Heat

Climate heating just makes things hotter still

August 13th, 2021, by Tim Radford

The past has an uncomfortable lesson for a warming world: climate heating begets even more of the same.

LONDON, 13 August, 2021 − Climate heating has a way of making the globe even hotter. As higher temperatures kick in, there is a pronounced planetary tendency to send the mercury rising even further.

And − on the evidence of the last 66 million years − this is a process that doesn’t even need human help. Some kind of warming bias seems to have been baked into the climate machinery, according to a new study.

And if the warming process gets a bit of help from humankind in the form of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion, natural planetary ecosystems and global geochemistry could augment the process and take it a lot further.

“The northern hemisphere’s ice sheets are shrinking, and could potentially disappear as a long-term consequence of human actions,” said Constantin Arnscheidt of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the research outlined in the journal Science Advances.

“Our research suggests that this may make the Earth’s climate fundamentally more susceptible to extreme, long-term global warming events such as those seen in the geologic past.”

Continuous cycle

It’s not a new idea. Researchers have been saying for decades that as the polar ice retreats, more open sea and rock is exposed. Ice and snow reflect radiation, dark rock and blue sea absorb it, to amplify warming and accelerate climate change.

As the permafrost thaws, long-buried plant remains begin to surrender methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, to speed up the thaw even more. As forests − vast stores of atmospheric carbon − become hotter and more drought-stricken, they are at risk of fire, which puts even more greenhouse gas  back into the atmosphere to warm the world even more intensely.

But these have all been warnings: what two researchers at MIT did was to look at the tell-tale patterns of climate change deep in prehistory. Because fossil evidence tells a reliable story of past climates, they could study changes in the composition of the shells of foraminifera preserved in ocean sediments.

These identified a continuous cycle of temperature rise and fall and, in particular, the way temperature rose during the aeons that followed the extinction of the dinosaurs at the close of the Cretaceous.

The researchers found the curve of warming and cooling was more skewed to warm events than cool ones: warm events tended to be of a more extreme temperature than the most extreme cool spells. Sometimes the planetary climate changed dramatically, to bring crocodiles to Arctic waters, and forests to Antarctica.

“This may make the Earth’s climate fundamentally more susceptible to extreme, long-term global warming events such as those seen in the geologic past”

The researchers call this a multiplier effect: increases in temperature bias the climate system towards even more increases.

The study may throw additional light on an enduring climate puzzle: the pattern of temperature for much of the Earth’s history can be matched to the pattern of cyclic shifts in the planetary orbit around the sun, over hundreds of thousands of years.

But these changes are themselves tiny. The multiplier effect could explain why they jolt the planet’s climate into a new regime.

“Climate warms and cools in synchrony with orbital changes, but the orbital cycles themselves would predict only modest changes in climate. But if we consider a multiplicative model, then modest warming, paired with this multiplier effect, can result in extreme events that tend to occur at the same times as these orbital changes,” said Daniel Rothman, a geophysicist at MIT, and a co-author.

And Constantin Arnscheidt said: “Humans are forcing the system in a new way. And this study is showing that, when we increase extreme temperature, we’re likely going to interact with these natural, amplifying effects.” − Climate News Network

The past has an uncomfortable lesson for a warming world: climate heating begets even more of the same.

LONDON, 13 August, 2021 − Climate heating has a way of making the globe even hotter. As higher temperatures kick in, there is a pronounced planetary tendency to send the mercury rising even further.

And − on the evidence of the last 66 million years − this is a process that doesn’t even need human help. Some kind of warming bias seems to have been baked into the climate machinery, according to a new study.

And if the warming process gets a bit of help from humankind in the form of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion, natural planetary ecosystems and global geochemistry could augment the process and take it a lot further.

“The northern hemisphere’s ice sheets are shrinking, and could potentially disappear as a long-term consequence of human actions,” said Constantin Arnscheidt of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the research outlined in the journal Science Advances.

“Our research suggests that this may make the Earth’s climate fundamentally more susceptible to extreme, long-term global warming events such as those seen in the geologic past.”

Continuous cycle

It’s not a new idea. Researchers have been saying for decades that as the polar ice retreats, more open sea and rock is exposed. Ice and snow reflect radiation, dark rock and blue sea absorb it, to amplify warming and accelerate climate change.

As the permafrost thaws, long-buried plant remains begin to surrender methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, to speed up the thaw even more. As forests − vast stores of atmospheric carbon − become hotter and more drought-stricken, they are at risk of fire, which puts even more greenhouse gas  back into the atmosphere to warm the world even more intensely.

But these have all been warnings: what two researchers at MIT did was to look at the tell-tale patterns of climate change deep in prehistory. Because fossil evidence tells a reliable story of past climates, they could study changes in the composition of the shells of foraminifera preserved in ocean sediments.

These identified a continuous cycle of temperature rise and fall and, in particular, the way temperature rose during the aeons that followed the extinction of the dinosaurs at the close of the Cretaceous.

The researchers found the curve of warming and cooling was more skewed to warm events than cool ones: warm events tended to be of a more extreme temperature than the most extreme cool spells. Sometimes the planetary climate changed dramatically, to bring crocodiles to Arctic waters, and forests to Antarctica.

“This may make the Earth’s climate fundamentally more susceptible to extreme, long-term global warming events such as those seen in the geologic past”

The researchers call this a multiplier effect: increases in temperature bias the climate system towards even more increases.

The study may throw additional light on an enduring climate puzzle: the pattern of temperature for much of the Earth’s history can be matched to the pattern of cyclic shifts in the planetary orbit around the sun, over hundreds of thousands of years.

But these changes are themselves tiny. The multiplier effect could explain why they jolt the planet’s climate into a new regime.

“Climate warms and cools in synchrony with orbital changes, but the orbital cycles themselves would predict only modest changes in climate. But if we consider a multiplicative model, then modest warming, paired with this multiplier effect, can result in extreme events that tend to occur at the same times as these orbital changes,” said Daniel Rothman, a geophysicist at MIT, and a co-author.

And Constantin Arnscheidt said: “Humans are forcing the system in a new way. And this study is showing that, when we increase extreme temperature, we’re likely going to interact with these natural, amplifying effects.” − Climate News Network

Emissions, Oceans

Ancient sea level rises may have been fairly minimal

August 12th, 2021, by Tim Radford

Maybe ancient sea level rises were not so dramatic. But they’d still have been pretty frightening.

LONDON, 12 August, 2021 − Earth scientists have measured the rising tides of a warmer world more than 100 millennia ago and found a glimmer of good news: ancient sea level rises during a warm spell in the last Ice Age were quite possibly only about 1.2 metres higher than they are today.

Since, between 128,000 and 117,000 years ago, the world was perhaps as much as 2°C warmer than it would become for most of human history, this really is encouraging. Right now, climate scientists project a rise of somewhere between 60cm and 1.5m later this century, as global temperature levels rise 2°C or more above those normal before the Industrial Revolution.

But until now, geological orthodoxy has proposed that during the last “interglacial” or sudden warming, sea levels rose by six metres or possibly even nine metres. This could only happen if the Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets had collapsed.

And although these are indeed already losing ice at an accelerating rate, it doesn’t seem possible for such a colossal quantity of ice to melt in only a handful of decades.

Missing factor

So there was a mismatch between the predictions of the world’s scientists and the apparent evidence from the past.

Now a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers a solution: calculations about past sea level heights may have been perhaps too gloomy because they did not fully factor in sea level’s other great uncertainty — the movement of the continents lapped by the sea.

This bedevils all predictions about sea level rise. Seas rise and fall with global temperatures, but so do landmasses. Right now, although sea level is creeping up at a rate measured in millimetres per year, the land under a number of great coastal cities is sinking dramatically, as humans build  ever more massive cities and abstract ever more groundwater. So predictions warn that millions could be at risk of coastal flooding.

But there is another, deeper reason for the uncertainty: as rising temperatures remove the massive burden of ice from glaciated land, and wind and rain erode mountains, so the subterranean rocks in the Earth’s mantle, far below the crust, respond by inching upwards. Even the seemingly solid rocks are elastic, subsiding under pressure and rising when the mass is removed.

“Models of ice sheets are still in their toddlerhood”

All this means that, unless researchers can make an accurate estimate of land movement as well, sea level estimates are riven with uncertainties.

So a team from Columbia University in the US has looked at evidence of sea level rise and fall preserved in fossilised reefs and dunes in just one 1200km chain of islands − the Bahamas in the Atlantic − to come up with a new set of projections.

In the next 100 years, sea levels will rise by about 1.2 metres. This could be too modest: sea levels could just possibly rise by perhaps 5.3 metres, but this doesn’t seem likely. And a nine-metre rise is highly improbable.

“To get to nine metres of sea level rise, you’d have to melt large parts of Greenland and Antarctica,” said Blake Dyer, of the university’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Tricky calculation

“This suggests that didn’t happen. So maybe we should feel not so bad about the future. On the other hand, our lower estimate is bad, and our upper one is really bad.”

