23/10/2017

Analysis: How Well Have Climate Models Projected Global Warming?

Carbon Brief - Zeke Hausfather

Afternoon sunlight casts long shadows from thunderhead anvils down onto southern Borneo Credit: NASA Archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Scientists have been making projections of future global warming using climate models of increasing complexity for the past four decades.
These models, driven by atmospheric physics and biogeochemistry, play an important role in our understanding of the Earth’s climate and how it will likely change in the future.
Carbon Brief has collected prominent climate model projections since 1973 to see how well they project both past and future global temperatures, as shown in the animation below. (Click the play button to start.)


While some models projected less warming than we’ve experienced and some projected more, all showed surface temperature increases between 1970 and 2016 that were not too far off from what actually occurred, particularly when differences in assumed future emissions are taken into account.

How have past climate models fared?
While climate model projections of the past benefit from knowledge of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, volcanic eruptions and other radiative forcings affecting the Earth’s climate, casting forward into the future is understandably more uncertain. Climate models can be evaluated both on their ability to hindcast past temperatures and forecast future ones.
Hindcasts – testing models against past temperatures – are useful because they can control for radiative forcings. Forecasts are useful because models cannot be implicitly tuned to be similar to observations. Climate models are not fit to historical temperatures, but modellers do have some knowledge of observations that can inform their choice of model parameterisations, such as cloud physics and aerosol effects.
In the examples below, climate model projections published between 1973 and 2013 are compared with observed temperatures from five different organizations. The models used in the projections vary in complexity, from simple energy balance models to fully-coupled Earth System Models.
(Note, these model/observation comparisons use a baseline period of 1970-1990 to align observations and models during the early years of the analysis, which shows how temperatures have evolved over time more clearly.)

Sawyer, 1973
One of the first projections of future warming came from John Sawyer at the UK’s Met Office in 1973. In a paper published in Nature in 1973, he hypothesised that the world would warm 0.6C between 1969 and 2000, and that atmospheric CO2 would increase by 25%. Sawyer argued for a climate sensitivity – how much long-term warming will occur per doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels – of 2.4C, which is not too far off the best estimate of 3C used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today.
Unlike the other projections examined in this article, Sawyer did not provide an estimated warming for each year, just an expected 2000 value. His warming estimate of 0.6C was nearly spot on – the observed warming over that period was between 0.51C and 0.56C. He overestimated the year 2000’s atmospheric CO2 concentrations, however, assuming that they would be 375-400ppm – compared to the actual value of 370ppm.

Broecker, 1975
The first available projection of future temperatures due to global warming appeared in an article in Science in 1975 published by Columbia University scientist Prof Wally Broecker. Broecker used a simple energy balance model to estimate what would happen to the Earth’s temperature if atmospheric CO2 continued to increase rapidly after 1975. Broecker’s projected warming was reasonably close to observations for a few decades, but recently has been considerably higher.
This is mostly due to Broecker overestimating how CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations would increase after his article was published. He was fairly accurate up to 2000, predicting 373ppm of CO2 – compared to actual Mauna Loa observations of 370ppm. In 2016, however, he estimated that CO2 would be 424ppm, whereas only 404 pm has been observed.
Broecker also did not take other greenhouse gases into account in his model. However, as the warming impact from methane, nitrous oxide and halocarbons has been largely cancelled out by the overall cooling influence of aerosols since 1970, this does not make that large a difference (though estimates of aerosol forcings have large uncertainties).
As with Sawyer, Broecker used an equilibrium climate sensitivity of 2.4C per doubling of CO2. Broecker assumed that the Earth instantly warms up to match atmospheric CO2, while modern models account for the lag between how quickly the atmosphere and oceans warm up. (The slower heat uptake by the oceans is often referred to as the “thermal inertia” of the climate system.)
You can see his projection (black line) compared to observed temperature rise (coloured lines) in the chart below.

Projected warming from Broecker 1975 (thick black line) compared to observational temperature records from NASA, NOAA, HadCRUT, Cowtan and Way, and Berkeley Earth (thin colored lines) from 1970 to 2020. Baseline period of 1970-1990. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts. Broecker made his projection at a time when scientists widely thought that the observations showed a modest cooling of the Earth. He began his article by presciently stating that “a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide”.

Hansen et al, 1981
NASA’s Dr James Hansen and colleagues published a paper in 1981 that also used a simple energy balance model to project future warming, but accounted for thermal inertia due to ocean heat uptake. They assumed a climate sensitivity of 2.8C per doubling CO2, but also looked at a range of 1.4-5.6C per doubling.

Projected warming from Hansen et al 1981 (fast growth–thick black line–and slow growth–thin grey line). Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts. Hansen and colleagues presented a number of different scenarios, varying future emissions and climate sensitivity. In the chart above, you can see both the “fast-growth” scenario (thick black line), where CO2 emissions increase by 4% annually after 1981, and a slow-growth scenario where emissions increase by 2% annually (thin grey line). The fast-growth scenario somewhat overestimates current emissions, but when combined with a slightly lower climate sensitivity it provides an estimate of early-2000s warming close to observed values.
The overall rate of warming between 1970 and 2016 projected by Hansen et al in 1981 in the fast-growth scenario has been about 20% lower than observations.

