Trump Would Reverse Global Warming Progress For Money

 The following is part of a post by Dan Rather:

President Biden calls climate change an “existential threat.” His administration has been responsible for more than 100 new laws and initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and cutting pollution. A big part of his agenda is transitioning from gasoline-powered cars to electric vehicles. . . .

For months Donald Trump has been openly hostile toward electric vehicles, saying they will “kill” the auto industry. His remarks are at odds with an industry embracing EV production. Maybe it’s because the United Auto Workers endorsed Biden. But perhaps there’s a different reason — money. 

 

Trump, long a climate change denier, doesn’t want to unplug only the electric car effort; he’s against wind and solar energy too. Last month he held a dinner at Mar-a-Lago for 20 oil and gas executives. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee reportedly offered that, if elected, he would scrap every one of Biden’s new environmental regulations in exchange for the oil execs raising $1 billion for Trump’s campaign. 

 

Call it what you want: a shakedown, quid pro quo, scandalous, but apparently it isn’t illegal. He went on to suggest that $1 billion is a “deal” for the oil companies because of the taxes and financial regulations they wouldn’t have to pay. While dealmaking like this isn’t new, the stunning transparency is.

Senate Democrats think so too. Today, they opened a second investigation into that now infamous meeting and whether Trump offered a “policies-for-money transaction.” 

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or an environmental scientist, to know our planet is changing, and fast. We can all feel it. Weather experts say higher temperatures are causing more severe weather, more frequently. 

 

More needs to be done. The White House climate initiatives are only a beginning. To abandon them now would be, well, madness. I want my grandchildren and your grandchildren to know that we did our best to save our democracy and our planet.

2023 Was The Hottest Year - Did It Reach The Tipping Point?

When the Paris Accords were agreed to by the world's nations, they set a limit of how much rise in temperature could be allowed. They said the limit should be 1.5 degrees centigrade, or if a year exceeds that temporarily, it should never exceed 2 degrees centigrade. They believed that 2 degrees was a tipping point beyond which the climate could not recover.

In 2023, the world experienced its hottest year ever. The first five months were among the hottest years recorded, and the last seven months set huge new records in heat. The year finished 1.8 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels.

That exceeds the 1.5 degree goal, and is coming very close to a 2 degree rise. Was 2023 an anomaly? Or is the global warming reaching its tipping point? We won't know for sure until we see what happens in 2024. But it should be frightening enough to spur serious and coordinated action by the nations of the world.

Unfortunately, it does not look like the United States (which should be leading the effort to control global warming) will take the action necessary. The Republicans in Congress still have the power to block serious efforts to control the warming climate. Their only energy point is to say we should be drilling more for fossil fuels (even though we are already the world's leading producer).

Unless we act soon, we will assuredly reach the tipping point -- beyond which nothing can be done to stop radical and disastrous climate change. The only way to prevent that is to vote the fossil fuel loving Republicans out of power -- and it must be done soon. We are running out of time.

Is The Rate Of Global Warming Increasing?

 The following is just a small part of an article from The Washington Post:

For the past several years, a small group of scientists has warned that sometime early this century, the rate of global warming — which has remained largely steady for decades — might accelerate. Temperatures could rise higher, faster. The drumbeat of weather disasters may become more insistent.

And now, after what is poised to be the hottest year in recorded history, the same experts believe that it is already happening.

In a paper published last month, climate scientist James E. Hansen and a group of colleagues argued that the pace of global warming is poised to increase by 50 percent in the coming decades, with an accompanying escalation of impacts.

According to the scientists, an increased amount of heat energy trapped within the planet’s system — known as the planet’s “energy imbalance” — will accelerate warming. “If there’s more energy coming in than going out, you get warmer, and if you double that imbalance, you’re going to get warmer faster,” Hansen said in a phone interview.

Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist with Berkeley Earth, has similarly called the last few months of temperatures “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas” and noted, “there is increasing evidence that global warming has accelerated over the past 15 years.”

