08/08/2019

Climate Change Is A National Security Issue

The Interpreter Lowy Institute - Pat Conroy

The Morrison government’s Pacific “Step Up” will stumble before it starts unless global warming is taken seriously.
An Australian army vehicle in floodwaters near the Queensland town of Bowen in March 2017 following Cyclone Debbie (Photo: Peter Parks via Getty)
If only a minister of the Morrison government would be as forthright in identifying climate change as a massive destabilising force in Australia’s region as the Chief of the Defence Force Angus Campbell has been.
In a private speech in Bowral in June, General Campbell is reported to have sounded a clear warning that climate change and Australia’s national security are inextricably linked. We live in the most disaster-prone region in the world – he is reported to have said – and a further rise in global temperatures would likely put more pressure on the Australian Defence Force’s ability to respond.
In 2016, Australia’s Defence White Paper identified the risk that climate change would drive natural disasters and political instability in the Pacific. As the number of disasters increase, so do the number of disaster relief missions that are likely to involve the Australian Defence Force.
Since that White Paper the ADF has supported disaster relief missions in Fiji, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and New Zealand, as well as in Queensland and the Northern Territory following cyclones, and New South Wales and South Australia following floods. Those missions involve thousands of troops at a time, some times more than Australia deployed at the height of our involvement in Afghanistan. For example, we sent 1,000 troops to support Operation Fiji Assist, about 1,600 to help after Cyclone Debbie hit Queensland, and close to 3,000 to help North Queensland clean up after floods earlier this year.
Flooding from the sea leaves damaged roads in Kirbati (Photo: Jonas Gratzer via Getty)
Disaster relief takes resources. Indeed, the largest vessels our Navy has ever deployed – HMAS Adelaide and HMAS Canberra – are more often likely to be contributing to humanitarian missions in response to climate-related disasters than fulfilling a traditional combat role. General Campbell reportedly reiterated what Pacific leaders have been telling us for years – that climate change is a threat to their very existence, and they are looking to Australia to do more. Through loss of land, undermined economies, and threatened sustainability, an influx of climate refugees from affected islands would be a humanitarian disaster that could destabilise the region.
As early as 2007, then senior Papua New Guinean diplomat Robert Aisi, representing the Pacific Islands Forum, told the United Nations Security Council that Pacific islands were already impacted by climate change. Aisi spoke about how Cyclone Heta had left one-fifth of the population of Niue homeless in 2004. How the Cook Islands had experienced five cyclones in one month when previously they were uncommon. How PNG was experiencing more malaria and dengue fever. And how rising sea temperatures and winds were expected to push major tuna stocks westwards, causing economic problems. He said:
the impact of climate change on small islands was no less threatening than the dangers guns and bombs posed to large nations.
Leaders from Fiji and the Solomon Islands have made similar pleas. And as recently as last month, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winton Peters said that any country that wanted to “step up” in the Pacific needed to take climate change concerns seriously.
It is not that climate change itself causes conflict, but it puts pressure on natural resources, on the security of land, water, health and food which are critical to human survival.
In the US, the military understands the risk climate change poses to security. US military combatant commands are integrating climate-related impacts into their planning cycles. They are doing this because the Pentagon understands that climate change will “aggravate problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions that threaten stability in a number of countries”.
In April, the US Air Force Chief of Staff General David L. Goldfein, cited the conflict in Syria as an example of how climate change’s impact is already destabilising some nations. “Most don’t remember what caused the Syria conflict to start,” he told a Senate Armed Forces Committee. “It started because of a 10-year drought.”
It is not that climate change itself causes conflict, but it puts pressure on natural resources, on the security of land, water, health and food which are critical to human survival.
The Pacific is a foreign policy priority for the Morrison government, yet its “Step Up” in the region, important as it is, is being undermined by the Government’s inaction on climate change.
The Pacific Islands Forum’s Boe Declaration, signed last year, identified climate change as the number one existential threat to the region, yet it’s well known that the Australian government did everything it could to seek to water down that declaration. In diplomatic forums in the Pacific, Australia is seen to be acting to remove words around climate change from communiques and negotiating positions. This undermines the entire region’s attempts to adapt to climate change, and would appear to undermine what General Campbell says is the ADF’s position, in that they have been preparing for the impact of climate change “for years”.
Recently Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape agreed to work towards elevating the relationship between our countries to the status of a Comprehensive Strategic and Economic Partnership, a move which Labor welcomes.
But without adequate development funding and without addressing climate change, the Morrison Government’s Pacific Step Up stumbles before it starts.
Morrison must, as General Campbell does, recognise the intrinsic link between climate change in the Pacific and Australian national security. The Government must act to mitigate climate change – making sure the Paris Treaty is implemented properly so that we limit global warming, the effects of climate change in the Pacific and the potential destabilisation of our region.

