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Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Biden calls climate change “the ultimate threat to humanity.” [1]
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Date: 2023-11-16
With the release of the Fifth National Climate Assessment and COP28 just two weeks away, President Biden on Tuesday called climate change the “ultimate threat to humanity” as the assessment finds that global warming caused by humans— particularly burning of oil, gas and coal — is raising average temperatures in the United States more quickly than across the rest of the planet.
While nowhere is safe from the impacts of the climate crisis, CNN reports that there is now evidence detailing where in the United States consequences will be most grave because of attribution science, which can pinpoint those areas that will most likely be more severely impacted by extreme weather events.
“Too many people still think of climate change as an issue that’s distant from us in space or time or relevance,” said Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University who contributed to the report. The new fifth assessment, reveals “how climate change is affecting us here, in the places where we live, both now and in the future,” Hayhoe said.
“Now thanks to the field of attribution, we can make specific statements,” Hayhoe said, saying attribution can help pinpoint certain areas of a city that are now more likely to flood due to the effects of climate change. “The field of attribution has advanced significantly over the last five years, and that really helps people connect the dots.”
The report noted that:
Northern States are experiencing less snow, heavier rain, and an upswing in tick-borne diseases
Extreme precipitation and stronger storms are occurring in California, Florida, Louisiana and Texas
Landlocked states are devastated from flooding from extreme storms
Despite a slight decrease in GHG pollution, the assessment report finds cutbacks are not happening rapidly enough to align with the UN Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C.
Biden announced on Tuesday the allocation of $6 billion to aim for resilience “by bolstering America’s electric grid, investing in water infrastructure upgrades, reducing flood risk to communities, and advancing environmental justice for all,” an administration official said.
The assessment presents five key points about climate change and the US. According to CBS:
The U.S. is experiencing climate change at rates "unprecedented over thousands of years” U.S. has reduced greenhouse gas emissions — but not enough to stop climate change impacts Every region in the U.S. is already feeling the impacts of climate change — and it's going to get worse Climate change will continue to have "profound negative effects on human health" — particularly for overburdened communities The U.S. is adapting to climate change, but investments are "insufficient" to reduce the risks
The government has issued an online tool that allows individuals to view climate change impacts in their city and state.
The chairman of this year’s COP28 in Dubai, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, has been pushing for carbon capture technologies to combat global warming. Yet as the Guardian reports this week, Al Jaber’s company emits enough CO2 in six years that it would take 343 years to remove the carbon from the air. COP28, which begins in Dubai on November 30, is tasked with convincing participants to agree to significant cuts in the use of fossil fuels and to tripling renewable energy.
Warning that carbon capture is a “red herring,” Global Witness’ Jonathan Noronha Gant warns “Sultan Al Jaber’s Cop is shaping up to be the Cop of false solutions, inundated by fossil fuel lobbyists pushing empty promises. If Al Jaber is serious – if we are serious – we must immediately reject the CCS [carbon capture and storage] false solution and tackle the existential oil and gas problem head on.’’
There is deep concern that COP28 will focus on carbon CCS solutions rather than on seeking commitments from the parties to cut back on emissions to address global warming. With 2023 the warmest year on record, time is running short. Fossil fuel companies have been advocates of CCS procedures as they continue to litter the world with tons of carbon annually.
Since 2022, worldwide the investment in CCS technology has doubled to $6.4 billion. And even as the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook projects by 2030 there will be nearly 10 times as many electric cars in operation and renewables will make up almost half of global power, global warming will still increase by 2.4 degrees C this century. (heated.world/...)
Meanwhile, ahead of the COP, the US and China announced an agreement this week to work together to accelerate action against global warming.
The Sunnylands Statement resulted from a three-day confab between John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua and aims to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030 and to "sufficiently accelerate" renewables domestically as well. China has consented to work towards decarbonizing its economy by substituting renewables for coal, oil, and gas.
As part of the agreement and despite environmentalists and other experts calling out CCS as a false solution which is also expensive and difficult to implement, the two superpowers are planning to develop five large CCS projects by 2030.
Debunking the UAE's B.S. There is nothing "game-changing" about allowing more oil and gas influence at climate talks. Since the annual COPs began in the 1990s, polluting interests have been deeply involved in negotiations, sending hundreds of lobbyists each year. At last year’s summit, close to 400 people connected to fossil fuel industries were in attendance—”a grouping that was larger than all but two of the national delegations sent by countries,” according to an Associated Press analysis released this week.2 While it’s difficult to quantify the fossil fuel industry’s influence at these summits because so much of the negotiations happen behind closed doors, two things can be said definitively: Fossil fuel interests have a consistent, decades-long track record of using their political influence to delay climate action. In three decades, the COP talks have yet to produce any agreement to phase out, or even phase down fossil fuels, the leading cause of climate change.
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