A new study says that thawing permafrost probably won’t cause a runaway process. Permafrost is permanently frozen ground that covers about a quarter of the landmass in the Northern Hemisphere. It stores large amounts of methane and carbon dioxide that will be released when it thaws. If that release were to cause enough further warming to accelerate its own release, the process would inevitably “run away” until everything is released. The new study now says that the pace of release depends strongly on the ground conditions and in general wouldn’t be fast enough to actually speed itself up.

Single view - AWI
https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/service/press/single-view/tauender-permafrost-kein-globales-klima-kippelement-trotzdem-gravierende-auswirkungen.html

‘A green transition that leaves no one behind’: world leaders release open letter | Emmanuel Macron, Mia Mottley, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Ursula von der Leyen, Charles Michel, Olaf Scholz, Fumio Ki...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/21/a-green-transition-that-leaves-no-one-behind-world-leaders-release-open-letter

We, leaders of diverse economies from every corner of the world, are united in our determination to forge a new global consensus. We will use the Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact on June 22-23 as a decisive political moment to recover development gains lost in recent years and to accelerate progress towards the SDGs, including just transitions. We are clear on our strategy: development and climate commitments should be fulfilled and, in line with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, we recognise that we need to leverage all sources of finance, including official development assistance, domestic resources and private investment.

Delivering on that consensus should start with existing financial commitments. Collective climate-finance goals must be met in 2023. Our total global ambition of $100bn (£78bn) of voluntary contributions for countries most in need, through a rechannelling of special drawing rights or equivalent budget contributions, should also be reached.

No country should have to wait years for debt relief. We need greater and more timely cooperation on debt, for both low- and middle-income countries. This starts with a swift conclusion of solutions for debt-distressed countries.

A top priority is to continue ambitious reform of our system of multilateral development banks, building on the existing momentum. We are asking development banks to take responsible steps to do much more with existing resources and to increase financing capacity and private capital mobilisation, based on clear targets and strategies in terms of private finance contribution and domestic resource mobilisation. These financial resources are essential, but this reform is about far more than money. It should deliver a more effective operational model, based on a country-led approach. We also need our development banks to work together as an ecosystem, closely with other public agencies and streamlined vertical funds – and, where appropriate, with philanthropists, sovereign wealth funds, private finance and civil society – to deliver the greatest impact.

Technology, skills, sustainability, and public and private investment will be at the core of our partnerships, to promote voluntary technology transfer, a free flow of scientific and technological talents, and contribute to an inclusive, open, fair and non-discriminatory economy. We will promote an agenda of sustainable and inclusive investment in developing and emerging economies, based on local economic value added and local transformation, such as fertiliser value chains. This comprehensive approach will require new metrics to update our accountability instruments.

Public finance will remain essential to achieving our goals. We should start with strengthening our instruments (the International Development Association, the International Monetary Fund’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust and Resilience and Sustainability Trust, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Green Climate Fund, and other concessional windows of our banks, as well as the Global Shield against Climate Risks). But we acknowledge that meeting our development and climate goals, including the fight against hunger, poverty, and inequality; adapting to climate change; and averting, minimising and addressing loss and damage, will require new, innovative, and sustainable sources of finance, such as debt buy-backs, engagement from sectors that prosper thanks to globalisation, and more trusted carbon- and biodiversity-credit markets.

SCHWEPZ:

https://twitter.com/jrockstrom/status/1613829474834939907?s=19

Just 10 Big Shareholders Hold Key To Controlling The Climate Crisis | IFLScience
https://www.iflscience.com/just-10-big-shareholders-control-50-percent-of-fossil-fuel-reserves-64562

2022 Ten financial actors can accelerate a transition away from fossil fuels
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2210422422000636

just 200 companies (known as the Carbon Underground 200 or CU200) own 98 percent of the potential emissions from the world's remaining oil, gas, and coal reserves – the vast majority of which must remain in the ground if we are to avert a full-blown climate catastrophe

CU200 fossil fuel reserves have the potential to produce 674 gigatons of carbon emissions, more than enough to push global average temperatures beyond 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Within the CU200 group, just 10 shareholders own 49.5 percent of the potential emissions from the world's largest energy firms and have a gargantuan influence over the fossil fuel market.

