I am starting today on a personal note. I have been shamelessly promoting the virtual outing presentation that I made last Thursday. It was very well attended in fact setting a new record for our group’s presentations. It went very well from my perspective and I have received very favorable feedback. In case you missed it and may be interested to see what it’s all about the link is below. To those of you who DID see it, thanks for joining in and all the positive responses. It was truly special to see a great number of friends and I am honored that so many of you choose to spend an evening with me.
Besides the praise for the stunning photography and engaging stories the one thing I heard over and over again was thanks for taking people away from all the stress of daily life that we’ve all been experiencing for the last year especially. So treat yourself to some beauty, fun and introspection for about an hour!
I write a great deal about how climate change is and will impact our daily lives such as in transportation, insurance, investments/financial impact, real estate values, flooding, fires, energy and electricity, etc. I think it’s been a while since I featured the basics: the changing climate itself and how it’s impacting the planet and its natural systems. Essentially, how we humans are destroying the natural systems that sustain not only our physical wellbeing but our financial wellbeing as well.
Therefore, as the new year gets rolling, I thought I’d cover a bit of that today and remind you how dire the circumstances are and that we are creating a positive feedback loop such that the more the climate and our natural world unravels, the more these very events speed up the disintegrating process.
I’ve heard some people comment that our new President, Joe Biden, (Boy it feels good to say that!) is moving too fast and not reaching out to Congress or the Republicans to move our government forward on so many issues for which he’s issued Executive Orders. My thought is that at least as these pertain to the environment and climate, he can’t move fast enough. Furthermore, he’s simply telling all the people in the Executive Branch how he expects them to make decisions: what factors to bear in mind in doing so. It would be no different than if in my own business we issued a memo in this same regard. The time is coming when the cooperation of the Legislative Branch will be necessary to make policy.
The quotes below from the attached articles at the end, describe the picture that I have been painting for you for many, many years. That is that the scientists and “talking heads” have not been willing to forecast worst case scenarios that those of us who have not felt any particular restraints were willing to say. (Actually, I have tempered my predictions so as not to appear TOOOO extreme.) Unfortunately, quoting from the articles:
“Melting on the ice sheets has accelerated so much over the past three decades that it’s now in line with the worst-case climate warming scenarios outlined by scientists.”
“The world’s frozen places are shrinking — and they’re disappearing at faster rates as time goes by.”
“some experts believe climate change is altering ocean currents in ways that may be driving more melting.”
We’ll be in big trouble if the Gulf Stream becomes altered…
“Altogether, the research finds that ice loss all over the world has sped up by at least 57% since the 1990s alone. The researchers note that “there can be little doubt that the vast majority of Earth’s ice loss is a direct consequence of climate warming.””
“Oceanic populations of sharks and rays have declined by over 70% in the last half-century, according to a new paper that is the first global analysis of the species.”
“The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Index says that the population sizes of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have seen an average drop of 68% since 1970. Researchers were dismayed to see that replicated in oceanic habitats that they thought might be farther from the reach of humans.”
“”Sharks are the top predators in marine food webs, and depletion of these species risks the ocean balance,””
As a result of the harm we’re doing to the climate we’re experiencing the results from an economic perspective in dollars. This reenforces the reality that the cost of NOT doing all we can to prevent catastrophic change is far in excess of doing all we can right now.
“The U.S. experienced 22 disasters last year that each caused at least $1 billion in damage, shattering a previous record and reflecting the increasing cost of climate change, according to NOAA…
The list of disasters is composed almost exclusively of hurricanes, storms and tornadoes.
“2020 stands head and shoulders above all other years in regard to the number of billion-dollar disasters,” NOAA said.
Altogether, the disasters caused $95 billion in damage and killed 261 people.
NOAA counted the wildfires that swept across the West last year as a single disaster, raising questions about whether they should be considered multiple tragedies. The deadly blazes blackened huge stretches of California, Colorado and Oregon.”
Ice Loss Worldwide Accelerated 57% Since 1990s
Chelsea Harvey, E&E News
January 25, 2021
The world’s frozen places are shrinking — and they’re disappearing at faster rates as time goes by.
In the 1990s, the world was losing around 800 billion metric tons of ice each year. Today, that number has risen to around 1.2 trillion tons.
Altogether, the planet lost a whopping 28 trillion tons of ice between 1994 and 2017.
That’s according to a new study, published today in the journal The Cryosphere, calculating all the ice lost around the globe over the last few decades.
It’s the first to provide a truly global analysis of the planet’s vanishing ice, the authors say. It accounts for both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, Arctic and Antarctic sea ice and mountain glaciers all over the world.
