#intergovernmental panel on climate change

[aperint]

Reprobados en cambio climático

Reprobados en cambio climático #aperturaintelectual #vmrfaintelectual @victormanrf @Victor M. Reyes Ferriz @vicmanrf @victormrferriz Víctor Manuel Reyes Ferriz

12 DE DICIEMBRE DE 2023 Esto es para ti papi POR: VÍCTOR MANUEL REYES FERRIZ El día de hoy culmina la cumbre del clima “Conferencia de Partes” (COP) en su edición número 28 que comenzó el pasado 30 de noviembre en el “Expo City” de Dubái y ésta reúne a los delegados de 197 países, organizaciones no gubernamentales, empresas, científicos, representantes de la industria, activistas y por supuesto…

[indizombie]

Searing heat has forced 33 million children out of schools in Bangladesh, as temperatures in parts of the country soared past 42C (108F). Schools and colleges will be shut for at least until 27 April. This is the second year in a row that authorities made such a move due to extreme weather. “Children in Bangladesh are among the poorest in the world, and heat-related school closures should ring alarm bells for us all," said Shumon Sengupta, Save the Children's Bangladesh director. Low-lying Bangladesh is one of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a 30- to 45-cm rise in sea level could displace more than 35 million people from coastal districts - about a quarter of the country's total population.

Kelly Ng, ‘Searing heat shuts schools for 33 million children’, BBC

[omg-erika]

Who is afraid of CO2?

by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext What the mainstream media is hiding Why we should fear and hate carbon dioxide – A guest article by Elena Louisa Lange about the sense and folly of worrying about “man-made climate change.” In September, the world witnessed five minutes of climate ideology at its finest. Apple, the world’s most capitalized company, produced a promotional film designed to…

[irreplaceable-spark]

Hot or Not: Steven Koonin Questions Conventional Climate Science and Methodology| Uncommon Knowledge

Steven Koonin is one of America's most distinguished scientists, with decades of experience, including a stint as undersecretary of science at the Department of Energy in the Obama administration. In this wide-ranging discussion, based in part on his 2021 book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters, Koonin gives a more refined look at the science behind the climate issue than the media typically offers, guiding us through the evidence and its implications. As Koonin explains in this interview, he was “shaken by the realization that climate science was far less mature than I had supposed” and that the “overwhelming evidence�� of catastrophic implications of anthropogenic global warming wasn’t so overwhelming after all.

[n0thingiscool]

Last week, the judge in Held v. Montana handed down a victory for the 16 young plaintiffs, who argued that the state’s continued production of fossil fuels violated their constitutional rights. Advocates say the landmark ruling could have broad ramifications for future climate litigation. But it’s also clear that Montana was woefully unprepared to face climate science on trial.

[rodgermalcolmmitchell]

How to be a climate and COVID denier by calling warnings, "panicked fearmongering."

If you were in a burning building and people yelled at you, “Get out, the building is on fire,” I assume Bjorn Lomborg and Jordan B. Peterson would call that “panicked fearmongering.” It is the only conclusion I can draw from the ridiculous Trumpian article published under their names. Stop the panicked fearmongering if we want to make the world better By Bjorn Lomborg and Jordan B. Peterson…

[meshugenist]

Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?

James E. Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Makiko Sato, George Tselioudis, Joseph Kelly, Susanne E. Bauer, Reto Ruedy, Eunbi Jeong, Qinjian Jin, Eric Rignot, Isabella Velicogna, Mark R. Schoeberl, Karina von Schuckmann, Joshua Amponsem, Junji Cao, Anton Keskinen, Jing Li & Anni Pokela

