Clean Energy Wire ) – The damaging effects of climate change are set to hit economic growth severely across most countries, said researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

With the climate change that is already locked-in through past and “plausible” future emissions, income will be 19 percent lower on average globally over the next 26 years than in a scenario without climate change, they said in an article in Nature.

This corresponds to global annual damages in 2049 of 38 trillion dollars (in 2005 dollars), said the researchers. They also compared these damages to the mitigation costs required to achieve the Paris Climate Agreement goals and said that climate damages are larger than the mitigation costs in 2050 by a factor of approximately six.

Maximilian Kotz et al. wrote,

“Using an empirical approach that provides a robust lower bound on the persistence of impacts on economic growth, we find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices (relative to a baseline without climate impacts, likely range of 11–29% accounting for physical climate and empirical uncertainty). These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2 °C by sixfold over this near-term time frame and thereafter diverge strongly dependent on emission choices. Committed damages arise predominantly through changes in average temperature, but accounting for further climatic components raises estimates by approximately 50% and leads to stronger regional heterogeneity.”

The red shows decreases in income, the blue increases, caused by climate change. H/t Nature

Climate advocates and policymakers often emphasise that the cost of inaction on climate change is set to be much larger than the cost of efforts to mitigate the worst effects by introducing ambitious climate policy.

German government representatives have also said that climate mitigation is of the highest priority, because the less intense the impacts of climate change are, the less money needs to be spent adapting to them.

Published under a “ Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)”. The text has been augmented by quotes from the original Nature article.

Soon after the elected, unindicted felons passed their dirty bill, Texas was hit with an unprecedented string of 100° F. days amid one of the state’s worst and longest heat waves, accompanied by severe drought. The state also faces sea level rise along the coasts, storm surges, more powerful hurricanes, flooding, and severe winters caused by the polar vortex exacerbated by climate change. Not to mention that it experienced just last month among the worst and largest wildfires in U.S. history.

While government is powerful and economic incentives can affect economic activities, this pitiful effort to prop up the dying fossil fuel industries appears to resemble most the frenetic to and fro of a chicken that has been beheaded. A lot of energy expended just before a certain demise.

Exhibit A is a new report by the Energy Information Agency that shows how rapidly solar power is overtaking fossil gas in the state.

Wind farms produce the most renewable energy in Texas, but solar is making rapid strides, alongside vastly increased battery storage. Solar power generation in the Lone Star state has already overtaken that in California, which is saying something.

From the winter of ’22-’23 to the past winter, ’23-’24, solar power generation in Texas increased by a whopping 35%. This increased solar power generation allowed the state to use less fossil gas in the middle of the day. Yes, solar is coming on so strong in Texas that it is already displacing fossil gas.

“Solar Hero v. Gas Monster,” by Juan Cole, Digital, Dream/ Dark Fantasy/ IbisPaint, 2024.

Utility-scale solar now generates about a third as much power (32k GWh) as wind (108k GWh) in Texas. For the moment, wind is holding steady and only growing slowly as a power source.

Solar, in contrast, is set to grow by leaps and bounds over the next two years. Texas now has 16 gigawatts of solar power, but in ’24 and ’25 there are plans to add 24 gigawatts of solar net summer capacity to the grid.

Texas ended 2023 with 5.6 gigawatts of battery storage, but there are plans to add 13 gigwatts of battery storage to the electricity grid in the next couple of years.

Julian Spector at Canary Media explains that Texas’ ERCOT incentivizes entrepreneurial renewables:

“Unlike California, Texas does not award specific contracts to ensure sufficient grid capacity; instead, the price spikes from moments of scarce supply are meant to incentivize private developers to build power plants and make money. Developers have found that acquiring land, obtaining permits and connecting to the grid is easier in Texas than in California’s regulatory regime. The payoffs can be huge, both for developers and residents. For developers, rapidly responding batteries are well suited to making money off the sudden swings in ERCOT’s increasingly renewables-inflected markets.”

