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Nature_and_Environment.7 |
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Global Climate Change |
{Nature_and_Environment.7.525}: Julien Peter Benney {taite} Sat, 04 Jun 2011 08:41:24 CDT (27 lines)
The way rainfall has changed in Australia, especially Western Australia, since 1967 (look at the decline at http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=139&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=009628 and the increase at http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=139&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=011003) I have always been aware of the problems of climate change. However, besides deliberately refusing to be taught to drive, I know there is little I can do personally to deal with Australias utterly appalling greenhouse gas emissions. What I can do, and try my best to do given my problematic temper that is very prone to rant both in speech and writing, is to try to convince people, especially people abroad, that there are exceedingly sound reasons why Australias per capita carbon emissions should not be the highest in the world, but the lowest by a very, very large margin. I am well aware that present cultural and political trends are likely to mean that Australia retains environmentally-unfriendly technology even as countries in Europe and Asia switch to carbon-neutral technology, and that because of its peoples greater hospitality and generosity migrants and workers will still prefer to go to Australia rather than a much more sustainable country like Denmark or Sweden. My knowledge of how ecologically absurd such a situation is makes me think a completely new strategy has to be developed by countries whose people have greater environmental awareness (actually reflecting far more selfishness and less empathy) to really reduce emissions where reductions are needed rather than where cultural and demographic costs are very high.
{Nature_and_Environment.7.526}: Nancy Davison {nmdavison} Sat, 04 Jun 2011 15:20:44 CDT (2 lines)
Is it really the highest in the world? Higher than the US? that's amazing.
{Nature_and_Environment.7.527}: Julien Peter Benney {taite} Sun, 05 Jun 2011 01:42:29 CDT (15 lines)
It is: about forty percent higher than in the US. In reality, Australias per capita carbon emissions should be, I have calculated, about 1 to 4 percent those of Eurasia, the Americas and New Zealand. The root of the trouble is that Australias surfeit of natural resources leaves it politicians powerless and its well-financed and ultra-comfortable suburban population totally passive. What is needed - and has been proposed - is a total cap on income of mining companies put totally to dismantling the car and coal industries of Australia and replacing it with an absolutely first rate mass transit system to cater for every single journey in Australia without a single molecule of greenhouse gas emissions. This is something that should have been achieved by 1990, but never will be as things stand unless Australia is made into the kind of pariah state we associate with Cuba, Iran, Libya or Sudan.
{Nature_and_Environment.7.528}: Nancy Davison {nmdavison} Sun, 05 Jun 2011 15:04:06 CDT (1 line)
So the spoilers are everywhere, aren't they?
{Nature_and_Environment.7.529}: Glen Marks {wotan} Sat, 30 Nov 2019 02:55:39 CST (2 lines)
"https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/11/25/why- everything-they-say-about-climate-change-is-wrong/"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.530}: Glen Marks {wotan} Sun, 01 Dec 2019 09:35:43 CST (2 lines)
"https://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2019/11/be-excellent-how- ancient-virtues-can-guide-our-responses-to-the-climate-crisis/"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.531}: Glen Marks {wotan} Sun, 08 Dec 2019 00:45:52 CST (1 line)
https://apnews.com/26706b2c60c69668edd1216c2c56700f
{Nature_and_Environment.7.532}: Glen Marks {wotan} Thu, 12 Dec 2019 10:04:09 CST (5 lines)
"https://www.google.com/search? tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=657&ei=qmTyXc2sC5G8tAaAuKPYBQ&q=time+ person+of+the+year+2019&oq=time+person&gs_l=img.1.0.0i131l6j0i3j0i131 l2j0i3.2875.4341..8115...0.0..2.333.1886.2j5j3j1......0....1..gws- wiz-img.......0.PlqCKDuKJhA#imgrc=USHQUI10Nuw76M:"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.533}: Glen Marks {wotan} Mon, 16 Dec 2019 02:05:44 CST (4 lines)
If you ever thought that humanity could get its act together to fight climate change, read this: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sound_of_Music_(film)#Legacy"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.534}: Glen Marks {wotan} Mon, 16 Dec 2019 02:06:43 CST (4 lines)
Or see the audience reaction on this Youtube upload: The Rolling Stones - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - Glastonbury 2013 (HD)
{Nature_and_Environment.7.535}: Jay Hoffman {resist} Tue, 31 Dec 2019 22:46:11 CST (92 lines)
