Climate Change Updates
Increase your awareness of environmental news by checking the "climate change updates" regularly.
California Had Its Own Climate Summit. Now What?
An array of governors, mayors and business executives from around the globe met to promote their successes in cutting greenhouse gas emissions locally and to encourage one another to do more.
A key premise of the conference was that if a handful of leading-edge states, cities and businesses can demonstrate that it’s feasible — and even lucrative — to go green in their own backyards, they might inspire others to follow suit. That, in turn, could make it easier for national leaders to act more forcefully.
Antartica ice melting faster than ever
Two June 2018 studies published in Nature show 1. that the rate of melting from the Antarctic ice sheet has accelerated threefold in the last five years and is now vanishing faster than at any previously recorded time, and 2. that unless urgent action is taken in the next decade the melting ice could contribute more than 25 cm to a total global sea level rise of more than a meter by 2070, which could eventually lead to the collapse of the entire west Antarctic ice sheet and another 3.5 meter of sea-level rise.
"Carbon Bubble" could spark global financial crisis
Plunging prices for renewable energy and rapidly increasing investment in low-carbon technologies could leave fossil fuel companies with trillions in stranded assets and spark a global financial crisis, a new study has found.
A sudden drop in demand for fossil fuels before 2035 is likely, according to the study, given the current global investments and economic advantages in a low-carbon transition.
The existence of a “carbon bubble” – assets in fossil fuels that are currently overvalued because, in the medium and long-term, the world will have to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions – has long been proposed by academics, activists and investors. The new study, published on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that a sharp slump in the value of fossil fuels would cause this bubble to burst, and posits that such a slump is likely before 2035 based on current patterns of energy use.
Shell’s vision of a zero carbon world by 2070, explained
Oil companies are finally beginning to bow to the reality that the world is getting serious about climate change — or might be, sometime soon. The latest chapter in this story is a new report from Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s biggest oil company. It’s called the “Sky scenario” and it envisions a world that achieves net-zero carbon emissions by 2070, thus (in the company’s accounting) holding global average temperatures beneath the international target of 2 degrees Celsius.
Heat Waves and Climate Change
In the past 3-4 decades, there has been an increasing trend in high-humidity heat waves, which are characterized by the persistence of extremely high night-time temperature. The combination of high humidity and high night-time temperature can make for a deadly pairing, offering no relief and posing a particular threat for the elderly. Extreme heat events are responsible for more deaths annually than hurricanes, lightning, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes combined.
At the same time, low-humidity heat waves associated with droughts and fueled in part by climate change contribute to the dry conditions that are driving wild fires.
Numerous studies have documented that human-induced climate change has increased the frequency and severity of heat waves across the globe.
Restricting global warming to 1.5 degrees could ‘halve’ risk of biodiversity loss
Limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels rather than 2C could halve the number of vertebrate and plant species facing severe range loss by the end of the century, a study finds.
The analysis of more than 115,000 species finds that keeping warming at 1.5C – which is the aspirational target of the Paris Agreement – instead of 2C could also cut the number of insects facing severe range loss by two-thirds.
However, if countries fail to ramp up their efforts to address climate change, around a quarter of all vertebrates (animals with a spine), half of insects and 44% of plants could face severe range loss, the lead author tells Carbon Brief.
The greatest range losses are expected to occur in some of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, the author adds, including in the Amazon and southern Africa.
Fossil Fuel Subsidies Sustain the Oil Industry
In 2015, global fossil fuel subsidies represented a whopping 6.5% of global GDP (Coady 2015), and a US review estimated that subsidies for the US oil industry alone were close to $4.6 billion per year (US Gov 2015). A 2017 study by researchers at Stockholm Environment Institute published in the journal Nature Energy estimated that nearly half of US oil production would be unprofitable without subsidies (Erickson 2017).
Globally, governments provide an estimated $775 billion to $1 trillion annually in subsidies to fossil fuel corporations. This estimate does not include social costs of climate change, other environmental impacts, armed conflict, and damage to health, all of which are also borne by the public (Oil Change International 2017). When these other so-called “externalities” of fossil fuel exploitation are included, the International Monetary Fund estimated in 2015, the costs of fossil fuel development that have to be paid by the public are closer to US$5.3 trillion annually – an astonishing US$10 million per minute (Coady et. al. 2015).
from Carbon Pricing: A Critical Perspective for Community Resistence
In Fiji, villages need to move due to climate change
For much of the world, climate change is a catastrophe unfolding in slow motion, with consequences that can still seemingly be ignored.
