Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

But as China’s economy slows to the lowest level in a quarter century — around 6% growth, according to government statistics — policymakers are doubling down on support for coal and other heavy industries, the traditional backbones of China’s energy system and economy. At the same time, the country is reducing subsidies for renewable energy.

Protecting the US economy was one of Trump's excuses for rolling back clean air regulations and attempting to promote heavier use of coal.

Findings confirm reliability of projections of temperature changes over last 50 years

Climate models have accurately predicted global heating for the past 50 years, a study has found.

The findings confirm that since as early as 1970, climate scientists have had a solid fundamental understanding of the Earth’s climate system and the ability to project how it will respond to continued increases in the greenhouse effect. Since climate models have accurately anticipated global temperature changes so far, we can expect projections of future warming to be reliable as well.

The research examines the accuracy of 17 models published over the past five decades, beginning with a 1970 study and including 1981 and 1988 models led by James Hansen, the former Nasa climatologist who testified to the US Senate in 1988 about the impacts of anthropogenic global heating. The study also includes the first four reports by the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC).

“We found that climate models – even those published back in the 1970s – did remarkably well, with 14 out of the 17 model projections indistinguishable from what actually occurred,” said Zeke Hausfather, of the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of the paper.

Based on modern climate model projections, if countries follow through with current and pledged climate policies, the world is on track for about 3C of warming above pre-industrial temperatures by 2100 – a situation the IPCC and others predict would be catastrophic.

The challenge in evaluating climate model accuracy lies in the fact that due to computing power limitations, simulations are only run for a few specific future greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. There are an infinite number of such possible scenarios, but real-world emissions will follow only one path, and it will never exactly match the few scenarios input into climate models. Thus, if Earth warms less than in a climate model projection, it does not necessarily mean the model was inaccurate.

Put simply, climate scientists are not in the business of predicting human fossil fuel consumption but are attempting to accurately simulate how the climate will change in response to a given rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

“Future emissions depend on human behaviour, not physical systems, and climate models should be evaluated on their physics rather than the future emission projections,” said Hausfather.

In nearly half of the model projections examined in the paper, the input scenarios were significantly different from the real-world changes in greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, projected temperature changes were only consistent with observed global warming in 10 of the 17 models, with four projecting more warming and three projecting less than subsequently occurred.

However, the study authors addressed these inconsistencies by evaluating the change in temperature per change in “radiative forcing” – the global energy imbalance caused by the increased greenhouse effect and other factors – in models against what happened in the real world. This metric reveals whether the climate models are accurately producing the temperature response to a given emissions change – in essence, whether are accurately simulating the physical response of Earth’s climate system. With this factored in, 14 of the 17 models were accurate.

“The rate of warming we are experiencing today is pretty much exactly what past climate models projected it would be,” said Hausfather.

Those who oppose policies to limit the impacts of global heating have long sought to undermine the credibility of climate models. If the model projections are considered unreliable, they argue, then we do not know how urgent slowing global warming is. As a result, “climate models are unreliable” has become a popular myth propagated by climate deniers.

The latest study adds to the body of evidence supporting the accuracy of climate models, and will be welcomed by those arguing that more aggressive climate policies are needed to avoid dangerous levels of global warming. The UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2020 will be crucial, as countries will be expected to commit to scaling up the emission reductions that were pledged in the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change.

As global temperatures rise, warm-weather crops like apples and pears are feeling the heat. While the climate shows no signs of cooling down, farmers in Spain are looking for ways to adapt — starting in the laboratory.
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"We saw the problem 10, 15 years ago, and 10, 15 years ago we began to make things to correct it, and now I think we're ready to make the changes needed."

TRUMP had no intent on reducing anything. He was pandering to a crowd that believed he could sustain jobs iin mining and coal transport and use.nIf this wre China, maybe..
The market alone has shown us that coal as a fule is , if not dead, is on life support.

Sharks, tuna, marlin and other large fish at risk from spread of ‘dead zones’, say scientists

Oxygen in the oceans is being lost at an unprecedented rate, with “dead zones” proliferating and hundreds more areas showing oxygen dangerously depleted, as a result of the climate emergency and intensive farming, experts have warned.

