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I don’t have a proper blog this week because (a) I was doing my taxes (or thinking about doing them) and (b) I am still sulking over the redesign of the paper, which has buried the blogs and brought to the fore lots of crime and real estate and obituaries. If AI were going to write the paper, it could do police reports, real estate listings, and meeting summaries. It couldn’t do the blogs or the restaurant reviews, am I right? I am hopeful that the new editors will figure out how to make our paper delightful and human again.
But I don’t want to leave you empty-handed just because I was stewing. So below is an interesting chart that I saw earlier this week in a Stanford Continuing Studies class. The class is about what we can learn about climate change from looking at Earth’s ancient history. It is very well taught by Professors Michael McWilliams and Franklin Orr, but afaict there is not a lot of good news for us. It’s kind of disconcerting to hear McWilliams relate in his happy lilt how we are now all probably in a sixth extinction.
Anyway, the chart below is from 2023 rather than ancient history, and specifically from the 2024 Munich Security Conference. Every year the conference organizers survey 1000 people from each of a set of countries about their perceptions of different risks. How serious is each risk, how imminent, how prepared is their country, etc. What is interesting to me is how many of the top perceived risks are related to climate change (see red below, but also others like food shortages), and how the US is a marked outlier among developed countries when it comes to worrying about climate change. Is it because we are wealthy? Oblivious? Optimistic? We are more preoccupied with political polarization, cyberattacks, and China.
The Chinese seem pretty sanguine about everything, but survey administrators caution readers to take the results with a grain of salt as “respondents may not feel like they can freely express their views.” It’s interesting that the number one issue for Indians, by far, is “Climate change generally”. I can see that given the debilitating heat and floods they have been experiencing.
Anyway, I should have a blog post next week, tentatively on how California is thinking about land use when it comes to its aggressive climate goals. Until then, I’m interested in your thoughts on this chart, doing your taxes, or the redesign!
Current Climate Data
Global impacts (January 2024), US impacts (January 2024), CO2 metric, Climate dashboard
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I agree the new format sucks. The blogs and comments are much more interesting than crime reports, etc, etc.
I agree the new format sucks. The only way I have come up with following discussions is by leaving several tabs open and refreshing them daily. Very tiresome.
As for climate and farming, have you been paying attention to the farmers in France and Germany, probably other places, who are protesting by blocking roads with tractors about various climate initiatives. If the farmers can’t afford to farm, how will we feed the world’s population let alone ourselves? Will we all have to turn into back yard gardeners just to eat? OK probably an exaggeration but Europe seems to be in revolt.
The farmers are certainly in revolt all over Europe. I read that much of it is because of the Ukraine war (higher costs, letting in cheap goods) and efforts to fight inflation (lower food costs). But there is an effort to reduce subsidies for diesel fuel, and it’s never easy to claw back subsidies. It’s also true that extreme weather and drought are affecting production, and there is concern about nitrogen taxes affecting fertilizer prices, water use restrictions, etc. With so much change, it is no wonder the far right is ascendant. But change is coming whether we like it or not. Even managing the change is change. If you want to see more detail on what some of the issues are and how many are related to the impacts of climate change or efforts to mitigate those impacts, see https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-do-the-eu-farmer-protests-relate-to-climate-change/
Thanks for expressing your dismay, Sherry, over the new format of Palo Alto online. I agree that it needs more work. The new format has a LOT of photos as enticements to read the stories, but being able to get into the story with a few lines or a paragraph is much more enticing, especially if it’s a stock photo of a police badge or a casket with flowers. Perhaps these could be made smaller as an icon that symbolizes “this is a police story” or “read the Obits here.” While it’s only a mini-second to scroll past them, it still an annoying waste of time to a reader who wants to get to the “meat” of a story. And as a second point, it’s not always clear if the headlines that go with the stories belong to the photos above or below. The graphics folks need do something better to connect the headlines with the pictures. I understand that people like to see photos, but this IS a town full of highly educated people who like to READ, and we don’t need big recurring photos to convince us to click on what we are looking for.
Yeah, I’d trade text for huge photos any day. But maybe that’s just you and me? We’ll see. FWIW, the mobile (phone) site hasn’t changed all that much, it’s mostly the desktop site, which not as many people use. The key will be to figure out how much it’s affecting views, comments, impressions of the paper, etc.
Anyway, be sure to share your feedback with the new editors. Thanks for taking the time to comment Debbie!