The first ice-free day in the Arctic could occur more than 10 years earlier than previous projections, the study finds. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Home of polar bears, seals and walruses could be mostly water for months as early as 2035 due to fossil fuel emissions
The Arctic could have summer days with practically no sea ice within the next decade due to emissions from burning fossil fuels, a study has found.
This would transform the unique habitat, home to polar bears, seals and walruses, from a “white Arctic” to a “blue Arctic” during the summer months, scientists said. The calculation used for “ice free” means less than 1m sq km, in which case the Arctic would be mostly water.
The authors said consistently ice-free Septembers could be expected by 2035 to 2067. The exact year within that period is dependent on how quickly the world reduces the amount of fossil fuels burned.
A view of major bleaching on the coral reefs of the Society Islands on May 9, 2019 in Moorea, French Polynesia. (Photo: Alexis Rosenfeld/Getty Images).
“It’s looking like the entirety of the Southern Hemisphere is probably going to bleach this year,” one scientist said.
Driven by sustained climate-fueled oceanic heating, the planet is on the brink of another mass coral bleaching event that marine biologists warn could kill large swaths of tropical reefs including significant areas of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
Scientists are sounding the alarm following months of record ocean temperatures exacerbated by the planetary emergency and the El Niño climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean.
“It’s looking like the entirety of the Southern Hemisphere is probably going to bleach this year,” Derek Manzello of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch told Reuters. “We are literally sitting on the cusp of the worst bleaching event in the history of the planet.”
Accumulated heat stress (the red trajectory) is still rising rapidly throughout the #GreatBarrierReef. The central & northern regions have caught up with the south after a cooler start to summer.
7th mass coral bleaching event since 1998 is well underway, 5th in just 8 years. pic.twitter.com/YZf4cRQeqP
When water is too warm, corals will expel the algae (zooxanthellae) living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white. This is called coral bleaching. When a coral bleaches, it is not dead. Corals can survive a bleaching event, but they are under more stress and are subject to mortality.
In 2005, the U.S. lost half of its coral reefs in the Caribbean in one year due to a massive bleaching event. The warm waters centered around the northern Antilles near the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico expanded southward. Comparison of satellite data from the previous 20 years confirmed that thermal stress from the 2005 event was greater than the previous 20 years combined.
Following the planet’s hottest summer on record last year, the Caribbean suffered its worst recorded bleaching event. The last worldwide bleaching occurred in 2014-17, when scientists say approximately 15% of all reefs experienced major coral deaths. Nearly a third of the Great Barrier Reef’s coral perished during the bleaching.
In the Southern Hemisphere, where summer is ending and ocean temperatures are at or near their annual peaks, there is “basically bleaching all over the place,” according to Manzello.
Matthew England, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia who studies ocean currents, recently told TheNew York Times that “the sea ice around the Antarctic is just not growing” and “the temperature’s just going off the charts.”
“It’s like an omen of the future,” he added.
It’s a similar story in the North Atlantic, which “has been record-breakingly warm for almost a year now,” University of Miami hurricane expert Brian McNoldy told the Times. “It’s just astonishing. Like, it doesn’t seem real.”
A 2018 report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that global heating of 1.5°C is likely to result in the loss of 70-90% the planet’s coral reefs over the coming decades.
Current emissions-based forecasts have Earth on track for at least 1.5°C of warming, which researchers say is likely to trigger five climate tipping points: melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, mass die-off of warm-water coral reefs, thawing of Arctic permafrost, and collapse of the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre circulation.
The European Environment Agency’s long-term forecasts for 2071-2100 predict worldwide oceanic heating of 0.5°C-3.8°C, depending on future greenhouse gas emission scenarios.
Scientists say the best way to avert worst-case outcomes for both coral reefs and the climate is to swiftly transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Reducing land-based pollution and overfishing are also critical to reef preservation.
