‘Catastrophic’: Great Barrier Reef hit by its most widespread coral bleaching, study finds

 

Rising water temperatures began to turn the corals of One Tree Island reef white in early 2024. Photograph: Sydney University

 

 More than 40% of individual corals monitored around One Tree Island reef bleached by heat stress and damaged by flesh-eating disease

 

More than 40% of individual corals monitored around a Great Barrier Reef island were killed last year in the most widespread coral bleaching outbreak to hit the reef system, a study has found.

Scientists tracked 462 colonies of corals at One Tree Island in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef after heat stress began to turn the corals white in early 2024. Researchers said they encountered “catastrophic” scenes at the reef.

Only 92 coral colonies escaped bleaching entirely and by July, when the analysis for the study ended, 193 were dead and a further 113 were still showing signs of bleaching.

 

Prof Maria Byrne, a marine biologist at the University of Sydney and lead author of the study, has been researching and visiting the island for 35 years.

“Seeing those really massive colonies die was really devastating,” she said. “I have gone from being really sad to being really cranky. We have been trying to get the message across about climate change for ages.”

 

 

Shows mass coral bleaching on Great Barrier Reef amid global heat stress event 

 

In November the Australian Institute of Marine Science visited eight reefs in the same Capricorn-Bunker sector of the reef. They found the single largest annual decline in hard coral cover in that area since monitoring started in the mid-1980s, with coral cover dropping by 41%.

Similar falls in coral cover were also recorded by Aims scientists in parts of the northern section of the reef, where one government scientist has described seeing a “graveyard of corals”.

Corals at One Tree Island reef have suffered also from a flesh-eating disease known as black band. Photograph: Sydney University

Byrne and colleagues set up the study in early February last year. The team used temperature loggers, video and direct observations to track the welfare of 12 different types of coral.

The scientists wrote in the study: “As corals can recover from mild bleaching when water cools, there is a perception that while bleaching is bad, it is not necessarily catastrophic. What we observed at [One Tree Reef] was by contrast, catastrophic.”

One genus of coral – Goniopora, which is long-lived and forms large boulders covered by vibrant flower-like polyps – was observed bleached and then afflicted with a flesh-eating disease known as black band.

Byrne said it was the worst bleaching recorded at One Tree reef. The corals that were still white at the end of their study could recover, or could die, she said.

 

Dr Shawna Foo, a coral reef scientist at the University of Sydney and study co-author, has worked on the island for several years but said that after tracking the corals for five months “it was hard to recognise” many of the colonies, because they were either “covered with algae, dead or crumbling”

“It’s horrible to see this happen to somewhere I know really well but we were expecting this to happen because we have seen it in other parts of the reef, and other parts of the world,” she said.

March is usually the peak month for heat stress on the reef. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said last week temperatures were currently up to 1.2C above average across most of the marine park.

 Great Barrier Reef suffering ‘most severe’ coral bleaching on record – video

 

The US government’s Coral Reef Watch program is projecting parts of the reef, north of Cooktown, will be subjected to heat stress and potentially more widespread bleaching by mid-February.

Richard Leck, the head of oceans at WWF-Australia, said: “We are yet to see the full data about last summer’s coral bleaching, but it’s clear there has been major mortality in areas from the north and this new research shows major mortality in the south.

“The reef is under more heat stress this summer, especially in the north, and there’s a risk we could see another back-to-back bleaching event. It’s a case of Russian roulette whether that occurs or not.

“We know the reef is under increasing pressure from climate change and its world heritage status is under increasing pressure.”

The Australian government has been asked by Unesco to report on the condition of the reef by early next month, and Leck said it was “vital an accurate representation of the reef’s health is given, and new and increased efforts to protect the reef are committed to”.

 

A third of the Arctic’s vast carbon sink now a source of emissions, study reveals. Critical CO2 stores held in permafrost are being released as the landscape changes with global heating, report shows

 

Near Newtok in Alaska, melting permafrost is causing the Ninglick River to widen and erode its banks. Photograph: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

 Patrick Greenfield

 

A third of the Arctic’s tundra, forests and wetlands have become a source of carbon emissions, a new study has found, as global heating ends thousands of years of carbon storage in parts of the frozen north.

For millennia, Arctic land ecosystems have acted as a deep-freeze for the planet’s carbon, holding vast amounts of potential emissions in the permafrost. But ecosystems in the region are increasingly becoming a contributor to global heating as they release more CO₂ into the atmosphere with rising temperatures, a new study published in Nature Climate Change concluded.

More than 30% of the region was a net source of CO₂, according to the analysis, rising to 40% when emissions from wildfires were included. By using monitoring data from 200 study sites between 1990 and 2020, the research demonstrates how the Arctic’s boreal forests, wetlands and tundra are being transformed by rapid warming.

“It is the first time that we’re seeing this shift at such a large scale, cumulatively across all of the tundra. That’s a pretty big deal,” said Sue Natali, a co-author and lead researcher on the study at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

The shift is occurring despite the Arctic becoming greener. “One place where I work in interior Alaska, when the permafrost thaws, the plants grow more so you can sometimes can get an uptick in carbon storage,” Natali said. “But the permafrost continues to melt and the microbes take over. You have this really big pool of carbon in the ground and you see things like ground collapse. You can visually see the changes in the landscape,” she said.

 

 The study comes amid growing concern from scientists about the natural processes that regulate the Earth’s climate, which are themselves being affected by rising temperatures. Together, the planet’s oceans, forests, soils and other natural carbon sinks absorb about half of all human emissions, but there are signs that these sinks are under strain.

The Arctic ecosystem, spanning Siberia, Alaska, the Nordic countries and Canada, has been accumulating carbon for thousands of years, helping cool the Earth’s atmosphere. In a warming world, the researchers say that the carbon cycle in the region is beginning to change and needs better monitoring.

Anna Virkkala, the lead author of the study, said: “There is a load of carbon in the Arctic soils. It’s close to half of the Earth’s soil carbon pool. That’s much more than there is in the atmosphere. There’s a huge potential reservoir that should ideally stay in the ground.

“As temperatures get warmer, soils get warmer. In the permafrost, most of the soils have been entirely frozen throughout the full year. But now the temperatures are warmer, there’s more organic matter available for decomposition, and carbon gets released into the atmosphere. This is the permafrost-carbon feedback, which is the key driver here.”

 

More Americans, Risking Ruin, Drop Their Home Insurance

 

By Christopher Flavelle and Mira Rojanasakul

 

Homeowners in places most exposed to climate disasters are increasingly giving up on paying their insurance premiums, leaving them exposed to financial ruin, according to sweeping new government data.

The numbers show how climate change is eroding the underpinnings of American life by making home insurance costlier and harder to hang on to, even as wildfires, hurricanes and other calamities increasingly threaten what is, for many people, their most valuable asset. 

 

“Homeowners’ insurance is where many Americans are now feeling the financial effect of climate change directly, in their pocketbook,” said Ethan Zindler, climate counselor at the Treasury Department. “Nature doesn’t really care whether people are living in a blue state or a red state or another state, or whether you do or don’t believe in climate change.”

The rising cancellation rates are part of a broader trend captured by the Treasury Department, which analyzed information for 246 million insurance policies issued by 330 insurers nationwide from 2018 through 2022. The result is the most comprehensive look yet at the effect of climate change on the American home insurance market.

Homeowners with mortgages are generally required by lenders to carry insurance. But people who own a house outright, perhaps because the property has been in a family for decades or generations, have the option of dropping insurance.

The cost and frequency of insurance claims are rising quickly in the highest-risk parts of the United States, as defined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to the numbers. They show that the financial stress on insurers is also growing.

So, too, is the cost of insurance, which has risen far more in high-risk areas than elsewhere.

As those trends worsen, more people are getting thrown off their insurance plans. That happens two ways. One is through cancellations, when insurers drop homeowners who fail to pay their premiums. Another is through nonrenewals, in which insurers refuse to renew the policies of homeowners who want to keep paying for coverage.

The rates of both cancellations and nonrenewals are increasing, and those increases are most pronounced in high-risk areas. 

In more than 150 ZIP codes around the country, insurers canceled at least 10 percent of home insurance policies in 2022, the most recent year for which numbers are available, because homeowners failed to pay their premiums, according to the data. Cancellation rates were highest in coastal areas in the Carolinas, including Hilton Head, Charleston and Myrtle Beach, which are especially exposed to hurricanes. They were also high in parts of West Virginia, Arizona and California.

