25/07/2021

(The Guardian) IPCC Steps Up Warning On Climate Tipping Points In Leaked Draft Report

The Guardian -  and agencies

Scientists increasingly concerned about thresholds beyond which recovery may become impossible

Dried area of the Penuelas Lake, in Valparaiso, Chile. Hunger, drought and disease will afflict tens of millions more people within decades, according to a draft UN assessment. Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images

Climate scientists are increasingly concerned that global heating will trigger tipping points in Earth’s natural systems, which will lead to widespread and possibly irrevocable disaster, unless action is taken urgently.

The impacts are likely to be much closer than most people realise, a a draft report from the world’s leading climate scientists suggests, and will fundamentally reshape life in the coming decades even if greenhouse gas emissions are brought under some control.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is preparing a landmark report to be published in stages this summer and next year. Most of the report will not be published in time for consideration by policymakers at Cop26, the UN climate talks taking place in November in Glasgow.

A draft of the IPCC report apparently from early this year was leaked to Agence France-Presse, which reported on its findings on Thursday. The draft warns of a series of thresholds beyond which recovery from climate breakdown may become impossible.

It warns: “Life on Earth can recover from a drastic climate shift by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems … humans cannot.”

Tipping points are triggered when temperatures reach a certain level, whereby one impact rapidly leads to a series of cascading events with vast repercussions.

For instance, as rising temperatures lead to the melting of Arctic permafrost, the unfreezing soil releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that in turn causes more heating.

Climate tipping points could topple like dominoes, warn scientists.  Read more

Other tipping points include the melting of polar ice sheets, which once under way may be almost impossible to reverse even if carbon emissions are rapidly reduced, and which would raise sea levels catastrophically over many decades, and the possibility of the Amazon rainforest switching suddenly to savannah, which scientists have said could come quickly and with relatively small temperature rises.

Bob Ward, the policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said: “Scientists have identified several potential regional and global thresholds or tipping points in the climate beyond which impacts become unstoppable or irreversible, or accelerate.

"They could create huge social and economic responses, such as population displacements and conflict, and so represent the largest potential risks of climate change. Tipping points should be the climate change impacts about which policymakers worry the most, but they are often left out of assessments by scientists and economists because they are difficult to quantify.”

Previous work by the IPCC has been criticised for failing to take account of tipping points. The new report is set to contain the body’s strongest warnings yet on the subject.

Simon Lewis, a professor of global change science at University College London, said: “Nothing in the IPCC report should be a surprise, as all the information comes from the scientific literature.

"But put together, the stark message from the IPCC is that increasingly severe heatwaves, fires, floods and droughts are coming our way with dire impacts for many countries.

"On top of this are some irreversible changes, often called tipping points, such as where high temperatures and droughts mean parts of the Amazon rainforest can’t persist. These tipping points may then link, like toppling dominoes.”

Earth is trapping ‘unprecedented’ amount of heat, Nasa says.  Read more

He added: “The exact timing of tipping points and the links between them is not well understood by scientists, so they have been under-reported in past IPCC assessments.

"The blunter language from the IPCC this time is welcome, as people need to know what is at stake if society does not take action to immediately slash carbon emissions.”

Myles Allen, a professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford, declined to comment on the draft report but stressed that avoiding dire impacts was still possible. “It’s important people don’t get the message ‘we’re doomed anyway so why bother?’.

"This is a fixable problem. We could stop global warming in a generation if we wanted to, which would mean limiting future warming to not much more than has happened already this century.

"We also know how. It’s just a matter of getting on with it,” he said.

According to AFP, the IPCC draft details at least 12 potential tipping points. “The worst is yet to come, affecting our children’s and grandchildren’s lives much more than our own,” the report says.

The report may be subject to minor changes in the coming months as the IPCC shifts its focus to a key executive summary for policymakers.

It says that with 1.1C of warming above pre-industrial levels clocked so far, the climate is already changing.

A decade ago, scientists believed that limiting global warming to 2C above mid-19th-century levels would be enough to safeguard the future.

That goal is enshrined in the 2015 Paris agreement, adopted by nearly 200 nations who vowed to collectively cap warming at “well below” 2C – and 1.5C if possible.

