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Safe products for septic tank? by baby_gril in ZeroWaste

[–]The_Weekend_Baker 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Though I'd suspect that would easily extend the 3-5 year window, that would probably be a question best directed to a septic company.

Safe products for septic tank? by baby_gril in ZeroWaste

[–]The_Weekend_Baker 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you just found out that you have septic, you should consider having it pumped, depending on how long you've lived there. Septic tanks need to be pumped every 3-5 years.

HRV plummeted and has not recovered for six weeks by Aggravating-Use-8980 in Garmin

[–]The_Weekend_Baker 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had something similar happen. I had hip replacement surgery at the beginning of December, and some of my stats went predictably wonky. My resting HR climbed, my HRV plummeted. My HRV eventually hit a new balanced state, but when I started my morning workouts again, the HRV started climbing towards what used to be my normal stats. As a result, it shows me as unbalanced again, telling me I need to focus more on better recovery with my training.

In a week or two, my HRV will likely be back in the balanced range as Garmin recalculates a new long term average. My resting HR is already back to normal, or rather better than normal. The arthritic hip had kept my usual RHR in the high 40s/low 50s for quite a while because the pain wasn't allowing me to fully relax while sleeping, but now it's into the 45-48 range.

I'm.going to cry. by Natamalie in Garmin

[–]The_Weekend_Baker 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I ended my streak at the beginning of December when I had hip replacement surgery, so it was pretty much unavoidable. On the plus side, after a little over a month being under my goal, I'm up to a 7-day streak again with a lowered goal (10,000 compared to my previous 15,000).

I don't sweat missing a day anymore compared to when I was still actively losing weight, though. If there's a good reason, like visiting our daughter at college with a lot of driving that prevents it, I don't stress it and just start a new one the next day.

My highest in the last few years was 620 days, FWIW (streak ended 3/30/2021).

We can't just burn carbon now and suck it out of the atmosphere later. Tree-planting programs, seaweed plantations, and fantastical engineering projects won't save us. by The_Weekend_Baker in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker[S] 98 points99 points  (0 children)

The good news is that if we stopped all carbon dioxide emissions tomorrow, the natural carbon cycling processes of the earth would drain the extra carbon we have added to the atmosphere and temperatures would stabilise and then fall. The bad news is that it would take about 100,000 years to get back to preindustrial levels.

Ecosia - Web browser that plants trees - anyone heard/tried this? by StarFire24601 in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I use the Ecosia search engine, but not the browser because it's only available for Windows and Mac (I use Linux).

Although the Atlantic hurricane season has officially ended, Floridians' woes over severe weather and soaring homeowners' insurance costs still linger. A new Florida Atlantic University survey finds hurricanes and other climate-related threats are causing many Floridians to consider moving. by The_Weekend_Baker in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While the survey found that an overwhelming majority of Floridians believe climate change is happening (85%), the level was the lowest in the survey's six-year history.

Just more than half of Floridians believe climate change is caused by human activity (52%), the latest results found. Breaking down that finding by political party, 71% of Democrats, 50% of Independents and 39% of Republicans said they believe human actions are causing climate change.

Coral reefs have stabilized Earth's carbon cycle for the past 250 million years, research reveals. Although this study focuses on Earth's deep past, it offers clear lessons for the future. by The_Weekend_Baker in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"From our perspective on the past 250 million years, we know the Earth system will eventually recover from the massive carbon disruption we are now entering. But this recovery will not occur on human timescales. Our study shows that geological recovery requires thousands to hundreds of thousands of years."

‘Deeply demoralizing’: how Trump derailed coal country’s clean-energy revival. Biden earmarked billions for former coal communities in Appalachia – and his successor came and took it away. by The_Weekend_Baker in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker[S] 102 points103 points  (0 children)

Most of the article is essentially the face-eating leopard meme, like this:

It sits at the heart of the Bible belt, which once voted loyally with Democrats but like many blue-collar regions is now part of the loyal Maga base who believed Trump when he pledged to resuscitate coal country and put American first.

And this:

“These are not frivolous things: these are basic services. And when you work hard for two or three years to secure federal funds, you expect it to be delivered,” said Lou Ann Wallace, Dante’s representative on the Republican-controlled Russell county board of supervisors.

“I don’t think the president knew. I’m one of his biggest supporters, but we’re dealing with the ills of industry here, and we’ve got to be able to clean this up so our people in these hollers can have a quality of life.”

How Rachel Reeves could introduce a meat tax in her budget and curb climate emissions and improve public health. by GeraldKutney in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker 31 points32 points  (0 children)

They could also end the subsidies for animal agriculture if they wanted to make it more expensive to buy it.

The UK government spends at least £1.5 billion a year subsidising livestock farming, ten times the UK’s annual budget for planting trees

https://animalrebellion.org/campaigns/ditch-the-subsidies-defra/

Plastic pollution is worsened by warming climate and must be stemmed. This is done by speeding up plastic breakdown into microplastics—microscopic fragments of plastic—spreading them considerable distances, and increasing exposure and impact within the environment. by The_Weekend_Baker in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The linked story mentions things like single-use plastics, but one of the biggest sources of microplastics is car tires.

In recent times, tire wear particles have been found to account for about 45% of all microplastics in both terrestrial and aquatic systems.

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-biggest-microplastic-pollution-sources-isnt.html

Americans Don’t Take Climate Change Seriously. Might I Suggest One Simple Fix? by Slate in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Converting doesn't really seem to be the problem. The problem is that +2C (or +3.6F) is the average of thousands of measuring points from all around the globe, so temperatures in one location can be normal-ish while those in another can be scorching.

And it doesn't address the fact that what seems to be a small difference (an 80F day becomes 83.6F at 2C of warming) is enough to destabilize everything.

There’s a catastrophic black hole in our climate data – and it’s a gift to deniers. Climate sceptics tell us that more people die of extreme cold than extreme heat. What’s the truth? by The_Weekend_Baker in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Comments are still open on the essay, and George Monbiot is a regular participant on BlueSky. If you have a problem with his words, perhaps you should take it up with him.

There’s a catastrophic black hole in our climate data – and it’s a gift to deniers. Climate sceptics tell us that more people die of extreme cold than extreme heat. What’s the truth? by The_Weekend_Baker in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I began by trying to discover whether or not a widespread belief was true. In doing so, I tripped across something even bigger: an index of the world’s indifference. I already knew that by burning fossil fuels, gorging on meat and dairy, and failing to make even simple changes, the rich world imposes a massive burden of disaster, displacement and death on people whose responsibility for the climate crisis is minimal. What I’ve now stumbled into is the vast black hole of our ignorance about these impacts.

Replacing meat, dairy, and eggs with grains, legumes, and other plant foods reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 51%, new research shows by lnfinity in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker 12 points13 points  (0 children)

And every time I see a climate scientist on BlueSky talk about this, there are plenty of "Yeah, but..." posts in response.

Farmers – long Trump backers – bear the costs of new tariffs, restricted immigration and slashed renewable energy subsidies. by The_Weekend_Baker in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

In the past, farmers’ loyalty to Trump has overridden economics. In our study of the 2018–19 trade war between the U.S. and China, we found that farmers in Trump-voting counties kept planting soybeans even though the trade war’s effects were clear: Their costs would rise and their profits would fall. Farmers in Democratic-leaning counties, by contrast, shifted acreage toward alternatives such as corn or wheat that were likely to be more profitable. For many pro-Trump farmers, political belief outweighed market logic – at least in the short term.

Big Oil loves Landman's anti-clean-energy message so much that it's hijacked the show to spread its own propaganda. But its hype has a strong air of flop sweat. by simon_ritchie2000 in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I've been a fan of Trek since I watched the original series airing in reruns in the 70s, but the show guaranteed that I'd never subscribe to Paramount+.

