globalwarm 4 bak

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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see 1.5</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">field error on main&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">globalwarm4bak322</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">POST TRUMP</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">maybe premature, now 3 bak</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">what was glaciergate typo? vs what actually happened?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bad code alternet (not signed in?)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NEW</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-june-22-2022/">https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-june-22-2022/</a>&nbsp; nordhaus fraction of % gdp 2100 now 14%/yr much earlier, he got nobel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qkpBizCFYo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qkpBizCFYo</a>&nbsp;apr 2022 commonwealth</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><h1 class="book_title" style="line-height: 32px; padding: 2px 25px 10px; margin: 0px; width: 450px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fire and Flood: A People’s History of Climate Change, from 1979 to the Present</font></h1></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.harvard.com/book/fire_and_flood/">
</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.harvard.com/book/fire_and_flood/">https://www.harvard.com/book/fire_and_flood/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">Eugene Linden wrote his first story on climate change, for&nbsp;</span><i style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">Time</i><span style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">&nbsp;magazine, in 1988; it was just the beginning of his investigative work, exploring all ramifications of this impending disaster.&nbsp;</span><i style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">Fire and Flood</i><span style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">&nbsp;represents his definitive case for the prosecution as to how and why we have arrived at our current dire pass, closing with his argument that the same forces that have confused the public’s mind and slowed the policy response are poised to pivot with astonishing speed, as long-term risks have become present-day realities and the cliff’s edge is now within view.</span><br style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);" /><br style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">Starting with the 1980s, Linden tells the story, decade by decade, by looking at four clocks that move at different speeds: the reality of climate change itself; the scientific consensus about it, which always lags reality; public opinion and political will, which lag further still; and, perhaps most important, business and finance. Reality marches on at its own pace, but the public will and even the science are downstream from the money, and&nbsp;</span><i style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">Fire and Flood</i><span style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">&nbsp;shows how devilishly effective moneyed climate-change deniers have been at slowing and even reversing the progress of our collective awakening. When a threat means certain but future disaster, but addressing it means losing present-tense profit, capitalism’s response has been sadly predictable.</span><br style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);" /><br style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">Now, however, the seasons of fire and flood have crossed the threshold into plain view.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Linden focuses on the insurance industry as one loud canary in the coal mine: fire and flood zones in Florida and California, among other regions, are now seeing what many call “climate redlining.” The whole system is teetering on the brink, and the odds of another housing collapse, for starters, are much higher than most people understand</span><span style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">. There is a path back from the cliff, but we must pick up the pace.&nbsp;</span><i style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">Fire and Flood</i><span style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">&nbsp;shows us why, and how.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5 22 an</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">c<strong>limate change is the result of a deadly calculus: human lives are worth risking and even losing over the profits of global corporations.</strong></font><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently dropped a&nbsp;<a href="https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/wmo-update-5050-chance-of-global-temperature-temporarily-reaching-15%C2%B0c-threshold" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">bombshell announcement</a>&nbsp;that should have garnered news headlines in the major global and U.S. media, but did not. New WMO research concludes that “<b>[t]here is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level for at least one of the next five years.”</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WMO Secretary-General Professor Petteri Taalas explained, “The 1.5 degree Celsius figure is not some random statistic. It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2015, the likelihood of reaching that threshold within five years was nearly zero. In 2017 it was 10 percent, and today it is 50 percent. As we continue to spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.iea.org/news/global-co2-emissions-rebounded-to-their-highest-level-in-history-in-2021" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">dizzying amounts</a>, that percentage spikes with every passing year and will soon reach 100 percent certain</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ty.</span></font></p><p><font size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman">When average global temperatures hit the tipping point of 1<b>.5 degrees Celsius, climate scientists predict that most of the Earth’s&nbsp;<a href="https://theconversation.com/safe-havens-for-coral-reefs-will-be-almost-non-existent-at-1-5-c-of-global-warming-new-study-176084" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">coral reefs</a>&nbsp;will die off</b>. At 2 degrees Celsius, all will die off. This is the reason why&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/11/08/1052198840/1-5-degrees-warming-climate-change" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">United Nations members coalesced</a>&nbsp;around staving off an average global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius at the last global climate gathering in 2021.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The planet has already heated up by&nbsp;<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-official-the-last-five-years-were-the-warmest-ever-recorded-133056" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">1.1 degrees Celsius</a>, and the consequences are dire across the globe.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.vox.com/23057267/india-pakistan-heat-wave-climate-change-coal-south-asia" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">India</a>&nbsp;is experiencing its worst heat wave in 122 years, and neighboring Pakistan has broken a 61-year-old record for high temperatures. Dozens of people have already died as a result of the extreme heat.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In&nbsp;<a href="https://www.france24.com/en/environment/20220511-france-s-unprecedented-drought-shows-climate-change-is-spiralling-out-of-control" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">France</a>, farmers “can see the earth cracking every day,” as a record-breaking drought has thrown the country’s agricultural industry into crisis mode.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here in the United States, across the central and northeastern parts of the country, there is a&nbsp;<a href="https://news.yahoo.com/climate-change-heat-wave-northeast-record-breaking-united-states-194418560.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">heat wave</a>&nbsp;so large and so severe that people from Texas to Maine experienced triple-digit temperatures in May.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Even the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/11/weather/orange-county-california-fire-evacuations/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">wealthy enclave of Laguna Niguel</a>&nbsp;in Orange County, Southern California, is on fire, and dozens of homes have been destroyed</b>. Although moneyed elites have far more resources to remain protected from the deadly impacts of climate change compared to the rest of us, occasionally even their homes are in the path of destruction, indicating that nowhere on Earth will be safe on a catastrophically warming planet.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Ironically, as extreme heat waves become more likely with global warming, humans will burn more fossil fuels to power the air conditioning they need to cool off and survive, thereby fueling the very phenomenon that leads to more extreme heat wa</b>ves.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In such a scenario, it is a massive no-brainer for the world to quickly and without delay transition to renewable energy sources. Instead, President Joe Biden in April&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/climate/biden-drilling-oil-leases.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">announced</a>&nbsp;the sale of new leases for oil and gas companies to drill on public lands, reneging on his campaign platform’s climate pledges.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Biden did so apparently in order to increase domestic fuel supplies and thereby lower gas prices. He also raised the percentage of royalties that companies pay the federal government from 12.5 percent to 18.75 percent. But no amount of dollars saved by consumers or earned in royalties by the federal government can halt the laws of physics and protect the climate.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The New York Times’s&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/climate/biden-oil-gas-lease-sales.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Lisa Friedman</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;explained, “</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The burning of fossil fuels extracted from public land and in federal waters accounts for 25 percent of the greenhouse gases generated by the<b>&nbsp;United States</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>, which is the planet’s second biggest polluter, behind China</b>.” Here is one area where the federal executive branch has control, and yet financial considerations have been dictating responses rather than existential ones.</span></font></p><p><font size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman">After&nbsp;<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/climate-activists-decry-bidens-reopening-of-oil-and-gas-leases-on-public-lands/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">climate activists</a>&nbsp;vocally denounced the move,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/climate/biden-oil-gas-lease-sales.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Biden did finally cancel the drilling leases</a>&nbsp;for Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. The Interior Department cited a “lack of industry interest” and “conflicting court rulings,” rather than pressure from activists, as the reason for the cancellation. Regardless, it is a small measure of relief for a planet that is on its way to burning to a crisp.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Biden (and other lawmakers) claim they are driven by rising inflation and the impact of high gas prices on voters’ pocket books, it turns out the public doesn’t actually&nbsp;<em>want</em>&nbsp;a glut of oil and gas to help lower costs.</font></p><p><font size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);" face="Times New Roman">A new poll by the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.muhlenberg.edu/aboutus/polling/climateenvironmentsurveys/archivedpolls/winter2022-energyenvironmentsurvey/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">National Surveys on Energy and the Environment</a>&nbsp;found that there is&nbsp;<b>no longer skepticism among the public that the effects of climate change are real, as 76 percent of respondents—the highest on record since the poll started</b>—“believe there is solid evidence that temperatures on the planet have risen over the last four decades.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The poll also notably concluded that “Americans continue to favor reducing greenhouse gas emissions as their preferred approach for staving off the worst impacts of climate change,” and that they “remain skeptical of any pivot from mitigation toward climate policy that prioritizes adaptation, use of geoengineering or subterranean carbon storage.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>So, rather than invest in mitigating climate change or adapting to it—which is what market-driven economies favor—people, sensibly, want to stop the planet from warming in the first place.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, there is&nbsp;<a href="https://phys.org/news/2022-04-halve-energy-climate-catastrophe.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">growing concern among climate scientists</a>&nbsp;that it may already be too late for a transition to renewables. In spite of energy sources like solar and wind becoming rapidly cheaper and more accessible, overall energy consumption is increasing about as fast, as per one recent study. Mark Diesendorf, the author of the study, explained, “it is simply impossible for renewable energy to overtake that retreating target. And that’s no fault of renewable energy. It’s the fault of the growth in consumption and the fact that action has been left too late.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Because corporate profit-based considerations have constantly dictated our energy use and climate policies, we have effectively decided that major sacrifices of lives—most likely poor people of color—will be worth the pain of relying on fossil fuels for energy.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is an analogy to be found in the COVID-19 pandemic. For months,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01394-0" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">scientists sounded the alarm</a>&nbsp;over prevention, endorsing lockdowns, masks, and vaccines to stop the spread of the deadly virus, just as climate scientists issued warnings against global warming for decades. Both science-based campaigns faced uphill battles, each with its own challenges in recommending the most rational guidelines to maximize public safety in spite of financial sacrifices (closing down most businesses and restaurants and canceling major sporting and entertainment events, in the case of COVID-19; promoting solar power subsidies, switching to wind energy, and manufacturing hybrid and electric vehicles, in the case of the climate crisis). All the while, corporate interests and right-wing political opportunists successfully pushed their own agenda in the halls of power, insisting that economic growth was the most important consideration.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, even as COVID-19&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-cases-are-surging-hospitalizations-may-not-rcna28515" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">infection rates are skyrocketing</a>, with cases having risen by 58 percent in the last two weeks alone, mask mandates are being dropped all over the country and COVID-19-related restrictions are ending. This is not because the virus is under control—it is clearly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/?itid=hp_pandemic_gfx/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">not</a>—but because it’s no longer financially viable for corporate America to sacrifice profits for lives. So, it will sacrifice lives for profit—<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/02/28/1082564304/billions-of-people-are-in-danger-from-climate-change-u-n-report-warns" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">just as is the case with the climate crisis</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is worth spelling out this equation so that we know where we are headed.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the climate changes, we begin to see where the bodies are buried—literally. Water levels in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.iflscience.com/environment/more-human-remains-have-been-revealed-by-climate-change-at-lake-mead/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Nevada’s Lake Mead</a>&nbsp;have fallen so dramatically that the remains of at least two human bodies were recently discovered. What other disturbing discoveries are in store for us?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Author Bio</strong>: Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.risingupwithsonali.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">“Rising Up With Sonali,”</a>&nbsp;a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing fellow for the&nbsp;<a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/economy-for-all/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Economy for All</a>&nbsp;project at the Independent Media Institute.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">he's good w/ metaphor</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/limiting-climate-change-life-support/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The 1.5-degree goal is on life support. It is in intensive care."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday, as he stressed that a swift and just transition to clean energy is necessary to meet the Paris agreement's objective of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels—and warned against using Russia's deadly assault on Ukraine as an excuse to ramp up fossil fuel production worldwide.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The science is clear. So is the math," the U.N. leader said during a speech delivered at a Sustainability Summit hosted by The Economist. "Keeping 1.5 alive requires a 45% reduction in global emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by mid-century." And yet, "according to present national commitments, global emissions are set to increase by almost 14% in the 2020s."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We are sleepwalking to climate catastrophe," Guterres continued. "Our planet has already warmed by as much as 1.2 degrees—and we see the devastating consequences everywhere. In 2020, climate disasters forced 30 million people to flee their homes—three times more than those displaced by war and violence."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just this past weekend, scientists conveyed shock and alarm in response to reports that temperatures at both of Earth's poles reached more than 50°F above average last week. Peer-reviewed research published on Friday found that increasingly frequent and intense wildfires around the globe are exacerbating Arctic warming, which is worsening the conditions that make future blazes more likely.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Two weeks ago," said Guterres, citing part two of the U.N.'s landmark climate assessment, "the IPCC confirmed that half of humanity is already living in the danger zone. Small island nations, least developed countries, and poor and vulnerable people everywhere are one climate shock away from doomsday. In our globally connected world, no country and no corporation can insulate itself from these levels of chaos."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"If we continue with more of the same, we can kiss 1.5 goodbye," he added. "Even 2 degrees may be out of reach. And that would be catastrophe."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Making matters worse, said Guterres, "the fallout from Russia's war in Ukraine risks upending global food and energy markets—with major implications for the global climate agenda."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The United States, United Kingdom, and European Union have moved to restrict imports of Russian fossil fuels in response to Moscow's military offensive. Although progressives have emphasized that the ongoing invasion should lead to an intensification of efforts to move away from dirty energy, profit-hungry proponents of oil, gas, and coal have seized on surging prices to push for boosting extraction and exports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guterres warned that "as major economies pursue an 'all-of-the-above' strategy to replace Russian fossil fuels, short-term measures might create long-term fossil fuel dependence and close the window to 1.5 degrees."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Countries could become so consumed by the immediate fossil fuel supply gap that they neglect or knee-cap policies to cut fossil fuel use," he said. "This is madness. Addiction to fossil fuels is mutually assured destruction."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"As current events make all too clear, our continued reliance on fossil fuels puts the global economy and energy security at the mercy of geopolitical shocks and crises," added Guterres. "We need to fix the broken global energy mix."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Noting that "the timeline to cut emissions by 45% is extremely tight," the U.N. leader stressed that "instead of hitting the brakes on the decarbonization of the global economy, now is the time to put the pedal to the metal towards a renewable energy future."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His remarks came just hours before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) kicked off a two-week meeting to validate part three of its report, which focuses on the need to drastically slash carbon pollution to avoid the most disastrous outcomes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guterres argued that cooperation between the developed and emerging economies of the G20—responsible for 80% of global emissions—is essential to addressing the planetary emergency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Accelerating the phase-out of coal and all fossil fuels and implementing a rapid, just, and sustainable energy transition," he said, is "the only true pathway to energy security."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/great-barrier-reef-bleaching-event/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/climate-change-surge-uncharted-territory/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">j little tom dispatch</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">consider this perhaps the strangest thing of all in our all-too-strange world: the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced essentially never leads the news. Yes, the immediate crises of our world, most recently Vladimir Putin’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine, are 24/7 headlines for weeks at a time. And any set of events that sends millions of us into external or internal exile, as has become all too common on this planet of ours, should indeed be a focus of attention. But to put all of this in context, it’s estimated that within three decades up to a mind-boggling 1.2 billion human beings could be driven from their homes thanks to the burgeoning climate emergency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, climate change, as TomDispatch regular Jane Braxton Little, who still lives in the fire-devastated northern Californian town of Greenville, reminds us today, is already hard at work wrecking lives across our world. When it hits as fire or flood, as a dramatic weather disaster of some sort, the news often loves to show us the calamity at hand (and the all-too-photogenic weeping survivors). But the cause of it all, climate change itself? No such luck. The ongoing, never-ending, ever-worsening calamity that could someday simply destroy human life as we’ve known it gets remarkably little attention here (unless coal merchant Joe Manchin votes against its solution in some fashion).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Only recently the authoritative U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest devastating report, produced by 1,000 scientists, on what we’re doing to ourselves. In the midst of the Ukrainian events, it got hardly a moment’s notice. Yet its version of the news to come should have been screaming headlines, given that, if the effects of the overheating of this planet aren’t mitigated soon, by 2050, at least 183 million more people could be going hungry and that’s just to start down a long list of possible nightmares to come. At least climate change makes headlines here at TomDispatch. Today, for instance, you can learn from Little, who has experienced its effects in an up-close-and-personal way, just how we’re going to be “whiplashed” by the weather that our eternally fossil-fuel-burning societies (and the&nbsp; https://tomdispatch.com/best-of-tomdispatch-engelhardt-the-biggest-criminal-enterprise-in-history/... big energy companies...Greenville, CA — Snow began falling on December 24th, big fluffy flakes that made lace on mittens before melting. Within hours it had coated the ashes, the brick chimneys that the flames had left behind, and the jagged remains of roofs strewn across my burned-out town. White mounds soon softened the look of charred cars that are everywhere, while even the scorched trees that stretch to the hilltops were coated in a forgiving winter wonder.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Any moisture would have been welcome. Over the seven months since the&nbsp; destroyed Greenville and several other rural communities in California’s northern Sierra Nevada mountains, the drought that led to the flaming disaster had only deepened. October brought brief, drenching rains, but November and December were dry again. Soil that should have been moist was as desiccated as the air, while the humidity hovered just above single digits. We watched bulldozers move the dilapidated walls — what had not long ago been homes — into gigantic dump trucks in a haze of grime. Even the trees that survived had a withered look. Now, it was snowing — for Christmas! We greeted it with hearts as wide as the open mouths of kids savoring falling flakes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greenville, my adopted town of 46 years, had been devastated by a climate-change disaster. Sparked by the&nbsp; ...https://s1.q4cdn.com/880135780/files/doc_downloads/wildfire_updates/2021/07/071821.pdf... , the Dixie fire scorched nearly one million acres, the distance, if you care to measure, from Philadelphia to New York City. On August 4th, a pyrocumulus cloud collapsed on the ridge above the tarnished old Gold Rush community where I worked, erupting into red-hot embers that fell over a several square-mile area. Trees were transformed into towering torches. Flames roared down the nearby mountain, racing through overcrowded forests left bone dry (after a century of ill-advised fire suppression) by a third year of drought. It took less than 45 minutes for that inferno to raze the historic 160-year-old downtown, including my journalism office on the second floor of the oldest building around. About 800 homes went up in flames. Over the next four months, we gathered in grief in twos and threes in the post offices and shops of neighboring towns, soothing one another.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, it was Christmas and snowing! We relaxed and rejoiced amid the ruins.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Little did we know that, driven by our overheated planet, we were about to be whiplashed from drought to deluge. Hotter days and hotter nights have corkscrewed our weather patterns into spiraling extremes, leaving entire regions around the world jerked from the hottest temperatures they’ve known to the coldest, from devastating fires to disastrous floods. This is uncharted territory and, scientists say, an all-too-grim preview of the future we’re creating for ourselves.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By the fourth day of non-stop snow our euphoria had waned. Electricity was flickering on and off. The Internet was mostly off. We shoveled our steps and then the paths to our cars, only to find them covered all over again. Driveways were challenging and roads treacherous (if open at all). Snow was piling up across the Sierra Nevada, the gigantic tilted block of granite that lies along the state line with Nevada.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At Lake Tahoe, 75 miles to the south, 18 feet of snow was dumped on luxury second homes, collapsing decks, and taxing municipal snow-removal crews gone soft after years of mild winters. Highway 80, the main route over the mountains, was closed for three days by storms that made December the third snowiest month on record and the snowiest December ever. Those storms catapulted the state’s precipitation to 258% of its average for that point in the year. California water officials were giddy with expectation, predicting that our three-year-old drought would be broken.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then, of course, it ended. Precipitation of any kind simply stopped. January clocked in as the driest ever for some parts of the state, as well as most of Nevada, Utah, and western Colorado. Last month was the driest February in 128 years, according to a multi-agency partnership monitoring drought. And here’s the truth of it: if we keep letting greenhouse gases increase in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, we better get used to this sort of seesaw experience. Scientists say that, by century’s end, such abrupt transitions between wet and dry will increase by another 25% in northern California and possibly double that in southern California.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weather Whiplash</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While California may be a poster child for extreme weather events, they are occurring almost everywhere. Such wild swings from tinder-dry to inundation are known as climate or weather whiplash. What causes them is a matter of scientific speculation and the subject of much cutting-edge research, says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles. Some scientists cite a connection between the polar vortex, a wall of wind that circles the Arctic, and jet streams, the bands of strong winds that generally blow from west to east. As the Arctic warms — at as much as triple the average global rate — it seems to be destabilizing those jet streams and so, according to a study published in Environmental Research, provoking abnormal and extreme weather across the planet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Swain thinks we should imagine it as a colossal tug of war involving complex atmospheric dynamics over the Pacific Ocean. Yes, he says, the world is definitely getting warmer as greenhouse-gas concentrations rise. That, in turn, means wet times will generally be wetter and dry times drier, especially in California. He’s also found emerging evidence, as he told me, of what he calls “a relatively weird” regional effect: the loss of Arctic sea ice might actually be counteracting the drying effect of the expanding subtropical zone, keeping California from becoming more arid still in a warming world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People in my community know local weather and the land. Ranchers, loggers, and firefighters, they understand storms and seasons, soil, water, and trees in an up close and personal way. I’ve found my place among them over these years, writing about their work and their love of the landscape we share. We here in Greenville may not know anything about what the intersection of the polar vortex and jet streams or atmospheric dynamics are doing to our world, but we certainly know when our environment is off kilter. Being jerked from the drought that provoked the Dixie fire to that historic snowfall and back again has left us with little doubt: something with the weather is seriously bonkers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The unexpected uncertainty of weather we once took for granted is spawning anxieties that add to the trauma of living through a town-destroying fire. Instead of one disaster and done, weather whiplash threatens us with disaster after disaster. Having somehow survived fire, we’ve been thrust into a deeply uncertain future. The forests we turned to for hiking, fishing, and birdsong no longer promise solace. The natural world that welcomed and kept us in this valley ringed by mountains has become unreliable. What can we trust?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Is for Anthropocene</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When it comes to weather whiplash, Australia is exhibit A for Anthropocene, the current geological epoch dominated by the human impact on the environment. Storms have been pounding that island nation’s southeast coast since late February, earning the moniker “rain bombs” for their severity. In just two days, the town of Doon Doon in New South Wales received 42 inches of rain, roughly Washington, D.C.’s annual precipitation. Flooding has killed 22 people so far, prompting Prime Minister Scott Morrison to declare a national emergency. This round of extreme wet weather follows the catastrophic bushfires of 2020 that killed 28 people and more than a billion animals, while scorching an area nearly the size of Connecticut in a fashion never before seen.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Worse yet, as we in California have discovered, the recovery time for communities between such climate disasters is shrinking. Simon Bradshaw, a researcher at the Australian Climate Council, summed things up simply enough: “New South Wales was hit hard by the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires and now it is in the grips of another climate-driven disaster.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then there’s Texas. During the last decade that state has reeled from one of the most significant droughts since the 1950s to a series of deluges that have rivaled any period of flooding Texas has ever experienced. Rainfall in 2011 was 25 inches below average, forcing mandatory water restrictions. Meteorologist Jeff Lindner called the heat in Houston that August a 10,000-year event. Over the 2011 Labor Day weekend, vegetation primed by that drought combined with 40 mile-per-hour winds to produce the Bastrop fire, the single most devastating wildfire in that state’s history. It burned more than 35,000 acres and around 1,600 homes, while the Tricounty fire incinerated over 19,000 acres and 100 homes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then the weather seesawed. By the time Hurricane Harvey made landfall at Port Aransas on August 27, 2017, the area had rocketed from drought to deluge. Rainfall for the year was nearly 30 inches above the annual average. Netherland, a city on the Gulf of Mexico, recorded more than 60 inches. The devastation Harvey wreaked affected an estimated 13 million people and included at least 107 deaths, nearly 135,000 homes damaged or destroyed (one third of the total number in four counties), and up to a million wrecked cars.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Governor Greg Abbott, a veteran climate-change denier who has threatened to sue President Biden over policies addressing the crisis, conceded that something was changing dramatically. “We need to recognize that this is going to be a new normal. A new and different normal for the entire region,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even when such weather swings don’t create disasters, they have tangible consequences. Across the American Midwest, for instance, weather whiplash is driving a decline in municipal water quality. After excessive flooding followed a drought in 2012, researchers at the University of Kansas noticed a nitrogen spike in surface waters in the area. In dry times, the nitrogen fertilizer that farmers put in their fields doesn’t go into the plants it’s intended to enrich. A 2017 study found that the nitrogen stays in the soil, which acts like a sponge, holding it in place. “But as soon as you wet it,” Amy Burgin, one of its authors, points out, “like when you wring a sponge, the nitrogen can flood into the rivers.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such increasingly high nitrate levels in drinking water forced the Des Moines Water Works to construct a $4.1 million nitrate removal plant that costs $7,000 a day to operate. As weather whiplash becomes ever more the norm, scientists expect surface-water nitrate spikes to occur throughout the agricultural Midwest.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Elsewhere, the changing patterns of various kinds of wildlife are only exacerbating the problems caused by weird weather. In eastern Oregon, for instance, widespread drought followed by deep snow has caused elk to move out of the hills to feed on the haystacks that are ranchers’ paychecks. Conflicts between wildlife and humans are already common enough, but climate scientists expect them to increase as droughts, floods, and fires push animals off their normal ranges and into agricultural areas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who Drives the Climate Train?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As I’ve learned all too personally, climate disasters are profoundly destabilizing. They can wrench communities from their roots and turn them upside down. They are also profoundly unjust. Those with the fewest resources and least responsible for the climate crisis are going to continue to bear the brunt of its impact.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And here’s the only good news: climate change is a problem with a solution. We humans created it, which means it’s solvable. That, however, would require societal and political will of a kind we simply haven’t seen yet. And that’s the bad news. We haven’t mustered anything close to enough determination to halt the relentless increases in temperature driving the weather that’s whiplashing us ever more violently. As United Nations Secretary General António Guterres put it, a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is “a damning indictment of failed climate leadership… that reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Swain, the UCLA climate scientist, put it this way: “We’re on a train going faster and faster down the tracks with perfectly functional brakes. But the drivers, for whatever reasons, are choosing not to engage the brakes.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the great ironies of experiencing climate-change disaster may be that we are both its victims and its drivers. We could, at least theoretically, apply the brakes of the locomotive. In our fury over the forces of destruction beyond our control — the flames that incinerate and the floods that inundate our lives — perhaps we’ll find the political will and guts to bring meaningful change, at least on a very small scale right here in my town of Greenville.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In its charred devastation, we could now choose solar power over fossil fuels. (And if so, who would blame us for feeling smug about shunning PG&E?) We could choose community gardens over imported produce. All that, however, remains a distant future for a place with a single grocery store, a gas station, and little else. But if we must spend the rest of our lives healing, we can at least invest them in empowering one another and our community in a new way. We have so little left to lose.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">yikes high temps 50 degrees?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/polar/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">YIKES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2 22 final?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/with-limited-amount-of-time-left-new-ipcc-report-urges-climate-adaptation/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climatewire</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CLIMATE CHANGE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With ‘Limited Amount of Time Left,’ New IPCC Report Urges Climate Adaptation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Human and natural systems are already buckling under the influence of global warming, write the authors of a landmark report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Chelsea Harvey, Sara Schonhardt, E&E News on February 28, 2022</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The lowly Bramble Cay melomys, a small Australian rodent, wasn’t the kind of animal that often made the news. But in 2019, it splashed across headlines.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reason? It was the first mammal to go extinct because of climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Named for the island where it used to live, the little rodent had been declining for decades. Scientists had warned for several years beforehand that it was either already extinct or nearly there, blaming its demise on a combination of sea-level rise and increasing tropical storms.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now almost certainly gone, the Bramble Cay melomys is a grim reminder that some consequences of climate change are forever—and that some of these irreversible impacts are happening today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those warnings are among the stark messages contained in a landmark climate report released today by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, composed of the world’s leading climate scientists. A rapidly warming world will hit humans and nature harder than expected, the report warns—and we’re far from prepared to deal with the fallout.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the report “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change,” he said. ARSON ON OUR HOUSE?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report is the latest of three in a major ongoing climate assessment by the IPCC—the sixth since the organization was established more than 30 years ago. The first installment in August, which focused on changes to the atmosphere, water and land, found that the window for limiting temperature rise to dangerous levels was nearly closed and that some of the shifts now in motion—such as sea-level rise—are irreversible (Climatewire, Aug. 9, 2021).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today’s report focuses on how those physical changes will affect humans and natural ecosystems, and the ability of both to respond to what’s coming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Its primary takeaways include a mix of warning and hope. Human and natural systems already are buckling under the influence of global warming. Some of them are approaching the limits of their ability to adapt. Some of them will be changed forever and won’t be able to bounce back—even if rising temperatures eventually recede.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it’s not all doom and gloom. Some places around the world still have time to put measures in place that can help them adapt to more extreme heat, severe storms, drought and flooding. But that will require more money and resources, better policies, understanding and involvement of local communities—and all of it without delay.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Bramble Cay melomys is hardly the only irretrievable casualty of the warming world. Weather and climate extremes already have left some irreversible impacts as human and natural systems are pushed beyond their ability to respond, the report states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hundreds of other species around the world have gone locally extinct—not disappearing from the globe entirely but vanishing from some regions they used to call home. Some islands and other coastal areas are slipping beneath the rising seas, likely for good.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Within the last decade, residents of Louisiana’s rapidly shrinking island community of Isle de Jean Charles—many of whom belong to the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe—have become widely recognized as the first U.S. climate refugees. Elsewhere around the world, entire island nations are facing the prospect of forced relocation as their homes disappear beneath the swelling ocean.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many ecosystems that haven’t yet passed the point of no return are approaching the brink. Mass mortality events are plaguing forests and coral reefs around the world. Permafrost is thawing across the Arctic, releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide and methane, degrading the landscape and threatening buildings and other infrastructure. Mountain glaciers are melting and shrinking, threatening local water supplies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And around the world, human suffering is increasing as global temperatures rise.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wildfires, droughts, floods, hurricanes and other extreme weather events are growing more intense. Food and water insecurity is rising, particularly across parts of Asia, Africa, Central and South America and small islands. Malnutrition is affecting more children and expectant mothers. Small-scale farmers and fishermen are losing their livelihoods.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Extreme heat is killing people and damaging vital infrastructure, such as roads and power systems. Heat waves have reduced people’s ability to work outdoors in some places. Severe storms have dented or even decimated economic growth in countries that can often least afford to lose it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it will only get worse with each fraction of a degree of warming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We simultaneously need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to reduce the risks of climate change and also address losses and damages that are already being experienced,” said Adelle Thomas, a scientist at Climate Analytics and the University of the Bahamas and a co-author of the report. “And we have a very limited amount of time left to do this.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘MUCH MORE NEGATIVE THAN EXPECTED’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The world has warmed by just over 1 degree Celsius (that’s nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, when humans began rapidly pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It doesn’t sound like much, but that small amount of warming already has wreaked havoc on Earth’s climate system.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“One of the most striking conclusions in our report is that we’re seeing adverse impacts as being much more widespread and being much more negative than expected in prior reports, than expected at the current 1.09 degrees that we have,” said Camille Parmesan, an ecologist at the University of Texas, Austin, and a co-author of the IPCC report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report, which synthesizes thousands of recent climate studies, reveals that some climate consequences are happening faster than scientists had expected at this level of warming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Infectious diseases are spreading into new parts of the globe. Species are going extinct. Ecosystems are dramatically transforming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Already, between 3.3 billion and 3.6 billion people around the world—nearly half the global population—are “highly vulnerable” to the impacts of climate change, the report finds. Climate change is taking its toll on both the physical and mental health of communities all over the world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The findings suggest that even small amounts of future warming may have dire consequences for the planet, Parmesan noted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In another half-degree Celsius, the world will exceed the 1.5 C warming threshold, the most ambitious target of the Paris climate agreement. If that happens, the report states, “then many human and natural systems will face additional severe risks,” including a growing danger of irreversible climate consequences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate impacts around the world will grow even worse with additional warming. That’s a distinct possibility if global climate action doesn’t accelerate. At the moment, the climate policies enacted by world leaders put the world on track for around 3 degrees of warming by the end of the century.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The good news is that the IPCC makes clear that we can limit the extent to which these climate impacts worsen if we meet the Paris targets, but so far the world—including the US—is not on track to meet those pledges,” said Dana Nuccitelli, a research coordinator with the nonprofit Citizens’ Climate Lobby, in an email to E&E News.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In land-based ecosystems, for instance, anywhere from 3 percent to 14 percent of all species may face a high risk of extinction at 1.5 C of warming. At 2 C, up to 18 percent may be threatened. At 3 C, it’s up to 29 percent—and the risk continues to grow with additional warming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sea-level rise will worsen as temperatures climb. And the coastal populations exposed to severe floods will increase as a result.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Both extreme rainfall events and severe drought are likely to increase in many places around the world. At 4 C of warming, around 10 percent of the entire global land area is likely to face a growing likelihood of both high river flows, increasing the risk of floods, and low river flows, increasing the risk of water shortages.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hurricanes will grow more severe, likely causing more damage when they strike coastal communities. Wildfires will likely burn more land.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More people around the globe will suffer from extreme heat events. Heat is already the leading cause of weather-related death in the United States, and studies suggest it may cause hundreds of thousands of excess deaths around the world each year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And food and water insecurity will continue to rise, as agriculture suffers and freshwater resources dwindle on a warming planet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These impacts don’t affect all populations equally today, and they won’t in the future either. Certain parts of the world—particularly developing countries, small island nations and countries in tropical regions—are disproportionately at risk from many climate consequences, especially the effects of extreme heat and food and water insecurity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And in nations all across the globe, including the United States, some populations are more vulnerable than others. These include lower-income communities, Indigenous communities and people of color, unhoused populations, and the elderly.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Effective actions are those that reduce climate impacts and risks,” said Edwin Castellanos, a scientist at the University of the Valley of Guatemala and a co-author of the report. “And because these risks are different for different people, effective solutions need to provide site-specific actions. Putting vulnerable groups and countries at the heart of the decision-making process of how we respond to climate change can make societies more resilient.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ADAPTATION: ‘CRITICAL TO OUR SURVIVAL’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Efforts to respond to climate impacts have improved and expanded. That’s particularly true for measures around water-related risks, such as the building of levees, early warning systems for flooding, wetland restoration and farm-based water management, the report states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But progress on adaptation is uneven, driven in part by a lack of money needed to fund such efforts in places that face the greatest damage from rising temperatures.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most adaptation efforts so far have been piecemeal and incremental—focused on reducing immediate climate risks rather than putting in place measures for long-term, transformational change, the report states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They’re also small in scale and focused more on planning than implementation. And because those initiatives are geared toward current hazards, they are limited in their effectiveness as climate risks grow. And the warmer the world gets, the harder it becomes to adapt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report also finds that the gap between current adaptation efforts and what’s needed is widening and will only widen further if more action isn’t taken.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But there are feasible and effective adaptation options, according to the report. Heat health action plans can warn people of extreme temperatures and help protect them from exposure to prevent heat-related deaths. Restoring degraded forests can help them take in excess carbon rather than emit it. Protecting coastal or marine ecosystems, or creating corridors where threatened species can move to safer spaces, can help their survival.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But adaptation cannot prevent all the negative impacts of climate change, said Thomas, the Climate Analytics scientist and author.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In low-lying coastal communities, for example, the increasing intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes combined with sea-level rise will lead to losses that are irreparable. And the poorest and most vulnerable communities will be hit hardest, she said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For some measures, such as water management, there is no amount of money or government support that can help with adaptation when there is no more water available.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ability for human populations to respond to rising temperatures and try to hold them to the 1.5-degree limit also will depend on making sure natural systems are still capable of sucking carbon emissions from the atmosphere because reductions alone won’t be enough, said Parmesan from the University of Texas, Austin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet the vast majority of climate finance goes toward efforts to reduce emissions, such as investments in clean energy infrastructure, rather than adaptation, Thomas said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another challenge? As climate damage dents economic growth, it can be harder for low-income countries to access the money needed to respond.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Adaptation is critical to our survival in the face of climate change, but current financing schemes are underfunded and inaccessible to the majority of [small island developing states],” Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, which holds the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said in a statement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The solutions are there, the report shows that adaptation works. It is particularly clearer now, given the implications and vulnerability outlined in this report, that financing for loss and damage is more crucial now than ever,” Browne added.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">World leaders will gather in Egypt toward the end of this year to hammer out ways to respond faster and more effectively to impacts like those outlined in the report. Previous reports have served as the foundation for targets like the 1.5-degree temperature limit included in the Paris agreement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said in a statement that while emissions reductions will continue to be crucial, “we must expand and expedite adaptation action.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That matters since there also are limits to human adaptation—largely due to a lack of money and policies needed to support it. Those “soft limits” are currently playing out in low-lying coastal areas and among small-holder farmers who don’t have the resources to adapt further and will incur additional negative impacts from climate change as a result, Thomas said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For coastal communities, what that means in practice is that installing sea walls, putting in sand dunes or restoring coral reefs or wetlands no longer will be financially feasible or may no longer be technically feasible, she explained.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But they can be overcome.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If we put more resources toward adaptation, then additional adaptation options will open up,” Thomas said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Time isn’t the only obstacle, either. Many countries that most need to respond to climate impacts are striving to develop and meet the needs of growing populations with limited resources. The report aims to show that adaptation and lower emissions can help with sustainable development.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that will require increased international cooperation, especially a greater commitment to providing finance—which the report finds is currently insufficient—and also ensuring vulnerable countries have access to it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It also will involve planning to respond to climate impacts when adaptation is no longer an option, such as relocating coastal communities when homes and livelihoods are eaten away by unstoppable rising tides.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since the last report, there is further evidence that some adaptation can lead to unintended consequences that worsen the impacts of climate change—what’s known as maladaptation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Examples include firefighting efforts in ecosystems that are adapted to fire and rely on it to prevent outbreaks of larger blazes or hard infrastructure that doesn’t allow for water runoff and can increase the likelihood of flooding. Sea walls that might protect coastal communities today might damage coral reef ecosystems offshore.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Maladaptation can exacerbate inequality and put communities at further risk, and it can be expensive to undo, the report states. What’s needed to avoid it is long-term planning that takes into account local contexts and works to integrate solutions across different areas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It really requires a systemic, comprehensive response—not just a piecemeal, standalone series of projects. [It takes] really thinking about how does the economy, climate resilience, food security, health all intersect and how a better understanding of climate change reshaping all of those sectors can help us build a more resilient, just and fair future,” said Shyla Raghav, vice president of climate change at Conservation International.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For adaptation to work, government support will be needed, the report finds. So too will clear, defined policies, better understanding of both climate impacts and solutions and access to the money to make them realities. Involving vulnerable communities, drawing on Indigenous knowledge and committing to climate justice is also vital, according to the report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fact that IPCC reports are endorsed by governments and provided to policymakers gives weight to their findings. And they do help influence policy, said Rachel Licker, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But so far it hasn’t been enough.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We’ve had these reports coming out for decades, and we’ve known what the causes are, we know what the solutions are, and we’re just not implementing them,” Licker said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite the dire conclusions, ramping up action could be harder at a time when the world remains locked in a global pandemic and as war embroils Ukraine, threatening stability in Europe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We will always have emergencies at hand that seem to be more urgent than climate change,” said Castellanos of the University of the Valley of Guatemala.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that’s no reason to delay, he added.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We need to start addressing these problems of climate change,” he said. “Otherwise it’s going to be more complicated or even impossible to do so in the future.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2022. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/terrifying-hot-streak-continues-as-noaa-says-2021-6th-warmest-year-on-record/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/dozen-times-right-wing-media-said-something-ridiculous-about-climate-change-2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx mant vids</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A dozen times right-wing media said something ridiculous about climate change in 2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Special PROGRAMS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CLIMATE & ENERGY</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WRITTEN BY TED MACDONALD</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PUBLISHED 12/23/21</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro doesn’t think that 4 degrees Celsius of warming is an emergency</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the April 14 edition of The Daily Wire’s The Ben Shapiro Show, host Ben Shapiro stated that “I do not consider it a quote-unquote ‘emergency’ if the climate were to warm 4 degrees Celsius over the course of the next century. … It’s just a way for them to create a certain level of alarmism that is unjustifiable by the facts on the ground."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s a good thing that Shapiro, whose publication is backed by fracking billionaires, has no authority or credibility within the climate science community: 4 C of warming would be literally catastrophic for large swaths of the globe. As The Guardian reported in 2019, at 4 C of climate change, we’d have sea levels that would be around 2 meters higher than today (which would render many coastal areas obsolete), destruction of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, oceanic dead zones, temperatures in the equatorial belt so high that would make for impossible living conditions for most of the year, and the beginning of a potential mass extinction for many species. This is not the first time that Shapiro has said something ignorant about the climate crisis; he once theorized that people affected by rising sea levels could just sell their inundated homes and move.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2. Fox’s Dagen McDowell thinks that cold temperatures in certain parts of the U.S. entirely disprove global warming</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fox News personalities regularly conflate climate with weather, and they generally do it to dismiss global warming. On the April 21 edition of The Five, co-host Dagen McDowell mockingly suggested that “they stopped calling it global warming” because of abnormally cold U.S. temperatures.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Video file</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CitationFrom the April 21, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Five</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In reality, our warming climate has not eradicated cold weather, and in some cases, it has even made cold weather more severe and unpredictable. Nor have abnormally cold temperatures caused a dent in the Earth’s alarming warming trend, in which the past decade was the warmest on record.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3. Ex-coal lobbyist Steve Milloy lies about warming temperatures on One America News: “The June 2021 temperature was actually below the 40-year average”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the August 2 edition of OAN’s The Tipping Point, former coal lobbyist and Fox News contributor Steve Milloy stated: “The June 2021 temperature was actually below the 40-year average. … There’s just so much bad information going on around, and you know, you’ve just got to be careful with climate alarmists.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Video file</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CitationFrom the August 2, 2021, edition of OAN's The Tipping Point</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In reality, the U.S. suffered through its hottest June on record, while it was the fifth-warmest June on record globally (followed by the hottest July ever recorded in earth’s history). Milloy is a longstanding figure in the climate denial community, and viewers have really “got to be careful” with his objectively false information.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4. Fox's Laura Ingraham suggests that climate change is really “about controlling the people” and fearmongers that climate action will lead to pandemic-style lockdowns</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On both the May 18 and 19 editions of Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham theorized that Democrats will use climate change to control Americans’ lives through pandemic-style lockdowns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Video file</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CitationFrom the May 19, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is a dangerous conspiracy theory being pushed by prominent climate deniers that has taken hold among far-right media figures. To be clear, the way to fight climate change is not via lockdowns (COVID-19 lockdowns “only marginally reduced greenhouse gas emissions”), but by bringing about systemic change in our energy system and reimagining our economy and the way we live.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5. Newsmax’s Chris Salcedo doesn’t believe in “proof” that CO2 emissions are contributing to climate change</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There were multiple times this year when Newsmax host Chris Salcedo went on a perplexing rant claiming there’s somehow no proof that rising CO2 emissions affect temperatures in any meaningful way. On the August 18 edition of The Chris Salcedo Show, Salcedo called global warming a “religion” that “has not been proven through science” before going on to say, “There's no mathematical proof out there that states that X amount of man-made CO2 yields Y amount of temperature change.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then on the December 14 edition of his show, Salcedo stated: “From experts I have read and interviewed over the years, I can say that there is no proof that man's C02 emissions are destroying the planet.” Salcedo must be interviewing some pretty fringe climate deniers as “experts,” as there is effectively unanimous scientific consensus that “humans are changing Earth's climate, primarily through greenhouse gas emissions.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">6. Fox’s Tucker Carlson rants that climate change is somehow a conspiracy to shrink your children</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Tucker Carlson is no stranger to promoting weird conspiracy theories about climate change, one of his segments from June went completely overboard. On the June 22 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the Fox prime-time host accused climate scientists of wanting to use “human engineering” to “make human children smaller than they are now” and thereby reduce their lifetime greenhouse gas emissions: “All we need to do is experiment on human children and we can solve climate change.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tucker Human Engineering</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Carlson’s claim was based on a speech given by a bioethicist nearly five years ago. As Gizmodo reported, “The ideas are bad, but they’re utterly fringe. Activists are clamoring for transforming society, not individual humans. You’d never know that from watching the segment, though.” But taking a fringe remark out of context and repurposing it to claim that the government will take over our lives seems pretty on-brand for Fox News.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">7. Dennis Prager thinks the simple solution to a warming climate is to just use more air conditioning</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conservative commentator Dennis Prager, who leads a nonprofit online “university” that promotes climate denial, among other conservative talking points, offered his own absurd “solution” to climate change during a talk on September 22: “Did you know that there is a solution to a warm climate? It's called air conditioning. It's very effective.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prager’s comments follow a concerning new form of climate denial in right-wing media: acknowledging the climate is changing but claiming there’s nothing we can do to prevent it -- we must learn to live with it instead. In Prager’s case, he suggests that well-off people can just adapt to the warming climate by using air conditioning when it gets hot (which would only increase emissions even further), while those without access to air conditioning will suffer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">8. On Fox News’ The Five, Greg Gutfeld claims that the data to prove climate change is “never there”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the September 2 edition of Fox News’ The Five, co-host Greg Gutfeld criticized those who connect climate change to extreme weather events -- specifically to the destructive Hurricane Ida. He stated that the data is “never there,” and that “the severity” of such storms “has been on the decline.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LOMBORGIAN?&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Video file</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CitationFrom the September 2, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Five</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For one, science has shown that climate change is affecting hurricanes in a number of ways as storms are dumping more rain, moving slower, and rapidly intensifying -- all hallmarks of Hurricane Ida. Secondly, the data is indeed “there,” as climate models have been correct over the past 50 years. Additionally, Gutfeld talks about “severity” only in terms of decreasing deaths from natural disasters. However, focusing on this statistic obscures the many other reasons that climate change is a serious and deadly threat. As one scientist puts it, “climate change kills, from poor nutrition status and poor health linked to episodes of drought and harvest failures, the spread of infectious diseases, … increasing violent conflict, … and of course the impact of extreme events like tropical cyclones and flash floods.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">9. On Newsmax, Republican commentator Ford O’Connell claims that “climate change is the ultimate Trojan horse for socialism” before stating that the Earth “may or not be warming”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Newsmax had a wild year of promoting climate denial, and right-wing pundit Ford O’Connell’s claim that the Earth “may or may not be warming” on the October 25 edition of American Agenda is just another sad example.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Video file</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CitationFrom the October 25, 2021, edition of Newsmax's American Agenda</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The context behind this segment is noteworthy -- Newsmax was attacking its much larger rival Fox News for “going woke” and “making a permanent hard-left turn” by suggesting that the newly launched Fox Weather streaming service is taking climate change too seriously. In actuality, Fox Weather is just ignoring the issue altogether, but it’s funny to see Newsmax melt down over the fact that Fox is apparently not right-wing enough.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">10. On Fox Business, Patricia Lee Onwuka of the Independent Women’s Forum claims that climate change is a “fallacy”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Discussing President Biden’s response to Hurricane Ida on the September 3 edition of Fox Business' Mornings With Maria, right-wing commentator Patricia Lee Onwuka suggested that climate change is a “fallacy” that Biden is using to advance his agenda; she also said that “the facts dispute” the idea that extreme weather events like hurricanes are connected to climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Video file</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CitationFrom the September 3, 2021, edition of Fox Business' Mornings With Maria</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As noted above, we already know the ways in which climate change is affecting hurricanes and worsening their impacts on our warming world. Those facts don’t seem to matter to Onwuka or the Independent Women’s Forum, which has received both Koch and tobacco industry money and has a history of climate denial.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">11. On OAN, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) says that “we have the cleanest environment anywhere in the world” because of the fossil fuel industry</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A lot of stupid things were said by right-wing media regarding this year’s United Nations climate conference, known as COP26. One of the more head-scratching comments came from Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), who was featured on a November edition of OAN’s In Focus With Stephanie Hamill to downplay the seriousness of climate change. He went on to hype up the U.S. fossil fuel industry by stating that “we have the cleanest environment anywhere in the world” because of “clean energy practices” like fracking.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Cawthorn was alluding to the fact that natural gas obtained by fracking is cleaner than coal (it emits much less CO2 than coal when burned), it’s important to remember that fracking also releases methane, which is about 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. And like coal, there are numerous water and air pollution problems associated with its use. In any case, the side effects of fossil fuel operations involve literally polluting our air and waterways, so in no way are they responsible for making our environment clean and safe. Additionally, despite Cawthorn’s boast that “I’ll put our air [quality] up against anyone’s,” the U.S. is nowhere near the top of global environmental rankings by any metric.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">12. Fossil fuel lobbyist Daniel Turner thinks concern about climate change is “so overblown that it is hyperbolic and silly”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the November 1 edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, Daniel Turner of the fossil fuel shill group Power the Future tried to throw cold water on COP26 by claiming that “climate change panic is so overblown that it is hyperbolic and silly” and suggesting that the U.N. tries to scare people by publishing “nonsense reports.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Video file</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CitationFrom the November 1, 2021, edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We’re not sure what’s so “silly” about being concerned with a planet that’s on track for over 2.5 C of warming, which will have devastating consequences for billions of people around the world. Turner, who has spent almost his entire career working for Koch-backed groups, has made similar ludicrous statements in the past, including claiming that climate activists are somehow thrilled with the COVID-19 pandemic because it’s supposedly accomplishing their goals of implementing a Green New Deal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">loki crit an 1121</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The impact of agriculture on climate change is significant. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the agriculture sector is responsible for 10 percent of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, after transportation (29 percent), electricity production (25 percent), industry (23 percent), and commercial and residential usage (13 percent). However, according to Peter Lehner, managing attorney for EarthJustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, the EPA estimate is "almost certainly significantly quite low."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lehner argues that most analyses exclude five unique sources of emissions from the farming sector: soil carbon (carbon released during the disturbance of soil), lost sequestration (carbon that would still be sequestered in the ground had that land not been converted into farmland), input footprints (carbon footprint for products used in agriculture, like the manufacturing of fertilizer), difficult measurements (it is harder to measure the carbon emissions of biological systems like agriculture than it is to measure the emissions of other industries that are not biological, like transportation), and potent gases (like methane and nitrous oxide).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Regarding that last source: Focusing on carbon dioxide as the main greenhouse gas often ignores powerful planet-warming gases that are emitted by agriculture and that are even more potent than carbon dioxide. Methane, which is emitted by the burps and farts of ruminants like cows and sheep, has up to 86 times more global warming potential over a 20-year period than carbon dioxide (and also impacts public health, particularly in frontline communities). Nitrous oxide, a byproduct of fertilizer runoff, has 300 times more warming potential than carbon dioxide (and also harms plants and animals).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Most other studies, including by the [United Nations (UN)] and others, say that agriculture contributes much closer to 15 or 20 percent or more of world greenhouse gas emissions," Lehner points out.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Disappointingly, agriculture was not a central topic of discussion at COP26, the international climate summit that recently concluded in Glasgow, Scotland. "Despite [the] huge impact to ecological systems and climate," writes Suzannah Gerber, a nutrition scientist and fellow of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture—a research agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture—"specific high-level talks about agriculture comprised less than 5 percent of all official negotiations and less than 10 percent of side events, favoring the less controversial topic of renewable energy."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And while renewable energy supporters cheered the fact that the Glasgow Climate Pact is the first UN climate agreement to explicitly mention "coal" and "fossil fuels"—something that the fossil fuel industry fought hard against in previous summits, and that China and India managed to water down in the current agreement—the pact makes no mention of the words "agriculture" or "food."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meat Is Murder—for Animals and the Environment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Forests continue to be clear-cut to make room for farms, such as factory farms—which supply humans' appetite for meat—and plantations that produce the world's most used vegetable oil: palm oil. And while deforestation and methane emissions were main topics at COP26 (resulting in pledges to reduce both), agriculture—which is intimately linked to deforestation and land-use change—was relegated to a sideline topic. "Unlike forest, finance and transport—that got the feted 'title of a day' at … [COP26]—agriculture was taken up as part of 'Nature Day' on a Saturday," reported Richard Mahapatra for Down to Earth. "Outside the venue, thousands protested against a gamut of things, including step-motherly treatment to food systems that have been a major source of greenhouse gas… emissions."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Within agriculture, producing meat is the main climate problem: Plant-based foods account for 29 percent of the global food production greenhouse gas emissions, while animal-based food accounts for almost twice as much—57 percent—with beef being the main contributor. "Every bite of burger boosts harmful greenhouse gases," said the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). "Research shows that if cows were a nation, they would be the world's third-largest greenhouse gas emitter," according to UNEP. "As humans, meat production is one of the most destructive ways in which we leave our footprint on the planet."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And many, many more human footprints are on the way. By 2050, the human population is expected to reach a staggering 9.9 billion people. (Today, there are 7.7 billion people on the planet; just 50 years ago, the global population was less than half that number.) To ensure global food security in 2050, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that food production must increase by 60 percent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A More Sustainable Future Is Plant-Powered</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Animal-based agriculture is ultimately a poor way to feed a skyrocketing human population. "Farming animals is notoriously inefficient and wasteful when compared to growing plants to feed humans directly, with the end result that 'livestock' animals take drastically more food from the global food supply than they provide," writes Ashley Capps, a researcher specializing in farmed animal welfare for A Well-Fed World, an international food security organization advocating for the transition to plant-based agriculture.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is because in order to eat farmed animals, we have to grow the crops necessary to feed them, which amounts to vastly more crops than it would take to feed humans directly," writes Capps. "To give one example, it takes 25 pounds of grain to yield just one pound of beef—while crops such as soy and lentils produce, pound for pound, as much protein as beef, and sometimes more."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Switching to plant-based agriculture would help prevent food shortages, hunger and even famine at a time when climate change is creating food insecurity across the globe. Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, had warned during the Saudi Green Initiative Forum on October 24 that failure to stem the climate crisis "would mean less food, so probably a crisis in food security."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Well-Fed World points out that "[c]limate change is a hunger risk multiplier, with 20 percent more people projected to be at risk of hunger by 2050 due to extreme weather events. Unfortunately, the world's most food insecure populations are also those disproportionately harmed by climate-related events, including increased heat waves, droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis and flooding."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate, Conflict and COVID-19: A Perfect Storm</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"A perfect storm of conflict, climate crises, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and rising costs for reaching people in need is causing a seismic hunger crisis," warns the World Food Program, the food assistance branch of the UN. The agency has recently launched a public appeal to the world's billionaires to donate $6.6 billion to save 42 million people across 43 countries from famine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Concurrently replacing all animal-based items in the U.S. diet with plant-based alternatives will add enough food to feed, in full, 350 million additional people, well above the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food waste," according to a 2018 study by an international team of researchers published in the journal Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The authors note that the results of their study "highlight the importance of dietary shifts to improving food availability and security."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The dietary shift from meat to plants is something that UNEP has underscored as a way to combat climate change and increase the efficiency of our food system. In their Emissions Gap Report 2021, the agency noted that—in addition to switching from the combustion of natural gas to renewables—"behavioral changes such as reduced consumption of cattle-based foods and reduced food waste and loss" present a significant opportunity to reduce methane emissions. "[F]ast methane action, as opposed to slower or delayed action, can contribute greatly to reducing midterm (2050) temperatures," the report states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">COP26's Missed Opportunity</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In many ways, this behavioral change is already underway, as veganism is on the rise. "It can be difficult to get an accurate picture of how many vegans there are in the U.S., but one survey found a 300 percent increase in vegans between 2004 and 2019, amounting to about 3 percent of the total population or nearly 10 million people," notes Sentient Media, a nonprofit animal rights journalism organization. Still, even though there has been a steady increase in plant-based diets, meat consumption is hitting record levels, aided by carnivores in low- and middle-income countries where incomes are on the rise, like India and China.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Considering the growing interest in plant-based eating, the COP26 negotiators missed an opportunity to make dietary and agricultural changes a main thrust of the global climate solution. "Without positions and main messages from COP26 leadership, the need to address the climate change contributions from diet will not be able to gain ground," writes Gerber. In the UN-managed "Blue Zone" at the Glasgow Science Center, for example, while COP26 attendees were presented with mainly animal-based food choices, only 38 percent of the menu was plant-based, as opposed to the earlier promise of ensuring "50 percent plant-based offerings within the Blue Zone."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels (which will help avoid the worst impacts of climate change), the world must achieve net zero emissions by 2050. To meet this goal, the COP26 organizers listed four distinct strategies: accelerate the phase-out of coal; curtail deforestation; speed up the switch to electric vehicles, and encourage investment in renewables.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They would have done well to add a fifth: transition the world to a plant-based diet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/biden-climate-goals/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5 items</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/supreme-court-epa/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx tet</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Supreme Court could destroy the planet': Critics sound alarm over a new EPA case</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jessica Corbett and Common Dreams October 31, 2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As U.S. President Joe Biden prepares for a consequential United Nations climate summit in Scotland, the Supreme Court on Friday provoked widespread alarm by agreeing to review the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to limit planet-heating pollution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The Supreme Court could destroy the planet. Pass it on," tweeted Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) in response to the decision.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republican-led states and coal companies asked the justices to weigh in after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in January struck down the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule issued under former President Donald Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The day before Biden took office, a divided three-judge panel said that the Trump-era rule—intended to replace former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which never took effect—"hinged on a fundamental misconstruction" of a key section of the Clean Air Act that resulted from a "tortured series of misreadings" of the law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The justices will now consider whether that section of the Clean Air Act "clearly authorizes EPA to decide such matters of vast economic and political significance as whether and how to restructure the nation's energy system."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though there was some initial confusion about the forthcoming review due to a typo in Friday's order that was later corrected, climate action advocates and legal experts frantically issued warnings about how a ruling from the high court's right-wing supermajority may impede the Biden administration's efforts to combat the climate emergency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is the equivalent of an earthquake around the country for those who care deeply about the climate issue," Harvard University law professor Richard J. Lazarus told The New York Times. The court's decision threatens "to sharply cut back, if not eliminate altogether, the new administration's ability to use the Clean Air Act to significantly limit greenhouse gas emissions from the nation's power plant[s]."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The development comes a day after Biden announced a $1.75 trillion watered-down version of the Build Back Better Act that stripped out some climate provisions due to opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), one of the corporate-backed, right-wing party members who has held up the package designed to include much of the president's agenda.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although the Biden administration is still working on ways to cut emissions that don't rely on the section of the Clean Air Act in question, HuffPost's Alexander Kaufman explained how an unfavorable ruling from the Supreme Court could cause problems, given current conditions in Congress:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's only this one statute of the Clean Air Act, which is one of many tools the administration has," Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia Law School's Sabin Center on Climate Change Law, told HuffPost. "I don't think it's a problem for most of the measures the administration might want. But there's this one particular tool that might be in trouble."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The court could, however, seek to "take this as an opportunity to rule more broadly about the ability of Congress to delegate decisions to agencies," by going after the non-delegation doctrine, and might "say Congress is going to have to give EPA authority over such an important area and be more clear and explicit."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That would likely constitute a victory for the plaintiffs. With a 50-50 split in the Senate, Democrats need to vote in lockstep to pass a bill, giving unique power to lone senators like Manchin, whose opposition to climate regulations and personal family fortune tied up in a coal business have made him a magnet for fossil fuel industry donations throughout the past year. He'd be unlikely to vote for legislation granting the EPA new powers to regulate greenhouse gases. And Republicans are favored to win back at least one chamber of Congress in next year's midterm election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This "is the most significant climate case to reach the Supreme Court since 2007, when the justices ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gases could be regulated as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act," noted E&E News.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the petitioners, including 19 states led by West Virginia, celebrated the court's announcement, campaigners such as David Doniger, senior strategic director at the Natural Resources Defense Council's Climate & Clean Energy program, vowed that "we will vigorously defend EPA's authority to curb power plants' huge contribution to the climate crisis."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">EPA Administrator Michael Regan, meanwhile, signaled in a pair of tweets that the Biden administration will keep up its work to address climate-wrecking pollution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The federal agency, Regan vowed, "will continue to advance new standards to ensure that all Americans are protected from the power plant pollution that harms public health and our economy."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx twt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">US climate movement takes aim at Biden White House 'to change course of history'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jon Queally and Common Dreams October 11, 2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Organizers for climate justice are making final preparations Sunday ahead of five days of planned actions this week to confront President Joe Biden over the urgent need to declare a climate emergency, ditch fossil fuels, and move swiftly to create a green energy economy that can create millions of new jobs in the process.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"As fires burn, oceans rise and cities flood, we're mobilizing to Washington D.C. to demand that President Biden act on climate justice right now," said Joye Braun, a frontline community organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), a key member of the coalition behind the week-long mobilization dubbed "People vs. Fossil Fuels" which will kick off Monday, include daily civil disobedience at the White House, and culminate Friday with a march on the Capitol Building for a mass sit-in.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The fossil fuel industry has brought devastation to our homelands and it's time that we bring this fight to Biden's doorstep," said Braun.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The coalition—which includes IEN, 350.org, Sunrise Movement, Center for Biological Diversity, Zero Hour, Friends of the Earth USA, Oil Change International, Climate Justice Alliance, and many others—is calling on the U.S. president to "declare a climate emergency, stop all new fossil fuel projects, fight for climate justice, and launch a just and renewable energy revolution."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The group's detailed and complete list of demands can be found here and those who wish to get involved can visit this page on the coalition's website.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In their invitation to join the cause and back the demands put forth by front-line organizers from around the country, the coalition said: "We are asking you to stand with us. As representatives of communities who have carried the brunt of the harm from fossil fuels for generations, we ask you to join us in solidarity. If we all come together, put our bodies on the line in the name of climate justice, we may be able to change the course of history."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 'Build Back Fossil Free' coalition organizing this week's mobilization says that Biden has both the executive authority and the popular mandate to act aggressively to address the climate crisis but so far has not acted with nearly enough urgency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Biden is faced with a momentous decision, and I and others will be gathering in Washington to encourage that decision: to declare a climate emergency, stop the petrochem build-out, and usher in a just transition to a clean, green renewables economy," said John Beard, director of the Port Arthur Community Action Network, a Texas group fighting the oil and gas industry in the Gulf Coast.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"President Biden came into office promising bold action to transform our economy with renewable energy and good jobs, but he passed the buck to a dysfunctional Congress," said Jean Su, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Energy Justice program. "Biden has immense executive powers to speed the end of the fossil fuel era and ignite a just, renewable-energy revolution. Without executive action on fossil fuels, there's no way for the president to protect us from the climate emergency. We're calling on Biden to reclaim his power from coal- and gas-state Senators and show us he can be our Climate President."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to organizers:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By refusing to stop major fossil fuel projects, President Biden has broken his promises to protect Indigneous rights, prioritize environmental justice, and fully address the climate crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite the President's rhetoric, his administration has failed to stop major projects like the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, defended oil drilling in the Arctic, promoted fossil fuel exports, and allowed drilling, mining and fracking to continue on Native and public lands.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, the impacts of the climate and pollution crisis have only grown worse. Hurricanes have devastated communities from New Orleans to New York City. Wildfires have burned millions of acres across the West. Historic droughts and heatwaves have gripped most of the country. And every day, millions of Americans, especially Black, Brown, and Indigenous People, breathe air and drink water poisoned by fossil fuel pollution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Common Dreams reported, over 300 scientists last week backed the demands of the coalition and said that to avert 'uncontrollable climate chaos,' Biden must move more swiftly and concretely to end the age of fossil fuels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"U.S. scientists are done speaking calmly in the face of inaction," said Sandra Steingraber, a biologist and co-founder of the Concerned Health Professional of New York, who signed a letter alongside 337 colleagues. "Terrified by our own data, we stand in solidarity with the People vs. Fossil Fuels mobilization and its demands. President Biden, listening to science means acting on science. It means stopping new fossil fuel projects, opposing industry delay tactics, and declaring a national climate emergency."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dr. Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity who also signed the letter, said, "When scientists across the U.S. are imploring the president to get the country off fossil fuels, it's time to listen."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">UN IPCC Code red. //nukes?!&nbsp; AGW</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/nuclear-risk/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/climate-change-2655060913/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">jj comm dr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;United Nations warned Friday that the planet is barreling toward 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century, a nightmare scenario that can be averted only if policymakers take immediate and sweeping action to slash greenhouse gas emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even if the 191 parties to the Paris climate accord meet their current commitments, global greenhouse gas emissions will still rise 16% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels, according to a new report published by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The goal of the 2015 Paris agreement is to limit global warming to below 2°C—and preferably to 1.5°C—above pre-industrial levels. An analysis released earlier this week found that the climate targets and actions of just one country—The Gambia—are in line with the critical 1.5° goal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is what betrayal looks like," Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted in response to the latest U.N. findings. "Whatever our so-called 'leaders' are doing, they are doing it wrong."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of U.N. Climate Change, said in a statement that the international community must "peak emissions as soon as possible before 2030 and support developing countries in building up climate resilience."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The 16% increase is a huge cause of concern," said Espinosa. "It is in sharp contrast with the calls by science for rapid, sustained, and large-scale emission reductions to prevent the most severe climate consequences and suffering, especially of the most vulnerable, throughout the world."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The U.N. analysis came as U.S. President Joe Biden met with world leaders and announced that the United States is partnering with the European Union in an effort to cut methane emissions—a powerful driver of global warming—by nearly 30% by the end of the decade.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In its landmark report last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasized that a "strong, rapid, and sustained" reduction in methane emissions is necessary to prevent the worst of the planetary crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The IPCC also estimated that keeping global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels would require a 45% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030—a mark that the international community is currently on track to miss badly, according to the new U.N. report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">António Guterres, the secretary-general of the U.N., said in a statement Friday that 2.7°C of planetary heating would be "catastrophic" and that world leaders are "rapidly running out of time" to act.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is breaking the promise made six years ago to pursue the 1.5°C goal of the Paris agreement," said Guterres. "Failure to meet this goal will be measured in the massive loss of lives and livelihoods."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sv 350 921</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last month’s release of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report was the first ever to include a chapter on methane and other short-lived pollutants. Even so, experts argue the treatment of this "short-lived climate pollutant" was wholly insufficient, especially in light of a May 2021 UN report that said a reduction in human-caused methane emissions is “one of the most cost-effective strategies to rapidly reduce the rate of warming and...limit temperature rise to 1.5°C.” Methane’s global warming potential is about 101 times that of carbon dioxide over methane's 12 year lifespan in the atmosphere (this is often reported as 86 times more potent a greenhouse gas over 20 years); if unabated, the gas could be responsible for 30 percent of global warming by 2050.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Much of the focus on Congress this year has been on these emissions from the oil and gas industry. The $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package passed by the Senate last month would allocate $21 million to cleaning up abandoned mines and superfund sites, and plugging old oil and gas wells, which are estimated to produce 280,000 metric tons of methane per year. The reconciliation bill, now under construction, is expected to include a “methane polluter fee” based on legislation introduced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in March. Whitehouse’s plan proposes levying a $1,800/ton fee on methane emissions from oil and gas facilities, beginning in 2023. One issue? Recent research indicates that the EPA has been underestimating methane emissions from the oil and gas industry by as much as fifty percent.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Short-lived climate pollutants will likely be a top priority of 350 Silicon Valley’s policy advocacy through the 2022 legislative session. Please join the Legislative team at our regular meeting on Tuesday, September 28, 7pm PT, when we’ll be reviewing our list of priority bills for the next session and planning our strategy for the coming months. Previous agendas and the zoom link for the meeting are here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/wake-hurricane-ida-fox-doubling-down-climate-denial-order-attack-bidens-infrastructure</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fox News is using Hurricane Ida to downplay the seriousness of climate change and attack President Joe Biden’s climate agenda, including the infrastructure bill which contains measures to make us more resilient in the face of extreme weather.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fingerprints of climate change on the recent Hurricane Ida, which caused extensive damage from the Southeast to the Northeast U.S., were clear. One was its rapid intensification over very warm Gulf waters before pummeling Louisiana. Another was the amount of heavy rainfall that the storm brought in the Northeast that broke records in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, and caused major flash flooding. Beyond clearly showing that climate change is happening now, Ida’s devastating impacts, particularly in the Northeast, exposed how ill-prepared we are for it. And much of the coverage of Hurricane Ida was permeated with the theme that “​​the infrastructure in place today was built for a climate that no longer exists.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, with increased media coverage of events such as Ida, the public is beginning to increasingly understand the dangers of climate change and the need for actions that not only reduce climate-causing emissions, but make our communities less vulnerable to the climate impacts that are already happening. But as the public and more media outlets are starting to connect extreme weather to the need for climate action, Fox News coverage seeks to break those links.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fox networks downplayed climate change and accused Biden of politicizing Hurricane Ida to push a climate agenda</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since September 2, the day after Ida’s remnants ravaged the Northeast, Fox News and Fox Business have aired at least a dozen segments, combined, that claimed that the Democrats are using Ida as a pretext to implement a massive climate agenda including through the infrastructure bill [W/ CORP Tax increase]. These attacks, coupled with instances of climate denial, show the network’s ultimate goal is to stop the implementation of Biden’s climate agenda by all means necessary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fox’s favorite new climate contrarian Michael Shellenberger appeared on two Fox programs to downplay climate’s impact on Ida and to argue that the climate crisis is actually overblown, first on the September 2 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, and later on the September 7 edition of The Ingraham Angle. In both segments, Shellenberger accused Democrats of using climate change only as a cover to make the economy more dependent on renewable energy sources like solar power, which he has a history of attacking. (Shellenberger is useful for Fox News because he doesn’t outright deny that climate change is happening; he only -- and falsely -- suggests that it’s not a major problem. In this sense, he provides the perfect cover for the fossil fuel industry to keep polluting the planet.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perhaps one of the more egregious examples came during a discussion of Biden’s response to Hurricane Ida during the September 3 edition of Fox Business’ Mornings With Maria. Guest Patrice Lee Onwuka of the Koch-funded Independent Women's Forum accused Biden of using the “fallacy” of climate change to get his agenda passed:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[vid]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">paTRICE LEE ONWUKA (INDEPENDENT WOMEN’S FORUM): I think President Biden is absolutely looking out for what kind of a legacy he wants to leave behind, and he will try his best to get his agenda passed, using whatever fallacy that he can find. I mean, it’s remarkable that we're talking about, you know, a hurricane, and people who’ve lost livelihoods, some who’ve lost their lives, and we’re still pivoting to this idea that it’s all driven by climate change, when frankly, the facts dispute that. So it is unfortunate that the American people are subjected to this every single day, but this is going to continue.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is no “fallacy” here and she is wrong on the facts -- climate scientists know that climate change has an impact on hurricanes, from things like rainfall to intensity level to how slow they move, and these impacts will only get worse in the future unless carbon emissions are rapidly cut.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There were many other examples that attacked Democrats for politicizing extreme weather events and threw cold water on the infrastructure bill. On the September 3 edition of Fox News’ Your World With Neil Cavuto, correspondent Chad Pergam began a segment on the infrastructure bill by stating, “Democrats are using the storm to justify their push for the infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion bill. It's loaded with environmental provisions.”[which are obviously inherently bad?!]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the September 4 edition of Bongino Unfiltered, host Dan Bongino began a segment on Ida by also claiming, “Democrats wasted no time demanding action against climate change.” The segment which displayed chyrons like “Democrats’ Climate Power Play” and “Dems Push Climate Alarmism After Deadly Storms” also featured a Democratic strategist squaring off against longtime climate denier Marc Morano. Morano used his time to argue that the climate crisis is overblown. Although climate “both-sides” debates should be a relic of the past as they were promoted solely by polluting interests wanting to advance the narrative that climate change is “debatable,” Fox had no qualms in reviving it here despite overwhelming evidence of climate’s impact on Ida.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition, Fox invited climate-denying meteorologist Joe Bastardi on the September 8 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight. The segment began with guest host Brian Kilmeade claiming that Joe Biden is “using these disasters for political purposes” in order to pass the infrastructure bill. Bastardi then backed up Kilmeade’s claim by dismissing the climate impacts of Ida, simply noting that other bad storms have happened in the past. He also falsely claimed, “The sun, the oceans, the events, the very design of the system, always try to fight back, and at the very least you can't tell what CO2 is doing.”&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During an interview with U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) on the September 4 edition of Fox News Live, co-anchor Anita Vogel referenced Biden’s and Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) comments on Ida and climate change, and asked Malliotakis if “it's appropriate to blame this on climate change. … Should he be bringing politics into this when people are suffering?” Malliotakis responded, “We all need to do our part to be more environmentally friendly and reduce our footprint, but at the end of the day, you know, they're using this to push their radical-left agenda to try to pass a $3.5 trillion socialist wish list.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some Fox hosts also made similar comments in the wake of Ida. On the September 2 edition of Fox News’ Hannity, host Sean Hannity began a segment that ultimately downplayed the climate impacts of Ida by stating, “The left is blaming climate change for the heavy rainfall, severe weather and using it as another pretext to push their Green New Deal socialist agenda.” On the September 5 edition of Fox News’ The Next Revolution With Steve Hilton, host Steve Hilton did a short segment on Democrats using Ida to implement the Green New Deal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although the infrastructure bill is not the Green New Deal, that hasn’t stopped congressional Republicans, Fox News, and other right-wing media outlets from trying to compare the two. Fox is utterly obsessed with the Green New Deal and is using it to undermine basically every climate action that is proposed, however modest. This time, it’s the infrastructure bill the costs of which would pale in comparison to what unchecked climate change would do to the global economy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ida hit the U.S. against the backdrop of the recent report from U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that conclusively linked climate change “to an increased frequency and/or intensity of some weather and climate extremes since pre-industrial times.” It also followed a summer of harrowing extreme weather events that also had climate fingerprints all over them, including Western U.S. wildfires and drought, and a brutal Pacific Northwest heat wave. The fact that, despite all these events, Fox continued to diminish climate’s impact on Ida and argued for continued delayed action on climate change shows how much of a dangerous threat the network is to the discourse on climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">greek pres called for climate action b/c of wildfires 821</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">821 412 ppm 800K years NOAA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3.6 inch rise since records start</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">recent sci rept temp up faster than expected, sea level rise related to fla condo collapse?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">412 ppm, sea level record rise (during pandemic recession)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...the major indicators of climate change," officials from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information pointed out in a statement, "continued to reflect trends consistent with a warming planet. Several markers such as sea level, ocean heat content, and permafrost once again broke records set just one year prior."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Annual global surface temperatures were 0.97°–1.12°F (0.54°–0.62°C) above the 1981–2010 average" in 2020, said NOAA, making last year one of the three warmest on record "even with a cooling La Niña influence in the second half of the year."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last year was the warmest on record without an El Niño effect, and "new high-temperature records were set across the globe," NOAA said. The agency added that the past seven years (2014-2020) had been the seven warmest on record.....