Lethal Heating: June 2016

30/06/2016

Turnbull And Shorten Ignoring Voters On Coal And Climate

Fairfax - Sarah Gill*

Illustration: Andrew Dyson

Here are two statistics to ponder as we prepare to head to the polls this weekend: voter support for action on climate change has surged to historically high levels since the last election and; four fifths of us believe neither of the major parties actually gives a toss.
Polling released by the Climate Institute last week reveals that 72 per cent of us are worried about global warming, and that while only 17 per cent think the Coalition's climate policies are credible, the plausibility of Labor's response is ahead by just a whisker, at a paltry 20 per cent.
And, really, is it any wonder? While the Coalition and the ALP have emission-reduction targets – neither of which, it must be said, will avoid dangerous global warming – the policy detail underpinning them is woefully inadequate. It's like trying to build the Eiffel Tower with a box of matchsticks.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, remain unequivocal in their support for Australian coal mining. Photo: Peter Braig

After a decade of flip-flopping on climate policy, the electorate, it seems, has wised up. We're not buying Labor's pledge of an "orderly" closure of coal-fired power stations – remember how well that went last time? – any more than Environment Minister Greg Hunt's enthusiasm for the Coalition's Emissions Reduction Fund which, as everyone knows, is about as effective as an ashtray on a motorbike.
Maybe the reason for our distrust, our incredulity, is that at the core of this policy vacuum, on the most burning issue of all – the fate of Australia's gargantuan coal reserves – both major parties are intransigent.
You don't need to be Einstein to know that curbing emissions requires us to stop burning fossil fuels – and if you can't burn them, why dig them up? And why, more to the point, expand our already significant coal production with a swathe of new "mega mines" planned in the Galilee Basin along with expansions across the Upper Hunter and the Liverpool plains?
Undeterred, though, by estimates that around 90 per cent of Australia's coal reserves need to stay in the ground, or recent mining moratoriums announced by the US and China, the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, remain unequivocal in their support for Australian coal mining. Indeed, without a hint of irony, Turnbull has overlooked not just the climate impact but also the deteriorating economics and what analysts say are "delusional" asset valuations to urge us all to approach the issue of coal mining in a "clear-eyed, cool-headed and rational way". The audacity is simply breathtaking.
There's no point in calling a halt to Australian exports, says he, because others will rush to fill the gap and anyway our coal is cleaner. But hardly anyone is suggesting an export moratorium – just a ban on new mines – and, for the record, coal from the Galilee Basin is relatively poor in quality. As for jobs and growth – the new three-word slogan haunting this election campaign – the industry is around 80 per cent foreign owned, and mining giants across the board have indicated a willingness, perhaps even an enthusiasm, to import foreign workers.
If you thought Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg was on thin ice spruiking the benefits of coal for the third world – asserting, I kid you not, that coal will reduce air pollution – then the Australian coal lobby recently dispensed with reason altogether by claiming, in the wake of the Paris climate agreement, that "coal will play a part in reducing emissions globally".
Where will this end? And why do we find it so hard to shrug off the enduring fiction that shackles our destiny to this shiny black rock? Because it's too politically unpalatable to do otherwise, you say? But unpalatable to whom? Not, it would seem, the two thirds of Australians who favour phasing out coal mining to address global warming, or even the majority of northern Queensland voters who support the same. Not to six out of 10 people in the Prime Minister's own seat of Wentworth, either. And not, ultimately, to the burgeoning number of local government, finance, tertiary education or religious institutions that are choosing to divest from fossil fuels and the big banks that fund them.
Naturally, major resource companies – a significant source of political donations – would probably take a dim view of any alternate reality. Let's not forget that in the lead up to the last election, the Coalition snared $1.8 million from companies in favour of a carbon price repeal. Mining industry executives – who are drawn, with disturbing regularity, from the ranks of former politicians and political staffers – would, no doubt, be similarly disgruntled. And when you factor in the effect of marginal seats – such as northern Queensland's Capricornia, home to the largest mining workforce of all north Queensland electorates – all the pieces start coming together.
Which is why Queensland Liberal Senator and Federal Attorney-General George Brandis has been toiling away in the State's north, cranking out the "six point economic plan" and Adani Coal's now discredited pledge of 10,000 jobs to anyone who will listen.
All of this just underscores what we already knew: that not every vote will be equal this Saturday, not every vote counts, despite what our leaders say. On issues as critically important and as broadly supported as climate change and coal mining, for the time being at least, we're snookered.
The world's largest privately-owned coal producer, Peabody Energy, may have recently filed for bankruptcy protection amid a slump in global demand and tighter environmental regulation, but our political leaders are resolutely peddling a narrative on the merits of Australian coal that could have been drafted by the Minerals Council of Australia. Who knows, maybe it was?

*Sarah Gill is an Age columnist who has worked as a writer and a policy analyst.

Links

Tragic Lack Of Leadership Puts Red Hot Climate Change Out In The Cold

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn

Environment and climate groups publish final scorecards rating main political parties as Australians prepare to vote

The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, with the environment minister, Greg Hunt, in Townsville in June. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

If ever there was going to be a climate change election, surely this was going to be it.
As May came and the election date was announced, the implications of the global Paris agreement between more than 190 countries just months earlier were still resonating – the world was moving away from fossil fuels and the challenge to keep global warming well below 2C was agreed.
The globe had just had its hottest year on record. April was the 12th consecutive month to break global heat records. In Australia, we just had the warmest autumn on record.
Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, taken at Cape Grim in Tasmania, passed a symbolic 400 parts per million, driven by the burning of fossil fuels. Moves to cut climate research at the CSIRO made international headlines.
And then, of course, there was the worst global coral bleaching event on record, bookmarked by the worst known bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef, killing about a quarter of all corals mostly in the once "pristine" northern section.
This disaster coincided with the hottest sea surface temperatures on the reef in the Bureau of Meteorology's records going back to 1900.
So climate change and clean energy should have been the red-hot issue.
But instead, at least between the ALP and the Coalition, the reaction to these seismic events was, mostly, meh.
David Ritter, chief executive of Greenpeace Australia Pacific, says the reef's plight should have been the "tragic starting gun" for an election where all parties pitched a vision "for how Australia can flourish in a world of new technologies, renewable energy and cleaned up political economy".

It is as if the onion eater may have gone, but the bad breath of climate denialism still lingers across the government.
David Ritter, Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Instead, the political response was "tragically inadequate".
"The political debate has lacked all sense of proportion," he says, reserving particular disappointment that the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had turned away from his previous passionate advocacy for action.
"It is as if the onion eater may have gone, but the bad breath of climate denialism still lingers across the government."
I've spoken to several leaders in the climate and environment movement in the past couple of days and one message comes through consistently.
While poll after poll shows the Australian public wants action, there's a distinct lack of leadership from the ALP and the Coalition.
Only the Greens have consistently shown leadership – which goes almost without saying.
John Connor, chief executive of the Climate Institute, says climate was "knocking on the door" but continued to be only a "tier two issue" for the main parties.
Although the ALP had a "demonstrably stronger platform" for climate change and a transition to clean energy, there was a "credibility gulf" between both main parties, their leaders and the public.
"The public just doesn't believe them," he says.
Connor believes that whichever party gains power, the Paris climate agreement will force the hand of the next government.
As part of the process, the UN will carry out a global stocktake of climate pledges from all countries in 2018. The Paris agreement also ensures that future pledges to cut emissions improve over time.
"They've danced around it this time, but they will have to grapple with it very soon," he says. "This is all a curtain raiser for the next 12 months and the parties' credibility will be put to the test."

Fossil-fuelled politics?
Could one reason for the lack of leadership and low profile for the issues be down to the funding that major parties get from the fossil fuel and mining industry and the close relationships which those industries have forged across the political spectrum?
Blair Palese, chief executive of the climate campaign group 350.org Australia, thinks that is a big part of the story.
Her group ran a Pollution Free Politics campaign trying to get candidates to sign a simple pledge: "I support a ban on donations from fossil-fuel companies and a ban on subsidies to fossil-fuel companies."

350.org Australia's campaign video to push politicians to sign a pledge to get fossil fuel cash out of politics.

Palese says the campaign clearly touched a nerve with the Liberals who cited it six times in its "Greening of Labor" scare campaign.
Not surprisingly, no Liberals signed the pledge, but there were some successes. All sitting Greens MPs and senators signed, as have 18 Greens candidates.
Serving ALP member for Richmond, Justine Elliot, signed the pledge, as did three ALP candidates: Janelle Saffin (Page), David Atkins (Cook) and Steve Hegedus (Ryan).
Other notable signatories include independents Andrew Wilkie (Denison), Rob Oakeshott (Cowper) and Rob Taber (New England).
Palese says after the election her group will push harder for a reform of the opaque system of political donations and for a national corruption commission to be established.
Palese, too, says there has been a lack of leadership, particularly on the need to prepare communities and workers for the unfolding transition away from coal to renewables.
'There is a terrifying lack of leadership – at national and state level – and it means workers are being left high and dry," she says.

Leadership lacking
Announcing its election scorecard (links to others at the bottom of this post), WWF Australia's chief executive, Dermot O'Gorman, said as the environment faced huge challenges "this generation of political leaders has not yet stepped up to reflect the concerns of the vast majority of Australians".
The Australian Conservation Foundation's chief executive, Kelly O'Shanassy, is similarly unimpressed with the political leadership. Only thanks to momentum from community groups and the tragic bleaching of the reef had the issues been pushed briefly into the limelight.
"The Coalition just didn't want to talk about it – their policies are quite weak," she says. "The ALP has much stronger clean energy transition policies, but neither leader has led the charge."
O'Shanassy believes one campaign from a coalition of environment groups, including ACF, WWF and The Wilderness Society, called Places You Love, has helped to push environmental law reform on to the ALP's policy platform.
The Coalition did make one major environmental announcement when Turnbull joining the environment minister, Greg Hunt, in Townsville to reveal a $1bn reef fund.
But campaign groups were quick to criticise the plan. Not only was it several billions short of what one group of scientists say is needed, but the announcement was just a shifting of existing cash from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation which the Coalition has been trying to shut down.
"There's no additional carbon reduction benefit from that," says Imogen Zethoven, Great Barrier Reef campaign director at the Australian Marine Conservation Society. "We did send the Coalition a series of questions on that announcement, but we didn't get any answers. It raises more questions than it answers."
She says one major win was a policy commitment from Labor to regulate pollution levels flowing into the reef. "That is not to be underestimated," she says. "That would be a major step forward."

