Lethal Heating: 10/15/16

15/10/2016

Most People Alive Today Set To Witness Dangerous Global Warming In Their Lifetime, Scientists Warn

The Independent - Ian Johnston

Average temperature could rise to two degrees Celsius above the norm by 2050 or 'even sooner'

Pictures that show we are killing our planet (first of 21)

The world could hit two degrees Celsius of warming – the point at which many scientists believe climate change will become dangerous – as early as 2050, a group of leading experts has warned.
In a report called The Truth About Climate Change, they said many people seemed to think of global warming as "abstract, distant and even controversial".
But the planet is now heating up "much faster" than anticipated, said Professor Sir Robert Watson, a former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and one of the authors of the report.
If their analysis is correct, it means the majority of people alive today will experience what it is like to live on a dangerously overheated planet.
But in the same year the level of warming reached 1C after an astonishing 0.15C rise in just three years.
Droughts, floods, wildfires and storms are all set to increase as the world warms, threatening crops and causing the extinction of species.

A raging wildfire closes in on a tree as people flee near Clayton, California

The new report warned the 1.5C target had "almost certainly already been missed"
Even if all the pledges to cut emissions made by countries at Paris are fulfilled, the average temperature is set to reach that level in the early 2030s and then 2C by 2050, they said.

Professor Watson, a chemist who has worked for Nasa, the World Bank, the US president and now at the renowned Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, said: "Climate change is happening now and much faster than anticipated.
"While the Paris Agreement on Climate Change is an important step in the right direction, what is needed is a doubling or tripling of efforts.
"Without additional efforts by all major emitters, the 2C target could be reached even sooner."
The report said an extra 0.4 to 0.5C of warming was expected to take place because of greenhouse gases that have already been emitted due to the slow response of the ocean and atmosphere.
The report said that full implementation of the pledges made at Paris would require wealthy countries to give a total of $100bn a year – as promised at the summit – to poor countries to help them transition to a zero-carbon economy.
"About 80 per cent of the pledges are subject to the condition that financial and technological support is available from developed countries," Professor Watson said.
"These conditions may not be met, which means that these pledges may not be realized."

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The UK has already indicated its share of this total will come from the foreign aid budget, meaning poor countries will actually not get any more cash than they do at present.
The report suggested there was little chance the world would not see 2C of warming at some point.
"The main concern is not when the 2C target will be exceeded, but the impacts of climate change resulting from such an increase in global temperature," it said.
"Weather-related events due to climate change have doubled in number since 1990.
"An increase in global average temperature of 2C within the next couple of decades implies an additional doubling in the number of these events.
"As the number of weather-related events due to climate change continues to rise, their impact on water resources, food production, human health, services and infrastructure in urban and rural areas, among other sectors, will be more frequent and intense.
"Some of the impacts of climate change may be beneficial, while most will not, negatively impacting lives and livelihoods everywhere."

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But there was "still time to slow down the current path towards the 2C target", the report stressed.
The experts called for drastic changes to the way the world produces and uses energy with a switch to electric cars among steps that should be taken quickly.
They also said carbon capture-and-storage (CCS) of emissions from fossil fuel power stations and industrial plants could be part of the solution if the system could be made to work.
Deforestation should be reduced and more trees – which absorb carbon from the atmosphere as they grow – should be planted.
But humanity should also take steps to deal with the "unavoidable" adverse effects of climate change that are already in the pipeline.

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Professor James McCarthy, an oceanographer at Harvard University and one of the report's authors, said: "Climate change is already causing harm. Although implementation of the Paris Agreement will slow the rate of change, we will still need widespread adaptation to reduce its risks.
"It is important that appropriate adaptation measures be planned and implemented with sensitivity to specific regional context."
Mark Lynas, in his award-winning book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, laid out just what will happen as the world's average temperature increases.
He described the report's findings as "extremely worrying".
"If we hit 2C by 2050 then we will be well on the way to a really terrifying 3C-plus scenario by the end of the century," Mr Lynas said.
"The world's ice-caps will be in full-scale meltdown, and large areas of what are now breadbaskets could become deserts, threatening serious global food shortages.
"We would likely lose all the tropical coral reefs, combined with a devastating mass extinction of plants and animals more widely.
"And we would be condemning our children and grandchildren to multi-metre sea level rise, and the eventual evacuation of major coastal cities."