At the heart of the puzzle is a phenomenon known to geophysicists as isostasy: vast tracts of continental landmass have been heaving up and down, imperceptibly, over periods of tens of thousands of years, in response to ice and erosion.

So calculating sea level rise and fall when the thing on which sea level measurements are recorded − the land − is itself always shifting becomes tricky. That has always been why climate projections of sea levels contain a range of forecasts, rather than a hard number.

The argument is that changes recorded along the north-south lie of the Bahamas would provide a new and more sophisticated way of reconstructing sea heights in the relatively recent past.

Melting not guaranteed

The study doesn’t settle the question: estimates of past sea level change on a dramatic scale come from many parts of the planet, and glaciologists still have to reconstruct the rate at which the northern ice, for instance, may have retreated while the southern ice cap continued to advance during the last interglacial: that too would have limited sea level rise.

“This is still a question. Models of ice sheets are still in their toddlerhood,” said Maureen Raymo, director of the Earth Observatory and a co-author.

Human carbon emissions are now heating the globe far more rapidly and evenly than during the last interglacial, so there is no guarantee of any melting at different rates in two hemispheres

“That makes it more difficult to apply the results to today. The easy thing to say would be, ‘Oh we showed that sea levels were not so bad, and that’s terrific.’  The harder answer, the more honest answer, is that maybe things were different then, and we’re not in the clear.” − Climate News Network

Maybe ancient sea level rises were not so dramatic. But they’d still have been pretty frightening.

LONDON, 12 August, 2021 − Earth scientists have measured the rising tides of a warmer world more than 100 millennia ago and found a glimmer of good news: ancient sea level rises during a warm spell in the last Ice Age were quite possibly only about 1.2 metres higher than they are today.

Since, between 128,000 and 117,000 years ago, the world was perhaps as much as 2°C warmer than it would become for most of human history, this really is encouraging. Right now, climate scientists project a rise of somewhere between 60cm and 1.5m later this century, as global temperature levels rise 2°C or more above those normal before the Industrial Revolution.

But until now, geological orthodoxy has proposed that during the last “interglacial” or sudden warming, sea levels rose by six metres or possibly even nine metres. This could only happen if the Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets had collapsed.

And although these are indeed already losing ice at an accelerating rate, it doesn’t seem possible for such a colossal quantity of ice to melt in only a handful of decades.

Missing factor

So there was a mismatch between the predictions of the world’s scientists and the apparent evidence from the past.

Now a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers a solution: calculations about past sea level heights may have been perhaps too gloomy because they did not fully factor in sea level’s other great uncertainty — the movement of the continents lapped by the sea.

This bedevils all predictions about sea level rise. Seas rise and fall with global temperatures, but so do landmasses. Right now, although sea level is creeping up at a rate measured in millimetres per year, the land under a number of great coastal cities is sinking dramatically, as humans build  ever more massive cities and abstract ever more groundwater. So predictions warn that millions could be at risk of coastal flooding.

But there is another, deeper reason for the uncertainty: as rising temperatures remove the massive burden of ice from glaciated land, and wind and rain erode mountains, so the subterranean rocks in the Earth’s mantle, far below the crust, respond by inching upwards. Even the seemingly solid rocks are elastic, subsiding under pressure and rising when the mass is removed.

“Models of ice sheets are still in their toddlerhood”

All this means that, unless researchers can make an accurate estimate of land movement as well, sea level estimates are riven with uncertainties.

So a team from Columbia University in the US has looked at evidence of sea level rise and fall preserved in fossilised reefs and dunes in just one 1200km chain of islands − the Bahamas in the Atlantic − to come up with a new set of projections.

In the next 100 years, sea levels will rise by about 1.2 metres. This could be too modest: sea levels could just possibly rise by perhaps 5.3 metres, but this doesn’t seem likely. And a nine-metre rise is highly improbable.

“To get to nine metres of sea level rise, you’d have to melt large parts of Greenland and Antarctica,” said Blake Dyer, of the university’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Tricky calculation

“This suggests that didn’t happen. So maybe we should feel not so bad about the future. On the other hand, our lower estimate is bad, and our upper one is really bad.”

At the heart of the puzzle is a phenomenon known to geophysicists as isostasy: vast tracts of continental landmass have been heaving up and down, imperceptibly, over periods of tens of thousands of years, in response to ice and erosion.

So calculating sea level rise and fall when the thing on which sea level measurements are recorded − the land − is itself always shifting becomes tricky. That has always been why climate projections of sea levels contain a range of forecasts, rather than a hard number.

The argument is that changes recorded along the north-south lie of the Bahamas would provide a new and more sophisticated way of reconstructing sea heights in the relatively recent past.

Melting not guaranteed

The study doesn’t settle the question: estimates of past sea level change on a dramatic scale come from many parts of the planet, and glaciologists still have to reconstruct the rate at which the northern ice, for instance, may have retreated while the southern ice cap continued to advance during the last interglacial: that too would have limited sea level rise.

“This is still a question. Models of ice sheets are still in their toddlerhood,” said Maureen Raymo, director of the Earth Observatory and a co-author.

Human carbon emissions are now heating the globe far more rapidly and evenly than during the last interglacial, so there is no guarantee of any melting at different rates in two hemispheres

“That makes it more difficult to apply the results to today. The easy thing to say would be, ‘Oh we showed that sea levels were not so bad, and that’s terrific.’  The harder answer, the more honest answer, is that maybe things were different then, and we’re not in the clear.” − Climate News Network

Deforestation, Land Use

Amazonia’s forests leak carbon they once stored

August 11th, 2021, by Tim Radford

Once vital barriers to climate change, Amazonia’s forests now show how that and other human action can harm the rainforest.

LONDON, 11 August, 2021 − Part of Brazil − home to the world’s greatest rainforest − is becoming a source of greenhouse gases. What had once been a powerful machine in the climate system for absorbing carbon dioxide and cooling the planet is now playing a role in accelerating climate change. Much of Amazonia’s forests are no longer carbon sinks: now they are sources instead.

Why? Drought, and forest fires made increasingly likely by drought, have lately killed an estimated 2.5 billion trees and vines, to turn what had once been forest too wet to catch fire into a tinderbox.

And the process is not likely to stop as human numbers multiply and global temperatures soar. Yet another study has found that even those parts of the tropical forest worldwide that are defined as “intact” are at risk: mining, quarrying and extractive industries have concessions that overlap with at least a fifth of the world’s remaining tropical forest.

In the first 13 years of this century alone, an estimated 919,000 sq kms of forest − an area the size of Nigeria − was degraded, destroyed or converted. The area of surviving forest now identified as at risk is 975,000 sq kms, an area almost the size of Egypt.

The restoration and conservation of the world’s forests is a vital part of the global strategy to contain and limit climate change: all three studies confirm the worst fears of conservationists and climate scientists.

East-West split

Researchers have repeatedly warned that what had once been a vast, rich rainforest could − as global temperatures rise and human demands multiply − collapse to something more like dry savannah.

The latest study, in the journal Nature, is a progress report on an ecological catastrophe. Researchers flew 590 missions from four locations above the forest between 2010 and 2018 to make precise measurements of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide released from stressed and damaged vegetation below.

They found that eastern Amazonia on the whole surrendered more carbon than the forest to the west: over the past 40 years, this region has been more systematically invaded, felled, burned and baked by rising temperatures.

South-eastern Amazonia, in particular, now releases more carbon than it absorbs. Carbon that had once been stored in timber, foliage and soils is now escaping into the atmosphere to make climate change even more hazardous. Researchers estimate that the entire forest is home to 123 billion metric tons of carbon: as more escapes, so much the higher the planetary thermometer could rise.

“It is almost impossible to restore the myriad values of intact forests once they are lost”

And extreme drought and extended wildfires will be among the agents that do the damage, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers looked at a tract of forest about twice the size of Belgium in eastern Amazonia − it would amount to just 1.2% of the entire Brazilian Amazon rainforest − after the drought triggered by a largely natural climate phenomenon known as El Niño in 2015 and 2016.

They calculate that drought and fire accounted for 2.5 billion trees and shrubs, and the loss of these released 495 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air above them. Although, as the rains resumed, the vegetation started to recover, three years later only about a third of the emitted carbon dioxide had been re-absorbed.

But drought and wildfire are not the only agents of destruction: human intrusion is even more destructive, and tends to change the forest forever.

The Wildlife Conservation Society and the WorldWide Fund for Nature  report in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change that the extractive industries authorised by governments have gained concessions over huge areas of what conservationists define as tropical intact forested landscapes; that is, the jungles of the Amazon and the Congo, and South-east Asia.

Avoiding disturbance

These intact forests store around two-fifths of all tropical forest carbon, and at least a third of their area is home to − and is protected by − groups recognised as politically and economically marginalised indigenous people.

So undisturbed forest is important for the myriad as-yet-unidentified wild plants and animals that define an ecosystem; it is also an important part of the human mosaic.

