[✔️] February 20, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Brazil rains, rooftop energy, AI answers climate questions, PBS tipping points, Anthropocene essay

[Richard Pauli]

/*February 20, 2023*/

/[ big rains change culture ]/
*Heavy rains leave 36 dead in Brazil, cities cancel Carnival*
Heavy rain caused flooding and landslides that have killed 36 people in 
Brazil's north Sao Paulo state and the fatalities could rise
https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/19-dead-amid-heavy-rains-brazil-cities-cancel-97325398



/[ Combine wind and solar on your roof -- Just Have a Think - video  14 
mins ] /
*The smartest renewable rooftop system in the world?*
Just Have a Think
28,218 views  Feb 19, 2023
Renewable rooftop power will play a vital role in the decentralised 
community grid systems of the future. Getting every ounce of power out 
of available rooftop spaces will be key to making that transition a 
success. Now a Dutch firm has shown us how it can be done, with several 
large successful REAL-WORLD installations.

Help support this channels independence at
http://www.patreon.com/justhaveathink

http://www.justhaveathink.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vJuKxAIMuA



/[ NYTimes teams with AI to give smarty pants answers to your questions ]/
*Have Climate Questions? Get Answers Here.*
By The New York Times Climate Desk
Feb. 9, 2023

Climate change is tremendously complex — and we’re here to help. The 
climate desk at The Times has been collecting reader questions and has 
started answering them here.

Type your question in the search box to see if we’ve covered it yet. If 
you don’t find an answer, don’t worry: We’re following your great 
questions and will add more in time.

*Ask your question here:* 
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/climate/climate-change-faq.html

Or browse the questions below:

    *The science*
    How do we know climate change is really happening?
    How do we know humans are to blame for climate change?
    How will climate change affect biodiversity?
    What are tipping points, and why should we care?
    Do volcanoes affect climate change?
    What’s happening to the oceans?
    How does ranching and animal agriculture affect climate change?
    What are climate “models” and are they any good?
    Is there a connection between climate change and earthquakes?
    What can I do?
    What can the average person do about climate change?
    Are we doomed?
    How should I think about my diet?
    What about non-dairy milks like almond milk?
    Should I have kids?
    How bad is the plastic problem and what can be done about it?
    Should I bother recycling?
    Does composting help?
    How do I explain climate change to my kid?
    What can I do about climate anxiety?
    How can I identify or rebut bad information when I see it?

    *Solutions and geopolitics*
    Who is most responsible for climate change?
    +What are the most critical steps to take soon?
    Can you give me some good news, please?
    How did climate change become so political if the science is clear?
    What can be done about the biodiversity crisis?
    Are offsets legitimate?
    How will the Inflation Reduction Act address climate change, and how
    quickly?
    What is the Paris Agreement?
    What is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
    What is COP?

    *Extreme weather*
    Are heat waves getting worse?
    Is climate change causing more droughts?
    Are wildfires getting worse?
    What about hurricanes?
    Is flooding getting worse?
    Has climate change affected rainfall?
    Does climate change affect tornadoes?

    *Technology*
    What is the climate impact of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology?
    How green are electric cars?
    Which electric car is best?
    What about electric-car batteries?
    What are the key technologies to tackle climate change? Are they ready?
    What should I know about geoengineering?
    Will nuclear fusion save us?

    *Deciphering the jargon*
    Are global warming and climate change the same thing?
    What are greenhouse gases?
    What exactly does sustainable mean?
    What does net zero mean?
    What is a carbon footprint?
    What is mitigation?
    What is adaptation?
    How does carbon capture work?
    What is carbon removal and is it effective?
    What is carbon pricing and how does it work?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/climate/climate-change-faq.html



/[//  PBS about triggered tipping points  --  video 12 min ]/
*Is THIS the Climate Tipping Point of No Return?*
PBS Terra
Feb 14, 2023
Arctic air is warming, causing scientists to worry that melting arctic 
ice and snow could also lead to a sudden permafrost thaw and release of 
carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) that forms a climate tipping 
point or feedback loop. Thawing of permafrost has been linked to 
releasing zombie viruses not seen in millennia and the feedback loop 
mentioned in the recent IPCC report and COP27 focused on the release of 
CO2. This is something that US leaders hope the 2022 climate change bill 
(Inflation Reduction Act) could help avoid, but the trigger temperature 
may be coming sooner than expected.