But not everyone agrees. University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann has argued that no acceleration is visible yet: “The truth is bad enough,” he wrote in a blog post. Many other researchers also remain skeptical, saying that while such an increase may be predicted in some climate simulations, they don’t see it clearly in the data from the planet itself. At least not yet.

UN Climate Report Says World Is NOT Meeting Its Goals

 

The United Nations has released its 2023 Emissions Gap Report. And it's rather frightening. It shows that the world is not meeting the goals set in the Paris Accords (which would limit global warming to about 2.0C). Unless better action is taken, and soon, the rise will be closer to 3.0C, and that would trigger disastrous consequences. You can read the entire report here.

Here is the report's forward (written by Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program):

Humanity is breaking all the wrong records when it comes to climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions reached a new high in 2022. In September 2023, global average temperatures were 1.8°C above pre-industrial levels. When this year is over, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, it is almost certain to be the warmest year on record.

The 2023 edition of the Emissions Gap Report tells us that the world must change track, or we will be saying the same thing next year – and the year after, and the year after, like a broken record. The report finds that fully implementing and continuing mitigation efforts of unconditional nationally determined contributions (NDCs) made under the Paris Agreement for 2030 would put the world on course for limiting temperature rise to 2.9°C this century. Fully implementing conditional NDCs would lower this to 2.5°C. Given the intense climate impacts we are already seeing, neither outcome is desirable.

Progress since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 has shown that the world is capable of change. Greenhouse gas emissions in 2030, based on policies in place, were projected to increase by 16 per cent at the time of the agreement’s adoption. Today, the projected increase is 3 per cent. However, predicted 2030 greenhouse gas emissions must fall by 28 per cent for the Paris Agreement 2°C pathway and 42 per cent for the 1.5°C pathway.

Change must come faster in the form of economy-wide, low-carbon development transformations, with a focus on the energy transition. Countries with greater capacity and responsibility for emissions will need to take more ambitious action and provide financial and technical support to developing nations. Low- and middle-income countries, which already account for more than two thirds of global emissions, should meet their development needs with low- emissions growth, which would provide universal access to energy, lift millions out of poverty, and expand strategic industries.

The first global stocktake, concluding at COP 28 in Dubai this year, will inform the next round of NDCs, which will set new national emissions targets for 2035. Ambition in these NDCs must bring greenhouse gas emissions in 2035 to levels consistent with the 2°C and 1.5°C pathways. Stronger implementation in this decade will help to make this possible. The world needs to lift the needle out of the groove of insufficient ambition and action, and start setting new records on cutting emissions, green and just transitions, and climate finance – starting now.

Still Time To Avoid A Climate Catastrophe - But Not Much

The following is from the editorial board of The Washington Post: 

Every half-decade or so, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases an authoritative report on climate change, reflecting the consensus view among a vast number of experts and government officials. The latest installment, on the path humanity must take to avoid punishing climate consequences, came out on Monday. Another analysis filled with dire warnings, the latest report might seem depressing — or, depending on one’s point of view, encouraging.

The report found that humanity has used up almost its entire budget of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions if the planet is to avoid warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, the threshold scientists warn the average global temperature should not surpass. Another decade of emissions at the level between 2010 and 2019 would expend nearly all of the rest. With the policies in place as of 2020, the world will warm 3.2 degrees Celsius. If nations meet the commitments they made under the landmark Paris agreement, they would nudge that down to 2.8 degrees. To get on track, global emissions must peak before 2025, then decline rapidly.

Sounds grim. The encouraging part is that progress is still possible — easier, in fact, than one would have expected even a decade ago. The cost of renewables such as wind and solar has plummeted. Battery technology has improved. Some 18 countries have cut their emissions for 10 years straight. The pathway is clearer now than it has ever been. Cheaper renewables need to be deployed quickly and at massive scale, with continued government aid. Building standards must cut energy waste from the built environment. Cities must require better public transportation and non-car infrastructure. Electric vehicles must become the norm and run on a cleaner energy grid. Better technology and less wasteful behavior could cut energy needs by half by 2050.

