How did humans get to the brink of crashing climate?
AP News
Amidst record-high temperatures, deluges, droughts and wildfires, leaders are convening for another round of United Nations climate talks later this month that seek to curb the centuries-long trend of humans spewing ever more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
For hundreds of years, people have shaped the world around them for their benefit: They drained lakes to protect infrastructure, wealth and people. They dug up billions of tons of coal, and then oil and gas, to fuel empires and economies. The allure of exploiting nature and burning fossil fuels as a path to prosperity hopped from nation to nation, each eager to secure their own energy.
People who claimed the power to control nature and the energy resources around them saw the environment as a tool to be used for progress, historians say. Over hundreds of years, that impulse has remade the planet’s climate, too — and brought its inhabitants to the brink of catastrophe.
This year will be Earth’s hottest in human history, report confirms
The Washington Post
As COP28 began, the World Meteorological Organization confirmed what appeared to be a foregone conclusion: that 2023 is assured to end up as Earth’s hottest year in human history.
It will break a record set in 2016, underscoring that the world is closer than ever to the global warming thresholds that global leaders are seeking to avoid. Data from January through October shows the planet is likely to average 1.3 degrees Celsius to 1.5 degrees Celsius above a preindustrial norm this year, the WMO said.
Constraining global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels is the world’s most important climate goal. Scientists say it is becoming increasingly out of reach but that achieving it would save coral reefs, preserve polar ice and prevent dramatic sea-level rise. (Such warmth would need to sustain for years and decades at a time to face the worst consequences.)
Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the United Nations agency, stressed that this year’s warming has had real-life harms around the world and pushed the planet to new weather and climate extremes.
“Greenhouse gas levels are record high. Global temperatures are record high. Sea level rise is record high. Antarctic sea ice is record low,” he said in a statement. “It’s a deafening cacophony of broken records.”
3 climate impacts the U.S. will see if warming goes beyond 1.5 degrees
NPR News
[…] Currently, the world is on track for just under 3 degrees Celsius of warming (more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. While a few degrees of difference may seem small, climate research shows that every tenth of a degree can have a profound effect when it comes to the dangers posed by extreme weather.
"We're not destined for some catastrophic climate," says Deepti Singh, who is an assistant professor at Washington State University. "We know that we can have a future that is more equitable and less volatile if we limit the warming through our actions today."
Here are three climate impacts that get substantially worse in the U.S. if the world exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.
1. At 1.5 degrees of warming worldwide, the U.S. will heat up even faster […]
2. Rainfall intensifies beyond 1.5 degrees of warming […]
3. Extreme heat gets worse, meaning more hot days and fewer cold ones […]
4 in 5 people around the world support ‘whatever it takes’ to limit climate change
Grist
More than 70,000 delegates from around the world are gathering at the U.N. climate talks in Dubai this week to negotiate (ostensibly) how to tackle the climate crisis. Many of the important conversations at COP28 will revolve around “loss and damage,” rules for “carbon markets,” and whether to “phasedown” or “phaseout” fossil fuels. Not exactly kitchen-table topics.
“There will be a fair amount of gobbledygook coming out of COP28,” said John Marshall, the CEO of Potential Energy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit marketing firm.
A lot of that jargon is bound to go over people’s heads, but a new survey, the largest of its kind, shows that people around the world want their governments to take action. Some 78 percent of those polled agree that it’s essential to do “whatever it takes” to limit the effects of climate change, according to the survey released on Thursday by Potential Energy, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, and other organizations. The research also gauged what messages resonated with people the most. The best one? “Later is too late.”
Harris to Stand In for Biden at U.N. Climate Conference
The New York Times
Vice President Kamala Harris will attend the annual United Nations climate summit in Dubai on Friday and Saturday, standing in for President Biden, who will skip the event for the first time since taking office.
A spokeswoman for Ms. Harris said in a statement on Wednesday that while at the summit, known as COP28, the vice president would “underscore the Biden-Harris administration’s success in delivering on the most ambitious climate agenda in history, both at home and abroad.” […]
White House officials have said Mr. Biden is consumed with other global issues, including the war between Israel and Hamas and securing funding for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion, which has become the subject of an intense congressional clash in recent days. […]
During the summit, officials said, Ms. Harris will announce several U.S. initiatives related to bolstering climate resilience in other countries and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They said she would also discuss the passage of clean energy legislation during the first two years of the administration.
