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

One hundred and sixty Germans, four major issues, one goal: for lawmakers to live up to their climate pledges. The Citizen Assembly is set to debate Germany's environmental ambitions and make sure its voices are heard.

A group of 160 German citizens chosen at random from across the country will launch an experiment in participatory democracy this week, aiming to inspire public debate and get the government to follow through with its pledge to reach net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050.

The Bürgerrat Klima, or Citizen Assembly, will follow the example set in the last few years by countries like Ireland, the United Kingdom and France. The concept, intended to directly involve citizens in the climate decisions that will shape their lives in the coming decades, is seen as a way for people to push for stronger climate policies and political action — though the previous experiments abroad have met with varying degrees of success.

Inspired by a 99-person Citizens' Assembly, the Irish government adopted a series of reforms in its 2019 climate bill aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 51% before the end of this decade. These included recommendations "to ensure climate change is at the centre of policy-making," and covered everything from clean tech and power generation to electric vehicles and plans to retrofit older buildings.
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Glacier melt contributing more to sea-level rise than loss of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, say experts

The melting of the world’s glaciers has nearly doubled in speed over the past 20 years and contributes more to sea-level rise than either the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets, according to the most comprehensive global study of ice rivers ever undertaken.

Scientists say human-driven global heating is behind the accelerating loss of high-altitude and high-latitude glaciers, which will affect coastal regions across the planet and create boom-and-bust flows of meltwater for the hundreds of millions of people who live downstream of these “natural water towers”.

The visualisations were generated from a database of glaciers called Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (Glims). Scientists around the globe are continually adding new records to Glims, building a comprehensive inventory of glaciers and how they are changing over time.

Researchers have reconstructed these glacier outlines from satellite images, aerial photography and ground surveys. Some shapes resemble withering plants; some once monumental glaciers have broken up into small fragments.

In some cases, an apparent change in a glacier’s extent can be caused by different teams of researchers measuring it differently. But the vast majority of glaciers are losing more ice than they accumulate because global temperatures are much higher today than they were in pre-industrial times.

In an order published today, the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court held that the provisions of the Federal Climate Change Act of 12 December 2019 (Bundes-Klimaschutzgesetz – KSG) governing national climate targets and the annual emission amounts allowed until 2030 are incompatible with fundamental rights insofar as they lack sufficient specifications for further emission reductions from 2031 onwards. In all other respects, the constitutional complaints were rejected.
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On the same day when the German Federal Constitutional Court handed youth (many of those even aren't allowed to vote) a great victory in their climate change fight,

Scientists say ice equivalent to 1-2 metres of sea level rise is probably already doomed to melt

A significant part of the Greenland ice sheet is on the brink of a tipping point, after which accelerated melting would become inevitable even if global heating was halted, according to new research.

Rising temperatures caused by the climate crisis have already seen trillions of tonnes of Greenland’s ice pour into the ocean. Melting its ice sheet completely would eventually raise global sea level by 7 metres.

The new analysis detected the warning signals of a tipping point in a 140-year record of ice-sheet height and melting rates in the Jakobshavn basin, one of the five biggest basins in Greenland and the fastest-melting. The prime suspect for a surge in melting is a vicious circle in which melting reduces the height of the ice sheet, exposing it to the warmer air found at lower altitudes, which causes further melting.

The study shows destabilisation of this ice sheet is under way. Uncertainties in the research meant it might already be at the point of no return, or be about to cross it in the coming decades, the scientists said. However, even if the tipping point was crossed, it did not mean that the entire ice sheet was doomed, they said, because there might be a stable state for a smaller ice sheet.

“We’re at the brink, and every year with CO2 emissions continuing as usual exponentially increases the probability of crossing the tipping point,” said Niklas Boers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, who conducted the research with Martin Rypdal from the Arctic University of Norway. “It might have passed [the tipping point], but it’s not clear. However, our results suggest there will be substantially enhanced melting in the near future, which is worrying.”

Boers said ice equivalent to 1-2 metres of sea level rise was probably already doomed to melt, though this would take centuries and melting the whole ice sheet would take a millennium. “We would probably have to drive temperatures back below pre-industrial levels to get back to the original height of the Greenland ice sheet,” he said.

“The current and near-future ice loss will be largely irreversible,” he said. “That’s why it is high time we rapidly and substantially reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and restabilise the ice sheet and our climate.”

The new research examined just one part of Greenland, but Boers said there was no reason in principle that it should be different from other parts of the giant ice sheet: “We might be seeing something that is happening in many parts of Greenland, but we just don’t know for sure, because we don’t have the high-quality data for other parts.”

