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©Ashley Cooper
July 22, 2022 Climate Change / Correcting False Information / Environment / Environmental justice / International / News & Updates / Public Health / Science & Society / Time for Action is Now
Catastrophic weather: The ghost of summer future

Climate-change-denying politicians love to attack the IPCC as alarmist. It pleases the fossil fuel barons who fund them. But if anything, the IPCC has likely underestimated the role climate change is playing in the increase in persistent weather extremes we’ve seen in recent summers.
One of us has collaborated on research investigating how the asymmetric pattern of the warming of Earth’s surface (wherein the polar regions have warmed more than the middle latitudes) alters the behavior of the summer jet stream. Specifically, it favors a tendency for high-amplitude meanders of the jet stream that remain locked in place, leading to highly persistent deep high and low-pressure centers associated, alternately, with extreme heat, drought, wildfire or extreme flooding.
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July 21, 2022 Climate Change / Environment / International / IPCC / News & Updates / Science & Society / Time for Action is Now / Video - Documentary
PBS Video: The Doomsday Glacier Is Collapsing… Who Is Most at Risk?

“These currently elevated rates of ice melting may signal that those vital arteries from the heart of West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) have burst, leading to accelerating flow into the ocean that is potentially disastrous for future global sea level in a warming world.”

Scientists studied both the Thwaites Glacier (nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier” for the potentially devastating impacts if it melts) and the neighboring Pine Island Glacier on the western side of the continent, which are both vulnerable to melting from warm water flowing underneath them.

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June 2, 2022 Climate Change / CO2 Emissions / Environment / Environmental justice / International / News & Updates / Time for Action is Now
Current policies will bring ‘catastrophic’ climate breakdown, warn former UN leaders

The policies currently in place to tackle the climate crisis around the world will lead to “catastrophic” climate breakdown, as governments have failed to take the actions needed to fulfil their promises, three former UN climate leaders have warned.

There is a stark gap between what governments have promised to do to protect the climate, and the measures and policies needed to achieve the targets. At the Cop26 summit last November, countries agreed to bring forward plans to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – the limit of safety, according to scientists. They have so far submitted pledges that would limit temperatures to under 2C.

But the policies and measures passed and implemented by governments would lead to far greater temperature rises, of at least 2.7C, well beyond the threshold of relative safety, and potentially as much as 3.6C. That would have “catastrophic” impacts, in the form of extreme weather, sea-level rises and irreversible changes to the global climate.

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May 9, 2022 Climate Change / Future Costs / International / News & Updates / Science & Society / Time for Action is Now
More difficult than expected for glaciers to recover from climate warming

ce shelves are floating extensions of glaciers. If Greenland’s second largest ice shelf breaks up, it may not recover unless Earth’s future climate cools considerably. This is the result of a new study, published in Nature Communications.
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“Even if Earth’s climate stopped warming, it would be difficult to rebuild this ice shelf once it has fallen apart,” says Henning Åkesson, who led the study at Stockholm University.

“If Petermann’s ice shelf is lost, we would have to go ‘back in time’ towards a cooler climate reminiscent of the period before the industrial revolution to regrow Petermann,” Åkesson says.

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May 7, 2022 Ecology / Environment / Future Costs / International / News & Updates / Resource Management / Science & Society / Soil / Sustainability / Time for Action is Now
The secret world beneath our feet is mind-blowing – and the key to our planet’s future

Beneath our feet is an ecosystem so astonishing that it tests the limits of our imagination. It’s as diverse as a rainforest or a coral reef. We depend on it for 99% of our food, yet we scarcely know it. Soil.
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We face what could be the greatest predicament humankind has ever encountered: feeding the world without devouring the planet. Already, farming is the world’s greatest cause of habitat destruction, the greatest cause of the global loss of wildlife and the greatest cause of the global extinction crisis. It’s responsible for about 80% of the deforestation that’s happened this century. Of 28,000 species known to be at imminent risk of extinction, 24,000 are threatened by farming. Only 29% of the weight of birds on Earth consists of wild species: the rest is poultry. Just 4% of the world’s mammals, by weight, are wild; humans account for 36%, and livestock for the remaining 60%.

Unless something changes, all this is likely to get worse – much worse. In principle, there is plenty of food, even for a rising population. But roughly half the calories farmers grow are now fed to livestock, and the demand for animal products is rising fast. Without a radical change in the way we eat, by 2050 the world will need to grow around 50% more grain. How could we do it without wiping out much of the rest of life on Earth?

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