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Here’s How The Hottest Month In Recorded History Unfolded Around The World

Washington Post - Brady Dennis | Andrew Freedman

Icebergs are seen at the seashore of King's Point in July in Newfoundland. Formerly the center of cod fishing, the island province now sees more and more icebergs that made their last trip from Greenland to Newfoundland. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)
During the hottest month that humans have recorded, a local television station in the Netherlands aired nonstop images of wintry landscapes to help viewers momentarily forget the heat wave outside.
Officials in Switzerland and elsewhere painted stretches of rail tracks white, hoping to keep them from buckling in the extreme heat.
At the port of Antwerp, Belgium, two alleged drug dealers called police for help after they got stuck inside a sweltering shipping container filled with cocaine.
On Monday, scientists officially pronounced July 2019 the warmest month the world has experienced since record-keeping began more than a century ago.
How hot was it?
Wildfires raged across millions of acres in the Arctic. A massive ice melt in Greenland sent 197 billion tons of water pouring into the Atlantic Ocean, raising sea levels. And temperature records evaporated, one after another: 101.7 degrees Fahrenheit in Cambridge, England, and 108.7 in Paris. The same in Lingen, Germany.
“We have always lived through hot summers. But this is not the summer of our youth. This is not your grandfather’s summer,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres told reporters as July gave way to August.
People cool off on a hot afternoon at Flushing Meadows park in New York City on July 21. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)
The Copernicus Climate Change Service, a program of the European Union, calculated that last month narrowly edged out July 2016 for the ominous distinction of hottest month on record. The month beat July 2016 by about 0.07 degrees (0.04 Celsius).
Scientists found that the planet is headed for one of its hottest years, and the period from 2015 to 2019 is likely to go down as the warmest five-year period on record.
“July has rewritten climate history, with dozens of new temperature records at [the] local, national and global level,” Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, said in announcing the month’s historic implications. “This is not science fiction. It is the reality of climate change. It is happening now, and it will worsen in the future without urgent climate action."
The Copernicus ranking was generated by taking millions of readings from weather balloons, satellites, buoys and other sources on an hourly basis and feeding them into a computer model.
The results still must be checked against data from thousands of temperature-measuring sites around the world. Those readings ultimately will be reported by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other agencies in the coming weeks. While their rankings could vary, the final results are not likely to differ significantly, according to scientists.
An aerial image of beach umbrellas and deck chairs as beachgoers enjoy the hot weather at a beach in the Netherlands on July 24. (Sem Van Der Wal/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Notably, July’s monthly temperature record comes without the added influence of a strong “El Niño” in the tropical Pacific Ocean, which adds heat to the oceans and atmosphere and helps boost planetary temperatures. The 2016 record, for example, occurred during a year with an extremely strong El Niño.
“While we don’t expect every year to set a new record, the fact that it’s happening every few years is a clear sign of a warming climate,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist with Berkeley Earth.
From scorching heat in Europe to gargantuan wildfires in Siberia and Alaska, the record heat of July 2019 left its mark on people and the ecosystems they depend on.

