Turning Climate Change Legislation Into Public Health Policy

The Lancet

Macduff Everton/Getty Image

SUMMARY The effects of climate change are inextricably entwined with health: WHO estimates 7 million deaths from breathing polluted air indoors and outdoors; Impact of weather-related natural disasters; Negative effects on crop yields and food security; Changing patterns of vector-borne diseases; The shaping of social and environmental determinants of health. 2018 marks 10 years of the UK's 2008 Climate Change Act, which mandated reduction of UK carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050 to 1990 levels, and legislated an independent Committee on Climate Change.

The effects of climate change are inextricably entwined with health: ranging from the WHO estimate of 7 million deaths from breathing polluted air indoors and outdoors; through the impact of weather-related natural disasters; negative effects on crop yields and food security; and changing patterns of vector-borne diseases; to the shaping of social and environmental determinants of health.
2018 marks 10 years of the UK's 2008 Climate Change Act, which mandated reduction of UK carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050 to 1990 levels, and legislated an independent Committee on Climate Change.
Internationally, this past decade saw completion of the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the establishment of the 2010 Green Climate Fund, and the adoption of the 2015 Paris Agreement within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, collectively setting national and international targets towards mitigating the effects of climate change.
Building on local, national, and international progress to turn climate change policy into public health actions maximises cobenefits for health.
Local authorities and health professionals have already cooperated for many years in the UK: climate change legislation is a common and shared interest, but these groups must engage in stronger partnerships and dialogue.
There is bureaucratic complexity in national government cross-departmental sharing of policy—including key players from the Departments of Environment, Food, & Rural Affairs, Transport, Health, Business, and Energy & Industrial Strategy—but such sharing is essential for effective results.
The Climate Change Act and accompanying committees facilitate this, and there is support from health professionals, seen in the work of the Lancet Countdown and the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change.
Pressing challenges for UK policy makers exist around the interlinked policies of travel and air pollution.
From the lack of joined up infrastructure to quantifying the impact of health-related travel in the UK, health needs to be better embedded into decision making.
For example, although individual-level public health advice has long been to undertake more active travel through walking and cycling, urban planning and rural infrastructures are widely variable, traffic safety is frequently poor, and levels of outdoor air pollution are dangerous.
Air pollution policy is at a crossroads.
The UK Government is in the final stages of developing a new draft clean air strategy that would bring the 1956 and 1968 Clean Air Acts up to date.
An environment act, which is yet to be drafted, is also being precipitated by the UK's 2019 departure from the European Union, and has the potential to influence local and national land use, industry output, agriculture, and urban planning.
 Government departments need the support of the health community to link these initiatives and to keep health firmly on cross-departmental agendas.
Internationally, new data published on May 2 by WHO reporting the air pollution levels in 4300 cities found that nine of ten people globally are breathing polluted air (defined by WHO as exposure to small particulate matter of 2·5 μm or less in diameter [PM_2·5], in concentrations higher than an average mean of 40 μg/m³).
WHO data should be used to inform policy to support cross-sectoral solutions for transport, land use, urban housing, and energy infrastructure.
Against this backdrop, WHO has called for health to be the top priority for urban planners—with more than half of the world's population already living in cities.
In China, the urban population is expected to reach 71% by 2030, bringing a host of urban health implications.
The Tsinghua-Lancet Commission on Healthy Cities in China: unlocking the power of cities for a healthy China recommends addressing urban planning, calling for better integration of health into all civic policies, and the integration of multisectoral policies.
The recommendations have universal importance and should be read and acted on by all those with responsibility for urban health, and are not limited to China.
Cooperation and sharing of goals, targets, and measurements across diverse sectors will support effective action on climate change—especially environmental pollution.
Climate change legislation is a central concern across government at all levels, and is not solely about the changing climate, but is embedded in public health policies.
The Climate Change Act plays an important part in the UK, and can continue to act as a beacon to inform other countries' national approaches within the Paris Agreement framework.
 Health professionals have a responsibility to influence and contribute to policies at local and national levels that demonstrate commitment to public health, as this will define how future societies take shape around our world.

Links

• Climate Change: Australia's Position Is Unconscionable For A Wealthy Country
• Disease Threat Forces SA Health To Prioritise Adapting To Climate Change
• Health And Climate Change: Call For Urgent Action
• Australia One Of The Countries Most Exposed To Climate Change, Bank Warns
• Climate Change Promotes The Spread Of Mosquito And Tick Borne Viruses
• The Temperature Is Rising ... And So Is The Death Toll
• 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
• Climate Change Already Damaging Health Of Millions Globally, Report Finds

We Will Prevent Catastrophic Climate Change!!

