Record breaking CO2 level continues to rise

 

 

The rapid rise continues, relentlessly. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Tuesday that the average carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere during May rounded to 414.8 parts per million, or ppm — the highest monthly number on record and the peak of 2019. While Earth's CO2 trend has been skyrocketing overall — compared to both geologic and historic levels — each year the potent greenhouse gas wavers down during the warm growing season, when flourishing trees and plants in the Northern Hemisphere temporarily soak up CO2 from the air (this ever-rising, though saw-like line is called the Keeling Curve).

But 414.8 ppm, while the highest monthly CO2 level in recorded history, is not the only number that's critical to appreciate. The other is 3.5 ppm. That, noted Scripps, is the leap in CO2 ppm since last May. It's the second highest year-to-year jump on record, and smashes average CO2 increases from earlier decades. After the Scripps monitoring station atop Hawaii's towering Mauna Loa went online in 1959, CO2 rose around just 0.7 ppm per year in the early decades of operation. Then, in the 1990s, the rate increased to 1.5 ppm per year. The last decade has averaged 2.2 ppm.
Yet, in the last year, it was a 3.5 ppm gain. Concentrations of the planet's most influential greenhouse gas are accelerating.
"It's extremely alarming to see atmospheric CO2 continuing to increase relentlessly year after year when all scenarios that lead to a stable climate require that it go down," said Sarah Green, an environmental chemist at Michigan Technological University.

 

"The further we go into the uncharted climate territory of unprecedented CO2 levels, the more likely we are to encounter surprises," added Green, referencing the extreme weather and climate disruptions wrought by such warming. "We are heading toward the part of the climate map labeled 'here there be dragons' and rather than turning around, or even slowing down, we are running faster."
On Earth, climate scientists globally are well aware that the climate has naturally changed before, as CO2 levels have fluctuated over hundreds of thousands of years. But the current rate of change has no precedent, in at least some 800,000 to a million years.
"When I think of the Keeling curve, I see it as the most important confirmation that the rate of the rise in CO2 (or the pace of CO2 increase) is like nothing we have ever seen before and probably like nothing the planet has ever seen before, certainly in the last million years and possibly ever," said Kris Karnauskas, an associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

 

 

Today's CO2 measurements, like the Scripps' measurements taken atop Mauna Loa and other stations around the globe, are direct, incontrovertible proof that the planet is experiencing profound atmospheric changes.
"These are measurements of the real atmosphere," Pieter Tans, a senior scientist with NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division, said in a statement. "They do not depend on any models, but they help us verify climate model projections, which if anything, have underestimated the rapid pace of climate change being observed."
  
Although these CO2 numbers are stark, they're even more striking when put into context with observable changes around the rest of the world. In real time, scientists are seeing unprecedented disappearances of Arctic ice, vanishing mountain glaciers, a surge of large, destructive wildfires, and continually warming seas.
"We still need to remember that the story isn't built on a single number," emphasized Green. "The full story of the climate crisis, which is even more alarming, is built from many, many data points on global emissions, ocean heat, Arctic warming, deforestation, and many other metrics."

Moto says HI! Wa'sup Knights?

The Greta effect? Meet the schoolgirl climate warriors

 

This Friday, like many Fridays before it, Haven Coleman will not be attending school. The 13-year-old is taking a stand. Coleman, from Denver, Colorado, is risking her education to strike for climate change action. She said her decision was because of one person: Greta Thunberg.

"Once we found Greta, we were like, 'Oh that's amazing, let me try, let me do something similar'," Coleman said.
When Thunberg sat outside Sweden's parliament on 20 August, 2018, aged 15, she cut a lonely figure. Carrying a "school strike for climate change" sign, she said she was refusing to attend classes until Swedish politicians took action.

 

Nine months later, Thunberg was  no longer alone. Energized by her climate strike movement, Fridays for Future (FFF), students vowed to boycott school on Fridays until their countries adhere to the 2015 Paris agreement, which aims to prevent global temperatures from rising 1.5C (34.7F) above pre-industrial levels.

On the 15th of  March, an estimated 1.6 million students from 125 countries walked out of school to demand climate change action.  Coleman, the co-director of US Youth Climate Strike, was one of them. She founded the organization with Isra Hirsi, the 16-year-old daughter of Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Villaseñor, 13.
"It's really cool because it's driven by girls. I think that's amazing," she said.

Based on the "tons of people" she knows within the movement, she believes girls outnumber boys. Learning about the effects of deforestation on sloths - her "favorite animal" - was her gateway into climate activism. But it was Thunberg's school walk-out, she said, that prompted her to start striking on her own.

 

Haven has accused adults of being frozen by the fear of change

So she began descending the steps of the Denver Capitol Building every Friday with her "school for climate strike" placard. With the help of Hirsi, who's from Minneapolis, and Villaseñor, who's from New York, she led a nationwide strike on March 15th across all 50 states.

Coleman takes a dim view of adults like Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who believes she should be in school, not out protesting. Her assessment of world leaders was damning - she accused them of patronizing her and being frozen by the fear of change. Youth strikers were "turning this fear into action", she said. "We're trying to fix a mess that adults can still fix."

Coleman's organization, US Youth Climate Strike, is backing the New Green Deal (NGD) - a policy proposal to reduce carbon emissions by transforming the US economy. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest congresswoman in history at 29, is an enthusiastic supporter of the policy initiative, although convincing others of its merits has proved more difficult.

 

Thunberg stands on stage at a Fridays for Future protest in Berlin

Ms Ocasio-Cortez's NGD resolution was roundly rejected by the Senate in March, defeated by 57 votes to zero. Republican lawmakers, some of whom do not believe in man-made climate change, have branded the NGD a "socialist manifesto".
Their resistance illustrates the political realities facing young climate activists. For all the young strikers' passion, it is politicians who are navigating the economic and practical complexities of shifting the global economy away from fossil fuels and towards a carbon-free future.

 

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is caused by human behavior, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body. A 2016 study of peer-reviewed journals said the IPCC's position was shared by 97% of actively publishing climate scientists. Most leading scientific organizations, including NASA, the American Meteorological Society and the UK Met Office, agree.

To minimize the risks, global carbon emissions must be cut by 50% within the next 11 years, a landmark UN report warned last year. If temperatures go beyond the 1.5C threshold, experts fear climate change could become unstoppable by 2030 - by which time Lilly Platt will be 22.
Platt, who is 11 and lives in the Netherlands, is impatient for change. "I'm in the generation that has to suffer through this."

 

Lilly Platt started a litter-picking campaign in 2015

Accompanied by her mom, she strikes on Fridays for an hour with permission from her school.
Her protests, held outside her local town hall in Utrecht, were about "educating and informing people about climate change", she said. She is a child ambassador for the Plastic Pollution Coalition and HOW Global, a water charity.
And she has her own litter-picking campaign, Lilly's Plastic Pick Up. Started in 2015, when Platt was seven, it focuses on "informing people about single-use plastic and how they can stop using it".
She too cited Thunberg as the inspiration for her first school climate strike. But she is now well known in her own right - she has more than 6,600 followers on Twitter. Is there a reason girls like her are spearheading climate movements?
"I think it's because we're inspiring more people. You have to lead by example," she said.

 

Lilly Platt strikes school on Fridays with her mom

In many cases, it is the developing countries that contribute least to global fossil fuel emissions that are likely to suffer most from climate change.

Leah Namugerwa is a 14-year-old FFF activist in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Her country, like many others in Africa, is at risk of desertification - a process that causes fertile agricultural land to turn barren. Experts say droughts and elevated temperatures - two factors linked to climate change - cause it to occur.

At the age of 12, Namugerwa watched TV news reports about Uganda's devastating famine of 2017, when exceptional drought conditions left millions in need of food aid. Horrified by the scale of suffering, she felt compelled to act. Inspired by Thunberg, she held her debut protest on 1 February this year and has been striking every Friday since.
"I wanted to make a positive change in my country and pressure my government into taking action,"

 

Leah Namugerwa (wearing a red pinstriped shirt) striking with her classmates

Climate change was also "escalating existing gender inequality" - women and girls would endure a "steep social cost", Namugerwa said.
According to a 2015 report by the World Health Organization (WHO), women are more vulnerable than men to the impact of extreme climate events for a variety of reasons, including biological and social factors.

