climate news – Artifex.News https://artifexnews.net Stay Connected. Stay Informed. Tue, 11 Jun 2024 16:17:53 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.5 https://artifexnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/cropped-Artifex-Round-32x32.png climate news – Artifex.News https://artifexnews.net 32 32 Groundwater is heating up, threatening life below and above the surface https://artifexnews.net/article68276366-ece/ Tue, 11 Jun 2024 16:17:53 +0000 https://artifexnews.net/article68276366-ece/ Read More “Groundwater is heating up, threatening life below and above the surface” »

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Groundwater makes up a whopping 97% of all usable freshwater. 
| Photo Credit: S Rambabu/The Hindu

Under your feet lies the world’s biggest reservoir. Groundwater makes up a whopping 97% of all usable freshwater. Where is it? In the voids between grains and cracks within rocks. We see it when it rises to the surface in springs, in caves, or when we pump it up for use.

While groundwater is often hidden, it underpins ecosystems around the world and is a vital resource for people.

You might think groundwater would be protected from climate change, given it’s underground. But this is no longer the case. As the atmosphere continues to heat up, more and more heat is penetrating underground. There is already considerable evidence that the subsurface is warming. The heat shows up in temperature measurements taken in boreholes around the world.

Our team of international scientists have combined our knowledge to model how groundwater will heat up in the future. Under a realistic middle of the road greenhouse gas emission scenario, with a projected mean global atmospheric temperature rise of 2.7°C, groundwater will warm by an average of 2.1°C by 2100, compared to 2000.

This warming varies by region and is delayed by decades compared to the surface, because it takes time to heat up the underground mass. Our results can be accessed by everyone globally.

Why does it matter?

You might wonder what the consequences of hotter groundwater will be.

First, the good news. Warming beneath the land’s surface is trapping 25 times less energy than the ocean, but it is still significant. This heat is stored in layers down to tens of metres deep, making it easier to access. We could use this extra heat to sustainably warm our homes by tapping into it just a few meters below the surface.

The heat can be extracted using heat pumps, powered by electricity from renewable energies. Geothermal heat pumps are surging in popularity for space heating across Europe.

Unfortunately, the bad news is likely to far outweigh the good. Warmer groundwater is harmful for the rich array of life found underground – and for the many plants and animals who depend on groundwater for their survival. Any changes in temperature can seriously disrupt the niche they have adapted to.

To date, the highest groundwater temperature increases are in parts of Russia, where surface temperatures have risen by more than 1.5°C since 2000. In Australia, significant variations in groundwater temperatures are expected within the shallowest layers.

Groundwater regularly flows out to feed lakes and rivers around the world, as well as the ocean, supporting a range of groundwater dependent ecosystems.

If warmer groundwater flows into your favourite river or lake, it will add to the extra heat from the sun. This could mean fish and other species will find it too warm to survive. Warm waters also hold less oxygen. Lack of oxygen in rivers and lakes have already become a major cause of mass fish deaths, as we’ve seen recently in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin.

Cold water species such as Atlantic salmon have adapted to a water temperature window provided by continuous cool groundwater discharge. As these thermal refuges heat up, it will upend their breeding cycle.

Groundwater is vital

In many parts of the world, people rely on groundwater as their main source of drinking water. But groundwater warming can worsen the quality of the water we drink. Temperature influences everything from chemical reactions to microbial activity. Warmer water could, for instance, trigger more harmful reactions, where metals leach out into the water. This is especially concerning in areas where access to clean drinking water is already limited.

Industries such as farming, manufacturing and energy production often rely on groundwater for their operations. If the groundwater they depend on becomes too warm or more contaminated, it can disrupt their activities.

Our study is global, but we have to find out more about how groundwater is warming and what impact this could have locally. By studying how groundwater temperatures are changing over time and across different regions, we can better predict future trends and find strategies to adapt or reduce the effects.

Global groundwater warming is a hidden but very significant consequence of climate change. While the impacts will be delayed, they stretch far and wide. They will affect ecosystems, drinking water supplies and industries around the world.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.



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Australian weather bureau sees 50% chance of La Nina this year https://artifexnews.net/article68174213-ece/ Tue, 14 May 2024 09:24:35 +0000 https://artifexnews.net/article68174213-ece/ Read More “Australian weather bureau sees 50% chance of La Nina this year” »

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A La Nina would have significant consequences for global agriculture because it typically brings wetter weather to eastern Australia and southeast Asia and drier conditions to the Americas.
| Photo Credit: Ritu Raj Konwar/The Hindu

There are early signs that a La Nina weather event may form in the Pacific Ocean later this year, Australia’s weather bureau said on Tuesday.

