Climate Change News & Discussions

[caltrek]

Research Shows that Managing UK Agriculture with Rock Dust Could Absorb up to 45 Per Cent of the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Needed for Net-zero
April 25, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/950523

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) Managing UK agriculture with rock dust could absorb up to 45 per cent of the atmospheric carbon dioxide needed for net-zero, research shows

● Major new study shows adding rock dust to UK agricultural soils could remove between 6 and 30 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere annually by 2050.

● Costs of carbon removal are estimated to be around £200 per tonne of CO2 currently, falling to half that by 2050 - making it highly competitive relative to other carbon dioxide removal options.

● Research identifies substantial co-benefits that include mitigation of nitrous oxide, the third most important greenhouse gas, and widespread reversal of soil acidification caused by intensification of agriculture.

● The study estimates that rock dust can be substituted for expensive imported fertilisers. By reducing demand for imported fertilisers, using rock dust avoids carbon emissions and offsets costs of deployment.

Adding rock dust to UK agricultural soils could absorb up to 45 per cent of the atmospheric carbon dioxide needed to reach net zero, according to a major new study led by scientists at the University of Sheffield.

[caltrek]

Shareholders Target Wall Street Banks With 'Groundbreaking' Climate Resolutions
by Brett Wilkins
April 26, 2022

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/ ... esolutions

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) A significant percentage of shareholders at three of the biggest U.S. banks voted Tuesday to endorse first-of-their-kind resolutions urging the companies to stop supporting new fossil fuel development amid a worsening climate emergency.

Shareholders at Citi, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo voted 12.8%, 11%, and 11%, respectively, to support climate resolutions filed by the Sierra Club Foundation and other members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. According to the Sierra Club, any resolution that receives at least 5% of the vote can be refiled the following year, and those that get 10% or more are "considered difficult for a company to ignore."

"Big banks have a responsibility to address their massive contribution to the climate crisis and protect their shareholders from climate risk by aligning their policies with their own net-zero commitments and ending support for fossil fuel expansion," Adele Shraiman of the Sierra Club's Fossil-Free Finance campaign said in a statement. "The pressure on them to do so from shareholders and the public is only growing stronger."

The "groundbreaking" resolutions include a call for each bank to "build upon" its net zero commitments by adopting policies "to help ensure that its financing does not contribute to new fossil fuel supplies that would be inconsistent" with the International Energy Agency's "Net-Zero Emissions by 2050" scenario and other climate frameworks.

While shareholders have previously compelled companies to disclose the emissions impact of their operations and investments and set long-term climate targets, this is the first time they have called on banks to implement plans to achieve those objectives, according to Sierra Club.

https://grist.org/article/will-exxon-ch ... his-year/

(Grist) Last week, executives from Citibank and JPMorgan sat on a panel at a New York City business conference hosted by the news agency Reuters to discuss “the decarbonization pathway for finance.” But as they were expounding on what their banks were doing concerning climate change, an activist got up and interrupted them.

“Citibank and JPMorgan are two of the world’s — THE TOP TWO financiers of fossil fuels in the world,” she told the room. “You’re telling me that you people are going to lead the way to sustainable finance?”

It’s no longer just activists confronting executives with these kinds of questions. This week kicks off a new season of shareholder activism at the annual general meetings of banks, oil companies, and other publicly traded corporations. These meetings are typically a time for companies to convince investors that their money is in good hands. But increasingly, shareholders are using these meetings to demand more information on how climate change and the transition to clean energy could affect their investments, and what companies are doing to manage climate-related financial risks.

“Investors are saying we can’t conduct business in a world that is on fire, that has heatwaves and insufficient water,” said Danielle Fugere, president of the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow. “And I do think companies are beginning to understand that it’s in their interest to take action and that shareholders support that action.”

JPMorgan already faced a reckoning in 2020 when shareholders pressured the company to oust Lee Raymond, the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, from its board. The bank demoted Raymond from the position of lead independent director, and he eventually resigned from the board entirely at the end of 2020. Last year, in one watershed week, investors voted to replace three directors on Exxon’s board on the grounds that the company had refused to accept that fossil fuel demand would decline and to make transition plans — and was underperforming financially. At Chevron, 61 percent of shareholders voted in favor of a resolution asking the oil giant to set a target to lower the emissions that come from the use of its products, also known as “scope 3” emissions.

[wjfox]

New York on track for zero-emission electricity by 2040

27th April 2022

Two huge new infrastructure projects in New York are expected to dramatically cut the state's greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more: https://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/202 ... w-york.htm

[weatheriscool]

Wildfires in US, Canadian boreal forests could release sizable amount of remaining global carbon budget

by Union of Concerned Scientists
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-wildfires ... zable.html

A paper by U.S. scientists published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances today finds that fires occurring in U.S. and Canadian boreal forests between now and 2050 could release about 3% of the remaining global carbon budget unless greater investments are made to limit fire size in these carbon-rich forests. The first-of-its-kind study was led by Dr. Carly Phillips, a fellow with the Western States Climate Team at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and co-authored with a team of researchers from the Woodwell Climate Research Center, Tufts University, Harvard University, the University of California, and Hamilton College.

The latest scientific report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes clear that countries have a quickly narrowing window to rein in heat-trapping emissions. To meet the Paris Agreement's principal goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid some of the worst climate change impacts, nations need to drastically reduce heat-trapping emissions during this consequential decade and reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

"Wildfires in boreal forests can be especially harmful in terms of the amount of emissions they release into the atmosphere since they store about two-thirds of the world's forest carbon, most of which is contained in the soil and has accumulated over hundreds or even thousands of years," said Dr. Phillips. "If not properly contained, heat-trapping emissions from wildfires in boreal forests could dramatically increase, jeopardizing nations' ability to limit warming in line with the Paris Agreement."

[caltrek]

Global Warming Accelerates the Water Cycle, With Relevant Climatic Consequences
April 29, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/951247

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) Researchers at the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) in Barcelona have found that global warming is accelerating the water cycle, which could have significant consequences on the global climate system, according to an article published recently in the journal Scientific Reports.

This acceleration of the water cycle is caused by an increase in the evaporation of water from the seas and oceans resulting from the rise in temperature. As a result, more water is circulating in the atmosphere in its vapour form, 90 per cent of which will eventually precipitate back into the sea, while the remaining 10 per cent will precipitate over the continent.

"The acceleration of the water cycle has implications both at the ocean and on the continent, where storms could become increasingly intense. This higher amount of water circulating in the atmosphere could also explain the increase in rainfall that is being detected in some polar areas, where the fact that it is raining instead of snowing is speeding up the melting", explains Estrella Olmedo, the leading author of the study.

The work also shows that the decrease in the wind in some areas of the ocean, which favours stratification of the water column, i.e. water not mixing in the vertical direction, could also be contributing to the acceleration of the water cycle.

"Where the wind is no longer so strong, the surface water warms up, but does not exchange heat with the water below, allowing the surface to become more saline than the lower layers and enabling the effect of evaporation to be observed with satellite measurements", points out Antonio Turiel, also an author of the study. In this sense, Turiel adds that "this tells us that the atmosphere and the ocean interact in a stronger way than we imagined, with important consequences for the continental and polar areas".

[weatheriscool]

Unchecked global emissions on track to initiate mass extinction of marine life
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-unchecked ... -mass.html
by Morgan Kelly, Princeton University

As greenhouse gas emissions continue to warm the world's oceans, marine biodiversity could be on track to plummet within the next few centuries to levels not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs, according to a recent study in the journal Science by Princeton University researchers.

The paper's authors modeled future marine biodiversity under different projected climate scenarios. They found that if emissions are not curbed, species losses from warming and oxygen depletion alone could come to mirror the substantial impact humans already have on marine biodiversity by around 2100. Tropical waters would experience the greatest loss of biodiversity, while polar species are at the highest risk of extinction, the authors reported.

"Aggressive and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are critical for avoiding a major mass extinction of ocean species," said senior author Curtis Deutsch, professor of geosciences and the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton.

[weatheriscool]

Prof. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele
✔
@JPvanYpersele

Humanity has now succeeded to increase the CO2 concentration by 50% (420/280) since the pre-industrial time. A new symbolic (and sad) record has been broken. We need to decarbonise fast. #ClimateEmergency

[erowind]

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[caltrek]

Manchin, Kelly Join GOP in Passing Motion to Bar Biden from Declaring Climate Emergency
by Jake Johnson
May 5, 2022

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/ ... -emergency

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) Two right-wing Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Mark Kelly of Arizona, crossed the aisle Wednesday to help Republicans approve a motion aimed at barring President Joe Biden from declaring a climate emergency, a step that green groups have been pressuring him to take since his first day in office.

The nonbinding motion, sponsored by Sen. Shelley Capito (R-W.Va.) and approved by a vote of 49-47, states that Biden "cannot use climate change as the basis to declare a national emergency." House and Senate lawmakers will consider the motion as part of their efforts to finalize legislation packed with subsidies to profitable microchip corporations.

It's unclear whether lawmakers will ultimately include the climate emergency language in the final bill, but environmentalists voiced outrage at the motion's passage as Manchin and Republicans continue to obstruct desperately needed congressional action to slash greenhouse gas emissions and bolster renewable energy production.

A separate motion instructing lawmakers to reject provisions that "prohibit development of an all-of-the-above energy portfolio"—which would include oil and gas production—also sailed through Wednesday by voice vote.

"Our political leadership is out to kill most of us," Basav Sen, director of the Climate Justice Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, said in response to the vote. "Every branch of [the federal government] (executive, Congress, courts) is rotten to the core."

[caltrek]

How Treaties Protecting Fossil Fuel Investors Could Jeopardize Global Efforts to Save the Climate – and Cost Countries Billions
May 5, 2022

https://theconversation.com/how-treatie ... ons-182135

Introduction:

(The Conversation) Fossil fuel companies have access to an obscure legal tool that could jeopardize worldwide efforts to protect the climate, and they’re starting to use it. The result could cost countries that press ahead with those efforts billions of dollars.

Over the past 50 years, countries have signed thousands of treaties that protect foreign investors from government actions. These treaties are like contracts between national governments, meant to entice investors to bring in projects with the promise of local jobs and access to new technologies.
…
The treaties allow investors to sue governments for compensation in a process called investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS. In short, investors could use ISDS clauses to demand compensation in response to government actions to limit fossil fuels, such as canceling pipelines and denying drilling permits. For example, TC Energy, a Canadian company, is currently seeking more than US$15 billion over U.S. President Joe Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

In a study published May 5, 2022, in the journal Science, we estimate that countries would face up to $340 billion in legal and financial risks for canceling fossil fuel projects that are subject to treaties with ISDS clauses.

That’s more than countries worldwide put into climate adaptation and mitigation measures combined in fiscal year 2019, and it doesn’t include the risks of phasing out coal investments or canceling fossil fuel infrastructure projects, like pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals. It means that money countries might otherwise spend to build a low-carbon future could instead go to the very industries that have knowingly been fueling climate change, severely jeopardizing countries’ capacity to propel the green energy transition forward.

[ReactiveWaters]

Climate change: 'Fifty-fifty chance' of breaching 1.5C warming limit

The likelihood of crossing a key global warming threshold has risen significantly, according to a new analysis.

UK Met Office researchers say that there's now around a fifty-fifty chance that the world will warm by more than 1.5C over the next five years.

Such a rise would be temporary, but researchers are concerned about the overall direction of temperatures.

It's almost certain that 2022-2026 will see a record warmest year, they say.


Full story : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61383391

[wjfox]

Climate change is pushing the pine beauty moth northward 50 years ahead of earlier predictions

10 May 2022

In Finland, climate change is causing the pine pest Panolis flammea, or pine beauty moth, to shift its range northward 50 years ahead of predictions. Changes in both the distribution and size of the pine beauty moth population are linked to higher temperatures, a new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows. The findings were reported in Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research.

“This is not unexpected, since many scientists have previously predicted that some insect pests will shift their distribution range northward as a result of rising temperatures caused by climate change. However, what is astonishing is that this is happening 50 years ahead of earlier predictions,” Doctoral Researcher Alexander Pulgarin Diaz from the University of Eastern Finland says.

The larvae of the pine beauty moth feed on the needles of different pine species across Central Europe, developing periodical outbreaks often controlled with chemical insecticides. These outbreaks co-occur with other pine insect pests and diseases and could reach thousands of hectares. Outbreaks have not been reported in Finland, but conditions for their development could become favourable as a result of increasing temperatures and forest health decline —both of which are consequences of climate change.

Earlier studies have shown that temperature is closely related to the development and distribution of insects.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/952211



Credit: Olli-Pekka Tikkanen.

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Trees Aren’t a Climate Change Cure-all – Two New Studies on the Life and Death of Trees in a Warming World Help Show Why
William R.L. Anderegg

(The Conversation) When people talk about ways to slow climate change, they often mention trees, and for good reason. Forests take up a large amount of the planet-warming carbon dioxide that people put into the atmosphere when they burn fossil fuels. But will trees keep up that pace as global temperatures rise? With companies increasingly investing in forests as offsets, saying it cancels out their continuing greenhouse gas emissions, that’s a multibillion-dollar question.