The study is only a first measure of the risk to the remaining tropical wilderness. Although extractive industries are more interested in the oil, gas and minerals that lie beneath the forest floor, they depend on roads, pipelines and power lines, housing settlements and supply chains that divide and disturb what had once been wilderness.

That triggers a cascade of other consequences. Loss and disturbance become inevitable and may be permanent. As the researchers point out: “It is almost impossible to restore the myriad values of intact forests once they are lost.” − Climate News Network

Once vital barriers to climate change, Amazonia’s forests now show how that and other human action can harm the rainforest.

LONDON, 11 August, 2021 − Part of Brazil − home to the world’s greatest rainforest − is becoming a source of greenhouse gases. What had once been a powerful machine in the climate system for absorbing carbon dioxide and cooling the planet is now playing a role in accelerating climate change. Much of Amazonia’s forests are no longer carbon sinks: now they are sources instead.

Why? Drought, and forest fires made increasingly likely by drought, have lately killed an estimated 2.5 billion trees and vines, to turn what had once been forest too wet to catch fire into a tinderbox.

And the process is not likely to stop as human numbers multiply and global temperatures soar. Yet another study has found that even those parts of the tropical forest worldwide that are defined as “intact” are at risk: mining, quarrying and extractive industries have concessions that overlap with at least a fifth of the world’s remaining tropical forest.

In the first 13 years of this century alone, an estimated 919,000 sq kms of forest − an area the size of Nigeria − was degraded, destroyed or converted. The area of surviving forest now identified as at risk is 975,000 sq kms, an area almost the size of Egypt.

The restoration and conservation of the world’s forests is a vital part of the global strategy to contain and limit climate change: all three studies confirm the worst fears of conservationists and climate scientists.

East-West split

Researchers have repeatedly warned that what had once been a vast, rich rainforest could − as global temperatures rise and human demands multiply − collapse to something more like dry savannah.

The latest study, in the journal Nature, is a progress report on an ecological catastrophe. Researchers flew 590 missions from four locations above the forest between 2010 and 2018 to make precise measurements of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide released from stressed and damaged vegetation below.

They found that eastern Amazonia on the whole surrendered more carbon than the forest to the west: over the past 40 years, this region has been more systematically invaded, felled, burned and baked by rising temperatures.

South-eastern Amazonia, in particular, now releases more carbon than it absorbs. Carbon that had once been stored in timber, foliage and soils is now escaping into the atmosphere to make climate change even more hazardous. Researchers estimate that the entire forest is home to 123 billion metric tons of carbon: as more escapes, so much the higher the planetary thermometer could rise.

“It is almost impossible to restore the myriad values of intact forests once they are lost”

And extreme drought and extended wildfires will be among the agents that do the damage, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers looked at a tract of forest about twice the size of Belgium in eastern Amazonia − it would amount to just 1.2% of the entire Brazilian Amazon rainforest − after the drought triggered by a largely natural climate phenomenon known as El Niño in 2015 and 2016.

They calculate that drought and fire accounted for 2.5 billion trees and shrubs, and the loss of these released 495 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air above them. Although, as the rains resumed, the vegetation started to recover, three years later only about a third of the emitted carbon dioxide had been re-absorbed.

But drought and wildfire are not the only agents of destruction: human intrusion is even more destructive, and tends to change the forest forever.

The Wildlife Conservation Society and the WorldWide Fund for Nature  report in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change that the extractive industries authorised by governments have gained concessions over huge areas of what conservationists define as tropical intact forested landscapes; that is, the jungles of the Amazon and the Congo, and South-east Asia.

Avoiding disturbance

These intact forests store around two-fifths of all tropical forest carbon, and at least a third of their area is home to − and is protected by − groups recognised as politically and economically marginalised indigenous people.

So undisturbed forest is important for the myriad as-yet-unidentified wild plants and animals that define an ecosystem; it is also an important part of the human mosaic.

The study is only a first measure of the risk to the remaining tropical wilderness. Although extractive industries are more interested in the oil, gas and minerals that lie beneath the forest floor, they depend on roads, pipelines and power lines, housing settlements and supply chains that divide and disturb what had once been wilderness.

That triggers a cascade of other consequences. Loss and disturbance become inevitable and may be permanent. As the researchers point out: “It is almost impossible to restore the myriad values of intact forests once they are lost.” − Climate News Network

Emissions, Land Use

Real cost of net zero carbon could be mass hunger

August 10th, 2021, by Paul Brown

Governments and companies are happy to make net zero carbon pledges. Their real cost could be ruinous for the poor.

LONDON, 10 August, 2021 − Plans for removing carbon from the atmosphere, if they proved workable, could exact a lethal price from those least able to afford it: starvation for the world’s poorest people. Anti-poverty campaigners say implementing some net zero carbon schemes could devastate the prospects for global agriculture.

A report by Oxfam International, the global campaign to end poverty, says one of the favoured schemes, planting trees, is totally unrealistic, as it would require 1.6 billion hectares of new forests, an area five times the size of India, and greater than all the existing farmland on the planet.

To prevent irreversible damage to the climate and limit temperature rise to the internationally agreed target of 1.5°C above historic levels, governments need to be on track by 2030 to cut carbon emissions by 45% from their 2010 levels, according to the UNFCCC, the United Nations climate change convention.

It says countries’ current plans to cut emissions are inadequate to limit warning to the more lenient 2°C target agreed at its meeting in Paris in 2015, let alone to the 1.5°C that scientists say is necessary. Oxfam says the current plans will achieve only a 1% reduction in emissions, a long way from the 45% that is needed.

Risky gamble

The current lack of governmental action on climate is undermining the efforts of Oxfam and many others to tackle inequality and poverty around the world, while the climate crisis is worsening the humanitarian crisis, hunger and migration.

Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International’s climate change lead, said: “‘Net zero’ should be based on ‘real zero’ targets that require drastic and genuine cuts in emissions, phasing out fossil fuels and investing in clean energy and supply chains. Instead, too many ‘net zero’ commitments provide a fig leaf for climate inaction. They are a dangerous gamble with our planet’s future.

“Nature and land-based carbon removal schemes must be pursued in a much more cautious way. Under current plans, there is simply not enough land in the world to realise them all. They could instead spark even more hunger, land grabs and human rights abuses.”

Separately Patricia Espinosa, the UNFCCC’s executive secretary, also expressed concern at what she said was governments’ failure to be realistic on net zero carbon.

Every government is supposed to have submitted its “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) by 31July, stating the emissions it plans to make to contribute to the target of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Only 110 of the 197 governments that signed up in Paris to provide one had done so by the deadline.

“Nature and land-based carbon removal schemes must be pursued in a much more cautious way”

“Recent extreme heat waves, droughts and floods across the globe are a dire warning that much more needs to be done, and much more quickly, to change our current pathway. This can only be achieved through more ambitious NDCs”, Patricia Espinosa said.

The Oxfam report says the world’s three largest carbon emitters − China, the US and the EU − have pledged to reach net zero by mid-century, but that their plans are vague and unverifiable.

Some plans − Colombia’s, for example − require reforesting on a grand scale. Its forests are still disappearing alarmingly fast, but it pledges to reforest one billion hectares of land by 2030, although there is no sign of that happening.

One-fifth of the world’s 2,000 largest public companies now have net zero goals that depend on land-based carbon sinks. Four of the world’s largest oil companies − BP, Eni, Shell and TotalEnergies − would have to forest an area of land twice the size of the UK to achieve net zero by 2050.

Trusting technology

But unlikely pledges on forests are not the only weaknesses of government and corporation planning to make net zero carbon a possibility. For example the UK, host to November’s COP-26 climate talks, relies heavily on unproven technologies that will magically be developed and built in time to reach net zero by 2050.

These include a new generation of nuclear power stations that are still at the early development stage. The UK is also relying on large-scale carbon capture and storage – a long-promised technology, many of whose bids to succeed have been abandoned as too expensive and impractical. The government hopes as well to replace fossil fuel gas with green hydrogen produced from surplus renewable energy and nuclear power – a hugely ambitious idea.

Meanwhile job-producing and much-needed plans to insulate homes and improve building standards, promised both last year and this, have been postponed again.

Although this is the quickest and easiest way of reducing the UK’s largest source of emissions, the contribution from buildings, the government has met opposition from house builders, many of whom are large donors to the ruling Conservative party’s funds. − Climate News Network

Governments and companies are happy to make net zero carbon pledges. Their real cost could be ruinous for the poor.

LONDON, 10 August, 2021 − Plans for removing carbon from the atmosphere, if they proved workable, could exact a lethal price from those least able to afford it: starvation for the world’s poorest people. Anti-poverty campaigners say implementing some net zero carbon schemes could devastate the prospects for global agriculture.

A report by Oxfam International, the global campaign to end poverty, says one of the favoured schemes, planting trees, is totally unrealistic, as it would require 1.6 billion hectares of new forests, an area five times the size of India, and greater than all the existing farmland on the planet.

To prevent irreversible damage to the climate and limit temperature rise to the internationally agreed target of 1.5°C above historic levels, governments need to be on track by 2030 to cut carbon emissions by 45% from their 2010 levels, according to the UNFCCC, the United Nations climate change convention.

