Global Climate Change Science News

[Brian Peacock]

EXCLUSIVE: is THIS the solution to global warming? Scientist claims we should MOVE the Earth away from the Sun - here's how this wacky idea could really work.

(Daily Mail)

[pErvinalia]

What could possibly go wrong?

[Animavore]

Some people will do anything to not stop using oil.

[Svartalf]

you want me to fry my food in margarine?

[pErvinalia]

Some people will do anything to not stop using oil.

Not the case with this one. It's a millions of years time-scale.

[Brian Peacock]

Some people will do anything to not stop using oil.

Not the case with this one. It's a millions of years time-scale.

But still, it seems easier for people to think about things like moving the Earth, building orbital colonies, or migrating to Mars than to actually address a global problem that a lot of very bright folks have already done a great deal of work on and arrived at some practical, real-world ways of addressing. The point of the Daily Mail piece fits its general agenda in response to global heating - to tell its audiences know that global heating is such an difficult and insolvable issue that scientists can only imagine doing 'wacky' stuff like moving the Earth to stop it.

[Brian Peacock]

Interesting paper in June's issue of Nature...

Safe and just Earth system boundaries
Johan Rockström et al, 31 May 2023

Abstract

The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked, yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently. Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales. We propose ESBs for maintaining the resilience and stability of the Earth system (safe ESBs) and minimizing exposure to significant harm to humans from Earth system change (a necessary but not sufficient condition for justice). The stricter of the safe or just boundaries sets the integrated safe and just ESB. Our findings show that justice considerations constrain the integrated ESBs more than safety considerations for climate and atmospheric aerosol loading. Seven of eight globally quantified safe and just ESBs and at least two regional safe and just ESBs in over half of global land area are already exceeded. We propose that our assessment provides a quantitative foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people now and into the future.

Main

...

We propose a set of safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, fresh water, nutrients and air pollution at global and subglobal scales. These domains were chosen for the following reasons.

• They span the major components of the Earth system (atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, biosphere and cryosphere) and their interlinked processes (carbon, water and nutrient cycles), the ‘global commons’14 that underpin the planet’s life-support systems and, thereby, human well-being on Earth
• They have impacts on policy-relevant timescales
• They are threatened by human activities; and
• They could affect Earth system stability and future development globally

Our proposed ESBs are based on existing scholarship, expert judgement and widely shared norms, such as Agenda 2030. They are meant as a transparent proposal for further debate and refinement by scholars and wider society.

First, we identify ‘safe’ boundaries at subglobal and global scales for “maintain[ing] and enhanc[ing] the stability and resilience of the Earth system over time, thereby safeguarding its functions and ability to support humans and all other living organisms”. To determine safe boundaries, we use assessments of tipping point risks among local and regional tipping elements, evidence on declines in Earth system functions, analyses of historical variability and expert judgement. We assess the uncertainty in and confidence of these ESBs. Tipping elements are those components or processes that regulate the functioning and state of the planet and that show evidence of having thresholds at which small additional perturbations can trigger self-reinforcing changes that undermine Earth system resilience. We do not exclusively rely on tipping points for setting safe ESBs, however, and the ESBs should not be interpreted as representing tipping points. As a reference state for human life support on Earth, we use an interglacial Holocene-like Earth system functioning dominated by balancing feedbacks that cope with, buffer and dampen disturbances. Methods and Supplementary Information have details on how safe boundaries are determined.

Second, we use three criteria to assess whether adhering to the safe ESBs could protect people from significant harm (Box 1): ‘interspecies justice and Earth system stability’; ‘intergenerational justice’ between past and present generations and present and future generations; and ‘intragenerational justice’ between countries, communities and individuals through an intersectional lens.

These criteria sit within a wider Earth system justice framework that goes beyond planetary and issue-related justice to take a multi-level transformative justice approach focusing on ends (boundaries and access levels) and means. Methods and Supplementary Information have more detailed discussions of the justice approach applied in this paper.

We define harm as negative impacts on humans, communities and countries from Earth system change in addition to background rates. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report identifies ‘severe’ risks and ‘high’ reasons for concern when tens to hundreds of millions of people are exposed to changes in climate, such as increases in temperature and extreme events. In this paper, we define significant harm as widespread severe existential or irreversible negative impacts on countries, communities and individuals from Earth system change, such as loss of lives, livelihoods or incomes; displacement; loss of food, water or nutritional security; and chronic disease, injury or malnutrition (a glossary is in the Supplementary Methods).

