Lethal Heating: September 2017

30/09/2017

How The Law Could Save The Planet

Fairfax - Elizabeth Farrelly

Can the law save the planet? Ten days ago, on Threatened Species Day, Education Minister (and ex-planning minister) Rob Stokes won a special achievers' award for Outstanding Merit in Habitat Destruction. His "success" was to bulldoze 3.65 hectares of bushland, home to five threatened species including the red-crowned toadlet, the powerful owl and the very rare, walnut-sized eastern pygmy possum.
The bush was cleared for an "asset protection zone" to let the local Manly Vale public school double in size and shift further into the bush. The idea is to give the 1000 pupils of this newly amalgamated $50 million "super-school" a closer understanding of nature. But of course the irony is blinding. If loving nature routinely means degrading it, there'll be no nature to love.

Adani coal mine gets go ahead
Approval has been given for the controversial Carmichael coal mine in central Queensland. Vision courtesy ABC News

"There's no law against extinction," points out Sue Higginson, chief executive officer and chief solicitor of the NSW Environmental Defenders Office. "It could be illegal, but it isn't." For me, this is a lightbulb moment.
I suddenly see that both Higginson and James Thornton, the American rock-star eco-lawyer who spoke at the Opera House recently, are right. The fight to save the planet will turn on law, as much as politics, and in that fight – as in the fight to make decent cities – the best laws place the simplest possible protections around what we value most.
Globally, Australia sits in the top five for extinction – not least because, on official figures, we've already cleared more than 90 per cent of our eastern temperate bushland. We could ban it. We could say, any action that knowingly contributes to extinction is illegal, period.
But we don't. Instead, we make new laws to ease land clearing. We pretend that using "offsets" to legitimise habitat destruction will protect biodiversity. With hypocrisy unusual even among governments we call the enabling legislation the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, when it is designed to do the opposite. We offer industry "Environment Protection Licenses" that are actually just licenses to pollute.
In short, we see environmental law, like planning law, as a slipway for development, not a safe-house for our most treasured assets. This needs to change.
Law is the framework and guarantor of civilisation. But its capacity to drag us from the swamp is only as great as our determination to wield it for the long-term good of the many, not the short-term greed of the few. Increasingly, our system of "justice" seems glacial, exorbitant and remote, an uncertain mechanism massively rigged to favour the big guys. In a word, hugely unfair.

Illustration: Simon Bosch

It is also a profession that thousands leave, and thousands more want to, since it draws our brightest and most starry-eyed then shows them a single, grim path to success; making the rich richer. This is an unpardonable destruction of souls and minds as well as social trust.
Mainstream law likes to regard planning and environmental law as somewhat declasse, but Higginson and Thornton stand in brilliant contradiction to this snobbery. Both, despite decades at the coal face, are, more passionate, more driven, more riveting than ever. Why? Because they are fired by purpose, using their formidable intellects to fashion the rule of law into a protective carapace for planet earth. And they're winning.

'There's no law against extinction. It could be illegal, but it isn't': Sue Higginson, CEO of the NSW Environmental Defenders Office. Photo: Nic Walker

Thornton's firm is called Client Earth. But wait? Does the earth have rights? Should it? This idea, once as preposterous as the thought that women or black people had rights, is increasingly plausible. In March, New Zealand courts made the Whanganui River a legal person, all rights attaching. Five days later, the Ganges followed in becoming, literally, personified. Perhaps, if Australia was serious about respecting Indigenous connection to country, the same would happen here.
In fact, this kind of rights-based approach is not what Thornton advocates. He's a Zen priest, yes, but also an energetic litigator, and his tools are emphatically legal. If Earth is your client, science is your brief. Science is the earth's lexicon and its syntax, so that is always where you start. Understand the science. Formulate policy. Advocate, negotiate, mediate. That's the prep. Only at the exuberant end of the process do you get, in the eco-lawyer's joyous, haka-like war-cry, to "sue the bastards!"

New Zealand courts have made the Whanganui River a legal person. Photo: Fairfax NZ

Higginson also insists on starting with science. "I am lawyer and my currency is evidence." Personifying nature may be useful philosophically, she says, but in legal terms it is problematic, since "rights discourse is failing us as a society drastically in every way ...[and] not delivering justice". An obvious example is the government's relentless determination to approve the Adani mine in the Galilee Basin despite its mammoth destruction of Native Title lands.
In August 2015 the EDO successfully sued then federal environment minister Greg Hunt for illegally approving Adani's mine without properly considering climate effects, Adani's history of environmental destruction and two federally listed vulnerable species on the site, the yakka skink and ornamental snake. The courts found the minister had acted illegally, and overturned the approval.

James Thornton outside Britain's High Court after successfully pushing for the government to release its plans to tackle city air pollution.

The government, far from apologising, went on the attack, coining the "green lawfare" terminology that enabled them to cast groups fighting to uphold the law of the land as outlaw "environmental vigilantes".
It re-approved the mine and attempted to remove rights to third party "standing". But the EDO keeps fighting.

