These 'Missing Charts' May Change The Way You Think About Fossil Fuel Addiction

National Observer - Barry Saxifrage

We're still burning more and more fossil fuel every year, says climate reporter Barry Saxifrage. File photo by Kris Krug

To address the twin threats of climate change and ocean acidification, nearly every nation has promised to reduce fossil fuel burning.
But so far, humanity keeps burning ever more. Last year we did it again, burning an all-time record amount.
That's according to data compiled from the latest "BP Statistical Review of World Energy." This annual report is one of the most widely used and referenced around the world. It's big and comprehensive with fifty pages, thirty-three spreadsheets and forty charts. The report highlights most of the important trends in global energy. Most. But one critical trend was nowhere to be found....
Conspicuously absent was the basic statistic on fossil fuels that I, as a climate reporter, was looking for: how much fuel is the world burning each year? Such a simple question, and the answer tells one of the most important stories in the world: are we finally turning the corner on our fossil fuel dependency?
To find that missing story, I needed to download and combine multiple BP data sheets, do the math, and then build my own charts to reveal the trends. Here (drumroll, please) are the "missing charts" and what they have to say to us…

The missing charts: how much carbon-polluting fuel is humanity burning?
I built three charts using the compiled BP fossil fuel data. This first chart shows the total energy consumed from burning fossil fuels each year.
As you can see, the amount we burn continues to rise. Last year humanity set another fossil fuel energy record of 11.4 billion tonnes of oil equivalent (Gtoe). A decade ago we were at 10 Gtoe of energy. In 2000, we were at 8 Gtoe.
There is certainly no sign in this chart of a turning point in our relationship to fossil fuels.
My next chart uses the same BP data, but this time shows the annual increase from year to year:
In 25 of the last 26 years, we burned more fossil fuels than the year before.
The only year in the last quarter century with a decrease was 2009. That was caused by a sharp global recession. And within a year, that rare respite was wiped out by a massive surge that followed.
Sadly, there is no sign of a turning point in this chart either.
Take last year for example. The increase wasn't particularly large, but it wasn't particularly small either. In fact, it was right in line with the 1990s average. And the nineties certainly weren't anyone's idea of a retreat from burning fossil fuels. Nor were they a turning point in our fight against climate change or ocean acidification. The 1990s were business-as-usual.
Finally, here's a third view of the same BP data. This one illustrates fossil fuels' share of all global energy. Turning point?
What this chart says to me is that fossil fuels continue to absolutely dominate global energy consumption. Even a quarter century of global efforts to transition to safer energy sources was unable to make any meaningful dent in the dominance of fossil fuels.
Together, these three "missing" charts of BP's fossil fuel data — ever rising amounts; increasing every year; and maintaining uncontested dominance — paint a sobering picture of humanity's lackluster response to the growing threat.
As California Governor Jerry Brown lamented in a recent New York Times interview: "No nation or state is doing what they should be doing. This is damn serious, and most people are taking it far too lightly than the reality of the threat. You can't do too much to sound the alarm because so far the response is not adequate to the challenge."
Those three missing charts illustrate our inadequate response quite clearly. Perhaps that is why BP (an oil & gas company after all) left them out of their report.

Oil, gas and coal: the last five years
I started digging into the BP data because I've read a fair number of articles proclaiming that a fundamental shift in fossil fuel use is underway, and I wanted to see it for myself. Unable to find any sign of it in the aggregated fossil fuel data shown above, I decided to drill down into oil, gas and coal separately.
If we really are at a turning point in our use of fossil fuels then we should be able to find some sign of it in BP's oil, gas and coal data for last five years. So, let's take a look at each of those.
I'll start with the biggest of all: oil.

Fossil oil dependency rockets upwards
This chart shows the increase in global energy use over the last five years. Renewables are tin green and oil is in black.
Notice any turning point?
To make matters worse from a climate perspective, an analysis by ARC Energy Institute shows that the oil-efficiency of the global economy has also been getting significantly worse in recent years. In other words, humanity has reversed course and is now burning more oil per dollar of GDP with each passing year.
They conclude: "Headlines around electric cars and carbon policy suggest our oil dependency is on a slippery downward slope. Recent data from 2016 suggests the opposite: our worldwide addiction is getting stronger."
With no sign yet of a turning point in oil burning, let's look at fossil gas.

Surging fossil gas is locking in climate failure
I added natural gas to my chart and...ouch. It seems that the recent increase in natural gas burning has nearly matched oil's blistering pace.
Indeed, we have increased use of fossil gas far more than we have for the climate hope twins — wind and solar — combined.
As Bloomberg New Energy Finance sums it up, the "outlook on natural gas is brighter than ever." BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and the International Energy Agency (IEA) have all published reports that agree. Each one projects fossil gas consumption will keep growing far into our future.
That's certainly bad news for our destabilized climate and oceans. The title of a new report from Climate Action Tracker highlights the risk: "Foot off the gas: increased reliance on natural gas in the power sector risks an emissions lock-in."
Their analysis shows that surging investment in fossil gas infrastructure and production is enough to ensure failure for the Paris Agreement on climate change.
With oil and gas use sprinting rapidly towards climate failure, let's turn to our attention to the remaining fossil fuel: coal.

At least coal is falling. Or is it?
Adding BP's coal data to the chart finally gives us a glimmer of climate hope in the bad news. It looks like coal burning has declined in the last few years.
Or has it? Could those coal numbers be wrong?
Sadly, the more I drilled into them, the more likely it seems that the numbers are under-reporting what's really being burned.
Here are four maddeningly compelling reasons to be skeptical of a coal downturn:

1. Data: Our atmosphere shows no sign of it.
2. History: China has huge under-reporting problems.
3. Human nature: Growing pressure to under-report and no way to catch it.
4. Money: New coal plant construction is booming worldwide.

