Phil McKenna at Inside Climate News writes—Today's Fossil Fuel Infrastructure Already Locks in 1.5°C Warming, Study Warns:
All the power plants, vehicles and other fossil fuel-burning infrastructure operating today will lock the world into 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, exceeding the Paris climate agreement goals, unless the biggest polluters are shut down early or are retrofitted to capture their carbon emissions, a new study shows.
And that's just the infrastructure already built. When the researchers factored in the future emissions of coal- and gas-fired power plants that are currently planned or under construction, they found the total lifetime emissions would shoot past 1.5°C (2.7°F) warming and put the world on pace to burn about two-thirds of the remaining carbon budget for staying under 2°C warming compared to pre-industrial times.
The findings imply profound changes for the planet and many of its inhabitants in this century. As global temperatures rise, heat waves continue to intensify, extreme precipitation increases, and an additional 10 million people face greater risks from sea level rise in just the half degree between 1.5°C and 2°C, among other threats, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote last fall.
"We have already built enough to take us over 1.5," said Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science and a co-author of the study. "For these 1.5 scenarios you would either need to retire CO2 emitting infrastructure early or have carbon dioxide removal strategies which are generally thought to be expensive."
Nine years ago, Caldeira co-authored a similar study that found the planet had already locked in about 496 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide with existing infrastructure, emissions that would result in about 1.3°C of warming above pre-industrial levels. [...]
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QUOTATION
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” ~~Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (1987)
TWEET OF THE DAY
(Yesterday, I wondered aloud whether Grisham would tell the truth or follow in the footsteps of her predecessor. Today we found out for sure—MB.)
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2012—More revelations about Upper Big Branch mine explosion:
More details are emerging about the two sets of safety records kept at Upper Big Branch mine leading up to the explosion that killed 29 workers there. The more you read, the worse Massey Energy's behavior looks.
The New York Times reports that:
In a presentation in Beaver, W. Va., Mr. Stricklin offered a stinging indictment of Massey practices, saying the federal investigation by more than 100 people had been able to rule out the company’s assertion that the explosion on April 5, 2010, happened because of an event beyond its control: a huge inundation of gas.
His findings matched those of the earlier report, conducted by a former federal mine safety chief, Davitt McAteer, which said that coal dust had been allowed to accumulate, spreading what had been a small ignition of methane through the mine and creating the deadliest mine blast in 40 years. “We are further along than this just being our theory,” Mr. Stricklin said. “This is our conclusion.”
Stricklin, the Mine Safety and Health Administration's administrator for coal, showed examples of how safety hazards noted on the mine's internal books were absent on the official reports seen by the government. The NYT notes that two people have been indicted for lying; those, however, are relatively low-level management. Senior management up to former CEO Don Blankenship haven't been indicted, though they were certainly responsible for the overall corporate culture of disregard for safety.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin helps us catch up after the debates and another embarrassing jaunt abroad for Trump. The word of the day is: disjunctive. With just days to go until July 4th, Trump's still reviewing fabric swatches. But get ready for the next big grift: VIP tix.