The Environmental Defenders Office won an important case on behalf of the residents of Bulga against Rio Tinto's coalmine extension. Photo: Nick Moir

The EDO could only do this because, a couple of years earlier, it won for a Bulga community group against Rio Tinto's coalmine extension. Let me explain...
The win incensed the lobbyists. The Australian Coal Council petitioned the premier O'Farrell to condition all EDO funding on its not pursuing "merit appeals in the Land and Environment Court". The Minerals Council, accusing the EDO of conducting "a deliberate campaign of economic sabotage against... our most valuable export commodity", sought its complete and immediate defunding.

Rio Tinto's Warkworth open-cut coal mine near Bulga in the Hunter Valley.

This forced the EDO to secure independent funding, crowdsourcing its future. While the federal government failed to outlaw standing, NSW's creation of the Planning and Assessment Commission effectively extinguished third-party appeals regardless.
But the EDO lives, stronger, smarter, more energised than ever. So Goliath one, David one. But David's sword is pointier, flaming and Damocletian.

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Change In Weather Patterns Led To Mainland Tasmania Tiger Extinction, Researchers Say

ABC Radio - Brett Williamson

DNA from 50 thylacines has been used to identify their primary cause of extinction. (Supplied: University of Adelaide)

Researchers believe they have discovered what killed off mainland populations of the Tasmanian tiger — and their cause of death might surprise you. Associate Professor Jeremy Austin from the University of Adelaide has been comparing the genetics of mainland and Tasmanian thylacines for 10 years.
"We know they must have been separated about 10,000 years ago when sea levels rose and cut Tasmania off from the mainland," he said.

At the SA Museum you can see a preserved thylacine. (ABC Radio Adelaide: Brett Williamson)

Tasmanian thylacines survived until 1936, but mainland thylacines were last recorded in Aboriginal cave art dating back to middle Palaeolithic times.
However, Dr Austin's radio carbon dating of thylacine bones revealed pockets of the species survived until 3,000 to 8,000 years ago in southern parts of Australia.

So what killed them?
Three theories have previously been prominent:

The introduction of dingoes to mainland Australia approximately 4,000 years ago;
A possible change in Aboriginal hunting techniques pressuring the population; and, more recently
A rapid change in climatic conditions.

Last thylacine 'Benjamin' in captivity at Beaumaris Zoo Hobart in 1933

Dr Austin's research, with the help of PhD student Lauren White, has confirmed the main cause of thylacine extinction was a dramatic change in mainland Australia's weather patterns.
"About the same time as dingoes arrived and human populations intensified, we also had the onset of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO)," he said.

"The climate in Australia went from relatively stable to suddenly very unstable.

"It's very clear that the [Tasmanian population] went through a population crash around the same time the species went extinct on the mainland.
"The fact that those things happened around the same time suggests to us it must have been one thing in both of those populations.
"The only thing that is common is climate change, because dingoes weren't in Tasmania and human intensification wasn't occurring.

"Climate change started the decline, then something on the mainland — either dingoes or humans — pushed the species all the way to extinction."

Dr Austin said DNA sampled from remains showed no evidence of contributing disease or bacterial infections.

Are thylacines still alive?
Sightings are a semi-regular occurrence now.

A trio of Tasmanians say they've got footage of a Tasmanian tiger (ABC News)

But Dr Austin is pretty convinced about whether or not thylacines still exist in Tasmania or on the mainland.
"For a population of thylacines to survive, there would have to be hundreds of them in a relatively confined geographical location," he said.
"Not a single animal has ever been shot, trapped, hit by a car or been killed in any other way that a body has been put forward.

"They are extinct and we need to learn the lesson from that.

"There are hundreds of other animals and birds in Australia that could use our help as opposed to spending a lot of time looking up dark alleys at blurry images of foxes or dogs or kangaroos which might, if you squint hard enough, look like a thylacine."
Dr Austin's research was published today in the Journal of Biogeography.

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29/09/2017

One In Five Australians Believe Global Warming Is A Hoax

Fairfax - Felicity Caldwell

More than one in five Australians believe global warming is a hoax and more than one-third think aliens have visited Earth.
Essential Research has surveyed about 1000 Australians on various beliefs to reveal some eyebrow-raising results.

While 21 per cent of respondents believed global warming was a hoax perpetrated by scientists, 68 per cent did not believe that statement. Photo: Paul Jones

It found 21 per cent believed global warming was a hoax perpetrated by scientists - with 9 per cent strongly believing in the statement and 12 per cent somewhat believing. Another 11 per cent were not sure.
One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts has been among those to doubt climate change science, with a senior NASA official last year rejecting his claims the agency had falsified data to exaggerate warming in the Arctic.

