The Burning Issue: Climate Change and the Australian Bushfire Threat

Climate Council - Lesley Hughes 

Australia’s bushfire preparedness is under threat from climate change as bushfire seasons here and in the Northern Hemisphere increasingly overlap, putting new demands on critical shared firefighting aircraft.
Our latest report, The Burning Issue: Climate Change and the Australian Bushfire Threat, found the length of the fire season increased by almost 19% globally between 1978 and 2013. Longer fire seasons are reducing opportunities for controlled burning and intensifying pressure on firefighting resources.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT

Key Findings

1. Record-breaking spring temperatures in 2015, exacerbated by climate change, have driven an early start to the bushfire season in Australia.

• The maximum temperatures in Melbourne on October 5th and 6th were the hottest ever recorded for the first week of October while temperatures were at least 12°C above average for most of southern Australia on at least one day during that week.
• Globally, seven months this year have broken their monthly temperature records and 2015 is very likely to surpass 2014 as the hottest year on record.
• Longer, hotter and more intense heatwaves, and more frequent and severe droughts, are driving up the likelihood of very high bushfire risk, particularly in the southwest and southeast of Australia.

2. North America has faced a deadly bushfire season in 2015.

• The North American bushfires have been driven by years of severe drought in combination with warmer temperatures, a situation Australia is likely to face with increasing frequency in future.
• Between January and October of 2015, over 50,000 bushfires burned over 38,000 km2 of land – an area more than half the size of Tasmania, making it one of the worst bushfire years on record in the US.

3. Australia’s bushfire preparedness is at risk from climate change as bushfire seasons increasingly lengthen and overlap with fire seasons in the Northern Hemisphere.

• Large areas of southeast and southwest Australia are facing above-average bushfire potential for the 2015/2016 summer. Most of the southeast coast of Australia is expected to experience above normal bushfire potential due to a long-term rainfall deficit, relatively low soil moisture, and relatively warm conditions predicted for the summer.
• Globally, the length of the fire weather season increased by nearly 19% between 1979 and 2013. Longer fire seasons will reduce opportunities for controlled burning and increase pressure on firefighting resources.
• Some of Australia’s key firefighting aircraft are leased from overseas and are contracted to North American firefighting services during their summer. The fire seasons of the two hemispheres – and the demand for these critical shared firefighting aircraft – will increasingly overlap, challenging such arrangements.
• During the past decade, state fire agencies have increasingly needed to share personnel and other firefighting resources during peak demand periods. This pressure will continue to intensify and the number of professional firefighters will need to double by 2030 to meet demand.

4. Stronger climate change action is needed to reduce bushfire risk.

• Australia’s emissions reduction target of 26-28% on 2005 levels by 2030 is not sufficient to protect Australians from worsening bushfires and extreme weather events.
• Australia must cut emissions more rapidly and deeply to join global efforts to stabilise the world’s climate and the vast majority of Australia’s fossil fuel reserves must stay in ground.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT

October 2015 Becomes First Month To Cross Key Global Warming Boundary

Mashable - Andrew Freedman

Visualization of sea surface temperature departures from average across the Pacific Ocean, showing the hallmark signs of El Nino. Image: NOAA

The planet has not been only record warm this year, it's been so unusually mild that the temperature records themselves have set records of their own. This is the case with October 2015, according to new preliminary NASA data released Tuesday.
The information shows that October 2015 was by far the warmest October on record, dating back to 1880. Not only that, but October also had the largest temperature departure from average of any month on record.
The scorchingly hot October seals the deal: 2015 is almost certain to become the Earth’s hottest year since instrument records began in 1880. This means the year will beat out 2014, and become yet another data point showing that manmade global warming, plus natural climate variability, is pushing the climate into new territory.

