The Temperature Is Rising ... And So Is The Death Toll

Fairfax - Professor Hilary Bambrick*

I've investigated the impact of climate change driven extreme weather on public health for 20 years.
The research shows the links between the two couldn't be clearer - extreme weather events such as severe heatwaves, bushfires and supercharged storms are placing Australian lives at risk.

The threats to our lives from extreme weather isn't limited to heatwaves, but extends to more severe storms and floods and more intense and 'out of season' bushfires. Photo: AFP

As we continue to burn fossil fuels such as coal and gas, more carbon pollution is released into our climate system, causing more intense, more severe and more frequent extreme weather events, which in turn, will continue to place increasing pressure on health systems, emergency services and our communities.
Globally, we've just experienced the hottest five year period ever recorded, stretching from 2013 to 2017, and this month parts of Queensland were hit with a severe heatwave, breaking February averages by more than  10 degrees.
The reality is that Australia will become warmer and drier as a direct result of intensifying climate change as heatwaves continue to become hotter, longer, and more frequent.
Severe heatwaves are silent killers, causing more deaths since the 1890s than all of Australia's bushfires, cyclones, earthquakes, floods and severe storms combined.
Over the past decade, severe heatwaves around Australia have resulted in deaths and an increased number of hospital admissions for heart attack, stroke, respiratory illness, diabetes and kidney disease.
Older people, young children, and those with chronic health conditions are at high risk, but so are outdoor workers and our emergency responders.
In January 2009, Melbourne suffered three consecutive days of above 43 degrees, while elsewhere in Victoria it came within a whisker of 49.
There were 980 heat-related deaths during this time, which was around 60% more than would normally occur at that time of year.
Morgues were over capacity and bodies had to be stored in refrigerated trucks.
A few years earlier in 2004, Brisbane experienced a prolonged heatwave with temperatures reaching up to 42 degrees in February, which increased overall deaths by 23%.
The threats to our lives and livelihoods from extreme weather isn't limited to heatwaves, but extends to more frequent and more severe storms and floods, more intense and 'out of season' bushfires, and widespread and prolonged drought.
Of course, we’re used to extreme weather in Australia, so much so that it is embedded in our cultural identity.
From ancient Indigenous understandings of complex seasons and use of fire to manage landscapes, to Dorothea McKeller’s 1908 poem My Country, to Gang Gajang’s 1985 anthem Sounds of Then (This is Australia), we sure like to talk about the weather.
But climate change is making these events more and more deadly, and we can’t afford to be complacent.
So what do we do to protect ourselves and our loved ones from extreme heat and other events?
We can check in with our friends, family and neighbours on extreme heat days and we can strive to make our health services more resilient and responsive, but this doesn't deal with the cause.
Without rapid effective action to reduce carbon emissions we're locking ourselves into a future of worsening, out of control extremes.
Ultimately, to protect Australians from worsening extreme weather events and to do our fair share in the global effort to tackle climate change, we have to cut our greenhouse gas pollution levels quickly and deeply.
Reducing our carbon pollution means a healthier Australia, now and in the future, with fewer deaths, fewer ambulance call-outs, fewer trips to the hospital, and reduced costs to the health system.
The only thing standing in the way of Australia tackling climate change is political will.

*Professor Hilary Bambrick is a member of the Climate Council and heads the School of Public Health and Social Work at QUT.

Links

• Australia Among Countries Growing Hotter Faster: Report
• 'Significant' Heatwave Roasts South-Eastern Australia As Global Records Melt
• Penrith Swelters While Florida Freezes: Climate Disruption Is To Blame
• BOM Annual Climate Statement Shows 2017 Was Australia's Third-Warmest Year On Record
• Sydney Hits Its Highest Temperature Recorded Since 1939 With Penrith Reaching 47.3c
• Global Hot Spot: Exceptional Heat Pushes Up Ocean Temperatures Off Australia
• Health Savings Outweigh Costs Of Limiting Global Warming: Study
• With Political Leaders On The Sidelines, Sport Could Take The Lead On Climate Change
• Why Climate Change Is Worsening Public Health Problems
• How Climate Change Can Spread Respiratory Infection
• Study: Climate Change Is Damaging The Health Of Millions Of People
• How Climate Change Affects The Building Blocks For Health
• Doctors Call On Health Super Funds To Pull $1.7 Billion Out Of Coal And Oil Companies

