"The true extent of global warming has been hidden." "Sea level rise will displace up to 400 million people by 2100." "Fossil fuel consumption subsidies topped $1 trillion for the first time in 2022."
The Guardian has revealed that the US averages one chemical accident every two days, thanks to deregulation, lack of safety standards, overworked and underpaid operators, and aging, ill-maintained equipment and infrastructure. The consequences of these accidental releases are underreported and likely much worse than suspected, most recently in the case of Ohio’s train derailment and subsequent burning of the released toxins: “The full scope of health consequences related to the crash is not yet known. Some people in the East Palestine area have reported feeling ill but have not yet seen a doctor, and some long-term effects of chemical exposure, such as cancer, can take decades to manifest.” The Environmental Protection Agency, gutted and politicized under Trump, insists that the water in East Palestine was safe to drink, based on testing conducted by the company responsible for the spill: “The testing that Ohio authorities relied on to declare the municipal water in East Palestine safe to drink after a disastrous train derailment was funded by the railroad operator itself and did not initially comply with federal standards, HuffPost has learned.” This disaster has become emblematic of the free market response to the humanitarian costs of doing dirty business in a changing world: amp up the “green” rhetoric publicly and offer a few token, mostly useless “renewable technology” and carbon trading initiatives, continuing business as usual while steering the debate toward reconciling the profit motive with the maintenance of a livable planet. This is an impossible, and transparently genocidal, project, given the increasing prevalence and accelerating nature of feedback loops and tipping points:
Many scientists think the huge current losses of biodiversity are the start of a new mass extinction. But the new research shows total ecosystem collapse is “inevitable”, if the losses are not reversed, the scientists said.
The Permian-Triassic extinction event, known as the “Great Dying” occurred 252 million years ago. It was driven by global heating resulting from huge volcanic eruptions and wiped out 95% of life on Earth.
However, species are being lost today even faster than in any of the previous five mass extinctions that have struck the planet. Wildlife is being destroyed via the razing of natural habitats for farming and mining, pollution and overhunting. Humanity relies on healthy global ecosystems for clean air and water, as well as food.
Thus far, the global average sea level increased by one-fifth of a meter — roughly 8 inches — between 1901 and 2018, according to the WMO. Half of the sea-level rise to date is from thermal expansion, meaning that water expands as it grows warmer, and the other half is from melting glaciers and ice sheets.
The pace of ascending ocean levels is getting much faster. The average rate of sea-level rise went from 1.3 millimeters per year before 1971 to 1.9 millimeters per year between 1971 and 2006. Between 2006 and 2018, it rose 3.7 millimeters per year.
But that’s nothing compared with what’s in store. Due to the time lag between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, and then between warming and glacial melting that causes the oceans to rise, humanity has already ensured that future sea-level rise will dwarf what has happened so far.
The WMO projects 3 to 5 feet of sea-level rise by 2100. “In less than 80 years, 250 million to 400 million people will likely need new homes in new locations,” U.N. General Assembly president Csaba Körösi noted in his remarks Tuesday morning.
Garner and her colleagues wanted to see how the latest science is making its way into local guidance documents. So they analysed nearly 400 projections of sea-level rise included in the assessments from 54 coastal locations in the United States, and compared them with regional estimates in the IPCC’s sixth assessment report, released in 2021 — one of the most comprehensive summaries of climate science so far. Sea-level projections from at least 56% of the communities included in the analysis did not reflect the upper range of the IPCC’s predicted rise by 2100.
In some cases, this was because the communities’ assessments used only a single, middle-of-the-road estimate for sea-level rise, instead of a range that accounts for worst-case scenarios. Not considering these scenarios means that infrastructure could be vulnerable to less likely, but more extreme hazards, and might require costly retrofits to continue functioning, Garner says.
Global warming has caused ice loss and glacier melts worldwide. It has also caused thermal expansion of water – the phenomenon by which any object that is subjected to heat expands. The ocean is now heating up faster over the past century than since the end of the last deglacial transition which was around 11,000 years ago, the WMO’s report titled “Global Sea-Level Rise & Implications: Key facts and figures” said.
The report highlighted how the sea level, in turn, has risen over the years. Thermal expansion explained 50% of sea-level rise between 1971 and 2018 and human activities were what most likely drove the increase since 1971. The average rate of sea level rise increased from 1.3 mm per year between 1901 and 1971, to 1.9 mm per year between 1971 and 2006. Between 2006 and 2018, this rose again to 3.7 mm per year. As per the WMO, the sea level rise has been 4.5 mm per year between 2013 and 2022.
