Lethal Heating: 05/30/18

30/05/2018

Poorest Hardest Hit By Even Low End Of Paris Climate Temperature Goals

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The tropics, home to many of the world's poorest nations, will be hard hit by global warming even at the lower end of the Paris climate goals, exacerbating inequality and worsening stresses on human populations and ecosystems alike, a new paper argues.
Research published Wednesday in Geophysical Research Letters examined the likely climate change impacts on wealthy and poorer countries under the 1.5 degree-2 degree warming limit - compared to pre-industrial times - as set by the 2015 Paris accord.

People volunteer to be sprayed in Karachi, Pakistan, as the mercury climbed well into the 40s this month. Photo: AP

Australia's tropical north - a region targeted for greater development in the future - will not escape the effects.
“People in Darwin will experience more of a shift in their climate than people in Melbourne, for example," said Andrew King, a climate scientist at Melbourne University and co-author of the report.
While tropical regions have generally warmed less than higher-latitude regions in the past century or so, ecosystems and societies typically experience a more narrow temperature variability over the year.
Polar regions, for instance, can experience anomalies of as much as 20 degrees whereas places close to the equator rarely have departures from the norm of more than a few degrees.

The paper applied a simple signal-to-noise ratio to identify the potential impacts of further warming and found aiming for 1.5 degrees rather than 2 degrees "makes quite a big difference", said Dr King.
"I was surprised by just how clear that outcome was.”
More temperate countries, led by Britain, were much less affected than tropical ones such as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo - even though the latter nations have been relatively small contributors historically to greenhouse gas emissions, the paper found.
"The tropics tend to be the poorest regions in the world and that means they don’t have the capacity to adapt, even though they’re going to feel the brunt of the climate change," said Dr King, who is also a researcher with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. “It certainly pushes the limits ... and some people won’t be able to cope.”
While the paper looked solely at temperatures, a warming world is also leading to rising sea levels, more powerful storms and heavier precipitation. The atmosphere can hold about 7 per cent more moisture for each degree of warming.

These changes would likely be "compounding effects", with poorer nations again likely to be harder hit than richer ones.
“It’s seems distinctly unfair given the cumulative emissions of countries like the UK,” Dr King said.
“These are the countries that haven’t benefited from industrialisation and may have their economic development hampered in the future by bigger shifts in the climate than the wealthier countries will experience.”

Animals in Lahore Zoo in Pakistan were given ice to help them cool off as temperatures reached 44 degrees or warmer last week. Photo: AP

Erwin Jackson, senior climate and energy adviser for Environment Victoria, said "current levels of warming are already at dangerous levels".
“While the world’s poorest will be hardest hit by climate change this is not just an issue for our northern neighbours," Mr Jackson said.
"Even current levels of warming are impacting on Australia through severe damage to the Great Barrier Reef, more extreme heatwaves and other weather-related events like bushfires."
While the discrepancy of impacts for poorer nations raised issues of climate injustice, Australia itself could face cascading challenges from abroad.
"What happens to others in our region matters to us," Mr Jackson said. "Severe economic damage and social unrest would have knock-on effects to our economy and national security.”

Sinking shoreline threatens millions in Indonesia

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Plain Sailing: How Traditional Methods Could Deliver Zero-Emission Shipping

The Conversation - Christiaan De Beukelaer

The Avontuur recently completed a sail-powered transatlantic cargo voyage. Timbercoast

On May 10, the 43.5-metre schooner Avontuur arrived in the port of Hamburg. This traditional sailing vessel, built in 1920, transported some 70 tonnes of coffee, cacao and rum across the Atlantic. The shipping company Timbercoast, which owns and operates Avontuur, says it aims to prove that sailing ships can offer an environmentally sustainable alternative to the heavily polluting shipping industry, despite being widely seen as a technology of yesteryear.
Similar initiatives exist across the world. In the Netherlands, Fairtransport operates two vessels on European and transatlantic routes. In France, Transoceanic Wind Transport sails multiple vessels across the English Channel and Atlantic Ocean, and along European coasts. The US-based vessel Kwai serves islands in the Pacific. And Sail Cargo, based in Costa Rica, is building Ceiba, a zero-emission cargo sailing ship.

Transporting cargo by sail is both a practical response to climate change and a contribution to a larger debate.

These initiatives have an environmental objective: transporting cargo without generating greenhouse gas emissions. But are they really a viable alternative to today’s huge fossil-fuelled maritime cargo transport industry?

