#climatecrisis

psychmesu@diaspora.glasswings.com

https://climatejustice.social/@breadandcircuses/113634903701762229 breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social - This is grimly ironic...


The question of whether global warming is accelerating is hotly contested among climate scientists. While some have argued that the current rate of warming — which hit an all-time high last year — is strictly correlated with increased fossil fuel emissions and therefore aligned with current climate models, others have cautioned that the Earth is far more sensitive to fossil fuels than previously thought and that humanity is hurtling toward tipping points from which there can be no return.

In a recent study, a group of researchers from the University of Melbourne complicated this debate with an analysis of warming rates across the globe and possible causes for regional differences. Their principal finding: The globe is getting hotter at a faster rate, but this acceleration is occurring unevenly.

Surprisingly, densely populated areas with large concentrations of poverty — megacities like Cairo and Mumbai — are warming more slowly than urban centers in Europe and North America. Why?

The researchers found that the large quantity of aerosol particles in the air of highly polluted cities reflect sunlight back out into space and, at least in the short term, can have a net cooling effect on populations.


FULL STORY -- https://grist.org/climate-energy/some-cities-are-so-polluted-theyre-warming-slower/

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis

adolar@diaspora.psyco.fr

UN human rights expert raises concerns about US charges against climate protesters | Climate crisis | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/04/un-human-rights-expert-cellist-climate-protester

In the letter, which was sent to the US diplomatic mission at the United Nations in Geneva, the UN experts raised concerns about the factual basis of an assault charge against Rozendaal and Connon, resulting from a complaint by a member of Citibank’s security staff.

After participating in another peaceful protest, the two activists were also charged with criminal contempt, which carries a seven-year maximum sentence.

The assault charges were dropped after the security guard failed to submit a deposition. The contempt charges were resolved by the pair pleading guilty to “disorderly conduct” – referring to Rozendaal playing the cello in a public plaza outside Citibank HQ and Connon sheltering him from the rain with an umbrella.

Playing cello is now a serious crime. Sadly, the US is not the only country criminalising peaceful #climate protesters.😔

#climatechange #climatecrisis

psychmesu@diaspora.glasswings.com

https://climatejustice.social/@breadandcircuses/113477538393474961 breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social - Mother Nature says: FAFO


Trees and land absorbed almost no carbon dioxide (CO2) last year, and scientists are struggling to work out why.

Carbon sinks, such as forests, oceans and soils, are an essential part of regulating the Earth’s climate. Through natural processes, these land and ocean masses absorb almost half of all human carbon emissions from the atmosphere.

But preliminary findings for 2023 – the hottest year ever recorded on Earth – have found that the amount of carbon absorbed by forests, plants, and soil has temporarily collapsed.

This was completely unexpected, and therefore not something factored into most predictions and calculations about how quickly the Earth will heat up as a result of climate change. The breakdown of the land carbon sink could be temporary, but if it isn’t, this will drastically increase the rate of global heating.

It will be impossible for the world to reach net zero without carbon sinks, because there is simply no human technology that can absorb carbon on the same scale as the forests, grasslands, peat bogs, and oceans of the world.


FULL STORY ➡️ https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/environment/trees-absorbed-almost-no-co2-last-year-and-scientists-are-struggling-to-explain-why-385673/

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis

psychmesu@diaspora.glasswings.com

https://climatejustice.social/@breadandcircuses/113289032171493870 breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social - Excerpts from an opinion piece in Current Affairs that does not mince words...


Hurricanes have occurred throughout living memory, and every hurricane season is going to have deadly storms, but warming oceans make the storms worse, causing higher wind speeds, heavier rainfall, and more severe storm surge. The warming itself is, of course, caused mostly by the burning of fossil fuels.

This really is not complicated. We have to stop using fossil fuels as rapidly as possible, because they’re causing a massive global calamity that is not just bringing us worse storms, but drawing us closer to irreversible tipping points that will escalate the speed of changes and cause human suffering on an unprecedented level. Scientists who study planetary “vital signs” say we are imperiling the very fabric of life on our planet and causing an “abrupt climate upheaval, which jeopardizes life on Earth like nothing humans have ever seen.”

You would think, then, that because of the serious harm being done, our political leaders would be treating the situation as an emergency and acting accordingly. Not so. In fact, there is an astonishing amount of denial, and it’s bipartisan.

On the right, Republicans just outright deny climate science, which J.D. Vance calls “weird science” and Donald Trump thinks is a Chinese hoax. Even Florida politicians like Marco Rubio downplay the problem despite its immense harmful impacts on the state. The state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, has stripped mentions of climate change from state laws, perhaps in the hope that by pretending the problem doesn’t exist, we can make it go away.

The right’s denialism is atrocious. They seem to want to march us straight into the abyss.

But let’s be honest: Democrats haven’t been much better.

Democrats have shifted in the way they discuss climate change. Instead of emphasizing the seriousness of the problem and the need to pivot away from fossil fuels, they boast about record levels of oil and gas production. The issue can be awkward for Democrats, and recently the White House was seeking to avoid the fact that President Biden, who has called for a transition away from fossil fuels, has overseen the biggest oil and gas boom in United States history.

The Wall Street Journal, in a remarkable recent report, says Big Oil is trying to make sure Donald Trump doesn’t gut the Democrats’ signature “climate law,” the Inflation Reduction Act. That’s not because fossil fuel companies want to save the planet, but because the law actually contains huge handouts to them!

The failure by our political class to deal with this completely solvable issue is staggering and shameful. Many of them have children and grandchildren. Presumably they would like their descendants to inherit a world worth living in. And they could make that happen. Unfortunately, it would require challenging the power and profits of some of America’s most influential corporations.

Those corporations have lobbyists crawling all over U.N. climate summits to make sure any global action is watered down to the point of uselessness — which they do with the support and collaboration of Democrats who supposedly care about the crisis and think it’s real!


FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/you-should-be-furious-at-the-political-class-for-enabling-this-climate-catastrophe

#Politics #Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis

psychmesu@diaspora.glasswings.com

https://wandering.shop/@susankayequinn/112989493467382765 susankayequinn@wandering.shop - The Dems have released their policy doc ahead of the convention and the whole thing is worth the read, but especially the climate section.

AND THIS — there's so much to do but this is the future administration of the most powerful country in the world STARTING TO GET IT.

#ClimateCrisis #ClimateSolutions #Harris2024 @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews

Read the Dem Party Platform HERE: https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTER-PLATFORM.pdf

faab64@diasp.org

Car parks with space for 80 cars or more in France are now required by law to be covered with solar panels.

  • Parks between 80-400 spaces have 5 years to comply
  • Parks with spaces of 400+ have 3 years to comply

This will result in about 11 gigawatts of power.
Imagine if places like US would embrace this and help keep cars cool while generating electricity. Or adding solar panels on top of all the ridiculously giant shopping malls, would create enough electricity to cut their power consumption by a huge percentage.

#ClimateCrisis #Mitigation #Electrification #SolarPanels #SolarFarm #ParkingSpace #Europe #France #Environment #Economy

claralistensprechen3rd@friendica.myportal.social

Our wars add greenhouse gases by the tons.

DoomsdaysCW - 2024-07-11 19:31:16 GMT

EU climate service: Earth records 12 straight months of record high temperaturesBy Clyde Hughes, UPI

July 8 (UPI) -- "June 2024 was hotter than any June previously on record, leaving people exposed to life-threatening temperatures and more extreme weather, the European Union's #Copernicus #ClimateChange Service said Monday.

"Copernicus researchers found that temperatures worldwide each month for the past 12 months were 1.5 degrees Celsius greater than the average before the #preindustrial age.

"The report said temperatures in Europe were higher on average than in the southeast regions. It added the countries and regions with the hottest temperatures outside of #Europe were eastern #Canada, the western #UnitedStates, western #Mexico, #Brazil, northern #Siberia, the #MiddleEast, northern #Africa, and western #Antarctica.

"'Even if this specific streak of extremes ends at some point, we are bound to see new records being broken as the climate continues to warm,' said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, according to The Guardian.

"'This is inevitable unless we stop adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the oceans.'

"The report said its review of the oceans, air temperatures were higher than average in the #AtlanticOcean and #IndianOcean along with most of the #PacificOcean. Temperatures were below average in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean and smaller regions around the world, like the Bering Sea.

"Copernicus uses measurements from various sources, including airplanes, weather stations, ships and satellites to capture vital climate information worldwide.

"'This is not good news at all,' said Aditi Mukherji, the co-author of the newest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 'We know that extreme events increase with every increment of global warming and at 1.5 degrees Celsius, we witnessed some of the hottest extremes this year.'"

https://www.accuweather.com/en/climate/eu-climate-service-earth-records-12-straight-months-of-record-high-temperatures/1667214

#ClimateCrisis #GlobalWarming #ExtremeHeat #ClimateCatastrophe

adolar@diaspora.psyco.fr

"What is the cheapest way to beat climate change?"

https://youtu.be/ReXaS4QausQ?si=RScS-wBsK8cCuOst

Tackling climate change, viewed from an economic angle. You will often hear people whining about how expensive it is to fight climate change. Those people usually not only ignore the costs that will arise if we don't do anything, they also ignore the economic reality, usually lobbying for certain economic interests.

Funnily, there are even solutions that come with negative costs. Others (like bicycle infrastructure) don't cost much, they only need to be done.
#climatechange #climatecrisis

psychmesu@diaspora.glasswings.com

https://climatejustice.social/@breadandcircuses/112093951203096593 breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social - Woo-hoo, this is it!  🎉 Let’s celebrate! 🥳  If you live in the USA, today is Earth Overshoot Day for 2024!!

That means we’ve used our entire carbon budget in this country for the full year. We have exceeded our Ecological Footprint.

So, as of today, no one will be driving ICE cars or flying on airplanes. All our fossil fuel power plants are shutting down until next January. No more single-use plastics for the rest of the year. Everything is getting delivered by bicycle or on foot, and —

  — wait, what? It doesn’t mean that?

It means nothing changes at all? You mean we’ll still be polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases and poisoning our bodies with microplastics?

Nothing changes? Nothing??!!

Shit.

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual