Tag Archives: Global Warming

Record Drop in Coal Burning Raises Question — Is Peak Fossil Fuel Use Happening Now? RobertScribbler

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Peak oil, gas, and coal.

It’s a possibility that many who believe the fossil fuel industry’s false dependency mantra look at with fear and trembling. Because, for years, that industry, through various public relations efforts, has perpetuated a myth that a loss of access to fossil fuels would ruin the modern global economy. That fossil fuels were so high-quality no other energy source could effectively replace them.

It’s a myth that, in many ways, competes with the threat of human-caused climate change for space in the public’s collective imagination. One that is not without a few valid supports. For the shifting of energy use away from one set of sources and on toward another set is a massive, disruptive undertaking even in the case where the new energy sources are superior to the old.

.. (This is what a real existential threat to global civilization looks like. From the 1880s to the six month cold season of 2015-2016, global temperatures warmed by 1.38 degrees Celsius. At the end of the last ice age, it took about 3,000 years for as much warming to occur as human fossil fuel burning has achieved over just the last 136 years. Dealing with what is a problem of geological scale ramping up with lightning speed will require a necessarily rapid reduction to zero fossil fuel burning over the coming decades. Recent swift curtailments of coal use provide some hope that such a reduction may be possible. But rates of fossil fuel use will have to peak soon and be cut even more swiftly to prevent a very rapidly intensifying global emergency. Image source: NASA GISS.)

Source: robertscribbler | Scribbling for environmental, social and economic justice

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Bay Area Voters Approve Tax to Fix Marshes As Seas Rise | Climate Central

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GR:  Individuals, not the corporations responsible for the problem are paying this tax.  Hey, Republicans, why not reverse fossil-fuel subsidies and let the fossil-fuel industry’s past profits help pay to clean up polluted air, water, and land?

John Upton:  Voters in the San Francisco Bay Area approved an unprecedented tax Tuesday to help fund an ambitious vision for restoring lost marshlands, handing electoral victory to shorebirds, crabs and advocates of a muddy strategy for adapting to rising seas.

Measure AA is projected to raise an estimated $25 million a year for 20 years. As of Wednesday morning, 69 percent of voters in the nine Bay Area counties supported it, with only a small number of votes left to be counted. The $12 annual tax proposed for each parcel of property owned in the Bay Area needed two thirds of votes to pass.  Read more:  Bay Area Voters Approve Tax to Fix Marshes As Seas Rise | Climate Central

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The Guardian view on the Great Barrier Reef: the crisis they prefer to downplay | Opinion | The Guardian

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Many of the politicians fighting Australia’s election campaign talk about the economy and immigration but the world is listening for what they say about the impact of climate change.

If the rest of the world could vote in next month’s Australian election, there would almost certainly be one issue that would be raised to the top of the country’s political agenda: saving the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists say this year 93% of its reefs experienced some bleaching, and 22% of all of the reef’s coral was killed by unusually warm waters. Unheard of just three decades ago, large-scale bleaching has become a regular occurrence. Within 20 years the conditions that drove this year’s bleaching in Australia will occur every second year. A Guardian report illustrates in vivid detail the scale of the devastation unfolding beneath the surface. Over the past 34 years the average proportion of the Great Barrier Reef exposed to temperatures where bleaching or even death is likely has increased from about 11% a year to about 27% a year.

It is a constant struggle to motivate most people most of the time about climate change. The evidence accumulates slowly; despite being an emergency, it often . . . more:  The Guardian view on the Great Barrier Reef: the crisis they prefer to downplay | Opinion | The Guardian

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Arctic Sea Ice Breaks May Record . . . By A Lot | Climate Central

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By Bobby Magill:  Arctic sea ice shrank to its fourth-lowest level in 50 years last month, setting a record low for the month of May and setting up conditions for what could become the smallest Arctic ice extent in history, according to National Snow and Ice Data Center data released Tuesday.

