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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Private equity firms are increasingly profiting from cleaning up climate disasters in the United States, while failing to better protect workers and often also investing in the fossil fuels that are causing the climate emergency, new research has found.
The demand for skilled disaster restoration or resilience workers, who are mostly immigrants and refugees from Latin America and Asia, is soaring as greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels heat the planet, provoking more destructive storms, floods and wildfires.
As the industry has become more profitable, at least 72 companies that specialize in disaster cleanups and restoration have been acquired by private equity firms since 2020, according to the research, by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PSEP) and Resilience Force, a labor rights organization with thousands of members.
Wage theft, lack of protective clothing, and other unsafe conditions are rampant across the industry at the expense of workers, communities and climate, according to the report, Private Equity Profits from Disasters, shared exclusively with the Guardian.
At risk are tens of thousands of resilience workers, traveling from disaster to disaster cleaning up and rebuilding American communities while facing hazards such as unstable buildings, ash and other toxins, and water-borne diseases.
Researchers found that an increasingly complex web of franchises, contractors and subcontractors, insurance providers, labor brokers, and agencies and mostly temporary jobs makes it difficult for workers to know who is ultimately accountable for violations.
“Disasters have become more intense and destructive, and rebuilding has become more profitable. As the money started pouring in, companies started consolidating, and private equity started circling and buying up these companies,” said Saket Soni, director of Resilience Force. “Wage theft and health and safety violations are deeply endemic … and private equity is failing to establish higher standards.”
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recorded 194 violations at private-equity owned restoration companies and their franchises between January 2015 and January 2022, the report found.
Most violations were classified as serious, and included failures to protect workers from asbestos, respiratory problems, and falls. (The true number of health and safety violations is likely to be higher given the small number of OSHA compliance officers).
It is impossible to say precisely what proportion of the disaster workforce is currently controlled by private equity, but acquisitions are gathering pace, with 14 in the first six months of this year compared to 13 during the entire course of 2020. Acquisitions included companies from 28 states, but most were in Florida and Texas – states hit by multiple billion-dollar climate disasters in recent years.
“This is the latest example of a disturbing trend where we see private equity coming into industries where there is a lot of money – and indeed a lot of federal investment – in order to pad their pockets by cutting costs,” said the Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. “This is already a dangerous industry … cutting costs will cut quality, and increase the threats to essential workers – who are already extremely vulnerable to greedy employers. Those who put up the money, in this case private equity, are ultimately responsible.”
Overall, the number and cost of weather and climate disasters in the US is rising due to a combination of population growth, development and the influence of human-caused global heating on extreme events like floods, drought, and fires. Over the past seven years (2016 to 2022), 122 separate billion-dollar disasters have killed at least 5,000 people and cost more than $1 trillion in damage, according to data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Historically, the disaster restoration industry was made up of smaller, independent businesses handling local projects. But after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, private equity firms saw an opportunity to consolidate the market by buying up smaller companies, and some estimates value the US restoration industry as high as $200 billion. The Restoration Industry Association, whose board includes three private equity executives, did not respond to the Guardian.
Taxpayer dollars increasingly pay for restoration costs – involving public buildings like schools and hospitals, and for folks without insurance. Yet the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, does not attach mandatory labor or health and safety standards to its payouts, while private equity firms have a track record in cost cutting to maximize profits.
Private equity refers to an opaque form of private financing in which funds and investors buy and restructure companies, including troubled businesses and real estate, using money from wealthy individuals and institutional investors such as university endowments and state employee pension funds.
In recent years, some private equity firms have become major greenhouse gas polluters, often acquiring risky oil, gas, and coal projects with minimal public scrutiny or regulatory oversight – which means firefighters, nurses, and teachers have little way of knowing if their retirement nest egg is financing police surveillance equipment, disaster companies, or leaky pipelines.
Researchers found a third of the private equity companies with disaster restoration company investments are also backing fossil fuel-linked projects – ostensibly profiting from the cause and effect of the climate emergency.
The Blackstone Group, the world’s largest private equity firm, which manages over $1 trillion, backs 21 energy companies, of which 52 percent are fossil-fuel projects. In 2020, Blackstone’s power plants produced 18.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere – equivalent to the annual emissions of nearly 4 million gas-powered vehicles.
Blackstone’s institutional investors include Los Angeles, Maine, Arizona, North Carolina, Texas, New York state, and Oregon public sector worker pensions.
In March 2019, Blackstone acquired a majority share in Servpro Industries, a damage restoration company with more than 2,000 independently owned and operated franchises across the US and Canada. Servpro franchises helped with restoration efforts after Hurricanes Harvey, Matthew, and Sandy – some of the most devastating storms to hit the US mainland in recent years.
Higher temperatures and sea level rise caused by burning fossil fuels are making storms more intense and destructive.
In Massachusetts, a Servpro franchise in 2022 settled claims by the state that its restoration work at an elementary school led to asbestos contamination, forcing the school to close for months. In November 2019, a Servpro franchise in Boynton Beach, Florida, was forced to pay more $200,000 in back wages to almost 150 restoration workers after a department of labor investigation.
In another example the commercial restoration firm BlueSky, which operates in more than 40 states, is owned by two private equity companies including Partners Group, whose portfolio also includes gas pipeline companies in the US and Europe.
“Firms like Blackstone are using the public’s money to personally profit off both sides of disasters,” said Azani Creeks, PESP research coordinator and co-author of the report.
“Public employees have a right to know that their pension dollars are being used to purchase fossil-fuel plants that are contributing to climate disasters – and companies that profit off of these very disasters, most often off the backs of wage workers with little health and safety protections.”
A Blackstone spokesperson rejected the report’s findings as “cherry-picking,” and said that some of the cases related to matters prior to their investment – and that there was no evidence that the alleged shortcomings were related to private equity ownership.
“As a franchisor, Servpro Industries does not control or direct the operations of its independent local franchises, nor does it employ their workers … Since Blackstone’s investment, the company has expanded the training resources available to its franchisees – including worker safety related to OSHA compliance and use of personal protective equipment, among other areas – and continually evaluates ways to further expand and enhance those efforts.”
Blackstone had invested more than $20 billion in the energy transition, the spokesperson said: “Legacy exploration and production investments today total less than 1 percent of our overall fair market value portfolio.”
According to the 2022 state of the industry report, the biggest issues facing the disaster restoration industry is finding – and retaining – skilled workers, and increasing wages for certified employees.
Information about the disaster workforce is limited, but more than 100,000 people are estimated to work occasionally or full time in the industry, according to Resilience Force. Most workers are concentrated in southern states prone to natural disasters like Louisiana, Texas, and Florida, but are often deployed thousands of miles away for weeks or months at a time. It is a male-dominated industry, but also includes thousands of women, with Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, India, and the Philippines among some of the most common countries of origin.
While the work is predominantly done by immigrants who are often undocumented or have temporary residency status, the workforce also includes current and ex-incarcerated people and US-born people of color – also groups which have historically faced discrimination and poor working conditions.
In one case, migrant workers who helped rebuild luxury hotels destroyed by Hurricane Irma in Florida Keys in 2017, were forced to sue Cotton Commercial, acquired by the private equity firm Sun Capital in 2020, and a temp agency to recover more than $280,000 in back pay and damages.
A spokesperson for Cotton said: “All Cotton contracts include provisions on subcontractors’ responsibility for payment to their personnel in accordance with all applicable employment laws and regulations, as well as strict safety requirements.”
The need for climate resilience workers is likely to continue rising, and next month Jayapal will re-introduce the 2022 Climate Resilience Workforce Act which would help create a well-trained, fairly paid workforce to help the US prepare for the climate emergency – and ease the transition to a green economy.
Soni, the director of Resilience Force, said: “Disaster restoration is a public good, and we need a strong sustainable workforce as disasters increase. Many people deeply love the work and are dedicated … but the work gets more dangerous year after year, because there are no standards. We’re depleting the workforce when we ought to be building it.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Private equity profits from climate disaster clean-up – while investing in fossil fuels on Sep 10, 2023.
