“The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic,” said the head of the World Meteorological Organization. “It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet.”
The World Meteorological Organization warned Monday that the planet now faces a 50% chance of temporarily hitting 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial levels over the next five years, another signal that political leaders—particularly those of the rich nations most responsible for carbon emissions—are failing to rein in fossil fuel use.
“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise.”
In 2015, by comparison, the likelihood of briefly reaching or exceeding 1.5°C of global warming over the ensuing five-year period was estimated to be “close to zero,” the WMO noted in a new climate update. The report was published amid a deadly heatwave on the Indian subcontinent that scientists say is a glimpse of what’s to come if runaway carbon emissions aren’t halted. Thus far, the heatwave has killed dozens in India and Pakistan.
Signatories to the Paris climate accord have agreed to act to limit the global average temperature increase to well below 2°C—preferably to 1.5°C—by the end of the century. Climate advocates have deemed the 1.5°C target “on life support” following world leaders’ refusal to commit to more ambitious action at the COP26 summit in Glasgow late last year.
“We are getting measurably closer to temporarily reaching the lower target of the Paris Agreement,” Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the WMO, said in a statement Monday. “The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic. It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet.”
“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise,” Taalas added. “And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise and, our weather will become more extreme. Arctic warming is disproportionately high and what happens in the Arctic affects all of us.”
BREAKING from the World Meteorological Organization @WMO: There is now a 50% probability that at least one of the next 5 years will temporarily reach the Paris Agreement threshold of 1.5°C. In 2015 this chance was estimated to be zero.Our house is truly on fire. #ClimateEmergencyhttps://t.co/u5sTx63weR
— Scientist Rebellion (@ScientistRebel1) May 10, 2022
Dr. Leon Hermanson, a climate expert at the U.K. Met Office who led the WMO report, stressed that a short-lived breach of the 1.5°C threshold would not mean that the world is guaranteed to fall short of the Paris accord’s most ambitious warming target, which climate experts and campaigners have long decried as inadequate.
Such a breach, however, would “reveal that we are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5°C could be exceeded for an extended period,” said Hermanson.
The WMO’s latest research also estimates that there is a 93% chance that at least one year between 2022 and 2026 will be the warmest on record. Currently, 2016 and 2020 are tied for the top spot.
Even if global warming is limited to 1.5°C by 2100, countless people across the globe will still face devastating heatwaves, droughts, and other extreme weather, with the poor facing the worst consequences.
Meanwhile, key ecosystems could be damaged beyond repair in a 1.5°C hotter world. One recent study found that 99% of the world’s coral reefs would experience heatwaves that are “too frequent for them to recover” if the planet gets 1.5°C warmer compared to pre-industrial levels.
Scientists behind the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report cautioned last month that if there’s to be any hope of keeping warming to 1.5°C or below by 2100, “it’s now or never.”
“Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible,” said Jim Skea, co-chair of IPCC Working Group III.
Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
A browser extension that reveals Amazon brand and exclusive products while you shop on the site
Amazon has registered more than 150 private-label brands with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and carries hundreds of thousands of items from these house brands on its site.
A recent investigation by The Markup found that the online shopping behemoth often gives its own brands and exclusive products a leg up in search results over better-rated competitors. We also found Amazon is inconsistent in disclosing to shoppers that those products are Amazon-brand products or exclusives.
Few respondents in a 1,000-person national survey we commissioned recognized the best-selling Amazon brands as owned by the company, apart from Amazon Basics.
So we decided to add some transparency for Amazon shoppers. The Markup created a browser extension that identifies these products and makes their affiliation to Amazon clear.
Brand Detector highlights product listings of Amazon brands and exclusive products by placing a box around them in Amazon’s signature orange. This happens live while shoppers browse the website.
The selective staining is inspired by a lab technique in biology called an assay, which we also applied to web pages in a past investigation about Google. That investigation revealed that the tech giant’s search engine gave Google properties 41 percent of real estate on the first page of popular searches.
How Does It Work?
The browser extension uses various techniques developed and refined during our year-long investigation to identify Amazon brands and exclusive products (read more in our methodology).This includes checking a list of proprietary products we created and cross-referencing Amazon’s “our brands” filter. The extension is available for Chrome (and other chromium-based browsers) and Firefox browsers.
The extension sits in the background until the user visits Amazon’s portal in the United States (amazon.com), Australia (amazon.com.au), Canada (amazon.ca), Germany (amazon.de), India (amazon.in), Italy (amazon.it), Japan (amazon.co.jp), Mexico (amazon.com.mx), Spain (amazon.es), or the United Kingdom (amazon.co.uk) and searches for something. At that point, Brand Detector identifies Amazon brands and exclusives and highlights them on the search results page. (It does not extend the product page.)
Because the “our brands” filter is not comprehensive, the extension also cross-references products against a list of proprietary electronics we found from Amazon’s best sellers section (which Amazon doesn’t include in the “our brands” filter) and performs partial text matching for phrases like “Amazon brand” and “Featured from our brands” and full text-matching for “AmazonBasics” and a few other brand names that didn’t tend to return false positives in our tests.
Even with these techniques, the extension may still miss some Amazon brand or exclusive products from time to time.
Amazon Brand Detector does not collect any data, in keeping with The Markup’s privacy policy. We won’t know how you used it, if at all, what you searched for or what you end up buying.
The extension only works on desktop browsers, not mobile apps.
Cross-Extension Compatibility
The extension can work in conjunction with other extensions, such as Fakespot, which affixes a letter grade to any Amazon product based on the authenticity of reviews for that product. Users can use these extensions together to find Amazon brands and exclusive products and their Fakespot grades.
The extension also works with full-page screenshot extensions, like “Awesome Screenshot & Screen Recorder.” You can use these to capture an entire search page stained by the extension.
The Markup is not affiliated with these extensions, nor do we endorse them.
Try It Out:
Enhance your Amazon shopping by knowing which products are from Amazon’s own brands and exclusives.
“It makes you want to cherish the Earth and protect it, the more you see it from space,” says a French astronaut calling for global cooperation to fight the climate crisis.
French astronaut Thomas Pesquet says the impacts of the climate emergency are clear from space—and worsening on his watch—and has expressed optimism that the kind of global cooperation that built the International Space Station can also be channeled to protect the planet he calls “an oasis in the cosmos.”
“Through the portholes of the space station, we distinctly see Earth’s fragility.”
Pesquet, a European Space Agency astronaut, made to the remarks in an interview published Monday at CNN.
In November, Pesquet, completed a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station. It was his second tour at the ISS, following an earlier mission in 2016 and 2017.
From space, an astronaut has a unique view of “the fragility of planet Earth,” he told the outlet.
There’s simply “emptiness,” he said, “apart from this blue ball with everything we need to sustain human life, and life in general, which is absolutely fragile.”
“It makes you want to cherish the Earth and protect it,” he said, “the more you see it from space.”
According to Pesquet, the view from space also reveals the impacts of humanity’s destruction of nature such as river pollution. But the “most visual visible effect” of the climate crisis, he said, is the retreat of glaciers.
Compared to his earlier mission, Pesquet told CNN that on his 2021 tour he “could see a net increase in the frequency and the strength of extreme weather phenomena like hurricanes, like wildfires.”
He also likened the “peaceful cooperation between countries that were not always friends” in maintaining the space station, and suggested that transferring “that model to the way we deal with the environment on Earth” could lead to planetary protection.
“If we can make a space station fly,” said Pesquet, “then we can save the planet.”
On Instagram, Pesquet has captured many remarkable images from the station, documenting both Earth’s beauty and the impacts of the climate crisis.
In October, Pesquet described viewing the climate crisis from space and the increasing prevalence of destructive events viewable from above. “Definitely, the hurricanes, seen from space, and the forest fires, I had never seen that before, especially on my previous mission.”
He conveyed his space view of the planetary crisis to French President Emmanuel Macron last year. “Through the portholes of the space station, we distinctly see Earth’s fragility,” he said. “We see the damaging effects of human activity, pollution of rivers and air pollution.”
He and the other astronauts on the 2021 mission also witnessed wildfires ravaging various regions including California, which was “covered in a cloud of smoke, we saw the flames with our naked eyes.”
Worsening impacts of the climate crisis from his tour five years earlier were clear, he said: “The weather phenomena are accelerating at an alarming rate.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by ANDREA GERMANOS and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Taylor Swift is serving fans holiday gifts left and right. First, Swift announces a surprise album, “Evermore”, the second one this year and drops it within mere hours and just two days shy of her 31st birthday. This upcoming album will be Taylor’s 9th album and regarded by singer as “folklore’s sister”. Followed up with the music video for her first song off the track, “Willow” simultaneously with release.
It’s already obvious Taylor Swift is mega pop star that has garnered multiple Grammy, Billboard, MTV awards and more. Yet, Taylor being such an animal lover and proclaimed cat lady should also be equally recognized.
December 2020 will be newsworthy for the artist and her holiday card this year puts a proverbial cherry on top. A journalist revealed Taylor’s card and yes it includes the artist’s trio of adorable cats, inspired and named from TV and movie characters: Olivia Benson, Meredith Grey and Benjamin Button.
As if we need a reason to explain why our pets are held in such high regard, sometimes, more so than our fellow humans. Especially during the nearly year long pandemic filled with social isolation, our pet(s) appreciate everything we do for them, provide emotional support (even if they don’t know it) and ultimately provide unconditional love. It’s clear why Taylor so proudly put them on display.
During her annual interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Billie Eilish explained her and brother / collaborator, Finneas have been recording a new batch of songs: “Right now I have 16. We’ve been working. And I love them all.”
The Eilish siblings, who like the most of us have been forced to stay at home, have taken that time to get their creative juices flowing.
In addition to playing around and creating hilarious TikTok content, the duo have pumped them out; song after song.
During the interview, she describes their joint creative stamina and how it is at a peak; “I think Finneas and I have just seriously really gotten in the groove. We do it so fast.”
Last month, the singer shared her newest single “Therefore I am” and performed it live for the first time during the American Music Awards (AMAs).
Eilish has also been nominated for several Grammy Awards for “Everything I Wanted”, including Best Pop Solo Performance and Song of the Year.
The Confusion around 5G goes far beyond the political-nonsense conspiracy theories
Most articles on 5G since the Apple iPhone 12 launch event on October 13th have been looking in the rearview mirror to predict the future: 5G will “disappoint” due to the slow buildout, technical limitations of the format, and various issues with all the competing systems and carriers, and these arguments are casting doubt on the much touted potential.
This perspective misses the point on so many levels, it’s difficult to know where to begin to unpack the myriad of misunderstandings.
Much of the technical discussion has been focused on the various flavors of 5G and the associated limitations and advantages of each. The fact that the fastest 5G, which goes by the sub-category moniker millimeter wave, is not instantly available everywhere for the 5G capable iPhones, and that they will not be in the hands of most consumers before next year, has been met with feigned shock and bewilderment.
And further, many highlight the confusion mounting over the various providers and the various flavors: 5G, 5G E, 5G UW or 5G+ as they are designated by “service indicators” on the iPhone 12 itself. Verizon Communications Inc., T-Mobile US Inc. and AT&T Inc. each have their own systems they have developed and are building out – looking for a piece of the 5G market, expected to be around $1.15 trillion by 2025.
First and foremost – since Apple and iPhone are the leader of all innovations in the marketplace – not necessarily by the sheer number of handsets sold, but by the focus on increasing technical and aesthetic quality, and appealing to the top demographic, not to mention the majority of early adopters, it is precisely the fact that, until now, the iPhone 5G handset did not yet exist, that the buildout is not further along.
The fact that, in real-world tests, it is already performing at up to 7 times the fastest previously available connections, was coupled inevitably with the caveat; physical locations where these speeds can be accomplished are currently hard to find.
Due to the technical issues with this ultra-high speed version of 5G; the inability to travel more than very short distances and the lack of ability to penetrate obstacles or walls, the possibility to get these amazing speeds are, at present, more likely to be found at outdoor locations.
This is, admittedly, an odd conundrum, but you can be sure, with the upcoming massive increase in competition for ISP customers, it is one that will find at least some viable solutions very soon. There are many billions at stake for those that can find ways to improve this issue.
“Standing in front of a camera store in South of Market, I got 5G speeds reaching 2,160 megabits a second, which was 2,900 percent faster than 4G. Even where it was a tad slower — behind the Safeway parking lot in the Marina district — the 5G iPhone drew speeds of 668 megabits a second, which was 1,052 percent faster than 4G.”
– Brian X. Chen for the New York Times
The carriers have not had the market to build for, and needed to be pushed by a huge influx of iPhone 12 owners. Then, meaning now, they will begin to compete with one another for that extremely lucrative group of users. That rising competitive battle is not the only one looming on the horizon.
Regardless of the ultimate time frame of the build-out, there is an obvious and very meaningful conclusion that we can reach here: 1 year from now things will look very different in the options available for those who want to work and play with the help of a faster internet connection (meaning, obviously, everybody).
As can be seen from the chart above in early 2020 the US ranked 13th in desktop download speed while mobile speeds ranked even worse coming in at #33 (various sources have US at #10 for fixed broadband). Liechtenstein is nearly 4x faster, on average, than the US. Also note that the highest average is one-tenth to one-twentieth of the eventual “ideal conditions” speeds of 5G.
Failure of the US Broadband infrastructure and the coming shake-up in the ISP system grid-lock
The problem is not a technological one. The US lags behind due to the pseudo-geographical monopolies held by various ISPs and the ability they have enjoyed to be able to gouge customers with high priced, bad service. Lack of competition often results in slow progress, or no progress.
That is all about to change. You don’t need to have a technician to analyze the various 5G systems, or compare carriers chances of “winning” to realize that the very fact that speeds and options are increasing exponentially is going to re-write the map when it comes to who controls the cash-cow subscription gravy train. That system is about to collapse.
In steps Elon, and his little copy-cat-side-kick Jeffy Bezos, and the landscape is about to become unrecognizable
First, 5G speeds rival or exceed the former fixed / desktop speeds which had commanded a premium for the geographically entrenched providers. 5G home systems will be available in many areas that will be competitive in speed, price and convenience.
SpaceX’s Starlink, with nearly 1,000 satellites already in orbit out of an eventual 12,000, with launches continuing almost weekly with 60 in each launch, is a serious project. This ambitious plan will eventually encircle the Earth completely with interconnected satellites that will link through intermediary “ground stations” with up to 1 million planned for USA alone. Each ground station is just under 19 inches (.48 m) across.
“It looks like a UFO on a stick,” according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk “It’s very important that you don’t need a specialist to install. The goal is for … just two instructions and they can be done in either order: Point at sky, plug in.”
Satellite Broadband, such as SpaceX’s Starlink will not only add ubiquitous 100mbps and higher, low latency coverage, it will also cover the same areas with high population density, major cities, where both current systems and 5G are also focusing.
Exact pricing is as yet unknown, but it is very likely that there will be a high-pitched battle over customers, once the various systems go into the next phase of the rollout. And all of this is not factoring in additional players in 5G and satellite systems.
Longer term (2 years +) there will be major world-wide implications of this shift, toward more and faster options in internet connectivity
The first shift, primarily driven by the geographical independence of satellite broadband, such as Starlink, will be a decentralization of populations at massive scale. While we are looking at a world where, due to the current pandemic countermeasures, WFH a.k.a. work from home is becoming more than a temporary factor. As many as 20 major companies such as Google and Microsoft have announced extended or permanent work-from-home policies as of October 2020.
There are plenty of very serious discussions about what will be done with all the skyscrapers and office buildings once there are no workers to fill the offices. This is not idle chit-chat. A migration has already begun away from the insanely overpriced rents and home prices to take advantage of the work-from-home-anywhere approach.
Extrapolate, based on increased speed and availability of connectivity to millions of locations not currently viable, will soon have internet at minimum speeds rivaling the current world champion Liechtenstein (see above), and you see the beginnings of an exodus of epic proportions. Just in time for economic upheaval, due to the aftermath of the still ongoing global pandemic, and yes, the issues of accelerated global warming, which will, coincidentally, affect costal “elite” cities like Miami, San Francisco, New York and others around the world to a disproportionally large degree.
“The reality is that a technological utopian vision, one where the world is able to shift to sustainable energy and regenerative farming, and create economies based on prosperous and equal distribution of the wealth generated by those systems (along with AI plus robot technology (powered by sustainable clean energy), can only be realized by an acceleration of learning and positive social change. “
-DL
These changes, to be clear, are not all “bad” nor are they all the cause of negative side-effects such as the current covid-19 outbreak.
The reality is that a technological utopian vision, one where the world is able to shift to sustainable energy and regenerative farming, and create economies based on prosperous and equal distribution of the wealth generated by those systems, (along with AI, robot technology powered by sustainable clean energy), can only be realized by an acceleration of learning and positive social change.
Change is urgently needed to build out the human networked-communication-system that will enable the learning and cooperation which is the only hope for the survival of our species. 5G, the iPhone 12 and SpaceX’s Starlink Satellite Broadband are going to be huge factors, in making the first baby-steps toward that change, possible.
