Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) - basalt dust. Methane: Lemon grass and cows. CC litigation. Meat eating and production. UK Gov policy on CC. 1 CC management strategies. 1.5°C v 2°C. Agricultural footprint. Air conditioning. Air transport sustainability. Bering Strait barrage. Carbon capture. Carbon offsetting. Carbon reduction. Future camping. Industrial management of CC. Walls around coastal airports. Holistic risk management. Small things. Earthshot Prize. Effective solutions. Planting trees v Ecosystem recovery. Progress to targets.
Stop flying (flygskam; flugscham) Climate change emergency UK. Mitigation with trees. Kids protest. Super-rich climate change management. Political change on env. Reaction time: Emergency = R × U = p × D × τ / T. Scenarios. Walls on sea floor. Working with nature to tackle climate change. Climate change: Can 12 billion tonnes of carbon be sucked from the air?
Is it remotely feasible to remove 12 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air?
Every year. For decades to come. That's the challenge posed by the latest conclusions of the UN's climate science panel. It says that only by pulling this heat-trapping gas out of the atmosphere can we avoid dangerous climate change. But according to one leading researcher, there's a bit of a hitch: "We haven't a clue how to do it". The problem is that scientists reckon that even if the world manages to cut emissions of the gas, it will no longer be enough to avoid the worst impacts. We've got to go a step further, they say, and find ways of doing something never attempted before: get rid of the gas that's already out there.
What ideas are around? The most headline-grabbing solution is for giant machines to filter the air and strip out the gas, as my colleague Matt McGrath has reported. This happens all the time naturally but took off in spectacular fashion more than 400 million years ago. Twitter. A metaphor for humanity’s attitude towards the ecological crisis. Twitter. Sweden to reach its 2030 renewable #energy target this year.
BBC Newsnight sur Twitter : "“We have to confront those powers that are destroying humanity” Environmental activist George Monbiot says “a political struggle” is needed to challenge climate change #newsnight. I don’t like the sarcastic use of ‘good luck with that’ but....… The most effective individual steps to tackle climate change aren't being discussed. Governments and schools are not communicating the most effective ways for individuals to reduce their carbon footprints, according to new research.
Published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the study from Lund University, found that the incremental changes advocated by governments may represent a missed opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions beneath the levels needed to prevent 2°C of climate warming. The four actions that most substantially decrease an individual's carbon footprint are: eating a plant-based diet, avoiding air travel, living car-free, and having smaller families. The research analysed 39 peer reviewed papers, carbon calculators, and government reports to calculate the potential of a range of individual lifestyle choices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This comprehensive analysis identifies the actions individuals could take that will have the greatest impact on reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. Twitter. This heatwave is just the start. Britain has to adapt to climate change, fast. Much of the world is in the grip of a heatwave.
Britain is so hot and dry that we have Indonesia-style peat fires raging across our moorlands. Montreal posted its highest temperature ever, with the deaths of 33 people in Quebec attributed to the scorching heat. And if you think that’s hot and dangerous, the town of Quriyat in Oman never went below a frightening 42.6C for a full 24 hours in June, almost certainly a global record. While many people love a bit of sun, extreme heat is deadly. Climate change: Michael Bloomberg pledges $4.5m for Paris deal.
Image copyright Reuters Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he will pay $4.5m (£3.2m) to cover the lapsed US financial commitment to the Paris climate accord.
