Category: Environment

‘Code Red for Humanity’: IPCC Report Warns Window for Climate Action Is Closing Fast

DeSmog

‘Code Red for Humanity’: IPCC Report Warns Window for Climate Action Is Closing Fast

By Jake Johnson at Common Dreams       August 9, 2021

“The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.”
 

Wildfire in the Pacific Northwest Credit: BLM Oregon & Washington. CC By 2.0

A panel of leading scientists convened by the United Nations issued a comprehensive report Monday that contains a stark warning for humanity: The climate crisis is here, some of its most destructive consequences are now inevitable, and only massive and speedy reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can limit the coming disaster.

Assembled by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — a team of more than 200 scientists — the new report represents a sweeping analysis of thousands of studies published over the past eight years as people the world over have suffered record-shattering temperatures and deadly extreme weather, from catastrophic wildfires to monsoon rains to extreme drought.

The result of the scientists’ work is a startling assessment of the extent to which human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, has altered the climate, producing “unprecedented” planetary warming, glacial melting, sea level rise, and other changes that are wreaking havoc in every region of the globe — wiping out entire towns, imperiling biodiverse ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef and the Amazon rainforest, and endangering densely populated swaths of the world.

“This report is a reality check,” said Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a climate scientist at the University of Paris-Saclay and co-chair of the panel that produced the report. “We now have a much clearer picture of the past, present, and future climate, which is essential for understanding where we are headed, what can be done, and how we can prepare.”

One central finding of the new analysis is that the Paris accord’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is in serious danger as policymakers fail to take the necessary steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Each of the past four decades, according to the report, has been successively warmer than any preceding decade dating back to 1850, atmospheric CO2 has soared to levels not seen in two million years, and “global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered.”

“Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century,” the IPCC panel warns, “unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.”

“Many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the changes already set in motion—such as continued sea level rise—are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years,” reads the report, which was approved by 195 member nations of the IPCC.

“However,” the report emphasizes, “strong and sustained reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would limit climate change. While benefits for air quality would come quickly, it could take 20-30 years to see global temperatures stabilize.”

Panmao Zhai, another co-chair of the IPCC working group, stressed that “stabilizing the climate will require strong, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and reaching net-zero CO2 emissions.”

“Limiting other greenhouse gases and air pollutants, especially methane, could have benefits both for health and the climate,” Zhai added.

The planet has warmed at an unprecedented rate, the IPCC report states.

The new report, the first of three installments, was released just weeks before world leaders are set to gather in Glasgow for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), which activists view as a pivotal moment for the global climate fight.

“Many see COP26 as our last, best chance to prevent global temperatures from spiraling out of control,” Dorothy Grace Guerrero of Global Justice Now wrote last month. “Unfortunately, we are not yet on track to limit global warming to 1.5°C, the threshold that scientists agree will prevent the most dangerous climate impacts. Failure to reach this goal will take a disproportionate toll on developing countries.”

António Guterres, secretary-general of the U.N., said in a statement Monday that the IPCC’s latest findings are “a code red for humanity.”

“The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk,” said Guterres. “Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.”

“There is a clear moral and economic imperative to protect the lives and livelihoods of those on the front lines of the climate crisis,” Guterres continued. “If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe. But, as today’s report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses. I count on government leaders and all stakeholders to ensure COP26 is a success.”

This article was republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Higher water levels in Lake Okeechobee may be part of new Army Corps plan

Higher water levels in Lake Okeechobee may be part of new Army Corps plan

Adriana Brasileiro                             

 

Lake Okeechobee may be kept at higher levels for longer periods of time under a new management plan the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is refining now that a $1.8 billion upgrade of the Herbert Hoover Dike is nearly completed.

The Corps picked a preferred alternative, called “CC,” out of six choices and will now work on fine-tuning the plan based on extensive feedback from environmentalists, agriculture representatives, Native American tribes and other leaders on how to balance the conflicting demands on lake waters..

“We are building on the CC foundation in order to get every ounce of benefit out of the new plan,” Col. Andrew Kelly, the Corps commander for Florida, said during a presentation outlining the basics on Monday. “The technical team is now running optimization models and they will come back in September with a better defined plan,” he said.

Thick blue-green algae surrounds boats in the Pahokee Marina on Lake Okeechobee earlier this year. Blooms increased as water temperatures rose and nutrients in the shallow lake got stirred up by wind.
Thick blue-green algae surrounds boats in the Pahokee Marina on Lake Okeechobee earlier this year. Blooms increased as water temperatures rose and nutrients in the shallow lake got stirred up by wind.

 

Priorities include reducing harmful releases of polluted lake water to the Caloosahatchee estuary on the west and to the St. Lucie on the east, and sending more water south to the parched Everglades and Florida Bay. But the plan also aims to guarantee more water to users, including the sugar industry which has vast fields around the lake. Reducing pollution in the lake and lowering the risk of harmful algae blooms that have plagued Florida’s coasts and hurt local economies were also among the consensus priorities, Kelly said.

The biggest changes from years past: A massive $1.8 billion upgrade of the dike that is scheduled to be completed next year, as well as Everglades restoration projects that will come online in the next few years. The projects include a vast reservoir and storm water treatment area that, once completed in 2023, will allow managers to send more water south when lake levels rise, reducing discharges to estuaries on the east and west.

The aim is to produce water that’s clean enough to replenish the Everglades amid efforts to recreate something close to the original flow of the River of Grass, going south through Shark Valley in Everglades National Park, taking much-needed fresh water all the way south to Florida Bay.

“While we’re encouraged by the Army Corps’ selection, the new Lake O playbook won’t be successful unless it brings relief to the Caloosahatchee estuary without sending additional water to the St. Lucie,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades. “The way to accomplish this is by sending more clean water south during the dry season, rather than stockpiling it in the lake for irrigation south of the lake.”

An algae bloom in the lake in May generated a sense of urgency and pressure on the Corps to accelerate work on the new plan, seen as a solution for the conflicting demands for water from the Everglades’ liquid heart, at least for the next decade. Environmentalists and Everglades restoration advocates argue that the lake has been managed for the needs of agriculture south of the lake, which is primarily sugar.

Farmers and those in the recreation and fishing business around the lake want assurances that they will have the water when they need it. And South Florida’s growing cities also want the certainty of uninterrupted water supply and flood control during the rainy season.

By running the lake in a more balanced way and giving its own operations more flexibility, the Corps hopes to reduce water releases that have been disastrous for the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries. As renovation work on the dike is expected to reduce the risk of a breach, over a foot more water can be kept on the lake during the rainy season. The lake is usually kept between 12.5 feet (to guarantee water supply) and 15.5 feet (to protect the dike). Under the new plan, it could go higher than 17 feet and stay at around that level for more days, Kelly said.

Raising lake levels could have environmental ripple effects, however, on aquatic plants and fish. A higher lake may also be detrimental to the system’s ecology, drowning and killing vegetation that helps clean up nutrients that feed algae blooms.

“When the lake is over 15 feet you are killing the vegetation, and when you kill the vegetation all the water that goes west, east, south will be polluted and it will be a disaster,” Newton Cook, the president of United Waterfowlers Florida, said Monday during the meeting.

Kelly said the Corps’ technical team will run models taking into account the different comments and will present a more detailed plan in September. That plan will receive more public input through the end of October, when the Corps will set a schedule for coordination with the South Florida Water Management District and other agencies involved in the new lake management plan. Their input will be added to the process, and a draft document is expected to be ready in February, he said.

‘Impending disaster.’ Worsening algae bloom on Lake Okeechobee threatens coasts again

‘The Day After Tomorrow’ film foretold a real and troubling trend: The Atlantic ocean’s circulation system is weakening

‘The Day After Tomorrow’ film foretold a real and troubling trend: The Atlantic ocean’s circulation system is weakening

Aylin Woodward                  
the day after tomorrow 20th Century Fox
A still from the film “The Day After Tomorrow.” 20th Century Fox

In the 2004 film “The Day After Tomorrow,” a climatologist played by Dennis Quaid warns world leaders about a rapid climate shift.

The key factor is an ocean current system called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which moves warm water from the equatorial tropics up to Europe and the north Atlantic. This influx of warmer water contributes to western Europe’s mild, temperate climate.

In the movie, the AMOC stops completely, causing an ice age to begin almost overnight. While the speed and intensity of that cold snap are hyperbolized in the film, the AMOC is very real, and research suggests a slow down of its circulation is a likely consequence of climate change.

In a paper published last week, climate scientist Niklas Boers concluded that the AMOC is approaching a tipping point. If enough fresh water from melting polar ice enters the ocean, the current system will experience an “abrupt weakening,” and destabilize, he told Insider.

A new climate report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) similarly suggests that the AMOC will very likely weaken by the end of the century.

According to Boers, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, this weakening would cause temperatures in Europe to fall, and “the cooling effect would be stronger the further north you go.”

