Climate Crisis: News Outlets Still Giving A Platform To Dangerous And Outdated Views

The Conversation - Sharon Coen

John Gomez

Author Sharon Coen is Senior Lecturer in Media Psychology, University of Salford

For years, scientists have been stressing the need to act quickly and effectively on climate change. And as part of my work as a media psychology academic, I’ve seen the way media outlets along with readers have discussed climate change over the past decade.

I’ve observed very slow progress on the issue. But many news outlets do now present the climate crisis as fact rather than a matter of belief. Though given the scale of the problem, this feels like too little too late. This is why I, along many other academics and psychologists, have joined the environmental campaign group Extinction Rebellion (XR).

This group of activists have long advocated for the need to put in place policies and regulations aimed at addressing the climate emergency and breakdown. Extinction Rebellion poses three demands:

1. Tell the truth
2. Net zero emissions by 2025
3. Organise Citizen Assemblies whose decisions are binding

Extinction Rebellion repeatedly claim that government and media alike are not telling the truth about the gravity and seriousness of the climate crisis. This has led to a series of recent demonstrations against mainstream media outlets calling on them to highlight the crisis and to increase their coverage of climate issues.

So just how much of an issue is press coverage of the climate crisis and are journalists going far enough in their reporting?

False balance and distortions

Back in 2007, researchers from Oxford University highlighted the barriers to accurate and consistent coverage of the climate crisis.

One of the key messages of their report was that sometimes coverage is poor not because of an intentional distortion by the media, but because of a clash between journalistic values and the need to tell the truth about the climate crisis.

Providing a balanced view is an important aspect of reporting and is highly valued by journalists. But research has found that so-called “false balance”, whereby a counter argument or expert is given on a topic where there is otherwise overwhelming consensus, can distort the public’s perceptions of what ought to be noncontroversial subjects.

The way the news is often framed (for example, whether a natural disaster is presented as an isolated incident or in the context of a large-scale phenomenon) can also lead to distortions. So can the types of images associated to climate change news – such as the iconic polar bears, or the melting ice. These images can make it seem like this is something happening far away that won’t impact most people’s lives.

Beyond consensus

I’ve spoken with Extinction Rebellion critics who argue that modern coverage of climate change no longer questions consensus. Indeed, research has found that more recently, the media does generally recognise the existence of consensus in the scientific community – and that critics of climate crisis are in a small minority.

One of the classic climate change images. FloridaStock/Shutterstock

But the study also shows how distortions still occur in the way journalists frame and interpret climate change issues and expert opinions around it. These results support previous research that analysed climate crisis coverage in British newspapers between 2007–2011. It found that uncontested sceptical voices - though in clear decline - were still present. This practice was predominant in editorials and opinion pieces in right-leaning newspapers often written by non specialist, in-house columnists.

In other words, although the mainstream media has corrected its representation of scientific consensus, a sceptic view is still delivered to readers – just via opinion pieces or editorial rather than news reporting.

This can also be seen in the BBC’s recent response to a complaint concerning the way Justin Webb, presenter of Radio 4’s Today programme, described the climate and ecological emergency as “a matter of opinion”. The complaint office responded by saying that while there is agreement on the reality and existence of man-made climate change, the “notion of there being a climate emergency is the subject of some debate”.

“The notion of there being a climate emergency is the subject of some debate” WTAF @BBCNews @BBCr4today??? The UN says so, the government says so, more than 13,000 scientists say so,even David Attenborough says so.This is CRIMINAL misreporting. Read this: https://t.co/3s5byNRhki pic.twitter.com/1EXFSuk8Tu

— Dr Emily Grossman (@DrEmilyGrossman) September 14, 2020

This is despite the fact that the UK Parliament has declared a climate emergency in response to accumulating evidence on the need to act urgently to save our planet.

Similarly, Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp papers were promoting a sceptic reading of the devastating 2019 wildfires in Australia.

Outdated views

Research on journalistic norms shows how, by and large, journalists see their role as “informing the citizenry, free from influences of government or obligations to any external force”.

But in the upcoming book, The Psychology of Journalism, that I’ve edited with my colleague Peter Bull, we explore how demands posed by the political and economic system journalists work in can affect the way in which news information is presented. And this can also influence the way people receive and respond to news.

Ultimately though, journalists can still be hesitant to adopt a “doom and gloom” approach when talking about the climate emergency. But research shows this is not the only way to talk about climate crisis – and continuing to present it as a topic to be debated is outdated and dangerous.

Links

• The use of religious metaphors by UK newspapers to describe and denigrate climate change
• Media coverage of climate change in 2019 got bigger - and better
• Extinction Rebellion: Tell the truth
• Extinction Rebellion is showing Britain what real democracy could look like 
• Uncovering a Climate Catastrophe? Media Coverage of Australia’s Black Summer Bushfires and the Revelatory Extent of the Climate Blame Frame
• Fear appeals, information processing, and behavioral intentions toward climate change
• Rupert Murdoch's British Papers Delayed As Climate Protesters Stop The Presses
• What I Learned Covering The Climate Crisis For 15 Years
• (AU) Can TV Affect Our Attitudes To Climate Change And Carbon Emissions?
• What Facebook And The Oil Industry Have In Common
• Facebook Creates Fact-Checking Exemption For Climate Deniers
• Lethal Heating: Media Posts

(AU) Australia Cannot Wait For Climate Decision To Save Reef: Foundation

Sydney Morning Herald - Tony Moore

Australia cannot wait for the world’s politicians to agree on climate change before taking steps to protect its most famous reef from ocean warming, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation's chief executive Anna Marsden warns.

Ms Marsden said practical steps would include identifying fast-growing "super-breeder reefs" to repopulate damaged reef areas and protect threatened species.

A Raine Island green turtle after nesting. Credit: Gary Cranitch/Queensland Museum 

"I stand in front of an ecosystem that is on the frontline of a changing climate," Ms Marsden said.

"I will lose the world’s reef if I only focus on the long game.

Anna Marsden, managing director of Great Barrier Reef Foundation with green turtle hatchlings.

"We don’t have the luxury of just waiting for the world to get their act together on the climate-change mitigation front alone."

Seeing green turtle hatchlings recently enter the reef waters from the 64,000 extra turtles that made headlines in July was a start, Ms Marsden said.

"There are not many causes that land on our generation that have to be solved within our generation, so this is really the cause of our time," she said.

Great Barrier Foundation chief scientist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg believes broad-scale change on the reef must be under way in 10 years.

Ms Marsden said criticism of the federal government’s process in awarding $443 million to the foundation in 2017, subsequently reviewed by the Australian National Audit Office, encouraged it to tell its own 20-year story better.

Much of the $443 million is helping a cross-expertise program called the Reef Restoration and Adaption Program, blending experience from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, James Cook University, the CSIRO and Great Barrier Marine Park Authority.

"This is not about coral gardening, it is about rebuilding reefs," Ms Marsden said.

"It is about cracking the code of rebuilding the reefs that have been lost, protecting the reefs that are still there and doing it at scale.

"If we can crack these techniques, we can protect much of the Great Barrier Reef and arguably share this knowledge with the world."

The scientific team is trying to identify "super-breeder reefs" that can be used to repopulate the rest of the Great Barrier Reef network after coral bleaching events.

"This is what we have to crack; how do you rebuild a reef after a cyclone, or after a bleaching event," Ms Marsden said.

Raine Island green turtles arrive to nest. Credit: Gary Cranitch/Queensland Museum

About $50 million is invested in partnerships with 72 traditional reef owner groups that have custodianship over parts of the reef, similar to their Great Barrier Reef Foundation Raine Island Recovery Project.

In July, a series of steps including raising the sand levels, fencing off breeding grounds and using drones to count showed 64,000 additional green turtles arriving to breed on Raine Island off Cairns.

Some of the $443 million funding goes to programs that tackle crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks and water quality.

"But we have carved out a good chunk of the money for game-changing innovations," Ms Marsden said.

The Great Barrier Marine Foundation’s partnership management committee identified the projects.

"When you think about coral reef protection, the scale of the problem is a problem only Australia has," Ms Marsden said.

"A lot of people are doing coral restoration, but they are talking about one reef. We have thousands of reefs, so we have to scale it and make it affordable at scale."

Their five-year Raine Island Recovery Project is a success in a conventional conservation project.

"It is all part of the circle of life. In July we covered the mums and now we are reporting on the babies."

Ms Marsden said the foundation agreed the Great Barrier Reef was facing "a perfect storm of threats".

"But what this conservation project is showing is that the right blend of traditional owner, conservation, engineering and science working together can achieve that natural circle of life and give us that extra resilience boost that is weighing against so many other challenges they are facing," she said.

Ms Marsden said similar steps were being taken at Lady Elliott Island on southern Great Barrier Reef.

"The model is to get the right amount of modelling data, understand the biodiversity in the ecosystem and understand how the system has worked in peak times," she said.

"We then 'work' the problem."

Links

• Drone footage shows 64,000 green turtles migrating to Cairns rookery
• (AU) We Just Spent Two Weeks Surveying The Great Barrier Reef. What We Saw Was An Utter Tragedy
• Big Parts Of The Great Barrier Reef Are Dying
• (AU) Great Barrier Reef Found To Be Coral Bleached From North To South For First Time
• Rescuing The Great Barrier Reef: How Much Can Be Saved, And How Can We Do It?
• (AU) Climate Change The Biggest Threat To Great Barrier Reef: Ley
• AgForce Backs Calls For Review Of Consensus Science On Great Barrier Reef
• Great Barrier Reef Outlook Now 'Very Poor', Australian Government Review Says 

(AU) Cowardice: What Morrison And Albanese Have In Common On Climate

Sydney Morning Herald - Sean Kelly

Author Sean Kelly is a columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald and a former adviser to Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

In 2009, Anthony Albanese was asked how long he’d stay in Parliament if Labor lost. "Not one day. I'm out of here."

