Time to prepare for, not prevent, the climate apocalypse
What If We Stopped Pretending?
The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it. New Yorker, By Jonathan Franzen 8 Sept 19” There is infinite hope,” Kafka tells us, “only not for us.” This is a fittingly mystical epigram from a writer whose characters strive for ostensibly reachable goals and, tragically or amusingly, never manage to get any closer to them. But it seems to me, in our rapidly darkening world, that the converse of Kafka’s quip is equally true: There is no hope, except for us.
Even at this late date, expressions of unrealistic hope continue to abound. Hardly a day seems to pass without my reading that it’s time to “roll up our sleeves” and “save the planet”; that the problem of climate change can be “solved” if we summon the collective will. Although this message was probably still true in 1988, when the science became fully clear, we’ve emitted as much atmospheric carbon in the past thirty years as we did in the previous two centuries of industrialization. The facts have changed, but somehow the message stays the same………
Our atmosphere and oceans can absorb only so much heat before climate change, intensified by various feedback loops, spins completely out of control. The consensus among scientists and policy-makers is that we’ll pass this point of no return if the global mean temperature rises by more than two degrees Celsius (maybe a little more, but also maybe a little less). The I.P.C.C.—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—tells us that, to limit the rise to less than two degrees, we not only need to reverse the trend of the past three decades. We need to approach zero net emissions, globally, in the next three decades.
This is, to say the least, a tall order. It also assumes that you trust the I.P.C.C.’s calculations. New research, described last month in Scientific American, demonstrates that climate scientists, far from exaggerating the threat of climate change, have underestimated its pace and severity. ………
the scenarios in which collective action averts catastrophe. The scenarios, which I draw from the prescriptions of policy-makers and activists, share certain necessary conditions.
The first condition is that every one of the world’s major polluting countries institute draconian conservation measures, shut down much of its energy and transportation infrastructure, and completely retool its economy. ……. The actions taken by these countries must also be the right ones. Vast sums of government money must be spent without wasting it and without lining the wrong pockets. ….
Finally, overwhelming numbers of human beings, including millions of government-hating Americans, need to accept high taxes and severe curtailment of their familiar life styles without revolting. They must accept the reality of climate change and have faith in the extreme measures taken to combat it. They can’t dismiss news they dislike as fake. They have to set aside nationalism and class and racial resentments. They have to make sacrifices for distant threatened nations and distant future generations……
even if we can no longer hope to be saved from two degrees of warming, there’s still a strong practical and ethical case for reducing carbon emissions. In the long run, it probably makes no difference how badly we overshoot two degrees; once the point of no return is passed, the world will become self-transforming. In the shorter term, however, half measures are better than no measures. Halfway cutting our emissions would make the immediate effects of warming somewhat less severe, and it would somewhat postpone the point of no return. The most terrifying thing about climate change is the speed at which it’s advancing, the almost monthly shattering of temperature records. If collective action resulted in just one fewer devastating hurricane, just a few extra years of relative stability, it would be a goal worth pursuing.
In fact, it would be worth pursuing even if it had no effect at all. To fail to conserve a finite resource when conservation measures are available, to needlessly add carbon to the atmosphere when we know very well what carbon is doing to it, is simply wrong. Although the actions of one individual have zero effect on the climate, this doesn’t mean that they’re meaningless. Each of us has an ethical choice to make. ……
if you accept the reality that the planet will soon overheat to the point of threatening civilization, there’s a whole lot more you should be doing……
Every renewable-energy mega-project that destroys a living ecosystem—the “green” energy development now occurring in Kenya’s national parks, the giant hydroelectric projects in Brazil, the construction of solar farms in open spaces, rather than in settled areas—erodes the resilience of a natural world already fighting for its life. Soil and water depletion, overuse of pesticides, the devastation of world fisheries—collective will is needed for these problems, too, and, unlike the problem of carbon, they’re within our power to solve. As a bonus, many low-tech conservation actions (restoring forests, preserving grasslands, eating less meat) can reduce our carbon footprint as effectively as massive industrial changes.
All-out war on climate change made sense only as long as it was winnable. Once you accept that we’ve lost it, other kinds of action take on greater meaning. Preparing for fires and floods and refugees is a directly pertinent example. But the impending catastrophe heightens the urgency of almost any world-improving action. In times of increasing chaos, people seek protection in tribalism and armed force, rather than in the rule of law, and our best defense against this kind of dystopia is to maintain functioning democracies, functioning legal systems, functioning communities. ……. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending?source=EDT_NYR_EDIT_NEWSLETTER_0_imagenewsletter_Daily_ZZ&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_090819&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bea00ac3f92a404693b7a69&cndid=46508601&esrc=&mbid=&utm_term=TNY_Daily
Europe’s record heat linked to climate change. Deaths in France
RECORD HEAT WAVE LINKED TO CLIMATE CHANGE KILLED 1,500 PEOPLE IN FRANCE THIS SUMMER, NEWSWEEK, BY ON 9/8/19 HEAT WAVES THAT PLAGUED FRANCE THIS SUMMER LEFT SOME 1,500 PEOPLE DEAD, ACCORDING TO THE EUROPEAN NATION’S HEALTH MINISTER.
