How Runaway Sea Level Rise Could One Day Swamp The World's Biggest Cities

Fairfax - Tom Arup

Greenland's ice is melting. Scientists set up camp on the ice of Greenland, in the hope to capture the first comprehensive measurements of the rate of melting ice. Their research could yield valuable information to help figure out how rapidly sea levels will rise in the 21st century.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world are living in places that could eventually be submerged by rising sea levels triggered by unchecked climate change, new global maps suggest.
An estimated 627 million people live in these places, including about 1.9 million in Australia and many more in the world's great metropolises such as Tokyo, New York and Shanghai.
The rising seas won't happen overnight, nor in anybody's current lifetime. The global mapping project, carried out by the US group Climate Central, is based on huge sea-level rises that would not emerge for another 200 to 2000 years.

Hurricane Katrina left much of New Orleans under water in 2005. A similar scenario could play out for many of the world's big cities if predicted sea level rises occur. Photo: Reuters

But a report that accompanies the maps, released on Monday, says this future would be locked in if global warming reached four degrees by 2100 - considered likely if the current level of emissions continued unabated.
The project is based on a scientific paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA in October. That analysis - carried out by researchers at Climate Central - found that four degrees of warming could lock-in 8.9 metres of long-term sea level rise in the centuries to follow.
If warming was held to two degrees by strong emissions cuts - the goal of a new global climate agreement countries are negotiating through the United Nations - then the rise would be more like 4.7 metres. About 280 million people live in areas below that watermark.
Across Australia, the analysis finds there are about 1.9 million people living in areas that would be submerged if there was an 8.9 metre rise in sea level. At 4.7 metres, it is 668,000 people.
In central Melbourne, the maps based on what is locked in with four degrees of warming suggests significant inundation of prized bayside suburbs and throughout Docklands.

In Sydney, the water pushes up into the suburbs around the harbour and Botany Bay.

The report says Shanghai is the city most affected. About  22.4 million people would be displaced by an 8.9 metre sea level rise, and 11.6 million by 4.7 metres.
Also among the most affected places could be major Indian cities. In Kolkata, there are 12 million people living in the areas affected by sea level rise of nine metres.
In Jakarta, water would reach land that 9.5 million people currently call home under the four-degree scenario.
The actual number of people who would be affected is fairly speculative given the very long timeframes at play. These numbers do not factor in preventative measures cities might take in the meantime to counteract rising seas. Nor does it consider how populations will move and grow.
Sea level rise as a result of global warming comes from the thermal expansion of the oceans and the melting of glaciers. But the biggest potential rises depend on the long-term response of massive ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland, for which there is significant scientific uncertainty.
For that reason scientists have been largely conservative in their projections. In 2013, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in its last major assessment a projected sea-level rise of at worst 0.82 metres out to 2100 with unchecked emissions.
But more recently a number of studies have begun to explore what might happen after the end of this century. One recent example is an Australian-led study that found if ice shelves protecting the Antarctic sheets from the ocean were lost, then it would unlock thousands of years of unstoppable contributions to sea level rise.

World Bank Warns Climate Change Could Add 100 Million Poor By 2030

Fairfax

Cyclone Pam's impact on Vanuatu: World Bank warns ranks of the poor will swell with climate change. Photo: Lawrence Smith

Without the right policies to keep the poor safe from extreme weather and rising seas, climate change could drive over 100 million more people into poverty by 2030, the World Bank said on Sunday.

In a report, the bank said ending poverty - one of 17 new U.N. goals adopted in September - would be impossible if global warming and its effects on the poor were not accounted for in development efforts.

But more ambitious plans to reduce climate-changing emissions - aimed at keeping global temperature rise within an internationally agreed limit of 2 degrees Celsius - must also cushion poor people from any negative repercussions, it added.

"Climate change hits the poorest the hardest, and our challenge now is to protect tens of millions of people from falling into extreme poverty because of a changing climate," World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement.

The bank's estimate of 100 million more poor by 2030 is on top of 900 million expected to be living in extreme poverty if development progresses slowly. In 2015, the bank puts the number of poor at 702 million people.

Climate change is already hurting them through decreased crop yields, floods washing away assets and livelihoods, and a bigger threat of diseases like malaria, said John Roome, World Bank senior director for climate change.