Global average surface temperatures so far this year versus the other warmest years on record. Image: NOAA NCEI

The global average surface temperature came in at 1.04 degrees Celsius above average for the month, which is the biggest warm temperature anomaly in recorded history, the NASA data shows.
See also: Earth's thermostat is stuck on bake as October shatters records for global warmth

Global temperature anomalies for the month of October 2015, according to NASA. Image: NASA GISSTEMP

Importantly, this was also the first time that a single month exceeded the 1-degree Celsius temperature anomaly, surpassing the 0.97 degree Celsius temperature anomaly in January 2007. This is a symbolic milestone, but one that will be broken more frequently as the climate continues to warm due to increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the air because of human activities.
The NASA data corroborates information released by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) on Monday, also showing that October was the warmest such month on record, as the year heads toward setting a record for the warmest calendar year, beating out 2014 for the top spot.
On Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its October temperature data, and also found the month was the warmest such month on record, and broke the record for the largest monthly global temperature anomaly in 1,630 months of record-keeping. The agency said the month fell just short of the 1 degree Celsius anomaly, at 0.98 degrees Celsius above average, but nevertheless solidly beat the previous record monthly temperature anomaly, which was set in September.
According to NOAA, 2015 is cruising toward the record for the planet's warmest year since instrument records began.
Parts of South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Africa, Europe, Australia, the Pacific Ocean and the western U.S. were all record warm in October, according to the NOAA data.
In the JMA data set, which analyzes similar temperature records but processes them differently than NOAA and NASA do, this October beat October 2014 by 0.34 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0.19 degrees Celsius. According to NASA, though, this October beat October of last year by 0.32 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0.19 degrees Celsius.



According to the JMA, this was the largest temperature departure from average for any month so far this year.
The JMA information shows October was unusually mild throughout areas of the Northeast, Central, and South Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, much of North America, parts of Asia, and most of Europe — as well as all of Australia, Africa and the Middle East.
The warmth in the Central Pacific is related to a strong El Niño event that is characterized by unusually mild ocean temperatures along the equator, from the central Pacific to the west coast of South America.

Global average surface temperature anomalies through October 2015, showing where 2015 as a whole is likely to end up. Image: NASA GISSTEMP

El Niño events cause changes in weather patterns around the world by altering the way heat is distributed throughout the oceans and atmosphere. They also tend to boost global average temperatures higher, in addition to the effects of long-term manmade global warming.
The NOAA has found a 97% chance that 2015 will break the all-time calendar year temperature record for the planet. On Tuesday, Gavin Schmidt, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, said it is now 99% likely that 2015 will set a calendar year temperature record.

According to NASA, the January through October period ranks as the warmest such period in its 136 years of record-keeping, with a temperature anomaly of 0.82 degrees Celsius, or 1.45 degrees Fahrenheit. This beats global average temperature anomalies for the same period last year, which was 0.76 degrees Celsius, or 1.37 degrees Fahrenheit above average.
For the year as a whole, global average surface temperatures are likely to reach 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial temperatures for the first time, according to the UK Met Office, NOAA and now NASA as well.
Even 2014, which was the previous record-holder for the warmest year in recorded history, did not eclipse this symbolic, but important, boundary.

Global average surface temperature anomalies for the warmest years in NASA's data set. Image: NASA GISS

The 1-degree mark means that the world is already halfway to the internationally agreed warming target of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), above preindustrial levels. Since the stated goal of the Paris Climate Summit, which kicks off on Nov. 30, is to craft an agreement that will limit global warming to the 2-degree target or lower, it's clear that diplomats do not have an easy task before them.
In fact, the assessments produced to date show the planet will likely exceed the 2-degree threshold, at least for a period of time, even if the Paris agreement puts stringent emissions limits in place that are rigorously enforced.

The Consequences Of Climate Change

NASA

The potential future effects of global climate change include more frequent wildfires, longer periods of drought in some regions and an increase in the number, duration and intensity of tropical storms. Credit: Left - Mellimage/Shutterstock.com, center - Montree Hanlue/Shutterstock.com.

Global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted and trees are flowering sooner.

Effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are now occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves.
Taken as a whole, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time.

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Scientists have high confidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come, largely due to greenhouse gases produced by human activities. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which includes more than 1,300 scientists from the United States and other countries, forecasts a temperature rise of 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century.
According to the IPCC, the extent of climate change effects on individual regions will vary over time and with the ability of different societal and environmental systems to mitigate or adapt to change.
The IPCC predicts that increases in global mean temperature of less than 1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 3 degrees Celsius) above 1990 levels will produce beneficial impacts in some regions and harmful ones in others. Net annual costs will increase over time as global temperatures increase.
"Taken as a whole," the IPCC states, "the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time."

Future effects
Some of the long-term effects of global climate change in the United States are as follows, according to the Third National Climate Assessment Report:

---

Change will continue through this century and beyond
Global climate is projected to continue to change over this century and beyond. The magnitude of climate change beyond the next few decades depends primarily on the amount of heat-trapping gases emitted globally, and how sensitive the Earth’s climate is to those emissions.

Earth’s vital signs: Sea level
An indicator of current global sea level as measured by satellites; updated monthly.

GISS climate models
NASA visualizations of future precipitation scenarios.

Climate Time Machine
Go backward and forward in time with this interactive visualization that illustrates how the Earth's climate has changed in recent history.

---

Temperatures will continue to rise
Because human-induced warming is superimposed on a naturally varying climate, the temperature rise has not been, and will not be, uniform or smooth across the country or over time.

Video: Global warming from 1880 to 2013
A visualization of global temperature changes since 1880 based on NASA GISS data.

21st century temperature scenarios
NASA visualization of future global temperature projections based on current climate models

---

Frost-free season (and growing season) will lengthen

The length of the frost-free season (and the corresponding growing season) has been increasing nationally since the 1980s, with the largest increases occurring in the western United States, affecting ecosystems and agriculture. Across the United States, the growing season is projected to continue to lengthen.
In a future in which heat-trapping gas emissions continue to grow, increases of a month or more in the lengths of the frost-free and growing seasons are projected across most of the U.S. by the end of the century, with slightly smaller increases in the northern Great Plains. The largest increases in the frost-free season (more than eight weeks) are projected for the western U.S., particularly in high elevation and coastal areas. The increases will be considerably smaller if heat-trapping gas emissions are reduced.

Visualization comparing 1950s and 1920s
This NASA visualization presents observational evidence that the growing season (climatological spring) is occurring earlier in the Northern Hemisphere.

---

Changes in precipitation patterns

Average U.S. precipitation has increased since 1900, but some areas have had increases greater than the national average, and some areas have had decreases. More winter and spring precipitation is projected for the northern United States, and less for the Southwest, over this century. Projections of future climate over the U.S. suggest that the recent trend towards increased heavy precipitation events will continue. This trend is projected to occur even in regions where total precipitation is expected to decrease, such as the Southwest.

NASA visualizations of future precipitation scenarios
These NASA visualizations show model projections of the precipitation changes from 2000 to 2100 as a percentage difference between the 30-year precipitation averages and the 1970-1999 average.

Precipitation Measurement Missions
The official website for NASA's fleet of Earth science missions that study rainfall and other types precipitation around the globe.

Precipitation quiz
Earth’s water is stored in ice and snow, lakes and rivers, the atmosphere and the oceans. How much do you know about Earth's water cycle and the crucial role it plays in our climate?

---

More droughts and heat waves
Droughts in the Southwest and heat waves (periods of abnormally hot weather lasting days to weeks) everywhere are projected to become more intense, and cold waves less intense everywhere.
Summer temperatures are projected to continue rising, and a reduction of soil moisture, which exacerbates heat waves, is projected for much of the western and central U.S. in summer.
By the end of this century, what have been once-in-20-year extreme heat days (one-day events) are projected to occur every two or three years over most of the nation.

NASA visualizations of future precipitation scenarios
These NASA visualizations show model projections of the precipitation changes from 2000 to 2100 as a percentage difference between the 30-year precipitation averages and the 1970-1999 average.

NASA: Megadroughts in U.S. West projected to be worst of millennium

Droughts in the Southwest and Central Plains of the United States in the second half of the 21st century could be drier and longer than anything humans have seen in those regions in the last 1,000 years, according to a NASA study published in Science Advances on February 12, 2015.

---

Hurricanes will become stronger and more intense

The intensity, frequency and duration of North Atlantic hurricanes, as well as the frequency of the strongest (Category 4 and 5) hurricanes, have all increased since the early 1980s. The relative contributions of human and natural causes to these increases are still uncertain. Hurricane-associated storm intensity and rainfall rates are projected to increase as the climate continues to warm.

NASA: What are the chances of another Hurricane Katrina?

According to a new NASA study, a string of nine years without a major hurricane landfall in the U.S. is Iikely to come along only once every 177 years. This video explains the findings of this study.

---

Sea level will rise 1-4 feet by 2100
Global sea level has risen by about 8 inches since reliable record keeping began in 1880. It is projected to rise another 1 to 4 feet by 2100. This is the result of added water from melting land ice and the expansion of seawater as it warms.
In the next several decades, storm surges and high tides could combine with sea level rise and land subsidence to further increase flooding in many of these regions. Sea level rise will not stop in 2100 because the oceans take a very long time to respond to warmer conditions at the Earth’s surface. Ocean waters will therefore continue to warm and sea level will continue to rise for many centuries at rates equal to or higher than that of the current century.

Earth’s vital signs: Sea level
An indicator of current global sea level as measured by satellites; updated monthly.

Sea level quiz
Test your knowledge of sea level rise and its effect on global populations.

---

Arctic likely to become ice-free
The Arctic Ocean is expected to become essentially ice free in summer before mid-century.

Earth’s vital signs: Sea ice
An indicator of changes in the Arctic sea ice minimum over time. Arctic sea ice extent both affects and is affected by global climate change.

Global Ice Viewer
An interactive exploration of how global warming is affecting sea ice, glaciers and continental ice sheets worldwide.

By One Measure, This Wicked El Niño Is The Strongest Ever Recorded: What It Means

Washington Post - Jason Samenow

The El Niño event of 2015-2016 is making history, wreaking weather havoc around the world and forecast to unleash many weather surprises through the coming winter.

As of today, the warm ocean temperatures that define El Niño have surged to a stunning three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than normal in the central tropical Pacific, the highest level ever measured.

Anomaly for El NIño 3.4 region spikes at record +3.0

Many global impacts already
El Niño events, while simply descriptions of ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific and not storms, have ripple effects on weather patterns all over the world.
“Severe droughts and devastating flooding being experienced throughout the tropics and sub-tropical zones bear the hallmarks of this El Niño, which is the strongest for more than 15 years,” said World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General Michel Jarraud in a news release.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, the El Niño of 2015-2016 is shaping up to be one of the strongest in this past century. Here are the types of weather we can expect around the world due to this year's El Niño. (World Meteorological Organization/ YouTube)

The WMO published a long list of many harmful weather impacts for which this El Niño has been implicated, including coral bleaching and the most active season for intense tropical cyclones in the Northern Hemisphere on record, both due to historically warm ocean waters.
[The Northern Hemisphere’s record-shattering tropical cyclone season, by the numbers]
It also linked El Niño with drought in South East, Asia which has lead to one of the worst wildfire outbreaks in Indonesia on record.
[Indonesian fires are pouring huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere]
Not all impacts from El Niño have been harmful. For example, it introduced wind shear in the tropical Atlantic which has depressed hurricane activity that might impact North America and may already be increasing precipitation in California, which is suffering from a historic drought.
[Is the near-record El Niño already chipping away at the California, western drought?]

‘Uncharted territory’
This El Niño is operating in a warmer world in which forecasters have no prior experience predicting its effects.
“This event is playing out in uncharted territory,” Jarraud said. “Our planet has altered dramatically because of climate change, the general trend towards a warmer global ocean, the loss of Arctic sea ice and of over a million square kilometers of summer snow cover in the northern hemisphere.”
“So this naturally occurring El Niño event and human induced climate change may interact and modify each other in ways which we have never before experienced,” he said.
“Even before the onset of El Niño, global average surface temperatures had reached new records. El Niño is turning up the heat even further,” Jarraud added.
While El Niño has certain characteristic effects which we have discussed at length in the past (for the D.C. area, and the U.S. and beyond), the background warmth adds a potential element of surprise heading into the winter months.

Comparing this year’s El Niño vs. 1997-1998, and what it portends
While today’s unsurpassed ocean temperature measurement in the central tropical Pacific made history, it is too soon to know if this toasty temperature reading is just a blip or a signal. In order for this El Niño to officially pass 1997-1998’s event as the strongest on record, the warm waters would need to be sustained near these level for three months.

3.0C in Nino 3.4 using OISSTv2 is the highest on record.

“A week of sea surface temperature-only data isn’t enough to say this is a record,” said NOAA climate analyst Michelle L’Heureux in an email.
Forecasters expect strong El Niño levels to persist through the winter, but it may be peaking now and about to begin a gradual decay. However, the event’s recent and projected intensity may be enough for this event to surpass 1997-1998.
“Judging from the trajectory of SST anomalies … it is likely that one of the late-year three-month average … sea surface temperature values in 2015 will end up upending 1997’s record warmth and claim for the 2015 the title as strongest El Niño event on record,” wrote Weather Underground meteorologist Jeff Masters.
Every El Niño has its own signature and, so far, what sets this one apart is the amount of warm water it has generated across a vast expanse of the Pacific – spanning both the eastern and central part of the ocean basin. While it hasn’t been as intense in the eastern tropical Pacific as 1997-1998, its warm waters have extended farther west.

Compare and contrast: Weekly SST anomalies for this week in 1982, 1997, and 2015.

“So, in terms of the eastern Pacific, this event is weaker than 1997, but in terms of the central Pacific, the present event is stronger,” said Paul Roundy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Albany.
Phil Klotzbach, a tropical weather researcher from Colorado State University, says a powerful eastward push of water known as a Kelvin wave may lead to some warming in the eastern Pacific over the next few weeks.
The implications of warm water covering such a vast area of the Pacific in terms of weather patterns in the U.S. are unclear.
Sometimes El Niño events which have their warmest waters in the central rather than eastern Pacific favor less precipitation in California and colder conditions in the Northeast U.S. than events with warmer water to the east. But researchers aren’t convinced this event will behave like a central Pacific El Niño, sometimes described as a Modoki event.
“Although it has large sea surface temperature anomalies across the central basin, it is NOT a central Pacific El Niño event,” Roundy said. “The present circulation response pattern and model forecasts agree that circulation outcomes are likely to be more like strong east Pacific events, because convection is aligned well east of the dateline.”
Klotzbach along with two climate researchers at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, Jon Gottschalck and Stephen Baxter, said they agreed with Roundy’s view via email.
Jason Furtado, a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, said while he concurred this El Niño is not a central Pacific event, the very warm waters observed there might mean the winter bears some of its characteristics. Furtado also cautioned El Niño “is but one ingredient for our winter climate – its interactions with other processes and climate patterns will also be important to monitor.”

Law Student Tackles NZ Govt On Climate Change

Radio New Zealand

A 24-year old law student plans to take the New Zealand Government to court over its climate change policy, claiming the targets to which it will commit at an upcoming UN climate convention in Paris are too low.

