Federal Judge Demands Unprecedented 5-Hour Climate Change Lesson

Mashable - Mark Kaufman

Sea level rise exacerbates high-tide flooding in Miami, Florida. Image: Getty Images

San Francisco and Oakland are battling the world's oil giants in federal court for knowingly producing fossil fuels whose emissions have triggered sea level rise. The two coastal cities argue that oil companies — including BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell — should foot the bill for hugely expensive infrastructure defenses to hold back rising waters — such as formidable sea walls.
And now — for the first time — a federal judge will listen as both sides present their understanding of climate science and the causes of global warming before the court. The hearing, referred to by the judge as a "tutorial," will address at least 14 specific questions that U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup asked both sides on Feb. 27.
"To my knowledge, no court has asked for this sort of presentation on climate science," said Justin Gundlach, a climate lawyer at Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, in an interview.
"This is an odd procedure, but one that makes sense," Gundlach said.
Oil companies and the cities have fundamental disagreements about climate science findings, so settling on some foundational realities about the effects of sending massive amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere could give Alsup an improved idea of how to rule in the case.
"What’s interesting about this request is that it does seem that an inevitable outcome is a list of stipulations about climate science — things all reasonable people should agree on," said Gundlach.
"That’s not to say that the parties are going to agree," he added.

The rate of global sea level rise has been accelerating, according to a new study using NASA data

Judge Alsup wrote a court notice asking that a "tutorial" be provided over the course of five hours, in which both sides will be given 60 minutes to present on each of two subjects:

1. Tracing "the history of scientific study of climate change, beginning with scientific inquiry into the formation and melting of the ice ages, periods of historical cooling and warming, smog, ozone, nuclear winter, volcanoes, and global warming."
2. Setting forth "the best science now available on global warming, glacier melt, sea rise, and coastal flooding."

While Gundlach said he's not sure what approach the oil companies will choose to take when describing climate science, he speculated that they may "emphasize uncertainties about how climate change will affect the future" as a way to avoid responsibilities for effects like sea level rise.
The lawyers for San Francisco and Oakland will likely present evidence that, as early as the 1970s, scientists within the oil industry were well aware of the effects carbon emissions would have on the global climate.
"Defendants took these stark warnings and proceeded to double-down on fossil fuels," San Francisco and Oakland's lawyers stated in their complaint, filed in September 2017.
"Even at this time, with the global warming danger level at a critical phase, defendants continue to engage in massive fossil fuel production and execute long-term business plans to continue and even expand their fossil fuel production for decades into the future,” the complaint states.
Already, climate scientists are working to crowdsource answers to Alsup's climate science questions. Many of these questions are elementary to climate scientists and are not up for much debate in the climate science community — such as the causes of ice ages.
Beyond addressing these basic tenants of climate science, it's possible both sides may look at recent research attempting to gauge each oil corporations' responsibility for historic carbon emissions — meaning who's responsible for what fraction of the world's total emissions from burning oil and gas.
"I would think the fight would be over that — to the extent that there’s a fight," said Gundlach.
This lawsuit is part of a wave of legal actions taken by everyone from 21 young Americans to New York City to try to force the oil industry and the federal government to recognize the scientific consensus on the subject and take action to address climate change.

Links

• New York City is suing big oil for global warming
• Patterns of Climate Change Litigation During Trump Era
• Landmark Case Challenges Land Clearing Based On Climate Change Impact
• US Government Can Be Sued By Children Over Climate Change: Court
• Seven Climate Change Myths That Big Oil Continues To Perpetuate
• Why The World Is Looking To The Philippines For Climate Justice
• Environmental Activists Are Suing Governments Over Climate Change — And Winning
• 'Sloppy And Careless': Courts Call Out Trump Blitzkrieg On Environmental Rules
• If Climate Change Wrecks Your City, Can It Sue Exxon?

This Dire Ocean Scenario Is A Stark Reminder Of Why The World Is Trying To Stop Climate Change

Washington Post - Chris Mooney

Rolling waves driven by Cyclone Christian appear in the Elbe estuary near the North Sea close to Brunsbuettel, northern Germany, on Oct. 28, 2013. (Christian Charisius/European Pressphoto Agency)

