Climate Change / Global Warming Discussion

[mspohr]

Revealed: almost everyone in Europe is breathing toxic air

Guardian investigation finds 98% of Europeans breathing highly damaging polluted air linked to 400,000 deaths a year

www.theguardian.com

The Guardian worked with pollution experts to produce an interactive map revealing the worst-hit areas on the continent. The measurements refer to PM2.5 – tiny airborne particles mostly produced from the burning of fossil fuels, some of which can pass through the lungs and into the blood stream, affecting almost every organ in the body. The current WHO guidelines state that annual average concentrations of PM2.5 should not exceed 5 micrograms a cubic metre (µg/m3). The new analysis found only 2% of the population of Europe live in areas within this limit. Experts say PM2.5 pollution causes about 400,000 deaths a year across the continent.

 

[iPlug]

2023 is going in the record books for minimum and maximum sea ice extent for the Antarctic. Unfortunately, this is feat is likely to be broken again in the coming years.

Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graph | Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis

 

[mspohr]

‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief

IEA’s Fatih Birol says uptake of solar power and EVs is in line with net zero goal but rich countries must hasten their broader plans

www.theguardian.com

The prospects of the world staying within the 1.5C limit on global heating have brightened owing to the “staggering” growth of renewable energy and green investment in the past two years, the chief of the world’s energy watchdog has said.

Tessa Khan, executive director at Uplift, a campaigning organisation, said: “This [IEA report] is yet more confirmation from the world’s energy experts that we can’t have new oil and gas projects if we’re going to stay within a safe climate, and that massively scaling up renewables is key to achieving that. “Yet the UK is part of a tiny club of wealthy countries that while professing to lead on climate is massively expanding oil and gas production. Just five nations – the US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK – are responsible for over half of all planned oil and gas field developments from now to 2050.”

 

[mspohr]

‘Whatever it takes’: students at 50 US high schools launch climate initiative

Green New Deal for Schools demands districts teach climate justice, update buildings and plan for extreme weather

www.theguardian.com

Students at more than 50 high schools across the US are proposing a Green New Deal for Schools, demanding that their districts teach climate justice, create pathways to green jobs after graduation and plan for climate disasters, among other policies. The campaign, coordinated by the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate justice collective, is a reaction to rightwing efforts to ban or suppress climate education and activism at schools. The national effort could include teach-ins and walkouts, as well as targeted petitions to school boards and districts in the coming weeks, organizers with Sunrise told the Guardian, ahead of the Monday launch.

 

[eevee-fan]

‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief

IEA’s Fatih Birol says uptake of solar power and EVs is in line with net zero goal but rich countries must hasten their broader plans

www.theguardian.com

The prospects of the world staying within the 1.5C limit on global heating have brightened owing to the “staggering” growth of renewable energy and green investment in the past two years, the chief of the world’s energy watchdog has said.

Tessa Khan, executive director at Uplift, a campaigning organisation, said: “This [IEA report] is yet more confirmation from the world’s energy experts that we can’t have new oil and gas projects if we’re going to stay within a safe climate, and that massively scaling up renewables is key to achieving that. “Yet the UK is part of a tiny club of wealthy countries that while professing to lead on climate is massively expanding oil and gas production. Just five nations – the US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK – are responsible for over half of all planned oil and gas field developments from now to 2050.”

Yet the aliens who have embedded themselves in our government is working hard to ensure the world heat up more than 1.5C. There are laws MANDATING fossil fuel use. I see they have a foot hold in TX! And one guy is running for President, again. How can a fat human male a 6'3" weigh only 215 lb?!? Definitely not human.