How delicious that the market and technological innovation are allowing renewables companies to outflank the corporate welfare socialism of Texas’ conservative legislators. Watch the top of the below graph moving left to right. It is showing the future:

Source: US Energy Information Administration

The combination of solar and batteries is important because after midday, solar generation begins declining. Consumers get home from work and put a big strain on the grid from 6 pm to 8 pm, when solar goes offline. Some of this shortfall is taken up by wind farms, since the winds pick up in the evening. But much of it is covered by fossil gas peaker plants, which come online to substitute for the fading solar generation.

But if excess solar power has been stored in batteries, then you can release it back into the grid as the sun sets, instead of turning to the fossil gas peaker plants. Since the latter emit a great deal of carbon dioxide as they come online, the batteries save a lot of CO2.

There are also plans for a further 3 gigawatts of wind generation by the end of 2025.

The long and the short of it is that solar growth is already so great that it is cutting down on the need for fossil gas in the Texas grid during some hours of the day and during the summer. Doubling solar capacity and combining it with a tripling of battery storage will make even greater inroads into fossil gas.

There is no point in getting a 3% loan or a bonus from the state government to build a fossil gas plant if you will nevertheless go bankrupt. Hence there are only plans to add 3 gigawatts of fossil gas capacity to the Texas grid over the next two years, only a fifth of what is planned for solar and only a fourth of what is planned for battery storage. Somebody is being left in the dust.

(The Conversation) – African countries will suffer significant economic loss after 2050 if global warming is not limited to below 2°C, a new study by the Center for Global Development has found.

Environment and energy economist Philip Kofi Adom is the author of the report. He synchronised many years of research by climate change scientists and researchers and found that west and east Africa will fare worst. We asked him about his findings.

You found climate change will reduce Africa’s crop earnings by 30%. How will this affect people?

If climate change continues on its current trend, crop production in Africa will decline by 2.9% in 2030 and by 18% by 2050. About 200 million people risk suffering from extreme hunger by 2050. The crop revenue loss of approximately 30% will cause a rise in poverty of between 20% and 30% compared to a no-climate-change scenario.

How this will happen is that climate change will drive agricultural production down, so crop sales will suffer although scarcity will raise prices.

In Africa, 42.5% of the working class is employed in the agricultural sector. The incomes of those, mostly rural, workers will decline. Already, a higher share of people living in rural areas are poor and most impoverished people in Africa are concentrated in the rural areas. The decline of the agricultural sector is likely to push more people into severe poverty.

We will also face food security issues and those who work in the agricultural sector will face the risk of losing jobs. Rural farmers who rely only on rain and have no irrigation systems to grow their crops will suffer the most.

You project a long term Africa-wide gross domestic product (GDP) decline of 7.12%. What impact will this have?

When we speak of the long term, we are looking at 2050 and beyond. GDP tells us the wealth status of economies at any point in time. Through wealth creation, businesses emerge and jobs are created. Taxes collected pay for infrastructural investment, investment in social services and provision of social support like health insurance and unemployment insurance. With a 7.12% decline in GDP, these wealth creating potentials in the economy are going to be severely affected should climate change continue at the current pace.

“In East Africa climate change and increased food prices lead to extreme hunger” | Oxfam GB Video

Country-level projections have suggested much greater economic losses in GDP, ranging from 11.2% to 26.6% in the long term, in the most affected regions of Africa. When economies shrink in size, businesses could close down, certain jobs will be destroyed and new jobs will not be created.

For the people of Africa, this is very significant because it is predicted that in the coming years, the continent’s population will reach over 2 billion. The African population is the world’s most youthful. So if African economies shrink, where would those young people find their source of livelihood? That is a great concern.

50 million Africans are likely to be pushed into into water distress. What does this mean?

It means severe water shortages in homes and industries. For example, if you used to have access to water all day, you are going to have a much lower supply – a quantity so low that it does not meet your needs. This is a demand and supply issue. There will be higher demand for water resources but because of the short supply, water prices will shoot up. Going into the future, if nothing is done, water across Africa will be very expensive.

Can adaptation and mitigation help us avoid this disaster?

When we talk about climate change it is community or collective action. Obviously, governments are the big players. The government has to foster the change efforts that are required by supporting private initiatives in climate adaptation and mitigation – either directly or through incentive designs.

No attempts at adaptation and mitigation are too small. If these small efforts are coordinated, we can expect to see results. Individual households and individual businesses can do a lot. For example, people can cut down on the amount of meat and dairy eaten or change how transport is used – resorting to cycling, walking or public transport when possible. At home, energy saving practices can be adopted. And green spaces must be respected and protected.

People who use banks should ensure they conduct responsible investment. It is always important to know what kind of investment the bank is using money for. If it is not something that is climate friendly, customers and clients can speak about that.

Whatever the side effects will be, everyone will be at the receiving end. Everyone has a voice and it is important to use it on climate related issues.

What should African leaders be doing?

Climate change is an ongoing and impending environmental crisis. Luckily there is the chance to do something about it before the unthinkable happens. I urge African leaders to be very proactive in their climate change and mitigation efforts. The agricultural sector is the economic mainstay for most economies in Africa and climate change poses a grave danger to it. Climate change may create a state of perpetual economic distress if we fail to act now.

Philip Kofi Adom, Associate Professor, School of Economics and Finance, University of the Witwatersrand

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Cronkite News ) The current Western megadrought is unlike any other dry period the region has experienced over the past 500 years.

That’s according to a new study in which scientists looked at tree rings to track changing temperatures going back to 1553. Researchers found that human-fueled climate change is driving temperatures higher, which makes soil drier and droughts more frequent, intense and widespread.

King, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, gathers a core sample from a mountain hemlock tree at Lassen National Volcanic Park in northern California. King is the lead author on a study of tree rings that puts the 21st century Western megadrought into historical context. (Photo by Grant Harley/University Of Idaho)

Karen King, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and the study’s lead author, said it shows the role of temperature in shaping modern drought.

“We know that extreme heat has consequences,” King said. “We know that drought has consequences. So when they’re compounded together, we can expect that those vulnerabilities are only going to be magnified and the consequences are going to be more wide reaching.”

The study, which was published in the journal “Science Advances,” analyzed cross-sections of trees from a number of Western states, including Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming. The study’s authors concluded that the two-decade period from 2000 to 2020 was the warmest in half a millennium.

The consequences of dry conditions in the 21st century include significant strain on the Southwest’s most important water supply, the Colorado River, which supplies about 40 million people across seven states. It has been shrinking as a result of those higher temperatures, but demand for water has not.

Policymakers around the region have struggled to rein in demand for water, even as more than two decades of dry conditions have shrunk the nation’s two largest reservoirs – Lake Mead and Lake Powell, both on the Colorado River – to record lows.

Some scientists and water managers say the Southwest’s currently dry period extends beyond the normal definition of “drought,” arguing that it should be categorized instead as “aridification,” a permanent resetting of the baseline for how much water enters the region’s streams, rivers and reservoirs each year.

Eric Balken, executive director of Glen Canyon Institute, walks along a sandbar that had long been submerged under Lake Powell. But as the reservoir drops to record lows, as a result of more than 20 years of drought in the region, areas that were underwater for decades have begun to emerge. (Photo by Alex Hager/KUNC)

Experts say warm temperatures are, essentially, the first domino in a chain of changing conditions that impact water supply.

Since 2000, average temperatures in the upper Colorado River basin have been more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than in the previous century. That upper Colorado is the region where the river begins, mostly as snow in high-altitude portions of Colorado and Wyoming.

The new tree-ring study shows how high temperatures have made the region’s soil drier. Dry soil means less water in streams and rivers.

