Climate change issues, prevention, adaptation 6

Aaron Rupar @atrupar | 11:49 AM · Aug 26, 2019:

REPORTER: What do you think the world should be doing about climate change?

TRUMP: "I feel the US has tremendous wealth... I'm not going to lose that wealth on dreams, on windmills - which, frankly, aren't working too well... I think I know more about the environment than most."

https://twitter.com/i/status/1166014689756815361 (1:57 video clip)

Ocean acidification could weaken diatoms’ glass houses
More carbon dioxide in seawater slows the tiny algae’s ability to build silica cell walls

Carolyn Gramling | August 26, 2019

Ocean acidification doesn’t just erode calcium carbonate shells. It can also slow the rate at which tiny algae called diatoms* build their beautiful, intricate silica cell walls. Thinner walls mean lighter diatoms — making the algae less able to transport carbon to the deep ocean...

Vast diatom blooms act as a biological pump in the ocean, adding oxygen to the atmosphere and drawing carbon dioxide out of it. To protect themselves from predators, diatoms also build houses of glass — strong cell walls of silica. When diatoms die, the walls act as ballast, causing the creatures to sink and sequester carbon from the atmosphere.

But as oceans absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide, their waters become more acidic. If greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current track, the average ocean pH will drop from about 8.1 to about 7.8 by 2100...

Previous research suggests more CO2 could increase diatoms’ productivity, helping the algae to grow faster. But...lower pH might also affect how well the algae build their glass houses.

...After 12 days, (~35 spp) diatoms in the most acidic water (7.45) were making 60 percent less new silica compared with those in seawater with a pH of 8.1. And, in that heavily acidic tank, larger, heavier species went from making up about 40 percent of the community to only 3 percent.

But even at pH as high as 7.84, silica production shrank... the pH levels expected by 2100...a new climate change threat to the ecosystem...

Citations
K. Petrou et al. Acidification diminishes diatom silica production in the Southern Ocean.** Nature Climate Change. Published online August 26, 2019. doi:10.1038/s41558-019-0557-y. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0557-y

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ocean-acidification-could-weaken-diatoms-gla...

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* The Air You're Breathing? A Diatom Made That
Andrew Alverson | June 11, 2014

You'll consume about 2 liters (just over a half gallon) of oxygen in the time it takes you to read this post. About 20 percent of that oxygen comes from photosynthesis by marine diatoms — the most important little organisms that most people have never heard of.

https://www.livescience.com/46250-teasing-apart-the-diatom-genome.html

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** Diatoms, large bloom-forming marine microorganisms, build frustules out of silicate, which ballasts the cells and aids their export to the deep ocean. This unique physiology forges an important link between the marine silicon and carbon cycles. However, the effect of ocean acidification on the silicification of diatoms is unclear. Here we show that diatom silicification strongly diminishes with increased acidity in a natural Antarctic community. Analyses of single cells from within the community reveal that the effect of reduced pH on silicification differs among taxa, with several species having significantly reduced silica incorporation at CO2 levels equivalent to those projected for 2100. These findings suggest that, before the end of this century, ocean acidification may influence the carbon and silicon cycle by both altering the composition of the diatom assemblages and reducing cell ballasting, which will probably alter vertical flux of these elements to the deep ocean...)

Can We Survive Extreme Heat?
Humans have never lived on a planet this hot, and we’re totally unprepared for what’s to come

Jeff Goodell | Aug 27, 2019

...A recent study published in Nature Climate Change found that by 2100, if emissions continue to grow, 74 percent of the world’s population will be exposed to heat waves hot enough to kill. “The more warming you have, the more heat waves you have,” says Michael Wehner, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “The more heat waves you have, the more people die. It’s a pretty simple equation.”

...Unless nations of the world take dramatic action soon, we are headed for a warming of at least 5.4°F (3°C) by the end of the century, making the Earth roughly as warm as it was 3 million years ago during the Pliocene era, long before Homo sapiens came along. “Human beings have literally never lived on a planet as hot as it is today,” says Wehner. A 5.4°F-warmer world would be radically different from the one we know now, with cities swamped by rising seas and epic droughts turning rainforests into deserts. The increased heat alone would kill significant numbers of people. A recent report from the University of Bristol estimated that with 5.4°F of warming, about 5,800 people could die each year in New York due to the heat, 2,500 could die in Los Angeles, and 2,300 in Miami. “The relationship between heat and mortality is clear,” Eunice Lo, a climate scientist at the University of Bristol and the lead author of the report, tells me. “The warmer the world becomes, the more people die.”...

...South Asia...cities...immigrants...Hispanics (agriculture)...homeless...(AC fails: the rest of us)...

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/climate-crisis-goodell-sur...

NASA Images Show Just How Much Carbon Monoxide Is Coming Off The Burning Amazon
LAUREN FRIAS | 24 AUG 2019
https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-images-show-just-how-much-carbon-monoxide-is-c...

NASA's AIRS Maps Carbon Monoxide from Brazil Fires
Images | August 23, 2019
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php

The Amazon Is on Fire. So Is Central Africa.
Julie Turkewitz | Aug. 27, 2019

...in Central Africa, (fires) are incinerating savanna and scrubbier land, and mostly licking at the edges of the rainforest...

...While some ignite naturally in the dry season, others are deliberately set by farmers to clear land and improve crop yields.

In South America the burns spilled into sensitive areas and grew out of control. In Africa, some experts fear the same outcome, and say that Central African governments may be inadequately prepared to fight the blazes.

...Angola ranks first in the number of fire alerts by province right now, while Brazil ranks second, with Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo in third and fourth place.

...rising temperatures, decreased rain and industrial practices like logging have made forests increasingly vulnerable to out-of-control blazes. Less rain leaves the land dry and more vulnerable to sparks, while logging thins the forest, making it less dense and less humid, and more vulnerable to fire, said (Irène Wabiwa Betoko, a forest manager with Greenpeace who is based in Kinshasa)...("Start acting now to make sure these fires are not getting out of control.”)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/world/africa/congo-angola-rainforest-fires.ht...

15 things a (US) president can actually do to tackle the climate crisis
Zach Wolf | September 4, 2019

1. Rejoin the Paris climate agreement
2. Declare a national emergency on climate
3. Set a carbon-free goal
4. Reverse Trump's rollback of fuel economy standards
5. Set a zero-emission deadline for the US
6. Embrace energy-efficient light bulbs
7. Reinstate the Clean Power Plan
8. Reverse Trump's plan to speed up oil and gas pipelines
9. Reimpose a moratorium on coal sales from public lands
10. Stop trying to push coal altogether
11. Undo Trump's efforts to increase offshore oil drilling
12. Accelerate production of renewable energy on public lands
13. Use the SEC to scrutinize banks and investors for climate risks
14. Tap into growing public sentiment and work with corporations
15. Finally, get Congress on board

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/04/politics/presidents-power-day-one-climate-change/...

Kind of goes against stereotype to think of England as stressed by LACK of water, but apparently so in south and it's feared in north's future?

Climate change means we can no longer take the North’s water for granted, according to new report
IPPR North (press release) | 8/29/2019 )

Pressure on water supply could put Northern Powerhouse projects at risk, says IPPR North

Politicians in the North must act now or risk new projects failing because of pressure on supplies, according to the leading think tank for the North of England.

Pressures on the supply and demand of water in the North will become much more acute in the next 25 years, say IPPR North.

Of the three Northern regions, Yorkshire and the Humber faces the greatest long-term pressures. Without a reduction in water use among households and businesses, demand for water could start to outstrip supply by 2035.

Successful water management in the North West would enable it to supply water to other regions of England through a water trading scheme, while the North East is expected to have a water surplus for several decades.

However, the new paper, Natural Assets North: Water in the Northern Powerhouse, explains that people, leaders and businesses across the North must work together to ensure that water does not outstrip demand in the region. It identifies five key factors likely to increase pressure on water supply:

Climate change, with all Northern regions expected to see significant reductions in rainfall and water flow.
Public attitudes to water, with most people still unaware about the need to use water more responsibly in future.
Population growth, which would offset some of the gains made by more efficient household water use.
Growing demand for energy, including plans to reduce net carbon emissions via methods to capture and store carbon – which are particularly water intensive.
The ability of the water companies to deliver on their water management plans for the next 25 years. Current plans will require an “unprecedented increase” in efforts to reduce leakage, the report says.

The report calls for the North’s leaders to take shared responsibility for ensuring the demand for water remains sustainable in coming decades.

It says they should make a concerted effort, together with the water sector, to minimise future demand for water across industry, businesses and households. This could include encouraging much more widespread use of water meters to measure household consumption and ‘greywater’ systems that enable wastewater from houses and offices to be re-used...

https://www.ippr.org/news-and-media/press-releases/nan-water-report-press-releas...

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Natural Assets North: Water in the Northern Powerhouse (24 p)
Jack Hunter, Institute for Public Policy Research
29/08/2019

Without a reliable and sustainable supply of clean water, and effective and efficient wastewater systems, activity in the Northern Powerhouse would quickly grind to a halt. To date, conversations about the future of the region and its economy have largely taken the North’s water resources for granted...

https://www.ippr.org/research/publications/natural-assets-north-water-in-the-nor...

So four auto companies seeing the writing on the wall, opt to work with California to improve gas mileage. Spurned, Trump's Justice Dept investigates them for violation of anti-trust laws, scaring away other companies who might have joined the CA agreement.

Justice Dept. Opens Antitrust Inquiry Into Automakers’ Emissions Pact With California
Hiroko Tabuchi and Coral Davenport | Sept. 6, 2019

...In July, four automakers — Ford Motor Company, Volkswagen of America, Honda and BMW — announced that they had reached an agreement with California to stick with standards slightly less stringent than the Obama-era rules but that would nevertheless require automakers to significantly improve the fuel economy of their vehicles. The announcement came as an embarrassment for the Trump administration, which assailed the move as a “P.R. stunt.”

Now, the Justice Department is investigating whether the four automakers violated federal antitrust laws by reaching a side deal to follow California’s stricter rules, those people said. The Justice Department declined to comment on the investigation, which was initially reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Richard Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University, said... the agreement between California and the auto companies is, so far, largely an agreement in principle that has not yet been signed or legally formalized....

“These are four car companies standing in the way of something the president wants to do,” Mr. Revesz said. “Now the enormous prosecutorial power of the federal government is brought to bear against them. This should make any large companies very nervous.”

...Under the agreement (with California), the four automakers, which account for about 30 percent of the United States’ auto market, would be required to reach an average fleetwide fuel economy of 51 miles per gallon by 2026, a slightly looser standard than the 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 set forth by the Obama administration.

In comparison, the Trump administration’s plan would roll back those standards to about 37 miles per gallon...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/climate/automakers-california-emissions-antit...

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The second prong of Trump strategy under consideration is a plan to revoke California’s legal authority to set state tailpipe pollution standards that are stricter than federal regulations. Apparently the administration is having difficulty with third prong--justifying a lowering of the fderal requirement from 54.5 to 37 MPG by 2025:

White House Prepares to Revoke California’s Right to Set Tougher Pollution Rules
Coral Davenport | Sept. 5, 2019

...California’s special right to set its own tailpipe pollution rules dates to the 1970 Clean Air Act, the landmark federal legislation designed to fight air pollution nationwide. The law granted California a waiver to set stricter rules of its own because the state already had clear air legislation in place.

A revocation of the California waiver would have national significance. Thirteen other states follow California’s tighter standards, together representing roughly a third of the national auto market. Because of that, the fight over federal auto emissions rules has the potential to split the United States auto market, with some states adhering to stricter pollution standards than others. For automakers, that represents a nightmare scenario.

The Obama-era tailpipe pollution rules that the administration hopes to weaken would require automakers to build vehicles that achieve an average fuel economy of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, cutting about six billion tons of carbon dioxide pollution over the lifetimes of those vehicles. The proposed Trump rule would lower the requirement to about 37 miles per gallon, allowing for most of that pollution to be emitted.

Originally, officials had hoped to complete work on that rule and introduce it by this spring, allowing time for the expected legal fight over the measure to reach the Supreme Court by 2020, during Mr. Trump’s first term.

As it became clearer in recent months that administration officials had not been able to complete the thousands of pages of analyses required to put forth the rollback of the broader rule on nationwide vehicle pollution, White House officials began considering moving forward with the one piece of the plan that was ready, according to people familiar with the matter, the revocation of the Clean Air Act provision giving California its special status.

Xavier Becerra, the California attorney general, restated his intention to sue over any attempt to undermine his state’s legal authority to set its own pollution standards. “California will continue its advance toward a cleaner future,” he wrote in an email.

A spokeswoman for the American Auto Alliance, which lobbies on behalf of the largest automakers, declined to comment until any plan had been made public.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/climate/trump-auto-pollution-california.html

Ireland to plant 440 million trees by 2040
Melissa Breyer | September 4, 2019

Over the centuries, Ireland went from having an initial forest cover of 80 percent to just one percent in 1929...According to the Agriculture and Food Development Authority, Ireland is the only country in Europe where such complete forest destruction took place.

Since then, the country has slowly been increasing its forest cover. In 2012, the National Forest Inventory (NFI) estimated that the area of forest was 731,650 hectares or 10.5 percent of the land area.

Even though Ireland's forest cover is estimated to be at its highest level in over 350 years, it still lags notably behind the European average of over 30 percent. Given the crucial role that trees play in helping to fend off the climate crisis, what's a tree-sparse country to do?

Plant more trees. Which is exactly what the country is planning to do. The Irish Times reports that 22 million trees will be planted every year over the next two decades for a total of 440 million new trees by 2040.

...need for 2,500 conifers or 3,300 broad-leaf trees for every hectare planted, with a goal of 70 percent conifers and 30 percent broad leaves.

...believe it or not, it's not just the farmers expressing a lack of enthusiasm – a conservation non-profit is speaking up as well. The Irish Wildlife Trust (IWT) takes issue with the vast new swaths of non-native Sitka spruce, arguing that out-of-place conifer forests do not provide the right habitat ingredients for native species. As well, non-native species planted in massive planting don't always fare so well...rewild...

https://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/ireland-plant-440-million-trees-...

What If We Stopped Pretending?
Jonathan Franzen | September 8, 2019

The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it...

...(To achieve goal of less than 2C increase) The first condition is that every one of the world’s major polluting countries institute draconian conservation measures, shut down much of its energy and transportation infrastructure, and completely retool its economy.

...Vast sums of government money must be spent without wasting it and without lining the wrong pockets....deforestation of Indonesia for palm-oil plantations...subsidy of ethanol fuel, which turned out to benefit no one but corn farmers.

...overwhelming numbers of human beings, including millions of government-hating Americans, need to accept high taxes and severe curtailment of their familiar life styles without revolting

...Our resources aren’t infinite. Even if we invest much of them in a longest-shot gamble, reducing carbon emissions in the hope that it will save us, it’s unwise to invest (in) all of them...not banked for disaster preparedness...erodes the resilience of a natural world already fighting for its life...low-tech conservation actions

...All-out war on climate change made sense only as long as it was winnable. Once you accept that we’ve lost it, other kinds of action take on greater meaning. Preparing for fires and floods and refugees is a directly pertinent example. But the impending catastrophe heightens the urgency of almost any world-improving action. In times of increasing chaos, people seek protection in tribalism and armed force, rather than in the rule of law, and our best defense against this kind of dystopia is to maintain functioning democracies, functioning legal systems, functioning communities. In this respect, any movement toward a more just and civil society can now be considered a meaningful climate action...

...There may come a time, sooner than any of us likes to think, when the systems of industrial agriculture and global trade break down and homeless people outnumber people with homes. At that point, traditional local farming and strong communities will no longer just be liberal buzzwords. Kindness to neighbors and respect for the land—nurturing healthy soil, wisely managing water, caring for pollinators—will be essential in a crisis and in whatever society survives it...

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending

ETA_________________________________________________________________

Something I needed to read after Franzen's pessimistic, if accurate, assessment to stop pretending that we can stop climate change:

Say not the Struggle nought Availeth
By Arthur Hugh Clough

Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.

Vox paints a hypothetical scenario of a heat wave over Phoenix, Arizona and it's cascading effects.

122 degrees for days: the looming Phoenix heat wave that could harm thousands

The scenarios in Phoenix, Southern California, and Tampa we’ll describe in this three-part series are hypothetical. But they’re based on models scientists use to project what’s possible today, or tomorrow. There’s always uncertainty in these models. Things can change. These aren’t premonitions, but tastes of what’s possible.

We face more and more expensive disasters, and we are still building right in the paths of tempests. But our ability today to anticipate dangerous future weather creates an opportunity to reconcile with where we let people build, how we manage vegetation that could burn, and whether we replace more trees and soil with heat-magnifying concrete.
…
The city’s past brushes with heat extremes are illustrative.

The hottest temperature recorded in Phoenix was 122 degrees in 1990. And a searing late-June heat wave in 2017 lasted more than a week and melted mailboxes. Letters slid off street signs. Asphalt bubbled. Airplanes couldn’t take off. Power consumption soared to record highs. There was no measurable rain during the month.

High temperatures killed a record 172 people in the Phoenix metropolitan area that summer, up from 150 heat deaths in 2016 and 85 in 2015.

Wedge-shaped marine heat wave blankets West Coast, concerning scientists
Hina Alam | Sept. 8, 2019

Scientists are keeping a close eye on a thin blanket of warm water off the West Coast for about three months, saying it resembles a marine heat wave nicknamed “the blob” that disrupted marine life between 2014 and 2016.

...The heat wave — which resembles a wedge, stretching from the south of Vancouver Island to Baja, Calif., and offshore towards Hawaii — has raised temperatures about three to four degrees Celsius higher than the normal longterm average for those parts of the ocean, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

...NOAA research scientist Nate Mantua noted that this year’s wedge is at this point less severe than the blob of 2014 to 2016, because it’s only been around for a few months. Three to five years ago, the warm water penetrated to depths of 200 to 300 metres, while right now it’s mostly between 30 and 50 metres...“It’s a blanket over the ocean and that means it could go away pretty quickly if the winds start blowing in a normal way” ...So far, the warm expanse has been held offshore by cold water welling from the ocean depth...in addition to being able to dissipate the wedge, winds also have the power to make the heat wave worse...California may already be seeing some of the effects from the warmer waters: NOAA’s surveys have recently noted higher concentration of anchovies — and the big predators that feed on them — close to shore waters.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/09/08/wedge-shaped-marine-heat-wave-bla...

Alaska’s Sea Ice Completely Melted for First Time in Recorded History
Dahr Jamail | September 3, 2019

...for the first time in recorded history, Alaska’s sea ice has melted completely away. That means there was no sea ice whatsoever within 150 miles of its shores, according to the National Weather Service, as the northernmost state cooked under record-breaking heat through the summer...

...Nine out of the 10 hottest Julys ever recorded have occurred since 2005.... (July 2019 was the hottest yet)

https://truthout.org/articles/alaskas-sea-ice-completely-melted-for-first-time-i...

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Alaska just had the most ridiculous summer. That's a red flag for the planet.
Bill Weir | September 10, 2019

Anchorage, Alaska (CNN)Alaska's summer of fire and no ice is smashing records.

With the Arctic warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, America's "Last Frontier" feels like the first in line to see, smell and feel the unsettling signs of a climate in crisis.

There are the smoky skies and dripping glaciers, dead salmon and hauled-out walrus but scientists also worry about the changes that are harder to see, from toxic algae blooms in the Bering Sea to insects from the Lower 48 bringing new diseases north.

The head shaking among longtime locals really began on the Fourth of July, when at 90 degrees, Anchorage was hotter than Key West...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/09/weather/alaska-climate-crisis-summer-weir-wxc/ind...

Canada Tries a Forceful Message for Flood Victims: Live Someplace Else
Christopher Flavelle | Sept. 10, 2019. Updated Sept. 11, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/climate/canada-flood-homes-buyout.html

Trump defends lightbulb efficiency rollback: 'I look better under an incandescent light'
Zack Budryk | 09/09/19

...The administration finalized the reversal of Obama-era efficiency standards last week, rolling back the rules for about half of lightbulbs. Critics of the move say it will hasten climate change by requiring the U.S. to produce more energy to power the less efficient bulbs...

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/460630-trump-defends-lightbulb...

Western Siberian rivers and lakes emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
September 11, 2019 , Umea University

Warmer climate and thawing of permafrost increase greenhouse gas emissions from West Siberian rivers and lakes. This is shown by Svetlana Serikova in her dissertation, which she defends on September 27 at Umeå University.

...Svetlana Serikova performed several field campaigns to Western Siberia in a transect over 1 500 km distance, travelling from the very south of the region with no permafrost, all the way to the Arctic Ocean where permafrost is stable. She measured rivers and lakes greenhouse gas emissions in different seasons and in different years.

The new findings provide increased knowledge about the effects of thawing permafrost on greenhouse gas emissions from inland waters.

"I found that Western Siberian rivers and lakes are sources of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, the magnitude of which varies depending on the state of permafrost in this area. For example, river greenhouse gas emissions were greatest in areas where permafrost is thawing, whereas lake greenhouse gas emissions were greatest in areas where permafrost is still intact," says Svetlana Serikova.

She also shows that currently greenhouse gas emissions from all Western Siberian rivers and lakes exceed the amount of carbon that Western Siberian rivers transport to the Arctic Ocean. Such finding means that a major part of previously frozen carbon that ends up in rivers and lakes in this region is emitted as greenhouse gases from the water surface into the atmosphere, making Western Siberia a hotspot for river and lake greenhouse gas emissions following permafrost thaw...

The thesis is available online: urn.kb.se/resolve

https://m.phys.org/news/2019-09-western-siberian-rivers-lakes-emit.html

New Report Suggests the Speed of the Energy Transition Is Rapid
Jules Kortenhorst | September 11, 2019

...There Is Time to Act but it Is Time to Choose

From the perspective of RMI, the evidence clearly points to a rapid energy transition scenario. The key is to feel the winds of change early and move into position so that it can fill all sails. Electric vehicles had a global market share of just 2 percent in 2018, but the global auto sector has committed $300 billion to a strategic transformation that seeks to ensure that auto industry incumbents from Detroit to Stuttgart will continue their centurylong dominance far into the future. As we published in a report earlier this week, clean energy portfolios now make natural gas-powered generation unprofitable across the United States. Developing countries will opt for the more cost-effective new technologies, rather than adopting solutions from the past. And increasing policy pressure, together with financial markets that reallocate capital, will all drive in the same direction. We can all of us—innovative technology start-ups, global energy incumbents and government policymakers alike—travel together and deliver the benefits of the energy transition profitably. But first recognizing what road we are traveling will make all the difference.

https://rmi.org/new-report-suggests-the-speed-of-the-energy-transition-is-rapid/

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The Speed of the Energy Transition Gradual or Rapid Change? (White Paper)
World Economic Forum | 12 September 2019
32 p

The energy industry is complex, and understanding the major trends changing the industry can be challenging. Investors, policy-makers, business people and other interested stakeholders require clear information about the evolution of the energy system to inform present decisions, which can have long-lasting effects.

This White Paper provides a framework for navigating the mosaic of often conflicting narratives for how the energy system is evolving. The two very different narratives about the energy transition are: Gradual and Rapid. This paper summarizes the main ways in which they differ and what to look for over the course of the next decade to see which narrative is playing out.

https://www.weforum.org/whitepapers/the-speed-of-the-energy-transition

Executive Summary

The great energy debate.
The Gradual narrative.
The Rapid narrative.
The narrative can become self-fulfilling.
The road to Paris.
Implications for the fossil fuel sectors.

What determines the difference.
1. What matters – stock or flow.
2. Technology growth – linear or exponential.
3. Policy – static or dynamic.
4. Emerging market energy pathways – copy or leapfrog.

The Speed of the Energy Transition
Is the energy transition just about solar and wind?
How important are different fossil fuels?
What is the role of finance in the energy transition?
What about countries that resist the energy transition?
Can technology solve everything?
Don’t shoot the messenger.
Recent developments.

What to watch out for. The key issues to watch over the course of the next decade have been laid out to see which narrative will prevail. In technology, the focus is on the cost and growth rates of the key disruptive technologies – solar, wind, batteries, EVs and green hydrogen. In policy, the focus is on whether politicians implement more rigorous actions to make fossil fuel users pay for their greenhouse gas externalities. In the emerging markets, the question is whether China and India will be able to continue to implement new clean energy and energy efficiency technologies at scale and whether the path they are setting will be followed by South-East Asia and Africa.

Signposts. A series of signposts are presented. Pass these and the Rapid narrative is on track. Fail to pass them and the Gradual narrative is playing out. Three targets have been set for 2030: solar electricity at $20-30 per megawatt hour (MWh); advanced lithium-ion batteries at $50-100 per kilowatt hour (kWh); and carbon taxes implemented on around half of emissions at $20 per tonne, with three peaks to take place in the 2020s in the event of Rapid transition: peak demand for new ICE cars; peak demand for fossil fuels in electricity; and peak demand for all fossil fuels.

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_the_speed_of_the_energy_transition.pdf

I wonder how NASA in this Administration manages to continue collecting climate data (a critical mission),
much less make it available to the media. See FAQ!

Climate Change Resources for Media
These selected multimedia and graphic resources are available for use by news media under NASA's media usage guidelines.
https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/media-resources/

Etienne Berthier @berthax2 | 5:05 PM · Sep 16, 2019:

Red colours almost everywhere in this map = bad news for Andean glaciers. They nearly all lost mass between 2000 and 2018.
See more in https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0432-5 *
Image ( https://twitter.com/berthax2/status/1173704364055322629/photo/1 )

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* E. Berthier Dussaillant et al. 2019. Two decades of glacier mass loss along the Andes. Nature Geoscience (16 Sept 2019) | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0432-5

Abstract
Andean glaciers are among the fastest shrinking and largest contributors to sea level rise on Earth. They also represent crucial water resources in many tropical and semi-arid mountain catchments. Yet the magnitude of the recent ice loss is still debated. Here we present Andean glacier mass changes (from 10° N to 56° S) between 2000 and 2018 using time series of digital elevation models derived from ASTER stereo images. The total mass change over this period was −22.9 ± 5.9 Gt yr−1 (−0.72 ± 0.22 m w.e. yr−1 (m w.e., metres of water equivalent)), with the most negative mass balances in the Patagonian Andes (−0.78 ± 0.25 m w.e. yr−1) and the Tropical Andes (−0.42 ± 0.24 m w.e. yr−1), compared to relatively moderate losses (−0.28 ± 0.18 m w.e. yr−1) in the Dry Andes. Subperiod analysis (2000–2009 versus 2009–2018) revealed a steady mass loss in the tropics and south of 45° S. Conversely, a shift from a slightly positive to a strongly negative mass balance was measured between 26 and 45° S. In the latter region, the drastic glacier loss in recent years coincides with the extremely dry conditions since 2010 and partially helped to mitigate the negative hydrological impacts of this severe and sustained drought. These results provide a comprehensive, high-resolution and multidecadal data set of recent Andes-wide glacier mass changes that constitutes a relevant basis for the calibration and validation of hydrological and glaciological models intended to project future glacier changes and their hydrological impacts.

Climate change: ‘We’ve created a civilisation hell bent on destroying itself – I’m terrified’, writes Earth scientist
James Dyke | May 24, 2019

...one explanation for our collective failure on climate change is that such collective action is perhaps impossible. It’s not that we don’t want to change, but that we can’t. We are locked into a planetary-scale system that while built by humans, is largely beyond our control. This system is called the technosphere.

...the technosphere is the system that consists of individual humans, human societies – and stuff. In terms of stuff, humans have produced an extraordinary 30 trillion metric tons of things. ..

... the technosphere has dramatically grown since World War II. This tremendous increase in the number of humans, their energy and material consumption, food production and environmental impact has been dubbed the Great Acceleration.

...The purpose of humans in (technosphere) context is to consume products and services. The more we consume, the more materials will be extracted from the Earth, and the more energy resources consumed, the more factories and infrastructure built. And ultimately, the more the technosphere will grow.

...My fear, however, is that we will not be able to slow down the growth of the technosphere even if we tried – because we are not actually in control.

...Rather than being masters of our own destiny, we may be very constrained in how we can act.

...humans are part of a global-scale system that provides for all their needs and so has led them to rely on it entirely.

...any change must be incremental because it must use what current and previous generations have built...

We have just come to appreciate that our impacts on the Earth system are so large that we have possibly ushered in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. The Earth’s rocks will bear witness to humans’ impacts long after we disappear. The technosphere can be seen as the engine of the Anthropocene. But that does not mean we are driving it. We may have created this system, but it is not built for our communal benefit. This runs completely counter to how we view our relationship with the Earth system.

Take the planetary boundaries concept*, which has generated much interest scientifically, economically, and politically. This idea frames human development as impacting on nine planetary boundaries, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and ocean acidification. If we push past these boundaries, then the Earth system will change in ways that will make human civilisation very difficult, if not impossible, to maintain. The value of, say, the biosphere here is that it provides goods and services to us. This represents what we can literally get from the system.

This very human-centric approach should lead to more sustainable development. It should constrain growth. But the technological world system we have built is clever at getting around such constraints. It uses the ingenuity of humans to build new technologies – such as geoengineering – to reduce surface temperatures. That would not halt ocean acidification and so would lead to the potential collapse of ocean ecosystems. No matter. The climate constraint would have been avoided and the technosphere could then get to work overcoming any side effects of biodiversity loss. Fish stocks collapse? Shift to farmed fish or intensively grown algae.

As defined so far, there appears nothing to stop the technosphere liquidating most of the Earth’s biosphere to satisfy its growth. Just as long as goods and services are consumed, the technosphere can continue to grow.

...those who fear the collapse of civilisation or those who have enduring faith in human innovation being able to solve all sustainability challenges may both be wrong.

After all, a much smaller and much richer population of the order of hundreds of millions could consume more than the current population of 7.6 billion or the projected population of nine billion by the middle of this century. While there would be widespread disruption, the technosphere may be able to weather climate change beyond 3°C. It does not care, cannot care, that billions of people would have died.

...It’s not just that we give tacit consent to the technosphere by using its roads, computers, or intensively farmed food. It’s that by being a productive member of society, by earning and spending, above all by consuming, we further the technosphere’s growth.

...the mainstream economic attitude about trees, frogs, mountains, and lakes is that these things only have value if they provide something to us. This mindset sets them up as nothing more than resources to exploit and sinks for waste.

...if we continue to frame the situation in terms of “us against them”, of human well-being trumping everything else in the Earth system, then we may be effectively hacking away the best form of protection against a dangerously rampant technosphere.

And so the most effective guard against climate breakdown may not be technological solutions, but a more fundamental reimagining of what constitutes a good life on this particular planet.

...Embracing the reality of the technosphere doesn’t mean giving up, of meekly returning to our cells. It means grabbing a vital new piece of the map and planning our escape.

http://theconversation.com/climate-change-weve-created-a-civilisation-hell-bent-...

