23/10/2019

The Climate Is Apparently Not Getting 'Worse' Because Some Places, Like Canada, Will Benefit

ABC News - Jack Snape


Deputy secretary Evans says whether climate change is bad is "a judgement call". (ABC News)

Key points
  • A Department of Environment official was not prepared to say the climate is getting "worse"
  • She argued that changes will advantage some parts of the world
  • A report from Moody's earlier this year found that Canada may benefit under projected temperature rises
There will be winners and losers from climate change, and that means the climate is not getting "worse".
That's the view inside Australia's Department of Environment, which insists it provides "frank and fearless" advice to Federal Government ministers.
Jo Evans, deputy secretary of the department, told a Senate hearing on Monday that whether you used "worse" or "better" to describe climate trends depends on where you were on the globe.
"Some parts of the world — they will find some of those changes working to their advantage, some of them not so much," she said.
Last year's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identified the people and places at a higher risk from rising temperatures.
"Populations at disproportionately higher risk of adverse consequences with global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius and beyond include disadvantaged and vulnerable populations, some indigenous peoples, and local communities dependent on agricultural or coastal livelihoods," the report warned.
"Regions at disproportionately higher risk include Arctic ecosystems, dryland regions, small island developing states, and least-developed countries."
Despite the sober outlook, some have identified other groups and regions that might benefit if global warming trends continue.

Adaptation providers
As the climate warms, extreme weather events are predicted to become more common.
A report from investment bank Morgan Stanley last year identified this as a possible commercial opportunity.
"Developing countries may offer investment opportunities in new construction and infrastructure projects that are built to hold up under extreme weather events," it stated.
"Investments can include companies that help refit existing buildings and reinforce energy infrastructure for more resilience."
Construction of sea walls was among the examples it listed.
The Center for Climate Integrity, based in the US, estimates it will take at least $42 billion to build sea walls to block storm surges for all threatened American coastal cities with more than 25,000 residents by 2040, according to The New York Times. Protecting all coastal communities would cost more than $400 billion.
Shackowners along the coast at Chinaman Wells on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula are building their own sea wall to protect their properties from storm surges. (Supplied: Doug Pritchard)
Arctic entrepreneurs
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Finland earlier this year, highlighting opportunities in the region.
"The Arctic is at the forefront of opportunity and abundance," he said.
"It houses 13 per cent of the world's undiscovered oil, 30 per cent of its undiscovered gas, an abundance of uranium, rare earth minerals, gold, diamonds, and millions of square miles of untapped resources, fisheries galore."
Although sea level rises caused by melting ice caps threaten coastal communities around the world, less ice in the Arctic means more access.
"This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days," Mr Pompeo said.
"Arctic sea lanes could become the 21st century Suez and Panama canals."
Warmer temperatures could unlock the Arctic for shipping and mineral extraction. (Supplied: Amelie Meyer)
Baseball sluggers
Researchers from the University of Michigan suggested the changing climate around the Mediterranean might be reducing the quality of cork that makes baseballs.
The outcome? More home runs.

Defence and aid contractors
Although Australia's defence force is still developing a climate change strategy, it's wary of risks and warns that a changing security paradigm may stretch its capability.
The Defence Force expects Australia might be called on to conduct more humanitarian and disaster relief operations as a result of climate change.
International experts have noted it's difficult to attribute an individual conflict to climate change, but that the risk of climate-induced violence grows as temperatures increase.
"Think of climate change as 'loading the dice', making conflict more likely to occur in subtle ways across a host of different country contexts," two professors wrote recently in The Washington Post.
A freedom of information disclosure from the Department of Defence last year stated the increased potential for conflict could lead to "an increase in the demand for a wide spectrum of Defence and Government responses".
Private Daniel Bond and resident at Dillon's Bay in Vanuatu work together on building repairs after Cyclone Pam in 2015. (ABIS Tom Gibson)
Canada
Earlier this year, the analysis branch of ratings agency Moody's released a report about the economic implications of climate change.
It predicted higher temperature increases would mean more global damage, but also that they would impact nations differently.
Canada is set to perform the best of the world's large economies, with little projected change to GDP in 2048, even in a scenario modelled on high temperature increases.
This outcome was linked to the changing climate creating more arable land and longer seasons in the region.
Joe Oliver, former minister of finance in the Conservative government, wrote an opinion article in response asking why Canada should fight climate change.
"Our focus needs to be on adaptation, reduction and protection, as well as on building resilience and increasing survivability."
The projected hit to Australia's GDP, according to Moody's, is proportionally similar to that to be experienced in China.

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Climate Scientist: Our Profession Is Letting Down Humanity – We Must Change The Way We Approach The Climate Crisis

The Conversation - 

A scientist monitoring solar activity at the North Pole. Andrey Pavlov/Shutterstock
As a climate scientist of more than 25 years, I’m proud of the work my profession has done in recent decades to alert humanity to the unfolding climate crisis. But as the emergency becomes ever more acute, we scientists need to alter the way we approach it – or face being part of the problem.
Climate science has in large part been a remarkable success story. Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius accurately calculated how much a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would warm the planet as early as 1896.
The 1979 Charney report raised concerns about an impending climate crisis long before we could directly evidence it. In response, the scientific community stepped up its research efforts, and has been conducting regular scientific assessments to build a consensus view, and send a strong message to policy makers to spur them into action.
The problem is that 40 years of these efforts, however well-intentioned, have not had any impact on the carbon course of humanity. Since the middle of the 19th century, CO₂ emissions from human activities have been growing exponentially, on average by 1.65% per year since 1850.
The UN has to date been powerless to stop emissions rising. Wolgang Knorr
There were times when economic hardships temporarily stalled emissions, such as the oil price shocks of the early 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet block, and the 2008 financial crisis. But these had nothing to do with climate policy.
If we continue this exponential rise for just five more years, we will have already exhausted the carbon allowance that gives us a two-thirds chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C. That’s according to the IPCC, the UN body responsible for communicating the science of climate breakdown. Other scientists estimate that we have already missed the boat.

Hedged bets
Our painful sluggishness to act is not the fault of scientists. But the crisis is now more urgent than ever, and our current approach to it is starting to make us part of the problem.
Scientists are by nature conservative. This tendency is intimately linked to the way science operates: before a new theory is accepted it needs to be repeatedly scrutinised to make sure we are absolutely sure it holds up.
Usually, this is good practice. But it has caused climate scientists to consistently underestimate both the speed at which the climate is destabilising, and the severity of the threat it poses.
The IPCC is a chief culprit for this. It has the added difficulty of having to seek ratification from the world’s governments for its summary reports, and has been consistently singled out for underselling the impending crisis.
The scientists across the world that contribute to the body’s reports must heed its track record of mistaken conservatism, and adjust their approach going forward. Uncertainties are of course inherent in modelling how and when the climate will destabilise, but when the stakes are as high as they are, we must operate on the precautionary principle – the normal burden of proof on scientists should be reversed.

Acceptable risk
At the current level of 1.1℃ of global heating, climate change and ecological breakdown are already displacing and killing hundreds of thousands of humans, and sending other species towards extinction. Above 1.5℃ though, risks to humanity and ecosystems amplify greatly.
Yet the UN’s target for global carbon emissions to reach net zero by 2050 only gives us about a one-in-two chance of limiting global heating to below this level. This target is based on one of multiple potential pathways laid out by IPCC scientists in a special report in 2018.
Above 1.5℃, millions more around the world will struggle for fresh water amid crop failure and deadly heatwaves. ffmr/Shutterstock

Professions such as doctors wouldn’t take such a punt on preserving life if better odds were available. Why is the same not true of climate scientists? We need to shift both our own and society’s ideas about what is an acceptable level of risk to offer government leaders, and therefore the living planet’s inhabitants.

