31/12/2017

The Growing Movement To Take Polluters To Court Over Climate Change

New Republic - 

As climate liability lawsuits rise, industry forces are fighting back.
Peter Macdiarmid/Getty
There’s a vast conspiracy afoot to decimate American manufacturing.
Wealthy environmentalists and greedy attorneys are trying to stuff their already-fat pockets by suing defenseless companies over their contributions to global warming.
They allege that energy manufacturers create a “public nuisance” by emitting greenhouse gases and are liable for the damages this causes.
Worse, they disguise themselves as do-gooders: They represent plaintiffs like Alaska Native American tribes who are losing their frozen land to warming temperatures, and communities impacted by sea-level rise.
But these con artists aren’t really trying to save the planet. They’re trying to put American companies out of business.
That’s the core message of a new trade group quietly formed last month by the National Association of Manufacturers, the largest industry trade group of its kind and a powerful lobbying force in Washington.
IMAGES
The Manufacturers’ Accountability Project was formed to “highlight the concerted, coordinated efforts made by trial lawyers, public officials, deep-pocketed foundations and other activists” to undermine manufacturing—but with a specific focus on lawsuits that seek to hold corporations financially responsible for their role in the climate crisis. No other trade association has ever undertaken such an effort. “We are the first group out there,” a spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
MAP is a novel effort because climate liability cases are, too. In the last year, an increasing number of plaintiffs and attorneys general have attempted to use the courts to punish big polluters, seeking punitive damages or other penalties against companies that contribute to climate change. And we know who those companies are: Earlier this year, a peer-reviewed study asserted that just 90 companies were responsible for as much as 50 percent of the increase in global temperature and 32 percent of sea level rise since 1880. The study also said investor-owned companies like BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil have caused 16 percent of the global average temperature increases and 11 percent of global sea level rise.
But are climate liability lawsuits and investigations an effective strategy for fighting climate change? That’s up for debate, since few cases have been successful. But the fact that the National Association of Manufacturers is taking up arms against this strategy suggests that they see a legitimate threat. With multiple cases pending, 2018 may be the year that corporate polluters are finally held responsible for what they’ve done to the planet.
Climate-related court cases have skyrocketed in the last three years. A May study by the United Nations and Columbia University found that the number of lawsuits filed across the world has tripled since 2014; out of nearly 900 cases, 654 were filed in the United States. Most of these suits seek to punish governments, not corporations, for not taking sufficient action to fight climate change—usually by arguing that public officials have denied citizens’ rights to a clean and healthy environment.
Some of these lawsuits have succeeded in other countries. In 2015, the Dutch government was forced to lower the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in response to a class action lawsuit from its citizens. A judge in Ireland recently ruled that citizens have a constitutional right to a safe climate and environment. And last month, a climate liability lawsuit against Germany’s largest power company was allowed to move forward.
“Judicial decisions around the world show that many courts have the authority, and the willingness, to hold governments to account for climate change,” said Michael Burger, executive director of Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. He cited a 2007 lawsuit that forced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. “Similar litigation all over the world will continue to push governments and corporations to address the most pressing environmental challenge of our times.”
The success of Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency keeps corporate attorneys up at night. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases are an air pollutant that cause harm, a legal precedent that is “being used as the support for climate-change-related lawsuits against companies,” reads a recent report from the corporate law firm Anderson Kill.
That report warns of a “coming flood” of tort lawsuits that allege corporations are liable for climate change–related damages, as well as shareholder lawsuits that allege public companies aren’t doing enough to warn investors about the financial risks of climate change and climate lawsuits.
“Although we have yet to see any significant number of governmental actions or shareholder suits against corporations or their [executives] in relation to climate-change-related disclosure failures,” the report reads, “the seeds for the future growth of such actions are being sown.”
The Manufacturers’ Accountability Project recognizes this, and focuses on the cases that have the biggest chance of succeeding in 2018. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating whether Exxon Mobil intentionally misled shareholders about the impact of climate change on company profits, thereby committing securities fraud.
Court filings from Schneiderman’s office in June stated that “evidence suggests not only that Exxon’s public statements about its risk management practices were false and misleading, but also that Exxon may still be in the midst of perpetrating an ongoing fraudulent scheme on investors and the public.”
MAP’s website calls the investigation “politically motivated” and alleges, without evidence, a “web of collaboration” between Schneiderman and “anti-manufacturing advocates.” (Exxon has sued to block the Schneiderman’s investigation, though without success thus far, and still no charges have been filed.)
MAP’s site also sharply criticizes Matt Pawa, an attorney who, according to a 2010 profile by InsideClimate News, has been “working tirelessly to establish global warming as a ‘public nuisance’ under tort law, holding corporations accountable for their greenhouse gas pollution and forcing them to face their victims in court.” (MAP also targets InsideClimate over its Pulitzer Prize-nominated investigation into Exxon.)
Pawa’s most recent cases are in California, where he’s representing the cities of San Francisco and Oakland in suits against ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Shell. The lawsuits are trying to make the oil giants pay for seawalls and other structures “to protect about $49 billion in public and private property sitting within six feet of the current sea level,” according to Climate Liability News. Both cities are extremely at risk from sea level rise.
MAP attacks Pawa for partnering “with wealthy donors, activists and other profit-seeking plaintiffs lawyers to attack the energy industry,” adding, “He knows he will be handsomely compensated at many points on his legal marathon.” Reached by phone, Pawa laughed for approximately 30 seconds, then declined to comment on the accusations. He did, however, speculate why his cases were targeted by the group. “Maybe it’s a sign that these lawsuits are considered to have merit,” he said. “And so they’re concerned.”
Cases like Pawa’s have many hurdles. For instance, as a MAP spokesperson rightly pointed out to the Washington Examiner, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 2011 that corporations can’t be sued for greenhouse gas emissions under federal law because the EPA already has rules to regulate those emissions. But Pawa’s California cases, for example, are based on state law instead of federal law, and use a legal strategy that’s already been successful in one California case against a lead paint manufacturer: arguing that the companies create a “public nuisance,” a centuries-old legal doctrine that is broader in California than in most other states.
There are also limitations to how impactful these lawsuits can be. As Ketan Jha argues at Slate, litigation “is typically an inefficient method of achieving policy reform.” The lead paint case that Pawa is replicating is still in court 17 years after it was brought, because of appeals.
And while punishing companies for damage they’ve already done to the planet may feel satisfying, it does little to reverse the problem. But climate lawsuits and investigations don’t have to save the world to be worthwhile. In fact, they don’t even necessarily have to end in victory to make an impact. The world’s polluters see what’s happening to Exxon, and they just might clean up their act to avoid the same fate.

