Lethal Heating: 01/02/18

02/01/2018

Climate Change Places A Major Economic Burden On Future Generations

Futurism - Brad Bergan | Chelsea Gohd

Climate Stability
It’s no secret that climate change has already started to impact human health. In fact, there is a growing body of research concerned with how rising temperatures will specifically affect humans: from heat stroke to decreased productivity — even an increased risk of violence. It’s becoming clear that climate change will leave a mark on more than just our planet.
A new study is looking even farther ahead at how rising temperatures might affect our children — but not so much in terms of their physical health. Rather, the researchers ask ho might climate change impact their financial health as adults.
Published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study was conducted by researchers at Stanford, the University of California, Berkeley, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The results lead researchers to conclude there could be a link between heat waves during childhood and lower earnings in adulthood.

The study found that for every day in a child’s life between conception and age one when temperatures rose above 32 ˚C (roughly 90 ˚F) is associated with a 0.1 percent decrease in average income at age 30. It sounds abstract, but this means that too many sweltering days of youth corresponds to a slightly lower chance of ultimately achieving a higher income.
While these findings might seem, at first, possibly coincidental or accidental, as they are so astounding, Patrick L. Kinney, Sc.D., a Beverly A. Brown Professor of Urban Health and Sustainability in the Department of Environmental Health at the Boston University School of Public Health, first reacted to these findings in a phone call to Futurism, stating simply: “that’s bizarre.”
But Kinney later explained, in an email to Futurism, that this ” study is very intriguing and as noted in the commentary, is significant in suggesting that climate warming has long-term negative consequences for wage earnings.” He continued that “we know that health is closely tied to economic status. Until now, most studies only show short-term effects on health outcomes. The long-term aspect is what’s new. Very interesting and seemingly well-done study.”
As global temperatures continue to rise, we may see this correspondence become a more noticeable phenomenon. The paper notes that fetuses and infants are “especially sensitive to hot temperatures because their thermoregulatory and sympathetic nervous systems are not fully developed.” While the research doesn’t directly explain how this sensitivity leads to financial instability later in life, there is a fairly extensive body of research exploring how the conditions of our early life affect our health later on.
Such research also links exposure to extreme temperatures in that time-frame to lower birth rate and higher infant mortality. While the new study didn’t explicitly conclude the nature of the relationship, that nature could certainly be further explored through existing and continued research.

Facing the Repercussions
UC Berkeley public policy professor Solomon Hsiang, who explored how hotter temperatures will push global inequalities in a 2015 Nature paper, told MIT Technology Review, “We know that high temperatures have numerous damaging consequences for current economic productivity, at the time that the high temperatures occur.”

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These consequences will not only worsen as climate change progresses — they will disproportionately affect poor families and those living in developing nations. Maya Rossin-Slater, a co-author of the study and assistant professor in Stanford’s Department of Health Research and Policy, explained that “In poor countries in hot climates that don’t have air conditioning, we could imagine these effects being even more dramatic.”
If the effects of global warming were presented as an economic issue, perhaps it could nudge lawmakers who do not typically vote in favor of climate-change-fighting movements to consider the issue with due urgency. On a more positive note, the field of renewable resources booming and causing global economic growth.
But even with this silver lining to the portentous global climate change cloud, the issue of confronting a real and dangerous impact on our financial security remains. And, if we aren’t motivated by self-interest, we would do well to understand that it is not only our own earning potential under threat — as with so many other things in life, our children may inherit our mistakes.

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Teens Sue Trump Administration, Say Government Let Down The Next Generation On Climate

Washington Times - Ben Wolfgang

The landmark case would involve proving in court that climate change is real and that humanity is driving it, and that government, through both negligence and policies that deliberately favor fossil fuels over clean energy, has failed to do anything about it. Associated Press Photo: Kathy Matheson

On climate change, President Trump’s most dangerous foe could prove to be a bunch of kids.
The Trump administration tried and seemingly failed last month to get a climate lawsuit — filed on behalf of nearly two dozen teens — tossed out of federal court, paving the way for an unprecedented environmental trial in which the plaintiffs will argue the government has shirked its constitutional responsibility to protect the next generation of Americans from global warming.
The potential courtroom showdown, which a Justice Department litigator has said would be “trial of the century” if it’s allowed to go forward, would be as far-reaching in scope as any in recent history, when it comes to climate change and the government’s obligation to address it. Attorneys for the plaintiffs say they’re prepared to mount a sweeping indictment of the federal government and its actions over a period of decades.

