World on ‘thin ice’ as UN climate report gives stark warning
By Associated Press, CNN Mar 21, 2023, https://www.9news.com.au/world/climate-change-ipcc-report-antonio-guterres-says-world-on-thin-ice-as-un-climate-report-gives-stark-warning/fd6c84d9-6139-40a9-a971-866da5233ca1—
Humanity still has a chance, close to the last one, to prevent the worst of climate change‘s future harms, a top United Nations panel of scientists says.
But doing so requires quickly slashing carbon pollution and fossil fuel use by nearly two-thirds by 2035, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said.
The United Nations chief said it more bluntly, calling for an end to new fossil fuel exploration and rich countries quitting coal, oil and gas by 2040.
“Humanity is on thin ice — and that ice is melting fast,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.
“Our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.”
Stepping up his pleas for action on fossil fuels, Guterres not only called for “no new coal” but also for eliminating its use in rich countries by 2030 and poor countries by 2040.
He urged carbon-free electricity generation in the developed world by 2035, meaning no gas-fired power plants too.
That date is key because nations soon have to come up with goals for pollution reduction by 2035, according to the Paris climate agreement.
“The climate time-bomb is ticking,” Guterres said, describing the IPCC report as a “a how-to guide to defuse” it.
The report draws on the findings of hundreds of scientists to provide a comprehensive assessment of how the climate crisis is unfolding.
After contentious debate, the UN science panel calculated and reported that to stay under the warming limit set in Paris the world needs to cut 60 per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, compared with 2019, adding a new target not previously mentioned in the six reports issued since 2018.
“The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts for thousands of years,” the report, said calling climate change “a threat to human well-being and planetary health”.
“We are not on the right track but it’s not too late,” said report co-author and water scientist Aditi Mukherji.
“Our intention is really a message of hope, and not that of doomsday.”
With the world only a few tenths of a degree away from the globally accepted goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees since pre-industrial times, scientists stressed a sense of urgency. The goal was adopted as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement and the world has already warmed 1.1 degrees.
This is likely the last warning the Nobel Peace Prize-winning collection of scientists will be able to make about the 1.5 mark because their next set of reports will likely come after Earth has either breached the mark or locked into exceeding it soon, several scientists, including report authors, told The Associated Press.
‘We are pretty much locked into 1.5’
After 1.5 degrees “the risks are starting to pile on,” said report co-author Francis X Johnson, a climate, land and policy scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute.
The report mentions “tipping points” around that temperature of species extinction, including coral reefs, irreversible melting of ice sheets and sea level rise on the order of several metres.
“The window is closing if emissions are not reduced as quickly as possible,” Johnson said in an interview.
“Scientists are rather alarmed.”
“1.5 is a critical critical limit, particularly for small islands and mountain (communities) which depend on glaciers,” said Mukherji, who’s also the climate change impact platform director at the research institute CGIAR.
Many scientists, including at least three co-authors, said hitting 1.5 degrees is inevitable.
“We are pretty much locked into 1.5,” said report co-author Malte Meinshausen, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
“There’s very little way we will be able to avoid crossing 1.5 C sometime in the 2030s” but the big issue is whether the temperature keeps rising from there or stabilises.
Guterres insisted “the 1.5-degree limit is achievable”. Science panel chief Hoesung Lee said so far the world is far off course
“This report confirms that if the current trends, current patterns of consumption and production continues, then … the global average 1.5 degrees temperature increase will be seen sometime in this decade,” Lee said.
Scientists emphasise that the world, civilisation or humanity won’t end if and when Earth hits and passes the 1.5 degree mark. Mukherji said “it’s not as if it’s a cliff that we all fall off”. But an earlier IPCC report detailed how the harms – from coral reef extinction to Arctic sea ice absent summers to even nastier extreme weather – are much worse beyond 1.5 degrees of warming.