Links
at No comments:

The Article That Changed My View … Of How Civil Disobedience Helps The Planet

The Guardian - Suganshi Ropia, as told to

Suganshi Ropia says a piece she read after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement helped her realise we shouldn’t wait to make our voices heard
Protesters close Ffos-y-Fran opencast coalmine in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, in 2016. Photograph: Natasha Quarmby/Rex Shutterstock
Suganshi Ropia, 21, is a law student from Pune, India
I try to keep in touch with news related to climate change, and am particularly interested in environmental law.
My compulsion to do something positive about climate change was one of the reasons I decided to study law.
When I read the opinion piece Civil disobedience is the only way left to fight climate change, by Kara Moses, in spring 2016, it crystallised my feelings about the responsibility we have as a community of humans to do more.
The article made me realise that having a legal framework in place is not the only solution to a problem this complex.
More than ever, we need to be proactive in our resistance, whether that takes the form of a quiet or a very vocal protest.
This piece was written days after 1,000 people successfully closed the world’s largest coal-exporting port in Newcastle, Australia and just two weeks after the Paris Climate Accord was signed.
It was written mainly from a British perspective, but really resonated with me.
Anti-coal activists in kayaks and boats block the entrance to Newcastle harbour on Sunday, May 8, 2016. Photograph: 350.org Australia
In India, where I live, smog pollution is a major problem.
Moses discusses how this problem also affects those living in Beijing, and explains the double-edged benefit to employing people in jobs that improve the state of our environment as well as the quality of life for the majority of people on the planet.
“The choice between clean, safe, democratic and sustainable energy/jobs or dirty, dangerous and undemocratic energy/jobs is a no-brainer,” she writes.
Moses implores us not to wait for treaties to be drawn up and politicians to agree on changes they would like to implement, but to work from the ground up, in small ways.
She asks us to “take it upon ourselves to do more if we really want climate justice” and “support rather than denounce those willing to put themselves on the line, since we all benefit from their actions”.
I found her words urgent, clarifying and emboldening.
I shared the article with friends, many of whom were similarly moved by it, and when we were asked to complete an internship as part of our course, I chose to work at a law firm that has an environmental focus.
When I graduate I hope to work in this field and become someone bringing about positive change both professionally and personally.

Links
at No comments:

10 Incredible Things Climate Change Will Do

Deutsche Welle - Ineke Mules

Climate change will bring some surprising effects: Bumpy plane rides, greater mood swings and more volcanic eruptions are just a few of the things we can expect over the decades to come. And yes, even more lightning.
We're already familiar with some of the more evident effects of global warming such as melting glaciers and more extreme weather events. But few people are aware of some of the other, less obvious - and completely surprising - impacts of our changing climate, which could have a serious impact on the way we live.

1. Airplane turbulence will get worse 
Unfortunately, we can expect air travel to become even more stressful - thanks to the effects of climate change.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom looks into the relationship between clean-air turbulence and anthropogenic climate change. Using the popular flight corridor between Europe and the United States as an example, they examined various strengths of turbulence and how each will change in the future if carbon dioxide levels were to double.
The results showed that severe turbulence is likely to dramatically increase by up to 149 percent as a result of stronger wind shears within the Earth's jet streams. These are narrow, fast-flowing, meandering westerly currents found near the tropopause, which are frequently used by commercial airlines as a means of saving time and fuel.

2. Icebergs will clog up shipping lanes 
No ship has been struck by an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean since the Titanic sunk in 1912 and the International Ice Patrol was subsequently formed. But patrol workers are likely going to get a lot busier soon.
In early April, more than 400 icebergs clogged up shipping lanes in the North Atlantic, forcing ships to take detours of up to 400 nautical miles - wasting significant time and fuel in the process.
While icebergs are common in these waters, their number and timing is unusual. Experts say climate change could be to blame. The icebergs begin their journey after breaking off a glacier in Greenland, which is influenced largely by winter weather, especially storms accompanied by strong winds. Rising temperatures also lead to the melting of ice sheets, causing more chunks of ice to break off and float into the open ocean.

3. Lightning will strike more frequently 
Heat energy acts as a form of fuel for storm clouds. So as global temperatures continue to rise, we can also expect more active thunderstorms.
Although there are a number of downsides to this phenomenon - including a probable increase in wildfires - lightning actually produces a powerful chemical reaction that can be beneficial for Earth's atmosphere.
Lightning creates a special form of a greenhouse gas called nitrogen oxide, which indirectly regulates other potentially harmful greenhouse gases, like ozone and methane.

4. Volcanic activity could increase
You would be forgiven for thinking that climate change and volcanic activity are completely unrelated phenomena. But the workings of our planet are interconnected in suprising ways.
In places like Iceland, volcanoes and glaciers have coexisted for thousands of years. However, as glaciers melt due to rising temperatures, the pressure on the Earth's mantel decreases, which in turn increases magma amounts while reducing stress on a volcano's magma chambers. This leads to higher volcanic activity, along with the travel chaos that often follows.
There is a historic precedent to this prediction: 12,000 years ago, Iceland was covered by a glacier as thick as 2 kilometers. When that glacier abruptly melted due to a warming trend, a huge surge in volcanic activity followed.

5. We'll become angrier 
Even our mood isn't immune from climate change. Researchers in social psychology have long highlighted the link between warmer climates and higher levels of impulsive behavior and even violence.
This has been shown in regions closer to the equator - if global temperatures continue to rise as expected, we could also begin to see behavioral changes in areas further north.
In addition to having to contend with warmer weather, there is also evidence that climate change will further fuel global conflict by adding stress on natural resources like food and water.

6. The ocean will get darker 
We can expect our oceans to gradually become murkier as the effects of climate change become more apparent over time.
While climate change is often associated with higher temperatures and drought, it is also expected to increase annual rainfall in some areas of the world. This will create faster-flowing rivers, which in turn churns up more silt and debris before this water meets the ocean.
This phenomenon has already been observed along the coast of Norway, where the ocean water has become increasingly darker due to an increase in precipitation and melting snow.

7. Allergies will worsen 
As if getting angrier wasn't enough: If you're one of the many people who suffer from springtime allergies, you should probably start stockpiling your medication.
Warmer temperatures also mean longer and earlier blooming seasons for allergy-triggering plants like dandelions and ragweed. Pollen counts are likely to double over the next three decades in the United States - and "sneezing season" will also kick off in the future as soon as the first week of April.

8. Animals will shrink
This one may take a bit longer to become apparent - but the development of smaller mammals has been a common evolutionary response to past global warming events.
During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, around 50 million years ago, mammals were "dwarfed" after global temperatures rose 5 and 8 degrees Celsius.
Like all examples of evolution, the reason for this shrinking comes down to basic survival: As nutrients become more scarce due to rising temperatures and drought, larger animals struggle more than their smaller counterparts to fulfill their nutritional needs.

