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Tag: wildfires

  • Shell Slammed for ‘Planet-Wrecking’ Profits as Temperatures Soar to New Heights

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

    Geenpeace activists set up a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters amid the company’s profits announcement on July 27, 2023 in London, England. (Photo: Handout/Chris J Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)

    “We cannot let countries and communities that have done the least to cause climate change pay the price for Shell’s greed,” one green group said.

    A little more than a week after Earth endured its four hottest days on record, fossil fuel giant Shell announced higher second-quarter profits than expected at $6.3 billion.

    The company also announced a new share buyback program worth $3.5 billion through September, CNBC reported.

    “It is shameful that Shell, as one of the world’s largest and most profitable fossil fuel companies, continues to reap billions in profits off the back of its planet-wrecking oil and gas operations,” Chiara Liguori, the senior climate justice policy adviser at Oxfam Great Britain, said in response to the news. “At a time when the company should be taking strong action to cut emissions it is instead weakening its climate targets and continues to invest in new oil and gas projects, in favor of short-term shareholder returns.”

    “That the profits of two companies alone can outweigh the GDP of six countries already being battered by the climate crisis lays bare the shameful inequity at the heart of the fossil fuel economy.”

    Shell’s announcement covers the months of April through June 2024. While the company made 19% less than it did during the first three months of the year, it made $400 million more than London Stock Exchange Group predicted for the quarter, according to CNBC.

    A Global Witness analysis concluded that Shell paid $23 billion to shareholders since June 2023. Every month in that same 13-month period saw temperatures averaging 1.5°C or more above preindustrial levels—the more ambitious temperature goal enshrined in the Paris agreement. Each month in that stretch was also the hottest of its kind on record.

    “Wildfires raging across the Arctic Circle and temperature records breaking by the day should be a wake-up call,” Greenpeace U.K. said on social media. “But Shell continues to bank billions from digging up climate-wrecking fossil fuels.”

    Shell’s announcement caps a month in which high global temperatures fueled a number of extreme weather events. July began with Hurricane Beryl forming as the earliest ever Category 4 and Category 5 Atlantic hurricane on record, before it devastated several Caribbean islands. Last week, a fast-moving wildfire forced more than 20,000 people to flee historic Jasper in the Canadian Rockies before it destroyed nearly a third of the town. The same week, Typhoon Gaemi dumped more than 1,000 millimeters of rain on Taiwan in less than 24 hours.

    “As people flee wildfires in Canada, floods in Taiwan, and rebuild in the wake of Storm Beryl, Shell is doubling down on fossil fuels, U-turning on renewables, and profiting to the tune of billions from an intensifying climate crisis,” Alice Harrison, head of Fossil Fuel Campaigns at Global Witness, said in a statement.

    Shell’s announcement also comes days after BP posted $2.8 billion in second-quarter profits.

    Global Witness calculated that BP and Shell’s second-quarter profits combined would be enough to pay one-tenth of the $100 billion in climate-related loss and damage money that developing nations have requested by 2030.

    At the same time, the two oil giants’ profits over the past year—£31.2 billion ($39.8 billion)—exceed the £27.7 ($35.3) billion combined gross domestic products of the six nations most impacted by Beryl: Barbados, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Grenada, according to Global Justice Now.

    “That the profits of two companies alone can outweigh the GDP of six countries already being battered by the climate crisis lays bare the shameful inequity at the heart of the fossil fuel economy,” Izzie McIntosh, climate campaigner at Global Justice Now, said in a statement. “People in the Caribbean devastated by the impacts of Hurricane Beryl are left to pick up the pieces, while rich shareholders and fossil fuel CEOs get to rake in the profits, removed from the chaos they’ve played a leading role in creating.”

    The climate justice organizations called for governments to take action to stop fossil fuel companies before they can further destabilize Earth’s climate.

    “We need accountability and a government that isn’t afraid to stand up to them—it can start by introducing measures to make these polluting megacorporations pay up for the climate damage they’ve caused in the Global South, as well as a fossil fuel phaseout,” McIntosh continued.

    Harrison agreed: “We can’t keep letting polluters off the hook. Governments should be holding fossil fuel majors to account for the crisis they created and forcing them to pay for the damage they are inflicting on millions of families around the world.”

    Oxfam G.B. and Greenpeace U.K. recommended policies for the United Kingdom—where Shell and BP are headquartered—specifically.

    “As global temperatures and the huge costs of tackling the climate crisis continue to rise, the U.K. government has a chance to ensure those most responsible for contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions, like Shell, are held to account by taxing them more,” Liguori said. “This could help raise the vital funds needed to ensure a fair switch to clean, renewable energy in the U.K. as well as fulfilling our international commitments to support communities worst-hit by climate change to adapt and recover.”

