17/03/2019

Students Worldwide Skip School To Demand Tough Action On Climate Change

CBS News - CBS | AP



From the South Pacific to the edge of the Arctic Circle, students mobilized by social media and word of mouth skipped class Friday to protest what they believe are their governments' failure to take tough action against global warming. The rallies were one of the biggest international actions yet, involving hundreds of thousands of students in more than 100 countries around the globe.
The coordinated "school strikes" were inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who began holding solitary demonstrations outside the Swedish parliament last year. Since then, the weekly protests have snowballed from a handful of cities to hundreds, fueled by dramatic headlines about the impact of climate change during the students' lifetime.
Thunberg, who was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, said as protesters cheered her name at a rally in Stockholm that the world faces an "existential crisis, the biggest crisis humanity ever has faced, and still it has been ignored for decades by those that have known about it. And you know who you are, you that have ignored this and are most guilty of this."
Across the globe, protests big and small urged politicians to act against climate change while also highlighting local environmental problems.
  • Speakers at the U.S. Capitol in Washington stood behind a banner that said "We don't want to die." 
  • In New York City, students chanted "Save our planet" and "Climate change has got to go" near an entrance to Central Park.
  • In San Francisco, hundreds of students disrupted downtown traffic as they marched from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office to Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office, CBS San Francisco reported.
  • In St. Paul, Minnesota, about 1,000 students gathered before the state Capitol, chanting "Stop denying the earth is dying."
  • In Berlin, police said as many as 20,000 protesters, most of them young students, gathered in a downtown square, waving signs with slogans such as "March now or swim later" and "Climate Protection Report Card: F" before marching through the capital's government quarter with a stop in front of Chancellor Angela Merkel's office.
  • In Poland, thousands marched in rainy Warsaw and other cities to demand a ban on the burning of coal, which is a major source of carbon dioxide. Some wore face masks as they carried banners that read "Today's Air Smells Like the Planet's Last Days" and "Make Love Not CO2."
  • In India's capital New Delhi, schoolchildren protested inaction on climate change and rising air pollution levels that often far exceeds World Health Organization limits.
  • "Now or Never" was among signs brandished by enthusiastic teenagers thronging cobblestoned streets around the domed Pantheon building, which rises above the Left Bank in Paris. Several thousand students gathered peacefully around the landmark. Some targeted French President Emmanuel Macron, who sees himself as the guarantor of the Paris climate accord but is criticized by activists for being too business friendly and not ambitious enough in efforts to reduce French emissions.
  • About 50 students protested in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, chanting "There's No Planet B." One protester held a sign reading "You'll Miss The Rains Down in Africa." Experts say Africa, with its population of more than 1 billion people, is expected to be hardest hit by global warming even though it contributes least to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause it.
  • Police in Vienna said about 10,000 students rallied in the Austrian capital, while in neighboring Switzerland a similar number protested in the western city of Lausanne. Last month, lawmakers in the northern Swiss canton of Basel symbolically declared a "climate emergency."
  • In Helsinki, police said about 3,000 students had gathered in front of Finland's Parliament sporting placards such as: "Dinosaurs thought they had time too!"
  • Thousands marched through Madrid and more than 50 other Spanish cities. Spain is vulnerable to rising sea levels and rapid desertification.
Students protest to demand action on climate change in Lisbon, Portugal. RAFAEL MARCHANTE/REUTERS
A website used to coordinate the rallies listed events in over 2,000 cities. In the U.S., Alexandria Villasenor founded Youth Climate Strike U.S. along with 12-year-old Haven Coleman and 16-year-old Isra Hirsi.
They're calling for, among other things, "100 percent renewable energy by 2030," CBS News correspondent Tony Dokoupil reported. For more than three months, Villasenor has been playing hooky from the 7th grade on Fridays and going to U.N. headquarters in New York in hopes of pushing adults into action against global warming.
"Since climate change will be a global problem, I decided that this would be the best place to strike," she told CBS News. She expected students to be striking in all 50 states Friday.
In a speech Friday outside the U.N., Villasenor said world leaders weren't listening. "Our world leaders are the ones acting like children," she said. "They are the ones having tantrums, arguing with each other and refusing to take responsibility for their actions while the planet burns."



