The climate crisis roundups I found for this weeks roundup:
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Earth’s tipping points could be closer than we think. Our current plans won’t work
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The climate crisis is a health crisis
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Lesser-known symptoms of climate crisis seen in Poconos. How to reverse them.
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‘We’re going after creatives that greenwash fossil fuels’: the group targeting ad agencies
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Forget plans to lower emissions by 2050 – this is deadly procrastination
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The climate crisis can't be stopped, we must adapt
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Let’s manage climate risks, not disasters
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Climate activists are being killed for trying to save our planet. There is a way to help
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Rain fell on Greenland’s ice sheet for the first time ever known. Alarms should ring
This Is An Open Thread
Earth’s tipping points could be closer than we think. Our current plans won’t work
If there’s one thing we know about climate breakdown, it’s that it will not be linear, smooth or gradual. Just as one continental plate might push beneath another in sudden fits and starts, causing periodic earthquakes and tsunamis, our atmospheric systems will absorb the stress for a while, then suddenly shift. Yet, everywhere, the programmes designed to avert it are linear, smooth and gradual.
Current plans to avoid catastrophe would work in a simple system like a washbasin, in which you can close the tap until the inflow is less than the outflow. But they are less likely to work in complex systems, such as the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere. Complex systems seek equilibrium. When they are pushed too far out of one equilibrium state, they can flip suddenly into another. A common property of complex systems is that it’s much easier to push them past a tipping point than to push them back. Once a transition has happened, it cannot realistically be reversed.
The climate crisis is a health crisis
The U.S. House recently passed infrastructure legislation along with a budget resolution that could be its “strongest-ever climate bill,” with essential provisions like the Clean Electricity Payment Program (CEPP) that can realistically get us to 80 percent clean energy by 2030.
But more to the point, if key plans to revolutionize our energy, transportation and agricultural sectors and dramatically reduce carbon emissions are included in the final budget reconciliation package, Congress will pass more than climate and infrastructure bills — they will protect American families with bold and crucial health bills.
The deadly heat of this oppressive summer alone has made it clear — the climate crisis is a health crisis. Dire forecasts from the latest International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report point to even greater increases in heat and humidity. If we don’t aggressively curtail our use of dirty fossil fuels, the world will continue to get hotter, faster — with more extremely hot days that will last for longer stretches of time.
Lesser-known symptoms of climate crisis seen in Poconos. How to reverse them.
The remnants of Hurricane Ida hit us hard last week, depositing torrential, flood-inducing rains across a huge swath of the eastern United States. Here in Pennsylvania, torrential downpours, dangerous flash flooding, and tornadoes destroyed homes and vehicles, disrupted and contaminated water supplies, devastated communities, and resulted in tragic and avoidable deaths. Unfortunately, Ida is just the latest and most extreme manifestation of climate change we’ve experienced in the Keystone State this summer.
On Aug. 12, heat and humidity levels across Pennsylvania posed so grave a threat to public health that Governor Wolf sent an official warning to everyone in our state. Dangerous heat and humidity like we saw earlier this month used to happen once every few years, but now we’re seeing it multiple times every summer. The day after Gov. Wolf sent his excessive heat warning, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared that July was the hottest month yet recorded on this planet.
‘We’re going after creatives that greenwash fossil fuels’: the group targeting ad agencies
Jamie Henn, a co-founder of the climate group 350.org, had for a long time noticed a gap in climate advocacy that many had overlooked: while the fossil fuel industry pours money into ad campaigns, much of the climate movement simply doesn’t have the resources to do that work.
Inspired to change that, Henn launched Fossil Free Media to give public relations and communications support to grassroots groups taking on the fossil fuel industry and campaigning for climate justice.
Fossil Free Media is also trying to change the wider PR and advertising industry through its Clean Creatives campaign, pressuring agencies to break their ties with the fossil fuel industry.
Forget plans to lower emissions by 2050 – this is deadly procrastination
The world has by and large adopted “net zero by 2050” as its de facto climate goal, but two fatal flaws hide in plain sight within those 16 characters. One is “net zero.” The other is “by 2050”.
These two flaws provide cover for big oil and politicians who wish to preserve the status quo. Together they comprise a deadly prescription for inaction and catastrophically high levels of irreversible climate and ecological breakdown.
