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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>November 22, 2020</b></font></i></p>
[News moves slowly from current research]<br>
<b>Greenland Is Melting, And a New Model Suggests We've Greatly
Underestimated Its Impact</b><br>
JONATHAN BAMBER, THE CONVERSATION - 21 NOVEMBER 2020<br>
Greenland is the largest island in the world and on it rests the
largest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere. If all that ice melted,
the sea would rise by more than 7 metres.<br>
<br>
But that's not going to happen, is it? Well, not any time soon, but
understanding how much of the ice sheet might melt over the coming
century is a critical and urgent question that scientists are trying
to tackle using sophisticated numerical models of how the ice sheet
interacts with the rest of the climate system.<br>
The problem is that the models aren't that good at reproducing
recent observations and are limited by our poor knowledge of the
detailed topography of the subglacial terrain and fjords, which the
ice flows over and in to.<br>
<br>
One way around this problem is to see how the ice sheet responded to
changes in climate in the past and compare that with model
projections for the future for similar changes in temperature. That
is exactly what colleagues and I did in a new study now published in
the journal Nature Communications.<br>
<br>
We looked at the three largest glaciers in Greenland and used
historical aerial photographs combined with measurements scientists
had taken directly over the years, to reconstruct how the volume of
these glaciers had changed over the period 1880 to 2012.<br>
<br>
The approach is founded on the idea that the past can help inform
the future, not just in science but in all aspects of life.<br>
<br>
But just like other "classes" of history, the climate and the Earth
system in future won't be a carbon copy of the past. Nonetheless, if
we figure out exactly how sensitive the ice sheet has been to
temperature changes over the past century, that can provide a useful
guide to how it will respond over the next century...<br>
<br>
We found that the three largest glaciers were responsible for 8.1 mm
of sea level rise, about 15 percent of the whole ice sheet's
contribution.<br>
<br>
Over the period of our study, the sea globally has risen by around
20 cm, about the height of an A5 booklet, and of that, about a
finger's width is entirely thanks to ice melting from those three
Greenland glaciers.<br>
<br>
<b>Melting As Usual</b><br>
So what does that tell us about the future behaviour of the ice
sheet? In 2013, a modelling study by Faezeh Nick and colleagues also
looked at the same "big three" glaciers (Jakobshavn Isbrae in the
west of the island and Helheim and Kangerlussuaq in the east) and
projected how they would respond in different future climate
scenarios.<br>
<br>
The most extreme of these scenarios is called RCP8.5 and assumes
that economic growth will continue unabated through the 21st
century, resulting in a global mean warming of about 3.7C above
today's temperatures (about 4.8C above pre-industrial or since
1850).<br>
<br>
This scenario has sometimes been referred to as Business As Usual
(BAU), and there is an active debate among climate researchers
regarding how plausible RCP8.5 is. It's interesting to note,
however, that, according to a recent study from a group of US
scientists it may be the most appropriate scenario up to at least
2050.<br>
<br>
Because of something called polar amplification, the Arctic will
likely heat up by more than double the global average, with the
climate models indicating around 8.3C warming over Greenland in the
most extreme scenario, RCP8.5.<br>
<br>
Despite this dramatic and terrifying hike in temperature, Faezeh's
modelling study projected that the "big three" would contribute
between 9 and 15 mm to sea level rise by 2100, only slightly more
than what we obtained from a 1.5C warming over the 20th century. How
can that be?<br>
<br>
Our conclusion is that the models are at fault, even including the
latest and most sophisticated available which are being used to
assess how the whole ice sheet will respond to the next century of
climate change.<br>
<br>
These models appear to have a relatively weak link between climate
change and ice melt, when our results suggest it is much stronger.<br>
<br>
Projections based on these models are therefore likely to
under-predict how much the ice sheet will be affected. Other lines
of evidence support this conclusion.<br>
<br>
What does all of that mean? If we do continue along that very scary
RCP8.5 trajectory of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, the
Greenland ice sheet is very likely to start melting at rates that we
haven't seen for at least 130,000 years, with dire consequences for
sea level and the many millions of people who live in low lying
coastal zones. The Conversation<br>
Jonathan Bamber, Professor of Physical Geography, University of
Bristol.<br>
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative
Commons license.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.sciencealert.com/the-see-could-rise-by-more-than-7-metres-if-greenland-just-keeps-melting">https://www.sciencealert.com/the-see-could-rise-by-more-than-7-metres-if-greenland-just-keeps-melting</a><br>
- -<br>
[Source material]<br>
<b>Centennial response of Greenland's three largest outlet glaciers</b><br>
Abstract<br>
The Greenland Ice Sheet is the largest land ice contributor to sea
level rise. This will continue in the future but at an uncertain
rate and observational estimates are limited to the last few
decades. Understanding the long-term glacier response to external
forcing is key to improving projections. Here we use historical
photographs to calculate ice loss from 1880-2012 for Jakobshavn,
Helheim, and Kangerlussuaq glacier. We estimate ice loss
corresponding to a sea level rise of 8.1 ± 1.1 millimetres from
these three glaciers. Projections of mass loss for these glaciers,
using the worst-case scenario, Representative Concentration Pathways
8.5, suggest a sea level contribution of 9.1-14.9 mm by 2100. RCP8.5
