Humanity just lived through the hottest 12 months in at least 125,000 years
CNN
Month after month since June, the world has been abnormally hot. Scientists have compared this year’s climate-change fallout to “a disaster movie” — soaring temperatures, fierce wildfires, powerful storms and devastating floods — and new data is now revealing just how exceptional the global heat has been.
Two major reports published this week paint an alarming picture of this unprecedented heat: Humanity has just lived through the hottest 12-month period in at least 125,000 years, according to one, while the other declared that 2023 is “virtually certain” to be the hottest year in recorded history, after five consecutive months of record-obliterating temperatures.
“We have become all too used to climate records falling like dominoes in recent years,” David Reay, executive director of the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute at the University of Edinburgh, told CNN. “But 2023 is a whole different ball game in terms of the massive margin by which these records have been broken.”
Red hot October almost guarantees 2023 will be the hottest year on record
AP News
This October was the hottest on record globally, 1.7 degrees Celsius (3.1 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the pre-industrial average for the month — and the fifth straight month with such a mark in what will now almost certainly be the warmest year ever recorded.
October was a whopping 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the previous record for the month in 2019, surprising even Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European climate agency that routinely publishes monthly bulletins observing global surface air and sea temperatures, among other data.
“The amount that we’re smashing records by is shocking,” Burgess said.
After the cumulative warming of these past several months, it’s virtually guaranteed that 2023 will be the hottest year on record, according to Copernicus.
A Major Alarm Is Flashing Under Greenland’s Ice
Wired
Climate change would be much worse if it weren’t for the oceans, which have absorbed 90 percent of the excess heat humanity has pumped into the atmosphere. That warming of the oceans has already been devastating for the organisms that live there, but it’s also come back to bite us in a more unexpected way: It’s contributing to the destruction of ice sitting on top of Greenland.
That ailing ice sheet (the bit resting on land) contributed more than 17 percent of observed sea level rise between 2006 and 2018, and new research delivers yet more ominous news. (Greenland has much less ice than Antarctica but is losing 270 billion tons of it a year, compared to Antarctica’s 150 billion tons.) Greenland’s northern ice shelves—the ice that floats on the ocean instead of resting on land—have actually lost more than a third of their volume since 1978, thanks to warm sea water eating away at their bellies. Three of these northern ice shelves have completely collapsed since the year 2000, and the five that remain are rapidly deteriorating, in turn destabilizing nearby glaciers.
While ice shelves themselves don’t really contribute to sea-level rise, since they’re already floating in the ocean, they act like dams to regulate the amount of ice discharged into the ocean from the interior of the ice sheet on land. “We see that the ice shelves are getting weaker and weaker and weaker,” says Grenoble Alpes University glaciologist Romain Millan, lead author of a new paper in Nature Communications. “We have observed that in response to this increased melting, the glaciers are retreating, and they are already discharging more ice into the ocean.”
Global fossil fuel production plans far exceed climate targets, UN says
Reuters
Global fossil fuel production in 2030 is set to be more than double the level deemed consistent with meeting climate goals set under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the United Nations and researchers said on Wednesday.
The U.N. Environment Programme's (UNEP) report, assessing the gap in fossil fuel production cuts and what’s needed to meet climate goals, comes ahead of the global COP 28 climate meeting which starts on Nov. 30 in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates (UAE).
"Fossil fuel phase out is one of the pivotal issues that will be negotiated at COP 28," Ploy Achakulwisut, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) scientist and a lead author of the report said in a press briefing.
"We need countries to commit to a phase out of all fossil fuels to keep the 1.5C goal alive," she said.
Despite climate pledges, Canada and other fossil fuel producers set to scale up production: report
CBC News
Canada is among a group of top fossil fuel-producing countries on pace to extract more oil and gas than would be consistent with agreed-upon international targets designed to limit global warming, according to a new analysis.
The report, released on Wednesday by the United Nations in collaboration with a team of international scientists, found that countries still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be required to limit warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.
The findings are at odds with government commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement, as well as with projections by the International Energy Agency that global demand for coal, oil and gas will peak within this decade.
New Report Reveals Big Oil’s Playbook to Silence Climate Protests
truthout
A new report by Greenpeace USA details the widespread coordination between the public and private sectors to monitor activism, punish protesters both physically and legally, and grease the wheels for proposed anti-protest bills that criminalize civil disobedience.
“Corporate polluters, and their allies in government, have shown they will go to extreme lengths to silence us,” said Greenpeace Senior Research Specialist Andres Chang, one of the authors and editors of the report. “Why? Because a supermajority of Americans support climate action, and our ability to voice our dissent is essential to making climate progress.”
The Greenpeace report combines previously available research with new details about the ongoing collaboration between police officers and private security forces, the strategic use of dissent-chilling lawsuits, and tight-knit relationships between fossil fuel representatives and law enforcement — all of which compromise both the public interest and the First Amendment rights of protesters.
Fishing groups sue tire-makers over toxic chemical that kills salmon
The Seattle Times
West Coast fishing groups filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against 13 of the largest tire manufacturers in the U.S., alleging the companies are illegally killing or harming endangered salmon and oceangoing trout by the use of toxic chemicals in their products.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco alleges that the tire-makers violated the U.S. Endangered Species Act through the discharge of 6PPD-quinone, a chemical derived from a preservative that helps tires last longer. The chemical has been linked to mortality in coho salmon returning to Puget Sound streams and, the groups allege, is harming Chinook and steelhead. […]
In 2020, researchers revealed that the toxic chemical was the culprit behind the deaths of coho in about 40% of the Puget Sound area. The study found it kills 40% to 90% of coho returning to some urban streams before they spawn.
Salmon are vanishing from the Yukon River — and so is a way of life
Grist
[…] There have been salmon in the Yukon, the fourth-longest river in North America, for as long as there have been people on its banks. The river’s abundance helped Alaska earn its reputation as one of the last refuges for wild salmon, a place where they once came every year by the millions to spawn in pristine rivers and lakes after migrating thousands of miles. But as temperatures in western Alaska and the Bering Sea creep higher, the Yukon’s salmon populations have plunged.
State and federal fishery managers have resorted to drastic measures to save them. In 2021, for the first time in Fitka’s life, regulators prohibited all fishing for the river’s two main salmon species — king and chum — even for subsistence. For the better part of three fishing seasons, thousands of Yup’ik and Athabascan fishers have been banned from catching the fish that once kept their families fed.
“We grew up with fishing, cutting fish, smoking fish all our lives,” [Serena] Fitka said. “And to have it taken away just like that — without warning, without mentally preparing yourself — is traumatizing.”
U.S., already hit by 25 disasters of $1 billion each, could see more flooding this year
NBC News
The United States has had a record 25 weather disasters so far in 2023, each of which caused at least $1 billion in damage — and a new NASA analysis suggests the year’s extreme weather events may be far from over.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday released its monthly climate report, which included details of the country’s billion-dollar extreme weather events in the first 10 months of the year. With two months left in 2023, the 25 disasters tallied to date are already the most for any year since 1980, when NOAA started keeping such records. […]
So far in 2023, weather and climate disasters resulted in more than $73.8 billion in damage, according to NOAA officials. The 25 disasters over just 10 months far outpaces the previous record of 22 billion-dollar extreme weather events, set in 2020.
Corporations fall short on implementing green agendas: report
AFP via Yahoo!
Corporations are increasingly committed to green agendas, but a new report on Tuesday reveals that only one in 20 of over a thousand publicly listed companies have a detailed strategy for how they will reach their greenhouse gas targets.
While 82 percent of companies in sectors ranging from food to oil and gas reported long-term emissions strategies, only half incorporated climate scenarios into their planning, according to the report published by the Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) Centre at the London School of Economics.
And only one percent of the companies aligned their future spending with their goals to decarbonise.
"Our research is contributing to this shift in emphasis from setting targets to actually implementing them and the big takeaway is just how little of that is going on right now, even among these very large and sophisticated publicly listed companies," TPI Research Director Simon Dietz told AFP.
Amazon drought sparks fears of climate tipping points (alt link)
Financial Times
One of the world’s largest rivers and a major tributary of the Amazon, the yawning Rio Negro is a pillar of the rainforest ecosystem that is crucial to the stability of the global climate. But vast sections of the waterway are currently dry.
