30 June 2016, NASA. Why a half-degree temperature rise is a big deal. The Paris Agreement, which delegates from 196 countries hammered out in December 2015, calls for holding the ongoing rise in global average temperature to “well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels,” while “pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C.” How much difference could that half-degree of wiggle room (or 0.9 degree on the Fahrenheit scale) possibly make in the real world? Quite a bit, it appears. The European Geosciences Union published a study in April 2016 that examined the impact of a 1.5 degree Celsius vs. a 2.0 C temperature increase by the end of the century, given what we know so far about how climate works. It found that the jump from 1.5 to 2 degrees—a third more of an increase—raises the impact by about that same fraction, very roughly, on most of the phenomena the study covered. Heat waves would last around a third longer, rain storms would be about a third more intense, the increase in sea level would be approximately that much higher and the percentage of tropical coral reefs at risk of severe degradation would be roughly that much greater. But in some cases, that extra increase in temperature makes things much more dire. At 1.5 C, the study found that tropical coral reefs stand a chance of adapting and reversing a portion of their die-off in the last half of the century. But at 2 C, the chance of recovery vanishes. Tropical corals are virtually wiped out by the year 2100. Read More here
Tag Archives: Emissions
28 June 2016, DESMOG, Obama Admin Approved Over 1,500 Offshore Fracking Permits in Gulf of Mexico and Mainstream Media Has Ignored It. On June 24, the independent news website TruthOut broke a doozy of a story: the Obama Administration has secretly approved over 1,500 instances of offshore hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the Gulf of Mexico, including during the Deepwater Horizon offshore spill disaster. Albeit released on a Friday, a day where many mainstream media reporters head out of the office early and venture to late-afternoon and early-evening Happy Hour specials at the bars, the TruthOut story has received deafening silence by the corporate-owned media apparatus. Google News, Factiva and LexisNexis searches reveal that not a single mainstream media outlet has covered the story. TruthOut got its hands on the story via documents provided by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). CBD explained inpress release that they “obtained the information following an agreement that settled a lawsuit challenging the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s failure to disclose documents regarding the scope of offshore fracking in the Gulf under the Freedom of Information Act.” CBD also has published a list of all of the instances of offshore fracking in the Gulf of Mexico provided to it by BOEM, both inlist-form and in visual map form. Read More here
26 June 2016, Climate News Network, China aims to halve meat eating.The Chinese government has issued guidelines to help wean its citizens onto a more vegetarian diet − offering huge potential health gains and cuts in greenhouse gases. In a bold challenge to individual appetites and societal norms, China says it wants to reduce its citizens’ consumption of meat by 50%. The country consumes 28% of the world’s meat, including half of its pork, although its per capita consumption is much less than in at least 14 other countries. The average American or Australian eats twice as much meat as the typical Chinese citizen. The Chinese health ministry has published new dietary guidelines recommending that people should eat from 40g to at most 75g of meat a day, which is close to the level recommended by British health authorities to limit the risk of developing bowel cancer. The guidelines’ main purpose is to improve public health, but if they achieve their aim they will also give a significant boost to efforts to cut emissions of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) that are stoking climate change and global warming. Livestock emissions Worldwide, 14.5% of greenhouse emissions come from the livestock industry, which is more than the contribution from the entire transport sector. Livestock emit the highly-potent greenhouse gas methane, although there have been proposals to tackle the problem by changing the animals’ diets. Land clearing, fertilisers and slurry also release large quantities of GHGs. The new guidelines could mean carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from China’s livestock industry would fall by 1bn tonnes by 2030, from a projected 1.8bn tonnes in that year. Read More here
17 June 2016, The Guardian, What would a global warming increase of 1.5C be like? How ambitious is the world? The Paris climate conference last December astounded many by pledging not just to keep warming “well below two degrees celsius,” but also to “pursue efforts” to limit warming to 1.5C. That raised a hugely important question: What’s the difference between a two-degree world and a 1.5-degree world? Given we are already at one degree above pre-industrial levels, halting at 1.5C would look to be at least twice as hard as the two-degree option.So would it be worth it? And is it even remotely achievable? In Paris, delegates called on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to report on the implications of a 1.5C target. They want the job done by 2018, in time to inform renewed talks on toughening emissions targets beyond those agreed upon in Paris. But the truth is that scientists are only now getting out of the blocks to address what a 1.5C world would look like, because until recently it sounded like a political and technological impossibility. As a commentary published online in Nature Climate Change last week warned, there is “a paucity of scientific analysis” about the consequences of pursuing a 1.5C target. To remedy this, the paper’s researchers, led by Daniel Mitchell and others at Oxford University, called for a dedicated program of research to help inform what they described as “arguably one of the most momentous [decisions] to be made in the coming decade.” And they are on the case, with their own dedicated website and a major conference planned at Oxford in the fall. So what is at stake? There are two issues to address. First, what would be gained by going the extra mile for 1.5? And second, what would it take to deliver? Read More here