Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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The UN’s 3-road solution to the eco-crisis in farming
First is a shift towards more plant-based diets
Second, restoring native ecosystems to increase biodiversity.
Thirdly, farming in a less intensive and damaging way and accepting lower yields.Prof Tim Benton, “We must stop arguing that we have to subsidise the food system in the name of the poor and instead deal with the poor by bringing them out of poverty.”
Benton said the report was not advocating that all people should become vegan, but should follow healthy diets that are as a result much lower in meat.
Susan Gardner, director of Unep’s ecosystems division, said, “Reforming the way we produce and consume food is an urgent priority,”
For example, a switch from beef to beans by the US population would free up fields equivalent to 42% of US cropland for other uses such as rewilding or more nature-friendly farming.
If the permanent pasture around the world that was once forest was returned to its native state, it would store 72bn tonnes of carbon – roughly equivalent to seven years of global emissions from fossil fuels.
More disappointing news for those who still believe that governments will act to protect the environment.
The world’s state-owned fossil fuel companies are poised to invest about $1.9tn (£1.4tn) in the next decade in projects that would destroy any prospect of meeting the Paris agreement climate goals…the authors made the dilemma clear: “Either the world does what’s necessary to limit global warming, or national oil companies can profit from these investments. Both are not possible.”
David Manley, the lead author of the report and a senior economic analyst at the thinktank, said: “A lot of the oil industry wants one last party, and they are going to invest trillions. We are worried about how long that party will continue. If the energy transition [away from fossil fuels and into clean energy] is to be fast enough to meet the Paris agreement, the party needs to be over very quickly.”
Misuse of climate models could pose a growing risk to financial markets by giving investors a false sense of certainty over how the physical impacts of climate change will play out, according to the authors of a paper published on Monday.
“…climate models were never developed to provide finessed information for financial risk,” said Andy Pitman, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales and a co-author of the paper.
Improper use of climate models could lead to unintended consequences, such as “greenwashing” some investments by downplaying risks, or hitting the ability of companies to raise debt by exaggerating others, the authors said.
The problem is that existing climate models have been developed to predict temperature changes over many decades, at global or continental scales, whereas investors generally need location-specific analysis on much shorter time frames.
“Businesses like using models, because the numbers give them a sense of security,” said Tanya Fiedler, a lecturer at the University of Sydney and lead author of the paper. “It doesn’t necessarily mean the numbers are reliable.”
Saved again
The depletion of the ozone is now in reverse once more.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ozone-layer-chemical-killing-emissions-b1800393.html
There is also this passage from that report on state-owned oil companies (NOCs):
“Many of the countries with NOCs are highly dependent on oil and gas revenues. They should be helped to overcome this dependence, according to Manley. “These countries are often quite poor, and it’s not their fault – it is not as easy as saying to BP and Shell they should shut down,” said Manley.”
Another reason why a rational world energy policy is impossible under capitalism — the sectional interests of the various capitalist states into which the world is divided politically get in the way.
Ending fossil fuels will be economic suicidal for some countries.
The think-tank Carbon Tracker says some countries could lose at least 40% of total government revenue. The dependence on oil and gas revenue is very marked for some countries – more than 80% for Iraq and Equatorial Guinea. For another seven including Saudi Arabia the figure is more than 60%. Some countries face very large losses of total revenue. For seven countries, including Angola and Azerbaijan the predicted loss is at least 40%. For another 12, including Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Algeria it is in the range of 20% to 40%.
It estimates the cumulative total revenue loss for all oil-producing countries by 2040 will be $13 trillion (in 2020 dollars).
This report also calls for the rest of the world to support the transition.
“The sharks are not the problem – climate change is the problem. The sharks are telling us that the ocean is changing and it’s now time for us to do something about it.” says Kyle Van Houtan, of the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-82424-9 (long read)
Australian and Chinese researchers adds weight to scientists’ warnings from recent United Nations reports about how sea levels are expected to rise dangerously in the coming decades.
“You could say,” Grinsted added, “that this article has two main messages: The scenarios we see before us now regarding sea level rise are too conservative—the sea looks, using our method, to rise more than what is believed using the present method. The other message is that research in this area can benefit from using our method to constrain sea level models in the scenarios in the future.”
“The analysis of the recent sea level data indicate the world is tracking between RCP4.5 and the worst case scenario of RCP8.5,” Church warned. “If we continue with large ongoing emissions as we are at present, we will commit the world to meters of sea level rise over coming centuries.”
The research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, found that sea level rise projections for this century “are on the money when tested against satellite and tide-gauge observations,” as a statement from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) summarized.
However, because of the limited 11-year comparison period, Church added, “there remains a potential for larger sea level rises, particularly beyond 2100 for high emission scenarios.
Heartrending scene on a documentary preview shows trees being felled and forest bulldozed as orangutans flee. A desperate orangutan is seen pushing in vain against a digging machine.
In Texas a propaganda war has broken out over the cause of its electrical power collapses.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/20/in-extreme-texas-cold-green-new-deal-turns-into-hot-potato
“This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott told Fox News.
“The Green New Deal has nothing to do with our problems in Texas,” said Daniel Cohan, associate professor of engineering at Rice University. “…Natural gas systems failed to provide those plants with a reliable supply of fuel.”
The situation is Texas has some parallel with what happened in Britain in the Big Freeze-up of 1963 and for the same reason — that it is not profitable to invest in the extra electricity generation capacity to meet a once in a decade weather condition.
Energy executive brags of ‘hitting the jackpot’ as natural gas prices surge amid deadly crisis in Texas…
https://www.rawstory.com/texas-storm-2650682585/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6619
And i am called a Cassandra catastrophist …hummmfff
The climate emergency is already hitting “worst case scenario” levels that if left unchecked will lead to the collapse of ecosystems, with dire consequences for humanity, according to the chief executive of the Environment Agency.
Warning that this is not “science fiction”, Sir James Bevan said on Tuesday that in recent years several of the “reasonable worst case scenarios” had happened in the UK, with more extreme weather and flooding. And he urged politicians to take action to reduce emissions and adapt to the “inevitable” impacts of the climate emergency.
“Much higher sea levels will take out most of the world’s cities, displace millions, and make much of the rest of our land surface uninhabitable or unusable,” Bevan told the annual conference of the Association of British Insurers. “Much more extreme weather will kill more people through drought, flooding, wildfires and heatwaves than most wars have. The net effects will collapse ecosystems, slash crop yields, take out the infrastructure that our civilisation depends on, and destroy the basis of the modern economy and modern society.
“If [this] sounds like science fiction let me tell you something you need to know. This is that over the last few years the reasonable worst case for several of the flood incidents the EA has responded to has actually happened, and it’s getting larger.
if left unchecked as always is the key phrase.
The Gulf Stream, the weather system that brings warm and mild weather to Europe, is at its weakest in more than a millennium. Further weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) if global heating continues, could bring us close to a “tipping point” at which the system could become irrevocably unstable.
“The consequences of this are so massive that even a 10% chance of triggering a breakdown would be an unacceptable risk.”
Climate change is drying up the Colorado River…
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