Lethal Heating: 01/23/19

23/01/2019

Immediate Fossil Fuel Phaseout Could Arrest Climate Change – Study

The Guardian - Damian Carrington

The study found there is a 66% chance of staying below 1.5C above pre-industrial levels if immediate action is taken. Photograph: Alamy

Climate change could be kept in check if a phaseout of all fossil fuel infrastructure were to begin immediately, according to research.
It shows that meeting the internationally agreed aspiration of keeping global warming to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is still possible. The scientists say it is therefore the choices being made by global society, not physics, which is the obstacle to meeting the goal.
The study found that if all fossil fuel infrastructure – power plants, factories, vehicles, ships and planes – from now on are replaced by zero-carbon alternatives at the end of their useful lives, there is a 64% chance of staying under 1.5C.
In October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the difference between 1.5C of warming and the earlier international target of 2C was a significantly lower risk of drought, floods, heatwaves and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
Christopher Smith, of the University of Leeds, who led the research, said: “It’s good news from a geophysical point of view. But on the other side of the coin, the [immediate fossil fuel phaseout] is really at the limit of what we could we possibly do. We are basically saying we can’t build anything now that emits fossil fuels.”
Nicholas Stern, of the London School of Economics, who was not part of the research team, said: “We are rapidly approaching the end of the age of fossil fuels. This study confirms that all new energy infrastructure must be sustainable from now on if we are to avoid locking in commitments to emissions that would lead to the world exceeding the goals of the Paris agreement.”
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, used computer models to estimate by how much global temperatures would rise if a fossil fuel infrastructure phaseout began immediately. The lifespan for power plants was set at 40 years, cars an average of 15 years and planes 26 years. The work also assumes a rapid end to beef and dairy consumption, which is responsible for significant global emissions.
In this scenario, the models suggest carbon emissions would decline to zero over the next four decades and there would be a 66% chance of the global temperature rise remaining below 1.5C. If the phaseout does not begin until 2030, the chance is 33%.
The analysis did not include the possibility of tipping points such as the sudden release of huge volumes of methane from permafrost, which could spark runaway global warming.
The scientists accept their scenario is at the extreme end of ambition, but said it was important to know that meeting the 1.5C target was still physically possible and dependent on the choices made now and in the coming years. “The climate system is not stopping you [hitting the target], global society is stopping you,” Smith said.
Other work, using a different approach, has also shown that keeping within the 1.5C limit is possible if radical action is taken immediately. In some sectors, zero-carbon technology already exists, such as renewable energy. But in others, such as aviation, it does not. “Maybe the solution here is flying less,” Smith said.
Prof Dave Reay, of the University of Edinburgh, who also was not part of the research team, said: “Whether it’s drilling a new gas well, keeping an old coal power station open, or even buying a diesel car, the choices we make today will largely determine the climate pathways of tomorrow. The message of this new study is loud and clear: act now or see the last chance for a safer climate future ebb away.”
Smith’s personal belief is that global heating will surpass 1.5C. “We are going the right way, but I don’t think we will do enough, quickly enough. I think we are heading for 2C to 2.5C.”
But he added: “If you don’t have a goal, you are not going to get anywhere. If you have a target that is really hard to achieve and you miss it slightly, that is better than wandering aimlessly into a future climate that is no good for anybody.”

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Pentagon Warns Of Dire Risk To Bases, Troops From Climate Change

Bloomberg - Anthony Capaccio | Jennifer A Dlouhy | Ari Natter

▶ ‘Effects of a changing climate are a national security issue’

▶ The report to Congress is at odds with Trump’s position

Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Hampton, Virginia. Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. Defense Department has issued a dire report on how climate change could affect the nation’s armed forces and security, warning that rising seas could inundate coastal bases and drought-fueled wildfires could endanger those that are inland.
The 22-page assessment delivered to Congress on Thursday says about two-thirds of 79 mission-essential military installations in the U.S. that were reviewed are vulnerable now or in the future to flooding and more than half are at risk from drought. About half also are at risk from wildfires, including the threat of mudslides and erosion from rains after the blazes.
“The effects of a changing climate are a national security issue with potential impacts to DOD missions, operational plans and installations,” Defense Department spokeswoman Heather Babb said Friday in an email.
The report contradicts the view of President Donald Trump, who has rejected the scientific consensus that climate change is real and man-made. The report’s premise echoes the findings of the National Climate Assessment, written by 13 federal agencies and released in November. It concluded that the effects of global warming are accelerating and will cause widespread disruption.
Trump rejected those findings. “I don’t believe it,” he said at the time.
The new Defense Department report, which was mandated by Congress, describes widespread impacts, dispersed across the U.S., with more coastal flooding along the East coast and Hawaii.
U.S. military facilities are already encountering some of the effects, the Pentagon says, noting that Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia has experienced 14 inches of sea-level rise since 1930. And Navy Base Coronado in California already is subject to flooding during tropical storms.
In the Washington area, several Defense Department sites -- including Joint Base Andrews, home of Air Force One -- are experiencing drought conditions that have been severe in the past 16 years, the report says. Those conditions can lead to ruptured utility lines and cracked roads, the Pentagon warns, as moisture disappears from soil.
The Defense Department stresses in its report that it is working with nations around the world “to understand and plan for future potential mission impacts” from climate change, describing it as “a global issue.”
But Democratic lawmakers said the Defense Department pulled its punches by listing what Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called a “phone book” of threats without offering a plan of action.
“It fails to even minimally discuss a mitigation plan to address the vulnerabilities,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith said in a statement. Committee member Jim Langevin said the Defense Department “for no apparent reason” omitted the threat to U.S. bases abroad.

