'This is unprecedented': Alert, Nunavut, is warmer than Victoria

It's the latest anomaly in what's been a long, hot summer across the Arctic



A series of signs outside the military base in Alert, Nunavut, show the distance to various places around the world. Environment Canada says Canadian Forces Station Alert hit a record of 21 C on Sunday. (Mario De Ciccio/Radio-Canada )

Weather watchers are focused on the world's most northerly community, which is in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave.

"It's really quite spectacular," said David Phillips, Environment Canada's chief climatologist. "This is unprecedented."
Bob Weber · The Canadian Press · Posted: Jul 15, 2019 4:36 PM CT | Last Updated: 30 minutes ago

Iceland has lost its first glacier to rising temperatures. Now, scientists from Rice University and Iceland are planning to install a plaque near the sad pile of ice and snow formerly known as Ok Glacier. The researchers say it’s the first memorial to a disappearing glacier, but climate change ensures it almost certainly will not be the last.

Huge swathes of the Arctic on fire, ‘unprecedented’ satellite images show

Earth’s boreal forests now burning at rate unseen in ‘at least 10,000 years’, scientists warn

Have you got climate zombies? We debunk the myths that refuse to die

By environment reporter Nick Kilvert
Updated about an hour ago
First posted about 5 hours ago

She has addressed world and U.N. leaders and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Later this month, she'll sail across the Atlantic Ocean in a 60-foot yacht powered by solar panels and underwater turbines on her way to participate in the U.N. climate talks in New York (see related story).

But the success of Thunberg — who describes herself on Twitter as a "16 year old climate activist with Asperger" — remains a sore point for those who reject mainstream climate science and some who have helped shape or encourage the Trump's administration rollback of climate policy.

They frequently point to Thunberg's autism, claim she is used by her parents and compare her call to young people on climate change to "Hitler Youth." They have pointed to her "monotone voice" and framed her as a "millenarian weirdo" with the "look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes."

Climate expert at CDC poised to file whistleblower complaint over treatment
By Maya Earls, E&E NewsAug. 14, 2019 , 10:50 AM
Originally published by E&E News

An expected whistleblower complaint is the latest escalation in a fight between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, and its former head of climate work.

George Luber, who led the CDC’s Climate and Health Program, plans to file his complaint this week, E&E News has learned. It will allege that the agency retaliated against him for speaking out on climate change and will raise concerns that the CDC is shifting climate funds to other programs.

grist.org wrote:

Here’s why Iceland is mourning a dead glacier

Some 100 people gathered at the top of a volcano in Iceland on Sunday for an unusual funeral. The victim: A 700-year-old, six-mile glacier. Cause of death: climate change.

The Okjokull glacier actually died a decade ago. But Iceland decided to hold the funeral for the deceased ice mass — it’s first to go extinct from rising temperatures — last weekend amid warnings from the scientific community that hundreds of other glaciers across the sub-Arctic country could soon disappear. Iceland is projected to be entirely glacier-free within 200 years.

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ENERGY
And Now the Really Big Coal Plants Begin to Close
Old, small plants were the early retirees, but several of the biggest U.S. coal burners—and CO2 emitters—will be shuttered by year’s end

The use of olivine in carbon capture has not been well-studied, but it remains an emerging field of research.  Scientists are uncertain how practical this approach would be since the quantity of olivine needed to meaningfully sequester the CO2 emissions would be enormous.  In one study, it was estimated that it would take 5 gigatonnes of olivine on beaches to offset 30% of the current CO2 emissions for merely one year.  In theory, one kilogram of olivine sequesters an equal amount of CO2 but this has not taken into account the energy used to mine and distribute the olivine onto the beaches in the first place.

minininja wrote:Yeah, we may have no choice but to use some industrial geoengineering techniques, but we can't rely on them being a solution. The consequences are unknown and could be catastrophic in their own ways. And the belief that it can all be solved with more industry just encourages governments to continue business as usual. Important to research these things, but not as important as forcing major political and economic change to reduce the causes of climate change.

minininja wrote:Feel free to contribute.

felltoearth wrote:It isn’t clear that it is all that the website purports it to be.

Olivine: The Environmentally "Green" Solution to Climate Change? | Geology for Investors

The use of olivine in carbon capture has not been well-studied, but it remains an emerging field of research.  Scientists are uncertain how practical this approach would be since the quantity of olivine needed to meaningfully sequester the CO2 emissions would be enormous.  In one study, it was estimated that it would take 5 gigatonnes of olivine on beaches to offset 30% of the current CO2 emissions for merely one year.  In theory, one kilogram of olivine sequesters an equal amount of CO2 but this has not taken into account the energy used to mine and distribute the olivine onto the beaches in the first place.

He has proposed that coarse olivine grains should be spread onto beaches that experience heavy waves. The wave-action would tumble the olivine grains and break them down into smaller particles, thus further speeding up the weathering process naturally. Olivine beaches are a popular tourist attraction in Hawaii.

ENVIRONMENT
June 23, 2018 8:00 am Updated: June 23, 2018 8:01 am
The world is running out of sand — there’s even a violent black market for it
By Katie Dangerfield
National Online Journalist, Breaking News Global News

Olivine against climate change and ocean acidification
R.D.Schuiling1) and Tickell, O.2)
1) Olivine Foundation for the reduction of CO2. schuiling@geo.uu.nl
2) Oxford Climate Associates / Kyoto2. oliver.tickell@kyoto2.org Abstract
The weathering of calcium and magnesium silicates is the main natural mechanism limiting atmospheric CO2 levels. The weathering process transforms CO2 into bicarbonate, which washes down to the oceans where it ultimately precipitates as carbonate.
However weathering at its natural pace is unable to keep up with current and prospective anthropogenic CO2 production. Thus we propose to mitigate excess CO2 by increasing the rate of weathering: olivine, volcanic ash and similar silicate rocks should be mined, milled, and spread widely, mainly in the humid tropics where weathering rates are highest.
This may produce important additional benefits, reversing the acidification of soils, rivers and oceans, and enriching soils with mineral nutrients. Oceans would receive additional fluxes of orthosilicic acid, a limiting nutrient for marine diatoms: the consequent increase in diatom phytoproductivity could increase carbon fluxes to deep ocean, or support the production of biofuels in 'diatom farms'.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology attached to power stations is currently being pursued as a solution to climate change. However CCS costs are estimated as $50-$100/t CO2, while there are fears as to the long term security of reservoirs. Using accelerated rock weathering, by contrast, CO2 could be securely and rapidly sequestered for about €10/t CO2, while bringing benefits to agriculture and forestry, and restoring ocean alkalinity.
With key countries including India, China, Brazil, Indonesia and Canada rich in exploitable olivine deposits, international acceptance of CO2 mitigation by accelerated weathering would advance the prospect of achieving an encompassing climate agreement.

Macdoc wrote:small steps with some momentum but long term it all helps

ENERGY
And Now the Really Big Coal Plants Begin to Close
Old, small plants were the early retirees, but several of the biggest U.S. coal burners—and CO2 emitters—will be shuttered by year’s end

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -to-close/