Lethal Heating: 12/04/20

04/12/2020

'Mock Cop26' Activists Vote On Treaty Ahead Of 2021 Climate Summit

The Guardian - Jessica Murray

Young people from 140 countries presented policies to UK climate action champion

Mitzi Jonelle Tan, 22, from Manila, Philippines, one of the student organisers of Mock Cop26. Composite: Jessica Murray/Guardian Design Team

Young people from 140 countries who attended an online “mock Cop26” climate summit have presented a treaty of 18 policies to Nigel Topping, the UK’s high level climate action champion.

After two weeks of negotiations, delegates from the international youth-led conference presented their formal treaty to Topping during the event’s closing ceremony on Tuesday, and called on world leaders to prioritise the policies during Cop26, which was postponed for a year because of the pandemic and is now due to be held in Glasgow in November 2021.

Their demands include climate education at every level of formal education, tougher ecocide laws, stronger regulation on air quality, banning the offshoring of emissions and a commitment to limiting global heating to below 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Suphane Dash-Alleyne, a delegate from Guyana, South America, said: “Mock Cop26 sends a strong message to world leaders that young people can coordinate global negotiations and we have the solutions. Now is the time for us to have a seat at the table.”

A legal team, including lawyers from the legal charity ClientEarth, worked with delegates to formalise the statement into a treaty, which countries could adopt into law.

James Thornton, chief executive and founder of ClientEarth, said: “The youth behind Mock Cop26 have created a powerful statement calling on governments to take action to protect future generations from the worst impacts of climate change. Decisions taken by governments now will affect the youngest generation for many years to come.”

Mock COP26 was organised at short notice to fill the void left by the postponed Cop26 conference.

The Mock Cop26 policies were voted on by 330 young people across the globe who attended the event, with priority given to countries most affected by the climate crisis – people from the global south made up 72% of delegates.

Sainey Gibba, a 23-year-old delegate from the Gambia, said: “My country is very vulnerable to the impact of climate change, particularly rising sea levels and coastal erosion, so I feel like Mock Cop26 has really helped us raise our concerns and speak for the voiceless.

“Cop26 should never have been postponed, they should have done it virtually like how we have done it. They should really learn from us because there is so much urgency.”

The student staff team who organised Mock Cop26 is made up of 18 students from Australia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Canada, Ecuador, India, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, Philippines, Solomon Islands and the UK. Photograph: Mock Cop26

The Mock Cop26 organisers grouped delegates by time zones to ensure they could attend the two-week schedule of talks and discussions around their studies, and they hope the online conference could become a model to help future major conferences produce less carbon emissions.

“If we have been able to organise a conference online where we got more than 300 delegates from more than 140 countries to come together and make policies, I think our leaders could too,” said Sonali, a 21-year-old event organiser from Patna, India. “It reduces the carbon footprint massively when people don’t have to travel.”

The delegates and volunteers involved in Mock Cop26 now plan to spend the next 12 months urging politicians to implement their policies nationally to raise ambition on the run up to Cop26.

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Climate Change: 2020 Set To Be One Of The Three Warmest Years On Record

BBC News - Matt McGrath

The Sun shining through the heat haze from a wildfire in California. Getty Images

The Earth continued to endure a period of significant heating in 2020 according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Its provisional assessment suggests this year will be one of the three hottest, just behind 2016 and 2019.

The warmest six years in global records dating back to 1850 have now all occurred since 2015.

The most notable warmth was in the Siberian Arctic, where temperatures were 5C above average.

How do we know the temperature for 2020 when the year isn't over yet?

To work out the annual rise in temperatures for their State of the Climate report, the WMO uses information from five different global datasets.

They then compare modern readings to temperatures taken between 1850-1900. This baseline figure is sometimes referred to as pre-industrial levels.

With data available from January to October this year, the WMO says 2020 is set to be around 1.2C above the baseline, but with a margin of error of 0.1C.

All five datasets currently have 2020 as the second warmest, behind 2016 and ahead of 2019, based on comparisons with similar periods in previous years.

However the expectation from scientists is that the temperature data from November and December will likely see enough cooling to push 2020 into third spot.

That's because a La Niña weather event has developed in the Pacific Ocean and this normally depresses temperatures.

The biggest differences from the long term average temperature were seen in the Siberian Arctic.

Despite this, the WMO is certain that 2020 will remain one of the warmest three.

"Record warm years have usually coincided with a strong El Niño event, as was the case in 2016," said Prof Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary General.