If Business Leaders Want To Regain Our Trust, They Must Act On Climate Risk

The  Guardian - Ian Dunlop*

Empty rhetoric from corporates is not enough as climate change is accelerating far faster than expected

‘Already one of the world’s largest carbon polluters when exports are included, Australia is complicit in destroying the conditions which make human life possible’ Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP 

Business leaders seem astonished that community trust in their activities is at an all-time low, trending toward the bottom of the barrel inhabited by politicians. To the corporate leader dedicated to the capitalist, market economy success story of the last 50 years, that attitude is no doubt incomprehensible and downright ungrateful.
But it is hardly surprising given continuing scandals and declining ethics across the corporate and banking worlds, driven by the pernicious impact of short-termism, rising inequality and undue political influence; in large part the outcome of the oxymoron of “pay-for-performance” remuneration. So how is trust regained? The need for stronger leadership, ethics, greater transparency, open communications and improved culture feature prominently in current responses.
But a far more fundamental requirement is ignored, namely that business must lead on really critical issues, particularly the point raised long ago by economist Kenneth Boulding: “Anyone who considers economic growth can continue indefinitely in a finite system is either a madman or an economist”. The constraints Boulding anticipated have now arrived, as burgeoning population and economic growth crash into global biophysical limits which cannot be circumvented.
Those constraints, encompassing resource shortages, biodiversity loss and pollution in various guises, do not feature in the capitalist economic lexicon, as technology and the market are supposed to overcome all as we march toward the sunlit uplands of the neoliberal nirvana. In the real world, the entire growth model under which Australia and global economies operate, is no longer sustainable; it sowed the seeds of its own destruction some time ago and is rapidly driving itself into the ground as growth rates decline. This is the great “black elephant” of business and politics; a known, knowable fact that no one wants to acknowledge – the unmentionable in the recent Business and Governance Summits around the country, as our leaders strive to compound the problem with self-defeating subterfuges to maximise growth, not least corporate tax cuts and trade agreements.
To the community, these constraints are increasingly obvious as the quality of life for the average person deteriorates in myriad ways. The rhetoric of much-vaunted corporate social responsibility no longer holds water when our supposed leaders are not prepared to address the issues that really count for our survival, let alone prosperity.

These range from basic considerations such as ensuring food and water availability, to the creation of genuinely sustainable global societies. However, the first priority must be human-induced climate change, manifest as the lack of an atmosphere into which we can continue dumping carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, agriculture and deforestation, without causing catastrophic consequences.
Climate change is accelerating far faster than expected, to the point where it now represents an existential threat to humanity, that is a threat posing permanent large negative consequences which will be irreversible, an outcome being locked in today by our insistence on expanding the use of fossil fuels. This should be a major concern in Australia given that we are more exposed than most, but instead our leaders would have us embark on massive fossil fuel expansion. Already one of the world’s largest carbon polluters when exports are included, Australia is complicit in destroying the conditions which make human life possible. There is no greater crime against humanity.
The economic and social impacts will be devastating unless that policy is rapidly reversed. The unprecedented hurricane season in the Atlantic, bushfires in the Californian winter, extreme heat in many parts of South Asia and rapid heating of the Arctic with associated instability in the northern hemisphere weather system, are only the most recent portents of what is to come. The worst outcomes can only be avoided now by emergency action, akin to restructuring economies on a war-footing.
It finally seems to be dawning on corporate and investor leadership that climate change is a real and present danger which is not going away.
Company directors are personally liable for failing to assess and act upon climate risk, but the greenwash continues. Major corporates parade their credentials in support of serious climate action, but none of their scenarios and policies are in line with the Paris objective of constraining global temperature increase “well below 2.0C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.50C”.
Fortunately, as understanding of the risks improves, regulatory pressure mounts. The recommendations triggered by Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, via the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) are gradually being taken up, with companies voluntarily disclosing the impact which a 2C policy framework would have on their organisation, assuming such a framework was ever put in place (by governments?). Progress, but reactive and certainly not leadership. The question that must be answered is: “what are you doing proactively as a company to create a 2C world” – more realistically closer to 1.5C, as it is now patently clear that 2C is far too high?
If business genuinely wishes to regain trust, it must proactively face up to the challenge posed by climate change and initiate emergency action. Beyond that, it must open up honest debate on a new economic model to replace conventional growth. It is the only way business will be sustainable in the 21st century with a real social licence to operate.
In Churchill’s words: “Sometimes we have to do what is required”.

*Ian Dunlop was formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chair of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors

Links

• Arctic warming: scientists alarmed by 'crazy' temperature rises
• Hostage to myopic self-interest: climate science is watered down under political scrutiny
• Maintaining the social licence to operate: 2018 KPMG - AICD Trust Survey
• World’s great forests could lose half of all wildlife as planet warms – report
• Extreme winter weather becoming more common as Arctic warms, study finds
• Greens electric car push: end sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030
• Weatherwatch: Over Southern Ocean, clouds are made to a different recipe
• Burning coal may have caused Earth’s worst mass extinction
• Climate change is a disaster foretold, just like the first world war

Rain Or Shine: New Solar Cell Captures Energy From Raindrops

The Guardian - Damian Carrington

New device is designed to prevent power output plummeting when the sun isn’t shining – but practical application is still some years off

Researchers want to create a hybrid device that harvests kinetic energy from water as well as solar power from the sun. Photograph: Getty Images

A solar panel that can generate electricity from falling raindrops has been invented, enabling power to flow even when skies cloud over or the sun has set.
Solar power installation is soaring globally thanks to costs plunging 90% in the past decade, making it the cheapest electricity in many parts of the world. But the power output can plummet under grey skies and researchers are working to squeeze even more electricity from panels.
The new device, demonstrated in a laboratory at Soochow University in China, places two transparent polymer layers on top of a solar photovoltaic (PV) cell. When raindrops fall on to the layers and then roll off, the friction generates a static electricity charge.
“Our device can always generate electricity in any daytime weather,” said Baoquan Sun, at Soochow University. “In addition, this device even provides electricity at night if there is rain.”
Other researchers have recently created similar devices on solar panels, known as triboelectric nanogenerators (Tengs), but the new design is significantly simpler and more efficient as one of the polymer layers acts as the electrode for both the Teng and the solar cell.
“Due to our unique device design, it becomes a lightweight device,” said Sun, whose team’s work is published in the journal ACS Nano. “In future, we are exploring integrating these into mobile and flexible devices, such as electronic clothes. However, the output power efficiency needs to be further improved before practical application.”
Sun said the field was developing fast and expects to produce a prototype product in three to five years. Other scientists in China have also used Tengs on solar cells to harvest some power from the wind, an approach Sun said could be added to his device. The top layer of the Teng is also grooved to help focus more light on the solar cell.
“The idea is interesting – a hybrid device that harvests kinetic energy from water without destroying the output of the solar cell during sunny times,” said Varun Sivaram, at the Council on Foreign Relations, US, and author of a new book on solar power. “There’s lots of nice engineering, like using one layer to do double duty as a component of the Teng as well as trap light for the solar cell.”
However, Varun said the power the device generates from falling rain needs to be significantly higher to start making an overall difference to a solar panel’s output. “It’s really not clear whether this is a big deal or not – I suspect it’s not.”
Prof Keith Barnham, at Imperial College London, said the hybrid device gave an important advantage in making it more compact and efficient. But he said: “Wind power is clearly the most effective and complementary power source to PV – and it works equally well in the rain!”
Other innovations in solar panel design include using the mineral perovskite as a flexible and efficient material, using so-called “quantum dots” and researching artificial photosynthesis, which uses sunlight to produce liquid and gas fuels.

Links

• After the 'sunrush': what comes next for solar power?
• Time to shine: Solar power is fastest-growing source of new energy
• Solar energy and moonshine politics
• Inside Glanrhyd, the first solar 'eco hamlet' in Wales
• US energy shakeup continues as solar capacity set to triple
• Solar Impulse 2 completes first ever Atlantic crossing by solar plane
• UK solar eclipses coal power over month for first time
• Renewable energy smashes global records in 2015, report shows
• UK solar power installations plummet after government cuts
• Australia's Solar Power Boom Could Almost Double Capacity In A Year, Analysts Say
• Australia Rooftop Solar Boom Continues With Best January Ever
• Shorten Hails Cheap Wind And Solar, But Will He Stop Adani?
• Plunging Costs Make Solar, Wind And Battery Storage Cheaper Than Coal
• CEFC Finances Solar Farm At Coleambally In NSW
• Surging Power Bills Spark Rush For Household Solar In Australia
• Powering Up: Rooftop Solar Installations Jump By Half To Hit Record 1GW In 2017
• Outback Couple Build Solar Farm To Prove Fringe-Of-Grid Power Generation Need
• Four Decades And Counting: New NASA Instrument Continues Measuring Solar Energy Input To Earth
• Queensland Chooses Sunshine Over Coal, To Relief Of Solar Industry
• Community Solar Heads For Rooftops Of NYC’s Public Housing Projects

