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Russ Schumacher, Colorado State University and Becky Bolinger, Colorado State University

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?

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

What are the new normals?

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.

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.

Why are normals updated?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Most of the U.S. had more months in 1991-2020 that were warmer than the 1981-2010 average than months that were colder.

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.

Becky Bolinger, CC BY-ND

The concept of 'normal' in weather and climate

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.

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.

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.

Average summer precipitation in Fort Collins, Colorado, can vary by a factor of 10 from year to year.

Summer precipitation at Fort Collins, Colorado, for the years 1991-2020. The black circle indicates the 30-year average precipitation of 4.97 inches.

Russ Schumacher and Becky Bolinger, CC BY-ND

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.

Comparing 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.

What the new normals show

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.

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.

Average temperatures were higher across most of the U.S. in 1991-2020 than in 1981-2010.

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.

Russ Schumacher and Becky Bolinger, data from NOAA, CC BY-ND

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.

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.

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.

Most of the Central and Eastern U.S. was wetter in 1991-2020 than in 1981-2010, while most Western states were drier.

Difference between 1991-2020 average and 1981-2010 average precipitation for each month, with the annual change in the bottom panel. Browns shading shows where the new normals are drier; green shading shows where the new normals are wetter.

Russ Schumacher and Becky Bolinger, data from NOAA, CC BY-ND

Shifting to new climate normals can have counterintuitive effects. For example, in the next few years there may be a better chance that you'll see what are now described as cooler-than-normal temperatures in a given day or month. Using Fort Collins again as an example, before the update, a summer average temperature of 70 F would have been slightly warmer than normal. Now that same summer would go down as being slightly cooler than normal, even though it would still be warmer than around 100 of the 127 years in the history of that location.

Meteorologists and climatologists are already starting to incorporate these new normals into our work. But when you hear the term “normal," keep in mind that it reflects a 30-year snapshot and represents a different reality today than it did 30, 60 or 100 years ago.

[Get our best science, health and technology stories. Sign up for The Conversation's science newsletter.]The Conversation

Russ Schumacher, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science and Colorado State Climatologist, Colorado State University and Becky Bolinger, Assistant State Climatologist and Research Scientist in Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The fires that follow

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When permafrost perishes

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.

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.

Carbon-rich peat burns readily, making it good fuel for lightning-caused fires.

(U.S. National Parks Service, Western Arctic National Parklands)]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Catherine Dieleman, Research associate, Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph

This article is republished from The Conversation

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/a-vote-for-the-apocalypse

tom E

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."

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.

"This is not an act of God"

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.

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.")

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."

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?"

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.

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.

In an all-too-literal fashion, The Donald is indeed proving to be history's "fire and fury" president.

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.

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!)

Our very own firenado

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.

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 TomDispatchauthors 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.

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).

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/new-global-report-warns-nearly-40-of-plants-are-at-risk-of-extinction

no lnx vid guk twt

New global report warns nearly 40% of plants are at risk of extinction

Jessica Corbett and Common Dreams October 01, 2020

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.

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.

"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.

"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."

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."

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.

"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."

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.'"

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."

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.

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."

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."

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."

"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.

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."

"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."

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/new-analysis-finds-planet-heading-toward-temperature-threshold-not-seen-in-34-million-years/

comm dr

a newly publishedstudyconducted 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.”

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.

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.

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.

what the scientists found is that the planet has gone through four distinctive climate phases, which they label “warmhouse, hothouse, coolhouse, and icehouse states.”

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.

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]

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.

Prior to the industrial era, it would have taken thousands of years, at least, for such dramatic levels of warming to unfold.

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.”

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.”

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.

“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.”

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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.

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https://www.ecowatch.com/1-5-degrees-celsius-2024-study-2647536374.html

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Greenhouse Gases Rise as CO₂ Emissions Slow

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.

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.

Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂0) from WMO Global Atmosphere Watch.

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.

