Thread: Any doubts about Climate Change?

Originally Posted by Stumpy

So let's say you are not a climate denier. What are you doing about it Spamdreth?

The most powerful thing any individual can do.

I vote

Over 100 confirmed tornados in the Midwest of the USA in 72 hours make for a new all-time record. Add heat, energy, entropy into the system and this is what you get.

Originally Posted by thailazer

Over 100 confirmed tornados in the Midwest of the USA in 72 hours make for a new all-time record. Add heat, energy, entropy into the system and this is what you get.

Don't forget El Nino.

Err...that would be the heat.

Originally Posted by cyrille

Err...that would be the heat.

Another genius contribution from Mrs. Brady.

• Copernicus – April 2024 was the warmest April recorded

Globally, April 2024 was:

• 0.67°C warmer than the 1991-2020 average for April
• the warmest April on record, 0.14°C warmer than April 2016, the previous warmest April
• 1.58°C warmer than an estimate of the pre-industrial average for 1850-1900
• the eleventh consecutive month (since June 2023) for which the monthly temperature has been the warmest on record for the respective month of the year. While unusual, a similar streak of monthly global temperature records previously occurred in 2015/2016, lasting up to 15 months.

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• Climate change: World's oceans suffer from record-breaking year of heat

Fuelled by climate change, the world's oceans have broken temperature records every single day over the past year, a BBC analysis finds.

Nearly 50 days have smashed existing highs for the time of year by the largest margin in the satellite era.

Planet-warming gases are mostly to blame, but the natural weather event El Niño has also helped warm the seas.

The super-heated oceans have hit marine life hard and driven a new wave of coral bleaching.

The analysis is based on data from the EU's Copernicus Climate Service.

Copernicus also confirmed that last month was the warmest April on record in terms of global air temperatures, extending that sequence of month-specific records to 11 in a row.

For many decades, the world's oceans have been the Earth's 'get-out-of-jail card' when it comes to climate change.

Not only do they absorb around a quarter of the carbon dioxide that humans produce, they also soak up around 90% of the excess heat.

But over the past year, the oceans have displayed the most concerning evidence yet that they are struggling to cope, with the sea surface particularly feeling the heat.

From March 2023, the average surface temperature of the global oceans started to shoot further and further above the long-term norm, hitting a new record high in August.

Recent months have brought no respite, with the sea surface reaching a new global average daily high of 21.09C in February and March this year, according to Copernicus data.

As the graph below shows, not only has every single day since 4 May 2023 broken the daily record for the time of year, but on some days the margin has been huge.

NOAA – April 2024 was the warmest April on record

2024 Year-to-date (January – April). Warmest January – April recorded

NOAA

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Climate change made the deadly heatwaves that hit millions of highly vulnerable people across Asia more frequent and extreme

Throughout April and continuing into May 2024, extreme record-breaking heat led to severe impacts across the Asian continent.

From Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, in the West, to Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines in the East, large regions of Asia experienced temperatures well above 40°C for many days. The heat was particularly difficult for people living in refugee camps and informal housing, as well as for outdoor workers.

Heatwaves are arguably the deadliest type of extreme weather event and while the death toll is often underreported, hundreds of deaths have been reported already in most of the affected countries, including Palestine, Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and the Philippines. The heat also had a large impact on agriculture, causing crop damage and reduced yields, as well as on education, with holidays having to be extended and schools closed in several countries, affecting millions of students.

Extreme heat in South Asia during the pre-monsoon season is becoming more frequent. Two previous World Weather Attribution studies focused on extreme heat events in the region: the 2022 India and Pakistan heatwave and the 2023 humid heatwave that hit India, Bangladesh, Lao PDR and Thailand. Despite differences in the nature and impact of the events (drier heat in 2022 leading to widespread loss of harvest, and humid heat in 2023 with greater impacts on people), both studies found that human-induced climate change influenced the events, making them around 30 times more likely and much hotter.

