Sea level rise from ice sheets track worst-case climate change scenario: Phys.org

Credit: CC0 Public Domain 

Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica whose melting rates are rapidly increasing have raised the global sea level by 1.8cm since the 1990s, and are matching the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's worst-case climate warming scenarios.

According to a new study from the University of Leeds and the Danish Meteorological Institute, if these rates continue, the ice sheets are expected to raise sea levels by a further 17cm and expose an additional 16 million people to annual coastal flooding by the end of the century.

Since the ice sheets were first monitored by satellite in the 1990s, melting from Antarctica has pushed global sea levels up by 7.2mm, while Greenland has contributed 10.6mm. And the latest measurements show that the world's oceans are now rising by 4mm each year.

"Although we anticipated the ice sheets would lose increasing amounts of ice in response to the warming of the oceans and atmosphere, the rate at which they are melting has accelerated faster than we could have imagined," said Dr. Tom Slater, lead author of the study and climate researcher at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds.

"The melting is overtaking the climate models we use to guide us, and we are in danger of being unprepared for the risks posed by sea level rise."

The Observer view on the climate catastrophe facing Earth : The Guardian

"Thirty years ago we were warned. Now is our last chance to listen

 

Climate Catastrophe

Thirty years ago this week, the population of Earth was given official notification that it faced a threat of unprecedented magnitude. Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, spewed into the atmosphere from factories and vehicles burning fossil fuels, were pinpointed, definitively, as triggers of future climate change. 

Melting icecaps, rising sea levels and increasing numbers of extreme weather events would be the norm for the 21st century unless action were taken, warned the authors of the first assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The scientists had been charged by the IPCC, which had been set

When Arctic Ice Melts

up two years earlier, with establishing whether climate change was a real prospect and, if it was, to look at the main drivers of that threat. They concluded, in a report released in August 1990, that the menace was real and that coal, gas and oil would be the principal causes of global heating. Unless controls were imposed on their consumption, temperature rises of 0.3C a decade would be occurring in the 21st century, bringing havoc in their wake."
 Observer editorial

Go to complete story of The Guardian 

 Related: There is an answer to post Covid-19 economic chaos.

UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), IPCC report, #climate crisis, #cambio-climatico, #climatecriminals, #jailclimatecriminals, 

You Can't Say You Haven't Been Warned: Green Market Oracle

Despite an unremitting stream of warnings and studies we still are not doing what we must to protect the natural world and keep temperatures from warming beyond critical upper temperature limits. We were warned about our impact on nature seven years ago in the GEO-5 report. Undeterred we continued to perpetrate genocide against nature.  In 2012 scientists warned us that our oceans are dying but we did not respond.  We have now decimated entire aquatic ecosystems and all around the world coral reefs are dead or dying.
We were warned not to surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial norms. We ignored these warnings and we keep pumping climate change causing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at record breaking rates. We are now at 1 degree C above preindustrial norms, two thirds of the way to the point of no return.
Everyone from Stephen Hawkings to President Obama have warned us of the urgent need to act on climate change. The world's leading scientific organizations have also repeatedly warned us about climate change. This includes the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society, the Royal Institution, NASA, the US National Academy of Sciences, the US Geological Survey, and the national science bodies of dozens of countries.
We have amassed an unparalleled body of research that convincingly demonstrates we are on the cusp of an apocalypse. "By now, we know all we need to know" Anne Olhoff said recently. Olhoff is the head of strategy, climate and planning and policy for the UNEP DTU (Technical University of Denmark) Partnership. "The science is pretty clear, and very frightening," she said. 


Read the original article
These warnings are not new. A half century ago climate models accurately predicted global warming. A brief review of climate science shows us that we have known about the dangers of a warming planet since the 1950s. In the last couple of decades scientists have added to these warnings. In 2006 the Stern Review warned us that we had to urgently reduce our emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. By 2012 dozens of studies made the case for anthropogenic climate change including a report from UNEP that warned that we are on the brink of a climate catastrophe. In 2013 The U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA) report and an IPCC study reaffirmed that anthropogenic climate change is a real and growing problem.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) issued a climate warning in 2012 and so did the World Bank. We have seen countless scientific warnings including reports from PwC, AGU and the WMO, all of which have told us that we are are running out of time. Seven years ago the IEA and the WRI warned that we need to stop burning fossil fuels. Investors are continually being warned about the dangers of hydrocarbons and even oil companies have issued their own climate warnings. In fact, in the 1960s the fossil fuel industry's own science revealed that they are causing global warming.
We fail to act despite the preponderance of economic evidence indicating that the benefits of climate action far outweigh the costs. According to the Global Energy Transformation report, there are 160 trillion dollars worth of savings from climate action. Five years ago the wisdom of action was explained in the Risky Business Report.  Climate change has also been the hot topic at the World Economic Forum (WED) in Davos Switzerland.
In 2017 two scientific warnings stand out, the U.S. Global Change Research Program's fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) and an open letter from the Alliance of World Scientists. The letter is titled "Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice" and it was published in BioScience. It was signed by more than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries. It warned humanity about the dangers of climate change. The warning specifically said that humanity must change its ways in order to protect the planet. It specifically points to rising greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation.
A 2018 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) study reaffirmed that we are teetering on the cusp of a man-made climate calamity. The  IPCC report warned that governments must take urgent action to avoid "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society". The report warned that by 2030 we will will breech the upper threshold limit (1.5 C). A 2019 IPCC report warned that we are seeing accelerated ice melt and sea level rise. 


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In 2019, more than 10,000 scientists from 153 countries declared a "climate emergency". The study is called "World scientists' warning of a climate emergency". The seriousness of the threat was addressed by biologist Jesse Bellemare who said "the climate crisis is real, and is a major, even existential, threat to human societies." Bellemare is an associate professor of biology at Smith College who is a signatory of the study’s emergency declaration.
Researchers have warned us that we are facing the end of civilization. The well documented effects of catastrophic warming includes cataclysmic flooding from sea level rise, more frequent and devastating extreme weather, massive wildfires, and chronic food shortages. But there may be an even worse fate awaiting us in a world ravaged by runaway climate change. Simply put, if we fail to act we are headed for a horrific disaster that will adversely impact life on Earth.
Climate change is here and the only question that remains is just how bad it will get. That is still up to us, but with each passing year we ebb ever closer to tipping points from which we may not be able to recover.  The window of opportunity to act is closing  and the longer we wait the harder it will be. 

Read the original article

The terrible truth of climate change: The Monthly

"As I collated this information for my presentation, it became clear to me that Cyclone Tracy is a warning. Without major action, we will see tropical cyclones drifting into areas on the southern edge of current cyclone zones, into places such as south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales, where infrastructure is not ready to cope with cyclonic conditions.

These areas currently house more than 3.6 million people; we simply aren’t prepared for what is upon us.

There is a very rational reason why Australian schoolkids are now taking to the streets – the immensity of what is at stake is truly staggering. Staying silent about this planetary emergency no longer feels like an option for me either. Given how disconnected policy is from scientific reality in this country, an urgent and pragmatic national conversation is now essential. Other-
wise, living on a destabilised planet is the terrible truth that we will all face."

"We still have time to try and avert the scale of the disaster, but we must respond as we would in an emergency. The question is, can we muster the best of our humanity in time?"

Read the complete The Monthly article 

See also:

Honest Government Ad | We're F**ked: YouTube

What You Should Know About the New Climate Change Report: Medium

We have the technological capability to stop our earth from warming further. But it looks like that won’t happen.

"Even tiny increases in global temperature — give or take just 0.5°C — could severely alter our planet, bringing us hotter days year-round, the total destruction of the world’s corals, more dangerous flooding, and increased instances of drought and wildfire. Even though we have the technology and know-how to cap warming at a 1.5°C increase, humanity is on track to warm the planet by 3°C by the end of the century.

This is all according to a new report by a group of international researchers that advise the United Nations on all things climate change. The research zooms in on what would happen if the world warms by 1.5°C and 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The report’s authors say keeping temperature rise at or below 1.5°C is necessary to stave off the more drastic impacts of global climate change."