___________________________________________________________________________

*Wikipedia: ...Molina (2009) identified nine 'planetary boundaries" and, drawing on current scientific understanding,researchers proposed quantifications for seven of them. These seven are

(1) climate change (CO2 concentration in the atmosphere (less than) 350 ppm and/or a maximum change of +1 W/m2 in radiative forcing);

(2) ocean acidification (mean surface seawater saturation state with respect to aragonite (more than or equal to) 80% of pre-industrial levels);

(3) stratospheric ozone (less than 5% reduction in total atmospheric O3 from a pre-industrial level of 290 Dobson Units);

(4) biogeochemical nitrogen (N) cycle (limit industrial and agricultural fixation of N2 to 35 Tg N/yr) and

(5) phosphorus (P) cycle (annual P inflow to oceans not to exceed 10 times the natural background weathering of P); global freshwater use ((less than) 4000 km3/yr of consumptive use of runoff resources);

(6) land system change ((less than) 15% of the ice-free land surface under cropland); and

(7) the rate at which biological diversity is lost (annual rate of (less than) 10 extinctions per million species).

The two additional planetary boundaries for which the group had not yet been able to determine a global boundary level are

(8) chemical pollution and

(9) atmospheric aerosol loading.

Molina, M. J. (2009), "Planetary boundaries: Identifying abrupt change", Nature Reports Climate Change, 1 (910): 115–116, doi:10.1038/climate.2009.96
https://www.nature.com/articles/climate.2009.96

Trump axes California's right to set own auto emissions standards
Paul A. Eisenstein | Sept. 18, 2019

...California has already filed legal efforts to forestall such a move and has been joined by other states that have adopted the stricter California mandates.

...California originally was granted authority to set tougher standards as an acknowledgment of the poor air quality in cities such as Los Angeles. ...

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/trump-about-strip-california-its-right-ov...
_________________________________________________________

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump | 2 h
The Trump Administration is revoking California’s Federal Waiver on emissions in order to produce far less expensive cars for the consumer, while at the same time making the cars substantially SAFER. This will lead to more production because of this pricing and safety......

.... advantage, and also due to the fact that older, highly polluting cars, will be replaced by new, extremely environmentally friendly cars. There will be very little difference in emissions between the California Standard and the new U.S. Standard, but the cars will be....

....far safer and much less expensive. Many more cars will be produced under the new and uniform standard, meaning significantly more JOBS, JOBS, JOBS! Automakers should seize this opportunity because without this alternative to California, you will be out of business.

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Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom (CA Governor) | 11:51 AM · Sep 18, 2019:
This is simply inaccurate.

Your standards will cost consumers $400 billion.

Result in 320 billion more gallons of oil burned and spewed into our air.

And hurt car companies’ ability to compete in a global market.

It’s bad for our air. Bad for our health. Bad for our economy.

Extreme Weather Displaced a Record 7 Million in First Half of 2019

Extreme weather events displaced a record seven million people from their homes during the first six months of this year, a figure that put 2019 on pace to be one of the most disastrous years in almost two decades even before Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahamas.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, which compiles data from governments, United Nations humanitarian agencies and media reports, concluded in a report published Thursday that floods, landslides, cyclones and other extreme weather events temporarily displaced more people in the first half of this year than during the same period in any other year.

“In today’s changing climate, mass displacement triggered by extreme weather events is becoming the norm,” the center said in its report, adding that the numbers represent “the highest midyear figure ever reported for displacements associated with disasters.” The center has been publishing annual data since 2003.

The latest numbers reflect both bad news and good. Extreme weather events are becoming more extreme in the era of climate change, according to scientists, and more people are exposed to them, especially in rapidly growing and storm-prone Asian cities.

At the same time, many government authorities have become better at preparing for extreme weather, with early warning systems and evacuation shelters in place that prevent mass casualties.

So, the numbers of displaced this year include many who might otherwise have been killed. That was almost certainly the case for the 3.4 million people who were evacuated from their homes in India and Bangladesh in May before Cyclone Fani barreled over the Bay of Bengal. Fewer than a hundred fatalities were reported across both countries, according to the United Nations humanitarian affairs agency.

By contrast, in southern Africa, where Cyclone Idai struck in March, more than 1,000 people were killed and 617,000 were displaced across Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Madagascar.

Climate Strike N.Y.C.: 1.1 Million Can Skip School for Protest

“This completely changes things,” one student said.
...
Some 600 medical professionals across the country have also signed a virtual “doctor’s note” encouraging teachers to excuse students on the grounds that climate change is dangerous to their and others’ health.

NASA Climate @NASAClimate | Sept18, 2019
Last month's global average concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) was nearly 412 parts per million (ppm),
up approximately 3 ppm from August 2018.

Carbon Dioxide
LATEST MEASUREMENT:
August 2019
412 ppm
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/

Ice slabs in Greenland glaciers: another tipping point?
(On a smaller scale, ice formed by warmer temps prevent reindeer from hoofing down through snow to forage...)

Expanding ice slabs are increasing Greenland’s contribution to sea level rise
Hard layers of frozen meltwater force new melting water directly into the sea

Carolyn Gramling | Sept 18, 2019

By forcing more meltwater to run along the surface and pour directly into the sea, the impermeable slabs could increase Greenland’s contribution to global sea level rise from seven to 74 millimeters by 2100, depending on future greenhouse gas emissions, simulations suggest. So far, additional meltwater runoff due to the slabs has contributed about one millimeter to global sea levels, researchers report in the Sept. 19 Nature.

...Typically, summer meltwater can seep back into the ice sheet, trickling down into porous, partially compacted layers of granular snow called firn. Sometimes, pockets of meltwater within the firn refreeze into small, scattered bodies of hard ice, called ice lenses.

It was while drilling for ice cores in 2012 in southwest Greenland that (Michael MacFerrin, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder) and colleagues first determined that instead of isolated lenses, there might be widespread layers of frozen ice just beneath the surface. “We did not expect to find meter after meter after meter of solid ice,” MacFerrin says. Those ice slabs, the team suggests, act as an effective barrier to percolating meltwater, funneling the water more quickly to the ocean.

...“Under the lower greenhouse gas emission scenario, in which greenhouse gas emissions are reduced around 2050, we see ice slabs growing through the middle of the century and then the process slows down,” MacFerrin says. But under the highest future emissions scenario, in which current emissions are not reduced, slab growth could extend all the way to the center of the ice sheet...

...extra rivulets of meltwater pour into lakes and streams on the surface of the ice, but might also find ways to sink much deeper via cracks and crevasses — possibly all the way down to the base of the ice sheet, where it meets land, she says.

Adding meltwater to the base of the ice sheet could act as a kind of lubricant, possibly speeding up the flow of the ice sheet itself toward the ocean...

Citations

M. MacFerrin et al. Rapid expansion of Greenland’s low-permeability ice slabs. Nature. Vol. 573, September 19, 2019, p. 403. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1550-3. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1550-3.epdf

J. Mouginot et al. Forty-six years of Greenland Ice Sheet mass balance from 1972 to 2018. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 116, May 7, 2019, p. 9239. https://www.pnas.org/content/116/19/9239

Naomi Klein on the Case for a Green New Deal, Greta Thunberg, & The Rise of Ecofascism (Democracy Now)

#26--that was worthwhile watching. There is no doubt that Donald Trump needs to be defeated but we can't go back to a complacent feel goody past--we have to deal with issues that are confronting us now and climate is pretty much the biggest issue. Anyway I'm absolutely for the green new deal which rolls in other problems in a way that tackles climate change and yes we'll have to transform our economy and society and make them fairer for all.

I do think more and more people are on board at least with how serious the issue is but even much of the so-called 'left' media is pushing back against all the time--just calling for incremental changes. It's not going to be enough. It's interesting to hear Greta Thunberg is Asperger's (my son as well) and how Naomi talked about how people mirror each other or the things they see and/or hear which brings us back around the circle again in how we can be manipulated by mainstream centrist media voices determined to give us candidates that are for incremental change.

Donald Trump is a symptom of the disease--he's not the disease. When he's gone we will still have to cure the problem.

Last thought is how Naomi tells us how people are capable of much more than they think and working collectively will multiply that capability.

>27 lriley:

Did you catch what she said about the fascists who accept climate change is happening being even scarier than the deniers? How true, and how chilling. Because there's no doubt that the millions on the move from devastated areas today are just the beginning--meaning that there will be no end to fascist organising. And the UN is estimating 25 million to 1 billion of people trying to reach safer regions by 2050. It's difficult to see how this will be controlled without involving large-scale policing, probably by the military.

She was also spot on regarding the disgusting evasive language of the politicians, including those on the so-called left, and how it contributes to obscuring the crisis.

People should not panic, but they should ACT.

Finally, how depressing to hear Bush in 1988 acknowledging the crisis and compare that to what the current turds are doing. I remember the summer when I first read about the ozone hole, the disbelief and the anguish I felt. Telling my mom to stop using hairspray, because of the freons in it. But soon there'd be the distraction of the civil war to make us worry about more direct threats...

Ah, it's possible the Bush clip came from Sam Bee's show (I've been chain-watching vids on the topic so it gets mixed up):

Meet the Rich: The Koch Brothers | Full Frontal on TBS (linked to start with Bush at 0:51)

#28--yeah I did and walls are being put up to keep 'others' out even if it means they will die. And Trump gave us that kind of message the other day speaking about the homeless who are to be seen clogging up the entrance ways of the posh and wealthy. It's a similar message anyway.

The stronger democratic candidates for POTUS on this are Sanders and Warren and Biden is pretty much the worst. The establishment of the party is behind Biden right now and that's a problem. Momentum is more with Warren though and Biden can hardly open his mouth without inserting his shoe. A question is if Warren and Sanders got in how much support they'd get from their own party. It's going to be two things that get whatever action going--the left of the democratic party and more climate events. They're going to happen in greater numbers and greater force. There are going to be more Paradise's destroyed by wildfires--there are going to be more hurricanes and earthquakes--more sea level rise and the Pentagon has been aware of that for a long time. It's hampered a lot of their missions and operations.

Anyway I've read some of Naomi's books and seen numerous of her interviews over the years--I often cite and recommend her Shock Doctrine. I like her a lot. The thing is we have our time here on earth--however long that is and a good person will do their best to make the world a little better for the generations that will follow after them. Unfortunately in the United States our ideals are continually being corrupted by rich and powerful entities. To borrow from the post punk band Gang of Four--history 'is not made by great men' it's the work of all of us.

Frankly, the Dem circus is giving me the creeps. It's very clear that the liberal media doesn't want Sanders but I can't tell how that relates to the Dem base. Meanwhile, while they are trumpeting his "sliding" in some frikkin polls, he actually seems to be on par with Biden and Warren and perhaps even leading in places (California?)

I truly fear a repetition of Clinton/Sanders. Warren will obviously suffer from a segment of purportedly anti-Trump voters whether she's innocent as a lamb or orders a mafia hit on Sanders.

The trouble is that the "Sanders or nobody" people have a point--there really IS establishment animus against him. The US doesn't tolerate "socialists" and that's that.

But saying that both the Dem and the Rep side don't want his politics in the White House doesn't necessarily mean there's an actual "conspiracy" against him--there's nothing secret about this antagonism. The Red Scare successfully infected your country and is sitting in your genes. And it certainly doesn't mean Warren herself, should she win the candidacy, will have done so only through cheating. But I see that narrative coming up already, she's being "Clintonised" ever more intensely.

Here is the problem as I see it: I have no idea whether Sanders would split the Dem party--but I do know that nominating Warren is showing every sign of beign treated as Clinton redux. So I'd as soon take a chance on Sanders. But will the Dem base? Won't they get cold feet?

I can almost understand people panicking and putting silly hopes in Biden. Tragically ironic that the two most progressive candidates are cast in such difficult "unwinnable" position.

I repeat here my solution, which is that in exchange for platform inclusions, Sanders throw his support behind Warren.

In regard to Klein, I have only watched half because it is late and people here are sleeping, but I am likely to continue to agree with her.

With or without watching it, I am likely to come away uninspired, as the fundamental change required to solve the problem seems to me impossible. The oligarchs are simply too powerful. I believe the only possibility for substantial political and economic change is environmental panic, but the wealth gap has allowed the most powerful country in the world to become a nation of sloths who could not grasp the betrayal of Obama when he more than courted Wall Street and when he allowed insurance complanies to draft his modest health plan. The US citizens will be the last to effect change, allow discussion of change, react to frightening news...

#31--anyone in the current democratic field I would vote for against Trump--with maybe the exception of Biden--I might sit at home instead if he's the nominee. NYS is going to vote for the democrat so it won't really matter what I do.

I like Sanders best but the thing with Warren if she won I think she'd get broader in party support.....and I like a lot of her policy proposals. She might be the smartest person in the entire Senate and she's organized and I've seen her eviscerate Wall St. bankers and insiders. She rips them apart--she knows economics and she knows all the games those people play and is merciless on the attack. She has a lot of contempt for them so it's not like I don't think she means a lot of what she says. We could do a lot worse. On climate though Sanders has been talking about this since the 80's at the least--there's a video of him with a full head of hair going into a grade schools and talking to kids about it.

What I think is going to happen is Warren is going to win the democratic nomination--there are a bunch of things that will derail Biden--low energy is one of them. I don't see Trump beating her--I really don't. Even with interference and voter suppression. He's got a solid committed base but a lot of people who took a chance on him last time won't this time. He won't win any states he didn't win last time and he'll lose some states that he did win. He's accomplished almost nothing and there is lot more hate for him than love. I think the 2018 midterms was just the prelude to 2020.

All I can say is I wish I lived in a better country. There are some politicians that give me hope though---the justice democrats make up a good % of them.

#33--The Shock Doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism--really is a must read. There are very powerful forces that want unregulated capitalism, monetized or privatized social services or none at all---no societal safety nets. That group is from the center all the way out to the extreme right--so it includes many in the Democratic Party in the United States. The Supreme Court allows them to take vast amounts of money from corporate interests--calls it free speech.

Over 97% of the money Sanders has raised in this presidential run by the way has come from small donors. It is left populist support. I think Warren's number would be pretty high too. I looked Sanders numbers up yesterday because Morning Joe and Mika were fawning all over Michael Bennett who was shitting all over medicare for all and complaining how some things weren't going to be possible because they were too expensive. Bennett is also running for POTUS but is in the 1% or less range but that didn't stop Joe (former republican congressman from Florida) and Mika from fawning all over him and those remarks of his anyway. So Bennett gets 19% of his campaign contributions from small donors to Sanders 97%.

If Biden were to win he won't do anything unless his big donors give their stamp of approval.

Environmental panic will eventually be coming our way if we continue not doing anything about it.

"Youth climate activism should not have to exist."

Linking to the bit with Jamie Margolin, 17 yo who sued the state of Washington over climate change inaction:

“Young People Have Had Enough”: Global Climate Strike Youth Activists on Why They Are Marching

It was a source of pride to my grandparent's (and even somewhat my parent's) generation that they were going to give future generations a better world. My generation has been a generation of 'selfishness is good'. It's a who gives a fuck about anyone else generation. Not only are we giving future generations a crap climate--we're going to give them a shit economy and jobs market, we're going to give them massive amounts of student debt so they can live lives for all practical purposes of indentured servitude. We've been singing hosannas to their billionaire masters for years. 'Oh look at this guy with all his billions. He must be a great guy to have all that. Let's give him another tax break'! We don't care how much of the world's wealth he's sucked up or the damage he's done to the environment. We're further bankrupting the next generation with the most fucked up health care system in the western world while at the same time neglect any kind of infrastructure improvements. So our kids have a lot to be pissed at.

This isn't just out of the Republicans---this is also prevalent in the democratic party too. We have 78 year old Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar bashing Warren for her medicare for all plan. Working Class Joe who has limited lifetime left probably won't get to see all the damage he's done. Working Class Joe who never worked a working class job. Who has always had good health care and could fly around the world at his leisure.

During the 1990s, a biologist I knew said we'd look back on that time as golden years...
As a boomer, I look back at climate and biodiversity deterioration since the 70s and feel horror that it happened on our watch.
It may have started earlier, but it accelerated in our time--in spite of our knowing what was happening.

Russian Scientists: Permafrost Thawing Can Cause Unpredictable Climate Change
Vladimir Baranov | 19.09.2019

...On 16 September, TPU (Tomsk Polytechnic University) scientists aboard the research vessel Akademik M. Keldysh left from Arkhangelsk for another expedition to the Seas of the Eastern Arctic together with (leading scientists from institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Moscow State University, NArFU, universities in Sweden, the Netherlands, Great Britain, the USA, and Italy). The expedition is aimed at identifying the biogeochemical and environmental consequences of permafrost thawing in the Eastern Arctic Seas and along the Northern Sea Route.

...in the last 30 years, the rate of permafrost thawing in the Seas of the Eastern Arctic has doubled compared to previous centuries, and reached 18 centimetres per year. This means that during the modern period of warming, the roof of the submarine permafrost has deepened into the stability zone of hydrates (“hard” methane), which has led to their destabilisation and massive emissions of greenhouse methane.

...Why it’s Necessary to Study (permafrost thawing) Processes on the Arctic Shelf

(1) ...studying processes helps assess geological risks.

“If you don’t consider the results of the study of the submarine permafrost state, geological and environmental disasters (such as accidents in the Gulf of Mexico) causing irreparable damage may occur during exploration and industrial activity”, Igor Semiletov, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of Arctic Research at TOI and Professor of the TPU Department of Geology...

...new risk zones appear during the installation of platforms with nuclear reactors on the Arctic shelf in places with a complex structure of submarine permafrost and manifestations of cold vultures (sections of the ocean or sea floor, where gases are released from the underlying rock formations) and hydrothermal activity.

(2) ...help assess possible climatic effects. For example, if 1-5% of the hydrates of the Eastern Arctic Seas shelf, where more than 80% of all submarine permafrost is located, enter the atmosphere, the densification of atmospheric methane can affect the planet’s climate.

(3)... predict the environmental effects of permafrost thawing. According to the results published in Nature Geoscience in 2016, extreme acidification of water due to the oxidation of permafrost’s erosive carbon and dissolved methane’s fractioning to carbon dioxide is a great danger. This process leads to significant environmental consequences, including the dissolution of carbonate-containing shells and shells of marine mollusks, which leads to their extinction...

https://sputniknews.com/science/201909191076840593-russian-scientists-permafrost...

Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says
Tess Riley | 10 Jul 2017

A relatively small number of fossil fuel producers and their investors could hold the key to tackling climate change

...more than half of global industrial emissions since 1988 – the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established – can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned entities. The scale of historical emissions associated with these fossil fuel producers is large enough to have contributed significantly to climate change, according to the report.

ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are identified as among the highest emitting investor-owned companies since 1988. If fossil fuels continue to be extracted at the same rate over the next 28 years as they were between 1988 and 2017, says the report*, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 4C by the end of the century. This is likely to have catastrophic consequences including substantial species extinction and global food scarcity risks.

While companies have a huge role to play in driving climate change, says (Pedro Faria, technical director at environmental non-profit CDP, which published the report in collaboration with the Climate Accountability Institute. ), the barrier is the “absolute tension” between short-term profitability and the urgent need to reduce emissions.

A Carbon Tracker study in 2015 found that fossil fuel companies risked wasting more than $2tn over the coming decade by pursuing coal, oil and gas projects that could be worthless in the face of international action on climate change and advances in renewables – in turn posing substantial threats to investor returns.

CDP says its aims with the carbon majors project are both to improve transparency among fossil fuel producers and to help investors understand the emissions associated with their fossil fuel holdings.

..pace of change are nowhere near enough. A research paper** published last year by Paul Stevens, an academic at think tank Chatham House, said international oil companies were no longer fit for purpose and warned these multinationals that they faced a “nasty, brutish and short” end within the next 10 years if they did not completely change their business models...

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-com...

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*Paul Griffin. July 2017. The Carbon Majors Database: CDP Carbon Majors Report 2017. 100 fossil fuel producers and nearly 1 trillion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. 16 p. https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.co...

A huge acceleration in the extraction of fossil fuels has doubled their contribution to global warming since 1988.
The contribution of fossil fuels to global warming has doubled
Coal makes up a larger share of fossil fuels.
Large ventures into carbon-intensive ‘unconventional oils’ have emerged.

Over half of global industrial emissions since human-induced climate change was officially recognized can be traced to just 25 corporate and state producing entities.
Investors own a great legacy of GHG emissions
The distribution of emissions is concentrated

Chinese Coal
Since the turn of the millennium, growth in Chinese coal production has tripled to nearly 4 billion tonnes, representing half of global output.

Russian Coal
Russia is the world’s 6th largest coal producing nation and has seen production increase by 70% since the late 1990s to 373 million tonnes in 2015.

Investors in fossil fuel companies carry influence over one fifth of industrial greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
Emissions from investor-owned companies are significant
The distribution of emissions is concentrated
Most of the largest companies are oil and gas companies

Fossil fuel extraction companies will need to plan their future in the context of a radical transformation of the global energy system...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Paul Stevens. 5 May 2016. International Oil Companies: The Death of the Old Business Model. (46 p) https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/international-oil-companies-death-old-b... https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/international-oil-companies-death-old-b...

Summary

The future of the major international oil companies (IOCs) – BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and Total – is in doubt. The business model that sustained them during the 20th century is no longer fit for purpose. As a result, they are faced with the choice of managing a gentle decline by downsizing or risking a rapid collapse by trying to carry on business as usual.

Most commentary on the IOCs’ problems has focused on the recent fall in oil prices and the growing global commitment to tackle climate change. Important though these are, the source of their predicament is not confined to such recent developments over which they have no control. Their problems are more numerous, run deeper and go back further. The prognosis for the IOCs was already grim before governments became serious about climate change and the oil price collapsed.

The most recent iteration of the IOCs’ business model emerged during the 1990s and was built upon three pillars: maximizing shareholder value based on a strategy that provided benchmarks for financial returns, maximizing bookable reserves and minimizing costs partly based on outsourcing. This model began to face serious challenges as the operating environment changed. It is the accumulation of these challenges, on top of those evident since the 1970s, and the failure of the IOCs to adapt to them that indicates that their old business model is gradually dying.

The IOCs have been able to survive over the last quarter of a century, but signs that their business model is faltering have recently begun to show. As well as poor financial performances, the symptoms include growing shareholder disillusion with a business model rooted in assumptions of ever-growing oil demand, oil scarcity and the need to increase bookable reserves, all of which increasingly lack validity.

There are, however, options that might allow the IOCs to improve their situation, namely:

Squeezing costs in the hope oil prices will revive
More mega-mergers
Playing vultures with remnants of the US shale gas revolution
Reshuffling their portfolios
Diversification
Becoming a purely OECD operation
Rebuilding in-house technology

However, none alone is sufficient to solve the fundamental challenges, and even if implemented together they would amount only to fiddling around the edges while the model threatens the companies’ survival. In particular, the IOCs cannot assume that, as in the past, all they need to survive is to wait for crude prices to resume an upward direction. The oil market is going through fundamental structural changes driven by a technological revolution and geopolitical shifts. The old cycle of lower prices followed by higher prices is no longer applicable.

In this new world, the only realistic option for the IOCs lies in restructuring and realizing many of their current assets to provide cash for their shareholders. Inevitably, this means that they must shrink into the remaining areas of operation, functionally and geographically, where they can earn an acceptable return. This would require a major change in the corporate culture of the IOCs. It remains to be seen whether their senior management could handle such a fundamental shift. If they can, the IOCs will be able to slip into a gentle decline but ultimately survive on a much smaller scale.

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Capitalism Made This Mess, and This Mess Will Ruin Capitalism
Matt Simon | 09.20.2019

...the root cause of this crisis: rampant capitalism. Capitalism has steamrolled this planet and its organisms, gouging out mountains, overexploiting fish stocks, and burning fossil fuels to power the maniacal pursuit of growth and enrich a fraction of humanity. Since 1988, 100 corporations have been responsible for 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

...Jason Moore, an environmental historian and sociologist at Binghamton University...what got us into this mess, why capitalism won’t survive it, and what a brighter future might actually look like.

...It is going to be difficult. I would just remind everyone that climate change is bad for ruling classes (historical examples). It's miserable for all the rest of us over the time spans of 10 and 20 and 30 years, that we're all going to be living through very difficult times. But there will also be times at which the 1 percent, in whatever form that takes, will be thoroughly and radically destabilized...ruling classes are (not) at all prepared for the kinds of political and cultural transformations that will occur in this period.

We're already seeing this in part around the generational shift and the fact that now we can talk about socialism. That's really the first time since maybe 1970 to '75 we could do it in a public way. Capitalism is much less resilient than most people credit it. It had its social legitimacy, because in one way or another it could promise development. And I don't think anyone takes that idea seriously anymore.

https://www.wired.com/story/capitalocene/

Who’s Speaking at the U.N. Climate Summit? Several Champions of Coal
Somini Sengupta | Sept. 22, 2019

...the United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, made one of his boldest calls yet to the world’s presidents and prime ministers. (May 2019)
Don’t build new coal plants after 2020, he said, and certainly don’t pay for them with taxpayer money.

...India. The vast majority of its electricity comes from burning coal, and it continues to develop new coal mines and new coal-fired power plants, often with state subsidies, even as it ramps up renewable energy.

Indonesia, the world’s biggest exporter of thermal coal.

China, the world’s coal juggernaut

...Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kenya — three countries where Chinese state-owned companies are building, or want to build, coal-fired power plants...role that Chinese companies and banks played in promoting coal both at home, where old coal plants are being phased out, and abroad.

A landmark report last October by a United Nations-backed scientific panel recommended that coal-fired power generation shrink by more than three-fourths by 2030 if the world as a whole is to keep emissions from rising to dangerous levels.

Worldwide, the global coal plant pipeline has shrunk by half over the last three years, but there are lots of new coal-fired power plants still in the planning stages — and if they go forward, emissions would rise sharply...

...Australia, which recently authorized the opening of a vast new coal basin

Japan, which continues to fund coal projects around the world.

the United States, where President Trump has championed coal but where it is fast diminishing as a source of energy because of the boom in natural gas.

...Germany...last week announced an ambitious plan to slash emissions, which also requires shuttering coal plants, most of them in the country’s east, in the next 20 years. ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/22/climate/un-climate-summit-coal.html

Al Gore: The Climate Crisis Is the Battle of Our Time, and We Can Win
We have the tools. Now we are building the political power.

Al Gore | Sept. 20, 2019

...Are we really helpless and unwilling to respond to the gravest threat faced by civilization? Is it time, as some have begun to counsel, to despair, surrender and focus on “adapting” to the progressive loss of the conditions that have supported the flourishing of humanity? Are we really moral cowards, easily manipulated into lethargic complacency by the huge continuing effort to deceive us into ignoring what we see with our own eyes?

More damage and losses are inevitable, no matter what we do, because carbon dioxide remains for so long in the atmosphere. So we will have to do our best to adapt to unwelcome changes. But we still retain the ability to avoid truly catastrophic, civilization-ending consequences if we act quickly.

This is our generation’s life-or-death challenge. It is Thermopylae, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Lexington and Concord, Dunkirk, Pearl Harbor, the Battle of the Bulge, Midway and Sept. 11. At moments of such crisis, the United States and the world have to be mobilized, and before we can be mobilized, we have to be inspired to believe the battle can be won. Is it really too much to ask now that politicians summon the courage to do what most all of them already know is necessary?

We have the technology we need...

This transition is already unfolding in the largest economies...

More broadly, the evidence now indicates that we are in the early stages of a sustainability revolution that will achieve the magnitude of the Industrial Revolution and the speed of the digital revolution, made possible by new digital tools...

And so far, the best available technology for pulling carbon dioxide from the air is something called a tree...

Yet for all this promise, here is another hard truth: All of these efforts together will not be enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently without significant policy changes...

This will require a ferocious attack on the complacency, complicity, duplicity and mendacity of those in Congress who have paid for their careers by surrendering their votes and judgment to powerful special interests that are sacrificing the planet for their greed. To address the climate crisis, we must address the democracy crisis so that the people themselves can reclaim control of their destiny...

...Next year’s election is the crucial test of the nation’s commitment to addressing this crisis, and it is worth remembering that on the day after the 2020 election, the terms of the Paris climate accord will permit the United States to withdraw from it. We cannot allow that to happen. Political will is a renewable resource and must be summoned in this fight. The American people are sovereign, and I am hopeful that they are preparing to issue a command on the climate to those who purport to represent them: “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/opinion/al-gore-climate-change.html

2018 Wildfire kills 80% of fish in a Colorado river

The wildfire scorched an estimated 54,000 acres of land in the Hermosa Creek watershed. Following the fire, heavy rain hit the region -- and that led to a runoff filled with ash that suffocated fish in the river.

However, despite the significant drop off, there are some promising signs.

Heavy snow during the winter led to a sustained runoff in the spring and summer that cleaned the river bottom, which is home to a lot of fish and the food they eat.
…
As trout are unable to reproduce naturally in the Animas river since there are old mines that drain heavy metals into the water upstream, fish are raised in a local hatchery and used to stock the river, according to CPW.

IPCC Report: Oceans and Ice Systems Already Facing Unprecedented Climate Impacts

MONTE CARLO, Monaco – Today, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) in the Principality of Monaco. This report, the product of a week of editing in which the scientists who authored the report took questions from delegations of 111 member nations, is the third Special Report in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report Cycle, following the 1.5° Report in October 2018 and Lands report in August 2019.

...Oceans

The world’s oceans have historically served as a buffer, taking up over 90% of the excess heat in the climate system since 1970 and up to a third of human-caused CO2 emissions since the 1980s.

Carbon emissions have led to an ocean that is warmer, more acidic and losing oxygen. This is having a cascade of negative effects, such as changing the presence and abundance of many species. Fisheries have been disrupted and fish catch has already been reduced in some regions.

Warming oceans are now fueling tropical and extratropical storms, loading them with additional rainfall and increasing their intensity. And sea level rise is elevating storm surge, contributing to extreme flooding events.

Marine heat waves have doubled in frequency and have become longer-lasting, more intense, and more extensive events that have already resulted in large coral bleaching events and worldwide reef degradation. Nine out of 10ten marine heat waves are now attributable to climate change.

Coastal impacts

Melting polar ice sheets have now begun to dominate sea level rise, and as a result, sea level rise is accelerating, eroding our coastlines, and increasing both high tides and storm tides, contributing to coastal flooding. Mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has accelerated, and scientists cannot rule out the possibility that irreversible ice sheet instability has begun.

Coastal ecosystems, which help protect coastlines and buffer sea level rise and ocean acidification, are being degraded by climate change and other human disturbance.

High Mountains and Polar

Dwindling snowpack has impacted water supplies and hydropower in many regions, including the western U.S.

The decline of snowpack and ice due to climate change is contributing to increased wildfires in mountain regions and the Arctic.

Projected Impacts

Regardless of the future efforts to reduce carbon pollution, severe changes are now locked-in and managing those changes will require urgent and ambitious adaptation measures.

Coastal impacts

The projections for sea level rise have increased since the last IPCC report. Absent major adaptation efforts, extreme coastal flooding will become common by the end of the century due to sea level rise.

