[GWSG] Benefits of action; COP26 poem; blue carbon; going under well; going further; old pres on COP 26

[Tilley, Al]

1. Limiting emissions to hold heating to 2C would lessen the amount of ozone and particulates in our air. That would save an estimated 1.4 million premature American deaths by 2040 and 4.5 million through 2070. If you would like that valued in economic terms, the article will comply. It’s a great bargain even if the transition to renewables costs anything instead of saving money, as seems most likely. We would also enjoy less dementia, fewer heat deaths, and other benefits, detailed in the PNAS study. Climate action need not be for just the grandkids or the future of the planet. Selfish and myopic people will have reason to rejoice as well. Further recent studies explore benefits in other countries from a reduction in emissions.   https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/11/clean-energy-could-save-american-lives-to-tune-of-700-billion-per-year/

2.  Simon Armitage, English Poet Laureate, offers “Futurama” on the occasion of COP26. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/05/a-strange-poem-for-strange-times-a-response-to-cop26

3. Carbon sequestered in the oceans, blue carbon, has often been neglected by climate planners. One restored coastal marsh in England sequestered over 15 times a much C as a woodland its size. As for C from the sea, “bottom trawling could release as much carbon as global aviation emissions”—about 5% of the total. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/06/dangerous-blindspot-why-overlooking-blue-carbon-could-sink-us
Not mentioned in the article, or much at all in discussions of CCS, is kelp permaculture, which would alleviate stress on marine biosystems by reducing seawater acidity as it cheaply sequesters carbon. https://theconversation.com/how-farming-giant-seaweed-can-feed-fish-and-fix-the-climate-81761
The Guardian article does not mention sequestration longevity, but because forests burn, are harvested, fall victim to parasites, or otherwise give up their carbon more regularly than costal marshes are destabilized, blue carbon may provide more dependable carbon sequestration than does forestation. Kelp permaculture can sequester carbon on scales of hundreds to thousands of years.
A fine novel with a marsh-savvy heroine: Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens (2015).

4. As the ocean rises, marshes may adapt or become open water, and what was dry land can become coastal marsh—healthy ones, if we plan well and clean up gas stations, septic tanks, and brownfields to welcome them. This 8-minute video shows some projects underway on the upper US East Coast.  https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/11/how-the-coastal-mid-atlantic-is-haunted-by-sea-level-rise/

5. As the pledges of COP26 could limit heating to 1.8C above industrial levels, it is good to remind ourselves of why we need to strive to limit it yet further. This article sketches the differences for us between 2C and 1.5C. (Some knowledgeable people consider that Greenland, Arctic sea ice, and the West Antarctic have already passed their tipping points, and that the Amazon, Arctic permafrost, and the AMOC may have.)  https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/explainer-whats-the-difference-between-15-c2-b0c-and-2-c2-b0c-of-global-warming/ar-AAQppby

6. The president of the 2015 Paris summit celebrates pledges at COP26 which could limit heating to 1.8C, warns that we have not yet seen guidelines on how the pledges will be achieved or verified, and urges us to devise new measures which would take us to 1.5C. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/05/president-of-paris-summit-says-18c-commitment-is-only-hypothetical

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