This story was originally published in Modern Farmer and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate crisis.
Eerily empty, abandoned fields stretch across the coast of the southeast United States, replacing once sprawling fields of golden wheat, corn, and soybeans.
For centuries, farmers have favored the rich soil of coastal areas during the growing season. “It’s very fertile soil, especially in some areas that are called the ‘black lands.’ These are really deep organic soils that formed on the coast over millennia,” says Michael Gavazzi, coordinator of the USDA Southeast Climate Hub coordinator and natural resource specialist.
It’s a different story when the floods come in. Hurricanes and tropical storms bring torrential rain and powerful winds that cause storm surges—abnormally large waves that can tower up to 25 feet in height. The aftermath of such disasters is devastating. Crop damage and equipment loss can rack up to thousands of dollars for farmers, even with insurance. The spread of invasive species hinders future growing seasons of certain crops. And most of all, flooding risks long-term consequences to soil health and the geological makeup of farms that could force farmers to permanently abandon their land.
Take, for instance, 2018’s Hurricane Florence. The slow-moving Category 4 giant ravaged southeast coasts, with wind gusts as high as 100 miles per hour, rainfall that exceeded 10 inches in most coastal regions (Swansboro reported 34 inches of total rainfall) and $24 billion in damages—more than Category 5 Hurricane Matthew and Category 4 Hurricane Floyd combined. The initial $1.1-billion damage cost calculation was conservative, and it didn’t account for damages from soil salinization. Even worse, climate scientists say that rainfall estimations were worsened by climate change, an indication that future storms could follow similar patterns.
The storm rocked North Carolina’s agricultural industry to its core. Five of six top agricultural counties of the state were in the most storm-vulnerable areas. Most eastern farmers’ fields were obliterated; the storm came right before peak harvest season for tobacco, corn, and cotton. Crop insurance didn’t cover all the damages incurred, especially not the long-term costs.
“Fresh water [non-saline] flooding from intense rainfall events can [have] short- and long-term consequences,” says Gavazzi, “but the land will usually recover.” However, ocean-driven storm surge flooding is saltwater, and crop productivity can be negatively impacted. Repeated flooding can permanently reduce forest, range, and agricultural production of these coastal areas.
Soil salinization occurs when seawater from floods eventually evaporates but leaves behind its salt content, which accumulates over years in the soil. With enough flooding, the soil on farms could become so salinized that crops can no longer be grown on that land.
More often known as saltwater intrusion, soil salinization can also impact local water quality; the salt eventually makes contact with freshwater aquifers, thus salinizing them. Many local communities source water from wells that draw from these aquifers. Aquifer salinization forces these communities to drill new wells deeper and further inland, which further depletes underground freshwater and creates a self-enforcing loop.
This process isn’t immediately noticeable: One hurricane season isn’t enough for farmers to see the effects. But several years later, farmland productivity starts to plummet. Crop yields never return to previous rates, and there is only so much farmland owners can do to rid the salt before another hurricane comes along.
The issue, although having long been a concern among agronomists, started to rapidly proliferate in the past couple of years, as hurricanes and natural disasters become more frequent and more severe as a result of human-caused climate change. While not solely to blame for extreme weather, scientists agree that the burning of fossil fuels is supercharging normal weather patterns.. “It seems like it’s become more of an important issue in the last five to 10 years as [soil salinization] started to impact more land,” says Gavazzi.
“What they can do is hope for rain. Rain before a storm surge can fill up the soil pore space and prevent saltwater from entering the soil. Additional rain that occurs with a hurricane can also flush the standing saltwater off the land and kind of return it back to its previous non-saline state.”
As sea level increases due to climate change, the difference between ocean water levels and soil elevation is decreasing, making post-storm water runoff more difficult. Although the rain can eventually help flush out salt content in soil, long-term accumulation of salt far exceeds what natural precipitation can remove. Small farmer owners can also use water to flush out salt on their own, but this solution is far from viable for medium to large farm owners.