On the US East Coast, meanwhile, sea levels would rise. Parts of central and west Africa would experience persistent drought conditions, since those areas also benefit from the AMOC’s circulation.

An on/off switch for the Atlantic’s currents
ocean currents
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation carries warm water from the tropics into the North Atlantic (in red), where the water cools and sinks before flowing back south (in blue). NASA/JPL

 

When the AMOC is flowing quickly, western Europe enjoys a wet and warm climate. Scientists have likened the system to a conveyor belt: Once warmer water reaches the area around the UK, it cools and sinks to the bottom of the Labrador and Nordic Seas. Then that cold water makes a U-turn and snakes along the ocean floor, down to Antarctica’s Southern Ocean.

But if this circulation is sluggish and weak, warm tropical waters don’t get moved up, and the north Atlantic cools.

The AMOC’s speed is determined by a delicate balance of salt and fresh water. Salty water is dense, so it sinks easily. But as Greenland’s ice sheet and glaciers continue to melt, more fresh water is joining the AMOC’s salty surface water, making it lighter and less likely to sink. That clogs up the circulation’s flow.

Prior research suggests that a change in the strength of water circulation in the Atlantic really does precede abrupt climate changes. By examining ice cores dated to Earth’s last ice age, scientists have found that the AMOC alternates between two states – a strong “on” state, where the current system runs quickly, and a weak “off” state where that circulation decelerates.

“A shutdown of the AMOC is the easiest, most efficient way to disrupt the climate system,” Francesco Muschitiello, a geographer specializing in paleoclimatology at the University of Cambridge told Insider, adding, “95% of time when we talk about rapid climate change, it’s associated with AMOC.”

Still, Boers said, any cooling related to the AMOC wouldn’t look like “The Day After Tomorrow” – it “would take a few decades,” and North America “won’t get as cold as the movie suggests.”

It would take at least a few hundred years for the AMOC to re-strengthen
greenland
A small iceberg melting in southern Greenland. Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

 

In the past, when the AMOC reached a tipping point, the transition from strong to weak took a couple of decades, Boers said. But it takes much longer for the system to switch back.

“It typically took a few hundred to a few thousand years for the AMOC to go back to the strong mode,” he said, adding, “if the AMOC were to collapse to the weak mode at some point in the future, it would indeed be very hard to bring it back to the strong mode.”

According to the IPCC report, it’s possible that the AMOC will experience an abrupt collapse by 2100. That collapse, the report authors said, could be triggered by an unexpected additional melted ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet, which has been thawing at an unprecedented rate. A 2019 study found the ice sheet was melting six times faster than it was 40 years ago.

Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean. Getty/MKnighton/Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing

 

It’s unlikely, however, that the Greenland Ice Sheet will ever melt quickly enough to completely stop the AMOC.

A full halt like the one depicted in “The Day After Tomorrow,” would only happen “if the Greenland ice sheet was to melt over the course of a few days,” Muschitiello previously told Insider.

That said, some studies suggest that the AMOC has stopped entirely in the past.

“These major distortions of the AMOC led to the coldest events ever recorded,” Muschitiello said.

In those cases, the cold events may have lasted for up to 1,000 years. If the AMOC were to shut down completely again, Boers said, the only way to undo it would be “to reverse the global temperature trend and get back to pre-industrial conditions.”

As summer winds down, concern rising over ‘multiyear drought,’ Idaho water managers say

As summer winds down, concern rising over ‘multiyear drought,’ Idaho water managers say

Nicole Blanchard                     

 

Idaho water managers are warning of the possibility of a lasting drought following the second-driest March-to-July period in the state’s recorded history.

According to an Aug. 6 drought condition update from the Idaho Department of Water Resources, officials are more worried than ever that the state’s drought won’t resolve quickly.

“With storage being rapidly depleted across the state, concern is rising that we may be entering into a multiyear drought,” wrote hydrologist David Hoekema in the report.

Hoekema said many reservoirs have been depleted this year, which means the state’s water supply will start off the next water year — which begins in October — already at a deficit. He mentioned that the Mountain Home Irrigation District and Big Wood Canal Company shut down water deliveries from storage in June, and said the Little Wood River Reservoir in Blaine County, the most drought-stricken part of the state, was at 2% storage capacity on Aug. 6.

Water resource managers in the Treasure Valley have also warned that they’ll likely have to cut the irrigation season short by a month or so. They’ve urged people to water lawns less often and find other means of conserving the dwindling water supply.

Hoekema said that when the irrigation season ends, officials can analyze what kind of snowpack Idaho will need this year to bounce back from the drought.