One in three Australians think we've been visited by aliens. Photo: Keith Srakocic/AP

And in June, after being asked by Senator Roberts whether it was important for scientists to keep an open mind, chief scientist Alan Finkel agreed: "But not so open that your brain leaks out."
Griffith University Climate Change Response Program director Brendan Mackey said climate change was an established scientific fact backed up by hard data.
"We have a really solid scientific basis for knowing and understanding the way the climate is changing rapidly," Professor Mackey said.
"I find it interesting as a scientist when people say they don't believe in science because science is not a matter of faith - religion is a matter of faith.
"It's really a matter of having a scientific understanding or explanation in relation to the cause and effect."
Professor Mackey said many people had never been taught about climate change science so found it difficult to understand.
And he said it was not something you could look out the window and see or experience, such as using an iPhone.
"The technology [for smartphones] comes from scientific understanding about quantum mechanics," he said.
"There's hardly anyone who understands about quantum mechanics but the iPhone works and they're happy their phone works and they're not worried about the reason why.
"People don't say 'I don't believe in gravity' because they can feel the effect of it.
"Climate change is a more abstract concept so part of it is people don't have that direct personal experience of climate change."
However, Professor Mackey said the vast majority of people accepted the science around climate change, which was positive.
A study by Griffith University and Cardiff University found 6.5 per cent of Australians were strong climate change sceptics in 2010, while 74 per cent believed "the world's climate is changing".
About half of the respondents completely or very substantially trusted what scientists said about the environment.
Mean climate change concern levels were highest in Victoria and Western Australia and lowest in Queensland and New South Wales.
Meanwhile, the Essential Research survey showed 34 per cent of respondents believed extra-terrestrials had visited Earth - either strongly or somewhat.
The survey found 40 per cent believed heaven and hell both existed as destinations after life.
About 39 per cent said angels and demons were active in the world and 35 per cent said ghosts existed and could influence their will on the living.
It found 14 per cent believed vaccines could cause autism, while 34 per cent said the story of creation in the book of Genesis was a true account of the first man and woman.

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Hidden Costs Of Climate Change Running Hundreds Of Billions A Year

National Geographic - Stephen Leahy

A new report warns of a high price tag on the impacts of global warming, from storm damage to health costs. But solutions can provide better value, the authors say.

Debris from a damaged home in Spring, Texas, serves as a reminder of Hurricane Harvey's fury. Such storms may be spurred by a changing climate, with expensive consequences. PHOTOGRAPH BY LUKE SHARRETT, BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Extreme weather, made worse by climate change, along with the health impacts of burning fossil fuels, has cost the U.S. economy at least $240 billion a year over the past ten years, a new report has found.
And yet this does not include this past months’ three major hurricanes or 76 wildfires in nine Western states. Those economic losses alone are estimated to top $300 billion, the report notes. Putting it in perspective, $300 billion is enough money to provide free tuition for the 13.5 million U.S. students enrolled in public colleges and universities for four years.
In the coming decade, economic losses from extreme weather combined with the health costs of air pollution spiral upward to at least $360 billion annually, potentially crippling U.S. economic growth, according to this new report, The Economic Case for Climate Action in the United States, published online Thursday by the Universal Ecological Fund.
“Burning fossil fuels comes at a giant price tag which the U.S. economy cannot afford and not sustain," said Sir Robert Watson, co-author and director at the U.K's Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research.

Climate Change 101 With Bill Nye

“We want to paint a picture for Americans to illustrate the fact that the costs of not acting on climate change are very significant,” Watson, the former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told National Geographic.
Watson is quick to point out that extreme weather events, including heat waves, hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts, are not caused by climate change. However, there is no question their intensity and frequency in many cases has been made worse by the fact the entire planet is now 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C) hotter, he said in an interview.
While a 1.8 degree F (1 degree C) increase may seem small it’s having a major economic impact on the U.S. According to data provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the number of extreme weather events causing at least $1 billion in economic losses has increased more than 400 percent since the 1980s. Some of that increase is due to increased amounts of housing and commercial infrastructure along coastlines. “However that doesn’t account for big increases in the last decade,” Watson said.
And much more global warming is coming—3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) temperature by 2050 and even greater warming beyond that—unless bigger cuts in fossil-fuel emissions are made than those promised in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, said Watson. “The impacts of climate change are certainly going to get more than twice as bad,” he said.

SEEKING SOLUTIONS
The report also looks at low-carbon solutions that can cut emissions and air pollution and benefit the U.S. economy. For instance, doubling the current share of renewable energy could create 500,000 new jobs while substantially cutting the amount of electricity currently generated using coal—improving air quality and reducing health costs.
Renewable energy, even when subsidised, will save America billions of dollars, according to the first national study of the future costs and benefits of renewable portfolio standards (RPS). Twenty-nine states have RPS—regulations requiring increased production of energy from renewable energy sources.
If existing RPS programs continue unchanged from now until 2050 they’d generate about 40 percent of U.S. electricity and save $97 billion in air pollution health costs and $161 billion in climate damage reductions, the Assessing the Costs and Benefits of U.S. Renewable Portfolio Standards study found. But if all states meet their Clean Power Plan obligations solely with renewables they’d generate 35 percent of U.S. electricity by 2030 and 49 percent by 2050.
The health benefit savings and climate impact cost reductions in this scenario would be over $1.1 trillion. However, the Trump Administration signed an Executive Order calling for a review of the Clean Power Plan last March and the new head of the EPA has told states they no longer have to comply.
RPS policies do increase electric system costs and may increase rates in some states but the overall costs are far less than the health benefits and cost reductions, said lead author Ryan Wiser, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
“RPS programs provide a big social benefit to all Americans,” Wiser said in an interview. However, RPS policies are not the most efficient way to reduce fossil fuel use, he added.
“Pretty well every economist will tell you that a carbon tax or cap and trade are better.”
In the 1980s acid rain air pollution was curbed through a cap and trade program championed by George H.W. Bush. It was the first such program in the world and worked quite well, said Wiser.

