March 7 Hot Air News Roundup

Something to keep in mind…

After the most tepid solar cycle in at least a century, several top forecasters are now predicting an even more lackluster cycle in the 2020s. The sun’s prolonged calmness is fascinating as well as mysterious, but here’s something to keep in mind: even if the sun goes into a multi-decade “grand minimum”, any climate effects are likely to be swamped by human-produced climate change.

Figure 5. Sunspot observations over the past 400 years clearly show the Maunder and Dalton minimums. The Gleissberg cycle is reflected in the Dalton minimum, around 1800, as well as the cluster of quiet solar cycles around 1900 (not labeled). Global temperatures have been increasing since the 1980s even though solar activity, as reflected in sunspot activity, has been on the decrease. Image credit: Robert Rhode, Global Warming Art, via Wikimedia Commons.

The planet was indeed chilly during the Maunder minimum, with surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere about 0.9°F (0.5°C) below their 1961-1990 average. However, the drop in solar input is unlikely to have been the prime cause of the cooling, since the most prolonged cold period of the Little Ice Age (from 1570 to 1750) got under way more than 70 years before the Maunder minimum. Sun-blocking volcanic eruptions are believed to be one of the main drivers of the Little Ice Age.

HOT AIR NEWS ROUNDUP

Indonesia Reduces Deforestation, Norway to Pay Up
World Resource Institute 2-21-19

Indonesia was one of the few tropical nations to reduce its deforestation rates in 2017, and it’s paying off. Norway announced on February 16 that it will provide the first results-based payment to Indonesia as part of a REDD+ agreement the two nations established in 2010.

Food supply falls as fish flee warmer seas
Climate News Network 3-4-19

In the last 80 years, there has been an estimated drop of more than 4% in sustainable catches for many kinds of fish and shellfish. That is the average. In some regions – the East China Sea, for instance, and Europe’s North Sea – the estimated decline was between 15% and 35%.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are quietly helping Big Oil destroy the climate
Think Progress 2-28-19

But the tech giant is working overtime to close deals with the world’s biggest oil companies to help them boost fossil fuel production using the latest information technology, such as cloud computing, which enables companies to capture, store, and analyze vast amounts of data in real time.

Most of the major companies are getting into the fracking business. Lots of details in the article…
Fracking the World: Despite Climate Risks, Fracking Is Going Global Desmog 3-4-19

The U.S. exported a record 3.6 million barrels per day of oil in February. This oil is the result of the American fracking boom … “Going forward the world is going to be Saudi Aramco’s playground.” But not if other countries frack there first.

Good question…

Climate Weekly: Who will govern geoengineering?
Climate Home News1-3-19

All the same, it is increasingly hard to see the world avoiding dangerous warming without it – and research is proceeding, whether they like it or not. … Switzerland is calling on the UN Environment Programme to consider international governance options, in a draft resolution

Switzerland puts geoengineering governance on UN environment agenda
Climate Home News 2-26-19

But as greenhouse gas emissions remain stubbornly high and geoengineering research gets underway, there is growing concern these technologies could be deployed without protections against their serious risks – and that the prospect of a technofix will be taken as a licence to keep on polluting.

Democracy Now 3-1-19
[VIDEO] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VymaRPaZ2_A

Our Highest Office, My Deepest Obligation
Bloomberg 3-5-19

I’m not running for president, but I am launching a new campaign: Beyond Carbon. … I will expand my support for the Beyond Coal campaign so that we can retire every single coal-fired power plant over the next 11 years. … I will launch … Beyond Carbon: a grassroots effort to begin moving America as quickly as possible away from oil and gas and toward a 100 percent clean energy economy.

Walz aims for 100 percent clean energy in Minnesota by 2050
Star Tribune 3-4-19

A proposal by Gov. Tim Walz to make Minnesota’s electricity providers generate all their energy from clean sources, like solar and wind, by 2050 drew immediate criticism Monday for being too costly and unreliable.

China Bans Imported Recyclables from US, Now Cities Just Burn Them
Green Optimist 2-28-19

“The unfortunate thing in the United States is that when people recycle they think it’s taken care of when it was largely taken care of by China,” Paul Gilman, Covanta’s chief sustainability officer, told The Guardian. “When that stopped, it became clear we just aren’t able to deal with it.”

