26/07/2016

Climate Change Increases The Risk Of War, Scientists Prove

The Independent - Ian Johnston

The heatwaves, droughts and other natural disasters expected to increase because of global warming are helping to push countries into armed conflict, particularly those already split along ethnic lines
Countries where there was fractionalisation were conflict 'hot spots' Getty
Heatwaves, droughts and other severe weather events are increasing the risk of wars breaking out across the world, scientists say they have proved.
The researchers carried out a statistical analysis of the outbreak of armed conflicts and climate-related natural disasters between 1980 and 2010.
Their findings – that nearly one in four conflicts in ethnically divided countries coincided with "climatic calamities" – suggest that war should be added to the usual list of problems likely to be caused by global warming, such as sea level rise, crop failures, water shortages and floods.
Environmentalists have warned that if temperatures rise significantly over the next century, large areas of the planet could become uninhabitable, forcing millions of people to migrate elsewhere and significantly increase the risk of conflicts breaking out.
But the new research, by academics in Germany, found there was already a statistical link between outbreaks of widespread violence and extreme weather events.
Dr Carl Schleussner, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said: "Devastating climate-related natural disasters have a disruptive potential that seems to play out in ethnically fractionalised societies in a particularly tragic way.
"Climate disasters are not directly triggering conflict outbreak, but may enhance the risk of a conflict breaking out which is rooted in context-specific circumstances. As intuitive as this might seem, we can now show this in a scientifically sound way."
The idea of linking conflict to natural disasters has been controversial. Some previous studies which compared wars to temperature, for example, did not find a link.
However for this study, described in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, the researchers used data from international reinsurance firm Munich Re.
This was then combined with information about conflicts and an index used to quantify how "ethnically fractionalised" countries are.
Globally, there was a nine per cent coincidence rate between the outbreak of armed conflicts and natural disasters like droughts and heatwaves. But, in countries that were deeply divided along ethnic lines, this rose to about 23 per cent.
Dr Jonathan Donges, who co-wrote the paper about the study, said: "We've been surprised by the extent that results for ethnic fractionalised countries stick out, compared to other country features such as conflict history, poverty, or inequality.
"We think that ethnic divides may serve as a predetermined conflict line when additional stressors like natural disasters kick in, making multi-ethnic countries particularly vulnerable to the effect of such disasters."
The paper said many African and Central Asian countries were "among the most fractionalised", making these areas "potential hot spots of armed-conflict outbreak risk".
Climate models also suggest that these areas can expected "a substantial increase in extreme event hazards".
"Projections of overall conflict risk up to 2050 … find these regions to be particularly endangered, which highlights the relevance of our findings in the wider context of conflict prevention and development," the paper says.
"Recent analyses of the societal consequences of droughts in Syria and Somalia indicate that such climatological events may have already contributed to armed conflict outbreaks or sustained conflicts in both countries.
"Similarly, a prolonged drought might have contributed negatively to the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan.
"Further destabilisation of Northern Africa and the Levant may have widespread effects by triggering migration flows to neighbouring countries and remote migrant destinations such as the European Union."
The paper stressed that the root cause of these conflicts were "case specific" but cautioned that natural disasters had the potential "to amplify already existing societal tensions and … thus to further destabilise several of the world's most conflict-prone regions".

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These Are The Best Arguments From The 3% Of Climate Scientist 'Skeptics.' Really.

The Guardian - 

Contrarian climate scientist Roy Spencer summed up the contrarian case for a fossil fuel and tobacco-funded think tank
Chewbacca and Han Solo from ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’. The best case made by climate contrarian scientists amounts to little more than ‘the Chewbacca defense’. Photograph: Allstar/DISNEY/LUCASFILM 
When I give a presentation and mention the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming, I’m often asked, “what’s the deal with the other 3%?”. These are the publishing climate scientists who argue that something other than humans is responsible for the majority of global warming, although their explanations are often contradictory and don’t withstand scientific scrutiny.
A few months ago, the world’s largest private sector coal company went to court, made its best scientific case against the 97% expert consensus, and lost. One of coal’s expert witnesses was University of Alabama at Huntsville climate scientist Roy Spencer - a controversial figure who once compared those with whom he disagreed to Nazis, and has expressed his love for Fox News.
Last week, Spencer wrote a white paper for the Texas Public Policy Institute (TPPI) outlining the contrarian case against climate concerns. TPPI is part of the web of denial, having received substantial funding from both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries, including $65,000 from ExxonMobil and at least $911,499 from Koch-related foundations since 1998, and over $3 million from “dark money” anonymizers Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.
Spencer’s arguments should of course be evaluated on their own merits, regardless of who commissioned them. However, it turns out that they have little merit on which to stand. The white paper is a classic example of a Gish Gallop – producing such a large volume of nonsense arguments that refuting all of them is too time-consuming. NASA Goddard director Gavin Schmidt rightly described Spencer’s paper as:
(Image)
A mishmash of myths
Most of Spencer’s white paper consists of repeating a variety of long-debunked myths. It’s laid out in the form of 13 basic climate questions that Spencer tries to answer. Fortunately, SkepticalScience.com has a database of over 200 climate myths, and summaries of what the peer-reviewed scientific research says about each. This makes it possible to handle Spencer’s 13-point Gish Gallop by simply referring to the relevant myth rebuttals. So here we go:

