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As the planet warms, people are moving. Will Canada welcome them?

As droughts, deteriorating farmland and rising sea levels push people around the world from their homes, advocates in Canada are calling on the federal government to support those who are — and will be — displaced by the climate crisis.

Last week, Climate Action Network Canada (CAN-Rac), a body of more than 100 environmental groups across the country, sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Immigration Minister Sean Fraser asking them to grant permanent residency to all 1.7 million migrants in Canada, including half a million undocumented people. This “regularization” process is key to climate justice, explained Caroline Brouillette, national policy manager for CAN-Rac.

“Fighting the climate crisis is not only about reducing our emissions, it’s about how we care for one another — and that’s why we’re asking for this,” she said.

Climate change is already a factor causing people to immigrate to Canada, said Syed Hussan, the executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), which worked with CAN-Rac to send the letter. But while climate migrants come to the country as workers, students or refugees, they “may not even be able to describe their experiences having resulted from climate change.”

He said many migrants’ understanding of climate change is that it causes poverty.

“[Climate change is] actually closely linked to economic deterioration,” Hussan explained.

Take farmers, for example. Soil degradation is one of climate change’s greatest impacts, he said. Poor soil means poor crops, forcing farmers to move to towns and cities to find work. But many fail to find jobs in larger urban centres, he added, leaving them no choice but to leave their home country and seek opportunities in Canada.

‘Soon the world will be unrecognisable’: is it still possible to prevent total climate meltdown?

Globe with steam rising from it. North and South America in view.
Record high temperatures and extreme weather events are being recorded around the world. Photograph: Ian Logan/Getty Images

Blistering heatwaves are just the start. We must accept how bad things are before we can head off global catastrophe, according to a leading UK scientist

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 complacency 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.

Bill McGuire.
Bill McGuire is emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London and was also an adviser to the UK government.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Dawn of the Apocalypse

The Dawn of the Apocalypse

We were warned for decades about the death march we are on because of global warming. And yet, the global ruling class continues to frog-march us towards extinction.

Our Climate Future – by Mr. Fish

 

The past week has seen record-breaking heat waves across Europe. Wildfires have ripped through Spain, Portugal and France. London’s fire brigade experienced its busiest day since World War II. The U.K. saw its hottest day on record of 104.54 Fahrenheit. In China, more than a dozen cities issued the “highest possible heat warning” this weekend with over 900 million people in China enduring a scorching heat wave along with severe flooding and landslides across large swathes of southern China. Dozens of people have died. Millions of Chinese have been displaced. Economic losses run into the billions of yuan. Droughts, which have destroyed crops, killed livestock and forced many to flee their homes, are creating a potential famine in the Horn of Africa. More than 100 million people in the United States are under heat alerts in more than two dozen states from temperatures in the mid-to-upper 90s and low 100s. Wildfires have destroyed thousands of acres in California. More than 73 percent of New Mexico is suffering from an “extreme” or “severe” drought. Thousands of people had to flee from a fast-moving brush fire near Yosemite National Park on Saturday and 2,000 homes and businesses lost power.

It is not as if we were not warned. It is not as if we lacked scientific evidence. It is not as if we could not see the steady ecological degeneration and species extinction. And yet, we did not act. The result will be mass death with victims dwarfing the murderous rampages of fascism, Stalinism and Mao Zedong’s China combined…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate Impacts From a Removal of Anthropogenic Aerosol Emissions

Abstract

Limiting global warming to 1.5 or 2.0°C requires strong mitigation of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Concurrently, emissions of anthropogenic aerosols will decline, due to coemission with GHG, and measures to improve air quality. However, the combined climate effect of GHG and aerosol emissions over the industrial era is poorly constrained. Here we show the climate impacts from removing present-day anthropogenic aerosol emissions and compare them to the impacts from moderate GHG-dominated global warming. Removing aerosols induces a global mean surface heating of 0.5–1.1°C, and precipitation increase of 2.0–4.6%. Extreme weather indices also increase. We find a higher sensitivity of extreme events to aerosol reductions, per degree of surface warming, in particular over the major aerosol emission regions. Under near-term warming, we find that regional climate change will depend strongly on the balance between aerosol and GHG forcing.

Plain Language Summary

To keep within 1.5 or 2° of global warming, we need massive reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, aerosol emissions will be strongly reduced. We show how cleaning up aerosols, predominantly sulfate, may add an additional half a degree of global warming, with impacts that strengthen those from greenhouse gas warming. The northern hemisphere is found to be more sensitive to aerosol removal than greenhouse gas warming, because of where the aerosols are emitted today. This means that it does not only matter whether or not we reach international climate targets. It also matters how we get there.