“It is virtually certain that global mean sea-level will continue to rise over the 21st century,” the report noted. It also warned that over the next 2000 years, the global mean sea-level would rise by 2 to 3 m if warming is limited to 1.5°C; 2 to 6 m if limited to 2°C; and by 19 to 22 m with 5°C of warming.
Surveillance satellites had detected 209 square kilometers (80.6 square miles) of forest destroyed,, according to the INPE space research institute's DETER monitoring system.
This is an area equivalent to about 30,000 football fields.
The INPE report included data only up to February 17, but was already an increase from the previous worst February, in 2022, when far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro was still in office.
Last month, Amazon deforestation was down 61 percent from a year earlier, according to the same source.
But experts warned at the time it was premature to talk of a "reversal" of the deforestation trend, partly because some forest loss may have been unobserved due to heavy cloud cover.
It is a little-known fact that trees have been dying at an unprecedented rate all over California and elsewhere in the West for decades. Anyone who drives the southern portion of Hwy 49, that runs north to south in the Sierra Nevada foothills, can see this for themselves. One of the most pronounced, and saddest, scenes of that drive is the extent of the forest that has died due to fires, droughts, and infestation.
The loss of all these trees is particularly problematic because we are losing a vital carbon sink for the absorption of greenhouse gases (GHG). Like all plants, trees use carbon dioxide in the process of photosynthesis, which is exactly why we need them to mitigate the effects of global warming. But equally so, the loss of so many trees is an omen, like canaries in a coal mine, regarding what lies ahead relative to the effects of global warming that we all will suffer. When plant and animal life suffer massive die-offs due to human pollution, then our end is likely not far off as well.
One-third of the southern Sierra Nevada Forest is already dead
THE THREAT HUMAN-CAUSED global warming poses to the Northwest’s forests was evident long before the 2021 heat dome: Oregon and Washington’s most common conifer species are all dying in alarming numbers, many because of drought. Starting in 2015, state foresters began warning that western hemlocks, a particularly drought-sensitive species common to the Coast Range and Cascades, were succumbing to pests and fungi that infested the already-stressed trees. More recently, foresters have seen widespread die-offs of western redcedar and Douglas firs. Aerial surveys in 2022 documented what foresters have dubbed “firmageddon” — the sudden death of 1.2 million acres of “true firs” (which include grand and noble firs, but not Douglas firs), mostly in Oregon.
“All of our trees are drought-stressed,” Oregon state entomologist Christine Buhl told HCN last July. “They can’t protect themselves against other agents” in their weakened state. Even common pests and native parasites that don’t normally kill trees are now proving lethal.
Until recently the 1,000 residents of Rio Verde Foothills bought water from the neighbouring city in lieu of its own supply.
However The New York Times reportedon Monday that Scottsdale turned off the taps due to its own needs amid the prolonged “megadrought” which has seized the West for the past two decades. Residents in the planned community told The Times that they were now flushing toilets with rainwater and limiting showers in an effort to save water in the short-term, but feared for their long-term property investments.
The western US is not alone: “France is going to enforce water restrictions as the driest winter on record puts the country in a “state of alert” for droughts this summer, Ecological Transition Minister Christophe Bechu said in an interview in Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper.”
Fruits and vegetables are being rationed across the UK, another consequence of climate change. It is also forcing ranchers to thin more of their cattle herds, resulting in a looming beef shortage on top of crop failures.
Two PFAS have been linked to an array of health problems. PFOA has been connected with kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol and pregnancy-induced hypertension. PFOS has been associated with reproductive, developmental, liver, kidney, and thyroid disease. At lower levels PFAS have been associated with immunotoxicity.
The substances have been found at about 17,000 sites across the UK and Europe. Of these, PFAS have been detected at high concentrations of more than 1,000 nanograms a litre of water at about 640 sites, and above 10,000ng/l at 300 locations.
A new study offers a glimpse of the future by looking to the past. Mosquitoes that transmit malaria in sub-Saharan Africa have moved to higher elevations by about 6.5 meters (roughly 21 feet) per year and away from the Equator by 4.7 kilometers (about three miles) per year over the past century, according to the study.
That pace is consistent with climate change and may explain why malaria’s range has expanded over the past few decades, the authors said. The results have serious implications for countries that are unprepared to cope with the disease.
“If this were random, and if it were unrelated to climate, it wouldn’t look as cleanly climate-linked,” said Colin Carlson, a biologist at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security and the paper’s lead author. The study was published on Tuesday in the journal Biology Letters.
Pushed along by climate change and forces across the Pacific Ocean, spring has arrived weeks early in the South and is now reaching up the East Coast into the Mid-Atlantic. In New York, temperatures are rising and bringing on warmth usually not seen until mid-March. Washington, D.C.’s famous cherry blossom trees are on pace to bloom early.
The mainly absent winter may cheer people who hate the cold and those looking for lower heating bills. But it plays havoc with nature and agriculture. Warmer temperatures bring plants out of dormancy sooner, which can hurt migrating animals, and if a late cold blast arrives, the freeze can damage trees and their fruit.
Increasingly tempestuous winds have been sweeping dust from Earth's deserts into our air at an increasing rate since the mid-1800s. New data suggests that this uptick has masked up to 8 percent of current global warming.
Using satellite data and ground measurements, researchers detected a steady increase in these microscopic airborne particles since 1850. Soil dust in ice cores, ocean sediments, and peat bogs shows the level of mineral dust in the atmosphere grew by around 55 percent over that time.
By scattering sunlight back into space and disrupting high-altitude clouds that can act like a blanket trapping warmer air below, these dust particles have an overall cooling effect, essentially masking the true extent of the current extra heat energy vibrating around our atmosphere.
When the Agriculture Department finished its calculations last month, the findings were startling: 2022 was a disaster for upland cotton in Texas, the state where the coarse fiber is primarily grown and then sold around the globe in the form of tampons, cloth diapers, gauze pads and other products.
In the biggest loss on record, Texas farmers abandoned 74 percent of their planted crops — nearly six million acres — because of heat and parched soil, hallmarks of a megadrought made worse by climate change.
That crash has helped to push up the price of tampons in the United States 13 percent over the past year. The price of cloth diapers spiked 21 percent. Cotton balls climbed 9 percent and gauze bandages increased by 8 percent.
“In parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda that have been most affected by the recent drought, this could be the 6th failed consecutive rainfall season,” it said.
Drier than normal conditions have also increased in parts of Burundi, eastern Tanzania, Rwanda and western South Sudan, the centre added.
While famine thresholds have not been reached, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that 8.3 million people – more than half Somalia’s population – will need humanitarian assistance this year.
A controversial proposal in the New Mexico Legislature this year would amend the State’s Constitution via its Civil Rights Act to include purported “environmental rights,” and empower people to file litigation if those rights are allegedly violated.
It’s known as the “green amendment” and took the form of Senate Joint Resolution 6 and in the House as House Resolution 4, both Democrat-sponsored…
While supporters of the resolution argued it could be used to defend New Mexicans from the harmful effects of industries like oil and gas extraction, Seguin worried the same could be said for wind and solar or even transmission projects needed to send renewable energy to market.
She said the amendment as written was broad enough that it could be used to bring lawsuits during the permitting process for renewable – or any – developments and could reduce regulatory certainty for companies looking to bring projects to New Mexico.
That could drive them away from the state and into neighbors like Colorado or Texas, Seguin contended.
“Remarkable” loss of sea ice in the last six years indicate that record levels of heat are now in the ocean, and the climate crisis is manifesting.
Scientists feared the decline of Antarctic ice as far back as 2014, climate models show, and a giant ice sheet which sits on the continent was set to collapse due to global heating back then, the Guardian reports.
But the increasing loss of sea ice exposes ice sheets and their glaciers to waves that speed up disintegration and melting, researchers have warned.
“I have never seen such an extreme, ice-free situation here before,” Professor Karsten Gohl, from the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, told the Guardian.
The news continues to be uniformly terrifying, yet we continue our swift march in the wrong direction, propping up poisonous industries and criminalizing and spurning protesters attempting to draw attention to the most pressing crisis in our civilization’s history.
To tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”: this is the oath defendants in an English court must take. But when David Nixon sought to do so, he was sent to jail.
Nixon, who had taken part in an Insulate Britain protest blocking a junction in the City of London, was on trial for causing a public nuisance, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. He sought to explain his motivation to the jury. But the judge, Silas Reid, had instructed the defendants not to mention their reasons for taking action: namely climate breakdown, fuel poverty and the need for better insulation. When Nixon disregarded this instruction, Reid handed him an eight-week jail sentence for contempt of court.
Questions have been raised over the fact that Ms Ravi did not have a lawyer during her hearing - a fact which criminal lawyer Rebecca John, who has been tracking the case, described as "a shocking abdication of judicial duties" in a Facebook post.
"If the accused was not being represented by counsel at the time of the hearing, the magistrate should have waited till her counsel arrived or in the alternate, provided her with legal aid," Ms John wrote.
People charged under the draconian law have to surrender their passports, are not eligible for government jobs and must produce themselves in the court as and when required.
President Biden calls the order for Boeing jetliners, "historic," adding that it will support a total of 1.47 million direct and indirect jobs across country, with a total economic impact of $70 billion.
In addition to the Boeing jets, Air India is ordering 250 airplanes from European manufacturer Airbus, including 210 A320 Neo narrow-body planes and 40 A350 wide-body aircraft, which Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of Air India's parent company Tata Sons, says will be used to "fly all ultra long distance across the globe."
Air India is also entering into lease agreements for 25 airbus planes, making the overall acquisition 495 passenger jets.
Oil subsidies rose 85 percent between 2021 and 2022, while subsidies for natural gas and electricity more than doubled year on year, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency. The analysis only accounts for direct fossil subsidies. It does not account for the high cost of pollution or climate disasters, which are borne by the public but not included in the price of fossil fuels.
Last year, consumer fossil fuel subsidies matched global investment in low-carbon technologies and helped keep coal, gas, and oil artificially competitive with solar, wind, and electric vehicles. Analysts say that government spending is at odds with the Glasgow Climate Pact, which calls on countries to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies.
“During an energy crisis, government commitments to phasing out subsidies are overshadowed by the priority to protect consumers,” IEA analysts wrote.
The ship will only be able to operate within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, and there is little expectation that will change.
The UN convention on the law of the sea grants nations significant discretion over the management and exploitation of living resources in their exclusive economic zones.
Commercial whaling was banned under an International Whaling Commission moratorium in 1986 but with a clause that allowed Japan to continue to hunt whales legally in the Southern Ocean for what it claims to be “scientific research”.
The contaminated water could just naturally — and safely — decay in storage onsite.
Environmental groups and residents are also concerned this could harm their community, as the Hudson River is already a federally designated toxic Superfund site. Rich Burroni, Holtec’s site vice president for Indian Point, agreed to give the community at least a month's notice before any radioactive discharge into the Hudson River begins.
But Holtec is well within its legal rights and permits to discharge waste at the same rate as it did when operating, and it does not need federal, state or local approval to dump the contaminated water. This practice is standard for nuclear plants.
Energy sector emissions rose to 135 million metric tons in 2022, the IEA said in its Global Methane Tracker report. The increase is the third consecutive yearly rise and brings energy sector emissions close to their highest-ever level, which was reached in 2019.
Methane, a greenhouse gas much like carbon dioxide, is believed to be responsible for around 30% of the increase in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, the agency estimates. Methane doesn’t last as long in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide but contributes more to global warming, ton for ton…
“Some progress is being made but… emissions are still far too high and not falling fast enough,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA. “Especially as methane cuts are among the cheapest options to limit near-term global warming. There is just no excuse.”
Some 70% of methane emissions from oil, gas and coal companies could be reduced with existing technologies, such as steps to capture and sell methane gas or ensuring gas intentionally released is burnt rather than escaping into the atmosphere, the IEA said.
They also found concerning research about glyphosates. Use of this weed-killer has increased 100-fold in recent decades. Because it targets an enzyme that exists only in plants, it was thought to be perfectly safe for animals. However, a study last year showed that it alters the mix of bacteria and microbes in bees' intestines, while also disrupting their ability to keep hives at the optimum temperature.
When the chemicals you use to protect crops harm their pollinators, are you really any further ahead?
It seems not. A third study showed that the use of neonicotinoid in a cornfield produced no increase in corn yields but did depress yields and profits in nearby watermelon fields by 21 percent.
Looking at these findings together, the researchers conclude that scientists have some catching up to do if we are to understand the full picture of the impacts of pesticide use. And regulations need to catch up to the science.
Almost half of products cleared so far under a new US federal ‘biofuels’ program are not, in fact, biofuels
he Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently gave a Chevron refinery the green light to create fuel from discarded plastics as part of a climate-friendly initiative to boost alternatives to petroleum. But, according to agency records obtained by ProPublica and the Guardian, the production of one of the fuels could emit air pollution that is so toxic, one out of four people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer.
“That kind of risk is obscene,” said Linda Birnbaum, former head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. “You can’t let that get out.”
That risk is 250,000 times greater than the level usually considered acceptable by the EPA division that approves new chemicals. Chevron hasn’t started making this fuel yet, the EPA said. When the company does, the cancer burden will disproportionately fall on people who have low incomes and are Black because of the population that lives within three miles of the refinery that will produce the fuel in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