A La Nina would have significant consequences for global agriculture because it typically brings wetter weather to eastern Australia and southeast Asia and drier conditions to the Americas.

The bureau said it had declared a “La Nina Watch”.

“When La Nina Watch criteria have been met in the past, a La Nina event has subsequently developed around 50% of the time,” it said.

Also Read | El Niño, La Niña and changing weather patterns 

La Nina events result from cooler sea surface temperatures in the Pacific. Warmer sea surface temperatures can cause an opposite weather phenomenon called El Nino, which occurred last year and lasted into early 2024.

“Sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific have been steadily cooling since December 2023,” the bureau said.

“The Bureau’s modelling suggests that ENSO will likely remain neutral until at least July 2024,” it said, using the formal name, the El Niño Southern Oscillation, that describes the switch between the two phases.

Japan’s weather bureau has said there is a 90% chance that the El Nino phenomenon will dissipate by the end of May.

Other forecasters have also heralded a La Nina later this year. Last week, Japan’s weather bureau said there was a 60% chance it would occur by November, and a U.S. government forecaster said there was a 69% chance that it would develop during July-September.



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Iceland’s ‘Mammoth’ raises potential for carbon capture https://artifexnews.net/article68160386-ece/ Fri, 10 May 2024 07:32:59 +0000 https://artifexnews.net/article68160386-ece/ Read More “Iceland’s ‘Mammoth’ raises potential for carbon capture” »

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A plaque for “Mammoth”, the new plant of Swiss start-up Climeworks is pictured in Hellisheidi, Iceland on May 8, 2024. A Swiss start-up unveiled on May 8, 2024 its second plant in Iceland sucking carbon dioxide from the air and stocking it underground, scaling up its capacity tenfold with the aim of eliminating millions of tonnes of CO2 by 2030.
| Photo Credit: AFP

With Mammoth’s 72 industrial fans, Swiss start-up Climeworks intends to suck 36,000 tonnes of CO2 from the air annually to bury underground, vying to prove the technology has a place in the fight against global warming.

Mammoth, the largest carbon dioxide capture and storage facility of its kind, launched operations this week situated on a dormant volcano in Iceland.

It adds significant capacity to the Climework’s first project Orca, which also sucks the primary greenhouse gas fuelling climate change from the atmosphere.

Just 50 kilometres (31 miles) from an active volcano, the seemingly risky site was chosen for its proximity to the Hellisheidi geothermal energy plant necessary to power the facility’s fans and heat chemical filters to extract CO2 with water vapour.

CO2 is then separated from the steam and compressed in a hangar where huge pipes crisscross.

Finally, the gas is dissolved in water and pumped underground with a “sort of giant SodaStream”, said Bergur Sigfusson, chief system development officer for Carbfix which developed the process.

A well, drilled under a futuristic-looking dome, injects the water 700 metres (2,300 feet) down into volcanic basalt that makes up 90 percent of Iceland’s subsoil where it reacts with the magnesium, calcium and iron in the rock to form crystals — solid reservoirs of CO2.

For the world to achieve “carbon neutrality” by 2050, “we should be removing something like six to 16 billion tonnes of CO2 per year from the air”, said Jan Wurzbacher, co-founder and co-chief of Climeworks at the inauguration of the first 12 container fans at Mammoth.

“I quite strongly believe that a large share of these… need to be covered by technical solutions,” he said.

From kilo to gigatonnes

“Not we alone, not as a single company. Others should do that as well,” he added, setting his start-up of 520 employees the goal of surpassing millions of tonnes by 2030 and approaching a billion by 2050.

Three years after opening Orca, Climeworks will increase capacity from 4,000 to 40,000 tonnes of CO2 captured once Mammoth is at full capacity — but that represents just seconds of the world’s actual emissions.

According to the IPCC, the UN’s climate expert body, carbon removal technologies will be necessary to meet the targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement — but major reductions of emissions is the priority.

The role of direct air capture with carbon storage (DACCS) remains minor in the various climate models due to its high price and its deployment at a large scale depends on the availability of renewable energy.

Climeworks is a pioneer with the two first plants in the world to have surpassed the pilot stage at a cost around $1,000 per tonne captured. Wurzbacher expects the cost to decline to just $300 in 2030.

More than 20 new infrastructure projects, developed by various players and combining direct capture and storage, should be operational worldwide by 2030 with a capacity around 10 million of tonnes.

“We need probably around $10 billion to proceed over the next decade to deploy our assets” in the Unites States, Canada, Norway, Oman and also Kenya, said Christoph Gebald, Climeworks co-founder and co-chief, 10 times what the company has already raised.

Carbon credits

“When I’m standing now at Orca I think: ‘Oh this looks like a little bit like Lego bricks’. It’s a tiny thing compared to Mammoth,” Wurzbacher said.

Lego bought carbon credits generated by Climeworks for every tonne of CO2 stored.

The credits are a way for making the solution known to the general public, Gebald said, who has not ruled out selling credits to “big polluters” as well.

Critics of the technology point to the risk of giving them “licence to pollute” or diverting billions of dollars that could be better invested in readily available technology like renewable energy or electric vehicles.

Climeworks claims to target “incompressible” emissions, after reduction.

The recipe is complex: optimise costs without competing with the growing need for renewable energy, more innovation, public and private funding, with storage infrastructure to follow.

“We are currently doing a pilot testing of using seawater for injection,” Sandra Osk Snaebjorndottir, chief scientist at Carbfix.

This procedure would allow the use of seawater for the mineralisation of CO2, near a port built by the Icelandic company to receive carbon dioxide from other countries.



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Japan weather bureau says 90% chance of El Nino ending by May https://artifexnews.net/article68160322-ece/ Fri, 10 May 2024 06:25:50 +0000 https://artifexnews.net/article68160322-ece/ Read More “Japan weather bureau says 90% chance of El Nino ending by May” »

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An area is uncovered by the lowering of the water level from the Magdalena river, the longest and most important river in Colombia, due to the lack of rain, in the city of Honda, January 14, 2016. While flooding and intense rain wreak havoc on several countries in Latin America, El Nino brings other harmful effects to Colombia with severe drought.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Japan’s weather bureau said on Friday there was a 90% chance that the El Nino phenomenon will dissipate by the end of May, while there was a 60% chance of the La Nina phenomenon occurring in the months up until November.

El Nino is a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific. La Nina is characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific region and is linked to floods and drought.



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Africa dramatically dried out 5,500 years ago https://artifexnews.net/article68157220-ece/ Thu, 09 May 2024 11:57:05 +0000 https://artifexnews.net/article68157220-ece/ Read More “Africa dramatically dried out 5,500 years ago” »

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Around five and half millenia ago, northern Africa went through a dramatic transformation. The Sahara desert expanded and grasslands, forests and lakes favoured by humans disappeared. Humans were forced to retreat to the mountains, the oases, and the Nile valley and delta.

As a relatively large and dispersed population was squeezed into smaller and more fertile areas, it needed to innovate new ways to produce food and organise society. Soon after, one of the world’s first great civilisations emerged – ancient Egypt.

This transition from the most recent “African humid period”, which lasted from 15,000 to 5,500 years ago, to the current dry conditions in northern Africa is the clearest example of a climate tipping point in recent geological history. Climate tipping points are thresholds that, once crossed, result in dramatic climate change to a new stable climate.

Our new study published in Nature Communications reveals that before northern Africa dried out, its climate “flickered” between two stable climatic states before tipping permanently. This is the first time it’s been shown such flickering happened in Earth’s past. And it suggests that places with highly variable cycles of changing climate today may in some cases by headed for tipping points of their own.

Whether we will have any warnings of climate tipping points is one of the biggest concerns of climate scientists today. As we pass global warming of 1.5˚C, the most likely tipping points involve the collapse of ice sheets in Greenland or Antarctica, tropical coral reefs dying off, or abrupt thawing of Arctic permafrost.

Some say that there will be warning signs of these major climate shifts. However, these depend very much on the actual type of tipping point, and the interpretation of these signals is therefore difficult. One of the big questions is whether tipping points will be characterised by flickering or whether the climate will initially appear to become more stable before tipping over in one go.

620,000 years of environmental history

To investigate further, we gathered an international team of scientists and went to the basin of Chew Bahir in southern Ethiopia. There was an extensive lake here during the last African humid period, and deposits of sediment, several kilometres deep, underneath the lake bed record the history of climate-driven lake level fluctuations very precisely.

Today, the lake has largely disappeared and the deposits can be drilled relatively cheaply without the need for a drill rig on a floating platform or on a drillship. We drilled 280 metres below the dry lake bed – almost as deep as the Eiffel Tower is tall – and extracted hundreds of tubes of mud around 10 centimetres in diameter.

Drilling for ancient lake sediment in Chew Bahir.Asfawossen Asrat

By putting these tubes together in order they form a so-called sediment core. That core contains vital chemical and biological information which records the past 620,000 years of eastern African climate and environmental history.

We now know that at the end of the African humid period there was around 1,000 years in which the climate alternated regularly between being intensely dry and wet.

In total, we observed at least 14 dry phases, each of which lasted between 20 and 80 years and recurred at intervals of about 160 years. Later there were seven wet phases, of a similar duration and frequency. Finally, around 5,500 years ago a dry climate prevailed for good.

Climate flickering

These high-frequency, extreme wet-dry fluctuations represent a pronounced climate flickering. Such flickering can be simulated in climate model computer programs and also happened in earlier climate transitions at Chew Bahir.

We see the same types of flickering during a previous change from humid to dry climate around 379,000 years ago in the same sediment core. It looks like a perfect copy of the transition at the end of the African humid period.

This is important because this transition was natural, as it occurred long before humans had any influence on the environment. Knowing such a change can occur naturally counters the argument made by some academics that the introduction of livestock and new agricultural techniques may have accelerated the end of the last African humid period.

Conversely, humans in the region were undoubtedly affected by the climate tipping. The flickering would have had a dramatic impact, easily noticed by a single human, compared to the slow climate transition spanning tens of generations.

It could perhaps explain why the archaeological findings in the region are so different, even contradictory, at times of the transition. People retreated during the dry phases and then some came back during the wet phases. Ultimately, humans retreated to the places that were consistently wet like the Nile valley.

Confirmation of climate flickering as precursors to a major climate tipping is important because it may also provide insights into possible early warning signals for large climate changes in future.

It seems that highly variable climate conditions such as rapid wet–dry cycles may warn of a significant shift in the climate system. Identifying these precursors now may provide the warning we need that future warming will take us across one of more of the sixteen identified critical climate tipping points.

This is particularly important for regions such as eastern Africa whose nearly 500 million people are already highly vulnerable to climate change induced impacts such as drought.The Conversation

Martin H. Trauth, Professor, University of Potsdam; Asfawossen Asrat, Professor, Addis Ababa University, and Mark Maslin, Professor of Natural Sciences, UCL

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.



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How oil companies put the responsibility for climate change on consumers https://artifexnews.net/article67416012-ece/ Fri, 13 Oct 2023 10:28:17 +0000 https://artifexnews.net/article67416012-ece/ Read More “How oil companies put the responsibility for climate change on consumers” »

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The political response to the climate crisis remains largely inadequate in the face of heat waves, hurricanes, floods and forest fires that are accelerating and intensifying.

The political inertia can be explained, among other things, by the stranglehold of fossil fuel interests on political decision-makers, and the strong influence polluting industries have on the spheres of power in North America.

These industries use two types of discourse to secure their interests. First, they discredit and marginalize ecological issues. Just think, for example, of the actions taken by oil and gas companies against climate policies, such as in Seattle, Wash., where they hired lobbyists to torpedo pro-environmental policies adopted by the city, and simultaneously paid Instagram influencers to promote gas.

Secondly, industry acts to convince people that their polluting activities are compatible with managing the climate and environmental crises. These rebranding strategies are part of a wider objective of “greenwashing” extractive activities. Over the past three decades, the five biggest U.S. oil companies have spent more than US$3 billion on marketing and donations to boost their communications with the general public and political decision-makers.

Also Read | Seeing India’s energy transition through its States 

Making citizens responsible for curbing the climate crisis

One particularly significant rhetorical strategy the oil industry has adopted is to place responsibility for climate change mitigation and adaptation on the individual.

By putting the burden of reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions — and consequently the fight against climate change — on individuals, oil companies and their political allies are taking the onus off themselves to make changes to their fossil fuel production, consumption and exploitation practices.

As a doctoral student in political science and a specialist in climate change adaptation, I have examined the interests, ideas and institutions that shape and restrict our adaptation practices. For the past three years, I have been analyzing environmental discourses in Louisiana to explain why climate policies are moving so slowly.

The carbon footprint as a symbol of industry marketing

The most obvious expression of this strategy of placing responsibility on the individual is the creation of the carbon footprint. Born of a communications strategy by the giant British Petroleum in the early 2000s called “Beyond Petroleum,” the carbon footprint measures the impact of individual consumption on greenhouse gas emissions.

Also Read | High hopes for climate and energy outcomes at summit as India takes lead

Through numerous advertisements promoting the importance of individual action in the climate crisis, BP has succeeded in shifting responsibility for the climate problem onto the consumer. This, in turn, removes the industry’s responsibility for finding solutions and reducing carbon emissions.

BP’s “Beyond Petroleum” campaign was also designed to encourage individuals to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle while maintaining their consumption levels. This strategy contributes to what researchers Karl Smerecnik and Valerie Renegar of San Diego State University and Southwestern University call capitalistic agency.

By endorsing the environmentalist image and removing themselves as the source of the problem, oil giants limit people’s ability to think about other forms of environmental action beyond consumption, and thus, economic growth. It confines the individual and his or her responsibility towards climate change within the logic of the market, reducing the possibilities for systemic transformation.

ExxonMobil and Total also engage in the same strategies. They emphasize greenhouse gas emissions as a problem of demand, not supply, creating an imaginary concept around the individual as a consumer and the sole stakeholder responsible for mitigating climate change.

Also Read | China, U.S. and India absent at U.N.’s Climate Ambition Summit

This communication strategy legitimizes the continued production of fossil fuels and serves to protect the industry from restrictive environmental regulations by pointing the finger at growing demand.

Louisiana’s “green” and community-based oil industry

My doctoral research on the political discourses and practices of adaptation in Louisiana shows that fossil fuel industries rely on this rhetorical and marketing logic. “Greenwashing” enables them to turn their role on its head and present themselves as genuine environmental saviours by investing in coastal restoration and promoting an eco-responsible, community-based industry.

Lobbyists for major oil companies like ExxonMobil and advocacy groups like the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association, as well as their political partners in the Louisiana Senate and House of Representatives, insist on the “green” nature of fossil fuels.

This rhetoric conveys the idea that preserving extractive activities is a benefit for the United States and for the fight against climate change. According to this line of reasoning, American oil and gas have a better carbon footprint than oil and gas produced internationally. They, therefore, help reduce global emissions in the face of growing consumer demand.

Also Read | Disentangling the 2030 global renewable energy target 

The “green” fossil fuel narrative is also gaining momentum in the legislative spheres of other states, ensuring the stranglehold of these industries on local economies.

Referring to the ecological activities of oil companies in Louisiana as a true “Cajun environmental movement,” lobbyists solicit local identities and citizen support in an effort to preserve their operating activities. This other form of individualization targets climate policies, particularly those of the Biden administration, as a direct attack on the interests and well-being of local populations.

A veritable “oil culture” has thus emerged through community investment (for example, Shell’s long-standing funding of the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, or of local hurricane recovery operations). It also highlights the entanglement of Cajun identities with the historical development of the local oil industry.

Using individual responsibility to reinforce political inertia

In Louisiana in particular, individualization can be seen in the popular support for extractive activities and the rejection of restrictive regulations or environmental movements. Positioned as true environmental and community protectors, oil and gas industries maintain their influence in legislative spheres through political lobbying and the support of public opinion. In this way, they manage to stave off any reconsideration of their operating practices.

Large-scale individualization, whether through BP’s campaigns or French President Emmanuel Macron’s appeal to schoolchildren to plant trees, reverses responsibility for the fight against climate change. It encourages the political inertia that continues to protect the interests of polluting industries.

Sarah M. Munoz, Doctoral researcher in political science / Doctorante en science politique, Université de Montréal

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.



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Amazon’s Indigenous people urge Brazil to declare climate emergency as rivers dry up https://artifexnews.net/article67411420-ece/ Thu, 12 Oct 2023 10:34:07 +0000 https://artifexnews.net/article67411420-ece/ Read More “Amazon’s Indigenous people urge Brazil to declare climate emergency as rivers dry up” »

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A person on a boat navigates on Puraquequara Lake, which has been affected by drought, in Manaus, Brazil, October 6, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Indigenous inhabitants in the Amazon are asking the Brazilian government to declare a climate emergency as their villages have no drinking water, food or medicine due to a severe drought that is drying up rivers vital for travel in the rainforest, their leaders said on Tuesday.

The drought and heatwave has killed masses of fish in the rivers that Indigenous people live off and the water in the muddy streams and tributaries of the Amazon river has become undrinkable, the umbrella organization APIAM that represents 63 tribes in the Amazon said.

Also Read | Amazon loses 10% of its vegetation in nearly four decades

“We ask the government to declare a climate emergency to urgently address the vulnerability Indigenous peoples are exposed to,” APIAM urged in a statement released at a news conference.

Fisherman Raimundo da Silva do Carmo, 67, collects water from a well on Puraquequara Lake, which has been affected by drought, in Manaus, Brazil, October 6, 2023.

Fisherman Raimundo da Silva do Carmo, 67, collects water from a well on Puraquequara Lake, which has been affected by drought, in Manaus, Brazil, October 6, 2023.
| Photo Credit:
Reuters

The Rio Negro, Solimoes, Madeira, Jurua and Purus rivers are drying up at a record pace, and forest fires are destroying the rainforest in new areas in the lower Amazon reaches, APIAM said in a statement.

Environment Minister Marina Silva told Reuters last month the government was preparing a task force to provide emergency assistance to the Amazon region hit by the drought. It has sent tens of thousands of food parcels to communities isolated by the lack of river transport.

Also Read | Amazon loses 10% of its vegetation in nearly four decades

The region is under pressure from the El Nino weather phenomenon, with the volume of rainfall in the northern Amazon below the historical average.

The most serious problem for Indigenous communities that have no running water is sanitation now that the river water cannot be drunk, APIAM coordinator Mariazinha Bare said.

“The smaller rivers have dried up and turned to mud,” Bare said in an interview. “Indigenous people have to walk long distances in the rainforest to find potable water, and the poor quality of water is making people ill,” she said.

Fisherman Raimundo da Silva do Carmo, 67, baths with water from a well on Puraquequara Lake, which has been affected by drought, in Manaus, Brazil, October 6, 2023.

Fisherman Raimundo da Silva do Carmo, 67, baths with water from a well on Puraquequara Lake, which has been affected by drought, in Manaus, Brazil, October 6, 2023.
| Photo Credit:
Reuters

Impassable rivers have made it harder for medical assistance to reach Amazon villages, Bare said, and rain is not expected until the end of November or early December when the rivers and their fish population normally renew themselves.

The Madeira river to the southwest is no longer navigable in its upper reaches, isolating Indigenous villages and non-Indigenous communities that rely on collecting fruit in the rainforest but cannot move their produce out.

Also Read | Amazon nations seek common voice on climate change, urge developed world to help protect rainforest

Ivaneide Bandeira, who heads the Kaninde Indigenous organization in the state of Rondonia, said isolated non-Indigenous communities were asking Indigenous villages for food.

She said the smoke from forest fires was worse than ever, aggravating the climate crisis and affecting the health of the elderly and children.

“It is not just the El Nino current. Deforestation continues with these fires,” she said by telephone. “The agricultural advance does not stop. They are destroying everything, as if they do not see what is happening to nature,” she said.



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Muscle, wood, coal, oil: what earlier energy transitions tell us about renewables https://artifexnews.net/article67348042-ece/ Tue, 26 Sep 2023 08:59:04 +0000 https://artifexnews.net/article67348042-ece/ Read More “Muscle, wood, coal, oil: what earlier energy transitions tell us about renewables” »

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In 2022, the burning of fossil fuels provided 82% of the world’s energy. In 2000, it was 87%. Even as renewables have undergone tremendous growth, they’ve been offset by increased demand for energy.

That’s why the United Nations earlier this month released a global stocktake – an assessment on how the world is going in weaning itself off these energy-dense but dangerously polluting fuels. Short answer: progress, but nowhere near enough, soon enough.

If we consult history, we find that energy transitions are not new. To farm fields and build cities, we’ve gone from relying on human or animal muscle to wind and water to power sailboats and mill grain. Then we began switching to the energy dense hydrocarbons, coal, gas and oil. But this can’t last. We were first warned in 1859 that when burned, these fuels add to the Earth’s warming blanket of greenhouse gases and threatening our liveable climate.

It’s time for another energy transition. We’ve done it before. The problem is time – and resistance from the old energy regime, fossil fuel companies. Energy historian Vaclav Smil calculates past energy transitions have taken 50–75 years to ripple through societies. And we no longer have that kind of time, as climate change accelerates. This year is likely the hottest in 120,000 years.

Also Read | Seeing India’s energy transition through its States 

So can we learn anything from past energy transitions? As it happens, we can.

Energy shifts happen in fits and starts

Until around 1880, the world ran on wood, charcoal, crop residue, manure, water and wind. In fact, some countries relied on wood and charcoal throughout the 20th century – even as others were shifting from coal to oil.

The English had used coal for domestic heating from the time of the Romans because it burned longer and had nearly double the energy intensity of wood.

So what drove the shift? Deforestation was a part. The reliance on wood worked while there were trees. In the pre-industrial era, cities of 500,000 or more needed huge areas of forests around them.

In some locales wood seemed boundless, free and expendable. The costs to biodiversity would become apparent only later.

Also Read | High hopes for climate and energy outcomes at summit as India takes lead

Britain was once carpeted in forest. Endemic deforestation drove the change to coal in the 16th and 17th centuries. Most English coal pits opened between 1540 and 1640.

When the English figured out how to use coal to make steam and push a piston, it made even more possible – pumping water from deepening mining pits, the invention of locomotives, and transporting produce, including the feed needed by working animals.

Yet for all this, coal had only reached 5% of the global market by 1840.

In North America, coal didn’t overtake wood until as late as 1884 – even as crude oil became more important.

Why did America first start exploiting oil reserves? In part to replace expensive oil from the heads of sperm whales. Before hydrocarbon oil was widely available, whaling was depended upon for lubricants and some lighting. In 1846, the US had 700 whaling vessels scouring the oceans for this source of oil.

Also Read | India plans to export solar power: official

Crude oil was struck first in Pennsylvania in 1859. To extract it required drilling down 21 metres. The drill was powered by a steam engine – which may have been fired by wood.

Steam and muscle

The 19th century energy transition took decades. It wasn’t a revolution so much as a steady shift. By the end of that century, global energy supply had doubled and half of it was from coal.

When they were first invented in 1712, steam engines converted just 2% of coal into useful energy. Almost 150 years later they were still highly inefficient at just 15%. (Petrol-powered cars still waste about 66% of the energy in their fuel).

Even so, steam sped up early proto-industries such as textiles, print production and traditional manufacturing.

But the engines did not free us from the yoke. In fact, early coal mining actually increased demand for human labour. Boys as young as six worked at lighter tasks. Conditions were generally horrific. Alongside human muscle was animal strength. Coal was often raised from pits by draft horses.

Also Read | 57% of power generated will be via renewable sources by 2027: Central Electricity Authority

In 1850s New England, steam was three times more expensive than water flows powering textile mills. Vaclav Smil has shown industrial waterwheels and turbines “competed successfully with steam engines for decades”. The energy of flowing water was free. Digging up coal was labor-intensive.

Why did steam win? Human ecologist Andreas Malm argues what really drove the shift to steam-powered mills was capital. Locating steam engines in urban centres made it easier to concentrate and control workers, as well as overcoming worker walk-outs and machine breaking.

The question of who does the work is often overlooked. When energy historians refer vaguely to human muscle, we should ask: whose muscles? Was the work done by slaves or forced labourers?

Even in the current energy transition there can be gross disparities between employer and worker. As heat intensifies, some employers are giving ice vests to their migrant workers so they can keep working. That’s reminiscent of coal shovelers in the furnace-like stokeholes of steam ships being immersed in ice-baths on collapse, as historian On Barak has shown.

What does this mean for us?

As Vaclav Smil points out, “every transition to a new energy supply has to be powered by the intensive deployment of existing energies and prime movers”. In fact, Smil argues the idea of the “industrial revolution” is misleading. It was not sudden. Rather, it was “gradual, often uneven”.

History may seem like it unfolds neatly. But it doesn’t at all. In earlier transitions, we see overlaps. Hesitation. Sometimes, more intense use of earlier energy sources. They start as highly localised shifts, depending on available resources, before new technologies spreads along trade routes. Ultimately market forces have driven – or hindered – adoption.

Time is short. But on the plus side, there are market forces now driving the shift to clean energy. Once solar panels and wind turbines are built, sunlight and wind are free. It is the resistance of the old guard – fossil fuel corporations – that is holding us back.

Liz Conor, ARC Future Fellow, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.