The research combines measurements from a variety of sources — mainly satellite studies, as well as on-site observations and numerical models.
The findings are stark. Ice is steadily disappearing across much of the world, and a majority of the losses are driven by climate change.
Rising air temperatures are causing mountain glaciers to shrink, from the European Alps to the Himalayas of Asia to the Andes in South America. The study suggests that mountain glaciers worldwide have lost nearly 10 trillion tons of ice since the 1960s, with the losses speeding up over time. Nearly 6 trillion tons of ice have disappeared since the 1990s alone.
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets also have shed huge volumes of ice. Since the 1990s, Antarctica has lost more than 2.6 trillion tons and Greenland has lost nearly 4 trillion.
In Antarctica, most of these losses stem from marine-terminating glaciers, or glaciers that back up to the ocean. Recent studies have found that warm ocean currents are increasingly melting these glaciers from the bottom up, causing them to pour more ice into the sea.
Scientists still are investigating the sources of the warm water, but some experts believe climate change is altering ocean currents in ways that may be driving more melting.
In Greenland, some of the same processes also are at play. But more than half of Greenland’s ice sheet losses come from surface melting, or ice that melts on the top of the ice sheet. Rising air temperatures are a key driver of surface melting.
Losses from mountain glaciers and the two ice sheets are major contributors to global sea-level rise. Combined, the new study estimates they’ve raised sea levels by more than 34 millimeters, or around 1.3 inches, since 1994.
The study also looks at Antarctica’s ice shelves, floating ledges of ice that jut out from the ice sheet into the ocean. These ice shelves help to stabilize the ice sheet’s marine-terminating glaciers and hold back the flow of ice behind them.
In addition to the ice sheet’s losses, Antarctica’s ice shelves have lost more than 8.6 trillion tons of mass since the 1990s. This ice doesn’t add to sea-level rise — it’s already floating in the water. But as the ice shelves shrink, they destabilize the ice sheet’s glaciers and contribute to further losses.
Similarly, sea ice doesn’t contribute to sea-level rise as it melts away. But its losses still are significant.
Sea ice is an important habitat for wildlife, including polar bears and walruses. And as it melts away, it may help to speed up global warming. Ice has a bright, reflective surface that helps beam sunlight away from the Earth; as it disappears, it allows the ocean to absorb more heat.
Using a combination of satellite data and ocean models, the study estimates that Arctic sea ice has been shrinking by about 230 billion tons each year since 1980. Many experts believe that dwindling sea ice has sped up the Arctic’s rate of warming. Temperatures there are currently rising more than twice as fast as the rest of the world.
Antarctic sea ice, on the other hand, has actually grown since the 1980s by around 43 billion tons each year.
Scientists are still divided on what’s caused these gains. Some experts believe that changes in atmospheric circulation, linked to the gradual recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, have something to do with it. Others believe they’re explained by natural variations in the Earth’s climate.
As the climate continues to warm, though, scientists expect this trend to reverse itself. In fact, it may already be happening. Recent studies suggest that Antarctic sea ice began declining a few years ago; experts are still working to figure out why (Climatewire, July 2, 2019).
Altogether, the research finds that ice loss all over the world has sped up by at least 57% since the 1990s alone. The researchers note that “there can be little doubt that the vast majority of Earth’s ice loss is a direct consequence of climate warming.”
Study Documents ‘Shocking’ Decline of Sharks and Rays
Kylie Mohr, E&E News
January 27, 2021
Oceanic populations of sharks and rays have declined by over 70% in the last half-century, according to a new paper that is the first global analysis of the species.
The study, published today in the journal Nature, underscores that the biodiversity crisis extends past terrestrial species.
“While many people know that we have a decade to stop climate change, we also have only one decade to reverse biodiversity loss,” said lead author Nathan Pacoureau, a postdoctoral fellow at Simon Fraser University.
The Global Shark Trends Project led the research in collaboration with multiple universities and the Georgia Aquarium with support from the Shark Conservation Fund.
Researchers from around the world estimated the relative abundance of 18 oceanic species of sharks and rays between 1970 and 2018 to assess the risk of extinction for all 31 oceanic shark and ray species. Three-quarters of the oceanic species are now threatened with extinction, they found.
Three of those 24, the oceanic whitetip shark and the scalloped and great hammerhead sharks, are now classified as critically endangered. This is the highest threatened category on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List. The shortfin mako shark was recently classified as endangered, the second-highest threat category, along with the pelagic thresher and dusky shark.
In total, half of oceanic shark and ray species are now critically endangered or endangered.
“I think it’s quite a shocking package of results, to be perfectly honest,” said Nicholas Dulvy, a co-author and a marine ecologist at Simon Fraser University and the co-chair of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group.
Trends varied considerably among oceans, with tropical sharks declining more steeply than temperate species.
Although studies have documented reductions in oceanic and coastal shark and ray populations around the world, this work is the first global analysis. The species are often harder to track, monitor and assess because they live in such vast oceanic habitats.
The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Index says that the population sizes of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have seen an average drop of 68% since 1970. Researchers were dismayed to see that replicated in oceanic habitats that they thought might be farther from the reach of humans.
“They’re remote animals, they’re the hardest to hunt, so you’d expect that just from that perspective we’d make less of a dent on ocean-ranging organisms,” Dulvy said. “But it was clearly shocking to the whole team that we’d done that much damage in such a short space of time.”
Researchers correlated the drop with an eighteenfold increase in relative fishing pressure over the same period. This measures the proportion of sharks and rays caught relative to their global population. The same period saw a doubling of fishing pressure and a tripling of shark and ray catches.
Dulvy said he hopes the paper can act as a report card and a wake-up call as the United Nations assesses its 2020 biodiversity targets and considers goals for 2030 to reverse population declines and use marine resources sustainably.
“All the progress towards these biodiversity targets are mainly driven by terrestrial knowledge because it is far easier to track, so what we wanted to do is bring the marine species forward in this decisionmaking,” said Pacoureau.
Historically, oceanic species data has been hard to come by.
“We hope that at a bigger level, by putting sharks and rays within the eye line of policymakers, they will incorporate them into these targets and we can hold governments accountable,” Dulvy said.
Sharks and rays grow slowly and produce few young, making them susceptible to overfishing. Overfishing has both ecological and economic consequences.
Researchers think the decline may be even more severe than they could calculate, because baseline data begins in 1970 but fishing fleets expanded globally beginning in the 1950s.
“The scariest thing about it is we know our estimate has to be an underestimate,” Dulvy said.
“Sharks are the top predators in marine food webs, and depletion of these species risks the ocean balance,” Pacoureau said.
Subsistence fishermen’s source of income, particularly in the tropics, is also at risk if sharks and rays aren’t caught sustainably.
“If they aren’t fished sustainably, there are economic and social losses,” Dulvy said. “The livelihoods of all those fishermen and those industries are put at risk.”
Scientists say immediate action is needed to prevent collapses of these marine populations.
One action they support to help promote species recovery is for governments to implement catch limits. They point to great white and hammerhead sharks, which are beginning to recover despite precipitous decline, as evidence that science-based fishing limits work.
“We have a lot of knowledge of what could be working,” Pacoureau said. “But it’s not implemented. We need proactive measures that can prevent all the population collapses that are happening, and we know they can work. There’s still hope.”
Global Ice Melt Matches Worst-Case Climate Scenario, Study Says
The first global ice-loss survey using satellite data showed ice is disappearing faster in Antarctica and Greenland
By Laura Millan Lombrana
January 25, 2021
Melting on the ice sheets has accelerated so much over the past three decades that it’s now in line with the worst-case climate warming scenarios outlined by scientists.
A total of 28 trillion metric tons of ice was lost between 1994 and 2017, according to a research paper published in The Cryosphere on Monday. The research team led by the University of Leeds in the U.K. was the first to carry out a global survey of global ice loss using satellite data.
“The ice sheets are now following the worst-case climate warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,”lead author Thomas Slater said in a statement. “Although every region we studied lost ice, losses from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have accelerated the most.”
Ice melt from sheets and glaciers contributes to global warming and indirectly influences sea level rise, which in turn increases the risk of flooding in coastal communities. Earth’s northern and southern poles are warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet. In 2020, a year of record heat, Arctic sea ice extent hovered around the lowest ever for most of the year.
The new research, which used information from the European Space Agency’s network of satellites, found that Earth lost 1.3 trillion tons of ice in 2017, accelerating from 0.8 trillion metric tons per year in the 1990
The ice lost is equivalent to a 100-meter-thick sheet of ice able to cover the whole of the U.K. Another way to think of it is as 28 giant ice cubes —one for every trillion metric tons of ice lost—each taller than Mount Everest and measuring 10 kilometers in width, height and depth, the scientists said.
“One of the key roles of Arctic sea ice is to reflect solar radiation back into space, which helps keep the Arctic cool,” said Isobel Lawrence, a researcher at the Leeds’ Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling. “As the sea ice shrinks, more solar energy is being absorbed by the oceans and atmosphere, causing the Arctic to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet.”
The survey, which also analyzed 215,000 mountain glaciers around the planet, concluded that half of the losses were from ice on land, including from mountain glaciers and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet. These losses have raised global sea levels by an estimated 35 millimeters.
Billion-dollar Disasters Shattered U.S. Record in 2020
Thomas Frank, E&E Reporter
January 11, 2021
The U.S. experienced 22 disasters last year that each caused at least $1 billion in damage, shattering a previous record and reflecting the increasing cost of climate change, according to NOAA.
The billion-dollar disasters of 2020 were led by Hurricane Laura, a Category 4 storm that caused $19 billion in damage and 42 deaths when it slammed the Louisiana coast in August. The list of disasters is composed almost exclusively of hurricanes, storms and tornadoes.
“2020 stands head and shoulders above all other years in regard to the number of billion-dollar disasters,” NOAA said.
Altogether, the disasters caused $95 billion in damage and killed 261 people.
NOAA counted the wildfires that swept across the West last year as a single disaster, raising questions about whether they should be considered multiple tragedies. The deadly blazes blackened huge stretches of California, Colorado and Oregon.
NOAA’s database of “billion-dollar weather and climate disasters” catalogues every natural disaster since 1980 that caused at least $1 billion in damage and is widely cited by lawmakers, scientists and climate advocates.
The agency published its count for 2020 on Friday and said the 22 events signal a trend of growing disasters that have caused $2.2 trillion in damage since 1980.
The previous record was 16 billion-dollar disasters. It was set first in 2011 and again in 2017.
NOAA’s findings renewed calls for action to curb climate change. The report was released less than two weeks before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
“Reining in climate change must be one of our highest priorities,” former NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco wrote on Twitter on Saturday in response to the agency’s 2020 data.
Friends of the Earth wrote on Twitter, “This is exactly why we cannot afford anything less than real, substantive action.”
Climate change and the nation’s growing population and wealth in vulnerable areas are driving the rise in U.S. disaster costs, NOAA said.
“The increase in population and material wealth over the last several decades are an important cause for the rising costs,” NOAA scientists led by Deke Arndt, head of the agency’s climate monitoring branch, wrote on NOAA’s website. “Much of the growth has taken place in vulnerable areas like coasts and river floodplains. Vulnerability is especially high where building codes are insufficient for reducing damage from extreme events.”
NOAA added: “Climate change is also playing a role in the increasing frequency of some types of extreme weather that lead to billion-dollar disasters — most notably the rise in vulnerability to drought, lengthening wildfire seasons in the Western states, and the potential for extremely heavy rainfall becoming more common in the eastern states. Sea level rise is worsening hurricane storm surge flooding.”
NOAA temperature data, which was posted separately on its website Friday, shows that 2020 was the fifth hottest year in the U.S. since the agency began keeping records in 1895. The five hottest years in the U.S. have occurred since 2012.
NOAA’s disaster report is the latest documentation of costly climate trends for 2020.
Global reinsurer Munich Re reported last week that disasters worldwide in 2020 caused $210 billion in damage — one of the costliest years on record — including $95 billion in U.S. damage (Climatewire, Jan. 8).
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said global temperatures in 2020 tied with 2016 for the hottest year on record (Climatewire, Jan. 8).
The National Interagency Fire Center posted statistics showing that wildfire burned a record 10.3 million acres in the U.S. last year, breaking the previous record of 10.1 million acres, set in 2015.
President Trump declared three major disasters for wildfires last year — two in California and one in Oregon — and the Federal Emergency Management Agency made 78 fire management assistance declarations, which provide states with limited federal funds for firefighting. The FEMA declarations were in nine Western states as well as Oklahoma and Florida.
But NOAA counted all the U.S. wildfires as a single billion-dollar disaster — “the Western wildfires” — that caused $16.5 billion in damage.
That raised questions on Twitter from people who said the agency was minimizing the wildfires and should count distinct blazes as separate events.
The National Interagency Fire Center recorded 58,258 separate wildfires in 2020.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection recorded 9,639 wildfires in the state last year between Feb. 15 and Dec. 23.
NOAA said on Twitter that it has historically counted wildfires as well as droughts as a single “regional-scale season-long event.”
In addition to U.S. wildfires and drought, the 22 billion-dollar disasters in 2020 included seven hurricanes and 13 severe storms, led by the derecho that swept across the Midwest in August and caused $11 billion in damage.
Billion-dollar disasters account for an increasing share of the overall damage caused by catastrophes each year, NOAA said. Since 1980, the nation’s 285 billion-dollar disasters have accounted for 85% of the $2.2 trillion in disaster costs in the U.S.
