USA at G20 tried to stop any mention of climate change
US blocking mention of climate change in G20 statement, diplomats say Independent UK, ‘Oliver O’Connell, New York, 24 Feb 20,
1 day ago G20 diplomats say the US is against mentioning climate change in the communique of the world’s financial leaders.
A new draft of the joint statement shows the G20 considering including it as a risk factor to growth.
Finance ministers and central bankers from the world’s 20 largest economies are discussing the main challenges to the global economy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this weekend.
G20 sources told Reuters that the US was reluctant to accept language on climate change as a risk to the economy.
The US is represented at the meeting by treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin…….. G20 diplomats say the US is against mentioning climate change in the communique of the world’s financial leaders.
A new draft of the joint statement shows the G20 considering including it as a risk factor to growth. Finance ministers and central bankers from the world’s 20 largest economies are discussing the main challenges to the global economy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this weekend.
Climate denialists using bots on Twitter to get their message across
|
Draft of Brown study says findings suggest ‘substantial impact of mechanized bots in amplifying denialist messages’ Guardian, Oliver Milman in New York @olliemilman, Fri 21 Feb 2020 The social media conversation over the climate crisis is being reshaped by an army of automated Twitter bots, with a new analysis finding that a quarter of all tweets about climate on an average day are produced by bots, the Guardian can reveal.The stunning levels of Twitter bot activity on topics related to global heating and the climate crisis is distorting the online discourse to include far more climate science denialism than it would otherwise. An analysis of millions of tweets from around the period when Donald Trump announced the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement found that bots tended to applaud the president for his actions and spread misinformation about the science. The study of Twitter bots and climate was undertaken by Brown University and has yet to be published. Bots are a type of software that can be directed to autonomously tweet, retweet, like or direct message on Twitter, under the guise of a human-fronted account…….. An analysis of millions of tweets from around the period when Donald Trump announced the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement found that bots tended to applaud the president for his actions and spread misinformation about the science. The study of Twitter bots and climate was undertaken by Brown University and has yet to be published. Bots are a type of software that can be directed to autonomously tweet, retweet, like or direct message on Twitter, under the guise of a human-fronted account…….. Trump has consistently spread misinformation about the climate crisis, most famously calling it “bullshit” and a “hoax”, although more recently the US president has said he accepts the science that the world is heating up. Nevertheless, his administration has dismantled any major policy aimed at cutting planet-warming gases, including car emissions standards and restrictions on coal-fired power plants……. number of suspected bots that have consistently disparaged climate science and activists have large numbers of followers on Twitter. One that ranks highly on the Botometer score, @sh_irredeemable, wrote “Get lost Greta!” in December, in reference to the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg……. ohn Cook, an Australian cognitive scientist and co-author with Lewandowsky, said that bots are “dangerous and potentially influential”, with evidence showing that when people are exposed to facts and misinformation they are often left misled. “This is one of the most insidious and dangerous elements of misinformation spread by bots – not just that misinformation is convincing to people but that just the mere existence of misinformation in social networks can cause people to trust accurate information less or disengage from the facts,” Cook said. .. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/21/climate-tweets-twitter-bots-analysis The stunning levels of Twitter bot activity on topics related to global heating and the climate crisis is distorting the online discourse to include far more climate science denialism than it would otherwise.ast |
|
Huge rise predicted for Britain’s seas and tidal rivers
 Times 23rd Feb 2020, Britain should be preparing for its seas and tidal rivers to rise by up to 6½ ft in the next 80 years, according to the scientist in charge of protecting Holland against flooding and sea level change. Peter Glas, head of Holland’s Delta Programme, which oversees long-term flood risk management, will tell a UK conference that the rise in the level of theNorth Sea may accelerate sharply from 2050, potentially reaching 2 metres (6½ ft) by 2100. That is nearly double the Met Office’s worst-case
predictions. It follows research at Holland’s Deltares centre, commissioned by the Delta Programme, into the impact of rising sea levels on northern Europe. “The rise could potentially accelerate with effect from 2050, entailing far-reaching consequences,” said Glas’s latest report to the Dutch government, which he will cite at this week’s Floodex conference in Peterborough. The Delta report added that effects of “the more rapid melting of Antarctic ice sheets” had not yet been incorporated into the programme’s predictions. |
|
|
JP Morgan economists warn climate crisis is threat to human race
|
Leaked report for world’s major fossil fuel financier says Earth is on unsustainable trajectory, Patrick Greenfield and Jonathan Watts The world’s largest financier of fossil fuels has warned clients that the climate crisis threatens the survival of humanity and that the planet is on an unsustainable trajectory, according to a leaked document.The JP Morgan report on the economic risks of human-caused global heating said climate policy had to change or else the world faced irreversible consequences. The study implicitly condemns the US bank’s own investment strategy and highlights growing concerns among major Wall Street institutions about the financial and reputational risks of continued funding of carbon-intensive industries, such as oil and gas. JP Morgan has provided $75bn (£61bn) in financial services to the companies most aggressively expanding in sectors such as fracking and Arctic oil and gas exploration since the Paris agreement, according to analysis compiled for the Guardian last year. Its report was obtained by Rupert Read, an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson and philosophy academic at the University of East Anglia, and has been seen by the Guardian. The research by JP Morgan economists David Mackie and Jessica Murray says the climate crisis will impact the world economy, human health, water stress, migration and the survival of other species on Earth. “We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened,” notes the paper, which is dated 14 January. Drawing on extensive academic literature and forecasts by the International Monetary Fund and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the paper notes that global heating is on course to hit 3.5C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. It says most estimates of the likely economic and health costs are far too small because they fail to account for the loss of wealth, the discount rate and the possibility of increased natural disasters. The authors say policymakers need to change direction because a business-as-usual climate policy “would likely push the earth to a place that we haven’t seen for many millions of years”, with outcomes that might be impossible to reverse. “Although precise predictions are not possible, it is clear that the Earth is on an unsustainable trajectory. Something will have to change at some point if the human race is going to survive.” The investment bank says climate change “reflects a global market failure in the sense that producers and consumers of CO2 emissions do not pay for the climate damage that results.” To reverse this, it highlights the need for a global carbon tax but cautions that it is “not going to happen anytime soon” because of concerns about jobs and competitiveness. The authors say it is “likely the [climate] situation will continue to deteriorate, possibly more so than in any of the IPCC’s scenarios”. Without naming any organisation, the authors say changes are occurring at the micro level, involving shifts in behaviour by individuals, companies and investors, but this is unlikely to be enough without the involvement of the fiscal and financial authorities. Last year, analysis compiled for the Guardian by Rainforest Action Network, a US-based environmental organisation, found JP Morgan was one of 33 powerful financial institutions to have provided an estimated total of $1.9tn (£1.47tn) to the fossil fuel sector between 2016 and 2018. A JP Morgan spokesperson told the BBC the research team was “wholly independent from the company as a whole, and not a commentary on it”, but declined to comment further. The metadata on the pdf of the report obtained by Read said the document was created on 13 January and that the author of the file was Gabriel de Kock, executive director of JP Morgan. The Guardian has approached the investment bank for comment. Pressure from student strikers, activist shareholders and divestment campaigners has prompted several major institutions to claim they will make the climate more of a priority. The business model of fossil fuel companies is also weakening as wind and solar become more competitive. Earlier this month, the influential merchant bank Goldman Sachs downgraded ExxonMobil from a “neutral” to a “sell” position. In January, BlackRock – the world’s biggest asset manager – said it would lower its exposure to fossil fuels ahead of a “significant reallocation of capital”. Environmental groups remain wary because huge sums are invested in petrochemical firms, but some veteran financial analysts say the tide is changing. The CNBC money pundit Jim Cramer shocked many in his field when he declared: “I’m done with fossil fuels. They’re done. They’re just done.” Describing how a new generation of pension fund managers was withdrawing support, he claimed oil and gas firms were in the death knell phase. “The world has turned on them. It’s actually happening kind of quickly. You’re seeing divestiture by a lot of different funds. It’s going to be a parade that says, ‘Look, these are tobacco. And we’re not going to own them,’” he said. “We’re in a new world.”
