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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>November 23, 2020</b></font></i></p>
[BBC reports]<br>
<b>Climate change: Covid pandemic has little impact on rise in CO2</b><br>
By Matt McGrath<br>
Environment correspondent<br>
<br>
The global response to the Covid-19 crisis has had little impact on
the continued rise in atmospheric concentrations of CO2, says the
World Meteorological Organization (WMO).<br>
<br>
This year carbon emissions have fallen dramatically due to lockdowns
that have cut transport and industry severely.<br>
<br>
But this has only marginally slowed the overall rise in
concentrations, the scientists say.<br>
<br>
The details are published in the WMO's annual greenhouse gas
bulletin.<br>
<br>
This highlights the concentrations of warming gases in the
atmosphere.<br>
<br>
Greenhouse gas concentrations are the cumulative result of past and
present emissions of a range of substances, including carbon
dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.<br>
- -<br>
CO2 levels are measured in parts per million (ppm) - an indication
of their overall atmospheric abundance.<br>
<br>
According to the WMO, the global average in 2019 was 410.5ppm, an
increase of 2.6ppm over 2018. This was larger than the increase from
2017 to 2018 and bigger than the average over the past decade.<br>
<br>
Thanks to lockdowns in early 2020, carbon emissions fell by 17% at
their peak, but the overall effect on concentrations has been very
small.<br>
<br>
Preliminary estimates suggest that CO2 will continue to increase
this year but that rise will be reduced by 0.08 to 0.23ppm...<br>
- - <br>
More than half of the methane emitted comes from human activities
such as raising cattle, growing rice and drilling for oil and gas.<br>
<br>
Concentrations of nitrous oxide grew by about the average of the
past decade. Emissions come from agriculture, energy and waste
management. This gas damages the ozone layer as well as contributing
to global warming.<br>
<br>
While the Covid-19 pandemic hasn't slowed down the increase in
concentrations of all these warming gases in the atmosphere, the
decline in emissions in the early part of this year shows what's
possible.<br>
<br>
"The Covid-19 pandemic is not a solution for climate change," said
Prof Taalas.<br>
<br>
"However, it does provide us with a platform for more sustained and
ambitious climate action to reduce emissions to net zero [balancing
out any emissions by absorbing an equivalent amount from the
atmosphere] through a complete transformation of our industrial,
energy and transport systems.<br>
<br>
"The needed changes are economically affordable and technically
possible and would affect our everyday life only marginally."<br>
<br>
Meteorologists expect CO2 levels to vary by 1ppm between years due
to natural fluctuations in the climate - for reasons other than
human releases of carbon.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55018581">https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55018581</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[For mountain climbers SMITHSONIANMAG.COM]<br>
<b>Into Thicker Air and Onto Thinner Ice: How Climate Change Is
Affecting Mount Everest</b><br>
Researchers have documented that the high-altitude air is gaining
more oxygen and large glaciers are melting at rapid rates<br>
By Rasha Aridi<br>
NOVEMBER 20, 2020<br>
<br>
Despite being the highest point on Earth, Mount Everest still can't
escape the effects of climate change. The only place that punctures
the stratosphere--Everest's peak reaches 29,035 feet above sea
level--has an atmosphere so thin that it leaves mountaineers gasping
for breath and glaciers so big that they stretch for miles on end.
But both of those elements are changing fast. According to two new
studies published today in iScience and One Earth, the air pressure
near Everest's summit is rising, making more oxygen available to
breathe, and glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates, leading to
more meltwater. The changes will impact climbers scaling the peak
and local people who live in the shadow of it.<br>
<br>
"Some of the lower Himalayan regions are fairly well studied, but a
place like Everest is less studied because it's just so hard to do
work up there." says Aurora Elmore, a climate scientist at the
National Geographic Society. "There's a big gap in the research,
especially above 5,000 meters [16, 404 feet]--and Everest is 8,850
meters [29,035 feet]. That huge three kilometers of elevation has
been under studied."<br>
<br>
To learn more about the highest reaches of the world, last year
Elmore helped organize an expedition that sent a team of 34
scientists to Mount Everest to collect glaciological and
meteorological data by installing the highest weather stations in
the world. The expedition provided the data for both of the new
studies, each of which Elmore co-authored.<br>
<br>
In a study published in iScience, Elmore and a team of scientists
set out to document how the atmospheric pressure on Everest has
fluctuated since the 1970s. Each year, around 800 people attempt to
summit Mount Everest, but after ascending 21,325 feet, the air gets
so thin that most climbers turn to bottled oxygen to help them
breathe. Only a handful of mountaineers attempt to climb it without
supplemental oxygen. But that may get easier, as climate change is
causing the air to slowly thicken, which means more oxygen is
available at higher altitudes.<br>
<br>
When temperature rises, molecules move faster. And when these
molecules start to collide with each other, pressure increases. More
pressure means more molecules, making more oxygen available to
breathe, says lead author Tom Matthews, a climate scientist at
Loughborough University in the U.K.<br>
<br>
To analyze the changes in the atmosphere, Matthews and his team
collected data using those weather stations they installed on the
Everest expedition in 2019. They coupled their newly collected data
with analyses produced by the European Centre for Medium Range
Weather Forecasting to reconstruct what the climate was like on
Everest from 1979 to 2020.<br>
<br>
Matthews and his team then used the climate data to model how the
atmosphere around Everest has changed over time and how it will
continue to change as the planet warms. Their models suggest that if
global temperatures increase by 2 degrees Celsius above
pre-industrial levels--which the planet is on track to meet as early
as 2050--the maximum rate of oxygen consumption on Everest would
increase by 5 percent. It may seem like a subtle shift, but that's
enough to be the difference between life and death for a mountaineer
standing at Everest's peak. "Some people would find [thicker air] as
a good consequence of climate change," Matthews says with a laugh.
