TITLE: Planet-warming pollution is growing at the fastest rate in history, scientists say
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/10/28/wmo-report-record-greenhouse-gases/
EXCERPTS: Concentrations of carbon dioxide — the most important driver of global warming — are now growing faster than at any time since our species evolved, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. The increase can be traced back to stubbornly high rates of fossil fuel consumption, the report said, as well as ecosystems that are becoming more likely to produce emissions and potentially less capable of absorbing excess carbon.
Levels of the potent greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide also hit all-time highs in 2023, the WMO said. The total heat-trapping potential of the atmosphere is now 51.5 percent higher than in 1990, when United Nations scientists first warned the world was on track for catastrophic climate change.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere last year exceeded 420 parts per million — a level not seen since the Pliocene epoch more than 3 million years ago. At that time, global temperatures were 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer, sea levels were 30 to 60 feet higher and Homo sapiens did not yet exist.
Most of the recent growth comes from people burning coal, oil and gas, the report said. But the WMO researchers also found worrying evidence that human-driven warming has caused natural systems to release more greenhouse gases and may be hurting the Earth’s ability to absorb what people emit.
The hike in carbon dioxide concentrations last year coincided with the largest-observed spike in carbon monoxide — a related gas that is produced when trees burn, the scientists said. Global carbon emissions from forest fires were 16 percent above average during the 2023-2024 fire season, as Australia endured a historic drought and Canada saw a record 37 million acres of forest go up in flames.
Surging levels of methane may also be traced to degraded ecosystems, data suggest. Chemical analysis of the gas, which traps 28 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 100-year time frame, suggests that it is increasingly coming from microbial activity, rather than fossil fuel burning. Though some of that increase can be attributed to bacteria living in landfills and the guts of cows, researchers worry it is also being produced by warming tropical wetlands and thawing Arctic permafrost.
Meanwhile, the net amount of carbon taken up by ecosystems last year was about 28 percent lower than in 2021 and 2022, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Monitoring Laboratory. This decline may be in part because of 2023′s record-high temperatures, which are known to stress plants and cut into ecosystems’ ability to serve as a carbon sink.
The more the world continues to warm, the researchers said, the more natural carbon sinks will weaken, and the harder it will be to achieve the world’s climate goals.
“We face a potential vicious cycle,” WMO Deputy Secretary General Ko Barrett said in a statement. “These climate feedbacks are critical concerns to human society.”
TITLE: Is climate change making us dumber?
https://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/specials/363360/is-climate-change-making-us-dumber
EXCERPTS: The short answer is: Yes. It is becoming more and more evident every year how extreme weather events and rising temperatures are increasingly disrupting education cycles, leaving millions of children without access to school, stunting their intellectual growth and their ability to compete with their peers globally.
For example, the 2022 Sylhet floods -- these floods began in May and lasted until the end of June and left 1.5 million children without access to their educational institutions for six months, according to Unicef. Although the rains only lasted about six weeks, waterlogging remained. Furthermore, as some schools were being used as shelters, children couldn’t go back to school for nearly half the academic year. This is not an isolated event -- it is part of a troubling global pattern giving rise to more frequent extreme weather events.
In Bangladesh, between 1971 and 2022, the average temperature has increased by 0.16 degrees Celsius. These rising temperatures have led to recurrent heatwaves and floods. In June 2023, the government was forced to shut down primary and secondary schools across the country due to a relentless heatwave. Bangladesh’s 33 million schoolchildren -- out of a total of 54 million -- suffered significant learning loss because of this.
This year, schools remained closed for weeks and, even after reopening, children returned to classrooms in the middle of another heatwave; while the closures were an extension of the Eid holidays, leading to prolonged disruption in education continuity. The Bangladesh Meteorological Department reported temperatures above 38 degrees Celsius for 24 consecutive days in April this year, followed by another, milder heatwave. This recurrent cycle of heat is a growing threat to education in Bangladesh.
But the problem isn’t limited to Bangladesh. Over one billion of the world's 2.4 billion children -- live in countries highly susceptible to climate change. Among them, those that are already affected by poverty and inequality are even more vulnerable. According to Save the Children, one-third of the world’s children live with the dual burden of poverty and high climate risk. Children in these regions face compounding challenges that hinder their ability to learn and thrive.
In addition to learning disruptions, climate change also creates a range of other challenges. It causes more extreme weather events, making them more frequent and intense, this in turn leads to prolonged school closures, population displacement, and economic hardship. Families struggling to recover from climate shocks may find it harder to invest in their children’s education, and often deprioritize returning to school in their disaster recovery plans. Rising temperatures are also linked to increased risks of violence and conflict, further destabilizing communities and deepening educational inequities.