“On a positive note, the tropical Pacific is lining up for another La Niña this winter,” the hydrologist wrote in his report. “A La Niña typically brings higher than normal precipitation to northern Idaho, but could result in deepening drought across the southwestern United States and up into the Bear River basin.”

According to Hoekema, another La Niña system last winter provided “a near average” snowpack for Idaho by March 1. It was the scarce precipitation since then — which set record lows at snow telemetry measurement sites across Idaho and the Northwest — that created a rapidly accelerating drought that took water managers by surprise.

The report said the heart of Idaho’s drought is in the state’s central mountains, which also saw drought in 2020.

“Runoff records indicate that the Big Wood, Big Lost, and Little Lost basins may set record lows this year,” Hoekema wrote. “In other words, 2021 is likely to be considered the drought of record in those basins.”

Fire Threatens Second California Town as Heat Stokes Flames

Fire Threatens Second California Town as Heat Stokes Flames

Will Wade                   

 

(Bloomberg) — Hot, dry weather is hampering California firefighters’ efforts to combat the Dixie blaze, which swelled over the weekend to become the second-largest in state history and is threatening to engulf a second town.

The fire, which troubled utility giant PG&E Corp. said may have been sparked by one of its power lines, has ripped through more than 489,000 acres (198,000 hectares), destroying the Gold-Rush-era town of Greenville last week. It’s now spreading toward Janesville, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast.

“Our intention is that we will not lose any more structures, we will not lose any more communities,” Mark Brunton, operations section chief with California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said in a briefing Sunday. “That is our priority.”

More than a dozen blazes are burning across California, fueled by a historic drought and heat waves that parched the West and created ideal wildfire conditions. Wildfires have also devastated Greece, Turkey and Siberia this year, and a landmark report Monday from the United Nations found “unequivocal” evidence that human activities have warmed the atmosphere.

The Dixie fire has been burning for almost four weeks and has destroyed more than 600 structures, according to Cal Fire, as the agency is known. The destruction is a growing risk for PG&E, which said last month that a worker had discovered a tree leaning against a power line near the start of the blaze.

The company’s shares were up 0.2% at 3:25 p.m. in New York Monday.

A judge on Friday ordered the utility to identify each of the California wildfires its equipment started this year. PG&E emerged from bankruptcy last year after sparking a series of wildfires in 2017 and 2018 that killed more than 100 people.

The Dixie fire has prompted mass evacuations as it continues to tear across the region, and was just 21% contained on Monday morning. Firefighters were aided over the weekend as the winds shifted in their favor, but higher temperatures this week are helping to fuel the blaze.

“Really hot conditions and really dry conditions are what is fueling the fire,” said Hannah Chandler-Cooley, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sacramento. “It is still pretty dry and that is really not going to improve much.”

The Dixie Fire started on July 13 and destroyed much of the northern Sierra Nevada town of Greenville last week, leveling buildings and melting lamp posts.

“We’re really focusing on this effort just to keep it out of Janesville,” Jake Cagle, an operations sections chief with the U.S. Forest Service, said in a briefing. “We’re doing everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

California’s eight biggest wildfires have all burned since December 2017, department statistics show. Last year’s August Complex fire that destroyed more than 1 million acres remains the largest.

Powerful heat wave to cause 100-degree temperatures for 25 million in the U.S. this week

Powerful heat wave to cause 100-degree temperatures for 25 million in the U.S. this week

Andrew Freedman                  

 

Heat warnings and advisories are in effect for at least two dozen states through the end of the week. 25 million people are projected to see highs reach or eclipse 100°F this week, as yet another powerful heat dome-dominated weather pattern affects a huge swath of the country.

 

Why it matters: The heat wave will combine with drought conditions in the Pacific Northwest to aggravate an already dire wildfire situation, and bring more miserable weather to residents of Portland, Oregon, and other states hit hard by record-shattering heat in late June and early July.

  • This time around, heat and high humidity will combine to make for dangerously hot conditions in the Mid-Atlantic and Central states, too.
  • The hot and dry weather will only worsen the ongoing wildfires and potentially lead to new ignitions from thunderstorms. California’s Dixie Fire, the second-largest blaze in state history and the largest ongoing wildfire in the U.S., grew further overnight toward the 500,000-acre mark, threatening more homes.

By the numbers: A strong area of high pressure across the Pacific Northwest, also known as a “heat dome,” will ratchet up the heat from northern California to Washington state during the Wednesday-through-Saturday period in particular.

