Using tree rings to extend their scrutiny back many centuries before reliable temperature gauges were available, scientists at the University of Cambridge and Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany have found that 2023 was the hottest summer the northern hemisphere has seen since 246 CE, when Marcus Julius Philippus was Roman emperor. Last summer’s temperatures were also 3.96° Celsius (7.1° Fahrenheit) warmer than the average from the years 1 through 1890, the scientists concluded in a study published Tuesday in Nature.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, and the U.K.’s Met Office, among other climate agencies, have all previously declared 2023 to be the hottest year on record globally. And today, the World Meteorological Organization also reported that last month was the warmest April on record and the 11th consecutive month of record global temperatures. It noted too that northern hemisphere snow cover was the lowest on record for April and sea surface temperatures have been at a record high for the past 13 months.
One co-author of the temperature study, Ulf Büntgen from Cambridge's Department of Geography, said: "When you look at the long sweep of history, you can see just how dramatic recent global warming is. 2023 was an exceptionally hot year, and this trend will continue unless we reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically."
Jan Esper, the study's lead author and a professor of climate geography at Johannes Gutenberg University, told reporters Monday that "It's no surprise—this really, really outstanding 2023—but it was also, step-wise, a continuation of a trend that will continue. Personally I'm not surprised, but I am worried.”
"It's true that the climate is always changing, but the warming in 2023, caused by greenhouse gases, is additionally amplified by El Niño conditions, so we end up with longer and more severe heat waves and extended periods of drought. When you look at the big picture, it shows just how urgent it is that we reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately."
The researchers also found the 2015 Paris Agreement’s aspirational goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels has already been breached in the northern hemisphere. Last week, as I reported, The Guardian published their survey of 380 active IPCC scientists. Just 6% said they think the 1.5°C goal will be met. Nearly 80% said they foresee at least 2.5°C (4.9°F) of warming. And 52% of those under age 50 said they think the temperature will rise 3°C (5.4°F) over pre-industrial times.
From 1900 to the present we have a reliable source of temperatures from standardized gauges at a plethora of sites around the planet. In the 50 years before that, there are instrument records, but they are sparse. Before that, proxies are needed. The best known are annual tree rings—which is how we know the Southwest U.S. megadrought was the harshest in at least 1,200 years—and oxygen isotopes found in ice cores.
John Timmer at Arstechnica writes:
But proxy records are somewhat inexact; depending on the proxy, they may not fully capture extreme changes and may average out year-to-year swings in temperatures. So, it's possible that a few exceptionally hot years occurred in the past, but we have been unable to detect their presence in the proxy records because they were surrounded by relatively cool years.
All of this makes it difficult to say how much of an outlier 2023 was for the planet. Esper, Torbenson, and Büntgen decided to try to find out the best they could, by limiting themselves to areas of the globe where we have the best data. As mentioned above, for the temperature record, that means the Northern Hemisphere, more specifically the region above 30° north—think anything north of Egypt, New Orleans, or the southernmost part of the main Japanese islands. We've also got good proxy records of that area based on tree ring data, which captures a record of summertime temperatures. These include some individually long-lived trees, allowing for a very extensive record.
In reconstructing both instrumented temperatures and proxies, the scientists found that the sparsely documented 1850-1900 period was a bit cooler than previously calculated. So, instead of its being 2°C above the period average, the summer of 2023 was about 2.3°C above it.
Esper lamented the worsening heat and other bad climate impacts: "The longer we wait [to act], the more extensive it will be, and the more difficult it will be to mitigate or even stop that process and reverse it. It's just so obvious: We should do as much as possible, as soon as possible."
—MB
Here’s the study’s abstract:
Including an exceptionally warm Northern Hemisphere (NH) summer1,2, 2023 has been reported as the hottest year on record3-5. Contextualizing recent anthropogenic warming against past natural variability is nontrivial, however, because the sparse 19th century meteorological records tend to be too warm6. Here, we combine observed and reconstructed June-August (JJA) surface air temperatures to show that 2023 was the warmest NH extra-tropical summer over the past 2000 years exceeding the 95% confidence range of natural climate variability by more than half a degree Celsius. Comparison of the 2023 JJA warming against the coldest reconstructed summer in 536 CE reveals a maximum range of pre-Anthropocene-to-2023 temperatures of 3.93°C. Although 2023 is consistent with a greenhouse gases-induced warming trend7 that is amplified by an unfolding El Niño event8, this extreme emphasizes the urgency to implement international agreements for carbon emission reduction.
RESOURCES & ACTION
GREEN BRIEFS
West Virginia (and its co-petitioners) won a crucial Supreme Court case in 2022 against the Environmental Protection Agency. The 6-3 interpretation of the Clean Air Act barred broad emission-cutting plans the EPA had tried to put in place under Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan that was meant to reduce carbon emissions 32% by 2030. The ruling said the EPA can regulate power plant emissions, but cannot shift power generation away from plants burning fossil fuels to cleaner sources, which the Obama Clean Power Plan was designed to do.
Now, West Virginia—specifically Attorney General Patrick Morrisey—is leading a coalition of attorneys general from 25 Republican-controlled states, plus rural cooperatives, and coal advocates seeking to overturn the Biden administration’s new rule designed to reduce pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants. This is the first time the federal government has set limits on carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. It would also lower the plants’ permitted mercury emissions, cut the level of allowable pollution in wastewater, and establish standards for handling coal ash.
Said Morrisey in a statement.“This Green New Deal agenda the Biden administration continues to force onto the people is setting up the plants to fail and therefore shutter, altering the nation’s already stretched grid.” North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley said in a statement, “This rule intentionally sets impossible standards to destroy the coal industry.”
If the EPA were somehow to wangle a favorable decision on the rule from a hostile Supreme Court, it would require the nation’s remaining 217 coal-fired power plants to capture 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions—or shut their doors—by 2039. It would also mandate big pollution cuts for natural gas-fired replacements of those coal plants. The EPA calculated that the rule would prevent emissions of 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon pollution through 2047 and deliver hundreds of billions of dollars in climate and health benefits, which would mean fewer premature deaths, asthma cases, and lost days at work and school. The AGs apparently view those benefits as less worthy than fossil fuel companies’ hankering for profit.
—MB
The Coastal Salish people known as Quinault have lived on the Olympic Peninsula of the Pacific Northwest for countless generations, with Indigenous populations present there for at least 12,000 years. Their first European encounters came with the arrival of Russian fur traders and later Spaniards and Brits. By all accounts, these contacts were violent. In 1855, the Quinault River Treaty ceded land to the United States and a reservation was established. Negotiations were conducted in Chinook Jargon, a 500-word pidgin unsuited for nuance.
Starting in 1887, the Quinault, like many other tribes throughout the United States at the time, were forced by the Dawes Act to accept individual allotments carved from the previously commonly held land. As a consequence, there was “surplus” land left when the allotments were completed, which was given over to non-Native homesteaders. By this means, the tribe lost 32% of its treaty-guaranteed land. Fallout from the allotment policy continues to plague the Quinault and many other tribes.
Sea-level rise is in the process of taking another chunk of Quinault land, this time at Taholah, a settlement in a beautiful sea cove where the tribe has its headquarters. A decade ago, seeing that climate change was going to inundate a portion of the town that is just inches above the sea, tribal officials developed a $60 million plan to relocate the village away from flooding hazard zones and tsunami potential. The work began in 2019, and by May 2021, a senior and children’s center—the Generations Building (WenɑsɡwəllɑʔɑW)¸—was operating. That building includes day care, Head Start, adult education, and services for seniors.
Said tribal council member Ryan Hendricks: “This was our most modern effort to relocate our most vital citizens with all of our next generations. This is a shared building with all of our most valuable resources, our children. And then, all of our most valuable information holders are our elders on the other side (of the building).”
As Mark Trahant and Stewart Huntington at Indian Country Today report:
The easy part of relocation is already done. The nation has constructed what’s needed for a new community. The streets are paved. The sewers are in. And only a couple of things are missing: houses and residents. [...]
There are a lot of questions that still must be answered before any houses are built.