Globally, over 1.3 billion children live in countries highly vulnerable to climate disasters. These countries also tend to have lower learning outcomes, meaning that children that are already at an educational disadvantage face even greater hurdles due to the impacts of climate change, and this trend is predicted to rise as global action to combat climate change is below par. More needs to be done to ensure that schools take measures to reduce the heat exposure of children, prepare educators and children to ensure continuity in learning despite school closures, increase remote and digital learning opportunities and tools, as well as encourage communal neighborhood and community learning practices.
The connection between climate change and education is a growing crisis.
TITLE: The American Invasion: Climate Denialism Crosses the Atlantic
https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2024/10/28/the-american-invasion-climate-denialism-crosses-the-atlantic/
EXCERPTS: In a coordinated effort to undermine climate science and slow environmental progress, prominent American climate change denial organizations recently teamed up with a conservative Austrian trade union known as the Union for Sovereignty and the German climate denialist European Institute for Climate and Energy to strategize on defeating climate solutions that threaten the fossil fuel industry or are otherwise deemed too radical.
The Heartland Institute, one of the leading climate denial organizations in the U.S., and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a longstanding libertarian group, hosted the 16th International Climate Change Conference (ICCC), which took place from June 13–15 in Vienna — a new stronghold of the far right. It was the first time the conference had been held in Europe in almost a decade. According to CFACT, their intention was “to make the case for ‘climate realism,’” a phrase used by right-wing organizations to delegitimize climate change and downplay the urgency of the crisis.
At the conference, speakers shared strategies for combating both “climate alarmism” and the growth of renewable energy. Craig Rucker, president of CFACT, advocated participating in shareholder meetings to propose anti-green initiatives, drafting model bills against renewables, and drawing more attention to whale deaths to ramp up public opposition to offshore wind farms — using what experts have called a misinformation campaign.
Many presenters, including Taylor and Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com, framed climate change as an anti-democratic, left-wing plot to consolidate global power, echoing conspiracy theories associated with recent Covid-19 measures.
Morano further claimed that sustainable farming policies would force American farmers to sell their land to tech-world billionaires such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos due to rising compliance costs. He also painted net-zero policies like restrictions on gas-powered cars as “corporate government collusion” aimed at benefiting the Chinese EV industry — a claim that echoes the rise in anti-China rhetoric used by Republican politicians and other conservatives. Morano further criticized Natural Asset Companies (NACs) — a boogeyman to conservatives for valuing ecosystems and natural resources — as a Wall Street plot to “take away available land from private citizens.”
The scientists who presented at the conference, including a Nobel laureate in physics and a former Trump administration scientific advisor, promoted denialist rhetoric by casting doubt on scientific evidence of global warming and the impact of greenhouse gasses. Some reiterated the fringe argument that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but rather “plant food,” while others questioned mainstream climate models such as those used by the United Nations.
Many of the scientists who presented at the conference have ties to oil industry money and have been criticized for accepting but not disclosing industry funding for their research.
Willie Soon, an astrophysicist formerly associated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, failed to disclose that he had accepted more than $1.2 million in research-related donations from corporate fossil fuel funders, including the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and DonorsTrust, according to reporting by the New York Times.
William Happer and John F. Clauser, both of whom kowtowed to the fossil fuel industry by downplaying the role of carbon emissions on climate change, are members of the Koch-funded CO2 Coalition, which also receives funding from the Bradley Foundation, the Mercer Family Foundation, The 85 Fund (run by right-wing legal firebrand Leonard Leo), the Scaife Foundation, and other far-right donors. Additionally, Happer received $8,000 from Peabody Energy in exchange for testimony at a 2015 Minnesota state hearing claiming that carbon dioxide makes a positive impact on society, a Greenpeace investigation revealed.
Heartland and CFACT also receive significant funding from the fossil fuel industry. In 2019, a coalition of 19 U.S. Senators accused these groups of creating a “web of denial” to mislead the public about climate change and stymie legislative action. Heartland has received funding from fossil fuel companies such as Murray Energy and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers. Since 2014, it has also received over $15 million from Donors Capital Fund and DonorsTrust, identity-scrubbing operations that give Big Oil a way to fund climate misinformation while avoiding bad press. These donor-advised funds have increasingly supported climate denial organizations as the traceability of funding from Big Oil has decreased, a correlation documented by Greenpeace.
Donors to CFACT have included ExxonMobil as well as the Scaife and Koch family foundations, which are largely funded by fossil fuel fortunes. Despite claims by its senior policy advisor that the group stopped accepting fossil fuel money as of 2010, data collected by DeSmog shows small grants from Charles Koch’s foundation and Murray Energy between 2014 and 2018. CFACT has also received more than $8 million from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund over the past 20 years.
While these organizations claim to be “climate realists,” they play a major role in elevating and promoting arguments against net-zero initiatives and climate mitigation strategies critical to addressing the climate crisis. By reconnecting with their counterparts in Europe, they are expanding their global reach in ways that threaten serious efforts to radically reduce carbon emissions before it’s too late.