Point of No Return: Global Warming Created by the Chinese

[seemslikeadream]

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The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

Published on
Thursday, September 29, 2016
byCommon Dreams
Point of No Return: Earth Reaches 400ppm Threshold Permanently
Scientists say it is 'almost impossible' that carbon dioxide output will drop below symbolic milestone in our lifetimes
byNadia Prupis, staff writer


The confirmation comes soon after a report from the U.K. Met Office in June warned that the planet was well on its way toward that grim milestone. (Photo: Kevin Gill/flickr/cc)
September's carbon dioxide output failed to drop below 400 parts per million (ppm) despite historically being the year's low point for CO2 emissions, which means the Earth has very likely passed that symbolic climate threshold forever.

The Earth has hit 400ppm before, but seasonal cycles have always reduced carbon dioxide output back below that level. Now, climate scientists say it is "almost impossible" that will ever happen again.

According to Climate Central:

September is usually the month when carbon dioxide is at its lowest after a summer of plants growing and sucking it up in the northern hemisphere. As fall wears on, those plants lose their leaves, which in turn decompose, releasing the stored carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. At Mauna Loa Observatory, the world's marquee site for monitoring carbon dioxide, there are signs that the process has begun but levels have remained above 400 ppm.

"Is it possible that October 2016 will yield a lower monthly value than September and dip below 400 ppm? Almost impossible," scientist Ralph Keeling, who runs the carbon dioxide monitoring program at the Scripps Institute for Oceanography, wrote in a blog post this week. "Brief excursions towards lower values are still possible but it already seems safe to conclude that we won't be seeing a monthly value below 400 ppm this year—or ever again for the indefinite future."

Climate Central continues:

We may get a day or two reprieve in the next month, similar to August when Tropical Storm Madeline blew by Hawaii and knocked carbon dioxide below 400 ppm for a day. But otherwise, we're living in a 400 ppm world. Even if the world stopped emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow, what has already put in the atmosphere will linger for many decades to come.

"At best (in that scenario), one might expect a balance in the near term and so CO2 levels probably wouldn't change much—but would start to fall off in a decade or so," Gavin Schmidt, NASA's chief climate scientist, said in an email. "In my opinion, we won't ever see a month below 400 ppm."

The confirmation comes soon after a report from the U.K. Met Office in June warned that the planet was well on its way toward that grim milestone as the impact from rising fossil fuel emissions was worsened by a turbulent El Niño event. Similar predictions came in May as climate scientists cautioned the limit could be hit at any time.

Another recent report also found that the planet could pass another point of no return—the agreed-upon 1.5°C warming threshold—in a decade.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/0 ... ermanently

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Another recent report also found that the planet could pass another point of no return—the agreed-upon 1.5°C warming threshold—in a decade.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/0 ... ermanently

That report might be optimistic. We are already 1.3°C this year.

Climate scientists expected 'nothing like' this year's record-breaking global temperatures

'Massive temperature hikes, but also extreme events like floodings, have become the new normal'

Ian Johnston Environment Correspondent
Wednesday 27 July 2016

The planet’s record-breaking temperatures every month of this year have taken scientists by surprise, according to a leading expert who said they had expected “nothing like” this level of global warming.

The first six months of this year averaged 1.3 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, compared to the ambition agreed at the Paris climate summit in December to limit warming to as close to 1.5C as possible.

This now seems optimistic, particularly as the actual action promised by countries could see the world’s average surface temperature rise by up to 3.1C, according to a recent analysis.

However, Dr David Carlson, director of the World Climate Research Programme, said models of future warming had failed to predict the high temperatures recorded this year, suggesting they are under-estimating how hot the world will get.

Greenland lost 1 trillion tons of ice in just four years

Every month this year has set a new record high temperature for the month, continuing a streak that now extends over 14 months.

“What concerns me most is that we didn't anticipate these temperature jumps,” Dr Carlson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“We predicted moderate warmth for 2016, but nothing like the temperature rises we’ve seen.

“Massive temperature hikes, but also extreme events like floodings, have become the new normal.”

The WCRP was set up by the International Council for Science and the World Meteorological Organization in 1980.

Scientists have expressed concerns at a number of tipping points that could dramatically increase the rate of warming.

For example, the melting of ice at the poles reduces the amount of sunlight that is reflected with the darker water or land absorbing more of the sun’s energy and increasing the temperature. Experts have warned the warming in the Arctic – far higher than the global average – could have a “possibly catastrophic” effect on the number of dangerous storms in the northern hemisphere.

Vast amounts of methane – a powerful greenhouse gas – that has been frozen for thousands of years in the tundra of Siberia has also started to be released as it melts. Methane has also been seen bubbling to the surface in the ocean off the northern coast of Russia following dramatic reductions in sea ice cover.

And Dr Carlson said the way humans react to warmer weather could make things worse.

“Also critical is the fact that people survive the heat by using more energy for cooling, thus further depleting the world's resources,” he said.

He said the increased frequency of extreme storms was starting to attract world leaders’ attention.