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Risky geoengineering should be banned, climate group says https://artifexnews.net/article67321918-ece/ Tue, 19 Sep 2023 08:10:30 +0000 https://artifexnews.net/article67321918-ece/ Read More “Risky geoengineering should be banned, climate group says” »

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A facility for capturing CO2 from air of Swiss Climeworks AG is placed on the roof of a waste incinerating plant in Hinwil, Switzerland July 18, 2017. Controversial technologies intended to offset the effects of atmospheric carbon should banned until properly assessed, a group of politicians and scientists have warned.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Controversial technologies intended to offset the effects of atmospheric carbon should banned until properly assessed, a group of politicians and scientists have warned, even as they urged developed nations to lead in cutting CO2 emissions.

A report by the Climate Overshoot Commission, chaired by former WTO boss Pascal Lamy and formed in 2022, said it was increasingly likely the world would exceed the target to keep temperature rises within 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

It said richer countries needed to take the initiative to cut CO2 emissions and mobilise finance for poorer countries to adapt. Carbon removal technologies that minimise the risks of CO2 leaking back into the atmosphere should be promoted, the report said.

Also Read | What is solar geoengineering? 

But potentially dangerous experimental geoengineering methods – including controversial “solar radiation modification” – need to be halted until they have been researched thoroughly, the report said.

“Countries should adopt a moratorium on the deployment of solar radiation modification and large-scale outdoor experiments that would carry risk of significant transboundary harm,” it said.

Solar radiation modification refers to a range of proposed technologies designed to reflect sunlight away from the earth, including the direct injection of sulphates into the atmosphere. Last year, 60 scientists launched a global initiative aimed at banning all kinds of solar geoengineering.

Also Read | Geoengineering is not a quick climate fix, but a costly gamble 

“The world does not yet know enough to make informed decisions about solar radiation modification,” the report said, adding that routine international reviews should take place to assess the potential risks.

“Early scientific evidence suggests that solar radiation modification could reduce some climate risks but would also introduce significant new risks,” it said.

The report said slashing emissions should be a priority but will not be enough on its own and efforts need to be made to adapt to global warming, and deploy technologies to remove CO2 and “create space for the least industrialised countries to pursue their clean and sustainable energy transitions while fighting poverty and fulfilling their development imperatives.”

The Climate Overshoot Commission also includes senior politicians from Canada, India, Pakistan, Spain and China.



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Risky geoengineering should be banned, climate group says https://artifexnews.net/article67321918-ece-2/ Tue, 19 Sep 2023 08:10:30 +0000 https://artifexnews.net/article67321918-ece-2/ Read More “Risky geoengineering should be banned, climate group says” »

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A facility for capturing CO2 from air of Swiss Climeworks AG is placed on the roof of a waste incinerating plant in Hinwil, Switzerland July 18, 2017. Controversial technologies intended to offset the effects of atmospheric carbon should banned until properly assessed, a group of politicians and scientists have warned.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Controversial technologies intended to offset the effects of atmospheric carbon should banned until properly assessed, a group of politicians and scientists have warned, even as they urged developed nations to lead in cutting CO2 emissions.

A report by the Climate Overshoot Commission, chaired by former WTO boss Pascal Lamy and formed in 2022, said it was increasingly likely the world would exceed the target to keep temperature rises within 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

It said richer countries needed to take the initiative to cut CO2 emissions and mobilise finance for poorer countries to adapt. Carbon removal technologies that minimise the risks of CO2 leaking back into the atmosphere should be promoted, the report said.

Also Read | What is solar geoengineering? 

But potentially dangerous experimental geoengineering methods – including controversial “solar radiation modification” – need to be halted until they have been researched thoroughly, the report said.

“Countries should adopt a moratorium on the deployment of solar radiation modification and large-scale outdoor experiments that would carry risk of significant transboundary harm,” it said.

Solar radiation modification refers to a range of proposed technologies designed to reflect sunlight away from the earth, including the direct injection of sulphates into the atmosphere. Last year, 60 scientists launched a global initiative aimed at banning all kinds of solar geoengineering.

Also Read | Geoengineering is not a quick climate fix, but a costly gamble 

“The world does not yet know enough to make informed decisions about solar radiation modification,” the report said, adding that routine international reviews should take place to assess the potential risks.

“Early scientific evidence suggests that solar radiation modification could reduce some climate risks but would also introduce significant new risks,” it said.

The report said slashing emissions should be a priority but will not be enough on its own and efforts need to be made to adapt to global warming, and deploy technologies to remove CO2 and “create space for the least industrialised countries to pursue their clean and sustainable energy transitions while fighting poverty and fulfilling their development imperatives.”

The Climate Overshoot Commission also includes senior politicians from Canada, India, Pakistan, Spain and China.



Source link

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