OECD Coal Discussions Highlight Tensions In Australia’s Position On Climate Change

The Conversation - Katherine Lake

The OECD is seeking to limit finance for coal power. Coal image from www.shutterstock.com

While the UN Paris talks approach at the end of November, attention is currently focused on another forum, the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), where member countries are negotiating a deal to limit public finance to overseas coal projects in emerging and developing countries.
Australia and South Korea are reportedly opposed to an agreement struck by the US and Japan and supported by other member countries, notably Germany and France, to prevent public finance to all but the very cleanest power plants.
How will these discussions at the OECD impact on the UN Paris negotiations? Australia’s approach to these international meetings would seem to be inconsistent.

Many pathways to action on climate change
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is still the main negotiating forum through which countries negotiate emission reduction commitments. However, over the last decade, other international forums, in particular the World Bank, International Energy Agency, G20, G7 and the OECD, have played an increasingly important role in progressing emission reduction outcomes.
The OECD’s broad objective is to assist governments foster prosperity and fight poverty through economic growth and financial stability. It helps to ensure that the environmental implications of economic and social development are taken into account. Pursuant to this mandate the OECD has worked with the G20 and G7 to address climate change, in particular through promoting green growth, reducing fossil fuel subsidies, reforming energy regulation and facilitating climate finance
This multi-forum approach to addressing climate change is critical as it diversifies the range of action, but it also maximises accountability in the process and exposes countries' weaknesses and internal inconsistencies in their climate change policy positions.
Given the different membership and mandates of international organisations, outcomes that might be impossible in one forum are able to be achieved in others. Clearly, this multi-layered approach is essential if we are to solve the climate change problem.
The strength of the UN process is in providing an overarching framework, whereas more concrete actions can be achieved through the OECD, the World Bank and other forums.

Limiting coal finance
The work on fossil fuel subsidies by international organisations was undertaken in response to a request by G20 Leaders when they met in Pittsburgh in September 2009.
At that time, leaders agreed to “rationalize and phase out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption”. They asked the OECD together with the International Energy Agency (IEA), Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the World Bank to “provide an analysis of the scope of energy subsidies and suggestions for the implementation".
Export credit finance is a particular type of fossil fuel subsidy, through which public credit agencies, such as the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation in Australia, provide government-backed loans and other types of finance to businesses wishing to invest in industries abroad. It is estimated that agencies from OECD countries channelled US$34 billion into coal power projects between 2007 and 2014.
The discussions to phase out export credit finance for coal power stations in the OECD commenced last year, but hit a stalemate in June this year. In November, however, the US and Japan will reportedly announce a proposal which would restrict export credit finance to all but the cleanest power stations, known as ultra-supercritical pressure coal plants, a technology that Japan is a leader in.
The text of the proposal also reportedly includes a clause that a coal plant could only win public funding if cleaner alternatives, such as renewables, were not viable. If adopted, the US-Japan proposal would substantially reduce the number of new power stations built in emerging economies in Asia and South America. Australia opposes these restrictions and also rejects the clause requiring project developers to look at cleaner alternatives.
OECD rules require that decisions are made by consensus by the members, so countries will need to reach a compromise next week, when the process concludes. The ultimate outcome will have a direct impact on the ambition of the Paris negotiations, so is important.

Australia is walking a fine line in climate diplomacy
Are Australia’s positions on climate change in the UN and the OECD inconsistent?
On the one hand, Australia supports the objective of keeping the global temperature rise within 2℃ and is willing to make some domestic emission reductions to assist in achieving this.
On the other hand, it is not yet willing to place any real limits on its coal exports to developing countries. It justifies this position on the basis that coal is required by developing countries to alleviate poverty and that it is not for Australia to decide how other countries allocate their public finance.
Other countries, notably the US, Japan and Germany, however, now accept that if we are to meet the 2℃ goal then developed countries have a responsibility, including through the direction of public finance, to ensure that emerging economies transition away from fossil fuels, by allocating funding to clean energy technologies instead.
This transition is not as fanciful as it once seemed, given the decreasing cost of renewable technologies every year. The International Energy Agency recently highlighted that in order to meet the 2℃ goal, any new power stations must on average emit 200 grams of CO₂ per kilowatt-hour, whereas even super-critical power stations emit above 600 grams per kWh. It is therefore clear that the cleanest power stations will be required to limit warming to 2℃, unless carbon capture and storage technology becomes viable for power stations, which currently seems unlikely.
While Australia’s economy is more vulnerable than others to the effects of restrictions on coal uptake, it seems inevitable that there will be a continuing decline in coal demand and thus the sooner we transition our economy accordingly, the easier this transition will be in the long term. Many businesses recognise this probability and are already planning scenarios around it.
In addition, taking a blocking position at the OECD has the potential to damage Australia’s credibility in other international negotiations and particularly as its role as co-chair of the Green Climate Fund. Overall, to address climate change, our policies on energy and climate change will need to align. As the US, EU and China step up their leadership on climate change, Australia will come under increasing pressure to reconcile its different positions.