In 2008, Tim Lenton published a groundbreaking paper on tipping points. 
Permafrost was left off the list at the time. But since then, additional 
research has shown that this truly enormous store of carbon is far more 
susceptible to global warming than we just recently believed.

If the permafrost that covers much of the northern hemisphere were to 
reach this tipping point, it would add many gigatons of greenhouse gas 
into our atmosphere, significantly worsening climate change, and 
threatening many of the other climate tipping points.

This episode of Weathered explores the latest research on the 
possibilities of abrupt permafrost thaw as well as the much deeper 
yedoma regions that could be triggered later on.

Weathered is a show hosted by weather expert Maiya May and produced by 
Balance Media that helps explain the most common natural disasters, what 
causes them, how they’re changing, and what we can do to prepare.

This episode of Weathered is licensed exclusively to YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpqZTqIKMxs



/[  Old classic essay -- 4 years ago ]/
Feb 5, 2019
*Why the “Anthropocene” is not “Climate Change”*
“Anthropocene” is a widely proposed name for the geological epoch that 
covers human impact on our planet. But it is not synonymous with 
“climate change,” nor can it covered by “environmental problems.” Bigger 
and more shocking, the Anthropocene encapsulates the evidence that human 
pressures became so profound around the middle of the 20th century that 
we blew a planetary gasket. Hello, new Earth System. Hello, Anthropocene.

The phrase “Earth System” refers to the entirety of our planet’s 
interacting physical, chemical, biological, and human processes. Enabled 
by new data-collecting technologies like satellites and ever more 
powerful computer modeling, Earth System science reframes how we 
understand our planet. Climate is just one element of this system; if we 
focus on that alone, we will misunderstand the complexity of the danger. 
*The term “environment” helps us understand ourselves as part of 
ecosystems, but fails to capture the newness of our current situation. 
We have always lived in the environment; only very recently, just as 
Asia began its skyrocketing development, did we begin living in the 
altered Earth System of the Anthropocene.*
*
**The Anthropocene Requires a New Way of Thinking*
The Anthropocene is a multidimensional challenge. Our future is more 
unpredictable than ever, with new phenomena like Category 5 megastorms, 
rapid species extinction, and the loss of polar ice. This change is 
irreversible. NASA says that levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) are higher 
than they have been at any time in the past 400,000 years — well before 
our species evolved — causing the atmosphere to warm...
- -
*The climate has certainly changed, but so too have other aspects of the 
planetary system. Take the lithosphere: 193,000 human-made “inorganic 
crystalline compounds,” or what you and I might call “rocks,” now vastly 
outnumber Earth’s ~5,000 natural minerals, while 8.3 billion tons of 
plastics coat the land, water, and our internal organs. Due to modern 
agribusiness techniques, so much topsoil is washing away that England 
has only about 60 more harvests left.*

The biosphere is equally altered. Never has the planet been so crowded 
with human beings. In 1900, there were around 1.5 billion of us; in the 
1960s, around 3 billion; today there are upwards of 7.4 billion. *Human 
beings and our domesticated animals comprise an astounding 97% of the 
total zoomass of terrestrial mammals, meaning that wild creatures make 
up a miserly 3%*. Humans and our companion species occupy considerably 
more than half of the planet’s habitable land surface. Concerning the 
hydrosphere, fresh water renews itself at the rate of about 1% a year, 
but currently 21 out of 37 of the world’s major aquifers are being drawn 
down faster — in some cases much faster — than they can be replenished.

The planet’s chemistry has changed too. Warmer oceans interfere with the 
production of oxygen by phytoplankton, and some scientists predict that 
with a rise of 6 C — which could happen as soon as 2100 — this oxygen 
production could cease. Our production of fixed nitrogen is five times 
higher than it was 60 years ago; in fact, Earth has never had so much 
fixed nitrogen in its entire ~4.5-billion-year history. Since World War 
II, synthetic chemical production has increased more than thirtyfold. Of 
the more than 80,000 new chemicals, the United States Environmental 
Protection Agency has tested only about 200 for human health risks.