“It is certainly prudent to be planning for a future that’s warmer than 1.5 degrees,” said IPCC report review editor Steven Rose, an economist at the Electric Power Research Institute in the United States.
Threats from fossil fuels
If the world continues to use all the fossil fuel-powered infrastructure either existing now or proposed Earth will warm at least 2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, blowing past the 1.5 mark, the report said.
Because the report is based on data from a few years ago, the calculations about fossil fuel projects already in the pipeline do not include the increase in coal and natural gas use after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, said report co-author Dipak Dasgupta, a climate economist at The Energy and Resources Institute in India.
The report comes a week after the Biden Administration in the United States approved the huge Willow oil-drilling project in Alaska, which could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day.
The rich vs poor divide
The report and the underlying discussions also touch on the disparity between rich nations, which caused much of the problem because carbon dioxide emissions from industrialisation stay in the air for more than a century, and poorer countries that get hit harder by extreme weather.
If the world is to achieve its climate goals, poorer countries need a “many-fold” increase in financial help to adapt to a warmer world and switch to non-polluting energy. Countries have made financial pledges and promises of a damage compensation fund.
If rich countries don’t cut emissions quicker and better help victim nations adapt to future harms, “the world is relegating the least developed countries to poverty”, said Madeline Diouf Sarr, chair of a coalition of the poorest nations.
Despite the risk, ‘a message of hope’
The report offers hope if action is taken, using the word “opportunity” nine times in a 27-page summary. Though opportunity is overshadowed by 94 uses of the word “risk.”
The head of the IPCC said the report contains “a message of hope in addition to those various scientific findings about the tremendous damages and also the losses that climate change has imposed on us and on the planet”.
“There is a pathway that we can resolve these problems, and this report provides a comprehensive overview of what actions we can take to lead us into a much better, liveable future,” Lee told The Associated Press.
Lee was at pains to stress that it’s not the panel’s job to tell countries what they should or shouldn’t do to cap global temperature rise at 1.5 Celsius.
“It’s up to each government to find the best solution,” he said, adding that scientists hope those solutions will stabilise the globe’s temperature around 1.5 degrees.
Asked whether this would be the last report to describe ways in which 1.5 degrees can be achieved, Lee said it was impossible to predict what advances might be made that could keep that target alive.
“The possibility is still there,” he said.
“It depends upon, again I want to emphasise that, the political will to achieve that goal.”
Activists also found grains of hope in the reports.
“The findings of these reports can make us feel disheartened about the slow pace of emissions reductions, the limited transition to renewable energy and the growing, daily impact of the climate crisis on children,” said youth climate activist Vanessa Nakate, a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF.
“But those children need us to read this report and take action, not lose hope.”
Climate News. What is the IPCC AR6 synthesis report and why does it matter?
The fourth and final instalment of the sixth assessment report (AR6) by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of the world’s leading
climate scientists, is the synthesis report, so called because it draws
together the key findings of the preceding three main sections.
Together, they make a comprehensive review of global knowledge of the climate. The
first three sections covered the physical science of the climate crisis,
including observations and projections of global heating, the impacts of
the climate crisis and how to adapt to them, and ways of reducing
greenhouse gas emissions. They were published in August 2021, February and
April 2022 respectively.
The synthesis report also includes three other
shorter IPCC reports published since 2018, on the impacts of global heating
of more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, climate change and land, and
climate change and the oceans and cryosphere (the ice caps and glaciers).
Guardian 19th March 2023
Samoa’s desperate plea for world climate action
Samoa PM urges world to save Pacific people from climate crisis
obliteration. The world must step back from the brink of climate disaster
to save the people of the Pacific from obliteration, the prime minister of
Samoa has urged.
On the eve of a landmark report by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, which is expected to deliver a scientific “final
warning” on the climate emergency, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, Samoa’s prime
minister, issued a desperate plea for action. “We’re all impacted, but
the degree of the impact is in the particular circumstance of countries. So
our low-lying atoll countries, it’s right there, we’re living with it,”
said Mata’afa. “There are already examples in the Pacific of communities,
whole communities, that have relocated to different countries,” she said.
