Climate change / extreme weather thread

[sweep_shot]

How green and profitable are e-scooters?

Exactly how green and how profitable are the electric bikes and scooters that millions of us are now renting?

Those were two of the big questions hanging over the industry as 2020 began.

Despite the huge disruption the pandemic brought, the biggest player in the market, Lime, now says it is profitable for the first time.

"There are some markets where we're hitting all-time high ridership," Lime chief executive Wayne Ting says.

Those include Seoul, London and Salt Lake City. For example, in London each vehicle is now being used an average of 4.5 times a day instead of about twice a day.

But there has also been some aggressive cost-cutting. As a privately-owned company, Lime won't disclose detailed numbers.

The year began with 14% of the workforce being cut - that's 100 jobs - and a retreat from 12 cities as the company ran short on cash.

Mr Ting says "it's been a tough year, certainly for Lime, but also for a lot of companies".

When the pandemic emerged in the spring, "we saw 95% declines in revenues" as country after country went into lockdown, he says.

That meant the rental service was paused for more than a month in the vast majority of the more than 120 cities where they operate.

However, as economies reopened, the recovery for Lime was "much faster and much more broad-base than we expected" says Mr Ting.

He thinks that was because for many people "one of the key questions was: 'How do I move around in a safe way?' And we have an open air, single passenger mode of transportation, and we saw lots of passengers taking another look at Lime".

Scooter jump
Data collected by Lime from Berlin, London and Paris shows a 15% increase in the number of electric bike and scooter trips, between pre-lockdown February and the warmer month June, when restrictions had been eased.

While some of the increase is seasonal, the distances travelled rose 68%, and by even more in areas with newly-installed bike lanes.

Justine Bornstein tracks the industry for the consultancy Deloitte, and says: "The various Covid-related lockdowns have been very good for the industry as a whole, but not for every company. There has definitely been an increase in the use of bikes and scooters".

"With much less car traffic on the street, people who had been put off for safety reasons were now trying out these new modes," she says.

Mr Ting believes the new customers will stick around, saying: "I think a lot of them are going to stay once this pandemic is over."

But safety is a key concern for governments around the world, with worries about electric scooters even greater than those about electric bikes.

France has been a test case for these struggles. Last year it introduced new laws to cut the death rate and stop e-scooters being ridden on pavements or abandoned in the wrong places.

London and New York are among the major global cities considering those problems as they look at introducing e-scooters, after a recent surge in cycling.

Mr Ting says the pandemic has accelerated their plans. "Because of Covid, now they see the value."

UK view
In the UK, the law changed in the summer to allow rented e-scooters to be used on roads, but not pavements.

Parliament's Transport select committee recently called for that change to also apply to privately owned e-scooters.

However in an echo of the concerns of authorities in many parts of the world, a senior London policeman, chief superintendent Simon Ovens, this month said that e-scooters "remain notoriously dangerous", with concerns including riders not wearing helmets or having sufficient road awareness.

Mr Ting argues that his company's vehicles are intuitive and "you see roughly similar incident rates" to bicycles, although he concedes "it's still too high [and we] want to get it better than that".

That is why he says Lime has online tutorials about safe usage and has given away more than 100,000 helmets globally.

Lime green?
Another big concern that he wants to address is the environmental impact of e-scooters.

The International Energy Agency says 24% of carbon emissions come from transport, and last year, a study from North Carolina State University found that over their lifetime, e-scooters produce more emissions per passenger mile than buses.

Mr Ting says his firm's latest generation of e-scooters mean that is no longer true because they have longer life spans.

He wants to get people out of their cars and says "the average scooter or e-bike ride is less than 5% of the carbon footprint of a car ride". But he adds: "We've got to bring that number down".

Vehicles such as e-bikes and scooters are important "if we're going to be serious at tackling the transportation impact of the climate crisis," Mr Ting says.

For investment analyst Dan Ives at Wedbush Securities, Lime's e-scooters are an important innovation.

He says: "It's a fragmented space and competitors such as Bird and Voi among others have impressive business models."

But he says Lime's technology, brand, and strategic vision have been the winning bets.

The challenge, he says, will be retaining customers amid renewed competition from buses and trains in a post-Covid world.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55107754.

 

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Brazil's Amazon: Deforestation 'surges to 12-year high'

Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has surged to its highest level since 2008, the country's space agency (Inpe) reports.

A total of 11,088 sq km (4,281 sq miles) of rainforest were destroyed from August 2019 to July 2020. This is a 9.5% increase from the previous year.

The Amazon is a vital carbon store that slows down the pace of global warming.

Scientists say it has suffered losses at an accelerated rate since Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019.

The Brazilian president has encouraged agriculture and mining activities in the world's largest rainforest.

The Amazon is home to about three million species of plants and animals, and one million indigenous people.

The latest data marked a major increase from the 7,536 sq km announced by Inpe in 2018 - the year before Mr Bolsonaro took office.

The new figures are preliminary, with the official statistics set to be released early next year.

Brazil had set a goal of slowing the pace of deforestation to 3,900 sq km annually by 2020.

In addition to encouraging development in the rainforest, President Bolsonaro has also cut funding to federal agencies that have the power to fine and arrest farmers and loggers breaking environmental law.

Mr Bolsonaro has previously clashed with Inpe over its deforestation data. Last year, he accused the agency of smearing Brazil's reputation.



In a statement, Brazilian non-governmental organisation Climate Observatory said the figures "reflect the result of a successful initiative to annihilate the capacity of the Brazilian State and the inspection bodies to take care of our forests and fight crime in the Amazon".

But some officials said the fact that the rate of increase was lower than that recorded last year was a sign of progress.

"While we are not here to celebrate this, it does signify that the efforts we are making are beginning to bear fruit," Vice-President Hamilton Mourão told reporters.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55130304.

 

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Whitebark pine trees are dying across the US west. Could a federal proposal protect them?

The high-elevation tree – a key source of food for grizzly bears – is vulnerable to climate crisis, beetles and disease

Climate crisis, voracious beetles and disease are imperiling the long-term survival of a high-elevation pine tree that’s a key source of food for some grizzly bears across the US west.

Whitebark pine trees can live up to 1,000 years and are found at elevations up to 12,000 feet (3,600 meters), conditions too harsh for most trees to survive. The trees grow in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and western Canada, but have been all but wiped out in some areas.

That includes parts of the eastern edge of Yellowstone national park, where they are a source of food for threatened grizzly bears. Grizzlies raid squirrel caches of whitebark pine cones and devour the seeds within the cones to fatten up for winter.

Environmentalists had petitioned the government in 2008 to protect the trees, and a US Fish and Wildlife Service proposal scheduled to be published on Wednesday would indeed protect the tree as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

However, the agency said it doesn’t plan to designate which forested areas are critical to the tree’s survival, stopping short of what some environmentalists argue is needed.

A non-native fungus has been killing whitebark pines for a century. More recently, the trees have proven vulnerable to bark beetles that have killed millions of acres of forest and climate change that scientific studies have said is responsible for more severe wildfire seasons.

The government’s proposal described the threats to the trees as “imminent” and said whitebark was one of many plants expected to be affected as climate change moves faster than they are able to adapt.

“Whitebark pine survives at high elevations already, so there is little remaining habitat in many areas for the species to migrate to higher elevations in response to warmer temperatures,” said Fish and Wildlife Service officials.

The officials added: “Overall, whitebark pine stands have seen severe reductions in reproduction and regeneration … High severity wildfires, white pine blister rust, and mountain pine beetle all act on portions of whitebark pine’s range.”

An attorney with the Natural Resources Defense council, which submitted the 2008 petition for protections, lamented that it took so long for the government to act but said the proposal was still worth celebrating.

“This is the federal government admitting that climate change is killing off a widely distributed tree, and we know that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are many species threatened,” said Rebecca Riley, legal director for the environmental group’s nature program.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/01/whitebark-pine-trees-dying-us-west-environment.

 

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Researchers say widespread lake drainage on tundra another sign of climate change

Scientists say a year in which almost 200 tundra lakes drained away could point to what’s in store for Canada’s North.

Between 2017 and 2018, 192 lakes in northwest Alaska lost at least a quarter of their area as the permafrost that held them melted. Canada has plenty of the same kind of landscape and can likely expect the same effects, said Claude Duguay, a University of Waterloo researcher and co-author of a new paper in the journal Cryosphere.

“It’s pretty widespread,” he said.

Duguay and his colleagues examined some of the countless small, shallow lakes that dot the tundra of Alaska’s Seward Peninsula. Many have been stable for millennia while others wax and wane depending on the stability of the permafrost that blocks water from draining both underneath and along the shoreline.

During the winter of 2017 and into the summer 2018, the entire region experienced unusually warm temperatures and exceptionally heavy precipitation consistent with what climate change models predict across the Arctic.

“These conditions are basically projections of what may be happening in the future,” said Duguay.

Warmer than usual— air temperatures that year averaged 0 C — and insulated by a thick blanket of snow, much of the permafrost that ringed the shores and sealed the bottoms melted away.

In a single year, nearly 1,200 hectares of lake disappeared. That’s more than 10 times the usual rate of change and twice the drainage of the previously worst year, 2005-06.

Similar lakes sitting on similar geology are easy to find in Canada, Duguay said. They cover the Mackenzie Delta in the Northwest Territories, the Old Crow flats in Yukon and the Hudson Bay lowlands in Manitoba and Ontario.

“Some of those regions are already showing similar trends,” said Duguay, who added that Canada hasn’t yet experienced anything like what happened in Alaska, but it could be coming.

“The process could accelerate,” said Duguay. “That’s what we’ve been seeing. There’s been temperature increases of four degrees in the winter. Higher temperature and more snowfall will lead to these types of winters.”

The Northwest Territories has long been experiencing the effects of melting permafrost: sinking buildings, heaving roads and cracking airstrips. In 2015, a lake in the N.W.T. fell off a cliff when the permafrost holding it up melted.

Losing lakes affects how people get around and use the landscape, Duguay said. And as well as being a clear sign of climate change, draining lakes also contribute to it.

Permafrost is full of carbon from undecomposed plant material. Melting permafrost exposes that material, which generates both carbon dioxide and methane, the two main greenhouse gases.

Canada’s vast stretches of tundra hold millions of tonnes of such material, said Duguay.

“The draining of these lakes will lead to the remobilization of carbon.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada...on-tundra-another-sign-of-climate-change.html.

 

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Climate change: PM aims for world-leading UK emissions cuts

The UK prime minister is set to declare one of the most ambitious targets in the world for tackling climate change.

BBC News understands Boris Johnson's goal will be to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 68% or 69% by the end of the decade, based on 1990 levels.

This will mean an even faster pace of decarbonisation for industries, transport and homes.

It might, for instance, mean a faster switch away from gas boilers for home heating.

Or it could, under another scenario, lead to the phase-out of gas-guzzling SUVs.

The targets are known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). They're at the heart of the Paris Agreement, the international pact signed in 2016 that's intended to cut emissions with the aim of keeping global temperature rise well under 2C.

NDCs represent the commitments by each country - under the Paris pact - to reduce their own national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Mr Johnson hopes that the UK’s new targets will set an example to other nations, which will join a virtual climate pledges summit on 12 December.

This virtual event will occur in place of annual UN climate talks, which were set to have taken place in Glasgow this year, but was postponed because of Covid-19.

The UK has assumed the presidency at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting - in partnership with Italy. The full meeting will take place at the end of next year.

The 68% cut was deemed by the EU to be Britain’s fair share towards combating climate change.

By adding another percentage point, the PM would attract favourable headlines from some environmentalists – although others think the number should be higher still, given the apparent impact of climate change on the world already.

Green groups have called for a 75% cut, and research by consultancy Cambridge Econometrics, commissioned by the Prince of Wales corporate leaders group, said a target of a 70% by 2030 was necessary.

Tim Crosland, from the pressure group Extinction Rebellion, said 100% emissions cuts in the UK should be made by 2025 if the world was to avoid over-shooting the 1.5C temperature threshold agreed by the UN.

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said it wouldn’t comment until it had seen the official figures.

The true value of the PM’s target won’t be clear until details about background assumptions are revealed officially in coming days.

The 2030 date is important because CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are cumulative.

That means that if the UK doesn’t radically reduce emissions by that date, it won’t be able to achieve its long-term aim of net zero emissions by mid-century.

Net zero refers to cutting greenhouse gas emissions as far as possible and balancing any further releases by removing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere.

Only a handful of countries have submitted revised NDCs so far.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55164231.

 

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'Canada really sticks out:' Studies show banks not so green on climate change

International analyses suggest Canadian financiers are oiling the wheels of the fossil fuel industry at a far greater rate than their peers.

Bankers say they've made big strides in addressing climate change concerns and promise to reveal how dependent on carbon their portfolios are. They add the nature of Canada's resource-driven economy makes large investments in oil and gas all but inevitable.

But critics say not much is changing.

"There's no significant decrease in financing," said Olaf Weber of the University of Waterloo's School of Environment, Enterprise and Development.

A recent study from the Rainforest Action Network placed RBC, TD and Scotiabank in the global Top 10 for financing fossil fuels, providing more than $89 billion to oil and gas companies in 2019 alone. The Bank of Montreal and CIBC are in 16th and 21st spots with a total of nearly $42 billion.

In the 4 1/2 years since the Paris agreement on climate change, fossil-fuel lending has grown at all five major banks, says the study.

It's the same story at Export Development Canada, an arm's-length federal agency that helps Canadian industry sell its products abroad. Last May, Oil Change International ranked the agency second in the world in support for fossil fuels. Its average $10 billion a year outspent everyone but China.

Earlier this month, the International Institute for Sustainable Development ranked Canada last among countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in its attempts to end public finance of oil and gas as well as the scale of its support for exploration, production, refining, and transportation.

Only one of the Canadian major banks -- TD -- has committed to a global effort by 88 banks and financial institutions to standardize how banks tote up their carbon exposure.

"Canada really sticks out like a sore thumb," said Bronwen Tucker of Oil Change International, which advocates for energy transition.

Canadian banks say they're changing. Most no longer finance thermal coal projects and several -- including RBC, TD and BMO -- reject fossil fuel drilling in the Arctic.

Alec Clark, head of global energy for TD Securities, said his bank has been disclosing its carbon-intensive investments since 2018. It has promised to be carbon neutral by 2050, aligning it with Paris agreement targets, and has pledged to invest $100 billion in renewable energy by 2030.

"Setting out our ambitions provides good context for our clients," Clark said. "A significant number already have their own ambitions."

RBC is working with its clients to be environmentally responsible, said spokesman Andrew Block in an email.

"We are committed to finding ways to balance the transition to a low-carbon economy while supporting efforts to meet global energy needs and our energy clients. The world will continue to rely on natural resources and traditional sources of energy for some time."

Carl Burlock, Export Development Canada's executive vice-president, said the agency has committed to reduce the carbon intensity of its investments by 15 per cent by 2023. Those reductions will be disclosed, he said.

About $3.5 billion has been provided to more than 250 clean technology companies, said Burlock. "We have a role to play in the transition to a lower carbon economy."

Any lender involved in a significant way in the Canadian economy will be involved with fossil fuels, he said.

"Oil and gas have been substantial exports from Canada for many years. If you look at the profile of our support it really reflects the profile of Canada's export industry."

Clark agrees. "Energy is a big part of TD Securities. It's a big part of the Canadian economy."

That doesn't mean investment doesn't change, he said.

"You can be an energy company and still be very focused on doing things in your day-to-day operations that make you less intensely a user or emitter of emissions."

As well, most banks have policies intended to evaluate an investment's environmental, social and governance risks.

Weber points out some estimates say that up to 80 per cent of investments made in Canada already use the criteria. If they made a difference, he said, we'd have noticed by now.

"You can see that it's not really a radical shift."

Amelia Meister of the shareholder activism group Sum Of Us said Canada's investment in fossil fuels is more than just a mirror of its economy. It's a bit of cheering for the home team.

"I have spoken to executives at banks who have said the fossil fuel industry is a pillar of the Canadian economy and it's the banks' responsibility to support the Canadian economy," she said.

"At one point, that may have been true. We are at a very different point."

Tucker said investing in fossil fuel companies has direct impacts on emissions. New oilfields don't get opened, oilsands mines don't get built and pipelines don't get laid without gobs of cash.

"A new pipeline or oilfield ... presents emissions that we can't afford even in the near term but also that are going to be locked in for decades. We are actually at a point where we can't expand oil and gas infrastructure any more."

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-...anks-not-so-green-on-climate-change-1.5215051.

 

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Climate change: UK aims to cut emissions by 68% by end of 2030

The UK will aim to cut its carbon emissions by at least 68% of what they were in 1990 by the end of 2030, Boris Johnson has announced.

The PM said the "ambitious" target would see the UK cutting emissions faster than any major economy so far.

And he urged other world leaders to follow his lead at a virtual climate summit on 12 December.

Scientists have welcomed the news - but say it does not guarantee dangerous climate change will be avoided.

They urged Mr Johnson to impose policies to back up his ambitions - currently the UK is slipping behind its existing targets.

The PM said: “We have proven we can reduce our emissions and create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process – uniting businesses, academics, NGOs and local communities in a common goal to go further and faster to tackle climate change.

“Today, we are taking the lead with an ambitious new target to reduce our emissions by 2030 faster than any major economy.

“But this is a global effort, which is why the UK is urging world leaders to bring forward their own ambitious plans to cut emissions and set net zero targets.”

One of the UK’s leading climate scientists, Prof Sir Brian Hoskins, told BBC News: “Mr Johnson’s target is ambitious – but we need action to back it up, right now.

He noted that the Chancellor Rishi Sunak recently committed £127bn to the HS2 rail link and new roads - which will both increase emissions - while offering just £1bn to home insulation, which would reduce emissions.

Prof Hoskins remarked: “The actions of the chancellor don't measure up. Every single department has to wear climate change glasses when they think of new policies, and the Treasury clearly hasn’t got that message.”

He and other scientists said even if the UK and other nations keep their promises on cutting emissions there was no guarantee the world would avoid serious heating.

“The world will be increasingly difficult and dangerous with every percentage point of temperature rise,” he said. “There are important things we don’t know for sure. How much more does it take to destabilise Antarctica, for instance? We don't know… and the impact could be devastating.”

Prof Corinne Le Quéré from the University of East Anglia (UEA) said if nations matched the UK’s lead “it won’t be a safe climate – but it will be a safer climate than we’d get based on current levels of ambition.”

A coalition of green groups was urging the government to reach a 75% cut by 2030.

And more radical groups such as Extinction Rebellion say the UK should stop emissions almost completely within a few years to be confident of avoiding climate disaster.

Research by the London School of Economics (LSE) found that it is economically feasible for UK emissions to be cut by 72%. The government has not costed the range of measures that would be needed, but experts say more homes will need to switch to low-carbon heating. Gas guzzling SUVs might also be forced off the roads – and frequent fliers taxed more.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which advises government, welcomed the 68% cut, but warned: “This is more than just a number.

“It should be accompanied by wider climate commitments, including the development of a policy package and net zero strategy to deliver against the UK goal; clear commitments to reduce international aviation and shipping emissions; and greater support for climate finance, particularly for developing countries.”

Net zero refers to cutting greenhouse gas emissions as far as possible and balancing any further releases by removing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere.

More policies will be revealed if the long-delayed Energy White Paper is published, as expected, before Christmas.

The prime minister’s 68% target represents the UK’s NDC – its nationally determined contribution towards meeting the Paris Agreement.

NDCs represent the commitments by each country - under the Paris pact - to reduce their own national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

The Paris deal, signed in 2016, is aimed at keeping global temperature rise well under 2C, preferably with a maximum rise of 1.5C.

The virtual event Mr Johnson’s hosting next week is in place of annual UN climate talks. They were scheduled for Glasgow in November but postponed by a year because of Covid-19.

The UK will hold the presidency of next year’s meeting in partnership with Italy. It is known as COP26 - the 26th Conference of the Parties.

'Further and faster'
Laurence Tubiana, an architect of the successful Paris Agreement, said: "This commitment from the prime minister can underpin his personal efforts to seek similar moves from counterparts in the run-up to the Glasgow Summit next year.

“(It will need) investments in areas ranging from greener steel production to farming and clean heating technologies, but other countries can draw confidence from Britain's leadership.

“International attention now turns to the United States, China and other major economies to take similar steps by COP26."

The RSPB’s Martin Harper said: “The UK government’s new 2030 climate target will enhance the UK’s leadership credentials.

“But we need to go further and faster, in particular by investing in protecting and restoring habitats such as our peatlands which are so important for locking up carbon.”

A UK strategy on conserving peat is long-delayed.

Ed Miliband, the shadow business secretary, said: "We welcome the important strengthening of the 2030 UK target. But this is the minimum we should aim for.

"Our goal should be to go further and faster, cutting the significant majority of emissions in this decisive decade, which is the right way to lead in creating the climate jobs of the future and keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees.

"It is clear there is a yawning gap between the government's aspirations and its policies to deliver them. It didn’t have the policies to meet its previous target - and the chasm will be even greater now.”

Peter Simpson, from Anglian Water and co-chair of The Prince of Wales's Corporate Leaders Group, said: “Credible plans matter in the race to zero, so today’s announcement is welcomed. The spotlight is on. Climate change won’t wait for us, and the time for action is now.”

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55179008.

 

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Climate change: UK aim of 68% emissions cut a 'colossal challenge'

Meeting the UK's world-leading climate change target will be a "colossal challenge", a government spending watchdog has warned.

The National Audit Office says it will affect the way we work, travel, heat our homes - even how much meat we eat.

In a report it says the cost of cutting CO2 is highly uncertain, but the cost of allowing temperatures to rise would probably be greater.

The PM has vowed to cut emissions by 68% by 2030 based on 1990 levels.

Making the new pledge, Boris Johnson urged other world leaders to follow with ambitious targets at the virtual climate summit he is hosting on 12 December.

The announcement has been broadly welcomed, although scientists say it does not guarantee dangerous climate change will be avoided.

They urged Mr Johnson to impose policies to back up his ambitions - currently the UK is slipping behind its existing targets.

The PM said: “We have proven we can reduce our emissions and create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process – uniting businesses, academics, NGOs and local communities in a common goal to go further and faster to tackle climate change.

“Today, we are taking the lead with an ambitious new target to reduce our emissions by 2030 faster than any major economy.

“But this is a global effort, which is why the UK is urging world leaders to bring forward their own ambitious plans to cut emissions and set net zero targets.”

One of the UK’s leading climate scientists, Prof Sir Brian Hoskins, told BBC News: “Mr Johnson’s target is ambitious – but we need action to back it up, right now.

He noted that Chancellor Rishi Sunak recently committed £127bn to the HS2 rail link and new roads - which will both increase emissions - while offering just £1bn to home insulation, which would reduce emissions.

Prof Hoskins remarked: “The actions of the chancellor don't measure up. Every single department has to wear climate change glasses when they think of new policies, and the Treasury clearly hasn’t got that message.”

He and other scientists said even if the UK and other nations keep their promises on cutting emissions there was no guarantee the world would avoid serious heating.

“The world will be increasingly difficult and dangerous with every percentage point of temperature rise,” he said. “There are important things we don’t know for sure. How much more does it take to destabilise Antarctica, for instance? We don't know… and the impact could be devastating.”

Prof Corinne Le Quéré from the University of East Anglia said if nations matched the UK’s lead “it won’t be a safe climate – but it will be a safer climate than we’d get based on current levels of ambition.”

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55179008.

 

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Costs of climate change are soaring in Canada, yet still barely understood: report

10:14 Dec 03, 2020
LJI-BC-CLIMATE-COSTS-REPORT
Costs of climate change are soaring in Canada, yet still barely understood: report
By: Carl Meyer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Source: National Observer

We don’t know nearly enough about what the climate crisis will cost Canada — but what we do know is already troubling, and should inspire greater action.

That’s the conclusion from the first of several sweeping reports on the economic, social and environmental costs of climate change in Canada by the independent, publicly funded Canadian Institute for Climate Choices.

The institute pored over decades of data on the costs of weather-related disasters from both government relief and insurance industry payouts. Its findings make it clear that volatile weather events have already become more frequent, and more costly.

But it also revealed how climate change-related costs are still barely understood today, and these unknown costs are likely to explode far beyond those that are known.

“The lack of understanding of risk, plus the lack of tools to be able to address risk, create this dead zone, where it’s really hard to do anything,” said adaptation director Ryan Ness in an interview.

“What we’re suggesting is, we have to act on the knowledge we have, and we have enough knowledge to move forward.”

Average disaster cost up 1,250 per cent

What is already known is stunning: the average cost per weather-related disaster has soared by 1,250 per cent since the 1970s, and the number of catastrophic events has more than tripled since the 1980s.

In the nine years from 2010 to 2019, there was over $14 billion in disaster costs — the same amount as over the previous 40 years, save for the one-time $7-billion Eastern Canada ice storm in 1998.

As the title of the Dec. 3 report, “Tip of the Iceberg,” indicates, these numbers are just the beginning.

There are many more long-term impacts from climate change, such as an estimated $1.3-billion cost to dozens of communities across the Northwest Territories due to permafrost thaw.

Such a cost will add to the stretched budgets of northern governments already coping with unaffordable food prices and other stressors such as long-term drinking water advisories.

And all of this doesn’t even take into account the many impacts that are just not recorded at all in Canada — things such as the impact on health care that climate change is creating.

“Canada lacks up-to-date evidence on the potential economic impacts of climate change,” reads the report.

The institute said the last effort to “examine a broad range of costs at a national scale” was done in 2011, by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.

Over the next two years, it expects to publish further reports on health, infrastructure, macroeconomics and the North.

Counting up all the climate unknowns

Ness said there are many reasons why it is difficult to cost out climate impacts, but one main issue is that there are so many different ways that climate change affects Canada in the first place.

Not only are disasters and extreme weather linked to death, disease and mental health challenges, for example, but there are a range of other consequences.

Wildfire smoke harms lungs, for example, while extreme heat makes kids miss school. The Fort McMurray wildfire of 2016 was the “largest single weather-related insurance loss event in Canadian history,” the report states.

Ocean warming and acidification will also likely impact fisheries, and therefore the food security and prosperity of First Nations that depend on them, while early heat waves can cause havoc for farmers depending on seasonal harvests.

Then there are the economic impacts of extreme weather on Canadian small business operations, or the disruptions to household budgets, as well as the impact of climate refugees on domestic politics and international conflict.

“Pick an economic sector, pick an infrastructure type, pick a health impact — each one of those is extremely complex to try and figure out what a changing climate means for those impacts, and then how those impacts play out in terms of costs,” Ness said.

Another concern is how all these issues will interact with each other. Ness gave the example of how climate change could impact the electricity supply, causing power outages in the summer, at the same time as climate-driven heat waves drive up demand for air conditioning.

“We don’t know how much the climate’s going to change in the end. We don’t know if there’s weird things that are going to happen in those systems ... we could see impacts that are way bigger than science might predict, because science is based on past climate and past behaviour,” he said.

Adaptation policies 'fall far short of what is needed'

The institute said this all suggests that the debate over Canada’s progress in tackling climate change needs to broaden from its current focus on reducing carbon pollution to one that also addresses adaptation — or the ways that Canadians can adjust to account for the widening range of climate impacts.

“Current adaptation policies and investments in Canada fall far short of what is needed to address the known risks of climate change, let alone those that are still unclear and unknown. This has to change,” the report states.

Its three recommendations are for all orders of government to increase funding for adaptation, more closely co-ordinate their adaptation efforts and examine the current levels of transparency over climate risks.

While the federal and provincial governments have come together previously over climate change, such as the Pan-Canadian Framework, Ness said more detail was needed over which authorities do what and how they work in unison.

Source: https://www.yorktonthisweek.com/new...yet-still-barely-understood-report-1.24249723.

 

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Mitigating Climate Change and Extreme Heat With Reflective Pavements

MIT postdoc explains how reflective pavements can significantly — and often indirectly — mitigate climate change and extreme heat.

Extreme heat events — like those seen in California in 2020 — are expected to worsen over the century due to climate change and urban heat islands (UHIs). Cities will likely experience the brunt of those effects.

To help cities mitigate UHI and extreme heat, MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub postdoc Hessam AzariJafari is studying one of the most abundant urban surfaces: pavements. He has found that it’s possible to significantly lower urban air temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions by altering pavement surface reflectivity. However, as he explains below, the effects of reflective pavements can depend heavily on where they are implemented.

Q: What are reflective pavements and how do they impact climate change?

A: Reflective pavements are a paving strategy that can help solve the problem of urban heat islands. The so-called “cool pavement” strategy is currently practiced in a few cities, such as Los Angeles, by implementing reflective coatings and/or brighter-color materials in the pavement mixtures. These properties allow more sunlight to be reflected from a pavement’s surface, and less to be absorbed by its mass. As a result, reflective pavements can lower urban temperatures when the ambient temperature is lower than the pavement surface temperature. In Los Angeles, for instance, we found that reflective pavements would reduce the occurrence of heat waves by around 40 percent over 20 years.

In addition to altering air temperatures, pavements also influence climate change. By reflecting light into building envelopes, they can alter heating and cooling demands and their associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the surrounding neighborhoods. Moreover, by sending a larger amount of solar irradiation to the sky, they can alter the Earth’s energy balance. This process, known as a radiative forcing, creates a cooling effect that can help counteract climate change.

Q: How do the effects of reflective pavements vary by context?

A: The effectiveness of reflective pavement strategies in reducing climate change impact depends on several factors. One major factor is geographical context. The local climate condition, including real-time temperature, cloud factors, and relative humidity, plays an important role in the intensity of radiative forcing, as well as changes to building energy demand (BED) due to heating and cooling.

Within urban areas, the neighborhood morphology, such as building density and canyon aspect ratio [ratio of building heights to the adjacent pavement width], can considerably change the BED effect of reflective pavements. Building configuration characteristics, such as the ratio of the surface area to volume, the insulation system, and the heating and cooling technology also affect the intensity of BED change.

The efficiency and sustainability of the local grid play a part as well. For example, generating one kilowatt-hour of electricity in Phoenix emits 85 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than in Boston. That’s because a small proportion of the electricity generation is from low-GHG sources in Arizona. Therefore, increases in building energy demand in Phoenix can have a larger climate change impact.

Q: Many aspects of a pavement contribute to its life-cycle environmental footprint. Where does surface reflectivity fit into that total footprint?

A: Surface reflectivity is just one part of a pavement’s cumulative life-cycle emissions. Additional impacts include pavement construction and repairs, the extra fuel consumption of vehicles induced by pavement properties, and the end-of-life landfilling or recycling.

Just as with pavement reflectivity, these impacts can also vary by context. For example, in urban neighborhoods, the BED effect of pavements is more pronounced because there are hundreds of thousands of apartment units located in the city whose energy demands will be altered by the surface reflectivity of pavements. Since pavements in those dense urban areas also service a relatively low volume of traffic, the contribution of their reflectivity to their total life-cycle impact is more significant as well. However, on highways, which see significantly greater levels of traffic, the surface roughness and structural properties of a pavement contribute to a greater proportion of that pavement’s life-cycle emissions by influencing the fuel consumption of vehicles. Therefore, it is important to consider all elements of a life cycle when municipalities and transportation authorities decide on the environmentally preferred option.

References:

“Quantifying Location-Specific Impacts of Pavement Albedo on Radiative Forcing Using an Analytical Approach” by Xin Xu, Omar Swei, Liyi Xu, C. Adam Schlosser, Jeremy Gregory and Randolph Kirchain, 14 January 2020, Environmental Science & Technology.
DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.9b04556

“The Impact of Pavement Albedo on Radiative Forcing and Building Energy Demand: Comparative Analysis of Urban Neighborhoods” by Xin Xu, Jeremy Gregory and Randolph Kirchain, 9 September 2018, Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board.
DOI: 10.1177/0361198118794996

Source: https://scitechdaily.com/mitigating-climate-change-and-extreme-heat-with-reflective-pavements/.

 

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Climate change: Snowy UK winters could become thing of the past

Snowy winters could become a thing of the past as climate change affects the UK, Met Office analysis suggests.

It is one of a series of projections about how UK's climate could change, shared with BBC Panorama.

It suggests by the 2040s most of southern England could no longer see sub-zero days. By the 2060s only high ground and northern Scotland are still likely to experience such cold days.

The projections are based on global emissions accelerating.

It could mean the end of sledging, snowmen and snowball fights, says Dr Lizzie Kendon, a senior Met Office scientist who worked on the climate projections.

"We're saying by the end of the century much of the lying snow will have disappeared entirely except over the highest ground," she told Panorama.

If the world reduces emissions significantly the changes will be less dramatic, the Met Office says.

The average coldest day in the UK over the past three decades was -4.3 Celsius.

If emissions continue to accelerate, leading to a global temperature rise of 4C, then the average coldest day in the UK would remain above 0 Celsius across most of the country throughout winter.

Even if global emissions are reduced dramatically and world temperatures rise by 2C, the average coldest day in the UK is likely be 0 Celsius.

The Met Office says these temperatures are subject to variation and some years may see days colder than the average. Its projections explore how the UK's climate might change.

"The overarching picture is warmer, wetter winters; hotter, drier summers," Dr Kendon says.

"But within that, we get this shift towards more extreme events, so more frequent and intense extremes, so heavier rainfall when it occurs."

The Met Office says we are already seeing dramatic changes in the UK climate.

"The rate and nature of the climate change that we're seeing is unprecedented," says Dr Mark McCarthy of the Met Office's National Climate Information Centre.

Most of the country has already seen average temperatures rise by 1C since the Industrial Revolution and we should expect more of the same, he warns.

That may not sound like much, but even these small changes in our climate can have a huge impact on the weather and on many plants and animals.

Hotter drier summers
The Met Office says there could be significant temperature rises in the decades ahead for both winter and summer.

