Originally published on
by at Greenbiz
Standardization is a win-win for both companies and ESG rating agencies.
Originally published on
by at Greenbiz
A year into her new job as global sustainability lead of the food program at Google, Kathy Cacciola discusses the skills and strategies it takes to land such a prestigious role.
Originally published on
by at Greenbiz
Understanding where our greenhouse gas emissions come from is crucial to helping us curb them.
Originally published on
by at Greenbiz
Can artificial intelligence conduct an informed conversation about the broad and complex technologies under the climate tech umbrella? Let’s let it speak for itself.
Originally published on
by at Greenbiz
A basic assumption in approaches to risk assessment is that the problems they address can be resolved primarily by better information and technocratic solutions. But business executives, policymakers and the public crave simpler, more practical alternatives.
Originally published on
by at Greenbiz
After almost 6 months of discussions and debate in the European Union, the trading bloc’s response to the Inflation Reduction Act is finally taking shape.
Originally published on
by at Arctic News
Sea ice extent is very low at both poles at the moment, and the outlook is that the situation is getting even worse.
Around Antarctica, sea ice extent was 2.23 million km² on February 2, 2023. Later in February this year, extent looks set to go below the 1.924 million km² all-time record low reached on February 25, 2022.
Arctic sea ice extent was 13.676 km² on February 1 , 2023, the second-lowest extent on record for the time of year, as illustrated by the image below.
As the above image indicates, over the next few days Arctic sea ice extent looks set to reach an all-time record low for the time of year.
It looks like it’s going to be a very strong El Niño, given that we’ve been in a La Niña for such a long time.
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| [ from earlier post, adapted from NOAA ] |
Observed values for January 2023 are already well above the maximum values that NOAA predicted to be reached in July 2025. If this trend continues, the rise in sunspots forcing from May 2020 to July 2025 may well make a difference of more than 0.25°C, a recent analysis found.
Further feedbacks include additional greenhouse gas release such as methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean and methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide from rapidly thawing permafrost on land.
Falling away of this aerosol masking effect could cause a huge temperature rise, while there could be an additional temperature rise due to an increase in warming aerosols and gases as a result of more biomass and waste burning and forest fires.
Links
• NSIDC – Chartic interactive sea ice graph
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph
• Climate Reanalyzer – sea ice based on NSIDC index V3
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/seaice
• Extinction
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html
• Pre-industrial
• NOAA – Climate Prediction Center – ENSO: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
• NOAA – Monthly temperature anomalies versus El Niño
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202213/supplemental/page-2
• Tonga eruption increases chance of temporary surface temperature anomaly above 1.5 °C – by Stuart Jenkins et al.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01568-2
• The Clouds Feedback and the Clouds Tipping Point
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/clouds-feedback.html
Originally published on
by at Greenbiz
Ashley Orgain, chief impact officer at Seventh Generation, discusses how the consumer products company hopes to shift the conversation with its ‘climate fingerprint’ reporting.
Originally published on
by at Greenbiz
Without advances in recycling and decarbonization, the aluminum sector’s emissions could careen towards nearly 2 billion metric tons by 2050.
Originally published on
by at Greenbiz
We need a different kind of leadership — one that makes a positive contribution that counts today and lasts into the future.
Originally published on
by at Greenbiz
Matt Prindiville, CEO and chief solutioneer at Upstream Solutions, discusses his organization’s quest to help reuse business models scale and the need for more infrastructure to support those strategies.
Originally published on
by at Arctic News
by Andrew Glikson
Despite of deceptively-claimed mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in parts of the world, ongoing burning of domestic and exported fossil fuels world-wide continues to change the composition of the atmosphere, enriching it in greenhouse gases by yet another ~2 ppm CO₂ (2022: 418.95 ppm; CH₄: 1915 ppb; N₂0: 337 ppb), reaching levels commensurate with those of the Miocene (23.03 to 5.333 Ma) at rise rates exceeding any in the geological record of the last 66 million years (Glikson, 2020) (Figure 1).
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| Figure 1. Global 1880-2021 annual average temperatures (adapted by UCAR from ClimateCentral). |
Since 1880 mean global temperatures rose at a rate of 0.08°C per decade, from 1981 by 0.18°C per decade and more when emitted aerosols are accounted for (Hansen et al., in Berwyn, 2022). According to Will Steffen, Australia’s leading climate scientist “there was already a chance we have triggered a global tipping cascade that would take us to a less habitable Hothouse Earth climate, regardless of whether we reduced emissions” (Figure 2).
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| Figure 2. Global mean temperature profile since 200 AD projected to beyond 2000 AD (Will Steffen) |
Over a brief span of less than two centuries (Figure 1) anthropogenic reversal of the carbon cycle induced the emission of some 1.5 10¹² tonnes of CO₂ and an increased release of 150% more CH₄ from the crust, accumulated in sediments for hundreds of million years through photosynthesis and calcification, as well as from permafrost and oceans. Permeation of the atmosphere and the hydrosphere with the toxic residues of ancient plants and organisms, poisoning the biosphere, is leading to the Sixth mass extinction of species in the history of nature.
