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Humans ‘pushing Earth close to tipping point’, say most in G20
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Surface Water Vulnerable to Widespread Pollution From Fracking, a New Study Finds
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Fixing the hole in the ozone layer was a success. How can we learn from it to cut carbon emissions?
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Opinion: Let’s heed the UN’s dire warning and stop the east African oil pipeline now
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Opinion: Why is life on Earth still taking second place to fossil fuel companies?
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Opinion: This Is the World Being Left to Us by Adults
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Opinion: Vested interests turn up heat in battle against global warming
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Residents in a densely-populated Pittsburgh suburb are demanding public hearings on two proposed fracking wells
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Stanford’s commitment to sustainability: The road to 100% solar
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How artificial intelligence can help save us from air pollution
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Siberia’s massive wildfires are unlocking extreme carbon pollution
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Solar costs dropped more than 70% over the last decade, and Biden wants to accelerate the trend
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Colorado Weather: Mountains Wake Up To Snow From Summer Storm
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Fossil Fuel Companies Are Quietly Scoring Big Money for Their Preferred Climate Solution: Carbon Capture and Storage
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Study proposes new ways to estimate climate change impacts on agriculture
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Denser cities could be a climate boon – but nimbyism stands in the way
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Illinois Solar Companies Say They Are ‘Held Hostage’ by Statehouse Gridlock
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Opinion: The more children know of the natural world, the more they’ll want to protect it
The writers in Climate Brief work to keep the Daily Kos community informed and engaged with breaking news about the climate crisis worldwide while providing inspiring stories of environmental heroes, opportunities for direct engagement, and perspectives on the intersection of climate activism with spirituality politics, and the arts.
Climate Brief posts every evening, 5 pm est
This Is An Open Thread
Humans ‘pushing Earth close to tipping point’, say most in G20
Three-quarters of people in the world’s wealthiest nations believe humanity is pushing the planet towards a dangerous tipping point and support a shift of priorities away from economic profit, according to a global survey.
The Ipsos Mori survey for the Global Commons Alliance (GCA) also found a majority (58%) were very concerned or extremely concerned about the state of the planet.
Four in five respondents said they were willing to step up and do more to regenerate the global commons.
The lead author of the report, Owen Gaffney of the GCA, said the results showed strong global support for urgent, decisive action on the climate and nature crises.
Surface Water Vulnerable to Widespread Pollution From Fracking, a New Study Finds
Fossil fuels don’t just damage the planet by emitting climate-warming greenhouse gases when they are burned. Extracting coal, oil and gas has a huge impact on the surface of the earth, including strip mines the size of cities and offshore oil spills that pollute country-sized swaths of ocean.
Years of research has shown how the fracking boom has contaminated groundwater in some areas. But a study published on Thursday in the journal Science suggests there is also a previously undocumented risk to surface water in streams, rivers and lakes.
After analyzing 11 years of data, including surface water measurements in 408 watersheds and information about more than 40,000 fracking wells, the researchers found a very small but consistent increase in three salt compounds—barium, chloride and strontium—in watersheds with new wells that were fracked. While concentrations of the three elements were elevated, they remained below the levels considered harmful by the EPA.
Fixing the hole in the ozone layer was a success. How can we learn from it to cut carbon emissions?
In 1985 three scientists made a shocking discovery: chemicals known as CFCs were causing a hole to develop in the ozone layer.
At the time these chemicals were widely used for manufacturing consumer goods such as fridges, styrofoam packaging and hairspray.
Once thought to be harmless, it was theorised in the 1970s that when they were released into the atmosphere, the sun’s rays broke them down and they bonded with ozone chemicals. This caused damage to the protective layer of gas that surrounds the earth.
Jonathan Shanklin was employed by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to interpret a backlog of data on the ozone layer above Halley Station when he made the discovery.
Opinion
Let’s heed the UN’s dire warning and stop the east African oil pipeline now
If there is one world leader trying to look out for the planet as a whole, not just their own nation, it’s the UN secretary general. Last week, António Guterres was resolute in the wake of the damning report from the IPCC on the perilious climate crisis. It should, he said, sound “a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet”.
He called for an end to “all new fossil fuel exploration and production”, and told countries to shift fossil fuel subsidies into renewable energy.
