(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Overnight News Digest: World leaders aim for another climate cop-out as the world broils [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-09-07  

Tonight’s news awaits your comments. Everyone is encouraged to share their 2¢ or articles, stories, and tweets. This is an open thread.

World Leaders Head for Another Climate Cop-Out

Bloomberg

Leaders of the world’s largest economies are once again heading for a fudge on climate as they prepare to meet in New Delhi this weekend. Group of 20 host Narendra Modi is pushing for an agreement among members to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030, after a similar proposal was blocked by oil titans Saudi Arabia and Russia in July. But even if they reach an agreement, the text’s current language is vague. It’s not clear what baseline they’ll be working from. And there’s a key caveat: The anticipated deal offers support to technology that allows factories and power plants to keep burning fossil fuels […] The technology has faced major hurdles in scaling up and is derided by climate campaigners as an excuse for fossil-fuel giants to maintain output. In all, an agreement this weekend is unlikely to bolster confidence that world leaders are finally doing what’s needed to keep climate change in check.

Earth just had its hottest summer on record, U.N. says, warning "climate breakdown has begun"

CBS News

[…] "The dog days of summer are not just barking, they are biting," warned U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a statement coinciding with the release of the latest data from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) by the World Meteorological Organization. "Our planet has just endured a season of simmering — the hottest summer on record. Climate breakdown has begun," Guterres said. The WMO's Secretary-General, Petteri Taalas, issued an urgent assessment of the data, saying: "The northern hemisphere just had a summer of extremes — with repeated heatwaves fueling devastating wildfires, harming health, disrupting daily lives and wreaking a lasting toll on the environment." Taalas said that in the southern hemisphere, meanwhile, the seasonal shrinkage of Antarctic Sea ice "was literally off the charts, and the global sea surface temperature was once again at a new record."

This summer broke the world record for the highest temperature officially recorded

AP News

Earth has sweltered through its hottest Northern Hemisphere summer ever measured, with a record warm August capping a season of brutal and deadly temperatures, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Last month was not only the hottest August scientists ever recorded by far with modern equipment, it was also the second hottest month measured, behind only July 2023, WMO and the European climate service Copernicus announced Wednesday. August was about 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial averages. That is the threshold that the world is trying not to pass, though scientists are more concerned about rises in temperatures over decades, not merely a blip over a month’s time.

Africa contributes just 4 percent of global carbon emissions despite being the continent that will suffer the most from climate change

Al Jazeera

African leaders and delegates are meeting in Nairobi, Kenya this week for the continent’s first climate summit. The 2023 African Climate Summit, from September 4 to 6 and co-hosted by the African Union, will cover critical climate issues facing African nations, as well as climate finance solutions and green growth across the continent of some 1.4 billion people. Africa is the continent most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. According to the International Rescue Committee, out of the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate disaster, seven are in Africa. […] Comprising about 17 percent of the world’s population, Africa contributes just 4 percent of global carbon emissions at 1.45 billion tonnes.

Africa proposes global carbon taxes to fight climate change

BBC News

African leaders have proposed a global carbon tax regime in a joint declaration. The Nairobi Declaration capped the three-day Africa Climate Summit in Kenya's capital. The document, released on Wednesday, demanded that major polluters commit more resources to help poorer nations. African heads of state said they will use it as the basis of their negotiating position at November's COP28 summit. The African Climate Summit was dominated by discussions on how to mobilise financing to adapt to increasingly extreme weather, conserve natural resources and develop renewable energy.

Where dangerous heat is surging

The Washington Post

The world is experiencing a surge in extremely hot days that put human health at risk, with the threat concentrated in some of the places least prepared to cope, according to an analysis of climate data by The Washington Post and CarbonPlan, a nonprofit that develops publicly available climate data and analytics. By 2050, over 5 billion people — probably more than half the planet’s population — will be exposed to at least a month of health-threatening extreme heat when outdoors in the sun, the analysis shows, up from 4 billion in 2030 and 2 billion at the turn of the century. The analysis calculated an approximate form of “wet-bulb globe temperature,” a metric that combines temperature, humidity, sunlight and wind. Scientists consider it the gold standard for evaluating how heat harms the human body.