|
|
All the world is betraying the world’s children, the World Health Organisation has found
|
Every country on Earth failing to provide world fit for children, landmark report warns‘Predatory marketing’ and wealthy countries’ high carbon emissions among chief concerns for health of future generations, says major WHO, Lancet and Unicef report Independent UK, Harry Cockburn, 20 Feb 20, Every country in the world is failing to protect children’s health, their environment and their futures, a landmark report for the World Health Organisation has found. The damning findings pull back the curtain on an increasingly fragile world in which unbridled industrialism is already sabotaging the lives of younger generations. The report, based on a commission of more than 40 child and adolescent health experts from around the world, said every child on Earth is now “under immediate threat from ecological degradation, climate change and exploitative marketing practices that push heavily processed fast food, sugary drinks, alcohol and tobacco at children”. Despite improvements in child and adolescent health over the past 20 years, progress has stalled, and is set to reverse,” said Helen Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand and co-chair of the commission. The report, by the WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and the Lancet Commission, ranked 180 countries on the conditions they provide for a child to “thrive and survive”…….. The report said while wealthier countries generally have better child health and development outcomes it is them in particular who “threaten the future of all children through carbon pollution, on course to cause runaway climate change and environmental disaster”. When authors took per capita CO2 emissions into account, the rankings told a very different story. Norway ranked 156th, the Republic of Korea 166 and the Netherlands 160. Each of these countries emits 210 per cent more CO2 per capita than their 2030 target. The UK ranked 136th on this measure. The US, Australia and Saudi Arabia are among the 10 worst emitters. “It has been estimated that around 250 million children under five years old in low- and middle-income countries are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential, based on proxy measures of stunting and poverty. But of even greater concern, every child worldwide now faces existential threats from climate change and commercial pressures,” Ms Clark said. The authors of the report said: “Governments must harness coalitions across sectors to overcome ecological and commercial pressures to ensure children receive their rights and entitlements now and a liveable planet in the years to come.”…….
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, described the report as a “wakeup call”. He said: “This report shows that the world’s decision-makers are, too often, failing today’s children and youth: failing to protect their health, failing to protect their rights, and failing to protect their planet…… To protect children, the independent commission authors call for a new global movement driven by and for children. Specific recommendations include: Stop CO2 emissions with the utmost urgency, to ensure children have a future on this planet; Place children and adolescents at the centre of our efforts to achieve sustainable development; New policies and investment in all sectors to work towards child health and rights; Incorporate children’s voices into policy decisions;……. Henrietta Fore, Unicef’s executive director, said: “From the climate crisis to obesity and harmful commercial marketing, children around the world are having to contend with threats that were unimaginable just a few generations ago. ….. https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/children-future-planet-world-health-organisation-report-climate-crisis-capitalism-advertising-lancet-a9343856.html |
|
All wars are serious, but this climate war could have the direst consequences
THE ONE WAR THAT THE HUMAN SPECIES CAN’T LOSE The New Yorker, By Robin Wright, 20 Feb 2020 “……… For almost a half century, I’ve covered wars, revolutions and uprisings on four continents, many for years on end. I’ve always been an outside observer watching as others killed each other. I lamented the loss of human life—and the warring parties’ self-destructive practices—from an emotional distance. In Antarctica, I saw war through a different prism. And I was the enemy. “ “Humans will be but a blip in the span of Earth’s history,” Wayne Ranney, a naturalist and geologist on the expedition, told me. “The only question is how long the blip will be.”
Last week, the temperature in Antarctica hit almost seventy degrees—the hottest in recorded history. It wasn’t a one-day fluke. Famed for its snowscapes, the Earth’s coldest, wildest, windiest, highest, and most mysterious continent has been experiencing a heat wave. A few days earlier, an Antarctic weather station recorded temperatures in the mid-sixties. It was colder in Washington, D.C., where I live. Images of northern Antarctica captured vast swaths of barren brown terrain devoid of ice and with only small puddle-like patches of snow.
The problem is not whether a new record was set, “it’s the longer-term trend that makes those records more likely to happen more often,” John Nielsen-Gammon, the director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies at Texas A. & M. University, told me this week……
The iceberg that I watched break off from Antarctica was part of a process called calving. It’s normal and a necessary step in nature’s cycle, except that it’s now happening a lot faster and in larger chunks—with existential stakes. The ice in Antarctica is now melting six times faster than it did forty years ago, Eric Rignot, an Earth scientist at the University of California, Irvine, and a co-author of a major study of the continent’s ice health, told me.
This month, an iceberg measuring more than a hundred square miles—the size of the Mediterranean island of Malta, or twice the size of Washington, D.C.—broke off the Pine Island Glacier (lovingly known as pig, for short) in West Antarctica. It then broke up into smaller “pig-lets,” according to the European Space Agency, which tracked them by satellite. The largest piglet was almost forty square miles.
