Climate Change Is Killing Off Earth’s Little Creatures

The Conversation - Bill Laurance

A jumping spider, which uses sharp eyesight to hunt its prey. ThomasShahan.com/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Climate change gets blamed for a lot of things these days: inundating small islands, fueling catastrophic fires, amping-up hurricanes and smashing Arctic sea ice.
But a global review of insect research has found another casualty: 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered. It confirms what many have been suspecting: in Australia and around the world, arthropods – which include insects, spiders, centipedes and the like — appear to be in trouble.
The global review comes hard on the heels of research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA that suggests a potent link between intensifying heat waves and stunning declines in the abundance of arthropods.
If that study’s findings are broadly valid – something still far from certain – it has chilling implications for global biodiversity.

Our natural world depends on arthropods. Steve Raubenstine/Pixabay

Arthropod Armageddon
In the mid-1970s, researchers on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico conducted a large-scale study to measure the total biomass (living mass) of insects and other arthropods in the island’s intact rainforests, using sweep nets and sticky-traps.
Four decades later, another research team returned to the island and repeated the study using identical methods and the same locations. To their surprise, they found that arthropod biomass was just one-eighth to one-sixtieth of that in the 1970s – a shocking collapse overall.
And the carnage didn’t end there. The team found that a bevy of arthropod-eating lizards, birds and frogs had fallen sharply in abundance as well.

Insects are crucial in food webs for species such as this jacamar. Pixabay

In the minds of many ecologists, a widespread collapse of arthropods could be downright apocalyptic. Arthropods pollinate some of our most important food crops and thousands of wild plant species, disperse seeds, recycle nutrients and form key links in food chains that sustain entire webs of life.
This ecological ubiquity arises because arthropods are so abundant and diverse, comprising at least two-thirds of all known species on Earth. In the 1940s, evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane quipped that “God has an inordinate fondness for beetles.” Humans might think we rule the world, but the planet really belongs to arthropods.

Killer heat waves
The researchers who documented the arthropod collapse in Puerto Rico considered a variety of possible causes, including pesticides and habitat disruption. But the evidence kept pointing to another driver: rising temperatures.
Weather stations in Puerto Rico indicate that temperatures there have risen progressively in the past several decades – by 2℃ on average.
But the researchers are far less worried about a gradual increase in temperature than the intensification of heat waves—which have risen markedly in Puerto Rico. This is because nearly all living species have thresholds of temperature tolerance.
For example, research in Australia has shown that at 41℃, flying foxes become badly heat-stressed, struggling to find shade and flapping their wings desperately to stay cool.
But nudge the thermometer up just one more degree, to 42℃, and the bats suddenly die.
In November, heat waves that peaked above 42℃ in north Queensland killed off almost a third of the region’s Spectacled Flying Foxes. The ground beneath bat colonies was littered with tens of thousands of dead animals. Dedicated animal carers could only save a small fraction of the dying bats.

Bats die en-masse during a recent heatwave.

The El Niño connection
El Niño events – fluctuations in Pacific sea-surface temperatures that drive multi-year variations in weather across large swaths of the planet – are also part of this story. New research appears to be resolving longstanding uncertainties about El Niños and global warming.
Recent studies published in Nature and Geophysical Research Letters suggest global warming will in fact intensify El Niños – causing affected areas to suffer even more intensively from droughts and heat waves.
And this ties back to Puerto Rico, because the researchers there believe a series of unusually intense El Niño heatwaves were the cause the arthropod Armageddon. If they’re right then global warming was the gun, but El Niño pulled the trigger.

Beyond heat waves
Puerto Rico is certainly not the only place on Earth that has suffered severe declines in arthropods. Robust studies in Europe, North America, Australia and other locales have revealed big arthropod declines as well.
And while climatic factors have contributed to some of these declines, it’s clear that many other environmental changes, such as habitat disruption, pesticides, introduced pathogens and light pollution, are also taking heavy tolls.

Monarch butterflies are declining in the USA and Mexico, probably from habitat disruption. Pixabay

So, at a planetary scale, arthropods are suffering from a wide variety of environmental insults. There’s no single reason why their populations are collapsing.
The bottom line is: we’re changing our world in many different ways at once. And the myriad little creatures that play so many critical roles in the fabric of life are struggling to survive the onslaught.

Links

• The Guardian View On The Mass Death Of Insects: This Threatens Us All
• Plummeting Insect Numbers 'Threaten Collapse Of Nature'
• Save Our Bugs! How To Avert An Insect Armageddon
• Urgent Climate Action Required To Protect Tens Of Thousands Of Species Worldwide, New Research Shows
• Climate Change On Track To Cause Major Insect Wipeout, Scientists Warn 
• Climate change: effect on sperm could hold key to species extinction

Climate Change Could Thaw The Home Of Humanity's Doomsday Vault

Gizmodo - Brian Kahn

Photo: AP

If climate change has its way, the seeds the world is saving for doomsday might just be able to grow in the Arctic, according to a report released Monday by the Norwegian government.
Svalbard, the Norwegian islands that are home to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault aka the Doomsday Vault, has warmed up to 5 degrees Celsius since 1971. But according to the new report, which draws on existing studies and data as well as new targeted modelling, it could see temperatures ratchet up another 10 degrees Celsius by 2100 if carbon pollution continues unchecked. That would precipitate major changes to sea ice, permafrost, and glaciers that dominate the landscape.
The Arctic is the fastest warming location on Earth, and Svalbard has already seen dramatic changes. In addition to the spike in temperatures, the islands have seen a drop in sea ice, particularly in fjords, a 20-day shrinkage of snowfall season, and permafrost warming at rates of 0.15 degrees Celsius annually since 2009. That warming signature can be detected down to 80 meters below the surface.
And if humans continue burning fossil fuels at rapid clip, the aforementioned eye-popping 10 degree Celsius uptick in temperatures will set off a series of changes that will ripple out through the islands. Under the worst case scenario, by century’s end, glaciers will retreat into the mountains by 400 meters, and permafrost will turn to mush and release carbon dioxide and methane.
Those twin trends will in turn destabilize the landscape and, along with more rain and less snow cover, likely lead to more avalanches and landslides. The only silver lining is that sea levels will drop as the islands spring up in response to being relieved of the weight of glaciers.
Under a more moderate scenario where the world’s carbon emissions decline by midcentury, Svalbard is “only” looking at 7 degrees Celsius of warming. Only 2,300 people call Svalbard home, but even so, the impacts on locals can’t be ignored. The changes also mean polar bears, seals, and other animals that live on the remote outpost will also face major risks.
And of course there’s the flashiest resident of Svalbard, the Doomsday Vault. Drilled into the side of a mountain, the seed bank is managed by the Norwegian government, Crop Trust, and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center. It can hold up to 2.5 billion seeds, and the cold climate is a key component to keeping the seeds in viable condition. The permafrost acts as natural insulation and the temperature inside is kept at a brisk minus−18 degrees Celsius. The whole purpose is stash away crop seeds in a safe place in case of environmental catastrophe.
Yet climate change has already led the vault’s owners to plunk millions of dollars into renovations to keep up with climate change.
The vault also had a flood scare a few years ago, driven by hotter-than-normal temperatures thawing the permafrost around it. The new report shows even with all the recent upgrades, it still may not be enough to keep the seeds on ice.

Links

• Climate in Svalbard 2100 (pdf)
• There's Way Too Little Ice Around Svalbard Right Now
• Threat Of Climate Change Is Forcing Norway To Drop Millions On Its Doomsday Vault
• Scientists Add 50,000 Seeds To Arctic Doomsday Vault Because Everything Is Awful
• The Doomsday Vault Isn't Flooded But We're All Still Going To Die
• Ancient Plants Reveal Arctic Summers Haven't Been This Hot In 115,000 Years

We Could Be Among The World's Climate Change Winners

Fairfax - Ross Gittins

In the dim distant past, politicians got themselves elected by showing us a Vision of Australia’s future that was brighter and more alluring than their opponent’s.
These days the pollies prefer a more negative approach, pointing to the daunting problems we face and warning that, in such uncertain times, switching to the other guy would be far too risky.

Illustration: Simon Letch

We’ve gone from “I’m much better than him” to “if you think I’m bad, he’d be worse”. Maybe they simply lack any vision of the future beyond advancing their own careers.
Management-types tell us we should conduct “SWOT analysis” – considering our strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. But we’ve become mesmerised by the threats and incapable of seeing the opportunities. Such a pessimistic mindset is crippling us when we could be going from strength to strength.
Take climate change. It, of course, is a threat – to our climate, and hence to our comfort and our economy – but think a bit more about it and you realise that, for a country like ours, it’s also a new gravy train we could be climbing aboard.

Illustration: Andrew Dyson

The stumbling block is that responding to climate change requires change – and no one likes change, especially those who earn their living from the present way of doing things.
So, what more natural reaction than to resist change? Economists are always warning politicians not to try “picking winners”. In reality, they’re far more likely to resist change by spending lots of money trying to prop up losers.
Start by denying that change is necessary. Global warming isn’t happening, it’s just a conspiracy by scientists angling for more research funds.
Nothing new about heatwaves, droughts, floods and cyclones – they’ve always existed. They’re becoming bigger and more frequent? Just your imagination.
What you’re not imagining is the ever-higher cost of electricity. But that’s just because those ideologues imposed a carbon tax and are making us subsidise renewable energy. Get rid of the taxes and subsidies and the cost falls back to what it was.
And those terrible wind turbines. They’re unnatural and unsightly, they kill rare birds and their noise endangers farmers’ health.
Renewable energy is unreliable because it depends on the wind blowing or the sun shining. You need coal for steady supply. With the greater reliance on renewable, where do you think the blackouts are coming from?
And renewable energy is so expensive. Coal-fired electricity is much cheaper. Plus, we’ve got all our chips stacked on coal. We’re world experts at open-cut coal mining. Our coal is much higher quality than most other countries.
Coal provides jobs for 30,000 workers. There are towns desperate for jobs who’d just love another coal mine. And, of course, we’ve still got huge reserves of the stuff that’s of no value if it stays in the ground.
Some of these claims have always been untrue, some are no longer true and some are less true than they were.
Just this week, for instance, a report from the independent Grattan Institute has debunked the claim that “outages” are being caused by renewables, saying more than 97 per cent of outage hours can be traced to problems with the local poles and wires that transport power to businesses and homes.
While it’s true that power from existing coal-fired generators is dirt cheap, many of these are old and close to the end of their useful lives. They’re not being replaced by new coal generators because there’s too much risk that the demand for coal-fired power will dry up before the generators have returned the money invested in them.
The latest report from the CSIRO says the lowest-cost power from a newly built facility is now produced by solar and wind.
The cost of solar, battery storage and, to a lesser extent, wind power, has fallen dramatically over this decade, partly because of advances in technology but mainly because of economies of scale as China and many other countries jump on the bandwagon. These falls are likely to continue.
This has gone so far that the old arguments about the need for a price on carbon and subsidies for renewables are being overtaken by events.
Installation of renewable generation is proceeding apace, with all renewables’ share of generation in the national electricity market jumping from 16 per cent to 21 per cent, just over the year to December, according to Green Energy Markets.
So, as the economist Frank Jotzo, of the Australian National University, has said, coal is on the way out. The only question is how soon it happens.
According to our present way of looking at it, this is disastrous news. But not if we see it as more an opportunity than a threat.
Professor Ross Garnaut, of the University of Melbourne, has said that “nowhere in the developed world are solar and wind resources together so abundant as in the west-facing coasts and peninsulas of southern Australia.
“Play our cards right, and Australia’s exceptionally rich endowment per person in renewable energy resources makes us a low-cost location for energy supply in a low-carbon world economy.
“That would make us the economically rational location within the developed world of a high proportion of energy-intensive processing and manufacturing activity.”

Links

• EnergyAustralia to turn charities into mini-power plants
• Coal bites the dust in Germany, Europe's greenest nation
• Australia Could Be 100% Renewables By 2032 At Current Rate Of Wind And Solar Installs
• Wind, Solar Eat Further Into Coal Supply On NEM, As Coalition Pushes For More Coal Supply On NEM
• 10 Hot Trends Shaping Australian Clean Energy
• Records 'Blown Away' As Rising Power Bill Fears Trigger Solar PV Surge
• Brown Coal Generation Drops To Lowest For NEM As Solar, Wind Surge
• Unsubsidised Wind And Solar Now Cheapest Form Of Bulk Energy
• Global Report Highlights Australia’s Renewables Potential Amid Mixed Signals For Coal
• 'We Want To Do Everything We Can': NSW Readies For Renewables Surge
• Clean Energy Is Cheap, Surging – And Headed For A Fall

As Lawsuits Over Climate Change Heat Up, Oil Industry Steps Up Attacks On Its Critics

Los Angeles Times - Michael Hiltzik

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig, aflame in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The rig's owner, BP, is one of more than 20 oil companies being sued over their alleged role in climate change. (Gerald Herbert / AP)

The oil industry has been depicting itself lately as the target of a conspiracy by scientists, local government officials and climate change activists to make it look bad.
It would be odd to think that a conspiracy is necessary to punch holes in the fossil fuel companies’ public reputation, but here’s the argument presented by the Independent Petroleum Assn. of America, one of the industry’s leading lobby organizations.
“In a highly-coordinated move,” the IPAA declares on its website, “nearly 30 scientists, government officials and third-party organizations recently joined the fledgling climate litigation campaign.” The IPAA labeled this a “free-for-all” and quoted an industry newsletter calling the campaign “a carefully orchestrated effort by local governments in California and elsewhere to use state law to collect damages from companies producing and marketing fossil fuels.”

False and deceptive marketing, ... campaigns to deceive the public — those are traditional state police power matters.
Victor Sher, plaintiff's attorney in climate change lawsuits

If you think this sounds like a Goliath pretending to be a David, you are right. The litigation campaign IPAA refers to is a cluster of lawsuits pioneered in 2017 by the California counties of San Mateo, Imperial Beach, Marin and Santa Cruz, and the cities of Richmond, Oakland and San Francisco, among other jurisdictions, against more than 20 oil and gas companies.
The plaintiffs assert that the companies freely promoted the use of their products even though they were aware of the products’ effect on global warming — information the industry allegedly suppressed for years. The municipalities are asking that the companies be forced to help pay for the damage wreaked by climate change, including drought, wildfires, sea level rise and extremes of heat and precipitation. Since the filing of the California cases, similar lawsuits have been filed by Rhode Island, Washington’s King County (that is, Seattle), Baltimore and New York City.
The oil companies succeeded in transferring the state lawsuits to federal court, where they expect to face less liability under the law. The plaintiffs’ argument that the cases belong back in state court is being heard by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

A new study shows how Exxon Mobil downplayed climate change when it knew the problem was real

What has the industry vibrating at the moment is a sheaf of eight friend-of-the-court, or amicus, briefs all filed on Jan. 29 with the appellate court supporting the transfer back to state court. Among other parties, the briefs were filed by the California Assn. of Counties, the Natural Resources Defense Council, a group of six prominent oil company critics, and the National League of Cities.
To the industry, this looks like a cabal. In a blog post, the IPAA found something sinister in “the fact that all eight of the briefs were filed within hours of one another on a random January afternoon (i.e. there wasn’t a court-designated deadline).” Not only was that “reason enough to suspect some level of coordination took place,” the blog post observes, but “signing onto the amicus briefs were many of the activists and politicians who have played key roles in the broader campaign to take down the oil and natural gas industry for years.”
A couple of points are pertinent here. First of all, there was indeed a court-designated deadline for filing the briefs — Jan. 29, the day they were filed. The court’s procedural calendar specifies that amicus briefs must be filed no later than seven days after the main brief of the party they’re supporting. The California plaintiffs filed their brief on Jan. 22, seven days earlier. So much for the “coordination.”
Second, why should it be so odd that the supporters of the cities and counties are drawn from the community of fossil fuel critics? Who else?
Let’s examine some of the industry’s other points. Among the chief targets of its pushback are Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran of the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University, who filed one of the amicus briefs in conjunction with four other scholars with interest in climate change science.

