WTF Climate Change News

[Essence Lumin]

Results of the study indicate that if global temperatures increase by 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the 2.2 billion residents of Pakistan and India's Indus River Valley, the one billion people living in eastern China and the 800 million residents of sub-Saharan Africa will annually experience many hours of heat that surpass human tolerance.

Or about half the world's population.

Climate-driven extreme heat may make parts of Earth too hot for humans

If global temperatures increase by 1° Celsius (C) or more than current levels, each year billions of people will be exposed to heat and humidity so extreme they will be unable to naturally cool themselves, according to interdisciplinary research from the Penn State College of Health and Human...

phys.org

 

[detrius]

Or about half the world's population.

Climate-driven extreme heat may make parts of Earth too hot for humans

If global temperatures increase by 1° Celsius (C) or more than current levels, each year billions of people will be exposed to heat and humidity so extreme they will be unable to naturally cool themselves, according to interdisciplinary research from the Penn State College of Health and Human...

phys.org

Meanwhile, white supremacists:

 

[Beebo Brink]

Crop failures have consequences.

‘They don’t go for jewellery any more’: Olive oil theft on the rise in Greece | Greece | The Guardian

But the spate of thefts is a small matter next to the climate problems farmers will inevitably have to deal with, said Oikonomou, with global heating in the Mediterranean basin set to accelerate 20% faster than any other region.

“People here will have to start thinking seriously of transferring olive groves further north to places like Thrace and Macedonia that are cooler,” he said. “We have been cultivating olives in Greece for 4,000 years and what we are seeing now is truly unprecedented.”

 

[Beebo Brink]

Washington Post: These are the places that could become ‘unlivable’ as the Earth warms
In the hottest parts of the world, high temperatures and humidity will, for longer stretches, surpass a threshold that even young and healthy people could struggle to survive as the planet warms, study says

Heat waves can already be deadly for the most vulnerable people — but in a warming world, temperatures and humidity will, for growing stretches of every year, surpass a threshold that even young and healthy people could struggle to survive, according to new research published Monday.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Argentina wildfire, started by camper making coffee, forces hundreds to flee - National | Globalnews.ca

A man has been detained after he started a campfire to make coffee near the city of Villa Carlos Paz and lost control of the flames due to strong winds.

globalnews.ca

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

America Mysteriously Hit a Deadly Climate Tipping Point & No One Knows Why

It’s so dramatic & so shocking that scientists — typically not prone to hyperbole — published in the journal BioScience: “Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory...”

open.substack.com

 

[Beebo Brink]

Oil companies capture a lot of their CO2. They use it to drill more oil. - The Washington Post

Every year, companies around the United States capture around 18 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from natural gas processing plants, oil refineries and power plants. As long as that CO2 — equivalent to around 4 million cars on the road for a year — is buried somewhere deep underground, it can’t contribute to global warming.

That’s the theory, anyway. But today, the lion’s share of the CO2 captured from industrial processes doesn’t go back into the ground. Instead, 60 percent of it is used to extract more oil, in a controversial process known as “enhanced oil recovery.”

 

[Beebo Brink]

If You Didn’t Care About Antarctica’s Icy Belly, You Will Now | WIRED

 

[Cindy Claveau]

'Uncharted territory': climate scientists sound alarm over Earth's vital signs

A global team of climate scientists has reported that Earth’s vital signs have worsened beyond anything humans have seen, to the point that life on Earth is imperilled.

In a paper published today in Bioscience, the 12 international scientists have shown that 20 of 35 identified planetary vital signs are at record extremes. They also outline policies needed to address the underlying issue of “ecological overshoot”.

 

[Beebo Brink]

November 2023
How We Know that Global Warming is Accelerating and that the Goal of the Paris Agreement is Dead
Signed by: James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Norman Loeb, Makiko Sato, Leon Simons, George Tselioudis, and Karina von Schuckmann

A shortcoming of our climate science is failure to communicate well what is known from existing data. Global warming in the pipeline and emissions in the pipeline assure that the goal of the Paris Agreement – to keep global warming well below 2°C – is already dead, if policy is constrained only to emission reductions plus uncertain and unproven CO2 removal methods.

