New 3d View Of Methane Tracks Sources And Movement Around The Globe

NASA - Ellen Gray

Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

NASA’s new 3-dimensional portrait of methane concentrations shows the world’s second largest contributor to greenhouse warming, the diversity of sources on the ground, and the behavior of the gas as it moves through the atmosphere. Combining multiple data sets from emissions inventories, including fossil fuel, agricultural, biomass burning and biofuels, and simulations of wetland sources into a high-resolution computer model, researchers now have an additional tool for understanding this complex gas and its role in Earth’s carbon cycle, atmospheric composition, and climate system.

Since the Industrial Revolution, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled. After carbon dioxide, methane is the second most influential greenhouse gas, responsible for 20 to 30% of Earth’s rising temperatures to date.

“There’s an urgency in understanding where the sources are coming from so that we can be better prepared to mitigate methane emissions where there are opportunities to do so,” said research scientist Ben Poulter at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.


Credit: NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio. This video can be downloaded at NASAs Scientific Visualization Studio.

A single molecule of methane is more efficient at trapping heat than a molecule of carbon dioxide, but because the lifetime of methane in the atmosphere is shorter and carbon dioxide concentrations are much higher, carbon dioxide still remains the main contributor to climate change. Methane also has many more sources than carbon dioxide, these include the energy and agricultural sectors, as well as natural sources from various types of wetlands and water bodies.

“Methane is a gas that’s produced under anaerobic conditions, so that means when there’s no oxygen available, you’ll likely find methane being produced,” said Poulter. In addition to fossil fuel activities, primarily from the coal, oil and gas sectors, sources of methane also include the ocean, flooded soils in vegetated wetlands along rivers and lakes, agriculture, such as rice cultivation, and the stomachs of ruminant livestock, including cattle.

“It is estimated that up to 60% of the current methane flux from land to the atmosphere is the result of human activities,” said Abhishek Chatterjee, a carbon cycle scientist with Universities Space Research Association based at Goddard. “Similar to carbon dioxide, human activity over long time periods is increasing atmospheric methane concentrations faster than the removal from natural ‘sinks’ can offset it. As human populations continue to grow, changes in energy use, agriculture and rice cultivation, livestock raising will influence methane emissions. However, it’s difficult to predict future trends due to both lack of measurements and incomplete understanding of the carbon-climate feedbacks.”

Researchers are using computer models to try to build a more complete picture of methane, said research meteorologist Lesley Ott with the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at Goddard. “We have pieces that tell us about the emissions, we have pieces that tell us something about the atmospheric concentrations, and the models are basically the missing piece tying all that together and helping us understand where the methane is coming from and where it’s going.”

To create a global picture of methane, Ott, Chatterjee, Poulter and their colleagues used methane data from emissions inventories reported by countries, NASA field campaigns, like the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) and observations from the Japanese Space Agency’s Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT Ibuki) and the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P satellite. They combined the data sets with a computer model that estimates methane emissions based on known processes for certain land-cover types, such as wetlands. The model also simulates the atmospheric chemistry that breaks down methane and removes it from the air. Then they used a weather model to see how methane traveled and behaved over time while in the atmosphere.

The data visualization of their results shows methane’s ethereal movements and illuminates its complexities both in space over various landscapes and with the seasons. Once methane emissions are lofted up into the atmosphere, high-altitude winds can transport it far beyond their sources.

When they first saw the data visualized, several locations stood out.

Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio 

In South America, the Amazon River basin and its adjacent wetlands flood seasonally, creating an oxygen-deprived environment that is a significant source of methane. Globally, about 60% of methane emissions come from the tropics, so it’s important to understand the various human and natural sources, said Poulter.

Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Over Europe, the methane signal is not as strong as over the Amazon. European methane sources are influenced by the human population and the exploration and transport of oil, gas and coal from the energy sector.

Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

In India, rice cultivation and livestock are the two driving sources of methane. “Agriculture is responsible for about 20% of global methane emissions and includes enteric fermentation, which is the processing of food in the guts of cattle, mainly, but also includes how we manage the waste products that come from livestock and other agricultural activities,” said Poulter.

Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

 China’s economic expansion and large population drive the high demand for oil, gas and coal exploration for industry as well as agriculture production, which are its underlying sources of methane.

Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

 The Arctic and high-latitude regions are responsible for about 20% of global methane emissions. “What happens in the Arctic, doesn’t always stay in the Arctic,” Ott said. “There’s a massive amount of carbon that’s stored in the northern high latitudes. One of the things scientists are really concerned about is whether or not, as the soils warm, more of that carbon could be released to the atmosphere. Right now, what you’re seeing in this visualization is not very strong pulses of methane, but we’re watching that very closely because we know that’s a place that is changing rapidly and that could change dramatically over time.”

“One of the challenges with understanding the global methane budget has been to reconcile the atmospheric perspective on where we think methane is being produced versus the bottom-up perspective, or how we use country-level reporting or land surface models to estimate methane emissions,” said Poulter. “The visualization that we have here can help us understand this top-down and bottom-up discrepancy and help us also reduce the uncertainties in our understanding of the global methane budget by giving us visual cues and a qualitative understanding of how methane moves around the atmosphere and where it’s produced.”

The model data of methane sources and transport will also help in the planning of both future field and satellite missions. Currently, NASA has a planned satellite called GeoCarb that will launch around 2023 to provide geostationary space-based observations of methane in the atmosphere over much of the western hemisphere.

Links

• NASA: Methane emissions in Arctic cold season higher than expected
• NASA-led study solves a methane puzzle
• NASA: Which is a bigger methane source: cow belching or cow flatulence?
• NASA Flights Detect Millions of Arctic Methane Hotspots
• NASA: Unexpected future boost of methane possible from Arctic permafrost
• NASA: GRACE, GRACE-FO Satellite Data Track Ice Loss at the Poles
• NASA: Greenland, Antarctica Melting Six Times Faster Than in the 1990s
• NASA Satellite Offers Urban Carbon Dioxide Insights
• NASA: Visualizing the Quantities of Climate Change

(US) Editorial: Climate Change Is Just As Real As Covid-19. Now’s The Last, Best Chance For Our Government To Treat It That Way

Los Angeles Times - LA Times Editorial Board

A resident walks past shadows cast by trees during a sunny day in Beijing on March 3. China’s far-reaching efforts to control the spread of the new coronavirus have resulted in a steep drop in carbon emissions and other pollutants. (Ng Han Guan / Associated Press)

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic is the crisis of the moment, and a terribly serious one at that, threatening not only human lives but also the global economy.

But it’s not the only crisis the world is facing, and we ought not, while confronting the immediate menace, disregard the other immense threat looming over us: global warming. Rather, somewhat counterintuitively, we should use the current pandemic to learn some lessons and glean some insights about the other perils we will soon be facing.

We’re not suggesting that climate change contributed to the coronavirus outbreak; there seems to be no direct link, although experts say a warming world could accelerate pandemics of insect-borne diseases (the coronavirus is spread person to person). But the global response to this pandemic does show that the world can come together to confront a shared threat. That could bode well for addressing climate change — if we treat it as seriously.

The pandemic is putting a chokehold on economic activity in hard-hit regions of the world — China, Europe and here in the U.S. When factories and businesses are closed, workers and customers stay home (here in California and in New York, by order of the governors). With few people traveling long distances, airlines slash flights. Sure, people and businesses continue to use energy, but not at the levels they did just a month ago. And that reduction in energy use in turn reduces fossil fuel consumption and emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Little of this will be long-lasting. Once the epidemic subsides, economic activity will resume and so, presumably, will emissions.

But the crisis offers opportunities for change, and we ought to be mindful of them as the pandemic and the economic crisis play out. Businesses are learning how much of their workforce can do their jobs remotely, which offers guidance for how they might operate in the future with a lighter carbon footprint. Consumers are undergoing a forced experiment in changed patterns of shopping and consumption.

Congress and President Trump also are negotiating a series of bailouts and other support packages to help people and businesses survive. They should take this opportunity to press for changes in how some of these industries operate.

The airline industry, for instance, should be asked to do more to reduce its carbon emissions, which have soared in recent years and will continue to rise as air travel itself is projected to increase. A September paper from the International Council on Clean Transportation used industry data to conclude that commercial air operations account for 2.4% of global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels, and that industry emissions in 2018 were 32% higher than five years before.

One available emissions-reducing alternative is the use of so-called sustainable aviation fuels, including biofuels, but they are more expensive than conventional jet fuel. And airline companies can be pressured to adopt aggressive plans to replace older, higher-polluting planes. That would be in line with the demand for increased fuel efficiency commitments that the Obama administration attached to its bailout package for the auto industry.

Of course, extracting climate-friendly concessions will vary by the industry seeking bailout help, so we won’t get too prescriptive here. The main imperative for the government is to keep climate policy in mind as it devises a plan to rescue the economy.

But wait, you think. This is the Trump administration, which at best shrugs at the science and ignores global warming. True enough, but Congress also is involved, and it can place climate considerations on the table
.
Here’s a good place to start: The government should not be bailing out the oil and gas industry at a time when we should be focusing on expanding production of renewable energy and the infrastructure to store and deliver it.

In recent days, early coronavirus scoffers — including the president — have come around to the reality that this pandemic is a deadly threat and have finally begun taking strong steps to address it.

Yet global warming is a larger and longer-lasting threat to humankind. We have about a decade, according to the experts, to make significant reductions in carbon emissions to avoid the worst ramifications of climate change. The world already is seeing the effects in longer and more severe droughts in some places, record flooding in others, stronger and more intense tropical storms and regional temperature rises that are making parts of the word nearly uninhabitable.

The science confirms all this, as it has confirmed the spread and dangers from the novel coronavirus. So maybe accepting the reality of COVID-19 will lead the administration to recognize the reality of climate change and work with Congress to begin addressing it in meaningful ways.

Links

• (AU) Call To Integrate Post-Virus Rebuild With Land And Climate Repair
• (UK) Climate Change Is Still With Us
• Paul R. Ehrlich: A Pandemic, Planetary Reckoning, And A Path Forward
• If We’re Bailing Out Corporations, They Should Bail Out The Planet
• Coronavirus Response Proves The World Can Act On Climate Change
• (US) Where The Virus And Climate Intersect
• The Coronavirus And The Climate Movement
• Coronavirus Response Should Be A Model For How We Address Climate Change
• With Coronavirus And Climate Change, It’s About Time

Water Is An Under-Used Weapon In Climate Change Fight, UN Says

Reuters - Megan Rowling

Residents of the village of Shangshak in India's northeast Manipurcarry state carry water home on Saturday after finding four springs dry. | AP

 
BARCELONA - Using water more efficiently in everything from daily life to agriculture and industry would help reduce planet-warming emissions and curb climate change - a potential benefit that has yet to be widely recognised, the United Nations said on Sunday.

In a report issued on World Water Day, U.N. agencies said global warming would “affect the availability, quality and quantity of water for basic human needs”, threatening the right to water and sanitation for “potentially billions of people”.

But as well as using limited supplies more wisely and fairly, policymakers and businesses should also seek to manage water resources better to economise on the electricity and fuel needed to pump, clean and deliver water, the report said.

“If you save water, you’re saving energy and reducing the greenhouse gases to produce that energy to bring the water,” said Richard Connor, the report’s editor.

Using less energy cuts down further on the water needed to produce electricity, creating a virtuous circle, he said.

Even more water can be saved by switching to less-thirsty clean power sources like wind instead of fossil fuels, he added.

Water use has increased six-fold over the past century and is rising by about 1% a year, said the United Nations World Water Development Report 2020.

It outlined ways water could be used and recycled more effectively to limit emissions, alongside looking after nature.

Restoring and protecting wetlands, for example, is of “critical importance” because they store twice as much carbon as forests, while also preventing floods, purifying water and providing a habitat for animals and birds, the report said.

Conservation agriculture - a green farming approach that causes minimal disturbance to the soil - also helps reduce carbon emissions and the huge amounts of water needed for crop irrigation in intensive farming systems.

Treating more wastewater would also make a big difference, said the report, noting 80%-90% of wastewater is discharged to the environment without any form of treatment.

Untreated wastewater is a major source of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, while wastewater treatment accounts for an estimated 3%-7% of all emissions, due to the energy and biochemicals required for the process.

The best solution, the report said, is to invest in modern techniques that extract methane from organic matter in wastewater and use this biogas to generate the energy needed to treat the water - a method already used in some water-scarce countries like Jordan, Mexico, Peru and Thailand.

As a result, public utilities there have reduced carbon emissions by thousands of tonnes, while making financial savings and providing a higher-quality service, it added.

Policy ‘Disconnect’
One of the main barriers to these types of approaches is a lack of cooperation between government officials working on climate change and those tasked with managing water.

“The disconnect remains abundantly clear at the policy level,” said Connor.

