[✔️] February 13, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | degradable plastic, Why gas stoves, Antarctica heats up, Oil giants with big revenue, Fossil fuel fascism..

[Richard Pauli]

/*February 13, 2023*/

/[ Inventing biodegradable plastic ]/
*Finally a plastic that nature can easily deal with!*
Just Have a Think
33k iews  Feb 12, 2023
A truly compostable plastic is something scientists all over the world 
have been striving towards for years. There have been many variations on 
the theme but none that seemed to totally solve our plastic pollution 
problem. Now a team from the University of Konstanz in Germany reckon 
they've come pretty close...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmtYcGxoYqI


/[ Induction stove are the best -- yes he always wears an obvious 
microphone  - video ]/
*It’s Time To Break Up With Our Gas Stoves | Climate Town*
Climate Town
828,448 views  Nov 18, 2021
Cooking with gas! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ClimateTown
sUbScRiBe FoR mOrE ViDeOs: https://www.youtube.com/c/climatetown...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX2aZUav-54



/[ ratcheting up heat and melting -- Inside Climate News - long essay ]/
*Antarctic Researchers Report an Extraordinary Marine Heatwave That 
Could Threaten Antarctica’s Ice Shelves*
The inexorable rise of ocean heat is now evident off the coast of West 
Antarctica, potentially disrupting critical parts of the global climate 
system and accelerating sea level rise.
By Bob Berwyn
February 12, 2023

Research scientists on ships along Antarctica’s west coast said their 
recent voyages have been marked by an eerily warm ocean and record-low 
sea ice coverage—extreme climate conditions, even compared to the big 
changes of recent decades, when the region warmed much faster than the 
global average.

Despite “that extraordinary change, what we’ve seen this year is 
dramatic,” said University of Delaware oceanographer Carlos Moffat last 
week from Punta Arenas, Chile, after completing a research cruise aboard 
the RV Laurence M. Gould to collect data on penguin feeding, as well as 
on ice and oceans as chief scientist for the Palmer Long Term Ecological 
Research program.

“Even as somebody who’s been looking at these changing systems for a few 
decades, I was taken aback by what I saw, by the degree of warming that 
I saw,” he said. “We don’t know how long this is going to last. We don’t 
fully understand the consequences of this kind of event, but this looks 
like an extraordinary marine heatwave.”

If such conditions recur in the coming years, it could start a rapid 
destabilization of Antarctica’s critical underpinnings of the global 
climate system, including ice shelves, glaciers, coastal ecosystems and 
even ocean currents. Such radical changes have already been sweeping the 
Arctic, starting in the 1980s and accelerating in the 2000s...
- -
Data collected during Moffat’s most recent research voyage includes the 
first readings from temperature and salinity sensors that were deployed 
a few years ago, which will give the scientists a starting point for 
comparisons. Moffat said it’s “too early, and difficult” to attribute 
this year’s conditions to long-term climate change until some 
peer-reviewed results are published.

“But it seems to me that this might be a really unprecedented event,” he 
said. “These episodes of relatively rapid ocean warming that can persist 
for months have been occurring all over the place. They haven’t been 
common in this region.”...
He said ocean temperature readings going back to April 2022 speak to the 
persistence of the warm conditions off the Antarctic Peninsula. The 
cruise covered an area more than 600 miles long and criss-crossed waters 
above the 125-mile wide continental shelf, documenting widespread ocean 
heating.

“That’s a very significant region,” he said. “We don’t have data going 
back 30 years for the entire region. But for the parts of the shelf for 
which we do have that data, it really seems extraordinary. It’s very 
difficult to warm the ocean, and so when we see these conditions, that 
really speaks to a very intense forcing.”

*A Dangerous Climate Feedback*
Greenhouse gases, mostly from burning fossil fuels, are the force behind 
the warming of the atmosphere and the oceans. The latest reports from 
Antarctica raise concern that a perilous climate feedback cycle of 
warmer oceans and melting ice has started around the continent, said 
Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact 
Research.

“We know the melting of Antarctica is most sensitive to lubrication by 
water,” he said. “It’s the sea melting the ice from below, it’s not 
atmospheric melting from above. And this is really, really worrying … 
and quite surprising, because up until 10 years ago, we were absolutely 
convinced that the Greenland ice sheet and the Arctic was the more 
sensitive of the two poles.”
https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/AntarcticaSeaIceExtentJan2023-750px.png

Up until about 2014, science suggested that Antarctica was still gaining 
ice, but “that has shifted,” he said. An assessment released that year 
by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that there is 
likely an Antarctic tipping point between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius 
warming that would trigger irreversible melting of ice shelves and glaciers.

The Paris Climate Agreement to cap warming in that range was signed the 
following year with the understanding that a vicious climate cycle in 
Antarctica has global implications, raising sea level faster than 
expected, and contributing to the slowdown of the critical Atlantic 
thermohaline circulation that moves warm and cold water between the 
poles. He said research shows that system of currents has been affected 
by global warming in recent decades, leaving more warm water in the 
Southern Ocean to drive marine heatwaves.

Instead of flowing northward to the Gulf Stream, the warmer water 
persists around Antarctica, because ”That whole system has slowed down 
by 15 percent,” he said. “So when the circulation slows down, and you 
have more heat, you get more warm surface water in Antarctica.”

*The Potential Start of an Icy Death Spiral*
Antarctica was seen as a frozen redoubt until very recently because its 
ice sheets average more than a mile thick and cover an area as big as 
the contiguous United States and Mexico combined, spreading over about 
5.4 million square miles with its center more than 1,000 miles from the 
ocean.

The continent is also encircled by a swift ocean current—the only one 
that flows all the way around the world–and an accompanying belt of jet 
stream winds several miles above it. Both helped buffer Antarctica’s sea 
ice, as well as its land-based glaciers and floating ice shelves, from 
the rapid increase of climate extremes seen in most other parts of the 
world the past few decades.

But the observations from this year’s conditions may bolster several 
recent studies showing how global warming is eroding that protection. An 
August 2022 study in Nature Climate Change suggested that “circumpolar 
deep water” at a depth of 1,000 to 2,000 feet has warmed by up to 2 
degrees Celsius, which is in turn related to a poleward shift of the 
westerly wind belt.

That’s a critical depth where the water creeps up the continental shelf 
and beneath the floating ice shelf extensions of Antarctica’s huge 
land-based ice sheets, which poses a threat not only to ice in West 
Antarctica, already known to be vulnerable, but also to the thick, 
remote ice on the eastern half of the continent.


Warming through the world’s oceans is projected to persist in coming 
decades, so “the oceanic heat supply to East Antarctica may continue to 
intensify, threatening the ice sheet’s future stability,” the authors of 
the 2022 paper wrote...
- -

Another study, published June 2022 in Science Direct, showed that the 
changes to the winds responsible for pushing the warmer water closer to 
shore will also persist if greenhouse gas emissions continue, so without 
immediate action to implement global climate policies, the Antarctic 
system could loop into a death spiral.

A 2016 study outlined a worst-case scenario in which warming would 
contribute to a rapid break-up of towering ice cliffs near the shore in 
a process that could speed up sea level rise, raising the water up to 7 
feet by 2100 and 13 feet by 2150, increases that would be very hard to 
adapt to.

The water’s rise is already accelerating. In the 1990s, the global 
average sea level increased at about 3 millimeters per year, but that 
annual rate increased to 4.5 millimeters in the last five years. Between 
August 2020 and January 2021, sea level rose 10 millimeters.

*Warming Waters Spread South*
Researchers feel those buffering winds and ocean currents when they 
start their research voyages from South America, Africa or Australia 
because they have to cross the “Roaring Forties,” latitudes where fierce 
winds and deck-washing waves toss the vessels for a day or two before 
they end up in the relative calm of the Southern Ocean, where they can 
cruise smoothly under misty skies past floating sheets of ice.

The Southern Ocean encompasses all the water below 60 degrees South, and 
while it’s a mix of Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean waters, it was 
geographically recognized as a distinct geographic entity by NOAA in 
1999, precisely because it’s separated by those currents in the ocean 
and the sky that enclose Antarctica’s climate and ecosystems.

But it’s now clear that warming is dangerously infiltrating West 
Antarctica, said Rob Larter, a polar marine scientist with the British 
Antarctic Survey who is currently measuring marine sediments in the 
Southern Ocean from the RV Polarstern to determine how fast and how far 
ice sheets have moved in the past.

Comparing the marine geology with climate data like temperatures and 
carbon dioxide levels through the millennia helps show how the ice will 
respond to human-caused warming, but some of the changes are visible 
without instruments, Larter said.