When rain falls or snow melts, it seeps into the dirt before entering streams and rivers. When that dirt is saturated, it can’t absorb additional water, and snowmelt flows directly into nearby waterways. But when the soil is dry, as it is now, it acts like a sponge, soaking up water before it has a chance to reach the places where humans collect it.

The data in this new tree-ring study, as well as findings from other similar research, spell trouble for decision-makers trying to share a shrinking resource across a region with growing populations and a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy.

“While the future of precipitation in the region remains uncertain, projections of increasing temperatures pose substantial risk for intensifying drought conditions and increasing water insecurity for these economically important, population-dense, and historically active megadrought regions,” the study’s authors wrote.

This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.

-This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC and supported by the Walton Family Foundation.

Via Cronkite News

Action continues to fall far short of pledges, even as temperature and greenhouse gas records are repeatedly broken

Catherine Early

( China Dialogue ) – Countries must make far greater efforts to implement their climate strategies this decade to stand a chance of keeping global temperature rise within 1.5C (2.7F) of the pre-industrial average.

Continued delays will only increase the world’s reliance on uncertain carbon dioxide removal technologies (CDR), according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

In the most recent annual assessment of progress on global climate action, the Emissions Gap Report 2023, UNEP pointed to progress since the Paris Agreement. When it was adopted in 2015, greenhouse gas emissions were projected to rise 16% by 2030. Today, that increase is projected to be 3%.

But from now emissions must fall 28% by 2030 to keep temperature rise to 3.6F (2C), or 42% to stay within 2.7F (1.5C), and countries are failing to match this need with action, UNEP found.

Photo by Andreas Felske on Unsplash

Current climate policies will result in a rise of 3C this century. The increase will be limited to 5.2F (2.9C) if countries fully implement their national climate plans (known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs).

This could be kept to 4.5F (2.5C) if plans by developing countries, which are currently conditional on obtaining financial support, are carried out – since that would result in a 9% fall in emissions.  

In UNEP’s most optimistic scenario, where all conditional NDCs and net zero pledges are met, limiting temperature rise to 3.6F (2C) could be achieved, UNEP says. This scenario is considered to give at best a 14% chance of limiting warming to 2.7F (1.5C).

Now, 97 countries have pledged to meet net zero emissions, up from 88 last year. Pledges cover 81% of the world’s greenhouse gases (GHGs). However, the authors do not consider these pledges to be credible, pointing out that none of the G20 countries are reducing emissions at a pace consistent with their net-zero targets.

National net zero plans have several flaws, according to Anne Olhoff, chief scientific editor of the report. Many are not legally binding, or fail to have clear implementation plans, and there is a lack of targets between now and the dates when governments claim to be aiming for net zero, she says.

“But most importantly, emissions are still going up in countries that have put forward zero emission pledges. There are many ways to net zero, but at some point you need to peak and reduce. And the longer you wait until you peak, the more difficult it’s likely to be to actually get to net zero,” she says.

Under the Paris Agreement, ambition in the NDCs is designed to be ramped up over time. At COP28, which begins in Dubai at the end of November, countries will debate how to build new ambition under the first Global Stocktake. This will inform the next round of NDCs that countries should submit in 2025, which will have targets for 2035.

Countries should focus on implementing existing policies this decade, rather than pledging higher targets for 2030, says Olhoff.

“Whether or not the ambition of the 2030 targets is raised or not is less important than achieving those targets. If countries find that they can also strengthen ambition for 2030, that’s an added benefit,” she says.

The more action taken this decade, the more ambitious countries can be in their new targets for 2035, and the easier it will be to achieve those targets, she points out.

The report states that high-income and high-emitting countries among the G20 should take the most ambitious and rapid action, and provide financial and technical support to developing nations.

However, it adds that low- and middle-income countries already account for more than two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions. Development needs in these countries need to be met with economic growth that produces low emissions, such as by reducing energy demand and prioritising clean energy, it says.