We estimate a decline for 2020 of about 4-7% compared to 2019 levels, depending on how the pandemic plays out.

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.

Global daily fossil CO₂ emissions to June 2020. Updated from Le Quéré et al. 2020, Nature Climate Change.

Warmest Five Years on Record

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

1 in 4 Chance of Exceeding 1.5°C Warming

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.

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.

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.

[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.

Arctic Ocean Sea-Ice Disappearing

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.

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.

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.

Urgent Action Can Change Trends

Human activities emitted 42 billion tons of CO₂ in 2019 alone. Under the Paris Agreement, nations committed to reducing emissions by 2030.

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.

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.

Pep Canadell is a Chief research scientist, Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; and Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO.

Rob Jackson is a Chair, Department of Earth System Science, and Chair of the Global Carbon Project, Stanford University.

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.

https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-methane-emissions-regulations-2646947182.html

820

720

covid cover even more dereg including NEPA, arctic 100 C

720 ew

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Tuesday that a trend of increased coastal flooding will continue to worsen as the climate crisis escalates.

deforest:

https://www.ecowatch.com/rainforest-loss-2019-2646150833.html

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.

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.

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.

"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.

Brazil's losses preceded President Jair Bolsonaro's legislative moves to loosen rules that would otherwise protect regions from minerals extraction and agriculture.

"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.

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.

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.

Tougher enforcement and bans on new oil-palm concessions, had all helped, said Arief Wijaya, expert at World Resources Institute Indonesia.

Bolivia Has 80% Higher Loss

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.

"Its highly biodiverse Chiquitano Dry Forest was particularly affected, with reports that nearly 12% of it burned," said the study.

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.

Indigenous Rights Protect Forests Too

WRI's Seymour said a "mounting body of evidence" suggested that legal recognition of indigenous land rights "provides greater forest protection:

"We know that deforestation is lower in indigenous territories," Seymour said.

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.

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.

Its authors again warned that slashing forests had major implications for global goals to curb climate change.

"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.

Trees are estimated to absorb about a third of all planet-warming emissions from fossil-fuel combustion, including petrol and diesel-powered vehicles.

Pandemic Weakens Enforcement

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.

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.

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.

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.

Glasgow's COP26 Postponed

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.

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.

Reposted with permission from Deutsche Welle.

rainforests deforestation wildlife amazon rainforest climate crisis carbon emissions

620 ew

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.

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*.

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."

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."

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.

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.

"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.

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.

"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."

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.

carbon emissions greenhouse gases coal fossil fuels climate change science forests

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aha omg: amazon will be no longer a buffer but emitter soon? mostly b/c of burning?!

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/29/megadrought-us-south-west-fires-water-research

US south-west in grip of historic 'megadrought', research finds

Intensified by climate change, the current 20-year arid period is one of the worst on record, with wide-ranging effects

Samuel Gilbert

@samuelgilbert1

Fri 29 May 2020 05.30 EDTLast modified on Fri 29 May 2020 08.31 EDT

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.

When Ken Pimlott began fighting US wildfires at the age of 17, they seemed to him to be a brutal but manageable natural phenomenon.

Dust bowl conditions of 1930s US now more than twice as likely to reoccur

Read more

“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.”

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

Water deliveries from the Colorado River are also being rationed this year, for the first time.

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.

“Were seeing more intense fires, with longer durations,” he said.

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icn 5/20

50 Years From Now, Many Densely Populated Parts of the World Could be Too Hot for Humans

BY: BOB BERWYN

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.

no brainer to stop subsidizing ?!

icn 420

super-Polluting Methane Emissions Twice Federal Estimates in Permian Basin, Study Finds

BY: PHIL MCKENNA

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.

https://www.ecowatch.com/water-crisis-5-lessons-2645724350.html

5 Lessons for the Future of Water

World Economic Forum

Apr 16 ew

https://www.ecowatch.com/southwest-drought-climate-crisis-2645742986.html

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.