 

[mspohr]

Girl, 11, among six young people taking on 32 nations in historic climate case

Claimants say European countries are breaching their human rights by failing to take adequate action to tackle global heating

www.theguardian.com

An 11-year-old girl from Portugal sat inside the grand chamber of the European court of human rights on Wednesday to face 86 lawyers from 32 nations in the world’s largest climate legal action. Mariana Agostinho was alongside her brother and sister, and her cousins, two rows back from 17 human rights judges. A few feet away, teams of black-suited lawyers from across Europe stood to argue why the countries they represented should not do more to tackle global heating. Agostinho had stood as the judges, led by the court’s president, Síofra O’Leary, filed in to take their seats. O’Leary told the packed courtroom: “The case is concerned with articles 2, 3, 18 and 14 [of the European convention on human rights] as regards the impact of climate change … which results in heatwaves and wildfires affecting the applicants’ lives and health.” Outside the court, in Strasbourg, the six young people from Portugal were supported by campaigners from across the world, holding signs which read: “You are heroes, stay strong” and “Love and courage.”

But Macdonald said the countries’ responses were akin to saying the problem was just too big, too complicated, too global and the court should look away. “The respondents say that human rights have reached the end of the road. But they are wrong,” she said.

 

[mspohr]

Eighteen climate activists arrested for shutdown protest in McCarthy’s office

Members of Sunrise Movement refused to vacate House speaker’s office entrance until he pledged to avert US government shutdown

www.theguardian.com

Today showed that the GOP is nothing but a group of cowards,” said Adah Crandall, an 18-year-old Sunrise Movement organizer, in an emailed statement. “They chose to arrest a bunch of teenagers instead of facing us. They would rather shut down the government than do their jobs and protect our generation.” The activists, who traveled from across the country to attend the protest, held signs that read: “Climate action not shutdown”, “The GOP hates Gen Z” and “McCarthy: Aren’t you ashamed”.

The Sunrise Movement is also demanding no cuts to the implementation of Inflation Reduction Act programs – something Biden administration officials are concerned about – and the reinstating of the child tax credit. “McCarthy and Republicans can either do their jobs, act on the climate crisis and fund our schools, or they can risk our economy appease a few extremists,” said Shiva Rajbhandari, 19, a Sunrise organizer who sits on the Boise, Idaho, school board, in an emailed statement. “Our generation is watching and we will hold them accountable for their actions.”

 

[eevee-fan]

 

[mspohr]

5 inches of rain!

 

[eevee-fan]

5 inches of rain!

Liquid cooling for Nissan Leaf in NY!

 

[mspohr]

How a thinktank got the cost of net zero for the UK wildly wrong

Civitas’s deeply flawed report was timed to follow the PM’s speech in which he called for an honest approach to the issue

www.theguardian.com

Imagine demanding an “honest” debate over the cost of net zero in a report full of errors that even a schoolboy would be embarrassed about. Then imagine getting coverage of your report in the Sun, Times, Daily Mail, Daily Express and Spectator.

Sound impossible? Well, let me tell you how Civitas, one of the thinktanks housed at 55 Tufton Street in London, did exactly that, and nearly got away with it.


On Wednesday, Civitas published a pamphlet on net zero by Ewen Stewart, whose consultancy, Walbrook Economics, works on “the interaction of macroeconomics, politics and capital markets”.

Stewart is also a climate sceptic, having written in 2021 that human-caused warming is a “contested theory”. Along with Civitas, 55 Tufton Street also houses the climate-sceptic lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation and its campaigning arm Net Zero Watch. These groups previously attempted to spark an “honest debate about the cost of net-zero” in 2020.

 

[mspohr]

Accused of wrongthink

Vietnam detains energy thinktank chief in latest arrest of environmental expert

Ngo Thi To Nhien detained over charges of ‘appropriating documents’, a government spokesperson confirmed

www.theguardian.com

Vietnam state media has confirmed the arrest of the director of an independent energy policy thinktank – the sixth expert working on environmental issues to be taken into custody in the past two years.

Nhien was working on the implementation plan for Vietnam’s just energy transition partnership (JETP), a $15bn G7-funded project to help wean Vietnam off fossil fuels, according to freedom of expression group the 88 Project last month.

