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‘Five-Alarm Fire’ as Global Temps Breach 2°C Threshold

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Canadian wildfire 2023
Canadian wildfire 2023

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

While scientists were quick to point out that this was just a daily anomaly, not a permanent shift, it is a “canary in the coalmine” that “underscores the urgency of tackling greenhouse gas emissions.”

Global temperatures surpassed 2°C above preindustrial levels for the first time Friday, according to preliminary data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ ERA5 data set showed global service air temperatures rising 2.07°C above the 1850-1900 average on Friday and 2.06°C above that average on Saturday, the service said.

“This is a five-alarm fire for humanity,” the group Climate Defiance tweeted in response to the figures.

In the 2015 Paris agreement, world leaders set out to keep warming to “well-below” 2°C above preindustrial levels. Allowing warming to breach that point increases several climate risks, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): 2°C of warming compared with 1.5°C would raise sea levels by an additional 0.1 meters by 2100, destroy 99% of coral reefs instead of 70% to 90%, and expose several hundred million more people to poverty and climate-related hazards by 2050.

Friday’s 2°C breach was first noted by Copernicus Climate Change Service deputy director Samantha Burgess on social media Sunday. She said the day was also 1.17°C above the 1991-2020 average, making it the warmest November 17 on record.

Scientists were quick to point out that this doesn’t mean global heating has breached the 2°C threshold long-term.

“The 1.5°C and 2°C warming thresholds have been defined in terms of the trend line,” University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann tweeted. “Not individual years, let alone months, weeks, or days (the shorter the time period, the larger the random fluctuations). Those who imply otherwise are misleading you.”

Richard Allan, professor of climate science at the University of Reading in the U.K., told CNN that it was “entirely expected that single days will surpass 2°C above preindustrial well before the actual 2°C target is breached over many years.”

“We are blowing past warning signs with wild abandon. We are approaching the precipice and flooring the gas.”

That said, the reading was a “canary in the coalmine” that “underscores the urgency of tackling greenhouse gas emissions,” Allan said.

It also comes in a year of dropping canaries: The 12 months from November 2022 to October 2023 were the 12 hottest on record, according to a Climate Central analysis. 2023 saw the hottest Northern Hemisphere summer on record, the hottest month in July, and is likely to be the hottest year not just since record-keeping began, but in the last 125,000 years. And it’s not just numbers. The record-breaking temperatures fueled deadly heatwaves, wildfires, and floods around the world.

“The indicators are flashing red,” Climate Defiance wrote. “The planet’s vital signs are clear. Humanity is on life support. With the El Niño cycle just beginning, this 2°C breach sadly represents not a climax but a small taste of what is to come.”

“This is happening faster than expected,” the group continued. “We are blowing past warning signs with wild abandon. We are approaching the precipice and flooring the gas. This is madness. Utter madness.”

The 2°C breach comes a little less than two weeks from the start of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference in the United Arab Emirates. A recent report from U.N. Climate Change found that national plans were still incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5°C and that world leaders must take “bold strides forward” at the conference “to get on track.” More than 650 scientists have signed a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to back a fossil-fuel phaseout at the talks.

“It’s just one day (so far) above 2°C, but it highlights again that the world is approaching the limits set out by the Paris Agreement,” IPCC scientist Ed Hawkins tweeted. “We already have many of the solutions to rapidly reduce emissions and halt the rise in global temperatures. We just need to choose to use them.”

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

Continue Reading‘Five-Alarm Fire’ as Global Temps Breach 2°C Threshold

Young people to take 32 European countries to court over climate policies

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/14/young-people-to-take-32-european-countries-to-court-over–climate-policies

Canadian wildfire 2023
Canadian wildfire 2023

Claimants to argue lack of adequate action is breach of human rights, in largest climate legal action to date

Six young people are preparing to appear at the European court of human rights to try to compel 32 nations to rapidly escalate their emissions reductions in the world’s largest climate legal action to date.

Aged from 11 to 24, the six Portuguese claimants, say they were driven to act by their experiences in the wildfires that ripped through the Leiria region in 2017, killing 66 people and destroying 20,000 hectares of forest.