“The question is shifting from ‘has the climate changed?’ to ‘by how much?’” he said.

“Statistically we need to get better at predicting not only how frequent and intense these events will be – but how long they will last.”

However he added: “The world leaders making serious commitments to tackle climate change are currently few and far between.”

Prime Minister Theresa May, just days after taking office, decided to scrap the post of Energy and Climate Change Secretary from the Cabinet and also the associated government department.

Climate change is now the responsibility of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Business Secretary Greg Clark.

Ms May also appointed Andrea Leadsom as Environment Secretary, after she revealed her first question to officials after she was appointed energy minister last year was: "Is climate change real?"

[seemslikeadream]

oh you know me....nothing but optimistic.... :P

[Blue]

Hard to see the glass half full but Naomi Klein has a point.

What if confronting the climate crisis is the best chance we’ll ever get to build a better world?

[seemslikeadream]

Published on
Friday, September 30, 2016
by Common Dreams
Forget Paris, Scientists Say 'Radical Change' Only Way to Stay Below 2 Degrees
Study by former IPCC chair comes amid rash of new research, all predicting the Earth will soon blow by key global warming thresholds
by Lauren McCauley, staff writer

To much fanfare, global leaders have agreed to tackle the climate crisis by ratifying the Paris climate agreement, but a group of esteemed scientists is warning that current pledges to reduce emissions are far from sufficient and, in fact, put the world on track to reaching the dangerous 2°C climate threshold by 2050.

"The pledges are not going to get even close," said Sir Robert Watson, former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and lead author of a new report out Thursday. "If you governments of the world are really serious, you're going to have to do way, way more."

Aptly titled The Truth About Climate Change, the report, put forth by the Argentina-based Universal Ecological Fund (Fundación Ecológica Universal FEU-US), comes amid a rash of new research, all suggesting that key global warming thresholds will be reached much more rapidly than previously thought.

Led by Watson, the team examined the climate commitments, known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), put forth by COP21 signatories and concluded that the delayed commitment to climate action has essentially eliminated the possibility to keeping the Earth's temperature increase beneath 1.5°C.

The report states:

[T]he 1.5°C target has almost certainly already been missed because of the lack of action to stop the increase in global GHG emissions for the last 20 years. Global average temperature has already reached 1°C above pre-industrial times in 2015, as reported by the World Meteorological Organization. This is a significant increase, compared to the 0.85°C above pre-industrial times in 2012 reported by the IPCC. An additional warming of 0.4-0.5°C is expected as a consequence of GHGs that have already been emitted. This additional increase in global temperature is due to the slow response of the ocean-atmosphere system to the increased atmospheric concentrations of GHGs.

Global GHG emissions are not projected to decrease fast enough, even if all the pledges are fully implemented. Full implementation of the pledges will require the promised US$100 billion per year in financial assistance for developing countries to be realized. As a result, the 1.5°C target could be reached by the early 2030s and the 2°C target by 2050.

Further, the researchers minced no words when laying the blame for the missed targets on "political and sectoral interests," including those "benefiting from the use of fossil fuels," for promoting "deliberate misinformation" about the current situation.

Thursday's study, which came just one day before European leaders agreed on a fast-track, joint ratification of the Paris accord, concludes with a call for nations to "rais[e] the ambition of the INDCs" and commit to "a radical change in the way the world produces and uses energy."

Much like the landmark report published last week by fossil fuel watchdog Oil Change International, the latest findings leave no room for future emissions or new fossil fuel infrastructure projects. Even as the commitments stand, scientists predict that U.S. will miss its target for 2025 if "fundamental changes" are not made.

In the past week, two separate reports have warned that the planet will likely pass the 1.5ºC benchmark this decade and, under current emissions projections, is "locked in" to reaching a 2 million-year temperature record.

With 2016 on track to set another heat record, the wave of research comes as the planet reached another grave milestone: atmospheric carbon has permanently surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm).

Appearing on Democracy Now! on Friday, author and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben reiterated his call for a World War II-scale mobilization to combat the global warming "siege."

"If we're going to have a chance of dealing with climate change, it means mobilizing in ways that we haven't in a very long time," he continued:

In this case, it's not that we need to go to war with climate change, it's that we’re under siege. I mean, by all the measures by which one thinks about warfare, we're in one. We're losing territory all the time. I mean, there are literally islands disappearing. You know, we've lost huge swaths of the coral in the world this year alone. A wave of warm water swept across the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. In many places, 80, 90 percent of coral died in a matter of weeks, these atolls that have been there forever in the Arctic. You know, ice that's been there for millennia upon millennia is now gone. I mean, the world looks entirely different from a satellite now than it did 30 years ago.

So, the question is not whether or not we're in a conflict. The question is whether or not we’re going to fight it, or whether we’re going to keep listening to the Exxons of the world and do nothing.

According to the cumulative research, that's not a viable option. Watch the segment below:http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/30/forget-paris-scientists-say-radical-change-only-way-stay-below-2-degrees