One of the greatest stories of Antarctic exploration – late one night, exhausted after a days work on the still mostly unknown depths of southern polar ice – Claude Lorius famously chipped some ice from an Antarctic core into a glass of whiskey, and observed the fizzing and popping as trapped air bubbles melted and escaped. He reasoned, correctly, that the air bubbles represented micro samples of the ancient atmosphere trapped when that ice was first forming.z
One of science’s greatest eureka moments. That insight lead to a revolution in scientific understanding of how changing atmospheric composition interacted with ice sheets and sea level in the past, and how it will affect us in the future.
Claude Lorius, a leading glaciologist whose expeditions helped prove that humans were responsible for global warming, has died at the age of 91.
He led 22 expeditions to Greenland and Antarctica during his lifetime.
It was during one trip to Antarctica in 1965 where an evening of whiskey with ice cubes led him to prove humankind’s role in the heating of the Earth’s surface.
Lorius died on Tuesday morning in the French region of Burgundy.
It was his love of adventure which set him on the path to identifying and predicting an impending catastrophe for the planet.
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Decades later, Jason Box repeated the experiment for me in Greenland, at the Kangerlussuaq International Science Support facility.
This animation of Michael Thomas’ graph comparing current mining for fossil fuels vs mining needed for the clean transition is spot on, and can’t be shared often enough.
Meltwater Pulse 1A is scientist’s name for a period during the warmup from the last glacial period (as the Earth’s axis slowly tilted more in the direction of the sun over 10,000 years or so, warming especially the northern polar regions) when a gradual ice retreat turned into a torrent of meltwater, and sea levels rose approximately a meter every 20 years or so, for 400 years. Since producing the above video, I’ve heard more qualifiers from other scientists. Andrea Dutton PhD cautioned me that, coming out of the ice age, an enormous ice sheet covered what is now Canada, and was exposed to a strong warming – a larger area of ice than we have today. Eric Rignot has since underlined what he said in the video above, that, even as ice sheets destabilize, strong human action to limit greenhouse warming could slow the process greatly, making it much more likely humans can adapt. 10 meters of Sea Level rise over 800 or a thousand years is one thing. Over 200 years, something else. Meanwhile, worth remembering that the physics of glacial dynamics are only partially understood, we keep discovering new dynamics of glacial melt, that allow for rapid ice loss not seen in historical human experience. With that in mind, new research gives us pause.
A new study of the seafloor near the coast of northern Norway brings an ominous warning from the past, showing that some of the planet’s ice sheets retreated in pulses of nearly 2,000 feet per day as the oceans warmed at the end of the last ice age.
The international research team documented that rate of retreat by mapping and measuring what they called “corrugation ridges” spread across about 11,000 square miles of the seabed. The ridges are generally less than 8 feet high and are spaced between about 80 and 1,000 feet apart. They were formed about 20,000 years ago, as the retreating ice sheet moved up and down with tidal rhythms, floating free at high tide and pushing sediments into a ridge at the point where the ice meets the seafloor at every low tide.
The daily tidal cycles produce two ridges per day, enabling the scientists to calculate that the rate of retreat was up to 20 times faster than has previously been measured anywhere else, said co-author Frazer Christie, a polar scientist with the Scott Polar Research Center at the University of Cambridge.
“It’s probably likely, in my opinion, that this rapid buoyancy driven course of retreat could be all that’s needed to set in motion a chain of events that spirals into a more runaway style of retreat,” he said.
Scientists monitor ice sheet retreat rates to better estimate contributions to global sea level rise. Antarctica and Greenland have lost more than 6.4 trillion tons of ice since the 1990s, boosting global sea levels by at least 0.7 inches (17.8 millimeters). Together, the two ice sheets are responsible for more than one-third of total sea level rise.
The rapid retreat found on the Eurasian Ice Sheet far outpaces the fastest-moving glaciers studied in Antarctica, which have been measured to retreat as quickly as 160 feet per day. Once the ice retreats toward the land, it lifts from its grounding on the seafloor and begins to float, allowing it to flow faster and increase the contribution to sea level rise.
A study by researchers at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire used data from 100,000 Major League Baseball games and 220,000 individually hit balls to show that higher temperatures increase the number of balls hit out of the park.
They found that between 2010 and 2019, global heating led on average to an extra 58 home runs a year. Since 6,776 home runs were hit in the record-setting 2019 season, the effect is modest. But each degree Celsius of future warming is associated with about 95 more home runs a season, they said. If the climate crisis was not mitigated, rising temperatures could be responsible for a 10% increase by the end of the century.
“When you have warmer temperatures you have lower air density, and when you have lower air density you have less drag on a flying object, whether that’s a baseball or an aeroplane,” said Justin Mankin, an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth and senior author of the study published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. “On a warm day as opposed to a cool day you should expect more home runs.”
The authors accounted for a number of other influences, including covered stadiums, manufacturing variabilities in bats and balls, use of performance-enhancing drugs and the effect of modern sports analytics. They found the biggest home run surge was liable to take place at Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, because it hosts a large number of daytime games, meaning hotter temperatures than at night.
Though the Texas Rangers’ previous ballpark opened as recently as 1994, the summer heat in the Dallas region proved so uncomfortable that the club moved to a climate-controlled $1.2bn new stadium with a retractable roof in 2020. Among the league’s 30 stadiums, eight have retractable or fixed roofs.
“More roofs on ballparks is going to be unavoidable. That is frustrating,” said Christopher Callahan, the lead author of the study. “One of the joys of baseball is sitting in the open air, sitting under the blue sky and the breeze.” However, he added: “At a certain point over the course of the next couple of decades it’s going to be unsafe to play baseball games in very high temperatures.”
As well as the effect of heat on players, staff and fans, American stadiums near water, including venues in Florida, California and New York, are vulnerable to risks such as rising sea levels and more intense hurricanes.
Not just wind turbines and solar panels – there is a broad based attack on the energy transition. A population of paranoid, conspiracist, aggrieved and confused Americans, lost in the disinformation rabbit holes of social media, has been weaponized by the fossil fuel industry.
MECOSTA COUNTY, Mich., (WPBN/WGTU) — A proposed battery plant in Mecosta County could bring thousands of jobs to the area.
But right now, the company is bringing hundreds of questions.
On Wednesday night, representatives from the company and the county held and online panel to address some of the community’s concerns.
The company’s ties to China, the environmental impact and threatening the small-town atmosphere.
Those are the three main categories of concerns surrounding Gotion Inc.’s proposal to build a $2.4 billion electric vehicle battery plant in Big Rapids.
“None of these claims are true, they don’t have any basis in facts whatsoever,” said Gotion North America Vice President Chuck Thelen. “So we will provide the truth to all of these topics tonight.”
Thelen was in the hot seat on Wednesday night, as he fielded questions over Gotion, which was founded in China.
Some community members have expressed concern that Gotion Inc. will promote communist ideas in the area.
“I’ve never seen or heard of any kind of push to bring some underground communist plot into Big Rapids,” Thelen said.
“I have never, ever, witnessed any type of activity in this company that suggests that the Chinese government runs the company,” Thelen said.
When it comes to environmental concerns, some are worried about the plant’s impact on area’s water supply.
“Our water consumption will be roughly 715,000 gallons per day,” Thelen said. “That is 50% of the pump capacity that’s at the current wells on the Big Rapids Township property. There are two wells; we only need one.”
Thelen added there should be no concern of any pollution passing through the plant and going into the ground or rivers.
“The water that we use never even comes in contact with materials that we process,” Thelen said. “If you get these materials wet, you destroy the materials. So no, we will not be pumping materials or minerals or chemicals into the water.”
Gotion said the plant will create 2,350 jobs by 2030.
While Gotion plans to bring in 20 to 50 people from outside the U.S. to get the plant up and running, Thelen said they will not be permanent workers and he will prioritize hiring locals.
“This plan will be run by Michiganders, I hope I will be the first one,” Thelen said. “And then whoever succeeds me, hopefully they’re Michigander. If not, they’ll be an American.”
A protest against the proposed plant was held near the campus of Ferris State University where community members held signs and voiced opposition, including 2024 Republican presidential candidate Perry Johnson.
In some ways, though, Russia’s most important defeat has come not on the battlefield but on the economic front. I said that Russia has launched four great offensives; the fourth was the attempt to blackmail European democracies into dropping their support for Ukraine by cutting off their supplies of natural gas.
There were reasons to be concerned about this attempt to weaponize energy supplies. While the Russian invasion of Ukraine initially disrupted markets for several commodities — Russia is a major oil producer, and both Russia and Ukraine were major agricultural exporters before the war — natural gas seemed like an especially serious pressure point. Why? Because it isn’t really traded on a global market. The cheapest way to ship gas is via pipelines, and it wasn’t obvious how Europe would replace Russian gas if the supply were cut off.
