16/08/2021

(AU The Guardian) Think Morrison Was Wrong About Electric Cars And Weekends? Wait Till You Hear Him On Emissions

The Guardian - 

When it comes to facing up to the reality of combatting climate change, the Coalition has utterly failed

‘Scott Morrison did specifically link electrical vehicles to weekend destruction.’ Photograph: James Ross/AAP

The day after the IPCC released its sixth report on climate change, the prime minister told parliament he hadn’t said what we all heard him say.

On Tuesday, Chris Bowen asked Scott Morrison about the IPCC report and, if he was in favour of “more technology” to combat climate change, “why did the prime minister claim that electric vehicles would end the weekend?”

Morrison fobbed the question off to Angus Taylor but not before replying “the claim made by the questioner is false”.

Well now.

It took those listening less time than it took Taylor to get to the dispatch box to produce evidence that the claim made by the questioner was true.
Morrison claims Australia will make our Paris target cuts of 26% 'in a canter' despite all evidence to the contrary
In April 2019, Morrison told reporters that, “Bill Shorten wants to end the weekend when it comes to his policy on electric vehicles, where you’ve got Australians who love being out there in their four-wheel-drives.”

Now maybe he could wriggle out by saying he didn’t say electrical vehicles would end the weekend but Shorten’s policy on electrical vehicles would – this was Morrison’s own explanation made after question time.

But are we so base that we should hold the prime minister of Australia to such a pathetic standard?

Because Morrison did specifically link electrical vehicles to weekend destruction.

‘No place to hide’: pressure on Australia to end support for new fossil fuel projects after IPCC report.  Read more

He said (and you can watch the video just to check) that “the cheapest car you can currently buy, as an electric vehicle … is about $45,000 to $50,000.

" That’s the cheapest car Bill Shorten wants to make available to you to buy in the future, and I’ll tell you what, it’s not going to tow your trailer.

"It’s not going to tow your boat. It’s not going to get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family”.

That claim was incorrect. Electric vehicles in 2019 could already tow your boat or trailer, and the ALP’s policy related to cars in 2030, by which time I think we can say the technology will have advanced.

But of course, not only was he wrong about the power of electric vehicles, he was also wrong about the policy – which was that by 2030 the ALP aimed for half of new car sales to be electric vehicles, not that you would not be able to buy or own a combustion engine SUV.

It was a mistake about a policy that involved a mistake about electric vehicles and this week, to complete the trifecta, he tried to pretend he didn’t mean what we all heard him say.

Not surprisingly this was about climate change – a topic where truth and reality departed the Coalition party room decades ago.

Scott Morrison walks back ‘end the weekend’ rhetoric on electric vehicles.  Read more

It fits perfectly with his claims that Australia will make our Paris target emissions cuts of 26% “in a canter” despite all evidence to the contrary.

But while misleading the public is bad (if, alas, taken as a given now), worse is that this claim ignores the fact that a 26% cut remains inadequate.

The IPCC report this week outlined two scenarios for reducing emissions that have a chance of preventing temperatures from rising by more than 2C above pre-industrial averages.

To remain below a 2C rise we need to cut 2020 emissions by 13% by 2030, and to prevent temperatures rising by more than 1.5C we need a 43% cut.



Australia’s current target of a 26% cut from 2005 levels translates to just an 11% cut over the next decade.

That’s bad enough; the real problem is we’re only on target to cut them by 7%.

We are failing to do even the inadequate.

But how can we expect otherwise?

We have a government led by a man not only unwilling to face up to the reality of what needs to be done, but who cannot even be honest about his own statements that were made precisely to undermine efforts to do what needs to be done.

To combat climate change, you first need to be honest about the issue with the public.

Scott Morrison has utterly failed in this regard.

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(USA NPR) Computer Models Of Civilization Offer Routes To Ending Global Warming

NPR - 

Electrical workers check solar panels at a photovoltaic power station built in a fishpond in Haian in China's eastern Jiangsu province. STR/AFP via Getty Images








As the world's top climate scientists released a report full of warnings this week, they kept insisting that the world still has a chance to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

"It is still possible to forestall most of the dire impacts, but it really requires unprecedented, transformational change," said Ko Barrett, vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "The idea that there still is a pathway forward, I think, is a point that should give us some hope."

That hopeful pathway, in which dangerous changes to the world's climate eventually stop, is the product of giant computer simulations of the world economy.

They're called integrated assessment models. There are half a dozen major versions of them: four developed in Europe, one in Japan, and one in the U.S., at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

"What we mostly are doing, is trying to explore what is needed to meet the Paris goals." says Detlef van Vuuren, at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, which developed one of the models.

How to cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero in 40 years

World leaders agreed in Paris to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The planet has already warmed about 1 degree Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.

Meeting that goal will mean cutting net greenhouse gas emissions to zero within about 40 years. It would require profound changes; so profound, it's not immediately clear that it's even possible.

That's why van Vuuren and his colleagues turned to their computer models for help. "How is it possible to go to zero emissions?" he says. "That's for transport, that's for housing, that's for electricity."

Each of these models starts with data about current sources of greenhouse emissions. They include cars and buses, auto rickshaws, airplanes, power plants, home furnaces and rice paddies. The models also include assumptions about international trade, prices, and the costs of new technologies.

Then the scientists force their virtual worlds to change course, by introducing limits on greenhouse emissions. The models then try to satisfy that requirement in the most cost-effective way, as long as it's technologically feasible and doesn't run up against limits like the supply of land or other natural resources.