Following failed attempts to deny climate science, vested business and political interests are proceeding, with the support of many governments, to mine coal, sink oil wells and frack hydrocarbon gas, regardless of the consequences in term of global heating, sea level rise, inundation of islands and coastal zones, collapse of the permafrost, heat waves, floods, ocean acidification, migration of climate zones and dissemination of plastic particles, rendering the future of much of the biosphere uninhabitable.
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| Figure 3. Europe: Maximum extreme temperatures, July 17-23, 2002. |
The progression of global warming is unlikely to be linear as the flow of cold ice melt water from Greenland and Antarctica glaciers would cool parts of the ocean and in part the continents (Figure 4), leading toward a stadial-type phenomenon, the classic case of which is symbolized by the Younger dryas cool period 12,900 to 11,700 years ago.
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| Figure 4. Projected transient stadial cooling events (Hansen et al., 2016) |
There was a time when leaders fell on their sword when defeated in battle or lose their core beliefs, nowadays most not even resign their privileged positions to resist the existential danger posed to advanced life, including human civilization, preoccupied as nations are with preparations for nuclear wars.
 |
| Andrew Glikson |
A/Prof. Andrew Glikson
Earth and Paleo-climate scientist
School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences
The University of New South Wales,
Kensington NSW 2052 Australia
Books:
The Asteroid Impact Connection of Planetary Evolution
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400763272
The Archaean: Geological and Geochemical Windows into the Early Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319079073
Climate, Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep Time Dimensions of the Anthropocene
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319225111
The Plutocene: Blueprints for a Post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319572369
Evolution of the Atmosphere, Fire and the Anthropocene Climate Event Horizon
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400773318
From Stars to Brains: Milestones in the Planetary Evolution of Life and Intelligence
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783030106027
Asteroids Impacts, Crustal Evolution and Related Mineral Systems with Special Reference to Australia
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319745442
The Event Horizon: Homo Prometheus and the Climate Catastrophe
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030547332
The Fatal Species: From Warlike Primates to Planetary Mass Extinction
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030754679
Originally published on
by at Arctic News
 |
| [ image adapted from NOAA, from earlier post ] |
The upcoming El Niño looks set to coincide with a high number of sunspots. The number of sunspots is forecast to reach a peak in July 2025 and recent numbers are higher than expected, as illustrated by the image on the right, from NOAA.
In conclusion, the joint impact of a strong El Niño and high sunspots could make a difference of more than 0.65°C. This rise could trigger further developments and feedbacks that altogether could cause a temperature to rise from pre-industrial of as much as 18.44°C by 2026.
Further developments and feedbacks
As said, these developments and feedbacks could jointly cause a temperature rise from pre-industrial of as much as 18.44°C by 2026, as discussed at the Extinction page. Keep in mind that humans are likely to go extinct with a rise of 3°C, as illustrated by the image below, from an analysis discussed in an earlier post.
The situation is dire and threatens to turn catastrophic soon. The right thing to do now is to help avoid or delay the worst from happening, through action as described in the Climate Plan.
Links
• NASA – La Niña Times Three
• NOAA Climate Prediction Center – ENSO: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/sunspots.html
• Cataclysmic Alignment
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2022/06/cataclysmic-alignment.html
• NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, State of the Climate: Monthly Global Climate Report for October 2022, retrieved November 16, 2022
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/2022010/supplemental/page-4
• Tropicaltidbits.comhttps://www.tropicaltidbits.com
• Cold freshwater lid on North Atlantic
• Invisible ship tracks show large cloud sensitivity to aerosol – by Peter Manhausen et al.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05122-0
• Extinction
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html
• When will we die?
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/06/when-will-we-die.html
• Climate Plan
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html
New political leaders in Brazil and Colombia have promised to protect the rainforest, raising hopes of saving the ecosystem from becoming savannah
From the New Scientist, 31 December 2022
By Luke Taylor
The Potaro river running through the Amazon rainforest in Guyana
After four years of runaway deforestation in the Amazon under Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who takes office on 1 January, could be a decisive turning point.
Lula has pledged to aim for net-zero deforestation – the first Brazilian president to do so. “A standing tree is worth more than thousands of logs,” he said in his victory speech on 31 October. “That is why we will resume the surveillance of the entire Amazon and any illegal activity.”
As well as the restoration of monitoring and surveillance efforts, Lula is proposing several ambitious projects, such as a national climate authority and a sustainable farming scheme. But without a majority in Brazil’s Congress, it is unclear whether he will be able to deliver on these pledges. It will also take time to dislodge the illegal industries that have taken hold in the Amazon, such as gold mining.
Despite the challenges ahead, Lula’s win has made researchers and conservationists more optimistic that the Amazon could be saved, even as there are signs it is hitting a tipping point that would see it transform into savannah. “The election of Lula is a great reason for hope,” says Mark Plotkin, an ethnobotanist and co-founder of non-profit organisation the Amazon Conservation Team.