Agnes Buzyn explained on France Inter radio on Sunday that there had been at about 1,000 more deaths than normal during the summer months, with half of the deceased being 75 or older, the French newspaper Le Monde reported. In total, she said there were 18 exceptionally hot days recorded in France during June and July.
Although the number of deaths was high, Buzyn also pointed out that it was much lower than the 15,000 deaths that occurred during scorching summer heat wave back in 2003. The minister attributed the lower death toll in 2019 to a successful public awareness campaign.
“We have succeeded — thanks to prevention, thanks to workable messages the French population heeded — to reduce fatalities by a factor of 10,” she said, according to the Associated Press.
Paris, the French capital, experienced its hottest day ever recorded in July, with the temperature soaring above 108 degrees Fahrenheit. The previous record, documented in 1947, was just under 105 degrees.
Elsewhere in Europe, multiple countries recorded exceptionally hot summer temperatures as scientists pointed to the growing global impact of climate change.
In Germany, the temperature nearly hit 107 and in the Netherlands it narrowly surpassed 105 back in July. In Belgium, the temperature soared above 104, which was a new record as well. In fact, all three countries broke their hottest-ever recorded temperature records twice within 24 hours, British newspaper The Guardian reported at the time…….
A study conducted by a team of European scientists linked the intense heat wave directly to man-made climate change…….. https://www.newsweek.com/summer-heat-wave-climate-change-killed-1500-france-1458205
Emigration from Central America is driven by climate change
In the back of the pickup truck that day, we talked about gangs too. There was increasing criminal activity in the town nearby, and some young people in the town were being harassed and recruited. But this was a relatively new issue for the community, layered on top of the persistent problem of the ecological crisis. ……. situation is reflective of a much broader global phenomenon of people leaving their homes, directly or indirectly due to climate change and the degradation of their local ecosystem. ….
Land and livelihood
Migration from Central America has gotten a lot of attention these days, including the famous migrant caravans. But much of it focuses on the way migrants from this region – especially El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras – are driven out by gang violence, corruption and political upheaval.
Studies show that displacement often happens indirectly through the impact of climate change on agricultural livelihoods, with some areas pressured more than others. But some are more dramatic: Both Honduras and Nicaragua are among the top 10 countries most impacted by extreme weather events between 1998 and 2017.
Coffee production, a critical support for these countries’ economies, is especially vulnerable and sensitive to weather variations. A recent outbreak of coffee leaf rust in the region was likely exacerbated by climate change.
Compounding factor
For several years now, scholars and legal advocates have been asking how to respond to people displaced by environmental conditions. Do existing models of humanitarian response and resettlement work for this new population? Could such persons be recognized as in need of protection under international law, similar to political refugees?
Complete melting of Alaska’s sea ice
Alaska’s Sea Ice Completely Melted for First Time in Recorded History , BY Dahr Jamail, Truthout, 3 Sept 19 The country of Iceland has held a funeral for its first glacier lost to the climate crisis. The once massive Okjökull glacier, now completely gone, has been commemorated with a plaque that reads: “A letter to the future. Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.”
This reality is reverberating across the globe, far beyond Iceland. Even when no literal funeral is being held, we are, in a sense, witnessing an ongoing funeral for the world we once knew.
July was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth since record keeping began in 1880. Nine out of the 10 hottest Julys ever recorded have occurred since 2005, and July was the 43rd consecutive July to register temperatures above the 20th century average.
In Greenland, scientists were stunned by how rapidly the ice sheet is melting, as it was revealed the ice there was not expected to melt like this until 2070. The melt rate has been called “unprecedented,” as the all-time single-day melt record was broken in August as the ice sheet lost a mind-bending 12.5 billion tons of water in one day. It is worth remembering that the Greenland ice sheet contains enough ice to increase global sea levels by 20 feet, and it is now predicted that it will lose more ice this year than ever before.
Also for the first time in recorded history, Alaska’s sea ice has melted completely away. That means there was no sea ice whatsoever within 150 miles of its shores, according to the National Weather Service, as the northernmost state cooked under record-breaking heat through the summer.
Earth
A recent UN report estimates 2 billion people are already facing moderate to severe food insecurity, due largely to the warming planet……
Water
Drought-induced blackouts are now besetting the people of Zimbabwe, where some places are seeing 18 hours per day without electricity. Imagine that in the summer heat. Dams providing hydropower lack water. Power blackouts are spreading.
In Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city, the taps have run dry, affecting more than 2 million people, who have been trying to cope with not having access to municipal drinking water.
In India, a stunning 1 million people were displaced and at least 270 killedby severe flooding from heavier than usual monsoon rains……
Fire
These stunning satellite photos show an Arctic burning up in front of our eyes. In Alaska alone, at the time of this writing, at least 1.6 million acres have burned from at least 100 wildfires this summer. Wildfires in Siberiacould well burn into October when the first snows fall, as at least 6.7 million acres have burned across Russia…..
Air
By 2050, Florida will have more days that feel like 100 degrees Fahrenheit (100°F) than any other state in the U.S…….