1 Introduction

If global warming is to be kept within 1.5 or 2.0°C, strong, and rapid mitigation of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is required (Matthews & Caldeira, 2008; Millar et al., 2017; Rogelj, Luderer, et al., 2015). As anthropogenic aerosols are often coemitted with long-lived GHG, such emissions will likely also see sharp decreases—compounded by present and future effort to improve air quality (Bowerman et al., 2013; Smith & Bond, 2014).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fact-Check: is more than 1.5°C of global warming already locked in?

Fact-Check: is more than 1.5°C of global warming already locked in?

Claim: The lag between CO₂ emissions and warming means ~0.7°C of warming is yet to come, and aerosols are masking another ~0.7°C, meaning warming of much more than 1.5°C or even 2°C is already locked in even if we stopped all emissions right now.

Reality: If emissions stopped, falling carbon dioxide levels due to natural carbon sinks would counteract the climate lag. Immediately stopping aerosol emissions would cause a warming boost of ~0.2-0.4°C, but a slower partial phase-out can reduce this and can be more than countered by also reducing methane emissions. This means that the responsibility for future warming lies with current rather than past actions.

This is the sixth post in a new climatetippingoints.info series fact-checking claims that various climate tipping points have been crossed, and that sudden catastrophic warming is now inevitable. See the Introduction post for an overview.

It is sometimes claimed (e.g. 1,2,3,4,5,6) that more than 1.5°C or even 2°C of global warming is already geophysically locked-in even if we immediately stopped all greenhouse gas emissions, and that this has been ignored or covered up by scientists.

This is often based on two assumptions: firstly, that the lag between when emissions happen and when warming catches up means ~0.7°C of warming is in the pipeline already; secondly, that another ~0.6-0.7°C masked by cooling aerosols will emerge as emissions fall.

On top of a high estimate of ~1.3-1.4°C of current warming it’s therefore been stated that ~2.7°C of warming is already locked in (and some claim even more), breaching the Paris Targets already and risking triggering extra catastrophic feedbacks.

It’s also sometimes claimed that the planet is already beyond a specific threshold in CO₂ concentrations (e.g. 450500 ppm CO₂e) beyond which more than 2°C of warming becomes inevitable.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Scientists warn of widespread drought in the 21st century

Scientists warn of widespread drought in the 21st century

Scientists sound alarm over widespread drought in the 21st century
Frequency changes (%) of different drought metrics from 1970–99 to 2070–99 under the (left) SSP2-4.5 and (right) SSP5-8.5 scenarios projected by CMIP6 multimodel ensemble mean. Credit: IAP

Drought is among the most damaging natural hazards in the world, often causing severe losses to agriculture, ecosystems and human societies.

Historical records of precipitation, streamflow and observation-derived  indices all show increased aridity since 1950s over several hotspot regions, including Africa, southern Europe, East Asia, eastern Australia, Northwest Canada, and southern Brazil.

“Climate model projections also suggest that drought may become more severe and widespread as the -induced global warming continues in the 21st century,” said Prof. Zhao Tianbao from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Recently, Zhao and Prof. Dai Aiguo from University at Albany, State University of New York, further investigated hydroclimatic and drought changes in the latest projections from 25 models of the Phase Six of the Coupled Model Inetercomparison Project (CMIP6).

Their results were published in the Journal of Climate on Jan. 5.

The study suggests that the latest projections from CMIP6 models reaffirm the widespread drying and increases in agricultural drought by up to 200 percent over most of the Americas (including the Amazon), Europe and the Mediterranean region, southern Africa, Southeast Asia, and Australia under moderate-high emissions scenarios in the 21st century.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the drought is also expected to last longer and spread wider in the late 21st century (2070–99), Zhao noted.

The model results suggest a decrease in the mean and flattening of the probability distribution functions of drought metrics, despite large uncertainties in individual projections partly due to internal variability.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hottest ocean temperatures in history recorded last year

Ocean heating driven by human-caused climate crisis, scientists say, in sixth consecutive year record has been broken

An oil platform stands offshore as cargo shipping container ships wait in the Pacific Ocean to enter the port of Los Angeles.
An oil platform stands offshore as cargo shipping container ships wait in the Pacific Ocean to enter the port of Los Angeles. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

The world’s oceans have been set to simmer, and the heat is being cranked up. Last year saw the hottest ocean temperatures in recorded history, the sixth consecutive year that this record has been broken, according to new research.

