31/7/2021
This turbine has just gone online off the Fall of Warness with an undersea cable connecting the electricity network. The 680 ton, 74m long turbine is expected to work for the next 15 years proving electricity for 2000 homes from the fast flowing waters in the region. The turbine is also providing an onshore electrolyser to generate green hydrogen. Maybe this will be the first of many of these to provide clean sustainable energy to the UK.
Photo Orbital Marrine Power
30/7/2021
Southern Madagascar is experiencing its worst drought in four decades with more than 1.14 million people food insecure. There have been back-to-back droughts in Madagascar which have pushed communities right to the very edge of starvation. And no one is doing anything about this. Widespread poverty in the country, combined with weak government agencies and a tenuous political situation, has led to an alarming humanitarian situation. The World Food Programme (WFP) is sounding the alarm: if we don’t act now, the number of people in Catastrophe will double by October.
Photo AP Newsl
29/7/2021
Met Office The UK’s climate has continued to warm. All of the top-ten warmest years for the UK in records back to 1884 have occurred since 2002, and, for central England, the 21st century so far has been warmer than the previous three centuries. These climate variables all have an impact on UK wildlife, and plants. The UK recorded 626 hours, 144% of the 1981-2010 long-term average sunshine. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-office/news/weather-and-climate/2021/climate-change-continues-to-be-evident-across-uk
Photo Philip M Russell
28/7/2021
Could this be the new crime. Ecocide - An unlawful or wanton act commited with the knowledge that there is substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long term damage to the environment being caused by those acts. World leaders could be put on trial for not doing something to stop this. Not doing things to save the planet could become a crime. We are rapidly approaching the tipping points - some argue we have reached them as the last weeks of weather have shown.
Photo Paul Russell
27/7/2021
"The pandemic is a warning from the planet that much worse lies in store unless we change our ways." Joyce Msuya, assistant secretary general of the United Nations. There haver been years of promises from countries but the Global Climate emergency is going to be more costly to nations than this Pandemic which has managed to bring nations to their knees. In thew last few weeks we have seen the heat waves, wildfires and floods. It is clear that extreme weather is the new normal. And as countries invest unprecedented amounts of resources into kickstarting the global economy, this recovery must be green.
Photo Philip M Russell
26/7/2021
A DLR station showed Londers what it like in other parts of the world. A small flash flood in East London send water knee deep through a DLR station and caused chaos on some roads . Houses were also flooded. This situation is going to become more likely any where as the amounts of rain falling in any area might become heavier dur to slower moving storms caused by global warming. On Monday 47.8mm of rain fell in a 24-hour period in Kew, most of it in just one hour. The average monthly rainfall in July is 44.5mm. London Fire Brigade said it had taken more than 1,000 calls related to flooding.
Photo Rob Watkins
23/7/2021
Siberia has been seeing some of its hottest days ever and the forest fires are starting earlier. Much is uninhatibted and many areas have no communications. In these areas the fires started often by lightning strikes, are burning through tinder dry forests unchecked. In some areas the fire fighters are able to put out the blazes, but ones in the more remote areas are just left to run their course. As you can imagine the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere is estimated to be in the order of millions of tons.
Photo Cameron Strandberg from Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Canada
22/7/2021
Northern Russia has been seeing some of its hottest days ever. The Ground that is permanently frozen - permafrost usually at about -6 Celcius at this time of year is melting. As the water melts it takes with it the soil as mud around it. This leads to coastal erosion as well as bringing biological material that has been frozen for thousands of years to the surface allowing it to decay and release Carbon Dioxide and the more potent green house gas Mathane. Thousands of tons of theese gases are being released. With the changew in climate this is only yhr start and this soon could see the end of the oermafrost areas and runaway climate change.
Photo Boris Radosavljevic
21/7/2021
More than 20cm of rain fell in Zhengzhou in an hour - the heaviset rainfall in 1000 years - far more rain than fell in Germany in 3 days. The Underground system and subways were flooded and cars floated down the streets. Much of the city was without power as the power lines were switched off. Social media showed people wading waist deep in water. Thousands of people have been displaced and the number of dead is rising. The cities resevior has been breached.