Read the Medium article 

Related: 

Leaked IPCC report warns of the future of oceans in climate change: Global Landscapes Forum

 

Leaked IPCC report warns of the future of oceans in climate change: Global Landscapes Forum

"This topic will be discussed at the Global Landscapes Forum New York 2019. Learn more about how to join here.

The world’s vast oceans, glacial ice sheets and northern permafrost are poised to unleash disaster, including drought, floods, hunger and destruction, unless dramatic action is taken against human-caused carbon pollution and climate change, warns a leaked draft of a major U.N. report.

The Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) sounds alarm bells over declines in fish stocks, plus “a hundred-fold or more increase in the damages caused by superstorms, and hundreds of millions of people displaced by rising seas,” according to news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), which obtained a copy of the 900-page draft report."

Read the complete article 

Related:

Great Barrier Reef outlook now 'very poor', Australian government review says: The Guardian

Forests, logging and climate change: IA

Logging has a serious effect on climate change, writes Frances Pike.

THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL for Climate Change (IPCC) recommends that "natural solutions" are employed to deal with climate change emergency. The immediate protection and restoration of natural systems for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) are preferred to geo-engineering and B.E.C.C.S — burning biomass as a fossil fuel substitute while using some sort of carbon capture and storage.

It is clear that the resilience of natural systems must be enhanced to withstand climate change impact, lest they falter and collapse, inhibiting their capacity for CDR.

The fairytale that burning wood instead of coal is carbon neutral continues to wreak havoc on the world’s extant forests. But that fairytale could soon end, taking with it the myth that the industrial logging of the world’s native forests has been and is now "sustainable".

For a long time, the falsity of carbon emission accounting for forest bioenergy has been apparently invisible to many policymakers. A Weekend Australian commentator said, in relation to UK power station Drax which has converted to wood: “The CO2 it emitted as a coal station was causing climate change; the increased CO2 now emitted from burning wood is defined by the EC bureaucrats as not existing”.

Read the complete article 

Related: Want to beat climate change? Protect our natural forests: The Conversation

We can’t keep eating as we are – why isn’t the IPCC shouting this from the rooftops? The Guardian

by George Monbiot

"It’s a tragic missed opportunity. The new report on land by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shies away from the big issues and fails to properly represent the science. As a result, it gives us few clues about how we might survive the century. Has it been nobbled? Was the fear of taking on the farming industry – alongside the oil and coal companies whose paid shills have attacked it so fiercely – too much to bear? At the moment, I have no idea. But what the panel has produced is pathetic. 

 

The problem is that it concentrates on just one of the two ways of counting the carbon costs of farming. The first way – the IPCC’s approach – could be described as farming’s current account. How much greenhouse gas does driving tractors, spreading fertiliser and raising livestock produce every year? According to the panel’s report, the answer is around 23% of the planet-heating gases we currently produce. But this fails miserably to capture the overall impact of food production.

The second accounting method is more important. This could be described as the capital account: how does farming compare to the natural ecosystems that would otherwise have occupied the land? A paper published in Nature last year, but not mentioned by the IPCC, sought to count this cost. Please read these figures carefully. They could change your life."

Go to The Guardian article

Will the world end because of climate change?

Victoria can, and should, lead the country on climate change: SMH

Grey Power Climate Protectors

"Many people see climate change as a federal domain, but actually the states are responsible for energy supply and have most of the regulatory levers – like the EPA – to cut pollution across all sectors of the economy. Plus Andrews has already done the hard yards cranking up the renewables we will need as we phase out Victoria’s ageing coal power stations.

All of which means Victoria can, and should, lead the entire country on the issue.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that human civilisation has just 12 years to avert an ecological and humanitarian catastrophe. We live in an extraordinary time and it calls for extraordinary leadership, not merely sound management. The Andrews government has just won an election with a massive mandate on climate change and renewable energy and here is the perfect political moment to act. Will they seize it?"

Read the SMH article

1.5°C = Zero Fossil Fuels: 350.org

1.5 degrees heating

It’s simple — to keep global warming below 1.5°C, coal, oil + gas needs to stay in the ground.

On October 8, 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report on keeping warming below 1.5°C. It was a wake-up call to the world that the window for avoiding runaway climate change is closing — fast.

