Arguments
Governments around the world face a conundrum. Virtually none are on track to meet their Paris climate commitments. That includes the United States, which committed to cut its emissions at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 but is only on track for 32-43% cuts by 2030 based on current policies.
And many of those policies, like the clean energy incentives passed in the Inflation Reduction Act – the landmark 2022 climate law – could be rolled back by the incoming Republican administration and Congress, leaving the U.S. even further short of its climate targets. President-elect Trump has pledged to once again withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, which would mean that the country’s involvement in international climate agreements and finance contributions will also cease.
The United Nations Environment Program’s latest annual emissions gap report, ominously titled “No more hot air … please!” concluded that in order to meet their Paris climate commitments, governments “must deliver a quantum leap in ambition in tandem with accelerated mitigation action in this decade.”
“Nations must accelerate action now, show a massive increase in ambition in the new pledges and then deliver urgently with policies and implementation,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, wrote in the foreword to the report. “If they do not, the Paris Agreement target of holding global warming to 1.5°C will be dead within a few years and 2°C will take its place in the intensive care unit.”
The Paris target was established to minimize the growing risks and damages that countries are already experiencing in today’s world – which has warmed by about 1.3°C – like extreme weather events and rising ocean levels inundating coastlines. Every additional fraction of a degree of global warming worsens those threats.
To prevent the Paris target from slipping out of reach, governments around the world will have to commit to do more to curb carbon pollution and pass additional climate policies to fulfill those pledges. Fortunately, the United Nations reports that there are no technological barriers preventing these goals from being met. Sufficient affordable clean technology solutions exist to reduce emissions at a rate consistent with meeting the Paris targets.
But government actions so far have failed to deploy those solutions at a sufficiently rapid rate, and the United States’ expected climate withdrawal will leave an even larger emissions gap for the rest of the world to fill.
2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
Posted on 17 November 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John Hartz
Story of the week
Our Story of the Week is completely "meta" (no, not that Meta). It's about our exploring how to improve the utility of the feature you're reading right now.
Sharp-eyed or possibly even distracted regular readers of our weekly climate news roundup will have noticed some distinct differences in the prior two editions to this latest, compared with the past 634 releases.
Typically our weekly listing of news and analysis centered on climate change has been displayed in chronological order, more-or-less following the sequence of original article publication dates. This is a perspective that sometimes affords readers a sense of the development of particlarly prominent stories, a useful view of major developments.
There are other ways of measuring the weight and meaning of news about our climate. Given that many of us are likely to have special areas of interest, it can be particularly helpful when articles are categorized by their common themes of topic matter (click here or the thumbnail for an example). Our readers have remarked on this and we'd certainly like to follow through on worthy suggestions for improvements. But categorization means effort— time taken from the scanty and overcommited budget of minutes afforded by the all-volunteer crew running our weekly features.
For the past three weeks we've experimented with creating digests of the respective week's news via "AI" services, first with Google's Gemini and then (when Gemini proved unreliable) OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Neither method produces exactly what we'd like to see, which ideally would be comprehensive categorization of thematically related news and analysis, with direct link access to component articles of each category and with "lede" elements offering readers a hint of why they might be interested in reading any given item. We're left with a twist on the old "80:20" rule; here the last 20% of what we need is quite materially important to our objectives.
We're going to continue tinkering with what we think may well end up as an improved "product." The semi-automated work flow behind the Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup is well suited to an additional integration step. It's a plain fact that uncategorized information is harder for readers to access, so if there's a way to achieve this improvement we'll seek to follow it.
In connection with any decision to use the current achingly energy inefficient generative LLMs, it's worth taking energy usage into account. Kilowatt hours in still mean kilograms of CO2 out despite whatever handwaving about offsets or other accounting tricks are used to salve our consciences. An astute reader pointed this out in comments, unsurprisingly given that AI industry "demands" for power are reaching absurd levels definitely needing to be questioned and possibly denied permission. The answer to this, in our context? It may come as a surprise, but even with the generosity of ignoring embodied carbon costs for creating a human capable of productively spending an hour at a computer keyboard it appears that for our context here, it's likely more efficient to use a stochastic parrot as an assistant.
At any rate we've paused our experimentation to step back and consider where to go next, and so this week's liisting is in the chronological format we've been using for the past few months— similar to that of the prior 600 or so editions. Meanwhile we'd be delighted to hear your thoughts on where we might best go with this feature, AI-augmented or not.
Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:
Before November 10
- How is climate misinformation evolving? (a podcast), BBC, Jordan Dunbar. Climate science and reporting are vital to understanding how our climate is changing. But false information spread online is causing big problems and it’s getting harder to spot.
- Experts: What does a Trump presidency mean for climate action?, Carbon Brief, Molly Lempriere. The Republican candidate Donald Trump has been elected as the 47th US president, beating his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris in a “historic comeback”.
- Skeptical Science New Research for Week #45 2024, Skeptical Science, Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack. Skeptical Science's weekly survey of newly published research on climate change.
- Brazil Hopes to Make the Amazon a Model for a Green Economy, Yale Environment 360, Fred Pearce. "As he prepares to host the G20 summit, Brazil’s president is championing initiatives to promote a 'bioeconomy' in the Amazon that protects biodiversity and helps Indigenous residents. The goal: To get governments to commit to a new economic vision that is truly sustainable."
- WHO demands urgent integration of health in climate negotiations ahead of COP29, WHO News Release, Staff.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #46 2024
Posted on 14 November 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Microbial solutions must be deployed against climate catastrophe, Peixoto et al., Nature Communications [comment]:
The climate crisis is escalating. A multitude of microbe-based solutions have been proposed, and these technologies hold great promise and could be deployed along with other climate mitigation strategies. However, these solutions have not been deployed effectively at scale. To reverse this inaction, collaborators across different sectors are needed — from industry, funders and policymakers — to coordinate their widespread deployment with the goal of avoiding climate catastrophe. This collective call from joint scientific societies, institutions, editors and publishers, requests that the global community and governments take immediate and decisive emergency action, while also proposing a clear and effective framework for deploying these solutions at scale.
