What is known about the mysterious disappearance of insects » Yale Climate Connections

These news articles and accessible scientific papers explain the latest findings on the 'insect apocalypse.'

Perhaps you remember when a drive in the country meant a windshield covered with the remains of many tiny insects. And you may have noticed that this is no longer always (or even usually) the case. Indeed, you can drive many interstate miles, even in rural areas, without having to clean your windshield to see properly.

(Photo credit: chapstickaddict / Flickr )
Are there really fewer insects than there used to be? Yes, in fact – a lot fewer. Is this drop-off an effect of a warming globe? Partly. We might call it one of the ways in which climate change is a threat multiplier – shifts in temperatures, rainfall, and drought increase the damage caused, for instance, by habitat loss and pesticides.

The drop-off in numbers of insects is also an example of a sliding baseline: Based on their own first-hand observations, young people set their expectations about the world decades later than their parents set theirs, and their parents in turn set theirs decades after their own parents or grandparents did. So those long, slow declines go relatively unnoticed. In the case of insects, which many of us don’t notice except as annoyances, even a faster decline may stay largely unobserved by many.

The best single article to read about all this (and the several recent scientific studies about it) is Brooke Jarvis’s “The Insect Apocalypse is Here” (Nonsubscribers can use one of their monthly free reads.) It is compelling to read, thorough, and rich in both information and human stories.

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The 'war on coal' myth » Yale Climate Connections

Environmental regulations aren't the reason that coal is falling off the map.
Is environmental extremism causing the decline of the American coal industry? A look at the economics shows that coal has been beaten fair and square in the marketplace by cheaper and cleaner alternatives. The best way to support coal communities is to confront these economic realities, rather than creating a divisive and false narrative about the reasons behind the industry’s challenges.

Talen Energy in June announced the early closure of part of its Montana Colstrip power plant, the sixth-largest source of greenhouse emissions in the U.S. Two of the plant’s four coal-burning units are to be shuttered at the end of this year. The plant, and now its closing, are emblematic of the struggle between the fight to save coal communities and the inevitable economic forces plucking away at coal’s one-time dominance of American energy.
The Colstrip plant has four units, each its own power plant. The two oldest units, Units 1 and 2, are closing in light of insurmountable headwinds. They emit so much pollution that under federal law they are not permitted to operate unless the relatively cleaner units are also running and the net pollution then can be averaged-out. These 43-year-old units are also expensive to run compared to the amount of power they generate, so they are seldom used.
Continue reading at: The 'war on coal' myth » Yale Climate Connections

E.P.A. Won’t Ban Chlorpyrifos, Pesticide Tied to Children’s Health Problems - The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration took a major step to weaken the regulation of toxic chemicals on Thursday when the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would not ban a widely used pesticide that its own experts have linked to serious health problems in children.

The decision by Andrew R. Wheeler, the E.P.A. administrator, represents a victory for the chemical industry and for farmers who have lobbied to continue using the substance, chlorpyrifos, arguing it is necessary to protect crops.

It was the administration’s second major move this year to roll back or eliminate chemical safety rules. In April, the agency disregarded the advice of its own experts when officials issued a rule that restricted but did not ban asbestos, a known carcinogen. Agency scientists and lawyers had urged the E.P.A. to ban asbestos outright, as do most other industrialized nations.

In making the chlorpyrifos ruling, the E.P.A. said in a statement that the data supporting objections to the use of the pesticide was “not sufficiently valid, complete or reliable.” The agency added that it would continue to monitor the safety of chlorpyrifos through 2022.


A 2018 protest in California after a public hearing on increasing restrictions on the use of the agricultural pesticide chlorpyrifos. CreditCreditMax Whittaker for The New York Times



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Lake Erie Harmful Algal Bloom

NOAA and its research partners predict that western Lake Erie will experience a harmful algal bloom (HAB) of cyanobacteria this summer that is larger than the mild bloom in 2018. Scientists expect this year’s bloom to measure greater than a 7 on the severity index. The severity index is based on a bloom’s biomass – the amount of its harmful algae – over a sustained period. The largest blooms, 2011 and 2015, were 10 and 10.5, respectively. Last year’s bloom had a severity of 3.6 considered a mild bloom. However, the size of a bloom is not necessarily an indication of how toxic it is. For more information on the projection click here.



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Tipping Elements - the Achilles Heels of the Earth System — PIK Research Portal

Tipping elements are components of the Earth system of supra-regional scale which - in terms of background climate - are characterized by a threshold behavior. Once operating near a threshold, these components can be tipped into a qualitatively different state by small external perturbations. To compare them with the human body, tipping elements could be described as organs which drastically alter or stop their usual function if certain requirements, such as oxygen supply, are not sufficiently fulfilled.

The threshold behavior is often based on self-reinforcing processes which, once tipped, can continue without further forcing. It is thus possible that the new state of a tipping element persists, even if the background climate falls back behind the threshold. The transition resulting from the exceedance of a system-specific tipping point can be either abrupt or gradual. Its large-scale environmental impacts could endanger the livelihood of millions of people.