"I think that's stretching it a little bit."<br>
<br>
The real surprise of this study, Matthews says, is learning how
dramatically the atmospheric pressure on Everest can vary. From the
40 years of data, the team picked out the day with the lowest air
pressure on record and compared it to the day with the highest. The
difference was huge, Matthews says, with oxygen availability between
the two days being equivalent to an elevation change of 2,460 feet.<br>
<br>
And the climate can vary remarkably within a span of a few days, he
says. On one day, the air at the summit can feel breathable without
supplemental oxygen; a few days later, the pressure can plunge to
thin, sharp, mid-winter-like air, making it unclimbable. This means
that for climbers planning to forego supplemental oxygen and push
their bodies to the absolute limits, they must pay close attention
to oxygen forecasts. For example, if climbers leave basecamp on a
day when an oxygenless summit would be physiologically possible and
then arrive a week later when the pressure has bottomed out, it
could be a "real horror show," Matthews says.<br>
<br>
"What really struck me about this study is that climate change may
be impacting the conditions on Mount Everest, and the acceptable
conditions on Mount Everest for climbers, in more ways that we have
already understood," says Kimberley Miner, a climate risk scientist
at the University of Maine who was not involved with this study.
"Looking at the way that oxygen is affected in the higher alpine
environments [is] something that probably doesn't strike people
immediately when you talk about climate change, but these secondary
impacts could have very specific effects on climbers and
mountaineers [and are] also just as significant."<br>
<br>
Although atmospheric changes on Everest aren't visible to the eye,
the havoc that climate change is wreaking on glaciers is crystal
clear to those living in the region.<br>
<br>
"The melting ice in the Himalayas is already alarming," says Pasang
Dolma Sherpa, the executive director of the Center for Indigenous
Peoples' Research and Development in Kathmandu, Nepal. A few weeks
ago, she went hiking in a nearby community, and the local people
told her, "Oh, by this time [of year] we used to have already white
mountains, but now you see all black." And the floods caused by
melting glaciers--which were once rare--are now happening more
regularly and unpredictably, she says.<br>
<br>
The study published today in One Earth reports just how dramatically
glaciers have thinned since the 1960s--in some areas by as much as
490 feet. A team of scientists led by glaciologist Owen King, a
research fellow at the University of St Andrews in the U.K., used
archived satellite images and old surveys dating back to the 1960s
to build a baseline dataset from which to compare future glacier
melt. The images came from ten different years spread out between
1962 and 2019.<br>
<br>
The team studied 79 glaciers--including the Khumbu Glacier, the
highest glacier in the world--and found that between 2009 and 2018,
glaciers thinned at nearly twice the rate that they did in the
1960s. And some estimates suggest that a few glaciers have areas on
them that have likely lost half of their thickness since the 60s.<br>
<br>
The average temperature from 2000 to 2016 is about 1.8 degrees
Fahrenheit warmer than the average between 1975 and 2000. Although
rising temperatures are the primary drivers of glacier thinning,
other big factors are at play, King says. As the glaciers retreat,
they often leave behind rocky debris and expose cliffs and troughs
on the mountainsides. The exposed rocks absorb more radiation from
the sun, melting the adjacent ice. The melted water then seeps into
the troughs created by the retreating glaciers, creating small
ponds. The ponds melt the surrounding ice, and more water fills the
ponds. Ultimately, clusters of ponds join up and form huge glacial
lakes. As a result, more than 400 new lakes formed between 1990 and
2015, King says.<br>
<br>
Heidi Steltzer, a mountain scientist at Fort Lewis College in
Colorado who wasn't involved in the study, says the results are
concerning, given the persistent ice loss across the study area.<br>
<br>
In addition to the 18 Indigenous communities residing in the
Himalayas, nearly two billion people depend on the mountain range
for a source of freshwater. As melting accelerates, it puts that
once-steady source of water in jeopardy, threatening the lives and
livelihoods of nearly a fifth of the world's population.<br>
<br>
And although faster melting might mean more water, "it's only a good
thing for a little bit of time," Elmore says. If water melts too
fast, it arrives in the form of floods, which communities in the
region are already experiencing. "They are reaping the repercussions
of a global climatic change that they are not major contributors