20/7/2021
The Met office gave out its first extreme heat wave warning for western areas. The Extreme Heat Warning, which is issued with partners including public health partners across the UK, will cover a large part of Wales, all of southwest England and parts of southern and central England. The amber warning will be in force until the end of Thursday. The warning comes as the forecast continues to signal for unusually high temperatures for western areas in particular, as well as continuing high nighttime temperatures creating potential impacts for health. The prolonged nature of the current heatwave has also been a factor for the increased impacts from this continued heat.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-office/news/weather-and-climate/2021/extreme-heat-warning-issued-for-western-areas
Photo B Katonams
19/7/2021
The politicians in Germany have been very quick to blame the recent very heavy rainfall and flooding on climate change when before today they were far more cautious about saying this. So what is next? What are the politicians going to do. They wiill have to spend a lot of money of repairing the infrastructure of the contry. Putting in place flood defence systems would have been cheaper if the governments knew where the floods would occur. Putting in place climate changinf schemes might have got rid of the problem to start with - but only if everyone helped. Germany has now three bills, - to repair what is broken, to put in measures to stop this happening again and to change their stance on climate change and accelerate the rate of mitigation of climate change. Now if the other counties can see what has happened in Germany and prevent this type of thing happening in their countries.
Photo B & S/dps/picture alliance
16/7/2021
Back in 2010 the Elbe flooded, but this flood is worse - much worse. The scale has increased. The death toll rises and some 15,000 police, soldiers and emergency service workers search for hundreds of people missing. Helicopters are being used to rescue people from rooftops and tanks have cleared roads of fallen trees and debris. The German regions of North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland were worst affected. Luxembourg and the Netherlands were also affected by the flooding. Meteroligists are describing this as the heaviest rainfall in a century. But these one in a century events are happening more often. This must be linked to global warming and will this spur on the world leaders to do something NOW.
Photo B & S/dps/picture alliance
16/7/2021
China announced its long awaited carbon emissions trading system. China said that it was laying the foundations for the worlds largest carbon trading market, which would force thousands of of Chinese companies to cut their pollution or face deep economic threats. But closer examination showed that the European Unions plan on reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 was about three times as large as China's version. China's version does not include many of the industrial sectors that are needed to get to carbon netrality.
If China only wants to cut emissions in certain sectors then certain industries could be hit very hard leading to many problems down the line.
Photo Huangdan2060
15/7/2021
Back in April this year a report by Yuanwei Qin in nature climate change found that the carbon lost from forest degradation exceeded that from deforestation in Brazil. forest They showed that degradation has become the largest process driving carbon loss and should become a higher policy priority. They found that the gross forest area loss was larger in 2019 than in 2015, possibly due to recent loosening of forest protection policies. This means that significant parts of the world's largest tropical forest have started to emit more Carbon Dioxide than they absorb and forest degradation is the cause and this is where money needs to be spent.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01026-5
Photo Atabong Armstrong
14/7/2021
The USA and Canada hiot the news with their heatwave, but the same is happening in northeren China. Thousands have needed to be evacuated because of floods threatening villages, and China's Guangdong and Hebel provinces are have some of the worst heatwaves. The elderly and those working outside are suffereing from the extrme heat. Like most cities in the world Beijing is not geared up to cope with such a heatwave. It loks like the summers could be extended by 25 days and the the rainfall increase by 25%. Flooding is already a serious problem in Shanghai, and we can expect more flooding in the future and more devastating impacts from floods.
Photo http://www.china.org.cn/environment/2010-07/06/content_20431300.htm
13/7/2021
The UN has revealed ambitious draft goals to halt biodiversity loss for the key summit in the Chinese city of Kunming, where the final text will be negotiated. The goals set out by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) aim to eliminate plastic pollution, reduce pesticide use by two-thirds, halve the rate of invasive species introduction and eliminating $500bn (£360bn) of harmful environmental government subsidies a year. This draft is likely to be held in Kunming in the first half of 2022, after being delayed a few times by the Corona Pandemic.
Photo https://www.maxpixel.net/Nature-Pollution-Water-Waste-Garbage-3234847
12/7/2021
As the US heatwave continues the US power grid struggles as Air conditioners run at full speed to refridgerate Americas homes. A Portland-area power company even had to install extra cooling systems to prevent its own equipment from overheating. Those cooling systems themselves use electricity, as do all the air conditioners begin bought and used. Millions of people in the US are under warnings of the excessive heat. Ans as if things couldn't get worse now there are worries about forest fires.