Let's look at each in turn.

Reason #1: Our atmosphere shows no sign of it
BP says that the reported decline in coal burning means that global CO2 emissions have stopped rising. If so, then someone forgot to tell our atmosphere about it.
Instead, CO2 levels in the air have been surging upwards at record-breaking rates.
Here's a chart showing the CO2 increase each year since 1960. Those two tallest orange bars on the right show that CO2 rose by all-time record amounts in each of the last two years.
(See related article: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards, smashing records)
Not only is there is no sign of a turning point in our atmosphere, but CO2 levels are actually accelerating upwards. My next chart shows this clearly:
Scientists are able to measure the levels of CO2 in our atmosphere very accurately. Atmospheric CO2 data doesn't rely on unverifiable, self-interested, reports from industries and nations — like BP's coal statistics do.
Now, it could be that the huge mismatch between our atmosphere and the claims of coal burners is the result of nature behaving in some new way we don't understand.
On the other hand, it could be the result of humans acting in familiar ways that we do understand: by under-reporting.

Reason #2: China's problem with under-reporting emissions
China burns half the world's coal. And China also struggles to accurately measure and report its emissions.
How inaccurate are China's numbers?
The New York Times recently reported that China's "pollution and energy data can be unreliable or outright fake."
Widespread accounting problems have become a major issue threatening the roll out of China's new national carbon market. In other words, they don't trust their energy accounting enough to rely on it themselves.
An eye-watering example of one of China's past accounting errors happened just a few years ago. The government revised its 2013 coal estimates upwards by 600 million tonnes per year. Yeah, that's a lot.
To put that into perspective, I've added this amount to my chart as a red arrow. As you can see, it's double the entire reported global coal decline from the last three years.
Oh, and before that 2013 revision, China had another gigantic one.
A decade earlier, another big error in China's coal reporting "created an erroneous impression that China had succeeded in generating economic growth without increasing emissions." Instead, their coal data was under-reported.
So, are China's more recent coal estimates also too low? Unfortunately it will be a few more years before we find out because China only reports revisions every five years.
If their numbers are off by a sizable amount again, it could instantly erase the supposed global "downturn" in coal. That would bring reported global fossil fuel emissions more in line with what scientists are measuring in our atmosphere.
China is certainly not the only nation with inaccurate coal numbers. India and others struggle with this too. Partly it is caused by developing nations' lack of resources. Partly it is caused by the growing pressure to under-report the numbers, as we will see next.…

Reason #3: Growing pressure to under-report and no way to catch it
As the impacts of climate change and air pollution continue to grow worse, pressure is growing on foot-dragging governments and industries to fudge their numbers so they appear to be acting more vigorously than they really are.
This is true around the world, not just in China. For example, the metastasizing Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal revealed a widespread, intentional effort to under-report emissions on a global scale. And that cheating occurred in a highly-regulated industry with required verification tests.
Caixin reports on another recent example from China: "Recent Environmental Ministry inspections found that one-third of manufacturers in northern China had tampered with emissions data to avoid heavy penalties." There is now a "cottage industry" to help fake the numbers. That cheating also took place in a regulated industry that required verification tests.
Now consider coal burning. Pressure is growing to cut back because of toxic air pollution, the Paris Agreement promises, worsening climate change and the emerging ocean acidification crisis. Also consider that, unlike those other examples of cheating, there is no way to verify coal burning claims.
Scientific American warns that the "world needs a way to verify that nations have made their promised carbon cuts … The current inability to verify that a nation has made its promised carbon cuts remains a long-standing loophole that experts say must be closed to make the global pact (Paris Agreement) effective."
The New York Times reported on verification in China: "Like some other nations, China, the world's biggest polluter, has refused to accept international monitoring of its emissions and says it will provide data to outside observers. In the past, conflicting data about the country's energy use has raised questions about accuracy...Furthermore, there are persistent differences between coal consumption statistics reported on the provincial and national levels."
Widespread emissions cheating is occurring even in highly regulated areas with mandatory verification testing. It is even more tempting to under-report coal burning numbers because they are mostly self-reported and there is no way for others to disprove the claims.

Reason #4: The global boom in new coal plants
A final reason to be skeptical of a coal downturn is the boom in coal plant construction worldwide.
If humanity is really at a turning point for coal then why are investors pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into increasing global coal power capacity by 43 per cent?
That depressing statistic comes from the coal-tracking database compiled by the German group, urgewald. A recent article in The New York Times makes for sobering reading and leaves little doubt about the scale and breadth of the ongoing coal expansion. This global coal boom is being led by Chinese companies, but they aren't limiting their efforts to China. Nations with no history of coal burning are about to join the club for the first time.
This mismatch between climate promises to reduce fossil fuels and the financing being injected into fossil fuels is happening all around the world.
A new joint report led by Oil Change International, "Talk is Cheap: How G20 Governments Are Financing Climate Disaster," adds it all up. "Of all public finance for energy provided by G20 institutions and the multilateral development banks between 2013 and 2015...58 percent supported fossil fuel production."
I created this chart from that report's data. It shows the top four nations in public financing of fossil fuels between 2013 and 2015.
Every one of them poured far more money into fossil fuels than into all other energy sources combined.
And just look at China. A whopping 90 per cent of government energy spending went to fossil fuels. The "Talk is Cheap" report says China spent more on coal than on all non-fossil energy sources combined. Downturn?
Even under former U.S. president Barack Obama, a major proponent of climate action, the United States spent more public money on fossil fuels than on all alternatives combined.

