22/06/2019

Cold War Spy Satellite Images Show Himalayan Glaciers Are Melting Fast

ABC News - AP

The once-classified spy satellite images provide crucial missing evidence to scientists. (NRO via AP)
Cold War-era spy satellite images are showing scientists that glaciers on the Himalayas are now melting about twice as fast as they used to.
The Asian mountain range, which includes Mount Everest, has been losing ice at a rate of about 1 per cent a year since 2000, according to a study published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
"The amount of ice [lost] is scary but what is much more scary is the doubling of the melt rate," said Josh Maurer, a glacier researcher at Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory and lead author of the study.
Forget the queues on Everest,
this is the real crisis in the Himalayas
The Himalayas, part of an area that is referred to as the "third pole" because it has so much ice, has only 72 per cent of the ice that was there in 1975.
It has been losing about 7.5 billion tonnes of ice a year, compared to 3.9 billion tonnes a year between 1975 and 2000, according to the study.
The Himalayan melt does not contribute much to sea level rise, Mr Mauer said, because it is dwarfed by melting in Greenland and Antarctica.
But the loss of the ice means current and future disruptions of water supplies — both surges and shortages — for the hundreds of millions of people in the region who rely on it for hydropower, agriculture and drinking, said study co-author Jorg Schaefer, a climate geochemistry professor at Columbia.
"Disaster is in the making here," Mr Schaefer said.
The Changri Nup Glacier in Nepal, much of it covered by rocky debris. (AP: Joshua Maurer)
Scientists lacked some critical data on ice in the Himalayas until Mr Maurer found once-classified 3D images from US spy satellites that had been put online.
Those images allowed Mr Maurer to calculate how much ice was on the Himalayas in 1975. He then used other satellite data to measure ice in 2000 and then again in 2016.
Past research looked at individual Himalayan glaciers over short time periods, but this is the first to look at the big picture — 650 glaciers over decades, Mr Schaefer said.
For years, scientists have looked at many possible causes for melting glaciers, including pollution and changes in rainfall.
But when the team was able to see trends using long-term data, they found the major culprit: "it's clear it's temperature and everything else doesn't matter as much," Mr Schaefer said.
A still of a 3D model that researchers made from the NSO pics, showing the Himalayan glaciers in the mid-1970s. (NSO)
Mr Maurer double-checked that conclusion by feeding the data into a computer model. It "predicted" the same type of ice melt that happened over the four decades.
NASA climate scientist Josh Willis, who wasn't part of the study, said it provided important confirmation of what scientists suspected and what models showed.
"As a scientist, it's nice to hear that we're right, but then again as a civilian, it's sometimes a little scary to hear that we're right," Mr Willis said.

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UN Climate Chief Says 3C Hotter World 'Just Not Possible'

Reuters - Megan Rowling

Climate change is an "existential issue", and stepping up efforts to keep warming to agreed limits is urgent, the U.N. climate chief says
People stand and watch the sunset on Grand Anse Beach in St. George's, Grenada, November 27, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
BARCELONA - Climate change is an "existential issue" for humankind, and stepping up efforts to keep warming to globally agreed limits is urgent, the U.N. climate chief said on Monday, calling on governments to make progress at talks in Bonn.
The mid-year climate negotiations are tasked with resolving outstanding issues in setting rules for the 2015 Paris climate accord, ahead of an annual conference in Chile in December.
Patricia Espinosa, head of the U.N. climate change secretariat, said existing country pledges to cut planet-warming emissions would heat the planet by 3 degrees Celsius (5.4F) from pre-industrial times.
"That is just not possible," she said, adding it would leave people sicker and result in battles over resources such as water and land, with coastal residents losing homes to rising seas.
"We are literally in a climate emergency, and... we are increasingly hearing that this is the fight of our lives," she said.
The Paris Agreement, now ratified by 185 countries, set a goal to limit the rise in average global temperatures to "well below" 2C and to strive for 1.5C. Temperatures have increased by about 1C already.
"It's time that all people open their eyes to just how urgent things are," Espinosa told journalists on the first day of the talks. "We need to get to the 1.5 degree goal."
Doing so would provide benefits in the form of less air pollution - much of which is caused by burning fossil fuels for transport, power and industry - better health for children, cleaner water and green jobs, she stressed.
As the Bonn talks got underway, developing countries that are suffering some of the worst impacts of wilder weather - from sizzling temperatures in India to cyclone devastation in Mozambique - need more funding to try to cope, campaigners said.
Harjeet Singh, who leads on climate change for charity ActionAid, said "it's all about life and death" for impoverished communities facing wilder weather with very little protection.
Simon Stiell, Grenada's minister for climate resilience, told media in a telephone briefing that small island developing states were experiencing everything from flooding, sea surges and droughts to coastal erosion and loss of coral reefs.
"All of these phenomena are a direct and real threat to life and the livelihoods of our people," he said, urging more European states to follow Britain in setting a target for net-zero emissions by mid-century.

Carbon Market
Stiell and Daryl Vaz, a Jamaican minister who leads efforts to deal with climate change, also called on wealthy governments to boost contributions to the Green Climate Fund, which is helping the Caribbean island nations implement projects to adapt to a warmer world.
U.N. climate chief Espinosa said the different streams of financing for climate action around the world were "all over the place" and needed to be brought together in a unified system. In Bonn, at the June 17-27 talks, government officials should concentrate on devising a "solid" mechanism for carbon markets, which business is waiting for, she added.
This is a key area that was postponed when the "rulebook" for the Paris Agreement was hammered out last December.
The Paris pact allows countries to transfer emissions reductions among themselves using carbon credits, but they have yet to agree on how to do that to ensure the reductions are not counted twice where they are produced and purchased.
Espinosa said protests and school strikes by young people over government inaction on climate change - a movement that has gathered steam since last year - should serve as a reminder to U.N. negotiators why their work mattered.
"They (youth) have credible and solid demands that are mobilising political leadership," she said.

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CSIRO, NAB Chair Say Shift To 100% Renewables Inevitable, And Likely By 2050

RenewEconomy - 


Australia’s main scientific research organisation, along with academics, economists, policy analysis and business people such as National Australia Bank chair Ken Henry, say that the shift to 100 per cent renewables in Australia’s grid is inevitable, and likely by 2050.
A new landmark report by the CSIRO – titled Australian National Outlook – provides a comprehensive vision for what a prosperous Australia can look like throughout the 21st century, and has found that governments need to be proactive in working towards that vision, otherwise Australia risks undergoing a ‘slow decline’.Key to Australia’s future prosperity is for governments to embrace technological change and plan for the transition to a 100 per cent renewable energy grid, along with working cooperatively with other countries to tackle climate change.
NAB’s Ken Henry, the former Treasury Secretary, said that customers and shareholders were putting pressures on companies to adopt a positive vision for the Australian economy that included investments in renewables, which meant Australia was on a pathway towards 100% renewables irrespective of the policy environment.
“Australia’s energy transition is going to happen anyway, almost no matter what the policy framework is. Decisions taken by business leaders today will ensure that by about mid-century, Australia’s electricity sector will be 100% renewables. That’s almost irrespective of what decisions are taken at a policy level.” Henry said in an interview with ABC’s The Business.
“And that’s because, leaders of businesses in the energy sector are having to take investment decisions on behalf of their shareholders right now. Shareholders obviously don’t want to see stranded assets.”
NAB worked with CSIRO to produce the report.
CSIRO’s projections of Australia’s future electricity system show what the future energy mix will look like and how Australia will shift to an electricity market that is almost completely powered by renewable energy, as renewables replace coal and gas, and fossil fuels are pushed out of the market.
With proactive policies in place, Australia can each 100 per cent renewables by around 2050, while also lowering electricity prices for Australian consumers.
The CSIRO predicts that under an ambitious policy scenario, Australians would spend between 58 per cent and 64 per cent less on electricity as a proportion of their income than they are today. This is due to both falling energy costs driven by renewables uptake, as well as increased wages through improved prosperity.
In fact, the worst thing Australia could do in terms of bringing down electricity prices is to continue to foster uncertainty about Australia’s future energy and climate change policies.
Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions could also be reduced to net-zero emissions by 2050, in a plan that both provides a sustainable transition away from fossil fuels, while providing lower energy prices and a strong economy.
If Australia fails to embrace a future energy system powered predominantly by renewable energy, the CSIRO has predicted that it will fall behind in an increasingly competitive global economy, leading to slower economic growth and a drop in living standards for Australians.
CSIRO forecasts that energy prices will be highest under scenarios where there are no established policies to secure investment in renewable energy and guide the transition away from fossil fuels.
“Without stable policy and the investment that flows from it, investors would require higher rates of return, resulting in a cost of wholesale energy that is higher than all other scenarios in the medium term, alongside a slower reduction in emissions” the report said.
Under the more prosperous scenario, Australia’s overall energy use will be lower, driven by substantial improvements in energy productivity and efficiency, but electricity consumption will grow, as industries undertake a shift towards electrification of their energy use, allowing greater utilisation of renewable energy sources.
This includes a dramatic shift towards electric vehicles, with the CSIRO predicting that electric vehicles will be the cheapest form of transport as early as 2025, with around half of all vehicles to be all-electric by 2040.

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