Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Scientists find vast numbers of illegal 'ghost roads' used to crack open pristine rainforest

loggers — Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

One of Brazil's top scientists, Eneas Salati, once said, "The best thing you could do for the Amazon rainforest is to blow up all the roads." He wasn't joking. And he had a point.

In an article published in Nature, my colleagues and I show that illicit, often out-of-control road building is imperiling forests in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. The roads we're studying do not appear on legitimate maps. We call them "ghost roads."

What's so bad about a road? A road means access. Once roads are bulldozed into rainforests, illegal loggers, miners, poachers and landgrabbers arrive. Once they get access, they can destroy forests, harm native ecosystems and even drive out or kill indigenous peoples. This looting of the natural world robs cash-strapped nations of valuable natural resources. Indonesia, for instance, loses around A$1.5 billion each year solely to timber theft.

All nations have some unmapped or unofficial roads, but the situation is especially bad in biodiversity-rich developing nations, where roads are proliferating at the fastest pace in human history.

Mapping ghost roads

For this study, my Ph.D. student Jayden Engert and I worked with Australian and Indonesian colleagues to recruit and train more than 200 volunteers.

This workforce then spent some 7,000 hours hand-mapping roads, using fine-scale satellite images from Google Earth. Our team of volunteers mapped roads across more than 1.4 million square kilometers of the Asia-Pacific region.

As the results rolled in, we realized we had found something remarkable. For starters, unmapped ghost roads seemed to be nearly everywhere. In fact, when comparing our findings to two leading road databases, OpenStreetMap and the Global Roads Inventory Project, we found ghost roads in these regions to be 3 to 6.6 times longer than all mapped roads put together.

When ghost roads appear, local deforestation soars—usually immediately after the roads are built. We found the density of roads was by far the most important predictor of forest loss, outstripping 38 other variables. No matter how one assesses them, roads are forest killers.

What makes this situation uniquely dangerous for conservation is that the roads are growing fast while remaining hidden and outside government control.

Roads and protected areas

Not even parks and protected areas in the Asia-Pacific are fully safe from illegal roads.

But safeguarding parks does have an effect. In protected areas, we found only one-third as many roads compared with nearby unprotected lands.

The bad news is that when people do build roads inside protected areas, it leads to about the same level of forest destruction compared to roads outside them.

Our findings suggest it is essential to limit roads and associated destruction inside protected areas. If we can find these roads using satellite images, authorities can too. Once an illegal road is found, it can be destroyed or at least mapped and managed as a proper legal road.

Keeping existing protected areas intact is especially urgent, given more than 3,000 protected areas have already been downsized or degraded globally for new roads, mines and local land-use pressures.

Hidden roads and the human footprint

The impact we have on the planet differs from place to place. To gauge how much impact we're having, researchers use the human footprint index, which brings together data on human activities such as roads and other infrastructure, land-uses, illumination at night from electrified settlements and so on. You can use the index to make heat-maps showing where human impacts are most or least pronounced.

We fed our ghost road discoveries into the index and compared two versions for eastern Borneo, one without ghost road information and one with it. The differences are striking.

When ghost roads are included in mapping the human impact on eastern Borneo, areas with "very high" human disturbance double in size, while the areas of "low" disturbance are halved.

Artificial intelligence

Researchers investigating other biodiversity-rich developing regions such as Amazonia and the Congo Basin have found many illegal unmapped roads in those locales too.

Ghost roads, it seems, are an epidemic. Worse, these roads can be actively encouraged by aggressive infrastructure-expansion schemes—most notably China's Belt and Road Initiative, now active in more than 150 nations.

For now, mapping ghost roads is very labor-intensive. You might think AI could do this better, but that's not yet true—human eyes can still outperform image-recognition AI software for mapping roads.

At our current rate of work, visually mapping all roads—legal and illicit—across Earth's land surface just once would require around 640,000 person-hours (or 73 person-years) to complete.

Given these challenges, our group and other researchers are now testing AI methods, hoping to provide accurate, global-scale mapping of ghost roads in close to real time. Nothing else can keep pace with the contemporary avalanche of proliferating roads.

