March 25th 2022

Feature story

Chaos in the cryosphere

We’re not just breaking records anymore, we’re absolutely shattering them.

Last week, temperature records were obliterated, simultaneously, at both frigid ends of the Earth. Antarctic weather stations recorded temperatures 40 C higher than what we used to call “normal.” While in the Arctic, the mercury soared 30 C above average for this time of year.

Scientists were left scrambling for words. “Impossible,” “unthinkable,” “stunning,” “freakish.” Cryosphere scientists who spend their lives on the planet’s ice sheets and glaciers say “Antarctic climatology has been rewritten.” The events “upended our expectations about the climate system.”

Mark Maslin, at University College London, told The Guardian: “I and colleagues were shocked by the number and severity of the extreme weather events in 2021… Now we have record temperatures in the Arctic which, for me, show we have entered a new extreme phase of climate change much earlier than we had expected.”

For those of you who prefer your data visualized, follow the red line showing this year’s daily highs at one of the Antarctic weather stations.

It used to be, back in the good old days of the Holocene, that temperature records were broken by fractions of a degree. Not in great leaps of several degrees. But we are now regularly shattering extreme records — last week, one all-time record was topped by 15 C.

This will all sound uncomfortably familiar to those who sweltered through last summer’s deadly heat in the Pacific Northwest. "There's really no hyperbole strong enough for this," a meteorologist with Environment Canada said in June. "We're just flummoxed with how much these records are breaking."

The meteorological lingo is becoming all too familiar, as well. The proximate cause of the freakish Antarctic temperatures was an atmospheric river pouring towards the continent and a blocking heat dome. The Arctic was also on the receiving end of an atmospheric river, this one steered north by a “bomb cyclone” that formed off the east coast of North America and swept towards Greenland (it set a record there, too — for the lowest air pressure ever recorded in Greenland).

The aliens watching down on us must be as flummoxed as our scientists. Not only are the planet’s governments moving more slowly than the glaciers, the chaos in our climate doesn’t yet galvanize screaming worldwide headlines. There was some stellar science journalism about the polar extremes last week, but it was barely a ripple in the torrent of most news feeds.

Perhaps the aliens are waiting to see if the youth of the world will jar older generations into action. This Friday was the first global climate strike since mass rallies had to pause during the pandemic.

There were rallies and marches in over 1,000 locations around the world, standing up against fossil fuels and hydrocarbon war. From Cape Town to Copenhagen, Bangladesh to Bolivia, Tokyo to Thunder Bay, people of all ages joined youth leaders under the banner of “people not profit.”

Over 20,000 people marched in Berlin.

While Bangladeshis rallied against coal power.

Fittingly, demonstrations were organized on every continent, even at the icy research stations of Antarctica.

The Roundup

Electrifying Windsor

Big news in Windsor, Ont., this week: a new factory is going to employ 2,500 people making batteries for electric vehicles. LG and Stellantis announced they will build a $5-billion facility. By all accounts (even Doug Ford’s), the investment is a result of active campaigns by the feds to woo investment in next generation vehicles.

In past newsletters, we’ve discussed industrial revitalization in steel-making and other sectors as a counterweight to the lure of right-wing populism. But, as several of you have pointed out, it’s more than just a counterweight — we’re building a constituency of Canadian workers who are personally invested in accelerating the clean energy transition.

A bandwagon of cities

The Chicago Sun-Times reports: “Chicago on Monday climbed aboard the bandwagon of cities mandating divestment of city funds from fossil fuel companies to promote a ‘clean energy future’ for a world buffeted by climate change.”

And Paris became the sixth French city (and the 41st globally) to join the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty initiative.

"Like all major cities, Paris has an essential role to play in building a decarbonized world, free of its dependence on fossil fuels,” said Deputy Mayor Dan Lert. “Faced with the climate emergency, we are accelerating the energy transition by aiming for energy sobriety and massively developing renewable energies. We need new international mechanisms for climate, human rights and peace. Therefore, Paris joins the initiative for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Texas ‘humming’ with wind and solar

Texas might be better known as the epicentre of the U.S. oilpatch — the world’s largest oil and gas producer. But Texas has also surged to be the top wind power state and is on track to be No. 1 in solar. Wind is already the second-largest source of electricity at 21 per cent.

One renewable energy CEO who used to work for Calgary-based AltaGas told the CBC: "I have transitioned through those different technologies and ended up right where I think the future is and where we're going to be growing."

Megadrought in the western U.S.

The American West has been drying out for more than two decades. Scientists figure it’s the driest period in at least 1,200 years. The last three have been especially parched: farms and orchards are closing, hydropower is at risk and reservoir levels keep breaking low-water records.

California’s Central Valley produces about a quarter of the nation’s food, about 40 per cent of its fruits and vegetables.

“You want to know the bad news? I’m the last,” one farmer told the Washington Post. The family put the farm up for sale after their son decided to give up and look into moving out of state instead.

“You know who I am talking to about this? Canadian pension funds, Wall Street hedge funds and big real estate investment firms. They are saying this is an investment. But they are not talking about growing anything. Who will?”

Rich countries like Canada must end oil and gas production by 2034

In a useful twist on debates over just transition and the ethics of fossil fuels, a new report ran the numbers on equity between rich and poor countries. Natasha Bukowski reports that, if we’re to have even a 50-50 chance of holding global warming below 1.5 C, Canada and other rich countries have to wind down extraction by 2034:

“Wealthy countries like Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. must be the first to end production to give smaller, poorer nations an equitable transition and provide them with financial support. The richest countries, which produce over a third of the world’s oil and gas, must cut output by 74 per cent by 2030, while the poorest, which supply just one-ninth of global demand, must cut back by 14 per cent.”

The report found that even without oil and gas, Canada’s GDP would still be the 13th-highest in the world.

Liberal-NDP deal to provide security but nothing new on climate

The NDP didn’t secure any stronger climate commitments in the new federal not-a-coalition. But political scientists focused on climate policy are cautiously optimistic it will provide time for Steven Guilbeault to get a new climate plan into operation. That’s “really important at this moment in Canadian climate policy,” says UBC prof Kathryn Harrison.

The new national plan to cut climate pollution is expected to be released next week.

Climate disclosure

The noose is tightening around corporate climate disclosure on both sides of the Atlantic. Although there will surely be lots of lobbying before new rules come into force, both Europe and the U.S. are moving towards requiring publicly traded companies to disclose climate risks.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission voted this week to “require firms to provide detailed information on greenhouse gas emissions; corporations with big indirect carbon footprints will be expected to disclose so-called Scope 3 emissions,” reports Bloomberg. That last bit is big: Big Oil is vehemently fighting against disclosing the impact of its products. Canadian companies like Suncor and TC Energy have been lobbying against climate disclosure.

Meanwhile, “European lawmakers have agreed to force roughly 28,000 foreign subsidiaries to comply with the bloc’s ESG rules, marking a blow to representatives for U.S. corporations who had lobbied for the opposite outcome.”

Heat pumps for peace and freedom

Heat pumps are having a remarkable moment. “As Europe faces off against Russia over Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine, the lowly, unloved heat pump has become a crucial tool in Europe’s all-hands-on-deck effort to cut its dependency on Russian gas,” reports Time magazine.

Many of you will know that Bill McKibben proposed a wartime mobilization of heat pump manufacturing a couple of weeks ago — a reinvention of the Second World War lend-lease program. The U.S. and the European Commission just announced a Task Force to Reduce Europe’s Dependence on Russian Fossil Fuels. It’s 40 per cent new wind and solar, 30 per cent LNG and 30 per cent demand reduction — heat pumps and efficiency.

Clean school bus program to launch in U.S.

You all know I love good news about electric school buses. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is putting $5 billion behind electric buses for kids. Many of them will likely get built by Quebec’s Lion Electric, which has just opened a new plant in Illinois where it can build 20,000 electric buses and trucks annually.

If you’re interested in electric buses more generally, Canary Media took a look this week at How one California transit agency electrified its fleet 18 years ahead of schedule.

I’ll leave you this week with two recommendations. First, Jessica McDiarmid’s harrowing account In New Orleans, living through climate emergency means rebuilding — again — after tornado.

And also a New York Times feature. It’s worth it for the headline alone: OK Doomer. You’ll meet youth and climate scientists battling despair and the privilege underlying “it’s too late” fatalism. You’ll also hear from Mary Annaïse Heglar, who coined the wonderful term “hopeium” — ungrounded, anesthetizing optimism.

“Underneath doomerism and hopeium is the question of ‘Are we going to win?’” Heglar tells The Times. “That’s premature at this point. We need to ask ourselves if we’re going to try.”

That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading Zero Carbon. Please feel free to forward it along and you can always write with feedback or suggestions to [email protected].

Support for this issue of Zero Carbon came from The Trottier Foundation and I-SEA.