These actors included: Blackrock, Vanguard, the Government of India, State Street, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Life insurance Corporation, Norges Bank, Fidelity Investments, and Capital Group. It's these actors, the researchers argue, who are key to solving the climate crisis and ending the era of fossil fuels.

“Without them, we simply won't have what it takes to meet our emissions targets and avoid catastrophe."

"If they're serious, capital markets can enable a low-carbon transition within the top coal, oil and gas reserve owners in the world," said Dordi. "Recent pledges to reduce carbon exposure in investment portfolios and engagement with the fossil fuel industry indicate we may already be moving in that direction."

XCHAOS: ranni davka rychlych generalizaci? Byl bych se svymi vyroky opatrnejsi...

A Caribbean beach could offer a crucial test in the fight to slow climate change | MIT Technology Review
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/22/1004218/how-green-sand-could-capture-billions-of-tons-of-carbon-dioxide/

Research and lab simulations have found that waves will significantly accelerate the breakdown of olivine, and one paper concluded that carrying out this process across 2% of the world’s “most energetic shelf seas” could offset all annual human emissions.

thawing permafrost contains lots of microscopic ice-nucleating particles. These particles make it easier for water droplets to freeze; and if the ones in permafrost get airborne, they could affect Arctic clouds

Thawing permafrost is full of ice-forming particles that could get into atmosphere
https://theconversation.com/thawing-permafrost-is-full-of-ice-forming-particles-that-could-get-into-atmosphere-152736


When sea ice melts and the water surface increases, more iodine-containing vapours rise from the sea. Scientists from the international research network CLOUD have now discovered that aerosol particles form rapidly from such iodine vapours, which can serve as condensation nuclei for cloud formation. The CLOUD researchers, among them atmospheric scientists from the Goethe University Frankfurt, fear a mutual intensification of sea ice melt and cloud formation, which could accelerate the warming of the Arctic and Antarctic.

Climate research: rapid formation of iodic particles over the Arctic – more clouds could cause ice to melt faster | Aktuelles aus der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
https://aktuelles.uni-frankfurt.de/englisch/climate-research-rapid-formation-of-iodic-particles-over-the-arctic-more-clouds-could-cause-ice-to-melt-faster/

pray to #accelerate

latest monthly update for greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (*new record*), methane (*new record*), and nitrous oxide (*new record*)

Germany will accelerate its switch to 100% renewable energy in response to Russian crisis - the new date to be 100% renewable is 2035.

Jeste k topiku.

Gene Editing for the Climate: Biological Solutions for Curbing Greenhouse Emissions
https://www2.itif.org/2020-gene-edited-climate-solutions.pdf

Recent advances in gene editing offer promising opportunities to mitigate emissions from agriculture and other sectors, and to capture carbon from the atmosphere. Governments should accelerate the development and deployment of these solutions.

-- -- --
Necetl jsem to zatim cele. Ale jak to tak zatim ctu tak bych to lepe nenapsal.

TADEAS:

Xi Jinping warns China’s low-carbon ambitions must not interfere with ‘normal life’ | China | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/26/xi-jinping-warns-chinas-low-carbon-ambitions-must-not-interfere-with-normal-life

Xi told senior Communist party leaders in a speech published late on Monday that China needed to “overcome the notion of rapid success” and proceed gradually.

“Reducing emissions is not about reducing productivity, and it is not about not emitting at all,” Xi was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying.

“We must stick to the overall planning and ensure energy security, industrial supply chain security and food security at the same time as cutting carbon emissions,” he said.

Since a national economic work meeting held at the end of last year, Chinese policymakers have repeatedly stressed that the country would “prioritise stability” in 2022.