9. Desert soil may erode 
Believe it or not, deserts are actually teeming with life - also in the form of bacterial colonies. These colonies grow so large, in fact, that they form strong layers known as "biocrusts" that prevent soil erosion.
But different kinds of bacteria thrive in different temperature ranges. So as the climate continues to change quickly, these bacteria could find it difficult to adapt. If desert soil could becomes more prone to erosion, it would not be fertile enough to support plants and feed animals.

10. Ant behaviour will change 
Ants play a more important role in the planet's ecosystem than you may realize. In spite of their status as a pest, ants helps plants by controlling other insects, circulating vital nutrients and turning over the soil, among other things.
But ants appear to be ill-equipped to handle the rising tempertatures caused by climate change. A study carried out at Harvard Forest in Massachusetts revealed a susceptibility of ants to even slight temperature increases, with the most important seed-dispersing species essentially shutting down and retreating to their underground nests until conditions improved.

Flaming inferno. Some 10,500 firefighters were called to tackle forest fires in California in 2015. They were unable to prevent 1,400 homes from destruction. The blaze was fueled by hot and dry weather - as a result of climate change.


 Links
at No comments:

The Criminal Dimension Of Climate Change

Media Monitors Network - Andrew Glikson

A review of a new book by P. Carter, E. Woodworth and J. Hansen




“We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet.”
Professor Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impacts.
The extreme rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) since the onset of the industrial age, reaching ~403 parts per million in 2017, and the corresponding rise in mean global temperature to +1.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperature (Figure 1), pose an existential risk for the future of civilization and nature.
Figure 1. A plot of mean global temperature since vs CO2 levels since 200 AD (after Steffen, 2012)
A new book titled “Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival“, by Dr Peter Carter and Dr Elizabeth Woodworth, with a forward by the leading climate scientist Professor James Hansen outlines the criminality of those who actively promote the continuing emission of carbon gases into the atmosphere with full knowledge of the consequences, including the breakdown of the large ice sheets, sea level rise and intensification of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods and fires around the world.
The book highlights the collusion of a large part of the media with climate change denial and cover-up, stating: “There is no benign explanation for a full media blackout of a significant global development that was heralded by the United Nations Secretary-General. This blackout goes far beyond ignorance or negligence. It is a wilful obstruction of public knowledge of the extraordinary extent of global efforts to combat the greatest existential threat of all time by changing business-as-usual. We define this wilful, methodical blocking of vital survival information as an unprecedented crime against life on the planet.”
The book cites the US writer Tom Engelhardt (Terracide and the Terrarists: Destroying the Planet for Record Profits): “The fossil-fuel companies are guilty of the ultimate crime, because they are earning their “profits directly off melting the planet, knowing that their extremely profitable acts are destroying the very habitat, the very temperature range that for so long made life comfortable for humanity.”… “However, Big Carbon could never have been able to continue its polluting ways – long after the scientific community had reached consensus about the connection between fossil-fuel emissions, global warming, and climate change – without the assistance of the media“.
According to James Hansen, NASA’s former chief climate scientist (2012), “Burning all fossil fuels would create a different planet than the one that humanity knows. The palaeoclimate record and ongoing climate change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline, extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet, and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes“.
Following the presentation of definitive evidence of anthropogenic climate change, a plethora of websites has emerged reporting the views of non-scientists or of scientists known to receive funding from the fossil fuel industry. These views, in breach of the basic laws of physics and of direct observations, ignore the peer-reviewed published climate and paleoclimate science, misrepresent observed atmosphere and ocean processes and trends, fabricate evidence and conduct personal attacks against the climate scientists.
Examples abound:
  • Climate change deniers claim CO2 is not a factor driving global warming, contrary to the rise of CO2 by more than 40 percent since the onset of the industrial age and the laws of black body radiation of Stefan-Boltzmann, Planck and Kirchhof.
  • Where the average global temperature has been rising sharply since about 1975, a relative lull pertained during 2000–2014 mainly due to (1) albedo increase from heavy sulphur aerosol emission, and (2) lower sunspot numbers, with high warming rates resuming from 2015. Climate change deniers claim this transient period represents a cessation of global warming.
  • Where large Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets have been melting at a rate of more than 500 billion ton per year, the cold ice meltwater flowing off these glaciers cooled adjacent ocean regions, resulting in transient extension  of circum-Antarctic sea ice, claimed by climate change deniers to represent global cooling
