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Earth

CNN: Planet Earth 'Just Failed Its Annual Health Checkup' (cnn.com) 111

Posted by EditorDavid from the happy-earth-day dept.
CNN reports on this year's "State of the Climate" report from the World Meteorological Organization (the UN agency promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science a d climatology).

The report "analyzes a series of global climate indicators — including levels of planet-heating pollution, sea level rise and ocean heat — to understand how the planet is responding to climate change and the impact it is having on people and nature."

CNN's conclusion? "The world just failed its annual health checkup."= - Oceans reached record high temperatures, with nearly 60% experiencing at least one marine heatwave.

- Global sea levels climbed to the highest on record due to melting glaciers and warming oceans, which expand as they heat up.

- Antarctica's sea ice dropped to 1.92 million square kilometers in February 2022, at the time the lowest level on record (the record was broken again this year).

- The European Alps saw a record year for glacier melt, with Switzerland particularly badly affected, losing 6% of its glacier volume between 2021 and 2022.

- Levels of planet warming pollution, including methane and carbon dioxide, reached record highs in 2021, the latest year for which there is global data...


Last year, climate change-fueled extreme weather "affected tens of millions, drove food insecurity, boosted mass migration, and cost billions of dollars in loss and damage," WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. In 2022, China had its most extensive and long-lasting drought on record. Droughts also affected East Africa, with more than 20 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia facing acute food insecurity as of January this year. Many western and southern US states experienced significant drought and Europe's punishing heatwave is estimated to have led to 15,000 excess deaths. In Pakistan, record-breaking rainfall left huge swaths of the country underwater, killing more than 1,700 people, with almost 8 million displaced, and causing $30 billion in damages...

Last year is unlikely to be an outlier, as temperatures continue their upwards trajectory. The past eight years were the hottest on record, despite three consecutive years of the La Niña climate phenomenon, which has a global cooling effect. The global average temperature last year climbed to about 1.15 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to the report, as the world continues its march towards breaching 1.5 degrees of warming for the first time. With the predicted arrival later in the year of El Niño, which brings warmer global temperatures, scientists are deeply concerned that 2023 and 2024 will continue to smash climate records. The hottest year on record, 2016, was the result of a strong El Niño and climate change, said Baddour. "It is only a matter of time before that record is broken...."

"The droughts and level of heatwaves that we saw throughout 2022 were quite remarkable," Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, told CNN. "This is really a wake up call that climate change isn't a future problem, it is a current problem. And we need to adapt as quickly as possible," she added.
Omar Baddour, head of the Climate Monitoring and Policy Division at the WMO, also told CNN that "Communities and countries which have contributed least to climate change suffer disproportionately."

And for more bad news, CNN notes a report from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service found Europe experienced its hottest summer ever recorded, unprecedented marine heatwaves in the Mediterranean sea, and widespread wildfires.
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CNN: Planet Earth 'Just Failed Its Annual Health Checkup' More

CNN: Planet Earth 'Just Failed Its Annual Health Checkup'

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  • Not news. (Score:1, Troll)

    by XXongo ( 3986865 )
    I'm sorry, but this is not actually news. The summary is "trends that have been continuing for years have continued this year."

    Unless you expect some sort of magical intervention, nothing here is unexpected or newsworthy.

    • Re:Not news. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LionKimbro ( 200000 ) on Saturday April 22, 2023 @04:18PM (#63470038) Homepage

      Unless there is a magical intervention, it cannot be news?

      I'm trying to wrap my head around this.

      I'm imagining you in the doctor's office. The doctor says, "Your blood pressure continues to rise. And the cancer is getting bigger."

      And your response is: "Nope. Not news. Not unless you supply my with a magical intervention. That would change whether what you say is news or not."

      Doctor says, "Well, you could eat better, and we could look into surgeries for the canc-"

      "Nope. Magic or STFU. Not news."

      • And your response is: "Nope. Not news. Not unless you supply my with a magical intervention. That would change whether what you say is news or not."

