[✔️] April 4, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Opinion, Noam Chomsky, Ozone issue, Famine Website, Antarctic warming, Under a Green Sky, Water book

Tue Apr 4 12:15:01 EDT 2023

/*April*//*4, 2023*/

/[ opinion ] /
*The Media’s Recent Turn to “Climate Optimism” Is a Cruel Fantasy*
Beneath the upbeat messaging, the latest UN climate report makes it 
clear that while the means to save the planet may still be available, 
the political will is nowhere in sight.
By Wen Stephenson
- -
But however you dress it up, the salient points remain what we’ve known 
for some time (and this fresh reminder should by rights herald the 
demise of the cheery optimism that has recently overtaken 
professionalized climate and progressive NGO spaces):

    § The Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5˚C above the
    preindustrial average—beyond which all bets are off for the survival
    of enormous swathes of humanity, largely in the Global South—is all
    but dead. The planet is now likely to cross that threshold in the
    early 2030s.

    § Some parts of the world are rapidly approaching, or have already
    reached, the “limits of adaptation” (see: rising sea levels,
    desertification, and extreme heat intolerable to the human body).
    With every additional increment of warming, the task of adaptation
    gets harder and costlier, if not impossible.

    § Our only chance at stabilizing the climate this century requires
    deep and rapid decarbonization, which entails not only the
    accelerated build-out of renewable energy but the immediate end of
    all new fossil-fuel development. Indeed, even capping coal, oil, and
    gas operations at existing levels will blow through the “carbon
    budget” for limiting the planet’s warming to 1.5˚C—or even 2˚C.

- -
Guterres calls the report “a how-to guide to defuse the climate time 
bomb.” But it isn’t really. That’s because the IPCC says nothing (and 
never has) about how to overcome those “existing barriers.” All we’re 
told is that—ready?—“political commitment” will be required.

The apparently unspeakable truth, for both the IPCC and mainstream 
journalists, is the necessity of something like a near-term political 
revolution to topple those barriers. Yet there’s an utter lack of 
anything remotely resembling the kind of mass political movement capable 
of bringing it about. The present risk-averse climate movement certainly 
isn’t; nor is anything else on the left. Even well-informed progressives 
are more inclined to toil away at incrementalist politics-as-usual—or 
fantasize about far-off technological breakthroughs (nuclear 
fusion!)—than face up to the kind of radical “political commitment” 
that’s necessary. To call 1.5˚C or 2˚C “feasible” in the face of these 
realities is simply magical thinking...
- -
A true reckoning with the radical implications of climate science—that 
nothing short of political revolution will prevent what amounts to 
genocide for large, mostly dark-skinned portions of humanity—has yet to 
come. And yet, in one form or another, a reckoning will come: 
everywhere, and all at once.
https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/ipcc-report-climate-optimism/

/[ pay attention to Noam Chomsky -  video ]/
*"Evil doesn’t begin to approach it" - Noam Chomsky speaks live on the 
Climate Crisis and Resistance*
Just Stop Oil
6.42K subscribers
Streamed live on Apr 23, 2022  #juststopoil #climatecrisis #globalwarming
"I don't know what word in the language—I can’t find one—that applies to 
people of that kind, who are willing to sacrifice the existence of 
organized human life, not in the distant future, so they can put a few 
more dollars in highly overstuffed pockets. The word “evil” doesn’t 
begin to approach it." - Noam Chomsky

Professor Noam Chomsky needs no introduction, he is arguably the world’s 
leading public intellectual. The Climate Crisis needs no introduction, 
it is unarguably the greatest act of injustice in human history. Noam 
will talk about resistance because the time for talking is over.

The world's top climate scientist, James Hanson, former head of NASA, 
recently said the idea of staying under 1.5C is “unadulterated 
bullshit”. Britain’s former top government science advisor, Sir David 
King has said “We have to act quickly. What we do in the next three to 
four years will determine the future of humanity”. That’s polite elite 
speak for billions of people will die of starvation so that the rich can 
keep their power.

