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2021-2025 Articles
2021-2025 Articles
Climate Crisis ‘Wreaking Havoc’ on Earth’s Water Cycle 0125.rtf
How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points? 0824.rtf
Most Earth System Models Are Missing Permafrost, a Key Part of Climate Change 0124.rtf
James Hansen Is Back with Another Dire Climate Warning 1123.rtf
Earth Nears 6 ‘Risk Tipping Points’, Damaging Our Ability to Fight Climate Crisis 1023.rtf
Earth Exceeds Its ‘Safe Operating Space for Humanity’ in 6 of 9 Key Ways 0923.rtf
World Unlikely to Limit Temperature Rise to 2°C, Warns Former IPCC Chairman 0723.rtf
‘We are damned fools’ - Scientist Who Sounded Climate Alarm in 1988 Warns of Worse to Come 0723.rtf - Jim Hansen - 'There's a lot more warming in the pipeline' - up to 10°C."
When It Comes to Climate Change, There's No Such Thing as a New Normal 0723.rtf
Humans Started a New Geologic Era, the Anthropocene, in 1950 - 0723.rtf - Some debate about exactly when, much less where. Based on nuclear fallout, industrial chemicals such as pesticides and plastics, as well as rapid atmospheric GHG growth and warming from fossil fuel use.
Ecological Tipping Points Could Occur Much Sooner than Expected 0623.rtf
Here’s Why It’s Time to Pursue Climate Restoration 0623.rtf
The Oceans Are the Hottest on Record. Here Are 6 Things to Watch for. 0423.rtf
Climate Impacts Trigger Tipping Points in Earth System Faster than Forecast 0423.rtf
Corporate Interests ‘Watered Down’ the Latest IPCC Climate Report, Again 0323.rtf
World ‘Population Bomb’ May Never Oo Off as Feared, Finds Study 0323.rtf
Warming above 1.5°C Likely in Near Term unless World Acts Now 0323.rtf
World Risks Climate ‘Doom Loop’ - $ to Fix, not Prevent, Damages 0223.rtf
Stopping Climate Change Isn’t Enough – We Need to Reverse It 1122.rtf
Climate Change Threatens ‘Things Americans Value Most,’ U.S. Assessment Says 1122.rtf (National Climate Assessment) - “Over the past 50 years, the U.S. has warmed 68% faster than the planet as a whole,” the report finds. It noted that the change reflects a broader global pattern, in which land areas warm faster than the ocean, and higher latitudes warm more rapidly than lower latitudes. That shift means significant parts of the country now must grapple with growing threats to safe drinking water, housing security and infrastructure. A hotter atmosphere creates a litany of health hazards, makes farming and fishing more difficult and unpredictable, and imperils key ecosystems.
The frequency of billion-dollar disasters has now increased from once every 4 months in the 1980s to once every 3 weeks in the present. It finds that the United States is experiencing some of the most severe sea-level rise on the planet.
In the short term, the assessment finds, communities must do more to adapt to the changes that already are here — and some are doing just that. But over the long term, the only real solution is for humanity to muster the political and technological will to stop polluting the atmosphere.
Stifling heat waves in the Midwest to deadly floods in the Southeast, from warming oceans along the Northeast coast to raging wildfires in the West.
A warming world threatens reliable water supplies. Deluges and drought. Climate change is making our food, water and infrastructure worse. Droughts are projected to increase in intensity, duration and frequency, mostly in the Southwest.
Extreme events are wreaking havoc on homes and property. The United States has experienced an average of 7.7 billion-dollar disasters annually over the past 4 decades. In the past 5 years, that average has jumped to nearly 18 events each year, or about one every 3 weeks. Those disasters also don’t hit all Americans equally. Homes with poor insulation or inefficient cooling can make it harder for low-income residents to heat or cool their homes.
The U.S. can expect more forced migration and displacement.
Climate change is a growing public health threat.
It’s not just humans who are feeling the effects.
There is good news and opportunity to still shape the future.