1) ‘Carbon dioxide is a trace gas’ is rebutted as Myth #127.
2) ‘Climate has changed before’ is addressed in Myth #2, and climate scientist Michael Mann recently rebutted the myth that climate researchers ignore natural factors. Spencer’s misleading claims about temperatures of the past 2,000 years based on a paper by Henrik Ljungqvist are refuted in Myth #168. Claims of hotter periods during that time than today are tackled in Myth #56, and implications that the planet is magically warming because it used to be colder during the Little Ice Age in Myth #32. Finally, the rebuttal to Myth #136 explains why we can’t just blame global warming on natural cycles.
3) The reliability of global temperature measurements is explained in Myth #6.
4) Models used by the IPCC have accurately predicted global warming, as explained in the rebuttals to and Myth #229, as well as an important paper published last year.
5) The net negative consequences of rapid global warming are outlined in the rebuttal to Myth #12.
6) The warming over the past 18 years is discussed in the rebuttal to Myth #7, and is clear from the record hot temperatures of the past 3 years.
7) The accuracy of climate models is covered under Myth #5 and in my book.
8) The sensitivity of the climate to the increasing greenhouse effect is addressed in Myth #30, and the role of clouds in Myth #143.
9) False claims about the 97% expert climate consensus are in Myth #3 and Myth #226.
10) Claims of ‘slow’ ocean warming are refuted by the fact that it’s accumulating heat at a rate equivalent to 4 atomic bomb detonations per second, consistent with climate model predictions.
11) Spencer downplays the importance of our repeated breaking of temperature records, but we wouldn’t be breaking them without global warming.
12) On climate change causing extreme weather (Myth #41), Spencer suggests that we shouldn’t worry about stronger hurricanes (Myth #16), denies the record intensity of California’s current drought, and cherry picks sea ice (Myth #157) and snow cover data (Myth #159).
13) Spencer ends his paper with the claim that the 97% of climate research that’s consistent with the expert consensus is all politically biased. This is ironic given that Spencer has previously said:
I view my job a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government.
The best case against climate concern is really bad
All in all, Spencer managed to cram about 24 climate myths into a 13-point white paper. Most importantly, as Schmidt noted, the bulk of those myths served no purpose.
Just consider Spencer’s very first argument. No scientist should ever claim that carbon pollution is benign because it’s only present in the atmosphere in trace amounts. For example, arsenic can be deadly if present in trace amounts in water; Spencer probably wouldn’t drink from a water source with 400 ppm of arsenic. This is an easily-refuted, scientifically-useless argument whose sole purpose seems to be fooling non-experts. It’s the climate version of the Chewbacca defense.

South Park’s “Chewbacca Defense” 

In the Peabody Energy case, the judge ruled that the preponderance of evidence did not support Spencer or his fellow coal expert witnesses. Without strong evidence supporting their arguments, climate contrarians often resort to Gish Gallops to win arguments. In fact, the RationalWiki page on Gish Gallops lists another climate contrarian, Christoper Monckton among the well-known “abusers of this technique,” alongside Donald Trump.
In short, if there were a valid case against the urgent need for climate action, contrarians’ best experts wouldn’t have to scrape 24 long-debunked myths from the bottom of the oil barrel.

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After Paris, How Are Governments Tackling Climate Change?

Climate Home - Sam Bickersteth*

Governments appear committed to delivering on their promises, but many will require more funding and assistance to deliver a fast and effective green transition