Later, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was inspired by the students to call a special summit in September to deal with what he called "the climate emergency." "My generation has failed to respond properly to the dramatic challenge of climate change," Guterres wrote in an opinion piece in The Guardian. "This is deeply felt by young people. No wonder they are angry."
Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen showed up at a protest in Copenhagen and tweeted Friday "We must listen to the youth. Especially when they're right: the climate must be one of our top priorities."
IMAGE
Carla Reemtsma, a 20-year-old university student who helped organize the protest in Berlin, said she's part of about 50 WhatsApp groups devoted to discussing climate change. "A lot happens on social media because you can reach a lot of young people very quickly and show them: look there's lot of us," she told the Associated Press. "There's a very low threshold so we reach a huge number of people."
"I think that's how we managed to get so big," said Reemtsma. Many protesters in Berlin took aim at politicians such as the leader of Germany's pro-business Free Democratic Party, Christian Lindner, for suggesting that complicated issues such as climate change were "a matter for professionals" not students.
Others, including Germany's economy minister, Peter Altmaier, have urged students to stage the protests outside school hours.
Volker Quaschning, a professor of engineering at Berlin's University of Applied Sciences, said it was easy for politicians to belittle students. "That's why they need our support," he said. "If we do nothing then parts of this planet could become uninhabitable by the end of the century."



Scientists have backed the protests, with thousands signing petitions in support of the students in Britain, Finland, Germany and the U.S. "It gives me great hope," environmentalist Bill McKibben told CBS News contributing meteorologist Jeff Berardelli. "This new generation is doing all it can to make sure that we older people don't foreclose their chance for a decent life. It's beautiful to see their courage, their passion -- if anyone ever thought 'kids today' don't care about the world, or are spending all their time on video games, the photos from around the world should renew their faith."
Scientists have warned for decades that current levels of greenhouse gas emissions are unsustainable, so far with little effect. In 2015, world leaders agreed in Paris to a goal of keeping the Earth's global temperature rise by the end of the century well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
Yet at present, the world is on track for an increase of 4 degrees Celsius, which experts said would have far-reaching consequences for life on the planet. In Germany, environmental groups and experts have attacked government plans to continue using coal and natural gas for decades to come.
Quaschning, who was one of more than 23,000 German-speaking scientists to sign a letter of support this week, said Germany should aim to fully "decarbonize" by 2040. This would give less-advanced nations a bit more time to wean themselves off fossil fuels while still meeting the Paris goal globally.
"This is going to require radical measures and there isn't the slightest sign of that happening yet," said Quaschning.



A poll published Friday by German public broadcaster ZDF found that 67 percent of respondents backed the students' protests during school hours, with 32 percent opposed. The representative telephone poll conducted between March 12 and 14 involved 1,290 randomly selected voters. The margin of error was about 3 percentage points.
In Stockholm, Greta Thunberg predicted that students won't let up their protests. "There are a crisis in front of us that we have to live with, that we will have to live with for all our lives, our children, our grandchildren and all future generations," she said.
"We won't accept that, we won't let that happen and that's why we go on strike. We are on strike because we do want a future, we will carry on," she said.

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Remember Morrison's Black-Rock Stunt? Well, Look Who's Scared Now

The Guardian - 

With their clash over coal, the Coalition partners are making the case for voters to show them the exit
“Scott Morrison’s brandishing of a lump of coal during question time in 2017 is one of the most boneheaded performances ever to grace the bear pit.” Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP 
It’s always unwise to call peak farce when we are dealing with Australia’s torturous climate and energy debate, so perhaps we can just categorise the following incident as mildly surreal.
Scott Morrison was in Melbourne for much of this past week. On Wednesday he was out on the hustings with Daniel Andrews, one of the most progressive political leaders in the country, and a premier who has recently secured an emphatic mandate from the people.
By stapling himself to Andrews, by cooperating mightily in a state where the Liberals are in deep political trouble, perhaps Morrison was hoping for a small measure of reflected goodwill.
Whatever his aspirations, Morrison was asked about coal, as he has been every day since a group of Queensland Nationals decided to go to war with their leader Michael McCormack. The brawl that has fractured the government was unleashed just over a week ago, and it relates to McCormack’s failure to shirt-front the Liberals on coal plants and on divestiture powers to break up energy companies.
For some of the rebels, this is a proxy war about Barnaby Joyce returning to the leadership (yes, really). For others, coal and energy really is the burning issue.
Reporters inquired on Wednesday how Morrison could tolerate the Nationals defying his leadership by banging on relentlessly about wanting new coal plants. He calmly mouthed the responses prime ministers mouth in trying situations.
Morrison noted that Joyce (“a passionate fellow”) had returned the red cordial to the fridge and was now sequestered, spent after a spell of thrashing, on the time-out step. Joyce had “settled” the insurrection, Morrison said, by acknowledging it had been a “misstep” to describe himself as the “elected deputy prime minister”.
Having declared peace in our time (and I deploy that phrase in the Neville Chamberlain sense), Morrison then rolled around to energy projects. He said the government was about “supporting the development of commercially viable and feasible baseload power all around the country”. These projects could be “gas, it could be hydrogen … it could be hydro”.
There’s a word missing there, right? It starts with c and ends in l.
The prime minister declined to utter the word coal. As well as gas, hydrogen and hydro, Morrison noted there could be “other traditional sources”. C-o-a-l could not pass his lips.
This omission would be of only glancing interest, or perhaps zero interest, had the prime minister not been the same bloke who, seemingly five minutes ago, had brought a lump of coal into the Australian parliament and brandished it lustily during question time, in one of the most boneheaded performances ever to grace the bear pit.
“This is coal,” the then treasurer declared triumphantly in February 2017, brandishing his prop as if he’d just stumbled across an exotic species previously thought to be extinct. “Don’t be afraid,” Morrison said, soothingly, to his political opponents, waving the black rock kindly supplied by the Minerals Council of Australia. “Don’t be scared.”
Just for the record, no one was scared then – except perhaps members of the voting public transiently in the visitors galleries of the House of Representatives witnessing the sudden onset of shark-jumping as a parliamentary sport.
But perhaps the strange coal seance of 2017 was all a harbinger, more omen than stunt, because it’s pretty clear that Morrison, to borrow from himself, is a bit scared now. Being trepidatious is entirely reasonable, because it’s clear to anyone watching that there is a schism inside the government.
Put simply, the schism is this.
The Nationals want Morrison to produce a shortlist that commits the Coalition to supporting new coal projects. They want an explicit commitment made in public before the federal election, because they believe that commitment pays political dividends in central Queensland.
To underscore this point, Joyce noted during one of his interventions that he was intent on protecting the interests of his regional heartland, and didn’t give a stuff about the climate-induced anxieties of voters in Melbourne. (In case you are wondering, this isn’t the normal Joyce word salad; this is a deliberate smack at the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg. The Nationals believe Frydenberg is running most of the internal interference on this issue, because he’s worried about his inner city seat, and others like it.)
The Liberals have made it equally clear that they do n-o-t (underlined) want the government to put taxpayers on the hook by supporting coal before the election, because that is the equivalent of cordially inviting their small-l liberal heartland to take out their baseball bats and start swinging come May – not just in Melbourne, but right around the country.
If you are Morrison, that’s not an easy difference to split.
Unless there’s some grand bargain in the offing – Morrison supporting a north Queensland coal project, then sealing the border allowing any Liberals south of Noosa plausible deniability – this is a straight win/loss proposition.
Either the Nationals win, or the Liberals win, and while this unresolved roiling persists (and I predict the Nationals will persist), the bottom line is the government loses. While the priority is internal death match politics, the government makes its own compelling case for why Australian voters should show it the door.
Just to summarise the general ludicrousness, in the space of seven months the government has gone from rolling Malcolm Turnbull in large part because he was too progressive on climate change, and dumping the national energy guarantee that might have given them all a measure of electoral protection on this issue, to the prime minister being unable to utter the word coal in public, for fear of offending voters worried about climate change.
As the kids say, life comes at you fast. You wouldn’t believe it had you not seen it with your own eyes.
Meanwhile, as the numpty show rolled on, and on, a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank stood amid the clamour of the week and said what anyone with any respect for facts and evidence now says: climate change is real. It’s not cyclical, it’s a trend, and if we don’t start factoring it into our policy settings and our business decisions (meaning the prudent management of carbon risk), then Australia’s financial stability is at risk.
It was an important speech from Guy Debelle, both in terms of the content, and in terms of the signal. Debelle speaks for an institution apparently intent on telling the public it does not intend to drop the ball on this most important of policy issues, which might give the students who demonstrated around the country on Friday some measure of comfort that the failure of their parents isn’t absolute.
Eyes will also be on Labor over the coming weeks. The party that wants to form the next government is expected to release the remaining elements of its policy on climate change: what it will do to reduce pollution from heavy emitters, in transport and agriculture.
Given the diabolical history of this issue, there is nervousness in Labor’s ranks about the onset of yet another cheap scare campaign once the policy is subjected to scrutiny, and the policy will be heavily scrutinised, not only by journalists but also by the stakeholders now assuming Labor wins the contest in May.
Polling, both private and public, makes clear that a majority of Australians want action on climate change. Many voters see the cheapjack opportunism of the past decade as symptomatic of a political system that has lost its way.
While political actors who favour rational action on climate change have the wind at their back in a way I haven’t seen since the federal campaign of 2007, there’s only one way to get a mandate to decarbonise the Australian economy.
It’s not complicated. You have to seek one, and be brave enough to do that without fudges or strategic omissions or weasel words.

