This was not an easy decision, and will be extremely difficult to implement, but needed ASAP.

Letter Update from the Climate Reality Project, December 19, 2023

Despite its many flaws and contradictions, COP 28 marks a major step forward for our movement. For the first time ever, a COP agreement explicitly acknowledges the main culprit responsible for the climate crisis: fossil fuels. While the agreement falls short of a complete phase out of fossil fuels, it urges countries to transition away from them, calling for a tripling of renewables and doubling of energy efficiency this decade.

Yes, there are caveats. The agreement lacks binding commitments, leaving countries to decide on their own pace of transition. It’s riddled with loopholes to benefit petrostates and fossil fuel lobbyists – who had more representation at the UN climate summit than every country except Brazil and the UAE – through “transitional fuels” like natural gas and unproven and expensive technologies like carbon capture and storage.

Plus, for the many island nations and climate-vulnerable countries whose very survival depends on the world holding rising temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the agreement doesn’t go nearly far enough. But our fight is far from over. If there’s anything to take away from COP 28, it’s the fact that the world is ready to leave fossil fuels behind.

The almost 130 countries supporting a phase out, the near open revolt by island nations, and the public outcry from thousands of climate advocates from around the world all point towards a future where fossil fuels are no longer king. For a recap of COP 28 and what comes next, check out our wrap-up videos at 24hoursofreality.org.

WATCH THE RECAP WITH AL GORE

The road ahead will be challenging, but we are not giving up yet. The science is clear: We need to phase out all fossil fuels to keep our goal of holding warming to 1.5 degrees within reach. Not just unabated fuels. Not just emissions. All fossil fuels.

Critically, we also have to do it fairly. The wealthy nations that got us here need to lead the transition away from coal, oil, and gas and provide the long-promised financing for developing countries to build clean energy economies of their own.

But the biggest takeaway is that now the world is talking about a future without fossil fuels. And that’s worth fighting for.

>>>Your friends at Climate Reality Project

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PS. Take action today by calling on leaders of the G20 group of major economies to end all subsidies for fossil fuel companies making billions driving climate devastation.

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PS. For the United States, it is now crystal clear that our country can no longer justify the Halliburton Loops, that is preferential environmental regulations for the fossil fuel industries. DGN

Fourier had no idea in 1824 of all the impacts of global warming

From an Article by Robin McKie, The Guardian News Service UK, July 30, 2022

The publication of Bill McGuire’s latest book, Hothouse Earth, could not be more timely. Appearing in the shops this week, it will be perused by sweltering customers who have just endured record high temperatures across the UK and now face the prospect of weeks of drought to add to their discomfort.

And this is just the beginning, insists McGuire, who is emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London. As he makes clear in his uncompromising depiction of the coming climatic catastrophe, we have – for far too long – ignored explicit warnings that rising carbon emissions are dangerously heating the Earth. Now we are going to pay the price for our complacence in the form of storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves that will easily surpass current extremes.

The crucial point, he argues, is that there is now no chance of us avoiding a perilous, all-pervasive climate breakdown. We have passed the point of no return and can expect a future in which lethal heatwaves and temperatures in excess of 50C (120F) are common in the tropics; where summers at temperate latitudes will invariably be baking hot, and where our oceans are destined to become warm and acidic. “A child born in 2020 will face a far more hostile world that its grandparents did,” McGuire insists.

In this respect, the volcanologist, who was also a member of the UK government’s Natural Hazard Working Group, takes an extreme position. Most other climate experts still maintain we have time left, although not very much, to bring about meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. A rapid drive to net zero and the halting of global warming is still within our grasp, they say.

Such claims are dismissed by McGuire. “I know a lot of people working in climate science who say one thing in public but a very different thing in private. In confidence, they are all much more scared about the future we face, but they won’t admit that in public. I call this climate appeasement and I believe it only makes things worse. The world needs to know how bad things are going to get before we can hope to start to tackle the crisis.”

McGuire finished writing Hothouse Earth at the end of 2021. He includes many of the record high temperatures that had just afflicted the planet, including extremes that had struck the UK. A few months after he completed his manuscript, and as publication loomed, he found that many of those records had already been broken. “That is the trouble with writing a book about climate breakdown,” says McGuire. “By the time it is published it is already out of date. That is how fast things are moving.”

Among the records broken during the book’s editing was the announcement that a temperature of 40.3C was reached in east England on 19 July, the highest ever recorded in the UK. (The country’s previous hottest temperature, 38.7C, was in Cambridge in 2019.)

In addition, London’s fire service had to tackle blazes across the capital, with one conflagration destroying 16 homes in Wennington, east London. Crews there had to fight to save the local fire station itself. “Who would have thought that a village on the edge of London would be almost wiped out by wildfires in 2022,” says McGuire. “If this country needs a wake-up call then surely that is it.”

Wildfires of unprecedented intensity and ferocity have also swept across Europe, North America and Australia this year, while record rainfall in the midwest led to the devastating flooding in the US’s Yellowstone national park. “And as we head further into 2022, it is already a different world out there,” he adds. “Soon it will be unrecognisable to every one of us.”

These changes underline one of the most startling aspects of climate breakdown: the speed with which global average temperature rises translate into extreme weather.

“Just look at what is happening already to a world which has only heated up by just over one degree,” says McGuire. “It turns out the climate is changing for the worse far quicker than predicted by early climate models. That’s something that was never expected.”

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, when humanity began pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, global temperatures have risen by just over 1C. At the Cop26 climate meeting in Glasgow last year, it was agreed that every effort should be made to try to limit that rise to 1.5C, although to achieve such a goal, it was calculated that global carbon emissions will have to be reduced by 45% by 2030.

“In the real world, that is not going to happen,” says McGuire. “Instead, we are on course for close to a 14% rise in emissions by that date – which will almost certainly see us shatter the 1.5C guardrail in less than a decade.”

And we should be in no doubt about the consequences. Anything above 1.5C will see a world plagued by intense summer heat, extreme drought, devastating floods, reduced crop yields, rapidly melting ice sheets and surging sea levels. A rise of 2C and above will seriously threaten the stability of global society, McGuire argues. It should also be noted that according to the most hopeful estimates of emission cut pledges made at Cop26, the world is on course to heat up by between 2.4C and 3C.

From this perspective it is clear we can do little to avoid the coming climate breakdown. Instead we need to adapt to the hothouse world that lies ahead and to start taking action to try to stop a bleak situation deteriorating even further, McGuire says.

Certainly, as it stands, Britain – although relatively well placed to counter the worst effects of the coming climate breakdown – faces major headaches. Heatwaves will become more frequent, get hotter and last longer. Huge numbers of modern, tiny, poorly insulated UK homes will become heat traps, responsible for thousands of deaths every summer by 2050.

“Despite repeated warnings, hundreds of thousands of these inappropriate homes continue to be built every year,” adds McGuire.

As to the reason for the world’s tragically tardy response, McGuire blames a “conspiracy of ignorance, inertia, poor governance, and obfuscation and lies by climate change deniers that has ensured that we have sleepwalked to within less than half a degree of the dangerous 1.5C climate change guardrail. Soon, barring some sort of miracle, we will crash through it.”

The future is forbidding from this perspective, though McGuire stresses that if carbon emissions can be cut substantially in the near future, and if we start to adapt to a much hotter world today, a truly calamitous and unsustainable future can be avoided. The days ahead will be grimmer, but not disastrous. We may not be able to give climate breakdown the slip but we can head off further instalments that would appear as a climate cataclysm bad enough to threaten the very survival of human civilisation.

“This is a call to arms,” he says. “So if you feel the need to glue yourself to a motorway or blockade an oil refinery, do it. Drive an electric car or, even better, use public transport, walk or cycle. Switch to a green energy tariff; eat less meat. Stop flying; lobby your elected representatives at both local and national level; and use your vote wisely to put in power a government that walks the talk on the climate emergency.”

Now available ~ Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide by Bill McGuire is published by Icon Books, £9.99

Five unexpected threats posed by the pumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere

1. Under our feet ~ As vast, thick sheets of ice disappear from high mountains and from the poles, rock crusts that had previously been compressed are beginning to rebound, threatening to trigger earthquakes and tsunamis. “We are on track to bequeath to our children and their children not only a far hotter world, but also a more geologically fractious one,” says Bill McGuire.

2. New battlefields ~ As crops burn and hunger spreads, communities are coming into conflict and the election of populist leaders – who will promise the Earth to their people – is likely to become commonplace. Most worrying are the tensions over dwindling water supplies that are growing between India, Pakistan and China, all possessors of atomic weapons. “The last thing we need is a hot war over water between two of the world’s nuclear powers,” McGuire observes.