Irreversible changes in the sea surface temperature threshold for tropical convection to CO2 forcing, Park et al., Communications Earth & Environment:
Cave air temperatures in four caves in the European Alps show statistically significant warming trends of about 0.2 °C per decade over the last two decades (2000–2020). These trends are about half as large as those observed outside and are characterized by a remarkable spatial and temporal consistency. The investigated caves represent different types in terms of their ventilation regime and one of them also hosts perennial ice. Key observation sites are located in cave sections where the temporal variability of air temperature is strongly attenuated compared to outside conditions and data from different cave sections show that the main results are valid for large parts of the investigated caves. Continued warming will lead to broad changes in alpine cave environments, including changes in strength and direction of air flow in caves, karst hydrology and subsurface ecosystems. The observed subsurface warming has a particular strong effect on the long-term preservation of perennial ice present in some of these caves. This is shown for an ice cave in the Austrian Alps, where enhanced melt of ice correlates with the observed warming. This cave (and similar ones) will not be able to hold perennial ice beyond the next decade.
Ross Ice Shelf frontal zone subjected to increasing melting by ocean surface waters, Sheehan & Heywood, Science Advances:
Solar-warmed surface waters subduct beneath Antarctica’s ice shelves as a result of wind forcing, but this process is poorly observed and its interannual variability is yet to be assessed. We observe a 50-meter-thick intrusion of warm surface water immediately beneath the Ross Ice Shelf. Temperature in the uppermost 5 meters decreases toward the ice base in near-perfect agreement with an exponential fit, consistent with the loss of heat to the overlying ice. Ekman forcing drives a heat transport into the cavity sufficient to contribute considerably to near-front melting; this transport has increased over the past four decades, driven by the increasing heat content of the ice-front polynya.
Climate change terminology does not influence willingness to take climate action, Goldwert et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology:
Despite widespread concern about climate change, a majority of people are not engaging in climate actions necessary to help decrease the risks posed by global warming. Many practitioners and scholars have argued that the climate change terminology can be leveraged to elicit distinct reactions. However, the results of different climate change terms have been mixed. The current research addresses this ongoing debate by directly testing the impact of climate terminology. Across two experiments (Ntotal=6,132, recruited globally in 63 countries in Experiment 1, and a replication in the US in Experiment 2), we explored whether climate terminology influenced the extent to which individuals were willing to engage in preventative action. We tested the differential effect of 10 frequently used terms (i.e., “climate change”, “climate crisis”, “global warming”, “global heating”, “climate emergency”, “carbon pollution”, “carbon emissions”, “greenhouse gasses”, “greenhouse effect”, “global boiling”). Despite high willingness to engage in climate action (74% in Experiment 1 and 57% in Experiment 2), the terms had no impact on intentions to act. Bayesian ANOVAs strongly supported the null hypothesis in both studies. This pattern of null results was robust across a wide variety of populations (including age, gender, political ideology, socioeconomic status, and education level), as well as across numerous psychological and cultural variables. Our null results suggest that subtle differences in climate change language are not a barrier to climate action, indicating that focusing on subtle terminology in climate messaging is not an effective use of resources.
Harnessing oil and gas superprofits for climate action, Egli et al., Climate Policy:
Climate change disproportionately harms low-income countries, whilst international climate finance to support them remains inadequate. Negotiations about the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) centre around how to cover increasing needs of developing countries. Windfall profits of the fossil fuel industry, which benefits from this dominant source of greenhouse gas emissions, could contribute to mobilizing more finance, both for the NCQG and wider needs of domestic and international climate finance. We find that the energy crisis of 2022 led to oil and gas industry ‘superprofits’ in the same year – defined as being above the stated expectations at the beginning of the year – amounting to about half a trillion dollars (US$490 bn above the $753 bn projected by the companies). Over $200 bn of this accrued to companies directly controlled by governments, two-thirds of which do not have a historical commitment to contribute to international climate finance. The remaining $280 bn of superprofits went to privately controlled companies, of which over 95% are headquartered in countries currently contributing to international climate finance. We argue that there is a clear case to include fossil fuel profits on the agenda of UNFCCC climate finance negotiations and to pursue an international agreement on minimum fossil fuel production taxes. Given that most privately controlled superprofits occurred in G20 countries and the group's ability to reach agreement on corporation taxes recently, the G20 could be a natural forum to pursue such policy action.
From this week's government and NGO section:
Extreme Weather, Extreme Content: How Big Tech Enables Climate Disinformation In a World on the Brink, Climate Action Against Disinformation
The authors present three new case studies that provide a snapshot into the online world of English-language climate disinformation. The key findings from the report include opposition to renewables—despite having years to clean up their platforms, Big Tech continues to allow a small number of “super-spreaders” to pollute their platforms with debunked claims attacking renewable energy and electric vehicles; weaponizing wildfires-disinformation operations are exploiting extreme weather events to fuel opposition to climate policies, and recently, have led to threats of violence against emergency response personnel; and fossil fuel advertising on Meta-fossil fuel companies continue to use digital advertising to launder their image.
The Educator's Guide to Climate Emotions, Carolyn McGrath and Kate Schapira, Climate Psychology Alliance of North America
The climate crisis is profoundly impacting the emotional well-being of young people. While teaching about the causes, consequences, and responses to global warming, K-12 educators can create space for students to identify, understand, and express their feelings about living through a time of rapid environmental change. The authors offer suggestions for age-appropriate pedagogical approaches, cross-disciplinary teaching methods, as well as opportunities for collective action and collaboration. The guide highlights the transformative potential of incorporating emotions in climate education to foster a sense of agency, efficacy, and purpose among students.
The Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change, Zabel et al, Paleontological Research Institution
The guide includes both the basics of climate change science and perspectives on teaching a subject that has become socially and politically polarized. The focus audience is high school Earth science and environmental science teachers, and it is written with an eye toward the kind of information and graphics that a secondary school teacher might need in the classroom.
137 articles in 54 journals by 979 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
A Systematic Local View of the Long-Term Changes in the Atmospheric Energy Cycle, Liu et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-24-0106.1
An emerging pathway of Atlantic Water to the Barents Sea through the Svalbard Archipelago: drivers and variability, Kalhagen et al., Open Access 10.5194/egusphere-2023-3080
Assessing Radiative Feedbacks and Their Contribution to the Arctic Amplification Measured by Various Metrics, Huo et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres Open Access 10.1029/2024jd040880
20 fact briefs published in collaboration with Gigafact!
Posted on 13 November 2024 by BaerbelW
In April 2024 we announced the (renewed) collaboration between Gigafact and Skeptical Science to create fact briefs, short but credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. Our initial plan had been to publish one fact brief per week on Saturdays but - as happens with many good plans - this turned out to be a somewhat too ambitious target for the project. We therefore took it more solwly and while we sometimes managed to publish a fact brief on consecutive Saturdays, the production rate turned out to be one fact brief every other week on average. Regardless of that, we published fact brief #20 on November 9 and thought that this little milestone might make for a good reason to write a short blog post about this project.
From what we can tell, these bite-sized explanations are useful to people - at least they collect quite some likes and get shared on various social media platforms once we put up a post there. Another intriguing aspect of this collaboration with Gigafact is, that we are part of their network of news outlets and some of our fact briefs have for example been republished by Wisconsin Watch among their own big list of fact briefs!
Sabin 33 #2 - Are toxic heavy metals from solar panels posing a threat to human health?
Posted on 12 November 2024 by BaerbelW
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report "Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles" written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #2 based on Sabin's report.
Roughly 40% of new solar panels in the United States and 5% of new solar panels in the world contain cadmium1, but this cadmium is in the form of cadmium telluride, which is non-volatile, non-soluble in water, and has 1/100th the toxicity of free cadmium2. Most solar panels, like many electronics, contain small amounts of lead3. However, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DER) has assessed that “because PV panel materials are enclosed, and don’t mix with water or vaporize into the air, there is little, if any, risk of chemical releases to the environment during normal use.”4 The Massachusetts DER has further assessed that, even in the unlikely event of panel breakage, releases of chemicals used in solar panels are “not a concern.”
All materials in a solar panel are “insoluble and non-volatile at ambient conditions,” and “don’t mix with water or vaporize into air.” Moreover, they are encased in tempered glass that not only withstands high temperatures, but is also strong enough to pass hail tests and is regularly installed in Arctic and Antarctic conditions. It is theoretically possible that, when exposed to extremely high heat exceeding that of a typical residential fire, panels “could emit vapors and particulates from PV panel components to the air.” But that risk is limited by the fact that “the silicon and other chemicals that comprise the solar panel would likely bind to the glass that covers the PV cells and be retained there.” When a cadmium telluride panel is exposed to fire of an intensity sufficient to melt the glass on the panel, “over 99.9% of the cadmium [is encapsulated in] the molten glass.” Furthermore, a 2013 analysis found that, even in the worst-case scenarios of earthquakes, fires, and floods, “it is unlikely that the [cadmium] concentrations in air and sea water will exceed the environmental regulation values.”5
One peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Natural Resources and Development (A. Robinson & Meindl 2019) found it unlikely for lead or cadmium to leach into the soil from functional solar panels. Measuring heavy metal concentrations in the soil at various distances, researchers found no significant differences in lead or cadmium concentrations directly underneath solar panels, compared to soil 45 or 100 feet away. The study further found that “lead and cadmium were not elevated in soils near PV systems and were far below levels considered to be an imminent or future danger to environmental health.”6
Although the study did find higher levels of selenium in soil directly underneath solar panels, the study noted that the presence of selenium was possibly a “result of the cement used in construction,” rather than leaching from the panels themselves. In addition, the study noted that even the highest selenium concentrations observed were below the EPA’s risk threshold for mammals. Finally, the study noted that fly ash, a product of coal combustion “commonly disposed of in landfills and as a soil amendment in agriculture,” contains significantly higher concentrations of lead (40x), cadmium (1.1x) and selenium (4x) than the soil samples taken directly underneath the solar panels in the study area.
2024 will be the first year above 1.5°C
Posted on 11 November 2024 by Zeke Hausfather
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink, and an excerpt from a much more detailed State of the Climate Q3 2024 report that I published over at Carbon Brief today. See that for more details on climate model/observation comparisons, sea ice extent, and other climate variables.
The warmest year on record
In my latest quarterly state of the climate assessment over at Carbon Brief, I analysed records from five different research groups that report global surface temperature records: NASA’s GISTEMP; NOAA’s GlobalTemp; Hadley/UEA’s HadCRUT5; Berkeley Earth; and Copernicus/ECMWF.
The figure below shows my estimate of where 2024 temperatures will end up in each of the groups, based on the year to date and expected El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions in the tropical Pacific for the remainder of the year.
The dots reflect the best estimate, while the whiskers show the two sigma (95%) confidence interval of the projections. The prior record year (2023 in all groups) is shown by the coloured square.