Another issue, which is essential to mitigating damage, is that salinization is harder to spot than expected. “[It’s] not always obvious on the surface,” explains Gavazzi. “Sometimes, it washes away, but the salinity of the soil can be increasing … There’s noticeable declines in productivity with that, but it’s kind of quiet after the event.” Farmers not equipped with the proper resources and knowledge to understand this are at particularly high risk of losing farmland.
“We’ve talked to some farmers that have constructed dikes to try to keep the water out,” he says. But infrastructure also comes with certain drawbacks. “Dikes are good for keeping out some flooding, but when water gets behind them, they hold that water and it also changes the natural landscape [of the area].”
To support coastal agriculture, the USDA, in partnership with regional and national organizations, provides financial and technical assistance to farmers in order to aid during recovery, post natural disaster. Research studies on future mitigation and resilience strategies are also well underway at universities. A research group formed jointly by scientists from Duke University and the University of Virginia recently published their findings mapping saltwater intrusion across the eastern coast in high-profile journal Nature. They found that between 2011 to 2017, “salty patches”, an indication of saltwater intrusion, have doubled in frequency across Delaware and in parts of Virginia and Maryland. Up to 93 percent of the farmlands analyzed were shown to be in proximity to the salinized areas. The economic implications of such changes were estimated to run as high as $107.50 million annually.
Other research efforts that revolve around salt-tolerant crop development and cover crop planting practices are beginning to gain traction among farmers. Michelle Lovejoy, a climate resilience manager at the Environmental Defense Fund, says that today’s farmers are more willing to adapt such mitigation practices.
“We are starting to see that shift as the next generation starts to take over the farm and as farmers are noticing ‘I’m getting more wet years,’” says Lovejoy.
Lovejoy emphasizes that the impacts of flood damage reverberate throughout state-wide communities, as well as local agricultural ones. When flooding disrupts crop production, especially of staple crops such as corn, wheat or potatoes, grocery stores and farmers’ markets take a hit.
She explains that, particularly in states that are responsible for producing large amounts of a staple crop, flooding can result in supply chain collapses. Food disappears off store shelves and already food-insecure communities are left to grapple with devastating food shortages.
“That’s where, collectively as a nation, we need to make sure there’s redundancy in the system, but we, as a society, have made decisions historically that looked at efficiencies and cost,” says Lovejoy, referring to practices that ensure no singular agricultural community is responsible for producing the majority of a crop supply for the rest of the country.
She draws a comparison to a similar occurrence during the pandemic. “During [COVID-19] when we watched the supply chains collapse, we made decisions that said, ‘We don’t need those redundancies,’” says Lovejoy. “But now we’re realizing [that] part of resilience is having redundancies in the system. That’s a local level conversation that needs to happen.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘A silent killer’: How saltwater intrusion is overtaking coastal farmland in the US on Sep 9, 2023.
A new analysis funded by NASA and conducted in conjunction with its High Mountain Asia Team and Sea Level Change Team has found that with 1.5 degrees Celsius of global heating above pre-industrial levels, half the world’s glaciers would disappear and cause sea levels to rise 3.5 inches by the year 2100.
From 2013 to 2017, David Rounce, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and his research team measured the Imja-Lhotse Shar Glacier near Mount Everest’s base in the Himalayas as it quickly receded. As the glacier melted, the lake at the base of the famous mountain filled up, a press release from NASA said.
“To go to the same place and to see the lake expand and see how the glacier was thinning rapidly was quite eye-opening to say the least,” Rounce said in the press release.
Rounce led a study in January that predicted Earth’s glaciers could shrink by up to 40 percent by 2100.
The study, “Global glacier change in the 21st century: Every increase in temperature matters,” was published in the journal Science.
In their analysis, the research team modeled the planet’s glaciers, except the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, in order to make projections of how they would be affected by temperature increases from 1.5 to four degrees Celsius, the press release said.
While they found that half the world’s glaciers would melt at 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, if the planet warms by 2.7 degrees Celsius, which is the predicted temperature increase based on COP26 climate pledges, almost all of the glaciers in western Canada, the U.S. (including Alaska) and Central Europe would disappear. If temperatures warm by four degrees Celsius, 80 percent of Earth’s glaciers would be gone and cause sea levels to rise by six inches.
“Regardless of temperature increase, the glaciers are going to experience a lot of loss,” Rounce said in the press release. “That’s inevitable.”
The study by Rounce and his team was the first to use mass change data taken from satellites of all 215,000 of the planet’s glaciers.
“Sea level rise is not just a problem for a few specific locations,” said leader of NASA’s Sea Level Change Team Ben Hamlington in the press release. “It’s increasing almost everywhere on Earth.”
The model took into account glacial debris cover, including sediment, soot, dust, rocks and volcanic ash on the surface of glaciers. Glacial debris can affect melting — a thin layer can cause more while a thick layer can provide insulation that reduces it.
Especially strong indicators of climate change are glaciers located in remote parts of the planet.
Glaciers that are melting quickly affect landscapes, the availability of freshwater, sea level rise, tourism, ecosystems and the severity and frequency of hazards.
“We are not trying to frame this as a negative look at the loss of these glaciers, but instead how we have the ability to make a difference,” Rounce said in the press release. “I think it’s a very important message: a message of hope.”
The post Half of Earth’s Glaciers Could Melt With 1.5°C of Warming, NASA Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.
In its first major assessment of progress made on the 2015 Paris Agreement goals, the United Nations warned Friday that the world is “not on track” to meet any of the long-term targets set in the landmark climate treaty. According to the U.N., countries are falling short in efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), to adapt to climate impacts, and to provide enough climate financing to developing countries.
The report marks “a truly damning report card for global climate efforts,” Ani Dasgupta, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, said in a statement. “Carbon emissions? Still climbing. Rich countries’ finance commitments? Delinquent. Adaptation support? Lagging woefully behind.”
The report is the result of two years of intense negotiations between governments, experts, and nonprofits, reflecting hundreds of thousands of pages of written input. Its comprehensive review of global climate action finds that current emissions reduction goals set by governments worldwide fall short in both ambition and follow-through.
“There is a rapidly narrowing window to raise ambition and implement existing commitments in order to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C {2.7 degrees F} above pre-industrial levels,” report authors cautioned.
In addition to reviewing progress made, the report also identified areas for policymakers to take further action. It called for countries to set more ambitious targets for reducing emissions and to implement them as soon as possible. The report also said leaders should involve “those most affected by climate impacts” while crafting policies, including young people, women, and Indigenous peoples.
Other key recommendations include “phasing out all unabated fossil fuels,” investing in and building out renewable energy, and ending deforestation. The U.N. noted that while there’s been encouraging progress in renewable energy development, with solar power and electric vehicle deployment growing over 10 and 100 times respectively, the benefits of clean technology have been largely concentrated in wealthier, more developed nations.
Meanwhile, global investment in “emissions-intensive” activities continues to grow. To respond to the climate crisis, the U.N. said, countries will need to redirect trillions in subsidies from fossil fuels toward renewable technologies and climate adaptation.
Last year, those investments reached a record high. According to the International Monetary Fund, government subsidies for oil, coal, and natural gas totaled $7 trillion in 2022. While tax breaks and other subsidies are often provided to lower consumer energy bills, they can also further delay an already overdue energy transition.
“The removal of fossil fuel subsidies is a key strategy for addressing structural economic barriers that can perpetuate inertia to change and prevent cost-effective low-carbon alternatives from being adopted at scale,” the U.N. report stated.
The report’s findings will likely be central to discussions at this year’s upcoming UN climate summit, COP28, in Dubai. There, negotiators are expected to review previous emissions reductions commitments made by countries and submit revised targets in light of the report. Countries are expected to hammer out the details of a new “loss and damage” fund, which aims to funnel money from wealthier nations to developing countries that experience the brunt of climate impacts.
But some environmental advocates, including prominent U.N. figures, have grown disenchanted with the lack of progress made at the annual conferences. Christiana Figueres, a former executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, called the upcoming COP in Dubai a “circus.”
