#Greenhouse Gasses

[reasonsforhope]

"In a bid to slow deforestation in the Amazon, Brazil announced Tuesday [September 5, 2023,] that it will provide financial support to municipalities that have reduced deforestation rates the most.

During the country´s Amazon Day, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also signed the creation of two Indigenous territories that total 207,000 hectares (511,000 acres) — over two times the size of New York City — and of a network of conservation areas next to the Yanonami Indigenous Territory to act as a buffer against invaders, mostly illegal gold miners.

“The Amazon is in a hurry to survive the devastation caused by those few people who refuse to see the future, who in a few years cut down, burned, and polluted what nature took millennia to create,” Lula said during a ceremony in Brasilia. “The Amazon is in a hurry to continue doing what it has always done, to be essential for life on Earth.”

The new program will invest up to $120 million in technical assistance. The money will be allocated based on the municipality´s performance in reducing deforestation and fires, as measured by official satellite monitoring. A list of municipalities eligible for the funds will be published annually.

The resources must be invested in land titling, monitoring and control of deforestation and fires, and sustainable production.

The money will come from the Amazon Fund, which has received more than $1.2 billion, mostly from Norway, to help pay for sustainable development of the region. In February, the United States committed to a $50 million donation to the initiative. Two months later, President Joe Biden announced he would ask Congress for an additional $500 million, to be disbursed over five years.

The most critical municipalities are located along the arc of deforestation, a vast region along the southern part of the Amazon. This region is a stronghold of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who favored agribusiness over forest preservation and lost the reelection last year.

“We believe that it’s not enough to just put up a sign saying ‘it’s forbidden to do this or that. We need to be persuasive.” Lula said, in a reference to his relationship with Amazon mayors and state governors.

Lula has promised zero net deforestation by 2030, although his term ends two years earlier. In the first seven months of his third term, there was a 42% drop in deforestation.

[Note: For context, Lula's third term as president started January 1, 2023. It was not continuous with his first two terms, when he was president from 2003 to 2010. Lula's third term has been a historic and desperately needed reversal of the anti-environmental, etc. policies of Bolsonaro, whose term ended at the end of 2022.]

Brazil is the world’s fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, with almost 3% of global emissions, according to Climate Watch, an online platform managed by World Resources Institute. Almost half of these emissions come from deforestation. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, Brazil committed to reducing carbon emissions by 37% by 2025 and 43% by 2030."

-via AP, September 5, 2023

#brazil #deforestation #lula da silva #amazon #amazon rainforest #environmentalism #fossil fuels #environment #environmental justice #land back #illegal miners #yanonami #indigenous #first nations #greenhouse gasses #conservation #good news #hope

[mindblowingscience]

Engineers at the University of Cincinnati have created a more efficient way of converting carbon dioxide into valuable products while simultaneously addressing climate change. In his chemical engineering lab in UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science, Associate Professor Jingjie Wu and his team found that a modified copper catalyst improves the electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide into ethylene, the key ingredient in plastic and a myriad of other uses.

Continue Reading.

#Science #Enviroment #Chemistry #Materials Science #Climate Crisis #Greenhouse Gasses #Plastic

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Rewetting about half of England’s lowland peat would be enough to deliver a fifth of the greenhouse gas emissions savings needed from the country’s farming by 2030, research suggests. Rewetting peat would also help restore habitats for birds, wildlife and plant species.

#peat #peat bogs #greenhouse gasses #farming

[mckitterick]

Manatee Bay, Florida, reports ocean temperature of 101.1°F (38°C), a global record

Ocean temperatures are also breaking records in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean this week.

The ocean has warmed unabated since 1970, having absorbed more than 90% of excess heat from the climate system, and is now seven degrees hotter than normal.

Why is this bad?

Rising global temperatures decrease oxygen solubility in water, increase the rate of oxygen consumption via respiration, and reduce the introduction of oxygen from the atmosphere and surface waters into the ocean interior by increasing stratification and weakening ocean overturning circulation.

Low-oxygen zones increase production of N2O (a potent greenhouse gas), reduce biodiversity, alter food webs, and negatively affect food security and livelihoods. Both acidification and rising temperature are linked with deoxygenation and combine with low-oxygen conditions to affect biogeochemical, physiological, and ecological processes.

Global warming is the primary cause of ongoing deoxygenation. Models project further oxygen declines during the 21st century, even with ambitious emission reductions.

But wait, there's more.

How could ocean warming be catastrophic?

Clathrates are deposits of methane trapped within ice on the bottom of the ocean, usually off the continental shelf where decaying biological material has flowed from the land into the seas for millennia.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, possessing global-warming potential 72× greater than carbon dioxide.