It says the biggest increases will be in the already warmer southern parts of the UK. At the same time extreme weather is expected to become more frequent and more intense.

Heatwaves are likely to become more common and last longer, with record temperatures being exceeded regularly.

Not every summer will be hotter than the last, the Met Office says, but the long-term trend is steadily upwards, particularly if emissions remain unabated.

That high-emissions scenario shows peak summer temperatures could rise by between 3.7 C and 6.8 C by the 2070s, compared with the period 1981 to 2000.

If the world succeeds in reducing emissions, these temperature rises will be considerably smaller.

The level of detail in the models mean it is possible to see how the climate might change in neighbourhoods across the country.

Hayes in west London, for example, is likely to see some of the most dramatic temperature rises of all, the new data suggests.

The average hottest day in Hayes was 32C around 20 years ago. If emissions continue to accelerate, the new Met Office data suggests the average hottest day could reach a sweltering 40C by around 2070.

If global emissions reduce, this temperature rise will not be so severe.

"I mean, I think it's really frightening. That's a big change, and we're talking about in the course of our lifetime. It's just a wake-up call really as to what we're talking about here," says Dr Kendon.

Summers might not just be hotter, they could be drier too, the Met Office predicts. Summer rain could become less frequent, but when it does rain it is likely to be more intense.

The combination of longer dry periods with sudden heavy downpours could increase the risk of flooding because dry ground doesn't absorb water as well as damp ground.

Warmer wetter winters
Rainfall is expected to increase in many parts of the country in winter too, the Met Office says.

The projections suggest western parts of the UK may get even wetter under a high-emissions scenario.

Of course, some years will always buck the trend by being wetter or cooler than others - and there will be significant regional variations.

This pattern of wetter winters and more intense summer downpours across much of the country risks putting infrastructure under greater strain.

Roads, railways, reservoirs, sewers, bridges and other infrastructure is all designed for the sort of rainfall we have had in the past and much of it may need to be upgraded or even rebuilt to cope with the storms and floods to come.

Last week, the UK government announced ambitious new targets for tackling climate change.

The new goal is to cut the UK's greenhouse gas emission by 68% by the end of the decade, based on 1990 levels.

Boris Johnson hopes the new targets will set an example to other nations, which will join a virtual climate pledges summit on 12 December.

This virtual event will occur in place of annual UN climate talks, which were set to have taken place in Glasgow this year, but were postponed because of Covid-19.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55179603.

 

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Beer and crisps used to help tackle climate change

The much-loved combination of beer and crisps is being harnessed for the first time to tackle climate change.

Crisps firm Walkers has adopted a technique it says will slash CO2 emissions from its manufacturing process by 70%.

The technology will use CO2 captured from beer fermentation in a brewery, which is then mixed with potato waste and turned into fertiliser.

It will then be spread on UK fields to feed the following year's potato crop.

Creating fertiliser normally produces high CO2 emissions, but the technology adopted by Walkers makes fertiliser without generating CO2.

So, the beer-and-crisps combo performs a dual function.

It stops the emission of brewery CO2 into the atmosphere – and it saves on the CO2 normally generated by fertiliser manufacture.

This ingenious double whammy was developed with a grant from the UK government by a 14-employee start-up called CCm.

The fertiliser was trialled on potato seed beds this year, and next year Walkers will install CCm equipment at its Leicester factory to prepare for its 2022 crop.

A decision has not yet been made on which brewery Walkers will work with on this.

The new technology adds to carbon-saving techniques already under way.

The firm has installed an anaerobic digester, which feeds potato waste to bacteria to produce useful methane.

The methane is burned to make electricity for the crisp-frying process – so this saves on burning fossil fuel gas.

The new system will go a step further by taking away potato “cake” left after digestion - and stirring the brewery CO2 into it to make an enriched fertiliser which will help put carbon back into the soil as well as encouraging plant growth.

It’s an example of scientists finding ways to use CO2 emissions which otherwise would increase the over-heating of the planet.

Zero emissions target
The CCm Technologies falls into the industrial category of Carbon Capture and Usage (CCU).

Related inventions are already being harnessed in novel ways to create fuels, polymers, fertilisers, proteins, foams and building blocks.

CCU is currently at a tiny scale, though - partly because the technologies are new, and partly because production of waste CO2 from society vastly outweighs demand for it.

CCU is a sister technology to the better-established Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) which catches emissions from chimneys, compresses them and pumps them into underground rocks where they can’t heat the climate.

The prime minister is keen on CCS, which can be used on a large scale.

Katy Armstrong, manager of the Carbon Utilisation Centre at Sheffield University, previously told BBC News: “We need products for the way we live - and everything we do has an impact.

"We need to manufacture our products without increasing CO2 emissions, and if we can use waste CO2 to help make them, so much the better.”

Many of the young carbon usage firms are actually carbon-negative: that means they take in more CO2 than they put out.

These firms are pioneers in what’s known as the circular economy, in which wastes are turned into raw materials.

The EU is trying to prompt all industries to adopt this principle, because firms will need to emit zero emissions by 2050.

Walkers brand owner, PepsiCo, is looking to extend the CCm project by feeding oats and corn with the “circular” fertiliser.

'Baby steps'
David Wilkinson from PepsiCo’s said: “This innovation could provide learnings for the whole of the food system, enabling the agriculture sector to play its part in combating climate change.

“This is just the beginning of an ambitious journey, we’re incredibly excited to trial the fertiliser on a bigger scale and discover its full potential.”

CCm says it produces CO2-based fertiliser at roughly the same price as the conventional product.

CO2 from the production of conventional fertilisers has been a large factor in keeping emissions from agriculture static as most other emissions across society have been falling.

Peter Hammond from CCm told BBC News: “There has been an increase in public awareness that we should get something done about the climate – and lot of baby steps have come together to make something significant.

“The key challenge for us as a business wasn’t getting down the cost – it was marketing the fertiliser. This link with PepsiCo takes care of that for us.”

PepsiCo has a mixed record on the environment.

It has long been among the leaders in tackling carbon emissions, and it recently committed to eliminating all virgin plastic from its bottles sold in nine European states by 2022.

But a recent survey from by the Break Free From Plastic Campaign ranked it second highest (after Coke) in the amount of plastic pollution it creates.

Some environmentalists consider Pepsi to be among the symbols of the throwaway culture, with its plastic waste found in 43 countries.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55207597.

 

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Hydrogen power: Firms join forces in bid to lower costs

The possibility of a future powered significantly by clean hydrogen has taken a small step closer.

The world’s biggest “green” hydrogen developers have joined forces in what they call the Green Hydrogen Catapult.

Their ambition is to expand production 50-fold in less than six years to radically drive down the cost.

The companies involved include ACWA Power, CWP Renewables, Envision, Iberdrola, Ørsted, Snam, and Yara.

Green hydrogen produced by renewable energy using electrolysis is currently much more expensive than obtaining hydrogen from natural gas.

The firms hope that their economies of scale can drive the cost down to $2 a kg, which recent analysis suggests could make it cost-competitive.

Some energy experts doubt whether the objective is achievable, especially as green hydrogen currently costs between 3.5 and 8/kg.

The new initiative will see industry leaders deploy 25 gigawatts of renewables-based production through 2026.

If the target is reached it would make a substantial contribution to world attempts to decarbonise society by helping transform carbon-intensive industries, including power generation, chemicals, steelmaking and shipping, by supplanting use of gas or coal.

Hydrogen could also be used for heavy transport such as buses, trucks and construction vehicles – like the prototype JCB digger.

One potential location for production is the vast, relentlessly sunny Sahara, where solar power is already established.

One member of the consortium, Paddy Padmanathan, from Saudi-backed ACWA said: "Having led the race to deliver photovoltaic energy at well-below $2 cents per kilowatt-hour, we believe collective ingenuity and entrepreneurship can deliver green hydrogen at less than US$2 per kilogram".

"From an industry perspective, we see no technical barriers to achieving this, so it's time to get on with the virtuous cycle of cost reduction through scale up.”

It’s part of a techno-optimistic rush towards hydrogen.

But while the fuel has benefits, says Michael Liebreich, an energy analyst in the UK, “it displays an equally impressive list of disadvantages”.

Techno-optimists
“It does not occur in nature so it requires energy to separate,” Mr Liebreich writes in recent essays for BloombergNEF.

“Its storage requires compression to 700 times atmospheric pressure, refrigeration to -253C… It carries one quarter the energy per unit volume of natural gas… It can embrittle metal, it escapes through the tiniest leaks and yes, it really is explosive.”

Despite this, Mr Liebrich says green hydrogen still “holds a vice-like grip over the imaginations of techno-optimists”.

Among that number are the UK's Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who is preparing a hydrogen strategy, the EU, which has drafted a strategy, and the German government, which is investing $10bn in hydrogen as part of its green recovery.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55218573.

 

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Human-made objects to outweigh living things

Scientists say the weight of human-made objects will likely exceed that of living things by the end of the year.

In other words, the combined weight of all the plastic, bricks, concrete and other things we've made in the world will outweigh all animals and plants on the planet for the first time.

The estimated weight of human-made objects is about one teratonne.

For every person in the world, more than their body weight in stuff is now being produced each week.

These astonishing figures have been calculated by a team at the Weizmann Institute of Sciences in Rehovot, Israel, to show how our species is transforming the Earth.

"The significance is symbolic in the sense that it tells us something about the major role that humanity now plays in shaping the world and the state of the Earth around us," Dr Ron Milo, who led the research, told BBC News.

"It is a reason for all of us to ponder our role, how much consumption we do and how can we try to get a better balance between the living world and humanity."

The scientists worked out the combined mass of all human-made stuff from 1900 to the present day and compared this with the weight of all the living things on the planet (known as biomass).

From plastic bottles to the bricks and concretes we use for buildings and roads, the weight of all the things we produce has been doubling every 20 years recently.

At the same time, the weight of living things has been falling, mainly due to the loss of plant life in forests and natural spaces.

The scientists knew at some point we would reach a crossover point. And according to their estimates, 2020 is the year when human-made mass from the likes of roads, buildings and machines, will likely overtake that of all the living things in the world.

The exact timing is sensitive to definitions, so there may be some variability in the estimates by a few years either side, they say.

But if we continue as we are, by 2040, the weight of all human-made stuff will have almost tripled from 1.1 teratonnes (1,100,000,000,000 tonnes) to about three teratonnes.

This means humanity is now producing stuff at a rate of more than 30 gigatonnes (30,000,000,000 tonnes) per year.

The research, published in Nature, is further evidence that we have entered a new geological age, known as the Anthropocene, where humanity's impacts on Earth will be visible in sediments and rocks millions of years into the future.

The formal start date could be the 1950s, which marks the beginning of the "Great Acceleration", when the human population and its consumption patterns suddenly speeded up.

It coincides with the spread of ubiquitous materials, such as aluminium, concrete and plastic.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55239668.

 

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Extinction: Conservation success set against 31 lost species

The European bison has moved a step back from the brink of extinction, according to an update of the official extinction list.

Europe's largest land mammal was almost wiped out by hunting and deforestation a century ago, but numbers have now risen to over 6,000 in wild herds across the continent.

The recovery is regarded as a "conservation success" story.

But 31 species of plants and animals have gone extinct in the latest tally.

They include frogs, fish, several plants and a bat.

The extinction list by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation for Nature) assesses the survival prospects of plants, animals and fungi.

In the third and final update for this year, Dr Bruno Oberle, director general of the IUCN, said the recovery of the European bison and 25 other species demonstrated "the power of conservation".

But the growing list of extinct species "is a stark reminder that conservation efforts must urgently expand", he added.

The IUCN has now assessed almost 130,000 species of plants and animals, of which more than a quarter are threatened with extinction.

In the latest update of the "RedList", there is good news and bad news for a range of mammals, birds and amphibians.

Despite good news for animals such as the European bison, a total of 31 species have been declared extinct, including three frogs of Central America, 17 freshwater fish of the Philippines, the Lord Howe long-eared bat and 11 plant species.

The frogs have been hit by a deadly fungal disease, while the fish have disappeared due to predation by introduced species and over-fishing.

A dolphin found in the Amazon river, the tucuxi, has been classed as endangered. All the world's freshwater dolphins are now threatened.

The small grey dolphin is in trouble due to accidental capture in fishing gear, pollution and the damming of rivers. The IUCN says its survival rests on eliminating the use of gillnets - curtains of fishing net that hang in the water - and reducing the number of dams in the waters where they live.

In the bird kingdom, the Andean condor, secretary bird, bateleur and martial eagle are now at high risk of extinction.

Ian Burfield of BirdLife International, which compiles the extinction list for birds, said while any species being listed as threatened was obviously bad news, "it doesn't have to be a tragedy".

"For many, the road to recovery begins here, as listing brings visibility to their plight and helps to raise their conservation priority," he explained.

The benefits of conservation action are being seen for a number of animals. They include an upturn in numbers for the European bison and another 25 species of plants and animals, including skates, amphibians and birds.

The "conservation successes" announced on Thursday "provide living proof that the world can set, and meet, ambitious biodiversity targets", said Dr Jane Smart, global director of IUCN's Biodiversity Conservation Group.

Good news stories
Species: The European Bison (Bison bonasus)

Status: Moved from Vulnerable to Near Threatened

Large herds of wild bison once roamed across Europe, as recorded in ancient cave paintings. But human pressures and hunting caused their downfall, and by the 1920s, the large mammal was extinct, except in zoos.

Efforts to return the bison to its natural landscape started in Poland in the 1950s.

Numbers have grown from around 1,800 in 2003 to more than 6,000 last year, mainly found in Poland, Belarus and Russia.

The bison are scattered in almost 50 herds, most of which are too small to survive without continued conservation work.

Dr Rafal Kowalczyk, a bison expert from the Polish Academy of Sciences, told BBC News: "The species is very vulnerable to extinction but with this international effort we were able to save the species, to increase its number of herds and increase its distribution. and I hope the future of the species is bright."

Species: The red kite

Status: Moved from near threatened to least concern (the lowest category of extinction risk)

The red kite was declining across Europe, due to poisoning from pesticides, persecution and loss of natural spaces. But legal protection led to an action plan, including large-scale reintroduction projects. The bird is now recovering and has become a common sight in many areas, although poisoning and persecution are still a problem in some places.

Species: The Oaxaca treefrog

Status: Moved from Critically Endangered to Near Threatened

Many amphibians are in trouble, but actions by local communities in Mexico have helped to protect this frog's habitat.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55259552.

 

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Climate change: 700-year history of wind recorded in island mud

Scientists have reconstructed a 700-year history of how westerly winds have blown around the Southern Hemisphere.

It's a remarkable record that's written in the muds at the bottom of a small lake on the remote Marion Island in the sub-Antarctic Indian Ocean.

What this history reveals is that the strength and latitude of the westerlies is tied closely to temperature.

And the implication is that the winds will likely intensify and move poleward as the climate warms.

"What we're seeing in this lake record is that these westerly winds are highly mobile and sensitive to really quite small changes in temperature, and this has some big implications for what the future of our planet looks like," Dr Bianca Perren from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) told BBC News.

The westerly winds - known by latitude as the roaring forties, furious fifties, and screaming sixties - are hugely influential.

The position of their core belt is linked to drought and wildfire potential on southern landmasses; they also regulate the Southern Ocean's uptake of carbon dioxide and heat by churning its waters; and in recent decades the winds have reshaped the distribution of sea-ice around Antarctica, and have become implicated in the melting of the west of the White Continent by driving warm water under floating glacier fronts.

But, you might ask: how does a lake on Marion Island retain a record of these westerly winds? The answer is in the chemistry of its sediments.

As the wind blows across the surface of the ocean, it kicks up a salty spray. When this lands on the island lake, it makes the lake water more saline. This, in turn, alters the biology in the lake, favouring only those tiny algal species, or diatoms, that can tolerate the new salty environment.

The stronger the winds, the more salt spray and the more challenging are the conditions in the lake.

What this means is that when the scientists drill into the mud at the bottom of the lake, dating its layers and identifying the remains of the dominant species of diatoms through time, they get a multi-century "proxy" for the strength of the winds blowing over Marion Island.

When this information is combined with other climate records around the Southern Hemisphere, what emerges is a fascinating picture.

It shows that during cool periods in recent Earth history, such as the so-called Little Ice Age (roughly AD 1400-1870), the core belt of the winds weakened and shifted towards the equator.

During warm periods, on the other hand (before 1450 and after 1920), the core intensified and migrated poleward.

Since the 1960s, instrumental records have documented a continuation of the poleward migration and intensification of the main belt winds - most probably as a result of the atmospheric changes induced by the loss of stratospheric ozone, which was caused by human-produced chemicals that have subsequently been banned.

The question now is whether, as the ozone hole is repaired, global warming steps in to renew and harden the trend.

Computer models will take this new information and refine their forecasts.

"This research gives us a little window into what the westerly winds have been doing in the past, and what we can anticipate in the future," said Dr Perren.

Co-author Dr Dominic Hodgson, also at BAS, added: "With the rapid changes now occurring in the Earth's climate it is especially important that we use historical data to increase the accuracy of our climate models.

"This study has revealed the behaviour of the westerly winds long before satellites and on the ground measurements began.

"It shows us that climate warming drives moisture bearing winds southwards away from Australia, South America and South Africa. The immediate human consequences of this are increased droughts and wildfires."

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55260908.

 

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Climate change: Covid drives record emissions drop in 2020

The global response to the Covid-19 pandemic has driven the biggest annual fall in CO2 emissions since World War Two, say researchers.

Their study indicates that emissions have declined by around 7% this year.

France and the UK saw the greatest falls, mainly due to severe shutdowns in response to a second wave of infections.

China, by contrast, has seen such a large rebound from coronavirus that overall emissions may grow this year.

The decline in carbon in 2020 has dwarfed all the previous big falls.

According to the Global Carbon Project team, this year saw carbon emissions decline by 2.4 billion tonnes.

In contrast, the fall recorded in 2009 during the global economic recession was just half a billion tonnes, while the ending of World War Two saw emissions fall by under one billion tonnes.

Across Europe and the US, the drop was around 12% over the year, but some individual countries declined by more.

France saw a fall of 15% and the UK went down by 13%, according to one analysis.

"The main reason is that these two countries had two waves of confinement that were really quite severe compared with other countries," said Prof Corinne Le Quéré, from the University of East Anglia, UK, who contributed to the study.

"The UK and France have a lot of their emissions come from the transport sector and generally have a bit less coming from industry and other sectors.

"This is even more true in France, because so much of their electricity production is from nuclear energy, so 40% of their emissions are from the transport sector."

Aviation around the world has been badly hit by restrictions and by the end of this year, it's expected that emissions from this sector will still be 40% below 2019 levels.

One country that may have bucked the trend is China.

Overall, the research team estimates that the country will experience a fall in emissions of 1.7% this year but some analysis suggests that the country has already rebounded enough from Covid-19 that the overall carbon output may have increased.

"All our datasets show that China experienced a big drop in emissions in February and March, but the datasets differ in the level of emissions towards the end of 2020," said Jan Ivar Korsbakken, a senior researcher at CICERO, who was involved in the study.

"In late 2020, China is at least close to having the same level of daily emissions as in 2019, and indeed some of our estimates suggest Chinese emissions may have actually increased for the year as a whole in 2020 relative to 2019, despite the pandemic," he added.

Researchers believe that dramatic drop experienced through the pandemic response might be hiding a longer term fall-off in carbon, more related to climate policies.

The annual growth in global CO2 emissions fell from around 3% in the early years of this century to around 0.9% in the 2010s. Much of this change was down to a move away from coal as an energy source.

"An emerging discussion pre-2020 was whether global fossil CO2 emissions were showing signs of peaking," said Glen Peters, research director at CICERO.

"Covid-19 has changed this narrative to one that involves avoiding a rebound in emissions and asking if emissions have already peaked," he said.

All the researchers involved in this project agree that a rebound of emissions in 2021 is almost certain.

To minimise the uptick in carbon, the scientists are urging a "green" rather than a "brown" response, meaning recovery funding should be spent on sustainable projects and not on fossil fuels.

They argue that efforts should also be made to boost walking and cycling in cities and to rapidly deploy electric vehicles.

While 2020's fall of over two billion tonnes of CO2 is welcome, the scientists say that meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement will need cuts of up to two billion tonnes every year for the next decade.

"Although global emissions were not as high as last year, they still amounted to about 39 billion tonnes of CO2, and inevitably led to a further increase in CO2 in the atmosphere," said lead researcher Prof Pierre Friedlingstein from the University of Exeter, UK.

"The atmospheric CO2 level, and consequently the world's climate, will only stabilise when global CO2 emissions are near zero."

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55261902.

 

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'Not enough' climate ambition shown by leaders

The UK minister tasked with leading UN climate talks says world leaders are failing to show the necessary level of ambition.

Alok Sharma was speaking at the conclusion of a virtual climate summit organised by the UK, UN and France.

He said "real progress" had been made and 45 countries had put forward new climate plans for 2030.

But these were not enough to prevent dangerous warming this century, Mr Sharma explained.

Taking place on the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate agreement, the summit heard the UN Secretary General warn that every country needed to declare a climate emergency.

Around 70 heads of state and government took part in the meeting, which was organised by the UK, UN and France. They outlined new pledges and commitments to curb carbon.

China's contribution was eagerly awaited, not just because it is the world's biggest emitter, but because it has recently promised to reach net zero emissions by 2060.

Achieving net zero means that emissions have been cut as much as possible and any remaining releases are balanced by removing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere,

But while President Xi Jinping outlined a range of new targets for 2030, many analysts felt these did not go far enough.

India brought little in the way of new commitments but Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his country was on track to achieve its goals under the Paris agreement and promised a major uptick in wind and solar energy.

According to the UK, some 24 countries had outlined net zero commitments and 20 had now set out plans to adapt and become more resilient to rising temperatures and their impacts.

But despite these commitments, Mr Sharma said not enough had been achieved.

"Have we made any real progress at this summit? And the answer to that is: yes," he said.

"But they will also ask, have we done enough to put the world on track to limit warming to 1.5C, and protect people and nature from the effects of climate change? To make the Paris Agreement a reality.

"Friends, we must be honest with ourselves, the answer to that, is currently: no. As encouraging as all this ambition is. It is not enough."

Mr Sharma re-stated a commitment made last year to double the UK's international climate finance spend. This will bring it to at least £11.6bn over the next five years.

Earlier on Saturday, UK Prime Minister Mr Johnson said advances in renewable energy technologies would "save our planet and create millions of high-skilled jobs".

He added: "Together we can use scientific advances to protect our entire planet - our biosphere - against a challenge far worse, far more destructive even than the coronavirus. And by the promethean power of our invention, we can begin to defend the Earth against the disaster of global warming."

Meanwhile, UN Secretary General António Guterres criticised rich countries for spending 50% more of their pandemic recovery cash on fossil fuels compared to low-carbon energy.

Mr Guterres said that 38 countries had already declared a climate emergency and he called on leaders worldwide to now do the same.

On Covid recovery spending, he said that this is money being borrowed from future generations.

"We cannot use these resources to lock in policies that burden future generations with a mountain of debt on a broken planet," he said.

The meeting is taking place after the pandemic caused the postponement of the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting, which had been due to take place in Glasgow this year.

The UK has announced an end to support for overseas fossil fuel projects, and has today deposited a new climate plan with the UN.

It's the first time that Britain has had to do this, as it was previously covered by the European Union's climate commitments.

The UK pointed to its new commitment on overseas fossil fuel projects as well as a new carbon cutting target of 68% by 2030, announced last week by the prime minister.

The EU presented a new 2030 target of a 55% cut in emissions, agreed after all-night negotiations this week. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said: "It is the go-ahead for scaling up climate action across our economy and society."

China's President Xi Jinping announced that the country would reduce its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by over 65% compared with 2005 levels. China will also increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption by about 25%. And President Xi pledged to increase forest cover and boost wind and solar capacity.

But Manish Bapna, managing director of the World Resources Institute (WRI) said: "The strengthened renewable energy, carbon intensity, and forest targets are steps in the right direction, but recent WRI analysis shows that China would benefit more economically and socially if it aims higher, including by peaking emissions as early as possible."

Although President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Paris pact, the summit saw statements from the Republican governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, and the Democrat governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, who said the US was "all-in" on tackling climate change.

Pope Francis said the Vatican had committed to reaching net zero emissions, similar to carbon neutrality, before 2050. "The time has come to change course. Let us not rob future generations of the hope for a better future," he said.

A number of big emitters, including Australia, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Mexico, did not take part, as their climate actions were not deemed ambitious enough.

Some observers believe this hard line on some countries is justified.

"From a kind of symbolic procedural point of view, it's good to have everybody on board," said Prof Heike Schroeder from the University of East Anglia.

"But from a proactive, creating some kind of sense of urgency approach, it also makes sense to say we only get to hear from you if you have something new to say."

The five years since the Paris agreement was adopted have been the warmest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and emissions have continued to accrue in the atmosphere.

But many countries and businesses have started the process of decarbonisation in that time.

The progress they've made now needs to be acknowledged and encouraged, says former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres.

"That progress that's been seen in the real economy has to be reflected and incentivised further by those additional commitments," she said.

One area that yielded little progress at this meeting was the question of finance. Rich countries had promised to mobilise $100bn a year from 2020 under the Paris agreement - but the commitments on cash are not forthcoming.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55276769.

 

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Recovery from coronavirus pandemic must include ‘ambitious’ climate change plan: Trudeau

Countries rebuilding from the devastation left by the novel coronavirus pandemic must do so in a way that includes an “ambitious plan to take strong action against climate change,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday.

“We will raise our emission reduction ambitions,” he said in a pre-recorded video. “And in partnership with provinces and territories, we as a country will strive for the upper end of a range of 32 to 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.“

Trudeau made the comments during a virtual summit with world leaders on Saturday to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate accord.

The agreement, adopted in 2015 by 196 countries, saw nations pledge to keep their greenhouse gas emissions under a level that would keep global temperatures from rising above 2 C, and ideally no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

Trudeau’s comments at the virtual summit come a day after his government unveiled a major new climate plan.

The plan involves billions in new funding for green vehicles and infrastructure, as well as changes to the Clean Fuel Standard set to take effect in late 2021.

It also details exactly how much the federal government plans to raise the levy on greenhouse gas emissions, which is set to hit $50 per tonne in 2022.

“We will raise Canada’s price on carbon pollution by $15 a tonne starting in 2023, and rising to $170 Canadian dollars per ton by 2030,” he said.

The prime minister also said Canada will “remain committed to making significant investments in international climate finance.”

Trudeau said the pandemic has “taught us the importance of global cooperation.”

"And we must translate that lesson to how we deal with the climate crisis, because our kids and grandkids are counting on us,” he continued.

Laurent Fabius, president of the COP21 Paris Climate Conference, said he wished world powers had fought global warming as resolutely as they have confronted the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“Unfortunately, we are not doing as much to fight climate change as we are to tackle the fallout from COVID,” Fabius said.

Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/7518255/trudeau-paris-climate-agreement/.

 

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Slowing Climate Change With Sewage Treatment for the Skies

(Bloomberg) -- Humans can emit about 1,000 more gigatons of carbon dioxide before we lock in a global average temperature increase of more than 2C from before the Industrial Revolution, the threshold beyond which scientists warn that changes to the climate get dangerous. A higher-than-2C planet might trigger runaway effects that would make things even worse.

The new year will arrive with the average temperature already up about 1.2C. More than halfway there. Every year, we’re releasing more than 35 gigatons of CO₂ and pushing up its concentration in the air by about 2.5 parts per million. Keeping our collective fever under the 2C targeted by signatories to the Paris Agreement or even better, below the 1.5C they’d prefer—is already looking very difficult.

Decarbonizing our energy and transport sectors as quickly as possible remains the centerpiece of every serious plan to deal with this danger, including President-elect Joe Biden’s, but everything else ever suggested has to be considered, too. It’s an inevitable fact that we’ll be adding more CO₂ to the atmosphere before we can achieve a carbon-neutral technological base. Given the severe danger, we need to try every possible mitigation.

Among these all-hands-on-deck possibilities are technologies to draw carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it on or inside the Earth. Sometimes called carbon drawdown or carbon negative, these projects now look more attractive than ever, even necessary. Old objections that the very idea of removing carbon will encourage people to slack off on rapidly addressing the sources of new emissions no longer really obtain when we’re at this point.

The quickest and easiest methods to draw carbon out of the atmosphere are no doubt biological: reforestation, regenerative agriculture, kelp and sea grass, aquaculture, wetlands restoration, and so on. But there may not be enough room for natural solutions to do the job alone. In the two centuries since industrialization began, we’ve burned the residue of millions of years of forest growth. For the biological world to draw that fossil carbon back down might take the land and sea of two Earths.

So it makes sense to discuss a technology we haven’t quite mastered: direct-air capture, or DAC. This process involves using machinery to filter out CO₂ from ambient air, then disposing of the captured gas—either by injecting it underground, binding it to rock, or putting it to industrial use. Drawdown machines, if scaled up to some significant proportion of the need, would help us a lot.

Capturing CO₂ out of the air is a sophisticated industrial process, and it can be water- and energy-intensive. Translation: It’s expensive. Prototype systems cost as much as $1,000 per ton captured. But these costs could soon drop to half that, and there are hopes of ultimately reaching $100 a ton.

The mechanical operations involved are already employed in large-scale industries. Everything from storage and transport methods to fans and beds of absorbents can be adopted from existing technologies rather than invented from scratch. Ironically, it’s the old oil companies that already have some of the key technical skills and infrastructure that could be adapted to this work.

Several companies are already working on systems and have prototypes operating that could be scaled up. Climeworks AG in Switzerland has built the first commercially operating DAC facility, and it recently entered a partnership with a geothermal plant in Iceland to capture CO₂ and bind it with rocks underground. Carbon Engineering Ltd. and Global Thermostat LLC are also pursuing DAC designs. This emerging industry is being bolstered by academic research at places such as Arizona State University’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, whose director, Klaus Lackner, guided me through the current state of the technology.

DAC is sometimes compared to the auto industry. A car, like carbon-drawdown machinery, is complicated and expensive. Yet we build millions of them each year, because we like what they do. An even better comparison may be to a sewage-treatment plant—a costly tool to deal with waste we can’t ignore. We’re spewing billions of tons of carbon waste into our life support system; as with our other wastes, it needs to be properly disposed of if we aren’t to poison ourselves. Paying for that cleanup is necessary, whether it’s for street sweepers or air scrubbers.

The problem isn’t technical viability but the giant investment required to build something that may not yield a profit. There’s promise in developing liquid fuels made with captured CO₂ or turning the primary greenhouse gas into feedstock for various carbon fibers. But the amount of carbon we need to draw down far exceeds these industrial uses, and capital seeking the highest rate of return won’t get invested.

Everyone would benefit from a stabilized climate, but if the market remains the only way to calculate value, there’s no way to charge people appropriately for keeping the biosphere viable. The solution here is simply to consider this technology a public utility creating a public good, like roads, national defense, fresh water, or sewage disposal—and pay for it as such.

A method of payment that might come into play here would be carbon quantitative easing. Central banks could finance the manufacture and installation of a growing fleet of CO₂ scrubbers, just as they provide liquidity to the financial industry in times of need. The effort could also become a work program so large it might constitute something resembling a job guarantee, with both planetary and individual benefits. There’s that much work to be done here. It would take a lot of government investment—and a lot of labor. We have both of these, or we can if we want them.

All forms of DAC will also require a lot of electricity, which would have to be clean renewable energy or else the point of the effort would be lost. A big DAC initiative, one that matched a significant percentage of the need, might require as much as a few percentage points of all the electricity generated. This sounds extreme, but consider that right now 2% of the world electricity supply is wasted on the creation of Bitcoin. It’s possible that a similar amount directed to saving civilization could be considered reasonable.

The carbon and material costs of building so many units would have to be calculated into the overall cost-benefit equation, but these factors pertain for everything we manufacture, even for vital climate solutions such as lithium-ion batteries and solar panels. We seem to think those costs are worth it. In the case of DAC, pulling CO₂ out of the air is a pure good, without possible bad side effects. We won’t be in danger of overdoing it and creating a new ice age anytime soon! And if we ever did get to that point, it would be a nice problem to have.

Even though other methods are easier to get started and less expensive to ramp up to significant capacity, they all have problems. In an all-hands-on-deck emergency, direct-air capture could become one of the strongest hands. It’s worth looking into.

Robinson writes science fiction in Davis, Calif. His latest novel is The Ministry for the Future. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Source: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/slowing-climate-change-with-sewage-treatment-for-the-skies-1.1535921.

 

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Revitalizing a Global Fight Climate Change Together

Authors: Xu Guoying & Zhao Qingtong

Since the 1960s, the effects of global climate change have alarmed the peoples over the world. It includes unprecedented stronger storms, floods, droughts, landslides, rising temperatures and glacier melting. The nature is becoming more fragile, as Harvard scientist James McCarthy warned, “Now the Earth is populated with 6 billion people and natural and human systems that provide us with food, fuel, and fibre are strongly influenced by climate.” It does not matter whether carbon dioxide is placed in the atmosphere from China or the United States, it still affects global change. Truly as climate change accelerates, future change may not occur as smoothly as it has in the past. Despite considerable public attention, for example, the Vienna Conventions in 1985, FCCC in 1994 and the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, still less impressive progress has been made in reducing CO2 emissions globally.

Considering this, world leaders from some 70 countries staged a virtual gathering on December 12 to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the Paris climate accord, the international agreement to curb global warming, with a view to drawing pledges by countries to increase efforts in tackling global climate challenges. As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, the world needs to reduce global emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels and urged world leaders to “take the right decisions” to push their countries towards carbon neutrality. As a response to Guterres’ address, the president of the European Council Charles Michel reiterated the importance of international cooperation in fighting climate change. Chinese President Xi announced China’s determined commitments to combatting climate change along with other countries. The U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson also pointed to the global efforts in developing coronavirus vaccines as an example of the strength of countries working together. As he said, “Together we can use scientific advances to protect our entire planet, our biosphere, against a challenge far worse, far more destructive than coronavirus.”The world indeed needs the golden thread of climate action to weave through every international gathering next year, including the G7, the G20 and other meetings, in order to fight climate change much more efficiently and substantially.

