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Canadian wildfires and global emissions

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The wildfires that burned vast amounts of Canada’s boreal forests in 2023 produced enormous amounts of smoke that found its way into American cities, working its way down the eastern seaboard and even producing unsafe air in Florida.

Researchers at Cal Tech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory analyzed the carbon emissions associated with these fires last year and found that they were greater than those of all but three countries:  China, the US, and India.

Boreal forests have historically been a natural defense against climate change by storing carbon in trees rather than adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.  The fires in Canada, fueled by hot and dry weather, were extraordinary when compared with historical records.  But such fires are likely to be increasingly common as the climate continues to warm.

However, the hot and dry weather that fueled the 2023 fires was exceptional in many ways, involving early snow melt and so-called flash droughts.  This year’s fires in Canada are still bigger than average, but so far have not been as destructive as last year’s. 

Canada has been warming at about twice the global rate.  The extreme temperatures last summer were a major factor in the fueling of the fires, which burned an area almost the size of Florida.

Forests absorb about a quarter of global carbon emissions, but the increasing frequency and intensity of fires are calling into question their ability to continue to do so.  Parts of the Canadian forests are not regrowing after fires as they have in the past, partly because blazes burn trees so frequently and intensely.

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Canada’s Wildfires Were a Top Global Emitter Last Year, Study Says

Photo, posted June 8, 2023, courtesy of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Nearly everyone wants climate action

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A global survey of 75,000 people revealed that 80% of participants want their governments’ climate action commitments to be stronger.  The poll, conducted by the United Nations Development Program, GeoPoll, and Oxford University, asked 15 questions in telephone calls to residents of 77 countries representing 87% of the global population.

According to the survey, 89% of poorer countries favored increasing efforts to curb global emission, while 76% of wealthy G20 nations supported tougher climate action.

The two biggest greenhouse emitters in the world were less enthusiastic:  Chinese participants were 73% in favor of stronger action and Americans were 66% in favor of greater efforts to combat global warming. 

Other demographic differences included that in the big emitting countries of Canada, France, Germany, Australia, and the U.S., women were 10 to 17% more in support of stronger climate action than men.

Overall, only 7% of those polled globally thought their government should not transition away from fossil fuels at all.  More than half of those polled said that they were more worried about climate change this year than last year.  A worldwide majority of 72% support a fast fossil fuel phaseout, including those in nations that are among the top ten coal, oil, and gas producers.

As is the case across the board with respect to climate issues, the more influential factor continues to be economic as opposed to scientific or humanitarian.  Those who stand to lose the most money from the transition away from fossil fuels continue to hold sway over those who will lose in many other ways.

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Four Out of Five People Want Increased Climate Action, UN Poll Says

Photo, posted July 31, 2020, courtesy of School Strike 4 Climate via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The slippery slopes of the ski industry

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According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, snowfall is declining globally as temperatures warm because of human-caused climate change.  Less snow threatens to reinforce global warming, and to disrupt food, water, and livelihoods for billions of people.   

According to new modeling by researchers from Protect Our Winters Australia and The Australian National University, the ski industry in Australia is at risk of major disruptions and shorter seasons if climate change continues unabated.  The researchers found the average ski season across all resorts in Australia will be 44 days shorter by 2050 under a mid-greenhouse gas emissions scenario, and 55 days shorter under a high-emissions scenario.

But the research team also revealed that the Australian ski industry would fare significantly better if decisive action is taken to reduce climate pollution.  In fact, under a low-emissions scenario, the ski season would be 28 days shorter by 2050, before starting to improve by 2080 if emissions are kept down.

However, if decisive climate action isn’t taken, the researchers warn some ski resorts in Australia may be forced to close for good.  But this threat isn’t unique to Australia. 

In fact, according to a study recently published in the journal PLOS ONE, 13% of ski areas around the world are predicted to lose all natural snow cover under the high-emissions scenario by 2071-2100 – relative to their historic baselines. 

The future losses of ski areas around the world will be significant if global emissions continue unchecked.

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Climate crisis puts Australia’s ski industry on slippery slope, but not all hope is lost

“Our Changing Snowscapes” Report Released

The future is likely less skiable, thanks to climate change

Photo, posted June 6, 2018, courtesy of Clement Tang via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Skiing and climate change

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According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, anthropogenic climate change resulting in higher average temperatures has caused a global decline in snowfall.  Less snow threatens to reinforce global warming, and to disrupt food, water, and livelihoods for billions of people.  

According to a new study recently published in the journal PLOS ONE, annual snow cover days in all major skiing regions are projected to decrease dramatically as a result of climate change.  In the study, the research team from the University of Bayreuth in Germany examined the impact of climate change on annual natural snow cover in seven major skiing regions.  Using the public climate database CHELSA, the researchers predicted annual snow cover days for each ski area for 2011-2040, 2041-2070, and 2071-2100 under low, high, and very high carbon emissions scenarios.

Under the high emissions scenario, 13% of ski areas are predicted to lose all natural snow cover by 2071-2100 relative to their historic baselines.  By 2071-2100, average annual snow cover days were predicted to decline by 78% in the Australian Alps, 51% in the Southern Alps, 50% in the Japanese Alps, 43% in the Andes, 42% in the European Alps, 37% in the Appalachians, and 23% in the the Rocky Mountains – all declines relative to their historic baselines.

The future losses of natural snow cover in ski areas around the world will be significant if global emissions continue unchecked.

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The future is likely less skiable, thanks to climate change

New maps show where snowfall is disappearing

Photo, posted April 14, 2006, courtesy of Kallu via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Record high emissions

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The world is adding solar and wind power to the grid.   We are driving more and more electric cars.  Countries are pledging to cut back fossil fuel use.  There are highly visible international conferences on the climate crisis.   But despite all of these things, global carbon emissions from fossil fuels have risen once again in 2023, reaching all-time record high levels of more than 40 billion tons, about 1.1% more than the previous year.

In some places, including Europe and the U.S., fossil fuel CO2 emissions are falling, but globally, they are still rising.  Emissions continued to increase in India and China.  Global action to cut fossil fuel use is not happening fast enough to prevent the increasingly dangerous effects of climate change.

Global CO2 emissions include both the contributions of fossil fuel use and the effects of land use change.  Adding the two together, in 2023 the total was about 45 billion tons, basically unchanged from last year. 

Adding insult to injury are the emissions from fires.  The extreme wildfire seasons in Canada, Australia, and other places have contributed CO2 emissions much larger than historical averages.

About half of all the carbon dioxide emitted on Earth is absorbed by carbon sinks on land and the oceans.  The other half remains in the atmosphere, where levels are now averaging 419 parts per million, 51% above pre-industrial levels.

Current efforts are simply not profound enough or widespread enough to put global emissions on a downward trajectory.  Some climate policies in some places are proving effective, but much more needs to be done.

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Fossil CO2 emissions at record high in 2023

Photo, posted December 18, 2013, courtesy of Steve Nelson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Carbon Capture: Solution Or Band-Aid? | Earth Wise

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The idea of capturing the CO2 emissions from industry and locking them up is nothing new.  It’s been going on for decades in some places.  Norway’s state-owned oil company Equinor has been holing away a million tons of CO2 a year for a long time.  But overall, CCS – carbon capture and storage – has had very limited use.  As of last year, there were only about 30 large-scale projects in operation around the world, capturing only 0.1% of global emissions.

There is now growing interest in CCS and many new projects are underway.  A combination of rising carbon prices in Europe, tax breaks for CCS in the US, national net-zero targets, and the increasing need to ramp down global emissions are all driving rising CCS activities. 

While recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change still claim that it is possible to remain below 2 degrees Celsius of warming without using carbon capture, there is growing belief that it may be necessary given the present pace of the transition away from fossil fuels.

Two industries that together produce about 14% of global CO2 emissions are cement and steel.  These are both industries for which it is difficult to eliminate emissions regardless of the energy sources used. CCS may be the best approach to reducing their emissions.

But there is considerable pushback against CCS.  The concern is that CCS is primarily a way to delay decarbonization.  It encourages various industries to continue to use fossil fuels instead of shifting away from them.  Nonetheless, CCS no doubt has its place as part of the solution to climate change.

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Solution or Band-Aid? Carbon Capture Projects Are Moving Ahead

Photo, posted June 5, 2022, courtesy of Mark Dixon via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Greenhouse Gas Removal And Net Zero | Earth Wise

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Reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions can slow the progress of global warming but only reaching and sustaining net zero global emissions can halt the progress of climate change.

The move to renewable power and the use of electric transport are substantial and essential ways to reduce emissions.  But even if these transitions take place on a rapid timescale, they will not eliminate all emissions.  Many industrial activities and, especially, agriculture will continue to contribute substantial greenhouse gas emissions.   There are efforts to reduce the contributions of these things, but there are no zero-emission substitutes for most of them.

