… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: Climate Emergency

  • Extreme Makeover: Human Activities Are Making Some Extreme Events More Frequent or Intense

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    https://climate.nasa.gov/blog/3125/extreme-makeover-human-activities-are-making-some-extreme-events-more-frequent-or-intense/

    By Alan Buis,
    NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

    In Brief:
    It’s not your imagination: Certain extreme events, like heat waves, are happening more often and becoming more intense. But what role are humans playing in Earth’s extreme weather and climate event makeover? Scientists are finding clear human fingerprints.

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    There’s growing evidence that people and the planet are increasingly impacted by extreme events. According to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, published in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, “more frequent and intense extreme weather and climate-related events, as well as changes in average climate conditions, are expected to continue to damage infrastructure, ecosystems, and social systems that provide essential benefits to communities.”

    As the impacts of extreme events continue to mount, interest has grown in the scientific community to study whether specific extreme events can be partially attributed to human activities. With the help of climate models, scientists have conducted an impressive array of studies, looking for possible links between human activities and extreme events such as heat waves, rainfall and flooding events, droughts, storms, and wildfires.

    A dry lake bed
    A dry lake bed. Scientists are seeing an increase in the intensity of droughts. Credit: NOAA

    Increasingly, they’re able to draw robust connections. There are reductions in the number of cold waves, increases in the number of heat waves on the ocean and on land, increases in the intensity of rainfall and drought, and increases in the intensity of wildfires. Despite the complications and uniqueness of individual events, scientists are finding significant human contributions to many of them.

    An interactive map produced by CarbonBrief in 2020, shown below, provides visible evidence of these studies. On it, red dots represent different extreme events where scientists have found a substantial contribution from human activities – that is, human activities have made these events more frequent or more intense. For some of the blue dots, however (associated with rainfall events), scientists have yet to find a substantial human contribution.

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    The continued increase in global mean temperatures in response to rising levels of greenhouse gases sets the expectation that we’ll see a corresponding increase in global heat extremes. Indeed, this is being borne out by daily temperature data across the globe. Studies of individual heat waves, such as the devastating event that took place in the Pacific Northwest this summer, suggest such events have become tens to hundreds of times more likely because of human-driven climate change.

    A global examination of how often heat waves are occurring, as well as their cumulative intensity (how many days heat waves last above a certain temperature level), published last year by Australian scientists from the Climate Change Research Centre and the University of New South Wales Canberra, reveals a clear increase of more than two days per decade in the number of heat wave days since the 1950s.

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    The intensity of droughts is increasing. It’s not so much that scientists are seeing less rainfall, though that’s certainly happening in some places. Rather, in places where drought conditions exist, soils are becoming drier due to other factors, such as increased soil evaporation and decreased snowpack, which is reducing the amount of river flow during summer and fall. In the American Southwest, scientists estimate human-caused climate change is making droughts 30 to 50 percent more intense. 1

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    There have been hurricanes and intense storms throughout history, so what’s changed? Model studies confirm that, for instance, about 20 percent of Harvey’s rainfall was attributable to human-produced warming of the climate and waters in the Gulf of Mexico. 2, 3 More generally, climate simulations confirm that this increased intensity is a robust result.

    It’s important to note that impacts from extreme events are mainly a question of thresholds – the amount of flooding needed to overtop a levee, or overwhelm storm drains – so every inch (of additional rain) counts. So, while total rainfall may increase only slightly, it’s the extreme precipitation events that disproportionately cause problems.

    The Bottom Line

    The combination of models and observations, informed by the unique view that space provides, imply that almost all the current multi-decadal trends we’re seeing in climate are the result of human activities. In addition, there’s increasing confidence that human-induced climate change is making extreme events statistically much more likely.

    This doesn’t mean every extreme event has a substantial human contribution. But with extreme events such as heat waves, wildfires and intense precipitation, we’re seeing, in event after event, a very clear human fingerprint.

  • COP26 News review day 9

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    Gender day today at the COP26 summit. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi arrived today.

    COP26 Report Reveals ‘Massive’ Credibility Gap Between Climate Commitments and 1.5°C Target

    Climate policy experts on Tuesday called for the final days of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be spent with world leaders focusing on closing the “credibility, action, and commitment” gap that has emerged as countries put forward their goals for reaching net-zero fossil fuel emissions, with current targets on track to allow global heating far above the 1.5°C limit.

