Melting Permafrost In Arctic Will Have $70tn Climate Impact – Study

The Guardian - Jonathan Watts

Study shows how destabilised natural systems will worsen man-made problem

Greenhouse gases, which have been frozen below the soil for centuries, have already begun to escape. Photograph: John Mcconnico/AP 

The release of methane and carbon dioxide from thawing permafrost will accelerate global warming and add up to $70tn (£54tn) to the world’s climate bill, according to the most advanced study yet of the economic consequences of a melting Arctic.
If countries fail to improve on their Paris agreement commitments, this feedback mechanism, combined with a loss of heat-deflecting white ice, will cause a near 5% amplification of global warming and its associated costs, says the paper, which was published on Tuesday in Nature Communications.
The authors say their study is the first to calculate the economic impact of permafrost melt and reduced albedo – a measure of how much light that hits a surface is reflected without being absorbed – based on the most advanced computer models of what is likely to happen in the Arctic as temperatures rise. It shows how destabilised natural systems will worsen the problem caused by man-made emissions, making it more difficult and expensive to solve.
They assessed known stocks of frozen organic matter in the ground up to 3 metres deep at multiple points across the Arctic. These were run through the world’s most advanced simulation software in the US and at the UK Met Office to predict how much gas will be released at different levels of warming. Even with supercomputers, the number crunching took weeks because the vast geography and complex climate interactions of the Arctic throw up multiple variables. The researchers then applied previous economic impact models to assess the likely costs.
Permafrost melt is the main concern. Greenhouse gases – which are released when organic matter that had been frozen below the soil for centuries thaws and rots - have already begun to escape at the current level of 1 degrees Celsius of global heating. So far the impact is small. Ten gigatonnes of carbon have been released from the permafrost but this source of emissions will grow rapidly once temperatures rise beyond 1.5C.
On the current trajectory of at least 3C of warming by the end of the century, melting permafrost is expected to discharge up to 280 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide and 3 gigatonnes of methane, which has a climate effect that is 10 to 20 times stronger than CO₂.
This would increase the global climate-driven impacts by by $70tn between now and 2300. This is 10 times higher than the projected benefits from a melting Arctic, such as easier navigation for ships and access to minerals, says the paper.
It would also add to global inequality because most of the economic burden – equivalent to almost the entire world’s current annual GDP – is likely to be borne by countries in warmer poorer regions such as India and Africa, which are most vulnerable to a rise in temperatures.
“It’s disheartening that we have this in front of us,” said Dmitry Yumashev of Lancaster University. “Even at 1.5C to 2C, there are impacts and costs due to thawing permafrost. But they are considerably lower for these scenarios compared to business as usual. We have the technology and policy instruments to limit the warming but we are not moving fast enough.”
The new projections contained a modicum of good news because the impact of land permafrost melt was at the lower range of what had been feared. Previous estimates suggested these Arctic tipping points could add more than 10% to climate costs. Some feared the methane alone could prove catastrophic but the new figures show CO₂ remains the greatest concern.
“We still have a time bomb, but it may not be as large as previously believed,” said Yumashev. But he warned against complacency because even at the low end the damages are huge, the study has a considerable degree of uncertainty and the costs of several other potential tipping points have yet to be calculated.

Links

• Arctic warming will accelerate climate change and impact global economy
• A warming Arctic could cost the world trillions of dollars
• Six ways loss of Arctic ice impacts everyone
• To stop global catastrophe, we must believe in humans again
• Climate crisis: today’s children face lives with tiny carbon footprints 
• Forget Brexit and focus on climate change, Greta Thunberg tells EU
• This scientist thinks she has the key to curb climate change: super plants
• Arctic’s strongest sea ice breaks up for first time on record
• Greta Thunberg’s visit to Britain is a huge moment for the climate movement
• Greta Thunberg backs climate general strike to force leaders to act
• Bank of England begins climate enforcement with a velvet glove
• Fresh wave of youth climate action protests expected across Britain

United Nations Report: One Million Species At Risk Of Extinction

NEWS.com.au - AFP

One million species on earth are at risk of dying out due to an ‘imminent’ mass extinction event, according to a shocking new United Nations report. Pic: AFP

Up to one million species face extinction due to human influence, according to a draft UN report obtained by AFP that painstakingly catalogues how humanity has undermined the natural resources upon which its very survival depends.

The accelerating loss of clean air, drinkable water, CO2-absorbing forests, pollinating insects, protein-rich fish and storm-blocking mangroves — to name but a few of the dwindling services rendered by nature — poses no less of a threat than climate change, says the report, set to be unveiled May 6.
Indeed, biodiversity loss and global warming are closely linked, according to the 44-page summary for policymakers, which distils a 1800-page United Nations (UN) assessment of scientific literature on the state of nature.

All the world's wild horses are extinct, according to a 2018 study. Picture: AFP

Delegates from 130 nations meeting in Paris from April 29 will vet the executive summary line by line. Wording may change, but figures lifted from the underlying report cannot be altered.
“We need to recognise that climate change and loss of nature are equally important, not just for the environment but as development and economic issues as well,” Robert Watson, chair of the UN-mandated body that compiled the report, told AFP, without divulging its findings.
“The way we produce our food and energy is undermining the regulating services that we get from nature,” he said, adding only “transformative change” can stem the damage.
Deforestation and agriculture, including livestock production, account for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions and have wreaked havoc on natural ecosystems as well.

Mass Extinction Event
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report warns of “an imminent rapid acceleration in the global rate of species extinction”.

The pace of loss “is already tens to hundreds of times higher than it has been, on average, over the last 10 million years”, it notes.
“Half-a-million to a million species are projected to be threatened with extinction, many within decades.”
Many experts think a so-called “mass extinction event” — only the sixth in the last half-billion years — is already under way.
The most recent ended the Cretaceous period some 66 million years ago when a 10-kilometre-wide asteroid strike wiped out most lifeforms.
Scientists estimate Earth is today home to some eight million distinct species, a majority of them insects.
A quarter of catalogued animal and plant species are already being crowded, eaten or poisoned out of existence.
The drop in sheer numbers is even more dramatic, with wild mammal biomass — their collective weight — down by 82 per cent.
Humans and livestock account for more than 95 per cent of mammal biomass.

Extinction Rebellion climate change activists perform a mass ‘die in’ under the blue whale in the foyer of the Natural History Museum in London on April 22, 2019. Picture: AFP

Population Growth
“If we’re going to have a sustainable planet that provides services to communities around the world, we need to change this trajectory in the next 10 years, just as we need to do that with climate,” noted World Wildlife Fund chief scientist Rebecca Shaw, formerly a member of the UN scientific bodies for both climate and biodiversity.
The direct causes of species loss, in order of importance, are shrinking habitat and land-use change, hunting for food or illicit trade in body parts, climate change, pollution, and alien species such as rats, mosquitoes and snakes that hitch rides on ships or planes, the report finds.
“There are also two big indirect drivers of biodiversity loss and climate change — the number of people in the world and their growing ability to consume,” said Mr Watson.
Once seen as primarily a future threat to animal and plant life, the disruptive impact of global warming has accelerated.
Shifts in the distribution of species, for example, will likely double if the global average temperature rise goes up a notch from 1.5 degrees Celsius to 2C.
So far, the global thermometer has risen 1C compared with mid-19th century levels.
The 2015 Paris Agreement enjoins nations to cap the rise to “well below” 2C. But a landmark UN climate report in October said that would still be enough to boost the intensity and frequency of deadly heatwaves, droughts, floods and storms.

Climate change activists attempt to approach the Houses of Parliament during the ongoing Extinction Rebellion climate change demonstration in London on April 23, 2019. Source: AFP

Global Inequity
Other findings in the report include:

• Three-quarters of land surfaces, 40 per cent of the marine environment and 50 per cent of inland waterways across the globe have been “severely altered”.
• Many of the areas where nature’s contribution to human wellbeing will be most severely compromised are home to indigenous peoples and the world’s poorest communities that are also vulnerable to climate change.
• More than two billion people rely on wood fuel for energy, four billion rely on natural medicines and more than 75 per cent of global food crops require animal pollination.
• Nearly half of land and marine ecosystems have been profoundly compromised by human interference in the last 50 years.
• Subsidies to fisheries, industrial agriculture, livestock raising, forestry, mining and the production of biofuel or fossil fuel energy encourage waste, inefficiency and over-consumption.