Media reports in August 2020 suggested the Greenland ice sheet had already passed the point of no return, but scientists said this was a misinterpretation of research. In 2019, scientists warned that the world might already have crossed a series of climate tipping points.

The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, used temperature records, ice cores, and modelling to reconstruct the ice sheet’s elevation and melting rates since 1880. Careful examination of the size and duration of changes during this time series revealed the warning signals of an imminent tipping point, by showing that the ice sheet’s ability to recover from melting is diminishing fast.

The feedback loop caused by falling ice-sheet height appears to be the largest factor, but other feedbacks may play a role in destabilising it. These include the thinning of coastal glaciers, allowing more ice to slip into the sea, and reduced falls of fresh white snow exposing the darker surface of the ice sheet, which then absorbs more heat from the sun. But warmer temperatures may also result in damper air and more snowfall, counteracting some ice losses.

Boers said the dynamics of the Greenland ice sheet were very complex, and that using today’s incomplete knowledge to estimate a precise date when a tipping point is passed would give a false sense of certainty.

The scientists said better monitoring of the Greenland ice sheet is needed. “We urgently need to better understand the interplay of the different positive and negative feedback mechanisms that determine the current stability and the future evolution of the ice sheet,” said Boers.

Large-scale melting of the Greenland ice sheet would have long-term global consequences, beyond rising sea levels. It could halt the Gulf Stream ocean current, with potential knock-on effects on the Amazon rainforest and tropical monsoons.

“It’s great that we have satellites to track the pulse of our planet and models to perform a health check, but the diagnosis is shockingly clear: our climate is sick and needs urgent care,” said Prof Andrew Shepherd, at the University of Leeds, UK, who was not involved in the new study.

“Although we see the effects of climate heating around the planet, often the changes of greatest concern are those that will alter landscapes forever,” he said. “If Greenland has shifted into a new unstable state of heightened melting, then that’s big news.”

But uncertainties remained, Shepherd said, with some evidence that the heightened melting may have stabilised, which would be at odds with the idea that the ice sheet has entered an unstable state.

When seen from above, it looks like a brush of beige swirled across the dark blue waters of the Sea of Marmara. Up close, it resembles a creamy, gelatinous blanket of quicksand. Now scientists are warning that the substance, known as sea snot, is on the rise as a result of global heating.

The gloopy, mucus-like substance had not been recorded in Turkish waters before 2007. It is created as a result of prolonged warm temperatures and calm weather and in areas with abundant nutrients in the water.

The phytoplankton responsible grow out of control when nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are widely available in seawater. These nutrients have long been plentiful in the Sea of Marmara, which receives the wastewater of nearly 20 million people and is fed directly from the nutrient-rich Black Sea.

In ordinary amounts, these tiny, floating sea plants are responsible for breathing oxygen into the oceans, but their overpopulation creates the opposite effect. Under conditions of stress, they exude a mucus-like matter that can grow to cover many square miles of the sea in the right conditions.

In most cases, the substance itself is not harmful. “What we see is basically a combination of protein, carbohydrates and fat,” said Dr Neslihan Özdelice, a marine biologist at Istanbul University. But the sticky substance attracts viruses and bacteria, including E coli, and can in effect turn into a blanket that suffocates the marine life below.

This year’s event, the largest yet seen, began in deep waters in late December, and was initially only a nuisance to fishers, who have been unable to cast their nets since the sea snot appeared.

Around this time, Dr Barış Özalp, a marine biologist at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, had a chance encounter with the substance in the Çanakkale strait, the narrow passage that connects the Aegean and Marmara seas.

Özalp was startled by the extent of the sea snot he encountered during his regular dive to monitor corals, his main research focus. It is particularly damaging to immobile organisms such as corals as it gets wrapped around them, inhibiting their ability to feed or breathe and often killing them.

“The gravity of the situation set in when I dived for measurements in March and discovered severe mortality in corals,” Özalp said, naming gold coral (Savalia savaglia) and the violescent sea-whip (Paramuricea clavata) as the most affected species. He warned that if the sea snot were to persist, invertebrate life at the bottom of the Sea of Marmara would be under severe threat.

When the mucus eventually reached the shoreline in the following months, it also started to threaten the breeding ground of fish.

“Once the mucilage covers the coasts, it limits the interaction between water and the atmosphere,” said Dr Mustafa Sarı, the dean of Bandırma Onyedi Eylül University’s maritime faculty, who is leading a study into the economic effects of the sea snot.