Alarming as each factor is on its own, the concept of the Anthropocene 
brings all these factors and others together. *This is the only way that 
we can understand Earth as a single reverberating system with feedback 
loops and tipping points that we can’t yet predict.*

The Anthropocene’s interrelated systematicity presents not a problem, 
but a multidimensional predicament.*A problem might be solved, often 
with a single technological tool produced by experts in a single field, 
but a predicament presents a challenging condition requiring resources 
and ideas of many kinds. *We don’t solve predicaments; instead, we 
navigate through them. Collaboration among scientists, policymakers, 
social scientists, humanists, and community leaders is key to contending 
with the Anthropocene. Technology is important, but the hardest 
challenges will be about how to alter our political and economic 
systems. Even the United Nations’ US$24 million Millennium Ecosystem 
Assessment (2005) concluded that our current systems are not up to the 
task: we need “significant changes in policies, institutions and 
practices that are not currently under way.”...
- -

*The Danger of the One-Dimensional Thinking of Climate Change*
So, are the techno-optimists, who believe most world problems can be 
solved by innovation, wrong? The answer to this question is that they 
are not so much wrong as misguided, addressing a narrow issue in the 
narrowest terms. Most begin by gesturing toward the totality of 
environmental problems, but end by focusing on climate change alone. 
Sometimes climate change is further reduced to CO2 emissions to the 
exclusion of all other greenhouse gases, such as methane.

A favorite example of techno-optimists like economist Jeffrey Sachs is 
substituting wind power for fossil fuels. Like others, he speaks in 
confident tones about “decoupling” economic growth from natural 
resources, contending that “growth can continue while pressures on key 
resources (water, air, land, habitats of other species) and pollution 
are significantly reduced rather than increased,” by means of new 
technologies and market pricing. In short, we can provide for the 
growing human population (expected to hit 8 billion in 2023) without 
destroying the ecosystem, without impoverishing future generations, and 
without bothering to transform our political and economic systems. The 
status quo is fine if we tighten a few nuts and bolts. Let us look at 
this techno-optimism from the Anthropocene perspective.

*Most industrial-scale wind turbines require rare earth metals* sourced 
from China, which supplies about 90% of the world’s demand and has a 
monopoly on some elements. Not only are the mines of China’s primary 
production site, the southeastern province of Jiangxi, being rapidly 
depleted, but such mining entails shocking environmental and social 
costs. According to investigative journalist Liu Hongqiao, *“Research 
has found that producing one ton of rare earth ore (in terms of rare 
earth oxides) produces 200 cubic meters of acidic wastewater. The 
production of the rare earths needed to meet China’s demand for wind 
turbines up to 2050 … will result in the release of 80 million cubic 
meters of wastewater.” *Once obtained, this ore must be transported and 
processed to make turbines. These turbines, once positioned, require 
maintenance, using more resources. Ultimately, though, they will end up 
as refuse, more trash on our trash-filled planet. *There is nothing 
dematerialized or carbon-free about wind turbines if we look at the 
total picture.*

*Reducing our problem to climate change, then to CO2, and finally to 
measuring emissions only at the point of energy production is a dramatic 
misrepresentation of our dilemma. An Anthropocene perspective is needed 
to keep the totality of the predicament in view.*

*Slowing climate change is crucial but navigating its challenges is only 
possible if it is understood as one facet of planetary overshoot. The 
challenges of our altered, unpredictable Earth System cannot be met by 
technological tinkering within the very systems that pushed it over the 
edge in the first place. *There’s nothing for it but to roll up our 
sleeves and begin the hard work of transforming our political and 
economic systems with the aims of decency and resilience.
https://medium.com/local-futures-economics-of-happiness/why-the-anthropocene-is-not-climate-change-ad78e6a61718



/[The news archive - looking back at when we started to learn of the 
seriousness ]/
/*February 20, 2013*/
February 20, 2013:

In his first major policy speech as Secretary of State, John Kerry 
directly addresses the risks of climate change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqJt_WSGoVI

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/21/1620201/speech-kerry-climate-hawk-courage-reject-dirty-keystone-xl-pipeline/


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