For example, the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change does not mention water, the U.N. report noted.

The national climate action plans submitted by countries under that pact generally acknowledge the importance of water, but few have so far presented and costed specific projects, it added.

“When it comes time to move from talk to action - be it finance or otherwise - the talk falls on deaf ears and water gets put aside and ... left behind,” said Connor.

More concrete efforts to adapt to rising water stress and cut emissions from water use will require joint planning between climate change and water specialists, as well as greater investment to put them into practice, the report said.

Water management, water supply and sanitation services are under-funded, it added - but by tackling global warming as well as water challenges, projects could aim to capture a larger share of climate finance.

In 2016, only 2.6% of $455 billion invested in climate change measures was allocated to water management, it noted.

That may be starting to change. In the past four years, the Green Climate Fund, for example, has approved two projects in Sri Lanka to upgrade village irrigation systems, protect water catchments, and promote climate-smart farming practices.

"Water does not need to be a problem – it can be part of the solution," said Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Links

• Water Wars: Early Warning Tool Uses Climate Data To Predict Conflict Hotspots
• All That Perfectly Good Water Dumped Into The Ocean Like Some Sort Of Enormous NATURE TOILET!
• 'Quite Scary': Rising Temperatures Threaten Melbourne, Sydney's Water Security
• NSW Towns Including Dubbo And Tamworth Face Water Emergency Within Months
• Australian Insurers Say 'Act Now' On Climate Change
• Scientists Warn Australia's Water Security Threatened By Climate Change
• Redrawing The Map: How The World’s Climate Zones Are Shifting
• Pay More Attention To Forests To Avert Global Water Crisis, Researchers Urge

(AU) Call To Integrate Post-Virus Rebuild With Land And Climate Repair

Farmonline



COVID-19 stimulus and budget initiatives should align with investment and policies working on land, climate and economic repair, the Carbon Market Institute says.
In welcoming the Climate Change Authority's latest policy toolkit report, CMI's chief executive officer John Connor said the government should plan now to integrate both the recovery from COVID-19, and the huge public stimulus, with the recovery from Australia's black summer bushfire season.
"Aligning the three tasks of land, climate and economic repair will give clear long-term signals to investors, business and farmers who are managing risks and seizing the opportunities in the transition to net-zero emissions economy. These signals can help ensure the long-term safety and prosperity of Australia," he said.
"It is imperative that we use the public funds that are available now well, but plan for when public taxpayer funding will need to be reduced," added Mr Connor.
This can be done by evolving policies such as the Government's safeguard mechanism so that its carbon reduction regulations or 'baselines' for emissions intensive industries align, at least, with national carbon reduction targets.
Farmers have been winners from the Government's Emission Reduction Fund with $100 million being invested in land sector projects.
"The ERF is throwing lifelines and new revenue streams to farmers who have been struggling with drought, but these policies need more to be put on more sustainable footing, and be less dependent on public taxpayer funds," said Mr Connor.
Next week will see the tenth ERF auction after the last auction priced carbon reductions at $14.15 a tonne.
"The Government's commitment to add almost $2 billion to the ERF over the next 15 years is welcome but we should be planning to transition to policies - such as stronger Safeguard Mechanism baselines - that make business the drivers of this market, not the taxpayer," said Mr Connor. This week's report by the Climate Change Authority "Prospering in a Low Emission World: A Policy Toolkit for Australia" also recommends declining baselines and measures to maximise the potential of the land sector in carbon reduction.
CMI believes we can and must reform with smart policy that manages emissions intensive companies' trade exposure and supports affected workers and communities.
CMI's January 2020 bushfire recovery workshop report noted that recognising climate change as a factor in the unprecedented bush fire weather conditions meant that emissions reduction is hazard reduction. It called for an integration of land and climate repair tasks, now we need to also integrate economic repair with these tasks.
"Finally, it is worth noting that the South Korean Government, so successful in containing COVID-19's impacts, is announcing policies for net-zero emissions for 2050 and boosting its carbon pricing mechanism, setting the course for a clean and more resilient post-COVID-19 economy, Australia should do the same," said Mr Connor.