“The most striking changes I have witnessed are the retreat of the front 
of Pine Island Glacier after an abrupt change in its calving style in 
2015,” he said, describing one of the glaciers in West Antarctica known 
to be particularly vulnerable to the warming ocean. Up until that year, 
the glacier had been thinning, and then all of a sudden, big chunks 
started breaking off, he said.

“I visited the front on three different research cruises, in 2017, 2019 
and 2020,” he said. “And each time we had to go about 10 km further 
upstream due to the rapid retreat resulting from more frequent calving.”

The RV Polarstern is cruising in the Bellingshausen Sea, farther south 
than Moffat’s ship, but Larter said the ocean surface in their research 
area is also unusually warm, “largely a consequence of the fact most of 
the sea ice that’s usually here had melted or drifted away westward by 
the end of November,” he said.

Sea ice holds the water temperature to about 2 degrees below zero 
Celsius, Larter said, but the water during his current expedition has 
been nearly a degree above zero—almost three degrees Celsius warmer than 
normal.

He said declining sea ice could potentially affect the global ocean 
temperatures more rapidly by decreasing the flow of frigid water from 
the Southern Ocean along sea floors farther north.

“The dense, cold water formed around Antarctica flows northward and 
fills the deepest parts of most ocean basins,” he said. “In doing so it 
provides an important driver for the overturning thermohaline 
circulation.” Those currents help balance the global climate by 
redistributing massive amounts of heat energy.

The process of producing that dense water starts with sea ice formation 
and melting, he said.

“Sea ice is a little fresher than the water it forms from due to brine 
rejection during ice crystal formation,” he said. “The residual water 
becomes more saline, which makes it denser, causing it to sink, where it 
keeps the global refrigerator running as it spreads outward.”

It will be critical to monitor exactly how and where the warming ocean 
moves toward the ice shelves in West Antarctica, said Ted Scambos, a 
senior Antarctic researcher with the Earth Science and Observation 
Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

For now, it’s not clear whether the warmer water will reach the Amundsen 
Sea, which holds the Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier,” he said. 
“If it does, or if it’s the start of a patch of warm water that will 
eventually drift in front of all of those glaciers, then, yeah, we would 
see a jump in the retreat rates for sure.”

Scambos helps coordinate a global effort studying the region’s most 
vulnerable ice, and he said the scientists are also probing and prodding 
far beneath the shelves to learn how the formation of grooves and cracks 
affects melting. Sometimes, as the shelf drags across sections of the 
rough seafloor, the friction opens up gaps that can trigger more crack 
as the ice sags from above.

“The processes are real,” he said. “They really do happen, they really 
do speed things up and they are being incorporated in the models. But 
it’s not as dire as some of the more high end forecasts.”

While the tipping points that could cause runaway ice melt are difficult 
to reach, he said, research like Larter’s sediment maps shows that rapid 
retreats and meltdowns have happened in the geological past, potentially 
raising seas 2 to 3 meters in a century to submerge coastlines around 
the world.

“The runaway aspects of the process take hold fairly slowly. In the 
natural world, this process of marine ice instability takes about a 
millennium,” he said. But, “if we continue to drive it hard by warming 
the Pacific, by changing the circulation of air and ocean around 
Antarctica, we will get the fastest possible version of that marine ice 
sheet instability.”

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12022023/antarctic-ice-shelves-marine-heatwave/



/[ "because they can"  -- following the money - from BBC ] /
*Why are BP, Shell, and other oil giants making so much money right now?*
By Ben King
Business reporter, BBC News
The big oil companies - from the UK-based BP and Shell to international 
giants such as ExxonMobil and Norway’s Equinor - have been announcing 
astonishing profit figures.

They are all benefitting from the surging price of oil and gas following 
the invasion of Ukraine.

While they rake in the profits, people around the world are struggling 
to pay their energy bills and fill up their cars - leading to calls for 
higher taxes on these companies.

So how are they making so much money, and should the government step in 
to stop them?
- -
Oil and gas are traded around the world, and if supplies are short and 
demand high, sellers can charge more, and the price goes up.

Before the Ukraine war, Russia was the world’s largest exporter of oil 
and natural gas.

A lot of the money that people paid to buy that oil and gas went to the 
Russian government - those exports made up 45% of the Russian government 
budget in 2021.

