Arguments
Hurricane Milton approaching landfall in Florida on October 9, 2024. (Image credit: NOAA/CIRA/Colorado State University)Human-caused climate change boosted the wind speeds of recent Atlantic hurricanes, making them more damaging and costly, according to a pair of scientific reports released today.
Research published in the journal Environmental Research: Climate, “Human-caused ocean warming has intensified recent hurricanes,” found that between 2019 and 2023, the maximum sustained winds of Atlantic hurricanes were 19 mph (31 km/h) higher because of human-caused ocean warming.
And a parallel report by Climate Central, a nonprofit scientific research organization, applied the techniques developed in the Environmental Research paper to the 2024 hurricane season, finding that climate change increased maximum wind speeds for all 11 Atlantic hurricanes in 2024, increasing their highest sustained wind speeds by nine to 28 mph (14-45 km/h).
This increase in wind speeds moved seven of the hurricanes into a higher Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale category and strengthened Hurricanes Debby and Oscar from tropical storms into hurricanes. The report found that without human-warmed ocean temperatures, Hurricane Beryl and Milton would have been Category 4 storms, but the extra human-caused warming increased their winds by 18 mph (29 km/h) and 23 mph (37 km/h), respectively, lifting them to Category 5 strength.
“Every hurricane in 2024 was stronger than it would have been 100 years ago,” said Daniel Gilford, climate scientist at Climate Central and lead author of the new research. “Through record-breaking ocean warming, human carbon pollution is worsening hurricane catastrophes in our communities.”
2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #47
Posted on 24 November 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John Hartz
Story of the week
This week, we again asked Gemini to create a topical summary of the articles we shared during the week. Based on feedback kindly provided in comments to last week's edition - thanks a lot for that! - we have now updated our Google form used to collect the articles with a new drop-down list from which (for now) one item can be picked which will eventually be used to generate a list based on topic instead of date.
Major Climate Change Impacts:
- Extreme Weather Events: Increasing frequency and intensity of heatwaves, hurricanes, typhoons, and other extreme weather events due to climate change. (The Guardian, Yale Climate Connections, Carbon Brief, CNN)
- Climate Change and Health: Rising temperatures contributing to the spread of diseases, foodborne illnesses, and other health risks. (NBC News, Yale Climate Connections, Inside Climate News)
- Ocean Warming: Impact of ocean warming on hurricanes and marine ecosystems. (Yale Climate Connections)
Climate Policy and Diplomacy:
- Climate Negotiations: Challenges and setbacks at COP29, including the 1.5C target and adaptation funding. (The Guardian, Inside Climate News, Climate Home News)
- Climate Disinformation: The role of misinformation and disinformation in hindering climate action. (The Verge, Inside Climate News, The Guardian)
- Fossil Fuel Influence: Continued influence of the fossil fuel industry on climate policy and negotiations. (Inside Climate News)
Climate Science and Research:
- Climate Attribution Science: Advances in understanding the link between climate change and extreme weather events. (The Guardian, Carbon Brief)
- Climate Modeling and Projections: Future climate scenarios and their implications. (RealClimate)
Climate Solutions: Potential solutions, such as renewable energy, carbon capture, and adaptation measures. (New York Times, The Guardian)
Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:
Before November 17
- Trump promise to repeal Biden climate policies could cost US billions, report finds, Environment, The Guardin, oliver Milman. "Trump could stop in its tracks US’s emergence as clean energy superpower and forfeit billions in investment"
- With dengue cases at an extreme high, research points to climate change's role, Health, NBC News, Randi Richardson. "Rising temperatures are responsible for nearly a fifth of the world’s dengue burden, according to the new findings — a share that's expected to keep rising."
- Nuclear Power Was Once Shunned at Climate Talks. Now, It’s a Rising Star., Climate, New York Times, Brad Plumer. "Growing worldwide energy demand and other factors have shifted the calculus, but hurdles still lie ahead."
- The Tug-of-War on This Climate Super Pollutant Has Big Implications for the Future, Fossil Fuels, Phil McKenna. "A U.N. summit calling for fast action on methane may be undermined by a second Trump administration as voluntary efforts fail to curb emissions globally."
- Category 5 Super Typhoon Man-yi hits the Philippines, Eye on the Storm, Yale Climate Connections, Jeff Masters & Bob Henson. "The island nation endures its fourth typhoon in less than two weeks, while Tropical Storm Sara rakes Honduras."
Fact brief - Has human-caused climate change increased extreme weather?
Posted on 23 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.
Has human-caused climate change increased extreme weather?
Planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather, jeopardizing the stability of ecosystems and human populations.
Warmer temperatures increase evaporation while warmer air holds more moisture. This has caused prolonged heat waves and drought in some regions and intensified precipitation, storms, and flooding in others.
Global warming has also increased sea levels due to ice melt and thermal expansion of the oceans, worsening storm surges and coastal flooding.
Impacts of these ongoing trends include ecosystem disruption, crop failures, water shortages, infrastructure damage, mass displacement, and increased disease and death.
In a study published in 2023, researchers used satellites to measure abnormally wet or dry conditions around the world between 2002 and 2021. They concluded that “extreme hydroclimatic events” are increasing with global warming, risking “dire consequences for human health, food security, human migration and regional unrest and conflict.”
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 Defense Fund Extreme weather is getting a boost from climate change
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate change impacts
Nature Changing intensity of hydroclimatic extreme events revealed by GRACE and GRACE-FO
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #47 2024
Posted on 21 November 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Projected increase in the frequency of extremely active Atlantic hurricane seasons, Lopez et al., Science Advances:
Future changes to the year-to-year swings between active and inactive North Atlantic tropical cyclone (TC) seasons have received little attention, yet may have great societal implications in areas prone to hurricane landfalls. This work investigates past and future changes in North Atlantic TC activity, focusing on interannual variability and evaluating the contributions from anthropogenic forcing. We show that interannual variability of Atlantic TC activity has already increased, evidenced by an increase in the occurrence of both extremely active and inactive TC seasons. TC-resolving general circulation models project a 36% increase in the variance of North Atlantic TC activity, measured by accumulated cyclone energy, by the middle of the 21st century. These changes are the result of increased variability in vertical wind shear and atmospheric stability, in response to enhanced Pacific-to-Atlantic interbasin sea surface temperature variations. Robust anthropogenic-forced intensification in the variability of Atlantic TC activity will continue in the future, with important implications for emergency planning and societal preparedness.
The Summer Heatwave 2022 over Western Europe: An Attribution to Anthropogenic Climate Change, Feser et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society:
The European summer heatwave 2022 was exceptional in its intensity, duration, and spatial extent (Copernicus Observer 2022). Large-scale and persistent high temperatures, both over land and over sea, in combination with local droughts characterized the extraordinary heatwave. Both methods showed that the heatwave was an extreme event, in terms of temperature differences between present-day, preindustrial, and +2°C times and in its statistics. According to our results, the anthropogenic contribution was crucial for the high temperatures of the extreme heatwave of summer 2022.
Pervasive fire danger continued under a negative emission scenario, Kim et al., Nature Communications:
Enhanced fire-prone weather under greenhouse gas warming can significantly affect local and global carbon budgets from increased fire occurrence, influencing carbon-climate feedbacks. However, the extent to which changes in fire-prone weather and associated carbon emissions can be mitigated by negative emissions remains uncertain. Here, we analyze fire weather responses in CO2 removal climate model experiments and estimate their potential carbon emissions based on an observational relationship between fire weather and fire-induced CO2 emissions. The results highlight that enhanced fire danger under global warming cannot be restored instantaneously by CO2 reduction, mainly due to atmospheric dryness maintained by climatic inertia. The exacerbated fire danger is projected to contribute to extra CO2 emissions in 68% of global regions due to the hysteresis of climate responses to CO2 levels. These findings highlight that even under global cooling from negative emissions, increased fire activity may reinforce the fire-carbon-climate feedback loop and result in further socio-economic damage.
Partisan belief in new misinformation is resistant to accuracy incentives, Stein et al., PNAS Nexus:
One explanation for why people accept ideologically welcome misinformation is that they are insincere. Consistent with the insincerity hypothesis, past experiments have demonstrated that bias in the veracity assessment of publicly reported statistics and debunked news headlines often diminishes considerably when accuracy is incentivized. Many statements encountered online, however, constitute previously unseen claims that are difficult to evaluate the veracity of. We hypothesize that when confronted with unfamiliar content, unsure partisans will form sincere beliefs that are ideologically aligned. Across three experimental studies, 1,344 conservative and liberal US participants assessed the veracity of 20 politically sensitive statements that either confirmed or contradicted social science evidence only known to experts. As hypothesized, analyses show that incentives failed to correct most ideological differences in the perceived veracity of statements. Sixty six to 78% of partisan differences in accuracy assessment persisted even when monetary stakes were raised beyond levels in prior studies. Participants displayed a surprising degree of confidence in their erroneous beliefs, as bias was not reduced when participants could safely avoid rating statements they were unsure about, without monetary loss. These findings suggest limits to the ability of disciplining interventions to reduce the expression of false statements, because many of the targeted individuals sincerely believe them to be true.
From this week's government/NGO section:
Powering United States Primary Steel Decarbonization, Snook et al., Clean Energy Buyers Association
The U.S. primary steel industry will require 174 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity annually by 2050 to slash up to 57% of the industry’s emissions and help achieve global aims to reduce carbon emissions. The 174 TWh would be a 159 TWh increase from business-as-usual practices. To power this next generation of steel with carbon-free energy would require at least 28 gigawatts (GW) of solar and wind resources and 58 GW of battery storage by 2050, as well as interregional transmission reform. The report’s findings amplify the need for transmission reform as well as accelerated deployment of carbon-free energy to power these steel-making facilities and processes, retain domestic competitiveness, and reduce emissions deep in corporate supply chains.
The economic cost of extreme weather events, Oxera Consulting LLP, International Chamber of Commerce
The authors estimate that climate-related extreme weather events have cost the global economy more than $2 trillion over the past decade. They used almost 4,000 events which impacted a total of 1.6 billion people between 2014 and 2023. In the last two full years alone, global economic damages reached $451 billion – representing a 19% increase compared to the previous eight years of the decade. The analysis highlights the acute impact on many developing economies with single extreme weather events often imposing economic costs more than a country’s annual GDP.
94% of Europeans support measures to adapt to climate change, according to EIB survey, European Investment Bank
Almost three-quarters of people polled across the European Union recognize the need to adapt their lifestyle due to the effects of climate change, according to the annual Climate Survey commissioned by the European Investment Bank. Among the challenges facing their countries, respondents ranked climate change second only to the cost of living. Many believe that investing in adaptation now will not only boost the economy but will also prevent higher costs in the future. The Survey presents the views of over 24,000 respondents from across the European Union and the United States on the topic of climate change. In the EU, 24,148 people took part in the survey, which was conducted in August 2024.
132 articles in 58 journals by 855 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Enhanced understanding of warming and humidifying on ground heat flux in the Tibetan Plateau Hinterland, He et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2024.107799
Estimated human-induced warming from a linear temperature and atmospheric CO2 relationship, Jarvis & Forster, Nature Geoscience Open Access 10.1038/s41561-024-01580-5
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
Durability of carbon dioxide removal is critical for stabilizing temperatures
Posted on 20 November 2024 by Zeke Hausfather
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink
The world is emitting over 40 gigatons of CO2 per year, contributing to an accelerating warming of the planet. The world needs to cut emissions rapidly to be remotely on track to meet our Paris Agreement goals of limiting warming to well-below 2C, and we should be spending the vast majority (>95%) of our resources today on reducing emissions.
But once we get close to zero emissions, we will need to rely on an increasing amount of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to stabilize temperatures. As I discussed in an earlier Climate Brink article, every ton of CO2 we put in the atmosphere continues to warm the earth for millennia to come. Getting to zero emissions will stop the Earth from warming, but will not cool the planet back down. The only way to do that, or to counterbalance any remaining positive emissions in the system, is to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
However, because of the extremely long warming effects of our emissions today, I’ve long argued that only carbon dioxide removal that removes CO2 from the atmosphere for millennia – comparable to the atmospheric residence time of CO2 – can actually counterbalance our fossil fuel emissions.
Net-zero requires a “like for like” framework
I have a new paper out in the Nature journal Communications: Earth and Environment today titled “Durability of carbon dioxide removal is critical for Paris climate goals”. I teamed up with ETH Zurich researchers Cyril Brunner and Reto Knutti to run climate model simulations of differing carbon removal durability over the next 500 years.
Figure 1 from our paper, shown below, explores the climate impacts of 1 GtCO2 emissions and 1 GtCO2 removals deployed simultaneously. The red line shows what would happen to the climate if the captured CO2 was immediately re-released, while the orange, dark blue, and light blue lines show the impact of 100-year, 1000-year, and permanent carbon removal, respectively.1
Sabin 33 #3 - Solar panels generate too much waste and will overwhelm landfills
Posted on 19 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 #3 based on Sabin's report.
The amount of waste that solar panels are expected to generate over the next few decades is trivial compared to the amount of waste that will be generated by fossil fuels. A study published in Nature Physics in October 2023 found that “35 years of cumulative PV module waste (2016-2050) is dwarfed by the waste generated by fossil fuel energy and other common waste streams.” Specifically, the study found that “if we do not decarbonize and transition to renewable energy sources, coal ash and oily sludge waste generated by fossil fuel energy would be 300-800 times and 2-5 times larger [in mass], respectively, than PV module waste.”1
Figure 1: PV module waste from 2016-2050 compared to other sources of waste. Source: The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law (visualizing data from Heather Mirletz et al. 2023).
In addition, although only about 10% to 15% of solar panels are recycled in the United States2, the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded funding under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for additional research and development for solar technology recycling.3 A 2024 study on solar PV recycling concluded that “PV recycling will reduce waste, and CO2 emissions, while contributing to a sustainable environment,” and that “[i]t is expected that the research for efficient PV recycling strategies will accelerate as the PV industry grows and as many more organizations and government work towards a sustainable future.” (Ngagoum Ndalloka et al. 2024)
Already, some companies have been able to recover 90% of solar panels’ mass in their recycling processes (Aman et al. 2015). One commercial recycling plant in France can recycle more than 95% of a solar module (Deng et al. 2022). Bulk materials such as glass, steel, and aluminum are recoverable through existing recycling lines4 (Heath et al. 2020), while certain semiconductor materials (tellurium and cadmium) can also be recovered at very high rates of 95% to 97% (Chowdhury et al. 2020). Valuable materials in the panels, including silver, copper, and crystalline silicon, are actively sought for the development of other products, including the next generation of solar panels.5 In addition, new companies are emerging with innovative technologies to recycle solar panels.
Here’s how governments could fix their Paris climate commitment failures
Posted on 18 November 2024 by dana1981
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
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