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">821</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/one-billion-children-extremely-high-risk-impacts-climate-crisis-unicef</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One billion children at ‘extremely high risk’ of the impacts of the climate crisis - UNICEF</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Children in the Central African Republic, Chad, and Nigeria are among the most at risk of climate change, according to UNICEF’s first child-focused climate risk index.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"code red"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bbc</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate change: Five things we have learned from the IPCC report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Matt McGrath</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Environment correspondent</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Published 9 August</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The UN report on the science of climate change is set to make a huge impact. Our environment correspondent Matt McGrath considers some of the key lessons from it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate change is widespread, rapid and intensifying - and it's down to us</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For those who live in the West, the dangers of warming our planet are no longer something distant, impacting people in faraway places.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Climate change is not a problem of the future, it's here and now and affecting every region in the world," said Dr Friederike Otto from the University of Oxford, and one of the many authors on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is the confidence of the assertions that the scientists are now making that is the real strength of this new publication.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The phrase "very likely" appears 42 times in the 40-odd pages of the Summary for Policymakers. In scientific terms, that's 90-100% certain that something is real.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Infographic</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I think there's not one single kind of new surprise that comes out, it's the over-arching solidness that makes this the strongest IPCC report ever made," Prof Arthur Petersen, from University College London (UCL), told BBC News.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prof Petersen is a former Dutch government representative at the IPCC, and was an observer at the approval session that produced this report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's understated, it's cool, it's not accusing, it's just bang, bang, bang, one clear point after the other."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The clearest of these points is about the responsibility of humanity for climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There's no longer any equivocating - it's us.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[More than 100 people were killed in floods that ravaged parts of Europe in July 2021]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 1.5C temperature limit is on life support</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the last IPCC report on the science of climate change was published in 2013, the idea of 1.5C being the safe global limit for warming was barely considered.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But in the political negotiations leading up to the Paris climate agreement in 2015, many developing countries and island states pushed for this lower temperature limit, arguing that it was a matter of survival for them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A special report on 1.5C in 2018 showed the advantages of staying under the limit were massive compared to a 2C world. Getting there would require carbon emissions to be cut in half, essentially, by 2030 and net zero emissions reached by 2050. Otherwise, the limit would be reached between 2030 and 2052.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This new report re-affirms this finding. Under all scenarios, the threshold is reached by 2040. If emissions aren't reined in, 1.5C could be gone in around a decade.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reaching net zero involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible using clean technology, then absorbing any remaining ones by, for example, planting trees.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the situation is very serious, it is not a sudden drop into calamity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The 1.5C threshold is an important threshold politically, of course, but from a climatic point of view, it is not a cliff edge - that once we go over 1.5C, suddenly everything will become very catastrophic," explained Dr Amanda Maycock, from the University of Leeds, and one of the authors of the new report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The very lowest emissions scenario that we assess in this report shows that the warming level does stabilise around or below 1.5C later on in the century. If that were the pathway that we would follow, then the the impacts would be significantly avoided."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Infographic</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The bad news: No matter what we do, the seas will continue to rise</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the past, the IPCC has been criticised for being way too conservative when it came to assessing the risk of sea-level rise. A lack of clear research saw previous reports exclude the potential impacts of the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not this time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report shows that under current scenarios, the seas could rise above the likely range, going up to 2m by the end of this century and up to 5m by 2150. While these are unlikely figures, they can't be ruled out under a very high greenhouse gas emissions scenario.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That's bad enough - but even if we get a handle on emissions and keep temperatures around 1.5C by 2100, the waters will continue to rise long into the future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Infographic</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The gorilla that looms large in the background is these very scary sea-level rise numbers in the long term," said Prof Malte Meinshausen from the University of Melbourne and an IPCC author.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In the paper it shows that even with 1.5C warming we're looking at the long-term of two to three metres. And under the highest scenarios, we could be looking at multi-metre sea-level rise by 2150. That is just scary, because it's maybe not at the end of our lifetime, but it is around the corner and it will be committing this planet to a big legacy."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even if the sea-level rise is relatively mild, it will have knock-on effects that we cannot avoid.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"With gradual sea-level rise, those extreme sea-level events that have occurred in the past, just once per century, will occur more and more frequently in the future," said Valérie Masson-Delmotte, co-chair of the IPCC working group that prepared the new report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Those that occurred only once per century in the past are expected to occur once or twice per decade by mid-century. The information we provide in this report is extremely important to take into account and prepare for these events."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The good news: Scientists are more certain about what will work</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The warnings are clearer and more dire - but there is an important thread of hope running through this report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scientists have long been worried that the climate could be more sensitive to carbon dioxide than they thought.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They use a phrase - equilibrium climate sensitivity - to capture the range of warming that could occur if CO2 levels were doubled.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the last report, in 2013, this ranged from 1.5C to 4.5C, with no best estimate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This time round, the range has narrowed and the authors opt for 3C as their most likely figure.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why is this important?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We are now able to constrain that with a good degree of certainty and then we employ that to really make far more accurate predictions," said Prof Piers Forster from the University of Leeds, and an author on the report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"So, that way, we know that net zero will really deliver."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Infographic</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another big surprise in the report is the role of methane, another warming gas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the IPCC, around 0.3C of the 1.1C that the world has already warmed by comes from methane.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tackling those emissions, from the oil and gas industry, agriculture and rice cultivation, could be a big win in the short-term.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The report quashes any remaining debate about the urgent need to slash methane pollution, especially from sectors such as oil and gas, where the available reductions are fastest and cheapest," said Fred Krupp, from the US Environmental Defense Fund.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"When it comes to our overheating planet, every fraction of a degree matters - and there is no faster, more achievable way to slow the rate of warming than by cutting human-caused methane emissions."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Politicians will be nervous, the courts will be busy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The timing of this report, coming just a couple of months before the critical COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, means that it will likely be the bedrock of the negotiations. The IPCC has some form here: their previous assessment in 2013 and 2014 paved the way for the Paris climate agreement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This new study is far stronger, clearer and more confident about what will happen if politicians don't act.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If they don't act quickly enough and COP26 ends in an unsatisfactory fudge, then the courts might become more involved.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Four maps showing how world could get warmer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In recent years, in Ireland and the Netherlands, environmental campaigners have successfully gone to court to force governments and companies to act on the science of climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We're not going to let this report be shelved by further inaction. Instead, we'll be taking it with us to the courts," said Kaisa Kosonen, senior political adviser at Greenpeace Nordic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"By strengthening the scientific evidence between human emissions and extreme weather, the IPCC has provided new, powerful means for everyone everywhere to hold the fossil fuel industry and governments directly responsible for the climate emergency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"One only needs to look at the recent court victory secured by NGOs against Shell to realise how powerful IPCC science can be."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;no lnx grafix</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omfg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cf al gore Inc truth</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/gulf-stream-collapse/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx pix twt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Unimaginably catastrophic': Researchers fear Gulf Stream system could collapse</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jessica Corbett and Common Dreams August 05, 2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While heatwaves, fires, and floods produce warnings that "we are living in a climate emergency, here and now," a scientific study suggested Thursday that a crucial Atlantic Ocean current system could collapse, which "would have severe impacts on the global climate system."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, focuses on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream. As the United Kingdom's Met Office explains, it is "a large system of ocean currents that carry warm water from the tropics northwards into the North Atlantic," like a conveyor belt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Previous research has shown AMOC weakening in recent centuries. The author of the new study, Niklas Boers of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK), found that this is likely related to a loss of stability.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The Atlantic Meridional Overturning is one of our planet's key circulation systems," Boers, who is also affiliated with universities in the U.K. and Germany, said in a statement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We already know from some computer simulations and from data from Earth's past, so-called paleoclimate proxy records, that the AMOC can exhibit—in addition to the currently attained strong mode—an alternative, substantially weaker mode of operation," he continued. "This bi-stability implies that abrupt transitions between the two circulation modes are in principle possible."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the absence of long-term data on the current system's strength, Boers looked at its "fingerprints," sea-surface temperature and salinity patterns. He said that "a detailed analysis of these fingerprints in eight independent indices now suggests that the AMOC weakening during the last century is indeed likely to be associated with a loss of stability."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The findings support the assessment that the AMOC decline is not just a fluctuation or a linear response to increasing temperatures," he continued, "but likely means the approaching of a critical threshold beyond which the circulation system could collapse."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As The Guardian's Damian Carrington reports, the collapse of "one of the planet's main potential tipping points" would be devastating on a global scale:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America, and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level in the eastern U.S. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The complexity of the AMOC system and uncertainty over levels of future global heating make it impossible to forecast the date of any collapse for now. It could be within a decade or two, or several centuries away. But the colossal impact it would have means it must never be allowed to happen, the scientists said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The signs of destabilization being visible already is something that I wouldn't have expected and that I find scary," Boers told the newspaper. "It's something you just can't [allow to] happen."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is unclear what level of global heating would cause a collapse, "so the only thing to do is keep emissions as low as possible," he added. "The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some climate action advocates responded to the study by highlighting a science fiction movie that, as famed film critic Roger Ebert wrote nearly two decades ago, "is ridiculous, yes, but sublimely ridiculous—and the special effects are stupendous."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We all laughed at The Day After Tomorrow, back in 2004," said Guy Shrubsole, policy and campaigns coordinator at Rewilding Britain. "Turned out it was a documentary."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The environmental advocacy group 350 Tacoma responded to the findings with a call to action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"There are warning signs that the Gulf Stream could collapse, an unimaginably catastrophic (and irreversible) impact of fossil fuel-caused climate breakdown," the group tweeted. "Scientists say we cannot allow this to happen. People in power stand in our way."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The study comes ahead of a United Nations climate summit in Glasgow set to begin October 31. Last month, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres noted the upcoming event and reminded leaders of wealthy countries that "the world urgently needs a clear and unambiguous commitment to the 1.5-degree goal of the Paris agreement," and "we are way off track."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Day After Tomorrow - Official® Trailer [HD]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">www.youtube.com</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Gulf Stream is slowing to a 'tipping point' and could disappear ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Slowing Gulf Stream current to boost warming for 20 years - BBC ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omfg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">msnbc? calls it rommney exxn bill, not the bipart infra</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/senior-exxonmobil-lobbyist/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">raw story</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Channel 4 in the U.K. published a startling expose on ExxonMobil's lobbyists who revealed the top most important U.S. Senators who are the ones behind any legislation that might hurt the oil industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While many oil companies are diversifying with natural gas, it appears ExxonMobil is going all-in battling to keep "big oil" alive and well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Keith McCoy is a senior ExxonMobil lobbyist on Capitol Hill and has represented the company in its liaison with the U.S. Congress for the last eight years," explained the report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not," said McCoy on camera. "Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that's true. But there's nothing, there's nothing illegal about that. We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McCoy compared his work with elected officials to fishing with ExxonMobil who supplies the "bait" before it "reels in" the official on issues like a carbon tax, electric cars, taxation and infrastructure.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"When you have an opportunity to talk to a member of Congress, I liken it to fishing, right? You know you have bait, you throw that bait out. And they say: 'Oh, you want to talk about infrastructure, yeah,'" McCoy continued. "And then you start to reel them in and you start to have these conversations about federal leasing programs, you start to have these conversations about a carbon tax. You know, it's all these opportunities that you use and to use the fishing analogy again just to kind of reel them in."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I make sure I get them the right information that they need so they look good. And then they help me out. They're a captive audience. They know they need you. And I need them," McCoy also said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He went on to explain that lobbyists aim to have close relationships with officials.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"You want to be able to go to the chief… and say we need congressman so and so to be able to either introduce this bill, we need him to make a floor statement, we need him to send a letter. You name it, we've asked for everything," he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it was the shocking revelation that he has 11 U.S. Senators on the hook.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Maggie Hassan, Senator John Barrasso, Senator John Cornyn, Senator Steve Daines, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Mark Kelly and Senator Marco Rubio," were all cited.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He went on to explain that the last thing they want is to appear in a public hearing before Congress where the American people can see.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We don't want it to be us, to have these conversations, especially in a hearing. It's getting our associations to step in and have those conversations and answer those tough questions and be for, the lack of a better term, the whipping boy for some of these members of congress," McCoy confessed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"There was something we were working on earlier this week where we, where our CEO was invited to a hearing from a member of congress who we know is just going to rip him to shreds when he goes there. So, we look at it and we say: well, why us?" he asked.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">See the video below and read the full story at Channel 4:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">will hit 500K kia covid #2 to US</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">heated 621</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">there are few humans with more power over the climate than Jair Bolsonaro. The Trump-like president of Brazil knows this better than anyone—which is why he’s threatening to destroy it unless he gets lots of cash.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reports of this threat come from President Joe Biden’s virtual summit of world climate leaders held this past Earth Day. At that summit, Bolsonaro publicly pledged to make Brazil carbon neutral by 2050 and end illegal deforestation of the Amazon rainforest by 2030. That was great news, because ending deforestation in the Amazon is crucial to reaching the 1.5 degree Celsius target. It simply will not happen without Brazil.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Privately, however, Bolsonaro refused to make any agreement with the Biden administration to end his own legal assault on the Amazon. And his environment minister, Ricardo Salles, told the Wall Street Journal that it wouldn’t happen unless the U.S. gave Brazil at least $1 billion. “We think that $1 billion … is a very reasonable amount that can be mobilized up front,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Salles told the Journal that Brazil needs the money because it can’t save the rainforest without it. The country, he said, needs help to increase enforcement of environmental laws against illegal deforesters, and to support new programs to “provide alternatives to poor farmers who slash and burn to raise crops and cattle.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that’s very hard to believe, given the Bolsonaro administration’s record of implementing policies that actively weaken environmental enforcement and encourage slash and burning in the Amazon. The recent alarming acceleration in Amazon deforestation is a “direct result” of Bolsonaro’s policies, according to Amnesty International. Also, literally the day after the interview, Bolsonaro approved a 24 percent cut to Brazil’s environment budget.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is not the result of a lack of money, but a consequence of the government’s deliberate failure of care,” former Brazilian environment ministers Marina Silva and Rubens Ricupero wrote in The Guardian. Marcio Astrini, the executive secretary of the Brazilian Climate Observatory, seems to agree. “It’s extortion,” he told Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell in a recent interview. “Bolsonaro and his team are saying, ‘If you don’t give us the money, we don’t know what will happen to the Amazon.’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Silva and Ricupero warned the Biden administration not to fall for Bolsonaro’s trap. “What the government is missing is not cash, but a commitment to the truth,” they wrote. “To reach a billion-dollar agreement with Bolsonaro’s government at this crucial moment will only strengthen its resolve: it will be a boon for the farmers and land-grabbers who have illegally occupied public forests and indigenous land and send the precisely opposite message to that which is needed in this crucial year for the climate.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So what should Biden do instead? Some suggest a regional environmental treaty, though Bolsonaro hasn’t been known to take those very seriously. Others, like Senate Democrats, have urged Biden to only give aid with very strict conditions. There’s also the option of a more aggressive approach—denial of aid, sanctions, et cetera, et cetera.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The most immediate thing Biden has to do, though, is appoint a new U.S. ambassador to Brazil. Because up until last week, the Bolsonaro-friendly ambassador appointed by Trump remained in place. Todd Chapman, the now-former ambassador to Brazil, had “made headlines by cozying up to Bolsonaro’s administration, particularly by hosting the president at a July 4 barbecue at his residence in the midst of the pandemic,” the Federal News Network reported. His resignation last week “could signal more U.S. pressure on Brazil regarding environmental issues,” it added.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is a story that will continue to unfold. Until then, I recommend reading the Rolling Stone feature about Bolsonaro’s climate sabotage published last week, which deems him “the most dangerous climate denier in the world.” It’s a succinct and well-reported summary of the threat Bolsonaro poses to everyone’s future, and why that threat is coming to an alarming head right now as a dry season exacerbated by fossil fuels approaches.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I also recommend reading about how deforestation in the Amazon has been accelerating lately, and how a climate-fueled dry season is making the problem worse. You don’t have to go anywhere to do that; I’m re-posting an article about it from Mongabay below.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One more thing: We talk about the U.S. a lot at the newsletter. But Brazil’s role in our collective climate future cannot be overstated. The country is home to more than half of the Amazon, which covers 4 percent of the Earth’s surface and is home to one in ten of Earth’s species. The carbon-absorbing trees in that forest are a big reason fossil fuels haven’t already turned the planet into an unlivable hotbox. Without them, we’re fucked.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I know that all seems very depressing. But if we don’t know about it, we don’t care. And if we don’t care, nothing gets done.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/climate-crisis-2653267213/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">comm dr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New research by global insurance giant Swiss RE warns that the looming devastation of runaway greenhouse gas emissions and the climate crisis could result in economic retractions twice as potent as the global recession unleashed by Covid-19—a calamity, unlike the pandemic, which could go on for many years without end.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Analyzing the figures compiled in a research report (pdf) by Zurich-based Swiss RE, Oxfam International said while the world's poorest nations will be hardest hit, even the rich nations—like those of the G7 meeting this week in the United Kingdom—will not be spared from the economic pain that will come if world temperatures rise by 2.6ºC that some scenarios predict.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Oxfam, economies of the G7 nations could see an average loss of 8.5 percent annually by the middle of the century―equivalent to $4.8 trillion―if more urgent action to address global warming is not taken immediately.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The international aid and anti-poverty group said this potential drop in GDP is double that of the coronavirus pandemic, which resulted in an average 4.2% reduction among G7 nations, recessions that resulted "in staggering job losses and some of the largest economic stimulus packages ever seen." But, Oxfam added, "economies are expected to bounce back from the short-term effects of the pandemic, the effects of climate change will be seen every year."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The devastation for poor nations would be enormous.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The economic turmoil projected in wealthy G7 countries is only the tip of the iceberg: many poorer parts of the world will see increasing deaths, hunger and poverty as a result of extreme weather," said Max Lawson, head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, in a statement. "This year could be a turning point if governments grasp the challenge to create a safer more liveable planet for all."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the group's analysis notes:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">India could lose 27% from its economy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Australia, South Africa and South Korea are projected to lose 12.5, 17.8 and 9.7% respectively.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Philippines is projected to lose 35%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Colombia is projected to lose 16.7%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jerome Haegeli, a chief economist at Swiss Re involved with the research, told the Guardian that: "Climate change is the long-term number one risk to the global economy, and staying where we are is not an option—we need more progress by the G7. That means not just obligations on cutting CO2 but helping developing countries too, that's super-important."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The research from Swiss RE, as Oxfam details,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">modelled the economic impacts of climate change on 48 countries in four different temperature paths and used different impact scenarios to account for the large parameter uncertainty and missing climate impact channels usually present in the climate economics literature. The projections used in this press release assume high stress factors and global warming of 2.6°C by mid-century, which is a level of warming that could be reached based on current policies and climate pledges from all countries. All figures relate to real GDP. The GDP projections compare a warmer world with a world unaffected by climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ahead of the G7 summit in the U.K., global climate campaigners have continued to urge the world's richest and most powerful nations—also its largest emitters—to not only commit to stronger pledges on reducing fossil fuel pollution, but to increase their financial pledges to the developing world that have contributed far less to the climate crisis but continue to face its most devastating impacts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/major-extinction-events/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roughly 66 million years ago, an asteroid or comet struck the planet and wiped out three-quarters of every animal and plant species alive. Known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (K–Pg), it has been immortalized in popular culture because of its association with the end of the dinosaurs' reign on Earth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That is why scientists are hopeful that a new study regarding the rate of extinction nowadays may hammer home the urgency of our pollution problems. In an international study led by the Justus Liebig University Giessen that included geologists, paleontologists, evolutionary biologists and many others, researchers found that in some cases, man-made factors are causing an extinction rate that surpasses that of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The study, which was published last month in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, closely analyzed past extinction rates for freshwater animals and plants, then used that information to extrapolate likely future extinction rates. They discovered that the average predicated rate for freshwater animals and plants today is three orders of magnitude higher than it was during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. If current trends continue unabated, one-third of all freshwater species alive today may be forever gone by 2120.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If that happens, we can expect that the damage to our freshwater ecosystem — which, inevitably, has an impact on ecosystems everywhere else on the planet — will be effectively permanent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Our results indicate that, unless substantial conservation effort is directed to freshwater ecosystems, the present extinction crisis will have a severe impact to freshwater biota for millions of years to come," the authors write.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even after the extinction event itself abated, the extinction rate remained high for 5.4 million years; the ecological recovery period required another 6.9 million years. Hence, the authors believe that our current situation might be comparable. Even if the man-made impact on life on Earth "ceases immediately, the already triggered phase of extinction might still involve several million years," they write.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Speaking to the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, the study's lead author Dr. Thomas A. Neubauer explained that "losing species entails changes in species communities and, in the long run, this affects entire ecosystems. We rely on functioning freshwater environments to sustain human health, nutrition and fresh water supply." He added that "despite our short existence on Earth, we have assured that the effects of our actions will outlast us by millions of years."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the study itself, the authors explained that the extinction crisis "has consequences on many levels," noting that smaller changes compound into larger ones that eventually have devastating consequences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Radical changes in ecosystem functioning, in turn, may have severe implications on ecosystem services for humanity, such as food provision, disease resistance or economic benefits," the authors write. "Thus, if we continue to lose species at the fast pace our analysis suggests, we will continue to impair ecosystem services to our own disadvantage."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new study is one of many red flags being thrown up by the planet about a number of pollution issues that threaten our survival. A February report by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Global Wildlife Conservation revealed that roughly one-third of the world's 18,075 freshwater fish species face possible extinction. The reasons for this include climate change, the introduction of invasive species, habitat destructions, pollution, and overly aggressive draining and damming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In September a report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) found that overall population sizes of "mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish" have dropped by 68 percent since 1970, indicating that the planet "is being destroyed by us at a rate unprecedented in history." Some scholars have already coined a term, Anthropocene, to describe the geological epoch brought about by climate change and marked by the proliferation of mass extinctions. We are already in the midst of what scientists refer to as the Holocene extinction, or the sixth known mass extinction event in the Earth's history, this one due to human activity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The quest to save the banana from extinction - Alternet.org ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why this philosopher fears we have a 1 in 6 chance of existential ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Marine life is fleeing the equator to cooler waters. History tells us this ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mass extinction facts and information from National Geographic ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Six (Mass) Extinctions in 440 Million Years ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mass Extinction Event ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/trump-report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">raw story gettys</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump administration delayed the first-ever report from the Environmental Protection Agency blaming humans for climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The EPA acknowledged in a 2017 report that human activity was, at least in part, to blame for glaciers shrinking, sea levels rising, coastal flooding and other threats, but the agency's climate change indicators website was not updated under former president Donald Trump, reported the BBC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Combating climate change - it's not optional. It's essential at EPA," said the agency's administrator Michael Regan, who was appointed by President Joe Biden. "We will move with a sense of urgency because we know what's at stake."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The EPA had never before attributed global warming to human activity, even during Barack Obama's administration, but the agency neglected to release its findings under Trump, who had called climate change a "hoax."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report shows data from dozens of federal agencies to show the damage already caused by climate change, including coastal flooding and wildfires, and attributed rising temperatures to increased energy consumption -- which has nearly doubled in summer months since 1973.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/warming-climate/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">same as below schumacher</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/climate-change-2652929726/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no animation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russ Schumacher, Colorado State University and Becky Bolinger, Colorado State University</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Anyone who listens to weather reports has heard meteorologists comment that yesterday's temperature was 3 degrees above normal, or last month was much drier than normal. But what does “normal" mean in this context – and in a world in which the climate is changing?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released updated “climate normals" – datasets that the agency produces every 10 years to give forecasters and the public baseline measurements of average temperature, rainfall and other conditions across the U.S. As the state climatologist and assistant state climatologist for Colorado, we work with this information all the time. Here's what climate normals are, how they've changed, and how you can best make sense of them</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What are the new normals?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information released the new set of normals, covering 1991-2020, on May 4, 2021. Climatologists have been performing calculations on data from long-term observing stations around the country for a wide range of parameters, including high and low temperature, precipitation and snowfall.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The data also includes more detailed statistics, like the normal number of days below freezing or those with more than an inch of snowfall. NOAA puts data from individual stations onto a grid to enable the creation of useful maps for the entire country, even in places with relatively few observing stations. This provides a wealth of information for anyone interested in the climate of a specific area.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why are normals updated?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The World Meteorological Organization sets international standards for climatological normals, defined as a 30-year periods that are regularly updated. The idea is to have global consistency for analysis. The 30-year normals also create a benchmark that represents recent climate conditions and serves as a reference for assessing current conditions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate change highlights the need for regularly updating these normals. For the past 10 years, weather professionals have used the 1981-2010 climate normals as our reference. But we've observed above-average temperatures much more frequently than below-average temperatures from 1991-2020 for much of the U.S. Updating the normals is a way to calibrate to our most recently observed climate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And as the climate continues to change, the further away in time we get from the “normal" period, the less representative that period will become. Using a very long period of time, or not regularly updating the period, could lead to including observations that would be extremely unlikely in our climate today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the other hand, there are situations in which it makes sense to consider periods longer than 30 years – for example, to understand long-term changes to the climate or to monitor extremes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most of the U.S. had more months in 1991-2020 that were warmer than the 1981-2010 average than months that were colder.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Difference in the number of months that had above-normal vs. below-normal temperature by county for the period 1991-2020, with respect to the 1981-2010 normals. Areas in red and brown had far more months that were were warmer than normal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Becky Bolinger, CC BY-ND</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The concept of 'normal' in weather and climate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An old saying, often attributed to Mark Twain, asserts that “climate is what you expect, and weather is what you get." Calculations of normal climate conditions for particular locations show how this works.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, data from the long-term weather and climate observing station in Fort Collins, Colorado, where we work, shows that precipitation in summer (June, July and August) over the 30 years from 1991 to 2020 varied significantly from year to year. The lowest summer rainfall was 1.48 inches in 2002 and the highest was 14.79 inches in 1997. Most years, it's somewhere between 3 and 5 inches.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But few years match the average value, just shy of 5 inches. So even though we call this the “normal" amount of rainfall, in most years the total is higher or lower – sometimes by quite a bit.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Average summer precipitation in Fort Collins, Colorado, can vary by a factor of 10 from year to year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Summer precipitation at Fort Collins, Colorado, for the years 1991-2020. The black circle indicates the 30-year average precipitation of 4.97 inches.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russ Schumacher and Becky Bolinger, CC BY-ND</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Looking at summer temperatures from the same station, let's compare the previous 30-year period, 1981-2010, with the most recent 30-year period, 1991-2020. The data shows a shift toward higher temperatures between the two time periods. The normal summer temperature increased by nearly 1 degree, from 69.6 to 70.4 F. This “new normal" for the past 30 years reflects climate warming that has occurred both locally and globally.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omparing the 1981-2010 and 1991-2020 normals for Fort Collins, Colorado, shows how summers there are warming. The black circle indicates the average value for each time period. Credit: Russ Schumacher and Becky Bolinger.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What the new normals show</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The key change that's reflected in shifting from the 1981-2010 normals to the new 1991-2020 set is dropping the 1980s and adding the 2010s. The climate has been warming, so the new normals show higher temperatures for most regions and most months of the year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Across the continental U.S., the temperature rose by about 0.5 F on average from the 1981-2010 to 1991-2020 period. The new average is 1.2 F warmer than that of the 20th century. A couple of exceptions are cooling observed in the spring over the Northern Great Plains and cooling over the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic in November. December shows the greatest amount of warming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Average temperatures were higher across most of the U.S. in 1991-2020 than in 1981-2010.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Difference between 1991-2020 average and 1981-2010 average temperatures for each month, with annual change in the bottom panel. Oranges and reds show where the new normals are warmer; blues and purples show where the new normals are cooler.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russ Schumacher and Becky Bolinger, data from NOAA, CC BY-ND</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Precipitation is more variable than temperature from year to year and decade to decade. As a result, the changes in normal precipitation represent a mix of effects from long-term climate change and natural variations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Overall, the 2010s were very wet in much of the central and eastern U.S. and dry in the west, and the normals reflect that. Average annual rainfall in Houston increased by over an inch, to 55.6 inches per year, while at Phoenix, Arizona, it dropped from an already dry 8.02 inches to a parched 7.22 inches per year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On a monthly basis, some of the most notable patterns to emerge are widespread drying in November, particularly over the Gulf states and along the Pacific Coast, and a wetter pattern over the eastern half of the country in April.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[maps]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/sea-level-rise/&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">jake comm dr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature warns that if the world's governments fail to meet warming targets set by the Paris climate accord, sea level rise from the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet will accelerate at a "rapid and unstoppable" rate in the coming decades.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Authored by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the new paper finds that if planetary warming continues at its current rate—which is headed toward 3° Celsius above pre-industrial levels—Antarctic melting will reach a tipping point by 2060, beyond which the consequences would be "irreversible on multi-century timescales."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"If the world warms up at a rate dictated by current policies we will see the Antarctic system start to get away from us around 2060," Robert DeConto, the lead author of the study, told The Guardian. "Once you put enough heat into the climate system, you are going to lose those ice shelves, and once that is set in motion you can't reverse it."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's really the next few decades that will determine the sea level rise from Antarctica," DeConto added. "These ice shelves won't be able to just grow back."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The researchers find that if the most optimistic Paris goal of no more than 1.5° Celsius of warming by the end of the century is met, the Antarctic ice sheet would contribute around six centimeters of sea level rise by 2100.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"But if the current course toward 3 degrees is maintained, the model points to a major jump in melting," the study warns. "Unless ambitious action to rein in warming begins by 2060, no human intervention, including geoengineering, would be able to stop 17 to 21 centimeters of sea-level rise from Antarctic ice melt alone by 2100."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under a scenario in which no further action is taken to limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, the research paper finds, Antarctic melting would contribute a "globally catastrophic" 10 meters or more to sea level rise by 2300.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"If we did nothing at all to reduce emissions we could get five meters of sea level rise just from Antarctica by 2200, at which point you'd have to remap the world from space," said DeConto. "It would be unimaginable."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The study comes days after U.S. President Joe Biden hosted a climate summit with 40 world leaders to discuss ways to bring the world into line with Paris warming targets. Biden, for his part, pledged to cut U.S. emissions at least 50% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade—a goal climate activists slammed as nowhere near sufficient.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Science and justice demand that we reduce emissions by 70% from 2005 levels by 2030 on the road to zero emissions by mid-century," Janet Redman of Greenpeace USA said last month. "The White House can get this done by removing government subsidies to fossil fuel companies, investing in an equitable and sustainable economic recovery, and stopping fishy carbon offset deals."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Antarctica's ice shelves are trembling as global temperatures rise ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A glacier the size of Florida is on track to change the course of ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There's a supermoon just around the corner — and it comes with a ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate Change: Global Sea Level | NOAA Climate.gov ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sea level rise, facts and information ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is sea level rising? ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">shifted the poles?!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/melting-glaciers/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/antarctic-ice-sheet/ trembling?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/marine-life/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">flee equator</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/amazon/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx twt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'We're destroying our life-support systems': Study suggests the Amazon now ?contributes to warming</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jessica Corbett and Common Dreams March 14, 2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While recent research has raised alarm that tropical forests including the Amazon could soon stop serving as carbon sinks, a first-of-its-kind study from 30 experts that takes into account other greenhouse gases suggests the world's largest rainforest may already be contributing to the warming of the planet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new analysis, published Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, considers not only carbon dioxide (CO2) and its impact on the global climate but also that of methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N20), black carbon, biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), aerosols, evapotranspiration, and albedo.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"What the authors do that's important is to expand the conversation beyond carbon dioxide, which is what 90% of public conversation is centered around," Patrick Megonigal, associate director of research at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, told National Geographic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"CO2 is not a lone actor," added Megonigal, who was cited in but not involved with the research, which was funded by the National Geographic Society. "When you consider the whole cast of other characters, the outlook in the Amazon is that the impacts of human activities will be worse than we realize."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As 15-year-old climate activist Alexandria Villaseñor put it in a tweet about the study: "We're destroying our life-support systems. We're running out of time."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The study notes that "after a transient period of reduced deforestation and increased optimism, rising agricultural conversion and illegal logging activities are again accelerating Amazonian forest loss. This resurgence has renewed concerns that the region is rapidly approaching a catastrophic 'tipping point.'"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Data from the Rainforest Foundation Norway revealed Monday that human activities have destroyed 34% of old-growth tropical rainforests and degraded 30% worldwide. Over half of that destruction since 2002 has been in the Amazon and neighboring South American rainforests. Under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro—whose country is home to the majority of the Amazon—deforestation hit a 12-year high in 2020.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Cutting the forest is interfering with its carbon uptake; that's a problem," Kristofer Covey, lead author of the new study and a professor of environmental studies at Skidmore College, told National Geographic. "But when you start to look at these other factors alongside CO2, it gets really hard to see how the net effect isn't that the Amazon as a whole is really warming global climate."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The study says that despite some uncertainty, "we conclude that current warming from non-CO2 agents (especially CH4 and N2O) in the Amazon Basin largely offsets—and most likely exceeds—the climate service provided by atmospheric CO2 uptake. We also find that the majority of anthropogenic impacts act to increase the radiative forcing potential of the basin."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Given the large contribution of less-recognized agents," the paper continues—noting that Amazonian trees alone emit about 3.5% of all global CH4—focusing strictly on carbon uptake and storage "is incompatible with genuine efforts to understand and manage the biogeochemistry of climate in a rapidly changing Amazon Basin."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Covey and his colleagues told National Geographic that reversing the damage that's already been done will require halting emissions from fossil fuels around the world and reining in Amazon deforestation, "along with reducing dam building and increasing efforts to replant trees."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Amazon is among the most biodiverse places on the planet. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of conserving and restoring rainforests not only because of the climate emergency but also to prevent future zoonotic disease outbreaks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the pandemic—officially declared a year ago Thursday—has killed more than 2.6 million people and sickened over 119 million worldwide, experts from across the globe have repeatedly called on humanity to heal its "broken relationship with nature."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'We do not want to disappear': Indigenous peoples go to court to ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How indigenous peoples won a landmark victory to protect the ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Can humanity survive without the Amazon rainforest? - Alternet.org ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SEE 2 PREVIOUS/ OLDER</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4/19</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see doom tip pt, see ANWR</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">html damselfish&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see wildfires brazil, siberia, everglades</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">australia oz, US WEST 920</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/amazon/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx twt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'We're destroying our life-support systems': Study suggests the Amazon now ?contributes to warming</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jessica Corbett and Common Dreams March 14, 2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While recent research has raised alarm that tropical forests including the Amazon could soon stop serving as carbon sinks, a first-of-its-kind study from 30 experts that takes into account other greenhouse gases suggests the world's largest rainforest may already be contributing to the warming of the planet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new analysis, published Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, considers not only carbon dioxide (CO2) and its impact on the global climate but also that of methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N20), black carbon, biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), aerosols, evapotranspiration, and albedo.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"What the authors do that's important is to expand the conversation beyond carbon dioxide, which is what 90% of public conversation is centered around," Patrick Megonigal, associate director of research at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, told National Geographic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"CO2 is not a lone actor," added Megonigal, who was cited in but not involved with the research, which was funded by the National Geographic Society. "When you consider the whole cast of other characters, the outlook in the Amazon is that the impacts of human activities will be worse than we realize."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As 15-year-old climate activist Alexandria Villaseñor put it in a tweet about the study: "We're destroying our life-support systems. We're running out of time."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The study notes that "after a transient period of reduced deforestation and increased optimism, rising agricultural conversion and illegal logging activities are again accelerating Amazonian forest loss. This resurgence has renewed concerns that the region is rapidly approaching a catastrophic 'tipping point.'"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Data from the Rainforest Foundation Norway revealed Monday that human activities have destroyed 34% of old-growth tropical rainforests and degraded 30% worldwide. Over half of that destruction since 2002 has been in the Amazon and neighboring South American rainforests. Under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro—whose country is home to the majority of the Amazon—deforestation hit a 12-year high in 2020.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Cutting the forest is interfering with its carbon uptake; that's a problem," Kristofer Covey, lead author of the new study and a professor of environmental studies at Skidmore College, told National Geographic. "But when you start to look at these other factors alongside CO2, it gets really hard to see how the net effect isn't that the Amazon as a whole is really warming global climate."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The study says that despite some uncertainty, "we conclude that current warming from non-CO2 agents (especially CH4 and N2O) in the Amazon Basin largely offsets—and most likely exceeds—the climate service provided by atmospheric CO2 uptake. We also find that the majority of anthropogenic impacts act to increase the radiative forcing potential of the basin."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Given the large contribution of less-recognized agents," the paper continues—noting that Amazonian trees alone emit about 3.5% of all global CH4—focusing strictly on carbon uptake and storage "is incompatible with genuine efforts to understand and manage the biogeochemistry of climate in a rapidly changing Amazon Basin."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Covey and his colleagues told National Geographic that reversing the damage that's already been done will require halting emissions from fossil fuels around the world and reining in Amazon deforestation, "along with reducing dam building and increasing efforts to replant trees."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Amazon is among the most biodiverse places on the planet. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of conserving and restoring rainforests not only because of the climate emergency but also to prevent future zoonotic disease outbreaks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the pandemic—officially declared a year ago Thursday—has killed more than 2.6 million people and sickened over 119 million worldwide, experts from across the globe have repeatedly called on humanity to heal its "broken relationship with nature."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'We do not want to disappear': Indigenous peoples go to court to ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How indigenous peoples won a landmark victory to protect the ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Can humanity survive without the Amazon rainforest? - Alternet.org ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1/21 mma</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Biden takes climate action. Fox News and Sinclair respond with lies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some of President Joe Biden's first actions were in response to climate change -- like rejoining the Paris accords and canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline once and for all. Fox News responded to Biden's executive actions by hosting climate deniers and climate "contrarians." One Fox host declared that climate activists just want to "fight the weather." Contrary to claims aired on Fox, taking action on climate change will create jobs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It wasn't just Fox. Sinclair Broadcasting also aired claims on local news stations across the country that canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline would destroy jobs. Longtime readers will remember these accusations being debunked repeatedly , but they've again gained steam on the right in the early days of the Biden administration, with some inflating the number to tens of thousands of jobs. The actual number is a few hundred jobs to construct the pipeline, and a few dozen to maintain it after that; the number is dwarfed by the number of clean energy jobs that already exist, much less ones that could exist with further investment. Additionally, the jobs number doesn't take into account the risks of oil spills or threats to drinking water. For instance, the already-existing Keystone Pipeline (that is, the non-XL version) has already seen at least 21 oil spills and leaks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">i negect scary reports eg artcic warming #x planet --> methane</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5 yr anniv conf of Paris, Biden will put us back in; EU has boosted targets?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">UN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/11-000-scientists-climate-emergency/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/climate-change</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JC cmn dreams</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More than 250 scientists and scholars from 30 countries have issued an open letter calling on policymakers to "engage more with the growing risk of societal disruption and collapse due to damage to the climate and environment," arguing that only then "might communities and nations begin to prepare and so reduce its likelihood, speed, severity, harm to the most vulnerable, and to nature."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The letter, a version of which appeared GUK in The Guardian Sunday, comes on the heels of a pair of United Nations reports warning of the dire direction in which the planet is headed. As U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres put it: "The state of the planet is broken. Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This weekend, world leaders will hold the Climate Ambition Summit 2020 to mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate agreement. After failing in the years since then to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with that accord, the letter says, "we must now face the consequences."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While "some armed services already see collapse as an important scenario, requiring planning," the letter notes that "the topic is not well reported in the media, and mostly absent from civil society and politics," even though such collapse "is already the experience or memory of many communities in the Global South."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The U.K. arm of Extinction Rebellion shared pieces of the letter on Twitter with photos of climate activists around the world demanding urgent action:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Denouncing media coverage that "typically cites people who condemn discussion of the topic," the letter says that "ill-informed speculations, such as on foreign misinformation campaigns, or impacts on mental health and motivation, will not support serious discussion. Rather, such claims risk betraying the thousands of activists and community leaders whose anticipation of collapse is part of their motivation to push for change on climate, ecology, and social justice."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The letter continues:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People who care about environmental and humanitarian issues should not be discouraged from discussing the risks of societal disruption or collapse. That could risk agendas being driven by people with less commitment to such values.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some of us believe that a transition to a new form of society may be possible. That will involve bold action to reduce damage to the climate, nature and other people, including preparations for major disruptions to everyday life. We are united in regarding efforts to suppress discussion of collapse as hindering the possibility of that transition.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We have experienced how emotionally challenging it is to recognize the damage being done, along with the growing threat to our own way of life," the letter concludes. "We also know the great sense of fellowship that can arise. It is time to invite each other into difficult conversations, so we can reduce our complicity in the harm, and be creative to make the best of a turbulent future."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Signatories and supporters of the letter shared it on social media with the hashtag #scholarswarning, offering their summaries of what the letter calls for and detailing why they signed on to it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We're saying we must confront the real possibility of climate collapse so that we can do our utmost to avoid it," American climate scientist Peter Kalmus, a signatory to the letter, said in a tweet Sunday. "This is as far from 'doomerism' as you can get."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a statement, University of Cumbria professor Jem Bendell, another signatory, explained that "we come from dozens of countries and subject disciplines and perceive a resistance by the establishment to serious engagement in adapting to the increasing disruptions to food, water, health, and the economy."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It is time to listen to the scholarship," Bendell added, "and try to reduce harm from societal disruption and even collapse."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump faceplants with a scientifically illiterate claim about climate ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pope Francis Gave Trump a Copy of His Climate Change Encyclical ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How We Can Use Psychology To Help Fight Climate Change ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4 Reasons Climate Change Affects National Security - Alternet.org ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nature Climate Change ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What is climate change? A really simple guide - BBC News ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate Change | United Nations ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-study-greenhouse-gas-emissions-2648886531.htm</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1120</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A controversial new climate study has found that, even if greenhouse gas emissions were halted tomorrow, it might not be enough to stop temperatures from continuing to rise.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The study, published in Scientific Reports Thursday, was conducted by two researchers at the BI Norwegian Business School. They used the ESCIMO climate model to determine that, even if emissions ceased tomorrow, the permafrost would continue to thaw for hundreds of years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"According to our models, humanity is beyond the point-of-no-return when it comes to halting the melting of permafrost using greenhouse gas cuts as the single tool," lead author and professor emeritus of climate strategy Jorgen Randers told AFP. "If we want to stop this melting process we must do something in addition – for example, suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it underground, and make Earth's surface brighter."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, other scientists have pointed to the simplicity of the model Randers and his colleague Ulrich Goluke used and cautioned against misinterpreting their findings as a reason to give up on climate action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This paper clearly may be cited in support of a misleading message that it is now 'too late' to avoid catastrophic climate change, which would have the potential to cause unnecessary despair," University of Exeter climate scientist professor Richard Betts said in response. "However, the study is nowhere near strong enough to make such a frightening message credible."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So what exactly does the study say? The researchers used their model to see what would happen by 2500 if emissions stopped today and if they slowly declined to zero by 2100, as AFP explained. In the first scenario, temperatures would still rise to around 2.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels within the next 50 years, taper off, then rise again starting in 2150. By 2500, the world would be around three degrees Celsius warmer and sea levels would rise by around three meters (approximately 9.8 feet). In the second, temperature and sea level rise would end up in the same place, but the temperature increase would be much faster.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reason for the persistent increase comes from three feedback loops, the model found.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The melting of sea ice, which means that the sun's heat is absorbed into the darker ocean instead of reflected back by the bright ice.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The thawing of permafrost, which releases more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Increased moisture in the atmosphere, which in turn raises temperatures.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The only way to have prevented runaway climate change would have been to have stopped burning fossil fuels between 1960 and 1970, the model found, as USA TODAY reported. In order to stop temperatures and sea levels from rising now, we would have to remove at least 33 gigatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year starting this one.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The study authors were the first to admit their findings were limited to one model.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We encourage other model builders to explore our discovery in their (bigger) models, and report on their findings," they wrote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, Betts noted that their model was not the model used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and did not realistically simulate how the climate works.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Penn State University meteorologist Michael Mann agreed. He told USA TODAY that it was not very complex and did not accurately reproduce atmospheric and ocean circulation systems.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"While such models can be useful for conceptual inferences, their predictions have to be taken with great skepticism. Far more realistic climate models that do resolve the large-scale dynamics of the ocean, atmosphere and carbon cycle, do NOT produce the dramatic changes these authors argue for based on their very simplified model," he said. "It must be taken not just with a grain of salt, but a whole salt-shaker worth of salt."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That said, even the models used by the IPCC show that we will need to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to reach the Paris agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, even if we achieve zero emissions by 2050.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"What the study does draw attention to is that reducing global carbon emissions to zero by 2050 is just the start of our actions to deal with climate change," University College London climate professor Mark Maslin said in response.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/corporate-broadcast-tv-news-mentioned-climate-change-only-once-during-its</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hurricane (not great on fires either?)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omfg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/understanding-the-norths-climate-change-trifecta/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Arctic Circle became unbelievably hot on June 20. In the Russian community of Verkhoyansk, temperatures topped 38C, marking what may be the highest air temperature ever recorded within the Arctic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The temperatures at Verkhoyansk are part of a larger trend across western Russia this summer, with small communities throughout the region reporting temperatures that are smashing local records that have stood for decades. During the latter half of June, surface temperatures throughout western Siberia were as much as 10C above historical norms, marking one of the hottest Junes on record despite relatively cool temperatures at the start of the month.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For scientists the world-over these record-breaking temperatures are alarm bells, demonstrating the kind of extreme weather events we can expect to see more often if climate change continues unchecked. However, it is the long-term fallout from modern heat waves that has many northern scientists deeply concerned, as they will affect our planet for decades to come.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fires that follow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During heat waves surface temperatures soar, often triggering a chain of fire-promoting weather conditions including extreme thunderstorms. These thunderstorms have hundreds of lightning strikes that can ignite the dry soils and vegetation that serve as fuel for fire.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In northern regions like the boreal biome, these fire-promoting conditions can cause large-scale wildfires that burn millions of hectares of forest in a single summer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Historically, humanity has considered wildfire a true disaster and spent considerable resources to suppress them. We now understand that despite the initial loss of established trees and soils, wildfires are a natural and integral part of the boreal biome.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Modern wildfires, however, are occurring with increasing frequency and intensity, covering a larger area due weather events like severe heat waves. In extreme fire years, these modern wildfires can burn deep into the organic soils that characterize boreal forests. These carbon-rich soils have been built up over thousands of years and hold approximately 30 per cent of the world's terrestrial carbon stocks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When fires burn deep into soils or return too quickly to a forest, they lose their “ancient carbon" stocks. Instead of being held in the ground these ancient carbon reserves are combusted and released back into the atmosphere, increasing the carbon levels. The higher carbon dioxide levels generated by wildfires intensify climate change impacts like heat waves, which can lead to further wildfires, forming a powerful “positive feedback" loop with climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While these trends alone are alarming, northern researchers warn that the fallout from heat waves won't stop when the fires burn out. In northern regions where the soils historically stay frozen year-round, a whole new set of changes are beginning to take form.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When permafrost perishes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Permafrost forms on the landscape when soil materials remain below freezing for two or more consecutive years. In some areas permafrost forms in direct response to a cold climate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As one moves further south, however, permafrost becomes increasingly dependent on the presence of thick organic soils, surface vegetation and a shady overstorey to survive the warm summer months. In those cases, the ecosystem acts like a giant protective blanket, limiting the sun's heat that is able to reach the frozen permafrost materials below.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Carbon-rich peat burns readily, making it good fuel for lightning-caused fires.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(U.S. National Parks Service, Western Arctic National Parklands)]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When permafrost ecosystems burn, the wildfire consumes these protective layers, often triggering permafrost thaw. This can occur gradually, with the thawed layer expanding slowly over decades, or abruptly, with the thawed layer expanding dramatically over years. The land may cave in or sink, plant communities may change completely and local water flows may be rerouted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In both cases, the loss of permafrost makes the massive Arctic carbon reserves more vulnerable to loss. With gradual thaw microbes are able to break down and release the previously frozen carbon back to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. In contrast, abrupt thaw commonly occurs in ice-rich permafrost resulting in warmer but also wetter soils. Under these conditions decomposition still occurs but carbon is commonly returned to the atmosphere as methane, a greenhouse gas approximately 30 times more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All this lost carbon may make the positive feedback with climate change even stronger. While scientists are working to understand if the vegetation that grows after permafrost thaw is able to offset all the carbon released during decomposition, most current models indicate that permafrost thaw will ultimately be a source of atmospheric carbon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more: More frequent fires could dramatically alter boreal forests and emit more carbon]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Researchers are coming to understand just how tightly linked these disturbances caused by climate change really are. What appears as an individual event — heat wave, forest fire or permafrost thaw — has cascading ramifications through time and space in the Arctic, potentially serving as the seed crystal for the next disturbance in the coming months, years or even decades that follow.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heat waves, wildfires and permafrost thaw represent an environmental trifecta that are inherently linked and drive change in the occurrence and intensity of one another.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Catherine Dieleman, Research associate, Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article is republished from The Conversation&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/a-vote-for-the-apocalypse</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">tom E</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was August 2017 and Donald Trump had not yet warmed up to Kim Jong-un, North Korea's portly dictator. In fact, in typical Trumpian fashion, he was pissed at the Korean leader and, no less typically, he lashed out verbally, threatening that country with a literal hell on Earth. As he put it, "They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen." And then, just to make his point more personally, he complained about Kim himself, "He has been very threatening beyond a normal state."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Only a year and a half later, our asteroidal president would, of course, say of that same man, "We fell in love." Still, that threat by an American leader to — it was obvious — launch a nuclear strike for the first time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nearly obliterated in August 1945 was memorable. The phrase would, in fact, become the title of a 2018 bestselling book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," by journalist Michael Wolff. Two years later, amid so many other threatening phrases from this president, "fire and fury" has, however, been left in history's dustbin, largely forgotten by the world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is not an act of God"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Too bad, since it seems so much more relevant now that California, Oregon, and Washington, not to speak of a Southwest already officially in a "megadrought," have experienced the sort of apocalyptic fire and fury (and heat and smoke) that has turned daytime skies an eerie nighttime orange (or yellow or even purple, claims a friend of mine living in the San Francisco Bay Area). We're talking about a fire and fury that's forced cars to put on their headlights at noon; destroyed towns (leaving only armed right-wing militants behind amid the flames to await imagined Antifa looters); burned millions of acres of land, putting hundreds of thousands of Americans under evacuation orders; turned startling numbers of citizens into refugees under pandemic conditions; and crept toward suburbs and cities, imperiling the world as we've known it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the wake of the hottest summer on record in the Northern Hemisphere, we are, in other words, talking about the sort of apocalyptic conditions that the president undoubtedly had in mind for North Korea back in 2017, but not even faintly for the U. S. of A; we're talking, that is, about a burning season the likes of which no one in the West has ever seen before, a torching linked to the overheating of this planet thanks to the release of fossil-fuel-produced greenhouse gasses in ever greater quantities. In fact, as Washington Governor Jay Inslee pointed out recently, we shouldn't even be talking about "wildfires" anymore, but about "climate fires" whose intensity has already outpaced by years the predictions of most climate scientists. (Or, as Inslee put it, "This is not an act of God. This has happened because we have changed the climate of the state of Washington in dramatic ways.")</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Significant hunks of the American West have now been transformed into the natural equivalent of furnaces, with fires even reaching the suburban edges of Portland, Oregon (which, for days, had the worst air quality of any major urban area on the planet), and promising a future in which cities will undoubtedly be swept up in such conflagrations, too. Admittedly, Donald Trump didn't threaten to launch "fire and fury like the world has never seen" against Portland (though he did send federal agents there to snatch peaceful protesters off its streets and continues to insult and threaten that city's mayor). If anything, as the fires scorched those states to a crisp, he did his best to avoid the subject of the burning West, as in these years more generally he's largely treated climate change (that "hoax") like... well, a pandemic that should be ignored while America stayed "open."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it's not a subject he's been grilled on much either, not until recently when Western governors began laying into him over his stance on climate change. To offer just one example, as far as I can tell, Bob Woodward, the Washington Post editor and court chronicler of presidents who, for months, had unparalleled access to Trump and grilled him on so many subjects, never bothered to ask him about the most important, most dystopian, most apocalyptic future Americans face. And mainstream Democrats didn't do much better on the subject while those fires were building to a crescendo until Joe Biden finally called the president a "climate arsonist." He added, aptly enough, "If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze?"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There's no question that, at the beck and call of the fossil-fuel industry, Donald Trump and his demonic crew have worked without qualms or remorse to ensure that this would be a fiery and furious America. Freeing that industry of restrictions of every sort, withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, opening up yet more areas for oil drilling, wiping out environmental safeguards, and even (at the very moment when the West was burning) appointing a climate-science denier to a top position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the president and his crew proved themselves to be pyromaniacs of the first order.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, the heating of this planet has been intensifying for decades now. (Don't forget, for instance, that Barack Obama presided over a U.S. fracking boom that left people referring to us as "Saudi America.") Still, this president and his top officials have put remarkable energy (so to speak) into releasing yet more carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. And here's the strange thing: they made it deep into the present apocalyptic moment in the West without — Greta Thunberg and climate change protesters aside — being held faintly accountable for their urge to fuel the greatest danger humanity faces other than nuclear weapons. In fact, as is increasingly obvious from the torching of the West, what we're beginning to experience is a slow-motion version of the nuclear apocalypse that Trump once threatened to loose on North Korea.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an all-too-literal fashion, The Donald is indeed proving to be history's "fire and fury" president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And don't for a moment think that there was no warning about the over-the-top burning now underway in this country. After all, in 2019, parts of Australia were singed to a crisp in a way never before seen, killing at least 25 humans and possibly more than a billion animals. And that country, too, was headed by a climate-change denier, a man who once brought a piece of coal to parliament and handed it around while soothingly telling other legislators, "Don't be afraid, don't be scared." In addition, in recent years, the Arctic (of all places) has been smoking and burning in an unprecedented fashion, heating its permafrost and releasing staggering amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Oh, and this June, the temperature in a small town in Siberia crossed the 100-degree mark for the first time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By the way, Russia, too, is run by a leader who until recently was a climate denier. I mean, what is it about the urge of so many of us in such a crisis to support those dedicated to quite literally destroying this planet as a livable place for... well, us? (Hey there, Jair Bolsonaro!)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our very own firenado</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An almost unimaginable near-half-century ago on a different planet, I lived in San Francisco. I can still remember the fog rolling in daily, even during summer in one of the coolest, breeziest cities around. Not this year, though. On September 6th, for instance, the temperature there broke 100 degrees, "crushing" the previous record for that day. In Berkeley, across the Bay, where I also once lived long, long ago, it hit 110. As a heat wave swept the state (and the West), temperatures near Los Angeles soared to a record-breaking 121 degrees (almost challenging overheated Baghdad, Iraq, this year), while reaching 130 degrees in the aptly named Death Valley — and that's just to start down a list of soaring temperatures across the West from the Canadian to the Mexican borders.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As those fires filled the skies with smoke and ash, turning day into the eeriest of nights, a smoke cloud the likes of which had never before been seen appeared over the coastal West. Meanwhile, firenadoes were spotted and the ash-filled air threatened terrible things for health. As has been true for the last 46 years, I'm thousands of miles away from my old Bay Area haunts. Still, I regularly check in with friends and TomDispatch authors on that coast, some aged like me and locked in their homes lest the smoke and ash, the air from hell, do them in. Meanwhile, their cars are packed to go, their evacuation checklists ready.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My heart goes out to them and, really, to all of us (and, above all, to those to whom we oldsters will be leaving such a blazing, tumultuous world).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sadly, among the endless scandals and horrors of the Trump era, the greatest one by far scandalized all too few for all too long among those who officially matter on this beleaguered planet of ours. Even in 2016, it should have been obvious enough that a vote for Donald Trump was a vote for the apocalypse. Give him credit, though. He made no secret of that fact or that his presidency would be a fossil-fueled nightmare. It was obvious even then that he, not climate change, was the "hoax" and that this planet would suffer in unique ways from his (ad)ministrations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And in every way imaginable, Donald Trump delivered as promised. He's been uniquely fiery and furious. In his own fashion, he's also been a man of his word. He's already brought "fire and fury" to this country in so many ways and, if he has anything to say about it, he's just gotten started.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Don't doubt for a second that, should he be losing on November 3rd (or beyond, given the mail-in vote to come), he'll declare electoral fraud and balk at leaving the White House. Don't doubt for a second that he'd be happy to torch that very building and whatever, at this point, is left of the American system with it before he saw himself "lose."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since he is, in his own fashion, a parody of everything: a politician, a Republican, an autocrat, even a human being, he sums up in some extreme (if eerily satiric) fashion human efforts to destroy our way of life in these years. In truth, fiery and furiously fueled, he's a historic cloud of smoke and ash over us all.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By his very nature, to use those 2017 nuclear words of his, he is "threatening beyond a normal state." Think of him as the president from hell and here I mean a literal hell. Four more years of him, his crew, and the fossil-fuelized criminals running the major oil, gas, and coal companies who are riding his coattails into profit heaven and planetary misery are the cast of a play, both comedy and tragedy, that none of us should have to sit through. He's our very own firenado and — it's not complicated — four more years of him will consign us to a hell on Earth of a sort still only faintly imaginable today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/new-global-report-warns-nearly-40-of-plants-are-at-risk-of-extinction</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;no lnx vid guk twt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New global report warns nearly 40% of plants are at risk of extinction</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jessica Corbett and Common Dreams October 01, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Humanity's destruction of nature has made an estimated two in five plant species worldwide at risk of extinction, according to an assessment published Wednesday by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the United Kingdom.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fourth annual report, entitled State of the World's Plants and Fungi (pdf), draws on the expertise of 210 researchers from 42 countries for what professor Alexandre Antonelli, director of science at RBG Kew, calls an "unparalleled collaborative effort" that aims to put the planet and all its inhabitants on a more sustainable path.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Open your fridge, peek into your medicine cupboard, examine your living room, feel your clothes. For thousands of years, we have searched nature to satisfy our hunger, cure our diseases, build our houses, and make our lives more comfortable," Antonelli writes in the report's introduction.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"But our early exploration of useful traits in species relied on rudimentary tools, and Indigenous knowledge was lost as local traditions were downplayed and globalization emerged," he adds. "As a result, humanity is still a long way from utilizing the full potential of biodiversity, in particular plants and fungi, which play critical roles in ecosystems. Now, more than ever before, we need to explore the solutions they could provide to the global challenges we face."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report comes on the heels of a United Nations assessment that the international community has failed to fulfill any of the biodiversity targets that were set a decade ago as well as the latest edition of World Wide Fund for Nature's flagship publication, which warned that "nature—our life-support system—is declining at a staggering rate." Specifically, WWF found "an average 68% decrease in population sizes of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish between 1970 and 2016."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Throughout the report's 12 chapters, researchers address the importance of seeking out species before they disappear and calculating extinction risk; ways that plants and fungi can be used in terms of food, energy, healthcare, and more; how biological resources can be used more wisely; and the conditions in the U.K. and its territories.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Natural ecosystems provide useful services for humanity, such as regulating climate, preventing floods, and filtering water. As the building blocks of ecosystems, plants and fungi have the potential to help us address current environmental challenges, such as climate change," the report notes. "However, these natural benefits could be compromised by biodiversity loss, caused by humans clearing or degrading natural vegetation and over-harvesting wild species, as well as by shifting weather patterns."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given the importance of plants and fungi, "we need to have a rough idea of the conservation status of every species," Eimear Nic Lughadha, conservation scientist at RBG Kew and lead author of the extinction chapter, explained in a statement. Lughadha highlighted advancements with artificial intelligence, adding, "the techniques are good enough to say, 'this area has a lot of species that haven't been assessed but are almost certainly threatened.'"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2019 alone, 1,942 plants and 1,886 fungi were scientifically named for the first time, according to the report—which adds that "current threats to global biodiversity, from climate change, logging, and land-use change, make the task of cataloguing species a race against time."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Only six species of medicinal fungi have been assessed for conservation status, "one of which, Fomitopsis officinalis, a wood-inhabiting parasitic fungus, has already been pushed to the brink of extinction," the report says. Out of 25,791 known medicinal plants, 5,411 have been assessed and 723—or 13%—are threatened.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Professor Monique Simmonds, deputy director of science at RBG Kew and lead author of the commercialization chapter, told the Guardian that humanity should look to nature for treating coronaviruses and other diseases with pandemic potential. As she put it: "I am absolutely sure going forward that some of the leads for the next generation of drugs in this area will come from plants and fungi."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report also notes that even though there are at least 7,039 plants that hold potential as foods, "just 15 crop plants contribute to 90% of humanity's energy intake, and more than four billion people rely on just rice, maize, and wheat." As an RBG Kew statement explained, "Relying on a handful of crops to feed the global population has contributed to malnutrition and left us vulnerable to climate change."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stefano Padulosi, co-author of the food chapter, said that "the thousands of underutilized and neglected plant species are the lifeline to millions of people on Earth tormented by unprecedented climate change, pervasive food and nutrition insecurity, and economic disempowerment."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Harnessing this basket of untapped resources for making food and production systems more diverse and resilient to change should be our moral duty to current and future generations," declared Padulosi, former senior scientist at the Alliance of Biodiversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Antonelli agreed, saying broadly that "the data emerging from this year's report paint a picture of a world that has turned its back on the potential of plants and fungi to address fundamental global issues such as food security and climate change. Societies have been too dependent on too few species for too long."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"At a time of rapid biodiversity loss, we are failing to access the treasure chest of incredible diversity on offer and missing a huge opportunity for our generation," he added. "As we start the most critical decade our planet has ever faced, we hope this report will give the public, businesses, and policymakers the facts they need to demand nature-based solutions that can address the triple threats of climate change, biodiversity loss, and food security."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/new-analysis-finds-planet-heading-toward-temperature-threshold-not-seen-in-34-million-years/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">comm dr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a newly published study conducted by a team of climate scientists warns that—barring prompt and rigorous efforts to minimize greenhouse gas emissions—”Earth is on track for some of the strongest, fastest climate change the planet has ever experienced.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Undertaking what Chelsea Harvey of Scientific American described as “one of the most comprehensive investigations of the Earth’s climate history,” the researchers used chemical analyses of ancient sediments to discern information about our planet’s climatological record.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The sediments—obtained by drilling the ocean floor in various locations around the world over the course of several years—contain “the preserved shells of tiny organisms that can tell scientists about the temperature and chemical composition of the ocean when they were formed,” Harvey explained.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some of the sediments are 66 million years old, which enabled the research team to “reconstruct Earth’s climate history going back to the mass extinction that killed three-quarters of the planet’s species, including dinosaurs,” Harvey reported.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">what the scientists found is that the planet has gone through four distinctive climate phases, which they label “warmhouse, hothouse, coolhouse, and icehouse states.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In general, transitions between climate states have hinged on changing concentrations of greenhouse gasses, typically generated by “volcanic eruptions and other natural processes,” as well as “shifts in the Earth’s orbit that affected the amount of solar energy reaching the planet,” Scientific American noted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fifty million years ago, when Earth was in its hottest phases and long before the existence of humans, planetary temperatures were more than 10 degrees Celsius hotter than they are at present. However, reaching those temperatures took thousands or even millions of years, which is much different than the accelerated warming occurring today, warns the study, published in the journal Science.[twt]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">while the world has been in an icehouse state for millions of years, explained Harvey, “Earth could once again reach a temperature threshold not seen for at least 34 million years” in only a few centuries unless society limits greenhouse gas emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prior to the industrial era, it would have taken thousands of years, at least, for such dramatic levels of warming to unfold.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Jim Zachos, a paleoclimatologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a co-author of the new paper, the worst-case scenario by 2300 shows “the change in mean global temperature is larger than most of the natural variability going back over the last 66 millions years related to changes in the Earth’s orbit.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Harvey pointed out that “feedback processes that can speed things up or slow things down” make it difficult to “predict future change, especially over relatively short periods of time.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, by “reconstructing the Earth’s long-term climate history,” this study can help scientists test the accuracy of models used to make projections about the future by comparing them to simulations of the past, which could yield useful knowledge about “how climate change could unfold in the coming decades and centuries,” explained Scientifc American.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s not an inevitable future,” Harvey stressed, adding that “with immediate and stringent action to reduce climate change, the world can keep global temperatures from rising more than a few degrees above their preindustrial levels.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ew 920</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">only 10% of global energy utility companies are expanding their renewable energy capacity at a faster rate than their gas or coal-fired capacity. That is the main finding of a study by Galina Alova from the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">920</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/1-5-degrees-celsius-2024-study-2647536374.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ew theconv</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Paris climate agreement seeks to limit global warming to 1.5℃ this century. A new report by the World Meteorological Organization warns this limit may be exceeded by 2024 – and the risk is growing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This first overshoot beyond 1.5℃ would be temporary, likely aided by a major climate anomaly such as an El Niño weather pattern. However, it casts new doubt on whether Earth's climate can be permanently stabilized at 1.5℃ warming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This finding is among those just published in a report titled United in Science. We contributed to the report, which was prepared by six leading science agencies, including the Global Carbon Project.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report also found while greenhouse gas emissions declined slightly in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they remained very high – which meant atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have continued to rise.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greenhouse Gases Rise as CO₂ Emissions Slow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O), have all increased over the past decade. Current concentrations in the atmosphere are, respectively, 147%, 259% and 123% of those present before the industrial era began in 1750.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Concentrations measured at Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory and at Australia's Cape Grim station in Tasmania show concentrations continued to increase in 2019 and 2020. In particular, CO₂ concentrations reached 414.38 and 410.04 parts per million in July this year, respectively, at each station.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂0) from WMO Global Atmosphere Watch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Growth in CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel use slowed to around 1% per year in the past decade, down from 3% during the 2000s. An unprecedented decline is expected in 2020, due to the COVID-19 economic slowdown. Daily CO₂ fossil fuel emissions declined by 17% in early April at the peak of global confinement policies, compared with the previous year. But by early June they had recovered to a 5% decline.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We estimate a decline for 2020 of about 4-7% compared to 2019 levels, depending on how the pandemic plays out.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although emissions will fall slightly, atmospheric CO₂ concentrations will still reach another record high this year. This is because we're still adding large amounts of CO₂ to the atmosphere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global daily fossil CO₂ emissions to June 2020. Updated from Le Quéré et al. 2020, Nature Climate Change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Warmest Five Years on Record</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The global average surface temperature from 2016 to 2020 will be among the warmest of any equivalent period on record, and about 0.24℃ warmer than the previous five years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This five-year period is on the way to creating a new temperature record across much of the world, including Australia, southern Africa, much of Europe, the Middle East and northern Asia, areas of South America and parts of the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sea levels rose by 3.2 millimeters per year on average over the past 27 years. The growth is accelerating – sea level rose 4.8 millimeters annually over the past five years, compared to 4.1 millimeters annually for the five years before that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The past five years have also seen many extreme events. These include record-breaking heatwaves in Europe, Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, major bushfires in Australia and elsewhere, prolonged drought in southern Africa and three North Atlantic hurricanes in 2017.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Left: Global average temperature anomalies (relative to pre-industrial) from 1854 to 2020 for five data sets. UK-MetOffice. Right: Average sea level for the period from 1993 to July 16, 2020. European Space Agency and Copernicus Marine Service.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1 in 4 Chance of Exceeding 1.5°C Warming</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our report predicts a continuing warming trend. There is a high probability that, everywhere on the planet, average temperatures in the next five years will be above the 1981-2010 average. Arctic warming is expected to be more than twice that the global average.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There's a one-in-four chance the global annual average temperature will exceed 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels for at least one year over the next five years. The chance is relatively small, but still significant and growing. If a major climate anomaly, such as a strong El Niño, occurs in that period, the 1.5℃ threshold is more likely to be crossed. El Niño events generally bring warmer global temperatures.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under the Paris Agreement, crossing the 1.5℃ threshold is measured over a 30-year average, not just one year. But every year above 1.5℃ warming would take us closer to exceeding the limit.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Global average model prediction of near surface air temperature relative to 1981–2010. Black line = observations, green = modelled, blue = forecast. Probability of global temperature exceeding 1.5℃ for a single month or year shown in brown insert and right axis. UK Met Office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Arctic Ocean Sea-Ice Disappearing</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Satellite records between 1979 and 2019 show sea ice in the Arctic summer declined at about 13% per decade, and this year reached its lowest July levels on record.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Antarctica, summer sea ice reached its lowest and second-lowest extent in 2017 and 2018, respectively, and 2018 was also the second-lowest winter extent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most simulations show that by 2050, the Arctic Ocean will practically be free of sea ice for the first time. The fate of Antarctic sea ice is less certain.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Urgent Action Can Change Trends</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Human activities emitted 42 billion tons of CO₂ in 2019 alone. Under the Paris Agreement, nations committed to reducing emissions by 2030.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But our report shows a shortfall of about 15 billion tons of CO₂ between these commitments, and pathways consistent with limiting warming to well below 2℃ (the less ambitious end of the Paris target). The gap increases to 32 billion tons for the more ambitious 1.5℃ goal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our report models a range of climate outcomes based on various socioeconomic and policy scenarios. It shows if emission reductions are large and sustained, we can still meet the Paris goals and avoid the most severe damage to the natural world, the economy and people. But worryingly, we also have time to make it far worse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pep Canadell is a Chief research scientist, Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; and Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rob Jackson is a Chair, Department of Earth System Science, and Chair of the Global Carbon Project, Stanford University.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Disclosure statement: Pep Canadell receives funding from the Australian National Environmental Science Program - Earth Systems and Climate Change hub. Rob Jackson receives funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, California Energy Commission, Environmental Defense Fund, and Stanford Natural Gas Initiative.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-methane-emissions-regulations-2646947182.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">820</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">720</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">covid cover even more dereg including NEPA, arctic 100 C</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">720 ew</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Tuesday that a trend of increased coastal flooding will continue to worsen as the climate crisis escalates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">deforest:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/rainforest-loss-2019-2646150833.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Satellite data collated for the World Resources Institute (WRI) showed primal rainforest was lost across 38,000 square kilometers (14,500 square miles) globally — ruining habitats and releasing carbon once locked in wood into the atmosphere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The count by the University of Maryland means that 2019 was the third most devastating year for primary forests — comprising old-growth trees and highly diverse wildlife — since scientists began such surveys two decades ago.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brazil burnt, logged and bulldozed a third of the area lost, with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia placed second and a distant third, concluded WRI experts from the Global Forest Watch (GFW) project.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Primary forest loss was 2.8% higher in 2019 than the year before and has remained stubbornly high for the last two decades despite efforts to halt deforestation," exclaimed the study's authors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brazil's losses preceded President Jair Bolsonaro's legislative moves to loosen rules that would otherwise protect regions from minerals extraction and agriculture.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Hot spots" identified in satellite images, said the WRI, had corresponded with reports of land-grabs inside the Trincheira/Bacaja indigenous reserve of Brazil's Para state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Deforestation across the Amazon was nearing a threshold, calculated another in March, that once crossed would see it morph into arid savannah within 50 years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indonesia was "one of the few bright spots in the global data," wrote WRI fellow Frances Seymour and colleagues, referring to a 5% loss decline since 2018.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tougher enforcement and bans on new oil-palm concessions, had all helped, said Arief Wijaya, expert at World Resources Institute Indonesia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bolivia Has 80% Higher Loss</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In its Global Forest Watch report, the WRI highlighted Bolivia, saying its removal of primary forest and surrounding woodlands — to produce soy and range cattle in 2019 — had been 80% higher than any of its previous years on record.