At COP28, the United States Will Stress an End to Fossil Emissions, Not Fuels
Inside Climate News
President Joe Biden will not attend the climate talks that commence this week in Dubai, but the conflict that has come to define his policy on the planetary crisis will be front and center.
The president who has catalyzed the nation’s greatest investment ever in a clean energy transition also has presided as U.S. oil and natural gas production reached record heights.
And as delegates from nearly 200 nations convene Thursday for two weeks of negotiations on what more needs to be done to stave off catastrophic warming, pressure is building for the annual conference to address specifically—for the first time— the future of fossil fuels.
But the United States, casting itself as a climate action leader despite its role as the world’s No. 1 oil and natural gas producer, will insist that any phase-down language be focused not on fossil fuels themselves, but on their emissions.
US oil and gas production set to break record in 2023 despite UN climate goals
The Guardian
The United States is poised to extract more oil and gas than ever before in 2023, a year that is certain to be the hottest ever recorded, providing a daunting backdrop to crucial United Nations climate talks that hold the hope of an agreement to end the era of fossil fuels.
The US’s status as the world’s leading oil and gas behemoth has only strengthened this year, even amid warnings from Joe Biden himself over the unfolding climate crisis, with the latest federal government forecast showing a record 12.9m barrels of crude oil, more than double what was produced a decade ago, will be extracted in 2023.
Records will also be broken this year for gas production, with a glut of new export terminals on the Gulf of Mexico coast facilitating a boom that will see US exports of liquified natural gas (or LNG) double in the next four years.
Tellingly, the US government expects this frenzy of oil and gas activity to continue at near-record levels right up to 2050, a point at which scientists say planet-heating emissions must be eliminated to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown. A third of the world’s planned oil and gas expansion in this period will occur in the US, a recent report found.
How wealthy countries evade responsibility for their fossil fuel exports
Bill McKibben @ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
When the world convenes in the United Arab Emirates for the next round of the endless climate slog, much attention will be paid to the pledges of individual nations to cut their emissions. This has been the basic scorecard of climate talks almost since the start. But it’s a wildly incomplete scorecard, in ways that are becoming ever clearer as we enter the endgame of the energy transition. We’ve been measuring it wrong.
That’s because a country’s exports of fossil fuel don’t count against its total. But it’s those exports that are driving fossil fuel expansion around the world, coming as they do from some of the most diplomatically powerful and wealthy nations on Earth.
To give the most obvious, and largest, example: the United States is, fitfully, cutting back on its carbon emissions; its envoys will be able to report, honestly, that the Inflation Reduction Act should soon actually be trimming our domestic use of oil, gas, and coal, as we subsidize heat pumps and build out EV charging networks. But at the very same moment, the U.S. production of fossil fuels is booming. That means, of course, that much of that supply is headed overseas.
Emissions Gap Report 2023
United Nations Environment Programme
As greenhouse gas emissions hit new highs, temperature records tumble and climate impacts intensify, the Emissions Gap Report 2023: Broken Record – Temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions (again) finds that the world is heading for a temperature rise far above the Paris Agreement goals unless countries deliver more than they have promised. The report is the 14th edition in a series that brings together many of the world’s top climate scientists to look at future trends in greenhouse gas emissions and provide potential solutions to the challenge of global warming.
The report finds that there has been progress since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. Greenhouse gas emissions in 2030, based on policies in place, were projected to increase by 16 per cent at the time of the agreement’s adoption. Today, the projected increase is 3 per cent. However, predicted 2030 greenhouse gas emissions still must fall by 28 per cent for the Paris Agreement 2°C pathway and 42 per cent for the 1.5°C pathway.
As things stand, fully implementing unconditional Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) made under the Paris Agreement would put the world on track for limiting temperature rise to 2.9°C above pre-industrial levels this century. Fully implementing conditional NDCs would lower this to 2.5°C.
