10 Things You Should Know About Sea Level Rise And How Bad It Could Be

Washington Post - Rob Motta* | James White* | R. Steven Nerem*

This undated photo courtesy of NASA shows Thwaites Glacier in Western Antarctica. (AFP/Getty Images)

Sea level rise has been in the news a lot lately. Recent research has raised concerns about the possible collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and how this could double sea level rise projections for 2100.

Sea level rise is potentially one of the most damaging results of climate change, but few people understand its risks. Its impacts — financial and otherwise — will spread far from the coasts.
Here are 10 things you should know about sea level rise, what causes it and how bad it might get.

1. There is enough water stored as ice to raise sea level 230 feet.
Most of this ice is located in Antarctica and Greenland. Antarctica, with an area 40 percent greater than the United States, is covered by an ice sheet almost a mile thick that holds about 200 feet equivalent of sea level. Most of that ice is — for now — stable, but scientists are concerned that the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which holds about 11 feet of potential sea level rise, has reached a tipping point and will collapse. Another 23 feet of equivalent sea level is stored as ice in Greenland, and it is melting at an increasing rate. The rest is in glaciers and ice caps spread around the world, and they, too, are generally melting.

2. Sea levels have changed by hundreds of feet in the past.
We generally think of sea level as stable, but sea level has varied a lot over time as we have gone from ice age to ice age at about 100,000-year intervals. At the height of the last ice age, when much of North America was covered in ice, sea level was about 400 feet lower. We are now in a warm period between ice ages; sea level should be peaking and then eventually starting to go down again. But human-caused climate change is altering this cycle.

3. We are changing sea level at a very rapid rate.
While sea level has varied greatly in the past, it has generally changed slowly, over many thousands of years — except when ice sheets collapse. We will explain more on ice sheet collapse later, but prior to about 1900, we know sea level was stable for several thousand years. A warming world is now pushing sea levels higher, and the rate of rise is accelerating.

Environmental Protection Agency, data via National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

Sea level rose about seven inches during the 20th century. That may not seem like much, but the rate of sea level rise has almost doubled in recent years, and scientists expect that rate to continue to go up. About a third of the current rate of sea level rise is from thermal expansion of the oceans (the water expands like mercury in a thermometer), because they are absorbing about 90 percent of the increased heat from climate change. But in the future, melting ice will play a greater role. Predictions for the year 2100 are in the range of two to three feet, excluding any potential contributions from ice sheet collapse.

4. We could melt it all.
The Earth has already warmed by 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Scientists estimate that if it warms by about 4 to 5 degrees Celsius (7.2 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit), which is projected to happen by the end of the century if we don’t act on climate change, then all the ice will eventually melt. That’s 230 feet of sea level rise.
What the shoreline would look like if all the ice melted, courtesy an excellent interactive map from National Geographic:

If all the ice on Earth melted, this is how North America would change. National Geographic

5. Scientists are racing to better understand how sea level will rise as temperatures climb higher and higher.

The curve, or rate at which ice melts, is not directly proportional to time and temperature. In other words, at one-fifth of the temperature rise needed to melt all the ice (about where we are today), it is not likely that exactly one-fifth of all the ice will melt, leading eventually to 46 feet of sea level rise — could be more, could be less. The same is true with melting over time.
Ice sheets and glaciers are currently melting slowly, but there have been times in the past when they have collapsed rapidly, causing sea level to rise by a foot or more per decade — for decades at a time. We may be facing one of those periods in the near future.
Scientists are working to understand how unstable the ice sheets are, and how much additional sea level rise we could see over the current projections, particularly for the short-term (like in the time frame your kids will see). But with 230 feet of potential sea level rise on the table, it doesn’t take a whole lot more melting for a coastal city to be okay in one set of assumptions, and under water in another.

According to a new study, high levels of greenhouse gas emissions could cause oceans to rise by close to two meters in total (over six feet) by the end of the century, and more than 13 meters (42 feet) from Antarctica alone by 2500. (Nature, Rob DeConto, David Pollard)

6. The last time sea levels changed significantly, there weren’t a lot of people around.
When the last ice age ended around 10,000 years ago and sea level started to rise to its present level, there were only about 5 million people on Earth, and they didn’t live in expensive cities right on the coast. Today, in the United States alone, nearly 5 million people live within 4 feet of high tide. So, not only are sea levels changing at a rapid clip, but we have also built a tremendous amount of infrastructure (such as houses, highways, utilities and nuclear power plants) right on yesterday’s coastline.
Not only will the sea level rise itself cause issues, but it is expected to greatly increase the damage from storm surges which will reach farther inland, or overtop natural or man-made barriers that would not have otherwise been breached. This is likely how one would first “get wet” from sea level rise.

