Over ten thousand evacuated & ca. 600 homes gone

From an Article by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, December 31, 2021

Tens of thousands of Coloradans were forced to flee their homes Thursday as two fast-moving wildfires—whipped up by wind gusts reaching 110 mph—tore through communities just outside of Denver, engulfing entire neighborhoods in flames and destroying hundreds of buildings.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has declared a state of emergency to help aid the disaster response as officials characterized the late-December fire event as among the worst in the state’s history. “None of this is normal,” said Colorado state Rep. Leslie Herod (D-8). “We are not OK.”

Experts said the combination of months of unusually dry conditions, warm winter temperatures, and ferocious winds set the stage for the devastating blazes, which meteorologist Eric Holthaus viewed as further evidence that “we are in a climate emergency.”

The Colorado branch of the Sunrise Movement agreed, writing on social media that the fires were “fueled by the climate crisis.” A growing body of evidence has detailed the extent to which human-caused climate change is driving more frequent and intense wildfires in the U.S. and across the globe.

“People are losing their homes and running for their lives from a fire that started December fucking 30th,” Sunrise Colorado tweeted before turning its attention to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and the Big Oil-friendly infrastructure law he helped craft. “Sen. Manchin, your Exxon highway bill isn’t going to save our homes or our lives,” the group said. “Your greed and corruption is not only torching our future. It’s burning our communities and destroying lives tonight.” Manchin, a close ally of the fossil fuel industry, is currently blocking progress on Democrats’ Build Back Better Act, a $1.75 trillion reconciliation package containing hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-related investments.

Officially known as the Marshall and Middle Fork fires, the blazes have thus far torched nearly 600 homes and 1,600 acres in the Boulder County area. Avista Adventist Hospital, a 114-bed facility in Louisville, was forced to evacuate its intensive care units. No deaths and several injuries had been reported as of late Thursday as firefighters worked to contain the damage, an effort they hope will be assisted by a forecasted New Year’s Eve snowstorm.

Colorado Public Radio observed that while the exact cause of the destructive blazes is not yet clear, “early evidence suggests a sparking power line could have ignited the fires.”

“Late-December wildfires aren’t unheard of in Colorado, but the colder fall and winter months used to mean a break from the state’s peak fire season,” the outlet noted. “Scientists and fire ecologists say climate change, fueled by human-made carbon emissions, has added 78 days to the fire season since the 1970s.”

Environmentalist Bill McKibben likened the horrific images emerging from Colorado to “when the comet hits in ‘Don’t Look Up,’” a globally popular new film satirizing climate denial. “So look. Long and hard,” McKibben said. “And then get to work breaking the power of the fossil fuel industry.”

The ice sheets in Antarctica are melting faster and faster

From an Article by Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams News, 4/9/21

A new study is shedding light on just how much ice could be lost around Antarctica if the international community fails to urgently rein in planet-heating emissions, bolstering arguments for bolder climate policies.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that over a third of the area of all Antarctic ice shelves—including 67% of area on the Antarctic Peninsula—could be at risk of collapsing if global temperatures soar to 4°C above pre-industrial levels.

An ice shelf, as NASA explains, “is a thick, floating slab of ice that forms where a glacier or ice flows down a coastline.” They are found only in Antarctica, Greenland, Canada, and the Russian Arctic—and play a key role in limiting sea level rise.

“Ice shelves are important buffers preventing glaciers on land from flowing freely into the ocean and contributing to sea level rise,” explained Ella Gilbert, the study’s lead author, in a statement. “When they collapse, it’s like a giant cork being removed from a bottle, allowing unimaginable amounts of water from glaciers to pour into the sea.”

“We know that when melted ice accumulates on the surface of ice shelves, it can make them fracture and collapse spectacularly,” added Gilbert, a research scientist at the University of Reading. “Previous research has given us the bigger picture in terms of predicting Antarctic ice shelf decline, but our new study uses the latest modelling techniques to fill in the finer detail and provide more precise projections.”

Gilbert and co-author Christoph Kittel of Belgium’s University of Liège conclude that limiting global temperature rise to 2°C rather than 4°C would cut the area at risk in half. “At 1.5°C, just 14% of Antarctica’s ice shelf area would be at risk,” Gilbert noted in The Conversation.

While the 2015 Paris climate agreement aims to keep temperature rise “well below” 2°C, with a more ambitious 1.5°C target, current emissions reduction plans are dramatically out of line with both goals, according to a United Nations analysis.

Gilbert said Thursday that the findings of their new study “highlight the importance of limiting global temperature increases as set out in the Paris agreement if we are to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, including sea level rise.” And, “If temperatures continue to rise at current rates,” she said, “we may lose more Antarctic ice shelves in the coming decades.” Also, “Limiting warming will not just be good for Antarctica — preserving ice shelves means less global sea level rise, and that’s good for us all,” Gilbert added.

The researchers warn that Larsen C—the largest remaining ice shelf on the Antarctic peninsula—as well as the Shackleton, Pine Island, and Wilkins ice shelves are most at risk under 4°C of warming because of their geography and runoff predictions.