So many people, myself included, worried about the effects of a de facto Russian gas embargo. Would it cause a European recession? Would hard times in Europe undermine willingness to keep aiding Ukraine?
Well, the big story — a story that hasn’t received much play in the news media, because it’s hard to report on things that didn’thappen — is that Europe has weathered the loss of Russian supplies remarkably well. Euro area unemployment hasn’t gone up at all; inflation did surge, but European governments have managed, through a combination of price controls and financial aid, to limit (but not eliminate) the amount of personal hardship created by high gas prices.
And Europe has managed to keep functioning despite the cutoff of most Russian gas. Partly this reflects a turn to other sources of gas, including liquefied natural gas shipped from the United States; partly it reflects conservation efforts that have reduced demand. Some of it reflects a temporary return to coal-fired electricity generation; much of it reflects the fact that Europe already gets a large share of its energy from renewables.
Hurricanes, typhoons and tropical storms may be more powerful than usual this year thanks to a record-breaking spike in global ocean temperatures.
The global average sea surface temperature hit a record high of 21.1°C on 1 April, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US and compiled by the University of Maine.
This beats the previous record of 21°C set in March 2016, and is more than 0.5°C warmer than is typical for this time of year, according to the 30-year average.
Climate change impacts threaten the stability of the US housing market. In response to growing concerns that increasing costs of flooding are not fully captured in property values, we quantify the magnitude of unpriced flood risk in the housing market by comparing the empirical and economically efficient prices for properties at risk. We find that residential properties exposed to flood risk are overvalued by US$121–US$237 billion, depending on the discount rate. In general, highly overvalued properties are concentrated in counties along the coast with no flood risk disclosure laws and where there is less concern about climate change. Low-income households are at greater risk of losing home equity from price deflation, and municipalities that are heavily reliant on property taxes for revenue are vulnerable to budgetary shortfalls. The consequences of these financial risks will depend on policy choices that influence who bears the costs of climate change.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa—Officials in this city in eastern Iowa have long sought to build a system of levees and walls to prevent the Cedar River from flooding its banks and soaking homes and businesses.
But to construct the more than $550 million flood-control system, Cedar Rapids officials say they must seize the land of some 20 homeowners who live in a low-income area along the riverfront.
“Unfortunately,” said Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell, there are families “that are paying the price for the safety of the entire city.”
Proposed after a 2008 flood temporarily displaced 10,000 people in the city of 136,000, the project is an example of the challenges municipal leaders can face as they seek to insulate their residents from natural disasters, a threat made more urgent by climate change, experts in flood buyouts say.
The frequency of floods, fires and storms has led some to say that entire communities need to be relocated, in some instances. But even dislocation on a smaller scale poses significant challenges. “No one has figured out how to actually make this work,” said John Lovett,a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans who has written about the use of buyouts and eminent domain after disasters.
City and state officials generally have broad authority to take land if it is for public use—a term interpreted with deference to the government, legal experts say—and if they compensate landowners for it.
In Cedar Rapids, the concerns about this process, known as eminent domain, have been magnified. Many of the affected homeowners see the proceedings as a land grab that would be used not exclusively for flood protection, but to beautify a city where home prices have risen markedly in recent years. Their houses are in a historically working-class neighborhood called Time Check, which was named for the postdated pay stubs its residents were once given when the railroads they worked for were short of cash.
“They have a vision,” said Ajai Dittmar, 51 years old, who grew up in Time Check, “and we’re not part of it.”
Oil workers are racing to get as much prep work done as possible, for the recently approved Willow oil drilling project, before winter’s frozen ground gives way to squishy mud and makes working impossible.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to make Conoco Phillip’s controversial initiative a legendary example of hubris and business miscalculation.
It’s been just days since the Biden administration approved an $8 billion project to drill for oil in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the nation’s single largest expanse of untouched wilderness. But the oil giant ConocoPhillips is already in motion, massing equipment and flying in workers and provisions to this vast frozen flatland 250 miles above the Arctic Circle. –
While scientists have warned that nations must stop approving new oil and gas drilling or face a perilous future on a dangerously heated planet, the people involved in the Willow project are eager to get going.
