Summary: 277 quakes M2+, 125 quakes M3+, 49 quakes M4+, 7 quakes M5+ (458 total) This report is being updated every hour. Magnitude 2+: 277 earthquakes Magnitude 3+: 125 earthquakes Magnitude 4+: 49 earthquakes Magnitude 5+: 7 earthquakes Magnitude 6+: none Magnitude 7+: none Magnitude 8+: none Magnitude 9+: noneTotal seismic energy estimate: 5.6*10^13 J…

Earthquake report world-wide for Saturday, 20 June 2020 — VolcanoDiscovery – Visit Active Volcanoes: Volcano News

Earthquake report world-wide for Saturday, 20 June 2020

Saturday Jun 20, 2020 18:20 PM | BY: EARTHQUAKEMONITOR

World map showing earthquakes above magnitude 3 during the past 24 hours on 20 Jun 2020
Summary: 299 quakes M2+, 121 quakes M3+, 49 quakes M4+, 7 quakes M5+ (476 total)
This report is being updated every hour.
Magnitude 2+: 299 earthquakes
Magnitude 3+: 121 earthquakes
Magnitude 4+: 49 earthquakes
Magnitude 5+: 7 earthquakes
Magnitude 6+: none
Magnitude 7+: none
Magnitude 8+: none
Magnitude 9+: noneTotal seismic energy estimate: 5.6*10^13 J (15.4 GWh / 13284 tons of TNT / 0.8 atomic bombs equivalent) [learn more]

List of 10 largest earthquakes in the world (past 24 hours):

#1: M 5.4 quake: 112 km ESE of Hihifo, Tonga (Samoa) on Sat, 20 Jun 01h57 – 17 hours ago
#2: M 5.4 quake: Iceland Region on Sat, 20 Jun 15h05 – 3 hours 59 minutes ago
#3: M 5.3 quake: Solomon Islands on Sat, 20 Jun 15h45 – 3 hours 19 minutes ago
#4: M 5.1 quake: New Zealand on Sat, 20 Jun 03h59 – 15 hours ago
#5: M 5.0 quake: New Zealand on Fri, 19 Jun 23h51 – 19 hours ago
#6: M 5.0 quake: 267 km NNW of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands on Sat, 20 Jun 11h57 – 7 hours ago
#7: M 5.0 quake: Vanuatu Islands on Sat, 20 Jun 11h39 – 7 hours ago
#8: M 4.9 quake: New Zealand on Fri, 19 Jun 20h08 – 23 hours ago
#9: M 4.9 quake: 34 km SE of Mina, Nevada (USA) on Fri, 19 Jun 20h42 – 22 hours ago
#10: M 4.9 quake: New Zealand on Fri, 19 Jun 21h12 – 22 hours ago

Camp on the rim of Nyiragongo volcano (Photo: Tom Pfeiffer)

Summary: 277 quakes M2+, 125 quakes M3+, 49 quakes M4+, 7 quakes M5+ (458 total) This report is being updated every hour. Magnitude 2+: 277 earthquakes Magnitude 3+: 125 earthquakes Magnitude 4+: 49 earthquakes Magnitude 5+: 7 earthquakes Magnitude 6+: none Magnitude 7+: none Magnitude 8+: none Magnitude 9+: noneTotal seismic energy estimate: 5.6*10^13 J…

Earthquake report world-wide for Saturday, 20 June 2020 — VolcanoDiscovery – Visit Active Volcanoes: Volcano News

Earthquake report world-wide for Saturday, 20 June 2020

Saturday Jun 20, 2020 18:20 PM | BY: EARTHQUAKEMONITOR

World map showing earthquakes above magnitude 3 during the past 24 hours on 20 Jun 2020
Summary: 299 quakes M2+, 121 quakes M3+, 49 quakes M4+, 7 quakes M5+ (476 total)
This report is being updated every hour.
Magnitude 2+: 299 earthquakes
Magnitude 3+: 121 earthquakes
Magnitude 4+: 49 earthquakes
Magnitude 5+: 7 earthquakes
Magnitude 6+: none
Magnitude 7+: none
Magnitude 8+: none
Magnitude 9+: noneTotal seismic energy estimate: 5.6*10^13 J (15.4 GWh / 13284 tons of TNT / 0.8 atomic bombs equivalent) [learn more]