    The climate policy organizations Climate Analytics and NewClimate Institute released their annual Climate Action Tracker (CAT) on Tuesday, showing that even with full implementation of emissions targets set for 2030, the planet is expected to heat up by 2.4°C by the end of the century.

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    [Comment by dizzy: I can’t see humans surviving anything like an increase of 2.4C. Apparently we’re at 1.1 or 1.2C increase currently and look at the problems that we have already …]

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    First Draft of COP26 Decision Text Slammed as ‘Love Letter’ to Fossil Fuel Industry

    As a new analysis revealed Monday that fossil fuel industry lobbyists have a larger presence at the COP26 than any country, global campaigners criticized the first draft of the final decision text for the United Nations climate summit for failing to even mention phasing out coal, gas, and oil.

    Greenpeace International, in a statement, highlighted that “this glaring omission” comes despite expert warnings about the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground that have mounted in the leadup to the ongoing summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

    “What’s very concerning here in Glasgow is that the first draft of the climate pact text is already exceptionally weak. Usually, the text starts with some ambition, which then gets watered down,” said Greenpeace International executive director Jennifer Morgan.

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    UN ‘guilty’ of failing to act on climate change say activists and experts from the Global South

    Sunday was an official break day for proceedings at COP26 – but that doesn’t mean that climate events weren’t still happening across Glasgow.

    Organised by the COP26 Coalition, the People’s Summit for Climate Justice was one of those events. And as negotiators and COP attendees took a well-deserved rest, a People’s Tribunal took place. This is a simulated trial with the aim of holding the UN accountable for failing to act on climate change.

    Made up of activists, experts, NGOs and even a former COP negotiator from the Global South, the tribunal heard four hours of evidence against the UNFCCC, the UN organisation behind these climate talks.

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    Climate change is a far bigger problem than coronavirus, Sir Patrick Vallance warns

    The climate crisis poses a far greater threat to humanity than Covid, the UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor Sir Patrick Vallance has said.

    In a stark warning, Sir Patrick Vallance said global warming could kill more people than the pandemic and pose a threat that could last a hundred years.

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    Jeremy Corbyn hits out at COP26 ‘greenwashing’

    Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has told The Big Issue there is too much greenwashing and “chat” at COP26, and not enough action.

    “I’m concerned that there’s an awful lot of greenwash. There’s an awful lot of chat going on, there seems to be very few concrete agreements that have been reached so far. That worries me,” he said.

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    Boris Johnson to return to Cop26 for one-day visit

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  • COP26 News review day 8

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    Obama implores world leaders to ‘step up now’ to avert climate disaster

    Barack Obama has called on world leaders to “step up and step up now” to avert climate breakdown, singling out China and Russia for being foremost among countries that are failing to cut planet-heating emissions quickly enough.

    Obama said that while progress has been made at the Glasgow climate talks, including significant pledges made by countries to reduce methane emissions and to end deforestation, “we are nowhere near where we need to be at” in cutting emissions and that “most nations have failed to be as ambitious as they need to be”.

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    HSBC led big banks’ charge against climate change action

    HSBC coordinated efforts to try and water down action on climate change in the banking sector by seeking to delay a key deadline and scrap mandatory science-based targets for a major net-zero alliance, the Bureau can reveal.

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    Revealed: 1,000 fossil fuel and big business reps at COP26

    Nearly 1,000 representatives from the fossil fuel industry, big business and nuclear power companies have registered to attend the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, according to an analysis by The Ferret.

    They include executives from Shell, BP, Equinor, Chevron, Total, Gazprom and other major oil and gas companies, as well as multinational corporations such as McDonald’s, Bayer, Walmart, HSBC, PepsiCo, Nestlé and Microsoft.

    There are also delegations from the coal industry, tobacco companies and pesticide manufacturers. Eleven people from two climate sceptic think-tanks have registered for the summit.

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    Wera Hobhouse MP: Tory fossil fuel funding is delaying an end date for fossil fuels

    ‘As long as we have a Government dominated by vested interests, the UK will make no progress on climate action.’

