What’s Another Way to Say ‘We’re F-cked’? : Medium

One of the leading climate scientists of our time is warning of the horrifying possibility of 15-to-20 feet of sea-level rise

 

Richard Alley is not a fringe character in the world of climate change. In fact, he is widely viewed as one of the greatest climate scientists of our time. If there is anyone who understands the full complexity of the risks we face from climate change, it’s Alley. And far from being alarmist, Alley is known for his careful, rigorous science. He has spent most of his adult life deconstructing past Earth climates from the information in ice cores and rocks and ocean sediments. And what he has learned about the past, he has used to better understand the future.

For a scientist of Alley’s stature to say that he can’t rule out 15 or 20 feet of sea-level rise in the coming decades is mind-blowing. And it is one of the clearest statements I’ve ever heard of just how much trouble we are in on our rapidly warming planet (and I’ve heard a lot — I wrote a book about sea-level rise)."

Read the Medium article

 Related:

Showing sea level 5m rise flooding in Melbourne city

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

 

Showing sea level 5m rise flooding in Melbourne city

Melbourne inundation with a 5m sea level rise

• We are looking more and more unlikely to prevent global heating.

• Scientists are predicting the melting of the ice covering Greenland with a subsequent sea level rise of 7m.

• This rise does not factor in sea rise from the melting of Antarctica and other ice.

• Already many properties are likely to flood when a high tide is combined with high local rainfall. What were a hundred year rainfall events are now ten year events.

• The frequency of high rainfall events will increase with global heating and more and more severe hurricanes are predicted because of warmer seas.

• Low coastal areas will be subjected to severe storm surges. 

• Once the ice on Greenland and Antarctica melts the sea level will rise. It is already melting.

• Would you buy a property likely to be inundated in twenty years, fifty years, a hundred years? Many wouldn't. Even the perception of possible inundation will greatly affect property values.

• When certain properties are in less demand their value falls.

• Would you buy a property with a value likely to fall?

•  The view of Melbourne above shows areas likely to be inundated by a 5m sea level rise.

• Property above a 10m rise will become highly sought after and will greatly rise in value.

Learn more about how sea rise inundation will affect Australian property.

Click here to go to Coastal Risk Australia site

'Retreat' Is Not An Option As A California Beach Town Plans For Rising Seas: NPR 


#inundation  #sea rise  #searise  #climatecrisis  #climatechange  #ice  #melting ice

Bernie Sanders Calls To Seize the Means of Electricity Production The presidential candidate’s new climate plan includes moving toward 100% public ownership of power.

"A year after a neglected Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) power line sparked a wildfire that tore through northern California, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday visited Chico, Calif., where many who fled the fire made a new home. He held a town hall the same day he released a new climate plan, in which he declared that the days of investor-owned utilities—with their profit incentives to underinvest in the electric grid and double down on fossil fuels—have to end.

He’s right: It is time for a massive public takeover of the nation’s electric grid.

The for-profit companies that reign over our energy system now have shown no meaningful sign of being willing to transform our energy system; they are much more interested in shareholder gains and business as usual. Together, for-profit utilities and fossil fuel companies have created powerful political-economic machines across the country to solidify the status quo of extraction and extortion. In contrast, democratic public ownership of our energy system could prioritize community benefit over profit, paving the way for a just and equitable energy system."

Go to In These Times story 

See also:

It’s Time to Try Fossil-Fuel Executives for Crimes Against Humanity: Jacobin

 

 See also:

The case for renationalising Australia's electricity grid

 

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

It’s Time to Try Fossil-Fuel Executives for Crimes Against Humanity: Jacobin

......"These are welcome attempts to hold the industry responsible for its role in warming our earth. It’s time, however, to take this series of legal proceedings to the next level: we should try fossil-fuel executives for crimes against humanity.

Guilty Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Just one hundred fossil fuel producers — including privately held and state-owned companies — have been responsible for 71 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions released since 1988, emissions that have already killed at least tens of thousands of people through climate-fueled disasters worldwide.

Green New Deal advocates have been right to focus on the myriad ways that decarbonization can improve the lives of working-class Americans. But an important complement to that is holding those most responsible for the crisis fully accountable. It’s the right thing to do, and it makes clear to fossil-fuel executives that they could face consequences beyond vanishing profits."

Read the Jacobin story 

Related:

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

Hard Times in the Climate Denial Business for the Heartland Institute: DeSmog

"A Failing Business Model?

The oil industry is still spending heavily against policies to address climate change and in support of efforts to promote fossil fuel consumption. These days, however, the messaging and efforts seem to be moving away from Heartland-style denial attacks on climate science and tuned more toward PR campaigns promoting the idea that oil and gas companies accept climate change is happening and are doing their part to address it.

That's likely driven in part by the fact that public awareness of and concern about climate change has significantly increased since 2008.

The list of talking points at https://t.co/xb4sVkeq7K reads like the list of climate myths at https://t.co/HYOLcOjBof

— John Cook (@johnfocook) July 25, 2019

The industry's new approach appears focused on selling the idea that natural gas is “clean” and that fossil fuels are the future — even a “solution” to climate change. Meanwhile, across the U.S., coal plants are closing, the gas industry is a financial disaster, and renewables are growing rapidly and in many cases can provide electricity more cheaply than gas power plants.

The Cato Institute, another free market think tank that for years pushed climate science denial and received funding from the fossil fuel industry, dropped its climate denial program earlier this year. Cato was founded by the petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch. 

Will Heartland follow a similar path to attract broader appeal and fossil fuel industry funding?"

Read the complete DeSmog article 

Related:

Who is Preventing Kids from Learning about Climate Change? :Green Market Oracle