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Investors Threaten Car Industry On Climate

Climate News Network - Terry Macalister

Car manufacturers warned they must address climate change by switching to low-emission models − or face a sell-off of their shares.

Low-carbon vehicles such as Tesla’s pump in electric instead of petrol. Image: Windell Oskay via Flickr

Major investors have warned the automotive industry it needs to accelerate its readiness for a low-carbon world if it is to retain their support and prosper.
Vehicle makers must put climate change specialists on their boards, engage better with policy-makers, and invest more heavily in low-emission cars, says a network of 250 global investors with assets of more than $24trillion.
The demands come in a new report, Investor Expectations of Automotive Companies, published this week by the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC).
“Long-term investors want to ensure that automotive companies are prepared for the challenges stemming from climate change, new technologies, changing policies and shifts in demand caused by global trends,” says Dr Hans-Christoph Hirt, co-head of investment house Hermes EOS, a member of the IGCC.
“Investors expect the industry to embark upon a smoother route to future prosperity by developing and implementing long-term business strategies that are resilient to climate change and resulting regulatory shifts.”

Sustainable returns
Chris Davis, senior programme director of the Ceres Investor Network on Climate Risk, agrees. “A growing number of institutional investors recognise that climate change will impact their holdings, portfolios, and asset values in the short and long-term,” he says.
“To achieve sustainable returns for clients and beneficiaries, investors in the automotive sector must engage to ensure companies are prepared to thrive in a carbon-constrained environment and support robust policy action sufficient to drive the transition to clean vehicles.”
The traditional car industry has gradually been increasing its output of pure electric and hybrid diesel/electric models, but in small numbers. It has failed to shrug off its image as a foot-dragger in the fight against climate change – similar to the way most big oil companies are seen.

“Investors in the automotive sector must engage to ensure companies are prepared to thrive in a carbon-constrained environment”

The recent Volkswagen emissions scandal, in which the German car manufacturer used “cheat devices” that underplayed pollution on its cars, has further tarnished the industry’s image over the last 12 months. And critics have long claimed that few vehicles live up to the fuel consumption levels claimed of them.
Making sure the industry has “closed the gap between real world and emissions testing” is highlighted by the IIGCC as one of the key issue that must be fixed.
But the finance houses also want car and truck makers to set more meaningful targets and metrics to reduce greenhouse gases in their own supply chain. And car companies need to engage more meaningfully with international policy-makers and their own investors on climate change.
Big investors point out that large car companies face serious threats inside their own sector from innovators such as the California-based automaker Tesla, evangelists for climate change and producers of low-carbon electric vehicles.

Climate agreement
And the finance houses say the move towards driverless vehicles, being pioneered by the likes of Google, poses a threat of even more severe potential new competition for the traditional car firms.
Last year’s Paris climate change agreement has increased the urgency for the big manufacturers such as Ford, VW and Toyota to move more quickly, the report warns.
They point to a recent study by the Moody’s credit agency that highlighted the potential dangers of tighter regulations for vehicles.
And the new IIGCC report warns that the automotive industry is already exposed to “a plethora of CO₂ and pollutant emission reduction targets in all major markets”.
It says that tougher vehicle standards have already been implemented or are on their way in Australia, Brazil, China and India, as well as the US and Europe.
And it stresses that governments are increasingly incentivising the use of electric vehicles in countries such as Norway and Holland.

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Global Sea Levels Are Rising Fast, So Where Does That Leave The Cities Most At Risk?

The Guardian - Amy Lieberman

The severe risk of climate change and rising sea levels on urban areas has not been addressed in the UN’s proposed New Urban Agenda, so flood-risk cities will have to learn from each another and share solutions

New reports suggest nearly 1.9 million US homes could be under water by the end of the century. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Current projections of global average sea level rise are now expected to double by 2100, which would be severely damaging – if not disastrous – for many of the world’s coastal cities, from Ho Chi Minh City and Mumbai to New Orleans and Miami.
Yet the upcoming United Nations conference on sustainable urban development, Habitat III, is unlikely to create the international platform needed to tackle such a global threat, according to Dan Lewis, head of UN Habitat’s urban risk reduction unit.
“The communication of risk is something that most UN member states are not prepared to openly discuss, unless they happen to be Tuvalu or the Maldives or other South Pacific or Caribbean islands,” Lewis told the Guardian.
“Massive [climate-induced] displacement is a big problem that a lot of member states have dressed up as other kinds of issues. But when it comes to the real nuts and bolts of ‘how do you accommodate 100,000 people from Kiribati in the next decade or so?’, I don’t think we are going to see much of an expression emerging about the practical aspects of a major situation like that.”