Arctic impacts

Sea-ice free summers in the Arctic are increasingly likely under 2°C of global warming. As ice melts, new shipping routes in the Arctic will have dramatic implications for global trade, marine ecosystems, and coastal communities.

High mountain impacts

High mountain recreational economies are at high risk from glacier and snowpack decline. Adaptation strategies like artificial snowmaking are projected to become less effective at sustaining the ski industry at and beyond 2°C of warming, including in North America.

On a business as usual path…

Ocean ecosystems will be profoundly damaged due a triple threat of rising temperatures, acidifying waters and oxygen starvation.

Ecosystems and biodiversity, such as wetlands, kelp forests, and coral reefs, are at severe risk of failure or disappearance.

Fisheries that feed much of the world are in critical danger of collapsing or moving beyond reach of communities that rely on them. Under business-as-usual, the report projects a 20% decline in fish catch potential on the East Coast of the United States.

Warming oceans and sea level rise will fuel increasingly severe extreme weather, with increased intensity, storm surge events, and flooding.

There is a very high risk that permafrost thaw will set off a vicious warming feedback loop by releasing tens of thousands of carbon into the atmosphere. While there is conflicting evidence on whether such permafrost thaw may already be contributing to global warming, permafrost carbon includes methane, which is significant because of its high global warming potential.

Responses

There are dramatic differences between the impacts on a low-emissions pathway forward versus the impacts on a high-emissions pathway.

Adaptation options to many impacts will be severely compromised on the business-as-usual path, especially for some marine ecosystems including coral reefs, and Arctic and low-lying coastal communities.

We have to adapt to and manage the changes that we can no longer avoid, requiring tens to several hundreds of billions of dollars in investment per year. We also have to act quickly to prevent the catastrophic changes we can still prevent, such as extreme sea level rise and widespread ocean ecosystem failure.

Ocean-based renewable energy sources, including offshore wind, can help address climate change and generate economic opportunities.

https://climatenexus.org/climate-change-news/ipcc-oceans-ice-systems-climate-imp...

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Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate

The IPCC approved and accepted Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate at its 51st Session held on 20 – 23 September 2019. The approved Summary for Policymakers (SPM) was presented at a press conference on 25 September 2019. (45 pages plus six figures)...

https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/home/

>2 margd: contd.

Ocean ecosystems take two million years to recover after mass extinction – new research
September 27, 2019

Around 66m years ago, a giant asteroid struck the Earth, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs, ammonites, and many other species.

...driving ocean plankton to near-extinction. This crippled the base of the marine food chain and shut down important ocean functions, such as the absorption and delivery of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean floor.

...The nannoplankton almost totally wiped out 66m years ago – also known as coccolithophores – are now widespread once more in the sunlit upper oceans. Although roughly 100 times smaller than a grain of sand, they are so abundant that they are visible from space as swirling blooms in the ocean surface.

When these microscopic plankton die, they leave behind exquisite armoured exoskeletons known as coccospheres made from the mineral calcite, composed of bonded calcium and carbon. Along with the dead plankton cells, these skeletons slowly fall to the ocean floor, forming a muddy calcium and carbon-rich sediment. As this sediment compacts, it forms chalk and limestone, leaving us with iconic landscapes such as white chalk cliffs – the shallow sea floor of a forgotten age, since lifted up by tectonic activity.

...a continuous core of deep-sea sediment from the Pacific Ocean. For the first 13m years after the mass extinction event, we took a sample of the fossil record at intervals of 13,000 years. We measured fossil abundance, diversity and cell sizes from over 700,000 specimens, producing probably the largest fossil dataset ever produced from a single site.

2m years for stability, 10m for diversity

These fossil data revealed that the plant-like, photosynthetic plankton bounced back almost immediately - probably within a few thousand years after the mass extinction. However, the earliest communities were highly unstable and made up of just a handful of species with unusually small cell sizes, as the figure above shows.

While the calcite skeletons of larger plankton cells can sink to the sea floor, the skeletons of these smaller organisms descend much less often, instead getting “recycled” in the upper ocean by hungry plankton. Communities with larger cell sizes were not reestablished until two million years later, restoring their critical transfer of carbon to the ocean floor to pre-extinction levels.

By this time, the number of different plankton species had also increased. This genetic diversity allowed them to expand into a greater range of ocean habitats, providing greater resilience to environmental change, and a secure foundation at the base of the ocean food web.

This stability then supported expansion in the abundance and diversity of larger plankton, fish, mammals, and birds dependent on these food sources. But although stable and resilient ecosystems had returned by two million years after the mass extinction, it took a further eight million years for species numbers to fully recover to their previous levels.

...populations of modern-day plankton have already declined by as much as 40%, and that 70% of species are migrating towards the poles...

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Sarah A. Alvarez et al. 2019. Diversity decoupled from ecosystem function and resilience during mass extinction recovery. (Letter) Nature. Published: 25 September 2019. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1590-8

Abstract

The Chicxulub bolide impact 66 million years ago drove the near-instantaneous collapse of ocean ecosystems. The devastating loss of diversity at the base of ocean food webs probably triggered cascading extinctions across all trophic levels and caused severe disruption of the biogeochemical functions of the ocean, and especially disrupted the cycling of carbon between the surface and deep sea. The absence of sufficiently detailed biotic data that span the post-extinction interval has limited our understanding of how ecosystem resilience and biochemical function was restored; estimates of ecosystem ‘recovery’ vary from less than 100 years to 10 million years. Here, using a 13-million-year-long nannoplankton time series, we show that post-extinction communities exhibited 1.8 million years of exceptional volatility before a more stable equilibrium-state community emerged that displayed hallmarks of resilience. The transition to this new equilibrium-state community with a broader spectrum of cell sizes coincides with indicators of carbon-cycle restoration and a fully functioning biological pump. These findings suggest a fundamental link between ecosystem recovery and biogeochemical cycling over timescales that are longer than those suggested by proxies of export production, but far shorter than the return of taxonomic richness. The fact that species richness remained low as both community stability and biological pump efficiency re-emerged suggests that ecological functions rather than the number of species are more important to community resilience and biochemical functions.

Climate change is raising quite the stink in Florida
Jen Christensen | September 27, 2019

...About 1 in 5 US households rely on septic systems, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency...

These systems will be incredibly vulnerable to sea level rise and heavy rains. The climate crisis has brought both. In areas with drought, it may also be difficult to get the volume of water needed to keep the tanks functioning...

...Broken septic systems mean when it floods people will be wading through waste that can make them sick.
If untreated sewage gets into area waters, it can create algae blooms and other ecological problems...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/27/health/septic-climate-change-miami-eprise/index.h...

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Guy Howard and Jamie Bartram. 2010. The resilience of water supply and sanitation in the face of climate change. Technical report. Vision 2030 WHO/HSE/WSH/10.01. 47 pages. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/70462/WHO_HSE_WSH_10.01_eng.pdf

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Miami Dade County. 2018. SEPTIC SYSTEMS VULNERABLE TO SEA LEVEL RISE. November2018. Final Report in support of Resolution No. R-911-16. 66 pages. https://assets.nationbuilder.com/miamiwaterkeeper/pages/2951/attachments/origina...

...within the next 25 years, 64% of the tanks could break and need repairs every year. The report found there are likely 1,000 properties already failing under current conditions...

...estimates it would take more than $3.3 billion to build the infrastructure to connect residential and businesses to the system and to support the additional service that will be needed from pumping systems and move properties to traditional sewer.

...For residents, replacing a septic system with sewer could cost between $15,000 to $50,000 out of pocket.

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Cooper JA, Loomis GW, Amador JA (2016) Hell and High Water: Diminished Septic System Performance in Coastal Regions Due to Climate Change. PLoS ONE 11(9): e0162104. 18 pages. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0162104 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0162104&a...

BOD -- biochemical oxygen demand
CC -- climate change
FCB -- fecal coliform bacteria
N -- nitrogen
P -- phosphorus
PC -- present climate
OTWS -- onsite wastewater treatment systems
STA -- soil treatment area

Abstract
Climate change may affect the ability of soil-based onsite wastewater treatment systems (OWTS) to treat wastewater in coastal regions of the Northeastern United States. Higher temperatures and water tables can affect treatment by reducing the volume of unsaturated soil and oxygen available for treatment, which may result in greater transport of pathogens,nutrients, and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) to groundwater, jeopardizing public and aquatic ecosystem health. The soil treatment area (STA) of an OWTS removes contaminants as wastewater percolates through the soil. Conventional STAs receive wastewater from the septic tank, with infiltration occurring deeper in the soil profile. In contrast, shallow narrow STAs receive pre-treated wastewater that infiltrates higher in the soil profile, which may make them more resilient to climate change. We used intact soil mesocosms to quantify the water quality functions of a conventional and two types of shallow narrow STAs under present climate (PC; 20°C) and climate change (CC; 25°C, 30 cm elevation in water table). Significantly greater removal of BOD was observed under CC for all STA types. Phosphorus removal decreased significantly from 75% (PC) to 66% (CC) in the conventional STA, and from 100% to 71–72% in shallow narrow STAs. No fecal coliform bacteria (FCB) were released under PC, whereas up to 17 and 20 CFU 100 mL were released in conventional and shallow narrow STAs, respectively, under CC. Total N removal increased from 14% (PC) to 19% (CC) in the conventional STA, but decreased in shallow narrow STAs, from 6–7% to less than 3.0%. Differences in removal of FCB and total N were not significant. Leaching of N in excess of inputs was also observed in shallow narrow STAs under CC. Our results indicate that climate change can affect contaminant removal from wastewater, with effects dependent on the contaminant and STA type.

...Results and Discussion
Increased moisture and lower O2 under climate change...
More BOD removal under climate change...
Release of FCB increased under climate change...
-- Wetter soil likely reduced microbial attachment...
-- Temperature likely less important than moisture for FCB removal...
Virus removal unlikely to be impacted by climate change...
-- Acidic soils may be important for viral removal...
Effects of climate change on N removal dependent on STA type...
-- Heterotrophic N removal limited under climate change...
-- Rapid movement of wastewater in STA may limit N removal...
-- Models of N removal need more parameterization...
Phosphorus removal diminished under climate change...
-- Reduction of metal-P complexes mobilize P...
-- Abiotic mechanisms appear more important for P retention...
Whole system evaluation...

Conclusions
Our results indicate that CC can affect contaminant removal, with effects dependent on the contaminant and STA type. Removal of FCB, total P and total N in shallow narrow STAs diminished under CC conditions. In contrast, total N removal in conventional STAs improved.Viral pathogens and BOD were well removed under PC and CC, suggesting that OWTS were more resilient with respect to these contaminants.

Although conditions in the field may diverge from those in the laboratory, our experiment allowed us to make direct comparisons between PC and CC among different STA types. We recognize that systems installed under field conditions have more performance variability than systems evaluated under laboratory conditions. Warming the entire STA, as opposed to only the near surface under field conditions, enabled us to make direct observations between the two temperature conditions at all depths in the soil profile. While the length of our study was relatively short, the limited duration prevented extreme temporal variation in the STA microbial communities between climate conditions.

The response of abiotic and biotic components in OWTS to differing temperature and moisture conditions may be different. For example, the rate of soil microbial processes isknown to double with a 10°C increase in temperature. In contrast, the rate of chemical reactions generally respond in a linear manner to increases in temperature over the range of temperatures experienced by soil. Nevertheless, our results demonstrate the potential effects of climate change on different types of OWTS. This study provides regulators with a starting point for future planning as well as providing an impetus for designing improvements for OWTS technologies...

Russia adopts Paris climate agreement: decree
Issued on: 23/09/2019 - 15:26

Moscow (AFP)

Russia's prime minister on Monday gave formal support to the Paris climate agreement and ordered Russian laws to be adapted to its obligations, according to a decree posted on the government's website.

The document signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev says that Russia is formally adopting the 2015 Paris agreement and will now "allocate financial resources... to developing countries for prevention and adaptation to climate change."

While not formally named a "ratification," the government said in a statement that the decree signifies Russia's adoption of the agreement and "Russia's consent to the obligations under the Paris Agreement".

...Medvedev said that it is important for Russia to participate in the process of reducing emissions.

"The threat of climate change is (the) destruction of the ecological balance, increased risks for successful development of key industries... and most importantly, threat to safety of people living on permafrost and increase of natural disasters."

The news comes just hours ahead of a new major UN climate summit, aimed to reinvigorate the faltering Paris accord as mankind is releasing more greenhouse gases than ever into the atmosphere...

https://www.france24.com/en/20190923-russia-adopts-paris-climate-agreement-decre...

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Russia formally joins Paris climate agreement
Natalie Sauer | 23/09/2019, 10:39pm

Four years after it was agreed, Russia has formalised its participation in the climate accord

The world’s fourth largest emitter, Russia, has formally adopted the Paris Agreement, drawing an end to months of national tensions on the subject...

https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/09/23/russia-formally-joins-paris-climate...

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Why Vladimir Putin Suddenly Believes in Global Warming
Julian Lee | September 29, 2019

President Vladimir Putin needs to go green quickly to stop the permafrost from melting, so that Russian oil and gas companies can keep pumping the hydrocarbons that are warming the planet and making the permafrost melt.

...Until now, climate change has been seen as a “good thing” for Russia — at least in part. Warming waters have opened up the Northern Sea Route across the top of the country and made it practical, if not necessarily economic, to search for and exploit oil and gas resources beneath the Arctic seas.

...“Permafrost is undergoing rapid change,” says the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate report adopted by the IPCC last week. The changes threaten the “structural stability and functional capacities” of oil industry infrastructure, the authors warn. The greatest risks occur in areas with high ground-ice content and frost-susceptible sediments. Russia’s Yamal Peninsula — home to two of Russia’s biggest new gas projects (Bovanenkovo and Yamal LNG) and the Novy Port oil development — fits that bill.

The problem is bigger than those three projects, though. Some “45% of the oil and natural gas production fields in the Russian Arctic are located in the highest hazard zone,” according to the IPCC report.

The top few meters of the permafrost, the so-called active layer, freezes and thaws as the seasons change, becoming unstable during warmer months. Developers account for this by making sure their foundations are deep enough to support their infrastructure: including roads, railways, houses, processing plants and pipelines. But climate change is causing that active layer to deepen, which means the ground loses its ability to support the things built upon it. The loss of bearing capacity is dramatic and it’s already well under way, as this chart shows...

Nevertheless, it may be too late to avoid much of the permafrost loss. AMAP (Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme) says that even if greenhouse gas emissions were cut roughly in line with the targets in the Paris Agreement, that would only “stabilize near-surface permafrost extent at roughly 45% below current values.” Doing nothing would see an even greater loss and even more problems for Russia’s oil and gas producers. Is this the real reason for Putin’s sudden conversion?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-vladimir-putin-suddenly-belie...

Journal 'Nature' retracts ocean-warming study
Joshua Emerson Smith | September 30, 2019

The journal Nature retracted a study published (Oct. 31, 2018 by researchers at the University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.) that found oceans were warming at an alarming rate due to climate change.

"Shortly after publication, arising from comments from Nicholas Lewis, we realized that our reported uncertainties were underestimated owing to our treatment of certain systematic errors as random errors.

"Despite the revised uncertainties, our method remains valid and provides an estimate of ocean warming that is independent of the ocean data underpinning other approaches."

Lewis, a mathematician and critic of the scientific consensus supporting the climate crisis, posted a critique of the paper shortly after its publication.

Co-author and climate scientist Ralph Keeling at Scripps has taken the blame for the mistake...

https://phys.org/news/2019-09-journal-nature-retracts-ocean-warming.html

Explore further

Climate contrarian uncovers scientific error, upends major ocean warming study
Joshua Emerson Smith | November 16, 2018
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-climate-contrarian-uncovers-scientific-error.html

More information: L. Resplandy et al. Retraction Note: Quantification of ocean heat uptake from changes in atmospheric O2 and CO2 composition, Nature (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1585-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1585-5 Abstract. Shortly after publication, arising from comments from Nicholas Lewis, we realized that our reported uncertainties were underestimated owing to our treatment of certain systematic errors as random errors. In addition, we became aware of several smaller issues in our analysis of uncertainty. Although correcting these issues did not substantially change the central estimate of ocean warming, it led to a roughly fourfold increase in uncertainties, significantly weakening implications for an upward revision of ocean warming and climate sensitivity. Because of these weaker implications, the Nature editors asked for a Retraction, which we accept. Despite the revised uncertainties, our method remains valid and provides an estimate of ocean warming that is independent of the ocean data underpinning other approaches. The revised paper, with corrected uncertainties, will be submitted to another journal. The Retraction will contain a link to the new publication, if and when it is published.

L. Resplandy et al. Quantification of ocean heat uptake from changes in atmospheric O2 and CO2 composition, Nature (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0651-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1585-5

Sounds like our planting trees in mid-latitudes of North America could ameliorate droughts elsewhere--at least somewhat? :)

Abigail Swann’s alternate Earths show how plants shape climate
Susan Milius | Oct 2, 2019

Water vapor from forests can affect drought patterns a hemisphere away

(Abigail Swann atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle)...ran computer simulations that added a lot of trees in the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Those hypothetical forests would lead to far-flung changes in precipitation patterns (see map at link!), even in the opposite hemisphere. Some areas would get wetter (blue) and some would get drier (orange).

...Atmospheric scientists have long recognized that plants pull carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, out of the air. Swann focuses instead on how plants affect Earth’s atmosphere by drawing water from soil and leaking water vapor from leaves.

...Untangling how plants impact precipitation could improve plans for fending off food shortages and saving biodiversity. Plants may, for example, change who gets rain and whose crops shrivel a hemisphere away. Trees in one hemisphere could actually move rain belts in another hemisphere from one place to another

...Thirsty land has become one of the big worries of climate change, with research predicting more frequent and severe droughts across as much as 70 percent of Earth in the next century. Swann and colleagues took a new look at droughts, this time including more details about plant water use in the simulations. In their analysis, only about 37 percent of the world’s land would expect more severe droughts...Drought predictions for some places, such as southern North America, don’t improve much. And when droughts happen, she points out, they can still be very bad.

Citations

A.L.S. Swann. Plants and drought in a changing climate. Current Climate Change Reports. Vol. 4, June 2018, p. 192. doi:10.1007/s40641-018-0097-y https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40641-018-0097-y

A.L.S. Swann, F.M. Hoffman, C.D. Koven and J.T. Randerson, (2016), Plant responses to increasing CO2 reduce estimates of climate impacts on drought severity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. PNAS September 6, 2016 113 (36) 10019-10024; first published August 29, 2016 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1604581113 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/36/10019.short

A.L.S. Swann, I.Y.Fung and J.C.H. Chiang. Mid-latitude afforestation shifts general circulation and tropical precipitation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol 109, January 17, 2012, p. 712. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1116706108 https://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/712

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/abigail-swann-sn-10-scientists-to-watch

Map · Sep 17, 2019
Yale Climate Opinion Maps 2019
By Jennifer Marlon, Peter Howe, Matto Mildenberger, Anthony Leiserowitz and Xinran Wang

These maps show how Americans’ climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy support vary at the state, congressional district, metro area, and county levels... (See interactive map at link.)

https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/

#47 contd.

Radical warming in Siberia leaves millions on unstable ground
Anton Troianovski and Chris Mooney | Oct. 3, 2019

...The permafrost that once sustained farming — and upon which villages and cities are built — is in the midst of a great thaw, blanketing the region with swamps, lakes and odd bubbles of earth that render the land virtually useless.

“The warming got in the way of our good life,” said Alexander Fedorov, deputy director of the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in the regional capital of Yakutsk. “With every year, things are getting worse and worse.”

For the 5.4 million people who live in Russia’s permafrost zone, the new climate has disrupted their homes and their livelihoods. Rivers are rising and running faster, and entire neighborhoods are falling into them. Arable land for farming has plummeted by more than half, to just 120,000 acres in 2017.

In Yakutia, an area one-third the size of the United States, cattle and reindeer herding have plunged 20 percent as the animals increasingly battle to survive the warming climate’s destruction of pastureland.

...Siberians who grew up learning to read nature’s subtlest signals are being driven to migrate by a climate they no longer understand.

This migration from the countryside to cities and towns — also driven by factors such as low investment and spotty Internet — represents one of the most significant and little-noticed movements to date of climate refugees. The city of Yakutsk has seen its population surge 20 percent to more than 300,000 in the past decade.

And then there’s that rotting smell...

... The (Washington) Post’s analysis, which uses a data set from Berkeley Earth...shows that Zyryanka and the roughly 2,000-square-mile area surrounding it has warmed by more than 3 degrees Celsius when the past five years are compared with the mid- to late 1800s.

Some regions of Siberia bordering on the Arctic Ocean are warming even faster...

... Desyatkin, at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Yakutsk, found that the changes are even more dramatic underground. From 2005 to 2014, his team found, the number of days with below-freezing temperatures three feet below the surface fell from around 230 days a year to 190.

That is significant because enormous wedges of ice lie under Yakutia.

...An international team of scientists, led by Dmitry A. Streletskiy at George Washington University, estimated in a study published this year that the value of buildings and infrastructure on Russian permafrost amounts to $300 billion — about 7.5 percent of the nation’s total annual economic output. They estimate the cost of mitigating the damage wrought by thawing permafrost will probably total more than $100 billion by 2050....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climat...

Reports from National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, including one on the future of the US Gulf Coast:

The Impacts of Climate Change on the Global Ocean

The global ocean covers about 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and acts as its primary reservoir of heat and carbon, absorbing over 90 percent of the surplus heat and about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) associated with human activities, and receiving close to 100 percent of fresh water lost from land ice.

With the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, notably CO2 from fossil fuel combustion, the Earth’s climate and its oceans are now changing more rapidly than at any time since the advent of human societies. Society will increasingly face complex decisions about how to mitigate adverse impacts of climate change such as sea-level rise, ocean acidification, and species loss. Our publications explore the science, policies, and infrastructure needed to understand, manage, and conserve coastal and marine environments and resources.

Understanding the Long-Term Evolution of the Coupled Natural-Human Coastal System: The Future of the U.S. Gulf Coast (144 pages)...
Approaches to Understanding the Cumulative Effects of Stressors on Marine Mammals ...
Marine Protected Areas: Tools for Sustaining Ocean Ecosystems ...
A Research Review of Interventions to Increase the Persistence and Resilience of Coral Reefs...
A Decision Framework for Interventions to Increase the Persistence and Resilience of Coral Reefs ...
Sustaining Ocean Observations to Understand Future Changes in Earth’s Climate ...
Effective Monitoring to Evaluate Ecological Restoration in the Gulf of Mexico ...
Responding to Oil Spills in the U.S. Arctic Marine Environment ...
The Use of Dispersants in Marine Oil Spill Response ...
Ocean Acidification: A National Strategy to Meet the Challenges of a Changing Ocean ...
(more)

Heat waves could increase substantially in size by mid-century, says new study
NOAA Headquarters | October 8, 2019

...by mid-century, in a middle greenhouse emissions scenario, the average size of heat waves could increase by 50%. Under high greenhouse gas concentrations, the average size could increase by 80% and the more extreme heat waves could more than double in size.

...more people will be exposed to heat stress...increase electrical loads and peak energy demand on the grid

..."If you have a large contiguous heat wave over a highly populated area, it would be harder for that area to meet peak electric demand than it would be for several areas with smaller heat waves that, when combined, are the same size," said Tony Barnston, Chief Forecaster at Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society and paper co-author.

https://phys.org/news/2019-10-substantially-size-mid-century.html

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Bradfield Lyon et al, Projected increase in the spatial extent of contiguous U.S. summer heat waves and associated attributes, Environmental Research Letters (2019). DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab4b41 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab4b41

Abstract

The frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves are all expected to increase as the climate warms in response to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The focus of this study is on another dimension of heat waves, their spatial extent, something that has not been studied systematically by researchers but has important implications for associated impacts. Of particular interest are spatially contiguous heat wave regions, examined here over the conterminous U.S. for the May to September season in both the current climate and climate model projections from the CMIP5 archive (11 models total) using the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 radiative forcing scenarios. Given their myriad impacts, heat waves are defined using multiple temperature variables, one which includes atmospheric moisture. In addition to their spatial extent, several other physical attributes are computed across contiguous heat wave regions, including a proxy for energy use. An estimate of the human population exposed to current and future heat waves is also evaluated. We find that historical climate model simulations, in aggregate, show good fidelity in capturing key characteristics of heat waves in the current climate while projections show a substantial increase in spatial extent and other attributes by mid-century under both scenarios, though generally less for RCP4.5, as expected. Overall, the study presents a framework for examining the behavior, and associated impacts, of a frequently overlooked aspect of heat waves. The projected increases in the spatial extent and other attributes of heat waves reported here provides a new perspective on some of the potential consequences of the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia: 'No One Has Ever Recorded Anything like This Before'
Hannah Osborne | 10/8/19

Scientists in Siberia have discovered an area of sea that is "boiling" with methane, with bubbles that can be scooped from the water with buckets. Researchers on an expedition to the East Siberian Sea said the "methane fountain" was unlike anything they had seen before, with concentrations of the gas in the region to be six to seven times higher than the global average.

The team, led by Igor Semiletov, from Tomsk Polytechnic University in Russia, traveled to an area of the Eastern Arctic previously known to produce methane fountains. They were studying the environmental consequences of permafrost thawing beneath the ocean.

A huge proportion of Siberia is covered in permafrost...But permafrost is also present under the ocean. In 2017, scientists announced they had discovered hundreds of craters at the bottom of the Barents Sea, north of Norway and Russia. The craters had formed from methane building up then exploding suddenly when the pressure got too high.

In the latest expedition to chart methane emissions coming from the ocean, researchers analyzed the water around Bennett Island, taking samples of sea water and sediments. In one area, however, they found something unexpected—an extremely sharp increase in the concentration of atmospheric methane. According to a statement from Tomsk Polytechnic University, it was six to seven times higher than average.

They then noticed an area of water around four to five square meters that was "boiling with methane bubbles," the statement said. This could be scooped out with buckets, the researchers said. After identifying the fountain, the team was able to take samples directly from it. Methane levels around the fountain were nine times higher than average global concentrations.

...The following day they found another methane fountain and conducted a comprehensive analysis of it...

https://www.newsweek.com/methane-boiling-sea-discovered-siberia-1463766

Warm ocean water attacking edges of Antarctica's ice shelves
University of Colorado at Boulder | News Release 9-Oct-2019

Upside-down "rivers" of warm ocean water are eroding the fractured edges of thick, floating Antarctic ice shelves from below, helping to create conditions that lead to ice-shelf breakup and sea-level rise, according to a new study.

...Ice shelves float out on the ocean at the edges of land-based ice sheets, and about three-quarters of the Antarctic continent is surrounded by these extensions of the ice sheet. The shelves can be hemmed in by canyon-like walls and bumps in the ocean floor. When restrained by these bedrock obstructions, ice shelves slow down the flow of ice from the interior of the continent toward the ocean. But if an ice shelf retreats or falls apart, ice on land flows much more quickly into the ocean, increasing rates of sea-level rise.

The scientists' new work focuses on two factors conspiring to weaken ice shelves. First, flowing ice often stretches and cracks along its edges or "shear margins," especially when it's flowing quickly...As those craggy features flow toward the ocean and become part of floating ice shelves, they're vulnerable to erosion from below, by warm plumes of ocean water...

Warm and fresh water is more buoyant than cold and salty water, so it has a tendency to "find" high spots in floating ice, sometimes forming a type of "upside-down river" that can grow miles wide and tens of miles long. Alley and her colleagues first mapped those rivers or "basal channels" a few years ago, spotting them as wrinkles or sags in otherwise smooth ice surfaces. (https://cires.colorado.edu/news/antarcticas-upside-down-rivers)

Now, they've put it all together, showing that large basal channels are more likely to form at the shear margins--the weakest parts--of fast-flowing ice shelves. While the ice is still on land, large troughs form in the shear margins, becoming thin spots when the ice flows onto the ocean. Warm ocean water finds those thin spots along the base of the ice shelf, further eroding and weakening margins, making ice shelves more vulnerable to retreat and collapse.

These processes appear to happen on ice shelves in both Antarctica and Greenland...

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-10/uoca-wow100219.php

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Karen Alley et al. 2019. Troughs developed in ice-stream shear margins precondition ice shelves for ocean-driven breakup. 0
Science Advances 09 Oct 2019: Vol. 5, no. 10, eaax2215 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aax2215 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/10/eaax2215

Abstract

Floating ice shelves of fast-flowing ice streams are prone to rift initiation and calving originating along zones of rapid shearing at their margins. Predicting future ice-shelf destabilization under a warming ocean scenario, with the resultant reduced buttressing, faster ice flow, and sea-level rise, therefore requires an understanding of the processes that thin and weaken these shear margins. Here, we use satellite data to show that high velocity gradients result in surface troughs along the margins of fast-flowing ice streams. These troughs are advected into ice-shelf margins, where the locally thinned ice floats upward to form basal troughs. Buoyant plumes of warm ocean water beneath ice shelves can be focused into these basal troughs, localizing melting and weakening the ice-shelf margins. This implies that major ice sheet drainages are preconditioned for rapid retreat in response to ocean warming.

Peruvian Glaciers Have Shrunk By 30 Percent Since 2000
E360 Digest | October 7, 2019

Nearly 30 percent of Peru’s glaciers have melted away since 2000, threatening a critical source of drinking water and irrigation for millions of people downstream...

...the country lost nearly 8 gigatons of ice from 2000 to 2016, with 170 glaciers — covering an area equivalent to 80,000 soccer fields — disappearing entirely...

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/peruvian-glaciers-have-shrunk-by-30-percent-since-2...

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Seehaus, T., Malz, P., Sommer, C., Lippl, S., Cochachin, A., and Braun, M.: Changes of the tropical glaciers throughout Peru between 2000 and 2016 – mass balance and area fluctuations, The Cryosphere, 13, 2537–2556, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-2537-2019, 2019. https://www.the-cryosphere.net/13/2537/2019/

Abstract

Glaciers in tropical regions are very sensitive to climatic variations and thus strongly affected by climate change. The majority of the tropical glaciers worldwide are located in the Peruvian Andes, which have shown significant ice loss in the last century. Here, we present the first multi-temporal, region-wide survey of geodetic mass balances and glacier area fluctuations throughout Peru covering the period 2000–2016. Glacier extents are derived from Landsat imagery by performing automatic glacier delineation based on a combination of the NDSI and band ratio method and final manual inspection and correction. The mapping of debris-covered glacier extents is supported by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) coherence information. A total glacier area loss of −548.5±65.7  km2 (−29 %, −34.3 km2 a−1) is obtained for the study period. Using interferometric satellite SAR acquisitions, bi-temporal geodetic mass balances are derived. An average specific mass balance of −296±41 kg m−2 a−1 is found throughout Peru for the period 2000–2016. However, there are strong regional and temporal differences in the mass budgets ranging from 45±97 to −752±452 kg m−2 a−1. The ice loss increased towards the end of the observation period. Between 2013 and 2016, a retreat of the glacierized area of −203.8±65.7 km2 (−16 %, −101.9 km2 a−1) is mapped and the average mass budget amounts to −660±178  kg m−2 a−1. The glacier changes revealed can be attributed to changes in the climatic settings in the study region, derived from ERA-Interim reanalysis data and the Oceanic Nino Index. The intense El Niño activities in 2015/16 are most likely the trigger for the increased change rates in the time interval 2013–2016. Our observations provide fundamental information on the current dramatic glacier changes for local authorities and for the calibration and validation of glacier change projections.