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Its highly biodiverse Chiquitano Dry Forest was particularly affected, with reports that nearly 12% of it burned," said the study.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other countries with severe losses had been Peru, Malaysia and Colombia, followed by Laos, Mexico and Cambodia — from 1,620 square kilometers and 800 square kilometers in primal forest lost.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indigenous Rights Protect Forests Too</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WRI's Seymour said a "mounting body of evidence" suggested that legal recognition of indigenous land rights "provides greater forest protection:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We know that deforestation is lower in indigenous territories," Seymour said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global Forest Watch (GFW) project manager Mikaela Weisse said, if left undisturbed, areas stripped of virgin rainforest would "take decades or even centuries" to get back to their original state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those virgin rainforests destroyed comprised but a third of all tree cover (119,000 million hectares, including plantations) lost across the global tropics in 2019, said the study.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Its authors again warned that slashing forests had major implications for global goals to curb climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"At least 1.8 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions are associated with 2019 primary forest loss, equivalent to the annual emissions of 400 million cars," said the authors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trees are estimated to absorb about a third of all planet-warming emissions from fossil-fuel combustion, including petrol and diesel-powered vehicles.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pandemic Weakens Enforcement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The current Covid-19 pandemic had changed dynamics, said Weisse, weakening enforcement of forest-protection laws and leaving rural families desperate to feed themselves back home after losing jobs in cities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In April, scientists grouped within the Global Carbon Project estimated that coronavirus-induced economic slowdowns would trim carbon dioxide emissions by more than 5% year-on-year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was "something not seen since the end of World War Two," said project chair Rob Jackson, professor of Earth system science at Stanford University, California.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But, recalling the aftermath of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, climate scientist Corinne Le Quéré at England's University of East Anglia, forecast in April that emissions were likely to rebound if structural changes were not instituted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Glasgow's COP26 Postponed</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last week, host Britain confirmed that UN climate talks due in Glasgow, known as COP26, had been postponed a year until between November 1 and 12 2021.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Experts involved in those long-running negotiations insist that global emissions must start dropping this year to avoid irreversible impacts, including polar melts, record hot weather, rogue storms, and ocean level rises.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reposted with permission from Deutsche Welle.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rainforests deforestation wildlife amazon rainforest climate crisis carbon emissions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">620 ew</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Human activity has pushed atmospheric carbon dioxide to higher levels today than they have been at any other point in the last 23-million-years, potentially posing unprecedented disruptions in ecosystems across the planet, new research suggests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Understanding atmospheric concentrations of CO2 is "vital for understanding Earth's climate system" because it "imparts a controlling effect on global temperatures," said scientists in a study published in Geology.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate change is largely driven by a disproportionate increase of CO2 in the atmosphere largely resulting from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas as well as cutting down or burning forests that serve as carbon stores, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. A 2013 study published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that climate change from CO2 and greenhouse gas emission is not only caused by humans but has had "widespread impacts on human and natural systems."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Previous measurements have turned to ice cores to determine CO2 levels present in the atmosphere throughout Earth's history, but have only pieced together the last 800,000 years. To expand upon this record, researchers at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette used fossilized remains of ancient plant tissue to produce a record of atmospheric CO2 dating back 31 million years of "uninterrupted Earth history."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As plants grow, the amount of two stable carbon isotopes, carbon-12 and carbon-13, change in response to CO2 levels in the atmosphere. With this in mind, the research team measured the relative amount of these carbon isotopes in fossil plant materials from 700 measurements, published in 12 studies, characterizing ancient plants and their lipids in order to calculate concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere during the timeframe that the plants grew.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This atmospheric "timeline" did not show fluctuations in CO2 that are comparable to increases seen in the last century. In fact, the highest concentrations of CO2 were found during the Miocene, between 5 and 23 million years ago, but were still determined to have been below present-day levels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"These data suggest present-day CO2 exceeds the highest levels that Earth experienced at least since the Miocene, further highlighting the present-day disruption of long-established CO2 trends within Earth's atmosphere," write the study authors in Geology.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The abrupt increase of greenhouse gas distribution today is unprecedented in Earth's 23-million-year history, indicating that ecosystems and global temperatures may be more sensitive to smaller changes in CO2 levels than previously thought. Though CO2 levels have varied widely throughout Earth's history, researchers believe that they have never fluctuated nor been as high as in recent years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"One of the most pressing messages that climate scientists attempt to convey to the public is that current CO2 is elevated compared to the geological past," write the study authors, adding that the results also indirectly imply that major changes in plant and early humans were not driven by large changes in CO2 but rather "relatively small-amplitude changes."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Humans have increased atmospheric CO2 concentration by more than one-third since the Industrial Revolution began, according to NASA. Though the BBC reports "worst-case scenario" for emissions of CO2 in the 21st century is considered unlikely by researchers, scientists still expect a rise of around 3 degrees Celsius by 2100, according to The Guardian — 1.5 degrees Celsius above goals set forth by the Paris agreement. A report published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration earlier this year corroborates the findings, confirming that CO2 levels in 2018 were higher than at any other point in the past 800,000 years. The last time amounts were this high was more than 3 million years ago, when global temperatures were between 3.6 and 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit higher than during the pre-industrial era, and sea level was 50 to 80 feet higher than today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">carbon emissions greenhouse gases coal fossil fuels climate change science forests</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha omg: amazon will be no longer a buffer but emitter soon? mostly b/c of burning?!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/29/megadrought-us-south-west-fires-water-research</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">US south-west in grip of historic 'megadrought', research finds</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Intensified by climate change, the current 20-year arid period is one of the worst on record, with wide-ranging effects</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Samuel Gilbert</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;@samuelgilbert1</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fri 29 May 2020 05.30 EDTLast modified on Fri 29 May 2020 08.31 EDT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Enterprise Bridge passes over a section of Lake Oroville that is nearly dry on 19 August 2014 in Oroville, California. The region is in the grip of a 20-year megadrought, research suggests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Ken Pimlott began fighting US wildfires at the age of 17, they seemed to him to be a brutal but manageable natural phenomenon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dust bowl conditions of 1930s US now more than twice as likely to reoccur</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Read more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We had periodic [fire] sieges in the 80s, but there were breaks in between,” said Pimlott, the former head of the California department of forestry and fire protection. But no longer. “That doesn’t really happen any more. Now you can’t even blink” between fires, he said. “We’re seeing the kinds of fires we have never seen before.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A recent study published in the journal Science helps explains why, revealing that the south-western US is in the grip of a 20-year megadrought – a period of severe aridity that is stoking fires, depleting reservoirs and putting a strain on water supplies to the states of the region.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You see impacts everywhere, in snowpacks, reservoir levels, agriculture, groundwater and tree mortality,” said co-author Benjamin Cook, of Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. “Droughts are these amazingly disruptive events. Water sits at the foundation of everything.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Researchers compared soil moisture records from 2000-2019 to other drought events from the past 1,200 years. They found that the current period is worse than all but one of five megadroughts identified in the record.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unlike past megadroughts – brought on by natural fluctuations in the Earth’s climate – this current drought has been heavily influenced by human-induced climate change, “pushing what would have been a moderate drought in south-western North America into megadrought territory”, according to the study.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Global warming has made the drought much worse than it otherwise would have been,” said Cook. “We estimate 30-50% is attributed to climate change.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Nasa, 19 of the 20 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001. Climate change, if unchecked, will hit the American south-west particularly hard.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A major concern is the megadrought’s impact on water supplies in the region. It has experienced explosive growth – half of the nation’s fastest-growing states are in the south-west – made possible by elaborate river diversion projects and massive reservoirs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the past two decades, drought-depleted rivers, and population growth has led to steep declines in two of the nation’s largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, on which which tens of millions of people depend.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Water deliveries from the Colorado River are also being rationed this year, for the first time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For Pimlott, this drought has manifested itself in 21st-century fires unlike any he had previously witnessed. In 2018, a fire tornado destroyed part of one northern California town, and almost the entire community of Paradise, California, was wiped out by a blaze that claimed 85 victims.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Were seeing more intense fires, with longer durations,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">icn 5/20</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">50 Years From Now, Many Densely Populated Parts of the World Could be Too Hot for Humans</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BY: BOB BERWYN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unless steps are taken to check global warming, up to 3 billion people will find themselves in areas too warm for human comfort, a new study finds.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no brainer to stop subsidizing ?!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">icn 420</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">super-Polluting Methane Emissions Twice Federal Estimates in Permian Basin, Study Finds</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BY: PHIL MCKENNA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The methane is a byproduct of fracking for oil, often burned off at well heads or emitted into the atmosphere instead of being captured for use as fuel.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/water-crisis-5-lessons-2645724350.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5 Lessons for the Future of Water</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;World Economic Forum Apr 16 ew&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/southwest-drought-climate-crisis-2645742986.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A severe drought that has engulfed the American Southwest since the year 2000 is likely to soon be the most severe drought since the 800s, according to a new study published in Science.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This appears to be just the beginning of a more extreme trend toward megadrought as global warming continues," the authors wrote in the study.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A team of researchers from Columbia University conducted the study. They described the ongoing dry spell, which has helped intensify wildfire seasons and threatened water supplies for people and agriculture, as an "emerging megadrought," according to The New York Times.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, nothing is guaranteed. By comparison to the previous 19 years, 2019 was actually a fairly wet year. Unpredictable climate variability may also bring enough rain to the region to end the drought, but global warming boosts the chances that the drought will endure.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We know that this drought has been encouraged by the global warming process," said lead author A. Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, as The New York Times reported. "As we go forward in time it's going to take more and more good luck to pull us out of this."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scientists have suspected for a while that that the dryness is evolving into a megadrought. The new research not only confirms their suspicion, but also concludes this megadrought may be as bad or worse than anything known before.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We now have enough observations of current drought and tree-ring records of past drought to say that we're on the same trajectory as the worst prehistoric droughts," said Williams, in a statement, as USA Today reported. This is "a drought bigger than what modern society has seen."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The researchers say that man-made global warming caused about half of this drought. Changes in the climate have contributed to dwindling reservoirs and harsher wildfire seasons.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It all could get much worse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Anthropogenic global warming and its drying influence in (southwestern North America) are likely still in their infancy," the study warns, as CNN reported. "Themagnitude of future droughts in North America and elsewhere will depend greatly on future rates of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions globally."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Without a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, these droughts are just the beginning.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The effects of future droughts on humans will be further dependent on sustainable resource use because buffering mechanisms such as ground water and reservoir storage are at risk of being depleted during dry times," the study continues, according to CNN....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/if-were-facing-climate-change-doom-should-we-still-take-action-anyway/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">philos kant gramsci</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07042020/global-warming-ecosystem-biodiversity-rising-heat-species</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global warming is about to tear big holes into Earth's delicate web of life, pushing temperatures beyond the tolerance of thousands of animals at the same time. As some key species go extinct, entire ecosystems like coral reefs and forests will crumble, and some will collapse abruptly, starting as soon as this decade, a new study in the journal Nature warns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many scientists see recent climate-related mass die-offs, including the coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef and widespread seabird and marine mammal mortality in the Northeastern Pacific linked to a marine heat wave, as warning signs of impending biodiversity collapse, said lead author Alex Pigot, a biodiversity researcher at University College, London. The new study shows that nowhere on Earth will escape the impacts.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In the U.S., the southern states from Texas to Florida, the Appalachians and the West Coast are projected to be at particularly high risk, with between 20 and 40 percent of species facing conditions beyond anything they have previously experienced," Pigot said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In those regions many species live in small geographic areas under a narrow range of climatic conditions. As global warming heats their habitat to the point that it is intolerable, many species have no place to go. Some will go extinct, with a domino effect that affects scores of other species. If it gets too hot for bumblebees, for example, it affects the reproduction of plants. If it gets too warm for insects and reptiles, it affects food supplies for birds and mammals.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I hope our predictions are wrong. But increasingly, what we're observing around us are the signs of this happening," Pigot said, referring to research showing how global warming affects individual species. "I think these studies are showing that many species are already living very near their thermal limits. Our results suggest that these losses are likely to involve multiple species near simultaneously rather than happening gradually, one species at a time," he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the current rate of warming, abrupt exposure events in tropical oceans will begin before 2030 and spread to tropical forests and higher latitudes by 2050. The risks decrease and arrive more slowly if global warming is capped at less than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, as per the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the study concluded.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"If we can avert the worst of the warming we can buy extra time," Pigot said. "Even if we can get a few extra decades, it gives us time to work on expanding protected areas, or deciding on whether to try things like assisted migration and assisted evolution."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even an immediate curb on greenhouse gas emissions doesn't preclude warming of up to 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century because the current amount of warming could be magnified by big increases of heat-trapping methane in the Arctic or by changes to cloud processes, he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jennifer Sunday, a research biologist at McGill University, said the new study for the first time shows when species will be faced with warmer temperatures than they've ever experienced for five years in a row. And it turns out that a surprising number of animals within various ecosystems will hit those climate thresholds at the same time, which can lead to widespread ecosystem disruptions or collapse, said Sunday, who was not involved in the research.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We did not know about the time-course of events. We have lots of models that compare species ranges today to those at a future date, but we did not know when most of the changes were going to happen," she said. The research also makes it clear that global warming's impacts on ecosystems could arrive very suddenly.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I think we often and maybe subconsciously expect climate change to be a gradual process, but this helps to illustrate that the impacts may be in fits and spurts," she said. "As we know today, our human adaptive systems are not great at dealing with synchronous events," she said, referring to the global response to the coronavirus pandemic. The findings show that some climate impacts could be as sudden and widespread as the pandemic, challenging our adaptive management systems.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Species in Tropics, Polar Regions, Will be Hardest Hit</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the study, Pigot's team assessed temperatures ranges for more than 30,000 land and sea species—birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish and other marine animals and plants—to estimate when they will start experiencing unprecedented temperature conditions. Capping global warming at 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit would decrease the risk of ecosystem failures significantly, but allowing global warming to continue unchecked would lead to widespread biodiversity decline quickly, they found.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ecological communities in tropical regions near the equators will be hard hit because many species there are already living near the upper end of their heat tolerance spectrum. In high latitudes, toward the poles, communities of species will struggle because those areas are warming about twice as fast as the global average, giving them even less time to adapt, he said....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/while-we-fixate-on-coronavirus-earth-is-hurtling-towards-a-catastrophe-worse-than-the-dinosaur-extinction</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx / graf</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While we fixate on coronavirus, Earth is hurtling towards a catastrophe worse than the dinosaur extinction</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This 2002 Blue Marble ]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by The Conversation April 10, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At several points in the history of our planet, increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have caused extreme global warming, prompting the majority of species on Earth to die out.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the past, these events were triggered by a huge volcanic eruption or asteroid impact. Now, Earth is heading for another mass extinction – and human activity is to blame.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I am an Earth and Paleo-climate scientist and have researched the relationships between asteroid impacts, volcanism, climate changes and mass extinctions of species.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s what the coronavirus pandemic can teach us about tackling climate change</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My research suggests the current growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions is faster than those which triggered two previous mass extinctions, including the event that wiped out the dinosaurs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The world’s gaze may be focused on COVID-19 right now. But the risks to nature from human-made global warming – and the imperative to act – remain clear.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The current rate of CO2 emissions is a major event in the recorded history of Earth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Past mass extinctions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many species can adapt to slow, or even moderate, environmental changes. But Earth’s history shows that extreme shifts in the climate can cause many species to become extinct.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, about 66 million years ago an asteroid hit Earth. The subsequent smashed rocks and widespread fires released massive amounts of carbon dioxide over about 10,000 years. Global temperatures soared, sea levels rose and oceans became acidic. About 80% of species, including the dinosaurs, were wiped out.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And about 55 million years ago, global temperatures spiked again, over 100,000 years or so. The cause of this event, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, is not entirely clear. One theory, known as the “methane burp” hypothesis, posits that a massive volcanic eruption triggered the sudden release of methane from ocean sediments, making oceans more acidic and killing off many species.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So is life on Earth now headed for the same fate?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Comparing greenhouse gas levels</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before industrial times began at the end of the 18th century, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere sat at around 300 parts per million. This means that for every one million molecules of gas in the atmosphere, 300 were carbon dioxide.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In February this year, atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 414.1 parts per million. Total greenhouse gas level – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide combined – reached almost 500 parts per million of carbon dioxide-equivalent</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Carbon dioxide is now pouring into the atmosphere at a rate of two to three parts per million each year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Using carbon records stored in fossils and organic matter, I have determined that current carbon emissions constitute an extreme event in the recorded history of Earth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My research has demonstrated that annual carbon dioxide emissions are now faster than after both the asteroid impact that eradicated the dinosaurs (about 0.18 parts per million CO2 per year), and the thermal maximum 55 million years ago (about 0.11 parts per million CO2 per year).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The next mass extinction has begun</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Current atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are not yet at the levels seen 55 million and 65 million years ago. But the massive influx of carbon dioxide means the climate is changing faster than many plant and animal species can adapt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A major United Nations report released last year warned around one million animal and plant species were threatened with extinction. Climate change was listed as one of five key drivers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report said the distributions of 47% of land-based flightless mammals, and almost 25% of threatened birds, may already have been negatively affected by climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many researchers fear the climate system is approaching a tipping point – a threshold beyond which rapid and irreversible changes will occur. This will create a cascade of devastating effects.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are already signs tipping points have been reached. For example, rising Arctic temperatures have led to major ice melt, and weakened the Arctic jet stream – a powerful band of westerly winds.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A diagram showing the weakening Arctic jet stream, and subsequent movements of warm and cold air.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NASA]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This allows north-moving warm air to cross the polar boundary, and cold fronts emanating from the poles to intrude south into Siberia, Europe and Canada.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A shift in climate zones is also causing the tropics to expand and migrate toward the poles, at a rate of about 56 to 111 kilometres per decade. The tracks of tropical and extra-tropical cyclones are likewise shifting toward the poles. Australia is highly vulnerable to this shift.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Uncharted future climate territory</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Research released in 2016 showed just what a massive impact humans are having on the planet. It said while the Earth might naturally have entered the next ice age in about 20,000 years’ time, the heating produced by carbon dioxide would result in a period of super-tropical conditions, delaying the next ice age to about 50,000 years from now.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During this period, chaotic high-energy stormy conditions would prevail over much of the Earth. My research suggests humans are likely to survive best in sub-polar regions and sheltered mountain valleys, where cooler conditions would allow flora and fauna to persist.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Earth’s next mass extinction is avoidable – if carbon dioxide emissions are dramatically curbed and we develop and deploy technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But on the current trajectory, human activity threatens to make large parts of the Earth uninhabitable – a planetary tragedy of our own making.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Read more:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Anatomy of a heatwave: how Antarctica recorded a 20.75°C day last month</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Conversation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrew Glikson, Earth and paleo-climate scientist, Australian National University</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CAFE smash crisis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/trump-to-announce-his-most-disastrous-environmental-policy-so-far/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump to announce his most disastrous environmental policy so far</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams March 31, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the nation grapples with the coronavirus outbreak crisis, the Trump administration intends to further threaten public health and advance its attacks on environmental regulations with a new rule neutering Obama-era vehicle mileage standards, according to multiple news reports Monday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The administration is expected to announce the new rule Tuesday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Obama administration in 2012 ordered automakers to have a 5% annual increase in fuel efficiency for model years beginning in 2021‚ a standard that would bring the equivalent of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.&nbsp; The Trump administration will significantly weaken that standard and instead require a 1.5% annual increase, putting the 2025 at 40 mpg.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Of all the bad things President Trump has done to the environment, this is the worst,” said Dan Becker, director of Safe Climate Campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Amid a spiraling health crisis and economic turmoil, Trump is recklessly driving us over a climate cliff,” Becker added.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Bloomberg reported,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The final regulation’s release will conclude a years-long effort to dismantle the ambitious standards, which supporters have called the most effective policy ever enacted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The expected regulatory change drew criticism from climate experts who said it spells bad news for consumers and the planet alike.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is an enormous license for car companies to lock in and profit from decades more pollution from SUVs,” meteorologist and journalist Eric Holthaus said on Twitter Monday. “This rule change alone is expected to result in a billion tons of needless CO2.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ken Kimmell, president of Union of Concerned Scientists, concurred.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This new rule leaves the country worse off. In the near term, it’s a massive transfer of tens of billions of dollars from drivers to oil companies, as consumers will spend more on gasoline due to less efficient cars. It also cedes American leadership in vehicle manufacturing, putting the automakers at risk in a global market. In the long term, it’s even worse—a deliberate decision to steer us at high speed toward a more dangerous climate,” said Kimmell.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“To add insult to injury, the Trump administration has barely even attempted to justify this new rule, basing its decision on flimsy or outright false arguments,” he continued. “The stated rationale defies common sense, science, and the public interest. This new rule will face a difficult test in the federal courts, which should have no patience for this kind of shoddy reasoning.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">220 mojo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oil and Gas Firms “Have Had Far Worse Climate Impact Than Thought”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JONATHAN WATTS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-plant-and-animal-species-2645160419.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx graf</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Jessica Corbett</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The human-caused climate crisis could cause the extinction of 30 percent of the world's plant and animal species by 2070, even accounting for species' abilities to disperse and shift their niches to tolerate hotter temperatures, according to a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">University of Arizona researchers Cristian Román-Palacios and John J. Wiens analyzed data on 538 plant and animal species and 581 sites worldwide, focusing on species surveyed at the same locations over time, at least a decade apart. They found that 44 percent of the species had local extinctions at one or more sites.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The study identified maximum annual temperatures — the hottest daily highs in summer — as the key variable that best explains whether a population will go extinct," said a statement from the university. "Surprisingly, the researchers found that average yearly temperatures showed smaller changes at sites with local extinction, even though average temperatures are widely used as a proxy for overall climate change."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Wiens explained, "This means that using changes in mean annual temperatures to predict extinction from climate change might be positively misleading."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lead author Román-Palacios laid out their key findings in a series of tweets Thursday:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"By analyzing the change in 19 climatic variables at each site, we could determine which variables drive local extinctions and how much change a population can tolerate without going extinct," Román-Palacios said in the statement. "We also estimated how quickly populations can move to try and escape rising temperatures. When we put all of these pieces of information together for each species, we can come up with detailed estimates of global extinction rates for hundreds of plant and animal species."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The university statement noted that "previous studies have focused on dispersal — or migration to cooler habitats — as a means for species to 'escape' from warming climates. However, the authors of the current study found that most species will not be able to disperse quickly enough to avoid extinction, based on their past rates of movement."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The researchers found that species were able to tolerate hotter conditions at their original locations to a point, but the local extinction rates increased as maximum temperatures did. About half of the species they studied experienced extinctions if the maximum temperature rose over 0.5°C; that figure jumped to 95 percent of species when maximum temperature rose by over 2.9°C.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Given dispersal alone, many of these species (_57–70%) may face extinction. However, niche shifts can potentially reduce this to only 30% or less," according to the study. Considering both dispersal and niche shifts, the researchers projected that 16–30% of the 538 studied species could disappear within the next 50 years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the researchers' new projections are similar for plant and animal species, they found that extinctions could be up to four times more common in the tropics compared with more temperate regions. Román-Palacios said that "this is a big problem, because the majority of plant and animal species occur in the tropics."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In a way, it's a 'choose your own adventure,'" said Wiens. "If we stick to the Paris agreement to combat climate change, we may lose fewer than two out of every 10 plant and animal species on Earth by 2070. But if humans cause larger temperature increases, we could lose more than a third or even half of all animal and plant species, based on our results."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some scientists and climate advocacy groups have long criticized the landmark 2015 Paris accord as too weak to adequately address the planetary emergency — and, as Common Dreams reported in December 2019, the latest global negotiations about implementing the agreement were denounced as an "utter failure." At the time, nearly 100 civil society groups called out polluting industries and wealthy countries for "throwing gasoline on the fire of the climate crisis."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ahead of the COP 25, U.S. President Donald Trump delivered on his promise to ditch the Paris agreement by beginning the one-year withdrawal process in November 2019. Climate experts and activists condemned the move as "irresponsible and shortsighted" but also looked ahead to the November 2020 election and emphasized that the next president could recommit the U.S. to the accord and fight for even more ambitious action on a global scale.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new study comes as young people take to the streets worldwide to demand bolder climate policies, experts warn that the climate crisis is an "existential danger," and scientists contribute to the growing body of research showing how global heating is expected to affect species and the environment. One of those studies, published last week, found that the rate at which bumblebees are declining due to extreme heat is "consistent with a mass extinction."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reposted with permission from Common Dreams.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Endangered Wolf's 8,700-Mile Journey Ends in Tragedy - EcoWatch ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This Penguin Colony Has Fallen by 77% on Antarctic Islands ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate crisis: One-third of all plant and animal species could be ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/new-study-warns-climate-chaos-is-driving-a-rapid-decline-of-bumblebees/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">OMG interacion matthew</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://yyy.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jan/22/wealth-gap-widening-for-more-than-70-per-cent-of-global-population-researchers-find</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">guk</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Inequality and development</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wealth gap widening for more than 70% of global population, researchers find</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Policymakers urged to act on climate and bridge digital divide as study shows soaring inequality is affecting millions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global development is supported by</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">About this content</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sam Phan</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wed 22 Jan 2020&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social and economic disparities have soared even in countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, where inequality had been falling in recent decades, found the World Social Report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If nothing is done to address the problem, the prosperity and development of millions of people could be damaged.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If we don’t act now, the entrenched inequalities that are already there will worsen,” said Elliott Harris, chief economist and assistant secretary general for economic development in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But he added: “What is changing now is that there is a greater awareness that this inequality is having consequences and [causing] social upheavals. It’s something we’ve known for some time, but it hasn’t gotten the recognition.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report said that while international inequality has declined in relative terms, the absolute gap between the average incomes of people living in high- and low-income countries has doubled since 1990.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rising inequalities are benefiting the wealthiest. Top income tax rates have fallen in all countries, which have made tax systems less progressive. In wealthier countries, the top income-tax rates have dropped from 66% in 1981 to 43% in 2018.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The income gap has been exacerbated by the climate crisis. The report estimates that the gap between the richest and poorest 10% of the global population is 25% larger than it would be in a world without global warming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The UN said better use of technology, tackling the climate crisis and improved management of migration and urbanisation could help reduce the inequalities, a target of the UN global goals.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate, inequality, hunger: which global problems would you fix first?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Read more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Almost 87% of people living in wealthy countries have internet access compared with 19% in the least developed countries, creating a digital divide that will increasingly marginalise low-skilled workers, said the report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It added that the impact of the climate crisis threatened to reverse progress on reducing inequality, as the communities most affected by the impact of global heating will find it increasingly hard to escape poverty.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A transition towards greener economies could help combat inequality, said the researchers. Although millions of lower-skilled jobs in carbon-intensive industries will be lost, carefully designed adaptation strategies could create 24m new jobs, they predicted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, better urban planning and city management could improve the lives of more than 1 billion people who currently live in slums, often with little access to decent sanitation, clean water or energy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Better migration policies and lower transaction costs for family remittances would also allow millions of people to pursue better opportunities and improve their lives, added the report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It is difficult to address inequality, but it can be successfully reduced. We need to agree on the need and the policy, and then address it,” said Harris.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is not [our] destiny. If we act now through policy, we can deliver better outcomes.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Talk is cheap, says the acting executive secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, who begged governments around the world to make sure that 2020 is not another year of conferences and empty promises, but instead is the year to take decisive action to stop the mass extinction of wildlife and the destruction of habitat-sustaining ecosystems, as The Guardian reported.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Acting Executive Secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema warned that the absence of concrete action to stop deforestation, pollution and the climate crisis will mean that humanity has given up on the planet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mrema who grew up in Tanzania near Mount Kilimanjaro has seen the streams near her childhood home dry up, turning a fertile forest into bare land, she said to The Guardian.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Her stark assessment of an empty world came just ahead of the Davos World Economic Forum, which starts on Wednesday. The climate crisis is expected to take center stage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The World Economic Forum said this year that climate-related risks overshadow all other risks, and it placed loss of biodiversity as the third biggest risk to the world, ahead of infectious diseases, terrorism and war between countries. It was only outranked by other climate-related threats, with extreme weather as the top threat, followed by a failure to adapt and mitigate the climate crisis, according to the World Economic Forum.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"For the first time in the history of the Global Risks Perception Survey, environmental concerns dominate the top long-term risks by likelihood among members of the World Economic Forum's multistakeholder community," according to the executive summary of the Forum's 2020 Global Risks Report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mrema is tasked with creating an international agreement to protect nature on the scale of the 2015 Paris agreement. She noted in urgency that the disappearance of coral reefs, rainforests and other life supporting ecosystems will lead to an "empty world" and have "catastrophic" consequences for societies, according to The Guardian.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"People's lives depend on biodiversity in ways that are not always apparent or appreciated. Human health ultimately depends on ecosystem services: the availability of fresh water, fuel, food sources. All these are prerequisites for human health and livelihoods," she said to The Guardian in an exclusive interview.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scientists have warned that human-activity is fueling the sixth mass extinction in history as animals and plants are disappearing at rates tens to hundreds of times faster than at any point in the last 10 million years. In fact, researchers predict that nearly 1,000 species will be lost over the next century and animal size will decrease 25 percent, as conditions favor smaller more adaptable animals, according to EcoWatch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In October, governments will meet in China to formalize an agreement on protecting biodiversity. The draft proposal released last week calls for a modest commitment to protect at least 30 percent of the planet, controlling invasive species and reducing pollution from plastic waste, according to the draft from the Convention on Biological Diversity, as The Guardian reported.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mrema told The Guardian she hopes the attendees will negotiate a more rigorous and ambitious agreement. However, if this modest one fails, the consequences will be dire.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The risks will be major," she said to The Guardian. "One is that we will not have listened to the science and the evidence provided. Because we will not have listened, it means the global community will have said: let biodiversity loss continue, let people continue to die, let the degradation continue, deforestation continue, pollution continue, and we'll have given up as an international community to save the planet. I hope that's not where any of us would want to be."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wildlife species extinction deforestation pollution davos world economic forum biodiversity extreme weather paris agreement coral reefs rainforests sixth mass extinction climate crisis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">i thot maybe pearl harbor moment tip pt at last? uptick after slow start?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/us-broadcast-news-coverage-australian-fires-largely-fails-connect-crisis-climate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">corp news fail connect fires to age, plus</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amid raging bushfire, Rupert Murdoch's Australian media empire turns a blind eye to climate crisis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">01/06/20 3:32 PM EST</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">krugman correctly ID's tipping pt? he's a systems guy?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/a-historical-turning-point-paul-krugman-warns-that-disaster-in-australia-is-a-sign-were-barreling-down-the-road-to-hell/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘A historical turning point’: Paul Krugman warns that disaster in Australia is a sign we’re ‘barreling down the road to hell’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Alex Henderson January 10, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although wildfires were causing death and destruction long before climate change, such disasters are getting worse: more common, more widespread, more intense. Climate change didn’t invent wildfires any more than it invented hurricanes, floods or tornadoes, but it is making them worse. Liberal economist and New York Times opinion writer Paul Krugman, in a scathing column this week, warns that extreme events like the wildfires that have been devastating Australia are a preview of things to come — and he stresses that right-wing politicians who deny the reality of climate change are as great a threat as the events themselves.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In a rational world,” Krugman writes, “the burning of Australia would be a historical turning point. After all, it’s exactly the kind of catastrophe climate scientists long warned us to expect if we didn’t take action to limit greenhouse gas emissions.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Krugman goes on to lament that “the world isn’t rational. In fact, Australia’s anti-environmentalist government seems utterly unmoved as the nightmares of environmentalists become reality. And the anti-environmentalist media, the Murdoch empire in particular, has gone all-out on disinformation, trying to place the blame on arsonists and ‘greenies’ who won’t let fire services get rid of enough trees.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “Murdoch empire” Krugman is referring to is, of course, the one led by 88-year-old media mogul Rupert Murdoch, a Melbourne, Australia native and founder of Fox News’ parent company, News Corp. One of the silliest talking points at News Corp. is that environmentalists are largely to blame for the Australian wildfires because they have been overly protective of the trees that are now burning.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As destructive as the Australian wildfires have been, Krugman warns, diehard climate change deniers are unlikely to be swayed by science.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If a nation in flames isn’t enough to produce a consensus for action — if it isn’t even enough to produce some moderation in the anti-environmentalist position — what will?” Krugman asserts. “The Australia experience suggests that climate denial will persist come hell or high water — that is, through devastating heatwaves and catastrophic storm surges alike.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right-wing climate change deniers, according to Krugman, are as problematic in Canberra (the Australian capital) as they are in Washington, D.C.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Very few of the people still denying the reality of climate change or at least opposing doing anything about it will be moved by further accumulation of evidence, or even by a proliferation of new disasters,” Krugman warns. “Any action that does take place will have to do so in the face of intractable right-wing opposition.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One possible solution, Krugman writes, is to appeal to voters’ self-interest by promoting the economic and job-creating benefits of a Green New Deal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Can such a strategy succeed?” Krugman asks. “I don’t know. But it looks like our only chance given the political reality in Australia, America, and elsewhere — namely, that powerful forces on the right are determined to keep us barreling down the road to hell.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/paul-krugman-apocalypse-is-the-new-normal/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul Krugman: ‘Apocalypse’ is the ‘new normal’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Earth's Hottest Decade on Record Was Marked by Extreme Storms and Deadly Wildfires</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BY: BOB BERWYN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As global warming intensified, people and ecosystems felt the climate changing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/2019-climate-wins-2642492657.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">20 reasons hope</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/here-are-nine-things-you-love-that-are-being-wrecked-by-climate-change/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wine</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">trump record:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19122019/trump-climate-policy-record-rollback-fossil-energy-history-candidate-profile</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Been There</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When U.S. government scientists released their latest volume of the National Climate Assessment, it revealed much about the robust, sobering scientific consensus on climate change. It also revealed the striking disconnect between President Donald Trump and essentially every authoritative institution on the threat of global warming. The president rejected the assessment's central findings—based on thousands of climate studies and involving 13 federal agencies—that emissions of carbon dioxide are caused by human activities, are already causing lasting economic damage, and have to be brought rapidly to zero.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I don't believe it. No, no, I don't believe it," Trump said. Immediately, his cabinet members launched attacks on the report, portraying it as "alarmist" and clinging to Trump's agenda of fossil fuel energy expansion that the science says is at the root of the problem.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Done That</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Trump delivered his first major energy speech in the fracking fields of North Dakota as a candidate in May 2016, he called for American domination of global energy supplies. To make that happen, he wanted an end to all of President Barack Obama's executive actions involving greenhouse gas emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We are going to turn everything around," Trump declared. "And quickly, very quickly."