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

MIAMI — Three years ago, not long after Hurricane Irma left parts of Miami underwater, the federal government embarked on a study to find a way to protect the vulnerable South Florida coast from deadly and destructive storm surge.

Already, no one likes the answer.

Build a wall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed in its first draft of the study, now under review. Six miles of it, in fact, mostly inland, running parallel to the coast through neighborhoods — except for a one-mile stretch right on Biscayne Bay, past the gleaming sky-rises of Brickell, the city’s financial district.

The dramatic, $6 billion proposal remains tentative and at least five years off. But the startling suggestion of a massive sea wall up to 20 feet high cutting across beautiful Biscayne Bay was enough to jolt some Miamians to attention: The hard choices that will be necessary to deal with the city’s many environmental challenges are here, and few people want to face them.

“You need to have a conversation about, culturally, what are our priorities?” said Benjamin Kirtman, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Miami. “Where do we want to invest? Where does it make sense?”

“Those are what I refer to as generational questions,” he added. “And there is a tremendous amount of reluctance to enter into that discussion.”

In Miami, the U.S. metropolitan area that is perhaps most exposed to sea-level rise, the problem is not climate change denialism. Not when hurricane season, which begins this week, returns each year with more intense and frequent storms. Not when finding flood insurance has become increasingly difficult and unaffordable. Not when the nights stay so hot that leaving the house with a sweater to fend off the evening chill has become a thing of the past.

The trouble is that the magnitude of the interconnected obstacles the region faces can feel overwhelming, and none of the possible solutions is cheap, easy or pretty.

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The climate crisis is causing a widespread fall in oxygen levels in lakes across the world, suffocating wildlife and threatening drinking water supplies.

Falling levels of oxygen in oceans had already been identified, but new research shows that the decline in lakes has been between three and nine times faster in the past 40 years. Scientists found oxygen levels had fallen by 19% in deep waters and 5% at the surface.

Rising temperatures driven by global heating is the main cause, because warmer water cannot hold as much oxygen. Furthermore, rising summer heat leaves the top layer of lakes hotter and less dense than the waters below, meaning mixing is reduced and oxygen supply to the depths falls.

Oxygen levels have increased at the surface of some lakes. But this is most likely due to higher temperatures driving algal blooms, which can also produce dangerous toxins. Cutting emissions to tackle the climate crisis is vital, the scientists said, as well as cutting the use of farm fertiliser and urban sewage pollution that also damages lakes.

“All complex life depends on oxygen and so, when oxygen levels drop, you really decrease the habitat for many different species.” said Prof Kevin Rose, of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in the US, who was part of the research team.

“This study proves that the problem is even more severe in fresh waters [than in oceans], threatening our drinking water supplies and the delicate balance that enables complex freshwater ecosystems to thrive,” said Curt Breneman, RPI’s dean of science.

Freshwater habitats are rich in fish, insects, birds and animals, and are important for food and recreation for humans. But they have already suffered great damage, with average wildlife populations having fallen by 84% since 1970. In addition to global heating and pollution, the causes include overuse of water for farming.

The study, published in the journal Nature, analysed 45,000 dissolved oxygen and temperature profiles collected from nearly 400 lakes worldwide. Most records started in about 1980, though one went back to 1941.

Most of the lakes were in temperate zones, particularly in Europe and the US, but there were a few records from higher latitudes, nearer the poles, and for tropical lakes in Africa. In both cases, oxygen was falling as in the other lakes.

In lakes where oxygen levels have fallen to almost zero, phosphorus can be drawn out of sediments, providing an essential nutrient for bacteria. These can proliferate and produce the powerful greenhouse gas methane, driving further heating.

Oxygen levels in surface waters were increasing in about a fifth of the lakes studied, almost all of which were prone to pollution. This is an indicator of widespread increases in algal blooms, said Rose. “Without taxonomic data, we can’t say that definitively, but nothing else we’re aware of can explain this pattern.”

Global temperatures are still rising, pushing lake oxygen levels ever lower, so just keeping the status quo requires action to clean up freshwater bodies. Rose said a positive example was Oneida Lake in New York state, where a clean-up led to better water clarity, which in turn allowed more photosynthesis from oxygen-producing algae.