It says countries’ current plans to cut emissions are inadequate to limit warning to the more lenient 2°C target agreed at its meeting in Paris in 2015, let alone to the 1.5°C that scientists say is necessary. Oxfam says the current plans will achieve only a 1% reduction in emissions, a long way from the 45% that is needed.

Risky gamble

The current lack of governmental action on climate is undermining the efforts of Oxfam and many others to tackle inequality and poverty around the world, while the climate crisis is worsening the humanitarian crisis, hunger and migration.

Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International’s climate change lead, said: “‘Net zero’ should be based on ‘real zero’ targets that require drastic and genuine cuts in emissions, phasing out fossil fuels and investing in clean energy and supply chains. Instead, too many ‘net zero’ commitments provide a fig leaf for climate inaction. They are a dangerous gamble with our planet’s future.

“Nature and land-based carbon removal schemes must be pursued in a much more cautious way. Under current plans, there is simply not enough land in the world to realise them all. They could instead spark even more hunger, land grabs and human rights abuses.”

Separately Patricia Espinosa, the UNFCCC’s executive secretary, also expressed concern at what she said was governments’ failure to be realistic on net zero carbon.

Every government is supposed to have submitted its “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) by 31July, stating the emissions it plans to make to contribute to the target of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Only 110 of the 197 governments that signed up in Paris to provide one had done so by the deadline.

“Nature and land-based carbon removal schemes must be pursued in a much more cautious way”

“Recent extreme heat waves, droughts and floods across the globe are a dire warning that much more needs to be done, and much more quickly, to change our current pathway. This can only be achieved through more ambitious NDCs”, Patricia Espinosa said.

The Oxfam report says the world’s three largest carbon emitters − China, the US and the EU − have pledged to reach net zero by mid-century, but that their plans are vague and unverifiable.

Some plans − Colombia’s, for example − require reforesting on a grand scale. Its forests are still disappearing alarmingly fast, but it pledges to reforest one billion hectares of land by 2030, although there is no sign of that happening.

One-fifth of the world’s 2,000 largest public companies now have net zero goals that depend on land-based carbon sinks. Four of the world’s largest oil companies − BP, Eni, Shell and TotalEnergies − would have to forest an area of land twice the size of the UK to achieve net zero by 2050.

Trusting technology

But unlikely pledges on forests are not the only weaknesses of government and corporation planning to make net zero carbon a possibility. For example the UK, host to November’s COP-26 climate talks, relies heavily on unproven technologies that will magically be developed and built in time to reach net zero by 2050.

These include a new generation of nuclear power stations that are still at the early development stage. The UK is also relying on large-scale carbon capture and storage – a long-promised technology, many of whose bids to succeed have been abandoned as too expensive and impractical. The government hopes as well to replace fossil fuel gas with green hydrogen produced from surplus renewable energy and nuclear power – a hugely ambitious idea.

Meanwhile job-producing and much-needed plans to insulate homes and improve building standards, promised both last year and this, have been postponed again.

Although this is the quickest and easiest way of reducing the UK’s largest source of emissions, the contribution from buildings, the government has met opposition from house builders, many of whom are large donors to the ruling Conservative party’s funds. − Climate News Network

Emissions

Gulf Stream puzzles science − but don’t panic yet

August 9th, 2021, by Tim Radford

Could an ocean circulation system − the Gulf Stream, say − sort of  shut down? And what would that do to the world’s climate?

LONDON, 9 August, 2021 − Once again, new research has warned that one of the great engines of global climate, known variously as the Atlantic conveyor belt, a current that spans the entire ocean from the surface to its lowest depths, or (not very accurately) the Gulf Stream, could be about to falter.

That is, thanks to global heating, it could be about to switch from a relatively stable state to a “critical transition” towards a much feebler regime.

If it does so, that’s bad news for Europe, because part of what oceanographers call the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is the Gulf Stream, a surface flow that brings tropical warmth to what would otherwise be chilly north-western European nations.

And it could be very bad news for billions in tropical Africa, Asia and South America, because it could trigger changes in the tropical monsoon system.

Repeated warnings

Climate scientists have been measuring indicators of possible change in the ocean circulation system for at least two decades: any shift in ocean behaviour could signal a tipping point, a serious shift in climate for the terrestrial world.

The current brings warm, dense salty water north to the Arctic, where it meets less dense meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic glaciers and dives to the ocean floor, to flow south all the way to Antarctica before it surfaces again.

Researchers have warned on an almost yearly basis that as greenhouse gas emissions grow, and global temperatures creep up, the ocean currents could become less stable: Europe’s relatively mellow climate could cool; it could do so some time this century; and when it did, it would disrupt global weather patterns.

The latest study, in the journal Nature Climate Change, is partly based on long-term climate data and reconstructions of past climates, themselves based on ice cores, fossil evidence and ocean deposits.

“If AMOC shuts down, this could negatively impact the climate further afield, such as the West African monsoon system”

These suggest that AMOC can exist in a stable state, or a weak one: more to the point, as it weakens, it could suddenly shift or tip into a new circulation mode. And what could be one of the agents of sudden change might be the increasing flow of cold fresh water from the warming Arctic.

This is consistent with many of the observations of the last decade. What isn’t certain is whether a sudden change is imminent. Is the seeming weakening of the flow part of a long-term natural pattern, or does it herald a dramatic loss of stability? What is the Gulf Stream really up to?

“The difference is crucial, because the loss of dynamical stability would imply that AMOC has approached its critical threshold, beyond which a substantial and in practice likely irreversible transition to the weak mode could occur,” said Niklas Boers of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, the author of the research.

“I wouldn’t have expected that the excessive amounts of fresh water added in the course of the last century would already produce such a response in the overturning circulation.”

Winners and losers

Dr Boers calls for more and more detailed research, and for better climate models that would allow climate scientists to make a more precise judgment of the consequences of what could be a shutdown of ocean circulation. The case is not closed, and Professor Tim Palmer of the University of Oxford, UK, points out that the study is based on indirect evidence.

Direct observations of the deep ocean current do not, he says, suggest that the Atlantic conveyor belt could be close to collapse or shutdown. But he too has argued for a concerted international effort to build better computer simulations of the planetary climate system. This could help to show what is happening to the Gulf Stream.

“The Gulf Stream is forced by atmospheric winds and these will continue to blow. If the AMOC does shut down, the Gulf Stream will flow a little further south than where it flows now. This will lead to cooler temperatures over the North Atlantic and hence over Northern Europe. This may help offset the effects of climate change in these regions (and potentially help stabilise Greenland ice loss − which would be a good thing),” Professor Palmer said.

“On the other hand, if AMOC shuts down, this could negatively impact the climate further afield, such as the West African monsoon system and the moisture flow into the Amazon.” − Climate News Network

Could an ocean circulation system − the Gulf Stream, say − sort of  shut down? And what would that do to the world’s climate?

LONDON, 9 August, 2021 − Once again, new research has warned that one of the great engines of global climate, known variously as the Atlantic conveyor belt, a current that spans the entire ocean from the surface to its lowest depths, or (not very accurately) the Gulf Stream, could be about to falter.

That is, thanks to global heating, it could be about to switch from a relatively stable state to a “critical transition” towards a much feebler regime.

If it does so, that’s bad news for Europe, because part of what oceanographers call the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is the Gulf Stream, a surface flow that brings tropical warmth to what would otherwise be chilly north-western European nations.

And it could be very bad news for billions in tropical Africa, Asia and South America, because it could trigger changes in the tropical monsoon system.

Repeated warnings

Climate scientists have been measuring indicators of possible change in the ocean circulation system for at least two decades: any shift in ocean behaviour could signal a tipping point, a serious shift in climate for the terrestrial world.

The current brings warm, dense salty water north to the Arctic, where it meets less dense meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic glaciers and dives to the ocean floor, to flow south all the way to Antarctica before it surfaces again.

Researchers have warned on an almost yearly basis that as greenhouse gas emissions grow, and global temperatures creep up, the ocean currents could become less stable: Europe’s relatively mellow climate could cool; it could do so some time this century; and when it did, it would disrupt global weather patterns.

The latest study, in the journal Nature Climate Change, is partly based on long-term climate data and reconstructions of past climates, themselves based on ice cores, fossil evidence and ocean deposits.

“If AMOC shuts down, this could negatively impact the climate further afield, such as the West African monsoon system”

These suggest that AMOC can exist in a stable state, or a weak one: more to the point, as it weakens, it could suddenly shift or tip into a new circulation mode. And what could be one of the agents of sudden change might be the increasing flow of cold fresh water from the warming Arctic.

This is consistent with many of the observations of the last decade. What isn’t certain is whether a sudden change is imminent. Is the seeming weakening of the flow part of a long-term natural pattern, or does it herald a dramatic loss of stability? What is the Gulf Stream really up to?