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As president, he has rolled back regulations on energy suppliers at a rapid clip slowed only at times by the courts, while auctioning off millions of acres of new drilling leases on public land. Last year, domestic oil production hit a record high. The result of this, among other things, was the reversal of three consecutive years of declining U.S. carbon emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His administration has undone or delayed—or tried to—most regulatory and executive actions related to climate change, while proposing new ones to accelerate fossil fuel development. Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law counts 131 actions toward federal climate deregulation since Trump took office. In the absence of any comprehensive national climate law, those moves have led to an erosion of the federal government's main regulatory levers for cutting global warming emissions.Trump began the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate treaty, the agreement signed by nearly all nations to reduce fossil fuel emissions. He replaced Obama's Clean Power Plan, intended to sharply reduce emissions from U.S. power plants. He took the first step to weaken fuel economy standards for cars, the single most important effort for reining in the largest driver of U.S. emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Several of those actions, including rollbacks of significant rules on methane, cross-state air pollution regulations and energy efficiency, have been blocked or delayed by judges who have questioned the administration's broad view of its legal authority. Some of those setbacks may be temporary, though, and the courts have yet to rule on the most consequential deregulatory actions. According to the administration's agenda for 2020, the president will try to fast-track as many more as possible before the end of his first term.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Getting Specific</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Promoting unfettered oil, natural gas and coal development. Right out of the gate, Trump greased the wheels for fossil fuel development. He issued a sweeping executive order directing all departments to target for elimination any rules that restrict U.S. production of energy. He set guidance to make it more difficult to put future regulations on fossil fuel industries, and he moved to discard the use of a rigorous "social cost of carbon," a regulatory measurement that puts a price on the future damage society will pay for every ton of carbon dioxide emitted. He swiftly signed memorandums to revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, projects blocked by Obama. And later, with the Keystone XL still stalled, he issued executive orders aimed at speeding approval and construction of fossil fuel projects by limiting state environmental reviews.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fossil fuel infrastructure adds to greenhouse gas emissions, in part by leaking methane into the atmosphere. Trump's administration ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to stop gathering data from oil and gas companies needed to rein in leaks of this potent short-lived climate pollutant. It later loosened methane regulations for projects on public and private land, despite the support for them among the industry's biggest companies. It sought drilling in pristine areas where oil companies have long sought to drill. The administration moved to lift Obama's offshore Arctic drilling ban and approved a plan to drill wells there. It pushed to drill in the previously off-limits Beaufort Sea, in 1.6 million acres of the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and in nearly all of the Outer Continental Shelf. It proposed to expedite oil and gas permits on national forest lands, and it has limited how climate change can be used in determining endangered status for species, further opening doors to drilling in sensitive areas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trying to restore King Coal to its throne. Many of Trump's regulations have been tailored to favor the coal industry, often at the expense of cheaper, cleaner energy. Robert Murray, founder of the now-bankrupt coal company Murray Energy and one of Trump's closest industry allies, gave the president a "wish list" early on that has become of virtual template for the administration's rollback of regulations. The administration swiftly lifted an Obama moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands. It rolled back a stream protection rule designed to reduce the environmental and climate impact of mountaintop removal coal mining, and it has proposed allowing coal plants to emit much more CO2 by weakening New Source Review, which requires big emitters to modernize pollution controls when they make major modifications to their facilities. It pushed a coal bailout rule that would have rewarded electric companies for keeping big stockpiles of fuel on hand. (U.S. regulators rejected it.) It also further relaxed coal ash rules, allowing coal utilities to keep unlined coal ash ponds open for years, making it less expensive to burn coal to produce electricity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Suppressing climate and related science. In almost every agency overseeing energy, the environment and health, Trump selected top officials who dispute the mainstream consensus on the urgency of climate action. People with little scientific background, or strong ties to industries they would be regulating, were appointed to scientific leadership positions. One of the administration's first actions was to order scientists and other employees at EPA and other agencies to halt public communications. Several federal scientists working on climate change have said they were silenced, sidelined or demoted. At least three—a senior employee at the Department of Interior, one at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and another at the National Park Service—invoked whistleblower protections. Independent science advisors, such as members of the EPA's Board of Scientific Counselors, have also been sidelined. Scientific content on government websites has been altered and the public's access to data reduced. Climate data from the government's open portal website was removed. So was the EPA's climate change website. The words "climate change" have been purged from government reports, and other reports have been buried, including by officials at the Department of Agriculture. The administration even edited a major Defense Department report to downplay its climate findings. Through speeches and tweets, the president has repeatedly spread misinformation to the public through his climate denial and denigration of renewable energy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">EPA, meanwhile, is working to finalize its proposal to suppress the types of scientific evidence the agency can use in writing its rules. This includes prohibiting the use of well-established, long-term scientific studies underpinning the nation's air pollution rules, a change the fossil fuel industry had sought for years. Known as the "secret science" rule, it has been lambasted by scientists and health experts worldwide. Related, the White House issued a memo offering new ways for fossil fuel and other industries to challenge science-based policies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Undermining clean energy development and energy efficiency. In its budget proposals, the Trump administration has made clear its resolve to retreat from a federal role in advancing a clean energy economy and maintaining global leadership in the technology. It has proposed repeatedly to radically slash funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), a move that would cripple support for novel and promising technologies for advanced wind turbines, high-tech materials, energy-efficient buildings and more. He has tried to eliminate tax credits for electric vehicles and made several attempts to eliminate the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program, an incubator for cutting-edge energy research and development. Congress has largely rebuffed this scale of funding cut.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The administration issued in 2019 its final rule to dramatically weaken energy-efficient light bulb standards that Congress voted to phase in a decade ago. The standards would have eliminated inefficient light bulbs nationwide, saving some 1.5 trillion kilowatt-hours by 2030 and hundreds of millions tons of CO2. And it delayed for three years standards to substantially cut the energy that household and commercial appliances consume, moving to enact them only after a federal appeals court ruled the hold was illegal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trying to undercut California's world-leading climate progress. After freezing Obama's national fuel-economy improvements, the administration stripped California of its legal authority to enact the nation's toughest fuel-efficiency standards, a move that could squelch the nascent U.S. market for zero-emission vehicles at a critical time. It sued the state over its cap-and-trade agreement with Quebec to lower fossil fuel emissions, arguing that California exceeded its authority when it launched. It has threatened action against California on air and water pollution. Those moves run counter to the administration's hands-off approach and deregulatory agenda. Because of that—and because California has among the best compliance records in the nation on water pollution and has invested billions to improve air quality—former federal officials have said the efforts reek of political score-settling.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our Take</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the Trump administration's early days, climate policy optimists gamely sifted through the president's statements, his administration's actions, and other nations' reactions for grains of hope. Perhaps Trump would be persuaded to maintain the United States' seat at the table in international climate negotiations. Perhaps the efforts of his early, scandal-plagued cabinet members to erase climate regulation would fail. Or perhaps other nations would step up to fill the climate leadership void created by Trump, and the world would forge ahead with the action needed to address the climate crisis, leaving the United States behind.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All such hopes have been in vain. Although Trump occasionally feigns concern about climate—"I think about it all the time," he once said—his policy has been an unmitigated and relentless drive toward fossil energy development. The missteps of his former EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, and others in the first round of appointees, have been erased by seasoned Washington bureaucrats and lobbyists who now are at the helm of the environmental agencies. And instead of racing to grasp the leadership baton dropped by Trump, China, the European Union and other large carbon polluters are falling behind both in their own ambition and in support for the nations most vulnerable to climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump's intentions, and his administration's deleterious impact on global climate progress, will be evident to voters in 2020 in a way that many failed to grasp four years earlier. The only question is whether those who care about the planet's future can unite as a political force in a way that eluded them in 201</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/12/14/1905639/-Methane-super-emitters-releasing-massive-plumes-after-Trump-rolled-back-environmental-regulations#read-more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Methane is many times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. It’s not mentioned as often when considering the greenhouse effect behind the climate crisis because it’s released in comparatively low volumes and will gradually degrade over time. But methane’s potency means that even at low volumes it definitely makes a significant contribution to global warming. That was a big part of the reason that, under President Obama, regulations were set in place to limit the amount of methane that oil and gas companies were allowed to emit, especially by venting wells in areas where capturing all the methane doesn’t happen to be convenient.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But those regulations were some of the first to be rolled back under Donald Trump. Trump proudly took all caps off the ability of fossil fuel producers to vent methane into the atmosphere. Producers and their supporters in Congress have tried to wave away any potential impact from venting — after all, methane is natural gas, and natural gas has value, so how much could companies really be spilling? The answer, as revealed in a report from The New York Times, is absolutely staggering.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In just a few hours of flying over Texas sites with a small plane, the Times identified hundreds of sites whose level of methane production puts them in the category of “super emitters.” The leaks came not just from wells, but from storage facilities, pipelines, and every stage of natural gas production. Since fracking generated a surprise boom in natural gas production two decades ago, the level of methane in the atmosphere has been increasing. Even though that change corresponded almost exactly with increased production, oil and gas companies have pretended to ignorance over the source of the methane. But it’s clear that methane is leaking in massive amounts.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, so much methane is being leaked at such rates that it could be argued that the move from coal to natural gas as the largest source of electricity in the United States has actually created more damage to the climate. But it’s hard to be sure, because so little of this loss is actually measured. And if Trump gets his way, companies will not longer be required to even monitor for methane loss.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While scientists can easily detect that overall methane levels are rising, tracking that methane back to sources can be very difficult. Even when satellite data or information from aircraft helps to identify a methane “plume” on the surface, the source of that gas can be any one of thousands of wells, hundreds of storage facilities, or anywhere in miles of pipeline. Tracking the methane to a specific source can be all but impossible, especially in areas of high production.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Producers are supposed to seek permission and obtain permits before releasing significant quantities of methane. But, safe in the knowledge that tracking back a massive one-time release is almost impossible, many companies simply skip that step. They know they can release a blast that’s equivalent to the environmental impact of running a city, and feign ignorance if anyone comes knocking. That’s why the critical factor is forcing companies to measure the methane themselves by requiring monitors on wells, takes, and other facilities. Only by having those monitors on site, and having them regularly inspected, can there be any hope of identifying both accidental leaks and intentional venting.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Naturally, that’s exactly the requirement that Trump has already weakened, and is seeking to remove completely. Lobbyists for oil and gas were some of the biggest contributors to Trump’s campaign, his inaugural slush fund, and his 2020 PAC. It was no coincidence that his first Secretary of State came straight from the offices of Exxon.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But gas companies aren’t all like Gordon Sondland. They don’t care of their contributions earn them keen ambassadorships. They just want to be left to make maximum money … by doing maximum damage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Natural Gas Rush Drives a Global Rise in Fossil Fuel Emissions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03122019/fossil-fuel-emissions-2019-natural-gas-bridge-oil-coal-climate-change</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A surge in natural gas has helped drive down coal burning across the United States and Europe, but it isn't displacing other fossil fuels on a global scale. Instead, booming gas use is fueling the global growth in greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University and other institutions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, natural gas use is growing so fast, its carbon dioxide emissions over the past six years actually eclipsed the decline in emissions from the falling use of coal, the researchers found.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are also failing to cut emissions fast enough, the report says, as much of their growth has provided new energy supplies instead of displacing fossil fuels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The findings of the study, published Tuesday, support those from other recent studies that found the world is continuing to rely on fossil fuels—including coal—to meet growing energy demand, even as renewable energy sees soaring growth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Globally, most of the new natural gas being used isn't displacing coal, it's providing new energy. That's the key interaction, and that's true for renewables even," said Rob Jackson, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and the report's lead author. "We need renewables that displace fossil fuels, not supplement them."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jackson's paper, published in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters, is one of three included in Global Carbon Project's annual update on the global carbon budget.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They show that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are expected to grow by 0.6 percent this year. That would be significantly slower than last year, when emissions grew by 2.1 percent. But it would mark the third straight year of growth, after three years of stable emissions. The assessment does not include the methane emissions released by producing and shipping fossil fuels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Each year of growth makes it harder and more expensive to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F) from pre-industrial levels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Supplementing Rather Than Supplanting</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Natural gas presents a particular challenge.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the U.S., coal use has fallen by half over the past 15 years, and the biggest reason for that is the expanded use of natural gas, Jackson said. This year, wind and solar power are responsible for only one-sixth of the drop in coal use. This decline in coal power generation is the main reason U.S. emissions are expected to fall by nearly 2 percent this year, and why they fell by an annual average of nearly 1 percent over the previous six. A similar trend has occurred in Europe, where the decline of coal has, in some cases, been even sharper.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These shifts are also being used by the oil and gas industry and its supporters in government to argue in favor of drilling for more gas, not less. Supporters often refer to natural gas as a "bridge fuel" between higher-emitting fossil fuels and renewable energy, but some industry executives have instead begun calling it a "forever fuel"—one they see continuing to grow for decades to come.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/29/climate-low-carbon-transition-disrupting-fossil-fuel-politics</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Trump administration works to weaken regulations on fossil fuel production and use, a larger struggle is playing out across multiple industries. Until recently, oil companies and their defenders generally reacted to calls for regulating carbon emissions by spreading doubt and promoting climate denialism. However, I believe this approach is becoming less effective as climate change effects worsen and public demands for action intensify worldwide.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a scholar who focuses on the politics of energy and the environment, I see growing anxiety among corporate elites. Some fossil fuel defenders are embracing a new strategy that I call climate defiance. With a transition to a low-carbon economy looming, they are accelerating investments in fossil fuel extraction while pressuring governments to delay climate action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate defiance is leading to some surprising clashes between the Trump Administration, bent on extreme deregulation and extraction, and many other companies who recognize that the fossil fuel economy is unsustainable, even if they have not embarked upon a green transition. Climate change is sparking this self-reflection, which is writing a new chapter in global warming politics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Car Wars</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One high-profile example is the Trump administration’s effort to weaken corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards negotiated by the Obama administration, which were projected to reduce U.S. oil consumption by an estimated two million barrels per day. Early in the Trump presidency, both an auto industry consortium and fossil fuel producers lobbied hard for the Trump administration to weaken the emissions standards.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But when it became clear that the Trump administration planned to go further than simply weakening the standards, and to freeze them altogether in 2020, some automakers balked. California and more than a dozen other states insisted on the right to keep higher standards, and four major automakers — Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW — joined them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those companies, who represent about 30% of the U.S. market, have now agreed to adhere to stricter emissions standards similar to the Obama plan, citing the need for more regulatory certainty. In retaliation, the Justice Department recently opened an antitrust investigation into the pact.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, Toyota, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler are siding with the Trump administration. Their decision surprised many industry watchers, particularly given Toyota’s leadership in designing low-emissions vehicles.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols, center, with Gov. Gavin Newsom, left, and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. The state is suing the Trump administration for revoking California’s authority to set its own vehicle emissions standards. Rich Pedroncelli/AP</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Methane Capture</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another divisive issue is the Trump administration’s plan to ease regulations curbing methane emissions from natural gas production. Energy companies tout natural gas as a cleaner fossil fuel because it generates fewer carbon dioxide emissions than coal or oil.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, methane — the main component of natural gas — is a greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming. According to some studies, methane leaks from natural gas extraction and production, known as fugitive emissions, may make natural gas extracted from shale rock worse than coal in terms of its greenhouse gas footprint.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Several major oil companies, including BP and Royal Dutch Shell, oppose Trump’s plan to further deregulate methane. Why? They have invested heavily in natural gas as a way to extend their fossil fuel business, and methane leaks pose a serious threat to the notion that natural gas should play a prominent role in a green transition, especially as renewable energy costs continue to decline.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In contrast, the American Petroleum Institute and smaller oil and gas companies support the rollback, claiming that methane control is too expensive.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[vid]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shades of Green</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Beyond these specific controversies, many companies in the energy sector and beyond have voiced support for moving to a lower-carbon economy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, in August 2019 the Business Roundtable, a corporate advocacy group comprised of almost 200 CEOs from major American corporations, declared that corporate responsibility meant more than just serving shareholders. Instead they adopted a broader definition that includes serving customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders, and pledged to “protect the environment by embracing sustainable practices across our businesses.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such declarations are easy to dismiss as corporate greenwashing. Corporate responses to climate change have largely touted market-based reforms, like pricing carbon emissions, which would not jeopardize ongoing fossil fuel extraction and profits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, global fossil fuel and overall energy consumption are still rising. And while banks may highlight their support for renewable energy projects, they also have provided at least US$1.9 trillion in fossil fuel financing since the 2016 Paris Agreement entered into force.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, recent climate change assessments warn that avoiding warming on a catastrophic scale will require “rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems.” Many experts assert that change on this scale will ultimately require countries to stop burning fossil fuels altogether.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Others assert that investments in renewable energy alone will not stave off drastic warming. Historically, they argue, new renewable energy additions have mostly increased overall energy consumption, rather than displacing fossil fuels. From this perspective, phasing out fossil fuels will require political action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such a shift poses an existential threat to major oil companies. Big Oil touts its green projects, but renewable energy accounts for only 1% to 4% of its new investments. In the view of energy scholars Daniel Sperling and Lewis Fulton, Big Oil has “no clear road map” for a green transition.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An Existential Choice</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In my view, struggles between the Trump administration and major corporations over environmental deregulation signal an awareness that the fossil fuel economy’s days are numbered. Although climate deniers occupy prominent positions in the White House, Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency today, recent polls show that two-thirds of Americans are worried about climate change and believe it will harm them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As I argue in my recent book, our fossil fuel system was set up to put the world to work for the benefit of European and American powers. Its profits come from undervaluing the labor and resources that feed it, which I believe has led not only to climate change but to extreme global wealth inequality.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A green transition is therefore not only a technical project. As global interest in Green New Deals suggests, climate change calls fossil fuel capitalism itself into question.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I see corporations beginning to sense this challenge. Some companies, especially those built upon fossil fuels, will continue to resist moving toward a lower-carbon future. Others will promote market reforms rather than broader systemic changes. I believe, however, that the most forward-looking must begin to imagine how they will fit into a just and decarbonized economy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[ Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter. ]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cara Daggett is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">UN report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">World’s Emissions Gap Is Growing, with No Sign of Peaking Soon, UN Warns 11/19.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">World’s Current Fossil Fuel Plans Will Shatter Paris Climate Limits, UN Warns</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BY NICHOLAS KUSNETZ</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27112019/climate-tipping-points-permafrost-forests-ice-antarctica-greenland-amazon-nature</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Humans are playing Russian roulette with Earth's climate by ignoring the growing risk of tipping points that, if passed, could jolt the climate system into "a new, less habitable 'hothouse' climate state," scientists are warning ahead of the annual UN climate summit.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Research now shows that there is a higher risk that "abrupt and irreversible changes" to the climate system could be triggered at smaller global temperature increases than thought just a few years ago. There are also indictations that exceeding tipping points in one system, such as the loss of Arctic sea ice, can increase the risk of crossing tipping points in others, a group of top scientists wrote Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"What we're talking about is a point of no return, when we might actually lose control of this system, and there is a significant risk that we're going to do this," said Will Steffen, a climate researcher with the Australian National University and co-author of the commentary. "It's not going to be the same conditions with just a bit more heat or a bit more rainfall. It's a cascading process that gets out of control."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The scientists focused on nine parts of the climate system susceptible to tipping points, some of them interconnected:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Arctic sea ice, which is critical for reflecting the sun's energy back into space but is disappearing as the planet warms.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Greenland Ice Sheet, which could raise sea level 20 feet if it melts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Boreal forests, which would release more carbon dioxide (CO2) than they absorb if they die and decay or burn.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Permafrost, which releases methane and other greenhouse gases as it thaws.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a key ocean current, which would shift global weather patterns if it slowed down or stopped.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Amazon rainforest, which could flip from a net absorber of greenhouse gases to a major emitter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Warm-water corals, which will die on a large scale as the ocean warms, affecting commercial and subsistence fisheries.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which would raise sea level by at least 10 feet if it melted entirely and is already threatened by warming from above and below.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parts of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet that would also raise sea level significantly if they melted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just looking at Arctic changes shows how the links between parts of the climate system susceptible to tipping can amplify global warming and its effects, said Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at Exeter University and an author of the commentary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shrinking sea ice increases ocean heat because it no longer reflects as much of the sun's energy back to space and it enables the darker water to absorb more warmth. The ocean heat extends over land and, combined with other heating effects, thaws permafrost, which releases more heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, Lenton said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Research shows that melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet may also be slowing the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a key Atlantic Ocean current that transports heat between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and directs rainfall around the planet. That could disrupt monsoon rains critical to agriculture in developing countries.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"If you transfer less heat from south to north, it warms up the Southern Hemisphere, which affects the Antarctic ice sheets. When you start thinking about this, heading to a new climate state becomes very plausible indeed," he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ocean circulation slowdown was documented in a 2015 study by researchers including Michael Mann and Stefan Rahmstorf, a co-author of the new commentary. Cold water from the melting Greenland Ice Sheet is likely slowing the current, showing "how these tipping point responses are actually interrelated, not independent," Mann said. "If one goes early then so too may the others, like dominoes."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lack of Policy Urgency as Permafrost Thaws</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite increasingly urgent warnings about the effects of rising greenhouse gas emissions, two new reports published this week by the United Nations show that international efforts to slow global warming are falling far short of what scientists recommend.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Emissions Gap Report—an annual assessment of global pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions—shows that countries' current pledges under the Paris climate agreement will still raise global temperatures 3.2°C (5.8°F) by the end of the century, well beyond the Paris goal of limiting warming to well below 2°C (3.6°F). The Production Gap Report shows that the amount of oil, gas and coal that countries already plan to produce will lead to 50 percent more fossil fuels produced by 2030 than would be allowable to stay under 2°C warming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Earth is now warming faster and CO2 levels "are increasing at rates that are an order of magnitude higher than at the end of the last ice age," when rapid climate change destabilized the climate quickly, the scientists wrote in the Nature commentary.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"To err on the side of danger is not a responsible option," they wrote.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">long, cont....]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/superfund-sites-climate-disaster-2641394009.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">climate crisis has put at least 945 designated toxic waste sites at severe risk of disaster from escalating wildfires, floods, rising seas and other climate-related disasters, according to a new study from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), as the AP reported.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The country's most contaminated spots that pose an imminent threat to human health or the environment are designated Superfund sites. That means cleaning them up is a national priority. The EPA has identified more than 500 contaminants at Superfund sites, including arsenic, lead and mercury.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, the GAO found that efforts to secure the toxic waste have weakened as the Trump administration plays down their threat, according to the AP.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senate Democrats responded to the report in a letter to the EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler demanding an explanation for agency leaders' "failure to embrace addressing climate change as a strategic objective," according to the Washington Post.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We believe that EPA's refusal to implement GAO's recommendations could result in real harm to human health and the environment as the effects of climate change become more frequent and intense," the lawmakers wrote to Wheeler, as the Washington Post reported.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GAO report looked at 1,571 Superfund sites and found that six out of 10 are vulnerable to extreme weather caused by the climate crisis. The GAO produced an interactive map that shows each of the 945 vulnerable sites. It is color-coded to show if the site is threatened by wildfires, hurricanes, storm surge, sea-level rise, or coastal and river flooding, as the Verge reported....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/04/analysis-why-it-s-risky-invest-saudi-aramco-s-climate-wreckage-sale</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;board of the state-owned oil company of Saudi Arabia, known as Saudi Aramco, has given its final approval to proceed with its long awaited part privatization, otherwise known as an “Initial Public Offering” or IPO. It is predicted to be the biggest IPO in history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The sale is of oil, a large proportion of which we cannot afford to burn if we want a livable future. Read more...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andy Rowell for Oil Change International</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The board of the state-owned oil company of Saudi Arabia, known as Saudi Aramco, has given its final approval to proceed with its long awaited part privatization, otherwise known as an “Initial Public Offering” or IPO. It is predicted to the biggest IPO in history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Bloomberg, the oil giant has been gauging market conditions and assessing feedback from potential key investors. The Saudi government is reportedly courting powerful anchor investors, including wealthy Gulf families, domestic pension funds, and regional sovereign wealth funds.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bloomberg notes that: “People involved in the deal say about two percent of Aramco may be sold, which could raise $40 billion. The firm is targeting a valuation of at least $2 trillion – more than double that of Apple Inc.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Excitement is rising in the Kingdom, with everyone being encouraged to invest in the kingdom’s most important asset, argues Bloomberg. “Many Saudis see the IPO as a demonstration of loyalty”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the one hand, one could argue that there is a positive to the sale, in that some see the sale as an attempt by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to kickstart the diversification of the OPEC nation’s economy away from oil.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that is only a small positive. The Kingdom is awash with oil money. And essentially the sale is of oil, a large proportion of which we cannot afford to burn if we want a livable future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate contradiction</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whereas some see profit. Others see pollution. Whereas some investors see quick cash, others see a climate emergency. Whereas some see strategic assets other see stranded assets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Often when we talk about our climate crisis and climate emergency, we write about privately owned oil companies, such as Exxon, Shell and BP. We often forget about the state owned ones, and the biggest state oil company of them all, Saudi Aramco.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last week the Guardian newspaper published details of the 20 fossil fuel companies whose “relentless exploitation of the world’s oil, gas and coal reserves can be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the modern era.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twelve of the top 20 companies were state-owned. The top company “driving the climate emergency that threatens the future of humanity” was Saudi Aramco, which is behind 4.38 percent of all carbon dioxide and methane emissions since 1965.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Saudi Aramco was not just the worse polluter historically over the last 50 years. It is also the big climate villain moving forward. According to the Guardian, between “2018 and 2030 Saudi Aramco plans to produce oil and gas equivalent to 27bn tonnes of carbon dioxide. That’s 4.7 percent of the 1.5°C carbon budget.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those who invest in Saudi Aramco will be investing in oil production, just at a time when fossil fuel disinvestment increases apace. And rightly so, as CNN points out, one of the risks to the sale is “the potential for reduced oil consumption due to concerns about climate change.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Financial risk</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2017, an analysis by Oil Change International which examined the policies needed to meet the Paris climate goals of limiting global warming to “well below” 2°C estimated that these could reduce the value of Saudi Aramco by about 40 percent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the time, Greg Muttitt from OCI told the Financial Times, that “New York and London have been competing hard to get the Aramco listing, but I don’t think they have been paying enough attention to how much it would increase oil price risk and climate risk for investors.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That climate risk has gotten worse over the last eighteen months. This month, Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, warned that companies and industries that are not moving towards zero-carbon emissions will be punished by investors and go bankrupt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, a survey published this week of around 100 investors plan to move $920 billion (£725.9bn) out of fossil fuel investments in the next ten years. The survey was published by the Octopus group. Matt Setchell, Co-head of Octopus Renewables, said: “Our children’s futures will be shaped by decisions that are made now by the global investment industry.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He added: “Given the scale of the challenge and the limited time we have to make a change, the guardians of trillions of dollars of capital have a crucial role to play in averting a climate crisis.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For this reason, the guardians of trillions of dollars should not be investing in Saudi Aramco’s climate wreckage sale.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">guk</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Chevron’s Kern River oil field in Bakersfield, California. Photograph: Guardian Design</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New data shows how fossil fuel companies have driven climate crisis despite industry knowing dangers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Half a century of dither and denial – a climate crisis timeline</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why we need political action to tackle the oil, coal and gas companies - video explainer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Matthew Taylor and Jonathan Watts</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wed 9 Oct 2019 07.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 10 Oct 2019 09.18 EDT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Guardian today reveals the 20 fossil fuel companies whose relentless exploitation of the world’s oil, gas and coal reserves can be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the modern era.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New data from world-renowned researchers reveals how this cohort of state-owned and multinational firms are driving the climate emergency that threatens the future of humanity, and details how they have continued to expand their operations despite being aware of the industry’s devastating impact on the planet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The analysis, by Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute in the US, the world’s leading authority on big oil’s role in the escalating climate emergency, evaluates what the global corporations have extracted from the ground, and the subsequent emissions these fossil fuels are responsible for since 1965 – the point at which experts say the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known by both industry leaders and politicians.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The top 20 companies on the list have contributed to 35% of all energy-related carbon dioxide and methane worldwide, totalling 480bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) since 1965.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Q&A</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What is the polluters project?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those identified range from investor-owned firms – household names such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell – to state-owned companies including Saudi Aramco and Gazprom.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chevron topped the list of the eight investor-owned corporations, followed closely by Exxon, BP and Shell. Together these four global businesses are behind more than 10% of the world’s carbon emissions since 1965.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Why we need political action to tackle the oil, coal and gas companies - video explainer]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twelve of the top 20 companies are state-owned and together their extractions are responsible for 20% of total emissions in the same period. The leading state-owned polluter is Saudi Aramco, which has produced 4.38% of the global total on its own.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Mann, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, said the findings shone a light on the role of fossil fuel companies and called on politicians at the forthcoming climate talks in Chile in December to take urgent measures to rein in their activities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The great tragedy of the climate crisis is that seven and a half billion people must pay the price – in the form of a degraded planet – so that a couple of dozen polluting interests can continue to make record profits. It is a great moral failing of our political system that we have allowed this to happen.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The global polluters list uses company-reported annual production of oil, natural gas, and coal and then calculates how much of the carbon and methane in the produced fuels is emitted to the atmosphere throughout the supply chain, from extraction to end use.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It found that 90% of the emissions attributed to the top 20 climate culprits was from use of their products, such as petrol, jet fuel, natural gas, and thermal coal. One-tenth came from extracting, refining, and delivering the finished fuels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Guardian approached the 20 companies named in the polluters list. Eight of them have replied. Some argued that they were not directly responsible for how the oil, gas or coal they extracted were used by consumers. Several disputed claims that the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known as far back as the late 1950s or that the industry collectively had worked to delay action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most explicitly said they accepted the climate science and some claimed to support the targets set out in the Paris agreement to reduce emissions and keep global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All pointed out efforts they were making to invest in renewable or low carbon energy sources and said fossil fuel companies had an important role to play in addressing the climate crisis. PetroChina said it was a separate company from its predecessor, China National Petroleum, so had no influence over, or responsibility for, its historical emissions. The companies’ replies can be read in full here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The latest study builds on previous work by Heede and his team that has looked at the historical role of fossil fuel companies in the escalating climate crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The impact of emissions from coal, oil and gas produced by fossil fuel companies has been huge. According to research published in 2017 by Peter Frumhoff at the Union of Concerned Scientists in the US and colleagues, CO2 and methane emissions from the 90 biggest industrial carbon producers were responsible for almost half the rise in global temperature and close to a third of the sea level rise between 1880 and 2010. The scientists said such work furthered the “consideration of [companies’] historical responsibilities for climate change”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heede said: “These companies and their products are substantially responsible for the climate emergency, have collectively delayed national and global action for decades, and can no longer hide behind the smokescreen that consumers are the responsible parties.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Oil, gas, and coal executives derail progress and offer platitudes when their vast capital, technical expertise, and moral obligation should enable rather than thwart the shift to a low-carbon future.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heede said 1965 was chosen as the start point for this new data because recent research had revealed that by that stage the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known by industry leaders and politicians, particularly in the US.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In November 1965, the president, Lyndon Johnson, released a report authored by the Environmental Pollution Panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, which set out the likely impact of continued fossil fuel production on global heating.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the same year, the president of the American Petroleum Institute told its annual gathering: “One of the most important predictions of the [president’s report] is that carbon dioxide is being added to the Earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas at such a rate by the year 2000 the heat balance will be so modified as possibly to cause marked changes in climate beyond local or even national efforts.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heede added: “Leading companies and industry associations were aware of, or wilfully ignored, the threat of climate change from continued use of their products since the late 1950s.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The research aims to hold to account those companies most responsible for carbon emissions, and shift public and political debate away from a focus just on individual responsibility. It follows a warning from the UN in 2018 that the world has just 12 years to avoid the worst consequences of runaway global heating and restrict temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The study shows that many of the worst offenders are investor-owned companies that are household names around the world and spend billions of pounds on lobbying governments and portraying themselves as environmentally responsible.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A study earlier this year found that the largest five stock-market-listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200m each year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heede said the companies had a “significant moral, financial, and legal responsibility for the climate crisis, and a commensurate burden to help address the problem”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He added: “Even though global consumers from individuals to corporations are the ultimate emitters of carbon dioxide, the Climate Accountability Institute focuses its work on the fossil fuel companies that, in our view, have their collective hand on the throttle and the tiller determining the rate of carbon emissions and the shift to non-carbon fuels.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-that-an-extraterrestrial-collision-12-800-years-ago-triggered-an-abrupt-climate-change-for-earth-118244</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/dont-count-on-capitalism-to-save-the-earth/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Don’t count on capitalism to save the Earth</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Ted Morgan / Salon October 19, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The bad news just keeps coming.&nbsp; Again and again, science-based studies uncover increasing evidence that the planet is headed toward unfathomable disaster.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the last year alone, we have seen publication of the US National Climate Assessment’s Fourth National Climate report,&nbsp; the UN Global Sustainable Development report (“The Future is Now”), the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report, the World Meteorological Association report on Accelerating Climate Change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on Climate Change and Land and Ocean and Cryosphere, the Science Advisory Group to the UN Climate Action Summit’s report “United in Science,” to say nothing of countless articles in science journals warning that catastrophe lies ahead.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As “United in Science” put it, current efforts need to be “roughly tripled to be aligned with the 2o C goal and increased fivefold to align with the 1.5o C goal” adopted by the 2016 Paris Agreement (emphasis added).”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hence we are confronted by the damage already resulting from climate change: more intense and frequent extreme weather events like hurricanes, floods, droughts, forest fires, and heat waves; rising sea levels that threaten the homes, lives and livelihoods of millions of people; and melting ice caps and permafrost, among others.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The consensus among science-based reports is that the path ahead is far worse: widespread food and water scarcity, increased exposure to diseases and allergic illnesses, economic decline, and damage to the “infrastructure, ecosystems, and social systems that provide essential benefits to communities.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Noam Chomsky put it, “To describe these challenges as ‘extremely severe’ would be an error. The phrase does not capture the enormity of the kinds of challenges that lie ahead.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We can observe three kinds of responses to the crisis of climate change.&nbsp; First, activism on a global scale is clearly on the rise, commonly led by young people who will bear the greatest burden of climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Millions participated the global Climate Strike on September 20.&nbsp; 530 groups from around the world signed on to the Lofoten Declaration calling for rapid phasing out of fossil fuels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the signers, the Extinction Rebellion, has mobilized two weeks of dramatic direct action and civil disobedience in cities from New York and Philadelphia to London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Amsterdam, Toronto and Sydney: from traffic blockades to rallies, marches, and street theatre to throwing red paint on Wall Street’s bull statue.&nbsp; Some 200 young mothers marched from Westminster to 10 Downing Street where they engaged in a Nurse-In, nursing the babies they seek to protect from climate disaster.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Second, most nations of the world, many states and localities within the United States, even some corporations and the US military, now recognize that the world faces a profound challenge.&nbsp; Several governments have taken preliminary steps toward altering their emissions, and even more have pledged to do so.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In contrast to the energy of the Climate Strike and the warnings of the UN Science Advisory Group warning, the UN Climate Action Summit produced only modest pledges from a minority of nations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These steps remain woefully inadequate if the world is to avoid a cataclysmic outcome.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why this relative inaction in the face of global catastrophe?&nbsp; The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions are produced by the world’s developed capitalist economies, with China and the US leading the way.&nbsp; By contrast, people in nations that have the least impact on climate change are most vulnerable to the worst of its effects.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This climate injustice is only one manifestation of the inequalities and injustices built into the capitalist powers’ imperial exploitation of the “under-developed” world.&nbsp; In the late Immanuel Wallerstein’s framework, the core capitalist powers compete with each other for dominance in exploiting the resources of the underdeveloped periphery nations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consequently, each of the capitalist powers is loathe to weaken its competitive position vis à vis the other capitalist economies.&nbsp; In a capitalist world, each economic unit must act to protect what it deems its own interests.&nbsp; The only counterweight comes from the public sector.