Was Four-Lane Road Through Amazon Forest Construction To Facilitate A (Checks Notes) Climate Summit?

A big highway is being cut through the Amazon rainforest
in northeast Brazil, and according to sources, it's 
hypocritically being built to facilitate a major
UN climate change conference in November. 

 Critics are accusing a Brazilian state of building a four-lane freeway through tens of thousands of acres in sensitive Amazon rain forest to, of all things, facilitate a major UN climate summit.  

The summit is scheduled for November in the city of Belem in northeast Brazil, in the Amazon not too far inland from the Atlantic Ocean. 

Officials in the  Brazilian state of Para where the highway is being built, deny the summit was the impetus behind the highway construction. 

Those officials say construction on the highway started in 2020, before Belem was announced as the location for the climate summit, known as COP30.

Brazilian and  Para state officials also said the nation's federal government is not funding the project. 

Still, locals and environmentalists are highly suspicious, to say the least, noting the sudden, fast progress of highway construction after decades of resistance. That fast pace came after Belem was selected as the COP30 site 

Per Reuters:

"Still, some locals tie recent progress on the long-discussed highway to the approaching UN summit, when tens of thousands of delegates are expected to swarm the Amazon city home to 1.3 million."

 Plus, local officials basically admitted to the BBC the highway was being built to service the COP30 climate summit.  

Per BBC

"Adler Silveira, the state government infrastructure secretary, listed this highway as one of 30 project happening in the city to 'prepare' and 'modernize' it, so 'we can have a legacy for the population and more importantly, serve people for COP30 in the best possible way."

Silveira also said the highway would have wildlife crossings for animals to pass over, bike lanes and solar lighting 

All wonderful, but they're chopping down part of a critical rain forest to do all this.   

There's other projects ahead of COP30 that might harm the Amazon rain forests too, mostly by bringing in more people. The more people there are, the more harm an ecosystem will suffer.  The Belem airport is being expanded, new hotels are under construction and the port is being redeveloped to accommodate cruise ships. 

Like unloading a 1,000 people off a cruise ship into the Amazon, or at least near it, won't harm anything. Jeez! 

As usual, it's the locals who depend on the rain forest that got screwed the most. 

People who live adjacent to the new highway so they weren't compensated for land takings. They also fear the  highway will cause an explosion of new development like warehouses, stores, gas stations and such that would mow down much more of the rain forest. 

As the BBC reports, the road would leave two disconnected areas of protected forests, fragmenting the ecosystem and disrupting the movement of wildlife.

The bottom line:

We're having a big UN conference to combat climate change. And we're flying thousands of people from all over the world to the Amazon to attend this conference. I'm not advocating a ban of air travel, but airliners are a major contributor to climate change, so there's that.

Then, we're cutting a major highway through the Amazon, which is essential a large part of the Earth's lungs. The Amazon is a major natural ally against climate change because it absorbs huge amounts of carbon dioxide.

So, the solution is to cut down some of the Amazon to bloviate about climate change in political setting.

It makes no sense.  

Quick Vermont Snow Update: Little Change In Forecast, Mountains Rejoice, Wind, Blowing Snow Everywhere

National Weather Service snow total forecast for this
storm issued this afternoon, is almost identical to the
one issued early this morning. The expected chain of 
events now through Friday is little changed, too.

 Our Alberta clipper storm is here in Vermont as of early this evening, with occasional light snow overspreading the entire region. So here's a brief Wednesday evening update. 

Roads aren't terrible, but there are slick spots, so you'll want to take it easy if out on the highways tonight. That state of affairs will continue all night into early tomorrow morning.

 Snow will keep falling on and off, with not much in the Champlain Valley and probably a plowable snow elsewhere.

We're still on track for snow showers, some locally heavy on Thursday. At this point, I think the afternoon and early evening might end up being the trickiest part.

Temperatures seem like they will rise slightly above freezing in many of the warmer valleys in the late morning and early afternoon. By afternoon and evening, temperatures will fall below freezing as colder air rushes in. Snow showers will continue, and some of them will continue to have some oomph. Winds will strengthen from the northwest. They'll eventually gust to 40 mph.

