[MCN] Another anthology on human-caused climate change

[Lance Olsen]

UN chief calls new report a "red alert" for Earth as governments lack ambition to tackle climate change <https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEKrKI_zLS39Wb3IDuLzxF84qGQgEKhAIACoHCAowyNj6CjDyiPICMKb_xAU?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen>
A new report from the United Nations warns that global governments are "nowhere" near ambitious enough to adequately tackle climate change and meet the ...
CBS News <https://news.google.com/publications/CAAqBwgKMMjY-gow8ojyAg?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen>

New climate pledges 'far short' of meeting Paris Agreement goals, UN warns <https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEERFH7RaieCWft_-XxbZDeAqMwgEKioIACIQpzoRSNLEm6QR--MasMLSAioUCAoiEKc6EUjSxJukEfvjGrDC0gIwpfTQBg?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen>
The planet is on "red alert" because governments are failing to meet their climate change goals, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said ...
CNN <https://news.google.com/publications/CAAiEKc6EUjSxJukEfvjGrDC0gIqFAgKIhCnOhFI0sSbpBH74xqwwtIC?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen>

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Providing decent living with minimum energy: A global scenario
Joel Millward-Hopkinsa,⁎, Julia K. Steinbergera,b, Narasimha D. Raoc,d, Yannick Oswalda 

a Sustainability Research Institute, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
b Institute of Geography and Sustainability, Faculty of Geosciences and Environment, University of Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland 

c Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
d IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis), Laxenburg, Austria 

ABSTRACT 

It is increasingly clear that averting ecological breakdown will require drastic changes to contemporary human society and the global economy embedded within it. On the other hand, the basic material needs of billions of people across the planet remain unmet. Here, we develop a simple, bottom-up model to estimate a practical minimal threshold for the final energy consumption required to provide decent material livings to the entire global population. We find that global final energy consumption in 2050 could be reduced to the levels of the 1960s, despite a population three times larger. However, such a world requires a massive rollout of advanced technologies across all sectors, as well as radical demand-side changes to reduce consumption – regardless of income – to levels of sufficiency. Sufficiency is, however, far more materially generous in our model than what those opposed to strong reductions in consumption often assume. 

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“The wealthy bear greatest responsibility: the emissions of the richest one per cent of the global population account for more than twice the combined share of the poorest 50 per cent. 

“This group will need to reduce its footprint by a factor of 30 to stay in line with the Paris Agreement targets.”

https://reliefweb.int/report/world/emissions-gap-report-2020
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 
September 8, 2020 ; first published August 19, 2020
 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2014291117 <https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2014291117>

NEWS FEATURE
News Feature: Foreseeing fires
Amy McDermott
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2014291117 <https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2014291117>

Excerpts

“Wildfire ripped through the black spruce forests of Eagle Plains, Yukon Territory, Canada in 1990. Fire came again in 2005. By the time plant ecologist Carissa Brown arrived in the summer of 2007, all but a few trees were dead.”

“Any seedlings that had sprouted after the first fire had burned in the second.”

“Researchers can no longer look to the past as an accurate predictor of the future. Forests adapted to rare fires may not persist through frequent ones.”

“ … the plants that grow on a burn site after a first fire are fuel for the next fire there.”

“In Yellowstone, lodgepole pine is the major player,” Hansen says. “If they can’t establish, it’s possible the system converts to nonforest rather than a different tree species.”

“Forest ecologist Jonathan Coop, at Western Colorado University in Gunnison, coauthored a review published in July, analyzing more than 100 studies from western North America and Canada. The main takeaway, Coop says, is that “in an era of changing climate and increasing wildfire activity, we really can't count on forests to come back.” 

Complete article
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2014291117 <https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2014291117>

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The climate crisis shows how rich people blow through their “fair share” of carbon emissions <https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEJOVF--yS8ZJHtg_iQXgH4YqGAgEKg8IACoHCAowlOzSATCaiDUwzdjoBQ?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen>
Our liberty-loving way of life has landed us in an encircling moral maze otherwise known as the climate crisis.

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Carbon Brief 23 February 2021 

Guest post: The threat of high-probability ocean ‘tipping points’

Excerpt
In recent years, tipping points <https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-nine-tipping-points-that-could-be-triggered-by-climate-change> – thresholds where a small change could push a system into a completely new state – have increasingly become a focus for the climate research community.

However, these are typically thought of in terms of unlikely changes with huge global ramifications – often referred to as “low probability, high impact” events.
 
In a new paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences <https://www.pnas.org/content/118/9/e2008478118>, my co-authors and I instead focus on the potential for what we call “high probability, high impact” tipping points caused by the cumulative impact of warming, acidification and deoxygenation.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-the-threat-of-high-probability-ocean-tipping-points <https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-the-threat-of-high-probability-ocean-tipping-points>

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Plant responses to climate are lagged
Climate drivers outside of the growing season may have stronger effects on plants than previously assumed.

GERMAN CENTRE FOR INTEGRATIVE BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH (IDIV) HALLE-JENA-LEIPZIG

NEWS RELEASE 22-FEB-2021
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-02/gcfi-prt022221.php <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-02/gcfi-prt022221.php>

Article
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.15519 <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.15519>

Excerpts from release

Two in five of the world's plant species are at risk of extinction. In the face of climate change, understanding why certain plant species are vulnerable to extinction while others prevail is more urgent than ever before.

"Most researchers assume that plant populations respond to the climate within twelve months and only use this time window in their models to analyse plant responses," says first author Sanne Evers

However: "There are many ways in which climate during the dormant season, or climate that occurred few years in the past, can influence the survivorship, growth, and reproduction of plants. For example, species can grow substantially during the cold season, at least where the cold season temperature does not fall below 5° Celsius. In addition, it might take multiple years for plants to die after physiological damage from drought has occurred," says Aldo Compagnoni from iDiv and MLU and senior author of the paper.

To investigate which combination of climate drivers and temporal window have the best predictive ability, the researchers used four exceptionally long-term data sets:  "For these plant species, 15 to 47 years of data was available.

The results were clear: In many cases, it can take several years for plants to respond to climate. "Plant responses to climate drivers that are lagged and/or outside of the growing season are the rule rather than the exception," says co-author Tiffany Knight, professor at MLU and UFZ and head of a research group at iDiv. 

While this study focuses on examining the effects of past climate on plants, there are important implications for understanding how plants will be affected by future climate change. 
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In England, the "wood crisis there has to be attributed to the requirements of expanding agriculture, industry and commerce, all stimulated by a growing, shifting population.”

“The population of England and Wales, about three million in the early 1530's, had nearly doubled by the 1690's. The resulting demand for wood for various purposes was further increased by changes in the distribution of the population.”

“ … although only one person in 10 was a townsman in the 1530s, one person in four was a townsman in the 1690s.”

John U. Nef. An Early Energy Crisis and Its Consequences. Scientific American November 1977

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