Lethal Heating: March 2016

31/03/2016

Study: Antarctica Ice Melting Far Faster Than Predicted

Al Jazeera

New study forecasts dramatic Antarctica melt that could raise sea levels 86cm by 2100.

By the year 2500, computer simulations predict seas 13 metres higher - purely from Antarctic melt [Reuters]

Warmer air, less frigid water and gravity may combine to make parts of Antarctica's western ice sheet melt far faster than scientists had thought, raising sea levels much more than expected by the end of the century, a new study says.
New physics-based computer simulations forecast dramatic increases in melting in the vulnerable western edge of the continent. In a worst-case scenario, that could raise sea levels 46cm to 86cm by 2100 - more than an international panel of climate scientists predicted just three years ago.
Even if countries control heat-trapping gases at the moderate levels pledged in Paris last year, it would still mean seas 8cm to 31cm higher than forecast, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Antarctic studies show irreversible ice melt

By 2500, in the worst-case scenario, the simulations predict seas 13 metres higher - purely from the Antarctic melt.

"You're re-mapping the way the planet looks from space with those numbers, not just subtle changes about which neighbourhoods are going to be susceptible to storm surge," said study lead author Robert DeConto, a climate scientist at the University of Massachusetts.
This is all because Antarctica is one of the biggest wild cards when scientists try to assess the effects of man-made climate change in upcoming decades.
Scientists were caught by surprise when the western portion of the continent started showing signs of rapid ice loss in the last decade or so.
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has not forecast much sea level rise from Antarctica, just 18cm by the year 2100 in its last report. For this century, the panel saw water expanding from heat, glacier melt, and Greenland ice sheet loss as bigger factors.
Instead of 18cm, DeConto's simulations forecast sea level rise from Antarctica's melt alone as 64cm to 105cm in the worst-case scenario, and 26cm to 49cm if greenhouse gas emissions are moderately controlled.
If the world cracks down more dramatically on heat-trapping gases, Antarctica would essentially not add anything to sea level rise, the study said.
But those figures are just worldwide averages. In many places on the US East Coast, like Boston, it could be 25 percent more than that because of geological conditions, DeConto said.
"North America has a lot to fear from ice loss from West Antarctica, which is where it all begins," DeConto said.
While other studies have looked at the effect of warming from water below ice sheets and the air that melts from above, DeConto added in the effect of pooling water and giant ice cliffs.
Those ice cliffs, which can be dozens and even hundreds of metres high, can collapse from the sheer weight of ice, and that hastens glacier and ice sheet retreat, he said.
Ted Scambos - at the University of Colorado, who wasn't part of the new study - said it was plausible and used "a few simple yet under-appreciated factors regarding ice retreat".
Carnegie Institute climate scientist Chris Field said the study drives home the difference the world can make by controlling its greenhouse gas emissions.
It's the difference between rising seas that can be managed and conditions that are "dangerously risky", he said.

NASA maps Earth's polar ice caps

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As the Climate Change Threat Grows, So Does a Theatrical Response

American Theatre - Chantal Bilodeau*

What started as a North American short-play project around last year's Paris talks blossomed into an ongoing worldwide effort.

Georgia Murphy in "The Final Frontier," as part of a Climate Change Theatre Action event organized by Vicky Album in London.

It started with an idea: to get playwrights to write plays about the social and ecological issues related to climate change. After six months of coordinating, it coalesced into Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA), a series of worldwide readings and performances presented in support of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) that lasted Nov. 30–Dec. 11, 2015 in Paris.
At first, our aim was modest. Theatre Without Borders core member Elaine Ávila, NoPassport Theatre Alliance and Press founder Caridad Svich, and I—representing the Arctic Cycle—asked 21 American and Canadian writers to write 1- to 5-minute plays on the topic of climate change. The playwrights included Naomi Iizuka, Neil LaBute, Deborah Zoe Laufer, Erik Ehn, and Jacqueline E. Lawton. We then made these plays available to our producing partners in both countries and invited them to organize their own event. The collaborators were also encouraged to include work by local playwrights.
The goal of the project was to invite as many people as possible, including those who would not otherwise pay attention to the outcome of COP21, to participate in a conversation about climate change. CCTA was modeled on previous NoPassport theatre actions that focused on gun control and the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill; we wanted to draw on the expertise and resources of local artists while being national in scope.
But when Roberta Levitow, cofounder and director of Theatre Without Borders, came on board, we suddenly had access to a huge international network of theatre artists. Eager to include a wider variety of perspectives, we reached out and increased the number of writers—including poets and songwriters—to 50, representing six continents.
We did the same with the producing collaborators, and soon we had more than 100 events scheduled in 25 countries, including Costa Rica, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Lithuania, and the United Arab Emirates. The events ranged from readings to fully staged performances, from pop-up street theatre to site-specific presentations. They weren't limited to theatre, either—there were also radio programs and original films. We didn't know when we started whether the theatre community would embrace our project. But we quickly saw the value of a frame to unify and support people's efforts.