“The new study provides a much-needed global overview of what happens in the limited freshwater stores of the planet – their health is a prime concern,” said Prof Hans-Otto Poertner, of the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, who was not part of the team. Lakes are isolated and small compared with oceans, in which global currents can still provide oxygen to deeper waters, he said.

“Climate change, together with [agricultural pollution], threatens vulnerable freshwater systems, adding to the urgency to strongly cut emissions,” Poertner said.

Nearly three-fourths of the U.S. West is grappling with the most severe drought in the recorded history of the U.S. Drought Monitor, as hot and arid conditions are set to exacerbate the threat of wildfires and water supply shortages this summer.

Parts of California, Nevada and Washington experienced sweltering triple-digit temperatures over the past week amid the drought, according to the National Weather Service, with states releasing excessive-heat warnings and heat advisories in some areas.

Conditions this spring are much worse than a year ago. In fact, nearly half of the continental U.S. is in a moderate to exceptional drought, marking the most significant spring drought in the country since 2013, according to scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The U.S. Drought Monitor, a map produced by a team of academic and government scientists, started roughly two decades ago. It is updated every Thursday to display the location and intensity of drought across the country.

In California, which frequently experiences drought conditions and massive wildfires, state reservoirs are 50% lower than they should be at this time of year, an Associated Press report says, which could trigger hydroelectric power plants to shut down during the worst part of wildfire season.

The state had its worst wildfire season on record last year in terms of total acres burned, fueled in part by prolonged heat waves, drought and lightening strikes made worse by climate change.

During a meeting with the head of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection last week in Sacramento, Gov. Gavin Newsom called for a record $2 billion wildfire preparedness budget and an expansion of its fleet of aircraft to combat the fires.

California will also have its largest firefighting force in history working on the ground during peak fire season.

Alisha Herring, a communications representative for Cal Fire, told CNBC the department has completed dozens of fuel reduction projects, including controlled burns, to reduce the threat of fires this season.

“As we move deeper into the summer months, conditions will only dry out further, increasing the fire danger,” she said. “These dry conditions make it much easier for a wildfire to ignite and to burn hotter and faster than we would normally see this time of year.”

The world’s climate and nature crises cannot be solved unless they are tackled together, scientists have warned in a major report.

Global temperatures are already nearing levels deemed unsafe by climate scientists, while 77 per cent of the world’s land and 87 per cent of its oceans have been degraded by humans – putting more species at risk of extinction than at any other time in human history, according to the analysis.

To address the escalating crises, the world must end deforestation, rewild vast stretches of the land and sea and rapidly switch to plant-based diets, says the report, which is published by more than 50 of the world’s leading climate and nature scientists.

However, countries must ensure that the solutions they pursue address both crises effectively or risk committing environmental “epic fails”, the scientists said. They pointed to tree-planting with just a single species as an example of a solution that does little to tackle the decline of nature or the climate crisis in the long term.

“Even in areas where tree-planting is the right thing to do, [single-species] plantation forests are a disaster,” Professor Camille Parmesan, a report author and ecologist at Plymouth University, told a press briefing held on Wednesday.

“For a forest to be able to be resilient to [the climate crisis], you need it to be diverse. Plantation forests are extremely vulnerable... because every tree is the same species. One drought or heatwave can cause the loss of the whole forest.”

The peer-reviewed report is the first collaboration between the world’s leading climate science authority, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the leading authority on biodiversity decline, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Together, the scientific groups warn that the world is currently not doing enough to recognise that the climate and nature crises are inextricably linked.

For example, the way that humans impact the land through deforestation, agriculture and development is the chief driver of biodiversity loss and also a major cause of the climate crisis, with land use accounting for around a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, each problem can exacerbate the other, the scientists said. For example, rapidly rising temperatures threaten the survival of many species, while the loss of wildlife from ecosystems can affect their ability to store carbon.

Despite the links, the climate and nature crises are often treated as separate issues in the political arena, the report notes.

World leaders discuss each problem at separate UN conferences, with the next summit on biodiversity loss taking place in Kunming, China, in October and the next meeting on the climate crisis taking place in Glasgow in November.

Many of the solutions currently being considered by leaders also fail to take into account how both crises are interlinked, the report adds.

