Australia’s out of control bushfires (all along the region where the nuclear lobby wants to put reactors!)
‘Uncharted territory’: Dozens of out of control bushfires burn across 
New South Wales and Queensland, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/uncharted-territory-dozens-of-out-of-control-bushfires-burn-across-new-south-wales-and-queensland Hot, windy conditions are wreaking havoc across New South Wales and Queensland.
Australian firefighters warned they were in “uncharted territory” as they struggled to contain dozens of out-of-control bushfires across the east of the country on Friday.
Around a hundred blazes pockmarked the New South Wales and Queensland countryside, around 19 of them dangerous and uncontained.
“We have never seen this many fires concurrently at emergency warning level,” New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told the ABC. “We are in uncharted territory.”The RFS said on Friday afternoon it received multiple reports of people being trapped in their homes at several locations.
Homes have also been destroyed, the RFS added.
A mayor on New South Wales’ mid-north coast said on Friday the bushfires ripping through the region were “horrifying and horrendous beasts”.
MidCoast Council mayor David West said a fire near Forster threatened a council building on Thursday night.
“It was literally a wall of yellow, horrible, beastly, tormenting flames,” the mayor said.
The mayor was particularly concerned about an out-of-control fire burning near Hillville south of Taree.
Katharine Hayhoe: the religious duty to act on climate change
I’m a Climate Scientist Who Believes in God. Hear Me Out.
Global warming will strike hardest against the very people we’re told to love: the poor and vulnerable. NYT, 3 Nov 19, By Katharine Hayhoe
Dr. Hayhoe is a professor and co-directs the Climate Center at Texas Tech University. I’m a climate scientist. I’m also an evangelical Christian.
And I’m Canadian, which is why it took me so long to realize the first two things were supposed to be entirely incompatible.
I grew up in a Christian family with a science-teacher dad who taught us that science is the study of God’s creation. If we truly believe that God created this amazing universe, bringing matter and energy to life out of a formless empty void of nothing, then how could studying his creation ever be in conflict with his written word?
I chose what to study precisely because of my faith, because climate change disproportionately affects the poor and vulnerable, those already most at risk today. To me, caring about and acting on climate was a way to live out my calling to love others as we’ve been loved ourselves by God.
I realized, distantly, that there were people on both “sides” who fundamentally believed and were even dedicated to promoting the idea that faith and science were in conflict. But it wasn’t until after I’d moved to the United States for graduate school that it dawned on me, to my disbelief, that divisions within the science-faith arena, originally focused on questions of human origins and the age of the universe, were expanding to include climate change.
Now, this discrepancy is pointed out to me nearly every day: often by people with Bible verses in their social media profiles who accuse me of spreading Satan’s lies, or sometimes by others who share my concerns about climate change but wonder why I bother talking to “those people.” The attacks I receive come via email, Twitter, Facebook comments, phone calls and even handwritten letters.
I track them all, and I’ve noticed two common denominators in how most of the authors choose to identify themselves: first, as political conservatives, no matter what country they’re from; and second, in the United States, as conservative Christians, because the label “evangelical” has itself been co-opted as shorthand for a particular political ideology these days.
But I refuse to give it up, because I am a theological evangelical, one of those who can be simply defined as someone who takes the Bible seriously. This stands in stark contrast to today’s political evangelicals, whose statement of faith is written first by their politics and only a distant second by the Bible and who, if the two conflict, will prioritize their political ideology over theology.
I’m not a glutton for punishment and I don’t thrive on conflict. So why do I keep talking about climate change to people who are disengaged or doubtful? Because I believe that evangelicals who take the Bible seriously already care about climate change (although they might not realize it). Climate change will strike hard against the very people we’re told to care for and love, amplifying hunger and poverty, and increasing risks of resource scarcity that can exacerbate political instability, and even create or worsen refugee crises.