He described ending poverty and tackling climate change as "the defining issues of our generation".

"The best way forward is to tackle poverty alleviation and climate change in an integrated strategy," he told reporters.

Poor families are more vulnerable to climate stresses than the rich because their main assets are often badly built homes and degrading land, and their losses are largely uninsured, the report said.

Low-income households in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are particularly at risk of having their hard-won gains wiped out by climate-linked disasters, forcing them back into extreme poverty, it added.

The report warns that, between now and 2030, climate policies can do little to alter the amount of global warming that will happen, making it vital to invest in adaptation measures and broader ways to make people more resilient.

When Cyclone Pam devastated Vanuatu this March, a payout from a regional catastrophe risk scheme helped speed the response. When drought in Ethiopia led to a hunger crisis in 2011, a national programme providing food and cash in return for work on community projects was quickly expanded.

Better social safety nets and health coverage for all, together with targeted improvements such as flood defences, early warning systems and hardier crops, could prevent or offset most of the negative effects of climate change on poverty in the next 15 years, the report said.

"We have a window of opportunity to achieve our poverty objectives in the face of climate change, provided we make wise policy choices now," said Stephane Hallegatte, a senior World Bank economist who led the team that prepared the report.

Roome highlighted the need to roll out good policies faster, and ensure development projects consider climate projections, so that new infrastructure is not damaged in the future.

Adaptation limits

Beyond 2030, the world's ability to adapt to unabated climate change will be limited, warned the report, released ahead of a U.N. climate summit from Nov. 30-Dec. 11 where a new deal to curb global warming is due to be agreed.

To rein in the longer-term impacts on poverty, immediate policies are needed that bring emissions to zero by the end of this century, the World Bank said.

Some of those will have benefits for the poor, such as cleaner air, more energy efficiency and better public transport.

Others could increase energy and food prices, which represent a large share of poor people's expenditures, the report noted.

But policy shifts need not threaten short-term progress against poverty provided they are well-designed and international support is made available, it added.

For example, savings from eliminating fossil fuel subsidies could be reinvested in assistance schemes to help poor families cope with higher fuel costs.

Or governments could introduce carbon or energy taxes and recycle the revenues through a universal cash transfer that would benefit the poor, the report said.

The international community can help by providing financial and technological support for things like insurance schemes, crop research, public transport and weather forecasting systems, the report said.

Canada Now Has a Minister of Climate Change

The Huffington Post Canada - Joshua Ostroff

Words matter, and nowhere is that clearer than with Wednesday's unveiling of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change during the swearing-in of Canada's new cabinet.
Catherine McKenna, a lawyer with a background in international trade and social justice, is in charge of the renamed portfolio.
"Canadians expect their government to be responsible around climate change and addressing the impacts to the environment that we are facing," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said following the ceremony. "Canada is going to be a strong and positive actor on the world stage, including in Paris at COP21. That's why we have a very strong minister, not just of the environment but of the environment and climate change who will be at the heart of this discussion."

Critics have spent the past 10 years decrying government indifference, if not outright antagonism, to the issue of climate change. The previous Conservative government pulled Canada out of the Kyoto Accord, muzzled government scientists, and refused to allow Opposition leaders to attend international conferences. (The latter prompted Trudeau's profane response in Parliament.)
While Harper did pass some environmental policies, a recent report card from a Simon Fraser University professor gave the Harper government an F. The report authored by Mark Jaccard said, "Since 2006, the government has implemented no regulations that would materially reduce Canadian GHG emissions from what they otherwise would be in 2020."
Trudeau, on the other hand, campaigned on climate change. During the Munk Debate, he tied the environment and the economy together, and promised $40 billion for public transit and green infrastructure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
After winning the federal election, he also immediately invited opposition leaders including the Green Party's Elizabeth May, and the provincial premiers to attend the upcoming Paris climate change summit.
Trudeau is not the first leader to change the name of the entire ministry to include climate change. Ontario has had a minister of environment and climate change following the Liberal win in 2014.
As well, climate change is referenced as the titular portfolio of environment ministers from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, New Zealand, India, Scotland, the UK and the European Union.