Share this historic event in your networks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdY4ImvU-3s

/
/

/[ some important science ]/
*Potent Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depleting Chemicals Called CFCs Are 
Back on the Rise Following an International Ban, a New Study Finds*
A U.S. chemical plant in Louisiana that produces a common refrigerant 
may be partly to blame for increased emissions of CFCs—chemicals 
thousands of times more potent at warming the planet than carbon dioxide.
By Phil McKenna
April 3, 2023
At current levels, the increasing CFC emissions will have little impact 
on the ongoing recovery of the atmospheric ozone layer, which protects 
the planet from harmful ultraviolet radiation. The ozone hole over 
Antarctica is on track to be fully restored by 2066.

However, the chemicals’ climate impact may be of greater concern. 
Emissions of the five chemicals–CFC-13, CFC-112a, CFC-113a, CFC-114a and 
CFC-115—equaled 47 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 
2020 alone, according to the study. That is equal to the annual 
greenhouse gas emissions from 10 million cars or 13 coal-fired power 
plants, according to the EPA’s greenhouse gas equivalency calculator.

“Any delay to Antarctic ozone hole recovery will only be very small, but 
they are still quite potent greenhouse gases,” said the study’s lead 
author, Luke Western, a researcher at the University of Bristol in the 
United Kingdom and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 
in the U.S.

The five CFCs that were monitored in the current study are thousands of 
times more effective at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide on a 
pound for pound basis. However, their atmospheric concentrations are 
quite low compared to CO2, the primary driver of climate change.

Total annual emissions for all CFCs are down by approximately 95 percent 
from their peak in the late 1980s, when countries first began a 
mandatory phase out of their production and use under the Montreal 
Protocol, Western said.

If the sources of ongoing CFC emissions can be found and eliminated, it 
could have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions reductions 
in the near term while countries continue to work on the larger 
challenge of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse 
gases, Western said.

“It has the potential to be an easy win,” he said.

Three of the five pollutants—CFC-113a, CFC-114a and CFC-115—are unwanted 
byproducts formed during the production of HFC-125, and “may account for 
at least some of the observed emissions,” Western and colleagues wrote 
in the study. HFC-125 is one of two ingredients in R-410A, a widely used 
chemical refrigerant for air conditioners.
- -
Any CFC emissions from HFC production in the U.S. should begin to 
decline sometime over the next decade. The U.S. and other developed 
countries must reduce HFC production and use by 85 percent by 2036 under 
a recent update to the Montreal Protocol. China and other developing 
countries are required to reduce HFCs by 80 percent by 2045.

But before HFC production decreases, it will likely continue to 
increase, Western said. “For the next decade, we’ll likely still see an 
increase in production of HFCs or many HFCs at least,” he said.

Stephen Andersen, director of research at the Institute for Governance 
and Sustainable Development, said that countries should accelerate the 
phase down of HFCs as the chemicals are potent greenhouse gases in their 
own right and their breakdown can result in the formation of “forever 
chemicals.” At the same time, Andersen said the Montreal Protocol should 
tighten or eliminate current exemptions for things like CFC emissions 
from HFC production.

As a party to the Montreal Protocol, the U.S. government could play a 
key role in eliminating remaining exemptions for CFC emissions, Andersen 
said.

“Everyone knows how to do this,” Andersen said. “They’re just not 
motivated enough to do it.”
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03042023/cfc-ban-rise/

/[ Tracking famine with a new website  ]/
*Monitoring & forecasting acute food insecurity*
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) is a leading 
provider of early warning and analysis on acute food insecurity around 
the world.
Acute Food Insecurity Area Classification
February - May 2023 Near Term Projection
https://fews.net/

/[ Antarctic warming - video of research paper ]/
*Antarctic Ice Sheet Melt and Abyssal Ocean Warming Slows Southern 
Overturning Circulation and AMOC*
Paul Beckwith
Apr 1, 2023
Please donate to http://PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and 
videos as I connect the dots on abrupt climate system change.

A landmark peer reviewed scientific paper on Antarctica was just 
released a few days ago.

This paper clearly shows that Antarctic Ice Sheet Melt is accelerating, 
the warming ocean abyssal water (below 4,000 meters depth) is 
accelerating, the Southern Overturning Circulation (SOC) off the coasts 
of Antarctica will reduced by 42% in the next 26-27 years (by 2050), 
also causing the northern hemisphere Atlantic Meridional Overturning 
Circulation (AMOC) to slow by 19%.