Audience members looking at people's hopes for COP21 written in the tree at Tricklock Company in Albuquerque, N.M., as part of Climate Change Theatre Action. Photo by Juli Hendren.

The kick-off event was in New York City, on Nov. 2nd, and the final happening was in Denmark on Dec. 20. Throughout those two months, CCTA events occurred on a daily basis, with sometimes up to five events in one day. We used Facebook to rally the community, connecting writers to collaborators and collaborators with each other. Not only was the impact of local events enhanced by the fact that they were part of a global initiative, but collaborators were energized in knowing they were working in tandem with artists in other countries, raising awareness about an important issue.
In addition to the theatrical presentations, there were also talks with scientists and environmentalists, which provided concrete facts to support the artistic work. Artichoke Dance Company in Brooklyn had a representative from the local chapter of the environmental organization 350.org talk about their current initiatives; Rogue Machine Theatre and HeatWave Theatre in Los Angeles had a presentation by climate scientist Joshua Fisher of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and Arizona State University invited Chispa Arizona, a program of the League of Conservation Voters, to make a presentation on the importance of civic engagement on climate change.
The producers also found creative ways to engage the audience, like Tricklock Company in Albuquerque, N.M., who invited audience members before and after the show to add to a mural displaying hopes and dreams for COP21, and memories of a time spent in nature. Each event had its own unique flavor. Some of my favorites included:

A week-long series of activities organized and performed by the students of Baker High School in Baldwinsville, New York
A solstice celebration in an eco-village in Denmark that included refugees from a nearby refugee center
A site-specific reading of A Pain in the Crevasse: Short Plays on Climate Change at the foot of the Mendenhall Glacier organized by Perseverance Theatre in Alaska
Intimate living room events for a group of friends in Paris, France and for kids in Vancouver, Canada
A film by Italian artists called Video Postcard From the End of the World, shot in Armenia, based on texts from over 27 CCTA plays and poems

If the project had stopped there, we would have been more than satisfied. We had succeeded in activating artists, educating students, and getting audience members to pay attention to local and international climate change policies. But CCTA, like the Energizer bunny, kept on going. Lithuania has been invited to tour their show, Nothing Is Forever (containing five CCTA plays, and live violin and viola solos), to Belarus, Belgium, Germany, and Poland.
We have partnered with the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts to organize a contest inviting designers to submit sustainable design ideas for pieces in the CCTA collection. Recently we made the CCTA collection available to educators for use in the classroom. And in the fall, NoPassport Press will publish an anthology of the CCTA plays, with introduction by NYU Professor and eco-theatre pioneer Una Chaudhuri.
Thanks to the international theatre community, CCTA has grown into a global movement. Theatre artists reached across geographical and cultural borders, and united in our common concern for the planet and the creatures that inhabit it. It was inspiring to see everyone jump in and gather the resources necessary to make these events happen.
Did we change the world? I don't know. But the plays worked on us as much as we worked on them. The project asked us to deeply consider climate change; to imagine loss, survival, and resilience; and to expand our methods of telling stories and making work. Maybe we made a case for how the arts can contribute to social change. Maybe one of the CCTA artists or audience members will become activists in the mode of Naomi Klein or Bill McKibben.
I do know that all of us who participated now see the world in a slightly different way and will, consciously or unconsciously, inspire others to partake in that vision.

*Chantal Bilodeau is a New York–based playwright. She is artistic director of the Arctic Cycle and the founder of the blog Artists and Climate Change.

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The Wall Street Journal, Climate Change Denial, and the Galileo Gambit

The Huffington Post - Michael E. Mann

Bloomberg via Getty Images

Fossil fuel companies have been misleading the public and policymakers about the risks of their products for decades. These corporations should obviously be held accountable.

It’s odd that we aren’t able to discuss this straightforwardly. After all, accountability is common for other industries. When companies mislead the public about the health effects of the drugs they market, for instance, we hold them accountable.

Similarly, when asbestos manufacturers misled the public about the cancers their product caused, they were held accountable. When Enron misled its customers and shareholders, it was held accountable. And when we learned that Volkswagen cheated consumers by secretly embedding an emissions control “kill switch” in it’s diesel vehicles, citizens and government officials swung into action to hold the company accountable.

Most significantly, when we discovered that the tobacco industry hid information about the addictive nature and deadly toll of cigarettes and systematically engaged in a decades-long campaign to misinform the public, we held the industry accountable.

Given this history, let’s be clear about what we now know regarding the fossil fuel industry’s history of deception on climate change.

As early as the late 1970s, executives at fossil fuel companies were well aware that burning oil, gas and coal could cause irreversible and dangerous climate change. Indeed, as early as 1981, Exxon-Mobil was weighing whether or not to develop carbon-intense gas reserves off the coast of Indonesia because of the climate risks associated with the project.

Exxon-Mobil and other fossil fuel companies chose, however, to suppress what its own scientists knew. From 1979 to 1983, the American Petroleum Institute operated a scientific task force to study climate change. According to a researcher who worked on the project, it was taken out of scientists’ hands and quickly buried — and forgotten — until reporters rediscovered it just last year.