Your vote?
So who should you vote for if you want to improve the chances of survival for the reef and Australia's unique habitats and help the country make the inevitable transition away from fossil fuels?
To help with that decision, in recent days the Climate Institute, WWF, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Marine Conservation Society have all published assessments of the key parties on their environment and climate polices.
You should read them and then go and vote.

Links

Scientists: Window For Avoiding 1.5c Global Warming ‘Closed’

Climate Home - Megan Darby

World is almost certain to breach danger threshold for millions of vulnerable people, study finds

Raised houses in Bangladesh protect inhabitants from rising flood risk (Flickr/Nasif Ahmed/UNDP Bangladesh)

Scientists have bad news for people on the front line of climate change impacts.
The 1.5C global warming limit vulnerable countries fought hard to include in the Paris Agreement may already be out of reach.
There is slim chance of stabilising temperature rise at that level without controversial negative emissions technology, according to a study published in Nature.
"The window for limiting warming to below 1.5C with high probability and without temporarily exceeding that level already seems to have closed," the report found.
It is a blow for those living near the coast of Bangladesh or low-lying islands like Kiribati, which is preparing for an exodus as rising seas swallow homes.
Coral reefs dying and tropical heatwaves are also expected to kick in at moderate levels of global warming, affecting millions of people worldwide.
In the most up-to-date analysis available, researchers found national climate pledges were consistent with temperature rise of 2.6-3.1C above pre-industrial levels.
Some poorer nations said they could cut greenhouse gas emissions further with financial support. These conditional targets would cool the planet a further 0.2C.
That still leaves a lot of work to bend the curve to "well below 2C", the main Paris goal.
Lead author Joeri Rogelj, at the Vienna-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, stressed the importance of periodic reviews.
"The grain of hope for these most vulnerable nations is that the Paris Agreement provides a regular forum where ambition can be increased," he told Climate Home.
Governments meet for a "facilitative dialogue" in 2018 and a stocktake in 2023. These provide opportunities to ratchet up their commitment.
The grim numbers do not rule out eventually bringing average temperatures back below 1.5C, but this will involve sucking carbon dioxide out of the air.
This d bioenergy with carbon capture and storage: growing plants to absorb CO2, burning them for energy and pumping the emissions underground.
Bioenergy is contentious because it puts energy crops in competition with food production for land, water and nutrients.
"It is a really important precondition to do this in a sustainable and a just way," said Rogelj, adding: "The faster one cuts emissions, the less one relies on these massive negative emissions afterwards to clean up the atmosphere."
The 1.5C threshold is still important and should not be dropped, he said. "The 1.5C limit is an expression of a risk assessment of dangerous climate interference. Even if we overshoot… the validity of that limit is still there."

Links

29/06/2016

The Climate Change Letter Most Candidates Won't Answer

Fairfax - Fiona Stanley*

I recently wrote to more than 1000 candidates in the federal election.
I described how climate change is a real and growing threat requiring urgent attention, and that health professionals are seeing its impacts in medical practice right now and will be increasingly in the future.
The results distressed me.
More than 100 independent candidates and those from virtually all minor parties and Greens responded to me with comments that were often constructive and extensive.
There was only one individual response from a Labor Party candidate, and a courteous response from Labor campaign headquarters detailing official Labor policy.
No Liberal Party candidate acknowledged my letter and there was no official response.
Doctors' organisations such as Doctors for the Environment Australia, the AMA and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians are pleading for action on climate change, yet our governments are ignoring their advice.

Much of Queensland has been declared drought-affected. Photo: Glenn Campbell

Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organisation, explained why we need our political leaders to act when she addressed the 69th World Health Assembly last month:

As the international community enters the era of sustainable development, the global health landscape is being shaped by three slow-motion disasters: a changing climate, the failure of more and more mainstay antimicrobials and the rise of chronic non-communicable diseases as the leading killers worldwide. These are not natural disasters. They are man-made disasters created by policies that place economic interests above concerns about the well-being of human lives and the planet that sustains them.

Australia is already experiencing more and severe weather events, which include damaging fires and environmental catastrophes, while Australia's capital cities are experiencing hotter, longer and more frequent heatwaves.
In Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane respectively, heatwaves now start on average 19, 17 and eight days earlier. Worldwide, more communities are ravaged by drought, flood and storm.
The public is justifiably concerned about the threat of climate change. A recent Galaxy poll showed Australians' interest in this issue is at its greatest since the 2008 election.
And yet Australian greenhouse emissions are presently 110 per cent of 2000 levels, testifying to the failure of policy over 15 years, and we are among the highest emitters per person in the world.
To bring about the urgent reduction of dangerous greenhouse emissions, in my letter to candidates I asked them to support:

1. The NO case for new coalmines or mine expansions.
If global warming is to stay below the 2 degrees Celsius target agreed by policy makers, a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and more than 80 per cent of current coal reserves globally need to stay in the ground.
Yet in Australia more coal is being burned, causing a 6 per cent increase in our emissions.
Furthermore, in Australia this year air pollution from burning coal will contribute to 3000 deaths (double the road toll), and significant illness from heart and lung disease.