The landmark case would involve proving in court that climate change is real and that humanity is driving it, and that the government, through both negligence and policies that deliberately favor fossil fuels over clean energy, has failed to do anything about it.
“The failure of the government to act and the government’s actions in enabling that increase [in greenhouse gas emissions] will be the subject of the first aspect of the case — primarily what we would call, ‘What did the government know and when did it know it, and why did it continue to act to further endanger these kids?’” said Philip Gregory, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs and a partner with the California law firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy.
“The next aspect will be putting the science on trial,” he continued. “What does science say about … our current situation in the United States regarding the climate, and are there steps that can be taken to dramatically reduce the ongoing problems — steps taken by the federal government?”
Lastly, he said he and his team will prove that the government’s course has directly endangered the 21 plaintiffs, all of whom were minors when the suit was first filed against the Obama administration in 2015.
Since President Trump came to power, his Justice Department has fought hard to get the case tossed out of court. The suit now names Mr. Trump, all Cabinet secretaries, several agency chiefs and other top administration officials as defendants.
A federal judge in Oregon last year said the case could go forward, setting an initial trial date for February. Government lawyers were granted a stay, and in December argued before a federal appeals court in San Francisco that allowing the trial to go forward would set a dangerous precedent.
“According to the plaintiffs’ complaint, virtually every U.S. citizen has the right to sue virtually any government agency,” said Justice Department lawyer Eric Grant during the appeals court arguments, adding that a “constitutional confrontation” within the government over how to approach climate change would be the natural result of the trial.
In essence, critics argue the plaintiffs are asking federal courts to set environmental policy — a job that should be left to the administration and to Congress. Some specialists say that even if a court agrees the government has violated the teens’ constitutional rights to life and liberty by failing to address global warming, it’s unclear how a court could fix the problem.
“The challenge for the plaintiffs is that they have brought a very amorphous case. They could lose,” said Christine Tezak, an analyst with ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington-based energy research company. “What is your relief here and how does the court grant it?”
While the plaintiffs point to several specific government actions — including federal approval of a liquefied natural gas export terminal in Oregon, where the case was filed — that they say bolster their case, Mr. Gregory said they’ll expect to court to take a broader view.
He said the plaintiffs don’t expect the court to step in and write specific environmental laws, but rather to establish standards for greenhouse gas emissions that the government, through the White House and Congress, can then use as a blueprint to write law.
“We want the trial court to establish a baseline — this is where we are, and this is how the federal government either is contributing to the problem or failing to address the problem,” he said.
It’s unclear when the San Francisco appeals court will hand down its decision, though the judges seemed somewhat hostile to the government’s position, leading most observers to believe the case ultimately will reach trial. It’s a virtual certainty that the initial February start date for the trial will be pushed back.
Lawsuits over the government’s environmental policies are hardly new, but with youth plaintiffs taking the lead, this case seems to have given activists and supporters of more aggressive climate policies their best chance to date to gain real concessions from the federal government.
“I believe that the momentum is on our side and it’s time for climate science to have its day in court,” said Nathan Baring, 17, of Fairbanks, Alaska, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

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Colonial First State Prepared To Dump Managers ‘Lagging’ On Climate Change, ESG

AFR - Alice Uribe

APRA's Geoff Summerhayes is putting pressure on companies to protect themselves and their customers against the risk of climate change. Jessica Hromas

Colonial First State, the wealth arm of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, has warned the fund managers it invests with to take the financial risks of climate change seriously or risk being dumped.
A CFS survey of more than 75 of its global and domestic investment managers found less than half (45 per cent) believe climate change is an investment risk, with less than 20 per cent measuring the carbon footprint of their portfolios. None are using carbon prices in valuing companies.
Scott Tully, head of investments at CFS, which manages $87 billion on behalf of nearly 1 million superannuation fund clients, said the findings were "lower" than the wealth manager had hoped.
"We've now got to assess [and ask] 'what are they doing about it?' It is a process where we might remove managers, not because we think they're not doing the right thing, but because they're not identifying risks which we think are material to portfolios," he told The Australian Financial Review.
This comes as the prudential regulator last year outlined plans for an industry-wide review of climate-related disclosure, warning insurers, superannuation funds and banks they place their "futures in jeopardy" by ignoring risks related to climate change.
"Increasingly, APRA will expect more sophisticated answers, especially from well-resourced and complex entities," said Australian Prudential Regulation Authority executive director Geoff Summerhayes in November.
"APRA intends to gain insights in areas such as how exposed regulated entities are to physical, transitional and liability risks, and whether they're taking steps to protect themselves and their customers."
As part of its survey CFS spoke to big-name funds such as the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock, State Street, Fidelity Investments, T. Rowe Price and Perpetual, as well as smaller funds including Solaris Investment Management, Greencape Capital, Kardinia Capital and Kapstream Capital.
"Broadly speaking global managers have the time and resources to dedicate to thinking about these issues, and tend to be further along the path than a small cap, Australian manager that's only got a few people on the investment team," Mr Tully said, not referring to any particular fund.
"A small manager could probably get up to speed very quickly. I just don't think there has been the wherewithal to do so. And part of our engagement would be with those managers, [to determine] what is stopping them from doing it."

