Climate Change News & Discussions

[Time_Traveller]

E.U. Set to Unveil First-Ever Carbon Border Tax

July 13, 2021

Europe is about to shake up the global trade network—all in the name of climate change.

The European Union is scheduled this week to release its plan for a carbon border adjustment—basically a fee on planet-warming carbon embedded in goods produced outside the 27-member bloc.

The E.U. border tax—which would be the first of its kind in the world—is part of a package of 13 different climate policies set to be unveiled tomorrow.

Its intent is twofold. The tax is designed to help the E.U. meet emissions targets enshrined in a new climate law. And it’s supposed to protect E.U. industries from overseas competitors less constrained by climate regulations.

Not surprisingly, the plan has attracted global interest since a draft was leaked early last month. The E.U.’s trading partners will be watching closely to see if the border tax is designed to reduce emissions and can survive accusations of protectionism, which could rub up against the World Trade Organization’s regulations.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... order-tax/

[caltrek]

"Time for Incrementalism Is Over," Says Climate Movement as Extreme Weather Hits U.S.
by Jessica Corbett
July 12, 2021

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/ ... er-hits-us

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) With hundreds of thousands of acres burning across swaths of the U.S. West that have already endured record-breaking heat this summer—and mounting concerns about the GOP and centrist Democrats watering down federal infrastructure legislation—the climate movement on Monday reiterated demands for ambitious government action and investment.

Progressives that called President Joe Biden's initial physical and human infrastructure proposal, the American Jobs and Families Plans, inadequate have ramped up their criticism in the wake of a bipartisan deal Democrats want to pass alongside a reconciliation bill, a flooded New York City subway system, a collapsed condo in Florida, a pipeline-related fire in the Gulf of Mexico, and a firenado in California.

"Buildings are collapsing into the sea. Infrastructure is melting. Hundreds are dying from extreme heat. Millions are without power. The ocean is literally on fire.* The climate crisis is here," said Ellen Sciales, communications director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, in a statement Monday.

"And yet, some Democratic politicians like Joe Biden are still pushing for a compromise on climate under the guise of 'bipartisanship'—though it's actually just doing the bidding of Exxon lobbyists," she added, pointing to an exposé that provided insight on the company's lobbying efforts targeting key senators who are working on the infrastructure package.

Sciales highlighted that the movement's demands aren't just focused on infrastructure legislation; activists also want the president to use his executive power to deliver on his broad campaign promises to combat the climate emergency.

*I believe Ms. Sciales is here referring to this: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gulf-of-me ... -pipeline/

[wjfox]

[Yuli Ban]

Merkel calls for climate change action as she surveys flood damage

The train station has been reduced to rubble, wrecked cars lie on the tracks and uprooted trees line the riverbank.

Hundreds of people in the village of Heimersheim were still without power Sunday as police combed the wreckage left by receded water to look for bodies and potentially flammable material.

There were similar scenes across western Germany and other parts of Europe where the cleanup from last week's disastrous flooding continued. At least 180 people have died, officials confirmed Sunday; thousands more are missing.

As the waters rose from the Ahr river, Zinat Hamsoro, 41, who lives in normally tranquil Heimersheim, said she had been forced to climb and spend the night on a hill near the village.

"It happened so fast, and we weren't warned," she said Sunday. "The city council posted a warning message on its Facebook page, but by then it was too late."

[caltrek]

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

Here is an article in Mother Jones by Leah Douglas related to the quoted topic:
The USDA Wants to Make Farms Climate-Friendly. Will It Work?
July 19, 2021

https://www.motherjones.com/environment ... e-program/

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) What if all it took to make a dent in agriculture’s contribution to climate change was to pay farmers not to farm?
That’s the theory behind the recent expansion of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a decades-old initiative that has emerged as a central tool in the Biden administration’s effort to achieve net-zero emissions in the agriculture sector.

