Lethal Heating: 04/22/17

22/04/2017

Climate Change Will Fuel Terrorism Recruitment, Report For German Foreign Office Says

The Guardian - Ben Doherty

Report by Adelphi thinktank warns terrorist groups will exploit natural disasters and water and food shortages

One of the biggest camps for people displaced by Islamic extremists in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Drought-hit areas are ideal recruiting grounds for groups like Boko Haram, according to the Adelphi report. Photograph: Sunday Alamba/AP

Climate change will fuel acts of terrorism and strengthen recruiting efforts by terrorist groups such as Islamic State and Boko Haram, a report commissioned by the German foreign office has found.
Terrorist groups will exploit the natural disasters and water and food shortages expected to result from climate change and allow them to recruit more easily, operate more freely and control civilian populations, argues the report by Berlin thinktank Adelphi.
“Terrorist groups are increasingly using natural resources – such as water – as a weapon of war, controlling access to it, and further compounding, and exacerbating resource scarcities,” Lukas Rüttinger writes in the report, titled Insurgency, Terrorism and Organised Crime in a Warming World.
“The scarcer resources become, the more power is given to those who control them, especially in regions where people are particularly reliant on natural resources for their livelihoods.
“As climate change affects food security and the availability of water and land, affected people will become more vulnerable not only to negative climate impacts but also to recruitment by terrorist groups offering alternative livelihoods and economic incentives.”
The Adelphi report cites several examples where the impacts of climate change are already spurring or exacerbating terrorism.
In the drought-ravaged region around Lake Chad in central Africa, food and water shortages, near-economic collapse, and weak governments are providing a ripe recruiting ground for Islamist fundamentalist group Boko Haram.
“In north-eastern Nigeria, the region closest to Lake Chad and where Boko Haram is strongest, 71.5% of the population live in poverty and more than 50% are malnourished … This kind of economic deprivation provides an ideal breeding ground for recruitment by Boko Haram.”
In Syria, the now six-year civil war and rise of Isis was, not caused, but exacerbated by one of the worst and widest droughts in the country’s history, which drove hundreds of thousands from the land, and sent millions into extreme poverty and food insecurity.
Isis is using water as a weapon of war, the report argues, controlling dams to harm enemies and expand its own territory.
“In 2015, Islamic State closed the gates of the Ramadi dam to more easily attack regime forces further downstream. Weaponisation of water can also take the form of using it as a source of funding by taxing it, as Isis did in Raqqa. In other instances, Isis did not cut the supply, but rather used water to flood land in order to expel people from their homes.”
And in Afghanistan, a country riven by internecine conflicts and acutely vulnerable to climate change, more than half of local conflicts are over land and water. Diminishing rainfall and advancing desertification are likely to spark further violent clashes between nomads and pastoralists over access to pastures and water and food.
Rüttinger told the Guardian climate change alone did not cause terrorism, but “creates an environment where terrorism can thrive” and exacerbates existing tensions and conflicts.
Former US deputy undersecretary of defence Sherri Goodman told the Guardian this month that climate change was a “threat multiplier” for unstable regions around the world, but that its impacts would be felt globally, and by countries distant from the source conflict.
“Climate is a threat multiplier because it aggravates others tensions and conflicts that already exist.”
Militaries around the world, across the Americas, UK, Europe, and the Asia Pacific, have highlighted the “threat multiplier” impact of climate change and extreme weather events.
The Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change has warned the impact of global warming will drive massive refugee movements of an “unimaginable scale”, and that climate represents “the greatest security threat of the 21st century”.
The US secretary of defence, James Matthis, told his confirmation hearing in January climate change posed a real and current security threat to American troops.
“Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today. It is appropriate for the combatant commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning.”
In March, the United Nations, in passing a resolution on the Lake Chad crisis, emphasised the “interconnectedness” of the climate and security challenges in the region, emphasising “the adverse effects of climate change and ecological changes among other factors on the stability of the region”.

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Renewables Roadshow: How The People Of Newtown Got Behind Solar-Powered Beer

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

A hipster brewery in a Sydney suburb has created beer with an environmental message

Renewables roadshow – Newtown: 'What could be better than solar-powered beer?'