Pages 6-44 | Published online: 03 Feb 2025

Abstract

Global temperature leaped more than 0.4°C (0.7°F) during the past two years, the 12-month average peaking in August 2024 at +1.6°C relative to the temperature at the beginning of last century (the 1880-1920 average). This temperature jump was spurred by one of the periodic tropical El Niño warming events, but many Earth scientists were baffled by the magnitude of the global warming, which was twice as large as expected for the weak 2023-2024 El Niño. We find that most of the other half of the warming was caused by a restriction on aerosol emissions by ships, which was imposed in 2020 by the International Maritime Organization to combat the effect of aerosol pollutants on human health. Aerosols are small particles that serve as cloud formation nuclei. Their most important effect is to increase the extent and brightness of clouds, which reflect sunlight and have a cooling effect on Earth. When aerosols – and thus clouds – are reduced, Earth is darker and absorbs more sunlight, thus enhancing global warming. Ships are the main aerosol source in the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans. We quantify the aerosol effect from the geographical distribution of sunlight reflected by Earth as measured by satellites, with the largest expected and observed effects in the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans. We find that aerosol cooling, and thus climate sensitivity, are understated in the best estimate of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Global warming caused by reduced ship aerosols will not go away as tropical climate moves into its cool La Niña phase. Therefore, we expect that global temperature will not fall much below +1.5°C level, instead oscillating near or above that level for the next few years, which will help confirm our interpretation of the sudden global warming. High sea surface temperatures and increasing ocean hotspots will continue, with harmful effects on coral reefs and other ocean life. The largest practical effect on humans today is increase of the frequency and severity of climate extremes. More powerful tropical storms, tornadoes, and thunderstorms, and thus more extreme floods, are driven by high sea surface temperature and a warmer atmosphere that holds more water vapor. Higher global temperature also increases the intensity of heat waves and – at the times and places of dry weather – high temperature increases drought intensity, including “flash droughts” that develop rapidly, even in regions with adequate average rainfall. Polar climate change has the greatest long-term effect on humanity, with impacts accelerated by the jump in global temperature. We find that polar ice melt and freshwater injection onto the North Atlantic Ocean exceed prior estimates and, because of accelerated global warming, the melt will increase. As a result, shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is likely within the next 20-30 years, unless actions are taken to reduce global warming – in contradiction to conclusions of IPCC. If AMOC is allowed to shut down, it will lock in major problems including sea level rise of several meters – thus, we describe AMOC shutdown as the “point of no return.” We suggest that an alternative perspective – a complement to the IPCC approach – is needed to assess these issues and actions that are needed to avoid handing young people a dire situation that is out of their control. This alternative approach will make more use of ongoing observations to drive modeling and more use of paleoclimate to test modeling and test our understanding. As of today, the threats of AMOC shutdown and sea level rise are poorly understood, but better observations of polar ocean and ice changes in response to the present accelerated global warming have the potential to greatly improve our understanding.

[mindblowingscience]

According to the president of COP28, the latest round of UN climate negotiations in the United Arab Emirates, there is "no science" indicating that phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to restrict global heating to 1.5°C. President Sultan Al Jaber is wrong. There is a wealth of scientific evidence demonstrating that a fossil fuel phase-out will be essential for reining in the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. I know because I have published some of it. Back in 2021, just before the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, my colleagues and I published a paper in Nature entitled Unextractable fossil fuels in a 1.5°C world. It argued that 90% of the world's coal and around 60% of its oil and gas needed to remain underground if humanity is to have any chance of meeting the Paris agreement's temperature goals. Crucially, our research also highlighted that the production of oil and gas needed to start declining immediately (from 2020), at around 3% each year until 2050. This assessment was based on a clear understanding that the production and use of fossil fuels, as the primary cause of CO₂ emissions (90%), needs to be reduced in order to stop further heating. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that net zero CO₂ emissions will only be reached globally in the early 2050s, and warming stabilized at 1.5°C, if a shift away from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources begins immediately.

Continue Reading.

[mariacallous]

In 2025, we will see a fundamental transformation in the language of climate politics. We’re going to hear a lot less about “reducing emissions” from scientists and policymakers and a lot more about “phasing out fossil fuels” or “ending coal, oil, and methane gas.” This is a good thing. Although it is scientifically accurate, the phrase “reducing emissions” is too easily used for greenwashing by the fossil-energy industry and its advocates. The expression “ending coal, oil, and methane gas,” on the other hand, keeps the focus on the action that will do most to resolve the climate crisis.

This discourse shift has been initiated by the latest report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The world’s climate scientists say that already existing fossil-energy infrastructure is projected to emit the total carbon budget for halting global heating at 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial temperatures. This statement means two things. It means that the world cannot develop any more coal, oil, or gas, if we want our planet to remain relatively livable. And it means that even some already developed fossil-fuel deposits will need to be retired before the end of their lifetime, since we need to leave space in the carbon budget for essential activities like agriculture.

The international community has already integrated this new science into its global climate governance. The 28th Conference of the Parties—the annual conference of the world’s nations party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—called for every country to contribute to “transitioning away from fossil fuels.” Never before in the history of international climate negotiations had the main cause of global heating been clearly named and specifically targeted. The United Nations itself now calls for the phaseout of coal, oil, and methane gas.

This new climate language will become mainstream in 2025. In her policy plans for her second term aspPresident of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen pledged not to work to lower EU emissions, but to “continue to bring down energy prices by moving further away from fossil fuels.” The new UK government promised in its manifesto that it will withhold licenses for new coal and for oil exploration—and states outright that it will “ban fracking for good.” And in France, Macron has explicitly vowed to end fossil-fuel use entirely.

Climate politics in the US will also evolve in the wake of Donald Trump’s reelection for president. Republicans will continue to embrace a “drill, baby, drill” climate agenda, denying the danger or sometimes even the reality of climate change while advocating for expanding domestic crude and methane-gas production. They may try to greenwash their policies by claiming they embrace an “all of the above” energy strategy, but this messaging will have limited effects. Due to political polarization the association of Trump with coal, oil, and gas will raise Democratic support for phasing out fossil fuels. Before the 2024 election, 59 percent of Democrats said climate change should be the Federal government’s top priority, but only 48 percent said they supported a phaseout. In 2025 majorities of Democrats will begin to support fossil-fuel phaseout, especially if climate advocates revive science-based climate messaging, continue to emphasize that clean-energy deployment is job creation, and frame choosing to phase out fossil fuels as a form of freedom that upholds our right to a livable future.

Given that Democrats won many down-ballot races, and cities and states are still pledging to pass climate policies, this shift in the Democratic majority will keep the US on the map in international climate negotiations, whether or not Trump withdraws the US from the Paris Agreement, creating new local alliances with the UK, the EU, and global south nations calling for international fossil-fuel phaseout targets. This bloc can counter the power of petrostates in international climate negotiations. At the very least, the mainstreaming of the language of fossil-fuel phaseout will help undermine the greenwashing strategy of current oil and gas company PR, which falsely advertises industry as pursuing technologies at scale to help “reduce emissions” even as they continue their upstream investments.

Of course the petrostates, along with India and China, will push back against the rhetoric of fossil fuel phaseout. But India can be helped to turn away from its domestic coal stores by clean-energy financing at close to cost along with the international aid and technology transfers already pledged at previous climate conferences. And although its rhetoric may not align with that of the West, China should not be imagined as opposed to climate action. China has enacted the most comprehensive climate policy on the planet, in service of its goal to peak emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions by 2060. If their climate messaging remains focused on “emissions,” in light of their plan to keep using fossil fuels past 2030, they are preparing for next decade’s pivot away from fossil fuels by building out clean energy at a truly extraordinary rate.

In 2025 climate discourse will recenter on the message that halting global heating requires the phaseout of coal, oil, and gas. This new consensus will shift the politics of climate change and help motivate an urgent sprint to a clean-energy, ecologically integrated economy—the only economy that ensures a livable future.

[sataniccapitalist]

A new discovery of methane leaks in Antarctica could be a game-changer and potential near-term threat that’s difficult to characterize without sounding overly negative. Of course, situations like this that appear threatening to civilization, or life as we know it, are difficult to believe and accept as something the will really happen, which is understandable because nothing in human history compares to the risk attendant to the dreaded runaway greenhouse effect. So, there’s nothing in human history to compare it to.

Nevertheless, there are scientists who believe we are living on borrowed time because of massive changes happening at the top and at the bottom of the planet where only scientists and indigenous people hang out. Now, this new discovery serves to emphasize their concerns of a climate monster capable of altering everything, lurking in the background.

The threat is explained in a YouTube video: Immense Methane Leaks in Antarctica: A Hidden Climate Theat Unveiled by Phantom Ecology, which is headed by Milton Muldrow, Ph.D. asst. professor at Wilmington University and Chair/College of Arts & Sciences.

As a prelude to this new information, it’s important to note that Russian scientists have been monitoring the risks of methane breakouts in the High Arctic for a couple of decades and have voiced concern about the risks of a sudden burst as undersea methane clathrates increasingly melt, bubbling to surface in ever-larger diameters, which they have measured. As it happens, methane (CH4) is many times more potent than CO2 at trapping excessive global heat.

Additionally, the risk of a methane breakout is mentioned by Peter Wadhams, emeritus professor, Ocean Physics, University of Cambridge, in his celebrated, brilliant interview: The Future of Sea Level Rise: “Russian scientists working the region believe a huge pulse of methane could erupt.” This could crank up global temperatures to ultra-dangerous levels in as little as 2-3 years. The consequences would be unspeakable. And with Antarctica joining, the game changes.

As a science researcher/writer of over 400 articles, this new development is extraordinarily spooky and difficult to accept because the consequences feel way too close for comfort. Stated at the opening of the Phantom Ecology video: “Deep beneath the icy plains of Antarctica, a slumbering giant is beginning to stir. Scientists have made a startling discovery. Vast reservoirs of methane hydrates locked away for millennia are showing signs of instability.”

The finding sent ripples of concern throughout the world of science. The consequences for the planet could be quite dangerous, maybe sooner rather than later. Rising plumes of methane (CH4) near the Antarctic Peninsula raises a major concern that trapped methane will be released into the atmosphere, exacerbating an already dire situation of accelerating global temperatures. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Maginot line of 1.5C above pre-industrial not to be exceeded as framed at the Paris 2015 climate conference by nearly all the nations of the world is kaput. To date, global temperatures have been exceeding that level for nearly two years running.

Meanwhile, world famous climate scientist James Hansen (Earth Institute, Columbia University) says 2C is on the horizon. “The pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, according to renowned climate scientist Prof James Hansen, who said the international 2C target is “dead” (Climate Change Target of 2C is ‘Dead’ Says Renonwed Climate Scientist, The Guardian, Feb. 4, 2025). It’s a huge understatement to say this would be horrendous for Antarctic methane leaks, Arctic methane leaks, including Siberian methane leaks and Alaskan methane leaks, as well as Glacial methane leaks (see below “Methane Double Trouble” for another disturbing new discovery).

The volume of methane locked away in Antarctic ice is estimated to be more carbon than all other fuel deposits combined for the planet. A small fraction of this escaping into the atmosphere could have catastrophic consequences for the climate system “in the not-too-distant future.” (Muldrow)

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Capturing and storing the carbon dioxide humans produce is key to lowering atmospheric greenhouse gases and slowing global warming, but today's carbon capture technologies work well only for concentrated sources of carbon, such as power plant exhaust. The same methods cannot efficiently capture carbon dioxide from ambient air, where concentrations are hundreds of times lower than in flue gases. Yet direct air capture, or DAC, is being counted on to reverse the rise of CO2 levels, which have reached 426 parts per million (ppm), 50% higher than levels before the Industrial Revolution. Without it, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we won't reach humanity's goal of limiting warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above preexisting global averages.

Read more.

