Anthropogenic Climate Change

URL	https://Persagen.com/docs/anthropogenic_climate_change.html	Global Temperature Over My Lifetime xkcd.com/2500  |  explainxkcd.com
Sources	Persagen.com  |  Wikipedia  |  other sources (cited in situ)
Source URL	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change
Date published	2021-08-12
Curator	Dr. Victoria A. Stuart, Ph.D.
Curation date	2021-08-12
Modified
Editorial practice	Refer here  |  Dates: yyyy-mm-dd
Summary	Contemporary climate change includes both global warming caused by humans and its impacts on Earth's weather patterns. There have been previous periods of climate change, but the current changes are more rapid than any known events in Earth's history. The main cause is the emission of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). Burning fossil fuels for energy use creates most of these emissions.
Related	Climate Change Denial Climate Change Denial: Facebook Climate justice Environmental justice
Disruptive influencers	American Petroleum Institute American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Dark Money Heartland Institute
Oil companies	Chevron Corporation Royal Dutch Shell plc Shell Oil Company The Reason Fossil Fuel Companies Are Finally Reckoning With Climate Change
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change	Climate change: IPCC: Sixth Assessment Report, 2021-08 In-depth Q&A: The IPCC's sixth assessment report on climate science, 2021-08-09
Keywords	Show acidification | aerosol-induced cooling | agriculture | anthropogenic | anthropogenic climate change | anthropogenic-induced climate change | bitumen | carbon dioxide | carbon pricing | carbon tax | cement production | climate | climate change | climate change denial | climate crisis | climate emergency | climate feedbacks | climate scientist | CO2 | coal | coastline protection | clean energy | coral reefs | dark money | deforestation | desertification | disaster management | disease | disinformation | drought | drought resistant crops | economic loss | emergency_management | emission of greenhouse gases | energy efficiency | energy use | environmental damage | extinction | extinction events | extreme weather | fake news | food security | forest loss | fossil fuels | glaciers | global heating | global surface temperature | global temperature | global warming | greenhouse gas emissions | greenhouse gases | heat dome | heat pumps | heat waves | hottest month | hottest year | human impact | human migration | human-induced warming | inadvertent climate modification | irreversible environmental damage | methane | military-industrial complex | misinformation | mitigation efforts | NASA | near-zero emissions | ocean acidification | ocean warming | oil industry | oil sands | permafrost | production cuts | public transportation | reef bleaching | resistant crops | retreating glaciers | rising sea levels | sea level rise | sea levels | solar energy | steel making | sunlight-reflecting snow cover | surface temperature | sustainable_energy | temperature rise | threat to global health | tipping points | warmest month | warmest year | water scarcity | weather extremes | wild fires | wind energy
Named entities	Show ALEC | Amazon rain forest | American Legislative Exchange Council | American Petroleum Institute | Arctic | Athabasca oil sands | Big Oil | Canadian oil industry | Chevron | Chevron Corporation | COP26 | Donald Gutstein | Environmental Defence | Facebook | Global Annual Temperature Rankings Outlook | Heartland Institute | Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change | IPCC | IPCC: Sixth Assessment Report | James Hansen | Justin Trudeau | National Centers for Environmental Information | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | NOAA | Paris Agreement | Royal Dutch Shell | Royal Dutch Shell plc | Shell | Shell Oil | The Big Stall | The Big Stall: How Big Oil and Think Tanks Are Blocking Action on Climate Change in Canada | United States military | World Health Organization
Ontologies	Show Nature - Earth - Environment - Climate change Nature - Earth - Environment - Climate change - Climate change denial Society - Business - Companies - Royal Dutch Shell plc Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Organizations - Nonprofit Organizations - Dark Money Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Organizations - Nonprofit Organizations - Dark Money - Countries - United States Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Countries - United States - Organizations - Nonprofit organizations - 501(c)(3) organizations - American Petroleum Institute Society - Issues - Environment - Climate change denial

Background

Contemporary climate change includes both global warming caused by humans and its impacts on Earth's weather patterns. There have been previous periods of climate change, but the current changes are more rapid than any known events in Earth's history. The main cause is the emission of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄). Burning fossil fuels for energy use creates most of these emissions. Agriculture, steel making, cement production, and forest loss are additional sources. Temperature rise is also affected by climate feedbacks such as the loss of sunlight-reflecting snow cover, and the release of carbon dioxide from drought-stricken forests. Collectively, these amplify global warming.