Sudden release of large amounts of natural gas from long-frozen methane clathrate deposits likely were responsible for Earth's sudden runaway warming 630 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic extinction event, and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Our greatest hope right now is that most clathrates lie deep under the ocean where temperatures are less likely to rise rapidly enough to melt their ice caps.

However, some methane clathrate deposits are much shallower, making them far more vulnerable to warming. A deposit off Canada in the Beaufort Sea and another in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf are as shallow as 45 meters, so even slight ocean warming could quickly release gas from the currently frozen methane.

Not less than 1,400 gigatons of methane currently lurk under the Arctic submarine permafrost, with up to 50 gigatons of methane hydrate highly likely to be abruptly released at any time.

A release on this scale would increase the methane content of the planet's atmosphere by a factor of twelve, equivalent in greenhouse effect to doubling the level of CO2.

Recognizing this threat led to the "Clathrate Gun" hypothesis. A 2012 study concluded that melting these Arctic methane clathrates would mean a 1000-fold free methane increase in a single pulse, increasing atmospheric temperatures by more than 6°C in 80 years.

(map of methane clathrate deposits worldwide)

The worst part of all this horror is that such a sudden warming is also likely to set off other methane clathrate deposits across the world, sending Earth into an ever-increasing temperature spiral akin to those ancient extinction events.

So, yeah, ocean temperatures like this are not just red flags, but radioactively glowing warning signs of impending worldwide disaster.

#clathrates #greenhouse gasses #climate change #global warming #clathrate gun

[commiepinkofag]

#greenhouse gasses #climate crisis #earth day #2024

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Greenhouse gas emissions should be subject to legal controls in the US and phased out under the Toxic Substances Control Act, according to a group of scientists and former public officials, in a novel approach to the climate crisis.

“Using the TSCA would be one small step for [the Us President] Joe Biden, but potentially a giant leap for humankind – as a first step towards making the polluters pay,” said James Hansen, a former NASA scientist, who is a member of the group alongside Donn Viviani, a retired 35-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Their legal submission, filed to the EPA on Thursday, states that greenhouse gas emissions present a danger to the climate and should be regulated as such under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), a law passed in 1976 as part of a suite of environmental regulations in the US.

The TSCA, which was amended in 2016, allows the EPA to place monitoring requirements on companies and enforce strict controls on certain substances. It has been used to restrict chemicals including asbestos, lead in paint, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

The law covers substances that pose “an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment”. The petitioners believe it can be interpreted to allow for a phase-out of greenhouse gas emissions.

Viviani said: “TSCA is like the ruby slippers [in The Wizard of Oz] – it can do just about anything. It can allow you to put a levy on carbon, and can deal with the legacy of carbon emissions. It has nearly international reach, as the US is the biggest market in the world and could apply these measures to imports too.”

He and the other petitioners have filed “a mountain’s worth” of scientific studies showing the impact of greenhouse gases on weather, which results in wildfires, heatwaves, severe drought, rising sea levels and increasingly acidified oceans.

The US has a recent history of attempts to regulate carbon dioxide under existing environmental legislation, as Congress has often proved reluctant to consider passing laws to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The former president, Barack Obama, who was unable to get his climate legislation through the Republican-dominated Congress, tried to use the Clean Air Act – another of the environmental achievements of the 1970s – to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power stations, but under Donald Trump the attempt was reversed.

The US Supreme Court, which has a strong Republican bias, is re-examining whether the EPA should have such carbon-regulating powers.

Viviani has also tried a similar tack before, submitting a legal petition in 2015 for carbon dioxide to be controlled under the TSCA to tackle ocean acidification. That failed, but he believes that the amendment to the legislation in 2016 offers a fresh basis on which to present the argument again.

Hansen said the new attempt was more likely to succeed, adding: “The TSCA is different. It’s better than the Clean Air Act (CAA). The CAA was a possible vehicle for a rising carbon fee, because the supreme court in Massachusetts vs EPA ruled that CO2 was a pollutant. However, there is a very strong suspicion that if the CAA is used that way, the present conservative supreme court will reverse that ruling. They can’t do that easily with the TSCA, which was passed by Congress and reaffirmed [in 2016] with bipartisan support.”

Alongside Viviani and Hansen, the other petitioners include: Lise Van Susteren, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at George Washington University; John Birks, an emeritus professor in atmospheric chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder; Richard Heede, of the Climate Accountability Institute; and the Climate Protection and Restoration Initiative.