So only parts of Alaska are impacted, but some BC grizzly bears unable to bulk up for winter as salmon stocks plummet. First Orcas, now grizzlies...

Meet the Winner of Katmai National Park’s Fat Bear Week 2019
Olivia Rosane | Oct. 10, 2019

....In Canada's British Columbia, meanwhile, a wildlife photographer snapped a picture of emaciated bears this fall struggling to find food amidst one of the area's lowest-ever salmon runs.

While the Katmai bears are lucky in comparison, the climate crisis has still affected them. That's because the salmon were delayed this fall due to drought, which meant that bears and fish didn't arrive along the Brooks River until mid-September, two weeks later than normal, Boak told NPR.

"I've been out there before, when a salmon run was delayed by a week, and the bears start getting anxious," Joy Erlenbach, a Ph.D. candidate at Washington State University's Bear Center, told The Verge. "It's scary for the bears because they don't know what's happening. They just know the food they expect isn't there, and it can affect their behavior."
And the impacts of this year's hot weather could linger. It is still too soon to tell if the pre-spawning death of salmon this year will lead to fewer fish for the bears to gorge on during Fat Bear Weeks to come...

https://www.ecowatch.com/fat-bear-week-katmai-park-2640911327.html

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Canada’s Starving Grizzlies Mean Low Salmon Stock
Jordan Davidson
Oct. 03, 2019 11:51AM EST Animals
Canada's natural resources ministry told CNN they will meet with First Nations later today to discuss the salmon and the bears. Education Images / Universal Images Group / Getty Images

The effect the climate crisis will have on the food chain are already playing out in British Columbia. Low fish stocks this summer have caused southern resident killer whales to starve. And now, with winter fast approaching, a photographer captured images of an emaciated family of grizzly bears desperately searching for salmon where there are none...

https://www.ecowatch.com/canadas-starving-grizzlies-mean-low-salmon-stock-264083...

Record melting sees Swiss glaciers shrink 10% in five years
Jack Guy | October 16, 2019

(CNN)Glaciers in Switzerland have shrunk 10% in the past five years, a rate that has never been seen before in over a century of observations, according to new research published Tuesday.

The summer 2019 heatwave saw glacier melt rates break records, leading to huge losses in ice volume, reports the Cryospheric Commission (CC) of the Swiss Academy of Sciences*...

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/15/europe/switzerland-glacier-melting-scli-intl-...

* Glacier volume reduced by 10 per cent in only five years (Press release)
Sciences Switzerland | 15.10.2019
https://naturalsciences.ch/organisations/ekk/118503-glacier-volume-reduced-by-10...

Suncor holds one of the largest positions in the oil sands. We are committed to delivering safe, reliable, low-cost production, while being leaders in growth, technical innovation and environmental sustainability. (www.suncor.com)

Suncor CEO slams climate change deniers, politicians who cater to them
David Bell | Jun 06, 2018

...Suncor Energy Inc. president and chief executive officer Steve Williams — speaking on a panel during the event in Calgary titled Bridging Divides: In Search of Sound Public Policies for Energy and Environment in Canada — said he's unhappy with how the debate on climate change has become so polarizing.

"It is a matter of profound disappointment to me that science and economics have taken on some strange political ownership. Why the science of the left-wing is different than the science of the right-wing. Why it's not possible for, certainly within Canada for conservatives, to take a conversation about, 'Hey, it's just a fact. Let's get some facts out on the table...Climate change is science. Hardcore science. What we have been talking about here is economics. Science and economics. Both very important subjects, not perfectly understood. Periods of discovery go on forever and we keep getting better and better at those things...It makes sense to consume things sensibly. Common sense is not a big part of the conversation that normally goes on on this thing...Energy efficiency, the sensible use of what is a finite resource. My belief is that we will run out of these things in the not too distant future, 100 or 200 years, so we better use them very wisely...(Williams didn't hold back on politicians who aim their rhetoric at deniers.) I find it scary. And I find the current politics of it — where if you want to vote this side of the politics or that side of the politics, you have to be a believer or not a believer — is complete nonsense, and we shouldn't allow that framing of the debate...And I hope some of those politicians get brave enough to stand up and take some different positions on it."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/suncor-ceo-slams-climate-change-deniers-c...

I enjoy Facebook discussion on (ancestral) Scottish Hebrides, but from climate perspective have been a bit appalled by flocks of methane-producing sheep, which prevent re-establishments of trees on the denuded countryside. Also, continued harvest of peat for heating, which releases CO2.

The fascinating and beautiful photo essay below is from Ireland, where 90,000 homes reported heating with turf (dried peat) in 2016:

The Secret World of Life (and Death) in Ireland's Peat Bogs
Emily Toner |Oct 19, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/19/multimedia/ireland-peat-bogs.html

_______________________________________________________________________

OTOH:

Scotland generating enough wind energy to power two Scotlands
Harry Cockburn | 19 July 2019 23:07

...figures, from Weather Energy, show between January and June wind turbines provided enough electricity to power the equivalent of 4.47million homes for those six months.

That is nearly twice the number of homes in Scotland...

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/scotland-wind-power-on-shore-renewable...

The Return of the 'Blob': Hawaii's Reefs Threatened by Marine Heat Wave
Kendra Pierre-Louis | Oct. 21, 2019

The ocean off of the Pacific Coast is simmering, threatening coral reefs and livelihoods around Hawaii, and causing many to worry of worse to come.

...reminiscent of 2014, when a hot spot that became known as the blob began forming in the Pacific. It expanded and lingered over much of the Pacific Coast from Mexico to Alaska for years.

...Researchers say they think that climate change strongly influenced the original blob’s creation.

...led to the first known mass bleaching event in Hawaii (as much as 50%), in which coral reefs stressed by the extreme temperatures shed the symbiotic plant that both gives them their flamboyant coloration and provides them with oxygen.

...upended the aquatic food web...100 million cod disappeared off the coast of southern Alaska.

Warming waters can trigger the release of a neurotoxin called domoic acid from algae. Shellfish eat the algae and when animals eat the shellfish they get sick and can die...seabirds...sea lions... In 2016, domoic acid also prompted officials to close the California Dungeness crab fishery.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/21/climate/hawaii-coral-bleaching.ht...

A pope from South America, with a degree in chemistry, with eyes to see, with great moral influence, and sympathy for indigenous peoples steps up on climate and rainforests. Hopefully his some-day successor will be made of similar cloth. (IF we manage to tame climate change before it decimates the human population, the church will have to come to terms with carrying capacity. IMHO.)

As Amazon Fires Burn, Pope Convenes Meeting on the Rainforests and Moral Obligation to Protect Them
Georgina Gustin | Oct 6, 2019

Two of the most powerful forces in Brazil, the president and the pope, are pulling in opposite directions on an issue critical to climate change.

..."The pope is speaking from an informed perspective on climate change, and he relates that to a Biblical responsibility toward God and toward creation," said Fred Van Dyke, executive director of the Au Sable Institute, a Michigan-based non-profit that works with Christian colleges on environmental education.

Critics: Worry about Souls, 'Not Saving Trees'
Pope Francis, who is from Argentina and the first pope from South America, has met with criticism from conservative leaders within the church.

The organizing document, which serves as a guide to the Synod, says the Synod will discuss some controversial topics, including the ordination of married priests in the Amazon and giving more official church responsibilities to women. Some conservative leaders within the church have also criticized the pope for incorporating indigenous spiritual concepts into his statements, saying those go against the theology of the Catholic Church.

Some have also said his climate-focused pronouncements stray into church doctrine and government policy. That's a position shared by the (Brazil President) Bolsonaro administration.

"When the church adopts this environmentalist attitude, it's really adopting the leftist agenda," Ricardo da Costa, a history professor at the Federal University of Espírito Santo who advises Bolsonaro's education agency, told the Religion News Service. "The clergy should worry about saving people's souls, not saving trees."

The Catholic Church has worked in the Amazon region for decades and has a long history of working with indigenous people to protect the rainforest.

"The Catholic Church has a very good environmental record in Brazil," Van Dyke said. He noted that priests and nuns have been assassinated for working on land reform issues in the rainforest. "The church can quite literally say it's given its blood for the poor and land reform."

Its relationship with indigenous tribes is particularly important to the church as it loses members to Pentecostal and other Christian faith groups. The pope has called for a church with an "Amazonian face."

"The church is getting more deeply involved in protection indigenous people," said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, who called them the "key players in the global struggle against climate change." "There's a growing body of evidence that indigenous people are the best guardians of the land," she said...

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05102019/pope-amazon-forest-fires-synod-bolso...

The Worst Day in Earth’s History Contains an Ominous Warning
One of the planet’s most dramatic extinctions was caused in part by ocean acidification, which has become a problem in our own era.
Robinson Meyer | Oct 22, 2019

...A new paper, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*...The (end-Cretaceous asteroid) impact changed the chemical content of the ocean, rendering seawater more acidic and inhospitable to the tiny plankton that form the base of the marine food chain. Combined with the other effects of the asteroid—darkened skies and a snap of global cooling—this ecologic disruption doomed much of life on Earth.

The finding may be satisfying for asteroid fans, but it is an ominous one. Ocean acidification, a hallmark of the planet’s previous mass extinctions, is happening again today.

How does an asteroid prompt an extinction? It chooses the right location. The Yucatán Peninsula was an excellent one, says Pincelli Hull, an author of the paper and a geology professor at Yale. The peninsula is essentially an “old buried reef,” she told me, an accumulation of dead coral and other sea life that is now more than a mile thick. When the asteroid hit, untold megatons of that old organic material—rich in nitrogen and sulfur—instantly became dust and shot up into the atmosphere.

Soon it began to fall back down, now as nitric oxide and sulfuric acid. “It was raining brimstone and acid from the sky,” Hull said. The air would have reeked of acrid smog and burnt matches. The acid accumulated in the oceans, wearing away the shells of the small, delicate plankton that serve as the basis of the marine food chain. Within a few centuries of the impact, ocean acidity had jumped by at least 0.3 pH units.

This spike in ocean acidification may have lasted for less than 1,000 years. But even that pulse “was long enough to kill off entire ecosystems for sure,” Hull said. Ocean acidification also likely worsened other sweeping environmental changes wrought by the impact, such as the years-long darkness caused by orbiting debris and ash from the global wildfires.

With this new finding, it now appears that all three of the worst mass extinctions in Earth’s history featured huge spasms of ocean acidification. They include the K-T extinction; the End-Triassic Extinction, when volcanoes in New Jersey killed 75 percent of all species; and the dread End-Permian Event, the worst extinction in the history of the planet, which killed roughly 85 percent of all species and nearly sterilized the oceans. Scientists call that event “the Great Dying.”

And that pattern is worrying, because the oceans are acidifying again today. Carbon dioxide—the same air pollutant that causes global warming—also dissolves in the oceans and increases the acidity of seawater. Since the late 1980s, the planet’s oceans have become about 0.02 pH units more acidic every decade, according to a report last month from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. More than a fifth of all modern carbon pollution has already dissolved into the oceans, the report also found....

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/the-worst-day-in-earths-hist...

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* Michael J. Henehan et al. 2019. Rapid ocean acidification and protracted Earth system recovery followed the end-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact
PNAS first published October 21, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1905989116 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/10/15/1905989116
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/10/15/1905989116

Significance
Debate lingers over what caused the last mass extinction 66 million years ago, with intense volcanism and extraterrestrial impact the most widely supported hypotheses. However, without empirical evidence for either’s exact environmental effects, it is difficult to discern which was most important in driving extinction. It is also unclear why recovery of biodiversity and carbon cycling in the oceans was so slow after an apparently sudden extinction event. In this paper, we show (using boron isotopes and Earth system modeling) that the impact caused rapid ocean acidification, and that the resulting ecological collapse in the oceans had long-lasting effects for global carbon cycling and climate. Our data suggest that impact, not volcanism, was key in driving end-Cretaceous mass extinction.

Abstract
Mass extinction at the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary coincides with the Chicxulub bolide impact and also falls within the broader time frame of Deccan trap emplacement. Critically, though, empirical evidence as to how either of these factors could have driven observed extinction patterns and carbon cycle perturbations is still lacking. Here, using boron isotopes in foraminifera**, we document a geologically rapid surface-ocean pH drop following the Chicxulub impact, supporting impact-induced ocean acidification as a mechanism for ecological collapse in the marine realm. Subsequently, surface water pH rebounded sharply with the extinction of marine calcifiers and the associated imbalance in the global carbon cycle. Our reconstructed water-column pH gradients, combined with Earth system modeling, indicate that a partial ∼50% reduction in global marine primary productivity is sufficient to explain observed marine carbon isotope patterns at the K-Pg, due to the underlying action of the solubility pump. While primary productivity recovered within a few tens of thousands of years, inefficiency in carbon export to the deep sea lasted much longer. This phased recovery scenario reconciles competing hypotheses previously put forward to explain the K-Pg carbon isotope records, and explains both spatially variable patterns of change in marine productivity across the event and a lack of extinction at the deep sea floor. In sum, we provide insights into the drivers of the last mass extinction, the recovery of marine carbon cycling in a postextinction world, and the way in which marine life imprints its isotopic signal onto the geological record.

** foraminifer--a single-celled planktonic animal with a perforated chalky shell through which slender protrusions of protoplasm extend. Most kinds are marine, and when they die, their shells form thick ocean-floor sediments. (Oxford)

Foraminifera (/fəˌræməˈnɪfərə/; Latin for "hole bearers"; informally called "forams") are members of a phylum or class of amoeboid protists characterized by streaming granular ectoplasm for catching food and other uses; and commonly an external shell (called a "test") of diverse forms and materials. (Wikipedia)

This was a couple years ago, but amazing that, with solar costs falling, in ONE MONTH India cancelled plans to build coal power stations equivalent to total in the UK.

India cancels plans for huge coal power stations as solar energy prices hit record low
Ian Johnston | Tuesday 23 May 2017

India has cancelled plans to build nearly 14 gigawatts of coal-fired power stations – about the same as the total amount in the UK – with the price for solar electricity “free falling” to levels once considered impossible.

Analyst Tim Buckley said the shift away from the dirtiest fossil fuel and towards solar in India would have “profound” implications on global energy markets.

According to his article on the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis’s website, 13.7GW of planned coal power projects have been cancelled so far this month – in a stark indication of the pace of change...

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/india-solar-power-electricity-cancels-...

_________________________________________________________________

IEEFA Asia: India’s Electricity-Sector Transformation Is Happening Now
Utility-Scale Solar Projects Continue to Attract Record Low Bids
Tim Buckley | May 17, 2017
http://ieefa.org/ieefa-asia-indias-electricity-sector-transformation-happening-n...

U.S. Military Could Collapse Within 20 Years Due to Climate Change, Report Commissioned By Pentagon Says

The report, titled Implications of Climate Change for the U.S. Army, was launched by the U.S. Army War College in partnership with NASA in May at the Wilson Center in Washington DC. The report was commissioned by Gen. Milley during his previous role as the Army’s Chief of Staff. It was made publicly available in August via the Center for Climate and Security, but didn't get a lot of attention at the time.

The two most prominent scenarios in the report focus on the risk of a collapse of the power grid within “the next 20 years,” and the danger of disease epidemics. Both could be triggered by climate change in the near-term, it notes.

The report also warns that the US military should prepare for new foreign interventions in Syria-style conflicts, triggered due to climate-related impacts. Bangladesh in particular is highlighted as the most vulnerable country to climate collapse in the world.
…
But without urgent reforms, the report warns that the US military itself could end up effectively collapsing as it tries to respond to climate collapse. It could lose capacity to contain threats in the US and could wilt into “mission failure” abroad due to inadequate water supplies.

The report paints a frightening portrait of a country falling apart over the next 20 years due to the impacts of climate change on “natural systems such as oceans, lakes, rivers, ground water, reefs, and forests.”

Current infrastructure in the US, the report says, is woefully underprepared: “Most of the critical infrastructures identified by the Department of Homeland Security are not built to withstand these altered conditions.”
…
At particular risk is the US national power grid, which could shut down due to “the stressors of a changing climate,” especially changing rainfall levels:

“The power grid that serves the United States is aging and continues to operate without a coordinated and significant infrastructure investment. Vulnerabilities exist to electricity-generating power plants, electric transmission infrastructure and distribution system components,” it states.

As a result, the “increased energy requirements” triggered by new weather patterns like extended periods of heat, drought, and cold could eventually overwhelm “an already fragile system.”

(me: Okay, I got reading fatigue and teeter on outright depression)

>65 2wonderY: How can leaders NOT give climate crisis the attention we need???
________________________________________________________________________________________

Glacial rivers absorb carbon faster than rainforests, scientists find
Leyland Cecco | 25 Oct 2019 04.54 EDT

In the turbid, frigid waters roaring from the glaciers of Canada’s high Arctic, researchers have made a surprising discovery (PNAS*): for decades, the northern rivers secretly pulled carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a rate faster than the Amazon rainforest.

...In temperate rivers, a bounty of organic material – plant life and fish – results in higher levels of decomposition, meaning the bodies of water emit a far greater amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than they absorb.

But glacial rivers, with their milky appearance and silt-laden composition (margd: my youthful recollection is that the Bow River in Alberta was milky turquoise), are not very hospitable to aquatic life, leading to far less organic decay – and little carbon output.

At the same time, the fine sediment scraped from glaciers, including silicate and carbonate, when tossed along in the rushing waters, begins the geological process known as chemical weathering.

...the effect of chemical weathering in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere extended as far away as 26 miles (42km) from the headwaters of the river.
...glacial river water will absorb 40 times as much carbon as the Amazon rainforest.

... their limited size means on a gross scale, they pull in far less than the sprawling Amazon.

... the short-term benefits of the newly discovered carbon sink also illustrate the rapid decline of glaciers in northern Canada.

...biologists discovered** the lake (Hazen), one of largest of the high Arctic, was changing at a dramatic rate. Since 2007, water entering the lake from melting glaciers has increased tenfold over historic flow rates. With the water comes sedimentation, the same particles responsible for removing carbon dioxide. Because of the cloudier water in the lake, researchers speculate that the char population is growing skinnier, with the fish finding it more difficult to navigate the murky waters...(margd: increased turbidity would also affect base of food web, interrupting sunlight, forcing productivity higher in water column)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/25/scientists-glacial-rivers-ab...

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* Kyra A. St. Pierre et al. 2019. Proglacial freshwaters are significant and previously unrecognized sinks of atmospheric CO2. PNAS September 3, 2019 116 (36) 17690-17695; first published August 19, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1904241116 https://www.pnas.org/content/116/36/17690

Significance
Glacier melt is one of the most dramatic consequences of climate change in high-latitude and high-altitude environments. As meltwaters move across poorly consolidated landscapes, they transport vast quantities of highly reactive comminuted sediments prone to chemical weathering reactions that may consume atmospheric CO2. Using a whole watershed approach in the Canadian High Arctic, combined with additional dissolved CO2 measurements in glacial rivers in Greenland and the Canadian Rockies, we show that certain glacier-fed freshwater ecosystems are significant and previously unrecognized annual CO2 sinks due to chemical weathering. As many of the world’s rivers originate from glacial headwaters, we highlight the potential importance of this process for contemporary regional carbon budgets in rapidly changing high-latitude and high-altitude watersheds.

Abstract
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from freshwater ecosystems are almost universally predicted to increase with climate warming. Glacier-fed rivers and lakes, however, differ critically from those in nonglacierized catchments in that they receive little terrestrial input of organic matter for decomposition and CO2 production, and transport large quantities of easily mobilized comminuted sediments available for carbonate and silicate weathering reactions that can consume atmospheric CO2. We used a whole-watershed approach, integrating concepts from glaciology and limnology, to conclusively show that certain glacier-fed freshwater ecosystems are important and previously overlooked annual CO2 sinks due to the overwhelming influence of these weathering reactions. Using the glacierized Lake Hazen watershed (Nunavut, Canada, 82°N) as a model system, we found that weathering reactions in the glacial rivers actively consumed CO2 up to 42 km downstream of glaciers, and cumulatively transformed the High Arctic’s most voluminous lake into an important CO2 sink. In conjunction with data collected at other proglacial freshwater sites in Greenland and the Canadian Rockies, we suggest that CO2 consumption in proglacial freshwaters due to glacial melt-enhanced weathering is likely a globally relevant phenomenon, with potentially important implications for regional annual carbon budgets in glacierized watersheds.

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**Igor Lehnherr et al. 2018. The world’s largest High Arctic lake responds rapidly to climate warming. Nature Communications volume 9, Article number: 1290 (2018) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03685-z

Abstract
Using a whole-watershed approach and a combination of historical, contemporary, modeled and paleolimnological datasets, we show that the High Arctic’s largest lake by volume (Lake Hazen) has succumbed to climate warming with only a ~1 °C relative increase in summer air temperatures. This warming deepened the soil active layer and triggered large mass losses from the watershed’s glaciers, resulting in a ~10 times increase in delivery of glacial meltwaters, sediment, organic carbon and legacy contaminants to Lake Hazen, a >70 margd:% decrease in lake water residence time, and near certainty of summer ice-free conditions. Concomitantly, the community assemblage of diatom primary producers in the lake shifted dramatically with declining ice cover, from shoreline benthic to open-water planktonic species, and the physiological condition of the only fish species in the lake, Arctic Char, declined significantly. Collectively, these changes place Lake Hazen in a biogeochemical, limnological and ecological regime unprecedented within the past ~300 years.

Climate Change Will Cost Us Even More Than We Think
Naomi Oreskes and Nicholas Stern | Oct. 23, 2019

Economists greatly underestimate the price tag on harsher weather and higher seas. Why is that?

...One reason is obvious: Since climate scientists have been underestimating the rate of climate change and the severity of its effects, then economists will necessarily underestimate their costs.

...A set of assumptions and practices in economics has led economists both to underestimate the economic impact of many climate risks and to miss some of them entirely.

...But when conditions change so much that experience is no longer a reliable guide to the future — when stationarity no longer applies — then estimates become more and more uncertain.

...A second difficulty involves parameters that scientists do not feel they can adequately quantify, like the value of biodiversity or the costs of ocean acidification.

...A third and terrifying problem involves cascading effects. One reason the harms of climate change are hard to fathom is that they will not occur in isolation, but will reinforce one another in damaging ways.

...The urgency and potential irreversibility of climate effects mean we cannot wait for the results of research to deepen our understanding and reduce the uncertainty about these risks. This is particularly so because the study* suggests that if we are missing something in our assessments, it is likely something that makes the problem worse...if we wait to be more certain, the only certainty is that we will regret it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/opinion/climate-change-costs.html

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* The missing economic risks in assessments of climate change impacts (policy publication, 15p PDF)
London school of Economics and Political Science | 20 September, 2019

In order to make well-informed decisions on climate change action, leaders need to understand clearly the nature and magnitude of the risks to lives and livelihoods that are being created by climate change. Unfortunately, much of the technical advice and recommendations about these risks incorporate assessments of the economic implications that omit or underplay the largest potential impacts of climate change.

This policy insight seeks to identify and draw attention to these missing and under-represented risks. The authors also discuss how populations might fare in light of their potential to adapt in the face of these risks. When the risks are taken into account, the case for strong, deliberate and urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions becomes even more compelling.
Summary points

Economic assessments of the potential future risks of climate change have been omitting or grossly underestimating many of the most serious consequences for lives and livelihoods because these risks are difficult to quantify precisely and lie outside of human experience.

Political and business leaders need to understand the scale of these ‘missing risks’ because they could have drastic and potentially catastrophic impacts on citizens, communities and companies.

Scientists are growing in confidence about the evidence for the largest potential impacts of climate change and the rising probability that major thresholds in the Earth’s climate system will be breached as global mean surface temperature rises, particularly if warming exceeds 2°C above the pre-industrial level. These impacts include:

Destabilisation of ice sheets and glaciers and consequent sea level rise

Stronger tropical cyclones

Extreme heat impacts

More frequent and intense floods and droughts

Disruptions to oceanic and atmospheric circulation

Destruction of biodiversity and collapse of ecosystems

Many of these impacts will grow and occur concurrently across the world as global temperature climbs.

Some of these impacts involve thresholds in the climate system beyond which major impacts accelerate, or become irreversible and unstoppable.

When a threshold is breached, it might cause one or more other thresholds to be exceeded as well, leading to a cascade of impacts.

Many of these impacts could exceed the capacity of human populations to adapt, and would significantly affect and disrupt the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people worldwide.

These impacts would also undermine economic growth and development, exacerbate poverty and destabilise communities.

Economic assessments fail to take account of the potential for large concurrent impacts across the world that would cause mass migration, displacement and conflict, with huge loss of life.

Economic assessments that are expressed solely in terms of effects on output (e.g. gross domestic product), or that only extrapolate from past experience, or that use inappropriate discounting, do not provide a clear indication of the potential risks to lives and livelihoods.

It is likely that there are additional risks that we are not yet anticipating simply because scientists have not yet detected their possibility, as we have entered a period of climate change that is unprecedented in human history.

Some advances are being made in improving economic assessments of climate change impacts but much more progress is required if assessments are to offer reliable guidance for political and business leaders on the biggest risks.

The lack of firm quantifications is not a reason to ignore these risks, and when the missing risks are taken into account, the case for strong and urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions becomes even more compelling.

http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/publication/the-missing-economic-risks-in...

Warmer temperatures are associated with more intense algal blooms in freshwater. Moreover, heavy rain events such as those Great Lakes experienced in recent years flush more fertilizer (as well as bacteria, pesticides, and sediment) into open waters.

Even at low doses, common cyanotoxins (e.g. from bluegreen algae / cyanobacteria suffered in Lake Erie and inland waters of Lake Ontario and St Lawrence R drainage) "have potential to induce inflammation and apoptosis in immune and brain cells" ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214750015300974 ). At higher doses some algal toxins can kill, e.g., several pet dogs who swam in algae-choked waters this summer.

Toxic Algae Blooms Really Have Become More Intense, Study Finds
Ed Cara | 10/14/19

...Potentially toxic algae blooms in the world’s freshwater lakes have become more intense over the last 30 years. And while climate change may not be the only reason why blooms have gotten worse, rising temperatures are likely making it harder for lakes to recover from them.

...they studied algae trends in 71 large lakes located across 33 countries on six continents. They found that in 68 percent of the lakes, the peak summertime intensity of blooms got worse, while the intensity of blooms only decreased in a 8 percent of lakes during that same time. The same pattern was true for a particularly dangerous type of algae made of bacteria called blue-green algae, which can be toxic to wildlife, pets, and people.

...While there seems to be a link between climate change and these blooms, though, the relationship is complicated...algae blooms can be affected by many different factors, depending on an individual lake’s environment. And while these factors can include temperature, it can also include rainfall heavy rain flushes more fertilizer into lakes or fertilizer use nearby.

“However, one consistent finding is that only lakes that warmed less (or actually cooled) were able to sustain gains in water quality,” (study author Anna Michalak, a senior researcher at Stanford’s Carnegie Institution for Science) added.

In other words, even if climate change isn’t making blooms in one particular lake more common, it’ll still make trying to manage them a nightmare for scientists and governments across the world. Already, the authors noted, algae blooms in the U.S. are thought to cost the country $4 billion annually, thanks to the damage they can cause to an area’s drinking water, agriculture and tourism industry. They also can be deadly, as a wave of pet deaths over the summer linked to blue-green algae demonstrated this year...

One key takeaway from the study, Michalak said, “is that tackling climate change will also benefit us in many other ways, such as safeguarding water quality.

“A second takeaway,” she added, “is that water management strategies need to take into account the fact that temperatures and rainfall are changing. Doing so will increase the chance of success of those strategies.”...

https://earther.gizmodo.com/toxic-algae-blooms-really-have-become-more-intense-s...

_______________________________________________________________________________

Jeff C. Ho et al. 2019. Widespread global increase in intense lake phytoplankton blooms since the 1980s. Nature (14 October 2019) | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1648-7

Abstract
Freshwater blooms of phytoplankton affect public health and ecosystem services globally. Harmful effects of such blooms occur when the intensity of a bloom is too high, or when toxin-producing phytoplankton species are present. Freshwater blooms result in economic losses of more than US$4 billion annually in the United States alone, primarily from harm to aquatic food production, recreation and tourism, and drinking-water supplies. Studies that document bloom conditions in lakes have either focused only on individual or regional subsets of lakes, or have been limited by a lack of long-term observations. Here we use three decades of high-resolution Landsat 5 satellite imagery to investigate long-term trends in intense summertime near-surface phytoplankton blooms for 71 large lakes globally. We find that peak summertime bloom intensity has increased in most (68 per cent) of the lakes studied, revealing a global exacerbation of bloom conditions. Lakes that have experienced a significant decrease in bloom intensity are rare (8 per cent). The reason behind the increase in phytoplankton bloom intensity remains unclear, however, as temporal trends...do not track consistently with temperature, precipitation, fertilizer-use trends or other previously hypothesized drivers. We do find, however, that lakes with a decrease in bloom intensity warmed less compared to other lakes, suggesting that lake warming may already be counteracting management efforts to ameliorate eutrophication. Our findings support calls for water quality management efforts to better account for the interactions between climate change and local hydrological conditions.

> 62 RC Amazon synod

Church must convert from cultural, ecological sins, Amazon synod concludes
Courtney Mares/CNA | 27 October, 2019

...“We propose to define ecological sins of commission or omission against God, one’s neighbor, the community and the environment,” paragraph 82 of the final document states. “They are sins against future generations and are manifest in acts and habits of pollution and destruction of the harmony of the environment.”

“No believer, no Catholic can live their life of faith without listening to the voice of the earth,” Bishop David Martínez de Aguirre Guinea, apostolic vicar of Puerto Maldonado, Peru explained at a press conference to present the final document Oct. 26.

“If we are going to face the problem, then we have to change,” Cardinal Michael Czerny, special secretary for the synod, added.

...The final document for the Synod of Bishops on the Pan-Amazon region calls for a new four-fold expression of “integral conversion” for the Church in the Amazon: pastoral, cultural, synodal, and ecological. These are framed in terms of “new paths of conversion” in the chapter titles for each of the subjects.

“New paths” are a way of saying “change,” Czerny said. “Without conversions, we are repeating what we have done before …but there is no real change.”

“We have brought our tradition into play so that we can find a way forward,” he said. For the pope, the most important necessary change is “pastoral change.”

...The final synodal document has no teaching or binding authority of its own...(Pope) will write a post-synodal exhortation, to hopefully be published before the end of the year.

...The report says the Church must guard itself against “the power of neo-colonialism” and “unlearn, learn and relearn” in order to overcome any tendency toward “colonizing models.”...

https://catholicherald.co.uk/news/2019/10/27/church-must-convert-from-cultural-e...