The data doesn’t capture why homeowners chose to stop paying. But Nellie Liang, the Treasury Department’s under secretary for domestic finance, said her team viewed it as an indicator of families facing growing financial stress worsened by climate change.

“Households are not able to bear the burden by themselves,” Ms. Liang said.

As for cases where insurance companies refused to renew policies even for their paying customers, those nonrenewal rates were also higher, and grew faster, in high-risk areas. The ZIP codes with the greatest share of nonrenewals in 2022 were in coastal South Carolina as well as parts of California, including in Sonoma County and Yuba County, which have been hit by wildfires. Areas of Tennessee that have suffered severe storms also saw high nonrenewals.

The destabilization of the home insurance market doesn’t hurt only homeowners, Ms. Liang said. It also threatens property-tax revenues that communities rely on, since tax receipts can decline if homeowners can’t rebuild or if homes lose value. It also hurts local businesses that rely on homeowners as customers.

“There’s a lot to worry about,” Ms. Liang said. 

 

A Climate Crisis for Insurance

As Insurers Around the U.S. Bleed Cash From Climate Shocks, Homeowners Lose

It’s not just California and Florida now: Insurers are losing money around the country. It means higher rates and, sometimes, cancellation notices.

By Christopher Flavelle and Mira Rojanasakul

May 13, 2024

Home Insurance Rates in America Are Wildly Distorted. Here’s Why.

Climate change is driving rates higher, but not always in areas with the greatest risk.

By Christopher Flavelle and Mira Rojanasakul

July 8, 2024

Insurers Are Deserting Homeowners as Climate Shocks Worsen

Without insurance, it’s impossible to get a mortgage; without a mortgage, most Americans can’t buy a home.

By Christopher Flavelle and Mira Rojanasakul

Dec. 18, 2024

 

 

The Treasury Department’s effort to gather data was complicated by the political clashes over climate change, and also over who gets to regulate insurance companies.

The department announced the effort in 2021 as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to address the financial effects of climate change. Its original plan was to gather data directly from insurance companies. But some state insurance commissioners (which regulate the industry) objected, backed by Republicans in Congress.

So the Treasury Department let state commissioners gather the data. Or not gather it: Seven states — Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Indiana, Montana and North Dakota — declined to participate. According to the Treasury Department, this meant that local insurance companies that happen to be headquartered in those states did not provide data. But national insurers still provided data for homeowners they cover in those states. (Another exception was Texas, where they did not provide some data.)

In addition, the states that did participate chose to withhold some important information, including data from their state-mandated high-risk-insurance plans. Those plans, which are designed to provide insurance to people who can’t buy it from regular insurance companies, are becoming more important as climate change worsens. Excluding those plans means the data doesn’t capture the experience of many homeowners facing the highest risk from climate threats.

And of the data that was collected, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which represents state commissioners and compiled data from them, shared only a portion with the Treasury Department.

The association did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Treasury Department, as part of its report, called on state commissioners and the national association to keep working with the agency’s Federal Insurance Office to gather and publish the data annually, and even expand that effort by including information for high-risk pools.

The chances of that happening are unclear. Last month, Republican state insurance commissioners wrote to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the leaders of what President-elect Donald J. Trump has called his new Department of Government Efficiency, urging them to scrap the Federal Insurance Office altogether.

They argued that the office’s work gathering data on climate change showed that the federal government was trying to exceed its authority and that, by moving ahead with releasing the new data, the office “has chosen to proceed with flawed information, which risks misleading the public.” The commissioners did not say why they viewed the information as flawed. 

 

Methodology

Seven state insurance departments did not participate in the Treasury Department data collection: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Montana, and North Dakota. In some cases, national insurers that provide coverage in those markets submitted data for those states. Texas insurer data provided by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners did not include nonpayment cancellations or nonrenewals.

Risk categories are based on the composite risk score from FEMA’s National Risk Index. Policy cancellation and nonrenewal rates represent an average within each risk category.

Nobel prize winners call for urgent ‘moonshot’ effort to avert global hunger catastrophe

A rice paddy during a drought in Uttaradit, northern Thailand. Rice production around the world is stagnating and even declining. Photograph: Jack Taylor/The Guardian

 

More than 150 Nobel and World Food prize laureates have signed an open letter calling for “moonshot” efforts to ramp up food production before an impending world hunger catastrophe.

The coalition of some of the world’s greatest living thinkers called for urgent action to prioritise research and technology to solve the “tragic mismatch of global food supply and demand”.

Big bang physicist Robert Woodrow Wilson; Nobel laureate chemist Jennifer Doudna; the Dalai Lama; economist Joseph E Stiglitz; Nasa scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig; Ethiopian-American geneticist Gebisa Ejeta; Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank; Wole Soyinka, Nobel prize for literature winner; and black holes Nobel physicist Sir Roger Penrose were among the signatories in the appeal coordinated by Cary Fowler, joint 2024 World Food prize laureate and US special envoy for global food security.

 

Citing challenges including the climate crisis, war and market pressures, the coalition called for “planet-friendly” efforts leading to substantial leaps in food production to feed 9.7 billion people by 2050. The plea was for financial and political backing, said agricultural scientist Geoffrey Hawtin, the British co-recipient of last year’s World Food prize.

“It’s almost as if people are burying their head in the sand,” he said. “There’s so many other issues that grab the attention, that this is somehow insidious and creeping up on us and most people don’t give it too much thought. Which is what makes how way off we are from meeting the UN targets on hunger very scary.

“There’s a lot of concern over the rate at which climate change is going on, then this secondary notion that further down the road food is going to be a problem,” he said.

 

Hawtin pointed to already stagnating and even declining production in rice and wheat around the world, at a time when food production needed to be ramping up by 50% to 70% over the next two decades.

“It’s very easy to defer tackling it, but if we wait until there really is a massive food crisis then we’ll have 10 to 15 [years] to live in that crisis

“You can’t solve that sort of problem overnight. From the time you start a research programme to the time it can have a significant impact on production, you’re talking 10 to 15 years.

“It does require political will, international political will. It really needs the focused attention of international institutions.

“A lot of knowledge is there, a lot more is needed. If you look at the possibilities, it’s very encouraging, if you look at the will to make some of those possibilities happen, it’s far less encouraging,” he said.

The world was “not even close” to meeting future needs, the letter said, predicting humanity faced an “even more food insecure, unstable world” by mid-century unless support for innovation was ramped up internationally.

“All the evidence points to an escalating decline in food productivity if the world continues with business as usual,” said Fowler. “With 700 million food-insecure people today, and the global population expected to rise by 1.5 billion by 2050, this leaves humanity facing a grossly unequal and unstable world. We need to channel our best scientific efforts into reversing our current trajectory, or today’s crisis will become tomorrow’s catastrophe.”

The laureates’ letter outlined the climate threat, particularly in Africa, where the population is growing yet yields of the staple maize are forecast to decline.

Factors undermining productivity include soil erosion, land degradation, biodiversity loss, water shortages, conflict and government policies that hold back agricultural innovation.

“The impacts of climate change are already reducing food production around the world, particularly in Africa, which bears little historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions yet sees temperatures rising faster than elsewhere,” said Adesina, who received the World Food prize in 2017.

“Temperature rises are expected to be most extreme in countries with already low productivity, compounding existing levels of food insecurity. In low-income countries where productivity needs to almost double by 2050 compared to 1990, the stark reality is that it’s likely to rise by less than half. We have just 25 years to change this.”

The letter cited the most promising scientific breakthroughs and emerging fields of research that could be prioritised as “moonshot” goals. These include improving photosynthesis for wheat and rice and developing cereals that can source nitrogen biologically and grow without fertilisers; alongside boosting research into indigenous crops that tolerate extreme weather conditions, reducing food waste by improving the shelf life of fruits and vegetables, and creating food from microorganisms and fungi.

Mashal Husain, incoming president of the World Food Prize Foundation, said: “This is an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ moment for global hunger. Having the world’s greatest minds unite behind this urgent wake-up call should inspire hope and action. If we can put a man on the moon, we can surely rally the funding, resources and collaboration needed to put enough food on plates here on Earth.”

The letter is due to be discussed at an event in the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry in WashingtonDC on Tuesday, followed by a webinar on Thursday.

Rosenzweig, the 2022 World Food prize laureate, said it was a timely call: “Many if not most food-producing regions are experiencing more frequent extreme events that are damaging not only yields but farmer livelihoods as well.

“We need to launch long-term science-based actions today in order to achieve a world without hunger.”

 

‘We’re in a New Era’: How Climate Change Is Supercharging Disasters. Extreme weather events — deadly heat waves, floods, fires and hurricanes — are the consequences of a warming planet, scientists say.

 

 

The remains of a home after the Marshall fire swept through Louisville, Colo., in 2021.Credit...Alyson Mcclaran/Reuters

 

By Friday, the fires in California had consumed more than 30,000 acres and destroyed thousands of buildings.Credit...Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times

 

By David Gelles and Austyn Gaffney

 

As Los Angeles burned for days on end, horrifying the nation, scientists made an announcement on Friday that could help explain the deadly conflagration: 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history.

With temperatures rising around the globe and the oceans unusually warm, scientists are warning that the world has entered a dangerous new era of chaotic floods, storms and fires made worse by human-caused climate change.

The firestorms ravaging the country’s second-largest city are just the latest spasm of extreme weather that is growing more furious as well as more unpredictable. Wildfires are highly unusual in Southern California in January, which is supposed to be the rainy season. The same is true for cyclones in Appalachia, where Hurricanes Helene and Milton shocked the country when they tore through mountain communities in October.

Wildfires are burning hotter and moving faster. Storms are getting bigger and carrying more moisture. And soaring temperatures worldwide are leading to heat waves and drought, which can be devastating on their own and leave communities vulnerable to dangers like mudslides when heavy rains return.

 

Around the globe, extreme weather and searing heat killed thousands of people last year and displaced millions, with pilgrims dying as temperatures soared in Saudi Arabia. In Europe, extreme heat contributed to at least 47,000 deaths in 2023. In the United States, heat-related deaths have doubled in recent decades.

“We’re in a new era now,” said former Vice President Al Gore, who has warned of the threats of global warming for decades. “These climate related extreme events are increasing, both in frequency and intensity, quite rapidly.”

The fires currently raging in greater Los Angeles are already among the most destructive in U.S. history. By Friday, the blazes had consumed more than 36,000 acres and destroyed thousands of buildings. As of Saturday, at least 11 people were dead, and losses could top $100 billion, according to AccuWeather.

Although it is not possible to say with certainty as any specific weather event unfolds whether it was caused by global warming, the Los Angeles fires are being driven by a number of conditions that are becoming increasingly common on a hotter planet.

Last winter, Southern California got huge amounts of rain that led to extensive vegetation growth. Now, months into what is typically the rainy season, Los Angeles is experiencing a drought. The last time it rained more than a tenth of an inch was on May 5. Since then, it has been the second-driest period in the city’s recorded history

Temperatures in the region have also been higher than normal. As a result, many of the plants that grew last year are parched, turning trees, grasses and bushes into kindling that was ready to explode.

 

That combination of heat and dryness, which scientists say is linked to climate change, created the ideal conditions for an urban firestorm.

“Wintertime fires in Southern California require a lot of extreme climate and weather events to occur at once,” said Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “And the warmer the temperatures, the more intense the fires.”

A third factor fueling the fires, the fierce Santa Ana winds, which blow West from Utah and Nevada, cannot be directly linked to climate change, scientists say. But the winds this week have been particularly ferocious, gusting at more than 100 miles per hour, as fierce as a Category 2 Hurricane.

Fires across the West have been getting worse in recent years. In 2017, thousands of homes in Santa Rosa, Calif., burned to the ground. The next year, the Camp fire leveled more than 13,000 homes in Paradise, Calif. In 2021, roughly a thousand homes burned near Boulder, Colo.

 

Virtually nothing was unscathed in the Coffey Park section of Santa Rosa, Calif., following a wildfire in 2017.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

 

 

Workers searched for the remains of victims after the Camp fire in Paradise, Calif., in 2018.Credit...Eric Thayer for The New York Times

 

 

And from the boreal forests of Canada to the redwood groves of Oregon, large fires have been incinerating vast areas of wilderness.

“In the last couple years we’ve seen an increase in extreme weather events and increasing amounts of billion-dollar disasters,” said Kaitlyn Trudeau, a senior research associate focused on wildfires and the West Coast at Climate Central, a nonprofit research group. “It’s very clear that something is off, and that something is that we’re pumping an insane amount of carbon into the atmosphere and causing the climate systems to go out of whack.”

As the Los Angeles fires consumed some of the most valuable real estate in the world, an unfolding tragedy became fodder for political attacks.

President-elect Donald J. Trump blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, for the disaster. Mr. Trump inaccurately claimed that state and federal protections for a threatened fish had hampered firefighting efforts by leading to water shortages.

And on Thursday, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and an ally of Mr. Trump, inserted himself into the debate over the role climate change plays in wildfires.

“Climate change risk is real, just much slower than alarmists claim,” Mr. Musk wrote to his 211 million followers on X, the social media site he owns. He said the loss of homes was primarily the result of “nonsensical overregulation” and “bad governance at the state and local level that resulted in a shortage of water.”

Those claims were rebutted by scientists, who noted that, as humans continue to warm the planet with emissions, extreme weather is becoming more common.

In Los Angeles, residents displaced by the fires watched in exasperation as the unfolding disaster was politicized.

“People are just wanting to blame somebody else,” said Sheila Morovati, a climate activist who lives in Pacific Palisades and saw her neighborhood burn. “What about all the dryness? What about the temperatures? There’s so many pieces that are all pointing back to climate change.”

News that 2024 was the hottest year on record was hardly a surprise. The previous hottest year was 2023. All 10 of the hottest years on record have come in the last decade.

“We sound like a broken record but only because the records keep breaking,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which monitors global temperatures. “They will continue to break until we get emissions under control.”

But the world is not getting emissions under control. In fact, last year countries released record amounts of planet warming gases into the atmosphere, even as the consequences of climate change have become painfully clear. U.S. efforts to cut emissions largely stalled last year.

The inevitable result: more heat and more

extreme weather.

In late September and early October, Hurricane Helene, which scientists said was made worse by climate change, roared across the Southeast, unleashing deadly floods and landslides in several states, including North Carolina.

 

A flood-damaged church in Swannanoa, N.C., in October.Credit...Mike Belleme for The New York Times

Months earlier, researchers showed that the devastating floods that swamped Porto Alegre, Brazil, would not have been so severe were it not for human caused global warming.

In May, scientists found the fingerprints of climate change on a crippling heat wave that gripped India, and found that an early heat wave in West Africa last spring was made 10 times more likely by climate change.

On Friday, parts of the South that are not used to winter weather, including Atlanta, saw sleet and snow, disrupting travel and canceling flights. But it’s unclear whether the recent blast of cold air that has led to plunging temperatures across the Southeast and Gulf Coast states was caused by a warming climate.

“We just don’t see robust increases in severe cold events,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a research organization. “If anything, they’re decreasing.”

While Southern California is no stranger to fires, the events of the past week have exposed the region’s inherent vulnerabilities.

As the first fires started, fierce winds pushed the flames through canyons loaded with dried-out vegetation and into homes built in the so-called wildland-urban interface, areas where neighborhoods abut undeveloped wilderness. Both of the areas in the Los Angeles region that suffered the greatest losses, Pacific Palisades and Altadena, were in such fire-prone areas.

Art delaCruz, the chief executive of Team Rubicon, a nonprofit organization that mobilizes veterans and other volunteers to assist after disasters, was at home in Los Angeles when the fires broke out. His house is safe for now, and he is now preparing to deploy volunteers who will help clear roads and distribute aid.

Team Rubicon was founded after a group of former Marines went to Haiti to volunteer after the devastating earthquake in 2010. But Mr. delaCruz said that most of the disasters his organization responds to around the world now are linked to climate change.

“It’s simple physics,” he said. “Warmer air holds more water. The storms are increasing in frequency. The storms are increasing in severity. And the damage is just unbelievable.”

There is no rain in the forecast for Los Angeles for at least another couple weeks. But scientists are already concerned about what will happen when the rains do arrive.

In 2018, the wealthy enclave of Montecito, Calif., just north of Los Angeles, was devastated by mudslides after torrential downpours fell on hills that had recently burned.

 

An inmate fire crew deployed to help search for victims following a mudslide in Montecito, Calif., in 2018.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

 

“If we get intense rainfall on those burn scars, then we’re going to add insult to injury and have debris flows,” said Alexander Gershunov, a research meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

Heat waves. Drought. Fires. Superstorms. Floods. Mudslides. These are the growing threats of a rapidly warming world, and scientists say nowhere is entirely protected from the effects of climate change.

“We think sometimes that if we live in a city, we’re not vulnerable to natural forces,” Dr. Schmidt said. “But we are, and it comes as a huge shock to people. There’s no get out of climate change free card.”

Lisa Friedman contributed reporting.

David Gelles reports on climate change and leads The Times’s Climate Forward newsletter and events series. More about David Gelles

Austyn Gaffney is a reporter covering climate and a member of the 2024-25 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers. More about Austyn Gaffney

Alemães fazem revolução da energia solar em suas varandas. Mais de 800 mil painéis foram instalados na Alemanha em 2024, o dobro do ano anterior.

 

Painéis solares instalados em casa em Berlim, na Alemanha - Tobias Schwarz - 3.jan.2025/AFP 

 Sophie Makris

 

Berlim | AFP

Flocos de neve caem suavemente sobre os painéis solares instalados na varanda do berlinense Jens Sax, que frequentemente verifica seu telefone para ver quanta eletricidade está sendo gerada.

A quantidade atualmente é modesta, disse Sax, que admite estar "viciado" em checar as notificações do celular para ver a geração de energia. "Economizamos 79 euros (cerca de R$ 497 na cotação atual) desde que os instalamos em agosto".

Mais de 800 mil equipamentos como este foram instalados na Alemanha em 2024, segundo dados oficiais, graças aos subsídios e os desejos de economizar dinheiro diante dos altos custos da eletricidade.

Isso é mais que o dobro do ano anterior e 10 vezes a quantidade de 2022.

 

A consultora EmpowerSource calcula que existam 3 milhões de equipamentos ativos no país, incluindo alguns que não estão oficialmente registrados.

Os números de instalação poderiam ser maiores porque o equipamento muitas vezes não é registrado, segundo Leonhard Probst, pesquisador do Instituto Fraunhofer de Sistemas de Energia Solar.

As instalações em varandas ganharam força na Alemanha porque são mais baratas e mais fáceis de instalar do que os painéis fotovoltaicos no telhado.

 

COVID E GUERRA

A principal economia da Europa quer que 80% de seu consumo bruto de eletricidade seja renovável até 2030, em comparação com 59% em 2024. A energia solar foi responsável por 14,6% da eletricidade alemã no ano passado.

Os painéis solares de varanda, menos potentes que os de telhado, cobrem apenas parte da demanda de uma casa e são usados para tarefas como carregar computadores.

Probst calcula que os equipamentos correspondam a apenas 2% de quase 100 gigawatts de capacidade solar total da Alemanha, mas espera que esse número aumente.

"Há um efeito educacional, mais pessoas se familiarizam com a energia solar e isso pode levá-las a investir em sistemas mais potentes", diz ele.

 

Oliver Lang, chefe da empresa de equipamentos solares em Sonnenepublik, em Berlim, disse que a firma cresceu nos últimos anos graças a pandemia de Covid-19 e a guerra na Ucrânia.

Ele recorda que havia pouca demanda quando começou a vendê-los há seis anos.

"Começou durante a Covid quando as pessoas tinham tempo, logo depois começou a guerra na Ucrânia e havia o medo da escassez elétrica. Depois, entraram os subsídios", explica.

SUBSÍDIOS

A cidade de Frankfurt pagou a Christoph Stadelmann, um professor de 60 anos, metade dos 650 euros (cerca de R$ 4.000 na cotação atual) que o equipamento lhe custou no início do ano passado.

Stadelmann espera recuperar seu investimento em três anos.

"Para um sistema fotovoltaico clássico, um sistema mais potente, o investimento inicial é de cerca de 15.000 euros" (R$ 94,4 mil), estima Lang, da Sonnenrepublik. "Demora cerca de 15 anos para recuperar o investimento".

Os preços da eletricidade na Alemanha se estabilizaram depois de alcançar seu ponto mais alto em 2022, no entanto, seguem entre os mais altos na Europa.

Painel solar instalado em casa em Berlim - Tobias Schwarz - 3.jan.2025/AFP

 
 As pesquisas indicam que o custo de vida é uma das principais preocupações da população antes das eleições legislativas de 23 de fevereiro.

Segundo Sax, a economia superou as preocupações ambientais em sua decisão de comprar equipamentos solares para varandas.

O governo apoiou a tendência, Os donos dos equipamentos já não precisam registrar os equipamentos e as pessoas que moram em prédios podem utilizá-los sem autorização do proprietário ou administrador do imóvel.

Mirjam Sax, esposa de Jens, recomenda os painéis solares de varanda, apesar do céu às vezes cinza da Alemanha

"Se você tem uma varanda e um pouco de sol, pode instalar um desses painéis para ver se vale a pena", comenta. "É fácil e tem muitos orçamentos".

 

Lei aprovada em Mato Grosso quer converter Amazônia em Cerrado; entenda. Estudo mostra que mudança liberaria 5,3 milhões de hectares para o desmatamento; deputado nega incentivo à derrubada de floresta.

 

Lei abre brecha para aumento do desmatamento no Mato Grosso, afirmam ambientalistas Foto: Tiago Queiroz/Estadão

Por Paula Ferreira

 

 

BRASÍLIA- Uma lei aprovada pela Assembleia Legislativa do Mato Grosso quer converter florestas antes consideradas pertencentes à Amazônia em vegetação classificada como do Cerrado. Caso a medida seja sancionada pelo governador Mauro Mendes (União), o porcentual de reserva legal, ou seja, a área onde o desmate é proibido, cairá de 80% para 35%. O texto foi aprovado na quarta-feira, 8, por 15 votos a 8.

Na prática, segundo ambientalistas, a mudança deixará uma área maior suscetível ao desmatamento. Isso porque com a queda do porcentual de reserva legal, produtores rurais poderão expandir suas áreas agrícolas sobre a vegetação.

 O projeto de lei complementar 18/2024 foi apresentado originalmente pelo Executivo, em maio do ano passado, para fazer um ajuste na escala de mapas utilizada como base pela Secretaria de Estado do Meio Ambiente para operar o Cadastro Ambiental Rural (CAR). O projeto, no entanto, sofreu diversas alterações durante a tramitação, o que acabou desfigurando a proposta.

O texto aprovado, de autoria do deputado Nininho (PSD), traz uma nova redação para a lei que cria definições para áreas que seriam classificadas como floresta, pertencentes ao bioma Amazônia, e as que seriam enquadradas como Cerrado.

 

O dispositivo diz que serão definidas como “floresta” as áreas com predominância de vegetação “com as médias de alturas totais a partir de 20 metros, e que apresentem indivíduos com alturas máximas entre 30 (trinta) e 50 (cinquenta) metros”. Já “as áreas com predominância de indivíduos com a média das alturas totais até 20 metros” serão classificadas como Cerrado.

O deputado Lúdio Cabral (PT) chegou a apresentar outro substitutivo para suprimir a redação e preservar a proposta original do Executivo, mas o texto não passou.

 

Milhões de hectares vulneráveis

Um estudo feito pelo Observatório Socioambiental de Mato Grosso afirma que a mudança permitiria o desmatamento de 5,2 milhões de hectares. Em nota, o Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM) cita o levantamento e classifica como “retrocesso” a aprovação da lei na assembleia. Segundo o Ipam, a perda de florestas acentua as mudanças climáticas.

“Estudos científicos já demonstraram que não é mais necessário derrubar nenhuma árvore para ter mais produtividade no campo. Em muitos casos, os ganhos podem dobrar ou até triplicar apenas restaurando áreas degradadas ou reutilizando pastos abandonados”, afirma no comunicado o diretor-executivo do Ipam, André Guimarães.

 

Após a repercussão negativa da lei, o deputado Nininho afirmou em nota publicada em seu site que a legislação proposta atende as exigências feitas pelo Supremo Tribunal Federal para identificação de biomas.

“O projeto não aumenta nem incentiva o desmatamento no Estado. Estamos adequando o que já foi decidido pelo STF e adotando dados mais precisos do IBGE, em conformidade com o projeto original enviado pelo próprio Governo do Estado”, argumentou no comunicado.

Procurado pelo Estadão neste sábado, 11, o deputado não se manifestou sobre o tema. A Secretaria de Estado de Meio Ambiente de Mato Grosso também não se posicionou até o momento. O espaço permanece à disposição.