Public agencies and university scientists were also tracking climate change around this same, of course, and the first high-profile climate hearings in the U.S. Congress occurred around 1988. That’s when fossil fuel industry lobbyists and executives started pouring more money into front groups and advocacy campaigns aimed at spreading doubt about climate science and blocking action to reduce emissions.

Leonard Bernstein, an Exxon-Mobil scientist who advised one of the industry’s public policy groups in the mid-1990s attempted to set the companies straight on climate science. He was rebuffed.

Despite executives’ claims to the contrary, many oil and coal companies continue to support groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, which spreads misinformation about climate science to state legislators, but denies that it denies climate science. And in the past few months, we’ve learned that now-bankrupt coal giant Alpha Natural Resources was funding a lawyer who has carved out a niche for harassing climate scientists.

If any other industry took such drastic steps to hide obvious risks from its products, would they find such ready defenders in the editorial pages of Rupert Murdoch‘s Wall Street Journal (WSJ)?.

Consider in this regard the deeply deceptive recent WSJ op-ed by David B. Rivkin Jr., who writes for the National Review and is a principal attorney in the fossil fuel industry attacks on the EPA clean power plan, and Andrew M. Grossman, who represents the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), an organization with long-established ties to both the fossil fuel industry and the tobacco industry before it, including its ongoing affiliation with Chris Horner, the very lawyer Alpha was funding to attack climate scientists.

The main defense Rivkin and Grossman muster in the face of calls to hold companies accountable for funding deceptive campaigns about their products is that under the First Amendment, the government cannot prevent them or the groups they work with from speaking out.

No doubt. But when state and U.S. prosecutors successfully sued the tobacco companies for systematically misleading the public about the risks their products caused, no one’s free speech rights were infringed. Instead, tobacco companies agreed to pay states for health care costs associated with their products, just as Volkswagen will have to pay its customers and other people who suffered from its deceptions.

The fossil fuel industry can and should be held accountable in the same way. And indeed, thousands of Americans are calling on state attorneys general and the Department of Justice to act.

Rivkin and Grossman also peddle falsehoods about me specifically. For example, they launder a popular myth in climate change denier circles that the famous “Hockey Stick” curve which my co-authors and I published sixteen years ago is “an artifact of [our] statistical methods”. The claim is flatly untrue.

Our key finding, that the recent warming trend is unprecedented over at least the past 1000 years, has not only been overwhelmingly affirmed by more than a dozen subsequent studies, but has been vastly strengthened. There is now widespread consensus in the scientific community that recent warmth is unprecedented over an even longer time frame (for the full story behind fossil fuel industry-funded attacks on me and the hockey stick, read my book “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars“).

Perhaps more to the point, Rivkin and Grossman completely mislead readers about why CEI and the National Review are being sued by me. The lawsuit is not about their political stances or even their feelings or beliefs about climate policy or climate science. It focuses instead on their clients’ false, defamatory and libelous accusations that my work is fraudulent.

Indeed, given their affiliations with groups that have regularly attacked climate scientists, it’s quite galling to see Rivkin and Grossman compare themselves to Galileo Galilei, the famous Italian scientist who bravely insisted that the Earth orbited the Sun and not the other way around. Such ironic attempts by climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, and other science critics to usurp the mantle of legitimate scientific skepticism is so commonplace it has a name — the Galileo Gambit.

So let’s be clear about the facts: Galileo had the courage to speak truth to the powerful interests of his day in the Roman Catholic Church, just as two generations of scientists have tried to speak truth about climate change to executives and lobbyists in the fossil fuel industry.

The Catholic Church declared Galileo a heretic and placed him under house arrest. Oil industry lobbyists don’t have that kind of power, thankfully, so they merely suppressed internal climate research and started funding groups like CEI to publicly attack independent climate researchers, instead.

If he were alive today, Galileo would be appalled to witness industry shills attempt to wrap themselves in his legacy. He would not be on the side of powerful fossil fuel interests who fund attacks on scientific research; perhaps this time, ironically, he would be on the side of his Pope and the scientists whose council he regularly seeks, who respect facts and evidence and recognize the reality we live in for what it is.

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30/03/2016

Unexpectedly Widespread Permafrost Melting Could Set Off A Greenhouse Gas Timebomb

IFLScience - Robin Andrews

Permafrost is a major reservoir of carbon and methane. Stockdonkey/Shutterstock

Beneath much of the Arctic resides vast stores of greenhouse gases, locked up for millennia in icy soils. With this in mind, a pair of studies provides a double whammy of bad news: Not only are these frozen reservoirs thawing out more extensively than previously thought, but at this stage, there’s little that can be done about it.
Carbon dioxide and methane are indubitably the two most potent greenhouse gases. Vast reservoirs of both exist within the world’s permafrost, which is hydrated soil that has remained below the freezing point for two or more years. Remarkably, these permafrost soils hold almost twice as much carbon than that found in the atmosphere – and one study, published in Nature Geoscience, shows them thawing all across the northern hemisphere.
Thanks to consistently warmer summers, permafrost in Russia, Alaska and Canada is being “uncapped;” icy wedges that form at the top of the permafrost were observed to be almost universally melting even in the coldest regions of the Arctic. These wedges make up around 20 percent of the upper permafrost volume, so their melting is exposing massive areas of concealed, deeper permafrost.
“The scientific community has had the assumption that this cold permafrost would be protected from climate warming, but we’re showing here that the top of the permafrost, even if it’s very cold, is very sensitive to these warming events,” Anna Liljedahl, the lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, told the Washington Post.