Low-lying coastal areas such as small island nations of Vanuatu and Tuvalu in the South Pacific Ocean face the greatest risk from sea level rise, Gilbert told CNN. “However, coastal areas all over the world would be vulnerable,” she warned, “and countries with fewer resources available to mitigate and adapt to sea level rise will see worse consequences.”

Research published in February examining projections from the Fifth Assessment Report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as the body’s Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate found that sea level rise forecasts for this century “are on the money when tested against satellite and tide-gauge observations.”

A co-author of that study, John Church of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales, said at the time that “if we continue with large ongoing emissions as we are at present, we will commit the world to meters of sea level rise over coming centuries.”

Parties to the Paris agreement are in the process of updating their emissions reduction commitments—called nationally determined contributions—ahead of November’s United Nations climate summit, known as COP26.

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Sea level rise will be extreme as melting accelerates

See also: ‘A dire prediction’ on melting ice sheets and rising sea levels – Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2016

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See also: “Will the world ever be all under water?” | Ed Mathez, American Museum of Natural History (AMNH)

If all the ice covering Antarctica , Greenland, and in mountain glaciers around the world were to melt, sea level would rise about 70 meters (230 feet). The ocean would cover all the coastal cities.

EARTH DAY is April 22nd this month in 2021

From Bill McKibben, 350.ORG, Reply-To: 350@350.org

Dear Friends and Concerned Citizens,

I’ve stepped back to emeritus status at 350.org as I start on other projects, but I still follow my old colleagues’ work intently — and the next big thing is coming up very soon. And you can be a part of it.

The Global Just Recovery Gathering — three days of free, online, brass tacks education — starts this Friday, and it has one focus: building energy for real action as we come out of the pandemic. Given the speed with which scientists say we must work, this may be the last high-leverage moment for huge change. We’ve seen some promising initial signs with things like the Biden plan for green infrastructure — but we need more, we need it everywhere, and we need it fast.

The movement was on the cusp when the pandemic hit — remember those truly giant student-led climate strikes in the fall of 2019? Now, we need to regain momentum.

So this Gathering is all about training everyone up. Whether you’re new to activism or a veteran of many year’s work, there will be useful sessions for you — and the special focus on the Just in Just Recovery will add to the power of this event.

Over 17,000 people from every corner of the world have signed up already — you’ll get a first-hand sense of what I mean when I say this is the largest, most diverse movement for change the world has ever seen. And you’ll come out equipped to be a better part of that movement, making change with even more power than you do now.

Can I count on seeing you at the Global Just Recovery Gathering starting this Friday, April 9? Register now to join me and thousands of climate activists from around the globe.

Register » “Global Just Recovery Gathering”

I’m on the “End Fossil Fuel Finance” plenary session, but mostly I’m looking forward to watching. And to seeing you there.

Let’s go onward together!

Bill McKibben, 350.ORG,
PO Box 843004, Boston, MA 02284-3004

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See also: Despite Pandemic Shutdowns, CO2 Now at Levels Unseen in 3.6 Million Years, Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams News, April 8, 2021

NOAA warned that carbon dioxide and methane “continued their unrelenting rise in 2020.” Carbon dioxide has now exceeded 412 ppm and continues to rise more rapidly year by year.

The Paris Accords were agreeded to by 196 parties to become effective on 4 November 2016

Book Reviews by Bob Ward, The Guardian (UK), February 14, 2021

Two eminent voices on the climate crisis present clear strategies for tackling emissions, deniers and doomsayers.

President Joe Biden has promised a new era of American leadership on global climate action, after four years of unscientific denial and misinformation under Donald Trump. Two important new books by prominent American authors, both written before the result of the presidential election was known, should help to capitalise on the new spirit of cautious optimism by laying out bold but well-argued plans for accelerating action against climate change.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by presents a compelling explanation of how the world can stop global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions effectively to zero. Gates and his wife, Melinda, are well known for tremendous work on improving health and tackling disease around the world, particularly in poor countries. It is this concern for the most vulnerable people on the planet that has meant Gates has occasionally appeared equivocal about climate and energy policies that he thought could undermine the fight against poverty and illness.

However, this book lays out forcefully his understanding that the impact of climate change poses a far bigger threat to lives and livelihoods in developing countries – it is thwarting efforts to raise living standards because poor people, in every country, are the most at risk from droughts, floods and heatwaves.

Gates rightly emphasises the importance of improving the resilience of both rich and poor countries to current and future climate change that cannot now be avoided. But his book leaves no doubt that adapting to the impact is not a solution on its own – we must also eliminate global emissions of greenhouse gases.

His strategy for reaching zero emissions is laid out in a very straightforward way, using numbers to help guide the reader to the magnitude of the challenge. He notes that annual emissions of greenhouse gases before the Covid-19 pandemic were well over 50bn tonnes worldwide, and rising. Getting to zero within the next few decades will be no mean feat.

