British police arrest environmental protesters at nearly three times the global average rate, research has found, revealing the country as a world leader in the legal crackdown on climate activism.
Only Australia arrested climate and environmental protesters at a higher rate than UK police. One in five Australian eco-protests led to arrests, compared with about 17% in the UK. The global average rate is 6.7%.
The research comes amid an outcry over the targeting of climate and environmental protesters, with a rise in the suppression of dissent around the world as the climate, biodiversity and pollution crises take hold.
It found an increase in the number and proportion of protests linked to climate and environmental destruction over the past decade, but argued that rather than tackling the issues provoking them, states are focusing on punishing dissent.
Michel Forst, the UN special rapporteur for environmental defenders, said earlier this year: “In many countries, the state response to peaceful environmental protest is increasingly to repress rather than to enable and protect those seeking to speak up for the environment.”
The latest research paints a picture of extensive repression of climate and environmental protest in the global north and south, with distinct characteristics in each region contributing to the overall trend.
“There is an increasing criminalisation and repression of climate and environmental protest,” said Oscar Berglund, a political economist at the University of Bristol who led the study. “These kinds of protests have increased, climate protests quite sharply, and the response to this has been a crackdown that has to be seen in the wider political sense of a breakdown in climate action.”
Berglund and his colleagues looked at data collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data database between 2012 and 2023, focusing specifically on the countries that had more than 1,000 protest events registered for that period. They then narrowed down their focus to 14 countries representing all six populated continents for a qualitative analysis.
Following academic convention, they drew a terminological distinction between environmental protest and climate protest. Environmental protests were defined as those that target destructive projects such as mining, dams or large scale construction, while climate protests are a generally newer phenomenon, mainly concentrated in the global north. They are geographically separate from the projects they oppose and have broader political demands.
The researchers found that both kinds of protest had increased, but the data showed a particularly sharp rise in the number of climate protests towards the end of the 2010s, coinciding with the growth of the youth-led Fridays for Future movement and groups such as Extinction Rebellion in the UK and the Sunrise Movement in the US...
iswydt
"With less regulation on the margins we expect the financial sector to do well under the incoming administration” —money manager
In its last year in office the previous Tory govt issued more that 100 exploratory oil and gas licences for the North Sea, at knock-downs bargain-basement prices. The climate assessments fossil companies submitted with their applications only had to cover the impact of exploration, that is: the assessment didn't have to cover the impact of exploitation, processing, distributing or, most significantly, burning the presumptive oil or gas. An exploration licence allows companies to identify, develop, drill and cap a wellhead and to build the infrastructure for extraction. At that point they need to apply for a secondary exploitation licence - usually granted as a formality. In June a private case succeeded in the Supreme Court obliging the govt to require fossil companies to assess the global climate impact of developing new wells and fields. The new Labour govt is currently reviewing the Supreme Court decision, but independent research now suggests that CO2 emissions from new North Sea drilling sites would match 30 years’ worth emissions from UK households.
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
Sent from my penis using wankertalk. "The Western world is fucking awesome because of mostly white men" - DaveDodo007. "Socialized medicine is just exactly as morally defensible as gassing and cooking Jews" - Seth. Yes, he really did say that.. "Seth you are a boon to this community" - Cunt. "I am seriously thinking of going on a spree killing" - Svartalf.
Around 1820 mathematician Joseph Fourier hypothesised that there must be some quality to the air which was stopping the energy that reached the planet as sunlight from simply radiating away back into space. All things being equal he suggested, the planet should be frozen. He was right, he just didn't know why or how.
In the 1850s Eunice Newton Foote demonstrated by experiment that CO2 had a thermal capacity c.1000x that of 'natural air'.
In 1896 Svante Arrhenius published an account of atmospheric CO2 which established a direct relationship between its prevalence and global mean temperatures, surmising that global mean temperatures would rise logarithmically with increases in CO2 levels. He calculated that a doubling of CO2--an unimaginable proposition at the time--would lead to around a 5°C increase in mean temperatures. He wasn't that far off the mark given the data he had available.