IPCC Cities Conference Tackles Gaps Between Science And Climate Action On The Ground

The Conversation - Jago Dodson

The IPCC’s first cities conference revealed the challenges in bridging the gaps between scientific knowledge and policy practice, and between cities in developed and developing nations. Cities IPCC/Twitter

Some 600 climate scientists, urban researchers, policymakers and practitioners attended the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) first ever conference on cities last week. Hosted in Edmonton, Canada, it was organised as a forum to share knowledge and advice in support of the sixth IPCC Assessment Report (AR6) due in 2021.
The significance of a UN-organised global scientific conference on climate change and cities should not be underestimated. Urbanisation has been a United Nations concern since 1963. Policy attention strengthened in the 1970s when the UN Habitat agency was established. This focus was redoubled in the mid-2000s when it was reported that more than half of the global population was now urban.
Climate change has been a topic of UN action since 1988, with policy attention intensifying in the late 1990s and mid-2010s. Appreciation has since grown that with 55% of the world’s people now living in cities, this is where where efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change must be focused.

A collision of science, practice and politics
By venturing onto urban terrain the IPCC faces some interesting scientific questions. To a large degree biological or physical systems can be studied as objective phenomena that behave according to discoverable and predictable patterns. Carbon dioxide objectively traps solar radiation leading to climatic warming; biological species die at temperatures above their tolerance.
By contrast cities are riven with historical, social, economic, cultural and political dynamics. The theoretical and conceptual frames that scientists apply to cities are subject to many biases.
We certainly can calculate the emissions a city produces and chart the likely impacts on it from a changing climate. But the reasons why a city came to emit so much and how it responds to the need to reduce emissions and adapt to impacts are highly contingent. Objective validation and verification are difficult. Identifying causality and forward pathways is very difficult.
There is also a vast divide between the physical and social science of cities and the policymakers and practitioners who shape urban development. Research shows that most urban professionals simply do not read urban science. Instead they draw on practice knowledge acquired from peer practitioners via an array of non-scientific channels and networks.
These difficulties were observable at the IPCC cities conference. It was scientific in purpose but a subtle politics was at play. Rather than being convened by a scientific body, the conference was co-ordinated as an instrument of the world’s national polities and the IPCC, organised by a mix of UN organisations and NGO networks, and sponsored by a local, provincial and national government.
Fewer than two-thirds of delegates were scientists; the remaining 40 per cent were policy officials and practitioners. The problem of connecting scientific and practice knowledge was often on display.
Many cities have accepted the clear scientific evidence on climate change and accompanying global targets. These cities are striving at the local scale to cut emissions and adapt to changing climate patterns. For many, their main need is for knowledge of practical policies and programs, rather than more evidence of climate change impacts or mitigation technologies.
Often these cities are racing far ahead of slow and certain science. They are sharing practical experience of mitigation and adaptation strategies via self-organising peer-city networks. Finding ways to link inventive but unsystematic practice knowledge with the formal peer-reviewed processes of orthodox science will be a critical task for climate change scientists and policymakers.
Policymakers are also grappling with how to implement global agreements within complex international arrangements. There face myriad tiers of national, regional, city and local governance, involving a plethora of discrete public, private and civic actors.
For this group, their priorities at the IPCC cities conference concerned policy processes and institutional design, political commitment and implementation instruments. Their needs are for policy, institutional and political science as much as for further scientific detail on climate change.