  • High temperatures of up to 112°F are possible in inland valleys in western Oregon, the National Weather Service predicts, with little overnight relief in many areas.
  • High temperatures will generally be between 10°F and 15°F above average for this time of year.

Threat level: When it comes to fire weather, the Weather Service forecast office in Medford, Oregon, is warning of “excessively hot, very unstable and dry air” across southern Oregon and northern California — where the Bootleg Fire is still burning, in addition to the Dixie and other blazes.

  • Fire weather warnings for potentially extreme wildfire behavior, including the formation of pyrocumulus clouds, go into effect on Wednesday.
  • Portland, Oregon, which set an all-time high temperature record of 116°F back in July, is predicted to reach a sizzling 104°F on Thursday.
  • Meanwhile, in the Eastern U.S., highs in the mid-to-upper 90s°F will affect the urban corridor between Washington and Boston, with scorching heat even reaching parts of New Hampshire and Maine.

Context: The heat wave comes just a day after a landmark climate science report was released by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which definitively linked the increasing frequency and severity of heat waves to human emissions of greenhouse gases.

  • The report described this connection as “established fact,” a striking increase in confidence level since its last major assessment, which is the equivalent of a CT scan for the planet, in 2013.
  • At the same time as the U.S. is feeling the heat and seeing more than 105 large wildfires burn across the country, a brutal heat wave in the Mediterranean region is continuing to fuel deadly blazes in Greece and Turkey.

World is on the brink of catastrophe, warns Government climate chief

World is on the brink of catastrophe, warns Government climate chief

Telegraph reporters                       
Alok Sharma says a Government report due out on Monday will be the "starkest warning yet" about what the future could hold - GETTY IMAGES
Alok Sharma says a Government report due out on Monday will be the “starkest warning yet” about what the future could hold – GETTY IMAGES

 

The world is getting “dangerously close” to running out of time to avert catastrophic climate change, Cop26 President Alok Sharma has said.

Mr. Sharma – who is tasked with making a success of the upcoming climate talks in Glasgow – said failing to limit warming to 1.5C would be “catastrophic”.

In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Sharma said a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due to be published on Monday, would be the “starkest warning yet” about what the future could hold.

“You’re seeing on a daily basis what is happening across the world. Last year was the hottest on record, the last decade the hottest decade on record,” he said.

He said Cop26 “has to be the moment we get this right”, adding: “We can’t afford to wait two years, five years, 10 years – this is the moment.”

“I don’t think we’re out of time but I think we’re getting dangerously close to when we might be out of time,” Mr Sharma said.

“We will see (from the IPCC report) a very, very clear warning that unless we act now, we will unfortunately be out of time.”

He added: “Every fraction of a degree rise makes a difference and that’s why countries have to act now.”

“We’re seeing the impacts across the world – in the UK or the terrible flooding we’ve seen across Europe and China, or forest fires, the record temperatures that we’ve seen in North America,” he said.

“Every day you will see a new high being recorded in one way or another across the world.”

Fires linked to environmental changes caused by global warming have been raging through Greece and parts of Europe - REUTERS
Fires linked to environmental changes caused by global warming have been raging through Greece and parts of Europe – REUTERS

 

But despite his powerful warnings, Mr. Sharma refused to condemn plans for a new oilfield off the coast of Shetland, that could see a further 150 to 170 million barrels extracted.

The Cambo oilfield could be approved before Glasgow, and potentially be in operation as far into the future as 2050.

Elsewhere, the Government has refused to rule out new licenses for oil and gas in the North Sea or a new coal mine in Cumbria.

The International Energy Agency said in May there must be no new investment in oil and gas projects and coal power plants from this year to have a hope of limiting warming to 1.5C.

But Mr. Sharma refused to criticize the UK Government’s plans for further fossil fuel extraction, saying: “Future [fossil fuel] licenses are going to have to adhere to the fact we have committed to go to net zero by 2050 in legislation.”

He added: “There will be a climate check on any licenses.”

The former business secretary came under fire this week for the volume of flights he has taken since new year in a bid to hash out a deal with countries dragging their feet on emissions targets.

But despite cries of “hypocrite” from political rivals, green groups refused to condemn him and the Government was robust in his defence.

Mr Sharma told the Guardian: “I have every week a large number of virtual meetings, but I can tell you that having in-person meetings with individual ministers is incredibly vital and actually impactful.

“It makes a vital difference, to build those personal relationships which are going to be incredibly important as we look to build consensus.”

He added he was “throwing the kitchen sink” at the negotiations.

The Cop26 climate talks are due to take place from October 31 to November 12 in Glasgow.

“Apocalyptic, catastrophic”: World leaders, activists react to “sobering” UN climate report

Axios

“Apocalyptic, catastrophic”: World leaders, activists react to “sobering” UN climate report

Jacob Knutson                        
A sweeping United Nations-sponsored review of climate science published Monday projected that the world will cross a crucial temperature threshold as early as 2030 — up to a decade sooner than previously thought.

 

Why it matters: Warming is affecting every area of the globe, the report notes, and extreme weather events are becoming more common and severe contributing to a more volatile world.

What they’re saying:

United Kingdom: “Today’s report makes for sobering reading, and it is clear that the next decade is going to be pivotal to securing the future of our planet. We know what must be done to limit global warming – consign coal to history and shift to clean energy sources, protect nature and provide climate finance for countries on the frontline,” U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a statement.

  • The U.K. hosts the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as the COP26 summit, in November.

United States: “The IPCC report underscores the overwhelming urgency of this moment. The world must come together before the ability to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is out of reach,” U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry said in a statement.

  • “As the IPCC makes plain, the impacts of the climate crisis, from extreme heat to wildfires to intense rainfall and flooding, will only continue to intensify unless we choose another course for ourselves and generations to come.”
  • Secretary of State Antony Blinken added in his own statement: “We cannot delay ambitious climate action any longer.”
  • Eric Lander, President Biden’s science advisor, said the report confirms “that climate change is intensifying faster than we thought.”

Activists: “The new IPCC report contains no real surprises. It confirms what we already know from thousands previous studies and reports – that we are in an emergency. It’s a solid (but cautious) summary of the current best available science,” Greta Thunberg tweeted.

  • “Today, I, and so many other young people, wake up enraged — the IPCC report is apocalyptic, catastrophic, and nothing we haven’t been screaming from the rooftops for years. Our politicians shouldn’t need a report to tell them how bad things are. We’re already living it,” Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, said in a statement.

This story will be updated with more reactions.

More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

Climate Change Is a ‘Hammer Hitting Us on the Head,’ Developing Nations Say

Climate Change Is a ‘Hammer Hitting Us on the Head,’ Developing Nations Say

Lisa Friedman, Hiroko Tabuchi, and Winston Choi-Schagrin

 

A neighborhood inundated by flooding in Banjarmasin, Indonesia, in January. (AP)

 

When some 200 scientists convened by the United Nations all but demanded on Monday that the nations immediately band together to cut emissions, they portrayed it as a brief window to avert the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

But as their call ricocheted around the planet, it only underscored the challenge ahead: getting the world’s biggest polluters and its most vulnerable countries to cooperate against a grave global threat.

In unequivocal terms, the new U.N. report said that the world has been so slow to cut emissions, it was certain to miss one of its basic goals to limit warming. It said atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide had not been this high in at least 2 million years, and the past decade is likely the hottest the planet has been in 125,000 years. And in unusually direct terms, it said that human activity — burning oil, gas and coal — was squarely to blame.

The report prompted outrage among some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, whose leaders demanded that rich, industrialized powers immediately reduce their planet-warming pollution, compensate poor countries for the damages caused and help fund their preparations for a perilous future.

“What science is now saying is actually happening in front of our eyes,” said Malik Amin Aslam, special assistant on climate change to the prime minister of Pakistan, where temperatures exceeded 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) last year. “It’s like a hammer hitting us on the head every day.”

Tensions over the report’s findings are likely to course through negotiations taking place ahead of a major U.N. climate conference set for November in Glasgow.

The report concluded that essentially all of the rise in global average temperatures since the 19th century has been driven by humans burning fossil fuels, clearing forests and loading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane that trap heat.

Environmental groups said those findings will bolster international legal strategies to try to hold fossil fuel companies and governments accountable. The report may prove particularly valuable because, unlike previous reports, it focuses extensively on regional effects of climate change. That may allow environmental groups to fashion stronger, more specific legal arguments.

“It’s like a turbocharge” for some of the legal strategies that Greenpeace and other organizations have been pursuing in courts for years, said Jennifer Morgan, the executive director of Greenpeace International. Earlier this year, Greenpeace successfully sued Royal Dutch Shell in a Dutch court using evidence from an earlier U.N. report.

“I just expect the pace and the scale of the calls for action, whether they be in the courtrooms or on the streets or in the committee hearing rooms, to be clearer louder, bigger than ever before,” Morgan said.

Hours after the report was published, demonstrations were being planned for later this month in London and other cities.