Then there’s pollution, biodiversity loss, habitat fragmentation, species extinction: climate change makes all those worse, too. In fact, if we truly believe we’ve been given responsibility for every living thing on this planet (including each other) as it says in Genesis 1, then it isn’t only a matter of caring about climate change: We should be at the front of the line demanding action………
I explained that climate change is not a belief system. We know that the earth’s climate is changing thanks to observations, facts and data about God’s creation that we can see with our eyes and test with the sound minds that God has given us. And still more fundamentally, I went on to explain why it matters: because real people are being affected today; and we believe that God’s love has been poured in our hearts to share with our brothers and sisters here and around the world who are suffering. ……https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/opinion/sunday/climate-change-evangelical-christian.html
Heat deaths in India will increase greatly, if greenhouse emissions increase
If Emissions Continue, India Could See 1 Million Heat Deaths a Year, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/if-emissions-continue-india-could-see-1-million-heat-deaths-a-year/?utm_medium=social&utm_content=organic&utm_source=twitter 3 Nov 19,
Premature deaths from extreme heat next century could top those from infectious diseases today, A new study predicts there’ll be more than 1 million deaths a year from extreme heat in India by the next century if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current level.Research by the Climate Impact Lab with the University of Chicago’s Tata Centre for Development projects India’s average annual temperature will rise 4 degrees by 2100.
When broken down by location, 16 of India’s 36 states and union territories will become hotter than Punjab, which is currently the hottest state, with an average annual summer temperature around 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).
As temperatures rise, the number of extremely hot days is expected to rise, as well.
The state of Odisha will see the highest increase, with an average of 48.05 hot days by 2100 compared with 1.62 in 2010. Delhi is projected to experience 22 times as many days with extreme heat, and Haryana is estimated to see 20 times as many days.
The study estimates the combination of hotter summers and more high-heat days will contribute to more than 1.5 million deaths each year by 2100.
The projected death rate is as high as the current death rate from all infectious diseases in India today. Six states—Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra—are expected to contribute to more than half of the excess death rate from rising temperatures.
“Having already seen 2,500 deaths due to a heat wave in 2015, the future is projected to be even more worrying if India—and the world—does not change course to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change,” said Amir Jina of the Climate Impact Lab.
If the world commits to the Paris Agreement and regularly updates its commitments, the study estimates India’s excess death rate from high heat will drop more than 80%.
The study comes as India’s energy use is expected to more than double by 2040, with fossil fuels serving as the main source.
The country’s 5% increase in coal demand last year contributed to a nearly equal percentage in its carbon emissions. India is currently the world’s third-largest carbon emitter (Climatewire, Aug. 14).
Michael Greenstone, faculty director at the Tata Centre and a co-founder of the Climate Impact Lab, said the continued reliance on fossil fuels will harm India in the years to come. The need to balance cheap and reliable energy sources while managing climate risks, he said, is “perhaps the defining challenge of our generation.”
Climate change driving California’s wildfires to worse levels
California wildfires: Climate change driving ‘horror and the terror’ of devastating blazes, say scientists
Fires are not new, but their severity is, The Independent, Andrew Buncombe, Seattle @AndrewBuncombe 3 Nov 19,
The words from California’s former governor could barely have been more stark.
“I said it was the new normal a few years ago,’’ says Jerry Brown. “This is serious, but this is only the beginning. This is only a taste of the horror and the terror that will occur in decades.”
As firefighters in California continue to confront a three-week spate of blazes that has reached across the state, attention has also turned to why this year’s wildfires have been so severe. The reason, according to scientists, is climate change.
“It’s warmer weather, more evaporation, and drier conditions. They just burn more,” says Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University. The words from California’s former governor could barely have been more stark.
“I said it was the new normal a few years ago,’’ says Jerry Brown. “This is serious, but this is only the beginning. This is only a taste of the horror and the terror that will occur in decades.”
As firefighters in California continue to confront a three-week spate of blazes that has reached across the state, attention has also turned to why this year’s wildfires have been so severe. The reason, according to scientists, is climate change.
“It’s warmer weather, more evaporation, and drier conditions. They just burn more,” says Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University. “And we expect this trend to continue. We can’t say if it will happen every year – there are natural variations as well. But we know that when things are drier, a larger area burns.”
Speaking from New York, Williams adds: “We’ve always had the fires. But things are now two or three degrees hotter. That’s enough to make a major difference.”
As Donald Trump continues to refuse to acknowledge the existence of man-made climate change, and as Jay Inslee, the only Democrat running for president on a ticket to address climate change, dropped out of the race this autumn, residents of California and other western states are trying to figure out how to confront the challenge, not just this year but in the years and decades ahead.