Melting Antarctic Ice Sheets And Sea Level Rise: A Warning From The Future

The Conversation - Andrew Glikson

Antarctica is vital to the planet’s climate system. Antarctic image from www.shutterstock.com

The remote location of the Antarctic and Greenland polar ice sheets may leave us with the impression that developments in these regions have little effect on the climate and life in the temperate zones of the Earth, where most of us live. We may therefore be forgiven for asking why should we care when these changes are projected to unfold over tens to hundreds of years.
However, the stability of the polar regions is critical for maintaining a planet with the conditions that allowed the emergence of humans, agriculture and civilisation, as well as many other species. The polar ice sheets serve as “thermostats” of global temperatures from which cold air and cold ocean currents emanate, moderating the effects of solar radiation. The ice sheets regulate sea levels, store volumes of ice whose melting would raise sea level by up to 61 metres.
Unfortunately, what’s happening with the polar ice sheets now ought to warn humanity of what is to come.
For example, a recent paper suggested that melting Antarctic ice sheets could lead to 0.6-3.0 m of sea level rise by the year 2300. This is based on modelling of greenhouse gas emissions out to 2300.
If greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, the world may warm by 8–10℃ by 2300. Such a temperature rise could raise sea levels by tens of meters over hundreds of years.
The recent paper only looked at sea level rise from melting Antarctic ice sheets and does not take into account sea level rise contributions from the Greenland ice sheet (currently about 280 billion tonnes per year), which would more than double the Antarctic contribution.

Antarctic warming: Red represents areas where temperatures have increased the most during the last 50 years, particularly in West Antarctica. NASA

Peering into the past to see the future
Much of the discussion in the paper and related papers appears to assume linear global warming – that is, little change to the rate of warming over time.
Little mention is made of feedbacks which could increase the rate of warming. Such feedbacks could arise from reducing albedo, where solar radiation usually strongly reflected by ice is replaced by strong absorption by water.
Other feedback processes associated with warming include methane release from permafrost and bogs; loss of vegetation; and fires.
In a recent article, former NASA climate scientist James Hansen and a large group of climate scientists point to observations arising from detailed studies of the recent history of the atmosphere-ocean-ice sheet system.
The climate records of the past — specifically, the Holocene (from about 10,000 years ago) and the Eemian interglacial period (about 115,000 to 130,000 years ago) — are closely relevant to future climate projections. These records include evidence for rapid disintegration of ice sheets in contact with the oceans as a result of feedback processes resulting in sea level rise to 5-9 m above current levels. All this during a period when mean global temperatures were near to only 1℃ above pre-industrial temperatures.
Sea levels reflect the overall global temperature and thus of global climate conditions. As shown by the position of the circles in the chart below, the ratio of sea level rise (SL) to temperature rise (TR) during the glacial-interglacial cycles was approximately between 10-15 metres per 1℃.

Plots of Temperature rise (relative to the pre-industrial age) vs relative sea level rise in (meters).

By contrast from around 1800 to the present sea level rose by an approximate ratio of 0.2-0.3 m per 1℃. This suggests significant further rise towards an equilibrium state between sea level and temperature. Thus, the points in the right-hand circle represent long-term temprature-sea level equilibria in the past while points in the left-hand circle represent where we’re at now, namely at an incipient stage moving toward future temprature-sea level equilibrium.

Why should long term climate change matter?
Due to the extreme rate of CO₂ and temperature rise during the 20th century relative to earlier events and the non-linearity of climate change trends the timing of sea level rise may be difficult to estimate.
Even on conservative estimates, current global warming is bound to have major consequences for human civilisation and for nature, as follows:

• Further melting of the ice sheets will destroy the climate conditions which allowed agriculture and the rise of civilisation in the first place.
• The lower parts of the world’s great rivers (Po, Rhine, Nile, Ganges, Indus, Mekong, Yellow, Mississippi, Amazon), where more than 3 billion people live and the bulk of agriculture and industry are located, sit no more than a few metres above sea level.
• Further melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets can only result in sea level rises on the scale of tens of metres, changing the continent-ocean map of Earth.