Denial and Reality
Ever busy denying the crisis, in the last month the Trump administration buried a large climate disruption response plan, as revealed by Politico. The outlet revealed how the Agriculture Department prevented the release of an already completed and sweeping plan about how the government should best respond to the climate crisis…….https://truthout.org/articles/alaskas-sea-ice-completely-melted-for-first-time-in-recorded-history/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=0c8d2522-93df-479f-b11f-0eff5492523a
Akademik Lomonosov — the first floating nuclear power stations – both a nuclear and a climate danger
‘It is not just a nuclear risk, but a climate risk’ https://www.downtoearth.org.in/interviews/climate-change/-it-is-not-just-a-nuclear-risk-but-a-climate-risk–66520
Jan Haverkamp, a nuclear expert of Greenpeace (Central and Eastern Europe), spoke to Down To Earth on about Akademik Lomonosov — the first floating nuclear power stations — in Russia
By Rajit Sengupta, 04 September 2019 Akademik Lomonosov is the first among a fleet of a dozen floating nuclear power stations to be used for fossil fuel exploration and exploitation in the Arctic. Jan Haverkamp, a nuclear expert of Greenpeace (Central and Eastern Europe), spoke to Down To Earth on how this project is not only about increasing nuclear risk, but also increasing climate change risks.
How safe is Akademik Lomonosov?
Unlike nuclear submarines, the Akademik Lomonosov is a barge without own propulsion, meaning it can only float (or sink) and not dive. It means that if the mooring is broken, the barge is steerless, adding considerable to the risk when compared to a submarine or an ice-breaker.
It can also not dive away from an iceberg or avoid sea-ice by going deep. For its operations, it will be partially dependent on a coastal electricity link, which will also be used for electricity intake in times of trouble. The cable is lot more vulnerable than that of an on-land reactor.
Accidents with naval reactors have happened in the past. In 1970, an uncontrolled start-up of the reactor of the nuclear submarine K-320, at the Krasnoye Sormovo wharf in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, caused the release of larger amounts of radioactivity. It led to 12 casualties and hundreds of people getting exposed to above-limit radiation doses.
An accident during fuel loading of the reactor of a nuclear submarine in Chazma Bay, in 1985, irradiated 290 workers leading to 10 casualties and 49 injured.
The radioactive content of the two reactors on board of the Akademik Lomonosov is around 25 times smaller than that of the Chernobyl nuclear power station, but is still considerable. A severe accident with bypass of the containment could cause substantial contamination kilometres downwind.
Will Akademik Lomonosov lead to further nuclearisation in Northern Sea Route?
The Akademik Lomonosov is a new step in the nuclearisation of the Arctic. The first was the introduction of nuclear submarines, followed by nuclear weapons, nuclear marine vessels, a few nuclear merchant ships and nuclear ice-breakers and the Bilibino nuclear power station, which is to be closed down soon.
Akademik Lomonosov is the first of a fleet of a dozen floating nuclear power stations that are to power ports to enable transport through the Northern Sea Route, and substantially increase fossil fuel exploration and exploitation in the Arctic. So it is not only about increasing nuclear risk, but also increasing climate change risks.
Russia plans to sell the technology to other countries including Sudan. Why are countries so interested in this technology?
The interest is much lower than what Rosatom (Russia’s state nuclear corporation) wants us to believe. Indonesia and Cabo Verde have already denied interest. I think Sudan, which was a military dictatorship a few months ago, is an exception.
Rosatom is making tall promises to sell the technology, which is unlikely to be fulfilled. It has promised financing, cheap or competitive electricity and waste management with little historical experience to back it up.
What has Russia benefitted from the project?
The Akademik Lomonosov is a symbol of the power-struggle between the old nuclear dinosaurs gathered in Rosatom and the upcoming and already much larger global clean renewable industry.
The Akademik Lomonosov is extremely expensive, certainly in comparison with viable renewable alternatives for Chukotka. Now nuclear power is being used to exploit more gas, oil and coal. Rosatom is a bad energy advisor for Russia and for foreign partners.
St. Lucie and Turkey Point nuclear power stations on alert for Hurricane Dorian
Hurricane warnings issued across Florida
- Closure to begin if hurricane-force winds predicted at sites
- State has two plants, St. Lucie and Turkey Point, owned by FPL
Florida’s two nuclear plants are ready to shut down if forecasts show hurricane-force winds hitting the facilities when Dorian finally moves on shore.
Both plants — St. Lucie, north of Palm Beach, and Turkey Point, south of Miami — sit on Florida’s Atlantic coast, and both lie within the possible path of the storm.
Their owner, NextEra Energy Inc.’s Florida Power & Light, has been preparing since Monday for the possibility of shutting down the plants, said spokesman Peter Robbins. It’s poised to do so once forecasts predict hurricane-force wind speeds at the sites, he said.
“We do it in advance,” Robbins said. “We don’t wait.”
Dorian’s path, however, remained uncertain enough Friday that FPL hadn’t yet made the decision to power down. “We’ve seen the path and intensity of the storm change a lot,” Robbins said. “Like most hurricanes, it’s got some tricks up its sleeve.”