7. Sea level rise is not going to stop anytime soon.
With the greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere, we are already committed to further temperature increases, and further melting of the ice and increasing sea levels. As far into the future as you want to plan for, sea level will probably still be rising. It is something we, and future generations, are going to have to live with. Our climate change actions at this point can slow down the rate of sea level rise and limit the damage, but we cannot stop it.

8. Sea level rise will not be the same everywhere.
There are many reasons why sea level rise might be greater in some places than in others, but in general, when ice melts, sea level rise is less closer to the location of the ice and greater farther away. Differences in the regional heating of the oceans, changes in ocean currents, and a variety of other factors can contribute to regional variations in sea level rise.
In addition, land subsidence, like that occurring along the Gulf Coast of the United States, can worsen the impacts of sea level rise. Land uplift, like that occurring in Scandinavia, can buffer some against future sea level rise.

9. Melting Arctic sea ice does not contribute directly to sea level rise.
The Arctic has a lot of floating sea ice, and it is in the news a lot because it is decreasing dramatically, but sea ice loss in the Arctic does not directly contribute to sea level rise. That’s because it is already floating — it is not on land, so its melting does not directly impact sea level rise. If this sounds strange, you can verify this by watching a glass of ice water and checking the water level as the ice melts — it will not rise or fall. However, if you add more ice to the glass, the water level will rise. (Loss of Arctic ice does directly impact climate change because dark blue ocean absorbs more energy than white ice does, so it adds a bit to global warming).

10. The cost of sea level rise will go up faster than sea level itself.
In other words, the damage caused by going from 1 foot of sea level rise to 2 feet will be much greater than the damage from the first foot of sea level rise. In addition, the cost of conventional berms or levees to protect the shoreline also increases much faster than the height. For example, doubling the height of a levee makes the cost goes up by a factor of almost 4.

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Sea level is already rising fast, but nobody knows exactly how much this could speed up if we continue to warm the earth at the rate we are doing now. One thing we do know is the more greenhouse gases and heat we put in, the faster sea level will rise.
That is why tackling climate change is so important. We have to ask ourselves how much of a chance we want to take. The difference between an aggressive stance on climate change and a slower path could mean the difference between an orderly approach to sea level rise and a chaotic retreat from the coasts.
To read more about how New York and Miami are handling these issues, read our article: A Tale of Two Cities: Miami, New York & Life on the Edge at climatecentral.org.

*Motta has worked in the energy and environment field as a program manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He is currently an affiliate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research working on the communication of sea level rise risks and impacts.
*White is professor of geological sciences, professor in the environmental studies program, and fellow and director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is a Web of Science most highly cited scientist (one of the top 1 percent most highly cited authors in his field).
*Nerem is a professor of aerospace engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and leader of NASA’s sea level change team. 

Links

• Scientists say Antarctic melting could double sea level rise. Here’s what that looks like.
• This mind-boggling study shows just how massive sea level rise really is
• Washington, D.C. under water: what sea level rise looks like
• India just set a new all-time record high temperature — 123.8 degrees

The Bizarre Self-Harm That Suggests CSIRO Has Lost Its Way

Fairfax - Adam Morton

The treatment of John Church should prompt questions for the Turnbull government.

John Church during his current – and probably final – research voyage with CSIRO. Photo: Supplied

CSIRO's decision to sack the global expert on sea level rise – while he was working at sea, three weeks from shore – is a bizarre form of self-harm that suggests the national science agency has lost its bearings.
Assuming the federal election campaign at some point considers the future of science in this country, the treatment of John Church should prompt questions for the Turnbull government.
Two weeks ago, Church was the co-author of a new peer-reviewed study that found five reef islands in the Solomon Islands have disappeared due to the combination of sea-level rise and high-powered waves.
This is significant not just of itself, but because of what it points to: the area is considered a sea rise hot-spot, with the level increasing up to three times faster than the global average. The study gives an insight into what the future might look like.
A couple of weeks earlier, Church was co-author of a letter published by the internationally respected Nature group that sets out the evidence that humans have been the dominant force in the accelerating increase in sea level since 1970.
I mention these two pieces of research not because of their particular importance, but because they are just the most recently available examples of Church's work, which stretches back to the late 1970s when he was hired by the national science agency after completing a PhD in physics.

CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall. Photo: Daniel Munoz

In science, peer-reviewed papers carry the weight of gold bars. Church's research – using tidal gauges and satellite data to calculate the pace at which the sea is rising across the globe, and the extent to which different factors are contributing to it – has yielded more than 150.
His CV includes the Eureka Prize for Scientific Research and CSIRO's Medal for Research Achievement. He has twice been a coordinating lead author of chapters in the era-defining reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
After first being reported by Fairfax Media's Peter Hannam, his sacking was picked up by the New York Times. Its report quoted NASA scientist Joshua Willis describing Church as one of the world's top 10 climate scientists. He summarised: "It is sad and embarrassing for the Australian government."

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis Photo: Jim Pavlidis

Scientists who spoke with Fairfax Media backed this up. They noted Church is conservative and meticulous in his work and public statements. He has often warned against inflated estimates of what can be projected with confidence across this century. He is also a leader, widely praised for his quiet guidance of younger scientists.
To state the obvious, this is not expertise you should give away lightly.
Since CSIRO's plan to axe 275 scientists was announced, Church has been among those who have spoken out forcefully against the cuts to climate programs in particular, arguing they breach Australia's commitment to escalate research as part of the climate deal reached in Paris in December.
Some within CSIRO believe it is likely Church was targeted due to his outspokenness. But it is not clear whether this is the case as CSIRO has signalled it is moving away from investigating global sea level rise.
It is making this cut despite sea level rise being a developing area of science that is clearly in Australia's interest to understand thoroughly.
On average, seas have risen more than 20 centimetres since the late 19th century. The most conservative estimates project a further increase of between 30 centimetres and a metre by the end of this century, depending on greenhouse gas emissions.
This is already having real-world ramifications for coastal planning and existing waterfront infrastructure worth billions. You might think a better understanding of the problem would be helpful to plan properly.
This is also not an argument against CSIRO making changes. It should pivot to focus on areas of science that it believes are most in the national interest. If that includes throwing resources into commercially focused innovation, so be it.
What makes little sense is abandoning areas in which you have world-leading expertise, and where more information is unarguably needed.
Of course, Church's case is just one high-profile example. It is understood 70 scientists in CSIRO's oceans and atmosphere division alone have been approached about a possible redundancy.
It comes as the agency has been scrambling in the face of significant pressure from the scientific community, here and overseas. Chief executive Larry Marshall's response was to spurn an offer by the Bureau of Meteorology to take over some CSIRO climate measurement and modelling, and instead promise to keep a smaller team at a new climate science centre in Hobart, employing 40 scientists.
It sounds good in a press release, but no details are available about how the centre will operate – they are still being nutted out. CSIRO's partner agencies are privately concerned they are being excluded. They believe that to be truly effective the centre should be a national collaboration, bringing in expertise from all agencies and universities. At this stage there is no sign that will happen.
Meanwhile, CSIRO's international reputation is being damaged. A recent Senate inquiry heard suggestions scientists overseas are concerned, and in some cases are crossing it off their list of potential employers.
To date, the government has ducked questions about the CSIRO cuts, citing its role as an independent statutory agency. In truth, the CSIRO act gives the science minister the power to direct the organisation if they choose.
At some point, government ministers should answer the question: do you support the discarding of world-leading scientific expertise that is taking place on your watch?

Links

• Global sea-level expert John Church made to walk the plank by CSIRO 
• What the CSIRO cuts mean for Australia
• What's going on inside the CSIRO and is Larry Marshall to blame?
• When should we worry about climate change? 
• Confirmed: Southern hemisphere CO2 level rises above symbolic 400 ppm milestone

Election 2016: Climate Politics Off To A Chilly Start, But Could Still Heat Up

The Conversation - Matt McDonald

Shadow environment minister Mark Butler and environment minister Greg Hunt shake hands before the National Press Club debate. AAP Image/Stefan Postles

One week into the extended federal election campaign, climate has not featured prominently. While prime minister Malcolm Turnbull campaigns on “jobs and growth”, opposition leader Bill Shorten has emphasised education and employment conditions. Climate also warranted no mention in the government’s pre-election budget.
This week’s National Press Club debate between federal environment minister Greg Hunt and his shadow counterpart Mark Butler largely retrod party lines, and received limited coverage.
Yet 2016 could still be a climate election. Here’s why.