One of the first tests of whether anyone is paying attention will be if somebody rips up the plans for what would be the world’s longest heated crude oil pipeline – the 1,443km (900-mile) east African crude oil pipeline (EACOP) that will run from oilfields in Uganda to the ocean ports of Tanzania. If it gets built, it’s is a sure sign that the world’s leaders are not listening.
The Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide-USA (ELAW-USA) estimates that burning the 210,000 barrels of oil a day that will be transported by the pipeline will produce more than 34m metric tonnes of carbon annually. This is significantly greater than the current combined emissions of Uganda and Tanzania.
Opinion:
Why is life on Earth still taking second place to fossil fuel companies?
The human tragedy is that there is no connection between what we know and what we do. Almost everyone is now at least vaguely aware that we face the greatest catastrophe our species has ever confronted. Yet scarcely anyone alters their behaviour in response: above all, their driving, flying and consumption of meat and dairy.
During the most serious of all crises, the UK elected the least serious of all governments. Both the Westminster government and local authorities continue to build roads and expand airports. An analysis by conservation charity WWF suggests that, while the last UK budget allocated £145m for environmental measures, it dedicated £40bn to policies that will increase emissions.
Astonishingly, it is still
government policy to “maximise economic recovery” of oil and gas from the UK’s
continental shelf. According to the government’s
energy white paper, promoting their extraction ensures that “the UK remains an attractive destination for global capital”, which is “the best way to secure an orderly and successful transition away from traditional fossil fuels”. It’s hard to imagine a more perverse argument. But when you pursue incompatible aims, the first casualty is logic.
Opinion
This Is the World Being Left to Us by Adults
Last week, some of the world’s leading climate change scientists confirmed that humans are making irreversible changes to our planet and extreme weather will only become more severe. This news is a “code red for humanity,” said the United Nations secretary general.
It is — but young people like us have been sounding this alarm for years. You just haven’t listened.
On Aug. 20, 2018, one child staged a lone protest outside the Swedish Parliament, expecting to stay for three weeks. Tomorrow we will mark three years since Greta Thunberg’s strike. Even earlier, brave young people from around the world spoke out about the climate crisis in their communities. And today, millions of children and young people have united in a movement with one voice, demanding that decision makers do the work necessary to save our planet from the unprecedented heat waves, massive floods and vast wildfires we are increasingly witnessing. Our protest will not end until the inaction does.
Residents in a densely-populated Pittsburgh suburb are demanding public hearings on two proposed fracking wells
Residents in two Pittsburgh suburbs are demanding public hearings on a proposal to drill two new fracking wells within a mile of an elementary school.
The wells, proposed by Apex Energy, would be within one mile of Level Green Elementary School and within two miles of 12,733 residents in Penn Township and Trafford Borough (about 17 miles east of Pittsburgh).
The wells would be near several environmental justice communities, which are defined as, which is defined in Pennsylvania as any census tract where 20% or more of the population lives at or below the federal poverty line, and/or 30% or more of the population identifies as non-white. Environmental justice communities often face disproportionately high levels of pollution and negative health impacts caused by the overlapping effects of poverty, racism, and pollution.
Penn Township and Trafford already experience pollution from a variety of sources, including fracking wells in nearby municipalities, other local industrial plants, and carcinogenic emissions from the region's remaining steelmaking plants.
Stanford’s commitment to sustainability: The road to 100% solar
Stanford will be powered entirely by solar energy by next summer, making it one of the most energy-efficient research universities in the world.
Stanford Energy System Innovations (SESI) has been working on Stanford’s transition to renewable energy for the past decade. Its original goal of going 100% solar by late 2021 was delayed by a year due to supply-chain shortages as well as a fire that destroyed a part of the first solar generating station. Currently, the University ranks within the top 10 colleges for using the most renewable energy. Stanford is also positioned “to become the first research university to use 100% renewable electricity, according to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE),” Lincoln Bleveans, the executive director of Sustainability and Energy Management at Stanford, wrote.
Stanford chose solar energy because of its cost-effectiveness and reliability relative to wind, geothermal and other clean energy sources, according to Joseph Stagner, former executive director of Sustainability and Energy Management at Stanford. “The solar grid that we ended up selecting was the most cost-effective for Stanford, and it appeared to be the one with the most chance of actually being built,” Stagner added.
