BBC News
For the first time, global warming has exceeded 1.5C across an entire year, according to the EU's climate service. World leaders promised in 2015 to try to limit the long-term temperature rise to 1.5C, which is seen as crucial to help avoid the most damaging impacts.
This first year-long breach doesn't break that landmark Paris agreement, but it does bring the world closer to doing so in the long-term. Urgent action to cut carbon emissions can still slow warming, scientists say.
"This far exceeds anything that is acceptable," Prof Sir Bob Watson, a former chair of the UN's climate body, told the BBC…
"Look what's happened this year with only 1.5C - we've seen floods, we've seen droughts, we've seen heatwaves and wildfires all over the world."
With the World Stumbling Past 1.5 Degrees of Warming, Scientists Warn Climate Shocks Could Trigger Unrest and Authoritarian Backlash
Inside Climate News
As Earth’s annual average temperature pushes against the 1.5 degree Celsius limit beyond which climatologists expect the impacts of global warming to intensify, social scientists warn that humanity may be about to sleepwalk into a dangerous new era in human history. Research shows the increasing climate shocks could trigger more social unrest and authoritarian, nationalist backlashes. […]
A major announcement about breaching the 1.5 mark in today’s political and social climate could be met with extreme denial in a political climate marked by “a remorseless rise of authoritarian forms of nationalism,” [Social policy researcher Paul Hoggett, professor emeritus at the University of the West of England in Bristol,] said. “Even an announcement from the Pope himself would be taken as just another sign of a global elite trying to pull the wool over our eyes.”
An increasing number of right-wing narratives simply see this as a set of lies, he added. […]
And based on the historical record, a rise in climate activism is likely to trigger a backlash, [explained sociologist and author Dana Fisher, a professor in the School of International Service at American University and director of its Center for Environment, Community, and Equity.]
“When you see a big cycle of activism growing, you get a rise in counter-movements, particularly as activism becomes more confrontational, even if it’s nonviolent, like we saw during the Civil Rights period,” she said. “And it will lead to clashes.”
Kiss 1.5 Celsius Goodbye. Was 2023 Our Last Year Below Key Climate Threshold?
truthout
Our climate has crossed the “dangerous” 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal warming threshold 50 years or more ahead of long-held projections, according to data analysis by a major climate organization. Of the four major Earth temperature evaluations released for 2023 so far, Berkeley Earth is at 1.54°C, the European Meteorological Service is at 1.48°C, the World Meteorological Service is at 1.45°C and NASA is at 1.44°C. Almost all climate change impacts are happening decades, generations and even a century ahead of projections.
As recently as 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said we would not cross the 1.5°C threshold until after 2032. The IPCC’s 1.5°C Report in 2018 said that a constant rate of warming from the mid 2020s would see us exceed 1.5°C warming in 2040.
Berkeley Earth says, in 2023, every month from June to December was warmer than the previous record warm month; something never before seen in the temperature record. Almost half of the days in 2023 were warmer than 1.5°C, more than doubling the previous record. Two days in November were above 2°C, a first ever occurrence.
Earth has endured 12 consecutive months of temperatures 1.5C hotter than the pre-industrial era for the first time on record, Europe's climate monitor said Thursday, in what scientists called a "warning to humanity". […]
The extremes have continued into 2024, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) service said, confirming that February 2023 to January 2024 saw warming of 1.52 degrees Celsius above the 19th century benchmark.
That is an alarming foretaste of future impacts even if global warming can be capped at the Paris climate deal's crucial 1.5C threshold, scientists said. It also underscores the urgent need to reduce planet-heating emissions.
But it does not signal a permanent breach of the limit, which is measured over decades.
"We are touching 1.5C and we see the cost—the social costs and economic costs," said Johan Rockstrom, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
We Breached The 1.5 °C Threshold Over 10 Years Ago, Study Warns
Science Alert
Chemical records written in sea sponge skeletons suggest we passed the critical threshold of 1.5 °C of warming as early as 2010. If true, this places us close to – or even at – about 2 °C today.
Being ahead of schedule would explain why such extreme climate consequences have been walloping us far sooner than anticipated. Last year's huge leaps in temperatures left researchers stunned and scrambling for theories to account for some mysterious missing factor to explain things.