More encouraging, although the administration of President Trump, who withdrew the U.S. from the Paris accord, wasn’t represented at the meeting. U.S. President-elect Joe Biden promised to rejoin the Paris Agreement in a written statement sent shortly before the meeting started. As the United States is returning to the Paris Agreement, the international community expects that the U.S. will commit to carbon neutrality, simply because others have done in the past days and weeks, countries such as China, Japan and Brazil. Yes, the countries that are party to the Paris Agreement are required to submit their updated targets to the United Nations by the end of this year.

As the largest developing country and a rising power as well, China vows to lower its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by over 65 percent from the 2005 level, increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 25 percent, increase the forest stock volume by 6 billion cubic meters from the 2005 level, and bring its total installed capacity of wind and solar power to over 1.2 billion kilowatts. As a matter of fact, China has called for the global commitments to work towards a range of issues, including climate change, marine ecosystem protection, sustainable land use, restoring migration routes and many other areas to prevent the alarming scale of biodiversity loss in the world. This is a recognition of the crisis and an expression of the need for a profound re-commitment from world leaders to take urgent action. Yet, pragmatically with the world facing the coronavirus pandemic and failing to meet the 2020 biodiversity targets agreed previously, this summit was seen as an opportunity for world leaders to revise their goals and commitment to protect nature. As they have agreed, the challenges of climate change and COVID-19 show us the importance of biodiversity conservation and sustainable use to ensure a more secure, inclusive and resilient world. To that end, they must develop and agree on a shared plan together for the biodiversity and climate negotiations scheduled for next year, to secure a carbon-neutral, nature-positive and equitable future for all. There has never been a more crucial time to act for nature than now, as the UN chief Guterres warned, people over the world must stop a “suicidal” war on nature.

Historically the first convention on global climate change was adopted in 1992. Now the question remains “Can global cooperation succeed in a combating climate change? At its root, the answer to our puzzle is quite simple and plain. From a realistic point of view, each country would like to benefit from a cleaner environment but would also like others to bear the costs of protecting environmental quality. Given this, all countries share the benefits of a healthy atmosphere and all face private costs in changing individual behavior. Accordingly, all countries have attempted to free ride on one another, hoping to reap the benefits of a greener environment without having to give up our current lifestyle. For example, the United States and Australia remain the only two industrialized countries that have declined to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Astonishingly, they even question climate change science and seriousness of the predicted impacts of global warming, maintaining that undertaking emission reductions would harm their economies, and also arguing that Protocol is flawed because it does not require the major developing countries like China to undertake mandatory emission measures.

The next problem of collective action is compounded by the distributional consequences of alternative policy solutions, especially in the case of global climate change. For example, hydrocarbon fuels are the life blood of modern economies, and the interests who would lose from any seminal policy-changing are large and politically powerful. Even nowadays these vested interests have played upon the basic incentive of all actors to free rise to block any policy change. Due to this, international institutions are expected to play a role in facilitating and codifying cooperation in global climate change. Negotiations have occurred necessarily among global leaders who have reached the agreements and the consensuses in order to use them as the efficient legal tools.

In light of the analysis above, some countries, such as Japan, Canada, France and the U.K., recently declared a “climate emergency” and pledged to make its public sector carbon neutral by 2025.In September, China also publicly committed to bring carbon emissions to a peak by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Since the presidential race in the US is over fundamentally, John Kerry signaled Washington’s seriousness about climate shortly after being tapped by President-elect Joe Biden to serve as U.S. envoy on climate, a new cabinet-level post. As he said, “America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent national security threat it is.” In addition, the UN is urging countries around the world to take more aggressive actions to match their commitments to the global climate change. In fact, although the pandemic is still the biggest concern to many people in the world in 2020, for millions in climate vulnerable places, the climate emergency remains the biggest threat and sadly there is no simple vaccine to fix the climate.

In order to show China is a responsible country in the world affairs, Beijing announced more new measures to fight climate change and stressed the important role of “solidarity, cooperation and confidence.” First, in term of the climate challenge, China argues that no one can be aloof and unilateralism will get us nowhere. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic which has affected over 50 million people globally, international community needs to work together to combat these natural disasters in terms of both virus and climate.”All countries need to maximize actions in light of their respective national circumstances and capabilities,” Xi said, calling on the developed countries to scale up support for developing countries in the financing, technology and capacity building. Only by upholding multilateralism, unity and cooperation can we deliver shared benefits and win-win for all nations.

For sure, the Prisoner’s dilemma that exists at the individual level is easily reproduced at the international level with the same consequences. The United States, as the world’s largest source of greenhouse gases, is unwilling to take an initiative to control its own emissions in the absence of a global solution. As former U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman (2006) stated, “We are a small contributor to the overall problems when you look at the rest of the world, so it’s really got to be a global solution agreed by all other countries.” In contrast, as the largest developing country and the second-largest economy in the world, China has been striving to coordinate economic growth and environmental protection and committed to the global fight against climate change. China has persistently exceeded its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions by 2030 under the Paris agreement, thanks to its efforts to cut growth in energy use and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Now Beijing vows to continue making new progress in building an ecological civilization, optimize the development and protection of territorial space, and achieve notable results in green transformation of production and lifestyle.

By the end of 2020, the great news is that President-elect Biden reiterated his campaign pledge that his administration will cut U.S. emissions to net zero “no later than 2050.” He goes further saying that the United States will engage closely with the activists, including young people, who have continued to sound the alarm and demand change from those in power. It is quite clear that under a Biden-Harris administration, the U.S. will be back working with other countries around the world to ensure realizing those goals for the sake of the world and future generations. The paradoxes of collective action are every bit as important for countries as for individuals. After all, together, the world never fails.

Source: https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/12/14/revitalizing-a-global-fight-climate-change-together/.

 

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Macron plans referendum on including climate change fight in French constitution

President Emmanuel Macron said Monday he plans to call a referendum on changing the constitution in order to include a commitment to fight against climate change and for the protection of the environment.

Speaking to members of a Citizen's Convention on Climate, Macron said that the referendum proposal would need to be approved by the lower house of parliament and the senate.

Changing the constitution to include the climate commitment and making destroying nature a crime -- so-called "ecocide" -- topped a list of proposals made by the Convention in June.

The group is composed of 150 randomly picked members of the public who were tasked by the government with proposing ways in which France could cut its emissions.

The last referendum in France was in 2005 when voters were asked to back the creation of a European constitution.

They rejected the proposal in a humiliating defeat for then-president Jacques Chirac.

Source: https://www.france24.com/en/france/...g-climate-change-fight-in-french-constitution.

 

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Earth may be even closer to 1.5°C of global warming than we thought

Global carbon emissions may have warmed Earth by 18 per cent more than previously thought, raising the prospect of the world having less time than expected to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and avoid catastrophic climate change.

The global average temperature is thought to have climbed about 1.07°C since the industrial revolution, up from a previous estimate of 0.91°C. This update brings all three of the world’s key temperature data sets in line, suggesting the true temperature rise is at the upper end of previous ranges.

The finding means governments may have less time to curb carbon emissions to hold the temperature rise to 1.5°C or 2°C under the Paris deal, and current estimates of future warming may rise too.

“Climate change hasn’t suddenly got worse. It’s just our estimate of how much warming has taken place has improved,” says Tim Osborn at the University of East Anglia, UK, who today published a paper with Met Office colleagues on the fifth update to the data, known as the Hadley Centre Climatic Research Unit Temperature (HadCRUT5).

The 18 per cent increase is the biggest in years of HadCRUT revisions, but brings it roughly in line with the two other main data sets used to track global temperatures, run by US agencies NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It is notable how closely these three independent data sets now resemble one another, says Kate Marvel at Columbia University, New York, who wasn’t involved in Osborn’s paper.

The change was overdue, say climate scientists. “Honestly, many of us have long recognised that the HadCRUT data set underestimated the warming,” says Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University.

There are two main reasons for the 0.16°C upwards revision in past warming. The biggest was changes to how the HadCRUT team looked at sea surface temperatures, specifically how it was measured by ships taking the temperature of sea water in their engine rooms.

The other is that gaps in the data set’s coverage of the Arctic, which has been warming two to three times as fast as the global average, have been filled in. Previously, grid squares for the region were left empty if there was no observational data – now they are estimated with data from nearby squares.

The new research may effectively shrink the world’s carbon budget, the amount that can be emitted without breaching temperature targets. The UN’s climate science panel, the IPCC, said in 2018 that global emissions need to roughly halve by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 to have a two-thirds chance of staying under 1.5°C.

It is too early to say how much today’s update may change that timeline. “The IPCC have overestimated the available carbon budget through choices that tend to underestimate the warming we’ve already experienced. That of course means that there is a lot more work to do if we are to avert dangerous warming,” says Mann.

The other consequence of the higher warming is some estimates of climate sensitivity – how much the world will warm based on a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide – will increase slightly, says Osborn.

Ultimately, the revision to HadCRUT doesn’t drastically change our situation, researchers told New Scientist, as governments and scientists rely on more than one of the major temperature data sets. “None of these things change the big picture: the globe is warming and it’s due to human activities,” says Gavin Schmidt at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Source: https://www.newscientist.com/articl...er-to-1-5c-of-global-warming-than-we-thought/.

 

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How Buying Stuff Drives Climate Change

Did you know that Americans produce 25 percent more waste than usual between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, sending an additional one million tons a week to landfills? This COVID-19 holiday season, with online shopping the preferred gift giving method for many, we will likely generate even more waste mailing packages all over the country. In addition, over two billion Christmas cards are mailed every year, with enough paper to fill a football field 10 stories high. More than 38,000 miles of ribbon are thrown away and usually end up in landfills. Over the holidays, Americans discard half their total yearly paper waste, mostly holiday wrapping and decorations—about nine billion tons. And each person wastes almost 100 pounds of food.

What’s all this got to do with climate change?

In fact, our consumer habits are actually driving climate change. A 2015 study found that the production and use of household goods and services was responsible for 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Not surprisingly, wealthy countries have the most per capita impact. A new U.N. report found that the richest one percent of the global population emit more than twice the amount than the poorest 50 percent; moreover, the wealthier people become, the more energy they use. A typical American’s yearly carbon emissions are five times that of the world’s average person. In 2009, U.S. consumers with more than $100,000 in yearly household income made up 22.3 percent of the population, yet produced almost one-third of all U.S. households’ total carbon emissions.

As more people around the world enter the middle class and become affluent, the problem is worsening.

After basic needs are met, consumers begin buying items for social status; as people try to acquire more and more status, more and more expensive status products are needed. Producing all these things generates climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions. And in fact, across its life cycle, the average product results in carbon emissions of 6.3 times its own weight, according to a study done by Christoph Meinrenken, associate research scientist at the Earth Institute’s Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management.

Technology can provide energy efficiency measures that help combat climate change, but “consumption (and to a lesser extent population) growth have mostly outrun any beneficial effects of changes in technology over the past few decades,” according to a June paper. The research concluded that it is not enough simply to “green” consumption by buying more sustainably produced goods—it is essential to reduce consumption. This is because 45 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions comes solely from the production of the things we use and buy every day.

The problem with stuff

While large oil companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions, we consumers are complicit. We demand the products and energy made from the fossil fuels they provide. One scientist found that 90 percent of fossil fuel companies’ emissions are a result of the products made from fossil fuels.

The accepted wisdom about the economy has been that consumption is essential to economic growth, since our demand for things makes companies profitable and provides employment.

To keep this engine running, companies intentionally plan obsolescence of their products by changing how they look, such as in the fashion industry, or updating the design or software of products and discontinuing support for older models. Prices are kept artificially low to encourage us to buy because the real costs of their creation—which should include their environmental and social justice impacts—are not figured in. So we keep buying, and as a result, only one percent of “stuff” is still in use six months from its purchase, according to Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff, the iconic 2007 film.

The psychology of consumption

After World War II, consumer spending was encouraged because the U.S. economy needed to rebuild. People splurged on new appliances such as washing machines, refrigerators, and televisions and cars.

Advertisers perfected strategies to keep people buying by exploiting our emotions, such as fears of what would happen if we didn’t buy a product, our need not to miss out, or our desire to be more attractive. By 1960, Vance Packard wrote in his classic book, The Wastemakers, “The lives of most Americans have become so intermeshed with acts of consumption that they tend to gain their feelings of significance in life from these acts of consumption rather than from their meditations, achievements, inquiries, personal worth, and service to others.”

For many today, leisure time is often spent shopping, but the pleasure it provides — getting a thrill from newness or a bargain, escaping one’s problems, or reveling in the status of owning the latest thing — is fleeting. This is because it is linked to the act of buying, not the product itself. If we really loved the products we purchased, we would take better care of them and not want to replace them.

Becoming more conscientious consumers

COVID-19, with its enforced restrictions on our usual activities, is showing many people that it’s possible to live happier, simpler and less materialistic lives. According to one Vox reporter’s survey, the number one change people said they wanted to maintain after the pandemic was to reduce their consumerism.

To help change consumption habits, Sandra Goldmark, director of Campus Sustainability and Climate Action at Barnard College and theater professor, has adapted Michael Pollan’s advice about food (“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”) to stuff: “Have good stuff (not too much), mostly reclaimed. Care for it. Pass it on.”

The tools people employ to change any habits, such as food or exercise, can be applied to consumption. Goldmark recommends starting small and setting realistic goals. “I always think that it helps to show people that they’re already engaging in a lot of these kinds of ‘healthy stuff’ activities,” she said. “For example, a lot of people already love buying used items in certain categories. So if you can just explain to them the incredible impact of shifting your ‘stuff diet’ from new to used, they might be like, ‘Wow, I’m already doing that.’ And then it becomes a question of turning up the volume on certain behaviors and turning down the volume on other behaviors.” Recognizing that one is already practicing some good habits makes expanding them feel achievable.

People can be motivated to change their consumption habits for different reasons. For some, awareness of environmental impacts might be key, such as the pushback that occurred after the environmental impacts of fast fashion were exposed. For others, it might be saving money—for example, the ability to get a great deal on outdoor gear. “There are people whom I’ve spoken to about those used gear sites that are super excited, because they know they can get expensive high quality Patagonia or REI gear at a really low price,” said Goldmark. “They don’t really care so much about the environmental part, or for them, that’s just a bonus.”

When making purchases, she recommends looking for good materials and design, and repairability. In her new book, Fixation, Goldmark, wrote, “Good stuff is well designed for a long life cycle, made of the right materials, has parts that are easily available and replaceable, and was produced in a socially and environmentally ethical process.”

And when buying a new appliance or device that claims to be more energy efficient, take into account the energy that was embodied in its production — consider the life cycle carbon implications of goods.

Meinrenken’s study found that 45 percent of a product’s total carbon emissions occurs upstream in the supply chain — in other words, from the sourcing of and type of raw materials that go into the product. The Carbon Catalogue he helped create provides a side-by-side comparison of the carbon footprints of 866 products made in 28 countries. When shopping for certain types of items, you can compare carbon emissions. For example, a pair of Levi Strauss Rigid Tank jeans produces 7.7kg of carbon emissions equivalent over its life cycle, whereas Levi Strauss Tumble Rigid jeans produce 16 kg.

What government policies could help?

Some products are designed to be difficult or impossible to repair when they break, either because they are glued together or contain proprietary parts that require a special tool to make repairs. These constraints mean that when the product breaks, it is almost always destined for a landfill. To avoid this, Goldmark says that a policy requiring the repairability of products would be a good start. She noted that in 2021, France will introduce a repairability index that indicates how easy certain consumer products are to repair.

She also would like to see repair providers get tax rebates and “pay as you throw waste collection” which would enable people to feel the cost of their consumption. But ultimately, she said, “Until people are being paid a living wage to make our products, the prices are going to be artificially depressed, and the circular economy is going to have a hard time keeping up with the new goods economy. So international wage standards would be huge.”

Better holiday traditions

A recent IBM survey found that 54 percent of consumers polled are willing to change their holiday purchasing habits to reduce environmental impacts and 44 percent reported that they would take sustainability into consideration while shopping. Here are some ideas for more sustainable gift giving.

Gifts

Remember that many electronics, toys and clothing include plastics. Plastic is difficult to fix if it breaks, and plastic waste is likely to wind up in the ocean, where it is consumed by marine animals, or littering beaches in even the most remote places on Earth. Microplastics can expose living beings to harmful chemicals, some of which have been linked to health problems including cancers. Electronics also contain rare metals that often end up in landfills. So before you buy a product, think about its environmental impact.

Consider giving gifts made of bamboo, glass, metal or something edible made from local foods.

Give a gift that is useful and always supply gift receipts. If doing Secret Santa, let people know exactly what you want so there’s no waste. Handmade gifts, locally made gifts, experiential gifts, such as tickets to a Zoom event, or a gift of your time and skill are also good alternatives. Regift something someone gave you to a friend who’d appreciate it more. Or make a donation on someone’s behalf.

Avoid online shopping if possible because the packaging and delivery generate added carbon emissions. Instead, go to the store yourself, and preferably support your local merchants.

Wrapping

Use brown paper bags, newspaper, maps, colorful pages from catalogs, or kids’ artwork as wrapping. Avoid shiny gift wrap — it is usually not recyclable because it includes foil, heavy ink, or glitter, which is usually made of microplastics.

Wrap presents with old pieces of fabric with Japanese Furoshiki techniques.

Instead of ribbon or tape, use recycled string. Make bows out of colorful magazine pages. Cut up old holiday cards to make gift tags.

Holiday gatherings

This year, because we should avoid unnecessary travel, most celebrations are likely to be small family affairs. Cook local foods or host a potluck. Instead of dinner, just serve dessert and provide reusable containers for people to take home leftovers.

Your actions count

Individuals sometimes feel that their actions are too insignificant to make a dent in climate change, but individual actions can become social trends that make a difference. In Fixation, Goldmark wrote, “Together, our individual actions add up to collective actions — to our culture. And the choices we make in our daily lives influence the choices we make as families, as communities, and ultimately, influence the choices we make at the ballot box, where we can come together to scale and multiply those many individual choices.”

Source: https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2020/12/16/buying-stuff-drives-climate-change/.

 

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Climate change turns up the heat on ad industry

By Andrew R.C. Marshall, Valerie Volcovici and Sheila Dang

(Reuters) - The avuncular man in the TV ad has an urgent-sounding message from his employer, the oil giant Chevron Corp.

"I think renewable energy is vital to our planet," says the man, identified only as an environmental expert called Steve. "At Chevron we're investing millions in solar and biofuels technology to make it work." He adds that the energy can be made widely available and the work needs to begin “right now.”

What Steve doesn't mention, according to three U.S. lawsuits alleging deceptive advertising, is that Chevron is overwhelmingly focused on fossil fuel extraction and its investment in renewables remains miniscule compared to the billions it spends each year on drilling for oil and gas.

Critics have long attacked the oil industry for ad campaigns that they call "greenwashing" - telling people that policies or products are more environmentally friendly than they really are. But the ad agencies behind the campaigns have largely escaped scrutiny.

That's changing, as the issue of climate change shoots up the global agenda. Climate activists and some ad industry figures are calling on agencies to declare or dump their Big Oil clients.

Recent lawsuits by four U.S. states, the District of Columbia and a city allege “greenwashing" by oil companies, accusing them of making "misleading and deceptive" claims. The suits don’t name the ad agencies as defendants, but do single out at least 15 campaigns. As a result, the companies could face embarrassment or become embroiled in the litigation.

Sean Corey, a Chevron spokesman, said such lawsuits are "meritless" and "serve only to divert attention and resources away from the collaborative, international efforts that are critical to developing a meaningful solution to climate change."

Pressure has been building against oil and gas companies in recent years to address dangerously rising global temperatures. The companies, which rank among the world's worst polluters, have been targeted by protests outside their offices and seen sponsorship deals with museums, art galleries and others canceled in the United States and Europe.

A prominent climate protest group, Extinction Rebellion, last year unfurled a banner reading "TELL THE TRUTH" outside the advertising industry's top awards ceremony in Cannes, France. Activists in the Netherlands and other European countries are campaigning for a tobacco-style ban on fossil fuel advertising.

All these pressures will likely intensify after the January inauguration of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, who has vowed to get tough on climate change.

Most major advertising companies with fossil fuel clients, and the U.S. ad industry's leading trade group, declined to comment for this story or did not respond to requests for comment. However, in a statement, WPP Plc, the world's largest advertising and public relations holding company, defended its practices.

"WPP recognises the importance of its role in addressing climate change by applying rigorous standards to the content we produce and helping clients to accelerate the world's transition to a lower-carbon economy," the agency said. A spokeswoman also said the company "will not undertake work which is intended or designed to mislead."

WPP did not handle the ad featuring Steve, formally known as "We Agree." That ad is part of a global campaign created in 2010 by New York-based agency Dentsu McGarryBowen LLC. Jennifer Ferguson, a spokeswoman for McGarryBowen's holding company, Dentsu Group Inc, declined to comment.

'A SEA CHANGE'

Delaware, along with Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, the District of Columbia and the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, are suing key players in the oil industry for violating consumer protection laws with the help of "greenwashing" ad campaigns.

The new scrutiny of advertising campaigns raises the prospect that ad agencies could see their names dragged into litigation along with their oil company clients, said Karen Sokol, an environmental law professor at Loyola University New Orleans.

Sokol said that similar lawsuits against the tobacco industry brought to light information on the role of advertisers and PR companies in deceiving the public about the dangers of smoking.

In 1997, R.J. Reynolds tobacco company agreed to pay $10 million to settle a lawsuit over a campaign for its Camel brand, which was accused of targeting children. The "Joe Camel" campaign was executed by large advertising firms that also were sued.

Ultimately, Sokol said, details about advertising and marketing practices that emerged during litigation against the tobacco industry contributed to the companies' decision in the late 1990s to pay billions of dollars annually in a massive settlement with the vast majority of U.S. states and territories.

"There was a sea change in how we viewed tobacco products after we learned about that industry's disinformation," she said. "We're on the cusp of that with climate."

Others predict that Big Oil’s message makers will likely avoid costly courtroom verdicts. Douglas Kysar, a professor at Yale Law School who specializes in climate change, among other things, said it was unlikely that ad firms would be held liable for misleading communications by fossil fuel companies. That’s because the primary duty of those firms is to their clients, the companies, and not to the public, he said.

However, he added, given the "existential stakes" of climate change, advertisers likely won't escape being sued in the first place. "I fully expect that advertising/PR firms, bankers, insurers, accountants, lawyers, and other professionals that support fossil fuel companies, will increasingly find themselves targeted by lawsuits and pressure campaigns."

'CREATIVITY HAS CONSEQUENCES'

The picture is different in Europe, where regulators have taken action against a number of ad campaigns by oil companies.

In 2019, for instance, the UK advertising watchdog upheld a complaint against an ad by Norwegian energy giant Equinor ASA that suggested gas was a "low carbon" energy source. In January, Italy's competition authority slapped state-backed energy giant Eni SpA with a €5 million ($6.10 million) fine for ads claiming that its diesel was "green" and helped the environment.

In the United States, ad agencies face a more immediate worry.

Several current and former ad executives and industry experts say advertisers for fossil fuel companies face a big challenge in appealing to young people, who polls show are far more concerned about global warming than their elders. In addition, some say, agencies with oil industry clients face a struggle to recruit talented young people with climate concerns.

Ad agency staff "are forced to treat all clients as equal," said Solitaire Townsend, co-founder of Futerra, a mid-sized advertising firm based in London. "But for the best young talent that simply isn't good enough anymore. They know that creativity has consequences, so our industry cannot be neutral."

Futerra has set up an initiative in which agencies voluntarily declare what proportion of their revenue comes from so-called "high-carbon" clients, including not just Big Oil but also the aviation, automobile, concrete and plastics industries.

Futerra disclosed in 2019 that 1% of its revenue was generated by clients involved in plastics or aviation, but otherwise had no high-carbon clients.

Her firm and 244 small to mid-size agencies have signed on to the initiative, she said.

The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry trade group, criticized the spate of recent efforts to get advertising firms to ditch the oil and gas industry, saying that they were "divisive" and "unfounded."

"We are focused on being part of the solution, and we welcome debate on the best ways to innovate for a cleaner, reliable and affordable energy future," said API spokeswoman Bethany Aronhalt.

Together with their subsidiaries, the Big Four advertising companies - WPP, Omnicom Group, Publicis Groupe and Interpublic Group of Companies (IPG) - handle the accounts of many major oil companies. The accounts provide much-needed income for an ad industry financially devastated by the coronavirus pandemic.

WPP and IPG told Reuters they would not disclose their client lists. Omnicom and Publicis didn't respond to a request for comment.

'THE CLARION CALL'

Despite financial strains exacerbated by the pandemic, the oil industry's spending on advertising and PR will continue, or perhaps rise, as it fights tougher climate-related regulations and shrinking social acceptance in many countries, ad industry experts told Reuters.

"Over the past thirty years, the major oil companies have ramped up their PR activities whenever it appears that the government is considering regulation of their activities," said Bob Brulle, Visiting Professor of Environment and Society at Brown University in Rhode Island. "It is quite predictable that this will occur as the Biden administration starts acting to control carbon emissions."

The suits by Delaware and Hoboken cite four WPP campaigns for fossil fuel companies as "misleading" or "greenwashing."

WPP, which is not named as a defendant, declined to comment on the lawsuits.

WPP's website publishes an emphatic statement in favor of addressing climate change by its subsidiary, Ogilvy Consulting. "As industry leaders, we must be the clarion call,” said the article. "We must act now."

Those actions included helping its clients from the energy sector "accelerate the world's transition to a lower-carbon economy," WPP told Reuters.

Christine Arena, CEO of Generous, an ad agency in San Francisco, said big agencies were positioning themselves as saviors of the climate while representing companies accused of wrecking it. In 2015, Arena was one of four executives who left a large U.S. public relations firm to protest its representation of oil companies.

"We're at the point where you can no longer play both sides credibly or with impunity," she said.

($1 = 0.8193 euros)

(Andrew R.C. Marshall reported from London; Valerie Volcovici from Washington, D.C.; Sheila Dang from Dallas, Texas. Editing by Julie Marquis)

Source: https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/news/world/climate-change-turns-up-the-heat-on-ad-industry-532173/.

 

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Climate change: 2021 will be cooler but still in top six warmest

UK Met Office scientists are forecasting that 2021 will be a little cooler around the world, but will still be one of the top six warmest years.

The La Niña weather phenomenon will see temperatures edge down but greenhouse gases will remain the biggest influence.

Researchers say the world will likely be around 1C warmer than the pre-industrial era.

It will be the seventh year in a row close to or above this mark.

According to Met Office projections, the Earth's temperature for 2021 will likely be between 0.91C and 1.15C above what they were in the years from 1850-1900 with a central estimate of 1.03C

The 2021 forecast is slightly lower than in recent years, due to the onset of the La Niña event in the tropical Pacific.

A La Niña develops when strong winds blow the warm surface waters of the Pacific away from South America and towards the Philippines.

In their place, colder waters from deep in the ocean come up to the surface.

It is expected to reduce sea-surface temperatures by 1-2C and will likely do enough to prevent 2021 from setting a new high mark.

"The global temperature for 2021 is unlikely to be a record year due to the influence of the current La Niña, but it will be far warmer than other past La Niña years such as 2011 and 2000 due to global warming," said Prof Adam Scaife, head of long-range prediction at the Met Office.

Researchers say the impact of a natural cooling event like La Niña, while important, is hugely overshadowed by the warming driven by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

There was a strong La Niña in the year 1999-2000, but global temperatures have gone up by 0.4C in the years since then.

This is in line with the estimate of 0.2C warming per decade, attributed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to human activities.

"The variability of the La Niña / El Niño cycle is the second most important factor in determining the Earth's temperature but it is simply dwarfed by the forcing effect of increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," said Met Office scientist Dr Nick Dunstone.

The Met Office says that its experience in forecasting previous annual temperatures gives it confidence in next year's projections.

A year ago, the agency estimated that 2020 would be 0.99C to 1.23C warmer than pre-industrial levels.

Data from January to October this year indicates that the annual temperature will be 1.17C above the 1850-1900 average.

2016 remains the warmest year on record with 2020 vying for second place with 2019.

According to a provisional assessment from the World Meteorological Organization, the warmest six years in global records dating back to 1850 have now all occurred since 2015. The Met Office expects that 2021 will edge out 2018 for sixth place.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55365414.

 

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Climate Change is Putting the Future of Cashmere at Risk

Among other threats to the cashmere industry

The onset of colder weather means the onset of warmer clothing if you’re planning to head outdoors at all this season. For many people, warmer clothing might include cashmere scarves or sweaters, which add comfort and a distinctive feel to most occasions. Cashmere wool has a long history, but its future may be at risk due to a host of factors — including climate change.

The existential threats to cashmere are documented in a new article from Robb Report. As Mark Ellwood writes, the bulk of cashmere come from goats residing in Mongolia. Over the last few decades, the global demand for cashmere has increased tremendously. This has led to changes in the way the goats are farmed — but that’s only part of what’s prompted a crisis for the industry. Changing temperatures have also had an adverse effect on Mongolia itself.

“Ninety percent of the country is drylands and so especially vulnerable to desertification,” Ellwood writes. “Mongolia is a hot spot for climate change, where temperatures have risen by 4 degrees since 1940, compared with an average global rise of about 1.5 degrees. Of course, that warming threatens the very ecosystem on which the goats depend — the second major problem.”

In other words, more goats need to get by on land that might not be able to produce as much. Add in the fact that the price of raw cashmere is actually dropping and it’s not hard to see why many observers are concerned. It’s an industry in the midst of flux — never an easy process to weather.

Source: https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/science/cashmere-wool-mongolia-climate-change.

 

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Deadly skin disease found in dolphins linked to climate change

TORONTO -- Scientists at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif. have identified a deadly skin disease in dolphins that is linked to global climate change.

In a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers found that the increasing frequency and severity of rainfall stemming from weather events such as floods, storms and cyclones has drastically decreased the salinity of coastal waters, causing a fatal skin disease in dolphins worldwide.

The disease was first noted by researchers in 2005 on approximately 40 bottlenose dolphins near New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, but this is the first time that scientists have been able to find a direct link to the cause of the deadly skin condition.

Scientists say the dolphins develop patchy lesions across their bodies and discolouration caused by a variety of fungal and bacterial species – sometimes covering up to 70 per cent of their skin.

"This devastating skin disease has been killing dolphins since Hurricane Katrina, and we're pleased to finally define the problem," Pádraig Duignan, chief pathologist at The Marine Mammal Center said in a statement. "With a record hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico this year and more intense storm systems worldwide due to climate change, we can absolutely expect to see more of these devastating outbreaks killing dolphins."

In recent years, significant outbreaks of the condition known as “freshwater skin disease” have been identified in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas and Australia. Researchers say that in all of these locations, a sudden and drastic decrease in the salinity of the waters was a common factor.

Coastal dolphins are usually accustomed to seasonal changes in their marine habitat, including changes in salinity levels, however they do not live in freshwater. Scientists say that the increasing frequency and severity of storm events like hurricanes and cyclones are dumping enormous volumes of rain that are turning coastal waters into freshwater.

The freshwater conditions can last for months, particularly after intense storms such as hurricanes Harvey and Katrina.

Scientists predict that without drastic interventions to mitigate the cause of climate change, extreme storms like these will continue to occur more frequently and will result in a severe disease outbreak among dolphins.

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-...n-dolphins-linked-to-climate-change-1.5239443.

 

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How artificial intelligence can drive your climate change strategy

In this Q&A, James Robey, global head of corporate sustainability at Capgemini, explores how artificial intelligence can drive your climate change strategy

Artificial intelligence can help drive an organisation’s climate change strategy.

In fact, a recent report from Capgemini found that AI powered use cases for climate action have the potential to help organisations fulfil up to 45% of their Economic Emission Intensity (EEI) targets of the Paris Agreement.

To find out more about how AI can drive your climate change strategy, Information Age spoke to
James Robey, global head of corporate sustainability at Capgemini.

Why should enterprises focus on sustainability and climate action?
There are many drivers for sustainability, from attracting investment and new employees to reputational enhancement.

In my research conducted at Henley Business School a few years ago, I explored the drivers behind corporate motivation to invest in becoming more sustainable. Based on inputs from 170 of the world’s largest companies, the ability to attract and retain the best employees topped the list of drivers, alongside the expectations of customers.

Our Capgemini Research Institute also carried out research this year around how sustainability is fundamentally changing consumer preferences. It found that 75% of millennials expect employers to take a stand on social and climate issues and that 79% of consumers are changing their purchase preferences based on sustainability

Another key driver for any business is the increased pressure on global resources. Organisations must deliver products and services sustainably, and the realisation of planetary limits is becoming more widely understood. A growing population, technological advancement, urbanisation and increased rates of consumption of everything from energy to consumer products is putting increased pressure on our natural resources. Whatever size the business, resource efficiency is going to be key. According to the Global Footprint Network, we are already using 1.7 Earths’ worth of resources annually — that’s more than nature can regenerate each year and will have a huge impact on a business’ ability to sustain itself.

The risk of climate change to organisations — and the planet — is increasingly ‘real’. Over the past decade, these concerns have climbed up the global agenda, with climate change and its related impacts featuring in the World Economic Forum’s top five Global Risks every year since 2011. According to the World Bank, $158 trillion of physical assets — double the total annual output of the global economy – are at risk without preventative action to mitigate climate change. Many businesses are already facing the hard implications of climate change today — for instance insurance costs are rising as claims for extreme weather events escalate.

The world is waking up to this, and we’re seeing policy change at unprecedented scale. In September the EU increased their carbon reduction ambition to ensure they reach their net zero target by 2050, China has committed to Carbon Neutrality, and under the President Elect, US will re-enter the Paris Agreement.

Another indicator is the investment community. For example, Blackrock have made sustainability a core part of its investment strategy and assets in sustainable funds hit a record $1 trillion as reported by MorningStar.

Increasingly business understands that addressing these issues is critical for their long-term success. The case for sustainability has never been more pressing.

Is it now an imperative regarding attracting and retaining customers?
We see from our retail team, that sustainable shopping and consumption patterns are attracting growing interest around the world. At the Consumer Goods Forum last year, Capgemini spoke on the role of technology to address sustainability issues in this sector. And many businesses then, were citing consumers as a key driver.

Impacts from global food waste, fast fashion and rare earth metal extraction are well documented. More and more, we are seeing retailers, driven by consumers, taking a stand on these issues and tackling problems like unsustainable palm oil cultivation or plastic packaging.

In research conducted by our Capgemini Research Institute in June 2020, we found that 78% of more than 7,000 consumers across seven countries believe “companies have a larger role to play in society.”

A significant majority of consumers (79%) are changing their purchase preferences based on sustainability. The research also found consumers practice sustainability-led behavior in their daily life (eg, minimising food waste or using energy-efficient appliances), and in their shopping behaviour (eg, preferring products with minimal packaging), which would impact their brand loyalty.

From a business perspective, there is a strong connection between sustainability and business benefits, with nearly 80% of executives pointing to an increase in customer loyalty as a key benefit from sustainability initiatives. Over two thirds (69%) pointed to an increase in brand value. The impact of sustainability credentials on brand value and sales is supported by our consumer research: if consumers perceive that the brands they are buying from are not environmentally sustainable or socially responsible, 70% tell their friends and family about the experience and urge them not to interact with the organisation.

The research found that 68% of the organisations also cited improvement in environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings of their organisation driven by sustainability initiatives, with nearly 63% of organisations saying that sustainability initiatives have helped boost revenues.

Another high-impact industry which we are seeing adapt to the new world order is the automotive sector.

Automotive and mobility companies worldwide are facing increasing pressure from both consumers and government regulators to prioritise their sustainability efforts. We’re seeing a fundamental potential for a shift in approach as consumers adopt new, greener and more flexible approaches to getting from A to B. This will be more of a mobility ‘experience’, rather than just being about vehicles. Over the coming decade, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) will be forced to shift from being product-centric companies to being product and service oriented, offering incentives and new ways in which consumers can get from A to B sustainably.

How can technology innovations like AI help with an organisation’s sustainability drive?
Technology is changing our world, and with it bringing new challenges and opportunities for sustainability. While recognising that technology can have unintended negative impacts, the possibility for ‘good’ far outweighs the bad. According to the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, GeSI, for example, technology has the potential to cut 9.7 times as many carbon emissions as it emits.

The most significant development for sustainability is the increasing ability to generate, capture, transmit as well as learn from data. The implications for what we can do with this data are huge and will be a critical feature for the sustainability agenda.

Advanced analytics, enabled by the increase in quality and quantity of data from connected devices in an operation, provide organisations with much greater insights into their efficiency. This can help identify opportunities to reduce environmental impacts across the operation, for example from energy consumption patterns, which can be adapted accordingly. In the same way, the intelligence from customer experience can be used to improve the manufacturing process, producing only what we need.

The adoption of AI to address climate change is also growing, with successful use cases around tracking GHG emissions and tracing GHG leakages at industrial sites, as well as using AI to improve the energy efficiency of facilities and industrial processes. AI is also being successfully utilised to design new products that reduce waste and emission during prototyping, production and usage. AI is playing a role in reducing the wastage of food products and raw materials by improving demand planning, it is also being successfully deployed for route optimisation and fleet management for retail, automotive and consumer products firms.

Our most recent report Climate AI: How artificial intelligence can power your climate action strategy, considers the potential that AI offers for accelerating climate action and the benefits that have been achieved so far, revealing that 48% of organisations across the automotive, industrial/process manufacturing, energy and utilities, consumer products, and retail industries are currently using AI to tackle climate change, and already helping reduce GHG emissions by 12.9% – with expectations that AI could help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 16% over the next 3-5 years. In fact, our modelling exercise — conducted in partnership with a climate start-up ‘right. based on science’ — estimates that, by 2030, AI-enabled use cases can potentially help some organisations fulfil up to 45% of their Economic Emission Intensity (EEI) targets of the Paris Agreement.

4. Who should lead this drive within an organisation and how?
The research found that only a few organisations are successfully combining and scaling their climate vision with AI capabilities. We call these high-performing organisations ‘Climate AI Champions’. They represent only 13% of the entire survey sample. We can learn from them about what is working for organisations and how best to integrate AI to better impact their sustainability initiatives.

One of the things they seem to be doing differently is being able to drive their climate action and AI action by building dedicated leadership and technical teams to drive implementation. We found that 47% of champions have a dedicated leader for each climate goal and action compare to 36% of others, and 53% have a dedicated team for implementing tech solutions compared to 42% of others.

One of the main recommendations from the report is the need to educate sustainability teams on the potential for AI and educate AI teams in the criticality of climate action. Given that we know from the report, that investment and skills is a ‘gap, it seems to me that it is only by coming together that the impact and needed change/approaches will be made.

Source: https://www.information-age.com/how...drive-your-climate-change-strategy-123493191/.

 

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Novel Method to Predict Global Warming with Lower Uncertainties

According to a new study, the threshold for hazardous global warming will probably be encountered between 2027 and 2042, which is a considerably narrower window compared to the predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the period between now and 2052.

Published in the Climate Dynamics journal, the study reports a new and more accurate method developed by scientists from McGill University to predict the temperature of the Earth. By using historical data, the method significantly decreases uncertainties compared to earlier methods.

For decades, climate models have been used by researchers to make predictions of future global warming. Such models tend to play a significant role in gaining better insights into the Earth’s climate and how it will possibly change. However, it is essential to determine the accuracy of the model.

Dealing with Uncertainty
Climate models are mathematical simulations of various factors that interact to influence Earth’s climate, like the ice, ocean, land surface, atmosphere and the sun. Although these models are developed using the best understanding of the Earth’s systems available, uncertainties still tend to persist when it comes to predicting the future.

To date, outcomes in various mitigation scenarios have been hard to pinpoint due to wide ranges in overall temperature projections. For example, upon doubling atmospheric CO2 concentrations, the General Circulation Models (GCMs) utilized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate a highly possible increase in the global average temperature between 1.9 °C and 4.5 °C—a massive range that covers moderate climate changes on the lower end and disastrous ones on the other.

Hébert is currently working at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Potsdam, Germany.

In the study, the team describes the new Scaling Climate Response Function (SCRF) model to predict the temperature of the Earth to 2100. Based on historical data, it decreases forecast uncertainties by around half, compared to the method used by the IPCC at present.

Upon examining the outcomes, the team discovered that the threshold for hazardous warming (+1.5 °C) will probably be crossed between 2027 and 2042. This is a considerably narrower window compared to GCMs prediction of between now and 2052.

The team also discovered that, on average, predicted warming was a little lower, by around 10% to 15%. However, they have also found that the 'very likely warming ranges' of the SCRF were less than those of the GCMs, supporting the predictions of the latter.

Journal Reference:
Hébert, R., et al. (2020) An observation-based scaling model for climate sensitivity estimates and global projections to 2100. Climate Dynamics. doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05521-x.

Source: https://www.azocleantech.com/news.aspx?newsID=28573.

 

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Climate change is giving "Christmastown, USA" an identity crisis

My Christmassy hometown is looking less and less like a winter wonderland.

When I was 9 years old, a reporter from Good Morning America visited Leavenworth, Washington, and declared it "the ultimate Christmas town." It was 2007, and he was doing a spot on my hometown's most popular winter event, the Christmas Lighting Festival, where thousands of people crowd around the Front Street gazebo to watch half a million red-and-green Christmas lights simultaneously turn on. Due to the East Coast time difference, he shot it live at 4 a.m. local time. Hundreds of people showed up anyway, many in costume and carrying signs, hoping to make it onto the program.

The postcard version of Leavenworth, Washington, is a winter wonderland — "one of the most Christmasy places in America," according to the city's official website. The charming town, home to 2,000 people, is filled with wooden balconies and A-line roofs with dark paneling, reflecting the architecture of an Old-World, alpine Bavarian village. We have year-round Christmas shops, a reindeer farm, and horse-drawn sleigh rides through what's sold as "white and drifted snow." According to the tourism board — which doesn't hold back, when it comes to schmaltz — December weekends "end like a Dr. Seuss tale," when the local "townsfolk" participate in the lighting festival, joining hands for some good old-fashioned Christmas caroling.

But the snow-blanketed, postcard-ready version of Leavenworth is in flux. According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program's Fourth National Climate Assessment, winter is retreating across the Pacific Northwest — and it's expected to recede even further in the coming decades. Thanks to climate change, towns like Leavenworth are slated to experience warmer temperatures and more rain. Notably, the snow season could shorten by a full month by the time I'm 50.

In Leavenworth, we are already getting a glimpse into that future — and so far, the effects of global heating aren't exactly amplifying our "Old-World Christmas spirit." December feels rainier. There's sleet in January. By February, slush replaces snow on the streets downtown. Of course, there are still some years when we get a lot of snow — but overall trends don't seem promising for our winter wonderland. As climate change chips away at Leavenworth's winters and brings the possibility of a season without "white and drifted snow" ever closer, the town is facing an identity crisis.

* * *

The first time I remember seeing the city bring in snow machines was in 2011. I was 12 years old, and a team of filmmakers wanted to shoot a low-budget independent movie, Ira Finkelstein's Christmas. (Its name was later changed to Switchmas, which is only slightly less cringey.) The storyline follows a Jewish tween from California, Ira, who desperately wanted to experience a Hallmark Christmas —one with Santa Claus, Christmas carols, and, of course, snow.

In the movie, Ira gets his way by swapping places with his doppelgänger in an airport.Ira goes to Leavenworth, while his lookalike visits Ira's grandparents in Florida. I was slated to be an extra in the film, sledding down a hill on Front Street as a nameless resident of Leavenworth, or, as the movie rebranded us: Christmastown, USA.

As a stand-in for Christmastown, Leavenworth was an obvious choice except for one problem: When the film crew scouted the area, the ground was "brown and muddy." That year hadn't been great for snow, and it was late in the season — thus, the Mission Ridge snow machine had to be called in. If it hadn't been for a belated Christmas miracle — a truly anomalous two-week-long stretch of late-season snow days that coincided with the film shoot — Ira Finkelstein's magical Christmas would have been entirely human-made.

Since that strange film, I've seen a lot more of those snow-making machines in Leavenworth — "snow guns," as they're officially called.Even when we aren't using the city center to film cheesy Christmas movies, there's a need to keep up wintry appearances, or at least, try to. In some cases, the snow guns can't keep up with snow loss, especially in high-traffic areas like Leavenworth's iconic Front Street sledding hill — the same place where I made my one-second Hollywood debut for Switchmas.

The hill has become an iconic downtown disaster zone, although it doesn't start the winter that way. For a few days each December, it's covered in powdery white snow, making it a sledding favorite for tourists visiting from Seattle. Growing up, my sister and I used to envy their impressive assortment of sleds —round ones, rectangular ones, plastic ones, foam ones.

But within days of the first flurries, overzealous sledders smush the snow down flat, and it mixes with the dirt underneath. The result is a black-and-brown slurry that colors the hill for weeks. It freezes and thaws until nighttime temperatures start to climb above freezing. But still, the kids come.

* * *

Snow holds more than symbolic significance to the people of Leavenworth; it helps support an entire tourism industry. Within a 10-minute radius of downtown, the city has three cross-country ski areas and a small alpine run, as well as two snowshoeing courses. The Leavenworth Winter Sports Clubmaintains much of this infrastructure, "grooming" the trails every night during peak season and holding races with Scandinavian-sounding names like the "Skirennen."

When I was in middle school, I joined the Sports Club's cross-country ski team. For some of my friends, ski team was their world — after weeks of practicing on Leavenworth's trails, they'd take off for weekend races in Winthrop, Washington, or Bend, Oregon. Even after spring had come and the snow had all melted into the Wenatchee River, they would bust out roller skis, practicing on the pavement in anticipation of "Junior Nationals," an end-of-the-season race in Wyoming, Vermont, or some other exotic and snowy destination. As I neared the end of high school, it seemed like they were spending more and more time on roller skis.

When I come back to Leavenworth now, on break from college, my friends and I often have to use "rock skis" — secondhand, inexpensive pairs of skis that you don't mind scuffing on rocks, pine cones, and exposed branches lying beneath the thinning snow's surface. Some years, the ski season doesn't even begin until late January, when I'm about to fly back to school for the spring semester.

For people who work in the ski tourism industry, the lack of snow can be devastating. In the early 2000s, each low-snow year in the Northwest was associated with annual economic losses of $173 million and 2,100 fewer jobs, compared to high-snow years. And with climate change, things will only go downhill, with scientists already forecasting the demise of some of Washington's most popular ski resorts by 2050. Some areas have been forced to purchase snow machines for the first time ever.

The winter of 2014-15 provided an alarming sneak preview, when the Northwest's temperatures shot 6.2 degrees F above the 1970-99 average. Precipitation was down too — the first half of the year was the seventh driest ever recorded. Stevens Pass, a popular ski resort within driving distance of Leavenworth, got only 40 percent of its usual amount of snow, and made 43 percent less money than during the previous season.

I remember that time. It was my junior year of high school, and people were calling it our year without a winter. I also remember that it was the same year Kentucky Senator James Inhofe infamously brought a snowball onto the Senate floor, "disproving" climate change once and for all. "It's very, very cold out," he said before tossing the snowball. "Very unseasonal."

* * *

Leavenworth has begun to remind me of a fast food ad —the food you get never looks quite as beautiful as the promo. In Time Magazine, we're one of the top 10 places with the most holiday cheer. On HGTV, we're an "exquisite Christmas town." Our own promo materials claim that "Leavenworth in winter is just like living in a snowglobe," before suggesting eight distinctly snow-dependent activities for visitors to do during a six-day "week of winter fun."

Living in Leavenworth, you see the less-shiny reality firsthand. In 2020, I've spent more time here than in any year since before college. Other than a brief stint in a Seattle sublet and a couple of weeks in Portland, Oregon, I've been living with my parents on the outskirts of town since my university sent its students home in March. Right now, people are understandably focused on COVID-19, which has caused business closures and canceled all of our winter events. In a normal year, 25,000 visitors might pack into Leavenworth's downtown plaza every weekend to watch the Christmas Lighting Festival. This year, no one will.

In both crises — COVID-19 and climate change — the urge to go on as normal can be overwhelming. Tourists continue to visit Leavenworth during lockdown, shivering on restaurant patios in cold, wet weather because of the restrictions on indoor dining. Many of Leavenworth's downtown shops now sell Christmas face masks.

It's a similar story with climate change. Folks visiting Leavenworth from Seattle expect a winter snowglobe. Driving over the pass, checking into hotel rooms, bundling up the kids, and purchasing newfangled sleds — it's a ritual that had better end with a goddamn snowman, or at least a snowball or two. So as the winter hobbles on, when it's January, it's lightly raining, and the sledding hill is streaked with brown, bright-eyed kids will innocently put sleds to dirt, as if sheer willpower could change the painful reality: Christmastown isn't what it used to be.

Source: https://www.salon.com/2020/12/25/cl...christmastown-usa-an-identity-crisis_partner/.

 

[sweep_shot]

It May Be Too Late to Save The World's Largest Lake From Climate Change

Most people know the world's oceans are on the rise, but further inland, the scales of climate change are tipping in the exact opposite direction.

As melting glaciers feed fresh water to the oceans, heat and drought are draining our lakes and inland seas of precious liquid.

The largest inland body of water on Earth, the Caspian Sea, is on a particularly precipitous decline, according to a new study published in Communications Earth & Environment.

Scientists are now warning this salty body of water will fall between 9 and 18 metres (30 and 59 feet) by the end of the century, if emissions continue to rise. A decline of that magnitude would evaporate nearly the entire northern Caspian shelf and some of the Turkmen shelf to the southeast. The eastern margin would be "completely desiccated", say researchers.

In the worst-case scenario of an 18-metre drop in sea level, models show 34 percent of this sea's surface area will shrink, and yet this enormous crisis is still thoroughly under-appreciated by the public. Even the scientific community is largely unaware of what's going on.

The International Panel on Climate Change has not addressed lake evaporation from climate change in any of its reports, nor has the United Nations addressed the issue in its sustainable development goals.

"The impacts of the overlooked facet of future sea level change – falling levels of lakes and seas in continental interiors on a global scale – could be similarly devastating as global sea level rise, and threaten the livelihood of millions of people worldwide," the authors of the new paper write.

Due to its size, about 371,000 square kilometres (143,000 square miles), and its salinity levels of around 1.2 percent, the Caspian was deemed a sea instead of a lake.

Without immediate and coordinated action, the Caspian Sea will serve as a poster child for receding lakes in a rapidly warming world. A global task force is therefore urgently needed, the authors say.

If nothing is done, the consequences to the environment will be immense. The projected decline in sea level will severely impact this unique ecosystem, and the loss of shallow water in the south will deprive endemic fish, birds and seals of invaluable habitat, spawning grounds and food sources.

"The expected escalating effects of Caspian sea level decline are likely to lead to a wholesale reorganization of ecosystems, and threaten unique Caspian biota that have been evolving in the basin over millions of years," the new paper concludes.

Even those areas of the Caspian Sea already protected will be "transformed beyond recognition" as deposits of nutrients bypass these rising shelves to head straight to the central part of the basin.

Dead zones will likely emerge as temperatures grow hotter and rivers carry less oxygen to the sea, impacting both the shallowest and deepest waters of the inland sea, similar to what's already happening in some parts of the world's oceans.

The geopolitical consequences are also terribly worrisome. Local economies dependent on fishing and maritime trade will be affected irrevocably, as will coastal ports, which will 'suddenly' find themselves much further from the water. The loss will also likely exacerbate water scarcity issues in the arid region, no doubt causing international disputes.

"As the livelihoods and food security of millions of people depend on the Caspian Sea, a loss of these ecosystem services will have drastic socioeconomic consequences and may trigger local and regional conflicts – in an ethnically diverse region that is already rife with tensions," experts predict.

And this is hardly just a problem for the Caspian Sea. A few recent studies have shown falling water levels in enclosed seas and lake systems, largely due to continental drying from climate change.

Because lakes do not have an outflow, they are particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures. Their water level is almost solely determined by precipitation, river inflow, and evaporation. The same is true of the Caspian Sea, which relies on the Volga River for its inflow.

Precise models for lake retreat around the world are desperately needed to save these precious ecosystems and the economies and societies they support.

Unfortunately, it's too late to save the Caspian through emission cuts alone. Already the inland body of water is declining at a rate of 6 to 7 centimetres (2.4 to 2.8 inches) each year.

Intense regional adaptation and mitigation efforts are therefore desperately needed. Public awareness would be a good place to start. For decades now, the decline of inland lakes has been misunderstood and overlooked even by the experts.

"For example, the IPCC's First Assessment Report (1990/92) suggested an increase in Caspian sea level from about 2010 onwards," the authors write.

"None of the IPCC Synthesis Reports considers this issue further."

A sheer lack of research is part of the problem. The risks and vulnerability of the Caspian Sea due to water loss have barely been studied at all.

Based on the case of the Caspian Sea, the authors are calling for a global campaign to raise awareness and improve research for the world's shrinking lakes and inland seas. They've been neglected for too long.

"Many people are not even aware that an inland lake is dramatically shrinking due to climate change, as our models indicate," says Matthias Prange who creates climate models at the University of Bremen in Germany.

"This has to change. We need more studies and a better understanding of the consequences of global warming in this region."

Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/climate-change-is-making-most-seas-rise-but-it-s-shrinking-this-one.

 

[sweep_shot]

2020 weather disasters boosted by climate change: report

PARIS - The ten costliest weather disasters worldwide this year saw insured damages worth $150 billion, topping the figure for 2019 and reflecting a long-term impact of global warming, according to a report Monday.

The same disasters claimed at least 3,500 lives and displaced more than 13.5 million people.

From Australia's out-of-control wildfires in January to a record number of Atlantic hurricanes through November, the true cost of the year's climate-enhanced calamities was in fact far higher because most losses were uninsured.

Not surprisingly, the burden fell disproportionately on poor nations, according to the annual tally from global NGO Christian Aid, entitled "Count the cost of 2020: a year of climate breakdown".

Only four percent of economic losses from climate-impacted extreme events in low-income countries were insured, compared with 60 percent in high-income economies, the report said, citing a study last month in The Lancet.

"Whether floods in Asia, locusts in Africa, or storms in Europe and the Americas, climate change has continued to rage in 2020," said Christian Aid's climate policy lead, Kat Kramer.

Extreme weather disasters, of course, have plagued humanity long before manmade global warming began to mess with the planet's climate system.

But more than a century of temperature and precipitation data, along with decades of satellite data on hurricanes and sea level rise, have left no doubt that Earth's warming surface temperature is amplifying their impact.

Massive tropical storms -- variously known as hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones -- are now more likely, for example, to be stronger, last longer, carry more water and wander beyond their historical range.

2020's record-breaking 30 named Atlantic hurricanes -- with at least 400 fatalities and $41 billion in damages -- suggest the world could see more such storms as well.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) had to use Greek symbols after running out of letters in the Latin alphabet.

EXTREMES, NOT AVERAGES

Intense summer flooding in China and India, where the monsoon season brought abnormal amounts of rainfall for the second year running, are also consistent with projections on how climate will impact precipitation.

Five of the most costly extreme weather events in 2020 were related to Asia's unusually rainy monsoon.

"The 2020 flood was one of the worst in the history of Bangladesh, more than a quarter of the country was under water," said Shahjahan Mondal, director of the Institute of Flood and Water Management at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

Wildfires that scorched record areas in California, Australia and even Russia's Siberian hinterland, much of it within the Arctic Circle, are also consistent with a warmer world, and a predicted to get worse as temperatures climb.

The planet's average surface temperature has gone up at least 1.1 degrees Celsius on average compared to the late 19th-century, with much of that warming occurring in the last half-century.

The 2015 Paris Agreement enjoins the world's nations to collectively cap global warming at "well below" 2C, and even 1.5C if feasible.

A landmark report in 2018 from the UN's IPCC climate science advisory panel showed that 1.5C is a safer threshold, but the likelihood of staying below it have grown vanishingly small, according to many experts.

"Ultimately, the impacts of climate change will be felt via the extremes, and not average changes," noted Sarah Perkins-Kilpatrick, a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales' Climate Change Research Centre.

If the growing frequency and intensity of natural weather disasters is consistent with modelling projections, the new field of attribution science is now able to put a number on how much more likely such an event is due to global warming.

The unprecedented wildfires that destroyed 20 percent of Australia's forests and killed tens of millions of wild animals in late 2019 and early 2020, for example, were made at least 30 percent more likely, according to research led by Friederike Otto at the University of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute.

In Europe, meanwhile, the chance of deadly heatwaves occurring has risen nearly 100 fold compared to a century ago, according to recent research.

"Heatwaves and floods which used to be 'once in a century' events are becoming more regular occurrences," noted WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

Source: https://news.abs-cbn.com/spotlight/12/28/20/2020-weather-disasters-boosted-by-climate-change-report.

 

[Tubs]

The totality of evidence leads to climate change being real, yet we still have science-deniers who claim it isn't. Similar to evolution. Very sad.

 

[sweep_shot]

B.C. scientists look at climate change impacts on aquaculture production

Increased heatwaves may have dire consequences for food security

As climate change causes more extreme temperature events, heat waves have the potential to hit marine environments especially hard. The impacts could be especially dire for humans, as we increasingly turn to aquaculture as the best hope to feed a global population speeding toward 10-billion people.

Researchers at Vancouver Island University are leading an investigation to study the effects of heatwaves on farmed finfish and shellfish to learn how farmers can improve crop security in an uncertain future.

“The world is changing, and we must make informed decisions to change with it successfully,” Dr. Dan Baker, a VIU Fisheries and Aquaculture Professor said. “British Columbia has a crucial part to play in providing food to Canada and the rest of the world in this future, and we believe we can help by addressing challenges in aquaculture industries hit hard by problems created by climate change and other anthropogenic activities.”

Baker, along with two other lead researchers, VIU professors Dr. Spencer Russel and Dr. Timothy Green, are designing research projects with $549,000 in funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and BC Knowledge Development Fund.

Green is investigating how marine heat waves can cause death in farmed oysters. Baker will examine how heat waves may alter how wild and farmed salmon and sturgeon respond and adapt to higher summer temperatures. Russell is investigating the impact on gill health of farmed salmonids.

The professors said many previous studies have focused on higher average seawater temperatures, but this general approach doesn’t improve understanding on impacts to food security. By looking at aquaculture specifically, the professors hope to provide information on how different species can adapt to climate change.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization places a high value on aquaculture for the global food supply. The agency found that of the 156-million tonnes of fish products the world ate in 2018, 52 per cent already comes from aquaculture.

In B.C., just 17,500 metric tonnes of wild salmon was harvested for human consumption, compared to 87,000 metric tonnes of farmed salmon.

Provincial shellfish farming is also on the rise, but is among the first to experience impacts of climate change. In recent years harmful algae blooms and marine biotoxin incidents have spiked in frequency, while ocean acidification, caused by an increase of carbon dioxide in the environment, devastated the industry in the Pacific Northwest as young shellfish were unable to form shells.

Going forward, heatwaves lasting between a few days to a few months are expected to increase in frequency.

“By identifying how marine heatwaves alter finfish and shellfish behaviour, physiology and immune responses, we will improve our knowledge on how these warm water events increase the susceptibility of aquatic animals to disease and make significant advances in the management of finfish and shellfish health and welfare,” Russell said.

Source: https://www.albernivalleynews.com/n...ate-change-impacts-on-aquaculture-production/.

 

[sweep_shot]

The financial market can hold back climate change

Financial mechanisms already exist to make it profitable to reduce carbon emissions

In early December, water futures became a tradable commodity on Wall Street. Investors now can bet on the availability of water in California, one of the most important agricultural markets in the world.

The emergence of this futures market is a signal of real scarcity for one of the planet’s most precious natural resources. Yet there is a silver lining.

Like the futures markets for gold and oil, if water becomes even scarcer, its price goes up. This creates a quantifiable tool for the cost understanding of water scarcity, which encourages conservation and investment in water-saving technology.

Now, imagine if a market mechanism were extended to other pressing challenges like carbon emissions that cause climate change.

Well, it’s already happening. However, there are several key differences: Water is getting scarcer; carbon emissions are increasing. And for carbon emissions, there are at least two steps necessary.

For the first part, look at the global payment-processing company Stripe. In 2019, it committed to spend US$1 million to buy credit from a number of companies for future carbon removal from the atmosphere and sequestration of this in long-term storage. In October this year, the company invited businesses that use its software to support carbon removal directly by committing a portion of their revenue to the project (it launches for US businesses first).

Why is this important? The Paris Agreement on climate change has set a goal to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. To reach that target, the international community needs double-digit decarbonization. That’s a big ask. Heavy investment is needed to enable this.

But how? Consider how Stripe’s actions could trigger reductions in the price of carbon-capture. By paying carbon-removal companies now for future carbon sequestration, it is investing in these companies and their technology. And then by asking its customers to join it, Stripe is creating a demand-side market for the technology.

Wright’s Law, used for forecasting prices, says that increasing volumes lead to learning effects and rapidly decreasing prices. Stripe is triggering this effect by being a buyer of first resort. Its actions will push carbon-capture prices to decline.

This concept is visible in the rise of electric vehicles and the cost of the batteries that power them. In little over a decade, the cost of lithium-ion batteries has dropped nearly 85%. Electric vehicles now have become cheap enough to compete with traditional fossil-fuel cars, and the cost keeps going down as the market opens up.

This is partially due to innovative efforts by companies like Tesla that got into the market early. Apple’s recent announcement that it will design and sell an electric car in 2024 will expand the market even further and drive costs lower.

Of course, Stripe won’t make money out of its carbon purchase. If anything, it is paying a higher price now for what should be cheaper in the future. Still, anti-climate-change advocates like Stripe should be rewarded for their moral risk-taking. Particularly if we want them to help make anti-climate-change technology viable.

So here’s the next part. What if financial markets were to create a trading instrument that is inverse to the mechanism of the California water (or gold or oil) futures? In essence, this would be a derivative instrument based on the future spot price of carbon removal.

Carbon credits bought up to a certain date could be priced according to the inverse of spot prices – like bond prices go up when interest rates go down. And like bonds, there could be a series of future tranches of carbon bought at specific, set dates so the market is sustainable. The details can be left to Wall Street, but the possibility certainly is there to reward those who take a position now on our future good.

It is morally wrong for the developed world to tell developing economies that they must reduce their greenhouse emissions now after the West has done more than its fair share of polluting the Earth in the past. Carbon sequestration can remove the excess greenhouse gases, if we invest in the technology.

Yet the leading economies of the world have, for various reasons, refused to embrace the principle of Wright’s Law for meaningful climate impact. The private sector has picked up the slack though, as is clear with the stunning rise in the electric-vehicle sector.

While Stripe might be a small company, its approach is one that smaller, more nimble countries could easily adapt. Tech-focused countries such as Estonia and Singapore, for example.

In addition, major hydrocarbon-producing countries such as those in the Persian Gulf region might see the logic of investing in carbon removal as the opposite complement to their fossil-fuel industry, profiting eventually through the financial markets.

The markets might yet help save us from the devastating effect on the climate of too much carbon dioxide.

This article was provided by Syndication Bureau, which holds copyright.

Joseph Dana, based between South Africa and the Middle East, is editor-in-chief of emerge85, a lab that explores change in emerging markets and its global impact.

Source: https://asiatimes.com/2020/12/how-financial-market-can-hold-back-climate-change/.

 

[sweep_shot]

Has The Time For International Action On Climate Change Finally Come?

“Net-zero emissions by 2050” has become an increasingly popular target among industrialised countries, with nations such as the U.K., France, Denmark, and New Zealand passing laws in 2019 to formalise climate targets in accordance with the 2015 Paris agreement. Japan and South Korea followed suit this October, while China, currently the world’s largest emitter, aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. This flurry of activity has been capped by U.S. President-elect Joe Biden pledging to put the world’s largest economy on a “path to net zero emissions” by 2020 and committing to rejoin the Paris agreement on his first day as president.

António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, said: “It is a very important signal. We look forward to a very active U.S. leadership in climate action from now on as U.S. leadership is absolutely essential. The U.S. is the largest economy in the world, it’s absolutely essential for our goals to be reached.” Biden’s statements stand in stark contrast to the actions of outgoing president Donald Trump, who used his term to repeal environmental policies relating to clean power, vehicle emissions, and methane pollution, in addition to withdrawing from the Paris agreement this November.

Recent years have been marked by inaction and even regression brought about by the election of climate change deniers such as Trump and Bolsonaro, resistance from major fossils fuel exporters such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Russia, and relative complacency in industrialised nations. But are these new developments a sign that international action on climate change is enjoying a resurgence?

Judging by the results of the Climate Ambition Summit held on 12 December, the answer is not so clear. While several countries made commitments to various emissions reduction programmes and projects to promote renewable energy, there is a distinct feeling that whatever has been mustered does not match the scale of the problem. U.K. business secretary and organiser of next year’s COP26 climate change summit Alok Sharma conceded:

“Have we done enough to put the world on track to limit warming to 1.5°C and protect people and nature from the effects of climate change? We must be honest with ourselves – the answer to that is currently no.”

This can to some extent be understood as politicians wishing to save their juicier announcements for COP26 rather than have them drowned out in the COVID-19 dominated news cycle. However, the end result is another year wasted to take decisive action on climate change. The pandemic has seen countries spend 50% more on fossil fuels than renewable energy in their stimulus packages, a situation UN Secretary-general Guterres has called “unacceptable”.

As Mohamed Adow, director of climate and energy thinktank Power Shift Africa, told the Guardian: “… it’s one thing to set a net-zero date for decades into the future and another thing to enact policies right now that will get us there. That is what must be on the agenda for all countries in 2021.” Economic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic must take advantage of this once-in-a-generation crisis shift to forge resilient economies that are prepared to tackle climate change, rather than see it as yet another reason to put off taking action. It is also important to challenge the use of fossil fuels and reduce emissions outright.

For example, researchers at Chatham House have criticised the “Circular Carbon Economy” (CCE) initiative, promoted at the most recent Saudi Arabia-chaired G20 summit. CCE promotes carbon capture technologies within the existing fossil fuel paradigm. While the technologies involved have some valid applications, they are not a catch-all solution for the social or environmental problems caused by fossil fuels, and CCE “risks undermining ambitious climate policy, mitigation targets and carbon pricing mechanisms that seek to incentivize a move away from fossil fuels altogether.” It is not tenable for the G20 to continue to subsidise fossil fuel production and consumption by an estimated $584bn a year instead of supporting sustainable energy technologies.

Failure to act or relapse in green policies could result in a worst-case scenario of 7 °C of global warming, double the 3.5 °C worst-case scenarios that could be seen at current trends, according to the U.K.-China Co-operation on Climate Change Risk Assessment, as explained by Daniel Quiggin of Chatham House. If historic decarbonisation trends continue, by 2050 half the global population will be exposed to major heatwaves for at least four days a year, and drought will severely impact crop yields around the world. Rising temperatures will melt sea ice and cause increased numbers of natural disasters such as flooding and typhoons.

While Joe Biden’s commitment to revitalizing U.S. climate diplomacy and the adoption of legally-binding of emissions targets in several countries are positive developments, these words need to be matched by urgent and bold action on climate change. Adair Turner of the Energy Transitions Commission writes in the Financial Times that decarbonisation to achieve global net-zero emissions by 2050 will cost less than 1% of global GDP while simultaneously increasing living standards and boosting GDP around the world. There is no longer a trade-off between the economy and the environment. Now is the time for ambitious and forward-looking policies that leave behind our fossil-fuel economy and embrace the sustainable technologies that will define the future.

Source: https://theowp.org/has-the-time-for...te-change-finally-come/?shared=email&msg=fail.

 

[sweep_shot]

Why 2021 could be turning point for tackling climate change

Countries only have only a limited time in which to act if the world is to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Here are five reasons why 2021 could be a crucial year in the fight against global warming.

Covid-19 was the big issue of 2020, there is no question about that.

But I'm hoping that, by the end of 2021, the vaccines will have kicked in and we'll be talking more about climate than the coronavirus.

2021 will certainly be a crunch year for tackling climate change.

Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, told me he thinks it is a "make or break" moment for the issue.

So, in the spirit of New Year's optimism, here's why I believe 2021 could confound the doomsters and see a breakthrough in global ambition on climate.

1. The crucial climate conference
In November 2021, world leaders will be gathering in Glasgow for the successor to the landmark Paris meeting of 2015.

Paris was important because it was the first time virtually all the nations of the world came together to agree they all needed to help tackle the issue.

The problem was the commitments countries made to cutting carbon emissions back then fell way short of the targets set by the conference.

In Paris, the world agreed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change by trying to limit global temperature increases to 2C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. The aim was to keep the rise to 1.5C if at all possible.

We are way off track. On current plans the world is expected to breach the 1.5C ceiling within 12 years or less and to hit 3C of warming by the end of the century.

Under the terms of the Paris deal, countries promised to come back every five years and raise their carbon-cutting ambitions. That was due to happen in Glasgow in November 2020.

The pandemic put paid to that and the conference was bumped forward to this year.

So, Glasgow 2021 gives us a forum at which those carbon cuts can be ratcheted up.

2. Countries are already signing up to deep carbon cuts
And there has already been progress.

The most important announcement on climate change last year came completely out of the blue.

At the UN General Assembly in September, the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, announced that China aimed to go carbon neutral by 2060.

Environmentalists were stunned. Cutting carbon has always been seen as an expensive chore yet here was the most polluting nation on earth - responsible for some 28% of world emissions - making an unconditional commitment to do just that regardless of whether other countries followed its lead.

That was a complete turnaround from past negotiations, when everyone's fear was that they might end up incurring the cost of decarbonising their own economy, while others did nothing but still enjoyed the climate change fruits of their labour.

And China is not alone.

The UK was the first major economy in the world to make a legally binding net zero commitment in June 2019. The European Union followed suit in March 2020.

Since then, Japan and South Korea have joined what the UN estimates is now a total of over 110 countries that have set net zero target for mid-century. Together, they represent more than 65% of global emissions and more than 70% of the world economy, the UN says.

With the election of Joe Biden in the United States, the biggest economy in the world has now re-joined the carbon cutting chorus.

These countries now need to detail how they plan to achieve their lofty new aspirations - that will be a key part of the agenda for Glasgow - but the fact that they are already saying they want to get there is a very significant change.

3. Renewables are now the cheapest energy ever
There is a good reason why so many countries are now saying they plan to go net zero: the collapsing cost of renewables is completely changing the calculus of decarbonisation.

In October 2020, the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organisation, concluded that the best solar power schemes now offer "the cheapest source of electricity in history".

Renewables are already often cheaper than fossil fuel power in much of the world when it comes to building new power stations.

And, if the nations of the world ramp up their investments in wind, solar and batteries in the next few years, prices are likely to fall even further to a point where they are so cheap it will begin to make commercial sense to shut down and replace existing coal and gas power stations.

That is because the cost of renewables follows the logic of all manufacturing - the more you produce, the cheaper it gets. It's like pushing on an open door - the more you build the cheaper it gets and the cheaper it gets the more you build.

Think what this means: investors won't need to be bullied by green activists into doing the right thing, they will just follow the money. And governments know that by scaling up renewables in their own economies, they help to accelerate the energy transition globally, by making renewables even cheaper and more competitive everywhere.

4. Covid changes everything
The coronavirus pandemic has shaken our sense of invulnerability and reminded us that it is possible for our world to be upended in ways we cannot control.

It has also delivered the most significant economic shock since the Great Depression.

In response, governments are stepping forward with stimulus packages designed to reboot their economies.

And the good news is it has rarely - if ever - been cheaper for governments to make these kind of investments. Around the world, interest rates are hovering around zero, or even negative.

This creates an unprecedented opportunity to - in the now familiar phrase - "build back better".

The European Union and Joe Biden's new administration in the US have promised trillions of dollars of green investments to get their economies going and kick-start the process of decarbonisation.

Both are saying they hope other countries will join them - helping drive down the cost of renewables globally. But they are also warning that alongside this carrot, they plan to wield a stick - a tax on imports of countries that emit too much carbon.

The idea is this may help induce carbon-cutting laggards - like Brazil, Russia, Australia and Saudi Arabia - to come onside too.

The bad news is that, according to the UN, developed nations are spending 50% more on sectors linked to fossil fuels than on low-carbon energy.

5. Business is going green too
The falling cost of renewable and the growing public pressure for action on climate is also transforming attitudes in business.

There are sound financial reasons for this. Why invest in new oil wells or coal power stations that will become obsolete before they can repay themselves over their 20-30-year life?

Indeed, why carry carbon risk in their portfolios at all?

The logic is already playing out in the markets. This year alone, Tesla's rocketing share price has made it the world's most valuable car company.

Meanwhile, the share price of Exxon - once the world's most valuable company of any kind - fell so far that it got booted out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average of major US corporations.

At the same time there is growing momentum behind the movement to get businesses to embed climate risk into their financial decision making.

The aim is to make it mandatory for businesses and investors to show that their activities and investments are making the necessary steps to transition to a net zero world.

Seventy central banks are already working to make this happen, and building these requirements into the world's financial architecture will be a key focus for the Glasgow conference.

It is still all to play for.

So, there is good reason for hope but it is far from a done deal.

To stand a reasonable chance of hitting the 1.5C target we need to halve total emissions by the end of 2030, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN-backed body that collates the science needed to inform policy.

What that means is making the sort of emissions reductions achieved in 2020 thanks to the massive international lockdowns every year to the end of the decade. Yet emissions are already edging back to the levels they were in 2019.

The truth is lots of countries have expressed lofty ambitions for cutting carbon but few have yet got strategies in place to meet those goals.

The challenge for Glasgow will be getting the nations of the world to sign up to policies that will start reducing emissions now. The UN says it wants to see coal phased out completely, an end to all fossil fuel subsidies and a global coalition to reach net zero by 2050.

That remains a very tall order, even if global sentiments on tackling global warming are beginning to change.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55498657.

 

[sweep_shot]

Last year was the fourth warmest on record for Australia, continuing a run of record warm years over the past decade, according to provisional data released by the Bureau of Meteorology.

Across the country, temperatures in 2020 were 1.15C higher than average, putting the year behind 2005, 2013 and 2019, which remains the hottest year on record.

The data is gathered from the bureau’s ACORN-SAT dataset that takes readings from 112 weather stations across the country and goes back to 1910.

Eight of the 10 hottest years on record for Australia have occurred since 2013, the data shows. Climate scientists said the heat was driven by human-caused climate change.

Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales specialising in extreme events, said human-caused climate change had reliably delivered another top 10 year.


WA coastline facing marine heatwave in early 2021, CSIRO predicts
Read more
“It’s a ‘no ****, Sherlock’ moment really,” she told Guardian Australia.

The hottest and driest year on record remains 2019, when mean temperatures were 1.52C above the 30-year average taken between 1961 and 1990.

Australia experienced droughts, heatwaves and devastating bushfires that carried on into 2020.

In March, abnormally high sea surface temperatures across the Great Barrier Reef caused the third mass coral bleaching event in five years.

The hottest spring on record occurred in 2020, with temperatures 2.03C above average. That ended with a November 2.47C warmer than average – the hottest November on record.

The bureau will check the latest provisional data before making a formal climate statement on 8 January.

The bureau declared a La Niña event in September and in late December said its influence was likely reaching its peak, with climate models suggesting a return to neutral conditions around late summer or early autumn.

La Niña is the cooler phase of a cycle known as Enso (El Niño Southern Oscillation), with the warmer phase known as El Niño.

Blair Trewin, senior climatologist at the bureau, told Guardian Australia La Niña’s influence on temperatures tended to come the year after the phenomenon was declared.

But he said: “Clearly 2020 was significantly warmer than a normal year. But it was a return to some level of normality after an exceptional 2019.”

While November was a record hot month, Trewin said it was likely that December had been relatively cool.

Rainfall and cloud cover in the north-west and central parts of the country had brought temperatures down.

Across the year, Trewin said, the underlying warming trend expected from human activity was the main driver of the higher temperatures.

La Niñas are associated with lower ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific and can bring higher rainfall for northern, eastern and central parts of the country, as well as cooler daytime temperatures.

The provisional data shows the previous hottest year to be associated with a La Niña was 1998, when Australian temperatures were 0.97C above average.

The most recent year that temperatures failed to get above the 1961 to 1990 average was 2011 – the middle year of a La Niña that spanned three years.

Perkins-Kirkpatrick said the record hot November had been a surprise because it was expected that La Niña would have kept temperatures lower.

She said: “2019 was in a league of its own and 2020 I think was not as extreme. The tone for the year was far more placid.

“Even with a La Niña end to the year, La Niñas now are warmer than El Niños were without climate change. We are seeing each year come into the top 10, and each year will shift ever warmer.”

She said human activity – mainly from burning fossil fuels that were loading the atmosphere with extra carbon dioxide – was generating the extra heat.

“It is absolutely us causing this warming. It couldn’t be occurring naturally.”

In December the World Meteorological Organization released a preliminary report saying 2020 was likely to be among the three hottest years globally, using an average across five global temperature datasets.

The UN agency said the warmth of 2020 would mean the past six years were likely to be the six warmest years on record.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environ...s-fourth-warmest-year-in-2020-despite-la-nina.

 

[sweep_shot]

Climate change is devastating Central American coffee farms, spurring migration

San Diego – Harvest season had just begun in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, and the coffee plants stood ripe and ready. But there was no one working at many of the farms.

Joaquín Solórzano, a coffee farmer and advocate for Nicaraguan growers, pointed at the cherries on a cluster of coffee plants visible from the winding mountain highway that was eerily empty during the 2019 harvest.

"Look, it's red," Solórzano said. "It should be picked, but no one is picking it right now because they won't get much money for it. Most of the coffee falls."

With coffee production in other countries driving down prices and droughts and storms wreaking havoc, coffee farmers in Central America have had to make tough choices in recent years.

Coffee is one of the many industries around the world feeling the pressures of climate change.

And, as people lose their livelihoods, climate change is becoming a larger impetus for forced migration.

U.S. immigration laws aren't equipped to grapple with whether someone fleeing the effects of climate change should be given refuge. But as those effects worsen, the United States is already seeing Central American coffee workers arrive at the border and ask for help.

The disappearance of coffee workers can have a ripple effect on other jobs in a region.

"All of the north of the country depends on coffee — the economy depends on coffee cultivation," said Aura Lila Sevilla Kuan, former president of the Asociación de Cafetaleros de Matagalpa in Nicaragua.

Droughts weakened the Nicaraguan coffee harvest in 2016 and 2017, and the drier-than-usual soil meant that when rain did come, it damaged the plants, Solórzano said.

Owners went into debt because the harvests yielded less than what they had invested. Now they are stuck in a cycle of shrinking their production to try to make ends meet.

Unemployed Nicaraguan coffee workers most often migrate to nearby Costa Rica, though some have tried coming to the United States. Coffee workers in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala more often choose to head north rather than south.

Coffee farming requires intense manual labor. The cherries are generally hand-picked, with workers harvesting the plants several times over a season. Workers carry heavy bags of coffee on their backs over the mountainous terrain to be weighed and transported for drying.

Some workers make as little as $5 or $6 per day.

Climate change struck Central American coffee farms hard again in 2020 in the form of two hurricanes — Eta and Iota.

According to the International Coffee Organization, landslides and flooding caused by the storms damaged large areas of the coffee regions in Nicaragua and Honduras.

Source: https://www.startribune.com/climate...offee-farms-and-spurring-migration/600006106/.

 

[sweep_shot]

Why 2021 could be turning point for tackling climate change

Countries only have only a limited time in which to act if the world is to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Here are five reasons why 2021 could be a crucial year in the fight against global warming.

Covid-19 was the big issue of 2020, there is no question about that.

But I’m hoping that, by the end of 2021, the vaccines will have kicked in and we’ll be talking more about climate than the coronavirus.

2021 will certainly be a crunch year for tackling climate change.

Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, told me he thinks it is a “make or break” moment for the issue.

So, in the spirit of New Year’s optimism, here’s why I believe 2021 could confound the doomsters and see a breakthrough in global ambition on climate.

1. The crucial climate conference

In November 2021, world leaders will be gathering in Glasgow for the successor to the landmark Paris meeting of 2015.

Paris was important because it was the first time virtually all the nations of the world came together to agree they all needed to help tackle the issue.

The problem was the commitments countries made to cutting carbon emissions back then fell way short of the targets set by the conference.

In Paris, the world agreed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change by trying to limit global temperature increases to 2C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. The aim was to keep the rise to 1.5C if at all possible.

We are way off track. On current plans the world is expected to breach the 1.5C ceiling within 12 years or less and to hit 3C of warming by the end of the century.

Under the terms of the Paris deal, countries promised to come back every five years and raise their carbon-cutting ambitions. That was due to happen in Glasgow in November 2020.

The pandemic put paid to that and the conference was bumped forward to this year.

So, Glasgow 2021 gives us a forum at which those carbon cuts can be ratcheted up.

2. Countries are already signing up to deep carbon cuts

And there has already been progress.

The most important announcement on climate change last year came completely out of the blue.

At the UN General Assembly in September, the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, announced that China aimed to go carbon neutral by 2060.

Environmentalists were stunned. Cutting carbon has always been seen as an expensive chore yet here was the most polluting nation on earth – responsible for some 28% of world emissions – making an unconditional commitment to do just that regardless of whether other countries followed its lead.

That was a complete turnaround from past negotiations, when everyone’s fear was that they might end up incurring the cost of decarbonising their own economy, while others did nothing but still enjoyed the climate change fruits of their labour.

And China is not alone.

The UK was the first major economy in the world to make a legally binding net zero commitment in June 2019. The European Union followed suit in March 2020.

Since then, Japan and South Korea have joined what the UN estimates is now a total of over 110 countries that have set net zero target for mid-century. Together, they represent more than 65% of global emissions and more than 70% of the world economy, the UN says.

With the election of Joe Biden in the United States, the biggest economy in the world has now re-joined the carbon cutting chorus.

These countries now need to detail how they plan to achieve their lofty new aspirations – that will be a key part of the agenda for Glasgow – but the fact that they are already saying they want to get there is a very significant change.

3. Renewables are now the cheapest energy ever

There is a good reason why so many countries are now saying they plan to go net zero: the collapsing cost of renewables is completely changing the calculus of decarbonisation.

In October 2020, the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organisation, concluded that the best solar power schemes now offer “the cheapest source of electricity in history”.

Renewables are already often cheaper than fossil fuel power in much of the world when it comes to building new power stations.

Fuels – 976

And, if the nations of the world ramp up their investments in wind, solar and batteries in the next few years, prices are likely to fall even further to a point where they are so cheap it will begin to make commercial sense to shut down and replace existing coal and gas power stations.

That is because the cost of renewables follows the logic of all manufacturing – the more you produce, the cheaper it gets. It’s like pushing on an open door – the more you build the cheaper it gets and the cheaper it gets the more you build.

Think what this means: investors won’t need to be bullied by green activists into doing the right thing, they will just follow the money. And governments know that by scaling up renewables in their own economies, they help to accelerate the energy transition globally, by making renewables even cheaper and more competitive everywhere.

4. Covid changes everything

The coronavirus pandemic has shaken our sense of invulnerability and reminded us that it is possible for our world to be upended in ways we cannot control.

It has also delivered the most significant economic shock since the Great Depression.

In response, governments are stepping forward with stimulus packages designed to reboot their economies.

And the good news is it has rarely – if ever – been cheaper for governments to make these kind of investments. Around the world, interest rates are hovering around zero, or even negative.

Global CO2 emissions, 1900-2020, 976 wide

This creates an unprecedented opportunity to – in the now familiar phrase – “build back better”.

The European Union and Joe Biden’s new administration in the US have promised trillions of dollars of green investments to get their economies going and kick-start the process of decarbonisation.

Both are saying they hope other countries will join them – helping drive down the cost of renewables globally. But they are also warning that alongside this carrot, they plan to wield a stick – a tax on imports of countries that emit too much carbon.

The idea is this may help induce carbon-cutting laggards – like Brazil, Russia, Australia and Saudi Arabia – to come onside too.

The bad news is that, according to the UN, developed nations are spending 50% more on sectors linked to fossil fuels than on low-carbon energy.

5. Business is going green too

The falling cost of renewable and the growing public pressure for action on climate is also transforming attitudes in business.

There are sound financial reasons for this. Why invest in new oil wells or coal power stations that will become obsolete before they can repay themselves over their 20-30-year life?

Indeed, why carry carbon risk in their portfolios at all?

The logic is already playing out in the markets. This year alone, Tesla’s rocketing share price has made it the world’s most valuable car company.

Meanwhile, the share price of Exxon – once the world’s most valuable company of any kind – fell so far that it got booted out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average of major US corporations.

At the same time there is growing momentum behind the movement to get businesses to embed climate risk into their financial decision making.

The aim is to make it mandatory for businesses and investors to show that their activities and investments are making the necessary steps to transition to a net zero world.

Seventy central banks are already working to make this happen, and building these requirements into the world’s financial architecture will be a key focus for the Glasgow conference.

It is still all to play for.

So, there is good reason for hope but it is far from a done deal.

To stand a reasonable chance of hitting the 1.5C target we need to halve total emissions by the end of 2030, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN-backed body that collates the science needed to inform policy.

What that means is making the sort of emissions reductions achieved in 2020 thanks to the massive international lockdowns every year to the end of the decade. Yet emissions are already edging back to the levels they were in 2019.

The truth is lots of countries have expressed lofty ambitions for cutting carbon but few have yet got strategies in place to meet those goals.

The challenge for Glasgow will be getting the nations of the world to sign up to policies that will start reducing emissions now. The UN says it wants to see coal phased out completely, an end to all fossil fuel subsidies and a global coalition to reach net zero by 2050.

That remains a very tall order, even if global sentiments on tackling global warming are beginning to change.

Source: https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/why-2021-could-be-turning-point-for-tackling-climate-change/.

 

[Robert]

Attenborough’s wonderful new programme broadcast on BBC last night said we are putting 100 times more carbon into the air every year than all the volcanoes in the world.

 

[sweep_shot]

Climate crisis will cause falling humidity in global cities – study

Research says planting trees in urban areas could mitigate rising temperatures

Urban regions around the world are likely to see a near-universal decrease in humidity as the climate changes, a study has found.

The research suggests that building green infrastructure and increasing urban vegetation might be a safe bet for cities looking to mitigate against rising temperatures.

Half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, but cities only account for about 3% of global land surface. Lei Zhao, a scientist from the University of Illinois and the lead author of the paper published in Nature Climate Change, says this has meant that previous climate models have not produced data specific to cities.

“Almost all the models do not have urban representation,” Zhao said. “Although cities occupy such a small area, that’s where a lot of the human impact [of global warming] takes place. So we closed this gap by providing multi-model climate projections which are specific to urban areas.”

Scientists and urban planners have known for a long time that temperatures in cities are higher than in rural areas. Infrastructure such as dark asphalt and concrete surfaces absorb more solar radiation, while reduced tree coverage contributes to what is called the “urban heat island effect”. This means that temperatures in cities can be up to 5C (9F) warmer than in the surrounding rural areas.

However, Zhao explains that urban and rural climates differ in more ways. “The urban heat island is one of the reasons why urban warming signal is different from other landscapes,” Zhao said. “But it’s not just temperature, it is also humidity. A lot of urban climate variables are different from other landscapes.”

The model predicts that green infrastructure would be a good investment for nearly all cities. Trees and vegetation help to reduce temperature by releasing water into the atmosphere, which cools down the air. This was seen as having a limited effect in places which are already humid, but the new model predicts that air in most non-coastal cities will become drier in the next century.

This would make surface evaporation more efficient, meaning increased levels of urban vegetation would be more effective at fighting global heating.

Zhao hopes the data will allow urban planners and policymakers to make more informed decisions about mitigating rising temperatures in their cities.

“Some strategy might work for a city, but not necessarily for your city,” he said. “When you look at large-scale projections, you can see if the warming signal is different from other places, and how humidity levels vary, so it can help you form the strategy differently.”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environ...cause-falling-humidity-in-global-cities-study.

 

[sweep_shot]

Why 2021 brings hope on climate change

Efforts to curb global warming have failed to meet the expectations of the Paris Agreement. But a new U.S. commitment gives a reason for optimism.

Buried in the $900 billion, 5,593-page economic stimulus bill recently passed by Congress – by far the longest bill ever passed by that body – lies a significant boost to efforts to address global warming: some $35 billion that will fund solar, wind, geothermal, and other clean energy programs.

Is it a big deal? “This is perhaps the most significant climate legislation Congress has ever passed,” Grant Carlisle, a senior policy adviser at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told The Washington Post.

During his campaign President-elect Joe Biden vowed to make climate change one of his top priorities, along with defeating the pandemic and repairing its economic damage. These new funds give his efforts a kick-start.

So will some $40 billion in loans available to the Department of Energy, funds allotted to the agency but not used under the previous administration.

Together they still represent a tiny fraction of the spending that will be needed to curb global warming in coming years. The Biden plan offsets some of that cost through programs that promote a robust clean energy economy, generating many new jobs.

To what extent Congress will go along remains to be seen. Which party controls the Senate, to be determined by today’s election of two senators in Georgia, will be a factor. But regardless of that outcome bipartisan cooperation will be important.

Dec. 12, 2020, marked five years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, signed by nearly 200 countries, that called for vigorous efforts to cut climate-warming emissions. It seeks to halt global warming before it reaches an additional 1.5 degrees Celsius (or, at worst, 2 degrees C). Research and current models predict that exceeding these levels could have disastrous effects on global weather. While some progress has been made, the 2 C threshold may be exceeded as early as 2034, the World Economic Forum says.

Mr. Biden has pledged that the United States will rejoin the Paris Agreement, which the U.S. left under President Donald Trump.

While the pandemic did cut world greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 7% to 8% in 2020, emissions are expected to soar again as world economies recover.

2020 also saw vast wildfires tear through forests from Australia to the U.S. West. Arctic sea ice shrank to an extent exceeded only once before. The Mojave Desert in the U.S. hit the highest temperature ever recorded, 54.4 degrees C (130 degrees Fahrenheit). And 2020 may be one of the two hottest years on record.

Plenty of evidence can be cited raising concerns that global warming is already underway.

But new hope has emerged too. Earlier climate models assumed that global warming is baked into Earth’s future for decades, if not centuries, to come, regardless of what is done now.

That no longer looks to be true. If greenhouse gas emissions can be brought down to net zero, the warming will level off, says climate scientist Joeri Rogelj at the Imperial College London, and “the climate will stabilize within a decade or two. There will be very little to no additional warming. Our best estimate is zero.”

That encouraging news should help dispel a sense of despair or hopelessness about climate change. The world is capable of making changes that will head off a disaster and assure a livable world in coming decades.

2021 now becomes a crucial year to step up international efforts to bring about that brighter climate future.

Source: https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentar...1/0105/Why-2021-brings-hope-on-climate-change.

 

[sweep_shot]

Here's a Solution to Climate Change: A Transatlantic Carbon Club

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- There’s a great way the U.S. and the European Union could together address two huge challenges in one policy sweep. It’s to create a transatlantic “carbon club,” which I’ll describe in a moment.

The geopolitical promise of this idea is to resurrect the notion of the “West” at a time when the U.S. and Europe are drifting apart but still hoping to rejuvenate their alliance after Joe Biden becomes president. The even bigger goal is to win the struggle against global warming, which both Biden and the EU cite as their priority.

The only way to slow climate change is to dramatically reduce our planetwide emissions of greenhouse gases. And the best approach to that is to put a price on carbon that’s both high and rising. This signal will make producers and consumers adopt behaviors and technologies to pollute less.

Within a given jurisdiction, we already know how to set such a carbon price. You can tax emissions directly. Or you can limit their overall amount by law, then issue carbon allowances which firms can buy and sell in an open market, at a price that constantly changes. This way emissions will be cut fastest wherever it’s easiest and cheapest to do so.

Of these cap-and-trade systems, the EU, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein jointly have the world’s largest. Still, it only covers sectors — from power generators to steelmakers and airlines — that account for 40% of European emissions, so the system must be expanded. Even then it still faces a bigger problem.

It’s that the rest of the world isn’t in the system. This both slants the economic playing field against European companies and leads to “carbon leakage.” Take a European steel company, for example. It must buy allowances to emit carbon, which is a cost. To avoid that cost, it can invest in technology that makes production cleaner, but that’s also expensive.

By contrast, a Chinese steelmaker doesn’t incur this cost yet. A European firm that uses steel could therefore simply switch to buying it more cheaply from China than from the home market. The European steelmaker and its workers lose. And the world loses because the same amount of carbon — or even more — has been emitted, just elsewhere. Only the Chinese supplier wins.

This is the classic problem of free riding, as analyzed by the economist William Nordhaus among others. In a nutshell, countries have an incentive to share in the benefits of a global public good — saving the climate — while shirking the costs of abatement. This logic, also known as the “tragedy of the commons,” explains why purely voluntary international climate deals such as the defunct Kyoto Protocol or the Paris Agreement tend to disappoint.

The solution to the free-riding dilemma is the club model proposed by Nordhaus and now endorsed by sharp minds such as Guntram Wolff, the director of Bruegel, a think tank in Brussels. Here a group of countries would agree on a minimum international carbon price.

All club members would then set about reaching that price with either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, the equivalent of their club dues. As long as their domestic carbon prices are high enough and comparable, there’s no need for club members to punish each other’s imports, so they trade freely (if you ignore other tariffs and quotas for the moment).

Non-members of the club, by contrast, would have to pay countervailing carbon duties on their exports to the club. The EU calls this a “carbon border adjustment mechanism” (CBAM). Unlike ordinary tariffs, the surcharges wouldn’t aim at making domestic producers more competitive but at spreading the cost of global carbon abatement. So they should be allowed by the World Trade Organization.

To existing members, the benefits of membership would be obvious, so the club would be a stable coalition. All others would quickly see the upside of joining the club by aiming for the same international carbon price at home.

As a first and relatively small demonstration project, the EU could link its emissions trading system with whatever the U.K. implements, now that it’s left the European regime (thereby causing that system to shrink by 11% overnight). Simultaneously, the Biden administration could work on the bigger goal of introducing a national cap-and-trade for the U.S.

All the while, diplomats on both sides of the pond would be preparing the transatlantic carbon club, a trade zone without internal carbon duties. Compared to negotiating comprehensive free-trade deals, such as the moribund Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, this should be a cinch.

In the process, the Western democracies would once again act as world leaders playing on the same team. But their club isn’t meant to be exclusive. Rather, it would measure its own success largely by how many new members it can attract over time. It would welcome the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, China, with particular enthusiasm.

If we still have a shot at controlling global warming, this might be it. Moreover, this kind of positive cooperation between rivals in east and west would have other benefits. Anxiety is growing that the enmity between the U.S. and China could one day end as the contest between Imperial Germany and the British Empire once did: in war. A successful collaboration against the common enemy, global warming, could defuse this conflict — and save the planet along the way.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andreas Kluth is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He was previously editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist. He's the author of "Hannibal and Me."

Source: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/here-s-...-change-a-transatlantic-carbon-club-1.1544332.

 

[sweep_shot]

Climate Change Is Turning Cities Into Ovens

A new model estimates that by 2100, cities across the world could warm as much as 4.4 degrees Celsius. It’s a deadly consequence of the heat-island effect.

WHICHEVER SIDE OF the subjective city-versus-rural debate you’re on, the objective laws of thermodynamics dictate that cities lose on at least one front: They tend to get insufferably hotter, more so than surrounding rural areas. That’s thanks to the urban heat-island effect, in which buildings and roads readily absorb the sun’s energy and release it well into the night. The greenery of rural areas, by contrast, provides shade and cools the air by releasing water.

Climate change is making the urban heat-island effect all the more dire in cities across the world, and it’s only going to get worse. Like, way worse. An international team of researchers has used a new modeling technique to estimate that by the year 2100, the world’s cities could warm by as much as 4.4 degrees Celsius on average. For perspective, that figure obliterates the Paris agreement’s optimistic goal for a global average temperature rise of 1.5 degrees C from preindustrial levels. In fact, the team’s figure more than doubles the agreement’s hard goal of limiting that global rise to no more than 2 degrees C.

Up until this point, global climate models have tended to snub urban areas, and for good reason, as they make up just 3 percent of the planet’s land surface. Cities are but a blip. Researchers are more interested in the dynamics of things like the ocean, ice, and air currents. “We're closing this kind of gap,” says Lei Zhao, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and lead author on a recent paper published in Nature Climate Change describing the modeling. “We provide urban-specific projections for the future.”

His team’s model suggests that hotter cities could be catastrophic for urban public health, which is already suffering from the effects of increasing heat. Between 2000 and 2016, according to the World Health Organization, the number of people exposed to heat waves jumped by 125 million, and extreme heat claimed more than 166,000 lives between 1998 and 2017. And while at the moment half the world’s population lives in urban areas, that proportion is expected to rise to 70 percent by 2050, according to the authors of this new paper. People in search of economic opportunity are unknowingly rushing into peril.

“When I read these papers, I just don't know what's wrong with humanity, to be honest with you. Because this is like the same song being sung by different people,” says climate scientist Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who wasn’t involved in the work. “Come on, man! When are we going to get serious about this problem? This is another person ringing the bell. We just for some reason refuse to hear this thing.”

To calculate how much city temperatures might rise, Zhao and his colleagues from a number of institutions, including Princeton University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, built a statistical model for the climate of urban regions, focusing on changing temperatures and humidities. These two factors are the conspiring menaces of extreme heat: Our bodies respond to high temperatures by perspiring, which is more fancily known as evaporative cooling. But humidity makes this process less efficient, because the more moist the air is, the less readily it accepts evaporating sweat from our bodies. That’s why humid heat feels so much more uncomfortable than dry heat.

Heat and humidity are not only uncomfortable; they can be dangerous. Mora has identified 27 ways heat can kill a person. When your body detects that it’s overheating, it redirects blood from the organs at your core to your skin, thus dissipating more heat into the air around you. (This is why your skin turns red when you’re hot.) In extreme heat, this can spiral out of control, resulting in ischemia, or the critically low flow of blood to the organs. This can damage crucial organs like the brain or heart. In addition, a high body temperature can cause cell death, known as heat cytotoxity. Humidity compounds the risk of overheating and organ failure, since you can’t sweat as efficiently to cool down.

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Extreme heat can harm healthy people, and those with heart or respiratory conditions like asthma are particularly vulnerable. Children are also at particular risk because of the thermodynamics of their bodies; their small size means that they both heat up and cool down faster. When he teaches his students, Mora uses the analogy of trying to cook a large potato—even one that is heated for a long time can remain cold in the middle. But if you want to heat it up faster, just slice it in half. "You double the area for exposing the potato to the heat so that it can get to the core of the potato easier. What you have done is change the ratio of volume to area," he says. "That’s exactly what happens with children. In adults, we can cope with the heat better because not only do we have an insulation barrier, the heat will take a longer time to get to the core." On the other hand, he continues, for children "the heat that is there is pretty much all the way down to their core."

Mora likens the simultaneous risks of climate change and the heat-island effect to having to battle two foes at once. “Dealing with climate change is like getting into a fight with Mike Tyson,” he says. “With the heat-island effect that these guys just documented here, that is now like bringing Jackie Chan on top of Mike Tyson. So now you gotta face those two guys—there is just no way for people to cope with this.”

To model how these two forces might affect cities, Zhao and his team turned their statistical model into an “emulator,” which mimics complex climate models, but focuses on urban areas. They could then apply the emulator to results from over two dozen global climate models, assuming either intermediate or high emission levels going forward, to translate coarse climate model outputs to the city level. When they assumed an intermediate level of emissions, they found that, on average, the planet’s urban regions could warm 1.9 degrees C over the next 80 years; when they assumed a high level, the figure became an astonishing 4.4 degrees C.

Overall, it’s bad news no matter where a city-dweller lives, but urban areas will be affected in different ways. For instance, the modeling found that the northern United States, particularly the upper Midwest, will warm more than the southern US. When it comes to relative humidity, inland cities around the world will tend to dry, while coastal cities will stay wetter—which makes good sense, given that they’re next to water.

Humanity can, though, brace its urban areas for the brutal heat that climate change is already delivering—by making them more rural. Greening public spaces both beautifies them and provides people with shade. Each tree’s leaves also act like tiny air conditioners, releasing moisture to cool the environment. And the less the pavement is exposed to the sun, the less the built environment will absorb its energy.

With the arrival of the Biden administration, the US could even revive the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps, putting people back to work greening up cities. That’ll be especially critical in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods, which tend to be less green and thus more likely to suffer from the heat-island effect, a consequence of racist housing policies.