Delayed response of climate makes human-made climate change a grave threat, especially for young people. Governments will not make required changes to energy policies based on theoretical threats – there must be sufficient empirical evidence of harm to force action. Thus, delayed response makes it difficult to avoid near-term, growing, climate impacts, but it does not prevent achievement of policies that will lead to a hospitable climate with a bright future for young people. Time is running short, however, and effective actions at this point require a good understanding of ongoing climate change and the responsible mechanisms.

What follows this confession of a failure to "communicate well" is a technical paper of considerable complexity. I tried reading it, but my eyes glazed over and my brain froze. So yeah, communication may still be a slight problem.

 

[Beebo Brink]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Beebo Brink]

If I was feeling hopeless about the climate, what of the scientists? So I asked them | Graham Readfearn | The Guardian

Today Guardian Australia is launching a podcast, video and article series – Weight of the world – featuring in-depth and personal interviews with three pioneering Australian climate change scientists: Graeme Pearman, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg and Lesley Hughes.

Part 1: The climate scientists who saw the crisis coming – Weight of the world, part 1 | Australia news | The Guardian

 

[Beebo Brink]

Yet another (utterly depressing) case of corruption in a company that claimed to be green.

Enviva, the world’s largest biomass energy company, is near collapse (mongabay.com)

“The company says that we use mostly waste like branches, treetops and debris to make pellets,” the whistleblower told Mongabay a year ago. “What a joke. We use 100% whole trees in our pellets. We hardly use any waste. Pellet density is critical. You get that from whole trees, not junk.”

But junk wood is cheap, while whole trees are not, and therein lies a part of Enviva’s operational problems.

The former employee — who declined to be named to protect his professional and family’s privacy — said last week that this wood-sourcing deception is one reason Enviva has been losing money.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Isabeau]

Precious water: As more of the world thirsts, luxury water becoming fashionable among the elite

Though the United Nations deemed water a basic human right more than a decade ago, millions of people worldwide still don’t have clean water to drink.

apnews.com

This “fine water” is drawn from volcanic rock in Hawaii, from icebergs that have fallen from melting glaciers in Norway, or from droplets of morning mist in Tasmania.

Connoisseurs, some who study to become water sommeliers, insist this trend isn’t about snobbishness. They appreciate the purest of the pure.

“Water is not just water,” says Michael Mascha, a founder of the Fine Water Society, a consortium of small bottlers and distributors worldwide. He likens consumers of high-end water to foodies who’d drive miles to find heirloom tomatoes or a rare salt. Some drink fine water instead of alcohol.

“Having the right stemware, drinking at the right temperature, pairing it with food, celebrating with water – all those kinds of things are important.”

 

[Essence Lumin]

There was an article linked on reddit saying it has been 666 days since Philadelphia has had an inch of snow in a day. I'm near there and that is just sad. I moved back a year ago after living with my love in Portland OR for quite a while. Yeesh, when I was a kid we would get a couple of feet now and then.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Why the Belief That Carbon Capture Technologies Can Work at Gigaton-Scale Is a Gigantic Gamble - DeSmog
Despite CCS’s track record of failure and glaring feasibility issues, petrostates are expected to use it as cover to dismiss fossil fuel phaseout at COP28.

The barriers and significant questions around the feasibility of CCS technologies to even scale up at any climate-relevant level are on top of an existing track record that, at best, is not very promising and at worst could be viewed as largely a failure. Analyses from DeSmog and from IEEFA, among others, show that most large-scale CCS projects underperform or fail to meet their capture targets. As the new Production Gap Report points out, “the track record for CCS has been very poor to date, with around 80% of pilot projects over the last 30 years ending in failure.”

“The U.S. has been publicly subsidizing carbon capture projects since the early 1980s,” Rees of Oil Change International said during the November 14 Gas Exports Today media briefing. “We have over 40 years of evidence that it doesn’t work.”

 

[Beebo Brink]

Meanwhile....

Canada oil and gas firms to drill 8% more wells next year as emissions target slips
Producers take advantage of new shipping options, including government-owned Trans Mountain pipeline, to boost exports.