Climate Change News & Discussions

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caltrek
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Research Shows that Managing UK Agriculture with Rock Dust Could Absorb up to 45 Per Cent of the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Needed for Net-zero
April 25, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/950523

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Managing UK agriculture with rock dust could absorb up to 45 per cent of the atmospheric carbon dioxide needed for net-zero, research shows

● Major new study shows adding rock dust to UK agricultural soils could remove between 6 and 30 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere annually by 2050.

● Costs of carbon removal are estimated to be around £200 per tonne of CO2 currently, falling to half that by 2050 - making it highly competitive relative to other carbon dioxide removal options.

● Research identifies substantial co-benefits that include mitigation of nitrous oxide, the third most important greenhouse gas, and widespread reversal of soil acidification caused by intensification of agriculture.

● The study estimates that rock dust can be substituted for expensive imported fertilisers. By reducing demand for imported fertilisers, using rock dust avoids carbon emissions and offsets costs of deployment.

Adding rock dust to UK agricultural soils could absorb up to 45 per cent of the atmospheric carbon dioxide needed to reach net zero, according to a major new study led by scientists at the University of Sheffield.
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caltrek
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Shareholders Target Wall Street Banks With 'Groundbreaking' Climate Resolutions
by Brett Wilkins
April 26, 2022

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/ ... esolutions

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) A significant percentage of shareholders at three of the biggest U.S. banks voted Tuesday to endorse first-of-their-kind resolutions urging the companies to stop supporting new fossil fuel development amid a worsening climate emergency.

Shareholders at Citi, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo voted 12.8%, 11%, and 11%, respectively, to support climate resolutions filed by the Sierra Club Foundation and other members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. According to the Sierra Club, any resolution that receives at least 5% of the vote can be refiled the following year, and those that get 10% or more are "considered difficult for a company to ignore."

"Big banks have a responsibility to address their massive contribution to the climate crisis and protect their shareholders from climate risk by aligning their policies with their own net-zero commitments and ending support for fossil fuel expansion," Adele Shraiman of the Sierra Club's Fossil-Free Finance campaign said in a statement. "The pressure on them to do so from shareholders and the public is only growing stronger."

The "groundbreaking" resolutions include a call for each bank to "build upon" its net zero commitments by adopting policies "to help ensure that its financing does not contribute to new fossil fuel supplies that would be inconsistent" with the International Energy Agency's "Net-Zero Emissions by 2050" scenario and other climate frameworks.

While shareholders have previously compelled companies to disclose the emissions impact of their operations and investments and set long-term climate targets, this is the first time they have called on banks to implement plans to achieve those objectives, according to Sierra Club.
https://grist.org/article/will-exxon-ch ... his-year/
(Grist) Last week, executives from Citibank and JPMorgan sat on a panel at a New York City business conference hosted by the news agency Reuters to discuss “the decarbonization pathway for finance.” But as they were expounding on what their banks were doing concerning climate change, an activist got up and interrupted them.

“Citibank and JPMorgan are two of the world’s — THE TOP TWO financiers of fossil fuels in the world,” she told the room. “You’re telling me that you people are going to lead the way to sustainable finance?”

It’s no longer just activists confronting executives with these kinds of questions. This week kicks off a new season of shareholder activism at the annual general meetings of banks, oil companies, and other publicly traded corporations. These meetings are typically a time for companies to convince investors that their money is in good hands. But increasingly, shareholders are using these meetings to demand more information on how climate change and the transition to clean energy could affect their investments, and what companies are doing to manage climate-related financial risks.

“Investors are saying we can’t conduct business in a world that is on fire, that has heatwaves and insufficient water,” said Danielle Fugere, president of the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow. “And I do think companies are beginning to understand that it’s in their interest to take action and that shareholders support that action.”

JPMorgan already faced a reckoning in 2020 when shareholders pressured the company to oust Lee Raymond, the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, from its board. The bank demoted Raymond from the position of lead independent director, and he eventually resigned from the board entirely at the end of 2020. Last year, in one watershed week, investors voted to replace three directors on Exxon’s board on the grounds that the company had refused to accept that fossil fuel demand would decline and to make transition plans — and was underperforming financially. At Chevron, 61 percent of shareholders voted in favor of a resolution asking the oil giant to set a target to lower the emissions that come from the use of its products, also known as “scope 3” emissions.
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New York on track for zero-emission electricity by 2040

27th April 2022

Two huge new infrastructure projects in New York are expected to dramatically cut the state's greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more: https://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/202 ... w-york.htm


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Wildfires in US, Canadian boreal forests could release sizable amount of remaining global carbon budget

by Union of Concerned Scientists
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-wildfires ... zable.html
A paper by U.S. scientists published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances today finds that fires occurring in U.S. and Canadian boreal forests between now and 2050 could release about 3% of the remaining global carbon budget unless greater investments are made to limit fire size in these carbon-rich forests. The first-of-its-kind study was led by Dr. Carly Phillips, a fellow with the Western States Climate Team at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and co-authored with a team of researchers from the Woodwell Climate Research Center, Tufts University, Harvard University, the University of California, and Hamilton College.

The latest scientific report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes clear that countries have a quickly narrowing window to rein in heat-trapping emissions. To meet the Paris Agreement's principal goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid some of the worst climate change impacts, nations need to drastically reduce heat-trapping emissions during this consequential decade and reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

"Wildfires in boreal forests can be especially harmful in terms of the amount of emissions they release into the atmosphere since they store about two-thirds of the world's forest carbon, most of which is contained in the soil and has accumulated over hundreds or even thousands of years," said Dr. Phillips. "If not properly contained, heat-trapping emissions from wildfires in boreal forests could dramatically increase, jeopardizing nations' ability to limit warming in line with the Paris Agreement."
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Global Warming Accelerates the Water Cycle, With Relevant Climatic Consequences
April 29, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/951247

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Researchers at the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) in Barcelona have found that global warming is accelerating the water cycle, which could have significant consequences on the global climate system, according to an article published recently in the journal Scientific Reports.

This acceleration of the water cycle is caused by an increase in the evaporation of water from the seas and oceans resulting from the rise in temperature. As a result, more water is circulating in the atmosphere in its vapour form, 90 per cent of which will eventually precipitate back into the sea, while the remaining 10 per cent will precipitate over the continent.

"The acceleration of the water cycle has implications both at the ocean and on the continent, where storms could become increasingly intense. This higher amount of water circulating in the atmosphere could also explain the increase in rainfall that is being detected in some polar areas, where the fact that it is raining instead of snowing is speeding up the melting", explains Estrella Olmedo, the leading author of the study.

The work also shows that the decrease in the wind in some areas of the ocean, which favours stratification of the water column, i.e. water not mixing in the vertical direction, could also be contributing to the acceleration of the water cycle.

"Where the wind is no longer so strong, the surface water warms up, but does not exchange heat with the water below, allowing the surface to become more saline than the lower layers and enabling the effect of evaporation to be observed with satellite measurements", points out Antonio Turiel, also an author of the study. In this sense, Turiel adds that "this tells us that the atmosphere and the ocean interact in a stronger way than we imagined, with important consequences for the continental and polar areas".
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Unchecked global emissions on track to initiate mass extinction of marine life
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-unchecked ... -mass.html
by Morgan Kelly, Princeton University
As greenhouse gas emissions continue to warm the world's oceans, marine biodiversity could be on track to plummet within the next few centuries to levels not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs, according to a recent study in the journal Science by Princeton University researchers.

The paper's authors modeled future marine biodiversity under different projected climate scenarios. They found that if emissions are not curbed, species losses from warming and oxygen depletion alone could come to mirror the substantial impact humans already have on marine biodiversity by around 2100. Tropical waters would experience the greatest loss of biodiversity, while polar species are at the highest risk of extinction, the authors reported.

"Aggressive and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are critical for avoiding a major mass extinction of ocean species," said senior author Curtis Deutsch, professor of geosciences and the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton.
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Prof. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele

@JPvanYpersele

Humanity has now succeeded to increase the CO2 concentration by 50% (420/280) since the pre-industrial time. A new symbolic (and sad) record has been broken. We need to decarbonise fast. #ClimateEmergency
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Manchin, Kelly Join GOP in Passing Motion to Bar Biden from Declaring Climate Emergency
by Jake Johnson
May 5, 2022

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/ ... -emergency

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Two right-wing Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Mark Kelly of Arizona, crossed the aisle Wednesday to help Republicans approve a motion aimed at barring President Joe Biden from declaring a climate emergency, a step that green groups have been pressuring him to take since his first day in office.

The nonbinding motion, sponsored by Sen. Shelley Capito (R-W.Va.) and approved by a vote of 49-47, states that Biden "cannot use climate change as the basis to declare a national emergency." House and Senate lawmakers will consider the motion as part of their efforts to finalize legislation packed with subsidies to profitable microchip corporations.

It's unclear whether lawmakers will ultimately include the climate emergency language in the final bill, but environmentalists voiced outrage at the motion's passage as Manchin and Republicans continue to obstruct desperately needed congressional action to slash greenhouse gas emissions and bolster renewable energy production.

A separate motion instructing lawmakers to reject provisions that "prohibit development of an all-of-the-above energy portfolio"—which would include oil and gas production—also sailed through Wednesday by voice vote.

"Our political leadership is out to kill most of us," Basav Sen, director of the Climate Justice Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, said in response to the vote. "Every branch of [the federal government] (executive, Congress, courts) is rotten to the core."
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How Treaties Protecting Fossil Fuel Investors Could Jeopardize Global Efforts to Save the Climate – and Cost Countries Billions
May 5, 2022

https://theconversation.com/how-treatie ... ons-182135

Introduction:
(The Conversation) Fossil fuel companies have access to an obscure legal tool that could jeopardize worldwide efforts to protect the climate, and they’re starting to use it. The result could cost countries that press ahead with those efforts billions of dollars.

Over the past 50 years, countries have signed thousands of treaties that protect foreign investors from government actions. These treaties are like contracts between national governments, meant to entice investors to bring in projects with the promise of local jobs and access to new technologies.

The treaties allow investors to sue governments for compensation in a process called investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS. In short, investors could use ISDS clauses to demand compensation in response to government actions to limit fossil fuels, such as canceling pipelines and denying drilling permits. For example, TC Energy, a Canadian company, is currently seeking more than US$15 billion over U.S. President Joe Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

In a study published May 5, 2022, in the journal Science, we estimate that countries would face up to $340 billion in legal and financial risks for canceling fossil fuel projects that are subject to treaties with ISDS clauses.

That’s more than countries worldwide put into climate adaptation and mitigation measures combined in fiscal year 2019, and it doesn’t include the risks of phasing out coal investments or canceling fossil fuel infrastructure projects, like pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals. It means that money countries might otherwise spend to build a low-carbon future could instead go to the very industries that have knowingly been fueling climate change, severely jeopardizing countries’ capacity to propel the green energy transition forward.
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