05/06/2019

Climate Change Doomsday Report Predicts End Of Human Civilisation

NEWS.com.au - Mike Cook

According to climate change scientists, we may only have 30 more years before complete environmental catastrophe.

Climate change doesn't seem complicated. Why is it such a divisive issue?

In the past week, the world has experienced chaotic weather phenomena, from deathly Indian heatwaves to snow inundating parts of Queensland. Now, the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Change has issued a report predicting the end of human civilisation as we know it.
The report, terrifyingly entitled Existential climate-related security risk, glimpses 30 years into the future to the year 2050 — and the results are grim.
Authors David Spratt, a researcher into climate change, and Ian Dunlop, former chairman of the Australian Coal Association and chair of the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading, propose a scenario in which global emissions and climate threats are ignored, and the trajectory of environmental collapse goes unchecked.
Their conclusions spell out a dire warning.
Rising temperatures could result in the collapse of Arctic ecosystems. Source: istock
Using climate data, Spratt and Dunlop claim the Earth can expect at least a 3C rise in temperatures, which would trigger global decay and destruction of crucial ecosystems, including the Arctic, Amazon rainforests and coral reefs.
“More than a billion people may need to be relocated, and in high-end scenarios, the scale of destruction is beyond our capacity to model, with a high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end,” Spratt and Dunlop warn.
By 2050, total ecological collapse would give way to massive social consequences ranging from “increased religious fervour to outright chaos”.
The report suggests the catastrophic chain of environmental disasters will climax with widespread pandemics, forced migration from inhabitable locations and a likely nuclear war due to skirmishing for limited resources.
“Planetary and human systems (reach) a ‘point of no return’ by mid-century in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable Earth leads to the breakdown of nations and the international order,” the report predicts.
Spratt and Dunlop sum up our disastrous fate with a harrowing thought: “Climate change now represents a near-to-mid-term existential threat to human civilisation.”
If the current trajectory of climate change goes unchecked, humankind may face extinction in under a century. Source: AFP
The 2050 scenario analysis was heavily supported by former chief of the Australian Defence Force and Deputy Chief of the Australian Navy, Chris Barrie, who now works for the Climate Change Institute in Canberra. In the report’s foreword, Mr Barrie praised the research for expounding the threats to humankind.
“David Spratt and Ian Dunlop have laid bare the unvarnished truth about the desperate situation humans, and our planet, are in, painting a disturbing picture of the real possibility that human life on Earth may be on the way to extinction in the most horrible way,” Barrie writes.
The report goes on to analyse each decade, predicting humankind’s downfall on the way to an apocalyptic future.
According to the report, by 2030, policymakers will have failed to act in time to prevent growing greenhouse gas emissions. The current Paris Agreement path indicates failure to build a zero-emission economy that begins accelerated global warming to unprecedented temperatures.
By 2050, sea levels will have risen by 0.5 metres, and 55 per cent of the global population will be subjected to lethal heat conditions for more than 20 days each year. Weather extremes will amplify, including increases in wildfires, heatwaves, drought and the aridification of “more than 30 per cent of the world’s land surface”.
The reality could, however, be catastrophically worse; Spratt and Dunlop suggest the 2050 scenario is “far from an extreme scenario”.
The climate change report claims almost one third of the world could become an arid wasteland. Source: istock
The report comes as Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young heavily criticised Australia’s environment laws as “not fit for purpose”.
In an interview with ABC’s Radio National, Ms Hanson-Young highlighted the importance of circumventing international trade that caused environmental detriment.
“We know that a big part of what Australia is facing is a global problem,” she said. “We can’t deal with the escalation of climate change if we don’t stop making things worse.”
The Greens senator claimed Australian exports, if left unchecked, exacerbated current negative environmental conditions.
“The pollution in the atmosphere doesn’t stop at Australia’s borders. If we export this stuff overseas it’s going to make climate change worse,” she said.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young slams current environment laws. Source: Getty Images
To combat the rising threat of climate change, the Greens want to amend current legislation to include a “climate trigger”. The change to environmental laws would ensure proposed projects, including those concerning exported resources, would undergo a pollution assessment.
Ms Hanson-Young says this “should” also halt development of any new coal mine projects.
“We’ve got these federal environment laws but they’re so out of date and not fit for purpose that at the moment they don’t even consider the impact of carbon pollution,” she said.
The Greens senator is also pressuring the Federal Government to release emissions data, claiming the undisclosed information may prove pollution from Australia has continued to rise.

