Climate Change is definitely real and it's already here.

[barnswallow]

oh
from the Washington Post:
Virtually all emperor penguins doomed for extinction by 2100 as climate change looms, study finds [8.4.21]
Can they predict this really? Is it reversible? I don't know.

Nearly all of the world’s emperor penguin colonies may be pushed to the brink of extinction by 2100, a new study has found, as the United States moves to list them as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

If climate change continues at its current rate, more than 98 percent of emperor penguin colonies are expected to become quasi-extinct by the turn of the century, a group of global researchers wrote in the journal Global Change Biology on Tuesday. The scientists’ near-term predictions were equally grim: They estimated at least two-thirds of colonies would be quasi-extinct by 2050.
(Quasi-extinction refers to a population being doomed for extinction even if some members of the species remain alive.)

...

The penguins breed on stable sea ice locked to the coast, on ice shelves or on islands around the Antarctic during the winter. Sea ice floes also offer a place for adult emperor penguins to rest or seek refuge from predators.
“There is a sea ice ‘Goldilocks’ zone,” said Stephanie Jenouvrier, a seabird ecologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a lead author of the study, in a statement. “If there is too little sea ice, chicks can drown when sea ice breaks up early; if there is too much sea ice, foraging trips become too long and more arduous, and the chicks may starve.”

Did you see the movie 'March of the Penguins'?

 

[poppy]

Mo' bad news.

Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse

A shutdown would have devastating global impacts and must not be allowed to happen, researchers say

Melting freshwater from Greenland’s ice sheet is slowing down the AMOC earlier than climate models suggested. Photograph: Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

...The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.

...“The signs of destabilisation being visible already is something that I wouldn’t have expected and that I find scary,” said Niklas Boers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who did the research. “It’s something you just can’t [allow to] happen.”

It is not known what level of CO2 would trigger an AMOC collapse, he said. “So the only thing to do is keep emissions as low as possible. The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere”.

 

[mdiver]

Mo' bad news.

Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse

A shutdown would have devastating global impacts and must not be allowed to happen, researchers say

Melting freshwater from Greenland’s ice sheet is slowing down the AMOC earlier than climate models suggested. Photograph: Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

...The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.

...“The signs of destabilisation being visible already is something that I wouldn’t have expected and that I find scary,” said Niklas Boers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who did the research. “It’s something you just can’t [allow to] happen.”

It is not known what level of CO2 would trigger an AMOC collapse, he said. “So the only thing to do is keep emissions as low as possible. The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere”.

I was in the Arctic circle last year and talking to inupiaq folk, they live at the bleeding edge of this and it’s real, already having real effects on their indigenous lifestyles and ability to survive.
It’s so sad to see


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[maplenpg]

I was in the Arctic circle last year and talking to inupiaq folk, they live at the bleeding edge of this and it’s real, already having real effects on their indigenous lifestyles and ability to survive.
It’s so sad to see


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Lots of people starting to be impacted by climate change now, I can't even begin to imagine how those at the core of it are coping. The scientists are talking with real urgency now: this might well not be reversible without drastic change, and even then it might be too late. Things seem trivial when we're threatened completely as a species, yet people still refuse to change their lifestyles. I've come to the conclusion that humans are doomed. We're too selfish, too greedy and we will be the cause of our demise. I'm just glad that some flora and fauna will outlive us. They deserve the planet more than us.

 

[poppy]

UN climate report says we've run out of time | Boing Boing

A United Nations climate report warns that the heatwaves, droughts and flooding seen worldwide will only become more extreme and that action is required immediately to prevent climate catastrophy. …

boingboing.net

UN climate report says we've run out of time

A United Nations climate report warns that the heatwaves, droughts and flooding seen worldwide will only become more extreme and that action is required immediately to prevent climate catastrophy. It warns of "code red for humanity", writes the BBC.

 

[maplenpg]

UN climate report says we've run out of time | Boing Boing

A United Nations climate report warns that the heatwaves, droughts and flooding seen worldwide will only become more extreme and that action is required immediately to prevent climate catastrophy. …

boingboing.net

UN climate report says we've run out of time

A United Nations climate report warns that the heatwaves, droughts and flooding seen worldwide will only become more extreme and that action is required immediately to prevent climate catastrophy. It warns of "code red for humanity", writes the BBC.

We need worldwide drastic change, now. The problem is people don't want to change. They like their gluttonous consumption of products and the 'freedom' to do whatever they want at whatever cost (even if it's too late, it's not their problem, the next generation will deal with it). I've had some hellish conversations on SM about this. People refuse to cut down, let alone cut out what they need to. Humanity is definitely going to kill itself, and we say we're the intelligent species.

 

[DiminutiveRocker]

It's so effing real - I have lived in Cali my entire life and the fires have been getting worse and worse for the last 20 years. 115 degrees in Portland Oregon?

 

[barnswallow]

New Research Helps Explain a Sudden Population Crash for Rare Whales [NYTimes, 9.1.21]

Is that that? 356 remain from a probable pre-whaling population of about 10,000.

An analysis of data on plankton, oceanic conditions and whale sightings, published Wednesday in the journal Oceanography, showed that the whales abandoned their traditional feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine in 2010, the same year that warming water caused the fatty crustaceans they eat to plummet in the area.

Many of the whales eventually followed their food north to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but the protections from fishing gear and ships that had safeguarded them in their previous habitat did not exist in their new one. Entanglement in gear is the leading cause of death for North Atlantic right whales, followed by collisions with vessels.

“They moved so fast that our policies didn’t move with them,” said Erin Meyer-Gutbrod, a quantitative marine ecologist at the University of South Carolina and one of the study’s authors. “The environment is just not as predictable as it used to be, so I think that we all need to think on our feet more.”

...

The whales tend to get tangled in ropes used for crab and lobster fishing. The ropes can drown them, sever parts of their bodies or lead to slow deaths from impaired feeding or swimming.

...

To make matters worse, researchers found that the decline in crustaceans had led to a drop in reproductive rates. “We’re slowing their births and we’re increasing their deaths,” Dr. Meyer-Gutbrod said. “You don’t have to be a super mathematician to guess what that change is going to cause.”

Scientists have counted only 356 individuals remaining.

...

The most effective solution, according to the study’s authors, would be a transition to ropeless fishing gear. “That would have a tremendous impact,” said Charles Greene, a senior fellow with Ocean Visions, a research and advocacy group, and one of the study’s authors.

...

Perhaps 10,000 right whales swam the North Atlantic before the advent of widespread whaling. They were considered good hunting targets because they moved slowly, stuck close to shore and floated when dead, all while yielding abundant oil and baleen, according to the International Whaling Commission. By the 1890s, the species was hunted close to extinction. But the whales’ numbers slowly recovered after commercial whaling was banned, reaching about 500 before the current decline took hold.
Earlier research suggested that plankton loss and warming water had prompted the whales to move, but this study presents the strongest case yet that human-driven climate change caused that reduction in prey, drove the whales into new areas and led to a decline in reproduction rates.

“Though it is upsetting because of the ultimate danger the whales faced, it is not surprising that they appear to move north in response to these changes,” said Jaime Palter, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island who was not involved with the study.

 

[barnswallow]

Does anyone know what this costume is about?

It appeared in this article about polar bears and the town of Churchill in Manitoba:

3000 Miles From Glasgow, a Town and Its Polar Bears Face the Future [NYTimes; 11.7.21]

This is not another story about saving Hudson Bay’s polar bears. It’s too late for that. This is a story about what comes next for a small town that bills itself as the Polar Bear Capital of the World.

In Churchill, an isolated town perched on the southern edge of the Arctic, climate change is not a looming danger. It imbues daily life. It is broken sewer lines and taller trees, longer summers and bigger snowstorms and moose where caribou used to go. Most of all, it is the fear that Americans won’t come visit anymore.

Yet the mood in Churchill is surprisingly sunny.

...

As sea ice melts away, Michael Spence, Churchill’s longtime mayor, says the town’s future is as an outlet for the grain grown on Canada’s western plains and the minerals that will be mined from its thawing northern expanses.

...

After decades of dire predictions, amid mounting evidence the warnings are coming true, there is still no sign that humans collectively are willing to make the kinds of changes necessary to limit the rise of global temperatures. In his 2019 book, “The Wizard and the Prophet,” the science writer Charles C. Mann described a long-running argument between those who believe humans can survive in the long term only by accepting the limits of nature and those who believe humans can survive by reshaping nature. Wittingly or otherwise, we are placing our chips in the second basket.

Michael Spence, Churchill's longtime mayor.

Warmer weather is endangering Arctic species, in part by opening the gates for other animals, like red foxes, wolves and brown bears, as well as a host of smaller species, to move north. “We haven’t found anything that isn’t changing” in the Hudson Bay ecosystem, said David Barber, a professor at the University of Manitoba who studies climate change as scientific director of the Churchill Marine Observatory. “From the viruses and the bacteria right up to the whales, every single thing is being affected by climate change.”

Polar bears spar as a way of exercising to prepare for their hunting season.

The big white bears live out of rhythm with their southern cousins. In the winter, instead of sleeping, they roam across the surface of the frozen bay, looking for ringed seals. In the summer, when the ice melts, they rest on shore. Every year around this time, several hundred polar bears congregate around Churchill, waiting for the ice to form.

While the polar bears are on land, people in Churchill are careful to make wide turns around street corners. They avoid walking alone at night. They guard their trash with the kind of care usually reserved for things that are valuable. Everyone has a story about a close encounter. Joseph Michel Boudreau, 74, told me that one morning he made the mistake of cooking bacon without turning on the stovetop vent. A bear put a paw through a front window. Mr. Boudreau went out the back door.

...

One immediate impact of global warming is that the bears are spending more time around Churchill as the sea ice forms later in the year and melts earlier. On land, polar bears lose about 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of their weight each day. As ice season shrinks, the bears face the double pain of fewer days of hunting and more days of fasting. Between 1980 and 2019, the weight of the average pregnant polar bear in the Churchill region declined by 15 percent, according to Nick Lunn, a Canadian government scientist. New births are in decline. The number of polar bears in western Hudson Bay fell by 30 percent from 1987 to 2016, and some experts think the population already is in terminal decline.

...

In the late 19th century, grain farmers on Canada’s western plains, frustrated by the long haul to the Atlantic, turned their eyes to Canada’s northern ocean.

The government of Manitoba decided to build a grain port at Churchill, an old fur-trading post set on a narrow granite ridge that runs for about 10 miles along the edge of Hudson Bay. At the western end of the ridge is the mouth of the Churchill River, a natural harbor sheltered from storms and deep enough to accommodate cargo ships. Because the world is round, the Churchill route to Europe is shorter than sending grain from the Great Plains through the Eastern Seaboard. When the new railroad and port opened in 1931, locals boasted that it was a shorter trip to Liverpool than from Montreal.
Churchill’s ice-free shipping season, which then ran from early August to early October, was brief but busy. In 1974, 25 million bushels of barley moved through Churchill — about one-fifth of the barley Canada exported that year.


The government of Manitoba decided to build a grain port at Churchill, an old fur-trading post set on a narrow granite ridge that runs for about 10 miles along the edge of Hudson Bay. At the western end of the ridge is the mouth of the Churchill River, a natural harbor sheltered from storms and deep enough to accommodate cargo ships. Because the world is round, the Churchill route to Europe is shorter than sending grain from the Great Plains through the Eastern Seaboard. When the new railroad and port opened in 1931, locals boasted that it was a shorter trip to Liverpool than from Montreal.
Churchill’s ice-free shipping season, which then ran from early August to early October, was brief but busy. In 1974, 25 million bushels of barley moved through Churchill — about one-fifth of the barley Canada exported that year.

...

The number of days that Hudson Bay is ice-free increased by about 1.14 days per year between 1980 and 2014, according to a study by the University of Manitoba. Moreover, change is accelerating. The melting of sea ice is like the clear-cutting of a forest: It removes a barrier that allows the sun to shine directly on the surface, warming it more quickly. Some climate models project that ships may be able to navigate Hudson Bay throughout the year as soon as 2030. What’s left of the sea ice would no longer pose a danger.

...

But unlike past disruptions, climate change isn’t just upending Churchill’s economy. It is quite literally tearing the town apart. Delayed winters have increased the intensity of storms, which draw strength from the open water. Elsie Hyska, who owns a summer cottage on the bay, said she now has to secure the window shutters with screws in the fall. Lightning storms were once so unusual that the town’s power lines were built without standard protections. Now lightning regularly knocks out power.

Warmer weather also is thawing the permafrost, undermining building foundations and breaking the town’s water and sewer lines.
...
It’s often said that we aren’t destroying the planet; we are destroying our ability to exist on the planet. But what if we are merely destroying the ability of others to exist on the planet? What if Churchill emerges as a thriving port city facilitating the distribution of wheat and minerals around the world and everything that is distinctive and particular about the Arctic is erased in the process?

Does that count as a victory? Will our descendants consider that good enough?

 

[DiminutiveRocker]

Climate Change Is Harming the Planet Faster Than We Can Adapt, U.N. Warns​

Countries aren’t doing nearly enough to protect against the disasters to come as the planet keeps heating up, a major new scientific report concludes.

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A seawall construction in low-lying metropolitan Manila, Philippines. Many developing countries lack the resources to prepare for the more serious climate-related threats still to come.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

By Brad Plumer and Raymond Zhong
Feb. 28, 2022Updated 10:15 a.m. ET
The dangers of climate change are mounting so rapidly that they could soon overwhelm the ability of both nature and humanity to adapt unless greenhouse gas emissions are quickly reduced, according to a major new scientific report released on Monday.
The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, is the most detailed look yet at the threats posed by global warming. It concludes that nations aren’t doing nearly enough to protect cities, farms and coastlines from the hazards that climate change has unleashed so far, such as record droughts and rising seas, let alone from the even greater disasters in store as the planet continues to warm.
Written by 270 researchers from 67 countries, the report is “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” said António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general. “With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change.”
The perils are already visible across the globe, the report said. In 2019, storms, floods and other extreme weather events displaced more than 13 million people across Asia and Africa. Rising heat and drought are killing crops and trees, putting millions worldwide at increased risk of hunger and malnutrition, while mosquitoes carrying diseases like malaria and dengue are spreading into new areas. Roughly half the world’s population currently faces severe water scarcity at least part of the year.

 

[DiminutiveRocker]

 

[maplenpg]

View attachment 1188

Scary stuff. Have you seen this video from NASA about global warming over the years?

Video: Climate Spiral (1880-2022) - NASA Science

The visualization shows monthly global temperature anomalies (changes from an average) between the years 1880 and 2022.

climate.nasa.gov

 

[barnswallow]

A Gripping Look At 2022's Global Drought [TPM; 8.26.22]

Has it been dry where you live?

Here, it's very dry. Townships across the state have imposed water bans. Finally, two days ago, we had a 1.7" water fall, which doesn't hardly make up for the deficit but eases the stress, momentarily.

Yesterday, in one hour, we had a further 1.4" of rainfall. 3.1" in 5 days, which is probably about as much as we had, up to this week, for the whole summer.

 

[barnswallow]

On cue, an article about water from TPM, dated 8.27.22:

As Colorado River Dries, the US Teeters on the Brink of Larger Water Crisis

Sub-titled: The megadrought gripping the western states is only part of the problem. Alternative sources of water are also imperiled, and the nation's food along with it.

I recently sat down with Jay Famiglietti, the executive director of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan, to talk about what comes next and what the public still doesn’t understand about water scarcity in the United States. Before moving to Canada, Famiglietti was a lead researcher at NASA’s water science program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and a member of the faculty at the University of California, Irvine. He pioneered the use of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites to peer into the earth’s mass and measure changes in its underground water supplies. The Colorado River crisis is urgent, Famiglietti said, but the hidden, underground water crisis is even worse. We talked about what U.S. leaders either won’t acknowledge or don’t understand and about how bad things are about to get.

 

[barnswallow]

Billionaire No More: Patagonia Founder Gives Away the Company

A half century after founding the outdoor apparel maker Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, the eccentric rock climber who became a reluctant billionaire with his unconventional spin on capitalism, has given the company away.

Rather than selling the company or taking it public, Mr. Chouinard, his wife and two adult children have transferred their ownership of Patagonia, valued at about $3 billion, to a specially designed trust and a nonprofit organization. They were created to preserve the company’s independence and ensure that all of its profits — some $100 million a year — are used to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe.

Giving thanks for the rare birds, making a positive difference: Yvon Chouinard and family.

 

[barnswallow]

Interesting article about alliances (I've only read part of it), which have a longer history than 'since the war in Ukraine' but which have been amplified since the invasion. China's purchase of Russian oil and gas have doubled; Turkey, tripled; India, quadrupled. Shared from the NYTimes, 11.5.2022:

How Putin and Friends Stalled Climate Progress

 

[barnswallow]

From the New York Times, 11.6.2021

The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof

Questions answered:

• How do we know climate change is really happening?
• How much agreement is there among scientists about climate change?
• Do we really only have 150 years of climate data? How is that enough to tell us about centuries of change?
• How do we know climate change is caused by humans?
• Since greenhouse gases occur naturally, how do we know they’re causing Earth’s temperature to rise?
• Why should we be worried that the planet has warmed 2°F since the 1800s?
• Is climate change a part of the planet’s natural warming and cooling cycles?
• How do we know global warming is not because of the sun or volcanoes?
• How can winters and certain places be getting colder if the planet is warming?
• Wildfires and bad weather have always happened. How do we know there’s a connection to climate change?
• How bad are the effects of climate change going to be?
• What will it cost to do something about climate change, versus doing nothing?

 

[barnswallow]

First knowledge came yesterday. Looking at my favorite weather website, I saw an ‘air quality alert’. The ‘read more’ was inadequate, and described the episode as lasting 24 hours, ending roughly around now. I heard an older friend, kind of quirky but savvy, speak of Canadian wildfires as the source. I’ve heard about the fires but the reporting has not been alarming, or not so much as it likely should have been.

The air here falls in the range of ‘unhealthy’ and that unhealthy air covers a broad swath of the eastern and mid-Atlantic states. Time to get out the N95 and pay attention. What’s happening in Canada right now?

Well, that just linked to the whole twitter page. Was aiming for this tweet:

Here’s how Canadian wildfires are worsening air quality across the U.S. [NPR; 6.6.23]

 

[mdiver]

I was in Alaska a few weeks ago again, this time on St Paul island. You may have seen this place on Deadliest Catch.
The island has been supporting the crab industry for years but now (2 seasons ago) the crab are just gone and nobody knows why. The Aleut Tribal government are now setting up to support research in to why this has happened rather than supporting the industry itself. Absolutely devastating to the community.
For reference this is St Paul harbor on the show.

 

[barnswallow]

the air quality alerts continue. Today is maybe a bit better, here. NYC was off the charts yesterday, or rather, they had to re-scale to fit it in the chart.

Just How Bad Was the Pollution in New York? [NYTimes; 6.8.23]