We urgently need to be able to map the world's roads accurately and often. Once we have this information, we can make it public that so authorities, NGOs and researchers involved in forest protection can see what's happening.

Without this vital information, we're flying blind. Knowing what's happening in the rainforest is the first step to stopping the destruction.

More information: Jayden E. Engert et al, Ghost roads and the destruction of Asia-Pacific tropical forests, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07303-5

Journal information: Nature

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.Ghost roads speed destruction of Asia-Pacific tropical forests, finds study

NO FOOLIN'

Pyrite may contain valuable lithium, a key element for green energy

by European Geosciences Union

There's a reason airlines won't let you put your laptop in your checked luggage; the lithium-ion battery poses a serious fire hazard. But why? Lithium is incredibly reactive. For instance, pure lithium violently interacts with seemingly innocuous water, releasing heat and forming highly flammable hydrogen. This reactivity, however, is exactly why lithium makes a great material for batteries, and why it is a critical mineral for the green energy transition. Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in electric vehicles. Plus, they can store energy produced by renewable resources like solar and wind.

In recent years, lithium demand has skyrocketed. Primary sources for lithium like pegmatites and volcanic clays are well understood, but finding other stores that are safe and economical to exploit would be helpful. To that end, a team led by researchers from West Virginia University is exploring whether previous industrial operations (e.g., mine tailings or drill cuttings) could serve as a source of additional lithium without generating new waste materials.

Shailee Bhattacharya, a sedimentary geochemist and doctoral student working with Professor Shikha Sharma in the IsoBioGeM Lab at West Virginia University, presents the team's findings during the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2024, which is taking place from 14–19 April 2024.

The study focuses on 15 middle-Devonian sedimentary rock samples from the Appalachian basin in the U.S. The team found plenty of lithium in pyrite minerals in shale, Bhattacharya said, "which is unheard of."

Though the geologic literature lacked information on the intersection between lithium and sulfur-rich pyrite, the electrochemical and engineering world has already begun to look at how lithium-sulfur batteries could replace lithium-ion ones, Bhattacharya said. "I am trying to understand how lithium and pyrite could be associated with one another."

As it turns out, organic-rich shale may show potential for higher lithium recovery as a result of that curious interaction between lithium and pyrite. However, whether the observations can be extrapolated beyond samples from the current study site is not known.

"This is a well-specific study," Bhattacharya cautioned. But, this work is promising because it hints at the possibility that certain shales could be a lithium source that doesn't require new mines. "We can talk about sustainable energy without using a lot of energy resources," she said.

More information: Shailee Bhattacharya et al, Potential lithium enrichment in pyrites from organic-rich shales, (2024). DOI: 10.5194/egusphere-egu24-369

This poster will be presented in session ERE4.8 on Monday, 15 April, abstract: meetingorganizer.copernicus.or … EGU24/EGU24-369.html

Provided by European Geosciences Union

Direct lithium extraction from spent batteries for efficient lithium recycling

Swiss climate policy in spotlight after court ruling

by Nina LARSON

Switzerland's direct democracy system allows popular votes on a vast array of issues.

Switzerland, known for pristine countryside and snow-capped peaks, is facing scrutiny of its environmental policies after becoming the first country faulted by an international court for failing to do enough against climate change.

The European Court of Human Rights's ruling last week highlighted a number of failings in Swiss policies, but experts stressed that the wealthy Alpine country was not necessarily doing much worse than its peers.

"The judgment made it really clear that there are critical gaps in the Swiss domestic regulatory framework," said Tiffanie Chan, a policy analyst at the London School of Economics and Political Science specializing in climate change laws.

"But it's definitely not a Switzerland-only case," she told AFP.

Corina Heri, a postdoctoral researcher with the Climate Rights and Remedies Project at Zurich University, agreed.

"This doesn't mean in any way that ... only Switzerland has a problem," she told AFP.

The court last Tuesday ruled in favor of the Swiss association Elders for Climate Protection—2,500 women above the age of 64—who had complained Swiss authorities' "failings" on climate protection could "seriously harm" their health.