After another summer in which wildfires raged across Portugal, Greece, Spain, Croatia and Italy, the young people will argue in the grand chamber of the Strasbourg court in 13 days’ time that the 32 European nations’ policies to tackle global heating are inadequate and in breach of their human rights obligations.

Crowdfunded by people around the world, who have donated more than £100,000, they are seeking a binding ruling from the judges to force the countries to rapidly escalate their emissions reductions in what would be a historic milestone in climate litigation.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/14/young-people-to-take-32-european-countries-to-court-over-climate-policies

Continue ReadingYoung people to take 32 European countries to court over climate policies

Dramatic climate action needed to curtail ‘crazy’ extreme weather

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/28/dramatic-climate-action-needed-curtail-extreme-weather

Heatwaves, wildfires and floods are just the ‘tip of the iceberg’, leading climate scientists say

‘Crazy off-the-charts records’: has humanity finally broken the climate?

Canadian wildfire 2023
‘Crazy off-the-charts records’: has humanity finally broken the climate?Canadian wildfire 2023

The “crazy” extreme weather rampaging around the globe in 2023 will become the norm within a decade without dramatic climate action, the world’s leading climate scientists have said.

The heatwaves, wildfires and floods experienced today were just the “tip of the iceberg” compared with even worse effects to come, they said, with limitations in climate models leaving the world “flying partially blind” into the future.

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“We need to stop burning fossil fuels,” said Dr Friederike Otto at Imperial College London. “Now. Not some time when we’ve allowed companies to make all the money they possibly can.”

Prof Emily Shuckburgh at the University of Cambridge in the UK said: “Anyone in any way perpetuating the fossil fuel era is firmly on the wrong side of history.”

“Knowing that we will look back on today’s extreme events as mild relative to what lies in our future is truly mind-boggling,” said Prof Andrea Dutton at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US. “The speed at which we make this transition will define the future that we get.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/28/dramatic-climate-action-needed-curtail-extreme-weather

Continue ReadingDramatic climate action needed to curtail ‘crazy’ extreme weather

‘The Pyrocene Is Well and Truly Here’: Climate Crisis Made East Canada’s Fires 2 Times More Likely

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

Canadian wildfire 2023
Canadian wildfire 2023

Seasons like this one will only become more likely and intense if policymakers allow global temperatures to rise by 2°C above preindustrial levels.

The hot, dry conditions that fueled eastern Canada’s unprecedented wildfire season were made at least two times more likely by the climate crisis, the latest study from World Weather Attribution has found.

The study, published Tuesday, also found that, by the end of July, Quebec’s fire season was 50% more intense than it would have been without the human-generated release of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The Pyrocene is well and truly here, thanks to our continued burning of fossil fuels,” study co-author and Imperial College London physicist Friederike Otto tweeted.

Canada’s wildfire season has been the worst on the record books since late June, but the weather conditions that fueled it began the month before. The entire May to July period was the nation’s warmest since 1940, according to World Weather Attribution (WWA). As of August 16, the Canadian government calculated that 5,753 fires had ignited to burn a total of 13.7 million hectares—that’s 123% more fires and 602% more land burned than normal.

The fires have had a devastating impact on human communities, killing at least 17 people, damaging at least 200 buildings, and forcing more than 150,000 to flee their homes, WWA said in a statement.

“The wildfires had disproportionate impacts on Indigenous, fly-in, and other remote communities who were particularly vulnerable due to lack of services and barriers to response interventions,” WWA wrote.

“Now we are able to put the number or an estimate on to what extent those conditions that we have seen this year are caused actually by climate change—and the numbers are very high.”

The dangerous smoke from all this combustion has menaced the air quality in cities from Ottawa and Toronto to Washington, D.C. and New York City, where pollution neared a record June 7 with an air quality index of 341.

“The consequences from the wildfires reached far beyond the burned areas with displaced impacts due to air pollution threatening health, mobility, and economic activities of people across North America,” WWA added.