The impact of Lula’s environmental policy should be magnified by the recent election of eco-conscious governments elsewhere in South America that have campaigned to protect the rainforest.
In Colombia, which is home to some of the Amazon’s most biodiverse regions, President Gustavo Petro is also positioning himself as a regional steward of the rainforest, after taking office in August 2022. Petro is pushing for high-income countries to support South America’s defence of the rainforest and he is also overseeing a total rethink of Colombia’s conservation strategy.
After decades of criminalising farmers who clear the forest for agriculture, the Colombian government now plans to offer them financial support to transition to more sustainable practices, such as harvesting Amazonian fruits from the trees.
The country’s environment minister also proposes diverting all carbon tax revenue directly to conservation schemes and forging an “Amazon Bloc” with other South American nations, so that they will have more leverage to secure international funds.
With Petro, Lula and US president Joe Biden all having been elected after campaigning to protect the Amazon, researchers say they have the political and public support to move forward with plans to conserve and restore the rainforest.
There may also be more opportunities for collaboration between different countries and groups. Bolsonaro blocked conservation in the wider region, not just Brazil, says Martín von Hildebrand, founder of the non-profit organisation Gaia Amazonas. Alliances between NGOs, scientists and Indigenous peoples can now be strengthened and their plans enacted, he says.
Restoring the forest
This could be the year that decades of damage begin to be reversed, says von Hildebrand. The anthropologist is working with researchers and Indigenous communities to draw up a reforestation project that would create a wildlife corridor stretching from the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean. “We’ve been waiting for a long time for political will to implement change and I think we are finally going to get it,” he says.
Carlos Nobre at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, believes that conservationists can capitalise on political support and the growing urgency of climate change to spur efforts towards reforestation.
At the COP27 climate summit in November 2022, Nobre presented a project to restore more than 1 million square kilometres of rainforest that would, he says, “store 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year for decades to come and prevent the Amazon from reaching a tipping point”.
Though the Amazon’s future remains uncertain, the importance of its conservation for climate change will only become more obvious in 2023, says von Hildebrand.
“It’s not only a carbon sink and a haven of biodiversity, but with its flying rivers [currents of water vapour], it’s a water pump for the entire Amazon, the Andes and beyond,” he says. “The forest is absolutely necessary. If we lose the forest, we simply won’t have water in this part of the world.”
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Originally published on
by at Arctic News
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| [ posted earlier at facebook ] |
The image on the right shows a forecast of very low temperatures over North America with a temperature of -40 °C / °F highlighted (green circle at center) for December 23, 2022 14:00 UTC.
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| [ posted earlier at facebook ] |
Conclusion
The situation is dire and calls for immediate, comprehensive and effective action as described in the Climate Plan.
Links
• Extreme Weather
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extreme-weather.html
• Feedbacks in the Arctic
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/feedbacks.html
Originally published on
by at Arctic News
In his book ‘Collapse’ (2011) Jared Diamond portrays the fate of societies which Choose to Fail or Succeed. On a larger scale the Fermi’s paradox suggests that advanced technological civilizations may constitute ephemeral entities in the galaxy, destined to collapse over short periods. Such an interpretation of Fermi’s paradox, corroborated by recent terrestrial history, implies that the apparent absence of radio signals from Milky Way planets and beyond may be attributed to an inherently self-destructive nature of civilizations which reached the ability to propagate radio waves, consistent with Carl Sagan’s views. It can be expected therefore that the number of advanced technological societies in the universe will be proportional to their average lifetime, perhaps lasting no more than a few centuries. Inexplicably, the behavior of Homo “sapiens” reveals the reality of Fermi’s paradox, unless humans can wake up in time.
Since the onset of the Neolithic about ~10,000 years ago open-ended combustion of wood, coal, oil, methane and gas for production of steam power and electricity (Figure 1), and of uranium to generate nuclear power, constrain the life expectancy of industrial civilizations through proliferation of greenhouse gases, alteration of the chemistry of the atmosphere and proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, testifying to the relevance of Fermi’s paradox in the 20-21 centuries.
Geological and astronomical studies establish Earth is unique among the terrestrial planets in harboring advanced life forms, including colonial life since as early as ~3.5 billion years ago. Should the fate of Homo sapiens be recorded, history would tell that, while the atmosphere was overheating, oceans acidifying and radioactivity rising, humans never ceased to saturate the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, mine uranium, unleash fatal wars and fire rockets at the planets. All the time indulging in sports games and inundating the airwaves with gratuitous words, false promises, misconstrued assumptions and simple lies ─ betraying their future generations and a multitude of species on the only haven of life known in the solar system.
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| Fig. 1. A combined night lights image of Earth signifying global civilization. NASA |
In a new paper titled ‘Global warming in the pipeline’, Hansen et al. (2022) state: “glacial-to-interglacial global temperature change implies that fast-feedback equilibrium climate sensitivity is at least ~4°C for doubled CO₂ with likely range 3.5-5.5°C. Greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing is 4.1 W/m² larger in 2021 than in 1750, equivalent to 2xCO₂ forcing. Global warming in the pipeline is greater than prior estimates. Eventual global warming due to today’s GHG forcing alone — after slow feedbacks operate — is about 10°C. Human-made aerosols are a major climate forcing, mainly via their effect on clouds … A hinge-point in global warming occurred in 1970 as increased GHG warming outpaced aerosol cooling, leading to global warming of 0.18°C per decade.”
The inevitable consequence is a shift in the position of the Earth’s climate zones, a decline in the Earth’s albedo (a climatologically significant ~0.5 W/m² decrease over two decades), a rise in greenhouse gases at a geologically unprecedented rate of 2-3 ppm/year), acidification of the oceans (by about 26 percent), receding ice sheets, rising sea levels (~20 cm since 1900), changes in vegetation, forests and soils, a shift in state of the climate and mass extinction, with humans are driving around one million species to extinction.
For longer than 50 years few were aware that a rise in atmospheric CO₂ on the scale of ~100 ppm CO₂ at the annual rate of 2 – 3 ppm per year, could lead to the unhabitability of large parts of Earth (The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace-Wells) (Figure 2A). Now we find ourselves surrounded by the consequences ─ hydrocarbon saturation of air and water, runaway global heating, acidification, dissemination of micro-plastics, habitat destruction, radioactive overload, proliferation of chemical weapons ─ In confirmation of the reality of Fermi’s Paradox.
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| Fig. 2. (A) Upper Holocene temperatures. (B). The Middle Miocene long-term continental (brown) and marine (blue) temperature change. Red arrow points to the present (2022) average global temperature of 13.9°C NOAA. |
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| Fig. 3. Tsar Bomba, exploded above Novaya Zemlya |
As stated by Hansen et al. (2012): “Burning all fossil fuels would create a different planet than the one that humanity knows. The paleoclimate record and ongoing climate change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline, extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet, and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes”.
A nuclear war in the background of carbon saturated atmosphere can only lead to extreme damage to the life support systems of the planet. The propensity of “sapiens” to genocide and ecocide, are hardly masked by the prevailing Orwellian language of politicians in the absence of meaningful action to avert the demise of the biosphere as we know it. Whereas the ultimate consequences of global heating are likely to occur within a century, including temperature polarities including heat waves and regional cooling of ocean regions by ice melt flow from Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets (Gikson 2019), a nuclear war on the scale of the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) can erupt on a time scale of minutes …
On July 16, 1945, witnessing the atomic test at the Trinity site, New Mexico, Robert Oppenheimer, the chief nuclear scientist (Figure 4), cited the Hindu scripture of Shiva from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. Then, as stated by Albert Einstein: “The splitting of the atom has changed everything, except for man’s way of thinking, and thus we drift into unparalleled catastrophes”.
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| Fig. 4. Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein in 1947 |
|
| Andrew Glikson |
A/Professor Andrew Glikson
Earth and Paleo-climate scientist
School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences
The University of New South Wales,
Kensington NSW 2052 Australia
Books:
The Asteroid Impact Connection of Planetary Evolution
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400763272
The Archaean: Geological and Geochemical Windows into the Early Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319079073
Climate, Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep Time Dimensions of the Anthropocene
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319225111
The Plutocene: Blueprints for a Post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319572369
Evolution of the Atmosphere, Fire and the Anthropocene Climate Event Horizon
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400773318
From Stars to Brains: Milestones in the Planetary Evolution of Life and Intelligence
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783030106027
Asteroids Impacts, Crustal Evolution and Related Mineral Systems with Special Reference to Australia
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319745442
The Event Horizon: Homo Prometheus and the Climate Catastrophe
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030547332
The Fatal Species: From Warlike Primates to Planetary Mass Extinction
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030754679
Originally published on
by at Arctic News
Earlier this year, on February 25, Antarctic sea ice extent was at an all-time record low of 1.924 million km², as the above image shows. Throughout the year, Antarctic sea ice extent has been low. On December 14, 2022, Antarctic sea ice was merely 9.864 million km² in extent. Only in 2016 was Antarctic sea ice extent lower at that time of year, and – importantly – 2016 was a strong El Niño year.
The NOAA image on the right indicates that, while we’re still in the depths of a persistent La Niña, the next El Niño looks set to strike soon.
Meanwhile, ocean heat content keeps rising due to high levels of greenhouse gases, as illustrated by the image on the right.
The currently very rapid decline in sea ice concentration around Antarctica is illustrated by the animation of Climate Reanalyzer images on the right, showing Antarctic sea ice on November 16, November 29 and December 15, 2022.
In 2012, a research team led by Jemma Wadham studied Antarctica, concluding that an amount of 21,000 Gt or billion tonnes or petagram (1Pg equals 10¹⁵g) of organic carbon is buried beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet, as discussed in an earlier post.
“We are sleepwalking into a catastrophe for humanity. We need to take notice right now. It is already happening. This is not a wait-and-see situation anymore,” Jemma Wadham said more recently.
The situation is dire and the right thing to do now is to help avoid or delay the worst from happening, through action as described in the Climate Plan.