The frozen continent is divided into West Antarctica and East Antarctica. (The South Pole is in East Antarctica.) Most of the melting and much of the big calving has happened in the West and along its eight hundred-mile peninsula. But, in September, an iceberg measuring more than six hundred square miles—or twenty-seven times the size of Manhattan—calved off the Amery Ice Shelf, in East Antarctica. Calving has accelerated in startling style. Two other huge soon-to-be bergs are being tracked as their crevices and cracks become visible from space. One is from pig in the West, the other is forming off the Brunt Ice Shelf in the East……….
“By 2035, the point of no return could be crossed,” Matthew Burrows, a former director at the National Intelligence Council, wrote in a report last year about global risks over the next fifteen years. That’s the point after which stopping the Earth’s temperature from rising by two degrees Celsius—or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit—will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, in turn triggering “a dangerous medley of global disasters.”
And that, in turn, goes back to ice and its role in fostering human civilization. “What’s coming—or is happening—is the end of the earth’s stability,” Glendon told me. “In human terms, that means a return to migration, but in a population of not just a few million, but several billion.”
Before I went to Antarctica, I checked in with Donald Perovich, a geophysicist at Dartmouth who tracks sea ice. We got to talking about wars. “You can argue that in all wars, there are winners and losers. Afterward, societies go on. There’s an opportunity to recover and move forward. If you approach climate change as a war, there are some really severe consequences across the board,” he told me. “This,” he added, “is the one war we can’t lose.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/antarcticas-ice-the-one-war-that-the-human-species-cant-lose?source=EDT_NYR_EDIT_NEWSLETTER_0_imagenewsletter_Daily_ZZ&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_022020&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bea00ac3f92a404693b7a69&cndid=46508601&esrc=&mbid=&utm_term=TNY_Daily
Al Gore’s goal to beat climate change – get Trump out of office!
Al Gore’s New Campaign To Save The Planet Is Focused On Getting Donald Trump Out Of Office
“For those of us concerned about the future of the Earth’s climate and balance, this election is extremely important,” Gore said.
Zahra HirjiBuzzFeed News Reporter – 19 Feb 20, Former vice president Al Gore is launching a voter registration campaign this week to increase voter turnout in November, focusing on young people concerned about the rapidly warming planet.This new effort by Gore, who starred in the 2006 climate documentary An Inconvenient Truth and won a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his climate activism, comes amid dire scientific warnings about the climate crisis and a new explosion in climate activism, driven mostly by young people skipping school and challenging politicians to take action. …
“Young people in particular have been both more concerned about climate than other age groups and traditionally less likely to vote in large percentages,” said Gore. “I want to do everything I possibly can to contribute to the registration and turnout and voting by those who are concerned about the climate crisis.”
The effort will initially focus on key battleground states. Gore will kick off with a voter registration rally on Wednesday at the Texas Southern University, a historically black public college in Houston, followed by visits to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on March 10 and the University of Pittsburgh on March 17. Voter registration drives are also being planned at eight additional college and university campuses in Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas over the coming months, and Gore plans to add more sites in the future.
And although he’s largely focused on influencing the presidential election, Gore will encourage voters to consider climate across the ballot…..
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrahirji/al-gore-climate-voter-registration-2020
UK’s new nuclear projects headed to be submerged due to climate change?
Speeding Sea Level Rise Threatens Nuclear Plants https://www.ecowatch.com/sea-level-rise-nuclear-plants-2645160125.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2 Climate News Network, Feb. 15, 2020 By Paul Brown
The latest science shows how the pace of sea level rise is speeding up, fueling fears that not only millions of homes will be under threat, but that vulnerable installations like docks and power plants will be overwhelmed by the waves.
New research using satellite data over a 30-year period shows that around the year 2000 sea level rise was 2mm a year, by 2010 it was 3mm and now it is at 4mm, with the pace of change still increasing.
The calculations were made by a research student, Tadea Veng, at the Technical University of Denmark, which has a special interest in Greenland, where the icecap is melting fast. That, combined with accelerating melting in Antarctica and further warming of the oceans, is raising sea levels across the globe.
The report coincides with a European Environment Agency (EEA) study whose maps show large areas of the shorelines of countries with coastlines on the North Sea will go under water unless heavily defended against sea level rise.
Based on the maps, newspapers like The Guardian in London have predicted that more than half of one key UK east coast provincial port — Hull — will be swamped. Ironically, Hull is the base for making giant wind turbine blades for use in the North Sea.
