Whoa! Scientists back away from long-held dire climate scenario

Comparisons among four IPCC scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions. Credit…Alaska Science Center

By Brad Plumer and Eric Niiler, The New York Times

When scientists try to model how hot Earth could get this century, they typically look at a range of possibilities for how much planet-warming pollution humans might pump into the atmosphere. These scenarios get updated every seven years or so.

In the latest update, the researchers abandoned a dire — and often criticized — high-emissions scenario known as RCP8.5 that has been prominently cited in thousands of climate studies over the past decade. The authors said the scenario was now “implausible” given recent energy trends.

Last weekend, President Trump weighed in, suggesting that the revision showed that global warming wasn’t a threat and that “the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!”

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Some encouraging signs from the CA chemical tank drama scene

A crack in a tank at an Orange County, California, chemical plant may be lowering the tank’s internal temperature, reducing the risk of an explosion. One of three tanks is now ‘neutralized.’ The danger zone posed by the other two is three to five miles around the plant.

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‘A betrayal of the Highlands’

By Jeff Tittel in The Jersey Vindicator

The Highlands Council approved a 900,000-square-foot warehouse on the Pohatcong grasslands this week despite the fact that Governor Mikie Sherrill called for a moratorium on new warehouses. This is a shameful attack on the protection of the Highlands and the preservation of farmland. The Highlands is, by law, a state and nationally significant environmental region. The purpose of those protections is to safeguard the drinking water supply for more than six million New Jersey residents, as well as residents of New York and Pennsylvania.

The preservation of open space is a critical part of that mission, especially forests and environmentally sensitive farmland. Instead, the Highlands Council approved a dirty deal for politically connected developers — a betrayal of the Highlands Protection Act and a betrayal of our drinking water during a drought. This warehouse is to be built on spec, so we don’t know what it could become: an AI data center or even an ICE detention facility.

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