But in island nations across the Pacific, climate change has well and truly arrived and is already posing an existential threat to communities.
Rising sea levels have swallowed up five of the Solomon Islands since the mid-20th century.
For Kiribati, a small island nation made up of coral atolls, rising waters pose a threat so dire that in 2014 the government purchased a 20-square-kilometre piece of land in Fiji, to be used to re-settle climate refugees.
Fiji itself has recorded a six-millimetre sea level increase each year since 1993. And that's just the beginning.
"The worst-case scenario is that we would be looking at one to three metres of sea-level rise [in the next 100 years]," said Elisabeth Holland, director of the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development at the University of the South Pacific.
"We're looking at significant changes from here on out, so we need to have strong plans in place," Holland told Al Jazeera.
Rising sea levels aren't Fiji's only concern, however.
Tropical cyclones are predicted to increase in intensity in the region. In February 2016, Fiji was struck by the most powerful tropical cyclone to ever hit the country. Cyclone Winston killed 44 Fijians and caused more than $1bn worth of damage.
With nearly one-third of all Fijians currently living in areas prone to these environmental disasters, the government announced last November that 43 villages would need to move to higher ground.
New Study Finds Sea Level Rise Accelerating
This acceleration, driven mainly by increased melting in Greenland and Antarctica, has the potential to double the total sea level rise projected by 2100 when compared to projections that assume a constant rate of sea level rise.
If the rate of ocean rise continues to change at this pace, sea level will rise 26 inches (65 centimeters) by 2100 -- enough to cause significant problems for coastal cities, according to the new assessment by NASA and several universities.
"This is almost certainly a conservative estimate," Nerem said. "Our extrapolation assumes that sea level continues to change in the future as it has over the last 25 years. Given the large changes we are seeing in the ice sheets today, that's not likely."
Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere increase the temperature of air and water, which causes sea level to rise in two ways. First, warmer water expands, and this "thermal expansion" of the ocean has contributed about half of the 2.8 inches (7 centimeters) of global mean sea level rise we've seen over the last 25 years, Nerem said. Second, melting land ice flows into the ocean, also increasing sea level across the globe.
EU to refuse to sign trade deals with countries that don't ratify Paris climate change accord
The European Union will refuse to sign trade deals with countries that do not ratify the Paris climate change agreement and take steps to combat global warming, under a new Brussels policy.
Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU’s trade chief, said a binding reference to the Paris agreement would be “needed in all EU trade agreements” from now on, noting that it had been included in a deal with Japan.
The policy also means a future trade deal with the US as long as Donald Trump is in office is off the table for now. The US President has indicated that he will not sign up to the deal to cut greenhouse emissions and has said he wants to renegotiate it – a plan most other countries, including the UK, have rejected.
U.S. Intelligence Agencies Break With Trump Over Climate Threats
The U.S. intelligence community is at odds with the White House about threats America faces from climate change.
The nation’s intelligence agencies are warning, in the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment, of global instability if climate change continues unabated, according to a report submitted for a hearing Tuesday before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
“The impacts of the long-term trends toward a warming climate, more air pollution, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity are likely to fuel economic and social discontent -- and possibly upheaval -- through 2018,” the report states.
The intelligence report describes how warming temperatures will exacerbate disasters, war, shortages, economic volatility and migration. Citing research showing that human activities have accelerated extinctions worldwide 100 to 1000 times normal rates, the analysts write that losses “will jeopardize vital ecosystems that support critical human systems.”
Two recent policy papers from the Department of Defense carried no such alarms about the warming world, placing the military nominally in line with the president’s actions and reversing a position adopted by President George W. Bush’s Pentagon in 2008.
Warming of the Planet Continues
4 of the 5 hottest years on record have been in the past 5 years. NASA ranked 2017 as the 2nd warmest year, behind 2016. The World in 2017 saw some of the highest average surface temperatures recorded. 17 of the 18 warmest years since modern record-keeping began (1880) have occurred since 2001.
New York Times January 18, 2018
Alaska’s Permafrost is Thawing
The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as other parts of the planet. Sea ice and wildlife habitat are disappearing; higher sea levels threaten coastal native villages. But to some scientists, the most urgent issue is the thawing of the permafrost, the always-frozen ground that underlies much of the state. It contains vast amounts of carbon in organic matter that froze before it could decompose.
Scientists have estimated that the process of permafrost thawing could contribute as much as 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit to global warming over the next several centuries, independent of what society does to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and other activities.
