Read this! putting the climate emergency in context

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

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.

High Arctic is warming 4x faster than the world

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 will it cost the world to achieve net zero by 2050?

Following on from Estimating the social cost of [uncontrolled] greenhouse gas pollution, what is the likely cost to shut down the emissions?

by David Brancaccio and Rose Conlon 14/02/2022 in Marketplace
What would it take to reach net-zero global emissions by 2050?:

More than 70 countries have pledged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by mid-century. And in order to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects the world would need to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Such a transition would require colossal change throughout the global economy, according to a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute, citing an average of $9.2 trillion in annual spending on physical infrastructure through 2050— $3.5 trillion more than current yearly spending.

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

Biospheric carbon emissions are not easily recovered

Living things and soils store vast amounts of organic carbon. If this is lost to the atmosphere by wildfire, land clearing, or other disturbances it is not easily recovered

Irrecoverable Carbon: The Importance of Preventing Deforestation

by Govind Bhutata 13/02/2022 Carbon Streaming Corporation in Visual Capitalist

The Earth is home to some natural ecosystems that function as carbon vaults, storing massive amounts of carbon. Researchers developed the concept of “irrecoverable carbon” to identify areas on the basis of three criteria relevant for conservation:

Manageability: How they can be influenced by direct and local human actions

Vulnerability: The magnitude of carbon lost upon disturbance

Recoverability: The recoverability of carbon stocks following loss

Applying the three criteria across all ecosystems reveals that some places contain carbon that humans can manage, and if lost, could not be recovered by 2050, when the world needs to reach net-zero to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change.

The above graphic sponsored by Carbon Streaming Corporation charts global irrecoverable carbon by land area, highlighting important ecosystems of stored carbon.

Read the complete article….

For the science behind this brief presentation see, Noon et al., 2022. Mapping the irrecoverable carbon in Earth’s ecosystems in Nature Sustainability.

Greta Thunberg tells us us how important it is to fight the fires.

greta-act-as-if-the-house-was-on-fire
Listen to Greta’s speech live at the World Economic forum in Davos 2019.. Except for her reliance on the IPCC’s overoptimistic emissions budget, everything she says is spot on that even she, as a child, can understand.

In other words, smell the smoke, see the reality, and fight the fire that is burning up our only planet so we can give our offspring a hopeful future. This is the only issue that matters. All the troop of wooden-headed puppets is doing is rearranging the furniture in the burning house to be incinerated along with anything else we may care about. In Greta’s words, “even a small child can understand [this]”. People hope for their children’s futures. She doesn’t want your hope. She wants you to panic enough to wake up and fight the fire…. so she can have some hope for her future. Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System will help you use your vote wisely on behalf of our offsprings’ futures.

If we successfully purge our Parliament of the puppets, we may be able leave our offspring with a hopeful future.

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

Estimating the social cost of greenhouse gas pollution

US Federal courts consider this vexing question: how much do greenhouse gas emissions cost society and who should pay this cost?

Jim Krane & Mark Finley, 13/02/2022 in The Conversation
What is the ‘social cost of carbon’? 2 energy experts explain after court ruling blocks Biden’s changes: When an electric company runs a coal- or natural gas-fired power plant, the greenhouse gases it releases cause harm – but the company isn’t paying for the damage. Instead, the costs show up in the billions of tax dollars spent each year to deal with the effects of climate change, such as fighting wildfires and protecting communities from floods, and in rising insurance costs. This damage is what economists call a “negative externality.” It is a cost to society, including to future generations, that is not covered by the price people pay for fossil fuels and other activities that emit greenhouse gases, like agriculture.

VC1 News Editor’s comment: Australians need to think about this in the run-up to our election. The costs to human society from human triggered global warming are already reaching catastrophic levels. If we cannot stop and reverse the warming process, near-term human extinction is likely. The social cost of this would be literally infinite (any costs divided by zero humans left is infinite). In other words, if we wish for our families to survive into the future, we need to spend whatever it takes to stop the warming. This won’t be helped by a present puppet government that continually denies and downplays the reality and often works to block any effective action against the carbon emissions of its puppet masters. Use Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System to replace them with people who will put climate action at the top of their to-do list if elected.

