Environmental news - Rochester, NY

Drilling for heat on a quickly warming planet

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 13:06:00 +0000

As I write this essay for my last RENewsletter, drillers are seeking heat far below our driveway so my wife and I can enjoy the befits of geothermal heating and cooling without warming up the planet more. Even though we have an old (1898) City house, we’re trying to have a sustainable existence, using solar panels for some of our electricity use, composting our leftovers, and growing ground cover in places rather than grass. Living in the City allows us to walk to many of our destinations and our plug-in hybrid electric car uses electricity for the first twenty miles—which is within most of the places we go.

It's not enough, of course.

As we go further into Climate Changemany of us will be changing how we get our energy, our heat, our food, and how we get about. But they’re not cheap and unless more of our economy, our nation, and the world move quickly to a much lower footprint on our environment, our efforts will just make us feel good without dealing with the #ClimareCrisis.

Since I began my website in 1998, the world has changed. It’s gotten warmer and more disruptive. It was 365ppm of carbon dioxide then and now it’s about 412—and climbing rapidly. My idea as I began my website RochesterEnvironment.com and later my weekly RENewsletter was to share my growing concerns about our increasingly compromised environment (our life support system) with the public and provide links on the Internet with the best and most useful information possible. Just as humanity was stricken with the most devastating, existential threat to life on Earth, the internet was blossoming into the greatest communication vehicle ever. Many of us bloggers were heady with the prospect of sharing the vast and timely information and concerns about the growing #ClimateCrisis with everyone. The greatest feature that comes with being human is working together to solve big problems, so I thought.

Or, I may have been laboring under a naïve assumption that given the facts of climate science and the evidence of Climate Change impacts for the last decade, we’d see dramatic changes in our collective behavior towards our planet—and each other. I didn’t really imagine that we’d drag our feet for so long and let this crisis get out of hand. Million, perhaps billions of concerned individuals have stepped up their game on addressing Climate Change, but nowhere nearly enough to solve this crisis on a scale and time frame that will matter.

At this point in our journey, Earth Day 2022, humanity has moved somewhat towards what climate scientists think we should be doing, but Climate Change is a vast complex issue involving complex natural systems we barely understand, With our planet filled will over 7 billion people and our infrastructures, wars, pandemics, and political intransigence, we’re going to be struggling just to adapt—let alone give our children and those who have long been treated unfairly a bright and cooler future.

I’ve tried to think of Climate Change as a new philosophically important venue as humanity now must live an existence quite different from the world that we thrived on for 10,000 years. We’ll need to monitor our planet’s vital signs and shift our behaviors accordingly for the foreseeable future. Humanity is not just another life form on Earth, we a critical factor in the forces driving our climate and life. Climate Change has implications for humanity past thinkers could not have imagined, including a world with increased tipping points that might quickly overwhelm us.

I will end my weekly RENewsletter after this edition, but I will continue to search for clarity and a sense of priority emerging from the #ClimateCrisis and post on my website and my essay blog—Environmental Thoughts. Until I don’t.

Time passes.

Weather reporting during Climate Change

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 10:29:00 +0000

For a long time, local weather reporting could have done a much better job at connecting local weather and Climate Change, better informing the public of the big picture. Now, with more data and better apps perhaps they can improve.

As climate change intensifies extreme weather, local newspapers see a bright future in meteorology “Every phone has a weather app on it. So where do you add value, layer in expertise?” Weather has long been a staple of local TV news. But as climate change makes extreme weather events like droughts, blizzards, and fires more frequent and severe, weather is becoming an even bigger part of people’s daily lives — and local newspapers see an opportunity. Some news outlets are leaving the “bring your umbrella”-type daily forecasts to the TV meteorologists and “rain starts in 15 minutes” to the weather apps, aiming to add value in deeper reporting. Others are seeking to compete directly with the meteorology departments that have been a staple of local TV news. (April 11, 2022) NiemanLab [more on Climate Change in our area]

A great opportunity to educate the public and prove the links between local weather and Climate Change projections has been lost because most local media were probably too timid and unimaginative to take on this responsibility to inform the public about this worldwide crisis. In fact, their silence on the matter probably convinced a large proportion of the public that Climate Change wasn’t real (otherwise, wouldn’t our local weather experts be covering it?).

The #ClimateCrisis covers the climate of our entire planet, but the changes, the impacts, are expressed locally—more extreme weather, more wildfires, more droughts, more health impacts where we live. If local media had taken up their responsibility earlier, had read critical climate reports, like the one that just came out last week (Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change), and connected the dots of the crucial information in the reports with what was being reported locally, it is likely the public would have a greater grasp and acceptance of the science behind Climate Change and all the possible impacts in local regions so the public and their leaders would be more prepared to adapt and help bring down planetary temperatures by more readily changing to renewable energy options in their area.

But they didn’t. They ignored this existential crisis, or outright denied it, or refused to include it in local issues such as the siting of renewable energy projects, or more shoreline flooding, or any of the myriad issues that affect our lives and environment.

Many opportunities, in the form of a television format that came to everyone’s home every day, have been missed but there is still time for local weather reporting to make important contributions for getting humanity busy on addressing Climate Change. Much needs to be done to prepare our region for Climate Change, including damping the propensity of the public to ignore or deny this crisis. And local weather reporting, especially with the tools and data available on the internet, can better prepare us for a quickly warming world by making it clear that our local infrastructures (water, energy, telecommunications, waste removal, and transportation) are more resilient and robust. Though the worst of the warming is happening in other places in the world—in the Arctic, the Antarctic, island nations, and the tropics—the impacts of global warming are still happening in the Rochester region too. (See more of the Climate Change impacts in Rochester’s CLIMATE ACTION PLAN]

Further, the threat of tipping points will bring Climate Change threats to our doorsteps with us unprepared—mostly because Climate Change has for so long felt to be inconvenient and not connected to our lives in this region.

There isn’t such a clear boundary between weather and climate as there used to be because both are now changing in lockstep tending towards warming and our ability to deal with them potentially being overwhelmed. How we report and process this new reality should grow with our need to monitor this crisis in such a way that we make the best of a bad situation and doing so while being mindful of the inherent equality issues.

Our ability to increase our ability to monitor changes in the weather isn’t just about planning farther ahead so we can avoid extreme weather events. It’s also about how we can make sound and fair decisions so everyone can adapt to this crisis and in doing so help us bring down our planet’s temperature. With new technology and more data, come more awareness and responsibility for our future.

Time passes.

Another Climate Change report as the world quickly warms

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 11:01:00 +0000

The latest IPCC report admits that while dire all hope is not lost for addressing Climate Changein time.

The Window for Climate Action Has Not Yet Closed Today marks the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report on the Mitigation of Climate Change as part of the Sixth Assessment Cycle. The report was approved by 195 government delegations and we thank the report’s authors for all of the work on its preparation. Last month’s Working Group II Report on Adaptation, Impacts and Vulnerability laid bare the impacts that will be felt if temperature is not limited to an increase of 1.5C. Today’s report on mitigation makes it clearer than ever that the window of opportunity to achieve this is rapidly closing. Global emissions continue to rise, and the emissions pathways implied by the current set of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are not enough to hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C. To keep 1.5C in reach, global CO2 emissions need to peak immediately and halve by 2030. Finance must also be significantly scaled up and support the urgent just transition to a low carbon economy, and deal with adaptation challenges. (April 4, 2022) United Nations Climate Change [more on Climate Change in our area]

It’s another critical climate report from the IPCC that helps humanity understand what Climate Change is, why it’s urgent to address it, and where we are at in this worldwide crisis. Lots of responsible media carried the story of the release of the IPCC report, though the irresponsible media pretended it didn’t exist. So it goes.

Reactions to the IPCC report include some talk of doom. Others speak of hope because 1.4C is better than 1.5C and 1.5c is better than 2C, etc.—which is true up to a point. Whatever anyone’s attitude, our planet’s temperature is going up.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres probably says it best:

“The latest IPCC report serves as a “file of shame,” Guterres said, “cataloging empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world.”” (Washington Post, April 4, 2022)

Time passes.

So quickly, Climate Change and microplastics pollution

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 10:58:00 +0000

Most people now understand that humanity can affect the workings of the entire planet, unlike ages ago when it was assumed that we puny humans could not influence the great processes of our planet. But most people still don’t appreciate how quickly we’ve mucked with how our planet operates. We disrupted this planet’s environment since at least since our species began decimating large megafauna (like mammoths and other large keystone species that orchestrated the life in their ecosystems) and from 10,000 years ago when our agricultural practices began to carve up many regions’ biodiversity.

But far quicker and more disruptive than our previous rearrangements of our planet to suit our needs and wants are the present-day catastrophes like Climate Change and microplastic pollution.

Microplastics found in human blood for first time Exclusive: The discovery shows the particles can travel around the body and may lodge in organs Microplastic pollution has been detected in human blood for the first time, with scientists finding the tiny particles in almost 80% of the people tested. The discovery shows the particles can travel around the body and may lodge in organs. The impact on health is as yet unknown. But researchers are concerned as microplastics cause damage to human cells in the laboratory and air pollution particles are already known to enter the body and cause millions of early deaths a year. Huge amounts of plastic waste are dumped in the environment and microplastics now contaminate the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. People were already known to consume the tiny particles via food and water as well as breathing them in, and they have been found in the faeces of babies and adults. (March 24, 2022) The Guardian [more on Recycling in our area]

This speed which has launched Climate Change into major disruptions and sent a newly developed product into all bodies of water and even our own bodies is threatening our ability to deal with these problems and maybe our existence. Plastichasn’t been around very long, but it’s now ubiquitous. It’s in our waters (like the Great Lakes), our products, and now our blood).

Speed matters because changing human behavior, like changing energy sources or getting rid of pollution, takes a long time because of our dysfunctional politics, our economies that care little for our environment and just everyday human stubbornness, is far more difficult and time consuming than wrecking the place. It’s relatively easy to screw up a very sensitive and complicated system like life on our planet and very difficult to make it sustainable again.

We know that to adapt to Climate Change our environment and our bodies must be as robust and resilient as possible. But we seem incapable of creating the kind of urgency and cooperation it took to get us into this existential mess.

Time passes.

The Climate Change zeitgeist

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 11:43:00 +0000

Now is not the time when Climate Change should be kicked around like a football or tossed to others like a hot potato but accepted by everyone as a trait of our present world, which is not so much a static state as a moving trajectory tending towards sustainability or further collapsing depending on our actions.

In this quickly warming world, we’ll be aware of long-term changes in our environment never experienced before by humanity. With this will come a change of consciousness, a zeitgeist characterized by anxiety, better knowledge and respect for science, and continual monitoring of impending threats.

Decisions we make will likely have a longer arc of introspections, where the considerations of everything we buy, or how we move about, must be made with our eyes constantly on a world where our existence is changing radically to deal with the possibility of our own demise. Our choices will be considered as if they were to be shared with the rest of the world, affecting our existential plight.

Our relationship with everything on Earth will change. Trees for example won’t be just building supplies, but integral parts of crucial ecosystems. If we decide to also use trees to sequester CO2 and bring down our greenhouse gas emissions, we must be aware of how we do this.

Tree Planting Is Booming. Here’s How That Could Help, or Harm, the Planet. Reforestation can fight climate change, uplift communities and restore biodiversity. When done badly, though, it can speed extinctions and make nature less resilient. A tree planted for every T-shirt purchased. For every bottle of wine. For every swipe of a credit card. Trees planted by countries to meet global pledges and by companies to bolster their sustainability records. As the climate crisis deepens, businesses and consumers are joining nonprofit groups and governments in a global tree planting boom. Last year saw billions of trees planted in scores of countries around the world. These efforts can be a triple win, providing livelihoods, absorbing and locking away planet-warming carbon dioxide, and improving the health of ecosystems. (March 14, 2022) The New York Times [more on Plants and Climate Change in our area]

Like once healthy patients, who now have a condition that needs to be constantly monitored, we’ll be watching for reports, like the next IPCC report, to measure our ability to address Climate Change and figure out the next steps we’ll need to take.

Climate Change is happening. And most of the world is quite aware of this. It’s our zeitgeist for the foreseeable future.

Time passes.

Addressing Climate Change by proxy

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 10:51:00 +0000

Whereas it is obvious that there is a general paradigm for addressing Climate Change, it is not obvious nor probable that humanity will specifically deal with this crisis. Climate studies and the increase in extreme weather, wildfires, flooding, and sea level rise have made it clear that humanity is quickly warming the planet, seriously depleting biodiversity (critical for healthy ecosystems), and increasing the health risks that come with heatwaves and the spread of tropical diseases to regions previously too cold for their spread.

The solutions to addressing Climate Change are well known, such as lowering our greenhouse gas emissions with clean renewable energy, removing some of the high levels of CO2 in our atmosphere, helping developing nations grow and adapt by using modern technologies that don’t destroy their environment and warm the planet more—like we did. We know that all nations working together to protect ecosystems that are quickly being destroyed by pollution, curbing development into natural settings, decreasing overfishing, and doing so while protecting vulnerable communities are ways most likely to deal with our precarious future. This we know.

What we don’t know is how to achieve these goals, given that we haven’t slowed down the warming on a scale and time frame that will matter. We don’t know how to get most of the world prepared for the consequences of our climate crisis. We don’t know how to get the rich nations to help the poor nations without the rich nations expecting even more than our share of the planet’s environmental resources. And we don’t know how to inform those who are still misinformed—either intentionally or not—about Climate Change.

A sustainable solution to Climate Change is not emerging from the dictates of reason, environmental knowledge, ethics, and justice. We are carrying on as we always have, as if our planet was designed especially for us and still frozen in the Holocene where our species thrived.

Yet, there is something emerging, a paradigm of sorts that’s leaning towards our species acting on this crisis, evolving like our human anatomy that grew not out of a perfect design, but through the optimizing of random changes in the basic processes of life. Humans became upright, for example, by slowly building on earlier solutions to getting around. We walk upright, our hands free for tool-making, not because it was foretold that we do. But because over thousands of years we used a body type best suited for the trees into one that served a hunter-gatherer well. Not perfectly, as anyone with feet and back problems will attest, but workable. Evolution, even in our social development, has altered over time into something that better serves our survival. We learned to work together for the same goals—sometimes.

An example of this process is our media, many of which are actively pushing climate denial still. Even so, they are not alone. There are many media who do try and inform everyone of what Climate Change is about within the context of their usual reporting. Occasionally, our media will mention why it’s urgent that we act, and puzzle through the daily ebb and flow of human events within the context of Climate Change. If we were tending towards addressing the #ClimateCrisis, we might see more people relying on responsible media that characterized our plight correctly. Hence, what might emerge is Climate Change news by proxy, where more of our media is compelled to report on this #ClimateCrisis, and the public is more inclined to shift their attention to only the important responsible media during this crisis. That is, the public and our leaders might increasingly learn about Climate Change and its impacts by demonstrating to our existing media that addressing Climate Change is important to us.

There are probably many other of our practices that presently don’t try and address Climate Change, but they may slowly shift as peer pressure, social norms, and our conscience makes dragging our feet on the planetary calamity less likely. A sort of addressing our most critical crisis by proxy, by methods we are already familiar with that can be coopted to other, better, solutions for our planet and our lives might be occurring. Maybe.

If its humanity’s default position that we address Climate Change by allowing it to evolve conveniently as we continue our lives as usual while getting our planet’s temperature down to something we can manage, it’s important to remember that evolution needs a lot of time to work—and time as our world quickly warms is not something we have a lot of. Evolution is not a prescription for getting something specific accomplished quickly; we must act more directly on addressing Climate Change. Waiting for the solution to this #ClimateCrisis to emerge from our present worldwide behavior is likely to be fruitless.

Time passes.

Energy security during Climate Change

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 11:07:00 +0000

The crisis in Ukraine highlights the extreme danger of a major war as Climate Change puts our existence in extreme peril. We might have considered such a scenario in the theoretical years ago, but now it’s upon us, just as a major worldwide pandemic was always a possibility but not taken seriously until Covid19.

As the recent IPCC report says Climate Change is happening so quickly, we must adapt quickly. Also, this is a moment to double down on our promise to transform our energy to clean energy. There’s no addressing Climate Change while continuing to burn fossil fuels and no chance for energy security while fueling wars with oil.

Whatever His Motives, Putin’s War in Ukraine Is Fueled by Oil and Gas The U.S. oil industry is hoping to fill the immediate void with increased oil and gas exports, while the EU moves in the longer term to replace Russian gas with renewable energy. With a Russian military convoy advancing on her city of Kyiv, Ukraine’s leading climate scientist made an emotional plea at last week’s meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots, fossil fuels, and our dependence on them,” said Svitlana Krakovska of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute, as the IPCC unveiled its report on climate impacts. (March 6, 2022) Inside Climate News [more on Climate Change and Energy in our area]

Absurd as this question sounds, “How do you have a nuclear war during Climate Change?” we should pause a moment and consider how humanity will solve our differences on a quickly warming planet. Our traditional violent way of resolving our differences is war—which causes incredible suffering, wreaks bloody havoc on our environment, and now has dramatically become more threatening as any kind of ban on attacking nuclear power plants seems moot.

Ukraine: The risks of war in a nuclear state The fear that Russia's invasion of Ukraine could escalate to a nuclear war is real. But what happens now that its largest active nuclear power plant has been caught in the crossfire? When Russian troops advanced on Zaporizhzhia, Europe's largest nuclear power plant on Friday, they didn't only trigger a fire in a training building within the facility, but also global fears of a major nuclear catastrophe. Though the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine reported that the blaze had been extinguished, that no radiation leaks had been detected and that staff were able to continue working at the site, the attack has brought the world's attention to the realities of a war being fought in a country so reliant on nuclear energy. "It is a unique situation in the history of nuclear power — in fact in history — that we have a situation where a nation is operating 15 nuclear reactors and is in the middle of a full-scale war," Shaun Burnie, nuclear specialist with Greenpeace East Asia, told DW. Located in southern Ukraine, the Zaporizhzhia power station has six of those reactors and produces around one-quarter of Ukraine's electricity. Only one reactor is currently in operation, according to the nuclear regulator. (March 3, 2022) Deutsche Welle [more on Climate Change in our area]

We have the political apparatus to deal with our differences without resorting to war—our courts of law and the United Nations—but if we choose to continue the institution of war our efforts to address Climate Change are not likely to work. Energy security while there is still war is a delusion.

On a personal level, my wife and I are soon to add geothermal heating to our solar-panels energy mix (and eventually free ourselves from burning any fossil fuels in our home), but not everyone can do this now. Nobody will be energy secure until humanity moves to renewable energy soon.

My wife and I have moved into the city where many of the places we need or want to go are within walking distance and our hybrid plug-in car gets about twenty miles before it starts using gas. We mostly only go short distances, so we haven’t been looking at gas prices.