On land, temperatures have risen about twice as fast as the global average. Deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Increased warming in the Arctic has contributed to melting permafrost,   glacial retreat and sea ice loss. Higher temperatures are also causing more intense storms and other weather extremes. In places such as coral reefs, mountains, and the Arctic, many species are forced to relocate or become extinct, as their environment changes. Climate change threatens people with food and water scarcity, increased flooding, extreme heat, more disease, and economic loss. It can also drive human migration. The World Health Organization calls climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Even if efforts to minimise future warming are successful, some effects will continue for centuries. These include sea level rise, and warmer, more acidic oceans.

Many of these impacts are already felt at the current level of warming, which is about 1.2 °C (2 °F). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects even greater impacts as warming continues to 1.5 °C and beyond. Additional warming also increases the risk of triggering tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Responding to these changes involves taking actions to limit the amount of warming, and adapting to them. Future warming can be reduced (mitigated) by lowering greenhouse gas emissions and removing them from the atmosphere. This will involve using more wind and solar energy,   phasing out coal, and increasing energy efficiency. Switching to electric vehicles, to public transport, and to heat pumps for homes and commercial buildings, could further limit emissions. Prevention of deforestation and enhancing forests can help absorb CO₂. Some communities may adapt to climate change through better coastline protection,   disaster management, and development of more resistant crops. By themselves, these efforts to adapt cannot avert the risk of severe, widespread and permanent impacts.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations collectively agreed to keep warming "well under 2.0°C (3.6°F)" through mitigation efforts. However, with pledges made under the Agreement, global warming would still reach about 2.8°C (5.0°F) by the end of the century. Limiting warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) would require halving emissions by 2030 and achieving near-zero emissions by 2050.

Terminology

Before the 1980s, it was unclear whether warming by greenhouse gases would dominate aerosol-induced cooling. Scientists then often used the term inadvertent climate modification to refer to the human impact on the climate. In the 1980s, the terms global warming and climate change were popularised. The former refers only to increased surface warming, the latter describes the full effect of greenhouse gases on the climate. Global warming became the most popular term after NASA climate scientist James Hansen used it in his 1988 testimony in the U.S. Senate. In the 2000s, the term climate change increased in popularity. Global warming usually refers to human-induced warming of the Earth system, whereas climate change can refer to natural or anthropogenic change. The two terms are often used interchangeably.

Various scientists, politicians and media figures have adopted the terms climate crisis or climate emergency to talk about climate change, and global heating instead of global warming. The policy editor-in-chief of The Guardian said they included this language in their editorial guidelines "to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue." In 2019, Oxford Languages chose climate emergency as its word of the year, defining it as "a situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it."

Additional Reading

• [CBC.ca, 2022-02-28] UN climate report urges world to adapt now, or suffer later.  Report is latest in a series by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

• [ClimateAndCapitalism.com, 2022-02-28] Scientists issue 'dire warning' on climate.  "A brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future."

[ ... snip ... ]

Despite countless investigations,   lawsuits, social shaming, and regulations dating back decades, the oil and gas industry remains formidable. After all, it has made consuming its products seem like a human necessity. It has confused the public about climate science, bought the eternal gratitude of one of America's two main political parties [Democratic Party], and repeatedly out-maneuvered regulatory efforts. And it has done all this in part by thinking ahead and then acting ruthlessly. While the rest of us were playing checkers, its executives were playing three-dimensional chess.

Take this brief tour of the industry's history, and then ask yourself: Is there any doubt that these companies are now plotting to keep the profits rolling in, even as mega-hurricanes and roaring wildfires scream the dangers of the climate emergency?

Say It Ain't So, Dr. Seuss!

One of the offspring of Standard Oil was Esso (S-O, spelled out), which later launched one of the most successful advertising campaigns in history. It did so by relying on the talents of a young cartoonist who millions would later adore under his pen name, Dr. Seuss. Decades before authoring the pro-environment parable The Lorax, Theodor Seuss Geisel helped Esso market "FLIT," a household spray gun that killed mosquitoes. What Americans weren't told was that the pesticide Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) made up 5% of each blast of FLIT.

When Esso put considerable creative resources behind the FLIT campaign, they were looking years ahead to a time when they would also successfully market oil-based products. The campaign ran for 17 years in the 1940s and 1950s, at the time an unheard length of time for an ad campaign. It taught Esso and other Standard Oil companies how to sell derivative products (like plastic and pesticides) that made the company and the brand a household name in the minds of the public. In its day, "Quick, Henry, the FLIT!" was as ubiquitous as "Got Milk?" is today.

At the time, the public (and even many scientists) didn't appreciate the deadly nature of DDT. That didn't come until the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring  [Wikipedia: Silent Spring]. But accepting that DDT was deadly was hard, in part because of the genius of Theodor Seuss Geisel, whose wacky characters - strikingly similar to the figures who would later populate Dr. Seuss books - energetically extolled FLIT's alleged benefits.

Theodore Geisel later said the experience "taught me conciseness and how to marry pictures with words." The FLIT ad campaign was incredibly smart and clever marketing. It taught the industry how to sell a dangerous and unnecessary product as if it were something useful and even fun. Years later, ExxonMobil would take that cleverness to new heights in its advertorials. They weren't about clever characters. But they were awfully clever, containing few, if any, outright lies, but a whole lot of half-truths and misrepresentations. It was clever enough to convince The New York Times to run them without labeling them as the advertisements that they, in fact, were. Their climate "advertorials" appeared in the op-ed page of The New York Times and were part of what scholars have called "the longest, regular (weekly) use of media to influence public and elite opinion in contemporary America."

Controlling Climate Science

Big Oil also saw climate change coming. As abundant investigative reporting and academic studies have documented, the companies' own scientists were telling their executives in the 1970s that burning more oil and other fossil fuels would overheat the planet. (Other scientists had been saying so since the 1960s.) The companies responded by lying about the danger of their products, blunting public awareness, and lobbying against government action. The result is today's climate emergency.

Less well-known is how oil and gas companies didn't just lie about their own research. They also mounted a stealth campaign to monitor and influence what the rest of the scientific community learned and said about climate change.

The companies embedded scientists in universities and made sure they were present at important conferences. They nominated them to be contributors to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body whose assessments from 1990 onward defined what the press, public, and policymakers thought was true about climate science. While the IPCC reports, which rely on consensus science, were sound, Big Oil's scientific participation gave them an insider's view of the road ahead. More ominously, they introduced the art of questioning the consensus science in forums where every word is parsed.

The oil and gas industry was employing a strategy pioneered by tobacco companies  [tobacco industry playbook | tobacco strategy | disinformation playbook], but with a twist. Beginning in the 1950s, the tobacco industry cultivated a sotto voce network of scientists at scores of American universities and medical schools, whose work it funded. Some of these scientists were actively engaged in research to discredit the idea that cigarette smoking was a health risk, but most of it was more subtle; the industry supported research on causes of cancer and heart disease other than tobacco, such as radon, asbestos, and diet. It was a form of misdirection, designed to deflect our attention away from the harms of tobacco and onto other things. The scheme worked for a while, but when it was exposed in the 1990s, in part through lawsuits, the bad publicity largely killed it. What self-respecting scientist would take tobacco industry money after that?

The oil and gas industry learned from that mistake and decided that, instead of working surreptitiously, it would work in the open. And rather than work primarily with individual scientists whose work might be of use, it would seek to influence the direction of the scientific community as a whole. The industry's internal scientists continued to do research and publish peer-reviewed articles, but the industry also openly funded university collaborations and other researchers. From the late 1970s through the 1980s, Exxon was known both as a climate research pioneer, and as a generous patron of university science, supporting student research and fellowships at many major universities. Its scientists also worked alongside senior colleagues at NASA, the United States Department of Energy, and other key institutions, and funded breakfasts, luncheons, and other activities at scientific meetings. Those efforts had the net effect of creating goodwill and bonds of loyalty. It's been effective.

The industry's scientists may have been operating in good faith, but their work helped delay public recognition of the scientific consensus that climate change was unequivocally man-made, happening now, and very dangerous. The industry's extensive presence in the field also gave it early access to cutting edge research it used to its advantage. Exxon, for example, designed oil platforms to accommodate more rapid sea level rise, even as the company publicly denied that climate change was occurring.

Don't Call It Methane, It's "Natural" Gas

Methane is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, yet it has received far less attention. One reason is that the oil and gas industry has positioned methane - which marketing experts cleverly labeled "natural gas" - as the future of the energy economy. The industry promotes methane gas as a "clean fuel" that's needed to bridge the transition from today's hydrocarbon economy to tomorrow's renewable energy era. Some go further and see gas as a permanent part of the energy landscape: BP plc's plan is renewables plus gas for the foreseeable future, and the company and other oil majors frequently invoke "low carbon" instead of "no carbon."