“We have penciled out what a house would cost. And right now we are sitting at somewhere between $350 and $400,000 per house,” Hendricks says. That is a number unaffordable for most tribal members. [...]
For now the bottom line is that the Quinault Nation is not sure where more than $450 million will come from to pay for this relocation.
The authors conclude:
The Quinault Nation is further along in this sort of planning than nearly every community on the planet. When we drove up the coast to get here, we passed through low-elevation towns and even cities that reflect the scale of the problem. And it’s clear that neither the region nor the country are penciling out what has to be done and what it will cost.
—MB
RELATED: FEMA Efforts Advancing Community-Driven Relocation
When Charlie Crist was Florida’s Republican governor from 2007 to 2011, his administration initiated policies to reduce carbon emissions, better the state’s energy efficiency, and boost renewable energy. The measures authorized Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection to develop cap and trade regulations to cut emissions and mandated that the state’s Public Service Commission develop rules for a renewable energy portfolio standard. The state Department of Agriculture and Consumers Services, which oversees the Office of Energy, was mandated to come up with clean energy goals. This was implemented in response to a petition from Our Children’s Trust who called for 100% clean energy in the state by mid-century.
Then, in 2011, Crist left office and became a Democrat as Republican Rick Scott took over as governor. He upended much of Crist’s environmental work, going so far as to notably ban the words “climate change” from state agency communications. But, as Amy Green at Inside Climate News reports, Gov. Ron DeSantis could today sign legislation that finishes off what’s left of those policies:
The measure, approved earlier this spring by the Republican-controlled legislature, would erase several instances of the words “climate change” from the state code and restructure Florida’s fossil fuel-based energy policy around reducing reliance on foreign sources and strengthening the energy infrastructure against “natural and manmade threats.”
The legislation also would nullify goals aimed at enhancing renewable energy use in the state. [...]
This is even more significant than what Rick Scott did,” said Andrea Rodgers, senior litigation attorney at Our Children’s Trust, of the legislation. The group also has filed litigation against the federal government over the country’s fossil fuel-based energy system. “Here the Florida Legislature is enshrining that philosophy into law, which is shocking given Florida’s vulnerability. This is something that all of state government should be addressing head on, and instead they’re burying their heads in the sand and pretending climate change doesn’t exist.”
No doubt, Florida’s fossil-fueled fools in the Republican-controlled legislature will cheer Governor DeSantis’s signing of this legislation (if he does) with references to what GOP talking points label these days as “Biden’s radical green agenda” or the “Democrat (sic) radical green agenda.”
Last year was the hottest in the record globally. Carbon dioxide emissions are still rising. Glaciers and permafrost are melting. Heat waves, wildfires, floods, and droughts are part of the daily news stream. A lengthy roster of lethal climate impacts that scientists have been telling us for decades would result from failure to change our ways are hitting us sooner than anticipated.
The politicians who actually have a radical, extremist agenda on climate change are the ones who pretend erasing the words from our vocabulary and sabotaging mitigating policies will make the crisis vanish. If this were just numbskullery, an expression of pure ignorance, it would be bad enough. But you can bet your paycheck that these lawmakers are well aware of the dire consequences of their extremism. And they just. do. not. care.
—MB
ECO-TWXXT
HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)
Conservation Works — and Science Just Proved It by John R. Platt at The Revelator. According to a study published April 26 in the journal Science, human efforts to help endangered and at-risk species have proven overwhelmingly successful at improving their status. The researchers — 33 authors from universities and conservation groups — examined 186 studies that measured the effectiveness of conservation efforts over time. The meta-study put the results clearly: “In two-thirds of cases, conservation either improved the state of biodiversity or at least slowed declines. Specifically, we find that interventions targeted at species and ecosystems, such as invasive species control, habitat loss reduction and restoration, protected areas, and sustainable management, are highly effective and have large effect sizes.” Interestingly, the study found that more recent conservation projects were the most likely to have gone well. We’ve learned a lot over the past few decades, which means we’re doing better all the time. Toward that point, the paper found that even conservation efforts that don’t work can provide critical information to help future programs, as two of the study authors wrote for The Conversation: “For example, in India, removing an invasive algae simply caused it to spread elsewhere. Conservationists can now try a different strategy that may be more successful.”
RELATED: Global wildlife crime causing ‘untold harm’, UN report finds
Changing How We Farm Might Protect Wild Mammals—and Fight Climate Change by Ruscena Wiederholt at Civil Eats. Nearly a quarter of U.S. mammal species are on the endangered species list. Researchers say farming with biodiversity in mind may help stave off further decline. While industrial farming feeds the multitudes, it is also a main driver of biodiversity loss across the country. More than 18 percent of North American mammals are decreasing in population, and nearly a quarter of the more than 400 mammal species in the U.S. are listed on the endangered species list. In addition to every species’ inherent value, mammals are vital in the natural order. They play critical roles in their ecosystems, sustaining and keeping in check species higher and lower on the food chain. They disperse seeds, pollinate, and transfer nutrients across landscapes, supporting healthy plant populations, and they alter their environments in ways that enhance biodiversity. They even mitigate climate change. The burgeoning human population, however, means agricultural impacts are only set to increase. Agriculture already takes up over half of U.S. land, with cropland expanding by 1 million acres per year, fueling habitat loss for wildlife and mammals. Yet these agricultural areas present a golden opportunity: What if farms could help other species, especially the charismatic, furred variety?
Co-op recognized for increasing solar accessibility for underserved communities: 'Every member has equal decision-making ability' by Alyssa Ochs at The Cooldown. Three solar developments proposed by an environmental justice co-op will make energy costs more affordable for low- and moderate-income households and Black and brown communities just west of Chicago. The co-op, Green Energy Justice Cooperative, is an extension of Blacks in Green, a national network for environmental justice and economic development. The Illinois Power Agency recognized the co-op for its community-driven solar project, prompting GEJC to apply for $12.5 million in renewable energy credits. This solar project stands out because it allows households without ownership or rooftop access to use solar power and save money on energy bills. With the co-op model, residents become co-owners and have a say in how the solar energy is managed and share in profits generated. "I've seen disenfranchised communities that are usually at the receiving end of various programs where you have the imposition of models," said Wasiu Adesope, the project manager at Blacks in Green. "But this model … every member has equal decision-making ability." The passing of the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act in 2021 made GEJC's community-driven solar program possible. The program's goals include hiring BIPOC contractors and getting communities of color involved in a solar training program to facilitate installation.
The Climate Crisis Is Already Transforming the Family by Anna Louie Sussman at The New Republic. The question of whether to have children amid a deepening climate crisis has been fodder for endless essays and op-eds, books and newsletters; the New York Times columnist and podcaster Ezra Klein has said it’s his listeners’ most popular query. Such discussions have tended to focus on a future child’s carbon footprint, or the morality of bringing a child into the world that is set to experience more frequent and more extreme weather events in the future. They often take place in the conditional tense: What would a child’s life be like if the climate crisis worsens? Jade Sasser’s new book, Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question, is one of a number of new books that reframe this debate. Instead of probing questions about consumption or lifestyle, they focus on communities, frequently communities of color, that are already experiencing the effects of climate change, often as just one of multiple overlapping crises that shape ideas about and approaches to parenting. These books examine the relationship between reproduction, gender, and power, and map how social and environmental injustice affects people’s bodies, in ways that are already remaking the very notion of reproductive choice. In paying attention to these often overlooked experiences, they illuminate collective modes of surviving—and of parenting—in the face of environmental and other existential threats.
How fungi could help clean up our biggest toxic messes by Lori Youmshajekian at Environmental Health News. Dig and dump’ — a common way to refer to excavation and disposal — is considered the most conventional and well-established remediation technique for places that contain contaminated soil. It’s simple but expensive: soil is removed and transported to landfill for disposal. While costs vary with the complexity of each site, some estimates predict that soil roughly the volume of an Olympic pool can cost at least $500,000 to remediate in this way, with hauling the primary expense. To put that into context, the City of Los Angeles has budgeted $120 million to clean up Taylor Yard using soil excavation alongside other remediation techniques. Seeking a way to address the root cause of contamination with a more natural and possibly cheaper alternative, several biologists are tapping into fungi’s decomposing abilities for these toxic sites. Enzymes produced by some species of fungi can break down pollutants in soil into less toxic forms or into nutrients in a process known as mycoremediation. Fungi can also latch onto the roots of plants to help the plants absorb heavy metals. Stevenson’s project is one such example of these techniques used in the field, opening the potential for fungi to give new life to the vast areas of unusable, polluted land across the country. But the process is still nascent. Results in lab conditions are impressive, but the logistical and environmental conditions at former industrial sites remain a challenge.
Forgotten Keepers of the Rio Grande Delta: a Native Elder Fights Fossil Fuel Companies in Texas by Dylan Baddour at Inside Climate News. An industrial buildout is erasing the last traces of an ancient world, but the Carrizo/Comecrudo, unrecognized and unknown, continue to resist. Juan Benito Mancias draws his identity from the landscape at the Rio Grande’s end not because he owns it, but because it owns his people, literally. His ancestors lie buried in it, going back millennia. Sadly for Mancias, U.S. law provides him no rights to protect his forebearers’ graves, even as they’re ripped from the ground by machines. The official story says the flourishing cultures of this once-mighty river delta died out, leaving no one to speak for their prime Gulf Coast real estate on the southern tip of Texas. It’s a convenient myth for the developers who see cheap land and labor near the Mexican border as their chance to build Texas’ next great industrial complex, here at the state’s last available deepwater port. But it’s not true. Mancias, now a 70-year-old long-haired great-grandfather, knows secret stories that could never be written, about the last free villages on the Rio Grande’s banks, about the massacres, about his people’s disguises and about their flight, at last, in the 1940s to the Panhandle of Texas, where he grew up picking cotton. He knows about the old river with ancient forests and enormous, teeming marshlands of which only glimpses remain. He knows how much was lost and how quickly it happened.
ECO-QUOTE
“I think that many non-Natives find it hard to understand why Native people are willing to fight so hard to protect their land. In the case of Gwaii Haanas, all you have to do is stand at the ocean’s edge with the cedars at your back and the sky on your shoulders, and you will know.”
―Thomas King, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
ECOPINION
Congressional Ag Chairs Release Dueling Farm Bill Proposals. What Happens Next? by Melissa Kaplan at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Although the House bill framework is relatively brief, it does provide some details about what to expect from their forthcoming bill. Unfortunately, it seems much of it isn’t good news for those of us concerned about racial justice and equity, the people who tend, harvest and serve our food, and protecting our climate. Conservation: The House framework proposes moving conservation funding from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into the food and farm bill. However, the framework does not include the climate guardrails originally included in the IRA, which required that conservation funding in the bill be dedicated to climate-smart agriculture. Instead, funding, which was originally intended to help make farmers more resilient in the face of extreme weather and a greater part of the climate solution, could go to practices with no proven climate benefit [...] The Senate proposal, in contrast, is not only far more detailed than the House version, but it includes many of UCS’s key food and farm bill priorities, particularly around climate, conservation, nutrition, research, equity, and food and farmworker protections.
The Truth Behind the Latest Oil Price-Fixing Scandal by Kate Aronoff at The New Republic. The FTC has accused Scott Sheffield of colluding with OPEC. But this entire industry was built on price fixing in one form or another. Trying to make it competitive misses the point.
Tariffs on China aren’t the way to win the EV arms race – getting serious on EVs is by Jameson Dow at Electrek. President Biden is set to quadruple tariffs on Chinese EVs to protect the US auto industry from the rapid growth of Chinese EV manufacturing. But instead of just de facto banning the competition from giving Americans access to affordable hot new EVs, the US should instead try making affordable hot new EVs itself. The global auto industry is in a time of flux. Cars are changing quickly, as is car manufacturing. The leaders of today, and of the last half-century, are not guaranteed to remain the leaders in the face of new entrants and new technology. And most of all, a new powertrain—electric—that will account for roughly 100% of cars on the road within a couple decades, which no serious person disputes. Further, as one of the most polluting sectors globally and the most polluting in rich countries, it is necessary that transportation clean up its act, and fast, in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change. The sooner this happens, the easier it will be for all of us.