Virulent attacks on climate scientists followed, for example, as cited in the book: “a climate change denier who has argued that the “demonization of CO2 really differs little from the Nazi persecution of the Jews, the Soviet extermination of class enemies or ISIL slaughter of infidels.”
Large parts of the conservative press have taken strong exception to the evidence of anthropogenic global warming, as reported in Robert Manne’s essays “Diabolical” and “Bad News“
The manifest paralysis of the political and media classes in the face of the climate impasse, evidenced by the failure of a succession of UN Framework Conventions on Climate Change to undertake meaningful steps to reduce CO2 emissions (since 2009: Copenhagen, Cancun, Doha, Durban, Warsaw, Paris) requires a search for alternative avenues to limit the deleterious consequences of continuing carbon emissions on the biosphere,  as reported by the IPCC Working Group II (Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability) and  the report by Working Group III (WGIII – Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of climate change).
Traditionally political and economic negotiations aim at a compromise. Unfortunately, no negotiation is possible with the basic laws of physics and chemistry and with processes in the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere system.
Is there anything in international and national laws which can avert the ongoing carbon emissions? Do global and national legal systems offer any possibilities in this regard? In exploring potential restrictions on carbon emission, the following international and national laws and conventions are relevant:
  • Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum. Such crimes are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority…”
  • United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Part III Article 6: states, among other: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life. When deprivation of life constitutes the crime of genocide, it is understood that nothing in this article shall authorize any State Party to the present Covenant to derogate in any way from any obligation assumed under the provisions of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.“
In the following, I list some of the consequences of the above:
  1. Since the onset of the industrial age and in particular following WWII an abrupt rise  in the temperature levels of the atmosphere was driven by an increase in concentration of greenhouse gases arising from release of 600 billion ton of carbon (GtC) to the atmosphere is leading to an extreme shift in state of the atmosphere-ocean system, such has no precedence in the recorded geological history, with the exception of events which resulted in the mass extinction of species, including massive volcanism, extra-terrestrial impacts and large-scale release of methane.
  2. As a direct consequence of the above mean global temperatures have risen since by about 1.3 degrees Celsius and, had it not been for emitted sulphur the aerosols, by near-2 degrees Celsius, reaching levels similar to those of the Pliocene period (~2.6 – 5.3 million years ago).
  3. The shift is occurring at the fastest rate recorded by paleoclimate studies. Whereas many species can adapt to gradual environmental changes, the current temperature rise rate resulting from ~2-3 parts per million (ppm) CO2/year may not be sustained.
  4. The current change is manifested by an increase in the rate of melting of the major ice sheets, accelerating sea level rise and a rise in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, reflecting elevated energy level of the atmosphere-ocean system.
  5. The consequences of continuing carbon emissions and consequent rise of mean global temperatures would render large parts of the Earth’s land surfaces uninhabitable, due to extreme temperatures, droughts, storms and flooding of coastal, deltas and lower river regions by sea level rise – estimated as about 25+/- 12 meters under Pliocene-like conditions, constituting an existential calamity for civilization and nature.
  6. Excepting injection of transient short residence-time sulphur aerosols, the arrest of current climate trend would require (A) a meaningful reduction in current rate of carbon emission (~9 GtC/year) and (B) application of CO2 draw-down technologies such as large-scale seagrass farming, biochar, CO2 capture by air streaming through basalt and serpentine et, aimed at reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas by at least 50 ppm.
  7. Enough reserves of conventional and unconventional (oil shale, tar sands, coal seam gas) fossil fuel exist whose combustion would raise the temperature of the atmosphere and oceans to levels which existed during the early Eocene and the Cretaceous, excluding most current forms of advanced life on Earth (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Fossil fuel reserves and equivalent CO2 emissions. 1 Gigaton carbon = 0.5ppm CO2
As stated by Robert Manne: “Unless by some miracle almost every climate scientist is wrong, future generations will look upon ours with puzzlement and anger – as the people who might have prevented the Earth from becoming a habitat unfriendly to humans and other species but nonetheless failed to act” and “Our conscious destruction of a planet-friendly to humans and other species is the most significant development in history”. The carbon-oxygen cycle of the atmosphere-ocean-land constitutes the lungs of the biosphere. The consequences of burning the vast carbon reserves buried in sediments can only result in a demise rivaling the five great mass extinctions of species in the history of the Earth. Survivors of the Sixth mass extinction of species may hold responsible those who promoted carbon emissions, turning a blind eye to the unfolding tragedy: the fossil fuel barons, the political classes and their media mouthpieces.