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ABC Says It Didn't Reject Adani Story Because Of Company Pressure

The Guardian - 

Radio story looking at economics of the Adani mine was killed off after call to news director, but ABC says it didn’t fit line-up
The ABC has denied that it blocked a story on Adani after a call from the company. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP 
The ABC says it did not broadcast a story about Adani for sound editorial reasons and not because the company spokeswoman telephoned its news director Gaven Morris.
Guardian Australia asked the ABC why a story by radio current affairs reporter Isobel Roe had not been broadcast and if it had anything to do with a direct call made by Adani spokeswoman Kate Campbell to Morris.
“There was no complaint,” an ABC spokeswoman told Guardian Australia.
“The only communication we received from Adani was a request for more time to respond to our questions. In light of the need to provide parties with a fair opportunity to respond and the strength of the other stories in the mix for Saturday AM, the decision was taken at an editorial level to not proceed with the story.”
ABC sources said Roe was preparing a report for Saturday AM on Friday 24 May which looked at the economics of Adani’s Carmichael mine.
But after calling Campbell for a response, the spokeswoman called Morris directly. Roe was later told by her managers not to proceed with her report.

The story Roe was following up was by Bloomberg reporter David Fickling, who argued in a series of tweets that the economics of the Carmichael mine “don’t stack up”. Fickling later had a piece published in the Australian Financial Review on the subject.
“Adjusting that for the cost of transporting the coal to port on third-party networks comes to about $US50 a ton of operating costs, or $US500 million for the whole project, enough to leave $US160m of gross profit,” Fickling wrote.

Several sources in the ABC raise concerns that the broadcaster
is being intimidated by mining company Adani

Aunty bows to Adani
Media Watch transcript

The heavy-handed tactics by Adani follow revelations in Guardian Australia the company lodged several Freedom of Information requests about ABC reporters who had covered Adani projects.
ABC investigative reporters Mark Willacy and Michael Slezak were asked for documents relating to news reports on allegations Adani was illegally drilling bore holes.
These requests were made by Adani lawyers AJ & Co, and follow revelations they planned to confront Adani critics including activists and journalists by acting like “a well-trained police dog”.
Most of the FOI requests were denied and the only documents that were released were Willacy and Slezak’s travel and accomodation costs and some heavily redacted phone logs.
The ABC’s Media Watch also investigated the spiking of Roe’s story and spoke to staff who overheard conversations about it in the ABC’s Sydney newsroom.
“Sorry. It’s nothing to do with you, but we’re not going to be able to run this,” was one conversation reported by Media Watch on Monday night.
“It’s not my decision, it’s come from on high,” was a second conversation reported by the program.
Despite the ABC’s claim there was “no complaint” Media Watch says Adani told them they did complain about Roe’s story before it was broadcast.
“… we raised concerns with ABC management when approached to comment on a story that contained inaccuracies and was potentially biased,” an Adani spokesperson told the ABC.
Media Watch host Paul Barry said the spiking of the story “sends a terrible message to ABC journalists trying to do their job and also to ABC viewers who trust the ABC to give frank and fearless coverage of matters of public importance”.

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Will Climate Change Cause Humans To Go Extinct?

The Conversation - 

Alas, poor all of us. Shutterstock.
I see a lot of resources talking about near-term human extinction, or the fact that thanks to climate change my generation will see the end of humanity. How likely is an outcome like this? Is there any hope for our futures?
Anonymous, aged 18. London, UK.
The claim that humanity only has just over a decade left due to climate change is based on a misunderstanding.
In 2018, a fairly difficult-to-read report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that humanity needs to cut its carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in half by 2030, to avoid global warming of 1.5°C above the levels seen before the industrial revolution.
What this actually means is roughly, “We have about 12 years before fixing climate change becomes really expensive and tough.”
Humanity can still live in a world with climate change – it’s just going to be more work, and many lives and livelihoods are likely to be threatened.
But it’s complicated, because this century we are facing many problems at the same time, and we are more dependent on each other than ever.

