(The Conversation) – Norway is set to make history by becoming the first nation to sell only zero emission (electric- or hydrogen-powered) vehicles by the end of 2025. While this doesn’t mean that fossil fuel-powered cars already on the road will suddenly disappear there, it marks a decisive shift towards their eventual obsolescence.

Imagine a world where petrol and diesel vehicles are no longer an option – a bold step towards a greener future. Norway is strikingly close to this goal.

If it succeeds, this will redefine what’s possible in the green transition. Consider this: in 2024, fully electric cars accounted for a staggering 88.9% of all new vehicle sales in Norway. Every year, this number draws nearer to the elusive 100% target (the zero emission category includes a small fraction of hydrogen-powered vehicles, most are electric).

Could Norway reach 100% by this year’s end? It’s a gripping challenge – but there is a barrier that it needs to address to achieve this. Among Norway’s top ten zero emission cars sold last year, there are no small non-SUV vehicles. Can Norway, and other countries, reach their targets selling only large cars?

Our recent research shows that affordability is a tool to get everyone on board. When lower-income households face affordability barriers, it’s not just their problem – it’s the missing link to achieving 100%. Smaller, more affordable electric cars could be the game changer needed to bridge this gap.

For every 100 cars sold in Norway, nearly 90 are electric. In Denmark, the runner-up in this global ranking, it’s just over 50. Elsewhere, few countries have reached or are even approaching a one-third market share for electric vehicles (EVs). Most of these are in Europe, with China also nearing that benchmark. The UK sits at just 19.6%, falling short of the top ten.

Why is Norway so far ahead? A mix of policies, cultural attitudes and the sheer availability of EVs play a role. But one factor stands out: subsidies. Generous, comprehensive subsidies are driving this change.

In Norway, buying an electric car isn’t just a green choice – it’s an affordable one. Subsidies and incentives bring electric car prices in line with, or below, those of petrol and diesel cars. Substantial exemptions from purchase tax and VAT, along with other perks, make electric car ownership remarkably appealing. And it’s financed not only through taxes but by Norway’s oil and gas revenue. Even with some limits on luxury models, the support remains unmatched.

But what about the UK? With the purchase grant – a government scheme that helped reduce the cost of buying an electric car – scrapped, the remaining modest subsidies pale in comparison to Norway’s all-encompassing support. If there’s one takeaway from Norway’s success, it’s that half-measures won’t cut it.

The challenge lies in addressing the affordability gap. Subsidies don’t always reach those who need them most. In Ireland, our research reveals a troubling trend. Grants often end up in the hands of wealthier households – those who could afford an electric car without help. Meanwhile, lower-income households, the ones who would benefit most, are left behind. The result? People buy the vehicles they can afford, which are often fossil fuel-powered.

The consequences are hard to ignore. In cities like London, low-emission zones penalise drivers of polluting vehicles. If you can’t afford an EV, you’re stuck paying more to drive or park in city centres. It’s a vicious cycle that disproportionately affects those with fewer resources.

Targets worth reaching

This isn’t just about fairness. It’s about meeting climate targets. Take Ireland, for example. To achieve its emissions goals, the country needs a significant increase in electric car adoption. Falling short means penalties for the country and missed opportunities to reduce emissions. Relying on households to shoulder the burden of the green transition is neither fair nor effective.

“Small EVs,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2024

The UK faces similar challenges. Slow adoption rates suggest cost is a barrier. The lack of strong leadership and a roadmap to 2035 only adds to the problem. It becomes clear that more targeted support is needed.

Smaller, more affordable vehicles could play a crucial role in meeting climate targets. Even in a wealthy country like Ireland, 77% of households cannot afford medium-sized electric cars, while 38% cannot afford smaller EVs when factoring in car loans. Without price cuts or higher subsidies, larger EVs will stay out of reach and fail to drive the transition forward.

So do we even need big, luxury EVs? The trend towards larger vehicles, particularly SUVs, isn’t new – but it’s growing rapidly. In Europe, sales of electric SUVs have jumped from one-tenth to half of all EVs sold in just five years.

Larger cars are more expensive, more resource-intensive, and more wasteful. Smaller vehicles, by contrast, are lighter, require fewer materials and emit fewer harmful particles from tyre and road wear. They’re also safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

Smaller vehicles play a crucial role in clean and inclusive mobility. Achieving climate goals hinges on their adoption. Without them, meeting emissions targets – at least in Ireland – becomes far less likely. And if electric vehicles fail to deliver significant emissions reductions, their entire purpose in the transition to a greener future comes into question.

Smaller vehicles aren’t just practical; they are essential for meaningful progress. But electric cars – even the smaller ones – remain burdened by the cost pressures of private car ownership.

Ultimately, though, we also need fewer cars on our roads. A successful green transition must involve more car share schemes, improved access to public transport, and active travel such as walking and cycling.

Agnieszka Stefaniec, Lecturer in Management Science, University of Southampton and Keyvan Hosseini, Enterprise Fellow, Sustainable Mobility, University of Southampton

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

(The Conversation) – The oceans are heating up as the planet warms.

This past year, 2024, was the warmest ever measured for the global ocean, following a record-breaking 2023. In fact, every decade since 1984, when satellite recordkeeping of ocean temperatures started, has been warmer than the previous one.

A warmer ocean means increased evaporation, which in turn results in heavier rains in some areas and droughts in others. It can power hurricanes and downpours. It can also harm the health of coastal marine areas and sea life – coral reefs suffered their most extensive bleaching event on record in 2024, with damage in many parts of the world.

Warming ocean water also affects temperatures on land by changing weather patterns. The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced on Jan. 10 that data showed 2024 had also broken the record for the warmest year globally, with global temperatures about 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit (1.6 Celsius) above pre-industrial times. That would mark the first full calendar year with average warming above 1.5 C, a level countries had agreed to try to avoid passing long-term.

Climate change, by and large, takes the blame. Greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere trap heat, and about 90% of the excess heat caused by emissions from burning fossil fuels and other human activities is absorbed by the ocean.

But while it’s clear that the ocean has been warming for quite some time, its temperatures over the past two years have been far above the previous decades. That leaves two mysteries for scientists.

It’s not just El Niño

The cyclic climate pattern of the El Niño Southern Oscillation can explain part of the warmth over the past two years.

During El Niño periods, warm waters that usually accumulate in the western equatorial Pacific Ocean move eastward toward the coastlines of Peru and Chile, leaving the Earth slightly warmer overall. The latest El Niño began in 2023 and caused global average temperatures to rise well into early 2024.

But the oceans have been even warmer than scientists expected. For example, global temperatures in 2023-2024 followed a similar growth and decline pattern across the seasons as the previous El Niño event, in 2015-2016, but they were about 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 Celsius) higher at all times in 2023-2024.

Scientists are puzzled and left with two problems to solve. They must figure out whether something else contributed to the unexpected warming and whether the past two years have been a sign of a sudden acceleration in global warming.

The role of aerosols

An intriguing idea, tested using climate models, is that a swift reduction in aerosols over the past decade may be one of the culprits.

Aerosols are solid and liquid particles emitted by human and natural sources into the atmosphere. Some of them have been shown to partially counteract the impact of greenhouse gases by reflecting solar radiation back into space. However, they also are responsible for poor air quality and air pollution.

Many of these particles with cooling properties are generated in the process of burning fossil fuels. For example, sulfur aerosols are emitted by ship engines and power plants. In 2020, the shipping industry implemented a nearly 80% cut in sulfur emissions, and many companies shifted to low-sulfur fuels. But the larger impact has come from power plants reducing their emissions, including a big shift in this direction in China. So, while technologies have cut these harmful emissions, that means a brake slowing the pace of warming is weakened.

Is this a warming surge?

The second puzzle is whether the planet is seeing a warming surge or not.

Temperatures are clearly rising, but the past two years have not been warm enough to support the notion that we may be seeing an acceleration in the rate of global warming.

Analysis of four temperature datasets covering the 1850-2023 period has shown that the rate of warming has not shown a significant change since around the 1970s. The same authors, however, noted that only a rate increase of at least 55% – about half a degree Celsius and nearly a full degree Fahrenheit over one year – would make the warming acceleration detectable in a statistical sense.

From a statistical standpoint, then, scientists cannot exclude the possibility that the 2023-2024 record ocean warming resulted simply from the “usual” warming trend that humans have set the planet on for the past 50 years. A very strong El Niño contributed some natural variability.

From a practical standpoint, however, the extraordinary impacts the planet has witnessed – including extreme weather, heat waves, wildfires, coral bleaching and ecosystem destruction – point to a need to swiftly reduce carbon dioxide emissions to limit ocean warming, regardless of whether this is a continuation of an ongoing trend or an acceleration.

