7 August 2017, New York Times, Scientists Fear Trump Will Dismiss Blunt Climate Report. The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years, according to a sweeping federal climate change report awaiting approval by the Trump administration. The draft report by scientists from 13 federal agencies concludes that Americans are feeling the effects of climate change right now. It directly contradicts claims by President Trump and members of his cabinet who say that the human contribution to climate change is uncertain, and that the ability to predict the effects is limited. “Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” a draft of the report states. It was uploaded to a nonprofit internet digital library in January but received little attention until it was published by The New York Times. The authors note that thousands of studies, conducted by tens of thousands of scientists, have documented climate changes on land and in the air. “Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change,” they wrote. Read More here
Category Archives: Global Action Inaction
4 August 2017, The Conversation, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions soar in latest figures. Figures reveal trend of increasing emissions since the carbon tax was repealed in 2014 and cast doubt on whether Australia can meet cuts in Paris agreement. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising to the highest figures seen in years, according to official government figures, increasing 1.6% in the last quarter and 1% in the past year. The country’s emissions in the year to March 2017 are the highest on record at 550.3m tonnes of CO2 equivalent when emissions from land use change are excluded – a sector where the government says its figures have a high degree of uncertainty. The country’s emissions rose by 1.6m tonnes in the quarter to March 2017, or by 1.1% – a figure that is the same whether estimations of land use emissions are taken into account or not. After adjusting for seasonal effects, the department of environment and energy says the rise amounts to a 1.6% rise in the quarter. The rise is particularly striking given emissions almost always drop in the March quarter. The only other March rise was more than a decade ago and by 0.4m tonnes. The figures reveal a clear trend of increasing greenhouse gas emissions since the carbon tax was repealed in 2014 – a trend that runs counter to Australia’s international commitments. Superimposed on promised cuts to emissions made after the Paris climate agreement, Australia appears to be moving further away from being able to meet them – a trend that was predicted by the government’s own projections earlier in the year, which found emissions would continue to rise for decades to come. Read More here
28 July 2017, Reuters, U.S. coal exports soar, in boost to Trump energy agenda, data shows. U.S. coal exports have jumped more than 60 percent this year due to soaring demand from Europe and Asia, according to a Reuters review of government data, allowing President Donald Trump’s administration to claim that efforts to revive the battered industry are working. The increased shipments came as the European Union and other U.S. allies heaped criticism on the Trump administration for its rejection of the Paris Climate Accord, a deal agreed by nearly 200 countries to cut carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels like coal. The previously unpublished figures provided to Reuters by the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed exports of the fuel from January through May totaled 36.79 million tons, up 60.3 percent from 22.94 million tons in the same period in 2016. While reflecting a bounce from 2016, the shipments remained well-below volumes recorded in equivalent periods the previous five years. They included a surge to several European countries during the 2017 period, including a 175 percent increase in shipments to the United Kingdom, and a doubling to France – which had suffered a series of nuclear power plant outages that required it and regional neighbors to rely more heavily on coal. “If Europe wants to lecture Trump on climate then EU member states need transition plans to phase out polluting coal,” said Laurence Watson, a data scientist working on coal at independent think tank Carbon Tracker Initiative in London. Read More here
27 July 2017, Climate News Network, Geo-engineers propose climate compromise. Humans have unintentionally changed the world and turned up the temperature. A climate compromise might turn down the heat. Geo-engineering, the deliberate alteration of the planet to undo its inadvertent alteration by humans over the past 200 years, is back on the scientific agenda, with a climate compromise suggested as a possible solution. One group wants to turn down the global thermostat and reverse the global warming trend set in train by greenhouse gases released by fossil fuel combustion, by thinning the almost invisible cirrus clouds that trap radiation and keep the planet warm. Another group proposes to inject sulphur particles into the stratosphere, and keep on doing so for 160 years, to block enough sunlight and lower the planetary temperature. And a third group wants to see a cocktail of both approaches: thin the high cirrus clouds that stop heat from escaping, and at the same pump particles into the stratosphere to scatter the incoming sunlight and limit the disadvantages of each approach by mixing them. The verb “wants” in all three studies is neither fair nor appropriate: all three groups concede that the healthy answer is for humans to fulfil the pledge made in 2015, and start to reduce fossil fuel emissions so drastically that global average temperatures stay well below the 2°C maximum rise agreed by 197 nations at the Paris climate conference. Read More here