“This is an extremely large and diverse group of countries, and the opportunities for low-emissions growth depend a lot on national circumstances,” Ohloff says. Proposed reforms to international finance through multilateral development banks should improve access to finance and the ability of developing countries to attract investment. Borrowing often costs a lot more in these countries than in developed ones, she says. 

But some countries who suffer from corruption need to “get their own house in order” and improve governance to avoid this, she adds.

The role of carbon removal

The report points out that the world will also need to use carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which the authors see as having a role on three timescales.

It can already contribute to lowering net emissions, today.

In the medium term, it can contribute to tackling residual emissions from so-called hard-to-abate sectors, such as aviation and heavy industry.

And in the longer term, CDR could potentially be deployed at a large enough scale to bring about a decline in the global mean temperature. They stress that its use should be in addition to rapid decarbonisation of industry, transport, heat and power systems.

CDR refers to the direct removal of CO2 from the atmosphere and its durable storage in geological, terrestrial or ocean reservoirs, or in products. It is different to carbon capture and storage (CSS), which captures CO2 from emissions at their sources, such as a power station, and transfers it into permanent storage. While some CCS methods share features with CDR, they can never result in CO2 removal from the atmosphere.

Some CDR is already being deployed, mainly through reforestation, afforestation and forest management. However, this is very small scale, with removals estimated at 2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) annually. Research and development into more novel technologies is increasing, with methods including sequestering carbon in soil; enhanced weathering, which speeds up the natural weathering of rocks to store CO2; and direct air capture and storage (DACC), where CO2 is extracted from the atmosphere.

There are multiple risks associated with scaling up CDR. These include competition with land for food, protection of tenure and rights, as well as public perception. In addition, the technical, economic and political requirements for large-scale deployment may not materialise in time, UNEP says. Some methods are very expensive, particularly DACC, which UNEP estimates at US$800 per tonne of CO2 removed.

Governments have tended not to specify the extent to which they plan to use CDR to achieve their emission-reduction targets, nor the residual emissions they plan to allow annually when achieving net-zero CO2 and greenhouse gas emission targets, UNEP found. Estimates of the implied levels of land-based removals in long-term strategies and net-zero pledges are 2.1-2.9 GtCO2 of removals per year by 2050, though this is based on an incomplete sample of 53 countries, the report notes.

Politicians need to coordinate the development of CDR, the report states. Dr Oliver Geden, lead author of the chapter on CDR, explains that governments need to clarify their role in national and global climate policy, and develop standards for measuring, reporting and verifying emissions reductions that can eventually be included in national GHG inventories under the UN climate change process.

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist. You can find her on X @Cat_Early76.

Via China Dialogue

Republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY NC ND) licence

National weather analysts released their 2023 billion-dollar disasters list on Jan. 9, just as 2024 was getting off to a ferocious start. A blizzard was sweeping across across the Plains and Midwest, and the South and East faced flood risks from extreme downpours.

The U.S. set an unwelcome record for weather and climate disasters in 2023, with 28 disasters that exceeded more than US$1 billion in damage each.

While it wasn’t the most expensive year overall – the costliest years included multiple hurricane strikes – it had the highest number of billion-dollar storms, floods, droughts and fires of any year since counting began in 1980, with six more than any other year, accounting for inflation.

The year’s most expensive disaster started with an unprecedented heat wave that sat over Texas for weeks over the summer and then spread into the South and Midwest, helping fuel a destructive drought. The extreme heat and lack of rain dried up fields, forced ranchers to sell off livestock and restricted commerce on the Mississippi River, causing about US$14.5 billion in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s conservative estimates.

Extreme dryness in Hawaii contributed to another multi-billion-dollar disaster as it fueled devastating wildfires that destroyed Lahaina, Hawaii, in August.

Other billion-dollar disasters included Hurricane Idalia, which hit Florida in August; floods in the Northeast and California; and nearly two dozen other severe storms across the country. States in a swath from Texas to Ohio were hit by multiple billion-dollar storms.