In parts of central Alaska, temperatures three feet down into the frozen ground are less than half a degree below freezing. This area could lose much of its permafrost by midcentury.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/23/climate/alaska-permafrost-thawing.html
Maps That Show the Countries Most Likely to Survive Climate Change
Factoring in location, population density, and wealth, the map graphically demonstrates the fact that global warming will most heavily impact the countries that have most been ravaged by colonialism and imperialism, the "global south." Big omission--the Philippines and many other Pacific Island nations are missing from the map.
Deep energy transformation needed by 2050 to limit rise in global temperature
20 March 2017
"The IEA analysis finds that to achieve this climate objective (to limit the global temperature rise to well below 2°C) a deep transformation of energy production and consumption needs to occur by 2050:
- Nearly 95% of electricity would need to be low-carbon by then, compared with about a third today, led by renewables
- 7 out of every 10 new cars would need to be electric, compared with 1 in 100 today
- The entire existing building stock would need to be retrofitted and the CO2 intensity of the industrial sector would need to drop by 80% below today’s levels
- Fossil fuels, in particular natural gas, would still be needed in 2050, and would account for 40% of energy demand, around half of today’s level
- $3.5 trillion in energy-sector investments would be needed on average each year until 2050, which is around twice current levels of investment"
2020: The Climate Turning Point
Preface: It is still possible to meet the Paris temperature goals if emissions peak by 2020 at the latest, and there are signs to show we are moving in that direction as global CO2 emissions have not increased for the past three years. We will need an enormous amount of action and scaled up ambition to harness the current momentum in order to travel down the decarbonisation curve at the necessary pace; the window to do that is still open.
Introduction: The evidence that a 2020 climate turning point is within our grasp is growing every day. Global CO2 emissions have already plateaued, and are expected to remain flat over the coming years thanks, in no small part, to China’s economic transformation, as well as the exponential growth in renewables worldwide. There are many signs that an irreversible direction of travel has been set: investment shifts, technology breakthroughs and cost reductions, a deepening understanding of eco-system services, resilient business and government leadership, as well as a staggering upsurge of citizen activism - all indicate that change is inevitable.
But when it comes to climate, timing is everything and we need to step-up the pace of change, accelerating a rapid drawdown in global emissions by 2020. Our shared mission is to ensure 6 critical milestones are met by 2020:
1. Renewables outcompete fossil fuels as new electricity sources worldwide
2. Zero emissions transport is the preferred form of all new mobility in the world’s major cities and transport routes
3. Large-scale deforestation is replaced with large-scale land restoration, and agriculture shifts to earth-friendly practices
4. Heavy industry - including iron & steel, cement, chemicals and oil & gas - commits to being Paris compliant
5. Cities and states are implementing policies and regulations to fully decarbonize buildings and infrastructure by 2050
6. Investment in climate action is beyond USD $1 trillion per year and all financial institutions have a disclosed transition strategy
Just as the Paris Agreement was a deeply shared endeavor, so delivering on its promise must be too. Our success in Paris was not an accident; it was the result of us rallying behind a common strategy, and abandoning resignation for a can-do attitude that accepted this challenge as our own. In this next phase, we will need to come together once again. Meeting these 6 milestones will not be easy, and we will need to support each other along the way to ensure the transition is just and equitable. But just as we delivered success in Paris, so we can deliver the 2020 climate turning point too. This is our moment. This is our great opportunity.
The Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), representing 48 countries with about one billion inhabitations, say that the Paris climate agreement is their "lifeline" and must be strengthened.
Keeping to 1.5 degrees is a matter of survival for residents of these countries, with irreversible damages and consequences if the Paris goals are not met. At a UN meeting in Bonn (preparatory to COP23) they are calling on all world leaders to increase their ambition. The group recently highlighted some of the important differences between keeping temperature rises under 2 degrees (the Paris mandate) or under 1.5 degrees (urged under the Paris agreement):
"The Greenland ice sheet would enter irreversible long-term decline, with significant 8impacts on sea levels at 1.6 degrees,"
"Warming beyond 1.5 would also appreciably increase the prevalence of extreme storms that have already been capable of large-scale lose of life and cutting a year's GDP (gross domestic product) in half or some of our members."
BBC News, May 17, 2017, Paris Climate deal is "lifeline" for world's poorest countries.
January 18 For Third Year, The Earth in 2016 Set Heat Record
Marking another milestone for a changing planet, scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016, trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row.