Global temperatures have already risen 0.9℃ and continental temperatures 1.5℃ degrees above pre-industrial levels. If we account for the cooling effect of sulphur aerosols from industrial pollution, greenhouse gases have already contributed 2℃ of global warming. The current rate of global warming, faster than any observed in the geological record, is already having a major effect in many parts of the world in terms of droughts, fires, and storms.
According to James Hansen burning all the fossil fuels on Earth would result in warming of 20℃ over land areas and a staggering 30℃ at the poles, making “most of the planet uninhabitable by humans”.
In 2009 Joachim Hans Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Climate Impacts Institute and Climate Advisor to the German Government, stated: “We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet”, constituting one of the most critical warnings science has ever issued to our species.
Mitigation plans proposed by governments would slow down the rate of carbon emissions but continuing emissions as well as feedbacks from ice melt, warming oceans, methane release and fires would continue to push temperatures upwards.
An effective technology required for global cooling efforts, if technically possible, would require investment on a scale not less than the trillions of dollars currently poured into armaments and war in the name of defence (more than $1.6 trillion in 2014).
Which planet do current decision makers think we are living on?

Fresh Climate Data Confirms 2015 Is Unlike Any Other Year in Human History

Slate - Eric Holthaus

This year is set to be Earth's warmest in millennia, according to new data—with profound implications. Here, calved icebergs are seen floating on the water on July 30, 2013, in Qaqortoq, Greenland. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Over the past few days, a bevy of climate data has come together to tell a familiar yet shocking story: Humans have profoundly altered the planet’s life-support system, with 2015 increasingly likely to be an exclamation point on recent trends.
On Monday, scientists at Britain’s national weather service, the Met Office, said our planet will finish this year more than one degree Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels for the first time. That figure is halfway to the line in the sand that scientists say represents “dangerous” climate change and global leaders have committed to avoid—an ominous milestone.
This year’s global heat wave—about two-tenths of a degree warmer than 2014, a massive leap when averaged over the entire planet—can be blamed most immediately on an exceptionally strong El Niño but wouldn’t exist without decades of heat-trapping emissions from fossil fuel burning. Separate data released on Monday by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed the current El Niño, a periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean, has now tied 1997 for the strongest event ever measured, at least on a weekly basis.
"We've had similar natural events in the past, yet this is the first time we are set to reach the 1 degree marker and it's clear that it is human influence driving our modern climate into uncharted territory," said Stephen Belcher, director of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre in a statement.
The Met Office data were quickly confirmed on Twitter by Gavin Schmidt, who leads the research center in charge of NASA’s global temperature dataset, which uses a slightly different methodology:

If that wasn’t enough, the World Meteorological Organization, a division of the United Nations, also confirmed on Monday that global carbon dioxide levels reached a new record high in 2014—for the 30th consecutive year. The more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the more efficient the planet is at trapping the sun’s heat, and so global temperatures rise. Since our carbon dioxide emissions have a lifespan of a hundred years or so, there’s a significant lag in this process—temperatures will keep rising for decades even if all human emissions ceased today.
That means not only will 2015 end up as the planet’s warmest year in millennia—and probably since the invention of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago—but that there’s a lot more warming that’s already baked into the global climate system.
All that extra heat is already changing the planet in complex ways. For example, as of last week, there’s fresh evidence that the Atlantic Ocean’s fundamental circulation system is slowing down.
Over the past few years, a notoriously persistent cold patch of ocean has emerged just south of Greenland in the north Atlantic. There have been several theories as to why this is happening, but most involve a slowdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global oceanic “conveyor belt” system of heat and water that helps regulate the Earth’s climate by cooling off the tropics and gently warming polar regions.
You wouldn’t necessarily expect persistent record-cold temperatures when the planet overall temperature is at record highs, but that’s exactly what’s happening:

The AMOC is so important that its slowdown has been linked to past episodes of abrupt climate change, like a three-degree Celsius drop in Northern Hemisphere temperatures in less than 20 years about 8,000 years ago, and formed the highly dramatized basis for the planetary chaos featured in The Day After Tomorrow. Earlier this year, an important study provided further strong evidence that melting ice from Greenland has begun to disrupt and slow down the ocean’s circulation by changing the density of the north Atlantic, with profound consequences: In 2009, East Coast sea levels sharply—and temporarily—jumped by about four inches as water piled up. Stronger winter storms and an interruption of the Atlantic marine food chain also may already be happening.
According to a new analysis released last week, scientists used data from a pair of NASA satellites to track climate-related changes in the north Atlantic—the first time ocean currents have been tracked from space. Over the last decade, the satellites were able to take highly precise measurements of the literal weight of the ocean between Florida and Iceland that corroborated measurements from a network of ocean buoys over the same general place and time. From that information, they were able to calculate that the Atlantic’s circulation is indeed slowing down, a potential climate tipping point that’s been long predicted to occur at some point in the 21st century. Call it one more data point from a rapidly changing planet.
Still, despite the blindingly clear data, there’s hope that the tide could—finally—be shifting on climate change. Later this month, world leaders will be gathering in Paris and are widely expected to agree to the first-ever global agreement to constrain future emissions trajectories in a meaningful way—possibly enough to avoid the worst-case climate scenario.