Links

• Plan now: Integrate post-virus repair plan with land and climate repair
• Prospering in a low-emissions world: An updated climate policy toolkit for Australia
• 'Unprecedented' globally: more than 20% of Australia's forests burnt in bushfires
• Net zero: why is it necessary?
• Emissions control policies
• National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting: Baselines
• Climate Solutions Fund - Emissions Reduction Fund

(UK) Climate Change Is Still With Us

Financial Times - Nick Butler

The fundamentals of energy use have not changed, even if the focus of attention has

A visualisation of Tidal Lagoon Power’s tidal energy project in Swansea Bay, Wales © PA 

Nick Butler is chair of the Policy Institute at King’s College London

Climate concerns were top of the agenda just a few weeks ago. Governments were making commitments to transform the ways in which energy is used. Companies from Microsoft to BP were expressing their intention to decarbonise.

None of the fundamentals have changed: emissions will fall a little this year in line with energy consumption but the shift is not permanent. After the coronavirus pandemic ends, a carbon-rich reality will return. The world in 2021 will still rely on hydrocarbons for close to 80 per cent of its energy needs, the chances of extreme weather conditions have not changed and the risk of floods has not receded.

The level of attention being given to the issue has, however, fallen sharply. Preparations for the COP26 meeting planned to be held in Glasgow in November have been minimal and the event could be postponed. Media coverage has moved on to more immediate problems, and companies are focused on responding to dramatic short-term falls in activity and income and on survival.

Recapturing attention will not be easy but it will be necessary. Two practical approaches would match the mood of the moment and help restore lost momentum.

The first is to accept the urgent need for international co-ordination of policy in key areas. That is evident in the coronavirus crisis in terms of both the medical issues and the economic implications. Similar co-ordination is needed for the climate agenda. The International Energy Agency, in the absence of any other serious body equipped to do the job, should be asked to propose how such co-ordination can be put in place.

The process matters but so does the substance. The second thing to do is to shift the focus from the setting of goals for 2050 to what can be done over the next decade — 2050 is beyond the horizon of any government, while 2030 is within measurable sight. Countries can take different actions depending on their circumstances but all can move towards a common objective. A cut of 25 per cent in emissions by 2030 will not satisfy campaigners but it has the virtue of being within reach.

The aggregation of certain steps using proven technology can make a material difference in the short term. These include:

• efficiency gains encouraged through incentives and regulation to close the wide gaps between performance at national and sector levels;
• the development of infrastructure from strengthened grids to charging systems capable of dealing with growing numbers of electric vehicles;
• the deployment of smart systems to maximise energy use; and 
• greater use of storage technology that is advancing beyond vehicle batteries and already playing a role in managing volatility at grid level.

Of course, a 25 per cent reduction is not enough and we should also use the next few years to prepare for the bigger steps needed later. That is about testing at scale prospects that are already within sight, for example hydrogen, which could transform the heating sector and potentially many other forms of energy consumption such as in ships’ engines.

Work needs to be done on carbon capture and storage to identify ways in which costs can be reduced and how carbon can be used rather than simply stored. Tidal and wave power must be made more economic and new financing mechanisms found that match their potential to produce power over many decades. Small modular nuclear reactors should be built and tested. Fusion power is a possibility but needs years of further research.

Some of these may not prove to be viable but all need exploring. At the same time the door must be opened to other technologies that can reduce the emissions from the production, processing and use of energy.

Few of these ideas can be deployed at scale until the 2030s but the work should be accelerated once the coronavirus crisis subsides. The effort should be public and private, local and international and should not be delayed by waiting for the most reluctant to sign up.

It is time to move on from proclamations of extinction and vague promises to do something by 2050. Over the coming weeks we should turn our idle, if well washed, hands to producing a practical, pragmatic plan to reduce emissions over the next decade.

Links

• Here Are The Top Ways The World Could Take On Climate Change In 2020
• (AU) We Must Fight Climate Change Like It’s World War Iii – Here Are 4 Potent Weapons To Deploy
• (UK) Patriotism Could Be The Unlikely Answer To Solving The Climate Crisis
• Coronavirus Should Give Us Hope That We Are Able To Tackle The Climate Crisis
• Coronavirus And Climate Change
• Report Finds 76 Solutions Available Right Now To Slow Down Climate Change
• 50 Simple Ways To Make Your Life Greener

Everyone, Everywhere: The Global Challenge Of Climate Change

Nature - Maria Ivanova

Christiana Figueres (second from left) and other global leaders celebrate adoption of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Credit: Arnaud Bouissou/COP21/Anadolu Agency/Getty

 

The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis Christiana Figueres & Tom Rivett-Carnac Knopf (2020) Climate Change and the Nation State: The Realist Case Anatol Lieven Allen Lane (2020)

Climate change demands action: humanity must shift from persistent destruction to intentional regeneration. So, how best to make that happen? Two new books give very different answers. In one, the solution lies exclusively with nation states and their protection of security and self-interest. The other expects a global-scale spirit of shared endeavour to harness the collective power of governments, corporations and individuals.