Except that methane gas isn't clean. It's about 80 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide is.

As recently as a decade ago, many scientists and environmentalists viewed "natural gas" as a climate hero. The oil and gas industry's ad guys encouraged this view by portraying gas as a coal killer. The American Petroleum Institute paid millions to run its first-ever Super Bowl ad in 2017, portraying gas as an engine of innovation that powers the American way of life. Between 2008 and 2019, the American Petroleum Institute spent more than $750 million on public relations, advertising, and communications (for both oil and gas interests), an analysis by the Climate Investigations Center found. Today, most Americans view gas as clean, even though science shows that we can't meet our climate goals without quickly transitioning away from it. The bottom line is that we can't solve a problem caused by fossil fuels with more fossil fuels. But the industry has made a lot of us think otherwise.

There's little chance the oil and gas industry can defeat renewable energy in the long term. Wind, solar, and geothermal, which are clean and cost-competitive, will eventually dominate energy markets. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley,   GridLab, and Energy Innovation have found that the U.S. can achieve 90% clean electricity by the year 2035 with no new gas and at no additional cost to consumers. But the oil and gas industry doesn't need to win the fight in the long term. It just needs to win right now, so it can keep developing oil and gas fields that will be in use for decades to come. To do that, it just has to keep doing what it has done for the past 25 years: win today, fight again tomorrow.

A Spider's Web of Pipelines

• See also: Coastal GasLink pipeline

Here's a final example of how the oil and gas industry plans for the next war even as its adversaries are still fighting the last one. Almost no one outside of a few law firms, trade groups, and congressional staff in Washington, D.C., knows what the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission  [FERC;  Wikipedia: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] is or does. But the oil and gas industry knows and it moved quickly after Donald Trump became president to lay the groundwork for decades of future fossil fuel dependency.

FERC has long been a rubber stamp for the oil and gas industry. The industry proposes gas pipelines  [pipeline transport of liquid or gas], and FERC approves them. When FERC approves a pipeline, that approval grants the pipeline eminent domain, which in effect makes the pipeline all but impossible to stop.

Eminent domain gives a company the legal right to build a pipeline through landowners' properties, and there is nothing they or state or county officials can do about it. A couple of states have successfully, though temporarily, blocked pipelines by invoking federal statutes such as the U.S. Clean Water Act. But if those state cases reach the current Supreme Court of the United States, the three justices Donald Trump appointed - Neil Gorsuch,   Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett - are almost certain to rule in the industry's favor.

Oil and gas industry executives seized upon Trump's arrival in the White House. In the opening days of Trump's administration, independent researchers listened in on public trade gatherings of the executives, who talked about "flooding the zone" at Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The industry planned to submit not just one or two but nearly a dozen interstate gas pipeline requests. Plotted on a map, the projected pipelines covered so much of the U.S. that they resembled a spider's web.

Once pipelines are in the system, companies can start to build them, and utility commissioners in every corner of America see this gas "infrastructure" as a fait accompli. And pipelines are built to last decades. In fact, if properly maintained, a pipeline can last forever in principle. This strategy could allow the oil and gas industry to lock in fossil fuel dependency for the rest of the century.

In hindsight, it's clear that oil and gas industry leaders used outright climate change denial when it suited their corporate and political interests throughout the 1990s. But now that outright climate change denial is no longer credible, they've pivoted from denial to delay. Industry public relations and marketing efforts have shifted massive resources to a central message that, yes, climate change is real, but that the necessary changes will require more research and decades to implement, and above all, more fossil fuels. Climate delay is the new climate denial.

Nearly every major oil and gas company now claims that they accept the science and that they support sensible climate policies. But their actions speak louder than words. It's clear that the future they want is one that still uses fossil fuels abundantly - regardless of what the science says. Whether it is selling deadly pesticides or deadly fossil fuels, they will do what it takes to keep their products on the market. Now that we're in a race to a clean energy future, it's time to recognize that they simply can't be trusted as partners in that race. We've been fooled too many times.

Last spring [2021-05-21], the Financial Times   published a useful series of charts  [Archive.today snapshot  |  local copy] showing the correlation between CO2 emissions [Greenhouse gas emissions] and the global distribution of wealth. The inequalities of the climate crisis are often, in many ways rightly, conceptualized as inequities between countries - particularly those of a few rich, carbon-intensive, industrialized economies and the rest.

