30/07/2020

Climate Explained: Are We Doomed If We Don’t Manage To Curb Emissions By 2030?

The Conversation - 

Is humanity doomed? If in 2030 we have not reduced emissions in a way that means we stay under say 2℃ (I’ve frankly given up on 1.5℃), are we doomed then?

Thongden Studio/Shutterstock

Author
 is Professor in Applied Mathematics, Massey University.

Climate Explained
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre.
Humanity is not doomed, not now or even in a worst-case scenario in 2030.

But avoiding doom — either the end or widespread collapse of civilisation — is setting a pretty low bar.

We can aim much higher than that without shying away from reality.It’s right to focus on global warming of 1.5℃ and 2℃ in the first instance.

The many manifestations of climate change — including heat waves, droughts, water stress, more intense storms, wildfires, mass extinction and warming oceans — all get progressively worse as the temperature rises.

Climate scientist Michael Mann uses the metaphor of walking into an increasingly dense minefield.
Good reasons not to give up just yet

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change described the effects of a 1.5℃ increase in average temperatures in a special report last year. They are also nicely summarised in an article about why global temperatures matter, produced by NASA.

The global average temperature is currently about 1.2℃ higher than what it was at the time of the Industrial Revolution, some 250 years ago. We are already witnessing localised impacts, including the widespread coral bleaching on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

This graph shows different emission pathways and when the world is expected to reach global average temperatures of 1.5℃ or 2℃ above pre-industrial levels. Global Carbon Project, Author provided

Limiting warming to 1.5℃ requires cutting global emissions by 7.6% each year this decade. This does sound difficult, but there are reasons for optimism.

First, it’s possible technically and economically. For example, the use of wind and solar power has grown exponentially in the past decade, and their prices have plummeted to the point where they are now among the cheapest sources of electricity. Some areas, including energy storage and industrial processes such as steel and cement manufacture, still need further research and a drop in price (or higher carbon prices).

Second, it’s possible politically. Partly in response to the Paris Agreement, a growing number of countries have adopted stronger targets. Twenty countries and regions (including New Zealand and the European Union) are now targeting net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier.

A recent example of striking progress comes from Ireland – a country with a similar emissions profile to New Zealand. The incoming coalition’s “programme for government” includes emission cuts of 7% per year and a reduction by half by 2030.

Third, it’s possible socially. Since 2019, we have seen the massive growth of the School Strike 4 Climate movement and an increase in fossil fuel divestment. Several media organisations, including The Conversation, have made a commitment to evidence-based coverage of climate change and calls for a Green New Deal are coming from a range of political parties, especially in the US and Europe.

There is also a growing understanding that to ensure a safe future we need to consume less overall. If these trends continue, then I believe we can still stay below 1.5℃.

The pessimist perspective

Now suppose we don’t manage that. It’s 2030 and emissions have only fallen a little bit. We’re staring at 2℃ in the second half of the century.

At 2℃ of warming, we could expect to lose more than 90% of our coral reefs. Insects and plants would be at higher risk of extinction, and the number of dangerously hot days would increase rapidly.

The challenges would be exacerbated and we would have new issues to consider. First, under the “shifting baseline” phenomenon — essentially a failure to notice slow change and to value what is already lost — people might discount the damage already done. Continuously worsening conditions might become the new normal.

Second, climate impacts such as mass migration could lead to a rise of nationalism and make international cooperation harder. And third, we could begin to pass unpredictable “tipping points” in the Earth system. For example, warming of more than 2°C could set off widespread melting in Antarctica, which in turn would contribute to sea level rise.

But true doom-mongers tend to assume a worst-case scenario on virtually every area of uncertainty. It is important to remember that such scenarios are not very likely.

While bad, this 2030 scenario doesn’t add up to doom — and it certainly doesn’t change the need to move away from fossil fuels to low-carbon options.

Links
at No comments:

(AU) Heavy Industry Co-Operates To Take On Climate Change Challenge

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

A group of Australia’s largest industrial companies has joined a new initiative designed to help them co-operate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from operations and supply chains.

Companies including BHP, Woodside, BlueScope Steel, BP Australia, Orica, APA Group and Australia Gas Infrastructure Group — which together represent 13.6 per cent of Australian industrial greenhouse gas emissions — have signed on to the Australian Industry Energy Transitions Initiative, which hopes more will soon join.

Simon McKeon: "This [initiative] is not about corporate window dressing." Credit: Jesse Marlow

The initiative is to be chaired by Simon McKeon, Chancellor of Monash University, former CSIRO Chairman and 2011 Australian of the Year.

He said that the Australian business and industry community was deeply concerned about climate change and over the years had at times felt constrained rather than supported by governments in its efforts to address it.

“This [initiative] is not about corporate window dressing; it is about growth and success and in some cases even survival,” he said.

He said industry leaders were aware that public scrutiny of every aspect of business operations and their impact on climate change was high and would rapidly increase, leaving those who could not demonstrate how they were rapidly pursuing net zero emissions at significant risk.

Professor McKeon said that the group’s members had already decided that in its decision-making and public positions it would pursue a majority-rules principle and would not be constrained by interests of individual members.

The group aims to help its members decarbonise crucial industrial processes that provide high-export earnings for Australia but remain stubbornly carbon intensive, such as the manufacture of products such as steel, aluminium and other metals such as lithium, copper and nickel, and chemicals including explosives and fertiliser.

The group has also been joined by financial and services sector representatives such as NAB and Australian Super, and has research ties with the CSIRO and The Rocky Mountain Institute, a leading United States research group specialising in resource and energy efficiency.

It is convened by the not-for-profit bodies ClimateWorks Australia and Climate-KIC Australia in collaboration with the Energy Transitions Commission.

ClimateWorks chief executive Anna Skarbek, one of the driving forces of Initiative’s creation, said such initiatives were crucial because emissions were a threat that did not observe national boundaries and because there were commercial advantages in addressing the problem.

“That’s why a supply chain approach is vital,” she said. “Globally, many countries and businesses are already moving to decarbonise supply chains in heavy industry sectors. There are huge opportunities for Australian businesses if they take a proactive approach to getting into this race.”

Links
at No comments:

(AU) Almost 3 Billion Animals Affected By Australian Bushfires, Report Shows

The Guardian -  |


Almost 3 billion animals affected by Australian bushfires – video report

Nearly 3 billion animals were killed or displaced by Australia’s devastating bushfire season of 2019 and 2020, according to scientists who have revealed for the first time the scale of the impact on the country’s native wildlife.

The Guardian has learned that an estimated 143 million mammals, 180 million birds, 51 million frogs and a staggering 2.5 billion reptiles were affected by the fires that burned across the continent. Not all the animals would have been killed by the flames or heat, but scientists say the prospects of survival for those that had withstood the initial impact was “probably not that great” due to the starvation, dehydration and predation by feral animals – mostly cats – that followed.

An interim report based on work by 10 scientists from five institutions, commissioned by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), suggests the toll from the fires goes much further than an earlier estimate of more than 1 billion animals killed.

Scientists from the University of Sydney, University of New South Wales, University of Newcastle, Charles Sturt University and Birdlife Australia contributed to the study.

Dermot O’Gorman, WWF-Australia’s chief executive, said: “It’s hard to think of another event anywhere in the world in living memory that has killed or displaced that many animals. This ranks as one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history.”

Chris Dickman, a professor in ecology at the University of Sydney and fellow of the Australian Academy of Science who oversaw the project, said its central finding was a shock even to the researchers. “Three thousand million native vertebrates is just huge. It’s a number so big that you can’t comprehend it,” he said. “It’s almost half the human population of the planet.”

Dickman said the project showed the impact of the fires was much greater than the devastating loss of koalas, which became the public face of the disaster to international audiences. Many of the reptiles affected were smaller species, such as skinks, that can live in densities of more than 1,500 individuals per hectare.


'We're helpless': thousands of koalas probably dead after wildfires – video

Lead researcher Lily van Eeden, of the University of Sydney, said the study was the first to attempt a continent-wide assessment of the impact of bushfires on animals. The analysis is based on a burned zone of 11.46m hectares (28.31m acres), an area nearly the size of England. It includes about 8.5m hectares of forest, mostly in the southeast and southwest but including 120,000 hectares of northern rainforest.

The study showed the extent to which megafires were reducing the country’s biodiversity, and underlined the need to address the climate crisis and stop the clearing of land for agriculture and development, said Dickman.

“We really need to start thinking about how we can rein in this demonic genie that’s out of the bottle,” he said, referring to climate change. “We need to be looking at how quickly can we decarbonise, how quickly can we stop our manic land-clearing.”

A dead native bird washed up among ash and fire debris on Boydtown Beach, Eden. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/Reuters 

Since the late 1980s Australian scientists have been warning that adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere would increase bushfire risk.

An analysis in March found the risk of the kind of hot and dry conditions that helped drive Australia’s catastrophic fires had increased by a factor of more than four since 1900, and would be eight times more likely if global heating above pre-industrial levels reached 2C.

In evidence to a royal commission into the bushfires in May, the Australian meteorology bureau presented data showing dangerous fire weather in southeast New South Wales and Victoria was now starting in August, three months earlier than in the 1950s.

An endangered Rosenberg’s monitor after being rescued from the fires. Photograph: David Mariuz/EPA

The WWF-backed analysis is the latest of several papers to map the devastating impact of the bushfires.

A peer-reviewed study by three ecology professors in June concluded that the fires had caused “the most dramatic loss of habitat for threatened species and devastation of ecological communities in postcolonial history”.

This month a separate paper drawing on the work of more than 20 leading Australian scientists found that 49 native species not currently listed as threatened could now be at risk, while government data suggested 471 plant and 191 invertebrate species needed urgent attention.

The WWF report says several techniques were used to estimate animal numbers. Mammal numbers were based on published data on the densities of each species in different areas; bird numbers were derived from BirdLife Australia data based on nearly 104,000 standardised surveys; reptile estimates were modelled using knowledge of environmental conditions, body size and a global database of reptile densities.

The scientists said their estimates were conservative due to limitations in the methodologies used. The number of invertebrates, fish and turtles affected was not estimated due to a lack of relevant data. A final report is due next month.

Several scientists have called for an overhaul of threatened species protection in the wake of the bushfires, including better monitoring of biodiversity. Conservationists have linked Australia’s limited monitoring of its wildlife to a funding for environment programmes being cut by more than a third since the conservative Coalition government was elected in 2013.

O’Gorman said the report should be considered as part of an ongoing independent review of Australia’s national environment laws. “Following such a heavy toll on Australia’s wildlife, strengthening this law has never been more important,” he said.

An injured koala rests in a washing basket at the Kangaroo Island wildlife park. Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

An interim report from the review released last week said the country was losing biodiversity at an alarming rate and had one of the highest rates of extinction in the world. It said existing laws were not fit to address current or future environmental challenges.

Scott Morrison’s government responded by announcing it would introduce new national environmental standards against which major development approvals would be judged.

But the government has been criticised for pushing to change the laws to allow it to devolve approval decisions to state and territory governments before completion of the review and before the new standards were ready to improve biodiversity protection.

Links
at No comments: