State of the Arctic in 2020: bad news for our future

William P. Hall on February 26, 2022

Amer. Meteorological Society’s 2020 State of the Climate reports accelerating Arctic warming (Arctic amplification) that drives world climate

Zach Labe samples that data to show midwinter temperature over the Barents and Kara Seas has risen by more than 2 °C per decade!

Note: over the next few days I will be posting a comprehensive post on the full State of the Arctic article and the warnings we should be taking from it.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Great idea! photovoltaic covers for irrigation canals

William P. Hall on February 26, 2022

Good for agriculture: Save scarce water from evaporation to pay for installing solar panel covers, supply energy, and generate profits

by Dan Gearino, 24/02/2022 in Inside Clean Energy
In Parched California, a Project Aims to Save Water and Produce Renewable Energy: Plan calls for building solar canopies over canals, and may be the first project of its kind in the United States [but not elsewhere]

Featured image: A conceptual rendering of solar canopies covering part of Turlock Irrigation District’s 110-foot-wide main canal, near Turlock, California. Credit: Turlock Irrigation District. From the article

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Global warming intensifies droughts and floods

William P. Hall on February 25, 2022

Global warming is shifting ocean evaporation towards poles, robbing rain from already drought stricken areas to dump it on already wet areas

by Taimoor Sohail & Jan Zika, 24/02/2022 in The Conversation
Climate change is warping our fresh water cycle – and much faster than we thought: Fresh water cycles from ocean to air to clouds to rivers and back to the oceans. This constant shuttling can give us the illusion of certainty. Fresh water will always come from the tap. Won’t it? — Unfortunately, that’s not guaranteed. Climate change is shifting where the water cycle deposits water on land, with drier areas becoming drier still, and wet areas becoming even wetter.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Look out! More and worse wildfires are coming for us

William P. Hall on February 25, 2022

UN’s “Spreading like Wildfire: The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Landscape Fires” warns positive feedbacks will accelerate warming and impacts

by Bob Berwyn, 23/02/2022 in Inside Climate News
Global Wildfire Activity to Surge in Coming Years: A new U.N. report says communities need to prepare for the growing threat by refocusing on prevention, rather than just reacting to fires as they happen.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Read this! putting the climate emergency in context

William P. Hall on February 25, 2022

This 50th Anniversary interview with a “Limits to Growth” author puts the work in context and shows more to do than just stopping warming

by Richard Heinberg & Dennis Meadows, 22/02/2022 in Resilience.org
Dennis Meadows on the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Limits to Growth: Only rarely does a book truly change the world. In the nineteenth century, such a book was Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. For the twentieth century, it was The Limits to Growth. Not only did this best-selling 1972 publication help spur the environmental movement, but it showed that the underlying dynamics of the modern industrial world are unsustainable on the timescale of a couple of human lifetimes.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Coral reef ecosystems on the way to being cooked

William P. Hall on February 24, 2022

The accelerating heat content of the world’s oceans will soon be forcing coral reef ecosystems towards their collapse into mass extinction

Click here for a detailed explanation of the graph…

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

IPCC’s 28 Feb climate change report will be bad news

William P. Hall on February 24, 2022

Part 2 of AR6 – The IPCC’s report on climate change impacts will likely be bad enough. However the actual truth will probably be even worse

by Matt McGrath, 22/02/2022 in BBC News/Science
IPCC: Climate change report to sound warning on impacts

A new report on the impacts of climate change will likely be the most worrying assessment yet of how rising temperatures affect every living thing.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

High Arctic is warming 4x faster than the world

William P. Hall on February 24, 2022

The true Arctic zone above the Arctic Circle that drives world climate change is heating at a prodigious rate. Bad news for our one Earth!

See the full article….

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

What do you fix first? Methane or CO₂?

William P. Hall on February 24, 2022

Methane is more powerful than CO₂ but has a relatively short life in the atmosphere. CO₂ hangs around for centuries. Both are bad news!

by John Lynch, 21/02/2022 in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Fatal distraction: the problem with the methane pledge

Over the past year, the world has experienced severe heatwaves, wildfires, and drought. As global temperature continues to creep upwards, these events will become more frequent and more extreme. Obviously, humanity needs to make a concerted effort to rapidly bring down greenhouse gas emissions to limit warming to 1.5-2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as global leaders agreed to do when they signed the Paris Agreement.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Interesting: green power can avoid winter blackouts

William P. Hall on February 24, 2022

Washington Post analyzes last winter’s Texas Blackout to show renewable energy networks can cope better than fossil fuel based systems

by Kasha Patel, 21/02/2022 in The Washington Post
A year after Texas cold spell, study shows renewable energy could help prevent blackouts

Electricity blackouts could be avoided across the nation by switching to solar, wind and water energy sources, the report argues

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.