Further research will have to fill in a few gaps. Planes and ships might have to run on hydrogen. Industrial processes such as cement-making require improvements in chemistry. There might be some sectors that never decarbonize fully.

To offset these, countries will have to remove carbon dioxide directly from the air. The easiest way to do this is to stop cutting down trees and other plant life — and, indeed, to grow more. More outlandish ideas include “fertilizing” the ocean to induce CO2-gobbling plankton to proliferate, an idea that the report warns could have unintended effects on ocean ecosystems.

Indeed, governments will have to be mindful of myriad trade-offs. Using more land for solar farms and tree-growing means that it cannot be used to grow food for an expanding world population, so agricultural intensity will have to improve. Some people in legacy fossil fuel industries will lose jobs, even as employment expands in other sectors. Governments will have to subsidize research budgets and ensure that money flows into renewables. All told, the report concludes, the costs might mean that world gross domestic product is a few percentage points lower in 2050 — not accounting for the value of the environmental destruction avoided. But those benefits would far outweigh the costs.

The United States has rejoined the Paris agreement, and Congress is considering major climate legislation. As it has on the fight for democracy in Ukraine and a host of other global issues, it is time for the United States to lead again.

We're Not Doing Enough To Stop Disastrous Climate Change

Scientists have been warning us for years now that global warming is causing climate change -- a change that will be disastrous if not stopped (or at least somewhat mitigated). The Paris Accords was an effort to limit that global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (a level that would still cause a lot of damage to the climate, but hopefully would be manageable). Unfortunately, The nations of the world are NOT doing enough to meet that goal, and it's likely that by the end of the century the warming will double that (3 degrees Celsius).  That's according to a new report released by the United Nations.

Here part of how The New York Times covered that new U.N. report:

Nations have delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they can no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next 30 years, though there is still a short window to prevent the most harrowing future, a major new United Nations scientific report has concluded.

Humans have already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, largely by burning coal, oil and gas for energy. And the consequences can be felt across the globe: This summer alone, blistering heat waveshave killed hundreds of people in the United States and Canada, floods have devastated Germany and China, and wildfires have raged out of control in Siberia, Turkey and Greece.

But that’s only the beginning, according to the report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of scientists convened by the United Nations. Even if nations started sharply cutting emissions today, total global warming is likely to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades, a hotter future that is now essentially locked in.

At 1.5 degrees of warming, scientists have found, the dangers grow considerably. Nearly 1 billion people worldwide could swelter in more frequent life-threatening heat waves. Hundreds of millions more would struggle for water because of severe droughts. Some animal and plant species alive today will be gone. Coral reefs, which sustain fisheries for large swaths of the globe, will suffer more frequent mass die-offs.

“We can expect a significant jump in extreme weather over the next 20 or 30 years,” said Piers Forster, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds and one of hundreds of international experts who helped write the report. “Things are unfortunately likely to get worse than they are today.”

Not all is lost, however, and humanity can still prevent the planet from getting even hotter. Doing so would require a coordinated effort among countries to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by around 2050, which would entail a rapid shift away from fossil fuels starting immediately, as well as potentially removing vast amounts of carbon from the air. If that happened, global warming would likely halt and level off at around 1.5 degrees Celsius, the report concludes.

But if nations fail in that effort, global average temperatures will keep rising — potentially passing 2 degrees, 3 degrees or even 4 degrees Celsius, compared with the preindustrial era. The report describes how every additional degree of warming brings far greater perils, such as ever more vicious floods and heat waves, worsening droughts and accelerating sea-level rise that could threaten the existence of some island nations. The hotter the planet gets, the greater the risks of crossing dangerous “tipping points,” like the irreversible collapse of the immense ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica. . . .