'A lot of the companies are changing'
BlackRock, which manages $US6 trillion ($7.7 trillion) in assets, in December wrote to 120 companies requesting that they begin to more clearly report what may be the climate risks to their business, according to a Bloomberg report.
Despite this Mr Tully said investment managers as a group are "lagging", adding there was a need for greater transparency and more evidence of integration.
The survey identified that measuring and monitoring ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and climate change risks in portfolio construction, risk management and reporting phases of the investment process, was global best practice – yet most respondents are yet to integrate to this level.
"A lot of the responsible investing, or ESG or climate risk are changing at the company level … a lot of the companies are changing. There's a little bit of a gap where the investment managers haven't quite cottoned onto the fact members have higher expectations," he said.
Last year the Financial Stability Board's Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, recommended scenario analysis should be used by companies to model the impact of different assumptions about climate change and climate policy on their business.
The CFS survey also looked what its superannuation fund members expected from fund managers, with 70 per cent saying investment managers should exclude companies that use child labour and 60 per cent expecting tobacco producers to be excluded.
"Our surveys have identified that the investment industry has made significant progress, however more is required to align investment manager considerations with customer expectations," said Mr Tully.

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Climate Change Could Massively Devalue Your Home – Here Are The Top Danger Spots

New Daily - David Ross

Melbourne's CBD is one of the climate change danger spots for property owners. Getty

Australians living in climate change hotspots could see the value of their homes plummet and insurance premiums soar as climatic conditions deteriorate and natural disasters become more common, experts have warned.
Melbourne’s CBD, Sydney’s inner west, and the Gold Coast in Queensland were among the areas most at risk.
Houses in low-lying areas, on eroding seashores, or in bushfire zones could soon find their values slashed by hundreds of thousands of dollars due to extreme weather events, made more common and more intense by climate change.
These extreme weather events will make insurance more costly or harder to come by, and will become major sticking points for prospective buyers, Mozo’s property expert Steve Jovcevski told The New Daily.
“The impacts of climate change will have a major domino effect on the Australian property market,” he said.
“Australians should be aware that a property’s value doesn’t change when an extreme weather event occurs, but when the market determines it will occur.”
The Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience & Safe Communities revealed the total cost of natural disasters is expected to soar to an average cost of $33 billion by 2050.
Mr Jovcevski said people will realise living in flood, erosion, or bushfire prone areas is not an ideal way to live.
“Who wants to live like that?” he said.
Mr Jovcevski identified 20 areas in Australia as high property risk for buyers due to anticipated effects of climate change in the next 30 years.
Those areas include:

Melbourne’s CBD
Caringbah, Kurnell, Cromer, Manly Vale, NSW
Parramatta River, Homebush Bay, Newington, Silverwater, NSW
Cooks River, Arncliffe, Marrickville, NSW
Surfers Paradise, QLD
Cairns, QLD
Murray Darling Basin
Lorne, Aireys Inlet, Fairhaven and Anglesea, VIC
Mount Buller, VIC

Professor Ralph Horne, Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor of Research and Innovation for the College of Design and Social Context at RMIT University, agreed with the prediction.