Wars cause widespread pollution and environmental damage—here’s how to address it in peace accords by Richard Marcantonio & Josefina Echavarria Alvarez at The Conversation. We work with a research program at the University of Notre Dame called the Peace Accords Matrix, which monitors the implementation of comprehensive peace accords in 34 countries worldwide. Only 10 of the accords have natural resource management provisions agreements, and these typically have not triggered major steps to protect the environment. [...] Integrating the environment into peace accords isn’t easy. Resources such as energy, clean soil and water are vital for life, which is precisely why military forces may seek to control or destroy them. This is happening in both Ukraine and Gaza. Peace negotiators tend to focus on social, political and economic issues, rather than environmental reparations. But leaving environmental damage unresolved until after a peace accord is signed keeps people who have been displaced and marginalized by conflict in precarious positions. It may even cause fighting to resume. According to the U.N. Environment Program, at least 40% of all wars within states in the past 60 years have had a link to natural resources. In those cases, fighting was twice as likely to resume within five years after conflict ended.
Our Once-Abundant Earth by John Reid at The Atlantic. Our immediate biodiversity crisis isn’t one of species loss; it’s the lost abundance of wild things. The problem has become pervasive and systemic in recent decades because humans have added a new way of subtracting wildlife from our land and waters: pollution. Where once we were limited to hunting and clearing habitat, now we disorient night-traveling birds with light, starve manatees by smothering the sea grass they feed on with sewage and farm runoff, and continue to change the chemical composition of the atmosphere. The impacts cascade through the kelp forests and every other ecosystem on the planet, tipping some wild populations, like those of the 131 species of outrageously costumed harlequin toads, into free fall. Long before they’re entirely gone, these organisms are functionally omitted from their ecosystems and from the human experience. [...] Human colonization of land, rivers, and sea, and use of the sky as storage space for soot, methane, sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, carbon dioxide, and other excess gases, have corresponded, on paper, to a golden age for the naked ape. More than twice as many people exist now than in 1970, and our average income has more than doubled in inflation-adjusted terms. Many experts and policy makers accept the collateral damage as a cost of doing business on this planet. That’s because their economic scorecards count what’s measurably good for human beings. Something that’s good for two people is twice as good as something that’s good for one person. From this point of view, a world drained of wildlife with a lot of people making increasing amounts of money is heading in the right direction. The losses of joy, wonder, and ethical interspecific relations are real, but, in contrast to our material gains, resist measurement.
The world is obsessed with forests’ climate benefits. Here’s the problem by Kate Yoder at Grist. Billions of dollars are flowing into projects to plant and protect trees so that governments and businesses can claim they’ve canceled out their emissions. Saving forests and planting trees are often portrayed as a “triple win” for the environment, economy, and people. According to a major report being presented on Friday at the United Nations Forum on Forests, however, that goal is proving more complicated than expected. The conversation about how to manage forests “has been overtaken by the climate discussion,” said Daniela Kleinschmit, an author of the report and the vice president of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, the network behind the research. The result? Indigenous peoples are getting pushed out of their lands because of carbon offset projects. Native grasslands are getting turned into forests, even though grasslands themselves are huge, overlooked reservoirs of carbon. And offset projects in forests, more often than not, fail to achieve all of the emissions benefits their backers had promised. The new report, the first comprehensive assessment of how the world is governing its forests in 14 years, offers some good news — global deforestation rates have slowed down slightly, from 32 million acres a year in 2010 to 25 million in 2020. But what the report calls the “climatization” of forests has led to the rise of carbon sequestration markets that prioritize short-term profits over long-term sustainability, it found.
OTHER GREEN STUFF
A Drug for Cows Could Curb Methane Emissions from Meat and Dairy • Automakers hedge their bets with plug-in hybrids as EV sales slow • The Great Honeybee Fallacy • Mosquitoes Newly Spreading in Scotland as Temperatures Rise, Scientists Say • Japan is Revising its Law on Ivory Trade—Time to Finally Close the Market • The Rise Of Big Oil’s Zombie Pipelines • DOE proposes ten “national interest” transmission corridors