5 ways that climate change affects the ocean
Jessica Pink | Jun 7, 2018

...Ocveans cover 70 percent of the planet,...feed us, provide most of the oxygen we breathe, and protect us from ourselves: Were it not for the oceans, climate change would have already made Earth uninhabitable.

How?

The oceans have gamely absorbed more than 90 percent of the warming created by humans since the 1970s, a 2016 report found. Had that heat gone into the atmosphere, global average temperatures would have jumped by almost 56 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit).

But as vast as the seas are, there is a limit to how much they can absorb, and they are beginning to show it....Human Nature examines some of the ways that climate change affects life in the oceans — and what that means for humanity.

1. Higher temperatures are bad for fish — and for us...

2. Polar ice is melting...

3. Rising sea levels represent a slow, seemingly unstoppable threat...

4. Warming oceans alter currents...

5. Climate change is affecting the chemistry of seawater...

https://www.conservation.org/blog/5-ways-that-climate-change-affects-the-ocean/

Cities On The Front Line Of Climate Change Need To Build Resilience
Mike Scott | Oct 22, 2019

...70% of global cities – from London to New York and Quito to Quezon – are already feeling the impacts of climate change

...by 2050, eight times as many city dwellers will be exposed to high temperatures and 800 million more people could be at risk from the impacts of rising seas and storm surges.

...almost half of cities (46%) do not report that they are doing anything to deal with climate impacts, including 41% of those that say they are already experiencing hazards.

...A new interactive map* showing each of the cities along with their ‘CDP hazard score’, is available online. This score consists of the number of climate hazards reported multiplied by the severity of the hazards.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikescott/2019/10/22/cities-on-the-front-line-of-cl...

* https://www.cdp.net/en/research/global-reports/cities-at-risk

Rising Seas Will Erase More Cities by 2050, New Research Shows
Denise Lu and Christopher Flavelle | Oct. 29, 2019

Rising seas could affect three times more people by 2050 than previously thought, according to new research, threatening to all but erase some of the world’s great coastal cities.

The authors of a paper published Tuesday developed a more accurate way of calculating land elevation based on satellite readings, a standard way of estimating the effects of sea level rise over large areas, and found that the previous numbers were far too optimistic. The new research shows that some 150 million people are now living on land that will be below the high-tide line by midcentury.

...South Viet Nam...much of Ho Chi Minh City...Bangkok...Shanghai...Mumbai...Alexandria, Egypt...Basra, the second-largest city in Iraq

...110 million people already live in places that are below the high tide line, which (Benjamin Strauss, Climate Central’s chief executive) attributes to protective measures like seawalls and other barriers. Cities must invest vastly greater sums in such defenses, Mr. Strauss said, and they must do it quickly...

(See maps at) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scott A. Kulp & Benjamin H. Strauss. 2019. New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding. Nature Communications volume 10, Article number: 4844 (Oct 29, 2019) | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12808-z
Abstract

Most estimates of global mean sea-level rise this century fall below 2 m. This quantity is comparable to the positive vertical bias of the principle digital elevation model (DEM) used to assess global and national population exposures to extreme coastal water levels, NASA’s SRTM. CoastalDEM is a new DEM utilizing neural networks to reduce SRTM error. Here we show – employing CoastalDEM—that 190 M people (150–250 M, 90% CI) currently occupy global land below projected high tide lines for 2100 under low carbon emissions, up from 110 M today, for a median increase of 80 M. These figures triple SRTM-based values. Under high emissions, CoastalDEM indicates up to 630 M people live on land below projected annual flood levels for 2100, and up to 340 M for mid-century, versus roughly 250 M at present. We estimate one billion people now occupy land less than 10 m above current high tide lines, including 250 M below 1 m.

___________________________________________________________

Meanwhile,

Major Coal Producer And Trump Booster Files For Bankruptcy
Jeff Brady | October 29, 2019
Heard on All Things Considered

...a company headed by one of Trump's most vocal supporters. Murray Energy Corp. filed for Chapter 11 on Tuesday morning.

The company says it reached an agreement to restructure and continue operating. As part of that, Bob Murray — the chairman, president and CEO — will relinquish two of his roles. His nephew, Robert Moore, will become president and CEO while Murray will stay on as chairman.

...A few months after Trump was sworn in, Murray met with Energy Secretary Rick Perry and delivered an "action plan" for helping coal. It included 16 proposals that became a "to-do list" for the Trump administration, including replacing former President Obama's Clean Power Plan and withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.

...He continues to push for subsidies for coal power plants, and without that he predicts dire consequences. (freeze in the dark)

...According to the Sierra Club, 298 coal-fired power plants have either shut down or have announced they will since 2010.

U.S. coal consumption has fallen to its lowest level in 40 years, a downward trend likely to continue as more utilities and states commit to energy with lower or no greenhouse gas emissions.

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/29/774391189/nations-largest-coal-producer-and-trump...

Rising Seas Will Erase More Cities by 2050, New Research Shows
Denise Lu and Christopher Flavelle | Oct. 29, 2019

Rising seas could affect three times more people by 2050 than previously thought, according to new research, threatening to all but erase some of the world’s great coastal cities.

The authors of a paper published Tuesday developed a more accurate way of calculating land elevation based on satellite readings, a standard way of estimating the effects of sea level rise over large areas, and found that the previous numbers were far too optimistic. The new research shows that some 150 million people are now living on land that will be below the high-tide line by midcentury.

...South Viet Nam...much of Ho Chi Minh City...Bangkok...Shanghai...Mumbai...Alexandria, Egypt...Basra, the second-largest city in Iraq

...110 million people already live in places that are below the high tide line, which (Benjamin Strauss, Climate Central’s chief executive) attributes to protective measures like seawalls and other barriers. Cities must invest vastly greater sums in such defenses, Mr. Strauss said, and they must do it quickly...

(See maps at) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scott A. Kulp & Benjamin H. Strauss. 2019. New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding. Nature Communications volume 10, Article number: 4844 (Oct 29, 2019) | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12808-z
Abstract

Most estimates of global mean sea-level rise this century fall below 2 m. This quantity is comparable to the positive vertical bias of the principle digital elevation model (DEM) used to assess global and national population exposures to extreme coastal water levels, NASA’s SRTM. CoastalDEM is a new DEM utilizing neural networks to reduce SRTM error. Here we show – employing CoastalDEM—that 190 M people (150–250 M, 90% CI) currently occupy global land below projected high tide lines for 2100 under low carbon emissions, up from 110 M today, for a median increase of 80 M. These figures triple SRTM-based values. Under high emissions, CoastalDEM indicates up to 630 M people live on land below projected annual flood levels for 2100, and up to 340 M for mid-century, versus roughly 250 M at present. We estimate one billion people now occupy land less than 10 m above current high tide lines, including 250 M below 1 m.

___________________________________________________________

Meanwhile,

Major Coal Producer And Trump Booster Files For Bankruptcy
Jeff Brady | October 29, 2019
Heard on All Things Considered

...a company headed by one of Trump's most vocal supporters. Murray Energy Corp. filed for Chapter 11 on Tuesday morning.

The company says it reached an agreement to restructure and continue operating. As part of that, Bob Murray — the chairman, president and CEO — will relinquish two of his roles. His nephew, Robert Moore, will become president and CEO while Murray will stay on as chairman.

...A few months after Trump was sworn in, Murray met with Energy Secretary Rick Perry and delivered an "action plan" for helping coal. It included 16 proposals that became a "to-do list" for the Trump administration, including replacing former President Obama's Clean Power Plan and withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.

...He continues to push for subsidies for coal power plants, and without that he predicts dire consequences. (freeze in the dark)

...According to the Sierra Club, 298 coal-fired power plants have either shut down or have announced they will since 2010.

U.S. coal consumption has fallen to its lowest level in 40 years, a downward trend likely to continue as more utilities and states commit to energy with lower or no greenhouse gas emissions.

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/29/774391189/nations-largest-coal-producer-and-trump...

>60 margd: contd. (peat burning)

Grouse-shooting estates face ban on burning of peat bogs
Rob Evans | 29 Oct 2019

...the government had been working on a law to ban the owners of estates from repeatedly burning heather on their moorlands to help boost the numbers of grouse for shooting...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/29/grouse-shooting-estates-face-ban...

U.S. tells U.N. it is quitting Paris climate deal: U.S. official
Reuters | November 4, 2019

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States notified the United Nations on Monday that it would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, said a U.S. State Department official, marking the first formal step in a one-year process to exit the global pact to fight climate change.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climate-paris-un/us-tells-un-it-is-quitti...

Earth sizzles through October as another month ranks as the warmest on record
This is the fifth straight month with record or near-record heat.

Global average surface temperature departures from average during October, when compared to 1981-2010 levels. (Copernicus Climate Change Service)
Andrew Freedman | November 5, 2019

October was the warmest such month on record globally, narrowly edging out October 2015 for the top spot, according to a new analysis* from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The finding, released Tuesday, is significant because it shows that 2019 is certain to be one of the warmest years on record, continuing a trend scientists attribute to increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activities.

According to Copernicus, global average surface temperatures were 1.24 degrees above average when compared to the 1981-2010 average, and 0.02 degrees above the 2015 record. The month was a solid 0.2 degrees above the third-warmest October, which occurred in 2017.

During October, the Western United States and parts of Canada stood out for being cooler than average. However, temperatures were “markedly above average” over much of the Arctic, where sea ice extent hit a record low for the month. Europe was warmer than average, as was the Eastern United States and Canada, the Middle East and much of North Africa and Russia.

Parts of Brazil, Africa, Australia and Antarctica also saw temperatures that were well above average during the month...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/11/05/earth-sizzles-through-october-...
* https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-october-2019

__________________________________________________________________________________

Arctic islands 8 degrees warmer than normal
Atle Staalesen | November 04, 2019

After the hottest Arctic summer on record follows the warmest ever fall.

The Russian archipelagos of Franz Josef Land and Severnaya Zemlya experienced the warmest ever October on record. According to Russia’s meteorological service Roshydromet, average temperatures on the islands were up to eight degrees Celsius higher than normal.

Temperature maps from the meteorologists show a belt of warm air stretching across major parts of the Arctic. The biggest abnormalities are found in the area of the Franz Josef Land and Severnaya Zemlya, as well as further west in an area on the northeastern coast of Greenland...

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/2019/11/arctic-islands-8-degrees-warmer-norma

(11,000) World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency
William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas M Newsome, Phoebe Barnard, William R Moomaw Author Notes
BioScience, biz088, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz088
Published: 05 November 2019
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biz088/56...

...The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy lifestyle...

Profoundly troubling signs from human activities include sustained increases in both human and ruminant livestock populations, per capita meat production, world gross domestic product, global tree cover loss, fossil fuel consumption, the number of air passengers carried, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and per capita CO2 emissions since 2000 ...

Especially disturbing are concurrent trends in the vital signs of climatic impacts... Three abundant atmospheric GHGs (CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide) continue to increase..., as does global surface temperature... Globally, ice has been rapidly disappearing, evidenced by declining trends in minimum summer Arctic sea ice, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and glacier thickness worldwide... Ocean heat content, ocean acidity, sea level, area burned in the United States, and extreme weather and associated damage costs have all been trending upward... Climate change is predicted to greatly affect marine, freshwater, and terrestrial life, from plankton and corals to fishes and forests (IPCC 2018, 2019). These issues highlight the urgent need for action.

Despite 40 years of global climate negotiations, with few exceptions, we have generally conducted business as usual and have largely failed to address this predicament... The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected... It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity (IPCC 2019). Especially worrisome are potential irreversible climate tipping points and nature's reinforcing feedbacks (atmospheric, marine, and terrestrial) that could lead to a catastrophic “hothouse Earth,” well beyond the control of humans (Steffen et al. 2018). These climate chain reactions could cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable.

To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live, in ways that improve the vital signs summarized by our graphs. Economic and population growth are among the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion (Pachauri et al. 2014, Bongaarts and O’Neill 2018); therefore, we need bold and drastic transformations regarding economic and population policies. We suggest six critical and interrelated steps (in no particular order) that governments, businesses, and the rest of humanity can take to lessen the worst effects of climate change. These are important steps but are not the only actions needed or possible (Pachauri et al. 2014, IPCC 2018, 2019).

(1) Energy
The world must quickly implement massive energy efficiency and conservation practices and must replace fossil fuels with low-carbon renewables...and other cleaner sources of energy if safe for people and the environment...

(2) Short-lived pollutants
We need to promptly reduce the emissions of short-lived climate pollutants, including methane..., black carbon (soot), and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)...

(3) Nature
We must protect and restore Earth's ecosystems...

(4) Food
Eating mostly plant-based foods while reducing the global consumption of animal products..., especially ruminant livestock (Ripple et al. 2014), can improve human health and significantly lower GHG emissions (including methane in the “Short-lived pollutants” step)...

(5) Economy
Excessive extraction of materials and overexploitation of ecosystems, driven by economic growth, must be quickly curtailed to maintain long-term sustainability of the biosphere...

(6) Population
Still increasing by roughly 80 million people per year, or more than 200,000 per day..., the world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced—within a framework that ensures social integrity...

Conclusions
Mitigating and adapting to climate change while honoring the diversity of humans entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems. We are encouraged by a recent surge of concern. Governmental bodies are making climate emergency declarations. Schoolchildren are striking. Ecocide lawsuits are proceeding in the courts. Grassroots citizen movements are demanding change, and many countries, states and provinces, cities, and businesses are responding.

As the Alliance of World Scientists, we stand ready to assist decision-makers in a just transition to a sustainable and equitable future. We urge widespread use of vital signs, which will better allow policymakers, the private sector, and the public to understand the magnitude of this crisis, track progress, and realign priorities for alleviating climate change. The good news is that such transformative change, with social and economic justice for all, promises far greater human well-being than does business as usual. We believe that the prospects will be greatest if decision-makers and all of humanity promptly respond to this warning and declaration of a climate emergency and act to sustain life on planet Earth, our only home.
Contributing reviewers

"If (drying) trend continues over the long term and the rainforest reaches the point where it can no longer function properly, many of the trees and the species that live within the rainforest ecosystem may not be able to survive. As the trees die, particularly the larger and older ones, they release CO2 into the atmosphere; and the fewer trees there are, the less CO2 the Amazon region would be able to absorb - meaning we'd essentially lose an important element of climate regulation."

Human Activities Are Drying Out the Amazon: NASA Study
Esprit Smith | November 5, 2019

A new NASA study shows that over the last 20 years, the atmosphere above the Amazon rainforest has been drying out, increasing the demand for water and leaving ecosystems vulnerable to fires and drought. It also shows that this increase in dryness is primarily the result of human activities.

...elevated greenhouse gas levels are responsible for approximately half of the increased aridity. The rest is the result of ongoing human activity, most significantly, the burning of forests to clear land for agriculture and grazing. The combination of these activities is causing the Amazon's climate to warm.

When a forest burns, it releases particles called aerosols into the atmosphere - among them, black carbon, commonly referred to as soot. While bright-colored or translucent aerosols reflect radiation, darker aerosols absorb it. When the black carbon absorbs heat from the sun, it causes the atmosphere to warm; it can also interfere with cloud formation and, consequently, rainfall.
Why It Matters

The Amazon is the largest rainforest on Earth. When healthy, it absorbs billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year through photosynthesis - the process plants use to convert CO2, energy and water into food. By removing CO2 from the atmosphere, the Amazon helps to keep temperatures down and regulate climate.

But it's a delicate system that's highly sensitive to drying and warming trends.

... the most significant and systematic drying of the atmosphere is in the southeast region, where the bulk of deforestation and agricultural expansion is happening. But they also found episodic drying in the northwest Amazon, an area that typically has no dry season. Normally always wet, the northwest has suffered severe droughts over the past two decades, a further indication of the entire forest's vulnerability to increasing temperatures and dry air.

If this trend continues over the long term and the rainforest reaches the point where it can no longer function properly, many of the trees and the species that live within the rainforest ecosystem may not be able to survive. As the trees die, particularly the larger and older ones, they release CO2 into the atmosphere; and the fewer trees there are, the less CO2 the Amazon region would be able to absorb - meaning we'd essentially lose an important element of climate regulation...

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2928/human-activities-are-drying-out-the-amazon-na...

Melting Arctic sea ice linked to emergence of deadly virus in marine mammals...sea lions, ice seals, sea otters and others
University of California - Davis | November 7, 2019

Scientists have linked the decline in Arctic sea ice to the emergence of a deadly virus that could threaten marine mammals in the North Pacific...phocine* distemper virus (PDV), a pathogen responsible for killing thousands of European harbor seals in the North Atlantic in 2002, was identified in northern sea otters in Alaska in 2004...

...radical reshaping of historic sea ice may have opened pathways for contact between Arctic and sub-Arctic seals that was previously impossible. This allowed for the virus' introduction into the Northern Pacific Ocean.

"The loss of sea ice is leading marine wildlife to seek and forage in new habitats and removing that physical barrier, allowing for new pathways for them to move," said corresponding author Tracey Goldstein, associate director of the One Health Institute at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. "As animals move and come in contact with other species, they carry opportunities to introduce and transmit new infectious disease, with potentially devastating impacts."

...identified widespread infection and exposure to the virus across the North Pacific Ocean beginning in 2003, with a second peak of exposure and infection in 2009. These peaks coincided with reductions in Arctic sea ice extent. (including Russia)

"As sea ice continues its melting trend, the opportunities for this virus and other pathogens to cross between North Atlantic and North Pacific marine mammals may become more common," said first author Elizabeth VanWormer, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis during the study and currently an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. "This study highlights the need to understand PDV transmission and the potential for outbreaks in sensitive species within this rapidly changing environment."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191107112926.htm

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E. VanWormer et al. 2019. Viral emergence in marine mammals in the North Pacific may be linked to Arctic sea ice reduction. Scientific Reports volume 9, Article number: 15569 (Nov 7 2019) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51699-4

Abstract

Climate change-driven alterations in Arctic environments can influence habitat availability, species distributions and interactions, and the breeding, foraging, and health of marine mammals. Phocine* distemper virus (PDV), which has caused extensive mortality in Atlantic seals, was confirmed in sea otters in the North Pacific Ocean in 2004, raising the question of whether reductions in sea ice could increase contact between Arctic and sub-Arctic marine mammals and lead to viral transmission across the Arctic Ocean. Using data on PDV exposure and infection and animal movement in sympatric seal, sea lion, and sea otter species sampled in the North Pacific Ocean from 2001–2016, we investigated the timing of PDV introduction, risk factors associated with PDV emergence, and patterns of transmission following introduction. We identified widespread exposure to and infection with PDV across the North Pacific Ocean beginning in 2003 with a second peak of PDV exposure and infection in 2009; viral transmission across sympatric marine mammal species; and association of PDV exposure and infection with reductions in Arctic sea ice extent. Peaks of PDV exposure and infection following 2003 may reflect additional viral introductions among the diverse marine mammals in the North Pacific Ocean linked to change in Arctic sea ice extent.

* phocine--relating to or affecting the true (earless) seals.

Australia battles bushfires, prepares for 'catastrophic' conditions
Will Ziebell | November 9, 2019

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australian firefighters raced on Sunday to contain widespread bushfires that have left three people dead, and warned of “catastrophic” fire conditions ahead, including around the country’s biggest city of Sydney.

Authorities upgraded the forecast for the greater Sydney region to catastrophic fire danger on Tuesday, the first time the city has been rated at that level since new fire danger ratings were introduced in 2009.

“High temperatures, strong winds and low humidity are forecast, making conditions dangerous,” the New South Wales state Rural Fire Service said in a statement.

Conditions on Tuesday in the greater Hunter region north of Sydney were also rated as catastrophic, the highest level of bushfire danger, while extreme or severe conditions were predicted for other parts of the state.

“If a fire starts and takes hold during catastrophic fire danger conditions, lives and homes will be at risk,” the statement said.

Australia is suffering one of its worst bushfire seasons, which is occurring even before the start of the Southern Hemisphere summer, with parts of the country crippled by severe drought...

...“There is really no rainfall, no significant rainfall, until at least the end of the year and possibly into the new year,” Queensland Fire and Emergency Services acting commissioner Mike Wassing told a news conference on Sunday.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-bushfires/australia-battles-bushfir...

I've been in Northern California (Chico) the last couple days. Up the road about 10-15 miles is Paradise which was destroyed by the wildfire last year. The population of Chico which was about 50-60K population last year has gone up about 20-25 thousand since then. Temps for Nov 9 went into the low 80's--yesterday was mid 70's and everything is dry in the Sacramento valley. Up in the mountains surrounding the valley it will snow like nobody's business over the winter. They will shut down all kinds of roads but right now it's pretty warm. By the way the congressman here is one hard core conservative--one of the very few still left in the state of California. To clean out the brush in forests in Northern California (like Trump has proposed) I would guess you would need about 200 million people working full time and very seriously for about 6 months to a year and then keep on about 15 million people full time afterwards to maintain. It's a massive area and the larger parts of it are unpopulated. The point is Trump has no idea what he's talking about and never has. He doesn't believe in science. He could care less about the climate problem. It's all an inconvenience when a disaster happens because he's expected to help and he hasn't a clue. He's more friendly though to those states and other countries (like Russia/Turkey) more supportive of his presidency. He understands quid pro quo. He doesn't understand climate.

Also, more lake-effect snow due to ice-free Great Lakes absorbing heat from sun (declining albedo effect) plus wavering jet stream (Rossby waves, polar vortex) = cold air over warmer water. Lately, northern NY's Tug Hill is snowiest spot in the US!

Ice loss causing Arctic to reflect less heat
Mark Kinver | 11 November 2019

A loss of snow and ice cover are the main reasons for a reduction in the Arctic's ability to reflect heat, not soot as had been previously thought...the albedo effect...is a measurement of how well a surface, such as snow or ice, bounces sunlight back into space.

The Arctic region has warmed significantly since the 1980s, up to three times as much as the average seen elsewhere across the globe.

...When sunlight hits a white surface such as snow and ice, more of it is reflected back into space without warming its surroundings than when light hits a darker surface.

Thus, darker surfaces tend to absorb more heat. As the albedo effect in the Arctic is reduced, there is a positive feedback effect because, as the region warms, more and more ice and snow cover is lost. As a result, more dark areas are left exposed to sunlight.

This results in an amplification in the cycle of warming, a phenomenon that has been described as the Arctic Amplification....

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Rudong Zhang et al. 2019. Unraveling driving forces explaining significant reduction in satellite-inferred Arctic surface albedo since the 1980s. PNAS first published November 11, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1915258116 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/11/05/1915258116

Significance
Changes in snow cover, sea ice cover, and surface albedo over the Arctic are important for local warming and midlatitude climate change. Here, multiple datasets are used to show that observed reductions in the Arctic surface albedo in recent decades are largely linked to the decrease in Arctic snow cover fraction. The reduced snow cover fraction, driven by surface warming and declining snowfall, explains 70% of the observed reduction in the Arctic surface albedo. While absorbing aerosol (soot) falling on snow and ice can also reduce the surface albedo, the amount of soot in snow has actually been decreasing in recent decades, so soot deposition does not appear to explain the decreasing trend in snow cover and surface albedo.

Abstract
The Arctic has warmed significantly since the early 1980s and much of this warming can be attributed to the surface albedo feedback. In this study, satellite observations reveal a 1.25 to 1.51% per decade absolute reduction in the Arctic mean surface albedo in spring and summer during 1982 to 2014. Results from a global model and reanalysis data are used to unravel the causes of this albedo reduction. We find that reductions of terrestrial snow cover, snow cover fraction over sea ice, and sea ice extent appear to contribute equally to the Arctic albedo decline. We show that the decrease in snow cover fraction is primarily driven by the increase in surface air temperature, followed by declining snowfall. Although the total precipitation has increased as the Arctic warms, Arctic snowfall is reduced substantially in all analyzed data sets. Light-absorbing soot in snow has been decreasing in past decades over the Arctic, indicating that soot heating has not been the driver of changes in the Arctic snow cover, ice cover, and surface albedo since the 1980s.

Discussion of Vibrio below in context of algal blooms below reminds me that cholera pathogen (a Vibrio) was detected a few decades ago in the middle of cold Lake Superior, apparently deposited with ballast water of an oceangoing vessel. (Historically, places like Chicago experienced outbreaks of cholera, but not in modern times.) Travellers from Bay of Bengal are blamed for outbreaks of cholera elsewhere in the world ( https://www.bbc.com/news/health-14664450 ), but the pathogen can survive the chill of a trans-oceanic voyage in balls of algae until discharged into waters with appropriate conditions...like South America in the 1990s ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8544225 )...

Why Climate Change Poses A Particular Threat To Child Health
Heard on Morning Edition (3 min)
Nurith Aizenman | November 14, 2019

When it comes to global health, the world has made remarkable strides over the past two decades. There has been unprecedented progress vaccinating kids, treating diseases and lifting millions out of poverty. The childhood death rate has been slashed in half since 2000. Adults are living an average 5 1/2 years longer.

Now scientists say these successes are under serious threat from climate change. The warning comes in a sweeping new study* in the journal The Lancet. It's the latest in an annual — and evolving — effort by researchers from more than a dozen universities as well as the World Health Organization to track the health impacts of climate change.

They note that even as the world has been doing so much to improve health, climate change has also been underway — slowly pushing up the average temperatures experienced around the planet by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit compared with in preindustrial times, roughly around the mid-19th century.

And that temperature boost has had a wide and complicated range of consequences for world health, says Dr. Nick Watts of University College London, who led the study.

...conditions for growing all sorts of crops around the world have become less favorable...the yield potential for these staple crops is now down as much as 6%....(children are most vulnerable) Particularly kids in poorer countries.

...climate change: It's improving conditions for the spread of a bacteria called Vibrio...(causes) cholera, wound infections and diarrhea, which in poorer countries is an especially big killer for kids...surface temperature of the ocean rises, the salinity patterns in the water shift...algal blooms...critical levels of Vibrio, which make it into the water supply and can then be ingested by humans...the number of days suitable around the world for the transmission of Vibrio double" — from 53 days to 107 days.

...massive heat wave(s)...

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/11/14/778992862/why-climate-chang...

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* Nick Watts et al. 2019. The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate. The Lancet. Review| Volume 394, ISSUE 10211, P1836-1878, November 16, 2019. http://www.lancetcountdown.org/2019-report/
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)32596-6/fullt...

Key Message
The life of every child born today will be profoundly affected by climate change, with populations around the world increasingly facing extremes of weather, food and water insecurity, changing patterns of infectious disease, and a less certain future. Without accelerated intervention, this new era will come to define the health of people at every stage of their lives.

A second path – which limits the global average temperature rise to “well below 2ºC” – is possible, and would transform the health of a child born today for the better, throughout their lives. Placing health at the centre of the coming transition will yield enormous dividends for the public and the economy, with cleaner air, safer cities, and healthier diets.

Bold new approaches to policy making, research, and business are needed in order to change course. An unprecedented challenge demands an unprecedented response. It will take the work of the 7.5 billion people currently alive to ensure that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate...

Algal blooms, bacteria, aerosols, Arctic cloud formation... Maybe elsewhere, too, I wonder?

Bacteria from the ocean floor could be influencing Arctic weather
Maddie Stone | November 15, 2019 at 2:36 PM

Scientists have identified a surprising new mechanism that could be affecting cloud formation and weather patterns in the Arctic: bacteria from the ocean floor.

When tiny, plantlike ocean microbes known as phytoplankton die, their bodies sink to the bottom of the sea, becoming food for bacteria residing there. New observations made in the Bering and Chukchi seas off the coast of Alaska suggest that under the right conditions, these algae eaters are sloshed to the surface and from there are wafted into the air.

Once airborne, seafloor bacteria may become seeds that promote the growth of ice crystals, an important step in the formation of Arctic clouds.

“Clouds are super important in the Arctic,” said Jessie Creamean, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University and lead author of new research published in mid-July in Geophysical Research Letters*. “They regulate the surface and atmospheric temperatures, affecting sea ice, ecology, shipping, Arctic climate and weather. And we just have a really poor understanding of how they form”...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/11/15/bacteria-ocean-floor-could-be-...

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* Creamean, J. M., Cross, J. N., Pickart, R., McRaven, L., Lin, P., Pacini, A., et al. (2019). Ice nucleating particles carried from below a phytoplankton bloom to the Arctic atmosphere. Geophysical Research Letters, 46, 8572–8581. https:// doi.org/10.1029/2019GL083039

Entire paper at https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2019GL083039?referrer_a...

In 2020, we all need to be one-issue voters...

In bleak report, U.N. says drastic action is only way to avoid worst effects of climate change
“We need to catch up on the years in which we procrastinated,” a top official says.

Brady Dennis | November 26, 2019 at 3:00 a.m. EST

The world has squandered so much time mustering the action necessary to combat climate change that rapid, unprecedented cuts in greenhouse gas emissions offer the only hope of averting an ever-intensifying cascade of consequences, according to new findings from the United Nations.

...Global temperatures are on pace to rise as much as 3.9 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, according to the United Nations’ annual “emissions gap” report, which assesses the difference between the world’s current path and the changes needed to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accord.

As part of that deal, world leaders agreed to hold warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels; the current trajectory is nearly twice that.

Should that pace continue, scientists say, the result could be widespread, catastrophic effects: Coral reefs, already dying in some places, would probably dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans. Some coastal cities, already wrestling with flooding, would be constantly inundated by rising seas. In much of the world, severe heat, already intense, could become unbearable.

Global greenhouse gas emissions must begin falling by 7.6 percent each year beginning 2020 — a rate currently nowhere in sight — to meet the most ambitious aims of the Paris climate accord, the report issued early Tuesday found. Its authors acknowledged that the findings are “bleak.” After all, the world has never demonstrated the ability to cut greenhouse gas emissions on such a scale...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/11/26/bleak-report-un-sa...

It’s not just Venice. Climate change imperils ancient treasures everywhere.
Kate Yoder | Nov 19, 2019

...Here’s a sampling of the landmarks at risk:

The statues of Easter Island: The remote Pacific island, 2,200 miles off the coast of Chile, is known for its giant monolithic statues of heads carved more than a thousand years ago. (PSA, they’re not just heads — the rest of their bodies are buried underground.) The island’s coastline is rapidly eroding, and waves are beginning to lap at the statues and ancient burial sites.

The cedars of Lebanon: The trees mentioned so often in the Bible are imperiled. The famous Forest of the Cedars of God is one of the most vulnerable sites in the world to climate change, which has brought hot and dry conditions inhospitable to the trees.

An ancient burial site in Russia: The frozen tombs that are part of the Treasures of the Pazyryk Culture in Siberia risk thawing out — and therefore rotting — as temperatures rise. The site includes 2,500-year-old burial mounds and rock carvings from the ancient Scythian people.

Archaeological ruins in Tanzania: At a 13th-century trading center called Kilwa Kisiwani, on a small island just off Tanzania’s coast, merchants handled a good chunk of the trade in the Indian Ocean — gold, perfumes, porcelain, and more — and spread Swahili culture far and wide. But the ruins could get washed away before archaeologists have more time to explore them.

