Current climate policies will leave more than a FIFTH of humanity exposed to dangerously hot temperatures by 2100, study warns
The prophecies never stop but nothing much ever happens
But the article is an amusing one. Very old-fashioned in its way. It examines -- wait for it -- "numbers of people left outside the ‘human climate niche’—defined as the historically highly conserved distribution of relative human population density with respect to mean annual temperature. We show that climate change has already put ~9% of people (>600 million) outside this niche." -- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01132-6
Fortunately, as a retired academic I can understand academic gobbledegook. More simply put: Heat is bad for you
It can even be regarded as racist to claim that climate has any effect on human beings but they are gaily doing just that. They imply that the tropics are lightly populated because heat is distressing and global warming will put more people into distressingly hot situations.
As someone who grew up in the tropics, I completely reject that. I loved my home in Far North Queensland and dream of going back there. Warmth is comforting and relaxing. You drink a lot of cold beer there but that is pretty good. It is cold that is threatening.
So why are the tropics lightly populated? I know why but dare not say it. Let me simply point out that most of the lightly populated tropical areas are in Africa
Current climate policies will leave more than a fifth of humanity exposed to dangerously hot temperatures by 2100, a study has warned.
Led by scientists at the University of Exeter, the study found that the legally binding measures currently in place will result in global warming of 4.9F (2.7C) by the end of the century.
This means two billion people - around 22 per cent of the projected end-of-century population - will be exposed to dangerous heat, with average temperatures of 84.2F (29C) or more.
At these high temperatures, water resources could become strained, mortality could increase, economic productivity could decrease, animals and crops could no longer flourish, and large numbers of people may migrate.
Globally, there are 60million people already exposed to this heat.
However, the researchers suggest there is 'huge potential' for decisive climate policy to limit the human costs of climate change.
They say the forecasts show that limiting global warming to 2.7F (1.5C), in line with the Paris Agreement, would mean five times fewer people are exposed to extreme heat.
The study, which was in association with scientists from the Earth Commission and Nanjing University in China, also found that the lifetime emissions of 3.5 average global citizens today would expose one future person to the dangerous conditions.
And in the US, this was even more concerning, as it was found just 1.2 US citizens' emissions would have the same result. This means that for almost every average person in America, their individual contribution to climate change over their lifetime could result in another person living in dangerous heat in the future.
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"Degrowth"?
In 1972 a collective of grandees known as the Club of Rome set out to establish the limits to economic growth. Worried about the state of the planet, they fed a computer all they knew about farming yields, natural resources, population trends and so on. The rudimentary machine crunched the data and spouted a grim answer: given ecological constraints, the highest standard of living possible was one stagnating at half the American level of the time. Anything beyond that risked imminent disaster, a “sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity”.
Half a century later, the global population has doubled and GDP more than quadrupled: the limits to growth turned out to be as surmountable in the 20th century as they had been when first posited in the 18th. But anyone thinking that another 50 years of evidence might have settled the debate has not met the European left. At a threeday “Beyond Growth” conference held at the European Parliament in Brussels this week (and organised by 20 mainly leftleaning MEPs), an audience of youngsters whooped and cheered as speakers proclaimed that, this time, the limits of growth really have been reached. Driven by ecological concerns and riled by social injustice, to them the question is no longer how to mitigate the effects of human activity, for example by investing in green technologies. Rather, some form of “degrowth” —décroissance, in the original French—is necessary today to avoid societal collapse.
Human beings are born small and stop growing as adults, says Philippe Lamberts, cohead of the Green group in the parliament and the conference’s leading light. Similarly, “when your economy is mature, well, it doesn’t need to grow any longer.” The metaphor falls short of what most economists would think of as convincing evidence. But it has clearly struck a chord. A similar growthastherootofallproblems jamboree five years ago was sparsely attended and confined to the parliament’s committee rooms. This time, thousands packed into the EU’s vast hemicycle and beyond. The big beasts of Brussels came to pay homage, led by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.
One participant gushed at being there at the “Woodstock for systemchangers”. That may be to overstate the impact that can be wrought by a cast of minor academics, trade unionists, green lobbyists and fellowtravellers on stage. Still, many a progressive idea has germinated in Europe, and Brussels is where some of them get turned into policy. So when those roaming its halls, even if only for a few days, discuss moving “from the welfare state to the socialecological state”, it is worth paying attention.
It turns out that the animus against economic growth comes in 50 shades of red. Some merely decry the use of GDP as the primary gauge of a society’s success, pointing to how it fails to measure ills ranging from environmental degradation to slumping mental health. Fair enough. A bit further from the mainstream are the “postgrowth” advocates, who think people can be just as happy with economies going up or down. If policymakers stop caring about everhigher output, they can throttle bits of societal activity campaigners don’t like, for example big cars, private jets and so on. Instead of trying to grow the pie, the idea is to take what there now is and share it more equally. One panel decried the “addiction of labour to growth” by advocating a fourday week. In the very seats where MEPs crafted rules for minimum wages, campaigners were discussing maximum allowable wages.
There is an even more exalted tier—the actual degrowers. By far the majority at the conference, their aim is to shrink the pie deliberately. Growth damages the planet, and only benefits the rich anyway, they maintain. The idea that emissions can be cut enough while economies keep growing is “a fairy tale” designed to prolong the neoliberal world order. It is better—necessary, even—to force a diet now, and get rid of any aspirations for growth later. How, exactly? “We need to determine democratically what kind of production we need to be doing,” and nix the rest, one participant advocated. Panels of citizens can advise what is wasteful and what is socially desirable. Any resemblance to some of the more stringent policies of the early Soviet era are presumably not intended.
A spectre is haunting economics
Sometimes utopians fail to notice that they have already reached the promised land. For what is Europe, if not a postgrowth continent already? Parts of it, like Italy, are scarcely bigger than they were 20 years ago. Yet, somehow, that has not prompted the contemplative contentment that the degrowers expect. It turns out voters do not much like stagnation; the newish premier, Giorgia Meloni, rails against “Greta Thunberg’s ideology” killing jobs.
Where the growthsceptics are right is that the environment has suffered as GDP has soared. But they too readily dismiss the obvious solution, which is to green the economy, not throttle it. As Mrs von der Leyen explained to the sceptical crowd, her political breed already accept that the old economic model centred on fossil fuels is “simply obsolete”. Europe wants to cut the carbon it spews into the atmosphere by over half by 2030 compared with 1990—it is busily enacting law after law to reach the target—and to reach netzero carbon emissions by 2050. Already, its emissions are coming down even as the economy is growing. That is a remarkable pivot for a continent whose prosperity was built through burning coal, oil and gas. To dismiss such efforts as “greenwashing”, as degrowers do, is an overstatement.
Beyond the confines of the conference, Europe is grappling with nearintractable problems. How much can it spend to assist Ukraine as it fends off Russian aggression? How will Europe’s welfare state be financed as society ages? How can the best ideas to continue decarbonising the economy be turned into reality? Finding suitable solutions will require hard graft and much human ingenuity. That is the very stuff that economic growth is made of.
The more of it, the better.
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Global cooling? It looks like it in India
On May 4, India’s capital of New Delhi recorded the third coldest May morning since 1901. At 16 degree Celsius (60 Fahrenheit), the region’s 32 million residents woke up to a relatively cold morning in what is usually the hottest month of the year.
So why is there a record low temperature when the dominant mainstream narrative tells us that climate change has made our environs warmer than before? Is this just an aberration?
While Western media obsessed with the warm weather in Spain, India’s capital recorded a very cold summer morning. In fact, most of the cold-weather records in Delhi have gone unreported in Western media, which are mainly interested in showcasing the city’s extreme summer temperatures.
Neatly concealed from the public’s eye are the record low winter temperatures that Delhi has been witnessing since 2017. In December 2018, Delhi recorded an average minimum temperature of 7°C (44°F), the third lowest in the last 50 years. On December 30, 2019, the maximum temperature settled at 9°C (49°F), making it the coldest December day in 122 years.
As is the case globally, winter cold in Delhi is a bigger killer than summer heat. According to studies, short-term exposure to extreme temperature accounts for 6.5 percent of all deaths in India, with 88 percent of that amount caused by cold weather and only 12 percent by hot weather.
This is an example of media bias towards advancing a narrative of apocalyptic warming when reporting weather events. Also, part of this slanted reporting is the media’s failure to acknowledge the real reason behind the recording of all-time high summer temperatures: the urban heat island (UHI).
Urban Heat Island, Not Climate, Sets Records
During my stint as a climate consultant in New Delhi, I lived close to the Safdarjung temperature-measurement station. As per the Indian Meteorological Department, the highest maximum temperature ever recorded at Safdarjung was 47°C (117°F) on May 29, 1944.
This high temperature recorded nearly 80 years ago for this station has yet to be toppled by the 21st century warming that supposedly threatens us with doom, and the reason is probably the station’s location.
Unlike the other temperature monitoring stations in Delhi, the Safdarjung station is in a relatively greener section of the city. Thus, it is less susceptible to the Urban Heat Island effect, and, therefore, has not been registering the insanely high temperatures of 49°C (120°F) witnessed in and around Delhi.
Mahesh Palawat, vice-president of Skymet Weather Services, says, “Safdarjung weather station is located in a fairly green area, as compared to the rest of Delhi, which has a lot of heavily concretised spaces without much green cover. Temperatures in these parts of the city will therefore, understandably, be higher.”
So, the reason thermometers record new all-time highs in Delhi is because of urbanization’s concrete structures and pavements and other landscape changes. Weather officials also note that some of the newer automatic weather instruments used in highly urbanized areas may be prone to error.
“Most observatories in Delhi have automatic systems, which have a scope for error because they use bimetals, which can contract and expand during different weather conditions,” says an official of the India Meteorological Department in the Hindustan Times. He added that abnormal temperature spikes of the error-prone stations should be compared to the readings of older stations like Safdarjung to obtain “a more precise idea of the temperature.”
It takes just a bit of common sense to understand the artificial urban heat island impact on thermometers in cities and airports. However, preconceived notions of catastrophic warming pose serious hurdles to grasping this reality.
Delhi’s case illustrates that warming is not a continuous and unprecedented phenomenon as some claim it to be. Instead, we see at play a chaotic climate system at work with unpredictable weather patterns. Additionally, we must be mindful of the urban heat island impact when reading news bulletins about record-high summer temperatures.
https://co2coalition.org/2023/05/15/media-ignore-delhis-coldest-may-since-1901/
*****************************************Australia: Santos boss Kevin Gallagher says gas is the key to moving to net zero, not renewables
Gas, not renewable energy, is the “main game” in the transition to net zero, Santos managing director Kevin Gallagher says, while warning the industry’s opponents are focused on “killing oil and gas”.
Speaking at the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference in Adelaide on Thursday, Mr Gallagher also championed carbon capture and storage (CCS) as integral to the transition, saying Santos’s Moomba project would equate to the carbon impact of taking 200,000-300,000 cars off the road.
Mr Gallagher said Santos was not looking for a government handout for its CCS ambitions, which include three hubs starting with the $US165m Moomba CCS project which aims to start injecting CO2 next year. But the industry did need “a supportive regulatory framework’’ to be able to move forward with confidence, he said.
Mr Gallagher said “abated oil and gas” was crucial to the move to net zero, with CCS a vital part of the equation.
He also said gas was at the core of the long-term shift to net zero, while downplaying the role of renewables.
“Renewables are part of the solution, but they are not the holy grail,’’ he said.
“The main game is gas because it makes renewables possible, it provides feedstock for fertilisers and chemicals, and it fires the high temperature furnaces required for bricks and cement.
“However, while getting to net zero should be all about emissions reductions, our opponents are only about killing oil and gas. Which is why they now seek to discredit carbon capture and storage as well.’’
The conference being held in Adelaide this week – the industry’s major annual get-together – has focused heavily on the role of CCS in the national and global transition to net zero.
