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Global Warming

The Most Important Climate Treaty You’ve Never Heard Of

Raise a hand if you've heard of the Gothenburg Protocol. No? Well, you're in good company. This treaty has been called an "unsung hero" in the fight against air pollution and climate change. It may be unknown in the United States, but it is a landmark international agreement, setting limits on how much black carbon and other pollutants countries can emit. Black carbon, or soot, is seen as a unique danger to the climate because its ability to accelerate warming in the atmosphere is many times stronger than carbon dioxide. It also speeds up the melting of sea ice. This double-whammy is responsible for a half a degree Celsius of warming in the Arctic so far.

Revolutionary Strategy In A Warming World

It doesn’t take much imagination to associate climate change with revolution. If the planetary order upon which all societies are built starts breaking down, how can they possibly remain stable? Various more or less horrifying scenarios of upheaval have long been extrapolated from soaring temperatures. In his novel The Drowned World from 1962, today often considered the first prophetic work of climate fiction, J. G. Ballard conjured up melting icecaps, an English capital submerged under tropical marshes and populations fleeing the unbearable heat towards polar redoubts. The UN directorate seeking to manage the migration flows assumed that ‘within the new perimeters described by the Arctic and Antarctic Circles life would continue much as before, with the same social and domestic relationships, by and large the same ambitions and satisfactions’...

22 National Science Academies Urge Government Action On Climate Change

As some of the world's biggest polluters resist efforts to address climate change—most glaringly, the United States—thousands of scientists from countries that make up the Commonwealth of Nations say their governments need to take bolder steps to lower greenhouse gas emissions. On Monday, the national science academies of 22 Commonwealth countries, including from the UK, Canada, India and Australia, issued a "Consensus Statement on Climate Change," declaring that the "Commonwealth has the potential, and the responsibility, to help drive meaningful global efforts and outcomes that protect ourselves, our children and our planet." The statement comes one month before the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London, where leaders intend to discuss sustainability and climate change.

Stress Test: Democracy Confronts Climate Change

Many climate scientists and others have reached the conclusion that, because we have dithered so long, we now face the prospect of either extreme rates of emission reduction or extreme impacts from global warming and ocean acidification. I fear that we could experience both of these great disruptions, despite all the technological progress now underway and despite the climate action commitments we see outside of Washington. Major climate impacts are now inevitable. Global temperature has already increased by 1˚C, with huge consequences. Another 0.5˚C is essentially baked in. I think we will easily exceed 2˚C global average warming in this century, and quite possibly more.

Climate Change Is Happening Faster Than Expected

Some of the strongest warnings in the Royal Society update came from health researchers, who said there hasn't been nearly enough done to protect millions of vulnerable people worldwide from the expected increase in heat waves. "It's a deadly tragedy in the making, all the worse because the same experts are saying such heat waves are eminently survivable with adequate resources to protect people," said climate researcher Eric Wolff, lead author of the Royal Society update. Atmospheric scientist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research said climate science has progressed in all directions since the IPCC report was published in 2014. He works with a group of scientists trying to update the IPCC reporting process to make it more fluid and meaningful in real time.

Polar Ice Is Disappearing, Setting Off Climate Alarms

Turns out, when you heat up ice, it melts. And with 2017 likely going down as one of the warmest years on record worldwide, this year's climate change signal was amplified at the Earth's poles. There, decades-old predictions of intense warming have been coming true. The ice-covered poles, both north and south, continue to change at a breathtaking pace, with profound long-term consequences, according to the scientists who study them closely. And the consequences are destined to spill over into other parts of the globe, through changing atmospheric patterns, sea currents and feedback loops of ever intensifying melting. The past year may not have broken annual records, but it provided ample evidence of where long-term trends are heading.