The approach has already started to feed into policymaking, with Zhang Bo, chief engineer of the ministry of ecology and environment, telling reporters earlier this week that the country would not impose strict water quality targets on local governments, and would instead encourage them to “consolidate” previous gains.

With energy supplies still a major concern after a wave of shortages hit manufacturers last year, Xi also told Party leaders that “the gradual withdrawal of traditional energy must be based on the safe and reliable replacement by new energy.“

China has promised to accelerate the shift to renewables, but will only start to reduce coal consumption - a major source of CO2 - after 2025.

China’s state planning agency also said in December that it will loosen blanket restrictions on energy consumption in order to ensure environmental targets do not erode growth.

Cédric Durand, Energy Dilemma — Sidecar
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/energy-dilemma

A successful carbon transition implies the harmonious unfolding of two processes complexly related at the material, economic and financial levels. First, a process of disbandment must take place. Sources of carbon must be drastically reduced: above all hydrocarbon extraction, electricity production by coal and gas, fuel-based transport systems, the construction sector (due to the high level of emissions involved in cement and steel production) and the meat industry. What is at stake here is degrowth in the most straightforward sense: equipment must be scrapped, fossil fuel reserves must stay in the soil, intensive cattle-breeding must be abandoned and an array of related professional skills must be made redundant.

All things being equal, the elimination of production capacities implies a contraction of supply which would lead to generalized inflationary pressure. This is even more likely because the sectors most affected are located at the commanding heights of modern economies. Cascading through the other sectors, pressure on costs will dent firms’ mark-up, global profits and/or consumer purchasing power, unleashing wild recessionary forces. In addition, degrowth of the carbon economy is a net loss from the point of view of the valorization of financial capital: huge amounts of stranded assets must be wiped out since underlying expected profits are foregone, paving the way for fire sales and ricocheting onto the mass of fictitious capital. These interrelated dynamics will fuel each other, as recessionary forces increase debt defaults while financial crisis freezes the access to credit.

The other side of the transition is a major investment push to accommodate the supply shock caused by the degrowth of the carbon sector. While changing consumption habits could play a role, especially in affluent countries, the creation of new carbon-free production capacities, improvements in efficiency, electrification of transport, industrial and heating systems (along with the deployment of carbon capture in some instances) are also necessary to compensate for the phasing out of greenhouse gas emissions. From a capitalist perspective, these could represent new profit opportunities, so long as the costs of production are not prohibitive relative to available demand. Attracted by this valorization, green finance could step in and accelerate the transition, propelling a new wave of accumulation capable of sustaining employment and living standards.

Yet it is important to bear in mind that timing is everything: making such adjustments in fifty years is completely different from having to disengage drastically in a decade. And from where we are now, the prospects for a smooth and adequate switch to green energy are slim, to say the least. The scaling back of the carbon sector remains uncertain due to the inherent contingency of political processes and the persistent lack of engagement from state authorities.

...

Market mechanisms are expected to internalize the negative externalities of greenhouse gas emissions, allowing for an orderly transition on both the supply and demand sides. ‘Carbon pricing has the advantage of focusing on efficiency in terms of cost per ton of CO2, without the need to identify in advance which measures will work.’ Reflecting the plasticity of market adjustment, a carbon price – ‘unlike more prescriptive measures’ – opens up a space for ‘innovative solutions’.

This free-market, techno-optimistic perspective ensures that capitalist growth and climate stabilization are reconciliable. However, it suffers from two main shortcomings. The first is the blindness of the carbon-pricing approach to the macroeconomic dynamics involved in the transition effort. A recent report by Jean Pisani Ferry, written for the Peterson Institute for International Economics, plays down the possibility of any smooth adjustment driven by market prices, while also dashing the hopes of a Green New Deal that could lift all boats.

