Holy crap. In the EU, fuel consumption monitoring devices are required on new cars. They studied over 10% of all cars sold in 2021 and turns out they use way more fuel, and generate way more CO2, than anybody thought. Nearly a quarter more. Plug-in Hybrids do poorly too.
This means our projections about getting cars off the road for the climate crisis is hugely undercounting the effects. More rail, more e-bikes, more electric, faster.
Why are so many climate scientists so scared and so angry?
Maybe it's because they know better than most of us how bad our situation today truly is, and how horribly we've been betrayed by our so-called leaders.
Here's an excerpt from an excellent piece on this subject by Alan Urban...
Even if the planet stopped getting warmer right now, we would still be in big trouble. The ice caps would keep melting and sea levels would keep rising.
Look at what’s happening at a mere 1.2°C of warming. We’re already seeing some of the worst heat waves in human history, not to mention record-breaking floods, droughts, wildfires, and water shortages.
But of course, warming isn’t going to stop at 1.2°C. Because of the heat we’ve already trapped in the atmosphere, and because we continue to emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases every year, the climate is warming exponentially.
All of these climate-related crises are stretching farms to the limit, yet this is just the beginning. As crop yields decline and the population grows, we will see food insecurity get worse and worse until we’re in a global famine.
And that right there is why climate scientists are scared. They understand that human civilization was born during the Holocene, when global temperatures were very stable and stayed within a range of about 1°C.
As we push the planet out of that range and raise the temperature about 50 times faster than would occur naturally, it will become harder and harder to produce enough food to feed everyone, and this will lead to social instability, political upheaval, the worst migration crisis ever, and wars over resources.
Disasters that weren’t supposed to happen until we reached 1.5°C are happening now, so we can only imagine what will happen when we hit 2° or 3°C.
This is why top scientists from around the world are warning us that we face a ghastly future filled with untold suffering. They’ve been telling us over and over, year after year, summit after summit, that we have to stop burning fossil fuels as quickly as possible. But as you can see [below], the world keeps ignoring them.
For those who haven’t seen it before, here is my review of The Climate Book, by Greta Thunberg…
I've read dozens of books about climate change, and this one is easily the best. It's packed with information, written to be accessible for anyone from high school (or a bright middle school student) on up, and most importantly it does NOT shy away from the true severity of our situation and the imperative need not only for individual action but for system change.
It's stunning to me that a young woman who just turned twenty years old was able to pull together such a massive project — coordinating the submissions of more than a hundred scientists, activists, and educators — while also writing a large part of the content herself. A truly amazing accomplishment.
This essential work should be in every school library and in every home. It will remain relevant for years to come, I believe, because although there certainly is plenty of data, mostly it's about ideas which will never age.
Scientists are now saying we are “out of time” to keep global heating at under 1.5°C. It’s simply too late. We’ve delayed any action far too long.
All our talk and meetings and phony “Net Zero” pledges don’t mean anything to an overstressed climate system that is rapidly breaking down.
You can’t fool Mother Nature.
The target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) is moving out of reach, climate experts say, with nations failing to set more ambitious goals despite months of record-breaking heat on land and sea.
“We’ve run out of time because change takes time,” said Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climatologist at Australia’s University of New South Wales.
As climate envoys from the two biggest greenhouse gas emitters prepare to meet next month, temperatures broke June records in the Chinese capital Beijing, and extreme heat waves have hit the United States.
Parts of North America were some 10C (18F) above the seasonal average this month, and smoke from forest fires blanketed Canada and the US East Coast in a hazardous haze, with carbon emissions estimated at a record 160 million tons.
In India, one of the most climate-vulnerable regions, deaths spiked as a result of sustained high temperatures, and extreme heat has been recorded in Spain, Iran, and Vietnam, raising fears that last year’s deadly summer could become routine.