By the 1930s British engineer Guy Stewart Callendar (good Scottish name for an Englishman!), having noted that the United States and North Atlantic region had warmed significantly during the previous 100 years, proposed a link between fossil fuel use, CO2 levels, and industrialisation. Until his death in the 60s he continued to argue publicly that human activity was accelerating the greenhouse effect and heating the planet.
In the 1950 US scientist Charles Keeling standardised methods for recording atmospheric CO2, and after making adjustments to historical data to compare against data collected at the time, produced what is now called the 'Keeling Curve' when mapping CO2 against global temperatures - a saw-tooth line on a graph with an upward trajectory over time as levels increase. His work was the basis for a number of early computer models which, taking Arrhenius' proposition, estimated that a doubling of CO2 would result in a 2-3°C increase in global temps.
By the 70s the link between fossil fuel extraction and use, CO2 levels, and global heating had been clearly demonstrated, and that CO2 could hang around in the atmosphere for 100s of years. There really was no excuse not to address the issue - accept that companies like Exxon, Shell, and BP et al, poured resources into disseminating a false 'counter balancing argument' in the public and policy debate, so that for the next 40 years every time a new paper or study highlighted links between CO2 and temperatures, or offered predictions about, say, disruption to the water cycle, changes in albedo, glaciers melting or sea levels rising, the increased prevalence of drought and wild fires, disruptions to food security, the potential for social upheaval, etc, some paid-for mouth piece would be pushed into the space to offer an 'alternate' perspective and dispute the claims and conclusions, criticise the science for not accounting for this-or-that, moralise about the personal failings of researchers, theorise about the malign political motives of climate research and funding, or to simply lie about the known facts.
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here. .
"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
On a chilly day in December under stubborn grey skies, a band of green-fingered volunteers can be found in Somerset’s Chew valley with spades in their hands and dirt under their fingernails.
There are about 30 helpers, split into pairs, carefully planting hawthorn, blackthorn and crab apple saplings, one tree at a time. Undaunted by the scale of the project, they are planting one of the biggest new woodlands in England.
The Lower Chew Forest, as it will be known, is a vast new woodland between Bristol and Bath with 100,000 native trees planted by about 1,000 volunteers mobilised by the woodland creation charity Avon Needs Trees.
The charity says the 170-hectare (420-acre) woodland will increase biodiversity, reduce flooding and lock up carbon to help the fight against climate breakdown. But what does it take to make it happen?
“We depend utterly on volunteers to be able to achieve our objectives and our aims. To develop the project as it is, we’re planting 100,000 trees here over the next two to three years,” says the volunteer leader, John Chew.
“One of the reasons that Avon Needs Trees has become so successful over the last four or five years is because so many people are concerned about climate change, biodiversity loss, things like that,” he says.
“There’s an awful lot of charities there that you can contribute to, possibly just give money to, but with Avon Needs Trees, of course, you can get actively involved. You can come and get your hands dirty. You can put some trees in the ground.”
The spades do not slip easily into the thick, clay soil; planting tree after tree takes some effort. But the volunteers are all thrilled to be here, each for their own unique reasons.
“I read in the media about the climate crisis, and I think for me to be able to compartmentalise it or cope with it in many ways, is to come and actually actively do something,” says Georgie Duckworth, 41, a writer who lives in the Chew valley. “So being here feels like a positive step to actually helping.”...
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
The world’s richest 1% have already used up their fair share of the global carbon budget for 2025, just 10 days into the year.
In less than a week and a half, the consumption habits of an individual from this monied elite had already caused, on average, 2.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, according to analysis by Oxfam GB. It would take someone from the poorest 50% of humanity three years to create the same amount of pollution.
...
On Friday, figures from the EU’s Copernicus climate change service showed that 2024 was the first year to exceed the 1.5C figure.
Rising temperatures have led to an emerging crisis of extreme weather events, from droughts to hurricanes to heatwaves, leading to increased food insecurity, wildlife habitat loss, disappearing glaciers, rising sea levels, and a host of other effects.