Links
at No comments:

30/12/2017

2017 Brought Another Year Of Weather Extremes As Drought And Heat Took Its Toll

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Australia is set to finish one of its hottest years on record, leaving fire authorities pinning their hopes a La Nina in the Pacific will bring soaking rains before heatwaves build through the summer.
Sydney is on track to post its fourth warmest December on record, according to Weatherzone. For the year, the city's mean, maximum and minimum temperatures will be in the top five warmest on records going back to 1858, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
Farmers race the front of a fast grassfire ahead of the huge Sir Ivan fire in NSW in February. Photo: Nick Moir
For Melbourne, very warm spells in March and November will likely place the city among its 10 hottest years for maximums.
Most of the nation will post another year above average – with Sydney notching its 25th in a row – as warming from climate change gradually bumps background temperatures higher regardless of the fluctuating influences of El Nino and La Nina events.
Cooling off was a popular pastime for many in Victoria and NSW from spring onwards. Photo: Brook Mitchell
"2017 will be recorded as one of Australia's five warmest years on record, with the national mean temperature between 0.8 and 0.9 degrees warmer than the mid-20th century average," Karl Braganza, head of climate monitoring at the bureau, said.
"This happened despite the absence of an El Nino in the Pacific, which is normally associated with very much warmer than average conditions over Australia."
While international media might be focused this week on the break-out of Arctic chill over much of eastern North America, average land and sea temperatures will rival the past three years of consecutive record annual global temperatures.


Riding high in an early morning surf session at Bells beach in Victoria in April. Photo: Joe Armao
With a continent as large as Australia's – and with a naturally varied climate, particularly for rainfall – every year is going to have its contrasting weather.
For NSW and Victoria, the year was largely one marked with a wet start, a long dry spell in the middle, before a mix of unseasonably warm conditions and some welcomed return of rain.
An unusually quiet cyclone season meant little northern penetration of rain until ex-tropical Cyclone Debbie dumped huge amounts of flooding rains along coastal Queensland and NSW.
The storm did, however, help bring an end to a second highly damaging bout of bleaching to the Great Barrier Reef in as many summers that has left as much as half the corals dead in the worst back-to-back event recorded.

Record heat
It may seem a long time ago, but last summer was Sydney and NSW's hottest, with many records broken and the electricity network brought to the brink of large-scale blackouts in February.
The heat was particularly persistent in north-east NSW, with Moree experiencing 54 consecutive days above 35 degrees – the longest such spell on record anywhere in NSW.
Sydney's reading of 36.5 degrees at 9am on January 18 was the warmest since records for that time of day began in 1955, the bureau said.
Victoria's summer was more moderate, with Melbourne failing to notch a 40-degree day for the first summer since the 2004-05 summer.
Autumn got off to a wet beginning for Sydney, with the city posting its wettest March since 1975 – before the heavens started to dry up. The extra cloud around that month helped give Sydney its hottest March for minimum temperatures on record – as it was also for NSW as a whole.
Sydney went from its wettest March since 1975 to its driest April-May in 11 years. Photo: Peter Rae
Victoria went the other way, setting its second-warmest March on record for maximum temperatures, with the mercury an average of 3 degrees above the norm.
Oddly, both Victoria and Tasmania were warmer in March than the previous month.

Bumper snow
Winter brought its range of alpine treats, with a slow start to the snow season ending up with the best since 2000 for many ski resorts.
By late September, snow depths at Spencers Creek in the Snowy Mountains peaked at 240 centimetres, the deepest at any time of year since 2000, the bureau said. Resorts kept their ski lifts running longer as a result.
Thredbo and other resorts had their best snowfalls since 2000. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
The good snowfalls, though, weren't matched by rain in many areas. Victoria had its driest June on record, and ended up with its driest winter since 2006.
For NSW, it was the driest winter since 2002, with half the usual rainfall. It was also the state's third-warmest for maximum temperatures.

Early fire season
Spring began somewhat ominously for fire authorities, particularly in NSW, with the state posting its driest September. Sydney's meagre 0.2 millimetres of rain could hardly have been less.
For Victoria, spring was most notable for its heat, coming in as the state's fourth-warmest on record for mean temperatures.
Melbourne (and Tasmania) sweltered in November as a blocking high in the Tasman Sea kept temperatures high in the south of the continent and mild for most of the east coast, including Sydney.
Melbourne's Olympic Park collected 15 days of at least 30 degrees in spring – three more than in the previous record spring of 2009 and almost four times the long-run average of four such days in the season.
The combination of above-average temperatures and rainfall deficiencies had fire authorities bracing for a dangerous season.