Permafrost is melting in even the coldest regions, and by 2100, massive amounts of greenhouse gases will be released skywards. Liljedahl et al./Nature Geoscience

Importantly, permafrost isn’t the only icy prison for greenhouse gases. Around 56 million years ago, there was a mysterious, sizeable, global spike in atmospheric carbon. One of the prevailing theories is that this occurred when a huge cache of frozen methane beneath the seabed was suddenly destabilized, causing it to release its contents into the atmosphere as both methane gas and carbon dioxide. This, in turn, caused dramatic global warming, and a similar turn of events could happen today if the permafrost stores are unleashed.
It might even be worse: The initial uptick in global temperatures could further destabilize both reservoirs of frozen greenhouse gases, which in turn would release more trapped gas, and so on. Once this cycle reaches a certain tipping point, it may be impossible to prevent.
So is there any way to avoid this, aside from agreeing to cut greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale? Some have suggested that plants, which would begin to proliferate in a warmer Arctic, could end up soaking up the escaping carbon dioxide, acting as a biological buffer to this increasingly troubling phenomenon.
Another study was commissioned to ask 100 Arctic researchers if this was plausible, and they gave a resounding answer: no, it’s not. The research, published in Environmental Research Letters, concluded that “the permafrost region will become a carbon source to the atmosphere by 2100 regardless of warming scenario.”
This means that, whatever happens, a vast chunk of its carbon will inexorably escape to the atmosphere by the end of the century. However, they do point out that up to 85 percent of permafrost carbon release could be stopped if human emissions are “actively reduced.”

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Will Bleaching Of Australian Reef Spur Renewed Interest Climate Action?

Christian Science Monitor - Molly Jackson

Extensive bleaching has been caused by higher ocean temperatures. To prevent further damage, governments should commit to lowering emissions, an Australian team says.

The Great Barrier Reef is experiencing the worst bleaching event in 15 years, Australian scientists announced Tuesday after conducting aerial surveys of more than 500 coral reefs from Cairns to Papua New Guinea. Terry Hughes/ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

News that 95 percent of the northern Great Barrier Reef is suffering extreme coral bleaching may be the Australian government's final wake-up call, climate scientists warned Tuesday, if it is to preserve the Earth's largest single structure made by living organisms.
“This has been the saddest research trip of my life,” James Cook University professor Terry Hughes, the convener of the National Coral Bleaching Taskforce, said in a press release after the team aerially surveyed almost 2,500 miles of the northern reefs.
Although the northern sections are considered most pristine, only four reefs out of the hundreds they studied between Cairns, Australia, and Papua New Guinea had escaped bleaching, making it the worst bleaching event on record. Previous events in 1998 and 2002 did not impact more than 20 percent.

And there may be more. The Taskforce will try to determine the southern limit of bleaching this week. But while Minister for the Environment Greg Hunt sounded optimistic last week, pointing out that “the bottom three quarters of the reef is in strong condition,” the Taskforce sees it differently.

"It was devastating to look at out of the chopper window and see reef after reef destroyed by bleaching. But really my emotion is not so much sadness as anger," Professor Hughes told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "I'm really angry that the government isn't listening to the evidence that we're providing them since 1998."

Scientists say the Great Barrier Reef is in great danger. The National Coral Bleaching Taskforce says 95% of Australia’s reefs are now severely bleached. Veuer’s Carly Figueroa has more.

Coral bleaching is a modern phenomenon, marine scientists say; Over the past 400 years, there's no evidence of bleaching events until the late 20th century. Changing environmental factors like rising sea temperatures can cause the coral to expel their photosynthetic algae, called zooxanthellae, making many turn stark white. Others remain vivid, but have lost the green and brown hues that signal health. Without the symbiotic algae to process sunlight into oxygen and other nutrients, the coral dies.
Some could recover if temperatures drop, but it would still be a decade-long process. Underwater surveys suggest that half of the impacted coral has already died, the team says. But the northern reef is otherwise one of the healthiest sections, so it may stand a better chance of eventually bouncing back. Southern sections have "dodged a bullet" thanks to cooler temperatures, according to Hughes.
A long-term solution requires long-term commitment to reducing climate change, such as lowering greenhouse gas emissions, the team says.
"What we're seeing now is unequivocally to do with climate change," University of Queensland professor Justin Marshall told the ABC. "I guess what upsets me the most is that we are literally stealing the future from our children.... I probably won't see the possible end of the Great Barrier Reef. But it's possible that my grandchildren will."
The World Wildlife Fund called for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to survey the bleaching, and see "the face of climate change," spokesman Nick Heath told the Sydney Morning Herald. "We can have our corals, or we can have our complacency. If we don't start to see some real leadership on the Reef, it will be gone."