Scientists from Lebanon, Sweden, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the United States and the United Kingdom collaborated to assess to what extent human-induced climate change altered the likelihood and intensity of the extreme heat in three Asian regions: 1) West Asia, including Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan; 2) the Philippines in East Asia; and 3) South and Southeast Asia, including India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Lao PDR, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.

https://www.worldweatherattribution....t-and-extreme/

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Extra

NASA – April 2024 was the warmest April recorded

NASA

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Looking ahead. Where 2024 will rank

JMA – April 2024 was the warmest April recorded

Five Warmest Years (Anomalies)

1st. 2024 (+0.67°C), 2nd. 2016 (+0.46°C), 3rd. 2020 (+0.36°C), 4th. 2019( +0.34°C), 5th. 2023 (+0.30°C)

JMA

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Corporations invested in carbon offsets that were ‘likely junk’, analysis says

Some of the world’s most profitable – and most polluting corporations – have invested in carbon offset projects that have fundamental failings and are “probably junk”, suggesting industry claims about greenhouse gas reductions were likely overblown, according to new analysis.

Delta, Gucci, Volkswagen, ExxonMobil, Disney, easyJet and Nestlé are among the major corporations to have purchased millions of carbon credits from climate friendly projects that are “likely junk” or worthless when it comes to offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a classification system developed by Corporate Accountability, a non-profit, transnational corporate watchdog.

Some of these companies no longer use CO2 offsets amid mounting evidence that carbon trading do not lead to the claimed emissions cuts – and in some cases may even cause environmental and social harms.

However, the multibillion-dollar voluntary carbon trading industry is still championed by many corporations including oil and gas majors, airlines, automakers, tourism, fast-food and beverage brands, fashion houses, banks and tech firms as the bedrock of climate action – a way of claiming to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint while continuing to rely on fossil fuels and unsustainable supply chains.

Yet, for 33 of the top 50 corporate buyers, more than a third of their entire offsets portfolio is “likely junk” – suggesting at least some claims about carbon neutrality and emission reductions have been exaggerated according to the analysis. The fundamental failings leading to a “likely junk” ranking include whether emissions cuts would have happened anyway, as is often the case with large hydroelectric dams, or if the emissions were just shifted elsewhere, a common issue in forestry offset projects.

“These findings add to the mounting evidence that peels back the greenwashed facade of the voluntary carbon market and lays bare the ways it dangerously distracts from the real, lasting action the world’s largest corporations and polluters need to be taking,” said Rachel Rose Jackson, Corporate Accountability’s director of research.

The fossil fuel industry is by far the largest investor in the world’s most popular 50 CO2 offsetting schemes. At least 43% of the 81m CO2 credits purchased by the oil and gas majors are for projects that have at least one fundamental flaw and are “probably junk”, according to the analysis.

The transport industry, which accounts for about a fifth of all global planet-warming emissions, has also relied heavily on carbon offsetting projects to meet climate goals. Just over 42% of the total credits (55m) purchased by airlines and 38% purchased by automakers (21m) for the top 50 projects are likely worthless at reducing emissions, the analysis found.

The new analysis, shared with the Guardian, builds on a joint investigation last year into the top 50 CO2 offset projects – those that have sold the most carbon credits in the global market. The vast majority of the most popular 50 offset projects were classified as likely or potentially junk due to one or more fundamental failing that undermines its promised emission cut, according to the criteria and classification system applied to the analyses.

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extra

Climate deniers like DeSantis hurt most vulnerable communities, scientists say

Misinformation spread by climate deniers such as Florida’s extremist Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, increases the “vulnerability” of communities in the path of severe weather events, scientists are warning.

The message comes on Saturday, the first day of what experts fear could be one of the most intense and dangerous Atlantic hurricane seasons on record, threatening a summer of natural disasters across the US.

Earlier this month, DeSantis signed a law erasing the words “climate change” from Florida statutes and in effect pledging the state’s future to burning fossil fuels, a significant contributory factor in global warming and an unprecedented “supersizing” of hurricanes’ destructive power.

“I can say I don’t believe in gravity, but if I step off a cliff I’m still going down,” Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy, said during a webinar hosted by the group to discuss expectations for the six-month-long hurricane season.

