Climate Change News & Discussions

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caltrek
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Climate Shuffles Superpowers
by Zachary Basu
November 7, 2021

https://www.axios.com/climate-shuffles- ... b5786.html

Introduction:
(Axios) Drought, rising sea levels and melting ice caps are transforming the geopolitical map at the same time China's rise and revanchist Russia are testing the limits of American power.

Driving the news: These dynamics, outlined in the first-ever National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)* on climate change, released last month, played out this past week at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. President Biden rebuked China's Xi Jinping for failing to show up or present new commitments.

Why it matters: U.S. intelligence assessments show climate change is threatening military assets and opening new fronts in the great-power competition defining the 21st century.
  • Biden has sought to place the "existential threat" of climate change squarely at the center of his national security policy, while at the same time casting China as the "biggest geopolitical challenge" facing the U.S.
  • Those two priorities are inextricably linked: China is the world's largest source of carbon emissions, and its cooperation is critical to preventing some of the worst effects of global warming.
*https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/document ... curity.pdf
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The Government’s New ‘Earthshot’ — Making It Cheap To Suck CO2 Out of the Atmosphere
by Emily Pontecorvo
November 5, 2021

https://grist.org/energy/the-government ... tmosphere/

Introduction:
(Grist) The U.S. government has a new goal to make it much cheaper to suck carbon dioxide out of the air. On Friday, at the United Nations’ climate conference, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announced her agency’s new “Earthshot Initiative” to bring the cost of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it securely below $100 per metric ton.

The Earthshots program is the Department of Energy’s attempt to help scale up some of the nascent technologies that could be required to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to make them cheaper. Today, we know how to generate clean electricity from the sun, wind, water, and the latent heat beneath the Earth’s surface. But we don’t yet have economical ways to fly airplanes, power large ships, make key materials like steel or cement, or grow food without sending planet-warming emissions into the atmosphere.

The Carbon Negative Shot is the third program in the Earthshots series. The Department of Energy announced a Hydrogen Shot, a program to make clean hydrogen fuel 80 percent cheaper than it is today, in June. The agency also introduced a Long Duration Storage Shot, with an aim to reduce the cost of storing at least 10 hours’ worth of energy for the electric grid, in July. (Grid batteries will be needed to supply power at times when renewable energy isn’t available.)

“Bringing those technologies to the market will not happen if we leave everything to energy markets,” said Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, at the press conference on Friday. “We need governments to push the button of innovation here.”

Carbon dioxide removal doesn’t directly cut emissions from any particular industry, like agriculture or aviation. But if other solutions don’t emerge to clean up flying or fertilizers, carbon removal can be deployed to counteract continued emissions and stabilize the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. That’s why United Airlines, for example, has invested in a direct air capture plant under development in Texas. In addition to balancing out any remaining emissions that can’t be eliminated, scientists say carbon removal is the only way the world could eventually reverse global warming, by sucking more carbon out of the atmosphere than we’re putting in.
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East Coast Flooding, Rising Sea Levels and Climate Change: Why the Ocean Keeps Pouring In
by Jianjun Yin
November 9, 2021

https://www.counterpunch.org/author/jnjnyni0486/

Introduction:
(Counterpunch) The U.S. East Coast has been hit with hurricanelike flooding in recent weeks, with South Carolina and Georgia getting the latest round. High tides are part of the problem, but there’s another risk that has been slowly creeping up: sea level rise.

Since 1880, average global sea levels have risen by more than 8 inches (23 centimeters), and the rate has been accelerating with climate change.

Depending on how well countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years, scientists estimate that global sea levels could rise by an additional 2 feet by the end of this century. The higher seas means when storms and high tides arrive, they add to an already higher water level. In some areas – including Charleston, South Carolina, where a storm and high tide on Nov. 5, 2021, sent water levels about 8 feet above normal– sinking land is making the impact even worse.

I’m a geoscientist who studies sea level rise and the effects of climate change. Here’s a quick explanation of two main ways climate change is affecting oceans levels and their threat to the world’s coasts.

Ocean thermal expansion

Climate change, fueled by fossil fuel use and other human activities, is causing average global surface temperatures to rise. This is leading the ocean to absorb more heat than it did before the industrial era began. That, in turn, is causing ocean thermal expansion.
In addition to further discussion of thermal expansion, the article also discusses how the melting of land ice also affects ocean levels.
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To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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China-US Announce Deal at Cop26 to Accelerate Climate Action this Decade
by Chloé Farand
November 10, 2021

https://www.climatechangenews.com/2021/ ... on-decade/

Introduction:
(Climate Home News) China and the US have announced a deal to strengthen their cooperation on climate action and accelerate emissions cuts this decade, in a boost to the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow, UK.

The world’s two biggest emitters released a surprise joint statement on Wednesday evening setting out their intention to “seize on this critical moment to engage in expanded individual and combined efforts to accelerate the transition to a global net zero economy”.

An unformatted draft was hastily shared through climate communications networks on a Google Doc before the official version was published by the US state department and Chinese environment ministry websites.

Under the deal, both sides promised to act in this “decisive decade” to reduce emissions and keep the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit temperature rise “well below 2C” and pursue efforts for 1.5C “within reach”.

They recognised that “there remains a significant gap” between current national carbon-cutting pledges and policies and what is needed to achieve the Paris goals.
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Well, instead of condemning the "pathetic limp rag of a document" perhaps we should actually read it for ourselves:

https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/ ... 16_adv.pdf

Mind you, as I typed my brief introduction above, I could hear a certain activist voice in my head condemning it all as "blah, blah, blah."

Still, on complex matters, words come before actions. Planning must proceed implementation. That is just in the nature of things. Not that I see myself as much of an apologist. As far as I am concerned, the ruling elites who are coming around on all of this are about forty years behind schedule. So their actions are hardly all that praiseworthy.
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:x :evil: :roll:

------------------

Morrison Government rejects key COP26 objectives hours after agreeing to them in Glasgow

Monday, November 15, 2021

The Glasgow climate summit has issued a final communique which calls on countries to phase down coal and to increase their formal 2030 targets by next year.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor has confirmed that the Morrison Government won't be doing either because it wouldn't be in Australia's national interest.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pr ... t/13631082
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