Climate Change News: Arctic Sea Ice Growth Stunted Again

CNN - Michael Pearson

The consequences of climate change go far beyond warming temperatures, which scientists say are melting the polar ice caps and raising sea levels. Click through the gallery for a look at 10 other key effects of climate change, some of which may surprise you.

Earth's Arctic ocean freezer is making fewer ice cubes, and that could be a problem throughout the Northern Hemisphere, researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center are warning.

Story highlights

Arctic sea ice spread is the smallest on record, researchers say
The loss of sea ice could influence global weather patterns, they say

The center, part of the University of Colorado at Boulder, reported Monday that the spread of Arctic sea ice set a new record low for the second straight year, stopping last week at 5.607 million square miles. That's 5,000 square miles less than last year's record low, as observed by satellites, and 431,000 square miles less than the average for winters between 1981 and 2010, the center said. "The Arctic is in crisis. Year by year, it's slipping into a new state, and it's hard to see how that won't have an effect on weather throughout the Northern Hemisphere," said Ted Scambos, a lead scientist at the center.
Arctic sea ice reflects heat from the sun. Less ice means more heat given off the from ocean and higher Arctic temperatures. That can affect weather around the world by, among other things, disrupting the jet stream -- the high-speed, high-altitude wind current that carries weather patterns from west to east.
Those disruptions can slow weather systems to a crawl and induce temperature extremes, researchers say.
Scientists say the loss of Arctic ice -- an average of 20,800 square miles a year since the 1970s, according to NASA -- is the result of climate change.
This winter has been a particularly warm one in the Arctic, with air temperatures as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit above average near the edges of the ice pack, according to Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Unusual winds from the south and an influx of warm Atlantic water have also played a role, the snow and ice center said.
The smaller maximum ice footprint this year doesn't necessarily foretell a record low this summer, researchers say.
That has more to do with how early ice begins melting in the upper Arctic, according to researchers. But, given the warm winter, ice and snow cover is shallower than usual and could produce more melting.
The Arctic ice pack shrank to record low summertime levels in 2005, again in 2007 and most recently in 2012, according to the center.

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Farming In 2050: Storing Carbon Could Help Meet Australia’s Climate Goals

The Conversation - Brett Anthony Bryan

Farming land in New South Wales. from www.shutterstock.com

Australia’s agricultural lands help to feed about 60 million people worldwide, and also support tens of thousands of farmers as well as rural communities and industries.
But a growing global population with a growing appetite is placing increasing demands on our agricultural land. At the same time, the climate is warming and in many places getting drier too.
Agriculture, and particularly livestock, is currently a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. But new markets and incentives could make storing carbon or producing energy from land more profitable than farming, and turn our agricultural land into a carbon sink.
How might these competing forces play out in changing Australian land use? Our research, published in Global Environmental Change, assesses a range of potential pathways for Australia’s agricultural land as part of CSIRO’s National Outlook.

Changing landscapes
The only constant in landscapes is change. Ecosystems are always changing in response to natural drivers such as fire and flood.
Humans have complicated things. Indigenous Australians manipulated the Australian landscape and climate through burning for millennia, sustaining a population of around 750,000 and underpinning a culture.
European colonisation brought a different and more pervasive change, clearing land, building cities, damming rivers and establishing an increasingly mechanised and industrialised agriculture.
These iconic but changed landscapes inspired the romantic art of Arthur Streeton and poetry of Banjo Paterson among many others — and helped forge a young nation’s identity.

‘Still glides the stream, and shall for ever glide’, 1890. Arthur Streeton. The Art Gallery of NSW describes the painting as ‘an idealised vision of the Yarra River at Heidelberg, with the Doncaster Tower in the middle distance and the Dandenong Ranges beyond’.

Change can happen surprisingly quickly. Often before we know it we’ve gone too far and need to scramble for fixes that are so often costly, slow and ultimately inadequate.
For example, in South Australia, researchers in the early 1960s raised the alarm that the feverish post-war period of soldier resettlement, land clearance and agricultural development threatened entire native plant and animal communities with extinction. The government’s response over the following 30 years was to expand greatly the conservation reserve network and eventually prohibit land clearing.

History repeating?
Agricultural lands produce a range of goods and services. But in many places the focus on agricultural productivity has come at the expense of ecosystems. Biodiversity, soil and water are all on downward trends.
Is the balance right? Opinion varies. Many would say no, and consider the status quo to be stacked strongly against the environment.
Others see agriculture as entering a boom time, driven by growing population and rising food prices. Substantial interest from overseas investors in Australian agricultural land reflects this opportunity.
Parts of Australia’s agricultural land continue to change fast. Lessons hard-learned by South Australia seem to have been forgotten. Rates of land clearance in Queensland are rising again since 2010 after a long-term trend of decline.
In the 1990s, new financial incentives led to the planting of over 1 million hectares of forest in southern Australia. Now a failed business model, many of these plantations are being returned to agriculture.
Demand for more secure sources of energy has generated rapid expansion of coal seam gas and wind power generation, and the development of northern Australia remains a bipartisan priority.
Worldwide, Australia is not alone — many international examples also exist of recent, massive, rapid and accelerating changes in how land is used.
Australia has historically taken a hands-off approach to managing land use change, instead focusing on increasing the productivity and competitiveness of agriculture. Apart from a handful of planning and environmental regulations, the use of land has been subject to minimal governance or strategic direction.

Where to from here?
What is it that Australians really want from our land? We know what we don’t want: wall-to-wall crops, pasture, buildings, gas wells, mines, wind farms or trees.
We can expect healthy debate around the margins, but, in general, diversity, productivity and sustainability seem to be widely valued. Most of us want to leave the place in decent condition for future generations.
Europe has had this conversation and knows what it wants from its landscapes — and it’s not afraid to pay for it (for instance, through agricultural subsidies). A deep aesthetic and cultural heritage is the central objective, with a balance of recreation opportunities, tourism, a clean and healthy environment and high-quality produce all being high priorities.
Once we know what we want, we can work out how to get there.
That’s where science can help. We now have the ability to project changes in land use in response to policy and global change, and the environmental and economic consequences.
CSIRO’s recent National Outlook mapped Australia’s potential future pathways. A companion paper in Nature found that it is possible to achieve strong economic growth and reduce environmental pressure, if we put the right policies in place now. It provides a glimpse of how our rural lands might respond to coalescing future change pressures.

Farming carbon
In our modelling, carbon sequestration in the land sector plays a key role of Australia’s future. Land systems can help with the heavy lifting required to hold global warming to 2℃ as recently agreed in Paris.
There are several factors that could drive this change, including climate, carbon pricing, global food demand and energy prices.
We modelled the economic potential for land use change and its impacts in over 600 scenarios (full data available here), combining a suite of global outlooks and national policy options.
A carbon price, which enables landholders to make money from storing carbon in trees and soils (often much more money than from farming), may increase pressure to shift farmland to restored forests.
Who knows? A pay rise while watching trees grow could be an attractive proposition for our ageing farmers. Complementary biodiversity payments could also help arrest declines in wildlife and help it adapt to climate change.
If we redouble our focus on productivity, by 2050 agriculture will produce more than today, even as farmland contracts. The least productive areas are less able to compete with reforestation and other new land uses, leaving the most efficient agricultural land in production.
But trade-offs are likely. Trees use a lot more water than crops and pasture, so we will need to think carefully about managing water resources.

Economic potential for land use change and sustainability impacts from 2013 to 2050 under national global environmental and economic conditions consistent with 2℃ warming by 2100

Australians care about their land and are more aware than ever about what is happening to it. While we can have some control over the future of our land, and we do exercise this control in certain circumstances (such as urban planning), our long-term approach to rural land has been to let environmental and economic forces play out and let the invisible hand of economics determine what will be.
Given the pace at which change can happen, a smarter approach will be to start the conversation, work out what it is we want from our land, and put the policies and institutions in place to get us there.

Links

29/03/2016

Great Barrier Reef Coral Bleaching At 95 Per Cent In Northern Section, Aerial Survey Reveals

ABC News - Peter McCutcheon

Video: Of the 520 reefs he surveyed, only four showed no evidence of bleaching (ABC News)

Key points:

95 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef's northern reefs rated as severely bleached
Only 4 out of 520 reefs surveyed were found to be unaffected by bleaching
Third global coral bleaching event since 1998

An aerial survey of the northern Great Barrier Reef has shown that 95 per cent of the reefs are now severely bleached — far worse than previously thought.
Professor Terry Hughes, a coral reef expert based at James Cook University in Townsville who led the survey team, said the situation is now critical.
"This will change the Great Barrier Reef forever," Professor Hughes told 7.30.
"We're seeing huge levels of bleaching in the northern thousand-kilometre stretch of the Great Barrier Reef."
Of the 520 reefs he surveyed, only four showed no evidence of bleaching.
From Cairns to the Torres Strait, the once colourful ribbons of reef are a ghostly white.
"It's too early to tell precisely how many of the bleached coral will die, but judging from the extreme level even the most robust corals are snow white, I'd expect to see about half of those corals die in the coming month or so," Professor Hughes said.
Coral bleaching is caused by abnormally high sea temperatures that kill the tiny marine algae essential to coral health.
This is the third global coral bleaching since 1998, and scientists have found no evidence of these disasters before the late 20th century.
"We have coral cores that provide 400 years of annual growth," explains Dr Neal Cantin from the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
"We don't see the signatures of bleaching in reduced growth following a bleaching event until the recent 1998/2000 events."

Video: Reef coral bleaching at 95 per cent in northern section, survey reveals (Photo: Justin Marshall) (7.30)

What is coral bleaching?

Occurs when abnormal environmental conditions cause coral to expel tiny photosynthetic algae, called zooxanthellae
Loss of colourful algae causes coral to turn white and "bleach".
Bleached coral can recover if the temperature drops and zooxanthellae are able to recolonise them, otherwise it may die

Source: ARC Centre of Excellence

Environment Minister Greg Hunt flew over the reef just eight days ago, before Professor Hughes' aerial survey, and announced some additional resources for monitoring the reef.
"There's good and bad news — the bottom three quarters of the reef is in strong condition," he said at the time.
"[But] as we head north of Lizard Island it becomes increasingly prone to bleaching."
The northern part of the Great Barrier Reef is the most pristine part of the marine park — and that is one possible glimmer of hope.
"On the bright side, it's more likely that these pristine reefs in the northern section will be better able to bounce back afterwards," Professor Hughes said.
"Nonetheless we're looking at 10-year recovery period, so this is a very severe blow."

'We're seeing climate change play out across our reefs'
Professor Justin Marshall, a reef scientist from the University of Queensland, said the reason for these bleaching events was clear.
"What we're seeing now is unequivocally to do with climate change," he told 7.30.
"The world has agreed, this is climate change, we're seeing climate change play out across our reefs."

Coral bleaching is caused by abnormally high sea temperatures that kill the tiny marine algae essential to coral health. (ARC Centre of Excellence Coral Reef Studies)

Professor Hughes said he is frustrated about the whole climate change debate.
"The government has not been listening to us for the past 20 years," he said.
"It has been inevitable that this bleaching event would happen, and now it has.
"We need to join the global community in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
"For me, personally, it was devastating to look out of the chopper window and see reef after reef destroyed by bleaching.
"But really the emotion is not so much sadness as anger.
"I'm really angry that the government isn't listening to us, to the evidence we've been providing to them since 1998."
Mr Hunt told 7.30 that he was confident in the advice from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority — that the southern and central parts of the reef had so far escaped serious bleaching.
He said the Government had committed $2 billion over the next decade to protect the reef through initiatives such as improving water quality and removing the crown-of-thorns starfish.
A spokesperson for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said it would be following up the aerial surveys with in-water surveys over the next two weeks to determine the true extent of the coral bleaching.

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The Arctic Sets Yet Another Record Low Maximum Extent

National Snow and Ice Data Center

This photograph from a March 27, 2015 NASA IceBridge flight shows a mixture of deformed, snow-covered, first-year sea ice floes, interspersed by open-water leads, brash ice and thin, snow-free nilas and young sea ice over the East Beaufort Sea. Nilas are thin sheets of smooth, level ice less than 10 centimeters (4 inches) thick and appear darkest when thin. Credit: NASA/Operation Ice Bridge.

Arctic sea ice was at a record low maximum extent for the second straight year, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.
"I've never seen such a warm, crazy winter in the Arctic," said NSIDC director Mark Serreze. "The heat was relentless." Air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean for the months of December, January and February were 2 to 6 degrees Celsius (4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit) above average in nearly every region.
Sea ice extent over the Arctic Ocean averaged 14.52 million square kilometers (5.607 million square miles) on March 24, beating last year's record low of 14.54 million square kilometers (5.612 million square miles) on February 25. Unlike last year, the peak was later than average in the 37-year satellite record, setting up a shorter than average ice melt season for the coming spring and summer.
According to NSIDC, sea ice extent was below average throughout the Arctic, except in the Labrador Sea, Baffin Bay, and Hudson Bay. It was especially low in the Barents Sea. As noted by Ingrid Onarheim at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research in Bergen, Norway: "A decrease in Barents Sea ice extent for this winter was predicted from the influence of warm Atlantic waters from the Norwegian Sea."
Scientists are watching extent in this area because it will help them understand how a slower Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may affect Arctic sea ice. "Some studies suggest that decreased heat flux of warm Atlantic waters could lead to a recovery of all Arctic sea ice in the near future," said NSIDC senior research scientist Julienne Stroeve. "I think it will have more of a winter impact and could lead to a temporary recovery of winter ice extent in the Barents and Kara seas."
This year's maximum extent is 1.12 million square kilometers (431,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average of 15.64 million square kilometers (6.04 million square miles) and 13,000 square kilometers (5,000 square miles) below the previous lowest maximum that occurred last year.
This late winter, ice extent growth in the Arctic has been sluggish. "Other than a brief spurt in late February, extent growth has been slow for the past six weeks," said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Meier is an affiliate scientist at NSIDC and is part of NSIDC's Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis team.
Ice extent increases through autumn and winter, and the maximum typically occurs in mid March. Sea ice then retreats through spring and summer and shrinks to its smallest or minimum extent typically by mid September.
The September Arctic minimum began drawing attention in 2005 when it first shrank to a record low extent over the period of satellite observations. It broke the record again in 2007, and then again in 2012. The March Arctic maximum has typically received less attention. That changed last year when the maximum extent was the lowest in the satellite record.
"The Arctic is in crisis. Year by year, it's slipping into a new state, and it's hard to see how that won't have an effect on weather throughout the Northern Hemisphere," said Ted Scambos, NSIDC lead scientist.
NSIDC will release a full analysis of the winter season in early April, once monthly data are available for March.

This NASA Blue Marble image shows Arctic sea ice extent on March 24, 2016, which averaged 14.52 million square kilometers (5.607 million square miles) on March 24, beating last year's record low of 14.54 million square kilometers (5.612 million square miles) on February 25. Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center/NASA Earth Observatory.

Arctic sea ice extent on March 24, 2016, averaged 14.52 million square kilometers (5.607 million square miles), beating last year's record low of 14.54 million square kilometers (5.612 million square miles) on February 25. Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The bottom part of this image shows a thin layer of ice bordering snow-covered, thick and ridged sea ice in the East Beaufort Sea. The rest of the image shows a lead that is mostly covered by large plates of dark nilas. Leads are narrow, linear cracks in the ice that form when ice floes diverge or her as they move parallel to each other. Credit: NASA/Operation Ice Bridge.

A thin cover of nilas, consisting of many ice floes that have finger-rafted together along the floe edges floats over the East Beaufort Sea. Credit: NASA/Operation Ice Bridge.

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Seven Charts Show How Renewable Investment Broke Records In 2015

Climate Brief -Simon Evans

Global investment in renewable energy reached record levels in 2015, according to a new report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

Chinese workers install solar panels at a photovoltaic power station in Eqiaotown, Wuhu city, east China’s Anhui province, 10 October 2014. © Imaginechina/Corbis

More surprisingly, perhaps, the report shows that the $286bn poured into green energy was more than double the spending on coal- and gas-fired power.

It also shows, for the first time, that more renewable power capacity was added than other sources and that renewable energy investment was mostly in developing countries.

Carbon Brief runs through the key findings in seven charts.

Record renewables
Investment in renewable energy reached a record $285.9bn in 2015, UNEP and BNEF say. That was up 5% on a year earlier and surpassed the previous peak of $279bn in 2011.

Global new investment in renewable energy by asset class, 2004-2015, $bn. Year on year growth is shown above the chart. Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance/UNEP Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2016.

Low-carbon takes over

Investments in low-carbon sources of electricity, such as renewables, large hydro and nuclear, were much higher than for fossil fuel generation. The record $262bn renewable investment in 2015 was more than twice the $130bn that went into coal and gas.

In fact, this has been the case for several years, highlighting the extent to which low-carbon, generally, and renewables, in particular, have become mainstream.

However, it’s worth noting that investments in oil and gas exploration and extraction easily eclipse spending on new electricity generation capacity. Despite huge spending cuts in the wake of the oil price crash, oil and gas investment in 2016 is expected to be $522bn, down from $595bn in 2015.

Global investment in power capacity 2008-2015, $billions. Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance/UNEP Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2016.

Majority stake

Last year also saw renewables, excluding large hydro, account for more than half of new power generation capacity for the first time. Of the 253 gigawatts (GW) added around the world in 2015, 134GW was from renewables excluding large hydro.

The world’s fossil-fired capacity also increased. After accounting for closures, global coal capacity increased by 42GW and gas by 40GW. Nuclear capacity grew by 15GW.

Net generating capacity added globally in 2015 by technology, gigawatts. Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance/UNEP Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2016.

Rising share

Despite renewables dominating capacity growth in 2015, it’s worth remembering that the world continues to rely heavily on fossil fuels to generate its power. Renewables supplied 10% of global electricity, excluding large hydro.

Including large hydro, renewables’ share of global electricity generation rises to more than 20%.

Renewable power generation and capacity as a share of global power, 2007-2015, %. Renewable shares exclude large hydro. Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance/UNEP Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2016.

Developing world dominates

The UNEP report shows, for the first time, that most renewable energy investment was in developing nations. This trend appears to be accelerating as ambition soars in China and India, while stalling across Europe.

Global new investment in renewables, developed vs developing countries, 2004-2015, $bn. Developed countries are OECD nations except Mexico, Chile and Turkey. Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance/UNEP Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2016.

China’s surge

This regional split is seen even more clearly on the map, below. China, which now spends more on renewables than the US and Europe combined, has ambitious plans to double its wind capacity and treble its solar capacity during its next five-year plan to 2020.

In contrast, spending in Europe has more than halved since a 2011 peak and has now fallen back to 2006 levels. US investment has been relatively steady. The recent extension of wind and solar tax credits should ensure this continues.

Global new investment in renewables by region, 2004-2015, $bn. Includes estimates for undisclosed deals. Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance/UNEP Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2016.

Falling costs

As well as reaching record levels of investment, renewable capacity added in 2015 was the highest ever too. That’s partly thanks to renewables getting cheaper, with each dollar buying more capacity.

In 2015, spending was 3% higher than in 2011. The 156 gigawatts (GW) added, however, was 56% larger than the 100GW installed in 2011.

Global renewable generating capacity (red line, left axis) and annual capacity additions (blue bars, right axis). Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance/UNEP Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2016, REN21 Global Status Reports and Carbon Brief analysis. Chart by Carbon Brief.

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