Waikato University law student Sarah Thomson has filed papers in the High Court in Wellington challenging the government's climate change policy. Photo: NZ Geographic

Sarah Thomson, who studies at Waikato University, has filed papers in the High Court in Wellington, requesting a judicial review of aspects of the government's climate change policy.
Listen to Sarah Thomson on Checkpoint ( 3 min 37 sec )
She said its domestic greenhouse gas targets were unreasonable and not in line with the current scientific consensus, and they should have been reviewed following a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last year.
"I'm going to be arguing that there actually is a legal obligation to set those reductions along the lines of scientific consensus.
"The Climate Change Response Act actually says in the 'purpose' section that any decision should be made in light of the climate change convention", she told Checkpoint.
"We're challenging the fact that government hasn't reviewed its emissions reductions targets, and that the targets that it has set for the convention in Paris are too low and unreasonable."

More on the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21) in December:

• Groser optimistic about climate change talks
• 'Lack of sunlight' on climate change

New Zealand's current proposed target ahead of the convention is to reduce emissions by 11 percent, based on 1990 levels, by 2030.
But, according to Ms Thomson's case, this target is "unreasonable and irrational".
Her case is that New Zealand's Climate Change Response Act requires the minister to review targets whenever the IPCC releases a new report, to make sure that targets are in line with scientific research and consensus on how to mitigate climate change.
She said there was no evidence any such review had taken place, which would mean the minister had acted unlawfully.
"I am fairly certain [that no review has happened] - all the information goes out onto the government website, and nothing has gone out about a review of that target."
A spokesperson for Minister for Climate Change Issues Tim Groser said the minister was seeking legal advice and was not in a position to comment further.

Possible precedent
In June, a Dutch court found its government had set an inadequate climate change policy, ordering it to adopt greater greenhouse gas reduction targets on behalf of its citizens.
Ms Thomson said the media attention around that case would have brought the issue to many people's attention but someone still needed to do something tangible.
"It's just a case of acting. And I and the lawyers have done that."

A spokesperson for Minister for Climate Change Issues Tim Groser said the minister was seeking legal advice over Ms Thomson's challenge. Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson

A column published on Wellington-based legal analysis website Deconstructing Paris in October said the New Zealand case was not quite the same as its Dutch predecessor.
The legal systems of the two countries differed, it said, with the Dutch system including a requirement for the government to perform its duty of care towards its citizens.
It also has a concept called "hazardous negligence", referring specifically to the state, which was a key aspect of the case and which not feature in New Zealand law.
Finally, the column said, the Dutch constitution specifically states that the authorities must "keep the country habitable and protect and improve the environment".

'We're in it for the long haul'
Ms Thomson said she had not always been interested in climate change, but following it more over the last few months impressed on her the need to act.
"Just learning more about it has made me realise how important this is, to do something. It's not really just the legal side of it, but also the human rights side and the environmental side of it too."
What Ms Thomson hoped to get out of her legal action depended on how the government responded, she said.
"The best outcome would be that the government is forced to review those targets and to set higher, more ambitious targets. Also, I hope that they're going to have a plan to actually achieve those targets too."
In the meantime, she was happy to play the waiting game.
"We're in it for the long haul - I'm keen to keep on taking it all the way through, and the lawyers are too."

Gates Foundation Would Be $1.9bn Better Off If It Had Divested From Fossil Fuels

The Guardian - Damian Carrington

Analysis of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation health charity, and 13 other major funds, reveals moving investments out of coal, oil and gas and into green companies would have generated billions in higher returns

A fossil free index from one of the world’s largest providers of financial indexes, MSCI, has just completed its first year with returns 60% greater than its parent index. Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would have had $1.9bn (£1.3bn) more to spend on its lifesaving health projects if it had divested from fossil fuels and instead invested in greener companies, according to a new analysis.
The Canadian research company Corporate Knights examined the stock holdings of 14 funds, worth a combined $1tn, and calculated how they would have performed if they had dumped shares in oil, coal and gas companies three years ago.
Overall, the funds would have been $23bn better off with fossil fuel divestment. The Wellcome Trust, which is the world’s biggest health charity after the Gates Foundation, would have been $353m better off. The huge Dutch pension fund ABP would have had $9bn in higher returns, while Canada’s CPP would have had $7bn more.
“There are billions of dollars potentially being left on the table by these large funds as a result of hanging on to fossil fuel stocks and being underexposed to the $3tn [environmental] sector,” said Toby Heaps, chief executive of Corporate Knights. Separately, a fossil free index from one of the world’s largest providers of financial indexes, MSCI, has just completed its first year with returns 60% greater than its parent index.
The Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust are widely recognised for their important work and have been the focus of a Guardian campaign asking them to divest their large endowments from fossil fuels.
Climate change poses the greatest threat to health in the 21st century, according to doctors, and to avoid catastrophic impacts, most known fossil fuel reserves must be kept in the ground. If the world’s governments keep their word and halt global warming, those reserves could become worthless, meaning there are both financial and moral arguments for divestment. Investors managing over $2.6tn of assets have already committed to divestment, including Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest. The Bank of England has also warned of potentially huge losses.
“The number one complaint about divestment we’ve heard from fund managers is that it would cost them too much money,” said Jamie Henn, communications director at 350.org, the climate campaign that commissioned the new research. “As it turns out, they are dead wrong. The energy industry of the 21st century is going to look nothing like the fossil fuel industry of the 20th. Institutions that don’t change with the times stand to lose big and, as this new analysis shows, they already are.” 350.org are partners on the Guardian’s Keep it in the Ground campaign.
The Corporate Knights research examined how 14 large investment funds would have performed if they had divested from fossil fuels in October 2012. The fossil fuel firms excluded were the top 100 coal companies and top 100 oil and gas companies, ranked by the size of their reserves by Fossil Free Indices, plus utilities generating more than 30% of their power by burning coal, as ranked by South Pole Group.
In the analysis, the excluded investments were replaced by increased investments in green companies already held by the funds. Green companies were those getting more than 20% of their revenue from environmental solutions as verified by FTSE Environmental Markets or Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a pool of 1,600 companies with a combined market capitalisation of $3tn.
The analysis found the New York City Employee Retirement scheme would have been $1.6bn better off with divestment, as would Australia’s Future Fund.
“The period of analysis coincides with a tough market for oil and commodities in general,” said Heaps. “Over the next few years, many oil stocks – if not coal utilities – could jump back, but in the long term, I don’t think a lot of prudent market watchers are betting that the carbon intensive sectors are going to outperform the market in general.” A crunch UN climate summit begins in Paris in two weeks, at which governments are expected to agree a deal to significantly cut future carbon emissions.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust does not comment on its investment holdings and decisions. Bill Gates has called fossil fuel divestment a “false solution” and in June announced he would invest $2bn of his own fortune in innovative renewable energy projects over five years.
A spokeswoman for the Wellcome Trust said: “The Trust’s long-term investment strategy has led to a total return of over £9bn since September 2008, while returns over both 10 and 20 years up to September 2014 have averaged above 10% per year in nominal terms.” This would allow charitable spending of £1bn a year for the next five years, she said. The director of the Wellcome Trust, Jeremy Farrar, said on Sunday that the impacts of climate change on health “affect us today, never mind affecting our children or our grandchildren. This is not some abstract threat; it is immediate and it is personal.”
The MSCI fossil fuel free index replicates its broad All Country World Index (ACWI), but without 124 companies identified as having large reserves of coal, oil and gas. In its first year, to October 2015, the fossil free index produced gross returns of 6.5% compared to 4.1% for the ACWI.
The significant outperformance of the fossil free index reflected the troubled year suffered by energy companies, said Tom Kuh, head of ESG indexes for MSCI: “The challenge for investors is to figure out whether what is going on with energy is cyclical or structural.”
Kuh noted the upcoming UN climate summit, the coal industry’s troubles of the last five years and recent legal investigations in the US into ExxonMobil and said: “There seems to be more pressure coming from regulators and policymakers on fossil fuel companies because of the role fossil fuels play in climate change.”
He said demand for fossil free and low carbon indexes was growing and that the fossil fuel divestment campaign had brought the issue to prominence in the last two years. MSCI will also be providing carbon footprints for all 160,000 of its indexes in 2016. “Carbon is increasingly becoming a factor that investors are looking at in understanding risk in their portfolios,” Kuh said.

As Terrorism Unites G-20, Climate Change Exposes Divisions

Fairfax - Raymond Colitt, Onur Ant & Arne Delfs

France pressed for tougher pledges on climate change from the Group of 20 nations ahead of climate talks in Paris that start at the end of this month. AP

After uniting to fight terrorism and narrowing their differences over the future of Syria, one issue remains divisive among world leaders: what should be done to stop the planet from getting hotter.

France pressed for tougher pledges on climate change from the Group of 20 nations ahead of climate talks in Paris that start at the end of this month. The key issue was whether to mention the aim to limit the rise in global warming to 2 degrees, which is what United Nations scientists have said the world needs to do by the end of this century to avoid catastrophic climate changes.

"After long negotiations through the night, we managed to get the two-degree-goal into the agreement," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. "However, we also made clear that a lot of negotiating remains to ensure that we make progress at the Paris climate summit. It has to be a success, and Germany will do anything to assist France."

The section on climate emerged as the foremost sticking point in negotiations over what countries will promise to undertake. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said all leaders reaffirmed their commitment to gather in Paris following the slaughter by Islamic militants in the city, yet he pushed for more ambitious language about tackling rising temperatures. The 2 degree goal wasn't mentioned in an earlier draft, he said.

Officials at the G-20 summit in Turkey worked overnight and into the morning to hammer out the wording of a paragraph in the final communique that was released on Monday.

"We can see the difference between the statement at the outset and the one at the end," Fabius, who represented Francois Hollande at the summit after the president cancelled his trip to stay in Paris, said at a briefing. "The initial draft wasn't satisfactory so I intervened and I received a great deal of support. We had to continue the hard work so the statement was a little more robust."

While emission-reduction pledges submitted by nations so far are not enough to reach that goal, the international deal that envoys aim to reach in Paris may encourage further cuts as long as it includes a mechanism to revise the commitments, the UN Environment Program said earlier this month.

Another bone of contention was that France and allies such as Germany encountered resistance to include a line in the communique to simply say that climate change is a common challenge and needs collective enhanced action, according to an EU official who asked not to be named while the haggling continued over the language. In the end, the world "collective" was included in the final text.

The COP 21 climate summit is due to begin on November 30, when leaders from around the world will meet in Paris to attempt what a 2009 summit in Copenhagen failed to do: reach a global agreement on how to cut fossil-fuel use. Countries have already submitted so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, pledging the scope of emissions cuts.

The divide at the G-20 initially emerged over whether countries will back a more "differentiated" approach, where developed nations carry an extra burden, or "shared" emissions responsibilities, which would require developing nations to make bigger cuts, according to officials who asked not to be named.

A reference to differentiation was removed from an early draft of the communique, though was cited in a separate statement from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the so-called BRICS developing economies.

The BRICS nations called for a greater focus on emissions pledges to be "differentiated" based upon national circumstances, suggesting they favour industrialized nations doing more to limit emissions than developing ones.

Advocacy groups said the final agreement was a compromise that fell short of expectations. There are no guarantees that climate financing will be part of the Paris agreement and even mention of the 2 degrees pledge is not backed up by measures, according to Kiri Hanks, energy policy adviser for Oxfam.

"They've postponed the tough choices," Hanks said in Antalya. "It's a very bland statement. They're basically saying, 'see you in Paris."'