Daily Archives: 18 January 2024

Global Cooperation Key to Preventing ‘Runaway’ Climate and AI Chaos: UN Chief

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres speaks at the U.N. headquarters on February 22, 2023.  (Photo: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

“Geopolitical divides are preventing us from coming together around global solutions for global challenges,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned that multilateralism that includes often overlooked governments in the Global South is the only solution to the rapidly developing crises posed by the climate emergency and artificial intelligence—both of which are worsening “the global crisis in trust.”

“In the face of the serious, even existential threats posed by runaway climate chaos,” said Guterres, “and the runaway development of artificial intelligence without guardrails, we seem powerless to act together.”

While “droughts, storms, fires, and floods are pummeling countries and communities,” particularly in nations that have contributed the least planet-heating fossil fuel pollution, Guterres told the political and business elite assembled in Davos, “countries remain hellbent on raising emissions.”

He reserved particular scorn for the United States fossil fuel industry, which—amid the Biden administration’s approval of pollution-causing infrastructure including the Willow oil project and the Mountain Valley Pipeline—deceives the public with false climate solutions, misinformation, and greenwashing campaigns “to kneecap progress and keep the oil and gas flowing indefinitely.”

As suffering intensifies in communities that are most vulnerable to drought, damage from extreme weather, and other climate catastrophes, Guterres said, fossil fuel giants and powerful governments are risking lives to only delay an “inevitable” shift to renewable energy.

“The phaseout of fossil fuels is essential,” said the secretary-general. “No amount of spin or scare tactics will change that. Let’s hope it doesn’t come too late.”

As trust between the Global South and wealthy governments is frayed by fossil fuel-producing countries’ refusal to leave oil, gas, and coal behind, Guterres warned that the separate threat of “unintended consequences” of artificial intelligence evolution also looms—for people in rich economies as well as developing countries.

“This technology has enormous potential for sustainable development,” said the U.N. chief, while noting that “some powerful tech companies are already pursuing profits with a clear disregard for human rights, personal privacy, and social impact.”

Guterres’ comments came days after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a new analysis of AI’s expected impact on the global economy and workers, with nearly 40% of the labor market expected to be “exposed” to AI.

In wealthy countries, about 60% of jobs are projected to be impacted by AI, and about half of those workers are likely to see at least some of their primary tasks being completed by AI tools like ChatGPT or similar technology, “which could lower labor demand, leading to lower wages, and reduced hiring,” according to the IMF. “In the most extreme cases, some of these jobs may disappear.”

The analysis released Sunday noted that the rapidly changing field could worsen inequality within countries, as some higher earners may be able to “harness AI” and leverage its use for increases in their productivity and pay while those who can’t fall behind.

“In most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality, a troubling trend that policymakers must proactively address to prevent the technology from further stoking social tensions,” said the IMF. “It is crucial for countries to establish comprehensive social safety nets and offer retraining programs for vulnerable workers.”

Guterres called on policymakers to work closely with the private sector—currently “in the lead on AI expertise and resources”—to “develop a governance model” for AI that is focused on “monitoring and mitigating future harms.”

A systematic effort is also needed, said the secretary-general, “to increase access to AI so that developing economies can benefit from its enormous potential.”

Along with the IMF and Guterres, global human rights group Amnesty International this week raised alarm about AI and the “urgent but difficult task” of regulating the technology, noting that in addition to changing how people and companies work, AI has the potential to be “used as a means of societal control, mass surveillance, and discrimination.”

Police agencies in several countries have begun using AI for so-called “predictive policing,” attempting to prevent crimes before they’re committed, while officials have also deployed automated systems to detect fraud, determine who can and can’t access healthcare and social assistance, as well as to monitor migrants’ and refugees’ movement.

Amnesty credited the European Union with making headway in regulating AI in 2023, closing out the year by reaching a landmark agreement on the AI Act, which would take steps to protect Europeans from the automation of jobs, the spread of misinformation, and national security threats.

The AI Act, however, has been criticized by rights groups over its failure to ban mass surveillance via live facial recognition tools.

“Others must learn from the E.U. process and ensure there are not loopholes for public and private sector players to circumvent regulatory obligations, and removing any exemptions for AI used within national security or law enforcement is critical to achieving this,” said Amnesty.

