Global Climate Change Science News

[aufbahrung]

Gotta start to dismantle the planet, kids...science and engineering 1 and nature 0

[Brian Peacock]

‘Simply mind-boggling’: world record temperature jump in Antarctic raises fears of catastrophe

On 18 March, 2022, scientists at the Concordia research station on the east Antarctic plateau documented a remarkable event. They recorded the largest jump in temperature ever measured at a meteorological centre on Earth. According to their instruments, the region that day experienced a rise of 38.5C above its seasonal average: a world record.

This startling leap – in the coldest place on the planet – left polar researchers struggling for words to describe it. “It is simply mind-boggling,” said Prof Michael Meredith, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey. “In sub-zero temperatures such a massive leap is tolerable but if we had a 40C rise in the UK now that would take temperatures for a spring day to over 50C – and that would be deadly for the population.”

This amazement was shared by glaciologist Prof Martin Siegert, of the University of Exeter. “No one in our community thought that anything like this could ever happen. It is extraordinary and a real concern,” he told the Observer. “We are now having to wrestle with something that is completely unprecedented.”

Poleward winds, which previously made few inroads into the atmosphere above Antarctica, are now carrying more and more warm, moist air from lower latitudes – including Australia – deep into the continent, say scientists, and these have been blamed for the dramatic polar “heatwave” that hit Concordia. Exactly why these currents are now able to plunge so deep into the continent’s air space is not yet clear, however...

[Brian Peacock]

Global rainforest loss continues at rate of 10 football pitches a minute.

The destruction of the world’s most pristine rainforests continued at a relentless rate in 2023, despite dramatic falls in forest loss in the Brazilian and Colombian Amazon, new figures show.

An area nearly the size of Switzerland was cleared from previously undisturbed rainforests last year, totalling 37,000 sq km (14,200 sq miles), according to figures compiled by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland. This is a rate of 10 football pitches a minute, often driven by more land being brought under agricultural cultivation around the world.

While Brazil and Colombia recorded large drops in forest loss of 36% and 49% respectively, under the environmental policies of presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro, those falls were offset by big increases in Bolivia, Laos, Nicaragua and other countries.

Canada also experienced a record-breaking loss of forest due to fire, losing more than 8m hectares (20m acres).

Mikaela Weisse, director of Global Forest Watch at the WRI, said: “The world took two steps forward, two steps back when it comes to this past year’s forest loss.

“Steep declines in the Brazilian Amazon and Colombia show that progress is possible, but increasing forest loss in other areas has largely counteracted that progress,” she said. “We must learn from the countries that are successfully slowing deforestation.”

Changes in land use – of which deforestation is a central component – is the second-largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions and a main driver of biodiversity loss. Preserving rainforests is essential to limit global heating to 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels, according to researchers...

[pErvinalia]

Yebut carbon capture technology.

[Brian Peacock]

... and liquid hydrogen airliners.

[Brian Peacock]

World’s biggest economies pumping billions into fossil fuels in poor nations

The world’s biggest economies have continued to finance the expansion of fossil fuels in poor countries to the tune of billions of dollars, despite their commitments on the climate.

The G20 group of developed and developing economies, and the multilateral development banks they fund, put $142bn (£112bn) into fossil fuel developments overseas from 2020 to 2022, according to estimates compiled by the campaigning groups Oil Change International (OCI) and Friends of the Earth US.

Canada, Japan and South Korea were the biggest sources of such finance in the three years studied, and gas received more funding than either coal or oil.

The G7 group of biggest economies, to which Japan and Canada belong, pledged in 2022 to halt overseas funding of fossil fuels. But while funding for coal has rapidly diminished, finance for oil and gas projects has continued at a strong pace.

Some of the money is going to other developed economies, including Australia, but much of it is to the developing world. However, richer middle income countries still receive more finance than the poorest.

The most recent G7 pledge, in the study, is to phase out all overseas fossil fuel funding by the end of 2022. The OCI study concentrates on the period from the beginning of the fiscal year of 2020-21 for each country, to the end of the fiscal year of 2022-23.

However, the researchers also found that Japan had continued to make new fossil fuel investments overseas in the past few weeks, up to mid-March 2024, exploiting loopholes in its promise to end fossil fuel funding.

The World Bank provided about $1.2bn a year to fossil fuels over the three-year period, of which about two-thirds went to gas projects.

The US, Germany and Italy also provided billions in funding a year to overseas fossil fuel projects before the end of 2022-23, according to the report published on Tuesday. The UK supplied about $600m a year on average.

Canada supplied just under $11bn a year on average, in the 2020-22 period studied, while South Korea put forward $10bn and Japan about $7bn.

Over the same three-year period, the G20 economies put about $104bn into clean energy developments overseas, according to the report...

[macdoc]

Not science.
This is

Climate science
Scientists divided over whether record heat is acceleration of climate crisis
Some believe global anomalies are in line with predictions but others are more concerned by speed of change
Jonathan Watts and Tural Ahmedzade
Sat 16 Mar 2024 19.00 AEDT

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... ate-crisis

Constant whinging about political and policy failures is just boring.

Hydrogen?
Sure you know better than Airbus?

Airbus
https://www.airbus.com › ... › Low-carbon aviation
At Airbus, we believe hydrogen is one of the most promising decarbonisation technologies for aviation. This is why we consider hydrogen to be an important ..

and

Are there any hydrogen-powered aircraft?
World's First Flight of Liquid Hydrogen Aircraft. - H2FLY
[September 7, 2023, Stuttgart/Maribor] – H2FLY, the Stuttgart, Germany-based developer of hydrogen-electric powertrain systems for aircraft, today announced it has successfully completed the world's first piloted flight of an electric aircraft powered by liquid hydrogen.

Carbon capture? et al

CNBC
https://www.cnbc.com › 2024/04/06 › big-oil-is-racing-...
3 days ago — The world needs to capture more than 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030, more than 20 times the 45 million metric tons captured in 2022,

Can We Engineer Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/clim ... e-ccs.html

[Brian Peacock]

Not science.

The contexts in which science is pursued and technology is developed are wholly embedded within, and therefore contingent upon, the prevailing social, political and economic frameworks of global capitalist modernism. Without wholesale political and economic reform, towards forms of social renewal that prioritise sustainable approaches to human well-being alongside ecological enhancement and protection, the paradigms that drive global heating and climate change will continue to make your Ministry of the Future utopian vision impossible - as they have made it impossible these last 40 years or more.

Or do you think we should start blowing up pipelines, oil tankers, and private jets?

[Brian Peacock]

Great Barrier Reef suffering ‘most severe’ coral bleaching on record

Concern that the Great Barrier Reef may be suffering the most severe mass coral bleaching event on record has escalated after a conservation group released footage showing damage up to 18 metres below the surface.

Dr Selina Ward, a marine biologist and former academic director of the University of Queensland’s Heron Island Research Station, said it was the worst bleaching she had seen in 30 years working on the reef, and that some coral was starting to die.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority last week said aerial surveys of more than 1,000 individual reefs revealed more than half were rated as having high or very high levels of bleaching, and a smaller number in the south – less than 10% of the total – had extreme bleaching. Only about a quarter were relatively unaffected.

It confirmed the 2,300-kilometre reef system was experiencing its fifth mass bleaching event in eight years. The authority said sea surface temperatures had been between 0.5C and 1.5C hotter than expected for this time of year...

[pErvinalia]

I know Selina.

[macdoc]

Cup half...I'd like to think peak agw is close but
Some good info regardless

Last year, more solar panels were installed in China — the world’s largest carbon emitter — than the US has installed in its entire history. More electric vehicles were sold worldwide than ever. Energy efficiency is improving. Dozens of countries are widening the gap between their economic growth and their greenhouse gas emissions. And governments stepped up their ambitions to curb their impact on the climate, particularly when it comes to potent greenhouse gases like methane. If these trends continue, global emissions may actually start to decline.

Climate Analytics, a think tank, published a report last November that raised the intriguing possibility that the worst of our impact on the climate might be behind us.

“We find there is a 70% chance that emissions start falling in 2024 if current clean technology growth trends continue and some progress is made to cut non-CO2 emissions,” authors wrote. “This would make 2023 the year of peak emissions.

https://www.vox.com/climate/24139383/cl ... ons-action

[pErvinalia]

I'll believe it when I see it.

But how is Brian going to smash capitalism if emissions start falling..?

[macdoc]

[Brian Peacock]

I'll believe it when I see it.

But how is Brian going to smash capitalism if emissions start falling..?

lols. Greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. Capitalism remains in rude health.

[macdoc]

His cup is always empty. and it's always capitalisms fault.