The argument about how much the sea level will rise this century has been raging in scientific circles since the 1990s. At the start, predictions of sea level rise took into account only two possible causes: the expansion of seawater as it warmed, and the melting of mountain glaciers away from the poles.
In the early Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports back then, the melting of the polar ice caps was not included, because scientists could not agree whether greater snowfall on the top of the ice caps in winter might balance out summer melting. Many of them also thought Antarctica would not melt at all, or not for centuries, because it was too cold.
Both the extra snow theory and the “too cold to melt” idea have now been discounted. In Antarctica this is partly because the sea has warmed up so much that it is melting the glaciers’ ice from beneath — something the scientists had not foreseen.
Alarm about sea level rise elsewhere has been increasing outside the scientific community, partly because many nuclear power plants are on coasts. Even those that are nearing the end of their working lives will be radio-active for another century, and many have highly dangerous spent fuel on site in storage ponds with no disposal route organized.
Perhaps most alarmed are British residents, whose government is currently planning a number of new seaside nuclear stations in low-lying coastal areas. Some will be under water this century according to the EEA, particularly one planned for Sizewell in eastern England.
The agency’s report says estimates of sea level rise by 2100 vary, with an upper limit of one meter generally accepted, but up to 2.5 meters predicted by some scientists. The latest research by Danish scientists suggests judiciously that with the speed of sea level rise continuing to accelerate, it is impossible to be sure.
A report by campaigners who oppose building nuclear power stations on Britain’s vulnerable coast expresses extreme alarm, saying both nuclear regulators and the giant French energy company EDF are too complacent about the problem.
The report said: “Polar ice caps appear to be melting faster than expected, and what is particularly worrying is that the rate of melting seems to be increasing. Some researchers say sea levels could rise by as much as six meters or more by 2100, even if the 2°C Paris target is met.
“But it’s not just the height of the rise in sea level that is important for the protection of nuclear facilities, it’s also the likely increase in storm surges. An increase in sea level of 50cm would mean the storm that used to come every thousand years will now come every 100 years. If you increase that to a meter, then that millennial storm is likely to come once a decade.
Bearing in mind that there will probably be nuclear waste on the Hinkley Point C site [home to the new twin reactors being built by EDF in the West of England] until at least 2150, the question neither the Office of Nuclear Regulation nor EDF seem to be asking is whether further flood protection measures can be put in place fast enough to deal with unexpected and unpredicted storm surges.”
Climate change to continue hitting UK with bigger storms
 UK must prepare for more intense storms, climate scientists say
Government urged to create more natural drainage systems to cope with impact of crisis, Guardian, Jonathan Watts 17 Feb 20, Britain must brace for more storms like Dennis and Ciara because rainfall will be more intense in a climate-disrupted future, scientists have warned.They said the government needed to increase the creation of more natural drainage systems if it wanted to avoid having to raise the level of sea and river defences every few years to counter the growing threat of flooding and storm surges. Storm Dennis killed at least three people and flooded many parts of the country at the weekend. Politicians from all parties have acknowledged the link to the climate crisis, but differ over how to respond. The new environment secretary, George Eustice, said on Sunday that the UK was already spending billions of pounds on flood infrastructure, but that there was a limit to how effective this could be in the face of a worsening threat…… Dr Mohammad Heidarzadeh, the head of coastal engineering and resilience at Brunel University, said the UK’s flood defences were not suited to the current situation, which is characterised by high frequency and high intensity climate events. “While the interval for major floods was 15-20 years in the past century in the UK, it has dramatically shortened to two-to-five years in the past decade. Therefore, it is no surprise that several flood defence systems were overtopped or damaged by flood water,” he said…… After Storm Desmond devastated parts of Scotland, the Lake District and Northern Ireland in 2015, scientists estimated human-driven change to the climate made extreme rain about 40% more probable. Similar attribution studies for the latest downpours will need more time, but the overall trends towards more extreme weather are well established. Compared with 50 years ago, the Met Office says the maximum daily deluge each year has risen by 17% from 64mm to 75mm, while the longest wet spell has increased from an average of 12.4 days to 12.9 days. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/17/uk-must-prepare-for-more-intense-storms-climate-scientists-say |
|
Global Optimism – The Future We Choose
Observer 15th Feb 2020, Christiana
Figueres is a founder of the Global Optimism group and was head of the UN climate change convention when the Paris agreement was achievedin 2015.