What did these encounters reveal?
The conference generated many fascinating insights. One major theme was the question of informality.
Many cities beyond the developed world are weakly governed. Multiple dimensions of urban life, including housing and infrastructure, are organised via informal institutions. Achieving effective action in these circumstances is a considerable policy problem.
A related problem is the gross geographical imbalance in scientific effort and focus on urban climate questions. Most research focuses on the cities of the developed West. And most of those are comparatively well resourced to respond to climate change.
In contrast, the cities of the developing world lack a systematic data and research base to enable effective and timely climate action. Yet these are the cities where many of the most severe climate impacts will be felt. Resolving this inequity is a fundamental international scientific challenge, as is growing the capacity to build a better evidence base.
Another question the IPCC needs to navigate is the boundary between science and politics in urban climate policy. During conference plenaries, the moderator — a former city mayor — excluded questions about specific political representatives’ stances on climate change according to apolitical IPCC rules. Yet questions about the effects on cities of neoliberalism were deemed permissible.
Urban scientists will require an especially nuanced framing of their research agenda if they are to address the very material politics of urban climate policy via theoretical abstraction alone.
The conference also provided some memorable highlights. William Rees, the originator of ecological footprint theory, lambasted delegates for not adequately appreciating the absolute material limits to resource exploitation. And the youth delegates received a standing ovation as the cohort who will be grappling with urban climate effects long after their older peers have departed.

William Rees explains the origins of the ecological footprint.

An agenda for urban climate action
The conference released a research agenda. This outlines the urgent need for inclusive and socially transformative action on climate change, improved evidence and information to support climate responses, and new funding and finance mechanisms to make this possible. It’s a very high-level guide for climate and urban scientists seeking to better understand climate change impacts on cities.
The conference appears to have met the IPCC’s needs to compile and review a large volume of scientific and practice insight for its assessment reporting. Whether it will have a wider effect on climate policy and action in cities remains unclear.
The participating scientists and practitioners certainly shared a general commitment to advancing the urban climate agenda. But it remains uncertain whether methodical scientific processes will be timely enough to meet the accelerating and expanding demands of urgent urban climate action.

Links

• This is why we cannot rely on cities alone to tackle climate change
• How American cities & states are fighting climate change globally
• While nations play politics, cities and states are taking up the climate challenge
• World Scientists, Local Leaders Map Research Agenda for Cities and Climate Change for Coming Years
• Ecological footprint

Extreme Winter Weather Becoming More Common As Arctic Warms, Study Finds

The Guardian - Oliver Milman

Scientists found a strong link between high temperatures near the pole and unusually heavy snowfall and frigid weather farther south.

Freezing weather conditions dubbed the ‘Beast from the East’ brought snow and sub-zero temperatures to the UK. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

The sort of severe winter weather that has rattled parts of the US and UK is becoming more common as the Arctic warms, with scientists finding a strong link between high temperatures near the pole and unusually heavy snowfall and frigid weather further south.
A sharp increase in temperatures across the Arctic since the early 1990s has coincided with an uptick in abnormally cold snaps in winter, particularly in the eastern US, according to new research that analyzed temperature data from 1950 onwards.
Extreme cold winter weather is up to four times more likely when temperatures in the Arctic are unusually high, the study found. Researchers compared daily temperatures from across the Arctic region with something called the accumulated winter season severity index, which grades winter weather based on temperature, snow fall and snow depth, across 12 US cities.
“There’s a remarkably strong correlation between a warm Arctic and cold winter weather further south,” said Judah Cohen, a climatologist at Atmospheric and Environmental Research. “It’s a complex story – global warming is contributing to milder temperatures but is also having unforeseen consequences such as this.”
The Arctic has just experienced its toastiest winter on record, with parts of the region 20C (68F) warmer than the long-term average, a situation scientists have variously described as “crazy,” “weird,” and “simply shocking”. The far north latitudes are warming around twice as quickly as the global average, diminishing glaciers and sea ice and imperiling creatures such as polar bears.