Scientists on Thursday published an alarming scenario for what could happen to the planet’s oceans and fisheries by the year 2300 if very high levels of global warming are allowed to continue.
The good news is that it’s eminently avoidable and a very long way off from happening. The bad news is that, according to the concerned authors, it highlights a new vulnerability that could arise in a severely disrupted climate system — and becomes a real possibility if rampant global warming continues well beyond this century.
The study finds that in a future world of extreme warming, after Antarctic sea ice collapses and oceans are altered, large volumes of essential nutrients could become trapped in the Southern Ocean. That could impair the growth of tiny marine organisms that form the base of the food chain in other parts of the world ocean, thus triggering a 20 percent decline in fishery yields overall, including a 60 percent drop in the Atlantic.
This would occur because the Southern Ocean near Antarctica is a key site of “upwelling,” in which deep ocean waters, which have picked up such nutrients as phosphorous and nitrogen from the depths (which end up there after marine organisms die and their bodies sink), rise and deliver that biological bounty to the surface. Then, the nutrients enter the global ocean circulation and are carried northward to more moderate climes.
But if warming gets severe enough, Southern Ocean upwelling can be suppressed by warm ocean surface waters. Meanwhile, many of the nutrients that do manage to rise will be consumed by the increasingly active biology of the mostly ice-free ocean around Antarctica — leaving far fewer nutrients for the rest of the world.
In this case, as organisms in the Southern Ocean die, more nutrients again sink to the bottom of that ocean, and stay there.
“So you have nutrients building up in the deep ocean, down where the biology can’t use them or get to them,” said Keith Moore, the lead author of the study in Science and a professor at the University of California at Irvine.
The researchers concede that the picture they paint is dire — and requires very high levels of warming that might never materialize. The temperature of the Antarctic Ocean in the scenario, for instance, would be 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it is now, and the sea ice ringing Antarctica would be almost entirely gone.
The computer modeling study also uses a worst-case scenario for the burning of fossil fuels to the year 2100 and even beyond it, ultimately triggering atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide just below 2,000 parts per million. That’s far in excess of the current level around 410 parts per million. It’s questionable that humanity would let things get that bad, and growing numbers of wind and solar installations and electric cars suggest that in future decades, we’ll be powering key aspects of life without fossil fuels.
Still, the authors said, it’s worth probing such extremes to understand how the climate system works, and they noted that for now, a high emissions scenario remains possible.
“These simulations paint a fairly dire picture of what I think will be catastrophic changes in the context of unmitigated climate warming,” said Matthew Long, one of the study’s authors and an oceanographer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “Along the path to those very catastrophic events, we may cross thresholds that we don’t know about. And so, I think it’s important for people to reflect on the impact we’re having on the world’s ocean and consider that in the context of action to mitigate climate warming.”
A researcher who was not involved in the study but reviewed it for The Washington Post, oceanographer Lynne Talley of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said she found the scenario plausible if warming is strong enough.
“Maybe they’ve got an extreme answer here, but all the pieces are what you’d expect to happen in a more moderate forcing,” Talley said.
An accompanying essay in Science, by ocean experts Charlotte Laufkotter and Nicolas Gruber of the University of Bern and ETH Zurich, respectively, in Switzerland, added that “the mere possibility of a future Southern Ocean nutrient-trapping scenario is highly concerning, warranting dedicated efforts to further our understanding of the unique role of the Southern Ocean in the global climate system.”
Fortunately, the study assumes as its premise a level of global warming that we in the present have ample opportunity to prevent.
If you think that the Paris climate agreement will work, holding the warming of the planet to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and bringing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations back down before they get much past 450 parts per million, then you can safely assume that such things will not occur.
On the other hand, if you don’t think the world can manage economic and population growth in the coming decades without a continual or even growing reliance on fossil fuels, this extreme scenario may be hard to get out of your mind.
Moore also said that he thinks the scenario presented in the study could at least begin to kick in at a lower temperature than the extreme ones in the paper. He said he’ll start to worry at a global temperature rise around 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit), when a lot of floating Antarctic sea ice could start to go.
“We don’t know exactly where that tipping point is,” Moore said. The study thus reinforces the importance of the Paris climate goals.
In the end, Long said, there is a value in describing what the worst-case scenario actually is — even if it is never actually realized.
“Human-driven climate warming is driving changes in the ocean that are epic in the context of Earth history,” he said. “They’re commensurate with some of the biggest, most fundamental reorganizations of the life support system of the planet. The scenario is unlikely, yet action remains stalled.”