Plus, says Elizabeth Sawin, codirector of Climate Interactive, a nonprofit that focuses on the intersection of climate change and inequity, greening creates jobs. You need people to grow the trees in a nursery, and then others to plant and maintain them, for instance. “Particularly when that can be done in partnership with the communities, there's a real opportunity to train people in new skills,” she says. “Those would be investments that really would help cities adapt to the climate change we can't prevent.”

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/climate-change-is-turning-cities-into-ovens/.

 

[sweep_shot]

2020 brought 22 climate-change disasters costing $1 billion or more and capped the hottest decade on record

Climate change-fueled natural disasters were a major story of 2020, costing the U.S. alone a total of $95 billion dollars

Rising global average temperatures in 2020 closed out the hottest decade since record-keeping began, conditions marked by a surge in deadly and expensive wildfires, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

Last year’s global temperatures were 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the 1981 to 2010 average, and 1.25 degrees Celsius (2.25 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average, according to the latest data published Friday by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, just one of several researchers that track global temperatures and climate change. These average temps tied the record high reached in 2016.

A record-breaking 22 weather and climate disasters costing over $1 billion each were recorded in 2020, a separate report from the U.S.-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) showed. The tally shatters the annual record of 16 costly disasters in both 2011 and 2017.

Last year kicked off with wildfires in Australia that burned a swath of land comparable in size to the the state of Florida. Wildfires in the western U.S., meanwhile, destroyed 10.3 million acres. What’s more, the Atlantic hurricane season featured a record-breaking 30 named storms. Some 1200 tornadoes were reported across the contiguous U.S. in 2020, while floods were also impacting more U.S. real estate markets. Above-average annual precipitation was observed from the Great Lakes and Plains to the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.

Wildfires are often seasonal and can be sparked by lightening, accidents and arson. But it’s the severity of droughts in the impacted areas, which scientists increasingly link to climate change, that are worsening outcomes. The increase in stronger hurricanes has been linked to rising ocean temperatures in the north Atlantic.

Annual losses in 2020 exceeded $95 billion, the fourth highest cost on record, NOAA said. The most costly events of the year included: Hurricane Laura, the Western wildfires and the Midwest derecho.

Carlo Buontempo, the director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, emphasized the Arctic’s warming in 2020. Temperatures there were more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above average, and some locations saw average temperatures more than 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal for the year.

Some researchers believe the COVID-19 impact offered a temporary slowing in the rise of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions but Copernicus data showed little slowing impact from the pandemic, and any impact is believed to be fleeting.

2020 set another record with carbon dioxide concentrations reaching a maximum of 413 parts per million (ppm) during May, the researchers said, before the pandemic impact had its full grip on the global economy.

“While carbon dioxide concentrations have risen slightly less in 2020 than in 2019, this is no cause for complacency. Until the net global emissions reduce to zero, CO2 will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere and drive further climate change,” said Vincent-Henri Peuch, director of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

For the year as a whole, the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration was slightly less than what was seen in each of the past two years (2.3 ppm vs 2.5 and 2.4 in 2019 and 2018, respectively). Separate data showed that human CO2 emissions fell in 2020 by around 7%, according to the Global Carbon Project.

President Trump pulled the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2020, a voluntary global pact created five years earlier with the message that major economic powers must cooperate and lead against the threat of man-made climate change.

The pact aims to hold the increase in average global temperatures “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and ideally no more than 1.5C (2.7 F), compared to pre-industrial levels.

Trump cited uneven compliance by China, Brazil and others. President-elect Joe Biden has pledged his commitment to return the U.S. to the global effort on “day one,” while the European Union, Japan and even China has announced various targets toward net-zero emissions.

Source: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/2...pped-the-hottest-decade-on-record-11610136499.

 

[sweep_shot]

Climate Change Is Slowly Turning Our Cities Into Saunas

Young and old are the most vulnerable to deadly heat predicted by a new model.

WHICHEVER SIDE OF the subjective city-versus-rural debate you’re on, the objective laws of thermodynamics dictate that cities lose on at least one front: They tend to get insufferably hotter, more so than surrounding rural areas. That’s thanks to the urban heat-island effect, in which buildings and roads readily absorb the sun’s energy and release it well into the night. The greenery of rural areas, by contrast, provides shade and cools the air by releasing water.

Climate change is making the urban heat-island effect all the more dire in cities across the world, and it’s only going to get worse. Like, way worse. An international team of researchers has used a new modeling technique to estimate that by the year 2100, the world’s cities could warm by as much as 4.4 degrees Celsius on average. For perspective, that figure obliterates the Paris agreement’s optimistic goal for a global average temperature rise of 1.5 degrees C from preindustrial levels. In fact, the team’s figure more than doubles the agreement’s hard goal of limiting that global rise to no more than 2 degrees C.

Up until this point, global climate models have tended to snub urban areas, and for good reason, as they make up just 3 percent of the planet’s land surface. Cities are but a blip. Researchers are more interested in the dynamics of things like the ocean, ice, and air currents. “We’re closing this kind of gap,” says Lei Zhao, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and lead author on a recent paper published in Nature Climate Change describing the modeling. “We provide urban-specific projections for the future.”

His team’s model suggests that hotter cities could be catastrophic for urban public health, which is already suffering from the effects of increasing heat. Between 2000 and 2016, according to the World Health Organization, the number of people exposed to heat waves jumped by 125 million, and extreme heat claimed more than 166,000 lives between 1998 and 2017. And while at the moment half the world’s population lives in urban areas, that proportion is expected to rise to 70 percent by 2050, according to the authors of this new paper. People in search of economic opportunity are unknowingly rushing into peril.

“When I read these papers, I just don’t know what’s wrong with humanity, to be honest with you. Because this is like the same song being sung by different people,” says climate scientist Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who wasn’t involved in the work. “Come on, man! When are we going to get serious about this problem? This is another person ringing the bell. We just for some reason refuse to hear this thing.”

Heat and humidity are not only uncomfortable; they can be dangerous. Mora has identified 27 ways heat can kill a person. When your body detects that it’s overheating, it redirects blood from the organs at your core to your skin, thus dissipating more heat into the air around you. (This is why your skin turns red when you’re hot.) In extreme heat, this can spiral out of control, resulting in ischemia, or the critically low flow of blood to the organs. This can damage crucial organs like the brain or heart. In addition, a high body temperature can cause cell death, known as heat cytotoxity. Humidity compounds the risk of overheating and organ failure, since you can’t sweat as efficiently to cool down.

Extreme heat can harm healthy people, and those with heart or respiratory conditions like asthma are particularly vulnerable. Children are also at particular risk because of the thermodynamics of their bodies; their small size means that they both heat up and cool down faster. When he teaches his students, Mora uses the analogy of trying to cook a large potato—even one that is heated for a long time can remain cold in the middle. But if you want to heat it up faster, just slice it in half. “You double the area for exposing the potato to the heat so that it can get to the core of the potato easier. What you have done is change the ratio of volume to area,” he says. “That’s exactly what happens with children. In adults, we can cope with the heat better because not only do we have an insulation barrier, the heat will take a longer time to get to the core.” On the other hand, he continues, for children “the heat that is there is pretty much all the way down to their core.”
Mora likens the simultaneous risks of climate change and the heat-island effect to having to battle two foes at once. “Dealing with climate change is like getting into a fight with Mike Tyson,” he says. “With the heat-island effect that these guys just documented here, that is now like bringing Jackie Chan on top of Mike Tyson. So now you gotta face those two guys—there is just no way for people to cope with this.”

To model how these two forces might affect cities, Zhao and his team turned their statistical model into an “emulator,” which mimics complex climate models, but focuses on urban areas. They could then apply the emulator to results from over two dozen global climate models, assuming either intermediate or high emission levels going forward, to translate coarse climate model outputs to the city level. When they assumed an intermediate level of emissions, they found that, on average, the planet’s urban regions could warm 1.9 degrees C over the next 80 years; when they assumed a high level, the figure became an astonishing 4.4 degrees C.

Overall, it’s bad news no matter where a city-dweller lives, but urban areas will be affected in different ways. For instance, the modeling found that the northern United States, particularly the upper Midwest, will warm more than the southern US. When it comes to relative humidity, inland cities around the world will tend to dry, while coastal cities will stay wetter—which makes good sense, given that they’re next to water.

Humanity can, though, brace its urban areas for the brutal heat that climate change is already delivering—by making them more rural. Greening public spaces both beautifies them and provides people with shade. Each tree’s leaves also act like tiny air conditioners, releasing moisture to cool the environment. And the less the pavement is exposed to the sun, the less the built environment will absorb its energy.

With the arrival of the Biden administration, the US could even revive the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps, putting people back to work greening up cities. That’ll be especially critical in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods, which tend to be less green and thus more likely to suffer from the heat-island effect, a consequence of racist housing policies.

Plus, says Elizabeth Sawin, codirector of Climate Interactive, a nonprofit that focuses on the intersection of climate change and inequity, greening creates jobs. You need people to grow the trees in a nursery, and then others to plant and maintain them, for instance. “Particularly when that can be done in partnership with the communities, there’s a real opportunity to train people in new skills,” she says. “Those would be investments that really would help cities adapt to the climate change we can’t prevent.”

Source: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/01/climate-change-is-turning-our-cities-into-ovens/.

 

[sweep_shot]

How CIA Satellites Helped Fight Climate Change

Where espionage and environmentalism converge

When you think of the Central Intelligence Agency, what comes to mind? It could be one of dozens of things, depending on your feelings on espionage, but one thing that probably won’t come up are efforts to address climate change and environmental catastrophes. And yet a small group of scientists within the CIA spent decades engaged in a very unexpected type of work.

In an expansive article for The New York Times, William J. Broad explored the work done by Dr. Linda Zall over the course of several decades. Specifically, Broad’s article focuses on “[Zall’s] highly classified struggle to put the nation’s spy satellites onto a radical new job: environmental sleuthing.”

In 1960, the United States launched the first Corona satellite, used for spying on Cold War rivals and offering its users a never-before-seen view of the planet from above. It turns out that the images taken by Corona and its successors had other uses beyond identifying military sites and other locations of interest to intelligence operatives. Having a consistent and regularly taken set of images also allowed scientists to see how parts of the landscape were changing overall.

This was especially pronounced at the planets poles. “Spies had little use for sweeping Arctic and Antarctic images,” writes Broad. “But they dazzled environmentalists because Earth’s poles were fast becoming hot spots of global warming and melting ice.”

In 1990, Al Gore — then a Senator — made inroads about using the CIA satellite data for environmental research. Dr. Zall was assigned to the project, and it soon became her focus. Over the years that followed, she was involved with her counterparts elsewhere — including the Navy and in Russia — to expand the scope of the project.

Dr. Zall retired from the CIA in 2013, but the impact of the work she and her colleagues did remains vast. The CIA and environmental advocates might not be the most predictable of alliances, but it’s certainly had an impact on the way we think about climate change.

Source: https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/science/how-cia-satellites-helped-fight-climate-change.

 

[sweep_shot]

Climate change blamed for a third of U.S. flood losses in past 3 decades

Jan 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Climate change has boosted the cost of flood damage caused by heavy rainfall in the United States by $75 billion over the last three decades, accounting for about a third of total losses, Stanford University researchers said on Monday.

With planet-heating emissions still going up, both extreme rainfall and related losses will continue to grow, they said – though strong efforts to curb emissions and adapt to changing conditions could help hold the line.

“The more global warming we get, the more we can expect these damages to increase – and reductions (in emissions) will have value in terms of avoided costs,” said climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh, co-author of a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Total U.S. flood costs from heavy rainfall between 1988 and 2017 are estimated at $199 billion, and the losses have surged as climate warming speeds up the planet’s water cycle, driving more extreme precipitation.

Flooding is the most common weather-related disaster threat in the United States.

Researchers, however, have long struggled to determine how much of the rising costs are due to additional housing development to serve a growing population, as well as increases in property values.

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The Stanford University team developed a model to analyze changes in these economic indicators and to extract them, in order to clarify the role of climate change.

The model developed could similarly be used to calculate the contribution of climate change to wildfire losses or reductions in crop yields from rising temperatures, if long-term data records are available, Diffenbaugh said.

Evidence that global warming is already driving more than a third of U.S. flood losses from heavy rainfall – the study did not look at flooding related to sea level rise – should push governments to step up emissions reductions and prepare for flood risks, he said.

“Decisions about what to do about climate change, how aggressively to curb greenhouse gas emissions as outlined in the Paris Agreement, or decisions on how to invest in adaptation – those are cost-benefit decisions,” Diffenbaugh said.

Quantifying the fraction of historical costs contributed by climate change provides real numbers to evaluate those cost-benefit decisions, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Researchers said most of the growing climate-linked losses were not being driven by overall increases in rainfall but by hikes in extreme rainfall events.

“What we find is that, even in states where the long-term mean precipitation hasn’t changed, in most cases the wettest events have intensified,” said Frances Davenport, an Earth system science graduate student and co-author of the study.

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That is increasing the financial damages relative to what would have occurred without the precipitation shifts, she said.

Besides curbing global warming, efforts to avoid building new homes on vulnerable floodplains could also limit losses, as the two go hand-in-hand, she added.

Environmental and planning groups last week petitioned the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to update its flood maps, set tougher standards for floodplain construction and prepare for climate change.

FEMA rules on floodplain use have not been comprehensively revised since the 1970s, meaning homes are still being built in areas likely to flood as global warming brings higher seas and more extreme rainfall and storms, the groups said. (Reporting by Laurie Goering //news.trust.org/climate)

Source: https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-p...a-third-of-u-s-flood-losses-in-past-3-decades.

 

[sweep_shot]

In the midst of discord south of the border and ongoing pandemic problems it’s important to take a moment to celebrate good news when it happens. And in mid-December, Montréal Mayor Valérie Plante delivered an early Christmas present to her city and the planet: arguably the most comprehensive plan to fight climate change of any Canadian city to date.

In a speech to the United Nations in late 2019, Plante pointed out that cities are on the front lines of climate change, having to deal regularly with negative impacts like flooding and heatwaves. “The [United Nations] Secretary-General has set a target for states to reduce their emissions by 2030 and commit to being completely carbon neutral by 2050,” said Plante. “I’m ready to go further.”

Plante has now followed through in magnificent fashion, introducing a plan that not only aims for carbon neutrality by mid-century but that cuts her city’s emissions by more than half by 2030. Montréal’s plan includes forty-six actions to help drive ambitious reductions, including banning non-electric vehicles from the city’s downtown core, removing parking around Metro stations, implementing an innovative system for disclosing building energy ratings and adopting strict energy efficiency standards for new construction. In fact, the city is already planning a zero-carbon neighbourhood on the site of the old Hippodrome horse-racing track.

There are a few unique aspects to Montréal’s approach. In keeping with the collaborative nature of Plante’s administration, the plan is being backed by a number of major civil society organizations, including the Trottier Family Foundation and the Foundation of Greater Montréal, who will lead an effort to engage major economic players and institutions in implementing the plan as a critical part of building a healthy and equitable city. It also includes a requirement for annual progress reports, something the federal government has only recently committed to in its Climate Accountability Act after years of missing targets. More importantly, the Montréal plan includes a “climate test” for all government decision-making. Requiring that all city decisions around spending or infrastructure consider climate implications “sets a standard for all public administrations,” according to Marc-André Viau of the Quebec-based environmental organization Équiterre.

Though the current “best in class,” Montréal is not unique amongst Canadian cities for tackling the climate challenge. For instance, Vancouver is looking to deter cars from travelling into its core with a congestion charging system and by putting a strong emphasis on a shift to “active” transportation like walking and cycling. It’s aiming for a city in which 90% of people live within “an easy walk or roll” of their daily needs and two-thirds of trips are by active transportation or transit by 2030.

Montréal and Vancouver will be well served by the bans enacted by their respective provincial governments on the sale of internal combustion vehicles (2035 in Quebec; 2040 in BC). This provincial action will, for example, help put Vancouver well on the road to achieving its goal of having 50% of the distance driven on the city’s roads be by zero emissions vehicles by 2030. Montréal will, in turn, lead by example by converting all city vehicles to electric by 2030 and will simultaneously encourage residents to switch to car sharing with the added goal of seeing a 25% decrease in single-occupant vehicle trips over the same time frame.

Toronto has an official goal of reducing citywide emissions by 65% by 2030 and achieving net zero by 2050 “or earlier.” Thanks in part to Ontario’s coal power phase out, Toronto’s emissions have already declined by 37% since 1990, a benefit Edmonton may also be about to reap as Alberta accelerates its own move away from coal and the city strives to reduce its emissions by 35% from current levels by 2035.

Climate change is a uniquely complex challenge and one that will require simultaneous interventions from all levels of government. Canadian cities, though chronically cash-starved and dramatically impacted by COVID and climate change alike, are punching well above their weight when it comes to solutions. Our country is well-served by this ambition.

Source: https://www.corporateknights.com/ch...in-the-fight-against-climate-change-16104542/.

 

[sweep_shot]

The world is on track for a "ghastly future," an international group of scientists has warned, with accelerating climate change and biodiversity loss threatening the survival of all of the planet's species unless world leaders face up to the challenge and act urgently.

As part of a bleak "prognosis," a team of 17 leading scientists on Wednesday cautioned that the future of the planet is "more dire and dangerous than is generally understood," and say they have conducted the assessment to clarify the seriousness of the situation the world faces.

Citing some 150 studies describing the world's environmental changes, the experts warn that world leaders need a "cold shower" wake-up call when it comes to the state of the planet, saying environmental conditions are "far more dangerous than currently believed" by civilians and scientists alike.

Daniel Blumstein, professor at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles and one of the authors of the article, told CNN it was no exaggeration to talk about a potential risk to our civilization.

"Maybe people certainly recognize it, but they don't understand the urgency, or maybe they recognize it, but they don't want to take the individual sacrifice," he said.

The time delays between ecological deterioration and its socioeconomic impacts mean people do not grasp the seriousness and timeliness of the problem, the report's authors said.

"The mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization," lead author Professor Corey Bradshaw, of Flinders University in Australia, said in a statement. "In fact, the scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms is so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts."

A GRAVE AND UNDERSTATED THREAT TO LIFE
Time and again, scientists, experts and environmentalists have warned that the earth has reached a crucial tipping point -- recent research from the World Wide Fund for Nature found the world's wildlife populations have fallen by an average of 68% in just over four decades, with human consumption behind the devastating decline.

We are in a sixth mass extinction, and humans are in the driving seat, having already wiped out hundreds of species and pushed many more to the brink of extinction through wildlife trade, pollution, habitat loss and the use of toxic substances.

In 2010, leaders from 196 countries gathered in Japan and agreed on a list of biodiversity targets designed to save the Earth -- but in September, 10 years later, a UN panel concluded that the world had collectively failed to fully achieve a single target.

UN experts have been clear: If we maintain our trajectory in the accelerating climate crisis, biodiversity will continue to deteriorate -- with devastating outcomes for the planet's animals, plants and people.

But the international experts warn that no leader or political system is prepared for the disasters associated with biodiversity loss, or capable of addressing the crisis.

"We've said for years 'we need to do this, that and the other thing,' we know what the problems are, we just choose not to make the changes," Blumstein said.

Eliminating fossil fuels, reining in corporate lobbying that influences policymaking and empowering women with access to education and reproductive control are among the steps necessary, he added.

"Stopping biodiversity loss is nowhere close to the top of any country's priorities, trailing far behind other concerns such as employment, healthcare, economic growth, or currency stability," Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, one of the study's authors, said.

"While it is positive news that President-elect Biden intends to reengage the U.S. in (the) Paris Climate accord within his first 100 days of office, it is a minuscule gesture given the scale of the challenge," he added.

Ehrlich is the author of "The Population Bomb," a controversial 1968 text that warned of overpopulation, predicting millions of people would starve to death.

He has since said that while many details and timings of events were wrong, the book was correct overall, telling the Guardian in 2018: "Population growth, along with over-consumption per capita, is driving civilisation over the edge: billions of people are now hungry or micronutrient malnourished, and climate disruption is killing people."

CHANGE IS CRUCIAL
The scientists warn that world leaders must act to avoid a grim future while planning for impending changes the planet is set to face -- but hope is not lost.

Blumstein said he hoped the coronavirus pandemic could serve as a warning. "COVID, with all of the disruption that it has caused, is actually practice for the future," he said. "This could actually help us move toward unifying and working together. Scientists, remarkably, have worked together. it's the lack of effective world governance or even cooperation in many ways, when we see things breaking down."

In the report, published in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science, the authors wrote: "Our goal is not to present a fatalist perspective, because there are many examples of successful interventions to prevent extinctions, restore ecosystems, and encourage more sustainable economic activity at both local and regional scales.

"Instead, we contend that only a realistic appreciation of the colossal challenges facing the international community might allow it to chart a less-ravaged future," the team added.

Still, they wrote, fundamental changes to global capitalism, education and equality are required to address the problem.

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-...s-warn-of-ghastly-future-for-planet-1.5265170.

 

[sweep_shot]

Halifax council approves ecological lens as latest tool against climate change

A recent Halifax budget meeting saw councillors zero in on climate change, and outline challenges ahead

Halifax regional council has reinforced its plan to tackle climate change in the first council meeting of the year.

On Tuesday, council passed a motion on a new ecological lens. It directs the chief administrative officer (CAO) to bring in guidelines for the environmental implications section of future reports.

It also suggests the CAO develop mandatory training for staff around those new guidelines, as well as additional resources and requirements for environmental decision-making. The council passed the motion without a discussion.

Although there was no discussion on the motion, the topic of climate change was brought up several times during the special budget committee meeting, just before the regular council meeting.

Councillors weigh in on climate change priorities
Coun. Sam Austin voiced his concern on the issue in the meeting.

“COVID will pass. We have an economic impact of that to linger for years here. But the biggest crisis of them all is the one that threatens our civilization on this planet is climate change,” he said.

The municipality’s long-term climate change plan is to cut total CO2 emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

In the budget meeting, CAO Jacques Dubé presented the 2021-2025 Strategic Initiatives towards Net-Zero Emissions plan, which includes: energy retrofits of municipal buildings, net-zero new constructions, community retrofits, renewable programs, and decarbonizing transportation and public transit.

Climate plan projects thousands of new jobs
The overall climate change plan states that not only will tackling climate change promote sustainable development and protect the environment, but it also improves the economy.

A projected $22 billion will be saved in energy expenditures in Halifax between 2020 and 2050. New and existing industries will also promise to generate approximately 170,000 new jobs over a span of 30 years.

A lot of work still needs to be done to achieve net-zero emissions. For instance, it was acknowledged in the budget meeting that buildings were one of the largest generators of greenhouse gas emissions, and replacing them would require a big investment.

“I do believe we need to be very aggressive in our green plan. I think we can still achieve net-zero. It just means we have to work harder in other places to offset pollution in others,” said Coun. Patty Cuttell.

The mandatory training for staff has not yet been developed. In an email, HRM spokesperson Klara Needler said the municipality will provide staff with resources such as training webinars.

The training for ecological lens would be mandatory for all new and current staff.

Source: https://signalhfx.ca/halifax-council-approves-ecological-lens-as-latest-tool-against-climate-change/.

 

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Total drops API over climate change differences

Company cites Paris Agreement, carbon pricing among factors

Citing differences over climate change, French petrochemical company Total is will not renew its membership in the American Petroleum Institute (API).

“Each year, Total assesses the main industry associations of which it is a member to ensure they are aligned with the Group’s climate positions,” the company said in a news release. “This alignment review is based on six key points:

1. our science-based position that the link between human activity and climate change is an established fact,

2. our support for the objectives of the Paris Agreement,

3. our belief in the necessity to implement carbon pricing,

4. our confidence in the key role that natural gas plays in the energy transition,

5. our support for policies and initiatives that promote the development of renewable energy, and

6. our support for the development of CO2 capture and storage.

According to Total, API’s positions in are conflict with the company’s goals. Regarding the role of natural gas, API maintains its support for the rollback of U.S. regulation on methane emissions. API is also part of the Transportation Fairness Alliance, which is opposed to subsidies for electric vehicles and, unlike Total, API opposes carbon pricing.

“Moreover, API gave its support during the recent elections to candidates who argued against the United States’ participation in the Paris Agreement,” the company said.

“The Group acknowledges the API’s considerable contribution, for over a century, to the development of our industry. Nevertheless, as part of our Climate Ambition made public in May 2020, we are committed to ensuring, in a transparent manner, that the industry associations of which we are a member adopt positions and messages that are aligned with those of the Group in the fight against climate change,” said Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO of Total. “This transparency responds to our stakeholders’ expectations, as well as being an essential guarantee of the credibility of our strategy.”

Source: https://www.compressortech2.com/news/total-drops-api-over-climate-change-differences/8009698.article.

 

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Carbon capture is vital to meeting climate goals, scientists tell green critics

Supporters insist that storage technology is not a costly mistake but the best way for UK to cut emissions from heavy industry

Engineers and geologists have strongly criticised green groups who last week claimed that carbon capture and storage schemes – for reducing fossil fuel emissions – are costly mistakes.

The scientists insisted that such schemes are vital weapons in the battle against global heating and warn that failure to set up ways to trap carbon dioxide and store it underground would make it almost impossible to hold net emissions to below zero by 2050.

“Carbon capture and storage is going to be the only effective way we have in the short term to prevent our steel industry, cement manufacture and many other processes from continuing to pour emissions into the atmosphere,” said Professor Stuart Haszeldine, of Edinburgh University.

“If we are to have any hope of keeping global temperature [increases] down below 2 degrees C then we desperately need to develop ways to capture and store carbon dioxide.”

Carbon capture and storage involves the extraction of emissions from power plants and factories, condensing them and then pumping the resulting carbon dioxide into underground stores. Britain is considered to be well placed to develop and operate such technology given its many depleted North Sea oil fields where this sequestrated carbon dioxide could be stored.

Several CCS development programmes have been launched over the past 20 years but have been cancelled as governments have vacillated over funding.

However, Boris Johnson – as part of his commitment to fight climate change – has pledged £1bn of public funds to help develop four major CCS schemes in Britain by 2030 as part of his plan for a “green industrial revolution”.

The aim is to make the UK a “world leader” in the technology and create thousands of jobs. But campaigners at Global Witness and Friends of the Earth Scotland said last week that a reliance on CCS was not a reliable way to decarbonise the energy system, and published a paper last Monday from the Tyndall Manchester climate change research centre that they said proved that CCS has a “history of over-promising and under-delivering”.

Both groups claimed CCS would not make “a meaningful contribution to 2030 climate targets” despite the investment, and instead urged the construction of more renewable energy plants to be given priority.

But the claims were last week dismissed by engineers and geologists. “These claims are quite unfair,” said Michael Stephenson, director of science and technology at the British Geological Survey.

“The science behind carbon capture and storage is extremely good. It offers us a genuine solution to some of the problems we face in trying to tackle global warming.”

At present, most successes in reducing UK carbon emissions have come from the power industry where renewable energy sources have taken over electricity generation from coal, gas and oil plants.

However, some industries – such as steel and cement industries – emit vast amounts of carbon dioxide on top of those produced by generating the power they consume.

It will be much more difficult to bring down carbon emissions from these plants even though these industries are vital to the UK’s economic strength.

This point was stressed by Haszeldine. “When CCS was first touted, it was seen as a way of cleaning up electricity generated by fossil fuels, in particular those burning coal. But now it is clear it can play a key role in cleaning up other industries.

“We just need to push ahead with its development so that Britain can find ways of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The longer we delay then the worst things are going to be and claims that CCS will not work do not help.”

Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, was also critical of the green groups’ claims.

“The opposition to CCS technology from some campaigners seems driven by a hatred of fossil fuel companies that is preventing a level-headed understanding of how we can stop climate change,” he told the Observer.

“Together with dithering policymakers, they share responsibility for stopping the UK from leading a global effort to develop this technology.”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environ...eeting-climate-goals-scientists-cut-emissions.

 

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Climate Change Needs an Operation Warp Speed

If the Covid vaccine push has proved anything, it’s that big government works.

IN THE DISMAL early days of the pandemic, a vaccine seemed depressingly far off. Historically, the average time to develop a new vaccine was 10 years—far too long for our current emergency. But then something happened to shift things into overdrive: serious government action.

The White House and Congress created Operation Warp Speed and started plowing some $18 billion into it. The feds authorized huge, multibillion-dollar preorders for vaccines, and with such a large guaranteed market, pharmaceuticals moved into high gear. The government also threw its logistical know-how at the hellish challenge of distributing the vaccines. Scientifically, of course, we were prepared and lucky. Genetic sequencing was advanced and speedy, and scientists cooperated globally. But it was the critical push from governments (the US and others) that propelled the fastest vaccine mobilization in history.

It’s also an object lesson for our troubled time: When you’re facing a world-threatening crisis, there’s no substitute for government leadership.

This is worth reflecting on, because we’re surrounded by existential threats. Principally, climate change. The scale of the problem is massive.

So is the answer: Operation Warp Speed for climate.

The US government should throw its muscle behind ramping up a mammoth, rapid rollout of all forms of renewable energy. That includes the ones we already know how to build—like solar and wind—but also experimental emerging sources like geothermal and small nuclear, and cutting-edge forms of energy storage or transmission. It’s not as if the feds have done nothing on renewables; tax credits for solar are partly why adoption is up and the price is down. But compared to the terrifying scale of the problem, the spending has been chump change. For the past 40 years, the US has spent 37 percent more on R&D for fossil fuels than for renewables.

A Climate Warp Speed campaign should invert that ratio. Hell, 10X it! More crucially, the government should become a bulk buyer of renewable energy. The feds’ vaccine purchase is what jolted pharmaceutical companies to move so bloody fast with Covid-19. “They’re not just going to make a bunch of vaccine that’s going to sit on a shelf and nobody's going to buy,” notes Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security. The virus created the demand; the feds created the market.

With renewable energy, the US government could pledge to buy as much clean energy as firms can make. One thing that slows cutting-edge deployments is that selling energy—closing contracts with many different states, cities, or businesses—is often a glacial, convoluted affair, notes Tim Latimer, CEO of Fervo Energy, a developer of geothermal energy. By being a single, huge buyer of first resort, the feds could strip away complexity.

“If the government just said, look, we'll buy the first batch—all of a sudden the scientists get to do what they do best, which is focus on the science and build it with certainty,” Latimer says. “That would just catalyze all kinds of new activities.”

The US can offer more than just cash, though. We have logistics. A climate Warp Speed could use the organizational oomph of our government and military to bring clean energy to every federal building nationwide. They could cut through red tape too. (They did this during Operation Warp Speed for vaccine-component firms.) If anything, the Trump administration erred in not going big enough to ramp up vaccine supply. Emergencies gotta emergency.

Carbon sequestration needs Warp-Speed treatment too. Startups and labs have dreamed up prototypical hardware for scrubbing carbon from the atmosphere. But it’s a gnarly engineering challenge that needs early support. In the long run, there may well be a robust market for extracted carbon, transformed into fuel or as construction materials. But in the short run it’s just an expensive pile o' extracted carbon. So the feds should buy it.

My libertarian friends, I can hear you protesting: Wait, won’t government spending distort these markets? Can’t free enterprise bootstrap truly world-changing new tech all on its own? Nope. It rarely has. The free market regarded nearly every foundational digital tech—in its early years—as a costly boondoggle and had little interest. Transistors, integrated circuits? Back in the ’50s and ’60s, the first batches were often janky messes. It took the Department of Defense pouring dough into startup firms like Fairchild Semiconductor to bring costs down and reliability up, so that 20 years later Woz could craft the Apple I. You’re welcome. (Oh, and if you like deep learning? Thank Canadian taxpayers.)

“It’s always been the symbiosis of public and private,” as Margaret O’Mara, historian and author of The Code, a history of Silicon Valley, tells me.

The new Biden administration plans to retire the “Warp Speed” name, but hopefully not the approach. When you’re finally jabbed with the new vaccine, savor our public victory. Then call your congresscritter to demand a Warp Speed for climate. The planet needs the same shot in the arm.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/warp-speed-for-climate-change/.

 

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Climate Change Will Be Sudden and Cataclysmic Unless We Act Now

By Peter Giger

The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner - but history tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats.

Our evolution has selected the "fight or flight" instinct to deal with environmental change, so rather like the metaphor of the frog in boiling water, we tend to react too little and too late to gradual change.

Climate change is often described as global warming, with the implication of gradual changes caused by a steady increase in temperatures; from heatwaves to melting glaciers.

But we know from multidisciplinary scientific evidence - from geology, anthropology and archaeology - that climate change is not incremental. Even in pre-human times, it is episodic, when it isn't forced by a human-induced acceleration of greenhouse gas emissions and warming.

There are parts of our planet's carbon cycle, the ways that the earth and the biosphere store and release carbon, that could trigger suddenly in response to gradual warming. These are tipping points that once passed could fundamentally disrupt the planet and produce abrupt, non-linear change in the climate.

A Game of Jenga
Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.

But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.

One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.

This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.

This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters with important regional variations.

More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.

Cutting Off Circulation
As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.

This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.

The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.

But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.

Recent research suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the cessation of arable farming in the UK, for instance.

It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)

Is it Time to Declare a Climate Emergency?
At what stage, and at what rise in global temperatures, will these tipping points be reached? No one is entirely sure. It may take centuries, millennia or it could be imminent.

But as COVID-19 taught us, we need to prepare for the expected. We were aware of the risk of a pandemic. We also knew that we were not sufficiently prepared. But we didn't act in a meaningful manner. Thankfully, we have been able to fast-track the production of vaccines to combat COVID-19. But there is no vaccine for climate change once we have passed these tipping points.

We need to act now on our climate. Act like these tipping points are imminent. And stop thinking of climate change as a slow-moving, long-term threat that enables us to kick the problem down the road and let future generations deal with it. We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and fulfill our commitments to the Paris Agreement, and build resilience with these tipping points in mind.