Texas power emergency hinged on stranded wind farm supplies

The Dallas Morning News

Texas’ worst power crisis in more than two years was triggered when officials were forced to halt deliveries on a long-distance transmission system, stranding electricity supplies hundreds of miles from major population centers. As record heat spurred demand for power to run air conditioners across Texas on Wednesday, a key transmission line supplying the Dallas area showed signs of an imminent overload. That prompted the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to issue a so-called transmission watch alert at 6:34 pm local time, suspending some power shipments, likely from wind farms, in South Texas. The precautionary measure intended to preserve the integrity of the transmission network forced generators to curtail about 1,000 megawatts just as electricity supplies were being stretched by unprecedented consumer demand, said Brad Jones, ERCOT’s former interim chief executive officer. That’s enough power to supply roughly 200,000 homes.

Is green growth happening? An empirical analysis of achieved versus Paris-compliant CO2–GDP decoupling in high-income countries

The Lancet

[…] High-income countries, with their high per-capita CO 2 emissions, must reduce their emissions at an extremely fast rate to comply with the climate targets and equity commitments of the Paris Agreement. Economic growth makes such rapid emission reductions very difficult to achieve. The problem is that, under any given scenario of technological change, an increase in aggregate production and consumption entails more energy demand, and consequently more CO 2 emissions, than would be the case without such an increase… Therefore, there are major concerns as to whether it is possible for high-income countries to uphold their obligations under the Paris Agreement while continuing to pursue economic growth. Politicians in high-income countries have typically responded to this problem by insisting that economic growth can be made green. For evidence, they point to countries that have recently achieved absolute decoupling of gross domestic product (GDP) from trade-corrected CO 2 emissions (ie, increasing GDP alongside declining emissions). Several commentators have cited these achievements as examples of green growth; perhaps most prominently is a 2022 Financial Times article claiming that “green growth is already here”, and “may take us to net zero all on its own”. […] Narratives that celebrate decoupling achievements in high-income countries as green growth are thus misleading and represent a form of greenwashing. At the achieved mitigation rates, these countries will on average take over 220 years to reduce CO 2 emissions by 95% and will exceed their fair-share carbon budgets by more than 27 times in the process. If high-income countries exceed their fair-share carbon budgets, they either exacerbate climate breakdown or appropriate the carbon budget shares of lower-income countries, or most likely they do both. There is nothing green about this. If we are to refer to what is happening in these countries as green growth, then green growth is not adequate for avoiding climate catastrophe, much less for achieving climate justice. Alternatively, if green growth is supposed to be consistent with the climate and equity targets of the Paris Agreement, then green growth has not been achieved in high-income nations, and it appears very unlikely to be achieved in the future.

'I'm aware of it now': How Calgary's new smoky normal is affecting summer life and future plans

CBC News

Calgary has been blanketed by smoke for nearly three full weeks this wildfire season, already surpassing the previous record set in 2018 and obliterating readings that were considered normal in previous decades. From May 1 to Sept. 5 this year, there have been a total of 499 smoke hours, according to weather data collected near the Calgary International Airport by Environment and Climate Change Canada. That's nearly 21 full days of smoke. The smokiest season on record prior to this year came in 2018, when 450 hours of smoke were recorded from May to September. For decades prior, smoky skies were a rarity in Calgary, with many seasons seeing no smoke at all. Things have changed.. Six of the last seven years have seen more than 100 hours of smoky summer skies.

World meteorologists point to ‘vicious cycle’ of heatwaves and air pollution

The Guardian

Heatwaves across the world are worsening air quality and pollution, scientists have said. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said extreme temperatures are not the only hazard from heatwaves but that they also cause pollution-related health problems. In their annual air quality and climate bulletin, the meteorologists have highlighted a “vicious cycle” of climate breakdown and air pollution. They have shown that heatwaves sparked wildfires in the north-western US and heatwaves accompanied by desert dust intrusions across Europe, which both caused dangerous air quality in 2022. […] “Heatwaves worsen air quality, with knock-on effects on human health, ecosystems, agriculture and indeed our daily lives,” said the WMO secretary general, Prof Petteri Taalas. “Climate change and air quality cannot be treated separately. They go hand-in-hand and must be tackled together to break this vicious cycle.”