Some climate campaigners have criticised Biden for a perceived lack of action on the climate crisis, despite the fact that he made it a priority in the early days of his presidency. The war in Ukraine and rising energy prices have prompted the White House to emphasise new gas extraction as an alternative to Russian supplies.

Viviani said: “President Biden is an empathic man; we hope he is also a brave man. We hope he will use both his empathy and bravery to pick up this tool he has in the TSCA, and use it to give hope that a solution will be found to the many millions of young people, and in fact all of us.”

Under the TSCA, the EPA has 90 days to consider and act upon the legal petition. The Guardian contacted the EPA for comment.

#us politics #news #the guardian #2022 #president joe biden #biden administration #environmental protection agency #Toxic Substances Control Act #James Hansen #Donn Viviani #Clean Air Act #president barack obama #greenhouse gasses #green energy #climate crisis #climate emergency #climate reform #global warming #science #trust the science

[mothshrub]

Vote tomorrow!!

This goes especially if you're anywhere that has voting happening, obviously, but especially especially if you're in Texas.

Proposition 7 is about whether to set money aside to strengthen the energy infrastructure. That's fantastic, except for all that it's carefully not spelled out in the legislature, it excludes green energy sources and prioritizes natural gas power plants.

The proposition is primarily funded by oil companies and organizations. It benefits them because it's basically free loans to oil companies to build long-term customers for themselves. On top of this it's theoretically it's supposed to fix weaknesses in the power grid, except the emissions by these plants are going to worsen the overall weather problems, which is going to bring us back to where we started.

Please vote no on Prop 7!!!

#america #texas #politics #voting #climate #greenhouse gasses

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

2.8: 50 Million Years of Climate Change - with Christina!

Have you ever thought about how dinosaurs lived on a warm, swampy Earth and how we live on one that’s cold enough to keep pretty much the entirety of Greenland and Antarctica buried under kilometers-thick sheets of solid ice and wondered, hmm, how did we get from there to here? The short answer is that it took 50 million years of declining atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and dropping…

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#atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations #Christina #climate catastrophe #climate change #dinosaurs #earth science #environmentalism #greenhouse gasses #science #solarpunk #solarpunk presents podcast

[lenbryant]

But the climate crisis is a “hoax” according to some.

#climate crisis #global warming #environment #greenhouse gasses

[plethoraworldatlas]

Providing a massive $27 billion in grants, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) is the largest grant program within the IRA. Not only does this provide a massive investment in pollution-reducing, clean energy technology, but it targets communities that have been historically overlooked and underserved and brings equity to the clean energy transition. And the program's flexibility puts decision-making into states and communities’ hands—allowing local leadership to design and implement programing for maximum impact. This financing will have both immediate and long-lasting impact, by deploying clean energy projects in communities now, and supporting the creation of green banks that can finance clean energy projects well into the future. 

The deadline to take advantage of these funds is fast-approaching: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) only has until September 2024 to award the money. And what follows is the potential to kick-start the transition to clean energy and reducing harmful pollution for impacted communities. It will take engagement from communities, nonprofits, financial institutions, state, local and Tribal governments to deliver transformational impact. That means equitable investment in projects and long term development strategies that prioritize benefits for historically harmed communities. 

#us politics #ecology #enviromentalism #inflation reduction act #greenhouse gas emissions #greenhouse gasses #Greenhouse gas reduction fund #pollution #environmental protection agency

[reasonsforhope]

"A global shift to a mostly plant-based “flexitarian” diet could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help restrict global heating to 1.5C, a new study shows.

Previous research has warned how emissions from food alone at current rates will propel the world past this key international target.

But the new research, published in the Science Advances journal, shows how that could be prevented by widespread adoption of a flexitarian diet based around reducing meat consumption and adding more plant-based food.

“A shift toward healthy diets would not only benefit the people, the land and food systems,” said Florian Humpenöder, a study author and senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “but also would have an impact on the total economy in terms of how fast emissions need to be reduced.” ...

The researchers found that adopting a flexitarian diet could lower methane and nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture and lower the impacts of food production on water, nitrogen and biodiversity. This in turn could reduce the economic costs related to human health and ecosystem degradation and cut GHG emissions pricing, or what it costs to mitigate carbon, by 43% in 2050.

The dietary shift models also show limiting peak warming to about 1.5C can be achieved by 2045 with less carbon dioxide removal, compared with if we maintain our current diets.

“It’s important to stress that flexitarian is not vegetarian and not vegan,” Humpenöder says. “It’s less livestock products, especially in high-income regions, and the diet is based on what would be the best diet for human health.”

