WTF Climate Change News

[Beebo Brink]

World's ocean's hit by "unusual warmth" tied to heat waves on land (axios.com)

Nearly all of the world's oceans are in the midst of "unusual warmth," warns a leading NOAA scientist who notes this has contributed to the extreme heat baking much of the Northern Hemisphere this summer.

Why it matters: "Even small rises in temperature can disrupt marine ecosystems, cause some species to relocate, and increase disease risks," said Stats NZ's Stuart Jones in a statement. "It also contributes to sea-level rise as the warmer water expands."

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Beebo Brink]

This article was written back in 2007, which isn't noted directly on the web page, but was part of the Reddit discussion about the prescience of the author. He covers scenarios from one degree of warming up to six degrees of warming. I've quoted the 1-2 degree section because that's where we are right now, even though his prediction was for this temperature scenario to start around 2040.

So... faster than expected. What else is new?

A degree by degree explanation of what will happen when the earth warms (berrens.nl)

BETWEEN ONE AND TWO DEGREES OF WARMING

At this level, expected within 40 years, the hot European summer of 2003 will be the annual norm. Anything that could be called a heatwave thereafter will be of Saharan intensity. Even in average years, people will die of heat stress.

The first symptoms may be minor. A person will feel slightly nauseous, dizzy and irritable. It needn’t be an emergency: an hour or so lying down in a cooler area, sipping water, will cure it. But in Paris, August 2003, there were no cooler areas, especially for elderly people.

Once body temperature reaches 41C (104F) its thermoregulatory system begins to break down. Sweating ceases and breathing becomes shallow and rapid. The pulse quickens, and the victim may lapse into a coma. Unless drastic measures are taken to reduce the body’s core temperature, the brain is starved of oxygen and vital organs begin to fail. Death will be only minutes away unless the emergency services can quickly get the victim into intensive care.

These emergency services failed to save more than 10,000 French in the summer of 2003. Mortuaries ran out of space as hundreds of dead bodies were brought in each night. Across Europe as a whole, the heatwave is believed to have cost between 22,000 and 35,000 lives. Agriculture, too, was devastated. Farmers lost $12 billion worth of crops, and Portugal alone suffered $12 billion of forest-fire damage. The flows of the River Po in Italy, Rhine in Germany and Loire in France all shrank to historic lows. Barges ran aground, and there was not enough water for irrigation and hydroelectricity. Melt rates in the Alps, where some glaciers lost 10% of their mass, were not just a record – they doubled the previous record of 1998. According to the Hadley centre, more than half the European summers by 2040 will be hotter than this. Extreme summers will take a much heavier toll of human life, with body counts likely to reach hundreds of thousands. Crops will bake in the fields, and forests will die off and burn. Even so, the short-term effects may not be the worst:

From the beech forests of northern Europe to the evergreen oaks of the Mediterranean, plant growth across the whole landmass in 2003 slowed and then stopped. Instead of absorbing carbon dioxide, the stressed plants began to emit it. Around half a billion tonnes of carbon was added to the atmosphere from European plants, equivalent to a twelfth of global emissions from fossil fuels. This is a positive feedback of critical importance, because it suggests that, as temperatures rise, carbon emissions from forests and soils will also rise. If these land-based emissions are sustained over long periods, global warming could spiral out of control.

In the two-degree world, nobody will think of taking Mediterranean holidays. The movement of people from northern Europe to the Mediterranean is likely to reverse, switching eventually into a mass scramble as Saharan heatwaves sweep across the Med. People everywhere will think twice about moving to the coast. When temperatures were last between 1 and 2C higher than they are now, 125,000 years ago, sea levels were five or six metres higher too. All this “lost” water is in the polar ice that is now melting. Forecasters predict that the “tipping point” for Greenland won’t arrive until average temperatures have risen by 2.7C. The snag is that Greenland is warming much faster than the rest of the world – 2.2 times the global average. “Divide one figure by the other,” says Lynas, “and the result should ring alarm bells across the world. Greenland will tip into irreversible melt once global temperatures rise past a mere 1.2C. The ensuing sea-level ?rise will be far more than the half-metre that ?the IPCC has predicted for the end of the century. Scientists point out that sea levels at the end of the last ice age shot up by a metre every 20 years for four centuries, and that Greenland’s ice, in the words of one glaciologist, is now thinning like mad and flowing much faster than it ought to. Its biggest outflow glacier, Jakobshavn Isbrae, has thinned by 15 metres every year since 1997, and its speed of flow has doubled. At this rate the whole Greenland ice sheet would vanish within 140 years. Miami would disappear, as would most of Manhattan. Central London would be flooded. Bangkok, Bombay and Shanghai would lose most of their area. In all, half of humanity would have to move to higher ground.