2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #45
Posted on 10 November 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John Hartz
Summary of this week's topics
We asked 
Google's Gemini again for help categorizing the articles we shared during the week, but it couldn't do it this time around. So, we tried with OpenAI's ChatGPT instead, which is why the format is different compared to last week's. Now that we have two different versions of generated summaries, we'd like to know which format you prefer, so please let us know in the comments!
International Climate Conferences and Agreements
- COP16 Outcomes and Challenges
- Nature, Carbon Brief, The Guardian: Coverage of COP16, including biodiversity agreements and developing nations’ frustrations over unmet funding promises.
- Paris Climate Agreement and US Role
- The Guardian, Nature: Analysis of António Guterres’s warning about the possible impacts of a US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, prompted by reports of Trump’s plans to exit.
Climate Change and Political Influence
- US Presidential Election and Climate Policy
- Inside Climate News, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The Conversation, Washington Post: Various perspectives on how climate policy was largely absent from US campaign discussions, the potential rollback of climate initiatives under Trump, and the implications for oil and gas companies.
- State-Level Climate Initiatives
- Inside Climate News: Positive outcomes for climate initiatives across multiple US states, even amid a challenging national political climate.
Climate-Related Environmental Impacts
- Methane Emissions and Policies
- Bloomberg Green, Washington Post, The Guardian: Reports on rising methane emissions despite pledges, causes of the spike, and the pushback against methane regulations from oil and gas producers.
- Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Targets
- Carbon Brief, The Guardian: Analysis of EU emissions reductions, projections of 2024 as the first year above 1.5°C warming, and Canada’s shift on CO2 policy by Alberta Conservatives.
- Droughts, Floods, and Severe Weather
- The Guardian, Washington Post, CNN, Yale Climate Connections: Coverage on Spain’s floods, US drought impacts on agriculture, and predictions for future drought dynamics due to increased evaporation.
- Wildfires, Hurricanes, and Heat Waves
- Inside Climate News, Yale Climate Connections, Washington Post: The growing intensity of natural disasters like wildfires and hurricanes due to climate change, with specific impacts in Canada, Greece, North Carolina, and the Amazon.
Climate Policy, Industry, and Regulation
- Corporate and Government Climate Actions
- DeSmog, Washington Post, The Tyee: Examination of Trump-backed policies favoring the fossil fuel industry, debates on methane regulation, and discussions around Canada’s water export pressure.
- Far-Right Influence on Environmental Policy
- The Guardian: Reports on how far-right groups are capitalizing on discontent among European farmers over climate policies.
Mental Health and Climate Anxiety
- Climate Anxiety and Mental Health
- Inside Climate News: Exploration of the psychological impacts of climate change, especially post-election, and the effects of heat on those using psychotropic medications.
Public Misconceptions and Climate Science
- Disinformation and Weather Manipulation Myths
- Science Feedback: Refuting claims that HAARP or other human interventions cause weather changes, emphasizing the natural causes of extreme weather patterns.
Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:
Fact brief - Is there an expert consensus on human-caused global warming?
Posted on 9 November 2024 by Guest Author
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.
Is there an expert consensus on human-caused global warming?
A number of peer-reviewed studies found nearly all climate scientists agree carbon dioxide from human activities is warming the planet by making it more difficult for heat to escape the atmosphere.
A 2016 summary of consensus studies confirmed 90%-100% of publishing climate experts agree on global warming. Recent 2021 studies suggested 98% and 99% consensus.
Scientific consensus is agreement among the vast majority of specialists on a basic principle. It results from a large, rigorous body of observations and experiments which proposed, debated, and refined an explanation of a specific phenomenon.
Public perception often relies on non-expert perspectives. Scientific consensus however, requires rigorous testing by experts to confirm that hypotheses stand up to scrutiny.
The diversity in perspective and approach of climate scientists shows expertise, not groupthink, produces consensus. From careful, continuous research, excess CO2 from burning fossil fuels is agreed to be the main driver of global warming.
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
Environmental Research Letters Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming
Environmental Research Letters Greater than 99% consensus on human caused climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature
Environmental Research Letters Consensus revisited: quantifying scientific agreement on climate change and climate expertise among Earth scientists 10 years later
NASA Scientific Consensus
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #45 2024
Posted on 7 November 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Anthropogenic warming has ushered in an era of temperature-dominated droughts in the western United States, Zhuang et al., Science Advances:
Historically, meteorological drought in the western United States (WUS) has been driven primarily by precipitation deficits. However, our observational analysis shows that, since around 2000, rising surface temperature and the resulting high evaporative demand have contributed more to drought severity (62%) and coverage (66%) over the WUS than precipitation deficit. This increase in evaporative demand during droughts, mostly attributable to anthropogenic warming according to analyses of both observations and climate model simulations, is the main cause of the increased drought severity and coverage. The unprecedented 2020–2022 WUS drought exemplifies this shift in drought drivers, with high evaporative demand accounting for 61% of its severity, compared to 39% from precipitation deficit. Climate model simulations corroborate this shift and project that, under the fossil-fueled development scenario (SSP5-8.5), droughts like the 2020–2022 event will transition from a one-in-more-than-a-thousand-year event in the pre-2022 period to a 1-in-60-year event by the mid-21st century and to a 1-in-6-year event by the late-21st century.
Opportunities for carbon sequestration from removing or intensifying pasture-based beef production, Hayek et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
Globally, ruminant grazing—including cattle for beef production—is the most extensive human land use. Removing cattle from pastures represents a meaningful opportunity to sequester carbon into regrowing vegetation and soils. Yet, carbon sequestration would trade off with beef production. By analyzing these tradeoffs globally in a spatially explicit manner, we identify carbon opportunity areas where removing relatively little pastured beef can result in substantial carbon sequestration, predominantly in high- and upper-middle-income countries. Removing this beef production may be compensated for by improving cattle management in sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil. By providing approaches to identify locations with minimal tradeoffs between food production and ecosystem restoration, this work can aid the design and improvement of policies related to natural climate solutions.
Do You See What I See? Emotional Reaction to Visual Content in the Online Debate About Climate Change, Rossi et al., Environmental Communication:
This paper explores the visual echo chamber effect in online climate change communication. We analyze communication by progressive actors and counteractors involved in the public debate about climate change on Facebook, to address the possibility that visual content can bridge ideologically diverse communities. Specifically, we investigate whether visual content depicting protest serves this purpose. The findings reveal a small amount of shared visual content. Interestingly, the emotional reactions to this content for the most part diverge significantly, suggesting that pre-existing attitudes, such as climate ideological position, influence interpretation. Contrary to our expectations, however, we do not observe visual content representing protest activity bridging the two groups. This work posits the possibility of a two-fold (de)polarization around visual content that both connects and divides, which contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the social dynamics that create and sustain the echo chamber effect observed in online climate change debates.
Continuity in Top-of-Atmosphere Earth Radiation Budget Observations, Loeb et al., Journal of Climate:
The Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) Energy Balanced and Filled (EBAF) product combines CERES and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on the Terra and Aqua satellites to create a record of earth radiation budget (ERB) and the associated cloud properties. As the Terra and Aqua orbits are no longer maintained at a fixed mean local time, EBAF recently transitioned to the CERES and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instruments on NOAA-20 to avoid introducing a time-dependent bias in the record. To ensure smooth transitions between the Terra, combined Terra and Aqua (Terra+Aqua), and NOAA-20 portions of the record, regional climatological adjustments derived from the overlap period between missions are applied to anchor the entire record to Terra+Aqua. We estimate the random error in global monthly anomalies following the transitions to be We estimate that there is a 33% probability of a data gap in 2028 and a 60% probability in 2035. Bridging a data gap using computed TOA fluxes from one satellite product and one atmospheric reanalysis results in errors that are a factor of 4 larger than those obtained when there is overlap between successive missions.
[bold ours]
From this week's government/NGO section:
10 years of rapidly disentangling drivers of extreme weather disasters, Otto et al., World Weather Attribution
To mark the 10th anniversary of World Weather Attribution, we look back at the 10 deadliest extreme weather events in the 20 years since the first attribution study. The authors use these to highlight key findings and developments in science as well as changes since some of the earlier studies were undertaken, due to the additional global warming in recent years.
Interregional Transfer Capability Study (ITCS) Strengthening Reliability Through the Energy Transformation, Barsotti et al., North American Electric Reliability Corporation
The authors provide an energy margin analysis and resulting recommendations for increases to the transfer capability between Transmission Planning Regions to improve energy adequacy during extreme weather events. They also recommend how to meet and maintain transfer capability as enhanced by these technically prudent additions.
121 articles in 49 journals by 726 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Fast-get-faster explains wavier upper-level jet stream under climate change, Shaw et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-024-01819-4
Irreversible changes in the sea surface temperature threshold for tropical convection to CO2 forcing, Park et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-024-01751-7
The planet is ‘on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster,’ scientists warn
Posted on 6 November 2024 by dana1981
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
A person rides past a destroyed church in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene flooding on October 6, 2024, in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Scientists say that climate change increased the storm’s deadly rainfall by about 10%. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Earth’s climate in 2024 is “in a major crisis with worse to come if we continue with business as usual,” a team of 14 climate scientists warned in “The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth.” The report did not sugarcoat their view of the dangers humanity is facing.
“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster,” the report begins. “This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.”
The report is the latest such annual peer-reviewed paper published in the journal BioScience by an international team of scientists led by Oregon State ecologist William Ripple.
The authors found that 25 of 35 “planetary vital signs” reached record levels last year, including global temperatures, human climate pollution, fossil fuel subsidies, heat-related mortality rates, meat production, and loss of forest cover.
After decades of warnings from climate scientists and efforts by some policymakers and activists, “the world has made only very minor headway on climate change, in part because of stiff resistance from those benefiting financially from the current fossil-fuel-based system,” it says. “We are currently going in the wrong direction and our increasing fossil-fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are driving us toward a climate catastrophe. We fear the danger of climate breakdown.”
They did note a few positive indicators like clean energy production.
“Of course, the situation is not hopeless,” wrote Harvard science historian and study co-author Naomi Oreskes via email. “What we want people to understand is that, while there has been progress – particularly in the price and deployment of renewables – it’s not nearly enough. And the atmosphere does not respond to our intentions. It responds to chemistry.”
The report calls for “rapidly phasing down fossil fuel use” by ratcheting up the carbon price in wealthy countries and using some of the proceeds to fund policies to stop climate change and adaptation programs to reduce damage from climate disasters. It also urges sharp reductions in emissions of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas, to “slow the near-term rate of global warming, helping to avoid tipping points and extreme climate impacts.”
Without a course correction, the report warned, “climate change could cause many millions of additional deaths by 2050.”
Sabin 33 #1 - Are electromagnetic fields from solar farms harmful to human health?
Posted on 5 November 2024 by BaerbelW
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report "Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles" written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #1 based on Sabin's report.