"This appears to be just the beginning of a more extreme trend toward megadrought as global warming continues," the authors wrote in the study.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

"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."

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.

It all could get much worse.

"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."

Without a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, these droughts are just the beginning.

"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....

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/if-were-facing-climate-change-doom-should-we-still-take-action-anyway/

philos kant gramsci

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07042020/global-warming-ecosystem-biodiversity-rising-heat-species

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.

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.

"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.

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.

"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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

"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.

"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.

Species in Tropics, Polar Regions, Will be Hardest Hit

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.

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....

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/while-we-fixate-on-coronavirus-earth-is-hurtling-towards-a-catastrophe-worse-than-the-dinosaur-extinction

no lnx / graf

While we fixate on coronavirus, Earth is hurtling towards a catastrophe worse than the dinosaur extinction

This 2002 Blue Marble ]

Written by The Conversation April 10, 2020

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.

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.

I am an Earth and Paleo-climate scientist and have researched the relationships between asteroid impacts, volcanism, climate changes and mass extinctions of species.

Here’s what the coronavirus pandemic can teach us about tackling climate change

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.

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.

The current rate of CO2 emissions is a major event in the recorded history of Earth.

Past mass extinctions

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.

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.

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.

So is life on Earth now headed for the same fate?

Comparing greenhouse gas levels

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.

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

Carbon dioxide is now pouring into the atmosphere at a rate of two to three parts per million each year.

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.

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).

The next mass extinction has begun

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A diagram showing the weakening Arctic jet stream, and subsequent movements of warm and cold air.

NASA]

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.

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.

Uncharted future climate territory

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.

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.

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.

[Read more:

Anatomy of a heatwave: how Antarctica recorded a 20.75°C day last month

The Conversation

Andrew Glikson, Earth and paleo-climate scientist, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

CAFE smash crisis

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/trump-to-announce-his-most-disastrous-environmental-policy-so-far/

no lnx

Trump to announce his most disastrous environmental policy so far

Written by Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams March 31, 2020

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.

The administration is expected to announce the new rule Tuesday.

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. The Trump administration will significantly weaken that standard and instead require a 1.5% annual increase, putting the 2025 at 40 mpg.

“Of all the bad things President Trump has done to the environment, this is the worst,” said Dan Becker, director of Safe Climate Campaign.

“Amid a spiraling health crisis and economic turmoil, Trump is recklessly driving us over a climate cliff,” Becker added.

As Bloomberg reported,

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.

The expected regulatory change drew criticism from climate experts who said it spells bad news for consumers and the planet alike.

“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.”

Ken Kimmell, president of Union of Concerned Scientists, concurred.

“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.

“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.”

220 mojo

Oil and Gas Firms “Have Had Far Worse Climate Impact Than Thought”

JONATHAN WATTS

https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-plant-and-animal-species-2645160419.html

no lnx graf

By Jessica Corbett

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.

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.

"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."

As Wiens explained, "This means that using changes in mean annual temperatures to predict extinction from climate change might be positively misleading."

Lead author Román-Palacios laid out their key findings in a series of tweets Thursday:

"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."

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."

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.

"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.

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."

"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."

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."

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.

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."

Reposted with permission from Common Dreams.

Endangered Wolf's 8,700-Mile Journey Ends in Tragedy - EcoWatch ›

This Penguin Colony Has Fallen by 77% on Antarctic Islands ... ›

Climate crisis: One-third of all plant and animal species could be ... ›

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/new-study-warns-climate-chaos-is-driving-a-rapid-decline-of-bumblebees/

OMG interacion matthew

https://yyy.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jan/22/wealth-gap-widening-for-more-than-70-per-cent-of-global-population-researchers-find

guk

Inequality and development

Wealth gap widening for more than 70% of global population, researchers find

Policymakers urged to act on climate and bridge digital divide as study shows soaring inequality is affecting millions

Global development is supported by

About this content

Sam Phan

Wed 22 Jan 2020 07.46 EST

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.

If nothing is done to address the problem, the prosperity and development of millions of people could be damaged.

“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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

Climate, inequality, hunger: which global problems would you fix first?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

“This is not [our] destiny. If we act now through policy, we can deliver better outcomes.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

wildlife species extinction deforestation pollution davos world economic forum biodiversity extreme weather paris agreement coral reefs rainforests sixth mass extinction climate crisis

i thot maybe pearl harbor moment tip pt at last? uptick after slow start?

https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/us-broadcast-news-coverage-australian-fires-largely-fails-connect-crisis-climate

corp news fail connect fires to age, plus

:{Amid raging bushfire, Rupert Murdoch's Australian media empire turns a blind eye to climate crisis:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

:{:(style="box-sizing:border-box;display:flex;height:1.5em;margin-right:1em;width:1.5em"):}:01/06/20 3:32 PM EST

krugman correctly ID's tipping pt? he's a systems guy?

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/

no lnx

‘A historical turning point’: Paul Krugman warns that disaster in Australia is a sign we’re ‘barreling down the road to hell’

Written by Alex Henderson January 10, 2020

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.

“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.”

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.”

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.

As destructive as the Australian wildfires have been, Krugman warns, diehard climate change deniers are unlikely to be swayed by science.

“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.”

Right-wing climate change deniers, according to Krugman, are as problematic in Canberra (the Australian capital) as they are in Washington, D.C.

“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.”

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.

“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.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/paul-krugman-apocalypse-is-the-new-normal/

Paul Krugman: ‘Apocalypse’ is the ‘new normal’

Earth's Hottest Decade on Record Was Marked by Extreme Storms and Deadly Wildfires

BY: BOB BERWYN

As global warming intensified, people and ecosystems felt the climate changing.

https://www.ecowatch.com/2019-climate-wins-2642492657.html

20 reasons hope

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/here-are-nine-things-you-love-that-are-being-wrecked-by-climate-change/

wine

trump record:

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19122019/trump-climate-policy-record-rollback-fossil-energy-history-candidate-profile

Been There

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.

"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.

Done That

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.

"We are going to turn everything around," Trump declared. "And quickly, very quickly."

As president, he has rolled back regulations on energy suppliers at a rapid clip slowed only at timesby 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.

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.

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.

Getting Specific

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 eliminationanyrules 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.

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 approveda 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.

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 alsofurther 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.
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.

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.

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.

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 ruledthe hold was illegal.

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.

Our Take

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.

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.

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

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/12/14/1905639/-Methane-super-emitters-releasing-massive-plumes-after-Trump-rolled-back-environmental-regulations#read-more

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Natural Gas Rush Drives a Global Rise in Fossil Fuel Emissions

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03122019/fossil-fuel-emissions-2019-natural-gas-bridge-oil-coal-climate-change

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

Supplementing Rather Than Supplanting

Natural gas presents a particular challenge.

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.

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.

...

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/29/climate-low-carbon-transition-disrupting-fossil-fuel-politics

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.

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 callclimate 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.

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.

Car Wars

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Methane Capture

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.

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.

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.

In contrast, the American Petroleum Institute and smaller oil and gas companies support the rollback, claiming that methane control is too expensive.

[vid]

Shades of Green

Beyond these specific controversies, many companies in the energy sector and beyond have voiced support for moving to a lower-carbon economy.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An Existential Choice

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.

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.

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.

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.

Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. [Sign up for our weekly newsletter. ]

Cara Daggett is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech.

UN report

World’s Emissions Gap Is Growing, with No Sign of Peaking Soon, UN Warns 11/19.

World’s Current Fossil Fuel Plans Will Shatter Paris Climate Limits, UN Warns

BY NICHOLAS KUSNETZ

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27112019/climate-tipping-points-permafrost-forests-ice-antarctica-greenland-amazon-nature

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.

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.

"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."

