NASA: 2017 Takes Second Place for Hottest Year - Video

NASA Goddard

Published on Jan 18, 2018

Earth's surface temperatures in 2017 were the second warmest since since 1880, when global estimates first become feasible, NASA scientists found. Global temperatures 2017 were second only to 2016, which still holds the record for the hottest year; however, 2017 was the warmest year on record that did not start with an El Nino weather pattern, as the previous two years did. In a separate, independent analysis, NOAA scientists found that 2017 was the third-warmest year in their record. The minor difference is due to different methods to analyze global temperatures used by the two agencies, although over the long-term the records remain in strong agreement. 

Music: Sojourner Rover by Craig Warnock [PRS], Lee Ahmad Baker [PRS], Sean Hennessey [PRS] This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12822

TNDL: Adani won't affect emissions: Shorten

"Adani's proposed coal mine in Queensland would not worsen Australia's greenhouse gas emissions, according to (Australia's) federal Labor leader Bill Shorten.

When asked when there would be enough damage from climate change - such as harm to the Great Barrier Reef - to prompt Labor to block the mine, Mr Shorten said he didn't accept the proposition."

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SMH: Logging deals are death warrants for native animals

 "Informed by no new research or effective assessment of the RFAs (Regional Forest Agreements) over the past 20 years – and despite no assessment of the impacts of climate change or climate-induced wildfires throughout the RFA forests – the Morrison government is locking in another 20 years of business as usual. It is unbelievable.

It will not even wait until the Senate inquiry into animal extinctions, which will hold a public hearing in Melbourne on Thursday, reports back with its recommendations.

RFAs have become death warrants for endangered native animals and governments seemingly want the slaughter to continue for another 20 years."

Read the SMH article

BBC: Climate change: Warming gas concentrations at new record high

Concentrations of key gases in the atmosphere that are driving up global temperatures reached a new high in 2017.

In their annual greenhouse gas bulletin, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says there is no sign of reversal in this rising trend.

Carbon dioxide levels reached 405 parts per million (ppm) in 2017, a level not seen in 3-5 million years.

Researchers also note the resurgence of a banned gas called CFC-11.

• China 'home foam' gas key to ozone mystery
• Five things we have learned from the IPCC report
• Why industry can combat climate change

Read BBC article

Labor's timid energy plan continues to protect coal from carbon price: Bandt

Greens climate change and energy spokesperson Adam Bandt MP said Labor’s energy policy announced today fails to tackle coal and is another capitulation to Tony Abbott by dumping a carbon price in favour of a policy scavenged from the Liberals’ rubbish bin.

Bloomberg Opinion: Big Oil Doesn’t Like EV Subsidies, Just Its Own Giant Subsidy

The lack of a penalty for carbon emissions is the single biggest obstacle to a level playing field.

By

Liam Denning

November 20, 2018

"A far-more efficient method is to put a price on the stuff you want less of and then let capitalism do its thing, pushing consumption away from the undesirables and investment toward innovative alternatives. Indeed, all these letters demand government officials stand back and let the market do its thing — except their version of the market leaves out one essential element. 

Greenhouse gases and the threat they pose are everyone’s problem, but the individual generating them at any given moment doesn’t pay toward dealing with that. Dump your garbage on your neighbor’s lawn and you’ll wind up paying to have it removed and probably a fine, too. Release 20 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning a gallon of gasoline, and it’s a freebie.

This is an enormous effective subsidy for fossil fuels and makes a mockery of market piety. Using Yale economist and recent Nobel-prize winner William Nordhaus’s $31-per-tonne estimate of the social cost of carbon, it amounted last year to $107 billion for energy-related emissions from oil and natural gas in the U.S. Within that, emissions from transportation — the biggest source in the U.S. and the only one still growing — enjoyed a free ride worth $59 billion."

Read complete Bloomberg Opinion article

New York Times: Can Dirt Save the Earth?

Agriculture could pull carbon out of the air and into the soil — but it would mean a whole new way of thinking about how to tend the land.

By MOISES VELASQUEZ-MANOFFAPRIL 18, 2018

"Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, agricultural practices and animal husbandry have released an estimated 135 gigatons — 135 billion metric tons — of carbon into the atmosphere, according to Rattan Lal, a soil scientist at Ohio State University. Even at current rates, that’s more than a decade’s worth of carbon dioxide emissions from all human sources. The world is warming not only because fossil fuels are being burned, but also because soils, forests and wetlands are being ravaged."

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