"We are now experiencing a La Niña, which has a cooling effect on global temperatures, but has not been sufficient to put a brake on this year's heat."

Are these small temperature differences important?

These relatively similar global temperature figure recorded over the past few years hide considerable differences at local level.

In 2020, Siberia saw temperatures around 5C above average, which culminated in a reading of 38C at Verkhoyansk on the 20th June, which is provisionally the highest known temperature recorded anywhere north of the Arctic Circle.

Icebergs off Greenland as the Arctic summer melt was second largest on record. Getty Images

January to October was also the warmest such period on record in Europe.

But some places were below average including parts of Canada, Brazil, India and Australia.

Overall though the 2020 figure reinforces the view that climate warming, driven by human activities is persisting. The decade from 2011 to 2020 is the warmest yet recorded.

Where 2020's heat went

The majority of the excess heat generated from warming gases in the atmosphere ends up in the oceans.

This is putting added strain on the seas, with around 80% of global waters experiencing at least one marine heatwave this year. These events, similar to heatwaves on land, see prolonged exposure to high temperatures which can have devastating impacts on marine creatures and ecosystems.

A long-running heatwave off the coast of California, known as "the blob", was said to have killed up to a million seabirds in 2015-16.

Researchers say that these events have become more than 20 times more frequent over the past 40 years.

"About 90% of the heat accumulating within the climate system from anthropogenic climate change is stored in the ocean," said Prof John Church from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

"This latest update from WMO clearly shows the oceans are continuing to warm, and at an accelerating rate, contributing to sea-level rise. This means climate change has significant momentum committing us to further change over the coming decades."

Ongoing warming

The WMO says that warming continues to drive melting in many parts of the world, including Greenland where around 152 billion tonnes of ice was lost from the ice sheet in the year to August 2020.

There were 30 named storms during the North Atlantic hurricane season, breaking the record for the number of such events.

Europe saw another record-breaking summer in 2020, making life uncomfortable for travellers. Getty Images

As well as record numbers, new evidence suggested that hurricanes get stronger when they hit land because of rising temperatures.

Other impacts noted by the WMO this year included wildfires in Siberia, Australia and along the US West Coast and South America, which saw plumes of smoke circumnavigate the globe.

Floods in Africa and South East Asia displaced large numbers of people and undermined food security for millions.

What has been the reaction to this report?

The findings of the WMO report won't come as a surprise to most observers.

"The state of the global climate? Parlous," said Prof Dave Reay from University of Edinburgh, UK.

"These annual updates of deteriorating planetary health always make for bleak reading; this year's is a full red alert. Surging heat, intensifying droughts and rampant wildfires all speak of the acute impacts of climate change in 2020. They also warn of the chronic undermining of global carbon sinks - the oceans, trees and soils around the world - that is underway.

"Throw yet more emissions and warming at them and they will rip the Paris climate goals from our grasp forever. The year ahead will be defined by our recovery from Covid-19, the centuries ahead will be defined by how green that recovery actually is."

Hurricane Iota left destruction in its trail in Nicaragua. Getty Images

Environmental campaigners say the report adds urgency to calls for the recovery, post-Covid, to focus on climate change and the environment.

"Although the pandemic will have been the biggest concern to many people in the developed world in 2020, for millions in climate vulnerable places the climate emergency remains the biggest threat and sadly there is no simple vaccine to fix the climate. But keeping fossil fuels in the ground would be a good start," said Dr Kat Kramer, from Christian Aid.

"These findings show just how important it is to ensure the government's economic recovery measures don't entrench the fossil fuel economy but act to accelerate the transition to a zero-carbon world."

Impact on nature

According to a new report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), climate change is now the biggest threat to the most important world heritage sites.

The IUCN says that 83 such sites are now threatened by rising temperatures, including the Great Barrier Reef where ocean warming, acidification and extreme weather have all contributed to a dramatic decline.

It has been rated as having a "critical" outlook for the first time.

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(AU) Great Barrier Reef Outlook 'Critical' As Climate Change Called Number One Threat To World Heritage

The Guardian - Lisa Cox

The outlook for Australian sites including the Blue Mountains and the Gondwana rainforests has deteriorated, report says

The outlook for the Great Barrier Reef has worsened from ‘significant concern’ to ‘critical’, the International Union for Conservation of Nature says. Photograph: James Cook University/AFP via Getty Images

The outlook for five Australian world heritage sites including the Great Barrier Reef, the Blue Mountains and the Gondwana rainforests, has deteriorated, according to a global report that finds climate change is now the number one threat to the planet’s natural world heritage.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, the official advisory body on nature to the Unesco world heritage committee, has found in its world heritage outlook that climate change threatens a third of the world’s natural heritage sites. The outlook has been published every three years since 2014.