Can the Climate Be Restored? 1022.rtf
World on Brink of 5 ‘Disastrous’ Climate Tipping Points 0922.rtf - collapse of Greenland ice cap, collapse of main North Atlantic current (Gulf Stream +), disrupting rain for billions of people, and abrupt thaw of permafrost, and dramatic changes to vast northern forests.
‘Soon the world will be unrecognizable’ – Is it still possible to prevent total climate meltdown? 0722.rtf - This summary of Bill McGuire’s book, Hothouse Earth, mentions neither CDR nor SRM [Carbon Dioxide Removal and Solar Radiation Management]. If one throws away these tools, McGuire’s analysis is broadly correct. But we should not throw these vital tools away.
Leading Scientist Warns “People do not understand the magnitude of what is going on.... we will not have anything left that we value, if we [don’t act.]” 0622.rtf - Katherine Hayhoe
Why Some Climate Models Are Running Red Hot - Clouds, Water, Ice 0522.rtf
The 1.5° Goal Is All But Dead 0422.rtf
The World Is Running Out of Options to Hit Climate Goals - U.N. Report 0422.rtf
Planet’s Breakneck Warming Likely to Pass 1.5°C, UN Scientists Warn 0422.rtf
Climate Report - 6 Key Findings for Water 0322.rtf
Climate and the IPCC Report 0222.rtf
IPCC Issues ‘Bleakest Warning Yet’ on Impacts of Climate Breakdown 0222.rtf
Climate Change Is Harming Earth Faster than We Can Adapt, U.N. Warns 0222.rtf
Tipping Points Passed? (4) Forests and the Amazon- A Faltering Carbon Sink 0122.rtf
Tipping Points Already Passed? (3) Greenland and the Arctic- Abrupt Change 0122.rtf
Have Tipping Points Already Been Passed for Critical Climate Systems? (1) The Basics 0122.rtf
Have Tipping Points Already Been Passed for Critical Climate Systems? (2) West Antarctica and the "Doomsday" Glacier 0122.rtf
The Crucial Ingredients for Decarbonizing and Safeguarding Cascadia 1221.rtf - Decarbonize electricity and electrify everything, plus other actions
On the Climate Crisis, Delay Has Become the New Form of Denial 1021.rtf
The Costs of Climate Tipping Points & How They Could Compound One Another 0821.rtf
Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States 0821.rtf
Feedbacks and Tipping Points - Big Uncertainties about Future Warming 0821.rtf
UN Climate Report - All Is Not Well—but All Is Not Lost 0821.rtf
It’s Grim 0821.rtf - take 2 on IPCC's 6th Assessment, part 1
Major Climate Changes Inevitable and Irreversible – IPCC’s Starkest Warning Yet 0821.rtf - take 1 on IPCC's 6th Assessment
Critical Measures of Global Heating Reaching Tipping Point 0721.rtf - Some 16 out of 31 tracked planetary vital signs, including greenhouse gas concentrations, ocean heat content and ice mass, set worrying new records.
Yep, It’s Bleak, Says Expert Who Tested 1970s End-of-Civilization Prediction 0721.rtf - Limits to Growth, from 1972. An update study shows that the 1972 study was essentially on target. It finds that, coming amid a cascade of alarming environmental events, from western US and Siberian wildfires to German floods, and the Amazon rainforest may no longer a carbon sink. Herrington’s work predicted that the collapse of civilization could come around 2040, if current trends held.
The other scenario, "comprehensive technology, modeled stalled economic growth without social collapse. Both scenarios “show a halt in growth within a decade or so from now…. pursuing continuous growth is not possible.”
Engineers - You Can Disrupt Climate Change 0621.rtf - About 85% is about the challenges of decarbonization, 12% about those of CO2 removal (to 350 ppm or less) and 3% of solar radiation management. Carbon pricing is addressed up front. Decarbonization challenges addressed are especially the more difficult energy uses: aviation fuel; the production of metals; industrial process heat for cement, fertilizer, glass, etc.; infrastructure such as sewage; energy sources from advanced photovoltaic and batteries to advanced fission and fusion. Some CO2 removal methods need good engineering, as done subterranean disposal. More white surfaces can help with the “3%" solar radition management needed.