Points of difference
There are major climate policy differences between the Coalition government and Labor opposition.
The government has committed to a target of 26% to 28% reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2030 (relative to 2005), and remains committed to its incentive-only auction scheme for industry to reduce emissions.
By contrast, Labor has committed to a 45% reduction in emissions over the same period, with a 50% renewable energy target. It has also pledged to set up an emissions trading scheme that is more consistent with how other countries are approaching climate policy.
These are substantial differences, especially given criticisms that the government’s Direct Action model is expensive and inefficient and offers no guarantee of achieving its stated targets. So there are opportunities for climate to feature prominently as a point of policy difference.

Public opinion
Public opinion tends to move in favour of the opposition on climate policy. For the past several years, the Lowy Institute has polled Australians on climate policy, among other international issues. It has found, perhaps surprisingly, that Australians tend to be most supportive of strong action when the government of the day is perceived as inactive.
The high point for public support was 2006. Conversely, the low point for public support on strong climate action was 2012, as the Labor government under Julia Gillard introduced the carbon tax.
There is evidence now of a rebound in support for climate policy, with perceptions that the government is dragging its feet on climate change. This clearly creates incentives for Labor to campaign on climate.

Green pressure
The Greens loom as a threat to Labor if it doesn’t emphasise its commitment to climate action. The Greens surprised many by winning the lower house seat of Melbourne in 2010, and Adam Bandt has held it since.
Now the Greens have their sights set on other lower house seats, and perception that it is the party that takes climate action seriously will have damaging effects for Labor in electorates most vulnerable to Greens campaigning.
Political opponents of all stripes have a real opportunity to wedge the prime minister on climate change. It appears likely that prime minister Turnbull is playing a long game and hoping that an election victory will allow him to marginalise those parts of his government that still oppose climate action.
This view involves placing weight on the claims Turnbull made on losing the coalition leadership to Tony Abbott in 2009. Then, he declared that he did not want to lead a party not serious about climate action, and questioned any policy that claimed to be cost-neutral. These statements may come back to haunt him.
Finally, civil society groups are mobilising aggressively on climate change. Groups such as GetUp! will be out in force come election day and are promoting climate action, while environmental groups are pushing hard to ensure that climate change will not be forgotten in the election.
Building on devastating reports of coral bleaching and David Attenborough’s most recent television series, many are using the Great Barrier Reef as a symbol of the need to take climate action seriously.

Dangers of a climate election?
For some analysts, Australia’s 2007 contest could rightly be described as “the world’s first climate election”.
The then Labor opposition leader Kevin Rudd rode a wave of support for strong climate action, and took office from a Coalition government perceived as weak on climate change.
In 2013, Coalition opposition leader Tony Abbott declared that the forthcoming election would be a “referendum on the carbon tax”, and in those terms he scored a resounding victory.
In both of these accounts, the role of climate policy in the election result is probably overstated. But it also helps to explain why leaders of both parties appear spooked by the idea of campaigning strongly on their climate policy. It may be easier for Labor to announce its climate position softly, and the government to run a scare campaign on economic costs of any stronger action than its own platform.
Indeed, for some advocates of climate action, a climate election may not be a good thing. The climate consensus that characterises the position of progressive countries has not been reflected in Australia. This undermines policy consistency, economic predictability for business, and public support for climate action.
But it is also the case that Australia’s most recent brief window of bipartisanship on climate policy in 2009 did not end well. The carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) was never enacted. And both the then prime minister Kevin Rudd and current prime minister Malcolm Turnbull lost their jobs, at least partly because of it.
We may well see climate feature prominently in the weeks to come. And while there may be some dangers, it’s hard to think of a climate policy situation in Australia that’s any more problematic than what has come before.

Links

• PolicyCheck: Labor’s phased emissions trading scheme
• Ideas for Australia: A six-point plan for getting climate policy back on track
• Signing the Paris Climate Agreement is easy – what comes next for Australia will be hard
• 2016 is likely to be the world’s hottest year: here’s why

Why We Must ‘Think Global, Act Local’ On Climate Change

Renew Economy - David Leitch

Many catchy slogans come and go: "Just do it", "Carpe Diem", "play hard." But out of all of them, "think global, act local" is the one that resonates the most with me, and seems to apply best in this age when we are all connected but still have individual responsibilities.
It's a slogan that's become more and more applicable in an era of distributed energy when every consumer that wants to, can make a difference at the local level. Disruptive technology typically depends on many individuals making small individual decisions that collectively have large impacts on corporate behaviour. In that spirit and as part of the "cognitive surplus" its seems worthwhile to pull together three articles that summarise some well known, and some slightly less well known, features of the global context that underlies the unfolding energy transformation in Australia.
Article 1 today is a very brief and familiar summary of the global warming data and the primary contributors to CO2 emissions.
Article 2 will summarise the global renewable energy picture; and Article 3 will look at some of the recent global data and analysis, including China and India coal-fired electricity generation and economics.