The Stone Age villages of Scotland: The Orkney Islands off Scotland’s north coast contain some of the oldest sites in the world, with some structures built around 5,000 years ago, before the Great Pyramid of Giza. Of the 3,000 archaeological sites on the
islands, some have already crumbled under heavy rains and erosion, and roughly half are under threat.

Unique habitat in Yellowstone National Park: Climate change is bringing ferocious fires and less snowfall to the greater Yellowstone region, which spans from Wyoming into parts of Montana and Idaho. Changing conditions could totally reshape its landscape, draining half of the area’s wetlands and turning its dense forests into open woodlands...

https://grist.org/article/its-not-just-venice-climate-change-imperils-treasures-...

Timothy M. Lenton et al. 2019. Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against (comment). Nature | Vol 575 | 28 November 2019 | 592-595 https://www.nature.com/magazine-assets/d41586-019-03595-0/d41586-019-03595-0.pdf

The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions...

Ice Collapse...We think that several cryosphere tipping points are dangerously close, but mitigating greenhouse-gas emissions could still slow down the inevitable accumulation of impacts and help us to adapt...

Biosphere boundaries. Climate change and other human activities risk triggering biosphere tipping points across a range of ecosystems and scales...

Global cascade. In our view, the clearest emergency would be if we were approaching a global cascade of tipping points that led to a new, less habit-able, ‘hothouse’ climate state...

Act now. In our view, the evidence from tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute (see ‘Emergency: do the maths’).We argue that the intervention time left to prevent tipping could already have shrunk towards zero, whereas the reaction time to achieve net zero emissions is 30 years at best. Hence we might already have lost control of whether tipping happens. A saving grace is that the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping — and hence the risk posed — could still be under our control to some extent.The stability and resilience of our planet is in peril. International action — not just words — must reflect this.

v.

Why Apocalyptic Claims About Climate Change Are Wrong
Michael Shellenberger | Nov 25, 2019
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/11/25/why-everything-they...

>87 margd: contd.

Johan Rockström: “10 years ago science showed there are 15 known Earth tipping elements that regulate the state of the Planet. Today we present findings that 9 of these 15 systems are on the move.”

Excepts from Lenton et al. (2019):

Amazon Rainforest
Arctic Sea Ice
Atlantic Circulation
Boreal Forest
Coral Reefs
Greenland Ice Sheet
Permafrost
West Antarctic Ice Sheet
Wilkes Basin (E Antarctica)

Some scientists counter that the possibility of global tipping remains highly speculative. It is our position that, given its huge impact and irreversible nature, any serious risk assessment must consider the evidence, however limited our understanding might still be. To err on the side of danger is not a responsible option.

If damaging tipping cascades can occur and a global tipping point cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilization. No amount of economic cost–benefit analysis is going to help us. We need to change our approach to the climate problem.

Amazon fires intensify Andes glacier melt
Victoria Gill | 28 November 2019

Smoke from burning forests in the Amazon can intensify glacier melt, researchers say, fuelling concern about a water crisis in South America.

The team found evidence that snow and ice was being "darkened", accelerating the melt rate, threatening supplies.

Melting tropical glaciers provide water for millions of people in the region.

Scientists modelled the movement and effect of smoke particles from fires on Andean glaciers, and checked their conclusions against satellite images.

And they say the impact will be felt across the continent.

Dr Newton de Magalhães Neto from Rio de Janeiro State University in Brazil, said: "Amazon deforestation and fires - events that occur mainly in Bolivia, Peru and Brazil - cannot be considered a regional issue.

"They have social implications at the continental scale, because accelerating the loss of glaciers increases the risk of a water crisis and the vulnerability of several Andean communities in response to climate change."...

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50573623

>87 margd: >88 margd: contd.

Scientists Warn: Nine Climate Tipping Points Now ‘Active’ – Could Threaten the Existence of Human Civilization
University of Exeter | November 30, 2019

...“A decade ago we identified a suite of potential tipping points in the Earth system, now we see evidence that over half of them have been activated,” said lead author Professor Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter.

“The growing threat of rapid, irreversible changes means it is no longer responsible to wait and see. The situation is urgent and we need an emergency response.”

Co-author Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said: “It is not only human pressures on Earth that continue rising to unprecedented levels.

“It is also that as science advances, we must admit that we have underestimated the risks of unleashing irreversible changes, where the planet self-amplifies global warming.

“This is what we now start seeing, already at 1°C global warming.

“Scientifically, this provides strong evidence for declaring a state of planetary emergency, to unleash world action that accelerates the path towards a world that can continue evolving on a stable planet.”

...“No amount of economic cost-benefit analysis is going to help us. We need to change our approach to the climate problem.”

Professor Lenton added: “We might already have crossed the threshold for a cascade of inter-related tipping points.

“However, the rate at which they progress, and therefore the risk they pose, can be reduced by cutting our emissions.”

Though global temperatures have fluctuated over millions of years, the authors say humans are now “forcing the system,” with atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and global temperature increasing at rates that are an order of magnitude higher than at the end of the last ice age.

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-warn-nine-climate-tipping-points-now-active-...

Heat waves and floods shattered records. Fires ravaged the Arctic and the Amazon. This was the climate crisis in 2019.
Morgan McFall-Johnsen | Nov 22, 2019,

So far, 2019 is the second-hottest year on record. Arctic sea ice reached new lows as carbon emissions reached new highs.
Climate change makes heat waves hotter, hurricanes stronger, and forests more flammable. The world saw that play out this year.

...Atmospheric carbon dioxide has reached its highest level in at least 800,000 years.

...Climate change is already leading to extreme weather that breaks records.

...The year began with a record-shattering polar vortex that engulfed the US Midwest and eastern Canada, killing at least 21 people.

...Scientists are starting to understand how rapid warming in the Arctic can make cold snaps like this more frequent.
cold michigan polar vortex

...When spring arrived, the Midwest saw record flooding as the Mississippi and Missouri rivers swelled under heavy rainfall.

...Extreme weather in the first six months of 2019 displaced a record 7 million people worldwide.

...The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center said it expects 2019 to be one of the worst years on record for this type of displacement.

...The summer was sweltering. July was the hottest month ever recorded.

...Two record-breaking heat waves swept across Europe — one in June, then another in July.

...June 28, 2019 is now the hottest day ever recorded in France.

...When the European heat wave washed over Greenland, it induced ice melt that even the most pessimistic climate models hadn't expected to see until 2070.

...Similar heat waves swept the US and Japan in July.

...Every month this summer saw record heat, continuing into October. So far, 2019 is the second-hottest year since records began

...The extreme heat depleted Arctic sea ice, which reached its lowest point ever for the month of July.

...By September, the sea ice had shrunk to 1.6 million square miles — its second-lowest extent in the 41-year record.

...Then coverage reached the lowest October extent ever recorded, at 32.2% below average.

...At Earth's opposite pole, Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest June coverage on record.

...Unprecedented wildfires raged across Siberia, Greenland, and Alaska all summer.

...Those forest fires released more carbon dioxide than they ever had before.

...Humans lit fires in the Amazon rainforest. Unusually hot, dry air made it easier for the flames to spread at unprecedented rates.

...A different kind of extreme weather brewed in the Caribbean. Hurricane Dorian tied the record for the strongest Atlantic hurricane landfall ever.

...Dorian made the most powerful landfall the Bahamas had ever seen. Then it sat over the island of Grand Bahama for nearly 24 hours.

...Meanwhile, Hurricane Lorenzo traveled farther northeast in the Atlantic than any Category 5 storm had ever gone. It menaced parts of the UK.

...Storm systems are complex, and scientists can't attribute any single storm to climate change. But global warming is making

...Meanwhile, satellites revealed that the world's largest, smelliest seaweed bloom now stretches from the coast of West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.

...Across the ocean, Venice flooded with its second-highest tide on record last week...

https://www.businessinsider.com/recording-breaking-weather-linked-to-climate-cha...

Climate change: Study underpins key idea in Antarctic ice loss
Jonathan Amos | 12/2/2019

It's long been suspected but scientists can now show conclusively that thinning in the ring of floating ice around Antarctica is driving mass loss from the interior of the continent.

... the diminishing thickness of ice shelves is matched almost exactly by an acceleration in the glaciers feeding in behind them.

What's more, the linkage is immediate.

It means we can't rely on a lag in the system to delay the rise in sea-levels as shelves melt in a warmer world.

The glaciers will speed up in tandem, dumping their mass in the ocean.

...The biggest changes are seen in the West of the continent, where huge glaciers such as Pine Island and Thwaites have accelerated in response to their denuded ice shelves. The ice volume contained in just these two ice streams would push up global sea levels by 1-2m - if it were all to melt out. The least change over the 25 years is seen in the East of the continent where shelves and their feeding glaciers have been largely stable.

______________________________________________________________________--

Gudmundsson Gudmundur, Hilmar et al. 2019. Instantaneous Antarctic ice-sheet mass loss driven by thinning ice shelves. Geophysical Research Letters. doi: 10.1029/2019GL085027 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2019GL085027?referrer_a...

Key Points:
First continent-wide assessment of the impact of observed changes in ice-shelf thickness on the mass loss of the Antarctic Ice Sheet
Process-based predictions of changes in ice flow are in good agreement with observed spatial patterns of ice loss
Changes in ice-shelf thickness are having a substantial and instantaneous impact on ongoing mass loss of the Antarctic ice sheet

Abstract
Recent observations show that the rate at which the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) is contributing to sea level rise is increasing. Increasing ice-ocean heat exchange has the potential to induce substantial mass loss through the melting of its ice shelves. Lack of data and limitations in modelling, however, have made it challenging to quantify the importance of ocean-induced changes in ice-shelf thickness as a driver for ongoing mass loss. Here, we use a numerical ice-sheet model in combination with satellite observations of ice-shelf thinning from 1994 to 2017 to quantify instantaneous changes in ice flow across all AIS grounding lines, resulting from changes in ice-shelf buttressing alone. Our process-based predictions are in good agreement with observed spatial
patterns of ice loss, providing support for the notion that a significant portion of the current ice loss of the AIS is ocean driven and caused by a reduction in ice-shelf buttressing.

Plain Language Summary
The Antarctic Ice Sheet is currently losing mass but the causes for the mass loss remain unclear. It has been suggested that reduction in the thickness of the floating ice shelves that surround the ice sheet, for example due to ocean warming or changes in ocean circulation, may be responsible for some of the observed ice loss. However, this hypothesis has remained untested. Here we use a state-of-the art numerical ice-flow model to calculate the direct mass loss due to observed changes in ice shelves between 1994 and 2017. We find that the magnitude and spatial variability of modelled changes are in good agreement with observations, suggesting that thinning ice shelves have driven a substantial portion of the recent ice-loss of the Antarctic ice sheet. The process we consider (ice-shelf buttressing) relates to changes in forces within the ice alone and is therefore effectively instantaneous (i.e. only limited by the speed of stress transition within the ice). Besides providing a possible explanation for a large part of the ongoing mass loss, this finding also shows that we are not protected against the impact of the Antarctic Ice Sheet on global sea levels by a long response time.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50625396

On hot days, I've always pitied veiled and/or heavily pregnant women.
Apparently heat hastens birth of their babies...

Climate change impact: Hot temperatures shorten pregnancies, study suggests
Doyle Rice | Dec 2, 2019

...birth rates were 5% higher on days when the temperature was above 90 degrees, according to a statement released by the University of California - Los Angeles. "And, perhaps more concerning, births on those days occurred up to two weeks earlier – and 6.1 days earlier on average – than they would have otherwise" ...

“That’s enough to take somebody from what’s considered to be a pretty healthy pregnancy into a ‘we are somewhat worried’ pregnancy,” said Alan Barreca, a UCLA professor of environment and human health and lead author of the new study...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/12/02/climate-change-hot-weather...

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Alan Barreca and Jessamyn Schaller. 2019. The impact of high ambient temperatures on delivery timing and gestational lengths. Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0632-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0632-4.epdf

Evidence suggests that heat exposure increases delivery risk for pregnant women. Acceleration of childbirth leads to shorter gestation, which has been linked to later health and cognitive outcomes. However, estimates of the aggregate gestational losses resulting from hot weather are lacking in the literature. Here, we use estimated shifts in daily county birth rates to quantify the gestational losses associated with heat in the United States from 1969 to 1988. We find that extreme heat causes an increase in deliveries on the day of exposure and on the following day and show that the additional births were accelerated by up to two weeks. We estimate that an average of 25,000 infants per year were born earlier as a result of heat exposure, with a total loss of more than 150,000 gestational days annually. Absent adaptation, climate projections suggest additional losses of 250,000 days of gestation per year by the end of the century

87, 88, 90 contd. Ten-minute radio interview on world at brink of a potentially irreversible cascade of climate tipping points...

Climate scientists warn we're on the precipice of disastrous 'tipping points'
Slow temperature changes could 'tip over' into catastrophic, fast and irreversible transformation
CBC Radio · Posted: Nov 29, 2019

Scientists warn we may have already passed a tipping point in Antarctica where there "some direct physical evidence of the kind of accelerating changes that we expect at a tipping point." (Pauline Askin / Reuters)

The world may be teetering on the brink of a potentially irreversible cascade of climate tipping points that scientists say could lead to an "existential threat to civilization."

According to a new commentary published in the prestigious science journal Nature, we are so close to at least one or two of these tipping points — the thresholds beyond which a slow change tips over into big and abrupt planetary transformations — that we can't rule out the process has already begun.

"What's happened now is we've got some direct physical evidence of the kind of accelerating changes that we expect at a tipping point," said Timothy Lenton, a professor of Climate Change and director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, in conversation with Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald...

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/nov-30-tipping-into-climate-catastrophe-blue-wha...

Bye-bye, birdie: Study finds North American birds getting smaller
Will Dunham | December 4, 2019

...Field Museum scientist, Dave Willard...took measurements of 70,716 bird specimens of migratory birds that died in collisions with buildings in Chicago over a period of about four decades (1978-2016)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Since 1978, researchers have scooped up and measured tens of thousands of birds that died after crashing into buildings in Chicago during spring and fall migrations. Their work has documented what might be called the incredible shrinking bird.

...a phenomenon called Bergmann’s rule, in which individuals within a species tend to be smaller in warmer regions and larger in colder regions, as reason to believe that species may become smaller over time as temperatures rise.

The study focused on 52 species - mostly songbirds dominated by various sparrows, warblers and thrushes - that breed in cold regions of North America and spend their winters in locations south of Chicago....

Over the four decades, body size decreased in all 52 species. The average body mass fell by 2.6%. Leg bone length dropped by 2.4%. The wingspans increased by 1.3%, possibly to enable the species to continue to make long migrations even with smaller bodies.

“In other words, climate change seems to be changing both the size and shape of these species” said biologist Brian Weeks...“I think the message to take away is this...As humans change the world at an unprecedented rate and scale, there are likely widespread and consistent biotic responses to environmental change.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-birds/bye-bye-birdie-study-finds-nort...
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Migratory birds shrinking as climate warms, new analysis of four-decade record shows
Jim Erickson ericksn@umich.edu | December 4, 2019

ANN ARBOR—North American migratory birds have been getting smaller over the past four decades, and their wings have gotten a bit longer. Both changes appear to be responses to a warming climate...

https://news.umich.edu/migratory-birds-shrinking-as-climate-warms-new-analysis-o...

________________________________________________________________________

Brian C. Weeks et al. 2019. Shared morphological consequences of global warming in North American migratory birds. Ecology Letters. 04 December 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13434 . https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ele.13434

Abstract
Increasing temperatures associated with climate change are predicted to cause reductions in body size, a key determinant of animal physiology and ecology. Using a four‐decade specimen series of 70 716 individuals of 52 North American migratory bird species, we demonstrate that increasing annual summer temperature over the 40‐year period predicts consistent reductions in body size across these diverse taxa. Concurrently, wing length – an index of body shape that impacts numerous aspects of avian ecology and behaviour – has consistently increased across species. Our findings suggest that warming‐induced body size reduction is a general response to climate change, and reveal a similarly consistent and unexpected shift in body shape. We hypothesise that increasing wing length represents a compensatory adaptation to maintain migration as reductions in body size have increased the metabolic cost of flight. An improved understanding of warming‐induced morphological changes is important for predicting biotic responses to global change.

Victoria Falls shrink to a trickle, feeding climate change fears
Mike Hutchings, Tim Cocks | December 6, 2019

VICTORIA FALLS, Zambia (Reuters) - For decades Victoria Falls, where southern Africa’s Zambezi river cascade down 100 metres into a gash in the earth, have drawn millions of holidaymakers to Zimbabwe and Zambia for their stunning views.

But the worst drought in a century has slowed the waterfalls to a trickle, fuelling fears that climate change could kill one of the region’s biggest tourist attractions.

While they typically slow down during the dry season, officials said this year had brought an unprecedented decline in water levels.

...southern Africa...taps running dry and some 45 million people in need of food aid amid crop failures.

...Zimbabwe and Zambia have suffered power cuts as they are heavily reliant on hydropower from plants at the Kariba Dam which is on the Zambezi river upstream of the waterfalls...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-drought-zimbabwe/victoria-falls...

World's oceans are losing oxygen at a dangerous, unprecedented rate as temperatures rise, study finds

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released the largest report of its kind — combining the efforts of 67 scientists from 17 countries — at the global climate summit in Madrid on Saturday. It found that the oxygen level of the ocean has declined by about 2% since the 1950s, and the volume of water completely depleted of oxygen has quadrupled since the 1960s.

Sixty years ago, only 45 ocean sites suffered from low oxygen levels. That number skyrocketed to 700 in 2011. According to the study, about 50% of oxygen loss in the upper part of the ocean is a result of temperature increase.
…
"This is perhaps the ultimate wake-up call from the uncontrolled experiment humanity is unleashing on the world's ocean as carbon emissions continue to increase," said Dan Laffoley, Senior Advisor Marine Science and Conservation in IUCN's Global Marine and Polar Program and a co-editor of the report.

Researchers named 2 major causes of deoxygenation

Ocean warming from burning fossil fuels: Warmer oceans hold less oxygen and are more buoyant than cooler water. This makes it difficult for oxygen to make its way to deeper waters and raises the oxygen demands of sea creatures.
2.Excessive growth of algae (eutrophication): Plant life is rapidly growing due to fertilizer run-off into waterways, sewage, animal waste, aquaculture and nitrogen deposition from the burning of fossil fuels. The increased plant life leads to a lack of oxygen and higher animal mortality rates.

Ocean deoxygenation has a wide range of consequences on marine biodiversity and the everyday functioning of ocean ecosystems.

Rossby waves...

Newly identified jet-stream pattern could imperil global food supplies, says study
Columbia University | December 9, 2019

Scientists have identified systematic meanders in the globe-circling northern jet stream that have caused simultaneous crop-damaging heat waves in widely separated breadbasket regions-a previously unquantified threat to global food production that, they say, could worsen with global warming. The research shows that certain kinds of waves in the atmospheric circulation can become amplified and then lock in place for extended periods, triggering the concurrent heat waves. Affected parts of North America, Europe and Asia together produce a quarter of the world food supply.*...

"We found a 20-fold increase in the risk of simultaneous heat waves in major crop-producing regions when these global-scale wind patterns are in place," lead author Kai Kornhuber, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University's Earth Institute said. "Until now, this was an underexplored vulnerability in the food system. During these events there actually is a global structure in the otherwise quite chaotic circulation. The bell can ring in multiple regions at once."

...Combing through large amounts of climate data from 1979 to 2018, (lead author Kai Kornhuber, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University's Earth Institute) and colleagues zeroed in on two Rossby waves with specific wavelengths, termed wave-5 and wave-7; that is, north-south wobbles in the jet stream that produce either 5 or 7 peaks and corresponding troughs around the planet's circumference. They found that while waves of lower or higher lengths seem to wobble around randomly, wave-5 and wave-7 patterns can lock into a grid of symmetric, often much larger meanders centered over predictable regions. The wave-5 patterns tend to hover over central North America, eastern Europe and eastern Asia; the wave-7 patterns over western-central North America, western Europe and western Asia. In both cases, the results are the same: hot air swirls up from the south into the peaks, producing abnormal spikes in temperature that can go on for weeks. This in turn reduces rainfall, dries up soils and vegetation, and kills crops in each region...

...While the study focuses mainly on hot spells in the Rossby waves' northern peaks, it also suggests that opposite extremes can occur in the southerly troughs. A precursor study by Kornhuber and others earlier this year noted that during the 2018 northern heat waves, more southerly regions including the Balkans and Japan saw extraordinary rains and destruction from flooding and landslides. During a 2010 northern heat outbreak in Russia, concurrent flooding on the Indus River in Pakistan displaced millions and destroyed crops.

Many scientists believe that Rossby waves will grow and stall more often as the planet warms...

https://phys.org/news/2019-12-large-atmospheric-jet-stream-global.html

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*Kai Kornhuber et al. 2019. Amplified Rossby waves enhance risk of concurrent heatwaves in major breadbasket regions , Nature Climate Change (Dec 9, 2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-019-0637-z , https://nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0637-z

Abstract
In an interconnected world, simultaneous extreme weather events in distant regions could potentially impose high-end risks for societies. In the mid-latitudes, circumglobal Rossby waves are associated with a strongly meandering jet stream and might cause simultaneous heatwaves and floods across the northern hemisphere. For example, in the summer of 2018, several heat and rainfall extremes occurred near-simultaneously. Here we show that Rossby waves with wave numbers 5 and 7 have a preferred phase position and constitute recurrent atmospheric circulation patterns in summer. Those patterns can induce simultaneous heat extremes in specific regions: Central North America, Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia for wave 5, and Western Central North America, Western Europe and Western Asia for wave 7. The probability of simultaneous heat extremes in these regions increases by a factor of up to 20 for the most severe heat events when either of these two waves dominate the circulation. Two or more weeks per summer spent in the wave-5 or wave-7 regime are associated with 4% reductions in crop production when averaged across the affected regions, with regional decreases of up to 11%. As these regions are important for global food production, the identified teleconnections have the potential to fuel multiple harvest failures, posing risks to global food security.

Greenland ice losses rising faster than expected
University of Leeds | December 10, 2019

...Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than in the 1990s and is tracking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's high-end climate warming scenario, which would see 400 million more people exposed to coastal flooding by 2100.

...Greenland has lost 3.8 trillion tonnes of ice since 1992—enough to push global sea levels up by 10.6 millimetres. The rate of ice loss has risen from 33 billion tonnes per year in the 1990s to 254 billion tonnes per year in the last decade—a seven-fold increase within three decades.

...(Professor Andrew Shepherd at the University of Leeds) said: "As a rule of thumb, for every centimetre rise in global sea level another six million people are exposed to coastal flooding around the planet...On current trends, Greenland ice melting will cause 100 million people to be flooded each year by the end of the century, so 400 million in total due to all sea level rise."...

https://phys.org/news/2019-12-greenland-ice-losses-faster.html

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Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018, Nature (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1855-2 , https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1855-2

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Sea Level Change, Climate Change 2013 - The Physical Science Basis (2014). DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781107415324.026

Scott A. Kulp et al. New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding, Nature Communications (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12808-z

Marco Tedesco et al. Unprecedented atmospheric conditions (1948–2019) drive the 2019 exceptional melting season over the Greenland ice sheet, (2019). DOI: 10.5194/tc-2019-254

1.9 billion people at risk from mountain water shortages, study* shows
Jonathan Watts | 9 Dec 2019

Rising demand and climate crisis threaten entire mountain ecosystem, say scientists

...the Indus is the most important and vulnerable “water tower” due to run-off from the Karakoram, Hindu Kush, Ladakh, and Himalayan mountain ranges, which flow downstream to a densely populated and intensively irrigated basin in Pakistan, India, China and Afghanistan.

The authors warn this vast water tower – a term they use to describe the role of water storage and supply that mountain ranges play to sustain environmental and human water demands downstream – is unlikely to sustain growing pressure by the middle of the century when temperatures are projected to rise by 1.9C (3.42F), rainfall to increase by less than 2%, but the population to grow by 50% and generate eight times more GDP.

Strains are apparent elsewhere in the water tower index, which quantifies the volume of water in 78 mountain ranges based on precipitation, snow cover, glacier ice storage, lakes and rivers. This was then compared with the drawdown by communities, industries and farms in the lower reaches of the main river basins.

...Asian river basins face the greatest demands but shows pressures are also rising on other continents...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/09/billion-people-risk-water-su...

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* W. W. Immerzeel et al. 2019.Importance and vulnerability of the world’s water towers. Nature (Unedited. Aaccepted for publication.) 09 December 2019. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1822-y

Abstract
Mountains are the water towers of the world, supplying a substantial part of both natural and anthropogenic water demands. They are highly sensitive and prone to climate change, yet their importance and vulnerability have not been quantified at the global scale. Here, we present a global Water Tower Index, which ranks all water towers in terms of their water-supplying role and the downstream dependence of ecosystems and society. For each tower, we assess its vulnerability related to water stress, governance, hydropolitical tension and future climatic and socio-economic changes. We conclude that the most important water towers are also among the most vulnerable, and that climatic and socio-economic changes will affect them profoundly. This could negatively impact 1.9 billion people living in (0.3 billion) or directly downstream of (1.6 billion) mountain areas. Immediate action is required to safeguard the future of the world’s most important and vulnerable water towers.

A Coal Baron Funded Climate Denial as His Company Spiraled Into Bankruptcy
Lisa Friedman | Dec. 17, 2019

WASHINGTON — As his coal mining company hurtled into bankruptcy, Robert E. Murray, the former chief executive, paid himself $14 million, handed his successor a $4 million bonus and earmarked nearly $1 million for casting doubt on man-made climate change, new court filings show...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/climate/murray-energy-climate-denial-coal.htm...

107F! Friends' daughter just headed to Australia for two years. Friends planned to visit in Australia's spring--they are retired biologists, so hope they see more than bats falling from the sky with heatstroke and koalas being barbecued... :(

Australia records its hottest day ever – one day after previous record
Graham Readfearn @readfearn | 19 Dec 2019

Australia recorded its hottest day on record on Wednesday, with an average maximum temperature of 41.9C (107.4F), beating the previous record by 1C that had been set only 24 hours earlier.

Tuesday 16 December recorded an average of 40.9C across the continent, beating the previous record of 40.3C set on 7 January 2013. But it held the record for just 24 hours.

...Dr Andrew Watkins, head of long-range forecasts at the bureau, identified three key factors that have pushed temperatures to record levels – two of them natural, and one of them not.

Australia is currently feeling the impacts of one of the strongest Indian Ocean Dipole events on record.

When the IOD is positive, the waters off Australia’s north-west are cooler, dragging moisture away from the continent and leaving very dry conditions.

...“That positive IOD has kept things very dry in winter and spring,” Watkins said. “That sets us up with an extremely dry environment. It has been the second driest year to date and the warmest year to date.”

A second natural driver, Watkins said, was a negative phase of the Southern Annular Mode that was kicked off by warming of the atmosphere high above Antarctica.

The SAM had helped drive the extreme heat in NSW and Queensland, Watkins said, adding to the extreme fire danger. This has also brought drier and warmer air across the continent on westerly winds.

SAM events usually only last a few weeks, but Watkins said this event had been present since October.

“All of this is leading to central Australia baking,” he said. “There’s nothing there to evaporatively cool the air.”

...Underlying these two major drivers of the heat is climate change – the simple physics of loading the atmosphere with extra greenhouse gases, mainly by burning fossil fuels.

Australia’s latest State of the Climate report shows the country has warmed by just over 1C since 1910, leading to more extreme events.

Watkins said: “That long-term warming sees the bar lifted up so that it’s easier to get extreme conditions now than it was 50 or 100 years ago,”...

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/19/419c-australia-records-ho...

"Maybe, just maybe, instead of spending $1.8 trillion a year globally on weapons of destruction, maybe an American president—i.e. Bernie Sanders—can lead the world, and instead of spending money to kill each other, maybe we pool our resources and fight our common enemy—which is climate change."

- Bernie Sanders
https://www.newsweek.com/who-won-sixth-democratic-debate-analysis-winners-losers...

Climate-driven changes in weather patterns of regions of the US (warming holes, precipitation patterns--beyond floods):

A climate change double whammy in the US Corn Belt
Marie Denoia Aronsohn | December 19, 2019

...Traditionally the Corn Belt receives most of its rainfall during the summer, which is also the growing season for corn. However, (atmospheric scientist Mingfang Ting from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) identified a net loss of surface water here, indicating evaporation from the soil and plants is exceeding the net rainfall during those months. She and colleagues took a closer look.

"We didn't understand why precipitation is decreasing in this specific region, and the models are very robust, showing that, yes, in the future it's going to decrease. So, we looked into it. And what we find is puzzling. We were thinking this must be circulation-driven or (a result of the) thermodynamics changing. Turns out it's the storm pattern itself."

Ting and colleagues found the storms in the Corn Belt during the summer are becoming weaker and dropping less precipitation. This weakening is a product of global warming as well. Temperature differences between the polar and midlatitude regions trigger storm intensity. With the polar regions warming faster, there is less of a temperature contrast, thus weakening the storms.

The storms are getting weaker, but they will actually move more moisture out of the region, causing further drying...

https://phys.org/news/2019-12-climate-whammy-corn-belt.html

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US corn yields get boost from a global warming 'hole'
Dartmouth College | October 24, 2019

...the Corn Belt of the U.S., one of the most agriculturally productive regions of the world, has experienced a decrease in temperatures in the summer during the growing season. Known as the "U.S. warming hole," this anomalous cooling phenomenon...was responsible for boosting corn yields by 5 to 10 percent per year...

..."If however, the U.S. warming hole had not existed, corn yields for the average county in the central U.S. would have been approximately 10 percent lower per year," explained lead author Trevor F. Partridge, a graduate student in the department of earth sciences at Dartmouth. "This benefit of a 10 percent higher corn yield translates to roughly $1.5 billion per year in additional value. Our results underscore how the central U.S. has been relatively sheltered from the impacts of climate change," he added...

...North Dakota and South Dakota, and western Minnesota benefited most from the U.S. warming hole...

https://phys.org/news/2019-10-corn-yields-boost-global-hole.html

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Polar vortex defies climate change in the Southeast
Dartmouth College | February 14, 2018

Overwhelming scientific evidence has demonstrated that our planet is getting warmer due to climate change, yet parts of the eastern U.S. are actually getting cooler. According to a Dartmouth-led study in Geophysical Research Letters, the location of this anomaly, known as the "U.S. warming hole," is a moving target.

During the winter and spring, the U.S. warming hole sits over the Southeast, as the polar vortex allows arctic air to plunge into the region. This has resulted in persistently cooler temperatures throughout the Southeast. After spring, the U.S. warming hole moves north and is located in the Midwest...

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-polar-vortex-defies-climate-southeast.html

Australian fires DO look like hell on earth...

