Global Climate Change Science News

[JimC]

If they over-invest in resources which become economically unviable, then they will lose big time, and their shareholders will revolt...

[Brian Peacock]

The climate emergency really is a new type of crisis – consider the ‘triple inequality’ at the heart of it

Stare at a climate map of the world that we expect to inhabit 50 years from now and you see a band of extreme heat encircling the planet’s midriff. Climate modelling from 2020 suggests that within half a century about 30% of the world’s projected population – unless they are forced to move – will live in places with an average temperature above 29C. This is unbearably hot. Currently, no more than 1% of Earth’s land surface is this hot, and those are mainly uninhabited parts of the Sahara.

The scenario is as dramatic as it is because the regions of the world affected most severely by global heating – above all, sub-Saharan Africa – are those expected to experience the most rapid population growth in coming decades.

But despite this population growth, they are also the regions that, on current trends, will contribute least to the emissions that drive the climate disaster. So extreme is inequality that the lowest-earning 50% of the world population – 4 billion people – account for as little as 12% of total emissions. And those at the very bottom of the pile barely register at all. Mali’s per capita C02 emissions are about one-seventy-fifth of those in the US. Even if the lowest-earning third of the global population – more than 2.6 billion people – were to raise themselves above the $3.2-a-day poverty line, it would increase total emissions by a mere 5% – that is, one-third of the emissions of the richest 1%.

Half the world’s population, led by the top 10% of the income distribution – and, above all, by the global elite – drive a globe-spanning productive system that destabilises the environment for everyone. The worst effects are suffered by the poorest, and in the coming decades the impact will become progressively more extreme. And yet their poverty means they are virtually powerless to protect themselves.

...

You might say, plus ça change. The poor suffer and the rich prosper. But the consequences of the climate triple inequality are radical and new. Rich countries have long traded on unequal terms with the poor. During the era of colonialism, they plundered raw materials and enslaved tens of millions. For two generations after decolonisation, economic growth largely bypassed what was then known as the third world.

Since the 1980s, with the acceleration of China’s economic growth, the scope of development has dramatically widened. The middle 40% of the world’s income distribution now account for 41% of global emissions, meaning they have achieved a considerable level of energy consumption. But this “global middle class”, concentrated above all in east Asia, crowds out the carbon budget remaining for those on the lowest incomes, and their growth inflicts irreversible damage on some of the poorest and most disempowered people in the world.

This is the historic novelty of the current situation. As we run ever closer to the edge of the environmental envelope – the conditions within which our species can thrive – the development of the rich world systematically undercuts the conditions for survival of billions of people in the climate danger zone. They are not so much exploited or bypassed as victimised by the climactic effects of economic growth taking place elsewhere. This violent and indirect entanglement is new in its quality and scale....

[Brian Peacock]

Revealed: Saudi Arabia’s grand plan to ‘hook’ poor countries on oil.

[macdoc]

hail mary shot ..??

AN ALKALINE SOLUTION
As alarm about climate change grows, scientists explore a strategy for drawing excess carbon dioxide into the ocean
30 NOV 202312:30 PM ETBYWARREN CORNWALL
Go to content

https://www.science.org/content/article ... on-dioxide

[Joe]

hail mary shot ..??

AN ALKALINE SOLUTION
As alarm about climate change grows, scientists explore a strategy for drawing excess carbon dioxide into the ocean
30 NOV 202312:30 PM ETBYWARREN CORNWALL
Go to content

https://www.science.org/content/article ... on-dioxide

That has a sort of Ministry for the Future feel to it. Brilliant book. Your recommendation I recall.

[Brian Peacock]

Belgian court orders 55% emissions cut from 1990 levels

A Belgian court has declared the country’s climate targets “clearly insufficient” and ordered the government to cut emissions faster.

In a powerful victory for climate campaigners, the Brussels court of appeal ordered Belgium to cut its planet-heating pollution by at least 55% from 1990 levels by 2030. By 2021, Belgium had cut its emissions by just 24%.

The court rejected arguments that Belgium’s impact on the climate crisis was limited by its small size and found its climate governance to date had violated human rights.

Zakia Khattabi, the Federal climate minister, said in a post on X that the judgment – together with the European Commission’s expected response to Belgium’s national climate and energy plan – “constitute levers to strengthen and give credibility to our climate policies”.

The court case, which was brought by the nonprofit Klimaatzaak on behalf of more than 58,000 claimants, has dragged on for years through Belgium’s legal system. The ruling builds on a previous verdict that found Belgium’s climate policy inadequate by ordering the government to cut emissions faster.

The governments will now have to set a 2030 target of at least 55%, a level of ambition greater than its current obligations of 47% under EU effort-sharing rules.

Scientists warn that the new target will still not be enough to keep extreme weather from rapidly growing more violent. An analysis from the Grantham Institute in March found that Belgium would have to cut emissions at least 61% by 2030 to keep the planet from heating 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures, the level for which world leaders have promised to aim. If the right to pollute were to be shared out more equally between everyone on the planet, Belgium’s cuts would have to be even deeper, reaching 81% by 2030....

[macdoc]

It was the courts that finally got things moving on the Acid Rain issue and it turned out not to be such a hard row.
It really needs the courts to get CO2 abatement in high gear.
Yeah Ministry for the Future should be mandatory reading of the world, glad you enjoyed it

[rainbow]

hail mary shot ..??