implies an additional global temperature increase of 3.7 C by 2100,
approximately four times larger than that which has taken place
since 1880. We infer that projections forced by RCP8.5 underestimate
glacier mass loss which could exceed this worst-case scenario.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19580-5">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19580-5</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[movie -<b> I Am Greta</b>, - from Earther]<br>
<b>Hearing Greta's Message</b><br>
Leah Stokes<br>
Nov 20, 2020<br>
Last year, the climate movement found new vigor in a young Swede
named Greta Thunberg. She began a solo strike and quickly caught
global media attention for her sharp tongue and truth telling. Too
often, however, her words have fallen on deaf ears as politicians
continue to ignore the climate crisis. In one of her memorable
speeches, she asked British parliamentarians whether her microphone
was working. "Did you hear what I just said? Is my English OK? Is
the microphone on? Because I'm beginning to wonder."<br>
<br>
Yet, Greta has become the face of a global movement of young people
who are fed up with our leaders' decades of failure to address the
climate crisis. Her rise to prominence is charted in a new
documentary, I Am Greta, released last week on Hulu.<br>
<br>
The film follows her journey over a year, beginning with the iconic
images of her sitting alone, outside the Swedish parliament, being
scolded by strangers for missing school. It ends with her as a
global phenomenon meeting with world leaders and crossing the ocean
to attend a key United Nations meeting in New York. An estimated 4
million people took part in her weeklong strike in September 2019,
myself included. It is a modern day epic, a hero's quest that the
filmmaker, Nathan Grossman, documents on an intimate scale.<br>
<br>
I started working on climate change right around the time Greta was
born, when I was the same age she is today. At the time, we believed
that governments would act, and carbon emissions would fall. Instead
I've watched the first atmospheric carbon concentration I
memorized--375 parts per million--become out of date as we go past
415 ppm.<br>
<br>
We used to talk about kids like Greta's generation, and how much
this crisis would affect them. Working on my first climate campaign,
we thought we could inspire parents to care about the world they
were leaving their children. But that strategy largely failed.<br>
<br>
Instead, it was the kids who woke up to the crisis. And they aren't
so young anymore. They're teenagers, and they are angry at adults'
culpability. As an outspoken young activist with Asperger's, Greta
has emerged as an inspiration for an entire generation. By telling
her story, Grossman is also capturing a growing global movement
poised to reshape history.<br>
<br>
The portrait Grossman paints is one not of the icon Greta has
become, but of a teenage girl who has found herself unexpectedly
influential--and is uncomfortable with all the attention. There are
quiet moments with her dad where her stubbornness shows through and
a scene where she tells French President Emmanuel Macron she is "a
nerd" who loves reading about climate science.<br>
<br>
This young woman is able to spin straw into gold. As attacks against
her grow from the right, she sees it as a sign of her effectiveness.
In the film, she is shown laughing hysterically at absurd social
media comments from haters.<br>
<br>
Early on, when she was just beginning to gain broader media
attention, Arnold Schwarzenegger tweeted about her work. In the
movie, she marvels at his 4 million followers and laughs with her
father at the idea of reaching someone that famous. But, she quickly
moves beyond being star struck, strategizing how best to reply:
"Okay, I'll write: 'Count me in. Hasta la vista.'" Today, she has
her own 4 million followers.<br>
<br>
This fall, just after the election, President Donald Trump tweeted,
"STOP THE COUNT." Greta replied: "So ridiculous. Donald must work on
his Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie
with a friend! Chill, Donald, Chill!" These were the exact words he
had written about her a year later. And her tweet landed much better
than the original. Like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez--whom she has
met--Greta's quick wit works brilliantly online.<br>
<br>
The Trump tweets are emblematic of the pressure on Greta, which is
palpable throughout the film. She must speak in multiple languages
to huge audiences, be away from home for months on end, and be
attacked by old white men on television. At one point, Grossman
captures Greta's father, getting trained in emergency response, in
case she is attacked. This is not paranoia; as the film points out,
four climate activists are murdered every week.<br>
<br>
And in a sense, the pressure on Greta stands in for the pressure
being put on an entire generation. How else to describe being left
to cope with a wounded world? With growing floods and fires, heat
waves and hurricanes, life will not be as easy for Gen Z. If
anything, as a young white person in the developed world, Greta will
be more able to cope with climate disruption than her counterparts
in the developing world--a fact she regularly points out.<br>
<br>
But this is not a sad film. As anyone in the climate movement will
tell you, there is joy in activism. As the movement she sparked
begins to grow, Greta is delighted to find other people that share
her struggle. The visual shift from Greta sitting alone, to her
surrounded by thousands of young people is moving to watch, as are
the clips of other young people, largely girls, leading protests on
Fridays around the world.<br>
<br>
In some of the more poetic moments, Greta is shown dancing. She
raises her arms up and down, dips low, her braids swinging. Her
movements carry a message: Make your life into a living act of
resistance, make your life into art.<br>
<br>
But it is also a haunting film to watch in 2020, a year after the
narrative ends, in the midst of a global pandemic. The economic
crisis has proven yet another missed opportunity for climate action.