“Apocalyptic” Melting Transpires In Antarctica As Earth Ends Scorching Year

By Dahr Jamail for Truthout - The signs of runaway anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) continue to mount with each passing month. 2016 saw a record surge in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, according to the World Meteorological Organization. This means that last year's increase was a stunning 50 percent higher than the average over the last decade. Scientists said this makes obtaining global temperature targets -- such as the often-mentioned 1.5°C and 2°C limits -- largely unattainable. The combination of the increase of CO2 and El Niño have driven atmospheric CO2 to levels not seen for 800,000 years. How is this playing out around the planet? The Arctic Ocean is now starting to look more and more like the Atlantic Ocean, a shift that is threatening to turn the entire Arctic food web on its head. This is due to the fact that the summer Arctic sea ice is melting rapidly and the waters are warming, leading to encroachment by animals from warmer climates and a reorganization of Arctic biodiversity. Meanwhile, a recent report highlights the fact that planetary warming of just 3°C (a level we are currently on a trajectory to easily exceed before 2100) will be enough warming to lock in irreversible sea-level rise that will impact hundreds of millions of people. This year is already on track to be in the top three hottest years ever recorded, bearing in mind that the last three years have been the warmest three years ever recorded for the planet.

Averting The Apocalypse: Lessons From Costa Rica

By Jason Hickel for Local Futures - Earlier this summer, a paper published in the journal Nature captured headlines with a rather bleak forecast. Our chances of keeping global warming below the 2C danger threshold are very, very small: only about 5%. The reason, according to the paper’s authors, is that the cuts we’re making to greenhouse gas emissions are being cancelled out by economic growth. In the coming decades, we’ll be able to reduce the carbon intensity of the global economy by about 1.9% per year, if we make heavy investments in clean energy and efficient technology. That’s a lot. But as long as the economy keeps growing by more than that, total emissions are still going to rise. Right now we’re ratcheting up global GDP by 3% per year, which means we’re headed for trouble. If we want to have any hope of averting catastrophe, we’re going to have to do something about our addiction to growth. This is tricky, because GDP growth is the main policy objective of virtually every government on the planet. It lies at the heart of everything we’ve been told to believe about how the economy should work: that GDP growth is good, that it’s essential to progress, and that if we want to improve human wellbeing and eradicate poverty around the world, we need more of it. It’s a powerful narrative. But is it true?

Scientists Give Warning About Fate Of World In ‘Letter To Humanity’

By Andrew Griffin for Independent - A new, dire "warning to humanity" about the dangers to all of us has been written by 15,000 scientists from around the world. The message updates an original warning sent from the Union of Concerned Scientists that was backed by 1,700 signatures 25 years ago. But the experts say the picture is far, far worse than it was in 1992, and that almost all of the problems identified then have simply been exacerbated. Mankind is still facing the existential threat of runaway consumption of limited resources by a rapidly growing population, they warn. And "scientists, media influencers and lay citizens" aren't doing enough to fight against it, according to the letter. If the world doesn't act soon, there be catastrophic biodiversity loss and untold amounts of human misery, they warn. Only the hole in the ozone layer has improved since the first letter was written, and the letter urges humanity to use that as an example of what can happen when it acts decisively. But every single other threat has just got worse, they write, and there is not long left before those changes can never be reversed. There are some causes for hope, the letter suggests. But humanity isn't doing nearly enough to make the most of them and soon won't be able to reverse its fate. "Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out," the letter warns.

1,700 Scientists Issue Dire Warning To Humanity

By Staff of BioScience - Twenty-five years ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists, including the majority of living Nobel laureates in the sciences, penned the 1992 “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” (see supplemental file S1). These concerned professionals called on humankind to curtail environmental destruction and cautioned that “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.” In their manifesto, they showed that humans were on a collision course with the natural world. They expressed concern about current, impending, or potential damage on planet Earth involving ozone depletion, freshwater availability, marine life depletion, ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change, and continued human population growth. They proclaimed that fundamental changes were urgently needed to avoid the consequences our present course would bring. The authors of the 1992 declaration feared that humanity was pushing Earth's ecosystems beyond their capacities to support the web of life. They described how we are fast approaching many of the limits of what the ­biosphere can tolerate ­without ­substantial and irreversible harm.

