In the wake of an Iowa primary election chilled in a record blast of cold weather – which scientists say may, counterintuitively, have been worsened by global heating – Republican presidential candidates are embracing the fossil fuel industry tighter than ever, with little to say about the growing toll the climate crisis is taking upon Americans.
The remaining contenders for the US presidential nomination – frontrunner Donald Trump, along with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis – all used the Iowa caucus to promise surging levels of oil and gas drilling if elected, along with the wholesale abolition of Joe Biden’s climate change policies.
Trump, who comfortably won the Iowa poll, said “we are going to drill, baby, drill” once elected, in a Fox News town hall on the eve of the primary. “We have more liquid gold under our feet; energy, oil and gas than any other country in the world,” the multiply indicted former president said. “We have a lot of potential income.”
Trump also called clean energy a “new scam business” and went on a lengthy digression on how energy is important in the making of donuts and hamburgers.
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Last year was, globally, the hottest ever recorded, and scientists have warned of mounting calamities as the world barrels through agreed temperature limits. Last year, the US suffered a record number of disasters costing at least $1bn in damages, with the climate crisis spurring fiercer wildfires, storms and extreme heat.
Such concerns were largely unvoiced in frigid Iowa, however, apart from by young climate activists who disrupted rallies held by Trump, Haley and DeSantis. On Sunday, a 17-year-old activist from the Sunrise climate group interrupted a Trump speech to shout: “Mr Trump your campaign is funded by fossil fuel millionaires. Do you represent them, or ordinary people like me?”
Guardian Exclusive: Rise in share of UK oil and gas that is exported challenges PM’s claim that fossil fuel extraction brings energy security
The share of UK’s oil and gas that is exported has increased from 60% to 80% over the last two decades, according to findings that will intensify pressure over the government’s claims that “maxing out” the North Sea will increase the UK’s energy security.
On Monday, the government will attempt to pass the oil and gas bill, which they say will boost energy security by creating a rolling annual licensing regime for new fossil fuel contracts. But critics argue that the fossil fuels extracted will be sold on the global market, and the vast majority will be exported.
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Now analysis of government data by Global Witness has shown that in the 20 years between 2004 and 2023 the UK awarded 1,680 licences to companies to extract oil and gas in the North Sea. The analysis found that the share of UK oil and gas that was exported between 2004 and 2022 rose from 60% to more than 80%. During the same period domestic oil production fell by 60%.
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Jonathan Noronha-Gant, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said the new law would only prolong the UK’s energy problems. “People want long-term solutions to bring down their bills and fight the emissions damaging the climate,” he said. “New oilfields in the North Sea will line the pockets of rich fossil fuel execs; they won’t help the millions of Brits struggling to pay their bills.”
Skidmore said that the reason he had resigned over the bill was because “there is no future energy security in fossil fuels that are extracted by foreign companies, will only be sold on international markets and will have no impact on UK energy security”.
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.
AI will affect almost 40% of jobs around the world, replacing some and complementing others, according to the IMF’s new AI Preparedness Index, with a breakdown by country. Read @KGeorgieva’s blog for more. https://t.co/LMpupRBKr1pic.twitter.com/eHLYeiZYfx
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.”
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.
🚨Greenland losing 30m tonnes of ice an hour, study reveals. This will have huge impact as extreme weather events increase in frequency and destructive impact. More than 85% of Australians live within 50kms of the coast‼️#auspol#climateactnow#racetozerohttps://t.co/58P8rOH1bk
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.
Greenland ice sheets are losing 30 million tons of ice an hour. The impacts on ocean levels and currents is frightening. Meanwhile in Canada, the feds are giving billions more in taxpayers money more to increase production from the tar sands. As the planet burns. pic.twitter.com/MirjRtXVYZ
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