Elderly women are particularly vulnerable to the effects of heat waves, which due to climate change are becoming more frequent and intensifying, they argued.

The court agreed, ruling that the Swiss state's climate policy failures violated Article 8 of the European rights convention, which guarantees the "right to respect for private and family life

Insufficient'

The 2015 Paris Agreement set ambitious targets for governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the aim of preferably limiting warming to below global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

To help meet that goal, Switzerland has said it will cut emissions by 50 percent by 2030, compared to 1990-levels, and reach net zero by 2050.

That target is "average" on a global scale, according to independent monitor Climate Action Tracker (CAT)—which nonetheless deems Switzerland's climate targets, policies and finance as "insufficient" to help reach the Paris goals.

"Switzerland's climate policies and action until 2030 need substantial improvements to be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5C," it says.

To reach its 2030 target, Switzerland would need to slash emissions by at least 35 percent by next year, according to Geraldine Pflieger, head of Geneva University's science and environment institute.

But for now, Switzerland has cut emissions by less than 20 percent, which was the target it had set, and missed, for 2020.

"Switzerland is not on a favorable trajectory," Pflieger told AFP.

By comparison, the European Union as a whole has cut emissions by 31 percent, while experts believe it is on track to reach over 60 percent by 2030, Pflieger pointed out.

'Highly problematic'

But Chan stressed that many individual countries within the EU have also missed their 2020 targets.

"There are many challenges across Europe, which are similar to this case."

The comparison however looks worse for Switzerland when considering its heavy reliance on carbon offset projects abroad towards its promised cuts, experts say.

It does not quantify how much it plans to rely on such offsets to reach its targets, something CAT described as "highly problematic".

"The extent to which Switzerland relies on those is just huge," Charlotte Blattner, a senior lecturer and climate law expert at the University of Bern, told AFP.

Such projects, she lamented, typically "lack traceability, they are not really verifiable".

In addition, relying on them means "Switzerland misses a chance to basically transform its own infrastructure in a way that would align with climate policies".

Direct democracy dilemma

A major issue separating Switzerland from its peers is its direct democracy system, which allows popular votes on a vast array of issues, sometimes slowing down or derailing policies approved by government and parliament.

In 2021, voters rejected a new CO2 law, delaying implementation.

Finally last year, voters backed a new climate bill aimed at steering the country towards carbon neutrality by 2050.

"Direct democracy has not been a good friend for putting in place Swiss climate policies," Pflieger said.

Blattner however stressed that Switzerland's government can act fast in some cases.

She pointed to how it took emergency measures last year over the course of a weekend to rescue the country's second largest bank Credit Suisse from going belly-up.

"Here, no democratic vote of the people was necessary," she said.

"I think government should think more... of instituting effective climate change (action) rather than hiding behind excuses."

Top Europe court chides Switzerland in landmark climate ruling

Study shows how plants influence Europe's climate

by Tom Leonhardt, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg

The climate regulates plant growth and yet the climate is also influenced by plants. A study by Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), which was published in the journal Global Change Biology, has found that ecosystems can have a strong impact on Europe's climate depending on their plant mix.

The researchers combined satellite data with around 50,000 vegetation records from across Europe. A good 5% of regional climate regulation can be explained by local plant diversity. The analysis also shows that the effects depend on many other factors. Plants are able to influence the climate by reflecting sunlight, or cool their surroundings through evaporation.

"There is an extremely complex relationship between plants and the climate. At the one hand, the climate considerably influences plant growth as well as a plant's properties, such as how high it grows, how thick its leaves are, and how deep its roots go. At the other hand, plants influence climatic conditions in many different ways," explains Dr. Stephan Kambach, a research associate in the Department of Geobotany at MLU. For example, if plants reflect a lot of sunlight, less heat accumulates at that location. Plants also evaporate water, which cools their surroundings. In addition, plants bind large amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

However, according to Kambach, little was previously known about the extent to which the various functional traits of plants, such as the properties of its leaves and roots, affect climate. To close this knowledge gap, an international team led by MLU combined regional satellite data with local surveys of plants and plant traits at almost 50,000 locations in Europe.

"It was important for us to combine areas from very different habitats. Our data therefore includes information about coniferous, deciduous and evergreen deciduous forests, as well as various shrublands and open countryside formations," explains Professor Helge Bruelheide, the senior author of the study and head of the Department of Geobotany at MLU.

"We show that a significant proportion of the observed climate-regulating processes are explained by differences in the functional traits of local plants. Therefore, it depends greatly on which plants grow in which numbers in an ecosystem," continues Kambach.

However, the effects differed greatly between individual ecosystems, for example between evergreen coniferous and evergreen deciduous forests. "We were nevertheless able to prove that a higher plant cover reflects less sunlight and that larger leaves are associated with higher levels of evaporation and more carbon sequestration," the biologist explains.

The study is a key result of the European research project "FeedBaCks," which is investigating the feedback mechanisms between biodiversity and climate and their consequences for humans. It is coordinated by the University of Zurich.

"Our study also provides important points of departure for nature conservation and politics. The potential impact and feedback effects of biodiversity should be taken into account when developing measures for mitigating climate change," concludes Helge Bruelheide.

More information: Stephan Kambach et al, Climate regulation processes are linked to the functional composition of plant communities in European forests, shrublands, and grasslands, Global Change Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1111/gcb.17189

Journal information: Global Change Biolog

Provided by Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg Global climate data insufficiently explains composition of local plant species, say geobotanists

New catalyst allows energy-friendly ammonia production for fertilizers and alternative fuel

by RIKEN

Researchers led by Satoshi Kamiguchi at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) in Japan have discovered a greener way to produce ammonia, an essential compound used in fertilizers.The study, published in Chemical Science, describes a new catalyst that works stably at relatively low temperatures, thus reducing the amount of energy and money needed to synthesize ammonia. Because ammonia is an excellent way to store hydrogen safely, as well as an excellent alternative fuel in its own right, this discovery will make it easier to switch from fossil fuels to a carbon-neutral and green-energy economy.

Fertilizers are a way to provide extra nitrogen to plants, which helps them grow and increases crop yields. The nitrogen in fertilizers comes from ammonia, which is made by breaking apart hydrogen (H2) and nitrogen (N2) molecules and joining the individual elements together into ammonia gas (NH3) through the Haber–Bosch process. The reaction requires extremely high pressure and temperatures, and an iron catalyst.

The extremely high pressure and temperatures—about 200 atm and 500°C (932°F)—needed for the reaction require a large amount of energy. Because ammonia is so widely used in fertilizers and other industries, worldwide production thus consumes a huge amount of energy. To help reduce ammonia's energy footprint, the RIKEN CSRS researchers have developed a more eco- and energy-friendly reaction that can proceed stably at much lower temperatures without becoming deactivated.

The biggest hurdle was breaking down nitrogen gas because there is a strong triple bond between the two nitrogen atoms within a molecule of nitrogen gas. "The trick was to use ultrasmall molybdenum metal particles prepared from a hexanuclear molecular metal halide cluster, which was then activated with hydrogen gas," says Kamiguchi.

Once activated, multiple molybdenum atoms work together to break the strong nitrogen-nitrogen bonds and drive ammonia synthesis quickly. When tested, this new method was able to create ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen gases continuously for more than 500 hours at 200°C (392°F), greatly reducing the required temperature when using the conventional Haber–Bosch process.

In addition to impacting the fertilizer industry, the new way of producing ammonia could indirectly help reduce carbon emissions if ammonia fuel was used worldwide. Ammonia fuel can be burned directly in internal combustion engines without emitting any CO2, but has not become a practical alternative because of the high-energy Haber-Bosch process.

One of the advantages of the new method is that it would allow lower-energy ammonia production, which would greatly reduce carbon emissions if ammonia fuel is used on a large scale.

At the same time that ammonia is storing nitrogen for fertilizers, it's also storing hydrogen. This makes it an ideal carrier for hydrogen, which some consider to be the ideal source of energy. When the stored hydrogen is needed, it can be released from ammonia and used as fuel without emitting carbon dioxide.