Dhaka, Bangladesh (Pic: Pixabay)
The Paris climate talks marked a high water mark in international diplomacy, as countries queued up to present plans shaping their contribution to emissions reduction and climate resilient growth.
The overall ambition to hold temperature rise to well below 2C was rightly regarded as a landmark.
Seven months on, the Vienna conference on amending the Montreal Protocol has made major strides toward cutting hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) which could curb global warming this century by up to one degree.
If agreed and implemented, this will be a major achievement.
However, bottom-up action by countries to cut other greenhouse gas emissions – principally carbon dioxide and methane from power generation, industry, land use change and other activities – must leap ahead in order to achieve the high-level ambitions of the Paris climate accord.
Many countries’ national climate plans – known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) in UN jargon – were produced in a hurry for Paris, with limited consultation: weakly integrated with the rest of the economy, business, politics and other sectors.
Much needs to be done to link these national climate plans into national development plans and national budgets, and factor them alongside national level responses to the Sustainable Development Goals or ‘SDGs’: the first goal being to eradicate extreme poverty.
The reality of integrating climate change into national priorities of economic growth, employment and poverty reduction, alongside the normal challenges of security, political cycles and other events is now the challenge.
All countries face tough choices, the poorest most of all. And Paris was the beginning not the end: the pledges made amount to less than a third of those needed to reach the 2 degree target, let alone the aspiration of 1.5C.
At the international level, after an anticipated pause to recover early in the year, there has been much written and discussed.
From April, countries started to sign the Paris Agreement in New York with positive signals that formal adoption of the agreement (once it has been ratified by 55 countries emitting more than 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions) may occur within the year.
Donors have come together on several occasions to commit to supporting the implementation of the climate plans – now called ‘Nationally Determined Contributions’ (NDCs) with the German Government launching the NDC Partnership.
Practitioners and policy makers have recently gathered to learn of the actions and progress of their peers in the Africa LEDS Partnership and Asia LEDS Partnership meetings.
But Paris was about driving national level action and it is less clear what the overall pattern of progress is in initiating, implementing and mainstreaming those aspirations within national economic development.
The Agreement sought to establish a long term mitigation goal to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century and build the capacity for countries to adapt to climate change.
For developing countries, two particularly significant enablers for this are capacity building and finance but many lack both the numbers and capability of staff across both public and private sector to make the necessary changes.
Secondly, mobilising the promised $100bn annually in international climate finance flows – the pledge made by developed countries at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 and restated ever since – is only part of the problem.
Accessing funds from international and domestic resources is challenging not least because of the limited supply of good quality projects and limited capacity to absorb their management and delivery.
In developed economies, despite some turbulent politics, climate change policies and actions are so far continuing.
The EU package on low carbon economic development has been published , the UK’s 5th Carbon Budget agreed and some countries such as Portugal are, at times, getting all their electricity needs from renewables.
A growing number of investors are factoring in climate risk and the cost of carbon (often as a shadow price) partly inspired by the momentum around the G20 Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
In emerging market economies such as Colombia and Peru there has been progress in building institutions to coordinate across government ministries and share actions to reduce emissions across sectors.
For example, in Colombia, each of the priority sectors will propose a roadmap and action plan in August setting out how much and how they will contribute to the NDC target of 20% emissions reduction by 2030.
In addition, new laws and plans are emerging in the energy and transport sectors that take climate change into account.
Kenya’s Climate Change Act was passed in May 2016, establishing a National Climate Change Council and the Climate Change Directorate and signifying long term commitment towards stronger climate action.
In India, there has been much attention to ambitious plans around solar energy systems but there is also growing engagement on a range of climate-related actions at district and city level such as heat wave management, finance for mixed grid, weather attribution for business and science, and improved planning around disaster risk reduction.
In many countries, the challenge of climate action at subnational level has been identified as a bottleneck and in Uganda District Development Plans are being required to mainstream climate change including within their budgets.
Similarly, in Kenya, there is a process underway to support mainstreaming of climate change further within the subnational planning framework.
In Ethiopia, as in a number of other countries, a green growth approach has enabled integration of climate change measures into the national Growth and Transformation Plan, while Nepal has established a climate budget code to identify the level of investment of government resources in climate change.
But further effort is now required to achieve full integration into budgeting and operational processes beyond an integration ‘on paper’.
For example, in Bangladesh, despite considerable planning activity on the part of donors and government, hard trade-offs are being played out with the Rampal coal powered plant project.
This will work against Bangladesh’s stated intention INDC intention for ecosystem-based adaptation by affecting the UNESCO heritage site in Sundarbans as well as posing a shortfall in achieving climate mitigation targets.

Ambition, scale
For most African countries, financing climate action is the top priority.
While national investments in climate change actions are significant (at least 10% of government expenditure in Ethiopia) considerable effort is being put into developing a pipeline of projects for funding by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and other sources.
However, few NDCs can be regarded as investment-ready as yet and the current pipeline is often a result of earlier development work and not necessarily transformational enough to achieve a real paradigm shift in infrastructure investments towards low emission and climate resilient options.
2015 was about ambition and setting a pathway, and in 2016 progress so far shows that there is much yet to do to deliver transformative change at the scale and speed that is required or even as stated within the NDCs.
This year is more about the reality of integrating climate change into national priorities of economic growth, employment, poverty reduction working across sectors and different levels of government and many challenges of political economy.
However, much is being done and building blocks are being put in place in many countries as they normalise climate change into the business of government and private enterprise.
For developing countries transformative NDC implementation will only materialise when the requisite financial and capacity support is in place.
Securing this support from donors and other investors over the long term is the priority ahead.

*Sam Bickersteth is chief executive of CDKN, the Climate Development and Knowledge Network.
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China's Coal Peak Hailed As Turning Point In Climate Change Battle

The Guardian - 

Study by economists say achievement by world's biggest polluter may be a significant milestone, rather than a blip
Beijing, China. The country's coal consumption peaked in 2014 and began falling in what economists call a permanent trend. Photograph: Feng Li/Getty Images
The global battle against climate change has passed a historic turning point with China's huge coal burning finally having peaked, according to senior economists.
They say the moment may well be a significant milestone in the course of the Anthropocene, the current era in which human activity dominates the world's environment.
China is the world's biggest polluter and more than tripled its coal burning from 2000 to 2013, emitting billions of tonnes of climate-warming carbon dioxide. But its coal consumption peaked in 2014, much earlier than expected, and then began falling.
The economists argue in a new paper on Monday that this can now be seen as permanent trend, not a blip, due to major shifts in the Chinese economy and a crackdown on pollution.
"I think it is a real turning point," said Lord Nicholas Stern, an eminent climate economist at the London School of Economics, who wrote the analysis with colleagues from Tsinghua University in Beijing. "I think historians really will see [the coal peak of] 2014 as a very important event in the history of the climate and economy of the world."
The team's analysis, published in the Nature Geoscience journal, concludes that China's coal peak "may well be an important milestone in the Anthropocene and a turning point in international efforts to [cut] the emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases".
The struggle to tame climate change and avoid the "severe, widespread, and irreversible" damage predicted by scientists is often seen as too difficult. Even the successful global climate deal signed in Paris in December is not yet enough to hold world temperatures below a 2C rise, which is seen as the danger limit, and will need to be ratcheted up.
But Stern said he thought the breakthrough in China would drive further action by other nations: "Given the international political and economic structures we now have to manage climate change, I think it will be very influential on others."
The UN's climate chief, who oversees the global climate negotiations, welcomed the analysis. "This assessment of the possible peaking of China's coal use is a very positive development in international efforts to address climate change," said Patricia Espinosa, the incoming executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
She added: "It underlines how ambitious and deliberate policies to shift away from highly polluting fuels to cleaner energy sources can deliver global climate benefits and national improvements in health and indeed in people's lives."
To enter into force, the Paris climate deal requires the majority of large emitting nations to ratify it. Espinosa said: "I hope these positive developments reported today will encourage more countries to step forward so that Paris enters into force sooner rather than later."
Stern said that China's progress indicates its total carbon emissions will start falling before 2025, well ahead of its official target date of 2030. Prof John Schellnhuber, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a former adviser to German premier Angela Merkel and Pope Francis, said it could even happen by 2020, which would represent stunning progress.
"If we take the 2C target seriously, coal really has to disappear," he said. "I think coal will have to be phased out completely in all countries of the world by about 2035." Schellnhuber, one of the world's most influential climate scientists, said in 2015 that an "induced implosion" of the fossil fuel industry was required to beat climate change.
The latest official government statistics from China support the idea that its coal use peaked in 2014. Coal production fell 9.7% in the first half of 2016 compared to 2015, which itself saw a 5.8% decline on 2014, and coal burning fell 3.7% in 2015. China's total emissions have been near flat in recent years.
Stern said there are a series of deep and long-term transformations taking place in China, which means the nation's falling coal use is now a permanent trend. One is the falling rate of economic growth from 9-10% to about 6% and the transformation of the Chinese economy away from heavy industry and towards more hi-tech and service sectors, which are much less dependent on energy.
There is also a serious focus on improving energy efficiency, he said, to avoid dependency on imported fuels.
Another critical factor is a major policy shift from the Chinese government to tackle the pollution of air and water that blights many citizens. Stern said China's emergence as a global power in recent decades was important too, as well as its self-interest in avoiding global warming.
"It is partly the sense of responsibility that China really does feel" as a global power, he said. "But it is also climate change itself. Water has dominated Chinese thinking for millennia and its major rivers come off the Himalayas. What happens to the Himalayas and its ice caps is absolutely crucial to China, and of course climate change is mostly a water phenomenon."
As coal declines, clean electricity in China is increasing rapidly with solar power up 28% in the first half of 2016, nuclear up 25% and wind and hydropower both up 13%. But challenges remain, including connecting new windfarms to the grid. China's Renewable Energy Industries Association says that 15% of the wind power produced in the country in 2015 was wasted.

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