Climate News & Discussion: Part 2

[Bamaro]

The UN skewers world leaders' handling of the climate crisis, saying countries are 'utterly failing' and 'way off track'

"The emissions gap is the result of a leadership gap," Guterres told reporters on Tuesday. "But leaders can still make this a turning point to a greener future instead of a tipping point to climate catastrophe."

The Paris agreement set a goal to keep global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, but the UN report found countries are falling behind. Unless action is taken quickly, temperatures could rise to about 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

In addition, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) - a UN body - said on Monday that carbon dioxide has risen by more than the 10-year average in 2020 to 413.2 part per million, despite the world economy slowing during the pandemic.

"We are way off track," WMO's Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said, adding that carbon dioxide levels haven't been this high for at least 3 million years.

The UN skewers world leaders' handling of the climate crisis, saying countries are 'utterly failing' and 'way off track' (msn.com)

 

[Bamaro]

Environmental groups on Wednesday slammed the organisers of the COP26 climate summit for preventing thousands of experts from monitoring negotiations, warning their absence could weaken commitments needed to limit global heating.

Under the United Nations-led process to implement the goals of the Paris Agreement, civil society groups are allowed to attend annual talks as observers.

 

[Bamaro]

The Arctic is warming three times faster than the rest of the planet and is on such a knife’s edge of survival that the U.N. climate negotiations underway in Scotland this week could make the difference between ice and water at the top of the world in the same way that a couple of tenths of a degree matter around the freezing mark, scientists say.

Arctic ice sheets and glaciers are shrinking, with some glaciers already gone. Permafrost, the icy soil that traps the potent greenhouse gas methane, is thawing. Wildfires have broken out in the Arctic. Siberia even hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). Even a region called the Last Ice Area showed unexpected melting this year.

In the next couple of decades, the Arctic is likely to see summers with no sea ice.

 

[TexasBama]

'Tuvalu is sinking': Island nation threatened by sea level rise looks for salvation

With a population of just over 11,000 residents, Tuvalu is an idyllic South Pacific atoll consisting of nine low-lying islands whose highest elevation is roughly 15 feet. Thanks to sea level rise, each year that elevation shrinks a little bit more.

www.yahoo.com

 

[Bamaro]

Miseducation
How Climate Change Is Taught in America
Why are so many American children learning misinformation about climate change?

Investigative reporter Katie Worth reviewed scores of textbooks, built a 50-state database, and traveled to a dozen communities to talk to children and teachers about what is being taught about climate change in America’s public schools. She found a red-blue divide in climate education. More than one-third of young adults believe that climate change is not man-made, and no wonder—that’s what they are taught in school.

Columbia Global Reports | Miseducation · Columbia Global Reports

 

[Bamaro]

 

[Chukker Veteran]

I thought the tornados that devastated parts of Kentucky this week called for this thread to get bumped. Watching the news about it is just awful, so much sadness right here at the Holidays. It seems like we get more unusual, record breaking weather events, and they just keep getting worse.
i minored in environmental education at the University. We are now seeing what I was taught to expect for generations that came after me. The predictions were off, things are getting worse much faster than the experts expected.

 

[Bamaro]

I thought the tornados that devastated parts of Kentucky this week called for this thread to get bumped. Watching the news about it is just awful, so much sadness right here at the Holidays. It seems like we get more unusual, record breaking weather events, and they just keep getting worse.
i minored in environmental education at the University. We are now seeing what I was taught to expect for generations that came after me. The predictions were off, things are getting worse much faster than the experts expected.

Devistating tornados in December!

 

[major tidefan]

Devistating tornados in December!

It's not that rare in the mid south.Our secondary tornado season is in november,december.The 1989 Huntsville F4 and Tuscaloosa F4 in 2000 come to mind.

 

[Bamaro]

It's not that rare in the mid south.Our secondary tornado season is in november,december.The 1989 Huntsville F4 and Tuscaloosa F4 in 2000 come to mind.

Kentucky Tornado Averages
Kentucky is considered part of Hoosier Alley and sees high storm season happen in April and May. There are an average of 21 tornados that occur each year. See the number of tornado averages by month below:

• January – 1
• February – 1
• March – 2
• April – 4
• May – 6
• June – 2
• July – 1
• August – 0
• September – 0
• October – 2
• November – 2
• December – 0

 

[Go Bama]

My sister in law lives in Mayfield, KY. Her home escaped the tornado. Mayfield is about an hour and ten minutes north of where I'm sitting. I went out with the dogs before the weather got bad and it was 72 degrees at 8:30 PM. Everything just felt wrong. Our tornado warning siren went off, but everything was just north of us. Some parts of Gibson county got hit, but nothing like Mayfield, KY.

