Climate Change News & Discussions

[weatheriscool]

Arctic open-water periods are projected to lengthen dramatically by 2100
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-arctic-op ... gthen.html
by University of Manitoba

A team from the Centre for Earth Observation Science at the University of Manitoba has published a paper in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment that addresses a large gap in our understanding of Arctic Sea Ice coverage.

Their paper, "Arctic open-water periods are projected to lengthen dramatically by 2100," reports on the how sensitive the seasonal retreat and advance of Arctic sea ice in specific regions are to different thresholds of global warming, that is, what happens to the ice for every degree of warming.

The crucial information that this paper provides is knowing how long the problem will last, says lead author Alex Crawford. He likens it to sports: the most important information to a coach or fan isn't the type of an injury a player has, but rather how long that player will be out of action.

[weatheriscool]

Scientists establish new records of Singapore's sea-level history
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-scientist ... story.html
by Nanyang Technological University

A close up of the core sample. The sample is put through rigorous laboratory methods and statistical analysis to obtain data to reconstruct Singapore's sea level history. Credit: NTU Singapore

Climate scientists at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU, Singapore) have extended the known record of Singapore's sea level to almost 10,000 years ago, providing a more robust dataset to aid future predictions of sea level rise.

One of the main challenges in researching climate change is to reconstruct its history over thousands of years. To have a better sense of the potential causes and effects of future changes, scientists need to learn from and understand the past.

Extracting ancient sediments from a depth of up to 40 m underground at a site at Singapore's Marina South, an international team led by NTU researchers put the samples through rigorous laboratory methods (e.g., identifying microfossils such as foraminifera) and statistical analysis to obtain data to reconstruct Singapore's sea-level history.

[weatheriscool]

Substantial carbon dioxide emissions from northern peatlands drained for crop cultivation
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-substanti ... thern.html
by University of Exeter

A new study shows that substantial amounts of carbon dioxide were released during the last millennium because of crop cultivation on peatlands in the Northern Hemisphere.

Only about half of the carbon released through the conversion of peat to croplands was compensated by continuous carbon absorption in natural northern peatlands.

Peatlands are a type of wetland which store more organic carbon than any other type of land ecosystem in the world.

Due to waterlogged conditions, dead plant materials do not fully decay and carbon accumulates in peatlands over thousands of years.

Therefore, natural peatlands help to cool the climate by capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and trapping carbon in soils.

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

The Climate Bill Even Big Ag Loves
But will it dent emissions?

https://www.motherjones.com/food/2021/0 ... riculture/

Introduction:

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) normally doesn’t see climate change as a major societal threat in need of a policy response. A magnet for agribusiness and oil-industry campaign contributions, she pleaded ignorance about climate science at a debate in 2014. She added, “I can’t say one way or another what is the direct impact, whether it’s manmade or not. I’ve heard arguments from both sides.” Yet Ernst has managed to find a piece of climate legislation she likes—one that involves one of her state’s major industries: agriculture.

It’s called the Growing Climate Solutions Act, and Ernst counts among 49 senators on both sides of the partisan divide sponsoring it. Outside supporters include the National Milk Producers Federation, the National Pork Producers Council, and the United States Cattlemen’s Association. The American Farm Bureau Federation, an insurance conglomerate and agribusiness lobbying powerhouse that has long opposed federal regulation to cut greenhouse gas emissions, is pushing it, as is the US Chamber of Commerce, a champion of unfettered oil and natural-gas drilling.

Some Big Green groups back it, too. “Passage of the Growing Climate Solutions Act would be a big win for agriculture, conservation, and the climate,” argued a recent statement from the Nature Conservancy, echoing similar enthusiasm from the Environmental Defense Fund. In late April, the bill sailed through the Senate Agriculture Committee, and likely has the votes to pass the full Senate, although it has yet to be scheduled for a vote.

[weatheriscool]

Carbon dioxide levels hit 50% higher than preindustrial time
By SETH BORENSTEINan hour ago

The annual peak of global heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air has reached another dangerous milestone: 50% higher than when the industrial age began.

And the average rate of increase is faster than ever, scientists reported Monday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the average carbon dioxide level for May was 419.13 parts per million. That’s 1.82 parts per million higher than May 2020 and 50% higher than the stable pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million, said NOAA climate scientist Pieter Tans.

Carbon dioxide levels peak every May just before plant life in the Northern Hemisphere blossoms, sucking some of that carbon out of the atmosphere and into flowers, leaves, seeds and stems. The reprieve is temporary, though, because emissions of carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and natural gas for transportation and electricity far exceed what plants can take in, pushing greenhouse gas levels to new records every year.

https://apnews.com/article/business-cli ... 92c0457e62

[Time_Traveller]

'Glacier blood' could be key to understanding impacts of climate change

about 8 hours ago

Atop the French Alps, thousands of feet above sea level, the normally white snow sometimes appears stained with blotches of what appears to be dark red blood, some of which extend for miles.

But no, these aren't the sites of violent mountaintop massacres — the spooky red stains, known as "glacier blood," actually come from microalgae that live in the snow, and scientists recently trekked into the Alps to study these mysterious organisms.

The expedition is part of the AlpAlga project, an effort to study microalgae living in the mountains, 3,280 to 9,842 feet (1,000 to 3,000 meters) above sea level. Much like the microalgae that inhabit oceans, lakes and rivers, snow-borne microalgae help form the base of the food web of a mountainous ecosystem and likely react to pollution and climate change in a similar fashion, said Eric Maréchal, a coordinator of the AlpAlga consortium and a director of the Laboratory of Cellular and Plant Physiology, a research facility in Grenoble, France.

https://www.livescience.com/glacier-blo ... ition.html

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

António Guterres on the climate crisis: ‘We are coming to a point of no return’

Fri 11 Jun 2021

Wealthy countries risk an “unforgivable lost opportunity” by not emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic with newly green economies to address the climate crisis, the United Nations secretary general has warned.

Before meeting the leaders of the world’s major economic powers at the G7 summit in the UK, António Guterres said he was concerned that the richest nations have pumped billions of dollars more into fossil fuels than clean energy since the pandemic, despite their promises of a green recovery.

“I’m more than disappointed, I’m worried about the consequences,” Guterres told the Guardian at the UN headquarters in New York, as part of a Covering Climate Now consortium of interviews alongside NBC News and El Pais. “We need to make sure we reverse the trends, not maintain the trends. It’s now clear we are coming to a point of no return.

“To spend these trillions of dollars and not use this occasion to reverse the trends and massively invest in the green economy will be an unforgivable lost opportunity.”

A recent analysis showed the G7 countries – the UK, US, Canada, Italy, France, Germany and Japan – have committed $189bn to support oil, coal and gas, as well as offer financial lifelines to the aviation and automotive sectors, since the outbreak of the coronavirus. This is over $40bn more than has been directed towards renewable energy.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... andemic-g7

[weatheriscool]

Pine Island Glacier's ice shelf is ripping apart, speeding up key Antarctic glacier
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-island-gl ... pping.html
by University of Washington

For decades, the ice shelf helping to hold back one of the fastest-moving glaciers in Antarctica has gradually thinned. Analysis of satellite images reveals a more dramatic process in recent years: From 2017 to 2020, large icebergs at the ice shelf's edge broke off, and the glacier sped up.

Since floating ice shelves help to hold back the larger grounded mass of the glacier, the recent speedup due to the weakening edge could shorten the timeline for Pine Island Glacier's eventual collapse into the sea. The study from researchers at the University of Washington and British Antarctic Survey was published June 11 in the open-access journal Science Advances.

"We may not have the luxury of waiting for slow changes on Pine Island; things could actually go much quicker than expected," said lead author Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. "The processes we'd been studying in this region were leading to an irreversible collapse, but at a fairly measured pace. Things could be much more abrupt if we lose the rest of that ice shelf."

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

Hoover Dam reservoir reaches record-low water levels

1 day ago

Water levels in Lake Mead, the vital reservoir formed by the Hoover Dam, reached a new record low this week as the Western U.S. continues to suffer from a severe drought, according to news reports.

On Wednesday (June 9), the reservoir's levels dropped to 1,071.56 feet (326 meters) above sea level — slightly lower than the previous record low of 1,074.6 feet (327 meters) set in 2016, according to Reuters. Overall, the reservoir has fallen 140 feet (43 m) in the past 21 years, Reuters reported.

Engineers created Lake Mead in the 1930s by building the Hoover Dam in the Colorado River at the Arizona-Nevada border. It is the largest reservoir in the United States, containing some 9 trillion gallons (34 trillion liters) of water, which gets allocated to about 25 million people living in the Southwest, including those in Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson and Las Vegas, Reuters reported.

The Southwestern U.S. has been in a nearly continuous drought for the past two decades, with rainfall and snowfall too low to allow the region to fully recover from the drought, according to CNN.

"Climate change is clearly playing a role," in the prolonged drought, Brandon Miller, a meteorologist for CNN, told the news outlet. "The warmer temperatures are driving that vicious cycle [of drought] and making it harder for normal or even above-average rainfall years to make a dent," Miller said. "When one or two below-average rainfall/snowfall years occur, as we have just seen, the results are disastrous."

https://www.livescience.com/hoover-dam- ... tification

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

“Back to normal” Puts Us Back on the Path to Climate Catastrophe
by Rebecca Leber
June 15, 2021

https://www.vox.com/22522791/climate-em ... post-covid

Extract:

(Vox) The Covid-19 pandemic upended daily life so drastically that there was a moment when it seemed to be making a dent in the climate crisis. Rush-hour traffic disappeared, global travel slowed to a crawl, and the resulting economic tailspin sent energy-related pollution plummeting almost 6 percent globally. This kind of decline in pollution is unprecedented in modern human history — it’s as though the emissions output of the entire European Union had suddenly disappeared. It led many to wonder if the Covid-19 crisis would at least give us a little extra time to avert climate emergency.

More than a year after Covid-19 abruptly changed everyone’s routines, the United States is itching to return to “normal,” and some parts of the economy are approaching business as usual. But for the climate, “back to normal” means pollution is rebounding and, worryingly, climate change is accelerating.

“We ultimately need cuts that are much larger and sustained longer than the Covid-related shutdowns of 2020,” said Ralph Keeling, a geochemist who measures carbon pollution at Mauna Loa.

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to rage globally but starts to abate in the US, here are four ways to understand the new “normal” of the climate crisis.

• 1. Climate change is accelerating despite the pandemic…

• 2. Fossil fuels still rule the economy…

• 3. The global target of 1.5 degrees Celsius is almost out of reach…

• 4. Public opinion hasn’t changed either, which is surprisingly good news…

[wjfox]

Everyone Wants to Sell the Last Barrel of Oil

By Bill McKibben
June 16, 2021

A final victory last week over the Keystone XL pipeline is a reminder that fighting particular fossil-fuel projects is a necessary strategy if the climate is to be saved. The defeat of Keystone XL doesn’t mean that Canada’s vast tar-sands project, which is generally regarded as the largest industrial project in the world, is over, but the fight has been a gut punch to the fossil-fuel industry. In 2011, when protests began outside the White House, Canada’s National Energy Board was confidently predicting that tar-sands-oil production would triple by 2035—which led the climate scientist James Hansen to explain that pumping Alberta dry would be “game over” for the climate. A decade later, as Karin Kirk reported in Yale Climate Connections, fifty-seven major financial institutions have “pledged to stop funding or insuring oil sands ventures. Exxon Mobil has declared a loss on the original value of its oil sands assets, and Chevron has pulled out of Canadian oil and gas entirely. Other oil majors, like Shell and BP, are selling off their oil sands assets, leaving it largely to Canadian oil companies and the Canadian government to forge ahead.” Kirk’s piece appeared in March; the number of such institutions is now seventy-seven.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-o ... rel-of-oil

[weatheriscool]

An acceleration of coastal overtopping around the world
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-coastal-o ... world.html
by Institut de recherche pour le développement

The combination of sea level rise, tides, storm surge and waves has increased the overtopping of natural and artificial coastal protection by nearly 50% in the last two decades. This revelation comes from an international study coordinated by IRD, involving international partners . The study was published in Nature Communications on June 18th 2021.

By combining satellite data and digital models, the researchers have shown that coastal overtopping, and consequently the risk of flooding, is set to further accelerate over the 21st century, by up to 50-fold under a high emission global warming scenario, especially in the tropics. This increase is principally caused by a combination of sea level rise and ocean waves.

[Yuli Ban]

‘This is really, really bad’: scientists on the scorching US heatwave
‘Potentially the worst drought in 1,200 years’: scientists on the scorching US heatwave

The heatwave gripping the US west is simultaneously breaking hundreds of temperature records, exacerbating a historic drought and priming the landscape for a summer and fall of extreme wildfire.

Salt Lake City hit a record-breaking 107F (42C), while in Texas and California, power grid operators are asking residents to conserve energy to avoid rolling blackouts and outages. And all this before we’ve even reached the hottest part of the summer.

Among the 40 million Americans enduring the triple-digit temperatures are scientists who study droughts and the climate. They’d long forewarned of this crisis, and now they’re living through it. The Guardian spoke with researchers across the west about how they’re coping.

[caltrek]

Well, the lying liars who lie and otherwise distribute false information are at it again. As often happens, the new set of lies follows an age old pattern of wrapping everything up to make it sound like they are interested in protecting owners of small farms. The reality is that their aims usually prove out to involve anything but protecting small farms. Let us start with this Mother Jones article:

Republicans Declare War on Biden’s Nonexistent Plan to Grab Farmland

https://www.motherjones.com/environment ... -farmland/

Extract:

(Mother Jones) Farmers, sharpen your pitchforks: President Joe Biden is coming for your land.