Rain reprieve
Decent rain in December, though, helped ease the threat across Victoria, while days of storms have all but eliminated the near-term risk in north-eastern NSW.
"It's a more positive outlook when it's compared to the original fire potential," Ben Shepherd, senior spokesman for the NSW Rural Fire Service, said.
Still, significant rainfall deficiencies exist in the state's west, and for a region stretching from north of Nowra on the coast to Sydney and into the Hunter.
Late spring heat brought people to beaches in Melbourne while Sydney will likely post its fourth-warmest December. Photo: Janie Barrett
Since July, the RFS had dealt with 9200 bush, grass and scrub fires, up from 7700 fires at the same time a year ago, Inspector Shepherd said.
Craig Lapsley, Victoria's Emergency Management Commissioner, said those December rains gave crews a reprieve: "If we didn't have that we'd be in a serious fire season."
So far this year, Victorian authorities have dealt with 2668 fires compared with 4898 for the entire 2016-17 year, he said.
Areas including Warburton, the Yarra Valley and the Dandenongs around Melbourne remain a concern, and another spell of persistent heat could again elevate the fire threat.
"Seven hot days in a row can change the environment dramatically," he said.

Links
at No comments:

Trump's Call For Some 'Good Old Global Warming' Ridiculed By Climate Experts

The Guardian - 
  • US president again conflates weather with climate to mock climate change
  • Experts call comments ‘scientifically ridiculous and demonstrably false’
Climate scientists have long warned against using individual weather events to assess global warming Photograph: Xinhua / Barcroft Images
Donald Trump once dismissed it as a “hoax” created by the Chinese to destroy American jobs, but on a freezing Thursday night in the eastern US the president found himself pining for some of that “good old global warming”.
On holiday in Florida on Thursday, Trump wondered if global warming might not be such a problem after all.
As severe cold and record amounts of snow swept across the US east coast, Trump wrote on Twitter that his people “could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against”.
“Bundle up!” he added.
The president was reheating two favourite tropes: the conflation of weather with climate to pour scepticism on global warming, and the supposed cost to the American taxpayer of the Paris climate accord, from which he has confirmed the US will withdraw.
Climate scientists, however, have long warned against using individual weather events to ponder the existence or otherwise of global warming. Weather, they point out, refers to atmospheric conditions during a short period; climate relates to longer-term weather patterns.
On Friday, Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale University’s project on climate change communication, said Trump’s tweet was “scientifically ridiculous and demonstrably false”.
“There is a fundamental difference in scale between what weather is and what climate is,” he said. “What’s going on in one small corner of the world at a given moment does not reflect what’s going on with the planet.”
The extreme cold snap in the eastern US is a rare example of a place experiencing below-average winter temperatures, he said, a point that was neatly illustrated by a map tweeted out by the Weather Channel on Friday.
The Weather Channel 
1) There is a difference between and .
2) Short-term snaps will continue to occur in a warming climate.
3) 2017 will likely be a top three warmest year on record for the globe.
Graphic: Univ. of Maine - Climate Change Institute
Elsewhere, Matthew England, a climate scientist from the University of New South Wales, called Trump’s comment “an ignorant misconception of the way the earth’s climate works”.
“Nobody ever said winter would go away under global warming, but winter has become much milder and the record cold days are being far outnumbered by record warm days and heat extremes,” he said. “Climate change is not overturned by a few unusually cold days in the US.”
David Karoly, a climate scientist from the University of Melbourne, put it even more bluntly: “It’s winter in the US. Cold temperatures are common in winter.”
Climate modelling showed cold snaps like the one in the US were actually becoming less common as a result of global warming, Karoly said, adding that rapid attribution analysis means scientists are now able to look more closely at “classes of events”.
That type of modelling for the north-east of the US, he said, showed that although there was a great deal of year-to-year variability, the average coldest temperature in December in the region has increased in the past 50 years.
In any case, the US is already getting that “good old global warming”. 2017 is set to be the third-warmest on record, prompting among other things a climate-fuelled hurricane season in the country’s south.
Experts also know climate change is linked to a dangerous pattern of major weather events. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the US is on track to match or exceed the previous record year for extreme weather and climate events costing more than $1bn, including wildfires, hurricanes and flooding.
There had been 15 such events by the end of September, compared with 15 for the whole of 2016 and 16 in the record year of 2011.
Adam Smith, a climatologist at NOAA, said: “Climate change is playing a role, amplifying the frequency and intensity of some types of extreme weather that lead to billion-dollar disasters.”
With Hurricane Harvey devastating Texas and extraordinary wildfires in California, Smith said 2017 was expected to “shatter” the record for the US’s costliest year in terms of weather events. That was 2005, with losses of $215bn from disasters including Hurricane Katrina.
Trump’s tweet also revisited his claim that the Paris climate accord would have cost the US “trillions” of dollars. At a rally in Pennsylvania in April to mark his 100th day in office, Trump said “full compliance with the agreement could ultimately shrink America’s GDP by $2.5tn over a 10-year period”.
The politically non-aligned website Factcheck.org asked the White House for a source for that remark, and was pointed to a 2016 study by the conservative Heritage Foundation which found the Paris agreement “will result in over $2.5tn in lost GDP by 2035”.
While that is an 18-year period, not 10, Factcheck.org found the accuracy of Heritage’s statements depended on which numbers were used. The Heritage study used a carbon tax rate of $36, increasing 3% each year from 2015 to 2035. Other analyses have found the US would have needed only a carbon tax of $21.22 starting in 2017 to meet its Paris target by 2025.
Leiserowitz, meanwhile, criticised the president’s use of social media. “It’s meant to be red meat for his base,” he said. “They’re the ones most likely to be dismissive of climate change and the most likely to vote in the 2018 Republican primaries – so it’s a warning shot for the GOP members in Congress.”
The global warming tweet, he said, was another attempt by Trump to distract from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
He added that the idea a cold snap disproves global warming is a “zombie argument”, because though “it’s killed over and over by the science” it “keeps coming back for more brains”.
Trump’s tweet was “troll-like”, the scientist said, showing the president “delighting in sparking outrage among [his] opponents”.