Observing that ‘Procrastination has reduced the chances of engineering an orderly transition’, the report notes that there is ‘no guarantee that the transition to carbon neutrality will be good for growth.’ The process is quite simple: 1) since decarbonation implies an accelerated obsolescence of some part of existing capital stock, supply will be reduced; 2) in the meantime, more investment will be necessary. The burning question then becomes: are there sufficient resources in the economy to allow for more investment alongside weakened supply? The answer depends on the amount of slack in the economy – that is, idle productive capacity and unemployment. But considering the size of the adjustment and the compressed timeframe, this cannot be taken for granted. In Pisani Ferry’s view, ‘Impact on growth will be ambiguous, impact on consumption should be negative. Climate action is like a military build-up when facing a threat: good for welfare in the long run, but bad for consumer satisfaction’. Shifting the resources from consumption to investment means that consumers will inevitably bear the cost of the effort.

Climate Executive Summary — RethinkX
https://www.rethinkx.com/climate-executive-summary

Our previous research has shown that disruptions of the energy, transportation, and food sectors are inevitable. Solar, wind, and batteries (SWB) will disrupt coal, oil, and gas. Autonomous electric vehicles (A-EVs) providing transportation-as-a-service (TaaS) will disrupt internal combustion engines and private vehicle ownership. And precision fermentation and cellular agriculture (PFCA) will disrupt meat, milk, and other animal products. The three disruptions are already unfolding simultaneously, and their implications for climate change are profound. Yet it will be up to us to decide whether or not we deploy these technologies worldwide rapidly enough to avoid dangerous climate change.

The greatest barrier to fighting climate change is therefore our mindset. Conventional thinking views emissions mitigation through a linear, reductive lens that fails to appreciate the character, speed, and dynamics of change in both natural systems and human systems. By failing to fully appreciate these systems dynamics, conventional models have tended to underestimate not only the threat of climate change itself, but also the potential of technology to address it. As a result, we have seen a consistent pattern of mistakes and corrections over time, where each year the underestimated threat of climate change is corrected in the direction of ‘worse than we originally thought’ while the underestimated potential of technology to address it is corrected in the direction of ‘better than we originally thought’. Conventional thinking has therefore wasted time, attention, and resources on an eclectic array of ‘Band-Aid’ approaches to solving climate change like subsidies and taxes, biofuels, clean coal, clean diesel and other superficial techno-fixes that merely treat symptoms rather than the underlying problem.

Instead, a simpler and more effective approach is to focus on a handful of key technologies that will transform the entire foundation of our economy. But simple does not mean easy. Simple means we understand the key drivers and levers of major systemic change. However, there are many obstacles to overcome, and we cannot afford to be complacent. Despite the tremendous opportunities that the clean disruption of energy, transportation, and food will bring, technology alone is not enough. Societies around the world must make the right choices. We can either accelerate the disruptions and solve the climate crisis by ushering in a new era of clean prosperity, or we can waste precious time and trillions of dollars propping up the incumbent system with an ineffective ‘all-of-the-above’ approach that exposes humanity to additional risk of climate change impacts.

In this report, we help decisionmakers understand these choices by categorizing sources of emissions according to three stages of mitigation readiness: Research, Deploy, and Scale. More than three quarters of global GHG emissions can be mitigated by just eight key technologies that are either already at market and able to scale immediately, or ready to begin deploying to market. This provides a guide for decision-making based on how to prioritize our efforts to maximize mitigation benefits as soon as possible. Without such a framework, decisionmakers are left with a scattershot rather than focused approach to fighting climate change, which runs the risk of misallocating financial, material, and political resources.

To maximize the climate benefits of these disruptions, investors, policymakers, civic leaders, and other decisionmakers should focus attention and resources in direct proportion to where the fastest and most impactful opportunities for emissions mitigation are located. Since the overwhelming majority of these opportunities already lie in the Deploy and Scale stages, our primary efforts should be on enabling economic forces to do the heavy lifting by ensuring open, competitive, and transparent markets. This means removing barriers that favor the incumbents such as utility monopolies in the energy sector, removing regulatory hurdles to electric and autonomous vehicles in the transportation sector, and removing livestock farming subsidies and protections in the food sector.