The company, Florida’s largest utility, temporarily closed both facilities in 2017 as Hurricane Irma bore down on the state. Should FPL shut down the plants for Dorian, they would remain offline until the storm had passed and the facilities had been inspected, Robbins said. The company also would consult with local and federal officials before restarting operations.
“It’s a coordinated thing,” Robbins said. “We don’t make the decision by ourselves.”
Climate change is destabilising the Earth’s marine environment
|
Oceans turning from friend to foe, warns landmark UN climate report, Phys Org, by Marlowe Hood, Patrick Galey 30 Aug 19, The same oceans that nourished human evolution are poised to unleash misery on a global scale unless the carbon pollution destabilising Earth’s marine environment is brought to heel, warns a draft UN report obtained by AFP. Destructive changes already set in motion could see a steady decline in fish stocks, a hundred-fold or more increase in the damages caused by superstorms, and hundreds of millions of people displaced by rising seas, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “special report” on oceans and Earth’s frozen zones, known as the cryosphere. As the 21st century unfolds, melting glaciers will first give too much and then too little to billions who depend on them for fresh water, it finds. Without deep cuts to manmade emissions, at least 30 percent of the northern hemisphere’s surface permafrost could melt by century’s end, unleashing billions of tonnes of carbon and accelerating global warming even more. The 900-page scientific assessment is the fourth such tome from the UN in less than a year, with others focused on a 1.5-Celsius (2.6-Farenheit) cap on global warming, the state of biodiversity, and how to manage forests and the global food system. All four conclude that humanity must overhaul the way it produces and consumes almost everything to avoid the worst ravages of climate change and environmental degradation. Governments meet in Monaco next month to vet the new report’s official summary. While the underlying science—drawn from thousands of peer-reviewed studies—cannot be modified, diplomats with scientists at their elbow will tussle over how to frame the findings, and what to leave in or out. The final advice to policymakers will be released on September 25, too late to be considered by world leaders gathering two days earlier for a summit convened by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to extract stronger national commitments in confronting the climate crisis. Guterres may be disappointed by what the world’s major greenhouse gas emitters put on the table, according to experts tracking climate politics in China, the United States, the European Union and India……….. 1,000-fold flood damage increase By 2050, many low-lying megacities and small island nations will experience “extreme sea level events” every year, even under the most optimistic emissions reduction scenarios, the report concludes. By 2100, “annual flood damages are expected to increase by two to three orders of magnitude,” or 100 to 1,000 fold, the draft summary for policymakers says. Even if the world manages to cap global warming at two degrees Celsius, the global ocean waterline will rise enough to displace more than a quarter of a billion people. The report indicated this could happen as soon as 2100, though some experts think it is more likely to happen on a longer timescale……… Marine heatwaves Oceans not only absorb a quarter of the CO2 we emit, they have also soaked up more than 90 percent of the additional heat generated by greenhouse gas emissions since 1970. Without this marine sponge, in other words, global warming would already have made Earth’s surface intolerably hot for our species. But these obliging gestures come at a cost: acidification is disrupting the ocean’s basic food chain, and marine heatwaves—which have become twice as frequent since the 1980s—are creating vast oxygen-depleted dead zones. In the Tasman Sea, for example, a 2015-16 heatwave lasted for 251 days, causing disease outbreaks and a die-off of farmed shellfish.https://phys.org/news/2019-08-oceans-friend-foe-landmark-climate.html |
|
A freezing and deathly aftermath would follow a US-Russian nuclear war
 HERE’S WHAT WOULD FOLLOW US-RUSSIA NUCLEAR WAR https://www.futurity.org/nuclear-war-united-states-russia-2144632/ AUGUST 28TH, 2019 Indeed, death by famine would threaten nearly all of the Earth’s 7.7 billion people, says coauthor Alan Robock, a professor in the environmental sciences department in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
The study in the Journal of Geophysical Research–Atmospheres provides more evidence to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons the United Nations passed two years ago, Robock says. Twenty-five nations have ratified the treaty so far, not including the United States, and it would take effect when the number hits 50. Lead author Joshua Coupe, a doctoral student at Rutgers University, and other scientists used a modern climate model to simulate the climatic effects of an all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia. Such a war could send 150 million tons of black smoke from fires in cities and industrial areas into the lower and upper atmosphere, where it could linger for months to years and block sunlight. The scientists used a new climate model from the National Center for Atmospheric Research with higher resolution and improved simulations compared with a NASA model used by a research team Robock led 12 years ago. The new model represents the Earth at many more locations and includes simulations of the growth of the smoke particles and ozone destruction from the heating of the atmosphere. Still, the climate response to a nuclear war from the new model was nearly identical to that from the NASA model. “This means that we have much more confidence in the climate response to a large-scale nuclear war,” Coupe says. “There really would be a nuclear winter with catastrophic consequences.” In both the new and old models, a nuclear winter occurs as soot (black carbon) in the upper atmosphere blocks sunlight and causes global average surface temperatures to plummet by more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Because a major nuclear war could erupt by accident or as a result of hacking, computer failure, or an unstable world leader, the only safe action that the world can take is to eliminate nuclear weapons, says Robock. Additional researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and University of Colorado, Boulder contributed to the study. Source: Rutgers University |
|
|
’12 Years to Act on Climate Change’ – what does this really mean?
What Does ’12 Years to Act on Climate Change’ (Now 11 Years) Really Mean? https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27082019/12-years-climate-change-explained-ipcc-science-solutionsIt doesn’t mean the world can wait until 2030 to cut greenhouse gas emissions, or that chaos will erupt in 2030. Here’s what the science shows., BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS, AUG 27,2019We’ve been hearing variations of the phrase “the world only has 12 years to deal with climate change” a lot lately.Sen. Bernie Sanders put a version of it front and center of his presidential campaign last week, saying we now have “less than 11 years left to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy, if we are going to leave this planet healthy and habitable.”
But where does the idea of having 11 or 12 years come from, and what does it actually mean?
The number began drawing attention in 2018, when the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report describing what it would take to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, a goal of the Paris climate agreement. The report explained that countries would have to cut their anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, such as from power plants and vehicles, to net zero by around 2050. To reach that goal, it said, CO2 emissions would have to start dropping “well before 2030” and be on a path to fall by about 45 percent by around 2030 (12 years away at that time).
Mid-century is actually the more significant target date in the report, but acting now is crucial to being able to meet that goal, said Duke University climate researcher Drew Shindell, a lead author on the mitigation chapter of the IPCC report.
We need to get the world on a path to net zero CO2 emissions by mid-century,” Shindell said. “That’s a huge transformation, so that if we don’t make a good start on it during the 2020s, we won’t be able to get there at a reasonable cost.”
How Do Scientists Know?
Basics physics and climate science allow scientists to calculate how much CO2 it takes to raise the global temperature—and how much CO2 can still be emitted before global warming exceeds 1.5°C (2.7°F) compared to pre-industrial times.
Scientists worked backward from that basic knowledge to come up with timelines for what would have to happen to stay under 1.5°C warming, said Scott Denning, who studies the warming atmosphere at Colorado State University.
“They figured out how much extra heat we can stand. They calculated how much CO2 would produce that much heat, then how much total fuel would produce that much CO2. Then they considered ‘glide paths’ for getting emissions to zero before we burn too much carbon to avoid catastrophe,” he said.
“All this work gets summarized as ‘in order to avoid really bad outcomes, we have to be on a realistic glide path toward a carbon-free global economy by 2030.’ And that gets translated to something like ’emissions have to fall by half in a decade,’ and that gets oversimplified to ’12 years left.’
“There’s certainly a grain of truth in the phrase, but it’s so oversimplified that it leads to comically bad misconceptions about how to get there, conjuring up ridiculous cartoon imagery suggesting we just go on with life normally for the next 11 years and then the world ends,” Denning said.
That’s not what the IPCC writers envisioned, he said.
The science on the 2030 date is clear, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University. The controversy stems from people mischaracterizing the carbon reduction timeline as a threshold for climate disaster. He noted that people promoting climate science denial and delay have also latched on to the phrase “to intentionally try to caricature the concern about climate change.”
What Would Success Look Like?
It would be helpful if people looked at the 2030 target in terms of what success looks like rather than what failure means, Denning said.
“Solving the problem by 2030, 2040 or 2050 requires a new global energy infrastructure, which is arguably easier and less expensive than past infrastructure shifts like indoor plumbing, rural electrification, the automobile and paved roads, telecommunications, computers, mobile phones or the internet.
“All of these past changes cost tens of trillions of dollars, adjusted for inflation. All of them were hugely disruptive. All of them took a decade or more, completely changed the industrial and economic and social landscape, and created bursts of growth and productivity and jobs. And arguably, all of them made life better for huge numbers of people.”
This time, the shift is from heavy reliance on carbon-emitting fossil fuels to carbon-free energy sources, like wind power. And even with a speedy energy transition, the IPCC says keeping temperatures from warming more than 1.5°C will also likely require removing CO2 from the atmosphere on a large scale.
Missing the target doesn’t imply the onset of cataclysmic climate change in 2030, Denning said.
“Things just keep getting worse and worse until we stop making them worse, and then they never get better,” he said. “But no matter what, the world has to move on from fossil fuels just as we moved on from tallow candles and outhouses and land lines.”
What Would Exceeding 1.5°C Warming Mean?
The IPCC report described how increasing greenhouse gas emissions will result in more dangerous and costly disruptions to global societies and ecosystems, including longer, hotter heat waves and more frequent crop-killing droughts.
Mountain glaciers will melt faster as the planet warms, creating new risks for settlements in the valleys below. The meltdown of polar ice sheets is also projected to accelerate, intensifying flooding and speeding up sea level rise to a rate that will be hard to adapt to. More Arctic permafrost will thaw, releasing more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Despite the rising risks, it’s important to understand that, “in the physical climate system, there are no scientists claiming that there is a magical threshold that we breach or don’t breach that determines whether we have a habitable climate system,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Center for Climate and Weather Extremes.
The 2030 target is useful because it shows how the “next decade is incredibly consequential for what we do.” Swain said. “But I think the emphasis that’s being placed on this specific 12-year window as a differentiator between existential crisis or not is problematic.