“The difference is crucial, because the loss of dynamical stability would imply that AMOC has approached its critical threshold, beyond which a substantial and in practice likely irreversible transition to the weak mode could occur,” said Niklas Boers of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, the author of the research.

“I wouldn’t have expected that the excessive amounts of fresh water added in the course of the last century would already produce such a response in the overturning circulation.”

Winners and losers

Dr Boers calls for more and more detailed research, and for better climate models that would allow climate scientists to make a more precise judgment of the consequences of what could be a shutdown of ocean circulation. The case is not closed, and Professor Tim Palmer of the University of Oxford, UK, points out that the study is based on indirect evidence.

Direct observations of the deep ocean current do not, he says, suggest that the Atlantic conveyor belt could be close to collapse or shutdown. But he too has argued for a concerted international effort to build better computer simulations of the planetary climate system. This could help to show what is happening to the Gulf Stream.

“The Gulf Stream is forced by atmospheric winds and these will continue to blow. If the AMOC does shut down, the Gulf Stream will flow a little further south than where it flows now. This will lead to cooler temperatures over the North Atlantic and hence over Northern Europe. This may help offset the effects of climate change in these regions (and potentially help stabilise Greenland ice loss − which would be a good thing),” Professor Palmer said.

“On the other hand, if AMOC shuts down, this could negatively impact the climate further afield, such as the West African monsoon system and the moisture flow into the Amazon.” − Climate News Network

Governance, Negotiations

UK says a failure to act on the climate ‘is justified’

August 6th, 2021, by Alex Kirby

Three months before hosting the UN conference, COP-26, the UK says a failure to act on the climate treaty can be justified.

LONDON, 6 August, 2021 − In a remarkable challenge to the global consensus that the climate crisis is an urgent threat to the planet, the  United Kingdom has argued that a failure to act on the climate treaty agreed in 2015 can be justified.

Its stance is all the more bizarre as in less than three months the UK government is to host the crucial United Nations climate conference, COP-26, in the Scottish city of Glasgow, starting on 1 November.

The government’s case set out in its response to a legal action brought in May by three young Britons, Adetola Stephanie Onamade, Marina Tricks and Jerry Amokwandoh, who said their human rights were being breached by the government’s failure to act decisively on the climate crisis.

The action is also being brought by Plan B, the legal charity behind a failed attempt to block the expansion of Heathrow airport, and its director, Tim Crosland.

The government claims that it is doing enough to comply legally with the Paris Agreement, concluded six years ago in the French capital. Even if it is not, it argues, there are no grounds for the courts to intervene: it is for it alone to weigh the economic and environmental arguments.

In its reply to the claimants’ case, it says of its climate policies: “Any inadvertent and indirect discriminatory impacts would fall well within the UK’s margin of appreciation, and be objectively and reasonably justified, if they could be established by the claimants.”

“I don’t consent to my children being treated as collateral damage”

Tim Crosland said: “The Government’s real position is that the devastating, disproportionate and discriminatory impacts for the younger generation and for whole regions of the world − those who have contributed least to the crisis − can be ‘objectively and reasonably justified’.

“Presumably, that means it considers our young people ‘collateral damage’ in its pursuit of vast short-term profits for the few. But I don’t consent to my children being treated as collateral damage.”

The government claims to be responding to the advice it has received from the Climate Change Committee, an independent body advising it on progress made in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The joint foreword to the Committee’s latest report, however, tells a different story. It says: “It is hard to discern any comprehensive strategy in the climate plans we have seen [from the government] in the last 12 months. There are gaps and ambiguities  . . . We continue to blunder into high-carbon choices.

“Our planning system and other fundamental structures have not been recast to meet our legal and international climate commitments.”

Bid for recognition

The Glasgow conference will be an acutely anxious occasion for the British prime minister Boris Johnson, who is committed to making good on the UK’s attempts to be recognised as a world leader on the climate crisis.

The meeting’s main aim is to put flesh on the bones of the Paris Agreement, reached with the backing of 195 of the world’s governments. That planned a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions progressively: Glasgow’s task is to make the real progress which Paris did little more than foreshadow.

If Johnson can leave Glasgow with substantial progress assured, he will be able to lay claim to success of a sort which has eluded his predecessors for 20 years or more. If he fails, he will struggle to be taken seriously again either at home or in most foreign capitals

The United Kingdom has a record that deserves at least qualified praise, notably for its commitment, announced in April, to cut carbon emissions by 78% before 2035. That date is 15 years earlier than the target date already in place, and if the government ensures that it is achieved it really will count for something. But that is a massive “if”.

Leadership material?

There are questions too over its commitment to ending the exploitation and use of fossil fuels fast enough and to improving adaptation to rising temperatures.

It is easy to criticise Johnson for the deficiencies in his climate policies, and for his patchy record in implementing many of them. He is not alone in his failure so far to act with the vision and energy the crisis demands.

But that’s what we reasonably expect from genuine leaders: an ability to be different, to step beyond business-as-usual to something so radically different that few of us can even imagine it.

If Johnson can show that sort of world-leading ability in Glasgow he will confound his critics, and make the world a little safer too. The “ifs” grow more demanding with every repetition. − Climate News Network

Three months before hosting the UN conference, COP-26, the UK says a failure to act on the climate treaty can be justified.

LONDON, 6 August, 2021 − In a remarkable challenge to the global consensus that the climate crisis is an urgent threat to the planet, the  United Kingdom has argued that a failure to act on the climate treaty agreed in 2015 can be justified.

Its stance is all the more bizarre as in less than three months the UK government is to host the crucial United Nations climate conference, COP-26, in the Scottish city of Glasgow, starting on 1 November.

The government’s case set out in its response to a legal action brought in May by three young Britons, Adetola Stephanie Onamade, Marina Tricks and Jerry Amokwandoh, who said their human rights were being breached by the government’s failure to act decisively on the climate crisis.

The action is also being brought by Plan B, the legal charity behind a failed attempt to block the expansion of Heathrow airport, and its director, Tim Crosland.

The government claims that it is doing enough to comply legally with the Paris Agreement, concluded six years ago in the French capital. Even if it is not, it argues, there are no grounds for the courts to intervene: it is for it alone to weigh the economic and environmental arguments.

In its reply to the claimants’ case, it says of its climate policies: “Any inadvertent and indirect discriminatory impacts would fall well within the UK’s margin of appreciation, and be objectively and reasonably justified, if they could be established by the claimants.”

“I don’t consent to my children being treated as collateral damage”

Tim Crosland said: “The Government’s real position is that the devastating, disproportionate and discriminatory impacts for the younger generation and for whole regions of the world − those who have contributed least to the crisis − can be ‘objectively and reasonably justified’.

“Presumably, that means it considers our young people ‘collateral damage’ in its pursuit of vast short-term profits for the few. But I don’t consent to my children being treated as collateral damage.”

The government claims to be responding to the advice it has received from the Climate Change Committee, an independent body advising it on progress made in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The joint foreword to the Committee’s latest report, however, tells a different story. It says: “It is hard to discern any comprehensive strategy in the climate plans we have seen [from the government] in the last 12 months. There are gaps and ambiguities  . . . We continue to blunder into high-carbon choices.

“Our planning system and other fundamental structures have not been recast to meet our legal and international climate commitments.”

Bid for recognition

The Glasgow conference will be an acutely anxious occasion for the British prime minister Boris Johnson, who is committed to making good on the UK’s attempts to be recognised as a world leader on the climate crisis.

The meeting’s main aim is to put flesh on the bones of the Paris Agreement, reached with the backing of 195 of the world’s governments. That planned a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions progressively: Glasgow’s task is to make the real progress which Paris did little more than foreshadow.

If Johnson can leave Glasgow with substantial progress assured, he will be able to lay claim to success of a sort which has eluded his predecessors for 20 years or more. If he fails, he will struggle to be taken seriously again either at home or in most foreign capitals

The United Kingdom has a record that deserves at least qualified praise, notably for its commitment, announced in April, to cut carbon emissions by 78% before 2035. That date is 15 years earlier than the target date already in place, and if the government ensures that it is achieved it really will count for something. But that is a massive “if”.

Leadership material?

There are questions too over its commitment to ending the exploitation and use of fossil fuels fast enough and to improving adaptation to rising temperatures.

It is easy to criticise Johnson for the deficiencies in his climate policies, and for his patchy record in implementing many of them. He is not alone in his failure so far to act with the vision and energy the crisis demands.

But that’s what we reasonably expect from genuine leaders: an ability to be different, to step beyond business-as-usual to something so radically different that few of us can even imagine it.

If Johnson can show that sort of world-leading ability in Glasgow he will confound his critics, and make the world a little safer too. The “ifs” grow more demanding with every repetition. − Climate News Network

Emissions

Flood risk will rise as climate heat intensifies

August 5th, 2021, by Tim Radford

A warmer world will be a wetter one. Ever more people will face a higher flood risk as rivers rise and city streets fill up.

LONDON, 5 August, 2021 − In a world of climate change, the flood risk will be more intense and more frequent, presenting higher danger to ever more people in a greater number of countries.