Photo by Shifaaz shamoon on Unsplash

(The Conversation) – October to April is normally considered to be the wet season in California, yet this January, the region is experiencing some of the most devastating fires it’s ever seen.

As of January 10, five major fires in and around Los Angeles have burned over 29,053 acres, leading to the evacuation of more than 180,000 people, the destruction of over 2,000 buildings (mainly homes), and an estimated damage cost of at least US$52 billion (£42.5 billion). Ten lives have been lost, and these numbers are expected to rise as the fires continue to burn.

The exact causes of each fire are still under investigation. However, several factors have contributed to their rapid spread and intensity.

The seasonal Santa Ana winds are particularly strong this year, bringing low humidity, dry air and high wind speeds. Southern California has received less than 10% of its average rainfall since October 2024, creating dry conditions that make the area highly vulnerable to fire.

Unusually wet winters in both 2022-23 and 2023-24 led to increased vegetation growth, providing more fuel for the fires. This cycle of wet and dry extremes, known as “hydroclimate whiplash”, is part of the increasingly intense climate cycles caused by climate change.

Hydroclimate whiplash can occur virtually anywhere. These cycles can cause extreme wildfires, such as those in California, where rapid vegetation growth is followed by drying. They can also exacerbate flooding when unusually heavy rains hit the dry-baked ground, then run off over the land rather than seeping in, leading to flash flooding.

The human impact of hydroclimate whiplash

Rapid transitions between extreme wet and dry conditions have significant and wide-ranging impacts on people, a focus of my academic research, affecting everything from public health to economic stability and social equity.

As we have seen in California, there is the immediate impact of loss of life, property and livelihoods. We have also seen this during whiplash-induced floods and landslides, such as those experienced across California in 2023 and east Africa in 2024, when years of drought were followed by weeks of rain.

Fires exacerbate respiratory and cardiovascular diseases through their polluting smoke. Flooding creates conditions for waterborne illnesses such as cholera, leptospirosis or norovirus to rip through populations. Extreme swings in temperature can also create more heat-related illnesses, as human bodies struggle to adapt quickly. It is estimated that the health-related impacts of climate change will cost US$1.1 trillion by 2050.

But this number pails into insignificance against the projected US$12.5 trillion in economic losses worldwide due to climate change by 2050. Critical infrastructure, including water supply systems, wastewater treatment plants and transportation networks, is at risk of damage or destruction. Food insecurity and scarcity will also increase during hydroclimate whiplash events.

“Wild Fires,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024

And these impacts are not evenly distributed. While this month’s wildfires are affecting some of the richest communities in the US, it is generally low-income communities and vulnerable populations that are disproportionately affected, with limited resources to prepare for or recover from extreme events. Across the world, poorer populations are experiencing a 24%-48% increase in drought-to-downpour events, exacerbating their vulnerability and widening the health equity gap.

All these events and concerns also lead to mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), resulting from displacement and trauma. Such human impacts are harder to measure, and often under-reported.

Adaptation and resilience

As climate change intensifies hydroclimate whiplash events, the human impacts are expected to grow more severe. Addressing these challenges will require coordinated efforts across multiple sectors, with a focus on both mitigation and adaptation strategies to protect human health, economic stability and social equity.

Governments and local authorities will need to implement co-management approaches for both drought and flood risks, alongside developing more flexible water management systems and infrastructure. Investing in natural infrastructure to enhance biodiversity and ecosystems will reduce risks to humans, both by restricting the effects of climate change and lowering the risks of fire and flooding.

As individuals we can often feel powerless, but environmental campaigns and movements have been highly successful in changing government policies. In the UK, the 2008 Climate Change Act and the net zero by 2050 legislation were the direct result of citizen lobbying and action, and the same can be said for numerous renewable energy transition policies around the world.

In California, we have seen the devastating effect of hydroclimate whiplash – and this won’t be the last we see. By calling on our governments to produce adaptation and resilience strategies that recognise climate change as a long-term human and economic risk factor, we can be more prepared for these events.

Doug Specht, Reader in Cultural Geography and Communication, University of Westminster

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

(The Conversation) – The year 2024 was the world’s warmest on record globally, and the first calendar year in which global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial levels.

The official declaration was made on Friday by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union’s Earth observation program. It comes as wildfires continue to tear through Los Angeles, California – a disaster scientists say was made worse by climate change.

This record-breaking global heat is primarily driven by humanity’s ongoing greenhouse gas emissions, caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The warming won’t stop until we reach net-zero emissions.