First, consider “by 2050”. This deadline feels comfortably far away, encouraging further climate procrastination. Who feels urgency over a deadline in 2050? This is convenient for the world’s elected leaders, who typically have term limits of between three and five years, less so for anyone who needs a livable planet.
The climate crisis can't be stopped, we must adapt
The extent of destruction and death wrought by Germany's recent floods is slowly becoming apparent. Dozens of people have died, with many still reported missing. The disaster has devastated entire towns, washing away residential houses, cars and trees.
Natural disasters are nothing new. They occurred long before the advent of the industrial age, when humans began burning fossil fuels on a large scale.
Over time, however, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have doubled, raising Earth's temperature by 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit). A greater frequency and intensity of natural disasters has been the consequence.
As vast swaths of western Germany are dealing with one of the worst floods in years, parts of North America are grappling with scorching hot temperatures that have left scores dead and sparked forest fires that have proven very difficult to contain. The Northern Hemisphere, in short, is facing a climate crisis
Let’s manage climate risks, not disasters
Canada’s collective efforts to transition to net-zero carbon emissions are critically important. At the same time, we must double down on adapting to the extreme weather effects of climate change we are experiencing right now. Globally, the last decade was hotter than any period in the past 125,000 years, and Canada is heating at twice the global average. Preliminary data suggest that extreme heat at the end of June caused 70 per cent of sudden and unexpected deaths in B.C. We need to outsmart extreme weather, rather than chasing it – management by disaster is not a strategy.
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report provides indisputable evidence that climate change is real, human-induced and effectively irreversible. Supported by a solid business case, Canada has a unique opportunity to lead on accelerating adaptation at home and on the world stage at COP26, the coming UN Climate Change Summit in Glasgow this November. Now we need immediate and aggressive deployment of adaptation measures to limit the effects of otherwise unrelenting extreme weather.
Climate activists are being killed for trying to save our planet. There is a way to help
Each year, we learn more about the climate crisis. The data flows: ever-rising heat, unprecedented deforestation, record rainfall. And once a year, we also learn more about the human impact of the crisis too, as data is released on the killings of land and environmental activists, the very people highlighting and protesting at the breakdown of our climate. As Global Witness’ annual report reveals, in 2020, that number rose to a record 227 killings worldwide.
Every time, the data hits me like a blow to the face. I’ve spent much of my life as an environmental activist and journalist, and so if I haven’t actually met the people sadly on this list, I’ve met hundreds exactly like them. Strong local people, attached to place and community, seeing their role in defending terrain and ancestral territory. Every person like this around the world is at risk.
Canada’s Trans Mountain Pipeline is ‘genocide against my people.’ Why it’s ‘climate suicide’ for insurance companies
My people are descended from the sea. That is the meaning of our name: Tsleil-Waututh, “people of the inlet.”
Our creation story tells us that we were created from the sediment in the Burrard Inlet in Vancouver, Canada. The inlet is our grandmother, our oldest relative. The lands along this inlet have been my peoples’ home since time immemorial.
At 22 years old, I have spent over half my life fighting alongside my family, for our home and for all of your homes and this land that is slowly eroding along with the climate. The Trans Mountain pipeline has threatened our land and our livelihoods since it was built in 1953, with 84 reported oil spills to date.
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Rain fell on Greenland’s ice sheet for the first time ever known. Alarms should ring
Many people believed he couldn’t do it. Ski across the Greenland ice sheet, a vast, unmapped, high-elevation plateau of ice and snow? Madness.
But Fridtjof Nansen, a young Norwegian, proved them wrong. In 1888, he and his small party went light and fast, unlike two large expeditions a few years before. And unlike the others, Nansen traveled from east to west, giving himself no option of retreat to a safe base. It would be forward or die trying. He did it in seven weeks, man-hauling his supplies and ascending to 8,900ft (2,700 meters) elevation, where summertime temperatures dropped to -49F (-45C).
That was then.
This is now:
Last month, for the first time in recorded history, rain fell on the highest point of the Greenland ice sheet. It hardly made the news. But rain in a place historically defined by bitter cold portends a future that will alter coastlines around the world, and drown entire cities.
The writers in Climate Brief work to keep the Daily Kos community informed and engaged with breaking news about the climate crisis around the world 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.
I will be trying to do this style of the APR every Tuesday, When Georgia is busy it will be the fill in. Thanks for your support.