The book breaks down the sources of these emissions into a few broad categories – making things, plugging in, and getting around – and Gates knows how to frame issues in terms with which everybody should be able to engage, without dumbing down the material.

At its highest level, his strategy is simple: make power generation zero-carbon by replacing fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear power, and then electrify as much of our activities as possible. This works in theory, but creates significant challenges, such as how to manage the intermittency of supply from sources such as solar panels and wind turbines.

A key device used by Gates is to calculate the cost of clean alternatives relative to fossil fuels, and where they are currently more expensive, to quantify the difference as a “green premium”. He then explains how this premium can be reduced through innovation and government policies.

The credibility of the strategy is strengthened by references throughout to technologies in which Gates is investing his own money, such as novel ways to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and then store it. He also acknowledges that his sincerity will be doubted by some because of his wealth and use of private jets, for instance. But I think readers will discover from his book that he is a serious and genuine force for good on climate change.

Prof. Michael Mann says that, far from needing a miracle, we could achieve 100% clean electricity with current renewable technologies!

The only major concern I have is that in emphasising, correctly, the importance of rich countries reaching zero emissions by 2050, he appears to suggest that cuts in greenhouse gases over the next 10 years are less important. In fact, the amount of warming we face depends on cumulative emissions, so countries such as the US and UK need to be cutting sharply from now, and for the next 30 years.

Gates is also caught in the crosshairs in Mann’s book, The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, which criticises the 2016 edition of the billionaire’s annual letter, written with Melinda, for highlighting the challenges of cutting emissions and declaring “we need an energy miracle”. Mann, America’s most famous climate scientist, points out that many zero-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels are now cost-competitive with fossil fuels. He even suggests that, far from needing a miracle, we could achieve 100% clean electricity with current renewable technologies alone.

The main focus of Mann’s book is a call to arms in the new war against “inactivists” who are using new tactics of “deception, distraction and delay” to prevent the phase-out of fossil fuels. Mann is a robust character, and has fought off several disgraceful onslaughts against him and his work by climate change deniers in US politics and the media over the past 20 years.

Prof. Mann warns that vested interests and ideological extremists who oppose efforts to eliminate fossil fuels no longer deny outright the reality of climate change because people can now see the evidence for it all around them. Instead, opponents of action now rely on slightly subtler arguments, and Mann reveals how they are sometimes unwittingly assisted by clumsy communications from climate scientists and campaigners.

He cautions against highlighting in particular the need for action by individual citizens and consumers. As important as personal efforts are, they can distract attention away from the critical role of governments and companies in making systemic changes.

Mann criticises the practice of flight-shaming climate researchers, because it creates the false impression that experts have to experience personal sacrifice and deprivation to be taken seriously, regardless of how successful they are in persuading politicians to act. Despite the attention devoted to it, .

Mann also attacks “doomsayers”, including some members of , who claim that we have already passed the point of no return, condemning us all to imminent climate destruction. Such claims are not based on science and have the effect of making people give up on efforts to rid the world of fossil fuels.

Mann does not pull his punches, but his aim is usually strong and true. This book will no doubt prove controversial for some climate campaigners, as well as the deniers, but I hope it will be read by everybody who is engaged in making the case for action.

Both Mann and Gates appear optimistic that the world can stop climate change, but they are also under no illusions about the scale of the challenge we face and the many obstacles that lie in our way. They also show just how wrong those people are who think we cannot or should not succeed.

>> Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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NOTE — The following TED TALK VIDEO by Bill Gates is still relevant although eleven years old ….

Bill Gates: Innovating to zero (TED Talk 2010) – February 2010

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUEza10beMY

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See also: DOE Awards $160M to TerraPower and X-Energy to Build Advanced Nuclear Plants, Jeff St, John, Green Tech Media, October 14, 2020

With up to another $3.2 billion earmarked for federal support, the race for smaller, more flexible nuclear reactor designs is heating up.

This challenge is well known and now urgent ...

From an Article by Justin Worland, TIME — America Must Change, July 9, 2020

For the past five years, climate advocates had positioned 2020 as critical in the fight against climate change. Under the Paris Agreement, countries are required to submit new plans to reduce emissions in 2020, and climate diplomats had planned a series of meetings around the world this year to build momentum, culminating with the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, in November.

The Glasgow event was postponed a year, but the coronavirus pandemic has created a new sort of momentum. Empty city streets have been transformed into pedestrian space with cars banished, and many cities say they’re not going back. The oil industry has faced a reckoning, with the U.S. benchmark price at one point in mid-April dropping into negative territory and investors fleeing the industry; smaller firms filing for bankruptcy; and some of its biggest players writing down assets they say have lost their value.

With the writing beginning to appear on the wall, many countries are starting to build a different world. In South Korea, the newly re-elected government has promised a $10 billion Green New Deal to invest in renewable energy and make public buildings energy efficient.

In Costa Rica, one of a few developing countries to commit to eliminating their carbon footprint by 2050, leaders have created a new fee on gasoline to fund social-welfare programs and are planning to issue new green bonds to fund the next stage of climate adaptation programs. Rwanda, which has a GDP of roughly $9 billion, has adopted an $11 billion plan to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change, which includes a push for buses, cars and motorcycles to go electric. “We cannot afford to have the same mode of recovery, the same mode of doing business, the same mode of economic activity,” says Juliet Kabera, director general of the Rwanda Environment Management Authority.

International institutions are playing a critical role nudging these countries. The IMF, which has said it “stands ready” to use its $1 trillion lending capacity to stave off the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, has made climate resilience a key criterion for its lending. This has already paid dividends: some 50 nations, including dozens of developing countries, committed in late June to address climate change in their coronavirus recovery plans.

“It’s a great catalyst to think about building a new world,” says Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada. “Whatever we decide as a country or as a global community in the next six or 10 or 12 months is going to determine what happens on the earth for the next decade.”

Nowhere will such an approach have as large an impact as in the E.U. When compared with countries, the bloc is the world’s second largest economy and third largest emitter. Its pandemic recovery will help achieve the proposed target of halving its emissions in 10 years by spending $100 billion annually to make homes energy-efficient, $28 billion to build renewable energy capacity and up to $67 billion for zero-emissions trains. The European investment in going green will hurt coal-mining jobs in places like Poland and the Czech Republic, but the European recovery program will pay billions to retrain the workers and transition them to other industries. The measure awaits approval by the member countries, and the details are subject to negotiation, but observers do not expect the direction of the policy to change.

Other major players in the global economy, most notably the U.S. and China, have not made as clear commitments to a green-tinged recovery. Upcoming decisions in both of those countries, which combined are responsible for nearly half of global emissions, are urgent.

China is being pulled in two directions as it develops a plan that will set the course of its development–and, by extension, its emissions–for the next half decade. In March, as China’s coronavirus epidemic began to subside, the nation’s powerful Politburo Standing Committee, which is made up of senior leaders of the Communist Party, including President Xi Jinping, endorsed a proposal to expedite $1.4 trillion in spending on so-called “new infrastructure” that includes electric-vehicle charging stations and high-speed rail, as well as 5G technology, which wouldn’t cut emissions per se but would help advance the country’s tech sector rather than its heavy industry, stimulating economic growth with lower emissions.

But the degree of commitment to those green recovery measures remains unclear. The Politburo Standing Committee’s push is unfunded, leaving provincial governments to follow through. So far, the evidence on the ground has not been encouraging. Local Chinese governments have approved new coal-fired power plants this year at the fastest clip since 2015–a surefire way to stimulate economic growth and emissions. And the country is reportedly planning to ramp up production of oil and natural gas. Demand has fallen, but cheaper oil and gas typically stimulate the economy. Abroad, China continues to fund emissions-intensive projects through its Belt and Road Initiative. In Africa, for instance, China is financing new coal-fired power plants, even as many international financial institutions have walked away from the energy source.

External pressure is likely to force the issue, and the E.U. is trying to offer just that. To push China and others along, the bloc is crafting a new tax on imports from countries that aren’t reducing emissions. Climate and trade are both currently being discussed by officials behind the scenes and were planned to be on the top of the agenda at a now postponed September summit between the E.U. and China. “Europe is a very important market for the Chinese,” says Laurence Tubiana, the CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a key architect of the Paris Agreement. “China can be secured in its potential exports to Europe by understanding that it can secure positive trade relations by increasing its climate ambition.”

GHG emissions remain in the atmosphere for decades

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See also: Where Will Everyone Go? By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica, July 23, 2020

ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, with support from the Pulitzer Center, have for the first time modeled how climate refugees may move across international borders. This is what they found.

THIS YEAR 2020 Is Our Last, Best Chance to Save the Planet

From an Article by Justin Worland, TIME — America Must Change, July 9, 2020

From our vantage point today, 2020 looks like the year when an unknown virus spun out of control, killed hundreds of thousands and altered the way we live day to day. In the future, we may look back at 2020 as the year we decided to keep driving off the climate cliff–or to take the last exit. Taking the threat seriously would mean using the opportunity presented by this crisis to spend on solar panels and wind farms, push companies being bailed out to cut emissions and foster greener forms of transport in cities. If we instead choose to fund new coal-fired power plants and oil wells and thoughtlessly fire up factories to urge growth, we will lock in a pathway toward climate catastrophe. There’s a divide about which way to go.

In early April, as COVID-19 spread across the U.S. and doctors urgently warned that New York City might soon run out of ventilators and hospital beds, President Donald Trump gathered CEOs from some of the country’s biggest oil and gas companies for a closed-door meeting in the White House Cabinet Room. The industry faced its biggest disruption in decades, and Trump wanted to help the companies secure their place at the center of the 21st century American economy.

Everything was on the table, from a tariff on imports to the U.S. government itself purchasing excess oil. “We’ll work this out, and we’ll get our energy business back,” Trump told the CEOs. “I’m with you 1,000%.” A few days later, he announced he had brokered a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to cut oil production and rescue the industry.