Surface air temperature anomoly for July 2019 relative to 1981-2010 
Surface air temperature anomalies during July relative to the average from 1981 through 2010. (Copernicus Climate Change Service)
Surface air temperature anomalies during July relative to the average from 1981 through 2010. (Copernicus Climate Change Service)
The monthly temperature spike was driven largely by record warmth in Western Europe, including the searing heat wave that made its way to the Arctic and culminated in one of the most significant melt events ever recorded in Greenland. The Greenland ice sheet poured 197 billion tons of water into the North Atlantic in July alone — enough to raise global sea levels by 0.5 millimeters, or 0.02 inches.
Alaska also saw its warmest month on record. There and elsewhere across the Arctic, simultaneous and massive wildfires erupted, consuming millions of acres and emitting startling amounts of greenhouse gases. Arctic sea ice was at a record low for the month.
In Canada, a military installation in Alert, Nunavut — the northernmost permanently inhabited place on Earth — recorded 69.8 degrees on July 14, breaking a record set in 1956. The average July high for the outpost, some 600 miles from the North Pole, is 44.6 degrees.
In Belgium, one zoo fed its tigers with chickens frozen in blocks of ice. In Paris, local officials set up impromptu “cooling rooms” in each neighborhood where people could find air conditioning and cold water.
In parts of Germany, authorities were forced to lower autobahn speed limits over concerns that the high-speed motorways might suffer heat damage. Undeterred, one motor scooter rider took to the roads of eastern Germany but was stopped after officers spotted him wearing nothing aside from a helmet.
Residents took matters into their own hands in the German capital of Berlin, circulating maps on social media that showed the locations of air-conditioned public spaces. Portable air conditioners and fans quickly sold out, and one company that installs air conditioners suspended its phone service. A recorded voice message cited a flood of calls that it was no longer able to handle.
Brighton beach in Brighton, Britain, on July 25. (Peter Nicholls/Reuters)
Damodhar Ughade, a cotton farmer in the village of Seeras in western India’s Vidarbha region, felt like he was reliving a nightmare in July after a devastating heat wave the month before.
While droughts due to delayed monsoons are not infrequent, this year was the worst since 1972, when scores of people left their arid villages and migrated to cities. As temperatures soared to 102 degrees, Ughade’s fields lay parched, his livestock starved, and the village ran out of drinking water.
“There were two-foot cracks in my field. It was impossible to even walk on it,” he said by phone. The lack of reliable water led women to walk two hours to other villages, carrying earthen pots on their heads in search of water. Men rented small vehicles and carried tankers to nearby cities to buy water.
The scarcity was so severe that there was not enough water to share with the oxen. About 15 died in the village, he said.
In England, 22-year-old Andrea D’Aleo had the unenviable job of shuttling passengers down the River Cam — the main river that flows through Cambridge, a scenic university town about 60 miles north of London. He was standing at the back of a long, flat-bottomed boat, digging a long pole against the river bed. Normally, he said, umbrellas are used to fend off rain showers, but on Thursday, tourists used them as parasols.
“It was challenging,” D’Aleo said of working as a tour guide in the intense heat. “I was talking to a bunch of umbrellas while dying in the sun.”
Four years ago in Paris, world leaders committed to doing all they could to prevent the globe from warming more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (two degrees Celsius), with the goal of keeping warming to no more than 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 Celsius), compared with preindustrial levels.
But the commitments that countries made in Paris are far too modest to meet those targets. Last week, as the head of the United Nations recognized the likelihood that the world had just experienced its hottest month on record, he pleaded with national leaders to summon the will to take the kind of aggressive action that could put the globe on a more sustainable trajectory.
“This year alone, we have seen temperature records shattered from New Delhi to Anchorage, from Paris to Santiago, from Adelaide and to the Arctic Circle,” Guterres said. “If we do not take action on climate change now, these extreme weather events are just the tip of the iceberg. And, indeed, the iceberg is also rapidly melting.”
An iceberg floats near the seashore of King's Point in July in Newfoundland. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)

 
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Greenland Lost 12.5 Billion Tons Of Ice In One Day, A Grave Reminder Of Our Changing Planet

Forbes - Trevor Nace

Getty
As many people were looking forward to the weekend last Thursday, Greenland experienced something it has never experienced in our records. The glacier-covered island lost 12.5 billion tons of ice in one day.
Scientists in Greenland took videos of raging rivers of ice melt and endless shallow seas of water on ice sheets. Meteorologists, climate scientists, and geologists all combined data to determine the exact extent of melting on the island and where it sat with regards to the world record of ice melt on Greenland.

A record-setting European heat wave hit Greenland, causing a major melt on 60 percent of its ice sheet. (Associated Press/Caspar Haarløv “Into the Ice”)

Climate Scientist Martin Stendel calculated that the amount of ice melt last Wednesday and Thursday was enough to cover the entire state of Florida in five inches of water.
The loss of 12.5 billion tons of ice in 24 hours was the largest since advance measurements began in 1950. Looking over the entire island, about 60% of the entire island's surface ice experienced melting during those days. With elevations as high as 12,000 feet and the latitude equivalent to the high northern Canadian Arctic, it is surprising that such a large portion of the island reached melting temperatures.
Many of you remember the record-breaking heatwave in July in Europe. Dozens of records were broken during this event with Paris reaching 109 degrees F. This same heatwave migrated to Greenland and caused temperatures on the island up to 30 degrees above average for this time of the year.
It is well documented by NASA and many others that high latitudes like the Arctic are warming twice as fast as the tropic.
This rapid warming is causing a positive feedback loop. The more warming in the Arctic the more melting. This melting, in turn, causes the landscape to turn from the reflective white ice/snow to sunlight absorbing dark basalts and granites. This means the more ice melts the more it will push the local temperature warmer.
In total, 197 billion tons of ice melted this past month, pouring the equivalent amount of water into the Atlantic Ocean. It was enough water that satellites picked up on the change in global average sea levels from just one month of melt.
While these are summer months in Greenland, ice melt has never been this significant and the addition of ice during the winter months won't overcome the massive loss we've seen this summer and in recent summers.
What is increasingly clear is that these headlines of record-breaking heat, never before seen melting in the Arctic and unprecedented storms are becoming the new normal for our planet.
As we continue to see Earth change and we notice our local communities change we are forced to both adjust to the new normal and take a step back to evaluate how and if we will play a role as stewards on this planet.

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