List of 10 largest earthquakes in the world (past 24 hours):

#1: M 5.4 quake: 112 km ESE of Hihifo, Tonga (Samoa) on Sat, 20 Jun 01h57 – 17 hours ago
#2: M 5.4 quake: Iceland Region on Sat, 20 Jun 15h05 – 3 hours 55 minutes ago
#3: M 5.3 quake: Solomon Islands on Sat, 20 Jun 15h45 – 3 hours 15 minutes ago
#4: M 5.1 quake: New Zealand on Sat, 20 Jun 03h59 – 15 hours ago
#5: M 5.0 quake: New Zealand on Fri, 19 Jun 23h51 – 19 hours ago
#6: M 5.0 quake: 267 km NNW of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands on Sat, 20 Jun 11h57 – 7 hours ago
#7: M 5.0 quake: Vanuatu Islands on Sat, 20 Jun 11h39 – 7 hours ago
#8: M 4.9 quake: New Zealand on Fri, 19 Jun 20h08 – 23 hours ago
#9: M 4.9 quake: 34 km SE of Mina, Nevada (USA) on Fri, 19 Jun 20h42 – 22 hours ago
#10: M 4.9 quake: New Zealand on Fri, 19 Jun 21h12 – 22 hours agohttps://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?client=ca-pub-3740653521982427&output=html&h=280&slotname=7471320214&adk=2788610455&adf=2305786085&w=805&fwrn=4&fwrnh=100&lmt=1592679597&rafmt=1&psa=1&guci=2.2.0.0.2.2.0.0&format=805×280&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.volcanodiscovery.com%2Fearthquake%2Fnews%2F105593%2FEarthquake-report-world-wide-for-Saturday-20-June-2020.html&flash=0&fwr=0&rpe=1&resp_fmts=3&wgl=1&dt=1592679597705&bpp=2&bdt=367&idt=126&shv=r20200610&cbv=r20190131&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&cookie=ID%3D7e7468f9926199b6%3AT%3D1586951782%3AS%3DALNI_Mby6GgkfMKLj212UP0FZFa-hZIPvw&crv=1&prev_fmts=0x0%2C1006x280&nras=1&correlator=553028777412&frm=20&pv=1&ga_vid=175527261.1561966920&ga_sid=1592679598&ga_hid=1470762428&ga_fc=0&iag=0&icsg=140203&dssz=35&mdo=0&mso=0&u_tz=120&u_his=1&u_java=0&u_h=1080&u_w=1920&u_ah=1040&u_aw=1920&u_cd=24&u_nplug=3&u_nmime=4&adx=650&ady=1540&biw=1903&bih=969&scr_x=0&scr_y=0&eid=21066349%2C44717728&oid=3&pvsid=1359666495769414&pem=959&rx=0&eae=0&fc=1920&brdim=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C1920%2C0%2C1920%2C1040%2C1920%2C969&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7CeEbr%7C&abl=CS&pfx=0&fu=8336&bc=31&ifi=2&uci=a!2&btvi=1&fsb=1&xpc=jOGYMpFyne&p=https%3A//www.volcanodiscovery.com&dtd=132

The German online Business Insider here reports on just how climate (un)friendly electric cars really are. It concludes that e-cars in Germany are “far from being climate friendly”. As much of the public already suspects, the electricity coming out of the German outlets today is still largely produced by fossil fuel plants. And so e-cars […]

New German Study: E-Car Climate Benefits Based On “Great Miscalculation”…”Actually Exacerbate Global Warming”! — Iowa Climate Science Education

The German online Business Insider here reports on just how climate (un)friendly electric cars really are. It concludes that e-cars in Germany are “far from being climate friendly”.