• NSIDC – Interactive sea ice graph
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph
• NOAA – ENSO: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
• NOAA – ocean heat content
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/global-ocean-heat-content/index.html
• Climate Reanalyzer sea ice concentration
https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/todays-weather/?var_id=seaice-snowc&ortho=7&wt=1
• Potential methane reservoirs beneath Antarctica – Press release University of Bristol (2012)
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2012/8742.html
• Potential methane reservoirs beneath Antarctica – by Jemma Wadham et al. (2012)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11374
• A new frontier in climate change science: connections between ice sheets, carbon and food webs
• Climate Plan
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html
Originally published on
by at Arctic News
Are politicians for sale?
How can it be measured whether politicians are for sale and to what extent this occurs?
One measure of how much looters and polluters are buying politicians could be this: How fast is methane accelerating?
Arguably the most important metric related to climate change is surface temperature on land, as illustrated by the image below from an earlier post. The image was created with a July 16, 2022 screenshot from NASA customized analysis plots and shows that the February 2016 (land only) anomaly from 1886-1915 was 2.94°C or 5.292°F.
Land-only anomalies are important. After all, most people live on land, where temperatures are rising even faster than they are rising globally, and humans will likely go extinct with a rise of 3°C above pre-industrial, as illustrated by the image below, from an analysis in earlier post.
Note that in the above plot, anomalies are measured versus 1886-1915, which isn’t pre-industrial. The image raises questions as to what the temperature rise would look like when using a much earlier base, and how much temperatures could rise over the next few years.
What can be done about it?
The next question is: What can be done about it? To avoid politicians getting bought by looters and polluters, action on climate change is best implemented locally, with Local People’s Courts ensuring that implementation is science-based.
• When will we die?
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/06/when-will-we-die.html
• Pre-industrial
Originally published on
by at Arctic News
Arctic sea ice extent was 10.31 million km² on December 4, 2022. At this time of year, extent was smaller only in two years, i.e. in 2016 and 2020, both strong El Niño years. With the next El Niño, Arctic sea ice extent looks set to reach record lows.
The image below shows high sea surface temperature anomalies near the Bering Strait on December 2, 2022, with a “hot blob” in the North Pacific Ocean where sea surface temperature anomalies are reaching as high as 7°C or 12.6°F from 1981-2011. The Jet Stream is stretched out vertically from pole to pole, enabling hot air to enter the Arctic from the Pacific Ocean and from the Atlantic Ocean.
The situation is dire and the right thing to do now is to help avoid or delay the worst from happening, through action as described in the Climate Plan.
Links
• Vishop sea ice extent
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent
• NOAA ENSO: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
• nullschool.net
https://earth.nullschool.net
• Climate Reanalyzizer
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com
• Climate Plan
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html
Originally published on
by at Arctic News
In the above image, the atmosphere is presented as a “bucket” filling with greenhouse gas pollution from fossil fuel use from 1870 to 2020. The image depicts the idea that there is some carbon budget left, before 1.5°C above pre-industrial will be reached. The Global Carbon Project has just issued an update of what it refers to as the Global Carbon Budget.
The Global Carbon Project insists that there still is some carbon budget left, even as global fossil fuel C₂O emissions in 2021 were higher than 2020, and are projected to be higher again in 2022 than 2021, as illustrated by the image on the right.
Arctic-news has long said that the suggestion of a carbon budget is part of a narrative that polluters seek to spread, i.e. that there was some budget left to be divided among polluters, as if polluters could safely continue to pollute for years to come before thresholds would be reached that could make life uncomfortable, such as a rise of 1.5°C above pre-industrial.
For starters, an earlier analysis warns that the 1.5°C threshold may have already been crossed long ago. The situation looks set to soon become even more catastrophic. The upcoming El Niño could make a difference of more than 0.5°C over the next few years. Additionally, there will be a growing impact of sunspots, forecast to peak in July 2025.
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| [ image from quotes, text from 2013 post ] |
So, there is no carbon budget left. There is just a huge amount of carbon to be removed from the atmosphere and oceans, a “debt” that polluters would rather be forgotten or passed on to future generations.
The situation is dire and the right thing to do now is to help avoid or delay the worst from happening, through action as described in the Climate Plan and at the recent post Transforming Society.
Links
• Global Carbon Project – Global Carbon Budget 2022
https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/index.html
• The upcoming El Nino and further events and developments
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-upcoming-el-nino-and-further-events-and-developments.html
• Arctic Methane Monster
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/09/arctic-methane-monster.html
• The Clouds Feedback and the Clouds Tipping Point
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/clouds-feedback.html
Methane levels threaten to skyrocket
• Pre-industrial
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/pre-industrial.html
• Sunspots
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/sunspots.html
• Methane keeps rising
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2022/10/methane-keeps-rising.html
• Extinction
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html
• When will we die?
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/06/when-will-we-die.html
• Climate Plan
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html
Originally published on
by at Arctic News
The upcoming El Niño
The above image shows a forecast for August 2023 of the sea surface temperature anomaly in degrees Celsius, from tropicaltidbits.com. The forecast shows temperatures that are higher than average (based on 1984-2009 model climatology) for the tropical Pacific region indicative for an El Niño event.