For weeks, an unprecedented drought has pummelled the region, reducing water levels in key Amazonian arteries to record lows and wreaking havoc on local communities and the unique wildlife of the biome.
The immediate victims of the drought are more than half a million people in Brazil’s Amazonas state, who are suffering an unfolding humanitarian emergency as the region’s river-borne transportation is choked by the lack of water.
But the drought also has far-reaching implications for the Earth’s climate. As the extreme heat and water shortage kills trees and sparks fires, the forest begins to release its enormous stocks of carbon dioxide, fuelling the process of global warming that scientists say was an important factor behind the drought in the first place.
“It is starting a vicious circle that will destroy forest,” said Philip Fearnside, a scientist at the National Institute for Amazonian Research in Manaus.
‘Everything is parched’: Amazon struggles with drought amid deforestation
The Guardian
Cows, dust and smoke. That was what greeted me on my return home to Altamira, after several weeks on the road. An unusually fierce dry season has taken a horrific toll on the Amazonian landscape, swathes of which are already denuded by cattle ranches. Together, they threaten the integrity of the world’s biggest tropical forest.
I will get to the science behind that horrifying statement shortly. But first, let me describe what is happening on the ground, in and around my home in Altamira, in Pará state, northern Brazil.
Everything is parched. The vegetation crunches underfoot. Compared with the rainy season, the forest has visibly shrunk back several metres from the roadside. The more resilient trees are holding on, but at the fringes, the weaker palms have started to shrivel up and turn brown.
Abandoned oil mess still plagues communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Mongabay
There’s a pool here,” says Ermel Chávez, a representative of the Amazon Defense Front in Ecuador. Chávez plucks a long branch from a tree, crouches down, and uses it to clear the ground. He submerges the branch by making a hole in the ground and pushing down: 1 meter, 2, 3 meters — 10 feet deep now — and still he continues.
We’re in San Carlos parish in the canton of Joya de los Sachas, in Ecuador’s Orellana province. “There are pools up to 6 meters [20 ft] deep. There’s oil in here,” Chávez says as he pulls the branch out. It’s covered in a gray paste that smells strongly of fuel. A few meters away, cows are grazing. […]
Among the vegetation here, there are several pits — pools full of oil residue that were once covered with soil. “Fruit trees don’t grow here, and if they do, they don’t bear fruit,” say local community members. […]
This scene is one of many left behind by U.S. oil company Texaco, now part of Chevron, in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Climate change worsened drought in Syria, Iraq and Iran
Deutsche Welle
Climate change exacerbated a severe drought in Syria, Iraq and Iran and made it far more likely to occur, scientists found in a study published on Wednesday.
Since 2020, the region has experienced extremely low rainfall and persistent heat, leading to a drought that has displaced millions of people, ruined crops, and contributed to food insecurity. […]
The study found that increased temperatures, caused by the burning of fossil fuels — predominantly oil, gas, and coal — made the drought 25 times more likely in Syria and Iraq, and 16 times more likely in Iran.
Fast-hitting drought slams Australia’s south-east
Sydney Morning Herald
Avocado and citrus farmer Tim Kemp says his Central Coast property is already showing signs of drought: they’re using more water than they should be for this time of year, and the grass which the sprinklers don’t touch is brown and dry.
Kemp’s Peats Ridge farm has been smashed in the past few years, first, the 2017 drought which he just scraped through, then three years of heavy rain that destroyed 2200 avocado plants he was forced to pull out. Now, Kemp and his 800 avocado plants are preparing for what could be another devastating drought for large parts of the state.
“I just can’t afford to lose production, we are using water at a much quicker rate than usual,” he says. “I am just not taking the risks I would in the past. The last couple of years of dry and wet have crippled us.”
Editor of scientific journal says fake study linking whale deaths to wind farms is 'deliberate misinformation'
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The federal government's resolve to establish an offshore wind industry is being tested by the emergence of community opposition which the government claims is being influenced by misinformation.
It was the contents of a social media post in a community group that had Professor Quentin Hanich, editor-in-chief of respected scientific journal Marine Policy, trawling through hundreds of academic papers.
The post in the Facebook group No Offshore Wind Farm for the Illawarra referenced a University of Tasmania study purportedly published in his journal that predicted offshore wind turbines "could kill up to 400 whales per year".
"That paper does not exist," Professor Hanich said. "We never received this imaginary paper … I am seeing no evidence that the study ever took place."
Concern rising over increasing carbon emissions from Canada’s forest fires
Global News
[…] In British Columbia, around 62 million tonnes of greenhouse gases were emitted in 2021. It’s a reduction from previous years, such as 63.8 million tonnes in 2007 and 66.2 million tonnes in 2018.
However, B.C.’s figures don’t include one massive item: forest fires, which create an unbelievably large amount of carbon emissions. It’s estimated that B.C. forest fires produced 170 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2017 and 196 million tonnes in 2018.
In Europe, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said that carbon emissions from wildfires across Canada from Jan. 1 to July 31 totalled 290 megatonnes – more than double the previous record for the year as a whole.
It’s thought that around 40 megatonnes of that total came from B.C.’s wildfires. Notably, those totals do not include carbon emissions from August and September.
New analysis identifies largest threat to thousands of species facing extinction
CNN
Of all 14,669 varieties of plants and animals found in Europe that were registered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species by the end of 2020, one-fifth of them face the risk of extinction, a new analysis has found.
Researchers also determined the largest threat associated with Europe’s declining biodiversity was changes in agricultural land use, which result in habitat loss and overexploitation of biological resources, according to a news release for the study published Wednesday in the journal Plos One.
“We thought it would be good to combine all these data to see … what are the major threats? Where are the regions where the most threatened species occur?” said lead study author Axel Hochkirch, head of the department of ecology at the National Museum of Natural History in Luxembourg. “Because only if we know the threats, we can do something about it.”
Fewer insects hitting your car windscreen? Here’s why
The Conversation
[…] Unfortunately, studies show that the UK is not the only place where insect populations are declining; studies have been done across Europe that draw similar conclusions. […]
However, the situation is not only causing alarm in Europe, which is very densely populated and exposed to the pressures of human activity. Studies from tropical forests in Puerto Rico have compared current insect numbers with those of 36 years ago, with similarly catastrophic results: a reduction of over 78% in ground-dwelling insect biomass. This study also showed a parallel decline in animals that eat insects, such as lizards, frogs and birds.
Why are there fewer insects? There are many causes, all stemming from the continuous, increasing deterioration of soil, vegetation, water and air due to human activities.
Insects have various needs. They need the ground that we cover with cement, the increasingly scarce water that we pollute or divert, and the plants that we treat with pesticides. What is more, we interrupt the means of communication that insects need to survive: light, chemical and air pollution all cause insects to become disoriented. Among other things, the number of airborne microscopic particles, which block their sensory organs and ways of communicating, are on the rise.
These are all occurring alongside climate change, which is considered to be an important factor in declining insect populations in and of itself.
Great Lakes tribes’ knowledge of nature could be key to navigating climate change. Will enough people listen?
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
In late August, Robert Van Zile Jr., looked out over Rice Lake with dismay. Brown spot disease had decimated this year's wild rice crop.
The lake is home to the last remaining wild rice bed on the Mole Lake Sokaogon Ojibwe Reservation, and one of the few ancient beds left in Wisconsin. Researchers collect seeds there annually for reseeding projects in other parts of the state. In addition to nutritional and cultural value, wild rice beds create habitat for fish, filter pollutants and nutrients out of the water, and provide food for migrating birds.
This year, Van Zile, chairman of the Mole Lake Ojibwe Tribe, had to deny researchers and other outside harvesters so there would be enough for tribal members.
Why a climate researcher pushed the limits of low-carbon travel — and his employer’s patience
Nature
Gianluca Grimalda spent seven months in Papua New Guinea this year, but experienced plenty of adventures before he even reached the islands. He took an extraordinarily circuitous route as part of a fieldwork trip to Bougainville, an autonomous region of the country. Grimalda, who studies the social impacts of climate change, visited 30 villages in Bougainville to study the effects of climate disasters and natural hazards on social cohesion in small-scale traditional societies.