3. Methane bombs ~ Produced by wetlands, cattle and termites, methane is 86 times more potent in its power to heat the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, though fortunately it hangs around for much less time. The problem is that much of the world’s methane is trapped in layers of Arctic permafrost. As these melt, more methane will be released and our world will get even hotter.

4. Losing the Gulf Stream ~ As the ice caps melt, the resulting cold water pouring from the Arctic threatens to block or divert the Gulf Stream, which carries a prodigious amount of heat from the tropics to the seas around Europe. Signs now suggest the Gulf Stream is already weakening and could shut down completely before end of the century, triggering powerful winter storms over Europe.

5. Calorie crunch ~ Four-fifths of all calories consumed across the world come from just 10 crop plants including wheat, maize and rice. Many of these staples will not grow well under the higher temperatures that will soon become the norm, pointing towards a massive cut in the availability of food, which will have a catastrophic impact across the planet, says McGuire.

Jacob Fourier in France understood the “greenhouse effect” in 1824.

From Tom Rodd, Executive Director, WV Center on Climate Change, March 21, 2022

Here’s our final reminder about the upcoming Wednesday, March 23 @ 7 PM live climate science program from Morgantown, WV — featuring a great speaker, Dr. Julie Brigham-Grette.

§§§ — Details and registration are here.

Julie Brigham-Grette is a world-renowned scientist who studies the polar regions. She is tremendously alarmed at the ongoing environmental collapse of these areas that are so vital to our planetary well-being. See her recent article on this topic here.

Dr. Brigham-Grette will be speaking and answering questions about how the polar climate has already changed, what we can expect as global climate change continues, and why we urgently need to address the climate crisis to protect humanity’s future.

Dr. Brigham-Grette will be joined by two West Virginia University Professors, Dr. Amy Weislogel, Associate Professor of Sedimentary Geology, and Dr. Christopher J. Russoniello, Assistant Professor of Geology. More information on all of these speakers is here at the registration page.

Wednesday, March 23rd @ 7 PM — The in-person venue will be a “smart conference room” at the WVU Media Innovation Center, in the Evansdale Crossing Building, 62 Morrill Way, Morgantown WV 26506. There will be audience seating, cameras and microphones for online participation, and a large screen displaying online speakers and audience questions. Doors open at 6:30 PM USET, and the online program will go from 7:00 to 8:00 PM USET. Reservations are not required. WVU COVID protocols currently require masking.

Don’t miss this unique chance to engage with these outstanding scientists who are joining this program to discuss the most important challenge of our time. The stakes could not be higher — let’s make them welcome!

We have more than 130 registrants so far – and for anyone in the Morgantown area, this will be a special gathering with other climate-concerned folks! Please share this invitation with your friends, and I hope to see you, in-person or online!

>>> Tom Rodd, Director, West Virginia Center on Climate Change

### ~ To attend and participate in this program — either online or in person — register here. For more information, email info@wvclimate.org. Thanks for your climate concerns!

P.S. Please share this message with others who might be interested! They will appreciate it!

Clean Air Moms want you to understand Frontline Impacts

I am thrilled to commend everyone in the Halt the Harm Network for joining over 500,000 comments submitted nationwide on the EPA Methane Rule as of Monday. Over 8500 of these comments came from our grassroots leaders and concerned members of HHN.

We were also successful in promoting community voices at the Frontline Impacts from the EPA Methane Rule webinar on January 26.

Thank you to everyone who submitted comments, shared this to their network, and joined us for the January 26 webinar. We have all had a significant impact on strengthening the EPA methane rules to truly protect communities across the country.

The methane rule campaign is being created by leaders in Halt the Harm Network – a project focused on building a stronger and more connected movement to fight oil & gas. Join the network discussion here.

Please join us in the ongoing Methane Rule discussion space in particular to know when EPA’s supplemental comment period opens in March.

>>> Thank you! Raina Rippel, Senior Fellow, Halt the Harm Network

Halt the Harm Network, 5335 Wisconsin Ave NW,
Suite 440, Washington, District of Columbia 20015

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See also: Federal pipeline agency shifts focus to cut methane – Mike Soraghan, E&E News, January 18, 2022

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) was given a broad new responsibility by Congress to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and the “thousands” of inquiries it’s planning to make to companies about their methane emissions this year will be some of the earliest tangible signs of that mandate. “Congress was very clear that we must not just reduce these emissions, but we must do all we can to minimize these emissions,” Tristan Brown, PHMSA’s deputy administrator, said in a speech late last year.