"Replacing the Haber-Bosch process with our new method should result in worldwide energy-saving," says Kamiguchi. "If ammonia fuel and hydrogen fuel are used in much larger amounts, vastly reducing the energy needed to synthesize ammonia will lead to lower CO2 emissions and help prevent further global warming."

One problem still remains. The hydrogen needed to make ammonia is itself still produced using fossil fuels, and in the necessary large quantities would also lead to tremendous CO2 emissions and energy consumption. Kamiguchi, therefore, notes, "When our catalyst system is combined with green H2 production from renewable energy, the emission of global-warming CO2 could be reduced even more."

Currently, the research team is focusing on adding promoters to the molybdenum-based catalyst that will make ammonia synthesis more efficient.

More information: Satoshi Kamiguchi et al, Catalytic ammonia synthesis on HY-zeolite-supported angstrom-size molybdenum cluster, Chemical Science (2024). DOI: 10.1039/D3SC05447K

Journal information: Chemical Science

Provided by RIKEN

Engineers 'symphonize' cleaner ammonia production

Report explores possibilities of capturing and using carbon dioxide for sustainable production routes

by Christine Dillmann, DECHEMA Gesellschaft für Chemische Technik und Biotechnologie e.V.

Possibilities to capture and use carbon dioxide for sustainable production routes — Credit: DECHEMA Gesellschaft für Chemische Technik und Biotechnologie e.V.

A new DECHEMA report "Carbon for Power-to-X—Suitable CO2 sources and integration in PtX value chains" deals with possibilities of capturing and utilizing carbon dioxide for sustainable production routes. Carbon dioxide can serve as a carbon feed for numerous climate friendly commodities produced with Power-to-X technologies. The report elaborates on point sources and state-of-the-art capture methods.

Climate neutral commodities produced with sustainable power—that is the promise of Power-to-X (PtX). The PtX concept unites numerous innovative technologies to establish value chains that are fueled by renewable energy. For this reason, PtX is considered to be a relevant contribution for the industrial energy transition. However, for many PtX routes, carbon is required to substitute materials and energy carriers which are conventionally based on fossil resources.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a suitable source of carbon, since it can serve as the starting point to produce fuels, polymers, and a myriad of base chemicals. In the recent report, DECHEMA identifies point sources and describes various technologies to capture CO2.

"Today's value chains of most commonly used products are immensely shaped by the petrochemical industry, which deliver basic chemicals like methanol," says co-author Luisa López. "These fossil-based molecules are currently produced in megaton scale. PtX enables us to establish alternative production routes for these essential compounds, based on CO2."

Currently, CO2 is mainly a waste product in many sectors. About 37 gigatons of CO2 per year are emitted globally into the atmosphere. Although efforts to minimize these emissions are being carried out, remaining CO2 flows can be utilized as feedstock for PtX production.

The report shows that CO2 can be acquired from energy and industry sectors, biogenic processes, waste and wastewater and the atmospheric air. Sources in which the use of fossil resources are involved, have additional implications concerning sustainability, and potential lock-in effects must be considered. Therefore, CO2 sources with a closed carbon cycle are more suitable to achieve sustainability goals.

"Biogenic sources and direct air capture (DAC) could serve as sustainable carbon feed that is most accepted, due to the possibility of achieving a closed carbon cycle," says co-author Dr. Chokri Boumrifak. "Nevertheless, biomass is in great demand in other sectors as well, and its capacities are limited.

"DAC, as a theoretically unlimited available source, requires on the other hand high amounts of energy compared to other sources, and its large-scale applications are still very cost intensive. Therefore, unavoidable CO2 emissions from the industrial sector should be considered as an additional point source."

These technologies are already well developed, and their application depends on factors such as the quality of the stream composition, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. Amine gas treatment is among all CO2 separation methods the most matured technology and has already been widely commercialized.

Several other separation techniques, namely cryogenic separation, pressure swing adsorption, vacuum pressure swing adsorption, membrane separation, and chemical looping combustion are employed in carbon dioxide separation.

For combustion processes, the report demonstrates how carbon capture can be applied via different approaches. The simplest method consists on extracting CO2 from the exhaust gas after combustion with air. Much more advanced are approaches that either pre-treat the fuel via gasification or combust the fuel with pure oxygen to gain CO2 in higher purity. Moreover, CO2 can be captured directly from the atmosphere.

The captured CO2 can be utilized through either already existing production routes or newly established processes to synthesize chemicals with added value. The primary production routes with CO2 as feedstock include methanol synthesis (as a precursor for fuels, polymers, acids, etc.), Fischer-Tropsch (which produces fuels, waxes, naphtha and methane) and carbonylation processes (such as ibuprofen, acrylic glass etc.).

Adaption of these production routes to a PtX concept require novel technologies to convert CO2 to the respective precursor. One of the most advanced use-case for PtX are Power-to-Liquid (PtL) processes for the production of synthetic hydrocarbons such as fuels.

How CO2 will be integrated in the future depends on regulatory aspects that clarify which carbon source can be labeled as sustainable and infrastructure measures to supply carbon where it is needed. Besides these uncertainties, CO2 still will be a key component to push forward PtX products as an alternative to fossil-based materials and fuels.

More information: Report: Carbon for Power-to-X: Suitable CO2 sources and integration in PtX value chains

Provided by DECHEMA Gesellschaft für Chemische Technik und Biotechnologie e.V.

Researcher leads breakthrough in production of green carbon monoxide using light

Iceland volcano still spewing lava, one month on

by Jérémie RICHARD

Some 3.6 cubic metres of lava per second was being pumped out last week.

Orange lava bubbles and pops, occasionally spewing large fountains from a volcano that has been erupting for a month in Iceland, the second-longest eruption since the region's volcanic activity reawakened in March 2021.

"It's continuing at a pretty stable rate at the moment and we don't see any real signs that it will end in the near future," Benedikt Ofeigsson, geophysicist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO), told AFP.

On March 16, lava burst out of a crack in the ground at Sundhnukagigar, on the Reykjanes peninsula in southwestern Iceland, and has flowed ever since.

The volcano was pumping out some 3.6 cubic meters of lava per second in the most recent measurements taken on April 9, according to the IMO.

Other eruptions in the same region in December, January and February—preceded by the evacuation in November of 4,000 residents in the nearby town of Grindavik—likely created favorable conditions for a lasting eruption.

"Now there is an open channel to the surface," Ofeigsson said.

Magma is making its way through the Earth's upper crust from a depth of at least 10 kilometers (6.2 miles).

This scenario is similar to the first eruption in the region, near Mount Fagradalsfjall in March 2021, which lasted six months.

By contrast, the other eruptions in the past few months have only lasted a few days.

In addition, the ground has been observed rising—so-called inflation—in the nearby area of Svartsengi, home to a geothermal plant providing electricity and water to 30,000 people on the peninsula.

The inflation suggests that "all the magma coming from this depth doesn't have the capacity to go straight to the surface (and) is partly stored in this magma storage in Svartsengi," Ofeigsson said.

Until March 2021, the Reykjanes peninsula had not experienced an eruption for eight centuries.

Volcanologists now believe a new era of seismic activity has begun in the region.

Site off-limits

While the area's previous eruption sites have been open to the public, authorities have closed this one, wary of visitors flooding the evacuated town of Grindavik.

"I wanted to see some of the lava fields, maybe some flowing lava, get up close to a volcano. It was part of the whole 'land of ice and fire' thing, right?" tourist David Cordova, a 46-year-old engineer from Texas, told AFP.

He still hoped to get "some cool visuals" flying his drone over the crater.

Many tourists park by the roadside near the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa to take in the plumes of smoke rising from the ground just past a section of road blanketed by flowing lava in February and March and subsequently rebuilt.

The Blue Lagoon, Iceland's biggest tourist attraction, now resembles a fortress, protected by a hastily-built wall of earth towering a dozen meters high.

The spa's turquoise waters reopened to the public on April 6 after a three-week closure.

The spa has however had to close temporarily for two days since then due to air pollution linked to gas emissions and unfavorable winds.

Homes for sale

The small fishing town of Grindavik, bathed in glorious spring sunshine, is now a ghost town.

A few die-hard residents have returned to live in neighborhoods less at risk from the lava flow, but the vast majority packed their belongings long ago, accepting an offer to sell their homes to the state.

Thorkatla, a realtor specially created in response to the emergency, has received 675 applications, with the state offering 95 percent of the estimated current value. The first sales went through last Friday.

"We, at least at this point, need to start a new life, not here in Grindavik," resident Solny Palsdottir told AFP.

Her house, which she built herself 15 years ago and where she and her husband raised their five sons and a dog, is now uninhabitable, the structure cracked by the thousands of earthquakes in November that preceded the wave of eruptions.

Just a few blocks away on the edge of town, lava flowed into the streets of Grindavik during the January eruption, engulfing three homes.

Yet Palsdottir refuses to say goodbye for good.

"I really believe in my heart that I will come back, even though no one can say if it will be after some years or one year," she said.

"I feel it in my heart that Grindavík will bloom again."

A volcano in Iceland is erupting for the fourth time in 3 months, sending plumes of lava skywards

Most countries are struggling to meet climate pledges from 2009, emissions tracking study shows

by University College London

Nineteen out of 34 countries surveyed failed to fully meet their 2020 climate commitments set 15 years ago in Copenhagen, according to a new study led by UCL researchers.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, compared the actual net carbon emissions of more than 30 nations to their 2009 pledged emission reduction targets set during the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

The paper led by researchers at UCL and Tsinghua University is the first effort to comprehensively gauge how well countries were able to meet their Nationally Determined Contribution reduction pledges from COP15.

Of the 34 nations analyzed in the study, 15 successfully met their goals while 12 failed outright. The remaining seven countries fell into a category the study authors termed the "halfway group": nations that reduced the carbon emissions within their own borders but did so in part by using trade to shift emissions they would have made to other countries. Known as "carbon leakage" or "carbon transfer," this outsourcing of carbon emissions is a growing concern among environmental policy makers as countries seek to meet newer net-zero targets.

To track this carbon leakage the researchers used a "consumption-based" emissions tracking method which provides a more comprehensive scheme to calculate a country's total carbon emissions. It not only accounts for the emissions originating from economic activities within the nation's territorial borders, but the carbon footprint of imported goods manufactured abroad.

Lead author Professor Jing Meng (UCL Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction) said, "It's important to be able to completely track carbon emissions, even when they're offshored, enabled by consumption-based analysis. Our concern is that the countries that struggled to reach their commitment from 2009 will likely encounter even more substantial difficulties reducing emissions even further."

These emissions goals were set in 2009 at the COP15 international climate summit in Copenhagen. There, despite being unable to reach a comprehensive global agreement, individual countries around the world established their own individual emissions reductions targets. This meant that established goals varied widely, from Croatia's modest but successful pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 5%, to Switzerland's relatively ambitious but unsuccessful effort to reduce its carbon emissions by 20–30% by 2020, relative to 1990 levels.

The research also highlights the disparities between the countries' different starting points. Though four eastern European nations—Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Romania—were successfully able to achieve their goals, the researchers point out that this was largely because much of the region's industry involved many outdated and highly inefficient technologies left over from the early 1990s that they've more recently transitioned away from using.

In addition, the researchers caution that the countries that struggled the most to meet their COP15 goals are likely to encounter even bigger challenges in the future as they face even greater demand for energy as their economies further expand and develop.

The main ways that countries were able to meet their emissions targets were by increasing the amount of clean energy they produced, especially transitioning away from coal power, and making more efficient use of the energy produced. Countries unable to meet their targets were largely unable to do so because increased consumption associated with rising GDP per capita and population grown outpaced their efforts to increase efficiency, even though many of the countries were able to increase their efficiency somewhat.

The more recent Paris Agreement, signed in 2015 at COP21, established a more ambitious and comprehensive global framework to reduce carbon emissions which superseded these nationally determined contributions.

Senior author Professor Dabo Guan (UCL Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction) said, "Reducing emissions is critical to combat the ongoing climate crisis. To do this, it's imperative we have an accurate and reliable account of emissions, and this research shows some of the challenges countries face to reduce emissions while maintaining their economic growth. Developed countries have a dual role—rapidly reducing their own emissions, and providing financial aid and capacity building to developing countries, which most of them deliver insufficiently."

The full list of countries failing to meet their pledges is Australia, Austria, Canada, Cyprus, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland.

The halfway group is Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malta and Poland.

The group that achieved their emissions reduction goals are Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

More information: Revisiting Copenhagen climate mitigation targets, Nature Climate Change (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-024-01977-5

Journal information: Nature Climate Change

Provided by University College London G20 per capita coal emissions growing: research

Americans more willing to pay for climate action after extreme weather

by University of Vermont

People who personally experience extreme climate events, especially wildfires and hurricanes, are willing to pay significantly more for climate action, even if they report skepticism about human-caused climate change, finds new research from the University of Vermont

Trump voters who reported experiencing an extreme weather event were more likely to vote in favor of a clean energy referendum than Trump voters who had not experienced such events.

"Despite people's beliefs about climate change being human-caused, despite people's political affiliation—both of which we know have really strong impacts on how people think about climate change—we find that when people have experienced extreme events, they are more likely to support climate mitigation policy, even if it costs more money," says study co-author Rachelle Gould of University of Vermont (UVM).

For the study, researchers from UVM and University of Colorado examined survey data from nearly 6,000 residents of the U.S. northeast, southeast and West about their experiences of extreme climate events in the past five years. Respondents were asked if they would support a clean energy policy and if they would pay a utility bill increase—a random number between $5 and $265—which allowed the researchers to study how willingness to pay differed among respondents who reported different climate change beliefs and different experiences with extreme climate events. In addition to the survey data, the team independently verified the occurrence of the reported climate events using a variety of data sources.

The findings, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, suggest that when respondents have truly felt the impacts of climate change, regardless of their stated stances on the issue, they are willing to pay more for a means of mitigating climate change—about $100 more per year than people with similar beliefs and attributes who hadn't experienced an extreme event.

"When climate change is a distant concept, we've had a hard time getting people to be willing to actually pay more money for a mitigation policy," study co-author Trisha Shrum of UVM says. "There's something that clicks when climate change comes to your doorstep in a way that makes people willing to say, 'Ah, I get it, it's worth it to invest in renewable energy.'" She adds, "It was very interesting to see that effect even among people who report that they think maybe the climate is changing, but it's not caused by humans."

According to the researchers, the study is novel in various ways. While past research has explored the effects of confirmed extreme events on people's beliefs or examined outcomes for people who'd reported experiencing an extreme event, this research paired people's reported experiences with external climate data—the first study to bring both methods together to see how they match up.

Also novel is the researchers' separate considerations of different extreme climate events, to understand how each affects respondents' willingness to pay for climate mitigation policies. For example, hurricanes and wildfires had a strong effect on willingness to pay, while tornadoes and droughts did not have a significant effect on their own.

In addition to mental and emotional anguish, climate disasters can also create financial devastation. From medical costs to cleanup of homes and communities to lost property or the need to move—extreme climate events can leave behind tremendous financial costs for those who live through them.

"People can get really polarized on big ideological issues," says study co-author Donna Ramirez-Harrington of UVM. "But when you look at people's firsthand experiences with climate change, the results imply that they understand how it can hit their pocketbook. I think that's when decisions get made, and at the end of the day, those who experience extreme events first-hand are willing to pay more."

What does this mean? The authors note that there are different ways to view the data, but they strike an optimistic note. "There's a hopeful message here," Gould says. "People recognize climate change as an important issue that's worth spending a bit of money on. They are willing to contribute to the societal good, and that is encouraging."

More information: Rachelle K. Gould et al, Experience with extreme weather events increases willingness-to-pay for climate mitigation policy, Global Environmental Change (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102795

Provided by University of Vermont

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