CleanTechnica - Kurt Lowder

Did the title anger you or make the hair on the back of your neck stand up? Does it seem foolish or careless to make that statement since people could become complacent about climate change?
Perhaps. However, this article is not so much about definitively making this statement, but to question if maybe soon we should.
Of late, I feel increasingly confident that environmentalists will be able to make that claim soon. A few experts, like Tony Seba and Ramez Naam, are starting to make this claim. I have been weary of it, but increasingly I think they are right.


Why? Because the exponential growth of renewable energy and energy efficiency would require an act of war to stop it. Wind, solar, and batteries are all dropping in price with no sight in end. Additionally, self-driving electric taxis are just around the corner, meaning eventually we will need 80% fewer cars on the road.
Moreover, I think it is likely that, to be effective environmental advocates, at some point we have to start saying something like, “We will prevent catastrophic climate change.” Why? Because many people for their own sanity have to ignore the fear caused by climate change to simply get through their day. On the other hand, many are desperate for a “Yes, we can!” attitude.
As a refresher, allow me to give an example of how quickly renewable energy prices have dropped. I began following solar closely in 2014 when people across the world marveled how the record low price for a solar farm fell below 6 cents per kWh. In November 2017, the record low fell to 1.77 cents per kWh. This project is not yet built, but is on its way. I almost feel like a ticker tape parade is in order for solar dropping below two cents per kWh. It was only a few short years ago that I saw mainstream projections that this feat would not occur until 2050.
At least in the USA, we have a large number of people who do not think climate change is real or think that it is something minor and there is no urgency.
Roughly speaking, the rest of the population thinks climate change is real and, generally, many have an understanding that it is very serious. Nevertheless, some large portion of those people have become fatalistic. They feel there is nothing they can do about it, and for their own sanity, they choose to ignore it. These people are potential early adopters, but they feel they cannot make a difference to this massive calamity.
The human mind evolved in small hunter-gatherer groups of fewer than 150 individuals. The human mind is not meant to handle 24/7 global news. Most people are struggling to just get through their daily lives and are simply not equipped to take on the challenge of climate change. The drumbeat coming out of the environmental community is that if things to do not change, civilization is likely to collapse — that’s hard to deal with.
My hypothesis is that if we begin say something like, “We will prevent Catastrophic Climate Change,” two important things will happen. First, over time, the deniers will become less intense and dogmatic in their opposition to renewable and energy efficiency. Solar and wind power have high approval numbers, but most people have no idea how much the price of these technologies have fallen. This message can help them to learn that.
Surprisingly, many deniers are all for renewable energy if it is not subsidized. Frequently, they just shut down when you try to explain externalities or fossil fuel subsidies to them. We might consider not even bringing up climate change to them. We might just instead focus on convincing them of the economic benefits of wind and solar along with the health benefits. To open their mind, it is crucial to state that subsidies for these technologies will soon come to an end.
The second thing that may happen is people who do believe in climate change but are fatalistic about it can finally begin to be active in supporting the solutions to climate change. Even if they start out small, they can collectively make a large difference.
We really only need a few more early adopters for climate change solutions until they reach the point where they become overwhelmingly the best economic decision to make everywhere.
For example, maybe you cannot convince someone to buy an EV, but maybe you can convince them to refrain from buying a new car anytime soon, because EVs will be very cheap in just a few short years. Of course, automated electric taxis will be available soon and they an affordable, safe, and enjoyable method of transportation.
I think it is important that environmental activists spend some time out of our echo chambers. At times, we tend to be angry and self-righteous about our understanding of climate change. I think in many ways we need a “keep it simple, stupid” mentality.
Too often, I try to win the argument. Having to be right is a character defect of mine that gets me in trouble far too often. It is an easy mistake to fall into when considering the horrors that climate change present.
I think we need to be humble in our environmental advocacy. It is a misconception that being humble means being weak. Confidence is actually a part of humility. Soon, or even now, I think we need to confidently state, “We will prevent catastrophic climate change. Moreover, our efforts to do so will greatly increase our standard of living.”
Throughout history, an inspiring lesson is often repeated. Societies that face difficulties often surpass those that do not. Take the Aztecs for example, who were forced to settle in the unwanted swamps of Mesoamerica because that was the only territory that was available to them. To grow enough food, they built artificial islands called Chinampas, which floated in the swamp and in effect watered themselves. In facing this adversity to survive, they had to innovate. In the end, they became the most dominant civilization in their region — in large part because they had to face this big challenge.
Think about how well Europe rebuilt itself after being decimated in WWII.
The whole world is coming together to face this challenge. Our linear minds dictate to us that we are behind schedule, but we are catching up fast. While environmental degradation is sad, I am in absolute awe of our understanding of it and the efforts made to prevent it.
Jane Goodall in her book Hope for animals and their world quoted the maxim: “While there is life, there is hope.” The book details how so many brilliant minds are working tirelessly to save our Earth. I often watch this video clip when I need a resurgence of hope, and a reminder that we must have hope to succeed.

Links

• Tony Seba: By 2030, 95% of People Won’t Own a Private Car — Automaker Death Spiral Coming
• Low Costs of Solar Power & Wind Power Crush Coal, Crush Nuclear, & Beat Natural Gas
• Renewable Energy Doesn’t Get More In Subsidies Than Fossil & Nuclear Energy Have Gotten, & Continue To Get
• Renewable Energy Has Many Benefits For People, The Economy, & The Environment
• Hope for Animals and Their World

How Big Oil Distorts Climate Change Reality With Tweaks In Language

The Conversation - Sylvia Jaworska

Kanok Sulaiman / shutterstock

Almost every climate scientist agrees human-caused climate change is a major global threat. Yet, despite efforts over the past 30 years to do something about it, emissions keep increasing.
Any successful coordinated international response will require action from businesses. However, some organisations, especially those in sectors that significantly contribute to environmental degradation such as the oil industry, seem rather reluctant to embrace the challenge. Those climate initiatives they have embraced were more often than not prompted by litigation risks or enforced by governmental policies rather than a result of an intrinsic “green” commitment.
This isn’t the impression the industry likes to give off, of course, and it’s no wonder oil companies’ statements on corporate social responsibility and environmental reporting tend to highlight their greenest side. Yet the fact these documents give the oil firms the opportunity to construct their own narrative means they are a useful source for my research in applied linguistics. When a huge volume of language is analysed, features and patterns can emerge that would be invisible to the casual human reader.
My latest study looked at the “climate change reality” constructed by oil industry in its corporate reporting, what language was used to create this reality, and how this changed over time. This sort of analysis of language is important. Language not only mirrors the social world but acts as a lens through which objects, situations and people are given meaning. Features and associations that are foregrounded can point to some level of significance, while what is kept in the background or not mentioned at all can highlight a lack of interest.

‘Climate change’ or ‘global warming’? ‘Fixable problem’ or ‘unavoidable risk’? Giorgiogp2 / NCDC, CC BY-SA

This is why I used corpus-linguistic tools – essentially, using a computer to analyse vast amounts of text for certain patterns – to investigate nearly 500 corporate documents produced between 2000 and 2013 by major oil companies (including all the big names). This comprised some 14.8m words published in corporate social responsibility and environmental reports and relevant chapters in annual reports. That’s a lot of words – roughly equivalent to 25 copies of War and Peace.
Using software program Sketch Engine, I looked at how frequently the key corporate terms “climate change”, “greenhouse effect”, and “global warming” were used in each year to reveal how patterns of attention changed over time.
My analysis shows that the most frequently adopted term in the studied sample is “climate change”, while other terms such as “global warming” and “greenhouse effect” are rarely used. The preference for “climate change” and near absence of “global warming” reflects patterns observed in public and media discourse, too.
The use of the term “climate change” experienced peaks and troughs over time, with most mentions between 2004 and 2008, and fewer and fewer mentions since 2010. Less attention to climate change in public debates and overt anti-climate change attitudes on the parts of some governments in recent years might have contributed to the decline in attention given to climate change in corporate reporting.

The rise and fall of ‘climate change’ (frequency per million words). Sylvia Jaworska, Author provided

I then looked at words used alongside “climate change” to gather clues as to the company’s attitude towards it. This showed a significant change in the way it has been portrayed. In the mid-2000s, the most frequent associated terms were “tackle”, “combat” and “fight”, showing climate change was seen as a phenomenon that something could be done about.
However, in recent years, the corporate discourse has increasingly emphasised the notion of “risks”. Climate change is portrayed as an unpredictable agent “causing harm” to the oil industry. The industry tends to present itself as a technological leader, but the measures it proposes to tackle climate change are mainly technological or market-based and thus firmly embedded within the corporate world’s drive for profits. Meanwhile, social, ethical, or alternative solutions are largely absent.
It seems that climate change has become an elusive concept that is losing its relevance even as an impression management strategy. The proactive stance of a decade earlier is now offset by a distancing strategy, often indicated through the use of qualifying words like “potential” or “eventual”, which push the problem into the future or pass responsibility to others.
In doing so, the discourse obscures the oil sector’s large contribution to environmental degradation and “grooms” the public to believe that the industry is serious about tackling climate change.

Links

• Venue of last resort: the climate lawsuits threatening the future of big oil
• Issue Cycles in Corporate Sustainability Reporting: A Longitudinal Study
• Change But no Climate Change: Discourses of Climate Change in Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in the Oil Industry
• A Rhetoric of Motives
• Good science doesn’t guarantee public acceptance – diverse evidence may help
• Climate Activists Are Lousy Salesmen
• The Discovery of Global Warming
• Alarmism Is the Argument We Need to Fight Climate Change
• Why Hope Is Dangerous When It Comes to Climate Change
• Global warming vs climate change
• Climate change: some reasons for our failures
• The politics dominating views on climate change is made in the USA

Climate Activists Are Lousy Salesmen

Wall Street Journal - Stewart Easterby*

From turgid battle cries to hypocritical spokesmen, it’s no wonder they turn so many Americans off.

Illustration: Phil Foster

Politicians, bureaucrats, activists, scientists and the media have warned Americans for decades that the Earth is headed toward climate catastrophe.
Yet surveys consistently show that less than half of U.S. adults are “deeply concerned” or “very worried” about climate issues.
If, as Leonardo DiCaprio insists, climate change is the “most urgent threat facing our entire species,” why do a large percentage of Americans not share his fear? Climate crusaders tend to lay fault with nonbelievers’ intransigence.
But this is its own form of denial and masks the real reason: poor salesmanship.
The promotional efforts of the climate catastrophists have lacked clarity, credibility, and empathy. These are the cornerstones of effective persuasion.
Successful advocacy campaigns use lucid names to frame and sell their issues—“living wage,” “welfare queen” or “death tax.” Climate can be confounding; it is long-term weather, but environmentalists chide anyone who dares call it that.
Since Earth’s climate is always fluctuating, the word “change” muddles it with redundancy. Swapping between “climate change” and “global warming” confuses the public.
A good battle cry can rally the troops, but the Paris Agreement’s aim is “to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”
That is a far cry from “Remember the Alamo!” And Americans are always turned off by the use of metric units. In the U.S., Toyota wisely markets the 2018 Prius’s fuel economy as 52 miles a gallon, not 22 kilometers a liter.
American TV audiences bought Carl Sagan’s explanations of how the universe works because of his obvious scientific expertise. Bold statements about complex systems are always more plausible when they are made by people with impeccable credentials. As a Harvard sophomore, Al Gore received a D in a natural=sciences course. Mr. DiCaprio dropped out of high school in 11th grade.
The rank hypocrisy of many of the environmental movement’s superstars also alienates potential followers. Messrs. Gore and DiCaprio lead lavish, jet-setting lives. It is hard to heed Tom Steyer’s demand to ban offshore oil and gas drilling when Farallon, his hedge fund, invested hundreds of millions of dollars in coal mining.
Climate change activists tend to be aggressive advocates, but over-the-top selling doesn’t sway people who are undecided. This is as true for political surrogates attributing society’s ills to the other party’s candidate as it is for green activists linking all manner of extreme weather to climate change.
Scientific impropriety has triggered a popular backlash against the climate change activists.
The hockey stick chart, Climategate and questions about the integrity of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate data have all fueled public suspicion. Only 39% of Americans believe climate scientists can be trusted a lot to give full and accurate information on causes of climate change according to Pew.
Failed forecasts diminish believability. A Wall Street firm with multiple wrong market calls would lose clients. The actual rate of warming has come in below what climate models projected, casting doubt on future calculations.
 Likewise, claims that anyone can precisely estimate what global average temperatures will be decades from now don’t pass muster with the average person. There are currently no betting odds for Super Bowl CX in 2076 or S&P 500 futures with December 2099 expiration dates.
The burden of proof in the climate debate lies with those claiming rising temperatures stem primarily from human activity and not other factors. While the prosecution may feel it has a winning case, the jury’s verdict is what counts.
Labeling dissenting jurors “deniers”—an insidious association with Holocaust denial—is a losing courtroom strategy. Most people are naturally disinclined to obsess daily about a phenomenon that started long before they were born and won’t reach fruition until long after they die.
It’s true that almost all climate scientists believe human-caused global warming is real. Similarly, American adults understand that expert opinions can change or turn out to be spectacularly wrong. Think of the recently overturned consensus on the link between egg consumption and coronary heart disease, or the reports during the 1970s that a new ice age was imminent.
Against this backdrop, calling skeptics “anti-science” is counterproductive, especially since skepticism is the essence of the scientific method.
From 2006 to 2016, China increased its annual carbon dioxide emissions 37% while America’s yearly output decreased far more than any other country. In the Paris Agreement, China pledged to begin reducing emissions around 2030, meaning it can spew even more greenhouse gas for years to come. The U.S. vowed to reduce its 2025 emissions by 28% from 2005 levels.
Yet questioning if the accord is fair to America or will forestall global warming is reliably met with sanctimonious scorn.
My advice to the activists is this: you will attract more supporters to your cause if you can pick a name and stick with it, create a clear call to action, enlist a convincing spokesman with a small carbon footprint, tone down the alarmism, and fix the computer models.
Most important, listen to the doubters, don’t lambaste them.