    Greenpeace concluded: “We cannot let countries and communities that have done the least to cause climate change pay the price for Shell’s greed. The new Labour government must prove it is different to its predecessor by reining in the fossil fuel giants and imposing bold new taxes on polluters to force them to pay their climate debts at home and abroad.”

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

  • Thousands Evacuated Amid Northern California Wildfire and Heatwave

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

    Law enforcement officers watch as the Thompson Fire burns over Lake Oroville in Oroville, California on July 2, 2024.  (Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)

    “It cannot be stressed enough that this is an exceptionally dangerous and lethal situation,” the National Weather Service warned.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday declared a state of emergency in a northern county where a major wildfire has burned thousands of acres and forced the evacuation of thousands of residents amid near-record heat throughout much of the Golden State fueled by human-caused global heating.

    The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) said shortly after noon local time Wednesday that the Thompson Fire, which began Tuesday morning in Butte County, had burned 3,568 acres with no containment in and around the city of Oroville, home to more than 20,000 people.

    Citing an “imminent threat to life,” Newsom, a Democrat, issued an emergency declaration and said that “we are using every available tool to tackle this fire and will continue to work closely with our local and federal partners to support impacted communities.”

    CAL FIRE said that more than 1,400 firefighters using 199 engines, 46 dozers, eight helicopters, and other equipment are battling the blaze. More than 28,000 Oroville area residents have been evacuated.

    Red flag conditions are being exacerbated by low humidity and near-record temperatures throughout California. Oroville is expected to hit a high of 110°F on Wednesday, with daytime highs forecast to remain in the 110s through the holiday weekend. Dozens of daily, monthly, and all-time records could be broken throughout the state.

    “It cannot be stressed enough that this is an exceptionally dangerous and lethal situation,” the National Weather Service’s (NWS) San Francisco Bay Area branch cautioned as it extended the red flag warning through Friday while preparing the public for the possibility of further extensions.

    Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said during a video briefing, “I’m not so sure that really any of us will have seen this many days at this sustained level of heat, both daytime and most importantly nighttime heat.”

    Commenting on the wildfire and heatwave, Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn said on social media that “we need the California Legislature to pass their climate superfund bill NOW to #MakePollutersPay for these fossil-fueled disasters.”

    Introduced in April by California state Sen. Caroline Menjivar (D-20) but shelved the following month, S.B. 1497—the Polluters Pay Climate Cost Recovery Act—would require major fossil fuel producers to pay for their historic carbon emissions.

    The NWS said that as of Wednesday, more than 110 million people across the United States were facing either a heat advisory, watch, or warning. So far, 2024 has been the hottest year on record. Climate Central, a nonprofit news organization focusing on the worsening planetary emergency, said climate change has made the current California heatwave at least five times likelier.

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

  • Deadly heat waves in Mecca and Greece underscore climate crisis

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    https://www.axios.com/2024/06/17/heat-waves-greece-mecca-saudi-arabia-climate-crisis

    As the U.S. faces another potentially record heat wave this week, the Middle East and Europe’s Mediterranean have endured extreme temperatures that have proven deadly.

    The big picture: Multiple heat-related deaths have been reported in Greece during the country’s earliest heat wave on record and Jordan’s official news agency said Sunday “14 Jordanian pilgrims died and 17 others were missing” in the searing heat while on the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

    Tourists outside the Acropolis during high temperatures in Athens, Greece, on June 12, when authorities announced the closure of the ancient site for five hours due to soaring temperatures that also shut schools. Photo: Hilary Swift/Bloomberg via Getty Images
    • The heat waves sweeping these regions this month have been made “at least five times more likely” because of human-caused climate change, per new Climate Central analysis.

    Context: Climate Central’s analysis is based on the group’s Climate Shift Index (CSI), which compares observed or forecast temperatures with simulations of the same weather conditions minus excess atmospheric greenhouse gases, per Alex Fitzpatrick.

    • The idea is to compare real-world conditions with what might have been the case had human-caused climate change been absent.
    • Saudi Arabia had a CSI of 5, meaning that human-caused climate change made a given daily average temperature five times more likely as of Monday morning. Greece, which has endured two weeks of extreme heat, had a CSI of 5 last week and 2 on Monday. Parts of Turkey had a CSI of 5.

    Between the lines: Greece has been among the worst-affected European countries for extreme weather caused by the climate crisis in recent months, enduring an intense heat wave, severe wildfires and heavy rains flooding the country’s streets last year.

    • A joint report by UN and European Union agencies found in April that Europe’s temperatures are rising about twice as fast the global average due to human-caused climate change — making it the fastest-warming continent on Earth.

    …

    Continues at https://www.axios.com/2024/06/17/heat-waves-greece-mecca-saudi-arabia-climate-crisis

  • Rate of Global Warming Reaches All-Time High, Report Shows

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

    Firefighters set a backfire to protect homes during a wildfire in California in September 2020.  (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)

    “The devastation wrought by wildfires, drought, flooding, and heatwaves the world saw in 2023 must not become the new normal,” the report’s author said.