We are not freed, of course, from local gas prices as we still need products that are delivered by vehicles using fossil fuels. Our lives, even those of us who have been lucky enough to try and free ourselves as much as possible from fossil fuels cannot really free ourselves until everyone does. And this kind of personal change is way too slow to effect bringing down greenhouse gas emissions in a time frame that will matter.

With the war, it’s time to break from fossil fuels and have an energy security that will last.

Time passes.

A #ClimateCrisis distracted

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 11:11:00 +0000

Whatever is reported on by climate scientists (and the political wordsmiths) around the world on the state of our ability to adapt to the #ClimsteCrisis by the new IPCC climate report,, it cannot get at the likely disruptions to addressing Climate Changeand possible environmental resiliency compromises that are likely to dramatically impede humanity’s need for a viable future by the invasion of Ukraine. All human conflicts during Climate Change, especially those amplified by modern technology, are a threat and potential game changer to any plans we have for our future. (Mike Tyson said it best, “EVERYONE HAS A PLAN UNTIL THEY GET PUNCHED IN THE MOUTH”.) The specter of exchanging nuclear weapons during this Climate Change greatly increases our chances for a game-over scenario.

The almost unparalleled tragedy occurring in Ukraine and the release of the IPCC’s report of our abysmal efforts at addressing Climate Change, as the window of opportunity to avoid the worst consequences is a major blow to any confidence we might have had in getting a handle on this planetary environmental crisis that is now culminating in a bottleneck of despair. Clearly, humanity has not appreciated the gravity of this crisis that threatens the legacy of our past and the chances our actions might have on our future. We should have been preparing better for things to not get out of hand to this degree.

A cold clear look at Climate Change by experts reveals humanity is not addressing the #ClimateCrisis and humanity and all other life on Earth will suffer greatly. It didn’t have to be this way; some of it still doesn’t.

Humanity has a ‘brief and rapidly closing window’ to avoid a hotter, deadly future, U.N. climate report says Latest IPCC report details escalating toll — but top scientists say the world still can choose a less catastrophic path In the hotter and more hellish world humans are creating, parts of the planet could become unbearable in the not-so-distant future, a panel of the world’s foremost scientists warned Monday in an exhaustive report on the escalating toll of climate change. Unchecked greenhouse gas emissions will raise sea levels several feet, swallowing small island nations and overwhelming even the world’s wealthiest coastal regions. Drought, heat, hunger and disaster may force millions of people from their homes. Coral reefs could vanish, along with a growing number of animal species. Disease-carrying insects would proliferate. Deaths — from malnutrition, extreme heat, pollution — will surge. (February 28, 2022) The Washington Post [more on Climate Change in our area]

We must adapt. All life either adapts to existing conditions or perishes. Human societies and how they are trying to adapt to Climate Change seem to have a more pronounced focus in this scientific report—“Climate Change 2022, Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability”--which is critical because many of the impacts of the climate crisis are already baked into our future. Human societies are going to be deeply challenged because of Climate change. The luxury of waiting to find out if Climate Change is going to dramatically impact our lives is over, we have a tiger by the tail.

Also.

We are at the mercy of a relatively few powerful people. We are stymied by a lack of respect for others, science, and the priority of ingredients we need for life. And as always, we are thwarted by a lack of imagination; because too many people are unwilling to see that our present behavior will dramatically alter our future, we fail to recognize the opportunity we now have.

Too many crises are coming at us at once and we could be overwhelmed. We don’t have the time for any more distractions, and yet we still plow on incapable of being anything else but ourselves.

Time passes.

Is a Climate Change unknown unknown becoming a known unknown?

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 11:56:00 +0000

Though many climate scientists may conclude that carbon dioxide and methane emissions from permafrost are not troubling now, it seems prudent that they begin imputing this data into climate models. In order that humanity is able to address Climate Change, that is, adapt and mitigate this crisis, the public and their officials need to know all the possible impacts and sources of more greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.

Arctic Sinkholes Colossal explosions shake a remote corner of the Siberian tundra, leaving behind massive craters. In Alaska, a huge lake erupts with bubbles of inflammable gas. Scientists are discovering that these mystifying phenomena add up to a ticking time bomb, as long-frozen permafrost melts and releases vast amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. (Aired: 02/02/22) PBS NOVA.)

Recent discoveries of craters above in Siberia, above the Arctic circle, that have exploded out material and one (Yamal Crater) creating an 80-foot wide, 15-story deep hole, might be an anomaly, an unknown unknown phenomenon humanity has never witnessed. There are many impacts from Climate Change we have witnessed before, except not on the scale we are experiencing now: more, larger, and hotter wildfires, more devasting heatwaves, more quickly spreading droughts, and sea level rise. We have been experiencing sinkholes where the ground falls away because of melting permafrost. But have we experienced before a gigantic hole in the permafrost created by fossilized methane deep in the Earth’s crust seeping through the permafrost and exploding? Some scientists think so.

If so, have we reached a potential tipping point where ancient methane we thought was very stable because it was far below the permafrost and exists in volumes 250 times the methane in our present atmosphere become unstable? Shouldn’t we know for sure, instead of just assuming it is unlikely?

Already, it seems as though sea level rise from Climate Change has reached a tipping point. Describing sea level rise that will rise by a foot in less than thirty years “no matter what we do about emissions …” (see below) seems the very definition of a tipping point.

Coastal Sea Levels in U.S. to Rise a Foot by 2050, Study Confirms More precise measurements indicate that the increase will happen “no matter what we do about emissions.” Sea levels along the coastal United States will rise by about a foot or more on average by 2050, government scientists said Tuesday, with the result that rising water now considered “nuisance flooding” will become far more damaging. A report by researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies also found that, at the current rate of warming, at least two feet of sea-level rise is expected by the end of the century. “What we’re reporting out is historic,” said Rick Spinrad, the NOAA administrator, at a news conference announcing the findings. “The United States is expected to experience as much sea level rise in the next 30 years as we saw over the span of the last century.” (February 15, 2022) The New York Times [more on Climate Change in our area]

Each new climate report seems to suggest that climate experts are continually underestimatingthe impact of Climate Change—which in turn suggests we do not have a carbon budget where we can safely put any more of our greenhouse gases into our climate system.

However dreary it may seem to some people that endless speculations about what could happen as a result of Climate Change or possible mechanisms that will make this crisis worse, we should pursue these concerns anyways—if only to rule them out. Anything but complete clarity about Climate Change is a real threat to our existence.

Time passes.

Walking into Climate Change

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 11:56:00 +0000

Walking into Climate Change

While walking as a transportation option presents itself as one of the least expensive options to address Climate Change, it is beset with myriad safety issues that only seem to increase as technology and urban life grows. Walking affords everyone increasing health benefits due to its physical activity and helps the state control transportation costs because relatively little infrastructure is required for a safe way of moving from place to place. But due to an increase in distractions from vehicular gadgets, mobile phones, lack of respect for both pedestrians and their sidewalks, and reckless driving, it is far more unsafe than it should be.

According to NYSDOH, Bureau of Occupational Health and Injury Prevention, from 2012-2014, pedestrians accounted for 312 deaths, 3,027 hospitalizations and 12, 506 emergency visits.

Some of the ways threats to those who walk our city streets could be reduced are by continual education and awareness via public service announcements (PSAs) throughout the day on radio and television, especially during times of dense traffic. Reminders about the dangers to pedestrians from backing vehicles out of driveways, intersections that have historically been the site of many pedestrian/vehicular accidents, and notices of safe driving and bicycle riding in the streets should be constant.

Respect and awareness of pedestrians in urban settings would increase dramatically if sidewalks were not continually used for other purposes like construction, parking, and trash/leaf collections. Each should be discouraged. If there are temporary situations where blocking a sidewalk is necessary, signs and crossing guards would make these disturbances safer for walkers.

Granted, although the safety of the urban pedestrian is getting more perilous with urban growth, pedestrians need to take more responsibility for their own safety. Those walking or running should be doing so in a way they are not oblivious to the traffic around them: they should make sure they can hear and see around them unhindered by their own gadgets and use traffic signals. Also, pedestrians would fare better if their movements were predictable by those driving—meaning using crosswalks.

Traffic signals themselves would be safer for pedestrians if they operated more uniformly, making them less confusing and giving pedestrians priority so that there is enough time for safe crossing—and pedestrians are not left waiting a long time to cross streets. Much of the unsafe pedestrian behavior I have witnessed comes from folks becoming impatient with traffic signals and crossing streets in the wrong place heedless of traffic movements.

Many people are moving to urban areas where they can walk to many of their destinations to save money, help the environment, and slow the pace of their lives down. But they must feel safe, which would include clearing sidewalks of snow and encouraging property owners to keep their sidewalks clean—already a law.

Transportation accounts for a large share of our greenhouse gas emissionsand there are many plans to change our transportation systems to use clean energy and keep transportation infrastructures safe during the increase in extreme weather events. But walking from place to place (which includes those needing special equipment to walk) is not only a clean form of transportation but a great equalizer because even those using other transportation options must walk to get to them. Knowing you’ll get to your destination safely is likely to increase your desire for our fundamental transportation option, the human gift to walk.

Time passes.

Learning to live with Climate Change won’t be like learning to live with a pandemic.

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 12:25:00 +0000

At some point, the pandemic will likely morph into something like the seasonal flu, which is still catastrophic considering that 36,000 people die each year of this disease. Yet, the flu is a disease we consider manageable. It would be far more manageable if our health care delivered the best care and medicines for even the most vulnerable.

We are starting to get a sense of what normalcy might be as the Covid 19 crisis evolves. The desire for normalcy and the backlash against rules is nudging populations into a grudging acceptance of some of the characteristics of this disease: it changes (variants), it has hot spots (where some regions at various times will probably see an increase in cases, then move on to other hot spots), the rules on masking and social distancing will change as the pandemic projections change, vaccines work, masks work and disease experts from around the world are working furiously to find better methods to eliminate this pandemic. As the pandemic eventually moves to a less lethal and contagious state, life as we have known it will likely return to what it was. Maybe, maybe not. Restaurants, public education, and jobs may never be quite the same.

With Climate Change, despite many shared characteristics with the pandemic, there are truths about the #ClimateCrisis that are particular to it but ultimately we are not going back to what was normal for us. Climate Change is an existential threat, where our efforts to adapt to it may be overwhelmed. If we don’t get our greenhouse gas emissions down, it will become too hot to live. There is not a vaccine, a silver bullet for addressing Climate Change on a scale and time frame that will matter—an entire change of human behavior towards our planet and each other will have to occur. False information about Climate Change won’t just kill individuals as it has with the pandemic; humanity itself may not endure the lies about the nature of our quickly warming world. We need to adjust the way we get information about the #Climate Crisis, make sure everyone listens to it, and it must be accurate:

AFP reorganises newsroom with emphasis on climate coverage Reshaping the newsroom for a post-COVID-19 world offers a unique opportunity to put climate change coverage at the centre of operations – as AFP in France has done. In a bid to better reflect its editorial strategy and strengthen its coverage of certain topics, France’s AFP has reorganised its Paris newsroom into eight specialised hubs, including one focused on the impact of climate change. The move comes as news organisations across the globe are mulling over how best to adapt to a post-COVID-19 world, grappling with issues such as talent, diversity and flexible working policies. While navigating the pandemic has challenged the industry, it has been a driving force for innovation and flexibility, and opened up the possibility to reshape the newsroom, and redefine editorial strategy and coverage. (January 31, 2022) World Association of New Publishers [more on Climate Change in our area]

In the foreseeable future, it isn’t likely that we’ll be able to treat our lands and oceansthe way we have in our past. It isn’t likely we’ll be burning fossil fuels for energy the way we have. Normalcy is likely to be whatever we are able to adapt to and the road back to the lives we used to leave before Climate Change is disappearing.

One of the main differences between the pandemic and Climate Change is that Climate Change isn’t merely an inconvenient outbreak where we’ll eventually return to normal. Climate Change has already altered our world in such a way that our lives must adapt quickly. We are not bringing down our greenhouse gas emissions quickly enough and the warming is accelerating. Those battling this truth will make adapting even more difficult.

Time passes.

Our Climate Change future could be very constrictive

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 12:31:00 +0000

According to a new study, we’ve been measuring global warming inaccurately. It’s been warming quicker than we think because we haven’t been including humidity in our measurements and that matters because it explains why changes in extreme weather (flooding, snowfalls) have been so dramatic in the last couple of decades.

Measuring climate change: It's not just heat, it's humidity When it comes to measuring global warming, humidity, not just heat, matters in generating dangerous climate extremes, a new study finds. Researchers say temperature by itself isn’t the best way to measure climate change's weird weather and downplays impacts in the tropics. But factoring in air moisture along with heat shows that climate change since 1980 is nearly twice as bad as previously calculated, according to their study in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (February 1, 2022) Chron.com [more on Climate Change in our area]

Our Climate Changefuture is going to be measured and scrutinized far more than humanity ever has done so because one of the epiphanies of this crisis is there clarity about our environment and our existence we must attain in order to carry on. Our reality, that environment where we can live and thrive, is a reality that’s only a small part of our planet. It is and has been sensitive to even the smallest change. Already, we know many more gases other than CO2 can further warm our planet—including some gases we create. We know people in some regions are going to be losing their ability to provide themselves with enough food and will have to move. More people will be on the move because our new climate restricts more people from having an existence due to more heat, more diseases, more extreme weather, including permafrost collapsing. All of our choices on where and how to live will be more defined by our limited options. Our sense of Freedom is going to change.

People are losing land around the world because either their nations are sinking, their forests burning up, their arid land is getting dryer and hotter, their already drenching rainy seasons are getting deluged by flooding from longer monsoon seasons, or the ground beneath them is unfreezing, causing their homes and way of life to collapse. So, in a very real sense, our new Climate Change world is constricting our existence. We know from history what happens when homo sapiens need more land.

This clarity, like suddenly sailing a ship into an ice-filled part of the ocean, means we cannot navigate in any direction we wish; our freedom to roam has been constricted. Of course, we could go around some obstacles, or plow through the smaller obstacles, but overall, especially if there are many other ships trying to cruise these crowded waters, we are going to have move more carefully than when we had in open waters (an analogy to our history where humanity deluded itself that the only limits to our growth was our own ingenuity, or the lack of it). Climate Change, with so many people needing and wanting their existence fulfilled, we will have to be far more mindful than we ever have of the existence and actions of others. We’ll need to be more fair.

We don’t know exactly in what ways our world will constrict but it will most likely be in jerks, in the ratcheting of the impacts of the #ClimateCrisis. Things could look manageable until they aren’t. Climate Change could unleash opportunities to create better energy and transportation options and move us forward, but these optimistic solutions could also release a backlash effect from those who perceive that what they have or could have been achieved will be lost and quickly set us back.

People probably have lots of ideas about what our Climate Change future will bring. Some will be optimistic, and some will be filled with dread. But Climate Change is a practical moving situation that is dependent on many things. It’s moving because the various states of our environment (like seasonal change) and the human condition will be constantly adjusting, and probably not in sync with each other. There will always be the specter of being overwhelmed by our situation, including tipping points far ahead that are going to happen regardless, like a series of moves on a chessboard where checkmate is inevitable.

Freedoms of all sorts are likely to be more restrictive in our Climate Change future making our world more constricted, less tolerant of our mistakes. In our adolescent days, before we seriously kicked Climate Change into high gear, we believed that only our imagination limited us from getting what we wanted. Now, as the impacts and the science close in on us, our movements and our possibilities will be hemmed in by the way we have treated our planet and each other.

Living on a more constrictive planet with more people desiring more is going require that we get along better. We’ll need to construct inconvenient plans that people will agree upon, and harsh rules humanity will respect to adapt to a quickly warming planet. Otherwise…

Time passes.

Earth doesn’t need geoengineering to keep going, that would be for us.

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 12:08:00 +0000

Trying to geoengineer our way out of Climate Change is trickly at best (because there are so many known unknowns and unknown unknowns) but we may have to try. If we must try, it would be best to have the climate experts think it through, so we do as little damage to our environment as possible.

Scientists recommend a system of checkpoints to help guide climate engineering research Research into engineering techniques that might one day be employed to artificially cool the planet poses some of the thorniest questions facing society today. For climate scientists, that tension is compounded by the lack of a broadly accepted oversight framework to guide their research. In an opinion article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists led by NOAA and CIRES researchers outline a framework for assessing the viability of a method for reflecting sunlight called marine cloud brightening, or MCB. The proposed method would use ocean sea-salt particles to increase the reflectivity of low-lying clouds over certain ocean regions. This is one of a number of proposed methods under consideration as a temporary measure to limit rampant warming. (January 20, 2022) NOAA Research News [more on Climate Change in our area]

The assumption underpinning geoengineering our climate is that because we were able to wreck our climate, we should be able to fix it. That would be like expecting a kid who stole the family car for a joy ride and wrecked it could bring back home just like new. Destroying complicated systems is far easier than trying to fix them, especially when you barely understand them.

For most of our existence, we took our climate as it was, moving occasionally when the cold or heat became intolerable. It never occurred to us that we could change the planet’s climate (except maybe very localized microclimates) or would ever have the means to do so.

Soon we may need geoengineering to keep humanity going. But it’s very problematic, as we don’t know all the repercussions of our actions we cause on this complicated, sensitive planet. If one county’s action screws up another country’s climate then what, war, massive starvation, ecosystem collapses?

Tweaking our climate involves not only scientific expertise and a complete understanding of all the features that influence our climate, which scientists still don’t have on our planet’s climate, but also political, moral, economic, and myriad mind-boggling amounts of impacts from our own activities. Though we have been doing mind-boggling complex actions on our planet since we first made spears and hunted together, we didn’t know what the impacts of our actions (like killing off massive amounts of megafauna) would do to our environment. We didn’t intentionally try to engineer our climate. We acted, as most animals and plants do, totally indifferent to the effects our actions would have on our planet.

But now we know. We know humanity’s growth and continual environmental disturbances have wreaked havoc. We know our actions, burning fossil fuels, destroying our biodiversity by plundering our environment and using our planet as a waste disposal system are causing our planet to crash. This knowledge means our actions are now intentional; we are warming up the planet intentionally, purposely, deliberately. If you continue to use a product that’s proven to be unsafe, your perilous actions are intentional.

We must now put geoengineering on our radar because we are failing to get our planet’s temperatures down quickly. We must intentionally address Climate Change as a geoengineering process. So, we should have climate experts helping every nation with guidelines, or checkpoints; though it is still likely that anything we do on a planetary scale will have unfortunate consequences. Going it alone is reckless.

Even if we had vastly more powers for changing our planet into one we thought would best suit our future, it would still be a great conundrum agreeing on what was to be done. There are over almost seven billion of us and we rarely agree on anything. But maybe, we could agree on a structure in order to figure out how to carry on safely.

