governance – Page 14 – Desdemona Despair

Map showing global water stress projected to 2050. By 2050, an additional 1 billion people are expected to live with extremely high water stress, even if the world limits global temperature rise to 1.3 degrees C to 2.4 degrees C (2.3 degrees F to 4.3 degrees F) by 2100, an optimistic scenario. Global water demand is projected to increase by 20 percent to 25 percent by 2050, while the number of watersheds facing high year-to-year variability, or less predictable water supplies, is expected to increase by 19 percent. Data: wri.org/aqueduct. Graphic: WRI

August 20, 2023

25 countries, housing one-quarter of the population, face extremely high water stress – By 2050, an additional 1 billion people will live with extremely high water stress

By Samantha Kuzma, Liz Saccoccia, and Marlena Chertock 16 August 2023 (WRI) – New data from WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas show that 25 countries — housing one-quarter of the global population — face extremely high water stress each year, regularly using up almost their entire available water supply. And at least 50% of the world’s population […]

Attendees at the Cambridge Disinformation Summit at King’s College, which took place on 27 July 2023 and 28 July 2023. Photo: Keith Heppell / Cambridge Independent

August 20, 2023

Cambridge Disinformation Summit musters interdisciplinary ethos and sets up future agenda – News outlets should get “nutrition labels”

By Mike Scialom 2 August 2023 (Cambridge Independent) – The inaugural Cambridge Disinformation Summit, which took place on Thursday and Friday last week, proved hugely rewarding, say speakers and delegates who attended. This first event, organised by Alan Jagolinzer, professor of financial accounting at Cambridge Judge Business School, offered a global interdisciplinary perspective on the […]

Globally averaged surface air temperature for all months of July from 1940 to 2023. Shades of blue indicate cooler-than-average years, while shades of red show years that were warmer than average. Data: ERA5. Graphic: C3S/ECMWF.

August 14, 2023

July 2023 sees multiple global temperature records broken – Global mean temperature temporarily exceeded the 1.5° C threshold – “The extreme weather which has affected many millions of people in July is unfortunately the harsh reality of climate change and a foretaste of the future”

8 August 2023 (C3S) – The month started with the daily global mean surface air temperature record being broken on four days in a row, from 3-6 July. All days throughout the rest of July were hotter than the previous record of 16.80°C, set on 13 August 2016, making the 29 days from 3-31 July […]

Smoke from Canadian wildfires enveloped Washington, D.C. in June 2023. Photo: Kenny Holston / The New York Times

August 5, 2023

U.S. Republican energy strategy for 2024 denies climate change, calls for more drilling and less clean energy – “This agenda would be laughable if the consequences of it weren’t so dire”

By Lisa Friedman 4 August 2023 (The New York Times) – During a summer of scorching heat that has broken records and forced Americans to confront the reality of climate change, conservatives are laying the groundwork for future Republican administration that would dismantle efforts to slow global warming. The move is part of a sweeping strategy dubbed […]

Migrant workers from Mexico, working on six-month visas, pick squash and peppers on a farm in Lyons, Georgia, in July of 2023. Photo: José Ibarra Rizo / TIME

August 5, 2023

Extreme heat in 2023 endangers America’s workers and economy – Likely dozens of workers have already died from heat exposure in what may be the hottest summer in U.S. history – “Why are we being asked to choose between working and staying alive?”

By Aryn Baker 3 August 2023 GEORGIA (TIME) – Just after dawn on a recent July day in Rochelle, Ga., Silvia Moreno Ayala steps into a pair of sturdy work pants, slips on a long-sleeved shirt, and slathers her face and hands with sunscreen. She drapes a flowered scarf over her wide-brimmed hat to protect […]

Daily global surface air temperature, 1940-2023. July 2023 was the hottest July on record. The chart shows average global air temperature at 2 metres above the surface (land and sea). Data: Copernicus/ERA5. Graphic: The Guardian

August 5, 2023

“The era of global boiling has arrived,” says UN chief as July 2023 set to be hottest month on record – “Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning.”