Third, we combine these justice criteria with historical analyses, international health standards, Earth system modelling and expert judgement to quantify safe and just ESBs that minimize human exposure to significant harm (no significant harm (NSH)) from Earth system change. Minimizing significant harm is a cornerstone of national and international law and corrective justice. We focus on assessing the levels of Earth system change leading to widespread exposure to significant harm, which will lead to greater impacts when vulnerable populations are exposed3. Methods and Supplementary Information have details on how just boundaries are determined.

The just (NSH) boundaries described here are necessary but not sufficient conditions for Earth system justice, which must also enable access to resources for all and distributional and procedural fairness. A foundation that enables minimum access to water, food, energy and infrastructure for all humans alongside a safe and just (NSH) ESB ceiling of maximum allowed human pressure on biophysical domains could constitute a safe and just ‘corridor’ over time (Fig. 1)...

Full paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06083-8

Rockström is a faculty member of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at the University of Sweden, who are world leaders in a very broad academic field that explores complex adaptive systems (physical, ecological, social), systems dynamics, systems resilience, and systems change.

Another interesting synthesis report on the Institute's website concerning the possible impacts of AI on Earth and social systems...

Climate misinformation in a climate of misinformation

We are in the midst of a transformation of the digital news ecosystem. The expansion of online social networks, the influence of recommender systems, increased automation, and new generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools are rapidly changing the speed and the way misinformation about climate change and sustainability issues moves around the world.

Policymakers, researchers and the public need to combine forces to address the dangerous combination of opaque social media algorithms, polarizing social bots, and a new generation of AI-generated content.

This is the main message of this new synthesis, presented in connection to the Nobel Prize Summit 2023, "Truth, Trust and Hope"....

https://www.stockholmresilience.org/new ... ation.html

tl;dr? Advanced Machine Learning Systems (AMLS) have enormous potential, but the people and organisations currently developing AMLS have a very narrow focus for their use.

[Brian Peacock]

All email to and from COP28 goes through the servers of UAE's state oil and gas company. The conference chairman is the UAE energy minister, who is also the CEO of that same state oil and gas company.

‘Absolute scandal’: UAE state oil firm able to read Cop28 climate summit emails

Army of fake social media accounts defend UAE presidency of climate summit

COP has been captured by the fossil fuel sector.

[pErvinalia]

fuckn great. This problem was hard enough.

[Sean Hayden]

The bots are way out of control. “Strategic communications company…”

[macdoc]

China on course to hit wind and solar power target five years ahead of time
Beijing bolstering position as global renewables leader with solar capacity more than rest of world combined

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... rgy-leader

[pErvinalia]

But who will buy our coal?

[macdoc]

Nooooooooboooooody!!!
( inside Canuck joke )

.....
There will still be demand for high quality coking coal for steel production just lower demand for coal for power generation

[Brian Peacock]

The chairman of the government's appointed Climate Change Committee, a panel instituted to inform policy and monitor progress towards the UK's Paris Agreement NDCs, has taken the rather unprecedented step of going public.

Climate Change Committee says UK no longer a world leader

Government backing for new oil and coal, airport expansion plans and slow progress on heat pumps show that the UK has lost its leadership on climate issues, a government watchdog warns.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) described government efforts to scale up climate action as "worryingly slow".

It was "markedly" less confident than a year ago that the UK would reach its targets for cutting carbon emissions.

Committee chairman Lord Deben, a former Conservative environment minister, was particularly critical of the government's policy on new coal and oil projects.

The decision to approve the UK's first new deep coal mine in 30 years in Cumbria last December was "total nonsense", he told the BBC.

Lord Deben was also damning about plans for a major new oilfield off the coast of Scotland. Approval for Rosebank, which could produce an estimated 300 million barrels of oil in its lifetime, is expected soon.

"How can we ask countries in Africa not to develop oil?" Lord Deben said. "How can we ask other nations not to expand the fossil fuel production if we start doing it ourselves?" ...

What the UK was a 'world leader' in was setting climate targets - the most ambitious of the G7 - but not actually taking climate action.

[macdoc]

UK is a fuck up across the board...the Scots should divorce the bastids.
I mean for sakes - privatizing water - nobody does that except I think Peru and that was a disaster.