Climate Change News & Discussions

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Greenland ice sheet could fully melt after reaching specific tipping point, study finds
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-greenland ... cific.html
by Hannah Bird , Phys.org

Greenland's ice sheet currently spans over 1.7 million square kilometers and is the largest freshwater reservoir in the northern hemisphere. The ice sheet has already lost over a trillion tonnes of its total mass since the 1980s, with melting rates six times higher in the last decade. Indeed, a recent study found that an average of 30 million tonnes of ice is now being lost every hour.

Continued melting of the ice sheet from a warmer atmosphere and surrounding ocean causes both sea level rise and changes in the salinity of the ocean. This can have significant impacts on the immediate marine ecosystem, but also globally, as sea level increases pose challenges for coastal communities—predictions have suggested a rise of 7 meters if the entire ice sheet melts.

New research, published in The Cryosphere, has identified the tipping point at which the loss of ice mass may be too stark for the ice sheet to recover, potentially leading to complete melting. To do so, Dr. Michele Petrini of Norway's Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research and colleagues assessed the surface mass balance of Greenland's ice sheet, referencing the difference between snow accumulation and loss due to melting.

[wjfox]

‘Hotter, Drier, and More Flammable”: New Study Finds Climate Change Played a Role in LA Fires

Hot, dry, and windy conditions that fuelled the recent LA fires were made about 35% more likely due to human-made warming, a new study has confirmed.

Feb 4th 2025

Reduced rainfall and an abundance of dry vegetation due to human-induced climate change have worsened the recent LA wildfires, a new study has confirmed as it warned of escalating fire conditions as the climate crisis worsens.

Powerful Santa Ana winds – dry, warm winds that originate from the western desert interior of the US and are common this time of year – fanned the devastating fires, allowing them to spread rapidly across more than 57,000 acres and kill at least 29 people. The winds, coupled with an abundance in tinder-dry vegetation and heat, made for one of the city’s costliest fire events in US history.

But while wildfires in Southern California are not uncommon, they are more likely to occur because of climate change, as suggested in a new study.

Researchers at World Weather Attribution (WWA), an academic collaboration studying extreme event attribution, found that the hot, dry, and windy conditions that fuelled the recent fires were made about 35% more likely due to human-made warming, which is primarily driven by the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas.

[...]

According to WWA, the region is now 2.4 times more likely to experience a dry winter compared to pre-industrial times. This also translates into a much longer wildfire season – about 23 days longer, on average, compared to pre-industrial times, according to the study.

https://earth.org/hotter-drier-and-more ... -la-fires/



Credit: CAL FIRE_Official/Flickr.

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[firestar464]

Natural sequestration of carbon dioxide is in decline: climate change will accelerate

https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d ... 2/wea.7668

So much for the "plant food" nonsense

Scientific American- Crucial Ocean-Current System Is Safe from Climate Collapse―for Now

https://archive.ph/4NfSd

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Growers Who Rely on Climate Data Sue USDA for Cutting Off Access
by Frida Garza
March 4, 2025

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) In late January, the director of digital communications at the U. Department of Agriculture sent an email to staff instructing them to remove agency web pages related to climate change by the end of the following day.

Peter Rhee, the communications head, also told staff members to flag web pages that mention climate change for review and make recommendations to the agency on how to handle them. The new policy was first reported by Politico.

The result is that an unknown number of web pages—including some that contained information about federal loans and other forms of assistance for farmers and some that showcased interactive climate data—have been taken down, according to a lawsuit filed this week on behalf of a group of organic farmers and two environmental advocacy groups. The plaintiffs are demanding that the USDA stop erasing climate-related web pages and republish the ones taken down.

“Farmers are on the front lines of climate change,” said Jeff Stein, an associate attorney with the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, who is representing the plaintiffs. “Purging climate change web pages doesn’t make climate change go away. It just makes it harder for farmers to adapt.”

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/environmen ... ange-data

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The Public Environmental Data Partners are Committed to Preserving and Providing Public access to Federal Environmental Data

March, 2025

Introduction:

(The Public Environmental Data Partners) This is Version 2 of the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, released by the Council on Environmental Quality in December 2024. Although the tool remains unchanged, public access through the White House was discontinued on January 22, 2025. We re-created Version 2 and made it publicly accessible.

Read more here: https://screening-tools.com/climate-ec ... ing-tool

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Trump EPA and Citibank Sued for 'Illegally' Freezing Green Energy Funds
by Julia Conley
March 10, 2025

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) The need for a federal lawsuit filed Monday presents "more evidence of a constitutional crisis," according to one campaigner, as plaintiffs pushed back against the Trump administration's unlawful freezing of funds appropriated by Congress to help fuel a green energy transition in marginalized communities nationwide.

The lawsuit was announced Saturday by Climate United Fund, a nonprofit green investment fund, and was received Monday by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who previously presided over President Donald Trump's criminal trial regarding his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
The group is accusing the Environmental Protection Agency and Citibank of "illegally withholding" $7 billion that had been awarded to Climate United through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which set up a $20 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, also known as the Green Bank.

The Green Bank was established to fund solar power, energy-efficient housing projects, and electric vehicles. Climate United has reported that it used funds to begin pre-construction on a solar energy project across the University of Arkansas system, invest in electric trucks at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach with plans for nationwide expansion, and launch a grant program for low-income communities to start clean energy projects.

For the last two weeks, The New York Times reported, Climate United and seven other nonprofits that were awarded funding through the Green Bank have been unable to withdraw the money from their accounts at Citibank.

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/epa- ... on-fund

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Third warmest after 2024, 2016...

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[wjfox]

Deeply, deeply evil.