We need to plan now to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but we also need to plan for the impacts, such as the ability to feed everyone on the planet, develop plans to manage flood risk, as well as manage the social and geopolitical impacts of human migrations that will be a consequence of fight or flight decisions.

Breaching these tipping points would be cataclysmic and potentially far more devastating than COVID-19. Some may not enjoy hearing these messages, or consider them to be in the realm of science fiction. But if it injects a sense of urgency to make us respond to climate change like we have done to the pandemic, then we must talk more about what has happened before and will happen again.

Otherwise we will continue playing Jenga with our planet. And ultimately, there will only be one loser – us.

Reposted with permission from World Economic Forum.

Source: https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-act-now-2650039989.html?rebelltitem=5#rebelltitem5.

 

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Climate Change Could Cause Permanent Heatwaves in Lakes, Researchers Warn

Heatwaves are not just distinct to the land. A recent study found lakes are susceptible to temperature rise too, causing "lake heatwaves," The Independent reported.

For the first time, researchers showed how lakes experience heatwaves and are sensitive to variations in the climate, lead author Dr. Iestyn Woolway, a research fellow at the European Space Agency's Climate Office in the UK, told The Independent.

Published on Wednesday in Nature, the study analyzed how hundreds of lake temperatures changed across the world, from the period between 1901 to 2099. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, lakes will experience hotter and longer heatwaves, researchers found.

Woolway and his team studied lake temperatures during heatwaves under two scenarios: high greenhouse gas emissions and low greenhouse gas emissions. Compared to data from the period between 1970-1999, the average temperature of global lakes could increase to about 1.7°C during heatwaves by the end of the century in a high greenhouse gas emission future, The Independent reported.

But high greenhouse gas emissions could increase more than just a lake's temperature during a heatwave. The average length of a heatwave could also increase from eight days to 95 days by the end of the century, The Independent reported.

"As lakes warm during the twenty-first century, their heatwaves will begin to extend across multiple seasons, with some lakes reaching a permanent heatwave state," the study noted.

Over the summer, the Great Lakes experienced some of their warmest temperatures on record. Surface water temperature in all the Great Lakes, except for Lake Superior, experienced temperatures in the 70s, The Washington Post reported in July. Lake Erie even reported temperatures in the 80s, similar to that of Virginia Beach.

"Ultimately, lake temperatures follow the temperatures of the atmosphere," Dr. Woolway told The Independent.

The Great Lakes water temperatures were six to eleven degrees warmer than normal this past summer, responding to air temperatures in the region that were some of the warmest ever reported, The Washington Post reported.

"Last year was really cold and there was a lot of rain. This year there hasn't been as much rain, and it's been persistently hot," Andrea Vander Woude, manager of the Great Lakes CoastWatch program at NOAA, told The Washington Post.

Some locals in the Great Lake region had nothing to complain about. "I'm loving this," Whitney Miller, a Michigan-based swim instructor, told the Record-Eagle, a newspaper in the region, according to The Washington Post. "Last year I was in a wetsuit up through the 15th of July ... I was a popsicle." However, high temperatures in lakes pose a serious threat to the survival of natural ecosystems, the study found.

Serving as more than just a recreational hotspot, the Great Lakes are an important source for clean water and economic livelihood. Nearly 90 percent of the freshwater in the United States and approximately 20 percent of the world's fresh water supply comes from the Great Lakes, according to NOAA. Millions of pounds of fish are also extracted out of the lakes each year.

Increases in water temperature will reduce habitat for coldwater fish, making the lakes more suitable habitats for invasive species and susceptible to dangerous algal blooms, The National Wildlife Federation reported.

But meeting the Paris agreement's goal of limiting global warming below 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels could slow temperature increases and reduce heatwave length in lakes, the study found.

Relative to the period between 1970 and 1999, lake temperatures during heatwaves could be limited to just a 0.3°C increase by the end of the century if this goal is met. A lake's heatwave duration could also be limited, increasing by only 27 days, rather than 95 days in a high emissions future, according to the study.

To avoid major changes to lake ecosystems, action must be taken now, the researchers stress. "Reducing greenhouse gas emissions must remain at the forefront of our agenda," Dr. Woolway told The Independent.

Source: https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-lakes-heatwaves-2650058290.html?rebelltitem=5#rebelltitem5.

 

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Climate change requires lifestyle changes

The world has heard it on the radio and on television: “Pollution is killing our planet.” People have seen posters throughout the halls that demand they recycle before it is too late. Talks around the dinner table have led to debates about if the words are true or not: climate change.

For many, climate change does not mean anything. Many are not educated on the fact that the climate truly is changing, and not for the better.

Riverside High School senior Angel Akinleye, a high school student leader for Earth Charter Indiana said, “Climate change is the climate changing in a negative way, and it is impacted by human beings. We are the ones who contributed to climate change.”

Earth Charter Indiana executive director Jim Poyser said that the Earth Charter principles were established in the late 1990s by people from dozens of countries that realized the planet was having a climate crisis.

“So, 20 years ago, they said, ‘Look, we have a climate crisis. How are we going to solve it? Well, we can’t really solve it unless we address the issue of poverty. And we can’t really solve it unless we address the issue of racism, and we can’t really solve it unless we have democratic institutions that are transparent in how they operate,’” said Poyser.

Poyser said that the climate typically changes in increments of 30 years or more, and if someone has lived in one spot for 30 years, as he has, they can see the changes occurring themselves.

“What I am noticing, for example, is that there is a lot less snow, and the snow, when it falls in the winter, does not last as long. When it starts snowing is later in the season, and when it stops snowing is earlier in the spring. This is all predicted by a warming atmosphere,” he said.

According to Poyser, the changing of the environment has also affected animals and plants by destroying their homes and making it harder for them to adapt in a changing climate.

AP Environmental Science teacher Randy Hein said, “When the environment changes faster than organisms can actually keep up, we see extinctions. Right now, probably one of the largest losses that we’re having that we cannot get back from any kind of recovery is the species loss. So, when we lose biodiversity and the species are gone, you know it takes with them a lot of information.”

Hein is also the teacher sponsor for the Environmental Sustainability Club at Floyd Central. Hein said that this club tries to lessen its ecological footprint by conserving materials that are limited and reusing the ones that can be reused properly.

“What they try to do is they share more ideas about more sustainable lifestyles, more sustainable living. It is a group that likes to lessen their ecological footprint — the amount of resources that the planet needs to provide for an individual,” said Hein.

Hein said the club likes to brainstorm different ways members can improve their everyday lives and make a big impact in the community. He said that one of the ideas they had was to bring in used clothes and donate them to a charitable cause.

“They did a clothing exchange among the members; of course, you can’t do something like that today either, but they brought in things that they didn’t use anymore, and whatever was left over after the exchange I took to The Mustard Seed, and we donated those,” said Hein.

Reusing clothes is not the only way to reduce waste. Poyser also recommends food composting to those who have a tendency to waste or overbuy food.

“There’s a lot you can do to reduce rotting food. First of all, you can compost your food waste. That’s what I do at my house,” said Poyser.

In agreement with Poyser, Akinleye said food is often wasted; however, she also mentioned that when many people go grocery shopping, they do not use reusable bags and use plastic ones instead, leading to more pollution.

“I was watching this documentary, and they went to the deepest parts of the ocean and what did they see? Plastic bags. I feel like it’s up to each individual to make their choices and to help with this crisis,” said Akinleye.

Hein said many will continue to drain the earth of its resources and not think twice about climate change, but people need to come together and stop using the services they believe the earth has provided for free.

Hein said, “When we lose just the aesthetics, you know, that is one thing, but when we start losing those services that the environment provides for us, and we contaminate it to the point where it cannot provide us clean air, and cycle carbon, and nitrogen, and phosphorus, and when it starts impacting the natural cycle of things, it’s a long-term loss.”

Source: https://www.indianaenvironmentalreporter.org/posts/climate-change-requires-lifestyle-changes.

 

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How Climate Change Increased The Need For Fossil Fuels In 2021

As the climate is changing, the Arctic is warming four times faster than global averages, causing the circumpolar Jetstream to weaken and move southwards. Consequently, freezing cold air masses – known as the Polar Vortex – descend to more densely populated areas in the earth’s Northern Hemisphere, where humans have no other immediate choice but to increase fossil fuel consumption to keep warm. Analyzing global temperatures and related weather phenomena, Rystad Energy believes that the increased frequency of this weather pattern – which has caused a rise in demand for coal, liquefied natural gas (LNG), electricity and even a bit of oil – is here to stay. Recent eye-popping price spikes and their spread between summer and winter will widen, especially for gas, both natural and liquefied.

With European and Asian markets hungry for natural gas and LNG, storage levels are getting depleted. And with the Polar Vortex expected to create another cold snap in February, a perfect demand storm will likely cause a spike in global demand and contribute to a 4% rise in LNG consumption this year, reaching about 377 million tonnes (MT) in 2021 versus 363 MT in 2020.

Due to the cold snap, North-east Asia has already reached an international LNG import all-time-high in December, when the region imported a record 22 MT. China in particular imported a record 66 MT in the whole of 2020, despite the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, and is on the verge of overtaking Japan as the world’s largest LNG importer. Rystad Energy expects Chinese LNG imports in 2021 to grow to 72.9 MT, just 2 MT short of Japan’s projected 74.9 MT.

The Polar Vortex has so far hit Asian and European markets hard, causing a rise in the profitability of LNG, natural gas and coal. Rystad Energy’s price forecasts show that high gas and LNG price levels will likely remain high in coming weeks and are only likely to ease back in March and April as spring approaches in the Northern Hemisphere.

Yet US Henry Hub gas prices remain surprisingly subdued at $2.75 per MMBtu, a steep drop from the peak price of $3.40 per MMBtu registered in late October 2020. There are two main reasons US gas prices are comparatively depressed. First, the Polar Vortex has so far only drifted south over Europe and Asia, and not yet North America. Second, higher oil prices are incentivizing shale operators to tap into drilled but uncompleted wells (DUCs), which increases the domestic supply of both oil and gas.

As more wells are brought online, we see continued pressure on domestic US gas prices, even despite the surge in demand for US LNG exports. Rystad Energy expects the Henry Hub price to average $2.95 per MMBtu in 2021, in nominal terms.

The Polar Vortex, together with increased North East Asian demand for heating, has pushed up Asian LNG prices and the arbitrage window between the US and Asian markets. This has directed more US LNG volumes to the Far East compared to the US and Europe. Consequently, the long voyage from source to market is good for vessel demand, and thus also charter rates.

The increased demand for US LNG in Asia has led to congestion in the Panama Canal, the shortest route for transporting LNG from the US Gulf Coast to Asia. Maintenance and weather disruptions have further supported the current backup in the canal. Consequently, shippers may have to use alternative routes including passing through the Suez Canal or around South Africa for transporting cargoes from the US to Asia.

These routes would more than double the route distance and increase passage time from 20 to 30 days. As such, voyage costs for cargos from the US to Japan have soared as high as $5.60 per MMBtu during January 2021.

Perfect storm for coal

Japan presents an interesting case of how the attractiveness of coal has rebounded as a result of the Polar Vortex. With most of Japan’s nuclear reactors still offline in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Japan has relied heavily on LNG to meet its power demand and is therefore vulnerable to any shock related to the supply and demand balance in the LNG market. The Japanese power sector has also been affected by heavy snowfall and a lack of sunshine, thus affecting solar power generation and worsening the overall power supply. While the shortage can be offset by increased use of coal and oil, utilities have asked the public to use less electricity, a difficult ask in the midst of freezing temperatures.

The situation is hardly better in China. On 7 January 2021, Beijing recorded its lowest temperature since 1966 – touching -19.6 degrees Celsius. This has sharply lifted Chinese coal demand for both heating and power, and to deal with the demand spike, major north Asian energy consumers have ramped up coal consumption in recent weeks. In particular, thermal coal spot prices in China have soared since the start of the new year.

The cold weather has dampened domestic coal production and transportation, though the nationwide coal shortage started to appear in early November when major domestic coal-producing areas in Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces reported reduced supply due to the government’s crackdown on illegal production and sale of coal.

But the volatile coal market situation has also been exacerbated by the government’s own policy decisions. China's coal import quota system, plus the informal ban on Australian coal imports, has resulted in limited imported coal available to take up the domestic production shortfall, even though it is substantially cheaper. Chinese coal buyers were able to increase imports from Indonesia and Russia in December as the annual quota expanded, and have also recently turned to alternative sources of supply, including South Africa and Colombia, but these volumes are reportedly unlikely to arrive in time or in sufficient quantities to meet short-term demand requirements.

“The new round of lower temperatures can support the high energy prices in the market. As milder weather returns, we expect to see less upward pressure on energy prices. Still, the market will continue to be tight during the coming months, as challenges in the Panama Canal are yet to be resolved, Chinese coal production needs to recover, and gas storage needs to be restocked for the current market tightness to ease,” says Sindre Knutsson, vice president of gas market research at Rystad Energy.

Source: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-...reased-The-Need-For-Fossil-Fuels-In-2021.html.

 

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Climate Change Is Melting Ice in Every Continent, New Study Shows

(Bloomberg) -- Melting on the ice sheets has accelerated so much over the past three decades that it’s now in line with the worst-case climate warming scenarios outlined by scientists.

A total of 28 trillion metric tons of ice was lost between 1994 and 2017, according to a research paper published in The Cryosphere on Monday. The research team led by the University of Leeds in the U.K. was the first to carry out a global survey of global ice loss using satellite data.

“The ice sheets are now following the worst-case climate warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” lead author Thomas Slater said in a statement. “Although every region we studied lost ice, losses from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have accelerated the most.”

Ice melt from sheets and glaciers contributes to global warming and indirectly influences sea level rise, which in turn increases the risk of flooding in coastal communities. Earth’s northern and southern poles are warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet. In 2020, a year of record heat, Arctic sea ice extent hovered around the lowest ever for most of the year.

The new research, which used information from the European Space Agency’s network of satellites, found that Earth lost 1.3 trillion tons of ice in 2017, accelerating from 0.8 trillion metric tons per year in the 1990s.

The ice lost is equivalent to a 100-meter-thick sheet of ice able to cover the whole of the U.K. Another way to think of it is as 28 giant ice cubes —one for every trillion metric tons of ice lost—each taller than Mount Everest and measuring 10 kilometers in width, height and depth, the scientists said.

“One of the key roles of Arctic sea ice is to reflect solar radiation back into space, which helps keep the Arctic cool,” said Isobel Lawrence, a researcher at the Leeds’ Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling. “As the sea ice shrinks, more solar energy is being absorbed by the oceans and atmosphere, causing the Arctic to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet.”

The survey, which also analyzed 215,000 mountain glaciers around the planet, concluded that half of the losses were from ice on land, including from mountain glaciers and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet. These losses have raised global sea levels by an estimated 35 millimeters.

Source: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/climate...-in-every-continent-new-study-shows-1.1553491.

 

[sweep_shot]

Global ice sheets melting at 'worst-case' rates: U.K. scientists

LONDON -- The rate at which ice is disappearing across the world matches "worst-case climate warming scenarios", U.K. scientists have warned in new research.

A team from the universities of Edinburgh and Leeds and University College London said the rate at which ice is melting across the world's polar regions and mountains has increased markedly in the last three decades.

Using satellite data, the experts found the Earth lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice between 1994 and 2017.

The rate of loss has risen from 0.8 trillion tonnes per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tonnes per year by 2017, with potentially disastrous consequences for people living in coastal areas.

"The ice sheets are now following the worst-case climate warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)," said Dr. Thomas Slater, a research fellow at Leeds' Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling.

"Sea level rise on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century."

Input from United Nations' IPCC has been critical to forming international climate change strategies, including the 2015 Paris Agreement under which the majority of greenhouse gas emitting nations agreed to mitigate the impact of global warming.

The universities' research, published Monday in the European Geosciences Union's journal The Cryosphere, was the first of its kind to use satellite data.

It surveyed 215,000 mountain glaciers around the globe, polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, ice shelves floating around Antarctica, and sea ice drifting in the Arctic and Southern Oceans.

The survey found the largest losses in the last three decades were from Arctic Sea ice and Antarctic ice shelves, both of which float on the polar oceans.

While such ice loss does not directly contribute to sea rises, its destruction does stop the ice sheets reflecting solar radiation and thus indirectly contributes to rising sea levels.

"As the sea ice shrinks, more solar energy is being absorbed by the oceans and atmosphere, causing the Arctic to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet," Dr Isobel Lawrence said.

"Not only is this speeding up sea ice melt, it's also exacerbating the melting of glaciers and ice sheets which causes sea levels to rise," she added.

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-...-at-worst-case-rates-u-k-scientists-1.5282481.

 

[sweep_shot]

John Kerry: UK climate summit is world's 'last best chance'

US climate envoy John Kerry has told the BBC a UN climate summit in the UK this November is "the last best chance" to avert the worst environmental consequences for the world.

He said years were lost on the climate issue under President Donald Trump, "who didn't believe in any of it".

Dozens of world leaders will attend the COP26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

Mr Kerry spoke as President Joe Biden signed a flurry of executive orders designed to address climate change.

His latest edicts include a freeze on new oil and gas leases on public lands and set out to double offshore wind-produced energy by 2030.

Mr Biden said the US "must lead" a global response to the climate change crisis.

What did Kerry say?
The newly appointed US climate tsar said: "Glasgow will be extremely important.

"In fact, I would say that in my judgment, it is the last best chance the world has to come together in order to do the things we need to do to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis.

"Three years ago, we were told we have 12 years to avoid those consequences. Three of those years were lost because we had Donald Trump who didn't believe in any of it. And now we have nine years left to try to do what science is telling us we need to do."

But at a White House news conference on Wednesday, Mr Kerry told reporters it would make little difference in the global climate change fight even if the US reduced its emissions to zero.

He said: "He [Mr Biden] knows Paris alone is not enough. Not when almost 90% of all of the planet's global emissions come from outside of US borders.

"We could go to zero tomorrow and the problem isn't solved."

In one of his first acts as president, Mr Biden fulfilled a promise to re-enter the US into the 2016 Paris accord.

Nearly 200 countries signed up to the pact, which aims to keep the global temperature rise this century well below 2C above pre-industrial levels.

Mr Trump withdrew the US from the Paris agreement, arguing that it unfairly left the world's other two top polluters - India and China - free to use fossil fuels.

What else did Biden say?
The new US president indicated he would not wait until November's summit to engage in multilateral talks on the issue.

The series of executive orders that Mr Biden signed on Wednesday announced a US summit of leaders to be held in April on Earth Day.

"Just like we need a unified national response to Covid-19, we desperately need a unified national response to the climate crisis because there is a climate crisis," he said, as he established a White House office of domestic climate policy.

According to a White House statement, Mr Biden is directing the Department of the Interior to pause oil and gas drilling leases on federal lands and water and to launch a review of existing energy leases.

Mr Biden aims to conserve at least 30% of federal lands and oceans by 2030.

The new president - whose fellow Democrats control Congress - has signed more than three dozen executive orders in his first week in office, more than any of his predecessors.

Critics note he told ABC News while campaigning last October that only a "dictator" would use executive orders excessively. "We're a democracy," said Mr Biden. "We need consensus."

Mr Biden endured a storm of criticism for last week's executive order halting construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, that would have transported oil from Canada through the US.

His White House is trying to get ahead of more criticism by addressing job creation.

Mr Biden argued that "millions" of Americans would be able to find employment "modernising our water systems, transportation, our energy infrastructure - to withstand the impacts of extreme climate".

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55836163.

 

[sweep_shot]

Olive is the new green in fighting climate change

It’s a valuable middle way as no ‘brown’, carbon-emitting company can change its colours overnight


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https://www.ft.com/content/e37bb0b5-3362-497a-8df7-7c28b95d0cb4

If this week is anything to go by, 2021 will be the “Year of Green”.

On Tuesday, BlackRock said it will demand that all companies demonstrate plans to reach carbon zero by 2050. That same day, attendees at the virtual World Economic Forum issued pious climate pledges.

On Wednesday, Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, and Bill Winters, head of Standard Chartered bank, pledged to turbocharge the carbon offsets market. US president Joe Biden also suspended the issue of new oil and gas drilling permits on federal land.

Meanwhile, ExxonMobil, America’s largest oil major, is considering further cuts to fossil fuel investments and more spending on sustainable technologies. This shift, which comes as the company is under pressure from activists, is arguably the most startling of all. Exxon has hitherto been so defiantly wedded to fossil fuel that it has been a top target of environmentalists.

As the green bandwagon accelerates, though, it is time to consider a linguistic rethink. When teenage activist Greta Thunberg burst on to TV screens a couple of years ago, she demanded an immediate shift from carbon-emitting activities, like fossil fuels, to sustainable ones.

This “brown” versus “green” framing was admirably clear. Ms Thunberg also has a knack for irritating middle-aged executives, and thus deserves credit for shifting the debate. That is especially so as she also promoted understanding of a crucial concept: our globe has a measurable carbon “budget” which limits the emissions the planet can tolerate before irreparable environmental damage is done.

However, the issue now is not to divide the world into binary buckets of “green” and “brown”, as activists still demand and the European Commission’s new taxonomy attempts to do. Rather, it is to make currently brown activities less damaging and as fast as possible; in effect, create a blend of greenish-brown.

Thus it might be better to call 2021 the “Year of Olive”. What then really matters now is how quickly “olive” companies turn their activities a lighter shade of green and that they do so in a way that can be measured credibly.

Take the activist battle at Exxon, which looks like a tale of green David versus brown Goliath. The oil group was one of America’s largest and most respected companies. The activist, Engine No. 1, was created last month and owns just $40m in Exxon shares.

However, its “Reenergize Exxon” campaign has won backing from Calstrs, the huge California teachers retirement plan. DE Shaw wants spending cuts and BlackRock may back the activists. That is because Engine No. 1 understands olive. It is not demanding an immediate cessation of drilling but a credible plan that Exxon become net zero, fairly fast.

Exxon officials, of course, say they are already working on this. Their corporate website trumpets investments in carbon capture technology and other strategies to offset emissions. In that respect, it is not alone. Numerous other companies talk about carbon offsets too, which often involve planting forests. That is partly because trees are telegenic, but also because groups such as Salesforce have launched an eye-catching “trillion-tree” campaign.

Offsets can be a useful complement to decarbonisation plans. But there has been some lamentably poor reporting and greenwashing in this market. So Messrs Carney and Winters are now trying to put it on a more credible path. Let us hope they succeed.

Meanwhile, the “Reenergize Exxon” group rightly wants more. Offsets cannot be more than a small part of any solution. It is equally if not more important to fund new technologies, as Bill Gates did last week. Offsets such as planting trees also cannot become a distraction from the key task: making proper cuts to emission laden activities.

What Engine No. 1 wants Exxon to do is: show precisely how it will become a greener shade of olive quickly, by cutting oil and gas activities and embracing renewables.

This approach will not satisfy purists, who want “green now” and oppose funding anything short of that. But it is more likely to work. These days, investors increasingly award a share price premium to companies that are moving faster along the olive spectrum than their rivals. Financiers are also developing instruments that cut the cost of capital for greener groups.

Call this, if you like, an emerging olive yield curve. As such, it is welcome — with two caveats. First, it is not good enough for companies to tiptoe along this yield curve; the maths of the carbon budget means they need to move fast. Second, investors need a credible system for placing companies on an olive yield curve and measuring their progress.

In that respect, it is disappointing that BlackRock was vague this week about how it will measure the credibility of companies’ plans to get to carbon zero. It is also unnerving that the European Commission’s green taxonomy seems focused on a rigid, binary framework and that it is taking so long to harmonise sustainable accounting standards.

If we are going to make real progress on fighting climate change, it is vital to recognise the need to embrace an olive framework, track a company’s movement along an olive yield curve and speed its transformation. That will demand far more than planting trees, no matter how telegenic they are.

Source: https://www.ft.com/content/e37bb0b5-3362-497a-8df7-7c28b95d0cb4.

 

[sweep_shot]

Fighting Climate Change in America Means Changes to America

Climate isn't the only thing changing.

What comes next in the nation's struggle to combat global warming will probably transform how Americans drive, where they get their power and other bits of day-to-day life, both quietly and obviously, experts say.

So far, the greening of America has been subtle, driven by market forces, technology and voluntary actions. The Biden administration is about to change that.

In a flurry of executive actions in his first eight days in office, the president is trying to steer the U.S. economy from one that uses fossil fuels to one that no longer puts additional heat-trapping gases into the air by 2050.

The United States is rejoining the international Paris climate accord and is also joining many other nations in setting an ambitious goal that once seemed unattainable: net-zero carbon emissions by midcentury. That means lots of changes designed to fight increasingly costly climate disasters such as wildfires, floods, droughts, storms and heat waves.

Think of the journey to a carbon-less economy as a road trip from Washington to California that started about 15 years ago.

"We've made it through Ohio and up to the Indiana border. But the road has been pretty smooth so far. It gets rougher ahead," said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, climate and energy director at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center in Oakland, California.

"The Biden administration is both stepping on the gas and working to upgrade our vehicle," Hausfather said.

What isn't visible, and what is

The results of some of Biden's new efforts may still not be noticeable, such as your power eventually coming from ever-cheaper wind and solar energy instead of coal and natural gas that now provide 59% of American power. But when it comes to going from here to there, you'll notice that.

General Motors announced Thursday that as of 2035 it hopes to go all-electric for its light-duty vehicles, no longer selling gasoline-powered cars. Experts expect most new cars sold in 2030 to be electric. The Biden administration promised 550,000 charging stations to help with the transition to electric cars.

"You will no longer be going to a gas station, but you will need to charge your vehicle whether at home or on the road," said Kate Larsen, director of international climate policy research at the Rhodium Group, an independent research organization. "It may be a whole new way of thinking about transportation for the average person."

But it will still be your car, which is why most of the big climate action over the next 10 years won't be too noticeable, said Princeton University ecologist Stephen Pacala.

"The single biggest difference is that because wind and solar is distributed you will see a lot more of it on the landscape," said Pacala, who leads a study on decarbonizing America by the National Academy of Sciences that will come out next week.

Less expensive, plus health benefits

Other recent detailed scientific studies show that because of dropping wind, solar and battery prices, Biden's net-zero carbon goal can be accomplished far cheaper than had been predicted in the past and with health benefits "many, many times'' outweighing the costs, said Pacala, who was part of one study at Princeton. Those studies agree on what needs to be done for decarbonization, and what Biden has come out with "is doing the things that everyone now is concluding that we should do," Pacala said.

These are the types of shifts that don't cost much — about $1 day per person — and won't require people to abandon their current cars and furnaces but replace them with cleaner electric vehicles and heat pumps when it comes time for a new one, said Margaret Torn, a senior scientist at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, who co-authored a study published recently by Berkeley Lab, the University of San Francisco and the consulting firm Evolved Energy Research.

Part of the problem, said study co-author Ryan Jones, co-founder of Evolved Energy Research, is that for years, people have wrongly portrayed the battle against climate change as a "personal morality problem" where individuals have to sacrifice by driving and flying less, turning down the heat and eating less meat.

"Actually, climate change is an industry economy issue where most of the big solutions are happening under the hood or upstream of people's homes," Jones said. "It's a big change in how we produce energy and consume energy. It's not a change in people's day-to-day lives, or it doesn't need to be."

One Biden interim goal — "a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035" — may not be doable that quickly, but can be done by 2050, said study co-author Jim Williams of the University of San Francisco.

Electric vehicles, conservation, wind energy

Biden's executive orders featured plans for an all-electric federal fleet of vehicles, conserving 30% of the country's land and waters, doubling the nation's offshore wind energy and funding to help communities become more resilient to climate disasters. Republicans and fossil fuel interests objected, calling the actions job-killers.

"Using the incredible leverage of federal government purchases in green electricity, zero-emission cars and new infrastructure will rapidly increase demand for home-grown climate-friendly technologies," said Rosina Bierbaum, a University of Michigan environmental policy professor.

The next big thing for the administration is to come up with a Paris climate accord goal — called Nationally Determined Contribution — for how much the United States hopes to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. It has to be ambitious for the president to reach his ultimate goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, but it also has to be doable.

His administration promises to reveal the goal, required by the climate agreement but nonbinding, before its Earth Day climate summit, April 22.

That new number "is actually the centrally important activity of the next year," said University of Maryland environment professor Nate Hultman, who worked on the Obama administration's Paris goal.

Getting to net zero carbon emissions at midcentury means about a 43% cut from 2005 levels — the baseline the U.S. government uses — by 2030, said the Rhodium Group's Larsen. The U.S. can realistically reach a 40% cut by 2030, which is about one-third reduction from what 2020 U.S. carbon emissions would have been without a pandemic, said Williams, the San Francisco professor.

All this work on power and vehicles, that's easy compared with decarbonizing agriculture with high methane emissions from livestock and high-heat industrial processes such as steelmaking, Breakthrough's Hausfather said.

"There's no silver bullet for agriculture," Hausfather said. "There's no solar panels for cows, so to speak, apart from meat alternatives, but even there you have challenges around consumer acceptance."

Source: https://www.voanews.com/science-health/fighting-climate-change-america-means-changes-america.

 

[sweep_shot]

How Russia Stands to Benefit from Climate Change

The changing climate is starting to impact geopolitical risks. As the world moves away from a carbon economy, oil and gas are likely to diminish in importance, while the issue of food security is becoming more important.

This will have an impact on countries’ relative power to one another — and one of those countries that may stand to gain from climate change is Russia. As the earth warms, huge areas of Siberia are starting to open up to farming and grain production.

BRINK spoke to Rod Schoonover, the former director of environment and natural resources at the National Intelligence Council under U.S. President Obama.

SCHOONOVER: As temperatures go up both globally and regionally, what you’re seeing is a northerly shift in crop production zones in the Northern Hemisphere. Regions in Canada, the United States and especially in Russia that were once deemed non-productive for agriculture are becoming productive.

Siberia Is Opening to Agriculture
There are some open questions still about CO2 fertilization and its effects on crop yields, but there’s no question that we are seeing a shift towards the Poles in the plant world. So for example, in Russia, you can expect whole swaths of Siberia and other parts of the Tundra to become more favorable.

I don’t want to put it all down to climate because there are also technological improvements in terms of agricultural yields, but Russians are quite aware of climate change effects. They don’t have a strong climate denial industry inside the country, and climate change is pretty well embedded into their agricultural ambitions.

BRINK: How will climate change impact food security, or insecurity, more generally?

SCHOONOVER: There are a number of global trends affecting food security. One of those has to do with the world population, which is expected to hit about 10 billion people around 2050.

One of the great things that we’ve done over the last 50 years is to move people out of extreme poverty, but this will ultimately change their diets. Therefore, you have more people moving away from grains towards meat and more water and land-intensive fruits and vegetables. Even without climate change, this would be putting stress on the global food system.

Russia understands that they need to build an economy for the 21st century by taking less advantage of climate change that’s happening now and building towards taking advantage of it in the near future.

Climate Change’s Impact on Russia’s Agriculture
And then you have this shift of production poleward. So for example, corn is now being grown in North Dakota, and that comes at the expense of some of the more southerly production zones in the United States. In other parts of the world, like Europe, you may see a production zone moving completely out of a nation over time into another nation.

BRINK: On the Russian side, how does this play into their geopolitics?

SCHOONOVER: The agricultural sector in Russia suffered a terrible drought in 2010. Since then, the Russian government has really started to map out self-sufficiency in the food space. They have a plan to become an agricultural superpower for wheat, sugar beet, livestock and some other cereals.

The Kremlin understands that they need to build an economy for the 21st century. I would say that they are taking less advantage of climate change that’s happening on the ground now and building towards taking advantage of it in the near future.

If you’ve ever been to Siberia, it’s just this vast tract of land that’s largely frozen and doesn’t have a lot of infrastructure. There are some other things that would need to be put into place to take full advantage of climate change effects, but if you pay attention to their food policies and what they’re doing, then they are clearly telegraphing that they intend to be a beneficiary of shifting food patterns that are coming about, at least partially, because of climate change.

The Decline of Oil As a Geopolitical Risk
BRINK: More broadly, does this mean that we’re going to shift away from a geopolitics of oil towards seeing food as a critical resource?

SCHOONOVER: I wouldn’t expect it to be as fast a transition as some other people think — it seems like we’re holding onto fossil fuels much longer than it seems wise to. I do think historians between 2050 and 2060 will probably make the judgment that there was some kind of transition in our current period to a different set of critical national resources.

BRINK: Does that mean that the Middle East becomes less significant?

SCHOONOVER: That depends on how they adapt to these global shifts, and the degree to which they continue to depend on oil and gas. There’re a handful of countries who are quite wealthy. What do they do with that wealth? Do they invest it further into different types of renewable energy or desalination or things like that? Or do they just try to keep the oil pumps going?

When you look at the story of Venezuela, there are some lessons to be learned in terms of over reliance on a resource that falls out of favor.

Source: https://www.brinknews.com/how-russia-stands-to-benefit-from-climate-change/.

 

[Robert]

A very alarming final episode of A Perfect Planet on BBC last night. Perhaps our national treasure Sir David’s last stand, age 93, and he doesn’t care about soft soaping his message.

By 2080-2100 CE he foresees half the species of the world gone, ice cap melt changing the weather unpredictably and drastically, refugees fleeing famine marching on Europe not in their millions, but their hundreds of millions. An awful fate for our grandchildren to face.

And yet there is still hope at this eleventh hour - decarbonisation engineering systems, mass tree planting, solar farms in Morocco that drive steam turbines day and night using chemically stored heat. Sir David urges everyone to make such changes as they can.

 

[sweep_shot]

Southern France set to sizzle due to climate change

That dream house in southern France that so many fantasise about is going to become uncomfortably hot in coming decades, according to new climate change projections Monday by the country's national weather service.