As much of the public already suspects, the electricity coming out of the German outlets today is still largely produced by fossil fuel plants. And so e-cars indeed leave a large carbon footprint.

Moreover all the mining of raw materials and the massive amounts of energy needed to produce the batteries in the first place means it takes a very long time before the electric car ends up with a better carbon budget than a comparably sized internal combustion engine.

And never mind other disadvantages such as long charging times, high vehicle purchase price and low range.

The claim that electric cars on Germany protect the climate is based on a “great miscalculation,” Kiel Institute for the World Economy finds. Image: here. 

“Actually exacerbate global warming”

A new study by Ulrich Schmidt, researcher at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, concluded that electric cars do not contribute to climate protection, and in fact “actually exacerbate global warming if the current electricity mix is taken as a basis.”

The study found the point when electric mobility can contribute to climate protection is  still”far off”.

“Based on false assumptions”

Climate activists like insisting that the future of mobility belongs to electric cars, but the Kiel Institute for the World Economy researcher says that this is not so given Germany’s current power supply mix, which still relies heavily on coal. Claims that electric cars are clean are based on false assumptions, says Schmidt.

Business Insider writes:

As Schmidt points out in his study, a complete switch to e-mobility would increase electricity demand by almost 20 percent in the German automotive sector alone. This, in turn, would require more electricity generation from fossil fuels. Provided that availability is the same in both cases. This would considerably worsen the climate balance of e-cars.”

Schmidt adds: “Regardless of what you fill up your electric car with; from a macroeconomic perspective, it runs de facto on 100 percent electricity from fossil fuels, nowadays even 100 percent from coal. This means that electric cars do not contribute to climate protection, but actually make global warming worse.”

“40% fossil fuels in 2020”

This, Schmidt says, will remain true as long as the share of fossil fuels in the electricity mix remains above 20 percent. Business Insider points out that even the “EU Commission estimates that the share of fossil fuels will still be around 40 percent in 2050.”

via NoTricksZone

https://ift.tt/2AKzl6X

June 20, 2020 at 10:23AM

In order to get their multi-million dollar research grants, scientists demand that everyone else be poor. Scientists’ warning on affluence | Nature Communications Their peer-reviewed studies show that poverty leads to a clean environment. via Real Climate Science https://ift.tt/3fLovwj June 20, 2020 at 07:51AM

Scientists Demand Poverty — Iowa Climate Science Education

Scientists Demand Poverty

Posted on June 20, 2020 by tonyheller

In order to obtain their multi-million dollar research grants, scientists demand that everyone else be poor.

Scientists’ warning on affluence | Nature Communications

Their peer-reviewed studies show that poverty leads to a clean environment.

With 40 million unemployed thanks to incompetent scientists and other left wing politicians, they are bringing their dream to America.

By Paul Homewood h/t Mad Mike Whoops! Now, who would have thunk that? Sleeping problems are on the rise because energy-efficient homes are too warm at night, a Government study has concluded. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) reported that high temperatures are causing new homes to fail standards […]

Disturbed sleep a growing problem because of warmth of energy-efficient new homes — NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Mad Mike

Whoops! Now, who would have thunk that?

Sleeping problems are on the rise because energy-efficient homes are too warm at night, a Government study has concluded.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) reported that high temperatures are causing new homes to fail standards designed to tackle sleep deprivation.

The problem will get worse over the next 30 years as properties designed to be energy-efficient become so hot at night that people will not be able to sleep properly in the warmest months.

Experts have warned that highly insulated homes leave people “stewing in their beds”.

The study looked at new flats and houses in sites around England, including developments in Nottingham, Southampton and London, and concluded that none met the acceptable standard – the “compliance threshold” – for overheating set by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE)….

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/19/disturbed-sleep-growing-problem-warmth-

Guest essay by Eric Worrall Sociology Professor Kari Norgaard thinks people believe in global warming, but behave as if it wasn’t an issue, by numbing themselves to the reality. 29 weitere Wörter

Claim: People Believe in Global Warming, But Choose Not to Act — Watts Up With That?

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Sociology Professor Kari Norgaard thinks people believe in global warming, but behave as if it wasn’t an issue, by numbing themselves to the reality.

Climate Change in the Age of Numbing

“We live in one way, and we think in another. We learn to think in parallel. It’s a skill, an art of living.”

By: Kari Marie Norgaard

It was not long after my arrival in Bygdaby — a pseudonym I use for an actual rural community in western Norway — that I began to sense a paradox. Norwegians are among the most highly educated people in the world. Global warming was frequently mentioned during my time in Bygdaby, and community members seemed to be both informed and concerned about it. Yet at the same time it was an uncomfortable issue. People were aware that climate change could radically alter life within the next decades, yet they did not go about their days wondering what life would be like for their children, whether farming practices would change in Bygdaby, or whether their grandchildren would be able to ski on real snow. They spent their days thinking about more local, manageable topics.

Ingrid, a local high school student, described how “you have the knowledge, but you live in a completely different world.” Vigdis told me that she was afraid of global warming, but that it didn’t enter her everyday life: “I often get afraid, like — it goes very much up and down, then, with how much I think about it. But if I sit myself down and think about it, it could actually happen; I thought about how if this here continues, we could come to have no difference between winter and spring and summer, like — and lots of stuff about the ice that is melting and that there will be flooding, like, and that is depressing, the way I see it.”

…

Community members describe climate change as an issue that they have to “sit themselves down and think about,” “don’t think about in the everyday,” “but that in between is discouraging and an emotional weight.” People in Bygdaby did know about global warming, but they did not integrate this knowledge into everyday life.

…

Read more: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/climate-change-in-the-age-of-numbing/

Kari seems to assume people believe and are desperately worried, but psychologically numb themselves to the awful knowledge of imminent doom so they can function in their daily lives.

The other possibility of course is that people are a bit worried, but not worried enough to act on their concern.

Daniel J Cass, University of Sydney Australia’s energy market is outdated. It doesn’t encourage competition and that’s holding back the transition to renewable energy. Important reforms to modernise the market are on the way, but big energy companies are seeking to use the cover of COVID-19 to prevent the change. 6 weitere Wörter

Energy giants want to thwart reforms that would help renewables and lower power bills — Watts Up With That?

Daniel J Cass, University of Sydney

Australia’s energy market is outdated. It doesn’t encourage competition and that’s holding back the transition to renewable energy. Important reforms to modernise the market are on the way, but big energy companies are seeking to use the cover of COVID-19 to prevent the change.

This is bad for consumers, and for climate action. Reform would help create a modern grid designed around clean energy, pushing coal-fired generators to retire earlier. Over time, it would also bring down power costs for households and business.

Renewable energy is the cheapest form of new electricity. It’s far better for the environment than coal and gas, and can deliver reliable supplies when backed by batteries and other energy storage.

Instead of delaying reform, Australia should be advancing it.

What’s this all about?

Regulators and governments recognise the need to modernise the rules governing the National Electricity Market. That market, established in 1998, supplies all Australian jurisdictions except Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Reliable electricity requires that supply and demand be kept in balance. This balance is primarily provided by a system known as the wholesale spot market. Every five minutes, electricity generators bid into the spot market, specifying how much energy they will provide at a certain price.

An entire redesign of the market rules is scheduled for 2025. This should make the market work efficiently and reliably as coal retires and is replaced by renewable energy.

In the meantime, one important rule change is due to start in July next year, known as “5-minute settlement”.

---

Read more: Matt Canavan says Australia doesn’t subsidise the fossil fuel industry, an expert says it does

---

Currently, electricity is sold and sent out from generators in 5-minute blocks. But the actual price paid for this electricity in the wholesale market is averaged every 30 minutes. This means there are six dispatch periods, each with their own price, which are then averaged out when the market is settled.

This strange design has enabled big electricity generators to game the market. One method involves placing high bids in the first interval, then placing low or even negative bids in the remaining five intervals. This ensures that electricity from the big generators is purchased, but that they and all other generators receive an artificially high average price for the whole 30-minute period.

In 2017, the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) decided to replace 30-minute settlement with 5-minute settlement.

The commission says the current system was adopted more than 20 years ago due to technological barriers which have since been overcome. It argues moving to 5-minute settlement would better reflect the value to consumers of fast-response technologies, such as batteries storing renewable energy and so-called “demand response” (a concept we’ll explain later).

According to the AEMC, the rule change would lead to lower wholesale costs, cutting electricity prices for consumers.

But on March 19 this year, the Australian Energy Council, which represents most coal-fired power stations and the big three electricity retailers, sought to delay the reform. It wrote to federal energy minister Angus Taylor and his state counterparts, arguing the pandemic means energy companies must focus on “critical supply and reliabilty” issues, rather than implementing the rule change.

But energy consumption has barely changed during the pandemic, the Australia Institute’s national energy emissions audit shows. So delaying the reform to deal with supply and reliability issues appears unjustified.

Despite this, the Australian Energy Market Operator has proposed delaying the change for a year. Our submission, endorsed by energy and technology leaders, opposes the delay.

Moves by regulators to delay another 16 market reforms due to COVID-19 also seem to be afoot.

Change is possible

Last week, one big rule change to the National Electricity Market did proceed as planned. It allows “demand response” energy trading from 2021.

Demand response involves reducing energy consumption during peaks in demand, such as during heatwaves. Basically, the rule means big energy users, such as smelters and manufacturing plants, could power down in these periods, and be paid for doing so.

Technology pioneers such as battery entrepreneur Simon Hackett and Atlassian chief Mike Cannon-Brookes have backed this change.

Australia has successfully used demand response to provide emergency electricity capacity and other benefits. But it’s never been unleashed in the wholesale energy market.

The rule change doesn’t involve smaller users such as households. But it’s a promising start that creates new competition for fossil fuel generators and allows energy users to help make the grid more reliable.

---

Read more: New demand-response energy rules sound good, but the devil is in the (hugely complicated) details

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Political warfare over climate policy has held back Australia, and the electricity market, for more than a decade. But energy reform that encourages greater market competition can readily be supported by political conservatives.

The demand-response rule change is a clear example: it has been championed by Taylor and his predecessors Josh Frydenberg and Greg Hunt.

Getting future-ready

Once the health crisis is over and economic recovery has begun, Australia will need the economic and social benefits of electricity market reform even more than before.

Such reform “stimulus” would help ready the grid for the inevitable retirement of coal-fired power stations, such as Liddell in 2023.

It would also align with state government investments in renewable energy, and boost private investment in new generation (which has recently slumped) and large-scale batteries.

Electricity remains Australia’s highest-polluting sector. Around the world, electricity markets are planning the transition from high to low emissions.

Delaying reform in Australia would be a major setback on the path to our essential energy transition.

Richie Merzian, Climate & Energy Program Director at The Australia Institute, contributed to this piece.

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Read more: Putting stimulus spending to the test: 4 ways a smart government can create jobs and cut emissions

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Daniel J Cass, Research Affiliate, Sydney Business School, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From Jacobin Nothing is over the top any more. Insanity or hyperbole? You decide. Despite the obvious parallels with coronavirus shutdowns, states still show little determination to put in place the measures we’ll need to deal with the climate emergency. 15 weitere Wörter

To Halt Climate Change, We Need an Ecological Leninism — Watts Up With That?

From Jacobin

Nothing is over the top any more. Insanity or hyperbole? You decide.

Despite the obvious parallels with coronavirus shutdowns, states still show little determination to put in place the measures we’ll need to deal with the climate emergency. For Andreas Malm, we need to stop seeing climate change as a problem for the future — and use state power now to impose a drastic reordering of our economies.

A little assertion there, a little leap in logic there and without much in between, voila, pandemics are just like climate change.

From quite early on in the course of the pandemic, commentators began to draw comparisons between the COVID-19 crisis and the climate crisis. However, I argue that such direct comparisons are flawed in the sense that the current pandemic constitutes a specific event, whereas global warming is a secular trend. Nevertheless, we miss the essence of the COVID-19 outbreak if we fail to recognize it for what it is, namely one extreme — but long expected — manifestation of another secular trend: the rise in the rate of infectious diseases jumping from wild animals to human populations. This is a trend that has increased over past decades and is projected to accelerate in the future.

The most important driving force behind the production of pandemics is clear in the scientific literature and it is deforestation — which is also the second biggest contributor to global climate change. The place in which you find the greatest biodiversity on Earth is in tropical forests, and this biodiversity includes pathogens. These pathogens, which circulate among nonhuman animals in wild habitats, do not generally pose a problem to humanity as long as humans stay away from them. However, the problem arises as the human economy makes deeper and deeper incursions into these habitats. The clearance of forests for logging, agriculture, mining, and the construction of roads creates new interfaces where humans come into contact with wildlife. Through these interfaces, animal pathogens are able to mutate and leap into human populations through a process called zoonotic spillover.

Global warming itself also accelerates this trend. As temperatures rise, certain animals are forced to migrate in search of climates that match those to which they are adapted. A generalized chaos ensues in which animal populations — including, significantly, bats — are increasingly brought into contact with human populations, thereby increasing the rate of transmission. While there are upward of 1,200 different species of bats, all share a common trait that makes them unique among mammals, namely their ability to engage in sustained flight. This shared characteristic not only makes them highly mobile and therefore susceptible to climate-change-induced migration, it also requires prodigious amounts of energy, driving metabolic rates to a point where bodily temperatures reach 40°C for many hours on end, a level that would be experienced as fever by most other mammals. This process has been postulated as the primary reason behind bats being the main carrier of pathogens such as coronaviruses. [emphasis mine]

Postulated, and in passive voice. Good enough for me. Gotta love sciency writing.

And of course, it’s always a problem of oppression and inequity.

There was a moment in March 2020 when many of us in the climate justice movement felt a degree of surprise to find that governments in Europe and elsewhere were prepared to basically shut down their entire economies in an effort to contain the pandemic. This is striking, given that the same states had never contemplated undertaking any kind of intervention in the economy for the sake of the climate crisis. The primary reason for this lies in the different timeline of victimhood manifested by these two crises.

Now, overall, the pandemic has played out similarly to that of global warming in the simple sense that those who have suffered most and those who are most likely to die are the working class — most particularly working-class people of color and those in various hotspots in the Global South. The rich, meanwhile, have been able to self-isolate with ease by escaping to additional homes in the countryside and have been able to access private health care.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

The current juncture therefore provides us with an opportunity to oppose the return to business as usual, to push for the transformation of the global economy and the launch of something like a Green New Deal.

Nevertheless, we have to be honest about the situation we find ourselves in. COVID-19 has brought about the sudden obliteration of the climate justice movement in terms of everything that had been built up by the end of 2019. Since early 2020, COVID-19 has completely paralyzed all the most promising developments in the environmental movement — Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, Ende Gelände, and so on — this is a situation of grave disaster. Prior to this, there had been a growing momentum toward aggressively disrupting business as usual, and while there have been attempts to temporarily move these actions online, there is simply no way to exert the same kind of pressure through digital means.

The article goes on to discuss ways of defeating Capitalism and saving the world through the joyous overturning of the oppressive planet-killing system.

The whole strategic direction of Lenin after 1914 was to turn World War I into a fatal blow against capitalism. This is precisely the same strategic orientation we must embrace today — and this is what I mean by ecological Leninism. We must find a way of turning the environmental crisis into a crisis for fossil capital itself.

You can read the full article here.