Climate Change News & Discussions

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In Coastal Communities, Sea Level Rise May Leave Some Isolated
December 29, 2023

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) COLUMBUS, Ohio – Amid the threat of dramatic sea level rise, coastal communities face unprecedented dangers, but a new study reveals that as flooding intensifies, disadvantaged populations will be the ones to experience some of the most severe burdens of climate change.

While accelerating sea level rise will result in widespread intermittent flooding and long-term inundation in many coastal communities, the paper, recently published in Nature Communications, showed that when these levels increase above 4 feet, minority populations will be disproportionately at risk of isolation.

Rising sea levels could lead to isolation by disrupting transportation networks and roads, meaning that those affected lose access to essential locations such as critical emergency services and schools.

The study further exposed that renters and older adults face a greater risk of isolation, highlighting the growing connection between historical drivers of existing social inequality and the groups that incur the most risk of climate change.

According to Kelsea Best, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering at The Ohio State University, the first step in better characterizing these threats is changing how researchers assess community risk, as most studies measure this by exclusively determining impacts via direct flooding. But concentrating on this sole measurement neglects more complex aftereffects of sea level rise, such as isolation, and reinforces inequality in coastal areas, Best said.

Read more of the Eurekalert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1029988

Read the presentation of study results as published in Nature Communications here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467- ... 35-6#Abs1

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It's over: 2023 was Earth's hottest year, experts say.

11:31 a.m. Jan 1, 2024

It's a moment scientists have warned about for months: Earth has just ended its warmest year since people began keeping records, and scientists say it may have been the warmest in 125,000 years.

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"We are already beyond the point that any normal process would be able to keep 2023 from being the hottest year," Robert Rohde of Berkeley Earth, said in mid-December.

Official reports from organizations such as the Copernicus Climate Change Service in Europe, and U.S. agencies such as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are set to make their "warmest year on record" announcements over the next couple of weeks.

What's especially concerning, experts say, is that "the rate of warming over the past century has no precedent as far back as we are able to look, not only hundreds or thousands, but many millions of years," according to University of Pennsylvania meteorologist Michael Mann's book "Our Fragile Moment.".......................

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 882923007/

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Earth shattered global heat record in '23 and it's flirting with warming limit, European agency says

Source: ABC News/AP

January 9, 2024, 7:08 AM

Earth last year shattered global annual heat records, flirted with the world’s agreed-upon warming threshold and showed more signs of a feverish planet, the European climate agency said Tuesday.

In one of the first of several teams of science agencies to calculate how off-the-charts warm 2023 was, the European climate agency Copernicus said the year was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. That's barely below the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit that the world hoped to stay within in the 2015 Paris climate accord to avoid the most severe effects of warming.

And January 2024 is on track to be so warm that for the first time a 12-month period will exceed the 1.5-degree threshold, Copernicus Deputy Director Samantha Burgess said. Scientists have repeatedly said that Earth would need to average 1.5 degrees of warming over two or three decades to be a technical breach of the threshold.

The 1.5 degree goal “has to be (kept) alive because lives are at risk and choices have to be made,” Burgess said. “And these choices don’t impact you and I but they impact our children and our grandchildren.”

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireS ... -106219837

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US oil lobby launches eight-figure ad blitz amid record fossil fuel extraction

Wed 10 Jan 2024 16.28 GMT

The American oil lobby has launched an eight-figure media campaign this week promoting the idea that fossil fuels are “vital” to global energy security, alarming climate experts.

“US natural gas and oil play a key role in supplying the world with cleaner, more reliable energy,” the new initiative’s website says.

The campaign comes amid record fossil fuel extraction in the US, and as the industry is attempting to capitalize on the war in Gaza to escalate production even further, climate advocates say.

Launched Tuesday by the nation’s top fossil fuel interest group, the Lights on Energy campaign will work to “dismantle policy threats” to the sector, the American Petroleum Institute (API) CEO, Mike Sommers, told CNN in an interview this week.

The ad blitz – which uses images of farm vehicles, footballers under floodlights and concert goers holding phones lit up – comes after US oil production reached a record high in 2023, which was also the hottest year ever recorded.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -on-energy

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Scary... looks like we're only 2 decades away from 2°C.