He said he had a responsibility to help improve the environment because of President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the deal. The withdrawal was announced last June and sparked international condemnation. It will make the US in effect the only country not to be part of the Paris accord. The Paris agreement commits the US and 187 other countries to keeping rising global temperatures "well below" 2C above pre-industrial levels. Joe Smith sur Twitter : "yep, tho the extensive de-industrialising bit we're in the middle of a big help AND with plenty of very very negative consequences. I'll know UK mainstream politics serious when UK really gets cracking on transport, housing standa. Yes, the Climate Change Act - supported by all major parties - has been a triumph.… Martin Baxter sur Twitter : "Durability of Climate Change Act a real strength - survived through Labour, Coalition C/LD, Conservative majority and now Conservative minority govts & consistency cutting emissions - what’s not to like!…
Indeed. BTW, my goal is not to politicise climate action - the exact opposite: wherever the issue is captured by the left and held hostage, progress becomes impossible.… Kees van der Leun sur Twitter : "Spectacular proposal today by NL heating equipment suppliers, installers, NGO's, and some energy companies: no new purely gas-fired heating boilers to be installed from 1-1-2021. To be replaced by (hybrid) heat pumps, sola. Council for Science sur Twitter : ""Villach 1980 was a seminal meeting. This is when the scientists convinced themselves that this was serious [...] that this was a big, global problem.“ Peter Liss on the meeting that put #climatechange on the agenda. New.
'Let me be very clear, sea level rise is known, it is expected, it is not accidental and so it will NOT be insured' Tim Grafton of the NZ insurance council #climatechange #pccc2018. Zambian farmers benefit from millions in insurance pay-outs thanks to Reading data. Release Date 30 January 2018 Millions of dollars are due to be paid out to small-scale farmers in Zambia affected by a recent severe dry spell, following the introduction of a new government insurance scheme powered by University of Reading science.
Satellite-based rainfall estimates for Africa produced by the University’s TAMSAT research group have allowed around US$2.8m to be triggered for farmers in 370 locations in Zambia between December 1 2017 and 20 January 2018. More than a million farmers are benefiting from the new mandatory insurance scheme, introduced by the government last year to protect farmers against poor harvests due to extreme weather events. The weather index insurance scheme – the largest of its type ever run in Africa – is run by Risk Shield, which uses TAMSAT data. The scheme is integrated in the Government of Zambia’s Farmer Input Support Program (FISP).
A new report says we should tax meat-eaters like smokers. In Brief As global demand booms, a tax on meat may be a way of discouraging overconsumption and paying for the environmental damages of the livestock industry, a new report suggests.
But critics believe it would disproportionately affect the poor. Meet the Meat Tax Eating too much meat and smoking both have an impact on the public, from an environmental and health perspective. A new report says we should tax meat-eaters like smokers #environment #health. *****Carbon capture: Climate's magic rabbit: Pulling CO2 out of thin air. Image copyright CLIMEWORKS UN climate negotiators are meeting in Bonn amid a welter of reports indicating that concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have broken records, while international attempts to curb greenhouse gases are not doing enough to avoid dangerous levels of warming.
Our environment correspondent Matt McGrath has travelled to Switzerland to see if technology to remove CO2 from the air could be the answer to this ongoing carbon conundrum. While CO2 concentrations are now higher than they have been in at least 800,000 years, the gas still only accounts for a tiny 0.04% of our atmosphere. However, extracting carbon dioxide from well mixed air is not just technically difficult, it's expensive as well.
*****Mitigation - Carbon capture: Climate's magic rabbit: Pulling CO2 out of thin air. Here are three easy but effective strategies employed in Denmark to defend vulnerable cities against rising sea levels and flooding.… *****Climate change: Plant captures CO2 out of the air (carbon capture) Why do we find it so hard to care about climate change #Psychology. China to ban high-sulfur (sulphur) diesel used by tractors, ships from November 1 #shipping a big source of pollution. *****Adaptation: New Zealand considers creating climate change refugee visas. *****Adaptation: This architect is trying to save our cities from rising sea levels. Rising sea levels, coastal flooding, and biodiversity loss are stark realities for many cities across the United States.
By 2100, there is a 90% chance that global mean sea levels will rise anywhere from eight inches to 6.6 feet, according to a recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report. As the world becomes more urbanized, cities can lose wetlands (which protect against flooding), trees (which fight CO2), and native flora and fauna. Landscape architect Kate Orff, founder of the urban design firm Scape Studio, aims to address those issues in her work. She is a 2017 recipient of the MacArthur fellowship, also known as the "genius grant," announced on October 11.