“The Paris Agreement is good for nothing if it is not financed and executed,” Figueres said at the Sarawak Renewable Energy Forum in Malaysia this week. “Honestly, I would prefer 90,000 people stay at home and do their job.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline UN warns the world is ‘not on track’ to meet global climate targets on Sep 8, 2023.
The CDC has issued an emergency alert over a harmful bacteria, Vibrio vulnificus, in warming coastal waters. The center noted that with extreme weather, like heat waves, flooding and severe storms, people should be careful when participating in coastal water activities.
“Amid increasing water temperatures and extreme weather events (e.g., heat waves, flooding, and severe storms) associated with climate change, people who are at increased risk for V. vulnificus infection should exercise caution when engaging in coastal water activities. Prompt treatment is crucial to reduce mortality from severe V. vulnificus infection,” the CDC shared in a health alert.
The “flesh-eating” bacteria, Vibrio vulnificus, live in salt water and brackish water, making them common in coastal areas and estuaries. While the bacteria don’t actually consume flesh, a Vibrio vulnificus infection can cause necrotizing fasciitis, which damages or kills the tissue around a wound.
This bacterial infection can be severe and even fatal, with about one in five people dying, even within just one or two days of becoming infected. If an infection is suspected or occurs, immediate treatment is critical.
The center also advised doctors to consider Vibrio vulnificus as the possible cause of infections for patients, particularly those who have had recent contact with coastal waters.
Warmer waters create conditions for the bacteria to thrive, and with sea surface temperatures reaching record highs this summer, the CDC is warning of potential open-wound contact, which is the primary way Vibrio vulnificus is transferred.
According to the CDC, Vibrio vulnificus may enter inland waters after extreme weather events such as hurricanes or floods.
Vibrio vulnificus has been primarily reported in states along the Gulf of Mexico, but infections of this bacteria along the eastern coast have increased by as much as eight times from 1988 to 2018. Some infections this year have been linked to consuming raw or undercooked seafood.
There have been at least seven deaths from this bacterial infection in Florida, which has also seen ocean temperatures rise to the temperature of a hot tub in recent months.
To protect against infection, the CDC recommended people with any open wounds to stay out of salt and brackish waters, and get out of the water immediately if they get a cut while they are in these waters. Open wounds should be covered with waterproof bandages if there’s a chance for them to come into contact with salt or brackish water, and wounds need to be washed with soap and clean water.
Because some Vibrio infections are caused by consuming raw or undercooked seafood, the CDC also advises to properly cook shellfish and seafood and wash hands thoroughly when handling seafood.
The post CDC Issues Alert on Harmful Bacteria in Coastal Waters Amid High Sea Surface Temperatures appeared first on EcoWatch.
This story is part of Record High, a Grist series examining extreme heat and its impact on how — and where — we live.
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.
But just looking at the survivability threshold doesn’t paint the full picture of heat-related risk. The theoretical experiment underpinning that threshold was based on two assumptions: that humans are fully adapted to heat, or used to hot conditions, and that people do everything in their power — seek out shade, fan themselves, and douse themselves with water — to stay cool during an extreme heat event. The reality is that death can occur long before wet-bulb conditions are eclipsed for a variety of reasons that have to do with age, health, adaptation, and access.
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.
Christopher W. Callahan, an earth systems scientist at Dartmouth University who researches health and heat and was not involved in the research, called the study’s results “striking.” “Some locations are already experiencing these critically hot conditions,” he said. “They’re not just a forecast from a climate model, they’re directly observable using quality-controlled weather station observations.”
As more countries experience abnormally high temperatures every summer, using pure “survivability” as the metric for when heat-related mortality will occur is a dangerous proposition. Death can occur much sooner than that.
At the wet-bulb threshold, “no matter what you do short of air conditioning, you face lethal risk,” said Carter Powis, a researcher at the University of Oxford and the study’s lead author. “The threshold we looked at, noncompensable heat, is you face lethal heat risk unless you do something. Meaning there are still ways you can survive above this threshold such as using a fan, drinking cold water.” Any conditions between these two definitions are what the study’s authors call the “danger zone.” Whether someone dies when they’re in that zone depends on what cooling strategies are available to them and how well adapted they are.