Countries agreed in Paris in 2015 to try to keep long-term average temperature rises within 1.5C, but there is now a 66% likelihood the annual mean will cross the 1.5C threshold for at least one whole year between now and 2027, the World Meteorological Organization predicted in May.
#Tennessee Republicans, spurred on by #chemtrail advocates, pass a bill that, on the face of it, appears to unintentionally ban all #CO2 emissions ("injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals into the air affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight")
I suggest we all read this article very very very carefully…
Scientists estimate that the earth’s land ecosystems can hold enough additional vegetation to absorb between 40 and 100 gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. Once this additional growth is achieved (a process which will take a number of decades), there is no capacity for additional carbon storage on land.
But our society is currently pouring CO₂ into the atmosphere at a rate of ten gigatonnes of carbon a year. Natural processes will struggle to keep pace with the deluge of greenhouse gases generated by the global economy. For example, I calculated that a single passenger on a round trip flight from Melbourne to New York City will emit roughly twice as much carbon (1600 kg C) as is contained in an oak tree half a meter in diameter (750 kg C).
Yet fundamental misunderstandings about carbon capture by land ecosystems can have devastating consequences, resulting in losses of biodiversity and an increase in CO₂ concentrations. This seems like a paradox – how can planting trees negatively impact the environment?
The answer lies in the subtle complexities of carbon capture in natural ecosystems. To avoid environmental damage, we must refrain from establishing forests where they naturally don’t belong, avoid “perverse incentives” to cut down existing forest in order to plant new trees, and consider how seedlings planted today might fare over the next several decades. #Climate#ClimateCrisis#CO2#Deforestation
A lot of people still think about Covid as a wash your hands and socially distance kind of thing.
Chances of getting Covid from touching something is near zero and we're far more likely to catch it from someone we can't see because it can stay in the air for a long time, drift long distances, and remain potent long after a contagious person is gone (as much as 2 hours).
This is why improving ventilation is one of the most important things you can do to reduce risks of infection for yourself and people around you. With good air flow, an infectious person is less dangerous. Infected air is diluted and can't linger to keep infecting.
I took a variety of CO2 readings to estimate indoor air quality. Based on these readings, places I wouldn't want to be unmasked would be: house gatherings, offices, meeting rooms, conventions, public transit, a plane, funerals.
Places that may not be as risky as originally believed are: supermarkets, pharmacies, and restaurants.
In cased you missed this chart, it shows the predicted increase of #CO2 and #temperature in the #atmosphere (black lines) compared to current observations (red & blue lines).
The prediction was made back in 1982 by ExxonMobil in private documents.
They knew since 1970s that #FossilFuels would lead to #ClimateChange with "dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.”
They don’t need to have a majority, or anything even close to a plurality. All it takes is a few thousand sociopathic billionaires — the population of a village — to take full control of everything and then completely ruin our livable biosphere while further enriching themselves.
The scale on the image below is NOT exaggerated. In less than two centuries, and especially just within the last 30 years, capitalist oligarchs have burned so much coal, oil, and gas that our climate system simply can’t handle it.
It’s almost out of control now. But the people who are to blame have names and addresses.
Elizabeth Kolbert (@elizkolbert), author of "The Sixth Extinction," says:
"When I started reporting on climate change, the prediction was the Arctic could be sea-ice-free in summer by the 2070s. Now? By the 2030s."
She is not the only one highly alarmed by what we are seeing. Look at what the researchers are saying in this piece from Common Dreams...
Scientists on Tuesday warned that the planet is rapidly headed toward the consequences of the climate crisis they have been warning about for decades as researchers published a new study showing that a complete loss of Arctic sea ice in the summer months is now unavoidable.
The scientists found that even in a low-emissions scenario, summer ice in the Arctic will be gone by the 2050s.
In an intermediate- or high-emissions scenario — which is far more likely, considering that the United States, the largest historic source of fossil fuel emissions, has recently moved to approve massive projects such as the Willow oil drilling project and the Mountain Valley Pipeline — the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer months starting in the 2030s.