To have any chance of staying under 1.5°C of warming, no new fossil fuel project can be allowed to go ahead.

The fossil fuel industry is knowingly causing the climate crisis. Every institution and every single level of government has a role to play in stopping this reckless industry before it’s too late.

We must demand that all institutions withdraw their support from the fossil fuel industry — be that investments, sponsorships, subsidies or permits — and stand up to the industry before it’s too late.

Go to original 350.org article

#fossil fuels  #divestment  #coal  #oil  #gas  #IPCC  #1.5degrees C  # global warming

Is this the incentive we need? — IPCC Climate Report: Medium

Climate Catastrophe?

The IPCC is currently conducting a study in South Korea — and it is likely to report that keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius is possible — with immediate, radical action.

 

  Could this finally be the thing that kickstarts the green revolution, with governments not just meeting targets but far exceeding them? I’m sceptical, but optimistic at the same time.

Read the Medium article

Shed A Light: Rupert Read – This civilisation is finished: so what is to be done?: You Tube Video

The Paris Agreement explicitly commits us to use non-existent, utterly reckless, unaffordable and ineffective 'Negative Emissions Technologies' which will almost certainly fail to be realised. Barring a multifaceted miracle, within a generation, we will be facing an exponentially rising tide of climate disasters that will bring this civilization down. We, therefore, need to engage with climate realism. This means an epic struggle to mitigate and adapt, an epic struggle to take on the climate-criminals and, notably, to start planning seriously for civilizational collapse. 

 Dr Rupert Read is a Reader in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia. Rupert is a specialist in Wittgenstein, environmental philosophy, critiques of Rawlsian liberalism, and philosophy of film. His research in environmental ethics and economics has included publications on problems of ‘natural capital’ valuations of nature, as well as pioneering work on the Precautionary Principle. Recently, his work was cited by the Supreme Court of the Philippines in their landmark decision to ban the cultivation of GM aubergine. Rupert is also chair of the UK-based post-growth think tank, Green House, and is a former Green Party of England & Wales councillor, spokesperson, European parliamentary candidate and national parliamentary candidate. He stood as the Green Party MP-candidate for Cambridge in 2015. 

 About the series Shed A Light is a series of talks that seek to present alternative framings of future human-nature interactions and the pragmatic solution pathways that we could take to get there. By recognising the interlinkages between struggles for ecological, social and economic justice in addition to the desperate need for immediate societal transformation, Shed A Light aims to engage everyone with the green agenda and prompt broad-based discussions on sustainability issues. 

Filmed at Churchill College, 7 November 2018.

#climatecatastrophe  #runawayclimatechange  #methanegas  #greenhousegas  #geoengineering  #greenhousegases  #Parisagreement  #biogas   #biodiversity

CNN: Scientist laughs at climate change skeptics

Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist who assisted government agencies in publishing a report predicting devastating damages from climate change, said she in no way benefited financially from helping to write it.

The Guardian: We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN

Urgent changes needed to cut risk of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty, says IPCC

• Overwhelmed by climate change? Here’s what you can do

The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
 
The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday say urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target, which they say is affordable and feasible although it lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C.

Read the full The Guardian article

The Real News: Michael Mann: We Are Even Closer To Climate Disaster Than IPCC Predicts

TheRealNews Published on Oct 9, 2018 

A new report from the world's leading body on climate change says we could see catastrophic global warming by 2030, and climate scientist Michael Mann says their predictions are too conservative

Video from CNN: Stark Warning from UN Climate PanelCC

From The post-human world site: A New Life Awaits Us On The ALIEN EARTH

Read the original article and hear the podcast

Last year it finally dawned on me that we’d never solve climate change in time.

That the operative question was now: what would the world would be like after it?

BBC video: Why we're heading for climate catastrophe?

Published October 8, 2018

A damning report from the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has put the world on the path to a 'climate catastrophe' as global warming nears 3C. As scientists say global warming must be limited to 1.5 C, we investigate if it's too late to turn back.

PBS News: IPCC report a dire warning of climate heating

 
Unless we immediately reduce the burning of coal and oil and gas that drive up global temperatures, a new UN report warns the world will suffer tremendous consequences as early as 2040.

October 8, 2018