“They’re really having to address issues of sovereignty through loss of
land.”
Guardian 19th March 2023
Wiped out: Scientist’s ‘gigantic tsunami’ warning signals ‘grave threat’ to Sizewell C
The warning given yesterday by leading scientist Sir David King that London
and other UK coastal cities could be inundated in the future by a gigantic
tsunami reveals that coastal nuclear power developments in the South-East
of England would also be under a ‘grave threat’, says UK/Ireland Nuclear
Free Local Authorities English Forum Chair Councillor David Blackburn.
Sir David King was for seven years Chief Scientific Advisor to the British
Government. In widely reported press articles yesterday, Sir David warned
that a gigantic tsunami could hit Britain ‘at any time’ should there be a
landslide in the Canary Islands, which would trigger a huge wave headed for
this country.
In such an eventuality, coastal cities such as Portsmouth,
Plymouth and Southampton would be inundated and so too would London and the
Thames Estuary, and much of low-lying South-East England.
NFLA 14th March 2023
UN Secretary-General’s video message to the 58th Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
This will be the first comprehensive IPCC report in nine years – and the first since the Paris
Agreement on Climate Change.
It could not come at a more pivotal time. Our
world is at a crossroads – and our planet is in the crosshairs. We are
nearing the point of no return; of overshooting the internationally agreed
limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming. We are at the tip of a
tipping point.
But it is not too late – as you have shown. Your report last
year clearly demonstrated it is possible to limit global warming to 1.5
degrees with rapid and deep emissions reductions across all sectors of the
global economy.
And your recent reports have also underscored the need to
act now. In less than nine months, leaders will gather at COP28 for the
first global stocktake to bring the world in line with the goals of the
Paris Agreement. They need solid, frank, detailed scientific guidance to
make the right decisions for people and planet.
They must understand the
enormous consequences of delay and the enormous dividends from making the
tough but essential choices. To accelerate the phasing out of fossil fuels
and close the emissions gap. To race to a carbon-free, renewables future.
And to secure climate justice, helping communities adapt and build
resilience to the worsening impacts.
UN Secretary General 13th March 2023
How the nuclear lobby scuttled the EU’s anti-greenwashing tool
Succumbing to member states’ pressure and giving nuclear energy a “sustainable” label in a key regulation could derail the EU’s climate progress.
Aljazeera, Christiana Mauro, Senior advisor at the Biosphere Institute , Kacper Szulecki, Research professor in climate governance, 8 Mar 23,
One year ago, hopes were high for what was considered to be the most important environmental legislation in Europe. The European Union’s taxonomy regulation was meant to become the global “gold standard” for science-based policy that directs investment towards climate-friendly goals.
Their argument is that the “sustainable” label given to nuclear energy and natural gas breaches the EU’s climate commitments, violates EU environmental law and is incompatible with the “do no significant harm” criteria of the taxonomy regulation itself. The EC refused to revoke the act leading the complainants to launch a lawsuit at the European Court of Justice.
As we await the court’s decision, it is important to recall how this legislation was undermined by the nuclear lobby and what the consequences will be if it is not struck down
………………………………………………………………the EU taxonomy regulation ….. was supposed to be a list of scientifically-based technical criteria to set apart economic activities that are genuinely sustainable from those that are harming the environment.
It defined environmentally sustainable activities as contributing substantially to specific environmental objectives that will speed up the decarbonisation of the economy, comply with safeguards and “do no significant harm” to the environment.
Nuclear energy and natural gas initially failed to meet the taxonomy criteria. Of course, that went against big interests in the energy sector and predictably a lobbying blitz was launched to reverse this decision.
