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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>May 14, 2021</b></font></i> <br>
</p>
[warning - four years behind]<br>
Climate and Environment<br>
<b>U.S. has entered unprecedented climate territory, EPA warns</b><br>
The Trump administration delayed the report, which cites urban heat
waves and permafrost loss as signs of global warming, for three
years<br>
By Dino Grandoni - Brady Dennis<br>
May 12, 2021 <br>
- -<br>
As it launched an updated webpage to inform the public on how
climate change is upending communities throughout the country, the
Biden administration gave the agency’s imprimatur to a growing body
of evidence that climate effects are happening faster and becoming
more extreme than when EPA last published its “Climate Indicators”
data in 2016.<br>
<br>
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said he wants to make clear to the
entire country the dangers of rising temperatures in the United
States.<br>
“We want to reach people in every corner of this country because
there is no small town, big city or rural community that’s
unaffected by the climate crisis,” Regan told reporters Wednesday.
“Americans are seeing and feeling the impacts up close with
increasing regularity.”<br>
EPA staffers said the data detail how the nation has entered
unprecedented territory, in which climate effects are more visible,
changing faster and becoming more extreme. Collectively, the
indicators present “multiple lines of evidence that climate change
is occurring now and here in the U.S., affecting public health and
the environment,” the agency said...<br>
- -<br>
Trump questioned the idea that burning fossil fuels was warming the
planet and endangering Americans’ lives and livelihoods, and his
administration delayed an update to the EPA’s peer-reviewed report
on climate change indicators, first published in 2010. As a result,
the report offers a snapshot of the extent to which the science
around climate change grew more detailed and robust during Trump’s
term, even as his administration at times tried to stifle those
findings.<br>
<br>
New EPA administrator: ‘Science is back’<br>
<br>
In March, the Biden administration relaunched a bare-bones version
of the EPA’s website on climate change, much of which went dark
under Trump. The Trump administration did not take down the climate
indicators page, leaving it up with outdated information. To compile
its list of 54 climate change indicators released Wednesday, the EPA
culled data from across academia, nonprofit institutions and other
government agencies to come to its conclusions.<br>
Heat waves are occurring about three times more often than they did
in the 1960s, the agency found, averaging about six times a year. In
turn, Americans are blasting air conditioners to stay cool during
the hot months, which has nearly doubled summer energy use over the
past half-century and added even more greenhouse gases to the
atmosphere.<br>
<br>
At nearly every spot measured in Alaska, permafrost has warmed since
1978. The biggest temperature increases were found in the
northernmost reaches of the state, where the thawing of the once
permanently frozen soil has made it more difficult for Native
Alaskans to store wild game underground and for drillers to
transport oil by pipeline.<br>
<br>
The agency also found that coastal flooding is happening more often
at all 33 spots studied up and down the Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf
coasts. Older cities such as Boston, established decades before the
Industrial Revolution when seas were lower, are planning to spend
millions on costly coastal defenses.<br>
<br>
Kristina Dahl, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned
Scientists, noted that the report draws on data published by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration.<br>
“This site does a great job of compiling a lot of indicators from a
lot of different sources,” she said. “So it’s a really important
clearinghouse of this kind of information.”<br>
<br>
Despite Trump’s dismissal of climate science and his aggressive
rollback of efforts aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, his
administration was not able to avoid releasing some official
government findings about the depth of the problem.<br>
<br>
In 2017, the Trump administration released a dire scientific report
calling human activity the dominant driver of global warming, a
conclusion at odds with White House decisions to withdraw from the
Paris climate accord, bolster fossil fuels and reverse Obama-era
climate policies.<br>
<br>
The White House did not try to prevent the release of that report,
which the government is legally required to produce every four
years. But it did try to play down the report’s significance. “The
climate has changed and is always changing,” a White House spokesman
said at the time, noting that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from
energy consumption had declined.<br>
The following year, the Trump administration also allowed the
release of a long-awaited update, written by experts at more than a