But women and girls would not suffer in silence, Namugerwa said. "We have no-one to fight for us so we have to do it ourselves."
The US, China and India are the three biggest emitters of carbon dioxide in recent decades, according to latest statistics from Our World in Data.  Asheer Kandhari is a 15-year-old climate activist from India's capital, Delhi, where studies show carbon emissions are having a significant impact on air quality. Kandhari was inspired by the recent Extinction Rebellion protests in London, which saw activists glue themselves together, blocking major roads and train routes.

Of the world's 30 worst cities for air pollution, 22 are in India, according to a report by Greenpeace and AirVisual. Delhi, where Kandhari strikes with FFF India, was ranked the world's most polluted capital. In contrast, London is the 48th most polluted capital.
Furious with an Indian government she claims is "destroying" the environment, Kandhari wants Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare a climate emergency. "They're not realizing how important this is or the severity of the situation," she said.
She called on boys to get more involved. "It's as much their movement as it is ours," she said.

 

Asheer Kandhari takes part in Extinction Rebellion protests in India

Research by Girlguiding has found that climate degradation ranks among the biggest concerns for young women.
With the help of the world's media, Thunberg has amplified and personified their anxieties. In the process, she has managed to mobilize them with a simple call to action: school strike for climate.
For Kandhari, the reason for joining her is a matter of life and death. "What's the point of studying if [humanity may not live to see] the next century?" she asks.

Climate protestors storm Garzweiler coal mine in Germany

Hundreds of protesters joined forces to break into the mine and march through it

Hundreds of climate change activists have stormed an open cast coal mine in western Germany to campaign against fossil fuels.
The protesters ran through fields and broke through a police cordon to get into the Garzweiler mine.
Police had warned that the mine was not safe and said some officers were hurt as they tried to hold back protesters.
Germany has vowed to go carbon neutral by 2050 but activists say this is not soon enough.
Recent surveys have shown that climate change tops a list of concerns in Germany, with the Green party polling alongside the governing Christian Democrats.

 

 

  
Police tried to hold back protesters from entering the mine, which they said was dangerous 

               

Earlier in the day, protesters temporarily blocked a railway line used to transport coal. Some of the activists were among between 20,000 and 40,000 protesters who joined a demonstration on Friday in the city of Aachen in support of the school strike movement launched by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg.

 

Protesters carried camping gear, suggesting they intended to spend some time in the mine

 

 Police said some officers were harmed trying to prevent protesters from entering the mine

 

Dressed in white protective clothing, protesters ran over the sides of the mine to enter the premises

 

After storming the mine, activists used foil blankets to shield themselves from the sun

 

Climate activists blocked the rail tracks leading to the Hambach surface mine

Trump UN pick Kelly Craft breaks with White House on climate change

 

President Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations has broken with his viewpoint on climate change, saying it “poses real risks”. Kelly Craft told lawmakers at her confirmation hearing she would “be an advocate for all countries to do their part in addressing climate change”.

In the past, she had claimed to believe “both sides” of the climate debate. Mr Trump has previously called climate change a “hoax” and questioned the scientific consensus on the matter.

Earlier this month, Mr Trump said climate change “goes both ways” and blamed other nations for worsening air and water quality.  In 2017, he pulled the US out of the landmark Paris climate agreement, saying the deal was disadvantageous to US workers.

 

Mrs Craft who is currently serving as the ambassador to Canada, had offered a similar opinion in 2017, telling CBC she believed “there are scientists on both sides that are accurate”.

But she reversed that viewpoint on Wednesday, telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “human behaviour has contributed to the changing climate”.

“Let there be no doubt: I take this matter seriously.”

She also acknowledged “that fossil fuels have played a part in climate change”.

 

However, Mrs Craft did support Mr Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris accord, saying the US did not have to “be part of an agreement to be leaders”.

She added that the US should not have to assume “an outsized burden on behalf of the rest of the world”.

Mr Trump’s nominee has been under scrutiny over her ties to the coal industry as she is married to Joseph Craft III, the head of Alliance Resource Partners, one of the country’s largest coal companies.

After being grilled by Democrats on how she would handle fossil fuel discussions in the UN, Mrs Craft pledged to recuse herself from such talks if the ethics agreement called for it.