*Stewart Easterby has worked as a sales executive for three publicly traded technology companies.

Links

• Inspiring Terms Are Simple. ‘Climate Change’ Isn’t.
• The Discovery of Global Warming
• Alarmism Is the Argument We Need to Fight Climate Change
• Why Hope Is Dangerous When It Comes to Climate Change
• Global warming vs climate change
• Climate change: some reasons for our failures
• The politics dominating views on climate change is made in the USA

Inspiring Terms Are Simple. ‘Climate Change’ Isn’t.

Bloomberg - Faye Flam*

The doubters and believers aren’t even talking about the same thing.

Some global warming is caused by Jupiter. But most of the blame belongs on the third rock from the sun. Source: Universal Images Group, via Getty Images

As scientific terms go, “climate change” is failing.
Good terms are specific, descriptive and help people to understand complex concepts.
Climate change is ambiguous, referring perhaps to the most pressing human-generated environmental problem of the century, or to other kinds of changes that happen through natural forces and have been going on since long before humans arose.
Last week I chatted with Columbia University paleontologist Dennis Kent about some new work he and his colleagues published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about the surprisingly big influence of Venus and Jupiter on the climate of Earth.
The gravitational tug of the second and fifth planets from the sun act to stretch Earth’s annual orbit like a rubber band, pulling it into a more oblong ellipse and then back to something very close to a perfect circle over a cycle of 405,000 years. And that leads to big changes in our climate – or the climate of whatever creatures lived here.
The ambiguity of “climate change” plays into the problems that a Wall Street Journal op-ed identified last week in a piece headlined “Climate Activists Are Lousy Salesmen.” This is science, not advertising, and the terms that scientists come up with aren’t decided by public-relations experts using focus groups.
 Most of the burden of explaining climate changes, past and present, has fallen not to “activists” but to scientists, whether or not they have an interest in or aptitude for persuasion.
According to historians, the same people who were fascinated by dramatic natural climate changes were the ones to discover that burning up lots of fossil fuel was likely to cause a short-term spike in the global temperature. The start of that spike is already measurable.
 Research on human-generated and natural climate changes are related, and many of the same people still study both kinds in order to get a better handle on where things are headed in the coming decades, centuries and millennia.
Back in the 19th century, scientists started to investigate signs in the geologic record that dramatic ice ages had been occurring every 40,000 years or so, during which glaciers crept over much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Eventually, they realized that these are driven by what Kent calls an ice age pacemaker – the interplay between the tilt of the planet’s axis and our planet’s distance from the sun. Those factors change the way sunlight is distributed, concentrating more or less over the Northern Hemisphere, where there’s more land and the potential to build up glaciers.
Glaciers reflect sunlight, absorbing less of its heat energy than dark surfaces would, which makes the cold periods colder worldwide. Similarly, warmth releases carbon dioxide, which acts as a greenhouse gas traps solar heat and amplifies warm periods.
Adding to all this complexity is the subject of the new paper – a 405,000-year-long cycle caused by our fellow planets. Kent said that basic Newtonian physics shows that Venus and Jupiter actually change Earths’ orbit significantly.
At its most oblong, the long axis of the orbit is five percent longer than the shorter one. During that more oblong part of the cycle, the Earth strays farther than normal from the sun (twice a year) and also flirts closer to the sun than usual (twice a year). So other natural changes reach greater extremes – the ice ages colder and the periods in between warmer.
What Kent and his colleagues did was expand the record of those cycles by digging out cores of Earth hundreds of feet long from Arizona and Northern New Jersey. They used the natural clocks provided by radioactive materials and signs of reversal of the Earth's magnetic field to figure out when and how the climate changed. The cycles, he said, go back more than 200 million years, to the time when dinosaurs first appeared.
We are currently in the rounder, more even phase of our orbital cycle, Kent said, meaning the ice ages should be relatively mild. We’re also in between ice ages and could go into a new one in a few thousand years, though some think that human-generated global warming will be enough to offset it.
And herein lies the confusion.
People hear "climate change" and think, what’s the big deal? The climate has been changing for millions of years. Or they note that scientists used to think we were headed into another ice age. But the time scales matter. Fossil fuel burning and other human-generated changes are likely to warm the overall planet’s temperature by more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit over the coming decades. The next ice age isn’t expected for a few millennia. That’s a long time to wait for a potential cooldown.
One could distinguish the current, more rapid climate change by calling it "anthropogenic climate change," but that term makes people trip over their own tongues, so it’s understandable that people shorten it. There’s also the term "global warming," which is a little more descriptive, but scientists say it fails to capture changes in rainfall patterns, wind and currents that go along with the general trend of warming.
The Wall Street Journal piece was right about a sales problem. It’s too bad there isn’t a catchy term or acronym — such as WMD or GMO — to describe the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning, deforestation, domestic cattle and other human activities.
The complexity of climate science may always be at odds with the simplicity that's key to inspiring action.
Remember the hole in the ozone layer? It was more of a thin spot, but in the 1980s, that dramatic term may have helped spur a global movement to reduce certain pollutants staved off disaster.
It's too late to prevent anthropogenic climate change, or unnatural climate change, or global warming -- call it what you will.
But it isn't too late to slow the warming, and perhaps even reverse it. If only someone could sell the idea.