Even if humanity manages to modestly reduce greenhouse gas emissions—which so far has only happened during a raging pandemic or a global recession—France as a whole is on track to heat up nearly three degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by about 2070, Meteo France said in a report.

And if carbon pollution continues unabated, average annual temperatures across the nation will, by century's end, soar 4.5C beyond that benchmark.

That is verging on an unliveable world, a raft of climate studies have shown.

With just over 1C of warming so far, the planet has seen a sharp crescendo in deadly extreme weather, including heatwaves and megastorms made more destructive by rising seas.

The 2015 Paris climate treaty set a goal of capping global warming at below 2C, and 1.5C if possible.

Earlier climate models have predicted that France and the Mediterranean basin will be hit especially hard by heatwaves along with declining rainfall, and that reality has begun to bite.

In the summer of 2019, temperatures in picturesque wine country north of the coastal city of Montpellier reached a sizzling 46C, a national record. Paris was only a few degrees cooler.

Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-02-southern-france-sizzle-due-climate.html.

 

[sweep_shot]

Climate change in South Africa could cost up to 20% of GDP

The impact of climate change in South Africa can be seen in economic productivity, healthcare outcomes and labour availability – but what could it cost the population in the future, if left unchecked?
The CMCC Foundation and RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment (EIEE) and Athens University of Economics and Business, recently published in their investigation into how climate change could impact the GDP of South Africa.

Temperature rises across the globe have created shifting conditions for food security, with the tropical rain belt set to move drastically by 2100 and hydropower dams in Brazil creating difficulties for Indigenous groups who rely on fishing patterns. The changing climate has always been a crucial problem for communities attempting to feed themselves and upkeep their livelihoods.

But what about labour productivity itself?
Absent of the agricultural or livelihood insinuation, how could the fluctuating atmosphere impact the capacity of people to work at all?

The research finds that by 2100, the wage gap between high-skilled and low-skilled labour will be reduced. The lowest skilled labour will begin to receive more appropriate wages. This will be a consequence of the decrease in the relative availability of low-skilled to high-skilled labour due to the rising temperature, which increases the scarcity of such workers – and their economic value.

“The wage gap is closing because the wages of low-skilled workers are improving, and this is good news. But when you step back and look at the bigger picture, in the whole economy, something else is happening,” explains Dr Soheil Shayegh, a researcher at the CMCC Foundation and EIEE, the lead author of the paper.

“We see that economic damages are much larger. Climate change is not only impacting the labour supply: It is also damaging the productivity of all sectors.”

“Low-skilled labour” sectors are taking a hit
The increase in temperature naturally reduces the ability of people to work in sectors that usually have a high exposure to heat such as farming, construction, fishing and mining – areas which are referred to as “low-skilled labour.”

As you would expect, office workers are significantly less impacted by the temperature rise.

“We wanted to understand whether temperature changes affect how much people can work in a given week and if those who work inside have a climate advantage” explains Dr Shouro Dasgupta, a researcher at the CMCC Foundation and EIEE, co-author of the study.

“And this is something the findings confirmed: labour availability initially increases with temperature until it reaches its peak and then decreases as temperature increases beyond the maximum point.

“However, the optimal maximum temperature maximizing weekly labour supply is 26.2?C for low-skilled workers while it is 28.2?C for high-skilled workers. Those who work inside can work until the temperature is a little higher, because they are less exposed to heat.”

‘Marrying these two methodologies’
“In the literature, we find two research approaches that are clearly separate from each other” explains Dr Shayegh.

“One approach relies on empirical data and builds statistical relationships between indicators based on the data. This is what we used in the first phase of our research, building on survey data from the past to establish statistical relationships between temperature and labour supply. The other approach uses Overlapping Generations models, mathematical models that we use to forecast the future of our economies based on assumptions about decision-makers’ behaviour and choices, and usually not based on forecasted data.

“In this research, by marrying these two methodologies and building on survey data, we were able to answer a set of complex questions about the effect of climate change on labour markets that are interesting not just for South Africa, but probably for every country.”

Researchers say there is a world of other climate factors to explore
“It is important to note that we only considered the impact of climate change through gradual rising of average and maximum temperatures” specifies Dasgupta.

“Other climate factors such as precipitation, sea-level rise, or climate shocks such as floods or droughts are not considered in this study. Therefore, it is safe to assume that we have provided a conservative estimate of the climate change damages on productivity and welfare – in a scenario without climate action”.

Source: https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/climate-change-in-south-africa/102813/.

 

[sweep_shot]

Court rules France failed to respect its climate change goal

NGOs said the decision could ramp up pressure on other countries to act on global warming

A court on Wednesday ruled that the French state failed to take sufficient action to fight climate change in a case brought by four non-governmental organizations.

The NGOs cheered the decision as "historic" for their country and a boon to those elsewhere using the law to push their governments in the fight against global warming.

The four organizations are Greenpeace France, Oxfam France, the Nicolas Hulot Foundation and Notre Affaire a Tous [Our Shared Responsibility].

In its ruling, the Paris administrative court recognized ecological "deficiencies" linked to climate change and held the French state responsible for failing to fully meet its goals in reducing greenhouse gases.

The government said in a statement that it "took note" of the decision, and provided a list of actions in the pipeline to "allow France to respect in the future the objectives it set."

"The government remains fully engaged to take up the climate challenge and leave no one on the side of the road in this indispensable transition," the statement, which was signed by Barbara Pompili, the minister for ecological transition, went on.

France missing Paris Agreement targets

President Emmanuel Macron, who has been very vocal about his support for climate change action, pushed in December for beefing up the European Union's 2030 targets to reduce greenhouse gases by at least 55 per cent compared with 1990 levels — up from the previous 40 per cent target.

But Oxfam France, Greenpeace France and two other organizations contended that Macron's lobbying for global climate action is not backed up by sufficient domestic measures to curb emissions blamed for global warming.

France is missing its national targets that had been set under the 2015 Paris Agreement to curb climate change, and the country has delayed most of its efforts until after 2020.

The court ruled in a 38-page decision that there was a link between ecological damage and deficiencies by the state in respecting its own goals.

It decided that awarding money wasn't appropriate in this case. Instead, reparations should centre on fixing the failure to respect goals for lowering greenhouse gases.

The court gave itself two months to study measures to repair the problem and stop it from getting worse.

It did, however, ask the French state to pay each of the four organizations that brought the action a symbolic euro each, a common practice in France.

The four NGOs that brought the case called the decision "a first historic victory for the climate" as well as a "victory for truth," saying that until now France has denied the "insufficiency of its climate policies."

The decision "shows the state has a special responsibility in the climate fight ... Emmanuel Macron, more than other heads of state, spoke out strongly on the subject. Today, he cannot remain silent," Greenpeace France chief Jean-Francois Julliard said at a news conference.

The decision "goes beyond French borders," he noted, because it can help those fighting such battles in other countries.

'It's bizarre that you don't achieve your goals'
The French NGOs got advice from colleagues in the Netherlands where the Dutch Supreme Court upheld a judgment for the Urgenda environmental group that ordered the government to cut emissions by at least 25 per cent by the end of 2020 compared to 1990 levels.

The government responded with a package of measures that included shutting or reducing capacity at coal-fired power stations and subsidizing moves to promote sustainable energy.

Urgenda director Marjan Minnesma told The Associated Press on Wednesday that it's not yet clear if the Dutch government achieved the emissions reduction mandated by the court, but that the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus helped and they may be "nearly there." Minnesma said she is "super happy" with the French case.

"Fantastic, because it is a big country and if you have the Paris accord to your name, then it's bizarre that you don't achieve your goals," she said.

Former lawmaker and minister Cécile Duflot, now head of Oxfam France, said Wednesday's decision will be especially good news "for children born today who will live through catastrophic weather reports."

The judgment explains "not only how the state did not keep its commitments, it explains the gravity of climate change ... and that things can be done otherwise," she said, underscoring the sweep of the ruling.

"It is the first big climate trial [in France] and it has been won."

The NGOs hailed the more than 2.3 million people who signed a petition launched in 2018 to support the court action, saying that the victory was theirs too.

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/france-climate-change-goal-1.5899025.

 

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The frightening link between climate change and the pandemic
Forcing animals into new habitats means the viruses they carry move with them. It could mean more pandemics in the future.

Climate change isn’t just making sea levels rise and leading to epic droughts, hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and heat waves. It’s also making diseases such as Zika and yellow fever spread as mosquitos move into more areas. And a new study suggests that it may have been a factor in the current pandemic.

The study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, mapped changes in bat habitat in Yunnan Province in southern China and nearby areas of Myanmar and Laos, a region where SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may have originated in bats. As climate change made it warmer and sunnier in the area over the last century, and extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere made plants and trees grow faster, some areas that were once filled with shrubs and smaller plants became forests—an ideal place for bats to live. The study found that 40 bat species moved to the area in the last 100 years, making it a hot spot for coronaviruses. The animals brought around 100 new types of coronavirus to the region, one of which is genetically similar to the virus in the current outbreak.

Climate change isn’t the only problem; as humans have destroyed wildlife habitat, it’s becoming much more likely that people come in contact with wild animals and viruses can make the jump to humans. “The expansion of urban areas, farmland, and hunting grounds into natural habitats is a key driver of zoonotic disease transmissions—they are what puts many pathogen-carrying animals and humans into contact in the first place,” study author Robert Beyer, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, says in an email. “That being said, climate change can drive where these animals (or the animals that they got a virus from) occur; in other words, climate change can move pathogens closer to humans. It can also move a species that carries a virus into the habitat of another species that the virus can then jump to—a step that might not have occurred without climate change, and that might have major long-term consequences for where the virus can go next.”

More than 60% of emerging infectious disease events now come from animals. Bats, which carry at least 3,000 types of coronavirus, are particularly likely to be a source. The Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) virus likely originated in bats (before being transmitted to camels). The same is true of SARS and SARS-CoV-2; bats living in the area mapped in the study carry strains of coronavirus very similar to both of those viruses, which may have jumped from bats to palm civets and pangolins before jumping to humans via a wildlife market.

As climate change brings more bat species in contact in some areas, it’s more likely that viruses can spread and evolve in animals. Countries take steps to protect wildlife habitat and better regulate hunting and farms so humans are less likely to come into contact with infected animals that could spark the next pandemic, the study says. But it also makes one more argument for quickly cutting emissions.

Source: https://www.fastcompany.com/90601446/the-frightening-link-between-climate-change-and-the-pandemic.

 

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Arctic stew: Understanding how high-latitude lakes respond to and affect climate change

To arrive at Nunavut, turn left at the Dakotas and head north. You can't miss it—the vast tundra territory covers almost a million square miles of northern Canada. Relatively few people call this lake-scattered landscape home, but the region plays a crucial role in understanding global climate change. New research from Soren Brothers, assistant professor in the Department of Watershed Sciences and Ecology Center, details how lakes in Nunavut could have a big impact on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, and it's not all bad news—at least for now. Brothers examined 23 years of data from lakes near Rankin Inlet. He noted a peculiarity—as the lakes warmed, their carbon dioxide concentrations fell. Most lakes are natural sources of carbon dioxide, but these lakes were now mostly near equilibrium with the atmosphere.

This was odd. The expected pattern is that warmer temperatures should trigger larger releases of greenhouse gases from lakes. In places like Alaska, centuries of accumulated plant material in the permafrost release a hoard of carbon as they thaw, and are consumed by microbes. Experiments have also shown that as waters warm, carbon dioxide production by microbes increases more quickly than carbon dioxide uptake by plants, throwing the system out of balance. Together, these processes should increase atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions from waterways, in theory anyway. So why not in Nunavut? There is no question that the first step in this Rube Goldberg machine is engaged ... the climate is warming. Why then, are the lakes near Rankin Inlet not belching out carbon?

Pulling on good, thick parkas, Brothers and his team visited the lakes and came up with a few ideas as to why this is happening. First, they note that much of Nunavut is on the Canadian shield—an ancient granitic bedrock where thin soils are unlikely to contain—and thus release—the massive stores of organic matter entering waterways elsewhere in the Arctic. Second, longer ice-free seasons might be changing the water chemistry and biology in ways that actually lower carbon dioxide concentrations, including longer growing seasons for plants (which take up carbon dioxide), and potentially better growing conditions for algae on the bottom of these shallow, clear lakes.

Does this mean that nature has come to the climate rescue? Likely not—other lakes around the world may still increase carbon dioxide emissions with warming, and the lakes in Nunavut might eventually catch up with them too. More likely, Brothers suggests that the link between ice cover duration and carbon dioxide concentrations might be buying us some time, before stronger positive feedbacks are unleashed between the planet's warming and its ecosystems. It may be a complicated process, but understanding this complexity helps scientists predict variations in how lakes are responding to—and influencing—climate change. It's a view under the hood, making planetary feedbacks and tipping points a little more predictable. While the long-term trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions from lakes is not settled, these results are an important piece of the puzzle in climate change science.

Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-02-arctic-stew-high-latitude-lakes-affect.html.

 

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Climate change: West Antarctica's Getz glaciers flowing faster

Wherever you look in West Antarctica right now, the message is the same: Its marine-terminating glaciers are being melted by warm seawater.

Scientists have just taken a detailed look at the ice streams flowing into the ocean along a 1,000km-stretch of coastline known as the Getz region.

It incorporates 14 glaciers - and they've all speeded up.

Since 1994, they've lost 315 gigatonnes of ice - equivalent to 126 million Olympic swimming pools of water.

If you put this in the context of the Antarctic continent's contribution to global sea-level rise over the same period, Getz accounts for just over 10% of the total - a little under a millimetre.

"This is the first time anyone has done a really detailed study of this area of West Antarctica. It's very inaccessible to people to go and do field work because it's so mountainous; most of it hasn't ever been stepped on by humans," explained Heather Selley, a glaciologist at the Nerc Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds, UK.

"But it's really important we understand what's going on there - to recognise its glaciers are speeding up and the reason why," she told BBC News.

Selley and colleagues examined two and a half decades of satellite radar data on ice velocity and thickness. To this analysis, they added information about ocean properties immediately offshore of Getz - along with the outputs of a model that put the local climate in context over the period.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, reveal an unambiguous linear trend.

On average, the speed of all 14 glaciers in the region increased by almost a quarter between 1994 and 2018, with the velocity of three central glaciers increasing by more than 40%.

One particular ice stream was found to be flowing 391m/year faster in 2018 than it was in 1994 - a 59% increase in just two and a half decades.

The probable cause, once again, is what researchers call "ocean forcing". Relatively warm deep ocean water is getting under the glaciers' floating fronts and melting them from below.

Pierre Dutrieux, a study co-author at British Antarctic Survey, said: "We know that warmer ocean waters are eroding many of West Antarctica's glaciers, and these new observations demonstrate the impact this is having on the Getz region.

"This new data will provide a new perspective of the processes taking place so we can predict future change with more certainty."

Where a line of glaciers pushes out into the sea their floating fronts will often join together to form a single, continuous platform known as an ice shelf. It's interesting to note that in the case of Getz, this platform receives a certain stability from pressing up against eight islands and a number of shallow points on the seabed.

And yet, even with this in-built stability, the feeding glaciers behind are melting and speeding up.

Co-author Anna Hogg, also from Leeds, is an expert in satellite remote-sensing of the polar regions.

She told BBC News: "We have observations now around the whole margins of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in a way we've never had before. We're able to map really detailed, localised patterns of change.

"We're understanding how ocean water is moving around underneath the ice shelf - how and where it's getting in to that cavity under the shelf, so that we can really tie the physical process of ocean forcing to the signal we see in the satellite data."

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56171302.

 

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Climate change: Carbon emission promises 'put Earth on red alert'

The world will heat by more than 1.5C unless nations produce tougher policies, a global stocktake has confirmed.

Governments must halve emissions by 2030 if they intend the Earth to stay within the 1.5C “safe” threshold.

But the latest set of national policies submitted to the UN shows emissions will merely be stabilised by 2030.

The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, called it a red alert for our planet.

He said: "It shows governments are nowhere close to the level of ambition needed to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees and meet the goals of the Paris (Climate) Agreement.

"The major emitters must step up with much more ambitious emissions reductions targets."

Dr Niklas Hohne from the New Climate Institute told BBC News: "There is a huge gap to fill if we are serious about 1.5C (the threshold nations have agreed not to pass).

"Global emissions have to be halved – but with current proposals they will only be stable. That’s really not good enough."

Some nations have not even submitted a climate plan, and some – such as Australia – are judged to have offered no substantial improvement on previous proposals.

Emissions from those countries doing little or nothing extra comprise 10-15% of global emissions. Mexico and Brazil have attracted criticism for not doing more.

There are some positive signs, though. The EU, for instance, made the biggest jump from a target of a 40% cut to a 55% cut, based on 1990 levels.

"The target could have been more, but it’s a good step in the right direction," Dr Hohne said.

He also applauded Nepal, Argentina and the UK, which aims to reduce emissions by 68% by the target date of 2030, based on 1990 levels.

He held up the UK's governance of climate policy as an example to the rest of the world. Britain has a Climate Change Act which sets ambitions into law, overseen by an independent body.

The UK plans to be producing virtually no emissions by 2050 – the so-called Net Zero target. “It's a robust system that helps give longer term certainty," Dr Hohne said. "It sends a strong signal to investors."

The emissions proposals, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), reveal a productive rivalry between Japan and China over Net Zero.

Initially, Japan had no mid-century target. Then China proposed Net Zero by 2060, and Japan was stung into a counter-bid of Net Zero by 2050. China's proposal is yet to be formally confirmed to the UN.

The US has promised an ambitious submission under President Biden. And India – which long maintained that its poverty should exempt it from emissions cuts – is said to be pondering a target.

Contradictory priorities

There is a difference, though, between what governments say and what they do. And many nations have tensions between contradictory priorities. Germany, for instance, is a member of the Powering Past Coal international alliance. Yet last year it opened a new coal-fired plant.

The UK is founder of that alliance but currently is permitting a new coal mine to be dug in the face of scientific and international criticism.

It's also building a high-speed rail link that won't be carbon neutral until the back end of the century, and it has a £27bn roads programme.

The UK is also slipping away from the strict targets imposed by its climate advisors.

Yet on the other hand, the UK is cutting out coal from power generation, investing heavily in renewables and mandating that no more petrol or diesel cars should be sold after 2030.

Mr Guterres said: "Decision-makers must walk the talk. Long-term commitments must be matched by immediate actions to launch the decade of transformation that people and planet so desperately need."

Aubrey Webson, chairman of the Association of Small Island States, said: "We applaud the countries that have announced 2050 Net Zero pledges.

"But without credible 2030 pathways in their updated climate plans, those mid-century pledges are largely meaningless. This report confirms the shocking lack of urgency, and genuine action."

Dr Hohne added: "There is a gap between nations' stated plans and what's needed. There's also a gap between their pledges and their policies to deliver on those pledges. There is progress. It's slow, slow, slow. But it is progress."

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56208651.

 

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Cumbria coal mine plan 'damaging PM's reputation'

Boris Johnson has been warned by some of his foreign ambassadors that a planned coal mine in Cumbria is damaging his reputation.

The PM wants to lead the world on climate change, but the ambassadors say his tacit support for the mine is bringing accusations of hypocrisy.

The issue has flared as the UK co-hosts a coalition of nations pledging to phase out coal in power generation.

The Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA) was initiated by the UK.

Supporters of the Cumbria mine argue it should be encouraged because it will produce special coking coal for steel making, not thermal coal for power.

But that's too fine a distinction for some developing nations.

They have accused the UK of hypocrisy for shunning one type of coal while backing another.

I understand some of the UK's ambassadors have told the government the Cumbria controversy is making it harder for them to persuade other nations to contribute fully to the UN climate summit Mr Johnson will host in November.

Opponents of the mine say the government must support clean technologies to make steel without using coking coal.

*****ly dilemma

It's a *****ly dilemma for the PM. Around 85% of the coal from Cumbria will be exported but the project will create well-paid employment in so-called Red Wall constituencies whose Conservative MPs have promised to increase job prospects.

The mine area has slightly below average unemployment, but it's forecast that manufacturing jobs in the north of England will be especially vulnerable as the UK economy moves away from fossil fuels. The government has a challenge to replace these with new jobs in clean industries.

The UK's stance on coal will fall under the spotlight on Tuesday when the UK and Canada co-host the first virtual summit of the PPCA, which will be addressed by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

The Cabinet Office hopes the Cumbria problem can be resolved by then.

If the mine goes ahead, it fears climate talks will be soured through the year as the UK invites other nations to abandon coal.

In any event, the fate of the mine is in limbo. Cumbria County Council first approved it, then withdrew the decision to consider the latest advice from the UK's independent Climate Change Committee.

This says the UK should abandon the use of coking coal by 2035, unless its emissions are captured and buried underground.

New rules?

Europe's major steel producers are already striving to make low-carbon steel, but Mark Jenkinson, a Conservative MP in the constituency next to the Whitehaven mine, thinks that will not be economical by 2035.

He and other Conservative MPs have criticised the Labour party for trying to block the mine on climate change grounds.

The council will make a new decision on the mine in coming months. If it grants permission again, the issue will bounce back to the Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick to decide on it. First time round he said it was purely a local issue.

One solution might be for the government to introduce new rules obliging local councils to take climate change implications into account when they consider planning applications for high-carbon projects.

The UK is not alone in wrestling with policy tensions in the transition to a low-carbon economy, especially as fossil projects approved years ago come to fruition in a new era when permission is likely to have been denied.

Germany is also a member of the PPCA, yet it opened a new coal-fired power plant last year.

Canada has committed to phase out coal-fired electricity by 2030, but there are plans for new and expanded coal mining production in the west of the country.

It all comes as major emitters are again accused by the UN of not doing enough to combat climate change.

A global stock take of plans for emissions reductions showed that nations would only stabilise emissions overall by 2030 - instead of halving them, which is deemed necessary to avoid global temperatures rising above the threshold of 1.5C.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56223327.

 

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National Trust maps out climate threats to historic places

The National Trust has mapped climate change threats to its stately homes, countryside and coastline.

The map paints a "stark picture", which will help plan interventions to save its sites, says the charity.

The data is based on a "worst-case scenario" where emissions of heat-trapping gases continue unabated.

Sites facing a high level of threat from the likes of extreme heat or flooding could rise from 5% in 2020 to 17% in 2060, the map predicts.

The map will be used to help pinpoint locations for peat bog restoration to counteract flooding or tree planting to provide shade in areas likely to experience high temperatures.

"While the data draws on a worst-case scenario, the map paints a stark picture of what we have to prepare for," National Trust director for land and nature Harry Bowell said.

"But by acting now, and working with nature, we can adapt to many of these risks."

The map plots how extreme heat and humidity, landslides, coastal erosion, shrinking and shifting ground, and high winds could change over the next 40 years.

Future threats include more landslides at coastal sites such as the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, storm and flood damage to historic buildings, and high heat and humidity at stately homes such as Ham House in London.

The map uses data from a number of sources and plots them in hexagonal grids across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, where the National Trust operates.

A spokesperson for the independent Climate Change Committee, which advises government, said: "This map will support our research and analysis into the vulnerability and exposure of some of the nation's most important and sensitive heritage sites to future climate change."

The release of the map comes eight months ahead of a key climate summit in Glasgow where world leaders will meet to formulate a global plan on how to tackle the climate crisis.

On Friday, two reports from MPs criticised the government over its planning for meeting long-term climate targets and a lack of clear measures of success for the COP26 conference.

A COP26 spokesperson said the government was making "good progress" but added "there is no time to waste".

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56287005.

 

[sweep_shot]

How did climate change cause the Texas snowstorm?

2021 has brought some surprises, and one of those surprises is the terrible snowstorm in Texas. Although there have been such conditions in the past, this storm hit hard, leading me to think about climate change’s role in the extremity of the storm. Did climate change make the snowfall worse?

While snowstorms on the East Coast are expected, such conditions in the Midwest and Texas were alarming. Cities like Houston and Dallas experienced horrible snowstorms and extreme cold weather.

Lack of preparedness made things worse in Texas. While Texas Senator Ted Cruz was seen escaping to warmer weather in Cancún, electricity grids failed, leaving Texans with no power for days. Millions of Texans were left unable to get food easily and without proper running water and heat. Coupled with the pandemic, this has made things difficult for Texas.

Natasha Chugh, a sophomore who is currently in Texas, testified in an email to The News-Letter that her experience through the recent snowstorm has been tough.

“The snowstorm caused power outages all across Texas, including my house, for a whole week. Fortunately, we had power every other hour, but some didn’t have any at all,” she wrote.

She noted that her friends at the University of Texas had to boil water to sanitize it due to power outages at the water treatment plants.

How weird was this snowstorm in Texas? This is not the first time that the state has received snow, but the conditions of this past storm were a a bit abnormal. According to this graphic in a Washington Post article sourced from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, temperatures in Texas and the Midwest were as much as 50 degrees colder than average on Feb. 16, a stark difference.

According to Benjamin Zaitchik, a Hopkins professor and climate researcher, extreme weather has become more expected in recent years.

“We expect increased variability in many parameters of climate in a warming world,” he wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “Counterintuitively, this increase in variability may include cold extremes like we’ve seen this month.”

According to research about Arctic amplification, increasing temperatures due to climate change can lead to atmospheric patterns that result in easier winter storm development.

Climate change makes storms worse and more unpredictable. Global warming and higher temperatures lead to increased evaporation. Eventually, this increased evaporation leads to increased precipitation. At certain times, when temperatures are cold enough, this precipitation is snowfall. The path of these storms is also changing, which is why Texas may have had its devastating snowfall. In addition, climate change also affects the air currents in the atmosphere, also known as jet streams. Changing jet streams can lead to blocking weather patterns, which may result in colder winters and changing trajectory of storms.

We need to discuss how climate change is not only disastrous for the planet but also how it affects life on Earth. As weird weather patterns continue, people will continue to be affected, just like those who suffered through the snowstorms in Texas.

What should we think about moving forward? Zaitchik believes that we should focus on electrification. Electrification is the process of moving away from fossil fuel consumption and shifting to more renewable sources of energy, such as solar power or wind.

“Transportation, heating, and industrial processes that currently depend on direct fossil fuel consumption need to be electrified to take advantage of renewable electricity generation capabilities,” he wrote.

It’s easier said than done. The process of electrifying transportation, industrial processes and heating is lengthy and requires initiative from the government.

“That includes R&D, appropriate policy incentive structures, and very significant investments by governments and/or capital markets responding to appropriate policy signals,” Zaitchik wrote. “It also includes a broadminded and flexible approach to electrification solutions. I’m focusing on this particular challenge because it requires large-scale, concerted efforts over multiple decades, and there’s a big penalty for delay.”

In his plan for climate change and environmental justice, President Joe Biden seeks to invest more in renewable energy sources, decarbonize the food and agricultural sectors and set the country on a course to have a 100% clean energy economy by 2050. These proposals are bold, and the recent difficulties in Texas and the Midwest make clear that we must hold Biden accountable to ensure that they are fulfilled.

Source: https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2021/03/how-did-climate-change-cause-the-texas-snowstorm.

 

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Climate change: Kerry urges top polluters to cut emissions now

US climate change envoy John Kerry has urged the world's top 20 polluters which create 81% of emissions between them to reduce CO2 immediately.

He was speaking after meeting Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other senior UK figures in London to plan two upcoming international climate summits.

He praised the UK for phasing out coal, and for its "ambitious" climate goals.

But he told BBC Newsnight that the UK - along with other major nations - must deliver their proposed emissions cuts.

"China, the US, Russia, India, the EU, Korea, Japan and others all have to be part of this effort," he said. "Twenty countries. Eighty one percent of the emissions."

Asked during the interview whether the UK should be planning a controversial new coal mine in Cumbria, he replied: "The marketplace has made a decision that coal is not the future.

"All over the world people have made a decision to move to cleaner fuel than coal, which is the dirtiest fuel in the world. In America and elsewhere …most banks will tell you we're not going to fund a new coal plant."

Earlier after talks with Mr Johnson and other senior ministers, Mr Kerry hailed the UK as a "strong partner" in the fight to safeguard the planet.

And the prime minister said the two countries had an "exciting shared agenda" in driving down global emissions in the run-up to November's COP 26 UN summit in Glasgow.

Mr Kerry, a former US Secretary of State appointed to the role by Mr Biden in November, spent several hours in Downing Street with Alok Sharma, the cabinet minister who is chairing November's gathering.

Mr Kerry was also due to meet other senior UK figures, including Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, and Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng.

On Tuesday, climate diplomacy sees him in Paris and Brussels for talks with European leaders, who have been praised for their recent target to cut emissions 55% on 1990 levels.

Leaders are wrestling with gloomy news from China, whose recent five-year plan takes tiny steps to decarbonisation.

But they will be heartened by President Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus package agreed by the Senate, which will support “green” economic growth.

There is positive news too, from Brazil, which – under US pressure – says its previous stance blocking climate talks was misunderstood.

Monday's meetings may go some way to helping the UK focus its objectives for the November gathering.

Ministers were accused recently by MPs on the Business and Energy Select Committee of failing to set clear goals.

The committee said the key areas identified by the UK for action - adaptation and resilience; nature based solutions; energy transitions; clean transport and switching the finance system to low-carbon investments - were too broad and "without clear measures for success".

'Up for grabs'
It said more focus needed to be given to the "overriding necessity" of agreeing deliverable policies that keep global temperature rises to as close to 1.5C as possible.

Nick Mabey, from the think tank e3g, told the BBC there was the potential to achieve multiple goals – including banning new coal power plants, ending banks' fossil fuel investment and supporting poorer nations to adapt - and that these should be debated publicly.

“This debate is up for grabs” he said. “It should be a public debate because we’re talking out how to change whole economies. A lot of the outcomes from Glasgow will be decided in the court of public opinion.”

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-56321456.

 

[sweep_shot]

UK environmental protections 'being flouted'

Campaigners have accused the government of hypocrisy for setting out environmental protection principles while simultaneously flouting them.

UK ministers have just published long-awaited principles that will inform government decision-making.

They say they intend to put the environment at the heart of their policy.

But the document exempts the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence from being bound by the principles.

And environmentalists complain that the principles are meaningless anyway, because the government presses on with activities that will harm the planet – such as the planned Cumbria coal mine and a £27bn road building programme.

The principles have been laid out in a consultation document linked to the Environment Bill. Following Brexit, these principles will replace those agreed by the EU.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56352530.

 

[sweep_shot]

Climate change: 'Default effect' sees massive green energy switch

When Swiss energy companies made green electricity the default choice, huge numbers of consumers were happy to stick with it - even though it cost them more.

Four years after the switch, researchers found that around 80% of customers were still on green tariffs.

This "default effect" happened partly because people didn't want the hassle of switching back to fossil fuels.

The authors say the idea could have a big impact on global emissions of CO2.

In the study, the researchers looked at what happened when two Swiss energy suppliers changed the default electricity offering for their customers from a mixture of fuels to renewables only.

This change affected around 234,000 private households and 9,000 businesses.

Before the switch, the numbers choosing to have green power were at around 3%. Afterwards, this rose to 80-90% of customers.

Residential consumers had to pay at least 3-8% more for their energy on the green tariff, while businesses saw their costs increase by up to 14% for energy used at night.

Remarkably, these extra costs weren't enough to push consumers to change their tariffs back to ones with fossil fuels in the mix.

"It is worth noting that even five years after the change, some 80% of the households are still sticking with green electricity," said co-author Dr Jennifer Gewinner, from ETH Zurich, a public research university in Switzerland's largest city.

It was a similar story for small business customers. Several years after the switch, more than 70% were still on the more expensive green tariff.

In the case of large companies, which had considerable choice in terms of which energy provider to go with, the vast majority stayed with green energy even though it was costing them around $2,300 extra per year.

The researchers believe that what they are observing is the surprising power of the default effect.

This is a widely known phenomenon in different spheres, such as in organ donation, where laws have changed in many countries so that the people have to opt out if they don't want to donate after death.

A more mundane example is with double-sided printing, which has become the default in many offices to reduce wastage.

However, the authors of the Swiss study were surprised that this effect held up so well with energy, considering the greater costs involved.

The researchers believe that some of the reluctance to change is down to the human condition.

"You have to switch to the other cheaper tariff bills actively," said team leader Prof Andreas Diekmann, from ETH Zurich.

"You can do it by email or by a phone call, but many people just don't do it."

As well as people's inherent reluctance to tackle the paperwork involved in changing back to fossil fuels, there were other factors at play.

"People are a bit overwhelmed because it is a hard topic to actually feel competent to choose your own tariff," said Dr Gewinner.

"So if you help them and tell them we are all moving now to renewable energy, they feel okay. It was kind of what they wanted to do anyway.

"I think that's what makes default settings stick so much, because we understand that it's the recommended product, like the safe choice."

One of the concerns that suppliers have about green energy tariffs is that customers will increase their overall use of electricity because they feel that it's clean and sustainable.

Over the six-year period of the study, the researchers found no evidence of greater consumption among those using renewable power.

The authors also believe that moving to a green default setting would have a major impact on carbon dioxide emissions, particularly in countries with a high reliance on fossil fuels such as the US, China or Germany.

"We made a simulation for Germany with data from 2018," explained Prof Diekmann.

"We figured out that when all companies would do it only for their private customers, the saving was 45 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. That's a big impact, equal to about 5% of all the CO2 emissions in Germany."

But would this idea work if every energy supplier offered a green default - is there enough green energy to go around?

"The companies we work with, they were also afraid that they would need more renewable energy than they were able to support," said Dr Gewinner.

"But I think what our study does is help is to give you an estimate, of how many customers in your household sector and in your business sector will be likely to stick with green energy, and that will help the companies to actually calculate."

Dr Gewinner believes the idea should be applicable all over the world.

"Changing people's attitudes and beliefs takes a lot of time," she told BBC News.

"But we can do this without changing people's belief structures, but just by being human."

The study has been published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56361970.