Lethal Heating: 07/07/17

07/07/2017

Climate Change Authority Loses Last Climate Scientist

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn

David Karoly says without an expert to replace him, the CCA will struggle to fulfil its legal mandate

Professors David Karoly and Clive Hamilton at a 2012 Climate Change Authority media conference. Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP

Imagine, if you will, a government board to champion Australian arts without any artists on it, or an agency to advise on medical research without any medical researchers.
Or perhaps even, imagine a government authority set up to provide expertise on climate policy without any actual climate scientists.
Well you don’t have to imagine that last one, because that’s what we now have – the government’s Climate Change Authority is now sans climate scientist.
Prof David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne, has just finished his term on the authority’s board – the only member to stick it out for the full five years.
Karoly says without someone to replace him, the authority will struggle to fulfil its legal mandate. He told me:

I think that it is critically important that at least one member of the Climate Change Authority is an expert and experienced climate change scientist. Such a member is needed to provide information and interpretation on the latest climate change science publications and data.
In my view, it can only do that with a climate change scientist as a member, to provide expert assessment of the effectiveness of proposed greenhouse gas emission reductions nationally and globally, and the projected impacts on Australia from current and future climate change.
The Climate Change Authority Act 2011 states that, in conducting a review, the authority must have regard to environmental effectiveness among a number of other matters.

I asked the Department of the Environment and Energy if there were any plans to replace Karoly with another climate scientist. The department said:

Government appointments to the CCA are a matter for the Government under the CCA’s legislation. The Chief Scientist is an ex officio Member of the Authority and can assist on scientific matters and in providing access to the scientific community, including climate scientists.

So in other words, it won’t replace Karoly and will instead just rely on the chief scientist, Alan Finkel, to act as a go-between, which of course is much more efficient and logical than actually having a climate scientist right there in the room. That would be silly, right?
Remembering too that the CCA has always had the serving chief scientist on its board so, by this logic, Karoly was always a spare part.
In reality, the makeup and character of the CCA was fundamentally altered after Malcolm Turnbull made changes to the board in 2015.
So why did Karoly decide to stick it out this long, when colleagues including Prof Clive Hamilton, Prof John Quiggin and Danny Price were throwing in the towel out of frustration that the government was listening to rightwing anti-science advocates instead of actual expertise? Says Karoly:

I decided to stay on because I believe that the CCA was established by the Australian Parliament.
I believe that it is important that the Parliament and the Australian people are provided with the best possible independent science-based advice on Australia’s climate change policy.
Unfortunately, after six new members were appointed by the Government to the CCA in 2015, I do not think this continued to be the case, despite my efforts. That is why Clive Hamilton and I published our Minority Report in 2016. I did not resign at the same time as Clive Hamilton as I still wanted to provide the best possible science-based advice to the members of the CCA and to the Government.

Karoly’s account of a shift in the authority under the Turnbull government matches that of Hamilton, who told me this year that “the whole character of the authority changed”.
In its earlier years, the CCA had been forthright in its advice to the government. Simply put, the authority’s detailed reports showed targets to cut emissions were well short of what was needed if Australia wanted to mount any sort of claim to be doing its fair share globally.
Under the former Liberal leader Tony Abbott, the government vowed to axe the authority entirely – but couldn’t get enough support in parliament. So instead, if you believe its former insiders, the authority was carefully manipulated and undermined.
As Hamilton put it, the CCA became “dominated by people who want action, but not too much action”.

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Scientists Are Starting To Clear Up One Of The Biggest Controversies In Climate Science

Fairfax - Chelsea Harvey

How much Earth will warm in response to future greenhouse gas emissions may be one of the most fundamental questions in climate science - but it's also one of the most difficult to answer. And it's growing more controversial: In recent years, some scientists have suggested that our climate models may actually be predicting too much future warming, and that climate change will be less severe than the projections suggest.
But new research is helping to lay these suspicions to rest. A study this week in the journal Science Advances, joins a growing body of literature that suggests the models are on track after all. And while that may be worrisome for the planet, it's good news for the scientists working to understand its future.

Climate policy debate intensifies
Politicians from all sides have been very willing to share their thoughts on climate policy and the government's plan for a clean energy target.

The new study addresses a basic conflict between what the models suggest about future climate change and what we can infer from historical observations alone. Some scientists have suggested that the models may be too sensitive, pointing out that the warming they predict for the future is greater than what we would expect based only on the warming patterns we've observed since humans first began emitting greenhouse gases.
The models, for instance, suggest that if the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere were to reach double its preindustrial level, the planet would warm by anywhere from about 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius. But the warming patterns we've actually observed over the past 200 years or so would suggest that a doubling in carbon dioxide should only lead to about 3 degrees Celsius, of warming at the most.
The discrepancy has become a major cause for concern among climate scientists in recent years, according to the new study's lead author Cristian Proistosescu, a research associate at the University of Washington who conducted the research while completing a PhD at Harvard. Even the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledged the issue in its most recent report, he said, stating that it could no longer provide a best estimate for the climate's sensitivity.
"It worried a lot of us," Proistosescu told The Washington Post. " We needed to understand why our different estimates didn't work."
The new study helps to reconcile the models with the historical record. It suggests that global warming occurs in different phases or "modes" throughout the planet, some of which happen more quickly than others. Scientists now increasingly believe that certain slow-developing climate processes will amplify warming to a greater extent in the future, putting the models in the right after all. But these processes take time, even up to several hundred years, to really take effect - and because not enough time has passed since the industrial revolution for their signal to really develop, the historical record is what's actually misleading at the moment.
This conclusion is supported by a growing body of research, which suggests that warming estimates made from the historical record alone are "potentially biased low, for reasons we are now just beginning to understand," said Timothy Andrews, a climate scientist with the Met Office, the United Kingdom's national weather service, in an email to The Washington Post. While Andrews was not involved with the new study, he's one of multiple scientists whose recent research has tackled the same issue.

This illustration obtained from NASA on Jan. 20, 2016, shows that 2015 was the warmest year since modern record-keeping began in 1880, according to a new analysis by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Photo: Scientific Visualization Studio/Goddard Space Flight Center via AFP-Getty Images

The new study uses a statistical method to separate "fast" and "slow" climate modes in the models. According to Proistosescu, when greenhouse gases are emitted into the atmosphere, a "fast" warming effect begins to take place almost immediately in certain parts of the planet, mainly over the land masses in the Northern Hemisphere. Indeed, these are the parts of Earth where the most rapid warming has been observed since the industrial revolution.
On the other hand, he said, other parts of the planet - namely, the Southern Ocean and the eastern Pacific - respond much more slowly, in part because they're just so deep and cold to begin with. But as they absorb more heat and finally start to warm up, they may produce a variety of climate feedback effects that actually enhance the global warming that's already occurring. For instance, changes in ocean temperatures can alter atmospheric patterns around the world. The models suggest that these warming ocean regions may lead to a decrease in reflective cloud cover in the future, allowing more solar radiation to make it through the atmosphere to Earth's surface.
While the impact of these processes may be profound, they can also take long periods of time to unfold, Proistosescu said - potentially up to 300 years or so. Through their statistical parsing, the researchers found that the models suggest the effects of this slow climate mode only account for about 3 per cent of the human-caused warming we've seen so far. But in the future, under a scenario in which atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations double, it could account for up to half of all warming that occurs.
Since they were able to separate the fast and slow climate modes, the researchers also conducted a test to see what would happen if they only applied fast climate warming in the models. When they did so, the model predictions suddenly fell in line with the historical record - suggesting that the still-developing slow mode is the reason the two have failed to match so far.
That said, the study does beg the question of how we can be so sure the slow climate mode will actually develop as it does in the model, since humans have yet to really observe it in nature. According to Piers Forster, a University of Leeds climate scientist who has also studied climate sensitivity, the models tend to rely on certain assumptions that have not yet unfolded in real life - for instance, that the eastern Pacific will eventually warm to a greater extent than the western Pacific.
"This doesn't necessarily mean the models are wrong," he added in an emailed comment to The Washington Post. But, he said, it does suggest that "we do not yet fully understand these long term changes in the Pacific and therefore these climate change amplification effects."
According to Proistosescu, some studies of Earth's ancient climate - which scientists can conduct using information from sources like ice cores and preserved sediments - do suggest that a slow climate mode does exist and has occurred in the past. And he added that the climate models rely on basic physical processes to a great extent, and "we trust that they do the basic physics correctly."
But he agreed that some caution - or at least a great deal more research on how these slow climate responses will continue to develop - is called for. In fact, identifying the uncertainties that remain about Earth's climate sensitivity is another significant outcome of the study, he suggested.
The research indicates that the models and the historical record are not so different after all, and that there are certain large-scale climate feedback processes still unfolding. How exactly those develop may still be uncertain - no one's arguing that the models are currently perfect, Proistosescu said.
"But they're close enough that you trust that there is an effect there, you just need to better quantify what that is," he added. " And that's where a lot of the work is going."

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A Landmark Climate Lawsuit Against Trump Is Scheduled For Trial Next Year. Here’s What To Expect.

Washington Post - Chelsea Harvey

Twenty-one youths, ages 9 to 21, have sued the federal government, which they claim has violated their constitutional right to a healthy climate system by supporting the production of fossil fuels and emission of greenhouse gases. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News)

A trial date has finally been set for a groundbreaking, climate-change lawsuit being brought against the federal government after multiple hurdles in the past year threatened to prevent it from moving forward. Last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin ordered that the trial begin Feb. 5, 2018.
The order also permitted three fossil fuel industry trade associations, who had voluntarily joined the case last year as intervening defendants, to withdraw at their own request. This means the final showdown will take place only between the original plaintiffs and defendants — 21 youths, between ages 9 and 21, and the federal government, which they claim has violated their constitutional right to a healthy climate system by supporting the production of fossil fuels and emission of greenhouse gases. While the lawsuit was originally filed against the Obama administration, the Trump administration has now assumed the defense by default.
The case has already come a long way, with the court overturning a number of challenges since it was first filed in 2015. Last November, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken denied motions to dismiss the case filed by the federal government and the intervening fossil fuel industry groups. More recently, she also denied the federal government’s request to appeal that decision.
The last possible hurdle the case could face before moving to trial is a final petition filed by the Trump administration this month seeking a rare legal procedure known as a writ of mandamus, which calls for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to independently step in and review Aiken’s original decision to deny the federal government’s motion to dismiss the case. The writ of mandamus is widely considered a kind of hail-Mary petition, one that is rarely invoked and even more rarely granted.
“The United States — in both the previous and current Administrations — has endeavored to bring to an end this improper case that seeks to give one federal court complete control over federal energy policy,” said Mark Abueg, a public affairs specialist with the Justice Department, in a statement emailed to The Washington Post. “We have taken our arguments to the appellate courts.”
The decision on whether to allow it now rests with the Appeals Court. But lead counsel for the plaintiffs Julia Olson, executive director of the advocacy group Our Children’s Trust, says it is unlikely to stop the case from moving to trial.
“I would say it would be extraordinary for the 9th Circuit to step in before there’s a full factual record in the case,” she said.
Assuming that doesn’t happen, the trial itself is likely to last about six weeks, according to Olson.
“That’s based upon our analysis that we will need three weeks to present our case,” she said. “And we’re assuming that typically both sides take an equivalent amount of time presenting their cases.”
Olson and co-lead counsel Philip Gregory, a partner with Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, will serve as the two primary lawyers for the plaintiffs. Lawyers from the Justice Department will represent the Trump administration — so far, there have been three primarily working for the defense, including trial attorneys Sean Duffy and Marissa Piropato and senior litigation counsel Frank Singer, Olson said.
By allowing the case to move to trial at all, the court has acknowledged that the plaintiffs do, indeed, have a legal right to sue the federal government over their constitutional right to a healthy climate system — a right the plaintiffs argue is protected under the public trust doctrine, which holds that the government is responsible for preserving certain essential resources for the public good. In trial, they’ll be required to demonstrate the ways in which this right has been violated.
The plaintiffs will present their case in three major components, Olson said. One component will focus mainly on climate science, including the ways in which human activities are altering the Earth’s climate and the ways in which these changes are actually causing harm to the plaintiffs. This component will rely largely on expert testimony, Olson said, adding that the plaintiffs have already secured 13 experts for this segment, most of which are scientists.
A second component involves “looking at the historical evidence that we have of what the government knew, when it knew it, what it did with that information — and then also the continuing actions to make climate change worse by the Trump administration,” Olson said. This segment will likely involve the presentation of a variety of federal documents related to the government’s knowledge of and action (or inaction) on climate change, as well as testimony from experts and witnesses.
Securing such documents has already been something of a sticking point in the case’s pretrial discovery proceedings. Shortly after the presidential inauguration, the plaintiffs filed a request that the Justice Department preserve any documents containing information on climate change, energy and carbon emissions or that could otherwise be relevant to the lawsuit. The Trump administration pushed back against this request in a subsequent motion to put a temporary stay on the litigation, suggesting that the scope of discovery was likely to pose a significant burden on the federal defendants. This motion was later denied.
A third component of the case may involve a discussion of what can be done to remedy the situation, should the plaintiffs prevail. This section will mainly explore “what are the safe levels of CO2, what’s the safe maximum level of warming above preindustrial levels you can tolerate and so protect the rights of the youth for future generations, what can a solution and remedy look like and what’s the feasibility of the remedy to address the harm should the court order a remedy,” Olson said.
On the defendants’ side, after the plaintiffs have presented their claims, the responsibility shifts to the government to argue that its actions have not violated the plaintiffs’ rights. However, the major burden of the case lies with the plaintiffs in actually proving that their constitutional rights have been violated, said James May, a law professor and chief sustainability officer at Widener University, in an email to The Washington Post, noting that the plaintiffs “have pled a plausible cause of action, but still face an uphill battle.”
While the plaintiffs still face an unprecedented challenge in demonstrating that their right to a healthy climate system has been violated — something that has never before been done in federal court — the trial has huge implications regardless of which side prevails, May said.
“Regardless of the outcome, this pioneering lawsuit has altered the global conversation about constitution-based claims for protecting against and responding to climate change,” he said. “Such claims have the potential to be instrumental in addressing ineffective, inept, or incongruent national policies. They also represent a beacon of hope for rule-of-law based responses to the biggest challenge humankind has caused, and faced.”

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