It further depleted oxygen during decomposition, essentially sucking air out of the area, Sarı explained. He also noted that thousands of fish started dying a few weeks ago in Bandırma, a coastal town on the southern banks of the Marmara.

Scientists are calling for urgent action to reduce wastewater pressures on the Sea of Marmara in order to diminish nutrients.

“The main trigger is warming related to climate change, as phytoplankton grow during higher temperatures,” said Özdelice, noting that the seawater had warmed by 2-3C since preindustrial times. But since countering climate change requires a global and concerted effort, she urged Turkey to focus on factors it could control: overfishing and waste water discharges.

“This is also an outcome of overfishing because as filter feeders which consume phytoplankton are excessively hunted, it allows room for [phytoplankton and sea snot] to breed,” she said.

Even before the added pressure of climate change, the semi-enclosed Sea of Marmara could barely shoulder the burden of the densely populated and industrialised Marmara basin, Sarı said. “But as temperatures rise, the sea reacts in a completely different manner.

“We are experiencing the visible effects of climate change, and adaptation requires an overhaul of our habitual practices. We must initiate a full-scale effort to adapt.”

A Dutch court on Wednesday ordered Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) to significantly deepen planned greenhouse gas emission cuts, in a landmark ruling that could pave the way for legal action against energy firms around the world.

Shell immediately said it will appeal the court ruling, which comes amid rising pressure from investors, activists and governments on energy companies to shift away from fossil fuels and rapidly ramp up investments in renewable energy.

At a court room in The Hague, judge Larisa Alwin read out a ruling which ordered Shell to reduce its planet warming carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 from 2019 levels.

"The court orders Royal Dutch Shell, by means of its corporate policy, to reduce its C02 emissions by 45% by 2030 with respect to the level of 2019 for the Shell group and the suppliers and customers of the group," Alwin said.

Earlier this year Shell set out one of the sector's most ambitious climate strategies. It has a target to cut the carbon intensity of its products by at least 6% by 2023, by 20% by 2030, by 45% by 2035 and by 100% by 2050 from 2016 levels.

But the court said that Shell's climate policy was "not concrete and is full of conditions...that's not enough."

"The conclusion of the court is therefore that Shell is in danger of violating its obligation to reduce. And the court will therefore issue an order upon RDS," the judge said.

The court ordered Shell to reduce its absolute levels of carbon emissions, while Shell's intensity-based targets could allow the company to grow its output in theory.

Shell said in response that "urgent action is needed on climate change" and that it has therefore set out its plan to become a net-zero emissions energy company by 2050.

Shares in Shell's London-traded stock were down 0.7% at 1427 GMT, compared with 0.8% gains in the broader European energy sector (.SXEP).

CLIMATE LITIGATION

The lawsuit, which was filed by seven groups including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Netherlands, marks a first in which environmentalists have turned to the courts to try to force a major energy firm to change strategy.

It was filed in April 2019 on behalf of more than 17,000 Dutch citizens who say Shell is threatening human rights as it continues to invest billions in the production of fossil fuels.

"This is a huge win, for us and for anyone affected by climate change", Friends of the Earth Netherlands director Donald Pols told Reuters.

"It is historic, it is the first time a court has decided that a major polluter has to cut its emissions," Pols added after the verdict, which Shell can appeal.

Michael Burger, head of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School said that "there is no question that this is a significant development in global climate litigation, and it could reverberate through courtrooms around the world."

Burger is also a lawyer representing local governments in the United States in climate change lawsuits, including against Shell.

The company, which is the world's top oil and gas trader, has said its carbon emissions peaked in 2018, while its oil output peaked in 2019 and was set to drop by 1% to 2% per year.

However, the Anglo-Dutch company's spending will remain tilted towards oil and gas in the near future.

A rapid reduction in its carbon dioxide emissions would effectively force it to quickly move away from oil and gas.

Abstract
Climate change affects human health; however, there have been no large-scale, systematic efforts to quantify the heat-related human health impacts that have already occurred due to climate change. Here, we use empirical data from 732 locations in 43 countries to estimate the mortality burdens associated with the additional heat exposure that has resulted from recent human-induced warming, during the period 1991–2018. Across all study countries, we find that 37.0% (range 20.5–76.3%) of warm-season heat-related deaths can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change and that increased mortality is evident on every continent. Burdens varied geographically but were of the order of dozens to hundreds of deaths per year in many locations. Our findings support the urgent need for more ambitious mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize the public health impacts of climate change.