Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse

Scientists monitoring the world's largest penguin species used satellites to assess sixteen colonies in the Antarctic Peninsula, Weddell Sea and Bellingshausen Sea, representing nearly a third of the global emperor penguin population.

What they found was "probably about 50-percent worse" than even the most pessimistic estimate of current populations using computer modelling, said Peter Fretwell, who tracks wildlife from space at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Researchers know that climate change is driving the losses but the speed of the declines is a particular cause for alarm.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/23200651

archived (Wayback Machine)

Our alternative—the only alternative—is to work to slow the filling of our pool.

The Climate Bathtub Model

Fifteen years ago, smack in the middle of Barack Obama's first term, amid the rapid rise of social media and a slow recovery from the Great Recession, a professor at the University of Connecticut issued a stark warning: the United States was heading into a decade of growing political instability.

It sounded somewhat contrarian at the time. The global economy was clawing back from the depths of the financial crisis, and the American political order still seemed anchored in post-Cold War optimism — though cracks were beginning to emerge, as evidenced by the Tea Party uprising. But Peter Turchin, an ecologist-turned-historian, had the data

"Quantitative historical analysis reveals that complex human societies are affected by recurrent—and predictable—waves of political instability," Turchin wrote in the journal Nature in 2010, forecasting a spike in unrest around 2020, driven by economic inequality, "elite overproduction" and rising public debt.

Now, with the nation consumed by polarization in the early months of a second Donald Trump presidency, institutional mistrust at all-time highs, and deepening political conflict, Turchin's prediction appears to have landed with uncanny accuracy.

The new study, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, looked at medical records for more than 3,000 children born in Colorado between 1992 and 2019. The researchers found that children who were diagnosed with leukemia between the ages of two and nine were more than twice as likely to live within five kilometers — about three miles — of dense oil and gas development compared to healthy children. The study also found that Children who’d been diagnosed with leukemia during this time period were between 1.4 and 2.64 times more likely to live within 13 kilometers (about eight miles) of dense oil and gas development.

Farmer suicides have a long history in India, where many are one crop failure away from disaster, but extreme weather caused by climate change is adding fresh pressure.

Dwindling yields due to water shortages, floods, rising temperatures and erratic rainfall, coupled with crippling debt, have taken a heavy toll on a sector that employs 45 percent of India's 1.4 billion people.

Mirabhai's husband Amol was left with debts to loan sharks worth hundreds of times their farm's annual income, after the three-acre (one-hectare) soybean, millet and cotton plot withered in scorching heat.

He swallowed poison last year.

"When he was in the hospital, I prayed to all the gods to save him," said 30-year-old Mirabai, her voice breaking.

Amol died a week later, leaving behind Mirabai and three children. Her last conversation with him was about debt

The world’s oceans are in worse health than realised, scientists have said today, as they warn that a key measurement shows we are “running out of time” to protect marine ecosystems.

Ocean acidification, often called the “evil twin” of the climate crisis, is caused when carbon dioxide is rapidly absorbed by the ocean, where it reacts with water molecules leading to a fall in the pH level of the seawater. It damages coral reefs and other ocean habitats and, in extreme cases, can dissolve the shells of marine creatures.

However, a new study by the UK’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), the Washington-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University’s Co-operative Institute for Marine Resources Studies found that ocean acidification’s “boundary” was also reached about five years ago.

The study drew on new and historical physical and chemical measurements from ice cores, combined with advanced computer models and studies of marine life, which gave the scientists an overall assessment of the past 150 years.

It found that by 2020 the average ocean condition worldwide was already very close to – and in some regions beyond – the planetary boundary for ocean acidification. This is defined as when the concentration of calcium carbonate in seawater is more than 20% below preindustrial levels.

The deeper in the ocean they looked, the worse the findings were, the scientists said. At 200 metres below the surface, 60% of global waters had breached the “safe” limit for acidification.

“Most ocean life doesn’t just live at the surface,” said PML’s Prof Helen Findlay. “The waters below are home to many more different types of plants and animals. Since these deeper waters are changing so much, the impacts of ocean acidification could be far worse than we thought.”

Although Caribbean island nations account for only a small fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions, they are disproportionately affected by climate change. This has prompted calls for the world’s wealthiest nations to provide substantial financial support to help small island nations strengthen their adaptive capacity.

“We can’t make it the responsibility of these small island states, when the world’s richest countries have historically been the largest emitters of greenhouse gases,” Cloos said.

The study: What can be said about risks, vulnerabilities, and adaptation to climate change in Caribbean small island developing states (SIDS)? The case of Dominica. A qualitative study

It's a vicious cycle. As sea ice melts and opens new routes for maritime traffic in the Arctic, the environmental fallout caused by vessels burning fossil fuels adds to global warming, which in turn melts more sea ice.

A perfect example of this is black carbon. It's a sooty material emitted from gas and diesel engines that aren't completely combusted. Not only does black carbon pollute the air with particulate matter, but because of its ability to absorb light as heat, it contributes to climate change by warming the air.

When black carbon is deposited on ice in the Arctic, it takes away its ability to reflect heat.

On the Berkeley data, the PLF10 model estimates the final value at 1.41 ± 0.10 °C and final warming rate at 0.38 ± 0.14 °C/decade (2σ confidence intervals).

If the globe continues to warm at that rate, then we’ll cross the 1.5 °C limit of the Paris Climate Accord before the year 2030.

NGO says Afghan capital’s 7 million people face existential crisis that world needs urgently to address

The Mercy Corps report can be found here: Kabul’s Water Crisis - An Inflection Point for Action

Rocket fire, artillery shelling, and explosive devices, such as land mines, from both militaries have ravaged Ukraine’s landscapes and ecosystems. Over a third of all carbon emissions in Ukraine stem from warfare — the largest share of any sector in the country. Fighting has triggered destructive wildfires in heavily forested and agricultural grassland regions of eastern Ukraine. From February 2022 through September 2024, almost 5 million acres burned, nearly three-quarters of which are in or adjacent to the conflict zone.

This is why a collective of forestry scientists in Ukraine and abroad are working together to study war-driven wildfires and other forest destruction, as well as map unexploded ordnance that could spur degradation down the road. The efforts aim to improve deployment of firefighting and other resources to save the forests. It is welcome work, but far from easy during a war, when their efforts come with life-threatening consequences.

“The shelling, it’s an explosive wave, the fire makes everything unrecognizable,” a medic with the National Guard 13th Khartiya Brigade told the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in March. “When they get up, the forest is different, it has all changed.”

When you introduce war, you create fires that can’t be effectively extinguished. “You cannot fly aircraft to suppress fire with water because that aircraft will be shot down,” Maksym Matsala, a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, explained.

Forests and agricultural land are woven together across Ukraine, meaning wildfires also endanger the country’s food supply. Battle-sparked blazes destroy harvests and eliminate the trees that shelter cropland from drying winds and erosion that can lead to drought — leaving those on the military front lines and Ukrainian citizens at risk of food insecurity.

https://archive.ph/tadCp

The study

Climate experts such as University of Pennsylvania scientist Michael Mann have for years argued that carbon capture and storage is a false solution to the climate crisis that allows oil and gas companies to suck up huge amounts of public money while continuing to pump fossil fuels.

A jumble of shipping containers hold all that remains of the demolished public school in Newtok, Alaska, where on a recent visit, a few stray dogs and a lone ermine prowled among the ruins.

Late in 2024, the final residents of this sinking village near the Bering Sea left behind the waterlogged tundra of their former home, part of a fraught, federally funded effort to resettle communities threatened by climate change.

Nearly 300 people from Newtok have moved 9 miles across the Ninglick River to a new village known as Mertarvik, but much of the infrastructure there is already failing. Residents lack running water, use 5-gallon buckets as toilets, and must contend with intermittent electricity and deteriorating homes that expose them to the region’s fierce weather.

Newtok’s relocation was supposed to provide a model for dozens of Alaskan communities that will need to move in the coming decades. Instead, those who’ve worked on the effort say that what happened in Newtok demonstrates the federal government’s failure to oversee the complex project and understand communities’ unique cultural needs. It also highlights how ill-prepared the United States is to respond to the way climate change is making some places uninhabitable, according to an investigation by The Washington Post, ProPublica, and KYUK Public Media in Bethel, Alaska.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/36057050

Archived

China and India have approved the construction of the largest capacity of new coal-fired power plants in a decade, as the world’s two most populous nations seek to bolster energy security, according to the International Energy Agency.

China gave the green light to almost 100 gigawatts of new coal-fired plants in 2024, and India a further 15 gigawatts, pushing global approvals to their highest level since 2015, the Paris-based agency said.

“The capacity in coal is increasing,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in an interview as the agency published its annual World Energy Investment report. “But we also see that the capacity utilization rate in China is lower than in previous years, they are mainly using this when there are major challenges to meet the electricity demand.”

AI’s Need for Power Spurs Return of Dirty Gas Turbines Senate to Reinstate US Public Lands Sale to Pay for Tax Cuts European Power Markets Brace for Extreme Heat Over the Summer Coal Power Costs Climb Just as Trump Wants to Prop Up the Fuel

Investments in coal supply continue to tick upward with another 4% increase expected in 2025, a slight slowdown compared with the 6% annual average growth seen over the last five years, the IEA said. “Nearly all the growth in coal investments in 2024 came from China and India to meet domestic demand,” according to the report.

Trends in coal and other carbon-intensive sources may not be conducive to meeting global climate targets.

[...]

Japan’s struggle to encourage couples to have more children has been given greater urgency after data showed the annual number of births dropped to below 700,000 for the first time since records began more than a century ago.

According to government data released this week, the number of births reached 686,061 in 2024, a decline of 5.7% from the previous year and the lowest since statistics were first kept in 1899. The data excludes babies born to foreign residents.

The fertility rate – the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime – also fell to a record-low of 1.15, down from 1.20 in 2023, the health ministry said. That is well below the rate of 2.1 needed to keep the population stable. The ministry said 1.6m deaths had been recorded in 2024, up 1.9% from a year earlier.

If current trends persists, Japan’s population of about 124 million is projected to fall to 87 million by 2070, when 40% of the population will be 65 or over.

A shrinking and ageing population could have serious implications for the economy and national security, as the country seeks to boost its military to counter potential threats from China and North Korea.