        That is technically true. Continuing your health in the same state as last year isn't really news.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Doctor says, "Well, you could eat better, and we could look into surgeries for the canc-"

        Radiation therapy. It's what the doctor ordered.

        Bring on the nukes.

      • How long have I got?

        Well if this continues, about 50 years.

        Oh ok, I will be dead by then so I do not care.
        • The world will be better of without selfish shits like you. lets hope you haven't bred

          • He's just saying what those in power think. How long 'til the shit hits the fan? 50 years? I'm about 50 myself, I won't see 100 too likely, so why would I give a fuck?

            Not to mention that by then I'm sure as all hell no longer in office and it's someone else's problem. But if I now enact unpopular measures that would avoid it, I won't get reelected. So guess what I'm gonna do.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        There is the exact point: We, as individuals can't do jack shit about it, and the people that can rather have some nice $$$ in their pocket than a habitable planet. We get jacked around all the time on environmental stuff, but do you see who is always pushed to do the most for the environment? The poor or middle classes, who are forced into more regulations, be it having trash inspected and fined if there is a water bottle in the trash bag instead of recycles (the city I live in has each trash bag requir

      • I think what the GP meant was that if you eat junk good and expose yourself all day long to summer sun without protection, then the first time you see your doctor and he tells you: "Hey, you have skin cancer, and your cholesterol levels are out of the roof so you are likely to die sooner rather than later", then this is news.

        However, if you go see your doctor 2-3 years down the road, and when he asks you what you have done, you answer: "I've been eating tons of junk food again, and I am still spending all

      • I agree with the parent, this is not news. To use your analogy its like if you went to the doctor and they said you went to the doctor and they said your blood pressure is rising, and your cancer is getting bigger. Then every time you go to go to the doctor the doctor says your cancer is getting bigger and your blood pressure has risen. It soon becomes not news anymore.

        To me the magical intervention here would be that society gets off its but and does something significant to reduce pollution, instead of ma

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 )

      On that score... OK, yes, it's propaganda. But it's the right (and extremely rare) kind of propaganda, the truth. It needs to keep being hammered home until there's enough will to make some sacrifices to at least minimize the damage.

      Where I live, we're blessed with electricity - from 2019 numbers, 59% nuclear, 24% hydro, 8% wind, 7% natural gas. We're doing well on that front, I guess.

      But due to successful auto industry lobbying, you can't have an inexpensive electric car that is limited to 60 km/h. Tha

      • You said:

        it's the right (and extremely rare) kind of propaganda, the truth.

        But it's probably not true. For example, consider this statement from TFA:

        "In 2022, China had its most extensive and long-lasting drought on record."

        But if you look at the supporting link, it's not talking about a record-breaking drought at all, it's talking about a heat wave.

      • Truth? Isnâ(TM)t that entirely personal and not reliant on anything else?

      • OK, yes, it's propaganda. But it's the right (and extremely rare) kind of propaganda, the truth. It needs to keep being hammered home until there's enough will to make some sacrifices to at least minimize the damage.

        100% guaranteed nobody is willing to "sacrifice" sufficiently to amount to shit no matter what. If this is the plan failure is assured.

        But due to successful auto industry lobbying, you can't have an inexpensive electric car that is limited to 60 km/h. That would serve 95% of use cases, and we could have done it with lead acid batteries decades ago. so electrics have a price floor of around $44K.

        Total nonsense. EVs can be purchased new for half that and range not top speed determines cost. Batteries are expensive. Don't like it? Work on making them cheaper. Lead acid is far worse in all dimensions including cost. You couldn't even use most of a lead acid batteries capacity and still expect it not to instantly sulfate itself to death.

        The population that can't look at the data and make a decision needs to be frightened into going along with the decisions of those who can. And the mob needs to be angry enough about it that corporate lobbying to blunt measures isn't politically effective.

        This is the path to war yo

    • Tell that to the giant swaths of the population that say global warming isnâ(TM)t happening, that itâ(TM)s a liberal hoax and conspiracy.

  • I await the idiots posting about how this is all normal and we're all just frightened victims of propaganda.

    The Venn diagram of those people and the ones who died choking to death while telling doctors they didn't have COVID... it's a perfect circle by any criteria worth measuring.

    • Came here to say that, thank you

    • Well⦠according to Kaiser⦠The share of COVID-19 deaths among those who are vaccinated has risen. In fall 2021, about 3 in 10 adults dying of COVID-19 were vaccinated or boosted. But by January 2022, as we showed in an analysis posted on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, about 4 in 10 deaths were vaccinated or boosted. By April 2022, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data show that about 6 in 10 adults dying of COVID-19 were vaccinated or boosted

      • Well... yeah. When you increase the population, its share in a statistic will rise as well.

        Guess what, in a population where everyone is vaccinated and boosted, 10 out of 10 deaths will be of people vaccinated and boosted. Hope I didn't blow your mind.

    • The funny thing is that it's the exact opposite that is true. It's like a certain segment of people have decided to become anti-truth, and this is just one more thing on their lists.

      Even Kool-Aid can get boring, so it's good to have many flavors....I guess. These people are no different from Xenu worshippers, in fact, I don't know how they manage to not fall madly in love with each other. They seem like a match made in Heaven.

  • Time for Dr nuclear power! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Saturday April 22, 2023 @04:02PM (#63470020)

    Time for Dr nuclear power!

    • Yes, nuclear could solve this. Its expensive now, but there are lots of paths to making it cheaper.

      The problem is that people have entangled climate change with wealth disparity with semi-religious environmental beliefs, with anti-colonialism, with a desire to "punish" those who have done bad things. This makes almost any solution impossible.

      Maybe when the effects get bad enough, people will try to actually solve the problem instead of using it to promote political and social agendas. There is som
      • "Yes, nuclear could solve this. Its expensive now, but there are lots of paths to making it cheaper."

        If there was, they would have done it by now

        • You clearly have no idea how strong the anti-nuclear lobbies (greenpeace, and others) have become. They would rather see the world burn (literally, when you look at the recent heatwaves) than accept it as a transitional step.

          Civil nuclear has been around since 50+ years. That was enough time to not be in the deep shit we are in now. Instead of that, we have so-called "environmental" extremists patting themselves in the back because "renewables" (which emit more CO2eq than nuclear) like solar/wind make up fo

        • Could have said the same about launch vehicles - until SpaceX

      • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

        Yes, nuclear could solve this. Its expensive now, but there are lots of paths to making it cheaper.

        No it can't. Even if nuclear was magically free it can't do shit for our climate goals. The science is very clear about it, to meet the 1.5C target we need to halve emissions within 7 years. The number of nuclear plants we can build in 7 years is zero. The number we can build in 17 years is higher but not significantly, and the number of nuclear plants which will have provided a net carbon benefit over their construction in the next 17 years is still zero (in fact they will in that period contribute signifi

        • Solar and wind can provide a significant part of total global energy, but unless we develop low cost storage and transport they can't provide all of it. But I agree Nuclear doesn't help for 1.5C (except we need to not shut down existing plants) but I think its very unlikely we will limit at 1.5 or even 2 C. The decrease in economic activity caused by COVID briefly made things look better, but emissions are rising again. If I'm wrong, then great, but I'd like to see nuclear technology as quickly as we

        • I like to piss people off by pointing out that building a nuke reactor releases gigantic amounts of CO2 in the process of making concrete and steel... let alone refining the fuel, etc etc. I have not done the math to determine if it's a wash, however -- over the useful lifespan of a reactor.

          • Mining the materials to make batteries and solar panels is also a CO2 expenditure. The question is which is a net positive. The carbon cost of concrete and materials to build the reactor should be a one time expense. The mining of minerals doesnâ(TM)t have a (yet) roadmap to be carbon neutral as the mining requires heavy machinery that needs diesel.

          • I like to piss people off by pointing out that building a nuke reactor releases gigantic amounts of CO2 in the process of making concrete and steel... let alone refining the fuel, etc etc. I have not done the math to determine if it's a wash, however -- over the useful lifespan of a reactor.

            Does it piss you off to learn CO2 from PV is several times more than nuclear?