CRP spends nearly $2 billion annually on payments to farmers who have taken some or all of their acres out of crop cultivation and planted grasses or trees instead. The Farm Service Agency, which administers the program, boasts of a range of benefits for air, water, soil, and wildlife, including reportedly sequestering as much as half of the carbon dioxide emitted in the farming sector each year. Since 2000, the USDA has spent more than $35 billion on the program.

Yet the USDA only contracts CRP land for 10 to 15 years. After that, the vast majority of the land is tilled again for crop production, causing carbon that was stored in the soil to be released back into the atmosphere. The agency doesn’t take this rather significant flaw into account when calculating the program’s carbon benefits.

Expanding CRP is “a start, it’s a stepping stone” in addressing agriculture’s carbon emissions, says Jessica Kochick, a policy organizer with the Land Stewardship Project (LSP) in Minneapolis. But “on a broader scale, the way the government is investing in agriculture is broken,” she says. “It needs to be changed if we’re going to be serious about reducing agriculture’s role in producing greenhouse gases.

[caltrek]

What Climate Scientists Are Saying About This Catastrophic Summer
by Sofia Andrade
July 15, 2021

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... ummer.html

Introduction:

(Slate) By all accounts, the climate crisis is already here. Deadly heat domes across the Pacific Northwest, a petroleum pipeline leak in the middle of the ocean that set the Gulf of Mexico on fire, and the deadly floods in Germany and Belgium in the past few weeks alone have proved that the world is changing in response to how we have changed it.

No one should be surprised…For decades, scientists have been ringing the alarm bell about anthropogenic climate change. Over 30 years ago, NASA scientist James Hansen told the U.S. Congress that the “greenhouse effect is here.” And long before then, in the 1800s, scientists like Svante Arrhenius calculated that doubling the amount of CO2 that was in the atmosphere in 1895 would lead to global warming of 5 to 6 degrees Celsius in average global temperatures. “That wasn’t too far off,” said Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, speaking on his own behalf. It was just that Arrhenius’s timeframe for how quickly humans would emit those gasses was way off, Kalmus added: “It only took about 125 years for that increase in CO2 fraction that he thought would take 3000 years. He grossly underestimated the rate of emissions from burning fossil fuels that we actually did.”

Arrhenius’s original prediction represents a lot of the current problems faced by climate change models. Understanding where we are on the climate change timeline requires multiple steps—we need to know how much greenhouse gas has been emitted, how much those greenhouse gases have increased the global temperature, and then finally, we need to take one last step that even Arrhenius never took—we need to understand how those changes in global temperature will affect the climate we experience. It’s this last bit that is trickiest—we know the current proportion of carbon in our…what we don’t know is how to accurately predict all the consequences of the temperature increase caused by that extra carbon.

“The scientific community has done a really good job projecting when we would get to 1.2 degrees Celsius, which is about where we are now,” Kalmus said. “The community hasn’t done as good of a job projecting how bad climate impacts would be at 1.2 degrees Celsius.”

caltrek: I think one factor is that scientists are really by nature mostly a conservative lot. Many were reluctant to predict dire consequences if there was a sufficient level of uncertainty in those predictions. Yet, political conservatives complained that they were being too alarmist in their predictions. This became part of the mechanism by which negative effects were chronically underestimated. At least IMHO.

[raklian]

Here is an article in Mother Jones by Leah Douglas related to the quoted topic:
The USDA Wants to Make Farms Climate-Friendly. Will It Work?
July 19, 2021

https://www.motherjones.com/environment ... e-program/

The only type of farming that can be climate or carbon-neutral is indoor vertical farming with a closed recycling system.

[Time_Traveller]

Earth's clouds are likely to increase global heating, scientists find

about 24 hours ago

While we see Earth getting warmer as the effects of climate change continue to escalate, our planet's clouds make our planet hotter than ever, scientists worry.

