Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread

[Richard Hakluyt]

I've heard that the forest where Tesla hopes to build their factory is a pine monoculture; there are quite a lot of these in Germany. That being so an obvious compromise would be for Tesla to build their factory there and to commit to funding 70 hectares of mixed woodland somewhere else.

[Tamas]

Plans for the third Heathrow runway have been just ruled illegal because they don't take the Paris Accord commitments into account.

It is good the judge could foresee that everyone who would have landed at Heathrow due to the extended capacity will instead just not travel at all. Because if they do end up traveling regardless, their argument is BS.

[Maladict]

Plans for the third Heathrow runway have been just ruled illegal because they don't take the Paris Accord commitments into account.

It is good the judge could foresee that everyone who would have landed at Heathrow due to the extended capacity will instead just not travel at all. Because if they do end up traveling regardless, their argument is BS.

Quite sad it takes a court ruling to remind the government of their commitment to the Paris Accord.

[Josquius]

Extending Heathrow is a silly idea anyway.

[crazy canuck]

Plans for the third Heathrow runway have been just ruled illegal because they don't take the Paris Accord commitments into account.

It is good the judge could foresee that everyone who would have landed at Heathrow due to the extended capacity will instead just not travel at all. Because if they do end up traveling regardless, their argument is BS.

Not really.  The UK has a law that requires the impact of a development on carbon emissions to be considered.  The evidence before the court is that was not done.  While the law was passed in response to the Paris Accord, it is the failure to comply with UK law that was the problem.  A pretty straight forward finding on a judicial review.  Also easily fixed.

[Syt]

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/methane-permian-basin-oil-gas-climate-change/?__twitter_impression=true#

Satellite images reveal huge amounts of methane leaking from U.S. oil fields

Oil and gas operations in the Permian Basin, the largest oil-producing area in the United States, are spewing more than twice the amount of methane emissions into the atmosphere than previously thought — enough wasted energy to power 7 million households in Texas for a year. That's the result of a new study by researchers at Harvard University and the Environmental Defense Fund.

The Permian Basin stretches across a 250-mile by 250-mile area of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, and accounts for over a third of the crude oil and 10% of the natural gas in the U.S.

The study, published this week in the journal Science Advances, also found that the rate of leakage of methane gas makes up 3.7% of all the gas extracted in the basin, which is about 60% higher than the national average leakage rate. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and since the Permian Basin is so large, this excess waste is a significant contribution to our already warming climate.

"These are the highest emissions ever measured from a major U.S. oil and gas basin," said study co-author Dr. Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

To map the methane emissions, the team employed a space-borne sensor on a European Space Agency satellite called the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) from May 2018 to March 2019.

Since 2005, the rapid increase in oil and natural gas production in the United States has been driven primarily by hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking) and horizontal drilling.

While some see the leaked methane gas as a big waste of natural resources, others are focused on the danger posed by methane. Methane is an extremely powerful heat-trapping greenhouse gas, much more potent than its more well-known counterpart, carbon dioxide (CO2).

There is 225 times less methane in the atmosphere than there is CO2, but because of its powerful heat-trapping qualities, methane is contributing about 25% of the current rate of global warming.

Since the Industrial Revolution, global methane concentrations have doubled due mostly to human activities like livestock farming, decay from landfills, and from burning fossil fuels.

"I am very concerned about increasing methane emissions," said Dr. Robert Howarth, a biogeochemist and expert on methane from Cornell University, who was not involved with the study. "Methane is 120 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, compared mass-to-mass for the time both gases are in the atmosphere," he explains.

According to Hamburg, the methane gas escaping the Permian Basin is so excessive that it has tripled the typical heating impact it would have otherwise had through burning the gas. Evidence of this massive leakage undercuts the case made by proponents of natural gas who tout its cleaner-burning qualities over that of its normally dirtier-burning cousin, coal.

"The most up-to-date thinking is that for comparing coal and natural gas to generate electricity, gas is worse than coal if the methane emission rate is greater than 2.7%," said Howarth. However, this research found the Permian Basin's emission rate is higher than that — 3.7% of the gross gas extracted. Therefore, the leakage in the Permian Basin is so high it makes gas and oil emissions more intensive than even coal.

"After staying level for the first decade of the 21st century, methane emissions have been rising quickly over the past decade," said Howarth, "My research indicates that shale gas development in the U.S. is responsible for at least one-third of the total increase in these emissions globally."

The Harvard/EDF paper attributes the high methane leakage rate to extensive venting and flaring, resulting from insufficient infrastructure to process and transport natural gas.

On the other hand, the paper concludes, the higher-than-average leakage rate in the Permian Basin implies an opportunity to reduce methane emissions through better design, more effective management, regulation and infrastructure development.

