A new study suggests the earth is warming up faster than previously believed. While some projections indicate the world will reach 2.7°C around the turn of the century, Klaus Richter, president of the German Physical Society, and Frank Böttcher, chairman of the German Meteorological Society, issued a joint press release warning that average global temperatures could reach 3°C above pre-industrial levels by 2050.
Continue reading Global Temperature Rise Could Reach 3°C by 2050, study saysThe close connection that exists between the atmosphere and the ocean is not surprising considering that 70% of the planet is covered by water—about 360 million km2—and the few dozen km of air is extremely thin compared to the 12,750 km diameter of Earth. This means that about 90% of the atmospheric heating caused by rising concentrations of CO2 is transferred to the oceans.
In approximate terms, about one-third of the carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels stays there for centuries, about one-third is captured and sequestered in various land forms such as forests, soils and vegetation, although one recent United Nations study suggests the terrestrial sequestration may only be about 25%, possibly because forest and plant cover is being diminished by agriculture and fires, and because a higher global temperature is reducing the photosynthesis process by which plants process carbon dioxide into carbon, sugars and oxygen. Much of the remaining one-third of our CO2 emissions that is not absorbed by marine algae dissolves in the oceans to form carbonic acid.
Continue reading The Quadra Project – Warming Oceans
By Carl Meyer & Matt Simmons, The Narwhal, Local Journalism Initiative reporters
Edward Burrier chuckled as he told his colleagues what he thought about an academic paper written by a prominent U.S. climate scientist.
Burrier, a director of public policy at Canadian fossil fuel giant TC Energy, said the study was largely to blame for public skepticism about whether liquefied natural gas (LNG) is as environmentally friendly as the oil and gas industry claims.
“One quoted study that drove a lot of this initial activism … said that LNG is worse than coal,” Burrier said.
Continue reading The feds raised doubts about a climate scientist’s LNG research; He says they sounded like fossil fuel lobbyists
Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Hurricane Fiona left a trail of destruction across the Atlantic Coast in September 2022 wreaking havoc on wharves, fisheries, vessels, and gear and the federal government’s pocketbook.
In response to the climate disaster, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) has had to earmark more than $563 million to deal with Fiona’s aftermath, including damage to 142 out of 184 small craft harbours on the Atlantic coast.
However, internal communications obtained by Canada’s National Observer suggest that Hurricane Fiona was just a harbinger of escalating climate-related costs and operational threats DFO expects to face in the coming years. With a shrinking budget, the department is bracing for more severe financial and logistical challenges as the climate crisis intensifies.
Continue reading Fisheries and Oceans Canada expects to flounder under mounting climate costs
Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The federal government expects the cost of disaster relief funding to balloon to a billion dollars or more each year as the climate crisis advances, according to a new risk-management report.
The document, examining steps by the federal public service to manage the financial risks and possible rewards tied to climate change, was released by Minister of Finance Dominic LeBlanc on Monday.
Over the past decade, the federal government spent an average $793 million annually to help provinces and farms, businesses, industries and communities overcome natural disasters, according to the inaugural Federal Climate-Related Risk Management report.
However, as extreme weather and catastrophes aggravated by climate change — like the 2021 flooding in B.C. or Hurricane Fiona in Atlantic Canada the following year — occur more frequently, funding transfers to provinces through the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangement (DFAA) are expected to spike, the report noted.
Continue reading Feds release flimsy first report on climate risk managment