By Ajit Niranjan 27 July 2023 (The Guardian) – The era of global warming has ended and “the era of global boiling has arrived”, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said after scientists confirmed July was on track to be the world’s hottest month on record. “Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And […]

Satellite view of an algae bloom in the waters north of the Scandinavian and Kola peninsulas, 3 August 2023. The image was acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. One group of researchers observed large shifts in the location of summer coccolithophore blooms to the northeast between 2002 and 2018. They also identified an increasing presence of Phaeocystis pouchetii, a type of phytoplankton normally found in warmer waters that can form gelatinous colonies millimeters in diameter. The effect that such changes might have on the ecosystem is a topic of ongoing research. Data: MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Photo: Michala Garrison / NASA Earth Observatory

August 5, 2023

The ocean’s color is changing as a consequence of global warming – Color changes reflect significant shifts in essential marine ecosystems – “To actually see it happening for real is not surprising, but frightening”

By Jennifer Chu 12 July 2023 (MIT News Office) – The ocean’s color has changed significantly over the last 20 years, and the global trend is likely a consequence of human-induced climate change, report scientists at MIT, the National Oceanography Center in the U.K., and elsewhere. In a study appearing today in Nature, the team writes […]

Changes of sea surface temperature (SST) gradient anomalies and the spatial distribution of SST to a changing CO2 pathway. (A) Time evolution of latitudinal gradient of sea surface temperature anomaly (unit: °C) in the SH (pink) from its PD value. (B) Same as (A) but for the NH (black), the North Pacific (NP; 120°E to 90°W, green dotted line), and the North Atlantic (NA; 70°W to 0°E, orange dashed line) sectors with the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) strength anomaly from its PD value (skyblue; unit: Sv). The SST gradient is determined by the SST differences from the tropics (0° to 15°) to the midlatitudes (45° to 60°) in each hemisphere. The AMOC strength is defined by averaging annual-mean Atlantic meridional ocean stream function within the latitudinal band from 35°N to 45°N at a depth of 1000 m. Note that the weakening of AMOC is upwards in the right axis in (B). All values are based on the ensemble mean of 28 members (subjected to an 11-year running mean), with their 1 SD ranges across the ensemble members marked with shading. (C to E) SST changes (unit: °C) for peak (2121–2160) minus early RU (2001–2040) periods, late RD (2241–2280) minus peak periods, and late RD minus early RU periods, respectively. Climatological SST in the PD climate (unit: °C) is contoured in (C) to (E). The hatched regions in (C) to (E) indicate where temperature changes are statistically insignificant at the 95% confidence level. The SH, NP, and NA sectors for the SST gradient in (A) and (B) are denoted by colored boxes in (C) to (E). Graphic: Kim, et al., 2023 / Science Advances

August 5, 2023

Removing carbon from Earth’s atmosphere may not “fix” climate change – Changes to atmospheric circulation caused by global warming may persist for centuries after CO2 concentrations decrease – “We cannot control nature. We cannot reverse the consequences that easily. We cannot fix nature.”

By Tereza Pultarova 28 July 2023 (Space.com) – Removing carbon from Earth’s atmosphere may not reverse devastating changes to weather patterns in vulnerable areas, a new study suggests. In the study, Korean researchers simulated how removing large quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the air might affect the progress of local climate changes […]

August 5, 2023

Texans die from heat after GOP Governor bans mandatory water breaks – “Houston will fight so its residents retain their constitutional rights and have immediate local recourse to government”

By Steven Monacelli 6 July 2023 (Texas Observer) – As a part of a bill critics have dubbed the “Death Star” bill—an expansive law that preempts legislation in eight key areas of local government—the Legislature has overridden local ordinances that require giving workers water breaks. Otherwise known as House Bill 2127, it was signed into […]

Center for Industrial Progress President Alex Epstein speaks at a House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee hearing in March 2023. Photo: Francis Chung / POLITICO

July 31, 2023

“It’s called summer”: U.S. Republicans brush off record 2023 heat wave – “Thank God for air conditioning”

By Chris D’Angelo and Igor Bobic 28 July 2023 (Huffington Post) – Unless you’ve been living underground or have a vested interest in turning a blind eye to reality, you know that climate change has sent temperatures soaring to dangerous levels around the planet this summer. Two global climate organizations on Thursday confirmed that July […]