15/06/2020

Climate Crisis To Blame For $67bn Of Hurricane Harvey Damage – Study

The Guardian - 

Exclusive: new figure far higher than previous estimates of direct impact of global heating

Flooding in Houston, Texas, after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty

At least $67bn of the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 can be attributed directly to climate breakdown, according to research that could lead to a radical reassessment of the costs of damage from extreme weather.

Harvey ripped through the Caribbean and the US states of Texas and Louisiana, causing at least $90bn of damage to property and livelihoods, and killing scores of people.

Conventional economic estimates attributed only about $20bn of the destruction to the direct impacts of global heating. Climate breakdown is known to be making hurricanes stronger and may make them more likely to occur, but separating the effects of global heating from the natural weather conditions that also cause hurricanes is complex.

In a study published in the journal Climatic Change, researchers used the emerging science of climate change attribution to calculate the odds of such a hurricane happening naturally or under increased carbon dioxide levels, and applied the results to the damage caused.

Similar methods were used in a separate study, published last month in the same journal, that found that droughts in New Zealand between 2007 and 2017 cost the economy about NZ$4.8bn, of which $800m was directly linked to climate change. Floods caused insured losses of about NZ$470m over the same period, of which NZ$140m was linked to the climate.

The researchers say the new tools are a more accurate way of estimating the economic damage caused by climate breakdown.

“We’re pretty sure the climate change-related damages associated with extreme events have been underestimated in most assessments of the social cost of carbon,” said David Frame, a professor of climate change at the Victoria University of Wellington and the lead author of the studies. “We think this line of research, as it matures, should provide a really valuable input.”

Friederike Otto, the director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford, who was not involved in the research, said the method could make it possible to generate global estimates of the true cost of climate breakdown, which could have a profound effect on how governments and businesses approach the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“We have known about the costs of climate change theoretically,” said Otto. “It’s all very well in the abstract, but the global mean temperature does not kill anyone – extreme events cost money and lives. Being able to attribute these impacts to climate change means being able to convey what climate change really means.”

She said it would become possible to compile an inventory of the damage that could be attributed to climate change around the world, which governments and businesses could use to bring about change. “Hopefully this will speed up the process of moving to net zero [carbon].”

Estimating the true costs of the climate crisis could also help developing countries seeking recognition of the loss and damage they face as a result of climate breakdown, which they argue should spur rich countries to provide more assistance. Loss and damage is likely to be one of the most vexed issues at next year’s UN Cop26 climate summit.

Legal actions around the world would also be affected, said Tessa Khan, a co-director of the Climate Litigation Network. Activists and local governments around the world are taking fossil fuel companies to court over their greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that they knowingly caused damage while profiting from raising carbon dioxide levels.

“[The two new studies] are opening to door to stronger evidence to persuade courts that fossil fuel companies should be held accountable for their role,” Khan said. “This will strengthen the legal basis of these lawsuits.”

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Our Pandemic Response Was A Disaster. We Can't Afford To Make The Same Mistakes With Climate Change

Business Insider - Patrick Bolton | Marcin Kacperczyk

  • The COVID-19 crisis shows that we need to be prepared and act quickly in response to the climate crisis.
  • The climate change crisis is our next great challenge, but we must learn from the mistakes of our response to the novel coronavirus.

Rosie Perper/Business Insider                     

Authors
  • Patrick Bolton is the Barbara and David Zalaznick Professor of Business at Columbia University and Visiting Professor at Imperial College London.
  • Marcin Kacperczyk is a Professor of Finance at Imperial College London.
As COVID-19 rocketed across the globe, many countries took swift, drastic action to lock down their countries in order to save lives.

At every economic level, communities quickly adapted to new public health requirements in order to protect against the spread of the disease.

In a matter of months, every major city across the globe shut down activities that put people at risk. It has come at a devastating cost, but concern for the science behind this dangerous virus has largely prevailed.

This moment is not to be celebrated. But the lessons we have learned in the COVID-19 outbreak will pave the way as we confront a climate change crisis that is already causing a catastrophe. It can feel insignificant in comparison to the global pandemic, but we entered 2020 on fire, literally, the Australian wildfires destroyed 27 million acres in a matter of weeks. And in the first five months of  2020 surpassed 2019 as the warmest start to the year on record.

If we have any hope of surviving and emerging from the climate crisis, we need to view the swift and strong reaction to COVID-19 as a dry run for the action needed to meet the challenges of a warming planet. The changes we must make will require a radical departure from the norm, and we will need to sustain these changes.

The COVID-19 crisis shows we can be prepared and act quickly.

Countries that have so far mitigated the health costs of COVID-19 – including Germany and South Korea – have shown the importance of preparedness in reducing the impact of a crisis.

These countries recognized the need for spare hospital beds, trained nurses, testing kits, and PPE, to confront the pandemic. Countries with more redundancy in their resources have endured a smaller health shock than others – a note all countries should take before the climate crisis hits hard.

The coronavirus outbreak also painfully reinforced the importance of international cooperation in solving a global crisis. During the Great Recession, the world's leading central banks collaborated with the G20 on a coordinated economic response.

But at the early stages of this pandemic, the global response was disjointed and leaderless If the global community could have worked together on testing and screening, it's possible the global outbreak might have been less severe.

It's time to get ready for the next crisis

It is time, even in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, to start taking stronger action to address climate change to soften the blow of the approaching climate shock.

Just as we should have had better-prepared healthcare systems for a pandemic, we should be better prepared to react to climate change with a more sustainable economy. This means implementing climate mitigation policies such as carbon pricing, the integration of sustainability into financial practices and accounting frameworks, the search for appropriate policy mixes, and the development of new financial mechanisms at the international level.

History has shown us that green-focused economic recovery plans are more beneficial than their traditional counterparts in both the short and long-term. Research from our colleagues at Columbia reveals that green projects not only deliver jobs off the bat, they also work toward a carbon-conscious future.

Businesses and governments should start with factoring climate-related risk analysis into financial stability monitoring. Central banks and the financial sector must start treating climate change as a "green swan" risk: an extremely disruptive event that could ignite a chain reaction of financial and political crises. Their leadership to mitigate the climate crisis could mobilize action among governments, the private sector, and the international community.

Encouragingly, our research reveals that financial markets are beginning to factor in the risk of climate change. Even though companies with high carbon emissions may offer investors high earnings, investors are demanding more from these companies in terms of stock returns because of the risk associated with climate change. In the future, these companies may be starved of capital.

Private sector banks, including Barclays and Standard Chartered, are reorienting their investments to measure the carbon emissions of their portfolios and reduce their exposure to companies that pollute.

The transition to sustainability cannot happen overnight. Actions at all levels are needed and each one requires a careful assessment of the costs and benefits, whether economic or social. Blunt regulations that suddenly punish everyone could end up being counterproductive. What we need are fairly targeted interventions that focus on the parts of the economy where the benefits are greatest relative to the costs.

And we must start now. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that we have the capacity for bold global action. But the expression flattening the curve carries an implicit note of optimism – suggesting that the wave will pass. The climate crisis, unlike the coronavirus pandemic, will not pass. The changes it brings will be permanent.

As we recover from coronavirus, our aim shouldn't be to go back to normal but to take the lessons we've learned to strive towards a greener future.

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Climate Change Is Making Mosquito-Borne Diseases Deadlier

 Popular Mechanics - Daisy Hernandez

KATERYNA KON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Getty Images

  • Eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV), a mosquito-transmitted disease, appears to be becoming more prevalent in the eastern U.S.— bad news for humans considering some of the debilitating after-effects and even mortality brought on by EEEV.
  • One likely factor helping mosquitoes spread EEEV is climate change. Current trends point to even more cases of EEEV in the coming years as conditions become optimal for mosquitoes to procreate, feed, and spread.
Disease-laden mosquitoes carrying the eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV)—sometimes abbreviated as EEE—appear to be moving north and spreading the deadly infection into areas where it was previously not known to exist.

The likely culprit? Climate change, which has long been an issue affecting things like migratory patterns in animals, melting glaciers—which could release new viruses we are not prepared to treat—and even animal size.

In 2019, there was an EEEV outbreak in the U.S. that affected 36 people. That might not seem like a high number, but EEEV is very uncommon, making 36 confirmed cases in a year is a concerning amount.

To make matters worse, there is no treatment or cure for EEEV which is fatal in 30 percent of people who contract it per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said that “2019 has been a particularly deadly year for the [EEEV] in the United States,” citing the aforementioned 36 cases which spread across eight states with 13 of the cases being fatal.

EEEV spreads to humans via mosquito bite. It does not spread from person to person, other animals to people, or people to animals. The disease can then cause encephalitis—swelling of the brain—that can be deadly. In instances when EEEV is not fatal, it can leave a person with neurological problems, ranging from “mild brain dysfunction to severe intellectual impairment,” says the CDC.

EEEV symptoms include fever, chills, arthralgia, and myalgia. The CDC adds that people tend to make a full recovery when “there is no central nervous system involvement.” In addition to being fatal and causing neurological issues in humans, EEEV is also a health hazard to horses, which is where the virus' name originates. The University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine reports that EEEV is “most commonly seen in horses in the southeastern U.S.”

EEEV is not new in the U.S. In a 2013 paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, entomologist Theodore Andreadis and a colleague said:
Since the discovery of the EEE virus in the 1930s, cases in humans had been sporadic and restricted to areas south of northern New England until a disease outbreak struck New Hampshire in 2005. Over the past decade, we have witnessed a sustained resurgence of EEE virus activity within longstanding foci in the northeastern United States and northward expansion into regions where the virus was historically rare or previously unknown, including northern New England and eastern Canada.
Additionally, the paper authors wrote that virus transmission is “highly seasonal and dependent on weather conditions,” with the most favorable being “forested swamp habitats” where mosquitoes thrive.

With winters becoming milder and summers getting warmer, the weather is continually changing to favor the birth and spread of disease-carrying mosquitoes.

“Milder winters, in turn, may enhance the overwintering survival of mosquito vectors and allow mosquitoes to extend their range northward. Warmer summer conditions accelerate the generation time of mosquitoes, their frequency of blood feeding, and the rate of virus replication within mosquitoes,” say Andreadis and colleague.

If climate change continues following the current trajectory, we could be facing a slew of viruses we're not used to treating in the coming decades.

“These environmental changes have the potential to alter disease risk by increasing the abundance and distribution of the vector, lengthening the virus-transmission season, and increasing the intensity of virus transmission,” conclude the paper authors.

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