The results of two studies published in the journals Science and Ecology Letters on May 12, 2022 – one focused on growth*, the other on death** – raise new questions about how much the world can rely on forests to store increasing amounts of carbon in a warming future. Ecologist William Anderegg, who was involved in both studies, explains why.

What does the new research tell us about trees and their ability to store carbon?

William Anderegg: The future of forests is on a knife’s edge, with a tug of war between two very important forces: the benefits trees get from increasing levels of carbon dioxide and the stresses they face from the climate, such as heat, drought, fires, pests and pathogens.

Those climate stresses are increasing a lot faster as the planet warms than scientists had expected. We’re seeing immense wildfires and drought-driven forest die-offs much sooner than anyone had anticipated. When those trees die, that carbon goes back into the atmosphere. We’re also seeing evidence that the benefits trees get from higher levels of carbon dioxide in a warming world may be more limited than people realize.

Read more by William Anderegg here: https://theconversation.com/trees-arent ... hy-182944


* https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4875

(Science) Uncoupled carbon uptake and storage

Forests are expected to help mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon, with elevated carbon dioxide boosting photosynthesis and carbon uptake. However, the amount of carbon that can be stored in wood also depends on temperature, water, and nutrient availability. Cabon et al. examined temporal correlations between trees’ carbon uptake and woody growth by combining data on tree rings and gross primary productivity measures from 78 forests with carbon dioxide flux towers...

Abstract
Uncertainties surrounding tree carbon allocation to growth are a major limitation to projections of forest carbon sequestration and response to climate change. The prevalence and extent to which carbon assimilation (source) or cambial activity (sink) mediate wood production are fundamentally important and remain elusive.

**https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.14018

(Ecology Letters)

Abstract
Forests are currently a substantial carbon sink globally. Many climate change mitigation strategies leverage forest preservation and expansion, but rely on forests storing carbon for decades to centuries. Yet climate-driven disturbances pose critical risks to the long-term stability of forest carbon. We quantify the climate drivers that influence wildfire and climate stress-driven tree mortality, including a separate insect-driven tree mortality, for the contiguous United States for current (1984–2018) and project these future disturbance risks over the 21st century. We find that current risks are widespread and projected to increase across different emissions scenarios by a factor of >4 for fire and >1.3 for climate-stress mortality. These forest disturbance risks highlight pervasive climate-sensitive disturbance impacts on US forests and raise questions about the risk management approach taken by forest carbon offset policies. Our results provide US-wide risk maps of key climate-sensitive disturbances for improving carbon cycle modeling, conservation and climate policy.

[weatheriscool]

Sea ice can control Antarctic ice sheet stability, new research finds
https://phys.org/news/2022-05-sea-ice-a ... ility.html
by Sarah Collins, University of Cambridge

Despite the rapid melting of ice in many parts of Antarctica during the second half of the 20th century, researchers have found that the floating ice shelves which skirt the eastern Antarctic Peninsula have undergone sustained advance over the past 20 years.

Ice shelves—floating sections of ice which are attached to land-based ice sheets—serve the vital purpose of buttressing against the uncontrolled release of inland ice to the ocean. During the late 20th century, high levels of warming in the eastern Antarctic Peninsula led to the catastrophic collapse of the Larsen A and B ice shelves in 1995 and 2002, respectively. These events drove the acceleration of ice towards the ocean, ultimately accelerating the Antarctic Peninsula's contribution to sea level rise.

Currently, the jury is out on exactly how sea ice around Antarctica will evolve in response to climate change, and therefore influence sea level rise, with some models forecasting wholescale sea ice loss in the Southern Ocean, while others predict sea ice gain.

Now, an international team of researchers, from the Universities of Cambridge and Newcastle in the UK, and the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, have used a combination of historical satellite measurements, along with ocean and atmosphere records, to get the most detailed understanding yet of how ice conditions are changing along the 1,400-kilometer-long eastern Antarctic Peninsula.

[wjfox]

Italy's longest river, fed by melt from the Alps, dries up, threatening agricultural collapse

May 18, 2022

The Italian river Po travels 403 miles from the Alps to the wilds of the Po river delta in the East, where it finally empties into the Adriatic Sea. Along the way, the water nourishes the agricultural fields that Italians have farmed for thousands of years. Today, the agricultural products it grows provides 40% of the nation’s GDP.

Euro News reports that currently, a drought so severe that it threatens the breadbasket of Italy has dried up the Po River so severely that seawater has been able to be ‘sucked back upstream.’ The reason is that the water in the delta is “higher than upstream. This is because the vacuum left by the lack of river water is being filled by seawater,” Giancarlo Mantovani, the Director of a consortium that protects the delta’s biodiversity, which can be seen flowing back upstream in some areas. For farmers in the area, it means saltwater seeping into the earth and poisoning crops, which are blackened and wilting.”

There has been no rain for three months and counting, but the source of the problem starts in the Alps, where snowfall is now at its lowest level in over twenty years, measuring fifty percent lower than average. It is not only reduced snowfall, but the Alp’s glaciers which are the reservoirs for freshwater, have rapidly thinned, enabling permafrost to thaw and massive boulders of rock to break off the towering mountains.

The process is playing out across the world, from the Himalayas to the Rocky Mountains and the Sierras in the United States and Canada. Scientists have warned of this process for decades and are becoming a severe threat from climate shocks that reduce the freshwater supply for billions of people worldwide. A warming planet is turning the agricultural lands of Italy into a ‘salty wasteland while putting hundreds of thousands of livelihoods at risk. “It is a 360-degree disaster,” states Mantovani to Rebecca Ann Hughes of Euro News.

The problem is now even direr as groundwater has begun to be pumped by farmers where they find only saltwater allowing, even more, to move upstream. A feedback loop is now set in motion, The result will be a loss of thirty percent of agricultural production to dead soil.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/5 ... g-collapse

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Massachusetts Court Rules Exxon Must Face Trial Over Climate Lies
by Kenny Stancil
May 22, 2022

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) The Massachusetts high court on Tuesday rejected ExxonMobil's attempt to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the state, meaning the biggest oil giant in the U.S. must stand trial for allegations that it lied to the public about the climate emergency and the fossil fuel industry's role in driving it.

The lawsuit filed in 2019 by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey accuses Exxon of violating the state's consumer protection laws through a decadeslong effort to conceal what it knew about the negative environmental impacts of burning fossil fuels.

In particular, the complaint says, Exxon deceived investors about the risks that global warming poses to its business and misled consumers by downplaying the dangerous effects of its products and overstating what the company is doing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

As The Guardian reported, "Exxon claimed the lawsuit was in breach of legislation against what are known as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPS, used by wealthy individuals and corporations to silence critics."

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, however, ruled unanimously that the state's "anti-SLAPP" law is not applicable to government enforcement actions, affirming a lower court's decision to deny Exxon's special motion to dismiss the case.

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/ ... imate-lies

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Fastest Carbon Dioxide Catcher Heralds New Age for Direct Air Capture
May 28, 2022

Extract:

(EurekAlert) Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have developed a new carbon capture system which removes carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere with unprecedented performance. Isophorone diamine (IPDA) in a “liquid-solid phase separation” system was found to remove carbon dioxide at the low concentrations contained in the atmosphere with 99% efficiency. The compound is reusable with minimal heating and at least twice as fast as existing systems, an exciting new development for direct air capture.
...
A team led by Professor Seiji Yamazoe of Tokyo Metropolitan University have been studying a class of DAC (direct air capture) technology known as liquid-solid phase separation systems. Many DAC systems involve bubbling air through a liquid, with a chemical reaction occurring between the liquid and the carbon dioxide. As the reaction proceeds, more of the reaction product accumulates in the liquid; this makes subsequent reactions slower and slower. Liquid-solid phase separation systems offer an elegant solution, where the reaction product is insoluble and comes out of solution as a solid. There is no accumulation of product in the liquid, and the reaction speed does not slow down much.

The team focused their attention on liquid amine compounds, modifying their structure to optimize reaction speed and efficiency with a wide range of concentrations of carbon dioxide in air, from around 400ppm to up to 30%. They found that an aqueous solution of one of these compounds, isophorone diamine (IPDA), could convert 99% of the carbon dioxide contained in the air to a solid carbamic acid precipitate. Crucially, they demonstrated that the solid dispersed in solution only required heating to 60 degrees Celsius to completely release the captured carbon dioxide, recovering the original liquid. The rate at which carbon dioxide could be removed was at least twice as fast as that of the leading DAC lab systems, making it the fastest carbon dioxide capture system in the world at present for processing low concentration carbon dioxide in air (400ppm).

The team’s new technology promises unprecedented performance and robustness in DAC systems, with wide implications for carbon capture systems deployed at scale. Beyond improving their system further, their vision of a “beyond zero (emissions)” world now turns to how the captured carbon may be effectively used, in industrial applications and household products.

Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/953826