The study shows that, under current climate change conditions, 8 percent of the globe by land area experiences conditions that are in the danger zone once every decade. At 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) of warming, a climate change benchmark the world is currently on track to exceed, more than a quarter of the world will experience these conditions at least once a decade. The percentage of the planet that will experience potentially fatal heat continues to grow the more climate change accelerates.
It’s not just the hottest regions of the planet that are at risk. In the U.S., the Midwest and East Coast could see rapid increases in noncompensable heat exposure. The same is true for the Mediterranean region up north through Europe. These are areas that are not used to extreme heat.
“While prior research has indicated that fatal wet bulb temperatures will occur more often in the most populated and poor regions of the planet, this research suggests that wealthier countries in North America and Europe will also face increasingly dire heat waves,” Cascade Tuholske, a geographer at Montana State University who was also not involved in the study, told Grist.
For Powis, the biggest takeaway is that communities need to be aware that past heat-related mortality events are not a good way to gauge future risk. As the planet warms, the past will become an increasingly poor metric for looking at the future. “The danger is, in the near term, in the next decade or two decades, you have one of these extreme heat waves that departs from the historical maximum by a substantial amount, crosses this threshold, and causes wide-scale mortality,” Powis said. “Everything is fine until suddenly it’s not.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Parts of the world have already grown too hot for human survival on Sep 8, 2023.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service has found that June through August of this year had the highest global temperatures for summer on record. Additionally, sea surface temperatures of the North Atlantic and globally have reached record highs in summer 2023.
The service used data from satellites, weather stations, ships and aircraft around the world, amounting to billions of measurements to determine the temperatures. The findings revealed that June through August 2023 hit an average global temperature of 16.77 degrees Celsius, or 0.66 degrees Celsius above the average global temperature recorded for these three months.
Further, August 2023 hit record high temperatures for that month and came just behind July 2023 as the hottest month ever recorded.
“Global temperature records continue to tumble in 2023, with the warmest August following on from the warmest July and June leading to the warmest boreal summer in our data record going back to 1940,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement.
While the summer temperatures have reached record highs, the year as a whole is currently ranked as the second warmest on record, behind 2016. But 2023 is just 0.01 degrees Celsius behind the record-high temperatures of 2016, with another four months left in the year, Burgess explained.
Earlier this year, the World Meteorological Organization reported that there is a 98% chance that the Earth will have its hottest year on record within the next five years.
“Our planet has just endured a season of simmering — the hottest summer on record. Climate breakdown has begun,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, as reported by ABC News. “Scientists have long warned what our fossil fuel addiction will unleash. Surging temperatures demand a surge in action. Leaders must turn up the heat now for climate solutions. We can still avoid the worst of climate chaos — and we don’t have a moment to lose.”
In addition to the high global temperatures around the world, Copernicus Climate Change Service also found that the average sea surface temperatures globally have been higher than usual since April, and in August, sea surface temperatures hit the highest daily and highest monthly global average on record.
According to the service, global average sea surface temperatures broke the record of 20.95 degrees Celsius (March 2016), reaching 21.02 degrees Celsius on August 23 and 24. The global average sea surface temperatures of each day from July 31 to August 31 of 2023 were warmer than the previous record high from March 2016.
“The scientific evidence is overwhelming — we will continue to see more climate records and more intense and frequent extreme weather events impacting society and ecosystems, until we stop emitting greenhouse gases,” Burgess said.
The post Copernicus Climate Change Service Reports Summer 2023 as Hottest Summer on Record appeared first on EcoWatch.
Nominated by readers, the 2023 Grist 50 list of climate changemakers celebrates the grit, determination, and creativity of all kinds of people who share one goal: putting us all on a path to an equitable, cleaner future.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 50 climate leaders to know right now on Sep 8, 2023.
The evolution of plastic recycling is essential to cleaning up a plastic-addicted world and eliminating…
The post Earth911 Podcast: Nexus Circular CEO Jodie Morgan on Plastic Recycling Progress appeared first on Earth911.