“We didn’t just break the old May record, we’re way below the previous one,” NSIDC Director Mark Serreze said.  More:  Source: Arctic Sea Ice Breaks May Record . . . By A Lot | Climate Central

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To save the Great Barrier Reef ‘we need to start now, right now’ – video | Environment | The Guardian

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GR:  The video leaves us with a grim outlook.  Human wastes running into the oceans coupled with global warming will soon destroy all the reefs.  Do enough people care to force our governments to act?  Probably not.  Do you see any answers?

and , theguardian.com:  Jon Brodie from James Cook University says to give the Great Barrier Reef even a fighting chance to survive, Australia needs to spend $1bn a year for the next 10 years to improve water quality. If we don’t do that now, he says, we might need to just give up on the reef. ‘Climate change is happening much more quickly and much more severely than most scientists predicted’•

The Great Barrier Reef: a catastrophe laid bare – special report.    Source: To save the Great Barrier Reef ‘we need to start now, right now’ – video | Environment | The Guardian

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Green Conservatives call for earlier UK coal power phase-out | Environment | The Guardian

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Damian Carrington:  The UK should close all its coal-fired power stations two years earlier than the government’s pledge of 2025, according to green Conservatives including former energy minister Lord Greg Barker.

The move would not cause the lights to go out, would cut both carbon emissions and air pollution and would boost cleaner energy projects, according to a report from Bright Blue, a thinktank of Tory modernisers.

The report also concludes that if the troubled Hinkley C nuclear plant is cancelled it could be replaced by renewable energy.  Source: Green Conservatives call for earlier UK coal power phase-out | Environment | The Guardian

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Great Barrier Reef: diving in the stench of millions of rotting animals – video | Environment | The Guardian

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GR:  Watch this short video to get a clear idea of what’s happening to coral.

Richard Vevers from the Ocean Agency had never experienced anything like the devastation he witnessed in May diving around the dead and dying coral reefs off Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef. When his team emerged from the water, he says, ‘We realised we just stank – we stank of the smell of rotting animals.’ The reefs around the island have been ravaged by coral bleaching caused by climate change.  Special report by Josh Wall and Michael Slezak, theguardian.com.  Source: Great Barrier Reef: diving in the stench of millions of rotting animals – video | Environment | The Guardian

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Alaskan Community Efficiency Champions Compete for Funds to Implement Energy Reduction Plans | Department of Energy

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Increasing Energy Efficiency

GR:  It is good to see renewable energy mentioned.  Let’s hope it receives more emphasis in practice.

Alaska possesses great natural beauty, but also has some of the most expensive energy costs in the United States. The Energy Department is helping many Alaskan communities adopt more sustainable energy strategies to alleviate high energy costs.

Last September, President Obama traveled to Alaska to see the frontlines of our fight against climate change firsthand. While he was there, he visited remote Alaskan communities, including Kotzebue and Kivalina. The lives of Kivalina’s residents have been so dramatically impacted by rising sea levels and coastal erosion they have had to make the difficult decision to relocate their village. So, as the President noted, while the rest of the country is becoming more aware of climate change, these communities are already living it.

I was fortunate to visit Alaska myself with Senator Lisa Murkowski a little over a year ago in part to learn about the complex energy needs of remote areas like these in a state with abundant natural resources. I saw just how essential Alaska is to our all of the above approach as we build or future energy mix, and one aspect of that work is finding ways to integrate energy efficiency and renewable energy into our system.  More:  Alaskan Community Efficiency Champions Compete for Funds to Implement Energy Reduction Plans | Department of Energy

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Here’s what the science really says about Fort McMurray and climate change | National Observer

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Climate Change Causing More Fires

Now Fort McMurray residents have begun the difficult journey home weeks after that terrifying day in May when an unprecedented inferno, fueled by unusually hot and dry spring weather, caused them to flee and led to the largest evacuation in Alberta’s history.

Those unusual weather conditions have been widely attributed to El Nino, a naturally-occurring phenomenon linked to warm ocean water that disrupts the weather.

But Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire from the University of Alberta, and many other climate change scientists agree that while the Fort McMurray fires cannot be directly linked to the carbon pollution produced by humans, Canadian wildfire activity of the past few years is well above average. And it’s connected to the warming climate.

In terms of the total areas destroyed by fires, there’s an unmistakable escalation, they say.They see these fires as vivid markers of dangers to come for the forests and for the people and wildlife that live in them and around them.

As temperatures warm, they say, the likelihood is greater that more out of control infernos will consume more trees and human infrastructure.

Source: Here’s what the science really says about Fort McMurray and climate change | National Observer

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