    Wera Hobhouse is the Liberal Democrats’ justice spokesperson and MP for Bath.

    To reach net zero, we need an end date for the use of fossil fuels. Yet, the Government is taking us backwards on tackling climate change. Any wonder when they are bankrolled by fossil fuel interests and climate sceptics? As long as we have a Government dominated by vested interests, the UK will make no progress on climate action. 

    Earlier this week, an investigation revealed that the Conservative party and its MPs received £1.3m in gifts and donations from climate sceptics and fossil fuel interests since the election in 2019. 

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    How the UK Government is funnelling billions into fossil fuel projects abroad

    While spinning itself as a ‘leader’ in fighting climate change, the UK is funnelling billions into climate wrecking fossil fuel projects overseas

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  • COP26 Protests and the Young Communist League

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    There were huge protests in Glasgow and around the world on Saturday about failure to adequately address the climate crisis.

    The Young Communist League (YCL) of Britain was prevented from participating in the Glasgow protest by police. It appears that they were marching behind a banner reading ‘Socialism or Extinction‘. YCL published the following statement on 5 November 2021, the day previous to the protest and an article appeared in the Morning Star on the day of the protest.

    COP26: Socialism or Extinction

    COP26 has been billed as one of the last chances to save the planet and humanity as we know it. For nearly thirty years these meetings have brought together world leaders to discuss and debate the best way forward, yet little has changed in that time. In fact, since the first COP meeting held in Berlin in 1995, global CO2 emissions have increased by 56%. The imperialist world’s governments are paying this crisis nothing but lip service, rolling over to let the monopolies and big business that they represent in fossil fuels, agribusiness, manufacturing and finance run rampant across the globe. Politicians are still desperate to cling to the economic system that created this crisis.

    This week we have seen the representatives of right wing governments gather to express warm words and pledges in order to protect the capitalist system, with keynote speeches from some of the biggest polluters on the planet including BP and Amazon. These huge monopolies do not represent us and we cannot allow them to pressure governments into enabling and promoting the same privatised market solutions to climate change that have already failed for decades.

    Right wing governments and these monopolies cynically present the challenge facing humanity as one of “changing consumer choices and habits”. This completely ignores and obscures the fact that, like all things in our society and its development, production and consumption are rigidly dictated by the monopolies and banks that control the global economy and the governments which serve their interests – all for short-term financial profit.

    The continuing role of imperialism cannot be ignored. We are so often told that we are all in this together. But we are not! We are not equally responsible for this mess, and we do not equally share the risks of devastation. Yet we are all told that we all must make adjustments. This week, Scotland’s skies have been filled with the private jets of the elite. We have even seen politicians travelling in jets from Prestwick to Glasgow. A journey served well by a direct train link that takes less than 45 minutes.

    More than ever, the inequality capitalism has created on this earth has been made starkly clear. While the richest nations make their own plans for net-zero, many developing nations are being left in the lurch, not offered the breathing space required for their own development. All the while, Western imperialist countries outsource their production abroad whilst attempting to shift the blame towards China and other countries with mass exports.

    The media’s relentless anti-China sentiment has continued and increased this week with renewed attention on Chinese emissions, despite the fact that China is by far the largest investor, producer and consumer of renewable energy. Its CO2 emissions per capita barely place it in the top 50 polluting countries globally. Of course, it must do more and the Chinese Government have recently published its plans for net-zero. However, the ramping up of hostility, pointing to a New Cold War cannot be allowed to continue. Nor can we allow smaller and developing nations to be left behind and forced to remain underdeveloped in the interests of the already industrialised western countries.

    We cannot stand idly by while politicians seek to divide us, demanding individual responses to what is the crucial systemic problem of this age. We say no more! We do not have time to wait, and we cannot allow our leaders to kick the can down the road to 2030 or even 2050.

