Category: Econuts

BLUF
Extreme environmentalism is an ideology that cares little for human life, even regards it as a blight on the Earth that should be reduced. Its instinctive sympathies are against our species. It wants less economic growth, less entrepreneurial spirit, less development, less energy, less safety, less food, less comfort.

The real-world consequences of green extremism

Glorious pictures from the edge of the universe have arrived on Earth just when events here force us to consider the possibility that governments are run by aliens. They are so out of touch with common sense that they must come from other planets.

The James Webb Space Telescope, a wonder of human ingenuity, resourcefulness, imagination, and creative curiosity, is revealing the birth of galaxies to a world in which, by contrast, overreaching oligarchs and bossy bureaucrats constrict the actions of ordinary people trying to make their own lives and the lives of others better.

Much of the world groans under immiserating rules handed down by a “theory class,” even though they obviously don’t work. The accolade for the most disastrous policy outcome is hotly contested, and Wednesday’s grim revelation of 9.1% inflation shows that President Joe Biden’s spending agenda is a strong contender. But even that might not take the cake.

Worse, perhaps, are the results of hyper-alarmism on climate change. Excessive environmental policies are proving disastrous worldwide. Suddenly, all the green chickens are coming home to roost.

Intolerant “liberals” keen to “save the planet” are ruining it — officiously preventing the poor from lifting themselves out of poverty, forcing wealthy nations to retreat from comfort and efficiency into backwardness, even killing people by the hundreds of thousands.

Humankind long ago acquired the technological ability to thrive in all climes, but citizens of the most advanced nations must now check the weather forecast to know if their fridges and household lights will work or be shut down in an electricity blackout.

In Britain, overdependence on wind turbines built to cut carbon emissions leaves inhabitants at the mercy of the weather . When the wind doesn’t blow, the economy doesn’t work.

Likewise, in Germany, the world’s fourth-biggest economy, calm summer air means turbines stand idle, incapable of producing electricity and jacking up energy prices irrespective of the nation’s equally asinine overdependence on gas supplies from a recalcitrant Russia.

Excessively tight emissions rules, which amount to “anti-farming policies,” have triggered protests across Europe. They started in the Netherlands, where 30% of farms might be put out of business. And they have spread to Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland, where farmers fear being subjected to the same privations.

If, as expected, bureaucratic meddling slashes Dutch output — the Netherlands is one of the biggest and most efficient farming nations in the world — production will shift to less efficient, more polluting producers elsewhere.

This is similar to the attack that green zealots in the Democratic Party launched against American energy production at the start of the Biden administration. By shutting down energy leases and discouraging investment in the United States because of exaggerated and parochial climate concerns, the green oligarchy transfers production and wealth to dirtier producers overseas, such as Russia.

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BLUF
While the supply chain crisis and the placation of the California protestors continue, for now, remember the Democratic Party ultimately intends to take AB5 national, so be on the lookout for more freedom-damaging bills just like it coming soon near you.

Truckers Say California Law Likely to Make U.S. Supply Chain Crisis Even Worse.

Since last fall, PJ Media has been chronicling the U.S. supply chain crisis at our nation’s ports, railroads, highways, airports, and supermarket shelves. Over the intervening months, no amount of presidential or gubernatorial bloviating, photo-op visits, or misguided fines has truly fixed the congested conditions to get the supply chain back on track. And this month, a 2019 Democratic law is set to go into effect which will add even more stress to the already broken system.Yes, in their oh-so-vast wisdom, California Democrats passed Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) to force perfectly content freelancers and independent contractors (also known as “gig workers”) to be reclassified as employees. Like most leftist regulations, AB5’s initial intentions were one thing (“to protect all the poor mistreated gig workers” who didn’t  actually need or want protection) while its real-world outcomes are something thoroughly different (forcing employers to replace gig workers and decimating the industries that rely on them).

