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Living within a living, loving planet
Posts tagged CO2 emissions
More bad, bad news
Apr 12th
Carbon dioxide levels also record a big jump in 2021
“Meanwhile, levels of carbon dioxide also continue to increase at historically high rates. The global surface average for carbon dioxide during 2021 was 414.7 parts per million (ppm), which is an increase of 2.66 ppm over the 2020 average. This marks the 10th consecutive year that carbon dioxide increased by more than 2 parts per million, which represents the fastest sustained rate of increase in the 63 years since monitoring began.” https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/increase-in-atmospheric-methane-set-another-record-during-2021
“Observations sustained over many decades, by NOAA and others, show that the rate of carbon dioxide increase has tracked global emissions. Despite international pledges to reduce emissions, climate scientists have seen no measurable progress in reducing greenhouse gas pollution.”
Sky: Does anyone really think that this is God’s will?
IPCC Report Calls Out Vested Interests Delaying Climate Action
Mar 8th
“The UN’s expert climate science organization has criticised the “vested interests” obstructing efforts to cut emissions for the first time this week.”
By Phoebe Cook,
originally published by DeSmog Blog March 1, 2022
A Religious Left
Sep 30th
A religious left
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/24/684435743/provoked-by-trump-the-religious-left-is-finding-its-voice
“Activists on the left should welcome the emergence of a religious core in their ranks because when political activity is morally inspired, it becomes more passionate — as conservatives already understand. Liberals are famous for being cerebral. A religious left may bring more energy to the progressive movement.”
“Democrats got a jolt of that passion at their last national convention with an appearance by the Rev. William Barber, an African-American preacher from North Carolina who started the “Moral Monday” movement in that state.
“Jesus, a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew, called us to preach good news to the poor, the broken, the bruised, and all those who are made to feel unaccepted!” Barber thundered, bringing the delegates to their feet.
Describing himself as “an evangelical Biblicist,” Barber said the nation is need of “moral defibrillators” to work on its weak heart.
“We must shock this nation with the power of love. We must shock this nation with power of mercy. We must shock this nation and fight for justice for all!” Barber said, in the most rousing speech of the convention.”
I have no problem with concern for the poor, the broken, the bruised etc. However, to ignore the health of the Earth, to ignore an emphasis on “other than humans” is to invite extinction. We truly have a “climate crisis.” CO2 in the troposphere is increasing at an increasing rate. The increase is non-linear and unpredictable. A tipping point has been reached.
Definition of tipping point: the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place. The process at work here, and that imperils us, is un-predictable and poorly understood positive feedback. We must remember that with a CO2 reading of 414.7 ppm, in May, from the Mauna Loa Research Station on the big island of Hawaii, we have reached levels never before experienced by humans. Notice the caveat “often.” We don’t understand the Earth behaviour triggered by a “runaway” increase of CO2. We must consider that the “often” is probably a “certainly.”
Change in AMOC
Sep 28th
Carbon Brief
OCEANS 31 January 2019 19:00
Major study uncovers ‘sea change’ in world’s understanding of Atlantic conveyor belt
“The results highlight how important long-term data collection is to fully understanding the impact of climate change on the AMOC, says Prof Monika Rhein, an oceanographer from the Institute for Environmental Physics at Bremen University, Germany, who is also not involved in OSNAP. In a Perspectives article accompanying the new research, she writes:
‘Only long-term continuous time series can provide the much-needed benchmark to evaluate the climate model simulations. The promising results from the OSNAP array, its proximity to the Labrador Sea, and the questions raised about the processes causing AMOC variability provide excellent incentives to continue the OSNAP array for the next decades.’”
More time, more time. We heard this by the US officials after obvious acid rain had killed off all living things in some Canadian lakes. More time will not enable scientists to achieve certainty in how the Earth is affected by greenhouse gasses.
Anyway, we don’t have “more time.” There will be no benchmarks. More and more methane is being released in the northern hemisphere and CO2 is increasing at an increasing rate and increase is variable. Computer models will not give us reliable predictions simply because the increase in CO2 is an unknown variable. In other words, the increases in amount vary from year to year. The tipping point for CO2 has been reached.
