23/03/2018

Australia One Of The Countries Most Exposed To Climate Change, Bank Warns

Fairfax - Cole Latimer

Australia is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change in the developed world, and the threat of Australians dying from global warming-related events has risen, global bank HSBC warns.
Australia is at risk of more bushfires as climate change continues. Photo: Jonathan Carroll
A new report by the bank, titled Fragile Planet, has ranked 67 countries for their exposure to climate change risks. Australia scored poorly, with the largest percentage rise in deaths attributable to climate change in the developed world.
Combining data from the World Bank and EM-DAT, the International Disaster Database which calculates economic damage estimates, HSBC said fatalities attributable to climate change-linked events such as stronger storms, floods, or heat-related incidents surged from 0.36 per cent of the population between 1997 and 2006 to 3.41 per cent between 2007 and 2016.
At the same time, the number of people impacted by climate change events surged from 3.25 to 15.25 per 1000 of the population.
Israel and the US were the only developed countries with a bigger share of the population impacted by climate change-related events such as floods, storms, hurricanes, and wildfires.
lobally, the World Health Organisation forecasts that around 250,000 additional deaths annually will be attributable to climate change.
HSBC developed the report as a tool for investors to provide in-depth information on countries' climate change risk profiles, on their energy issues, risks to business operations, supply and demand and logistics as well as their long-term sustainable development issues.
Australia was ranked as highly sensitive to the physical risks of climate change, with predictions of more storms, floods, rain and bushfires. New Zealand ranked as one the nations least exposed to those risks.

Hurting the economy
Late last year, Deutsche Bank also developed a tool to forecast where its investments across the globe may be impacted by natural disasters brought on by climate change.
The German bank's economic modelling estimated that if carbon emissions aren't reduced throughout this century, per capita GDP will be 23 per cent lower than it otherwise would be.
Principal Advisor at The Australia Institute, Mark Ogge, said Australia's industries and infrastructure, such as coastal based business, roads and rail, and both commercial residential assets, are at significant risk from climate change-related events.
"There's up to $236 billion of infrastructure at risk from a one-metre sea level rise alone," Mr Ogge said. Temperature increases also put Australia's tourism industry at risk, with a rising number of days above 35 degrees celsius in holiday destinations such as Far North Queensland, he added.
The Australia Institute believes billions of dollars in infrastructure are at risk from a one-metre sea level rise. Photo: Ashley Roach
Australia is the only developed market that ranked within the top ten in HSBC's report for energy transition issues due to its high levels of fossil fuel exports – particularly coal – and is one of the few countries that has seen these exports growing as a percentage of their gross domestic product.
HSBC sees risks to the nation's economy as Australia attempts to shift its energy and economic system, currently underpinned by fossil fuels, to one with a greater mix of renewables.
“Many countries and other actors are at risk of seeing parts of their old energy economy becoming effectively ‘stranded assets’ – or economically non-viable – given the relative economics of alternatives and new breakthrough technologies,” the HSBC report stated.
“Managing the transition to a lower carbon economy is key to mitigating downside risks," the bank said. "We think achieving diversification is key.”

The good news
However, it is not all bad news. Australia was ranked amongst the top three nations – along with New Zealand and Norway – with the greatest potential to respond to climate change and financially prepare the country for a changing environment.
Despite Australia’s frequent drought conditions, it was seen as a market with adequate water resources availability, while Singapore was the developed market most at risk over water availability.

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Millions More Hungry In 2017 Amid Famine, Conflict, And Numbers Rising-Report