2. The removal of tax rebates of more than $7 billion a year to the fossil fuel industry.
In my view this is like subsidising tobacco.
It would be unconscionable for either party to give subsidies to the tobacco industry. The same must apply to fossil fuels.
The direct health, social and environmental costs of coal are considerable and not included in the market cost of coal.
As one example, the large power stations in Victoria's Latrobe Valley cost between $500 million to $1.2 billion each in health and environmental damage every year.

3. The transition to renewable energy.
Currently in Australia renewable energy creation is stagnating.
We have the ability to lead the world in the transition from the health hazards of air polluting coal to healthy renewable energy, which is fast becoming a cost-effective option.
Like many parents and grandparents today, I want to help shape a future in which the next generation can flourish.
However, I now consider that we are moving to a world that I would not wish future generations to live in.
Without robust action, future generations can expect deadly heatwaves, fires, floods, sea level rises, fields that no longer grow food, abandoned towns, conflict, displaced people, and diseases.
We must all stand together and call our political leaders to account. Action on climate is our insurance policy against an uncertain future.

*Professor Fiona Stanley is a former Australian of the year, a distinguished research professor at The University of Western Australia, vice-chancellor's fellow at The University of Melbourne and a member of Doctors for the Environment Australia.

Wind And Solar PV Have Won The Race – It’s Too Late For Other Clean Energy Technologies

The Conversation - Andrew Blakers

Solar photovoltaics, along with wind energy, now represent the bulk of new Australian energy. AAP Image/ARENA

Across the world, solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind are the dominant clean energy technologies. This dominance is likely to become overwhelming over the next few years, preventing other clean energy technologies (including carbon capture and storage, nuclear and other renewables) from growing much.
As the graph below shows, PV and wind constitute half of new generation capacity installed worldwide, with fossil, nuclear, hydro and all other renewable energy sources making up the other half. In Australia this dominance is even clearer, with PV and wind constituting virtually all new generation capacity.
Moreover, this trend is set to continue. Wind and PV installation rates grew by 19% in 2015 worldwide, while rates for other technologies were static or declined.

PV and wind dominate because they have already achieved commercial scale, are cheap (and set to get cheaper), and are not constrained by fuel availability, environmental considerations, construction materials, water supply, or security issues.
In fact, PV and wind now have such a large head start that no other low-emission generation technology has a reasonable prospect of catching them. Conventional hydro power cannot keep pace because each country will sooner or later run out of rivers to dam, and biomass availability is severely limited.
Heroic growth rates would be required for nuclear, carbon capture and storage, concentrating solar thermal, ocean energy and geothermal to span the 20- to 200-fold difference in annual installation scale to catch wind and PV – which are themselves growing rapidly.
Both wind and PV access massive economies of scale. Their ability to saturate national electricity markets around the world severely constrains other low-emission technologies. Some of the other technologies may become significant in some regions, but these will essentially be niche markets, such as geothermal in Iceland, or hydro power in Tasmania.
Around 80% of the energy sector could be electrified in the next two decades, including electrification of land transport (vehicles and public transport) and electric heat pumps for heat production. This will further increase opportunities for PV and wind, and allows for the elimination of two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions (based upon sectoral breakdown of national emissions data).

Storage and integration
What about the oft-cited problems with the variable nature of photovoltaics and wind energy? Fortunately, there is range of solutions that can help them achieve high levels of grid penetration.
While individual PV and wind generators can have very variable outputs, the combined output of thousands of generators is in fact quite predictable when coupled with good weather forecasting and smoothed out over a wide area.
What's more, PV and wind often produce power under different weather conditions – storms favour wind, whereas calm conditions are often sunny. Rapid improvements in high-voltage DC transmission allows large amounts of power to be transmitted cheaply and efficiently over thousands of kilometres, meaning that the impact of local weather is less important.
Another option is "load management", in which power demands for things like domestic and commercial water heating, and household and electric car battery charging, are moved from night time to day to coincide with availability of sun and wind. Existing hydro and gas or biogas generators, operated for just a small fraction of the year, can also help.
Finally, mass power storage is already available in the form of pumped hydro energy storage (PHES), in which surplus energy is used to pump water uphill to a storage reservoir, which is then released through a turbine to recover around 80% of the stored energy later on. This technology constitutes 99% of electricity storage worldwide and is overwhelmingly dominant in terms of new storage capacity installed each year (3.4 Gigawatts in 2015).
Australia already has several PHES facilities, such as Wivenhoe near Brisbane and Tumut 3 in the Snowy Mountains. All of these are at least 30 years old, but more can be built to accommodate the storage needs of new wind and PV capacity. Modelling underway at the Australian National University shows that reservoirs containing enough water for only 3-8 hours of grid operation is sufficient to stabilise a grid with about 90% PV and wind – mostly to shift daytime solar power for use at night.
This would require only a few hundred hectares of reservoirs for the Australian grid, and could be accomplished by building a series of "off-river" pumped hydro storages. Unlike conventional "on-river" hydro power, off-river PHES requires pairs of hectare-scale reservoirs, rather like oversized farm dams, located in steep, hilly, farm country, separated by an altitude difference of 200-1000 metres, and joined by a pipe containing a pump and turbine.
One example is the proposed Kidston project in an old gold mine in north Queensland. In these systems water goes around a closed loop, they consume very little water (evaporation minus rainfall), and have a much smaller environmental impact than river-based systems.

How renewables can dominate Australian energy
In Australia, if wind and PV continue at the installation rate required to reach the 2020 renewable energy target (about 1 GW per year each), we would hit 50% renewable electricity by 2030. This rises to 80% if the installation rates double to 2 GW per year each under a more ambitious renewable energy target – the barriers to which are probably more political than technological.
PV and wind will be overwhelmingly dominant in the renewable energy transition because there isn't time for another low-emission technology to catch them before they saturate the market.

Wind, PV, PHES, HVDC and heat pumps are proven renewable energy solutions in large-scale deployment (100-1,000 GW installed worldwide for each). These technologies can drive rapid and deep cuts to the energy sector's greenhouse emissions without any heroic assumptions.
Apart from a modest contribution from existing hydroelectricity, other low-emission technologies are unlikely to make significant contributions in the foreseeable future.

Links

National Geographic: Climate Change Photographs

National Geographic

Addicted to the 'black stuff'. Heather Levingstone

Fossil Fuel Galore: Aerial image of the largest oil field in California. Jassen T.

Focusing on Climate Change. Duey Moore

Climate changes and us. Debrup Chatterjee

Record Rainfall. Derek Mountney

Pray For Rain. Claudio Flores Fuentes

Drought. Aditya Waikul

Swallowed by the sea. Marcelo Martins

28/06/2016

David Pope: Climate Change Cartoons

David Pope

Make Climate Change Assessments More Relevant

Nature - Stéphane Hallegatte | Katharine J. Mach

Stéphane Hallegatte, Katharine J. Mach and colleagues urge researchers to gear their studies and the way they present their results to the needs of policymakers.

An islander adds to coastal protection at Anse Kerlan beach in the Seychelles. Kadir van Lohuizen / Noor / Eyevine

With the ink just dry on the Paris climate agreement, policymakers want to know how they can act most effectively. Ambition is high: the long-term goal is to keep the average warming of the planet to well below 2 °C, and even to 1.5 °C. Governments, corporations and communities have many options for minimizing dangerous climate change, and must choose between conflicting priorities and objectives. For example, how should governments decarbonize energy while increasing access to it without resorting to fossil fuels?
No single approach will work for all. The risks and impacts of climate change differ by place and time. Local values and contexts matter. Small islands are vulnerable to sea-level rise, for example, and fossil-fuel exporters will lose profits from the transition to low-carbon energy. We must consider value judgements, such as the relative importance of economic damage versus biodiversity loss, as well as inequality and fairness.
And the relevant climate and social sciences are themselves diverse, from studies of the physics of storm formation to investigations of the role of heritage in cultural identity. The challenge for those who assess such scientific knowledge, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is to summarize results in ways that are true to the original research, explicit about the values and judgements in the analysis, and digestible by and useful to policymakers and the public.
For example, the IPCC's 2014 Synthesis Report encapsulated factors from climate to ecology to technology into a single figure (Figure SPM.10)¹. This illustrates how long-term global risks are linked to emissions-reduction requirements under different physical, policy and risk scenarios. Such a figure, although an achievement, can convey only a glimpse of the complex analysis that went into it.
In the IPCC's sixth cycle of assessment, the climate-science community needs to supply the right sorts of information to help decision-makers to construct policies from myriad mitigation and adaptation options. Producing this information will require more multidisciplinary research, updated strategies for communicating uncertainty and studies of a broader range of climate and risk projections that include the impacts of policy responses.
Here, we set out four steps to putting policy relevance at the core of both research and assessment.

Integrate disciplines from the start
The range of risks summarized in the IPCC's 2014 Synthesis Report was limited by the research available. For example, the assessment highlighted increasing risks of climate extremes but said little about how climatic hazards interact with societal vulnerability. Sparse information on how risks evolve at specific warming levels resulted in the reporting of broad, qualitative levels of risk — for example, 'undetectable' to 'very high', as judged by experts. But comparison across risks was difficult.
Climate scientists need to close these gaps by scrutinizing the feedbacks between development pathways, climate change and its impacts and risks, and policies and responses. The community has created socio-economic scenarios that are better able to combine climate-policy consequences and climate-change impacts in certain areas — such as how poverty reduction reduces vulnerability to extreme events — and to investigate their interplay with development trends ranging from population to land-use trajectories². But covering many climatic and societal futures, globally to locally, is a monumental task. Projects that compare assumptions and results between different models are a start, but need to include more evidence and expert judgements across disciplines.
Research and assessments must be designed to solicit and answer questions crucial to decision-making. For example, how do risks and requirements compare for a climate goal at 1.5 °C, 2 °C or more? How can we avoid locking in to carbon-intensive development pathways and keep open options for rapid decarbonization? How can the effectiveness of adaptation actions be ensured? And how can emissions be reduced without slowing the pace of poverty reduction?

Sugarcane production is rising in Brazil to meet demand for ethanol for biofuel. Adriano Machado / Bloomberg / Getty

Explore multiple dimensions
Risks from a changing climate and responses to it vary dramatically from place to place, through time and with different levels of adaptation and mitigation. Projections of increases in sea level for different emissions scenarios, for example, range from tens of centimetres to more than 10 metres over centuries to millennia³. Small islands might quickly face inundation whereas large countries would have more time to adapt. Past assessments focused on characterizing a few alternative futures (such as continued high emissions versus ambitious mitigation) rather than weighing up the risks and benefits of limiting warming across a ladder of possible targets: 1.5 °C, 2 °C, 2.5 °C or higher.
A broader census of differences through space and time would strengthen the information foundation for policymaking. Decision-makers with different goals could select portfolios of responses, for example, based on risks to all, risks to the most vulnerable, risks of economic damages, risks of irreversible changes or a combination.
The distribution of losers and winners — regarding policies and impacts as well as people and places — needs to be studied. For example, the destruction of coral reefs affects fishing communities and may add to stresses, especially in places with weak governance. In some high-latitude areas, by contrast, a warming climate will bolster agricultural yields. Building sea walls could reduce coastal flood risks but threaten ecosystems, historical heritage and landscape beauty. Risks and opportunities from investments in mitigation options need to be evaluated. For example, expanding biomass energy may reduce (or reverse) emissions but could also threaten food production and biodiversity. Renewable energy reduces emissions and provides electricity more cheaply than that from fossil fuels in many remote locations, where some of the poorest people live.
More research is needed on regional challenges and opportunities that go beyond the use of a single metric — global mean warming — as a proxy for climate change and its impacts⁴. For example, ocean acidification and sea-level rise are not linearly related to peak temperature, and the risks that they create require more detailed investigation. And reducing emissions of short-lived climate pollutants such as soot and tropospheric ozone precursors might not change peak warming, but would slow the rate of warming globally⁵; this would allow more time for ecosystems and societies to adapt, as well as provide local health benefits.

Consider uncertainty
Decision-makers need to appreciate a wide range of possible outcomes, including uncertainty in the consequences of global climate policies. Four aspects of uncertainty must be evaluated and communicated: probability ranges that can be narrowed with future research; unknowns that are linked to a deep lack of knowledge; uncertain reactions that depend on societal decisions and geopolitical events; and other areas of uncertainty that reflect random or chaotic features of the climate system.
The implications of these uncertainty types for policymaking and research need to be untangled. Those that relate to underlying Earth-system processes, such as climate mechanisms that we do and do not understand, or the inherent variability of the climate system, can be addressed through research that increases understanding of climatic hazards. Extreme events and resulting damages lie in the tails of probability distributions that are inherently difficult to quantify or even characterize qualitatively.
Uncertainty need not be a bad thing. Uncertainties related to human choices — such as the multiple pathways to achieve a climate goal — can offer flexibility⁶. For example, much of the uncertainty in the relationship between emissions in 2050 and eventual temperature rise stems from the possibility of compensating for modest short-term emissions reductions with larger efforts, including negative emissions, in later decades.
An awareness of the diversity of options and their risks is important for making smart policies that allow for regular revisions in light of new information and feedback. More ambitious near-term emissions reductions create more flexibility for responses through the century, depending on whether useful and affordable technologies become available and how climate impacts pan out. Less mitigation early on would constrain options later and compound risks⁷. Short-term actions — such as the commitments for 2025 or 2030 that countries have made towards the Paris Agreement — can be compatible with a range of long-term targets, depending on the ambition of our efforts later in the century.

"Synergies and trade-offs must be evaluated, including risks arising from mitigation actions — not just inactions."

Assessing whether current policies are consistent with long-term goals depends on many factors that are impossible to predict with confidence^{8, 9}. And not knowing how people will respond makes such an assessment even harder. So emissions pathways that seem compatible today with a long-term temperature target could lead us to higher — or lower — levels of warming, depending on everything from future global climate policies to technology costs to the climate sensitivity of the Earth system. Intensified focus on limiting global warming to 2 °C or 1.5 °C decreases the risk of greater warming in the long term, for example a rise exceeding 3 °C, should available technologies turn out to be limited or climate sensitivity higher than expected.
Researchers need to assess how different sources of uncertainty affect decision-making, especially in worst-case scenarios. What should we do if temperatures start to rise more rapidly or the impacts are more dangerous than we expect? How can we detect such departures and how should we alter course? Climate policies might prove to be harmful and need revising; technology costs might not fall; carbon capture and sequestration might not work.

Inform holistic solutions
A fuller evaluation of risks and options is needed that includes those created by climate-change responses for other policy goals. For example, the assessment of climate-change risks at 1.5 °C in the IPCC's 2014 Synthesis Report foresaw impacts on coral reefs, Arctic sea ice, water availability, food production and sea-level rise. But the bigger picture should also include issues related to climate mitigation, such as economic duress, land- and water-use trade-offs and calls for high-risk geoengineering methods.
The impacts of climate changes and climate policies will interact if, for instance, a slower reduction in poverty owing to higher energy costs increases vulnerability. Synergies and trade-offs must be evaluated, including risks arising from mitigation actions — not just inactions. Social and climate scientists must investigate the political and socio-economic impacts of climate policies (short- as well as long-term), the distribution of those who benefit and those who are adversely affected, and the influences of powerful interest groups.
It is important to explore how climate responses can advance the Sustainable Development Goals and especially poverty reduction¹⁰. For instance, improving access to clean energy and decreasing the economic impacts of extreme weather events can accelerate development progress while protecting poorer nations against climate change. Climate action and protection will never be the sole priorities for decision-makers, but they will be integral to the full policy landscape. Research and assessment can create a powerful foundation for these interactions, and empower decisions in the years ahead.

Footnotes

Pachauri, R. K. et al. Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2014).
O'Neill, B. C. et al. Clim. Change 122, 387–400 (2014).
Clark, P. U. et al. Nature Clim. Change 6, 360–369 (2016).
Steinacher, M., Joos, F. & Stocker, T. F. Nature 499, 197–201 (2013).
Rogelj, J. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111, 16325–16330 (2014).
Otto, F. E. L., Frame, D. J., Otto, A. & Allen, M. R. Nature Clim. Change 5, 917–920 (2015).
Edenhofer, O. et al. (eds.) Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).
Kriegler, E. et al. Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change 90, 1–7 (2015).
van Vuuren, D. P. & Riahi, K. Clim. Change 104, 793–801 (2010).
Hallegatte, S. et al. Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty (World Bank, 2016).

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Australia Faces Its Own Brexit Experience

Independent Australia - Peter Boyer

As in Britain, Australians are dissatisfied with the establishment but we mustn't opt out. Despite the Coalition's claims to the contrary, our emissions are rising and we need to vote for climate change action, urges Peter Boyer.

(Image via businessreviewaustralia.com)

THE PARIS climate summit (COP21) last year was a ray of sunshine for global climate policy, getting nations to commit to tightening targets and an aspirational 1.5C warming limit.
Credit for that success must go to the host nation, France, to the community of nations that supported it to the hilt, the European Union (EU), and to the (once) United Kingdom.
Many Australian conservative politicians would have been perplexed at Britain's leadership of Europe's "Green Growth Group" of nations and its push – against strong objections from some EU members – for much stronger low-carbon policies in Europe.
On the basis of scientific advice that 2C of warming would bring yet more extreme, highly destructive weather, the UK under David Cameron, led the argument for European policies to target the much safer limit of 1.5C of warming.
This was Britain at its best, working within a complex, unwieldy system to achieve advances weighty enough to shape world politics. Last week, less uplifting British qualities were on show.
Brexit was a victory for age over youth, which has most to lose from climate change. Where their elders saw danger in open borders and opted to put up the shutters, Britons aged from 18 to 24 saw opportunity in an open Europe and voted three to one against leaving.
The new Little Britain looks like it might have to do without its Scottish and Irish electorate, which voted overwhelmingly to stay in Europe. Disgruntled Scotland has now renewed its campaign to leave the UK and a reunion of Ulster with republican Ireland is firmly on the table.
How Brexit will affect the global effort to mitigate climate change will take years to play out but it's a near-certainty that Europe will now stick with its 40 per cent 2030 target (against Australia's 26 to 28 per cent) instead of the 50 per cent that the UK was pushing.
Any sustained economic slump arising from Brexit will help bring emissions down. But more significantly, it will also diminish resources to develop clean energy, helped along by the fact that nationalist sentiment has more than a little in common with climate-change denial.
Britain's new leader may be Cameron's chief Brexit opponent, Boris Johnson, who once voiced scepticism about human-induced warming on the basis of a string of snowy British winters. That same shallow, ill-considered thinking surfaced repeatedly during the campaign.
I almost forgot – we have our own poll coming up. It too involves pent-up frustration with political and financial authority in an increasingly unequal Australia. Major parties are on the nose, as in Britain, and it's likely that what divides us now will still divide us afterwards.
Climate policy is one of those divides, revealed in an admirably independent and thorough analysis of parties' pre-election climate policies by Australia's Climate Institute.
All were found wanting. The Greens and (surprisingly) the Glenn Lazarus Team (GLT) came out best, but Green inflexibility and the GLT's lack of detail were negatives. The Nick Xenophon Team scored well on ambition but also lacked detail.
The Climate Institute assessment didn't include recent arrivals like the Renewable Energy Party or independents like Denison MP Andrew Wilkie. Both, I think, would have scored highly.
Applied globally, says the Climate Institute, Labor's policies still wouldn't keep warming below the dangerous 2C threshold, while the Coalition's would leave us a disastrous 3C to 4C warmer.
Former Liberal leader John Hewson is having none of it. He absented himself from Malcolm Turnbull's campaign launch on Sunday, to tell a rally in Turnbull's Sydney electorate that the need for bipartisan leadership on climate is "more than urgent".
Many electors, seeing Australian emissions still rising while hearing false claims to the contrary, share Hewson's concern. While time ticks away our political masters choose to talk of other things.
But however frustrated you are with the established order, don't opt out. Our main game has to be a decarbonised economy. On Saturday vote for those who will work for it and avoid those who won't.

Links

Climate change takes its first proven victim at Bramble Cay

Move to sack leading CSIRO scientist shocks scientific world

Acidifying oceans highlight Australia's barren climate policy

Greg Hunt's cultivated optimism gets us nowhere

Australia's climate effort falling behind in 'critical decade'

Ice melt studies say we underestimate sea level rise

The crazy saga of the great CSIRO sell-off

Earth is running a fever - not that the CSIRO will be reporting on it now

Using trees for carbon accounts looks good but it's a con

27/06/2016

Climate Change: John Hewson Accuses Coalition Of 'National Disgrace'

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

Former Liberal leader says climate should be dominant issue of election campaign rather than ‘short-term politicking’

The former Liberal leader and Wentworth MP John Hewson says the wider community is ‘way ahead’ of political and business leaders on climate change. Photograph: Michael Slezak for the Guardian

The former Liberal leader John Hewson addressed an estimated 2000 people protesting in the Sydney suburb of Double Bay – minutes from Malcolm Turnbull’s harbourside mansion – calling on the prime minister to take stronger action on climate change.
Speaking at the same time as Turnbull addressed the party faithful at the Coalition’s campaign launch, Hewson told protesters the Coalition’s lack of action on climate change was a “national disgrace”.
“I think climate change should be the dominant issue of this campaign – it should have been for quite some time,” said Hewson, who was once the local member for the seat of Wentworth, which includes Double Bay.
He said “short-term politicking” from both sides left targets that were inadequate and policies that were not going to meet those targets.
“The one thing that hasn’t failed is people like yourselves,” he said. “The community is way ahead of the political leaders and the business leaders on this issue.”
He urged the crowd to push political leaders for a bipartisan approach to climate change. “Enough is enough, it’s time to act,” Hewson said.
A spokesperson from GetUp, which organised the protest in coalition with three other environment groups, estimated there were about 2000 people in the crowd.
Protesters were given placards in the shape of coral, which were coloured on one side, and white on the other, which symbolised the devastating bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef. They turned them around for the cameras, while chanting “Choose the reef, not coal”.

Protestors in fancy dress at the #climatefizza rally. Photograph: Michael Slezak for the Guardian

Robert Shelly, who lives in Vaucluse, attended the protest with his two-year-old daughter, Ariella, and her dog. “We come from a family with a big environmental conscience. It’s a very important issue and it’s been completely ignored by the mainstream,” he said.
Paula Brook, who lives in Woollahra, said she was motivated to come to the protest after seeing the Australian Conservation Foundation’s scorecard, which said the Coalition’s environmental policies were “woefully inadequate”.
“The Coalition was really far down, and this is Malcolm Turnbull’s electorate and so it was important to show him that people care about environmental issues,” she said.

A sizeable crowd in Malcolm Turnbull's electorate calling for stronger action on climate change. Photograph: Michael Slezak for the Guardian

The crowd was also addressed by Dr Kate Charlesworth, who was until recently a Wentworth resident and previously worked at the sustainable development unit at the National Health Service in the UK. She said although climate change was a great risk to human health, and a health emergency, actions that would mitigate climate change had the potential to be a great boost to human health.
“Things like active transport – walking and cycling – improved diets with more plant based foods; looking at the causes of air pollution; reducing traffic congestion; healthier cities with more green space and tree cover. All these things will have tremendous benefits to human health,” she said.
Michael Borgas, a climate scientist at the CSIRO also addressed the crowd, calling on the government to fund climate science, following the news that the CSIRO was making significant cuts to its climate research.

Message to Malcolm Turnbull at rally in Wentworth. Photograph: Michael Slezak for the Guardian

Tony Fontes, a Great Barrier Reef diving instructor, also spoke, calling for stronger climate action to protect the reef. “We’ve just seen the greatest, most devastating bleaching event in the history of the reef and we’re going to see more.”
Lyndon Schneiders, the national director for the Wilderness Society, which helped organise the protest, said: “Malcolm Turnbull must do more to address climate change. The Great Barrier Reef is dying on Mr Turnbull’s watch and yet his government sticks to its inadequate Direct Action policy.”
Nikola Casule from Greenpeace – another organiser of the protest – said Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions were growing and forecast to increase until 2030. “The science is clear – the world needs to stop emitting greenhouse gases but our emissions are going in the other direction.”

Protesters turn their coral around to symbolize its bleaching. Photograph: Michael Slezak for the Guardian

The protest caps three days of protesting in Turnbull’s electorate.
On Friday Greenpeace activists hung a banner from Turnbull’s electorate office in Edgecliff, saying: “Turnbull’s Legacy: bleaching – brought to you by Malcolm’s mates in the coal industry.”
And on Saturday, a group of 50 pacific islanders kayaked from Blues Point to Lady Martin’s beach, mere metres from Turnbull’s harbourside mansion, raising awareness of climate change and sea level rise.

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