dozen federal agencies, which found that the effects of climate
change were intensifying — from deadly wildfires in the West to
increasingly destructive hurricanes and heat waves. That
congressionally mandated report stretched to more than 1,000 pages
and warned that global warming “is transforming where and how we
live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of
life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us.”<br>
<br>
The White House chose to release those findings on the day after
Thanksgiving — typically one of the slowest news days of the year.<br>
<br>
While the EPA’s report does not make projections into the future, it
suggests disastrous times ahead if the United States and other
industrialized nations do not act quickly on global warming.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/05/12/us-has-entered-unprecedented-climate-territory-epa-warns/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/05/12/us-has-entered-unprecedented-climate-territory-epa-warns/</a><br>
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<p><br>
</p>
[classic science event - a showdown debate from 2014]<br>
<b>Ben Santer: Climate Red Team v Blue Team - 2014</b><br>
May 13, 2021<br>
greenmanbucket<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deuNTXT01GU">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deuNTXT01GU</a><br>
<p><br>
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<p><br>
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[Center for Climate and Security]<br>
<b>New Report: Melting Mountains, Mounting Tensions: Climate Change
and the India-China Rivalry</b><br>
By Rachel Fleishman and Sarang Shidore<br>
In many parts of the world, climate change is a trigger for
disaster. In some, it can also be a catalyst for conflict. On the
India-China border, it has the potential to be both—exacerbating an
already-fraught relationship with the potential for escalation to
the nuclear plane. <br>
<br>
Melting Mountains, Mounting Tensions: Climate Change and the
India-China Rivalry is the first of a series of case studies
integrating security analysis of instability and conflict involving
nuclear-armed states with cutting-edge climate science. The outcome
of a novel collaboration between the Converging Risks Lab of the
Council on Strategic Risks and the Woodwell Climate Research Center,
the case studies aim to raise awareness and flag the urgency of
converging climate and nuclear risks at a time when the global
security landscape is becoming more complex. Climate change is the
main impetus for new Chinese hydropower projects in the Tibetan
Plateau and in Pakistani-held Kashmir. The addition of clean energy
to the Chinese grid will contribute to decarbonizing the economy.
But Indian populations downstream in the Indus and Brahmaputra river
basins worry that China will use its dams to manipulate water flow,
inducing or worsening droughts and floods. <br>
<br>
There are real material risks from China’s dam-building –
particularly in the Brahmaputra basin, where floods are almost an
annual phenomenon. Risks include seismic instability that can
trigger dam collapse and catastrophic floods. Drought could also be
induced during the dam-filling process, which can take months or
even years to complete. Chinese dams built in collaboration with its
ally Pakistan on the Indus river also raise tensions with India, as
the projected glacier melt will be sufficient to keep the hydropower
plants going throughout most of the century. <br>
<br>
However, physical climate projections in the study show that climate
change alone will worsen Indian floods. Dams enhance real risks
downstream, but also create major perceptual risks in an existing
context of extreme distrust. India could well interpret higher
floodwaters as being due to Chinese manipulation, even if that is
not the cause. <br>
<br>
The outcome of these contestations will ultimately depend on how the
dams and associated river basins are managed in the context of
increasing climate threats. Currently, no bilateral treaty or
data-sharing agreement exists between India and China on their
shared river basins. Nor does China have a history of transparency
on its dam projects when it comes to downstream states. <br>
<br>
Climate change also has the potential to be a threat multiplier in
the stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops deployed in their
contested border region. A strong warming trend, identified clearly
in the study, will increase the viability of military patrols,
raising risks of clashes. Troops will also face risks of avalanches
induced by glacier melt. <br>
<br>
The report recommends the parties commit to sustained and meaningful
dialog, with the aim of achieving agreements on:<br>
<br>
Regular, granular data exchange on shared water resources, including
full transparency on current and planned dam projects;<br>
Establishing joint early warning and coordinated response mechanisms
for natural disasters in the Brahmaputra and Indus River basins; and
<br>
Incorporating international best practices on river management on
both sides of the border. <br>
Deep-seated distrust on both sides of the India-China border
threatens to give rise to both material risks generated due to dam
projects and fundamental attribution error – misinterpreting
climate-induced floods and other natural disasters as originating
from Chinese manipulation. The first step to avoiding this dynamic,
and the instability and conflict that could follow, is jointly
recognizing the impacts that climate change will portend. The second
is strengthening communication, collaboration and transparency. In
the longer run, China and relevant South Asian states including
India could consider crafting new and extended river basin
management treaties that take into account increasing impacts of
climate change, further enhancing prospects for stability and peace
in this climate-vulnerable part of the world.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://climateandsecurity.org/2021/05/new-report-melting-mountains-mounting-tensions-climate-change-and-the-india-china-rivalry/">https://climateandsecurity.org/2021/05/new-report-melting-mountains-mounting-tensions-climate-change-and-the-india-china-rivalry/</a><br>
<br>
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[everything global includes gravitational orbits]<br>
<b>What if Space Junk and Climate Change Become the Same Problem?</b><br>
Changes to the atmosphere caused by carbon dioxide emissions could
increase the amount of debris that stays in orbit.<br>
By Jonathan O’Callaghan - May 12, 2021<br>
It’s easy to compare the space junk problem to climate change. Human
activities leave too many dead satellites and fragments of machinery
discarded in Earth orbit. If left unchecked, space junk could pose
significant problems for future generations — rendering access to
space increasingly difficult, or at worst, impossible.<br>
<br>
Yet the two may come to be linked. Our planet’s atmosphere naturally
pulls orbiting debris downward and incinerates it in the thicker
lower atmosphere, but increasing carbon dioxide levels are lowering
the density of the upper atmosphere, which may diminish this effect.
A study presented last month at the European Conference on Space
Debris says that the problem has been underestimated, and that the
amount of space junk in orbit could, in a worst-case scenario,
increase 50 times by 2100.<br>
<br>
“The numbers took us by surprise,” said Hugh Lewis, a space debris
expert from the University of Southampton in England and a co-author
on the paper, which will be submitted for peer review in the coming
months. “There is genuine cause for alarm.”<br>
<br>
Our atmosphere is a useful ally in clearing up space junk.
Collisions with its molecules cause drag, pulling objects back into
the atmosphere. Below 300 miles above the surface, most objects will
naturally decay into the thicker lower atmosphere and burn up in
less than 10 years.<br>
<br>
In the lower atmosphere, carbon dioxide molecules can rerelease
infrared radiation after absorbing it from the sun, which is then
trapped by the thick atmosphere as heat. But above 60 miles where
the atmosphere is thinner, the opposite is true. “There’s nothing to
recapture that energy,” said Matthew Brown, also from the University
of Southampton and the paper’s lead author. “So it gets lost into
space.”<br>
<br>
The escape of heat causes the volume of the atmosphere, and thus its
density, to decrease. Since 2000, Mr. Brown and his team say the
atmosphere at 250 miles has lost 21 percent of its density because
of rising carbon dioxide levels. By 2100, if carbon dioxide levels
double their current levels — in line with the worst-case scenario
assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — that
number could rise to 80 percent.<br>
<br>
For space junk, the implications are stark. More than 2,500 objects
larger than four inches in size currently orbit at or below an
altitude of 250 miles. In the worst-case scenario, increased orbital
lifetimes of up to 40 years would mean fewer items are dragged into
the lower atmosphere. Objects at this altitude would proliferate by
50 times to about 125,000.<br>
<br>
Even in a best-case scenario, where carbon dioxide levels stabilize
or even reverse, the amount of space junk would still be expected to
double. Mr. Brown thinks a more probable outcome is somewhere in
between, perhaps a 10 or 20 times increase...<br>
- -<br>
Just last month, for example, the U.S. Federal Communications
Commission approved a request from SpaceX to decrease the orbits of
nearly 3,000 satellites in its Starlink constellation, reasoning
that atmospheric drag would naturally sweep up dead satellites and
debris in a reasonable amount of time.<br>
<br>
Research by Mr. Brown and his team suggests that assumption may be
flawed.<br>
<br>
An F.C.C. spokesman said that most of its applicants currently used
NASA’s Debris Assessment Software to predict lifetimes of satellites
in low Earth orbit. “We do not know at this time if there are any
plans to change that program to address the changes in atmospheric
composition predicted in the paper,” he said. “The F.C.C.
periodically reviews its rules and regulations and updates them
consistent with developments in the marketplace and in scientific
knowledge.”<br>
<br>
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.<br>
<br>
Dr. Lewis said that he suspected that some of the modeling, however,
relies on outdated data, and that more needed to be done to actively
remove satellites and debris from orbit rather than relying on the
passive atmospheric effect. “Operators have to make this aspect of
the mission a priority,” he said.<br>
<br>
Even a moderate increase in lifetimes for large constellations could
pose significant problems. “If SpaceX’s spacecraft re-enter
passively in 10 or 15 years, would you argue that’s good enough?”
Dr. Lewis said. “Given the fact that it’s a large constellation,
lots of people would say probably not.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/science/space-junk-climate-change.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/science/space-junk-climate-change.html</a><br>
<p><br>
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<p>[no control of whether, only control of when]<br>
from RealClimate <br>
<b>Why is future sea level rise still so uncertain?</b><br>
Filed under: Arctic and Antarctic Climate Science Sea level rise —
gavin @ 12 May 2021<br>
Three new papers in the last couple of weeks have each made
separate claims about whether sea level rise from the loss of ice
in West Antarctica is more or less than you might have thought
last month and with more or less certainty. Each of these papers
make good points, but anyone looking for coherent picture to
emerge from all this work will be disappointed. To understand why,
you need to know why sea level rise is such a hard problem in the
first place, and appreciate how far we’ve come, but also how far
we need to go.<br>
Here’s a list of factors that will influence future regional sea
level (in rough order of importance):<br>
</p>
<blockquote>-- ice mass loss from West Antarctica<br>
-- ice mass loss from Greenland<br>
-- ocean thermal expansion<br>
-- mountain glacier melt<br>
-- gravitational, rotational and deformational (GRD) effects<br>
-- changes in ocean circulation<br>
-- steric (freshwater/salinity) effects<br>
-- groundwater extraction<br>
-- reservoir construction and filling<br>
-- changes in atmospheric pressure and winds<br>
</blockquote>
And on top of that, the risks of coastal flooding also depend on:<br>
<blockquote>- tectonic/isostatic land motion<br>
- local subsidence<br>
- local hydrology<br>
- storm surges<br>
- tides<br>
</blockquote>
If that wasn’t bad enough, it doesn’t even get into why some of the
bigger terms here are so difficult to constrain – ...<br>
- -<br>
Yes, but what about West Antarctica?<br>
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the elephant seal in the
aquarium. Ever since the 1970s it’s been suspected that it was prone
to rapid collapse because the bedrock on which it sits is below sea
level (and in some places, thousands of meters below sea level).
