Lethal Heating: 12/03/19

03/12/2019

UN Chief: Climate Change Near 'Point Of No Return'

Deutsche Welle - AP | AFP | Reuters

Antonio Guterres has taken the world's major economies to task for not "pulling their weight" to reduce emissions. Ahead of the COP25 climate summit, the UN head said we were rapidly approaching the "point of no return."

Guterres sounds stark climate warning

"We are confronted with a global climate crisis and the point of no return is no longer over the horizon, it is in sight and hurtling towards us," said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the eve of the two-week COP25 global climate summit in Madrid.
"Our war against nature must stop, and we know that it is possible," he said Sunday. "We simply have to stop digging and drilling and take advantage of the vast possibilities offered by renewable energy and nature-based solutions."
Across the globe, catastrophic weather patterns — from floods to fire to extreme droughts and heavy snowstorms — are wreaking havoc on both human and animal life. Scientists are warning that the world is running out of time to reverse the worst possible effects of man-made climate breakdown.
Guterres took member nations to task for not sticking to the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which calls on a limit to fossil fuel use in an attempt to curb global temperatures increases.

Protesters around the world demand action

World's largest emitters are not pulling their weight'
"We also see clearly that the world's largest emitters are not pulling their weight," he said, "and without them, our goal is unreachable."
The world's largest carbon emitter is China and the second-largest, the United States.
At last year's UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, member states drew up a framework for monitoring emission reductions and made plans for further cuts in the future. However, there has still been no agreement on key elements like putting a price on CO2 emissions that could allow carbon taxes to be traded between countries.
On Friday, mass rallies were held around the world as people called on their governments to address climate change before it's too late.

How is climate change affecting Europe?

Record-setting heat waves

The summer of 2019 saw heat records in Europe broken across the continent. In July, Germany recorded its highest temperature ever at 42.6 C (108 F). France broke its heat record twice in 2019, the highest temperature measuring 46.C (114.8 F) in July. Climate change increases the frequency of heat waves.

Venice under water

In November 2019, the Italian archipelago city of Venice experienced multiple flooding events and the high water mark of 1.5 meters was reached three times in one week for the first time in recorded history. Projected sea level rise due to climate change could make these events more likely in the future.

Wildfires burning Spain

The same heat wave that brought record temperatures to France sparked the worst wildfires to hit Spain in 20 years. On the Spanish island of Gran Canaria, wildfires in August decimated a national park on the popular tourist island. Hotter temperatures and drier air due to climate change increase the risk of fires.

German forests dying

A combination of drought, storms and extreme heat is depleting Germany's forests. According to BDF, a forest advocacy group, in Germany, more than 1 million established trees have died since 2018. "These are no longer single unusual weather events. That is climate change," said a BDF representative.

Disappearing glaciers in the Alps

A glacier on the Italian side of Mont Blanc experienced accelerated melting in 2019. And enthusiasts held a "funeral" for the Pizol glacier in the Swiss Alps, which has almost completely disappeared. Scientists say climate change accelerates glacial melting in the Alps.

Drought affecting food production

Two consecutive years of drought in Germany have hit farmers hard. In 2018, record drought caused major crop failures, and heat waves in 2019 also damaged crops. "Climate change means more frequent droughts and extreme weather events in Germany,"said German Weather Service Vice President Paul Becker.

New EU Commission plans 'Green Deal'
The newly minted leadership of the European Commission, under former German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, has set lofty climate goals for itself under a policy initiative called the "European Green Deal." Among the goals set out by the campaign is the plan to make Europe the "first carbon-neutral continent."
As von der Leyen and her cabinet took office on Sunday, she hailed the COP25 summit as the perfect "starting point" for her climate policy plans.
"Europe is leading in this topic and we know that we have to be ambitious for our planet,'' von der Leyen told reporters.

Seychelles: An ecosystem under threat

On Thursday, European lawmakers voted to declare an EU-wide climate emergency in a symbolic move aimed at increasing pressure on the incoming European Commission to take a stronger stance on climate change.
On Sunday, European Parliament President David Sassoli also spoke of the need "to turn the promises of the past few months into results that improve people's lives. From the fight against climate change to tackling the rise in the cost of living, Europeans want to see real action.''

Will a 'climate emergency' make a difference?

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Scientist's Theory Of Climate's Titanic Moment The 'Tip Of A Mathematical Iceberg'

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn

Formula for climate emergency shows if ‘reaction time is longer than intervention time left’ then ‘we have lost control’

‘Knowing how long societies have to react to pull the brake on the Earth’s climate and then how long it will take for the ship to slow down is the difference between a climate emergency and a manageable problem.’ Photograph: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

When is an emergency really an emergency?

If you’re the captain of the Titanic, approaching a giant iceberg with the potential to sink your ship becomes an emergency only when you realise you might not have enough time to steer a safe course.
And so it is, says Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, when it comes to the climate emergency.
Knowing how long societies have to react to pull the brake on the Earth’s climate and then how long it will take for the ship to slow down is the difference between a climate emergency and a manageable problem.
Rather than being something abstract and open to interpretation, Schellnhuber says the climate emergency is something with clear and calculable risks that you could put into a formula. And so he wrote one.

Emergency = R × U = p × D × τ / T

In a comment article in the journal Nature, Schellnhuber and colleagues explained that to understand the climate emergency we needed to quantify the relationship between risk (R) and urgency (U).
Borrowing from the insurance industry, the scientists define risk (R) as the probability of something happening (p) multiplied by damage (D).
For example, how likely is it that sea levels will rise by a metre and how much damage will that cause.
Urgency (U) is the time it takes you to react to an issue (τ) “divided by the intervention time left to avoid a bad outcome (T)”, they wrote.
Schellnhuber, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, tells Guardian Australia the work on the formula was just the “tip of a mathematical iceberg” in defining the climate emergency.
“It can be illustrated by the Titanic disaster, but it applies to many severe risks where you can calculate the do-nothing/business-as-usual probability of a highly damaging event,” he says. “Yet there are options to avoid the disaster.
“In other words, this a control problem.”
There is a time lag between the rapid cuts to greenhouse gases and the climate system reacting. Knowing if you have enough time tells you if you’re in an emergency or not.
Schellnhuber used “standard risk analysis and control theory” to come up with the formula, and he was already putting numbers to it.
“As a matter of fact, the intervention time left for limiting global warming to less than 2C is about 30 [years] at best. The reaction time – time needed for full global decarbonisation - is at least 20 [years].”
As the scientists write in Nature, if the “reaction time is longer than the intervention time left” then “we have lost control”.
Schellnhuber says: “Beyond that critical point, only some sort of adaptation option is left, such as moving the Titanic passengers into rescue boats (if available).”
Earlier this month, Oxford Dictionaries announced “climate emergency” as the word of the year, defining it as “a situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it”.
One website tracking climate emergency declarations says 1,195 jurisdictions in 25 countries, representing 454 million people, have already voted on the emergency.
This week the European parliament joined them, as did Ballina shire council in northern New South Wales, the 76th local government authority in Australia to make the declaration.
Prof Will Steffen, of the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and a co-author of the article, says: “Emergency can mean many things to many people. But there are some hard numbers behind why so many people are saying we are in a climate emergency.
“This formula sharpens our thinking. So we have 30 years to decarbonise and to stabilise our pressure on the climate system.”
In the Nature article, the scientists highlight nine “tipping points” that, if crossed, become almost impossible to stop. At least five are already “active”.
Some of them, like melting permafrost or forest degradation, can start to add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, making the job of keeping global temperatures down even harder.
“There are a range of these intervention times left,” Steffen says. “How long do we have before [the Greenland ice sheet] goes? Maybe we have 20 to 25 years and then we might be committed to losing Greenland.
“But the time we have left to intervene to stabilise coral reefs, for example, is a lot less than 30 years.
“Our reaction time has to be fast and to decarbonise by 2050 we have to really move now. That’s the point of [Schellnhuber’s] maths.
“To err on the side of danger is a stupid thing to do.”

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(AU) Woman Brings Remains Of Home Lost In NSW Bushfires To Parliament In Climate Protest

The Guardian - Australian Associated Press

‘We’ve got no leadership ... we’ve got nothing,’ says Melinda Plesman, who lost her house in Nymboida, near Grafton

Melinda Plesman stands with the remains of her burnt-out house, destroyed in the NSW bushfires, outside Parliament House in Canberra. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

A woman who lost her home in the New South Wales bushfires has brought the charred remains to Parliament House to send a message to both major parties on climate change.
Melinda Plesman and her partner, Dean Kennedy, lost their family home of 35 years after bushfires tore through Nymboida, south of Grafton in NSW, last month.
Plesman said she wanted to show Scott Morrison the direct result of climate change.
“It’s happening now and this is what climate change looks like,” Plesman said.
“I’m losing my home, whole communities are losing their homes ... and the prime minister said we’re not allowed to talk about it.

“He said he was going to pray for us. And that was the last straw.”
But she also criticised Labor for not wanting to discuss the link between climate change and bushfires.
“That is what is absolutely terrible. We’ve got no leadership, we’ve got no discussion, we’ve got no debate, we’ve got nothing,” she said.
“We need a bipartisan approach. I completely understand that the Labor party are absent in this as well.”
Plesman, who is now living in a motel room, said she didn’t know what the future held for her.
She said she wanted the government to set a price on carbon, phase out native forest logging, immediately shift Australia towards renewables and stop mining coal.
“I think it’s the job of the prime minister to bring us together and lead us forward. That’s his job,” she said.
On a sheet of corrugated iron rescued from the scorched remains her beloved home she had written: “Morrison, your climate crisis destroyed my home.”
“He’s not acting,” Plesman said.

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