When Climate Change Is Stranger Than Fiction

New York Times - Alisha Haridasani Gupta

Amitav Ghosh, whose book “Gun Island” is set in an ecologically unstable world, wants literature to explore the environment as much as it does other crises.

Amitav Ghosh at home in Brooklyn. His 12th book, “Gun Island,” is about a rare book dealer drawn into a globe-spanning adventure with Bangladeshi migrants in Libya, dolphins in the Mediterranean and venomous water snakes in California. Credit Caroline Tompkins for The New York Times

How do you capture the realities of climate change in a novel — not just its causes and symptoms, but the ever-changing, ever-weirder ways it is manifesting, within the conventional framework of a story with a beginning, middle and end?
Answering that question is, according to the writer Amitav Ghosh, the literary world’s great challenge. “I feel completely convinced that we have to change our fictional practices in order to deal with the world that we’re in,” he said.
“Something this big and this important, there have to be an infinite number of ways to just talk about it,” he said, similar to how war, slavery, colonization, famine and other crises and events have seeped into so many forms of literature.
Ghosh, 63, is attempting to add something to the conversation with “Gun Island,” his 12th book. The novel, which comes out Tuesday, leaps from the United States, to the Sundarbans mangrove forest between India and Bangladesh, to Italy, places where rising temperatures and water levels have uprooted human and animal lives and upended political systems.
It centers on Dinanth Datta, a rare book dealer also known as Deen, who reluctantly sets off on an Indiana Jones-esque trip to a temple in the Sundarbans, seeking clues to an ancient Bengali legend. That visit thrusts him into an adventure that connects him with Bangladeshi migrants in Libya, dolphins in the Mediterranean and venomous water snakes in California, while touching on migration, xenophobia and technology.
In his 2016 nonfiction book of essays, “The Great Derangement,” Ghosh wrote about his ancestors, “ecological refugees long before the term was invented” who lived on the shores of the Padma River in what is now Bangladesh. “One day in the mid-1850s the great river suddenly changed course, drowning the village,” he writes. “It was this catastrophe that had unmoored our forebears.”

Amitav Ghosh’s “Gun Island” comes out Sept. 10. Credit Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times

About a century later, Ghosh was born in Kolkata, a city that sits near India’s border with Bangladesh and serves as the starting point for Deen’s journey. Ghosh’s life, like Deen’s, has stretched across countries, from India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to Britain and eventually the United States, where he now lives.
While studying in New Delhi in the late 1970s, Ghosh experienced a tornado and hailstorm — phenomena previously unheard-of in India. He struggled to incorporate the episode into his fiction because, as he explained in “The Great Derangement,” it is difficult for a writer to use a case of “extreme improbability” without it seeming contrived.
Ghosh came up with the idea for “Gun Island” in the early 2000s when he was researching another novel, “The Hungry Tide,” that explores the rivers of the Sundarbans, whose ecosystem supports the endangered Bengal tiger and thousands of other species. But Ghosh could already see the impact of climate change: bigger waves and worsening cyclones that hindered farming. That shift, over the years, has directly or indirectly forced a sizable number of the four million inhabitants of the Sundarbans to flee to parts of India and Bangladesh.
“Gun Island” is likely to resonate in Italy, said Anna Nadotti, his friend and Italian translator of over 30 years, as the country grapples with an influx of migrants fleeing war, persecution and climate crises. “Politically, socially and also culturally, it’s important to give people all the means to understand what is really happening, why all these people are coming,” she said.
“Even if sometimes in ‘Gun Island’ Amitav invents, nothing is fictional,” she added, pointing out a scene from the book that is familiar to many Italians: a boat full of migrants, stranded at sea because it has been denied permission to dock.
At one point in “Gun Island,” Deen arrives in Los Angeles for an antiquarian book dealers conference at a museum. Wildfires burn nearby. The conference, at first, goes on. But soon, the bibliophiles, librarians and book dealers are told to evacuate because the winds are changing direction, making the blaze’s path increasingly unpredictable.
It seems to mirror when fires came perilously close to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2017, raising concerns they would destroy the artifacts inside. Ghosh said he wrote the scene six months earlier.
Later in the story, Deen confronts a freakish hailstorm and fierce “gusts of winds” in Venice. Two months ago, the real-life city was battered by hailstones and winds powerful enough to toss a cruise ship about.
That a novel seems to anticipate some of these unusual weather events is proof to Ghosh that literature should devote more attention to the environment.
“Fact,” he said, “is outrunning fiction.”

Links

• Climate Change, The Problem From Hell
• Book Reviews: The End Of The World Is Coming, And You Are Responsible
• The 1975, Jaden Smith, Billie Eilish & More Artists Fiercely Fighting Climate Change
• How Rising Sea Levels Erase Culture
• Why Science Needs The Humanities To Solve Climate Change
• How Climate Anxiety Is Changing The Face Of Australian Fiction
• Pink Floyd's David Gilmour Auctions Guitars For A$31 Million To Fight Climate Change
• 'Cartoons For Future': Artists React To The Climate Crisis
• Here There Be Monsters (Made Of Coal, Plastic And Pesticides)
• 7 Novels That Will Fire You Up About Climate Change 
• Could Cli-Fi Help Inspire Real Climate Change Action?
• How Climate-Change Fiction, Or “Cli-Fi,” Forces Us To Confront The Incipient Death Of The Planet
• Planet Earth Calling Doctor Who’s New Time Lady: Save Us
• 10 Climate Change Books To Help You Understand Our Environment
• 8 Ways To Teach Climate Change In Almost Any Classroom

Climate Change, Poverty And Human Rights: An Emergency Without Precedent

The Conversation - Lisa Benjamin | Meinhard Doelle | Sara L Seck

The effects of climate change will disproportionately affect the world's poorest

Julia Aylen wades through waist deep water carrying her pet dog as she is rescued from her flooded home during Hurricane Dorian in Freeport, Bahamas, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2019. (AP Photo/Tim Aylen)

Hurricane Dorian has devastated communities in the Bahamas, putting the human dimensions of climate change at the forefront of the news as the world grapples with the ongoing failure of many governments to effectively decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Two recently released climate reports by the United Nations Human Rights Council provide insights into future challenges.
The July 2019 Safe Climate report by David Boyd, the special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, clarifies the obligations of states to protect human rights from climate harms. The report also confirms the existing responsibility of businesses to respect human rights, especially as they pertain to climate change.
An earlier report on climate change and poverty, released in June 2019, was written by Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. This report draws attention to the disproportionate and devastating impact of unmitigated climate change on those living in poverty.
Both reports point out that urgent action is needed by governments. Our research suggests that international human rights law may already offer useful tools to prevent and remedy climate injustice, including the responsibilities of business enterprises as reinforced in the Boyd report.
The Alston report classifies the human rights impacts of climate change as a climate apartheid in which the rich would “pay to escape overheating, hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer.” The scale of this climate emergency very much depends on the level of effort the global community puts into mitigation.

A Syrian refugee walks through the snow at an informal settlement camp in Lebanon, which experienced its harshest winter in years. UNHCR/Diego Ibarra Sánchez, CC BY

A 1.5-degree increase above pre-industrial levels may expose an additional 457 million people to climate-related risks including sea level rise, flooding, droughts, forest fires, damage to ecosystems, food production and the availability of drinking water.
A two-degree increase would put an additional 100 million to 400 million people at risk of hunger, and one billion to two billion may not have access to adequate water. A total of 140 million people in the poorest parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America could be displaced by climate change by 2050.
Both reports detail incidents of permanent climate loss and damage which exceed our financial and technological capacities to restore. Our recent research documents existing incidents of loss and damage in small, vulnerable countries. As we concluded in another recent contribution to Climate Policy, those harmed by human-induced climate change will increasingly seek restitution from those who have contributed to the harm suffered.

Scale of impact
Current mitigation commitments will still result in a three-degree or higher rise in global temperatures. Nationally determined commitments (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement leave a significant gap. Many countries are not yet on target to meet their existing NDC commitments.
The scale of the overall impact, even at 1.5 degrees, is unprecedented. Climate change will exacerbate existing poverty and inequality between developed and developing countries, and also within countries.
The inequity of this disproportionate impact is exacerbated by the fact that those living in poverty have contributed — and will continue to contribute — the least to the problem. The poorest half of the global population is responsible for only 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, a person in the top one per cent (which includes most middle class citizens in developed countries) is on average responsible for 175 times more emissions than a person in the bottom 10 per cent.

Sandbags on the seashore in Bangladesh to protect houses from rising sea levels due to climate change. Shutterstock

Seeking climate justice
Climate justice has been a constant refrain by many vulnerable, developing countries during climate negotiations. However, as developed countries grew rich by burning an irresponsible amount of fossil fuels, international human rights law has failed to determine the responsibility of wealthier countries to provide assistance to developing countries for climate action. Meanwhile, almost no attention has been paid to understanding how the independent responsibilities of business to respect human rights apply in the climate context.

Benjamin Schachter, Human Rights Officer, talks about how climate change disasters affect people’s lives.

However, while it is clear that developed countries are largely responsible for historic emissions, some of the major emitters listed in Richard Heede’s groundbreaking report are located in the global South, including countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, India, Venezuela, Mexico, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Algeria. This activity accumulated vast wealth for these industries and countries (or at least their governments), but has contributed to devastating climate-induced impacts for others.
The Alston report suggests that the only way to address the human rights dimensions of climate crisis is for states to effectively regulate businesses and for those harmed by climate change to successfully sue responsible companies in court. The implication is that in the absence of regulation, businesses do not have a responsibility to reduce emissions.
Yet, the UN’s “Key Messages on Climate Change and Human Rights” states that “businesses are also duty-bearers and must be accountable for their own climate impacts.”
Similarly, the 2018 statement on climate change of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights expressly notes that “corporate entities are expected to respect Covenant rights regardless of whether domestic laws exist or are fully enforced in practice.”
Various other initiatives have grappled with business responsibilities, including the 2018 Principles on Climate Obligations of Enterprises.
However, the Safe Climate report goes further, stating that businesses “must adopt human rights policies, conduct human rights due diligence, remedy human rights violations for which they are responsible, and work to influence other actors to respect human rights where relationships of leverage exist.” These responsibilities includes the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from activities, products and services, minimizing emissions from suppliers and ensuring those impacted can access remedies.
The devastating impacts of climate change on those already living in poverty are increasingly difficult or impossible to avoid. Given the failure of many states to meet their own obligations, it is crucial that the responsibility of businesses to respect human rights be taken seriously by those advocating for climate action. Businesses, as organs of society, must ratchet up their existing responsibilities to alleviate increasing climate impacts on those who can least afford to bear them.

Links

• Climate change and poverty (pdf)
• Why the Paris climate deal must put the poorest, lowest emitting and most vulnerable people first
• Loss & damage from climate change: from concept to remedy?
• Non-economic loss and damage: lessons from displacement in the Caribbean
• Climate change will displace millions in coming decades. Nations should prepare now to help them
• Forget that sinking feeling - there’s nothing inevitable about climate change refugees
• The global community is finally acting on climate change, but we need to switch to renewable energy faster
• Climate explained: why we need to cut emissions as well as prepare for impacts

Women Take The Lead On Climate Change

Canberra Times - Rod Taylor

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report shows that in 2018, most of the natural hazards which affected nearly 62 million people were associated with extreme weather and climate.
Floods continue to affect the largest number of people, more than 35 million globally. Hurricanes are becoming billion-dollar disasters and the exposure of agriculture to climate extremes is threatening food security.
At a time when the IPCC State of the Climate report shows impacts accelerating, you'd expect to see political leadership, especially in an advanced country like Australia where our land and economy are particularly vulnerable.

Joining the Homeward Bound program this year is marine scientist Dr Elisabeth Deschaseaux. Picture: Supplied

The need for women to fill the leadership void is more urgent than ever. Currently, less than 26 per cent of the world's researchers are women and even fewer are in leadership roles, which leads to unbalance and clearly is a great loss in decision-making.

How do we get women in climate leadership?
Homeward Bound aims to address this imbalance by building over 10 years, a network of 1000 women working together to create innovative changes. It is a 12-month leadership program that gives women in science the skills, knowledge and confidence to become leaders and make decisions that will help shape our planet.
It culminates in a three-week workshop in Antarctica where future female leaders will brainstorm climate change and gender equity in leadership roles.
Antarctica has been chosen because over the last 50 years it has experienced some of the greatest warming on Earth, making it one of the most affected ecosystems due to human-induced climate change.
It is a wild and isolated environment where participants are pushed to their limits while disconnecting from their regular lives. It is a place for introspective and challenging thinking.
Joining the Homeward Bound program this year is marine scientist Dr Elisabeth Deschaseaux from Southern Cross University who works on a special marine-sourced compound called dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a biogenic sulfur gas that may have the capacity to counteract climate change.
Each participant has been asked to fundraise $24,500 to cover the cost of the program. You can help her and win interesting perks. Visit www.chuffed.org/project/women-for-climate-actions.

Links

• Women for environmental action
• The Misogyny Of Climate Deniers
• Can Women Save Planet Earth? 4 Women Fighting Climate Change Say They Can — And Must
• From Antarctica To Costa Rica, Women Team Up To Build A Climate-Safe Future
• Woman Fest Founder Plans Training Camp For Climate Rebels
• 25 Female Climate Leaders Shaping 2019
• These Women Are Changing The Landscape Of Antarctic Research
• Sydney Wins Bid To Host Major Climate Conference For Women In 2020
• Young Women More Likely To Care About Climate Change: Study
• Climate Change Is Everyone's Problem. Women Are Ready To Solve It

‘Dead Things Everywhere’: Is Australia Facing The Summer From Hell?

The Guardian - Lisa Cox

The outlook is grim, with low water storage levels and extreme temperatures forecast

Just a week into September, authorities issued total fire bans in Queensland and parts of New South Wales, with extreme, and potentially catastrophic, conditions expected in some areas. Photograph: Darren Pateman/AAP

Out in the Macquarie Marshes, about 1ookm north of Warren in the central west of New South Wales, large inland wetlands have become a place for the dead and dying.
“We went out last night and there was a little patch of water with dead and dying European carp,” Richard Kingsford, the director of the Centre for Ecosystem Science at the University of NSW, says. “There’s dead and dying things everywhere. Kangaroos dying and even foxes are dying.
“We were trying to trap for turtles but there doesn’t seem to be enough water for turtles. I’m not sure where they’ve gone to.”
There are large parts of the Macquarie River that have dried up completely as the state remains in the grip of one of the most severe droughts on record.
Valley water storages in the Macquarie are sitting at 11%. In the Namoi, in north-west NSW where water shortages have been acute, they’re at 1.5%. The Border Rivers, in the region between the NSW and Queensland border, are at 6%. In Sydney, dam storages have dropped below 50% for the first time in more than a decade.

A nearly dried up dam in the drought-stricken NSW and Queensland border town of Mungindi. Photograph: Danny Casey/AAP

It’s one part of the climate crisis playing out across much of the country. A different year, similar story. Most places are drier than usual, warmer than usual.

Repeat episode?
The summer of 2018 brought record-breaking heat for Australia. It’s too early to say whether this summer will bring such extremes.
But early outlooks for spring and December are again pointing to above average temperatures. And with the exception of parts of Western Australia and the west of Tasmania, the outlook is for below average rainfall.
“For most of Australia it’s this consistent dry story for the remainder of the year,” Jonathan Pollock, a climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, says. “It’s very likely it’s going to be hotter than usual and it’s very likely it’s going to be drier than usual.”
For the first eight months of the year, the country’s mean temperature was the second warmest on record. Mean maximums were the warmest on record over the same period and mean minimums the equal-sixth warmest.
Rainfall through winter was below to very much below average for most of the country, including New South Wales, southern and western Queensland, parts of northern and eastern Victoria, the east coast of Tasmania, the majority of South Australia and the Northern Territory, and most of the eastern half of Western Australia, and some coastal areas in the west of that state.

Rainfall through winter was below to very much below average for most of the country, including New South Wales. Photograph: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images

In drought-hit parts of eastern and southern Australia, rainfall levels for the season were in the lowest 10% of historical records.
Pollock says it would take something like a La Niña, which is associated with heavier rainfall, “to bring the turnaround that we need”.The El Niño-Southern Oscillation is currently neutral and is expected to remain so until the end of 2019 and into early 2020.
The prolonged dry and warm conditions have meant authorities have already issued warnings for the spring and into summer.
Fire services have told communities to be ready for a challenging bushfire season and to prepare their homes, properties and evacuation plans early.

In drought-hit parts of eastern and southern Australia, rainfall levels for the season were in the lowest 10% of historical records.

The Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre published its seasonal outlook last week, which warned parts of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, and parts of Western Australia and South Australia, face an above normal potential fire threat.
On Friday, just a week into September, authorities issued total fire bans in Queensland and parts of New South Wales, with extreme, and potentially catastrophic, conditions expected in some areas.
Richard Thornton, the chief executive of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, said winter had brought some significant fires to the north of the country and recent weeks had seen a spate of fires in south-east Queensland and NSW.
He said the ongoing drought was driving much of the risk this season and there was concern for forested areas that were already dry heading into the warmer months.
Thornton said that included a swathe beginning south of Rockhampton in Queensland and running all the way down the east coast into NSW and east Gippsland in Victoria.
“That takes in the major populated areas in south-east Queensland and around Sydney and the ACT – so some pretty significant population centres,” he said.
He said the conditions in eastern Tasmania, South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula and Kangaroo Island, south-western WA and parts of the Nullarbor, where rainfall has regenerated grasslands, also looked challenging.

A cow collapses from hunger on a farm outside Coonabarabran. Photograph: Photo: Brook Mitchell

In a couple of months, authorities will revisit the outlook to see if anything has changed heading into January and February 2020.
Along river systems in New South Wales, the outlook is similarly grim.
In the summer of 2018, low river flows caused by a combination of drought and over-extraction of water, coupled with extreme temperatures, caused an environmental catastrophe that killed thousands of fish.
Fisheries managers say they anticipate more fish are likely to perish this season if the drought continues.
A spokeswoman for the NSW Department of Primary Industries said it was “an evolving situation” and aquatic habitats were being closely monitored.
“Significant concerns are held for the Lower Darling, Namoi, Macquarie and Lachlan catchments in the early part of the summer as well as the Barwon-Darling, Border Rivers and Gwydir should current conditions persist,” she said.
Up in Queensland, Angus Emmott, an ecologist and farmer, runs a cattle station about 130km south-east of Longreach.

Angus Emmott says Farmers for Climate Action will be travelling to Canberra to call for a national strategy on climate and agriculture. Photograph: Change.org

The property primarily receives its rain in summer but, until last year, it had what he calls “eight failed summer rains in a row”.
That broke last summer, as a result of “two big floods”.
“We’re having a really good season unlike much of the country to the east of us,” Emmott says. “Up above us, near Julia Creek, they’ve had so much rain it killed three-quarters of a million head of cattle and washed all the fences and pastures away when Townsville got flooded as well”.
Emmott says for his farm it was a case of “luck”. The rains that had helped his property last year had caused catastrophe further north. And outside of the floodplains, places were still in drought.
“One thing that’s really affected agriculture in this part of the country is climate change,” he says. “That brings hotter than normal temperatures, drier than usual weather and higher minimums.
“Then what is happening is when we get a rainfall event there’s more of a chance of them being massive, like the one at Julia Creek, which created havoc.”
Emmott is on the board of the advocacy group Farmers for Climate Action. In a bit more than a week, he says farmers will be travelling to Canberra to call for a national strategy on climate and agriculture.
“I think things can change and they actually are but they would change so much quicker if we had a government that took some leadership,” he says. “If we didn’t have to drag them kicking and screaming, we’d get places a lot quicker. This applies to both sides of politics. They talk the talk and then do nothing.”

Links

• Floods, fire and drought: Australia, a country in the grip of extreme weather bingo
• Australia's summer outlook: soaring temperatures and bushfire risk
• Australia had third-hottest year ever in 2017, weather bureau says
• From 'angry summer' to 'weird winter': 2017 was riddled with extreme weather
• Australia facing climate disaster on its doorstep, government's white paper warns
• Australian cities to have 50C summer days by 2040, study says
• Former weather bureau chief says agency debilitated by climate deniers' attacks
• Thunderstorm asthma: 'You're talking an event equivalent to a terrorist attack'

Rare Weather Event Over Antarctica Driving Australia's Hot, Dry Outlook

ABC Weather - Ben Deacon

Sudden stratospheric warming sees temperatures high above Antarctica increase by more than 40 degrees Celsius.

Supplied: National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA)

Key points Sudden stratospheric warming is much more common in the northern hemisphere Meteorologists are warning it will result in higher temperatures and a decrease in rainfall It is not believed to be caused by global warming but is a 'natural phenomenon'

A rare event that took place 30 kilometres above the South Pole last week is expected to impact upon Australia's rainfall outlook.
The upper atmosphere above Antarctica warmed by as much as 40 degrees Celsius in the course of a few days — and it is continuing to warm.
This rare phenomenon, known as sudden stratospheric warming (SSW), could deepen one of the worst droughts in Australian history.
The Bureau of Meteorology's Harry Hendon warned of dry weather ahead.
"We will typically see conditions across most of Australia, but primarily concentrated in the eastern part of Australia, become warmer and drier through spring and into early summer," Dr Hendon said.
SSW is rare in the southern hemisphere with only one major event ever identified, in 2002 — one of Australia's driest years on record.

2002 had record low rainfall, influenced by a sudden stratospheric warming.

(Supplied: Bureau of Meteorology)

LARGE IMAGE

Dr Hendon said similar, less intense stratospheric warmings had been linked to other dry years in Australia.

"In the past 30 years we probably have had five or six occurrences that didn't quite qualify as a sudden stratospheric warming," he said.

"We looked at what happened over that period and we're pretty confident that we will see an increase in temperatures and a decrease in rainfall in central-eastern Australia in the following months."

Not climate change but 'natural phenomenon'
SSW is not thought to be caused by global warming.
"We view SSW as a natural, internally-generated phenomena," Dr Hendon said.
"It just happens to be very rare in the southern hemisphere."
It is much more common in the northern hemisphere where SSWs are associated with cold weather.
Last February, the 'beast from the east' storm that covered much of Europe in snow was triggered by an SSW over the North Pole.

Antarctic temperatures affect Australia
Sudden stratospheric warming over Antarctica causes westerly winds south of Australia to track further north, a pattern meteorologists refer to as a 'negative SAM'.
In spring and summer, this negative SAM pattern brings warmer, drier air into southern Queensland and New South Wales.

In summer, a negative SAM is associated with a decreased chance of rain in central-eastern Australia.

(Supplied: Bureau of Meteorology)

LARGE IMAGE

"Unfortunately, these are areas already in drought," said a lead author of the BOM's spring climate outlook, Andrew Watkins.
Dr Watkins said cooler than normal water in the Indian Ocean, a phenomenon meteorologists call a 'positive IOD', has led to a lack of moisture drifting over the continent.
"This has certainly been a big factor in why winter has been so dry in virtually all of Australia," he said.

"On top of that, we have the likelihood of prolonged periods of negative SAM, which also brings drier conditions to New South Wales and southern Queensland. So it's a bit of a double whammy in those locations."

A positive IOD is associated with a reduced chance of rain.

(Supplied: Bureau of Meteorology)

LARGE IMAGE

Dr Watkins said the impact of the SSW may be felt in Australia through to the end of the year.

"These sudden stratospheric warming events and the patterns that we see from them can go from September [to] October, sometimes persisting through to January," he said.
Dr Hendon said he was gratified the Bureau of Meteorology's computer models were able to predict the event.
"In 2002 we didn't even know about it until after it happened, and we didn't know if we would ever be able to predict it," he said.
"It's exciting for us now that we have predictive capability that we didn't have in 2002."

Links

• ‘Dead things everywhere’: is Australia facing the summer from hell?
• Spring is going to be hotter and drier, according to BOM's latest outlook
• This year's bushfire outlook is not good news, but will we heed the warnings?
• Two killed as 'Beast from the East' paralyses Europe

Nearly Half Of Australia's Native Plants Are Under Threat From Climate Change

SBS - Sandra Fulloon

Scientists are battling to save Australia's native species, with a nationwide study finding almost half are threatened by rising temperatures and erratic rainfall.



Earlier this year, a nationwide study of 2.5 million Australian herbaria specimens found 47 per cent of the country’s vegetation is potentially at risk from rising temperatures by 2070.
As Australia marks Threatened Species Day on Saturday, chief botanist at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, Dr Brett Summerell, says he is worried about the future of Australia’s biodiversity.
“Australia is a biodiversity hotspot since 85 per cent of our flora is endemic, so it occurs naturally nowhere else around the world. So if we lose a species here, it’s gone forever,” Dr Summerell said.
“Rising temperatures and altered rainfall patterns are impacting our flora, and that is leading to increased outbreaks of disease and pest invasions.”

Dead gum trees and casuarinas at Middle Head, affected by Phytophthera mould which thrives in warmer weather. SBS

Some plant die-back on Sydney's Middle Head is caused by phytophthora, which thrives in warmer conditions. 
Phytophthora is a soil-borne water mould that causes enormous economic losses to crops and natural ecosystems worldwide.
“There is a pattern of plant die-back across the country, and it’s caused by things like phytophthora and other pests and pathogens,” he said.
“And it’s becoming very serious everywhere we look.”

Dr Brett Summerell with spring flowering wattle on Sydney's Middle Head. SBS

Dr Summerell holds a PhD from the University of Sydney and has been published extensively on plant pathogens. He said it's vital the country's species are protected.
“The smell of a gum leaf or a banksia or waratah flowering, these are strong aspects of our culture, so it’s up to us to preserve and save our species,” he said.

Rapid transition
In the nationwide study 'Safety margins and adaptive capacity of vegetation to climate change', published in Nature June, Dr Rachael Gallagher from Sydney's Macquarie University found many species are already struggling in warmer temperatures.
“Our study identified 151 species that are already at their upper limit for warming, and further rises present a considerable challenge for those species,” she said.

Dr Rachael Gallagher says up to half of Australia's native plant species at at risk from rising temperatures. SBS

“This is the first time we’ve had a contintental-scale analysis like this of Australia’s vegetation, and its risks under climate change.”
Climate modeling predicts a rise of between two and four degrees in Australia’s mean annual temperature over the next 50 years, she said.
“The rate of climate change is so much faster than we have experienced in the past, it’s a very rapid transition to a very warm environment.”
“As a result of changing climate we run the risk of losing species that we don’t even know exist at this time,” she added.

Species flowering earlier
Scientists studying flowering patterns found many species are also flowering earlier when compared with historic specimens.
Firefighters are also preparing for severe fires in spring, after one of the warmest and driest winters on record. Catastrophic fire conditions are already forecast for parts of Queensland.

Banksia in flower. It's one of Australia's native species adapted to fire. SBS

“When bushfires occur out of ordinary range, only some plants survive,” Dr Summerell said.
If fires are early or late, plants are thrown out of cycle for flowering and setting seed, he said.
Plants growing tropical areas and alpine regions are particularly susceptible to climate change.
“Feldmark grass Rytidosperma pumilum is extremely vulnerable, as it only grows in a three square kilometre area in the high alpine section of Kosciuszko National Park,” Dr Summerell said.

Feldmark grass is Australia's smallest grass and grows only in a small area in the NSW alpine area. SBS

“We expect is that once temperatures rise, woodland will overtake this area and feldmark grass will become critically endangered and move towards extinction.”“Retaining a rich diversity of plants is not only important for the environment. We also rely on plants for food, water, medicine and the air we breathe.”

Breeding resilient species
At the National Herbarium of NSW, scientists are photographing more than 1.4 million specimens, to create an online data bank.
“It’s an amazingly powerful resource,” Dr Summerell said.
Information about plant specimens collected over 250 years will be analysed, to reveal flowering patterns and also examine cellular structures.

Dr Brett Summerell and Dr Rachael Gallagher watch plants being digitised, at the National Herbarium of NSW. SBS

Scientists are also sampling DNA to breed more resilient species, used to restore mine sites or degraded farmland. Threatened species may also be migrated to cooler sites.
Some of the oldest surviving samples were collected from Botany Bay by early explorer and naturalist Joseph Banks on James Cook’s first voyage to Australia on HMS Endeavour in 1770.
The collection of plants are lucky to have survived. Banks retrieved his collection from the sea after the Endeavour ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, Dr Summerell explained. Samples were dried out on the sails of the ship, and taken to Britain. The specimens were later returned to Australia.

A specimen collected by botanist Joseph Banks, from Botany Bay in 1770. Supplied

The digitising work is expected to continue until 2021.
Dr Summerell said it will form a valuable and accessible resource for scientists studying the impacts of rising temperatures on plants worldwide.
Scientists say preserving species diversity is crucial for healthy bush and cultivated land. Farms need paddock trees and areas of native vegetation as habitat for native birds and mammals.
"And there are other benefits of keeping trees: they lower the water table and provide shade for stock. So keeping a mix of flora can have important flow-on benefits for species protection and crop or grazing land,” she said.

Scientists at the National Herbarium of NSW are battling to save threatened plant species. SBS

People can report die-back to The Dead Tree Detective, a project at Western Sydney University.
Nurseries advise people to plant hardy, drought-tolerant species, with water restrictions active in some states.
"More people are asking for native plants so we're selling a lot of grass trees, grevilleas, and beautiful flowering gums," Jack Thorburn from Sydney nursery Honeysuckle Garden said.
"We also advise people to treat the soil with a wetting agent and mulch often."
Dr Gallagher called urgent action to protect Australian flora, in particular, to protecting endemic plant species that occur nowhere else in the world, she said.

Links

This Is No Time For Hunches – We Need Evidence And Expertise In Science

The Guardian - Ian Chubb

Nobody argues that science is perfect, but it has been an essential part of making us what we are 

‘The challenge is to use the evidence to develop policy that will sustain the best parts of the Great Barrier Reef while giving any “green shoots” a chance to survive, even in the face of global warming.’ Photograph:  David Gray/Reuters

Ian Chubb Ian Chubb is the former Australian chief scientist. He is chair of the Reef Water Quality Independent Science Panel

There will always be people who call for additional review or scrutiny of science when the results of a rigorous process don’t yield the outcomes they want.
Effectively they want incontrovertible evidence, and anything less is unacceptable to them.
Incontrovertible evidence is rare in science, so it is easy to pick some cherry and use it to seed controversy and delay action.
History shows how effective the strategy has been. It also shows why the notion of the precautionary principle is so important. The principle requires that precautionary measures should be taken if the risk or threats of harm to (say) the environment are significant. It can mean taking action in the face of uncertainty. But when the available evidence is developed through a rigorous scientific process (and especially when it draws on multiple lines of evidence), suitable precautionary actions can be introduced with confidence.
Take the 2017 scientific consensus statement on “Land use impacts on Great Barrier Reef water quality and ecosystem condition” to illustrate the point. The consensus statement is a comprehensive analysis of the science underpinning the processes and management actions designed to improve water quality and their outcomes. It follows a statement released in 2013 which in turn followed one from 2008.
To arrive at the most recent scientific consensus statement, some 1,600 relevant peer-reviewed papers and reports, published over the past few decades, were identified. Each had been circulating and available to the scientific community and other interested readers for more than 30 years. They were produced by some hundreds of authors from diverse institutions in Australia and overseas. They had been published in multiple outlets. They were subject to the usual intense scrutiny that follows publication.
The point of the consensus statement was to determine whether there was evidence converging on any particular point. The papers and reports were therefore picked apart and the results analysed by about 50 authors with internationally recognised expertise in Great Barrier Reef and coastal science, particularly water quality science and management.
For three of the chapters in particular, the authors drew on additional experts; and all chapters were seen by external reviewers. The whole process was carried out under the watchful scrutiny of the Reef Water Quality Independent Science Panel.

The final output is a multidisciplinary analysis and covers the condition of coastal and marine ecosystems, sources of pollutants, risk, catchment scale management priorities, governance, monitoring and modelling aspects, and gaps in knowledge to be addressed.
And there was a convergence. There is a consensus:

Key Great Barrier Reef ecosystems continue to be in poor condition. This is largely due to the collective impact of land run-off associated with past and ongoing catchment development, coastal development activities, extreme weather events and climate change impacts such as the 2016 and 2017 coral bleaching events.Current initiatives will not meet the water quality targets. To accelerate the change in on-ground management, improvements to governance, program design, delivery and evaluation systems are urgently needed. This will require greater incorporation of social and economic factors, better targeting and prioritisation, exploration of alternative management options and increased support and resources.

Two recently published reports add further weight to the evidence: The Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan Report Card 2017 and 2018 and the Outlook Report produced by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority both point in the same direction – the reef ecosystem overall is deteriorating. There are encouraging patches showing signs of regeneration; and some of the Great Barrier Reef is in excellent condition.
The challenge is to use the evidence to develop policy that will sustain the best parts of the Great Barrier Reef while giving any “green shoots” a chance to survive, even in the face of global warming.
The balance of evidence is important. The scientific consensus statement (2017) involves the work of some hundreds of independent scientists.
There is a small handful of scientists who have argued that the overwhelming majority are wrong, notwithstanding that the most prominent concedes that he is “not the authority on the issue”.
If there is evidence that leads to an alternative conclusion, it should be put into the public domain and be subjected to the same scrutiny as the work critiqued in the consensus statement. There has been plenty of time for the work to be done. This is no time for hunches; it is time for evidence.
When scientists seek to understand the world they make predictions and then test them. And they publish their results through appropriate channels.
Nobody argues that science is perfect. Mistakes can be made and sometimes are. The evidence provided by science at any point in time, however, is the accumulated knowledge that survives after rigorous challenge, scrutiny and testing.
We can be confident that decisions made on the basis of evidence derived from the processes of science will continue to provide benefits across society. It has done so for decades notwithstanding well documented diversionary tactics.
As a nation, science has been an essential part of making us what we are. There is no reason to stop now.

Links

• AgForce backs calls for review of consensus science on Great Barrier Reef
• Great Barrier Reef expert panel says Peter Ridd misrepresenting science
• 40 Years Ago, Scientists Predicted Climate Change. And Hey, They Were Right
• Wanted: Citizen Climate Scientists For Nationwide Study
• How Can Climate Policy Stay On Top Of A Growing Mountain Of Data?
• The Scientific Method And Climate Change: How Scientists Know
• How A Fossil Fuel Geoscientist Joined The Fight Against Climate Change
• Global Science Leaders Call For Further Action On Climate Change Ahead Of CHOGM 2018
• New Climate Model Promises To Help Avoid Dangerous Global Warming
• In-Depth: Scientists Discuss How To Improve Climate Models