Mindful of his carbon footprint, Grimalda travelled mainly by low-emission methods to reach Bougainville. On 9 February, he left Germany, where he worked at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), an economic research organization and think tank, arriving in Papua New Guinea 35 days later. This 22,000-kilometre trip took him through 12 countries in 22 legs, moving south and east through Europe, unexpectedly crossing the border between Iran and Pakistan in a police convoy and passing through India, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore (see ‘By land and sea’). The whole journey ended up costing him a little more than if he had relied on flights, and he couch-surfed along the way to save money.
By Grimalda’s calculations, his outward travel saved about two tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions compared with flying. He did take two flights: one from Kolkata in India to Bangkok, and another from Singapore to Buka in Papua New Guinea. But most of his travel used a combination of trains, ferries and buses.
Can Seawalls Save Us?
The New Yorker
[…] Most people, understandably, don’t want to abandon their homes… At a city-council meeting, a father of three stands up and declares, “It’s a war with the sea. We may win, we may lose, but we should never give up the ground unnecessarily.” […]
Pacifica embodies one of the central disagreements about rising seas. Fight or flight? Stay or go? Flight can seem unimaginable. But, if we try to fight the ocean with rock and concrete, it will cost us—and it may not work. Pacifica currently plans to borrow tens of millions of dollars to reinforce its seawall. […]
Hard seawalls may be the bluntest instrument in coastal engineering. Typically, they are made from concrete, stone, wood, or metal, and rise vertically from the shore. But a wave that strikes a seawall never breaks and dissipates, as it would on a beach; instead, it bounces off like an echo, its destructive force intact. In the end, the flow of water and sediment is a zero-sum game. For a wave to spare one place, it has to strike another; for sand to accumulate somewhere, it has to wash away from somewhere else.
According to the sociologist Summer Gray, seawalls are less a practical solution than a product of technocratic ideology—one that colonial powers have exported around the world. For all their potential benefits, seawalls “harm the environment, shift vulnerability downstream, lead to the disappearance of the beach, and create cycles of dependency,” she writes in her new book, “In the Shadow of the Seawall” (University of California Press).
To figure out the future climate, scientists are researching how trees form clouds
NPR News
Ever looked up at the clouds and wondered where they came from?
That's exactly what atmospheric researcher Lubna Dada studies at the Paul Scherrer Institute. She is part of an international project called CLOUD, wherein she and fellow atmospheric scientists study how clouds form and the role they play in the climate.
A recent study from the team published in the journal Science Advances looks at the role of trees and the natural compounds they release into the atmosphere in cloud formation. The goal is to more precisely understand the state of the climate before the Industrial Revolution — and how it's changed since.
More people not having children due to climate breakdown fears, finds research
The Guardian
[…] The study, by a team of academics at University College London, is believed to be the first systematic review to explore how and why climate-related concerns may be affecting reproductive decision-making.
Their analysis found that, in 12 of 13 studies, stronger concerns about climate breakdown were associated with a desire for fewer children, or none at all. […]
Uncertainty about the future and concerns about the ecological impact of the growing human population were key factors also identified by research, according to Hope Dillarstone, lead author on the study published in the journal PLOS Climate.
A blistering bull run is underway in the market for uranium
Business Insider
[…] A blistering bull run is underway in the market for uranium, the radioactive element used to produce nuclear energy. Prices just hit 15-year highs, and are on track for a record annual gain as a move away from fossil fuels increases demand. […]
Demand for the heavy metal has surged as countries from China to India and Russia pursue more nuclear programs to generate more energy while reducing carbon emissions.
About 60 nuclear reactors are under construction globally and will need about 30 million pounds of uranium a year when they start operating, according to a report by mining investment news and analysis provider Crux Investor.
First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled
Ars Technica
Nuclear power provides energy that is largely free of carbon emissions and can play a significant role in helping deal with climate change. But in most industrialized countries, the construction of nuclear plants tends to grossly exceed their budgeted cost and run years over schedule.
One hope for changing that has been the use of small, modular nuclear reactors, which can be built in a centralized production facility and then shipped to the site of their installation. But on Wednesday, the company and utility planning to build the first small, modular nuclear plant in the US announced it was canceling the project. […]
With the price of renewables dropping precipitously, however, the project's economics have worsened. Some of the initial backers started pulling out of the project earlier in the decade, although the numbers continued to fluctuate in the ensuing years.