The electromagnetic fields (EMF) generated at a solar farm are similar in strength and frequency to those of toaster ovens and other household appliances—and harmless to humans. A detailed analysis from North Carolina State University concluded that there is “no conclusive and consistent evidence” of “negative health impact[s] from the EMF produced in a solar farm.”1
EMF exposure levels vary according to the EMF source, proximity to the source, and duration of the exposure. On a solar farm, EMFs are highest around electrical equipment such as inverters. However, even when standing next to the very largest inverter at a utility-scale solar farm, one’s exposure level (up to 1,050 milligauss, or mG) is less than one’s exposure level while operating an electric can opener (up to 1,500 mG), and well within accepted exposure limits (up to 2,000 mG)2. When standing just nine feet from a residential inverter, or 150 feet from a utility-scale inverter, one’s exposure drops to “very low levels of 0.5 mG or less, and in many cases . . . less than background levels (0.2 mG).” For comparison, a typical American’s average background exposure level is 1mG, reaching 6 mG when standing three feet from a refrigerator, and 50 mG when standing three feet from a microwave3.
The electromagnetic fields present on a solar farm constitute “non-ionizing radiation,” which, by definition, generates “enough energy to move atoms in a molecule around (experienced as heat), but not enough energy to remove electrons from an atom or molecule (ionize) or to damage DNA.” In addition, EMFs are extremely low in frequency, which means they contain “less energy than other commonly encountered types of non-ionizing radiation like radio waves, infrared radiation, and visible light.”
Volunteer activity: Evaluate automated climate misinformation debunkings
Posted on 4 November 2024 by John Cook
A new challenge and a new opportunity for research
AI-generated disinformation threatens to make debunking climate misinformation even more challenging, swamping already scanty capacity. We are exploring ways to counter this burgeoning flood of harm by employing the same tools now employed by malefactors as a force for good. We've already published research on detecting and categorising climate misinformation (and spoiler alert, we have new research coming out very soon on detecting logical fallacies). The next step is combining this research with recent developments in generative AI and large language models to automatically generate debunkings as we detect new misinformation. In other words, generative debunking.
We've reached the stage of the project where we are evaluating the output generated by our AI models. For that, we need people to help us evaluate our AI debunkings.
How may I help?
Generative LLMs are prone to failures best spotted by real people. Here, we need help with evaluating output from our newly developed chain of tools producing automated replies to climate bunk. This activity is especially suited to people having a fair degree of familiarity with climate disinformation and misinformation.
Activity details:
We estimate this assistance to require about 5 hours of contributed time. Helpers will be personally familiarized with the process by Dr. John Cook, founder of Skeptical Science and a leading climate disinformation researcher.
This activity is also a great way to get acquainted with Skeptical Science as a volunteer, leading to other opportunities to help fight Earth's climate crisis by fostering a better-informed public.
Interested?
We hope so. If you are, please let us know some contact details and we'll be in touch. Your contact information will not be shared with or used by anybody outside of Skeptical Science, Inc. and will only be used in connection with this activity.
2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #44
Posted on 3 November 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John Hartz
Topics covered this week
Repeating last week's experiment, we asked Google's Gemini again for help categorizing the articles we shared during the week. The result is the bullet list below and we'd like to know how useful that kind of generated summary is for you, so please let us know in the comments!
Climate Change Impacts
- Extreme Weather Events:
- Hurricanes and Floods (The Guardian, Inside Climate News, CNN, Yale Climate Connections)
- Heatwaves and Drought (The Guardian, Yale Climate Connections, CNN)
- Rising Sea Levels and Coastal Erosion (The Guardian, CNN)
- Global Warming and Temperature Rise:
- Record-breaking temperatures (The Guardian, Yale Climate Connections, Inside Climate News)
- Melting glaciers and permafrost (NASA, The Guardian)
- Ocean acidification and marine life
- Climate Migration and Displacement:
- Forced displacement due to climate-related disasters (The Guardian)
Climate Action and Policy
- Climate Policies and Regulations:
- US Climate Policies (Inside Climate News, New York Times, The Guardian)
- International Climate Agreements (Inside Climate News, The Guardian)
- Renewable Energy and Clean Technology:
- Electric vehicles (Inside Climate News, New York Times)
- Solar and wind energy (Skeptical Science)
- Climate Activism and Public Opinion:
- Youth climate activism (Inside Climate News)
- Public opinion on climate change (The Guardian, Grist)
Climate Science and Research
- Climate Modeling and Projections:
- Future climate scenarios (Yale Climate Connections, Inside Climate News)
- Climate History and Paleoclimatology:
- Past climate changes
Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:
Before October 27
- French PM presents report preparing for dramatic climate warming scenario, AFP/Le Monde, Staff. "Temperatures in mainland France are on track to increase by 4°C by 2100 due to global warming, the government warned Friday, urging coping strategies for a much hotter country."
- Climate change breaks heat records across Canada this summer, Climate & Environment, CTV News , Jerry Hull.
- Climate Extremes - At the Abyss?, Youtube, OoS Pictures.
- Lifting the Veil on Tens of Billions in Oil Company Payments to Governments, Fossil Fuels, Inside Climate News, Nicholas Kusnetz. "New reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal payments around the globe. One takeaway? The U.S. government might be getting a bad deal."
- The Depths of Their Discontent: Young Americans Are Distraught Over Climate Change, Justice & Health. Inside Climate News, Nina Dietz. "A new study of 16,000 young people aged 16 to 25 found clear majorities across all regions and political affiliations deeply concerned about the impacts of a warming planet."
- October is aiming to smoke U.S. records for dryness and warmth, Eye on the Storm, Yale Climate Connections, Bob Henson. "Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Nashville may get their first-ever calendar month without a single raindrop or snowflake."
- Climate change reshapes cities, both environmentally and financially, Future America Series, The Hll, Oct, Saul nBein.
Fact brief - Are most glaciers growing?
Posted on 2 November 2024 by Guest Author
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.
Are most glaciers growing?
The vast majority of glaciers have continued to shrink worldwide.
To maintain stability, snowfall must equal ice loss from processes like surface melt, wind erosion, and avalanches.
