machination.org

• Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored) — “We are now living our ancestors’ nightmares, and it didn’t have to be this way” (Guardian)
• Climate Change Is Making It Harder for Campers to Beat the Heat — ‘It’s not just camp days that have changed; with climate change, nights don’t cool down as much. … Fans at night used to be enough to cool both cabins and campers. “About 10 years ago we noticed this was no longer the case,” and they installed air-conditioning in the cabins … after a “particularly brutal summer.”’ (New York Times)
• Climate change has gotten deadly. It will get worse. (Washington Post)
• Edinburgh flooding: Half of July rain fell in one hour (BBC News)
• Teaching ecology to, building habitats with disadvantaged children: ‘You’ll be amazed at how many animals arrive’ — “A charity worker says the children she teaches about the environment seem increasingly concerned.” (BBC News)
• Local: Access To D.C.’s Cooling Centers Was Limited Last Week, Despite Heat Emergency (DCist)

• At 245, America’s Old Enough to Be Honest About Its Founding (Intercept)
• ‘What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?’ by Frederick Douglass (Nation)
• A Fourth of July Symbol of Unity That May No Longer Unite — ‘David Surozenski, a Republican, refused to add Trump flags to his display. “That’s not the way I was brought up,” he said. “The American flag political? No.”’ (New York Times) I can admire that.
• Nowhere is safe, say scientists as extreme heat causes chaos in US and Canada — ‘“Climate models are actually underestimating the impact that climate change is having’ (Guardian)
• Is the Future of Farming in the Ocean? (Ep. 467) — “… if you take less than 5 percent of U.S. waters and just grow seaweed, you sequester the carbon-output equivalent of 20 million cars.” (Freakonomics Radio)
• Errol Morris on Donald Rumsfeld: A Fog of Memos — “The trick was to marginalize the record, to litter it with so many contradictions that a rebuttal to any future historian could always be found.” (New York Times)
• Some major cities ranked by surveillance cameras per km (Marginal Revolution) D.C. doesn’t quite make the top 10. I didn’t crack into the linked report to see if this includes Ring doorbell cameras.
• Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald’s NSA “Scandal” (New Republic) Greenwald has become problematic for me. I appreciated, if wincingly, his defense of principle that tried to force people to recognize the rights, if not agree on the rightness, of folks across the political spectrum. I question the sycophants of the left-ish media cult. But I think Greenwald’s once solid orbit above bullshit has decayed.

Links for 3 July 2021

• The North American heatwave shows we need to know how climate change will change our weather (Attention to the Unseen)
• Biden backs Dems into a corner on climate — “Climate activists … are worried that no one — including President JOE BIDEN and lawmakers on Capitol Hill — is doing enough to fix it, and as climate policies get swallowed up by the reconciliation process, they’re gearing up for a new pressure campaign to turn up the heat on Washington.” (POLITICO Playbook)
• How to survive in a permanent climate emergency (New York Magazine)
• The Dark Side of Solar Power — “… sustainable technology can least afford to be short-sighted about the waste it creates. A strategy for entering the circular economy is absolutely essential — and the sooner, the better.” (Harvard Business Review)
• Leaky Gas Pipeline Sparks an Inferno in the Gulf of Mexico(New York Times), Horrifying Massive Oil Pipeline Blaze Sets Gulf Of Mexico On Fire (Huffington Post)
• Inside the Insurrection on Congress (New York Times by way of Kottke)
• The demographic shift isn’t driving white people to the Right — “What liberals need to do is make a positive case for their values – toleration, neutrality, equality, proportionality and freedom from arbitrary infringements of liberty – on the merits. If they do not, and proceed as if this case were self-evident, then illiberal values such as nationalism, white supremacy, ethnocentrism, male superiority, religious fundamentalism, homophobia and the liberty to take advantage of the weak will surely take their place.” (Aeon)