How artificial intelligence can help save us from air pollution
As air quality plummets across the U.S. this summer, researchers have a glimmer of good news.
Artificial intelligence may soon provide advanced warning of future pollution events, which could help hospitals prepare for the uptick in pollution-related illnesses, or even reduce people's exposure entirely.
A spike in air pollution often leads to a spike in hospital admissions, as it can exacerbate asthma and other pre-existing respiratory conditions, cause upper respiratory tract infections, or increase the likelihood of stroke. But it's currently impossible to prepare for these spikes due to the constraints of existing air quality forecasts, which are only accurate up to three days in advance, Yunsoo Choi, associate professor of atmospheric chemistry from the University of Houston, told EHN.
One billion children at ‘extremely high risk’ of the impacts of the climate crisis - UNICEF
Young people living in the Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau are the most at risk of the impacts of climate change, threatening their health, education, and protection, and exposing them to deadly diseases, according to a UNICEF report launched today.
‘The Climate Crisis Is a Child Rights Crisis: Introducing the Children’s Climate Risk Index’ is the first comprehensive analysis of climate risk from a child’s perspective. It ranks countries based on children’s exposure to climate and environmental shocks, such as cyclones and heatwaves, as well as their vulnerability to those shocks, based on their access to essential services.
Launched in collaboration with Fridays for Future on the third anniversary of the youth-led global climate strike movement, the report finds approximately 1 billion children – nearly half the world's 2.2 billion children – live in one of the 33 countries classified as “extremely high-risk”. These children face a deadly combination of exposure to multiple climate and environmental shocks with a high vulnerability due to inadequate essential services, such as water and sanitation, healthcare and education. The findings reflect the number of children impacted today – figures likely to get worse as the impacts of climate change accelerate.
Siberia’s massive wildfires are unlocking extreme carbon pollution
The North American West isn’t the only place that’s burning this summer. Thousands of miles away in Siberia, hot, dry weather has helped fuel widespread forest fires that are releasing giant plumes of smoke and hundreds of millions of tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Residents of the region, many of them farmers, have been fighting the unprecedented fires themselves, even as they attempt to harvest what they can before wildfire consumes their crops.
Siberia may be better known for its frigid winters, but it’s no stranger to summer wildfires. And for the past few summers, those fires have been exceptional, particularly in the Sakha Republic, a region of far northeastern Russia nearly double the size of Alaska. In 2020, Sakhan wildfires were more intense, and released more carbon between June and August, than at any other point in satellite records going back to 2003.
Solar costs dropped more than 70% over the last decade, and Biden wants to accelerate the trend
Solar power in the U.S. has grown 4,000% percent over the last decade, but it still only accounts for 3% of electricity generation. The Biden Administration wants to change that, and on Tuesday said that solar could provide 40% of the country’s electricity by 2035 — if the government enacts supportive policies.
In order to meet this target, the Department of Energy said that solar’s growth rate will need to triple — or even quadruple — by 2030. That means costs will have to keep dropping.
The total cost of a solar system depends on variables including size, whether it’s purchased outright or leased and power prices in the specific location. Solar’s levelized cost of energy, which allows it to be compared to other forms of power generation, has fallen more than 70% over the last decade. But costs
Colorado Weather: Mountains Wake Up To Snow From Summer Storm
In addition to all of the severe weather in the last 24 hours our latest storm system also brought in colder temperatures with it. Cold enough to dust many peaks with Summer Snow!
In fact, temperatures in the Colorado high country dropped into the 20s and 30s in some spots. Most areas picked up less than an inch it is still a shock to the system after what has been a hot summer.
From Rocky Mountain National Park down through the mountains of the western slope many areas above 11,500 feet picked up snow from our quick moving storm. There was enough snow on Trail Ridge Road Friday morning that the road had to be closed because of blowing snow and slick road conditions.