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS TO TACKLING EMISSIONS
Switching to renewables will also save enormous amounts of freshwater. Electricity generation is the nation’s biggest water user because coal and gas boil large amounts of water to make electricity. If 35 percent of this generation was renewable it would reduce water use enough to meet the needs of 1.9 million homes, according to Wiser’s study. However, the cost benefits of this water savings is not included in the report, nor are other environmental costs and health benefits.
The Economic Case for Climate Action report also doesn’t include a number of climate-related losses such as reduced crop yields from drought. Those amounted to $56 billion since 2012. Nor does it include economic losses from health impacts of heat waves or impacts on ecosystems and water resources.
“Our report is an under estimate of the real costs of continued use of fossil fuels,” Watson said.
“Anything we estimate now is an underestimate,” said Amir Jina of the University of Chicago and co-author of yet another new study looking at impacts of climate change on the U.S. “Climate change is not isolated to small increases in global temperature, but to local impacts to our health and well-being that could be enormous.”

SOUTH AND MIDWEST TO BE HARDEST HIT
Estimating Economic Damage from Climate Change in the United States is a state-of-the-art analysis that projects future costs and benefits county by county based on current and past data. It found counties in states in the South and lower Midwest would be the hardest hit economically without strong action to curb climate change.
“The Gulf Coast will take a massive hit. Its exposure to sea-level rise—made worse by potentially stronger hurricanes—poses a major risk to its communities. Increasingly extreme heat will drive up violent crime, slow down workers, amp up air conditioning costs,” said co-author Robert Kopp, director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Rutgers University.
Programs like federal flood insurance insulate coastal communities from some of these risks but it means citizens a long way from the coast bear the financial costs. The same applies to disaster relief.
Billions of local, state and federal taxpayer dollars will rightly go towards the recovery efforts from the devastating impacts of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. However, those monies could have gone elsewhere to grow our economy and that affects every American, said Jina. "What would we have done with this rebuilding money if we didn't have to use it to rebuild?"
The study shows that these big storms lower the long-run growth of the U.S. economy and that their economic and human impacts ripple through the country for up to two decades. New Orleans hasn’t fully recovered from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Many small businesses never bounced back. Ten years after the storm the unemployment rate was still higher than pre-Katrina levels. Research shows that after most hurricanes more people tend to rely heavily on unemployment insurance and Medicaid, increasing the strain on those publicly funded programs, Jina said.
"The 'hidden costs' of carbon dioxide emissions are no longer hidden, since now we can see them clearly in the data,” he said.

Links

Hedge Fund Asks Climate Deniers To Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Is

ThinkProgress - Jeremy Deaton (Nexus Media)

Do you want to wager on the future of the planet?

CREDIT: Pexels

In an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson challenged former GM executive — and ardent climate denier — Bill Lutz to make a bet. “You take all the scientists who author these papers, get them to pool their money and invest in companies that would benefit from global warming,” Tyson said. “And take all the people who are in denial of global warming, take all their money and invest in companies that would presume there is no global warming. And I would predict [the climate deniers] will all go broke in the next 50 years.”
As the country’s foremost science communicator knows, sometimes there is no point in waving around the same peer-reviewed studies. Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is. You have to turn empirical truths into cold, hard cash.
To that end, UK hedge fund Winton Capital is setting up the first market to make predictions about climate change. Climate scientists will bet on the future state of the climate, and the market will pay out yearly to those who make the most accurate predictions. The aim is to find a consensus among experts about the future of the climate.
The climate prediction market will rely on something known as the wisdom of the crowd. This phenomenon was discovered more than a century ago when English statistician Francis Galton studied a contest to guess the weight of 1,198-pound ox. Nearly 800 villagers entered the contest, and their estimations varied widely, but the average of their guesses was 1,197 pounds, almost the exact weight of the ox. The numbers showed that a large number of reasonably informed people with a diverse set of opinions can, in the aggregate, make accurate guesses.

An ox of undetermined weight. CREDIT: Pixabay

To understand how it will work, look to Vegas odds makers. In last weekend’s match-up between the University of Washington Huskies and the Fresno State Bulldogs, Washington was the clear favorite. If every bettor put money on Washington and the Huskies won, the casino would lose money on the payouts. Casinos want an equal number of bettors on both sides to guard against losses. So, instead of allowing bettors to gamble which team will win or lose, casinos make the bet on whether a team will win by a lot or just a little.
This where the wisdom of the crowd comes into play. In the lead-up to the weekend’s game, Vegas had the Huskies as a 33-point favorite— bets were placed on whether Washington would win the game by more or less than 33 points. If the crowd got bullish on Washington, casinos might change their prediction to 34 or 35 points.
This is the crucial part. Because bettors tend to be sports aficionados steeped in the latest news and analysis, their predictions, on the whole, tend to be pretty accurate. Ultimately, Washington beat Fresno State by 32 points. That’s the wisdom of the crowd in action.

University of Washington defensive lineman Vita Vea. CREDIT: University of Washington Athletics

Back in the UK, Winton is trying to channel that wisdom to make predictions about climate change. The hedge fund will have experts make guesses about future temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations. (Later, Winton may expand the project to accommodate more specific predictions about regional warming and sea-level rise.)
U.S. gambling laws are murky when it comes to prediction markets, so Winton is setting up its climate prediction market in the United Kingdom. But the climate prediction market isn’t intended as a money-making scheme. This is a philanthropic endeavor, the goal of which is to produce useful information. It’s likely that Winton will lose money on the project, as it pays dividends to scientists who correctly predict the future.
“With a prediction market, getting the information is the primary objective,” said Mark Roulston, the scientist overseeing the climate prediction market.“There’s not necessarily a consensus on all the implications of climate change. The idea is have a benchmark which could track any emerging consensus.”
Other methods exist for determining what scientists think about climate change. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) aggregates the finding of researchers from around the world to estimate future temperatures under different emissions scenarios. But the IPCC doesn’t generate forecasts. Rather, it provides a road map of the future, showing how the choices we make today are likely to shape the climate in the decades to come.

Hurricane Irene, 2011. CREDIT: Pixabay

Roulston certainly isn’t the first scientist to suggest people should bet on climate change. Last year, Bill Nye bet climate-denying meteorologist Joe Bastardi $20,000 that 2016 would be one the ten warmest years on record. Bastardi turned down the offer. Too bad for Nye — 2016 clocked in as the hottest year ever recorded.
University of New Mexico physicist Mark Boslough has repeatedly challenged climate deniers to bets on near-term warming of the climate, but no one has taken him up on the offer. Other scientists have had more success turning climate predictions into cold, hard cash, and they have encouraged others to do the same.

The Long Now Foundation has created a forum for anyone to make bets on the future, though there are no climate bets posted at the moment. Some wagers are rather interesting — like the bet that the population of Earth would decline over the next half-century. Others are more frivolous. One man wagered the Large Hadron Collider would destroy the Earth by 2018. If he wins the $1,000 bet, he will most assuredly be dead.
Money, however, is a measure of seriousness. It is hard to doubt the convictions of scientists willing to wager on the future of the planet. This fact may make Winton’s climate prediction market a useful tool for persuading business leaders who are on the fence about climate change. Scientists willing to bet on the climate are unlikely to misrepresent what they think.
Winton believes the climate prediction market could make meaningful forecasts that account for predicted policy shifts or technological breakthroughs. The market may predict the rise in temperature will continue unchecked, or it may predict that nations take the steps necessary to avert catastrophic climate change.
Someday, the climate prediction market may offer a way to evaluate the credibility of scientists. Scientists who take part in the prediction market may be more credible by being willing bettors. The market will also allow the public to determine how the views of a particular scientist compare to those of her peers.
Winton’s founder, David Harding, studied theoretical physics at Cambridge and firmly believes in using the scientific method to guide his business decisions. The climate prediction market is an extension of that philosophy. Winton plans to open the market to climate scientists at universities later this year. Next year, it will expand the project to allow anyone in the United Kingdom to participate.

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28/09/2017

The Mail's Censure Shows Which Media Outlets Are Biased On Climate Change

The Guardian - Dana Nuccitelli

Right-wing media outlets like Breitbart, Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh echoed the Mail’s “significantly misleading” and now censured climate story

A selection of British newspapers - some more factually accurate and reliable than others. Photograph: Alamy

Back in February, the conservative UK tabloid Mail on Sunday ran an error-riddled piece by David Rose attacking Noaa climate scientists, who had published data and a paper showing that there was never a global warming pause. The attack was based on an interview with former Noaa scientist John Bates, who subsequently admitted about his comments:

I knew people would misuse this. But you can’t control other people.

The UK press regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organization (Ipso) has now upheld a complaint submitted by Bob Ward of the London School of Economics. Ipso ruled that the Mail piece “failed to take care over the accuracy of the article” and “had then failed to correct these significantly misleading statements,” and the Mail was required to publish the Ipso adjudication.

The Mail’s manufactured controversy
Essentially, Bates had expressed displeasure in the way the data from a Noaa paper had been archived at the organization. Rose and the Mail blew this minor complaint into the sensationalist claim that “world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data.” It would be hard to find a better example of fake news than this one. The piece included a grossly misleading chart that Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies director Gavin Schmidt described as a “hilarious screw up”:

IMAGE

In fact, the Noaa data and paper in question had already been independently verified by other researchers, and are in close agreement with global temperature data from other scientific groups:

IMAGE

And of course the paper itself had undergone rigorous peer-review prior to its publication in one of the world’s most highly-regarded scientific journals, Science. All signs pointed to the Noaa data and paper being based on sound science that had been reproduced and verified. But that didn’t fit the preferred denialist narrative of Rose and the Mail on Sunday, so they weaved a conspiracy theory that then reverberated through the right-wing media echo chamber.
Rose’s story seemed to have all the climate denial components that biased conservative media outlets crave. A lone wolf scientist whistleblowing his former colleagues with accusations of data manipulation for political purposes? Despite the glaring errors in the story that were immediately called out by climate scientists and reputable science journalists, this narrative proved irresistible to the conservative media: Breitbart, Fox News, Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh, The Daily Caller, The Washington Times, and more ran with Rose’s story. Meanwhile, legitimate news outlets like The Guardian, The Washington Post, Carbon Brief, E&E News, Ars Technica, Science Insider, RealClimate, and numerous other science blogs quickly debunked Rose’s falsehoods.
The errors really aren’t surprising. Rose and the Mail have a long history of climate denial, including error-riddled stories on Arctic sea ice, Antarctic sea ice, human-caused global warming, even the very existence of global warming. And the Mail has such a long history of inaccuracies in general that Wikipedia editors consider it an unreliable source and banned its use. But Breitbart, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other right-wing media outlets have no qualms with publishing inaccuracies from unreliable sources, as long as the story advances their climate denial agenda.
Lamar Smith (R-TX), the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, has been attacking the Noaa scientists since they published their ‘pausebuster’ paper in 2015. Rose’s piece was almost perfectly timed for one of Smith’s frequent anti-climate science congressional hearings just two days later, but alas, by then reputable journalists had already soundly debunked the story. Smith could only plead with attendees to believe that the story “may be more serious than you think.”
As Ipso has verified, it wasn’t. That Smith still tried to exploit the story, that it reverberated throughout the right-wing media echo chamber, and that the Mail published it in the first place tells us a lot about the narrative this group wants to push. The motivation is right there in the Mail’s headline – “world leaders were duped into investing billions.”
The scientific evidence is crystal clear that human-caused global warming is very dangerous. People who want to maintain the status quo that favors fossil fuel companies, who oppose climate policies that disrupt that status quo, need to somehow discredit that reality. They can’t argue the science, about which there’s a 97% expert consensus, so they instead attack the scientists themselves. They accuse these scientists – who have devoted their careers to bettering our understanding of the workings of Earth’s climate – of fraud, conspiracy, and manipulating data for nefarious purposes. Their goal is to manufacture doubt.
Usually they get away with it. This time the Mail on Sunday’s “significantly misleading statements” were so bad that they were censured, though not before they had misinformed millions of people. However, the Ipso ruling tells us which media outlets are reliable sources on the subject of climate change. Those that blindly echoed David Rose’s misinformation are not; those that debunked the Mail on Sunday’s distortions are.

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Jane Goodall Calls For Climate Change Action To Save Planet

Global Citizen - Joe McCarthy

“How is it that the most clever species to ever walk the earth is destroying its only home?”

In front of 60,000 global citizens, Dr. Jane Goodall spoke chimpanzee on the Global Citizen Festival stage to roaring cheers earlier this evening.
Goodall is best known for her kinship with chimpanzees. For decades, she lived with, observed, and learned about them.
In the process, she utterly transformed the scientific and cultural understanding of the species.
She also transformed how humans perceive animals and nature in general. She helped popularize the idea that, rather than being separate and above the world, humans are intimately entwined with all that surrounds them.
And because of this closeness, she advocated throughout her life, humans must respect nature and allow it to thrive.
Goodall, who is now a United Nations Messenger of Peace and Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, brought this sense of unity and responsibility to the Global Citizen Festival stage when she called on the global audience to recognize the bonds between man and nature.
"Chimpanzees help prove there is no sharp line that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom," she said. "And yet knowing that they have emotions like ours, we stil show cruelty toward animals and each other. With our clever brains, how is it that we humans are destroying the environment?"
In particular, she pointed to climate change as the culmination of bad human decisions toward the planet and its inhabitants.
"We're burning fossil fuels, creating the greenhouse gases that cause extremes of temperature, more frequent and more destructive storms," she said. "Why do we pursue the wealth at the expense of future generations?"
Goodall is revered throughout the world as a pioneering researcher, but she reminded the audience of her humble roots, suggesting that anyone out there is capable of similar feats of drive and creativity.
Global Citizen campaigns on improving access to opportunities for girls and you can take action on this issue here.
Despite all the challenges in the world, Goodall has hope for the future.
“I have hope because of our clever brains, the resileince of nature, the indomitable human spirit and above all the commitment of young peopel when they're empowered to take action."

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'Attacked From Two Sides': Antarctic Sea Ice Hits Another Record Low

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Sea ice around Antarctica has shrunk about 2 million square kilometres in just three years, swinging from a record large maximum area covered to a record low, in a shift that could have implications for the global climate.
While a late burst in ice cover this spring cannot be ruled out, it appears the sea ice around Antarctica has peaked for the sea at about 18.013 million square kilometres, the smallest maximum extent in the 30-plus years of satellite readings, Jan Lieser, from the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, said.