For example, how to remove CO2 directly from the air. Is it possible humanity could agree on how to get direct air capture up to scale? DAC machines are controversial for many reasons, including the moral hazard argument (making it “OK” to keep burning fossil fuels), but they will likely be critical for our existence. Our planet’s environment cannot remove carbon dioxide quickly enough. Even if we could stop all additional greenhouse gas emissions right now, our carbon concentration levels are what they were when Earth was a much hotter place.

Now the first plants are coming online, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognising that, even if the world reduces its ongoing emissions as quickly as possible, there will still be too much CO2 in the atmosphere to avoid catastrophic levels of global warming. (Direct air capture machines suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Are they part of the solution to climate change? January 27, 2022 ABC News. Net)

We are finding ourselves considering drastic measures we might not have had to if we had acted sooner and at a greater scale. Maddeningly frustrating as this all is, in another ten years, we’ll likely be observing similar circumstances with less time to work in.

Time passes.

Retreating from Climate Change

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 12:26:00 +0000

In the big picture, humanity can’t retreat from Climate Changeon a finite planet. For all the excitement about space travel recently, we seven+ billion people and the things we love do not have the capability of moving to another planet on a scale and time frame that would matter. But at a more reasonable level, where we now live, we can decide to stay and help our region adapt and help lower our greenhouse gas emissions or retreat to a region more likely to deal with the impacts of Climate Change. Some of us with the means to do so, that is.

Do we stand and fight or retreat from a #ClimateCrisis threatening to overwhelm whatever we do? Philosophically, this may be one of the most important issues during Climate Change we must decide individually and collectively. It’s a moral and practical conundrum.

If we retreat, there are many considerations. The high cost of rebuilding (including the increasing costs of replacing homes), insuring, maintaining infrastructures (water, energy, transportation, etc.) in a region that is increasingly vulnerable to Climate Change impacts and a decreasing tax base because populations are fleeing could be alleviated by long-term strategic planning. In other words, though complicated and inconvenient, retreating from Climate Change in a well-planned and fair way individuals in a hot zone for Climate Change would have more of a chance of adapting to the #ClimateCrisis.

A city in Minnesota is attracting ‘climate migrants.’ Could Canada be next? Nearly seven months after the town of Lytton, B.C., burned to the ground in a raging inferno, what was once a community of nearly 300 sits largely uninhabited. “It’s pretty well a ghost town,” laments the town’s mayor, Jan Polderman, in an interview with Global News. The mayor insists he wants to rebuild Lytton. But that’s a starkly different approach from what’s known as a ‘planned’ or ‘managed’ retreat, a contentious measure where residents are paid to move away from areas at risk, often very reluctantly, or even against their will. Conversations around managed retreat, while once off the table and considered taboo, are now happening with more frequency in Canada, including in communities like Gatineau, Que., or Grand Forks, B.C., each of which has struggled with recurring floods. (January 14, 2022) Global News [more on Climate Change in our area]

You fight when there’s a chance you can win. You retreat from a force far greater than yourself.

If you stay and fight, you buttress your region’s tax base and help fund the necessary infrastructures necessary now for collective human life. You work with your neighbors, local groups, and officials to work out solutions for adaptive measures specific to your region and communicate that to as many locals as possible so they are on board with the urgency of addressing the crisis in your region and making it less likely there will be efforts to thwart these solutions—like organizing against the siting of large-scale renewable projects.

If you retreat (and this may come to be anyways as desperation grows), managed retreats, where detailed plans are made to move away from the relentless threats from Climate Change in one region to another region that has been preparing for newcomers, rich and poor, is the wisest course. Yet, it will be unclear when to retreat from sea-level rise for many reasons including how likely efforts to keep back the waters are at any one moment.

As we go further into Climate Change retreating from this crisis is likely to become more problematic, like fleeing a great conflagration aboard a large ship. Eventually, though trying to figure out at what point involves a lot of uncertainty, everyone will be trying to flee to a region where the immediate impacts of Climate Change are tolerable. Whichever choice, stay or retreat, individuals and groups must plan so it doesn’t become a rout.

At this point in time, we are getting a clearer picture which direction Climate Change is headed making planning for the worst the best option.

Time passes.

The Climate Change agenda in New York

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 12:46:00 +0000

When you finish reading New York State’s Climate Action Council Releases Draft Scoping Plan for Public Comment and make suggestions as to how our state could address Climate Change better, you will have reviewed some of the best information on Climate Changeand how a state like New York proposes to address this crisis.

Climate Action Council Releases Draft Scoping Plan for Public Comment New Yorkers Encouraged to Review and Comment on Draft Scoping Plan Beginning Jan. 1 to Advance and Implement Nation-Leading Climate Law December 30, 2021 New York State’s Climate Action Council Co-Chairs, Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Basil Seggos and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) President and CEO Doreen M. Harris, today announced the release of the Draft Scoping Plan, which describes recommended policies and actions to help New York meet its ambitious climate directives as part of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). After a unanimous 19-0 vote by the Climate Action Council on Dec. 20, 2021, the Draft Scoping Plan is now available for public review and public comment beginning Jan. 1, 2022..(January 4, 2022) New York State Department of Environmental Conservation [more on Climate Change in our area]

Merely perusing social media comments and half-baked, cherry-picked media articles on Climate Change doesn’t have the same impact of seeing how your state officials, who are responsible for addressing this crisis, view this problem.

Because much of the Climate Change crisis includes how humanity reacts to the facts of this crisis and the rules our state will use to address it, it matters that our citizens provide feedback to their state.

There is a danger of casually picking and choosing the ways in which we get our climate change information. There’s always a bias. There’s always an agenda. Some groups want you to dismiss the #ClimateCrisis altogether because it conflicts with their worldview and financial security. Some want to solve other issues along the way without giving priority to a quickly-warming-world crisis. Some want you to change your lifestyle to theirs and some just want to make money off this crisis.

The state has an agenda too. New York State wants the state and all beings that inhabit it to flourish during this worldwide environmental crisis.

It’s more likely that a state like New York, trying to be a Climate Change leader, is going to tell you the truth about this crisis so their chances of convincing you and addressing this crisis are greater.

Time passes.

Talking about Climate Change

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 12:20:00 +0000

“Whether you think Don’t Look Up is the best or worst climate movie on a painfully short list is, in many ways, besides the point.”*

Don’t Look Up must seem to us who have been trying to get the public talking about Climate Change more of a public service announcement than a film because it has reached a lot of folks who haven’t been focused on this existential crisis.

* Why People Can't Stop Talking About Don't Look Up The top movie on Netflix has inspired, shall we say, impassioned responses. That's telling. If you’ve spent even a minute on the internet this week, you have surely seen something about Don’t Look Up. The Adam McKay-directed flick is Netflix’s top movie. It’s also perhaps the top reason for people shitting their pants online recently. The film has a critics’ score of 55% on Rotten Tomatoes, reflecting the deep divisions in how people have perceived the movie. The negative reviews have been nothing short of scathing. Defector called it a “movie made by people who spend too much time online.” Gawker said Don’t Look Up “transforms the underlying conflict [of how to address the climate crisis] from one of action into another of simple belief: do you listen to scientists, or don’t you?” McKay along with co-creator and journalist David Sirota have, for their part, tweeted defenses of the movie that have led to more meta criticisms to the point where we may all collectively be losing the thread. (December 31, 2021) Gizmodo [more on Climate Changein our area]

It's been the dickens trying to insert the #ClimateCrisis into our conversations, our public discourse, our elections, local media, schools, websites, and anywhere people gather. So, it’s wonderful that the folks who brought us Don’t Look Up have done so and reached so many people. Like with any other kind of communication on Climate Change (including expert climate science reports), we really don’t know the impact of the film, whether it will impress, scare, bore, or create an epiphany in those not inclined to focus on the climate crisis.

It is interesting to hear that many folks are zeroing in on the technical and acting parts of the film rather than the incredible phenomenon of trying in a unique way to convey humanity’s failure to appreciate the urgency and gravity of Climate Change.

We should hope that more efforts to reach the public on Climate Change will include more films, theatre, books, and every form of art that catches the human senses.

What mystifies me still is that so many climate activists and experts must pander to the myriad interests of our species in order to communicate the #ClimateCrisis. Shouldn’t the climate crisis be enough? When we do find a way to insert how sports, politics, entertainment, and many other interests will be impacted by Climate Change, we seem more likely to get criticism of how we depicted these particular interests rather than a focus on Climate Change. It is as if somewhere along our evolution, humans have erected a mental gatekeeper whose purpose is to filter important information through our worldview, our interests, our predilections before critical messages can get through. Although, charging tigers, imminent floods, and wildfires, can still crash these mental gates.

If possible, it would be even more tragic for humanity to allow Climate Change to destroy our future and doing so without understanding what we did.

Time passes.