In 2015 and 2016, the planetary warming was intensified by the weather pattern known as El Niño, in which the Pacific Ocean released a huge burst of energy and water vapor into the atmosphere. But the bigger factor in setting the records was the long-term trend of rising temperatures, which scientists say is being driven by increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Even at current temperatures, billions of tons of land ice are melting or sliding into the ocean. The sea is also absorbing most of the heat trapped by human emissions. Those factors are causing the ocean to rise at what appears to be an accelerating pace, and coastal communities in the United States are beginning to spend billions to fight increased tidal flooding. Their pleas for help from Congress have largely been ignored.
The finding that a record had been set for the third year in a row was released on Wednesday by three government agencies, two of them American and one British, that track measurements made by ships, buoys and land-based weather stations.
New York Times, January 18, 2016
January 5 Earth on the edge: Record breaking 2016 was close to 1.5°C warming
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2016 confirmed as the warmest year on record, warmer than 2015 by close to 0.2°C
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Global temperatures reached a peak in February 2016 around 1.5°C higher than at the start of the Industrial Revolution
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Extreme conditions impacting several regions across the Earth
The first global analysis of the whole of 2016 has confirmed last year as the warmest on record and saw the planet near a 1.5°C warming, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
The latest figures from C3S, part of the EU’s Copernicus earth observation programme, show that 2016’s global temperature exceeded 14.8°C, and was around 1.3°C higher than typical for the middle years of the 18th century. 2016 was close to 0.2°C warmer than 2015, which was previously the warmest year on record.
C3S found that global temperatures in February 2016 already touched the 1.5°C limit, though under the influence of a strong El Niño, an intermittent event involving a period of warming. Global temperatures still remained well above average in the second half of 2016, associated partly with exceptionally low sea-ice cover in both the Arctic and Antarctic.
For the first year CO2 levels did not return below 400 ppm as
summer turned to autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. In previous years, take-up of CO2 by vegetation during the summer growing season has typically seen September mark the lowest point for CO2 levels.
December 8 Only five years left before 1.5C carbon budget is blown
In its most recent synthesis report, published in early 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) laid out estimates of how much CO2 we can emit and still keep global average temperature rise to no more than 1.5C, 2C or 3C above pre-industrial levels.
That same year, Carbon Brief used these estimates to calculate how many years of current emissions were left before blowing these budgets.
Updating this analysis for 2016, our figures suggest that just five years of CO2 emissions at current levels would be enough to use up the carbon budget for a good chance – a 66% probability – of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5C.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-only-five-years-left-before-one-point-five-c-budget-is-blown
December 1 Four Ways to Look at Standing Rock: An Indigenous Perspective
A couple of weeks ago, as I stood before climate scientists, advocates, and world policy leaders at the COP22 in Morocco, I felt the increased importance of my message as climate denier Donald Trump was voted into office. My perspective as a young Native woman living on the Navajo reservation and studying both renewable energy engineering and Diné studies had earned me an appointment to the NEJAC/EPA Youth Perspectives on Climate Working Group as well as to the SustainUs Youth Delegation attending the November climate talks in Marrakech.
I was there to bring Standing Rock to the world climate talks.
I want to make sure the world’s youth hear an indigenous perspective on sustainability and comprehend how the need to protect our cultural identity and exercise our tribal sovereignty in the DAPL fight impacts our survival as nations.
Because we are still learning how to erase the colonization of our own minds to really see the cultural implications of our so-called “infrastructure projects,” perhaps it is easier to identify straightforward acts of environmental racism, such as placing a refining factory within an impoverished community. Perhaps we can more easily oppose using cheap labor as a country’s leading export or stand up for the rights of a particular sex, gender, or religion.
And perhaps that is why, on Sept. 3, the water protectors who watched Dakota Access workers destroy the graves of their ancestors, continued to pray for and forgive the ignorance of those committing the crimes against them.
As I told the COP22 audiences, the battle at Standing Rock symbolizes the greater battle we all face: The assurance of cultural well-being and sustainability as a global community while combating the short-term visions and greed of corporations. We must remember the importance of hózhǫ́—balance—and that we, as beings of the Five Fingered Clan, are connected as k’é—relatives. We are made of the same four elements, and we share the same finite resources. As my my mother says: “We may be coming from all four directions, but we all come from the same neighborhood—the earth.”
December 1, 2016 Military experts warn of 'epic' humanitarian crisis sparked by climate change
Climate change could prompt a "humanitarian crisis of epic proportions", causing mass migration, war and threats to national security, military experts warn.
Even if countries keep the commitment to limit warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels, seen as the threshold beyond which dangerous climate change will occur, coping with the impacts will not be cheap, Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti said. The former Commander of UK Maritime Forces and government climate and energy security envoy, said more UK forces would have to be deployed for conflict prevention and resolution and to respond to more frequent humanitarian disasters.