    Climate scientists published a report Wednesday showing that the rate of global warming reached an all-time high in the 10 years up to and including 2023 and that the record-breaking heat of last year was primarily due to that human-caused heating rather than other factors such as El Niño.

    The scientists found that from 2014 to 2023, the Earth warmed 0.26°C—higher than any previous 10-year period. The report, published in Earth System Science Data, was completed by 57 scientists who used the methods of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which produces major reports only every five to 10 years, with the next one expected in 2027. The report authors sought to fill the gap and, at least in one case, to galvanize climate action.

    “Rapidly reducing emissions of greenhouse gases towards net zero will limit the level of global warming we ultimately experience. At the same time, we need to build more resilient societies,” lead author Piers Forster, a climate physicist at the University of Leeds in the U.K. and an IPCC author, said in a statement. “The devastation wrought by wildfires, drought, flooding, and heatwaves the world saw in 2023 must not become the new normal.”

    Over the course of 2023, temperatures were on average 1.43°C above preindustrial levels, Forster and co-authors found, with an estimated 1.31°C of that due to human-caused global warming, and the relatively small remainder due to variability from events such as El Niño and La Niña.

    The report also shows that the Earth’s remaining “carbon budget”—how much can be emitted before reaching 1.5°C of warming, the Paris agreement target—is now roughly 200 gigatonnes, which will take only five years or so for the global population to use. This is down from the 500 gigatonnes that the IPCC estimated remained in the budget as of 2020.

    Adam Vaughan, environment editor at The Times, a U.K. newspaper, drew attention to the short time period in which humanity has to act, writing on social media that the 1.5°C target could be “blown” if emissions didn’t go down.

    In a guest post in Carbon Brief, Forster and another co-author explained that their report was “nothing short of alarming, yet it does contain some encouraging news.”

    “Greenhouse gas emissions have not yet risen beyond pre-pandemic levels and there is evidence that the rate of increase in CO2 emissions over the past decade has slowed compared to the 2000s,” they said.

    Forster, who also led the annual report in its first iteration last year, spoke to reporters in such a way as to avoid doomsday rhetoric.

    “If you look at this world accelerating or going through a big tipping point, things aren’t doing that,” he told TheAssociated Press. “Things are increasing in temperature and getting worse in sort of exactly the way we predicted.”

    However, the climate news remains dire: Researchers working with even more up-to-date data—through May—have found that the average temperature increase above preindustrial levels is now 1.6°C, and each of the last 12 months has been the hottest on record for that month. Those findings are from data released by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and reported by The Washington Post.

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

  • South Asia sizzles: Record heatwave and extreme weather blamed on climate crisis

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    https://globalvoices.org/2024/05/06/south-asia-sizzles-record-heatwave-and-extreme-weather-blamed-on-climate-crisis/#

    Screenshot from YouTube video by Abhi and Niyu via Zoom.Earth. April 7, 2024. Fair use.

    A scorching heatwave is ravaging South and Southeast Asia, impacting hundreds of millions with its intense heat. With April temperatures shattering previous records, the region is witnessing extreme weather patterns, wildfires, and tragic heat-related deaths. Schools have been forced to close, agricultural production and storage of perishable foods have been disrupted, and the risk of heatstroke and other health problems has risen significantly.

    Climate scientist Roxy Koll tweeted:

    The scientists attribute the heatwave to the diminishing influence of the 2023–2024 El Niño event, which started in July 2023.

    Forest fires and heatstroke deaths in Bangladesh

    Bangladesh has experienced increasingly extreme weather conditions in recent years, and April 2024 stands out as the hottest month since 1948, with average temperatures ranging from 40–42 degrees Celsius (104–107.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in over 80 percent of the country.

    Climate journalist Rafiqul Montu posted on X (formerly Twitter):

    Wildfires erupt amid extreme heat and dry conditions

    Typically in April, Bangladesh receives 130.2 millimetres of rain, however, this year, there was almost none. The government announced the closure of government schools affecting 33 million students nationwide, while private schools with better facilities transitioned to online education. In just one week of April, over 10 deaths across the country were attributed to heatstroke.

    However, the most notable impact was the wildfires in different parts of the Sundarbans Reserve Forest, the world’s largest mangrove forest. Sundarbans is a remote area, lacking adequate firefighting resources nearby. The Forest Department, along with fire service personnel, local villagers, and other volunteers, could only start firefighting efforts 17 hours after the first fire. As of the time of writing this report, a significant portion of the huge fire in the Amurbunia area of the Chandpai range is still burning, posing a threat to its rich biodiversity.

    …

    Article continues at https://globalvoices.org/2024/05/06/south-asia-sizzles-record-heatwave-and-extreme-weather-blamed-on-climate-crisis/#