The editorial writers at the Los Angeles Times have echoed the words of the former governor, who spoke to Politico, by declaring: “Climate change has set California on fire. Are you paying attention?”
“Nobody can honestly say this is a surprise, given the devastating fires of recent years. Yet it feels surprising all the same. How did things get so bad in California, so quickly,” they write. “The answer is climate change. It is here and our communities are not ready for it.”……..
Michael Mann, a climate expert and professor of Earth sciences at Penn State University, says in the American west climate change has increased the risk of fire weather fivefold and doubled how much land has burned. Wildfire frequency, he says, has quadrupled since the 1980s……..
Asked how such fires could be countered, he replies: “As long as we continue to emit carbon into the atmosphere, and create warmer, drier conditions in California, there is little question that we’ll see a worsening of wildfires.
“The only true solution is to stop burning fossil fuels, generating greenhouse gases, and warming the planet.”
Last year, the world’s leading climate scientists said the world had barely a dozen years to act to make massive changes to global energy infrastructure to limit global warming to moderate levels. “There is no documented historic precedent,” said the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change……. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/california-wildfire-climate-change-evacuation-santa-ana-winds-devil-diablo-a9181886.html
The first New Deal inspires the Living New Deal Project
THE FIRST “NEW DEAL” CAN HELP US AGAIN, Radio Ecoshock , October 
30, 2019,
Huge crowds of young people are rebelling against climate extinction. They have been promised a “Green New Deal” for 11 years. Opponents say a Green New Deal isn’t possible and government planning is always evil. This is partly what caused Gray Brechin to create the Living New Deal Project. But he was also looking for good news in our past ability to act together – to help his own sanity in the face of our rush toward catastrophe.
I think we need citizens to document their surroundings, so we can remember changes. Things change so fast we lose our memory. Or is it because the machine and the media compete to replace our memory with something that benefits the oligarchy?
Gray Brechin chronicles, literally from the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper “the murder of the public sector” – which is going on every day. There are signs and victims of that war against the public good. We privatize things and then make them too expensive for the common person.
Brechin is creating a new memory bank, with maps of what can be done when a government and a people are ready to be doers. His map of New Deal accomplishments shows the basis of American highways, power systems, public buildings, refurbished National Parks and so much more. Maybe President Roosevelt’s New Deal from 90 years ago can help America with the Green New Deal she needs so badly now.
I encourage people to visit the interactive map of more than 15,000 sites across America built by the New Deal. Find it at livingnewdeal.org. And check out Gray’s master work “Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin”.
Greta Thunberg and Leonardo Di Caprio join forces in climate crusade
|
Greta Thunberg, Leonardo DiCaprio unite in climate crusade, SBS News, 3 Nov 19 The Hollywood star said the pair has made a commitment to support one another in their fight for climate action.
UPDATEDUPDATED 1 DAY AGO
BY CHARLOTTE LAM Two of the world’s biggest voices in the fight for climate action have joined forces, sending fans into meltdown.
Hollywood A-lister Leonard DiCaprio met Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg in California, capturing the moment on DiCaprio’s Instagram. He posted that the pair have joined forces “in hopes of securing a brighter future for our planet”. DiCaprio, who recently pledged $7 million to preserve the Amazon rainforest yet is widely criticised for his use of private jets, said he was honoured to meet the young climate activist. “There are few times in human history where voices are amplified at such pivotal moments and in such transformational ways but Greta Thunberg has become a leader of our time,” he wrote on Instagram. …… DiCaprio said he hoped the 16-year-old’s message was a wake-up call to leaders everywhere that “the time for inaction is over”. “It is because of Greta, and young activists everywhere that I am optimistic about what the future holds,” he wrote on Instagram. HTTPS://WWW.SBS.COM.AU/NEWS/GRETA-THUNBERG-LEONARDO-DICAPRIO-UNITE-IN-CLIMATE-CRUSADE |
|
UK launches review of net zero emissions
Treasury 2nd Nov 2019, The Net Zero Review, the first of its kind, will assess how the UK can maximise economic growth opportunities from its transformation to a green economy. At its heart is a priority to ensure a fair balance of contributions from all those that will benefit, including considering how to reduce costs for low income households. This review is a major step
towards the UK achieving net zero emissions by 2050, after becoming the
world’s first major economy to legislate to do so earlier this year.
UN climate talks to take place in Madrid December 2-13.
UN climate talks to take place in Madrid https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/un-climate-talks-to-take-place-in-madrid/news-story/49630507277946754406e42af4685d2c, Australian Associated Press
UN Climate Change head Patricia Espinosa said in a statement that the conference, known as COP25, will now take place in Madrid on the same dates – December 2-13.
Weeks of violent unrest led Chile to cancel the COP25 and its hosting of the APEC trade talks that Prime Minister Scott Morrison was due to attend in mid-November.
The high-profile climate summit is slated to finalise negotiations around rules for the Paris emissions reduction targets – to which Australia has agreed.
Countries were going to be encouraged to improve their pollution reduction goals.
Climate change – more costly than we expected
The result of this failure by economists is that world leaders understand neither the magnitude of the risks to lives and livelihoods, nor the urgency of action. How and why this has occurred is explained in a recent report by scientists and economists at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. One reason is obvious: Since climate scientists have been underestimating the rate of climate change and the severity of its effects, then economists will necessarily underestimate their costs.
- But it’s worse than that. A set of assumptions and practices in economics has led economists both to underestimate the economic impact of many climate risks and to miss some of them entirely. That is a problem because, as the report notes, these “missing risks” could have “drastic and potentially catastrophic impacts on citizens, communities and companies.”One problem involves the nature of risk in a climate-altered world. Right now, carbon dioxide is at its highest concentration in the atmosphere in three million years (and still climbing). The last time levels were this high, the world was about five degrees Fahrenheit warmer and sea level 32 to 65 feet higher. Humans have no experience weathering sustained conditions of this type……..
A second difficulty involves parameters that scientists do not feel they can adequately quantify, like the value of biodiversity or the costs of ocean acidification. Research shows that when scientists lack good data for a variable, even if they know it to be salient, they are loath to assign a value out of a fear that they would be “making it up.”……A third and terrifying problem involves cascading effects. One reason the harms of climate change are hard to fathom is that they will not occur in isolation, but will reinforce one another in damaging ways. In some cases, they may produce a sequence of serious, and perhaps irreversible, damage…….
The urgency and potential irreversibility of climate effects mean we cannot wait for the results of research to deepen our understanding and reduce the uncertainty about these risks. This is particularly so because the study suggests that if we are missing something in our assessments, it is likely something that makes the problem worse.
This is yet another reason it’s urgent to pursue a new, greener economic path for growth and development. If we do that, a happy ending is still possible. But if we wait to be more certain, the only certainty is that we will regret it. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/opinion/climate-change-costs.html
Bushfires rage in California- 940.000 without power
Power shut off to 940,000 Californians as major bushfires rage, SBS, 27 Oct 19,Nearly a million people in California will be blacked out as powerful winds threaten to knock down electric wires and spark further fires.
A California power company says it will shut off power to around 940,000 customers across the north of the US state as powerful winds threatened to knock down electric wires and spark further fires.
“Winds of this magnitude pose a higher risk of damage and sparks on the electric system and rapid wildfire spread.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom said the outages were “unacceptable.”
“We are going to do our best to get through these high-wind events and work through Saturday, Sunday into Monday and get these lights back on and do everything in our power to make sure PG&E is never in a position where they’re doing this to us again,” Newsom said in a video posted on Twitter.
The largest wildfire is currently raging in northern California’s Sonoma County, where 50,000 residents were ordered to evacuate on Saturday.
‘Story about greed’
A number of bushfires are also raging in the northern part of the state. The most serious – the Kincade Fire – broke out late Wednesday in the Sonoma wine region, also prompting evacuations.
The state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., warned that millions of people in northern and central parts of the state could have their power cut off during the weekend given the high risk of fire.
The same type of equipment was responsible for the state’s deadliest bushfire ever – the Camp Fire in 2018 which killed 86 people.