After the invasion, Western countries, including the UK and EU, tried to 
stop (or at least massively reduce) their energy imports from Russia, to 
avoid funding the Russian military and supporting a hostile regime.

Countries that didn’t want to buy from Russia had to pay much higher 
prices for oil produced elsewhere.
- -
Oil prices had already been rising as economies reopened following 
Covid-19 lockdowns, and people needed more oil...
- -
The day after the Russian invasion, the oil price went above $100 a 
barrel, and peaked at over $127 in March, before coming back down to 
around $85. Gas prices also soared after the invasion.

Oil and natural gas are crucial to almost every aspect of modern life. 
Oil is used to make petrol and diesel, and natural gas is used for 
heating and cooking.

They're also used in agriculture, electricity generation, and other 
industrial processes which make everything from fertilizer to plastics.

So a sustained rise in oil and gas prices pushes up the cost of many 
other things we buy, driving the cost of living crisis that has gripped 
the UK - and other countries - in recent months...
- -
Oil companies have to operate in a world where the price of oil can go 
down as well as up, with little warning. Money made in the good years 
helps to balance out years when oil prices are low.

Many oil companies lost billions from Russian investments last year - BP 
wrote off $24bn of investments in the Russian oil company Rosneft, for 
example.

They also have to invest billions to find new reserves of oil to keep 
supplies running until the world switches over to renewable sources of 
power.

Energy companies have a big role to play in that switch-over, too. BP 
and Shell invest some of the billions they make from oil and gas into 
renewable power such as solar and wind farms, and charging stations for 
electric cars.

BP boss Bernard Looney said the British company was "helping provide the 
energy the world needs" while investing the transition to green energy.

Shell chief executive Wael Sawan said that these are "incredibly 
difficult times - we are seeing inflation rampant around the world" but 
that Shell was playing its part by investing in renewable technologies. 
Its chief financial officer Sinead Gorman added that Shell had paid 
$13bn in taxes globally in 2022.

However, BP scaled back its plans to cut its carbon emissions this year 
because demand for oil and gas is so strong.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64583982


/[ fossil fascism, or petro-vitalism - eco-fascism - but few words on 
how to rise above it all ]/
*Why This Far Right Trend Should Scare You*
Our Changing Climate
35k views  Feb 10, 2023  #climatechange #fascism #politics
Support OCC and get 20+ bonus videos by signing up for Nebula: 
https://go.nebula.tv/occ/
Watch the full companion video on Jair Bolsonaro here: 
https://nebula.tv/videos/occ-the-dark...
Watch next month's video on eco-sabotage here: 
https://nebula.tv/videos/occ-why-clim...

In this Our Changing Climate climate change video essay, I look at the 
rise of fossil fascism and ecofascism on the far right. As the world 
gets warmer and fossil fuels become increasingly untenable there are now 
glimpses of two trends within the far right that are a reaction to 
climate change. Ecofascism and fossil fascism.

I leaned heavily on the book White Skin, Black Fuel
_____________________
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
1:23 - What is Fascism?
6:09 - The Specter of Fossil Fascism
11:51 - The Specter of Ecofascism
18:14 - What We Shouldn't Be Doing
19:56 - Snuffing the Flames of Fascism
21:54 - Support OCC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGlrX6lA9O8



/[The news archive - looking back at insights easily seen then, does it 
apply now?]/
/*February 13, 2014*/
February 13, 2014:

In the New York Times, physicist Michael Riordan warns of the risks of 
coal exports to Asia:

"The billions of tons of coal burned in Asia every year contribute 
markedly to global warming. Should the United States be selling them 
subsidized coal and encouraging this impending disaster?

"Our nation needs a new, transparent, clean-energy policy that no longer 
turns a blind eye to the many negative impacts of coal burning — or to 
companies trying to sell coal to other nations playing catch-up in the 
global economy. A cornerstone of this policy must be the rational use of 
our vast reserves of Western coal as we ramp down the overuse of what 
is, by far, the dirtiest fossil fuel.

"Is our economy to become a resource economy like Australia’s, exporting 
mineral wealth to Asia in return for mining and shipping jobs, plus 
cheap consumer goods? Should we support this Faustian bargain by selling 
our coal so inexpensively? What kinds of jobs and living conditions do 
we really want to foster, and where? These are questions a rational and 
much-needed, 21st-century energy policy would address."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/opinion/dont-sell-cheap-us-coal-to-asia.html 



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