Shipping emission targets?
On April 13, 2018, the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations body that regulates shipping, agreed for the first time to limit the sector’s greenhouse emissions. It’s targeting a 50% reduction by 2050 (relative to 2008 levels), with the aim to phase out emissions entirely.
This was a breakthrough, given that both the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement exclude international shipping (and international aviation) from emissions targets, because these are so hard to attribute to individual countries.
Conventional seaborne cargo transport is relatively energy-efficient. It emits less greenhouse gas per tonne-kilometre (one tonne of goods transported over one kilometre) than transport by train, truck or plane. But because 80-90% of all goods we consume are transported by sea, the total emissions of the shipping industry are immense.
According to figures from the International Maritime Organization (IMO), shipping accounts for 2-3% of global emissions – outstripping the 2% share generated by civil aviation.
As the global demand for goods increases, so does the need for shipping. As a result, the IMO has projected that the sector’s greenhouse emissions will grow by anything between 50% and 250% between 2012 and 2050, despite improvements in fuel composition and efficiency. More worryingly, a commentary on that report in Nature Climate Change warns that “none of the anticipated shipping scenarios even approach what is necessary for the sector to make its ‘fair and proportionate’ contribution to avoiding 2℃ of warming”.
A recent report commissioned by the European Parliament raises further alarm bells, underscoring the fact that the sector’s huge growth is likely to swamp any carbon savings that come from improved operations. On top of this, the significant progress made in other industries means that the relative share of greenhouse gas emissions from cargo shipping is likely to increase from the current 2-3% to 17% by 2050.

Yo ho ho, shipping rum the old-fashioned way aboard the Aventuur. Timbercoast

Zero-emission vessels?
The OECD International Transport Forum is less pessimistic. It projects a 23% increase in the sector’s emissions between 2015 and 2035 on current trends, but also argues that it will be possible to decarbonise maritime transport altogether by 2035, through the “maximum deployment of currently known technologies”.
These emissions-reducing propulsion technologies include kites, solar electricity, and advanced sail technology. Some of them, such as Flettner rotors, are already in use. But these will not be scaled up and become viable unless there is strict regulation, even if some shipping companies have taken steps to reduce their emissions ahead of a binding IMO target. Electricity-propelled container barges operate in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, the IMO faced a tricky balancing act in juggling the priorities of different countries. Climate-vulnerable nations such as the Marshall Islands want shipping emissions to be cut entirely by 2035. The European Union has proposed a reduction of 70-100% by 2050, while emerging economies such as Brazil, Saudi Arabia and India have argued against any emissions target at all. Despite these differences, the IMO did agree on a 50% reduction target by 2050 in April 2018.

Sail cargo
It took Avontuur 126 days to sail from France to Honduras, Mexico, Cuba and home to Germany. But conventional container ships can cross the Atlantic in about a week. Avontuur was carrying more than 70 tonnes of cargo on arrival in Germany. But many cargo vessels now carry more than 20,000 standard shipping containers (TEU), each weighing more than 2 tonnes and able to hold more than 20 tonnes of cargo.
Given the relatively small capacity of sailing ships, it is expensive and labour-intensive to ship cargo this way. But despite these limitations, support for sail cargo initiatives is growing. A consortium of small North Sea ports, for example, will “create sail cargo hubs in small ports and harbours, giving local businesses direct access to ethically transported goods”.

Ceiba, a new sailing vessel builds on traditional skills and incorporates new technologies to help attain global carbon emission targets.

These initiatives signal the revival of sail cargo with an explicit environmental agenda, although this effort is dwarfed by the scale of the global shipping industry. But while they don’t stack up in logistical terms, these voyages can help us see the possibilities for a world without fossil fuels. Sail cargo aims to rethink not only the means of propulsion for cargo vessels, but the entire scale, economy and ethics of cargo transport.
Traditional sailing vessels like Avontuur will not be able to compete with conventional cargo vessels on speed, scale or cost. But they help us focus on the underlying issue. We ship too much, too often and too far. The scale of shipping is unsustainable. That is why we need a change of mindset as much as a change of technology.
Sail cargo initiatives raise awareness about the devastating environmental effects of conventional cargo shipping. And they do so by showing that an alternative is possible. Indeed, it has been around for thousands of years.