The combination will freeze roads pretty fast, and the added snow and blowing snow will turn what had been wet main roads in many places to icy, snowy, slow nightmares. Tonight's commute, and tomorrow morning's commute will have their issues. But chances are the worst conditions will be reserved for those of you on the way home late tomorrow afternoon and evening. 

Consider working remotely from home if you can tomorrow.

Total snowfall forecasts have not changed. Most of Vermont gets three to eight inches by Friday morning, with something closer to one to four inches in the Champlain Valley. The Green Mountains get six inches to locally a foot or more especially in the far southern and northern Green Mountains.

Expect a cold, blustery day Friday with pretty low wind chill factors. It will at least feel like the coldest day so far this winter. 

We're still expecting another warmup starting Sunday and continuing into midweek. 

Nice Snowy Part Of Vermont Storm Ending. Now For The Ice

Latest National Weather Service/South Burlington ice
forecast. Any shaded area can expect ice. Orange
represents at least a tenth of an inch of ice. Red
areas get a quarter inch of ice. A quarter inch of
ice accumulation is usually where you begin to
see some problems with tree branches and power lines.

 Just as expected, most of Vermont received one to three inches of snow overnight and early today, freshening things up and making it all look properly bright and wintry. 

Now for the extended messy part. I hope you like either freezing rain or a cold rain with temperatures in the 30s, because that's what we've got coming up for the next couple of days.

As I write this around 8 a.m. Wednesday, a lull was developing in the snow.  We'll just have flurries or maybe a patch or two of drizzle or freezing drizzle this afternoon, but nothing really to worry about.

ICY NIGHT

Then the next surge of precipitation comes in this evening and overnight. That's where the trouble begins. 

It looks like it will be just warm enough for a cold rain west of the Green Mountains except for maybe the far northern Champlain Valley.

But given the fact it's been nippy recently, that cold rain will still freeze on some surfaces, like back roads, driveways and sidewalks. So it won't necessarily be easy going in the "banana belt" either.

Along and east of the Green Mountains, and maybe the northern Champlain Valley from perhaps Georgia or St. Albans north, there will be freezing rain overnight. 

For the most part, it will not be heavy enough to weigh down trees and power lines so much that the electricity goes out. There might be an isolated issue with that here and there, but it won't be anything terrible.

What will be terrible are the roads overnight and early Thursday. It doesn't take much freezing rain at all to make the roads really hazardous. All it takes is a sprinkle of freezing rain. In the ice areas of Vermont, it's best to stay home overnight and Thursday morning if at all possible. 

It's no wonder there's a winter weather advisory up for the entire state. For western Vermont it expires by early afternoon today since most of the precipitation tonight should be rain. East of the Greens, the advisory goes to 7 a.m. Thursday. 

The hope is temperatures go above freezing for everybody Thursday afternoon to melt what's coming next. 

THURSDAY NIGHT/FRIDAY

It looks like a system similar to the one we're seeing tonight will come through Thursday night and Friday. 

Again, it looks like western Vermont will have another round of cold rain while eastern Vermont could see more freezing rain. 

I'm sure the National Weather Service in South Burlington will hoist another winter weather advisory for Thursday night. The won't' until the initial round tonight ends so as to avoid confusion. 

Not only will the roads be awful in the icy areas Thursday night and Friday, I'd begin to worry about power outages.

If tonight's ice doesn't melt off the trees and power lines Thursday afternoon, then a new dose of ice could start to cause somewhat more widespread issues with fallen branches and power lines.

That's by no means guaranteed, but it's something we'll have to watch.

Overall, that "fire hose" of moisture I described yesterday is more powerful further north than first thought. That plume of wet air is indeed causing a lot of flooding along the Gulf Coast.

Up here in Vermont, instead of a total of a quarter inch of melted snow, ice and rain between last night and Friday, most of us will see well over a half inch of melted precipitation, with many spots going to near an inch. 

Beyond that, a shot of colder air comes in Sunday.  There's wildly varying forecasts on whether one more storm near the East Coast will come close enough to Vermont to bring us another round of snow to start next week.

The good news is if we do see anything from that Sunday/Monday system, it would be snow, not ice.