[GWSG] Action choice; pongamia for supper; energy imbalance crucial; big CH4 alarm rings

[Tilley, Al]

1. In response to Peter Kalmus’s call for civil disobedience in the last news list, Bron Taylor sends this article analyzing the issues we face as we contemplate modes of climate action.  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282069814_Resistance_Do_the_Ends_Justify_the_Means

2. Pongamia is a hardy, drought-tolerant tree which produces lots of bitter beans. When the beans are tamed with alcohol, they yield a buttery oil which can replace olive oil, a vegetable milk with the full set of amino acids analogous to soy milk, or a high-protein food. They require no fertilization or irrigation, even in rough conditions. They grow wild in many Asian countries. Terviva, in Oakland, has piloted them in Florida and is importing the beans from India. Perhaps it will be what’s for supper. Thanks to Hank Williams for the story.  https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/food-and-farms/this-super-tree-could-help-feed-the-world-and-fight-climate-change

3. The Wikipedia article has not yet heard that the oil of the pongamia can be tamed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pongamia_oil

4. A 2016 Queensland, Australia, study found the tree moderately invasive but did not consider it an immediate problem. https://www.daf.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/67575/IPA-Pongamia-Risk-Assessment.pdf   The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the U of Florida considers pongamia an invasive threat. Might the tree prove so useful that we would cultivate it nonetheless, as Terviva has in the state? https://assessment.ifas.ufl.edu/assessments/millettia-pinnata/

5. Earth’s energy imbalance is more significant than surface temperature in describing the magnitude of climate change. https://phys.org/news/2022-07-earth-energy-imbalance-critical-global.html

6. An article in Nature observes that atmospheric methane is increasing more rapidly than we had anticipated. In addition to the usual culprits—melting permafrost, cattle, corporate plunder—it may be building up because “global heating is four times more influential in accelerating methane emissions than previously estimated, with rising temperatures helping to produce more methane (by speeding up microbe activity in wetlands for example), while at the same time slowing down the removal of methane from the atmosphere (with increasing numbers of wildfires reducing the availability of hydroxyl radicals in the upper atmosphere).” We appear to have been greatly underestimating the pace of climate disruption and the damage it causes. Obviously, we must work harder to control forest fires. Obviously, we should go immediately to a plant-based diet. Obviously, we have no business producing more greenhouse gasses, and should embark on an emergency program of atmospheric carbon removal and sequestration.   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/05/global-heating-causes-methane-growth-four-times-faster-than-thought-study

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