Climate Change 2021 – 2051

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 12:05:00 +0000

As we prepare to enter the new year, we should give at least a moment’s thought that Climate Changeis forcing upon us a new existence—an existence that is going to require that we all understand the implicationsof our changing world. Back in 1988, we learned that humanity was causing Climate Change and we needed to dramatically shift directions in the way we get energy. If we didn’t, we might be seeing headlines like this in thirty or so years:

Year in climate: Extreme weather events prove climate change is already here From extreme temperatures, to fires and floods, 2021 was a year of extremes. This may have been the year the world finally began to pay attention to the mayday calls for climate change and the harmful effects warming global temperatures will have -- not just on the environment, but on human life. Scientists have long warned of the calamity that could result from rising global temperatures. Predictions such as extreme temperature events, the increase of severe drought and more intense storms have all come to fruition in 2021 -- around the world and close to home. People will soon feel the impacts in their own backyards, President Joe Biden said on Nov. 2, his last day at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. There, world leaders emphasized that climate change is already happening and costing billions of dollars -- about $100 billion in the U.S. alone. (December 28, 2021) ABC News [more on Climate Change in our area]

We didn’t dramatically change how we got our energy since then on a scalethat it needed to be done and now it seems normal to be continually reminded that Climate Change is upon us. The baseline of normal climate in the 1980s has shifted to one where continual record-breaking weather reports are the norm.

And yet humanity has still not awakened to the fact that we are in a state of a climate emergency*—one where our efforts to adapt and stop our planet from warming may be overwhelmed.

Which begs the question, what will be the climate headlines in 2051?

Time passes.

* Earth Emergency This revealing film examines how human activity is setting off dangerous warming loops that are pushing the climate to a point of no return - and what we need to do to stop them. With captivating illustrations, stunning footage and interviews with leading climate scientists as well as support from Greta Thunberg, "Earth Emergency" adds the missing piece of the climate puzzle. (December 29, 2021) PBS [more on Climate Change in our area]

News during Climate Change

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 27 Dec 2021 12:38:00 +0000

Climate Change, that is, this climate change that has been disrupted by humanity since the Industrial Revolution, is our world—and our news should reflect it. Rather than use phrases like ‘climate catastrophe’, ‘climate emergency,’ and ‘climate crisis’, in reporting, capitalizing Climate Change might be more useful in giving the public a sense of acceptance of this new world. Not only do we now exist within a climate crisis but for the foreseeable future our lives will now play out during a time of an extraordinary shift away from the environment when our species thrived.

Certainly, there is a great need for urgency to make sure Climate Change doesn’t overwhelm us; but because we did not act sooner at scale, our media should settle into reporting on events in the context of a quickly warm world, a world where each day presents the impacts on us and our environment.

Climate change news coverage reached all-time high, language to describe it shiftingUnited States news coverage of climate change reached an all-time high in October and November, according to recent data from the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO), an international, multi-university collaboration based at the University of Colorado Boulder. Monitoring stories around the globe from 127 newspapers, radio and television stations in 59 countries and 13 languages, MeCCO found that during these two months—which coincided with the 2021 United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland—U.S. media coverage was the highest it's been since November and December 2009, when the same annual conference took place in Copenhagen, Denmark. "Climate change is no longer just a science story. It's now a political, economic, societal and cultural story," said Max Boykoff, MeCCO lead project investigator and chair of the Department of Environmental Studies. (December 21, 2021) PHYS.org [more on Climate Change in our area]

There are many reasons why Climate Change is more popular in the media recently (more extreme weather, COP26, U.S. politics, and more awareness by more people) and the trend is likely to increase—for a while anyway. But rather than keeping the pedal to the medal, so to speak, our media would serve us better if they daily provided all aspects of Climate Change so we can adapt instead of displaying more and more hyperbolic headlines—as if we will someday win over this monster climate and get back to what we were doing.

We need to know what the highest priorities are in our region to adapt to this new normal, this new world of ours. We need to know how the public is reacting and how they might react because our behavior plays a critical role in this crisis world. We need to know what the consequences are of more environmental disturbances in a world that is continually warming.

At the current pace at which humanity is releasing carbon into our atmosphere, we are moving towards a warming of 3 degrees Celsius by 2100 rather than 1.5 degrees as promised at COP 21 in Paris.[1] Some devastating impacts of global warming are already unavoidable, but there is still a narrow window open to stop things from getting worse.[2] (Migration and Climate Change: Can the European Green Deal be just and inclusive for all?December 20, 2021) Regional Office for the European Economic Area, the European Union and NATO)

We need to be able to assess from our media whether we are moving towards a solution or away from a sustainable existence. Whether our infrastructures are ready for the extreme weather coming. Whether others are living under the limits of Climate Change or heedless of this new normal. We need to know how we can transform our daily lives so that they add to the worldwide efforts to address Climate Change. Where we can find the best and most accurate information on the science and most likely projections of this crisis. And the consequences of our collective attempts to fix this crisis.

With leaders from two hundred nations making promises to lower their greenhouse gas emissions while internal forces, including wars and political strife undermining their efforts, with local leaders saying that they understand Climate Change and are working on it but only when prompted, with businesses reporting on one side of their ledgers that they are working on making sustainable products and the other side reveals that they are not, with many people affirming that they want clean energy but just not in their neighborhoods, with media occasionally posting a story on Climate Change but mostly ignoring the impacts of this crisis, with a plethora of evidence that disadvantaged communities are already suffering first and the worst of Climate Change but still our news rarely connecting the dots locally, with more extreme weather causing more disasters that leave more victims more desolate and a diminished chance of recovery, and with a lot of misinformed and powerful individuals hell bent on sowing doubt about the true nature of our warming world, the public must have an information system that scours our world for vital information and brings what seems like a far-off catastrophe home to us.

The media in the U.S. has undergone many transformations, from sensational news, to entertainment, to out and out dissembling. It’s time for our media to be the informational resource we must depend on to navigate through this treacherous time of warming. If this transformed media during Climate Change cannot pay for itself under our existing economics, perhaps we should subsidize it like we do the fossil fuel industry.

What should emerge from this media transformation is a realization that the stage from which our lives must exist henceforth is an environment sensitive to every tremor of our very disruptive species.

Time passes.

Addressing Climate Change is a matter of scale

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 12:14:00 +0000

Trying to empty an Olympic pool one spoonful at a time isn’t likely to accomplish much. On the other hand, using several large water pumps built for the job would probably make quick work of it. Scale.

Addressing Climate Changeat this late date, where the carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere are now over 400ppm, not reached since the Pliocene Era, is going to require solutions at scale. We have a very short time to get our planet back on track to something remotely habitable—for us.

Then, however expensive, removing carbon from the air so that it mimics the ratio of CO2-to-air at around 300ppm, where our species thrived also requires efforts like direct air capture at scale.

Scale is important because we a dealing with huge impacts, like Arctic and Antarctica Oceans disruptions, deforestations, massive wildfires, and major droughts so only efforts to scale up the removal of fossil fuels, increase renewable energy, remove extra greenhouse gases, will actually get us to a sustainable future. Small efforts over a long time period are no longer going to address the existential problem of Climate Change. (They might have done so a long time ago if we had acted in time.)

Scale comes up in another issue: adaptation.

Many are asking if the recent tornadoes were caused by Climate Change.

A warming world could add more fuel to tornadoes, scientists say While the link between global warming and disasters like wildfires and flooding are more definitive, experts say, warmer temperatures could intensify cool-season thunderstorms and tornadoes in the future. In the wake of deadly storms that ravaged parts of the South and the Midwest this weekend, scientists had a warning: While the exact link between climate change and tornadoes remains uncertain, higher temperatures could add fuel to these violent disasters. As rescuers searched Saturday amid the rubble of violent tornadoes that barreled through multiple states, killed scores of people, and leveled homes and businesses, climate scientists said people around the world needed to brace for more frequent and intense weather-driven catastrophes. (December 11, 2021) The Washington Post [more on Climate Change in our area]

Though, as climate scientists have said repeatedly that the conditions were ripe for such a huge catastrophe last weekend, scientists have yet to connect the dots precisely over this complicated issue. But what we do know is that the scale of catastrophes such as the tornadoes is going to require massive efforts that will help the victims of this carnage to recover and prepare for more of the same. There are going to be more people with more stuff in the way of more devastating extreme weather as we go further into Climate Change. Scale.

Time passes.

Moving to the cities as we go further into Climate Change

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 11:49:00 +0000

If the pandemic doesn’t upset population trends, by mid-century mostof humanity is projected to be living in urban areas. This could be a huge development in our collective ability to address Climate Change. With more folks living in urban areas, it’s more likely that issues like energy, transportation, and other infrastructures can be upgraded for a warmer climate more quickly and inexpensively. If this trend continues, it’s likely to keep much of our human footprints from disturbing more rural lands, including forests and other ecosystems. Biodiversity could again flourish and provide the kind of robust and resilient environment humanity thrived on in the past.

Some of the work at the COP26 was to help “future proof” our urban regions so that they function more efficiently, more environmentally friendly, and more humanely.

Future Proof What should our cities look like as we move further into the 21st century? How will our future cities incorporate sustainable practices and how can we ensure that building new cities does not push us further into climate crisis? These were some of the questions asked by Carl Elefante, Senior Fellow, Architecture 2030, and Ren21’s Research Manager, Lea Renalder at their talk at the Action Hub at COP26. Ren21 is a think tank focused on renewable energy, which earlier this year published its Renewables in Cities 2021 Global Status Report. The report is an overview of the current state of play regards renewables in cities, with regard to planning and construction, policy, citizen participation and investment. (December 6, 2021) United Nations Climate Change [more on Climate Change in our area]

Of course, each city is not an entity unto itself but part of the surrounding environment and essentially infused with our global environment. Some cities have abundant freshwater resources nearby, important minerals, ports for the transportation of goods, and fertile soils for growing food. And others, like desert communities, must rely on extensive additional infrastructures to bring essential resources to these precariously-placed communities. Good transportation providing essential lifelines for goods and services will be critical for these cities. Some cities will require more energy to cool themselves as we quickly warm the planet and others may find (for a while) that their winters are less harsh.