Photo https://www.flickr.com/photos/zedzap/
10/7/2021
Increased temperatures and drought stress, which are becoming more frequent with climate change, can negatively affect flowering, even if the plants deploy physiological resistance strategies. Drought reduced the photosynthetic output, whilst a temperature rise affected the loss of water through the stomata - the holes in leaves to allow the water to escape. The number of flowers produced dropped 40–90% in response to drought stress, while higher temperatures shortened flower life span. Both stresses affected floral traits, but flower resources diminished in response to higher temperatures, with lower nectar volume and pollen protein content.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351627804_Growing_and_Flowering_in_a_Changing_Climate_Effects_of_Higher_Temperatures_and_Drought_Stress_on_the_Bee-Pollinated_Species_Impatiens_glandulifera_Royle
Photo Udo Schmidt from Deutschland
9/7/2021
Do you refurbish old buildings, or do you replace them with more energy efficient ones. A difficult decision, but the Royal Institute of British Archetects says that the pollution caused by demolishing a building and the amount of Carbon Dioxide produced in the manufacture and building of a new biulding - although it may be more efficient, far exceeds any benefits a new building may give. It is far more economic and Carbon friendly to refurbish a building than to replace.
8/7/2021
The Lancet Planetary Health article by Colón-González et al suggests there is a direct causal relationship between the global rise in temperature and the risk in getting infected by Malaria or Dengue. because of the increased length 1-3 months of the breeding season of the insect vectors.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00171-6/fulltext
Photo dr_relling Mosquito bite
7/7/2021
Fermenting beer produces carbon dioxide (CO2), which is usually released into the atmosphere. A craft brewery in Sydney, Young Henrys, has partnered with climate change scientists and developed a way to use microalgae to capture that CO2, and turn it into oxygen. The CO2 from the fermentation of just one six pack of beer takes a tree two full days to absorb. The brewers estimate their algae releases as much oxygen as two hectares of bushland. “We began working with the UTS Climate Change Cluster on this project as they are developing numerous real world uses for algae which can help combat climate change. Together we’ve developed a method of using CO2, which is a by-product of the brewing process, to feed the algae housed in the bioreactors in on our brew floor. In turn reducing our emissions as a business.”
Photo https://younghenrys.com/algae
6/7/2021
A new report by Gavin Madakumbura in Nature Communications suggests from Machine Learning of past data that there isa strong correlation between human influence and the amount of rain falling. Machine learning-based methods for the detection of anthropogenic influence (DAI) have been shown to overcome the reliance on trends and are even capable of detecting the human influence from weather data on a single day. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24262-x
Photo Emmanuelkwizera, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
5/7/2021
Many industries seem to have a lack lusure attitude to low carbon and sustainability. They are all talk about by 2030, but what evidence is there of real change happening or being planned for. So far there seems to be little evidence. Only by some of these companoes changing will we see a shift in the balance, and that shift need to start happening today.
Photo Gavin Schaefer (Uxud), CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons
4/7/2021
In the past 5 dys 486 sudden deaths have been recorded many of these are likely to be the result of the extreme heatwave Canada is experiencing. Abnormally high tremperaturtes have been recorded in USA and Canada. Many of the people who have died lived in unventilated homes, The heat over western parts of Canada and the US has been caused by a dome of static high-pressure hot air stretching from California to the Arctic territories. Temperatures have been easing in coastal areas but there is not much respite for inland regions.
2/7/2021
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) said it would no longer finance the 2.8GW Sengwa coal power plant, according to an email summary of the meeting shared between campaigners. Last month, ICBC’s chief economist said the bank would develop a roadmap and timeline to phase out coal.
Photo © Copyright Iain Thompson and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
1/7/2021
Unless the world does something now some parts of the Earth may become uninhabitablee as part of Canada becomes one of the hottest place on Earth at 49.6C Lytton Canada for 3 days. Another heatwave earlier in June five Middle East countries topped 50°C. While humans can survive temperatures of well over 50C when humidity is low, when both temperatures and humidity are high, neither sweating nor soaking ourselves can cool us. This was Canada in the past few days. Related Dhaka is crumbling under the pressure as people move to the cities as the coast floods.
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