Heat-trapping gases in atmosphere again hit new highs last year
The levels of the crucial heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere reached historic highs last year, growing at near-record fast paces, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Carbon dioxide, the most important and abundant of the greenhouse gases caused by humans, rose in 2023 by the third highest amount in 65 years of record keeping, NOAA announced Friday. Scientists are also worried about the rapid rise in atmospheric levels of methane, a shorter-lived but more potent heat-trapping gas. Both jumped 5.5% over the past decade.
The 2.8 parts-per-million increase in carbon dioxide airborne levels from January 2023 to December, wasn’t as high as the jumps were in 2014 and 2015, but they were larger than every other year since 1959, when precise records started. Carbon dioxide’s average level for 2023 was 419.3 parts per million, up 50% from preindustrial times.
Last year’s methane’s jump of 11.1 parts per billion was lower than record annual rises from 2020 to 2022. It averaged 1922.6 parts per billion last year. It has risen 3% in just the past five years and jumped 160% from preindustrial levels showing faster rates of increase than carbon dioxide, said Xin “Lindsay” Lan, the University of Colorado and NOAA atmospheric scientist who did the calculations.
Methane emissions come from natural wetlands, agriculture, livestock, landfills and leaks and intentional flaring of natural gas in the oil and gas industry.
Methane is responsible for about 30% of the current rise in global temperature, with carbon dioxide to blame for about twice as much, according to the International Energy Agency. Methane traps about 28 times the heat per molecule as carbon dioxide but lasts a decade or so in the atmosphere instead of centuries or thousands of years like carbon dioxide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The third biggest humancaused greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, jumped 1 part per billion last year to record levels, but the increases were not as high as those in 2020 and 2021. Nitrous oxide, which lasts about a century in the atmosphere, comes from agriculture, burning of fuels, manure and industrial processes, according to the EPA.
Student debt relief: President Joe Biden will announce his latest effort to broaden student loan relief next week for new categories of borrowers, according to three people familiar with the plans, nearly a year after the Supreme Court foiled his administration’s first attempt to cancel debt for millions who attended college.
Biden will detail the plan Monday in Madison, Wisconsin, where the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin is located.
Much of the specifics that Biden will discuss Monday have long been telegraphed through a negotiated rule-making process at the Department of Education, which has worked for months to hash out the new categories of borrowers.
The effort seeks to make good on Biden’s promise after the Supreme Court struck down his initial plan in June, a $400 billion proposal to cancel or reduce federal student loan debt that a majority of justices said required congressional approval.
Taiwan earthquake: Rescue teams were searching Friday for a family of five feared trapped in a rockslide following Taiwan’s biggest earthquake in 25 years, which has left at least 12 dead.
Two bodies have been found in the Taroko National Park, a tourist attraction famous for its rugged, mountainous terrain in Hualien County, about 90 miles from Taipei. At least four other victims were found in the park. Authorities have yet to verify the identities of the latest victims.
The missing family had gone on a hike after visiting ancestral sites for traditional grave-sweeping observances.
Wednesday’s magnitude 7.4 quake sent boulders and mud tumbling down mountainsides, blocking roads and smashing cars, and injured more than 1,000 people.
UK sexting scam: British lawmakers who may have been targeted in a sexting scam were urged Friday to go to police, after a senior Conservative admitted disclosing the personal phone numbers of some colleagues to an unknown individual who held “compromising” material on him.
William Wragg, who chairs the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in Parliament, told The Times of London newspaper that he had handed over the phone numbers to a man he met on a gay dating app, after he had sent intimate photos of himself.
Wragg, 36, told The Times that the man had “compromising things” on him and he was “scared” and “manipulated” into giving his colleagues’ numbers to the unknown individual he had met on Grindr.
Germany counterfeit haul:
German investigators said Friday that they had seized counterfeit U.S. dollar bills with a face value of more than $103 million, which
apparently came from Turkey and were being stored ahead of transport to the United States.
The criminal police office in Schleswig-holstein, Germany’s northernmost state, said officers found 75 cartons of fake dollars in an apartment and two company addresses after tips from U.S. authorities.
The bills, known as “prop copy” or “movie money,” could be recognized as fakes when scrutinized closely, but Germany’s central bank and U.S. authorities believe they could be mistaken for real money in everyday life, police said in a statement.
They believe the counterfeits came from a wholesaler in Turkey who was using one of the suspect’s export firms in Juebek, near the Danish border, for interim storage before the bills were shipped to the U.S. The 42-year-old suspect, a Turkish national, wasn’t arrested but faces an investigation under Germany’s anti-counterfeiting law.
W.VA. storm death: Storms and flooding in West Virginia have caused at least one death and washed out about 200 tombstones at a cemetery where graves date back to the early 1800’s, officials said.
Valerie Ann Swisher, 49, died when the vehicle she was driving got stuck in high water and sank, trapping her inside, the Wood County Sheriff ’s Office said in a statement posted on social media Thursday. Divers found the vehicle, and Swisher was pronounced dead at the scene.
The death occurred on the same day that Gov. Jim Justice issued a state of emergency for Ohio, Wood and five other counties due to flooding following severe thunderstorms that also caused downed trees, power outages, road blockages and other damage, including a land slide at the Wheeling Mt. Zion cemetery.
The slide at the Ohio County cemetery, where thousands of people are buried including 400 veterans, toppled trees and gravestones, news outlets reported.