The report, approved by 195 governments and based on more than 14,000 studies, is the most comprehensive summary to date of the physical science of climate change. . . .

The new report leaves no doubt that humans are responsible for global warming, concluding that essentially all of the rise in global average temperatures since the 19th century has been driven by nations burning fossil fuels, clearing forests and loading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane that trap heat.

The changes in climate to date have little parallel in human history, the report said. The last decade is quite likely the hottest the planet has been in 125,000 years. The world’s glaciers are melting and receding at a rate “unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years.” Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have not been this high in at least 2 million years. . . .

Experts have estimated that current policies being pursued by world governments will put the world on track for roughly 3 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century. That has ramped up pressure on countries to make more ambitious pledges, beyond what they agreed to under an international climate agreement struck in Paris in 2015.

Most Believe Global Warming Is Real (& Caused By Humans)

The chart above reflects the results of the newest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between July 3rd and 6th of a national sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,281 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 2.8 points -- and for registered voters is 2.9 points.

It shows that 61% of adults (and registered voters) believe global warming (global climate change) is happening, and is caused by human activity (the overuse of fossil fuels). Only 30% say it is not caused by human activity, and only 9% say it not not happening.

Unfortunately, our government is not doing much to stop or mitigate the global climate change. The congressional Republicans have, at least so far, been able to block legislation that would address the crisis. They are playing to their base (where only 32% say climate change is happening die to human activity). They also think protecting corporate profits is more important that saving the climate and environment.

This puts the GOP against the wishes of the majority again. Hopefully, that will be enough to get them out of power in 2022. We don't have much time left before it's too late to stop or even mitigate the dangers of global climate change.

Republicans Out-Of-Step With Americans On Global Warming

 

These charts reflect the results of a recent Gallup Poll -- done between March 1st and 15th of a national sample of 1,010 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

It shows that while a significant majority of Americans think global warming is a serious threat, and is caused by human activity, Republicans don't believe that. As usual, they are out-of-step with most people.

Time Is Running Out To Deal With Global Climate Change

 

We have known about global climate change for a while now, and we know what is causing it -- the misuse and overuse of fossil fuels. But so far, our politicians (especially Republicans) have failed to take adequate action to stop it. We are running out of time. We may be less than a decade away from reaching the tipping point -- the point where any action taken will not stop the catastrophic effects of it.

The following is from CBS News:

The wild winter weather this week has been called historic and unprecedented, and John Kerry, U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, wants to stop it from becoming typical.

"Obviously we want to prevent this from becoming the new normal to the degree that we can," Kerry told CBS News' Ben Tracy.

Many people wrongly believe that climate change only relates to temperatures increasing, not decreasing.

Kerry said it threatens all weather patterns.

"I think it's a very appropriate way to think of it, so it is directly related to the warming, even though your instinct is to say, wait a minute, this is the new Ice Age. But it's not," Kerry said. "It is coming from the global warming and it threatens all the normal weather patterns." 

The planet is warming in large part because of greenhouse gas emissions that are pumped into the sky from power plants, cars, planes and industry. It even comes from the way we raise and grow our food. America is the second-largest emitter behind China of greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.

That warming is believed to make storms stronger, droughts drier and oceans higher. That means certain places on Earth where people currently live will become unlivable. In fact, it is already happening.

Kerry said we have only a few years left to avoid a climate catastrophe. 

"Well, the scientists told us three years ago we had 12 years to avert the worst consequences of climate crisis. We are now three years gone, so we have nine years left," he said. 

That's where the Paris accord, a climate treaty dedicated to lowering greenhouse gas emissions in more than 180 countries around the world, comes in. It was named after the City of Light, where it was agreed to back in 2015. But the pledges made then by nearly every country on Earth to cut their planet-warming emissions will no longer cut it.

"Even if we did everything that we said we were going to do when we signed up in Paris we would see a rise in the Earth's temperature to somewhere around 3.7 degrees or more, which is catastrophic," Kerry said.