Not only coastal communities will suffer. As mountains lose their glaciers, so people will lose their water supplies. The entire Indian subcontinent will be fighting for survival. As the glaciers disappear from all but the highest peaks, their runoff will cease to power the massive rivers that deliver vital freshwater to hundreds of millions. Water shortages and famine will be the result, destabilising the entire region. And this time the epicentre of the disaster won’t be India, Nepal or Bangladesh, but nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Everywhere, ecosystems will unravel as species either migrate or fall out of synch with each other. By the time global temperatures reach two degrees of warming in 2050, more than a third of all living species will face extinction.

Chance of avoiding two degrees of global warming: 93%, but only if emissions of greenhouse gases are reduced by 60% over the next 10 years.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Jasper and the great sadness | Canada's National Observer: Climate News

 

[Beebo Brink]

Global methane emissions rising at fastest rate in decades, scientists warn | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 

[Beebo Brink]

‘Apocalyptic’ floods in Vermont destroy homes as two dozen rescued by boat | Vermont | The Guardian

 

[Beebo Brink]

Hangzhou, Shanghai broil as extreme heat engulfs eastern China | Reuters

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Beebo Brink]

TIL...

The lost history of what Americans knew about climate change in the 1960s | Grist
It wasn't just scientists who were worried, but Congress, the White House, and even Sports Illustrated.

Why has so much of this history been overlooked? Oreskes pointed to the “general historical amnesia of Americans.” As the politician Adlai Stevenson once put it, “The trouble with Americans is that they haven’t read the minutes of the previous meeting.” Even people working in environmental protection seem to have lost track of what happened, Oreskes said, perhaps because the EPA of the 1970s focused its limited attention on the acute pollutants that posed an immediate threat to public health — leaving the previous concern over CO2 tucked away in archives.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Closely related to this, I think I maybe commented before that most Americans know climate change is real, but aren't willing to actually put in any effort or sacrifice anything to do something about it. I am willing to bet it's more like 5-15% of the US population that's actually willing to accept even a bit of economic damage to do something about the planet. Polls often overstate how much Americans care because they frame the questions in ways that dance around the fact we might not have all out economic growth if we actually do something meaningful.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Report: 82% of Scientists Say Overpopulation is a Major Problem | by HR NEWS | Aug, 2024 | Medium

Overpopulation remains a contentious issue, but scientific evidence increasingly points to it as a significant global challenge. A 2015 survey from Pew Research Center reported that 82% of scientists associated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science believe population growth will be a major problem.

The “techno-optimism” that suggests we can innovate our way out of overpopulation issues often ignores the immediate and long-term environmental impacts of such innovations.

Historical evidence shows that technological advancements have often been accompanied by increased resource consumption rather than decreased pressure on ecosystems.

The belief that technology will solve overpopulation issues can lead to complacency and delay in addressing urgent environmental and social challenges.

 

[Beebo Brink]

The climate impact of feeding ourselves is getting worse and worse | New Scientist

If we want to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from food production, we have to make it more efficient as the global population grows – and that isn't happening.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Beebo Brink]

‘Working here is hell’: latest death of farm worker in 40C heat shocks Italy

Italy has been shocked by reports of the “brutal” treatment of migrants working on farms across the country and the death of a flower picker in temperatures of about 40C (104F). Tens of thousands of migrants have been taking to fields to pick tomatoes and other crops across Italy at the same time as the country has been engulfed in consecutive heatwaves since the middle of June.

The Italian Meteorological Society said average summer temperatures in Italy between June and August have increased by 1.5C over the past 30 years, from 1994 to 2023.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Ten Ways the Heat Is Changing Us—Some Small, Some Horrifying

From exercise, to work, to food, and safety.

slate.com

Evernote Link

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Climate change, plus higher demand for ethanol, is producing more humidity from corn sweat.

Sweaty corn is making it even more humid

Corn sweat is the process by which corn plants release moisture into the air to stay cool, and it brings the Midwest a surge in humidity every summer.

apnews.com

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Report: 82% of Scientists Say Overpopulation is a Major Problem | by HR NEWS | Aug, 2024 | Medium

I know any use of the phrase "overpopulation" makes some people very uncomfortable, but I think at the very least it's a good reason nobody should be pressured into having kids if they don't want to.

Historical evidence shows that technological advancements have often been accompanied by increased resource consumption rather than decreased pressure on ecosystems.

I think this is mostly just because that is where the cost/benefit pressure was. Doing more with less resources maybe just doesn't have enough of an economic incentive so far.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

A study of sediments of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California done by researchers of NIOZ and Universities of Bristol and Utrecht comes to the conclusion, that science is underestimating the impact of CO2 on temperature a lot.

According to the study the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere would trigger temperature rises from 7 to a maximum of 14 degrees Celsius.

CO2's Impact on Temperature Underestimated, Study Reveals

A doubling of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere could cause an increase in the average temperature on earth from 7 to even a maximum of 14 degrees

www.miragenews.com