UK carbon emissions at lowest level since 1890

Fresh analysis has highlighted the dramatic fall in carbon emissions within the UK, reaching a new low unseen in normal times for 128 years.

The UK’s carbon emissions are now the same as
when Vincent Van Gogh died, or Oscar Wilde’s The
Picture of Dorian Gray was first published.

The findings are based on figures from the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and analysed by the Carbon Brief website.

The data shows that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels declined by 2.6 percent in 2017, following a 5.8 percent drop in the previous year.

Read the ClimateAction story - “UK carbon emissions at lowest level since 1890.”

The Climate Could Hit a State Unseen in 50 Million Years

No, the headline is not a typo. Current carbon dioxide levels are unprecedented in human history and are on track to climb to even more ominous heights in just a few decades.

Weekly carbon dioxide levels at Mauna Loa
Observatory are already nearing last year's peak.

If carbon emissions continue on their current trajectory, new findings show that by mid-century, the atmosphere could reach a state unseen in 50 million years. Back then, temperatures were up to 18°F (10°C) warmer, ice was almost nowhere to be seen and oceans were dramatically higher than they are now.

The implications of the research, published on Tuesday in Nature Communications, are some of the starkest reminders yet that humanity faces a major choice to curtail carbon pollution or risk pushing the climate outside the bounds that have allowed civilization to thrive.

Read Brain Kahn’s ClimateCentral story - “The Climate Could Hit a State Unseen in 50 Million Years.”

Climate change understanding so limited, so frightening

O

ur understanding of global warming/climate change (call it what you please) is so limited that it is frightening.

My children, my grandchildren, along with those who follow in your family, could be wrestling to adapt to temperatures hitherto unseen by humanity.

A report in Britain’s Independent says there is a one-in-ten chance of the world being 6C warmer than it is today by 2100 leading to cataclysmic changes in the global climate with unimaginable consequences for human civilisation.

The story - “Global warming: Scientists say temperatures could rise by 6C by 2100 and call for action ahead of UN meeting in Paris” - includes a warning from leading climate researchers in an “Earth Statement”.

El Niño and La Niña might seem irrelevant, but they can be life changing

Most things that impact on the dynamics that change the earth’s climate are remote and seemingly irrelevant to most peoples’ lives and so easily mentally dispensed with or not even thought about.

Among those are El Niño and La Niña for they are largely unseen and yet have consequences so real that people can die and entire industries disabled.

A story from the CSIRO entitled: “Explainer: El Niño and La Niña” helps us understand a little about this complex and yet critical happening in the world’s oceans, particularly as it impacts on the weather in eastern Australia.

“The simplest way to understand El Niño and La Niña is through the sloshing around of warm water in the ocean,” the CSIRO says.