Hansen et al, 1988
The paper published by Hansen and colleagues in 1988 represented one of the first modern climate models. It divided the world into discrete grid cells of eight degrees latitude by 10 degrees longitude, with nine vertical layers of the atmosphere. It included aerosols, various greenhouse gases in addition to CO2, and basic cloud dynamics.
Hansen et al presented three different scenarios associated with different future greenhouse gas emissions. Scenario B is shown in the chart below as a thick black line, while scenarios A and C are shown by thin grey lines. Scenario A had exponential growth in emissions, with CO2 and other GHG concentrations considerably higher than today.

Projected warming from Hansen et al 1988 (scenario B–thick black line–and scenarios A and C–thin solid and dashed grey lines). Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts. Scenario B assumed a gradual slowdown in CO2 emissions, but had concentrations of 401ppm in 2016 that were pretty close to the 404ppm observed. However, scenario B assumed the continued growth of emissions of various halocarbons that are powerful greenhouse gases, but were subsequently restricted under the Montreal Protocol of 1987. Scenario C had emissions going to near-zero after the year 2000.
Of the three, scenario B was closest to actual radiative forcing, though still about 10% too high. Hansen et al also used a model with a climate sensitivity of 4.2C per doubling CO2 – on the high end of most modern climate models. Due to the combination of these factors, scenario B projected a rate of warming between 1970 and 2016 that was approximately 30% higher than what has been observed.

IPCC First Assessment Report, 1990
The IPCC’s First Assessment Report (FAR) in 1990 featured relatively simple energy balance/upwelling diffusion ocean models to estimate changes in global air temperatures. Their featured business-as-usual (BAU) scenario assumed rapid growth of atmospheric CO2, reaching 418ppm CO2 in 2016, compared to 404ppm in observations. The FAR also assumed continued growth of atmospheric halocarbon concentrations much faster than has actually occurred.
The FAR gave a best estimate of climate sensitivity as 2.5C warming for doubled CO2, with a range of 1.5-4.5C. These estimates are applied to the BAU scenario in the figure below, with the thick black line representing the best estimate and the thin dashed black lines representing the high and low end of the climate sensitivity range.

Projected warming from the IPCC First Assessment Report (mean projection–thick black line, with upper and lower bounds shown by thin dotted black lines). Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts. Despite a best estimate of climate sensitivity a tad lower than the 3C used today, the FAR overestimated the rate of warming between 1970 and 2016 by around 17% in their BAU scenario, showing 1C warming over that period vs 0.85C observed. This is mostly due to the projection of much higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations than has actually occurred.

IPCC Second Assessment Report, 1995
The IPCC’s Second Assessment Report (SAR) only published readily-available projections from 1990 onward. They used a climate sensitivity of 2.5C, with a range of 1.5-4.5C. Their mid-range emissions scenario, “IS92a”, projected CO2 levels of 405ppm in 2016, nearly identical to observed concentrations. SAR also included much better treatment of anthropogenic aerosols, which have a cooling effect on the climate.

 Projected warming from the IPCC Second Assessment Report (mean projection–thick black line, with upper and lower bounds shown by thin dotted black lines). Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts. As you can see in the chart above, SAR’s projections ended up being notably lower than observations, warming about 28% more slowly over the period from 1990 to 2016. This was likely due to a combination of two factors: a lower climate sensitivity than found in modern estimates (2.5C vs. 3C) and an overestimate of the radiative forcing of CO2 (4.37 watts per square meter versus 3.7 used in the subsequent IPCC report and still used today).

IPCC Third Assessment Report, 2001
The IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) relied on atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (GCMs) from seven different modeling groups. They also introduced a new set of socioeconomic emission scenarios, called SRES, which included four different future emission trajectories.
Here, Carbon Brief examines the A2 scenario, though all have fairly similar emissions and warming trajectories up to 2020. The A2 scenario projected a 2016 atmospheric CO2 concentration of 406 ppm, nearly the same as what was observed. The SRES scenarios were from 2000 onward, with models prior to the year 2000 using estimated historical forcings. The dashed grey line in the figure above shows the point at which models transition from using observed emissions and concentrations to projected future ones.

Projected warming from the IPCC Third Assessment Report (mean projection–thick black line, with upper and lower bounds shown by thin dotted black lines). Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts. TAR’s headline projection used a simple climate model that was configured to match the average outputs of seven more sophisticated GCMs, as no specific multimodel average was published in TAR and data for individual model runs are not readily available. It has a climate sensitivity of 2.8C per doubling CO2, with a range of 1.5-4.5C. As shown in the chart above, the rate of warming between 1970 and 2016 in the TAR was about 14% lower than what has actually been observed.

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, 2007
The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) featured models with significantly improved atmospheric dynamics and model resolution. It made greater use of Earth System Models – which incorporate the biogeochemistry of carbon cycles – as well as improved simulations of land surface and ice processes.
AR4 used the same SRES scenarios as the TAR, with historical emissions and atmospheric concentrations up to the year 2000 and projections thereafter. Models used in AR4 had a mean climate sensitivity of 3.26C, with a range of 2.1C to 4.4C.