In late 2020, Congress ordered pipeline companies to update their inspections and maintenance plans to find ways to reduce methane emissions. It ordered PHMSA to check those plans with inspections. Meanwhile, the agency is also writing rules on methane, requiring companies to find and fix leaks. It says it’s aiming to have a proposed rule published in the Federal Register by May.

Subject: An invitation to join FracTracker in the Alliance

Become a FracTracker Supporter.

You’re warmly invited to join us in a newly formed group of special donors called the “Alliance.”

The members of the Alliance, our Advocates, provide ongoing, monthly gifts that help form a steady stream resource we know we can count on. Your monthly support will help make tangible changes, such as decreasing the number of oil and gas wells in the US, protecting the public from toxic and radioactive chemicals, and stopping petrochemical expansion into vulnerable communities.

As part of the Alliance, you will have direct access to the FracTracker team and receive special communications regarding our progress. You can also choose from swag options such as FracTracker Alliance t-shirts, stickers, and more. And if you sign up before July 4th, you will have the option to receive a complimentary FracTracker tote bag as a token of our gratitude.

Join the FracTracker Alliance today:

https://fractracker.networkforgood.com/projects/134604-join-the-alliance/

As we close out the fiscal year, we thank all of our friends and supporters for helping FracTracker achieve our mission to map, analyze, and communicate the risks of oil, gas, and petrochemical development to advance just energy alternatives that protect public health, natural resources, and the climate.

For more information on FracTracker’s finances and programing, please browse our annual reports here. If you have any questions about the Alliance, please contact me at (717) 303-0403 or lenker@fractracker.org.

With gratitude and respect,

Brook Lenker, Executive Director, FracTracker Alliance

p: 717-303-0403 m: 717-756-2637 f: 717-695-2119
a: 704 Lisburn Road | Suite 102 | Camp Hill, PA 17011
w: www.fractracker.org e: lenker@fractracker.org

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.

Living on “iceberg alley” is unbelievable!!!

From Stephanie Osmanski, Green Matters, December 10, 2020

One of the most overt effects of climate change that researchers can point to is the melting of ice in the Arctic. The average temperature of the planet is getting hotter, with 15 of the hottest years on record having occurred since 2000, according to NASA, and as temperatures climb, the climate no longer becomes sustainable for the environment necessary to support the Arctic. In fact, as of winter 2018, the Arctic’s sea ice coverage was the second smallest it’s ever been measured.

So, what happens if the Arctic melts?

“The Arctic is a natural freezer,” Michael Mann, a climatologist and director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, told The Verge. “Just like you’d be concerned if all of the ice in your freezer melted, so should you be concerned about the loss of Arctic sea ice.”

Sea levels will be drastically affected (increased)

The disappearing ice in the Arctic affects more than just the surrounding area. As the Arctic’s ice disappears, the rest of the world experiences global warming. As per Museum of Natural History, one of the most dangerous ways in which we would be affected by the Arctic melting is the rising of sea levels.

Why is this important? Different cities are established at different sea levels. If the sea levels rise 20 feet, populations and cities would be decimated. Coastal communities — Florida, New Jersey, Maryland – could be drastically affected and even now, are experiencing more instances of flooding. Raise the sea level 20 feet, and these areas will likely not survive.

“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. And land area would shrink significantly,” the Museum of Natural History site reads. “The [main] concern is that portions of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice caps may disappear. We do not know how much or how quickly this could happen, because we do not know exactly how it will happen.

Here’s what happens if the permafrost melts:

Mongabay reports that permafrost – which refers to any ground that remains completely frozen in nature for at least two years straight, usually near the North or South poles – is heading toward a crisis. Permafrost is located in Alaska, Canada, and Siberia.

“Permafrost covers approximately 22.8 million square kilometers (8.8 million square miles) in the Arctic, sub-Arctic and alpine regions — comprising nearly a quarter of the exposed land surface in the northern hemisphere,” according to Mongabay.