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

New litigation aims to bring Govt & interests to account

Several major legal actions to be taken to court this year hope to bring Australian governments & special interests to account for climate failures

by Kieran Pender 12/02/2022 in The Guardian
The environmental activists bringing the climate crisis to the courtroom: There’s a growing trend of climate litigation around the world. Here’s a look at the Australian cases likely to make headlines this year

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

Rising sea-level risk: can’t know when or how much

Melting polar glaciers are main contributors to rising sea level. The melting process is highly non-linear and thus inherently unpredictable

At least since the 1800s, world sea levels have been rising gradually but at a slowly accelerating rate. Since in the last 140 years it has risen around 17 cm, with around 6 cm of that in the 20 years between 2000 and 2020. And this is only a small part of the hugely complex planetary climate system that has an inherently unpredictable capacity to produce abrupt and catastrophically large changes in climate conditions.

Shows a slow acceleration in the rate of sea level rise.

The rising sea-level has two sources: runoff from the land (mostly glacial melt water) and thermal expansion of the ocean itself due to warming from excess solar energy accumulating from the global warming process.

Sourced from East Coast flooding is a reminder that sea level is rising as the climate warms – here’s why the ocean is pouring in more often – by Jianjun Lin, 07/11/2021 in the Conversation.

The melt water in the rising sea-level comes from two primary sources, melting glaciers and ice cap on Greenland that has increased 6-fold over the last couple of decades; and melting glaciers and ice cap on Antarctica which has more than doubled over the same time. This is measured by the loss of mass variable – representing the weight of the water that has been added to the oceans.

As described in the feature article below, the melting rate of a glacier is determined by its speed as it is creeping/sliding down the continental slope into the ocean. This in turn is determined by a complex set of interacting factors, e.g., temperature, angle of slope, width and roughness of the bed, how much meltwater is in the bed to lubricate/float the ice, where and how the ice may crack and crumble, how many bends there are in the valley, ocean conditions at the foot, whether and to what extent warm and salty (salt lowers the melting temperature of ice) ocean water penetrates into the glacier bed under its foot, thickness and extent of the floating ice shelf at the glacier’s foot and so on. Simply stated, melt rates are inherently unpredictable. However, one thing we can be sure of is that the melt rate will speed up as ambient temperatures increase the rate of ice melting, and rain replaces snow as the main form of precipitation.

The geological record provides good evidence that episodes of abrupt ice melting can cause raise sea-levels a lot faster than they are now, perhaps even showing large changes in rate over a few decades.

See Wikipedia: Meltwater pulse 1A: Meltwater pulse 1A (MWP1a) is the name used by Quaternary geologists, paleoclimatologists, and oceanographers for a period of rapid post-glacial sea level rise, between 13,500 and 14,700 years ago, during which global sea level rose between 16 meters (52 ft) and 25 meters (82 ft) in about 400–500 years, giving mean rates of roughly 40–60 mm (0.13–0.20 ft)/yr…. This rate of sea level rise was much larger than the rate of current sea level rise, which has been estimated to be in the region of 2–3 mm (0.0066–0.0098 ft)/yr.

There may well be enough ice in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet — especially if combined with an equally rapid melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet to support an equivalent amount of melting to the Meltwater Pulse 1A. It is notable that the land surface underlying very large areas of both West Antarctica and Greenland are below sea level – giving ample opportunities for warm ocean water to help speed the melting and collapse of the ice sheets.

Glacier front meets the sea

Why Melting Ice in Antarctica is Making Waves: Scientists recently discovered that the Thwaites Ice Shelf, a floating ice shelf that supports the Florida-sized Thwaites Glacier, could collapse in as little as five years because of global warming.

Climate Reality Project, 28/01/2022

This past December, the massive Thwaites Glacier in Western Antarctica made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Specifically, because new research revealed that the ice shelf preventing it from sliding into the ocean and drastically raising sea levels could collapse well within the next decade.

This Florida-sized glacier had already worried experts for years, going as far as to regularly be called the “Doomsday Glacier”. And yet, this update from the scientific community was still groundbreaking. 

It’s news that the world — particularly low-lying island and coastal communities — should understand and act on. So, what exactly is Thwaites Glacier, what does the latest research about it say, and what consequences could come from its decline?

FIRST THINGS FIRST, WHAT IS THWAITES GLACIER?

Thwaites Glacier is a massive body of dense ice located in Western Antarctica. Measuring about 80 miles (120 km) across, it’s the widest glacier on Earth.

Decline of West Antarctic Glaciers Appears Irreversible

Thwaites Glacier in Western Antarctica. Credit: NASA

The glacier has an ice shelf — a permanent piece of floating ice connected to it — that branches out into the Amundsen Sea. Now, understanding what exactly an ice shelf does is crucial.

Read the complete article….

As long as the world continues to warm and large amounts of snow and ice remain lying on the land, sea levels will continue to rise. The risk of an abrupt sea-level rise is real. The human and economic costs of such an event would be catastrophic if it happens. It therefore makes very good sense that mitigation works should begin soon with planning in place at federal, state and local levels to accelerate the work if we have any clear early warning signs that abrupt melting is actually beginning.

It is also clear that our present LNP COALition governments deeply deny the risks Australia faces from global warming and the climate emergency, and should be replaced with rational people who put action on the climate emergency at the top of their to do lists if they should be elected to Parliament.

The puppets show and tell
Captain Humbug (A.K.A. Scotty from Marketing) showing the parliamentary puppet troop what it is all about behind his then PM, “Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared, it won’t hurt you. It’s coal.” With these words Australia’s Treasurer Scott Morrison taunted the Opposition, attempting to ridicule its commitment to renewable energy.” – Picture from The Conversation (15-02-2017). See also Katherine Murphy in The Guardian on 09/02/2017 for the live video — “Scott Morrison brings coal to question time: what fresh idiocy is this? What a bunch of clowns, hamming it up – while out in the real world an ominous and oppressive heat just won’t let up.”

Also, from the official transcript dated 20/12/2019 from the PM’s own office, Scotty made it abundantly clear to John Stanley on 2GB Radio that HE doesn’t fight fires… “But I know Australians understand… that, you know, I don’t hold a hose, mate, and I don’t sit in a control room. That’s the brave people who do that are doing that job. But I know that Australians would want me back at this time out of these fatalities. So I’ll happily come back [from his secret holiday in Hawaii] and do that.”

Sixteen year-old Greta tells us and everyone at the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos how we and our governments should actually respond to the climate emergency:

greta-act-as-if-the-house-was-on-fire
Listen to Greta’s speech live. Except for her reliance on the IPCC’s overoptimistic emissions budget, everything she says is spot on that even she, as a child, can understand.

In other words, smell the smoke, see the reality, and fight the fire that is burning up our only planet so we can give our offspring a hopeful future. This is the only issue that matters. All Capt. Humbug and his troop of wooden-headed puppets are doing is rearranging the furniture in the burning house to be incinerated along with anything else we may care about. In Greta’s words, “even a small child can understand [this]”. People hope for their children’s futures. She doesn’t want your hope. She wants you to panic enough to wake up and fight the fire…. so she can have some hope for her future. Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System will help you use your vote wisely on behalf of our offsprings’ futures.

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

Biden’s climate incentives may show us how it’s done

Biden’s new climate incentives have a good chance to pass Congress, to work in practice, and to give great value for money

by Robinson Meyer 10/02/2022 in The Atlantic

Biden’s Biggest Idea on Climate Change Is Remarkably Cheap: It’s one of the most cost-effective climate policies the U.S. has ever considered, according to a new analysis…. The researchers’ study, which has not been peer-reviewed, finds that the policy’s benefits will be three to four times larger than its costs, creating as much as projected $1.5 trillion in economic surplus while eliminating more than 5 billion tons of planet-warming carbon pollution through 2050.

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

Jump onto early tipping signs to maximize remediation chances

Tipping points should be identified early and acted on fast to tackle the climate crisis. Social change needs to be dramatically accelerated.

by Damian Carrington, 11/02/2022 in The Guardian
Identify A-ha moments to trigger fast climate action, say UK scientists: Using ‘tipping points’ can unlock the changes needed on energy, food and plastics, analysis shows

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