Projected warming from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (mean projection–thick black line, two-sigma upper and lower bounds shown by thin dotted black lines). Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts. The figure above shows model runs for the A1B scenario (which is the only scenario with model runs readily available, though its 2016 CO2 concentrations are nearly identical to those of the A2 scenario). AR4 projections between 1970 and 2016 show warming quite close to observations, only 8% higher.

IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, 2013
The most recent IPCC report – the Fifth Assessment (AR5) – featured additional refinements on climate models, as well as a modest reduction in future model uncertainty compared to AR4. The climate models in the latest IPCC report were part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5), where dozens of different modeling groups all around the world ran climate models using the same set of inputs and scenarios.

Projected warming from the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (mean projection–thick black line, two-sigma upper and lower bounds shown by thin dotted black lines). Dashed black line shows blended model fields. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts. AR5 introduced a new set of future greenhouse gas concentration scenarios, known as the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). These have future projections from 2006 onwards, with historical data prior to 2006. The grey dashed line in the figure above shows where models transition from using observed forcings to projected future forcings.
Comparing these models with observations can be a somewhat tricky exercise. The most often used fields from climate models are global surface air temperatures. However, observed temperatures come from surface air temperatures over land and sea surface temperatures over the ocean.
To account for this, more recently, researchers have created blended model fields, which include sea surface temperatures over the oceans and surface air temperatures over land, in order to match what is actually measured in the observations. These blended fields, shown by the dashed line in the figure above, show slightly less warming than global surface air temperatures, as models have the air over the ocean warming faster than sea surface temperatures in recent years.
Global surface air temperatures in CMIP5 models have warmed about 16% faster than observations since 1970. About 40% of this difference is due to air temperatures over the ocean warming faster than sea surface temperatures in the models; blended model fields only show warming 9% faster than observations.
A recent paper in Nature by Iselin Medhaug and colleagues suggests that the remainder of the divergence can be accounted for by a combination of short-term natural variability (mainly in the Pacific Ocean), small volcanoes and lower-than-expected solar output that was not included in models in their post-2005 projections.
Below is a summary of all the models Carbon Brief has looked at. The table below shows the difference in the rate of warming between each model or set of models and NASA’s temperature observations. All the observational temperature records are fairly similar, but NASA’s is among the group that includes more complete global coverage in recent years and is thus more directly comparable to climate model data.
* SAR trend differences are calculated over the period from 1990-2016, as estimates prior to 1990 are not readily available.
# Differences in parenthesis based on blended model land/ocean fields
Conclusion
Climate models published since 1973 have generally been quite skillful in projecting future warming. While some were too low and some too high, they all show outcomes reasonably close to what has actually occurred, especially when discrepancies between predicted and actual CO2 concentrations and other climate forcings are taken into account.
Models are far from perfect and will continue to be improved over time. They also show a fairly large range of future warming that cannot easily be narrowed using just the changes in climate that we have observed.
Nevertheless, the close match between projected and observed warming since 1970 suggests that estimates of future warming may prove similarly accurate.

Methodological note
Environmental scientist Dana Nuccitelli helpfully provided a list of past model/observation comparisons, available here. The PlotDigitizer software was used to obtain values from older figures when data was not otherwise available. CMIP3 and CMIP5 model data was obtained from KNMI Climate Explorer.

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Waiting For The Tide To Turn: Kiribati's Fight For Survival

The Guardian - 

The 33 islands of Kiribati, a remote and low-lying nation in the Pacific Ocean, are under threat from climate change. But the islanders have not given up hope

Kiribati is one of the most isolated countries in the world. As you fly in to the main island of South Tarawa, located less than 100 kms from the equator, a precariously thin strip of sand and green materialises out of the ocean.
On one side, a narrow reef offers some protection to the inhabitants and their land – at low tide, at least. On the other side, a shallow lagoon reaches kilometres out to sea. The 33 islands of Kiribati – pronounced “Kiribass” – are extremely shallow; the highest point is just two metres above sea level. Looking out of the aeroplane window, there is no depth to the scene – sea dissolves seamlessly into sky, a paint palette of every blue.

Pictured above: The island of South Tarawa; children playing chicken with the passing boats on the Nippon causeway that joins Betio with the rest of South Tarawa. All photographs by Mike Bowers.
Pictured above: Cars on the Nippon causeway.
The only road
Kiribati is estimated to have a population of just over 100,000, with more than half making their home on South Tarawa. There’s only one road on the island and everything travels along it: schoolchildren, hospital patients, food, water, workers, taxis, mini busses, private cars, and motor scooters.
When I was last here four years ago the road was in a very poor state – a reflection of the country’s perilous economic position. Potholes and washaways were common, and the speed bumps were severe enough to rip out the front end of your car unless great care was taken.
Australia provided just under 30% of the A$77m (US$60.4m) cost of the Kiribati Road Rehabilitation Project. It was the largest economic infrastructure investment in the country since the second world war, and has made a substantial difference to the quality of life on South Tarawa. However, Kiribati is facing greater challenges which infrastructure alone cannot repair.

Pictured above: Betio, at the southern end of Tarawa; the main land-fill site on South Tarawa.
Pictured above: Some houses on the lagoon side around the village of Eita have been isolated by salt water from sea incursions and storm surges.
Rising sea levels
Climate change is a huge concern. Rising ocean waters are threatening to shrink Kiribati’s land area, increase storm damage, destroy its crop-growing lands and ultimately displace its people long before the islands are submerged.
Lack of fresh water is an immediate problem. Fresh water lies under the atolls and islands of Kiribati in what are known as a “water lenses”. Fresh water, which is less dense, floats on top of the denser salt water in a convex shape giving the sources their name. However, king tides and sea incursions are polluting the once-reliable sources and ruining the taro plant pits, known as babai pits, which depend on them.
Claire Anterea, one of the co-ordinators of Kirican, the Kiribati Climate Action Network, says she fears the “extraordinary impact on our islands”.
Having yesterday witnessed the effects of sea incursions on vegetable growth on the island of Abaiang, she says: “It has just moved me into tears. Like, oh my God, this is very serious. [The sea] is two or three metres from the babai pit [where taro plants are grown].
“I feel hopeless in one way that our people are suffering, but I also have the hope within our people that they will try to find a way to adapt.”


Pictured above: Claire Anterea fishes off the island of Abaiang; salt water from the sea incursions into the plant-growing areas of Tebunginako village has rendered the soil unable to sustain even coconut trees; a local football match played at the main stadium in Bairiki, South Tarawa, on a flooded pitch.
Pictured above: Maria Tekaie stands beside a fallen coconut tree where the sea has washed away the village of Tebontebike on the southern end of Abaiang.
Moving homes
At the southern end of Abaiang in the village of Tebontebike, Maria Tekaie leans against an uprooted coconut tree that used to be 100 metres from the shore. The village had to be moved recently, as did the babai pits, due to the incursion of the sea.
The 65-year-old expects to have to move again: “My children are worried and have started to talk about where else they can go. This is the only piece of land for us and they love it here,” she said.
“I just want the world to know, and my request to them is that we need help to protect our land because if we try to build something like a seawall the waves are stronger and we don’t know what option that we have. We just need help from you.”
Eighty minutes north along the bumping and tortuous dirt road is the village of Tebunginako. It’s the most graphic example of sea inundation. Toroua Beree, 63, says: “I moved away from this village because they don’t have any more life on this piece of land.
“I talk about life because before this land was full of banana, babai, coconut trees, so many coconut trees, so many trees we get food from, but now how can those trees continue to live when you don’t have fresh water to give them? This is community land and so everybody has a right to live on it but now it seems like the sea has taken that away.”


Pictured above: A village resident of Tebuginako, Abaiang island, looking out from the village ‘maneaba’ or meeting house; a fisherman waits for the tide to turn on the Anderson causeway; children from the village of Nanikai on South Tarawa performing acrobatics on the beach.
Pictured above: John Kaboa at his Tebero Te Rau Bungalow resort on the island of Abaiang.
Entrepreneurship
John Kaboa, 28, and his wife, Tinaai, run the Tebero Te Rau bungalow resort on Abaiang. Their optimism is typical of the spirit and entrepreneurship that runs hand in hand with fear and despair.
The accommodation sits on stilts over the water and the resort is powered with solar panels and a small, portable generator. Kaboa grows enough vegetables and fruit – such as cabbages, egg plants, papaya, pumpkin, watermelon, longbean, sweet pepper, taro, giant swamtaro and coconut tree – to supply his kitchen. He also buys local produce from farmers on the island in preference to buying imported products. And he has become involved in production of copra, the dried kernel of coconut which is used to extract oil for cooking, hair oils, shampoo, margarine and detergents.
Kaboa says he is hoping “to get enough money so that I can support my family to move to other countries if Kiribati will covered by the seawater. But I still really love my paradise country.”
Elsewhere, I meet a Swiss man who is growing vegetables hydroponically in PVC pipes. Each pipe has been elevated on racks to keep the plants safely away from the crabs who are a constant menace to crops grown in the ground.



Pictured above: Tinaai Teava, John Kaboa’s wife; copra – the dried kernel of coconut which is used to extract oil for cooking, hair oils, shampoo, margarine and detergents; Kaboa in his giant swamp taro pit, known as a ‘babai pit’; experimental hydroponic vegetable growing on the island of Abaiang.
Pictured above: The daily catch displayed for sale on Tarawa.
New government, new priorities
In March 2016 Taneti Maamau became the new president of the Republic of Kiribati. The elections swept away 12 years of BTK (Boutokaan Te Koaua) party rule along with the outgoing president Anote Tong, who had spent many of those years on the world stage raising awareness of the problems his low-lying island nation was facing due to climate change.
The new government is more inward focussed. Its long-term project is Kiribati Vision 20 (KV20), which looks ahead 20 years. The plan is to plough revenue generated by fishing licences and tourism back into the Kiribati economy to reduce unemployment, raise education standards and reduce poverty. Kiribati earned A$197.8m in 2015 from the sale of fishing licences, up from A$29.5m in 2009.
The new government has also doubled the price of copra to A$2 per kilo. This made the average sack of copra worth about A$200 – a large sum on Kiribati. The idea of this initiative is to entice people to travel back to their outer island homes and take pressure off the heavily populated South Tarawa. It seems to have had an immediate effect.
But opposition MPs believe the doubling of the copra price will mean that people sacrifice their healthy subsistence lifestyle in favour of the more profitable copra production. They also worry that the government’s dedication to domestic progress will be futile given Kiribati’s future will ultimately be determined on the global stage.