Trillion-tonne iceberg breaks off Antarctica
As big as Bali, the loss of the Larsen C ice shelf will require maps to be redrawn and could ultimately cause sea levels to rise.

"It looks like we have passed the peak," Dr Lieser told Fairfax Media, adding the sea ice "is being attacked from two sides", from above and below.
For Antarctica, the lowest maximum extent, recorded on September 12, follows a record low minimum sea ice coverage recorded on March 1 after the summer thaw, he said.
As with the Arctic, the warming oceans are undercutting sea ice from below, while the warming atmosphere is melting ice from above.

Antarctica's variability, though, makes it a more complex problem to understand than its polar opposite.
For instance, the freshwater from melting land-based glaciers more readily freezes than salty sea water, increasing sea ice in some regions of the continent.

Blue iceberg floating in the sea near Cierva Cove on the Antarctic Peninsula. Photo: Renato Granieri / Alamy Stock Photo

Altered precipitation patterns can also lead to extra snow, adding depth to both land and sea ice.
Zack Labe, an ice researcher at the University of California, Irvine, cautioned against a definitive call that maximum sea ice coverage had been reached this year.

Melting is going on at both ends of the planet, with Antarctic and Arctic sea ice extents reaching record lows in the past year. Photo: Richard Harker

He noted the first week of October in 2015 had a large net increase of sea ice after an extended retreat. (See chart below from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center.)

"Antarctic sea ice extent is particularly variable day-to-day, given weather conditions, and it's worth waiting another week," Mr Labe said.
Those conditions include wind and wave action that can bunch sea ice or spread it out.
John Turner, a research scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, said the September 12 maximum reading - which he put at 18.023 million square kilometres - looks to have been the peaked. That would place it at slightly less than the previous smallest maximum of 18.027 million square kilometres in 1986.
"This year's maximum is a far cry from the 20.201 million square kilometres record maximum we had in 2014 and shows the highly variable nature of sea ice around the Antarctic continent," Dr Turner said.
"[On 25 September], the ice extent had fallen to 17.689 million square kilometres so it's highly unlikely that the extent will increase by much over the next few weeks and we can assume that we've seen this year's maximum."

Climate signals
Even if the record low maximum wavers slightly, the Antarctic sea coverage is well shy of the average of about 19 million square kilometres over the past three decades or so, Dr Lieser said.
(See the latest NASA satellite image of Antarctica below.)

While the climate change signal is much clearer in the northern latitudes - where longer-term records show a relatively steady retreat of Arctic sea ice - evidence of global warming's impact around Antarctica is also showing up in the observations.
"We see an increase in the storminess of the Antarctic, and that's obviously redistributing the sea ice around" the continent differently, Dr Lieser said.
"Maximum sea ice extent is attributed to that change in wind patterns."
The storms can also have an impact "far and wide", including on Australia's weather, he said.
Scientists are less sure of the trends in sea ice volume in the southern hemisphere than in the north, given the difficultly satellites have in distinguishing sea ice from the snow that has accumulated on it, for instance.

'Conveyor belts'
Understanding such processes, though, is "critically important to understanding the climate of the earth" because of the way sea ice formation works as the initial driver of the global ocean "conveyor belts", Dr Lieser said.
When sea ice forms, brine from salty sea water is expelled. As it sinks by gravity, it draws in surface water, helping to disseminate warm tropical heat towards the poles.
There is no sign yet of a slowing in the major over-turning circulation belts, such as the Gulf Stream that transports warmth from the Gulf of Mexico to northern Scandinavia, keeping that region much more habitable.
Still, climate models suggest the belts could weaken or change course in the future, Dr Lieser said.
Disturbing one variable in such complex systems can have "major implications" on the global climate, he said.
(See US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chart below of percentage changes of sea ice concentration in September, compared with previous years in the satellite era.)

Dr Lieser is one of more than 60 representatives from 12 countries gathered this week in Hobart to discuss sea ice, including how it is beginning to affect ship traffic
"We have seen a number of private and commercial ships becoming stuck in the Antarctic sea ice in recent years, which have led to costly rescue operations that can delay scientific work," he said.

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27/09/2017

What Is Loss And Damage From Climate Change?

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars - Rachel James | Richard Jones | Emily Boyd

First Academic Study Reveals Different Perspectives, Challenging Questions

Following a series of recent devastating extreme weather events – mudslides in Sierra Leone, flooding in south Asia, and severe storms hitting the Philippines and the Gulf of Mexico, many have called attention to the role of climate change in these disasters. The string of Atlantic hurricanes that has devastated the Caribbean has prompted fresh calls to make nations and communities more resilient to the effects of climate change, and especially to address “loss and damage” in island nations.
In fact, there are already official agreements about loss and damage in international climate policy. But what does this actually mean? And does it have the same significance for different players? Our new paper, published today in Nature Climate Change, presents the first academic study of stakeholder perspectives on loss and damage. We interviewed 38 experts, including negotiators, practitioners, and researchers, between April and November 2015. These interviews revealed four distinct perspectives, which can help policymakers and practitioners better understand each other as they move forward on implementing international agreements.