Fossil fuels vs climate hope
It's hard for me to see any sign of good news for our future climate or oceans in BP's latest energy data. There is no sign of a turning point in our dependence on fossil fuels. Here again is the first of the "missing charts" that shows so clearly our ever-upward demand for fossil fuels.
Even at the relative level, the burning of fossil fuels continues to overwhelmingly dominate global energy consumption. Decades of efforts to shift to safer sources have barely dented fossil fuels' share, which continues to float north of 85 per cent.
When we drill down to recent trends in oil and gas it's even more discouraging. The burning of both those fossil carbon fuels continues to surge dizzyingly upwards, out-running the safer alternatives. Reports show that these twin surges threaten to "lock in" global climate failure.
The one possible point of hope for our climate and oceans is in the data on recent coal burning. But this data is the most likely to be under-reported. Coal burning has been spectacularly under-reported in the past. Repeatedly. And now, as pressure grows, more and more nations and industries stand to benefit by under-reporting. They face little chance of being caught if they do. That's because the world lacks any way to verify much of the global coal reporting.
Meanwhile, construction of coal plants continues to boom around the globe and CO2 levels in our atmosphere continue to accelerate upwards.
If we want hospitable climate and oceans, the fossil fuel data suggests that our efforts so far are far too little. In the words of California Governor Jerry Brown, "You can't do too much to sound the alarm because so far the response is not adequate to the challenge."

Links

• Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards, smashing records
• Here's how Europe ranks in the race against climate change
• Is big oil committing fraud to stay in business?
• Canadian cars turning electric without government forcing the issue: industry

As Beijing Joins Climate Fight, Chinese Companies Build Coal Plants

New York Times -  Hiroko Tabuchi

Workers at a construction site at the Sahiwal coal power plant, owned by China’s state-owned Huaneng Shandong Ruyi Group, in Pakistan. The country’s coal capacity is set to grow 15,300 megawatts from 190. Credit Asad Zaidi/Bloomberg 

When China halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants this year, even as President Trump vowed to “bring back coal” in America, the contrast seemed to confirm Beijing’s new role as a leader in the fight against climate change.

But new data on the world’s biggest developers of coal-fired power plants paints a very different picture: China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.

These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries.

Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.

The fleet of new coal plants would make it virtually impossible to meet the goals set in the Paris climate accord, which aims to keep the increase in global temperatures from preindustrial levels below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Electricity generated from fossil fuels like coal is the biggest single contributor globally to the rise in carbon emissions, which scientists agree is causing the Earth’s temperatures to rise.

“Even today, new countries are being brought into the cycle of coal dependency,” said Heffa Schücking, the director of Urgewald.

The United States may also be back in the game. On Thursday, Mr. Trump said he wanted to lift Obama-era restrictions on American financing for overseas coal projects as part of an energy policy focused on exports.

“We have nearly 100 years’ worth of natural gas and more than 250 years’ worth of clean, beautiful coal,” he said. “We will be dominant. We will export American energy all over the world, all around the globe.”

The frenzied addition of coal plants underscores how the world is set to remain dependent on coal for decades, despite fast growth in renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power.

In China, concerns over smog and climate change have prompted a move toward renewables, as have slowing economic growth and a gradual shift in the Chinese economy away from heavy manufacturing and toward consumer industries. The addition of domestic capacity, though large on paper, does not mean there will be growth in coal consumption. The current coal plants are operating far below capacity because demand for coal-generated power has slowed considerably.

But overseas, the Chinese are playing a different game.

Shanghai Electric Group, one of the country’s largest electrical equipment makers, has announced plans to build coal power plants in Egypt, Pakistan and Iran with a total capacity of 6,285 megawatts — almost 10 times the 660 megawatts of coal power it has planned in China.

The China Energy Engineering Corporation, which has no public plans to develop coal power in China, is building 2,200 megawatts’ worth of coal-fired power capacity in Vietnam and Malawi. Neither company responded to requests for comment.

Of the world’s 20 biggest coal plant developers, 11 are Chinese, according to a database published by Urgewald.

Over all, Chinese companies are behind 340,000 to 386,000 megawatts of planned coal power expansion worldwide, Urgewald estimated. A typical coal plant has a capacity of about 500 megawatts and burns 1.4 million tons of coal each year, enough to power almost 300,000 homes.

Kevin P. Gallagher, a professor of global development policy at Boston University and an expert in Chinese energy investment overseas, said a strong infrastructure demand in developing countries and a sharp fall in coal financing by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank had opened up the field for Chinese involvement.

“In China, you have lots of very competitive and politically influential companies — but all of a sudden there’s no demand,” Professor Gallagher said, referring to China’s slowing economic growth. “So China is helping these companies go overseas to help make the adjustment at home less painful.”

Much of China’s overseas push has come under a state initiative called “One Belt, One Road,” announced in 2013, which calls for up to $900 billion in infrastructure investments overseas, including high-speed railroads, ports, gas pipelines and power plants.

China’s two global policy banks, the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China, have already provided more than $43 billion in overseas coal financing since 2000, according to a separate database of Chinese energy investments published this year by Boston University.

Some of the countries targeted for coal-power expansion, like Egypt or Pakistan, currently burn almost no coal, and the new coal plants could set the course of their national energy policies for decades, environmentalists warn.

In Egypt, coal projects by Shanghai Electric and other global developers are set to bring the country’s coal-fired capacity to 17,000 megawatts, from near zero, according to the Urgewald database.

Pakistan’s coal capacity is set to grow to 15,300 megawatts from 190. In Malawi, planned coal projects would bring its coal-fired capacity to 3,500 megawatts from zero.

Chinese companies are not the only drivers of the global coal expansion.

The world’s single largest coal-plant developer is India’s National Thermal Power Corporation, which plans to build more than 38,000 megawatts of new coal capacity in India and Bangladesh. The corporation did not respond to an email query.

