are medium to dark brown — an indicator of A-horizon soil. But the high spots are tan and beige — the color of B-horizon soil. By calculating the exposure of B-horizon soils across the region, the scientists were able to estimate the overall loss of A-horizon soil.

The number they arrived at is shocking. “We predict,” they wrote, “[that] the A-horizon has been completely removed from 35±11% of the cultivated area of the Corn Belt.” Plus or minus 11 percent is a large range of uncertainty. But its meaning is plain. At best, 24 percent of the topsoil in the Corn Belt has been completely removed by farming. At worst, 46 percent has been lost.

...

 

a huge strategy change

Send in the scientists!

a tip of the hat to John

 

china stays with coal

A large expansion of coal-fired plants in underway. 

snip

...

In the short term, the Communist Party’s chief concern remains how to grow the economy by around 6 percent per year. And, as identified in its latest Five-Year Plan, one of the top risks to China’s aim of maintaining a “moderately prosperous society” remains a lack of energy to drive its economy.

“Energy security in the Chinese context primarily means coal,” said Li Shuo, a climate policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia. “So how do you reconcile these two narratives? I don’t think the plans that have been announced have given us a clear answer.”

...

 

 

which prevents dust bowls?

The root structure of native prairie grass on the left and commercial grains on the right. Guess which one keeps soil in place...

 

update: check Greg's addition in the comments.

brood x

Soon it will be very noisy in the Northeastern US.

Global warming may be changing things a bit.