Global temperature
I prefer to look at the global temperature in percentage terms. That's because, in my experience, 1 degree doesn't sound like something very important to the man in street, who is used to daily fluctuations of 10 degrees or more. Using percentages has its own problems, as Centigrade percentages will differ from Fahrenheit and, for the truly obsessed, Kelvin scales. Our primary data source is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and we like to use a 20-year moving average as the most smoothed form of data.
The disadvantage of moving averages is that they are out of date and give equal weight to old observations. This can be seen in the chart below. For that reason the ABS uses a "Henderson" trend for monthly and quarterly data, which gives more weight to the current observations and less weight to the older observations. Any stats-inclined people out there who want to calculate a 20-year Henderson weight, please get in touch. Here's the chart then. The anomaly average for calendar 2016 year to date is 1.13°C, about 8 per cent above the 20th century average.

Carbon emissions
The assumptions that underlie our thinking are:
The climate sensitivity is 3. That is, a doubling of CO2 concentration would lead to a 3°C temperature change. This relationship is linear, and emissions stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years.

• The current concentration is 397 ppm of CO2.
•  To keep temperature change at 2°C relative to the 20th century average of just under 14°C, cumulative emissions need to peak at around 800 GT of carbon. 1GT of carbon = 3.66 GT of CO2.

• Cumulative carbon emissions at the end of 2015 are estimated at 550-600GT, an increase of about 11 GT YoY.

• At the current rate, 800 GT will bet reached in 2035.

The following chart shows the cumulative causes from 1870 to 2014 of the increase in CO2.

From an economic perspective, electricity production is the No 1 cause of carbon emissions following by agriculture and industry.

And this chart shows that in recent years the increase in coal consumption is the main factor impacting the rate of change in carbon emissions.
 Looking at emissions by geography, the impact of China – and to a lesser extent, India – is clear, but the chart also shows that the collective rest-of-world, including Russia and Eastern Europe, Africa and South America and the remainder of Asia, continues to show significant growth. Cumulative emissions show that China is rapidly catching Europe and even India can no longer reasonably state that they didn't cause the problem, therefore they don't have to worry.

It's no great secret that the increase in coal is largely due to the growth of Chinese manufacturing. One view is that China has done the world's "metal and chemical bashing" in the past decade and, as such, China is just a symptom of the global problem.
Even so, we can see that limiting future coal and oil use in China and India, and limiting global oil consumption, are the two main drivers of slowing down the rate of increase in global temperatures.
The global carbon budget, simply put, shows that limiting total human-induced warming (accounting for both CO2 and other human influences on climate) to less than 2°C relative to the period 1861–1880 with a probability of 66 per cent would require total CO2 emissions from all anthropogenic sources since 1870 to be limited to about 2900 GtCO2. That's about 790 GtC. Recent emission rates are about 9.8 GtC per year and at that rate 2°C will be locked in by the mid 2030s.

At this point, any number of scenarios can be constructed about the rate of change and we will return to them over the next couple of articles. We close with the fact that, even based on the oil price (not the petrol or diesel price), the global oil industry has revenue of about $US1.7 trillion per year and the global coal industry about $US0.4 trillion. Gas and cement and land use loss of GDP from the efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are certainly not trivial. Annual emissions have basically been growing and are closely tied to GDP. In short the challenges facing the world and renewable energy industry shouldn't be underestimated.


Links

• The argument for divesting from fossil fuels is becoming overwhelming
• Carbon Capture: Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?
• Is Jonathan Franzen really asking us to shrug off the detruction of our world?
• Fossil industry faces a perfect political and technological storm
• Fossil fuel industry must 'implode' to avoid climate disaster, says top scientist
• Household solar + storage to meet most of peak demand, and keep grids stable 
• UNSW solar team achieves huge leap in solar cell efficiency 
• Tasmania rooftop solar worth three times current tariff: report 
• Coalition not ready to embrace high penetration renewable energy

Australian Scientists Warn Of Climate Change Flash Flood Risk In Cities

Independent Australia - Tim Radford

Scientists in Australia warn that global warming will lead to more intense and concentrated summer storms seriously testing city drainage systems already struggling to cope.

Australians have already seen the devastating impact of floods in our cities (Image screenshot from YouTube video below)

CLIMATE CHANGE could bring the equivalent of the flash flood to the modern city. That is because, as global temperatures rise, summer storms will deposit more moisture.
Australian scientists say peak rainfall will also be more intense, over a more confined area and over a shorter timespan. And when overwhelming levels of rain fall on asphalt, tiles and cement, drainage systems built for a different climate regime may fail to cope.
"As warming proceeds, storms are shrinking in space and time," said Conrad Wasko, a PhD candidate in the school of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
He continued:

"They are becoming more concentrated over a smaller area, and the rainfall is coming down more plentifully and with more intensity over a shorter period of time. When the storm shrinks to that extent, you have a huge amount of rain coming down over a smaller area."

Total precipitation
Most climate predictions are based on computer simulations that extend existing data. But this study is based on storms that have already happened.
Wasko and his colleagues report in Geophysical Research Letters that they analysed data from 1,300 rain gauges and 1,700 temperature stations across Australia to look for a link in the local temperature to the total precipitation, duration and area of a cloudburst.
The meteorologist's rule of thumb is that the potential moisture content of the atmosphere increases by 7 per cent with every 1°C temperature rise, so it follows that summer storms should potentially deliver more rainfall. The same scientists last year established that storms were getting briefer in duration.
The latest study looked at the area of rainfall and found that the heaviest downpour had moved nearer to the centre of each storm. And although the testing ground was confined to Australia, the study could have a message for city planners and hydraulic engineers worldwide.
Professor Ashish Sharma, one of the co-authors of the UNSW study, said:

Australia is a continent that spans almost all the climate zones in the world – Mediterranean, tropical, temperate, subtropical – everything except the Arctic or Antarctic. So the results hold a lot of value. We are finding the pattern repeating itself over and over, happening around Australia and around the world.
Look at the incidence of flooding in Mumbai or in Bangkok last year — you see urban streets full of water. You see it now in Jakarta and Rome and many parts of Canada. That's because the stormwater infrastructure cannot handle the rain and part of the reason there's more rain is the increase in global temperatures.

Kuala Lumpur flash floods due to inefficient drainage system. New Straits Times

Measurable difference
In addition to record temperatures during heatwaves, Australia has been hit by devastating floods linked to climate change, and in 2010 so much rain fell on the continent that it made a measurable difference to sea levels.
The Australian authors had already predicted that floods in some places – especially the warmer urban areas – could increase by 40 per cent. But there are a number of uncertainties.
Professor Sharma said.

When we say that the storms are shrinking in space and shrinking in time, and we say floods will increase, we are making an assumption that the volume of water coming down is not changing.
That assumption is very conservative, because you would expect the air to hold more moisture. If you factor in that as well, there'll be even more rainfall and more floods.

Links

• Deniers reality check: 97% of scientists agree humans causing climate change
• RESEARCH: Sea level rise from global warming likely to cause massive costs
• STUDY: Global warming set to further increase inequality
• U.S. and WTO block India's solar power plan
• New oil and gas well investment stalls as prices nosedive
• The beginning of the Anthropocene Age: Humans leave indelible mark
• Renewables could supply all Russian and Central Asian energy needs by 2030

Physicians Must Respond to Climate Change: An Interview With ACP President Damle

Medscape - Laurie Scudder

Editor's Note: The American College of Physicians (ACP) recently released a position statement emphasizing that climate change poses a catastrophic risk to human health, including more respiratory and heat-related illness, vector-borne diseases, malnutrition, and behavioral health problems, and stating that physicians have a crucial role to play in fighting it. In support of that position, the College released a toolkit to help physicians both advocate for effective climate change adaptation and mitigation policies and educate their communities. Medscape spoke with Nitin Damle, MD, MS, current ACP president, about the toolkit. Nitin Damle, MD, MS Image courtesy of Kevin Berne Dr Damle is a practicing internist and senior/managing partner at South County Internal Medicine in Wakefield, Rhode Island, and a clinical associate professor of medicine at Alpert Medical School, Brown University. He also spoke about changes that he has initiated in his own practice to address this serious public health issue.

Medscape: Why should the ACP take on climate change? Some physicians have suggested, given how busy they are with a huge array of clinical issues, that this is not an issue that they can or should tackle. Why do physicians need to take this on?
Dr Damle: It's not really global climate change that we are addressing. We are addressing the health effects of global climate change. At ACP, we consider climate change to be a human health issue. Beyond any political or economic ramifications, it is an important issue for the care of our patients. The effects of global climate change are being felt now. We are seeing a longer season and more severe allergy symptoms. There is also an increase in respiratory illnesses and tick-borne and water-borne infectious diseases. In addition, there are heat wave-related illnesses and food insecurity in some parts of the world. These changes are not in the distant future; they are happening as we speak. It's important for us to try to educate the public, our patients, and our colleagues about the human health effects of global climate change.

Medscape: From a clinical perspective, what can physicians do today in their practices to address these health effects?
Dr Damle: Climate change has resulted in longer allergy seasons, more pollen, and more allergens generally in the air. These changes cause a significant amount of distress for patients—rhinorrhea, conjunctivitis, general discomfort, and an increased risk for sinusitis and upper respiratory tract infection. Climate change can affect people with chronic diseases, including cardiac disease, asthma, and obstructive pulmonary disease. Increased incidences of exacerbations of these conditions can lead to more emergency department visits and hospitalizations. These are the health effects of air pollution, ozone pollution, and global warming.

Medscape: A recent study in the journal Temperature^[1] looked at the ability of individuals with diabetes to self-regulate their body temperature and postulated that extremes of temperature could be enough to tip someone with well-controlled diabetes out of control. Do you manage your diabetic patients differently as a result of climate change?
Dr Damle: Like hypertension, once diabetes is diagnosed, it is a life-long chronic condition. Many factors contribute to blood sugar control in diabetes, including extremes of weather. Heat exhaustion, heat prostration, and heat stroke can place diabetic patients at risk for episodes of hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia.

Medscape: Do you manage patients with chronic diseases differently in the summer? Has climate change affected the way you manage these patients?
Dr Damle: We are more aware of the health consequences of climate change for patients with diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, or allergies. Patients who don't have air conditioning in summer or have no place to go during a heat wave are more vulnerable to the health effects of climate change. We make these patients aware of their risk when severe climate changes (eg, heat waves, drought, floods) are anticipated and discuss the steps that they should take to prepare. Depending on where they live, patients must take precautionary action so that they do not find themselves in an unstable health situation.
We make sure that patients with chronic conditions are optimally controlled and that they have adequate supplies of their medications, inhalers, or oxygen. If patients become unstable, we see them acutely so that we can treat them earlier and they don't end up going to the emergency department or having to be admitted to the hospital.
Going forward, heat waves will be a major source of health instability. The Earth is warming, and heat waves are increasing in frequency, affecting people to a significant degree. Thousands of people died during a heat wave in Europe a few years ago, and several hundred people died in Chicago during a recent heat wave.

Medscape: ACP's climate change toolkit includes suggestions for "greening your practice." What practical strategies has your own practice implemented in response to climate change?
Dr Damle: I'm in private practice in an eight-physician group. We have about 20,000 square feet of space, and we have implemented some significant measures to reduce our carbon footprint. We installed energy-efficient lighting, heating, and air conditioning. We use recycled products and water fountains instead of water bottles.
A wind farm has recently been erected off the coast of Rhode Island. It supplies the power for our electrical grid. Two of our employees have electric cars, so we are putting in an electric charging station. Many real-world changes can be made, some small and some more significant. Collectively, they can make a huge difference.

Medscape: What is the potential economic impact of such measures to a physician practice?
Dr Damle: Most of these measures can be implemented at relatively low cost. There may not be an immediate return on investment, but setting the example for the community has value. Physicians are an important and respected part of the community, especially if they are in private practice in smaller communities. These steps provide an opportunity for physicians to talk about global climate change and health. They demonstrate that physicians have some "skin in the game" by putting into action the things they are talking about.

Medscape: Changes also are being made within your hospital system. How critical was advocacy on your part and that of other physicians in encouraging the hospital to make these changes? Or were the decisions mainly driven by economic considerations?
Dr Damle: Our local hospital system understood the consequences of climate change on human health and was willing to implement green energy design in building renovations and was energy efficient, using wind and solar energy. For some measures (food waste, recycled products), the hospital might even see an immediate return on investment. These mitigation strategies can have a substantial impact; and, by implementing them, the hospital becomes a role model demonstrating what the healthcare system can do to battle global climate change.

Medscape: Why did ACP create the toolkit? Will any of the items within the toolkit take clinicians by surprise?
Dr Damle: The toolkit has two functions. First, it consolidates all of the current information into one resource that is easily accessible, whether on a website or in printed form. Its purpose is to educate and encourage health professionals, in a simplified way, to take action. Second, the toolkit includes slide presentations that are available to any ACP diplomat who wishes to use them to educate students at schools, colleagues at local chapter meetings, and the general public. The toolkit can be downloaded, and the slide sets are available to ACP members.

Medscape: Downloading a slide set and educating others is a way of establishing physicians as leaders within the community. That has benefits for physicians in enhancing the presence of their practices, as well.
Dr Damle: Absolutely. There are benefits to this exposure as a community leader, as someone with authority and credibility to whom the community looks for guidance. Spreading the word will help to mitigate the influence of naysayers on the topic of global climate change. Climate change is real, it's here, and it's time to take action. If we don't, the health consequences and consequences to the Earth are going to be significant, not just in the next 100 years but in the next 10, 20, or 25 years.

Links

• ACP Urges Physicians to Step up Climate Change Fight
• What Are the Mental Health Effects of Climate Change?
• Air Quality and Climate Change: A Delicate Balance

Great Barrier Reef Needs $10bn For Chance Of Survival, Scientists Say

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

This election is Australia's last chance to save the reef, which requires $1bn a year for 10 years to reduce water pollution to give it a chance to survive climate change, report warns

The Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its worst ever bleaching event. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images

The 2016 Australian election is the last opportunity to save the Great Barrier Reef, the authors of a new scientific paper have warned.
The government needs to commit to $1bn a year for 10 years to reduce water pollution, which would give the reef a chance to survive the impacts of climate change, according to the paper published in the journal Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science.
"This is the last chance," said the lead author, Jon Brodie from James Cook University. "The current spending is totally inadequate ... You either do it properly or you give up on the reef. It's that bad."
Climate change is dramatically impacting the reef, with warm water causing 93% of coral reefs to bleach this year. It is the worst bleaching event ever seen in the Great Barrier Reef. Mass bleaching events were never seen before 1998.
The reef's ability to recover from bleaching is hampered by water pollution, caused largely by nearby land-clearing, as well as fertiliser and pesticide run-off from farming. Fishing also damages the reef's resilience by disrupting the ecosystems that support healthy coral.
Brodie and his colleague Richard Pearson analysed all the current management plans, evaluated their impacts and developed an estimate of what would be needed to give the reef a fighting chance against already locked-in climate change. The required measures would cost $10bn over 10 years. Brodie said that would get water quality to a point where the reef was in the best shape possible to fight the impact of climate change.
"It's a lot of money but the alternative is just to give up on the reef," Brodie said. "We know how to do it. In fact right now we're spending a little bit of money doing some of it and we have made a little bit of progress with that little bit of money but we just need a lot more."
Several water quality improvement plans have been created over the past couple of years. They involve input from agricultural scientists, reef ecologists, economists and social scientists. Using those, Brodie was able to develop a plan.
The analysis recommended management of the reef be extended from the world heritage area to include the "greater Great Barrier Reef". That would extend from the Torres Strait in the north to Hervey Bay in the south and include the catchment areas that are directly responsible for the water pollution.
It also found a focus should be diverted from the struggling reefs to the ecosystems that are still in relatively good condition, including those in the Torres Strait, northern Cape York and Hervey Bay.
Stronger regulation was also needed, with powers available under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act being used to stop activities on land that are polluting the water.
Some of the required measures could be controversial, including buybacks of some sugarcane farms that are too polluting. But Brodie said many of those farms were not particularly profitable and many farmers would be happy to sell the land.
The $10bn needed by 2025 amounted to $1bn a year. But since the reef was estimated to generate up to $20bn a year for the Australian economy, that amounted to just 5% of its economic value for a limited time.
Brodie said this federal election was the last chance for the reef. If this plan or one like it wasn't committed to, he said it could be time to give up on the reef. "It takes time for change to happen and we need to start fast," he said.
Imogen Zethoven from the Australian Marine Conservation Society said: "Things are worse than we thought for the reef's future; we are close to the brink of what this fragile ecosystem can tolerate without a credible plan for restoring it to good health.
"This federal election is an historic opportunity for political leaders to take heed and act decisively to stop its destruction," she said.

Links

• Great Barrier Reef bleaching made 175 times likelier by human-caused climate change, say scientists
• Saving Great Barrier Reef from climate change should be central election issue, says Tim Flannery
• Great Barrier Reef: tourism operators urge Australian government to tackle climate change
• Scientists resort to advertising to get Great Barrier Reef crisis in Queensland paper
• Mass coral bleaching now affecting half of Australia's Great Barrier Reef
• Great Barrier Reef government panel to include climate change experts
• Planting coral could save Great Barrier Reef from climate change, say scientists
• Great Barrier Reef: warmer waters helping coral-eating starfish thrive