The scientists focused on nine parts of the climate system susceptible to tipping points, some of them interconnected:

Arctic sea ice, which is critical for reflecting the sun's energy back into space but is disappearing as the planet warms.
The Greenland Ice Sheet, which could raise sea level 20 feet if it melts.
Boreal forests, which would release morecarbon dioxide (CO2) than they absorb if they die and decay or burn.
Permafrost, which releases methane and other greenhouse gases as it thaws.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a key ocean current, which would shift global weather patterns if it slowed down or stopped.
The Amazon rainforest, which could flip from a net absorber of greenhouse gases to a major emitter.
Warm-water corals, which will die on a large scale as the ocean warms, affecting commercial and subsistence fisheries.
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.
Parts of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet that would also raise sea level significantly if they melted.

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.

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.

Research shows that melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet may also be slowingtheAtlantic 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.

"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.

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."

Lack of Policy Urgency as Permafrost Thaws

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.

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.

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 Naturecommentary.

"To err on the side of danger is not a responsible option," they wrote.

long, cont....]

https://www.ecowatch.com/superfund-sites-climate-disaster-2641394009.html

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.

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.

...

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.

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.

"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.

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....

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/04/analysis-why-it-s-risky-invest-saudi-aramco-s-climate-wreckage-sale

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.

The sale is of oil, a large proportion of which we cannot afford to burn if we want a livable future. Read more...

Andy Rowell for Oil Change International

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.

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.

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.”

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”.

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.

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.

Climate contradiction

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

Financial risk

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

For this reason, the guardians of trillions of dollars should not be investing in Saudi Aramco’s climate wreckage sale.

ref

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions

no lnx

guk

Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions

Chevron’s Kern River oil field in Bakersfield, California. Photograph: Guardian Design

New data shows how fossil fuel companies have driven climate crisis despite industry knowing dangers

Half a century of dither and denial – a climate crisis timeline

Why we need political action to tackle the oil, coal and gas companies - video explainer

by Matthew Taylor and Jonathan Watts

Wed 9 Oct 2019 07.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 10 Oct 2019 09.18 EDT

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.

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.

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.

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.

Q&A

What is the polluters project?

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.

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.

Why we need political action to tackle the oil, coal and gas companies - video explainer]

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.”

https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-that-an-extraterrestrial-collision-12-800-years-ago-triggered-an-abrupt-climate-change-for-earth-118244

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/dont-count-on-capitalism-to-save-the-earth/

no lnx

Don’t count on capitalism to save the Earth

Written by Ted Morgan / Salon October 19, 2019

The bad news just keeps coming. Again and again, science-based studies uncover increasing evidence that the planet is headed toward unfathomable disaster.

In the last year alone, we have seen publication of the US National Climate Assessment’s Fourth National Climate report, 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.

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).”

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.

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.”

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.”

We can observe three kinds of responses to the crisis of climate change. 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.

Millions participated the global Climate Strike on September 20. 530 groups from around the world signed on to the Lofoten Declaration calling for rapid phasing out of fossil fuels.

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. 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.

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. Several governments have taken preliminary steps toward altering their emissions, and even more have pledged to do so.

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.

These steps remain woefully inadequate if the world is to avoid a cataclysmic outcome.

Why this relative inaction in the face of global catastrophe? The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions are produced by the world’s developed capitalist economies, with China and the US leading the way. By contrast, people in nations that have the least impact on climate change are most vulnerable to the worst of its effects.

This climate injustice is only one manifestation of the inequalities and injustices built into the capitalist powers’ imperial exploitation of the “under-developed” world. 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.

Consequently, each of the capitalist powers is loathe to weaken its competitive position vis à vis the other capitalist economies. In a capitalist world, each economic unit must act to protect what it deems its own interests. The only counterweight comes from the public sector.

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. And, of course, corporations and the wealthy dominate the shaping of public policy — nowhere more than in the US.

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.

