Climate Change

[Michael Scally MD]

Efforts to block research on climate change don’t just come from the Trump political appointees on top. Lower managers in government are taking their cues, and running with them.

WASHINGTON — Efforts to undermine climate change science in the federal government, once orchestrated largely by President Trump’s political appointees, are now increasingly driven by midlevel managers trying to protect their jobs and budgets and wary of the scrutiny of senior officials, according to interviews and newly revealed reports and surveys.

A case in point: When John Crusius, a research chemist at the United States Geological Survey, published an academic paper on natural solutions to climate change in April, his government affiliation never appeared on it. It couldn’t.

Publication of his study, after a month’s delay, was conditioned by his employer on Dr. Crusius not associating his research with the federal government.

“There is no doubt in my mind that my paper was denied government approval because it had to do with efforts to mitigate climate change,” Dr. Crusius said, making clear he also was speaking in his personal capacity because the agency required him to so. “If I were a seismologist and had written an analogous paper about reducing seismic risk, I’m sure the paper would have sailed through.”

Government experts said they have been surprised at the speed with which federal workers have internalized President Trump’s antagonism for climate science, and called the new landscape dangerous.

“If top-level administrators issued a really clear public directive, there would be an uproar and a pushback, and it would be easier to combat,” said Lauren Kurtz, executive director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, which supports scientists. “This is a lot harder to fight.”

An inspector general’s report at the Environmental Protection Agency made public in May found that almost 400 employees surveyed in 2018 believed a manager had interfered with or suppressed the release of scientific information, but they never reported the violations. A separate Union of Concerned Scientists survey in 2018 of more than 63,000 federal employees across 16 agencies identified the E.P.A. and Department of Interior as having the least trustworthy leadership in matters of scientific integrity. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2020-05/documents/_epaoig_20200520-20-p-0173.pdf

Findings published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE in April on a subset of those agencies found that 631 workers agreed or strongly agreed that they had been asked to omit the phrase “climate change” from their work. In the same paper, 703 employees said they avoided working on climate change or using the phrase. Perceived losses of scientific integrity under the Trump administration: A survey of federal scientists

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

A grim trend continues.

Data from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies confirmed you just lived through Earth's second-warmest January through June on record. In 140 years of direct surface measurements, only the first half of 2016 was hotter (which turned out to be the warmest year ever recorded). Already, 19 of the last 20 years are the warmest on record.

The planet is reacting to the highest levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide in at least 800,000 years, but more likely millions of years (carbon dioxide is a potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas). For decades, climate scientists have accurately predicted how much the climate would warm as humanity continually pumped CO2 into the atmosphere. The warming pattern persists.

"The recent data shows that the world is heating in line with predictions," Sarah Green, an environmental chemist at Michigan Technological University, told Mashable.

What's more, 2020's notable warming so far is occurring during a major ocean event that tends to have a cooling effect on overall global temperatures. This normal oceanic occurrence, called La Niña, results in cooler-than-average ocean surface temperatures across a giant swath of the equatorial Pacific Ocean, which cools the air above it.

(2016, a record warm year, got an extra boost from a strong El Niño, which is a warmer phase of the Pacific Ocean, or opposite of La Niña.)

"Most record warm years have been El Niño years," explained climate scientist Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University.

"So the fact that we’re even in the running for a potential new warm record in 2020 speaks to the profound impact that human-caused greenhouse warming is having on the planet," said Mann.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

[OA] Anthropocene, Emissions Budget, and the Structural Crisis of the Capitalist World-System

This paper evaluates the implications of global emissions budget distribution between three large geographical areas (China, OECD countries, and the rest of the world) in the context of Anthropocene and the structural crisis of the capitalist world system.

Two plausible emissions distribution principles are considered. Under neither the inertia principle nor the equity principle, can continuing economic growth be made compatible with requirements of climate stabilization in all three regions. This conclusion does not change significantly when plausible acceleration of emissions intensity reduction in the future is taken into account.

To limit global warming to not more than 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, at least two of the three large regions need to reorganize their economies to operate with zero or negative growth.

Such a reorganization cannot be achieved under a capitalist economic system given the inherent tendency of capitalism towards endless accumulation. Neither is it likely to be achieved under any conceivable economic system dominated by market relations.

Li M. Anthropocene, Emissions Budget, and the Structural Crisis of the Capitalist World-System. Journal of World-Systems Research 2020;26:288-317. http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/jwsr/article/view/977

 

[ergomaniac]

One thing I am concerned about is pollution. Everything seems to be expendable.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

4C global warming by 2100 seems to be much more likely than a lot of people realise. It doesn't even need one of the highest emissions scenarios. RCP6.0 (considered likely with current policies) gives that much warming fairly near the middle of the range in our latest projections.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Many observers assess the threat of climate change in terms of the frequency or severity of extreme events. They have viewed each crisis—be it a Texas hurricane or a California wildfire—as distinct from others. But consider how people feel on the fourth day of a heat wave as opposed to the first.

Their resilience begins to drain away. Viewing weather events as independent occurrences is like trying to understand a movie by looking at a series of brief clips; they are important plot points, but not the whole story.

In fact, viewing climate change as the accumulation of individual events underestimates the threat, because such events do not take place in a vacuum. As recent research shows, features of the climate interact with one another—interactions that exacerbate the impact on people and ecosystems.

Two interactions are particularly worrisome.

First, as extreme events become more intense and more frequent, they will increasingly occur close together in time and location, worsening the overall impact. Alone, a single extreme event—such as a hurricane or a wildfire—can devastate wide areas. But back-to-back climate catastrophes compound the misery of each.

The second type of interaction is longer term. It happens when one of the earth’s mechanisms for regulating the climate—systems involving air, the ocean, land, or ice—runs amok, setting off a chain reaction involving other such mechanisms.

These new risks to the planet should challenge the conventional wisdom on fighting climate change. ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

That is according to the International Energy Agency’s https://webstore.iea.org/world-energy-outlook-2020 (World Energy Outlook 2020). The 464-page outlook, published today by the IEA, also outlines the “extraordinarily turbulent” impact of coronavirus and the “highly uncertain” future of global energy use over the next two decades.

Reflecting this uncertainty, this year’s version of the highly influential annual outlook offers four “pathways” to 2040, all of which see a major rise in renewables. The IEA’s main scenario has 43% more solar output by 2040 than it expected in 2018, partly due to detailed new analysis showing that solar power is 20-50% cheaper than thought.

Despite a more rapid rise for renewables and a “structural” decline for coal, the IEA says it is too soon to declare a peak in global oil use, unless there is stronger climate action. Similarly, it says demand for gas could rise 30% by 2040, unless the policy response to global warming steps up.

This means that, while global CO2 emissions have effectively peaked, they are “far from the immediate peak and decline” needed to stabilise the climate. The IEA says achieving net-zero emissions will require “unprecedented” efforts from every part of the global economy, not just the power sector.

For the first time, the IEA includes detailed modeling of a 1.5C pathway that reaches global net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050. It says individual behaviour change, such as working from home “three days a week”, would play an “essential” role in reaching this new “net-zero emissions by 2050 case” (NZE2050).

 

[heady muscle]

Earth just had its hottest September on record | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration