The surge is startling scientists, amplifying impacts such as hurricane storm surges.

Across the American South, tides are rising at accelerating rates that are among the most extreme on Earth, constituting a surge that has startled scientists such as Jeff Chanton, professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science at Florida State University.

“It’s pretty shocking,” he said. “You would think it would increase gradually, it would be a gradual thing. But this is like a major shift.”

Worldwide sea levels have climbed since 1900 by some 1.5 millimeters a year, a pace that is unprecedented in at least 3,000 years and generally attributable to melting ice sheets and glaciers and also the expansion of the oceans as their temperatures warm. Since the middle of the 20th century the rate has gained speed, exceeding 3 millimeters a year since 1992.

In the South the pace has quickened further, jumping from about 1.7 millimeters a year at the turn of the 20th century to at least 8.4 millimeters by 2021, according to a 2023 study published in Nature Communications based on tidal gauge records from throughout the region. In Pensacola, a beachy community on the western side of the Florida Panhandle, the rate soared to roughly 11 millimeters a year by the end of 2021.

Scientists say the extreme conditions fueling the fires are the result of climate change. In Brazil, like elsewhere in the world, average temperatures are rising, paving the way for more drought. In parts of the Amazon, the dry season is now a month longer than in the 1970s, research shows.

World hits 12 straight months of record-high temperatures — but as warming continues, it'll be "remembered as comparatively cold"

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/24855054

Finite Carbon, created in 2009 and bought by British multinational oil and gas giant BP in 2020, is responsible for more than a quarter of the US’s total carbon credits, which it says it generates from protecting more than 60 “high credibility, high integrity projects” across 1.6m hectares (4m acres).

However, experts at the offsets ratings agency Renoster and the non-profit CarbonPlan analyzed three projects accounting for almost half of Finite Carbon’s total credits, with an estimated market value of $334m, according to analysis by market intelligence company AlliedOffsets. Renoster found issues, including trees in a project in the Alaska Panhandle that were probably never in danger of being cut down in an already extensively logged area. Of the credits Renoster looked at, they found that about 79% should not have been issued.

Renoster, a company mostly used by prospective buyers of carbon credits to help them avoid those without real climate benefits, was commissioned by the non-profit newsroom SourceMaterial to examine Finite’s projects. CarbonPlan provided additional analysis.

"What makes a transition just is far from a given [...] For an energy transition to be just, injustice must be eliminated, not merely displaced."

"For instance, a major scaling up of solar panel production with exploited labour or outsized damage to particular communities and ecosystems does not represent a just transition."

"Similarly, decarbonising energy systems in the Global North while the Global South remains underdeveloped is not a just transition. Rather, the project of advancing a just transition is transformational – moving from a world built around extraction to one built around regeneration and care, and a future where people can thrive in a world that is more just overall."

The penalty is for emissions of pollutants which kill people directly, rather than causing climate change but part of the deal is this:

Under the agreement announced Thursday, Marathon is required to take steps to reduce more than 2.25 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the next five years — roughly equivalent to the emissions avoided by taking 487,000 cars off the road for a year, the EPA said in a news release. The settlement will also prevent nearly 110,000 tons of volatile organic compound emissions, according to the agency.