[TheClimate.Vote] November 22, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sun Nov 22 16:36:55 EST 2020
/*November 22, 2020*/
[News moves slowly from current research]
*Greenland Is Melting, And a New Model Suggests We've Greatly
Underestimated Its Impact*
JONATHAN BAMBER, THE CONVERSATION - 21 NOVEMBER 2020
Greenland is the largest island in the world and on it rests the largest
ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere. If all that ice melted, the sea
would rise by more than 7 metres.
But that's not going to happen, is it? Well, not any time soon, but
understanding how much of the ice sheet might melt over the coming
century is a critical and urgent question that scientists are trying to
tackle using sophisticated numerical models of how the ice sheet
interacts with the rest of the climate system.
The problem is that the models aren't that good at reproducing recent
observations and are limited by our poor knowledge of the detailed
topography of the subglacial terrain and fjords, which the ice flows
over and in to.
One way around this problem is to see how the ice sheet responded to
changes in climate in the past and compare that with model projections
for the future for similar changes in temperature. That is exactly what
colleagues and I did in a new study now published in the journal Nature
Communications.
We looked at the three largest glaciers in Greenland and used historical
aerial photographs combined with measurements scientists had taken
directly over the years, to reconstruct how the volume of these glaciers
had changed over the period 1880 to 2012.
The approach is founded on the idea that the past can help inform the
future, not just in science but in all aspects of life.
But just like other "classes" of history, the climate and the Earth
system in future won't be a carbon copy of the past. Nonetheless, if we
figure out exactly how sensitive the ice sheet has been to temperature
changes over the past century, that can provide a useful guide to how it
will respond over the next century...
We found that the three largest glaciers were responsible for 8.1 mm of
sea level rise, about 15 percent of the whole ice sheet's contribution.
Over the period of our study, the sea globally has risen by around 20
cm, about the height of an A5 booklet, and of that, about a finger's
width is entirely thanks to ice melting from those three Greenland glaciers.
*Melting As Usual*
So what does that tell us about the future behaviour of the ice sheet?
In 2013, a modelling study by Faezeh Nick and colleagues also looked at
the same "big three" glaciers (Jakobshavn Isbrae in the west of the
island and Helheim and Kangerlussuaq in the east) and projected how they
would respond in different future climate scenarios.
The most extreme of these scenarios is called RCP8.5 and assumes that
economic growth will continue unabated through the 21st century,
resulting in a global mean warming of about 3.7C above today's
temperatures (about 4.8C above pre-industrial or since 1850).
This scenario has sometimes been referred to as Business As Usual (BAU),
and there is an active debate among climate researchers regarding how
plausible RCP8.5 is. It's interesting to note, however, that, according
to a recent study from a group of US scientists it may be the most
appropriate scenario up to at least 2050.
Because of something called polar amplification, the Arctic will likely
heat up by more than double the global average, with the climate models
indicating around 8.3C warming over Greenland in the most extreme
scenario, RCP8.5.
Despite this dramatic and terrifying hike in temperature, Faezeh's
modelling study projected that the "big three" would contribute between
9 and 15 mm to sea level rise by 2100, only slightly more than what we
obtained from a 1.5C warming over the 20th century. How can that be?
Our conclusion is that the models are at fault, even including the
latest and most sophisticated available which are being used to assess
how the whole ice sheet will respond to the next century of climate change.
These models appear to have a relatively weak link between climate
change and ice melt, when our results suggest it is much stronger.
Projections based on these models are therefore likely to under-predict
how much the ice sheet will be affected. Other lines of evidence support
this conclusion.
What does all of that mean? If we do continue along that very scary
RCP8.5 trajectory of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, the Greenland
ice sheet is very likely to start melting at rates that we haven't seen
for at least 130,000 years, with dire consequences for sea level and the
many millions of people who live in low lying coastal zones. The
Conversation
Jonathan Bamber, Professor of Physical Geography, University of Bristol.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative
Commons license.
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-see-could-rise-by-more-than-7-metres-if-greenland-just-keeps-melting
- -
[Source material]
*Centennial response of Greenland's three largest outlet glaciers*
Abstract
The Greenland Ice Sheet is the largest land ice contributor to sea level
rise. This will continue in the future but at an uncertain rate and
observational estimates are limited to the last few decades.