His warning is being backed by military experts from other parts of the world, who are speaking at an event at Chatham House.
Brigadier General Stephen Cheney, chief executive of the American Security Project and member of the US Department of State's foreign policy affairs board, said: "Climate change could lead to a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. We're already seeing migration of large numbers of people around the world because of food scarcity, water insecurity and extreme weather, and this is set to become the new normal."
The impacts of rising temperatures, such as droughts, are acting to increase instability on Europe's doorstep and there were direct links to climate change in the Syrian war, the Arab Spring and the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency in Africa, he said. Unless countries tackled the root causes of global warming and cut greenhouse gas emissions, the national security impacts would be "increasingly costly and challenging".
Major General Munir Muniruzzaman, former military adviser to the president of Bangladesh and chairman of the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change, warned South Asia could see the first "water war". He said a combination of water scarcity in one of the most water-stressed regions in the world and political conditions had made the right brew for a potential conflict.
He also warned Bangladesh was the "ground zero" of climate change, and with one metre (3ft) of sea level rise the country could lose 20% of its land mass. "We're going to see refugee problems on an unimaginable scale, potentially above 30 million people," with the potential to destabilise not only Bangladesh but the region, he said.
Rear Admiral Morisetti said climate change was a "threat multiplier" for security concerns. "Climate change is a strategic security threat that sits alongside others like terrorism and state-on-state conflict, but also interacts with these threats. "It is complex and challenging; this is not a concern for tomorrow, the impacts are playing out today," he said.
November 30, 2016 Losses of soil carbon under global warming might equal US emissions
For decades scientists have speculated that rising global temperatures might alter the ability of soils to store carbon, potentially releasing huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and triggering runaway climate change. A new Yale-led study in the journal Nature finds that warming will drive the loss of at least 55 trillion kilograms of carbon from the soil by mid-century, or about 17% more than the projected emissions due to human-related activities during that period. That would be roughly the equivalent of adding to the planet another industrialized country the size of the United States.
"Carbon stores are greatest in places like the Arctic and the sub-Arctic, where the soil is cold and often frozen," Crowther said. "In those conditions microbes are less active and so carbon has been allowed to build up over many centuries. But as you start to warm, the activities of those microbes increase, and that's when the losses start to happen," Crowther said. "The scary thing is, these cold regions are the places that are expected to warm the most under climate change."
The study predicts that for one degree of warming, about 30 petagrams of soil carbon will be released into the atmosphere, or about twice as much as is emitted annually due to human-related activities (A petagram is equal to 1,000,000,000,000 kilograms). This is particularly concerning, Crowther said, because previous climate studies predicted that the planet is likely to warm by 2 degrees Celsius by mid-century.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-11-losses-soil-carbon-global-equal.html#jCp
November 29 Citizen Involvement in Electricity Production
The challenge of climate change is global and it demands action on an international scale, such as the Paris Agreement. But a large part of the solution will be local, involving all of us in the way energy is produced and consumed.
The potential for citizen involvement in electricity production is considerable. A recent study showed that by 2050 half of all Europeans could produce their own electricity either at home, as part of a cooperative, or in their small business. Counting generation from wind and solar power alone, these small actors could meet almost half of Europe’s total electricity needs.
Even more people could support the energy transition, and share in the benefits, by storing power in batteries, electric vehicles and smart boilers. This enables the grid to draw power when it’s cheap and plentiful, and temporarily lighten the load if there’s a peak in demand.
These projections may seem generous, but they must be considered in the context of the unprecedented fall in wind and solar prices. Since 2009, the price of solar panels has fallen by 80% and wind turbines by 40%. And it won’t stop there. Renewable energies are becoming competitive with fossil fuels and new nuclear, such as Hinkley Point, where EDF will try to build the most expensive reactors in the world and provide electricity at an unprecedented cost.
November 10 Landmark Federal Climate Lawsuit
“Exercising my ‘reasoned judgment,’ I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.” –U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken
On November 10, 2016 Judge Ann Aiken issued an opinion and order denying the U.S. government and fossil fuel industry’s motions to dismiss a constitutional climate change lawsuit filed by 21 youth. The decision means that the youth, age 9 to 20 and from all over the U.S., now have standing because their rights are at stake, and now their case is headed to trial.