NBC News: “New details of the devastating Lahaina wildfire that killed over 100 people”

El Niño played a role in some of these disasters, but at the root of the world’s increasingly frequent extreme heat and weather is global warming. The year 2023 was the hottest on record globally and the fifth warmest in the U.S.

I am an atmospheric scientist who studies the changing climate. Here’s a quick look at what global warming has to do with wildfires, storms and other weather and climate disasters.

Dangerous heat waves and devastating wildfires

When greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide from vehicles and power plants, accumulate in the atmosphere, they act like a thermal blanket that warms the planet.

These gases let in high-energy solar radiation while absorbing outgoing low-energy radiation in the form of heat from the Earth. The energy imbalance at the Earth’s surface gradually increases the surface temperature of the land and oceans.

The most direct consequence of this warming is more days with abnormally high temperatures, as large parts of the country saw in 2023.

Phoenix went 30 days with daily high temperatures at 110 F (43.3 C) or higher and recorded its highest minimum nighttime temperature, with temperatures on July 19 never falling below 97 F (36.1 C).

Although heat waves result from weather fluctuations, global warming has raised the baseline, making heat waves more frequent, more intense and longer-lasting.

That heat also fuels wildfires.

Increased evaporation removes more moisture from the ground, drying out soil, grasses and other organic material, which creates favorable conditions for wildfires. All it takes is a lightning strike or spark from a power line to start a blaze.

How global warming fuels extreme storms

As more heat is stored as energy in the atmosphere and oceans, it doesn’t just increase the temperature – it can also increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.

When that water vapor condenses to liquid and falls as rain, it releases a large amount of energy. This is called latent heat, and it is the main fuel for all storm systems. When temperatures are higher and the atmosphere has more moisture, that additional energy can fuel stronger, longer-lasting storms.

Tropical storms are similarly fueled by latent heat coming from warm ocean water. That is why they only form when the sea surface temperature reaches a critical level of around 80 F (27 C).

With 90% of the excess heat from global warming being absorbed by the ocean, there has been a significant increase in the global sea surface temperature, including record-breaking levels in 2023.

Higher sea surface temperatures can lead to stronger hurricanes, longer hurricane seasons and the faster intensification of tropical storms.

Cold snaps have global warming connections, too

It might seem counterintuitive, but global warming can also contribute to cold snaps in the U.S. That’s because it alters the general circulation of Earth’s atmosphere.

The Earth’s atmosphere is constantly moving in large-scale circulation patterns in the forms of near-surface wind belts, such as the trade winds, and upper-level jet streams. These patterns are caused by the temperature difference between the polar and equatorial regions.

As the Earth warms, the polar regions are heating up more than twice as fast as the equator. This can shift weather patterns, leading to extreme events in unexpected places. Anyone who has experienced a “polar vortex event” knows how it feels when the jet stream dips southward, bringing frigid Arctic air and winter storms, despite the generally warmer winters.

In sum, a warmer world is a more violent world, with the additional heat fueling increasingly more extreme weather events.

This article, originally published Dec. 19, 2023, was updated Jan. 9, 2024, with NOAA’s disasters list.

Shuang-Ye Wu, Professor of Geology and Environmental Geosciences, University of Dayton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( RFE/ RL ) – Record temperatures, prolonged droughts, and the drying up of rivers and lakes are displacing tens of thousands of Iranians each year, experts say.

Many of the climate migrants are farmers, laborers, and fishermen who are moving with their families from the countryside to major urban areas in Iran in search of alternative livelihoods.

Iranian officials have blamed worsening water scarcity and rising desertification on climate change. But experts say the crisis has been exacerbated by government mismanagement and rapid population growth.

While the exact number of climate migrants is unknown, Iranian media estimated that around 42,000 people in 2022 were forced to migrate due to the effects of climate change, including drought, sand and dust storms, floods, and natural disasters. The estimated figure for 2021 was 41,000. Observers say the real figures are likely much higher.

