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NickB79

NickB79's Journal
NickB79's Journal
October 16, 2023

Massive surge in firearm licenses and ammunition sales amidst Gaza conflict

https://m.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-768360

Thousands of Israelis have been buying ammunition and trying to obtain a license in order to carry one according to many official sources and shooting ranges who spoke with The Jerusalem Post.

According to N12, From the beginning of the year, over 27,000 licenses for private firearms have been issued to citizens according to the National Security Ministry. For context - 12,896 gun-carrying licenses were issued in 2022, and 10,000 in 2021. According to the "Easy" app data, there has been a significant uptick in searches for shooting ranges in recent days.


October 4, 2023

The Amazon rainforest has entered a death spiral

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/04/south-american-monsoon-heading-towards-tipping-point-likely-to-cause-amazon-dieback

The South American monsoon, which determines the climate of much of the continent, is being pushed towards a “critical destabilisation point”, according to a study that links regional rainfall to Amazon deforestation and global heating.

The authors of the report said they found their results “shocking” and urged policymakers to act with urgency to forestall a tipping point, which could result in up to 30% less rainfall, a dieback of the forest and a dire impact on food production.


Snip

Human degradation of the Amazon – by land clearance, fire, logging and mining – is pushing that system towards a tipping point, after which drier conditions would be expected to cause an abrupt “regime shift” in the rainforest, which would be unable to sustain itself and transport moisture.

Other biomes in the region would also be affected, along with swathes of agricultural land because the monsoon stretches thousands of miles south from the Amazon to the River Plate (Rio de la Plata) basin. There would also be a climate impact because the Amazon – which would be worst affected – has historically served as an important carbon sink, though another study this week suggests it is now so degraded that it is at best carbon neutral. A dieback of the forest would release enormous amounts of carbon.
September 8, 2023

Parts of the world have already grown too hot for human survival

https://grist.org/extreme-heat/parts-of-the-world-have-already-grown-too-hot-for-human-survival/

More than a decade ago, two climate scientists defined what they considered at the time to be the upper limit of human survivability: 35 degrees Celsius, or 95 degrees Fahrenheit, at 100 percent humidity, also known as the wet-bulb threshold. In those conditions, a person, no matter who they are or where they live, cannot shed enough heat to stay alive for more than a few hours. The scientists’ operating assumption was that carbon emissions would need to warm the planet 5 to 7 degrees C (9 to 12.6 degrees F) before the world exceeded the wet-bulb threshold every year. Since then, more advanced work has demonstrated the world only needs to warm by about 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) before heat waves in the hottest parts of the world first cross that survivability line.

snip

A study published in Science Advances this week used a more realistic threshold to determine when and where the world will become dangerously hot for humans. The researchers, from the University of Oxford and the Woodwell Climate Research Center, used a framework called the “noncompensable heat threshold,” the conditions under which a human being can no longer maintain a healthy core temperature without taking action to cool off. Six hours of unmitigated exposure to these temperatures would be sufficient to cause death. This threshold can be reached under different combinations of air temperature and humidity — the hotter the temperature, the less humidity needed to cross the limit. At 40 degrees C (104 degrees F), for example, you need about 50 percent relative humidity to cross the noncompensable threshold.

The researchers found that parts of the world have already surpassed this threshold. They identified 21 weather stations that clocked conditions exceeding the noncompensable threshold between 1970 and 2020, mainly along coastlines in the hottest regions of the planet such as the Persian Gulf and South Asia. Even more people will face such conditions as the planet continues to warm from fossil fuel combustion.


Sooner than expected. As usual.

Pretty soon we'll experience mass casualty events in poor nations that can't afford AC.
September 8, 2023

Top global ports may be unusable by 2050 without more climate action, report says

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/top-global-ports-may-be-unusable-by-2050-without-more-climate-action-report-2023-09-07/

LONDON, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Some of the world's largest ports may be unusable by 2050 as rising sea levels hit operations, and efforts to speed up decarbonisation of the maritime sector and bring in new technology are vital, a study showed on Friday.

Weather-related disruptions are already impacting ports across the globe. These include a drought which is hampering operations in the Panama Canal, a top waterway.

The Global Maritime Trends 2050 report, commissioned by leading shipping services group Lloyd's Register and the independent charity arm Lloyd's Register Foundation, looked at future scenarios.

"Of the world’s 3,800 ports, a third are located in a tropical band vulnerable to the most powerful effects of climate change," a Lloyd's Register (LR) spokesperson said.

"The ports of Shanghai, Houston and Lazaro Cardenas (in Mexico), some of the world’s largest, could potentially be inoperable by 2050 with a rise in sea levels of only 40 cm."
August 27, 2023

Millions of carbon credits are not tied to forest preservation, as claimed

https://www.earth.com/news/millions-of-carbon-credits-are-not-tied-to-forest-preservation-as-claimed/

In a new study published in the journal Science, researchers have determined that a significant portion of the carbon credits tied to forest preservation may be based on inflated figures.