The youth had filed their constitutional climate lawsuit against the federal government in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon in 2015. Also acting as a plaintiff is world-renowned climate scientist Dr. James E. Hansen, serving as guardian for future generations and his granddaughter. Their complaint asserts that, through the governments affirmative actions in causing climate change, it has violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, property, as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources.
https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit/
November 2 Indigenous rights are key to preserving forests, climate change study finds
The world’s indigenous communities need to be given a bigger role in climate stabilisation, according to a new study that shows at least a quarter of forest carbon is stored on communal land, particularly in Brazil.
The research by a group of academic institutions and environmental NGOs is the most comprehensive effort yet to quantify the contribution of traditional forest guardians to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Authors say the expansion of tribal land rights is the most cost-effective way to protect forests and sequester carbon – an issue that they hope will receive more prominence at the upcoming United Nations climate conference in Marrakech.
The paper by the Rights and Resources Initiative, Woods Hole Research Centre and World Resources Institute aims to encourage governments to recognise indigenous land rights and include tribal input in national action plans. Currently this is not the case for 167 of 188 nations in the Paris agreement, including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are home to some of the world’s biggest forests. It is also likely to feed into a growing debate in Brazil, which has won kudos for recognising more indigenous land than any other country in the past decade but is now under a new government that has yet to be tested in international climate talks.
Based on satellite surveys of 37 tropical countries, the study estimates community-claimed lands sequester at least 54,546m tonnes of carbon – roughly four times the world’s annual emissions.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/02/indigenous-rights-forests-climate-change-study
September 22 Recalculating the Climate Math
To have a 50–50 chance of meeting the goal of keeping the global temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees (the desired target stated at COP21 at Paris last year) we can only release about 353 gigatons more CO2 into the atmosphere. Coal mines and oil and gas wells currently in operation worldwide contain 942 gigatons worth of CO2.
That means to have just a break-even chance of meeting the 1.5 degree goal set in Paris, we’ll need to close all of the coal mines and some of the oil and gas fields we’re currently operating long before they’re exhausted. The “keep it in the ground” slogan of the climate movement is more important than ever.
This information draws on a report by Oil Change International <http://priceofoil.org/>, a Washington-based think tank, using data from the Norwegian energy consultants Rystad. “Keeping it in the ground” does not mean stopping all production of fossil fuels instantly. Stephen Kretzmann, OCI’s executive director says: “If you let current fields begin their natural decline, you’ll be using 50 percent less oil by 2033.”
That gives us 17 years, as the wells we’ve already drilled slowly run dry, to replace all that oil with renewable energy and retrain workers.
Article by Bill McKibben, "Recalculating the Climate Math," in The Republic
September 15 North Dakota Pipeline Access Protests
Tuesday, September 13 was a national day of action to stop the North Dakota Access Pipeline, which would carry 450,000 barrels a day of Bakken crude oil from the North Dakota oil fields to Illinois for processing. The proposed pipeline cuts through land and water sacred to North American native peoples. Organized by Native America tribes, the protest at the site is the largest gathering of native peoples since the Lakota took on Custer in the 1800s. Other environmental organizations organized more than 200 supportive rallies in almost 50 states on Tuesday, and are sending allies to the protest camps on Standing Rock, North Dakota.
While a federal court refused to stop the construction last week, US governmental agencies have since asked the construction company to halt construction until the permits can be reexamined. Protesters were violently attacked by private security firms hired by the construction company, many people including reporters have been arrested, the National Guard has been called in, and social media communications are being interfered with. This is a critical action challenging the fossil fuel industries as well as desecration of sacred space and potential large scale water pollution. It is getting little coverage in mainstream media, so search alternate media, like Indian Country Today, Facebook, and #NoDAPL for updates.
August Ties July for Hottest Month on Record
August has tied July for the distinction of being the hottest month since record-keeping began in 1880, NASA said in a news release on Monday.
And there’s a good chance 2016 will become the third year in a row of record heat.
An increase in greenhouse gas emissions and El Niño, a weather pattern that warms parts of the Pacific Ocean, has contributed to temperature increases in 2016, scientists said earlier this year.
“But we’ve had El Niños before, they haven’t given us the record-warm temperatures like this,” said Gavin Schmidt, the director for NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
The records being set continue to stack up.
- August and July are now the hottest months on record.
- Every month since October 2015 has set a new monthly high-temperature record.
- The first six months of this year beat 2015 for the hottest half-year ever recorded.
• Both 2014 and 2015 set new heat records, and 2016 is on pace to continue the trend.
September 14 Briefing Book for a New U.S. Administration, by the Climate and Security Advisory Group
Dozens of U.S. military and national security experts, including former advisers to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, issued a similar admonition in September, in the form of a Briefing Book for A New Administration (pdf) that warned of "the potential for ongoing climatic shifts to contribute to near and/or over-the-horizon instances of instability," including mass migration.