    Capitalism, a system which is only capable of serving the interest of the banks and monopolies and the suicidal drive for ever increasing short term profit at any cost, has proven itself unwilling and unable to handle the impending catastrophe which it has created. It will never be in the interest of big business or the capitalist governments which it controls to discipline the major carbon emitters or implement the radical change needed to save the planet and humanity. Only a system with absolute democratic control over industry, a Socialist system, is capable of tackling climate change head on. So we say:

    The choice is clear – Socialism or extinction

    Central Committee
    Young Communist League

    5 November 2021
    Glasgow, Scotland

    YCL’s statement published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

    22/2/22 Young Communist League: Statement on the COP26 protest

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    Study Warns ‘Luxury’ Pollution by the Global Mega-Rich Is Imperiling the Planet

    “The emissions from a single billionaire spaceflight would exceed the lifetime emissions of someone in the poorest billion people on Earth.”

    JAKE JOHNSON November 5, 2021

    The richest people on the planet, representing a small sliver of the total population, are emitting carbon dioxide at a rate that’s imperiling hopes of keeping global heating below 1.5°C, prompting fresh calls for government action to rein in “luxury” pollution and combat the intertwined crises of inequality and climate change.

    New research by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) shows that by 2030, the carbon footprints of the wealthiest 1% of humanity are on track to be 30 times larger than the size compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century, the Paris Agreement’s more ambitious temperature target.

    If current trends continue, the richest 1% will account for 16% of global CO2 emissions in 2030.

    The carbon emissions of the poorest half of the global population, meanwhile, “are set to remain well below the 1.5°C-compatible level,” according to the analysis, which was commissioned by Oxfam International and published Friday. The planet has already warmed by roughly 1.1°C, and scientists have said any heating beyond 1.5°C would have destructive consequences worldwide.

    “The emissions from a single billionaire spaceflight would exceed the lifetime emissions of someone in the poorest billion people on Earth,” Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam’s climate policy lead, said in a statement. “A tiny elite appear to have a free pass to pollute. Their oversized emissions are fueling extreme weather around the world and jeopardizing the international goal of limiting global heating.”

    “The emissions of the wealthiest 10% alone could send us beyond the agreed limit in the next nine years,” Dabi added. “This would have catastrophic results for some of the most vulnerable people on Earth who are already facing deadly storms, hunger, and destitution.”

    Oxfam graphic on carbon emissions

    Authored by Tim Gore, head of the Low Carbon and Circular Economy program at IEEP, the new research paper notes that “while carbon inequality is often most stark at the global level, inequalities within countries are also very significant.”

    “They increasingly drive the extent of global inequality, and likely have a greater impact on the political and social acceptability of national emissions reduction efforts,” the paper reads. “It is therefore notable that in all of the major emitting countries, the richest 10% and 1% nationally are set to have per capita consumption footprints substantially above the 1.5⁰C global per capita level.”

    To slash the outsized planet-warming emissions of the global rich, the study calls on policymakers to pursue restrictions on mega-yachts, private jets, and recreational space travel. In a paper published last month, French economist Lucas Chancel estimated that “an 11-minute [space] flight emits no fewer than 75 tonnes of carbon per passenger once indirect emissions are taken into account (and more likely, in the 250-1,000 tonnes range).”

    “At the other end of the distribution, about one billion individuals emit less than one tonne per person per year,” Chancel observed. “Over their lifetime, this group of one billion individuals does not emit more than 75 tonnes of carbon per person. It therefore takes a few minutes in space travel to emit at least as much carbon as an individual from the bottom billion will emit in her entire lifetime.”

    In addition to targeting sources of “luxury carbon consumption,” the analysis by IEEP and SEI also proposes restrictions on “climate-intensive investments like stock-holdings in fossil fuel industries.”

    “The global emissions gap to keep the 1.5°C Paris goal alive is not the result of the consumption of most of the world’s people: it reflects instead the excessive emissions of just the richest citizens on the planet,” Gore said in a statement. “It is necessary for governments to target measures at their richest, highest emitters―the climate and inequality crises should be tackled together.”

    Emily Ghosh, a scientist at SEI, agreed, arguing that “carbon inequality must urgently be put at the center of governments efforts to reduce emissions.”

    “Our research highlights the challenge of ensuring a more equitable distribution of the remaining and rapidly diminishing global carbon budget,” said Ghosh. “If we continue on the same trajectory as today, the stark inequalities in income and emissions across the global population will remain, challenging the equity principle at the very heart of the Paris Agreement.”

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