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet in a capitalist world, each public authority — local, state or national government — is constrained by the fear that pushing public interests too far will cause capital flight, thereby undermining its viability.&nbsp; And, of course, corporations and the wealthy dominate the shaping of public policy — nowhere more than in the US.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is the way capitalism works, which suggests how profound and systemic the changes will have to be if the world is to avoid catastrophe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lastly, however, the Trump administration and its fossil fuel allies have thumbed their noses at the world by brazenly accelerating the race to destruction.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among his flagrant attempts to flout the international scientific consensus, Trump has pledged to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement; he promoted fossil fuel interests at the 2017 climate talks, he campaigned to end the “war on coal,” and subsequently his administration has moved to relax environmental coal plant emissions while weakening the federal government’s ability to set national standards.&nbsp; The administration removed restrictions on the leakage of methane from the nation’s oil and gas wells; it has taken steps to encourage coastal and Arctic oil drilling and exploration; and Trump announced he was revoking California’s authority under the Clean Air Act to enforce automobile emissions standard tougher than those of the federal government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But itself, climate change has caused 150,000 deaths each year, a number that is likely to double in a decade, and it has contributed to 5 million human illnesses every year.&nbsp; Left unchecked, climate change casualties could climb into the millions.&nbsp; Those political actors and fossil fuel producers who resist the fundamental changes that are necessary become guilty of producing these deaths&nbsp; — in short, guilty of crimes against humanity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The world cannot wait for the capitalist states to enact adequate constraints on greenhouse gas emissions.&nbsp; Instead, the Climate Strike and Extinction Rebellion are the beginning of a global uprising of increasing numbers of an increasingly well informed public.&nbsp; The confrontation with the powerful polluters will only grow; it will not diminish.&nbsp; Ultimately, the test will be the global uprising becomes coordinated force for systemic change that can no longer be dismissed by the powers that be.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate Change Threatens the World’s Fisheries, Food Billions of People Rely On</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BY GEORGINA GUSTIN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ICN 919</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://medium.com/s/teamhuman/the-power-of-panic-with-david-wallace-wells-d86abe222f1e</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">TEAM HUMAN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘The Power of Panic’ With David Wallace-Wells</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On why the climate crisis is both inevitable and avoidable</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Douglas Rushkoff</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/severe-climate-related-droughts-could-threaten-60-of-global-wheat-crop-by-2100/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...Underscoring the necessity of aggressive action to combat human-caused global warming, research published Wednesday warns that the majority of the world’s wheat fields are at risk of enduring “severe, prolonged, and near-simultaneous droughts” by the end of the century—raising serious concerns about future food insecurity and political instability.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Even under the ambitious mitigation scenario aimed to stabilize global warming at 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels, the increase in the frequency and extent of adverse weather extremes and related shocks on the production side would be unprecedented.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">—study</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If only one country or region sees a drought there is less impact,” said study co-author Song Feng of the University of Arkansas. “But if multiple regions are affected simultaneously, it can affect global production and food prices, and lead to food insecurity.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Science Advances, was conducted by team of researchers from the United States, Europe, and Asia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wheat accounts for about 20 percent of all calories consumed by humans worldwide and the global demand for wheat products such as cereal is expected to rise in the coming decades, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Recognizing humanity’s reliance on the crop as a key food source, the study’s researchers analyzed various climate models to assess the rising risk of drought in wheat-producing regions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wapo no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/big-money-urges-governments-to-tackle-climate-change/2019/09/19/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Big money urges governments to tackle climate change</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Frank Jordans?|?AP&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">September 18, 2019 at 9:50 p.m. PDT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A group of more than 500 major institutional investors called Thursday for governments to boost efforts to tackle climate change, warning that failure could have serious economic consequences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The banks, insurance companies and pension funds said in a joint statement ahead of next week’s U.N. climate summit in New York that current national commitments could lead to an “unacceptably high temperature increase that would cause substantial negative economic impacts.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The group includes financial giants such as France’s Amundi, which manages 1.487 trillion euros ($1.64 trillion); Canada-based Manulife; and Insight Investment in the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Countries that signed the 2015 Paris climate accord have committed to keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), ideally aiming for an increase of no more than 1.5C (2.7F) by the end of the century compared with pre-industrial times.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the investment firms, which together say they manage $35 trillion in assets, cited a gap between the modest steps pledged by governments — which in themselves fall short of what’s needed to meet the Paris goals — and actual measures taken so far.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This ambition gap is of great concern to investors and needs to be addressed, with urgency,” the companies said. “It is vital for our long-term planning and asset allocation decisions that governments work closely with investors to incorporate Paris-aligned climate scenarios into their policy frameworks and energy transition pathways.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The investors want governments to speed up the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, back rules requiring companies to report climate-related information in their financial statements and put a meaningful price on carbon emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Institutional investors have become increasingly vocal about the need to confront climate change lately.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a separate investor-backed study released Wednesday, the London-based Transition Pathway Initiative said none of the world’s top 50 oil and gas companies are in line with the Paris goal of capping global warming at 2C. By contrast, the researchers found that about 20% of the 59 electric utility companies examine are aligned with that target.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The majority of companies have yet to establish their 2030 emission reduction targets, let alone set a longer-term vision for their carbon emissions,” said Helena Viñes Fiestas, global head of stewardship and policy at France’s BNP Paribas Asset Management, one of the investment firms behind the report. “We, as a major institutional investor, are concerned that transition risk — the large and growing gap between government targets and company ambitions — is a major source of investment risk.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For more Associated Press stories about climate change, go to https://www.apnews.com/Climate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/terrifying-new-climate-models-warn-of-6-7c-of-catastrophic-warming-without-drastic-action/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘Terrifying’ new climate models warn of 6-7°C of catastrophic warming without drastic action</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams September 18, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New climate models unveiled by French researchers Tuesday showed Earth’s average temperature could rise a “terrifying” 6.5-7.0°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century if dramatic action is not immediately taken to slash carbon emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The findings, presented at a press conference in Paris, suggest the planet may be warming significantly faster than scientists previously believed as the world’s major economies continue to burn fossil fuels at unsustainable rates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Unfortunately, our global failure to implement meaningful action on climate change over recent decades has put us in a situation where what we need to do to keep warming to safe levels is extremely simple,” Joeri Rogelj, an associate professor at Imperial College London, told AFP. “Global greenhouse gas emissions need to decline today rather than tomorrow, and global CO2 emissions should be brought to net zero.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new models are expected to form part of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report, which is set to be published in 2021. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, published in 2014, presented a worst-case scenario of five degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Olivier Boucher, head of the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace Climate Modeling Center in Paris, which developed one of the new models, said the latest data provide a better look at where the climate is heading without drastic changes to global energy production.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We have better models now,” Boucher told AFP on Tuesday. “They have better resolution, and they represent current climate trends more accurately.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bloomberg reported that just “one of the updated climate models used by the researchers allowed for the global temperature increase to remain below 2°C by the end of the century.” That model assumed global carbon neutrality by 2060.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The worst-case scenario of 6.5-7.0°C of warming assumed continued economic expansion driven by growth of fossil fuel production.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Megara9&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@Meg9Time</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That 2.5 degree global temperature increase that was predicted to happen this century has been revised to 6.5-7 degrees. This is not good. https://phys.org/news/2019-09-earth-quickly-climate.html …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Earth to warm more quickly, new climate models show</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greenhouse gases thrust into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels are warming Earth's surface more quickly than previously understood, according to new climate models set to replace those used in...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">phys.org</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The IPCC warned last year that even limiting planetary warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century, the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement, would not prevent many of the disastrous effects of the climate crisis. Warming of 6.5-7.0°C would be catastrophic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Higher warming would allow less time to adapt and mean a greater likelihood of passing climate ‘tipping points’ such as thawing of permafrost, which would further accelerate warming,” said Boucher.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an email to Common Dreams, Penn State University climate scientist Michael E. Mann sounded a note of caution about the dire scenarios predicted by the new models.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Some earlier versions of the models appeared to underestimate climate sensitivity somewhat,” said Mann, “and I suspect that some of these more recent versions are actually over-estimating it a bit.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I suspect, when all is said and done, we’re probably looking at something in the range of 3-4°C and no higher, at least for near-term warming,” Mann added. “If we allow the warm[ing] to persist for centuries, then other long-term positive feedbacks (vicious cycles) could kick in, giving us substantially more warming.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ew 919</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">another sign of the climate crisis, a record seven million people were displaced from their homes by extreme weather events during the first half of 2019, The New York Times reported Thursday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/its-springtime-for-grifters-paul-krugman-explains-how-trump-is-bad-for-us-business-but-good-for-scams/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘It’s springtime for grifters’: Paul Krugman explains how Trump is bad for US business — but good for scams</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Cody Fenwick September 5, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have claimed that he is essentially the savior of American business, but economist Paul Krugman argued Thursday in a New York Times column that he is, in fact, the exact opposite.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With his trade wars and aggressive deregulatory policy, Trump is creating substantial economic burdens and uncertainty that appear to be creating serious a drag in the economy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many have made similar arguments, but the point about the risks of deregulation — which, unlike tariffs and trade wars, we would have expected from any GOP president elected in 2016 — is often missed:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Imagine yourself as the head of a business that plans and expects to be around for a long time. Sure, you’d like to pay less in taxes and not have to comply with costly regulations. But you also want to invest in your company’s future. And to do that, you need some assurance that the rules of the game will be stable, so that whatever investments you make now aren’t suddenly made worthless by future shifts in policy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Business leaders aren’t do-gooders, but they are realists. Most of them understand that climate change is happening, that it’s dangerous, and that we’ll eventually have to transition to a low-emissions economy. They want to spend now to secure their place in that future economy; they know that investments that worsen climate change are bound to be long-run losers. But they’ll hold off on investing in our energy future as long as conspiracy theorists who consider global warming a gigantic hoax — and/or vindictive politicians determined to erase Obama’s achievements — keep rewriting the rules.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, Krugman noted that, to the surprise of some, fossil fuel companies have opposed Trump’s efforts to roll back Obama-era environmental regulation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We should be careful here, because “business uncertainty” is a buzzword that is often used to attack progressive policies. President Barack Obama was frequently criticized for supposedly creating uncertainty in his efforts to regulate carbon emissions and other harmful externalities (though in reality, the biggest economic problem during his tenure was a shortfall in demand driven by austerity). But some uncertainty may be worth it if it’s the cost of imposing regulations that are actually good for the country and the world. In this case of deregulation, however, Republicans argue that rolling back rules is good for business; if, in fact, the uncertainty created by the changes actually hurts business, their entire putative purpose is undermined.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Krugman added that uncertainty isn’t actually bad for all business. One type of business doesn’t mind Trump’s antics? Scams:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To be fair, however, some kinds of business do thrive under Trumpism — namely, businesses that aren’t in it for the long run, operations whose strategy is to take the money and run. These are good times for mining companies that rush in to extract whatever they can, leaving a poisoned landscape behind; for real estate speculators sponsoring dubious ventures that take advantage of newly created tax loopholes; for for-profit colleges that leave their students with worthless degrees and crippling debt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, under Trump it’s springtime for grifters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, we shouldn’t be too surprised to find ourselves in these conditions, Krugman argued, when we elected the founder of Trump University.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/elizabeth-warren-adopts-inslees-climate-plan-im-challenging-every-other-candidate-to-do-same/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trump-moves-to-accelerate-climate-change-and-its-even-more-evil-than-it-first-appears/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump moves to accelerate climate change — and it’s even more evil than it first appears</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Martin Longman / Washington Monthly August 29, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Methane levels in the environment have been rising sharply since 2008, and there is probably more than one contributing factor. A lot of methane is trapped under ice sheets which are melting at a rapid pace. But some researchers see the new popularity of fracking as a prime culprit.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The boom in the US shale gas and oil may have ignited a significant global spike in methane emissions blamed for accelerating the pace of the climate crisis, according to research.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scientists at Cornell University have found the “chemical fingerprints” of the rising global methane levels point to shale oil and shale gas as the probable source…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">…Robert Howarth, the author of the paper published in the journal Biogeosciences, said the proportion of methane with a “carbon signature” linked to traditional fossil fuels was falling relative to the rise of methane with a slightly different carbon make-up…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">…“This recent increase in methane is massive,” Howarth said. “It’s globally significant. It’s contributed to some of the increase in global warming we’ve seen and shale gas is a major player.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but it exists in smaller quantities and dissipates more quickly in the atmosphere. It’s actually easier to make headway against climate change by reducing methane rather than carbon dioxide emissions, but that requires strict regulation of the shale gas fields where methane is released both intentionally and unintentionally during the hydraulic fracturing process. In 2016, the Obama administration sought to do this by announcing new rules.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new rules are part of the Obama administration’s goal to cut methane emissions from the oil and gas industry by up to 45 percent by 2025. They affect newly-drilled hydraulically fractured oil wells, which studies show are significant sources of leaking methane. At least one-third of human-caused methane emissions in the U.S. come from the oil and gas industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The regulations require companies to find and contain leaks with the goal of reducing methane pollution by the equivalent of 11 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2025, or roughly the same as the emissions from 2.34 million passenger cars.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The EPA is beginning work on regulating methane leaks from existing oil and gas wells by requiring energy companies to provide data to the agency under an “information collection request.” The request will require the companies to inform the EPA about their emissions and technology they could use to stop methane leaks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since 2016, climate scientists have been revising their estimates of the pace and severity of climate change, and the problem today looks more severe than their worst-case scenarios from three years ago. This would support revisiting the Obama administration’s rules on methane and fracking to see if they should be strengthened. But that’s not what the Trump administration is doing:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oil and gas companies would face looser controls on emissions of potent climate-changing methane gas under a proposal expected from the Trump administration as soon as Thursday, oil industry and environmental groups say.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The government’s plan would ease requirements on oil and gas sites to monitor for methane leaks and plug them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This plan is actually even more evil than it might first appear, as the Washington Post reports:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just as important, according to an EPA document obtained by The Washington Post, the proposal will challenge the agency’s earlier position that the federal government has the authority to regulate methane without first making a determination that it qualifies as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The Trump administration has taken several steps to limit the government’s ability to regulate climate pollutants in the future, including in a recently-finalized rule curbing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They want to free up frackers to release as much methane into the environment as they want, but they also want to make it harder for any future administration to reverse their decision. To get an idea of how truly egregious this step is, consider that the oil and gas industry isn’t uniformly behind it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The [EPA] estimates the proposed changes, which will be subject to public comment for 60 days after they are published, would save the oil and natural gas industry between $17 million and $19 million a year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But several of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies, including Exxon, Shell and BP, have opposed the rollback and urged the Trump administration to keep the current standards in place. Collectively, these firms account for 11 percent of America’s natural gas output.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since the industry has already adapted to the Obama Era rules, there’s really no reason to eviscerate them. But it seems that this administration will pursue almost anything if it’s a bad enough idea.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate scientists may not be the best communicators of climate threats</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Risa Palm, Georgia State University and Toby W. Bolsen, Georgia State University</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some climate scientists have spoken out about the dangers of climate change. But a new study shows those voices may not be very influential.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04082019/climate-change-ratings-agencies-financial-risk-cities-companies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the main agencies that rates the creditworthiness of big borrowers, including cities and corporations, has brought on board a data firm specializing in climate risks. It's a signal that rating agencies are paying more attention to global warming and its impact in the financial markets.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Credit ratings, much like individual credit scores, assess how likely it is that a borrower will repay debt. Those ratings can affect how much governments and companies are able to borrow and how much it will cost them. Just the threat of a lower credit rating can pressure cities and companies to be more proactive in taking steps to mitigate risks, and now those risks are starting to include climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"More and more, issuers and investors want to know how they are exposed to climate events," said Michael Mulvagh, head of communications in the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East for Moody's Corporation, which owns one of the largest U.S. ratings agencies.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He said Moody's decision to purchase a major stake in Four Twenty Seven, a company that analyzes the risks to corporations and governments from climate extremes such as sea level rise, heat stress and storms, "will help us go deeper into and refine how we assess physical risks caused by environmental factors."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For years, experts have warned about the increasing risks of climate disasters. Last year, the U.S. saw at least $91 billion in damage from the costliest storms, drought and wildfires, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And some analysts have criticized the financial sector—particularly around bond ratings—for moving too slowly in incorporating climate risks into their credit assessments.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The move by Moody's signifies a notable step toward financial institutions committing to the idea that climate change should be a routine consideration when evaluating the financial strength of any government or company and their ability to pay their debts.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"For [Moody's] to come and buy this company that's very focused and has some expertise in climate risks, it looks like they're making this a very big priority," said Kathy Hipple, a financial analyst with the Institute for Energy, Economics and Financial Analysis. "I think it's very positive and should be noted by the industry."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which Places and Sectors Are Most at Risk?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2017, Moody's downgraded the city of Cape Town, South Africa, after a major drought there threatened the municipality's ability to provide water to the community. Earlier this year, it downgraded Trinity Public Utilities District in California due to the elevated risk from wildfires.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate change-related disasters are becoming more tangible and more frequent, said Carmen Nuzzo of the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment. "They can no longer be ignored."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since about 2015, Nuzzo said, credit rating agencies, including Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Group, have been building their capacity to better analyze how climate change can factor into the financial stability of companies and governments around the world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Both Moody's and S&P have released online tools—such as Moody's heat map or S&P's ESG Risk Atlas—to gauge which areas and what industries face the most "exposure" to the physical impacts of climate change, as well as which are risking transitional impacts as renewable energy demand rises.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Moody's heat map, the top industries with elevated environmental risks are unregulated utilities and power companies, the automobile industry, the oil and gas refining market and the transportation industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For several of those industries, "the risk is quite obvious," said Mike Ferguson, director of the Sustainable Finance Team for Standard & Poor's Global Ratings. "The economy is transitioning away from what they sell."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With cities and counties, ratings agencies pay attention to the local economy, including threats to the tax base, and to the government's management and financial planning, which can include whether risk-mitigation projects are being completed. Once a government is struggling with climate-related damages, such as from hurricanes or flooding, higher borrowing costs can become a vicious circle.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Slow Start, but 'Going in the Right Direction'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hipple said credit rating agencies, especially around the bond market, have been slow to act on climate change, but they're "going in the right direction."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To some degree, credit rating agencies have always considered climate risks when assigning credit ratings, Nuzzo said, but only recently did agencies start routinely and explicitly incorporating climate risks into their assessment processes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Before, they were only looking at balance sheets," she said. "They still do, but they're also asking questions about how climate change can affect cash flow, costs, revenues, profits."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ferguson said he has also seen an increase in credit ratings actions based on climate risks being a major factor. Between 2015 and 2017, he said, about 15 percent of corporate global ratings actions were based on climate risks as a main factor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, Rachel Cleetus, the lead economist and climate policy manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists, thinks the financial sector could be doing more, especially when it comes to pressuring high-risk areas and industries to adapt more quickly to climate risks.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Everyone agrees that the science is real, the risk is real," she said, "but the market isn't accurately pricing it yet."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Published Aug. 5, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PUBLISHED UNDER:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTABILITY EXTREME WEATHER</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CLIMATE CHANGE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ff 75% ghg land use 25% DN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/03/ipcc-land-use-food-production-key-to-climate-crisis-leaked-report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">guk no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We must change food production to save the world, says leaked report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cutting carbon from transport and energy ‘not enough’ IPCC finds</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robin McKie</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sun 4 Aug 2019 04.00 EDT First published on Sat 3 Aug 2019 08.00 EDT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Hereford beef cattle.&nbsp; The IPCC report says meat consumption should be cut to reduce methane emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Hereford beef cattle. The IPCC report says meat consumption should be cut to reduce methane emissions. Photograph: Australian Scenics/Getty Images</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Attempts to solve the climate crisis by cutting carbon emissions from only cars, factories and power plants are doomed to failure, scientists will warn this week.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A leaked draft of a report on climate change and land use, which is now being debated in Geneva by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), states that it will be impossible to keep global temperatures at safe levels unless there is also a transformation in the way the world produces food and manages land.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Humans now exploit 72% of the planet’s ice-free surface to feed, clothe and support Earth’s growing population, the report warns. At the same time, agriculture, forestry and other land use produces almost a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sign up to the Green Light email to get the planet's most important stories</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Read more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition, about half of all emissions of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, come from cattle and rice fields, while deforestation and the removal of peat lands cause further significant levels of carbon emissions. The impact of intensive agriculture – which has helped the world’s population soar from 1.9 billion a century ago to 7.7 billion – has also increased soil erosion and reduced amounts of organic material in the ground.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In future these problems are likely to get worse. “Climate change exacerbates land degradation through increases in rainfall intensity, flooding, drought frequency and severity, heat stress, wind, sea-level rise and wave action,” the report states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is a bleak analysis of the dangers ahead and comes when rising greenhouse gas emissions have made news after triggering a range of severe meteorological events. These include news that:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">• Arctic sea-ice coverage reached near record lows for July;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">• The heatwaves that hit Europe last month were between 1.5C and 3C higher because of climate change;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">• Global temperatures for July were 1.2C above pre-industrial levels for the month.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This last figure is particularly alarming, as the IPCC has warned that rises greater than 1.5C risk triggering climatic destabilisation while those higher than 2C make such events even more likely. “We are now getting very close to some dangerous tipping points in the behaviour of the climate – but as this latest leaked report of the IPCC’s work reveals, it is going to be very difficult to achieve the cuts we need to make to prevent that happening,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new IPCC report emphasises that land will have to be managed more sustainably so that it releases much less carbon than at present. Peat lands will need to be restored by halting drainage schemes; meat consumption will have to be cut to reduce methane production; while food waste will have to be reduced.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among the measures put forward by the report is the proposal of a major shift towards vegetarian and vegan diets. “The consumption of healthy and sustainable diets, such as those based on coarse grains, pulses and vegetables, and nuts and seeds … presents major opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” the report states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There also needs to be a big change in how land is used, it adds. Policies need to include “improved access to markets, empowering women farmers, expanding access to agricultural services and strengthening land tenure security”, it states. “Early warning systems for weather, crop yields, and seasonal climate events are also critical.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The chances of politicians and scientists achieving these goals are uncertain, however. Nations are scheduled to meet in late 2020, probably in the UK, at a key conference where delegates will plant how to achieve effective zero-carbon emission policies over the next few decades.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The US, the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, will have just had its presidential elections. A new Democrat incumbent would likely be sympathetic to moves to control global heating. Re-election of Donald Trump, who has called climate change “a hoax”, would put a very different, far gloomier perspective on hopes of achieving a consensus.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/08/17-countries-home-one-quarter-world-population-face-extremely-high-water-stress</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Once-unthinkable water crises are becoming commonplace.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reservoirs in Chennai, India’s sixth-largest city, are nearly dry right now. Last year, residents of Cape Town, South Africa narrowly avoided their own “Day Zero” water shut-off. And the year before that, Rome rationed water to conserve scarce resources.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reasons for these crises go far deeper than drought: Through new hydrological models, WRI found that water withdrawals globally have more than doubled since the 1960s due to growing demand – and they show no signs of slowing down.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New data from WRI’s Aqueduct tools reveal that 17 countries – home to one-quarter of the world’s population—face “extremely high” levels of baseline water stress, where irrigated agriculture, industries and municipalities withdraw more than 80% of their available supply on average every year. Forty-four countries, home to one-third of the world, face “high” levels of stress, where on average more than 40% of available supply is withdrawn every year. (Check your country’s water stress level in the full rankings at the end of this post.) Such a narrow gap between supply and demand leaves countries vulnerable to fluctuations like droughts or increased water withdrawals, which is why we’re seeing more and more communities facing their own “Day Zeros” and other crises...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">trump faLLOUT:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-deforestation-unrecoverable-tipping-point-2639358982.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Amazon rainforest in Brazil is being clear cut so rapidly — a rate of three football fields per minute — that it is approaching a "tipping point" from which it will not recover, according to the Guardian.lnx]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As trees are lost, researchers said there is a risk that large areas could transition from rainforest to savannah as they lose the ability to make their own rainfall from evaporation and from plants giving off water vapor, according to Newsweek.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A transition on that scale could have significant implications for global warming since the rainforest absorbs vast amounts of atmospheric carbon. Recent research has shown the potential for massive tree plantings to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's very important to keep repeating these concerns. There are a number of tipping points which are not far away," said Philip Fearnside, a professor at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research, as the Guardian reported. "We can't see exactly where they are, but we know they are very close. It means we have to do things right away. Unfortunately that is not what is happening. There are people denying we even have a problem."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The alarming rate of deforestation and its acceleration confirms suspicions that new president Jair Bolsonaro has allowed illegal land invasion, logging and burning. Bolsonaro has called his own government's satellite data lies. The president's comments followed preliminary satellite data that showed more than 400 square miles of the rainforest had been cleared in the first half of July — an increase of 68 percent from the entire month of July last year, according to the BBC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bolsonaro, the far right politician who has said he is fulfilling a mission from God, dismissed concerns expressed by European Union members and called it hypocritical since so many European forests have been wiped out.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"You have to understand that the Amazon is Brazil's, not yours," Bolsonaro said, as the Guardian reported. "If all this devastation you accuse us of doing was done in the past the Amazon would have stopped existing, it would be a big desert."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The DETER-B satellite system that the Brazilian government started to use in 2015 to track deforestation has shown that the record setting July deforestation is on pace to clear enough forest to fit New York City twice by the end of the month.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The DETER satellite data is considered preliminary. Detailed figures are released at the end of the year when data from other satellites and observatories is also collected, according to Newsweek.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Unfortunately, it is absurd, but it should not catch anyone by surprise. President Jair Bolsonaro and minister Ricardo Salles are dismantling our socio-environmental policies," said Carlos Rittl, the executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, an NGO formed by a coalition of environmental groups, as the Guardian reported.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After years of conservation, Brazil's environmental track record has nose-dived in the first seven months of Bolsonaro's administration. He has given environmental oversight to the agriculture minister, who is the leader of a farming lobby. His foreign minister called climate science a part of a global Marxist plot.The government has invited businesses to register land counter-claims in areas that are protected nature reserves, indigenous territories and areas dedicated to sustainable production by native forest people, according to the Guardian.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/why-the-next-18-months-could-decide-the-fate-of-the-country-and-our-civilization/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why the next 18 months could decide the fate of the country — and our civilization</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Pixabay</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Mark Sumner / Daily Kos July 25, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The idea that what happens in the next year and a half could have consequences that spell out what will happen to the world in coming centuries seems not just daunting, but … a little ridiculous. Over the top. Exaggerated. It’s true, any day can be very consequential if Donald Trump should mistake the Coke button for that other button, and November 3, 2020, does fall within the next 18 months, and that’s a pretty big day on anyone’s calendar. But still … the future of planet? That seems like a big claim.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Except that there are some pretty good reasons to believe it’s true. And one of those reasons is the fact that the temperature in Paris today was 109° F.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was just last month that France and the rest of Europe were boiling in an early June heat wave that brought temperatures across the region to all-time record highs. As it turned out, those records lasted a month. This week records fell again and new ones were set in country after country. Roads buckled. Water pipes failed. Trains were derailed. People died. And the heat has not stopped.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, at the top of the world, the extent of Arctic Sea ice is at a record low for this date. In 2012, a warm year combined with a series of weather systems conspired to take the extent of ice far below the range seen over the 40-year history of close measurement. That 2012 result was such an outlier that it seemed like a genuine fluke … until this year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the BBC notes, almost from the first moment that people realized that the human-caused climate crisis is real, there’s been an effort to determine how quickly action needed to be taken to stave off the worst outcomes. Could we wait 50 years? What about 30? What about 20? The answers are no, no, and no. Recent studies had indicated that avoiding severe changes and keeping our already-warming world within 1.5° C (2.7° F) of where it was just a few years ago required action to be taken within the next 12 years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That model hasn’t really changed. What has changed is the realization that we can’t get to Jan. 1, 2030, and throw a global switch to drastically reduce greenhouse gases. If the world is going to be where it needs to be in 2030 to stave off absolute catastrophe, the solution has to begin now. And now means within the next 18 months, when a series of decisions are likely to determine if we are going to save the planet for ourselves and our children, or throw it utterly away.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In December 2015, the nations of the world signed on to the Paris agreement, aimed at making significant reductions in the worldwide production of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. However, not only did that agreement lack any real enforcement mechanism, but since then Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from the agreement. Those countries that have remained in the agreement have promised to tighten their restrictions by next year, but so far few seem to be making any real progress toward making that happen, and the noninvolvement of the U.S. isn’t helping nations decide to take critical, but potentially costly, steps.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And just as there is no worldwide switch for 2030, there is also no switch in the U.S., or Germany, or China, or anywhere else. Changes in every place take time and planning. Achieving the levels of reduction needed by 2030 means that action needs to be taken now. And that action isn’t being taken.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">UN Secretary General António Guterres has called for a special climate summit to be held in September in New York. But Guterres has told countries to show up only if they have in hand their plans to reduce CO2 by 45%. Needless to say, the United States isn’t going. It’s not clear who is going.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like Midwestern coal-fired power plants that export their pollution to the East Coast, every nation currently views carbon production as something that gets exported. Keeping fossil fuels on the table gives them energy options, and if they do screw the climate, well, it affects everyone. So just about the only countries with real incentive to hustle their reports to Guterres are those that don’t have a vested interest in fossil fuels and do have a recognition of the problem. In other words, the nations not responsible for the problem are likely to show up. Those that are responsible will stay away.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That event is a prequel to COP26, the 26th “conference of the parties” to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in November at a site not yet determined. It’s at that conference that member states will try to create the next climate agreement, and to make it one that can be enforced in some way. Paris … with teeth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That conference will also fall just a week after the U.S. presidential election. Which means that the conference is likely to be an issue in the U.S. election. And the U.S. election is certain to be a big factor at the conference.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Democratic victory going into that conference could mean that the world is looking at a United States where the next president ran and won on a platform of addressing climate change and executing a significant “green deal.” Because every major Democratic candidate has now put forward a serious, inclusive plan for addressing the climate crisis. That in turn could be the foundation that allows other nations to defend putting in place enforcement mechanisms and significant goals.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Or there could be Trump. And the whole process could be stalled by U.S. nonparticipation. And the world could spiral toward massive irrevocable changes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, you know, no pressure.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"terrifying" acidification 719</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">grist</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What shapes your beliefs about the climate crisis? It’s not just left vs. right.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Kate Yoder on Jul 12, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unless you’ve lost your home to a super-charged hurricane, evacuated from wildfire country, or survived some other kind of climate disaster, it’s not too hard to live as if we weren’t in the middle of a planetary crisis. Sure, scientists keep issuing dire warnings, but you can tune them out by switching the TV channel or leaving that depressing book on the shelf.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s more difficult, however, to brush off your friends and family when they start talking about climate change. Political persuasion matters less than you might think. Liberals and conservatives alike shift their opinions on the subject to align with the people closest to them, according to two new studies from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. ...Until recently, surprisingly little research explored the role our close relationships play in configuring opinions about our overheating planet. But that’s changing. A study from North Carolina State University last month, for instance, showed that middle schoolers who learned about climate change were pretty good at convincing their parents to care about it — especially conservative parents.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the Yale studies, Goldberg found that the influence of close relationships was “massive.” Among conservatives who think their circle doesn’t care, only 9 percent are worried about it, according to his team’s study from last month. That number jumps to a whopping 65 percent for conservatives who think the issue is important to their loved ones.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Experts have long suspected that the more people discuss the topic with friends and family, the more convinced they become that climate change is happening, caused by humans, and something to be worried about.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Goldberg’s latest study looked at the data to see if this was true. His team analyzed data from two sets of surveys conducted seven months apart in 2015, around the time that Pope Francis was traveling the world warning of environmental degradation and calling for urgent action. They found that folks who began discussing the climate more often had developed a slightly better grasp of the scientific consensus around climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reverse was true, too: People who had a better understanding of the scientific agreement ended up discussing climate change more, in a self-reinforcing cycle.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s one problem here: Most people aren’t talking about climate change at all, so they’re not part of this feedback cycle. According to the latest surveys from the Yale program, some 37 percent of Americans say they discuss the subject, despite 67 percent saying it’s important to them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That’s partly because of a sinister phenomenon called the “spiral of silence” — when everyone is quiet, it’s harder to speak up. We fear airing our unpopular ideas would mean losing friends and social status.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But since most people do care about climate change, these concerns may be “misguided,” Goldberg said. Americans estimate that 54 percent of the country accepts the reality of climate change, but in reality, 69 percent does, the Yale surveys show.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Talking about global warming could help close that gap. That task is tougher than it sounds — the science is complicated, and so is the ideological war it’s part of in the United States. But you don’t have to be fluent in the science to discuss climate change, says Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist, in her TED talk about the subject.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rather than convincing people with facts and figures, Hayhoe told her audience they could start off with “genuinely shared values,” like parenting, fishing, the economy, and national security (climate change touches every subject). “All we have to do is connect the dots between the values they already have and why they would care about a changing climate,” she said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">719 yet another report on&nbsp; rapid polar ice melt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate change is affecting crop yields and reducing global food supplies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Deepak Ray, University of Minnesota</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As climate change alters temperature and rainfall patterns, yields of some crops are increasing while others decline. The net result: less food, especially where it's most needed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/a-surprisingly-cheap-and-simple-plan-could-put-a-huge-dent-in-climate-change/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx many</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A surprisingly cheap and simple plan could put a huge dent in climate change</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">written by Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams July 5, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amid record-setting temperatures worldwide and predictions by experts that this year will be among the hottest humanity has ever seen, researchers behind a new study say a rapid global effort to plant billions of trees and the restoration of forests would be the “most effective” strategy for battling the planetary climate emergency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Based on a model of the potential for restoring trees worldwide to capture atmospheric carbon that is heating the planet, a Europe-based research team found that currently “there is room for an extra 0.9 billion hectares (2.22 billion acres) of canopy cover, which could store 205 gigatonnes of carbon in areas that would naturally support woodlands and forests.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lead researcher Tom Crowther, a professor at the Swiss university ETH Zürich, explained to Metrothat “if we act now, this could cut carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by up to 25 percent to levels last seen almost a century ago.” A worldwide planting program, researchers estimate, could remove two-thirds of the carbon that human activity has put into the atmosphere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In terms of cost, Crowther said that “the most effective projects” do restoration at about ¢30 per tree, meaning that restoring a trillion trees would be about $300 billion—which, he added, makes tree restoration “by far the cheapest solution that has ever been proposed.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Putting that figure into context, the U.S.-based youth-led Sunrise Movement tweeted, “For a fraction of the cost of the Trump tax cuts, we could pay for a trillion new trees and offset 2/3rd of all emissions to date.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sunrise Movement ??</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@sunrisemvmt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;For a fraction of the cost of the Trump tax cuts, we could pay for a trillion new trees and offset 2/3rd of all emissions to date.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(^rough cost estimate but still crazy cheap)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We have solutions ready to go; we’re just missing the political will to act.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-trees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2,690</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tree planting 'has mind-blowing potential' to tackle climate crisis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Research shows a trillion trees could be planted to capture huge amount of carbon dioxide</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">theguardian.com</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1,161 people are talking about this</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report, published Friday in the journal Science, describes tree restoration on a global scale as “our most effective climate change solution to date” while also warning that “climate change will alter this potential tree coverage.