Pictured above: A man fishes off the main wharf at Betio; Joseph Iteba shows the fish that he caught to feed his family at Betio.
Pictured above: Former president of Kiribati, Anote Tong, relaxes at his home on South Tarawa.
No excuse
Tong, the former president, sits on the seawall that protects his house. His extended family live all around him.
His public speeches have tracked his emotions regarding the fortunes of the I-Kiribati people from frustration to anger to a sense of futility. He says he grieves for what is happening to his country.
“Climate change for most if not all of the countries in the Pacific is a survival issue,” he says. “If we do not address the climate change challenge, all of our efforts in trying to achieve economic survival, economic viability all will come to nought.
“[Since leaving office] I’m at home, I’m seeing my grandchildren grow up, and the question that is always on my mind [is]: ‘What’s going to happen to my grandchildren in 20, 30, 40, 50 years time?’”
I ask him: will the residents of Kiribati become climate refugees? “I think we have no excuse, we have more than enough time to deal with it,” he says.
Following the Paris agreement on climate change – and despite the withdrawal of the US under Donald Trump – Tong feels there is now momentum for addressing the challenge. However, he notes that capping global temperature increases at “two degrees or 1.5 degrees does not mean a great deal for countries like Kiribati for whom the projected sea level rise will continue to be disastrous”.
Tong hopes Australia and New Zealand will support Kiribati’s cause at the United Nations’ framework convention on climate change in Germany next month. “If Australia and New Zealand are not there, it really puts into question the meaning of any relationship [we have] with Australia and New Zealand.”
Pictured above: A fisherman returns home at dusk on his traditional wooden outrigger near the village of Ambo on South Tarawa.
Water lapping at your door
Unfortunately, in Australia climate change has been used as a political punchline. In 2015, the Australian immigration minister Peter Dutton made a joke about rising sea levels in Kiribati to the then prime minister Tony Abbott. After Abbott complained that the Pacific Islands Forum in Papua New Guinea ran later, Dutton said: “Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re, you know, about to have water lapping at your door.”
During my conversation with Tong, I purposefully re-use those words and a brief flash of anger crosses over his normally peaceful face. He replies: “Well, actually, it does come into the door ... it’s not funny to the person being hurt.”
His sentiments are echoed by many of the residents of Kiribati, including Anterea. “I think you are too comfortable in your own country,” she says. “Just come to Kiribati and see with your own two eyes what we are suffering from.”

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Will The National Energy Guarantee Hit Pause On Renewables?

The Conversation - Frank Jotzo | Salim Mazouz

The new energy policy could potentially function to preserve black coal’s place in the energy mix. AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts
The federal government’s new National Energy Guarantee (NEG) proposal looks likely to put the brakes on renewable energy investment in Australia. And based on the sparse detail so far available, there are serious questions about whether the plan really can deliver on its aims of reliability, emissions reductions and lower prices.
The broad mechanism design could be made to work, but to be effective in driving the transition of the energy sector it would need adequate ambition on carbon emissions and very careful thought about the reliability requirements of the future electricity grid.
The policy may well be used to force investment into the fossil fuel power fleet through regulatory intervention, and perhaps for the power sector to buy emissions offsets. This would risk locking in a carbon-intensive power system.

The NEG: top or flop?
Having rejected several options – including an emissions intensity scheme, the Clean Energy Target put forward by the Finkel Review, and any continuation of the Renewable Energy Target – the government has finally managed to get a policy proposal through the party room, formulated in advice by its newly established Energy Security Board.
Analysts’ initial reactions have ranged from unbridled enthusiasm to derisive rejection. It depends on political judgments, expectations about how the scheme might operate in practice, and how high one’s expectations are for efficiency and environmental effectiveness.
The politics of this are complicated, but there are hopes that the Labor opposition will agree to the scheme in principle. But the decision is ultimately with the Australian states, which would need to pass legislation to implement it.

Reliability guarantee: supporting fossil fuels?
The first element of the NEG is the “reliability guarantee”. This would require electricity retailers to buy some share of their electricity from “dispatchable” sources that can be readily switched on. The NEG list includes coal and gas, as well as hydro and energy storage – essentially, anything except wind and solar.
The NEG proposal might be informed by a political imperative to support coal. As John Quiggin has pointed out, defining coal-fired plants as dispatchable is questionable at best: they have long ramp-up times and are sometimes unavailable.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) would prescribe the share of the “dispatchable” power sources and perhaps also the mix of technologies in retailers’ portfolios, separately in each state. This would be a remarkably interventionist approach.
Demand from retailers for the power sources they are told to use could trigger investment in new gas generators, refurbishment of existing coal plants, and some investment in energy storage. It is difficult to see how it would force the building of new coal plants, given their very large upfront cost and long-term emissions liabilities.
Would electricity prices be lower, as the Energy Security Board’s advice claims? Investment in new power generation will tend to reduce prices, cutting into profit margins. But the resulting investments will come at higher economic cost than market solutions, because they are determined by regulators’ orders made with a view to the short-term energy mix, not long-term cost-effectiveness. And there would be risk premiums on project finance, reflecting uncertainty about future policy settings.

Emissions guarantee: flexible but weak?
The NEG’s second pillar is the “emissions guarantee”. This would require retailers to keep their portfolio below some level of emissions intensity (carbon dioxide per unit of electricity).
This increases the demand for electricity from lower-emissions technologies, allowing them to command higher market prices and therefore encouraging investment in them. This price signal would benefit renewables and also favour gas over coal, as well as discriminating against the most polluting coal plants.
The Energy Security Board’s advice suggests that retailers would have flexibility in complying with that obligation, by buying and selling emissions components of their contracts, and potentially also using emissions offsets from outside the scheme to make up for any exceeding of emissions limits.
The reliability and emissions elements of the NEG interact with each other, and the net effect depends on the detailed implementation as well as the relative importance of the two components.
Given the politics within government, the weight could be on support for coal and gas generation. The reliability guarantee could therefore end up putting a tight lid on the amount of new wind and solar that can enter the system.

Renewables, gas or credits?
The Energy Security Board makes explicit reference to Australia’s Paris target of a 26-28% reduction in emissions, relative to 2005 levels, by 2030. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said the NEG will be expected to cut electricity emissions by a similar percentage, as a “pro rata” contribution to this goal.
But to meet the economy-wide target, the electricity sector would need to make deeper cuts, because emissions reductions are cheaper and easier here than elsewhere.
The Energy Security Board says it expects renewables to reach 28-36% by 2030. This is rather low, considering that the Finkel Review projected 42% under its proposed clean energy target, and 35% under business as usual. Other analyses have shown that much higher levels of renewables are achievable.
So if the NEG is not geared to support renewables, how could significant emissions reductions be achieved?
One way would be to replace coal with gas-fired power, and brown coal with black coal. But the government has flagged that it is opposed to closing old coal plants. And a large-scale shift to gas would raise electricity prices further, unless gas prices were to tumble.
That leaves another option, mentioned in the Energy Security Board’s report: power retailers could buy emissions offset credits from elsewhere to make up for not meeting the emissions standard, specifically from projects under the government’s Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF).
This might be attractive for the government, as electricity retailers would then pay for ERF credits, rather than government as has been the case until now. It may also be attractive to the power industry, as it would reduce the cost of complying with the new obligations. Retailers would pass on the costs to their customers, so electricity consumers would end up paying for ERF projects.
Even assuming that all of the ERF’s emissions reductions are real (and some of them may not be), all this does is shift the adjustment burden from electricity to other sectors such as agriculture.
The NEG has the potential to reduce emissions effectively if the parameters are adjusted accordingly. But what seems more likely is that it will put the brakes on investment in renewables, solidify the status quo and delay the energy transition.

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Is Climate Change Hollywood's New Supervillain?

The Guardian - 
Heavy weather … Gerard Butler in Geostorm. Photograph: Ben Rothstein/Warner Bros

In 2017, the desire to accelerate climate change – even in the name of brash, mass-market pop art – is quaint yet horrifying. The nagging feeling that humankind may already have zoomed past some sort of ecological tipping point thanks to our voracious appetites for cheap energy and consumer goods seems increasingly undeniable. Previously, we looked to the multiplex to vicariously experience the catastrophic aftermath of freak super-storms and monster tsunamis; now we see these images appear with increasing and distressing regularity in the news.