Minnesota gripped by worsening drought, with little rain in sight

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Minnesota has ended the summer with significant drought statewide, and for just the second time in the past two decades, parts of the state fall into the worst-case category of exceptional drought. A map released by the U.S. Drought Monitor on Thursday showed that the entire state is dryer than normal. The two hardest hit areas include a corridor stretching west from Duluth, encompassing the top of the Mississippi River, and a swath in the southeast corner of the state, with some of the dryest land due east of Albert Lea. The Twin Cities remained in the mid-range severe drought category. "We're not seeing consistent improvement, and that's troubling," State Climatologist Luigi Romolo said. "We don't have a good sense of when this might end." While this summer has brought a few heat waves as high as 100 degrees, the real issue is the lack of rain, Romolo said.

Dead trees around the world are shocking scientists

Knowable Magazine

[…] Forest scientists around the globe are alarmed to see droughts, often exacerbated by fire and infestations of bark beetles, cull trees at scales they have never seen before — from massive swaths of American woodland, to dry forests in Australia where roots can reach down some 50 meters (more than 160 feet), to temperate regions and moist tropical forests where such events were long deemed unthinkable. “Even people who are really knowledgeable and who have a lot of experience out in the field were surprised to see how fast these forests were going down the drain,” says Henrik Hartmann, an ecophysiologist at the Julius Kühn Institute Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants in Germany and lead author of an overview of forest die-offs in the 2022 Annual Review of Plant Biology. But forecasting the future is a mammoth challenge — so much so that the major climate predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are likely to heavily underestimate drought-driven tree die-offs. Scientists don’t even know how many trees are dying in the present day; they largely only record deaths at well-studied sites, so many are probably dying unnoticed. And importantly, much of the scientific understanding of how trees respond to drought is outdated, based on an incomplete consideration of tree physiology, making it difficult to build accurate models. Predicting what the future holds means untangling the silent processes unfolding inside the bodies of trees as they suffer through hotter and drier weather, and — ultimately — understanding how trees die.

Why Ashland may need to step up prescribed burns to manage dying Douglas firs

Oregon Public Broadcasting News

In Southern Oregon, Douglas firs are dying. And climate change is making the problem worse with more severe droughts and hotter temperatures. About 20% of Douglas firs in Ashland’s forests are dead or dying, according to Chris Chambers, the forest officer for the city of Ashland. “There is a lot of what we call ‘red and dead’ out there, canopies that have turned from green to red,” he said. “Ashland has always prided itself on having this emerald necklace of forests surrounding our community and that emerald necklace is changing to something a little more ruby-colored these days.” In Southern Oregon, Douglas firs are experiencing a “decline spiral,” according to researchers at Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service. “In recent years, we’ve had drought, of course, but it’s been drought accompanied by higher temperatures, particularly in the summer. And that has really stressed trees to their limits,” said Max Bennett, a retired extension forester with OSU. “And then opportunistic insects come along and take advantage of these stressed trees and kill them.”

As climate change challenges home insurers, an ‘uninsurable future’ looms

Los Angeles Times

Poll: 20% of Americans fear climate change could force them to move

USA Today

An exclusive USA TODAY/Ipsos poll finds a gaping American divide over climate change. Polling data shows an almost an equal number of people believe two completely different things: About 1 in 5 people surveyed were so concerned about global warming that they think it will make it more difficult to live in their area. About the same number said they either don't know if climate change is happening or don’t believe in it at all. […] The numbers tell the tale. At times it can seem as if people were living in different countries, or even different realities. Democrats are much more likely to say they’ve experienced extreme weather events recently compared with Republicans, 57% to 44%.

Of the 49% of people who said they had faced extreme weather in the past month, 76% were either very or somewhat concerned about climate change.

Among people who didn't experience a recent extreme weather event, only 24% said they were very concerned.