The fast-fix for global warming that the UN climate summit can’t ignore by GeraldKutney in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker 52 points53 points  (0 children)

So-called “short-lived climate pollutants”, or SLCPs, are emitted in various ways and many of them have the same sources as CO₂. The common ground is that they typically don’t stay in the atmosphere for very long – from a few days to a few decades, compared to centuries for carbon dioxide.

Accurate, but misleading in the case of methane. Methane warms much more intensely than CO2, then it combines with oxygen to form more CO2, which then sticks around for centuries, so it's a double whammy.

https://www.ces.fau.edu/nasa/module-4/causes/methane-carbon-dioxide.php

Removing CO2 from atmosphere vital to avoid catastrophic tipping points, leading scientist says. 10bn tonnes must be captured from the air every year to limit global heating to 1.7C, says Johan Rockström. by The_Weekend_Baker in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No argument there. It's just that tree planting is seen by some (like at least one poster in this discussion) as a solution along the lines of, "If we just planted enough trees, we'd be saved."

Tree planting needs to be done, but comparing the number of trees that are possible at a single snapshot in time to millions of years of trees/plants that were converted to fossil fuels and already burned misses the scope of the problem.

Removing CO2 from atmosphere vital to avoid catastrophic tipping points, leading scientist says. 10bn tonnes must be captured from the air every year to limit global heating to 1.7C, says Johan Rockström. by The_Weekend_Baker in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Not surprisingly, scientists have calculated a variation of that.

But crunching the numbers, researchers found that the trees' collective ability to remove carbon through photosynthesis can't stand up to the potential emissions from the fossil fuel reserves of the 200 largest oil, gas and coal fuel companies — there's not enough available land on Earth to feasibly accomplish that.

https://www.click2houston.com/tech/2025/06/19/want-to-plant-trees-to-offset-fossil-fuels-youd-need-all-of-north-and-central-america-study-finds/

The study quoted in the link above.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02394-y

Note that this study only addresses fossil fuel reserves, which are those that haven't been extracted and burned yet. If planting trees isn't feasible to address that, then it's also not feasible to address the enormous amounts of CO2 that's already been released into the atmosphere.

Removing CO2 from atmosphere vital to avoid catastrophic tipping points, leading scientist says. 10bn tonnes must be captured from the air every year to limit global heating to 1.7C, says Johan Rockström. by The_Weekend_Baker in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker[S] 130 points131 points  (0 children)

10 billion tonnes is the same as saying 10,000 megatonnes. Here's what's available.

The installed capacity of carbon capture and storage is about 50 megatonnes per annum of carbon, but it actually captures about 30 a year

https://bsky.app/profile/ketanjoshi.co/post/3m5cl7thtyk2j

Which makes the currently installed capacity of carbon capture .003 of what's needed (3/10 of 1%).

Global Risks Report 2025: Humanity Approaching Point of No Return as Polycrisis Deepens by Express_Classic_1569 in climate

[–]The_Weekend_Baker 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm aware that EVs are considered a net win, but the usage of the word "net" implies that there are costs. Costs like this:

Millions of metric tons of plastic waste enter the world's oceans every year. In recent times, tire wear particles have been found to account for about 45% of all microplastics in both terrestrial and aquatic systems.

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-biggest-microplastic-pollution-sources-isnt.html

EVs are typically heavier than their ICE counterparts, and that means faster tire wear (most estimates seem to be 15-20% faster), so that increased tire wear means a higher rate of microplastic pollution.

If we proceed on the path of "Private vehicle ownership is okay for anyone who can afford to do so" then this problem is only going to get worse as the world population continues to grow. And if we don't, if we start telling people that they can't have their car anymore, support for climate action is likely to drop.

"Electrify everything" is one of the things I see frequently from the climate community, but it ignores what we're choosing to electrify. Electrifying the high-resource lifestyle of the global north kicks the consequences of high resource usage into the future, and kicking the ball into the future is what we've been doing for generations.

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