*Faye Flam is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She has written for the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Psychology Today, Science and other publications. She has a degree in geophysics from the California Institute of Technology.

Links

• Climate Activists Are Lousy Salesmen
• The Discovery of Global Warming
• Alarmism Is the Argument We Need to Fight Climate Change
• Why Hope Is Dangerous When It Comes to Climate Change
• Global warming vs climate change
• Climate change: some reasons for our failures
• The politics dominating views on climate change is made in the USA

Future Sailors: What Will Ships Look Like In 30 Years?

The Guardian - Fred Pearce

With a target to halve its huge carbon footprint, the race is on to find new technologies to green the world’s shipping fleet

Low-tech solutions can deliver big emission cuts: sails could once again become the norm. Photograph: Courtesy of Elomatic Oy/NYK 

Watch out for the return of the sailing ship.
After a commitment last month to cut greenhouse gas emissions from shipping by at least 50% by 2050, the race is on to find new technologies that can green the 50,000-strong global shipping fleet. Wind power is one of the options being discussed.
International shipping accounts for more than 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions, roughly the same as aircraft. But the 2015 Paris agreement to fight climate change left control of the shipping industry’s emissions to the International Maritime Organisation.
While environment groups applauded the agreement to cut hard and deep by 2050, they pointed out that it falls far short what is technically achievable.
A report published just before the meeting by the International Transport Forum (ITF), a thinktank run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), found that the industry could achieve up to 95% decarbonisation as early as 2035 using “maximum deployment of currently known technologies.”

Low-tech solutions
The good news is that easy-to-do low-tech solutions can deliver a lot. Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping line, has already discovered it can cut fuel use 30% simply by steaming more slowly.
Because of the wide availability of cheap (and often dirty) fuel, shipping has traditionally been wasteful. Most merchant ships are made of heavy steel rather than lighter aluminium, and don’t bother with obvious energy-saving measures like low-friction hull coatings or recovering waste heat.
More slender ship designs alone could cut fuel use — and hence emissions — by 10-15% at slow speeds and up to 25% at high speeds, says the ITF. But replacing the existing fleet would take time. The average age of today’s shipping fleet is 25 years. Rules of energy efficiency for new ships introduced by the IMO in 2013 will only fully come into force from 2030, meaning that any switch to slender ships would not apply to most ships at sea until mid-century or beyond.
But much could be done more quickly by retrofitting existing ships with technology to cut their fuel use and hence emissions, according to the ITF. Here are just four:

• Fitting ships’ bows with a bulbous extension below the water line reduces drag enough to cut emissions 2-7%;
• A technique known as air lubrication, which pumps compressed air below the hull to create a carpet of bubbles, also reduces drag and can cut emissions by a further 3%;
• Replacing one propeller with two rotating in opposite directions recovers slipstream energy and can make efficiency gains of 8-15%,
• Cleaning the hull and painting it with a low-friction coating can deliver gains of up to 5%.

Entirely new ships
Putting together better designs and better fuel will create entirely new kinds of ships in future. And the blueprints are already being drawn up.
The Aquarius Ecoship, a cargo ship devised by a Japanese company called Eco Marine Power, is driven by a phalanx of rigid sails and solar panels. The same system could power oil tankers, cruise ships and much else. It would not, the designers admit, entirely eliminate the need for conventional fuel: Even with large batteries to store the solar and wind energy, back-up would be needed. But it could cut emissions by 40 percent.

The Aquarius Eco Ship concept design incorporates the innovative solar and wind power. Photograph: Courtesy of Eco Marine Power

Going one better, the Japanese shipping line NYK boasts that its design for a 350m-long container ship, the Super Eco Ship 2030, would use LNG to make hydrogen to run fuel cells. Backed up by solar panels covering the entire ship and 4,000 square metres of sails to catch the wind, the combination could cut emissions by 70%. Or for a completely zero-carbon option, engineers at Wallenius Wilhelmsen, a Scandinavian shipping line, offer the E/S Orcelle, a lightweight cargo ship designed to transport up to 10,000 cars (electric, we trust) on eight decks.
It would be powered by electricity, half coming directly from wind, solar and wave energy, and the other half from converting some of that energy into hydrogen to power fuel cells. The company says the ship could be afloat by 2025.
Today’s ships are in many respects almost indistinguishable from those of a century ago. But the IMO decision to finally get with the global climate agenda has fired the starting gun on what is set to be a race to create a new standard for low-carbon shipping that should be the norm just a few decades from now.
Some of the biggest gains will require banishing conventional petroleum-based fuel, says the Sustainable Shipping Initiative, a progressive industry ginger group whose members include cruise lines and commodities shipping lines. Innovations ranging from biofuels to liquefied natural gas (LNG), nuclear reactors to sails to catch the wind, and hydrogen to solar panels have been proposed.
Each has its benefits and drawbacks, and nobody is putting all their money on one solution. Biofuels are problematic because they take land to grow, though specially engineered crops such as algae could change that, says the ITF. While electric engines already operate on some short ferry journeys, the sheer weight and space taken up by batteries on oceangoing ships make them unviable until there are breakthroughs in lithium-ion batteries. Solar power can only augment other power sources.
One innovation already underway is converting ships to run on LNG. There are already more than a hundred LNG-fuelled ships globally. A new generation of giant cruise ships powered this way and carrying up to 7,000 passengers will be launched by MSC Cruises starting in 2022. Some LNG ships claim a reduction in CO₂ emissions of 15%, though that depends crucially on keeping leakage of the greenhouse gas methane to a minimum in ships and bunkers.

 LNG-powered Viking Grace boasts the first ship-based ‘rotor sail’. Photograph: Tuukka Ervasti/Lloyd’s Register

The first LNG-powered cruise ship is the Viking Grace, operating between Finland and Sweden. This vessel has another claim to fame. As of this April it also boasts the first ship-based “rotor sail” to capture power from the wind. Rotor sails have a large spinning cylinder amidships. Wind hitting the rotor creates a vertical force that can be used to power the ship, a phenomenon known as the Magnus effect. The Viking Line says the extra power will reduce the ship’s CO₂ emissions by 900 metric tonnes (1,000 tons) per year.