"According to the Department of Defense’s 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, climate change poses “immediate risks to national security.” These rapid changes in the climate are already exacerbating natural disasters, water, food, energy and health insecurities, contributing to conditions that can lead toconflict, state instability, and state failure, straining military readiness, operations and strategy, and making existing security threats worse. During both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama Administrations, the security community has taken steps to prepare for and reduce the risks climate change poses to the security landscape. Given that climate change affects all aspects of the security environment – including interactions with other state and non-state threats - these actions have been necessary to ensure the United States is able to protect and promote its interests. A growing consensus exists in the bipartisan US national security community that climate change presents a strategically significant risk to national and international security, and that more comprehensive action must be taken to ensure the US response is commensurate to the risk.
To save lives and money, strengthen national security, and demonstrate global leadership, a new administration must expand efforts to reduce and manage the security risks of climate change and seize the strategic opportunities presented by such efforts. The Climate and Security Advisory Group (CSAG) recommends that a new administration comprehensively address the security risks of climate change at all levels of national security planning, elevate and integrate attention to these risks across the US government, strengthen existing institutions and create new ones for addressing them. Specifically, the CSAG highlights ten topline recommendations drawn from the full recommendations below."
September 8 Endangered Glaciers: Alpine Ice begins Antarctic Journey
Scientists are drilling samples of ice from glaciers in the French Alps, some of the fastest receding glaciers on the planet. They will be stored in an "ice bunker" in the middle of Antarctica.
Bubbles in old, deep glacial ice are frozen records of our past atmosphere. Scientists say their purpose-built Antarctic ice bunker will keep these safe for future research.
BBC news, September 6
September 1 Big coastal cities sink faster than seas rise
NASA Report--While the threat of rising seas is well established, a phenomenon that is, in a sense, its opposite receives far fewer headlines: large coastal cities sinking faster than oceans can rise.
That is the conclusion of an article published by a team of scientists who recently assembled in New Orleans, La., and in Venice, Italy, to examine the problem. Extraction of groundwater or fossil fuels, and sometimes simply generations of farming, are causing large metropolitan areas in coastal zones around the world to subside surprisingly quickly—making the relative rise of adjacent seas an even greater potential hazard.
http://climate.nasa.gov/news/2487/big-coastal-cities-sink-faster-than-seas-rise/
August 16 July 2016 was world's hottest month since records began, says NASA
Last month was the hottest month in recorded history, beating the record set just 12 months before and continuing the long string of monthly records, according to the latest NASA data.
The past nine months have set temperature records for their respective months and the trend continued this month to make 10 in a row, according to Nasa. July broke the absolute record for hottest month since records began in 1880.
Similar data from the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said the past 14 months have broken the temperature record for each month, but it hasn’t released its figures for July yet.
Nasa’s results, which combine sea surface temperature and air temperature on land, showed July 2016 was 0.84C hotter than the 1951 to 1980 average for July, and 0.11C hotter than the previous record set in July 2015.
August 9 Volcanic rock can quickly store CO2
A new technique turns climate-warming carbon emissions to stone. In a test program in Iceland, more than 95 percent of the carbon dioxide injected into basaltic lava rocks mineralized into solid rock within two years. This surprisingly fast transformation quarantined CO2 from the atmosphere and could ultimately help offset society's greenhouse gas emissions, scientists report in the June 10 Science.
Science News, July 9, 2016
July 25 Record Heat Waves
Record-breaking temperatures around the world this week:
Iraq: 128F/54C
Kuwait 128F/54C
India 124F/51C
Record warmth was widespread across Alaska, western Canada, southern Mexico, northern South America, central Africa, Indonesia, northern and eastern Australia, North Indian Ocean, and across parts of north-central Russia, western Asia, central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, the southwestern Pacific Ocean, and the north-western Atlantic Ocean.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) (a body of the United Nations) highlighted that the latest heatwaves come as Earth has just witnessed the hottest six month period on record with temperatures shattering even the record levels seen in 2015.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=54559
July 18 Ratification of Paris Accord
As of 27 July 2016, there are 179 signatories to the Paris Agreement. Of these, 20 States have also deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance or approval accounting in total for 0.40 % of the total global greenhouse gas emissions.
The Agreement shall enter into force on the thirtieth day after the date on which at least 55 Parties to the Convention accounting in total for at least an estimated 55 % of the total global greenhouse gas emissions have deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession with the Depositary.
