We are still screwed: the coming climate disaster

Politics and religion
3043

India is planning to plant another 12% of its land area with forests.

The Narendra Modi government plans to spend $6.2 billion to create new forests through the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill, 2015, which has been passed by lawmakers in India’s lower house this week. The bill aims to increase India’s forest cover from 21.34% of the total land to 33%…“Our forest cover will dramatically increase and it will result in achieving our target 33% of tree cover and most importantly 2.5 billion tonne of carbon sink as we have indicated in our intended nationally determined contributions (INDC),” India’s environmental minister, Prakash Javadekar said on May 3rd.

3044

‘Headlines ‘exaggerated’ climate link to sinking of Pacific islands’:

Links between climate change and the sinking of five islands in the Pacific Ocean have been exaggerated, the author of a widely reported new study has said.

The report, published on Friday, tracked the shapeshifting of 33 reef islands in the Solomon Islands between 1947 and 2014. It found that five had been washed away completely and six more had been severely eroded. The study blamed the loss on a combination of sea-level rise and high wave energy.

Many media outlets, including the Guardian, jumped to the conclusion that the islands were lost to climate change. But this largely misinterprets the science, according to the study’s author, Dr Simon Albert.

“All these headlines are certainly pushing things a bit towards the ‘climate change has made islands vanish’ angle. I would prefer slightly more moderate titles that focus on sea-level rise being the driver rather than simply ‘climate change’,” Albert told the Guardian.

The major misunderstanding stems from the conflation of sea-level rise with climate change. As a scientifically robust and potentially destructive articulation of climate change, sea-level rise has become almost synonymous with the warming of the planet.

However, as Albert’s paper points out, the ocean has been rising in the Solomon Islands at 7mm per year, more than double the global average. Since the 1990s, trade winds in the Pacific have been particularly intense. This has been driven partly by global warming and partly by climatic cycles - in particular the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

“These trade winds have basically pushed water up into western Pacific and have driven these exceptionally high rates of [sea-level rise] in the Solomons,” said Albert. “The trade winds are partly a natural cycle but also the recent intensification is related to atmospheric warming.”

The proportion of the extra rise driven by climate change was not considered by Albert’s study.

Areas of the Pacific where seas are rising at closer to the global average have not yet experienced the same loss of land as the Solomon Islands. A few studies, based on comparing aerial photos of islands from world war two with current satellite images, have thus far have been inconclusive. There is even a suggestion that atolls in the central Pacific are getting bigger.

The loss of land in the Pacific is a totemic image of climate change. Residents of low-lying nations see incursions of the sea where it did not used to be and blame the burning of fossil fuels. This study shows that the issue is more complex than this. But it also contains a dire warning.

By the second half of this century the sea-level rise across the Pacific will be close to the rate observed in the Solomon Islands in recent decades. Albert’s team also observed a disturbing trend of wave energy increasing along with local sea-level rise, meaning islands exposed to high seas were trounced into oblivion.

In this respect, the drowning of these lands is a window into the future. For the first time, we can see clearly that the amount of sea-level rise we expect from climate change will overwhelm entire landscapes.

3045

This seems like the appropriate place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw

3046

I thought this was a neat little visualization. Courtesy of the Washington Post.

3047

Coal tries to sell Climate Change denial to a Judge and is roundly slapped down:

The losing case from the coal company witnesses (rebutted by John Abraham here and here) can be summarized as follows:

Warming has been less than models predicted [False]
This means the climate’s sensitivity to the increased greenhouse effect is low [False]
Carbon pollution is great anyway and should be subsidized, not taxed [False]

In between these primary arguments, Peabody coal’s witnesses made a variety of false and/or conspiratorial statements, dredging up numerous long-debunked climate myths…

…Ultimately Lindzen admitted that the coal company case relied upon trusting the 3% of fringe contrarian scientists and ignoring the expert consensus as summarized in the IPCC report:

All of this [opposition] testimony is flawed to the extent it simply relies on … predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change … today the best evidence indicates that … a much lower climate sensitivity value of 1°C or 1.5°C is correct

In other words, trust these outlier scientists’ judgment about what evidence is “best” and ignore the expert consensus. The judge did not find this argument compelling…

…Incredibly, the coal company actually made the case that carbon pollution is so terrific, we should be subsidizing it:

Because the initial impacts of climate change are positive, due to carbon dioxide fertilization, reduced winter heating, and few cold-related deaths, the social cost of carbon is negative for the highest discount rates, that is, carbon dioxide emissions should be subsidized rather than taxed.

3048

Well, to be fair to the poor lawyers tasked with this defense, they really only had two choices: roll out a bunch of lies and bullshit, or just stand up and say “fuck the planet, we want the money!”

Otherwise they haven’t a leg to stand on.

3049

Overall cost is the single biggest issue against nuclear, especially over the lifetime of the installation:

It’s like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. I am okay with that, good that the bad guy got cought…

3050

‘UK energy from coal hits zero for first time in over 100 years’:

The amount of electricity generated from coal in the UK has fallen to zero several times in the past week, grid data shows.

In what green energy supporters have described as a “historic turning point” for the UK’s power system, coal-fired electricity first fell to zero late on Monday night and for the early hours of Tuesday morning, according to data from BM Reports.

On Thursday, there was no electricity from coal for more than 12 and a half hours, more than half the day, with it making no contribution to the UK’s power supplies late at night when demand was low and for a period in the day, the data shows.

It is thought to be the first time the UK has been without electricity from coal since the world’s first centralised public coal-fired generator opened at Holborn Viaduct in London, in 1882, according to the Carbon Brief website which reports on climate science and energy policy.

As much as the land of my fathers relied for decades on coal, things change, and sadly coal along with other dirty fuels is just not in our best interests anymore, we need to change and green our energy sectors.

3051

Well, whaddayaknow.

April 2016 was the hottest April on record globally – and the seventh month in a row to have broken global temperature records.

The latest figures smashed the previous record for April by the largest margin ever recorded.

It makes three months in a row that the monthly record has been broken by the largest margin ever, and seven months in a row that are at least 1C above the 1951-80 mean for that month.

3052

It was a pretty mild (and wet!) winter for sure, and rather worrying to see the trend continue.

‘Air pollution rising at an ‘alarming rate’ in world’s cities’:

Outdoor air pollution has grown 8% globally in the past five years, with billions of people around the world now exposed to dangerous air, according to new data from more than 3,000 cities compiled by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

While all regions are affected, fast-growing cities in the Middle East, south-east Asia and the western Pacific are the most impacted with many showing pollution levels at five to 10 times above WHO recommended levels.

According to the new WHO database, levels of ultra-fine particles of less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5s) are highest in India, which has 16 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities.

China, which has been plagued by air pollution, has improved its air quality since 2011 and now has only five cities in the top 30. Nine other countries, including Pakistan and Iran, have one city each in the worst 30.

For the larger, but slightly less dangerous PM10 particles, India has eight cities in the world’s top 30. Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan each have two cities in the top 10. The true figure for the growth in global air pollution is likely to be worse because only a handful of African cities monitor their levels.

The most polluted city in the world, according to the WHO data, is Onitsha, a fast-growing port and transit city in south-eastern Nigeria that recorded levels of nearly 600 micrograms per cubic metre of PM10s - around 30 times the WHO recommended level of 20 micrograms per cubic metre.

Air pollution levels were generally much lower for cities in developed countries with Sydney, New York and London registering 17, 16 and 22 micrograms per cubic metre for PM10s respectively. However, the data only includes measurements for particulates and does not include forms of air pollution such as NO2 and ozone.

“We have a public health emergency in many countries. Urban air pollution continues to rise at an alarming rate, wreaking havoc on human health. It’s dramatic, one of the biggest problems we are facing globally, with terrible future costs to society,” said Dr Maria Neira, director of public health at the WHO in Geneva.

“The cost for countries is enormous. Air pollution affects economies and people’s quality of life. It leads to major chronic diseases and to people ultimately dying,” she said.

I’m very happy i moved out of the Big Smoke when i did.

3053

On the other hand…

3054

Have you got a link for that that doesn’t make you register? Barring that, what was the gist?

3055

It’s mainly based on this report. Basically the UK has a pretty nasty energy production crunch coming because of the lack of new plants and the variability of most renewable sources that have been coming online. That came to a head on Monday when the coal plants that were supposed to come online to cover an unexpected dip in wind generation failed and there were problems with two interconnectors that are used to draw power from the continent. The National Grid had to issue a Notice of Inadequate System Margin and wholesale prices increased spiked. Apparently National Grid had to offer £1,250 per MWh to one plant to ensure enough supply. That’s an order of magnitude more than usual.

3056

Hopefully whit means the market for Australian coal is beginning to dry up and our Government can get their heads our of their asses and look to knew energy sources.

3057

Australia should be majority solar by common sense. Maybe wind at night, solar by day.

3058

We are also sitting on some of the biggest Uranium deposits on the planet.

3059

Province of Ontario, Canada threw down a huge climate change action plan today.

-All homes and small buildings built in 2030 or later to not use fossil fuels for heating.
-$3.8 billion for building retrofits
-up to $14,000 incentives on electric vehicles plus more for low and moderate-income households, free overnight charging
-$354 million to regional transit (note this is in addition to many billions now funded or in planning)
-$375 million for R and D, establishment of ‘global centre for low-carbon mobility’.
-$1.2 billion to help factories and businesses become more efficient (e.g. replace older equipment)
-$200 million for bike lanes

3060

All things we all need to see coming from our governments really, time is running out in all aspects, and this report sort of shows why:

'Climate change puts 1.3bn people and $158tn at risk, says World Bank ':

3061

‘Farming is ‘single biggest cause’ of worst air pollution in Europe’:

Farming is the biggest single cause of the worst air pollution in Europe, a new study has found, as nitrogen compounds from fertilisers and animal waste drift over industrial regions.

When the nitrogen compounds are mixed with air already polluted from industry, they combine to form solid particles that can stick in the fine lung tissue of children and adults, causing breathing difficulties, impaired lungs and heart function, and eventually even premature death.

The compounds come from nitrogen-rich fertilisers, which have been in common use for decades. Nitrogen, the major content of the air we breathe, is essential for plant growth, and enhancing that growth has led to a massive industry in putting nitrogen - already naturally present in soils - back into the ground in greater quantities.

Ammonia, whose chemical composition is nitrogen and hydrogen (NH3), is a byproduct both of fertilised fields and of animal waste, as it can come from the breakdown of livestock excretions.

Links between fine particulate pollution and ammonia from agricultural sources have been slow to be firmly established, but an increasing body of research suggests that this is now a leading source of air pollution.

Europe, much of the US, Russia and China have been found to suffer from the problem, in the latest research from the Earth Institute at Columbia University, in the US, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

3062

‘Portugal runs for four days straight on renewable energy alone’:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/18/portugal-runs-for-four-days-straight-on-renewable-energy-alone

pretty damn awesome :)