Meadow and woodlands in Tuolumne County, one of the two rural counties where Golden State Natural Resources proposes to build a wood pellet production facility. Credit: Malcolm Manners(CC BY 2.0 DEED)
Plans by biomass giant Drax to manufacture wood pellets sourced from Californian forests will endanger natural habitats and increase toxic air pollution for rural communities, campaigners warn.
The British energy company has partnered with Golden State Natural Resources, a government-linked nonprofit which plans to build two industrial plants in rural California counties that would produce one million tonnes of compressed wood fiber pellets a year.
One plant would be in Tuolumne County in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the other in Lassen County in the state’s far northeast. From there, pellets would be shipped by rail to the city of Stockton, exported internationally, and burnt as biomass fuel to create electricity.
At its board meeting last Wednesday, Golden State Natural Resources ratified a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Drax.
The agreement comes as a BBC investigation revealed that Drax was burning rare forest wood in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
BBC Panorama found that in 2023 the company took more than 40,000 tonnes of wood from so-called “old-growth” forests in B.C. Following the investigation, the company issued a statement expressing confidence that its “biomass is sustainable and legally harvested.”
Drax already operates 18 wood pellet plants across the U.S. and Canada, but the MOU finalized on February 28 is the most concrete indication yet of Drax’s ambition to expand into California, a state with 33 million acres of forest.
The wood pellets Drax produces are treated as “carbon neutral” under international accounting rules, based on an assumption that new-growth trees will capture the carbon lost by wood burnt for electricity. But scientists and campaigners have long disputed these claims.
A 2021 study from the European Academies Science Advisory Council concluded that burning wood for energy “is not effective in mitigating climate change and may even increase the risk of dangerous climate change.” A power station operated by Drax in the UK generates 8 percent of the UK’s “renewable” electricity, but is also the single largest emitter of carbon dioxide.
Golden State Natural Resources claims its forest management techniques reduce the risk of wildfires — a claim which has also been disputed by campaigners — and that it maintains “stringent guardrails” to ensure the sourcing of materials for pellets is sustainable. Drax also says its pellets are made from “sustainable biomass” generated from low-grade roundwood, sawmill residues, and forest residues — although several investigations have found instances of the company using primary forest materials.
The plan calls for sourcing wood from areas that encompass eight National Forests, and activists in California have raised concerns that the production of this “renewable” power could endanger vital biodiversity in the forests, home to California’s endangered gray wolves. They are also concerned that the facilities could harm local communities, some of which face high health burdens.
A January 2024 study by the journal Renewable Energy found that thousands of tons of toxic air pollutants, from nitrogen oxide to volatile organic compounds, are emitted in the pellet-making process, especially in the southeastern United States where most pellet plants are located.
Rita Frost, a forests advocate from environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said the project would “diminish our forests’ ability to contribute to the fight against climate change, increase carbon emissions during a critical juncture when we must be reducing them instead, and compound health harms in vulnerable communities.”
‘Trojan Horse’
Golden State Natural Resources is a nonprofit co-founded by a state agency and a service organization that represents California’s rural counties. A document on the group’s website describes its purpose as “to build wildfire and forest resilience in the state and spur economic opportunities in rural communities.”
The MOU between Drax and the Californian nonprofit echoes those goals, stating that the companies should “work collaboratively and in good faith” to identify “potential sustainable vegetation management projects on forest land that meet the dual goals of promoting forest resilience and producing sustainable biomass fuel.”
GSNR says its proposed project would source pellet materials from a mixture of native forests undisturbed by human activity, and forests that have been subjected to logging cycles but allowed to regenerate, as well as privately managed timberland.
On its “Frequently Asked Questions” page, GSNR claims that its removal of accumulated fuel will help California’s forests burn “with less frequency and less intensity over the long term.”
A quarter of California — more than 25 million acres — is classified as under very high or extreme fire threat, with over 25 percent of the state’s population living in these high fire-risk areas. The counties where GSNR plans to cite its facilities have small populations but are no strangers to fire; the second-largest fire in state history, which covered nearly one million acres, burned partially in Lassen County.