Links
at No comments:

29/12/2017

On The Boil: Five Climate Lawsuits To Watch In 2018

Reuters - Sebastien Malo | Sophie Hares

Urgenda / Chantal Bekker
NEW YORK / TEPIC, MEXICO: - Lawyers and advocates stepped up the fight against climate change this year by pursuing a rising number of legal cases around the world that aim to test the limits of national laws.
Climate change cases numbered nearly 900 in 24 nations as of March, according to a survey by UN Environment and Columbia Law School, marking a steady increase in lawsuits filed to hold governments and companies to account over carbon pollution.
They include a handful of milestone suits that charge violations of various states’ constitutions.
Here are five cases whose outcomes, some expected in the coming year, could reshape the roles and responsibilities of governments and businesses in tackling climate change:

- URGENDA FOUNDATION V. KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS (NETHERLANDS)
This landmark case energized the climate movement in 2015 when a district court sided with the nearly 900 Dutch citizens behind it, ordering their government to cut greenhouse has emissions faster.
It was “one of the most important climate change decisions ever issued”, said Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law in New York.
But the outcome is now being appealed and a decision could be handed down as early as 2018, said Gerrard.
The Urgenda ruling remains the only one of its kind globally to declare a government’s obligation to control climate change.
It did so by citing the Dutch constitution, prompting a flurry of similar complaints worldwide where plaintiffs are trying to enlist their nations’ founding principles to curb global warming.

- JULIANA V. UNITED STATES (UNITED STATES)
Trial in this federal suit filed by a group of 21 U.S. teenagers could begin in February 2018.
Building on the precedent established by the Urgenda case, the young people from Oregon charge their government’s climate policy is inadequate and flouts their constitutional right to live in a habitable atmosphere.
The case is currently stalled amid efforts by the U.S. government - fearful it will lead to a constitutional crisis - to prevent it going forward.
“It’s clearly a case to watch,” said Sean Hecht, co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA in California.
“It would be extraordinary for a judge to take the step of holding the U.S. government responsible for this, but it’s not unthinkable,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

- LLIUYA V. RWE (GERMANY)
A Peruvian farmer, Saúl Luciano Lliuya, is seeking $20,000 in damages from a large German energy utility based half-way around the world.
Lliuya argues that RWE AG holds some responsibility - by emitting planet-warming gases - for the melting of glaciers and rising water level of a lake near his Andean town.
Observers are calling the Lliuya suit, which is due to hear evidence in 2018, a test case of whether a company can be held financially liable for its contribution to the effects of climate change in other parts of the world.

- EXXON MOBIL CORPORATION V. MAURA TRACY HEALEY (UNITED STATES)
Exxon Mobil is battling attorney generals in Massachusetts and New York who are investigating the oil giant, after news reports charged in 2015 that its own scientists had found cutting fossil fuel use was needed to slow down climate change.
Exxon’s case against Massachusetts’ attorney general Maura Healey and a similar one against her New York counterpart seek to derail subpoenas to obtain the company’s internal documents on climate science.
“There’s a lot at stake because these companies are very concerned about potential liability,” said UCLA’s Hecht.

- GREENPEACE NORDIC V. GOVERNMENT OF NORWAY (NORWAY)
In another case rooted in a constitutional argument, this lawsuit charges that Norway violated the country’s constitution by letting energy firms explore for oil and gas in the Arctic Barents Sea.
With a judgment expected in January, a win by Greenpeace would “re-energize similar litigations in other countries”, said Columbia Law School’s Gerrard.

Links
at No comments: