Coalition Quietly Appoints Expert Panel To Salvage Emissions Policy

The Guardian - Adam Morton | Katharine Murphy

Panel given less than a month to provide recommendations, despite government’s claims on meeting Paris target

The Bayswater black coal-powered thermal power station in the NSW upper Hunter Valley. The government has quietly appointed a panel of experts to devise ways to tackle Australia’s rising carbon emissions. Photograph: Taras Vyshnya/Alamy Stock Photo 

The Morrison government has quietly appointed an expert panel to come up with new ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions and given it less than a month to come up with recommendations.
In what is being seen by observers as an acknowledgment that its main climate change policy, the $2.55bn emissions reduction fund, is failing to cut national pollution, the government has appointed a panel of four business leaders and policy experts to suggest options to expand it.
The panel is headed by Grant King, the outgoing president of the Business Council of Australia and a former chief executive of Origin Energy. It was appointed by the minister for emissions reduction, Angus Taylor, in mid-October but has not been made public.
Business sources say the Morrison government, via officials, has been privately sounding out various groups about an overhaul of the fund for months. But stakeholders were taken aback when the King panel approached them to provide detailed comments on options in less than two weeks.
A letter from King to interest groups, seen by Guardian Australia, apologises implicitly for the compressed timeframe, acknowledging “it may not be possible to fully consult across your membership before providing your response”. But he argues there will be time for follow-up discussions as a final report is prepared.
The letter was sent with a discussion paper headed “Expert panel examining opportunities for further abatement” that critiques and sets out options “to enhance” the fund.
The panel has been established despite Morrison and Taylor maintaining they have set out “to the last tonne” of carbon dioxide how Australia will meet the 2030 emissions target announced before the Paris climate conference. In reality, national emissions have risen each year since 2015 and most analyses suggest the government will not reach the goal, a 26%-28% cut below 2005 levels, under current policies.
The discussion paper, first reported by Footprint, says the emissions reduction fund has been successful in generating carbon offsets from native vegetation and landfill projects, largely because they cost relatively little and do not require businesses to make substantial operational changes.
But it says the scheme has done little to cut emissions through energy efficiency projects and from industry, agriculture and transport, in part due to high upfront and transaction costs.
The emissions reduction fund works as a reverse auction, rewarding landowners and businesses that make cheap, viable bids for taxpayers’ support to cut pollution. The most recent auction bought emissions cuts equivalent to only 0.01% of Australia’s annual greenhouse gas pollution after officials found just three projects worth backing.
The paper says the government is looking at ways to attract more participants from industry and agricultural businesses.
It is also considering new incentives to complement the fund, including partnerships with other tiers of government and the private sector and reconsidering how to best spend “existing financing resources”. Those resources include an additional $2bn committed to the fund before the election (when the government rebranded it as part of what it calls a climate solutions fund) and money allocated to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
Possible emissions reduction options listed include:

• Changing the scheme known as the safeguard mechanism, which was supposed to limit emissions from big industry but in practice has allowed pollution to increase, so companies that emit less than their limit are awarded carbon credits they could sell to the government or business. Companies now have limits based on emissions intensity (how much they emit for every dollar earned) rather than outright pollution.
• Offering companies cash to help pay for technology-focused emissions reduction projects that would otherwise struggle to be financially viable.
• Boosting energy efficiency by giving smaller operators better access to expert advice and providing incentives to reduce energy use in commercial buildings and low-income housing.

There is a view among some stakeholders that the Morrison government is trying to pull together a policy reboot before a meeting of energy ministers at the Council of Australian Governments energy council in November. The meeting has been delayed for months because of wrangling among the participants.
Guardian Australia revealed in August that the New South Wales government had asked Canberra to provide an alternative to the dumped national energy guarantee. It would see the Morrison government underwrite both new generation to replace the Liddell power station, probably firmed renewables, and new investments in transmission.
Energy stakeholders are speculating that some states may also pursue money from the fund to drive abatement .
In response to questions about the panel, Taylor said the environment department and expert panel were working together to ensure the $2bn climate solutions fund would deliver the most emissions abatement possible.
He said the commonwealth conservatively estimated the fund would deliver at least 103m tonnes of cuts by 2030. “This is a minimum target, not a cap,” he said.
Interest groups were asked to give quick feedback last week before the panel submits advice to Taylor next month. The other panel members are Susie Smith, chief executive of the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network, Prof Andrew Macintosh, head of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee, and David Parker, the Clean Energy Regulator chairman.
The fund has faced consistent criticism since it replaced the Gillard-era carbon pricing scheme. A Guardian Australia investigation found while the type of vegetation projects it supports were worthwhile it was often difficult to know what taxpayers were getting for their money.
There have been problems with how emissions cuts from some projects have been calculated and some methodologies have paid for cuts that would have happened anyway. Others have supported fossil fuel projects.
The government has also been criticised for planning to reduce the difficulty of meeting its 2030 target by using what are known as “carryover credits”, which it has claimed for Australia surpassing the targets it set under the Kyoto protocol (an 8% increase in emissions between 1990 and 2012, and a 5% reduction between 2000 and 2020).
The environment department has conceded it is not aware of any other country planning to use carryover credits to meet a target under the Paris agreement.

Links

• Expert Panel examining opportunities for further abatement: Discussion Paper, October 2019
• Coalition's emissions reduction fund labelled 'a joke' after first post-election auction
• Up in smoke: what did taxpayers get for the $2bn emissions fund?
• Questions raised over how $1bn of emissions funding have been allocated
• Climate emissions from tropical forest damage 'underestimated by a factor of six'
• 'The climate doesn't need awards': Greta Thunberg declines environmental prize
• Why the climate crisis is the most crucial story we cover in America
• Electric cars could be charged in 10 minutes in future, finds research
• Climate crisis: business leaders say cost to taxpayers will spiral unless new policies introduced 

Greta Thunberg Rejects Environmental Prize, Saying: ‘The Climate Doesn’t Need Awards’

Washington Post - Lateshia Beachum

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg attends a climate rally in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Friday, Oct. 25, 2019. (Melissa Renwick/The Canadian Press via AP)

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has turned down a prestigious environmental honor. The reason? She doesn’t think the climate movement needs any more awards.
In a lengthy Instagram post in which she is pictured bundled up in a yellow raincoat, looking pensively into the camera, Thunberg, 16, outlined why she will not be accepting the Nordic Council’s 2019 Environmental Award.
“What we need is for our politicians and the people in power [to] start to listen to the current, best available science,” she wrote, acknowledging the prestige of the award and the esteemed climate reputation that many Nordic countries have.
Thunberg was nominated by Sweden and Norway for the prize, which is awarded to a company, organization or person for noteworthy efforts to “integrate respect for nature and the environment into their business or work or for some other form of extraordinary initiative on behalf of nature and the environment,” according to the Nordic Council and the Nordic Council of Ministers website.


After taking a solar-powered boat from England to New York to attend the United Nations Climate Action Summit, Thunberg discussed what activists need to do. (Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post)

The award, which was established in 1995, comes with a cash prize of 350,000 Danish krone, or about $52,000. Thunberg also said in her Instagram statement that she was turning down the money until leaders in Nordic countries “act in accordance with what sciences says is needed to limit the global temperature rise.”
Thunberg has become a globally recognized face for climate change as her protests to improve the environment morphed from skipping school and sitting outside the Swedish parliament to spearheading a worldwide youth movement in which teens have ditched school to call attention to increasing temperatures and protest disappointing climate change actions by lawmakers.
Her grass-roots movement, FridaysforFuture, is exactly why the Nordic Council chose her for the award.
“Like none before her, in a very short space of time Greta has succeeded in raising awareness of climate and environmental issues in the Nordic countries and the rest of the world,” the Nordic Council Jury said. “She has stubbornly and persuasively urged the world to listen to research and act on the basis of facts. Her influence has become so extensive that there is now talk of a global ‘Greta Thunberg effect.'”
Last month, youth in more than 150 countries skipped classes to demonstrate their concerns about climate change and to urge their elected officials to do something about it.

Links

• Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg demands that Congress ‘listen to the scientists’
• 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg offers a rejoinder to Trump’s sarcastic late-night tweet
• Jane Fonda plans climate change civil disobedience on the Capitol steps
• Scientists triple their estimates of the number of people threatened by rising seas
• Americans increasingly see climate change as a crisis, poll shows
• Americans would rather reduce oil and gas exploration than ‘drill, baby, drill’
• New U.N. climate report: Monumental change already here for world’s oceans and frozen regions

Business Lobby Groups Accused Of 'Undermining' Climate Change Policy

ABC News - Andrew Robertson

BP, Shell and Caltex are among the heavy polluters sitting on the BCA's climate change committee. (AP: Alik Keplicz)

Macquarie Group co-founder, and now chairman of Alinta Energy, Mark Johnson is a pillar of the establishment.

So it's surprising to hear he's no fan of business lobby groups like the Business Council of Australia (BCA) or the Minerals Council of Australia, which also see themselves as part of the establishment.
Both are under pressure over their stance on climate change.
"I suspect that it may be more analogous to our political situation where a relatively small rump of non-believers, conspiracy theorists and others have exerted influence to stop more proactive policies," Mr Johnson told the ABC.

"You often want to stay outside associations or industry bodies which have a tendency to come up with a slightly lower common denominator answer."

Mark Johnson says conspiracy theorists are exerting their influence to frustrate climate change initiatives. (ABC News: John Gunn)

And on climate change, there are many who believe that's exactly what business lobby groups are doing.
The latest to speak out are big global investors with $16 trillion in shareholdings, who have put their name to a letter demanding action.
"Investors have clear expectations of companies in impacted sectors and they're looking to work with them to get real positive progress in order to protect shareholder value," said Emma Herd, the CEO of Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC), whose members are also signatories to that letter.
One of the key demands is for their companies to withdraw from organisations that are not pulling their weight.
"Investors expect companies to ensure that they are aligned with the Paris Agreement and that company resources are not used to support trade associations that act for short-term gain, undermining Paris Agreement objectives," the IGCC letter said.
Front and centre is the coal lobby; groups like the Minerals Council of Australia, Coal 21 and the New South Wales Minerals Council, which the big institutions say, "continue to undermine effective climate policy".
"I think there's a lot of scope for Australia's industry associations to be working better with their members, in terms of managing for what we know will be very real financial implications arising from climate change," Ms Herd said.

Vested interests
The Business Council is under fire for supporting Kyoto carry-over credits to meet Australia's emissions reduction target for the more recent Paris Agreement.
That's despite the BCA saying it supports Paris.

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Paris 2030: Will we make it?

Are Australia's efforts to curb global warming enough to meet our Paris targets? Four Corners investigates.

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"In carbon accounting terms, that means that these organisations, and now the Federal Government, are planning for Australia to emit an additional 370 million tonnes of carbon, or CO2 equivalent, by 2030," Brynn O'Brien, head of shareholder activist group The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR), said.
According to the BCA's website, its policy on climate change comes from its Energy and Climate Change Committee.
A committee where the majority of member companies are heavy emitters of carbon.
It includes big names like Origin Energy, Orica, Santos, BP, Ausgrid, Chevron, BHP, Caltex, Shell and ExxonMobil.
"When you do have that key policy committee dominated by some of the companies that stand to benefit from delay to our de-carbonisation and our transition in Australia, that's how you end up with policy that is not representative of the broader membership," Ms O'Brien said.
Under pressure from shareholders, Westpac, Telstra and BHP are among those reviewing their memberships of the Business Council.
BHP is also reviewing its membership of the Minerals Council, having already quit the world Coal Association.

"Many coal producers I think are quite realistic about the outlook for their commodity, they know that's it's going to decline," Mr Johnson said.

"But they've got positions to preserve at the moment so they will work quite vociferously to preserve those positions."

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Analysis: Morrison's UN speech

RMIT ABC Fact Check looks at some of the key claims made by the Prime Minister at the United Nations to see if they stack up. 

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Other lobby groups are also in the firing line.
London-based shareholder activist group Influence Map has rated the world's worst on climate change.
Four Australian organisations make the top 30, with the Minerals Council at number eight.
The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) is ranked 18th, while the Business Council is 20th and the Australian Industry Group is in 30th place.
The top six lobby groups — in terms of resistance to climate change — are all from the United States, according to Influence Map.
It has some harsh words for the Minerals Council though, slamming it as "highly climate-oppositional" and having a "significant impact in undermining climate action".
As shareholder activists toughen their approach to lobby groups, the upcoming annual general meetings of BHP, ANZ and NAB will vote on resolutions calling for those companies to pull out of the Business Council.
And as pressure has built on the Business Council, just to add to its woes, six big companies have cancelled their memberships — AMP, Santos, JB Hi Fi, QBE, Medibank Private and IAG.

Links

• 'Extremely sceptical': Atlassian billionaire Cannon-Brookes puts the heat on BHP over climate action
• 'Out of line': top Australian companies accused of undermining Paris deal
• Minerals Council capitulates to investors, announces climate plan
• Casting Doubt and Undermining Action
• Why have we failed to address climate change?
• The Paris climate agreement explained
• Morrison says Australia will meet Paris climate target 'in a canter', but the data says different
• How the spread of insurance red zones could trigger a property crunch

All That Perfectly Good Water Dumped Into The Ocean Like Some Sort Of Enormous NATURE TOILET!

The Guardian - First Dog On The Moon

And the people who got us here are
screaming the loudest about how unfair it all is

Cartoon by First Dog on the Moon

LARGE IMAGE

Links

• THE GRETA THUNBERG PROBLEM, So Many Men Freaking Out About The Tiny Swedish Climate Demon
• How Actually Dare People Politicise The Bushfires By Claiming 'Scientifically' It's Linked To The Climate Crisis
• Brenda The Civil Disobedience Penguin Asks: What Will You Give Up To Save The Planet?
• Some ‘Sinister Tactics’ Those Brave Protesters In Queensland Could Have Used But Also Didn’t
• It's a global death sentence to keep eating like this: dinnertime at the Foreclaws
• In Not At All Intimidating News: Adani Wants The Names Of Scientists Investigating It
• What Did You Do In The Climate Wars Daddy?
• How Do You Hug A Climate Scientist? Follow These Simple Rules And Don't Make It Weird
• Adani: It All Looks Dodgy As Hell And None Of It Has Been Explained Properly
• As We Struggle To Save The Planet From Climate Collapse, Let's Dance (Dramatic Glockenspiel)
• The Billionaire's Guide To Surviving Global Warming – With Ian The Climate Denialist Potato
• 'Last Year I Gave The Kids Briquettes And Everyone Yelled At Me!' Christmas With Ian
• The Children Are Rioting In The Streets! They Are Deadly Serious And Perhaps Our Last Hope
• This Is A Call To Arms On Climate Change. And By Arms I Mean Flippers!

Damian Carrington On 10 Years As The Guardian's Environment Editor

The Guardian - Damian Carrington, as told to Sophie Zeldin-O'Neill

One of our leading environment journalists reflects on how awareness of the climate crisis has shifted in the last decade and offers advice for those who want to do more

Damian Carrington: ‘I’ve seen so much of the earth’s beauty. The flip-side to that is being confronted with its destruction.’ Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

What did you do before you joined the Guardian?

I did a PhD and post-doc research in geology at Edinburgh University, including an expedition to Antarctica, which was amazing: beautiful, pristine with bursts of life along the coast. But I think my attention span was a bit short for academic life, so I started writing science stories for newspapers. My first staff job was at BBC Tomorrow’s World magazine, then BBC News Online. I went to New Scientist next and then the Financial Times. In 2008, I was delighted to be hired by the Guardian, which was – and is! – my favourite paper.

Damian Carrington on the Snorkel Safari in Kimmeridge, Dorset – a marine conservation zone. Photograph: Peter Willows/BNPS.co.uk

How has awareness of the climate crisis changed in the last decade? What do you think the big milestones have been? 

When I joined the Guardian, concern about the climate crisis was running high, following a landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth – the IPCC and Gore went on to win the Nobel peace prize. But it was seen as a future problem. The transformative moment was meant to come at the 2009 UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. But it didn’t happen and after that the impacts of the global financial crisis grabbed all the attention. It wasn’t until 2015, by which time the role of human activities in driving climate change was undeniable, that a big step forward was taken with the Paris deal.

How has your role in covering the environment changed in that time?
The Guardian has always taken the environment very seriously. In the decade I have been here, the team has expanded. But the basic approach has largely stayed the same – environmental issues affect everything, so should feature across all our coverage: reporting, exposing and holding to account. Today, the climate crisis is here, evident in more frequent and more severe extreme weather and climate change deniers have been relegated to the far fringes. With the global youth climate strikes inspired by Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion protests, 2019 feels like a new chapter. Those who have campaigned for decades are feeling hopeful.

What would you say are the most important environmental issues?
The climate emergency is the best known, and it will take systemic change to beat it. But the annihilation of wildlife and the destruction of nature is just as crucial in my view – we depend on the natural world for almost everything. The huge scale of the losses – from forests to insects to marine life – has only really become widely reported in the last few years. Pollution is the third issue, particularly the toxic air that causes millions of early deaths every year. Air is actually getting cleaner in some rich nations, but the understanding of how damaging it is – on everything from intelligence to miscarriages – is only really emerging now. Chemical pollution is also a serious global problem, from fertiliser to pesticides to PCBs

What frustrates you about how these issues are sometimes be covered?
One thing is the charge of hypocrisy that is often levelled at environment campaigners because they have a TV or something. Just because you have to live in the world as it is today doesn’t mean you can’t campaign to make it a better place tomorrow. But I think hypocrisy is the attack made by people who know they’ve lost the real argument.

Has your work influenced/informed the way you live your life?
Yes. It’s impossible to write about it every day and not act. I am vegan at home and whenever I can elsewhere. My home is fully insulated and my energy supplier is renewable. I rarely fly for holidays – one short haul flight in the last couple of years – and usually go to Ireland by ferry to surf. I’ve also cycled to work for about 13 years now – it’s cheap, fast and healthy. Being green is often worthwhile for many reasons.

What would you say to readers who want to tackle the environmental crisis?
The big shifts will be driven by the governments we elect (in democracies) and the companies to which we give our custom. Demanding urgent action from those leaders is vital. But personal action is also important, in itself and as an encouragement to others. The biggest action, according to scientists, is having fewer children, but that of course is a deeply personal and complex choice. Flying less and eating less meat and dairy also make big cuts in your impact, as does driving fewer petrol-powered miles and insulating your home.

How can we build on the urgency we’ve seen from many campaigners in 2019 and keep the spotlight fixed firmly on the big changes we need?
We are in a race against time and it’s not at all certain that we are going to win. We understand the problems and what we have to do, more or less, but the pace of action is far too slow. Putting pressure on politicians and business leaders is key – giving them a strong reason to move faster. The good news is that many solutions gain their own momentum once started. In many places, solar and wind power is now the cheapest electricity, and electric cars are the cheapest to own. But there are still big problems to solve, including agriculture and aviation. The young people involved in the climate strikes will be running the world in the not-too-distant future. But we have to make sure we are still in the race by then.

What have been the highlights of your reporting at the Guardian so far? What has made you most proud?
I have written nearly 2,000 stories for the Guardian, and I’d hope most of them have played a part in building awareness of environmental issues. It’s usually hard to know how much impact stories have behind the scenes, but the restoration of slashed flood defence funding in England followed a lot of reporting by me, as did the EU ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, which harm bees. The recent resignation of the executive director of the UN environment programme also followed a string of my stories, which was a good example of the Guardian holding power to account. The environment team get a lot of positive feedback from readers, scientists and policymakers, which is very heartening. One prominent scientist recently told me: “Thank God for the Guardian!”

What is the area within your work and reporting expertise that you feel most passionately about?
Usually the story I’m working on right now. But in recent years I’ve done a lot on pesticides, insects, the impact of livestock, microplastics and harmful subsidies. And badgers. I’ve written a lot about the cull in England. One of my editors here said I had “made the Guardian the paper of choice for small mammals”, which may or may not have been a compliment.

What about the highs and lows of doing the job?
Often, this is the best job in the world. I’ve been fortunate to see a lot of the Earth’s natural beauty. I’ve tracked forest elephants in Gabon, been swimming with giant mantas in the Maldives and walked through extraordinary landscapes high in the Andes. On the other hand, almost every day I have to report more destruction and degradation of the environment. The most heartbreaking story I have covered is the poisoning of children with lead in a former mining town in Zambia. But I was glad to be able to expose it at least.

What’s next for you and the team?
The next 12 months are going to be absolutely pivotal for the world. There’s a major UN biodiversity conference in China next year – the targets set a decade ago have been woefully missed. The UN climate summit in Glasgow, UK, in 2020 will also be vital – nations are going to have to make big increases in the carbon cuts they pledge if we are to get anywhere near the 1.5C temperature rise seen as a safety limit. And we’ll be reporting day in, day out, across the world holding nations and companies to account for the environment and for social justice.

What makes the Guardian unique?
John Vidal, my brilliant predecessor as environment editor, says: “Environment is the world and everything in it”, and I think the issue now permeates all the newspaper’s coverage. That is because the Guardian has always taken the issue seriously, with full support from the top and the resources to match. Our readers really care too, and they tell us. I’d guess there aren’t many places where all that is the case.

Links

• Transforming the media’s coverage of the climate crisis
• Why We're Rethinking The Images We Use For Our Climate Journalism
• Drop The Doom And Gloom: Climate Journalism Is About Empowerment
• The Climate Crisis Is A Story For Every Beat
• Commentary: Climate Change Needs Better Storytelling To Address Severe Threats
• At Climate Feedback, Scientists Encourage Better Science Reporting. But Who Is Listening?
• Suzuki Wants Journalists To Forget The Dow Jones, Report On Climate Every Day
• Science Loses Out To Uninformed Opinion On Climate Change – Yet Again

Rising Sea Levels Pose Threat To Homes Of 300m People – Study

The Guardian - Jonathan Watts

Figure based on new analysis of coastlines
is more than three times previous estimate

River erosion in Bangladesh.
The numbers at risk of an annual flood by 2050 in Bangladesh increased
more than eightfold in the study.
Photograph: Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/Barcroft Media

More than three times more people are at risk from rising sea levels than previously believed, research suggests.
Land that is currently home to 300 million people will flood at least once a year by 2050 unless carbon emissions are cut significantly and coastal defences strengthened, says the study, published in Nature Communications. This is far above the previous estimate of 80 million.
The upward revision is based on a more sophisticated assessment of the topography of coastlines around the world. Previous models used satellite data that overestimated the altitude of land due to tall buildings and trees. The new study used artificial intelligence to compensate for such misreadings.
Researchers said the magnitude of difference from the previous Nasa study came as a shock. “These assessments show the potential of climate change to reshape cities, economies, coastlines and entire global regions within our lifetimes,” said Scott Kulp, the lead author of the study and a senior scientist at Climate Central.
“As the tideline rises higher than the ground people call home, nations will increasingly confront questions about whether, how much and how long coastal defences can protect them.”
The biggest change in estimates was in Asia, which is home to the majority of the world’s population. The numbers at risk of an annual flood by 2050 increased more than eightfold in Bangladesh, sevenfold in India, twelvefold in India and threefold in China.
The threat is already being felt in Indonesia, where the government recently announced plans to move the capital city from Jakarta, which is subsiding and increasingly vulnerable to flooding. The new figures show 23 million people are at risk in Indonesia, up from the previous estimate of 5 million.

Revised topographical modelling shows millions more people,

especially in Asia, are at risk from annual flooding by 2050

Guardian graphic. Nature Communications

Benjamin Strauss, Climate Central’s chief scientist and CEO, said more countries may need to follow Indonesia’s lead unless sea defences were strengthened or carbon emissions were cut. “An incredible, disproportionate amount of human development is on flat, low-lying land near the sea. We are really set up to suffer,” he said.
The authors say the calculations could still underestimate the dangers because they are based on standard projections of sea level rise in a scenario known as RCP2.6, which assumes emissions cuts in line with the promises made under the Paris agreement. Countries are currently not on course to meet these pledges.
In a worst-case scenario with greater instability of the Antarctic ice sheet, as many as 640 million people could be threatened by 2100, the scientists say.
Strauss said a World Bank study using the old elevation data estimated damages of $1tn per year by mid-century, and this would need to be updated. More sophisticated topographical measurements would also be necessary, he said.
“The need for coastal defences and higher planning for higher seas is much greater than we thought if we are to avoid economic harm and instability,” said Strauss. “The silver lining to our research: although many more people are threatened than we thought, the benefits of action are greater.”

Links

• Nature Communications: New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding
• Rising Seas Will Erase More Cities by 2050, New Research Shows
• Global Warming Will Drown Bangkok, Shanghai, Mumbai 
• Nearly 36 Million Indians Face Threat Of Annual Floods By 2050: Study
• Scientists triple their estimates of the number of people threatened by rising seas
• Study triples population at risk of climate-triggered floods
• Sea-level rise could flood hundreds of millions more than expected
• Climate crisis – here’s what the experts recommend we do
• New analysis triples risk from rising sea levels
• Up to 630 million people could be threatened by rising seas
• Glacial melting in Antarctica may become irreversible

The Answer To Climate-Killing Cow Farts May Come From The Sea

Mother Jones - Rowan Walrath

Methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas. A modest feed additive could provide a big leverage effect.

Cristina Byvik

One day in January 2014, police rushed to a farm in Rasdorf, Germany, after flames burst from a barn. They soon discovered that static electricity had caused entrapped methane from the flatulence and manure of 90 dairy cows to explode.
Headline writers had a field day. But the incident pointed to a serious problem: Ruminant livestock, mostly cattle, account for 30 percent of all global methane emissions, pumping out 3 gigatons of the gas every year in their burps, farts, and manure. Methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas: During its 12-year lifespan after being released, it traps 84 times as much heat as carbon dioxide, and its effect on global warming over a century is 34 times that of CO2. According to the United Nations, reducing methane emissions from cows could be one of the quickest ways to slow climate change.

Methane traps 84 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.

The United States government has done little to curb this potent pollution, which makes up 36 percent of the country’s methane emissions.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s AgStar program trains farmers to turn animal waste into biofuel using anaerobic digesters, but it is optional—8,000 farms could implement it, but only about 250 have done so.
Ermias Kebreab, an animal science professor at the University of California–Davis, has spent 15 years studying alternative ways to reduce livestock effusions. Three years ago, he heard that researchers at Australia’s James Cook University had mixed bacteria from cows’ digestive systems with red seaweed and discovered a drastic decrease in methane production. Their lab experiment suggested that reformulating a cow’s diet to contain 2 percent seaweed could reduce its methane emissions by 99 percent.
Kebreab tried to replicate those results with actual animals. His team mixed varying levels of Asparagopsis armata, a type of red seaweed, into the feed of 12 dairy cows over a two-month period. The results were shocking: When the cattle’s chow consisted of just 1 percent seaweed, their methane emissions went down 60 percent. “In all the years that I’ve worked in this area, I’ve never seen anything that reduced it that much,” Kebreab says.
These are preliminary results, but they offer exciting prospects. Seaweed doesn’t require precious freshwater, fertilizer, or land to grow. It can reverse ocean acidification by absorbing carbon dioxide. We’d have to grow quite a bit of seaweed to rely on it for sequestration: One study suggests we could remove the equivalent of 42 percent of all current global CO2 emissions by covering 4 percent of the world’s oceans in seaweed farms—but that’s a lot of ocean.
And as a review published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization notes, if aquaculturists remove rocks or native sea grasses to plant massive seaweed farms, they could disrupt ecosystems and even alter coastal currents. But responsible seaweed cultivation could be a boon to marine habitats, providing nurseries for fish and snails, argues Paul Dobbins, a senior specialist at the World Wildlife Fund and former president of a kelp farm in Maine.

“You don’t have to rebuild 10,000 power plants in the world. You basically create a modest feed additive that has a big leverage effect.”

The need to rein in methane emissions is especially urgent in Cali­fornia, home to 1.8 million dairy cows. A 2016 law requires the state air resources board to implement a strategy to reduce these emissions by 40 percent from 2013 levels by 2030. In hopes of helping farmers meet those goals, Kebreab and his team launched a larger version of his cow study in March, using 21 steers that he monitored for six months. So far, the results mirror the first experiment’s, but a full analysis won’t be ready until December. Kebreab’s biggest hurdle has been finding enough seaweed; the variety that’s useful for cows isn’t domestically available.
Massachusetts-based Australis Aquaculture hopes to cultivate red Asparagopsis on ropes anchored off the coast of Vietnam. CEO Josh Goldman is excited about feeding his underwater crop to cows: “You don’t have to rebuild 10,000 power plants in the world. You basically create a modest feed additive that has a big leverage effect.”
WWF’s Dobbins says seaweed farming can be a “triple win”: a way to grow nutritious food for both cows and people, provide coastal jobs, and improve the marine environment. “Everything you do in food production has pluses and minuses relative to the environment,” he says. “Seaweed farming, if done correctly, actually comes out more on the plus side.”

Links

• The Methane Gun
• Rising Methane May Thwart Efforts To Avoid Catastrophic Climate Change
• Methane From Food Production Might Be The Next Wildcard In Climate Change
• Scientists Discover New Additional Culprits For Global Warming
• Fossil Fuel Industry's Methane Emissions Far Higher Than Thought
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