The heating up of our oceans is being primarily driven by the human-caused climate crisis, scientists say, and represents a starkly simple indicator of global heating. While the atmosphere’s temperature is also trending sharply upwards, individual years are less likely to be record-breakers compared with the warming of the oceans.

A firefighter sprays water as a house burns in the Dixie fire in the Indian Falls area of Plumas County, California.
Climate crisis: last seven years the hottest on record, 2021 data shows
Read more

Last year saw a heat record for the top 2,000 meters of all oceans around the world, despite an ongoing La Niña event, a periodic climatic feature that cools waters in the Pacific. The 2021 record tops a stretch of modern record-keeping that goes back to 1955. The second hottest year for oceans was 2020, while the third hottest was 2019.

“The ocean heat content is relentlessly increasing, globally, and this is a primary indicator of human-induced climate change,” said Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and co-author of the research, published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

Warmer ocean waters are helping supercharge storms, hurricanes and extreme rainfall, the paper states, which is escalating the risks of severe flooding. Heated ocean water expands and eats away at the vast Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which are collectively shedding around 1tn tons of ice a year, with both of these processes fueling sea level rise.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oceans Break Heat Record for Third Year in a Row

Oceans Break Heat Record for Third Year in a Row

2021 broke the record from 2020 by about 14 zettajoules, or 20 times the world’s annual energy consumption

Oceans Break Heat Record for Third Year in a Row
An Arvor float is deployed from the RV Pourquoi Pas to capture ocean temperature data. The oceans are absorbing more heat as climate change advances. Credit: Argo Program

The world’s oceans reached their hottest levels on record in 2021. It’s the third year in a row it’s happened, and it’s driven almost entirely by human-caused climate change, scientists announced yesterday.

The findings are presented in a paper published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. As excess heat accumulates in the atmosphere, caused by continued greenhouse gas emissions, the oceans soak some of it in.

The study analyzes data from scientific sensors attached to floats scattered throughout the oceans, from the balmy Mediterranean to the icy waters surrounding Antarctica. It relies primarily on two international datasets—one maintained by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the other operated by NOAA.

The study finds that the amount of heat in the oceans last year broke the previous 2020 record by around 14 zettajoules. That’s equivalent to at least 20 times the entire world’s annual energy consumption.

It’s an ongoing pattern. All five of the world’s hottest ocean levels have occurred in the last five years. The record-breaker in 2017 is still a bit higher than 2018. But each of the last three years, from 2019 to 2021, have all broken the previous record.

That’s on top of a decades-long pattern of warming. Every decade since 1958 has been warmer than the previous decade. And the rate of warming has sped up significantly since the 1980s.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Scientists watch giant ‘doomsday’ glacier in Antarctica with concern

Cracks and fissures stoke fears of breakup that could lead to half-metre rise in global sea levels – or more

Satellite view of Antarctica with the Thwaites glacier marked in red.
Satellite view of Antarctica with the Thwaites glacier marked in red. Photograph: UniversalImagesGroup/UIG/Getty Images

Twenty years ago, an area of ice thought to weigh almost 500bn tonnes dramatically broke off the Antarctic continent and shattered into thousands of icebergs into the Weddell Sea.

The 1,255-sq-mile (3,250-sq-km) Larsen B ice shelf was known to be melting fast but no one had predicted that it would take just one month for the 200-metre-thick behemoth to completely disintegrate.

Glaciologists were shocked as much by the speed as by the scale of the collapse. “This is staggering. It’s just broken apart. It fell over like a wall and has broken as if into hundreds of thousands of bricks”, said one.

This week, ice scientists meeting in New Orleans warned that something even more alarming was brewing on the West Antarctic ice sheet – a vast basin of ice on the Antarctic peninsula. Years of research by teams of British and American researchers showed that great cracks and fissures had opened up both on top of and underneath the Thwaites glacier, one of the biggest in the world, and it was feared that parts of it, too, may fracture and collapse possibly within five years or less.

Thwaites makes Larsen B look like an icicle. It is roughly 100 times larger, about the size of Britain, and contains enough water on its own to raise sea levels worldwide by more than half a metre. It contributes about 4% of annual global sea level rise and has been called the most important glacier in the world, even the “doomsday” glacier. Satellite studies show it is melting far faster than it did in the 1990s.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil Giants admit to a 5C Temperature Increase being baked in but no one else will!

Oil Giants admit to a 5C Temperature Increase being baked in but no one else will!