Reuters - Thin Lei Win

"We are clearly seeing a trend now, from 80 million to 108 million, from 108 to 124 million, people literally marching to the brink of starvation around the world"
An internally displaced woman sits with her severely acute malnourished children as they wait to receive medical attention at the Tshiamala general referral hospital of Mwene Ditu in Kasai Oriental Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, March 15, 2018. Picture taken March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya
ROME - Conflicts and climate disasters, particularly drought, drove the number of people facing crisis levels of hunger up by about 15 percent last year and the situation is getting worse, a report said on Thursday.
Last year 124 million people in 51 countries faced crisis levels of hunger compared to 108 million people in 48 countries in 2016 and 80 million in 2015, according to the Food Security Information Network (FSIN).
The FSIN is a global project set up to strengthen food and nutrition security information systems that is sponsored by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme and the International Food Policy Research Institute.
"We are clearly seeing a trend now, from 80 million to 108 million, from 108 to 124 million, people literally marching to the brink of starvation around the world," said David Beasley, WFP's executive director.
"We will never address the issues of the day until we end some of these conflicts," he added at the report's launch.
The FSIN report said the rising numbers in 2017 were largely due to new or intensified conflicts in Myanmar, north-east Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Yemen.
In 2018, "conflict will remain a primary driver of food security", it said, while severe dry weather is expected to affect crop and livestock production and worsen hunger in many parts of Africa.
Yemen, where a proxy wdroughteport said.
It also singled out Eritrea, North Korea and Venezuela as places of concern but said a lack of data made it difficult to estimate the number of people left hungry.
The analysis showed the situation could worsen in 2018 in at least three or four countries, Luca Russo, senior food crises analyst at the FAO, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The FSIN uses a five phase scale with the third level classified as crisis, fourth as emergency and fifth as famine/catastrophe.
"In South Sudan, we all applaud ourselves because we avoided famine last year, but the figures today tell us we might have famine in South Sudan in the next few months and this can also apply to other countries," Russo said.

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Complex Science Behind Climate Change And Extreme Weather

ABC Weather - Kate Doyle

Only a chimney is left standing in this Tathra house after Sunday's fire. (ABC News: Bianca Gurra)
As cyclone Marcus ripped through Darwin and fires burned homes to the ground in Victoria and New South Wales, it was just a matter of time until the climate change discussion reared its head.
This week the Greens drew a link between the two, with comments made in the Senate and in the media, saying that fires are now more severe and frequent because of climate change.
The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull later commented that he was reportedly "disappointed" the Greens would politicise the events.
"You can't attribute any particular event, whether it's a flood or fire or a drought or a storm — to climate change," he said while on a visit to Bega, near the bushfire-affected areas.
Two people who have protested Mr Turnbull's remarks are Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick from the University of New South Wales and Dr Andrew King of the University of Melbourne.
They are two of Australia's leading researchers in climate change's role in extreme events and have spoken to the ABC regarding the field of 'climate change attribution'.

How does climate change attribution work?
The basic principle behind climate change attribution is comparing the world as it is, with how it would have been without human-induced greenhouse gasses.
To do this researchers use climate models which work like computer-based virtual worlds, to recreate the real world as closely as possible.
They then look at two sets of model experiments, one which is as close as possible to the current world, and one where the human introduced greenhouse gasses have been removed.
"We look at the frequency of that specific event between those two simulations and then compare how often it occurs now, compared to the natural world — as we think it used to be," said Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick.
"Essentially what we're doing is looking between those two groups of models and how the probability or intensity of extreme weather events [such as] heat waves, heavy rainfall events and droughts, are changing just between those two ensembles," said Dr King.
In the past, these attribution studies have found a link between the Canberra and Sydney Heatwaves of February 2017 and climate change.
For more complex weather events, for example Cyclone Debbie, or the 2011 floods of south east Queensland, Dr King says "it's harder to tell."
Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick spoke about climate change attribution at the AMOS conference in Sydney in February. (ABC Weather: Kate Doyle)
Part of the reason is that there is a lot of complexity in this analysis.
According to Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick, "It's not that easy.
"A lot of time, a lot of blood, sweat and tears go into actually defining the event and making sure you've got it right.
"It's taken me weeks before to make sure I've captured the event as well as I can."
How the event is defined, the model used, which parameters are included and how the data is analysed statistically, can all change the outcome, so these simulations are often repeated many times to ensure a robust result.

What are the limitations?
Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick said one of the limitations of climate change attribution studies is that they are heavily model-based.
"You have to be certain, or very confident at least, that that model is a good representation of the actual climate," she said.
"Unfortunately, however, no matter how good your model is, we simply can't really measure what the climate used to be like before climate change actually started."
There are some old observations, mainly in Europe, and paleo records, that are helping to improve knowledge in this area.
But our understanding of pre-industrial revolution conditions are not as good as our understanding of the current climate.
Dr Andrew King at the AMOS conference in Sydney 2018 (ABC Weather: Kate Doyle)
The type of event matters too.
Dr King said that hot or cold extremes are quite easy to attribute, especially on a big scale; other more variable events like rainfall, are more difficult.
"More complex events like fire weather, which has a combination of high temperatures, low humidity, strong winds — those are a lot harder."
Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick also puts individual cyclones in the variable pile.
"It doesn't necessarily mean with those events that there is no anthropogenic signal," said Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick.
"It just means that we can't yet detect it because there's a lot of variability overlying that particular signal."

'Weather' vs. 'climate'
Communicating the difference between long term-climate trends and individual extreme weather events is where all of this gets messy.
The weather is what is going on day-to-day; the climate is what is happening over time.
Using the wardrobe analogy: climate is all of the clothes in your closet, while weather is what you wear each day.
Which raises the question: does every event need to prove or disprove climate change?
According to Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick the answer is no.
"A lot of the events — I'm just saying a lot, I'm not saying all on purpose — would have probably occurred without climate change, but now they're occurring more frequently," she said.
"And that's exactly what attribution looks at: whether or not a particular event is occurring more frequently because of climate change,.
"We've always had tropical cyclones for example, they're always going to occur.
"It doesn't necessarily mean that every single tropical cyclone needs to be attributed to climate change."
"And we look at every event separately because they're all very different and very individual."
Likewise, not every cold snap means climate change is wrong.
"It's quite frustrating as a climate scientist to hear people saying that," Dr King said. "Especially if it's the president of the United States, it's not very helpful."
"We're always going to have that variable weather — even in a hundred years.
"It's just that the warm extremes are a bit warmer, the cool extremes are not quite as cold as they would've been in the past."
The driver of this ute got a shock when a palm tree outside his house came crashing down on him during Cyclone Marcus on Saturday. (ABC News: Neda Vanovac)
Both Drs King and Perkins-Kirkpatrick are trying to move away from publicly assigning a number or percentage to how much climate change has contributed to an individual event, despite media pressure.
Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick said she understands the pressure from the media, "They want that analysis because it is interesting and it does show that climate change is actually happening now."
The researchers explain there is only so fast they can get such analysis done.
"We're reasonably confident in the method, but sometimes the media wants these results yesterday," Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick said.
A fully quantifiable scientific analysis takes time.
"When we do put a number on it, it's not necessarily one that we've plucked out of thin air," Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick said
"We've looked at the event, we've repeated the analysis thousands of times, so we have a range, and we never give the number that's the most scary, or the highest number — we give a very conservative number."
"So even if we say an event is, for example, twice as likely due to climate change, that's probably the lower estimate."
For Dr King, it is about making sure the context is there.
"We always give uncertainties with those numbers but often it's lost in the communication from the media sources to the public," he said.
Flames come close to a home in Tathra as a large bushfires burnt through the town on Sunday 18 March, 2018. (ABC News: Peta Doherty)
So last weekend's events?
Last weekend's fires and cyclone may have been later than most but they still occurred within both the official NSW Rural Fire Services Bush Fire Danger Period and the NT's cyclone season.

With all of this confusion, is climate change attribution useful?
Darwin residents have a lot of work ahead of them, to recover from Tropical Cyclone Marcus. (ABC News: Emma Vincent)
Dr King said it was the extreme events that people remembered.
"Understanding how [extreme weather events] are changing resonates with people I think," he said.
"So it's a really good communication tool."
Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick said that ultimately, it is useful.
"Especially if you have all your methods pointing towards yes," she said. "You can say with confidence — with high confidence — that there's a signal there."
"Conversely, certain events you can't necessarily attribute to climate change.
"And if all your methods say the same thing, that climate change did not affect this event, you can say that with confidence as well."

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