By using a new approach to analyzing data from satellites, scientists in a new study suggest that Earth's clouds could exacerbate global warming over time. This work, conducted by researchers at Imperial College London and the University of East Anglia in the U.K., provides evidence that suggests that it is very likely — with an approximately 97.5% probability — that clouds will amplify global heating.

"Over the last few years, there's been a growing amount of evidence that clouds probably have an amplifying effect on global warming," co-author Peer Nowack, a researcher at the University of East Anglia and Imperial's Grantham Institute and Data Science Institute, said in a statement. "However, our new approach allowed us for the first time to derive a global value for this feedback effect using only the highest quality satellite data as our preferred line of evidence."

Many countries have signed the Paris Agreement, an international treaty that pledges that they will limit global heating to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), or ideally 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels.

However, according to this study, Earth's climate warming is unlikely to stay below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels and is more likely to rise more than 3 degrees C (5.4 degrees F), according to the same statement.

https://www.space.com/clouds-increase-g ... ate-change

[erowind]

What’s the mechanism involved there? I thought clouds reflected sunlight?

[raklian]

What’s the mechanism involved there? I thought clouds reflected sunlight?

They also trap radiation that bounces off the surface due to the heat/radiation conduction differential between air and volumetric density of water/ice. Clouds are a double-edged sword.

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

It's shocking to see Climate Change happening in front of you.

[Time_Traveller]

UK faces legal action over North Sea oilfield exploration plans

Fri 23 Jul 2021



The government faces the threat of legal action over plans to allow exploration at the Cambo oilfield near Shetland after promising to put an end to new oil exploration licences that do not align with the UK’s climate goals.

Greenpeace has threatened to take the government to court over the decision, which has triggered an outcry from climate experts and green campaigners in Scotland and across the UK in recent weeks.

In a letter to the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, the green group urged the minister not to rubber-stamp a permit for the Cambo oilfield, which could produce 170m barrels of oil and produce emissions equivalent to 16 coal-fired power plants running for a year.

The approval would risk undermining the UK government’s recent decision to bar new oil exploration licences unless the oil driller can pass a “climate checkpoint” test that proves the fossil fuel is needed and can be produced with as small a carbon footprint as possible.

The Cambo project will not face the same scrutiny in part because it would be an extension of an existing oilfield owned by the private equity-backed oil explorer Siccar Point. UK’s climate change minister, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, said last month in a parliamentary committee meeting that Cambo was “not a new licence, there are no new licences this year”.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... tion-plans

[erowind]

.

[raklian]

I’m not saying the drought in the western US isn’t real, it is. But it would help dramatically and perhaps even be manageable if Americans weren’t so wasteful, both industry and citizens. Dropping the obsession with lawns, mandating reclamation of water on farms instead of permitting excessive soil runoff and other things could be done but simply aren’t.

Yeah, it's more likely they don't want to give up their luxurious water consumption, so they'd rather dig deeper into debt by constructing environmentally harmful desalination plants along the coasts and transport filtered water inland. We've never been ones for efficiency, especially when it comes to our natural resources.

[caltrek]

Bipartisan Measure to Boost Carbon Credits May Be In Reconciliation Package
by Sara Sirota and Ryan Grim
July 21, 2021

https://theintercept.com/2021/07/21/agr ... ciliation/

Introduction:

(The Intercept) A BIPARTISAN MEASURE to boost carbon credit markets is a “prime contender” to be in the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., told The Intercept. But its inclusion in the simple-majority process would put Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and other critics in the awkward position of supporting a bill they already voted against.

The Growing Climate Solutions Act, or S. 1251, aims to help farmers and foresters more easily participate in carbon credit markets. It would establish a program at the Department of Agriculture to certify technical experts who can assist landowners implementing carbon capture, emission-reduction measures, and other sustainability methods by planting fast-growing crops such as hemp. Championed by Whitehouse and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., the Growing Climate Solutions Act has received the endorsement of the American Farm Bureau Federation and Environmental Defense Fund and passed the Senate in a 92-8 vote just last month.