2020 Was One Of The Hottest Years On Record

 The charts above show a sad fact -- that 2020 was one of the two hottest years on record. While global climate change has been pushed off the front page by other news, it has not stopped. And we must deal with it soon, or leave our descendants a virtually unlivable planet.

The following is part of an AP News report by Seth Borenstein:

Earth’s rising fever hit or neared record hot temperature levels in 2020, global weather groups reported Thursday.

While NASA and a couple of other measurement groups said 2020 passed or essentially tied 2016 as the hottest year on record, more agencies, including the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, said last year came in a close second or third. The differences in rankings mostly turned on how scientists accounted for data gaps in the Arctic, which is warming faster than the rest of the globe. . . .

NOAA said 2020 averaged 58.77 degrees (14.88 degrees Celsius), a few hundredths of a degree behind 2016. NASA saw 2020 as warmer than 2016 but so close they are essentially tied. The European Copernicus group also called it an essential tie for hottest year, with 2016 warmer by an insignificant fraction. Japan’s weather agency put 2020 as warmer than 2016, but a separate calculation by Japanese scientists put 2020 as a close third behind 2016 and 2019. The World Meteorological Organization, the British weather agency and Berkeley Earth’s monitoring team had 2016 ahead.

First or second rankings really don’t matter, “but the key thing to take away is that the long-term trends in temperature are very very clearly up and up and up,” said Schmidt, who heads NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies that tracks temperatures. “We’re in a position where we’re pushing the climate system out of the bounds that it’s been in for tens of thousands of years, if not millions of years.”

All the monitoring agencies agree the six warmest years on record have been the six years since 2015. The 10 warmest have all occurred since 2005, and scientists say that warming’s driven by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. . . .

The United States, which had its fifth warmest yea r, smashed the record for the number of weather disasters that cost at least $1 billion with 22 of them in 2020, including hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes and a Midwest derecho. The old record of 16 was set in 2011 and 2017. This was the sixth consecutive year with 10 or more billion-dollar climate disasters, with figures adjusted for inflation.

Earth has now warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times and is adding another 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 Fahrenheit) a decade.

That means the planet is nearing an international warming threshold set in Paris in 2015, Vose and Schmidt said. Nations of the world set a goal of preventing at least 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming, with a tougher secondary goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

“We cannot avoid 1.5 C above pre-industrial now -- it is just too late to turn things around,” University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Jason Furtado, who wasn’t on any of the measurement teams, said in an email. “I also fear that the 2 C threshold is slipping away from us too unless changes become much more immediate in the US and other nations.”. . .

The main reason the agencies have varying numbers is because there are relatively few temperature gauges in the Arctic. NOAA and the British weather agency take a conservative approach in extrapolating for the missing data, while NASA factors that the Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the globe, hitting 100 degrees (38 Celsius) in the Russian Arctic last June, said NASA’s Schmidt.

U.S. Public Says Government Should Do More On Climate

The charts above are from the Pew Research Center. They questioned a national sample of 10,957 adults between April 29th and May 5th. The margin of error for their survey is 1.4 points.

Currently, this nation (and the world) is busy fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. That's understandable, since we cannot end this recession until we control the virus, and we cannot save lives until the virus is controlled. The virus poses an immediate danger.

But we must not forget that the pandemic is not the only crisis facing this country (and the world). Global climate change (global warming) has not stopped. It doesn't care about the virus. And while it is happening slower, we may be reaching the tipping point (where nothing we do can avoid disaster). In the end, global climate change may actually be more dangerous to the world than the Coronavirus.

Unfortunately, our current federal government is doing NOTHING to stop, or even mitigate, global climate change. In fact, they are doing just the opposite. They are making it worse -- from withdrawing from the Paris Accords to removing rules that helped to clean-up emissions.

The public knows this. About 65% of the public says the government is not doing enough to save the climate and protect the environment. The six charts above show that the public disagrees with the current administration. They want government action.