You can find one general summary of gloabl warming and climate change at www.tomorrow.io/weather/blog/global-warming-status/. It takes 15-30 minutes to read. I have only a handful of quibbles with what it says.
Climate Change Tipping Points Are upon Us. Draft U.N. Report Warns - 'The Worst Is Yet to Come' 0621.rtf
Crushing Climate Impacts to Hit Sooner than Feared - Draft UN Report 0621.rtf
Australian Inventor Wants to Stop Global Warming by Electrifying Everything 0521.rtf
U.S. Has Entered Unprecedented Climate Territory, EPA Warns 0521.rtf
Paraphrasing: We are well on the way to 1.5°C hotter than 1880; damages will get even worse above 1.5°C. We need net-zero by 2050 to limit warming to 2°C. The changeover to renewables has been slow. Solar radiation management (SRM), by imitating major volcano eruptions, has the bad side effect of moving monsoon rain offshore. It is also expensive. For CO2 removal (CDR), CCS has proven to be too expensive - as well as ineffective, because it is mostly used for enhanced oil recovery. Direct air capture is also too expensive so far, as it uses a lot of energy. Removing our legacy CO2, even at a hoped-for $100 / ton, would exceed the Gross World Product (GWP). Trees are cheaper, but impermanent; forests burn. “The arithmetic highlights the tremendous need to cut emissions. There is no viable workaround.”
Dr. Fry’s comments: Achieving net zero would be wonderful, but it is very far from sufficient to hold global heating to 2°C. When Earth last wore 420 ppm CO2, millions of years ago, global temperatures were 4-8°C above 1880’s. This further (past and future, beyond 2°C) heating was, is and will be driven mostly by feedbacks from albedo (reflectivity) changes from snow, ice, and sulfates, plus their water vapor and clouds multiplier. The impacts of 5°C are far worse (several multiples of world GWP) than the cost of SRM and CDR. We indeed have a tremendous need to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but cutting them to zero, even immediately, is way not enough. Small companies, recent start-ups, are devising ways (no fans, no heat to regenerate catalysts) to cut DAC energy use (and cost) by 95% or so. For SRM, the costs are measured in billions rather than trillions of dollars. Perhaps better SRM than imitating volcanoes is marine cloud brightening (MCB), targeted in the Arctic. There, warming has caused the polar jet stream to meander, bringing long dry hot spells, long rainy spells (floods), and deep excursions of polar air into temperate zones in winter. MCB probably would not affect monsoons much
How Not to Solve the Climate Change Problem 0722.rtf - by Kevin Trenberth, a leading climate scientist for 4 decades who helped write IPCC assessments, influence exceeded only by Jim Hansen, in Dr. Fry's opinion.
2020 and earlier Articles
2020 and earlier Articles
Rethinking Energy 2020-2030 - 100% Solar, Wind, and Batteries Is Just the Beginning 1020.rtf
Climate Worst-Case Scenarios May Not Go Far Enough, Cloud Data Shows 0620.rtf - climate sensitivity about 5°C for doubled CO2, not 3°.