 

[mspohr]

‘We’re not doomed yet’: climate scientist Michael Mann on our last chance to save human civilisation

The renowned US scientist’s new book examines 4bn years of climate history to conclude we are in a ‘fragile moment’ but there is still time to act

www.theguardian.com

The renowned US scientist’s new book examines 4bn years of climate history to conclude we are in a ‘fragile moment’ but there is still time to act
“We haven’t yet exceeded the bounds of viable human civilisation, but we’re getting close,” says Prof Michael Mann. “If we keep going [with carbon emissions], then all bets are off.” The climate crisis, already bringing devastating extreme weather around the world, has delivered a “fragile moment”, says the eminent climate scientist and communicator in his latest book, titled Our Fragile Moment. Taming the climate crisis still remains possible, but faces huge political obstacles, he says

One motivation for the book, Mann says, is the rise of climate doomism: “We haven’t seen an end to climate denial, but it’s just not plausible any more because people can see and feel that this is happening. So polluters have turned to other tactics and, ironically, one of them has been doomism. If they can convince us it’s too late to do anything, then why do so?” Mann says he had noticed how climate history was being weaponised by doomers. “This idea that these past mass extinction events translate to ensured mass extinction today because of, for example, runaway methane-driven warming [as permafrost thaws] isn’t true – the science doesn’t support that.”

 

[Raffy.Roma]

NASA-funded Study: Half of Glaciers Vanish with 1.5 Degrees of Warming - NASA

The world’s glaciers could lose as much as 40% of their mass by 2100 with 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. That's according to a NASA-funded study appearing in the journal Science.

www.nasa.gov

According to NASA almost half of glaciers will vanish with 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming

 

[heltok]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1709217151452954998

 

[mspohr]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1709217151452954998

absolutely gobsmackingly bananas

New scientific term

 

[eevee-fan]

Toilet Paper Is Driving the Climate Crisis with Every Flush

Despite the fact that we have only a matter of years left to act to avoid catastrophic climate change, tissue companies driving a tree-to-toilet pipeline and flushing away this essential climate ally....

www.nrdc.org

Biden needs to push the Bidet.

 

[betstarship]

Great quotes in this article and chart: 'Gobsmackingly bananas' September of extreme warmth alarms climate scientists

Also, the source of this chart is here which has another great interactive chart too:

Home | Copernicus

climate.copernicus.eu

 

[mspohr]

Study reveals unexpected recovery times when forests are left alone to regrow after destruction

“If there’s no source for seeds, heavily degraded soils, and no way for animals to get there, that’s going to be a problem.”

news.yahoo.com

But a 2021 study has found that forest regeneration can occur with unexpectedly fast recovery times if forests are simply left alone to grow and thrive.
Incredibly, after one to nine years, the sites were able to achieve 90% of the carbon, nitrogen, and soil density levels found in untouched forests. Further, the size of tree leaves, tree wood density, and the number of nitrogen-fixing trees took between three to 27 years to return to old growth conditions. Clemson University ecologist Sara DeWalt noted that natural regeneration of forests is the most efficient way to do things, both ecologically and economically. “Nature will take care of it if we let it,” she said.

 

[mspohr]

Climate crisis costing $16m an hour in extreme weather damage, study estimates

Analysis shows at least $2.8tn in damage from 2000 to 2019 through worsened storms, floods and heatwaves

www.theguardian.com

Storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts have taken many lives and destroyed swathes of property in recent decades, with global heating making the events more frequent and intense. The study is the first to calculate a global figure for the increased costs directly attributable to human-caused global heating. It found average costs of $140bn (£115bn) a year from 2000 to 2019, although the figure varies significantly from year to year. The latest data shows $280bn in costs in 2022. The researchers said lack of data, particularly in low-income countries, meant the figures were likely to be seriously underestimated. Additional climate costs, such as from crop yield declines and sea level rise, were also not included.