Report Exposes ‘Devastating’ Economic, Public Health, and Environmental Impacts of Trump’s Industry Giveaways
Common Dreams 2-5-19

Specifically, the report details the extensive consequences of repealing six major regulations to serve four dirty industries:

• The Coal Industry: Clean Power Plan (CO2)

• The Automotive Industry: Clean Car Standards (CO2)

• The Automotive Industry: Glider Truck Pollution (CO2)

• The Oil & Gas Industry: Methane emissions (new and existing sources)

• The Oil & Gas Industry: Methane emissions (public lands) • The Landfill Industry: Methane emissions

PROTESTS • EXTINCTION REBELLION • RESISTANCE

Interviews with the young organizers of the Sunrise Movement…

Adults failed to take climate action. Meet the young activists stepping up
The Guardian 3-4-19

I feel like young people have always played the role of moral clarity and being willing to be idealists about what the world should be like. I see my generation as picking up the baton from young people in the 1960s and in the civil rights movement who engaged in similar efforts. We totally see our struggle as rooted in the past activism of young people.

With a caveat…

Germany’s Angela Merkel backs student ‘Friday for Future’ climate protests
Times of News 3-2-18

In a video podcast released on Saturday, Merkel said she was very supportive of the fact that “students take to the street in the cause of climate protection and fight for it.” … “I know that the students want many things to go faster, such as the exit from coal,” Merkel said. “But as head of government, I must point out that we have to take a lot of things into consideration: We have to reconcile jobs and economic health with the goals of climate protection.”

Open letter from the young climate leaders…

Youth Climate Movement to World Leaders: We Will ‘Change Fate of Humanity, Whether You Like It or Not’
Common Dreams 3-1-19

Student climate strikers issue open letter ahead of global day of action on March 15 that will consist of more than 500 events in over 50 countries. … “Young people make up more than half of the global population. Our generation grew up with the climate crisis and we will have to deal with it for the rest of our lives. Despite that fact, most of us are not included in the local and global decision-making process,” reads the letter

Fridays For Future

JOIN FRIDAYS FOR FUTURE: on their website

Youth Climate Strikers: We Are Going to Change the Fate of Humanity
Climate Change News 3-3-19

The letter, published by the Guardian, says: “United we will rise on 15 March and many times after until we see climate justice. We demand the world’s decision makers take responsibility and solve this crisis. You have failed us in the past. [But] the youth of this world has started to move, and we will not rest again.” … The Youth Strikes for Climate movement is not centrally organized, so keeping track of the fast growing number of strikes is difficult, but many are registering on FridaysForFuture.org.

Greta Thunberg

Good read and a good video too..

The First Time: Climate Activist Greta Thunberg
Rolling Stone 3-5-19

Thunberg, who is featured in Rolling Stone‘s March Women Shaping the Future issue, sat down for our video-franchise “The First Time,” telling the magazine that the first woman to inspire her was Rosa Parks. “I learned she was an introvert, and I’m also an introvert,” says Thunberg.

Extinction Rebellion

JOIN EX USA: on their website

EX NEWSLETTERS & EVENTS: on their website

The planet’s last stand: Why these climate change activists are ready to break the law
stuff

Now, from his neat town house in central Christchurch, the 74-year-old is plotting how to get arrested. … “For years and years now, we’ve been playing nice. And I think one of the things that has been recognised in the last year or so is that it’s not working. We just can’t be nice anymore.” … Drace is a climate activist, a member of the global movement Extinction Rebellion.

Bristol to host national ‘mass rebellion training’ event next weekend
Bristol Live 3-6-19

The Extinction Rebellion group has hired out Bristol’s top nightclub venue for an entire weekend later this month for what it describes as ‘mass rebellion training’. … “I’m massively excited to be part of a movement that’s about rebellion, about civil disobedience and about seeking practical answers alongside people who’ve been working on solutions to climate change and community breakdown for years.

ADAPTION AND RESILIENCE

New satellite-based maps of mangrove heights
NASA 2-29-19

Mangroves are among the planet’s best carbon scrubbers, moving far more than their fair share of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into long-term storage. … Thriving in brackish water that kills other plants, mangroves drop tons of leaves and branches—more than 9 metric tons per hectare (4 tons per acre) per year. The litter decomposes very slowly because the forests flood regularly at high tide. This translates into a lot of carbon taken out of the atmosphere and stored as peat in mangrove soils. … These useful trees are being squeezed between rising seas and coastal development around the world, and scientists are working to assess what that means to the carbon cycle.