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Trump takes an ax to more than a dozen pollution rules in rapid-fire deregulation

5:51 PM EDT, Wed March 12, 2025

The Trump administration announced its intent to roll back major climate policies Wednesday, including rules that target pollution from vehicles and power plants, in a major blow to America’s progress on clean air, clean water and climate action.

The changes are expected to inject even more uncertainty into key industries, including manufacturing, which President Donald Trump has pledged to support.

The administration was announcing rollbacks and actions in such rapid succession — 31 in around two hours — there appeared to still be placeholders or typos in the news releases.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced it will undo rules that would have pushed power plants and carmakers toward cleaner forms of energy. It also intends to roll back rules on soot, mercury and coal ash pollution, as well as the so-called “good neighbor rule” that regulates downwind air pollution, and eliminate its programs overseeing environmental justice and diversity.

Significantly, Trump’s EPA is also preparing to reconsider and strike down a consequential scientific finding on the dangers of climate pollution that has served as the basis behind federal regulations to curb them. Dismissing the precedent would strip the EPA’s authority to manage the pollution that causes global warming.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/12/climate/ ... index.html

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New Research Reveals How Asset Owners Can Leverage Environmental, Societal and Governance Shareholder Engagement Across the World
March 20, 2025

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) A new report has uncovered how investors can most effectively foster shareholder engagement on environmental, societal and governance (ESG) issues to overcome differences in structural and cultural climates around the world.

The report, titled Chains of influence, was funded by the Laudes Foundation and authored by Dr Emilio Marti, Rotterdam School of Management, Dr Kevin Chuah, D’Amore-McKim School of Business, and Professor Jean-Pascal Gond, Bayes Business School. It examines how power dynamics between asset owners and asset managers (‘active owners’), companies and other stakeholders vary significantly between different countries, and identifies two chains of influence – company-centric and owner-centric. These chains depict contrasting abilities of asset owners, and the asset managers working on their behalf, to apply pressure on companies to engage in ESG activities. The study outlines opportunities for active owners to influence under-engaged companies across different global contexts.

Company-centric chains are characterised by companies having low dependence on institutional investors. They therefore hold power because active owners are reluctant or unable to exert influence on them to engage on ESG issues. Examples include Brazil, China and India. Owner-centric chains, such as the United Kingdom and France, are more heavily reliant on institutional investment which allows asset owners and asset managers to exert greater pressure on managers and companies.

Read more of the Eurekalert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1077666

To read the Chains of influence report: https://cityuni-my.sharepoint.com/pers ... ents&ga=1

[wjfox]

[firestar464]

guys is it joever

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NIH Ends Future Funding to Study the Health Effects of Climate Change
by Annie Waldman and Sharon Lerner
March 24, 2025

Introduction:

(ProPublica) The National Institutes of Health will no longer be funding work on the health effects of climate change, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica.

The guidance, which was distributed to several staffers last week, comes on the back of multiple new directives to cut off NIH funding to grants that are focused on subjects that are viewed as conflicting with the Trump administration’s priorities, such as gender identity, LGBTQ+ issues, vaccine hesitancy, and diversity, equity and inclusion.

While it’s unclear whether the climate guidance will impact active grants and lead to funding terminations, the directive appears to halt opportunities for future funding of studies or academic programs focused on the health effects of climate change.

“This is an administration where industry voices rule and prevail,” said Dr. Lisa Patel, executive director of The Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, a coalition of medical professionals that raises awareness about the health effects of climate change. “This is an agenda item for the fossil fuel industry, and this administration is doing what the fossil fuel industry wants.”

She called the new guidance “catastrophic” and said it would have a “devastating” impact on much-needed research.

Read more here: https://www.propublica.org/article/nih ... c-health

[erowind]

kingtacticool is not correct. During the Permian era surface temperatures were on average 10C higher than preindustrial temperatures today. Antarctica will melt and become tropical, every biome will change dramatically, industrial human civilization will collapse and human populations will likely be reduced by 99% back to pre industrial levels and likely considerably farther back initially. This is assuming literally no preparations are made anywhere. But the biosphere will not go extinct, trees will still grow, megafauna will evolve from surviving species overtime, Earth will recover. Assuming an asteroid doesn't take us out humanity will get a 2nd chance many hundreds of thousands or millions of years down the line even in the worst scenarios, we won't be homo sapiens at that point but still sapient I'm sure.

There is risk in the uncertainty of how fast the change is happening compared to the Permian, but you have to remember that trees and plants at large and many species survived rapid climatic changes from the Yucatan impact aswell. I don't think there's any sense in projecting our existential and self-imposed dread onto the fate of the world even when it does apply to our human societies.

I'm also unsure that pockets of civilization won't survive, it will depend on how different people respond. New Zealand will be climatically moderated by Antarctica for centuries even as it melts, as will much of southern Australia. Patagonia is similar. New Zealand itself has coal reserves that would last it thousands of years by its own consumption and the burning of coal by a reduced or stagnant Oceanic population would not meaningfully impact the global climate. New Zealand is food sovereign too even with reduced yield and can leverage this for trade with Australia, another country that has a millennia of coal in reserves. Civilization will be sticky for longer than doomers expect I imagine, and with the ongoing collapse of capitalism incentives are bound to change. Hopefully future generations can build better governance systems and use their fortune to create regenerative economies in the southern hemisphere.

If you are in the northern hemisphere though and plan on creating a family, all I can say is get out. It truly is existential up here and for much of the southern hemisphere too over the long term. If you want to build something that will last generations Oceania, Patagonia, and the open Ocean are your best bet, preferably Pacific Islands not Atlantic ones.

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