But, as the Financial Times's data very clearly showed, there's actually a stark and highly visible divide between a tiny minority of extremely wealthy people and everyone else. Taken as a whole, those in the global top 1 percent of income account for 15 percent of emissions, which is more than double the share of those in the bottom half. The extremely wealthy have only gotten richer over the past thirty years and, as the data shows, their carbon footprints have gotten much bigger as well.

When this perspective is narrowed to individual countries, the class divide vis-à-vis carbon emissions is truly astonishing to behold. In the United States, those in the top decile of income alone account for half of household emissions while the bottom half account for under 10 percent. While America is admittedly a pretty extreme case, the same basic pattern holds true across many large industrialized economies - a point which underscores that the divides within countries are often at least as important as the divides between them.

[ ... snip ... ]

On Monday [2021-11-08], climate activists protested outside the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland - spotlighting the role of the U.S. military in fueling the climate crisis. The Costs of War Project estimates the military produced around 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon emissions between 2001 and 2017, with nearly a third coming from U.S. wars overseas. But military carbon emissions have largely been exempted from international climate treaties dating back to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol after lobbying from the United States. We go to Glasgow to speak with Ramón Mejía, anti-militarism national organizer of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and Iraq War veteran; Erik Edstrom, Afghanistan War veteran turned climate activist; and Neta Crawford, director of the Costs of War project. "The United States military has been a mechanism of environmental destruction," says Crawford.

[ ... snip ... ]

Canadians are six times more likely to report that climate change has a negative or somewhat negative impact on their day-to-day health rather than a positive impact, according to a new survey from Nanos Research.

The poll, conducted by Nanos Research and sponsored by CTV News, found that 41 per cent of Canadians surveyed would say climate change negatively or somewhat negatively impacts their health and 44 per cent of those surveyed said it has no impact on their health. Of those surveyed, six per cent said climate change has a positive or somewhat positive impact on their day-to-day health, while nine per cent of those surveyed were unsure.

[ ... snip ... ]

Yesterday, I wrote a column exposing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's hypocrisy in acting like a climate hero at the COP26 meetings in Glasgow. It obviously had little impact. That's because after the column appeared, the subservient media slavishly documented his efforts to promote a global carbon tax. Reporters covering COP26 have obviously not read Burnaby author Donald Gutstein's .

That's why they don't understand the game that Trudeau is playing. For https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Oil, the goal is to avoid mandated production cuts at all costs. You'll hear Trudeau talk about an "emissions" cap on the industry but never a "production" cut. It fools the media. Press the Liberal government on how to achieve these so-called emissions cuts as the oil industry continues jacking up production, and the response is invariably "technology". Trudeau simply trusts Big Oil's pledge that it will work toward carbon neutrality.

Nowadays, the Big Stall is centred on suckering the media with fanciful stories about storing emissions underground. It's never been proven to come close to the scale necessary to prevent us all from being fried. Donald Gutstein's 2018 book revealed the Trudeau strategy in stark detail: go for a carbon tax, not production cuts. That's because with a carbon tax, the Canadian oil industry can continue ramping up the export of dirty, diluted bitumen. And that would keep money flowing into provincial and federal treasuries and prop up the Canadian dollar.

Don't get me wrong: a carbon tax is desirable. But it will never come close to saving our collective hides as long as Big Oil continues developing new fossil-fuel infrastructure, subsidized by Canadian taxpayers. Last year, Environmental Defence estimated that the Trudeau government subsidized and supported this industry to the tune of $18 billion. It's worth repeating: Big Oil prefers a carbon tax over production cuts.

So now, Trudeau is doing its bidding by advancing this idea internationally with one of his favourite phrases: "putting a price on pollution". It's been a masterful performance. I would like to say that history won't be kind to Trudeau for not urging a sharp decline in the production of oil and gas. But there won't be much of a history to document if this game of political charades ends up in societal breakdown and widespread famine.

[ ... snip ... ]

The global temperature for July 2021 was the highest for July in the 142-year National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) record, which dates back to 1880. The year-to-date (January-July) global surface temperature tied as the sixth highest on record. According to National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)'s Global Annual Temperature Rankings Outlook, it is very likely that the year 2021 will rank among the 10 warmest years on record.   [Source]

• [Straight.com, 2021-08-16] July was hottest month in recorded history of the weather.

• [ClimateAndCapitalism.com, 2021-08-16] July was Earth's hottest month on record.  July is usually the warmest month, but this year it went over the top.

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