Normally, changes in the ocean current overturning like this take about 
1000 years to occur, certainly not in 26.75 years. There are enormous 
consequences to humanity with this ocean current rewiring:

    1) Much less heat will be carried from the surface to the abyss, so
    ocean warming near the surface and upper layers and atmospheric
    warming will greatly increase.

    2) The oceans will become much more stratified.

    3) Less oxygenated surface water will descend to the abyss, so the
    deep sea life that requires this oxygen will die off creating large
    benthic (bottom) dead zones.

    4) Less carbon will be transported from the surface to the sea
    floor, so carbon levels in the upper ocean will increase (worsening
    ocean acidification) and the ocean carbon sink will greatly reduce.
    Thus, CO2 levels in the atmosphere will rise much faster than they
    would otherwise.

    5) Fewer nutrients from the nutrient rich deep abyssal water will
    rise to the surface, so surface concentrations of phytoplankton will
    reduce, meaning less photosynthesis, thus less carbon capture and
    oxygen production.

    6) As this overturning further weakens, we head towards more anoxic,
    stagnant, stratified oceans and risk hydrogen sulphide production
    and a global extinction event.

    7) Changing ocean currents change the transfer of heat from the
    equator to the poles, change the atmospheric circulation patterns,
    and lead to a more chaotic weather system, with great increase in
    frequency, severity, duration, and extent of extreme weather events
    in our climate casino.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNctfcrJMGc

- -

/[ non-fiction helps with understanding ]/
*Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, 
and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future*
by Peter D. Ward  | Mar 25, 2008

More than 200 million years ago, a cataclysmic event known as the 
Permian extinction destroyed more than 90% of all species and nearly 97% 
of all living things. Its origins have long been a puzzle for 
paleontologists, and during the 1990s and the early part of this century 
a great battle was fought between those who thought that death had come 
from above and those who thought something more complicated was at work.

Paleontologist Peter D. Ward, fresh from helping prove that an asteroid 
had killed the dinosaurs, turned to the Permian problem, and he has come 
to a stunning conclusion. In his investigations of the fates of several 
groups of mollusks during those extinctions and others, he discovered 
that the near-total devastation at the end of the Permian was caused by 
rising levels of carbon dioxide leading to climate change. But it's not 
the heat (nor the humidity) that's directly responsible for the 
extinctions, and the story of the discovery of what is responsible makes 
for an fascinating, globe-spanning adventure.
https://www.amazon.com/Under-Green-Sky-Warming-Extinctions/dp/0061137928/ref=sr_1_1

/[ another book mentioned : Water]/
*Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization *
Paperback – Illustrated, January 18, 2011
by Steven Solomon (Author)
“I read this wide-ranging and thoughtful book while sitting on the banks 
of the Ganges near Varanasi—it's a river already badly polluted, and now 
threatened by the melting of the loss of the glaciers at its source to 
global warming. Four hundred million people depend on it, and there's no 
backup plan. As Steven Solomon makes clear, the same is true the world 
over; this volume will give you the background to understand the forces 
that will drive much of 21st century history.” —Bill McKibben

In Water, esteemed journalist Steven Solomon describes a terrifying—and 
all too real—world in which access to fresh water has replaced oil as 
the primary cause of global conflicts that increasingly emanate from 
drought-ridden, overpopulated areas of the world. Meticulously 
researched and undeniably prescient, Water is a stunningly clear-eyed 
action statement on what Robert F Kennedy, Jr. calls “the biggest 
environmental and political challenge of our time.”
https://www.amazon.com/Water-Struggle-Wealth-Power-Civilization/dp/0060548312/ref=sr_1_1 

/[The news archive - looking back]/
/*April 4, 2002*/
April 4, 2002: The New York Times reports:

    "President Bush signed an executive order last year that closely
    resembles a written recommendation given to the administration two
    months earlier by the American Gas Association, according to
    documents released by the Bush administration.

    "The executive order called for the creation of an interagency
    energy task force to accelerate the time it takes for government
    agencies to review corporations' applications for permits for
    energy-related projects, like power plants and the exploration of
    oil and natural gas on public lands. Mr. Bush signed the order last May.

    "The language in Mr. Bush's executive order is similar to a passage
    in a proposed energy bill sent in March 2001 to the Energy
    Department by officials at the American Gas Association, the trade
    group that represents large natural gas companies and has given more
    than $500,000 to the Republican Party since 1999."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/04/politics/04ENER.html

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