The 20 world cities with the highest number of people at risk from flooding, accounting for future climate and socioeconomic change. Source: OECD CLICK FOR LARGE VIEW

Sea level rise – along with flooding, storms, heatwaves and other effects of climate change – receives only one (admittedly lengthy) mention in the 175-point New Urban Agenda which member states are due to adopt at Habitat III in Quito, Ecuador:

“We also recognise that urban centres worldwide, especially in developing countries, often have characteristics that make them and their inhabitants especially vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change and other natural and man-made hazards, including earthquakes, extreme weather events, flooding, subsidence, storms including dust and sand storms, heatwaves, water scarcity, droughts, water and air pollution, vector borne diseases, and sea level rise particularly affecting coastal areas, delta regions and small-island developing States, among others.”

There are no direct references to climate-forced displacement nor potential remedies, Lewis notes. Yet he says there are an estimated 12 million people displaced worldwide because of climate events.
The conference, which starts on 17 October, will also include announcements of specific commitments, such as helping local Florida authorities address sea level rise in low-lying, low-income areas.

More than 1,800 people were killed after Hurricane Katrina hit the US in 2005. Photograph: Vincent Laforet/Pool/EPA

Of course, several factors that climate scientists are still working to understand – such as the fragility and likely collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet – mean questions about exactly how fast sea levels will rise, and where the effects will be most severe, must be left open.
While the New Urban Agenda is a global, non-binding plan that aims to promote socially and environmentally sustainable cities, Lewis says the best option for many flood-risk cities looking to take action is to develop independent partnerships and networks to learn from each other – adding that this is the “cheapest and most effective way of doing work”.
For example, the Netherlands embassy in Washington DC consults and collaborates with a number of vulnerable US cities, including Norfolk, Virginia, and New Orleans, Louisiana. According to Dale Morris, a senior economist at the embassy, some of the shared ideas follow the principle of adapting to living with water, not keeping it out. (About a third of the Netherlands is below sea level, with another third presently at sea level.)
UN Habitat is gearing up to connect 20 cities, including St Petersburg and Beirut, through a “city resilience” programme that provides direct technical assistance to measure cities’ resilience and training.

Dutch experts are advising the US city of Norfolk on how to prepare for the dangerous effects of climate change. Photograph: Bill Tiernan/AP

“There is a lot of work cities are already doing together that is going to get showcased [in Quito],” Lewis says. “There is a lot of sharing going on around specific hazards cities are facing, and there has been a kind of explosion around awareness in activities. Instead of older, historic approaches like creating levees, it will be positive to see how cities have progressed, and are adapting.”
Of 533 cities, 89% recognise climate change as a significant risk, according to a recent report. But just 210 of 490 surveyed cities report an active climate adaptation plan.
Individual city plans to mitigate the impacts of flooding and storm surge are often extremely expensive. They are also developed for fairly short-term timeframes – for example, in the case of Miami and its neighbouring cities – and without the support of the state or federal government.
C40, a 10-year-old network of the world’s largest cities working to address climate change, provides an outlet to share both innovative solutions and the particular challenges facing the world’s poorer cities.
“It’s very hard for poor cities to handle this, by and large,” says Seth Schultz, director of research and planning at C40’s New York office. “Many of them don’t have plans, and it is also just a question of the hazards they are facing in the short and long term.”
“If we come in at the high end of the [sea level rise] projections, there will be many cities whose persistence will be difficult to imagine,” says Ben Strauss, director of Climate Central, a New Jersey-based independent organisation of scientists and journalists. “New Orleans can build levees higher and higher – but then they are just pearls on a necklace at some point, and everything around it could become water.”
Projections of global sea level rise by 2100 range from 0.2 metres to 2.0 metres (0.66 to 6.6 feet). Strauss co-authored a recent study (working with projections of 2 to 7 feet during this time period, and 3 feet as a reasonable global average estimate for some areas) which found that even a sudden elimination of CO2 emissions would still leave 30 million Americans below the ocean’s high-tide line by the end of the century.

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