The Key to the Global Warming Crisis is Beneath Our Feet by Ellen Brown Contrary to popular belief, the biggest environmental polluters are not big fossil fuel companies. They are big agribusiness and factory farming, with six powerful food industry giants Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Dean Foods, Dow AgroSciences, Tyson and Monsanto (now merged with Bayer) playing a major role. Oil-dependent farming, industrial livestock operations, the clearing of carbon-storing fields and forests, the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and the combustion of fuel to process and distribute food are estimated to be responsible for as much as one-half of human-caused pollution. See: "https://www.localfutures.org/the-9-lie-industrial-food-and- climate-change/" to find out how this figure is arrived at. Climate change, while partly a consequence of the excessive relocation of carbon and other elements from the earth into the atmosphere, is more fundamentally just one symptom of overall ecosystem distress from centuries of over-tilling, over-grazing, over-burning, over-hunting, over-fishing and deforestation. David Perry writes on the World Economic Forum website: Global farmers can take on climate change. Here's how "https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/agriculture-climate-change- solution/" Perry observes that before farmland was cultivated, it had soil carbon levels of from 3% to 7%. Today, those levels are roughly 1% carbon. If every acre of farmland globally were returned to a soil carbon level of just 3%, 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide would be removed from the atmosphere and stored in the soil equal to the amount of carbon that has been drawn into the atmosphere since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago. The size of the potential solution matches the size of the problem. So how can we increase the carbon content of soil? Through regenerative farming practices, says Perry, including planting cover crops, no-till farming, rotating crops, reducing chemicals and fertilizers, and managed grazing (combining trees, forage plants and livestock together as an integrated system, a technique called silvopasture). These practices have been demonstrated to drive carbon into the soil and keep it there, resulting in carbon-enriched soils that are healthier and more resilient to extreme weather conditions and show improved water permeability, preventing the rainwater runoff that contributes to rising sea levels and rising temperatures. Evaporation from degraded, exposed soil has been shown to cause 1,600% more heat annually than all the worlds powerhouses combined. Regenerative farming methods also produce increased microbial diversity, higher yields, reduced input requirements, more nutritious harvests and increased farm profits. These highly favorable results were confirmed by Paul Hawken and his team in the project that was the subject of his best-selling 2016 book, Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. The project involved evaluating the 100 most promising solutions to the environmental crisis for cost and effectiveness. The results surprised the researchers themselves. The best-performing sector was not Transport or Materials or Buildings and Cities or even Electricity Generation. It was the sector called Food, including how we grow our food, market it and use it. Of the top 30 solutions, 12 were various forms of regenerative agriculture, including silvopasture, tropical staple trees, conservation agriculture, tree intercropping, managed grazing, farmland restoration and multistrata agroforestry. As noted in a Rolling Stone article titled How Big Agriculture Is Preventing Farmers From Combating the Climate Crisis: "https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/big- agriculture-preventing-farmers-combating-climate-crisis-886538/" [I]implementing these practices requires an economic flexibility most farmers dont have, and which is almost impossible to achieve within a government-backed system designed to preserve a large-scale, corporate-farming monoculture based around commodity crops like corn and soybeans, which often cost smaller farmers more money to grow than they can make selling. Farmers are locked into a system that is destroying their farmlands and the planet, because a handful of giant agribusinesses have captured Congress and the regulators. One proposed solution is to transfer the $20 billion in subsidies that now go mainly to Big Ag into a fund to compensate small farmers who transition to regenerative practices. We also need to enforce the antitrust laws and break up the biggest agribusinesses, something for which legislation is now pending in Congress. The bottom line is that saving the planet from environmental destruction is not only achievable, but that by focusing on regenerative agriculture and tapping up the central bank for funding, the climate crisis can be addressed without raising taxes, while restoring our collective health. "https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/31/the-key-to-the-environmental- crisis-is-beneath-our-feet/"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.536}: Jay Hoffman {resist} Tue, 07 Jan 2020 17:53:41 CST (45 lines)
Antarctic waters: Warmer with more acidity and less oxygen The increased freshwater from melting Antarctic ice sheets plus increased wind has reduced the amount of oxygen in the Southern Ocean and made it more acidic and warmer, according to new research led by University of Arizona geoscientists. The discovery drove the research team to improve current climate change computer models to better reflect the environmental changes around Antarctica. "It's the first time we've been able to reproduce the new changes in the Southern Ocean with an Earth system model," said co-author Joellen Russell, a professor of geosciences. The research is the first to incorporate the Southern Ocean's increased freshwater plus additional wind into a climate change model, she said. The team used the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's ESM2M model. "We underestimated how much influence that added freshwater and wind would have. When we add these two components to the model, we can directly and beautifully reproduce what has happened over the last 30 years," she said. Now, models will be able to do a better job of predicting future environmental changes in and around Antarctica, she said, adding that the Southern Ocean takes up most of the heat produced by anthropogenic global warming. "One out of every eight carbon molecules that comes out of your tailpipe goes into the Southern Ocean," Russell said. "Our model says that in the future, we may not have as big of a carbon sink as we were hoping." The team's paper, "Importance of wind and meltwater for observed chemical and physical changes in the Southern Ocean," is scheduled for publication in Nature Geoscience on Jan. 6. A list of additional co- authors and their affiliations is at the bottom of this release. The team also used the improved model to forecast conditions in the Southern Ocean. The forecast suggests that in the future, the Southern Ocean may not take up as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as previously predicted. "https://phys.org/news/2020-01-antarctic-warmer-acidity-oxygen.html"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.537}: Jay Hoffman {resist} Tue, 07 Jan 2020 17:54:09 CST (112 lines)
The sad truth about our boldest climate target Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C is almost certainly not going to happen. How 1.5 degrees C became the last chance The new target adopted in Paris reflected a growing conviction among scientists and activists that 2 degrees C, the target that had served as a kind of default for years, was in no way safe. Climate change at that level would in fact be extremely dangerous. Thus the addition of efforts to hit 1.5 degrees C. But it wasnt until last year that the world really got a clear sense of how much worse 2 degreesC (3.6 degreesF) would be than 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degreesF), after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report on the subject. Its findings were grim. Even 1.5 degreesC is likely to entail high multiple interrelated climate risks for some vulnerable regions, including small islands and Least Developed Countries. All of those impacts become much worse at 2 degrees C. (The World Resources Institute has a handy chart; see also this graphic from Carbon Brief.) Severe heat events will become 2.6 times worse, plant and vertebrate species loss 2 times worse, insect species loss 3 times worse, and decline in marine fisheries 2 times worse. Rather than 70 to 90 percent of coral reefs dying, 99 percent will die. Many vulnerable and low-lying areas will become uninhabitable and refugee flows will radically increase. And so on. At 2 degrees C, climate change will be devastating for large swathes of the globe. In short, there is no safe level of global warming. Climate change is not something bad that might happen, its something bad thats happening. Global average temperatures have risen about 1.3 degrees C from pre-industrial levels and California and Australia are already burning. Still, each additional increment of heat, each fraction of a degree, will make things worse. Specifically, 2 degrees C will be much worse than 1.5 degreesC. And 2.5 degreesC will be much worse than 2 degreesC. And so on as it gets hotter. Were still traveling headlong in the wrong direction, with centuries of momentum at our backs. Just focusing on the US, theres a more than 50/50 chance that President Donald Trump will be reelected in 2020, in which case we are all, and I cant stress this enough, doomed. Even if Dems take the presidency and both houses of Congress, serious federal action will have to contend with the filibuster, then the midterm backlash, then the next election, and more broadly, the increasingly conservative federal courts and Supreme Court, the electoral college, the flood of money in politics, and the overrepresentation of rural states in the Senate. Weve waited too long. Practically speaking, we are heading past 1.5 degrees C as we speak and probably past 2 degrees C as well. This is not a fact in the same way climate science deals in facts collective human behavior is not nearly so easy to predict as biophysical cycles but nothing we know about human history, sociology, or politics suggests that vast, screeching changes in collective direction are likely. The story of climate change is already a tragedy. Its sad. Really sad. People are suffering, species are dying off, entire ecosystems are being lost, and its inevitably going to get worse. We are in the midst of making the earth a simpler, cruder, less hospitable place, not only for ourselves but for all the kaleidoscopic varieties of life that evolved here in a relatively stable climate. The most complex and most idiosyncratic forms of life are most at risk; the mosquitoes and jellyfish will prosper. That is simply the background condition of our existence as a species now, even if we rally to avoid the worst outcomes. I know from conversations over the years that many people see that tragedy, and feel it, but given the perpetually heightened partisan tensions around climate change, they are leery to give it voice. They worry that it will lend fuel to the forces of denial and delay, that they are morally obliged to provide cheer. The idea that hope lives or dies on the chances of hitting 1.5 degrees C is poisonous in the long-term. Framing the choice as a miracle or extinction just sets everyone up for massive disappointment, since neither is likely to unfold any time soon. As climate scientist Kate Marvel put it, Climate change isnt a cliff we fall off, but a slope we slide down. Every bit makes it worse. No matter how far down the slope we go, theres never reason to give up fighting. We can always hope to arrest our slide. Here in the US, we need to think about how to help Californians dealing with wildfires, Midwestern farmers dealing with floods, and coastal homeowners dealing with a looming insurance crisis. All those problems are going to get worse. We need to grapple with that squarely, because the real threat is that these escalating impacts overwhelm our ability, not just to mitigate GHGs, but to even care or react to disasters when they happen elsewhere. Right now, much of Australia is on fire half a billion animals have likely died since September and it is barely breaking the news cycle in the US. As author David Wallace-Wells wrote in a recent piece, the world already seems to be heading toward a system of disinterest defined instead by ever smaller circles of empathy. That shrinking of empathy is arguably the greatest danger facing the human species, the biggest barrier to the collective action necessary to save ourselves. I cant help but think that the first step in defending and expanding that empathy is reckoning squarely with how much damage weve already done and are likely to do, working through the guilt and grief, and resolving to minimize the suffering to come. "https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/1/3/21045263/climate- change-1-5-degrees-celsius-target-ipcc"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.538}: Jay Hoffman {resist} Mon, 13 Jan 2020 01:46:42 CST (94 lines)
Australia Will Lose to Climate Change Even as the country fights bushfires, it cant stop dumping planet- warming pollution into the atmosphere. by Robinson Meyer Australia is caught in a climate spiral. For the past few decades, the arid and affluent country of 25 million has padded out its economy otherwise dominated by sandy beaches and a bustling service sectorby selling coal to the world. As the East Asian economies have grown, Australia has been all too happy to keep their lights on. Exporting food, fiber, and minerals to Asia has helped Australia achieve three decades of nearly relentless growth: Oz has not had a technical recession, defined as two successive quarters of economic contraction, since July 1991. But now Australia is buckling under the conditions that its fossil fuels have helped bring about. Perhaps the two biggest kinds of climate calamity happening today have begun to afflict the continent. The first kind of disaster is, of course, the wildfire crisis. In the past three months, bushfires in Australias southeast have burned millions of acres, poisoned the air in Sydney and Melbourne, and forced 4,000 tourists and residents in a small beach town, Mallacoota, to congregate on the beach and get evacuated by the navy. A salvo of fires seems to have caught the worlds attention in recent years. But the current Australian season has outdone them all: Over the past six months, Australian fires have burned more than twice the area than was consumed, combined, by Californias 2018 fires and the Amazons 2019 fires. The second is the irreversible scouring of the Earths most distinctive ecosystems. In Australia, this phenomenon has come for the countrys natural wonder, the Great Barrier Reef. From 2016 to 2018, half of all coral in the reef died, killed by oceanic heat waves that bleached and then essentially starved the symbiotic animals. Because tropical coral reefs take about a decade to recover from such a die- off, and because the relentless pace of climate change means that more heat waves are virtually guaranteed in the 2020s, the reefs only hope of long-term survival is for humans to virtually halt global warming in the next several decades and then begin to reverse it. Meeting such a goal will require a revolution in the global energy systemand, above all, a rapid abandonment of coal burning. But theres the rub. Australia is the worlds second-largest exporter of coal power, and it has avoided recession for the past 27 years in part by selling coal. Though polls report that most Australians are concerned about climate change, the countrys government has so far been unable to pass pretty much any climate policy. In fact, one of its recent political crises the ousting of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in the summer of 2018 was prompted by Turnbulls attempt to pass an energy bill that included climate policy. Its current prime minister, Scott Morrison, actually brought a lump of coal to the floor of Parliament several years ago while defending the industry. He won an election last year by depicting climate change as the exclusive concern of educated city- dwellers, and climate policy as a threat to Australians cars and trucks. He has so far attempted to portray the wildfires as a crisis, sure, but one in line with previous natural disasters. In fact, it is unprecedented. This seasons fires have incinerated more than 1,500 homes and have killed at least 23 people, Prime Minister Morrison said on Saturday.* There were at least twice as many fires in New South Wales in 2019 as there were in any other year this century, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Climate change likely intensified the ongoing epidemic: Hotter and drier weather makes wildfires more common, and climate change is increasing the likelihood of both in Australia. Last year was both the hottest and driest year on record in the country. Perhaps more than any other wealthy nation on Earth, Australia is at risk from the dangers of climate change. It has spent most of the 21st century in a historic drought. Its tropical oceans are more endangered than any other biome by climate change. Its people are clustered along the temperate and tropical coasts, where rising seas threaten major cities. Those same bands of livable land are the places either now burning or at heightened risk of bushfire in the future. Faced with such geographical challenges, Australias people might rally to reverse these dangers. Instead, they have elected leaders with other priorities. Australia will continue to burn, and its coral will continue to die. Perhaps this episode will prompt the more pro-carbon members of Australias Parliament to accede to some climate policy. Or perhaps Prime Minister Morrison will distract from any link between the disaster and climate change, as President Donald Trump did when he inexplicably blamed Californias 2018 blazes on the states failure to rake forest floors. Perhaps blazes will push Australias politics in an even more besieged and retrograde direction, empowering politicians like Morrison to fight any change at all. And so maybe Australia will find itself stuck in the climate spiral, clinging ever more tightly to coal as its towns and cities choke on the ash of a burning world. "https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/01/australia-caught- climate-spiral/604423/"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.539}: {wotan} Mon, 13 Jan 2020 23:33:38 CST (0 lines)
{erased by wotan Mon, 13 Jan 2020 23:37:11 CST}
{Nature_and_Environment.7.540}: Glen Marks {wotan} Mon, 13 Jan 2020 23:37:25 CST (4 lines)
And what about THIS?: "https://news.google.com/search? q=volcano%20eruption%20air%20pollution&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.541}: Glen Marks {wotan} Mon, 13 Jan 2020 23:45:57 CST (4 lines)
And THIS?: "https://thethaiger.com/hot-news/air-pollution/central-thailand- farmers-ignore-orders-to-stop-burning-off-their-sugar-cane"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.542}: Jay Hoffman {resist} Tue, 14 Jan 2020 00:16:37 CST (46 lines)
Climate gas budgets highly overestimate methane discharge from Arctic Ocean The atmospheric concentration of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, has almost tripled since the beginning of industrialisation. Methane emissions from natural sources are poorly understood. This is especially the case for emissions from the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic Ocean is a harsh working environment. That is why many scientific expeditions are conducted in the summer and early autumn months, when the weather and the waters are more predictable. Most extrapolations regarding the amount of methane discharge from the ocean floor, are thus based on observations made in the warmer months. "This means that the present climate gas calculations are disregarding the possible seasonal temperature variations. We have found that seasonal differences in bottom water temperatures in the Arctic Ocean vary from 1.7°C in May to 3.5°C in August. The methane seeps in colder conditions decrease emissions by 43 percent in May compared to August." says oceanographer Benedicte Ferré, researcher at CAGE Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. "Right now, there is a large overestimation in the methane budget. We cannot just multiply what we find in August by 12 and get a correct annual estimate. Our study clearly shows that the system hibernates during the cold season." How methane will react in future ocean temperature scenarios is still unknown. The Arctic Ocean is expected to become between 3°C and a whopping 13°C warmer in the future, due to climate change. The study in question does not look into the future, but focuses on correcting the existing estimates in the methane emissions budget. However: "We need to calculate the peculiarities of the system well, because the oceans are warming. The system such as this is bound to be affected by the warming ocean waters in the future," says Benedicte Ferré. A consistently warm bottom water temperature over a 12-month period will have an effect on this system. "At 400 meters water depth we are already at the limit of the gas hydrate stability. If these waters warm merely by 1.3°C this hydrate lid will permanently lift, and the release will be constant," says Ferré. "https://phys.org/news/2020-01-climate-gas-highly-overestimate- methane.html?"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.543}: Jay Hoffman {resist} Tue, 14 Jan 2020 22:37:48 CST (54 lines)
New climate models suggest Paris goals may be out of reach by Marlowe Hood New climate models show carbon dioxide is a more potent greenhouse gas than previously understood, a finding that could push the Paris treaty goals for capping global warming out of reach, scientists have told AFP. Developed in parallel by separate teams in half-a-dozen countries, the modelswhich will underpin revised UN temperature projections next yearsuggest scientists have for decades consistently underestimated the warming potential of CO2. Vastly more data and computing power has become available since the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections were finalised in 2013. "We have better models now," Olivier Boucher, head of the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace Climate Modelling Centre in Paris, told AFP, adding that they "represent current climate trends more accurately". The most influential projections from government-backed teams in the US, Britain, France and Canada point to a future in which CO2 concentrations that have long been equated with a 3C world would more likely heat the planet's surface by four or five degrees. The new models reflect a better understanding of cloud dynamics in at least two ways that reinforce the warming impact of CO2. Zelinka said new research had confirmed high clouds in the bottom layer of Earth's atmosphere boost the Sun's radiationand global heating accentuates that dynamic. "Another big uncertainty has been how low clouds will change, such as stratocumulus decks of the west coast of continents," he said. Recent observations suggest this type of cloud cover decreases with warming, which means less of the Sun's energy gets bounced back into space by white surfaces. With one degree Celsius of warming so far, the world is coping with increasingly deadly heatwaves, droughts, floods and tropical cyclones made more destructive by rising seas. The IPCC, the UN's climate advisory body, posits four scenarios for future warming, depending on how aggressively humanity works to reduce greenhouse gases. The so-called "business-as-usual" trajectory of increased fossil fuel use would leave large swathes of the planet uninhabitable by century's end. "Climate sensitivity had been in the range of 1.5C to 4.5C for more than 30 years. If it is now moving to between 3C and 7C, and that would be tremendously dangerous." "https://phys.org/news/2020-01-climate-paris-goals.html"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.544}: Jay Hoffman {resist} Tue, 14 Jan 2020 23:16:54 CST (29 lines)
Oceans were hottest on record in 2019 Oceans absorb more than 90 percent of excess heat created by greenhouse gas emissions and quantifying how much they have warmed up in recent years gives scientists an accurate read on the rate of global warming. A team of experts from around the world looked at data compiled by China's Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) to gain a clear picture of ocean warmth to a depth of 2,000 metres over several decades. They found that oceans last year were by far the hottest ever recorded and said that the effects of ocean warming were already being felt in the form of more extreme weather, rising sea levels and damage to marine life. The study authors said there was a clear link between climate-related disasterssuch as the bushfires that have ravaged southeastern Australia for monthsand warming oceans. Warmer seas mean more . evaporative demand by the atmosphere. That in turn leads to drying of the continents, a major factor that is behind the recent wildfires from the Amazon all the way to the Arctic, and including California and Australia." Hotter oceans also expand, leading to sea level rises. And given that the ocean has a far higher heat absorption capacity than the atmosphere, scientists believe they will continue to warm even if humanity manages to drag down its emissions in line with the Paris goals. https://phys.org/news/2020-01-oceans-hottest.html"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.545}: Jay Hoffman {resist} Sun, 19 Jan 2020 00:40:58 CST (41 lines)
The Rumbling Methane Enigma by Robert Hunziker The East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) alone is the size of Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, and Japan combined and jammed full of methane trapped beneath underwater permafrost that is rapidly thinning. According to Dr. Semiletov: Emissions of methane from the East Siberian Shelf which is the widest and most shallow shelf of the World Ocean exceed the average estimate emissions of all the worlds ocean. This is due to the fact that the reserves of methane under the submarine permafrost exceed the methane content in the atmosphere is many thousands of times. With ESAS getting more and more active as of recent, it is important to evaluate the risks of further breakout. For example, Wadhams says that Natalia Shakova, the leading expert on ESAS, believes it contains up to 700 GT of CH4. The risk is rapid release, a big burp of 8% of the deposit or 50GT, which, in turn, would crank up worldwide temperatures by 0.6°C over two years. This would have an extremely negative impact on the overall global climate system with unknown but likely horrific results as temps crank up to, or beyond, the IPCC danger zone of 2°C much sooner than anybody expects. Wadhams believes this is societys biggest climate threat because at 2°C above pre- industrial crop yields start going down, very rapidly. An ESAS big burp would do the job. The probability of this pulse happening is high, at least 50 percent according to the analysis of sediment composition by those best placed to know what is going on, Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov. Moreover, if it happens, the detrimental effects are gigantic the risk of an Arctic seabed methane pulse is one of the greatest immediate risks facing the human race Why then are we doing nothing about it? Why is this risks ignored by climate scientists, and scarcely mentioned in the latest IPCC assessment? It seems to be not just climate change deniers who wish to conceal the Arctic methane threat, but also many Arctic scientists, including so-called methane experts. (Wadhams, pg. 127-28) "https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/17/the-rumbling-methane-enigma/"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.546}: Jay Hoffman {resist} Wed, 22 Jan 2020 00:22:23 CST (48 lines)
Despite reports that global emissions of the potent greenhouse gas hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) were almost eliminated in 2017, an international team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, has found atmospheric levels growing at record values. Over the last two decades, scientists have been keeping a close eye on the atmospheric concentration of a hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gas, known as HFC-23. This gas has very few industrial applications. However, levels have been soaring because it is vented to the atmosphere during the production of another chemical widely used in cooling systems in developing countries. Scientists are concerned, because HFC-23 is a very potent greenhouse gas, with one tonne of its emissions being equivalent to the release of more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Starting in 2015, India and China, thought to be the main emitters of HFC-23, announced ambitious plans to abate emissions in factories that produce the gas. As a result, they reported that they had almost completely eliminated HFC-23 emissions by 2017. In response to these measures, scientists were expecting to see global emissions drop by almost 90 percent between 2015 and 2017, which should have seen growth in atmospheric levels grind to a halt. Now, an international team of researchers has shown that concentrations increased, setting an all-time record in 2018. The paper is published today in Nature Communications. Dr. Matt Rigby, who co-authored the study, is a reader in atmospheric chemistry at the University of Bristol and a member of the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE), which measures the concentration of greenhouse gases around the world. He said, "When we saw the reports of enormous emissions reductions from India and China, we were excited to take a close look at the atmospheric data. This potent greenhouse gas has been growing rapidly in the atmosphere for decades now, and these reports suggested that the rise should have almost completely stopped in the space of two or three years. This would have been a big win for climate." The fact that this reduction has not materialized, and that, instead, global emissions have actually risen, is a puzzle that may have implications for the Montreal Protocol, the international treaty that was designed to protect the stratospheric ozone layer. In 2016, Parties to the Montreal Protocol signed the Kigali Amendment, aiming to reduce the climate impact of HFCs, whose emissions have grown in response to their use as replacements to ozone depleting substances. "https://phys.org/news/2020-01-emissions-potent-greenhouse-gas- contradicting.html"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.547}: Jay Hoffman {resist} Wed, 12 Feb 2020 14:13:33 CST (19 lines)