ConservationBytes* @conservbytes | 10:10 PM · Dec 20, 2019:
After narrowly escaping yet another catastrophic bushfire,
I dedicate this poem I wrote to all the climate-change denialists out there. Fuck you very much
Image ( https://twitter.com/conservbytes/status/1208223235751329792 )

* Professor Corey Bradshaw - Flinders University - Adelaide, Australia

Companies Expect Climate Change to Cost Them $1 Trillion in 5 Years
Sara Harrison | 06.04.2019

...215 of the world’s biggest companies, including giants like Apple, JPMorgan Chase, Nestlé, and 3M, see climate change as a threat likely to affect their business within the next five years, with a cumulative cost of a trillion dollars.

...Companies identified a range of physical risks, such as the impact of flooding or rising sea levels on distribution centers and warehouses. They also enumerated the costs of transitioning to a lower-carbon, more climate-ravaged world, including updating facilities to withstand stronger storms or use less water, and complying with potential policies that would likely raise the cost of fossil fuels. Companies also recognized an image issue. In the report, Google's parent company, Alphabet, writes, “Not addressing climate change risks and impacts head on could result in a reduced demand for our goods and services because of negative reputation impact.”

CDP (a nonprofit that encourages companies to report how climate change might affect them) also found, however, that companies saw some opportunities in adapting to climate change. The report found that companies estimated opportunities related to climate change could bring in $2.1 trillion. Most companies pegged those benefits to the growth of low-emissions products and the creation of new products, such as new fuel sources or energy-efficient cars, which might appeal to a customer base that is increasingly climate-conscious...

https://www.wired.com/story/companies-expect-climate-change-to-cost-them-one-tri...

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Global Climate Change Analysis 2018
CDP
https://www.cdp.net/en/research/global-reports/global-climate-change-report-2018

Acidified oceans may corrode shark scales
Nature | December 19, 2019

Prolonged exposure to high carbon dioxide (acidified) seawater may corrode tooth-like scales (denticles) covering the skin of puffadder shysharks*...As ocean CO2 concentrations increase due to human activity, oceans are becoming more acidic, with potential implications for marine wildlife. Although the effects of acidified water have been studied in several species, this is the first observed instance of denticle corrosion as a result of long-term exposure.

Lutz Auerswald and colleagues investigated the effects of exposure to acidified seawater in puffadder shysharks. The authors found that in three sharks housed in acidified seawater for nine weeks, 25% of denticles on average were damaged, compared to 9.2% of denticles in a control group of three sharks that had been housed in non-acidic water. They suggest that such corrosion may impair the sharks' skin protection and open-water sharks' ability to swim, as denticle surface affects their swimming speed. They also speculate that similar corrosion may occur in sharks' teeth (which have the same structure and composition as denticles), which may negatively impact their feeding.

However, the authors also found that although exposure was linked with increased carbon dioxide concentrations in blood taken from a total of 36 sharks housed in acidified seawater for different periods of time, concentrations of carbonate also increased. This prevented the blood from becoming more acidic, suggesting that these sharks may be able to adjust to high CO2 conditions during periods of exposure.

https://phys.org/news/2019-12-acidified-oceans-corrode-shark-scales.html

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* Acid-base adjustments and first evidence of denticle corrosion caused by ocean acidification conditions in a demersal shark species, Scientific Reports (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-54795-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-54795-7

Abstract
Global ocean acidification is expected to chronically lower the pH to 7.3 (>2200 µatm seawater pCO2) by the year 2300. Acute hypercapnia already occurs along the South African west and south coasts due to upwelling- and low-oxygen events, with increasing frequency. In the present project we investigated the impact of hypercapnia on the endemic demersal shark species Haploblepharus edwardsii. Specifically, we experimentally analysed acid-base regulation during acute and chronic hypercapnia, the effects of chronic hypercapnia on growth rates and on denticle structure- and composition. While H. edwardsii are physiologically well adapted to acute and chronic hypercapnia, we observed, for the first time, denticle corrosion as a result of chronic exposure. We conclude that denticle corrosion could increase denticle turnover and compromise hydrodynamics and skin protection.

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The pH of seawater has remained steady for millions of years.
Before the industrial era began, the average pH at the ocean surface was about 8.2 (slightly basic; 7.0 is neutral).
Today it is about 8.1.

Sep 1, 2008
https://www.scientificamerican.com/www.scientificamerican.com › article › rising-acidity-in-the-ocean

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Compagno et al (2005): "Dermal denticles fall out continuously during the life of shark, with replacements growing out through the skin"---so-o increasing damage increases in spite of turnover?

Thomas E. Lovejoy and Carlos Nobre. 2019. Amazon tipping point: Last chance for action. (Editorial)
Science Advances 20 Dec 2019: Vol. 5, no. 12, eaba2949 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aba2949 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/12/eaba2949

...For more than 50 years, scientists and policy makers have known unequivocally (1) that the hydrological cycle of the Amazon depends squarely on the transpiration of the forest’s multitude of leaves and on the evaporation from the complex surfaces of the rain forest. When it rains on the Amazonian forest landscape, at least 75% of the moisture is returned to the westward-moving air mass. The rainforest recycles the moisture five to six times before it turns southward, feeling the proximity of the high wall of the Andes. Over the whole basin, the air rises, cools, and precipitates out close to 20% of the world’s river water in the Amazon river system.

The moisture of the Amazon is not confined to the basin but is a core and integral part of the continental climate system with specific benefits for critical Brazilian agriculture in the south. In fact, every country in South America other than Chile (blocked from this moisture by the Andes) benefits from Amazon moisture.

...when the land is deforested, more than 50% of rainwater runs off and is not available to recycle.

...Researchers predict that deforestation will lead to developing savannahs mainly in the eastern and southern Amazon, perhaps extending into central and southwestern areas, because these zones are naturally close to the minimum amount of rainfall required for the rain forest to thrive. Forests would also be pushed toward savannah configurations due to negative synergies with human-driven global warming, which leads to reduced rainfall and increased temperatures compounded with extensive use of fire (2).

The loss of forest will lead to staggering losses of biodiversity, carbon, and, in turn, human well-being. In addition, although deforestation anywhere in the Amazon diminishes its hydrological cycle, what happens in the Brazilian Amazon is particularly important because of the sensitivity of that part of the forest to incremental and cumulative impacts of vegetative decline from dieback. Current deforestation is substantial and frightening: 17% across the entire Amazon basin and approaching 20% in the Brazilian Amazon.

Already, there are ominous signals of it in nature...

...The good news is that we can build back a margin of safety through immediate, active, and ambitious reforestation particularly in the deforested regions that are largely abandoned cattle ranches and croplands, about 23% of destroyed forest territory. These areas, which now lay fallow, are probably the main reason why the Amazon has not already become an expanding savannah....

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/12/eaba2949

On Christmas Eve, 15% of Antarctica's surface apparently melted! Temporarily. This time.
"We Are in a Climate Emergency" Yah think?

Record Hit for Most Ice to Melt in Antarctica in One Day, Data Suggests: "We Are in a Climate Emergency"
Kashmira Gander | 12/27/19

The record in recent decades for the highest level of ice to melt in Antarctica in one day was reached on Christmas Eve, data suggests.

Around 15 percent of the continent's surface melted on Monday, according to the Global Forecast System (GFS) by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). The data comes from the Modèle Atmosphérique Régional (MAR), a model used for meteorological and climatic research.

Xavier Fettweis, a climatologist at the University of Liège in Belgium, who tweeted the data on Friday, said this is the highest melt extent in Antarctica in the modern era, since 1979. He added the production of melt water is a record 230 percent higher than average since November this year. That's despite the melting season not yet being over.

...Antarctica has been "significantly warmer than average" this melting season. But (Feweis) stressed the data is from a model, and not an in situ observation. The melting could be driven by a number of factors, and experts will need to wait two to three melting seasons to confirm what is going on.

"We have observed a crash of the Antarctica polar vortex just before this melting season," explained Fettweis, referring to low pressure near the pole. "A weaker polar vortex allows warm air masses to reach easier the ice sheet (which is usually protected by its polar vortex as it was the case the previous summer). The fact that the sea ice extent is very low also enhances the possibility of warm air masses to reach the ice sheet."

..Fettweis said Antarctica had been "protected" by global warming, due in part to a stronger polar vortex over this last decade than usual. But he said this no longer seems to be the case, and climate anomalies observed at the continent can no longer be used by climate skeptics to deny global warming is occurring..

https://www.newsweek.com/record-hit-ice-melt-antarctica-day-climate-emergency-14...

Photo* of Koala and Firefighter Surrounded by Flames Perfectly Captures the Climate Emergency
Brian Kahn | 12/23/19

...Even as firefighters—many of whom are volunteers—have done their best to turn back the flames, the conditions on the ground have just been too overwhelming. People and wildlife have lost their homes as a result, and their lives may never be the same after the summer of 2019. The pathos on display in this photo neatly captures all of that.

But the photo is also a microcosm of the climate-fueled chaos gripping the world. This year has made it clearer than ever we are living through a climate emergency that threatens everything we hold dear. The flames are at our collective doorstep, and yet the world has so far been hamstrung from making any meaningful moves to address it largely due to the influence of large fossil fuel corporations and a few governments looking to wring the final bits out of the fossil fuel-driven economy. (Australia is one of those countries).

There’s an uprising underway to combat this inaction and put the world on a pathway toward a future that balances human existence with nature. But right now, it’s staring at the wall of flames. To me, this photo is a snapshot of our present.

What we need are reinforcements to turn the tide on the advance fire. Whether they arrive in time will be the story of the next decade. We know what that picture needs to look like. How it develops is up to us.

* https://earther.gizmodo.com/photo-of-koala-and-firefighter-surrounded-by-flames-...

>110 margd:

Congratulations! WInner! @ # 110!

We are both pleased and PROUD to announce that You are the winner of Proximity1's "Most-Ignored-Thread-With-Lots-and-Lots-of-Posts-from-'margd' " contest.

Your thread has been uselessly extended Six times!

And our expert statisticians have carefully toted up the posts in each of these--from the first thread to the (so far (LOL!)) "last" (or "current") with these results

Original thread : 83 posts by "margd" of 191 posts (or 43.45% of the thread's posts)

Second: 104 posts by "margd" of 155 posts (or 67.09 % of the thread's posts)

Third : 125 posts by "margd" of 154 posts (or 81.16 % of the thread's posts)

Fourth : 129 posts by "margd" of 151 posts (or 85.43 % of the thread's posts)

Fifth : 131 posts by "margd" of 158 posts (or 82.91 % of the thread's posts)

and, not Last, but Least! (raw sum of the six thread) (so far)

Sixth : 89 of 110 posts (or 80.90 % of the thread's posts) posts by "margd"

For a grand total (so far) of (drumroll, please)

661 posts! (Sirens wailing)(Alarms dinging) (multi-colored lights flashing "on" and "off" quickly)

661 posts of 728 posts!

(or 91.07 % of all six thread's posts!)

NO OTHER thread crammed chock-a-block with comments by margd has come even close to being so consistently ignored as this one.

Congratulations! Winner!

>110 margd: Thanks again for your wonderful summary of pertinent environmental news—I read this thread religiously!

You're welcome! Summarizing brings it home to me, and I hope to others. Too, I figure information is only answer to climate deniers, and only way to keep issue in front of mind, say, when voting?

>113 margd: One certainly hopes...

Climate Change Is Brutal for Everyone, but Worse for Women
Matt Simon | 11.25.2019

...In East Africa, for instance, men in pastoral communities have traditionally wandered 15, maybe 30 kilometers from home in search of water for their cattle, returning to their families periodically. But with climate change, now they’re having to travel up to 150 kilometers. Before, women would go with the men and milk the cattle, using the product both for their family’s own nutrition and as an extra source of income, and heading home as needed. Now that the men have to cover much greater distances, the women end up staying at home base, thus losing out on the invaluable resource that is milk.

In India, the dynamics are even more complicated. Anticipating lower yields, men may plant seeds and get the crop going, then migrate away to find work in factories or on construction sites. Left with these new farming duties, on top of childcare and other household responsibilities, women struggle to support the family. Their agency slips farther and farther away as the family’s plight grows.

“The man’s story is not a very nice one either”...

...In polygamous households, an age hierarchy determines a wife’s agency: Elder women are the authority figures, for instance determining who eats what, and will dispatch younger women to walk to find ingredients. And with climate change bringing food scarcity, that puts ever more of a burden on these younger wives.

But the polygamous structure can also bring stability in a changing world. “In East Africa, we found that actually some of the women within polygamous households did much better in terms of their ability to respond and adapt than separated or divorced women, because polygamous men tended to be the better off, with more resources,” says Rao.

...adapting to the climate crisis will take more than throwing money at the problem, with subsidies for instance. A divorced woman and a married woman are both women, but their struggles will be vastly different. And while the climate crisis is full-tilt terrible for people in the developing world, it’s also a driver of change. “In South Asia, you find that men who are migrating in order to survive actually give much more responsibility to their wives,” says Rao. “They give them resources, they support them in order to manage the farms.” The patriarchal structure simply can’t withstand the weight of climate change.

Add to that a boost in women’s education, and the structure will further crumble...

The temptation is for girls to migrate to cities, as so many people are doing around the world...

Climate change is bad news all around, but with the right strategies in place, it also gives us opportunities to confront long-standing gender norms and give women the agency they need to not only weather this crisis, but to thrive.

https://www.wired.com/story/climate-change-and-gender/

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Nitya Rao et al. 2019. A qualitative comparative analysis of women’s agency and adaptive capacity in climate change hotspots in Asia and Africa
Nature Climate Change volume 9, pages 964–971(Nov 25, 2019). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0638-y

Abstract

There is growing concern about sustainable and equitable adaptation in climate change hotspots, commonly understood as locations that concentrate high climatic variability, societal vulnerability and negative impacts on livelihood systems. Emphasizing gender within these debates highlights how demographic, socioeconomic and agro-ecological contexts mediate the experiences and outcomes of climate change. Drawing on data from 25 qualitative case studies across three hotspots in Africa and Asia, analysed using qualitative comparative analysis, we show how and in what ways women’s agency, or the ability to make meaningful choices and strategic decisions, contributes to adaptation responses. We find that environmental stress is a key depressor of women’s agency even when household structures and social norms are supportive or legal entitlements are available. These findings have implications for the effective implementation of multilateral agreements such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Trump’s climate change reading material is beyond parody
Aaron Rupar@atrupar Jan 10, 2020

Good news: Trump plans to read a book about environmentalism. Bad news: the actual book.

...New York Times climate change reporter Lisa Friedman...followed up with the White House to find out which book the president was referring to. But if you thought Trump was planning to read something that might broaden his horizons, think again. It turns out the volume in question is literally titled Donald J. Trump: An Environmental Hero, and it was written by Ed Russo, who worked as a consultant for Trump’s business...

https://www.vox.com/2020/1/10/21060410/trump-climate-change-book

(Seven?) hundred people died in one European heatwave, and more than a hundred in North America, especially the elderly in inner cities. Threat will only increase. Hopefully, trees will be planted in urban areas, AC technology will become increasingly environmentally friendly, etc.

Wonder if water coolant AC discussed below could be paired with solar tubes for emission-free cooling? We are installing solar tubes to heat house and water, but will need to spill excess heat in summer--and there will be a LOT of heat then! Perhaps spilled heat from solar tubes could replace OxiCool's natural gas to boil the water. In our neighborhood, electricity that would power fans and condensers is largely emissions-free (hydro + wind + solar).

There are currently few days on the St Lawrence River when breezes fail the chimney-effect designed into our house and ceiling fans kick in, but a shame to spill heat if it can help with heat and humidity: caking salt, condensation dripping from toilet tanks (cold well water meets heat & humidity), buckling floors, sweaty nights...

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The OxiCool is a zero-emission air conditioner that chills your house with water
Jenny McGrath | January 7, 2020

...A traditional air conditioner uses a refrigerant that transitions between liquid and gas, absorbing and releasing heat over and over again. The cold air gets pumped into the house, while the excess heat is routed outdoors. Refrigerants aren’t great for the environment and air conditioners release carbon dioxide.

The OxiCool uses water as a refrigerant, instead. While the OxiCool works similar to a vapor compression system, it doesn’t use a compressor. It’s a closed-loop system, meaning the cube should have just as much water on day 500 as on day one.

If you boil a pot of water but leave the top off, you’ll release steam into the air. Putting the lid on increases the pressure inside, because the steam can’t escape. With the OxiCool, an open flame heats natural gas to boil the water in a vacuum chamber, and molecular sieves capture the excess H2O vapor, reducing the pressure inside. Fans and condensers cool the vapor to return it to its liquid form, starting the cycle over again.

From the large, outdoor cube, coolant is pumped into the module and distributed to wall units throughout the home. These “Home Cool” devices have touchscreens and can control other units spread through the house...

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/oxicool-air-conditioner-ces-2020/

Sustainable investment funds
Equity managers can get a leg up on competition by "paying more attention to what clients want...use the votes they wield on behalf of investors to reflect clients’ concerns."

2020s will not be kind to active fund managers
Focus on giving clients what they want will sort investment industry winners from losers
Pauline Skypala | 1/13/2020

...At the bottom of the rankings, Capital Group, T Rowe Price, BlackRock, JPMorgan Asset Management, Vanguard and Fidelity Investments all supported less than 10 per cent of climate proposals analysed. Even the best US groups were significantly adrift of their counterparts in the UK and Europe, which scored higher.

The top five groups, supporting more than 75 per cent of resolutions, were UBS Asset Management, Allianz Global Investors, Aviva Investors, Legal & General Investment Management, HSBC Asset Management and Axa Investment Managers.

Fund managers, whether active or passive, can already see that offering a sustainable investment fund or something similar is good for sales. The only true test of their conviction though is how they vote. Will any of them be bold enough to make their voting stance a selling point?

Outcomes on the climate front are not solely reliant on the decisions and actions of money managers, but change will be hard if they stand in the way...

https://www.ft.com/content/da82a393-e071-4ab4-ab87-5212479d7f25

_________________________________________________________________________

Sustainable Fund Flows in 2019 Smash Previous Records
This could be the leading edge of a huge wave of assets into sustainable funds.
Jon Hale | Jan 10, 2020

Sustainable funds in the United States attracted new assets at a record pace in 2019. Estimated net flows into open-end and exchange-traded sustainable funds that are available to U.S. investors totaled $20.6 billion for the year. That's nearly 4 times the previous annual record for net flows set in 2018.

The flow data encompasses 300 mutual funds that thoroughly integrate environmental, social, and governance factors into their investment processes, and/or pursue sustainability-related investment themes, and/or seek measurable sustainable impact alongside financial returns.

...With growing investor interest in sustainable investing, especially among younger investors, 2019's flows may be the leading edge of a huge wave of assets to come.

https://www.morningstar.com/articles/961765/sustainable-fund-flows-in-2019-smash...

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ETA
The Wall Street Journal WSJ | 7:15 AM · Jan 14, 2020:
BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, will exit investments in companies that
generate more than 25% of their revenues from thermal coal production

BlackRock Shakes Up Sustainable Investing Business Following Criticism
Julie Steinberg | Jan. 14, 2020

Investment giant BlackRock announced a series of moves to address risks related to climate change, following criticism from investors and advocacy groups for investing in fossil fuels and allegedly being slow to act on green issues....

https://www.wsj.com/articles/blackrock-shakes-up-sustainable-investing-business-...

Study Confirms Climate Models are Getting Future Warming Projections Right
Alan Buis | January 9, 2020

...In a study accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a research team led by Zeke Hausfather of the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a systematic evaluation of the performance of past climate models. The team compared 17 increasingly sophisticated model projections of global average temperature developed between 1970 and 2007, including some originally developed by NASA, with actual changes in global temperature observed through the end of 2017. The observational temperature data came from multiple sources, including NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) time series, an estimate of global surface temperature change.

The results: 10 of the model projections closely matched observations. Moreover, after accounting for differences between modeled and actual changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other factors that drive climate, the number increased to 14. The authors found no evidence that the climate models evaluated either systematically overestimated or underestimated warming over the period of their projections...

...while the relative simplicity of the models analyzed makes their climate projections functionally obsolete, they can still be useful for verifying methods used to evaluate current state-of-the-art climate models, such as those to be used in the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report, to be released in 2022.

“As climate model projections have matured, more signals have emerged from the noise of natural variability that allow for retrospective evaluation of other aspects of climate models — for instance, in Arctic sea ice and ocean heat content,” ( Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York ) said. “But it’s the temperature trends that people still tend to focus on.”...

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-fut...

No, we are not yet dealing with "a new normal" - rather, we're on a pathway to hell unless emissions go quickly to zero.
Graph shows rising sea temperatures in the tropics. Symbols represent El Nino, La Nina and ENSO-neutral periods

Image (Fig 1 in Hughes et al. 2018 (below), https://twitter.com/ProfTerryHughes/status/1216197849668435969/photo/1 )

-Terry Hughes @ProfTerryHughes | 10:18 PM · Jan 11, 2020:

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Terry P. Hughes et al. 2018. Spatial and temporal patterns of mass bleaching of corals in the Anthropocene. Science 05 Jan 2018:
Vol. 359, Issue 6371, pp. 80-83. DOI: 10.1126/science.aan8048. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6371/80

Not enough time for recovery
Coral bleaching occurs when stressful conditions result in the expulsion of the algal partner from the coral. Before anthropogenic climate warming, such events were relatively rare, allowing for recovery of the reef between events. Hughes et al. looked at 100 reefs globally and found that the average interval between bleaching events is now less than half what it was before. Such narrow recovery windows do not allow for full recovery. Furthermore, warming events such as El Niño are warmer than previously, as are general ocean conditions. Such changes are likely to make it more and more difficult for reefs to recover between stressful events.

Abstract
Tropical reef systems are transitioning to a new era in which the interval between recurrent bouts of coral bleaching is too short for a full recovery of mature assemblages. We analyzed bleaching records at 100 globally distributed reef locations from 1980 to 2016. The median return time between pairs of severe bleaching events has diminished steadily since 1980 and is now only 6 years. As global warming has progressed, tropical sea surface temperatures are warmer now during current La Niña conditions than they were during El Niño events three decades ago. Consequently, as we transition to the Anthropocene, coral bleaching is occurring more frequently in all El Niño–Southern Oscillation phases, increasing the likelihood of annual bleaching in the coming decades.

Record-setting ocean warmth continued in 2019
Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences | 13 Jan 2020

A new analysis shows the world's oceans were the warmest in 2019 than any other time in recorded human history, especially between the surface and a depth of 2,000 meters...the past ten years have been the warmest on record for global ocean temperatures, with the past five years holding the highest record.

...global ocean temperature is not only increasing, but it's speeding up.

...The amount of heat we have put in the world's oceans in the past 25 years equals to 3.6 billion Hiroshima atom-bomb explosions." said Lijing Cheng, lead paper author and associate professor with the International Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

...According to the researchers, humans can work to reverse their effect on the climate, but the ocean will take longer to respond than atmospheric and land environments. Since 1970, more than 90% of global warming heat went into the ocean, while less than 4% of the heat warmed the atmosphere and land where humans live.

...Cheng said. "The global ocean warming has caused marine heat waves in Tasman Sea and other regions."

One such marine heat wave in the North Pacific, dubbed "the blob," was first detected in 2013 and continued through 2015..."The blob is documented to have caused major loss of marine life, from phytoplankton to zooplankton to fish -- including a 100 million cod -- to marine animals, such as whales," said Kevin Trenberth, co-author and distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the United States....

Trenberth also noted that a hot spot in the Gulf of Mexico in 2017 spawned Hurricane Harvey, which led to 82 deaths and caused about $108 billion in damages according to the Rice Kinder Institute for Urban Research. The following year, a hotspot in the Atlantic Ocean near the Carolinas led to Hurricane Florence. According to Moody's Analytics, an economic research organization, the storm caused 53 deaths and between $38 and $50 billion in economic damage...

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/ioap-row010920.php

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Cheng, L., Abraham, J., Zhu, J. et al. 2020. Record-Setting Ocean Warmth Continued in 2019. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. February 2020, Volume 37, Issue 2, pp 137–142 | https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-020-9283-7 2020 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00376-020-9283-7

>118 margd: sustainable investment funds, contd.

BlackRock Will Put Climate Change at Center of Investment Strategy
Andrew Ross Sorkin | Jan. 14, 2020

Laurence D. Fink, the founder and chief executive of BlackRock, plans to announce Tuesday that his firm will make investment decisions with environmental sustainability as a core goal.

BlackRock is the largest in its field, with nearly $7 trillion under management, and this move will fundamentally shift its investing policy — and could reshape how corporate America does business and put pressure on other large money managers to follow suit.

Mr. Fink’s annual letter to the chief executives of the world’s largest companies is closely watched, and in the 2020 edition he said BlackRock would begin to exit certain investments that “present a high sustainability-related risk,” such as those in coal producers. His intent is to encourage every company, not just energy firms, to rethink their carbon footprints.

...introduce new funds that shun fossil fuel-oriented stocks, move more aggressively to vote against management teams that are not making progress on sustainability, and press companies to disclose plans “for operating under a scenario where the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees is fully realized.”

...Mr. Fink’s move...could spur a national conversation among financiers and policymakers...may put pressure on the other large money managers and financial firms in the United States — Vanguard, T. Rowe Price and JPMorgan Chase, among them — to articulate more ambitious strategies around sustainability...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/business/dealbook/larry-fink-blackrock-climat...

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ETA
BlackRock’s Larry Fink: Risks from climate change are bigger than the 2008 financial crisis with no Fed to save us
Matthew J. Belvedere | Jan 14 2020

VIDEO13:14
Larry Fink: Financial risks of climate change are bigger than any other crisis

BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink is warning that the financial risks of climate change are bigger than any crisis he’s experienced in his career on Wall Street.

“We don’t have a Federal Reserve to stabilize the world like in the five or six financial crises that occurred during my 40 years in finance,” the head of the world’s biggest money manager told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview that aired Tuesday. Sorkin also wrote about the interview in Tuesday’s New York Times.

“This is bigger,” he argued, calling on investors and corporate America to help combat climate change. “It requires more planning. It requires more public-private connections together to solve these problems. And I do believe many of these problems could be solved, but the actions have to begin now.”

Fink, whose BlackRock has nearly $7 trillion in assets under management, used his annual letter to the world’s biggest companies to sound the alarm. “Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects. … But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.”...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/larry-fink-risk-from-climate-change-bigger-than-...

"Glacier floods have directly caused at least:
7 deaths in Iceland,
393 deaths in the European Alps,
5745 deaths in South America and
6300 deaths in central Asia."

Scientific American film clip (4:09): https://twitter.com/sciam/status/1217478159341424647

Lake Ontario and St Lawrence River still show signs of being scoured when ice dam broke at the end of the last Ice Age...
(In Canada's north, catastrophic discharge from Mackenzie River had effects felt across the globe, apparently.)

Jonathan L.Carrivicka and FSTweed. 2016. A global assessment of the societal impacts of glacier outburst floods. Global and Planetary Change
Volume 144, September 2016, Pages 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2016.07.001 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818116301023

Highlights
• 1348 floods from 332 sites, and 36% of these sites have recorded societal impact.
• Over 12,000 deaths recorded globally due to glacier floods.
• Recurrence intervals calculated based on volume, discharge and damage.
• Damage type and index determined per event, per country and per major world region

Abstract
Glacier outburst floods are sudden releases of large amounts of water from a glacier. They are a pervasive natural hazard worldwide. They have an association with climate primarily via glacier mass balance and their impacts on society partly depend on population pressure and land use. Given the ongoing changes in climate and land use and population distributions there is therefore an urgent need to discriminate the spatio-temporal patterning of glacier outburst floods and their impacts. This study presents data compiled from 20 countries and comprising 1348 glacier floods spanning 10 centuries. Societal impacts were assessed using a relative damage index based on recorded deaths, evacuations, and property and infrastructure destruction and disruption. These floods originated from 332 sites; 70% were from ice-dammed lakes and 36% had recorded societal impact. The number of floods recorded has apparently reduced since the mid-1990s in all major world regions. Two thirds of sites that have produced > 5 floods (n = 32) have floods occurring progressively earlier in the year.

Glacier floods have directly caused at least: 7 deaths in Iceland, 393 deaths in the European Alps, 5745 deaths in South America and 6300 deaths in central Asia. Peru, Nepal and India have experienced fewer floods yet higher levels of damage. One in five sites in the European Alps has produced floods that have damaged farmland, destroyed homes and damaged bridges; 10% of sites in South America have produced glacier floods that have killed people and damaged infrastructure; 15% of sites in central Asia have produced floods that have inundated farmland, destroyed homes, damaged roads and damaged infrastructure. Overall, Bhutan and Nepal have the greatest national-level economic consequences of glacier flood impacts. We recommend that accurate, full and standardised monitoring, recording and reporting of glacier floods is essential if spatio-temporal patterns in glacier flood occurrence, magnitude and societal impact are to be better understood. We note that future modelling of the global impact of glacier floods cannot assume that the same trends will continue and will need to consider combining land-use change with probability distributions of geomorphological responses to climate change and to human activity.

More shippers and shipping companies promise to avoid Arctic routes
Bob Weber · The Canadian Press · Posted: Jan 13, 2020

Environmental group applauds voluntary effort to stay away from controversial routes

...the Ocean Conservancy, which is co-ordinating the campaign.

So far, 21 companies that either ship goods internationally or carry those goods have signed...including Nike, Puma, Columbia and Ralph Lauren — will ensure their products aren't shipped along routes that go through Arctic waters...global (shipping)giants such as Kuehne + Nagel and Hapag-Lloyd...the signatories control about one-third of the shipping industry by market share...That's 1,366 ships and three of the top five shipping companies in the world.

...'"still a long ways away from having any support infrastructure or rapid response if we have a spill."

The impact of shipping on Arctic ecosystems, animals such as beluga whales, narwhal and walrus, as well as Indigenous communities is largely unknown. Ice and periods of 24-hour darkness add to the hazards of northern seas. (margd: Also, ships and their ballast will hasten introduction of new species into warming Arctic.)

Arctic shipping remains in its infancy, but it has been growing at a rate of about six per cent a year, said Greg Fiske, a researcher at the Woods Hole Research Centre in Massachusetts."Ships are increasing.Mostly, it's the Russians." (margd: Russian waters are first to go ice-free. China showing interest.)...About half are cargo vessels of some type: from oil tankers to bulk shippers. The rest are for passengers, supplies or fishing.

"We also found that smaller ships are increasing faster than larger ships," Fiske said. "It's the smaller ships that are a big worry for policy-makers because they have a greater risk."...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/arctic-shipping-pledge-1.5424250

How to Halt Global Warming for $300 Billion
Adam Majendie and Pratik Parija | October 23, 2019

UN scientists say reclaiming wasteland could capture carbon
Global effort would stall emissions growth for up to 20 years

$300 billion. That’s the money needed to stop the rise in greenhouse gases and buy up to 20 years of time to fix global warming, according to United Nations climate scientists. It’s the gross domestic product of Chile, or the world’s military spending every 60 days.

The sum is not to fund green technologies or finance a moonshot solution to emissions, but to use simple, age-old practices to lock millions of tons of carbon back into an overlooked and over-exploited resource: the soil.

