Posted on 12 April 2020 by John Hartz

Story of the Week...

Coronavirus puts Arctic climate change research on ice

Coronavirus lockdowns have been touted on social media as helping to fight climate change. But in the Arctic Circle the virus is disrupting climate science. It could leave important gaps in our understanding.

East GRIP research facility in Greenland

Every year 150 climate scientists fly far into the wilderness and bore deep into Greenland's largest glacier. Their work is complicated and important. The EastGRIP project is trying to understand how ice streams underneath the glacier are pushing vast amounts of ice into the ocean, and how this contributes to rising sea levels. But this year the drills will be silent. The ice streams will go unmeasured. 

The reason is the coronavirus. The fallout from measures to contain the outbreak have made the research impossible. Greenland is closed to foreigners. Its government is worried any outbreak could be particularly dangerous to its indigenous population and rapidly overwhelm its health services. 

Even if the country were open, it just isn't practical to bring an international team of scientists together, 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away from the nearest airport, in case one of them is sick. The transport planes that normally fly in the teams and resupply them have also been grounded. Nobody wants to be responsible for bringing small, isolated communities into contact with the virus.

Coronavirus puts Arctic climate change research on ice by Alex Matthews, Deutsche Welle (DW), Apr 12, 2020

Click here to access the entire article.

Fridays For Future News...

Shifting Gears: The Climate Protest Movement in the Age of Coronavirus

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Fridays for Future, the youth climate campaign, was seeing numbers of protesters decline and its calls for action falling short of its goals. Now, the movement is recalibrating its strategies to try to usher in the next phase of a global campaign.

Youth climate activists at a Fridays For Future protest in Berlin, Germany on September 20, 2019. MAJA HITIJ/GETTY IMAGES

For more than a year, just about every Friday at noon, Invaliden Park in downtown Berlin was transformed into a vivacious, noisy, swarming hubbub with teenage speakers, bands, and live dance acts — as well as Germany’s top climate scientists — all sharing a makeshift stage and a microphone. Several thousand mostly school-age pupils waved banners and placards proclaiming “There is no Planet B,” “School Strike for Climate,” and “We’re on strike until you act!” Their chants against fossil fuels and for swift, decisive action on global warming echoed against the granite facades of the federal ministries for economy and transportation, both adjacent to the square.

The happening was the weekly “school strike” in Berlin of Fridays for Future (FFF), the climate crisis movement that began in 2018 with the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg skipping school once a week to protest her country’s half-hearted response to climate change. The movement then ricocheted across the globe, mobilizing school-age young people — in wealthy countries as well as poor — as never before. Last year, the campaign culminated in international demonstrations of millions in cities and towns from Cape Town, South Africa to Anchorage, Alaska, all with the same goal: to force their nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions and become carbon-neutral by 2050.

“There was a brilliant logic to the school strikes that drew people in,” explains Bill McKibben, author and co-founder of the climate action group 350.org. “If [the adult world] can’t be bothered to prepare a liveable world for me, why should I be bothered to sit in school and prepare for that future? That basic idea really hit home.”

Shifting Gears: The Climate Protest Movement in the Age of Coronavirus by Paul Hockenos, Yale Environment 360, Mar 26, 2020

Click here to access the entire article.

Toon of the Week...

Coming Soon on SkS...

• With climate and coronavirus, 'the broad shape of the story is the same' (Peter Sinclair)
• Coronavirus doubters follow the climate denial playbook (Dana)
• SkS New Research for Week #15 (Doug Bostrom)
• How does the way we define methane emissions impact the perception of its effects on global warming? (Justine Wickman)
• 'What's the best kind of car for the climate?' (Sara Peach)
• 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #16 (John Hartz)
• 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #16 (John Hartz) 

Climate Feedback Claim Review...

Global data contradict claim of no acceleration in sea level rise

CLAIM: "The long-term tide gauge datasets are all in agreement that there is no acceleration"

VERDICT:  

SOURCE: Looking For Acceleration In All The Wrong Places bY Willis Eisenbach, Watts Up With That (WUWT), Mar 8, 2020

KEY TAKEAWAY: Peer-reviewed global analyses of both tide gauge and satellite data have demonstrated that sea level rise has, in fact, accelerated in recent decades. 

Global data contradict claim of no acceleration in sea level rise, Edited by Scott Johnson, Climate Feedback, Apr 1, 2020

SkS Week in Review... 

• 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #15 by John Hartz (SkS Original)
• Deep emissions cuts this decade could prevent ‘abrupt ecological collapse’ by Daisy Dunne (Carbon Brief Repost)
• Skeptical Science New Research for Week #14, 2020 by Doug Bostrom (SkS Original)
• The irreversible emissions of a permafrost ‘tipping point’ by Christina Schädel (Carbon Brief Repost)
• Could the Atlantic Overturning Circulation ‘shut down’? by Richard Wood & Laura Jackson (Carbon Brief Repost) 
• 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #14 by John Hartz (SkS Original)

Poster of the Week...