"Unfortunately it has become too late to save Arctic summer sea ice," said Dirk Notz, a climatologist at the University of Hamburg and co-author of the study. "As scientists, we've been warning about the loss of Arctic summer sea ice for decades. This is now the first major component of the Earth system that we are going to lose because of global warming. People didn't listen to our warnings."
The planet is already experiencing the effects of increased open water in the Arctic during the summer months, lead author Seung-Ki Min of Pohang University in South Korea noted, and policymakers must now prepare communities to adapt to those impacts, including extreme weather events.
"The most important impact for human society will be the increase in weather extremes that we are experiencing now, such as heatwaves, wildfires, and floods," said Min. "We need to reduce CO2 emissions more ambitiously and also prepare to adapt to this faster Arctic warming and its impacts on human society and ecosystems."
The loss of summer sea ice would trigger a feedback loop known as "Arctic amplification," with the dark ocean absorbing more solar heat and causing additional planetary warming.
"We need to prepare ourselves for a world with warmer Arctic very soon," said Min. "The earlier onset of an ice-free Arctic also implies that we will be experiencing extreme events faster than predicted."
I use and like the #Aranet4#CO2 monitor. The #Aranet 4 is usually USD$249. It's on sale, direct from the manufacturer, till September 17, for $184.35, with free shipping in the US.
Since then, greedy capitalists and the governments they own have doubled down, completely wrecking our climate and environment, placing not only humans but thousands of other plant and animal species in grave danger of extinction.
It's not complicated. Anyone can understand that when forests burn, it's a LOSE-LOSE proposition for the climate and the environment.
We lose trees and grasslands and sometimes also peat that have been storing carbon, AND we send that previously stored carbon into the atmosphere, thereby sharply increasing CO2 emissions, which then push temperatures up even higher, drying out more of the forests and raising the risk of lightning storms which will ignite more fires — a massively destructive vicious cycle.
It's almost impossible to imagine anything worse than burning boreal forests, but that's what is happening, both in Canada and in Siberia. And STILL we keep on drilling for more oil in Alaska, mining the tar sands in Alberta, and fracking the hell out of everywhere else. Why? Because capitalism! 💰💰💰
MORE ON BOREAL FORESTS --
"Two of the countries at greatest risk are Russia and Canada, and not coincidentally, these are two places where the fossil fuel industry is making bad conditions even worse." https://climatejustice.social/@breadandcircuses/110423387240605334
"I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act."
The opinion piece below from Bloomberg/WaPo seems to agree with her...
"Global Heat Records Are Falling. A Little Panic Might Be in Order."
The planet could easily set a record-high average temperature in 2023, especially with an El Niño weather pattern kicking in later this year. We have already suffered through the hottest early June on record, with global land temperatures briefly touching 1.5C above the pre-industrial average. Ocean temperatures this spring have been the hottest ever at this time of year, in records going back 174 years.
Many people, including myself, have warned against panicking about such stunning new highs, given the temporary nature of El Niño’s boost. Even if we temporarily hit 1.5C of warming this year, it will still be theoretically possible to avoid long-term warming beyond that level and all the catastrophic consequences that would come with it.
But first we must kick our fossil-fuel addiction and stop spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And judging by how little the world’s policymakers seem to be interested in taking such steps, perhaps just a smidgen of panic might be helpful.
Scientists agree the world must zero out its emissions by 2050 in order to keep warming to 1.5C, a target set at the Paris climate accords in 2015. And so far 95 countries have made "net-zero" pledges.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that the vast majority of those pledges aren’t credible. Current policies and practices have the world on pace to hit nearly 3C of warming by the end of the century. Even the most dependable net-zero pledges would still lead to close to 2.5C of warming, a recent study found.