Sanders, along with Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J.; Ed Markey, D-Mass.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., voted against the bill. Broadly speaking, opponents argued that the measure was at best a distraction from the necessary work of reducing emissions and at worst could prolong the strength of the fossil fuel industry. “I don’t believe that an offset system that subsidizes corporations’ continued pollution in front-line communities is the best strategy,” Merkley said at the time of the vote. “Let’s set incentives that reduce pollution in both agriculture and front-line neighborhoods.”

Advocates of the bill argue that time has run out, and Democrats can’t afford to leave any tool that could reduce carbon concentration on the sidelines. Carbon concentration has reached 418 parts per million, well over the 350 ppm that scientists say is a threshold the planet needs to remain under.

Conclusion:

(Anthony) Pahnke (vice president of Family Farm Defenders) pointed to bills like Booker’s Farm System Reform Act, which would crack down on concentrated animal feeding operations, or New York Democrat Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s Relief for America’s Small Farmers Act as better legislation.

[weatheriscool]

World's Food Supplies In Jeopardy Amid Climate Disasters
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/wo...mate-disasters

Devastating floods in Germany, China, Turkey, and India. Scorching hot weather in the Western U.S. and Canada. Worst frost in two decades across Brazil. These recent weather phenomena are rapidly intensifying and threaten further food inflation already at decade highs.

We documented last week Brazil had some of the worst frost conditions in two decades. Temperatures dropped below zero and delivered a massive blow to farmers across the country's coffee belt. The result has been sky-high coffee prices.

Back-to-back heatwaves continue to scorch the Earth across the Western half of the U.S. The corn belt, which spans the Midwest, lacks rainfall, and hot weather could negatively impact crop development, leading to an underwhelming harvest.

In Europe, China, Turkey, and India, devastating floods have torn apart towns, damaged farmland, and killed hundreds of people. Torrential rains have the risk of sparking fungal diseases for grain crops.

"All of these events are touched by jet streams, strong and narrow bands of westerly winds blowing above the Earth's surface. The currents are generated when cold air from the poles clashes against hot air from the tropics, creating storms and other phenomena such as rain and drought," Bloomberg said...........

[Yuli Ban]

14,000 scientists warn of "untold suffering" if we fail to act on climate change

There are some phrases that should stop you in your tracks. The warning of a future that holds "untold suffering" is one of them. That is exactly what scientists from around the world are cautioning will happen if we don't take the threat of climate change seriously. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal BioScience, more than 14,000 scientists from 153 countries signed their name to research that warns of an incoming climate emergency.

The paper, led by researchers from Oregon State University, uses 31 different planetary variables that tell us how Earth is holding up in the face of humanity's insistence on draining natural resources and pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The list of checks includes surface temperature levels, rainforest health, and glacial ice levels, along with directly human-controlled factors like the health of the global economy and the availability of fossil fuel subsidies.

If you think of each of those indicators as a vital organ in the Earth's body, you won't be thrilled to hear that a majority of those organs are careening toward failure.

[Yuli Ban]

[weatheriscool]

Heatwave causes massive melt of Greenland ice sheet

The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second largest mass of freshwater ice on the planet, second only to Antarctica.

Greenland's ice sheet has experienced a "massive melting event" during a heatwave that has seen temperatures more than 10 degrees above seasonal norms, according to Danish researchers.

Since Wednesday the ice sheet covering the vast Arctic territory, has melted by around eight billion tons a day, twice its normal average rate during summer, reported the Polar Portal website, which is run by Danish researchers.

The Danish Meteorological Institute reported temperatures of more than 20 degrees Celsius (68 Fahrenheit), more than twice the normal average summer temperature, in northern Greenland.

And Nerlerit Inaat airport in the northeast of the territory recorded 23.4 degrees on Thursday, the highest recorded there since records began.

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-heatwave- ... sheet.html