A full 68% said extreme weather events will become more frequent soon. And 39% said climate change was harming their everyday life.

Close to two-thirds were pessimistic about the chance of slowing or reversing the effects of global warming – in part because they believe Americans aren't willing to change their behavior.

Third of Oregon counties now in a drought emergency

Oregon Capital Chronicle

Twelve of 36 counties, covering half the land in Oregon, are in a state of emergency over drought, with local officials calling for help. […] Most of the state is in a moderate to severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, impacting about 3.6 million Oregonians. A lack of precipitation and declining water levels in streams and rivers affect farming, ranching and recreation, according to a news release from the governor’s office, and are likely to lead to shorter growing seasons and wildfire risks. Droughts are exacerbated by human-caused climate change, and in the West, droughts have become longer, more frequent and more severe, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. […] Last year, the West experienced its driest period in 1,200 years, according to climatologists.

Hurricane Lee strengthens to Category 4

ABC News

Hurricane Lee, now churning over the Atlantic Ocean, intensified very rapidly on Thursday, strengthening from a Category 2 hurricane to a Category 4 hurricane. Lee is forecast to become a Category 5 hurricane with winds of 160 mph by Thursday night. Lee is expected to move north of the Caribbean islands over the weekend, sparing them any direct impacts other than rough surf and rip currents. By next week, the spaghetti models show the storm turning north before reaching Turks and Caicos. Bermuda may be in Lee's path.

Biden administration cancels state-owned oil leases in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Anchorage Daily News

The Interior Department announced Wednesday it will cancel the last remaining oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and move to restrict drilling on 13 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Biden administration asserts the ANWR lease sale held in 2021, in the final days of the Trump administration, violated federal law. […] Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said the Arctic refuge is like no other place on Earth and needs to be protected. It supports millions of migratory birds, polar bears and caribou herds sought by local Alaska Native hunters, she said. “Climate change is the crisis of our lifetime and we cannot ignore the disproportionate impacts being felt in the Arctic,” Haaland said. “We must do everything within our control to meet the highest standards of care to protect this fragile ecosystem.

‘Sickening’: GOP explodes at Biden over ANWR decision

E&E News

Republicans and irate Alaska lawmakers slammed the Biden administration Wednesday after the White House said it would cancel the last remaining oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The move, which came alongside new limits on oil leasing in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, prompted cheers from most Democrats, but a furious response from the GOP and the bipartisan Alaska delegation, who said the cancellation not only broke legal contracts but would weaken the United States and lead to higher energy prices. Some, like Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), could barely contain their anger. He said he was “livid,” while calling the decision “sickening.” Rep. Mary Peltola, the state’s lone Democrat in Congress, said she was “frustrated.”

Indonesian voters want a clean energy plan, but candidates haven’t delivered

Mongabay

Environmental policy experts are calling on the presidential hopefuls in Indonesia’s election next year to lay out their strategies for moving the country away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner sources of energy. Indonesia, the world’s fourth-largest democracy, holds presidential and legislative elections in February 2024. Three prominent figures have already declared their candidacies for the main event, but none have spoken about any kind of an energy transition for a country that’s the world’s biggest exporter of coal. Most likely voters younger than 44 say they experience the dire effects of climate change and expect the candidates to offer substantial plans to resolve them, according to a new survey published Sept. 5 by the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) and the UniTrend research institute at Gadjah Mada University.

Willis blasts congressman’s ‘interference’ in Fulton Trump probe

The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis Thursday blasted a congressman who has pledged to investigate her handling of an indictment of … Donald Trump and others. U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, recently demanded records of Willis’ communication with Justice Department officials who have also indicted Trump for his role in an alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election. […] On Thursday, Willis fired back, saying Jordan’s Aug. 24 letter included “inaccurate information and misleading statements.” She accused Jordan of improperly interfering with a state criminal case and attempting to punish her for personal political gain. “Its obvious purpose is to obstruct a Georgia criminal proceeding and to advance outrageous misrepresentations,” Willis wrote of Jordan letter. “As I make clear below, there is no justification in the Constitution for Congress to interfere with a state criminal matter, as you attempt to do.”