The Gold Coast in Queensland is a densely populated climate change hotspot. Photo: Getty

The effects of extreme weather were already becoming visible to city dwellers, some of whom have suffered three once in a 100-year storms in the last 10 years, he said.
The recent storm and flash flooding in Melbourne demonstrated the damage extreme weather events would cause, Professor Horne said.
“It’s not unbelievable, it’s actually kind of happening,” he said. “Climate change will manifest in property damage in different ways.”
Professor Horne, who is also director of the Cities Programme, the urban arm of the United Nations Global Compact, said governments at local, state and federal level needed to improve building standards to help Australian cities cope.
“It’s not rocket science to make reasonably good guesses on how to improve our houses.”
Larissa Rickards, research fellow at the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT, told The New Daily many Australians do not consider building or buying houses designed to cope with extreme weather.
“As people become more aware and experience heat waves they will look for other places to live,” Ms Rickards said.
“We certainly don’t build quality housing in Australia as a standard approach.”
This summer’s heatwaves and the warnings about the burden on the electricity system – largely due to the heavy draw from air conditioners – would show the need for a rethink, she said.
“We’re at a crossroads in Australia, whether we invest in the electricity grid or invest in measures to reduce our usage.”

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Talking About Climate Change In Orwellian Doublespeak Doesn't Make It Go Away

Los Angeles Times - Editorial

President Donald Trump speaks and lays out a national security strategy that de-emphasizes climate change, in Washington on Dec. 18. (Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

If President Trump were a reader of books, we’d recommend a nearly 70-year-old novel to him, because it illustrates nicely both the absurdity and the danger of perverting language for political ends. The book is George Orwell’s “1984,” which gave us the concept of “Newspeak,” a language invented by government, and of ministries that do the exact opposite of what their names imply, i.e., a Ministry of Peace that is in charge of waging permanent war, and a Ministry of Truth churning out lies.
The Trump administration hasn’t hit full Orwellian mode, but it seems to be trying awfully hard. The new National Security Strategy unveiled Monday drops all references to climate change as a threat to national security, despite the clear risks posed by rising seas, altered storm and drought patterns, and the political instability and mass human migration such changes are expected to cause. “Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system,” the report says — but then it goes on to frame the issue in terms of the U.S.’s role in “countering an anti-growth energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security interests.”
So the fight against climate change is the risk to national security, not climate change itself.

The government is playing games with words in an effort to obscure.

That shouldn’t be a surprise coming from an administration that sees burning more fossil fuels as the path to global energy dominance, which is like betting on the oldest, lamest horse in the race. By contrast, President Obama described climate change unequivocally as “an urgent and growing threat to our national security” in his 2015 national security strategy report. Someone needs to advise Trump that refusing to recognize a problem doesn’t make it go away.
Bizarrely, the president last week signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, which clearly spells out the risk of climate change (for instance, coastal naval stations are already having to adapt). So Trump’s name is now affixed to a budget document that calls out climate change for the national security threat it poses, while his National Security Strategy report actually makes a case for continued reliance on fossil fuels.
Around the same time Trump was signing the defense bill, scientists for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a report that concludes “the Arctic shows no sign of returning to reliably frozen region of recent past decades,” and noted escalation in both air and sea temperatures. So while Trump and his political acolytes are playing word games, the real-life effects of climate change are being observed and felt at other levels of government.
We should be heartened, we suppose, that the Trump language enforcers so far have let the Defense Department and NOAA mention climate change. Last week, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were warned off using seven words and phrases in preparing budget documents (you’ll be excused for immediately thinking about comedian George Carlin’s profanity-filled routine, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”). The offending bits of English: Vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus, evidence-based and science-based.
It’s not entirely clear whether the Trump administration tagged words reflecting policies it doesn’t like, or whether nervous bureaucrats did so to avoid drawing attention to programs, ideas and policies that might rub social conservatives in Congress the wrong way. Either way, the government is playing games with words in an effort to obscure.
Similarly, the Environmental Protection Agency has stripped references to climate change from many of its websites, including renaming the “Climate and Energy Resources for State, Local and Tribal Governments” page to “Energy Resources for State, Local and Tribal Governments.” The Department of Agriculture also removed “substantial portions” of climate-change references from its Climate Hubs page, according to the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, a nonprofit government-monitoring group. Bizarrely, one page refers to the effect on rural roads from shorter and warmer winters, without mentioning exactly why January is so much balmier these days. Maybe our spotlight-addicted president will declare that he has made winters warmer, but that the “lying media” refuses to give him credit for it.
The reality is that it is the burning of fossil fuels by humans, spewing carbon and other greenhouse gases into the air, that has increased the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. And unless we take quick and radical steps to curtail emissions and to remove some of the carbon (through reforestation and other techniques), the world as we know it will change, with species die-offs, coastline changes, more intense major storms and altered drought and rain patterns. And it will happen whether Trump uses the words “climate change” or not.

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