Nothing to see here. Global warming is a hoax. Things like this happen all the time. Move on.

 

[major tidefan]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1470126457221529604

 

[TexasBama]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/12/13/thwaites-glacier-melt-antarctica/

 

[crimsonaudio]

So little data means this only means what you want it to: https://abcnews.go.com/US/makes-kentuckys-devastating-tornadoes-rare/story?id=81694661

"Something like this is an unusual event for the month of December. It's typically our quietest month for tornadoes, especially in Kentucky," ABC News meteorologist Rob Marciano told "Good Morning America" on Saturday.

It's unclear if climate change could play a role in the activity, he said.

"There's no evidence that climate change has any impact on the strength of severe storms or tornadoes," he said. "That said, to get a tornado this strength and magnitude or length -- in December -- is incredibly rare."

I'm NOT arguing against climate change, but I am arguing that more data is needed to consider this an aspect of climate change rather than a knee-jerk reaction...

 

[TIDE-HSV]

Colorado experiencing its worst wildfire in history - in December. 580 homes and a hotel so far and 30K evacuated. This is WaPo, but you can Google it elsewhere...

WaPo

 

[Bamaro]

 

[Bamaro]

From the WSJ

Is Nuclear Power Part of the Climate Solution?

Nuclear power’s biggest environmental challenge is the waste it produces, which requires thousands or tens of thousands of years of safe storage. But there isn’t a lot of it: All of the nuclear waste produced in the U.S. since the 1950s adds up to about 85,000 tons of material. Compare that with the tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide that would have been produced had that electricity come from fossil fuels instead.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the nation’s total nuclear waste would cover a single football field, 10 yards high. By contrast, carbon dioxide, a colorless, odorless gas, is typically released into the atmosphere, affecting the climate of the entire globe.

The physical footprint of a nuclear plant is small compared with dams, strip mines and arrays of solar panels. Nuclear might even have large greenhouse-gas advantages compared with “bioenergy,” which can emit a lot of carbon dioxide to produce fuel from organic material, and hydropower, which generates tons of carbon dioxide from the construction of large dams and can release large quantities of methane due to decomposing plant matter in reservoirs.

With these advantages in mind, governments around the world have started to give nuclear power another look. In the U.S., the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package signed into law by President Joe Biden in November included $6 billion in subsidies to keep existing nuclear plants running longer and earmarked $2.5 billion for research and development of new nuclear technologies.

In France, as part of a massive push to “reindustrialize,” the government will spend $1.13 billion on nuclear power R&D by 2030. The focus is on developing a new generation of small modular reactors (SMRs) to replace parts of the existing fleet that supplies around 70% of the country’s electricity.

China, meanwhile, intends to build more than 150 new reactors in the next 15 years and will surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest generator of nuclear power within five years. In the past decade China has invested around $470 million in molten-salt reactors, a technology that uses fuel in a liquid state rather than solid rods, reducing the risk of meltdowns. The U.S. experimented with the technology in the 1960s but gave up on it as too expensive. China is now building the first molten-salt reactor that uses thorium as fuel, instead of more radioactive plutonium or uranium. An added advantage is that thorium accumulates as a waste product in China’s growing rare-earth mines, making possible much-needed cost savings for an expensive technology.

Is Nuclear Power Part of the Climate Solution? - WSJ

 

[Bamaro]

Last year was Earth’s fifth hottest on record, European scientists announced on Monday. But the fact that the worldwide average temperature didn’t beat the record is hardly reason to stop worrying about global warming’s grip on the planet, they said.

Not when both the United States and Europe had their warmest summers on the books. Not when higher temperatures around the Arctic caused it to rain for the first time at the Greenland ice sheet’s normally frigid summit. And certainly not when the seven hottest years ever recorded were, by a clear margin, the past seven.

 

[twofbyc]

Good read.

Manchin's Coal Corruption Is So Much Worse Than You Knew — Rolling Stone

The senator from West Virginia is bought and paid for by Big Coal. With his help the dying industry is pulling one final heist — and the entire planet may pay the price

apple.news

 

[twofbyc]

And the beat goes on…