[TheClimate.Vote] November 28, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

[Richard Pauli]

/November 28, 2019/

[top news missed by most media]
*Nine climate tipping points now 'active,' warn scientists*
November 27, 2019
Source: University of Exeter
Summary: More than half of the climate tipping points identified a 
decade ago are now 'active,' a group of leading scientists have warned.
Nine active tipping points:

Arctic sea ice
Greenland ice sheet
Boreal forests
Permafrost
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
Amazon rainforest
Warm-water corals
West Antarctic Ice Sheet
Parts of East Antarctica

More than half of the climate tipping points identified a decade ago are 
now "active," a group of leading scientists have warned.

This threatens the loss of the Amazon rainforest and the great ice 
sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, which are currently undergoing 
measurable and unprecedented changes much earlier than expected.

This "cascade" of changes sparked by global warming could threaten the 
existence of human civilisations.

Evidence is mounting that these events are more likely and more 
interconnected than was previously thought, leading to a possible domino 
effect.

In an article in the journal Nature, the scientists call for urgent 
action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to prevent key tipping points, 
warning of a worst-case scenario of a "hothouse," less habitable planet.

"A decade ago we identified a suite of potential tipping points in the 
Earth system, now we see evidence that over half of them have been 
activated," said lead author Professor Tim Lenton, director of the 
Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter.

"The growing threat of rapid, irreversible changes means it is no longer 
responsible to wait and see. The situation is urgent and we need an 
emergency response."

Co-author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate 
Impact Research, said: "It is not only human pressures on Earth that 
continue rising to unprecedented levels.

"It is also that as science advances, we must admit that we have 
underestimated the risks of unleashing irreversible changes, where the 
planet self-amplifies global warming.

"This is what we now start seeing, already at 1C global warming.

"Scientifically, this provides strong evidence for declaring a state of 
planetary emergency, to unleash world action that accelerates the path 
towards a world that can continue evolving on a stable planet."

In the commentary, the authors propose a formal way to calculate a 
planetary emergency as risk multiplied by urgency.

Tipping point risks are now much higher than earlier estimates, while 
urgency relates to how fast it takes to act to reduce risk.

Exiting the fossil fuel economy is unlikely before 2050, but with 
temperature already at 1.1C above pre-industrial temperature, it is 
likely Earth will cross the 1.5C guardrail by 2040. The authors conclude 
this alone defines an emergency....
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191127161418.htm
- - -
[Defining an Emergency with numbers]
*EMERGENCY: DO THE MATHS*
We define emergency (E) as the product of risk and urgency. Risk (R) is 
defined by insurers as probability (p) multiplied by damage (D). Urgency 
(U) is defined in emergency situations as reaction time to an alert (t) 
divided by the intervention time left to avoid a bad outcome (T). Thus:

E = R x U = p x D x t / T

The situation is an emergency if both risk and urgency are high. If 
reaction time is longer than the intervention time left (t/T>1), we have 
lost control.
from: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0
- - -

[Top climate scientists speak in journal Nature ]
*Climate tipping points -- too risky to bet against*
The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must 
compel political and economic action on emissions.

Timothy M. Lenton, Johan Rockstrom, Owen Gaffney, Stefan Rahmstorf, 
Katherine Richardson, Will Steffen & Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0



[Audio about global warming and wildfires in Calif]
*UCSB professor on Cave Fire: 'Call it what it is: climate change'*
Hosted by Matt Guilhem Nov. 27, 2019
The Cave Fire continues to burn in the mountains above Santa Barbara. 
The wind-driven blaze sparked Monday afternoon in an area of dry, brushy 
canyons in the Los Padres National Forest. It has grown to more than 
4,000 acres.
Although it's too early for authorities to announce the exact cause of 
the fire, UC Santa Barbara political science professor Leah Stokes says 
climate change is behind it. Why won't more firefighters and TV 
reporters back her up?
https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/kcrw-features/ucsb-professor-on-cave-fire-call-it-what-it-is-climate-change



[video talk, continued]
*Climate Restoration Ideas: Turning CO2 into Rock and Marine Life; 
Cooling the Arctic: 2 of 3 *
Nov 26, 2019
Paul Beckwith
Climate restoration tries to restore a healthy climate for our children 
and grandchildren similar to that enjoyed by our parents and 
grandparents when they were children. Among many ideas, to be useful 
methods must be scalable to remove large amounts of CO2, be 
finance-able, and store CO2 long term separate from atmosphere and water 
reservoirs. Promising ideas turn CO2 into rock, or into marine life via 
plankton capture. We must also cool the Arctic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq1kq3nSNqQ
- - -
read the PDF 
https://foundationforclimaterestoration.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/20191030_f4cr4_white-paper.pdf


[Consider more]
*Climate explained: how much does flying contribute to climate change?*
The flight shaming movement has raised our awareness of air travel’s 
contribution to climate change. With all the discussion, you might be 
surprised to learn that air travel globally only accounts for about 3% 
of the warming human activities are causing. Why all the fuss?...
- - -
Because any carbon dioxide you emit stays in the atmosphere for hundreds 
of years, it doesn’t matter much whether you release it from the exhaust 
pipe of your car at sea level or from a jet engine several kilometres 
high. Per passenger, a flight from Auckland to Wellington will put a 
similar amount of carbon dioxide into the air as driving solo in your 
car. Catching the train will cut your carbon emissions seven-fold.

When aircraft burn jet fuel, however, they also emit short-lived gases 
like nitrogen oxides, which can react with other gases in the air within 
a day of being released. When nitrogen oxides are released at altitude 
they can react with oxygen to put more ozone into the air, but can also 
remove methane.

Ozone and methane are both greenhouse gases, so this chain of chemical 
reactions can lead to both heating and cooling effects. Unfortunately 
the net result when these processes are added together is to drive more 
warming.

Depending on the atmospheric conditions, aircraft can also create 
contrails: clouds of tiny ice crystals. The science is not as clear cut 
on how contrails influence the climate, but some studies suggest they 
could have an effect as significant as the carbon dioxide released 
during a flight.

There is also considerable uncertainty as to whether aircraft exhaust 
might affect cloud formation itself - this could be a further 
significant contribution to warming...
https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-how-much-does-flying-contribute-to-climate-change-127707


*This Day in Climate History - November 28, 2010 - from D.R. Tucker*
 In a New York Times article, Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps 
Institution of Oceanography and David G. Victor of the University of 
California, San Diego discuss the need to make progress on climate change.

The opportunity to make progress arises from the fact that global
warming is caused by two separate types of pollution. One is the
long-term buildup of carbon dioxide, which can remain in the
atmosphere for centuries. Diplomacy has understandably focused on
this problem because, without deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions,
there can be no permanent solution to warming.

The carbon dioxide problem is hard to fix, however, because it comes
mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, which is so essential to
modern life and commerce. It will take decades and trillions of
dollars to convert all the world’s fossil-fuel-based energy systems
to cleaner systems like nuclear, solar and wind power. In the
meantime, a fast-action plan is needed.

But carbon dioxide is not the only kind of pollution that
contributes to global warming. Other potent warming agents include
three short-lived gases -- methane, some hydrofluorocarbons and
lower atmospheric ozone -- and dark soot particles. The warming
effect of these pollutants, which stay in the atmosphere for several
days to about a decade, is already about 80 percent of the amount
that carbon dioxide causes. The world could easily and quickly
reduce these pollutants; the technology and regulatory systems
needed to do so are already in place...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/opinion/28victor.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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