Understanding the long-term glacier response to external forcing is key
to improving projections. Here we use historical photographs to
calculate ice loss from 1880-2012 for Jakobshavn, Helheim, and
Kangerlussuaq glacier. We estimate ice loss corresponding to a sea level
rise of 8.1 ± 1.1 millimetres from these three glaciers. Projections of
mass loss for these glaciers, using the worst-case scenario,
Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5, suggest a sea level
contribution of 9.1-14.9 mm by 2100. RCP8.5 implies an additional global
temperature increase of 3.7 C by 2100, approximately four times larger
than that which has taken place since 1880. We infer that projections
forced by RCP8.5 underestimate glacier mass loss which could exceed this
worst-case scenario.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19580-5
[movie -*I Am Greta*, - from Earther]
*Hearing Greta's Message*
Leah Stokes
Nov 20, 2020
Last year, the climate movement found new vigor in a young Swede named
Greta Thunberg. She began a solo strike and quickly caught global media
attention for her sharp tongue and truth telling. Too often, however,
her words have fallen on deaf ears as politicians continue to ignore the
climate crisis. In one of her memorable speeches, she asked British
parliamentarians whether her microphone was working. "Did you hear what
I just said? Is my English OK? Is the microphone on? Because I'm
beginning to wonder."
Yet, Greta has become the face of a global movement of young people who
are fed up with our leaders' decades of failure to address the climate
crisis. Her rise to prominence is charted in a new documentary, I Am
Greta, released last week on Hulu.
The film follows her journey over a year, beginning with the iconic
images of her sitting alone, outside the Swedish parliament, being
scolded by strangers for missing school. It ends with her as a global
phenomenon meeting with world leaders and crossing the ocean to attend a
key United Nations meeting in New York. An estimated 4 million people
took part in her weeklong strike in September 2019, myself included. It
is a modern day epic, a hero's quest that the filmmaker, Nathan
Grossman, documents on an intimate scale.
I started working on climate change right around the time Greta was
born, when I was the same age she is today. At the time, we believed
that governments would act, and carbon emissions would fall. Instead
I've watched the first atmospheric carbon concentration I memorized--375
parts per million--become out of date as we go past 415 ppm.
We used to talk about kids like Greta's generation, and how much this
crisis would affect them. Working on my first climate campaign, we
thought we could inspire parents to care about the world they were
leaving their children. But that strategy largely failed.
Instead, it was the kids who woke up to the crisis. And they aren't so
young anymore. They're teenagers, and they are angry at adults'
culpability. As an outspoken young activist with Asperger's, Greta has
emerged as an inspiration for an entire generation. By telling her
story, Grossman is also capturing a growing global movement poised to
reshape history.
The portrait Grossman paints is one not of the icon Greta has become,
but of a teenage girl who has found herself unexpectedly
influential--and is uncomfortable with all the attention. There are
quiet moments with her dad where her stubbornness shows through and a
scene where she tells French President Emmanuel Macron she is "a nerd"
who loves reading about climate science.
This young woman is able to spin straw into gold. As attacks against her
grow from the right, she sees it as a sign of her effectiveness. In the
film, she is shown laughing hysterically at absurd social media comments
from haters.
Early on, when she was just beginning to gain broader media attention,
Arnold Schwarzenegger tweeted about her work. In the movie, she marvels
at his 4 million followers and laughs with her father at the idea of
reaching someone that famous. But, she quickly moves beyond being star
struck, strategizing how best to reply: "Okay, I'll write: 'Count me in.
Hasta la vista.'" Today, she has her own 4 million followers.
This fall, just after the election, President Donald Trump tweeted,
"STOP THE COUNT." Greta replied: "So ridiculous. Donald must work on his
Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a
friend! Chill, Donald, Chill!" These were the exact words he had written
about her a year later. And her tweet landed much better than the
original. Like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez--whom she has met--Greta's
quick wit works brilliantly online.
The Trump tweets are emblematic of the pressure on Greta, which is
palpable throughout the film. She must speak in multiple languages to
huge audiences, be away from home for months on end, and be attacked by
old white men on television. At one point, Grossman captures Greta's
father, getting trained in emergency response, in case she is attacked.
This is not paranoia; as the film points out, four climate activists are
murdered every week.