“When we decide not to react to the information that science provides us, it’s a choice to increase our vulnerability rather than decrease it.”

Hayhoe also noted that “hurricanes are getting stronger and more dangerous, heavy rainfall is getting more frequent, home insurance is going up”, saying she’s “worried about what this means for my city”.

“We can say all of those things without mentioning the words ‘climate change’,” she continued.

“There are conversations that can still happen, and must still happen. It illustrates the importance of cities, community organizations, researchers, businesses, homeowners’ associations and insurance companies carrying that conversation and making the direct connection between what’s happening and why it matters to our homes, the places we live, our families and the people, places and things that matter most.”

Hayhoe said water in the Atlantic and Caribbean was already as hot as temperatures usually recorded at the peak of hurricane season in August and September. That does not bode well for a summer in which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) expects up to 25 named tropical storms, including four to seven major hurricanes with winds at 111mph (179km/h) or higher.

“Heat-trapping gasses are building up in the atmosphere and wrapping an extra blanket around the planet, and nearly 90% of this extra heat is going to the ocean,” she said.

“We’ve been looking at record warm ocean temperatures for over a year now and they are what fuel these storms. When you think about that massive amount of heat and tropical storms plugged into the ocean as their power source, you can understand how we are really supercharging these events.”

The destructive power of storms has intensified so much in recent years that in February, a scientific study recommended adding a category 6 to the existing five-stage Saffir-Simpson scale to account for mega-hurricanes with sustained winds above 192mph. During the past decade, five storms would have met that criterion, the researchers said.

Hayhoe said other factors, including the amount of inland rainfall a storm might bring, also needed to be considered.

“There are indications that the storms are moving more slowly, which contributes to more rain because they’re sitting over you for longer,” she said. “And once they move over land, we are seeing that they’re lasting longer and weakening more slowly, so they’re reaching farther inland with greater impacts.”

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A reminder. It’s not the sun

Copernicus – May 2024 was the warmest May recorded.

The month was 1.52°C above the estimated May average for 1850-1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period.

The global-average temperature for the past 12 months (June 2023 – May 2024) is the highest on record, at 0.75°C above the 1991-2020 average and 1.63°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.

Copernicus

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Global rich must pay more to tackle climate crisis, says architect of Paris deal

Rich individuals in all countries must pay more to tackle the climate crisis, whether through taxes or charges on consumption, one of the architects of the Paris agreement has said.

There is a growing consensus on the need for some kind of global wealth tax, with Brazil, which will host the Cop climate summit next year, an enthusiastic supporter.

Meanwhile, poor countries are struggling to raise the estimated $1tn (£785bn) a year of external finance needed to help them cut emissions and cope with the impacts of the climate crisis.

Another proposal is for a frequent flyer levy, as the richest people tend to take far more flights – in any year about half of the people in the UK do not fly, for instance. Laurence Tubiana, the chief executive of the European Climate Foundation, said a levy could be targeted at business class and first

Other possible sources of revenue include a carbon tax on international shipping, which could raise billions without disrupting global trade, according to research from the World Bank. Levies on fossil fuels could also play a role.

The richest 1% of people in the world are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the 66% at the other end of the scale, yet they experience little of the vulnerability to climate shocks that are causing suffering and death, mainly among poorer people.

Tubiana said: “This inequality is true not only between developed countries and developing ones, but within each country – the 1% of rich Chinese, or the 1% of very rich Indians, or the US citizen – they have a lifestyle which is very, very similar, in terms of overconsumption. That’s where your carbon footprint comes in.”

Failing to address these inequalities could damage public acceptance of the measures needed to tackle the climate crisis, she said in an interview with the Guardian. “If you want to avoid a real conflict, we have to put the social justice element upfront. It’s legitimate to talk about taxation, with the immense elements of climate impact, and the need to mobilise more funding to respond to the transition [to a low-carbon economy] and adaptation [to the impacts of extreme weather].”

Tubiana is co-chair of the International Tax Task Force (ITTF), an initiative spearheaded by the governments of Barbados, France and Kenya, and set up at last year’s UN climate summit, to examine ideas for raising the sums needed.

Climate finance will be the key focus of this year’s UN climate summit, Cop29, in Azerbaijan. Government representatives were gathering on Monday in Bonn, Germany, where the UN framework convention on climate change secretariat is based, for a fortnight of preliminary talks, where officials will test the waters for some of the key proposals.

Although there is no clear agreement on the way forward, Tubiana said there was widespread acknowledgment among governments that new ways must be found. “At the G20 meetings, there was quite a consensus on, yes, we should do better, we have to reform our tax system,” she said.

Discussing revenue raising under the Paris climate agreement will be tricky, however. Governments are particularly touchy about national sovereignty when it comes to taxation.

One of the first tasks of the ITTF will be to come up with a new name. The term tax is inaccurate for some of the ideas under discussion, and could be a hindrance, as it is highly loaded and has specific legal resonance in some countries – the US, for instance, has rules over tax negotiations in an international context.

Tubiana said she hoped the very rich would cooperate with governments on paying for the climate crisis. “I’m optimistic that some of them can speak up, in particular the younger generation,” she said. “But we have to convince them as well.”

While most of the discussion at Cop29, and in Bonn, will focus on how to raise the money needed, but questions over how it should be spent also need to be resolved.

While the poorest countries have a clear claim, that should not be the only criterion, said Patricia Scotland, the director general of the Commonwealth, which represents many developing countries. She said many small island developing states that were particularly at risk from the climate crisis were already in debt, and needed help with debt forgiveness or restructuring. And there were some that appeared to be better off, with growing GDP or thriving economies, which may not meet the usual criteria for aid but when a climate-related disaster struck, they could be devastated and left in dire need of assistance.

Lady Scotland called for a “universal vulnerability index” to take account of this. “It would really take into account the exogenous shocks to which countries will be subject.”

She added that the climate crisis had rewritten the old standards by which countries were judged, and countries were being penalised for problems they had not created. “In the old days, they were talking about fiscal rectitude, that GDP was an indicator of your ability, your acuity, your good management of your income and being able to budget. It was all about your prudence. What we now know is it is not necessarily about fiscal prudence, it is your inability – or anybody’s inability, really – to manage the exogenous shocks.”

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‘Godfathers of climate chaos’: UN chief urges global fossil-fuel advertising ban

Fossil-fuel companies are the “godfathers of climate chaos” and should be banned in every country from advertising akin to restrictions on big tobacco, the secretary general of the United Nations has said while delivering dire new scientific warnings of global heating.

In a major speech in New York on Wednesday, António Guterres called on news and tech media to stop enabling “planetary destruction” by taking fossil-fuel advertising money while warning the world faces “climate crunch time” in its faltering attempts to stem the crisis.

“Many governments restrict or prohibit advertising for products that harm human health, like tobacco,” he said. “I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil-fuel companies. And I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil-fuel advertising.”

In his speech, Guterres announced new data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) showing there is an 80% chance the planet will breach 1.5C (2.7F) in warming above pre-industrial times in at least one of the next five calendar years. The past 12 months have already breached this level, with the average global temperature 1.63C (2.9F) higher than the pre-industrial average from June 2023 to May this year, following a string of months with record-breaking heat, according to the European Union’s Copernicus monitoring system.

Governments agreed in the 2015 Paris climate pact to restrain the global temperatures rise to 1.5C to avoid cascading heatwaves, floods, droughts and other ruinous impacts, and while a single year beyond this limit does not mean the target has been lost, scientists widely expect this to happen in the coming decade.

According to the WMO, there is a roughly 50-50 chance that the period of 2024 to 2028 will average above 1.5C in warming, globally. “We are playing Russian roulette with our planet,” Guterres, known for his strident language on the climate crisis, told an audience underneath a suspended 94ft model of a blue whale at the American Museum of Natural History. “We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell.”

In a nod to the venue of his speech, Guterres said that “like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, we’re having an outsized impact. In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs – we are the meteor. We are not only in danger – we are the danger.”