If confirmed, Mrs Craft would replace Nikki Haley, who resigned last October.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has continued to roll back environmental protections.
The latest such effort on Wednesday loosened restrictions on coal-fired power plants. The measure, signed by Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler, will allow individual states to determine if coal plants should reduce emissions.
The new measure replaces an Obama-era plan that sought to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmentalists have criticized the new policy, saying it will worsen fossil fuel emissions, while Republican lawmakers from coal industry states praised the move.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has promised a lawsuit. In a statement, she called the rule “another prime example of the Trump administration’s weak attempt to deny that climate change has caused – and will continue to cause – devastating impacts on both the safety and health of all Americans and the economy”.
Scientists have warned that the world is headed towards a temperature rise of 3C, that would cause significant and dangerous changes to the planet.

We have just twelve years before a catastrophic environmental breakdown is inevitable , unless we radically change the way we live now. The world's leading climate change scientists are warning that if global temperatures go up by 1.5 degrees, there'll be unprecedented levels of flooding, drought, wildfires and food shortages affecting billions of people. The question is will industry, Governments and individuals listen and take action?



The Earth cools after volcanoes erupt. Some researchers now think we should mimic those effects to reduce global warming. What could possibly go wrong?

 

In June, 1991, something surprising happened to the Earth. Mount Pinatubo, in the Philippines, erupted. The first surprise was that it was thought to be a mountain, not a volcano. In fact, pressure built up over centuries beneath this dormant volcano caused the second largest eruption of the 20th Century, spewing vast amounts of white ash and sulphates as high as the stratosphere – 10 km above the Earth’s surface.
Around 15-17 million tons of this volcanic material spread into a lazy haze covering much of the

globe. During the following 15 months, scientists discovered a second surprise: this particle cloud had formed a protective sun-shield, reflecting a significant proportion of the sun’s rays back into space. As a result, the average global temperature that year dropped by 0.6C. And for some researchers, that raised an interesting possibility. Could we do this on purpose, deliberately producing artificial clouds to reduce global warming?

 

In truth, we already know the action needed to reduce man-made climate change: a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. According to the recent Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) report, the world has just 12 years in which to cut emissions by half, and 32 years (by 2050) to get net emissions down to zero. However, far from the required dramatic decline, the latest figures show global carbon dioxide emissions actually going up. “Now more than ever, unprecedented and urgent action is required by all nations,” urged the UN’s Emissions Gap Report in November. And some think that artificially engineered reflective clouds may be one important solution.

 

Currently around 30% of the sun’s rays that reach Earth are reflected back to space by white surfaces, largely our polar ice. Sea ice reflects sunlight better than any known natural surface, bouncing around 90% back up; at the other end of the scale, the dark open ocean reflects just 6% of sunlight and absorbs 94%. With Arctic sea ice rapidly declining, replacing one with the other is expected to see global warming accelerate. Unless, that is, we find another white surface that can do the job.





  

Thanks to the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, the average global temperature in 1991 dropped by 0.6C
 



Since Pinatubo, there have been many suggestions for artificial reflective surfaces: launching mirrors into space to orbit around the earth; building wind-powered ice machines over the Arctic, or scattering it with trillions of silica beads. One Peruvian scheme even painted the tops of mountains white to replace retreating glaciers.

Clouds, however, naturally reflect the sun (it’s why Venus – a planet with permanent cloud cover – shines so brightly in our night sky). Marine stratocumulus clouds are particularly important, covering around 20% of the Earth’s surface while reflecting 30% of total solar radiation. Stratocumulus clouds also cool the ocean surface directly below. Proposals to make these clouds whiter – or “marine cloud brightening” – are amongst the more serious projects now being considered by various bodies, including the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s new “solar geoengineering” committee.

Stephen Salter, Emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh, has been one of the leading voices of this movement. In the 1970s, when Salter was working on waves and tidal power, he came across studies examining the pollution trails left by shipping. Much like the aeroplane trails we see criss-crossing the sky, satellite imagery had revealed that shipping left similar tracks in the air above the ocean – and the research revealed that these trails were also brightening existing clouds.
The pollution particles had introduced “condensation nuclei” (otherwise scarce in the clean sea air) for water vapour to congregate around. Because the pollution particles were smaller than the natural particles, they produced smaller water droplets; and the smaller the water droplet, the whiter and more reflective it is. In 1990, British atmospheric scientist John Latham proposed doing this with benign, natural particles such as sea salt. But he needed an engineer to design a spraying system. So he contacted Stephen Salter.
I didn’t realize quite how hard it was going to be,” Salter now admits. Seawater, for instance, tends to clog up or corrode spray nozzles. And that’s not to mention the difficulties of modelling the effects on the weather and climate.  But his latest design, he believes, is ready to build: an unmanned hydro-foil ship, computer-controlled and wind-powered, which pumps an ultra-fine mist of sea salt toward the cloud layer.