Pentagon History
The Pentagon has long expressed concern over climate change and its military implications worldwide.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who resigned last month, had been at odds with Trump over climate change, telling Senate Armed Services during his confirmation process that “the Department of Defense must pay attention to potential adverse impacts generated by this phenomenon.”
“Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today," Mattis wrote in written responses to questions from the committee. “It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning.”
In 2013, Republican Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, who now is chairman of the Senate panel, pressed Admiral Samuel Locklear, who was head of U.S. Pacific Command, to say that his concerns about climate change were being misrepresented by “environmental extremists.”

Obama Administration
Instead, Locklear said about 280,000 people died in natural disasters in the Pacific region from 2008 to 2012. “Now, they weren’t all climate-change or weather-related, but a lot of them were,” the admiral said.
Under the Obama administration, responding to the effects of climate on the nation’s military was a top initiative, but the Trump administration has taken a different tack. Climate change was omitted in 2017 as a threat from the National Security Strategy, a list of the top dangers facing the nation.
“Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty,” the 2017 strategy said. “U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth energy agenda.”
Shortly after taking office, Trump revoked a memorandum that Obama signed in 2016, directing the Defense Department to account for climate change in its decisions about where to build new facilities and how it prepares for future threats.
Senator Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, responded by calling Trump’s decision to rescind the memorandum “a security disaster.”

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David Attenborough Tells Davos: ‘The Garden Of Eden Is No More’

The Guardian - Graeme Wearden

Human activity has created a new era yet climate change can be stopped, says naturalist

‘The Garden of Eden is no more’, David Attenborough warns Davos summit

Sir David Attenborough has warned that “the Garden of Eden is no more”, as he urged political and business leaders from around the world to make a renewed push to tackle climate change before the damage is irreparable.
Speaking at the start of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, the 92-year-old naturalist and broadcaster warned that human activity has taken the world into a new era, threatening to undermine civilisation.
“I am quite literally from another age,” Attenborough told an audience of business leaders, politicians and other delegates. “I was born during the Holocene – the 12,000 [year] period of climatic stability that allowed humans to settle, farm, and create civilisations.” That led to trade in ideas and goods, and made us the “globally connected species we are today”.
That stability allowed businesses to grow, nations to co-operate and people to share ideas, Attenborough explained, before warning sombrely: “In the space of my lifetime, all that has changed.
“The Holocene has ended. The Garden of Eden is no more. We have changed the world so much that scientists say we are in a new geological age: the Anthropocene, the age of humans,” he declared.

In a stark warning to the world leaders and business chiefs flocking to the WEF this week, Attenborough warned that the only conditions that humans have known are changing fast.
“We need to move beyond guilt or blame, and get on with the practical tasks at hand.”
A survey conducted before the WEF found that environmental threats are now the biggest danger to the global economy, and concern is mounting that co-operation between countries on the issue is breaking down.
Attenborough admitted that even he has been surprised by the speed of the damage caused to the environment during his career making TV programmes showing life on earth.
In response, Attenborough – recently voted Britain’s most trustworthy celebrity – said humans must use their expert problem-solving skills. “If people can truly understand what is at stake, I believe they will give permission for business and governments to get on with the practical solutions,” he told the WEF.
Get it right, he argued, and humans can create a world with clean air and water, unlimited energy and sustainable fish stocks, but only if decisive action is taken now.
“Over the next two years there will be United Nations decisions on climate change, sustainable development and a new deal for nature. Together these will form our species’ plan for a route through the Anthropocene.
“What we do now, and in the next few years, will profoundly affect the next few thousand years,” he added.
Speaking to journalists after his speech, Attenborough warned that economic models needed to change. “Growth is going to come to an end, either suddenly or in a controlled way,” he explained, citing the old joke that anyone who thinks you can have infinite growth in finite circumstances is “either a madman or an economist”.
He is also hopeful that he can change hearts and minds during his trip to Davos, pointing out that some delegates have more power than a nation state. “The enormity of the problem has only just dawned on quite a lot of people ... Unless we sort ourselves out in the next decade or so we are dooming our children and our grandchildren to an appalling future.”
Before he spoke, Attenborough received the Crystal award from the WEF for his work. Saudi Arabia’s first female film-maker, Haifaa al-Mansour, and conductor Marin Alsop of the Baltimore Symphony were also honoured for their work.
Prince William is due to appear with Attenborough to discuss environmental issues at the WEF on Tuesday.

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