#climatechange

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Hazardous air from Eaton fire prompts warnings for deputies

Los Angeles County deputies working near the Eaton fire were warned to decontaminate their clothes and wear N95 masks after toxic particles, including lead and asbestos, were detected in the air

https://www.dailyclimate.org/hazardous-air-from-eaton-fire-prompts-warnings-for-deputies-2670900901.html

If the LA wildfires have taught us anything, it’s that government are ill equipped for disasters and are probably not going to save you.

Covid, disability & clean air activists are the ones doing the work. They were boots on the ground handing out respirators and air purifiers.

The Mayor of LA had been contemplating a mask ban, and when the fires hit the government asked the activists for help providing masks.

These are folks who’ve been vilified, taunted, excluded from public spaces and left behind… yet they showed up. Because they understand the serious risk the air poses to everyone right now.

If you can support a local mask bloc, please do so. We need them now more than ever.

Yesterday I wrote that disabled people are canaries in the coal mine for pandemics & climate change.

Today legendary director David Lynch has died after spending the last year in isolation trying to avoid Covid AND being evacuated from his home due to LA wildfires.

People were worried Lynch was retiring, he made it clear he was isolating due to Covid

Like many of us with disabilities, he was left behind. People craved his work but wouldn’t wear a mask so he could create safely. “You do you” policies pushed him out of the public eye.

Pandemics and climate change will sadly impact all of us eventually. Disabled people are just first.

We must work together to save the canaries:

https://www.disabledginger.com/p/disabled-people-are-the-canaries

' Net Zero Chief Calls for Climate Deniers to Vet UK Policies'

https://www.desmog.com/2025/01/14/tory-net-zero-chief-claire-coutinho-calls-for-climate-deniers-net-zero-watch-to-vet-uk-energy-policies/

'In a post on X.com on 12 January, the Conservative Party’s energy and lead urged Labour to “bring in” a group of well-known opponents of climate action to “red team” its analysis of renewable energy costs.'

'... had received £7.2 million from funders or directors of the over the past two decades. '

In the last few days the news focused a lot on the fact that #2024 was the first year where we went above #1.5°C. This made me want to highlight a paper again where I was the main author in 2022. In this paper we looked at what temperatures the reports focus at and we showed that over the last few assessment reports the focus went to lower and lower temperatures, with the last assessment report focusing most on 1.5°C of warming. This means we produce the most research for a temperature range that we already passed for the first time this year. As the warming won't suddenly stop tomorrow, this means we are aiming our research in the wrong direction. I hope for future assessment reports we will again focus more on the temperature range we actually are speeding towards.

You can find the whole paper here: …

Scientific figure which shows for each assessment report since 1990 how it focused on temperatures in the range between 0.5°C and 10 °C. The figure shows that the first four reports had a similar focus, with lots of research on higher temperatures, but that this trend shifted with the last two reports and is now mostly focused on 1.5°C and 2°C.