Two large winter storms recently swept the US east coast in less than a week, unloading up to three inches of snow per hour in places, resulting in several deaths, thousands of cancelled flights, closed schools and snarled traffic.
The cold front even reached Florida, contributing to a recent surge in manatee deaths. So far this year, 166 of the marine mammals have been found dead off the state’s coast, with stress from the cold the leading cause of mortality. “Manatees may join polar bears as one of the first iconic victims of extinction in the wild from climate change,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
The US storms follow freezing winds from Siberia – dubbed the ‘beast from the east’ – that battered parts of Europe, with the British army deployed to help liberate hundreds of stranded drivers on UK motorways.
“This winter is a great example of what we can expect from climate change,” said Cohen. “In the US we had the ‘bomb cyclone’ in January, followed by July-like warm weather in February that I’d never seen before. And now we’ve had a parade of powerful winter storms and the beast from the east. It’s mind boggling.”
The research didn’t look at the reasons behind the trend of see-sawing temperatures between the Arctic and areas to the south but Cohen said it was consistent with the theory that the polar vortex – which shot to public consciousness during a 2014 cold spell – is being disrupted as the earth heats up.
The polar vortex is a low pressure system that swirls around the polar region. Sometimes it can stray further south, bringing cold Arctic air with it. There is continuing conjecture over the impact climate change is having but some scientists believe warming temperatures could be weakening the polar vortex’s flow, allowing it to meander towards the equator.
This nuanced picture of the consequences of climate change has been derided by Donald Trump, with the president using Twitter to mockingly reference cold weather during almost every winter in recent years. In December, Trump tweeted that “perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming” amid plunging temperatures.
Scientists say this stance overlooks the complicated changes underway in the environment as the world warms due to human activity, by an average of around 1C over the past century. This temperature rise hasn’t been uniform across the globe and has fueled an array of conditions, from increased flood risk in some areas to drought conditions and heatwaves in others.
Richard Alley, a leading glacier and climate expert at Penn State who was not involved in Cohen’s research, said the study is “fascinating” and “important” but added the discrepancy between Arctic temperatures and winter weather elsewhere could have other drivers, such as a warm Gulf of Mexico feeding extra energy into storms along the US east coast.
“The broadest picture is that we are indeed warming the world’s climate, primarily from carbon dioxide release from fossil-fuel burning, and this will impact us and other living things,” said Alley.
The Arctic’s role is seen quite differently by some other scientists, however, who point out that occasional outbursts of cold weather haven’t altered the trend that winters in the US northeast have been getting warmer, particularly since the 1970s.
“There have always been cold outbreaks. The cold air has to go somewhere,” said Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
“The issue is whether the air stays put or gets loose. Some years it is contained, other years it breaks out. The question is where and what is the cause. This study reaffirms the relationship but not its cause. The Arctic likely plays a modest role in terms of feedbacks but it is unlikely it is a cause.”

Links

• Arctic permafrost thawing faster than ever, US climate study finds
• More people heading to court to spur action on climate change, study findsAsian typhoons becoming more intense, study findsRecord-breaking temperatures 'have robbed the Arctic of its winter'
• Rapid Arctic ice loss linked to extreme weather changes in Europe and US
• Extreme weather already on increase due to climate change, study finds
• Extreme weather becoming more common, study says
• Extreme weather more persuasive on climate change than scientists
• Climate Change Will Accelerate Extreme Weather Events In The Coming Years
• Arctic Warming: Scientists Alarmed By 'Crazy' Temperature Rises
• 'Really Extreme' Global Weather Event Leaves Scientists Aghast
• Scientists Just Issued a Grim New Warning on Climate Change: 'We Are Not Prepared'
• Human Existence Threatened More By Extreme Weather, Not Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Global Experts Warn
• 2017 Brought Another Year Of Weather Extremes As Drought And Heat Took Its Toll
• From America's Hurricanes To Portugal's Fires, ABC Weather Looks Back At 2017's Deadly Extremes
• 2017: The Year In Extreme Weather
• Unusual Hot Spell For Victoria And Tasmania Driven By Warm Seas, Stable Systems

'Game Changer': New Vulnerability To Climate Change In Ocean Food Chain

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Excessive rates of carbon dioxide affects the health of key micro-organisms in the oceans, potentially undermining the base of critical marine food chains, according to new research by US scientists.
A team of researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) applied techniques from the emerging field of synthetic biology to understand how ocean acidification from the absorption of CO2 is affecting tiny plants known as phytoplankton.

Phytoplankton like these diatoms turn out to be sensitive to ocean acidification, according to new research. Photo: Scripps Institution/Nature

Phytoplankton are not only a key food source for global fisheries, they are also important to the removal of CO2, much like how trees absorb the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.
In a paper published on Thursday in Nature, the team demonstrated how the microscopic plants require carbonate ions to acquire iron from the water to grow.
As CO2 levels rise, the oceans have less carbonate, affecting phytoplankton's ability to secure sufficient nutrient iron for growth. In fact, the concentration of sea surface carbonate ions are on course to drop by half by the end of this century.
“Ultimately our study reveals the possibility of a ‘feedback mechanism’ operating in parts of the ocean where iron already constrains the growth of phytoplankton,”said Jeff McQuaid, lead author of the study who made the discoveries as a PhD student at Scripps Oceanography.
“In these regions, high concentrations of atmospheric CO2 could decrease phytoplankton growth, restricting the ability of the ocean to absorb CO2 and thus leading to ever higher concentrations of CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere.”