Experts say a growing number of Iranians are likely to leave rural areas as more areas of Iran — where most of the land is arid or semiarid — become uninhabitable every year.

“It is visible because Iran is very dry, there is little rainfall, and a significant part of the country is desert,” Tehran-based ecologist Mohammadreza Fatemi told RFE/RL. “As a result, the slightest change in the climate affects the population.”

Fatemi cited the drying up of the wetlands and lakes in Iran’s southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan as an example. The Hamun wetlands were a key source of food and livelihood for thousands of people. But as the wetlands have diminished, many locals have migrated to the cities.

“Many people lived there, [but] they all moved to [the provincial capital] Zahedan and [the city of] Zabol,” said Fatemi. Now, he adds, many are moving from these cities to other provinces.

Environmentalist Mehdi Zarghami from Tabriz University recently estimated that some 10,000 families have left Zabol for other parts of Iran during the past year due to drought and sandstorms.

Fatemi estimates that around 70 percent of migration inside Iran is driven by the effects of climate change. “We’ve entered the phase of crisis. The next level could be a disaster,” he said.

‘Water Bankruptcy’

Some Iranian officials have warned that many parts of the Islamic republic could eventually become uninhabitable, leading to a mass exodus from the Middle Eastern country.

In July, officials warned that more than 1 million hectares of the country’s territory — roughly equivalent to the size of Qom Province or Lebanon — is essentially becoming unlivable every year.

Aljazeera English: “Iran drought: Residents flee villages as water shortages set in”

In 2018, then-Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said that drought and water scarcity could fuel “massive migration” and eventually lead to a “disaster.”

Iran is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change in the Middle East, which is warming at twice the global average.

Ahad Vazifeh of Iran’s Meteorological Center said in October that average temperatures in Iran had increased by 2 degrees in the past 50 years.

But experts say that climate change only partly explains the environmental crisis that Iran is grappling with.

Tehran’s failed efforts to remedy water scarcity, including dam building and water-intensive irrigation projects, have contributed to the drying up of rivers and underground water reservoirs.

Kaveh Madani, the director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that Iran’s “water bankruptcy” had been fueled by government mismanagement and the building of dozens of dams.

“Iran’s consumption is more than its natural sources of water,” he said. “Therefore, [the authorities are] using underground sources of water. [In response,] the wetlands have dried up, rivers have dried up, and now climate change has added to this equation.”

“Temperatures are rising, there’s more dust, soil erosion will increase, and desertification will increase,” predicted Madani, a former deputy head of Iran’s Environment Department.

The government’s mismanagement of Iran’s scant water resources has triggered angry protests in recent years, especially in drought-stricken areas.

Water scarcity has also led to conflict. Iran and Afghanistan engaged in deadly cross-border clashes in May after Tehran demanded that its neighbor release more upstream water to feed Iran’s endangered southeastern wetlands.

Social Problems

Some experts say rapid population growth in Iran has also contributed to the environmental crisis, although growth has slowed in recent years.

Iran’s population has more than doubled since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, rising from about 35 million to almost 88 million, with about 70 percent of the population residing in cities.

Climate migration has put a growing strain on infrastructure and created socioeconomic problems in Iranian cities, including rising poverty, homelessness, and overcrowding, experts say.

Researcher Mohammad Reza Mahbubfar told the Rokna news site in February 2021 that Tehran was a major destination for many of the country’s climate migrants. “Contrary to what officials say — that Tehran has a population of 15 million — the [real] figure has reached 30 million,” he said.

Mahbubfar added that “unbalanced development” had “resulted in Tehran being drowned in social [problems].”

The influx has led some wealthier Tehran residents to move to the country’s northern provinces, a largely fertile region that buttresses the Caspian Sea.

“My mother, who has a heart problem, now spends most of her time in our villa in Nowshahr,” a Tehran resident told Radio Farda, referring to the provincial capital of Mazandaran Province.