As a result, actually removing CO2 from the atmosphere once it is there is essential to achieve net zero emissions.  If greenhouse gas removal can be scaled up sufficiently, it opens the option of going “net negative”, which would be the ideal way to mitigate and, better still, reverse the effects of climate change.

There are multiple approaches to carbon dioxide removal.  Some are natural, involving ways of capturing and storing carbon in trees, biochar, and peatlands.  Others are technological.  An example is the system that has just gone into operation in Iceland that uses fans, chemicals, and heat to capture CO2 and then mineralize it in volcanic rock.   Another is a system being tested in the UK that captures CO2 from growing biomass and pipes it to storage under the North Sea.

Much of the attention on carbon capture technology is aimed at trapping the emissions from fossil fuel power plants, but the need to remove carbon dioxide that has entered the atmosphere in other ways is ultimately far greater.

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CO2 removal is essential to achieving net zero

Photo, posted August 17, 2013, courtesy of Joshua Mayer via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Record Carbon Dioxide Levels | Earth Wise

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The coronavirus pandemic caused a temporary dip in the burning of fossil fuels around the world as many human activities were diminished or curtailed entirely.  Despite this, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere set a record in May, reaching the highest levels in human history.

Scientific instruments atop the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii measured an average of 419 parts per million for the month, according to analysis from both the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This level is about half a percent more than the previous record of 417 ppm, set in May of 2020.  Carbon dioxide is the largest greenhouse gas contributor driving global warming and, according to scientists, there hasn’t been this much of it in the atmosphere for millions of years.

Global emissions of carbon dioxide were actually 5.8 percent lower in 2020 than 2019, as a result of pandemic lockdowns.  This was the largest one-year drop ever recorded.  But humanity was still responsible for emitting more than 31 billion tons of carbon dioxide last year.  About half of that CO2 is absorbed by the world’s trees and oceans, but the other half lingers in the atmosphere for thousands of years, gradually warming the planet via the greenhouse effect.

As long as we keep emitting carbon dioxide, it is going to continue to pile up in the atmosphere.  The only way to stop it is for the world’s nations to zero out their net emissions, mostly by switching away from fossil fuels to technologies that do not emit carbon dioxide, such as electric vehicles fueled by wind, solar, or nuclear power.

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Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere Hits Record High Despite Pandemic Dip

Photo, posted August 7, 2013, courtesy of Gerry Machen via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Scaling Up Green Hydrogen | Earth Wise

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The global hydrogen market generates about $150 billion dollars a year.  The bulk of the market consists of hydrogen used to produce ammonia, refine oil, and produce methanol.  Advocates for hydrogen foresee a $600 billion a year market based on power and industry uses, mobility and transport uses, chemical feedstocks, and construction.  But the problem with expanding the use of hydrogen is that the vast majority of hydrogen in use today is produced from fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal and producing it creates carbon dioxide emissions.

The great hope of the industry is “green hydrogen”- hydrogen produced either without using fossil fuels at all or by capturing and storing the emissions generated. The most likely approach is electrolysis – using electricity to produce hydrogen from water.

Billions of dollars are being invested by both governments and by large oil companies in a race to scale up electrolysis and make it economically attractive.  According to the Hydrogen Council industry lobby group, at least $300 billion is expected to be invested globally over the next decade aimed at developing the green hydrogen that could one day meet almost a fifth of global energy demand.

Many argue that producing green hydrogen with electrolysis is an extremely inefficient way to utilize renewable energy.  Critics of hydrogen-powered vehicles particularly make this argument.   But industrial applications of hydrogen that currently use large amounts of fossil fuels – such as steel manufacturing – may be places where green hydrogen would make a real dent in global emissions.

The race to clean up hydrogen is definitely on.

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The Race to Scale Up Green Hydrogen to Help Solve Some of the World’s Dirtiest Energy Problems

Photo, posted December 16, 2020, courtesy of Sharon Hahn Darlin via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Ozone Recovery Back On Track | Earth Wise

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In 2019, we reported that new emissions of chlorofluorocarbons from eastern Asia were threatening the recovery of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere.  An unexpected spike in CFC emissions was threatening to undo the progress made under the Montreal Protocol, the international treaty under which every country in the world agreed to phase out the production and use of the ozone-eating chemicals by 2010.