For example, the burning of crops to produce energy is often touted as a greener alternative to fossil fuels. However, if not carefully managed, the crops needed to produce “bioenergy” could take up large swathes of land, posing a large threat to biodiversity and food production, the scientists said.

They added that there were environmental solutions on offer that could provide a “win-win” for both the climate and nature crises.

In the UK, this includes the protection and restoration of the country’s carbon-rich peatlands, explained Professor Pete Smith, report author and chair of plant and soil science at the University of Aberdeen.

He said: “The big-ticket option in the UK is peatlands, particularly in the north and west of the country where we have large areas of peatlands – over 80 per cent of which are in relatively poor condition, they’ve been drained for grazing or otherwise mismanaged.

“They emit huge amounts of carbon. A degraded peatland can be emitting over 30 tonnes of CO2 per hectare per year. To put that in context, an average family car emits about four tonnes of CO2 a year.

“Switching off that big source of emissions is something that is really important and really good for biodiversity.”

Dr Will Pearse, an ecologist at Imperial College London who was not involved in the report, described the findings as “clear, authoritative and informative”.

“Only by treating climate, biodiversity and human society as coupled systems can we address the current catastrophes,” he said.

“Simple ‘quick fixes’, be they [tree plantations] or technological innovations, are shown to be ineffective and sometimes actively harmful when implemented without such a holistic approach.”

Prof Mark Maslin, a climate scientist at University College London, said the report put forward, “undeniable science that we can no longer treat human impacts on land, in oceans and in the atmosphere as separate”.

He said: “The Earth’s biodiversity and the functioning of many ecosystems are directly threatened by rapid climate change.

“However, to stabilise climate change we need to enhance and support the Earth’s ecosystem through massive rewilding and reforestation.”

Dr Nathalie Pettorelli, a senior research fellow at the Zoological Society of London, says that the report provides a “welcome first step” towards “a more joined-up approach to tackle the biodiversity and climate crises”.

The G7 meeting in Cornwall this weekend, as well as the Kunming and Glasgow conferences, “present clear policy windows for developing coherent policy frameworks that align targets across the nexus of biodiversity and climate change”, she said.

Keel Laying for New Research Ship

Successor to the research ship Uthörn will feature sustainable drive system powered by green methanol
[08. June 2021]
The Alfred Wegener Institute is setting new standards for sustainability in German maritime shipping. On 8 June 2021 the keel for the successor to the research cutter Uthörn will be laid at the Fassmer Shipyard in Berne, Lower Saxony. The 35-metre-long cutter will be the first seagoing vessel in Germany equipped with an environmentally friendly and especially low-emission methanol-fuelled drive system.
[...]
“I’m happy to say that, with regard to the Uthörn’s successor, we’ve chosen a climate-friendly and environmentally friendly approach for the power supply,” says Prof Antje Boetius. “The greatest benefit is the option of using ‘green’ methanol. Once the methanol’s production is combined with renewable energies, the ship can be operated on a virtually CO2-neutral basis. In addition, methanol dissolves well in water; bacteria break it down almost immediately, which means that, in the event of an accident, it doesn’t pose any major threat to the environment,” the AWI Director explains. Marius Hirsekorn, Logistical Coordinator for the AWI’s research ships, and Dr Michael Klages, who is coordinating the project from a research perspective, cite further advantages: “When methyl alcohol is burnt, substantially fewer soot particles are released into the air than with gasoline, diesel or heavy fuel oil. That being said, the fuel’s energy density, which is only half that of diesel, does pose a challenge. Accordingly, the new Uthörn will be fitted with much larger fuel tanks, ensuring she can bunker enough methanol to maintain a considerable range.”
[...]
Bremerhaven could then become one of the first harbour sites in the world to offer both sustainably produced hydrogen and sustainable methanol fuel for German and international shipping. In this regard the Uthörn, as Germany’s first methanol-fuelled seagoing vessel, represents an important practical example – for the Fassmer Shipyard, too. If the AWI’s new training ship proves to be a success, in the long term maritime shipping could become significantly greener, making a meaningful contribution to climate protection.

Limestone provides the raw material for some of the world's most iconic buildings — from the Egyptian pyramids to Notre Dame and the Parthenon.

And while these remarkable structures have stood the test of time, climate change and pollution are today putting them at risk: studies suggest that since the industrial revolution, the rate of decay of limestone buildings has sped up significantly.

Yet scientists have found a solution in an unlikely corner. Recent research has shown that bacterial cultures could become key players in the colossal effort to protect the world's historic limestone buildings from environmental degradation.

Saving historic buildings
The soft stone, consisting mainly of calcium carbonate, is vulnerable to acidic forms of air pollution in urban environments, such as the nitrous oxide and sulphur dioxide produced when we burn fossil fuels. Mixed with rainwater, these gases can cause black crusts to form on the stone which over time leads to serious deterioration.

Climate change is also a threat. Scientists fear that hotter summers in Europe are accelerating limestone decay. Rising temperatures could lead to more evaporation of rainwater, which leaves behind salt crystals that lodge inside and crack the porous stone.

A process known as bacterial carbonatogenesis has been shown to successfully protect damaged limestone with few negative effects on the building or the wider environment.

Bacterial cultures — such as bacillus cereus, bacillus subtilis, and myxococcus xanthus — are grown in a laboratory and either injected into the stone or applied with spatulas to the degraded surface. A nutritional solution is then added to feed the bacteria and the process is repeated until the bacteria have produced enough calcium carbonate to heal the limestone.

Although the treatment itself is relatively new, the earth's limestone was formed, in part, through calcium carbonate-producing bacteria and the process occurs naturally in oceans, soils, and lakes.

The technique was pioneered by the French Ministry of Culture in the 1990s and since then has been used on monuments and buildings across France, Portugal, and Spain. Preliminary tests have also been carried out at the Mayan site of Copan in Honduras.

Professor Carlos Rodriguez Navarro, a scientist at the Department of Minerology and Petrology at the University of Granada in Spain, leads a research group studying the process of using bacteria that naturally produce calcium carbonate, the main ingredient of limestone, to repair and protect damaged stone.

The fact that the bacteria produce calcium carbonate ensures a perfect compatibility with the substance already present in the limestone, says Navarro. "This is not the case with other materials, which strongly differ from the calcium carbonate present in limestones."

Less toxic than conventional methods
Jean-François Loubiere, a now-retired scientist at the French Ministry of Culture's Historic Monuments Research Laboratory, was part of the first team to use the bacterial method on a church in the 1990s in the town of Thouars, in western France.

"It is much more ecological and kinder to the stone because it is a natural process," said Loubiere, comparing it to the most common synthetic conservation techniques that can harm the stone and release toxins into the environment.

Some traditional chemical treatments using polymers release toxic chemicals, known as volatile organic compounds, which can be harmful to the environment and to human health.

According to Navarro, applying synthetic products can also create a waterproof surface that plugs up the pores of the stone and accelerates salt crystallization. Because the bacterial process simply adds to the calcium carbonate naturally present, it allows it to 'breathe.'

When it comes to aesthetics, Navarro says biomineralization, the process of the bacteria producing minerals, also has benefits. It does not appear to significantly change the stone's color or produce the typical wet or shiny appearance common with synthetic treatments.

Loubiere believes that the technique would also be appropriate for repairing Notre Dame's limestone blocks, which suffered heat damage in the major fire in April 2019.

Competing with cheaper synthetic methods
However, according to Faisl Bousta, a microbiologist at the Historic Monuments Research Laboratory, the technique is unlikely to be used on the Parisian cathedral, which is still being restored.

While the technique is frequently employed throughout France, particularly in the private sector, it has struggled to compete with synthetic methods.

"It is more expensive than the alternatives, and it is more restrictive in terms of application," said Victor Soulie, the director of AMONIT, a French company that makes the biological solutions used in the process and that works closely with the Laboratory of Historic Monuments. It can take months to add enough layers for the treatment to work.

Navarro believes the need to have a laboratory to grow bacteria, which can be costly and complex, is off-putting for many conservators.

However, his team at the University of Granada hassuccessfully demonstrated a way of bypassing the laboratory and using the bacteria already living on the stone. A nutritive solution is sprayed onto the limestone regularly over six days, feeding the indigenous bacteria. This approach has recently been used on monuments in Portugal. Not having to grow the cultures in a laboratory will save time and money.

With the impacts of climate change increasingly felt around the world, protecting monuments and historic buildings feels like a race against time for the team.

But Navarro is optimistic about the future use of this eco-friendly conservation solution.

"We strongly believe that this latter type of treatment will be more widely adopted over the coming years," Navarro said.

The scientist who led the international MOSAiC expedition to the North Pole on Tuesday warned that the point could have already been reached at which irreversible global warming is triggered.

During its expedition, the German research vessel "Polarstern" drifted through the Arctic on an ice floe for a year to also be able to research the winter at the North Pole, and the effects of climate change.

What did the research team find?
"The disappearance of summer sea ice in the Arctic is one of the first landmines in this minefield, one of the tipping points that we set off first when we push warming too far," said team leader Markus Rex, adding: "One can essentially ask if we haven't already stepped on this mine and already set off the beginning of the explosion."

Rex led what was the world's biggest mission so far to the North Pole, an expedition that involved some 300 scientists from 20 countries. Its Polarstern vessel returned to Germany in October bringing evidence of an Arctic Ocean that could see ice-free summers within decades.

Presenting the information eight months on, Rex noted that the ice had retreated "faster in the spring of 2020 than since the beginning of records" and that "the spread of the sea ice in the summer was only half as large as decades ago."

"Only the evaluation in the next years will allow us to determine if we can still save the year-round Arctic sea ice through forceful climate protection or whether we have already passed this important tipping point in the climate system," he said.

The team collected huge amounts of data aimed at building a better knowledge of the climate-relevant environmental processes at the North Pole.

The 140-million-euro ($165-million) expedition returned with an estimated 150 terabytes of data and more than 1,000 ice samples.

Increasing droughts in producer nations will also make palm oil and soya imports highly vulnerable, study finds

Coffee and chocolate supplies in Europe soon could be disrupted by the climate crisis as droughts hit producer countries, according to a study.

The research also found a high vulnerability for palm oil imports, used in many foods and domestic products, and soybeans, which are the main feed for chickens and pigs in the European Union.

The scientists predicted a sharp rise in drought risk for EU agricultural imports overall. Only 7% were vulnerable over the last 25 years, but this grows to 37% in the next 25 years, even if carbon emissions are cut sharply. Shortages of supply could result in higher prices, they said.

The analysis only considered drought; other climate impacts such as flooding and increased pests could worsen the situation. However, some regions may have lower drought risk in future and might partially compensate for lost crops elsewhere.

“Climate change impacts are not just happening within your borders,” said Ertug Ercin, at R2Water Research and Consultancy and Vrije University in the Netherlands, who led the research. “The study gives evidence of how we are interconnected globally through trade and how climate-driven disasters outside our borders can touch our lives directly and can be really relevant to our society and economy. We cannot just ignore it any more.”

The study, published in Nature Communications, concluded: “In the near future, supplies of certain crops to the EU could be disrupted due to increased drought in other parts of the world. Coffee, cocoa, sugar cane, oil palm, and soybean are the most climate-vulnerable imported products.”

The EU consumes a third of the world’s coffee, and half of this comes from Brazil and Vietnam, which are highly vulnerable to drought as global heating increases, the report said, though Colombia and Kenya become less vulnerable. Heatwaves and leaf rust fungus are also damaging coffee growing.

The EU produces only about 3% of the soybeans it uses, but 60% of soybean imports will come from places with a high vulnerability to drought by about 2050 in a medium emissions scenario. As soybeans are key to feeding livestock, “this makes the EU highly vulnerable to any disruption of soybean production”, the scientists said.

The EU is 100%-dependent on cocoa imports for its chocolate production, and the analysis found drought vulnerability levels are projected to rise sharply in Indonesia and Malaysia, and to a lesser extent in the Ivory Coast and Ghana. The study estimated 28% of cocoa imports will be from locations with high vulnerability in 2050.

Palm oil is one of the most widely used commodities and 61% of these imports become highly vulnerable to drought, particularly those from Indonesia. Sugar cane is mostly imported to Europe in processed food and 73% of these imports become highly vulnerable. The analysis found a low drought vulnerability for corn and sunflower imports.

The analysis used data from before Brexit and therefore included the UK. It accounted for the ability of exporting countries to adapt to drought, by building more water storage, for example. But it was not able to assess whether increased exports from less affected countries might in part compensate for lost production elsewhere.

Mike Rivington, at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland and not part of the study team, said the research was sound. But he said drought was just one of many climate risks to crops, such as flooding, increased disease, and loss of labour during heatwaves, as well as the loss of biodiversity such as pollinators.

“The study’s conclusions are reasonable in respect of droughts, but understate the overall vulnerability,” Rivington said. “Food systems will need to become more flexible to adapt to regional climate change extreme events. Open trade needs to continue without export restrictions to enable such trade movement flexibility.”

Prof Elizabeth Robinson, at the University of Reading, said: “This is an important study that highlights the complexities of food security in an increasingly interconnected and climate-insecure world. Households in Europe have already experienced increased food insecurity due to drought overseas. For example, during the 2008 food crisis, lower-income households were particularly affected by increases in food prices.”

Ercin said: “It’s fundamentally in Europe’s self interest to address climate [internationally].” He said helping poorer nations cut emissions and adapt to global heating for humanitarian reasons was important: “But maybe this kind of perspective can also wake up the businesses and policymakers in Europe.”

Abstract

Flowing waters have a unique role in supporting global biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles and human societies1,2,3,4,5. Although the importance of permanent watercourses is well recognized, the prevalence, value and fate of non-perennial rivers and streams that periodically cease to flow tend to be overlooked, if not ignored6,7,8. This oversight contributes to the degradation of the main source of water and livelihood for millions of people5. Here we predict that water ceases to flow for at least one day per year along 51–60 per cent of the world’s rivers by length, demonstrating that non-perennial rivers and streams are the rule rather than the exception on Earth. Leveraging global information on the hydrology, climate, geology and surrounding land cover of the Earth’s river network, we show that non-perennial rivers occur within all climates and biomes, and on every continent. Our findings challenge the assumptions underpinning foundational river concepts across scientific disciplines9. To understand and adequately manage the world’s flowing waters, their biodiversity and functional integrity, a paradigm shift is needed towards a new conceptual model of rivers that includes flow intermittence. By mapping the distribution of non-perennial rivers and streams, we provide a stepping-stone towards addressing this grand challenge in freshwater science.

... we would still likely be living through a once-in-a-century drought – but human activity accounts for about 46% of the severity of the current megadrought.

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The report, conducted by researchers at Montana State University, the US Geological Survey and the University of Wyoming, analyzes the effects of a changing climate not only in the park, but also in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem – an area 10 times the size.

In addition to geysers and hot springs, the area is home to grizzly bear populations and some of the longest intact wildlife migrations, including the seasonal movements of elk, pronghorn, mule deer and bison.

“Greater Yellowstone is valued for its forests, rivers, fish and wildlife,” said Steve Hostetler, a USGS scientist and co-lead author of the report said in a statement. “The trend towards a warmer, drier climate described in this study will likely affect ecosystems in the region and the communities that depend on them.”

The analysis shows that temperatures in the park are now as high or higher as during any period in the last 20,000 years and are very likely the warmest in the past 800,000 years. Since 1950, Yellowstone has experienced an average temperature increase of 2.3F, with the most pronounced warming taking place at elevations above 5,000ft.

Those changes could be even more extreme in the future: by the end of the century, the researchers say the temperature could increase by 5-10F under current emissions scenarios. That would mean the park’s surrounding areas could swelter under 40-to-60 more days per year with temperatures above 90F.

Because of the increased heat, the spring thaw now begins several weeks earlier, and annual stream runoff happens eight days earlier than it did in 1950.In addition, higher temperatures mean that much of the precipitation that once fell as snow will now be rain – annual snowfall has declined by nearly 2ft since 1950 and is expected to decline further.

That snowpack is a bank of water for later in the year, and is used by cities as far west as Los Angeles and earlier snowmelt and loss of snowpack will increase the area’s susceptibility to future wildfires, the authors write.

“The decrease in snow is due to the increase in temperature over time, which caused more precipitation to fall as rain instead of snow,” wrote report co-author Bryan Shuman of the University of Wyoming.

Old Faithful geyser was named for its frequent and somewhat predictable eruptions, which number more than a million since Yellowstone became the world’s first national park in 1872.

But the study also raises questions about the future reliability of the famous geyser: known for blasting water into the air at reliable intervals of about 90 to 94 minutes. Scientists recently found evidence that Old Faithful had ceased to erupt 800 years ago for several decades due to a drought. Dipping into an extended drought could once again cause the geyser to cease its blasts.

Yellowstone’s forests, too, could be changing. Covering roughly 80% of the park, some of the forests may convert to grasslands after a wildfire instead of bouncing back.

Yellowstone isn’t the only national park facing huge changes due to the climate crisis.

In California’s Joshua Tree, extreme temperatures are threatening the endangered flora that names the park. Drought and wildfire could drive the park to lose 80% of its renowned Joshua trees by 2070. And in Glacier national park in Montana, the number of glaciers has fallen from 150 to 26, with scientists predicting that those that remain will melt by the end of this century.
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Planet Earth is now trapping twice as much heat as it did 14 years ago, according to findings of a new study, which raise concerns about the possible acceleration of climate change.

For the study, researchers looked at data from the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument, which flies on several NASA Earth-observation satellites and measures how much energy the planet absorbs in the form of sunlight and how much of that it emits back into space in the form of infrared radiation.

The difference between the incoming and outflowing energy is called the energy imbalance, and the study found that in the period between 2005 and 2019 the imbalance doubled compared to the years before.

The scientists used additional data from Argo, an international network of robotic sensors distributed all over the world’s oceans, which measure the rate at which oceans heat up. The researchers said comparing CERES data to Argo helped strengthen the findings as global oceans are known to absorb up to 90% of the excess energy trapped by the planet.

"The two very independent ways of looking at changes in Earth's energy imbalance are in really, really good agreement, and they're both showing this very large trend," Norman Loeb, lead author for the new study and principal investigator for CERES at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, said in a statement. "The trends we found were quite alarming in a sense," he added.

Loeb and his team concluded the increased heating is a result of both naturally occurring and human-made processes. Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in Earth's atmosphere lead to more heat being trapped by the planet.

Meanwhile, the shrinking size of ice sheets, caused by the planet's warming, leads to less of the incoming energy being reflected away from the planet's surface.

But the researchers found that a natural recurring pattern called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is also contributing. The PDO cycle causes regular fluctuations in the temperature of the Pacific Ocean with its western parts becoming cooler and the eastern parts warming for ten years, following an opposite trend a decade after. An unusually intense PDO phase that began in about 2014 caused a reduction in cloud formation above the ocean, which also resulted in the increased absorption of incoming energy by the planet, the scientists said.

"It's likely a mix of anthropogenic forcing and internal variability," said Loeb, referring to the effects human activity has on the heat exchange between the Earth's atmosphere and the surrounding space environment and the natural variations in the behavior of the planet’s ecosystem. "Over this period they're both causing warming, which leads to a fairly large change in Earth's energy imbalance. The magnitude of the increase is unprecedented in this record."

Loeb added that while the study captures only a short period of time, the rate of the heat uptake suggests that the Earth’s climate is even more off-balance than previously thought and that worse effects can be expected (including steeper temperature and sea level rise) unless the trend is reversed.

The study was published June 15 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Undercover reporter hears company worked to undermine Biden efforts and funded shadow groups to deny global heating

Lobbyists for ExxonMobil have described the oil giant’s backing for a carbon tax as a public relations ploy intended to stall more serious measures to combat the climate crisis.

Two senior lobbyists based in Washington told an undercover reporter for Unearthed, the investigative journalism branch of Greenpeace, that they worked to undermine Joe Biden’s plans to limit greenhouse emissions and other environmental measures in his infrastructure bill.

They also admitted that Exxon funded shadow groups to deny global heating.

Keith McCoy, a senior director in Exxon’s Washington government affairs team, was recorded on video in May saying that the company backs a carbon tax “as an easy talking point” and an “advocacy tool” because “there is not an appetite for a carbon tax” and that Republican legislators who oppose taxes in principle will never let it happen.

“Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans, and the cynical side of me says, yeah, we kind of know that – but it gives us a talking point that we can say, well, what is ExxonMobil for? Well, we’re for a carbon tax,” he said.

Later, McCoy reiterates the point: “Carbon tax is not going to happen.”

The oil conglomerates and closely allied trade organizations, such as the American Petroleum Institute, finally declared their support for a carbon tax after years of resisting what many environmentalists regard as a key measure to reduce damaging fossil fuel emissions. But the lack of specifics over a cost and a timeframe immediately raised questions about the seriousness of the commitment.

Greenpeace said that Unearthed reporters posed as recruitment consultants looking to hire a Washington lobbyist for a major client and approached McCoy and Exxon’s former White House lobbyist, Dan Easley, who left the company at the end of the Trump administration.

In a meeting over Zoom, McCoy admitted that Exxon funded “shadow groups” that worked to misrepresent and deny climate science in order to sow doubt and stall regulation.

“Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes that’s true. But there’s nothing illegal about that. We were looking out for our investments, we were looking out for shareholders,” he said.

But McCory denied that Exxon covered up evidence from its own scientists about global heating caused by burning fossil fuels even though the company’s role in misrepresenting the dangers is well documented.

“Did we hide science? Did we at some point figure out climate change and then decide to bury the evidence? No.”

Although Exxon is not so overtly denying climate science any more, McCoy acknowledged that it continues to work to undermine environmental regulations and policies to combat global heating. He called measures in Biden’s American Jobs Plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions “insane” and described how the company lobbies Congress against them and on other issues.

McCoy said the oil giant was particularly concerned that Biden’s infrastructure and environmental plans would be paid for by undoing Trump’s corporate tax cuts which Easley described as “probably worth billions to Exxon”.

McCoy said that Exxon sought to restrict the infrastructure bill to spending on “roads and bridges” because it would help limit tax increases but also remove environmental measures the company opposed.

“If you lower that threshold, you stick to highways and bridges, then a lot of the negative stuff starts to come out,” he said. “Why would you put in something on emissions reductions on climate change to oil refineries in a highway bill? So people say, yeah, that doesn’t make any sense … that shouldn’t be in this bill.”

Easley said that the oil and gas industry was also lobbying against other environmental measures such as “requirements for the federal government to purchase green energy and renewable technologies and retrofitting federal buildings” that a future Republican administration would not be able to reverse.

“It’s gonna accelerate the transition to the extent that I think four years from now it’s going to be difficult to unwind that,” he said.

McCoy acknowledged that at the same time that Exxon was pushing to maintain tax cuts, it was also seeking government funding to get a carbon capture programme off the ground.

“So it’s a delicate balance. We’re asking for help with taxes over here and we’re saying don’t increase our taxes over here,” he said.

The lobbyist said that among the politicians he targeted was the Democratic senator Joe Manchin whose support is central to Biden getting the infrastructure bill and climate legislation through congress.

“Joe Manchin … I talk to his office every week. He is the kingmaker on this, because he’s a Democrat from West Virginia, which is a very conservative state, and he’s not shy about sort of staking his claim early and completely changing the debate,” he said.

McCoy ticked off the names of other Democratic senators he was working on, including Chris Coons from Delaware, the president’s home state, because he “has a very close relationship with Senator [sic] Biden”.

“As a matter of fact, our CEO is talking to him next Tuesday and having those conversations and just teeing it up and then that way I can start working with his staff to let them know where we are on some of these issues.”

The lobbyist described some Republican senators as “a captive audience” because they are reliant on industry backing.

“The Republicans, we have the great relationship with the senators, where we have assets,” he said.

McCoy said that meetings with senators might ostensibly be about a global issue, such as Russia or the Middle East, but the conversations are used to ensure backing on issues of concern to Exxon such as taxes and environmental legislation.

“There are all these opportunities that you use, and to use the fishing analogy just to kind of reel them in,” he said.

Exxon has been contacted for comment.

But McCory denied that Exxon covered up evidence from its own scientists about global heating caused by burning fossil fuels even though the company’s role in misrepresenting the dangers is well documented.

Council of State says it will assess state’s actions after 31 March 2022, and could issue fines if needed

France’s top administrative court has ordered the government to take “all necessary additional steps” within the next nine months to enable it to reach its climate crisis target or face possible sanctions, including substantial fines.

The Council of State said in a final ruling published on Thursday, with no possibility for appeal by the government, that France was not on track to meet its goal of achieving a 40% cut in emissions from 1990 levels by 2030.

“The Council of State therefore instructs the government to take additional measures between now and 31 March 2022 to hit the target,” it said.