It finds the conservation outlook for the Great Barrier Reef has worsened from “significant concern” to “critical” – the most urgent status under the IUCN system. The reef suffered its third mass coral bleaching in five years during the 2019-20 summer.

In the aftermath of the 2019-20 bushfire disaster, the Gondwana rainforests – comprising 40 separate reserves between Newcastle and Brisbane – and the Greater Blue Mountains world heritage area have seen their outlook move to “significant concern” in 2020 from “good with some concerns” in 2017.

The fires affected more than 80% of the Blue Mountains world heritage area and more than 50% of the Gondwana rainforests, with the bushfire royal commission finding the disaster was just a glimpse of what climate change would deliver to the country in the future.

Western Australia’s Shark Bay and Ningaloo Coast world heritage sites have deteriorated in the IUCN outlook from “good” to “good with some concerns”.

Other Australian world heritage sites remained in the same categories from previous reports including the Kakadu National Park and Queensland’s wet tropics, which are both listed as “significant concern”.

The renowned coral reef scientist, Terry Hughes, said it was logical the IUCN had moved the Great Barrier Reef into the critical category after three bleaching events in five years.

But he said it didn’t make sense that others, such as the Ningaloo Reef that fringes the Ningaloo Coast, were not also considered critical given the scale of the threat climate change posed to coral reefs worldwide.

“It’s not really credible to say the Barrier Reef is now super vulnerable to climate change but other coral reefs around the world aren’t,” he said. “Unesco have actually made that case very clearly.”

Australia has 12 natural world heritage sites, four cultural world heritage sites and four mixed world heritage sites.

The report finds climate change is either a very high or high threat to 11 out of the 16 natural and mixed sites and that the “manifold” effects of the climate crisis – including increased frequency and severity of fires, droughts and coral bleaching – were often accompanied by other threats, leading to a poorer outlook overall.

K’gari/Fraser Island, which was ranked “good with some concerns”, is the latest world heritage area to suffer the effects of catastrophic fire, with half of the island burnt in a bushfire that has been alight for six weeks.

On Wednesday, the chair of the next major UN climate summit pointedly thanked Australia’s state and territory governments – but not the Morrison government – for committing to targets of net zero emissions by 2050.

Last month, the IUCN World Conservation Congress passed a motion moved by an alliance of Australian environment groups that called on the Morrison government to show leadership and ensure its planned reforms of Australia’s national environmental laws delivered more for the environment, including world heritage areas.

“Australia’s World Heritage sites are places of outstanding global significance and it is our privilege – and responsibility – to lead in protecting these values, including from the impacts of climate change,” said Rachel Lowry, WWF-Australia’s chief conservation officer.

Lowry said a stronger government plan to address the climate crisis and reduce emissions was “essential for these special places to remain”.

“There is no doubt that if we are to learn from the recent devastating bushfires, as well as the findings in this report, we must commit to regenerating Australia and setting our nation on a pathway where both people and nature benefit,” she said.

The Australian Marine Conservation Society’s Great Barrier Reef campaign manager, Dr Lissa Schindler, said: “The federal government’s refusal to act decisively on climate change is unforgivable when they know that global heating is so dangerous for our reef.

“We call on the federal government to take its role as custodians of our international icon seriously by committing to a pathway compatible with 1.5C of heating in a wide-ranging national climate change policy,” she said.

A spokesman for the federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, said the report reflected the extreme weather events Australia had experience over the past 12 months.

He noted the IUCN had reviewed Australia’s protection and management of world heritage sites favourably, which he said was due to the “significant work” of federal, state and territory governments at those sites.

“Australia is committed to playing its role in a global response to climate change, it is investing unprecedented amounts protecting the reef, in bushfire wildlife and habitat recovery and in supporting our world heritage places,” the minister’s spokesman said.

The IUCN’s director general, Bruno Oberle, said countries owed it to future generations to protect the world’s “most precious places”.

He said the report showed “the damage climate change is wreaking on natural world heritage, from shrinking glaciers to coral bleaching to increasingly frequent and severe fires and droughts”.

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