Executives at ConocoPhillips are building an operation to last generations with, perhaps, an eye toward even further expansion inside the reserve at a later date. Like other oil giants that earned record profits in 2022, the company is betting that any pivot away from fossil fuels will take place in a distant future.
A transition to renewable energy is going to take a long time, said Connor Dunn, a ConocoPhillips manager in Alaska. “There is going to be a significant need for U.S. domestic oil production for a great many decades to come,” he said. – But even as ConocoPhillips gears up to build Willow, it faces complications on a planet that is dangerously warming because of the burning of fossil fuels. Average temperatures in the Arctic are increasing about four times as fast as the rest of the globe, and the permafrost is thawing faster than expected. –
The effects can be seen throughout the region that surrounds the reserve: in flooded ice cellars that can no longer preserve caribou and whale meat. In homes along the coast that are sinking into the ground, and in telephone poles now tilting from erosion. And it can be seen on the ice roads traveled by the oil company, which are growing thinner and melting earlier in the season. –
Changes like these will make drilling in the Arctic, already one of the most expensive places in the world to extract oil, only costlier.
Global warming presents other economic challenges as well. Will there be demand for the oil in years to come, as renewable power like solar and wind becomes cheaper and more widespread? This is perhaps ConocoPhillips’s biggest gamble.
At the earliest, the crude would begin flowing in about six years. By that time, the Biden administration hopes that demand for oil will have plummeted because of federal investments to encourage use of renewable energy and to encourage a transition to electric vehicles.
The threat that demand for oil will hit a peak, and then decline, is a risk that all oil companies take as they begin new drilling, said Roger Marks, a longtime petroleum economist in Alaska.
“The stone age did not come to an end for a lack of stone,” Mr. Marks said, making the point that he expected the same would be true with oil. “That’s the long-term risk these companies face with electric cars and wind and hydro and everything else,” he said. “Eventually oil is going to go away, even if there’s still some to produce
The frequency of tornado outbreaks (clusters of tornadoes) and the number of extremely powerful tornado events have been increasing over nearly the past half-century in the United States. Tippett et al. found that tornado outbreaks have become more common since the 1970s. This increase seems to have been driven by consistent changes in the meteorological environment that make tornadoes more likely to form. However, the changes are not necessarily those that one would expect from climate change, which makes it difficult to predict whether this trend will continue.
One in three U.S. adults report they have been personally affected by an extreme weather event in the past two years. Most commonly, they report experiencing extreme cold, hurricanes, or snow, ice storms or blizzards.
The results are based on Gallup’s annual Environment poll, conducted March 1-18. This marks the first time Gallup has asked Americans about their experiences with extreme weather events as part of this survey.
Residents of the South (39%) and West (35%) are significantly more likely than those living in the East (24%) and Midwest (27%) to say they have recently experienced an extreme weather event.
Southern residents are most likely to say they were affected by extreme cold (12%) or hurricanes (12%) and, to a lesser extent, tornadoes (7%).
Among Western residents, wildfires (13%), extreme heat (8%) and drought (7%) are most commonly reported.
Floods (6%) and hurricanes (6%) are the most frequent responses among Eastern residents, while Midwestern residents most often mention snow or ice storms (7%), floods (6%), or tornadoes (6%).
Extreme-Weather Victims More Concerned About Climate Change
Many scientists attribute recent extreme weather patterns to the effects of climate change or global warming. Gallup’s annual Environment survey tracks a number of measures of climate-change concern and attitudes. In general, extreme-weather victims worry more about climate change and are more likely to view it as a threat than those who have not experienced extreme weather in the past two years.
For example, 63% of those who have been affected by extreme weather worry “a great deal” about global warming or climate change, compared with 33% who have not been affected.
Nearly eight in 10 extreme-weather victims, 78%, believe the effects of global warming have already begun, compared with 51% of nonvictims. Sixty-four percent of victims and 36% of nonvictims say global warming will pose a serious threat to their way of life during their lifetime.
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In Gallup’s survey, those who report personal impacts of extreme weather are:
29 percentage points more likely to believe seriousness of global warming is “generally underestimated” in the news
28 percentage points more likely to say global warming will pose “a serious threat” to their way of life
20 percentage points more likely to agree with prioritizing environmental protection over economic growth
A string of recent victories for progressive candidates has underscored the power, especially, of young voters in the United States, for whom climate is a top line issue, coming out in historically large numbers, and overwhelmingly supporting candidates who share the concern about climate change.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 