TICK TOCK THE CLIMATE CLOCK PART THIRTY-TWO

Lest you thought the climate crisis had gone away, here’s a quick and dirty to disabuse you of that wishful thinking.

OH, NO-O-O-O-(A)!  In early June, NOOA predicted that 2020 was shaping up to be the hottest on record in the lower 48 United States, which is saying something, since each of the last five summers has set a heat record.

THE ARCTIC IS ON FIRE!  As the Guardian reported on June 25,

There’s an Arctic heatwave: it’s 38° C in Siberia. Arctic sea ice coverage is the second lowest on record, and 2020 may be on course to be the hottest year since records began.

The immediate effect is to increase wildfires. Siberia has seen “zombie fires” reignited from deep smouldering embers in peatland. This is bad news, releasing particulate air pollution and more carbon in 18 months than in the past 16 years.

 

THE CDC FAILS---AGAIN.  Heat kills.  Federal research predicts heatstroke and similar illnesses will claim tens of thousands of American lives each year by the end of the century. An investigative report by the Guardian (Guardian Climate Deaths) in conjunction with Columbia Journalism Investigations, the Center for Public Integrity, and Covering Climate Now found that the CDC isn’t helping: 

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is charged with helping cities and states adapt to threats like extreme heat. Its climate program, created more than 10 years ago, is the federal government’s only sustained effort to bolster state and local health departments’ fight against global warming. But the program has been hampered by a decade of underfunding, limited expertise and political resistance,…

Interviews with more than 100 people and a review of hundreds of pages of government records show the Obama administration, while pushing measures to combat climate change, missed opportunities to expand the program. In December 2015, Republicans in Congress rejected a proposal to boost spending on the CDC program to $18m. The increase would have more than doubled its size.  Under Donald Trump, officials have tried to eliminate it.

FROM THE SAHARA RIGHT TO YOUR FRONT DOOR.  The same day the Guardian also reported on the Saharan dust cloud barreling across the Atlantic toward the U.S.  The good news is that the dust reflects sunlight back into the atmosphere, slightly reducing temperatures. The bad news is the dust is very, very fine and exacerbates respiratory problems:  

The most sensitive groups to particle pollution include those with respiratory problems and older people, including those with asthma and covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

WHAT THE CORONAVIRUS GIVETH, MAN TAKETH AWAY.  Thanks to the coronavirus, carbon dioxide emissions plunged globally by an average of 17% in April, compared with 2019.  But now that much of the world has reopened, emissions have surged again to within 5% of last year’s levels.  Per Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency:

This year is the last time we have, if we are not to see a carbon rebound.  The next three years will determine the course of the next 30 years and beyond. If we do not [take action] we will surely see a rebound in emissions. If emissions rebound, it is very difficult to see how they will be brought down in future. This is why we are urging governments to have sustainable recovery packages.

As reported in the Guardian, the stimulus packages created in 2020 will determine the shape of the global economy for the next three years, according to Birol, and within that time emissions must start to fall sharply and permanently, or climate targets will be out of reach.  The target is a 7.5% decrease in emissions each year for ten years, starting in 2020.  We’ve already blown that budget.

TALK IS CHEAP.  Guardian Climate notes that, while some governments are poised to take action in their coronavirus recoveries, the money spent so far has been propping up the high-carbon economy:  

At least $33bn has been directed towards airlines, with few or no green strings attached,…According to analyst company Bloomberg New Energy Finance, more than half a trillion dollars worldwide – $509bn – is to be poured into high-carbon industries, with no conditions to ensure they reduce their carbon output.

Only about $12.3bn of the spending announced by late [May] was set to go towards low-carbon industries, and a further $18.5bn into high-carbon industries provided they achieve climate targets. But governments were still targeting high-carbon investment, [and] IEA research show[s] that by the end of May the amount invested in coal-fired power plants in Asia had accelerated compared with last year.

ARE PEOPLE REALLY THAT STUPID?  APPARENTLY, YES.  Latex gloves, masks, toilet paper substitutes, and sanitary wipes are being flushed down the toilet or dropped carelessly on the street, clogging up municipal sewer systems.  According to an AP report:

Between mid-March, when [Philadelphia’s] stay-at-home order was issued, and the end of April, most of the 19 sewer and storm water pumping stations in Philadelphia had experienced clogs from face masks, gloves and wipes residents had pitched into the potty.

Sanitary sewer overflows jumped 33% between February and March in Houston because of clogs from rags, tissues, paper towels and wipes, said public works department spokeswoman Erin Jones.

In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, crews are cleaning sewage pumping stations a couple of times a week that previously needed it once a month, said John Strickland, manager of the treatment facility.

At Beale Air Force Base in Northern California, a squadron that usually deals with airfield maintenance and weaponry disposal has been yanking wipes from the base’s plumbing.

By flushing the wrong things, people are taxing infrastructure that’s already deteriorating, said Darren Olson, vice chairman of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Committee for America’s Infrastructure.

A SECONDARY PLAGUE:  SINGLE-USE PLASTIC.  A report in the LA Times highlights the unfortunate byproduct of the coronavirus--the proliferation of single-use plastic:

The coronavirus pandemic has brought a dramatic increase in the use of plastic, the main component in masks, gloves, hand sanitizer bottles, protective medical suits, test kits, takeout containers, delivery packaging and other items central to our new, locked-down, hyper-hygienic way of life.

The disposal of such items is yet another troubling consequence of a crisis that has devastated economies and wracked healthcare systems. The deeper worry is that COVID-19 will reverse the momentum of a years-long global battle to cut down on single-use plastic.

Coming into this year, many nations had promised to reduce plastic use. The pandemic has forced some to shelve those plans; the World Bank warns that COVID-19, at least for now, “seems to be shifting the tide toward single-use plastics.”

THE GULF OF MEXICO IS DEAD TO ME.  Heavy rainfall, flooding in the Midwest, and the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides have caused hypoxia, a low level of oxygen that has created a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, shown above.  Large reductions in pesticides and fertilizers have been called for in federal-state action plans for almost 20 years, but without actions and therefore without results.  Per an article in The New York Times, NOOA forecasts that:

This year’s zone will be about 6,700 square miles, or roughly the size of Connecticut and Delaware combined. That’s not the biggest recorded, which was 9,776 square miles in 2017, but it is significantly larger than the five-year average.

AND FINALLY, EXTINCTION.  And saving the last for last, this report from The New York Times at Times Extinction:

We are racing faster and closer toward the point of collapse than scientists previously thought, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The extinction rate among terrestrial vertebrate species is significantly higher than prior estimates, and the critical window for preventing mass losses will close much sooner than formerly assumed — in 10 to 15 years.

“We’re eroding the capabilities of the planet to maintain human life and life in general,” said Gerardo Ceballos, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and lead author of the new study.

The current rate of extinctions vastly exceeds those that would occur naturally, Dr. Ceballos and his colleagues found. Scientists know of 543 species lost over the last 100 years, a tally that would normally take 10,000 years to accrue.

“In other words, every year over the last century we lost the same number of species typically lost in 100 years,” Dr. Ceballos said.

If nothing changes, about 500 more terrestrial vertebrate species are likely to go extinct over the next two decades alone, bringing total losses equivalent to those that would have taken place naturally over 16,000 years.

Oh, and just in case you think the warming of the planet is a mere inconvenience, scientists now believe that 445 million years ago, a volcanic eruption that released massive amounts of heat into the atmosphere caused the last known extinction known as the Late Ordovician mass extinction.  (See Times Ordovician.)  Have a nice day!

Keep it real!  Wear your mask!

Marilyn