Temperature Tops 100 F INSIDE THE ARCTIC CIRCLE!

We haven't heard much in the news about global warming lately. Other things have pushed it out of the headlines -- like a failed U.S. presidency, the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic recession, and an impending election. Those things are important (and should be covered by the news), but global climate change may be even more important -- and it's still getting worse. If we don't do something about it soon, it may be too late to stop global devastation.

Now we learn of something unheard of since temperatures have been recorded -- a town inside the Arctic Circle has recorded a temperature of 100.4 F (38 C). Here is how that significant (and frightening) event was reported by the Associated Press:

The Arctic is feverish and on fire — at least parts of it are. And that’s got scientists worried about what it means for the rest of the world.

The thermometer hit a likely record of 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Russian Arctic town of Verkhoyansk on Saturday, a temperature that would be a fever for a person — but this is Siberia, known for being frozen. The World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday that it’s looking to verify the temperature reading, which would be unprecedented for the region north of the Arctic Circle.

“The Arctic is figuratively and literally on fire — it’s warming much faster than we thought it would in response to rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and this warming is leading to a rapid meltdown and increase in wildfires,” University of Michigan environmental school dean Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist, said in an email.

“The record warming in Siberia is a warning sign of major proportions,” Overpeck wrote.

Much of Siberia had high temperatures this year that were beyond unseasonably warm. From January through May, the average temperature in north-central Siberia has been about 8 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) above average, according to the climate science non-profit Berkeley Earth.

“That’s much, much warmer than it’s ever been over that region in that period of time,” Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said.

Atmospheric CO2 At Highest Level In Last 3 Million Years

(This image was found at slideshare.net.)

A few days ago, I told you about the fact that January of 2020 was the hottest month since records have been kept (about 141 years). Now we learn of an even more frightening statistic. A recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report says there is now more CO2 in the atmosphere than in the last 3,000,000 years.

We simply cannot afford to keep the climate-denying Republicans in control of the White House or Congress any longer. We are running out of time, and more delay in addressing global climate change (global warming) will be disastrous. We are already past the point where we could have prevented significant climate change. But we can still mitigate the damage if we act quickly.

Here is part of what Jordan Davidson at EcoWatch reports about the NOAA report:


According to a recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report, the last time carbon dioxide levels were this high was 3 million years ago "when temperature was 2°–3°C (3.6°–5.4°F) higher than during the pre-industrial era, and sea level was 15–25 meters (50–80 feet) higher than today."

That period, the Pilocene Era, is unrecognizable from today. Giant camels walked around on the ice-free land above the Arctic Circle, as NBC News reported.

Earth first passed the 400 million parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere in 2013. Rather than take it as a dire warning, we have become inured to that level of concentration and have seen it rise slightly in subsequent years. In 2018, the concentration was 407.4 parts per million (ppm), according to NOAA. This year, CO2 concentrations are predicted to peak at 417 ppm, according to NBC News.

That level will put humans in new, unfamiliar territory. "For millions of years, we haven't had an atmosphere with a chemical composition as it is right now," said Martin Siegert, co-director of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, to NBC News.

In fact, just two weeks ago, on Feb. 10, NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory, an atmospheric baseline station in Hawaii, recorded the daily average of CO2 levels on as 416.08 parts per million, according to Common Dreams.

Carbon Dioxide concentrations are an effective measure of how many fossil fuels we are burning. Coal and crude oil contain carbon that plants have pulled out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis over million of years. However, in short order, human activity has returned that trapped carbon back into the atmosphere, as NOAA reported. . . .

Elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide are a hallmark of the climate crisis since they are associated with higher temperatures, melting ice and sea level rise, among other effects. . . .

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is also notable for its contribution to ocean acidification. According to NOAA, when CO2 reacts with water molecules, it produces carbonic acid and lowers the ocean's pH. Already, the ocean's surface pH has dropped from 8.21 in pre-industrial times to 8.10.

"The rate of rise in the last decade has been faster than previous decades," said Betts, as NBC Newsreported. "We're just tracking ever onwards, and 400 ppm is now a distant memory."

Last Month Was The Hottest January On Record

(The graphic image at the right is from 123rf.com.)

Donald Trump continues to deny that global climate change (global warming) exists, and the Republican Party refuses to pass any laws to curb that warming.

But their refusal doesn't change reality. Global climate change continues. In fact, January of 2020 was the hottest January in the 141 years since records have been kept.

Here is part of  how it was reported by Henry Fountain in The New York Times:

It may only be February, but 2020 is already “virtually certain” to be among the 10 warmest years on record, and has nearly a 50 percent chance of being the warmest ever, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday.

The predictions follow a January that was the warmest ever in 141 years of record keeping, Karin Gleason, a climatologist with the National Centers for Environmental Information, said in a conference call. Global average temperatures last month were 2.05 degrees Fahrenheit (1.14 degrees Celsius) above average, slightly higher than in January 2016, the previous record-holder.

In comparing this year with previous years, Ms. Gleason said, one way to look at it is “we completed the first lap in a 12-lap race, and we are in the lead.”

“According to our probability statistics, it’s virtually certain that 2020 will rank among the top 10 years on record,” she said. Their analysis also showed a 49 percent chance of this year being the warmest ever, and a greater than 98 percent likelihood it will rank in the top five.

The forecasts are in keeping with a long-term trend of global warming that is occurring as a result of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. All of the 10 current warmest years on record have occurred since 2004, and the past five years have been the hottest five. Last year was only slightly cooler than 2016, the hottest year ever.

It's The U.S. GOP That Prevents Action On Climate Change

It's not just Donald Trump that is preventing the United States from being a leader in solving the problem of global climate change. As Paul Krugman says, the U.S. Republican Party has been denying climate change and preventing action to solve it long before Trump was sworn in to office.

Here is some of what Krugman wrote in The New York Times:

Long before the cries of “fake news,” Republicans were refusing to accept science that contradicted their prejudices. Long before Republicans began attributing every negative development to the machinations of the “deep state,” they were insisting that global warming was a gigantic hoax perpetrated by a vast global cabal of corrupt scientists.

And long before Trump began weaponizing the power of the presidency for political gain, Republicans were using their political power to harass climate scientists and, where possible, criminalize the practice of science itself. . . .

But why have Republicans become the party of climate doom? Money is an important part of the answer: In the current cycle Republicans have received 97 percent of political contributions from the coal industry, 88 percent from oil and gas. And this doesn’t even count the wing nut welfare offered by institutions supported by the Koch brothers and other fossil-fuel moguls.

However, I don’t believe that it’s just about the money. My sense is that right-wingers believe, probably correctly, that there’s a sort of halo effect surrounding any form of public action. Once you accept that we need policies to protect the environment, you’re more likely to accept the idea that we should have policies to ensure access to health care, child care, and more. So the government must be prevented from doing anything good, lest it legitimize a broader progressive agenda.

Still, whatever the short-term political incentives, it takes a special kind of depravity to respond to those incentives by denying facts, embracing insane conspiracy theories and putting the very future of civilization at risk.

Unfortunately, that kind of depravity isn’t just present in the modern Republican Party, it has effectively taken over the whole institution. There used to be at least some Republicans with principles; as recently as 2008 Senator John McCain co-sponsored serious climate-change legislation. But those people have either experienced total moral collapse (hello, Senator Graham) or left the party.

The truth is that even now I don’t fully understand how things got this bad. But the reality is clear: Modern Republicans are irredeemable, devoid of principle or shame. And there is, as I said, no reason to believe that this will change even if Trump is defeated next year.

The only way that either American democracy or a livable planet can survive is if the Republican Party as it now exists is effectively dismantled and replaced with something better — maybe with a party that has the same name, but completely different values. This may sound like an impossible dream. But it’s the only hope we have.