Stephen Salter believes that a fleet of 300 of his autonomous ships could reduce global temperatures by 1.5C

 (Credit: James MacNeill)

 

“Spraying about 10 cubic metres per second could undo all the [global warming] damage we’ve done to the world up until now,” Salter claims. And, he says, the annual cost would be less than the cost to host the annual UN Climate Conference – between $100-$200 million each year.
Salter calculates that a fleet of 300 of his autonomous ships could reduce global temperatures by 1.5C. He also believes that smaller fleets could be deployed to counter-act regional extreme weather events. Hurricane seasons and El Niño, exacerbated by high sea temperatures, could be tamed by targeted cooling via marine cloud brightening. A PhD thesis from the University of Leeds in 2012 stated that cloud brightening could, “decrease sea surface temperatures during peak tropical cyclone season… [reducing] the energy available for convection and may reduce intensity of storms”.
Salter boasts that 160 of his ships could “moderate an El Niño event, and a few hundred [would] stop hurricanes”. The same could be done, he says, to protect large coral reefs such as the Great Barrier Reef, and even cool the polar regions to allow sea ice to return.

So, what’s the catch? Well, there’s a very big catch indeed. The potential side-effects of solar geoengineering on the scale needed to slow hurricanes or cool global temperatures are not well understood. According to various theories, it could prompt droughts, flooding, and catastrophic crop failures; some even fear that the technology could be weaponised (during the Vietnam War, American forces flew thousands of “cloud seeding” missions to flood enemy troop supply lines). Another major concern is that geoengineering could be used as an excuse to slow down emissions reduction, meaning CO2 levels continue to rise and oceans continue to acidify – which, of course, brings its own serious problems.

Even small changes to weather systems could have unforseen consequences, and some scientists fear that solar engineering could lead to droughts or flooding

 

A rival US academic team – The MCB Project – is less gung-ho than Salter. Kelly Wanser, the principal director of The MCB Project, is based in Silicon Valley. When it launched in 2010 with seed funding from the Gates Foundation, it received a fierce backlash from the media.
Her team’s design is similar to commercial snow-making machines for ski resorts, yet capable of spraying “particles ten thousand times smaller [than snow]… at three trillion particles per second”. The MCB Project hopes to test this near Monterey Bay, California, where marine stratocumulus clouds waft overland. They would start with a single cloud to track its impact.
“One of the strengths of marine cloud brightening is it can be very gradually scaled,” says Wanser. “You [can] get a pretty good grasp of whether and how you are brightening clouds, without doing things that impact climate or weather.”

Such a step-by-step research effort, says Wanser, would take a decade at least. But due to the controversy it attracts, this hasn’t even started yet. Not one cloud has yet been purposefully brightened by academics – although cargo shipping still does this unintentionally, with dirty particles, every single day.
The danger, however, is that solar geoengineering will be eventually called upon as a last chance solution, without the initial research to understand the side effects. “The risks tend to increase the more heat you’re trying to offset,” she says. “The more particles you have to put in, the more likely the side effects are stronger and the risks are greater… this research takes time, and at this point, we can’t even tell you we can build a sprayer that gets these particles to the clouds.”

There is another approach to solar radiation management that shares the benefits – and the risks – evenly across the globe. Stratospheric aerosol scattering (SAS) is more analogous to Mount Pinatubo: instead of spraying aerosols into the lower atmosphere, you scatter them 10km above the clouds. This suspended, almost static veil of particles – too thin to be visible from the ground – would reflect a proportion of sunlight back into space. Computer modelling by the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in 2017 suggested that for every teragram of particles (one trillion grams – roughly the mass of the Golden Gate Bridge) injected in the atmosphere, a global average temperature reduction of 0.2C could be achieved.

Once again, the consequences are unknown: it’s not clear what impact this strategy would have on the weather systems below, or on the ozone layer directly above it. Unlike a brightened cloud at sea, which may last for three days, an artificial stratospheric layer would likely linger – like the Mount Pinatubo eruption – for up to two years.

Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program are leading the work on SAS. Elizabeth Burns, its program director said, “solar geoengineering could only be a potential complement to emissions reduction. It could not replace those efforts”. This is no “quick fix”, she says. “We really do need to reduce emissions to zero if we want to address climate change.”

There are many preferable ways to reduce climate change than solar geoengineering. Planting trees – reforesting – is a proven, conservation-friendly method of taking carbon out of the atmosphere. A rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy would tackle the source of emissions. But neither are happening fast enough. Perhaps, if nothing else, even contemplating solar geoengineering may be enough to shock governments into rapid emissions reduction.

“We are doing an intervention [already] into our atmosphere in an unprecedented way [through fossil fuel and CO2 emissions],” continues Burns. “We have something that could potentially help with some of the symptoms, albeit not the cure… it is such an important topic globally that we need to start thinking about it.”

Pollution can impair our behavior and judgement..... Study

In the future, police and crime prevention units may begin to monitor the levels of pollution in their cities, and deploy resources to the areas where pollution is heaviest on a given day. This may sound like the plot of a science fiction movie, but recent findings suggest that this may well be a worthwhile practice.
Why? Emerging studies show that air pollution is linked to impaired judgement, mental health problems, poorer performance in school and most worryingly perhaps, higher levels of crime.
These findings are all the more alarming, given that more than half of the world’s population now live in urban environments – and more of us are travelling in congested areas than ever before. Staggeringly, the World Health Organization says nine out of 10 of us frequently breathe in dangerous levels of polluted air.
Air pollution kills an estimated seven million people per year. But could we soon add murder figures into this too?
It was in 2011 that Sefi Roth, a researcher at the London School of Economics was pondering the many effects of air pollution. He was well aware of the negative outcome on health, increased hospital admissions and also mortality. But maybe, he thought, there could be other adverse impacts on our lives.
To start with, he conducted a study looking at whether air pollution had an effect on cognitive performance.
Roth and his team looked at students taking exams on different days – and also measured how much pollution was in the air on those given days. All other variables remained the same: The exams were taken by students of similar levels of education, in the same place, but over multiple days.
He found that the variation in average results were staggeringly different. The most polluted days correlated with the worst test scores. On days where the air quality was cleanest, students performed better.
“We could see a clear decline [of performance] on days that were more highly polluted,” says Roth. “Even a few days before and a few days after, we found no effect – it’s really just on the day of the exam that the test score decreased significantly.”
To determine the long-term effects, Roth followed up to see what impact this had eight to 10 years later. Those who performed worst on the most polluted days were more likely to end up in a lower-ranked university and were also earning less, because the exam in question was so important for future education. “So even if it’s a short-term effect of air pollution, if it occurs in a critical phase of life it really can have a long-term effect,” he says. In 2016 another study backed up Roth’s initial findings that pollution can result in reduced productivity.
Proof positive that we are poisoning our children and condemning them to lower IQ's and poor productivity. If you are not aware of these facts or of the fact that the planet is heating up with disastrous consequences, then, my friends, you are living in a "fool's paradise".

The impact of climate change on humans

 

The impacts of climate change include warming temperatures, changes in precipitation, increases in the frequency or intensity of some extreme weather events, and rising sea levels. These impacts threaten our health by affecting the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the weather we experience. Emotional and mental stress seriously affect the victims of violent weather events ( floods, hurricanes and tornadoes).

The severity of these health risks will depend on the ability of public health and safety systems to address or prepare for these changing threats, as well as factors such as an individual's behavior, age, gender, and economic status. Impacts will vary based on a where a person lives, how sensitive they are to health threats, how much they are exposed to climate change impacts, and how well they and their community are able to adapt to change.
People in developing countries may be the most vulnerable to health risks globally, but climate change poses significant threats to health even in wealthy nations such as the United States. Certain populations, such as children, pregnant women, older adults, and people with low incomes, face increased risks physically and mentally.



