News bits: The cost of global warming; Status of global warming abatements; TDS update

The WaPo reported:

The National Climate Assessment, compiled by numerous federal agencies and published every few years at the direction of Congress, paints a picture of a nation whose economy, environment and public health face deepening threats as the world grows hotter. These days, weather-driven disasters happen far more frequently and cost the country about $150 billion each year, on average, according to the report.

But as the dangers become ever more evident, so does proof that many governments and communities are responding, the report says, even as the United States and other developed nations remain woefully far from hitting their long-term climate goals.

Risks from climate change, the report says, are becoming only more visible, whether it’s rapidly intensifying hurricanes in the Southeast, drought in the Midwest, ferocious fires and diminishing water supplies in the West or torrential rainstorms in the Northeast.

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The WaPo reports about how we’re doing in dealing with global warming:

Among the many dramatic ways society must transform to limit the worst effects of climate change, the world is only moving fast enough on one of them — the uptake of electric vehicles, according to a new report from seven climate organizations looking at 42 indicators of climate progress.

On the other 41 points of transformation, change is either too slow, too hard to measure, or going in the wrong direction. For example, the global rate of deforestation ticked up last year. The carbon intensity of steel production is increasing when it needs to be falling. Government financing for fossil fuels has risen for the first time since 2018.

While the takeaway is familiar — that the world is well shy of its stated goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — the State of Climate Action report provides a detailed diagnosis of the factors leading the planet astray. Those factors touch on almost every aspect of life, from how power is generated, how people commute, how food is produced, how buildings function and how readily finance flows to developing countries.

“We are woefully off track,” said Kelly Levin, the chief of science, data and systems change at the Bezos Earth Fund, one of the groups involved in the research. (The fund was created by Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post.)

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Trump's TDS is getting far out of hand. I take his latest blast as evidence that (i) his mental status has appreciably degraded in the last month or so, and (ii) his New York civil fraud case is starting to look extremely deadly to his financial situation. We can only hope. Salon writes:

“This is an actual incitement”: 

Legal experts alarmed after Trump pushes “citizen’s arrest”

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday reposted a Truth Social post calling for a “citizen’s arrest” of New York Attorney General Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing his fraud trial. Trump shared a post by a user describing his “fantasy”: “I WOULD LIKE TO SEE LITITIA JAMES AND JUDGE ENGORON PLACED UNDER CITIZENS ARREST FOR BLATANT ELECTION INTERFERENCE AND HARASSMENT.”

It would be great is someone would put DJT under citizen’s arrest for treason, a coup attempt, massive election fraud, inciting violence and corruption. Fat chance of that happy day ever coming. It still seems unlikely that he will ever spend a day in jail. More likely, he gets re-elected and pardons himself and the big cadre of traitors and grifters he pulled into his morally rotted personal orbit. Then people like us get whacked good and hard for being worse than subhuman vermin.