We Want Climate Action Now

Saturday, 31 October 2020

NSW urges climate action as bushfire royal commission's recommendations tabled (excerpt): ABC News

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"A former New South Wales fire chief is among those calling on the Federal Government to take urgent action on climate change as the Black Summer royal commission's findings hit Parliament.

Eighty recommendations feature in the report, which acknowledges the evidence that climate change will continue to increase the frequency and intensity of natural disasters.

Former top firefighter Greg Mullins is leading calls for the Government to act on the recommendations.

"We need the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to immediately endorse all 80 recommendations, to commit to fund them no matter who is in government, and to take urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions," he said."

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"Key recommendations:

Go to ABC story

Tuesday, 27 October 2020

1 year on since Australia's biggest bushfire: Climate Council

Exactly 12 months ago today, the huge Gospers Mountain Fire started from a lightning strike north-west of Sydney. The fire burned for almost 80 days, and became the biggest forest fire in Australia's recorded history.

One year on, the fire has left a heart-wrenching scar on both the landscape and the communities it tore through. This is what climate change looks like.

In just a few days, the Royal Commission will hand down its findings into the 2019-20 bushfire season, and it's imperative that it clearly acknowledges the role of climate change in fuelling the 2019-20 bushfires.

Polling Shows Growing Climate Concern Among Americans. But Outsized Influence of Deniers Remains a Roadblock (excerpt): DeSmog

#climatefires,#Australia,#cambio-climatico,#climateemergency,#bushfires,#firestorms,NSW,

Sunday, 25 October 2020

The Arctic is in a death spiral. How much longer will it exist? (excerpt): The Guardian

"The region is unravelling faster than anyone could once have predicted. But there may still be time to act."

"At the end of July, 40% of the 4,000-year-old Milne Ice Shelf, located on the north-western edge of Ellesmere Island, calved into the sea. Canada’s last fully intact ice shelf was no more.

On the other side of the island, the most northerly in Canada, the St Patrick’s Bay ice caps completely disappeared.

Two weeks later, scientists concluded that the Greenland Ice Sheet may have already passed the point of no return. Annual snowfall is no longer enough to replenish the snow and ice loss during summer melting of the territory’s 234 glaciers. Last year, the ice sheet lost a record amount of ice, equivalent to 1 million metric tons every minute.

The Arctic is unravelling. And it’s happening faster than anyone could have imagined just a few decades ago. Northern Siberia and the Canadian Arctic are now warming three times faster than the rest of the world. In the past decade, Arctic temperatures have increased by nearly 1C. If greenhouse gas emissions stay on the same trajectory, we can expect the north to have warmed by 4C year-round by the middle of the century."

Go to Guardian article and photo essay

The great thaw: global heating upends life on Arctic permafrost – photo essay

Gloria Dickie

Arctic,Antarctica,Greenland ice melt,#icemelting,sea level rise,#climate crisis,

Saturday, 24 October 2020

Polling Shows Growing Climate Concern Among Americans. But Outsized Influence of Deniers Remains a Roadblock (excerpt): DeSmog

California burns

"More Americans than ever before — 54 percent, recent polling data shows — are alarmed or concerned about climate change, which scientists warn is a planetary emergency unfolding in the form of searing heat, prolonged drought, massive wildfires, monstrous storms, and other extremes.

Climate change denial

These kinds of disasters are becoming increasingly costly and impossible to ignore. Yet even as the American public becomes progressively more worried about the climate crisis, a shrinking but vocal slice of the country continues to dismiss these concerns, impeding efforts to address the monumental global challenge.

Weather Extremes Driving Climate Concern

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. has already seen 16 billion-dollar weather disasters this year, including horrific fires in the West and powerful storms like Hurricanes Sally, Laura, and Delta on the Gulf Coast.

Florida's coast regularly floods

This reality of intensifying climate disasters in part helps explain the rise in concern on this issue among the American public, says Ed Maibach of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. Maibach is part of a research team that since 2008 has surveyed and categorized American attitudes on climate change into six different groups that they call the “Six Americas.”"

Go to complete DeSmog story

Read time: 9 mins By Dana Drugmand

Thursday, 22 October 2020

Boiling Point: Climate change is wreaking havoc on the power grid in ways you never knew (excerpts): LA Times

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"There’s been a lot of debate about the extent to which climate change is actually to blame. Officials pointed out that four of California’s five hottest August days in the last 35 years came this past August; others have noted that the state experienced hotter days and higher overall peak electricity demand during a July 2006 heat storm that did not lead to rolling blackouts.

Here’s what’s not in dispute: As the planet gets hotter, largely because of the burning of fossil fuels, the number of blackouts caused by extreme weather is on the rise, in California and across the country.

The nonprofit research organization Climate Central analyzed federal data and released a report last month finding that hurricanes, wildfires, heat storms and other extreme weather events caused 67% more power outages in the United States during the decade ending in 2019 than they did during the previous decade"

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"Climate change isn’t the only reason blackouts are on the rise. Roshi Nateghi, an industrial engineering professor at Purdue University, told me rapid urbanization — more people moving to cities — has put greater strains on aging infrastructure. And the data used by Climate Central may overstate the increase in weather-driven outages, since reporting requirements for utilities have gotten more stringent over time.

But there’s no question climate change is playing a role, and the effects will only get worse, Nateghi said.

“A big part of it is that our grid is vulnerable to severe weather and climate events,” she said. “And we have been seeing an increase in intensity and frequency of extreme events.”

Why is extreme weather such a problem for the electric grid? Powerful winds can knock down utility poles. Intense rains can flood substations. Ice can accumulate on wires during winter storms. Wildfires can knock out power lines — or utility companies can be forced to shut down lines to avoid igniting fires. High temperatures can cause fossil-fueled power plants to produce less electricity, which actually happened with California’s natural gas fleet in August."

Go to LA Times story

Monday, 19 October 2020

Amy Coney Barrett says she’s “not a scientist” and has no “firm views” on the topic of climate change: (excerpts) LAT and NYT

Wikipedia pic from 2018 Amy Coney Barrett

Amy Coney Barrett, the president’s Supreme Court nominee, was asked about climate change during Senate confirmation hearings. She responded that she’s “not a scientist” and has no “firm views” on the topic. The Supreme Court could play a big role in determining whether the federal government is able to mount a serious response to the climate crisis; as Marianne Lavelle wrote recently for InsideClimate News, activists are worried the court’s landmark 2007 climate ruling could be in danger.

Go to LA Times story

"But with Senator Kamala Harris of California, the Democratic

Photo from Alliance for Justice

candidate for vice president, Judge Barrett, the daughter of an oil executive, went further. She described the settled science of climate change as still in dispute, compared to Ms. Harris’s other examples, including whether smoking causes cancer and the coronavirus is infectious.

“Do you believe that climate change is happening and threatening the air we breathe and the water that we drink?” Ms. Harris asked.

Judge Barrett responded, “You asked me uncontroversial questions, like Covid-19 being infectious or if smoking causes cancer” to solicit “an opinion from me on a very contentious matter of public debate,” climate change.

“I will not do that,” Judge Barrett concluded. “I will not express a view on a matter of public policy, especially one that is politically controversial.”

Go to New York Times story

Sunday, 18 October 2020

Vigorous action needed, and soon, on climate change (excerpt): Yale Climate Connections

"Our essays in this series have presented compelling scientific evidence about the warming of the planet, reviewed the evidence that human activity is its principal cause, and discussed the resulting economic and environmental damages.

Now comes the question of what we are going to do about it. The options are clear:

– Nations can work toward eliminating greenhouse gas emissions and reducing the scale of future warming.
– Governments and private actors can, and will, invest in measures to protect home and livelihood from effects of changes that cannot be prevented.
– Or human societies and natural ecosystems will suffer the severe harms of inaction.

The more they (really we) do now and in the near future, the smaller will be the residual damages imposed on ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren. The choice is ours.

The suffering is already here, of course. In some places, it is almost impossible to bear despite growing investments in adaptation. So what is missing? A commitment to emissions reductions appropriate to the special nature of the climate change threat. Fortunately, with a smart choice of policy measures, the emissions control challenge can still be met at a tolerable economic cost."

Go to complete Yale Climate Connections article

economic impact, ecology, ecocide, greenhouse gas pollution, #globalheating, extreme heat, children,