[✔️] June 3, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | moving toward more danger, catastrophic scenarios, Isostatic rebound, 1977 wisdom

Sat Jun 3 09:08:38 EDT 2023

/*June*//*3, 2023*/

/[ From Associated Press  ]/
*Earth is ‘really quite sick now’ and in danger zone in nearly all 
ecological ways, study says*
By SETH BORENSTEIN
May 31, 2023
- -
Earth has pushed past seven out of eight scientifically established 
safety limits and into “the danger zone,” not just for an overheating 
planet that’s losing its natural areas, but for the well-being of people 
living on it, according to a new study.

The study looks not just at guardrails for the planetary ecosystem but 
for the first time it includes measures of “justice,” which is mostly 
about preventing harm for countries, ethnicities and genders.

The study by the international scientist group Earth Commission 
published in Wednesday’s journal Nature looks at climate, air pollution, 
phosphorus and nitrogen contamination of water from fertilizer overuse, 
groundwater supplies, fresh surface water, the unbuilt natural 
environment and the overall natural and human-built environment. Only 
air pollution wasn’t quite at the danger point globally.
- -
Air pollution is dangerous at local and regional levels, while climate 
was beyond the harmful levels for humans in groups but not quite past 
the safety guideline for the planet as a system, the study from the 
Swedish group said.

The study found “hotspots” of problem areas throughout Eastern Europe, 
South Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, parts of Africa and much of 
Brazil, Mexico, China and some of the U.S. West — much of it from 
climate change. About two-thirds of Earth don’t meet the criteria for 
freshwater safety, scientists said as an example.

“We are in a danger zone for most of the Earth system boundaries,” said 
study co-author Kristie Ebi, a professor of climate and public health at 
the University of Washington.

If planet Earth just got an annual checkup, similar to a person’s 
physical, “our doctor would say that the Earth is really quite sick 
right now and it is sick in terms of many different areas or systems and 
this sickness is also affecting the people living on Earth,” Earth 
Commission co-chair Joyeeta Gupta, a professor of environment at the 
University of Amsterdam, said at a press conference.

It’s not a terminal diagnosis. The planet can recover if it changes, 
including its use of coal, oil and natural gas and the way it treats the 
land and water, the scientists said.

But “we are moving in the wrong direction on basically all of these,” 
said study lead author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam 
Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

“This is a compelling and provocative paper – scientifically sound in 
methodology and important for identifying the dimensions in which the 
planet is nearing the edge of boundaries that would launch us into 
irreversible states,” Indy Burke, dean of the Yale School of the 
Environment said in an email. She wasn’t part of the study.

The team of about 40 scientists created quantifiable boundaries for each 
environmental category, both for what’s safe for the planet and for the 
point at which it becomes harmful for groups of people, which the 
researchers termed a justice issue.

Rockstrom said he thinks of those points as setting up “a safety fence” 
outside of which the risks become higher, but not necessarily fatal.

The report uses the same boundary of 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees 
Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times that international 
leaders agreed upon in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The world has 
so far warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit), so it 
hasn’t crossed that safety fence, Rockstrom and Gupta said, but that 
doesn’t mean people aren’t being hurt.

“What we are trying to show through our paper is that even at 1 degree 
Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) there is a huge amount of damage 
taking place,” Gupta said, pointing to tens of millions of people 
exposed to extreme hot temperatures.

The planetary safety guardrail of 1.5 degrees hasn’t been breached, but 
the “just” boundary where people are hurt of 1 degree has been.

“Sustainability and justice are inseparable,” said Stanford 
environmental studies chief Chris Field, who wasn’t part of the 
research. He said he would want even more stringent boundaries. “Unsafe 
conditions do not need to cover a large fraction of Earth’s area to be 
unacceptable, especially if the unsafe conditions are concentrated in 
and near poor and vulnerable communities.”