Similarly direct is An Inconvenient Sequel, the follow-up to Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The 2006 film was a crucial climate change primer that compiled scary collapsing icebergs and even scarier statistics (in short: tundra-enlightening, very, very frightening). Some reviews suggest the statesman’s sequel – which ponders how to tackle climate change in the increasingly science-sceptical era of Donald Trump – may have been unnecessary as well as inconvenient. But it is not as if the planet’s situation has improved, and Gore’s impassioned yet measured messaging bears repeating.
Postapocalyptic sci-fi will always be a popular film playground, but increasingly it seems as if we are being invited to look at worlds worn out rather that instantly shattered. Before it blasted into space, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar painted a plausible portrait of the US as a parched, crop-free dustbowl beyond resuscitation. Earlier this year, Logan presented a harsh, scrappy near future that looked as exhausted as its ailing hero, a planet teetering towards a more relatable kind of collapse than the apocalyptic threats of superhero cinema.
The central message of Aronofsky's Mother! is consistent: what is wrong with these people?
Even the imagery and palette of screen dystopias seems informed by freakish weather that climate change has made commonplace. The whooping, bestial carnival of Mad Max: Fury Road seems like one of the only sane responses in a world where 18-wheelers are dwarfed by electrified dust-devil storms that block out the sun. The crimson-choked Las Vegas of Blade Runner 2049, meanwhile, might not even be three decades away; cinematographer Roger Deakins was inspired by the Australian storms of 2009 that gave the Sydney Opera House a Martian makeover (in reality, red topsoil scooped up from the heart of Oz).
A shared anxiety about how we have abused our planet and how it might ultimately retaliate has seeped into recent cinema in other intriguing ways. Darren Aronofsky’s densely allegorical Mother! encourages any number of environmental interpretations, with Jennifer Lawrence as a barefoot earth mother whose Edenic dream home is invaded by selfish, rapacious squatters – an intensifying nightmare that leaves her traumatised but mostly bewildered. Despite its surreal, disorientating escalations, the central message is consistent: what is wrong with these people? How can they do this?
Kristen Wiig and Matt Damon in Downsizing. Photograph: courtesy of the Venice film festival
In the forthcoming Downsizing, Oscar-winning writer-director Alexander Payne imagines a near future where eco-conscious Norwegians have developed a sci-fi shrink-ray that can zap people, such as stressed everyman Matt Damon, down to just five inches in height. Everything about this growing community of nu-Lilliputians is smaller – particularly their carbon footprint. In the film, the procedure is marketed as a quasi-altruistic lifestyle choice that doubles as a lottery win, suggesting participants will improve the planet’s sustainability as well as artificially extending their savings.
Payne’s movie is a sociocomic parable that has the reassuring presence of Damon at its centre, an actor audiences have seen surviving in tough environments. But with the shrinking process irreversible, Downsizing seems to make a subtle but important point, one arguably as frightening as any large-scale disaster movie where a catastrophe annihilates humanity. Any real-world solution to our inescapable climate change problem is likely to be similarly and uncomfortably extreme – an even more inconvenient truth. Until we overcome our indifference to this monumental problem, the outlook is only going to get worse. Where’s Gerard Butler when you need him?

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CliFi – A New Way To Talk About Climate Change

The Guardian - 

If you’re not familiar with the new genre of climate fiction, you might be soon.
People shop in the newly opened Amazon Books on May 25, 2017 in New York City. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Cli-Fi refers to “climate fiction;” it is a term coined by journalist Dan Bloom. These are fictional books that somehow or someway bring real climate change science to the reader. What is really interesting is that Cli-Fi books often present real science in a credible way. They become fun teaching tools. There are some really well known authors such as Paolo Bacigalupi and Margaret Atwood among others. A list of other candidate Cli-Fi novels was provided by Sarah Holding in the Guardian.
What makes a Cli-Fi novel good? Well in my opinion, it has to have some real science in it. And it has to get the science right. Second, it has to be fun to read. When done correctly, Cli-Fi can connect people to their world; it can help us understand what future climate may be like, or what current climate effects are.
As I write this, we are getting a steady stream of stories out of Puerto Rico the island was devastated by Hurricane Maria. It is hard to imagine the devastation, what life is like without electricity, food, or water. What is life like on an island of 3 million people, each fending for themselves, just trying to survive.
Another thing that is hard to imagine is the future. What will the world be like decades from now when Earth temperatures have continued to rise? What will agriculture be like? What will coastal communities be like? What will international relations and armed conflict be like?
It is also hard to imagine what living a subsistence agriculture life is like, today. What happens to lives and communities when the rains change, or don’t come at all? What would that world look like?
Cli-Fi stories are vehicles that can help us imagine. The authors get us to think about these what ifs – these future Earths. Cli-Fi novels (and movies for that matter) can make experiences far more real than endless graphs or plots of temperature variations. And that, perhaps, is the most important contribution Cli-Fi can make to the discussion of climate change in our everyday lives. These authors get us to imagine what experiences are or would be like.
One recent example of Cli-Fi literature is South Pole Station by Ashley Shelby. In this book we follow an artist, Cooper Gosling, who is traveling to a research location on Antarctica to create paintings. Yes, an artist is sent to live with researchers and crew – with funding from the National Science Foundation. After arriving at the South Pole, Cooper has to become acquainted with the strange social system that exists there. Ashley writes the book in such a way that you actually feel you are huddled in the cold with her and her co-workers.
Cooper doesn’t uplift her life to travel to the South Pole on a whim. It is an outcome of a family tragedy and a history that involves romanticized stories of adventure to this remote place. While Cooper is stationed at the pole, she hears news that a radical scientist is coming. This scientist claims that climate change is a hoax – and his presence further upsets the delicate social balance that exists at the research location.
You see the expected reaction of the regular scientists when this climate denier arrives to perform his research. There is backstabbing and sabotage where in the end we find Copper helping this climate-denying scientist carry out an experiment. The experiment goes awry and there are repercussions all the way back to the US mainland, and the halls of Congress.
I liked this book because I don’t like fiction. That is, I find it really hard to get into fictional books because my mind always runs back to science, or my email, or papers to grade, or kids’ soccer practices to get to. I never feel like I have time to just read for fun. But this book was really engaging. It was the first fictional book in a decade that I didn’t want to put down.
It is funny with really quick-witted humor that made me laugh. At the same time, I was impressed by how I felt like I was there – working amongst the staff and scientists. I enjoyed how Ashely weaved in threads of real and accurate science. And this, perhaps, is what makes the Cli-Fi genre so important. We can unintentionally learn real science.
Ashley’s book is at the edge of this genre. It is not “dystopian” and it is not about a post-apocalyptic world resulting from climate change. It is topical and, though fiction, is as present-day as a news headline. This book is about what people, dedicated to facts, are really doing today. It doesn’t seem futuristic. It seems like we are at a point when a bunch of scientists and friends of facts could take over a research station and say, “Stop the madness!”
Salman Rushdie recently said that in the present day the country is so filled with lies and fantasy and fiction surrounding the truth, that it might require the fiction writer to plainly lay out what is reality and what is not. I think Ashley’s book fits that notion.
So, take a look at this new (newish?) form of literature. Particularly if you want a break from the usual genres. If you find something you like that I didn’t mention, please send it to me.