            • Actually I did not know that. Interesting. I do think that passive solar *thermal* power is vastly under-rated, mainly because it would require a complete re-write of the building codes in the US. And yet, it has been used very successfully in various individual projects over the years.

          • It is definitely not a wash over the lifetime of the plant. The amount of CO2 produced by building a nuclear plant is negligible compared to the amount of CO2 outputted by a comparably sized coal or gas plant. The energy required to refine the fuel can be sourced from nuclear itself so that is irrelevant.

            Save yourself the math. The point here is that *initially* as we build them we would actively be hurting the 1.5C climate goal. But in the long run nuclear is a very VERY climate positive thing to have.

            We s

        • The science is very clear about it, to meet the 1.5C target

          Why are we talking about this target though, there is zero chance of us hitting it. I would gladly bet anyone at 200:1 odds that we will surpass 1.5C. I'll give you $200 if the world stays under 1.5C, you give me $1 if it goes over.

          So given that this target is completely ludicrous from a purely empirical perspective, why is it a relevant criterion for analyzing anything? By my perspective, I'm certain that nothing whatsoever (maybe short of a nucle

          • Why are we talking about this target though, there is zero chance of us hitting it.

            Because it is the target we agreed to and it is the target specifically set to avoid certain climate scenarios. Now if you aren't interested in this target then rather than going for the next one ... instead of building nuclear, consider building seawalls and refugee shelters. They will be far more relevant if you kick the can down the road the way we are doing.

            • I don't think anyone agreed to (or can agree to) something that is empirically nearly impossible.

              It's not about whether I'm interested in this target -- after all I still drive an EV and power my house off the sun -- it's that my prediction that this target will not be met is not driving me to either abandon climate goals or descend into preparation for the apocalypse.

              Moreover, you haven't really given your prediction. Independent of what you wish people would do, what do you think will actually happen in r

    • Time for Dr nuclear power!

      Dr Nuclear Power will do fuck all. The best doctor in the world can't help you if he shows up after you've reached a point of no return. There's no a single current climate goal we can hit with the help of nuclear power. All nuclear can do for us is ensure we have a stable and clean electrical grid years *after* our climate goals have expired.

      • Maybe antinuclear scumbags shouldn't have blocked nuclear energy for the last 50 years. Maybe the antinuclear movement should apologize for lying about nuclear energy for 50 years. Worse is we could have prevented climate change with nuclear energy.

        By the way building only solar and wind will also fail to achieve our climate goals. Solar and wind are intermittent. Germans burn coal to overcome that

        • Absolutely agree and if invent a time machine the greenies from the 80s should be on the chopping block right after baby Hitler. They have done more environmental damage than all corporate profit driven endeavours combined.

          By the way building only solar and wind will also fail to achieve our climate goals. Solar and wind are intermittent. Germans burn coal to overcome that

          People need to stop being ignorant of Germany. Germany's coal consumption *dropped* along with nuclear. Germany is burning coal because they have an unstable supply of gas. Coal was very much on the chopping block for Germany right until Russia decided to fuck up the entire world.

  • Well...no...some of us are going to have to spend more money on remidiation a few decades down the line assuming the models are accurate and not omitting negative feedback mechanisms or solar dynamics like the Maunder Minimum, which may or may not be a driver of climate change on the timescales in question. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

    But that doesn't sell. What sells is telling people to buy your electric gizmo or your climate credits so that you don't melt when the APC doomsday clock rolls ov

    • Well...no...some of us are going to have to spend more money on remidiation

      Oh tell me about it. I'm remidiating [sic] my bunker and stocking up on ammo. The issue you're going to have has nothing to do a bit of land modification. You've seen how a country freaks out about a few thousand migrants coming. Just wait and see what happens when a country goes through true ecological collapse.

  • Soylent Green will be People, it seems.

  • Especially CNN.

  • Unpopular opinion time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by memory_register ( 6248354 ) on Saturday April 22, 2023 @05:10PM (#63470078)
    AGW will not kill us. Anyone selling massive government intervention is power hungry or a fool.

    However, we should still take better care of the planet, starting with micro nuclear plants everywhere until fusion is ready.

    • Re:Unpopular opinion time (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jd ( 1658 ) <`imipak' `at' `yahoo.com'> on Saturday April 22, 2023 @06:34PM (#63470184) Homepage Journal

      Fusion will only be ready if government shifts subsidies normally paid to fossil fuel companies to fusion research groups. Which is massive government intervention.

      The IMF calculates that fossil fuel subsidies amount to a global total of $11 million every minute. Shifting all of it to fusion would (a) cause a massive hike in fossil fuel prices to actual cost levels, and (b) amount to a massive cash injection hundreds of times greater than the total put into fusion research since the 1960s. I doubt you'd need to shift it all to achieve fusion, but I would suggest that if oil and coal cost their REAL amounts, fossil fuels would become very unpopular very quickly.

      • I really like the idea of fusion subsidies as the next moon shot. I don't know if we want to shock the oil markets with a full shift of the subsidies, but even a 5% haircut would be orders of magnitude more fusion funding. Really cool idea.
    • I fully support lots of fission power, though I'm not convinced micro plants are a win over large plants. Fusion though is hard - really really really hard. I'm also not convinced the public will accept fusion once they realize it also generates significant radiation and waste (far less then fission, but the public can't tell a micro-Curie form a kilo-Curie so it may not matter)

    • AGW certainly won't kill me. I am almost 50, the planet has another 30-40 years before it gets ugly, and I sure as fuck don't.

      I have no kids. If you don't have any either and will die in about 30-40 years, you also have no reason to worry.

    • AGW will not kill us.

      No AGW won't kill us. People will kill us. When their lives are destroyed and their land no longer viable they will come looking for those people who still have both.

      I wonder how America - I'll build a wall and make Mexico pay for it - will react.

      • No AGW won't kill us. People will kill us. When their lives are destroyed and their land no longer viable they will come looking for those people who still have both.

        With what resources do you suppose they would be waging war?

        • With what resources do you suppose they would be waging war?

          Who said waging war? Large countries already freak out about refugees numbering in the low thousands. The influx of refugees numbering in the millions and higher due to mass migration will cause the self-disintigration of society, especially the more racist ones.

          What you gonna do? Stand at the border and gun people down? Let's see how long that works as an internal policy. That may lead to your own country going to war with itself.

          • Who said waging war? Large countries already freak out about refugees numbering in the low thousands. The influx of refugees numbering in the millions and higher due to mass migration will cause the self-disintigration of society, especially the more racist ones.

            What you gonna do? Stand at the border and gun people down? Let's see how long that works as an internal policy. That may lead to your own country going to war with itself.

            If necessary absolutely. I have no problem with the threat of violence against acts of illegal invasion especially if the goal is to challenge / overthrow the state.

            Borders exist for a reason and people forcibly violating borders of other nations should fully expect to be opposed with violence if necessary. If I waltz into Canada without following the directions of the border guards they are not going to just look the other way and let me pass. They will oppose me with necessary amount of violence to for

  • ... someone tell the planet to turn its head and cough?

  • More money for Africa (Score:4, Insightful)

    by biggaijin ( 126513 ) on Saturday April 22, 2023 @08:17PM (#63470302)

    The UN committee will conclude, as usual, that the solution to the problem is for successful developed countries to transfer as much wealth as possible to undeveloped countries, mostly in Africa. There, the money will be used to build an expressway between the country's airport and the current leader's house and to pay off warlords.

    • Are you nuts? Imagine Africans wasting as many resources as we do. That planet already can't sustain us, let alone 10 times that many people doing the same.

  • a media outlet with little reputation left. I recall touring CNN in Atlanta back when they did News and Ted owned it. It was pretty cool. To bad! they have fallen so far.

  • I stopped reading at "CNN reports" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Saturday April 22, 2023 @09:21PM (#63470410)

    CNN has no credibility

  • I was unaware CNN was still going. I rarely even see it in airports now and assumed it was just fading into the sunset

  • Surprised? Only if you are a fool (Score:3)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Sunday April 23, 2023 @05:42AM (#63470756) Journal
    The western nations continue to drop our emissions, while CHina grows theirs AND UNDEVELOPED NATIONS, at a rate much higher than what the west can cut.
    What is needed is to require that ALL NATIONS add no more GHG emissions, and ideally drop theirs. Yes, even those under the average.