A report by Reclaim Finance, an NGO which scrutinises the impacts of financial actors on climate, revealed a lobbying campaign worth millions of euros was initiated to amend the regulation in favour of the natural gas and nuclear industries.
Lobbyists met frequently with EU representatives during critical phases of the deliberations over the taxonomy. Russia, which would have been a major financial and geopolitical beneficiary of the financial incentives that would ensue from the inclusion of gas and nuclear, was an extremely active “stakeholder” during the entire legislative process.
But there were also EU countries which sought to put pressure on the European Commission to change the regulation’s provisions. At the forefront of that effort were Poland, France, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, whose leaders wrote a joint letter arguing for the inclusion of nuclear power in the regulation.
The document used various common claims and arguments in support of nuclear sustainability. We were part of a team of fact-checkers from four EU countries who determined that 20 statements in the letter were false or misleading.
Among them were assertions that nuclear power is “environmentally friendly”, “essential to the transition towards clean energy sources”, a “promising source of hydrogen” and “affordable”.
A full analysis of the letter can be found here.
Why nuclear energy is not green
Why nuclear energy is not green is perhaps less obvious to the general public than natural gas. This likely is due to efforts by governments – such as the seven mentioned above – and organisations to mislead it.
False narratives of “clean” nuclear are also peddled by intergovernmental organisations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the OECD, and the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).
A common claim – which is also made in the letter to the EC – is that nuclear energy has a low carbon emission status. But if nuclear power can be said to produce lower carbon emissions, it is only true at the point of generation. When the entire life cycle of nuclear power plants is taken into consideration this contention crumbles.
Nuclear energy’s “upstream” activities that are necessary for operation, such as mining uranium, as well as transporting fuel, building and then decommissioning a power plant, and managing the radioactive waste that is a by-product of the process – are all linked to CO₂ emissions. Thus, the carbon footprint of nuclear energy generation is considerable, and according to some estimates, considerably higher than that of renewables.
Nuclear technology also needs significant amounts of cooling water and creates waste that is so toxic to the environment that no permanent storage solution has been developed for 70-odd years. It also represents a risk of seriously and permanently harming large swaths of territories in the case of an accident – which is now growing amid the current militarisation of civil nuclear facilities in Ukraine.
Posing an unmanageable danger to the environment, nuclear power falls short, even as a so-called “transitional activity”, defined in the regulation as an economic activity for which low-carbon alternatives are not available. This is because its financing today would derail the implementation of renewables by diverting investment away from them.
As Amory Lovins, a Stanford University professor and energy expert, says: “a low- or no-carbon energy source that costs more or takes longer to deploy will make climate change worse than one that is cheaper or faster, because the latter could have saved more carbon per euro and per year.”
Energy demand in Europe can easily be met by non-nuclear power sources, and considering the unreliability of nuclear power, with its ageing and deteriorating reactors, and vulnerability to extreme weather events, it is unlikely to have any energy contribution to make at all in the transition to renewables.
Even the most favourable calculations of the cost of nuclear energy show no advantage over renewable, which is seeing costs of deployment plummeting.
Government schemes keep consumer nuclear electricity prices artificially low. In fact, nuclear energy can only be made “competitive” with “hugely significant” government financing, as the EU Energy Commissioner inadvertently admitted in a recent speech. Hence, the seven governments’ letter also pleaded for “active support” for nuclear energy.
The profusion of nuclear delusions
There is a long history of attempts to link nuclear technology to overoptimistic technocratic environmental achievements that never materialise.
Media-hyped nuclear fiction abounds. For example, a recent fusion experiment in the US was touted as a major milestone in the search for an abundant source of clean energy. Predictably, it had a rather anticlimactic ending for anyone paying attention.
The energy generated in the experiment was significantly less than the amount needed to power the lasers involved in it. And the laboratory where the celebrated breakthrough took place was established to develop thermonuclear weapons, not civil nuclear energy projects, which explains its multibillion-dollar budget.