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The Biggest Mistake We've Made On Climate Change

Fairfax - Ross Gittins

Illustration: Andrew Dyson

Every time I go to the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival I’m asked the same question: since there’s no policy issue more important than responding to global warming, and we’re doing so little about it, why do I ever write about anything else?
I give the obvious answer. Though I readily agree that climate change is the most pressing economic problem we face, if I banged on about nothing but global warming three times a week, our readers would soon lose interest.
But even as I make my excuses, my Salvo-trained conscience tells me they’re not good enough. Even if I can’t write about it every week, I should raise it more often than I do.
I’m still combing through the budget’s fine print, but I’ve yet to remark that its thousands of pages make almost no mention of climate change.
Even the federal government’s latest, 2015 “intergenerational report” peering out to 2055, devotes only a few paragraphs to “environment” and avoids using words starting with c.
I fear that history won’t be kind to the present generation – and particularly not to people with a pulpit like mine.

Illustration: Dionne Gain

We’ve known of the scientific evidence for human-caused global warming since the late-1980s. Since then the evidence has only strengthened. And by now we have the evidence of our own senses of hotter summers and autumns and warmer winters, plus more frequent extreme weather events.
And yet as a nation we procrastinate. Our scientists get ever more alarmed by the limited time we have left to get on top of the problem, and yet psychologists tell us that the harder the scientists strive to stir us to action, the more we turn off.
Our grandchildren will find it hard to believe we could have been so short-sighted as to delay moving from having to dig our energy out of the ground to merely harnessing the infinite supply of solar and wind power being sent to our planet free of charge.
What were we thinking? Did an earlier generation delay moving from the horse and buggy to the motor car because of the disruption it would cause to the horse industry?
The biggest mistake we’ve made is to allow our politicians to turn concern about global warming into a party-political issue, and do so merely for their own short-term advantage.
The initial motives may have been short term, but the adverse effects have been lasting. These days, for a Liberal voter to worry about climate change is to be disloyal to their party and give comfort to the enemy.
Apparently, only socialists think their grandkids will have anything to worry about. The right-thinkers among us know the only bad thing our offspring will inherit is Labor’s debt.
Global warming used not to be, shouldn’t be and doesn’t have to stay a right-versus-left issue. In Europe it’s bipartisan. Margaret Thatcher was a vocal fighter for action on climate change, and the Conservative Party is anti-denial to this day.
If you remember, John Howard went to the 2007 election promising an emissions trading scheme. The big debate in that campaign was whether Labor’s rival plan was better because it started a year earlier.

John Howard went to an election promising an emissions trading scheme. Photo: AAP

The econocrat who designed Howard’s scheme, Dr Martin Parkinson, was the same person the Rudd government appointed to develop its scheme. The Department of Climate Change was a virtual outpost of Treasury. Indeed, I know of few economists who aren’t supporters of putting “a price on carbon”.
At the time, the Libs’ strongest supporter of action on climate change was a Malcolm someone. I wonder whatever happened to him?
As Liberal opposition leader, Turnbull was offering bipartisan support for Rudd’s emissions trading scheme when he was thrown out by Tony Abbott, who quickly changed his views to become leader of the party’s then-minority of climate change deniers.
I don’t doubt there are many, many Liberal voters who accept that global warming is real and would like to see the Coalition acting more decisively, but feel obliged to keep a low profile and let Dr John Hewson do the talking for them.

The National Party's climate change denial is puzzling. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer

The fossil-fuel industry is no doubt generous in its support to any party willing to help it stave off the evil hour, but the attitude of business generally is different.
Initially, it accepted that the move to renewable energy was inevitable. In which case, the government should just get on with it, reducing uncertainty by making the rules for the transition as clear and firm as possible.
But when the Libs succumbed to the deniers, business savoured the temporary relief of doing nothing. Now, however, the electricity and gas industries are in such a mess that business is back to demanding certainty in the inevitable move to renewables.
The Coalition, unfortunately, is utterly incapable of agreeing to anything meeting that description.

With states taking the lead in the renewable energy push, a report by the Climate Council puts each state's efforts against one another.

Which brings us to the mystery of the seemingly denier-packed National Party. How any farmers or people from country towns can doubt the reality of climate change is beyond me. The National Farmers’ Federation certainly doesn’t.
But we can’t put all the blame on short-sighted politicians and crony capitalism. If enough of us did more to voice our disapproval, the pollies would change their tune PDQ.
And we’d have a more convincing story to tell our grandkids when they want to know what we did in the climate war.

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