Every year, the John D. & Catherine T. Orff's projects focus on finding practical solutions to ecological problems facing cities. Orff and her firm Scape Studio arre known for designing green spaces for urban places. *****Carbon capture (CO2 to rock): A rock solid solution? Read more. NETs & BECCS explained Research programme into negative emissions As well as stopping #emissions.
NETs & BECCS explained Research programme into negative emissions As well as stopping #emissions. When -ve is a +ve Negative Emissions Key to Meeting 2°C Threshold HT @DrDCWahl. *****Volcanic Eruptions Can Cool the Planet, But They Won't Save Us From Climate Change. It's counterintuitive to imagine that any event spewing molten rock more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit could make anything cooler, yet that's precisely what volcanic eruptions do.
But because volcanoes are unpredictable, that impact isn't accounted for in the models of climate change we use to make decisions about carbon emissions and to set goals for mitigation—in fact, this omission is one of the biggest gaps in those models. A new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change attempts to solve the puzzle by modeling 60 different volcano scenarios and how they will impact climate. The results suggest that eruptions will likely play a role in modulating climate change over the next hundred years. Alarm as study reveals world’s tropical forests are huge carbon emission source. The world’s tropical forests are so degraded they have become a source rather than a sink of carbon emissions, according to a new study that highlights the urgent need to protect and restore the Amazon and similar regions.
Researchers found that forest areas in South America, Africa and Asia – which have until recently played a key role in absorbing greenhouse gases – are now releasing 425 teragrams of carbon annually, which is more than all the traffic in the United States. This is a far greater loss than previously thought and carries extra force because the data emerges from the most detailed examination of the topic ever undertaken. The authors say their findings – published in the journal Science on Thursday – should galvanise policymakers to take remedial action. “This shows that we can’t just sit back. Global vulnerability to collision mortality at wind farms revealed through a trait-based assessment #ornithology. *****The island people with a climate change escape plan - BBC News. The low-lying Caribbean islands inhabited by Panama's indigenous Guna people are threatened by rising sea levels and increasingly unpredictable weather.
But unlike many island communities facing such problems, the Guna have an escape plan. The tiny port of Carti on the mainland of Panama is the jumping-off place for day trippers who come to swim, splash and snorkel around the idyllic-looking islands that dot the horizon. Motor boats buzz in and out carrying smiling visitors wearing life jackets and sun hats. It's one of Panama's premier tourist destinations. The islands - almost one for every day of the year - make up the Guna Yala autonomous region, together with a strip of territory on the mainland.
Most Guna communities live on the archipelago, and have done for centuries, after they were driven offshore by disease and venomous snakes. It is the people of Gardi Sugdub - Crab Island - who are in the vanguard of the relocation project. This smart ‘tree’ has the environmental benefits of a small forest. Urban planners have a balancing act to perform.
On the one hand, green spaces in cities provide an obvious low-tech way to help remedy the growing problem of air pollution. But on the other, they are costly to maintain and space-intensive when inner-city land is at a premium. *****Adaptation: Painting roads white lowers surface temperatures by 10 degrees Celsius. Is geoengineering a bad idea? In 2010, science writer Eli Kintisch called geoengineering “a bad idea whose time has come”. It is considered by many to be the ultimate admission of our failure to curb carbon emissions – a tech-fix that excuses continued carbon gluttony in the industrialised world. A report released on Tuesday by the US National Academies of Sciences (NAS) said tinkering with the global climate now would be “irrational and irresponsible” and climate change can only be avoided by cutting emissions.
But the influential group of 16 scientists who authored the report urged policy makers to commit to further research into some geoengineering techniques. Should there come a time when the world must consider more extreme interventions in the climate, asked Marcia McNutt, the chair of the committee: “Do we want those decisions to be kneejerk reactions? Scientists are pushing wild climate hacking scenarios to save the planet.