Such nuclear myths are usually debunked by independent experts whose critical voices are often buried beneath irresponsibly promoted fantasies. The morass of disinformation is meant in part to mask the industry’s own failures, but also the military interests of nuclear governments, by pushing unsupported theories to legitimise public funding. It is meant to confuse, demoralise and disable any organised effort to change things.
And the media, instead of challenging this intentional misleading of the public, has played a part in it. European media, for example, reported on the letter of the seven EU countries lobbying for nuclear to be included in the EU taxonomy regulation without checking the veracity of its claims.
Thus, a misinformed public and passive media have allowed political actors to influence regulations that are supposed to be politically neutral. Well-intentioned, vital, and comprehensive legislation, years in the making, has been subverted.
In its current form, this delegated act is likely to derail key 2030 and 2050 climate goals, and damage the Green Deal by influencing negatively green taxonomies being developed around the world. It will encourage greenwashing practices, redirect capital flows towards polluting sectors, and upset progress made on implementing the objectives of the Paris Agreement. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/3/8/how-the-eus-most-promising-anti-greenwashing-tool-was-scuttled
Temperature rise can be stopped. It is a dangerous myth to say that it’s too late to act.
Wildfires raging across Australia. Floodwater submerging an entire third of
Pakistan. Crop-killing droughts striking all corners of the world. For
anyone casting even a passing glance at the news the only conclusion, it
may often seem, is that we’re all doomed.
But beware — that conclusion,
many scientists say, is a fallacy. In fact, the belief that it is too late
for humanity to save itself from climate destruction is a new form of
misinformation that some researchers describe as more dangerous even than
outright denial of global warming. It is a widespread belief, particularly
among the young.
A December 2021 report in the Lancet found that more than
half of 10,000 people aged 16 to 25 surveyed globally agreed that
“humanity is doomed”. Yet Kristina Dahl, a principal climate scientist
at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), says it is a “myth” that we
can do nothing to stop the worst effects of climate change.
“Recent
modelling shows that within about a decade of reaching net-zero current
emissions, we would stop temperature rise,” she says. “It’s things
[like] temperature that are especially responsive to changes in emissions.
There is still a lot that is within our power and there are even parts of
the climate system that respond really quickly to the changes that we make.
So that sense that it’s too late … is really false.”
Times 22nd Feb 2023
War is a climate killer — Beyond Nuclear International
Conflicts worsen military sector’s already enormous CO2 footprint
War is a climate killer — Beyond Nuclear International
The military already has the largest carbon footprint. Going to war makes it far worse
By Angelika Claussen
War brings death and destruction – not least to the environment and climate. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine offers a depressing reminder of that fact, and further increases the military sector’s already enormous global CO₂ footprint. In addition, the eastern Ukrainian cities where fighting is taking place are home to fossil fuel infrastructure such as chemical factories, oil refineries, and coal mines, the bombing of which produces a cocktail of toxic substances that has devastating environmental impacts. Efforts to arm the two sides, moreover, are consuming materials and resources that could otherwise go towards tackling the climate crisis.
Based on the global CO₂ budget, humanity has less than eight years to ensure it still hits its 1.5-degree warming target. To do so, we need to urgently implement reforms in all areas, to bring about “systemic change,” as the IPCC report from early April puts it. The military sector barely gets a mention in this almost 3,000-page document, however, with the word “military” coming up just six times. You might thus conclude that the sector is of little relevance to the climate emergency.
The reality is rather different. Using military hardware results in huge quantities of emissions. In the war in Ukraine, 36 Russian attacks on fossil fuel infrastructure were recorded in the first five weeks alone, leading to prolonged fires that released soot particulates, methane and CO₂ into the atmosphere, while oil infrastructure has been ablaze on the Russian side too. The oil fields that were set on fire in 1991 during the second Gulf War contributed two per cent of global emissions for that year.