Links

• Sustained climate warming drives declining marine biological productivity
• Marine Trackers Show How Warming Waters Affect Australian Sea Life And Beyond
• Climate Change Is Suffocating Large Parts Of The Ocean
• 'Maximum Damage': What's Going Wrong In Our Deep Blue And Warming Sea
• Climate Change Could Drive Coastal Food Webs To Collapse
• 'First Hint' Of A Puzzling Change In Southern Ocean Revealed By CSIRO
• In 2017, The Oceans Were By Far The Hottest Ever Recorded
• Climate Change Has Quadrupled Ocean 'Dead Zones,' Researchers Warn
• If Oceans Stopped Absorbing Heat From Climate Change, Life On Land Would Average 122°F
• Ocean Acidification Research Makes A Strong Case For Limiting Climate Change
• 'First Hint' Of A Puzzling Change In Southern Ocean Revealed By CSIRO
• Expect More 'Complete Surprises' From Climate Change: NASA's Schmidt
• Climate Change Impact On Antarctica Becomes Clearer As Scientists Make Progress
• Many Of The World’s Coasts Would Become Unviable If Antarctic Ice Continues To Melt Into Sea
• Climate Scientists Explore Hidden Ocean Beneath Antarctica’s Largest Ice Shelf
• As NASA Reveals Stunning Images, Antarctica Had Record Low Sea-Ice Coverage In 2017

We Can’t Fix Climate Change Without Fixing Gender Equality

Huffington Post - Liz Hutchins

When women are allowed a seat at the table, we all benefit

MATHILDE BELLENGER via Getty Images

2018 marks 100 years since most British women were granted the right to vote. Right now, a global movement is growing to expose the horrific scale of sexual assault around the world. #MeToo has become a shout of shared experience and a call to arms. The crescendo of women’s voices clamouring for change is loud, urgent, and powerful.
While the world stutters to respond to women saying “Time’s up”, we also face another stark and urgent challenge: climate change.
The impacts of climate change are not felt equally. Whilst poverty and geography are important dividing lines, so too is gender. Climate-change induced disasters disproportionately affect women. When disaster strikes, women, who still often play the primary role of looking after children and the elderly, are the last to evacuate; leading to higher female death tolls. Around 90% of the 150,000 people killed in the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone were women. They typically have less access to emergency response information and if they do survive, women, especially in poor or marginalised communities, are often less able to rebuild and recover.
Solutions to climate change need to work for everyone – yet women’s voices and needs are still often excluded from the decision-making table. The problem of climate change is simply too big to overlook half the world’s population and ignore female talent.
We can’t fix climate change without fixing gender equality but thankfully, there are already some amazing women stepping-up and leading the charge for a more equal, more sustainable world.
From Rachel Carson, the American marine biologist who, through her 1962 book Silent Spring, changed the way we think about the environment. To Berta Cáceres, the murdered Honduran environmental activist who successfully forced the world’s largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam. To Christiana Figueres - a driving force in negotiating the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Negotiating the agreement was a feat that many said couldn’t be done. It commits the world to pursue efforts to keep global temperature rises to1.5°C, and if honoured, it will save countless millions of lives – in the coming decades and in generations to come.
Equality and sustainability are two sides of the same story. The global economic system’s “business-as-usual” has had terrible consequences for our environment; as we use more and more of the earth’s resources with little care for what happens next. It has also led to huge inequality. It’s time to reimagine, and create, a different kind of world, with equality and sustainability at its heart. Where both resources and power are shared fairly.
When women are allowed a seat at the table, we all benefit. It’s becoming well-known that companies with women on their boards perform better, the same is true for women and climate change.There are already examples from around the world which have shown the positive impact that involving women can have on mitigating climate change and dealing with disasters.
The urgency of the climate crisis is real and acute, but we cannot focus on climate activism, without also working to create a fairer, more equal society.
In 2018, as we celebrate those who fought for a woman’s right to vote, we need to capture some of the spirit of the great women who came before us and with hope, passion and perseverance, together we can build a better world.
Why women will save the planet- the pioneering new book from Friends of the Earth and C40 Cities is available now from Zed books.

Links

• Why Women Will Save the Planet
• Climate Change 'Impacts Women More Than Men'
• Women Key To Fight Against Climate Change
• When Environmental Crises Hit Homes, Women Suffer The Most
• To Stop Climate Change, Educate Girls And Give Them Birth Control
• Lack Of Women In Energy ‘Holding Back Fight Against Climate Change’
• Bringing Women Together To Fight Climate Change
• 5 Ways Climate Change Is A Women’s Rights Issue
• Women Are Breaking The Climate Taboo And Questioning Whether To Have Kids In Such A World
• Mark Ruffalo, Noam Chomsky and Sir David Attenborough Join Forces for Climate Change Documentary
• Why Women Matter For Effective Climate Change Solutions – Analysis
• With Women At The Top, UN Climate Body Has Chance For Real Change