Clearly, the need for humanity to rapidly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions has never been more urgent.

An exceptional year

The Copernicus findings are consistent with other leading global temperature datasets indicating 2024 was the hottest year since records began in 1850.

The global average temperature in 2024 was about 1.6°C above the average temperatures in the late-19th century (which is used to represent pre-industrial levels).

On July 22 last year, the daily global average temperature reached 17.16°C. This was a new record high.

Copernicus also found that each year in the last decade was one of the ten warmest on record. According to Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo:

We are now teetering on the edge of passing the 1.5ºC level defined in the Paris Agreement and the average of the last two years is already above this level.

These high global temperatures, coupled with record global atmospheric water vapour levels in 2024, meant unprecedented heatwaves and heavy rainfall events, causing misery for millions of people.

How scientists take Earth’s temperature

Estimating the global average surface temperature is no mean feat. The methods vary between organisations, but the overall picture is the same: 2024 was the world’s hottest year on record.

The high global average temperature of 2024 wouldn’t have been possible without humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions. The El Niño climate driver also played a role in the first part of the year. It warmed Earth’s surface – particularly over a large swathe of the central and eastern Pacific – and increased global average surface temperature by up to 0.2°C.

What about Australia?

Copernicus found 2024 was the warmest year for all continents except Antarctica and Australasia.

But Australia is feeling the shift into a hotter, less hospitable climate, too. Last year was Australia’s second-hottest year on record, according to a declaration last week by the Bureau of Meteorology.

The hottest was 2019, when a blisteringly hot and dry spring led to the widespread bushfires of the Black Summer. Unlike 2019, Australia had a wetter than normal year in 2024.

However, 2024 was the hottest year on record for the southwest of Australia and parts of the centre and east of the continent.

Apart from April, Australia saw unusual warmth through all of 2024. August was the standout month for record-breaking heat.

In general, temperature records are broken more easily at the global scale than in individual regions. That’s because weather is more variable at the local level than on a global average. A period of, say, very cold weather in one part of a continent can bring down annual average temperatures there, preventing records from being broken.

That’s why Australia’s annual average temperatures have reached record highs three times since 2000 – in 2005, 2013 and 2019 – whereas the global average temperature set six new records in that period.

“Hot Earth,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2024

Does this mean the Paris Agreement has failed?

The global Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. So, if 2024 was about 1.6°C above pre-industrial levels, you might think the world has failed to meet this goal. But it hasn’t, yet.

The success of the Paris Agreement will be measured against longer periods than temperatures over a year. That eliminates natural climate variability and factors such as El Niño and La Niña, to build a clearer picture of climate change.

However, the statistics for 2024 are certainly a bad sign. It shows humanity has its work cut out to keep global warming well below 2°C, let alone 1.5°C.

More heat guaranteed

There’s one very important thing to understand about climate change: the amount of greenhouse gases that humans emit over time is roughly proportional to the increase in global temperatures over that same period.

This near-linear relationship means every tonne of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity causes about the same amount of global warming. So, the faster we decarbonise the global economy, the sooner we can halt global warming and reduce its harms.

This year is unlikely to be quite as hot as 2024 because the El Niño has passed. But unfortunately, Earth will continue to experience record hot global temperatures for at least the next few decades.

This is all the more reason for humanity to move faster in decarbonising our society and economy. It’s not too late to shift the long-term trajectory of Earth’s climate.

Andrew King, Associate Professor in Climate Science, ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, The University of Melbourne and David Karoly, Professor emeritus, The University of Melbourne

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

As the experts quoted by Matt McGrath at the BBC point out, climate change certainly played a role in the destruction of Pacific Palisades and Altadena yesterday in Los Angeles, though its precise effect has yet to be calculated.

He cites the Director of the Centre for Wildfire Research at Swansea University, Professor Stefan Doerr, saying, “While fires are common and natural in this region, California has seen some of the most significant increases in the length and extremity of the fire weather season globally in recent decades, driven largely climate change.”

Doerr goes on to caution that the precise contribution of human-caused climate change to yesterday’s conflagration has yet to be estimated. Still, the only question is how much our carbon dioxide and methane emissions turbocharged the wildfires, not whether they did. Was it by 10% or 30%? There is some indication it could have been by 40%! (See below).

Climate is long-term weather patterns. Weather is a one-off. A two-day downpour can be weather. A long-term increase in rainfall over previous averages would be climate change.