Phytoplankton off New York. The micro-organisms help remove carbon dioxide from the ocean. Photo: NASA

Andrew E. Allen, a biologist at Scripps and JCVI and the paper's senior author, said that while the genetics of common animals such as rats or rabbits was well known, the same was not true of marine microbes that play important roles in the global food chain.
The researchers inserted a mutated copy of a gene into phytoplankton cells and tested how it responded to changing ocean chemistry.
“It was a complete game changer,” Professor Allen told Fairfax Media, noting interest in who acidification impacts on phytoplankton had been "a pretty intensive topic of research for the past 10-20 years” given the implication for the food web. Progress, though, had been limited until the new techniques emerged.
“With [synthetic biological] tools like this we can really study the function of a protein in detail to really enable some breakthroughs.”
Professor Allen discovered several iron-responsive genes in diatoms - a type of phytoplankton - in 2008 that had no known function.
DNA analysis of samples that were collected by Mr McQuaid during a trip in the same year to Antarctica revealed one of Professor Allen’s iron genes was not only present in every sample of seawater, but that every major phytoplankton group in the Southern Ocean seemed to have a copy.
The subsequent research centred on the more common of two methods of iron take-up by diatoms.
"In the Southern Ocean, where the temperature decreases the solubility of carbonate, we should already be in the zone where the models project which start to limit iron uptake," Professor Allen said. "Certainly by 2100...the uptake of iron by this [primary] mechanism could be reduced by 45 per cent.”
While the micro organisms had a secondary way to extract the iron they needed to grow, that method was "a lot more energetically expensive and less efficient", Professor Allen said.
"If you take away one kind of iron substrate, there could be ripples through the microbial food web."
Professor Allen credited the now-Dr McQuaid for pulling together a wide-range of scientific fields - tapping experts in molecular evolution, iron and carbonate chemistry, synthetic biology and diatom biology - to "weave a coherent, integrated story”.

Links

• Carbonate-sensitive phytotransferrin controls high-affinity iron uptake in diatoms
• Key biological mechanism is disrupted by ocean acidification
• Iron chemistry matters for ocean carbon uptake
• Oceanographers solve mystery of phytoplankton survival in nutrient-poor Pacific
• Iron fertilization less efficient for deep-sea carbon dioxide storage than previously thought?
• Key biological mechanism is disrupted by ocean acidification
• Coral reef experiment shows: Acidification from carbon dioxide slows growth
• North Atlantic is getting less salty, but it's too soon to blame climate change

Should Climate Change Be Called Murder? What Do You Call Knowingly Killing People?

Washington Post - Tom Toles

Tom Toles

This seems like as good a time as any to shift the climate argument from the debate club to criminal court, and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger intends to do just that.
“I don’t think there’s any difference: If you walk into a room and you know you’re going to kill someone, it’s first-degree murder; I think it’s the same thing with the oil companies.”
Murder. Yes, it’s about time somebody started to use language that captures the actual effect of deliberately delaying the transition to carbon-free fuel. Will people really die as a result of climate change?
They already have, from the amplification of the power of storms, to more intense drought, wildfires and flooding.
The World Health Organization estimates that between 2030 and 2050, 250,000 people will die from climate change. EVERY YEAR. From malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress.
Of course, right now we’re living in a world where our current president can refute such concerns with the reasoned response of “FAKE NEWS!”
 Trump diddles while home burns. And the U.S. government has become a full orchestra of fellow diddlers, and everyone is afraid to yell fire in the crowded theater, which is actually ablaze.
Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt, who is conducting this gruesome symphony of suicide, doesn’t believe in climate science.
But then he doesn’t believe in evolution either. And why should he? He is behaving like a sheep, and when he looks around at others in his party, all he sees is more sheep. And they are all ambling off together to the slaughter, and trying to lead the rest of us there as well.
If the rest of us humans don’t stand up and stop them, maybe Schwarzenegger should change his lawsuit to First-Degree Slaughter.

Links

• Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Suing Big Oil for Climate Change
• Arnold Schwarzenegger looking to terminate big oil with legal action
• Schwarzenegger to Sue Big Oil for 'Murder'
• Schwarzenegger To Sue Oil Companies, Compares Them To Murderers