“We have lost the biological function of soils. We have got to reverse that,” said Barron J. Orr, lead scientist for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. “If we do it, we are turning the land into the big part of the solution for climate change.”

Rene Castro Salazar, an assistant director general at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said that of the 2 billion hectares (almost 5 billion acres) of land around the world that has been degraded by misuse, overgrazing, deforestation and other largely human factors, 900 million hectares could be restored.

Returning that land to pasture, food crops or trees would convert enough carbon into biomass to stabilize emissions of CO2, the biggest greenhouse gas, for 15-20 years, giving the world time to adopt carbon-neutral technologies.

“With political will and investment of about $300 billion, it is doable,” Castro Salazar said. We would be “using the least-cost options we have, while waiting for the technologies in energy and transportation to mature and be fully available in the market. It will stabilize the atmospheric changes, the fight against climate change, for 15-20 years. We very much need that.”

Returning that land to pasture, food crops or trees would convert enough carbon into biomass to stabilize emissions of CO2, the biggest greenhouse gas, for 15-20 years, giving the world time to adopt carbon-neutral technologies.

“With political will and investment of about $300 billion, it is doable,” Castro Salazar said. We would be “using the least-cost options we have, while waiting for the technologies in energy and transportation to mature and be fully available in the market. It will stabilize the atmospheric changes, the fight against climate change, for 15-20 years. We very much need that.”...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-23/how-to-halt-global-warming-fo...

See infrared aerial photos of methane emissions from oil and natural gas drilling sites at NYT webpage--criminal!

It’s a Vast, Invisible Climate Menace. We Made It Visible.
Jonah M. Kessel and Hiroko Tabuchi | Dec. 12, 2019

Immense amounts of methane are escaping from oil and gas sites nationwide, worsening global warming, even as the Trump administration weakens restrictions on offenders.*

...Methane is loosely regulated, difficult to detect and rising sharply. The Times’s aerial and on-the-ground research, along with an examination of lobbying activities by the companies that own the sites, shows how the energy industry is seeking and winning looser federal regulations on methane, a major contributor to global warming.

Operators of the sites identified by The Times are among the very companies that have lobbied the Trump administration, either directly or through trade organizations, to weaken regulations on methane, a review of regulatory filings, meeting minutes and attendance logs shows. These local companies, along with oil-industry lobby groups that represent the world’s largest energy companies, are fighting rules that would force them to more aggressively fix emissions like these.

Next year, the administration could move forward with a plan* that would effectively eliminate requirements that oil companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from oil and gas facilities. By the E.P.A.’s own calculations, the rollback would increase methane emissions by 370,000 tons through 2025, enough to power more than a million homes for a year...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/12/climate/texas-methane-super-emitt...

__________________________________________________________________________

Curbs on Methane, Potent Greenhouse Gas, to Be Relaxed in U.S.
Leaks from natural gas drilling, shipping and storage are one of the main sources of methane emissions in the United States.

Lisa Friedman and Coral Davenport | Aug. 29, 2019

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration laid out on Thursday a far-reaching plan to cut back on the regulation of methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule* aims to eliminate federal requirements that oil and gas companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities. It would also reopen the question of whether the E.P.A. had the legal authority to regulate methane as a pollutant.

The rollback plan is particularly notable because major energy companies have, in fact, spoken out against it — joining automakers, electric utilities and other industrial giants that have opposed other administration initiatives to dismantle climate-change and environmental rules...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/climate/epa-methane-greenhouse-gas.html

__________________________________________________________________________

* EPA's Proposed Rule (153 p) methane Emission Standards for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources, Oil & Gas Sector:
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-08/documents/frn_oil_and_gas_rev...

Climate refugees cannot be sent back home, United Nations rules in landmark decision
Rob Picheta | January 20, 2020

(CNN)Refugees fleeing the effects of the climate crisis cannot be forced to return home by their adoptive countries, a United Nations panel has ruled, in a landmark decision that could open the door to a flood of legal claims by displaced people around the world.

...countries could violate people's international rights if they force them back to countries where climate change poses an immediate threat. "Without robust national and international efforts, the effects of climate change in receiving states may expose individuals to a violation of their rights"...

...the decision could have a significant impact on future claims, as the number of people forced from their homes from the intensifying climate emergency grows.

Droughts, crop failure and rising seas are expected to force tens of millions to move to other areas in the coming years. A 2018 study by the World Bank found that 143 million people across South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America are at risk of becoming climate migrants.

...cited articles 6 and 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which ensure an individual's inherent right to life..."Given that the risk of an entire country becoming submerged under water is such an extreme risk, the conditions of life in such a country may become incompatible with the right to life with dignity before the risk is realized"...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/20/world/climate-refugees-unhrc-ruling-scli-intl/ind...

>117 margd: cooling technology, contd.

Ozone-depleting gases might have driven extreme Arctic warming
The far north is heating up twice as fast as the global average.
Giuliana Viglione | 20 January 2020

...Gases that deplete the ozone layer could be responsible for up to half of the effects of climate change observed in the Arctic from 1955 to 2005.

The finding could help to explain the disproportionate toll of climate change on the region, which has long puzzled scientists. The Arctic is warming at more than twice the average rate of the rest of the globe — a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification — and it is losing sea ice at a staggering pace.

Ozone-depleting substances, including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), are known to warm the atmosphere thousands of times more efficiently than carbon dioxide. But most of the research on these chemicals has focused on their effects on the planet’s protective ozone layer — especially over the Southern Hemisphere, where they are responsible for the formation of the Antarctic ozone hole, says . He co-authored the study, published on 20 January in Nature Climate Change1, which he says is “really reframing a lot of the discussion on a more global basis”.

(Mark England, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California) and his colleagues compared climate simulations both with and without the mass emission of CFCs that began in the 1950s. Without CFCs, the simulations showed an average Arctic warming of 0.82 °C. When the presence of ozone-depleting compounds was factored in, that number jumped to 1.59 °C. The researchers saw similarly dramatic changes in sea-ice coverage between the two sets of model simulations. By running the models with fixed CFC concentrations while varying the thickness of the ozone layer, the team was able to attribute the warming directly to the chemicals — rather than changes these substances caused in the ozone layer.

...Global CFC concentrations have been on the decline since the turn of the millennium, following the 1989 adoption of the Montreal Protocol, which called for a phase-out of the substances. Although many other factors contribute to Arctic amplification, the result suggests that Arctic warming and sea-ice melt might be tempered in the future as ozone-depleting substances continue to leave the atmosphere, Bitz says. “It’s a very important paper because it has a little shred of optimism.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00108-2
doi: 10.1038/d41586-020-00108-2

References
Polvani, L. M., Previdi, M., England, M. R., Chiodo, G. & Smith, K. L. Nature Clim. Change https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0677-4 (2020).

"one cubic meter of CLT wood (can) sequester...roughly one tonne (1.1 US tons) of CO2"!!
"half a ton of CO2 is emitted to manufacture a ton of concrete; 2 tons of CO2 are emitted in the manufacture of a ton of steel"

The hottest new thing in sustainable building is, uh, wood
David Roberts@drvoxdavid@vox.com Jan 15, 2020

The many, many benefits of using wood in place of concrete and steel.

...structural timber or, as it’s more popularly known, “mass timber” (short for “massive timber”)...involves sticking pieces of soft wood — generally conifers like pine, spruce, or fir, but also sometimes deciduous species such as birch, ash, and beech — together to form larger pieces.

....Mass timber is a generic term...But the most common and most familiar form of mass timber, the one that has opened up the most new architectural possibilities, is cross-laminated timber (CLT)...lumber boards that have been trimmed and kiln-dried are glued atop one another in layers, crosswise, with the grain of each layer facing against the grain of the layer adjacent. Stacking boards together this way can create large slabs, up to a foot thick and as large as 18-feet-long by 98-feet-wide, though the average is something more like 10 by 40. (At this point, the size of slabs is restricted less by manufacturing limitations than by transportation limitations.)

...Mass timber is (finally) coming to America...While CLT is continuing to explode in Europe and is accelerating in Canada, it remains hampered in the US by anachronistic and overly prescriptive building codes, limited domestic supply, and the small-c conservative thinking of the building trades.

The advantages of mass timber

1. It performs well in fire...

2. It reduces carbon emissions

Roughly 11 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from building materials and construction; another 28 percent comes from building operations, which mostly involve energy.

At least three carbon effects (constitute the full lifecycle impact of mass timber on carbon emissions)...

First, some greenhouse gas emissions are released by the supply chain, starting with forestry...soil carbon...plant and wood waste...the vehicles and machinery...

Second...carbon embedded in the timber itself, where it is sequestered in buildings that could last anywhere from 50 to hundreds of years. Though the exact amount will depend on tree species, forestry practices, transportation costs, and a number of other factors, (architect Michael Green, whose seminal 2013 TED Talk on mass timber helped kickstart interest in the US) says a good rule of thumb... is that one cubic meter of CLT wood sequesters roughly one tonne (1.1 US tons) of CO2...

Third and most significantly, substituting mass timber for concrete and steel avoids the carbon embedded in those materials...around 8 percent of global GHG emissions, more than any country save the US and China. The global iron and steel industry is responsible for another 5 percent. Something like half a ton of CO2 is emitted to manufacture a ton of concrete; 2 tons of CO2 are emitted in the manufacture of a ton of steel...

...for all but the most poorly managed forests, the overall impact of using CLT in place of concrete and steel will be a reduction in GHGs. A 2014 study in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry*...concluded: “Globally, both enough extra wood can be harvested sustainably and enough infrastructure of buildings and bridges needs to be built to reduce annual CO2 emissions by 14 to 31% and FF consumption by 12 to 19% if part of this infrastructure were made of wood.” The biggest drop in CO2 emissions came, it said, from “avoiding the excess fossil fuel energy used to make steel and concrete structures.”

...University of Washington...analysis comparing a “hybrid, mid-rise, cross-laminated timber (CLT) commercial building” to “a reinforced concrete building with similar functional characteristics.” After tallying up all the many factors, they concluded that the CLT building represented a “26.5% reduction in global warming potential.”

That’s likely a decent rule-of-thumb estimate, though again, that number could be pushed in either direction by better or worse forestry, transportation, milling, construction, and disposal practices.

3. It allows buildings to be constructed faster, with lower labor costs and less waste...

4. It is fantastic in earthquakes...

5. It is aesthetically and even spiritually appealing...

...Mass timber is also a good natural insulator: “Softwood in general has about one-third the thermal insulating ability of a comparable thickness of fiberglass batt insulation, but about 10 times that of concrete and masonry, and 400 times that of solid steel.” That makes it particularly good for windows and doors.

6. It can help pay for good forest management on public land...

7. It can create jobs in struggling rural areas...

8. There is no other choice...

Reservations about mass timber

First, protecting and properly managing forests is a huge part of fighting climate change and preserving a livable world...

Second and relatedly, some environmentalists worry that the sequestration benefits of wood as a building material are being overestimated...

Mass timber must be coupled with sustainable forestry...

Further reading... (incl. Michael Green's TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_why_we_should_build_wooden_skyscrapers )

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/1/15/21058051/climate-change-bui...

_______________________________________________________________

Chadwick Dearing Oliver et al. 28 March 2014. Carbon, Fossil Fuel, and Biodiversity Mitigation With Wood and Forests. Journal of Sustainable Forestry
Volume 33, 2014 - Issue 3. Pages 248-275. https://doi.org/10.1080/10549811.2013.839386 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10549811.2013.839386

Abstract

Life-cycle analyses, energy analyses, and a range of utilization efficiencies were developed to determine the carbon dioxide (CO2) and fossil fuel (FF) saved by various solid wood products, wood energy, and unharvested forests. Some products proved very efficient in CO2 and FF savings, while others did not. Not considering forest regrowth after harvest or burning if not harvested, efficient products save much more CO2 than the standing forest; but wood used only for energy generally saves slightly less. Avoided emissions (using wood in place of steel and concrete) contributes the most to CO2 and FF savings compared to the product and wood energy contributions. Burning parts of the harvested logs that are not used for products creates an additional CO2 and FF savings. Using wood substitutes could save 14 to 31% of global CO2 emissions and 12 to 19% of global FF consumption by using 34 to 100% of the world’s sustainable wood growth. Maximizing forest CO2 sequestration may not be compatible with biodiversity. More CO2 can be sequestered synergistically in the products or wood energy and landscape together than in the unharvested landscape. Harvesting sustainably at an optimum stand age will sequester more carbon in the combined products, wood energy, and forest than harvesting sustainably at other ages

>129 margd: ...While CLT is continuing to explode in Europe and is accelerating in Canada, it remains hampered in the US by anachronistic and overly prescriptive building codes, limited domestic supply, and the small-c conservative thinking of the building trades.

It actually seems to be taking off in the US. I've seen a lot of new apartments going up around here of this style:
http://archplanbaltimore.blogspot.com/2015/03/how-one-plus-five-is-shaping-ameri...

>130 jjwilson61: How interesting! Thanks for sharing that article.

>130 jjwilson61: Those apts DO look more people-friendly!

Update on A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein? :)

Maybe I'll donate a hardcover to local school or library?
Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees by Franck Prévot and Aurélia Fronty

The audacious effort to reforest the planet
Ben Guarino | Jan. 22, 2020

(Inspired by Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize for leading an effort to plant 30 million trees in Africa)...Plant for the Planet...inherited a massive tree-planting program, renamed the Trillion Tree Campaign, from the United Nations in 2011

... On Tuesday in Davos, Switzerland, President Trump said the United States would join 1t.org, a new project launched by the World Economic Forum to connect the Trillion Tree Campaign and other reforestation programs around the world. “In doing so we will continue to show strong leadership in restoring, growing and better managing our trees and our forests” ...

Greta Thunberg, the 17-year-old climate activist who was in the audience when Trump spoke, said planting trees is good but no solution to global warming. Thunberg and others say countries and industries must stop emitting carbon now and switch to solar, wind and other clean energy.

Most environmentalists, including those involved in reforestation, would agree with that sentiment. Still, tree planting offers a simple, accessible, low-tech idea with wide appeal...

Trees are the most efficient carbon-capture machines on the planet. Through photosynthesis, they absorb carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that traps heat in the environment, and turn it into energy. That energy creates new leaves, longer stems and more mass — locking away carbon.

That makes healthy forests carbon sinks. American vegetation, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, absorbed enough carbon dioxide to offset 11 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2017.

When it comes to climate change, however, not all trees are created equal. The right species must be planted. They must live to maturity. Location also matters: Trees planted in Germany do not have the same carbon-fighting capacity as trees planted in the tropics, where they grow more rapidly and therefore capture more carbon. While new forests in high latitudes can cause the Earth’s surface to grow darker and absorb more heat, forests in the tropics are frequently covered by clouds that reflect sunlight and cool the planet...

...strategy is simple: Pay poor farmers small sums to plant trees. The new forests would in turn reduce poverty, conserve biodiversity, and provide food and lumber that is sustainably harvested.

...The best plans provide long-term motivations to keep forests alive. Otherwise, after payments stop, locals may abandon the young trees before they mature. Or poor residents turn to the trees for cooking fuel. Some forests have even been destroyed so planters can be paid again to plant.

...six countries hold more than half the potential to restore trees — the United States, Russia, Brazil, Canada, Australia and China — because they have the most land available to plant.

...( ETH Zurich ecologist Thomas Crowther ) said, planting trees is “one of thousands of solutions that are absolutely critical.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/climate-solutions/trillion-tree-ref...

This is what high tech carbon pulling looks like:



Pretty?

Photo's not displayed--on my screen anyway.

Here it is in an article:

In Switzerland, a giant new machine is sucking carbon directly from the air

Umm, I think I prefer trees...but whatever works! :)

Trees
Joyce Kilmer - 1886-1918

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Frankenbrick!

Actually a very exciting line of research.

Living 'concrete' made from bacteria used to create replicating bricks

The team combined the bacteria with gelatin, sand and nutrients in a liquid mixture, then placed this in a mould. With heat and sunlight, the bacteria produced calcium carbonate crystals around the sand particles, in a process similar to how seashells form in the ocean.

When cooled, the gelatin solidified the mixture into a gel form. The team then dehydrated the gel to toughen it, with the entire process taking several hours.

The team liken their living material to concrete, which is a mixture of gravel and sand and cement combined with water. But its mechanical properties are more similar to mortar, a weaker material usually made with cement and sand and found between the bricks of buildings, says Srubar. It isn’t yet as strong as regular bricks.
...
The process has the potential to make energy intensive concrete production more environmentally friendly because of its reliance on photosynthesis. “Concrete is the second-most consumed material on earth after water,” says Srubar.

And so begins collapse of aquatic foodwebs... :(

Ocean Acidification Is Literally Dissolving The Shells Of Dungeness Crabs
Matt Charnock | 26 January 2020

...The survey, first conducted in 2016, examined larval Dungeness crabs along the West Coast and found their exoskeletons had begun to disintegrate … the moment they hatched. Similar findings were observed as far back as 2010, albeit in a different, more obscure family of fauna — phytoplankton and zooplankton, two animals responsible for fundamentally supporting the entire food web in our oceans.

“If the crabs and other ocean life is affected already, we really need to make sure we start to pay attention to various components of the food chain before it is too late,” said lead author for the study Nina Bednarsek, a senior scientist with the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, to NOAA. She was among thirteen other notable researchers involved in the study.

As defined by (NOAA): Ocean acidification refers to a reduction in the pH of ocean water, primarily caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over long time spans. When CO2 is absorbed by seawater — a phenomena occurring in nauseam now, due to increasing amounts of fossil fuels being burned annually — a domino's fall of chemical reactions happen, which results in an increased concentration of hydrogen ions, responsible for that pH reduction....

https://sfist.com/2020/01/26/ocean-acidification-is-literally-dissolving-the-she...

________________________________________________________________________________

Richard A.Feely et al. 2020. Exoskeleton dissolution with mechanoreceptor damage in larval Dungeness crab related to severity of present-day ocean acidification vertical gradients. Science of The Total Environment. Available online 22 January 2020. In Press, Corrected Proof. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.136610 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720301200

• Coastal habitats with the steepest ocean acidification gradients are most detrimental for larval Dungeness crabs.
• Severe carapace dissolution was observed in larval Dungeness crabs along the US west coast.
• Mechanoreceptors with important sensory and behavioral functions were destabilized.
• Dissolution is negatively related to the growth, demonstrating energetic trade-offs.
• 10% dissolution increase over the last two decades estimated due to atmospheric CO2.

Abstract

Ocean acidification (OA) along the US West Coast is intensifying faster than observed in the global ocean. This is particularly true in nearshore regions (

https://floodiq.com/
Flood risk for US coastal areas . (Interior info later?) Real estate values discussed.

First Street Foundation Mission
First Street Foundation is a non-profit research and technology group committed to defining America’s flood risk.

Using cutting edge modeling techniques validated through the peer-review process, the Foundation’s team of best in class data scientists is working to calculate the past, present, and future flood risk of every home and property in the United States. The First Street Foundation Flood Model and resulting data will allow world renowned researchers from the country’s top academic institutions to analyze the economic, fiscal, and social impacts of the country’s changing flood risk. Free, public access to the Foundation’s property-level flood risk information will continue to be available through Flood iQ ( https://floodiq.com/ ) the Foundation’s online database and visualization tool...

https://firststreet.org/press/partnership-announcement/

Shipping noise causing problems for wildlife in the Arctic
CBC News · Posted: Jan 26, 2020

'All this noise is making them leave the area'...Researchers have said Arctic cod are the "most important" link in Arctic marine ecosystems, so disturbing their habits can impact food availability for other marine wildlife and for native Arctic communities.

...because of receding ice in the Arctic, there's more underwater noise by shipping traffic.

Silviya Ivanova, lead author of the study and Ph.D. student at the University of Windsor, said the study was first started after Inuit in the area were complaining about the noise scaring away wildlife...

...it's unclear if Arctic cod will aclimatize to the noise or if it will be a long-term problem.

Cruise ship traffic in the Arctic has doubled in the last 20 years, with ice coverage reducing by about half from 2000-2012. The data showed this has resulted in a 10-12 decibel increase in noise levels...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/shipping-noise-ice-arctic-wildlife-study-...

_________________________________________________________________________

Silviya V. Ivanova et al. 2019. Shipping alters the movement and behavior of Arctic cod (Boreogadus saida), a keystone fish in Arctic marine ecosystems. Ecological Applications. First published: 10 December 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2050 . https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eap.2050

Abstract

Anthropogenic noise associated with shipping has emerged as a major disruptor of aquatic animal behavior worldwide. The Arctic marine realm has historically experienced little noise‐generating human activity; however, the continual loss of sea ice has facilitated a dramatic increase in shipping activity. Here, we use a combination of acoustic telemetry and modeling of ship noise to examine the temporospatial habitat use of key Arctic forage fish, Arctic cod (Boreogadus saida) in the presence and absence of vessels in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, Canada. The presence and movement of vessels induced a horizontal shift in the home ranges of Arctic cod with low core overlap when compared to periods without vessel activity. Home range displacement occurred near the vessel. Individuals also altered their swimming behaviors in response to vessel presence with searching decreasing and travelling increasing in proportion. Results indicate that Arctic cod perceive vessel noise and presence as a threat and react by moving away and decreasing exploratory activities. These changes in fish behavior also coincide with the critical open water feeding period suggesting an interruption in exploitation of important and seasonally abundant food resources, and carry broader implications for dependent seabirds and marine mammals, and indirectly for all Arctic indigenous peoples’ subsistence and long‐term cultural traditions. Our study implies that strategic management is required for aquatic acoustic disturbance as an environmental stressor in the Arctic marine ecosystem, and highlights ecologically and socially important impacts that require timely conservation action.

Guardian to ban advertising from fossil fuel firms
Jim Waterson | 29 Jan 2020

Move follows efforts to reduce carbon footprint and increase reporting on climate crisis...

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/29/guardian-to-ban-advertising-from-f...

Rewilding the Arctic can slow the climate crisis
Paul Brown | January 29th, 2020

...Trees that are growing ever further north as the Arctic warms are in turn leading to the melting of more permafrost by breaking up the snow which otherwise reflects sunlight away from the Earth. Instead, the snow absorbs more of the sunlight, enhancing the warming further.

By removing woody vegetation, enhancing grass growth and trampling on snow in search of winter forage, the scientists say, large mammals increase the amount of incoming solar energy that bounces back to space − the albedo effect.

Unlike shallow-rooted trees, grasslands also favour the capture of carbon in the deep roots of grasses and enable cold winter temperatures to penetrate deeper into the soil. Altogether, they say, these changes would have a net cooling effect on Arctic lands and delay permafrost melt.

The study estimates that carbon emissions from thawing permafrost could be around 4.35 billion tonnes a year over this century. This is around half as much as fossil fuel emissions, and three times more than estimates of the emissions produced by current and projected land use change, for example in tropical forests.

One of the drawbacks to the scheme is the need to import large quantities of relatively scarce animals like bison into the vast expanses that would need to be rewilded. It would take time to build up the numbers of animals required.

The fossil record in the period the scientists are trying to recreate shows that each square kilometre contained an average of one mammoth, 5 bison, 7.5 horses, 15 reindeer, 0.25 cave lions, and one wolf. This is around the animal density of present-day African savanna game reserves. Rewilding efforts would initially focus on bison and horses.

https://climatenewsnetwork.net/rewilding-the-arctic-can-slow-the-climate-crisis/

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* Marc Macias-Fauria et al. 2020. Pleistocene Arctic megafaunal ecological engineering as a natural climate solution? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Published:27 January 2020https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0122 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2019.0122

Abstract

Natural climate solutions (NCS) in the Arctic hold the potential to be implemented at a scale able to substantially affect the global climate. The strong feedbacks between carbon-rich permafrost, climate and herbivory suggest an NCS consisting of reverting the current wet/moist moss and shrub-dominated tundra and the sparse forest–tundra ecotone to grassland through a guild of large herbivores. Grassland-dominated systems might delay permafrost thaw and reduce carbon emissions—especially in Yedoma regions, while increasing carbon capture through increased productivity and grass and forb deep root systems. Here we review the environmental context of megafaunal ecological engineering in the Arctic; explore the mechanisms through which it can help mitigate climate change; and estimate its potential—based on bison and horse, with the aim of evaluating the feasibility of generating an ecosystem shift that is economically viable in terms of carbon benefits and of sufficient scale to play a significant role in global climate change mitigation. Assuming a megafaunal-driven ecosystem shift we find support for a megafauna-based arctic NCS yielding substantial income in carbon markets. However, scaling up such projects to have a significant effect on the global climate is challenging given the large number of animals required over a short period of time. A first-cut business plan is presented based on practical information—costs and infrastructure—from Pleistocene Park (northeastern Yakutia, Russia). A 10 yr experimental phase incorporating three separate introductions of herds of approximately 1000 individuals each is costed at US$114 million, with potential returns of approximately 0.3–0.4% yr−1 towards the end of the period, and greater than 1% yr−1 after it. Institutional friction and the potential role of new technologies in the reintroductions are discussed.

As with Thwaites glacier in Antarctic, warm ocean currents are undermining Grennland ice "tongues" from below:

Climate change: Scientists find another threat to Greenland's glaciers lurking beneath the ice
Gisela Crespo | Feb 4, 2020

Warm ocean water moving underneath the vast glaciers is causing them to melt even more quickly.

The findings were published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience by researchers who studied one of the many "ice tongues" of the Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier -- also known as the 79° North Glacier -- in northeast Greenland.*

An ice tongue is a strip of ice that floats on the water without breaking off from the ice on land. The massive one these scientists studied is nearly 50 miles long.

The survey revealed an underwater current more than a mile wide where warm water from the Atlantic Ocean is able to flow directly towards the glacier, bringing large amounts of heat into contact with the ice and accelerating the glacier's melting.

...The scientists also found a similar current flowing near another of Greenland's glaciers, where a large ice tongue had recently broken off into the ocean.

...Mass loss from Greenland's ice sheet is currently the single largest driver of sea level rise globally, and according to a study published in December in the journal Nature, Greenland's ice sheet is currently melting seven times faster than it was in 1992.

This ice sheet holds enough water to raise global sea levels by more than 24 feet...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/climate-change-scientists-find-anot...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Janin Schaffer et al. 2020. Bathymetry constrains ocean heat supply to Greenland’s largest glacier tongue. Nature Geoscience (Feb 3, 2020) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0529-x

Abstract

Mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has increased over the past two decades, currently accounting for 25% of global sea-level rise. This is due to increased surface melt driven by atmospheric warming and the retreat and acceleration of marine-terminating glaciers forced by oceanic heat transport. We use ship-based profiles, bathymetric data and moored time series from 2016 to 2017 of temperature, salinity and water velocity collected in front of the floating tongue of the 79 North Glacier in Northeast Greenland. These observations indicate that a year-round bottom-intensified inflow of warm Atlantic Water through a narrow channel is constrained by a sill. The associated heat transport leads to a mean melt rate of 10.4 ± 3.1 m yr–1 on the bottom of the floating glacier tongue. The interface height between warm Atlantic Water and colder overlying water above the sill controls the ocean heat transport’s temporal variability. Historical hydrographic data show that the interface height has risen over the past two decades, implying an increase in the basal melt rate. Additional temperature profiles at the neighbouring Zachariæ Isstrøm suggest that ocean heat transport here is similarly controlled by a near-glacier sill. We conclude that near-glacier, sill-controlled ocean heat transport plays a crucial role for glacier stability.

Climate change helped spawn East Africa’s locust crisis
Zoya Teirstein | Jan 28, 2020

...climate change...is to blame.

East Africa had an unusually wet year in 2019 — warming waters in the Indian Ocean produced a high number of tropical cyclones, which doused the coast and created “exceptional” conditions for locust breeding, Nairobi-based climate scientist Abubakr Salih Babiker told the Associated Press. Now, swarms of hungry insects are feasting on crops in the Horn of Africa, where millions of people already lack reliable access to nutritious food.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says a swarm the size of Paris can gobble up as much grub as half the population of France. To make matters worse, desert locusts can travel up to 80 miles a day and multiply at terrifying speeds. Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, the FAO said, are dealing with swarms of “unprecedented size and destructive potential.” Kenya plans to spend $5 million to curtail the worst locust invasion it’s had in 70 years. Meanwhile, the FAO is asking wealthier nations to take urgent action and calling for $70 million in emergency funding. The problem, the organization says, could quickly spread to other parts of East Africa.

...If these desert locusts aren’t reined in soon, the FAO says, swarms could grow 400 times bigger by the beginning of summer...

https://grist.org/climate/climate-change-helped-spawn-east-africas-locust-crisis...

How hard is it to catch swarms of locusts? Because...

Locusts are edible insects. Several cultures throughout the world consume insects, and locusts are considered a delicacy and eaten in many African, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries. They have been used as food throughout history.

I'd eat it. Visually they look no more offputting than scampi, and scampi, mmmmm.

Climate change: Why are US senators wearing this symbol?

Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, created a graphic that represents how the world is becoming warmer.

US Democrat senators Tom Carper, Sheldon Whitehouse and Chris Van Hollen wore it as a badge at the State of the Union address.

(photo at) https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-51418310/climate-change-why-are-...

See global map of nine tipping points:

Explainer: Nine ‘tipping points’ that could be triggered by climate change
Robert McSweeney | February 10. 2020. 8:00
https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-nine-tipping-points-that-could-be-triggere...

Ocean currents are getting faster
Stephanie Pappas | Feb 6, 2020

Ocean currents are moving faster today than they did two decades ago.

New research, published today (Feb. 6) in the journal Science Advances, finds that this acceleration is occurring around the globe, with the most noticeable effects in the tropical latitudes. The enhanced speed isn’t just at the ocean’s surface, but is occurring as deep as 6,560 feet (2,000 meters).

...Janet Sprintall, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, said..."While we expected some response to the increased winds over the past two decades, that the acceleration was above and beyond that was an unexpected response that is likely due to global climate change."...

https://www.livescience.com/ocean-currents-speeding-up.html

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Shijian Hu et al.2020. Deep-reaching acceleration of global mean ocean circulation over the past two decades. Science Advances 05 Feb 2020:
Vol. 6, no. 6, eaax7727 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aax7727 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/6/eaax7727

Abstract
Ocean circulation redistributes Earth’s energy and water masses and influences global climate. Under historical greenhouse warming, regional ocean currents show diverse tendencies, but whether there is an emerging trend of the global mean ocean circulation system is not yet clear. Here, we show a statistically significant increasing trend in the globally integrated oceanic kinetic energy since the early 1990s, indicating a substantial acceleration of global mean ocean circulation. The increasing trend in kinetic energy is particularly prominent in the global tropical oceans, reaching depths of thousands of meters. The deep-reaching acceleration of the ocean circulation is mainly induced by a planetary intensification of surface winds since the early 1990s. Although possibly influenced by wind changes associated with the onset of a negative Pacific decadal oscillation since the late 1990s, the recent acceleration is far larger than that associated with natural variability, suggesting that it is principally part of a long-term trend.

oops. Moving this to the more recent thread.