But the practice of removing trees or thinning forests to reduce fire danger is controversial, and some experts say it can actually increase the severity of fires.
Michelle Connolly, an ecologist and director of Conservation North, says GSNR is justifying its activity by using “scientific-sounding language to make it seem like they know what they’re doing.”
“Logging and road building in any kind of primary forests is associated with increasing fire risk,” she said.
“Fire is the latest Trojan Horse for industry to get into natural forests they otherwise might not get to violate. Pellets originating from primary forest are not sustainable in any way, shape or form.”
Megan Fiske, a wildlife biologist at the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center and a Tuolumne County resident, also has concerns over the impact of the clearance on forest health and natural habitats.
Each facility would source wood from a 100-mile radius, an area that includes eight National Forests and a major biodiversity hotspot. Dozens of endangered or threatened species take refuge in these zones — including California’s fledgling population of gray wolves, which were threatened with extinction and have only recently returned to the state.
“We need to restore the forest ecosystem and its natural processes,” Fiske told DeSmog.
“Removing the nutrients and other benefits imparted by ‘biomass’ does not restore the forest ecosystem or its natural processes, which provide tremendous ecosystem services.”
Environmental Pollution
The number of industrial wood pellet mills has risen rapidly in the U.S. and Canada to meet a rising demand for biomass-fuelled energy in Europe and Asia.
The two production plants planned for California are located in former timber industrial areas in rural counties, where drought and other extreme weather events associated with rising temperatures from climate change compound existing health inequalities.
Tuolumne County, which is home to part of Yosemite National Park, has a higher-than-average pollution burden, high rates of asthma and cardiovascular disease, and a high poverty rate, according to data in CalEnviroScreen 4.0 Indicator Maps.
Residents in Lassen have similar health outcomes to the state average, but on average die earlier than their neighbors.
The mapping tool CalEnviroScreen shows that the communities living around the port of Stockton, where the pellets will be shipped from, are some of the most disadvantaged in the state, based on factors including poor air quality, low income, and poor health indicators.
Though subject to environmental regulations, the production of pellets can release vast amounts of sawdust and other harmful particulates that impact air quality.
In May 2023, The Guardian reported a U.S. plant supplying wood pellets to Drax had violated air pollution limits in Mississippi. A September 2022 investigation by Unearthed found Drax was driving “environmental racism” after air pollution claims in the southeastern United States. Drax paid out $3.2 million to settle.
“These are not the kinds of jobs that our rural communities deserve. They are low wage positions and extremely dangerous working conditions.” – Nick Joslin
Nick Joslin, forest and watershed watch program manager at the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center, resides in Siskiyou County, an area where wood would be sourced and then transported by truck to the pellet mill in the Lassen County town of Nubieber.
“Siting a facility of this size in a small town is completely irresponsible,” he said.
“There are no services and no housing. Where would any newly employed people live? Where would they receive basic services or send their kids to school? The facility would run 24 hours a day with noise, lighting, dust, and noxious fumes.”
Golden State Natural Resources has also said the project will create 128 full-time jobs once both sites are operational, but Joslin is skeptical that these will provide the economic opportunities the county needs.
“These are not the kinds of jobs that our rural communities deserve. They are low wage positions and extremely dangerous working conditions,” Joslin added.
Fiske, of Tuolumne County, says the counties of the Sierra Nevada once exploited by the gold, timber, and water industries are now being hit by the latest cycle of commercial-scale resource extraction.
“We must keep the rivers clean and healthy, we must keep the forests from emitting too much wildfire smoke. All while the logging trucks and water trucks deteriorate our local roads and slow and impede traffic. All while employees are imported from elsewhere to take the temporary, barely living wage jobs.”
‘False Solutions’
As a “renewable” energy provider, Drax has benefited from billions of pounds in subsidies from the UK government. The thinktank Ember has estimated it will have collected more than £11 billion between 2012 and 2027, when the support runs out.