Newtown – Sydney’s grungy inner-city suburb where a seemingly endless string of Thai restaurants is interrupted by body-piercing shops, clothes stores and a growing number of small bars.
It’s a suburb known for its beer-fuelled nightlife and alternative cultural tastes. It’s also one of the most progressive areas in Australia: at the last New South Wales election, the Greens got more than 45% of the primary vote (and almost 60% after preferences) in the seat of Newtown.
It makes sense, then, that beer and progressive environmental politics would come together in this suburb and, right in the middle of Newtown, a community-owned solar array is powering a local brewery.
“Solar-powered beer tastes better,” says Oscar McMahon with a laugh. He is the cofounder of Young Henrys, a small local beer company whose brewery is now home to the solar array, which is owned by members of the Newtown community.
NSW has become one of the worst states for driving the transition to renewable energy, so Newtown locals have taken matters into their own hands.
The groups involved in the project – the brewery owners, the local investors, supporters in the NSW state parliament and the community energy provider Pingala – each have their own overlapping reasons to buy-in.
McMahon is the epitome of the Newtown variety of hipster. Standing among the fermenters, he has an impressive amount of tattoos protruding from his black sleeveless shirt and a full long beard that would make any biker jealous.
He and Richard Adamson began their business in a small warehouse space in Newtown in 2012. “We had a brewery that could produce 1200 litres at the time and we were generally selling about 5-10 kegs a week at the beginning,” McMahon says.
“Five years later, we’ve got a much more efficient, bigger brewery. We now have five warehouses. We have sales people all over the country and we are selling nationally to about 300 different venues.”
The idea for the business came out of a beer appreciation club they both attended. McMahon says the pair wanted to “create a brewery that is as in contact with the people that drink the beer as beer club is”. They have maintained that ethos by having a small restaurant or bar at each of their brewing locations and hand-picking the venues that sell their beer.
They see the community solar project on their roof as another way to be in close contact with the community around them. “We are buying our power from people that have invested in an idea and infrastructure within our business,” he says. “The benefits are that you open yourself up to other people that believe in your company to actually buy in.”
Adamson, McMahon’s business partner, thinks much of the local enthusiasm springs from the living situations of those who live there.
“A lot of people who live in Newtown either rent or they live in apartments. They don’t really have the opportunity to access solar energy,” Adamson says. “This way they get to participate and know that at least some of the electricity being used in the area is being generated by solar.”
Local state member Jenny Leong has been a supporter of the Pingala Young Henrys project from the start. So much so that hers was one of the 54 names drawn out of a hat with 300 names in it, allowing her to invest money personally in the project.
“What we see here is the community stepping in and filling the gap that is completely left open by the fact that we have no leadership from our national or state governments when it comes to really addressing the issue of pollution and really moving us away from polluting fossil fuel industries,” she says.
Indeed federal energy policy has been left in tatters after a decade of inaction on climate change. Investment in new electricity generation has stalled while many of the country’s old coal-powered generators are poised to close.
Consequently official government projections show greenhouse gas emissions are rising and will continue to do so to 2030. This means there is no hope of achieving the cuts in emissions Australia promised to make when they signed up to the Paris agreement in 2015.

Australia's projected emissions v emissions targets

Projected emissions have an upper and lower estimate, which could range from 571 MtCO2-e to 616 by 2030

Meanwhile, the lack of certainty for energy businesses has meant investment in energy generation has frozen, directly causing prices to jump and adding more than the cost of a $50 per tonne carbon price to wholesale energy prices.
The ACT, Victoria and South Australia have moved ahead in this area but NSW has been slow to build their own renewable energy policy. In 2016 they announced a goal of having zero net emissions by 2050, which would require a lot of renewable energy generation, yet how that would be achieved has not been clearly spelled out.
Leong says a project like this shows the community taking action, and moving forward without the politicians.
“Newtown is an electorate that is made up of some of the most wonderfully progressive people in the country, who want to see a real shift towards genuine protection of our planet and our environment from pollution.”
Pingala installed the brewery’s solar array and organised the ownership structure. The 29.9kW array is owned by 54 locals (including Leong), who will get 5%-8% return on their investment each year. The brewery sources a big chunk of its electricity from a totally renewable source, while paying about the same for its electricity.
At the end of 10 years, the locals will have made a profit on their investment and the solar array will be gifted to the brewery, who will continue to use it to generate free energy for another decade or longer.
The Young Henry’s installation is the first project that Pingala has organised but they expect it to be the first of many. “We spent a long time developing our business models and building a community base,” says April Crawford-Smith, a convenor of the four-year-old community energy organisation.
Their next step is to replicate the installation at other locations around Sydney. “We have amazing plans for the future, doing a similar project again on other breweries as well as looking at apartments and schools. And we have also looked at remote Aboriginal communities and energy affordability and solar as well,” Crawford-Smith says. “So we have a pretty broad remit.
“It’s very ambitious but at the very heart of it is community and them driving forward solutions for our environment and our society.”
For some at Pingala, the project of building community renewable energy is also about social justice. Pingala coordinator Tom Nockolds wants the public to own the sources of their own energy, taking it away from big business, and putting the profits and other benefits into the hands of the public.
“Community ownership of renewable energy is so important because we are in the midst of an amazing energy transition. It’s no longer a question of if it’s going to happen, it’s happening all around us,” Nockolds says. “The real question is are we going to take advantage of the opportunity to build fairer systems in the way our energy systems are structured?”
Leong believes her electorate of Newtown is the ideal place for the transition to begin.
“The wonderful local feeling that is appreciated by so many in Newtown is to have a locally brewed beer powered by solar energy and linked to an incredible community initiative and a cooperative structure,” she says. “What could be better than solar powered beer?.”