Turkish supreme court blocks coal plant, as wave of new projects stalls
Climate Home News 3-5-19

Turkey’s highest administrative court has blocked a major coal power plant on the Black Sea coast, in a victory for campaigners.

Hydrogen’s Recent Ascension as Fuel for Future Electric Cars
Green Optimist 2-17-19

Fuel cells produce electrical energy directly from the chemical potential energy that is stored in H2 and O2 molecules. Using a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM), the unit needs only to be supplied with pressurized H2. Fuel cells are inherently more efficient and reliable than combustion engines, and their only by-product is water.

Support is surging for teens’ climate change lawsuit
National Geographic 3-5-19

The trial, originally scheduled to begin last October, has been delayed while government lawyers have sought to have the case dismissed before trial. … In another amicus brief filed last week, eight Democrats in Congress disagreed and urged the court to hear the case. “[T]he intractability of the debates before Congress and state legislatures and the alleged valuing of short-term economic interest despite the cost to human life

WILDLIFE & THE ENVIRONMENT

Ruined crops, salty soil: How rising seas are poisoning North Carolina’s farmland
Faster Than Expected 3-1-19

Or maybe the problem goes even deeper. Scientists are increasingly concerned that rising sea levels are shifting the “zone of transition” — the underground gradient where fresh groundwater meets salty seawater. This issue may be compounded by the slow sinking of North Carolina’s coastal plain since the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago.

Reduced salinity of seawater wreaks havoc on coral chemistry
EurekAlert! 2-28-19

The paper, published in Nature Climate Change Monday, found that the number of heat wave days per year had increased by more than 50 percent during the last 29 years (1987 to 2016) when compared to the years between 1925 and 1954. This is bad news for important ocean ecosystems from kelp forests to coral reefs.

Disappearing rice fields threaten more global warming
PHYS ORG 3-5-19

It was always assumed that because rice paddies are already a huge source of atmospheric methane, nothing could happen to make a difficult situation worse.

Climate change puts additional pressure on vulnerable frogs
The Guardian 3-6-19

Australia’s frog species, already threatened by habitat destruction and disease, are being put under extra pressure by shifting rainfall and rising temperatures from climate change.

CLIMATE STUDIES

Good article…

Fire below, ice above: volcanoes, glaciers and sea level rise
NASA 3-5-19

The heat welling up from Earth’s interior beneath ice sheets and glaciers has nothing to do with the relatively rapid change in climate over recent decades, driven mainly by human emissions of greenhouse gases that warm the atmosphere. Heat sources from the deep Earth can remain steady for 50, 90 or 100 million years; human-driven climate change is occurring over mere decades and centuries.

Thousands of tiny quakes shake Antarctic ice at night
Science Daily 3-4-19

Scientists placed seismometers on the McMurdo Ice Shelf and recorded hundreds of thousands of tiny ‘ice quakes’ that appear to be caused by pools of partially melted ice expanding and freezing at night. The phenomenon may be able to help scientists track glacier melting — and to help explain the breakup of large ice shelves.

Carbon rise could cause cloud tipping point
Climate News Network 2-27-19

If carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere become high enough, the clouds that shade and cool some of the tropical and subtropical oceans could become unstable and disperse. More radiation would slam into the ocean and the coasts, and surface temperatures could soar as high as 8°C above the levels for most of human history.

Global Warnings

Paul Beckwith: “I declare a global climate change emergency to claw back up the rock face to attempt to regain system stability, or face an untenable calamity of biblical proportions.”

Kevin Hester: “There is no past analogue for the rapidity of what we are baring witness to. There has been a flood of articles … 2C is no longer attainable and that we are heading for dangerous climate change”

Guy McPherson: “The recent and near-future rises in temperature are occurring and will occur at least an order of magnitude faster than the worst of all prior Mass Extinctions. Habitat for human animals is disappearing throughout the world, and abrupt climate change has barely begun.”

Magi Amma: We need to turn on a dime at mach nine!

…
Equivalencies:
• 1 gigatonne equals one billion tons
• 1 gigatonne of carbon equals 3.67 gigatonnes of CO2
• 1 part per million of atmospheric CO2 is equivalent to 7.81 gigatonnes of CO2
• 1 part per million of atmospheric carbon is equivalent to 2.13 gigatonnes of carbon