In this century alone, the global population has increased by 18%. But the number of people exposed to damage and death by rising waters has increased by more than 34%.

This finding is not based on mathematical simulations powered by weather data. It is based on direct and detailed observation. Researchers report in the journal Nature that they looked at more than 12,700 satellite images, at a resolution of 250 metres, of 913 large flood events between the years 2000 and 2015.

During those years, and those floods, water spilled from the rivers to inundate a total of 2.23 million square kilometres. This, considered as one event, would cover a total area larger than Saudi Arabia. And during those first 15 years of the century, the number of people directly affected by the floods was at least 255m, and possibly 290m.

“Governments across the world have been too slow in reducing greenhouse gas emissions . . . This, alongside the current floods in Europe, is the wake-up call we need”

In those 15 years, the numbers of people in the way of the ever more devastating floods rose by at least 58m, and possibly as many as 86m. That’s a rise of as much as 24%.

It will get worse. According to the researchers, climate change and the multiplication of human numbers will extend the reach of flood risk: 32 nations already experience ever more flooding. By 2030, another 25 countries will have joined them.

The humans caught up in the sickening flow of mud, sewage and silt spilling from the rising rivers will mostly be in south and south-east Asia − think of the Indus, Ganges-Brahmaputra and Mekong Rivers − and many of them will have migrated to the danger zones: poverty and population pressure will leave them no choice.

None of this should come as a surprise. In the past 50 years, according to a new compilation by the World Meteorological Organisation, weather, climate and water were implicated in 50% of all disasters of any kind; in 45% of all reported deaths and 74% of all economic losses. Floods have claimed 58,700 lives in the last five decades. Between them, floods and storms − the two are often linked − cost Europe at least US$377bn in economic losses.

Higher flooding frequency

And things will certainly get much worse for Europe as global average temperatures continue to rise in response to ever higher greenhouse gas emissions from ever greater use of fossil fuels. That is because what had once been relatively rare events will grow in force and frequency.

More heat means more evaporation, and a warmer atmosphere has a greater capacity to absorb water vapour. So it will rain harder. And the arrival, say researchers in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, of intense, slow-moving storms that precipitate devastating flash floods of the kind that swept Belgium and Germany this summer will by the close of the century become 14 times more frequent.

“Governments across the world have been too slow in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming continues apace,” said Hayley Fowler, a climate scientist at Newcastle University in the UK, and one of the researchers.

“This study suggests that changes to extreme storms will be significant and cause an increase in the frequency of devastating flooding across Europe. This, alongside the current floods in Europe, is the wake-up call we need.” − Climate News Network

A warmer world will be a wetter one. Ever more people will face a higher flood risk as rivers rise and city streets fill up.

LONDON, 5 August, 2021 − In a world of climate change, the flood risk will be more intense and more frequent, presenting higher danger to ever more people in a greater number of countries.

In this century alone, the global population has increased by 18%. But the number of people exposed to damage and death by rising waters has increased by more than 34%.

This finding is not based on mathematical simulations powered by weather data. It is based on direct and detailed observation. Researchers report in the journal Nature that they looked at more than 12,700 satellite images, at a resolution of 250 metres, of 913 large flood events between the years 2000 and 2015.

During those years, and those floods, water spilled from the rivers to inundate a total of 2.23 million square kilometres. This, considered as one event, would cover a total area larger than Saudi Arabia. And during those first 15 years of the century, the number of people directly affected by the floods was at least 255m, and possibly 290m.

“Governments across the world have been too slow in reducing greenhouse gas emissions . . . This, alongside the current floods in Europe, is the wake-up call we need”

In those 15 years, the numbers of people in the way of the ever more devastating floods rose by at least 58m, and possibly as many as 86m. That’s a rise of as much as 24%.

It will get worse. According to the researchers, climate change and the multiplication of human numbers will extend the reach of flood risk: 32 nations already experience ever more flooding. By 2030, another 25 countries will have joined them.

The humans caught up in the sickening flow of mud, sewage and silt spilling from the rising rivers will mostly be in south and south-east Asia − think of the Indus, Ganges-Brahmaputra and Mekong Rivers − and many of them will have migrated to the danger zones: poverty and population pressure will leave them no choice.

None of this should come as a surprise. In the past 50 years, according to a new compilation by the World Meteorological Organisation, weather, climate and water were implicated in 50% of all disasters of any kind; in 45% of all reported deaths and 74% of all economic losses. Floods have claimed 58,700 lives in the last five decades. Between them, floods and storms − the two are often linked − cost Europe at least US$377bn in economic losses.

Higher flooding frequency

And things will certainly get much worse for Europe as global average temperatures continue to rise in response to ever higher greenhouse gas emissions from ever greater use of fossil fuels. That is because what had once been relatively rare events will grow in force and frequency.

More heat means more evaporation, and a warmer atmosphere has a greater capacity to absorb water vapour. So it will rain harder. And the arrival, say researchers in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, of intense, slow-moving storms that precipitate devastating flash floods of the kind that swept Belgium and Germany this summer will by the close of the century become 14 times more frequent.

“Governments across the world have been too slow in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming continues apace,” said Hayley Fowler, a climate scientist at Newcastle University in the UK, and one of the researchers.

“This study suggests that changes to extreme storms will be significant and cause an increase in the frequency of devastating flooding across Europe. This, alongside the current floods in Europe, is the wake-up call we need.” − Climate News Network

Governance, Wealth

Ailing Earth can’t cope as human demands soar

August 4th, 2021, by Tim Radford

Climate physicians who have re-checked global heating say the Earth’s condition is critical, worsening as human demands soar.

LONDON, 4 August, 2021 − Just 20 months after warning the world that climate change threatens “untold suffering” for millions, a team of scientists has checked the data and issued an even more urgent warning: all the evidence is that the climate emergency will get worse as human demands soar.

In 2019, more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries examined what they called the planet’s “vital signs” and warned that, without action, disaster threatened.

Since then, another 2,800 researchers have signed their declaration and authorities in 34 nations have declared or recognised a climate emergency. And since then, 11 of those signatories have identified an “unprecedented surge in climate-related disasters”.

Among these have been devastating floods in South America and south-east Asia, record-shattering heat waves and wildfires in Australia and the western United States, an extraordinary Atlantic hurricane season, and devastating cyclones in Africa, South Asia and the western Pacific.

“Policies to combat the climate crisis should address the root cause: human over-exploitation of the planet”

“There is also mounting evidence that we are nearing or have already crossed tipping points associated with critical parts of the Earth system, including the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, warm-water coral reefs, and the Amazon rainforest,” they warn in the journal Bioscience.

The year 2020 was the second hottest in history. The five hottest years on record have all happened since 2015. Three greenhouse gases − carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide − set records for atmospheric concentration in 2020 and again in 2021: in April of this year carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a ratio of 416 parts per million. This is the highest monthly global average ever recorded. Governments need to act urgently to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“We also need to stop treating the climate emergency as a stand-alone issue − global heating is not the sole symptom of our stressed Earth system”, said William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University in the US, who led the 2019 initiative and the latest study.

“Policies to combat the climate crisis or any other symptoms should address their root cause: human over-exploitation of the planet.”

Growing urgency

The researchers tracked 31 variable measures to find new record highs and lows in 18 of them. These included:

  • Forest loss rates in the Brazilian Amazon. These have increased in the last two years, reaching a 12-year high in 2020 with the loss of 1.11 million hectares of tree cover.
  • The global count of ruminant livestock. This has now gone past 4 billion: on the scales, the mass of sheep, cattle and so on would outweigh all humans and all wild mammals combined.
  • Global gross domestic product: this dropped by 3.6% in 2020, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, but is heading again to an all-time high.
  • Fossil fuel energy consumption fell during the pandemic months, along with carbon dioxide emissions: on present signs, these will rise and go on rising.
  • Solar and wind power consumption rose by 57% between 2018 and 2021 but is still 19 times lower than fossil fuel consumption.
  • Greenland and Antarctica: these went on losing record quantities of ice, while Arctic sea ice continues to fall to near all-time low levels each summer.
  • Glaciers are now losing 31% more snow and ice per year than they did 15 years ago.
  • The oceans: these continued to become ever more acid. Combined with higher sea temperatures, this threatens coral reefs upon which more than 500 million people depend for fisheries, tourism and storm surge protection.

The Bioscence study is only the latest in a series of increasingly urgent warnings from scientists, and from groups of scientists, who have looked at climate trends, the degradation of the planet’s ecosystems and the transformation of the Earth’s surface by human numbers and human demand.

Priority for basics

Separate studies have examined the so-called “tipping points” that could precipitate catastrophic climate change; have assessed the likelihood of an irreversible trend towards a “hothouse” Earth; and have identified a “ghastly” future for humanity in a world of ever-greater heat extremes, more violent storms and ever-rising sea levels.

And these too have all called for concerted international action to contain demand, alter economies and share resources more fairly. The latest study warns that the analysis reflects “the consequences of unrelenting business as usual”, and calls for profound changes in human behaviour, including a switch away from fossil fuels and the protection of the planet’s biodiversity − and of the wildernesses that absorb atmospheric carbon.

“All climate actions should focus on social justice by reducing inequality and prioritising basic human needs,” Professor Ripple said. “And climate change education should be included in school core curriculums around the world − that would result in greater awareness of the climate emergency and empower learners to take action.” − Climate News Network

Climate physicians who have re-checked global heating say the Earth’s condition is critical, worsening as human demands soar.

LONDON, 4 August, 2021 − Just 20 months after warning the world that climate change threatens “untold suffering” for millions, a team of scientists has checked the data and issued an even more urgent warning: all the evidence is that the climate emergency will get worse as human demands soar.

In 2019, more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries examined what they called the planet’s “vital signs” and warned that, without action, disaster threatened.

Since then, another 2,800 researchers have signed their declaration and authorities in 34 nations have declared or recognised a climate emergency. And since then, 11 of those signatories have identified an “unprecedented surge in climate-related disasters”.

Among these have been devastating floods in South America and south-east Asia, record-shattering heat waves and wildfires in Australia and the western United States, an extraordinary Atlantic hurricane season, and devastating cyclones in Africa, South Asia and the western Pacific.

“Policies to combat the climate crisis should address the root cause: human over-exploitation of the planet”

“There is also mounting evidence that we are nearing or have already crossed tipping points associated with critical parts of the Earth system, including the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, warm-water coral reefs, and the Amazon rainforest,” they warn in the journal Bioscience.

The year 2020 was the second hottest in history. The five hottest years on record have all happened since 2015. Three greenhouse gases − carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide − set records for atmospheric concentration in 2020 and again in 2021: in April of this year carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a ratio of 416 parts per million. This is the highest monthly global average ever recorded. Governments need to act urgently to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“We also need to stop treating the climate emergency as a stand-alone issue − global heating is not the sole symptom of our stressed Earth system”, said William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University in the US, who led the 2019 initiative and the latest study.

“Policies to combat the climate crisis or any other symptoms should address their root cause: human over-exploitation of the planet.”

Growing urgency

The researchers tracked 31 variable measures to find new record highs and lows in 18 of them. These included:

  • Forest loss rates in the Brazilian Amazon. These have increased in the last two years, reaching a 12-year high in 2020 with the loss of 1.11 million hectares of tree cover.
  • The global count of ruminant livestock. This has now gone past 4 billion: on the scales, the mass of sheep, cattle and so on would outweigh all humans and all wild mammals combined.
  • Global gross domestic product: this dropped by 3.6% in 2020, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, but is heading again to an all-time high.
  • Fossil fuel energy consumption fell during the pandemic months, along with carbon dioxide emissions: on present signs, these will rise and go on rising.
  • Solar and wind power consumption rose by 57% between 2018 and 2021 but is still 19 times lower than fossil fuel consumption.
  • Greenland and Antarctica: these went on losing record quantities of ice, while Arctic sea ice continues to fall to near all-time low levels each summer.
  • Glaciers are now losing 31% more snow and ice per year than they did 15 years ago.
  • The oceans: these continued to become ever more acid. Combined with higher sea temperatures, this threatens coral reefs upon which more than 500 million people depend for fisheries, tourism and storm surge protection.

The Bioscence study is only the latest in a series of increasingly urgent warnings from scientists, and from groups of scientists, who have looked at climate trends, the degradation of the planet’s ecosystems and the transformation of the Earth’s surface by human numbers and human demand.

Priority for basics

Separate studies have examined the so-called “tipping points” that could precipitate catastrophic climate change; have assessed the likelihood of an irreversible trend towards a “hothouse” Earth; and have identified a “ghastly” future for humanity in a world of ever-greater heat extremes, more violent storms and ever-rising sea levels.

And these too have all called for concerted international action to contain demand, alter economies and share resources more fairly. The latest study warns that the analysis reflects “the consequences of unrelenting business as usual”, and calls for profound changes in human behaviour, including a switch away from fossil fuels and the protection of the planet’s biodiversity − and of the wildernesses that absorb atmospheric carbon.

“All climate actions should focus on social justice by reducing inequality and prioritising basic human needs,” Professor Ripple said. “And climate change education should be included in school core curriculums around the world − that would result in greater awareness of the climate emergency and empower learners to take action.” − Climate News Network

General

Hotter worlds cut humans’ size − and their brains?

July 14th, 2021, by Tim Radford

In a greenhouse world, humans’ size could shrink. And there is a hint of hazard to thinking capacity as well.

LONDON, 14 July, 2021 − As global temperatures rise, humankind might be about to shrink small − and possibly even think small. New research has once again linked creatures’ stature, including humans’ size, with climate conditions and, less certainly, brain size.

The finding is consistent with a biological proposition called Bergmann’s Rule, although it is more an observation than a rule: that members of a species tend to be bigger in colder climates than in warm ones.

British and German researchers report in the journal Nature Communications that they measured 300 fossils of the genus Homo found across the globe and combined their measurements with a reconstruction of the world’s regional climates for the last million years: that is, for each fossil, they were able to pinpoint the place and the temperatures in which it flourished.

And they found that humankind, whether Homo neanderthalensis or the older versions of Homo sapiens, has tended to fluctuate significantly in height and weight over the last million years, and this fluctuation is strongly linked with the temperature. When climates were cold and harsh, body sizes were larger. In warmer regimes, they were smaller.

Over the same period, brain size changed dramatically, but not in step with body size: still, the researchers could see an indirect environmental influence on brain size, possibly linked to the range of nutrients in altered environments.

Shrink for safety

“Our study indicates that climate − particularly temperature − has been the main driver of changes of body size for the past million years,” said Andrea Manica, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Cambridge, and one of the authors.

“We can see from people living today that those in warmer climates tend to be smaller, and those living in colder climates tend to be bigger. We now know that the same climatic influences have been at work for the last million years.”

In colder climates, a larger size means more mass in relation to surface area: that is, in cold weather, large creatures lose body heat more slowly. Conversely, in hot climates, smaller animals can adjust their core temperatures by shedding heat more easily.

The finding is consistent with other studies of change over time in step with temperature. More than eight years ago, US and British scientists suggested that those species that could successfully “dwarf” would be at an advantage in an increasingly hotter world: those humans that survived what could be catastrophic climate change and ever higher temperatures could shrink to the size of J R R Tolkien’s fictional Hobbits.

“Climate − particularly temperature − has been the main driver of changes of body size for the past million years”

It was a warning, not an observation, but since then, as global average temperatures have crept up by little more than 1°C Celsius in the last century, chamois in the Italian Alps have grown on average smaller.

Another team of researchers checked the bulk of North American bison in two regions: those in grazing South Dakota were significantly heavier than their relatives much further south in Oklahoma.The team warned that this finding had costly implications for cattle farmers in an ever-warming world.

Brazilian scientists had already identified what they called “nutritional dwarfism” in north-eastern Brazil, where sustained drought four decades ago left millions in near-starving conditions. A generation of children in the region grew to an average adult height of 1.35 metres.

Diet and food supply are not separable from climatic conditions, so when it comes to brain size, the links are harder to establish. But the fossil measurement data seemed to suggest that brain size was larger when humans lived in ecologically stable areas, or in open steppes and grassland. Such people hunted large animals, which might have fuelled brain growth.

The human brain is a greedy organ: it consumes one-fifth of human energy intake. Quite how and why humans have evolved such big brains is a subject of continuous debate.

Puzzling brains

“We found that different factors determine brain size and body size − they are not under the same evolutionary pressure,” said Manuel Will, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, and another author.

“There is an indirect environmental influence on brain size in more stable and open areas: the amount of nutrients gained from the environment had to be sufficient to allow for the maintenance and growth of our large and energy-demanding brains.”

Human body size is still adapting: those in colder climates tend to be on average larger than those in the tropics. Brain size in humans however may have been shrinking since the end of the last Ice Age almost 12,000 years ago.

Why is not known: it might be explained by changes in human culture and social attitude; it might be connected with the invention of learning technologies. A library becomes in effect brainpower outsourced. Greater dependence on computers might drive down brain size even more. But nobody knows.

“It’s fun to speculate about what will happen to body and brain sizes in the future,” said Professor Manica, “but we should be careful not to extrapolate too much based on the last million years, because so many factors can change.” − Climate News Network

In a greenhouse world, humans’ size could shrink. And there is a hint of hazard to thinking capacity as well.

LONDON, 14 July, 2021 − As global temperatures rise, humankind might be about to shrink small − and possibly even think small. New research has once again linked creatures’ stature, including humans’ size, with climate conditions and, less certainly, brain size.

The finding is consistent with a biological proposition called Bergmann’s Rule, although it is more an observation than a rule: that members of a species tend to be bigger in colder climates than in warm ones.

British and German researchers report in the journal Nature Communications that they measured 300 fossils of the genus Homo found across the globe and combined their measurements with a reconstruction of the world’s regional climates for the last million years: that is, for each fossil, they were able to pinpoint the place and the temperatures in which it flourished.