    Now, a number of trolls will jump up and scream that CHina has the RIGHT to continue growing their emissions, even though the average age of their coal plant is now less than 20 years (which means another 40 years of outrageous emissions), have backed plans to grow coal plants from 1.25 TW to 1.75-2.0 TW BEFORE 2030, and their GHG are already higher than Germany's and just under America's. ALL OF THESE NATIONS are above AVERAGE. As such, we all need to come down. So screaming that America's is high (while ignoring the fact that we are actually in the top 30, not top 20, 10, or even #1 as the trolls would have ppl believe) does nothing to help. All it does is shows that these ppl are trolls and do not give a fuck about AGW.

    Politicians need to apply a slowly increasing tax on consumed goods/services based on where the worst part/service comes from. If they are still growing, then do 100% of the tax. If steady state, then 50% of tax. If it is dropping, then make it zero tax.
    This way we force ALL nations to lower their emissions.

    • You have it backward though: https://www.iea.org/reports/co... [iea.org]

      On 2022, China CO2 emissions declined by 0.2%. US CO2 emissions rose by 0.8%. I know, facts and data can be a bitch.

      • Worse... it doesn't matter if someone else is sending more pollution into the atmosphere, what matters is doing what you can to reduce the total. This means your own nation's emissions first, and others through diplomatic and economic means second.

        If China was implementing a massive program to burn oil for no other purpose than increasing carbon emissions, that's still no excuse for doing nothing domestically.

        Seriously, does, "They're trying to kill me, so I better stab myself first" make any kind of sense

      • Actually, I live on facts/data.
        2021/2022 are anomalies due to COVID;
        Here is the data set that shows how nations are doing [europa.eu]
        Year: 1990 2000 2005 2015 2019 2020 2021
        China: 2425.64 3703.34 6338.44 10771.82 11771.07 11948.12 12466.32
        United States 5067.48 6004.36 5950.65 5179.72 5011.10 4464.11 4752.08 12.55

        I am going to guess that a graph will help more.
        China [europa.eu]
        America [europa.eu]
        Plain and simple, America has dropped almost every year, since 2008. China has grown almost every year since 1980, but since mid

        • China has grown almost every year since 1980, but since mid 80s, they have grown more than what the entire west could cut.

          When looking at the numbers, the picture is more complex though:
          - Between 1980 and 2000, US CO2 emissions were growing too. With an average per capita at ~21tCO2/capita. And today they are at 15tCO2/capita.
          - Since 1980, China emissions rose, but per capita they are now "only" at ~8tCO2/capita

          CO2 emissions are directly linked to standard of living. You can't expect people in China to not want to improve their standard, and to do so they did as the Western countries did in their time: fossil fuel burning (bec

          • When looking at the numbers, the picture is more complex though: - Between 1980 and 2000, US CO2 emissions were growing too. With an average per capita at ~21tCO2/capita. And today they are at 15tCO2/capita. - Since 1980, China emissions rose, but per capita they are now "only" at ~8tCO2/capita

            First, America, like many other nations HIT 21 t CO2/capita. That was a maximum It absolutely was NOT our average, except for about 2-3 years.
            Secondly, America is down to 12-13 t/capita and still dropping.
            Third, China is OVER 9 t/capita, and that is based on lies that China puts forth. Keep in mind that CHina does not allow instruments to measure their CO2, nor are we allowed to see dirctly what they import/export/consume. China's numbers, esp. on weak ass groups like IEA, are based on what Chinese govern

  • Two planet meet.

    "You look horrible, what's wrong?"
    "I got homo sapiens"
    "OH, don't worry, it will pass"

  • Time to go fully nuclear! Cool.

    Oh, you just wanted to preen, emote, and blame the other political party? Carry on then.

  • CNN fails its truth checkup daily.

  • for the environment

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