[probablyasocialecologist]

It has long been clear what must be done, such as switching to renewable energy, expanding nature preserves, and eating less meat. Within the dry technocratic tomes produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), one can find surprisingly radical proposals reflecting this consensus. In addition to abjuring ‘cost-benefit’ analysis (marking a shift from money being the measure of all things), the IPCC has called for carbon-neutral building codes, a ban on new coal-fired power plants, and reducing cars through ‘effective [urban] planning’. The IPCC even blames the belief in ‘individual autonomy’ and ‘free-market ideology’ for allowing climate denial to fester, as well as ‘vested interests’ and ‘industry group lobbying’ for blocking reform. Despite our knowledge of what needs to be done, carbon emissions increase and mass extinctions continue relentlessly. Capital is at the helm, blindly steering the ship of fools towards ecological disaster. Unable to feel the wind or listen to its shouting passengers, capital can sense only price signals to guide its passage. In this way, capital destroys the world it cannot see.

Troy Vettese, Drew Pendergrass, Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics

[nostalgebraist]

Steve DeCanio, an ex-Berkeley activist now doing graduate work at M.I.T., is a good example of a legion of young radicals who know they have lost their influence but have no clear idea how to get it back again. “The alliance between hippies and political radicals is bound to break up,” he said in a recent letter. “There’s just too big a jump from the slogan of ‘Flower Power’ to the deadly realm of politics. Something has to give, and drugs are too ready-made as opiates of the people for the bastards (the police) to fail to take advantage of it.” Decanio spent three months in various Bay Area jails as a result of his civil rights activities and now he is lying low for a while, waiting for an opening. “I’m spending an amazing amount of time studying,” he wrote. “It’s mainly because I’m scared; three months on the bottom of humanity’s trash heap got to me worse than it’s healthy to admit. The country is going to hell, the left is going to pot, but not me. I still want to figure out a way to win.”

Re-reading Hunter S. Thompson's 1967 article about Haight-Ashbury, I thought: "huh, this guy sounds like he's going places. I wonder whether he ever did 'figure out a way to win'?"

So I web searched his name, and ... huh!

My current research interests include Artificial Intelligence, philosophy of the social sciences, and the economics of climate change. Several years ago I examined the consequences of computational limits for economics and social theory in Limits of Economic and Social Knowledge (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).  Over the course of my academic career I have worked in the fields of global environmental protection, the theory of the firm, and economic history.  I have written about both the contributions and misuse of economics for long-run policy issues such as climate change and stratospheric ozone layer protection.  An earlier book, Economic Models of Climate Change: A Critique (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), discussed the problems with conventional general equilibrium models applied to climate policy. From 1986 to 1987 I served as Senior Staff Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. I have been a member of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Economic Options Panel, which reviewed the economic aspects of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, and I served as Co-Chair of the Montreal Protocol’s Agricultural Economics Task Force of the Technical and Economics Assessment Panel. I participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, and was a recipient of the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007. In 1996 I was honored with a Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award, and in 2007 a “Best of the Best” Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. I served as Director of the UCSB Washington Program from 2004 to 2009.

I don't know whether this successful academic career would count as "winning" by his own 1967 standards. But it was a pleasant surprise to find anything noteworthy about the guy at all, given that he was quoted as a non-public figure in a >50-year-old article.

[darkmaga-returns]

Trump’s EPA has started the process to rescind the EPA’s authority to regulate CO2 and other alleged greenhouse gasses. It would remake our nation and shake a Western civilization already being pummeled by green madness. These regulations, both here and abroad, have been stalking horses for socialism and vehicles for fraud. graft, and funding left-wing actors on a scale unseen in human history.

On the international stage, the move to declare CO2 a pollutant and man its evil cause agent began in the 1970s with the first communist billionaire in the west, Maurice Strong. In 1988, Strong was instrumental in creating the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC), an organization that had as its primary purpose proving that “human activities” were increasing CO2 and to plan reparations for poor nations caused by western polluters.

Until 2007, the US resisted the claim that CO2 was a pollutant that could be regulated to adjust the world’s climate. That year, five activist Supreme Court Justices donned white lab coats of climate scientists in Massachusetts v. EPA to hold that the Clean Air Act was written so broadly that it gave the EPA, created simply to clean up pollution, almost unlimited authority to regulate carbon dioxide, an essential, albeit minute, part of our atmosphere.