Stephen Hawking: Climate Change, Trump Forcing Disastrous 'Tipping Points'

Washington Examiner - John Siciliano

Nearly 400 scientists urge leaders at U.N. this week to make global warming their most pressing concern. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, FILE)

American politics, just like climate change, have reached a "tipping point" with Donald Trump being named the Republican Party's nominee, said acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking and nearly 400 other scientists in an open letter Tuesday.
The letter, signed by 375 members of the National Academy of Sciences, is meant to urge American policymakers and leaders to make climate change their most pressing concern, not only because of record warming in the last year, but because of the possibility of Trump winning the presidency.
Hawking and his colleagues said the primary elections were alarming enough, with claims "that the Earth is not warming, or that warming is due to purely natural causes outside of human control." Those positions are "inconsistent with reality," the letter said.
Much like climate change, "the political system also has tipping points," the letter said. "Thus it is of great concern that the Republican nominee for president has advocated U.S. withdrawal from the Paris accord," which was agreed to last year by 196 countries, including the United States, to cut greenhouse gas emissions to reduce global warming by at least 2 degrees. Many scientists blame the emissions from burning fossil fuels for driving manmade climate change.
Trump's proposed "Parexit" would send a clear message to the world that "the United States does not care about the global problem of human-caused climate change. You are on your own."
"Such a decision would make it far more difficult to develop effective global strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change," the letter said. "The consequences of opting out of the global community would be severe and long-lasting — for our planet's climate and for the international credibility of the United States."
The letter comes one day before 20 countries led by Morocco plan to ratify the Paris agreement on Wednesday during a special ceremony at the U.N. in New York. It also comes less than a week before Trump debates Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for the first time on Monday night.

Links

• More than 300 scientists warn over Trump's climate change stance
• Scientists know climate change is a threat. Politicians need to realize it, too.
• Scientific opinion on climate changeClimate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet: Scientific Consensus

Here's How Global Warming Could Trigger the Next Financial Crisis

Fortune - Chris Matthews

The Bank of Canada thinks so

On October 21, 1926 the coastline in Miami, Florida, following the great hurricane, which brought an end to the Florida land boom. R. B. Holt—Getty Images

Move over mortgages. There's now something much, much bigger to worry about, and harder to curtail, and far more likely to cause the next financial crisis: global warming.
That's the conclusion of a new report published recently by the Bank of Canada.
The report is mainly focused on the reinsurance industry, a shadowy corner of the insurance business, and the fact that what the last financial crisis showed us was that when insurance companies aren't properly regulated or the risks they take on are poorly understood, the results can be disastrous. On top of that, the report's authors argue that in an era when climate change is causing natural disasters to be more severe, the risks that reinsurance are taking on could be larger than they appear.
The authors argument focuses on the role of retrocession, which are the risk-sharing arrangements among reinsurers. They are often not fully detailed in insurers accounting statements. "An important feature of the retrocession market is its opacity to both to market participants and regulators," the report reads, adding that the big problem is that reinsurers often don't know how much risk or what kinds of risks other insurers or reinsurers are taking on. "It is possible for contagion . . . to occur, in which the losses of one party cascade to others in the network."
Still, a lot would have to go wrong for a failure in the reinsurance industry to spread to the broader economy. The authors, after running a series of stress tests that evaluate the effect of various scenarios on the industry, argue that the stability of the financial industry appears to fairly robust and that "it would take a catastrophic event larger than any experienced in recent history to result in material failures within the industry."
Unfortunately for the industry, scientists are predicting that natural disasters, and particularly hurricanes, are going to grow in intensity as the effects of climate change grow. For instance, forecasters are predicting Miami—the twelfth largest metropolitan economy in the United States—will have anywhere from 4 to 8 hurricanes this year. The incidence will only grow over time, as will the chances of unprecedented property damage.
Of course, this is the worst-case scenario, and therefore not the most likely to happen. But remember that the subprime mortgage crisis—and subsequent overall decline in housing values— was an unfathomable event to the vast majority of professionals in the business, which is why it was able unleash such damage.

Links

• Are Counterparty Arrangements in Reinsurance a Threat to Financial Stability?
• Hurricanes and Climate Change
• Australia weather: climate change warning by World Bank for 2050
• Bank of England regulator warns of growing climate risks
• World Bank Wades into Climate Fight - Scientific American

Australia's Emissions Won't Fall By 2030 Without Greater Climate Action, Modelling Shows

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

RepuTex analysis says federal government paying polluters and ambitious renewable energy targets won't have sufficient impact

A coal-fired power station in Victoria. Australia's emissions were modelled to end up at just 2% below 2005 levels by 2030. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Australia's emissions will remain at the same level through to 2030, despite the federal government paying polluters billions to lower greenhouse gas emissions and some states having ambitious renewable energy targets, according to new analysis by the energy advisory firm RepuTex.
Combining the effect of current policy settings with expected growth in liquefied natural gas exports and land clearing, Australia's emissions were modelled to end up at just 2% below 2005 levels by 2030.
To meet current targets, which are at least 26% below 2005 levels by 2030, a total of about 1bn tonnes of carbon dioxide will need to be avoided.
The current emissions reduction target has widely been considered to be too weak. In August, the Climate Institute found it would result in Australia needing to reduce its emissions to zero in just five years, in order to stay within its carbon budget, determined by our commitment to keep global warming at "well below" 2C.
To meet even that weak target using existing mechanisms – like the safeguard mechanism in the Coalition's Direct Action policy – the cap on pollution from large emitters will need to tighten dramatically from 2020, at rate of about 5% each year, RepuTex found.
And if the government tried to meet the 2030 target without tightening the safeguard mechanism, they would need to take radical action in other areas, said RepuTex's executive director, Hugh Grossman.
"A lot of the policy measures become extreme if you exclude safeguard sectors," Grossman told Guardian Australia.
"That could include the tripling of funding for the emissions reduction fund and generation from rooftop photovoltaics, while rates of electricity and vehicle efficiency would need to double from current levels."
Grossman said that was "theoretically possible" but likely to be impractical, especially if Australia's targets are scaled up, which is the expectation of all countries after the Paris agreement.
Surprisingly, the analysis found that if emissions reductions were achieved by scaling up the safeguards mechanism, much of the burden would fall on the transport sectors and coal seam gas industries, while large coal-fired generators would avoid the impact of the tightening baselines.
"With emissions baselines declining from high point levels, we anticipate many large coal-fired generators would remain under their baseline due to factors such as falling electricity consumption," Grossman said.
The results showed that climate and energy policy needed to be properly integrated at a federal level, Grossman said.
RepuTex came to their conclusions using their new energy and climate policy tool, which allows users to measure how much CO₂ Australia will need to avoid by 2030, and explore different pathways to achieve that.
The analysis comes just weeks after the Climate Change Authority released its controversial report on Australia's climate policy requirements, recommending a "toolkit" of policies, which two dissenting authority members described as a "dog's breakfast".
It was commissioned to report on the policy settings needed to meet our international obligations, which includes a commitment to keeping global temperatures "well below" 2C of warming. But, instead, it made recommendations based on Australia's current targets, which are widely considered to be inconsistent with our international obligations.
It also made recommendations based on assumptions about what was politically feasible, rather than what was the best policy.
Even then, the details of the exact policy settings to needed to meet the 2030 targets were lacking. In a statement, RepuTex said its analysis attempted to fill that gap.

Links

• Global trade deal threatens Paris climate goals, leaked documents show
• Leonardo DiCaprio given rival invitations to visit Great Barrier Reef
• Climate sceptic MP appointed chair of environment and energy committee
• Debunking Malcolm Roberts: the case against a climate science denier
• Josh Frydenberg plays down Climate Change Authority call for tougher emissions limits
• Q&A smackdown: Brian Cox brings graphs to grapple with Malcolm Roberts
• CSIRO cuts: Turnbull government orders U-turn on climate science research
• Climate change: John Hewson accuses Coalition of 'national disgrace'
• Two-thirds of Australia's emissions fund spent for just 7% of 2030 target