[Aug 14-20'23] New term: "Fossil granfluencers"
Climate change is here now, teaching birds migration routes and compounding climate risks at 2C.
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Weekly Climate 🎉
References: [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5].
Just a brief reminder that the newsletter will be on vacation from next week and until Sep 25, this means I will pause subscriptions from next week, Monday Aug 28.
‼️News you can’t miss
Here’s one important scary/bad (🙀), good (😻), interesting (😼) and fossil (💩) news item.
😻 Austrian biologist teaches endangered bird species a new migration route
😼 Compounding climate risks at 2C warning
💩 Fossil fuel companies are using granfluencers
👩⚕️ Status: Climate & Science
Let’s look at how we’re doing this week!
[#climatechangeishere] — Experts warn that the climate crisis is here now as death tolls from summer disasters mount, including flash floods and landslides in India, typhoons in Asia, wildfires in Canada and Spain, and the deadliest US fire in over 100 years in Hawaii. Despite warnings, global carbon emissions continue to rise to record-high levels, with investments in coal, oil, and gas predicted to reach upwards of $1 trillion by the end of 2023, prompting the top climate official at the UN to urge world leaders to rethink their fossil fuel plans.
[#NASAstudy] — A NASA-led study has found that if global temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, people worldwide could face multiple impacts of climate change simultaneously. The study analyzed the projected impacts of such warming to understand how different climate effects might combine. The researchers found that more than a quarter of the world’s population could experience an additional month of severe heat stress each year compared to the middle of the 20th century. High temperatures and drought could combine dangerously in places like the Amazon, increasing the risk of wildfire. The study's authors worked with a specially processed set of climate predictions to investigate potentially compounding effects of rising temperatures. The resulting dataset is available to the public and can help leaders develop targeted climate adaptation and mitigation plans.
📰 The 7 Grand Challenges
⚡️Decarbonize Electricity
Clean electricity is the one do-or-die challenge we must solve.
[#redtape] — UK taxpayers are losing £1.5bn per year due to Treasury red tape blocking new offshore wind projects, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. The rules that constrain the number of contracted farms allotted at offshore wind auctions will keep bills higher, despite the contracts for difference arrangement providing savings. The current fifth allocation round could secure as little as 2GW of offshore wind, leading to missed savings of over £1.5bn per year from cheaper renewable energy, compared to around 7GW that could have been secured. The UK's offshore wind fleet is the second-largest in the world, but faces challenges from rival markets including the EU and US which have vast subsidy arrangements.
[#chinanuclear] — China is expected to have the world's largest nuclear fleet by 2030, with nuclear power plants increasing nearly fourfold in the past decade. Despite setbacks in the UK and Argentina, China is looking to export its nuclear power technology, with Pakistan seen as the latest "springboard" for further growth. Nuclear power is a "fuel of convenience" for China, meeting the country's concerns around energy security and the need to decarbonize. Safety concerns have slowed China's nuclear ambitions, but the government called for "actively developing nuclear power" as part of its 2021 action plan on peaking CO2 before 2030.
🏘 Reduce impact of urban and rural areas
Lowering the impact of urban and rural areas.
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