Paris Agreement- Status of Ratification
http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9444.php
July 11 Climate Change and Poverty
According to a new World Bank report, an additional 100 million people will be struggling with poverty by 2030, because of global warming, If countries fail to sustain policies that combat the impacts of climate change. The report titled "Shock Waves", states that poor people are more likely to be impacted by climate related “Shocks”, like flooding, drought, crop failure, spikes in food prices, or disease that will increase due to climate change. This means that climate change is a huge threat to the world’s historic goal of ending poverty by 2030.
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/22787/9781464806735.pdf
July 4 Climate Change Migrants
France’s environment minister, Ségolène Royal has warned that global warming will create hundreds of millions of climate change migrants by the end of the century if governments do not act. At the UN environment assembly in Nairobi, she addressed ministers of 170 countries, saying that “If nothing is done to combat the negative impact of climate change, we will have hundreds of millions of climate change migrants by the end of the century.”
http://www.marrakech2016cop22.com/single.php?article=149&lang=en
June 27 Drought Intensifies in South Madagasgar
http://www.ipsnews.net/2016/06/seeds-for-supper-as-drought-intensifies-in-south-madagascar/
Humanitarian agencies like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) estimate that 1.14 million people lack enough food in the seven districts of Southern Madagascar, accounting for at least 80 percent of the rural population. This is due to a drought crisis and many poor households have resulted to selling small animals and their own clothes, as well as kitchenware, in desperate attempts to cope.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), these adverse weather conditions (prolonged drought) have reduced crop production in other Southern African nations where an estimated 14 million people face hunger in countries including Southern Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Malawi and South Africa.
Farmers like Rasoanandeasana Emillienne say that this is the driest rainy season in 35 years. “I have never experienced this kind of hunger. We are taking one day at a time because who knows what will happen if the rains do not return,” says the mother of four.
June 20, 2016 China Plans to Reduce Citizen Meat Consumption
The Chinese government has outlined a plan to reduce its citizens’ meat consumption by 50%, in a move that climate campaigners hope will provide major heft in the effort to avoid runaway global warming.
New dietary guidelines drawn up by China’s health ministry recommend that the nation’s 1.3 billion population should consume between 40g to 75g of meat per person each day. The measures, released once every 10 years, are designed to improve public health but could also provide a significant cut to greenhouse gas emissions.
Globally, 14.5% of planet-warming emissions emanate from the keeping and eating of cows, chickens, pigs and other animals – more than the emissions from the entire transport sector. Livestock emit methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, while land clearing and fertilizers release large quantities of carbon.
China now consumes 28% of the world’s meat, including half of its pork. However, China still lags behind more than a dozen other countries in per capita meat consumption, with the average American or Australian consuming twice as much meat per person compared to China.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/20/chinas-meat-consumption-climate-change
June 13, 2016 12th Consecutive Warmest Month on Record
April 2016 was the warmest April on record for the globe, making it the 12th consecutive month that earth has recorded its warmest respective month on record. NOAA's global State of the Climate report found April's temperature over the Earth's surface was 1.10 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average. This crushed the previous warmest April set in 2010 by 0.28 degrees Celsius.
Defeating a previous record by a few tenths of a degree may not sound overwhelming, but in the world of climate statistics, computed from worldwide temperatures, this is yet another record-shattering figure. The 12-month streak with record warm temperatures for the world is the longest stretch of months in a row that a global temperature record has been set in NOAA's dataset.
Historical perspective from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 5th Assessment Report, Executive Summary:
Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850. In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years.
(NOAA--National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [U.S.])
https://weather.com/news/climate/news/record-warmest-april-earth-2016
June 7, 2016 India Ratifies Paris Accord
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India would ratify the Paris agreement this year, a key step toward making the deal stick. The agreement goes into effect 30 days after 55 nations representing 55% of all greenhouse gas emissions ratify it. India is the world's third-largest producer of greenhouse gases.
You can see the status of ratification of the Paris Accord here. (USA Today)
June 1, 2016 Renewables Added at Record Pace
New solar, wind and hydropower sources were added in 2015 at the fastest rate the world has yet seen. Investments in renewables during the year were more than double the amount spent on new coal and gas-fired power plants, the Renewables Global Status Report found. For the first time, emerging economies spent more than the rich on renewable power and fuels. For a number of years, the global spend on renewables has been increasing and 2015 saw that arrive at a new peak according to the report. China, the US, Japan, UK and India were the countries adding on the largest share of green power, despite the fact that fossil fuel prices have fallen significantly. (BBC News)