Lastly, however, the Trump administration and its fossil fuel allies have thumbed their noses at the world by brazenly accelerating the race to destruction.

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. 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.

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. Left unchecked, climate change casualties could climb into the millions. Those political actors and fossil fuel producers who resist the fundamental changes that are necessary become guilty of producing these deaths — in short, guilty of crimes against humanity.

The world cannot wait for the capitalist states to enact adequate constraints on greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, the Climate Strike and Extinction Rebellion are the beginning of a global uprising of increasing numbers of an increasingly well informed public. The confrontation with the powerful polluters will only grow; it will not diminish. 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.

Climate Change Threatens the World’s Fisheries, Food Billions of People Rely On

BY GEORGINA GUSTIN

ICN 919

https://medium.com/s/teamhuman/the-power-of-panic-with-david-wallace-wells-d86abe222f1e

TEAM HUMAN

‘The Power of Panic’ With David Wallace-Wells

On why the climate crisis is both inevitable and avoidable

Douglas Rushkoff

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/severe-climate-related-droughts-could-threaten-60-of-global-wheat-crop-by-2100/

...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.

“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.”

—study

“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.”

The peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Science Advances, was conducted by team of researchers from the United States, Europe, and Asia.

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.

...

wapo no lnx

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/big-money-urges-governments-to-tackle-climate-change/2019/09/19/

Big money urges governments to tackle climate change

By Frank Jordans?|?AP

September 18, 2019 at 9:50 p.m. PDT

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

Institutional investors have become increasingly vocal about the need to confront climate change lately.

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.

“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.”

For more Associated Press stories about climate change, go to https://www.apnews.com/Climate

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/terrifying-new-climate-models-warn-of-6-7c-of-catastrophic-warming-without-drastic-action/

no lnx

‘Terrifying’ new climate models warn of 6-7°C of catastrophic warming without drastic action

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams September 18, 2019

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.

The findings, presented at a press conference in Paris, suggest theplanet may be warming significantly faster than scientists previously believed as the world’s major economies continue to burn fossil fuels at unsustainable rates.

“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.”

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.

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.

“We have better models now,” Boucher told AFP on Tuesday. “They have better resolution, and they represent current climate trends more accurately.”

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.

The worst-case scenario of 6.5-7.0°C of warming assumed continued economic expansion driven by growth of fossil fuel production.

Megara9

@Meg9Time

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 …

Earth to warm more quickly, new climate models show

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...

phys.org

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.

“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.

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.

“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.”

“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.”

ew 919

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.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/its-springtime-for-grifters-paul-krugman-explains-how-trump-is-bad-for-us-business-but-good-for-scams/

no lnx

‘It’s springtime for grifters’: Paul Krugman explains how Trump is bad for US business — but good for scams

Written by Cody Fenwick September 5, 2019

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

Indeed, Krugman noted that, to the surprise of some, fossil fuel companies have opposed Trump’s efforts to roll back Obama-era environmental regulation.

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.

Krugman added that uncertainty isn’t actually bad for all business. One type of business doesn’t mind Trump’s antics? Scams:

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.

In other words, under Trump it’s springtime for grifters.

Of course, we shouldn’t be too surprised to find ourselves in these conditions, Krugman argued, when we elected the founder ofTrump University.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/elizabeth-warren-adopts-inslees-climate-plan-im-challenging-every-other-candidate-to-do-same/

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trump-moves-to-accelerate-climate-change-and-its-even-more-evil-than-it-first-appears/

no lnx

Trump moves to accelerate climate change — and it’s even more evil than it first appears

Written by Martin Longman / Washington Monthly August 29, 2019

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.

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.

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…

…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…

…“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

The government’s plan would ease requirements on oil and gas sites to monitor for methane leaks and plug them.

This plan is actually even more evil than it might first appear, as the Washington Post reports:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Climate scientists may not be the best communicators of climate threats

Risa Palm, Georgia State University and Toby W. Bolsen, Georgia State University

Some climate scientists have spoken out about the dangers of climate change. But a new study shows those voices may not be very influential.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04082019/climate-change-ratings-agencies-financial-risk-cities-companies

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.

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.

"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.

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."

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.

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.

"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."

Which Places and Sectors Are Most at Risk?

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

Slow Start, but 'Going in the Right Direction'

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."

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.

"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."

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.

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.

"Everyone agrees that the science is real, the risk is real," she said, "but the market isn't accurately pricing it yet."

Published Aug. 5, 2019

PUBLISHED UNDER:

BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTABILITY

EXTREME WEATHER

CLIMATE CHANGE

ff 75% ghg land use 25% DN

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/03/ipcc-land-use-food-production-key-to-climate-crisis-leaked-report

guk no lnx

We must change food production to save the world, says leaked report

Cutting carbon from transport and energy ‘not enough’ IPCC finds

Robin McKie

Sun 4 Aug 2019 04.00 EDT First published on Sat 3 Aug 2019 08.00 EDT

Hereford beef cattle. The IPCC report says meat consumption should be cut to reduce methane emissions.

Hereford beef cattle. The IPCC report says meat consumption should be cut to reduce methane emissions. Photograph: Australian Scenics/Getty Images

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

• Arctic sea-ice coverage reached near record lows for July;

• The heatwaves that hit Europe last month were between 1.5C and 3C higher because of climate change;

• Global temperatures for July were 1.2C above pre-industrial levels for the month.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/08/17-countries-home-one-quarter-world-population-face-extremely-high-water-stress

Once-unthinkable water crises are becoming commonplace.

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.

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.

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...

trump faLLOUT:

https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-deforestation-unrecoverable-tipping-point-2639358982.html

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]

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 watervapor, according to Newsweek.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

"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.

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.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/why-the-next-18-months-could-decide-the-fate-of-the-country-and-our-civilization/

no lnx

Why the next 18 months could decide the fate of the country — and our civilization

Pixabay

Written by Mark Sumner / Daily Kos July 25, 2019

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So, you know, no pressure.

"terrifying" acidification 719

grist

What shapes your beliefs about the climate crisis? It’s not just left vs. right.

By Kate Yoder on Jul 12, 2019

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

719 yet another report on rapid polar ice melt

Climate change is affecting crop yields and reducing global food supplies

Deepak Ray, University of Minnesota

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.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/a-surprisingly-cheap-and-simple-plan-could-put-a-huge-dent-in-climate-change/

no lnx many

A surprisingly cheap and simple plan could put a huge dent in climate change

written by Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams July 5, 2019

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

Sunrise Movement ??

@sunrisemvmt

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.

(^rough cost estimate but still crazy cheap)

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 …

2,690

Tree planting 'has mind-blowing potential' to tackle climate crisis

Research shows a trillion trees could be planted to capture huge amount of carbon dioxide

theguardian.com

1,161 people are talking about this

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

Crowther, however, appeared optimistic—given the potential impact and wide range of people and institutions that can actually take action.

“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.”

According to the newspaper:

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.

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.

Greta Thunberg

@GretaThunberg

Yes, of course we need to plant as many trees as possible.

Yes, of course we need to keep the existing trees standing and rewild and restore nature.

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 …

Glen Peters

@Peters_Glen

“The only way we can keep below 1.5°C or 2°C is to stop emitting fossil fuels”...

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/ …

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.”

“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.

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.

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.”

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....

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/03/booming-lng-industry-could-be-as-bad-for-climate-as-coal-experts-warn

no lnx

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.

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.

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.

'Problem in waiting': why natural gas will wipe out Australia's emissions gains

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.

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.

“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.

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.

Australia’s LNG industry has already more than tripled since 2012as 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.

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.

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.

A recent study found the level of atmospheric methane has increased significantly since 2007 after a relative flat period. Scientists are unsure why.

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.

“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.”

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.

Australia won't reach Paris target without action on transport, LNG and coal, expert says

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.

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.

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”.

“Australia’s oil and gas sector has a vital role to play in meeting the challenge of reducing global emissions,” McConville said.

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.

“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?”

Comment was sought from Taylor.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/06/24/poll-americans-fossil-fuels-drive-climate-change-pay-damages

Karen Savage, Climate Liability News. Originally posted on Climate Liability News.

The majority of Americans say fossil fuel companies should pay for damage caused by climate change, according to a recentpoll released by Yale University on Wednesday.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

Fossil fuel companies haveknown fordecades that their products cause climate change, but publicly worked to deny that science while internally planning to protect their own business operations and infrastructure.

Dozens ofmunicipalities across thecountry 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.

“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.

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.

“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.”

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.

GOP flipping on fires, flood, hurricane; Luntz sez young ppl will defect

good: a Trump appointee bucks the administration’s policy of climate denial

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.
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.”
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.
The report will probably be ready just as Trump hits the 2020 campaign trail in farm country.
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.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/22/threats-militia-provoke-shutdown-oregon-capitol-day-after-gop-lawmakers-fled/

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/armed-extremists-just-escalated-oregons-fight-over-climate-legislation/

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.

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.”

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.

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.

“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.

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.

“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.”

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:

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

But the Republican spokesperson from the Senate was quoted in a tweet on Friday afternoon, turning down the offer of assistance.

Francis Declares Climate Emergency in Meeting With Big Oil Leaders

AHA! THE SOLUTION IS TO RESTORE THE COMMONS

AHA: REDUCTIONISM KILLS/ ENSLAVES/ EXTRACTS

VS SYSTEMS HEAL, CONNECT, FREE

I/THOU VS I/IT

omfg

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/politics/trump-climate-science.html

some lnx below

Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science

May 27, 2019

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.

Now, after two years spent unraveling the policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault.

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.

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.

[Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter.]

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.

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.

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.

Image

President Trump has pushed to resurrect the idea of holding public debates on the validity of climate science.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times]

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

In an email, James Hewitt, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency, defended the proposed changes.

“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.

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.

Image

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]

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

Image

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

ImageThe Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: The White House Plan to Change Climate Science]

...

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23052019/carbon-pricing-microsoft-pepsi-stonyfield-corporate-lobbying-congress-climate-change-solutions

An epic quest loomed Wednesday before the largest gathering of business leaders in a decade to advocate for climate action on Capitol Hill.

Could they find a single Republican in the U.S. Senate to take up the cause of carbon pricing?

The answer appeared to be: "Not yet."

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.

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.")

"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."

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.

"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.

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 Tweetpraising the carbon fee-and-dividend proposal by the Climate Leadership Council, a coalition of businesses and environmental groups. But Romney, who represents astate where coal is the state rock,was not ready to commit to any view on what Congress should be doing.

"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.

Climate Reports, Polls and a Republican Shift

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.

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.

"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.

"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."

That was also the finding of a national survey released earlier this week by the GOP polling firm Luntz Global. The surveyfound 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.

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.

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 evenAgriculture 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.

"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."

What Business Leaders Are Saying

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.

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.

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.

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.

"We know where this administration is. It's living in a fact-free fantasy," said Gary Hirshberg, chairman of theorganic 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."

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."

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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.

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.

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."

These kids protesting could have a big impact: A study found that children are effective at changing the minds of parents about climate change.

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.)

"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.

The Trump administration moved to silence the head of the CDC's climate and health program -- but he is fighting back.

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."

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.

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.

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.

For a deeper dive:

Politico, Denver Post, CBS, AP, Reuters

Some Fish Already Reaching Thermal Limits

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.

"We're heading into uncharted territories. We're already seeing species disappear from places they've been for generations and longer," Pinsky said.

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.

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.

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4 Ways to Cut Plastic’s Growing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

BY: PHIL MCKENNA

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.