The AES Corporation, based in Arlington, Va., is building coal plants in India and the Philippines with a combined capacity of 1,700 megawatts. Amy Ackerman, a spokeswoman for the company, said it was shifting its focus to renewables and natural gas, and had no plans to build coal plants after its India and Philippines projects.

Japan’s Marubeni Corporation is involved in joint ventures for a combined 5,500 megawatts of new coal generation in Myanmar, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia, according to the database. Japan is also adding to its coal-fired capacity at home, to make up for an energy shortfall in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. A Marubeni spokesman confirmed projects in the four countries.

Western investors also continue to play a role in financing new coal plants overseas. Bonds and shares of the world’s biggest coal developers, like India’s National Thermal Power and Marubeni, are frequently found in the portfolios of large institutional investors and banks.

To be sure, countries like China and Japan are also big players in renewables. China is a major exporter of solar panels and wind turbines, and is leading the construction of the Quaid-e-Azam solar park in Pakistan, one of the world’s largest.

Chinese wind and solar companies are “among the leading renewables companies around the world and play a key role in the dramatic fall of wind and solar power prices,” said Alvin Lin, a Beijing-based climate and energy expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council. And President Xi Jinping of China and other top leaders there have been resolute in setting climate policy.

But China’s climate concerns have so far been driven by narrow concerns over local pollution, said Eric G. Gimon, a senior fellow at Energy Innovation, a research firm based in San Francisco.

“For now, those concerns seem not to extend elsewhere,” Mr. Gimon said.

Links

• How G.O.P. Leaders Came to View Climate Change as Fake Science
• Bucking Trump, These Cities, States and Companies Commit to Paris Accord
• Miles of Ice Collapsing Into the Sea
• Where Else Does the U.S. Have an Infrastructure Problem? Antarctica
• With More Ships in the Arctic, Fears of Disaster Rise
• Review: ‘An Inconvenient Sequel,’ With Al Gore Keeping the Pressure On
• Rome, City of Ancient Aqueducts, Faces Water Rationing
• Australia’s Greatest (Dying) Global Asset

Climate Change Will Force Mass Migration Of 1 Billion By 2100

Eco-Business - Via Agusta

Asia Pacific is the most vulnerable region to climate change, Bangladesh is the country most at risk, and poor people are to be hit the hardest, prompting migration on a massive scale, a sobering report by Asian Development Bank has found.

A temperature rise of 6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times is projected for some parts of Asia Pacific by 2100, which is expected to result in drastic changes in the region’s weather systems, agriculture, biodiversity, trade and urban development. Image: Asia Development Bank

Massive migration is foreseen all over the world by the end of the century, with the Asia-Pacific region identified as the most vulnerable if the current climate change scenario does not improve.
“Migration is happening all the time, but with unabated global warming … we’ll have to move over a billion [people],” said Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of climate science research institute Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in a press conference last Friday.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the PIK released a joint report called A Region at Risk: the Human Dimensions of Climate Change in Asia and the Pacific, which showed that the region faces severe consequences for the environment, economy and human living conditions as a result of climate change.
Professor Schellnhuber noted how a rich and well-organised country like his native Germany is able to take in more than a million refugees in a year at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis. However, less developed countries in Asia may not be as ready and may lack the same capacity to take in large influxes of migrants fleeing the effects of climate change.

Coastal and land areas most vulnerable to climate change. Image: ADB

According to the report, a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times is projected for some parts of Asia and the Pacific by the year 2100. Such increases in temperature will lead to drastic changes in the region’s weather systems, agriculture and fisheries, biodiversity, trade and urban development.
Large temperature increases are the likely result of a reliance on fossil fuels - which continue to dominate the region’s energy mix - and extreme heat events that typically happen once in hundreds or millions of years will become a daily, year-round occurence, with more pronounced effects in the tropics, the report predicted.
A summer heat wave known as a 3-sigma event that happens once in 740 years, and an event stronger 5-sigma event that occurs once in 3 million years, could become commonplace in tropical countries such as those of Southeast Asia by the late 21st century.
The living conditions that result in the tropics would make it almost impossible for people to live outside, prompting migration on a massive scale.
The following six Asia-Pacific territories are the most susceptible to climate change-related migration: Bangladesh, which has the world’s largest delta, the Philippines archipelago, China, which suffers from droughts, the Mekong Delta, which faces a serious food security issue, the flood-prone Indus Delta, and small island states like Tuvalu, Maldives and Fiji.

Climate impacts and possible migration routes in China. Image: ADB

Another side-effect of climate change for Asia is likely to be severe economic damage.
Despite the region’s unprecedented economic growth in recent years, Asia Pacific is home to two-thirds of the world’s poor, according to ADB vice-president for knowledge management, Bambang Susantono.
Climate change will significantly impact agriculture, a sector on which the majority of the region’s poor depend.
“In South Asia, food shortages induced by climate change could increase the number of malnourished children by 7 million by 2050,” Susantono noted.

Child deaths attributable to climate change by 2030 and 2050. Image: ADB

The poor living in coastal areas also depend on marine ecosystems for their livelihoods, and these ecosystems are seriously threatened by climate change.
Many of Asia’s urban poor live in low-lying coastal areas that ar emost exposed to floods and storm surges.
Schellnhuber demanded urgent action for Asia to contribute to the fight against climate change.
“Asia is now the economic powerhouse of the world, but the values are being generated using the old conventional model of industrialisation,” he said.
“Asia needs to leapfrog Europe and US, particularly in the energy sector. When we look at expected growth, it will all come from Asia. If Asia can turn the tide, the region will make a major contribution to the survival of our civilisation,” Schellnhuber said.
He highlighted steps the region needed to take to combat climate change.
Asia should switch to renewable energy, introducing more solar infrastructure as it is scalable and can be applied and deployed anywhere.
He urged for a shift to the use of conventional materials like clay or wood in construction as an alternative to concrete or steel, as this is less carbon intensive.
Third, transport needed to be powered using hydrogen instead of gasoline.
Finally, cities need to integrate climate adaption and mitigation in urban planning to reduce emissions and improve the quality of life in cities.
Meanwhile, Susantono reiterated the ADB’s commitment to abate the issue. The bank is pledging to double its climate financing to US$6 billion annually until 2020, with US$2 billion for mitigation and US$4 billion for adaption.
This money will be spent on energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable transport, urban development, as well as agriculture and infrastructure.

