Doomsday Clock Ticks Closest To Midnight In 64 Years Due To Climate Change, Nuclear Fears, Donald Trump Election

ABC News - Reuters

The clock was last set this close to midnight in 1953. (Reuters: Jim Bourg)

Scientists have reset their symbolic Doomsday Clock to its closest time to midnight in 64 years, saying the world is closer to catastrophe due to threats such as nuclear weapons, climate change and Donald Trump's election as US President.

Key points: The Doomsday Clock's hands have been moved to two minutes and 30 seconds from midnight The symbolic clock has not been as close to midnight since 1953 Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss says Trump, Putin largely responsible for shift

The timepiece, devised by the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and displayed on its website, is widely viewed as an indicator of the world's vulnerability to disaster.
Its hands were moved to two minutes and 30 seconds to midnight, from three minutes.
"The Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight than it's ever been in the lifetime of almost everyone in this room," Lawrence Krauss, the bulletin's chair, told a news conference in Washington.
The clock was last set this close to midnight in 1953, marking the start of the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Thursday's reset was the first since 2015.

Trump and Putin largely responsible for shift
Professor Krauss, a theoretical physicist, said Mr Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin carried a large share of the blame for the heightened threat.
The bulletin cited nuclear volatility, especially as the United States and Russia seek to modernise their atomic arsenals and remain at odds in war-torn countries such as Syria and Ukraine.

Scientists said Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin carried a large share of the blame for the heightened threat. (Reuters: Kremlin)

Mr Trump has suggested South Korea and Japan could acquire nuclear weapons to compete with North Korea, which has conducted nuclear tests.
Mr Trump has also raised doubts about the future of a multilateral nuclear pact with Iran.
Chinese aid to Pakistan in the nuclear weapons field, as well as the expansion of India and Pakistan's nuclear arsenals, were also worrisome, the bulletin said in a statement.
The climate change outlook was somewhat less dismal, "but only somewhat."
While nations had taken actions to combat climate change, the bulletin noted, there appeared to be little appetite for additional cuts to carbon dioxide emissions.
It said the Trump administration nominees raised the possibility the government will be "openly hostile to progress toward even the most modest efforts to avert catastrophic climate disruption."
The world also faces cyber threats, the bulletin said. US intelligence agencies' conclusion that Russia intervened in the presidential election to help Mr Trump raised the possibility of similar attacks on other democracies, it said.
The bulletin was founded by scientists who helped develop the United States' first atomic weapons. Its Science and Security Board decides on the clock's hands in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes Nobel laureates.

Links

• Nuclear 'Doomsday Clock' ticks closest to midnight in 64 years
• 'Doomsday Clock' Moves 30 Seconds Closer To Midnight
• Atomic scientists reset the Doomsday Clock to its closest time to midnight in 64 years
• The Doomsday Clock just advanced, 'thanks to Trump': It's now just 2½ minutes to 'midnight.'
• Symbolic 'Doomsday Clock' moves closer to midnight

Australia's Coal Power Plan Twice As Costly As Renewables Route, Report Finds

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

Researcher says new coal plants aimed at reducing emissions would cost $62b, while the cost using renewables would be $24-$34bn

Resources minister Matthew Canavan and energy and environment minister Josh Frydenberg want new coal power plants to be built in Australia. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/Reuters

A plan for new coal power plants, which government ministers say could reduce emissions from coal-generated electricity by 27%, would cost more than $60bn, a new analysis has found.
Achieving the same reduction using only renewable energy would cost just half as much – between $24bn and $34bn – the report found.
The resources minister, Matthew Canavan, and the energy and environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, have been arguing for new coal power plants to be built in Australia.
Last week, Canavan released analysis he commissioned from the industry department, which found replacing all Australia's coal power stations with the latest "ultra super-critical" coal-fired power stations would reduce emissions in that sector by 27%.
Frydenberg has also raised the conclusions in interviews, and promoted the benefits of coal power.
Neither has responded to questions about the cost of reducing coal-fired power emissions by 27% using the latest technology.
So Dylan McConnell from the Climate and Energy College at the University of Melbourne crunched the numbers, and found that the 27% reduction in the coal sector could be achieved, but it would cost $62bn.
McConnell said at a conservative estimate, achieving the reduction would require 20GW of new capacity. According to the latest estimates from the CSIRO, new ultra super-critical black coal costs $3,100 per kW to build.
"No wonder no one wants to talk about the costs," McConnell said.
He said $62bn would be enough to build between 35GW and 39GW of wind and solar energy. Because that would produce less electricity than 20GW of coal power, it would not completely replace coal power, but it would reduce its emissions by up to 65%.
And that would amount to an emissions reduction of between 50% and 60% in the electricity sector as a whole.
McConnell found that if the 27% reduction in emissions from the coal generation sector were to be achieved with renewables, rather than with new coal, about 13-19GW of renewable energy would be needed, which would cost between $24bn and $34bn.
He said the scenario proposed by Canavan and Frydenberg would end up with 20GW of highly polluting coal power stations that were unlikely to be retired for decades.
On the other hand, McConnell said, if that money were spent on renewables, it would leave some coal and gas in place, which ultimately would still need to be removed to meet long-term emissions reduction targets.
Neither Canavan nor Frydenberg responded to questions about the costs of building new coal power stations. In a statement, Frydenberg said only that the government was committed to a "technology neutral" approach to meeting emissions targets.
"Arbitrarily excluding certain technologies for ideological reasons will lead to higher cost outcomes," the statement said.
The Opposition spokesman for climate change and energy, Mark Butler, said: "This analysis clearly shows the government is off on an economically and environmentally irresponsible frolic with their trumpeting of 'clean coal'.
"As the Australian Industry Group and many others have made clear, replacing our existing coal power with more coal power just doesn't stack up; either on environmental or economic grounds.
"This is just the latest effort of a weak government to appease its irrational extreme right wing and distract from the fact they're simply incapable of delivering real policy solutions to our significant energy challenges," Butler said.
McConnell pointed out that the latest coal-powered fire stations were not at all "clean". They produced about 700 grams of CO2 for every kilowatt hour of electricity – much more than the 400 grams from new combined cycle gas turbines, and much more than the average produced by OECD countries, 420 grams per kilowatt hour in 2014, according to the International Energy Agency.
OECD countries will need to reduce that figure to just 15 grams per kilowatt hour if the world is to keep global temperature increases below 2C, the agency has said.