“First of all, it negates some of the risks that already exist and that will continue to build no matter what. And it also potentially suggests that anything short of complete victory in the next 12 years is pointless, which is exactly the opposite of the truth. At any point along the spectrum, more progress is always going to be better than less progress, less warming is always going to be better than more warming.”
Have We Passed Tipping Points Already?
In some ways, the “12 years” narrative may set up a deadline that’s too lenient, because some key part of the climate system may already be at or past tipping points, Swain said.
It creates the false illusion that there is some sort of guardrail moving forward, that if we just get in under the deadline we’ll be OK, he said. But “twelve years from now, it could be too late for some of these things, like the ice sheets.”
Research in the past few years reinforces the idea that some climate tipping points have already been breached. Studies show some parts of the Greenland Ice Sheet are unlikely to recover, and parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may also be at or very near a tipping point to rapid disintegration.
A study published in June suggested that the rate of permafrost thawing is progressing much faster than climate models projected. And scientists studying the link between global warming and European heat waves said those recent extremes are also outside the scope of what they expected at current levels of warming.
The world will still exist if we breach 1.5°C and 2°C, but “the climate impacts and risks will be higher and the temperature will be higher,” said Glen Peters, research director at the CICERO climate research center in Oslo. That all seems to be sinking in to public awareness, he said.
“But in terms of deadlines, we have already missed the deadline,” he said. “We should have started mitigating decades ago, then we would have the problem solved.”
International calls for urgent action on climate, as new fires rage in Amazon forests
|
As New Fires Rage in Amazon, Global Calls for Urgent Action to Avert ‘Astronomical’ Impacts to ‘Life on Earth’, Pope Francis urges protection of “that lung of forests” and French President Macron says G7 nations pledged help at summit August 25, 2019 by Common Dreams by Andrea Germanos, staff writer The military operations involving C-130 aircraft to put out fires came after Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro triggered global protests over his government’s policies and failure to take swift action to combat the flames. Official data released Saturday backs up the call for swift action. Agence France-Presse reported, “Some 1,130 new fires were ignited between Friday and Saturday, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).” So far this year, the country has witnessed 79,513 fires, more than half of which occurred in the Amazon, according to the agency. That marks an 82 percent increase from 2018. The fires were discussed by global leaders meeting in Biarritz, France for the G7 summit. French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday, “We are all agreed on helping those countries which have been hit by the fires as fast as possible.” “Our teams are making contact with all the Amazon countries so we can finalize some very concrete commitments involving technical resources and funding,” said Macron. The French leader and Bolsonaro last week sparred on Twitter over the fires. “Our house is burning. Literally. The Amazon rain forest—the lungs which produces 20 percent of our planet’s oxygen—is on fire,” tweeted Macron. Bolsonaro then accused Macron of using the fires “for personal political gains” and said the French president had a “sensationalist tone.” Pope Francis on Sunday added his voice to the chorus of concern. “We are all worried about the vast fires that have developed in the Amazon,” he said, speaking to the public in St Peter’s Square. “That lung of forests,” the pontiff added, “is vital for our planet.” Bolsonaro—who previously asserted there weren’t resources to battle the fires—has baselessly suggested the fires could have been started by NGOs upset with his policies. But environmental campaigners say his policies promoting deforestation and other manifestations of Amazon exploitation are the main culprits…….. As conservation group WWF said in a tweet Friday, further loss and destruction of this key carbon sink and biodiversity hotspot will affect us all. “If this vital ecosystem continues to burn,” said WWF, “the implications for life on Earth will be astronomical.”https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/25/new-fires-rage-amazon-global-calls-urgent-action-avert-astronomical-impacts-life |
|
Trump on climate change- USA companies’ profits more important. He is expert on environment
Trump’s climate session no-show, ABC News, 27 Aug 19
A $US20 million ($29.5 million) pledge to battle wildfires raging across the Amazon is being seen as one of the few solid agreements to come out of the meeting — but it appears to have come about with little input from Mr Trump.
“The President had scheduled meetings and bilaterals with Germany and India, so a senior member of the administration attended in his stead,” press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
CNN and the Guardian reported Mr Trump appeared to be unaware of when the climate session would be held when asked by reporters. He thought it had not happened yet…..
The US president up-ended last year’s G7 summit in Canada, walking out of the meeting early and disassociating himself from the final communique having initially endorsed the document. …..
World leaders’ closing remarks
US President Donald Trump: …….
- On climate change: “We are the number one energy producer in the world. It is tremendous wealth — I am not going to lose that wealth on dreams, on windmills, which frankly are not working that well.”
- “I want the cleanest water on Earth, I want the cleanest air on Earth … I think I know more about the environment than most people.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-27/trump-ready-to-meet-irans-president-to-solve-nuclear-impasse-g7/11451490
Donald Trump’s idea – use nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States
https://amp.axios.com/trump-nuclear-bombs-hurricanes-97231f38-2394-4120-a3fa-8c9cf0e3f51c.html
Jonathan Swan, Margaret Talev, 26 Aug 19, President Trump has suggested multiple times to senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States, according to sources who have heard the president’s private remarks and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those comments.
Behind the scenes: During one hurricane briefing at the White House, Trump said, “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” according to one source who was there. “They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?” the source added, paraphrasing the president’s remarks.
Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled he said something to the effect of, “Sir, we’ll look into that.”
Trump replied by asking incredulously how many hurricanes the U.S. could handle and reiterating his suggestion that the government intervene before they make landfall.
The briefer “was knocked back on his heels,” the source in the room added. “You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, ‘What the f—? What do we do with this?'”
Trump also raised the idea in another conversation with a senior administration official. A 2017 NSC memo describes that second conversation, in which Trump asked whether the administration should bomb hurricanes to stop them from hitting the homeland. A source briefed on the NSC memo said it does not contain the word “nuclear”; it just says the president talked about bombing hurricanes.
The source added that this NSC memo captured “multiple topics, not just hurricanes. … It wasn’t that somebody was so terrified of the bombing idea that they wrote it down. They just captured the president’s comments.”
The sources said that Trump’s “bomb the hurricanes” idea — which he floated early in the first year and a bit of his presidency before John Bolton took over as national security adviser — went nowhere and never entered a formal policy process.
White House response: A senior administration official said, “We don’t comment on private discussions that the president may or may not have had with his national security team.”
A different senior administration official, who has been briefed on the president’s hurricane bombing suggestion, defended Trump’s idea and said it was no cause for alarm. “His goal — to keep a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland — is not bad,” the official said. “His objective is not bad.”
“What people near the president do is they say ‘I love a president who asks questions like that, who’s willing to ask tough questions.’ … It takes strong people to respond to him in the right way when stuff like this comes up. For me, alarm bells weren’t going off when I heard about it, but I did think somebody is going to use this to feed into ‘the president is crazy’ narrative.”
Trump called this story “ridiculous” in a Monday tweet from the G7 summit. He added, “I never said this. Just more FAKE NEWS!”
The big picture: Trump didn’t invent this idea. The notion that detonating a nuclear bomb over the eye of a hurricane could be used to counteract convection currents dates to the Eisenhower era, when it was floated by a government scientist.
The idea keeps resurfacing in the public even though scientists agree it won’t work. The myth has been so persistent that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. government agency that predicts changes in weather and the oceans, published an online fact sheet for the public under the heading “Tropical Cyclone Myths Page.”
The page states: “Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.”
About 3 weeks after Trump’s 2016 election, National Geographic published an article titled, “Nuking Hurricanes: The Surprising History of a Really Bad Idea.” It found, among other problems, that:
Dropping a nuclear bomb into a hurricane would be banned under the terms of the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. So that could stave off any experiments, as long as the U.S. observes the terms of the treaty.
Atlantic hurricane season runs until Nov. 30.
Long history of misguided suggestions to nuclear bomb hurricanes
|
The idea has evidently surfaced multiple times in the administration, as Swan outlined, including during a hurricane preparedness briefings at the White House. “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” the president evidently interrupted, according to Swan’s source. “They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?” Even in a White House system engineered to respond quickly and authoritatively to a president’s whims, questions, or orders, no one knew what to do with an idea so obviously batty. As one source reportedly told Swan, “You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, ‘What the f—? What do we do with this?’” (Trump denied the reports in a tweet Monday.) The truth, though, is that Donald Trump’s apparent brainstorm—as terrible an idea as it is—actually has a long history. Seventy years ago, it was at the forefront of American scientific thought. What makes Trump’s embrace of nuking hurricanes unique is that, broadly speaking, no policymaker has seriously considered it a good idea since the days that the 73-year-old president was wearing diapers. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—when the US unleashed a destructive technology more powerful than anything in history—at first spurred unbridled excitement over the power of the atom…… Engineers dreamed of the day when nuclear engines would replace gasoline-powered automobiles, when a lump of Uranium-235 the size of a vitamin pill would power the family car for years at a time. In those heady early years of the atomic age, many scientists imagined a world where humans could routinely use nuclear weapons to cleave the earth and remake its climate. Decades before climate change became a major concern, one book, Almighty Atom: The Real Story of Atomic Energy, suggested using atomic weapons to melt the polar ice caps, gifting “the entire world a moister, warmer climate.” Thought experiments exploded over how harnessing the power of the atom would finally unleash humans’ ability to control and reshape their environment through geo-engineering. “For the first time in the history of the world, man will have at his disposal energy in amounts sufficient to cope with the forces of Mother Nature,” ……. One of the first tourist attractions in Las Vegas was the chance to wake up early, stand outside your hotel, and watch the flash and mushroom cloud from the bombs rolling into the sky. The after-effects of radiation—the invisible and inescapable poison spread by nuclear explosions—became clear soon enough. With that awareness, early atomic enthusiasm waned, particularly as bombs leapt from nuclear to thermonuclear, the atomic bomb’s power of kilotons—that is, a thousand tons of TNT—growing to the hydrogen bomb’s megatons, the equivalent of a million tons of TNT….. nuking hurricanes entered the conversation. According to International Spy Museum historian Vince Houghton, whose book Nuking the Moon details wacky military and intelligence schemes, an American meteorologist named Jack Reed, one of the nation’s earliest hurricane hunters, appears to be the first to seriously consider bombing a hurricane. His calculations held that maybe one or two 20-megaton bombs might be able to deflect a hurricane from land. He called for a test of the theory, but found it embraced by precisely zero policymakers …. Reed’s idea would actually now be prohibited under international law by the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty. Yet the appeal of nuking hurricanes has never really gone away. The issue is such a MacGuffin that NOAA has dedicated a webpage to debunking it: “During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms,” the weather service writes. “Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.” The idea has enough staying power that the meteorologists at NOAA even took on the underlying science, pointing out that there’s little evidence that even a successfully placed atomic bomb would do anything to alter a hurricane’s formation —the systems are simply too large, too strong, and most of all, a nuclear explosion wouldn’t affect the underlying dynamics, …… Even for Donald Trump, launching 80 nukes a year seems extreme https://www.wired.com/story/nuking-hurricanes-polar-ice-caps-climate-change/ |
|
Nuking a Hurricane Would Probably Just Create a Slightly Bigger, Radioactive Hurricane
Nuking a Hurricane Would Probably Just Create a Slightly Bigger, Radioactive Hurricane https://www.livescience.com/trump-hurricane-nuclear-bomb.html By 26 Aug 19, o Planet Earth
Has Trump been reading old Live Science articles about nuking hurricanes? And if not, should he be?