And in a sense, the pressure on Greta stands in for the pressure being
put on an entire generation. How else to describe being left to cope
with a wounded world? With growing floods and fires, heat waves and
hurricanes, life will not be as easy for Gen Z. If anything, as a young
white person in the developed world, Greta will be more able to cope
with climate disruption than her counterparts in the developing world--a
fact she regularly points out.
But this is not a sad film. As anyone in the climate movement will tell
you, there is joy in activism. As the movement she sparked begins to
grow, Greta is delighted to find other people that share her struggle.
The visual shift from Greta sitting alone, to her surrounded by
thousands of young people is moving to watch, as are the clips of other
young people, largely girls, leading protests on Fridays around the world.
In some of the more poetic moments, Greta is shown dancing. She raises
her arms up and down, dips low, her braids swinging. Her movements carry
a message: Make your life into a living act of resistance, make your
life into art.
But it is also a haunting film to watch in 2020, a year after the
narrative ends, in the midst of a global pandemic. The economic crisis
has proven yet another missed opportunity for climate action. While
people around the world called on leaders to pass a green stimulus,
their voices have been largely ignored. According to an analysis by
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and colleagues, as many stimulus policies
were green as dirty. In the U.S., the covid-19 relief bill was used to
bailout fossil fuel companies, to the tune of billions of dollars.
It's telling that heads of state have been caught scrolling on their
phones rather than listening to Greta's speeches. Our leaders are not
listening to her--or us or the increasingly urgent science.
At one point, Greta is standing on a train platform as a seemingly
endless row of new gas-powered cars are carried by freight, to be sold
and run for another couple decades. The metaphor could not be clearer:
We are stuck on the same track. The world keeps churning out the same
technology. It's easy to feel hopeless.
But to borrow some of Greta's words, change is coming, whether fossil
fuel companies like it or not. Come January, the U.S. will have a new
president in Joe Biden, who Greta endorsed. He ran on the boldest
climate platform in American history and has centered climate action in
his transition planning. Perhaps, our leaders have finally begun to hear
Greta's message. Perhaps, her microphone is finally working.
Leah C. Stokes is an assistant professor of political science at UC
Santa Barbara. She is the author of Short Circuiting Policy, a
contributor to All We Can Save and co-host of the podcast A Matter of
Degrees.
https://earther.gizmodo.com/hearing-greta-s-message-1845723757
[cough, cough]
*Investigation: How Pesticide Companies Are Marketing Themselves as a
Solution to Climate Change*
By Sharon Kelly and Frances Rankin - November 17, 2020
"Like a pandemic, climate change is an inevitable threat that we must
address before it is too late," reads a June 2020 statement. "As the
economy and agriculture begin to build back with the gradual easing of
the COVID-19 restrictions, we need to support a recovery for farmers
that puts the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss at its
core."
The speaker? Not Greta Thunberg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Al Gore.
Not, in fact, any environmentalist you might care to imagine. Instead,
it was Erik Fyrwald, Chief Executive Officer of Syngenta Group -- one of
the world's five largest pesticides manufacturers, a major consumer of
fossil fuels, and now a company marketing its products as a solution to
climate change.
Syngenta's messaging -- alongside similar campaigns from the other "big
five" global pesticides producers Bayer, BASF, Corteva and FMC --
reflects a sudden transformation within the agricultural world.
After decades of denial and delay by big agribusiness, the pesticides
industry now appears to have become a climate champion.
'Waking up on climate change'
The pesticides market is dominated by a small handful of companies --
Bayer (which acquired Monsanto in 2018), Corteva (formerly Dow and
DuPont), Syngenta, BASF and FMC -- whose hazardous products a United
Nations report said have "catastrophic impacts on the environment, human
health, and society as a whole" amid a global insect die-off and legal
battles over carcinogenic effects of products once marketed as harmless...
more at -
https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/11/18/pesticides-industry-climate-change-marketing-pr
- -
[From DESMOGUK]
*An extensive research database of agribusiness organisations and their
messaging on climate change.*
DeSmog has investigated agribusiness groups marketing themselves as part
of the solution to climate change. This database archives their past and
current activities regarding climate mitigation and adaptation. If
there's an industry association, campaign group or company you would
like to see researched and reported on by DeSmog, feel free to get in touch.
https://desmog.co.uk/agribusiness-database
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - November 22, 2009 *
CNN reports on the disproportionate toll climate change takes on women.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/11/18/climate.change.women/
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