Links

• Australia should invest in coal power to reduce emissions, minister says
• Australia's coal-fired power stations 'will need to shut at rate of one a year', hearing told
• Federal resources minister accuses ABC of 'fake news' over Adani coalmine
• Australia dubbed 'fossil of the day' after lobbying for coal mine at climate talks
• Australian unions call for 'just transition' from coal-generated electricity
• Quentin Bryce in high-powered group calling for coal power to be phased out
• Chief scientist to lead review into Australia's energy security
• Linking Adani coalmine to social uplift in India ridiculous, says conservationist

Sea Level Rise Estimate Grows Alarmingly Higher In Latest Federal Report

InsideClimate News - Nicholas Kusnetz

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) latest report arrives, predicting worst-case scenario of 8 feet of rise by century's end, just as Donald Trump takes office with pro-fossil fuel policies.

Places like Robbins, Md., already struggling with sea level rise, could see even more flooding under new federal projections. Credit: Getty Images

New federal estimates say global sea levels could rise faster than previously thought, and the rise may be even worse in many coastal regions of the United States.
A new report, written by scientists with several federal agencies and universities, says that under a worst-case scenario, climate change could raise the oceans an average of more than 8 feet by 2100, about 20 inches more than a previous federal estimate published in 2012.
The best case now projected would be an average of about a foot.
The report was delivered just as President Donald Trump took office, immediately working to undo President Barack Obama's climate policies.
On his inauguration day, pages mentioning climate change on whitehouse.gov were removed.
Trump has promised policies to increase fossil fuel development in the U.S., and to undo Obama's major emissions-cutting initiative, the Clean Power Plan.
Sea level rise will likely be worse in some regions of the U.S. because of ocean currents, wind patterns and settling sediments.
The authors examined six scenarios with a range of probabilities in an effort to help state and local governments plan for sea level rise.
 Under all of them, the Northeast should expect higher waters than much of the rest of the globe. The Pacific Northwest and Alaska would likely experience lower-than-average increases under the best-case scenarios.
"The ocean's not flat," said William V. Sweet, one of the authors and a scientist at NOAA. "It's not going to rise like water in a bathtub."
The six scenarios are based on United Nations models of future greenhouse gas emissions, depending on whether countries rapidly slash pollution or continue burning fossil fuels as usual.
The authors determined that the worst-case rise of more than 8 feet has only a 0.1 percent chance of occurring by 2100, even under a business-as-usual emissions scenario, but a rise of more than 1.5 feet is near certain with high emissions.
The increase in the estimates for global sea rise was partly due to new research on the Antarctic ice sheet, which is melting faster and appears to be more fragile than previously estimated, suggesting that some of the more pessimistic scenarios are increasingly likely.
The report also warned that moderate coastal flooding will become 25 times more likely with a 14-inch rise in the seas. That level could come anytime from 2030 to 2080 for most coastal cities, depending on their location and the world's emissions. It would mean that a flood that now comes once every five years would be expected five times a year.
Sea levels have already risen by more than 8 inches globally since 1880, with 3 inches coming since 1993.
Tidal flooding "has increased by an order of magnitude over the past several decades," the report says, "turning it from a rare event into a recurrent and disruptive problem."
The authors note that 2 million Americans would likely see their homes permanently flooded if sea levels rise 3 feet. Twice that increase would inundate the homes of 6 million.
Only the rosiest scenarios would avoid a 3-foot rise by 2100.
The effects of global warming, of course, will continue long beyond that year.
"Even if society sharply reduces emissions in the coming decades," the authors write, "sea level will most likely continue to rise for centuries."

Links

• Flood Damage Costs Will Rise Faster Than Sea Levels, Study Says
• 6 More Feet of Sea Level Rise Possible This Century, NYC Climate Panel Warns
• Antarctica's Melting Edges Bad News for Sea Level Rise