Touted as the leftist cure to save gig workers from exploitation, in reality, AB5 is simply a job- and freedom-killing monstrosity. AB5 limits the freedom of California’s workers to be independent contractors. Instead, it forces them to be considered salaried employees, which means the employers are also forced to place them under the existing laws for health insurance, retirement, and a myriad of other regulations concerning full-time employees. While AB5 does exempt some specific occupations from its onerous regulations, the state’s over 70,000 independent truckers were not explicitly among those exemptions in the original bill.

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After Sri Lanka, Globalist Green Agenda Pushes Ghana on Brink of Collapse.
From the Netherlands to Sub-Saharan Africa, ‘Climate Change’ policies devastate farmers’ livelihood and food supply.

From the Netherlands to Sub-Saharan Africa, the radical ‘Climate Change’ agenda is having a devastating impact on farmers’ livelihood and the world’s food supply. Days after the government in Sri Lanka collapsed after food riots triggered by ‘climate-friendly’ farming, the West African country of Ghana is on the verge of bankruptcy primarily due to these globalist policies.

Once among the fastest-growing economies in Africa, the country is now seeking a bailout from international financial institutions. “Ghana’s debt has steadily climbed from 54.2% of GDP in 2015 to 76.6% at the end of 2021, according to government data. Debt servicing cost just under 48% of government revenue in 2021 and Eurobond yields have been too high this year to issue new ones,” CNBC Africa reported Thursday.

Until recently, Ghana was the poster boy for the globalists. Under the Paris Agreement, Ghana “sought to reduce emissions by 15 to 45 percent … by 2030 and strengthen climate resilience in close alignment with its development priorities,” the United Nations reported in September 2020.

But that wasn’t radical enough. A year later, the country presented sweeping Climate goals that were “with more ambition across sectors and the inclusion of new greenhouse gases,” the UN acknowledged. This drastic cut in greenhouse emissions requires a massive reduction in the use of fertilizers in the farming and livestock sectors.

As the price of fertilizers rises in the international market in the wake of the Ukraine conflict, the West African country struggles to meet even its current requirement.

However, Ghana and other cash-strapped African countries cannot rely on Western support for their fertilizer procurement. The European Union has refused to help African countries to their boost domestic fertilizer production as this goes against the “EU green goals.”

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Coming here too, if we let the econuts in our goobermint do it.

BLUF
“The farrago of magical thinking, technocratic hubris, ideological delusion, self-dealing and sheer shortsightedness that produced the crisis in Sri Lanka implicates both the country’s political leadership and advocates of so-called sustainable agriculture.”

Eco-extremism has brought Sri Lanka to its knees
An obsession with organic farming ‘in sync with nature’ triggered an unsustainable but predictable economic crisis.

Sri Lanka’s collapse, from one of the fastest growing Asian economies to a political, economic and humanitarian horror show, seems to have taken everybody by surprise.

Five years ago, the World Bank was extolling “how Sri Lanka intends to transition to a more competitive and inclusive upper-middle income country”. Right up to the middle of last year, despite the impact of the pandemic, the country’s misery index (inflation plus unemployment) was low and falling. Then the misery index took off like a rocket, quintupling in a year.

What happened? There is a simple explanation, one that the BBC seems determined to downplay. In April 2021, president Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced that Sri Lanka was banning most pesticides and all synthetic fertiliser to go fully organic. Within months, the volume of tea exports had halved, cutting foreign exchange earnings. Rice yields plummeted leading to an unprecedented requirement to import rice. With the government unable to service its debt, the currency collapsed.

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THE REVOLUTION WON’T BE REPORTED

Everyone knows that the Dutch Farmers are in revolt, but we might miss how far in revolt they are: Protesting Dutch Farmers Refuse to Back Down Despite Police Crackdown. And the entire world knows about Sri Lanka. But here and there other things come through, that indicate trouble in other places: Albania, Italy, Germany.

Everywhere the Farmers are revolting against the revolting Green Agenda that would exterminate mankind and keep the few survivors alive to be play things of the elites, living in sewers and eating bugs to gratify the self-styled “best people.” And they dropped the masks and are talking about their agendas in public, as though they weren’t completely crazy-cakes and repulsive to any not-completely-perverted human being.

And it’s really repulsive and insane. Lately the UN put up an article explaining how world hunger was a good thing because it provided ready serfs. No one could make sense of it, and people maintain it’s satire, but is it the job of the UN to publish satire, particularly when it’s satire about a real situation we’re facing: World hunger? Not the localized world hunger created by kleptocratic (largely socialist) governments, but real world hunger, born of the idiot international kleptocrats f*ck f*ck plots and machinations.
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See Also Sri Lanka

A Popular Uprising Against the Elites Has Gone Global

A popular uprising of working-class people against the elites and their values is underway—and it’s crossing the globe. There is a growing resistance by the middle and lower classes against what Rob Henderson has coined the “luxury beliefs” of the elites, as everyday folks realize the harm it causes them and their communities.

There were early glimmerings last February, when the Canadian Trucker Convoy pitched working class truck drivers against a “laptop class” demanding ever more restrictive COVID-19 policies. You saw it as well in the victory of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who ran on parents’ rights in education and went on to win both suburbs and rural areas. You can see it in the growing support of Hispanic voters for a Republican Party, which increasingly identifies as anti-woke, and pro-working class. And now we’re seeing the latest iteration in the Netherlands in the form of a farmer’s protest against new environmental rulings that will ruin them.

Over 30,000 Dutch farmers have risen in protest against the government in the wake of new nitrogen limits that require farmers to radically curb their nitrogen emissions by up to 70 percent in the next eight years. It would require farmers to use less fertilizer and even to reduce the number of their livestock. While large farming companies have the means to hypothetically meet these goals and can switch to non-nitrogen-based fertilizers, it is impossible for smaller, often family-owned farms. The new environmental regulations are so extreme that they would force many to shutter, including people whose families have been farming for three or four generations. In protest, farmers have been blockading streets and refusing to deliver their products to supermarket chains. It’s been leading to serious shortages of eggs and milk, among other food items.

But the effects will be global. The Netherlands is the world’s second largest agricultural exporter after the United States, making the country of barely 17 million inhabitants a food superpower. Given global food shortages and rising prices, the role of Dutch farmers in the global food chain has never been more important. But if you thought the Dutch government was going to take that into account and ensure that people can put food on the table, you would be wrong; when offered the choice between food security and acting against “climate change,” the Dutch government decided to pursue the latter.

What is particularly frustrating is that the government is fully aware that what it is asking farmers to do will drive many of them out of existence. In fact, the government originally planned to move at a slower pace—until a lawsuit brought by environmental groups in 2019 forced an acceleration of the timetable.

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It’s amazing what the prospect for a winter with little to no heat will do

European Commission Declares Nuclear and Gas to be Green.

From Deutsche Welle

The European Commission has labeled nuclear and gas as sustainable. Critics are calling the step “greenwashing” and say it could threaten the bloc’s bid to become climate-neutral by 2050.

One good way to know someone is trustworthy is that they tell you how trustworthy (credible) they are.

In a proposal presented this Wednesday, the EU Commission stated that certain strings remained attached. For example, gas plants could only be considered green if the facility switched to low-carbon or renewable gases, such as biomass or hydrogen produced with renewable energy, by 2035.

Nuclear power plants would be deemed green if the sites can manage to safely dispose of radioactive waste. So far, worldwide, no permanent disposal site, has gone into operation though.

At a news conference in Brussels, Mairead McGuinness, the EU commissioner responsible for financial services, said her institution was not guilty of “greenwashing,” as gas and nuclear were labeled as “transitional” energy sources in the taxonomy. “Our credibility is still strong,” McGuinness added.

Not everyone was happy.

Environmental organizations most certainly see this critically, saying the proposal could jeopardize the EU’s aim to reach climate neutrality by 2050. The Climate Action Network Europe wrote that the EU Commission “sacrifices the scientific integrity of the taxonomy on the altar of fossil gas and nuclear lobbies” and failed to “reorient financial flows towards genuinely climate-positive investments.”

It’s a comprehensive article and well worth a read.

What happens next?

The European Commission’s taxonomy proposal will now be reviewed by the 27 EU member states and by the European Parliament.