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We Need To Get Rid Of Carbon In The Atmosphere, Not Just Reduce Emissions

The Conversation - Eelco Rohling

Humans have burned 420 billion tonnes of carbon since the start of the industrial revolution. Half of it is still in the atmosphere. Reuters/Stringer

Getting climate change under control is a formidable, multifaceted challenge. Analysis by my colleagues and me suggests that staying within safe warming levels now requires removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The technology to do this is in its infancy and will take years, even decades, to develop, but our analysis suggests that this must be a priority. If pushed, operational large-scale systems should be available by 2050.
We created a simple climate model and looked at the implications of different levels of carbon in the ocean and the atmosphere. This lets us make projections about greenhouse warming, and see what we need to do to limit global warming to within 1.5℃ of pre-industrial temperatures – one of the ambitions of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
To put the problem in perspective, here are some of the key numbers.
Humans have emitted 1,540 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide gas since the industrial revolution. To put it another way, that’s equivalent to burning enough coal to form a square tower 22 metres wide that reaches from Earth to the Moon.
Half of these emissions have remained in the atmosphere, causing a rise of CO₂ levels that is at least 10 times faster than any known natural increase during Earth’s long history. Most of the other half has dissolved into the ocean, causing acidification with its own detrimental impacts.
Although nature does remove CO₂, for example through growth and burial of plants and algae, we emit it at least 100 times faster than it’s eliminated. We can’t rely on natural mechanisms to handle this problem: people will need to help as well.

What’s the goal?
The Paris climate agreement aims to limit global warming to well below 2℃, and ideally no higher than 1.5℃. (Others say that 1℃ is what we should be really aiming for, although the world is already reaching and breaching this milestone.)
In our research, we considered 1℃ a better safe warming limit because any more would take us into the territory of the Eemian period, 125,000 years ago. For natural reasons, during this era the Earth warmed by a little more than 1℃. Looking back, we can see the catastrophic consequences of global temperatures staying this high over an extended period.
Sea levels during the Eemian period were up to 10 metres higher than present levels. Today, the zone within 10m of sea level is home to 10% of the world’s population, and even a 2m sea-level rise today would displace almost 200 million people.
Clearly, pushing towards an Eemian-like climate is not safe. In fact, with 2016 having been 1.2℃ warmer than the pre-industrial average, and extra warming locked in thanks to heat storage in the oceans, we may already have crossed the 1℃ average threshold. To keep warming below the 1.5℃ goal of the Paris agreement, it’s vital that we remove CO₂ from the atmosphere as well as limiting the amount we put in.
So how much CO₂ do we need to remove to prevent global disaster?

Are you a pessimist or an optimist?
Currently, humanity’s net emissions amount to roughly 37 gigatonnes of CO₂ per year, which represents 10 gigatonnes of carbon burned (a gigatonne is a billion tonnes). We need to reduce this drastically. But even with strong emissions reductions, enough carbon will remain in the atmosphere to cause unsafe warming.
Using these facts, we identified two rough scenarios for the future.
The first scenario is pessimistic. It has CO₂ emissions remaining stable after 2020. To keep warming within safe limits, we then need to remove almost 700 gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere and ocean, which freely exchange CO₂. To start, reforestation and improved land use can lock up to 100 gigatonnes away into trees and soils. This leaves a further 600 gigatonnes to be extracted via technological means by 2100.
Technological extraction currently costs at least US$150 per tonne. At this price, over the rest of the century, the cost would add up to US$90 trillion. This is similar in scale to current global military spending, which – if it holds steady at around US$1.6 trillion a year – will add up to roughly US$132 trillion over the same period.
The second scenario is optimistic. It assumes that we reduce emissions by 6% each year starting in 2020. We then still need to remove about 150 gigatonnes of carbon.
As before, reforestation and improved land use can account for 100 gigatonnes, leaving 50 gigatonnes to be technologically extracted by 2100. The cost for that would be US$7.5 trillion by 2100 – only 6% of the global military spend.
Of course, these numbers are a rough guide. But they do illustrate the crossroads at which we find ourselves.

The job to be done
Right now is the time to choose: without action, we’ll be locked into the pessimistic scenario within a decade. Nothing can justify burdening future generations with this enormous cost.
For success in either scenario, we need to do more than develop new technology. We also need new international legal, policy, and ethical frameworks to deal with its widespread use, including the inevitable environmental impacts.
Releasing large amounts of iron or mineral dust into the oceans could remove CO₂ by changing environmental chemistry and ecology. But doing so requires revision of international legal structures that currently forbid such activities.
Similarly, certain minerals can help remove CO₂ by increasing the weathering of rocks and enriching soils. But large-scale mining for such minerals will impact on landscapes and communities, which also requires legal and regulatory revisions.
And finally, direct CO₂ capture from the air relies on industrial-scale installations, with their own environmental and social repercussions.
Without new legal, policy, and ethical frameworks, no significant advances will be possible, no matter how great the technological developments. Progressive nations may forge ahead toward delivering the combined package.
The costs of this are high. But countries that take the lead stand to gain technology, jobs, energy independence, better health, and international gravitas.

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