In landmark ruling, court orders paint companies to pay to clean lead paint out of California homes

Oreskes and Supran were the authors of a 2017 study detailing the industry’s determined, decades-long effort to suppress scientific evidence of global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels, despite warnings by its own scientific researchers that the phenomenon was genuine, dangerous and accelerating.
We reported here on their study, which focused on Exxon Mobil. They compared hundreds of Exxon Mobil's internal reports and peer-reviewed research papers with its advertising — especially paid "advertorials" the company placed in the op-ed section of the New York Times from 1972 through 2001. The authors concluded that Exxon Mobil had systematically "misled non-scientific audiences about climate science."
The IPAA blog post claims that the Oreskes-Supran study has been debunked, but that’s not so. Their statistical method was questioned by another researcher, who was paid by Exxon Mobil. But the core of their findings wasn’t statistical but empirical. They compared internal company documents with the ad campaign, and found them wildly divergent.
Oreskes, in an email, labeled the so-called debunking “the sort of expert-for-hire doubt-mongering” engaged in by the tobacco industry when it was fighting medical science over the dangers of smoking. That’s a topic she’s familiar with, having covered it in the 2010 book “Merchants of Doubt,” co-written with Erik M. Conway.
It’s hardly surprising that the oil industry would be uneasy about the “fledgling climate litigation campaign.” The plaintiffs aim to use state laws to fix blame on the fossil fuel companies in ways that can’t be accomplished under federal environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act.

A federal judge accepts climate change science, but throws out a lawsuit blaming oil companies

Indeed, federal law vests the states with primary responsibility for addressing air pollution, according to Victor Sher, the San Francisco attorney representing the counties and cities. “Cases involving false and deceptive marketing, overpromotion of products, campaigns to deceive the public — those are traditional state police power matters that the Clean Air Act doesn’t address at all.”
Federal Judge Vince Chhabria of San Francisco largely agreed last March, when he ordered the lawsuits returned to state court. The oil companies appealed his order, which is why it’s now before the 9th Circuit bench.
The municipalities also are hoping to take advantage of California’s “public nuisance” doctrine, which holds that business can be held responsible for damage done by its products even if their usage was standard practice at the time.
The public nuisance argument was central to a lawsuit brought by California municipalities against lead paint manufacturers that concluded in 2017 with an order that the companies pay to clean up residual lead in dwellings that could pose a health hazard to children in those homes.
There’s no question that the cities and counties face a long and arduous road to saddling the oil industry with the responsibility for climate change and the expense of addressing its impacts. The lead paint lawsuit lasted 17 years before the verdict was made final.
But there’s also no question that the industry did its best to hide what it knew about the prospects of global warming and its products’ role in it. The latest misleading attack on its critics shows, if nothing else, that it still hasn’t learned to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Links

• Coal Miners Derided Climate Action 'Sideshow'. Now It's The Main Event
• 'We Won': Landmark Climate Ruling As NSW Court Rejects Coal Mine
• Vaccinate Public Against Science Misinformation, Researchers Urge
• See You In Court, Citizens Tell Governments On Climate Change
• A Surge Of Climate Lawsuits Targets Human Rights, Damage From Fossil Fuels
• 2018 In Climate Liability: When A Trend Became A Wave
• Big Coal And Friends On Track To Shut Down Your Climate Activism
• Children Demand Climate Change Action Through Protests And Lawsuits

Australia’s Bushfire Survivors Demand Government Action On Climate Change

SBS - Maani Truu

Janet Reynolds lost her home, and everything in it, during the NSW bushfires last year - now, she’s travelling to Parliament House, along with other bushfire survivors, to demand the government stops it happening again.