While greenhouse gas emissions are one of the most significant impacts of war, the quantity emitted depends on the duration of the conflict and on what tanks, trucks, and planes are used. Another is the contamination of ecosystems that sequester CO₂. Staff from Ukraine’s environment inspectorate are currently collecting water and soil samples in the areas around shelled industrial facilities.
Military emissions
The ramifications for the climate can be catastrophic in scale. According to a study by the organisation Oil Change International, the Iraq War was responsible for 141 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent emissions between its outbreak in 2003 and the report’s publication in 2008. By way of comparison: some 21 EU member states emitted less CO₂ equivalent in 2019, with only six states topping that figure…………………………………………………..
As the war in Ukraine goes on, the biggest challenge of the 21st century – the climate crisis – has slipped down the agenda. We mustn’t forget, though, that efforts to tackle that crisis can only succeed if all countries – including Russia – work together. The immediate demand is for a ceasefire, followed by measures to build trust, such as international disarmament treaties. Moreover, Russia will need outside help if it is to transition to a climate-friendly energy industry. What’s required is a fundamental socio-ecological transformation, with policy-making dictated by the needs of all. That may seem inconceivable at present, but what’s the alternative? Unchecked global warming would be catastrophic for the planet’s entire population. https://wordpress.com/post/nuclear-news.net/221967
‘Extreme situation’: Antarctic sea ice hits record low
Damian Carrington 16 Feb 23
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/antarctic-sea-ice-hits-record-low-climate-crisis
The area of sea ice around Antarctica has hit a record low, with scientists reporting “never having seen such an extreme situation before”. The ice extent is expected to shrink even further before this year’s summer melting season ends.
The impact of the climate crisis in melting sea ice in the Arctic is clear in the records that stretch back to 1979. Antarctic sea ice varies much more from year to year, which has made it harder to see an effect from global heating.
However, “remarkable” losses of Antarctic sea ice in the last six years indicate that the record levels of heat now in the ocean and related changes in weather patterns may mean that the climate crisis is finally manifesting in the observations.
Scientists were already very concerned about Antarctic ice. Climate models suggested as far back as 2014 that the giant West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), which sits on the continent, was doomed to collapse due to the levels of global heating already seen then.
The increasing loss of sea ice exposes ice sheets and their glaciers to waves that accelerate their disintegration and melting, researchers warned. A recent study estimated that the WAIS would be tipped into gradual collapse – and four metres of sea level rise – with a global temperature rise as low as 1C, a point already passed.
“I have never seen such an extreme, ice-free situation here before,” said Prof Karsten Gohl, from the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in the Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany, and who first visited the region in 1994.
Gohl, on board the research vessel Polarstern in Antarctica, said: “The continental shelf, an area the size of Germany, is now completely ice-free. It is troubling to consider how quickly this change has taken place.”
Prof Christian Haas, also at the Helmholtz Centre, said: “The rapid decline in sea ice over the past six years is quite remarkable, since the ice cover hardly changed at all in the 35 years before.”
Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the US have also said a new record low has been set. They said Antarctic sea ice extent fell to 1.91m square kilometres on 13 February, below the previous record set on 25 February 2022.
Sea ice melts away in the Antarctic summer before starting to grow again as autumn arrives. “In past years, the annual minimum has occurred between 18 February and 3 March, so further decline is expected,” the NSIDC researchers said. “Much of the Antarctic coast is ice free. Earlier studies have linked low sea ice cover with wave-induced stresses on the floating ice shelves that hem the continent, leading to break up of weaker areas.”
The German scientists said the “intense melting” could be due to unusually high air temperatures to the west and east of the Antarctic peninsula, which were about 1.5C above the long-term average. Furthermore, there have been strong westerly winds, which increase sea ice retreat. The result is “intensified melting of ice shelves, an essential aspect of future global sea-level rise”, the researchers said.