In Davos on Wednesday, Guterres expressed hope that policymakers will agree on climate, AI, and other solutions that center human rights in the coming year, including at the U.N.’s Summit of the Future, planned for September.

“These two issues—climate and AI—are exhaustively discussed by governments, by the media, and by leaders here in Davos,” said Guterres. “And yet, we have not yet an effective global strategy to deal with either. And the reason is simple. Geopolitical divides are preventing us from coming together around global solutions for global challenges.”

“The only way to manage this complexity and avoid a slide into chaos,” he said, “is through a reformed, inclusive, networked multilateralism.”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingGlobal Cooperation Key to Preventing ‘Runaway’ Climate and AI Chaos: UN Chief

‘Frightening’: Greenland Losing 33 Million Tons of Ice Per Hour Due to Climate Crisis

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Migratory birds sit on ice floating in the Baffin Bay in the Arctic Ocean near Pituffik, Greenland on July 15, 2022.  (Photo: Kerem Yücel/AFP via Getty Images)

A new study finds the island’s ice sheet is retreating 20% more than previously thought.

New research on the rate at which Greenland’s glaciers are melting shed new light on how the climate emergency is rapidly raising the chance that crucial ocean current systems could soon collapse, as scientists revealed Wednesday that the vast island has lost about 20% more ice than previously understood.

Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory led the study, published in Nature, which showed that Greenland’s ice cap is losing an average of 33 million tons of ice per hour, including from glaciers that are already below sea level.

The researchers analyzed satellite photos showing the end positions of Greenland’s glaciers every month from 1985 to 2022, examining a total of about 235,000 end positions.

Over the 38-year period, Greenland lost about 1,930 square miles of ice—equivalent to one trillion metric tons and roughly the size of Delaware.

An earlier study had estimated that 221 billion metric tons had been lost since 2003, but the researchers added another 43 billion metric tons to that assessment.

Previous research had not quantified the level of ice melt and breakage from the ends of glaciers around the perimeter of Greenland.

“Almost every glacier in Greenland is retreating. And that story is true no matter where you look,” Chad Greene, a glaciologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory who led study, told The New York Times. “This retreat is happening everywhere and all at once.”

Because the glaciers examined in the study are already below sea level, their lost ice would have been replaced by sea water and would not have contributed to sea-level rise.

But as Greene told The Guardian, “It almost certainly has an indirect effect, by allowing glaciers to speed up.”

“These narrow fjords are the bottleneck, so if you start carving away at the edges of the ice, it’s like removing the plug in the drain,” he said.

The previously unaccounted-for ice melt is also an additional source of freshwater that pours into the North Atlantic Ocean, which scientists warn places the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) at risk of collapse.

AMOC carries warm water from the tropics into the North Atlantic, allowing nutrients to rise from the bottom of the ocean and supporting phytoplankton production and the basis of the global food chain.

A collapse of the system would also disrupt weather patterns across the globe, likely leading to drier conditions and threatening food security in Asia, South America, and Africa, and increasing extreme weather events in other parts of the world.

One analysis found the collapse could take place as soon as 2025.

Charlie Angus, a member of the Canadian Parliament representing the New Democratic Party, noted that the study was released as Canada’s government continues to support fossil fuel production and what experts call false solutions to the planetary heating crisis—including a $12 billion carbon capture and storage project led by tar sands oil companies.

The Environmental Voter Project in the U.S. urged Americans to consider the latest statistics on melting glaciers when choosing the candidates and political parties they will support in 2024.

“Greenland is losing 30 million tons of ice an hour,” said the group. “So vote like it.”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘Frightening’: Greenland Losing 33 Million Tons of Ice Per Hour Due to Climate Crisis

Supreme Court Hears Koch-Backed Cases Designed to Unleash Deregulatory Bonanza

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch attends an event in Hagerstown, Maryland on March 11, 2022.  (Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

The conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in a pair of cases taking direct aim at a critical precedent that, if overturned, would gut federal agencies’ ability to set and enforce regulations—a potentially massive blow to the climate, civil rights, public health, and more.

Central to Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce is the so-called Chevron doctrine, which stems from a 1984 Supreme Court opinion that said judges should defer to federal agencies’ reasonable interpretation of a law if Congress has not specifically addressed the issue.

The precedent has long been a target of the fossil fuel industry and right-wing groups that are backing the plaintiffs in Loper and Relentless, both of which involve herring fishermen who challenged federal rules requiring them to pay for onboard compliance monitors.

Organizations that have received millions of dollars from the oil-soaked Koch network are supporting the effort to overturn the Chevron doctrine. In Loper, the plaintiffs’ lawyers are “working pro bono and belong to a public-interest law firm, Cause of Action, that discloses no donors and reports having no employees,” The New York Timesreported Tuesday.

“However,” the Times added, “court records show that the lawyers work for Americans for Prosperity, a group funded by [Charles] Koch, the chairman of Koch Industries and a champion of anti-regulatory causes.”

Relentless plaintiffs are represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a right-wing group that has received millions from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.

Caroline Ciccone, president of the watchdog group Accountable.US, said in a statement Wednesday that “the special interests who spent big to stack the court may get their way if the Supreme Court weakens the government’s ability to hold industry accountable when they pollute for profit.”

“Everything from the climate to consumer safety could be worse off thanks to this potential decision and the corporate lobbyists who brought us to this point,” Ciccone added.

Earlier this week, Accountable.US urged right-wing Justice Neil Gorsuch—who has criticized the Chevron doctrine—to recuse from Loper, citing his ties to a billionaire oil tycoon who is positioned to benefit from a ruling that scraps the decades-old precedent. Justice Clarence Thomas also faced calls to recuse over his ties to the Koch network.

Neither agreed to step away from the case.

At the start of the Supreme Court’s hearing Wednesday, liberal Justice Elena Kagan expressed concern that gutting Chevron would give judges who lack subject-matter expertise power over policy decisions previously made by agencies staffed with scientists and other experts.

“You think that the court should determine whether a new product is a dietary supplement or a drug, without giving deference to the agency where it is not clear from the text of the statute or from using any traditional methods of statutory interpretation whether in fact the new product is a dietary supplement or a drug?” Kagan asked Roman Martinez, an attorney for the plaintiffs in Relentless. “You want the courts to decide that?”

The U.S. Supreme Court, which includes three justices appointed by former President Donald Trump, has recently shown a willingness to curb federal agencies’ power to enforce key laws. In its 2022 ruling in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the court’s conservative supermajority limited the EPA’s authority to regulate power plants under the 1970 Clean Air Act.

But environmentalists and others warned that a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in Loper and Relentless would strike a far more sweeping and devastating blow.

“The consequences of this case will be serious for fishery management, yes,” said Meredith Moore, director of Ocean Conservancy’s fish conservation program. “But it also puts at risk all of the environmental and social programs that keep our air and water clean, our homes and workplaces safe, and ourselves and our children healthy.”

“If the Supreme Court eradicates Chevron deference, it will overturn 40 years of foundational administrative and environmental law that has provided stable public resource management,” Moore added. “It will allow science-based management and agency expertise to be replaced with the inexpert policy and ideological preferences of unelected judges, potentially resulting in dramatically different interpretations of law across the country.”

Tishan Weerasooriya, senior associate of policy and political affairs at Stand Up America, echoed those concerns, saying in a statement that “if the MAGA justices of the court overturn another decades-old precedent, it will greatly reduce the ability of scientists and experts at government agencies to defend every Americans’ right to clean water and air, worker protections, healthcare, and more.”

“Billionaires and elite corporations have been gunning to overturn this precedent for years, hoping to increase their profits even further if experts and scientists are no longer setting safety standards,” said Weerasooriya. “If the Roberts court overturns Chevron, it will continue to erode our fundamental freedoms and safety in deference to the wealthy and corporations.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingSupreme Court Hears Koch-Backed Cases Designed to Unleash Deregulatory Bonanza

Global heating may breach 1.5°C in 2024 – here’s what that could look like

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Original article by Jack Marley republished from the Conversation under Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives licence.

Sunrise on Lake Michigan, US during a heatwave. August 2023. Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune/TNS/Alamy Stock Photo

It’s official: 2023 was Earth’s hottest year ever recorded, beating the previous record set in 2016 by a huge margin. Last year was also the first in which the world was close to 1.5°C (1.48°C) hotter than the pre-industrial average (1850-1900). We are brushing against the threshold scientists urged us to limit long-term warming to.