The report cautioned against climate change solutions that may inadvertently harm nature.
The use, for example, of biofuels combined with “carbon capture and storage” — the sequestration of CO2 released when biofuels are burned — is widely seen as key in the transition to green energy on a global scale.
But the land needed to grow all those biofuel crops may wind up cutting into food production, the expansion of protected areas or reforestation efforts.

‘You Stole Our Future’
Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg met a cross-party group of British MPs on Tuesday, including Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn, as environmental protesters staged a ninth day of demonstrations in London.
In a powerful speech, the 16-year-old from Sweden implored the world’s leaders to act on climate change before it’s too late, fearing her generation “probably (doesn’t) have a future”.
“Because that future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money,” Ms Thunberg said.
“It was stolen from us every time you said that the sky was the limit, and that you only live once.
“Around the year 2030, 10 years 252 days and 10 hours away from now, we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will most likely lead to the end of our civilisation as we know it,” she said.

Swedish environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg addresses politicians, media and guests at the Houses of Parliament in London on April 23, 2019. Source: Getty Images

“That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society have taken place, including a reduction of CO2 emissions by at least 50 per cent.”
Ms Thunberg urged leaders to take a “cathedral thinking” approach to global warming — starting on an action plan even if we don’t have all the answers yet.
“The climate crisis is both the easiest and the hardest issue we have ever faced. The easiest because we know what we must do. We must stop the emissions of greenhouse gases. The hardest because our current economics are still totally dependent on burning fossil fuels and thereby destroying ecosystems in order to create everlasting economic growth.
“Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.”
Ms Thunberg’s visit to the UK — she refuses to fly and only travels from her native Sweden by train, electric bus or car to keep her emission low — comes as climate activism group Extinction Rebellion has been protesting on the streets of London for more than a week.

Extinction Rebellion Demonstrators March to Parliament from Marble Arch

Links

• Impact of climate change on species | WWF
• Climate Change and Species Loss
• Climate Change Affects Biodiversity — Global Issues
• Climate change impacting ‘most’ species on Earth, even down to their genomes
• These creatures are going extinct and the reason is climate change
• Earth Day 2019: The future, survival of these species are in significant danger
• Species Most Endangered By Global Warming

Climate Change Has Worsened Global Economic Inequality, Stanford Study Shows

Stanford University - Josie Garthwaite

The gap between the economic output of the world’s richest and poorest countries is 25 percent larger today than it would have been without global warming, according to new research from Stanford University.

The map on the left shows countries where per capita GDP increased or decreased as a result of global warming between 1961 and 2010. The map on the right shows the same information from 1991, after economic data became available for more countries. (Image credit: Noah Diffenbaugh and Marshall Burke)   LARGE IMAGE

A new Stanford University study shows global warming has increased economic inequality since the 1960s. Temperature changes caused by growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere have enriched cool countries like Norway and Sweden, while dragging down economic growth in warm countries such as India and Nigeria.
“Our results show that most of the poorest countries on Earth are considerably poorer than they would have been without global warming,” said climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh, lead author of the study published April 22 in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “At the same time, the majority of rich countries are richer than they would have been.”
The study, co-authored with Marshall Burke, a Stanford assistant professor of Earth system science, finds that, from 1961 to 2010, global warming decreased the wealth per person in the world’s poorest countries by 17 to 30 percent. Meanwhile, the gap between the group of nations with the highest and lowest economic output per person is now approximately 25 percent larger than it would have been without climate change.
Although economic inequality between countries has decreased in recent decades, the research suggests the gap would have narrowed faster without global warming.