The good news is that the models found a way to meet that target, at least in scenarios where world governments were inclined to cooperate in meeting their Paris commitments. In fact, according to Keywan Riahi, at the International Institute for Applied Systems, in Austria, they found multiple paths to zero carbon.

"The models tell us that there are, first of all, alternative pathways possible; that there are choices available to the decision-maker," he says.

Different models, using different assumptions, arrive at contrasting visions of the future world. But they're all dramatically different from the situation today.

Some models show people responding to higher energy prices or government regulations by changing their lifestyle. They move to more energy-saving houses, and give up their cars in favor of a new and better kind of public transit. In addition to traditional bus lines, autonomous vehicles respond like Uber — taking people where they need to go.

Riahi likes this version best. "I'm convinced that a fundamental demand-side restructuring would also lead to a better quality of life," he says.

Other scenarios show people still using plenty of energy, which in turn requires a huge boost in production of clean electricity. It would mean 10 or 20 times more land covered with solar and wind farms, compared to now, plus more power plants burning wood or other biofuels, outfitted with equipment to capture and store the carbon dioxide that's released.
Politics and individuals' preferences could foil the models

Riahi is quick to point out that what happens in the models may not be feasible in real life. They don't account for political obstruction, for instance, or human preferences. People may just want to drive an expensive car, rather than take public transit, even when the models says that choice isn't economically rational.

But the models also can be far too pessimistic, in particular about technological innovation. Ten years ago, van Vuuren says, they never anticipated the rise of cheap solar power. "We have been in the extremely fortunate situation that the cost of renewables has declined rapidly in the past decade." This has made the task of reducing carbon emissions much easier.

For all their shortcomings, though, these models remain the primary way that scientists and policymakers figure out options for the future. They quantify tradeoffs and consequences that may not be clearly apparent. If countries want to turn trees or crops into fuel, for instance, it means less land for growing food or for natural forests. Also, the models make it clear that international cooperation is essential, with rich countries helping poorer countries to cut their emissions.

The results of the computer modeling are like fuzzy maps, pointing out routes that could help the world avoid disaster.

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(Business Insider) Astronauts Say They're Saddened To Watch The Climate Crisis From The Space Station: 'We Can See All Of Those Effects From Up Here'

Business Insider - Morgan McFall-Johnsen

NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Mark Vande Hei speak with Insider from the International Space Station, August 11, 2021. NASA

Astronauts have a better view of Earth than anybody, but lately it's a discouraging one.

"We've been very saddened to see fires over huge sections of the Earth, not just the United States," NASA astronaut Megan McArthur told Insider on a recent call from the space station.

Wildfires are raging across the US, Canada, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Algeria, and Siberia.

McArthur's crewmate, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, has posted photos of those blazes from above on Twitter.

Wildfires are one of the most visible hallmarks of the climate crisis. This summer, they've come alongside historic heat waves and the western US's worst drought in the 20-year history of the US Drought Monitor.

A new report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that "fire weather" will probably increase by 2050 in North America, Central America, parts of South America, the Mediterranean, southern Africa, north Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. That means more days where conditions are warm, dry, and windy enough to trigger and sustain wildfires.

The amount of fuel available to burn in those places — dry vegetation — is also likely to increase as rising temperatures cause the air to absorb more moisture and bring about more droughts.

The IPCC report, released Monday, is the first part of the group's sixth assessment, which recruits hundreds of experts to analyze years of scientific research on climate change. Those experts determined that global temperatures will almost certainly rise at least 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average by 2040.

That may sound small, but it brings about huge changes across the planet, including further melting of glaciers and polar ice caps. This contributes to sea-level rise, and water expands as it heats up, so it is virtually certain that oceans will continue rising through the end of this century. In the best case scenario, the IPCC authors said, oceans will rise by nearly a foot over the next 80 years.

But there is still time to prevent 2 degrees Celsius of warming and the even more catastrophic changes that would bring, the report said.

"Over many years, scientists around the world have been sounding this alarm bell," McArthur said. "This is a warning for the entire global community. It's going to take the entire global community to face this and to work through these challenges."

Astronauts can see the climate crisis unfolding across the planet
A photo of Hurricane Laura taken from the International Space Station on August 25, 2020. Chris Cassidy/NASA
Astronauts can see other signs of the changing climate, too: "Big tropical storms — those are always coming, and potentially the flooding that comes after them," McArthur said. "We can see all of those effects from up here."

Future astronauts will probably observe even more of that. The IPCC report found that combinations of extreme events like heavy rainfall and hurricane-caused storm surge, paired with rising seas, will continue to make flooding more likely in coming decades.

Other satellites can also see signs of drought, like dried-up reservoirs across California.

"The other thing that we can see, of course, is the very thin lens of atmosphere," McArthur said. "That is what protects our Earth and everything on it. And we see how fragile that is, and we know how important it is."

The atmosphere glows above the southeastern African coast, as seen from the International Space Station. NASA
The burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil is drastically changing that thin atmosphere by filling it with heat-trapping gas.

In 2019, the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere was higher than at any time in at least 2 million years, according to the IPCC report. Concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide — more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide — were higher than at any time in at least 800,000 years.

On August 4, 2021, an astronaut on the International Space Station shot a photo of the Dixie fire’s thick smoke plume. NASA/JSC

As those gases fill the atmosphere, they prevent more and more heat from the sun from bouncing back into space. That's what's causing global temperatures to rise and bringing about the extreme weather that astronauts are watching in horror.

"That is the place that we need to be able to live. So it's important that we take ownership of whatever we can do to help maintain it," NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei told Insider.

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