But over the past few years, regulations on fossil fuels have gone in the opposite direction. "Trump's EPA has proposed to substantially weaken or even eliminate regulations, adopted during the Obama administration, to control methane emissions from oil and gas facilities," said Romany Webb, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

Webb says the Texas Railroad Commission — the state's oil and gas regulator — has its own rules controlling venting and flaring. Venting and flaring is permitted up to 10 days after completion of well drilling; after that operators can apply for an exemption from the commission. "Recently, the number of exemptions granted by the commission has increased dramatically, leading to concerns that it is simply acting as a rubber stamp," said Webb.

"To detect emissions takes sophisticated approaches and highly trained personnel," Howarth said. "To date, the best any government has done is to come up with regulations that rely on industry self-reporting. I find that rather useless."

If the world has any hope of meeting the target for reducing emissions outlined in the Paris climate agreement, reducing CO2 cannot accomplish this alone — the climate responds far more quickly to methane, explains Howarth. To keep the level of warming below the international goal of 2 degrees Celsius and prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, controlling methane leakage is essential. Without it, humanity is bound to fall short.

[MadImmortalMan]

Satellite images reveal huge amounts of methane leaking from U.S. oil fields

Oh, you mean like into peoples' basements? 

[Maladict]

Methane leaks tend to increase with age.

[Berkut]

If nothing else, at least this entire Corona virus thing has finally got people to stop going on and on about the fucking climate change bullshit!

[Syt]

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146647/parched-conditions-in-germany-again

I got you covered, berk.

Similar conditions to the article below in Austria, too.

Parched Conditions in Germany Again

Germany may be heading toward its third summer of drought in a row due to high temperatures and sparse precipitation. Forests have been threatened by drought and disease in recent months. In April 2020, the Rhine River was reportedly running low and hampering cargo ship traffic through the country. If no significant rain falls in May, some forecasters believe the country's agricultural industry could be headed for trouble.

The parched conditions in spring 2020 follow the warmest December to February on record for Europe. Germany also had a particularly dry spring, with little to no rain in many areas since mid-March. The German Meteorological Service reported that April 2020 was the sunniest and third driest April on record. Meteorologists were forecasting rain for early May but were unsure how much it might offset the precipitation deficit.

The map above shows root zone soil moisture in Germany for April 2020; the maps below show the same measurement for April through September from 2016-2019. The colors depict the wetness percentile; that is, how the amount of soil moisture compared to long-term records for the month. Orange and red areas depict deficits in soil moisture, while blue areas hold more water that usual.



The maps are based on data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow On (GRACE-FO) mission, a pair of spacecraft that detect the movement of water based on variations in Earth's gravity field. GRACE measures subtle shifts in gravity from month to month. Variations in land topography or ocean tides change the distribution of Earth's mass; the addition or subtraction of water in various regions also changes the gravity field. Those data are integrated with other ground-based observations into a numerical model of water and energy processes at the land surface.

In 2016, Europe experienced one of its hottest years on record in the wake of a strong El Niño. In 2018, drought caused harvest damage of "national proportions", leading the government to provide financial aid to farmers. 2019 also brought significant crop failures and income loss due to drought conditions.

These recent years fit a longer trend of warmer temperatures and reduced groundwater storage. According to the German government's Climate Monitoring Report, available water in agricultural soils has decreased over the past 50 years. Also, hot days—where temperatures rise above 30°C (86°F)—are also becoming more common. In 1951, Germany experienced about three hot days in an average year; now, there are ten.

[Maladict]

Yeah, another drought here as well. In a land that's supposed to be on the verge of drowning.
As if we didn't have enough problems already.

[Tamas]

The UK just had the sunniest April on record. It was getting weird for a couple of weeks or so no rain around our parts at least. Was unusual.

[mongers]

The UK just had the sunniest April on record. It was getting weird for a couple of weeks or so no rain around our parts at least. Was unusual.

The 'Other New Normal'* ?


*formerly the old New Normal, till the newest New Normal, coronavirus, elbowed it out of the way.

[Syt]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52543589

Climate change: More than 3bn could live in extreme heat by 2070

More than three billion people will be living in places with "near un-liveable" temperatures by 2070, according to a new study.

Unless greenhouse gas emissions fall, large numbers of people will experience average temperatures hotter than 29C.

This is considered outside the climate "niche" in which humans have thrived for the past 6,000 years.

Co-author of the study Tim Lenton told the BBC: "The study hopefully puts climate change in a more human terms".

Researchers used data from United Nations population projections and a 3C warming scenario based on the expected global rise in temperature. A UN report found that even with countries keeping to the Paris climate agreement, the world was on course for a 3C rise.