Here and now
Even the above pathways to a half-chance of limiting heating to 1.5℃ rely on unproven technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in the second half of the century. They also fail to take into account the political landscape in which these models are being applied. Leaders are well aware that the three to four degrees warming we’re headed for may be beyond civilisation’s ability to adapt, and yet are still to make any serious headway in phasing out global fossil fuel subsidies that total at least USD$100 billion a year.
In the face of a genuine existential threat to our civilisation, we scientists need to shift our focus from long-term models that give a false sense of control over the climate crisis and paint drastic emissions cuts as easily achievable.
Instead, we should focus on vulnerability in the here and now. For example, our global food system is already vulnerable to extreme weather events. If drought strikes in several countries at the same time, there are no guarantees that our food supply chains – in which deliveries arrive “just-in-time” to minimise costs – will not experience collapses in the next decade or two.
Yet compared to the vast amount of research focused on the uncertain impacts of global heating on humanity by 2050 and 2100, we know worryingly little about just how fragile our supply chains – or other parts of our highly efficient clockwork global economy – are in the near-term. Refocusing resources on such dramatically under-researched short-term vulnerabilities is vital, not least because it will make the climate and ecological crisis feel more close to home than abstract carbon budgets and temperature rises.
Ultimately, the way the world responds to the impending crisis depends on the extent to which its citizens and leaders feel radical action is necessary. By reframing our research and changing accepted levels of risk and uncertainty, perhaps climate scientists can finally help humanity change its carbon course.

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There’s An Effective And Progressive Solution For Climate Change. Why Won’t Democrats Embrace It?

Washington Post - Editorial Board

Smoke belches from a coal-fired power station near Datong, in China's northern Shanxi province. (Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)
IN AN ideal world, our leaders would acknowledge the danger of climate change and seek the best way to combat it.
If they did, they would easily find an answer that is effective and progressive: The latest bulletin from the International Monetary Fund maps what it would take to restrain warming to tolerable levels without wasting massive amounts of money or unnecessarily harming workers, companies and households.
In our far-from-ideal world, President Trump can’t even acknowledge the problem, and the Democrats who call for immediate action seem to be running from the best solutions.
The IMF reiterates what economists have long understood: Enacting a carbon tax is “the single most powerful and efficient tool” because pricing mechanisms “make it costlier to emit greenhouse gases and allow businesses and individuals to choose how to conserve energy or switch to greener sources through a range of opportunities.”
Politicians should favor choice and flexibility over central planning. “People and firms will identify which changes in behavior reduce emissions — for example, purchasing a more efficient refrigerator versus an electric car — at the lowest cost.”
By contrast, “regulations might not leave sufficient flexibility for households and firms to find least-cost options.” Regulators might not foresee or support novel technologies, and intrusive rules “motivate firms to collude with officials to alter or evade the regulations.” They also provide weak incentives for companies to invest in a wide range of better technology, because only the state’s favored approaches to decarbonizing the economy would be rewarded.
For these reasons, regulatory and other alternative approaches cost society some 50 to 100 percent more than a carbon tax for the same environmental benefits.
The IMF found that the average global price is a paltry $2 per ton of carbon dioxide, while the world requires a $75-per-ton global carbon tax by 2030 to keep warming below the 2-degree Celsius threshold scientists advise. 
Electricity prices would rise 70 percent on average — though only 53 percent in the United States — and gasoline prices 5 percent to 15 percent in most places.
But that’s the picture before one considers what the money raised by a carbon tax could do.
If governments recycled the revenue back to low-income and vulnerable people, and cut economically inefficient taxes — such as income taxes — a $50-per-ton carbon tax would feel to the economy more like $20 per ton.
The plan would help low-income households and place a higher burden on the upper-income bracket. There could also be money for essential research and development to aid the energy transition.
So is this the plan that the Democratic presidential candidates have embraced? If only. Though former vice president Joe Biden and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke have cautiously acknowledged the importance of carbon pricing, they are far more specific in their ideas for spending lots of money.
 Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) recently adopted a regulate-and-spend program. And Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would have the federal government establish its own utilities and build its own power-generation facilities, from scratch, according to, yes, a central plan.
The science does not change because politicians deny that humans are warming the planet. Likewise the economics do not change because politicians find them ideologically or politically inconvenient.

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