Climate Emergency: Greenhouse Gas Levels Surge To Historic Levels

By D. Lascaris for The Real News Network - This is Dimitri Lascaris for the Real News Network. On October 30th, the World Meteorological Association issued a greenhouse gas bulletin reporting that concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surged at record-breaking speed in 2016 to 403.3 parts per million. According to the bulletin, the rate of increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 70 years, is nearly 100 times larger than that at the end of the last ice age. Such abrupt changes in the atmospheric levels of CO2 have never been seen before. Rapidly increasing atmospheric levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases have the potential to initiate unprecedented changes in climate systems, leading to, "severe ecological and economic disruptions," said the report. Scientists say that recent devastating hurricanes in the US and the Caribbean are examples of major disasters that may have been made much more destructive by human-caused climate change. With us to discuss the World Meteorological Association's report, and what these record levels of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere mean, we are joined by Dr. Kevin Trenberth. Dr. Trenberth is a distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, climate and global dynamics laboratory. He joins us today from Boulder, Colorado. Thank you for joining us again today, Kevin.

Most Powerful Evidence Climate Scientists Have Of Global Warming

By Sabrina Shankman and Paul Horn for Inside Climate News - Earth's temperature is rising, and it isn't just in the air around us. More than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed into the oceans that cover two-thirds of the planet's surface. Their temperature is rising, too, and it tells a story of how humans are changing the planet. This accrued heat is "really the memory of past climate change," said Kevin Trenberth, the head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and co-author of a new paper on ocean warming. It's not just the amount of warming that is significant—it's also the pace. The rate at which the oceans are heating up has nearly doubled since 1992, and that heat is reaching ever deeper waters, according to a recent study. At the same time, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been rising. The charts that follow show how the oceans are changing and what they're telling us as a thermometer of global warming.

Antarctic Ice Shelf Larsen C Breaks Off Giant Iceberg

By John Zangas for DC Media Group - One of the biggest icebergs in recorded history, in both area and volume, broke off from the Antarctic East Peninsula and floated free sometime between Monday and early Wednesday morning. The ice mass separated from the Larsen C shelf in a process known as calving. Its surface area of roughly 2,550 square miles (5,800 sq. km) and average thickness of about 650 feet makes it the third largest iceberg ever recorded. The iceberg, designated as A68, has been tracked by scientists for several years and was expected to calve. The iceberg is comparable in size to the state of Delaware and is now drifting towards the Weddel Sea. As water and wind forces push it into the Southern Ocean, it will further break apart and melt as wave and wind forces move it against warmer ocean currents. This process may take years.

Southwest’s Deadly Heat Wave Previews Life In A Warming World

By Phil McKenna for Inside Climate News - The extreme heat baking the Southwestern U.S. isn't finished yet. The National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning today for parts of Southern California and Arizona, including Phoenix, through Monday, saying temperatures are forecast to reach 108-118 degrees each day. In its alert, the weather service warned of "a major increase in the potential for heat-related illness and even death." The week has provided a preview of the risks scientists warn are ahead as greenhouse gas emissions continue to raise global temperatures. Thermometers in the Phoenix area edged up to around 120 degrees for three straight days this week, flights were grounded as the rising temperatures decreased the air density, and the city's main burn treatment center saw twice its usual number of patients with burns caused by walking barefoot on hot pavement or getting into cars that had been heating up in the sun. Several heat-related deaths were reported in the Las Vegas area and in California. In California, where San Diego County set a record at 124 degrees, some communities faced power outages as air conditioners ran non-stop.

The U.S. Is On A Historic Streak Of Record Highs

By Brian Kahn for Climate Central - The U.S. is on a hot streak like no other. April marked yet another month where record highs outpaced record lows. It’s the 29th month in a row with the odds tipped in favor of record highs, 10 months longer than the previous stretch where highs beat lows in 2011-12. Embedded within the historic warm streak are a series of records-setting records. Every month of 2015 and 2016 saw more highs than lows, making them two of the only three calendar years that’s happened. The record high-to-low ratio this February was 49-to-1, making it the most lopsided month ever recorded (besting a record set in November 2016, no less). The monthly record stretch belies a larger trend where the ratio of record highs to lows has been growing disproportionately with each passing decade. That’s due largely to rising background temperatures driven by increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

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