According to the study, human populations are concentrated into narrow climate bands with most people residing in places where the average temperature is about 11-15C. A smaller number of people live in areas with an average temperature of 20-25C.

People have mostly lived in these climate conditions for thousands of years.

However, should global warming cause temperatures to rise by three degrees, a vast number of people are going to be living in temperatures considered outside the "climate niche".

Mr Lenton, climate specialist and director of the global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, conducted the study with scientists from China, the US and Europe.

He told the BBC: "The land warms up faster than the ocean so the land is warming more than three degrees. Population growth is projected to be in already hot places, mostly sub-Saharan Africa, so that shifts the average person to a hotter temperature.

"It's shifting the whole distribution of people to hotter places which themselves are getting hotter and that's why we find the average person on the planet is living in about 7C warmer conditions in the 3C warmer world."

Areas projected to be affected include northern Australia, India, Africa, South America and parts of the Middle East.

The study raises concerns about those in poorer areas who will be unable to shelter from the heat.

"For me, the study is not about the rich who can just get inside an air-conditioned building and insulate themselves from anything. We have to be concerned with those who don't have the means to isolate themselves from the weather and the climate around them," Mr Lenton said.

Mr Lenton says the main message from the team's findings is that "limiting climate change could have huge benefits in terms of reducing the number of people projected to fall outside of the climate niche.

"It's about roughly a billion people for each degree of warming beyond the present. So for every degree of warming, we could be saving a huge amount of change in people's livelihoods."

[Syt]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/locust-attack-india-amid-coronavirus-covid-19-crisis-and-heat-wave/

Coronavirus-battered India is now battling a plague of locusts

New Delhi — India is scrambling drones, sending teams to spray insecticide and issuing alerts as swarms of locusts descend on its western states. The drones are helping track the voracious insects as they destroy crops, increasing fears over food security and economic malaise in a country already battered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Swarms of desert locusts have attacked parts of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh states. Delhi, in central India, also issued alerts after suggestions the swarms could reach the Indian capital, too, given forecast wind directions. 

As if the dual menaces of COVID-19 and crop-killing insects wasn't enough, a wide swathe of India was also suffering under record heat. As the locusts ravaged fields in Rajasthan, farmers already reeling from the effects of a national coronavirus lockdown were left to watch helplessly in 122-degree heat.

It's the worst locust infestation India has seen since 1993, according to the country's Locust Warning Organisation (LWO), but the swarms aren't new to the nation. Usually they arrive from Pakistan between July and October and remain focused in Rajasthan. This time, however, weather conditions have helped the swarms spread into neighboring states.

Videos posted on social media show swarms not only in the farm fields but also in urban areas, including the popular tourist city of Jaipur, where they've never been seen before.

What is a locust?

Locusts are similar to grasshoppers, but can migrate over much large distances: A swarm can cover about 90 miles in a day. The desert locusts are known to form particularly dense, and highly mobile swarms, according to the United Nations's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) desert locust information center.

They don't attack people or animals, but they're considered the most destructive migratory pest in the world, with a small swarm of about 40 million locusts capable of gobbling up enough food for 35,000 people.

Damage in India

A 1-kilometer swarm (covering just under half of a square mile) can have up to 80 million locusts, and at least 10 such swarms were chewing through crops in India as of Wednesday, according to the LWO.

Several Indian media outlets reported that about 123,500 acres of cropland had already been destroyed in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh states.

The crop damage comes as many farmers were already struggling with the impact of India's 2-month coronavirus lockdown, which left them largely without the workers to tend to their crops. The double crisis could pose a serious threat to India's food security in the coming months. 

Experts have warned that more swarms, still devouring crops in Pakistan and the Horn of Africa, could migrate to India in June.

Warmer weather, more locusts

Scientists have said extreme weather is to blame for the unusually large and widespread swarms this year.

"The outbreak started after warm waters in the western Indian Ocean in late 2019 fueled heavy amounts of rains over east Africa and the Arabian Peninsula," explained Dr. Roxy Mathew Koll, a senior scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. "These warm waters were caused by the phenomenon called the Indian Ocean Dipole — with warmer than usual waters to its west, and cooler waters to its east. Rising temperatures due to global warming amplified the dipole and made the western Indian Ocean particularly warm."

"Heavy rain triggers the growth of vegetation in arid areas where desert locusts can then grow and breed," said Koll. "These locusts, which migrated to India early this year, might have found greener pastures as the pre-monsoon rains during March–May were in excess over north India."

Keith Cressman, the senior locust forecasting officer at the U.N.'s FAO, said there's been an undeniable and significant increase in the frequency of severe rain storms at both the beginning and the end of the summer and, "if this trend continues, whether it is specifically attributed to climate change or not, it's likely to lead to more Desert Locust outbreaks and upsurges in the Horn of Africa."