Some scientists, including former Nasa climatologist James Hansen, predict 2024 will be humanity’s first year beyond 1.5°C. As what were once dire warnings from climate experts become our shared reality, what can you expect?

The 1.5°C temperature target, enshrined in the 2015 Paris agreement, is not shattered on first contact. Most of the climate tipping points scientists fear could send warming hurtling out of control are not expected until Earth is consistently warmer than 1.5°C. The global average temperature is likely to dip down again once the present El Niño (a warm phase in a natural cycle focused on the equatorial Pacific Ocean) dissipates.

Instead, 2024 could be our first glimpse of Earth at 1.5°C. Here’s what research suggests it will look like for people and nature.

Ecosystems on the brink

Tropical coral reefs are in hot water. These habitats comprise a network of polyp-like animals (related to jellyfish) and colourful algae encased in calcium carbonate. The complex forms they build in shallow water around the Earth’s equator are thought to harbour more species than any other ecosystem.

“Corals have adapted to live in a specific temperature range, so when ocean temperatures are too hot for a prolonged period, corals can bleach – losing the colourful algae that live within their tissue and nourish them via photosynthesis – and may eventually die,” say coral biologists Adele Dixon and Maria Beger (University of Leeds) and physicists Peter Kalmus (Nasa) and Scott F. Heron (James Cook University).

Coral bleaching, once rare, now occurs on an almost annual basis. Damsea/Shutterstock

Climate change has already raised the frequency of these marine heatwaves. In a world made 1.5°C hotter, 99% of reefs will be exposed to intolerable heat too often for them to recover according to Dixon’s research, threatening food and income for roughly one billion people – not to mention biodiversity.

Coral reefs will earn their reputation as the “canaries in the coal mine” for climate change’s impact on the natural world. As global heating ticks up towards 2°C, the devastation already seen on reefs will become evident elsewhere according to an analysis by biodiversity scientist Alex Pigot at UCL:

“We found that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would leave 15% of species at risk of abruptly losing at least one third of their current geographic range. However, this doubles to 30% of species on our present trajectory of 2.5°C of warming.”

Heat beyond human tolerance

Above 1.5°C, humanity risks provoking heatwaves so intense they defy the human body’s capacity to cool itself.

Intense heat and humidity have rarely conspired to create “wetbulb” temperatures of 35°C. This is the point at which the air is too hot and humid for sweating to cool you down – different from the “drybulb” temperature a thermometer reports.

Earth’s rising temperature could soon change that according to climate scientists Tom Matthews (Loughborough University) and Colin Raymond (California Institute of Technology).

“Modelling studies had already indicated that wetbulb temperatures could regularly cross 35°C if the world sails past the 2°C warming limit … with The Persian Gulf, South Asia and North China Plain on the frontline of deadly humid heat,” they say.

A relief camp for heat stroke in Hyderabad, Pakistan, May 2023. Owais Aslam Ali/Pakistan Press International (PPI)/Alamy Stock Photo

But different areas of the the world are warming at different rates. In a world that is 1.5°C hotter on average, temperatures in your local area may have actually risen by more than that.

To account for this, Matthews and Raymond studied records from individual weather stations worldwide and found that many sites were closing in much more rapidly on the lethal heat and humidity threshold.

“The frequency of punishing wetbulb temperatures (above 31°C, for example) has more than doubled worldwide since 1979, and in some of the hottest and most humid places on Earth, like the coastal United Arab Emirates, wetbulb temperatures have already flickered past 35°C,” they say.

“The climate envelope is pushing into territory where our physiology cannot follow.”

How long do we have?

Species extinctions and deadly heat become more likely after 1.5°C. So do catastrophic storms and collapsing ice sheets.

For a chance to avoid these horrors, we must eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions heating Earth and that means rapidly phasing out coal, oil and gas, which account for 80% of energy use worldwide.

Will carbon emissions from fossil fuels keep growing in 2024? TTstudio/Shutterstock

How fast? According to the latest estimate, published in October, very fast indeed.

“If humanity wants to have a 50-50 chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, we can only emit another 250 gigatonnes (billion metric tonnes) of CO₂,” say climate and atmospheric scientists Chris Smith at the University of Leeds and Robin Lamboll at Imperial College London.

“This effectively gives the world just six years to get to net zero.”

Original article by Jack Marley republished from the Conversation under Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives licence.

Continue ReadingGlobal heating may breach 1.5°C in 2024 – here’s what that could look like

Extreme UK flood levels are happening much more often than they used to, analysis shows

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Original article by Louise Slater and Jamie Hannaford republished from the Conversation under Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives licence.

Flooding on the River Ouse, near York. January 4 2024. EPA-EFE/Adam Vaughan

Heavy rain across southern Britain meant that most rivers in England swelled at the beginning of 2024, prompting widespread flooding.

The River Trent was among the most severely affected. Water levels at the Drakelow gauging station in the west Midlands reached 3.88 metres on January 4 – well above the previous record set less than four years earlier in February 2020.

Are floods growing larger and happening more often in the UK? There are two ways to answer this question. One is to consult computer models which project Earth’s climate in the future, and the other is to search the historical record.

Climate projections are important but highly uncertain as they indicate a wide range of potential futures for any given river. Projections also only tell part of the story as they do not reflect the patterns of water use, changes to groundwater levels or to the urban environment that can decide flooding on a particular river.

That’s why we give equal importance to historical data, although we cannot project past changes directly into the future. Historical archives of river monitoring data can help us understand how the largest floods are changing on the River Trent.

For instance, how is the 50-year water level (the highest point a river would be expected to reach in 50 years on average) changing? On the River Trent at Drakelow, the 50-year water level has risen from about 3.46 metres in 1959 to 3.83 metres in 2024. This means the largest floods are indeed getting bigger.

How the January 2024 floods compare

The flood water level on the Trent at the start of January 2024 was actually higher than what scientists would consider a once-in-50-year event in today’s warmer climate.

The 50-year water level on the River Trent has risen in 65 years. Grey circles indicate the highest water level in each year. L. Slater

Another way to understand how much floods have changed is to consider how often they happen today compared with the past. If we look at the 50-year level from 1959 (about 3.46 metres), how often would such a flood occur in today’s climate?

On the Trent, a 3.46-metre flood level would now be expected to occur every 9.38 years, on average, in 2024. This makes sense, considering there have already been six events in which the river level exceeded 3.5 metres since the 1980s. The historical data shows that extreme water levels are being reached more frequently on the Trent.

The 50-year flood level from 1959 (3.5 metres) now recurs every nine years in 2024. L. Slater

Our analysis of the Trent aligns with results from a previous study which looked at rivers across the rest of the UK. In many places, 50-year floods are now happening less than every ten years, on average.

This is partly due to climate change and also partly due to natural variations in the climate which see rivers cycle through spells of more and less flooding. The UK went through a “flood-poor” period in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and has been going through a “flood-rich” period since then.

Prepare for worse

It is worth noting that there are caveats to this type of analysis which tries to assess how extreme events are changing over time. Caution must be exercised when looking at long records of river levels given changes in river management practices and measurement techniques over time.

It should also be noted that these results use a different methodology to the industry standard for flood estimation.

But what matters is not the precise changes in the frequency of major floods (from 50 years down to nine or even two-and-a-half years, according to some statistical methods). It is understanding that the frequency of large floods is changing fast.

For many UK rivers with more extensive historical archives of river level measurements, floods appear to be occurring far more frequently than before. In a smaller number of places, they are occurring less frequently.

We need to better understand how flood risk will evolve in response to further human-induced warming. The UK’s efforts to predict and prepare for future floods are supported by the Environment Agency’s flood hydrology roadmap, which is mobilising a wide community of researchers and practitioners.

Overall, the UK must prepare to live with bigger floods and be able to predict flood-rich periods several years ahead. This starts with an understanding of how the severity and frequency of such events is changing.

To support this effort, we are preparing a range of tools to guide flood planners, including an interactive map allowing users to explore how flood return periods are changing across the UK. Being better prepared for extreme events in a warming climate starts with understanding what it will mean for your local area.

Original article by Louise Slater and Jamie Hannaford republished from the Conversation under Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives licence.

Continue ReadingExtreme UK flood levels are happening much more often than they used to, analysis shows