What Is Loss and Damage?
For many years, vulnerable countries have pushed for loss and damage (L&D) to be tackled as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As early as 1991, small island states were calling for an international insurance pool covering residual damage from rising sea levels that couldn’t be prevented by mitigation and adaptation efforts. This is also not the only time that extreme weather has prompted further demands to address L&D. Many will remember the heartfelt plea from a Philippine delegate at the Warsaw climate negotiations following Typhoon Haiyan, which killed more than 6,000 people in 2013.

The Loss and Damage issue is complex — and sensitive

The L&D issue is complex — and sensitive — involving climate impacts and risks for developing countries, which are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Despite the challenges, L&D has now entered the formal architecture of the UNFCCC, first with the establishment of the Warsaw International Mechanism in 2013, and later as part of the Paris Agreement in 2015. The role of the Warsaw International Mechanism is to promote the implementation of approaches to addressing L&D associated with the adverse effects of climate change, by enhancing understanding, strengthening dialogue, and enhancing support (financial, technical, and capacity-building). The Paris Agreement explicitly states that this support does not refer to liability or compensation.
The language of these documents can be difficult for those outside the policy community to interpret, and some suggest “strategic ambiguity” has been fundamental for reaching agreement. But now, researchers and practitioners are starting to ask how they can help address L&D, and many are confused, particularly about how L&D mechanisms might be distinct from existing approaches to adapt to climate change, and manage disaster risk. So, practically speaking, what does addressing L&D mean? Experts have begun to develop concepts and frameworks for L&D policy, but, until now, there has not been an empirical research study to analyze expert opinions.

Four Distinct Views on Loss and Damage

Are existing frameworks to address climate change sufficient, or are new L&D-specific mechanisms needed? Some experts suggested that the UNFCCC should focus on improving mitigation and adaptation, rather than treating L&D as a separate challenge. Others emphasized the need for additional approaches to address the losses and damages that cannot be avoided, and climate changes which cannot be adapted to.
A related question is whether L&D mechanisms should focus on minimizing negative consequences of climate change, or instead on addressing impacts that have already occurred and will inevitably occur in the future. Some experts put more emphasis on reducing risks, whereas others emphasized recovery, rehabilitation, and migration. Many experts agreed, though, that both challenges were important, highlighting the importance of integrated risk management, including risk reduction, risk retention, risk transfer, and recovery.

What’s Climate Change Got To Do With It?
When it comes to managing L&D, many of the practical interventions suggested – insurance, social safety nets, early warning systems – are familiar territory for disaster risk managers. So what’s new about addressing L&D from climate change?

Human-induced climate change is modifying the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events

Human-induced climate change is modifying the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and causing slow onset changes such as sea-level rise and ocean acidification. The challenge of addressing L&D associated with weather and climate is amplified by anthropogenic climate change.
But for any specific case of loss or damage, the influence of climate change interacts with natural climate variations, as well as the level of exposure and vulnerability to hazards. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria are apt examples: Scientists can agree that more events of this magnitude can be expected in a warming climate. But the precise contribution of human-induced climate change to each disaster is harder to quantify, and the extent of L&D is also highly dependent on local factors, such as urban planning and emergency preparedness.
This creates difficult questions about how to address L&D. Should L&D mechanisms under the UNFCCC deal only with L&D that can be directly related to climate change? Our interviewees had different answers. Some highlighted that the UNFCCC’s mandate is to address human-induced climate change, and therefore L&D mechanisms should focus only on that. Others, particularly practitioners, suggested that it would be more productive to work with existing disaster risk management and humanitarian efforts, to ensure that these incorporate the added risk from climate change.

So It’s Not All About Finance?
In short: no. Some interviewees did suggest that compensation will be needed, but they also highlighted that this was not the only – or even the most important – intervention to address L&D. They raised more fundamental questions about how to deal with irreversible losses from climate change. For example, if parts of small island states become uninhabitable, a payout might provide important financial support for the former residents, but it will not answer more challenging questions about where people should live or how to address their lost livelihoods. And that’s even before considering more intangible losses, such as loss of community, sovereignty, and mental health.
In other words, the question “Who pays?” might obscure even more challenging questions about what to do with the money, and how to deal with losses that cannot be quantified.

Implications for Policymakers
So what do these four distinct expert perspectives mean for progress to address L&D? The fact that countries have reached agreement on L&D – despite their different views – is an important achievement. However, given that the agreements are still quite vague, it remains to be seen what will be prioritized.

The question “Who pays?” might obscure even more challenging questions

Policymakers should be aware of these different perspectives, since if they are not reflected in actions to address L&D, negotiations could re-emerge. The good news for policymakers is that we did not find a simple split between those who seek compensation and those who wish to avoid paying compensation, so perhaps some aspects of the debate can be depoliticized.
Our research might provide helpful background information for upcoming discussions, such as the 6^th meeting of the Executive Committee to the WIM, which will take place in mid-October in Bonn, as well as the annual climate negotiations in November. Meanwhile, practitioners and researchers are already looking for ways to help understand and address L&D. We hope that by identifying four perspectives of L&D we can help them identify possible actions and research questions.

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