More recent research constraining Eemian sea level (~125,000 yrs
ago) has confirmed that WAIS collapsed at that time, adding 3 or
more meters of sea level rise to the contribution from a much
reduced Greenland Ice Sheet. Moreover, present day observations from
gravity sensors (GRACE/GRACE-FO) show large ice mass losses from
WAIS – dominated by the rapid retreats of the Pine Island Glacier
and Thwaites glacier, and concomittent decreases in ice sheet
elevation (from IceSat2)... <br>
- -<br>
Additionally, it looks like the anomalous meltwater from WAIS is
causing the local ocean to freshen, stratify and cool (see Rye et
al. (2020) or Sadai et al. (2020). Both of these effects make a
straightforward connection between global mean warming and WAIS mass
loss tricky.<br>
<br>
But there is more. For instance, the bedrock topography under the
ice sheet is still being refined. The last major revision (BedMap2)
was in 2013 (Fretwell et al., 2013), but many areas remain without
good data and important revisions are still being made (Morlighem et
al., 2020). Also, the topography of the ocean bottom under the ice
shelves is still being discovered using autonomous underwater
vehicles, for instance, under the Thwaites last year. Meanwhile
Bedmap3 is underway...<br>
- -<br>
Recent advances...<br>
- -<br>
Remember that the biggest uncertainty is still the emission
scenario, and the higher the scenario in terms of global warming,
the more uncertain the ice sheet contribution is. Another key point
made by DeConto et al. is that the world doesn’t stop at 2100. The
consequences of even stable temperatures post-2100, has very large
long term implications for sea level. For instance, even a 2ºC
eventual warming is associated with around 1 meter of SLR just from
WAIS by 2300.<br>
<br>
Work to be done<br>
These two papers illustrate the fundamental ingredients that will
(eventually) get us to a more reliable estimate of SLR. The
structural uncertainty explored by Edwards et al is broad, still
incomplete, but essential. The calibration against past change in
DeConto et al is also essential, even if the structural uncertainty
they explore is narrower. A combined approach would be enlightening
– using the DeConto et al model for the current ISMIP6 protocol, and
extending that project to include the Eemian as an out-of-sample
test might help.<br>
<br>
Ice sheet science and the consequent sea level rise, like many
cutting-edge topics, generally has a widening of uncertainty when
the tools and theory start to really kick off. It is only later that
this uncertainty is constrained as more observational data is
brought to bear. Then, and not before, will projections start to
narrow.<br>
<br>
<b>Until then, the most productive way to reduce uncertainties might
just be to reduce emissions.</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/05/why-is-future-sea-level-rise-still-so-uncertain/">https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/05/why-is-future-sea-level-rise-still-so-uncertain/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming May
14, 1989 </b></font><br>
In a Washington Post op-ed, Sen. Al Gore (D-TN) notes:<br>
<blockquote>"As a nation and a government, we must see that
America's future is inextricably tied to the fate of the globe. In
effect, the environment is becoming a matter of national security
-- an issue that directly and imminently menaces the interests of
the state or the welfare of the people.<br>
<br>
"To date, the national-security agenda has been dominated by
issues of military security, embedded in the context of global
struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union -- a
struggle often waged through distant surrogates, but which has
always harbored the risk of direct confrontation and nuclear war.
Given the recent changes in Soviet behavior, there is growing
optimism that this long, dark period may be passing. This may in
turn open the international agenda for other urgent matters and
for the release of enormous resources, now committed to war,
toward other objectives. Many of us hope that the global
environment will be the new dominant concern...<br>
<br>
"When nations perceive that they are threatened at the strategic
level, they may be induced to think of drastic responses,
involving sharp discontinuities from everyday approaches to
policy. In military terms, this is the point when the United
States begins to think of invoking nuclear weapons. The global
environment crisis may demand responses that are comparatively
radical.<br>
<br>
"At present, despite some progress made toward limiting some
sources of the problem, such as CFCs, we have barely scratched the
surface. Even if all other elements of the problem are solved, a
major threat is still posed by emissions of carbon dioxide, the
exhaling breath of the industrial culture upon which our
civilization rests. The implications of the latest and best
studies on this matter are staggering. Essentially, they tell us
that with our current pattern of technology and production, we
face a choice between economic growth in the near term and massive
environmental disorder as the subsequent penalty."<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101200827_pf.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101200827_pf.html</a><br>
<br>
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