By contrast, the above forecast for November 2022 shows temperatures in the tropical Pacific region that are much lower than average, indicating that we’re still in the depths of a persistent La Niña.
By comparison, the above nullschool.net image shows the sea surface temperature anomaly for August 15, 2022, i.e. less than three months ago, when sea surface temperature anomalies in the tropical Pacific region were similar to what they are now, while anomalies in the Arctic were much higher than they are now.
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| [ from earlier post ] |
The NOAA image on the right confirms that we’re still in the depths of a persistent La Niña. NOAA predicts a transition out of La Niña. Note that the NOAA forecast only goes up to May/June/July 2023.
Methane keeps rising at accelerating pace
Furthermore, there are a number of events and developments that could additionally speed up the temperature rise, including greenhouse gas emissions that keep rising. Methane is particularly important, due to its high potency as a greenhouse gas and its abundance has also been growing at accelerating pace over the past few years.
The above image shows recent methane daily averages at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, ranging from 1900 ppb to nearly 2000 ppb.
The above image shows recent methane daily averages at Barrow, Alaska, ranging from 2000 ppb to over 2100 ppb.
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| [ from earlier post ] |
Very threatening is a rise in methane that kept following the trend depicted in the above image, created with WMO 2015-2021 global annual surface mean methane abundances, with an added trend that points at a potential mean global abundance of methane of more than 700 ppm CO₂e by the end of 2026. The image warns that, if such a trend kept continuing, the clouds tipping point could be crossed as a result of the forcing of methane alone.
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| [ see the Extinction page ] |
As an earlier post mentions, the upcoming temperature rise on land on the Northern Hemisphere could be so high that it will cause much traffic, transport and industrial activity to grind to a halt, resulting in a reduction in aerosols that are currently masking the full wrath of global warming.
The post points at a recent analysis that finds a stronger impact than previously thought for liquid water path adjustment, which supports the 2016 warning that by 2026 there could be a 1.9°C temperature rise due to a decrease in cooling aerosols, while there could be additionally be a 0.6°C temperature rise due to an increase in warming aerosols and gases as a result of more biomass and waste burning and forest fires by 2026.
There could also be additional temperature rises due to increased water vapor, nitrous oxide and further gases.
When including the temperature rise that has already unfolded from pre-industrial and the impact of all such events and developments, the temperature could rise by more than 10°C over the next few years, corresponding with a CO₂e of over 1200 ppm, which implies that the total temperature rise could be as high as 18.44°C in 2026.
Links
• Tropicaltidbits.com
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com
• nullschool.net
https://earth.nullschool.net
• The Clouds Feedback and the Clouds Tipping Point
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/clouds-feedback.html
• Pre-industrial
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/pre-industrial.html
• Extinction
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html
From The Guardian, 2nd November 2021:
The US has rejoined the High Ambition Coalition at the UN climate talks, the group of developed and developing countries that ensured the 1.5C goal was a key plank of the Paris agreement.
The decision by the world’s biggest economy and second biggest emitter, after China, to return to the High Ambition Coalition group of countries marks a significant boost to attempts to focus the Cop26 summit on limiting temperature rises to 1.5C, the tougher of the two goals of the Paris agreement.
A firefighter extinguishes a forest fire near the town of Manavgat, east of the resort city of Antalya, Turkey
The coalition, which numbered scores of countries at the 2015 Paris talks, will on Tuesday call on governments to step up their efforts on greenhouse gas emissions and phasing out coal, consistent with a 1.5C limit, and urge rich nations to double the amount of climate finance they make available for poor countries to adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis. They also want to bring an end to subsidies for fossil fuels.
A senior US official said: “The High Ambition Coalition was instrumental in Paris in making sure that high ambition was written into the Paris agreementand will be instrumental in Glasgow in making sure it’s delivered.”
Tina Stege, the climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, said: “The High Ambition Coalition has set the bar for what needs to happen at this Cop: getting on track to limiting temperature rise to 1.5C with enhanced [nationally determined contributions] and with real, actual actions, like phasing out coal; a sea-change on adaptation, with at least a doubling of current levels of adaptation financing; and making sure that we all have the resources we need to face this crisis, including the loss and damage we’re already experiencing today.
“These heads of state have given their marching orders for ambition.”
Margaret Neville was amazed by a beautiful creature that she saw during a stroll on her farm in South Africa. It is most remarkable for appearing to be covered in lots of tiny flowers, coloured green and white. Also, it complements these with a number of white or lilac protrusions to make them blend in with surrounding plants – a truly brilliant camouflage. They are small, being approximately 1.5 to 2 inches long and when threatened, will stand upright and spread their wings which reveal two “eyes” to scare off predators.
An ice cave that looks like a wave in Iceland
photography by Horour Bjorgvin Magnusson
The theme for Earth Day 2021 is ‘Restore Our Earth’, urging everyone to focus on how we can both reduce our impact on the planet and actively repair ecosystems.