While the planet is working on cutting emissions to curb climate change, some scientists are saying we can also help our planet out by directly messing with our atmosphere. Collectively known as geoengineering, these technology-based climate hacks could be our ticket to actively cooling down the planet, but they are untested and potentially dangerous, and therefore have remained controversial for decades. And yet scientists keep bringing them up. Now an international team of researchers has run the numbers on how we might stabilise global temperatures by using a 'cocktail' of solar geoengineering tools intended for deflecting solar radiation away from the planet.
The scientists modelled what would happen if we used sulphate particles to scatter the sun's rays in the atmosphere and simultaneously thinned out sunlight-reflecting clouds to reduce warming. A Dangerous Plan to Stop Climate Change – Nexus Media. These experts say we have three years to save the planet from irreversible destruction. Photos of Alaska's Muir Glacier in August 1941 (L) and August 2004 (R). NASA A planet devastated by climate change may seem like a distant future. But Earth is already experiencing effects today. Globally, the mean rate of sea level rise increased 50% in the last two decades.
Maps We Love (air conditioning) Twitter. #Infographic shows how much individual actions impact #climatechange. The "have fewer kids" one is controversial. The Netherlands, always vulnerable to floods, has a new approach to water management. Top Free Offers Today. *****Mitigation:Cutting cow farts to combat climate change. *****Adaptation: Fascinating to see the history of London's #flood defences through its engineering 'strata' #Thames #HiddenHistory. *****Mitigation: India plants 66 million trees in 12 hours as part of record-breaking environmental campaign. Volunteers in India planted more than 66 million trees in just 12 hours in a record-breaking environmental drive. About 1.5 million people were involved in the huge plantation campaign, in which saplings were placed along the Narmada river in the state of Madhya Pradesh throughout Sunday.
*****Mitigation: Creation of #forestcity in China is underway - a blanketed skyline of 1 million plants will absorb 10,000 tons of CO2 a year! *****Adaptation: Resilience planning in Rotterdam - an interesting read for planning the upcoming Rotterdam field trip @GeogBham. Good morning from Tanzania! Here to look at Kukua's weather station project, helping smallholder farmers to manage climate change. *****Military adaptation: Norfolk/Hampton Roads naval base - our largest - is raising docks ~6 feet because #climate change is raising sea levels. No denial there. Cutting emissions isn't enough, we need to start removing carbon from the atmosphere. #CarbonPrice in #Australia increased #renewables reduced #emissions drove up price. That's what it was designed for. Negative Emissions Key to Meeting 2°C Threshold. Humans will have to not only stop emitting greenhouse gases by 2085, but also develop technology that will result in negative emissions — the removal of 15 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year by the end of the century — in order to prevent global warming from exceeding 2°C (3.6°F), according to a new study.
Human greenhouse gas emissions, including methane and carbon dioxide, have already warmed the globe more than 1°C (1.8°F) compared to pre-industrial levels. Negative emissions tech: can more trees, carbon capture or biochar solve our CO2 problem? Climate stabilization: Planting trees cannot replace cutting carbon dioxide emissions. Growing plants and then storing the CO2 they have taken up from the atmosphere is no viable option to counteract unmitigated emissions from fossil fuel burning, a new study shows. *****Assessing threat from sea level rise: UNEP app helps coastal communities adapt to climate change - Daily Planet. The United Nations Environment Programmme(UNEP) has launched a web app and infographic to support people living and working on coasts in making decisions on how to adapt to a changing climate.
*****Adaptation to or mitigation of climate change?: Cats in the shade. *****Cost of climate change / risk register: Leading insurers tell G20 to stop funding fossil fuels by 2020. *****Climate change mitigation: UK launches ‘world first’ research programme into negative emissions. The public money will fund projects exploring the real-world potential of “negative emissions” technologies (NETs), including soil carbon management, afforestation, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), enhanced weathering and direct capture of methane from the air. NETs will “almost certainly be needed” to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change, one of the researchers tells Carbon Brief. The New York Times Sale: Get 50% Off For One Year.