COP28 president secretly used climate summit role to push oil trade with foreign government officials
Centre for Climate Reporting
The United Arab Emirates’ COP28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, sought to lobby on oil and gas deals during meetings with foreign governments about the UN climate summit, according to a cache of internal records leaked by a whistleblower.
Al Jaber, who has continued his role as CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) despite calls for him to step down during his COP presidency, has held scores of meetings with senior government officials, royalty and business leaders from around the world in recent months. The COP28 team has quietly planned to use this access as an opportunity to increase exports of Adnoc’s oil and gas, briefings prepared ahead of those meetings obtained by the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) reveal.
The leaked documents include more than 150 pages of briefings prepared by the COP28 team for meetings held by Al Jaber between July and October of this year, which CCR has decided to publish in part below. They offer an extraordinary insight into the private discussions between the COP president and prominent government figures attending the UN summit in Dubai, which starts later this week.
John Kerry’s ‘gamble’ — trusting an oil baron to save the planet
E&E News — Climate Wire
Climate activists and progressive lawmakers unleashed their scorn when the CEO of one of the world’s most powerful oil companies got the job of helming this year’s global climate summit.
“Do you take us for fools?” former U.S. Vice President Al Gore asked. “Completely ridiculous,” Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said. Hundreds of green groups and 130 lawmakers in the EU and U.S. joined in.
But United Arab Emirates oil chief Sultan al-Jaber has a defender in his corner at the summit known as COP28, which debuts Thursday in Dubai: John Kerry, whose two and a half years as President Joe Biden’s climate envoy have included an aggressive courtship of al-Jaber as a partner in the fight against greenhouse gas pollution.
At COP28 climate summit, there's concern oil and gas lobbyists have too much influence
CBC News
[…] COP28 is viewed by climate scientists and activists as a pivotal conference to cutting global greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, after a summer of record-setting heat. […]
An analysis from a coalition of advocacy groups found representatives of the fossil fuel industry have been in attendance a total of 7,200 times at the annual United Nations climate talks over the past two decades.
"There is a conflict of interest there," Andréanne Brazeau, a policy analyst with the Montreal-based environmental group Equiterre, said in an interview before heading to Dubai.
"It's a bit like inviting tobacco companies to a health summit."
Disinformation Is One of Climate Summit’s Biggest Challenges
The New York Times
As the world’s leaders gather this week at a major summit to discuss ways to address the effects of global warming, one of the greatest obstacles they face is disinformation.
Among the biggest sources of false or misleading information about the world’s weather, according to a report released this week: influential nations, including Russia and China, whose diplomats will be attending. Others include the companies that extract fossil fuels and the online provocateurs who make money by sharing claims that global warming is a hoax.
They spread diverse and frequently debunked falsehoods: Humans are not responsible for climate change; recent wildfires were enabled by arson rather than hotter and drier conditions; the world is cooling; oil and gas giants are leading the charge toward carbon neutrality; and warnings about the environment are an excuse for authoritarian elites to destabilize the developing world and force everyone into lockdown and onto a diet of insects and lab-grown food.
Their efforts have already significantly eroded the public pressure and political will needed to prevent a dire future for the planet, experts said.
Scientists track rapid retreat of Antarctic glacier
University of Leeds
Scientists are warning that apparently stable glaciers in the Antarctic can “switch very rapidly” and lose large quantities of ice as a result of warmer seas.
Their finding comes after a research team led by Benjamin Wallis, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds, used satellites to track the Cadman Glacier, which drains into Beascochea Bay, on the west Antarctic peninsula.
Between November 2018 and May 2021, the glacier retreated eight kilometres as the ice shelf at the end of the glacier - where ice extends out into the sea and is anchored onto the sea floor at what is known as the grounding zone - disappeared.
NOAA report says declining snowpack means worldwide food disruptions
UPI
Human-caused climate change resulting in higher average temperatures has caused a global decline in snowfall, according to a new analysis from NOAA. That means more precipitation is likely to fall as rain, causing a disruption to food supplies and less water for billions of people, the report said.
