Overview-Climate Change

The chart that defines our warming world=

BBC 6/20/2019

Is this the simplest way to show what is meant by global warming? The chart below organises all the countries of the world by region, time and temperature. The trend is unmistakeable.

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  One climate crisis disaster happening every week, UN warns

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  Climate crisis: Alaska is melting and it’s likely to accelerate global heating The Guardian

One climate crisis disaster happening every week, UN warns

The Guardian 7/07/2019

Catastrophes such as cyclones Idai and Kenneth in Mozambique and the drought afflicting India make headlines around the world. But large numbers of “lower impact events” that are causing death, displacement and suffering are occurring much faster than predicted, said Mami Mizutori, the UN secretary-general’s special representative on disaster risk reduction. “This is not about the future, this is about today.”

Scientists’ warning to humanity: microorganisms and climate change

Nature 6/28/2019

In the Anthropocene, in which we now live, climate change is impacting most life on Earth. Microorganisms support the existence of all higher trophic life forms. To understand how humans and other life forms on Earth (including those we are yet to discover) can withstand anthropogenic climate change, it is vital to incorporate knowledge of the microbial ‘unseen majority’. We must learn not just how microorganisms affect climate change (including production and consumption of greenhouse gases) but also how they will be affected by climate change and other human activities. This Consensus Statement documents the central role and global importance of microorganisms in climate change biology. It also puts humanity on notice that the impact of climate change will depend heavily on responses of microorganisms, which are essential for achieving an environmentally sustainable future.

Scientists Issue Warning To Humanity: Climate Change Depends On Microbes

Discover 6/28/2019

The world’s dirt holds on to some 2.2 trillion tons of carbon. That’s more than the combined amount of carbon in the atmosphere and in vegetation. And what controls how much carbon soil can hang on to and how much it releases? Microbes. Their carbon gatekeeping is critical, because the element is one of the key components of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2), which is currently at record levels in Earth’s atmosphere.

The same is true of soil microbes. “In terrestrial environments, microbes release a range of important greenhouse gases to the atmosphere (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide), and climate change is causing these emissions to increase,” Cavicchioli said. That’s because, as with plants, hotter temperatures cause soil microbes to release more carbon. And since climate-change-induced warming is only getting worse, scientists expect more carbon from vegetation and soils will go into the atmosphere.

Leaving microbes out of climate change conversation has major consequences, experts warn

EurekaAlert 6/28/2019

More than 30 microbiologists from 9 countries have issued a warning to humanity - they are calling for the world to stop ignoring an 'unseen majority' in Earth's biodiversity and ecosystem when addressing climate change.

For example, the Census of Marine Life estimates that 90% of the ocean's total biomass is microbial. In our oceans, marine lifeforms called phytoplankton take light energy from the sun and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as much as plants. The tiny phytoplankton form the beginning of the ocean food web, feeding krill populations that then feed fish, sea birds and large mammals such as whales.

"Climate change also expands the number and geographic range of vectors (such as mosquitos) that carry pathogens. The end result is the increased spread of disease, and serious threats to global food supplies."

Microbes hold the balance in climate crisis

Climate News Network 6/28/2019

They argue that research is ignoring the silent, unseen majority that makes up the microbial world. Lifeforms that add up to a huge proportion of living matter on the planet are being largely left out of climate calculations.

A Kentucky Power Plant's Demise Signals a Reckoning for Coal

InsideClimateNews-6/15/2019

The 1,000-megawatt coal plant on the banks of the Ohio River hadn't produced toxic ash—or electricity—since it was retired by its owner, LG&E, in 2015. But its demise, which took less than a minute, symbolized the broader decline of coal in both generating capacity and the production of electricity.

White House physicist sought aid of rightwing thinktank to challenge climate science

The Guardian 6/14/2019

In the messages, part of a group of emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Happer and the Heartland adviser Hal Doiron discuss Happer’s scientific arguments in a paper attempting to knock down the concept of climate emergency, as well as ideas to make the work “more useful to a wider readership”. Happer writes he had already discussed the work with another Heartland adviser, Thomas Wysmuller.

Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach

National Centre for Climate Restoration 5/2019

2030–2050: Emissions peak in 2030, and start to fall consistent with an 80 percent reduction in fossil-fuel energy intensity by 2100 compared to 2010 energy intensity. This leads to warming of 2.4°C by 2050, consistent with the Xu and Ramanathan “baseline-fast” scenario. However, another 0.6°C of warming occurs 19 — taking the total to 3°C by 2050 — due to the activation of a number of carbon-cycle feedbacks and higher levels of ice albedo and cloud feedbacks than current models assume. [It should be noted that this is far from an extreme scenario: the low-probability, high-impact warming (five percent probability) can exceed 3.5–4°C by 2050 in the Xu and Ramanathan scheme.]
While sea levels have risen 0.5 metres by 2050, the increase may be 2–3 metres by 2100, and it is understood from historical analogues that seas may eventually rise by more than 25 metres. Thirty-five percent of the global land area, and 55 percent of the global population, are subject to more than 20 days a year of lethal heat conditions, beyond the threshold of human survivability. The destabilisation of the Jet Stream has very significantly affected the intensity and geographical distribution of the Asian and West African monsoons and, together with the further slowing of the Gulf Stream, is impinging on life support systems in Europe. North America suffers from devastating weather extremes including wildfires, heatwaves, drought and inundation. The summer monsoons in China have failed, and water flows into the great rivers of Asia are severely reduced by the loss of more than one-third of the Himalayan ice sheet. Glacial loss reaches 70 percent in the Andes, and rainfall in Mexico and central America falls by half. Semi-permanent El Nino conditions prevail. Aridification emerges over more than 30 percent of the world’s land surface. Desertification is severe in southern Africa, the southern Mediterranean, west Asia, the Middle East, inland Australia and across the south-western United States.

Michael Bloomberg Launches Beyond Carbon

Bloomberg Philanthropies 6/07/2019

Beyond Carbon will work to put the U.S. on track towards a 100% clean energy economy by working with advocates around the country to build on the leadership and climate progress underway in our states, cities, and communities. Bloomberg and his foundation joined forces with the Sierra Club in 2011 to launch Beyond Coal with the goal of closing at least a third of the country’s coal plants. 

Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

NY MAG article Climate Change efforts 1979-1989

Editor’s Note:This narrative by Nathaniel Rich is a work of history, addressing the 10-year period from 1979 to 1989: the decisive decade when humankind first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change. Complementing the text is a series of aerial photographs and videos, all shot over the past year by George Steinmetz. With support from the Pulitzer Center, this two-part article is based on 18 months of reporting and well over a hundred interviews. It tracks the efforts of a small group of American scientists, activists and politicians to raise the alarm and stave off catastrophe. It will come as a revelation to many readers — an agonizing revelation — to understand how thoroughly they grasped the problem and how close they came to solving it. Jake Silverstein

Humans held responsible for twists and turns of climate change since 1900

Science Magazine 5/27/2019

While industry and agriculture belched greenhouse gases at an increasing pace through the 20th century, global temperature followed a jagged course, surging for 3 decades starting in 1915, leveling off from the 1950s to the late 1970s, and then resuming its climb. For decades, scientists have chalked up these early swings to the planet’s internal variability—in particular, a climatic pacemaker called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is characterized by long-term shifts in ocean temperatures. But researchers are increasingly questioning whether the AMO played the dominant role once thought. The oceanic pacemaker seems to be fluttering.
It is now possible to explain the record’s twists and turns almost entirely without the AMO, says Karsten Haustein

Climate change impacts worse than expected, global report warns

The Guardian- Hurricane's impact on Puerto Rico 4/26/19

The impacts and costs of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) of global warming will be far greater than expected, according to a comprehensive assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released Sunday in Incheon, South Korea.

National Geo Climate change impacts worse than expected, global report warns

National Geo Climate change impacts worse than expected, global report warns 10 07 2018

The impacts and costs of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) of global warming will be far greater than expected, according to a comprehensive assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released Sunday in Incheon, South Korea.

Country-level social cost of carbon

Nature Climate Change- Research Country-level social cost of carbon 9/18

Here we estimate country-level contributions to the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) using recent  climate model projections, empirical climate-driven economic damage estimations and socio-economic projections.  Central specifications show high global SCC values (median, US$417 per tonne of CO2 (tCO2); 66% confidence intervals, US$177–805 per tCO2) and a country-level SCC that is unequally distributed. However, the relative ranking of countries is robust to different specifications: countries that incur large fractions of the global cost consistently include India, China,  Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Climate disasters cost the world $650 billion over 3 years — Americans are bearing the brunt: Morgan Stanley

CNBC Costs of Climate Change last 3 years

North America absorbed two-thirds of the global cost of climate disasters over the last three years, Morgan Stanley says.

At $415 billion, the price of the disasters is equal to 0.66 percent of North America’s GDP.

2018 takes the podium as one of the hottest years on record. Let’s look deeper.

Mashable- Warming Overview 12/20/2018

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies keeps track of Earth's changing temperatures with a data bank that reaches back to the 1880s. This year will end up as the 4th-warmest year in recorded history, Gavin Schmidt, the director of the NASA program, said over email.

World 'nowhere near on track' to avoid warming beyond 1.5C target

The Guardian-No Progress on Climate Change 9/2018

A massive, immediate transformation in the way the world’s population generates energy, uses transportation and grows food will be required to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5C and the forthcoming analysis is set to lay bare how remote this possibility is.

California 4th Annual Report Climate Change

California 4th Annual Report Climate Change

Key Findings
California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment provides information to build resilience to climate impacts, including temperature, wildfire, water, sea level rise, and governance. Here you can view a snapshot of the key findings of the Fourth Assessment. For additional information, please download the Key Findings brochure, “California's Changing Climate 2018.”

100 Corporations Responsible For 71% Of Carbon Emissions

Carbon-Majors-Report 100 companies = 71% Climate Change CleanTechnica 100 companies = 71% Climate Change

The Carbon Majors Database stores greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data on the largest company-related sources of all time. CDP’s Carbon Majors Report 2017 is the first in an ongoing series of publications aimed at using this Database – the most comprehensive available – to highlight the role that corporations can play in driving the global energy transition.

The Impacts of Climate Change at 1.5c, 2C and Beyond

Carbon Brief Interactive difference between 1.5c and 2c

Carbon Brief has extracted data from around 70 peer-reviewed climate studies to show how global warming is projected to affect the world and its regions.
Scroll down to see how these impacts vary at different temperature levels, across a range of key metrics. Click on the icons below to skip to specific categories and regions.