For the study, the Canada-, U.K.- and Netherlands-based team looked specifically at the fires in eastern Canada, which were particularly abnormal and contributed the most to the smoke that drifted down over the U.S. East Coast and Midwest. They studied the daily severity rating, which defines how hard it is to put out a particular fire. To establish how extreme the season was at its peak, they also looked at the year’s highest seven-day moving average of the fire weather index.

“Climate change made the cumulative severity of Quebec’s 2023 fire season to the end of July around 50% more intense, and seasons of this severity at least seven times more likely to occur,” the study authors concluded.

They also found that this peak fire weather was at least twice as likely and around 20% more intense.

Yan Boulanger, one of the study authors who works as a research scientist for Natural Resources Canada, toldCBC News that the results were “shocking.”

“We know that those extreme fire-prone weather conditions are occurring more frequently,” he said. “Now we are able to put the number or an estimate on to what extent those conditions that we have seen this year are caused actually by climate change—and the numbers are very high.”

The study authors also found that seasons like this one will only become more likely and intense if policymakers allow global temperatures to rise by 2°C above preindustrial levels.

“Until we stop burning fossil fuels, the number of wildfires will continue to increase, burning larger areas for longer periods of time,” Otto told The Guardian.

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

Continue Reading‘The Pyrocene Is Well and Truly Here’: Climate Crisis Made East Canada’s Fires 2 Times More Likely

As Planet Burns, Shell Reports $5 Billion in Profits and Plans to Ramp Up Fossil Fuels

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

Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London.
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)

“Every house burnt to the ground, every town forced to evacuate, every ecosystem lost to a wildfire is a necessary consequence of a business model like Shell’s.”

With much of the world reeling from record-shattering heat and devastating wildfires, the London-based oil giant Shell is poised to ramp up its investments in planet-warming fossil fuels after ditching its plan to cut oil production.

An analysis released Thursday by the rights group Global Witness estimates that Shell’s investments in oil and gas projects are set to surge to around $14.5 billion this year, a 10% increase over 2022. The company is expected to spend far less on what it defines as “renewables and energy solutions.”

“Fossil fuels are the number one cause of climate breakdown, which is stoking extreme heatwaves, forest fires, and drought,” said Jonathan Noronha-Gant, a senior campaigner at Global Witness. “Every house burnt to the ground, every town forced to evacuate, every ecosystem lost to a wildfire is a necessary consequence of a business model like Shell’s, which prioritizes short-term cash grabs over the safety and survivability of our societies.”

The new analysis came as Shell reported $5.1 billion in second-quarter profits, a major decline compared to the company’s record-setting $11.5 billion in profits during the same period last year. Despite the profit dip, which Shell blamed on falling oil and gas prices, the company announced a 15% quarterly dividend increase and $3 billion in stock buybacks.

“CEO Wael Sawan’s fossil fuel direction continues to be solely aimed at profit for shareholders,” Nine de Pater, a campaigner with Friends of the Earth Netherlands, said in a statement. “This is immoral and completely irresponsible. We are seeing the impact of the climate crisis around the world this summer: the wildfires in Greece and heat records in southern Europe, Algeria, and India, among others, and the floods in Italy and Afghanistan.”

“Shell’s profits clearly show that the company chooses profits over human lives,” she added.

Shell, which has known about the climate impacts of burning fossil fuels since the 1970s, announced last month that it intends to boost gas production in the coming years while abandoning its plan to reduce oil production by up to 2% per year.

In an interview weeks after the announcement, Sawan claimed it would be “dangerous and irresponsible” to curb oil and gas production even as scientists say that’s exactly what’s needed to avert catastrophic warming.

Global Witness recently estimated that Shell’s reversal on oil production could generate an average of “29 million tonnes of extra carbon per year, almost as much as Denmark emits annually.”

“By 2030,” the group added, “Shell’s extra estimated emissions would be as much as Spain—one of Europe’s largest polluters—produces in one year.”

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

Continue ReadingAs Planet Burns, Shell Reports $5 Billion in Profits and Plans to Ramp Up Fossil Fuels