IPCC Declares "Near Certainty" on Human-Driven Warming 0913.rtf
China's Carbon & Climate Challenges 0813.rtf
Global Warming's Terrifying New Math 0613.rtf
2013 Nat'l Climate Assessment 0213.rtf
US Climate Assessment Warns of 10°F Warming by 2100 - 0113.rtf - 1993-2012 US pace was +12°F / century
8 Major Ways the IPCC Erred Rosy on Climate Projections 1212.rtf
UN Ties Climate Change to Extreme Weather 1111.rtf
Climate Change Could Cost 19% of GNPs by 2030 0909.rtf
US Hit by Climate Impacts Now 0609.rtf
Warming-Driven Food Shortages Could Bring Down Civilization - Lester Brown 0409
50-Year Droughts Plague World's Breadbaskets - Fry 0309.rtf
Stern Says He Was Too Optimistic 0408.rtf
IPCC Synthesis Report Sum 1107.rtf
Humans Consume 25% of Earth's Productivity - Erb 1007.rtf
AAAS Fears Climate Change 0707.rtf
Warming & Wars 0407.rtf
IPCC Damages 0407.rtf
Going Green Gets the Green - Citicorp 0307.rtf
IPCC Science 0207.rtf
Stern Review 1006
$T Cost of Climate Inaction - Ackerman 1006.rtf
plan-b-v-20-summary-0606.rtf
Tipping Point for Global Climate 0306.rtf
West’s ‘Dust Bowl’ Future Now ‘Locked In’, as World Risks Imminent Food Crisis 1219.rtf
Past climate emissions mean the US and Europe will experience devastating drought in 80 years, and a global food crisis could be triggered in the 2020s — yet it’s not too late to build resilience and avert the worst.
Research sponsored by global credit ratings agency Moody’s concludes that, by the end of century, parts of the US and Europe are now bound to experience severe reductions in rainfall equivalent to the American ‘dust bowl’ of the 1930s, which devastated Midwest farming for a decade. These consequences are now ‘locked in’, as a result of carbon emissions which we have already accumulated into the atmosphere.
But that’s not all. A spate of new scientific research released through 2019 has thrown light on nearer-term risks of a global food crisis in coming decades, such as a multi-breadbasket failure — due not just to climate change, but a combination of factors including population growth, industrial soil degradation, rising energy costs, and groundwater depletion, among other trends.
Taken in context with a number of climate change models produced over the last decade, the heightened risk of droughts in the 2020s means that a global food crisis could be imminent. Over 1,700 published climate models examined by the University of Leeds point to the risk of a global food crisis after 2030; 12 models point to this risk emerging and amplifying in just 3 years.
None of this research shows that the destructive impacts on human societies are unavoidable. With foresight, planning, mitigation, adaptation and cooperation, it’s possible for us to not simply build resilience to coming crises by minimizing disruptions and protecting the vulnerable; but to pave the way for a sustainable food system that can operate as a solution to climate catastrophe.
The ‘locked in’ impacts of climate change are bound to produce “severe” impacts on societies over the next decades, according to new research sponsored by one of the world’s biggest financial agencies. Among those impacts, the degradation of global freshwater supplies in particular threatens to destabilize the global food system. Historic carbon emissions appear to have made it inevitable that, by the end of this century, some of the world’s most important agricultural producers will experience conditions similar to the ‘dust bowl’, the worst human-induced ecological disaster in American history.
and so on, in great detail
A simple stick-figure cartoon video about how warming happens and what its effects are and WILL BE. It's titled "Wake Up, Freak Out".
Holistic Management Can Save Our Soils and Reduce CO2 Levels 0913
This picture is from a piece of land (left side) in Africa managed with Holistic Management grazing practices, used by locals taught by the Savory Institute. It stores far more carbon (and water) than land not so managed (right side of fence).
“China faces extremely grim ecological and environmental conditions, under the impact of continued global warming and changes to China's regional environment.” Assuming no measures to counter global warming, grain output in the world's most populous nation could fall from 5 to 20% by 2050. "But steadily, as the temperatures continue to rise, the negative consequences will be increasingly serious…. For a certain length of time, people will be able to adapt, but costs of adaptation will rise, including for agriculture.”
"Climate change will lead to severe imbalances in China's water resources, within each year and across the years. In most areas, precipitation will be increasingly concentrated in the summer and autumn rainy seasons, and floods and droughts will become increasingly frequent…. Without effective measures in response, by the latter part of the 21st century, climate change could still constitute a threat to our country's food security,"
China’s National Assessment Spells Out “Grim" Climate Change Risks 0112.rtf
from the 710-page report:
A simple video about risk of taking action vs not taking action.
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