In 2018, a team of scientists reported the spike in emissions of the particular formulation CFC-11 that began in 2013.  By 2019, a second team reported that a significant portion of the emissions could be traced to the Shandong and Hebie provinces in China where there were small factories using the chemical to manufacture foam insulation used in refrigerators and buildings.

Recently, in two papers published in Nature, the same two research teams reported that the global annual emissions of CFC-11 into the atmosphere have declined sharply.   They traced a substantial fraction of the global emission reductions to the very same regions of eastern China where they had previously reported the original spike. 

The results are very encouraging.   If CFC-11 emissions had continued to rise, or even just level off, there would have been real problems with ozone depletion.  Two independent global monitoring networks – one operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and one led by MIT called the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment – are doing a good job of detecting threats to the world’s protective ozone layer.  However, the Chinese sources only accounted for about half of the CFC-11 entering the atmosphere.  We still don’t know where the rest of it is coming from.

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Reductions in CFC-11 emissions put ozone recovery back on track

Return of an Old Threat

Photo, posted July 29, 2015, courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Global Emissions And The Coronavirus Shutdown | Earth Wise

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With so much of industry and personal activity curtailed by coronavirus shutdowns across the globe, it is no surprise that greenhouse gas emissions have declined.  According to new research published in the journal Nature Climate Change, average daily global greenhouse gas emissions declined 17% by early April compared to 2019 levels.

If the reopenings around the world continue and the world actually reaches pre-crisis levels by the middle of June, total CO2 emissions for the year would likely end up lower by about 4%.   If various restrictions continue until the end of the year, total global emissions could decline by 7%.

The study analyzed emissions estimates for three levels of coronavirus shutdowns and across six sectors of the economy.  It looked at trends in 69 countries, all 50 U.S. states, and 30 Chinese provinces, representing in total 86% of the world’s population and 97% of global CO2 emissions.

For the first 4 months of the year, emissions from industry declined 19%, the power sector 7%, and public buildings and commerce 21%, compared to last year.  Unsurprisingly, home energy use actually went up by about 3%.

The findings of this study only represent the effects of a short-lived decline in emissions.  As economies open back up, there is no doubt that greenhouse gas emissions will rise back to pre-Covid-19 levels.

The study also reveals that making real changes in emissions will require more than just behavior changes.  Despite billions of people staying home, companies shut down, planes grounded, and cars off the road, we still managed to pump more than 80% of the usual amount of greenhouse gases into the air for the first quarter of the year.

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Global Emissions Fell 17 Percent Due to Coronavirus Shutdowns

Photo, posted May 7, 2020, courtesy of the MTA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Forecasting A Bad Year For Carbon

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Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years, and they continue to grow.  The United Kingdom’s national meteorological service – known as the Met Office – issues annual predictions of global CO2 levels based in part on readings taken at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii.  Their forecast for this year is that there will be one of the largest rises in atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration in the 62 years of measurements at Mauna Loa.

Since 1958, there has been a 30% increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  This has been caused by emissions from fossil fuels, deforestation and cement production.  The increase would actually have been even larger if it were not for natural carbon sinks in the form of various ecosystems that soak up some of the excess CO2.

Weather patterns linked to year-by-year swings in Pacific Ocean temperatures are known to affect the uptake of carbon dioxide by land ecosystems.  In years with a warmer tropical Pacific – such as El Niño years – many regions become warmer and drier, which limits the ability of plants to grow and to absorb CO2 .  The opposite happens when the Pacific is cool, as was the case last year.

The Met Office predicts that the contribution of natural carbon sinks will be relatively weak, so the impact of human-caused emissions will be larger than last year.  The predicted rise in atmospheric CO2 is 2.75 parts-per-million, which is among the highest rises on record.  The forecast for the average carbon dioxide concentration is 411 ppm, with peak monthly averages reaching almost 415 ppm.  With global emissions not really declining, the numbers just get higher and higher.

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Faster CO₂ rise expected in 2019

Photo, posted March 18, 2006, courtesy of Darin Marshall via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rising Again

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If we want to avoid drastic global warming this century, we need to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions over time.   For the previous three years, emissions had been holding steady, but last year, global emissions from the use of coal, oil and natural gas increased by 1.4%.  According to the International Energy Agency, this unfortunate new data should serve as a strong warning that we need to increase our efforts to combat climate change.

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