Under pressure
To get our food, most of us humans depend on global transport, payment and logistics systems. These, in turn, require fuel, electricity, communications and a lot of other things to work properly.
All these systems are connected to each other, so if one starts crashing, the chaos may cause other systems to crash, and before we know it we’ll have massive shortages and conflicts.
It’s hard to calculate the exact risk of this happening, since it has never happened before.
Until recently, the world was split into separate regions that were largely independent of each other.
But we do know that climate change puts the whole world under pressure – everywhere, at the same time – making the risk of these systems collapsing more serious.
For example, it’s easier for businesses to handle cybersecurity and energy supply when they don’t also have to cope with natural hazards.
 Likewise, it’s difficult for governments to maintain infrastructure when politicians are busy dealing with the public’s reactions to food prices, refugees and ecological crises.

Building resilience
Geoengineering to reduce the impact of climate change – for example, by reducing CO₂ levels or pumping reflective particles into the Earth’s atmosphere to deflect the sun’s rays – might work. But if disaster strikes and those operations stop, the effects of climate change can return quickly.
The reasonable thing to do is to work on making our systems more resilient – and there are plenty of opportunities to do this.
In practice, this means more local energy production, better backup systems, work on reducing climate change, and being more willing to pay extra for safety.

Asteroids? Ideally not. Shutterstock.
Disasters and diseases
So what about the other threats humanity is facing? Though natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and hurricanes can be disastrous, they pose a comparatively small threat to the survival of the human race.
Hazards big enough to cause entire species to go extinct are relatively rare.
 The typical mammalian species survives for about a million years, so the risk is roughly one in a million per year.
Asteroid impacts and supervolcanos do happen, but they are rare enough that we do not have to worry about them.
Even so, planning for the day when we need to deflect an asteroid or make do without agriculture for a decade is a smart move.
Pandemics are worse. We know the 1918 flu killed tens of millions of people worldwide. New influenza viruses are popping up all the time, and we should expect to see a big pandemic at least once every 100 years.
Over the past century, we have become better at medicine (which lowers the risk from disease) but we also travel more (which increases the spread of diseases).
Natural pandemics are unlikely to wipe out the human race, since there is almost always somebody who is immune. But a bad pandemic might still wreck our global society.

Technology attacks
Bioweapons, which use bacteria, viruses or fungi to harm humans or agriculture, are another issue. Fortunately, they have rarely been used in war, but they might become more dangerous in the near future because advances in biotechnology are making it easier and cheaper to modify organisms and automate lab work.
As this technology becomes more accessible, there’s a growing risk it could be used as a “doomsday device” by nasty regimes, to deter other states from seeking to topple them.
 Right now, the risk is smallish, but it will surely become larger if we do not figure out better ways to detect pathogens early on, keep an eye on risky biotechnology and do diligent diplomacy to keep governments sane.
Perhaps the biggest risk to humanity right now is nuclear weapons.
I would personally guess the risk of a nuclear war (not necessarily world-ending but still horrifying) to be somewhere between one in 100 and one in 1,000 per year. This risk goes up or down, depending on tensions between countries and the competence of the people handling early warning systems.
At the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, we do a lot of work on Artificial Intelligence (AI). As with biotechnology, the risk right now is pretty minimal, but it might grow in time as AI become better and smarter, and we think it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Developing tools to ensure AI stays safe and operates in a way that benefits humanity could save money in the long run, and it’s unlikely to make things worse. Again, the probability of an AI disaster is fairly undefined, since it changes depending on how well we prepare for it.
I can’t give a probability of a world-ending disaster that isn’t more or less guesswork.
But I do think there’s a big enough risk of such a disaster in our lifetimes that we should work hard to fix the world – whether by making sure governments and AI stay safe and sane, replacing fossil fuels, building backup systems and plans, decentralising key systems and so on.
These things are worthwhile, even if the risk is one in a million: the world is precious, and the future we are risking is vast.

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