On current trends the world is heading for 3C at best.

Earlier models predicted that Earth-altering climate change was not likely before 2100.

But the UN draft report says prolonged warming even beyond 1.5C could produce “progressively serious, centuries-long and, in some cases, irreversible consequences.”

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(AU ABC) Australia Avoids Great Barrier Reef Global Embarrassment, But The Dangers Of Climate Change Remain For The Reef

ABC News - Michael Slezak

Australia has avoided the embarrassment of the Great Barrier Reef being labelled in danger after lobbying by Environment Minister Sussan Ley. (ABC/AAP)
When the scientific advisors to UNESCO recommended the Great Barrier Reef be added to UNESCO's in-danger list, Environment Minister Sussan Ley claimed the process stunk.

She argued it was a result of dirty politics, not science.

So it's a matter of some irony that her victory this week — avoiding an in-danger list for at least another couple of years — comes after some skilled politicking.

If there are claims that politics have swayed outcomes, then let's strip away the politics and look at the facts — the things that actually matter to the reef.

The Great Barrier Reef will not be added to UNESCO's "in danger" list this year, after environment minister Sussan Ley's whirlwind diplomatic effort won enough support. Read more



In 2015, the Great Barrier Reef narrowly escaped being listed as "in danger".

And regardless of that decision, and whether it fits UNESCO's criteria this time around, the facts show the reef clearly in danger.

'Dead corals don't make babies'

Mass bleaching events on the reef were a new — but still relatively rare — phenomenon back in 2015. The first one was in 1998 and then there was another in 2002.

The combined impact of those two bleaching events, outbreaks of crown of thorns starfish and severe cyclones mean the reef has lost half of its hard coral cover since 1985. 

That rate of loss is unprecedented in the previous 400 years, according to the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

Layered on top of that, the reef was being assaulted by fossil fuel giants developing major infrastructure along its coast.

Three massive LNG plants had just been built in the World Heritage Area on Curtis Island off Gladstone, the construction of which involved dredging.

And Adani was proposing to expand the Abbot point coal terminal, and dump dredge spoil in the World Heritage Area.

Adani's Abbot Point coal storage and dam beside Caley Valley wetlands in north Queensland. (Supplied: Adani)
 
Regardless, Australia was spared the embarrassment of an in-danger listing at the time, with stern words from UNESCO about acting on climate change, and the need for the reef's declines to halt and "reverse".

But fast forward six years and Adani's dumping proceeded, mass bleaching events hit three times in five years, and Australia's policies on climate change have not grown in ambition.

The 2016 and 2017 bleaching events wiped out half the shallow-water corals and the next year, coral reproduction dropped by nearly 90 per cent.

"Dead corals don't make babies," Professor Terry Hughes from James Cook University said at the time.

The reef's return

Despite the 2020 bleaching event, the reef has been in a period of recovery since 2019, and the most fast-growing (but also most fragile) corals have boomed, and coral cover in many parts of the reef has today returned to levels not seen since the 1980s.

Great Barrier Reef in 'recovery window'.
But it could be short lived

The Great Barrier Reef is experiencing a rare window of recovery due to a break in weather and bleaching events according to the latest observations from marine scientists. Read more
But the repeated insults have changed the reef, and left it more vulnerable. Those fast-growing corals make up a much greater percentage of the overall cover, and are much more vulnerable to storms, bleaching and predation.

"Because of these vulnerabilities and likelihood of more climate-related severe weather events, future disturbances may result in rapid decline on these reefs," said Dr Mike Emslie from the Australian Institute of Marine Science when their long-term monitoring results were released this month. 

Through all this, the official outlook for the reef remains "very poor".

And according to the federal government's Great Barrier Reef Authority: "The window of opportunity to improve the Reef's long-term future is now." 

Environment Minister Sussan Ley with Prime Minister Scott Morrison. (AAP)

Despite all that, Australia again avoided the embarrassment of a listing this year.

But without Australia taking international leadership on climate change, it's hard to see how it will be avoided in the years to come.

UNESCO has said that Australia's plan for the reef needed to include actions to address climate change, which are in line with the Paris Agreement, which involves trying to stop climate change at 1.5C of warming.

That makes sense, because even at 1.5C of warming, up to 90 per cent of the world's corals could be lost.

And for Australia's targets to be consistent with the agreement, Australia will need to nearly triple its ambition for 2030.

All that certainly sounds like "danger" for the reef.

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(AU RenewEconomy) Australia Lifted Fossil Fuel Subsidies More Than Any G20 Nation, Says BNEF

RenewEconomy - 


Australia’s financial support of fossil fuels increased by 48% over the five-year period between 2015 and 2019, the biggest increase in fossil fuel subsidies among G20 nations, and putting the country well behind its peers in supporting the goals of the Paris Agreement.

A new report from BloombergNEF (formerly Bloomberg New Energy Finance), called the Climate Policy Factbook, shows that Australia – along with a number of other G20 countries – is failing to keep up with even the bare minimum of climate action necessary.

Australia, it says, is lagging in all three areas highlighted in the report – the phasing out support for fossil fuels, putting a price on carbon emissions, and making companies disclose the risks they face due to climate change.

Moreover, while the report graciously describes Australia’s response to carbon pricing and climate-risk disclosure as “mixed”, it is Australia’s continued financial support for fossil fuel projects which draws the biggest concern, categorised in the report as heading in the “Wrong direction”.

According to BloombergNEF’s figures, Australian financial support for fossil fuels between 2015 and 2019 grew by 48% – the largest increase amongst all G20 nations, totalling $US38 billion ($A52 billion).

In 2019, that translated into a fossil fuel subsidy of $293 per person. And while the share of financial fossil fuel support spent on coal was zero in 2019, this just meant there was more left over to go towards oil and gas consumers.


Tax breaks formed the lion’s share of Australia’s financial fossil fuel support thanks to capex deductions for mining and petroleum operations, fuel-tax credits, reduced fuel-excise rates, and offset schemes.

Bloomberg’s report was less critical of Australia’s positions on both carbon pricing and climate-risk disclosure, but in both instances, there remains significant room for improvement.

Bloomberg says the Safeguard Mechanism “lacks ambition … as it was not designed to cut emissions – just ensure they remain below the baseline.”

And while the Australian Government has scrapped a real carbon price on industry and power generation – claiming such a mechanism would damage business – Australian businesses are nevertheless voluntarily ramping up their own investments to offset carbon emissions.

According to figures published earlier this month by market analyst RepuTex, Australia’s carbon market has grown by 21% in the first six months of 2021, with the spot price rising to $20 a tonne – and expected to increase further to over $50 a tonne by 2030.

Australia’s lacklustre, and at times blatantly obtuse climate action, is unfortunately not an outlier. Bloomberg’s latest Climate Policy Factbook shows that, together, the G20 provided $US636 billion ($A870 billion) in direct support for fossil fuels in 2019 alone – only 10% below 2015 levels.

During the report’s timeframe, eight G20 countries increased their support for fossil fuels – notably Australia, Canada, and the United States – “encouraging the use and production of fossil fuels, distorting prices, and risking carbon ‘lock-in’ – where assets funded today continue to emit high levels of emissions for decades ahead.” To make matters worse, five countries allocated over $US1 billion to coal in 2019.

 
Over the five-year period covered in the Factbook, G20 governments provided $US3.3 trillion worth of direct support for coal, oil and gas, and fossil-fuelled power – an amount which, at today’s prices, could have funded 4,232GW worth of new solar plants.

China, unsurprisingly, provided nearly a quarter of the 2019 financial support for fossil fuels, but by a per-capita accounting was nevertheless well below the G20 average – with China’s fossil fuel support working out to $104 per capita compared to the G20 average of $313 per capita.

In contrast, Saudi Arabia’s support for fossil fuels per capita led the way at $1,962, followed by Argentina well back at $734 and Russia at $523.

“Given that the G-20 accounts for nearly three-quarters of global emissions, progress from those governments in these three areas would mark a huge step forward toward tacking climate change,” said Victoria Cuming, head of global policy at BloombergNEF and lead author of the Factbook.

“So far, they have yet to step up to the plate.”

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