Impacts from Extreme Weather Events

Increases in the frequency or severity of some extreme weather events, threaten the health of people during and after the event. The people most at risk include young children, older adults, people with disabilities or medical conditions, and the poor. Extreme events can affect human health in a number of ways by:

• Reducing the availability of safe food and drinking water.
• Damaging roads and bridges, disrupting access to hospitals and pharmacies.
• Interrupting communication, utility, and health care services.
• Contributing to carbon monoxide poisoning from improper use of portable electric generators during and after storms.
• Increasing stomach and intestinal illness, particularly following power outages.
• Creating or worsening mental health impacts such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In addition, emergency evacuations pose health risks to older adults, especially those with limited mobility who cannot use elevators during power outages. Evacuations may be complicated by the need for concurrent transfer of medical records, medications, and medical equipment. Some individuals with disabilities may also be disproportionally affected if they are unable to access evacuation routes, have difficulty in understanding or receiving warnings of impending danger, or have limited ability to communicate their needs.
Every country needs to set up an entire infrastructure of agencies and programs to address these present and  future problems. At present that seems an impossibly enormous task. The simplest plan would be to reduce carbon output drastically and turn back the tide of climate change. Why are we not doing that??



Canada’s climate is warming twice as fast as global average

 

Because our climate is warming at double the rate of the rest of the word, Canadians are experiencing the costs of climate-related extremes first hand, from devastating wildfires and flooding to heatwaves and droughts. As the planet warms, extreme weather events will become increasingly common. The knowledge provided by our scientists has helped us understand that climate change is real and driven by human activity. The Government of Canada will continue to work with Canadian scientists, by listening to their expertise and evidence-based advice to help us continue to take ambitious action to reduce emissions and fight climate change.

 

 

Just released, Canada’s Changing Climate Report provides the first in-depth, stand-alone assessment of how and why Canada’s climate has changed, and what changes are projected for the future. Undertaken by some of Canada’s finest scientists, this report provides an independent analysis and evaluation of the scientific confidence based on the scientists’ expert judgement. The assessment was led by Environment and Climate Change Canada, with contributions from Fisheries and Ocean Canada, Natural Resources Canada and university experts.

The assessment confirms that Canada’s climate has warmed in response to global emissions of carbon dioxide from human activity. The effects of widespread warming are already evident in many parts of Canada and are projected to intensify in the near future. A warmer climate will affect the frequency and intensity of forest fires, the extent and duration of snow and ice cover, precipitation, permafrost temperatures, and other extremes of weather and climate, as well as freshwater availability, rising of sea level, and other properties of the oceans surrounding Canada.

This is the first report completed as part of the National Assessment Canada in a Changing Climate: Advancing our Knowledge for Action, led by Natural Resources Canada. It provides the climate science foundation for the forthcoming reports by addressing the impacts of climate change on our communities, environment, and economy, as well as how we are adapting to reduce risk.

Study Says 2035 Is Climate Change Point of No Return

One important area that could slow the movement toward a point of no return in 2035 is the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. But even this will require marked progress. Scientists have calculated that the share of renewables worldwide must grow by at least 2 percent each year in order to slow the march toward climate change.

 

There is hope, though. If the use of renewable energy were to outpace the scientists' model, say by 5 percent per annum, the climate change deadline could move back by at least a decade, the researchers note. Likewise, developing technology to remove carbon dioxide and other gases from the atmosphere could help slow climate change. These gases alter Earth's atmosphere and allow it to trap more heat from the sun and cause temperatures to rise.
"We hope that 'having a deadline' may stimulate the sense of urgency to act for politicians and policy makers," Henk Dijkstra, a professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and one of the study authors, said in a statement. "Very little time is left."

 

Quotes

“Climate change is real, and Canadians across the country are feeling its impacts. The science is clear, we need to take action now. Practical and affordable solutions to fight climate change will help Canadians face the serious risks to our health, security and economy, and will also create the jobs of tomorrow and secure a better future for our kids and grandkids.”
– Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change

“This report is a wakeup call for all Canadians. It is clear that climate change is real, human made, and requires urgent action. Our plan to fight climate change lays out measures across the country to take action on this urgent issue. Our plan will help build a cleaner and greener future that will provide new jobs for our kids and grandkids.”
– Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard

“Climate has an impact on the crops we grow and the resilience of our infrastructure. That is why the work of Canada’s climate researchers is so important. They study climate impact, adaptation and mitigation so we can make evidence-based decisions to help people and communities across Canada thrive.”
– Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Sport

“Climate change is the defining challenge of our time. Canada’s climate science, whether on ecosystem health or atmospheric models, is internationally recognized and provides solid knowledge on which to take action.”
– Dr. Mona Nemer, Chief Science Advisor