The Climate Change Thread

[TrickyRicky]

Sunrise, maybe I just worded my last post poorly. Yes emissions are going up in Saskatchewan, NF and skyrocketing in Alberta. They are falling in all the other provinces.

 

[W. K. Lis]

How produce stickers contribute to climate change

From link.

About three years ago, Susan Antler was at a composting facility in B.C. when a truck full of rotting avocados pulled up.

It was "51 feet, 52 feet [approx. 14 metres] — like, [a] massive truckload," said Antler, executive director of the Compost Council of Canada. "And the facility just wouldn't accept it."

Why? Because each of those thousands of rotting avocados was "contaminated" by a little plastic PLU (or price look up) sticker. It carries a number, standardized around the globe, that identifies the type of produce and whether it's conventionally or organically grown, to help cashiers enter the right price at the supermarket checkout.

Jane Proctor, vice-president of policy and issue management at the Canadian Produce Marketing Association, said while the stickers are voluntary, most chain supermarkets require them. "It is not a regulatory requirement," she said. "It's a business requirement."

The stickers are too small to be screened out in the waste sorting process, but don't break down during composting. Antler said they end up sprinkled as "foreign matter" through the finished product — compost that's destined to be used to enrich soils in places such as gardens, farmland and parks.

The stickers aren't toxic and don't harm the compost — although presumably they add microplastics to the environment — so it's mostly a cosmetic issue, Antler acknowledged. But there are strict guidelines about how much foreign matter is allowed in compost, especially higher grades. And too much can make compost unmarketable.

Mindful of the old adage "garbage in, garbage out," composting plants that want to produce and sell higher grades of compost need to be careful about what raw materials they take.

In the case of the B.C. facility, Antler offered to remove the stickers from the avocados, but the composting plant manager declined. "He just sent the truck away, so that material went to landfill." She's pretty sure it happens all the time. "The scale of waste is massive."

It's not just a waste — it could also speed up climate change.

At a compost plant, organic matter typically decomposes in the presence of oxygen, generating CO2 and compost that can nourish plants. At a landfill, it decomposes without oxygen into methane, a greenhouse gas that has about 30 times the global warming impact of CO2 over a century. (Some organics plants use anaerobic digestion, which also generates methane, but it is captured and burned so it doesn't go into the atmosphere.)

But there are solutions, including other ways to affix the PLU to bulk fruits and veggies, such as:

• Paper stickers or certified compostable plastic stickers, which have been successfully tested in the U.S.
• Ink stamps like the ones used to label eggs.
• "Branding" with lasers.

Proctor said produce sellers often don't see the extra investment as worthwhile when many customers don't have access to municipal composting. She added that the recent introduction of scannable barcodes on PLU stickers — which Canadian stores are expected to adopt soon — requires the labels to show fine detail and maintain durability, which only plastic enables.

In the meantime, you can help by making sure you take the little stickers off your fruit and veggie peels and rinds before tossing them in your green bin at home.

 

[Johnny Au]

Time to etch QR codes on individual pieces of produce using lasers.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Sunrise, maybe I just worded my last post poorly. Yes emissions are going up in Saskatchewan, NF and skyrocketing in Alberta. They are falling in all the other provinces.

Ok, cheers for reminding me that I'm not actually insane and that the memory still do work.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Scotland to reach 100% renewables in time to host 2020 climate summit

From link.

Scotland is shaping up as an exemplary host for this year’s UN climate conference, with data showing it is likely to meet its national target of 100 per cent renewable electricity in good time for the crucial November meeting.

Scotland, whose southern city of Glasgow was named last September as the host for the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26), has a goal to source the equivalent of 100% of its electricity demand from renewable energy sources by the end of this year.

And it is shaping up to do just that. Having closed its last coal-fired power plant in 2016, the UK country’s only remaining fossil fuel source is a gas-fired power station at Peterhead in Aberdeenshire.

In the meantime, Scotland has been making great progress on renewables – and particularly wind power.

On the technology front, it lays claim to installing the world’s first floating offshore wind farm, the 30MW Hywind project, to which it added last June a 1MW onshore battery storage system.

And in terms of output, a new national record was set in November last year, with production outstripping demand on 20 out of 30 days and over the whole month providing 109 per cent of electricity demand.

Scotland’s largest source of renewables – the Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm – can generate enough power for 450,000 homes. And the Seagreen Wind Farm, which is being built off Angus, will be bigger again, and able to power one million homes once completed.

And while it’s not quite officially 100 per cent renewable yet – according to the BBC the most recent official figure was 76.2%, based on 2018 data – a recent report from Scottish Renewables estimates it will hit its mark within the year thanks largely to ambitious and forward-thinking government policy.

As well as its 100 per cent renewables target, the Scottish government has set itself a legally-binding target to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2045, five years ahead of the UK, and leagues ahead of countries like Australia. (And as the BBC points out, Scotland also doesn’t rely on international credits or any other sort of tricky accounting to disappear emissions.)

All told, this will provide great inspiration for COP26, which is being billed as one of the most important international climate conferences since Paris in 2015.

As noted in The Conversation earlier this month, the two-week meeting – from November 9-19 – is considered pivotal for a number of reasons, not least being that 2020 is the year when all countries, including Australia, are asked to submit their new long-term climate goals.

The meeting will also be expected to tie off the loose ends of COP25, in particular to set out the rules for a carbon market between countries, deal with Australia’s much criticised claims of “surplus credits” and set in motion the 2015 Paris Agreement as the key driver of international climate action.

And it will be held just after the US presidential election. The results of the last election, when Donald Trump won in 2016, left delegates at the Marrakesh conference stunned, and many in tears. Trump has since announced he will pull the US out of the Paris treaty.

Meantime, Doug Ford is doing the opposite.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Nice one....now clean up Glasgow! Just playing...that's probably impossible.

Costa Rica, Scotland......anywhere else?

 

[tiffer24]

COPENHAGEN -- Britain on Monday issued five "severe" flood warnings, meaning there is a danger to life, in three central English counties as gale storms also caused flooding and electricity outages across other parts of northern Europe.

The British environment secretary said climate change was making extreme weather events more common, but denied the government was unprepared.

"We'll never be able to protect every single household just because of the nature of climate change and the fact that these weather events are becoming more extreme, but we've done everything that we can do with a significant sum of money, and there's more to come," George Eustice said.

The five "severe" flood warnings were issued in the counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire.

The storm, named Dennis, which started over the weekend, prompted widespread travel disruptions across Europe and had the potential to cause more damage than the previous week's storm, named Ciara.

https://www.cp24.com/world/britain-issues-severe-flood-warnings-as-storm-continues-1.4814895

 

[W. K. Lis]

Will there be a shift in the wine regions in Ontario? Could it shift northwards?

From link.

From limestone and loam to lake breezes and sheltering ridges, the local geography, soil and climate define Ontario’s appellations and sub-appellations and create subtle variations in our fine wines.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

^ Evidently, Durham Region is out of the equation for the next wine country

 

[W. K. Lis]

^ Evidently, Durham Region is out of the equation for the next wine country

Hope the map is "not to scale" and not a "prediction of shifting shorelines".

 

[pman]

PEC wineries would benefit a lot from climate change. While the County has some great soils, the climate is marginal for Pinot Noir, with harsh winters and sometimes insufficiently long growing seasons for ripening. A longer season would also help C-S in Niagara, which is sometimes (often) under-ripe. Of course, Niagara should probably go with its strength and focus on Cab Franc in the reds, but that’s another story.

 

[lenaitch]

It seems the Meaford/Thornbury/Beaver Valley area has already been lost.

 

[Johnny Au]

Grand Island in the Niagara River became inundated for good.

 

[W. K. Lis]

A Warm Winter Left Germany Unable to Produce Its Famed Ice Wines
Known for their sweet flavor, ice wines are made from grapes left to freeze on the vine

Dated March 5, 2020

From link.

Known for their uniquely sweet flavor, ice wines are a prized treat made from grapes that are frozen while still on the vine. The viticultural tradition originated around 200 years ago in Germany, which remains a top producer of the drink. But this winter, according to David McHugh of the Associated Press, the country’s ice wine output has been drastically compromised by unseasonably warm temperatures.

The German Wine Institute announced this week that just one winery—Zimmerle, located in the region of Württemberg—had managed to harvest a batch of ice wine. "Beyond that, we are not aware of any other winemaker from one of the 13 German wine regions, who managed to produce ice wine in this mild winter,” said the institute's Ernst Büscher. As far as experts know, 2019 marks the first vintage, or harvest year, in German history with such a low yield.

Allowing grapes to freeze on the vine concentrates their flavors, leading to a delicious dessert beverage. But making ice wines is a finicky process. The grapes have to be picked when temperatures drop below 19 degrees Fahrenheit; if left too long, however, they might start to thaw and rot, which dilutes their juices. Winemakers have to be prepared to harvest the grapes within a few hours of temperatures dropping to the right range. During picking season, which can fall anywhere between December and February “producers ... have a small army of workers ready to harvest hard grapes in the dark at a moment’s notice,” explains Atlas Obscura.

This year, however, the weather in Germany simply did not get cold enough in most of the country’s wine regions. “[T]he required minimum temperature ... was not reached," the German Wine Institute said.

The yield of the 2019 vintage was exceptionally low; the lone successful harvest in Württemberg produced less than 100 liters of wine. But this is not the first time that temperate weather has confounded the efforts of Germany’s ice wine producers. Only seven winemakers managed to produce the sweet stuff during the 2017 vintage. “Before that, the winter of 2014-2015 was so mild that ice wine from the 2014 vintage is also an absolute rarity,” Büscher said, adding that the output of the 2013 vintage was low, too.

Germany certainly does seem to be heading towards warmer winters, says Peter Hoffmann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research to the New York Times’ Christopher F. Schuetze. This winter, in fact, marked the second-mildest since record keeping began in 1881. “It could be an anomaly,” Hoffmann says, “but the longer you observe, the clearer the trend for warmer winter temperatures stands out.”

Shifting temperatures threaten to adversely impact the country in a number of ways, including the melting of Alpine glaciers, increased precipitation during winters and increasingly dry summers. Heat and drought conditions put Germany’s crops at risk—including, perhaps, ice wine grapes. Because it is difficult to produce, ice wine is already an expensive commodity. “If the warm winters accumulate in the next few years, ice wines from the German wine regions will soon become even more of a precious rarity than they already are,” Büscher says.

Ice wine is no longer a uniquely German speciality; Canada is now the largest producer of ice wine in the world, though its industry is also threatened by climate change. Still, “the most famous (and expensive)” ice wines continue to hail from Germany, according to the Times. Whether the country will be able to keep producing its famed alcoholic delicacy is now uncertain.

"In [the] future,” Büscher tells CBC Radio, “maybe you don't have any ice wine anymore."

 

[AlbertC]

Climate crisis may have pushed world's tropical coral reefs to tipping point of 'near-annual' bleaching

Graham Readfearn
Tue 31 Mar 2020 17.30 BST

Rising ocean temperatures could have pushed the world’s tropical coral reefs over a tipping point where they are hit by bleaching on a “near-annual” basis, according to the head of a US government agency program that monitors the globe’s coral reefs.

Climate crisis may have pushed world's tropical coral reefs to tipping point of 'near-annual' bleaching

Exclusive: Mass bleaching seen along Great Barrier Reef could mark start of global-scale event, expert warns

www.theguardian.com