The ways in which weather contributed to the Los Angeles catastrophe are easier to specify. California had a twenty-year drought that ended two years ago. The plentiful rainfall since then caused a lot of shrubs and greenery to spring up. Then, this spring, summer and fall turned extremely dry. The December rains did not come. Usually there would have been 4 inches by early January. It was under an inch. That water would have tamped down the fire risk. Then, the Santa Ana winds blowing west through the mountains were unusually strong and hot, and hit places they usually missed.

“Blaze Stalks L.A.,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024.

But why has this year been so dry, creating abundant “fuel” for the wildfire demons?

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, pointed in a scientific paper to the way in which burning fossil fuels and putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has caused more frequent dry autumns, and caused them to be drier for longer. Since the Santa Ana winds hit in fall and winter, if the dry season is extended, it increasingly overlaps with the winds. That is a recipe for disaster, as we just saw. Swain cites another study of the years 1960 – 2019 showing that November has gotten consistently drier over the past 60 years. We saw that again this fall. But it wasn’t weather, since there is a clear pattern of desiccation in the 11th month. It is climate.

Worse, Swain thinks we may see more and more of this deadly overlap as humans heat up the earth.

He also cites studies showing that winter rains may be concentrated later in the year. You could have some showers in October in the old days, and November could be wet. Increasingly, those months are dry, and rains fall December through February, maybe especially January-February.

I’ve long noticed how much it rains in the Raymond Chandler mysteries set in Los Angeles. Except for February, I don’t remember it being that rainy, cool and miserable in L.A. At first I thought it was because Chandler was British and he was importing his weather imagery to southern California. But after reading Swain I wonder if the rain wasn’t just spread out more in the 1930s and 1940s, and whether there didn’t used to be more of it.

As for the percentage by which human-caused climate change has ramped up the dangers, we have a study that suggests a particular number. A 2022 paper by Linnia R. Hawkins et al. subjected the teens of this century to a computer study comparing the current likelihood of autumn wildfires in southern California, northern California and Oregon to what it would be without human-caused climate change. They found a 40% increase in the likelihood:

We show that while present-day anthropogenic climate change has . . . increased the likelihood of extreme fire weather indices by 40% in areas where recent autumn wind-driven fires have occurred in northern California and Oregon. The increase was primarily through increased autumn fuel aridity and warmer temperatures during dry wind events. These findings illustrate that anthropogenic climate change is exacerbating autumn fire weather extremes that contribute to high-impact catastrophic fires in populated regions of the western US.

The authors, however, cite literature that does not find a strong climate change effect for changes in the Santa Ana winds. It is possible that those 100-mile-an-hour gales hitting places they usually don’t, such as Altadena and Pasadena, were just weather. But combined with the shift of rains later in the year and the extra heat and aridity in the fall being driven by climate change, they proved deadly.

You will find very little, though, about the climate crisis or the fact that we are in uncharted territory with the release of carbon dioxide from the arctic tundra.  No longer a “carbon sink,” the arctic tundra shifts now to be a source of carbon dioxide thus auguring in a future of accelerated warming temperatures.  The parallel catastrophe to the growing likelihood of nuclear bombs being used, has been relegated to back page news.  Climate scientists can barely find an audience for their despairing pleas.

On Sunday January 18, 2025, from 12:15 to 3pm in the Second Congregational Church, an event in Franklin Country will lift us above this downward spiraling existential reality.  It is appropriately called Our Projects for 2025: Envisioning the World We Want.  Their efforts will bring together dozens of organizations, each with a singular mission but all epitomized as doing social and environmental good. The sponsors include Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution, Traprock Center for Peace and Justice, Western MA CODEPINK, the Interfaith Council, Amherst Young Feminist Party and more than twenty-five other participating cosponsors.  This coalition group aims to provide an alternative vision by creating a public conversation with community organizations ranging from peace and justice, reproductive rights, creative education and housing initiatives, to free food for those who need it, justice for the imprisoned and for civil and immigrant rights, as well as for climate action.

The program includes speakers; singalong music, with songs from local musicians; space to share information and meet with those who are dedicated to particular organization missions; and a simple lunch provided by those organizing the event.

The local event replicates the Peoples’ March (formerly Women’s March) in Washington DC and hundreds of others across the country held on the same day – each challenging the necropolitics of our times.  They aim to make the weekend of January 17-20 a weekend of Help Not Hate, as a way to honor Martin Luther King and show the politics of democracy, resistance to inequality and intolerance are ways to strengthen, not divide, our local communities.

What is striking about these gatherings is the organizers.  It is primarily women from diverse interests working at the community level to build a cohesive movement from the bottom up across the country.  They stand in contrast to the nearly 100 percent men at the top in our country that gain their cohesion from hostility. 

“March,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2024

Equally striking is the style of women at the community level and men at the top.  The women’s groups and other like-minded groups across the country have more firmly than ever resolved to organize in mass resistance to the anti-humanist, anti-feminist, anti-democratic in-your-face politics here in the US.  And that is why – no matter the obstacles we face, we have no time for despair.

Neither political party has shown any moral authority on Israel.  A Senate majority recently voted to approve $61 million in mortar rounds to Israel with only 19 democratic and 1 independent senator voting against the measure.  Bernie Sanders has finally called out the ruling class of American for what it is – an oligarchy, a government of a few with influence because of money, politics, and corporate and military power.  But it did not start with Trump – it was with us before Trump and is not only a Republican phenomenon.

If we are to have a future, and not crumble like the Roman Empire over time, the people must lead with their moral vision of a government uncorrupted by corporate influence and money with a deep and meaningful commitment to being the party of the people.  Most of the public do not feel they participate meaningfully in the political system.  “A meaningful democracy would give the public the lead role forming those decisions…reflecting everyone’s active participation and deliberation.”

The fate of the whole earth — of its trillions of life forms, including billions of humans — also took a turn for the worse. The World Meteorological Organization projected total global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2024 to be 41.6 billion tons. Some 37.4 billion of that was from humans burning petroleum, fossil gas, and coal. The rest was from deforestation. 2024 was the hottest year on record, and likely the hottest in 125,000 years, though some of its ferocity was from the lingering cyclical El Niño that has now subsided.

Speaking of deforestation, NOAA is reporting the disturbing news that “After storing carbon dioxide in frozen soil for millennia, the Arctic tundra is being transformed by frequent wildfires into an overall source of carbon to the atmosphere, which is already absorbing record levels of heat-trapping fossil fuel pollution.”

No, no, not that. The arctic tundra is starting to put out CO2? That is very disturbing news.

Here’s the bad news: In 2023, global carbon dioxide emissions came to 40.6 billion tons.

That means emissions increased in 2024. This is nine years after the Paris Conference, 27 years after the Kyoto protocol.

We know that carbon dioxide and methane cause global heating and that they are changing the climate in extremely dangerous ways. Hundreds of millions of people will be displaced by heat, aridification, and sea level rise. People will die. Whole animal species could be wiped out. Food shortages loom.

So there is no excuse for increasing our emissions, which for the most part means burning more coal, gas and oil. Why would you do that? Are you, like, insane?

Courtesy World Meteorological Organization

The UIAA reports on a study in The Cryosphere, “2024 data from 5,500 glaciers across the Andes show the mountains have lost 25% of their ice coverage since the Little Ice Age, and that their tropical glaciers are melting ten times faster than the cumulative global average.” The best case scenario is that they only lose another 25% of their mass over the next 75 years, but it could be as much as 50%. All that water will make its way into the seas and cause sea level rise.

All the hurricanes in 2024 were fiercer because of climate change, by 15-25 mph. That is, if a hurricane would have had 125 mph winds in the old days, it would have up to 150 mph winds today because the oceans are much hotter.

The US government is largely pro-carbon, continuing to subsidize petroleum and gas to the tune of billions. This, even though the United States is currently the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and by far the largest historically.

The US government is about to get even more pro-carbon. But the US government’s budget is $4 trillion a year, and the US GDP is $29 trillion, so the society far outweighs the government. We have to keep fighting against carbon. This is not an individual responsibility. We can only succeed by changing big structures — pressuring businesses and local and state communities. We can still make essential progress even with strong headwinds. And, every ton of carbon dioxide we don’t release into the atmosphere is a win for humanity over the next few centuries. And, look. Things are going to get hard. There will be severe challenges. But we can find ways to overcome them. If we act now.

At the most northerly tip of the UK, looking north from the island of Muckle Flugga, Shetland, the cold wind whips up the sea and gannets dive.

While biodiversity loss in the Arctic Ocean may seem like a distant issue, the Shetland Islands lie further north than the Arctic Ocean’s southernmost waters.
The Arctic Circle is only 380 miles (610km) north of British waters – the same distance as London to Edinburgh by road.

Arctic wildlife is changing in ways that scientists like us don’t yet fully understand. Better protection for these species is urgently needed.

Establishing a new North Pole marine reserve where industrial activities such as shipping, oil and gas exploration and fishing are banned could provide an ocean sanctuary for wildlife.

Explorer-turned-conservationist Pen Hadow wants to create an internationally agreed marine reserve in the Central Arctic Ocean by 2037. He was the first person to trek solo from Canada to the geographic North Pole 21 years ago. The route he took in 2003 is no longer possible due to climate change.

In 2021, Hadow founded the 90 North Foundation, an environmental charity that is campaigning for a North Pole marine reserve to protect the Arctic’s peoples, its wildlife and its natural landscape.

Our team of marine researchers at the University of Exeter is collaborating with Hadow to explore how climate change will affect the ice and oceans in the Arctic and beyond.

Projected climate change poses great peril for wildlife such as polar bears and narwhals which are highly adapted to Arctic waters, relying on multi-year ice for foraging and breeding habitat.

So far, we have completed two ten-day surveys for whales and dolphins using both visual sightings and acoustic or sound monitoring underwater. We have also collected water samples to test for “environmental DNA” or eDNA. By filtering water and collecting small fragments of biological material, we can identity the presence of species by sequencing the trail they leave behind in the water in the form of fish scales, poo, skin or mucus, for example.

Once we have built a picture of where wildlife lives and how it moves about, changes in the Arctic ecosystem can be more easily monitored.

Arctic animals are also regularly spotted in British waters.

Ringed seals have been seen as far south as Cornwall. Beluga whales have been spotted off the coast of Shetland, and Atlantic white-sided and white-beaked dolphins frequently move between UK waters and the low Arctic. Bearded seals have been spotted in UK coastal waters, as have walrus and harp seals.

Brent geese, barnacle geese and pink-footed geese plus eider ducks, red knot, ringed plover and bar-tailed godwits all migrate between the Arctic and the UK. These birds breed in the Arctic and sub-Arctic, then overwinter in the UK and Ireland. These birds are particularly vulnerable because climate change is leading to wetter springs that can reduce their breeding success.

The wildlife living along UK’s shores is already changing as a result of climate change. Some species might expand their range northwards and this could further disrupt the Arctic ecosystem.

As well as monitoring wildlife, we are tracking the changing volume and routes of ships travelling through the Arctic Ocean. While our research is at an early stage, it’s already clear that industrial vessel activity in the Arctic Ocean is increasing as fishing vessels and cargo ships take advantage of the receding ice to make swifter routes across the globe.

The Arctic albedo

As the Arctic changes, the ramifications will be felt globally. The Earth’s northernmost white cap acts as a reflective shield against solar radiation. As the ice recedes, and the surface of the Earth darkens, so too does the planet’s in-built ability to reflect the sun’s warming rays.

Standing on a boat at the edge of the Arctic ice, we can see the powerful glow of sunlight reflecting from the icy surfaces. Any loss of this albedo (the ability of white ice to reflect sunlight and heat from the sun) triggers further warming, catalysing a negative feedback loop with profound implications. Rising temperatures can only be tackled by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Alongside this, we must protect the unique wildlife that have made the Arctic their home. A broad and encompassing approach to conservation of northern ecosystems could help limit the effects of human activities and the changing climate across the Arctic region and beyond. A well-connected global network of marine reserves that includes the Arctic Ocean is urgently needed.

Kirsten Freja Young, Senior Lecturer, Ecology, University of Exeter and Brendan Godley, Professor of Conservation Science, University of Exeter

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

Featured image: Kirsten Young has been monitoring wildlife in the Arctic Ocean. Danielle Zalcman, CC BY-NC-ND.

(The Conversation) – As more and more solar and wind energy enters Australia’s grid, we will need ways to store it for later.

We can store electricity in several different ways, from pumped hydroelectric systems to large lithium-ion battery systems. We can also use flow batteries. These are a lesser-known cross between a conventional battery and a fuel cell.

Flow batteries can feed energy back to the grid for up to 12 hours – much longer than lithium-ion batteries which only last four to six hours.

I was one of the inventors of one of the main types of flow battery in the 1980s. It has taken decades to bring batteries like these to commercial viability. But they are, finally, arriving in earnest.

This year, the Australian government launched a national battery strategy to expand domestic manufacturing of batteries. This A$500 million strategy will focus on the well-known lithium-ion batteries which power phones and cars. But it will also include flow batteries.

Batteries are becoming more and more important. They can now power cars, houses and even cities. Huge amounts are being spent on commercialising new battery chemistries to electrify transport and make it possible to green the power grid.

To date, most of Australia’s grid-scale batteries use chemistries such as lithium-ion. But as our grid shifts to renewables, we’ll need longer duration storage to eliminate the need for fossil fuel backup generators. That’s a task well suited to flow batteries.

What makes flow batteries different?

Conventional batteries such as lithium-ion batteries store power in their electrodes, commonly a metal.

Flow batteries store power in their liquid electrolytes. Electrolyte solutions are stored in external tanks and pumped through a reactor where chemical reactions take place at inert electrodes to produce energy.

Flow batteries can be altered to suit requirements of a task. You can change how much power you generate (in kilowatts) and how much storage (in kilowatt-hours). If you want more storage, you increase the volume of electrolytes in the tanks.

As you increase storage capacity, the cost per kWh of stored energy decreases dramatically. This is because you only have to add more liquid electrolytes rather than adding entirely new battery packs, as in conventional batteries.

This means flow batteries are currently the cheapest way to store electricity for longer durations (over 8 hours). Unlike lithium-ion batteries, flow batteries can run for tens of thousands of cycles and the electrolyte can last much longer – or even indefinitely. One downside is their weight – these batteries are very heavy and are not portable.

To date, zinc bromine and vanadium redox batteries have undergone the most testing and commercial implementation.

Vanadium flow

In the mid-1980s, my colleagues and I pioneered vanadium redox flow batteries at the University of New South Wales. Vanadium is an unusual metal. It can exist in different states of oxidation in the same solution. That means you can run a battery using just one element, instead of two, as in other chemistries. Doing so lets you avoid cross-contamination and gives the electrolyte solution an indefinite life.

After decades of development, vanadium flow batteries are now being commercially produced by companies in Japan, China and Europe, with several gigawatt hours worth of capacity now installed globally.

China, the world’s largest vanadium producer, has recently approved many large new vanadium flow battery projects. In December, the world’s largest came online in Dalian, China, with 175MW capacity and 700 mWH of storage.

Australia’s first megawatt-scale vanadium flow battery was installed in South Australia in 2023. The project uses grid scale battery storage to store power from a solar farm.

The main challenge to commercialisation has been securing vanadium, which has fluctuated wildly in price and supply due to competing demand from the steel industry.

This is likely to change. Government investment in critical minerals has fast-tracked several new vanadium mines and processing plants. Australia could become a major global vanadium producer in the future. In 2023, Townsville became home to Australia’s first factory producing vanadium electrolyte.

Iron and zinc

Flow batteries can be built from many different chemistries. Two other promising chemistries are iron-iron and zinc bromide.

Iron flow batteries have been under development in the United States since 2011. These cells use iron, salt and water, avoiding the need for vanadium.

In Australia, Queensland-based company ESI Asia Pacific is planning to develop their own iron flow batteries at a new factory in Maryborough once construction is complete in 2026.

While iron is plentiful and cheap, these batteries rely on high purity iron chloride to reduce iron corrosion. This may mean electrolytes cost significantly more than expected. Field testing data is limited to date.

Zinc bromine batteries use a solution of zinc, a metal, and bromine, an element extracted from salt water. The chemistry means each cell has a higher electricity output than other flow batteries, but it comes with a challenge – finding ways to stop the growth of tree-like dendrites inside the cell, which can disrupt energy production or trigger short-circuits.

Battery-powered future?

Creating a larger Australian battery industry will take time and funding. But the demand for batteries will skyrocket globally in coming years, across the electricity and transport sectors.

As we work to electrify road transport, we will see demand for electricity increase as well as demand for the lithium-ion batteries now ubiquitous in electric vehicles.

As a major producer of lithium, Australia could also manufacture lithium batteries too, for domestic use or export. To compete globally, we would need to embrace automation.

Despite different chemistries, flow batteries share many common components which could be made locally and boost energy self-sufficiency. Flow batteries have long required time consuming and expensive manual assembly. But it’s now possible to automate assembly lines, which will cut costs and make Australian-made batteries better able to compete. My colleagues and I are working on this challenge at present.

Within a decade, Australia could become a globally competitive battery maker and exporter of critical minerals. Doing so would help the shift to clean energy, both domestically and around the world.

Maria Skyllas-Kazacos, Professor Emeritus, School of Chemical Engineering, UNSW Sydney

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