Methane Leaks Rule
Sep 14th
Key facts about the new EPA plan to reverse the Obama-era methane leaks rule
Its ultimate fate may be decided by the administration in office in 2021.
Monday, September 9, 2019
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, in 2013 estimated that the greenhouse effect from methane is 34 times stronger than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, and 86 times stronger over a 20-year period. Its potency decreases over time because methane is a relatively short-lived greenhouse gas, mostly breaking down under chemical reactions after about 12 years, whereas carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere for centuries.”
Here, again, as with so many other reports, the author, whom I greatly respect, fails to point out that methane breaks down into CO2 and water. That’s a double whammy. So, methane breaks down “after about 20 years.” Why not stress that it breaks down into the highly persistent CO2 and water vapor which are both greenhouse gasses?
As for methane leakage, see:
Summer weather becomes more persistent in a 2 °C world
Aug 22nd
Summer weather becomes more persistent in a 2 °C world
- Peter Pfleiderer, peter.pfleiderer@climateanalytics.org
- Carl-Friedrich Schleussner,
- Kai Kornhuber &
- Dim Coumou
Nature Climate Change
Published: 19 August 2019
Abstract
Heat and rainfall extremes have intensified over the past few decades and this trend is projected to continue with future global warming1,2,3. A long persistence of extreme events often leads to societal impacts with warm-and-dry conditions severely affecting agriculture and consecutive days of heavy rainfall leading to flooding. Here we report systematic increases in the persistence of boreal summer weather in a multi-model analysis of a world 2 °C above pre-industrial compared to present-day climate. Averaged over the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitude land area, the probability of warm periods lasting longer than two weeks is projected to increase by 4% (2–6% full uncertainty range) after removing seasonal-mean warming. Compound dry–warm persistence increases at a similar magnitude on average but regionally up to 20% (11–42%) in eastern North America. The probability of at least seven consecutive days of strong precipitation increases by 26% (15–37%) for the mid-latitudes. We present evidence that weakening storm track activity contributes to the projected increase in warm and dry persistence. These changes in persistence are largely avoided when warming is limited to 1.5 °C. In conjunction with the projected intensification of heat and rainfall extremes, an increase in persistence can substantially worsen the effects of future weather extremes.
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I still cannot understand how such detailed probability figures can emerge from a model when the increase of CO2 in the troposphere is increasing at an increasing rate and this rate is not constant. Please see: http://www.earthenspirituality.com/tippingpoints/tippingpoints.pdf
System change not climate crisis
May 18th
SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE
Vicky Robin from Vicky Robin Blog
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-05-16/from-despair-to-repair/
“Yes! But notice that most system change has to do with human civilization, human inventions gone awry – democracy, justice, infrastructure, food production, finance. Our actions come from fixing our civilizational future. Now our grief is overwhelming: almost everything is too little too late… but if we stop CO2 we may save a remnant of the beauty, intelligence and glue of our human presence on the planet.
I am not saying this is wrong!!! I want to do all of this as well, and work daily locally on it. It’s just missing the true heart of the matter – that we as humans act upon the earth for our benefit but we do not act with the earth at any level of scale for healing all life.”
Can we Afford the Green New Deal?
Apr 6th
Can we afford the Green New Deal? Can there be a doubt?
How Large Are Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies?
“$5.3 trillion in 2015 (6.5% of global GDP)”
Volume 91, March 2017, Pages 11-27
Author links open overlay panel: DavidCoady, IanParry, LouisSears, BaopingShang
Show more
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.10.004
Summary
“This paper estimates fossil fuel subsidies and the economic and environmental benefits from reforming them, focusing mostly on a broad notion of subsidies arising when consumer prices are below supply costs plus environmental costs and general consumption taxes.
Estimated subsidies are $4.9 trillion worldwide in 2013 and $5.3 trillion in 2015 (6.5% of global GDP in both years). Undercharging for global warming accounts for 22% of the subsidy in 2013, air pollution 46%, broader vehicle externalities 13%, supply costs 11%, and general consumer taxes 8%. China was the biggest subsidizer in 2013 ($1.8 trillion), followed by the United States ($0.6 trillion), and Russia, the European Union, and India (each with about $0.3 trillion). Eliminating subsidies would have reduced global carbon emissions in 2013 by 21% and fossil fuel air pollution deaths 55%, while raising revenue of 4%, and social welfare by 2.2%, of global GDP.”
Photo from Pixabay
Tipping Points
Dec 23rd
“Policymakers “have severely underestimated” the risks of ecological “tipping points” – feedback mechanisms that could occur if certain thresholds are passed – a new study has found. Research published in the journal Science suggests that 45% of potential environmental collapses are interrelated and could amplify one another, highlighting ‘how overstressed and overlapping natural systems are combining to throw up a growing number of unwelcome surprises’, the Guardian writes. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/20/risks-of-domino-effect-of-tipping-points-greater-than-thought-study-says
Just 19% of the 30 types of ecosystem transitions studied were happening in isolation.”
Carbon Brief Daily | 20/12/2018
There is no “could occur” about it. The tipping point has occurred and the feedback mechanisms are spinning away with runaway increases in greenhouse gasses. At the moment, greenhouse gasses are increasing at a rate of over 50% per decade and this rate is also increasing.
http://www.earthenspirituality.com/tippingpoints/tippingpoints.pdf
First Fern Genome Shows Unique Bacterial Partnership
Aug 21st
Discover magazine
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2018/07/02/first-fern-genomes/#.W3vFpc5KiM_
First Fern Genome Shows Unique Bacterial Partnership
This article and research further supports James Lovelock and the Daisyworld hypothesis. Question? What probable action that we know of will lower the CO2 such that we won’t skip another ice age? If we don’t have another ice age, then what property or force that we know of will curtail the non-linear increase in CO2.
My previous post about the CO2 and methane being produced under and around thawing permafrost lakes will increase CO2 and with rising oceans, there will be more swamp and more vegetation under water which will increase CO2 and methane from rotting plants. Why should we not be very, very afraid on behalf of Gaia?
“Though it’s little, the tiny fern Azolla may have changed the world 50 million years ago. Fossil records from the Arctic suggest that these fast-growing, carbon-sequestering ferns removed enough carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere to cool the then-greenhouse globe and allow today’s polar ice caps to form.
In more recent Earth history, rice farmers in Asia have been using Azolla as a natural fertilizer for over 1,000 years. Nostoc azollae, a cyanobacterium species that lives inside Azolla leaves, captures nitrogen from the air and converts it into a form that the ferns — and rice plants — can use.
Many plants have symbiotic relationships with the bacteria living inside them, but Azolla’s partnership with Nostoc is unique because the bacterium lives inside the fern for its whole life and transfers from parent to child when Azolla reproduces. It’s a microbial inheritance that most plants don’t get — they must start fresh with bacteria from the environment.
Evidence hinted that the Azolla fern and its cyanobacterium partner might share a long evolutionary past together. Unraveling the details of their evolutionary history was one reason Li and his team wanted to sequence the Azolla genome.”
“Ferns may have been overlooked partly because they have a reputation for massive genomes that would be expensive to sequence — the average fern has about four times the genetic information of a human — and because the benefits of sequencing fern genomes is not immediately obvious compared to sequencing the genomes of other plants, like agricultural crops.”
“Comparing the new Azolla genome with the previously-sequenced Nostoc genome confirms that the fern and the cyanobacterium have been partners for as long as 100 million years, evolving and branching into new species together. From experiments with the fern’s genome, Li’s team found that the cyanobacterium’s ability to capture nitrogen from air keeps the fern nourished when other nitrogen sources aren’t available.”
“Li’s team studied the fern genomes to track down the origin of the natural pesticides and found evidence that in Salvinia, the pesticide protein might have come from bacteria rather than from plant ancestors. Transferring genes between species is fairly common among bacteria (this is what makes bacteria so good at resisting antibiotics) but rare in more complex life, like plants.”