APPEA itself has called for the creation of “net zero industrial zones”, where heavy-emitting industries would cluster together and have their emissions collected and sequestered.
However the federal government appears split on the issue, with Resources Minister Madeleine King this week expressing strong support for CCS while Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic said he had not been shown evidence that it was viable at a large scale.
Mr Gallagher said Santos had been injecting gas into depleted reservoirs in the Cooper Basin for “decades”, which made him “very confident” that Moomba CCS would be a success.
On a global scale, Mr Gallagher said there were 30 projects in operation, storing 44 million tonnes of CO2 annually, and it was clear that “abated oil and gas” – gas with the CO2 stripped out and stored – had a role to play for decades to come.
“To achieve the government’s targets under the Safeguard Mechanism, industries like steel, cement, aluminium and ammonia need us to succeed in delivering large-scale, low-cost abatement and affordable abated gas,’’ Mr Gallagher said.
“Otherwise, Australia will lose those industries and those jobs as well.
“We want to work with ministers like the Minister for Industry and the Minister for Energy to build support and confidence with these customers so that we can keep a viable manufacturing sector in Australia.’’
Mr Gallagher said there was also an equity issue involved in ensuring the supply of affordable gas, with “energy poverty” a growing issue even in developed countries such as Australia, while globally, gas was needed to feed the world.
Mr Gallagher said the industry’s ideological opponents had given “no thought to the human cost of a world without oil and gas’’.
“The world could not feed itself today, or anytime soon, without fertilisers made from gas,’’ he said.
“Without ammonia-based fertilisers made from natural gas, we could feed about four billion people, roughly half of today’s global population.
“And we do not yet have replacements for the materials that are fundamental to our modern civilisation – steel, cement and plastics.’’
Mr Gallagher, when asked about the public perception of the oil and gas sector and the political fight over issues such as the gas market intervention and recent proposed changes to the petroleum resources rent tax, said the industry needed to make its case forcefully.
“As an industry, we’ve sought to keep our head down and try to stay out of the firing line, but we’re in the firing line and so we do have to fight back but I don’t think that’s going to war with everybody.
“But I do think standing up for ourselves means that we have to be there telling our story and making sure that people understand the benefits of gas and that the need for gas will be here for a long time.’’
On the political front, Mr Gallagher said regulatory stability was the key issue.
“When I speak to my Japanese and Korean, Malaysian, French partners, they are all very concerned with the rate of change and the rate of market interventions,’’ he said.
“So whatever happens now I think we need stability going forward and I’ll be working with both sides of politics to try and encourage them.’’
Opposition leader Peter Dutton, in a video address delivered before Mr Gallagher’s speech, cast the political situation in a much stronger light, juxtaposing the “renewable zealotry” of the Labor Government against the free market ideology of the federal opposition.
Mr Dutton vowed to wind back the government’s intervention measures if elected, and urged the industry to “fight for yourselves’’ against “financially crippling” measures which threatened to de-industrialise the nation.
Mr Gallagher also said Santos’s direct air capture (DAC) trials were also progressing well, and the ambition was to bring the cost down to $US75 per tonne of carbon captured by 2030.
“Just last week, I visited Welshpool in Perth to witness commissioning of a DAC technology that we will soon be trailing in the Cooper Basin,’’ he said.
“It’s been running intermittently for several days now and it is working as planned, with lower energy inputs than other direct air capture technologies that we know of.
“The trial unit is able to capture a quarter of a tonne of CO2 per day and will soon be transported to Moomba where we will optimise its performance.
“Later this year, we will scale the technology up to build a one tonne per day unit for delivery to Moomba and further trials next year.’’
Mr Gallagher said he believed the company could hit the $US75 target, “an order of magnitude lower than average global costs of DAC technology today’’.
“This puts us in reach of the possibility of eliminating Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions from natural gas production and use,’’ he said.
The pilot plant’s costs are currently about $US200 per tonne of carbon, however that was inflated by the small size of the project, Mr Gallagher said.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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