Links

• Asia faces disaster from soaring temperatures if climate change unchecked - scientists
• Geo-engineers propose climate compromise
• Indian builders pledge "green" homes in race to meet climate goals
• Politics could short-circuit Australia's clean energy future
• In-depth: The challenge of using biofuels to cut transport emissions
• Asian temperatures could rise disastrously
• What's the sustainability story inside our food?
• Wastewater for India’s coal plants an impractical dream
• World’s young face $535 trillion bill for climate
• The SME's guide to benefitting from sustainability
• Sri Lanka struggles to adapt as disasters become a new "normal"

An Appeals Court Just Pressed Pause On The Much-Watched Youth Climate Lawsuit Against Trump

Washington Post - Chelsea Harvey

The Trump administration has filed a petition that calls for an appeals court to step in and independently review a decision made by a federal judge last year to allow a climate lawsuit to move to trial. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

A landmark climate change lawsuit, brought against the federal government by 21 children, has encountered yet another hurdle on its way to trial. A higher court has just stepped in and ordered a temporary stay on the proceedings while it considers an unusual petition from the Trump administration that could prevent from the case from moving forward at all.
The petition, filed last month by the Justice Department with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, requests a rarely invoked legal procedure known as a writ of mandamus, which allows higher courts to independently review — and potentially overturn — decisions made by lower courts before they have even held a trial. In this case, the petition calls for the appeals court to step in and independently review a decision made by a federal judge last year to allow the climate lawsuit to move to trial. The Trump administration has also requested a stay on the lawsuit’s proceedings until the 9th Circuit makes a decision on its petition.
On Tuesday, the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ordered a temporary stay until it can make a decision on whether to consider the Trump administration’s requests. According to Julia Olson, chief counsel for the plaintiffs and director of advocacy organization Our Children’s Trust, the 9th Circuit has not actually honored any of the Justice Department’s motions yet. The stay, she said, was enacted “on the court’s own initiative,” and the order notes that “the petition for a writ of mandamus and all other pending motions will be addressed by separate order.”
The Justice Department declined to comment on the new development in the case.
The order comes just three weeks after U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin set an official trial date of Feb. 5 for the case. Should the lawsuit get to that point, the plaintiffs — 21 youths now between the ages of 9 and 21 — will argue that the federal government has violated their constitutional rights by promoting the production of greenhouse gases through the use of fossil fuels and damaging the climate system. The case was initially filed during the Obama administration and has since been inherited by President Trump.
But the federal government has been steadily working to stop the case from progressing. The petition for a writ of mandamus is the latest of several measures taken by the Justice Department, including a motion under the Obama administration to have the case dismissed, denied by a federal judge in November, and a subsequent motion under the Trump administration to have this ruling overturned, also denied.
The petition for writ of mandamus, widely considered the “Hail Mary” of legal procedures, is the last measure that could potentially stop the case from going to trial. The request is an “extraordinary” move, according to James May, a law professor and chief sustainability officer at Widener University who is not involved with the lawsuit, and even considering it would be an unusual decision on the part of the 9th Circuit.
In fact, ordering a stay on the lawsuit’s proceedings is a rare move in and of itself, he said. Courts of appeal typically don’t get involved in lower courts’ affairs until the proceedings have progressed to trial, or at least “to a point where there’s something to review,” he told The Washington Post. While he noted that it’s impossible to predict what the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit will decide to do next, he added that he doesn’t feel the order is a “positive development” for the plaintiffs.
But Olson remains optimistic.
“I don’t think it’s a setback at all,” she said. “And all it means is that they are preparing an order on the Department of Justice’s request for the court to take up this writ of mandamus and motion for a stay. The court has a duty to consider these motions and decide them, and that’s what it’s doing right now.”
And May added that “given the novelty and importance of the claims, it’s possible — but unlikely — that the 9th Circuit needs more time and wants the lower court to take a breath and not do anything that is irreversible in the meantime.”

Links

• These 21 Kids Taking On Trump Could Be Our Best Hope For Climate Action
• Kids Suing Trump Over Climate Change Get A Boost From Grandpa
• A Landmark Climate Lawsuit Against Trump Is Scheduled For Trial Next Year. Here’s What To Expect.
• Climate Kids To Get Their Day In Court Against The Trump Administration
• White House Effort To Stop Youth Climate Lawsuit Is 'Drastic And Extraordinary'

Does Doom And Gloom Convince Anyone About Climate Change?

Science News - Erika Engelhaupt

New York magazine article brings teachable moment on communicating climate change science

An apocalyptic message about climate change might motivate some people to act but make others feel hopeless, science communication experts say. draco-zlat/iStockphoto

A couple of weeks ago, an article in New York magazine laid out a horrific scenario of global warming. The photo at the top summed up the tone: A fossilized human skull, jaw gaping beneath aviator sunglasses, hovered over a caption warning that people could be "cooked to death from both inside and out" in a hotter climate.
If that's not doom and gloom, I don't know what is. Yet despite being a complete downer, the article quickly became New York magazine's most-read story ever.
The article also reignites a debate over how best to communicate the science of climate change. Scientists and others who hope to inform the public or spur action have long struggled with how to convey the high stakes of global warming without making people feel helpless or fueling deniers by coming across as alarmist.
"Certainly a lot of people paid attention to it, and it sparked a very good conversation about what we're up against," says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. But its message of impending doom can have very different effects on people, he notes. "There are different audiences in this country, and they're affected by extreme scenarios differently."
That became clear as soon as the article was published, when just about everyone with an opinion on climate change jumped on it. Scientists questioned its accuracy — we don't know that it will be that bad, many said. Breitbart News, aiming from the right, proclaimed that New York had "broken the world record for the scariest, most catastrophic, hysterical exercise in extravagant climate doom-mongering in the history of the universe."
Others suggested it was just the kick in the pants that America needs. In fact, Slate said, the article isn't too alarmist; the rest of us just haven't been alarmist enough.
The real question now, though, is what the article's impact will be, measured not only by how many people read it but, more importantly, by whether it will change anything. In 2015, when Kathryn Schulz wrote a chilling Pulitzer Prize‒winning article for the New Yorker about the inevitability of an earthquake destroying much of the Pacific Northwest, droves of people ran out to buy earthquake preparation kits.
But there's no preparation kit for climate change, and it seems unlikely that a news story will change U.S. policy on climate change. So it remains to be seen whether this article, or others that might copy its doom-and-gloom tack, might change any minds or spur the public to act.
But perhaps it holds a lesson for anyone who is concerned about climate change and doesn't know how to talk to friends and family who aren't.
First, it depends who you're talking to. Leiserowitz's research has shown that there are six Americas, on a scale from "dismissive" to "alarmed" about global warming. Those groups interpret the same information differently based on the community they identify with. For instance, those who think climate change is a hoax will probably continue to think so. People in the middle, who don't know much about the issue, might become more concerned by a vivid account of how bad things could get.
And those who are most concerned about climate change may accept a gloomy message as vindication of their views — but there's always the chance they might lose hope about fixing the problem, Leiserowitz says.
"And that's the critique some scientists have put forward," he says, "that it's not enough to just totally scare the bejesus out of people." Indeed, as a science journalist who has covered climate change, I can vouch that scientists and the media have been told over and over that the public will ignore a message that's too depressing. As paleoclimatologist Michael Mann of Penn State University said of the New York article, overstating the severity of climate change could feed a "paralyzing narrative of doom and hopelessness."
This concern about public paralysis came out of communication studies years ago, when most reporters were still focused on a relentless drumbeat of bad news, Leiserowitz says. "It's more complicated than that. We weren't saying every piece of journalism has to present solutions."
So maybe there's a place for a little gloominess in talking about climate change. "The scientists should just tell us what they know and not worry too much about whether there's too much gloom and doom in it," says Dan Kahan, a Yale law and psychology professor who leads the Cultural Cognition Project, studying public perceptions of risk.​
What's more, most people don't form their opinions based on the news they read, he says. "They get the memo from their communities." His work has shown that people's cultural identity, not their knowledge of science, drives their opinion on climate change.
"What we need isn't more evidence, but people seeing other people who they identify with acting on the basis of the evidence," he says.
So while it looks like there's an audience out there for gloomy words, ultimately it's actions that speak loudest of all.

Links

• The Uninhabitable Earth
• The Climate Change Scare Campaign Most Politicians Won't Go Near
• Climate Change Doomsday Warning Of 'Rolling Death Smog' And 'Perpetual War' Criticised By Scientists
• Earth Could Become 'Practically Ungovernable' If Sea Levels Keep Rising, Says Former NASA Climate Chief
• Backlash Against Doomsday Article That Predicts A Climate Change Induced Apocalypse
• 'The Models Are Too Conservative': Paleontologist Peter Ward on What Past Mass Extinctions Can Teach Us About Climate Change Today
• Climate Change Is Killing Us Right No
• The World May Have Less Time To Address Climate Change Than Scientists Thought

Paw Power: China Plans 100 Panda-Shaped Solar Plants On New Silk Road

Reuters

In a country with everything from chopsticks to slippers designed to look like pandas, one Chinese energy company is going a step further

An aerial view shows panda-shaped solar plants built by Panda Green Energy Group in Datong, Shanxi province, China in this still image taken from a video footage, courtesy of Panda Green Energy Group, shot July 21, 2017. Panda Green Energy Group/Handout via REUTERS

BEIJING/HONG KONG - In a country where you can find everything from chopsticks to slippers designed to look like pandas, one Chinese energy company is going a step further by building 100 solar farms shaped like the bears along the route of the ambitious Belt and Road initiative.
Panda Green Energy Group has already connected one such 50-megawatt (MW) plant to the grid in the northern province of Shanxi, the first step in a public relations stunt that emphasises the cuddly side of the world's No.2 economy.
Built with darker crystalline silicon and lighter-coloured thin film solar cells, the plant resembles a cartoon giant panda from the air.
"The plant required an investment of 350 million yuan ($52 million), and it would require investment of $3 billion for 100 such plants," Panda Green Energy's Chief Executive Li Yuan told Reuters.
Li did not say where the longer-term investment would come from.
The Hong Kong-based firm is currently in talks with Canada, Australia, Germany and Italy to launch more panda-shaped power stations.
The Belt and Road initiative is a plan to emulate the ancient Silk Road by opening new trade corridors across the globe using roads, power lines, ports and energy pipelines.
A 100-MW panda power plant would be expected to generate 3.2 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy over 25 years, according to the company, capable of supplying power to over 10,000 households annually.
Panda Green Energy is currently constructing its second panda power plant in Shanxi, which accounts for a quarter of China's coal reserves.
Utilisation of one panda solar power plant will save the equivalent of a total 1.06 million tonnes of coal and cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 2.74 million tonnes in 25 years, the company said.
The firm has been investing in and running solar power plants in China's major solar hubs such as Xinjiang and Qinghai province, as well as some solar projects in Britain.
Shanxi aims to install 12 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2020 versus 1.13 GW installed in 2015.