The data show that while the long term forecast for snowfall is not good, climate change could mean more erratic weather patterns and increased snowfall events in the near term, as evidenced by recent storms in the U.S. Northeast. But scientists report over time, those events will decline and snowfall will drop off dramatically and noticeably.
"Eventually the laws of thermodynamics mean that as you keep warming you're just going to transition more and more of that snow over to rain," said Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist with the National Weather Service in Alaska and the author of the data analysis. "You can get away with things for a little bit, and it can hide some trends, but overall the laws of thermodynamics will win out."
Wolverines threatened with extinction as climate change melts their snowy refuges
AP News via ABC News
The North American wolverine will receive long-delayed threatened species protections under a Biden administration proposal released Wednesday in response to scientists' warnings that climate change will likely melt away the rare species’ snowy mountain refuges and push them toward extinction.
Across most of the U.S., wolverines were wiped out by the early 1900s from unregulated trapping and poisoning campaigns. About 300 surviving animals in the contiguous U.S. live in fragmented, isolated groups at high elevations in the northern Rocky Mountains.
Wolverines join a growing number of animals, plants and insects — from polar bears in Alaska to crocodiles in southern Florida — that officials say are at growing risk as increasing temperatures bake the planet, altering snowfall patterns and raising sea levels.
As Temperatures Rise, Dengue Fever Spreads and Cases Rise
Yale Environment 360
The monsoon season in Bangladesh typically runs from May to September, with rainfall peaking in July and sputtering out in early October. This year, however, there was more rain than usual in October and even some showers in normally dry November. The extra rain, along with overall warmer temperatures, contributed to a surge in cases of dengue fever, prolonging the country’s largest and deadliest recorded outbreak of the mosquito-borne disease.
According to data from Bangladesh’s ministry of health, 1,570 people have died and more than 300,000 have been infected as of November 22. That’s three times the number of infections recorded in the country’s largest previous outbreak, in 2019.
Dengue is a viral infection transmitted to humans by the bite of infected Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus mosquitoes. The disease is sometimes called “breakbone fever” for the aches and pains it can produce. While most cases of dengue are relatively mild, and symptoms can be treated, some patients develop dengue hemorrhagic fever, which can be fatal.
Coal generation decreased in 2022, but overall U.S. emissions increased
U.S. Energy Information Administration
U.S. coal-related CO2 emissions decreased by 7%, or 68 million metric tons (MMmt), in 2022 relative to 2021. This decrease was largely due to an 8% decline in coal-fired power generation because of retiring coal-fired generating capacity. Changes in electricity generation sources decreased the carbon intensity of electricity by 4% in the United States in 2022 as growing natural gas-fired and renewable energy resources and a coal supply shortage contributed to the lower coal-related emissions.
Overall, U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions increased slightly in 2022 to 4,939 MMmt from 4,905 MMmt in 2021, driven by a 2% increase in transportation sector emissions and a combined 1% increase in the residential and commercial sectors, according to our newly released annual report on energy-related carbon emissions. Industrial sector emissions declined by 2% as industrial activity decreased by 3% over the period.
Big Cars Are Killing Americans
The Atlantic
Standing on the aft deck of a modified 13-meter fishing boat in Halifax Harbour, Dariia Atamanchuk gazes at both a cause of the climate crisis and, she hopes, part of the solution.
On the nearby shore, three red-and-white-striped smokestacks rise like enormous barber poles, funneling carbon dioxide (CO2) from a natural gas–fueled power plant into the pale morning sky. At the seawall in front of the plant, seawater used to cool its piping flows into the harbor. Normally that water runs clear. But today, the outflow roils in a pink froth, like a cauldron of Pepto Bismol. “Ooh, that’s very milky,” says Atamanchuk, a chemical oceanographer at Dalhousie University.
The colorful eruption, part of an experiment led by the Halifax, Canada–based company Planetary Technologies, contains red rhodamine dye and a slurry of white magnesium hydroxide, the main ingredient in the drug store antacid Milk of Magnesia. The alkaline mineral should, in theory, raise the pH in the surrounding seawater, triggering a chemical reaction that will absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it to bicarbonate , an ion that can float through the ocean undisturbed for millennia.