In most of the world, glaciers are shrinking due to warming and snowfall changes. By 1990, glaciers worldwide had lost 7% to 28% of their 1901 mass.
Glacier research dates back to the 1890s, while specific “reference glaciers” have been continuously tracked since 1950. 2010-2019 saw the highest loss since observations began. 2023 was the 36th year in a row that reference glaciers lost, rather than gained, ice.
A few have grown where precipitation exceeds melt, attributable to unusual weather due to climate change. However, studies indicate other glaciers that once exhibited growth succumbing to warming; another 2023 paper suggested the weakening stability of presently-growing glaciers.
Glaciers provide freshwater vital to entire ecosystems—their loss would spell serious consequences for humanity and nature.
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
NOAA Climate Change: Mountain glaciers
HAL Open Science Accelerated global glacier mass loss in the early twenty-first century
World Glacier Monitoring Service ‘reference glaciers’ for mass balance
Global and Planetary Change Norwegian mountain glaciers in the past, present and future
NSIDC What is the Karakoram Anomaly?
Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles thanks to the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law
Posted on 1 November 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom
Earlier this year our volunteer editor Marc Kodack spotted an impressive answer to climate change solutions denial, "Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles," which he included in our weekly climate research survey. Written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, this was obviously a very useful and timely resource. So, we also shared it widely on social media— where we soon noticed a theme in comments: "Neat report - but it being a single PDF makes it impossible to link to each of the rebuttals directly."
We had - not so long ago - explicitly added "solutions denial" to our overall mission statement, but we didn't yet have many rebuttals in that category, mostly due to a lack of "inhouse" subject matter experts who could actually create and maintain these kinds of rebuttals. Sabin's report was therefore too good an opportunity to ignore, so we touched base with them in order to find out if we could create 33 individual rebuttals on Skeptical Science based on their report. We are very happy to report that the author team at Sabin quickly gave us the go-ahead for this adaptation of their work, so we set out to do just that.
As is rather common with projects and tasks like this, they tend to take somewhat longer than initially planned and hoped for, but we were eventually able to create 33 new rebuttals at the intermediate level, all linked to the "It's too hard" category in our taxonomy.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #44 2024
Posted on 31 October 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Communicating the most accurate and reliable science on climate change to society: A survey of editors from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Molina & Abadal Abadal, Geoscience Communication:
This study focuses on the perspectives of scientists involved in the IPCC AR5 and AR6 synthesis reports, examining their views on the communication of climate change knowledge and its dissemination to the public. The objectives include understanding scientists' opinions on the state of climate change knowledge, the effectiveness of current communication strategies, and recommendations for improving public engagement. A survey was conducted among 72 IPCC scientists, assessing their perceptions on various aspects of climate communication, including the use of media, educational integration, and challenges like misinformation. Results show that scientists generally rate the scientific community as well-informed, policymakers as moderately informed, and the public as only acceptably informed about climate change. Many respondents suggested improvements in the clarity and accessibility of IPCC reports, emphasizing the role of media, social networks, and education in better informing the public. The study concludes that trust in information sources is vital for effective climate communication and that a more tailored, empathetic, and solutions-based approach is necessary to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and public understanding.
Changes in Global Heatwave Risk and Its Drivers Over One Century, Wang et al., Earth's Future:
Heatwaves represent a significant and growing threat to natural ecosystems and socio-economic structures, making heatwave risk mitigation and prevention an important area of research. In exploring heatwave frequency and intensity from 1901 to 2020, the present study finds a sharp increase in both. The study also finds that the spatial distribution of heatwaves is unequal, the volatility of intensity characteristics has become more prominent over time, and the Gini coefficients of four key heatwave indictors have become larger due to increasing dryness. Although heatwaves occur more frequently in drylands, there is greater cumulative heat in humid areas, resulting in a higher heatwave risk in those areas. The global heatwave risk over the past three decades (1991–2020) has increased nearly five-fold compared to the early 20th century (1901–1930).
Climate justice and a fair allocation of national greenhouse gas emissions, Azar & Johansson, Climate Policy:
Rajamani et al. have presented estimates for a fair and equitable allocation of the remaining global greenhouse gas emissions that are compatible with meeting the temperature targets of the Paris Agreement. In this paper, we find that their approach yields a high emission allowance per capita to currently high-emitting countries such as Australia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and China. In fact, Rajamani et al. propose that these countries should get two to three times more allowances (emission space on a per capita basis) than for instance India and Ghana and they refer to this as a ‘fair’ allocation despite the fact that the latter countries have significantly lower per capita emissions, per capita income, and historical emissions. Furthermore, the allocation to several Western European countries, e.g. the UK and Sweden, is strongly negative. Hence, their approach tends to reward countries with high emissions and discriminate against countries with low emissions per capita despite the fact that Rajamani et al. argue that grandfathering cannot be seen as a fair principle for allocating emissions allowances.
Seeing the limits of voluntary corporate climate action in food and technology sustainability reports, Christiansen & Lund, Energy Research & Social Science:
Corporate climate action is booming with companies across all sectors pledging to contribute towards climate mitigation. Yet, how do companies represent their climate impacts and the possibility for them to act on these? In this study, we explore these questions by analysing the sustainability reports of fourteen of the world's largest food and technology companies. We do this through Carol Bacchi's ‘What's the Problem Represented to be’-approach. As such, we examine how companies' suggested climate solutions constitute and delimit the problems that corporate climate action can and should address. We show that companies' climate solutions emphasise efficiency gains in resource and energy use and substitution of carbon-intensive inputs in production processes, whereas solutions aimed at transforming or reducing consumption and production patterns are largely absent. Rather, companies in the food and technology sectors emphasise why the products and services they provide remain socially necessary in the future.
Towards BitCO2, an individual consumption-based carbon emission reduction mechanism, Golinucci et al., Energy Policy:
Human activities, such as burning fossil fuels for electricity generation, heating, and transport, are the primary drivers of a large amount of greenhouse gases emission. The individual consumers, able to influence the supply-chains behind the commodities their chose to fulfil their needs is the driver behind production and, consequently, its impacts. Thus, the active and willing participation of citizens in combatting climate change may be pivotal to address this issue. The present work is aimed at presenting and modelling a novel market-based carbon emission reduction mechanism, called BitCO2, designed to incentivize individual consumption choices toward lower carbon footprints. This mechanism is tested for the Italian private transportation sector thanks to an ad hoc developed System Dynamics model. The Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) adoption, if compared with the Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle (ICEV) one, cause less CO2 emissions per km travelled. After a certain number of travelled km, a BitCO2 token is assigned to BEV owners for each ton of avoided CO2. This token can be exchanged in a dedicated market and used to get a discount on insurance services.
From this week's government/NGO section:
The State of Greenhouse Gases in the Atmosphere Based on Global Observations through 2023, Crotwell et al., World Meteorological Organization
The bulletin is the latest analysis of observations from the WMO GAW Programme. It shows globally averaged surface mole fractions for carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) and compares them with the mole fractions during the previous year and with the preindustrial levels. It also provides insights into the change in radiative forcing by long-lived GHGs and the contribution of individual gases to this increase. From 2022 to 2023, the annual mean CO2 in the global surface atmosphere increased by 2.3 ppm. This increase marked the twelfth consecutive year with an increase greater than 2 ppm, continuing an already significant trend. CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than at any time during human existence. The current atmospheric CO2 level is already 51% above that of the pre-industrial (before 1750) era.
Keeping the Promise, United Nations Environment Programme
Last year was one of broken records and broken promises. There were new highs of greenhouse gas emissions, temperature records tumbling and climate impacts arriving stronger and faster. The finance to help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change isn’t being delivered. At the same time, most of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are off track at the halfway point of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The upside is that the global response to the triple planetary crisis intensified. Efforts to combat pollution and waste received a shot in the arm with the agreement of the Global Framework on Chemicals and progress on the global instrument on plastic pollution, which should be ready by 2024. Nations adopted a treaty to protect biodiversity in the ocean beyond national borders, while key guidelines to help the private sector reduce its impact on nature were released. Finally, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28, delivered a clear call on countries to transition away from fossil fuels.
Emissions Gap Report 2024: No more hot air … please! With a massive gap between rhetoric and reality, countries draft new climate commitments, Olhoff et al., United Nations Environment Programme
The authors look at how much nations must promise to cut off greenhouse gases and deliver, in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), due for submission in early 2025 ahead of COP30. Cuts of 42 percent are needed by 2030 and 57 percent by 2035 to get on track for 1.5°C. A failure to increase ambition in these new NDCs and start delivering immediately would put the world on course for a temperature increase of 2.6-3.1°C over this century. This would bring debilitating impacts to people, the planet, and economies.
346 articles in 69 journals by 2215 contributing authors
[This week's listing is unsually large, not due to a surge in publishing but because we cleared a bug that was temporarily halting the display of articles with certain formatting tags embedded in titles as submitted to the DOI system. Every paper deserves its day, so the resulting pile-up is included in this week's collection.]
Physical science of climate change, effects
In silico modelling of radiative efficiencies of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, Alvarado-Jiménez & Tasinato, Atmospheric Environment Open Access 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2024.120839
Accelerated North Atlantic surface warming reshapes the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability, Zanchettin & Rubino, Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-024-01804-x
The hidden health toll of hurricanes
Posted on 30 October 2024 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Neha Pathak
Disasters can disrupt medical care both during and long after the event. (Photo credit: U.S. Air National Guard / Sgt. Jorge Intriago)
Weeks after Hurricanes Milton and Helene tore paths of destruction across the Southeast, pictures of communities left in ruins continue to emerge.
We can easily see damage from the threats we commonly connect with hurricanes and tropical storms: winds, waves, and floodwaters.
But the lingering health problems these storms leave in their wake are mostly invisible, damaging well-being and increasing the risk of disease in insidious and silent waves. From immediate risks from disruptions of medical care to a slow worsening of preexisting chronic conditions, these events can have devastating health impacts – and official death tolls only scratch the surface. More than 7,000 deaths can be linked to a given major hurricane up to 15 years after the storm waves have receded, according to new research.
But the good news is that recognizing the full range of health threats can help families, communities, and health care systems prepare and recover long after landfall.
Immediate health risks: direct injury and contamination
When hurricanes strike, the immediate risk of physical injuries often dominates our attention.
Debris mobilized by winds or water can cause anything from minor cuts to serious trauma. Drownings from floodwater can occur, and downed power lines and floodwaters surging into homes can cause electrocution.
Less visibly, floodwater can mix with dangerous contaminants: Industrial chemicals, fossil fuels, and sewage can turn these waters into toxic stew. Contact with contaminated water can lead to skin injuries and infections, particularly in anyone with an open wound. Exposure to floodwater contaminated by human or animal waste can also increase the risk of gastrointestinal illnesses.
Using data from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 in Texas, researchers compared the rate of emergency department visits in places with low, medium, and high impact from the hurricane based on the amount of flooding. They found that on the day of the hurricane, emergency department visits decreased. This is not surprising as many people may be unable to leave their homes during hurricane conditions and many others may have evacuated from their communities.
But during the immediate aftermath, they saw higher rates of visits for carbon monoxide poisoning in high flood areas, possibly linked to faulty or damaged equipment from flooding or exposure from running generators. They also found higher rates of drownings and hypothermia.