Links

• Scientists dim sunlight, suck up carbon dioxide to cool planet
• Doctor Gustavo Zuniga holds up an Antarctic plant that has molecules that filter the solar radiation and could be used to prevent human DNA damage in Santiago
• Caribbean life "as we know it" at serious risk - expert
• Scientists dim sunlight, suck up carbon dioxide to cool planet
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How Trade Policies Can Support Global Efforts To Curb Climate Change

The Conversation - Adrian Henry Macey

Eliminating trade barriers on green technologies could help countries to shift away from fossil fuels. From www.shutterstock.com, CC BY-ND

Climate change will have a big impact on the global economy as nations seek to adapt to a warmer world and adopt policies to keep global warming below two degrees. In the wake of the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, it is important that policies around trade and investment support national efforts to adapt to global warming while trying to curb it. Four issues stand out:

1. Border tax adjustments
Border tax adjustments, or BTAs, refer to import taxes on goods from countries where companies do not have to pay for their emissions.
This is highly controversial and problematic for practical reasons and difficult to reconcile with World Trade Organisation (WTO) compliance requirements. The arguments in favour rest on punishing free riders and protecting the competitiveness of national firms subject to climate change costs in their home country. Such taxes are also held up as a way of avoiding “carbon leakage” caused by production shifting to countries with more lax climate change policies.
The latter two arguments are similar to those that have been applied in the past to environmental protection regulations. The problem with them is that there is very poor empirical evidence for either competitiveness risk or for carbon leakage. They also rest on the assumption that combating climate change is always a net cost. This is being increasingly challenged.
The argument against BTAs centres on the potential of unilateral measures being used to coerce developing countries. The sensitivity of such measures is shown by the fact that, until very late in the negotiations of the Paris Agreement, developing countries insisted on including the following clause.
“Developed country parties shall not resort to any form of unilateral measures against goods and services from developing country parties on any grounds related to climate change.”

2. Trade liberalisation in climate-friendly goods and services
Eliminating trade barriers on solar panels and other green technologies could help countries to shift away from fossil fuels. This is fully within the scope of the WTO and indeed the mandate of the current Doha trade round. There are several work streams within the WTO covering this area, though progress is slow.

3.International carbon trading and offsets
The Kyoto Protocol includes several mechanisms (Clean Development Mechanism, Joint Implementation and Emissions Trading) that can be used by countries that have tabled a 2020 target (European countries and Australia).
International market mechanisms beyond 2020 have not yet been created under the Paris Agreement but its Article 6 foresees them. Such mechanisms are being developed bottom-up by groups of countries, which can make much faster progress than is possible within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
However, any new mechanisms are likely to be linked in some way to the UNFCCC. There is no coverage of carbon trading under the WTO at present and there appears to be no appetite for bringing it within WTO disciplines.

4. Compatibility of climate measures and trade rules
One fear is that WTO rules will have a chilling effect on climate change measures such as subsidies, technical regulations or bans on certain products. However, Article 3.5 of the UNFCCC (which applies to the Paris Agreement as it does to the earlier Kyoto Protocol) is clear.
It uses WTO language to state that “measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade”. The UNFCCC, like the WTO, acknowledges the legitimate purpose of climate measures, including that they may involve restrictions on trade.
There is ample and growing WTO jurisprudence on measures taken for environmental purposes which confirms their legitimacy in WTO law. The jurisprudence is not static; it evolves with international thinking as expressed in treaties and less formal agreements.
Helpfully the WTO Treaty (1994) included an objective relating to protection and preservation of the environment that went further than the earlier General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). This provision has already been used in interpretation by the highest WTO jurisdiction, the Appellate Body.

Conclusions
I expect that some carbon markets will develop amongst carbon clubs. Trading rules will be determined by those countries involved and will rest on the environmental integrity of the units traded.
Border tax adjustments (BTAs) are problematic. Some commentators have predicted a climate change trade war, arguing that countries are vulnerable if their climate measures are seen as inadequate.
This is now an improbable scenario. Any attempt to impose BTAs against countries which have signed up to the Paris Agreement would face enormous practical difficulties. It would also risk undoing the international consensus.
Transparency, peer review and naming and shaming of countries with inadequate pledges (Nationally Determined Contribution or NDCs), or countries that fail to implement an adequate one, may prove more effective than any of these unilateral measures. Evidence from the climate change negotiations is that countries do care about their reputation.
A further resource to encourage countries to act would be carbon clubs, where countries wanting to accelerate their transition to a low-carbon economy would link their climate measures through a common carbon price via their emissions trading schemes.
The threat of BTAs - clearly foreseen by major American companies after the Trump Administration’s decision to leave the Paris Agreement - may be a useful political lever to gain cooperation. But there are other ways of achieving similar ends.
One example is to require all goods, domestic or imported, to meet sustainability standards. This is potentially allowable under the WTO Technical Barriers to Trade agreement (TBT) as a type of processing and production method. But even if not, the existence of the Paris Agreement – a universal agreement with clear objectives and requirements on all parties to act on climate change – would be a useful reference in any dispute settlement proceedings.