On August 15, 2018, Janet Reynolds was preparing to water her vegetable garden when massive winds suddenly sent a bushfire straight towards her Numbugga, NSW, home without warning.
Grabbing whatever she could and jumping in her car to flee, the 73-year-old retired school teacher found her driveway blocked by a wall of flames and a fallen tree. Fearing for her life, Ms Reynolds said she jumped out of the car, picked up the tree and threw it off the road herself.
“I thought, ‘oh no, I hope it doesn’t melt my tyres’,” she told SBS News.
“You can’t describe it. I think back now and realise I did suffer post-traumatic stress ... the skin on the backs of my hands felt as though it was burning all the time.”

Part of Janet Reynold's destroyed property. She said she is currently working to clear the land so she can rebuild. 

While she escaped with her life, Ms Reynolds, who lived alone, said she lost everything else - her home, all of her photos of family and friends, love letters and drawings from the children she had taught over the years.
“All that’s left is ash, melted glass, fractured ceramics and melted iron," she said.
Almost six months after that fateful day, Ms Reynolds along with other members of Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action will travel to Parliament House in Canberra on Thursday to demand politicians take action on climate change to help stop future bushfires.
“You think of all the people that are going to be threatened if something isn’t worked out now,” Ms Reynolds said.
“It really does worry me.
“We want our government to show that they have the intelligence and the passion to really look after our country for all the people that live here, so they are not living in constant fear.”
She's hoping that after meeting with politicians, the government will take climate change's links to dangerous bushfires more seriously.

Janet Reynolds said she is worried what will happen if the government doesn't act on climate change. Source: Supplied

According to the State of the Climate 2018 report, there has been a long-term increase in extreme fire conditions and the length of bushfire seasons in Australia since the 1950s.
The report, authored by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), also found that over the coming decades, southern and eastern Australia will be facing an even longer fire season.
"Our research has shown that these trends are attributable at least in part to human-caused climate change from greenhouse gas emissions, including due to increased temperatures," Dr Andrew Dowdy, senior research scientist at BoM, told SBS News.
Australia has just experienced its warmest January ever on record, which saw Tasmania and Victoria devastated by bushfires. Meanwhile, North Queensland is recovering from unprecedented flooding while bushfires are burning in north east NSW.
The bushfire, near Casino, has already destroyed at least three homes with conditions expected to deteriorate, with two emergency warnings in place for blazes in Tingha and Tabulam.
Former volunteer firefighter and environmental scientist Robert Gardner, who is also a member of Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action, said he’s upset about the lack of action by politicians to address climate change.

Janet Reynold's property was destroyed in the NSW south coast bushfires in August 2018. Source: Supplied

“Only this morning, I was talking to an older fellow in the coffee shop and he was saying ‘Summer is no longer enjoyable, it is a time of great stress’," he said.
“The summer season is no longer fun,” he said. “Those are the sorts of things we need to address. We don’t go away for holidays in summer anymore.”
The action group Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action formally launched last week on the 10 year anniversary of the horrific Black Saturday bushfires that killed 173 people and destroyed more than 3,500 properties.
Mr Gardner still lives in one of the areas destroyed by the Black Saturday fires and said his house was lucky to be spared. He added there’s “no question” that if nothing is done, Australians will be facing a repeat of the tragedy.
“Our fire seasons are becoming more intense, more frequent and coming earlier in the season,” he said.
“We’ll see it happen all over again and we are doing nothing to address it.”
Former Commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW Greg Mullins said in a statement last week that bad fire seasons are “now happening almost every year”.
"After nearly 50-years fighting fires I've watched bushfire seasons gradually become longer and hotter, and bushfires become more intense,” he said.
"It makes me fear for the safety of firefighters and the wider community.”
“We want leadership and action to reverse what is happening, to protect our environment and our people. Not a lot of waffle and talk, but action and demonstration that they are taking this seriously,” Ms Reynolds said.

Links

• 'Your friends died, your home disappeared': Black Saturday, 10 years on
• State of the Climate 2018
• Last year was Earth's fourth-hottest on record, scientists confirm
• NSW bushfires: Three homes destroyed as crews battle out-of-control blazes
• Veteran firefighter slams government over climate change inaction