At least, that is, according to Fox News, various Republican politicians, and the farm trade press. The outrage centers on an executive order Biden issued on Jan. 27, laying out the broad aim of “tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad.” As part of the effort, the order stated the goal of “conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.” Ever since, the battle to nix “30 for 30″—shorthand for the executive order—has emerged as a cause celebré in GOP circles.

A group of scientists argue that to mitigate climate change and slow the extinction crisis, 30 percent of the globe’s land would have to be protected.
A Texas-based group called the American Stewards of Liberty recently launched a campaign to “fight the radical environmental agenda from taking 30 percent of America’s land by 2030,” citing a Biden-hatched scheme to transform the United States from a “nation founded on private property principles to one controlled by the administrative state.”

….One problem: there’s no evidence whatsoever that the federal government plans to seize land from anyone.

Let us look further at that Executive Order. (Remember, it is a public document, so restrictions on length of citations for purposes of copyright protection do not apply)

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... nd-abroad/

Conserving Our Nation’s Lands and Waters. (a) The Secretary of the Interior, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, and the heads of other relevant agencies, shall submit a report to the Task Force within 90 days of the date of this order recommending steps that the United States should take, working with State, local, Tribal, and territorial governments, agricultural and forest landowners, fishermen, and other key stakeholders, to achieve the goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.

The Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, through the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality shall, as appropriate, solicit input from State, local, Tribal, and territorial officials, agricultural and forest landowners, fishermen, and other key stakeholders in identifying strategies that will encourage broad participation in the goal of conserving 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.

(ii) The report shall propose guidelines for determining whether lands and waters qualify for conservation, and it also shall establish mechanisms to measure progress toward the 30-percent goal. The Secretary of the Interior shall subsequently submit annual reports to the Task Force to monitor progress.

Note the use of the words “conserve” and “conservation.” That is in the same family of words to which “conservative” belongs. Moreover, it usually applies to protecting existing land use. So folks that own small farms that are in production already have an existing land use that can and should be conserved. So, one very reasonable interpretation is that such property owners would be protected. Moreover, the Executive Order mentions farmers in this light:

America’s farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners have an important role to play in combating the climate crisis and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, by sequestering carbon in soils, grasses, trees, and other vegetation and sourcing sustainable bioproducts and fuels.

Nothing here about taking their farm away. Only about encouraging farming practices that reduce “greenhouse gas emissions.” So, it is quite reasonable to conclude that farmers will be encouraged to continue their farming practices except that ways of doing so that promote the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will be encouraged.

Yet, according to my reading of Mother Jones, the right insists on reading things between the lines, things that simply are not there. What could be their motive?

Oh, here it is:

To the extent consistent with applicable law, the Secretary of the Interior shall pause new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters pending completion of a comprehensive review and reconsideration of Federal oil and gas permitting and leasing practices in light of the Secretary of the Interior’s broad stewardship responsibilities over the public lands and in offshore waters, including potential climate and other impacts associated with oil and gas activities on public lands or in offshore waters. The Secretary of the Interior shall complete that review in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Secretary of Energy. In conducting this analysis, and to the extent consistent with applicable law, the Secretary of the Interior shall consider whether to adjust royalties associated with coal, oil, and gas resources extracted from public lands and offshore waters, or take other appropriate action, to account for corresponding climate costs.

The old bait and switch. The real gripe is likely with slowing or halting new oil and gas extraction on already public land. Not nearly as unpopular, so casting their argument as if they are protecting owners of small farms is the result.

This is just one more example, as if further examples were even needed, of how the right has totally ruined any hope that they should be taken seriously as honest people expressing honest opinions. So much of what the say and write are lies, pure and simple.

[weatheriscool]

Projections of US high-tide flooding show rapid increases and extreme months
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-high-tide ... onths.html
by University of Hawaii at Manoa

In the mid-2030s, multiple United States coastal regions may see rapid increases in the number of high-tide flooding (HTF) days, according to a study led by the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and published today in Nature Climate Change. The combined effects of sea-level rise (SLR) and natural fluctuations in tidal range are anticipated to cause tipping points in the frequency of HTF.

Coastal locations around the U.S., particularly along the Atlantic coast, are experiencing recurrent flooding at high tide. The impact of HTF accumulates over numerous seemingly minor occurrences, which can exceed the impact of rare extremes over time. These impacts are subtle—for example, the loss of revenue due to recurrent road and business closures—compared with the physical damage of property and infrastructure associated with extreme storm-driven events.