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We estimate that if we cannot deviate from the current trajectory, the global potential canopy cover may shrink by ~223 million hectares (₅₅₁ million acres) by 2050, with the vast majority of losses occurring in the tropics. Our results highlight the opportunity of climate change mitigation through global tree restoration but also the urgent need for action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In its reporting on the new research, Vox noted that “there is distinction here between restoration, also known as reforestation, and afforestation. The latter refers to planting new trees where there were none before. The former refers to bringing trees back to areas that were previously forested, whether that’s through planting trees or allowing the woodlands to regrow on their own.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This research team focused on the former—planting trees where they once were. While the potential is great, accomplishing it is no easy task, Vox reported, because “deforestation is still rampant and is accelerating in some parts of the world. Rather than building up forests as a resource to offset greenhouse gas emissions, we’re currently losing them, and emitting more carbon in the process.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crowther, however, appeared optimistic—given the potential impact and wide range of people and institutions that can actually take action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What blows my mind is the scale,” Crowther told The Guardian. “I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the newspaper:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crowther emphasized that it remains vital to reverse the current trends of rising greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and forest destruction, and bring them down to zero. He said this is needed to stop the climate crisis becoming even worse and because the forest restoration envisaged would take 50-100 years to have its full effect of removing 200bn tonnes of carbon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some activists and experts—including Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and Glen Peters, a research director at Norway’s Center for International Climate Research—responded to the new study by emphasizing the importance of also changing human behaviors that produce planet-heating emissions, considering how long it could take to plant enough trees to remove carbon from the atmosphere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greta Thunberg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@GretaThunberg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Yes, of course we need to plant as many trees as possible.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yes, of course we need to keep the existing trees standing and rewild and restore nature.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But there’s absolutely no way around stopping our emissions of greenhouse gases and leaving the fossil fuels in the ground. https://twitter.com/Peters_Glen/status/1147037393725329408 …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Glen Peters</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@Peters_Glen</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The only way we can keep below 1.5°C or 2°C is to stop emitting fossil fuels”...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It could take hundreds of years to add enough mature forests to remove what we will emit in 20 years at the current rate of 40GtCO2/yr.@StephenLeahyhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/07/how-to-erase-100-years-carbon-emissions-plant-trees/ …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crowther pointed out that planting trees is a solution that doesn’t require U.S. President Donald Trump “to immediately start believing in climate change, or scientists to come up with technological solutions to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It is available now, it is the cheapest one possible, and every one of us can get involved,” he said, considering that in addition to any government-backed efforts individuals and charities can plant trees.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The model reveals restoration opportunities worldwide, with the six largest countries—Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Russia, and the United States—collectively containing about half of the sites.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crowther described Brazil—which contains the majority of the Amazon rainforest and is currently under the control of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro—as his “dream hotspot to get it right,” but he reiterated that “the potential is literally everywhere—the entire globe. In terms of carbon capture, you get by far your biggest bang for your buck in the tropics, but every one of us can get involved.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Author and anthropologist Jason Hickel praised the research as “brilliant” and noted that in addition to sucking carbon out of the atmosphere to combat the global climate crisis, tree restoration could provide job opportunities....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/03/booming-lng-industry-could-be-as-bad-for-climate-as-coal-experts-warn</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The booming liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry will play at least as big a role as new coal investments in bringing on a climate crisis if all planned projects go ahead, US-based energy analysts and campaigners say.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report by the Global Energy Monitor appears at odds with comments by Australia’s emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, who has said the country could be proud that the rapidly expanding LNG export industry was displacing coal power overseas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Government analysis identified LNG as the main reason Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen each year since 2015, but the minister and industry say Australian gas deserves credit for lowering global emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Problem in waiting': why natural gas will wipe out Australia's emissions gains</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Read more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Global Energy Monitor, formerly known as CoalSwarm, is a US-based research and advocacy group that tracks fossil fuel development. It found there were US$1.3tn in planned LNG investments across the globe, including nearly $38bn in Australia, putting it fourth on a list behind the US, Canada and Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ted Nace, the group’s executive director, said the proposed tripling of global LNG capacity risked introducing decades of emissions of methane, a potent and difficult-to-monitor greenhouse gas, at odds with the Paris climate agreement. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year estimated methane emissions would need to be reduced by 35% between 2010 and 2050 to meet the Paris goals.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The one piece of good news is that most of these projects are in the pre-construction stage so there is still time for a moratorium on LNG infrastructure before we lock ourselves into even more irreversible climate damage,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A separate study in the journal Nature found existing fossil fuel infrastructure alone, including coal and gas-fired power stations, would almost certainly be enough to push the world beyond 1.5C global heating if not shut down earlier than planned.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Australia’s LNG industry has already more than tripled since 2012 as developments have come online in Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory. A recent government Resources and Energy Quarterly report forecast the value of Australian LNG exports will be nearly $50bn this year, second only to iron ore.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Natural gas is at times described as a transition fuel in the response to the climate crisis as it has about half the carbon dioxide emissions of black coal when burned to generate electricity. That argument has been rejected by the head of the International Energy Agency and science bodies warning the world needs to rapidly move to clean energy and industries</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nace said it was difficult to compare emissions from coal and gas given their different nature. Gas has lower CO2 emissions than black coal when burned for electricity, but LNG developments also leak methane, which is a relatively short-lived gas that lasts in the atmosphere about 12 years but still has a warming power about 28 times greater than the same amount of CO2 when calculated over a century.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A recent study found the level of atmospheric methane has increased significantly since 2007 after a relative flat period. Scientists are unsure why.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global Energy Monitor researchers found fugitive methane emissions from new LNG extraction and processing would be expected to have as large or larger global heating impact than proposed coal power expansion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The truth about LNG is nobody knows what is happening across the supply chain,” Nace said. “But it’s very easy to see leakage of 2% to 3% and if that much gets away into the atmosphere it is significant – it gives a jolt of warming.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Taylor’s claim that Australia’s gas was displacing coal in Asia, Nace said it was likely this was true in some places, particularly parts of China, but in others it was being used to meet new energy demand that could be delivered with clean energy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Australia won't reach Paris target without action on transport, LNG and coal, expert says</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Read more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Taylor has said Australia’s LNG exports had the potential to lower global emissions by up to 148m tonnes last year, equivalent to 27% of Australia’s annual climate pollution. The department reached this estimate by assuming all exported Australian gas was used to replace coal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association chief executive, Andrew McConville, said the Global Energy Monitor study was flawed as it compared the total emissions from coal and gas but did not include a genuine lifecycle analysis, which would show gas had a significantly lesser impact.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He said the association supported a national climate policy that cut emissions at least cost and supported investment decisions “consistent with an international price on carbon”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Australia’s oil and gas sector has a vital role to play in meeting the challenge of reducing global emissions,” McConville said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nace said LNG developments were on a collision course with the Paris agreement and the declining cost of renewable energy. He said it created the risk of more than US$1tn in stranded assets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“These are 40-year investments from an industry standpoint,” he said. “Natural gas infrastructure may be competitive in three, four or five years but do people expect it to be competitive with renewables in 15 years?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Comment was sought from Taylor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/06/24/poll-americans-fossil-fuels-drive-climate-change-pay-damages</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Karen Savage, Climate Liability News. Originally posted on Climate Liability News.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans say fossil fuel companies should pay for damage caused by climate change, according to a recent poll released by Yale University on Wednesday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Researchers asked 5,131 Americans how much they think global warming is harming their local communities, who they think should be responsible for paying for the damages, and whether they support lawsuits to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for those costs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“A majority of Americans say global warming is already harming their local community and hold the fossil fuel industry at least partly responsible for the damages,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, a senior research scientist and director of Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communication.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The poll found that 57 percent of those surveyed think the fossil fuel companies have either a “great deal” or “a moderate amount” of responsibility for damages caused by climate change and 57 percent of the public thinks fossil fuel companies should be forced to pay for those damages.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Half of those polled said they are in favor of their local officials filing liability suits against the companies, while only 30 percent somewhat or strongly oppose taking legal action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fossil fuel companies have known for decades that their products cause climate change, but publicly worked to deny that science while internally planning to protect their own business operations and infrastructure.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dozens of municipalities across the country have filed lawsuits aimed at forcing fossil fuel companies to pay for the billions required to protect their residents from the impacts of climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The results of this study suggest that there are other jurisdictions — cities, counties, and states — where a majority of the public already holds fossil fuel companies responsible, want them to pay at least some of the costs for damages, and even for their own local officials to participate in lawsuits,” Leiserowitz said. He added that as damages and costs increase, there will likely be greater demand for companies to pay both for both climate-related damages and measures to protect residents from the worsening impacts of climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of those surveyed think fossil fuel companies, not taxpayers, should pay for most or all of those damages. At the same time, two-thirds of those polled say they somewhat or strongly distrust fossil fuel companies.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Although lawsuits are decided in the court of law,” said Jennifer Marlon, a research scientist at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, “the court of public opinion also plays a critical role in shaping the local, state, national, and international response to climate change.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The research was funded by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Energy Foundation, the 11th Hour Project, the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, the MacArthur Foundation, the Overlook Foundation and the Endeavor Foundation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GOP flipping on fires, flood, hurricane; Luntz sez young ppl will defect</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">good: a Trump appointee bucks the administration’s policy of climate denial</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One member of a powerful federal financial commission is setting himself up for a head-to-head confrontation with the Trump administration over climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rostin Behnam, a Trump appointee to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, told a New York Times reporter on Monday that “it’s abundantly clear that climate change poses financial risk to the stability of the financial system.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Benham is kicking off an investigation by the commission on how growing climate instability may harm different sectors of the U.S. economy, including agriculture, the mortgage and insurance industries, and more.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report will probably be ready just as Trump hits the 2020 campaign trail in farm country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Benham’s seat on the commission must by law be given to a Democrat, an “unusual status [that gives] him a measure of political protection” from reprisal by Trump or his other appointees. He thinks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/22/threats-militia-provoke-shutdown-oregon-capitol-day-after-gop-lawmakers-fled/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/armed-extremists-just-escalated-oregons-fight-over-climate-legislation/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Three Percenters’ Oregon chapter has gotten involved in the Oregon standoff between Republican state senators, who fled the state to avoid the passage of cap-and-trade legislation, and the Democratic majority who wanted to put the measure to a vote. The paramilitary group, known for anti-government and pro-gun sentiment, said in a Thursday night Facebook post, “We will stand together with unwavering resolve, doing whatever it takes to keep these Senators safe,” pledging to provide “security, transportation, and refuge” for Republican lawmakers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As my colleague Shane Bauer wrote in 2016, “the three percenter philosophy” had “quickly grown into a grassroots, national movement, part of a resurgence of right-wing militia activity following Obama’s election in 2008.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is the most recent escalation of the conflict that began when the Oregon House of Representatives passed a bill Monday that would impose a declining limit on the amount of CO2 emissions Oregon’s manufacturing, utility, and transportation industries can produce. But when Senate president Peter Courtney was ready to begin Thursday’s session, Oregon’s Republican senators fled the Capitol to make a vote impossible to hold.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are 18 Democratic senators, but 20 senators are needed for a quorum. A search of the Capitol on Monday yielded no Republicans, so Governor Kate Brown sent out Oregon State Police troopers to find the senators, who hid outside state lines, and bring them back to vote by force.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Senate Republicans have decided to abandon their duty to serve their constituents and walk out,” Brown said in a statement authorizing the Oregon State Police to bring back the Senate Republicans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Without the Republicans present, there were not enough Democrats to constitute the necessary quorum of lawmakers to conduct official business, even though they would have had enough votes to pass the bill. There’s only about one week left in the legislative session.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I beg and beseech my fellow legislators to come to the floor,” The Oregonian reported Courtney saying, as he placed his head in his hands. “If you’re mad, take it out on me. Come at me. Don’t do this to the people of Oregon.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The tactic of walking out to prevent bills one party opposes from being passed isn’t unique to either Oregon or Republicans. As the Associated Press pointed out:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2003, Texas Democrats fled to neighboring Oklahoma to deny a quorum, holing up in a Holiday Inn to block a GOP redistricting bill. The Democrats returned to Texas after the bill’s deadline passed, and it was effectively killed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Legislative minorities, both Democratic and Republican ones, have used walkouts as a strategy several times in Oregon alone, including in 1971, 1995, 2001, 2007, and May 2019.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a statement by Oregon Senate Republicans released Thursday, Senate Republican Leader Herman Baertschiger, Jr. explained the reason for the walk out, describing it as the will of the people of Oregon. “Protesting cap and trade by walking out today represents our constituency and exactly how we should be doing our job,” he said. “It’s time for the majority party to consider all Oregonians—not just the ones in Portland.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One Republican senator has already threatened a more violent response. “Send bachelors and come heavily armed,” said Brian Boquist in a video captured by Pat Dooris of KGW News in Portland. He said he told Travis Hampton, superintendent of the Oregon State Police, “I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon. It’s just that simple.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the Republican spokesperson from the Senate was quoted in a tweet on Friday afternoon, turning down the offer of assistance.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Francis Declares Climate Emergency in Meeting With Big Oil Leaders</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ew</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AHA! THE SOLUTION IS TO RESTORE THE COMMONS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AHA:&nbsp; REDUCTIONISM KILLS/ ENSLAVES/ EXTRACTS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">VS SYSTEMS HEAL, CONNECT, FREE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I/THOU VS I/IT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omfg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/politics/trump-climate-science.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">some lnx below</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">May 27, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WASHINGTON — President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change, and turned the term “global warming” into a punch line rather than a prognosis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, after two years spent unraveling the policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback of the most significant federal effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, initiated during the Obama administration. It will expand its efforts to impose Mr. Trump’s hard-line views on other nations, building on his retreat from the Paris accord and his recent refusal to sign a communiqué to protect the rapidly melting Arctic region unless it was stripped of any references to climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, in what could be Mr. Trump’s most consequential action yet, his administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter.]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Trump is less an ideologue than an armchair naysayer about climate change, according to people who know him. He came into office viewing agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency as bastions of what he calls the “deep state,” and his contempt for their past work on the issue is an animating factor in trying to force them to abandon key aspects of the methodology they use to try to understand the causes and consequences of a dangerously warming planet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a result, parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The attack on science is underway throughout the government. In the most recent example, the White House-appointed director of the United States Geological Survey,James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist, has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040, rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump has pushed to resurrect the idea of holding public debates on the validity of climate science.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scientists say that would give a misleading picture because the biggest effects of current emissions will be felt after 2040. Models show that the planet will most likely warm at about the same rate through about 2050. From that point until the end of the century, however, the rate of warming differs significantly with an increase or decrease in carbon emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The administration’s prime target has been the National Climate Assessment, produced by an interagency task force roughly every four years since 2000. Government scientists used computer-generated models in their most recent report to project that if fossil fuel emissions continue unchecked, the earth’s atmosphere could warm by as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That would lead to drastically higher sea levels, more devastating storms and droughts, crop failures, food losses and severe health consequences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Work on the next report, which is expected to be released in 2021 or 2022, has already begun. But from now on, officials said, such worst-case scenario projections will not automatically be included in the National Climate Assessment or in some other scientific reports produced by the government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What we have here is a pretty blatant attempt to politicize the science — to push the science in a direction that’s consistent with their politics,” said Philip B. Duffy, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the government’s most recent National Climate Assessment. “It reminds me of the Soviet Union.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an email, James Hewitt, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency, defended the proposed changes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The previous use of inaccurate modeling that focuses on worst-case emissions scenarios, that does not reflect real-world conditions, needs to be thoroughly re-examined and tested if such information is going to serve as the scientific foundation of nationwide decision-making now and in the future,” Mr. Hewitt said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, the goal of political appointees in the Trump administration is not just to change the climate assessment’s methodology, which has broad scientific consensus, but also to question its conclusions by creating a new climate review panel. That effort is led by a 79-year-old physicist who had a respected career at Princeton but has become better known in recent years for attacking the science of man-made climate change and for defending the virtues of carbon dioxide — sometimes to an awkward degree.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Beaufort Sea in the Arctic, a region that is warming rapidly. The United States recently declined to sign a communiqué on protecting the Arctic unless it omitted references to climate change.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” the physicist, William Happer, who serves on the National Security Council as the president’s deputy assistant for emerging technologies, said in 2014 in an interview with CNBC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Happer’s proposed panel is backed by John R. Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, who brought Mr. Happer into the N.S.C. after an earlier effort to recruit him during the transition.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Happer and Mr. Bolton are both beneficiaries of Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the far-right billionaire and his daughter who have funded efforts to debunk climate science. The Mercers gave money to a super PAC affiliated with Mr. Bolton before he entered government and to an advocacy group headed by Mr. Happer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate scientists are dismissive of Mr. Happer; his former colleagues at Princeton are chagrined. And several White House officials — including Larry Kudlow, the president’s chief economic adviser — have urged Mr. Trump not to adopt Mr. Happer’s proposal, on the grounds that it would be perceived as a White House attack on science.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House strategist who views Mr. Happer as “the climate hustler’s worst nightmare — a world-class physicist from the nation’s leading institution of advanced learning, who does not suffer fools gladly,” is apprehensive about what Mr. Happer is trying to do.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The very idea will start a holy war on cable before 2020,” he said. “Better to win now and introduce the study in the second inaugural address.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But at a White House meeting on May 1, at which the skeptical advisers made their case, Mr. Trump appeared unpersuaded, people familiar with the meeting said. Mr. Happer, they said, is optimistic that the panel will go forward.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Image</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">William Happer, who serves on the National Security Council, is pushing to create a climate review panel that would question scientific consensus.CreditPool photo by Albin Lohr-Jones]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The concept is not new. Mr. Trump has pushed to resurrect the idea of a series of military-style exercises, known as “red team, blue team” debates, on the validity of climate science first promoted by Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator who was forced to resign last year amid multiple scandals.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the time, the idea was shot down by John F. Kelly, then the White House chief of staff. But since Mr. Kelly’s departure, Mr. Trump has talked about using Mr. Happer’s proposed panel as a forum for it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For Mr. Trump, climate change is often the subject of mockery. “Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!” he posted on Twitter in January when a snowstorm was freezing much of the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His views are influenced mainly by friends and donors like Carl Icahn, the New York investor who owns oil refineries, and the oil-and-gas billionaire Harold Hamm — both of whom pushed Mr. Trump to deregulate the energy industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ImageThe Daily Poster</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Listen to ‘The Daily’: The White House Plan to Change Climate Science]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23052019/carbon-pricing-microsoft-pepsi-stonyfield-corporate-lobbying-congress-climate-change-solutions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An epic quest loomed Wednesday before the largest gathering of business leaders in a decade to advocate for climate action on Capitol Hill.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Could they find a single Republican in the U.S. Senate to take up the cause of carbon pricing?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The answer appeared to be: "Not yet."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Officials from Microsoft, Nike, Pepsi, eBay, Exelon, Gap, Levi's, Mars and Tesla were among more than 75 business leaders making the case for a national price on carbon. They scheduled 80 meetings with lawmakers and staff, half of them with Republicans. Lawmakers and their aides ducked behind closed doors to confer with members of the delegation throughout the day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who introduced bipartisan carbon tax legislation in the last Congress and would like to do so again, set up one roundtable meeting between his colleagues and six CEOs with a ground rule that he wouldn't name which members of Congress came to hear the pitch. (The bill he introduced last session put a fee on emissions of greenhouse gases and paid the revenues back to the public as a so-called "dividend.")</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"By offering an invitation to come have an off-the-record conversation with CEOs, I was partly recognizing that it is politically challenging or sensitive to have conservative Republicans in a room talking about a price on carbon," Coons said. "And I'm trying to find a way to move that conversation forward."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One Republican who is seen by some as a hope for GOP climate leadership did stop and speak briefly with a reporter outside the door on his way out of a half-hour session with CEOs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I think we're a long way from legislation of that character at this stage," said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) of their plea for congressional action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although Romney maintained a skeptical stance on climate during his 2012 presidential run, his more recent statements show openness to addressing climate change—including a 2017 Tweet praising the carbon fee-and-dividend proposal by the Climate Leadership Council, a coalition of businesses and environmental groups. But Romney, who represents a state where coal is the state rock, was not ready to commit to any view on what Congress should be doing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"They made a number of important points about creating incentives for the various industries to consider a carbon-friendly approach as opposed to a less carbon-friendly approach, and creating pricing mechanisms that would encourage them to emit less carbon," Romney said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate Reports, Polls and a Republican Shift</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The companies lobbying for carbon pricing together represented combined annual revenues of more than $2.5 trillion, according to the sustainability nonprofit group Ceres, which helped organizing the lobbying effort. Boston-based Ceres works with investors and companies to build networks of leaders on climate issues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dawn Martin, executive vice president of Ceres, said the business members of its policy network began pushing for the idea of a group lobbying effort on Capitol Hill after back-to-back climate science reports last fall—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 1.5 degrees report and the Fourth National Climate Assessment—issued stark warnings about the need to rein in greenhouse gases quickly.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's been a game-changer for people," said Martin. And while there isn't a GOP standard-bearer in Congress on carbon pricing, Martin said she has seen a shift.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"To have Republicans saying, 'We get it, but it's the wrong solution'—at least they get it now," she said. "And that has happened relatively overnight."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That was also the finding of a national survey released earlier this week by the GOP polling firm Luntz Global. The survey found that by a margin of 8 to 1, U.S. voters are more worried about climate today than they were a year ago. Luntz found majority support across party lines for the carbon fee-and-dividend proposal of the Climate Leadership Council, which commissioned the survey. Among Republicans under age 40, 75 percent supported the idea of pricing carbon and returning all revenue to households.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans on Capitol Hill are acting as though they've seen similar polling. Fewer are now openly questioning the core science of climate change, but many are still steering clear of the idea of strong government action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republican-controlled Senate Agriculture Committee, stacked with farm state lawmakers who have largely ignored the topic, held a hearing Tuesday focused on climate change in which several senators and witnesses raised the prospect of carbon markets. With the farm sector battered by a series of natural disasters and suffering under President Donald Trump's trade policies, the idea of possible farm revenue from carbon markets has appeal, and even Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue voiced support for the idea. But Republican lawmakers, who have long fought anything that remotely hints of regulation on American farms, were wary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"What I would hate to see is heavy handed government regulation," said Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst. "I think we can do this on our own."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What Business Leaders Are Saying</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many Republicans are touting technology subsidies—not taxes—as the solution. At a House Ways and Means Committee hearing last week, several Republicans voiced support for increased incentives to spur innovation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hugh Welsh, president of DSM North America, a nutrition and health company, said he was telling lawmakers that government incentives are fine for sparking innovation, but not for scaling them up enough to make a difference on climate change. For example, DSM has developed a feed additive that the company says would reduce methane emissions from cows by 30 percent, but he said there's not enough incentive for farms to buy the product unless there is a market imperative to reduce greenhouse gases.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jeff Eckel, CEO of the Annapolis, Md.-based clean investment firm Hannon Armstrong, is convinced he can make a business case for carbon pricing that should appeal to Republicans. To rely on subsidies and incentives alone, he said, "is a distinctly non-conservative economic position. If you want to go back to free market principles, you put a price on carbon and you stop socializing the cost" of climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The business leaders said they understood, however, that no matter how much progress they made in their lobbying day on Capitol Hill, they were not likely to see legislation in the short-term with the Trump administration maintaining its stance of climate denial.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We know where this administration is. It's living in a fact-free fantasy," said Gary Hirshberg, chairman of the organic yogurt company Stonyfield Farm. "But this is a matter of enormous urgency. What we need to help our colleagues and representatives understand is that this is not a partisan issue."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Said Welsh, "I think everybody understands that not much is going to get done in this Congress, in the polarized, divisive state we're in. But that's not a deterrent. That does not discourage us. It may be the first time we're up on the Hill, but it won't be the last time."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">random mma grab 519</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ABC News somehow spent more time on the royal baby in one week than it spent covering the climate crisis in all of 2018. Other networks were not much better.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A House subcommittee held a hearing regarding a recent report that warned that human activity is causing mass extinctions -- and those extinctions in turn threaten humanity's food supply and water. Republicans called two climate change deniers who have frequently appeared on Fox News; the pair used the hearing to attack climate change and accusing the scientists who wrote the report of having a political agenda. Worst of all, the two got more air time during the hearing than the four actual scientists invited by Democrats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schoolchildren around the globe walked out to protest climate inaction. Bill McKibben wrote about the need for the protests in The New Yorker: "Unless it’s your town that day that’s being hit by wildfire or a flood, it’s easy to let the day’s more pressing news take precedence. It can be hard to remember that climate change underlies so many daily injustices, from the forced migration of refugees to the spread of disease. Indeed, the people who suffer the most are usually those on the periphery—the iron law of climate change is that the less you did to cause it the more you suffer from it. So we focus on the latest Presidential tweet or trade war instead of on the latest incremental rise in carbon dioxide, even though that, in the end, is the far more critical news. A one-day work stoppage—a decision to spend a day demanding action from governments or building a bike path—is a way to break out of that bad habit."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These kids protesting could have a big impact: A study found that children are effective at changing the minds of parents about climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A new study found that the sea level may rise as much as seven-and-a-half feet by 2100 -- or twice as high by 2100 as predicted by the UN in a 2013 assessment. The study found that such a rise would permanently flood cities like New York, New Orleans, and Miami, as well as numerous other cities around the globe, causing hundreds of millions of refugees. On the bright side, the authors found this horrific sea level rise would only occur if nothing is done to lower emissions in intervening years. (Of course, on the other hand, nothing is being done.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"What if reporters covered the climate crisis like Edward R. Murrow covered the start of World War II?" That was the question from Bill Moyers as Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation launched a new program to increase coverage of climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump administration moved to silence the head of the CDC's climate and health program -- but he is fighting back.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse took to the Senate floor and called for better media coverage of the climate crisis: "I have noticed this trend so I’ve begun keeping an eye on the Sunday shows’ coverage this year. Each month I look at how many substantive segments on climate change each show runs. It’s not good. In April, for instance, there were only two substantive segments on climate change across all five shows. They have basically become Sunday morning political gossip columns."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Colorado senator and 2020 hopeful Michael Bennet introduced his plan to combat climate changeMonday, in the first major policy rollout of his campaign. Bennet's plan calls for the establishment of a "Climate Bank," using $1 trillion in federal spending to "catalyze" $10 trillion in private spending for the U.S. to transition entirely to net-zero emissions by 2050.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The plan also calls for a state "climate challenge," providing federal funds for states to slash emissions by 2030, as well as conservation of 30 percent of the country's lands and oceans by 2030.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The plan is short on specific policies to curb emissions, like a carbon tax or renewable energy mandates, which the Bennet campaign says would come during the first days of his administration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For a deeper dive:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Politico, Denver Post, CBS, AP, Reuters</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yellowstone’s Grizzlies Are Wandering Farther from Home and Dying in Greater Numbers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BY: JOHNATHAN HETTINGER</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate change has fueled the devastation of one of the grizzly bear’s key food sources, and more of its Yellowstone habitat is at risk as temperatures rise.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">yikes, scary amplify canada arboreal forest 2x rise? glacier 16x, ocean warming</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/plenty-of-collusion-for-the-ultimate-crime-lighting-the-earth-on-fire/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">tom dispatch</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And let’s not kid ourselves, this planet of ours is beginning to burn — and not just last week or month either. It’s been smoldering for decades now. Last summer, for instance, amid global heat records (Ouargla, Algeria, 124 degrees Fahrenheit; Hong Kong, over 91 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 straight days; Nawabsha, Pakistan, 122 degrees Fahrenheit; Oslo, Norway, over 86 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 consecutive days; Los Angeles, 108 degrees Fahrenheit), wildfires raged inside the Arctic Circle. This March, in case you hadn’t noticed — and why would you, since it’s gotten so little attention? — the temperature in Alaska was, on average, 20 degrees (yes, that is not a misprint) above normal and typical ice roads between villages and towns across parts of that state were melting and collapsing with deaths ensuing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, in the Antarctic, ice is melting at a rate startling to scientists. If the process accelerates, global sea levels could rise far faster than expected, beginning to drown coastal cities like Miami, New York, and Shanghai more quickly than previously imagined. Meanwhile, globally, the wildfire season is lengthening. Fearsome fires are on the rise, as are droughts, and that’s just to begin to paint a picture of a heating planet and its ever more extreme weather systems and storms, of (if you care to think of it that way) a Whole Earth version of Notre Dame.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Arsonists Arrive</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As was true with Notre Dame, when it comes to the planet, there were fire alarms before an actual blaze was fully noted. Take, for example, the advisory panel of scientists reporting to President Lyndon Johnson on the phenomenon of global warming back in 1965. They would, in fact, predict with remarkable accuracy how our world was going to change for the worse by this twenty-first-century moment. (And Johnson, in turn, would bring the subject up officially for perhaps the first time in a Special Message to Congress on February 5, 1965, 54 years before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal proposal.) As that panel wrote at the time, “Through his worldwide industrial civilization, Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment. Within a few generations he is burning the fossil fuels that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years…” In other words, the alarm was first sounded more than half a century ago.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When it comes to climate change, however, as the smoke began to appear and, in our own moment, the first flames began to leap — after all, the last four years have been the hottest on record and, despite the growth of ever less expensive alternative energy sources, carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere are still rising, not falling — no firemen arrived (just children). There were essentially no adults to put out the blaze. Yes, there was the Paris climate accord but it was largely an agreement in principle without enforcement power of any genuine sort.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, across significant parts of the planet, those who appeared weren’t firefighters at all, but fire feeders who will likely prove to be the ultimate arsonists of human history. In a way, it’s been an extraordinary performance. Leaders who vied for, or actually gained, power not only refused to recognize the existence of climate change but were quite literally eager to aid and abet the phenomenon. This is true, for instance, of the new president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who came to power prepared to turn the already endangered carbon sink of the Amazon rain forest into a playground for corporate and agricultural destroyers. It is similarly true in Europe, where right-wing populist movements have begun to successfully oppose gestures toward dealing with climate change, gaining both attention and votes in the process. In Poland, for instance, just such a party led by President Andrzej Duda has come to power and the promotion of coal production has become the order of the day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And none of that compared to developments in the richest, most powerful country of all, the one that historically has put more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere than any other. On taking office, Donald Trump appointed more climate-change deniers to his cabinet than might have previously seemed possible and swore fealty to “American energy dominance,” while working to kneecap the development of alternative energy systems.&nbsp; He and his men tried to open new areas to oil and gas drilling, while in every way imaginable striving to remove what limits there had been on Big Energy, so that it could release its carbon emissions into the atmosphere unimpeded. And as the planetary cathedral began to burn, the president set the mood for the moment (at least for his vaunted “base”) by tweeting such things as “It’s really cold outside, they are calling it a major freeze, weeks ahead of normal. Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming!” or, on alternative energy, “You would be doing wind, windmills, and if it doesn’t if it doesn’t blow you can forget about television for that night… Darling, I want to watch television. I’m sorry, the wind isn’t blowing.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among those who will someday be considered the greatest criminals in history, don’t forget the Big Energy CEOs who, knowing the truth about climate change from their own hired scientists, did everything they could to increase global doubts by funding climate-denying groups, while continuing to be among the most profitable companies around. They even hedged their bets by, among other things, investing in alternative energy and using it to more effectively drill for oil and natural gas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, of course, the planet that had proven such a comfortable home for humanity was visibly going down. No, climate change won’t actually destroy the Earth itself, just the conditions under which humanity (and so many other species) thrived on it. Sooner or later, if the global temperature is indeed allowed to rise a catastrophic seven degrees Fahrenheit or four degrees Celsius, as an environmental impact statement from the Trump administration suggested it would by 2100, parts of the planet could become uninhabitable, hundreds of millions of human beings could be set in desperate motion, and the weather could intensify in ways that might be nearly unbearable for human habitation. Just read David Wallace-Wells’s The Uninhabitable Earth, if you doubt me.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This isn’t even contestable information anymore and yet it’s perfectly possible that Donald Trump could be elected to a second term in 2020. It’s perfectly possible that more right-wing populist movements could sweep into power in Europe. It’s perfectly possible that Vladimir Putin’s version of great powerdom — a sagging Russian petro-state — could continue on its present globally warming path well into the future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Understand this: Trump, Bolsonaro, Duda, Putin, and the others are just part of human history. Sooner or later, they will be gone. Climate change, however, is not part of human history (whatever it may do to civilization as we know it). Its effects could, in human terms, last for almost unimaginable periods of time. It operates on a different time scale entirely, which means that, unlike the tragedies and nightmares of human history, it is not just a passing matter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, the planet will survive, as will some life forms (as would be true even if humanity were to succumb to that other possible path to an apocalypse, a nuclear holocaust resulting in “nuclear winter”).&nbsp; But that should be considered small consolation indeed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Putting the Planet on a Suicide Watch</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consider global warming a story for the ages, one that should put Notre Dame’s near-destruction after almost nine centuries in grim perspective. And yet the planetary version of burning, which should be humanity’s crisis of all crises, has been met with a general lack of media attention, reflecting a lack of just about every other kind of attention in our world (except by those outraged children who know that they are going to inherit a degraded world and are increasingly making their displeasure about it felt).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To take just one example of that lack of obvious attention, the response of the mega-wealthy to the burning of Notre Dame was an almost instantaneous burst of giving. The euro equivalent of nearly a billion dollars was raised more or less overnight from the wealthiest of French families and other .01%ers. Remind me of the equivalent for climate change as the planet’s spire threatens to come down?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As for arsonists like Donald Trump and the matter of collusion, there’s not even a question mark on the subject. In the United States, such collusion with the destroyers of human life on Planet Earth is written all over their actions. It’s beyond evident in the appointment of former oil and gas lobbyists and fellow travelers to positions of power. Will there, however, be the equivalent of a Mueller investigation? Will the president be howling “witch hunt” again? Not a chance. When it comes to Donald Trump and climate change, there will be neither a Mueller Report, nor the need for a classic Barr defense. And yet collusion — hell, yeah! The evidence is beyond overwhelming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We are, of course, talking about nothing short of the ultimate crime, but on any given day of our lives, you’d hardly notice that it was underway. Even for an old man like me, it’s a terrifying thing to watch humanity make a decision, however inchoate, to essentially commit suicide. In effect, there is now a suicide watch on Planet Earth. Let’s hope the kids can make a difference.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24042019/climate-change-fish-local-extinction-marine-species-hit-harder-land-animals-study-nature</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sea creatures, especially those that live in shallower water near the coasts, are much more vulnerable to global warming than land animals, new research shows. The scientists found that local populations of marine animals are disappearing at double the rate of land-based species.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That's because marine animals like fish, crabs and lobster are already more likely to be living near the threshold of life-threatening temperatures, and because in the ocean, there are fewer places to hide from extreme heat, said Malin Pinsky, lead author of a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"These results are stunning, in part because the impacts of climate change on ocean life were virtually ignored just a decade ago," said Pinsky, an ocean researcher at Rutgers University. The study took a close look at cold-blooded marine species whose body temperatures are dependent on their surroundings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some fish can move poleward to cooler waters, but for others, those thermal refuges will be inaccessible because the cooler areas are too far away or because shallow water habitat along continental shelves is not continuous. That can affect people in developing countries that depend heavily on fish as a daily source of food.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Understanding which creatures are most at risk allows scientists and fisheries managers to better allocate resources for conservation, Pinsky said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We already know terrestrial species are highly vulnerable to climate change," he said, "and now we see that marine species are even more vulnerable."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some Fish Already Reaching Thermal Limits</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Locally caught fish are an important source of protein for about half the world's population, and the new study shows that some of those species near the equator are among the most vulnerable to global warming because they already live near the edge of their heat tolerance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We're heading into uncharted territories. We're already seeing species disappear from places they've been for generations and longer," Pinsky said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, damselfish and cardinalfish, two small species that live on coral reefs, already live near their thermal limits and have started to disappear from some areas, which contributes to the overall decline of coral reef health.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Off the coast of North Carolina, summer flounder are another example, Pinsky said. They have moved so far to find cooler waters that it's had a big effect on fisheries, with boats having to travel more than 600 miles farther north to catch the species....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">icn 419</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4 Ways to Cut Plastic’s Growing Greenhouse Gas Emissions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BY: PHIL MCKENNA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Every stage of plastic's life cycle, from fossil fuel extraction to disposal, produces greenhouse gases. These scientists looked at ways to reduce the climate damage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div>