'The Saddest Thing Is That It Won't Be Breaking News': Concentration of CO2 Hits Record High of 416 ppm The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record high Monday, a reading from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that elicited fresh calls from climate activists and scientists for the international community to end planet-heating emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation. According to NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory, an atmospheric baseline station in Hawaii, the daily average of CO2 levels on Feb. 10 was 416.08 parts per million. In recent years, soaring rates of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have signaled that the world is not ambitiously addressing the climate crisis. "https://www. esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trend s/monthly.html" "https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/12/saddest-thing-it-wont- be-breaking-news-concentration-co2-hits-record-high-416-ppm"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.548}: Jay Hoffman {resist} Sat, 22 Feb 2020 22:19:16 CST (63 lines)
JP Morgan economists warn climate crisis is threat to human race Leaked report for worlds major fossil fuel financier says Earth is on unsustainable trajectory The worlds largest financier of fossil fuels has warned clients that the climate crisis threatens the survival of humanity and that the planet is on an unsustainable trajectory, according to a leaked document. The JP Morgan report on the economic risks of human-caused global heating said climate policy had to change or else the world faced irreversible consequences. The study implicitly condemns the US banks own investment strategy and highlights growing concerns among major Wall Street institutions about the financial and reputational risks of continued funding of carbon-intensive industries, such as oil and gas. JP Morgan has provided $75bn (£61bn) in financial services to the companies most aggressively expanding in sectors such as fracking and Arctic oil and gas exploration since the Paris agreement, according to analysis compiled for the Guardian last year. Its report was obtained by Rupert Read, an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson and philosophy academic at the University of East Anglia, and has been seen by the Guardian. The research by JP Morgan economists David Mackie and Jessica Murray says the climate crisis will impact the world economy, human health, water stress, migration and the survival of other species on Earth. We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened, notes the paper, which is dated 14 January. Drawing on extensive academic literature and forecasts by the International Monetary Fund and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the paper notes that global heating is on course to hit 3.5C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. It says most estimates of the likely economic and health costs are far too small because they fail to account for the loss of wealth, the discount rate and the possibility of increased natural disasters. The authors say policymakers need to change direction because a business-as-usual climate policy would likely push the earth to a place that we havent seen for many millions of years, with outcomes that might be impossible to reverse. Although precise predictions are not possible, it is clear that the Earth is on an unsustainable trajectory. Something will have to change at some point if the human race is going to survive. The investment bank says climate change reflects a global market failure in the sense that producers and consumers of CO2 emissions do not pay for the climate damage that results. To reverse this, it highlights the need for a global carbon tax but cautions that it is not going to happen anytime soon because of concerns about jobs and competitiveness. The authors say it is likely the [climate] situation will continue to deteriorate, possibly more so than in any of the IPCCs scenarios. "https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/21/jp-morgan- economists-warn-climate-crisis-threat-human-race"
{Nature_and_Environment.7.549}: Glen Marks {wotan} Sun, 23 Feb 2020 13:02:46 CST (4 lines)
Is it warm enough for you?: "https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/winter-2019-20-was-so-far-the- warmest-on-record-in-the-contiguous-u-s"
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