Sharks, tuna, marlin and other large fish species were at particular risk, scientists said, with many vital ecosystems in danger of collapse. Dead zones – where oxygen is effectively absent – have quadrupled in extent in the last half-century, and there are also at least 700 areas where oxygen is at dangerously low levels, up from 45 when research was undertaken in the 1960s.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature presented the findings on Saturday at the UN climate conference in Madrid, where governments are halfway through tense negotiations aimed at tackling the climate crisis.
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Some ocean areas are naturally lower in oxygen than others, but these are even more susceptible to damage when their oxygen levels are depleted further, the report’s authors said. Species that can more easily tolerate low oxygen levels, such as jellyfish, some squid and marine microbes, can flourish at the expense of fish, upsetting the balance of ecosystems. The natural oceanic cycles of phosphorus and nitrogen are also at risk.
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The problem of dead zones has been known about for decades, but little has been done to tackle it. Farmers rarely bear the brunt of the damage, which mainly affects fishing fleets and coastal areas. Two years ago, the meat industry in the US was found to be responsible for a massive dead zone measuring more than 8,000 sq miles in the Gulf of Mexico.
[...]
“A healthy ocean with abundant wildlife is capable of slowing the rate of climate breakdown substantially,” said Dr Monica Verbeek, the executive director of the group Seas at Risk. “To date, the most profound impact on the marine environment has come from fishing. Ending overfishing is a quick, deliverable action which will restore fish populations, create more resilient ocean ecosystems, decrease CO2 pollution and increase carbon capture, and deliver more profitable fisheries and thriving coastal communities.”

“Ending overfishing would strengthen the ocean, making it more capable of withstanding climate change and restoring marine ecosystems – and it can be done now,” explained Rashid Sumaila, professor and director of the fisheries economics research unit at the University of British Columbia. “The crisis in our fisheries and in our oceans and climate are not mutually exclusive problems to be addressed separately – it is imperative that we move forward with comprehensive solutions to address them.”

A study published at COP25 by Greenpeace International showed that restoring marine ecosystems could play a major role in tackling climate chaos.

Oceans losing oxygen at unprecedented rate, experts warn

Quote:

Sharks, tuna, marlin and other large fish at risk from spread of ‘dead zones’, say scientists

Oxygen in the oceans is being lost at an unprecedented rate, with “dead zones” proliferating and hundreds more areas showing oxygen dangerously depleted, as a result of the climate emergency and intensive farming, experts have warned.

Sharks, tuna, marlin and other large fish species were at particular risk, scientists said, with many vital ecosystems in danger of collapse. Dead zones – where oxygen is effectively absent – have quadrupled in extent in the last half-century, and there are also at least 700 areas where oxygen is at dangerously low levels, up from 45 when research was undertaken in the 1960s.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature presented the findings on Saturday at the UN climate conference in Madrid, where governments are halfway through tense negotiations aimed at tackling the climate crisis.
[...]
Some ocean areas are naturally lower in oxygen than others, but these are even more susceptible to damage when their oxygen levels are depleted further, the report’s authors said. Species that can more easily tolerate low oxygen levels, such as jellyfish, some squid and marine microbes, can flourish at the expense of fish, upsetting the balance of ecosystems. The natural oceanic cycles of phosphorus and nitrogen are also at risk.
[...]
The problem of dead zones has been known about for decades, but little has been done to tackle it. Farmers rarely bear the brunt of the damage, which mainly affects fishing fleets and coastal areas. Two years ago, the meat industry in the US was found to be responsible for a massive dead zone measuring more than 8,000 sq miles in the Gulf of Mexico.
[...]
“A healthy ocean with abundant wildlife is capable of slowing the rate of climate breakdown substantially,” said Dr Monica Verbeek, the executive director of the group Seas at Risk. “To date, the most profound impact on the marine environment has come from fishing. Ending overfishing is a quick, deliverable action which will restore fish populations, create more resilient ocean ecosystems, decrease CO2 pollution and increase carbon capture, and deliver more profitable fisheries and thriving coastal communities.”

“Ending overfishing would strengthen the ocean, making it more capable of withstanding climate change and restoring marine ecosystems – and it can be done now,” explained Rashid Sumaila, professor and director of the fisheries economics research unit at the University of British Columbia. “The crisis in our fisheries and in our oceans and climate are not mutually exclusive problems to be addressed separately – it is imperative that we move forward with comprehensive solutions to address them.”

A study published at COP25 by Greenpeace International showed that restoring marine ecosystems could play a major role in tackling climate chaos.

funny, I think that you dont seem to understand the concept of discussion. My response was perfectly in line between hightor and yours.

you've said it, but so far no one agrees with you. It's government that's got to make the chsnge haopoen.There's no way we can drive green cars unless car companies actuslly make them and the public can't make them.

It's government pressure on things like CAFE standards that make it happen. Same with alternative enetgy sources with tax incentives. You have a nice theory, but it won't happen tht way.

Scale and speed of loss much higher than predicted, threatening inundation for hundreds of millions of people

Greenland’s ice sheet is melting much faster than previously thought, threatening hundreds of millions of people with inundation and bringing some of the irreversible impacts of the climate emergency much closer.

Ice is being lost from Greenland seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, and the scale and speed of ice loss is much higher than was predicted in the comprehensive studies of global climate science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to data.

That means sea level rises are likely to reach 67cm by 2100, about 7cm more than the IPCC’s main prediction. Such a rate of rise will put 400 million people at risk of flooding every year, instead of the 360 million predicted by the IPCC, by the end of the century.

Sea level rises also add to the risk of storm surges, when the fiercer storms made more likely by global heating batter coastal regions. These impacts are likely to strike coastal areas all around the world.

“These are not unlikely events or small impacts,” said Andrew Shepherd, professor of earth observation at the University of Leeds, one of the lead authors of the study. “[These impacts] are happening and will be devastating for coastal communities.”

Greenland has lost 3.8tn tonnes of ice since 1992, and the rate of ice loss has risen from 33bn tonnes a year in the 1990s to 254bn tonnes a year in the past decade. Greenland’s ice contributes directly to sea level rises as it melts because it rests on a large land mass, unlike the floating sea ice that makes up much of the rest of the Arctic ice cap.

About half of the ice loss from Greenland was from melting driven by air surface temperatures, which have risen much faster in the Arctic than the global average, and the rest was from the speeding up of the flow of ice into the sea from glaciers, driven by the warming ocean.

Oceans have absorbed most of the excess heat arising from our disruption of the climate to date, and much of the carbon dioxide, but they are reaching the limits of their capacity to do so. Sea level rises are driven not only by melting ice but by the thermal expansion of the seas as they warm.

The scale and speed of the ice loss surprised the team of 96 polar scientists behind the findings, published on Tuesday in the journal Nature. The Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise comprised 26 separate surveys of Greenland from 1992 to 2018, with data from 11 different satellites and comparisons of volume, flow and gravity compiled by experts from the UK, Nasa in the US, and the European Space Agency.

Erik Ivins, of the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, stressed that the findings – the most comprehensive survey yet of the ice sheet over the past few decades – were based on observations, rather than computer modelling.

“While computer simulation allows us to make projections from climate change scenarios, the satellite measurements provide prima facie evidence,” he said.

The peak year for ice loss, according to the observations, was 2011 when 335bn tonnes of ice were lost. Since then, the average rate has slowed to 238bn tonnes a year from 2013, but this does not include the most recent observations from this summer, which showed even more widespread melting.

Governments are meeting in Madrid for the second week of crucial UN talks on the global response to the climate emergency. Campaigners have been frustrated by the slow pace of the negotiations, despite growing public clamour, including a 500,000-strong march through the centre of the Spanish capital led by the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Rachel Kennerley, a climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “We’re in a climate emergency – the impacts are coming thicker and faster every day. This latest research is yet more in an ever-growing pile of evidence which shows we need real action, not warm words. Governments need to stop dragging their feet and deliver real emissions cuts and real support for vulnerable people already experiencing the devastating effects of climate breakdown.”

The IPCC is the gold standard for climate science, but some experts are concerned that its findings do not take into account the potential for “tipping points”, thresholds beyond which climate breakdown accelerates and becomes catastrophic and irreversible.

Louise Sime, a climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, said of the new paper: “This finding should be of huge concern for all those who will be affected by sea level rise. If this very high rate of ice loss continues, it is possible that new tipping points may be breached sooner than we previously thought.”