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Amazon fires are causing glaciers in the Andes to melt even faster ObserverMatthew Harris Climate Science, Keele UniversityNovember 28, 2019 Fires occur in the rainforest every year, but the past 11 months saw the number of fires increase by more than 70% when compared with 2018, indicating a major acceleration in land clearing by the country’s logging and farming industries. When fires in the Amazon emit black carbon during the peak burning season (August to October), winds carry these clouds of smoke to Andean glaciers, which can sit higher than 5,000 metres above sea level. Despite being invisible to the naked eye, black carbon particles affect the ability of the snow to reflect incoming sunlight, a phenomenon known as “albedo”. Similar to how a dark-coloured car will heat up more quickly in direct sunlight when compared with a light-coloured one, glaciers covered by black carbon particles will absorb more heat, and thus melt faster. By using a computer simulation of how particles move through the atmosphere, known as HYSPLIT, the team was able to show that smoke plumes from the Amazon are carried by winds to the Andes, where they fall as an invisible mist across glaciers. Altogether, they found that fires in the Amazon in 2010 caused a 4.5% increase in water runoff from Zongo Glacier in Bolivia. The smoke from the fires rose high into the atmosphere and could be seen from space. Some regions of Brazil became covered in thick smoke that closed airports and darkened city skies. As the rainforest burns, it releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and larger particles of so-called “black carbon” (smoke and soot).
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The phrase “enormous amounts” hardly does the numbers justice – in any given year, the burning of forests and grasslands in South America emits a whopping 800,000 tonnes of black carbon into the atmosphere. This truly astounding amount is almost double the black carbon produced by all combined energy use in Europe over 12 months. Not only does this absurd amount of smoke cause health issues and contribute to global warming but, as a growing number of scientific studies are showing, it also more directly contributes to the melting of glaciers. In a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of researchers has outlined how smoke from fires in the Amazon in 2010 made glaciers in the Andes melt more quickly. Crucially, the authors also found that the effect of black carbon depends on the amount of dust covering a glacier – if the amount of dust is higher, then the glacier will already be absorbing most of the heat that might have been absorbed by the black carbon. Land clearing is one of the reasons that dust levels over South America doubled during the 20th century. Glaciers are some of the most important natural resources on the planet. Himalayan glaciers provide drinking water for 240m people, and 1.9 billion rely on them for food
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In South America, glaciers are crucial for water supply – in some towns, including Huaraz in Peru, more than 85% of drinking water comes from glaciers during times of drought. However, these truly vital sources of water are increasingly under threat as the planet feels the effects of global warming. Glaciers in the Andes have been receding rapidly for the last 50 years. The tropical belt of South America is predicted to become more dry and arid as the climate changes. A drier climate means more dust, and more fires. It also means more droughts, which make towns more reliant on glaciers for water. Unfortunately, as the above study shows, the fires assisted by dry conditions help to make these vital sources of water vanish more quickly.....read on https://theconversation.com/
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The climate crisis and all the evil in the world drives me to despair, The world will continue to be absurd, but you, with all your passion, can still make your corner of it more bearable Guardian Phileppa Perry Jun 24 2024 The question........I am finding it ever more difficult to be in this nasty world. Everything that I cherish is being destroyed and there is nowhere to go to find solace. I’ve always loved nature – but when I go for a walk now, I see every ash tree dying, I hear the loss of birdsong, I see how few insects there are. When I read the news, I just cannot comprehend how cruel humans are able to be, racism, misogyny, religious hate, cruelty to animals… The list is endless.I work in climate change and am having to pretend every day that there is still a chance we can prevent catastrophic climate change. I find it ever harder to be around people who don’t get just how bad things are. I don’t have kids and am single. I can’t talk to my family about it because they are rightwing, wealthy climate sceptics. They patronise me (despite the fact I’m nearly 60 and a chief executive). If I look to the future, I imagine how difficult it is going to be when food supplies are more affected by environmental crisis. People fought over toilet rolls during Covid – multiply that by 100 and apply it to food.I don’t want to face all this horribleness on my own. I’ve had lots of chances at relationships, but don’t want fear of the future to be the basis of one. In the meantime, I am trying to keep a lid on it, trying to dissociate my feelings, pretending all the bad stuff isn’t happening. When what I really want to do is scream my head off at everyone. Planet Earth is so beautiful, so incredible, I cry with the pain of what we are doing to it and to each other. How am I supposed to remain feeling in this fucked up world?
Philippa’s answer...... In his novel Candide, or Optimism, first published in 1759, Voltaire tells us of a young man who experiences a great deal of hardship and suffering. Using Candide’s experiences, Voltaire critiques the overly optimistic philosophy of the time. Like Candide, you too speak of a world marred by destruction and cruelty, and you are not mistaken. Although the forms of absurdity may change, the essence remains: human folly and suffering. Candide’s master is Pangloss who argues that “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds,” of which Voltaire takes a dim view. You, like Candide, are not comforted by this hollow optimism. The death of nature, the cruelty of men, increasingly extreme weather, these are not trifles to be dismissed with the wave of a philosophical hand. I cannot offer you the false balm of easy answers. What I can offer, however, is this: the world has ever been thus.........read on https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/nov/24/the-climate-crisis-and-all-the-evil-in-the-world-drives-me-to-despair
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New wildfires burn in US Northeast; California, West witnes s bigger blazes. Heavy smoke led to poor air quality and health advisories for parts of New Jersey and New York, including New York City.BS News Nov 13 2024 | New wildfires burned Tuesday across the N ortheast, adding to a series of blazes that have come amid very dry weather and killed at least one person, while much larger fires raged in California and other western states.Heavy smoke led to poor air quality and health advisories for parts of New Jersey and New York, including New York City.Firefighters in Massachusetts worked to contain dozens of fires amid strong winds and drought conditions. The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for much of that state and parts of Connecticut, saying conditions were critical and fires could rapidly spread. Massachusetts officials said all of the 200 or so fires they had been dealing with this month had been caused by human behaviour, and Governor Maura Healey urged people to avoid lighting fires. Now is not the time to burn leaves. Now is not the time to go outside and light a fire, she told reporters in Middleton. One fire in southern New Jersey tripped fire alarms and set off carbon monoxide detectors, causing an unprecedented number of 911 calls Monday, officials said.....read on https://www.business-
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They did note a few positive indicators like clean energy production. “Of course, the situation is not hopeless,” wrote Harvard science historian and study co-author Naomi Oreskes via email. “What we want people to understand is that, while there has been progress – particularly in the price and deployment of renewables – it’s not nearly enough. And the atmosphere does not respond to our intentions. It responds to chemistry.” The report calls for “rapidly phasing down fossil fuel use” by ratcheting up the carbon price in wealthy countries and using some of the proceeds to fund policies to stop climate change and adaptation programs to reduce damage from climate disasters. It also urges sharp reductions in emissions of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas, to “slow the near-term rate of global warming, helping to avoid tipping points and extreme climate impacts.” Without a course correction, the report warned, “climate change could cause many millions of additional deaths by 2050.”
Average global surface air and ocean temperatures shattered records in 2023, and are on track to do so again in 2024. The report notes that this extreme heat exacerbated numerous damaging and deadly extreme weather events over the past year, ranging from heat waves, droughts, and wildfires to hurricanes and floods. Some other planetary indicators setting records over the past year include global sea level rise, ocean acidity and heat content, the amount of ice on Greenland and Antarctica and in glaciers around the world, and tree cover loss due to wildfires. Preliminary findings from another recent report made headlines for finding that Earth’s trees, plants, and soils absorbed almost no carbon in 2023 due in part to the year’s record wildfires. But climate scientist Zeke Hausfather noted that this phenomenon sometimes happens in years with El Niño events. While human activity is responsible for long-term global warming, 2023 and 2024 were also influenced by an El Niño in the Pacific Ocean, which drew warm water up to the sea surface and contributed to short-term surface warming and associated climate impacts like droughts and wildfires in some regions.
Nevertheless, the report warned that human influence on Earth’s climate kept growing. Global fossil fuel consumption and associated climate-warming pollution reached record levels in 2023. So did the number of meat and dairy cattle and other ruminant livestock whose digestive processes generate planet-warming methane pollution, along with global per-person meat consumption........really folks, this IS A CRISIS......READ ON https://
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Wars, debt, climate crisis and Covid have halted anti-poverty fight World Bank. Setbacks mean UN goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 is impossible to hit, report finds Guardian Larry Elliot Tue 15 Oct 2024 Wars, debt, the climate crisis and the pandemic have combined to halt progress in the fight against poverty, the World Bank has warned. The Washington-based institution said on current trends it would take more than three decades to lift the near-700 million people living on less than $2.15 (£1.64) a day above the widely accepted definition of extreme poverty. In its Poverty, Prosperity and Planet report, the World Bank said the setbacks of recent years meant the goal set by the UN of ending extreme poverty by 2030 was already impossible to hit. Largely because of rapid growth in China, the global poverty rate fell from 38% in 1990 to 8.5% in 2024, but the rate of progress has come to a halt since 2019, and the figure is expected to decline only modestly, to 7.3%, by 2030. Extreme poverty remained concentrated in countries with historically low economic growth and high levels of fragility, many of which are in sub-Saharan Africa, the report said.
Axel van Trotsenburg, the World Bank senior managing director, said: “After decades of progress, the world is experiencing serious setbacks in the fight against global poverty, a result of intersecting challenges that include slow economic growth, the pandemic, high debt, conflict and fragility, and climate shocks. “Amid these overlapping crises, a business-as-usual approach will no longer work. We need a fundamentally new development playbook if we are to truly improve people’s lives and livelihoods and protect our planet.” The report said it would take even longer – more than a century – to meet a more ambitious objective of raising incomes above the $6.85 a day deemed to be the poverty threshold for upper middle-income countries.The bank defines upper middle-income economies as those with income a head of between $4,466 and $13,845 a year – a group of countries that includes Argentina, Botswana and China. Currently, 3.5 billion people – almost half the world’s population – live on less than $6.85 a day and the Bank said population growth meant the number of poor people on this measure of poverty had barely changed since 1990.......DEPRESSING NEWS......read on https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/15/wars-debt-climate-crisis-covid-poverty-world-bank
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