The company is now looking to gain an estimated £31.7 billion in additional subsidies for the controversial technology of bioenergy, carbon capture and storage (BECCS) — where emissions from burning organic matter are captured and buried underground.
Advocates promote this as a “carbon negative” climate solution, but experts and campaigners have argued that BECCS is technically unproven, and that the practice poses risks for biodiversity, land, and food security.
The UK government this year approved two new carbon capture units at Drax’s Yorkshire power station, while Drax is looking to roll out the technology to other countries — among them the U.S.
DeSmog reported in 2022 that Drax had lobbied California’s government to build a BECCS plant in the state, describing it as an “ideal location.” A UK government consultation on Drax’s future subsidies closed on Thursday (February 29), with a decision expected in April.
Campaigners say both the burning of biomass, and the attempted capture of its emissions, is deeply flawed.
“For California, there’s no time to waste on false solutions like this,” Rita Frost of NRDC told DeSmog.
“Any climate plan that relies on BECCS development with Drax is extremely high risk. Funds should instead be directed to wind and solar energy, which are not only low-cost and low-risk, but actually help fight the climate crisis.”
Drax and Golden State Natural Resources did not respond by publication time to specific questions submitted.
A power company that has received £6bn in UK green subsidies has kept burning wood from some of the world’s most precious forests, the BBC has found.
Papers obtained by Panorama show Drax took timber from rare forests in Canada it had claimed were “no-go areas”.
It comes as the government decides whether to give the firm’s Yorkshire site billions more in environmental subsidies funded by energy bill payers.
Drax says its wood pellets are “sustainable and legally harvested”.
The Drax Power Station, near Selby in North Yorkshire, is a converted coal plant which burns wood pellets. In 2023, it produced about 5% of the UK’s electricity. The site has become a key part of the government’s drive to meet its climate targets.
Its owner, Drax, receives money from energy bill payers because the electricity produced from burning pellets is classified as renewable and treated as emission-free.
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Drax helps the UK government meet its climate targets because, on paper at least, the power station is treated as emission-free. This is because international carbon accounting rules state that greenhouse gas emissions from burning wood are counted in the country where the trees are felled as opposed to where they are burned.
Darren Woods, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, last year. Photograph: Gavin John/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The world is off track to meet its climate goals and the public is to blame, Darren Woods, chief executive of oil giant ExxonMobil, has claimed – prompting a backlash from climate experts.
As the world’s largest investor-owned oil company, Exxon is among the top contributors to global planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions. But in an interview, published on Tuesday, Woods argued that big oil is not primarily responsible for the climate crisis.
The real issue, Woods said, is that the clean-energy transition may prove too expensive for consumers’ liking.
“The dirty secret nobody talks about is how much all this is going to cost and who’s willing to pay for it,” he told Fortune last week. “The people who are generating those emissions need to be aware of and pay the price for generating those emissions. That is ultimately how you solve the problem.” *
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Troves of internal documents and analyses have over the past decade established that Exxon knew of the dangers of global heating as far back as the 1970s, but forcefully and successfully worked to sow doubt about the climate crisis and stymie action to clamp down on fossil fuel usage. The revelations have inspired litigation against Exxon across the US.
“What they’re really trying to do is to whitewash their own history, to make it invisible,” said Robert Brulle, an environment policy expert at Brown University who has researched climate disinformation spread by the fossil-fuel industry.
A 2021 analysis also demonstrated that Exxon had downplayed its own role in the climate crisis for decades in public-facing messaging.
“The playbook is this: sell consumers a product that you know is dangerous, while publicly denying or downplaying those dangers. Then, when the dangers are no longer deniable, deny responsibility and blame the consumer,” said Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard historian of science and co-author of the 2021 paper.
* No, ultimately how you solve the problem is that you don’t create emissions through using sustainable, renewable energy. It’s also not accepted that renewable energy is any more expensive. I’d say that you’re just an evil climate destroyer for profit and fossil fuel BSter.