“Oil giants Shell and BP are planning for global temperatures to rise as much as 5°C by the middle of the century. The level is more than double the upper limit committed to by most countries in the world under the Paris Climate Agreement, which both companies publicly support.”
I believe a temperature increase of 5C and more will occur much, much sooner than mid-century. This is clearly an extinction event for most if not all complex life on planet earth.
In my May 2015 Oral Submission to the N.Z. Ministry of Environment, I pointed out that both the IEA and Shell Petroleum admit that close to 5C is baked in but none of the large NGO’s nor the global Green Party’s nor their networks are prepared to face the reality of the crisis. I received zero feedback from the Ministry minions but a standing ovation from the concerned members of the public at the hearing process. My oral presentation is embedded in the above hyperlink:
According to the conservative blogger Joe Romm at Think Progress the planet may have warmed 5C in 13 years once before;
“PETM shocker: When CO2 Levels Doubled 55 Million Years Ago, Earth May Have Warmed 9F In 13 Years

I  have written to both David Parker, Environment Minister and James Shaw co-leader of the Green Party of Aotearoa in the new Labour led coalition government in New Zealand challenging them both to face up to the reality of the situation, I have yet to receive any reply. My emails are copied below, feel free to email them yourself( both of their emails are embedded in the two links directly above) and ask why they are holding back;

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“If We Lose the Arctic We Lose the Globe” We’ve Lost the Arctic

“If We Lose the Arctic We Lose the Globe” We’ve Lost the Arctic

“Changes will happen decades earlier than previously thought.”
Now where have we heard that before?
“More rain than snow will fall in the Arctic and this transition will occur decades earlier than previously predicted, a new study led by the University of Manitoba (UM) and co-authored by scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at CU Boulder reports.”

New Climate Study Predicting More Rain Than Snow in the Arctic ‘Rings Alarm Bells’

“There are huge ramifications of these changes,” said the lead researcher, “all of which have implications on wildlife populations and human livelihoods.”
“There are huge ramifications of these changes, which we note in the paper, such as a reduction of snow cover, increased permafrost melt, more rain-on-snow events, and greater flooding events from increased river discharge, all of which have implications on wildlife populations and human livelihoods,” says lead researcher Michelle McCrystall, a postdoctoral fellow in UM’s Centre for Earth Observation Science in the Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources.
Rainfall in Arctic Will Soon Be More Common Than Snowfall – Decades Earlier Than Thought

“The Arctic is iconic for maintaining year-round ice and snow, but in the last decade, it has begun to transition to wetlands and open ocean. Emblematic of this change, in July 2020, the last intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic fell into the sea. Since first analyzed in 1902, the Milne ice sheet already lost 43 percent of its previous mass. Canada’s Ellesmere Island ice caps were also lost in the summer of 2020, as the ice deposited during the Little Ice Age (1600 to 1850) melted completely…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New Climate Study Predicting More Rain Than Snow in the Arctic ‘Rings Alarm Bells’

Greenland glaciers

Icebergs are shown near Ilulissat, Greenland. (Photo: Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

New Climate Study Predicting More Rain Than Snow in the Arctic ‘Rings Alarm Bells’

“There are huge ramifications of these changes,” said the lead researcher, “all of which have implications on wildlife populations and human livelihoods.”

Research published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications suggests rainfall will become more common in the Arctic than snowfall, and decades sooner than previously thought—findings that elicited fresh warnings about the necessity of ambitious climate action.

“The new models couldn’t be clearer that unless global warming is stopped, the future Arctic will be wetter.”

“As the Arctic continues to warm faster than the rest of the planet, evidence mounts that the region is experiencing unprecedented environmental change,” says the study, spearheaded by Michelle McCrystall, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manitoba.

“The transition from a snow- to rain-dominated Arctic in the summer and autumn is projected to occur decades earlier and at a lower level of global warming, potentially under 1.5°C, with profound climatic, ecosystem, and socioeconomic impacts,” the paper continues, referencing the Paris climate agreement’s lower temperature target for the end of this century.

McCrystall detailed the anticipated consequences of this transition, which is happening because of rapid global heating, poleward moisture transport, greater Arctic amplification, sea-ice loss, and increased sensitivity of precipitation to regional warming.

