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, 

Climate Change is a cause of attacks on democracy

As the climate crisis worsens and conflict increases over scarce resources expect more threats to authentic democracy.

In The Maldives

President Abdulla Yameen of the Maldives. AFP/Getty

"According to a 2017 study published in The Lancet, extreme weather could displace up to a billion people around the world by the middle of the twenty-first century—an unprecedented human migration will undoubtedly influence the politics of wealthy countries, pushing them to the right.

The best way to counteract this phenomenon is naturally to halt, or at least slow, the effects of climate change. So far, the Paris agreement is the only tangible result of those efforts, and its fate is far from certain .............  But this might change, if the problems caused by climate change—not just stronger hurricanes, droughts, and rising seas, but political rupture—keep washing up on the disappearing shorelines of wealthy governments."

Go to The New Republic article



Around the world

"In its 5th Assessment Report (2014), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) unequivocally confirmed that climate change is real and that human-made greenhouse gas emissions are its primary cause. The report identified the increasing frequency of extreme weather events and natural disasters, rising sea-levels, floods, heat waves, droughts, desertification, water shortages, and the spread of tropical and vector-borne diseases as some of the adverse impacts of climate change. These phenomena directly and indirectly threaten the full and effective enjoyment of a range of human rights by people throughout the world, including the rights to life, water and sanitation, food, health, housing, self-determination, culture and development."

Go to the ohchr.org story



In Australia

"Scott Morrison (Australia's Prime Minister) has signalled a crackdown on “selfish, indulgent and apocalyptic” environmental activists."

Go to The New Daily story 

"It takes some chutzpah to stand up with a straight face and deliver a speech foreshadowing a government crackdown on protest activity while in the same breath declaring that a new insidious form of progressivism is intent on denying the liberties of Australians."

Go to The Guardian story
 

Our democratic freedoms are under threat in Australia and around the world.

Australian Federal Police raid the ABC offices

"Source confidentiality is one of journalists’ most central ethical principles. It is recognised by the United Nations and is vital to a functioning democracy and free, independent, robust and effective media. 

Go to The Conversation article

"If the major parties and politicians want to rebuild trust with voters, they will need to change the way they do politics: stop misusing their entitlements, strengthen political donations laws, tighten regulation of lobbyists, and slow the revolving door between political offices and lobbying positions."

Go Grattan Institute article 

Let's safeguard our democratic institutions such as free speech, restrictions on overwhelming amounts of corporate donations to political parties, freedom to protest, freedom to privacy, freedom to gather.
 

In the USA

Go to The Atlantic article: David Goldman / AP

"As heat, disaster risks, and rising seas bombard local governments, the ability of those governments to fulfill their basic functions—the delivery of services, the maintenance of the safety net, and managing civil, familial, and educational institutions—could be degraded, too. This could manifest in three distinct phenomena that are already on display in disaster-affected areas: the increased dominance of private and developer-class interests in local politics, the acceleration of existing wealth inequality, and the collapse of institutions dedicated to disaster response."

Go to The Atlantic article

Prominent media corporations are supporting climate deniers, fossil fuel dependent corporations and corporations whose profits depend on degrading the human environment.

Let's care for our vulnerable. 

Lets support action plans (see below) to tackle climate change.

Go to World Bank document

George Monbiot speech at Extinction Rebellion Protest in London

Guardian journalist George Monbiot addresses the Extinction Rebellion climate change protest blocking the road outside parliament, London, UK. 31/10/2018.

U.N. Climate Action Summit: World leaders announce plans to tackle climate change: Video

Days after millions of young people took to the streets worldwide to demand emergency action on climate change, leaders gathered at the United Nations on Monday to try to inject fresh momentum into stalling efforts to curb carbon emissions.

Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Germany would double its contribution to a U.N. fund to support less developed countries to combat climate change to 4 billion euros from 2 billion euros.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the country is determined to be the most "sustainable food-produced in the world," while Indian Prime Minister Modi pledged to increase the country's renewable energy capacity.

 Over 60 world leaders and CEOs of energy and financial companies are expected to address the United Nations conference and announce climate finance measures and transitioning from coal power.

 For more info, please go to https://globalnews.ca/news/5940258/gr...


See also

We are talking about 'drought-proofing' again – they are simplistic solutions that will destroy Australia : The Guardian

 

#jailclimatecriminals  #suefossilcorpdirectors  #climatecrisis

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

Large potential reduction in economic damages under UN mitigation targets: Nature IJS

"International climate change agreements typically specify global warming thresholds as policy targets¹, but the relative economic benefits of achieving these temperature targets remain poorly understood^2,3. 

Uncertainties include the spatial pattern of temperature change, how global and regional economic output will respond to these changes in temperature, and the willingness of societies to trade present for future consumption. 

Here we combine historical evidence⁴ with national-level climate⁵ and socioeconomic⁶ projections to quantify the economic damages associated with the United Nations (UN) targets of 1.5 °C and 2 °C global warming, and those associated with current UN national-level mitigation commitments (which together approach 3 °C warming⁷)."

Read the complete Nature IJS article

GQ: Billionaires Are the Leading Cause of Climate Change

After the Paradise fires

This week, the United Nations released a damning report. The short version: We have about 12 years to actually do something to prevent the worst aspects of climate change. That is, not to prevent climate change—we're well past that point—but to prevent the worst, most catastrophic elements of it from wreaking havoc on the world's population. To do that, the governments of Earth need to look seriously at the forces driving it. And an honest assessment of how we got here lays the blame squarely at the feet of the 1 percent.

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