One big problem is that significant numbers of "net-zero" countries have zero plans to stop burning oil, gas, and coal, according to a new study from the Stockholm Environment Institute. Of the 95 pledging countries, 45 talk about "continuing or expanding fossil-fuel production" right there in their net-zero pledges, according to the study. Only 5 of the 95 countries, in contrast, discuss transitioning out of fossil-fuel production as part of their net-zero pledges.
#Sobriété
Une activité de #recherche bas carbone est possible ! En 2019, j'ai réalisé que mes déplacements professionnels émettaient beaucoup trop de gas à effet de serre. J'ai décidé alors de ne plus prendre l'#avion, définitivement. Mes déplacements professionnels (et perso) indispensables se font maintenant en #train 🚅 .
Résultat : les émissions de #CO2 de mes déplacements ont chutés d'un facteur de plus 40 (eq. à 98%) !! Sur l'année 2023, elles n'ont pas dépassés 200 kg CO2eq.
"Oil Giant Shell Knew About Climate Impacts Even Earlier"
Following explosive revelations about what ExxonMobil knew about fossil fuels driving global heating, investigations in 2017 and 2018 uncovered that Shell Oil's scientists privately warned about the impact of its products in the 1980s.
However, newly unveiled records show that "Shell began collecting knowledge about climate change in the 1960s. The company not only kept well abreast of climate science, but also funded research. As a result, Shell already knew in the 1970s that burning fossil fuels could lead to alarming climate change."
Faced with a global oil crisis, rather than using its climate information to publicly sound the alarm and shift to cleaner practices, the company "focused instead on a nonsustainable profit model."
The following year, a study Shell was involved with warned that "increases in the CO2 content of the atmosphere could lead to the so-called greenhouse effect... which would be enough to induce major climatic changes." Three years later, another report warned that "the continued burning of fossil fuels will lead to a manifold increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration."
Duncan Meisel, executive director of the campaign Clean Creatives, which targets advertising and public relations firms that work for fossil fuel companies, declared Monday that "what these new documents show is incredibly disturbing."
"In the 1980s, Shell scientists laid out two pathways for the planet: one where energy companies undertook a smooth transition to clean energy and one where fossil fuel demand continued to rise, creating 'more storms, more droughts, more deluges,'" he summarized. "Since the publication of that forecast, Shell has pushed at every turn to create more fossil fuel demand, creating exactly the devastating outcomes they predicted."
The Center for Climate Integrity said the records provide the world "more damning evidence" that the company knew its business model was having disastrous impacts on the world and its people. As the group put it: "They knew. They lied. They need to pay."
The wildfires raging through Canada’s boreal forests have torched about 45 million acres so far this year (an area larger than 104 of the world’s 195 countries) and have released staggering amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
To put this into context, take a look at the graphs below.
The first shows Canada's cumulative daily wildfire carbon emissions (in metric tons). As you can see, the level for 2023 is almost literally off the chart, about 400% higher than in any previously recorded year.
The second shows greenhouse gas emissions from Canadian wildfires (CO2 equivalent), comparing 2023's amount to Canada's TOTAL national emissions for the previous 20 years. Those gray bars you see are not from wildfires, but from ALL human-produced emissions. And the contrast is mind-boggling.
The last image is simply a sad photo of a burned boreal forest in Canada. 😢
Es gibt wirklich viele schlechte Nachrichten, da sind solche besonders willkommen. Und das wäre wahrlich eine massive Kehrtwende:
#China: Höchststand bei CO₂-Emissionen wohl schon in diesem Jahr, dann Rückgang
In China boomt der Ausbau der Solar- und #Windenergie. Das könnte dafür sorgen, dass die CO₂-Emissionen schon bald sinken – mit möglicherweise globalen Folgen.
Next to rising #GHG emissions, changing clouds by reduced #aerosol#pollution due to the phasing out of high-sulfur ship fuel are to blame (at least partially) for the recent record-breaking North Atlantic #OceanWarming.