Tipping risks

 

 

Jeffrey St. Clair

+ Jonathan Donges, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research: “To effectively prevent all tipping risks, the global mean temperature increase would need to be limited to no more than one degree – we are currently already at about 1.2°C.’”

+ Since the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, international banks have provided around $3.2 trillion to the fossil fuel industry to expand operations.

+ A new study published in Energies by Joshua Pearce at the University of Western Ontario, and Richard Parncutt from the University of Graz, still climate change could led to more than one billion deaths in the next century: “If global warming reaches or exceeds two degrees Celsius by 2100…it is likely that mainly richer humans will be responsible for the death of roughly one billion mainly poorer humans over the next century.”

+ The 2023 global temperature peak was around 0.3C higher than 2022.

+ West Antarctica is warming twice as fast as climate models predicted. If it’s ice sheet collapses, it would raise sea levels by several meters.

+ At least five of the nation’s largest property insurers—Allstate, American Family, Nationwide, Erie and Berkshire Hathaway—have told regulators that extreme weather patterns caused by climate change have led them to raise premiums and stop writing coverages for natural disasters, such as hurricanes and wildfires, in some regions.

+ From 2003 to 2020 California experienced about 18,000 fires, 380 of them included at least one day when the fire grew by at least 10,000 acres. Climate change increased the likelihood of that explosive growth for most of the fires.

+ In British Columbia, four of the most severe wildfire seasons of the last century occurred in the past 7 years: 2017, 2018, 2021, and 2023.

+ By 2050, more than 5 billion people could face at least a month of extreme heat each year.

+ Africa will need around $277 billion annually to implement “nationally determined contributions” to meet the continent’s 2030 climate goals, according to the Climate Policy Initiative. Currently, however, Africa is receiving only $30 billion a year in climate financing.

+ A couple of months before Hurricane Idalia ravaged the Gulf Coast of Florida, Ron DeSantis rejected $350 million in federal funds meant to help tackle climate change. Then DeSantis refused to meet with Biden as he toured the damage and doled out emergency relief funding from FEMA….

+ When Hurricane Lee intensified into a Category 5 with more than 160 MPH winds, it became the 8th Cat 5 Atlantic storm in the last eight years. Comparing 1970-2000 with 2001-2022, the frequency of Cat 5 storms has tripled.

+ Water levels at Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest navigable lake in the world, are dropping dramatically after an historic winter heat wave, which has seen Peru smash records for both minimum (87.6) and maximum temperatures (103).

+ Currently, air pollution contributes to around ten million deaths a year. An additional two degrees of global warming will lead to an extra 153 million air pollution-linked deaths this century alone.

+ As reported in ScienceDirect, a series of epidemiological studies concluded that higher wood stove and fireplace usage is associated with a 70% higher incidence of lung cancer.

+ More than 75% of food crops depend on animal pollination, yet air pollution is drastically reducing effective pollination because it degrades the scent of flowers. For example, ozone has degraded honeybees ability to recognize odors by up to 90% from just a few meters away.