Fossil Fuel Companies Are Quietly Scoring Big Money for Their Preferred Climate Solution: Carbon Capture and Storage
Over the last year, energy companies, electrical utilities and other industrial sectors have been quietly pushing through a suite of policies to support a technology that stands to yield tens of billions of dollars for corporate polluters, but may do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
These policies have fast-tracked environmental reviews and allocated billions in federal funding for research and development of carbon capture and storage, or CCS, technologies that pull carbon dioxide out of smokestacks or directly from the air before storing it underground. Just a single bill—the bipartisan infrastructure legislation that passed the Senate last week and is now headed to the House of Representatives—includes more than $12 billion in direct support for carbon capture, and could unlock billions more through other programs, according to the recent drafts.
Many environmental advocates argue that the massive government support would be better spent on proven climate solutions like wind and solar energy, which receive far less in direct funding under the infrastructure bill.
Study proposes new ways to estimate climate change impacts on agriculture
Most scientists agree climate change has a profound impact on U.S. agricultural production. But estimates vary widely, making it hard to develop mitigation strategies. Two agricultural economists at the University of Illinois take a closer look at how choice of statistical methodology influences climate study results. They also propose a more accurate and place-specific approach to data analysis.
"If you pay attention to forecasts of how the climate will affect U.S. agriculture, the results are completely different. Some scientists predict it's going to have a positive impact for the nation in the long run, some report it's going to have a negative impact," says study co-author Sandy Dall'Erba, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics (ACE) and director of the Center for Climate, Regional, Environmental and Trade Economics (CREATE) at U of I.
Dall'Erba and Chang Cai, doctoral student in ACE and the paper's lead author, take stock of all the academic literature that estimates the impact of climate change on U.S. farmland values and revenues, focusing on every U.S. county. The county-level scale is not only more accurate, the researchers say, but also important for regional policy makers, because they can make county-specific decisions in areas where climate change is anticipated to pose a serious challenge.
Denser cities could be a climate boon – but nimbyism stands in the way
In San Francisco’s Sunset District, rows and rows of pastel-colored, two-storey homes flow from the edge of Golden Gate park into the sand dunes of Ocean Beach. Many houses here have solar panels on their roofs and compost bins at their driveways, flanked by hybrid and electric cars.
Yet here – and all over this city – one major solution to both the housing crisis and the climate crisis has been met with fierce resistance: building more.
Climate scientists and urban planners increasingly suggest that one of the most impactful ways to slash greenhouse gas emissions is to make cities denser. This change, scientists have calculated, is even more impactful than installing solar panels on all new constructions or retrofitting old buildings with energy-saving technologies. Residents of cities like San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Minneapolis already have much lower carbon footprints than in the surrounding suburban sprawl. City dwellers tend to have smaller apartments that require less energy to heat and cool.
Illinois Solar Companies Say They Are ‘Held Hostage’ by Statehouse Gridlock
The number of rooftop solar installations in Illinois has plummeted, as state incentives for consumers have dried up amid a standoff in the Legislature over major energy legislation.
After a state incentive program ran out of money late last year, just 313 small rooftop solar projects were completed statewide in the three-month period ending June 30, compared with 2,908 a year earlier, Illinois Power Agency records show. Those numbers account for most of the rooftop solar projects done in Illinois.
The state program helped reduce the cost of adding solar to a home by thousands of dollars.
The funding problems also have idled hundreds of workers, hurting a fledgling, once fast-growing industry.
Opinion:
The more children know of the natural world, the more they’ll want to protect it
When the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was published in early August, it confirmed what was already being made increasingly obvious by 2021’s extreme weather events: the burning of fossil fuels is “choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk”.
While the report’s main headlines weren’t news to many – especially climate scientists, who have been sounding the alarm for decades, and the fossil fuel industry, which has spent billions obscuring the truth about climate change – one cohort in the UK was mostly able to continue with their days unaware of its implications: young children.
David Sobel, the American environmental educator, has a maxim: no environmental tragedies before fourth grade (in the US, when a child is nine or 10). Is this realistic today in a rapidly heating world? How parents talk to their own children about the Earth crisis will be child dependent, age dependent and location dependent. Of course as children go to school and become more aware, questions will be asked, and any fears and emotions should be acknowledged and explored, rather than brushed under the carpet. Parents and adults spending time with children can model living lightly and encourage responsible ecological behaviours from the earliest ages.
Read David’s thread please
This Is An Open Thread