Historical records also show dramatic changes in Antarctica, they said. The Belgian research vessel Belgica was trapped in massive pack ice for more than a year in the Antarctic summer 125 years ago, in exactly the same region where the Polarstern vessel is now sailing in completely ice-free waters.
Prof Carlos Moffat, at the University of Delaware, US, and recently returned from a research cruise in the Southern Ocean, told Inside Climate News: “The extraordinary change we’ve seen this year is dramatic. Even as somebody who’s been looking at these changing systems for a few decades, I was taken aback by what I saw.”
Antarctic sea ice level now lowest on record.
There is now less sea-ice surrounding the Antarctic continent than at any
time since we began using satellites to measure it in the late 1970s. It is
the southern hemisphere summer, when you’d expect less sea-ice, but this
year is exceptional, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Winds and warmer air and water reduced coverage to just 1.91 million square
km (737,000 sq miles) on 13 February. What is more, the melt still has some
way to go this summer.
BBC 17th Feb 2023
Rising seas threaten ‘mass exodus on a biblical scale’, UN chief warns
An increase in the pace at which sea levels are rising threatens “a mass
exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale”, the UN secretary
general has warned. The climate crisis is causing sea levels to rise faster
than for 3,000 years, bringing a “torrent of trouble” to almost a
billion people, from London to Los Angeles and Bangkok to Buenos Aires,
António Guterres said on Tuesday.
Some nations could cease to exist,
drowned under the waves, he said. Significant sea level rise is already
inevitable with current levels of global heating, but the consequences of
failing to tackle the problem are “unthinkable”. Guterres said:
“Low-lying communities and entire countries could disappear for ever. We
would witness a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale. And
we would see ever fiercer competition for fresh water, land and other
resources.
Guardian 14th Feb 2023
“No regrets” as UK government portrays nuclear power as “clean” and “green”
Nuclear power to get ‘green’ status as Britain races EU to hit net
zero. Move is part of a bid to unlock billions of pounds of funding for
more power stations. Nuclear power projects such as Sizewell C in Suffolk
will be granted so-called “green” status under plans by Jeremy Hunt to
unlock billions of pounds in funding for the industry. The Chancellor is
expected to announce the change within weeks as part of a broader shake-up
of the UK’s financial rules on green energy.
It would see nuclear power
projects classed as “green” or “sustainable” investments, clearing
the way for more institutional investors and environment-focused funds to
back them. There are also hopes that the Treasury could fund new power
plants with money raised through the Government’s green gilts and green
savings bonds. Generating nuclear power does not produce carbon dioxide, [ if you ignore the total nuclear fuel chain] so the sector is seen as a key plank of Britain’s plans to reach net zero
emissions by 2050.
A recent review by former energy minister and Tory MP
Chris Skidmore said that supporting the construction of more nuclear
reactors was a “no regrets” option. However, the sector has faced
difficulties portraying itself as environmentally friendly in the past
because of concerns about nuclear waste, water usage, and the remote but
catastrophic risk of nuclear accidents. Top fund managers such as Legal &
General and Aviva have previously expressed caution about the green
credentials of nuclear, with Aviva chairman George Culmer last year saying
there was an “ongoing debate”.
Telegraph 14th Feb 2023
Earth Changes Summary – January 2023: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs.
Sott.net
2023-02-14
The start of 2023 has been marked by heavy snow, unseasonably cold temperatures, and wetter-than-expected weather for the season.
Extreme weather hit California pretty hard this month: A bomb cyclone, severe flooding, mudslides, power outages, walls of snow in Soda Spring, and a magnitude 4.2 earthquake with an epicenter in offshore Malibu……………………………….
Heavy snow also disrupted normal life in Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and Mallorca. Mallorca was covered by its largest snowfall in more than five years.
China’s northernmost city, Mohe, was hit by an all-time record of -53°C, the lowest ever recorded. The local officials worked overtime to ensure heating and water services. This comes days after temperatures plunged to -50°C in Russia’s Yakutsk.