“People might say, ‘Well, what has that got to do with me?’ Well, this is going to affect you, and in actual fact, it is affecting you now,” McCrystall said in a statement. “For me, I think what people need to understand is, we live in a global society where everything is interconnected, and that’s true of the climate. We have a global climate. So, what happens in one region, will affect what happens everywhere else.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

To keep fossil carbon out of the air, just stop pulling it out of the Earth

To keep fossil carbon out of the air, just stop pulling it out of the Earth

Nakate chided her audience for sleepwalking toward catastrophe: “We see business leaders and investors flying into COP on private jets. We see them making fancy speeches. We hear about new pledges and promises. … I have come here to tell you that we don’t believe you.” She added, “I am here to say, prove us wrong.”

Throughout the summit, people of all ages and backgrounds had rallied in the streets outside to demand effective climate action, climate justice, an end to exploitation and other policies through which the world’s governments might prove Nakate wrong.

On Nov. 5, more than 8,000 children, teenagers, parents and teachers marched through the city, calling on the generation now in power not to ruin the future for generations who follow. The next day, a surge of more than 100,000 climate marchers demanded an end to fossil fuel investments, a global conversion to renewable energy financed by wealthy countries and reparations for Indigenous communities.

Tuntiak Katan, a member of the Shuar nation in Ecuador, reminded reporters that “Indigenous peoples already protect 950 million hectares of land worldwide.” Affluent nations, he said, must “abandon extractivism and get the oil, mining and agribusiness companies out of our territories, and apply a holistic vision, combined with the vision of the Indigenous peoples.”

The Glasgow marchers’ goals were both necessary and achievable, but they knew all too well that fossilized COP summits have failed the world 25 times since 1995, and COP26 would be no different.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Beware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth

Covid-19 may well have been one attempt by the Earth to protect itself. Gaia will try harder next time with something even nastier

Viewpoint Ponta do Sossego
‘I am not hopeful of a positive outcome at Cop26, knowing who is participating. I was not invited to Glasgow, though that is hardly a surprise.’ Photograph: Magdalena Bujak/Alamy

I don’t know if it is too late for humanity to avert a climate catastrophe, but I am sure there is no chance if we continue to treat global heating and the destruction of nature as separate problems.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, speaking in Brussels this Thursday

That is the wrongheaded approach of the United Nations, which is about to stage one big global conference for the climate in Glasgow, having just finished a different big global conference for biodiversity in Kunming.

This division is as much of a mistake as the error made by universities when they teach chemistry in a different class from biology and physics. It is impossible to understand these subjects in isolation because they are interconnected. The same is true of living organisms that greatly influence the global environment. The composition of the Earth’s atmosphere and the temperature of the surface is actively maintained and regulated by the biosphere, by life, by what the ancient Greeks used to call Gaia.

Almost 60 years ago, I suggested our planet self-regulated like a living organism. I called this the Gaia theory, and was later joined by biologist Lynn Margulis, who also espoused this idea. Both of us were roundly criticised by scientists in academia. I was an outsider, an independent scientist, and the mainstream view then was the neo-Darwinist one that life adapts to the environment, not that the relationship also works in the other direction, as we argued…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If all 2030 climate targets are met, the planet will heat by 2.7 C this century

If all 2030 climate targets are met, the planet will heat by 2.7 C this century

If all 2030 climate targets are met, the planet will heat by 2.7℃ this century
Corals will not likely survive more than 2℃ global warming. Credit: Shutterstock

If nations make good on their latest promises to reduce emissions by 2030, the planet will warm by at least 2.7℃ this century, a report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has found. This overshoots the crucial internationally agreed temperature rise of 1.5℃.

Released today, just days before the international climate change summit in Glasgow begins, UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report works out the difference between where  are projected to be in 2030 and where they should be to avoid the worst climate change impacts.

It comes as the Morrison government yesterday officially committed to a target of net-zero emissions by 2050. The government made no changes to its paltry 2030 target to reduce emissions by between 26% and 28% below 2005 levels, but announced that Australia is set to beat this, and reduce emissions by up to 35%.

The UNEP report was conducted before Australia’s new 2050 target was announced, but even with this new pledge, global pledges will undoubtedly still be short of what’s needed.

The report found global targets for net-zero emissions by mid-century could cut another 0.5℃ off . While this is a big improvement, it will still see temperatures rise to 2.2℃ this century. If we don’t close the global emissions gap, what will Australia, and the rest of world, be forced to endure?

 

 

If all 2030 climate targets are met, the planet will heat by 2.7℃ this century
Credit: The Conversation

Pledges are falling short

As of August 30 (the date the UNEP report reviewed to), 120 countries had made new or updated pledges and announcements to cut emissions.

The US, for example, has set an ambitious new target of reducing emissions by 50–52% below 2005 levels in 2030. Similarly, the European Union will cut carbon emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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