AN ALKALINE SOLUTION
As alarm about climate change grows, scientists explore a strategy for drawing excess carbon dioxide into the ocean
30 NOV 202312:30 PM ETBYWARREN CORNWALL
Go to content

https://www.science.org/content/article ... on-dioxide

That is really dumb.

[macdoc]

And why would that be oh wise one??

[rainbow]

And why would that be oh wise one??

In order to remove 1 mole of CO2, you require at least 1 mole of Mg(OH)2.
To make 1 mole of Mg(OH)2, you require at least 1 mole of Ca(OH)2.
To make Ca(OH)2 you need to slake lime CaO
To make CaO, you need to burn limestone, which releases 1 mole of CO2.

[Brian Peacock]

Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels

The president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.

Al Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”.

The comments were “incredibly concerning” and “verging on climate denial”, scientists said, and they were at odds with the position of the UN secretary general, António Guterres.

Al Jaber made the comments in ill-tempered responses to questions from Mary Robinson, the chair of the Elders group and a former UN special envoy for climate change, during a live online event on 21 November. As well as running Cop28 in Dubai, Al Jaber is also the CEO of the United Arab Emirates’s state oil company, Adnoc, which many observers see as a serious conflict of interest..

[macdoc]

or not.....
https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/re-ca ... tervention.
and
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16510-3
and
https://sp.copernicus.org/preprints/sp- ... 2023-1.pdf

Facts and figures about CO2 and olivine
2-2.5 BILLION TON CO2 PER YEAR
CO2 is not only produced by human activity. Volcanoes and disintegrating rocks produce 2-2.5 billion tons per year. Olivine is one of the earth’s defence mechanisms. Without it our atmosphere would long ago have become like that on Venus.

100 MICRONS
Human beings produce 30 billion tons of CO2 each year. Nature can’t cope with that amount. Spreading out enough olivine with a size of about 100 microns can help.

1.25 TON CO2
One tonne of olivine can permanently remove 1.25 ton CO2 from the atmosphere. There is enough of it to remove the excess of this greenhouse gas: on or just under the earth’s surface there is a thousand times more than required.

Olivine is the most widely occurring mineral on earth and in many places there are vast massives lying on the earth’s surface. The Mars Explorers have also found it on that planet

ABUNDANT
In Europe olivine is abundant. It is mined in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Italy, Austria, Greece, Cyprus and the Balkans. Turkey also has olivine mines. Olivine is a the most abundant mineral in the Sultanate of Oman, conservative estimates indicate a volume of about 14,700 cubic km!

FEW YEARS
Weathering olivine binds CO2. Sceptics think that it takes 700 years. However, the process is greatly accelerated by the action of heat, movement and water. And also by certain plant growth. Tests have shown that weathering then only takes a few years, rather than centuries.

HARMLESS
Olivine is harmless. Even after reaction with CO2 there are no signs of harmful effects. Olivine on the shoreline is also not a health risk.

https://smartstones.nl/about-olivine/facts-and-figures/

[Svartalf]

And why would that be oh wise one??

In order to remove 1 mole of CO2, you require at least 1 mole of Mg(OH)2.
To make 1 mole of Mg(OH)2, you require at least 1 mole of Ca(OH)2.
To make Ca(OH)2 you need to slake lime CaO
To make CaO, you need to burn limestone, which releases 1 mole of CO2.

nice catch 22

[Brian Peacock]

or not.....
https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/re-ca ... tervention.
and
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16510-3
and
https://sp.copernicus.org/preprints/sp- ... 2023-1.pdf

Facts and figures about CO2 and olivine
2-2.5 BILLION TON CO2 PER YEAR
CO2 is not only produced by human activity. Volcanoes and disintegrating rocks produce 2-2.5 billion tons per year. Olivine is one of the earth’s defence mechanisms. Without it our atmosphere would long ago have become like that on Venus.

100 MICRONS
Human beings produce 30 billion tons of CO2 each year. Nature can’t cope with that amount. Spreading out enough olivine with a size of about 100 microns can help.

1.25 TON CO2
One tonne of olivine can permanently remove 1.25 ton CO2 from the atmosphere. There is enough of it to remove the excess of this greenhouse gas: on or just under the earth’s surface there is a thousand times more than required.

Olivine is the most widely occurring mineral on earth and in many places there are vast massives lying on the earth’s surface. The Mars Explorers have also found it on that planet

ABUNDANT
In Europe olivine is abundant. It is mined in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Italy, Austria, Greece, Cyprus and the Balkans. Turkey also has olivine mines. Olivine is a the most abundant mineral in the Sultanate of Oman, conservative estimates indicate a volume of about 14,700 cubic km!

FEW YEARS
Weathering olivine binds CO2. Sceptics think that it takes 700 years. However, the process is greatly accelerated by the action of heat, movement and water. And also by certain plant growth. Tests have shown that weathering then only takes a few years, rather than centuries.

HARMLESS
Olivine is harmless. Even after reaction with CO2 there are no signs of harmful effects. Olivine on the shoreline is also not a health risk.

https://smartstones.nl/about-olivine/facts-and-figures/

Pah. These facts are mere inconveniences to the likes of the CEO of Adnoc. They've captured the process: they get to set the narrative now. Politicians are lining up to support them even while delivering earnest speeches which affirm their sincerity about addressing global heating. The idea that science is divided or that the matter is still in the balance is an attempt to shift the context of the debate - which it is.

[macdoc]

WTF are you on about. If you want to babble about conspiracies with Cunt do so other than in the Climate Science thread.