to," she says.<br>
<br>
But despite being on the frontlines of climate change, the
Indigenous peoples in the Himalayas are often left out of research,
climate strategy dialogues and policy making, Sherpa says. "The
studies that help people understand the resources they have and the
choices [they have] to adapt are just as important as a study of ice
loss," Steltzer says. "And maybe that's the next study to come."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/thicker-air-and-thinner-ice-how-climate-change-affecting-mount-everest-180976360/">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/thicker-air-and-thinner-ice-how-climate-change-affecting-mount-everest-180976360/</a><br>
<br>
- - <br>
<br>
[Source material VOLUME 3, ISSUE 5, P608-620, NOVEMBER 20, 2020]<br>
<b>Six Decades of Glacier Mass Changes around Mt. Everest Are
Revealed by Historical and Contemporary Images</b><br>
Open Access DOI:<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.10.019">https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.10.019</a><br>
Highlights<br>
- Glaciers around Mt. Everest have thinned by more than 100 m since
the 1960s<br>
<br>
- The rate of ice mass loss has consistently accelerated over the
past six decades<br>
<br>
- Glacier thinning has occurred at above 6,000 masl<br>
<br>
- Surge-type glacier behavior has been identified for the first time
in the region<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(20)30549-2">https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(20)30549-2</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[First idea from Scientific American]<br>
<b>We Need a National Institute of Climate Change and Health</b><br>
The NIH has a budget of over $40 billion--but spends a measly $9
million on this looming public health emergency<br>
<br>
By Howard Frumkin, Richard J. Jackson on November 22, 2020<br>
If there was any lingering doubt that climate change threatens human
health and well-being, this year put it to rest. Wildfire smoke
aggravated heart disease and lung disease up and down the West Coast
and across the country. A record-breaking hurricane season killed
and injured people from North Carolina to Texas, and left tens of
thousands homeless and at risk of PTSD and other mental health
problems. Oppressive heat across the Southwest imperiled outdoor
workers and athletes, the elderly and the poor, and people with
underlying health problems, with risks ranging from heatstroke to
heart attacks and even death.<br>
<br>
2020 reinforced another lesson: If we don't prepare for health
disasters and manage them skillfully, informed by the best evidence,
then people suffer and die needlessly. In confronting a novel virus,
the United States failed in its response, and we continue to have
one of the world's highest COVID-19 death rates.<br>
What is true for Covid-19 is true for climate change. We're not
prepared. Part of the gap is a knowledge gap: We haven't done the
needed research, and we lack critical information. As former
directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...<br>
Read more at:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.deccanherald.com/international/we-need-national-institute-of-climate-change-and-health-918863.html">https://www.deccanherald.com/international/we-need-national-institute-of-climate-change-and-health-918863.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[video 25 min]<br>
<b>Zero Emission Trucks : Can we afford to go there? Can we afford
not to??</b><br>
Nov 22, 2020<br>
Just Have a Think<br>
As our world transitions rapidly to remote working and online
shopping, road freight, powered mainly by diesel fuel, continues to
increase rapidly. There is hope on the horizon though and it's not
just Tesla's much anticipated heavy duty battery electric semi
truck. All of the world's biggest truck making firms are racing to
get their hydrogen or battery electric vehicles to market in the
next couple of years. The question is - will we have the
infrastructure ready to accommodate them? And can we afford it?<br>
Video Transcripts available at our website<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.justhaveathink.com">http://www.justhaveathink.com</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iiFArDAJC8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iiFArDAJC8</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[The New Yorker]<br>
<b>How Close Is Humanity to the Edge?</b><br>
Toby Ord, a philosopher who studies our species's "existential
risk," has been both frightened and encouraged by our response to
the pandemic.<br>
By Corinne Purtill - November 21, 2020<br>
<br>
In mid-January, Toby Ord, a philosopher and senior research fellow
at Oxford University, was reviewing the final proofs for his first
book, "The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity."
Ord works in the university's Future of Humanity Institute, which
specializes in considering our collective fate. He had noticed that
a few of his colleagues--those who worked on "bio-risk"--were
tracking a new virus in Asia. Occasionally, they e-mailed around
projections, which Ord found intriguing, in a hypothetical way.
Among other subjects, "The Precipice" deals with the risk posed to
our species by pandemics both natural and engineered. He wondered if
the coronavirus might make his book more topical.<br>
<br>
In February, the U.S. leg of Ord's book tour, which was scheduled
for the spring and was to include stops at Stanford, M.I.T., and
Princeton, was cancelled. "The Precipice" was published in the
United Kingdom on March 5th; two weeks later, Ord was sheltering in
place at home. His wife, Bernadette Young, an infectious-disease
specialist at John Radcliffe Hospital, in Oxford, began working
overtime, while he cared for their daughter, Rose, who was then
five. "I'd already known that, during a crisis, the unthinkable can
quickly become the inevitable," Ord told me, earlier this year.
"But, despite having this intellectual knowledge, it was still quite
something to see such a thing unfold before my eyes."<br>
<br>
For someone with Ord's interests, living through a pandemic is an
opportunity to contemplate alternate histories...<br>
- -<br>
A study conducted last year, by three experimental psychologists at
Oxford, found that individuals considered total human extinction to
be only slightly worse than a catastrophic event that wipes out
eighty per cent of the population. Respondents' opposition to
extinction rose when they were asked to consider the specific
consequences of all of human culture being extinguished forever.
Still, without that prompt, it was hard to grasp how much worse
total obliteration would be compared with merely cataclysmic death.<br>
<br>
There is a term for this outlook: "scope neglect," the cognitive
bias that makes it harder to understand the full scale of problems
the larger those problems get. It's the struggle, as Ord puts it, to
care ten times as much about something that's ten times more
important than an alternative. "One of the aspects in which I'm an
outlier is that I take scale really seriously, and always have," Ord
told me. "You can see that all through the book, really, including
taking the scale of the universe seriously."<br>
<br>
As "Precipice" closes, Ord zooms out to the cosmos and, against the
backdrop of its unfathomable vastness, asks us to grasp the scale of
what we risk losing if the human story ends prematurely. He writes
that, just as our early forebears, huddled around some Paleolithic
fire, couldn't have imagined the creative and sensory experiences
available to us today, we, too, are ill-equipped to conceive of what
is possible for those who will follow us. Humanity's potential is
worth preserving, he argues, not because we are so great now but
because of the possibility, however small, that we are a bridge to
something far greater. "How strange it would be if this single
species of ape, equipped by evolution with this limited set of
sensory and cognitive capacities, after only a few thousand years of
civilization, ended up anywhere near the maximum possible quality of
life," he writes. "I think that we have barely begun the ascent."...<br>
- -<br>
The challenge is to adopt a new frame of mind in which distant
threats aren't confused with impossible ones.<br>
<br>
Ord proposed "a simple piece of mathematics" that, for him, "has
helped make it all visceral": even a once-in-a-century catastrophe
has a five-per-cent chance of happening during any five-year
Parliamentary term in the U.K., and a four-per-cent chance of
occurring during any single Presidential term in the U.S. This risk
calculus may seem commonsensical to us now, because we are living
through such an event. Still, he said, "we'll forget it!" He
laughed. "We have five years or so where we are really protected
from things like this, because we're conscious of it," he went on.
"Beyond that, it relies on us to create institutions." It's for this
reason, especially, that being consumed with dread serves no
purpose. Fear must be motivating, or it's pointless. Safeguarding
the future requires believing in one.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/how-close-is-humanity-to-the-edge">https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/how-close-is-humanity-to-the-edge</a><br>
<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 23, 2014 </b></font><br>
The New York Times reports:<br>
<blockquote> "A warming climate is melting [Glacier National Park's]
glaciers, an icy retreat that promises to change not just
tourists' vistas, but also the mountains and everything around
them.<br>
<br>
"Streams fed by snowmelt are reaching peak spring flows weeks
earlier than in the past, and low summer flows weeks before they
used to. Some farmers who depend on irrigation in the parched days
of late summer are no longer sure that enough water will be there.
Bull trout, once pan-fried over anglers' campfires, are now caught
and released to protect a population that is shrinking as water
temperatures rise."<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/us/climate-change-threatens-to-strip-the-identity-of-glacier-national-park.html?mwrsm=Email">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/us/climate-change-threatens-to-strip-the-identity-of-glacier-national-park.html?mwrsm=Email</a><br>
<br>
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