After grand jurors were doxed, Georgia prosecutors want Trump trial jurors shielded

NPR News

County prosecutors want a judge to restrict defendants, the media and anyone else from publicizing the identities of future jurors in the Georgia criminal case focused on former President Donald Trump. That request comes after members of the grand jury that indicted Trump and his allies in August for a sweeping racketeering conspiracy had their personal information published on a far-right website. District Attorney Fani Willis is asking Fulton Superior Judge Scott McAfee to prevent anyone from sharing the likeness or identifying personal information of prospective jurors or jurors in the election interference trial. "It is clearly foreseeable that trial jurors will likely be doxed should their names be made public," Willis wrote in her motion Wednesday. "If that were to happen, the effect on jurors' ability to decide the issues before them impartially and without outside influence would undoubtedly be placed in jeopardy."

Harris launching college tour to try to mobilize young voters in battleground states

ABC News

Vice President Kamala Harris will soon be hitting the road for a monthlong college tour, traveling to more than a dozen campuses across eight states. The trip underscores both the value Democrats are placing on younger voters and the more forceful role Harris is seeking to play on key issues like abortion access ahead of the 2024 election, after weathering two years of scrutiny and low approval ratings. The vice president's "Fight for our Freedoms College Tour" begins on Sept. 14 at Hampton University in Virginia. It will focus heavily on mobilizing young voters -- some of whom have expressed less than favorable views of President Joe Biden -- in states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Wisconsin and Virginia, with additional campus visits and details to come. […] Young voters proved to be a key constituency for Democrats, boosting candidates in the last midterm and presidential election cycles… This year, however, Biden has faced low favorability marks from younger voters, according to ABC News/Ipsos polling.

Elon Musk Secretly Sabotaged Ukraine Attack Against Russia, Book Reveals

RollingStone

Elon Musk’S Starlink has been providing satellite internet connectivity to Ukraine as it fends off a Russian invasion, and a new biography of the tech titan features new details about the extent to which he’s been using the company to meddle in the war. Musk in 2022 secretly ordered his engineers to turn off Starlink’s connectivity along the Crimean coast in order to thwart a Ukrainian attack on Russia’s naval fleet, according to an excerpt of Walter Isaacson’s long-anticipated Elon Musk obtained by CNN. Musk made the decision out of a fear that the attack would lead Russia to retaliate with nuclear weapons, according to Isaacson. The Ukrainian subs rigged to blow up the Russian ships “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly” after Musk disconnected their service, Isaacson writes.

Russia Objects to US Supply of Depleted Uranium Rounds to Ukraine

Voice of America

Russia is criticizing a new U.S. aid package for Ukraine that includes depleted uranium tank ammunition, saying the decision to send the rounds “is a clear sign of inhumanity.” Russia’s embassy in Washington said on Telegram Wednesday that the United States is "deliberately transferring weapons with indiscriminate effects" and that it is fully aware of potential health and safety consequences from the ammunition. The tank rounds could help Ukrainian forces destroy Russian tanks and have previously been provided to Ukraine by Britain.

U.S. announces it’s sending controversial depleted-uranium rounds to Ukraine

Politico

[…] U.S. officials ultimately decided to send the munitions because they are considered the most effective way of arming U.S.-made Abrams tanks, according to a Defense Department official familiar with the plans. The first tranche of 10 Abrams will arrive in Ukraine in mid-September, after a group of Ukrainian soldiers finished a training program to use them last month… “What really is happening is that Russia simply doesn’t want to see Ukraine with tanks and more effective tank rounds that could be lethal against Russian tanks,” the official said. “If Russia has an issue with that, they can withdraw their tanks from Ukraine.” The move to send the depleted-uranium weapons comes on the heels of the White House’s decision to send Ukraine cluster munitions, which are banned by more than 100 countries because of the danger to civilians from unexploded ordnance.

NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable

Ars Technica

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/7/2192086/-Overnight-News-Digest-World-leaders-aim-for-another-climate-cop-out-as-the-world-broils

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/