As the EU’s executive opted for a delegated act, a type of fast-track legislative procedure, only a total of 20 EU countries, or a majority of EU lawmakers at the European Parliament, would be able to reject it.

While EU states are not likely to turn down the taxonomy, a win in the European Parliament is not yet certain. Parliamentarians from across the political spectrum have expressed anger over the inclusion of fossil gas and nuclear power in the EU taxonomy.

Green lawmaker Rasmus Andresen said he was “disappointed” by the proposal, adding that the Green parliamentary fraction would fight hard to gather a majority against the taxonomy.

German Social Democrat Joachim Schuster told DW he thought it possible that the European Parliament could vote against the act.

And even if lawmakers were to support it, there is another threat looming: Austria and Luxembourg have already threatened to sue  the European Commission over the taxonomy rules.

I THINK ROLLING STONE MAY BE SLIGHTLY OVERREACTING TO THE SUPREME COURT’S EPA RULING:

Libs are mighty upset that the Supreme Court just delivered another conservative victory which would curtail the power of the EPA to just create its own regulations out of thin air, with no congressional approval.

SCOTUS rules the EPA can’t regulate national emissions and industry, effectively ending its unlimited power trip
As of today, the federal government can’t use the FDA to threaten businesses with closure if they don’t follow the demands of an unelected bureaucracy.

The decision basically takes power away from one of the alphabet agencies and empowers Congress to make actual laws. You know, the end of the world.

At least that’s what the uber-lefties over at Rolling Stone appear to actually believe.

Here’s a real thing they actually tweeted out:

Umm, I think you might be overreacting just a tiny bit.

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The article points out that 3/4s of our stuff is transported via truck vs. rail (also diesel powered which my search shows about a 1/3rd of the locomotives also use this) but it seems there’s some underhanded business dealing going on behind the scenes as well as econut BS.
The supply situation looks to get even worse than speculated.

Get ready for the catastrophic DEF shortage.

DEF is the acronym for Diesel Exhaust Fluid. Every diesel truck that has been made since 2010 is required to use it. It’s a product made of 32.5% urea (made from natural gas) and 37.5% de-ionized water. DEF is kept in a separate tank in the truck and the trucks using it will not start unless the DEF system is working properly. There are regulators inside the engine that mix DEF with the diesel exhaust to reduce diesel emissions. That’s the purpose of DEF.

Vehicles with SCR [Selective Catalytic Reduction] technology have a separate tank filled with DEF. This is then injected into the exhaust pipe, in front of the SCR catalyst, downstream of the engine.

Heated in the exhaust, it decomposes into ammonia and CO₂. When the NOx from the engine exhaust reacts inside the catalyst with the ammonia, the harmful NOx molecules in the exhaust are converted to harmless nitrogen and water, which are released from the tail pipe as steam.  (link)

The DEF system is critical for “greening” the use of diesel fuel. But DEF stocks are dropping.

The shortages our country is experiencing are making their way to diesel fuel and Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF).  If the current shortages of mechanics, trucks, and drivers does not improve then shortages may continue to get worse, so plan ahead.  … The bottom line is that freight won’t move without DEF.

Urea is manufactured as a derivative of natural gas. The largest US manufacturer is CF Industries, which has an overwhelmingly majority share of total manufacture:

Urea is also an essential ingredient in fertilizer. Yet despite these production numbers, the United States is the world’s third-largest importer of urea. Who exports it? Market Realist reports,

There’s a global shortage of urea. While the ongoing supply chain issues are also to blame for the urea shortage, the situation got worse after Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is a major fertilizer exporter and the country has banned fertilizer and urea exports.

China, which is also among the major urea exporters, has put restrictions on exports. Urea prices have surged over the last year, which is leading to high fertilizer prices. To ensure the domestic supply of fertilizers at a time when there are real risks of a global fuel shortage, countries have been looking to curb exports and prioritize domestic consumption. Natural gas is the key raw material in urea production.

Since urea is a key input for DEF, the shortage is having a negative impact on the DEF supply. Also, Europe, which is among the major DEF exporters to the U.S., is battling higher prices and natural gas shortages.

And, key point:

According to Discover DEF, “If the truck is allowed to run out of DEF, the engine’s power is reduced, a solid red warning will be displayed and the vehicle speed will be limited to 5 mph until the DEF tank is refilled.” If the DEF shortage gets worse, it could ground commercial fleets since they mainly run on diesel.

So: US urea imports are falling, US DEF imports are falling. And US domestic manufacture of DEF is likewise falling and may very quickly turn critical. But what about consumer sales? How will that be affected? Let’s connect some dots.

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The prevailing urban attitude is:
“What do those dumb country hicks know about anything important?”

Rash wolf policy already wrecking ranches.

Don Gittleson’s ranch is situated just south of the Wyoming line near Walden. The ranch itself is surrounded by hills, and there are no big city lights to take your eyes off what matters. This is big country, this is ranch country, and Gittleson has been here for years. He has used good purebred genetics to build a herd of high-performing cattle that can, as they say, go out and make a living. Unfortunately, Gittleson’s ranch is also the epicenter for the wolf mess in which the state is currently elbow deep.

At night, the cow herd lies together, calves at side, gestating, lactating and ruminating, turning stout native grass and feed into beef. The only sound disrupting the soft noises of the night is the idling of Gittleson’s pickup.

Since December, he has spent an excessive number of nights in his pickup, waiting to hear the cattle or burros signal the presence of wolves. The pack, which Colorado Parks & Wildlife estimates at about eight, naturally migrated from Wyoming. Gittleson said he’s seen tracks for a number of years quietly announcing the presence of the apex predators.

Last fall, a collared female began teaching her pups to hunt. They started with deer and elk, killing groups and leaving them where they dropped in the snow. In December, Gittleson lost the first heifers to the pack. Some were killed, others were found bleeding and too severely injured to survive. The most recent kill — a calf — was partially dragged away. Gittleson said he guesses the meat was taken to the female, likely in a den with a new litter of pups. If history repeats itself, those pups will begin learning to eat beef before the new year.

Range riders are present overnight but it’s an expense he won’t be able to continue indefinitely. Right now, they’re on the dime of wolf-advocate groups but he doesn’t expect that to last and with five of the six damage claims unpaid and $5 diesel fuel, it doesn’t pencil. The most recent kill, he said, was while range riders were in the area. The wild burros that were gifted to Gittleson in the hopes that they would serve as guardians are, he said, able to noisily signal danger but certainly don’t fight off wolves.

The bottom line, he said, is that non-lethal hazing methods are ineffective if the wolves don’t have a fear of the use of lethal methods. The wolf pack is emboldened and unafraid. Without lethal methods, the next generation will learn to kill livestock and on and on until there is a large number of problem wolves across a large area. All of this, of course, playing out prior to the first released wolf ever hitting the ground.

The misguided ballot initiative, one that left the hands of actual experts tied, flung wide open the door to out-of-state activist groups and their cash. The state-level protection of wolves has taken more tools out of the management toolbox. It has become, and will continue to be, urban and suburban voters drowning out the votes of the rural areas that actually have to deal with the fallout.

While all of this is happening at Gittleson’s ranch, the CPW Commission is hearing and reviewing the Technical Working Group’s proposed management plan. The TWG, one of two groups along with the Stakeholder Working Group, wants to see the state take a phased approach to wolf introduction, eventually de-listing them, and, clutch your pearls, classifying them as either game or non-game species. The potential of bringing the wolf numbers to a level at which they are no longer fragile and may be managed by lethal methods outraged wolf advocates at the meeting.

The other realization that was brought forth during the meeting is an explanation of the territory each pack occupies. With the proposed 200 wolf population in the state, the wolves would occupy about 10% of the western slope. That means, one expert pointed out, it is more than entirely likely that the wolves will migrate into the Front Range and eastern Colorado. I can only imagine the Front Range voters who approved the measure questioning why the wolves aren’t kept on the other side of the state and not in their backyards.

With CPW required to move forward with wolf introduction, there is no ability for wildlife experts to make decisions based on what is best for wolves in real time but, it appears, that was never part of the equation.

Chevy Volt Short-Circuit: Virtue-Signaling GM Exec Gets Owned on Clean Energy

What really powers electric vehicles like the Chevy Volt” is not a question GM Environment and Energy Policy executive Kristin Zimmerman is comfortable answering, as you’ll see in today’s must-watch clip.

“Everybody thought we killed the electric vehicle,” Zimmerman told reporters in Lansing, Mich. on Thursday, referencing the automaker’s long-dead EV1 from the late ’90s. It was even the topic of a mocking 2006 documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?, narrated by lefty activist and occasional ham actor, Martin Sheen.

“But no, we didn’t,” Zimmerman bragged after showing off a brand-new Chevy Volt and charging station. “It’s alive and well.”

Then things went south when someone asked, “So what’s charging the batteries right now?”

Just to be clear, Zimmerman is no dummy. She has multiple degrees, including a Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics. As you’re about to see, it isn’t that she doesn’t know the answer — it’s that she doesn’t seem to want to admit it while showing off GM’s renewed EV efforts.

“Well, it’s here,” Zimmerman said. “It’s coming from the building.”

You can’t make this stuff up. Just watch the clip already.

When pressed, Zimmerman said, “Actually, Lansing feeds the building,” referring to the local utility company. “Lansing feeds power to the building.”

“I bet you they’re a bit of coal. Oh, they’re heavy on natural gas, aren’t they?”

No.

Peter Lark, from the Lansing Board of Water & Light, said, “Our grid… is about 95% coal.”

And there you have it, folks: The Car of Tomorrow, powered by the dirty fuel of 19th Century locomotives.

BLUF:
We’ve moved past the point of simple political disagreement and into the realm of purposeful sabotage in order to obtain a delusional partisan goal. They aren’t even hiding the ball anymore. These people want you to suffer.

They Want You to Suffer.

I don’t think I have to be the one to tell anyone reading this the news — as you are probably already well aware — but things aren’t going well under the Biden administration.

In a sentence I’ve typed way too often over the last year, inflation continues to sit at astronomical levels, gas prices keep increasing, and the border is in shambles. To make matters worse, over the past month, the stock market has crashed, eating away at people’s retirements and investments. Dreams that people had are now going to be on hold for years based on the hope that things will recover, and time isn’t something you can get back.

The response from the White House in the face of so many of their self-inflicted wounds hasn’t been empathy, though. Not that such would mean much, but it would at least give people peace of mind knowing that their leaders aren’t actively rooting for their destruction.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what appears to be happening. These people want you to suffer.

That’s the President of the United States calling the $5.00 a gallon gasoline that is crushing Americans an “incredible transition.” And lest anyone think I’m misreading him, he means it exactly as it sounds and says as much by citing that we’ll become “less reliant” on fossil fuels in the end.

In other words, this is all intentional.

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Global Warming Was Going to Destroy Skiing, Then the Snow Fell

Vail, Colorado concluded its skiing season on May 1 a year after the Denver Post warned that “climate change is shrinking the Colorado ski season”.

It’s almost as if some higher power has made a point of mocking doomsday predictions by climate pagans who think the weather can be changed by raising taxes and driving Teslas.

But like a Gore-Tex parka, the climate consensus is impermeable to mere snowfall.

A week after Vail Mountain announced that it was extending its skiing season for “the longest continuous season in Vail Mountain history” just after 9 inches of snow fell in early March, a local news station wondered, “With warmer winters, what will happen to the ski industry?”

It may have to extend to June.

In February 2022, Denver broke weather records to hit the coldest temperature in 109 years. At a balmy -7 degrees, the latest outbreak of global warming plunged the city down to a low that had not been seen since 1899.

Still not done mocking Al Gore, March temperatures at Denver International Airport broke a new low with -3. The last time that happened was 1932. Or back before Gore Sr. had even graduated from law school to begin his family’s long slimy political career.

Talk about an inconvenient truth.

Even as activists and resort owners were crying to the media that the entire skiing industry was about to disappear because there would be no more snow, it snowed for the first 9 out of 10 weeks of the year. That was the most starting snow that there had been in 63 years.