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Jane Goodall Talks Her New Movie And Empowering Youth On Climate Change

International Business Times - 



World renowned primatologist Jane Goodall has for decades promoted conservation efforts -- and she’s not done yet, especially as humans contribute to climate change.
Goodall spoke about her ongoing efforts to protect the planet after a special screening of the National Geographic film “JANE” last month in New York City. The documentary, based on over 100 hours of unseen footage that was believed to have been lost, was released in limited theaters on Friday. The film, directed by Oscar and Emmy-nominated director Brett Morgen, was put together with 16mm footage rediscovered in 2014 and shows a young Goodall in Gombe, Tanzania.
David Greybeard was the first chimp to lose his fear of Jane, eventually coming to her camp to steal bananas and allowing Jane to touch and groom him. As the film JANE depicts, Jane and the other Gombe researchers later discontinued feeding and touching the wild chimps. The feature documentary JANE will be released in select theaters October 2017. Photo: National Geographic Creative/ Hugo van Lawick
Goodall, 83, warned humans are destroying the planet that all animals co-exist in. She said the biggest difference between men and chimps is the “explosive development” of human's intellect, “like sending people to the moon.”
“Chimps, elephants are way more intelligent than anyone used to think but it doesn't stand up to the intelligence of humans, so why is it that this most intellectual creature is destroying its only home?” said Goodall during a Q&A after the film’s screening. “It seems to me there is a disconnect between the clever brain and the human heart, which is love and compassion.”
Goodall is currently traveling around the world talking about climate change, conservation, pollution and other damages to the planet, she told International Business Times after the event.
Goodall stressed the importance of supporting, listening and empowering young people to “roll up their sleeves and take action.”
“They’re my greatest hope for the future,” she told IBT.
The Jane Goodall Institute is working with groups made up of individuals from kindergarten to university levels in 100 countries through its Roots and Shoots project, the primatologist said.
“Every group has its main message every individual makes a difference every single day and what choice will you make, what difference will you make,” Goodall said. “Climate change is still key, human population growth, poverty and unsustainable lifestyle those are the key issues.”
Chimpanzee "Flint" peeks into a tent at Jane Goodall. The feature documentary JANE will be released in select theaters October 2017. Photo: National Geographic Creative / Hugo van Lawick
Jane Goodall As A Young Researcher In Gombe
Goodall, who had no training or degree, was sent by paleontologist Louis Leakey to learn about chimpanzees in the 60s. Leakey had been “looking for someone who had an open mind” and “monumental patience,” Goodall said in the film, making her the perfect choice.
The documentary shows Goodall at age 26 starting out her research in 1960. She’s seen searching, climbing and walking throughout the area to see chimpanzees, as well as waiting for long times in the heat and rain to catch a glimpse of them. Her patience garnered the animals’ trust and soon began to play and feed them, while jotting down her observations of the little-known mammals for the rest of the world to soon find out. Her research made headlines, while others tried to discredit her work for being a young woman in a male-dominated field.
Her mother’s strong support for Goodall’s love for animals was also visible in the film as she accompanied the young researcher to Gombe.
“I was very, very lucky to have a mother who was so supportive,” Goodall told IBT. “Being supportive is the key thing, whether you’re a chimp or a human mother.”
The film also shows Goodall’s interactions with Dutch filmmaker Hugo van Lawick, who was sent by National Geographic to document her work in 1964. The two ended up getting married and had a son, Grub.
Jane Goodall watches as Hugo van Lawick operates a film camera. The feature documentary JANE will be released in select theaters October 2017. Photo: Jane Goodall Institute
Jane Goodall and Hugo van Lawick during their wedding. The feature documentary JANE will be released in select theaters October 2017. Photo: Jane Goodall Institute
Jane Goodall kisses her son Grub. The feature documentary JANE will be released in select theaters October 2017. Photo: Jane Goodall Institute/Hugo van Lawick
However, the movie also shows some of the more difficult parts of Goodall’s life, including watching a chimpanzee community plagued by polio, as well as a subsequent war within the group after the death of Flo, a female chimpanzee with whom Goodall became close. Goodall’s divorce with van Lawick and her heart-breaking choice to leave her son in England for schooling while she studied animals is also documented.

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