IF YOU ENJOY SR AND FIND IT USEFUL WOULD YOU PLEASE DONATE
When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
Stephan: Here is another take on the coming real estate collapse; this one on another part of the U.S. This real estate bomb is ticking away about to explode. If you own property in one of these threatened areas, I suggest you ask yourself: How much longer can we retain our invested value, when should we think about selling?
Citation: "The effect of information about climate risk on property values," published April 27 in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, was authored by Miyuki Hino, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and
Stanford University; and Marshall Burke, Stanford University
Homes in floodplains are floating on overvaluation. Credit: CarlosOsorio/AP
Single-family homes in U.S. flood plains are overvalued by a total of $43.8 billion, new research shows, highlighting the unsustainability of real estate markets in the face of escalating climate change. An estimated 3.8 million single-family homes are located in flood plains, meaning the average flood plain home is overvalued by more than $11,500, according to an April 27 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The overvaluation we find is really concerning, especially given the increases in climate risk that are coming our way,” said lead author Miyuki Hino, an environmental social scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The widespread overvaluation could represent a ticking time bomb for the millions of Americans whose assets are tied up in flood zone properties, which are concentrated, but not exclusively located, in coastal states. As sea levels rise, natural disasters worsen and flood insurance rates rise, these properties’ values could plummet.
Hino and her co-author, Marshall Burke of Stanford University, found that a single-family home being located in a flood plain does decrease its value by a little bit — but to a far lesser degree than it should. “Lots of […]
Stephan: Here is yet another new approach to non-carbon energy. As I read these reports all I can think of is what would the world be like, would we have avoided climate catastrophe if, in 1973, Congress had listened to President Jimmy Carter and begun a serious transition out of the age of carbon energy instead of waiting nearly half a century.
A wavy, undulating solar panel building in the desert. Credit: Nudes
Designs of the future are increasingly centering on environmental impact as the effects of climate change start to reach world-historical levels. This means not only engineers, but architects and artists are exploring new and unprecedented ways of reimagining their work to minimize intrusion on the natural environment.
Burning Man is a well-known annual event that brings a lot of entrepreneurial people into the presence of artists, which makes the development of “Solar Mountain” assemblies to potentially power the 3,800-acre ranch of Burning Man with 318,645 kWh of power per year less of a stretch of the imagination.
And if the design is brought to completion, it could enable civil engineers and artists to reimagine the way we generate power for communities around the world, in an unprecedented wave of nature-oriented collaboration.
‘Solar Mountain’ could hint at the future of eco-friendly architecture
The new design incorporates a gigantic assortment of solar panels stretching down a gradient from a central spine. The architects behind the new project claim […]
Stephan: Here is one of the first exegetic reports I have read describing how badly government agencies forecast the transition out of the carbon era.
‘Solar is providing the cheapest energy the world has ever seen … It’s a fundamentally different world we’re moving into.’ Credit: Lukas Coch/AAP
In the year 2000, the International Energy Agency made a prediction that would come back to haunt it: by 2020, the world would have installed a grand total of 18 gigawatts of photovoltaic solar capacity. Seven years later, the forecast would be proven spectacularly wrong when roughly 18 gigawatts of solar capacity were installed in a single year alone.
Ever since the agency was founded in 1974 to measure the world’s energy systems and anticipate changes, the yearly World Energy Outlook has been a must-read document for policymakers the world over.
Over the last two decades, however, the IEA has consistently failed to see the massive growth in renewable energy coming. Not only has the organisation underestimated the take-up of solar and wind, but it has massively overstated the demand for coal and oil.
Jenny Chase, head of solar analysis at BloombergNEF, says that, in fairness to the IEA, it wasn’t alone.
Stephan: There are two problems with American Law enforcement, two reasons why the United States, on the basis of social outcome data, has the worst policing system amongst the democratic nations of the world. First, is the quality of the people who are hired. If you hire racist thugs and bullies is it any surprise they behave like racist thugs and bullies? Second, the way new hires are trained.
This article peels back the happy talk about police training that I keep reading from law enforcement agencies and reveals the truth about the kind of people hired to train new cops. When I read this article, particularly the comment by a police instructor who trains police departments across the nation, who tells trainees the best sex they will ever have is after killing a person, calling it a “perk of the job,” it made me want to puke.
David Grossman, who trains young cops to kill, and tells them they will have the best sex of the lives afterwards. Credit: The New Yorker.
The murders by cop go on – the latest, Lymond Moses, was asleep in his car – prompting furious calls for police reform from many weary of the carnage. Along with systemic racism, rabid militarization, fascist police unions, no accountability and infamously inadequate if not deranged training, we can thank messianic warrior-cop, uber fear-mongerer and “killology” expert Dave Grossman, a former Army ranger who for 20 years has traveled almost daily to every state in the blood-soaked union to offer popular police “trainings” to tell young acolytes they’re “the royalty of this land” – alas, a war zone of thugs and terrorists where they must learn to fight back with “righteous violence,” shoot first and think later, and per Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop, “make the threat die” – which, as the grim headlines remind us, they are, at a rate of roughly three a day. Since retiring from the Army in 1998 – video shows him in camo and face-paint shouting for “a symphony of death and destruction – […]
Stephan: I think Nicholas Kristof has got it right. If the Democrats in 2022 can retain control of the House and Senate, which I think they will, by 2024 the changes Biden, Harris, and the Democrats in Congress will have wrought in America will have changed the course of the nation in such a positive way that the Republican Party will be cast into the wilderness for a generation. I see this as very good news.
President Franklin Roosevelt
YAMHILL, OREGON — The best argument for President Biden’s three-part proposal to invest heavily in America and its people is an echo of Franklin Roosevelt’s explanation for the New Deal.
“In 1932 there was an awfully sick patient called the United States of America,” Roosevelt said in 1943. “He was suffering from a grave internal disorder … and they sent for a doctor.”
Paging Dr. Joe Biden.
We should be cleareyed about both the enormous strengths of the United States — its technologies, its universities, its entrepreneurial spirit — and its central weakness: For half a century, compared with other countries, we have underinvested in our people.
In 1970, the United States was a world leader in high school and college attendance, enjoyed high life expectancy and had a solid middle class. This was achieved in part because of Roosevelt.
The New Deal was imperfect and left out too many African-Americans and Native Americans, but it was still transformative.
Here in my hometown, Yamhill, the New Deal was an engine of opportunity. A few farmers had rigged generators on […]
Stephan: Here is some more exciting good news. The argument against wind turbines has been that they killed birds. Well, the technology is moving on, and this is the next step. No spinning turbine blades.
Wind farms certainly allow for the production of clean energy. Although they are 100% renewable, they still have problems. They have high costs, disfigure the landscape, produce noise pollution, and above all, have a heavy impact on fauna, and in particular on birds.
Vortex Bladeless wind turbines generate electricity from the vibration. Credit: Vortex Bladeless
The Spanish startup Vortex Bladeless has developed a bladeless turbine that can revolutionize wind energy, especially at the household level, and become the alternative to solar panels. The design of the Spanish firm has already received the approval of Norway’s state energy company, Equinor.
The new turbine, which has also been called the “Skybrator” due to its phallic shape, is capable of harnessing energy from winds without the sweeping white blades everyone associates with wind power. It generates wind energy thanks to vibration and without generating the environmental and visual impact on the fauna of the large wind farms.
Vortex Bladeless Design. Credit: Vortex Bladeless
About 3 meters high, it is basically a curve-topped […]
Stephan: I have been predicting this for years: migrations occurring because of climate change, and now they are occurring. Media has finally woken up to this trend as this transcribed interview describes.
The way to stop migrations is to assist countries in dealing with climate change in a way that fosters wellbeing. It will be more productive, more efficient, easier to implement, longer enduring, and much much cheaper.
Central American immigrants
We look at the link between migration and the climate emergency, which studies have estimated could displace over 200 million people by 2050, including many in Central American countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Last year, two hurricanes, Iota and Eta, devastated the region and forced thousands to flee north. A new report finds that the climate crisis is already a driver in migration from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, which reiterates the necessity of planning “ahead for the major migration flows,” says Camila Bustos, human rights associate at the University Network for Human Rights. “What we’re really telling the Biden administration is to take this data, look into it, think critically and creatively about solutions, and revise immigration policy.”
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. And we look now at the link between the climate emergency and migration. Studies have estimated climate change could displace over 200 million people by 2050, including many in Central America, including Guatemala, El […]
Stephan: This report about the anti-vaxxers, like reports about the number of people who still think Trump actually won the election, or Democrats are importing migrants of color so they can replace White people, or vaccines contain micro-chips so Bill Gates can monitor your every move, and on and on, I think are all telling us the same thing. About a third of the United States'population are not intellectually or emotionally capable of living in a fact-based reallity. Instead, they live in an emotional world of fantasy, fear, resentment, and mistrust.
Credit: Adam Maida/ The Atlantic
Several days ago, the mega-popular podcast host Joe Rogan advised his young listeners to skip the COVID-19 vaccine. “I think you should get vaccinated if you’re vulnerable,” Rogan said. “But if you’re 21 years old, and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I’ll go, ‘No.’”
Rogan’s comments drew widespread condemnation. But his view is surprisingly common. One in four Americans says they don’t plan to take the COVID-19 vaccine, and about half of Republicans under 50 say they won’t get a vaccine. This partisan vaccine gap is already playing out in the real world. The average number of daily shots has declined 20 percent in the past two weeks, largely because states with larger Trump vote shares are falling off the pace.
What are they thinking, these vaccine-hesitant, vaccine-resistant, and COVID-apathetic? I wanted to know. So I posted an invitation on Twitter for anybody who wasn’t planning to get vaccinated to email me and explain why. In the past few days, I spoke or corresponded with more than a dozen such people. I told them […]