“It’s supposed to snow in Denver — but maybe not quite like it has this year,” a local media outlet reluctantly conceded.

This is what happens when the weather makes a mockery of the climate consensus.

The climate must “hate science”.

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Observation O’ The Day
The problem with the climate cult isn’t even trying to fix a car while it’s running. It’s trying to fix a car while it’s running and they have no idea how a car runs to begin with. We don’t know enough to “fix” anything. We don’t even know enough to know if anything is wrong. And chances are our influence on the climate is much smaller than they wish to think.–Sarah Hoyt

The Ocean Is Still Sucking Up Carbon—Maybe More Than We Think.

Recent studies looking at carbon-sequestering microbes suggest we still have a lot to learn about the ocean’s biological carbon pump.

By Nancy Averett 3 May 2022

A newly discovered marine microbe has a “mucosphere” that chemically traps other microbes and their nutrients—including carbon. Credit: Nature Communications, CC BY 4.0

The ocean plays a critical role in carbon sequestration. Phytoplankton, which live on the warm, light-filled surface, suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for food. They also need nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen from colder, heavier, saltier water that upwells into warmer layers. When phytoplankton die, they sink, bringing some of the carbon and other nutrients they consumed with them back to the ocean depths.

Key to this circular process, known as the ocean’s biological carbon pump, is the vertical mixing of the surface and deeper water layers, which occurs through such mechanisms as currents, winds, and tides. However, because higher ocean temperatures cause greater stratification of these layers, traditional scientific models have long predicted that as the planet warms, this process would be disrupted, phytoplankton would be unable to thrive, and the ocean would sequester less carbon.

Now, two studies have shown the limits of such models. One found evidence that phytoplankton may become more efficient as the ocean warms. The other reported the discovery of a new, widely distributed ocean microbe species that also has the potential to sequester carbon.

​​“We often view the response of ocean carbon cycling to global warming as an on-off switch, but these results show it’s a dimmer switch and has some flexibility to take care of itself,” said Mike Lomas, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine and lead author of the first study, published in Nature Communications.

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Ford Reports Devastating Losses Thanks to Electric Vehicle Gamble.

Major U.S. automaker Ford blamed its sizable investment in electric vehicle (EV) company Rivian for its dramatic revenue decline in the first quarter of 2022.

Ford reported revenue of $34.5 billion between January and March, a 5% decline relative to the same period in 2021, and a net loss of $3.1 billion, according to the company’s earnings report released Wednesday. The Detroit automaker said its large investment in Rivian accounted for $5.4 billion in losses during the first quarter.

“A net loss of $3.1 billion was primarily attributable to a mark-to-market loss of $5.4 billion on the company’s investment in Rivian,” Ford said in the earnings report.

Ford maintains a roughly 12% stake in Rivian, CNBC reported in November.

Rivian has posted massive profit losses of its own and its share price has plummeted nearly 70% over the last six months. The value of Ford’s roughly 102 million Rivian shares has fallen from about $17.5 billion to $3.2 billion since November.

“The capability of this business is much stronger than what we were able to provide in the quarter,” Ford CFO John Lawler said Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Rivian, a California-based company founded in 2009, went public in November, according to the WSJ. Investors quickly scooped up shares of the startup EV maker at the time, but recent poor performance has driven many investors away.

In the final three months of 2021, Rivian reported a net loss of $2.5 billion.

Automakers have increasingly turned their attention toward manufacturing electric vehicles as governments push aggressive green energy plans. President Joe Biden has promised to craft policies to ensure 50% of new vehicle sales in the U.S. are emissions-free by 2030 and every addition to the federal government’s 600,000-vehicle fleet is electric by 2035.

However, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe recently suggested that the supply chain for EV batteries is still far behind where it needs to be to achieve many of the goals pushed by Western governments, the WSJ reported.

“Put very simply, all the world’s cell production combined represents well under 10% of what we will need in 10 years,” Scaringe said last week. “Meaning, 90% to 95% of the supply chain does not exist.”