[✔️] Jan 1, 2024 Global Warming News | Energy speeds consumption, Will we act?, 2023 exposed inability, OECD Work-Live Balance, Addiction to growth, Consider the Chestnut, 2010 Pope John Paul ll

Mon Jan 1 05:19:19 EST 2024

/*January*//*1, 2024*/

/[ a thoughtful way to start the new year - Just Have a Think - 13 min 
video ]/
*Does energy efficiency just make us use more stuff?*
Just Have a Think
Dec 31, 2023
Improvements in energy efficiency could give us as much as 50% of the 
carbon reductions we need by 2050, according to the International Energy 
agency. But the 'Jevons Paradox' says the more efficient and cheaper we 
make things, the more we use them. So are we in a no-win situation or is 
there actually a way out?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp5EoTT_FQk

[  video discussion from The Guardian article ]
*Will 2024 Be When We Find Out We Won’t Act On Climate?*
Climate Chat
Dec 31, 2023
In this Climate Chat episode we discuss whether the world will start to 
take climate action seriously in 2024.

Guardian article on "World will look back at 2023 as year humanity 
exposed its inability to tackle climate crisis, scientists say":
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/29/world-will-look-back-at-2023-as-year-humanity-exposed-its-inability-to-tackle-climate-crisis?CMP=share_btn_tw

For more Climate Chat episodes, see our YouTube home page:   / @climatechat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9hL61EJI4o

- -

[TheGuardian article ]
*World will look back at 2023 as year humanity exposed its inability to 
tackle climate crisis, scientists say*
Disastrous events included flash flooding in Africa and wildfires in 
Europe and North America
Jonathan Watts Global environment editor
@jonathanwatts
Fri 29 Dec 2023
The hottest year in recorded history casts doubts on humanity’s ability 
to deal with a climate crisis of its own making, senior scientists have 
said.

As historically high temperatures continued to be registered in many 
parts of the world in late December, the former Nasa scientist James 
Hansen told the Guardian that 2023 would be remembered as the moment 
when failures became apparent.

“When our children and grandchildren look back at the history of 
human-made climate change, this year and next will be seen as the 
turning point at which the futility of governments in dealing with 
climate change was finally exposed,” he said.

“Not only did governments fail to stem global warming, the rate of 
global warming actually accelerated.”

After what was probably the hottest July in 120,000 years, Hansen, whose 
testimony to the US Senate in 1988 is widely seen as the first 
high-profile revelation of global heating, warned that the world was 
moving towards a “new climate frontier” with temperatures higher than at 
any point over the past million years.

Now director of the climate programme at Columbia University’s Earth 
Institute in New York, Hansen said the best hope was for a generational 
shift of leadership.

“The bright side of this clear dichotomy is that young people may 
realise that they must take charge of their future. The turbulent status 
of today’s politics may provide opportunity,” he said...
- -
“We do not understand why the ocean heat increase is so dramatic, and we 
do not know what the consequences are in the future,” he said. “Are we 
seeing the first signs of a state shift? Or is it [a] freak outlier?”

In the Antarctic, scientists have also been perplexed and worried by the 
pace of change. The new Brazilian scientific module Criosfera 2, a solar 
and wind-powered laboratory that collects meteorological information, 
measured the lowest extent of sea ice in the region both for summer and 
winter.

“This environmental alert is a sign of ongoing global environmental 
changes and poses a daunting challenge for polar scientists to explain,” 
said Francisco Eliseu Aquino, a professor of climatology and 
oceanography at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and the 
deputy director of Brazil’s polar and climatic centre.

West Antarctica was affected by several winter heatwaves associated with 
the landfall of atmospheric rivers. In early July, a Chilean team on 
King George Island, at the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula, 
registered an unprecedented event of rainfall in the middle of the 
austral winter when only snowfalls are expected.

In January, a massive iceberg, measuring about 1,500 sq km, broke off 
from the Brunt ice shelf in the Weddell Sea. It was the third colossal 
calving in the same region in three years.

Aquino said human influence – through the burning of fossil fuels – had 
also created “frightening” dynamics between the poles and the tropics. 
Cold wet fronts from the Antarctic had interacted with record heat and 
drought in the Amazon to create unprecedented storms in between. Floods 
in southern Brazil killed 51 people in early September and then returned 
with similarly devastating force in mid-November.

Aquino said this “record record” was a taste of what was to come as the 
world entered dangerous levels of warming. “From this year onwards, we 
will understand concretely what it means to flirt with 1.5C [of heating] 
in the global average temperature and new records for disasters,” he said.

This is already happening. This year’s deadliest climate disaster was 
the flood in Libya that killed more than 11,300 people in the coastal 
city of Derna. In a single day, Storm Daniel unleashed 200 times as much 
rain as usually falls on the city in the entire month of September. 
Human-induced climate change made this up to 50 times more likely.
Forest fires burned a record area in Canada and Europe, and killed about 
100 people in Lahaina on Maui island, the deadliest wildfire in US 
history, which happened in August. For those who prefer to calculate 
catastrophe in economic terms, the US broke its annual record of 
billion-dollar disasters by August, by which time there had already been 23.

Raul Cordero, a climate professor at the University of Groningen and the 
University of Santiago, said the effects of this year’s heat were being 
felt across South America in the form of unprecedented water stress in 
Uruguay, record-breaking fires in Chile, the most severe drought in the 
Amazon basin in 50 years, prolonged power shortages in Ecuador caused by 
the lack of hydropower, and increased shipping costs along the Panama 
canal due to low water levels.

Cordero said El Niño was forecast to weaken in the coming year, but 
above average or record temperatures were likely to persist for at least 
the next three months.

And, as science has proved beyond any doubt, global temperatures would 
continue to rise as long as humanity continues to burn fossil fuels and 
forests.

In the years ahead, the heat “anomaly” and catastrophes of 2023 would 
first become the new norm, and then be looked back on as one of the 
cooler, more stable years in people’s lives. As Hansen warned, unless 
there is radical and rapid change, failure will be built into the 
climate system.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/29/world-will-look-back-at-2023-as-year-humanity-exposed-its-inability-to-tackle-climate-crisis?CMP=share_btn_tw

/[ Major study ]/
*Work-Life Balance*
OECD study
Finding a suitable balance between work and daily living is a challenge 
that all workers face. Families are particularly affected. The ability 
to successfully combine work, family commitments and personal life is 
important for the well-being of all members in a household. Governments 
can help to address the issue by encouraging supportive and flexible 
working practices, making it easier for parents to strike a better 
balance between work and home life.

Employees working long hours

An important aspect of work-life balance is the amount of time a person 
spends at work. Evidence suggests that long work hours may impair 
personal health, jeopardise safety and increase stress. 10% of employees 
in the OECD work 50 hours or more per week in paid work. Mexico is the 
country with the highest proportion of people working very long hours in 
paid work, with 27%, followed by Turkey with nearly 25% and Colombia 
with almost 24% of employees; all of these countries saw a drop in the 
proportion of people working very long hours in paid work compared to 10 
years ago. Overall, more men work very long hours in paid work; the 
percentage of male employees working very long hours in paid work across 
OECD countries is almost 14%, compared with about 6% for women.
Time devoted to leisure and personal care

Furthermore, the more people work, the less time they have to spend on 
other activities, such as personal care or leisure. The amount and 
quality of leisure time is important for people's overall well-being, 
and can bring additional physical and mental health benefits. A 
full-time worker in the OECD devotes 63% of the day on average, or 15 
hours, to personal care (eating, sleeping, etc.) and leisure 
(socialising with friends and family, hobbies, games, computer and 
television use, etc.). Fewer hours in paid work for women do not 
necessarily result in greater leisure time, as time devoted to leisure 
is roughly the same for men and women across the 22 OECD countries studied.
https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/work-life-balance/

- -

/[ return to a classic lecture from "Cognitive Challenges of Climate 
Change" video ]/
*Day 9 - Robert Costanza: Overcoming our societal addiction to growth*
MC: Alexia Ostrolenk, Ph.D Candidate in Psychiatric Science (UdeM); 
Science Communicator (ComScicon-QC, BrainReach)
Institut des sciences cognitives - UQAM
Oct 5, 2021  ISC Summer School 2021 - Cognitive Challenges of Climate 
Change / École d'été ISC 2021 - Défis cognitifs du changement climatique
ISC 2021 Summer School – Cognitive Challenges of Climate Change 
(https://sites.grenadine.uqam.ca/sites...)
Bio:
Professor Robert Costanza is a Vice-Chancellor’s Chair in Public Policy 
at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National 
University. He is also currently a Senior Fellow at the Stockholm 
Resilience Centre in Stockholm, Sweden, an Affiliate Fellow at the Gund 
Institute at the University of Vermont, and a deTao Master of Ecological 
Economics at the deTao Masters Academy in Shanghai, China. He is a 
Fellow in the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) and the 
Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in the UK, and is an Overseas Expert in the 
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Professor Costanza’s transdisciplinary research integrates the study of 
humans and the rest of nature to address research, policy and management 
issues at multiple time and space scales, from small watersheds to the 
global system. His specialties include: transdisciplinary integration, 
systems ecology, ecological economics, ecosystem services, landscape 
ecology, integrated socio-ecological modeling, ecological design, energy 
analysis, environmental policy, social traps and addictions, incentive 
structures, and institutions.

He is co-founder and past-president of the International Society for 
Ecological Economics and was founding chief editor of the society’s 
journal Ecological Economics. He currently serves on the editorial board 
of ten other international academic journals. He is also founding 
co-editor in chief of Solutions a unique hybrid academic/popular journal 
and editor in chief of the Anthropocene Review.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QCuNLh2Wss

/[ Positive action in the nearly extinct Chestnut -- this is a metaphor 
for a laudable approach and continuing use of science to attack a real 
problem ]/
*Rebirth of the American Chestnut as a Dominant Forest Species in 
Eastern North America*
UGACED
Nov 10, 2023
EECP Lecture Series
October 24, 2023
Scott Merkle, Professor of Forest Biology, UGA
"Rebirth of the American Chestnut as a Dominant Forest Species in 
Eastern North America"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjLrwXntYjw

/[The news archive - The Vatican seems the most vociferous ]/
/*January 1, 2010 */
January 1, 2010: In his World Day of Peace message, Pope Benedict XVI 
declares:

    "In 1990 John Paul II had spoken of an 'ecological crisis' and, in
    highlighting its primarily ethical character, pointed to the 'urgent
    moral need for a new solidarity.' His appeal is all the more
    pressing today, in the face of signs of a growing crisis which it
    would be irresponsible not to take seriously. Can we remain
    indifferent before the problems associated with such realities as
    climate change, desertification, the deterioration and loss of
    productivity in vast agricultural areas, the pollution of rivers and
    aquifers, the loss of biodiversity, the increase of natural
    catastrophes and the deforestation of equatorial and tropical
    regions? Can we disregard the growing phenomenon of 'environmental
    refugees,' people who are forced by the degradation of their natural
    habitat to forsake it – and often their possessions as well – in
    order to face the dangers and uncertainties of forced displacement?
    Can we remain impassive in the face of actual and potential
    conflicts involving access to natural resources? All these are
    issues with a profound impact on the exercise of human rights, such
    as the right to life, food, health and development."

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20091208_xliii-world-day-peace_en.html

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