And they found that humankind, whether Homo neanderthalensis or the older versions of Homo sapiens, has tended to fluctuate significantly in height and weight over the last million years, and this fluctuation is strongly linked with the temperature. When climates were cold and harsh, body sizes were larger. In warmer regimes, they were smaller.

Over the same period, brain size changed dramatically, but not in step with body size: still, the researchers could see an indirect environmental influence on brain size, possibly linked to the range of nutrients in altered environments.

Shrink for safety

“Our study indicates that climate − particularly temperature − has been the main driver of changes of body size for the past million years,” said Andrea Manica, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Cambridge, and one of the authors.

“We can see from people living today that those in warmer climates tend to be smaller, and those living in colder climates tend to be bigger. We now know that the same climatic influences have been at work for the last million years.”

In colder climates, a larger size means more mass in relation to surface area: that is, in cold weather, large creatures lose body heat more slowly. Conversely, in hot climates, smaller animals can adjust their core temperatures by shedding heat more easily.

The finding is consistent with other studies of change over time in step with temperature. More than eight years ago, US and British scientists suggested that those species that could successfully “dwarf” would be at an advantage in an increasingly hotter world: those humans that survived what could be catastrophic climate change and ever higher temperatures could shrink to the size of J R R Tolkien’s fictional Hobbits.

“Climate − particularly temperature − has been the main driver of changes of body size for the past million years”

It was a warning, not an observation, but since then, as global average temperatures have crept up by little more than 1°C Celsius in the last century, chamois in the Italian Alps have grown on average smaller.

Another team of researchers checked the bulk of North American bison in two regions: those in grazing South Dakota were significantly heavier than their relatives much further south in Oklahoma.The team warned that this finding had costly implications for cattle farmers in an ever-warming world.

Brazilian scientists had already identified what they called “nutritional dwarfism” in north-eastern Brazil, where sustained drought four decades ago left millions in near-starving conditions. A generation of children in the region grew to an average adult height of 1.35 metres.

Diet and food supply are not separable from climatic conditions, so when it comes to brain size, the links are harder to establish. But the fossil measurement data seemed to suggest that brain size was larger when humans lived in ecologically stable areas, or in open steppes and grassland. Such people hunted large animals, which might have fuelled brain growth.

The human brain is a greedy organ: it consumes one-fifth of human energy intake. Quite how and why humans have evolved such big brains is a subject of continuous debate.

Puzzling brains

“We found that different factors determine brain size and body size − they are not under the same evolutionary pressure,” said Manuel Will, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, and another author.

“There is an indirect environmental influence on brain size in more stable and open areas: the amount of nutrients gained from the environment had to be sufficient to allow for the maintenance and growth of our large and energy-demanding brains.”

Human body size is still adapting: those in colder climates tend to be on average larger than those in the tropics. Brain size in humans however may have been shrinking since the end of the last Ice Age almost 12,000 years ago.

Why is not known: it might be explained by changes in human culture and social attitude; it might be connected with the invention of learning technologies. A library becomes in effect brainpower outsourced. Greater dependence on computers might drive down brain size even more. But nobody knows.

“It’s fun to speculate about what will happen to body and brain sizes in the future,” said Professor Manica, “but we should be careful not to extrapolate too much based on the last million years, because so many factors can change.” − Climate News Network

Emissions, Land Use

Livestock’s harmful climate impact is growing fast

July 13th, 2021, by Kieran Cooke

Lobbyists are trying to downplay livestock’s harmful climate impact, which adds large amounts of methane to the atmosphere.

DUBLIN, 13 July, 2021 − A summer’s day, the sky is blue and the cattle are quietly meandering about in the meadow, grazing on lush grass. But this idyllic country scene hides a serious problem: livestock’s harmful climate impact.

The flatulence of cattle results in enormous amounts of methane, one of the most potent climate-changing greenhouse gases (GHGs), being released into the atmosphere. And these emissions, which contribute to the danger of global warming on a catastrophic scale, are growing.

According to the latest report on the worldwide outlook for agriculture by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), global carbon emissions from the sector are set to rise by 4% over the next 10 years, mostly as a result of expanding livestock production.

Buoyed by rising meat and dairy demand from what are referred to as middle income countries such as China, farmers are increasing the size of their herds. Giant meat and dairy companies, which farm cattle on an industrial scale, are also upping production.

Livestock – a large proportion of them cattle – are responsible for an estimated 14% of the total annual amount of greenhouse gases discharged worldwide.

“The industry has been borrowing tactics from the fossil fuel playbook”

Here in Ireland – a country which entices tourists with images of its green, pastoral environment – there are seven million cattle, with the country’s dairy herd increasing in size by almost 30% over the past six years.

The OECD says the adoption of new greener technologies across the world’s agricultural sector means that emissions per unit of output – the carbon intensity of production – will decrease significantly in coming years. But a big expansion in livestock production would wipe out those benefits.

“Thus, additional policy effort will be needed for the agricultural sector to effectively contribute to the global reduction in GHG emissions as set in the Paris Agreement,” says the OECD.

Bringing about changes in agricultural policies – whether in Ireland or elsewhere – is a tough task. Farming organisations and lobby groups wield considerable political and financial clout, particularly in countries such as Ireland where agriculture plays a big role in the economy.

Other powerful forces are at work. Jennifer Jacquet is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University who has studied the lobbying methods of the big US meat and dairy companies.

US Republican support

Writing in the Washington Post, Jacquet says the giants of the livestock industry have been seeking to call into question the dangers of global warming.

“Since at least 2006, when the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization  published a report, Livestock’s Long Shadow, cataloguing the sector’s global environmental impacts, the industry has been borrowing tactics from the fossil fuel playbook,” says Jacquet.

“While meat and dairy producers have not claimed that climate change is a liberal hoax, as oil and gas producers did starting in the 1990s, companies have been downplaying the industry’s environmental footprint and undermining climate policy.”

The political and financial lobbying efforts of “big meat” in the US have been successful, particularly among Republican Party officials.

Calls to eat less meat were, said a Republican governor, “a direct attack on our way of life”. Another Republican official had a blunt warming for those seeking to downsize the livestock industry. “Stay out of my kitchen”, he said. − Climate News Network

Lobbyists are trying to downplay livestock’s harmful climate impact, which adds large amounts of methane to the atmosphere.

DUBLIN, 13 July, 2021 − A summer’s day, the sky is blue and the cattle are quietly meandering about in the meadow, grazing on lush grass. But this idyllic country scene hides a serious problem: livestock’s harmful climate impact.

The flatulence of cattle results in enormous amounts of methane, one of the most potent climate-changing greenhouse gases (GHGs), being released into the atmosphere. And these emissions, which contribute to the danger of global warming on a catastrophic scale, are growing.

According to the latest report on the worldwide outlook for agriculture by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), global carbon emissions from the sector are set to rise by 4% over the next 10 years, mostly as a result of expanding livestock production.

Buoyed by rising meat and dairy demand from what are referred to as middle income countries such as China, farmers are increasing the size of their herds. Giant meat and dairy companies, which farm cattle on an industrial scale, are also upping production.

Livestock – a large proportion of them cattle – are responsible for an estimated 14% of the total annual amount of greenhouse gases discharged worldwide.

“The industry has been borrowing tactics from the fossil fuel playbook”

Here in Ireland – a country which entices tourists with images of its green, pastoral environment – there are seven million cattle, with the country’s dairy herd increasing in size by almost 30% over the past six years.

The OECD says the adoption of new greener technologies across the world’s agricultural sector means that emissions per unit of output – the carbon intensity of production – will decrease significantly in coming years. But a big expansion in livestock production would wipe out those benefits.

“Thus, additional policy effort will be needed for the agricultural sector to effectively contribute to the global reduction in GHG emissions as set in the Paris Agreement,” says the OECD.

Bringing about changes in agricultural policies – whether in Ireland or elsewhere – is a tough task. Farming organisations and lobby groups wield considerable political and financial clout, particularly in countries such as Ireland where agriculture plays a big role in the economy.

Other powerful forces are at work. Jennifer Jacquet is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University who has studied the lobbying methods of the big US meat and dairy companies.

US Republican support

Writing in the Washington Post, Jacquet says the giants of the livestock industry have been seeking to call into question the dangers of global warming.

“Since at least 2006, when the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization  published a report, Livestock’s Long Shadow, cataloguing the sector’s global environmental impacts, the industry has been borrowing tactics from the fossil fuel playbook,” says Jacquet.

“While meat and dairy producers have not claimed that climate change is a liberal hoax, as oil and gas producers did starting in the 1990s, companies have been downplaying the industry’s environmental footprint and undermining climate policy.”

The political and financial lobbying efforts of “big meat” in the US have been successful, particularly among Republican Party officials.

Calls to eat less meat were, said a Republican governor, “a direct attack on our way of life”. Another Republican official had a blunt warming for those seeking to downsize the livestock industry. “Stay out of my kitchen”, he said. − Climate News Network