In Rochester, New York our winters are warming up. But like other Great Lakes basin communities, our winters may fluctuate more wildly between heavy snow or less snow some years because of a disrupted airstream from a warming Arctic. As communities like Rochester rebuild itself better after the pandemic, after decades of racism, and the collapse of major industries, we must do so while adapting to Climate Change as our priority. Places that are attractive and beckoning to immigrants must also be sustainable by dealing with the threats coming with a warmer climate.

Our choices for city development are going to be increasingly restricted by what a warming world demands. Our solutions, like dealing with more floods, more water contamination from overflowing sewage systems, and more energy for more air conditioning will require more money. We’ll be competing for fewer dollars with more demands (unless we take the bull by the horns, as it were, and rebuild our economic system as if people and our environment mattered) so we must not continue to put Climate Change on the backburner. Addressing Climate Change shouldn’t just be a part of some project, it should rule.

Since the Industrial Revolution humanity has been rapidly gravitating to cities for jobs, a sense of community, and a marketplace. With Climate Change our cities can also be a hub for containing our footprints on our environment where we can work more efficiently towards managing the world we have so dramatically altered.

Time passes.

Filtering the noise out of Climate Change

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 11:50:00 +0000

Because of COP26, the couple of decades since we were firstwarned about anthropogenic Climate Change, and the reaction to the Covid 19 pandemic, there is some clarity emerging about our quickly warming world. We can depend on things getting messy: While many are supporting measures to bring down our greenhouse gases, many are fighting back. Many are refusing to act in the public interest and get vaccinated, so we can bring down deaths and social upheaving. There are those who are going to block progress on addressing Climate Change just because they can. Some businesses are trying to do good, but there is still much of the delusional greenwashing. We are shifting quickly to renewable energy, but not quickly enough.

Renewables Growth Must Double to Achieve Paris Goals - IEA The growth of the world’s capacity to generate electricity from solar panels, wind turbines and other renewable technologies is on course to accelerate over the coming years, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). 95% of growth in global power-generation capacity is projected to come from renewables by the end of 2026. However, the report cautions that renewables growth will still need to double to reach the Paris Agreement goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Even the IEA's "accelerated case," in which governments tackle challenges related to regulation, policy and implementation, would not be enough. (December 1, 2021) United Nations Climate Change [more on Climate Change in our area]

There is much in the media (except local media, which is largely quiet on this crisis) lately about Climate Change, what we should do, how we should cope, what impacts are likely to affect various products, services, animals, plants, values, and parts of the world we like. But are we losing sight of the focus of the #ClimateCrisis? The heat.

It was said recently that there were so many disasters going on around the world, we shouldn’t focus primarily on Climate Change. That’s like saying instead of trying to stop our car that is about the plunge over a cliff, we should give our attention over to the dash lights that just went out.

Addressing Climate Change is the priority issue for humanity now. If we don’t bring down our planet’s heat and adapt to the extra heat already in our climate system during this generation, future generations will be reeling.

If we don’t get Climate Change under some kind of control where we can survive, all our other problems will be moot. We need to fix our political systems, our economics, our duty to our fellow persons, and create an equal and non-discriminatory existence. But if the sound, the noise as it were, of all other disasters distracts us from monitoring and addressing the essential factors that cause our planet to overheat we will have failed in a very concrete, physical way.

There are instances where our focus on addressing Climate Change involves a long, pristine look into past climate changes to get a sense of what happens on Earth during a warmup completely free of the ‘noise’ of our modern-day, human-altered world. Ice core samples:

Quest begins to drill Antarctica's 'oldest ice' Efforts are about to get under way to drill a core of ice in Antarctica that contains a record of Earth's climate stretching back 1.5 million years. A European team will set up its equipment at one of the highest locations on the White Continent, for an operation likely to take four years. The project aims to recover a near-3km-long cylinder of frozen material. Scientists hope this ice can help them explain why Earth's ice ages flipped in frequency in the deep past. "Beyond EPICA", as the project is known, is a follow-up to a similar venture at the turn of the millennium called simply EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica). (November 30, 2021) BBC News [more on Climate Change in our area]

This pristine scientific information without the ‘noise’ of other issues can help keep us focused on the core of this #Climate Crisis. Granted, a noiseless, scientific view of Climate Change doesn’t give us a full picture of how a disruptive climate now will upset our plans for a clean, equitable future and therefore cannot be ignored. We are in a desperate situation where many critical issues must be addressed at the same time.

But we don’t want to allow our attention to stray too far from the fundamental heat-trapping problem our way of life has caused, or we will be trying to fix an environment doomed to fail.

Time passes.

Climate change data, garbage in garbage out

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 12:48:00 +0000

Addressing Climate Change requires accurate data. We cannot hope to live in a quickly warming world that humanity has profoundly disturbed without an in-depth, comprehensive, and fluid view of our environment. We cannot plan in a way that will actually reduce damages and increase recoveries from more extreme weather events—as they will assuredly come--if the information about our warming environment has been politicized or if we are missing information on critical parts of our environment.

For example, considering that soil organic matter “… holds three times more carbon than the atmosphere” [see below] it’s critical to include the role of soil in our climate models.

Study digs up roles bacteria play in global carbon cycle Cornell researchers have developed an innovative technique to track microbes and understand the various ways they process soil carbon, findings that add to our knowledge of how bacteria contribute to the global carbon cycle. That’s important because soil bacteria are notorously difficult to study, though they are a key to the health of our biosphere. They convert plant biomass into soil organic matter, which is the basis for soil fertility and which holds three times more carbon than the atmosphere. In this way, bacteria control how much carbon ends up in the atmosphere or stored in soil and every year soil microbes process about six times more carbon than all anthropogenic emissions combined. Improving our knowledge of the roles bacteria play in carbon cycling will ultimately help climate modelers develop more accurate predictions. (November 22, 2021) Cornell Chronicle [more on Climate Change in our area]

We are still trying to grasp the complexity of our environment and what we need to do to keep it healthy. No longer can we assume Nature can take care of itself (meaning our environment’s ability to take care of us) because humanity’s machinations have seriously lost our world a lot of its robustness and resiliency with damaged ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity.

As we discover more about our environment, how Climate Change impacts our world, and even how people will respond to changes, humanity will need all critical data—availability of freshwater, the state of our many infrastructures, the health of our ecosystems, the quality of our health care, what nations are willing to do to lower their carbon footprints and how they’re measuring them, food availability, and a zillion other quantifiable information--on a platform that all nations, the media, and businesses can easily use.

The data will be fluid as the information changes, and we learn more. We’ll constantly have to refresh our knowledge. For example, earlier than thought Arctic Ocean warming could mean many things including the need for more research for better data. Experts are scrambling to understand Climate Change. Which is to say the data we need to ‘see’ our warming planet will keep changing, it won’t always be clear because it’s coming from many different sources, and it’s always going to be incomplete.

The Arctic Ocean began warming decades earlier than previously thought, new research shows The Arctic Ocean has been warming since the onset of the 20th century, decades earlier than instrument observations would suggest, according to new research. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, found that the expansion of warm Atlantic Ocean water flowing into the Arctic, a phenomenon known as "Atlantification," has caused Arctic water temperature in the region studied to increase by around 2 degrees Celsius since 1900. Francesco Muschitiello, an author on the study and assistant professor of geography at the University of Cambridge, said the findings were worrisome because the early warming suggests there might be a flaw in the models scientists use to predict how the climate will change. (November 25, 2021) CNN [more on Climate Change in our area]

This data, like the way our senses have allowed our species to perceive the world, will be vital to our existence henceforth. (Only in recent times have we discovered that our atmosphere is made up of many gases, and later still that some of those invisible gases help warm our planet.) There’s still a lot about our environment we don’t know that we don’t know—even though we’ve caused major worldwide disturbances.

If we allow ourselves to rely on bad data to maintain our existence, we’ll be fruitlessly indulging ‘garbage in, garbage out’.

Time passes.

COP26 was not a failure

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 11:52:00 +0000

Cop26 may have not been a success in the sense that it did not achieve many of the stated goals of this particular UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, but it wasn’t a failure. This worldwide process of humanity trying to quickly address Climate Change continues (#COP27) and it continues to ask that nations try harder to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and help those poor nations who did not cause this crisis to adapt. It continues to hone down on the mechanisms to evaluate our efforts for a sustainable planet. The UN’s COPs are not cops who can arrest anyone; the COPs process is a worldwide voluntary process hoping to use humanity’s best abilities, qualities, and aspirations and emerge with human behaviors that result in a livable future.

COP26 Reaches Consensus on Key Actions to Address Climate Change Adaptation, mitigation and finance are all strengthened in a complex and delicate balance supported by all Parties. After six years of strenuous negotiations, pending items that prevented the full implementation of the Paris Agreement on carbon markets and transparency have finally been approved. Deliberations under the current session of the COP, CMP and CMA came to an end this Saturday in Glasgow, one day after their scheduled conclusion. The wide-ranging set of decisions, resolutions and statements that constitute the outcome of COP26 is the fruit of intense negotiations over the past two weeks, strenuous formal and informal work over many months, and constant engagement both in-person and virtually for nearly two years. The package adopted today is a global compromise that reflects a delicate balance between the interests and aspirations of nearly the 200 Parties to the core instruments on the international regime that governs global efforts against climate change. (November 13, 2021) United Nations Climate Change [more on Climate Change in our area]

COPs are a stage to focus on an existential threat. It gets major media attention. Voices of optimism and despairget heard. Science gets heard. And though it is quite troubling about humanity’s inability to fully address this crisis, the world gets to see much of where the problems are at any one year, who is accomplishing something, and who is trying to thwart collective efforts. If nothing else, the COPs process is a continual look at ourselves when some like a climate crisis strikes.

The ultimate guide to why the COP26 summit ended in failure and disappointment (despite a few bright spots) After two hard-fought weeks of negotiations, the Glasgow climate change summit is, at last, over. All 197 participating countries adopted the so-called Glasgow Climate Pact, despite an 11th hour intervention by India in which the final agreement was watered down from “phasing out” coal to “phasing down”. In an emotional final speech, COP26 president Alok Sharma apologised for this last-minute change. His apology goes to the heart of the goals of COP26 in Glasgow: the hope it would deliver outcomes matching the urgent “code red” action needed to achieve the Paris Agreement target. (November 14, 2021) The Conversation [more on Climate Changein our area]

At our heels, as humanity tries to negotiate fair and effective ways to bring our planet’s temperature down, is the relentless accumulation of our greenhouse gas emissions. Despite the reactions to the COP, optimistic or not, we have a tiger by the tail.

CO2 Hits 414.49 ppm as COP 26 Negotiations Conclude As negotiators from 195 countries concluded two weeks of COP 26 negotiations with lacklustre results, atmospheric readings from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii showed carbon dioxide levels rising over the last year to 414.49 parts per million—2.56 ppm more than a year ago, and a 24.69 ppm rise in a decade. The pre-industrial baseline in which human society developed was 280 ppm. That level had remained stable for thousands of years before Europe began to burn coal in large quantities. Adding the continuous use of oil and gas in larger quantities from 1900 and accelerating into this century has vastly speeded up the process. Scientists have placed the safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 350 ppm, a figure which they calculate will keep the planet’s temperature rise to 1.5C. In order to keep to a safe path, existing emissions need to be reduced by 45% this decade. On present trends—and now with COP 26 added as a marker—this seems wildly optimistic if not impossible. (November 14, 2021) The Energy Mix [more on Climate Change in our area]

Ours is now a world that has been dramatically altered by one species—our own. The changes we have caused did not happen all at once but over centuries of actions that failed to include the overall health of our planet, culminating in a desperate situation where we are also warming the planet that we have profoundly disturbed. We aren’t likely to “solve” the #ClimateCrisis in a way where we can quickly get back to business as usual because it’s the accumulated reckless environmental actions of our species that got us here in the first place.

That is to say, we are now on a trajectory fraught with increasing frustration with each other as our disparate agendas collide with the uncompromising laws of physics. There will be more public demonstrations for our leaders to give top priority to this climate crisis, more world gatherings trying to deal with nations’ desire to grow while doing so on a fragile planet continuing to falter, and more people around the world who realize the plight we are in.

Unlike trying to pull out of an unwinnable war we started, we cannot escape the attention a quickly warming world demands.

COP26 did much to gather humanity’s attention on the climate crisis and yet it wasn’t nearly enough.

Time passes.

How hot will Earth get? Depends.

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 11:46:00 +0000

Hopefully, we’re not asking ‘how hot can Earth get’ because that would be very hot indeed. Our rocky planet started out as a fireball. No, we’re talking about ‘how hot will we allow Earth to get as we go further into Climate Change’?

Climate Negotiators Confront a Key Question: How Hot Will the Planet Get? As the second week gets under way, how is the Glasgow climate conference going? How is the planet faring? Is it on target for capping warming at 2.7 degrees C (4.9 degrees F) by later this century? Or are we headed for 2.2 degrees C or 1.8 degrees C? Or is it still a doomsday 4 degrees C (7.2 degrees F) or more? All those numbers have been in circulation in recent days. So what should we believe? The most widely quoted figure for our climate destiny is 2.7 degrees C. This, say UN scientists, is the likeliest outcome if countries meet promises for the coming decade made prior to the conference in their pledges of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). (November 8, 2021) Yale Environment 360 [more on Climate Change in our area]

How hot will Earth get depends on how quickly we act to shift to renewable energy and stop drilling for more fossil fuels. It will depend on whether humanity can kick itself into high gear and lower our carbon footprints. It depends on whether we can find a way to effectively communicate to a large portion of the populace that doesn’t care or know about the existential threat of the #ClimateCrisis.

It depends on whether we can change our economic systems into efficient drivers of human behavior that rewards addressing Climate Change and discourages warming the place up more. It depends on whether we have or will trigger tipping points like the warming of the arctic so much so that we’ve lost the albedo effect and whether the arctic permafrost starts to unfreeze on a vast scale.

It depends on whether humanity works together to bring down our planet’s temperature or unleashes social unrest (war, etc.) due to real or perceived unfair methods to do so—making any joint efforts to address #ClimateCrisis impossible.

It depends on how accurate, honest, and complete our ability to monitor the changes in our environment as we go further into this crisis.

New high-resolution climate model predicts more extreme weather events in the future A first-of-its-kind study uses a new high-resolution climate model to highlight local climate-fueled extreme weather risks decades in advance -- and the results aren't good. The UK Met Office leveraged its 2.2 km resolution UK Climate Projection model to analyze future rainfall events. It is the first time researchers have used a climate model at a resolution on a par with operational weather models for national climate scenarios. Researchers found through the high-resolution model that impacts of extreme rainfall could be more frequent and severe due to climate change than had previously been thought. The study comes as global leaders convene in Glasgow, Scotland, for COP26 to discuss strategies for curbing greenhouse gas emissions in hopes of slowing human-induced warming, which is increasing at an alarming rate. The study narrows in on the COP26's host city, as well as London. (November 8, 2021) CNN [more on Climate Change in our area]

However.

Instead of mere spectators to the quick warming of our planet we have agency, we have the ability to change things. We can communicate the urgency of addressing #ClimateCrisis, push our leaders to do more, choose energy alternatives and/or by our actions with others, vote, rally, and more.

BTW: Is COP26 tending towards success? The talks didn’t collapse. Yet, this COP didn’t emerge with firm timelines, and there was a failure for the UN to declare a “state of emergency”.

Time passes.

Climate Change: Beyond politics

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com (Frank J. Regan) — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 12:38:00 +0000

Several nations have decided not to engage with their fellow nations at this year’s UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow. This is too bad because these nations are important to the worldwide dialogue on Climate Change. Recently, it was the USA’s leader that failed to join with other nations’ leaders at these climate talks. Beyond just simply blaming them, it’s going to be hard, if not impossible, to address a worldwide crisis like Climate Change when all world leaders are not at the table engaged in finding solutions for a world environment in trouble.

Who’s attending (Biden and Modi), and who isn’t (Putin and Xi). When President Biden was asked in Rome on Sunday about criticism of the world’s wealthiest economies to do more to address climate change, he noted to absence of two key players: China and Russia. “Not only Russia, but China, basically didn’t show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate change,” the president told reporters. “There’s a reason why people should be disappointed in that. I found it disappointing myself.” One day later, as Mr. Biden joined more than 100 world leaders who have descended on Glasgow for a critical climate summit — including Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain — the leaders of China and Russia were among the most notable no-shows. (November 1, 2021) The New York Times [more on Climate Change in our area]

Throughout world history, it’s been rare indeed when all world leaders were in agreement on any issue, except for maybe ending World War Two. Everyone had had enough of that. In fact, the United Nations itself was finally created and agreed upon by most nations because it was thought at the time humanity couldn’t tolerate such another conflagration. Nations talking to each other was thought then to be more productive and more conducive for our collective survival than going against each other with all the Industrial-Revolution technology that we could throw at each other. Humanity can change.

In a like manner, the United Nations is now trying to avoid another major conflagration—the burning up of our entire planet. And while the UN hasn’t been successful in preventing all conflicts around the world since the second world war, there has been a monumental advance in avoiding human battles and resolving smoldering resentments before anger boiled over. Admittedly, the rocky history of UN involvement in world affairs has proved that leaders meeting to iron out differences doesn’t necessarily bring everyone to the table. Nations, including our own, often wrongly perceive that it’s in their best interest to stay away, not talk with each other for a variety of reasons, including political or economic.

Parenthetically, it’s simply immoral for the developed nations not to come together and solve a climate crisis they created, not help developing nations deal with the crisis, and not help developing nations find other ways of growing without burning fossil fuels. It’s a sort of short-sighted meanness that’s likely to bite us in the ass.

Since World War Two humanity has finally realized that, though not perfect, the climate talks provide a structure where world leaders can talk about critical issues like Climate Change.

It seems most likely, given the dismal trajectory of Climate Change, that eventually all world leaders are going to be coming together to address this crisis. If major tipping points have occurred—massive worldwide wildfires, cities overwhelmed by sea-level rise, uncontrollable tropical diseases that can spread to places that had never had such outbreaks, and the collapse of major ecosystems (like the coral reefs)—there won’t be any holdouts because every nation, even the developed nations, will be desperate. Stubbornly refusing to talk won’t secure anyone’s long-term sustainability. The case that they’ll be better off trying to save only themselves on a very interconnected, finite planet is untenable. We’ll have to adapttogether.

Climate Change is beyond politics because no nation will knowingly vote against its own existence. Unlike humanity’s past bad behaviors like enslaving others and pillaging less powerful nations that are taking us a long time to resolve, addressing Climate Change comes with time and greenhouse gas limits. Soon, decades perhaps if we continue to undermine the UN climate talks, no one will be better off no matter how hard they try to shut out the rest of the world.

Time passes.