[✔️] October 14, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | This year the hottest, AC chems the worst, Local zoning in Michigan, Grid connections, 2013 Baltimore Sun opinion

Sat Oct 14 05:53:49 EDT 2023

/*October 14*//*, 2023*/

/[ We suspected as much ]/
*Global warning: 2023 will be the hottest year on record
*Global mean September temperature anomalies
Sweltering temperatures baking the globe this year, both on land and 
sea, have amplified the odds of the Earth setting an inauspicious record.

Driving the news: Months of hotter-than-normal weather have made the 
planet go from a 46.8% chance of having the warmest year on record at 
the end of July, to a greater than 99% chance of this outcome now, 
according to new data from NOAA.

September's air and ocean temperatures shattered global records, with 
NOAA and NASA each confirming early data that indicated it was a highly 
unusual month.
*September was the most *unusually warm month ever recorded in the 
agency's 174 years of instrument records, with a temperature anomaly of 
1.44°C (2.59°F).

This beat the previous warmest September by a staggering margin of 
0.46°C (0.83°F), and the prior largest temperature anomaly, which 
occurred in March 2016, by 0.09°C (0.16°F), NOAA stated.
Last month was the 49th-straight September with temperatures higher than 
the 20th century average, and the 535th straight month with 
warmer-than-average temperatures.
*What they're saying: *"September 2023 was the fourth month in a row of 
record-warm global temperatures," said Sarah Kapnick, NOAA's chief 
scientist, in a statement.

"Not only was it the warmest September on record, it was far and away 
the most atypically warm month of any in NOAA's 174 years of climate 
keeping. To put it another way, September 2023 was warmer than the 
average July from 2001-2010."
*Between the lines: *Throughout the year, meteorologists and climate 
scientists have been playing catch-up with global temperatures as the 
oceans have soared to record warmth, while entire continents have baked.

Record warm temperatures during September covered 20% of the world's 
surface, which was the largest area since at least 1951. Less than 1% of 
the world's surface had a record-cold September, NOAA found.

When the year began, NOAA projected that 2023 would likely be a top-10 
warmest year, but not at the top of the list.
However, with a building El Niño in the tropical Pacific, record ocean 
warmth worldwide, and extremely high land surface temperatures, that has 
rapidly changed.
The NOAA now pegs the odds of a record warm year in 2023 at greater than 
99%, which is near to or matching other global climate centers.
*By the numbers: *NASA data, which is processed using different methods, 
also showed that September was a shockingly warm month — with a 
temperature anomaly of 1.47°C (2.6°F).

This was the most unusually warm month on record in NASA's data set as well.

Other data, including from the Japan Meteorological Agency and the 
Copernicus Climate Change Service, corroborates NASA and NOAA's findings.
North America, South America, Europe and Africa had their warmest 
Septembers on record, and for the sixth-straight month, global oceans 
ranked as the hottest on record, NOAA found.
September tied August for the highest monthly sea surface temperature 
departure from average, at 1.03°C (1.85°F), of any month on record.
*Of note: *The U.S. has already seen two-dozen billion-dollar weather 
and climate disasters through the end of September, which is an annual 
record, NOAA reported last week.

*The intrigue: *Scientists are trying to determine what exactly is 
driving the extreme heat this year, in addition to human-caused climate 
change. Some factors are well-understood, such as a sudden flip from a 
three-year La Niña, which slightly cools the globe, to a warming El 
Niño. But there may be unknown factors involved as well.

"What's remarkable is that these record values are happening before the 
peak of the current El Nino event, whereas in 2016 the previous record 
values happened in the spring, after the peak," said NASA climate 
scientist Gavin Schmidt in a statement.
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/13/climate-heat-september-noaa-nasa

/[  a very dangerous chemical is widespread ]
/*When it comes to heating the planet, the fluid in your AC is thousands 
of times worse than CO2
*BY ISABELLA O’MALLEY
October 13, 2023
Air conditioning has made it possible to live comfortably in many hot 
places, but the special chemicals that makes it work are actually 
extremely hazardous to the climate.

Refrigerants used in fridges, freezers and cars change from a fluid to a 
gas to transport heat away from the place you want cooled.

In refrigerators, the refrigerant starts as a liquid and expands into a 
gas, which forces it to cool down. This chilled gas circulates through 
the fridge, absorbing heat as it flows along.

Once the chilled fluid has absorbed significant heat, say, from eggs you 
just hardboiled and placed inside, it gets squeezed in a compressor and 
gets even hotter. The refrigerant then flows through condenser coils 
where it releases its heat out and cools back into a liquid.
The cycle starts over when the refrigerant enters the expansion device, 
where the fluid spreads out, cools, and once again turns into a gas.

Air conditioners also use refrigerants and operate similarly to this, 
but they release their heat to the outdoors rather than your kitchen.

Refrigerants absorb a lot more heat than water or other common fluids, 
which makes them great for cooling systems but bad for climate change 
when they escape.

Some of the earlier refrigerant chemicals that allowed hot places like 
Phoenix, Arizona and Dubai to grow into population centers, were a 
family known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), but scientists discovered 
that these were causing widespread damage to the ozone layer in the mid 
to late 1900s.

So countries came together and ratified the Montreal Protocol which went 
into effect in 1987 and banned CFCs. This is cited as one of the most 
successful international environmental laws ever.

The family of chemicals that replaced those CFCs was hydrofluorocarbons 
or HFCs. They were first commercialized in the 1990s. But these were 
found to be dangerous for the climate and were rapidly building up in 
the atmosphere as air conditioning spread across the world.

The way to compare damaging gases is “global warming potential” or GWP, 
which the Environmental Protection Agency defines as how much energy one 
ton of a gas can absorb over a certain period of time, compared to one 
ton of carbon dioxide. Over one century, the GWP of carbon dioxide is 
one, therefore. Methane, the second most important greenhouse gas after 
carbon dioxide is 28, or 28 times worse. The common refrigerant known as 
R-410A, has a global warming potential of 2,088.

In 2016, the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol phased down the 
use of climate-harming hydrofluorocarbons 85% by 2036, so that phasedown 
is currently happening.

According to the most recent comprehensive climate report from 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2021, this Kigali Agreement 
will meaningfully prevent some warming of the Earth if fully enforced.

In the United States, people are not allowed to intentionally release 
hydrofluorocarbons and other refrigerants under the Clean Air Act. When 
an appliance containing a refrigerant is disposed of, the EPA also 
requires the last person in the disposal process to recover the 
refrigerant to a certain level or verify that there hasn’t been any leakage.

However, accidents happen. When a car is totaled in a collision, all of 
that refrigerant escapes into the atmosphere. The EPA also restricts 
sales of refrigerants, but people can purchase small cans of certain 
HFCs in stores if they contain two pounds or less. When a car is dumped 
at a junk yard, personnel there are responsible for recovering the 
refrigerant.

Scientists say that lowering our emissions of HFCs will have a fairly 
quick payoff because most persist in the atmosphere for roughly 15 
years, far less time than carbon dioxide.
https://apnews.com/article/refrigerant-global-warming-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-77c37a0127716266defb329b10800bba

/[ Michigan Conservative Energy Forum ]
/*Ed Rivet: Renewable Siting Needs Reform in Michigan*
greenmanbucket
Oct 13, 2023
Ed Rivet is Executive Director of the Michigan Conservative Energy 
Forum, a group of Conservative Republicans who support Clean energy 
development.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHhE4jvkxP4

/- -
/

/[  Local zoning battles moving to state battlegrounds  ]/
*WJRT 12 Flint Michigan: Controversy over Clean Energy Siting Reform*
greenmanbucket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7rOTs0VKOo

/[ engaging with a New  World  - video interview ]/
*The Interconnected Grid | Nafeez Ahmed*
Planet: Critical
What if the only viable future is a better one?

Oct 11, 2023

Whatever the future holds, one thing is certain: tomorrow’s world will 
not look like today’s. We could see fossil-fascism in which nations 
hoard their fossil reserves (coal and gas) for accelerated use at the 
expense of international collaboration. We could see eco-fascism after 
an unplanned recession which crashes the financial system and slashes 
demand. We could see a descent into madness in which we run out of fuel 
to heat, to eat, to survive.

We could also see degrowth, eco-socialism, renewable sharing and 
governance reimagined to meet human rights. No, this isn’t utopia—it’s 
laid out in the policy plans of many scholars around the world as one of 
the only paths to navigating the planetary crisis.

Systems theorist Nafeez Ahmed joins me to discuss the interconnected 
grid—a piece of renewable infrastructure which, by its design, would 
change our economic system, our geopolitics and our relationship with 
one another. Nafeez debated Simon Michaux a few months ago, and I highly 
recommend listening to these episodes as a trio: Nafeez, Simon, the debate.

-  Nafeez Ahmed: https://www.nafeezahmed.net/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q0Sgzkoh8w

/[The news archive - looking back at when one great newspaper spoke 
clearly  ]/
/*October 14, 2013 */
October 14, 2013: In an editorial, the Baltimore Sun declares:

    "The latest analysis produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on
    Climate Change (IPCC), compiled by hundreds of scientists and dozens
    of authors from around the globe, shows that climate change is real,
    it's largely caused by man, and it's the greatest environmental
    threat we face.

    "That's not alarmism, it's reality. Of course, know-nothing deniers
    will be as dismissive of the IPCC findings as they've been of
    similar reports in the past. That the IPCC is under the auspices of
    the United Nations will be used to stir up nationalistic suspicions.
    That climate change policy is highly inconvenient for the fossil
    fuel industries will cause the big coal and oil companies to
    continue their disinformation campaigns.

    "None of which changes the reality that climate change poses a
    serious threat, and as the evidence mounts, it's actually become
    easier to distinguish these basic changes in the ecosystem from the
    normal ups and downs of weather. No one super storm or drought or
    tornado is traceable to global warming, of course, but the data are
    simply too overwhelming to ignore. Each of the last three decades
    has proven successively warmer than the previous. Any recent slowing
    of that trend or plateau, as the report notes, has more to do with
    variables such as volcanic activity and the solar cycle over the
    last five years than it does the build-up of greenhouse gases in the
    atmosphere."

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-10-14/news/bs-ed-climate-20131014_1_ipcc-report-climate-change-intergovernmental-panel

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