The collaborative approach is set out insightfully in The Future We Choose. Its authors — Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac — had crucial roles in the Paris climate agreement of December 2015. Hailed both as a monumental achievement and as woefully inadequate, the agreement saw 197 parties commit to keeping the global average temperature rise to less than 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. Figueres is recognized as the person most responsible for that achievement: as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, she was at the heart of the process for six years, from the aftermath of the breakdown of negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009 to the success in Paris. Rivett-Carnac worked with Figueres at the UN and ran political strategy for the agreement.

Visions of the future
The book is an immersive journey through two very different visions of the year 2050. In one, the world has no fresh air and two billion people live with temperatures exceeding 60 °C for days on end. On the alternative, thriving, green planet, renewable energy powers smart grids and 50% of the land is covered in forest. Although such a stark choice could be criticized as simplistic, it brings into sharp relief the risk that humanity runs.

“Systemic change is a deeply personal endeavor,” the authors write. The most effective way to get anyone to act — from the person on the street to the diplomat in the negotiation room — is, they argue, to shift mindsets towards a deep acknowledgement of humanity’s dependence on nature.

Figueres and Rivett-Carnac are in a prime position to unpick exactly how to do that. Their behind-the-scenes stories are captivating, including the little-known details of the 2014 climate negotiations in which China and the United States moved away from competition towards shared wins, or Figueres’s decision to keep the 2015 conference running after UN security services found a bomb in the underground station serving the conference centre. I yearned for more, however, on what it took to change the mood and get commitment that no one thought possible. What was the exact chain of events leading up to the strike of the green gavel at 7.25 p.m. on 12 December 2015?

One of the duo’s major achievements was to bring civil society and business into the historically intergovernmental affair. Rivett-Carnac, for example, designed and led the Groundswell Initiative — a largely covert organization that mobilized support for the ambitious agreement from a wide range of stakeholders. Nation states are not the single or even most important driver in solving the climate crisis; it is, as the authors put it, an “everyone-everywhere mission”.

Bolivian soldiers combat forest fires in 2019. Credit: Aizar Raldes/AFP via Getty

National self-interest
By contrast, Climate Change and the Nation State argues for reframing the struggle in nationalist terms. Some 55% of all emissions come from four countries — China, the United States, India and Russia. What would compel these states to drastically change their behaviour and reduce emissions? For author Anatol Lieven, the answer lies in self-interest.

A British journalist with significant expertise in Pakistan and Russia, and an academic post in international relations, Lieven weaves his first-hand knowledge and experience into a compelling narrative. The branch of international-relations theory called realism, which assumes that states act to maximize their power, has rarely considered environmental concerns. Lieven calls on his realist colleagues to “wake up” to climate change as a paramount security threat. The heatwaves across Europe in 2003 and in Russia in 2010, he points out, respectively claimed more lives than France lost in its eight-year war in Algeria and Russia lost in a ten-year conflict with Afghanistan.

The mass movement of people, Lieven argues, will be “the most dangerous indirect effect … on Russia and the West”. The confluence of climate change, migration and automation will be the perfect storm, rivalling the devastation of nuclear war. Displacement of large numbers of people will put strain on states’ ability to provide for their populations. When this comes on top of massive unemployment resulting from increased automation, the nation state will not be able to respond. That will lead to a world much like Figueres and Rivett-Carnac’s potential dystopia.

Urgent action
Lieven makes a strong case for urgent action, especially by powerful states. He sees the armed forces, as experts on national security, as the logical first responders — not just for crowd control, but for large-scale infrastructure changes such as building flood defences. He advocates military support of the US Green New Deal, for example.

But Lieven is wrong to disregard global governance. Climate change is the quintessential worldwide problem. No one state, no matter how powerful its economy or military, can resolve it alone. Despite the primacy of the nation state in international affairs, global agreements and institutions are indispensable in ensuring that commitments are fulfilled, action is supported and agreements revised — think of the role of the World Health Organization in the coronavirus pandemic. This underscores that human and planetary health are inextricably bound, that global action is imperative, and that effective international or supranational organizations are crucial.