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'Monster' El Nino A Chance Later This Year, Pointing To Extended Dry Times

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Relief for Australia's drought-hit regions could be a long way off, with climate influences in the Pacific and Indian oceans tilting towards drier conditions and a "monster" El Nino a possibility by year's end.
Climate scientists said the conditions in the Pacific were particularly concerning given an unusual build-up of equatorial heat below the surface that could provide the fuel for a significant El Nino.

Sea surface warmth
El Ninos are marked by unusually warm sea surface temperatures that typically result in rainfall patterns shifting eastwards away from south-east Asia and the Australian continent.
Source: NOAA

If such an event transpires, the Great Barrier Reef would face another bout of mass coral bleaching while the drought gripping southern and eastern Australia could intensify.
Agus Santoso, a senior scientist at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, said there were two likely outcomes from the developments in the Pacific.
"We could have an El Nino fully formed by the end of May and then it could dissipate," Dr Santoso said.
"The other is that by May it’s already formed and it still keeps building up... and by the end of the year we could have a monster El Nino."
During El Ninos, the normal easterly winds blowing along the equator slow and even reverse. Rainfall patterns tend to shift eastwards away from south-east Asia and Australia, setting up conditions favourable for below-average rainfall and bushfires.

'Very exciting'- but not in a good way
The prospect of a big El Nino later this year was raised at an international conference of climate scientists in Chile earlier this month.
They considered parallel years, such as 2014 when a near-El Nino was reached before conditions revived a year later, creating one of the three most powerful such events in the past half century.
"There is more heat now below the surface waiting to be tapped than there was in early 2015," said Michael McPhaden, a senior scientist with US National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration who attended the Chilean event.
"If westerly wind bursts of sufficient amplitude, duration and zonal extent develop along the equator in the next couple of months, 2019-20 could be very exciting," he said.
The scientists stress that a "predictability barrier" that falls during the southern hemisphere autumn means model reliability is lower than at other times of the year.

What lies beneath
Scientists have identified particularly warm waters just below the surface in a section of the El Nino 3.4 region. This pool of warmth could provide the fuel for a powerful El Nino re-forming by the end of 2019.
Source: NOAA
"While it's not a slam dunk that El Nino is going to persist, I think that the odds have certainly increased over one to two months ago," Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University, said. " We've had a big build up of heat in the eastern and central Pacific."

'Not a great starting place'
Andrew Watkins, head of long-range forecasting at the Bureau of Meteorology, said "all models are suggesting an El Nino the over next month", with several having it peaking in autumn and dropping off.
The bureau has a higher threshold than NOAA - which has already declared an El Nino - but may announce one at its update next week.
Dr Watkins said "it's too early to say there'll be an extreme event", but he noted other influences - especially from the Indian Ocean - may also favour below-average rainfall during the spring for southern Australia.
The so-called Indian Ocean Dipole - which gauges relative warmth between the east and western Indian Ocean - is forecast to become positive by mid-winter, the bureau said.
“The odds are [favouring] on the drivers that create dry conditions for eastern and southern Australia," Dr Watkins said.
“We’re not starting from a great place," Dr Watkins said, noting inland reservoirs are dropping and near-term stream-flow forecasts are for below-average flows for much of the country.
Cai Wenju, a senior CSIRO scientist who has published widely on the El Nino Southern Oscillation climate pattern, said the chance of El Nino returning is high.
A return of westerlies by about June to halt the easterly tradewinds “could spark the fire and there’s a lot of fuel", Dr Cai said.
“If it’s similar to 2015, the impact this time will be big," he said. "We are already so dry.”

Climate change and big events
Dr Santoso's research, including a paper published late last year, has found the frequency of big El Ninos will increase with climate change.
That result is "quite concerning", particularly for ecosystems sensitive to heat spikes such as coral reefs that suffered mass bleaching during the 2015-16 big El Nino.
"If we get one or two bleaching events, [the Great Barrier Reef] can recover, but if we keep having these events coming up then maybe the corals are not going to be able to adapt," Dr Santoso said.
During El Ninos, the Pacific Ocean takes less heat from the atmosphere and even gives some up, giving global surface temperatures a bump up.
The trialling years of big El Ninos, especially 1998 and 2016 - the current holder of the world's hottest year on record - are particularly warm.
An event later this year would likely see temperatures next year "spike up, and that's not very helpful for global warming", Dr Santoso said.
Farmers have been already been hit hard by drought - with the Bureau of Meteorology saying rainfall totals in Australia in 2018 were the lowest since 2005. Credit: Joe Armao
 
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