“My husband and I are hoping to move there once we retire to escape Tehran’s bad weather and pollution,” the resident said.

Reza Aflatouni, the head of Iran’s Land Affairs Organization, said in August that about 800,000 people had migrated to Mazandaran in the past two years.

Local officials have warned that Mazandaran is struggling to absorb the large influx of people.

Elahe Ravanshad of RFE/RL’s Radio Farda contributed to this report

Via RFE/ RL

Although 2023 saw the beginnings of an El Nino climate phenomenon, which brings extra heat every few years, the El Nino effects were still small this year and most of the increase in heating was owing to humans having put billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (which they are still doing steadily, instead of reducing emissions).

Moreover, NOAA says, we have seen 537 (soon to be 538) months in a row of temperatures above the average for the twentieth century.

That statistic means that no one born after 1978 has ever lived through a normal year of temperatures, as we twentieth-century people knew them (I’m 71). We moved a lot and my father was stationed for a few months at places like Fort Dietrich in Maryland and Fort Dix in New Jersey. I can’t remember now when and where, but I recollect joining with other children to tunnel beneath the snow in the winter. Do children do that now? Last year Maryland had virtually no snow, and Baltimore got 0.2 inches. That absence of snowfall was admittedly a little extreme and may not be repeated in 2024, but this world is clearly not the one I grew up in.

Taylor Swift, born 1989, doesn’t know what a normal year is like. She is literally a force of nature. The megastar has made headlines when her fans danced and stomped so hard to the loud music at her concert in Seattle that they produced a mild earthquake. But mother nature is angry and is more powerful still.

We are heating our world so rapidly and so extremely by burning coal, fossil gas and gasoline that even Swift herself is being overtaken by climate effects.

It has just been confirmed that Ana Clara Benevides Machado, 23, who attended Swift’s Eras Tour concert in Rio de Janeiro on November 17 died of heat exhaustion.

Rio that day was 102 F. (39C), but because of humidity it felt like 138.7 F. (59.3C). Scientists have discovered fairly recently that humans cannot survive very high “wet bulb” temperatures, where both the temperature and the humidity are unusually elevated. We cool down by sweating, and very high heat and humidity don’t allow sweating to have that cooling effect. So our brains boil.

Ms Swift herself seemed at some points during her conference to be gasping for breath. She had her staffers distribute water and threw out some bottles herself. She canceled her scheduled Nov. 18 follow-up concert because of the extreme heat and Ms. Machado’s death.

Page 6: “Taylor Swift struggles to breathe while performing during deadly Brazil Eras Tour”

Mid-November is the beginning of summer in the southern hemisphere, but even so you didn’t used to see over 100 degrees F. in Rio at that time. Things are changing, and not for the better. Latin America didn’t really have a spring this year, suffering heat domes with temperatures as high as 104 F. (40C) even in August and September. (I was once in Rio for a conference in July and it was cold and rainy.) Those elevated, unseasonable temperatures were made 100 times more likely by the climate crisis, reports Scientific American.

Rio was not alone in seeing anomalous temperatures in 2023.

In just one week of summer 2023, 20,000 air flights were affected by the extreme heat globally. Thunderstorms, cracked take-off lanes, and — if it gets to 117 degrees F. or higher, thin air — can all interfere with flights.

Some twenty southern and southwestern cities in the US experienced either unprecedentedly high temperatures or unprecedentedly long heat waves, or both. Phoenix hit 110 degrees F. on 54 days this summer. Dallas-Fort Worth was also hit by a heat dome, which extended down into Mexico.

Friends, we are doing this to ourselves, every day, all day. We are hitting golf balls in our bathrooms and are surprised when they boomerang on us. It won’t get better until we stop. That probably means we have to stop electing Republicans. At all. And we have to pressure even the Dems, constantly, to do the right thing. This thing is too big for us as individuals to solve it. We need government, and the Dem Inflation Reduction Act was a good start. More of that.