In the US, agriculture accounts for more than 10% of total GHG emissions. Most of it comes from livestock. Reducing meat consumption can free up agricultural land used for livestock production, which in turn can lower methane emissions. A potent greenhouse gas, methane is mainly expelled from cows and other animals raised for livestock. Animal production is the primary contributor to air quality-related health impacts from US food systems.

“This paper further confirms what other studies have shown, which is that if we change our diets to a more flexitarian type, we can greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Jason Hill, a professor in the University of Minnesota’s department of bioproducts and biosystems engineering.

According to the study authors, one way to achieve a shift toward healthier diets is through price-based incentives, such as putting taxes on the highest-emitting animal products, including beef and lamb. Another option is informing consumers about environmental consequences of high meat consumption."

-via The Guardian, March 27, 2024

#flexitarian #vegetarian #vegan #environment #environmental news #agriculture #big agriculture #beef #methane #air pollution #greenhouse gasses #carbon emissions #1.5 degrees #climate action #climate hope #good news #hope #food #food systems

[mindblowingscience]

When Canadian dairy farmer Ben Loewith's calves are born next spring, they will be among the first in the world to be bred with a specific environmental goal: burping less methane. In June, Loewith, a third-generation farmer in Lynden, Ont., started artificially inseminating 107 cows and heifers with the first-to-market bull semen with a low-methane genetic trait. "Selectively breeding for lower emissions, as long as we're not sacrificing other traits, seems like an easy win," Loewith said. The arrival of commercially available genetics to produce dairy cattle that emit less methane could help reduce one of the biggest sources of the potent greenhouse gas, scientists and cattle industry experts say.

Continue Reading

#science #stem #climate change #greenhouse gasses #agriculture #cows #methane

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Former officials in the UN’s farming wing have said they were censored, sabotaged, undermined and victimised for more than a decade after they wrote about the hugely damaging contribution of methane emissions from livestock to global heating.

Team members at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tasked with estimating cattle’s contribution to soaring temperatures said that pressure from farm-friendly funding states was felt throughout the FAO’s Rome headquarters and coincided with attempts by FAO leadership to muzzle their work.

The allegations date back to the years after 2006, when some of the officials who spoke exclusively to the Guardian on condition of anonymity wrote Livestock’s Long Shadow (LLS), a landmark report that pushed farm emissions on to the climate agenda for the first time. LLS included the first tally of the meat and dairy sector’s ecological cost, attributing 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions to livestock, mostly cattle. It shocked an industry that had long seen the FAO as a reliable ally – and spurred an internal clampdown by FAO hierarchy, according to the officials.

“The lobbyists obviously managed to influence things,” one ex-official said. “They had a strong impact on the way things were done at the FAO and there was a lot of censorship. It was always an uphill struggle getting the documents you produced past the office for corporate communications and one had to fend off a good deal of editorial vandalism.”

Serving and former FAO experts said that between 2006 and 2019, management made numerous attempts to suppress investigations into the cow/climate change connection. Top officials rewrote and diluted key passages in another report on the same topic, “buried” another paper critical of big agriculture, excluded critical officials from meetings and summits, and briefed against their work.

"There was substantial pressure internally and there were consequences for permanent staff who worked on this, in terms of their careers. It wasn’t really a healthy environment to work in,” said another ex-official.

Scientists also expressed concern about the way the FAO’s estimate of livestock’s overall contribution to emissions is continuing to fall. The 18% number that was published in 2006 was revised downwards to 14.5% in a follow-up paper, Tackling Climate Change Emissions in 2013. It is currently being assessed at about 11.2% based on a new “Gleam 3.0” model.

But many scientists plot farm emissions on a very different trajectory. One recent study concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from animal products made up 20% of the global total and a 2021 study found that the figure should be between 16.5% and 28.1%.

#agriculture #united nations #climate change #greenhouse gasses #methane emissions #animal agriculture #farming #industry #capitalism #greed

[oaresearchpaper]

#Methane #Carbon dioxide #Conventional feeding #Gas chromatography #Greenhouse gasses

[iterumvivere]

The Big Polluters

Picture from unsplash.com by Chris LeBoutillier Who is really the worst? Once again I find myself commenting on a podcast by Those Vicar Blokes. The episode in question, Crumbling Schools, King David & Fake Doctors. In this case its not on a topic within the podcast but a throwaway line referring to the world’s major greenhouse gas emitters. In the particular podcast, they mention India and…

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#carbon footprint #greenhouse gasses #pollution

[papa-squat-89]

#coronavirus #covid 19 #pandemic #global warming #greenhouse gasses