“The world’s permafrost serves as a massive carbon reservoir, storing nearly twice the amount of carbon currently found in the atmosphere. An estimated 1,400 gigatons of carbon — made up of decomposed plants and animals which once inhabited the Earth — can be found embedded in permafrost.”

Should the world’s permafrost melt, it could unleash a toxic amount of carbon, while simultaneously damaging wildlife homes.

Damage to the Arctic may also lead to extreme weather

It has been proven that when the Arctic is “unusually warm,” according to The Verge, extreme winter weather is anywhere from two to four times more likely in the Eastern U.S. Clearly, our extreme weather events here, are directly tied to what’s going on in the Arctic. If the Arctic continues to warm – and at alarming rates at that – the U.S. could experience more extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves, heavy rainfall, and hurricanes and tropical storms.

Some researchers believe the Arctic’s issues are to blame for unusual weather in the U.S. – 2018’s bomb cyclone, record-breaking freezing temps, and a slew of hurricanes in a short period of time, to name a few. It’s not just the U.S. that is affected by the state of the Arctic. A 2017 study linked the Arctic’s disappearing ice predicament to the unhealthy smog layer in China.

How can we stop the Arctic ice from disappearing?

The most important, day-to-day thing we can do to stop the Arctic ice from disappearing is to cut back on greenhouse gas and carbon emissions. The lesser rate emissions happen, the slower the rate of global warming happens. The slower the rate of global warming, the slower ice from the Arctic disappears.

However, researchers are actively searching for ways to slow down the rate of the ice disappearing. Non-profit Ice911 has proposed covering the Arctic in millions of silica and glass beads, to reflect sunlight back into space and while insulating ice that would have otherwise melted. Silica does not pose a threat to nature or animals, and the beads actually stick to the ice and water upon contact.

Ice911’s silica bead tactic is still being field-tested as of 2019, but it could prove an important means to an end in the near future. In the meantime, the most impactful thing the average person can do is be cognizant in trying to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint overall.

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Listen Up! Dr. James Hansen Has A Message For The Citizens Of Earth, Steve Hanley, Clean Technia, September 7, 2020

Dr. Hansen says there are three parameters to the global heating conundrum but only two receive regular attention — the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and average global surface temperatures. The third critical component is the Earth’s energy imbalance and it may be the most important of the three. “Stabilizing climate requires that humanity reduce the energy imbalance to approximately zero,” Hansen writes.

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See also (Video): New projections for sea-level rise due to climate change, CBS News, December 23, 2020,

A newly published scientific paper warns that sea levels are rising more rapidly than previously thought. Oceanographer John Englander is one the authors of that paper, and he joined CBSN’s Tom Hanson to discuss their findings and the importance of the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica.

A fishing vessel sails in the ice fjord near Ilulissat, Greenland September 12, 2017. REUTERS

From an Article by Cassandra Garrison, Reuters via Portside, August 16, 2020

Greenland’s ice sheet may have shrunk past the point of return, with the ice likely to melt away no matter how quickly the world reduces climate-warming emissions, new research suggests.

Scientists studied data on 234 glaciers across the Arctic territory spanning 34 years through 2018 and found that annual snowfall was no longer enough to replenish glaciers of the snow and ice being lost to summertime melting.

That melting is already causing global seas to rise about a millimeter on average per year. If all of Greenland’s ice goes, the water released would push sea levels up by an average of 6 meters — enough to swamp many coastal cities around the world. This process, however, would take decades.

“Greenland is going to be the canary in the coal mine, and the canary is already pretty much dead at this point,” said glaciologist Ian Howat at Ohio State University. He and his colleagues published the study Thursday in the Nature Communications Earth & Environment journal.

The Arctic has been warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the world for the last 30 years, an observation referred to as Arctic amplification. The polar sea ice hit its lowest extent for July in 40 years.

The Arctic thaw has brought more water to the region, opening up routes for shipping traffic, as well as increased interest in extracting fossil fuels and other natural resources.

Greenland is strategically important for the U.S. military and its ballistic missile early warning system, as the shortest route from Europe to North America goes via the Arctic island.

Last year, President Donald Trump offered to buy Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory. But Denmark, a U.S. ally, rebuffed the offer. Then last month, the U.S. reopened a consulate in the territory’s capital of Nuuk, and Denmark reportedly said last week it was appointing an intermediary between Nuuk and Copenhagen some 3,500 kilometers away.

Scientists, however, have long worried about Greenland’s fate, given the amount of water locked into the ice. The new study suggests the territory’s ice sheet will now gain mass only once every 100 years — a grim indicator of how difficult it is to re-grow glaciers once they hemorrhage ice.

In studying satellite images of the glaciers, the researchers noted that the glaciers had a 50% chance of regaining mass before 2000, with the odds declining since.

“We are still draining more ice now than what was gained through snow accumulation in ‘good’ years,” said lead author Michalea King, a glaciologist at Ohio State University.

The sobering findings should spur governments to prepare for sea-level rise, King said. “Things that happen in the polar regions don’t stay in the polar region,” she said.

Still, the world can still bring down emissions to slow climate change, scientists said. Even if Greenland can’t regain the icy bulk that covered its 2 million square kilometers, containing the global temperature rise can slow the rate of ice loss.

“When we think about climate action, we’re not talking about building back the Greenland ice sheet,” said Twila Moon, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center who was not involved in the study. “We’re talking about how quickly rapid sea-level rise comes to our communities, our infrastructure, our homes, our military bases.”

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.

Sea level rise is an issue at the Norfolk Naval Station, the world’s largest

From an Article by Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury, November 5, 2019

If the stalwart presence of the U.S. military in Virginia makes you feel safer in an uncertain world plagued by sea level rise and climate change, a recent report by the U.S. Army War College would like to disabuse you of that sense of security.

According to “Implications of Climate Change for the U.S. Army,” the Department of Defense is “precariously unprepared for the national security implications” of climate change, while the U.S. Army has fostered an “environmentally oblivious” culture.

“In short, the Army is an environmental disaster,” the authors write.

Overall, the report, which was released this August but in the past week has garnered national and international attention, largely focuses on how climate change will heighten the likelihood of global instability. Warmer temperatures and rising seas will not only displace millions of people but endanger water supplies and power grids while fostering new geopolitical tensions, the authors warn.

Not all the risks are overseas. Domestically, military installations are threatened by both power grid vulnerabilities and sea-level rise.

“Department of Defense installations are 99 percent reliant on the U.S. power grid for electrical power generation due to the decommissioning of autonomous power generation capability for budgetary cost saving measures over the last two decades,” the report notes. But as climate change gives rise to more severe storms and weather events like drought and sustained precipitation, these shifts “introduce the possibility of taxing an already fragile system.”

Among the power concerns cited are the vulnerability of the nation’s nuclear power stations, all of which are located near waterways because of the technology’s reliance on water for cooling. This September, the New Republic highlighted the Surry Nuclear Power Station as an “extreme” example of vulnerability, reporting:

“the greatest risk of flood-related catastrophe at the facility would be surge combined with flooding from the nearby James River. A particularly severe flood could result in a maximum water level of 38.8 feet — more than 10 feet higher than the maximum Surry is built to withstand. It’s a highly unlikely combination of events, but a flood of this scale could wreak havoc on electrical systems and require Surry’s operators to try to cool the core in a dangerously flooded facility.”

Sea level rise continues to be the greatest threat to Virginia’s massive military infrastructure. Virginia is heavily reliant on the military: it receives more defense spending than any other state, and that spending makes up a greater portion of its gross domestic product than in any other state. But Virginia is also highly vulnerable to climate change, particularly in Hampton Roads, where the world’s largest naval base is found and the nation’s second-fastest rate of sea level rise is occurring. Earlier this summer, assessments by the four military branches identified six Virginia installations as among the nation’s most threatened military bases.

The Evidence for Climate Change

There is overwhelming consensus among scientists that the Earth’s climate is warming, and that this warming is largely driven by human action. Although regions have always experienced natural temperature fluctuations, long-term temperature records show an “unequivocal” warming trend since the 1950s. Other measurable changes such as accelerated melting of glaciers and ice sheets, sea level rise and increasingly extreme weather provide further clear evidence that warming is occurring. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which draws on research by thousands of scientists worldwide, this warming is “extremely likely” (defined as greater than 95% probability) to have been caused by human actions, particularly the release of “unprecedented” levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the mid-20th century. The U.S. Fourth National Climate Assessment released by the Trump administration in November 2018 similarly found that “observational evidence does not support any credible natural explanations for this amount of warming.”

Sources: IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report; NASA, “Climate Change: How Do We Know?”; U.S. Fourth National Climate Assessment.