EARTHDAY.ORG™ works in countries around the world to drive meaningful action for our planet across:
Food & Environment: Simply put, the event’s organisers want you to combat climate change by changing your diet – better known as reducing your “foodprint.” While we should all be working to reduce our foodprints, there are several factors to consider, such as access, availability, health, and sustainability.
The Canopy Project: By planting trees all over the world, this initiative aims to enhance our common climate. Since 2010, Earth Day organisers have worked with global partners to plant tens of millions of trees with The Canopy Project, reforesting areas in desperate need of rehabilitation.
The Great Global Clean Up: Did you know that unregulated burning of household waste causes 270,000 premature deaths per year, and that 2 billion people lack access to waste collection services? It’s also reported that 79 percent of all plastics ever made have ended up in landfills or the natural environment.
Global Earth Challenge: Begun in April 2020 and aims to involve millions of people by incorporating billions of data points from new and ongoing citizen science initiatives. Essentially, the Global Earth Challenge aims to become the world’s largest organised citizen science initiative by creating a new mobile app that allows public volunteers to contribute to scientific research.
This year’s focus is on assisting local communities, with a particular emphasis on areas that are disproportionately impacted by environmental concerns. Many who live on the front lines of environmental disasters don’t always have the money to repair the damage.
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The Government has been urged to set much tougher legally binding pollution targets by the coroner in an inquest into a nine-year-old girl who died of a fatal asthma attack after being exposed to toxic air.
Philip Barlow, assistant coroner for Inner South London, ruled in a landmark second inquest last year that air pollution contributed to the death of nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah from an asthma attack.
In a report to prevent future deaths, he said legally binding targets for particulate matter in line with World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines would reduce the number of deaths from air pollution in the UK and the Government should take action to address the issue.
The WHO limit is 10 micrograms of tiny “particulate” matter per cubic metre – and if the UK were to introduce such a limit about 15 million people would be living in areas with illegally high levels of pollution.The current UK – and EU – limit is 25 micrograms per cubic metre, which far exceeds the level of air pollution any part of the country, yet air pollution is responsible for an estimated 36,000 early deaths a year.
Mr Barlow also said greater public awareness of air pollution information would help individuals reduce their personal exposure.
And he warned the adverse effects of pollutants were not being sufficiently communicated to patients and their carers by medical staff
Responding to the report, Ella’s mother Rosamund Kissi-Debrah called on the Government to act on the recommendations in the coroner’s report, warning “children are dying unnecessarily because the Government is not doing enough to combat air pollution”.
Ella was the first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as the cause of death on their death certificate, following the inquest ruling by Mr Barlow last December.
She lived 25 metres from the South Circular Road in Lewisham, south-east London – one of the capital’s busiest roads.
Ella Kissi-Debrah
She died in February 2013, having endured numerous seizures and made almost 30 hospital visits over the previous three years.
A previous inquest ruling from 2014, which concluded Ella died of acute respiratory failure, was quashed by the High Court following new evidence about the dangerous levels of air pollution close to her home.
In his report following the second inquest, published this morning, Mr Barlow said national limits for particulate matter – a dangerous form of air pollutant – were set far higher than WHO guidelines.
“The evidence at the inquest was that there is no safe level for particulate matter and that the WHO guidelines should be seen as minimum requirements.
“Legally binding targets based on WHO guidelines would reduce the number of deaths from air pollution in the UK,” the report said.
He said Government departments for environment, health and transport should address the issue, while local and national governments should address the lack of public awareness about pollution information.
Health bodies and professional organisations needed to tackle the failure by doctors and nurses to communicate the adverse effects of air pollution on health to patients, he said.
Ms Kissi-Debrah said she would be contacting Environment Secretary George Eustice to urge him to put the WHO pollution guidelines into law in the Environment Bill and achieve them in the shortest possible time.
She also said there needed to be improved public information about the levels of pollution that people are exposed to and the health risks.
“As the parent of a child suffering from severe asthma, I should have been given this information but this did not happen.
“Because of a lack of information I did not take the steps to reduce Ella’s exposure to air pollution that might have saved her life. I will always live with this regret.
“But it is not too late for other children.”
And she said: “I invite the Government to act now to reduce air pollution. Immediately. Not in eighteen months, not in five years – that’s not fast enough.
“People are dying from air pollution each year. Action needs to be taken now or more people will simply continue to die.”
A Government spokesman said: “Our thoughts continue to be with Ella’s family and friends.”
The spokesman added that the Government is delivering a £3.8bn plan to clean up transport and tackle nitrogen pollution, and going further in protecting communities from air pollution, particularly particulate matter known as PM2.5.
“Through our landmark Environment Bill, we are also setting ambitious new air quality targets, with a focus on reducing public health impacts.
“We will carefully consider the recommendations in the report and respond in due course.”
As reported by By Tom Bawden, Science & Environment Correspondent, inews.co.uk
April 21, 2021 11:24 am
From BBC Science Focus Magazine:
Professor John McGeehan at work
The enhanced protein is made up of two enzymes produced by a type of bacteria that feeds on plastic bottles.
A so-called “super-enzyme” that eats plastic could be “a significant leap forward” in finding solutions to tackle the pollution crisis, scientists hope.
The enhanced protein is made up of two enzymes produced by a type of bacteria that feeds on plastic bottles, known as Ideonella sakaiensis.
Professor John McGeehan, director of the Centre for Enzyme Innovation (CEI) at the University of Portsmouth, said that unlike natural degradation, which can take hundreds of years, the super-enzyme is able to convert the plastic back to its original materials, or building blocks, in just a few days.
“Currently, we get those building blocks from fossil resources such as oil and gas, which is really unsustainable,” he said. “But if we can add enzymes to the waste plastic, we can start to break it down in a matter of days.”
He said the process would also allow plastics to be “made and reused endlessly, reducing our reliance on fossil resources”.
In 2018, Prof McGeehan and his team accidentally discovered that an engineered version of one of the enzymes, known as PETase, was able to break down plastic in a matter of days.
As part of their current study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team mixed PETase with the second enzyme, called MHETase, and found “the digestion of the plastic bottles literally doubled”. The researchers then connected the two enzymes together in the lab, like “two Pac-men joined by a piece of string”, using genetic engineering.
The super enzyme, which is two proteins joined together © Aaron McGeehan/Knott et al
“This allowed us to create a super-enzyme six times faster than the original PETase enzyme alone. This is quite a significant leap forward because the plastic that ends up in our oceans today is going to take hundreds of years to break down naturally,” Prof McGeehan said.
“[Eventually] through sunlight and wave action, it will start to break down into smaller and smaller pieces – and we will end up with microplastics, which is a serious problem for the organisms that live in the environment.”
Tests showed that this super-enzyme was able to break down a type of plastic used in soft drinks and fruit juice packaging, known as PET (polyethylene terephthalate). Although it is said to be highly recyclable, discarded PET persists for hundreds of years in the environment before it degrades.
Aside from PET, the super-enzyme also works on PEF (polyethylene furanoate), a sugar-based bioplastic used in beer bottles. However, Prof McGeehan said it is unable to break down other types of plastic.
Working with US colleagues, Prof McGeehan used intense X-ray beams at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron facility in Harwell, Oxfordshire, to map 3D structures of the enzymes. These molecular blueprints allowed the researchers to create the super-enzyme with an enhanced ability to attack plastic.
As part of the next steps, the researchers are looking at ways to even further speed up the break-down process, so the technology can be used for commercial purposes.
“The faster we can make the enzymes, the quicker we can break down the plastic, and the more commercially viable it will be,” Prof McGeehan said. “Oil is very cheap so we need to compete with that by having a very cheap recycling process.”
Reader Q&A: Why are some plastics recyclable and others are not?
Most of the plastics we use are either thermoplastic or thermosetting.
Thermoplastics include acrylics, nylon and polyethylene (polythene). As you heat them up they get soft, so they can be shaped into any form you like, which also makes them easy to recycle. Milk containers can be melted and reformed into furniture, plastic water bottles become fleece jackets, and hard bottle tops can get a new lease of life as storage boxes.
Thermosetting plastics, like Bakelite or polyurethane, are different because they harden as you heat them. Once they have set, you can’t melt them. This makes thermosetting plastics almost impossible to recycle.
Up to $160 billion needs to be invested in the technology by 2030, a ten-fold increase from the previous decade, it added. “Without it, our energy and climate goals will become virtually impossible to reach,” the IEA head Fatih Birol said in a statement.
A sharp rise in the deployment of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technology is needed globally if countries are to meet net-zero emissions targets designed to slow climate change, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday.A growing number of countries and companies are targeting net zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by around the middle of the century in the wake of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
To reach that, the amount of CO2 captured must rocket to 800 million tonnes in 2030 from around 40 million tonnes today, the IEA, which advises industrialised nations on energy policies, said in a report.
Up to $160 billion needs to be invested in the technology by 2030, a ten-fold increase from the previous decade, it added.
“Without it, our energy and climate goals will become virtually impossible to reach,” the IEA head Fatih Birol said in a statement.
The global economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic risks delaying or cancelling projects dependent on public support, the IEA said.
An oil price slide had also reduced revenues for existing CCUS facilities selling CO2 for so-called enhanced oil recovery (EOR). However, the IEA added: “Economic recovery packages are a unique window of opportunity for governments to support CCUS alongside other clean energy technologies.”
Referring to a major investment to build two carbon capture plants and an offshore CO2 storage facility, Birol said: “Norway showed its leadership in Europe by making a major funding commitment to the Longship project.” Nonetheless, the story of CCUS has largely been “one of unmet expectations”, marred by lack of commercial incentives, large capital costs and public opposition to storage, especially onshore, the IEA said.
In 2009, the IEA called for 100 large-scale CCUS projects to be built by 2020 to store around 300 million tonnes of CO2 per year. To date, just 20 commercial projects are in operation, capturing around 40 million tonnes per year.