While people around the world called on leaders to pass a green
stimulus, their voices have been largely ignored. According to an
analysis by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and colleagues, as many
stimulus policies were green as dirty. In the U.S., the covid-19
relief bill was used to bailout fossil fuel companies, to the tune
of billions of dollars.<br>
<br>
It's telling that heads of state have been caught scrolling on their
phones rather than listening to Greta's speeches. Our leaders are
not listening to her--or us or the increasingly urgent science.<br>
<br>
At one point, Greta is standing on a train platform as a seemingly
endless row of new gas-powered cars are carried by freight, to be
sold and run for another couple decades. The metaphor could not be
clearer: We are stuck on the same track. The world keeps churning
out the same technology. It's easy to feel hopeless.<br>
<br>
But to borrow some of Greta's words, change is coming, whether
fossil fuel companies like it or not. Come January, the U.S. will
have a new president in Joe Biden, who Greta endorsed. He ran on the
boldest climate platform in American history and has centered
climate action in his transition planning. Perhaps, our leaders have
finally begun to hear Greta's message. Perhaps, her microphone is
finally working.<br>
<br>
Leah C. Stokes is an assistant professor of political science at UC
Santa Barbara. She is the author of Short Circuiting Policy, a
contributor to All We Can Save and co-host of the podcast A Matter
of Degrees.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/hearing-greta-s-message-1845723757">https://earther.gizmodo.com/hearing-greta-s-message-1845723757</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[cough, cough]<br>
<b>Investigation: How Pesticide Companies Are Marketing Themselves
as a Solution to Climate Change</b><br>
By Sharon Kelly and Frances Rankin - November 17, 2020<br>
"Like a pandemic, climate change is an inevitable threat that we
must address before it is too late," reads a June 2020 statement.
"As the economy and agriculture begin to build back with the gradual
easing of the COVID-19 restrictions, we need to support a recovery
for farmers that puts the fight against climate change and
biodiversity loss at its core."<br>
<br>
The speaker? Not Greta Thunberg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Al
Gore. Not, in fact, any environmentalist you might care to imagine.
Instead, it was Erik Fyrwald, Chief Executive Officer of Syngenta
Group -- one of the world's five largest pesticides manufacturers, a
major consumer of fossil fuels, and now a company marketing its
products as a solution to climate change.<br>
<br>
Syngenta's messaging -- alongside similar campaigns from the other
"big five" global pesticides producers Bayer, BASF, Corteva and FMC
-- reflects a sudden transformation within the agricultural world.<br>
<br>
After decades of denial and delay by big agribusiness, the
pesticides industry now appears to have become a climate champion.<br>
<br>
'Waking up on climate change'<br>
The pesticides market is dominated by a small handful of companies
-- Bayer (which acquired Monsanto in 2018), Corteva (formerly Dow
and DuPont), Syngenta, BASF and FMC -- whose hazardous products a
United Nations report said have "catastrophic impacts on the
environment, human health, and society as a whole" amid a global
insect die-off and legal battles over carcinogenic effects of
products once marketed as harmless...<br>
more at -
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/11/18/pesticides-industry-climate-change-marketing-pr">https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/11/18/pesticides-industry-climate-change-marketing-pr</a><br>
- - <br>
[From DESMOGUK]<br>
<b>An extensive research database of agribusiness organisations and
their messaging on climate change.</b><br>
DeSmog has investigated agribusiness groups marketing themselves as
part of the solution to climate change. This database archives their
past and current activities regarding climate mitigation and
adaptation. If there's an industry association, campaign group or
company you would like to see researched and reported on by DeSmog,
feel free to get in touch.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://desmog.co.uk/agribusiness-database">https://desmog.co.uk/agribusiness-database</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
November 22, 2009 </b></font><br>
CNN reports on the disproportionate toll climate change takes on
women.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/11/18/climate.change.women/">http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/11/18/climate.change.women/</a>
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