Climate denialism has dissuaded billions of dollars of potential investment in renewable energy. Photo: Jessica Shapiro
America's great family dynasties were, for the most part, founded on
the industries that powered Western economic growth. Oil, railways, car
manufacturing, chemicals, banking and property development dominate the
landscape of generational wealth in the United States.
One of
those dynasties, the Rockefeller family, derived its vast riches from
ownership of Standard Oil, now known as ExxonMobil. But one of the
philanthropic funds controlled by the Rockefellers has declared it will
no longer invest in fossil fuels because of its profound concerns about
climate change.
The Rockefeller Family Fund says the clear
evidence on climate change leads it to believe that reserves of oil,
coal and tar-sands must remain in the ground "if there is any hope for
human and natural ecosystems to survive and thrive". It says "there is
no sane rationale for companies to continue to explore for new sources
of hydrocarbons" and it makes "little sense, financially or ethically"
to invest in companies that exploit fossil fuels.
And, in a
spectacular denunciation of the company that made the family rich, the
fund has damned ExxonMobil for engaging in "morally reprehensible
conduct", saying it appears to have deliberately sought to confuse the
public about climate change and its effects while seeking to exploit oil
exploration as Arctic sea ice recedes.
It is a powerful statement, one that will reverberate through the
global investment community because it is testimony to how opinion on
climate change has profoundly shifted. The science cannot be denied.
"History moves on, as it must," the Rockefeller fund says.
And
yet, here in Australia, we are still waiting for this kind of seismic
change to sway the investment community and, indeed, the political
class. While a smattering of superannuation funds, equity funds and
philanthropic foundations prioritise alternative energy investments over
those that contribute to greenhouse gases, years of climate denialism
from federal and state Coalition governments has dissuaded billions of
dollars of potential investment in renewable energy technology and
initiatives.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been slow to show
his credentials on climate change. Still, we welcome his decision to
create a $1 billion innovation fund that will invest in clean energy
projects. We also welcome his decision to retain the Clean Energy
Finance Corporation (CEFC), which invests in sustainable energy
initiatives, and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which has
issued grants totalling $87 million for research and developing pilot
projects involving solar, bio-energy, thermal and hydro-power
generation.
But The Age urges Mr Turnbull to do much more
than this. We say as much because the proposed new fund's $1 billion
(dispersed in dollops of $100 million a year over 10 years) is a loan
from the CEFC, not new money. It also appears to be focused towards
large projects only. By contrast, government grants, which are essential
to research and development projects and to small start-ups, do not
feature in his announcement.
The fund is a good move, as far as it
goes, but we urge Mr Turnbull to be far more courageous in developing
intensive policies that might influence industry to move away from
fossil fuels. Clean energy development is crucial but, as we have said
before, a price on carbon emissions – in conjunction with new energy
production – would dramatically change big polluters' behaviour and help
transition Australia to a cleaner environment.
Escaping the heat. Scout and Christie cool off in Lake Parramatta. Brook Mitchell/Getty Images
Climate change is putting increasing stress on the world's resources,
raising risks to the global economy and to global energy, food and
water systems.
HSBC has analysed the risks from climate change to G20 countries and
it has found the financial damage from floods, droughts, extreme
temperatures and fires is large.
The estimated damages bill from climate change is $US309 billion for
G20 countries for the decade to 2014 with 39% of that in China, followed
by the US (22%) and India (11%).
"In our view, assessing country vulnerability to these stresses
enables superior investment decision making," HSBC says in its study
Scoring Climate Risk.
"We expect asset managers and owners to develop strategies to account
for the impacts of climate change. This report shows investors where
the relative risks are likely to be felt harder."
As average temperatures increase across the globe, HSBC says water
stress is increasing with Australia and Saudi Arabia posting the largest
deterioration in water availability.
On average, G20 water resources have fallen 1.5% compared to HSBC's 2013 analysis.
HSBC says the dominance of floods and droughts illustrates how
changing rainfall patterns are currently the driver for a major
component of total extreme weather events and associated costs.
"We expect flooding to become more common as climate impacts increase," HSBC says.
The number of extreme weather events is increasing. This chart shows
how droughts, extreme temperatures, floods and wildfires are rising.
India, China and Indonesia are the three most vulnerable G20 countries to climate change risk.
Australia sits at 13th place. Here's the full ranking:
Former NASA climate director James Hansen and a team of scientists claim
a mechanism in the climate could rapidly raise sea levels by metres
Dr James Hansen, pictured in 2012 Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian
James Hansen's name looms large over any history that will likely be written about climate change.
Whether you look at the hard science, the perils of political
interference or modern day activism, Dr Hansen is there as a central
character.
In a 1988 US Senate hearing, Hansen famously declared that the
"greenhouse effect has been detected and is changing our climate now".
Towards the end of his time as the director of NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, Hansen described how government officials
had on other occasions changed his testimony, filtered scientific
findings and controlled what scientists could and couldn't say to the
media – all to underplay the impact of fossil fuel emissions on the
climate.
In recent years, the so-called "grandfather of climate science" has
added to his CV the roles of author and twice-arrested climate activist
and anti-coal campaigner. He still holds a position at Columbia
University.
So when Hansen's latest piece of blockbuster climate
research was finalized and released earlier this week, there was
understandable global interest, not least because it mapped a potential
path to the "loss of all coastal cities" from rising sea levels and the
onset of "super storms" previously unseen in the modern era.
So what is Hansen claiming?
Well, the first thing to understand is that Hansen's paper,
written with 18 other co-authors, many of them highly-reputable names
in climate science in their own right, is far from conventional.
Most scientific papers only take up four or five pages in a journal. Hansen's paper - in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
- grabs 52 pages (although it's hard to quibble over space when you're
laying out a possible path to widespread global disruption and the
complete reshaping of coastlines).
Nor was the paper published in a conventional way. If you're getting a
faint sense of déjà vu about Hansen's findings, then that could be down
to how a draft version of the study was published and widely covered in
July last year.
The journal runs an unconventional interactive system of peer review where comments and criticisms from other scientists are published for everyone to see, as are the responses from Hansen and his colleagues.
This is arguably a more transparent way of conducting the scientific
process of peer review - something usually carried out privately and
anonymously.
None of this should really detract from Hansen and his co-author's central claims.
All hell will break loose in the North Atlantic and neighbouring lands. Dr James Hansen
Firstly, Hansen says they may have uncovered a mechanism in the Earth's climate system not previously understood that could point to a much more rapid rise in sea levels.When the Earth's ice sheets melt, they place a freshwater lens over
neighboring oceans. This lens, argues Hansen, causes the ocean to retain
extra heat, which then goes to melting the underside of large ice
sheets that fringe the ocean, causing them to add more freshwater to the
lens (this is what's known as a "positive feedback" and is not to be
confused with the sort of positive feedback you may have got at school
for that cracking fifth grade science assignment).
Secondly, according to the paper, all this added water could first
slow and then shut down two key ocean currents – and Hansen points to
two unusually cold blobs of ocean water off Greenland and off Antarctica
as evidence that this process may already be starting.
If these ocean conveyors were to be impacted, this could create much
greater temperature differences between the tropics and the north
Atlantic, driving "super storms stronger than any in modern times", he
argues.
"All hell will break loose in the North Atlantic and neighbouring lands," he says in a video summary.
Dr James Hansen, of Columbia University, summarises his latest research into ice sheet melting, sea level rise and super storms.
Hansen points to evidence from ancient climates (known as paleoclimate data) to suggest this has previously happened on Earth – an interpretation that was challenged during the interactive peer review process.
Now, according to the IPCC, global sea levels will only rise a maximum of not quite a metre by the end of the century.
But Hansen says this is too conservative. His paper claims that
climate models, including those used for his paper, don't properly
capture the consequences from adding freshwater from melting ice sheets.
Sea levels could rise several metres beyond the IPCC's estimates, and
the rise would be much faster.
So what's the upshot? According to Hansen:
These feedbacks raise questions about how soon we will pass points of no return in which we will lock-in consequences that cannot be reversed on any time scale that people care about. Consequences include sea level rise of several metres, which we estimate could occur this century or at the latest next century if fossil fuel emissions continue at a high level. That would mean the loss of all coastal cities, most of the world's largest cities and all of their history.
The idea that ice sheets are becoming unstable and could raise sea
levels several metres is not as controversial as you might think. There
is good evidence that sea levels have been many metres higher in earth's
history, well before humans came along.
A May 2015 study covered here on Planet Oz
found Antarctica's ice sheet alone could have pushed sea levels as much
as 17 metres higher, but it would have taken thousands of years.
Commenting on Hansen's study, Dr John Church, a sea level rise expert
at Australia's CSIRO, says multimeter sea level rises are consistent
with current research, but where Hansen departs is on claiming it could
all happen before the end of this century.
But Church says that as fossil fuel emissions grow, the world is committing future generations to much higher sea levels.
"Even with the lower emission scenarios we have committed the world to ongoing sea level rise for centuries," he says.
Other scientists have already challenged many of Hansen's conclusions, as Hansen himself predicted would happen.
"You can be sure that many scientists – indeed most scientists – will
find some aspects in our long paper that they would interpret
differently," Hansen says.
But he also commented that these disagreements shouldn't be misinterpreted.
I find that the public sometimes misinterprets our science discussions – how research is done. Scepticism is the lifeblood of science. It takes time for conclusions to be agreed upon and details sorted out.
And so it's in this spirit that I think Hansen's paper should be taken.
Hansen and his co-authors have laid out their science and are
proposing an idea that will live, die or evolve through the scientific
method.
Whether or not March 2016 becomes another seminal moment in Hansen's
storied climate career only time, and a failure to reign in fossil fuel
emissions, will likely tell.
One final point.
Hansen has long called for a straightforward rising price on
greenhouse gas emissions, which he argues would "quicken the transition
to cleaner energy."
"This is a tragic situation, because it is unnecessary," he says.
We could already be phasing out fossil fuel emissions if only we stopped allowing the fossil fuel industry to use the atmosphere as a free dumping ground for their waste.