The research, led by an international consortium of scientists and economists from the University of Cambridge and VU Amsterdam, has found that the majority of carbon offset schemes might be significantly overestimating the deforestation levels they are preventing.

“This means that many of the carbon credits bought by companies to balance out emissions are not tied to real-world forest preservation as claimed,” says the report.


The only way we'll cut carbon emissions is by burning less fossil fuels. End of story.
August 25, 2023

India To Ban Sugar Exports In Addition To Rice As Corn, Soybeans And More Crops Falter In HEAT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/08/23/india-to-ban-sugar-exports-in-addition-to-rice-as-corn-soybeans-and-more-crops-falter-in-extreme-heat-and-drought/amp/

India is set to ban exports of sugar for the first time in seven years following a low-yield cane crop hurt by a lack of rain, Reuters reported Wednesday, adding to a list of crops that includes corn, sorghum and soybeans suffering amid the Earth's hottest summer on record.


August 22, 2023

There's more coal being shipped by sea than ever before

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-coal-being-shipped-sea-213157819.html

3
Clean, green renewables are on the rise. Coal, the dirtiest fuel, is dying. Or so the energy transition line goes. The reality, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), is that global coal production, consumption, and seaborne volumes are all at all-time highs in 2023.

Coal isn’t dying yet globally, just in the West. It’s still alive and kicking in Asia — and still growing globally as a result. That’s bad news for greenhouse gas emissions, but good news for owners of the dry bulk ships that transport coal, particularly as America exports more of its own mining output via long-haul voyages to Asia.

“Demand to ship coal has been a good support for the dry bulk market over the first half of the year,” said ship brokerage BRS on Thursday. “Despite coal demand in Europe and North America resuming its downward trend, Asia has provided an offset as demand continues to grow there.”

Seaborne coal volumes are predicted to reach 1,335,000 million metric tons this year, topping 2019’s record of 1,331,000 tons, the IEA said in its recently released midyear outlook.


This is bad. Really bad.
August 18, 2023

North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources warns more CO2 needed to sustain oil production long-te

https://www.kfyrtv.com/2023/08/16/north-dakota-department-mineral-resources-warns-more-co2-needed-sustain-oil-production-long-term/

BISMARCK, N.D. (KUMV) - State Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms said more carbon dioxide will be needed in order to sustain oil production for the long term. This comes following the Public Service Commission’s decision to deny a permit for the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 Pipeline.

While Helms didn’t comment on the matter, he said the state needs to get the gas from somewhere to help with enhanced oil recovery. The emerging technology uses CO2 and other materials to help producers to take more oil than traditional methods. Helms said current CO2 production only meets about 10 percent of what is needed for enhanced oil recovery.

"We’ve got to find a way for carbon capture and utilization to become a part of North Dakota’s economy or we will leave billions of barrels of oil in the ground,” said Helms.


Oh no, how awful! All that poor oil, trapped underground

Carbon capture, but it's used to repressurize old oil fields. Now THAT is greenwashing!
August 17, 2023

Siberian Carbon 'Sink' May Soon Become Net Source of Emissions - Study

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/08/16/siberian-carbon-sink-may-soon-become-net-source-of-emissions-study-a82156

Siberia’s boreal forests, long considered to be a carbon “sink,” may soon become a net source of carbon emissions, as wildfires causing forest loss and degradation have grown increasingly more intense over the past decade, researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences said Thursday.

Citing a recent study, the researchers said carbon emissions from high-intensity fires — those that occur when weather conditions are hot, dry, and windy — have more than doubled since 2000.

Likewise, the study estimates that Siberian wildfires alone are now responsible for around 5–20% of Russia’s total greenhouse gas emissions.


Siberian forests are very similar to Canadian forests, and are burning just the same. They're also dealing with dying trees from beetle outbreaks exploding due to warming winters.
August 16, 2023

We could be 16 years into a methane-fueled 'termination' event significant enough to end an ice age

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/we-could-be-16-years-into-a-methane-fueled-termination-event-significant-enough-to-end-an-ice-age

Large amounts of methane wafting from tropical wetlands into Earth's atmosphere could trigger warming similar to the "termination" events that ended ice ages — replacing frosty expanses of tundra with tropical savanna, a new study finds. Researchers first detected a strange peak in methane emissions in 2006, but until now, it was unclear where the gas was leaking from and if it constituted a novel trend.

"A termination is a major reorganization of the Earth's climate system," study lead author Euan Nisbet, a professor emeritus of Earth sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, told Live Science. "These repeated changes have taken the world from ice ages into the sort of interglacial we have now."

"Within the termination, which takes thousands of years, there's this abrupt phase, which only takes a few decades," Nisbet said. "During that abrupt phase, the methane soars up and it's probably driven by tropical wetlands."

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