Ideal temperature for economic output
The study builds on previous research in which Burke and co-authors analyzed 50 years of annual temperature and GDP measurements for 165 countries to estimate the effects of temperature fluctuations on economic growth. They demonstrated that growth during warmer than average years has accelerated in cool nations and slowed in warm nations.
“The historical data clearly show that crops are more productive, people are healthier and we are more productive at work when temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold,” Burke explained. “This means that in cold countries, a little bit of warming can help. The opposite is true in places that are already hot.”
In the current study, Diffenbaugh and Burke combined Burke’s previously published estimates with data from more than 20 climate models developed by research centers around the world. Using the climate models to isolate how much each country has already warmed due to human-caused climate change, the researchers were able to determine what each country’s economic output might have been had temperatures not warmed.
To account for uncertainty, the researchers calculated more than 20,000 versions of what each country’s annual economic growth rate could have been without global warming. The estimates in the paper capture the range of outcomes delivered by those thousands of different routes.
“For most countries, whether global warming has helped or hurt economic growth is pretty certain,” said Burke. Tropical countries, in particular, tend to have temperatures far outside the ideal for economic growth. “There’s essentially no uncertainty that they’ve been harmed.”
It’s less clear how warming has influenced growth in countries in the middle latitudes, including the United States, China and Japan. For these and other temperate-climate nations, the analysis reveals economic impacts of less than 10 percent.
“A few of the largest economies are near the perfect temperature for economic output. Global warming hasn’t pushed them off the top of the hill, and in many cases, it has pushed them toward it,” Burke said. “But a large amount of warming in the future will push them further and further from the temperature optimum.”

Dragged down by warming
While the impacts of temperature may seem small from year to year, they can yield dramatic gains or losses over time. “This is like a savings account, where small differences in the interest rate will generate large differences in the account balance over 30 or 50 years,” said Diffenbaugh, the Kara J. Foundation professor in Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). For example, after accumulating decades of small effects from warming, India’s economy is now 31 percent smaller than it would have been in the absence of global warming.

Lifted up or dragged down? 5 countries burdened by warming • Sudan (population 41 million): -36% • India (population 1.3 billion): -31% • Nigeria (population 191 million): -29% • Indonesia (population 264 million): -27% • Brazil (population 209 million): -25% 5 countries boosted by warming • Norway (population 5 million): +34% • Canada (population 37 million): +32% • Sweden (population 10 million): +25% • Great Britain (population 66 million): +9.5% • France (population 67 million): +4.8% World’s 3 largest economies • USA (population 327 million): -0.2% • China (population 1.4 billion): -1.4% • Japan (population 127 million): -1.1% (Percentages refer to the median change in per capita GDP from global warming between 1961 and 2010.)

At a time when climate policy negotiations often stall over questions of how to equitably divide responsibility for curbing future warming, Diffenbaugh and Burke’s analysis offers a new measure of the price many countries have already paid. “Our study makes the first accounting of exactly how much each country has been impacted economically by global warming, relative to its historical greenhouse gas contributions,” said Diffenbaugh, who is also Kimmelman Family senior fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
While the biggest emitters enjoy on average about 10 percent higher per capita GDP today than they would have in a world without warming, the lowest emitters have been dragged down by about 25 percent. “This is on par with the decline in economic output seen in the U.S. during the Great Depression,” Burke said. “It’s a huge loss compared to where these countries would have been otherwise.”
The researchers emphasize the importance of increasing sustainable energy access for economic development in poorer countries. “The more these countries warm up, the more drag there’s going to be on their development,” Diffenbaugh said. “Historically, rapid economic development has been powered by fossil fuels. Our finding that global warming has exacerbated economic inequality suggests that there is an added economic benefit of energy sources that don’t contribute to further warming.”

Links

• Study: Global warming has increased global economic inequality
• Large potential reduction in economic damages under UN mitigation targets
• Climate Change Has Increased Global Economic Inequality
• Climate change is already exacerbating global economic inequality
• Climate change and poverty - Wikipedia
• ‘Natural Disasters’ And People On The Margins – The Hidden Story
• Fighting Climate Change Means Fighting Inequality and Intolerance
• Climate Change Benefits The Rich At The Expense Of The Poor, Study Finds