Lieven is convincing when he writes: “If there was ever an issue that demands prudence in judgment and courage in action, it is climate change.” But the judgement and action have to be global. Figueres and Rivett-Carnac might come across as overly optimistic in their conviction that a sense of global responsibility, for fellow humans and other species alike, will prove sufficient to spur the necessary action. But their short and simple book grabs you by the heart and makes you want to join the great adventure against overwhelming odds.

Links

• A Better Planet: Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future
• More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next
• On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal
• The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720,
• Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America
• Waters of the World: The Story of the Scientists Who Unraveled the Mysteries of Our Oceans, Atmosphere, and Ice Sheets and Made the Planet Whole
• McSweeney’s Issue 58: 2040 AD
• Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age
• Greta and the Giants: Inspired by Greta Thunberg’s Stand to Save the World,
• One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon
• The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
• The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland’s Buried Past and Our Perilous Future

Greenland's Melting Ice Raised Global Sea Level By 2.2mm In Two Months

The Guardian - Oliver Milman

Analysis of satellite data reveals astounding loss of 600bn tons of ice last summer as Arctic experienced hottest year on record

The loss of land-based glaciers in Greenland leads directly to sea level rise, ultimately increasing the risk of flooding to millions of people. Photograph: Ian Joughin/IMBIE

Last year’s summer was so warm that it helped trigger the loss of 600bn tons of ice from Greenland – enough to raise global sea levels by 2.2mm in just two months, new research has found.

The analysis of satellite data has revealed the astounding loss of ice in just a few months of abnormally high temperatures around the northern pole. Last year was the hottest on record for the Arctic, with the annual minimum extent of sea ice in the region its second-lowest on record.

Unlike the retreat of sea ice, the loss of land-based glaciers directly causes the seas to rise, imperiling coastal cities and towns around the world. Scientists have calculated that Greenland’s enormous ice sheet lost an average of 268bn tons of ice between 2002 and 2019 – less than half of what was shed last summer. By contrast, Los Angeles county, which has more than 10 million residents, consumes 1bn tons of water a year.“We knew this past summer had been particularly warm in Greenland, melting every corner of the ice sheet, but the numbers are enormous,” said Isabella Velicogna, a professor of Earth system science at University of California Irvine and lead author of the new study, which drew upon measurements taken by Nasa’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) satellite mission and its upgraded successor, Grace Follow-On.
Glaciers are melting away around the world due to global heating caused by the human-induced climate crisis. Ice is reflective of sunlight so as it retreats the dark surfaces underneath absorb yet more heat, causing a further acceleration in melting.
Ice is being lost from Greenland seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, scientists revealed last year, pushing up previous estimates of global sea level rise and putting 400 million people at risk of flooding every year by the end of the century.
More recent research has found that Antarctica, the largest ice sheet on Earth, is also losing mass at a galloping rate, although the latest University of California and Nasa works reveals a nuanced picture.
“In Antarctica, the mass loss in the west proceeds unabated, which is very bad news for sea level rise,” Velicogna said. “But we also observe a mass gain in the Atlantic sector of east Antarctica caused by an increase in snowfall, which helps mitigate the enormous increase in mass loss that we’ve seen in the last two decades in other parts of the continent.”
The research has further illustrated the existential dangers posed by runaway global heating, even as the world’s attention is gripped by the coronavirus crisis. Crucial climate talks are set to be held later this year in Glasgow, although the wave of cancellations triggered by the virus has threatened to undermine this diplomatic effort.
“The technical brilliance involved in weighing the ice sheets using satellites in space is just amazing,” said Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Penn State University who was not involved in the study.
“It is easy for us to be distracted by fluctuations, so the highly reliable long data sets from Grace and other sensors are important in clarifying what is really going on, showing us both the big signal and the wiggles that help us understand the processes that contribute to the big signal.”

Links

• Antarctica logs hottest temperature on record with a reading of 18.3C
• Arctic ecosytems and communities are increasingly at risk due to continued warming and declining sea ice (pdf)
• Polar ice caps melting six times faster than in 1990s
• Greenland's ice sheet melting seven times faster than in 1990s
• Explainer: The high-emissions ‘RCP8.5’ global warming scenario
• Heatwaves amplify near-record levels of ice melt in northern hemisphere