President Donald Trump wants to nuke hurricanes into submission before they reach the Atlantic coastline, according to a bizarre article published yesterday (Aug. 25) on Axios. “Why can’t we do that?” he reportedly asked. This raises an important question: Has Trump been reading old Live Science articles? And if not, should he be?
Live Science answered this very question in a 2012 article.
“The theory goes that the energy released by a nuclear bomb detonated just above and ahead of the eye of a storm would heat the cooler air there, disrupting the storm’s convection current,” Rachel Kaufman wrote at the time. “Unfortunately, this idea, which has been around in some form since the 1960s, wouldn’t work.”
The problem is the energy involved, Kaufman reported, citing writing by Chris Landsea, a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research meteorologist.
A hurricane is essentially a powerful, super-efficient country-size engine for pulling heat out of the ocean and releasing it into the atmosphere. As a hurricane’s low-pressure system moves over warm water, that water evaporates and then condenses as droplets in the atmosphere. As the water condenses, it releases the heat it’s carrying into the surrounding air. About 1% of that heat energy gets converted into wind; the rest sticks around as ambient warmth, according to the article.
A hurricane can release 50 terawatts of heat energy at any given moment — a significantly greater output than the entire power system, and comparable to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb detonating every 20 minutes. Trying to stop a hurricane with a nuke would be “about as effective as trying to stop a speeding Buick with a feather,” Kaufman wrote, and might even add energy to the storm
Stopping a smaller tropical depression with a nuke might be more realistic, but there are just too many of them and no good way to tell which will develop into powerful, landfalling hurricanes.
“Finally, whether the bomb would have a minor positive effect, a negative effect, or none at all on the storm’s convection cycle, one thing is for sure: It would create a radioactive hurricane, which would be even worse than a normal one. The fallout would ride Trade Winds to land — arguably a worse outcome than a landfalling hurricane,” Kaufman wrote.
The best way to avoid the destruction of a hurricane, remains a boring one: prepare. In case that’s the route you want to go, how to prepare for a hurricane.
New fires – hundreds – in Amazon rainforests
Amazon rainforest burning at record rate
Leaders of the world’s major industrialised nations are close to an agreement on how to help fight the Amazon forest fires and try to repair the devastation.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the G7 countries comprising the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Canada, were finalising a possible deal on “technical and financial help”.
“There’s a real convergence to say: ‘let’s all agree to help those countries hit by these fires’,” he told reporters in Biarritz on Sunday.
Macron shunted the Amazon fires to the top of the summit agenda after declaring them a global emergency, and kicked off discussions about the disaster at a welcome dinner for fellow leaders on Saturday.
An EU official, who declined to be named, said the G7 leaders had agreed to do everything they could to help tackle the fires, giving Macron a mandate to contact all the countries in the Amazon region to see what was needed.
“It was the easiest part of the talks,” the official said.
A record number of fires are ravaging the rainforest, many of them in Brazil, drawing international concern because of the Amazon’s importance to the global environment……. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/hundreds-of-new-fires-rage-in-the-amazon-as-g7-leaders-offer-assistance
1 This Month
25 June- THE PUKE ON NUKES
Thursday, June 25, 2026
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5
From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
26 June – Radiation Trainwreck at the NRC / Join the Protect Better Campaign – https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4ZlZ5_qLSHGiLSCg8FF6Bg#/registration
1st July – Webinar Waste of Space: The Environmental Harm of Military and Civil Space Activity st July, 7 pm
Report Launch Online: We are seeing an increasing exploitation of space for military and commercial purposes. This must change.
Protect Sazan Island from the Trump family! https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/protect_sazan_island_from_the_trump_family_loc/?bqFCVab&v=174511&cl=22707147157&_checksum=5e9dde668860e8231c33699735e16a1fbf22ab2cb01da50c999fe8732b9775ef&utm_source=email&utm_medium=blast_email&utm_campaign=174511
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- June 2026 (230)
- May 2026 (306)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 