Links

• Carbon dioxide from ships at sea to be regulated for first time
• The environmental cost of moving all our stuff is huge. How can we shrink it?
• Decarbonising Maritime Transport (pdf)
• Low Emission Concept Ship with Rigid Sails & Solar Power

Hurricane Season May Be Even Worse In 2018 After A Harrowing 2017

The Guardian - Oliver Milman

The initial forecasts of an above-average season for hurricanes, beginning on 1 June, follow a punishing spate of storms last year

Flooded homes at Citrus Park in Bonita Springs, Florida on 16 September 2017, six days after Hurricane Irma. Photograph: Nicole Raucheisen/AP 

The US may have to brace itself for another harrowing spate of hurricanes this year, with forecasts of an active 2018 season coming amid new research that shows powerful Atlantic storms are intensifying far more rapidly than they did 30 years ago.
The peak season for Atlantic storms, which officially starts on 1 June, is set to spur as many as 18 named storms, with up to five of them developing into major hurricanes, according to separate forecasts from North Carolina State University and Colorado State University. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will soon provide its own 2018 hurricane predictions.
The initial forecasts of an above-average season for hurricanes follow a punishing 2017, most notable for Hurricane Harvey, which drenched large areas of Texas, Hurricane Irma’s sweep over Florida and the devastation that stubbornly lingers in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria.
These huge hurricanes brought winds of up to 185mph and lashing rains, causing hundreds of deaths, flattening homes, felling power lines and ruining roads. Combined, the three storms caused around $265bn in damage, and all ranked in the five most destructive hurricanes ever recorded.
Many communities, particularly in Puerto Rico and Texas, are still struggling to recover from last year’s hurricanes as the upcoming storm season approaches. And while the US may be spared 2017 levels of devastation this year, scientists have warned that the warming of the oceans, driven by climate change, is likely to stir greater numbers of prodigious storms in the future.

Atlantic hurricanes are intensifying far more rapidly than they did 30 years ago, according to a new study that analyzed the acceleration in wind speed of previous storms. Major hurricanes are defined by a sharp increase in speed, of at least 28mph in a 24-hour period.
Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that these big hurricanes are, on average, speeding up 13mph faster in this 24-hour period than they did 30 years ago. Much of this has to do with shifts in a natural climate cycle called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
Separate research from the National Center for Atmospheric Research suggests this natural variation will combine with escalating warming in the oceans and atmosphere, caused by the burning of fossil fuels by humans, to produce stronger hurricanes in the future. A warm ocean surface, combined with consistent wind patterns, contribute to the formation of fiercer, if not more numerous, hurricanes.

People make their way onto an I-610 overpass after being rescued from flooded homes during the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, on 27 August 2017 in Houston, Texas. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

In the weeks before Hurricane Harvey smashed into Texas in August last year, the Gulf of Mexico’s waters were warmer than any time on record at around 30C (86F), the NCAR research found.
“The implication is that the warmer oceans increased the risk of greater hurricane intensity and duration,” said Kevin Trenberth, an NCAR senior scientist and lead author of the study. “As climate change continues to heat the oceans, we can expect more supercharged storms like Harvey.
“While we often think of hurricanes as atmospheric phenomena, it’s clear that the oceans play a critical role and will shape future storms as the climate changes.”
Hurricanes act as a sort of relief valve for hot tropical oceans, funneling heat away into the atmosphere. Persistent warmth in the oceans, however, adds further energy to hurricanes and risks causing worse damage to life and property when these storms make landfall.
Faced with the prospect of supercharged hurricanes, as various other burgeoning climate change-related threats, Donald Trump has rescinded Obama-era rules preparing infrastructure for climate impacts. He has taken an axe to policies that would lower greenhouse gas emissions from cars and power plants and announced that the US will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
This agenda has been criticized by researchers who have called for an urgent reappraisal of the risk posed by climate change.
“We know this threat exists, and yet in many cases, society is not adequately planning for these storms,” Trenberth said.
“I believe there is a need to increase resilience with better building codes, flood protection, and water management, and we need to prepare for contingencies, including planning evacuation routes and how to deal with power cuts.”
This year, however, the focus will again be on disaster recovery rather than long-term mitigation. Ken Graham, director of Noaa’s National Hurricane Center said that the “entire Gulf Coast is at risk from storms and that several hurricanes can strike in a single season”.
“Don’t wait for a hurricane to be on your doorstep to make a preparedness plan, by then it may be too late,” he added. “Take the time now to get prepared for the season ahead.”

Links

• 'We've been forgotten': Hurricane Harvey and the long path to recovery
• Hurricanes and heatwaves: stark signs of climate change 'new normal'
• Costliest U.S. tropical cyclones (pdf)
• Increasing Magnitude of Hurricane Rapid Intensification in the Central and Eastern Tropical Atlantic