Links

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• The UN is slowly warming to the task of protecting World Heritage sites from climate change
• Cities can jump-start climate progress by plugging in their vehicles

How The Climate Crisis Could Become A Food Crisis Overnight

Washington Post - Elizabeth Winkler

(Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News)

In the summer of 2010, Russia faced a severe drought, a heat wave and a series of catastrophic wildfires, destroying a third of the country's wheat harvest. Half a year later, the Arab Spring began.
The two are connected: The Middle East and North Africa, among the most food-insecure regions in the world, rely heavily on grain imports from the Black Sea, especially Russia, one of the world's largest wheat exporters. But the Russian government banned grain exports amid the dismal harvest, looking to protect its own food supply.
Sapped of a major supplier, countries across the two regions saw bread prices skyrocket. And while many other factors fueled the political unrest characterized as the Arab Spring, the high cost of food fueled the broad popular discontent that prompted a string of attempts to overthrow illiberal regimes — some successful, some violently suppressed.
The episode illustrated the fragile nature of the network the world uses to feed its approximately 7 billion people. Now a new report by Chatham House, a London-based think tank, details how climate change further threatens that network, as the type of extreme weather event that knocked out the Russian harvest becomes all the more common.
Global food security depends on trade in just four crops: maize, wheat, rice and soybeans. The first three account for 60 percent of the world's food energy intake. The fourth, soybeans, is the world's largest source of animal protein feed, making up 65 percent of global protein feed supply. Their production is concentrated in a handful of exporting countries, including the United States, Brazil and the Black Sea region, from which they are flowing at ever-greater volumes. Between 2000 and 2015, global food trade grew by 127 percent to 2.2 billion metric tons — and growth rates are projected to keep increasing.
But the movement of these crops hinges on just 14 "choke-point" junctures on transport routes through which exceptional volumes of trade pass.
Such choke points have been perilously overlooked, said Rob Bailey, research director for energy, environment and resources at Chatham House and co-author of the report.

The fate of wheat prices can have an effect on geopolitical tensions. Photo: Craig Abraham

Trouble ahead
Imagine the following frightening-yet-plausible scenario: What if the next time Russia's wheat harvest is devastated by drought, other major food producers are also facing struggles with severe weather and wrecked harvests? In the United States, that could mean a freak flood season that wipes out inland waterways or overwhelms coastal ports.
Brazil, the world's other heavy-hitter, accounts for 17 percent of global wheat, maize, rice and soybean exports. But its road network is crumbling. Extreme rainfall could knock out a major transport route. If this happened together with a U.S. flood and a Russian drought, there would be global food shortages, riots and political instability, starvation in areas that are heavily dependent on imports, and recessions everywhere else.
The Panama Canal, linking Western and Asian markets, is one of the most critical maritime choke points: Thirty-six percent of U.S. maize exports and 49 percent of U.S. soybean exports pass through it each year.
Another is the Turkish Straits, which connect Black Sea producers to global markets — including, critically, the Middle East. Seventy-seven percent of wheat exports from Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan pass through these waters.
Inland waterways, roads, and railways are critical too. Sixty percent of U.S. agricultural products make their way from farms to ports via the 12,000-mile Inland Marine Transportation System (IMTS), which comprises a network of rivers and tributaries. Similarly, 60 percent of Russian and Ukrainian wheat exports rely on the Black Sea rail network — a choke point that, along with its ports, the report calls the most volatile of the 14 choke points thanks to conflict with Crimea, diplomatic tensions over Syria and Yemen, and unstable trade relations with Europe.
Disruption at any of these choke points would mean trouble, but if several jammed at once, it could be disastrous.
Climate change makes such a scenario more likely. While it's difficult to connect any specific weather event to climate change, models suggest the shifting climate is making such events more common.
For the United States, the could mean a lot more episodes like the one in August 2012, when Hurricane Isaac closed ports and suspended barge traffic on parts of the Mississippi River.

A frightening cycle
Political instability can also cause choke point disruptions. In 2015 and 2016, tensions between Russia and Turkey fueled power plays in the Turkish Straits, and an attempted internal coup led to a temporary shutdown of the Bosporus.
And disruption of key arteries due to political instability can lead to a self-reinforcing cycle, as food shortages breed further instability. In the Middle East and North Africa, statistical analyses show that food security is a particularly high indicator of political stability. Over a third of grain imports for the region pass through a maritime choke point for which there is no alternate route. But the problem is widespread. The 2007-2008 global food crisis was accompanied by protests in 61 countries and riots in 23.
To make matters worse, chronic underinvestment in infrastructure has weakened critical networks. Extreme weather and increased trade flows put them at risk of failing. The McKinsey Global Institute places the world's infrastructure investment deficit — the gap between funding available and funding needed — at $250 billion a year through 2040. (The United States has one of the largest deficits among G-20 countries, according to Chatham House.) But even where there is infrastructure investment, governments often fail to factor in climate risks: A 2016 survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that, with very few exceptions, they are largely overlooked even in rich countries.
"It is a glide path to a perfect storm," said Bailey.
In fact, 13 of the 14 choke points have seen some form of temporary disruption or closure in the last 15 years, according to the report. (The only one that hasn't, the Strait of Gibraltar, may now come under pressure in Brexit negotiations.) This should prompt policymakers to prepare for worst-case scenarios. But as Bailey observed, "We're not very good at conceptualizing risks which we haven't yet experienced." The mentality is very different when it comes to the oil market, where past oil embargoes make the idea of a supply shock more tangible. "People obsess about choke points there," he said.
One solution is for countries to invest in individual emergency stores. But this risks creating an international "Hunger Games" — encouraging hoarding and scrambling behaviors in the event of a crisis and a death spiral of declining market confidence.
"What is needed is a coordinated international approach like you have in energy markets," Bailey said. In 1974, the International Energy Agency established emergency response mechanisms to minimize the risk of oil and gas disruptions. Governments and international responders, like the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the U.N. World Food Program, should model this with rules on coordination during acute food disruptions. This would include emergency food supply sharing arrangements and smarter strategic storage — where choke points can't cut off supply.
But they also needed to take preventive measures, like diversifying production so countries aren't dependent on a handful of mega-crops and exporters. Funding should support alternative sources and supply routes around the world, as well as climate-resilient infrastructure. But all of this requires long-term planning. It needs to start now — before extreme weather becomes even more frequent.

Links

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