Extinction Rebellion: One Year On
Extinction Rebellion: One Year On, As their one-year anniversary approaches, Felicity Graham reviews the successes and failures of Extinction Rebellion. Cherwell, By Felicity Victoria Graham, 27th October 2019
For the climate’s sake, the $multibillion nuclear industry bailouts must stop
|
Nuclear Industry’s $23 Billion Bailout Request Shows Why It Should Have ‘No Role to Play’ in Solving Climate Crisis: Study “For the sake of taxpayers, electricity consumers and the climate, Congress must stop this endless nuclear boondoggle.” by Eoin Higgins, staff writer A proposed bailout of the U.S. nuclear power industry that could cost taxpayers $23 billion over the next 10 years is a perfect example of why the climate crisis needs solutions that focus on renewable resources, green advocacy group Friends of the Earth said Thursday.”The dying nuclear industry wants a massive bailout at the expense of taxpayers and the climate,” the group’s senior policy analyst Lukas Ross said in a statement. Friends of the Earth commissioned a study (pdf) on the Nuclear Powers America Act of 2019, a nuclear industry-backed bill making its way through Congress that would continue subsidies for the industry for decades. Vermont Law School fellow Mark Cooper, who authored the study, wrote that the consequences of continuing tax credits for the industry would have the effect of making other potential technologies unviable for reducing emissions. “Subsidizing nuclear keeps reactors on-line and crowds out the alternatives,” said Cooper. “It slows the transition to an electrical grid based on low-carbon distributed resources.” While renewables are a major part of the push from climate activists and advocates to solve the climate crisis, using nuclear power to reduce emissions has been floated as a potential piece of the Green New Deal. The technology was notably left out of the legislation by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a decision that Popular Mechanics writer Avery Thompson hailed in February as a “great idea.” “Reactors are gigantic beasts, and sustaining a nuclear reaction while drawing power from it requires an absurd level of engineering,” wrote Thompson. “Reactors are expensive, bulky, and complicated, to say nothing of the waste products they produce or the fear of a catastrophe like Chernobyl or Fukushima.” The proposed nuclear industry bailout, warns Cooper in the new report, is an attempt to reverse economic trends that have never been favorable to nuclear power standing by itself. The industry, Cooper said, hasn’t earned the right to be considered as a realistic solution to the climate crisis or U.S. energy needs. “Nuclear has failed for over 50 years to control its costs, even with help from massive subsidies, and alternatives are available to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a much lower cost,” wrote Cooper. Time is of the essence, said Friends of the Earth’s Ross. “With just a decade left to prevent the worst of the climate crisis, we shouldn’t dump more money into ancient nuclear reactors at the expense of cleaner and much cheaper renewables,” he said. |
|
Desertification and Drought – Sahara
|
COMBATING DESERTIFICATION AND DROUGHT
Displaced by the Desert: An expanding Sahara leaves Broken Families and Violence in its Wake, IPS News By Issa Sikiti da Silva 25 Oct 19, “……… In 2012, various groups of Tuareg rebels grouped together to form and administer a new northern state called Azawad. The civil strife that resulted drove many from their homes, with communities often fleeing with their livestock, only to compete for scarce natural resources in vulnerable host communities, according to the United Nations.
After the security situation began to improve in 2013, many returned home to rebuild their lives and livelihoods. But soon it was the turn of the expanding Sahara Desert, drought and land degradation that became the next driver of their displacement. “As time went by, the land became useless and we found ourselves having no more land to work on. Nothing would come out that could feed us, and our livestock kept dying due the lack of water and grass to eat, ” Abdoulaye recalls. “Drought across the Sahel region, followed by conflict in northern Mali, caused a major slump in the country’s agricultural production, reducing household assets and leaving many of Mali’s poor even more vulnerable,” FAO says. “We used to move up and down with our livestock, looking for water and grass, but most of the times we found none. Life was unliveable. The Sahara is coming down, very fast,” Abdoulaye says emotionally……….. Threatened with creeping desertification …The U.N. says nearly 98 percent of Mali is threatened with creeping desertification, as a result of nature and human activity. Besides, the Sahara Desert keeps expanding southward at a rate of 48 km a year, further degrading the land and eradicating the already scarce livelihoods of populations, Reuters reported. The Sahara, an area of 3.5 million square miles, is the largest ‘hot’ desert in the world and home to some 70 species of mammals, 90 species of resident birds and 100 species of reptiles, according to DesertUSA. And it is expanding, its size is registered at 10 percent larger than a century ago, LiveScience reported. The Sahel, the area between The Sahara in the north and the Sudanian Savanna in the south, is the region where temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else on Earth. The cost of land degradation is currently estimated at about $490bn per year, much higher than the cost of action to prevent it, according to UNCCD recent studies on the economics of land desertification, land degradation and drought. Roughly 40 percent of the world’s degraded land is found in areas with the highest incidence of poverty and directly impacts the health and livelihoods of an estimated 1.5 billion people, according to the U.N. In a country where six million tonnes of wood is used per year, reports say Malians are mercilessly smashing their already-fragile landscape, bringing down 4,000 square kilometres of tree cover each year in search for timber and fuel……….. What is being done?Projects such as the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification’s Land Degradation Neutrality project aimed at preventing and/or reversing land degradation are some of the interventions to stop the growing desert.
Everyone, including terrorists are equal in the face of the expanding SaharaBut there remain gaps and many in Mali still remain affected. Community leader Hassan Badarou spent several years teaching Islam in rural Mali and Niger. He tells IPS Mali has a very complex situation. “It is not easy to live in these areas. People there face double threats. It is double stress to flee from both armed conflict and desertification. And such people need to be welcomed and assisted, and not be seen as a threat to locals livelihoods……….. http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/10/displaced-desert-expanding-sahara-leaves-broken-families-violence-wake/?utm_source=English+-+IPS+Weekly&utm_campaign=2391e81e36-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_24_01_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_eab01a56ae-2391 |
|
No such thing as a zero- or close to zero-emission nuclear power plant.
David Lowry, Guardian 21st Oct 2019: in the analysis
of MPs’ voting record on bills to combat climate change (Tories five times more likely than other MPs to vote against bills to tackle climate crisis, 12 October), both Jeremy Corbyn and Caroline Lucas are marked as 92% supportive on the basis they voted to“keep nuclear power subsidies relatively low”.
Proposed Solution to Global Warming, Air Pollution, and Energy Security, in
his forthcoming book, 100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for
Everything, Jacobson argues: “There is no such thing as a zero- or close to
zero-emission nuclear power plant. Even existing plants emit due to the
continuous mining and refining of uranium needed for the plant. Overall
emissions from new nuclear are 78 to 178g of CO2/kWH, not close to 0.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/21/tory-boasts-on-climate-action-are-full-of-hot-air
Climate change: Permafrost is now becoming a carbon emitter
|
Climate change has turned permafrost into a carbon emitter, Tundra plants can’t absorb enough carbon in summer to make up for carbon released in winter, CBC, Bob Weber · The Canadian Press Oct 22, 2019 Research has found Arctic soil has warmed to the point where it releases more carbon in winter than northern plants can absorb during the summer.
The finding means the extensive belt of tundra around the globe — a vast reserve of carbon that dwarfs what’s held in the atmosphere — is becoming a source of greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change. “There’s a net loss,” said Dalhousie University’s Jocelyn Egan, one of 75 co-authors of a paper published in Nature Climate Change. “In a given year, more carbon is being lost than what is being taken in. It is happening already.” The research by scientists in 12 countries and from dozens of institutions is the latest warning that northern natural systems that once reliably kept carbon out of the atmosphere are starting to release it………. Emissions speeding upWhat’s more, the pace of the emissions is likely to increase. Under a business-as-usual scenario, emissions from northern soil would be likely to release 41 per cent more carbon by the end of the century. But the Arctic is already warming at three times the pace of the rest of the globe. Even if significant mitigation efforts are made, those emissions will increase by 17 per cent, said the report. Egan notes the research didn’t measure methane, a greenhouse gas about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide that is also released from soil. Her findings echo previous studies. Last summer, research suggested that larger, hotter wildfires are turning boreal forests into carbon sources. Another paper found that instead of melting slowly and steadily, permafrost is subject to sudden collapses that speed up the rate of carbon release. Mitigation won’t stop the problem any more, said Egan, but it will help.https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/permafrost-climate-change-1.5330144 |
|
|
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 