Later in April, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, in a video message from across the Atlantic, offered a different approach for the continent’s economic future. A European Green Deal, she said, would be the E.U.’s “motor for the recovery.”

“We can turn the crisis of this pandemic into an opportunity to rebuild our economies differently,” she said. On May 27, she pledged more than $800 billion to the initiative, promising to transform the way Europeans live.

For the past three years, the world outside the U.S. has largely tried to ignore Trump’s retrograde position on climate, hoping 2020 would usher in a new President with a new position, re-enabling the cooperation between nations needed to prevent the worst ravages of climate change. But there’s no more time to wait.

We’re standing at a climate crossroads: the world has already warmed 1.1°C since the Industrial Revolution. If we pass 2°C, we risk hitting one or more major tipping points, where the effects of climate change go from advancing gradually to changing dramatically overnight, reshaping the planet. To ensure that we don’t pass that threshold, we need to cut emissions in half by 2030. Climate change has understandably fallen out of the public eye this year as the coronavirus pandemic rages.

Nevertheless, this year, or perhaps this year and next, is likely to be the most pivotal yet in the fight against climate change. “We’ve run out of time to build new things in old ways,” says Rob Jackson, an earth system science professor at Stanford University and the chair of the Global Carbon Project. What we do now will define the fate of the planet–and human life on it–for decades.

The time frame for effective climate action was always going to be tight, but the coronavirus pandemic has shrunk it further. Scientists and policymakers expected the green transition to occur over the next decade, but the pandemic has pushed 10 years of anticipated investment in everything from power plants to roads into a monthslong time frame.

Countries have already spent $11 trillion to help stem the economic damage from COVID-19. They could spend trillions more. “It’s in this next six months that recovery strategies are likely to be formulated and the path is set,” says Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank chief economist known for his landmark 2006 report warning that climate change could devastate the global economy.

There’s No Substitute for EARTH

“You can get Time Magazine now at your newstand.”

WMO performs rigorous objective functions in the public interest

From an Article by Matt McGrath, BBC News Report, July 9, 2020

The World Meteorological Organisation says there’s a growing chance that global temperatures will break the 1.5C threshold over the next five years, compared to pre-industrial levels.

It says there’s a 20% possibility the critical mark will be broken in any one year before 2024. But the assessment says there’s a 70% chance it will be broken in one or more months in those five years. Scientists say that keeping below 1.5C will avoid the worst climate impacts.

The target was agreed by world leaders in the 2015 Paris climate accord. They committed to pursue efforts to try to keep the world from warming by more than 1.5C this century.

This new assessment, carried out by the UK’s Met Office for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), says there’s a growing chance that this level will be breached.

Researchers say that the Earth’s average annual temperature is already more than 1C higher than it was in the 1850s – and will probably stay around this level over the next five years. Previous studies had put the short-term chances of going above 1.5C at 10% – that’s now doubled say the climate modellers, and it’s increasing with time.

Some parts of the world will feel this rising heat more than others, with the scientists saying that the Arctic will probably warm by twice the global average this year. They also predict that over the coming five years there will be more storms over western Europe thanks to rising sea levels.

World edges closer to breaking 1.5°C temperature rise threshold:

> 20% chance average annual temperatures increase +1.5°C by 2024

> 70% chance 1.5°C threshold broken in one or more months by 2024

> 1.5° C threshold uses pre-industrial temperatures as a comparison

World Meteorological Organization (assessment does not take into account fall in CO2 emissions due to coronavirus pandemic)

The assessment considers natural variability as well as the impact of carbon emissions from human activities – however the models don’t take account of the fall-off in CO2 emissions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The WMO says this is unlikely to affect temperatures in the early 2020s.

“The WMO has repeatedly stressed that the industrial and economic slowdown from Covid-19 is not a substitute for sustained and co-ordinated climate action,” said Prof Petteri Taalas, the WMO’s secretary general. “Due to the very long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, the impact of the drop in emissions this year is not expected to lead to a reduction of CO2 atmospheric concentrations which are driving global temperature increases.

“Whilst Covid-19 has caused a severe international health and economic crisis, failure to tackle climate change may threaten human well-being, ecosystems and economies for centuries. Governments should use the opportunity to embrace climate action as part of recovery programmes and ensure that we grow back better,” he said.

If the 1.5C threshold is broken in one of the coming years, the experts stress it won’t mean the targets are invalid. However it will, once again, underline the urgency of significant emissions cuts to prevent a long-term move to this more dangerous, warmer world.

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See also: “Siberian Arctic ‘up to 18 F degrees warmer’ in June,” Justin Rowlatt, BBC News Report, July 7, 2020

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See also: Even if we start to fix climate change, the proof may not show up for 30 years – The Washington Post, Chris Mooney & Brady Dennis, July 7, 2020 — New findings put a brief emissions drop during the coronavirus pandemic into perspective

The awful truth about climate change that nobody wants to admit

From an Article by Christopher Knittel, Los Angles Times, October 28, 2019

Even now that most of the world has acknowledged that climate change is real and caused by humans, combating it has proved daunting. Why? There are five features that combine to make global warming a more vexing environmental crisis than any we have faced before.

1. First, the pollutants that contribute to it are global pollutants, ones that do their damage no matter where on earth they are released. Past pollutants — such as sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain, or nitrogen oxides, which are a precursor to smog — are local pollutants, which do most of their damage near where they are released. Elected officials are much more likely to enact measures to curtail local pollutants, because the voters who elect them are directly affected by the pollution. With global pollutants, much of the damage is felt far away, and moreover, they may not be something an elected official can control through local action.

2. The second complicating feature of climate change pollutants is that much of their damage is in the future. The electorate and their public officials have less reason to pass measures that would cost money and cause inconvenience now, when the most severe damage will accrue to some distant and unknowable future.

3. The third issue is that the pollutants producing climate change can’t be directly linked to a smoking gun. Whereas nitrogen oxide emissions directly created smog, which was easily seen, climate change pollutants lead to more frequent bad events, but these events also can and do occur naturally. We can chart, over time, that hurricanes are getting wetter and more damaging or that drought cycles last longer, but those observations are easily dismissed by those who wish to downplay the problem, since weather has always been variable. Rising average temperatures too can be ignored, because there have always been record-setting days and heat waves.

4. The fourth feature that makes climate change particularly daunting is that developing countries contribute a large share of the pollution that drives it. This is important for several reasons. It is difficult for developed nations to make the case that the same technologies that made their own growth possible should now be denied to the countries coming behind them. And it is hard for policy makers in developing countries to justify incurring the costs of reducing global pollutants when their citizens still struggle with getting enough to eat or having access to clean water.

5. The final characteristic making climate change such a thorny problem is that the pollutants causing it are tied directly to crucial aspects of people’s lives, including transportation, home electricity, and heating and air conditioning. Moreover, alternatives still tend to be more costly.

Some past environmental problems offered far easier solutions. The pollution that caused the hole in the ozone layer, for example — chlorofluorocarbons — were also a global pollutant and were tied to widely used products such as refrigeration, air conditioning and hairspray. But there were cheap, readily available alternatives. That’s not the case with the petroleum products we use to power our cars and the natural gas and coal still widely used to generate electricity. Yes, alternatives are being developed, but they are often more costly and haven’t been widely adopted worldwide.

If an evil genius had set out to design the perfect environmental crisis, one that would slowly destroy the earth through humans’ own actions and would be difficult to fight, those five factors would have made climate change a brilliant choice. But we didn’t need an evil genius. We stumbled into it on our own.

>>> Christopher Knittel is a professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

SHELL flaring ethane gas at Mossmorran, Scotland

From an Article by Angie Brown, BBC Scotland, October 2, 2019

Shell has been forced to burn off “significant” volumes of ethane because it cannot sell it to a firm that has temporarily shut down its plant with flaring issues in Fife.

Residents living near the Mossmorran site thought flaring would be reduced after Exxonmobil closed in August. However, flares have continued to burn because Shell’s only ethane customer is Exxonmobil, which shares the site.

Shell said it was “actively exploring alternative ethane outlets”.

Exxonmobil chose to temporarily close its plant to undertake maintenance on its boilers.

Shell’s Fife Natural Gas Liquids plant separates natural gas liquids into ethane, propane, butane and natural gasoline for storage and onward distribution. It sells its ethane to Exxonmobil’s neighbouring Fife Ethylene plant, which turns it into ethylene.

Since the Fife Ethylene Plant was temporarily closed down Shell said it “did not have the storage capacity for the significant quantities of ethane produced from North Sea gas”.

Exxonmobil’s plant at the site will be closed until at least November for work to be carried out to make the plant more “reliable”.

A total of £140m of work will also be spent by Exxonmobil improving the plant. ExxonMobil said it had started recruiting 850 temporary workers to carry out the work over the next 12 months. The operator said the investment was on top of the £20m it spends annually on maintaining its Mossmorran site.

A Shell Fife Natural Gas Liquids spokesman said: “The (ExxonMobil) Fife Ethylene Plant is currently the primary customer for ethane supplied by the Shell Fife Natural Gas Liquids plant, and processes ethane into ethylene.

“Our ground flares are burning excess ethane as the Fife Ethylene plant is currently not available for receiving the ethane to process it into ethylene.

“We have taken measures within the North Sea (SEGAL) supply system to help to manage the situation and are actively exploring alternative ethane outlets during the temporary shutdown.

“However, the volume taken by the Fife Ethylene plant is significant and any solution is likely to be for some volume rather than the full volume of ethane the Fife Natural Gas Liquids plant produces.”

James Glen, chairman of the Mossmorran Action Group, said: “I think it is ironic that Shell is being forced to flare off excess product because of the problems at Exxonmobil.

“Residents had hoped for some respite but they are having to continue to suffer from light and noise impact as a result of Shell’s flaring.”

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See also: Flaring, or Why So Much Gas Is Going Up in Flames – The Washington Post, Ryan Collins and Rachel Adams-Heard | Bloomberg, September 10, 2019

If you take a drive along the well-worn highways of West Texas, orange flames will punctuate your journey. Those are gas flares, and they’re lighting up the skies above West Texas oilfields like never before as drillers produce crude faster than pipes can be laid to haul the attendant natural gas away. Oil drillers say flaring is the most environmentally friendly way to get rid of excess gas they can’t sell. Environmentalists say that in many cases what flaring is friendly to is oil drillers’ profits. They think regulators in states including Texas and North Dakota should be tougher on a practice that harms air quality and contributes to climate change.

A Global Deal For Nature: Guiding principles, milestones, and targets

Authors are E. Dinerstein1,*, C. Vynne1, E. Sala2, A. R. Joshi3, S. Fernando1, T. E. Lovejoy4, J. Mayorga2,5, D. Olson6, G. P. Asner7, J. E. M. Baillie2, N. D. Burgess8, K. Burkart9, R. F. Noss10, Y. P. Zhang11, A. Baccini12, T. Birch13, N. Hahn1,14, L. N. Joppa15 and E. Wikramanayake16

* – 1RESOLVE, Washington, DC, USA, 2National Geographic Society, Washington, DC, USA, 3University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, 4George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA, 5University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 6Zoological Society of London, London, UK, 7Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, 8UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, UK, 9Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 10Florida Institute for Conservation Science, Chuluota, FL, USA, 11State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China, 12Woods Hole Research Center, Woods Hole, MA, USA, 13Google, Mountain View, CA, USA, 14Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA, 15Microsoft, Redmond, WA, USA, 16Environmental Foundation Ltd., Colombo, Sri Lanka

SOURCE: Science Advances, April 19, 2019: Vol. 5, no. 4, eaaw2869, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw2869

ABSTRACT for The Global Deal for Nature

The Global Deal for Nature (GDN) is a time-bound, science-driven plan to save the diversity and abundance of life on Earth. Pairing the GDN and the Paris Climate Agreement would avoid catastrophic climate change, conserve species, and secure essential ecosystem services. New findings give urgency to this union: Less than half of the terrestrial realm is intact, yet conserving all native ecosystems—coupled with energy transition measures—will be required to remain below a 1.5°C rise in average global temperature.

The GDN targets 30% of Earth to be formally protected and an additional 20% designated as climate stabilization areas, by 2030, to stay below 1.5°C. We highlight the 67% of terrestrial ecoregions that can meet 30% protection, thereby reducing extinction threats and carbon emissions from natural reservoirs. Freshwater and marine targets included here extend the GDN to all realms and provide a pathway to ensuring a more livable biosphere.

INTRODUCTION to The Global Deal for Nature

Nature conservation efforts, like climate change policies, are being reassessed in the midst of a planetary emergency. Climate concerns rightly prompted the 2015 Paris Agreement, which has facilitated coordinated global action not only among governments but also among companies, cities, and citizens. Research since then suggests that efforts to stabilize the climate and avoid the undesirable outcomes of >1.5°C warming will require a rapid reduction in land conversion and a moratorium by about 2035.

The most logical path to avoid the approaching crisis is maintaining and restoring at least 50% of the Earth’s land area as intact natural ecosystems, in combination with energy transition measures. Those measures by themselves will likely be insufficient and must be augmented by restoration to create negative emissions to offset the likely clearing and release of greenhouse gases that will occur until a 2035 moratorium can be reached.

Natural ecosystems are key to maintaining human prosperity in a warming world and 65% of Paris Agreement signatories have committed to restoring or conserving ecosystems. Intact forests, and especially tropical forests, sequester twice as much carbon as planted monocultures. These findings make forest conservation a critical approach to combat global warming. Because about two-thirds of all species on Earth are found in natural forests, maintaining intact forest is vital to prevent mass extinction.

However, carbon sequestration and storage extends far beyond rainforests: Peatlands, tundra, mangroves, and ancient grasslands are also important carbon storehouses and conserve distinct assemblages of plants and animals. Further, the importance of intact habitats extends to the freshwater and marine realms, with studies pointing to least disturbed wetlands and coastal habitats being superior in their ability to store carbon when compared with more disturbed sites.

Opportunities to address both climate change and the extinction crisis are time bound. Climate models show that we are approaching a tipping point: If current trends in habitat conversion and emissions do not peak by 2030, then it will become impossible to remain below 1.5°C. Similarly, if current land conversion rates, poaching of large animals, and other threats are not markedly slowed or halted in the next 10 years, “points of no return” will be reached for multiple ecosystems and species.

It has become clear that beyond 1.5°C, the biology of the planet becomes gravely threatened because ecosystems literally begin to unravel. Degradation of the natural environment also diminishes quality of life, threatens public health, and triggers human displacement because of lost access to clean drinking water, reduced irrigation of important subsistence crops, and exacerbation of climate-related storm and drought events. These occurrences will become increasingly worse without substantial action over the next few years. Additionally, human migrations, triggered by climate change–induced droughts and sea-level rise in combination with extreme weather events, could displace more than 100 million people by 2050, mostly in the southern hemisphere.

A companion pact to the Paris Agreement—a Global Deal for Nature (GDN)—could help ensure that climate targets are met while preventing species extinctions and the rapid erosion of biodiversity and ecosystem services in the terrestrial, freshwater, and marine realms. The concept of a GDN as a policy mechanism emerged from an earlier study restricted to protecting biodiversity in the terrestrial realm. We expand that perspective to the freshwater and marine realms while simultaneously lending support to an alternative pathway to remaining below 1.5°C that relies heavily on aggressive conservation of remaining habitats.

This approach not only safeguards biodiversity but also is the cheapest and fastest alternative for addressing climate change and is not beholden to developing carbon removal technologies unlikely to be effective or to scale in the time-bound nature of the current twin crises. Here, we offer a policy framework based on scientific guidelines that could pair nature and climate deals, be mutually reinforcing, and recommend time-bound milestones and targets. We identify specific threats and drivers of biodiversity loss, and discuss costs of implementation of a GDN. Finally, we introduce breakthrough technologies for monitoring progress.

DISCUSSION of The Global Deal for Nature

The Paris Agreement offers a useful template for a GDN because it sets global targets, provides a model for financial support, and supports bottom-up efforts. All nations have signed on to this agreement. But the Paris Agreement is only a half-deal; it will not alone save the diversity of life on Earth or conserve ecosystem services upon which humanity depends. It is also reliant on natural climate solutions that require bolstering outside of the Paris Agreement to ensure that these natural approaches can contribute to its success. Yet, land-based sequestration efforts receive only about 2.5% of climate mitigation dollars.

At the same time that climate scientists were arriving at a single numerical target for maintaining Earth’s atmosphere at safe limits, biodiversity scientists identified multiple targets for the required habitats to conserve the rest of life on Earth. But to communicate effectively, as in the Paris Agreement, these many needs could be encompassed within a single target: protect at least half of Earth by 2050 and ensure that these areas are connected. The evidence arising since these calls were made clearly demonstrate that while we may be able to afford to wait to formally designate 50% protected in nature reserves, we need to fast-track the protection and restoration of all natural habitat by 2030.

A GDN that will ensure that we have at least 50% intact natural habitats by 2030 is the only path that will enable a climate-resilient future and is one that will offer a myriad of other benefits. Since the crucial role of intact, diverse systems has also been demonstrated to be essential for carbon storage the GDN will need to emphasize mechanisms for protecting intactness both inside and outside of protected areas (e.g. in CSAs/OECMs) well before 2050.

Tallis and colleagues demonstrated that with existing technologies and large-scale adoption of common conservation approaches (e.g., protected areas, renewable energy, sustainable fisheries management, and regenerative agriculture), it would be possible to advance a desired future of multiple economic and environmental objectives (including 50% of each biome intact, with the exception of temperate grasslands). This spatial coexistence is possible even with the prospects of feeding and supporting the material needs of a growing human population. The success of proposals to boost food production while protecting biodiversity will likely depend on our success in addressing human population growth, however, and our willingness to marshal financial resources accordingly.

Gross costs for nature conservation measures across half the Earth could be $100 billion per year, but the international community currently spends $4 billion to $10 billion per year on conservation. Extending the area-based targets in the post-2020 strategic plan for biodiversity to 30% by 2030 will likely require direct involvement of the private sector. In key sectors—fishing, forestry, agriculture, and insurance—corporations may be able to align their financial returns directly to reaching targets recommended by the GDN. However, the typical approach to conservation planning does not involve the real (net) costs because the direct benefits of conservation and the averted costs of inaction are not included in the calculations. Barbier and colleagues showed that potential direct benefits from biodiversity conservation for various sectors range from increasing annual profits by $53 billion in the seafood industry to $4300 billion in the insurance industry.

In addition, marine reserves can provide more economic benefits from tourism than fishing in many locations worldwide. Financial investments of even 10 to 20% of potential benefits from biodiversity conservation from three key industries could make up as much of one-third of the commitment needed to implement a GDN. A GDN may appeal to a broader set of nonstate actors, including corporations and local government entities. The solutions could be implemented in ways that have direct positive benefits to local or regional communities and especially indigenous peoples. Land-based jobs, food security, green space, access to wilderness, and ecosystem services are benefits that deliver advantages to rural and urban dwellers alike.

Complex life has existed on Earth for about 550 million years, and it is now threatened with the sixth mass extinction. If we fail to change course, it will take millions of years for Earth to recover an equivalent spectrum of biodiversity. Future generations of people will live in a biologically impoverished world. Adopting a GDN and the milestones and targets presented here would better allow humanity to develop a vibrant, low-impact economy and conserve intact ecosystems, all while leaving space for nature. Linking the GDN and the Paris Agreement could solve the two major challenges facing the biosphere and all the species within it and result in a return to safe operating space for humanity.