According to the analysis, the richest 1% – about 77 million people, including all those earning more than $140,000 (£114,000) a year – are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution each year as the poorest half of humanity.
But it is the poorest people who are suffering the most serious effects of climate breakdown, which are worse in tropical regions. They also have the fewest resources to mitigate the disastrous results of sudden climatic change, while the wealthiest 1% live climate-insulated, air-conditioned lives, mostly in the global north...
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
Climate breakdown drove the annual global temperature above the internationally agreed 1.5C target for the first time last year, supercharging extreme weather and causing “misery to millions of people”.
The average temperature in 2024 was 1.6C above preindustrial levels, data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) shows. That is a jump of 0.1C from 2023, which was also a record hot year and represents levels of heat never experienced by modern humans.
The heating is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and the damage to lives and livelihoods will continue to escalate around the world until coal, oil and gas are replaced. The Paris agreement target of 1.5C is measured over a decade or two, so a single year above that level does not mean the target has been missed, but does show the climate emergency continues to intensify. Every year in the past decade has been one of the 10 hottest, in records that go back to 1850.
The C3S data also shows that a record 44% of the planet was affected by strong to extreme heat stress on 10 July 2024, and that the hottest day in recorded history struck on 22 July.
'There’s now an extremely high likelihood that we will overshoot the long-term average of 1.5C in the Paris agreement limit,” Dr Samantha Burgess, deputy director at C3S, said. “These high global temperatures, coupled with record global atmospheric water vapour levels in 2024, meant unprecedented heatwaves and heavy rainfall events, causing misery for millions of people.”...
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
Not sure if this can be laid at the feet of 'mainstream climate scientists' here, as the researchers running Integrated Assessment Models are few and looking at very specific aspects of atmospheric modelling, nor does running the models say anything about what govts should do with the results or give the researchers any special powers to influence policy. Nonetheless, despite climate (in)action being a supra-national matter the article makes a very strong general point - I recommend reading it all.
When the Paris agreement on climate change was gavelled into being in December 2015, it briefly looked like that rarest of things: a political victory for climate activists and delegates from the poorest regions of the world that, due to colonisation by today’s wealthy nations, have contributed little to the climate crisis – but stand to suffer its worst ravages.
The world had finally agreed an upper limit for global warming. And in a move that stunned most experts, it had embraced the stretch target of 1.5°C, the boundary that small island states, acutely threatened by sea-level rise, had tirelessly pushed for years.
Or so, at least, it seemed. For soon, the ambitious Paris agreement limit turned out to be not much of a limit at all. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC, the world’s foremost body of climate experts) lent its authority to the 1.5°C temperature target with its 2018 special report, something odd transpired.
Nearly all modelled pathways for limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels involved temporarily transgressing this target. Each still arrived back at 1.5°C eventually (the deadline being the random end point of 2100), but not before first shooting past it.
Scientists responsible for modelling the response of Earth’s climate to greenhouse gas emissions – primarily caused by burning fossil fuels – called these “overshoot” scenarios. They became the dominant path along which mitigating climate change was imagined to proceed, almost as soon as talk of temperature limits emerged.
De facto, what they said was this: staying below a temperature limit is the same as first crossing it and then, a few decades hence, using methods of removing carbon from the atmosphere to dial temperatures back down again.
...
By conjuring up the fantasy of overshoot-and-return, scientists invented a mechanism for delaying climate action and unwittingly lent credibility to those (and they are many) who have no real interest in reigning in emissions here and now; who will seize on any excuse to keep the oil and gas and coal flowing just a little longer.
The findings of this new paper (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08020-9) make it perfectly clear: There is no time machine waiting in the wings. Once 1.5°C lies behind us, we must consider that threshold permanently broken.
There then remains only one road to ambitious mitigation of climate change, and no amount of carbon dioxide removal can absolve us of its inconvenient political implications.
Avoiding climate breakdown demands that we bury the fantasy of overshoot-and-return and with it another illusion as well: that the Paris targets can be met without uprooting the status-quo. One limit after the other will be broken unless we manage to strand fossil fuel assets and curtail opportunities for continuing to profit from oil and gas and coal.
We will not mitigate climate change without confronting and defeating fossil fuel interests. We should expect climate scientists to be candid about this.
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
Climate science deniers from a US-based thinktank have been working with rightwing politicians in Europe to campaign against environmental policies, the Guardian can reveal.
MEPs have been accused of “rolling out the red carpet for climate deniers” to give them a platform in the European parliament, amid warnings of a “revival of grotesque climate denialism”.
The Heartland Institute, which has links to the Trump administration and has drawn on funding from companies including ExxonMobil and wealthy US Republican donors, has seized on a time when rightwing anti-climate action sentiment has been surging, and has set up a new European base in London.
For the past two years, representatives of the thinktank have been working with MEPs and have spoken in the European parliament to campaign against bills, including the nature restoration law. They have sought to cast doubt on established climate science, and connected climate-sceptic MEPs from Poland, Hungary and Austria to help coordinate campaigns against proposed environmental laws.
Heartland has made some extreme and incorrect comments on climate. In the past, it has compared people who believe in global heating to the Unabomber, the US terrorist jailed for killing three people and injuring many others, as well as branding the concept of human-caused climate change “fake news”...
Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
So much for AI saving us from runaway heating. Not only does the tech's prodigious electricity and water needs stress already at-capacity infrastructure, we now have...
Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have been very vocal about their efforts to reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. But as the Wall Street Journal and Gizmodo have reported, these same companies are currently teaming up with the fossil fuel industry to help them squeeze as much oil and gas out of the ground as possible.
Oil has always been hard to find and hard to extract, and so the industry has teetered precariously on the edge of profitability several times throughout its history. Over and over again, experts have predicted that we’ll soon run out of accessible, affordable oil — but so far, they’ve been wrong. Just when things look bleakest for black gold, new technology swoops in to keep the industry afloat.
In the early days, that technology came in the form of better drills and pumps. As we explain in the video above, today’s technological savior is artificial intelligence. Computer algorithms that perpetually improve themselves can automate the discovery of new reserves and streamline fossil fuel extraction — a big boost for companies that now have to compete with wind and solar.
In 2018, the oil and gas industries spent an estimated $1.75 billion on AI — a sum that is projected to balloon to $4 billion by 2025. To get their piece of that pie, big tech companies are developing AI for oil companies, even as they publicly celebrate their sustainable initiatives.
We reached out to Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Total for comment on this piece. None of them responded.
You can find this video and all of Vox’s videos on YouTube. And join the Open Sourced Reporting Network to help us report on the real consequences of data, privacy, algorithms, and AI.
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
Temperatures at the north pole soared more than 20C above average on Sunday, crossing the threshold for ice to melt.
Temperatures north of Svalbard in Norway had already risen to 18C hotter than the 1991–2020 average on Saturday, according to models from weather agencies in Europe and the US, with actual temperatures close to ice’s melting point of 0C. By Sunday, the temperature anomaly had risen to more than 20C.
“This was a very extreme winter warming event,” said Mika Rantanen, a scientist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute. “Probably not the most extreme ever observed, but still at the upper edge of what can happen in the Arctic.”
Burning fossil fuels has heated the planet by about 1.3C since preindustrial times, but the poles are warming much faster as reflective sea ice melts. The increase in average temperatures has driven an increase in fiercely hot summers and unsettlingly mild winters.
Julien Nicolas, a scientist at the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, said the unusually mild temperatures in the depths of the polar winter were linked to a deep low-pressure system over Iceland, which was directing a strong flow of warm air towards the north pole.
Extra-hot seas in the north-east Atlantic were strengthening the wind-driven warming, he added.
“This type of event is relatively rare, but we are not able to assess its frequency without further analysis,” said Nicolas. “We are aware that a similar event occurred in February 2018.”...
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa
"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