Map of the most important tipping elements in the Earth System overlain on the Köppen climate classification. There are three groups of tipping elements: melting ice bodies, changing circulations of the ocean and atmosphere, and threatened large-scale ecosystems. Question marks indicate systems whose status as tipping elements is particularly uncertain. Source: PIK, 2017.



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11 Critical Global Warming Tipping Points - Job One for Humanity

Global Warming Tipping Points Which Can Create Mass Extinction Within Our Lifetimes

(If you do not understand the basics of what global warming (aka climate change,) is or how it works, we strongly advise you click here first to view some basic illustrations that explain it. If you are not familiar with the 20 major and worst consequences of global warming we strongly recommend you review this page first as it will deepen your understanding of how the global warming tipping points can interact with these other global warming consequences to create a global warming extinction scenario within our lifetimes. Also please note that the global warming extinction process is also sometimes called runaway global warming or irreversible global warming.)

Introduction
"You cannot be called an alarmist if there really is something to be alarmed about." Unknown Source

While you are learning about key global warming tipping points, it is critically important to understand that no compensatory calculations for the effects of any global warming tipping points being crossed were ever included in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC,) calculations for precisely how much we have to reduce our global fossil fuel use to save ourselves from extinction. This is important because the IPCC's global fossil fuel reduction calculations are currently being used by all of the member governments of the United Nations (about 190 countries,) for setting their own internal national fossil fuel reduction programs.

This horrific failure to include crossing any global warming tipping points in our current global and national fossil fuel reduction calculations is also true for the world's most recent 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. As you will soon discover this omission of including proper calculations for crossing global warming tipping points as the world continues to warm is the recipe for mutually assured destruction.

Yes, this failure to include allowance calculations for crossed tipping points also means that the national fossil fuel reduction programs of every member of the United Nations using the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement targets is also based on incomplete and inaccurate calculations. In other words, our current global fossil fuel reduction calculations are based on the inconceivable belief that "everything will work perfectly within our rapidly warming climate systems all of the time and we will never crossing any key global warming tipping points." Unfortunately, the immutable laws of mathematics and physics also do not work that way, particularly as we simultaneously continue to add massively more carbon and methane to our atmosphere each year.

We all know how "everything always goes perfectly as planned all of the time" so, there's nothing really to worry about here or, is there? As you explore the key global warming tipping points described below the shocking meaning to your future wellbeing of our government's not including crossing any global warming tipping points in their calculations for how much we have to reduce our global and national fossil fuel use to prevent extinction will become much clearer to you...

Tipping Points
The major Global warming tipping points within interacting climate, human, and biological systems are:

1. The total amount of melting ice.
2. The albedo effect.
3. The release of methane from the warming of polar permafrost and tundra.
4. The total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.
5. The die-offs of carbon-eating and oxygen-producing sea plankton because of the warming, carbonization, and acidification of the oceans.
6. The ever-increasing atmospheric heat captured and stored by the oceans and sent to lower levels of the ocean.
7. The loss of the atmospheric carbon-eating forests because of heat, drought, wildfires, and timber-harvesting or agriculture-related clearcutting.
8. Soils that normally absorb carbon begin releasing it back into the atmosphere from their previously stored or inherent carbon because of the escalating heat.
9. The changes in major ocean currents that help to stabilize our weather and seasons.
10. The global warming-caused pandemic potential. When ancient ice, glaciers, permafrost, or frozen tundra melts, it releases still-living bacteria and viruses never seen before.
11. Total weight of rising seas and melting ice shifting. Although research is sparse in this area, it has been posited that the total massive weight change from all ice melt areas (where ice covers land masses) as well as the heating, expanding and shifting weight effect on seas caused by global warming can move existing tectonic plates.

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The urgency of Arctic change - ScienceDirect

This article provides a synthesis of the latest observational trends and projections for the future of the Arctic. First, the Arctic is already changing rapidly as a result of climate change. Contemporary warm Arctic temperatures and large sea ice deficits (75% volume loss) demonstrate climate states outside of previous experience. Modeled changes of the Arctic cryosphere demonstrate that even limiting global temperature increases to near 2 °C will leave the Arctic a much different environment by mid-century with less snow and sea ice, melted permafrost, altered ecosystems, and a projected annual mean Arctic temperature increase of +4 °C. Second, even under ambitious emission reduction scenarios, high-latitude land ice melt, including Greenland, are foreseen to continue due to internal lags, leading to accelerating global sea level rise throughout the century. Third, future Arctic changes may in turn impact lower latitudes through tundra greenhouse gas release and shifts in ocean and atmospheric circulation. Arctic-specific radiative and heat storage feedbacks may become an obstacle to achieving a stabilized global climate. In light of these trends, the precautionary principle calls for early adaptation and mitigation actions.


Recent Arctic erosion and loss of permafrost along the Alaskan coast near Drew Point. Thawing land ice (white) is clearly visible. This is part of the current rapid changes happening in the Arctic. Photo from USGS (https://on.doi.gov/arctic-coasts).

Continue reading at: The urgency of Arctic change - ScienceDirect