"The differences are quite profound," said University of Western Australia geochemist Malcolm McCulloch in a media briefing. "There is no real strong evidence that we're on a serious pathway to reduce emissions. That's the most concerning thing."
=======
Exxon and Chevron Announce Record Shareholder Returns in Hottest Year on Record
truthout
U.S. oil companies ExxonMobil and Chevron announced their second-highest profits in a decade on Friday, with both companies paying out a record amount to shareholders in 2023, which was the hottest year on record due largely to the burning of fossil fuels.
“In 2023, we returned more cash to shareholders and produced more oil and natural gas than any year in the company’s history,” Chevron chief executive Mike Wirth boasted in a statement.
Exxon also said it processed a record amount of oil and gas through its refineries. While profits for both companies have declined relative to their record hauls in 2022, Exxon CEO Darren Woods told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Friday that “we’ve more than doubled our earnings power from 2019 to 2023.”
‘Smoking gun proof’: fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954, documents show
The Guardian
The fossil fuel industry funded some of the world’s most foundational climate science as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents have shown, including the early research of Charles Keeling, famous for the so-called “Keeling curve” that has charted the upward march of the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels. […]
The fossil fuel interests backed a group, known as the Air Pollution Foundation, that issued funding to Keeling to measure CO2 alongside a related effort to research the smog that regularly blighted Los Angeles at the time. This is earlier than any previously known climate research funded by oil companies.
In the research proposal for the money – uncovered by Rebecca John, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center, and published by the climate website DeSmog – Keeling’s research director, Samuel Epstein, wrote about a new carbon isotope analysis that could identify “changes in the atmosphere” caused by the burning of coal and petroleum.
Why Exxon Is Suing Its Shareholders
DeSmog
Last month, ExxonMobil sued two of its “activist investors” — groups that try to use shareholder resolutions to pressure companies into taking action on social and environmental problems — in an attempt to block a proposal for the oil giant to limit its climate pollution from coming to a vote at an upcoming shareholder meeting. […]
Instead of allowing the proposal to come to a vote at its annual shareholder meeting in May, Exxon filed a lawsuit accusing the groups of being fueled by an “extreme agenda” that is “calculated to diminish the company’s existing business.” […]
“What Exxon is asking for in this case is to say that shareholders should have no right to question companies on climate-related issues,” said Danielle Fugere, president and chief counsel of As You Sow, another shareholder advocacy group.
Everything You Need to Know About Greenwashing
Vice News
[…] According to Janet Wesselius, a professor of philosophy of science and environmental theory at the University of Alberta, greenwashing is “marketing or advertising [that] describes a product or a practice as fundamentally and particularly good for the environment, when in fact, in the most egregious cases, it’s not good for the environment at all.” […]
The term was coined in 1986 by ecologist Jay Westerveld… [His] interest in greenwashing was piqued by materials in hotel rooms that encouraged guests to be mindful of their towel usage. It’s a common move … passing the buck of environmental responsibility on to the consumer. […]
“Companies—not just companies but governments, too—prey on the consumer’s lack of knowledge and take advantage of relaxed regulations around what they can legally claim to be true,” [Ziya Tong, a science journalist and board member for the World Wildlife Foundation] says, pointing out that the vast majority of greenwashing relies on “information gaps” to both trick the public into feeling good and give companies a pass about whatever not-actually-green action they’re taking.
Amazon’s Climate Pledge Was a Lie
Jacobin
Jeff Bezos pledged four years ago that Amazon would lead the way on carbon reduction. Since then, the firm’s emissions have risen by 40 percent — and its use of creative accounting suggests that the real figure is far higher.
In July, as the world recorded its hottest month on record, Amazon released its sustainability report. To great fanfare, the company celebrated its first decrease in total emissions since reporting began in 2018. The decline was a mere 0.4 percent to 71.3 million metric tons. At that rate, it would take Amazon until 2378 to reach its stated 2040 target of net-zero emissions. […]
Amazon uses a creative form of accounting to massively understate its carbon footprint. In its carbon methodology, Amazon acknowledges that it only includes “Amazon-branded product manufacturing, such as Echo devices, Kindles e-readers, Amazon Basics, Whole Foods Market brands, and other Amazon Private Brands products.” But this is just the tip of Amazon’s carbon iceberg: a mere 1 percent of total sales.
Wildfires in Chile leave at least 122 dead and hundreds more missing
Salon
From the coast to its central provinces, more than 120 people are dead and many others are missing due to a rash of wildfires raging throughout Chile. The beleaguered South American country appears to have suffered a death toll of at 122 at the time of this writing, with thousands more left homeless. The wildfires have been particularly brutal to the residents of Viña del Mar, where the flames are burning with the highest intensity. Viña del Mar was once home to a famous botanical garden since 1931— now it has been incinerated. Other nearby cities like Quilpué and Villa Alemana have reportedly been evacuated to prevent looting.
The wildfires occurred against a backdrop of unprecedented heat waves in Chile. These record high temperatures have combined with the effects of the El Niño weather pattern to cause severe droughts, which in turn make wildfires more likely.
The current unprecedented heat is driven by burning fossil fuels and climate change, but it's harder to directly attribute fires to climate change. As Salon previously reported, it is difficult to answer that question — but not impossible.
How climate change is fuelling wildfires like Chile’s
Canada’s National Observer
Scores of people have been killed by wildfires in central Chile, leading its president to declare two days of national mourning. The devastation comes soon after Colombia declared a disaster over wildfires. Scientists say climate change makes the heat waves and drought now hitting South America more likely — and both contribute to wildfires by drying out the plants that feed the blazes.
The fires in Chile came amid a heat wave that pushed temperatures in the capital city of Santiago to about 37 C (nearly 100 F). Extreme heat bakes moisture from wood, turning it into ideal fuel. Fires take hold more rapidly and also burn with more intensity. Just a few extra degrees can be a tipping point that makes the difference between a mild fire season and a severe one.
Edward Mitchard, a forests expert at the University of Edinburgh School of Geosciences in Scotland, said climate change “makes the world hotter, which means that plants evaporate more water through them and soils get drier.”
Insurers race to study wildfires as losses mount
E&E News
A small engineering team at a cavernous lab in South Carolina spends its days setting buildings, fences and bushes on fire — and studying what happens next.
The research is for the U.S. insurance industry, which has suffered historic losses over the last decade in blazes that have leveled entire communities.
The industry in response has tapped the scientists to investigate how wildfires spread through urban areas, a field of study that has taken on greater importance as climate change fuels bigger and more destructive wildfires.
New finding: Lack of humidity, not rainfall, is bigger problem for trees
Oregon Capital Chronicle
From “Firmageddon” to Western red cedars, drought has been implicated in the death of multiple tree species across the Northwest. Yet, how exactly drought is stressing and killing the region’s trees has remained something of a scientific mystery. But that is changing.
A recent study out of Oregon State University provides new light on drought’s ability to kill trees. It does this by, in effect, unpacking what we mean when we talk about drought.
The study, published in the journal Agriculture and Forestry, examines how Douglas fir trees responded to two very different elements of drought that are known to slow tree growth and lead to tree death: lack of rainfall and low moisture levels in the air.
Surprisingly, the study found that atmospheric aridity, that is dry air, was far more detrimental to the health of Douglas firs than a lack of rainfall.
Trees struggle to ‘breathe’ and sequester CO2 as planet warms
Engineering and Technology
Trees are struggling to sequester carbon in warmer, drier climates – meaning they may no longer serve as carbon sinks, according to a new study. […]
New research from Penn State University has found that trees are increasingly struggling to sequester carbon as the planet heats up.
“We found that trees in warmer, drier climates are essentially coughing instead of breathing,” said Professor Max Lloyd, lead author of the study. “They are sending CO2 right back into the atmosphere far more than trees in cooler, wetter conditions.”
Trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, allowing them to produce new growth. However, under these “stressful” conditions, they release CO2 back to the atmosphere in a process called photorespiration.
Climate change will bring megafloods to California
BBC News
Climate change is making it a matter of time before a megaflood hits the state.
The Santa Barbara police car blocked access to the bridge, lights flashing as the thundering, swollen brown river rampaged below. The water was running so high in this Southern California county that it gushed through the railings of the bridge, and poured out onto the road.
This region is familiar with water scarcity – usually battling extreme heatwaves, wildfires, and drought. Now, Southern California is confronting an overabundance of water, in the form of torrential rain and life-threatening floods.
Earlier this week, around half a year's worth of rain was predicted to fall in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas in just one day.
Seabed trawling found to be a major source of global CO2 emissions
New Scientist
Bottom trawling releases around 340 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, according to the first study to estimate these emissions. That is nearly 1 per cent of all global CO2 emissions, a major contribution that has been overlooked until now.
Trawling involves dragging weighted nets across the seafloor to catch bottom-dwelling fish, crustaceans and shellfish. This practice is widely used around the world, but it is controversial because the fishing gear damages seafloor environments such as cold water reefs, where some corals may be thousands of years old.
“Bottom trawling is an extremely destructive form of fishing as the nets and weights dragged along the bottom destroy marine habitats that can take many years to re-establish and recover,” says Mika Peck at the University of Sussex, UK, who wasn’t involved in the research.
Currently stable parts of East Antarctica may be closer to melting than anyone realized
Stanford University
In a warming climate, meltwater from Antarctica is expected to contribute significantly to rising seas. For the most part, though, research has been focused on West Antarctica, in places like the Thwaites Glacier, which has seen significant melt in recent decades.
In a paper published Jan. 19 in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers at Stanford have shown that the Wilkes Subglacial Basin in East Antarctica, which holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by more than 10 feet, could be closer to runaway melting than anyone realized.
“There hasn’t been much analysis in this region – there’s huge volume of ice there, but it has been relatively stable,” said Eliza Dawson, a PhD student in geophysics at Stanford and first author on the paper. “We’re looking at the temperature at the base of the ice sheet for the first time and how close it is to potentially melting.”
As glaciers melt, potential salmon habitat collides with outdated mining laws
High Country News
As human-caused climate change points a giant hair dryer at Western North America’s glaciers, melting them ever more rapidly, potential Pacific salmon habitat is opening up. New river systems are starting to flow, and rain and snowmelt will keep many running even after the ice disappears. In some, salmon are appearing for the first time.
But mining companies are homing in, too. According to peer-reviewed research published in Science last November, there’s substantial overlap between potential future salmon habitat and new mining claims in Southeast Alaska and in western British Columbia, where many Pacific salmon spawn. But there is hope: The establishment of Indigenous protected areas in British Columbia could protect at least some of these new waterways, and their fish, for future generations.
“The science is very clear,” said Naxginkw Tara Marsden (Gitanyow Huwilp), who co-authored the study. Marsden is the Wilp Sustainability director for the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs, whose unceded traditional territory lies in what today is British Columbia. “There are both risks and potential short-term benefits with salmon finding new habitats and adapting, and we need to do what we can to ensure that those areas are protected.”
US court bans three weedkillers and finds EPA broke law in approval process
The Guardian
Dealing a blow to three of the world’s biggest agrochemical companies, a US court this week banned three weedkillers widely used in American agriculture, finding that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) broke the law in allowing them to be on the market.
The ruling is specific to three dicamba-based weedkillers manufactured by Bayer, BASF and Syngenta, which have been blamed for millions of acres of crop damage and harm to endangered species and natural areas across the midwest and south.
This is the second time a federal court has banned these weedkillers since they were introduced for the 2017 growing season. In 2020, the ninth circuit court of appeals issued its own ban, but months later the Trump administration reapproved the weedkilling products, just one week before the presidential election at a press conference in the swing state of Georgia.
The number of monarch butterflies at their Mexico wintering sites has plummeted this year
AP News
The number of monarch butterflies at their wintering areas in Mexico dropped by 59% this year to the second lowest level since record keeping began, experts said Wednesday, blaming heat, drought and loss of habitat.
The butterflies’ migration from Canada and the United States to Mexico and back again is considered a marvel of nature. No single butterfly lives to complete the entire journey.
The annual butterfly count doesn’t calculate the individual number of butterflies, but rather the number of acres they cover when they clump together on tree branches in the mountain pine and fir forests west of Mexico City. Monarchs from east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada overwinter there.
Hurricanes are getting so intense, scientists propose a Category 6
The Washington Post
When meteorologists began using the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale to measure hurricane intensity in the 1970s, a Category 5 storm represented oblivion. Such a cyclone, with sustained winds of at least 157 mph, could flatten any structure of the era, so there was no reason to give the most ferocious tier of hurricanes an upper bound.
But as the planet warms, storms are increasingly surpassing what was once considered extreme, according to research published Monday. Now, two scientists are proposing a new label they say a growing number of storms already merit: Category 6.
“Climate change has demonstrably made the strongest storms stronger,” said Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “Introduction of this hypothetical Category 6 would raise awareness of that.”
Cryptocurrency Companies Must Now Report Their Energy Use to the Government
Inside Climate News
The Biden administration is now requiring some cryptocurrency producers to report their energy use following rising concerns that the growing industry could pose a threat to the nation’s electricity grids and exacerbate climate change.
The Energy Information Administration announced last week that it would start collecting energy use data from more than 130 “identified commercial cryptocurrency miners” operating in the U.S. The survey, which started this week, aims to get a sense of how the industry’s energy demand is evolving and where in the country cryptocurrency operations are growing fastest.
“As cryptocurrency mining has increased in the United States, concerns have grown about the energy-intensive nature of the business and its effects on the U.S. electric power industry,” the EIA said in a new report, following the announcement. […]
The new EIA report found that the world’s crypto miners used as much electricity in 2023 as the entire country of Australia, accounting for up to 1 percent of global electricity demand. In the U.S., the report said, just 137 mining facilities were responsible for up to 2.3 percent of the nation’s total electricity demand last year—roughly the same demand as the state of West Virginia.
China Is Dominating the World’s New Coal Power Plant Pipeline
BNN Bloomberg
China was home to the vast majority of the world’s new coal power plants last year as it sought to bolster energy security, even as many other governments push to phase out the fuel.
China accounted for 96% of new coal power construction, 81% of newly announced projects, and 68% of generators coming online, according to data released Tuesday by Global Energy Monitor. Beijing has massively expanded its world-leading coal fleet after a series of power shortages in 2021 and 2022.
The World’s Biggest Offshore Wind Developer Had a Horrible 2023, and It’s America’s Fault
Heatmap
The Danish energy developer Orsted delivered a withering verdict on its experiment trying to build wind farms in the United States: Bad. It’s lost a ton of money, the company said Wednesday, so it’s going to do less of that going forward, and take on way less risk.
That Orsted had struggled in the U.S. offshore wind market was no secret — late last year, it cancelled two projects in New Jersey — but its earnings report put some grim figures on it.
The company said that it had 9.6 billion Danish kroner worth of fees (about $1.4 billion) related to one New Jersey project, Ocean Wind 1, and had booked $4 billion of losses, most of which were due to Ocean Wind 1’s cancellation. Overall, it reported a a loss of almost $3 billion in 2023, entirely due to the fees and impairments it reported. Otherwise, the company would have had a more than $2 billion profit.
New air pollution rule could prevent thousands of premature deaths
The Washington Post
The Environmental Protection Agency is strengthening limits on fine particulate matter, one of the nation’s most widespread deadly air pollutants, prompting praise from public health experts and backlash from business groups.
The stricter standards could prevent thousands of premature deaths, particularly in communities of color where people have breathed unhealthy air for decades. While business groups don’t dispute these enormous health benefits, they argue that the standards could cause major economic upheaval by erasing manufacturing jobs across the country. [...]
The EPA is lowering the annual soot standard to 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air, down from the standard of 12 micrograms. When fully implemented in 2032, the stricter limit could prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths and 290,000 lost workdays per year, according to the agency.
Michael Mann, a Leading Climate Scientist, Wins His Defamation Suit
The New York Times
The climate scientist Michael Mann on Thursday won his defamation lawsuit against Rand Simberg, a former adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Mark Steyn, a contributor to National Review. […]
The six-member jury announced its unanimous verdict after a four-week trial in District of Columbia Superior Court and one full day of deliberation. They found both Mr. Simberg and Mr. Steyn guilty of defaming Dr. Mann with multiple false statements and awarded the scientist $1 in compensatory damages from each writer.
The jury also found the writers had made their statements with “maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm,” and levied punitive damages of $1,000 against Mr. Simberg and $1 million against Mr. Steyn in order to deter others from doing the same.