Central Asia also suffered a harsh January. In Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan recorded unusual levels of snow, that collapsed power poles and trees, blocked main roads, and burst water pipes. Thetemperatures in Kazakhstan reached a chilling -30°C.
The Middle East was also caught off guard by colder-than-usual temperatures and snow. Tens of thousands of Iranians were left without gas amid snow and freezing conditions, and Afghanistan temperatures plummeted as low as -33°C,combined with widespread snowfall, freezing gusts, and regular power outages. At least 166 people died due to the cold wave.
Ex-Tropical Cyclone Ellie continued to batter northern Australia this month. Heavy rain turned roads into rivers, thousands of cattle got lost or died, and boats were the only form of transportation in some counties. Western Australia was also hit hard by heavy rain and floods. 38 homes and 37 businesses were destroyed, with an additional 121 homes damaged. In some cases, the damage is so severe that will require long-term rebuilding efforts. The floods have also caused significant damage to infrastructure and transportation routes.
New Zealand’s largest city declared a state of emergency after torrential rains caused widespread flooding and evacuations. Heavy floods washed away houses, blocked roads, and knocked out power. The city received 75% of its usual summer rainfall in just 15 hours.
Latvia experienced its worst flooding since 1981, forcing residents of central areas to evacuate their homes. Meanwhile, large chunks of ice that drifted from Belkarus caused the water level to rise, while also putting pressure on a new dam.
Other noteworthy events this month:
- Sumatra, Indonesia: Heavy flooding leaves 3 dead and 15,000 homes damaged
- Johor and Pahang, Malaysia: More than 4,000 were displaced by flooding caused by 17 inches of rain in 24 hours
- North Sulawesi, Indonesia: Nearly 18 inches of rain in 48 hours left 3-meter floods in some areas.
- Zambia – Non-stop rains caused catastrophic flooding in southern and central provinces.
And things start to get rocky! A 5.9 Mag earthquake struck northwestern Iran, killing at least seven people and injuring 440.
All this and more in our SOTT Earth Changes Summary for January 2023:… https://www.sott.net/article/477313-SOTT-Earth-Changes-Summary-January-2023-Extreme-Weather-Planetary-Upheaval-Meteor-Fireballs
Twice as Much Land in Developing Nations Will be Swamped by Rising Seas than Previously Projected, New Research Shows
Twice as Much Land in Developing Nations Will be Swamped by Rising Seas
than Previously Projected, New Research Shows. Rising seas will swamp
farmlands, pollute water supplies and displace millions of people much
sooner than expected, scientists said last week, as they released new
research that accurately calculates the vulnerability of coastal areas,
especially in developing countries that have not had access to expensive
coastal mapping technologies.
Sea level rise keeps speeding up, and “many
coastal areas are lower than scientists thought they were,” said Ronald
Vernimmer, lead author of the new study published last week in Earth’s
Future, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
Inside Climate News 7th Feb 2023
When the Great Tide returns
Seventy years ago, on the night of 31 January/1 February, the ‘Great
Tide’ surged down the Essex Coast from Harwich all the way round to London,
bringing floods, death and destruction to communities and environments
along the sea, rivers and creeks that compose the 350 mile coastline.
Passing almost silently and unexpectedly in an age where phones were rare,
radios silent and police relied on foot and bicycle, the Great Tide exacted
its toll on poor communities like Jaywick and Canvey; our biggest peacetime
catastrophe, barely remembered beyond the older generation today.
Such a fate awaits any new nuclear development at Bradwell, harbouring dangerous
wastes into the far future on a battered, exposed and diminishing
coastline. It must not happen. As far as possible we must try to avoid the
calamity that overwhelmed our Essex shores on that fateful and perilous
night seventy years ago.
BANNG 7th Feb 2023
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- April 2026 (288)
- 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)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
-
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 