The report shows that if emissions of greenhouse gases continue at the same levels or are only slightly reduced, the outcome will be continued warming and worsening effects for at least the rest of the century. But if governments make immediate, drastic cuts in emissions, they can stabilize the climate at about 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming compared to preindustrial levels.

The Earth has already warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius, or about 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

Despite the jolt the report sent through world capitals, it was clear that some of the biggest polluters, including China and the United States, were unlikely to make the kind of immediate pivot away from fossil fuels that scientists say is needed to hold the rise in global average temperatures to 1.5 or even 2 degrees Celsius, the higher limit set by the 2015 Paris climate accord, an agreement among nations to fight global warming. Nearly every nation that signed the accord is far off track to meet its commitment.

At this point, every fraction of a degree of warming would bring ever more destructive floods, deadlier heat waves and worsening droughts as well as accelerating sea-level rise that could threaten the existence of some island nations, the report said.

The United States, which historically has pumped more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other country, in April pledged to roughly halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. While that is an ambitious goal, it is slightly below the target enshrined in law by the European Union and significantly below that of Britain.

John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, said the U.N. report showed that “we need all countries to take the bold steps required” to limit global warming to relatively safe levels. Unmentioned was the fact that current U.S. laws and regulations are insufficient to meet its own climate goals.

China, the world’s biggest current producer of greenhouse gases, is still increasing its emissions from power plants, transportation and industry. It plans to hit peak emissions by 2030 before starting to cut back until it no longer produces a net increase of carbon dioxide by 2060.

The Chinese government didn’t respond to the U.N. findings. But in a recent talk, the country’s top climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, objected to proposals to set new goals to cut global emissions beyond the level agreed upon by nations in 2015 as part of the Paris climate accord.

“As we’ve already achieved this consensus, there’s no need to ignite fresh controversy now over this goal,” Xie told an event organized by a Hong Kong foundation, adding, “Our issue now is taking action and stepping up.”

And in India, where emissions per capita are a fraction of those of wealthy nations yet growing at a rapid pace, the government said the U.N. findings point to the need for industrialized nations to do more. India also has been resistant to new language demanding all nations take stronger action to hold global temperatures to a 1.5 degree Celsius increase, arguing wealthy countries have not yet made good on their own targets.

“Developed countries have usurped far more than their fair share of the global carbon budget,” Bhupender Yadav, India’s environment minister, said in a statement. The report “vindicates India’s position that historical cumulative emissions are the source of the climate crisis that the world faces today,” he said.

Referring to the report as “a code red for humanity,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres renewed his call for an end to the construction of new coal-burning plants as well as an end to fossil fuel subsidies by governments. “This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet,” he said in a statement.

The American Petroleum Institute, which represents major oil and natural gas producers in the United States, said in a statement that “reducing methane emissions and addressing the risks of climate change are top priorities for our industry.” It added that the industry has already made gains but said, “we have more work to do.”

A representative from Shell declined to comment; Exxon Mobil did not respond to a request for comment.

For the most vulnerable countries, the report may have given new life to a fight that they have waged with mixed success in recent years to persuade wealthy nations to pay for the climate-change-related damages they are suffering.

“What’s happening in the science affects us immediately,” said Tina Stege, a climate envoy for the Republic of the Marshall Islands, a nation of coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean, much of which is only about 6 feet above sea level. Wealthier polluting countries need to step up their assistance “not just to protect our future generations, but current generations,” she said.

Vulnerable island nations said they require financial assistance for relocation efforts, early warning systems and other critical steps to adapt to a changing climate.

Wealthy nations agreed in 2009 to deliver $100 billion annually by 2020 in public and private finance to help developing countries adapt to climate change and transition to clean, renewable energy like wind and solar. That promise hasn’t been met. At the same time, poor countries have sought money to address the climate-fueled disasters happening now.

“People are suffering and somebody needs to pay for this,” said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University, Bangladesh. Noting that Germany’s Cabinet recently approved $472 million to help its citizens recover from recent devastating floods, he questioned why nations could not find money for disasters being suffered by the countries that did the least to cause climate change.

Sveinung Rotevatn, Norway’s minister of climate and the environment, sidestepped the issue of whether wealthy nations would agree to pay compensation to vulnerable countries. Europe and the United States have resisted calls for climate compensation to poor nations.

“It remains of vital importance that the limited funding should be directed at saving lives, adapting to climate change and also to mitigation efforts,” Rotevatn said.

Mohamed Adow, the director of Power Shift Africa, a climate think tank based in Nairobi, said the U.N. report predicts a dire future that some are already experiencing. “Those of us who live in Africa have been aware of the urgency of the climate crisis for many years,” he said. “Lives and livelihoods have been shattered. It was time, Adow added, “for us to act on the scientific words.”

© 2021 The New York Times Company

While Delta spreads, Republicans deflect and resort to Trump demagoguery

The Guardian – Opinion – U.S. Politics

While Delta spreads, Republicans deflect and resort to Trump demagoguery

Robert Reich                             August 8, 2021

Trump Republicans are falling back on their proven method of deflecting attention by blaming immigrants crossing the southern border.

A syringe is filled with a first dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at a mobile vaccination clinic in Los Angeles, California.
A syringe is filled with a first dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at a mobile vaccination clinic in Los Angeles, California. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

 

As America reaches the milestone of 70% of adults with at least one dose of a vaccine, the highly contagious Delta variant is surging.

Public health officials are trying to keep the focus on the urgent need for more vaccinations.

But with unvaccinated Americans – notably and conspicuously residents of states and counties that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2020 – succumbing to the Delta strain in large numbers, Trump Republicans are falling back on their proven method of deflecting attention by blaming immigrants crossing the southern border.

Last week, Trump issued a characteristic charge: “ICYMI: “Thousands of Covid-positive migrants passing through Texas border city,” linking a New York Post article claiming that “nearly 7,000 immigrants who tested positive for Covid-19 have passed through a Texas city that has become the epicenter of the illegal immigration surge.”

Trump has employed this racist-nationalist theme before. For years he fixed his ire on Mexicans and Central Americans from “shitholes”, as he has so delicately put it. He began his 2016 campaign by charging that “criminals, drug dealers and rapists” were surging across America’s southern border, and then spent much of the subsequent four years trying to erect a fence to keep them out.

Trump acolytes are adopting the same demagoguery.

As hospitalizations in Florida surged past 12,000 this week, exceeding a record already shattered last weekend, Florida governor Ron DeSantis accused Joe Biden of facilitating the virus by not reducing immigration through the southern border.

“Why don’t you do your job?” DeSantis snapped after Biden suggested DeSantis stop opposing masks. “Why don’t you get this border secure? And until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about Covid from you, thank you.”

The Trumpist media is quickly falling in line behind this nativist rubbish. In the last week, Fox News’s Sean Hannity has asserted the “biggest super-spreader” is immigrants streaming over the southern border rather than the lack of vaccinations.

The National Review claims “Biden’s border crisis merges with his Covid crisis” and asserts that “the federal government is successfully terrifying people about Covid while it is shrugging at the thousands of infectious illegal aliens who are coming into the country and spreading the virus.”

A columnist for the Wall Street Journal insists that “if Biden Is Serious About Covid, He’ll Protect the Border.” The Washington Examiner asserts “Biden hypocrisy endangers American lives on southern border.” Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire warns of “Covid-Positive Illegal Immigrants Flooding Across The Border.”

Can we please stop for a moment and look at the actual data? The Delta variant is spreading fastest in interior states like Missouri and Arkansas, far away from the Mexican border.

It was first detected in India in December, and then moved directly to the United States in March and April according to the CDC.

GISAID, a nonprofit organization that tracks the genetic sequencing of viruses, has shown that each of the four variants now circulating in the United States arrived here before spreading to Mexico and Central America. International travel rather than immigration over the southern border brought the viruses to America.

Haven’t we had enough demagoguery and deflection? Haven’t Trump and his ilk done enough damage already?

The blame game must stop. Let’s be clear: The best way to contain deaths and hospitalizations from Covid is to get more Americans vaccinated. Period.

… we have a small favor to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s high-impact journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5 million readers, from 180 countries, have recently taken the step to support us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent.

With no shareholders or billionaire owner, we can set our own agenda and provide trustworthy journalism that’s free from commercial and political influence, offering a counterweight to the spread of misinformation. When it’s never mattered more, we can investigate and challenge without fear or favor.

Unlike many others, Guardian journalism is available for everyone to read, regardless of what they can afford to pay. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of global events, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action.

We aim to offer readers a comprehensive, international perspective on critical events shaping our world – from the Black Lives Matter movement, to the new American administration, Brexit, and the world’s slow emergence from a global pandemic. We are committed to upholding our reputation for urgent, powerful reporting on the climate emergency, and made the decision to reject advertising from fossil fuel companies, divest from the oil and gas industries, and set a course to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.

If there were ever a time to join us, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers our journalism and sustains our future. Support the Guardian from as little as $1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you.