Another outside expert, Dr. Lynn Goldman, an environment health 
professor and dean of George Washington University’s public health 
school, said the study was “kind of bold,” but she wasn’t optimistic 
that it would result in much action.

https://apnews.com/article/earth-environment-climate-change-nature-sick-2dded06915af4645253f5c29abff4794/
/

/- -/

/[ quick, it may be too late ]
/*Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios*
Abstract

    Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case
    scenarios. Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are
    poorly understood. Could anthropogenic climate change result in
    worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At
    present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic. Yet there are
    ample reasons to suspect that climate change could result in a
    global catastrophe. Analyzing the mechanisms for these extreme
    consequences could help galvanize action, improve resilience, and
    inform policy, including emergency responses. We outline current
    knowledge about the likelihood of extreme climate change, discuss
    why understanding bad-to-worst cases is vital, articulate reasons
    for concern about catastrophic outcomes, define key terms, and put
    forward a research agenda. The proposed agenda covers four main
    questions: 1) What is the potential for climate change to drive mass
    extinction events? 2) What are the mechanisms that could result in
    human mass mortality and morbidity? 3) What are human societies'
    vulnerabilities to climate-triggered risk cascades, such as from
    conflict, political instability, and systemic financial risk? 4) How
    can these multiple strands of evidence—together with other global
    dangers—be usefully synthesized into an “integrated catastrophe
    assessment”? It is time for the scientific community to grapple with
    the challenge of better understanding catastrophic climate change.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108146119/
/

/
/

/
/

///[ Consider geological structures are like an inflatable raft in a 
swimming pool ]/
*Greenland Rises As Ice Melts*
October 2, 2021
Author William House

It’s Called Isostatic Rebound

Greenland and Antarctica shed record amounts of ice during the past 
several years, victims of a warming planet. On a single day in the 
summer of 2019, Greenland lost 12.5 billion tons of ice. A 2020 study by 
scientists at Ohio State University (King et al.) used four decades of 
satellite data to trace Greenland’s ice-loss history. The study found 
that from 2000 forward, the continent lost more ice each year than was 
replaced by snow. Greenland is now the largest contributor on the planet 
to sea-level rise. As the ice melts, the continent rises.

Terra firma provides us with a sense of stability when we stand firmly 
on solid rock, but our sense of unchanging stability is an illusion. 
 From a geological perspective, Earth’s surface is a shifting landscape 
of continents sliding past each other and sometimes violently colliding. 
When continents collide, mountains like the Himalayas rise upward 
towards the heavens. Terra firma is only a fleeting moment in the 
dynamic age-old dance of plate tectonics — continents are always in motion.

Despite its solid appearance, Earth’s surface is also mobile, flexing 
and bending in response to the waxing and waning geological stresses, 
including glacial ice sheets. The simplest analogy is a cork floating in 
a bowl of water. Press the cork with your finger, and it submerges, but 
remove the weight of your finger, and it pops back above the surface again.

The worlds thickest ice sheets are in Antarctica, where the ice is up to 
three miles deep. Pressure at the base of this ice exceeds 6,000 pounds 
per square inch or 432 tons per square foot. Ice has weight, and massive 
ice sheets press on the underlying continent, forcing it to sink like 
the cork in water.

*Isostatic Rebound*
Melting ice sheets reverse the process and reduce vertical pressure as 
the meltwater flows off the continent and into the ocean. Once relieved 
of the weight from the overlying ice, the continental crust rises upward 
in a process called isostatic rebound. While the cork in our experiment 
instantaneously popped back to its original level, continental rebound 
takes thousands of years. Parts of the North American continent are 
still rising as they recover from the weight of thick ice sheets, which 
formed during the last ice age.

Ten thousand years ago, one of the thickest areas of ice in North 
America was just south of Hudson Bay, Canada. There, a series of ancient 
shorelines (strandlines) record the isostatic rebound. A total of 185 
ancient strandlines rise like a giant staircase, each one representing a 
period in time when its rock and soil were at sea level. Collectively 
they record 995 feet of uplift starting about 8,000 years ago. 
Initially, the continent rebounded at about 33 to 39 feet each 100 
years. Today that rate is only 4.3 feet per 100 years.

Most of the northern hemisphere’s ice sheets have disappeared since the 
last ice age, and the Greenland Ice sheet remains one of the last 
vestiges of a cold, ice age Earth. The ice covering Greenland began 
forming about three million years ago, slowly depressing the continent.

*The Changes are Noticeable*
Anthropocene climate change is rapidly undoing three million years of 
mother nature’s work. The heat from global warming eats away at 
Greenland’s ice cap, melting water at its surface and calving ice into 
the Atlantic Ocean at the seaward ends of glaciers.

Dissolution of the Greenland ice sheet is a major driver of sea-level 
rise. There is also work indicating that the large volumes of freshwater 
accumulating in the North Atlantic are interfering with the North 
Atlantic circulation system — the Atlantic Meridional Overturning 
Circulation (AMOC). This system drives the famous Gulf Stream, which 
carries warm water to the North Atlantic from the tropics, providing 
Europe with mild winters from heat supplied by the Gulf Stream.

As the ice melts, Greenland rises due to isostatic rebound, and some 
evidence indicates the Earth’s crust may be warping in other ways. A 
recent study analyzed satellite data from 2003 to 2018 and detected both 
horizontal and vertical crustal movement in Greenland. Interestingly, 
the data indicated Greenland’s ice melt might also affect much larger 
areas of the Northern Hemisphere.

Greenland rises, and continents move as humankind’s grand experiment in 
climate change continues warming the only planet we have.
https://archeanweb.com/2021/10/02/greenland-rises-as-ice-melts/

/[The news archive - looking back at some ignored advice from NYT 
science writer Walter Sullivan ]/
/*June 3, 1977*/

June 3, 1977: The New York Times reports, "To avoid accumulation in the 
air of sufficient carbon dioxide to cause major climate changes, it may 
ultimately be necessary to restrict the burning of coal and other fossil 
fuels, according to Dr. William D. Nordhaus of the President's Council 
of Economic Advisers."

    This would exceed the fluctuations of the last 100,000 years,
    deduced from analysis of ocean sediments and cores from ice sheet
    drill holes, and could have serious consequences. Dr. Nordhaus also
    noted that the Princeton studies indicated a far more marked warming
    in the polar ??egions than near the Equator.

    In the long run, as noted by Dr. Broecker, this could melt polar
    ice, raising sea levels enough to flood many coastal cities and food
    producing areas.

    To limit the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the air to an
    increase of 100 per cent, he suggested an escalating tax schedule
    that would impose 14 cents a ton of released gas in 1980, increasing
    to $87.15 a ton by 2100.

    This would force energy consumers to shift to other sources, such as
    nuclear energy, which he termed presently “the only proven
    large‐scale and low‐cost alternative.” The shift from carbon‐based
    fuels would not reach major proportions until about 40 years hence.

    By then energy sources now at an early stage of development, such as
    solar power and atomic fusion, might be able to contribute electric
    power and noncarbon fuels.

    Since the United States contributes 10 to 20 percent of the carbon
    dioxide, any solution must be international, Dr. Nordhaus said. It
    will be “expensive, but not unthinkable,” he added.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30E15FC355D167493C1A9178DD85F438785F9

=======================================
*Mass media is lacking, many daily summariesdeliver global warming news 
- a few are email delivered*

=========================================================
**Inside Climate News*
Newsletters
We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every day or 
once a week, our original stories and digest of the web’s top headlines 
deliver the full story, for free.
https://insideclimatenews.org/
---------------------------------------
**Climate Nexus* https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/*
Delivered straight to your inbox every morning, Hot News summarizes the 
most important climate and energy news of the day, delivering an 
unmatched aggregation of timely, relevant reporting. It also provides 
original reporting and commentary on climate denial and pro-polluter 
activity that would otherwise remain largely unexposed.    5 weekday
=================================
*Carbon Brief Daily https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up*
Every weekday morning, in time for your morning coffee, Carbon Brief 
sends out a free email known as the “Daily Briefing” to thousands of 
subscribers around the world. The email is a digest of the past 24 hours 
of media coverage related to climate change and energy, as well as our 
pick of the key studies published in the peer-reviewed journals.
more at https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief
==================================
*T*he Daily Climate *Subscribe https://ehsciences.activehosted.com/f/61*
Get The Daily Climate in your inbox - FREE! Top news on climate impacts, 
solutions, politics, drivers. Delivered week days. Better than coffee.
Other newsletters  at https://www.dailyclimate.org/originals/

/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/ 

/Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/

/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
to news digest./

Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only.  It does not carry 
images or attachments which may originate from remote servers.  A 
text-only message can provide greater privacy to the receiver and 
sender. This is a personal hobby production curated by Richard Pauli
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain cannot be used for commercial 
purposes. Messages have no tracking software.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote 
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, 
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for 
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct 
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List 
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to 
this mailing list.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20230603/0d6b6aa8/attachment.htm>