Your new book is called The Future We Choose. But isn’t it too
late to stop the climate crisis? We are definitely running late. We have
delayed appallingly for decades. But science tells us we are still in the
nick of time. We can only choose it this decade.
Our parents did not have this choice, because they didn’t have the capital, technologies and understanding. And for our children, it will be too late.
So this is the decade and we are the generation. If we all reduce our emissions,
collectively we give a signal to the market. Obviously, corporations have
their own responsibilities but it’s helpful to have a strong demand from
the public. Once you get governments, corporations and the public moving in
the same direction towards low carbon, it can grow exponentially [such as
with renewable energy and electric cars]. People reducing their emissions
– by flying less, eating less meat and using clean energy, for example
– is important.
Giant iceberg ‘calves’ from Antarctic ice shelf
Shrinking Antarctic ice shelf Pine Island Glacier sheds giant iceberg, ABC News, Digital Story Innovation Team By Mark Doman 14 Feb 20, In one of the fastest-changing areas of the Antarctic ice sheet, satellites have captured the formation of a giant, 300-square-kilometre iceberg.
Researchers monitoring satellite imagery of the Pine Island Glacier (PIG), in west Antarctica, first noticed two large rifts forming in the shelf in 2019.
Over the next few months, as the glacier moved out towards the Amundsen Sea, the rifts expanded, eventually leading to the splitting of the iceberg from the glacier on February 9.
Within a day, the iceberg had broken up into smaller pieces.
Only one of the pieces was large enough to be named (B-49) and tracked by the United States National Ice Centre.
It comes just days after a station on the Antarctic Peninsula logged its hottest day on record, registering a temperature of 18.3 degrees Celsius.
The peninsula, which juts out to the north-east of the Pine Island Glacier, is among the fastest-warming regions on the planet. Temperatures there have increased almost 3C over the last 50 years, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.
Last month, scientists also recorded unusually warm water beneath the Thwaites Glacier, a neighbour to Pine Island.
While the calving of icebergs from shelves such as the Pine Island Glacier is a natural process in the life of a giant glacier, the rate at which this glacier and others in the region have been disintegrating is a cause of concern for scientists.
Previously the ice shelf calved once a decade. By the early 2000s, it started calving once every five years. But since 2013, the glacier has calved five times, according to Stef Lhermitte, a remote sensing scientist from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands……. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-13/antarctic-ice-shelf-pine-island-glacier-sheds-giant-iceberg/11957770
Sellafield and Drigg, Today and tomorrow’s Flood Warning.
should be no new nuclear wastes arriving at Sellafield, no new so called
Small Modular Reactors on this floodplain ….and no new coal mine deep
under the Irish Sea. Cumbria (and the fallout is planetary) is ALREADY
under intolerable risks. Today’s flood warnings …fingers crossed.
Coronovirus, bats, and the Climate Change connection
The Wuhan Coronavirus, Climate Change, and Future Epidemics…...TIME, 10 Feb 2020,
Some climate models now predict unexpected , unprecedented spike in global temperatures
A few climate models are now predicting an unprecedented and alarming spike in temperatures — perhaps as much as 5 degrees Celsius, Business Insider, CONNOR PERRETT FEB 9, 2020
- A handful of climate projections are predicting much higher rise in global temperatures than scientists have seen in the models before.
- While there’s concern over the number, some scientists hope the latest projections are outliers.
- A 2-degree rise in temperature could lead sea level to jump, coral reefs to die, and water to become dangerously scarce in some parts of the world. Some models right now predict a 5-degree rise.
The startling anomaly first appeared in models from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which suggested that if Earth’s atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration doubles (as it’s expected to do by the end of the century), the planet could wind up 5.3 degrees hotter. That’s 33% higher than the group’s previous estimate.
Scientists hope the models are an “overshot,” Bloomberg reported. It will take scientists a significant amount time – at least months – to figure out how to interpret the results.
The climate models estimate “climate sensitivity,” which tells scientists how much warmer the planet will get as a result of rising CO₂ concentrations. For four decades, the expected temperature rise if CO2 levels double has been about 3 degrees.
These models have a proven track record of accurately forecasting climate change. A recent study from the American Geophysical Union found that climate projections over the past five decades have largely been accurate – actual climate observations aligned with the models’ predictions.
Delhi’s disaster – disappearing water supplies
|
Delhi is facing a water crisis. Ahead of day zero, the city’s residents have turned to the mafia and murder https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-08/delhi-water-crisis-leads-to-mafia-murder-and-mutiny/11931208
By South Asia correspondent James Oaten and Som Patidar
On a crisp Delhi morning, dozens of women, men and children in one of the city’s poorest areas gather on the side of the road holding plastic bottles and buckets. They’re waiting for a water truck to arrive, clearly identifiable with its large tank on the back and hoses sprouting from the top like tentacles. When it does, the residents will have just a few minutes to fill their containers as much as possible to hopefully secure enough water for the day. In winter, when Delhi is cool, the situation is relatively calm. But in summer, when temperatures surge past 40 degrees Celsius, the situation becomes much more desperate. Fights have broken out. People have been killed. What it’s like to live with limited access to waterWe are getting water now as it is winter, but the crisis deepens in summer,” mother-of-three Babli Singh explained. The Delhi government has in recent years tried to supply water to unauthorised colonies by drilling water bores, but this is a short-term solution that exacerbates a bigger problem. Elsewhere, private enterprises — known locally as the “water mafia” — have been able to profit from the despair by building their own bores. The activity is illegal, but there has been little to nothing done to crack down on the practice. The ABC saw one such private enterprise drilling in a street, and the workers explained they were digging deeper than ever in an effort to find new water. Locals have been forced to borrow money to pay for waterMs Singh is one of the many families that had to pay the so-called water mafia to get their home connected to an illegal bore water supply. Her father-in-law, Inder Dev Singh, said he feels forgotten. “We are not getting any help from the government,” he explained. “The government has been promising us a water pipeline for a long time. We paid for our own private pipeline.” “We have to run behind water tankers. Sometimes I do not get water.” Ms Singh and her family of nine live in what’s considered Asia’s largest “unauthorised colony,” Sangam Vihar — which is home to well over 1 million residents and is located in Delhi’s southern outskirts. The buildings and infrastructure here were never designed or approved by a government agency. Rather, residents simply built their homes on a small plot of land with whatever resources they could muster, mostly concrete and brick. It’s a claustrophobic environment, with dusty roads so congested and narrow that cars often cannot enter. Essential services are also lacking, with the vast majority of residents relying on tanker water for drinking and groundwater for cleaning and washing. But with reserves so low, there’s real concern underground supplies will run dry in just a few months. “Our children go to school without a bath for four or five days,” Ms Singh said. “We are suffering. Life is very hard.” The rise of the ‘water mafia’ Delhi is one of 21 Indian cities that could run out of groundwater this summer, according to a 2018 government thinktank report. If and when this happens, it will be known as “day zero”. The water woes are a product of years of booming population growth, drought and mismanagement. During the summer, that pipe is only turned on for two hours, giving the family a small but crucial window to fill up a large underground tank they installed themselves. The water is drinkable if it is boiled first, he explained. Buying extra water is an option, but in an area where work is infrequent and wages are low, people often need to borrow money to buy extra allocations. “Water is supposed to be free,” Mr Singh explained. “[The private providers] do not want us to get a [government] water by pipeline as they are earning lot of money by providing water by tankers. “There will be a time when there will be no water.
A man was shot in a dispute over waterThe issue of water often only gets attention during the summer, when the situation becomes amplified. In the summer of 2018, a man was shot in Sangam Vihar during a dispute over water. In the same year, in another part of Delhi, a group of men and a juvenile were arrested for beating to death a father and son in another water dispute. Videos of skirmishes and violence also regularly emerge in summer on social-media application WhatsApp. This year, the issue is getting unseasonal attention as Delhiites head to the polls for local government elections. Political candidates, keen on securing votes from the city’s poorest, have made sweeping promises to build pipes to deliver water to every house in Delhi. “It does not get the respect it deserves,” explained Jyoti Sharma, who heads up the water security not-for-profit organisation, FORCE. “Water is central to everything we do. But everybody takes it for granted. So, it does not get the attention it deserves. It’s just these few election days that it’s being talked about.” Ms Sharma says there have been some positive steps in recent years, including forcing large homes to capture rainwater, and directing recycled water into rivers and ponds to recharge underground reserves. But it’s not enough to reverse the depleting trend. She worries about “day zero” but thinks it won’t occur this summer. “I am an Indian,” she explains.
“I’m hoping day zero will not happen. I am hoping it will not happen.” |
|
1 This Month
22 June – Virtual Event –Climate Change: New Data, New Debate
Monday, June 22, 2026 2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. CT
YouTube. Register here
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 (227)
- 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 