This wasn’t an admission of a dwindling devotion to politics. Eleven years later, Albanese leads his party. It was a reflection of Albanese’s recognition of the power that being in government gives you.

And, he said, there was no point in power for its own sake: “The first thing about power is that you've got to use it.” This reminded the journalist Laurie Oakes, from whose column I’m quoting, of an old piece of Labor wisdom: “You get power by exercising it.”

The seats of power ... Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese and Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

We all learned that lesson watching Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister. Time after time, he refused to exercise the power he had. And, sure enough, power slipped away from him, in increments that accumulated over a few short years into the loss of his entire prime ministership.

Politics can be disturbingly simplistic and prejudiced. Turnbull was verbose, urbane, wealthy and handsome: weakness could be made easily to fit.

The current Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader are very different men. They speak clearly, and conform to more traditional modes of Australian masculinity.

“Weak” is not a word that conveniently matches either Scott Morrison or Anthony Albanese. Yet each, this week, shied away from using his authority, at a time of urgency for our nation.

There are various nuances around the energy announcements of recent days, but there is a simple fact, too: the Prime Minister failed us.

The beginning of this year, its hurtling fires and thickened air, gave an early taste of the harm that will be done to Australia and Australians by a hotter climate. Most of us will see worse before we die.

On Tuesday, Morrison announced he would hurry things along, by doing everything he could to get more gas out of the ground.

A sad fact about the climate debate, and particularly the mess that Tony Abbott made of it, is that we have been reduced to bleak comparisons. Everything, at this point, is fairly disastrous, but at least X is slightly less disastrous than Y.

And so, within these confines, let us note the Liberal Party, under Morrison, has over the past two years moved away from coal. Within the perverse theatre of Australian climate debate, this looks like progress. In terms of brutal reality, it’s close to meaningless.

Climate scientist Will Steffen, who has advised governments of both persuasions on climate policy, provides some sense of how bad things are. We hear a lot about the Paris Agreement. It’s best to think about this in three tiers, Steffen says.

First: the aim of the agreement is to keep temperature rises well below two degrees. There is momentum already in the system – the world will keep getting hotter for a little while no matter what we do.

If the temperature rise hits two degrees, all of the disasters that are coming our way will be more severe – more heatwaves, more severe cyclones, higher sea levels. And 99 per cent of coral reefs will die. It’s crucial to avoid hitting this point. Note that the aim is well below two degrees.

Second, having agreed to that aim, nations made commitments on what they would actually do. But these commitments are far less than what is needed to meet the aim. If that is all we do, we will likely face a temperature rise of about three degrees.

Third, countries are not even meeting these weak commitments. Australia, Steffen says, is at the worse end of this. If every country acted like Australia, temperatures might rise by close to four degrees.

In the abstract public debate, the Paris accord can seem like a series of bureaucratic targets. In reality, it is the difference between the world that we have now – already facing more fire and drought – and absolute catastrophe.

So is there a role for gas as a “transition fuel” away from coal, as the Prime Minister says? Yes, says Steffen – but that means using the gas we already have, not extracting more of it.

Illustration: John Shakespeare

If the world simply relied on all the mines and infrastructure already in place – without adding one more mine or one new gas field – we might still hit two degrees. Instead, the Prime Minister is talking about expanding our gas production, which, over decades, would be “disastrous”.

The phrase “transition fuel”, Steffen believes, is being used as a smokescreen. “That is misusing the word and concept of transition.”

It can sometimes be difficult, in politics, to draw a line between canny leadership and weakness. Is it canny, or weak, to wait for events to move, and then move with them? There’s not one answer: it depends on various factors, including how important the issue is, and how high is the cost of waiting.

Climate change is the most important challenge any government in any of our lifetimes will face, coronavirus included. And it is clear, from what Steffen says, that the costs of waiting are disastrous.

This is why Morrison’s actions should be viewed as weak. He is failing to take our country where it needs to go. He has managed a shift away from coal partly because he is trusted by his colleagues as a genuine conservative. But he has also managed it simply because time has passed; he has read the politics of the moment, including those of his own party, and gone with them.

But consider what he might have done. In political terms, he was handed not one crisis but two. He could have used the fires to argue the matter was urgent; and he could have used the pandemic to make the case that a massive expansion of green jobs was necessary.

Facing perhaps the most opportune set of circumstances in which to act on climate that any prime minister has faced, he chose not to use his authority. These are the actions of a weak leader – not so different from Turnbull.

And what about Labor, a party of the left, allegedly committed to fighting climate change, the only one of the two major parties to have passed significant legislation to cut emissions? What did Labor do this week? Went along with it, more or less. There were some questions about whether the plan was much of a plan, but there was no strong disagreement.

The truth is, Labor has pretty much given up on fighting on climate change from opposition.

Here, we quickly come to the same question we did with Morrison: canny or weak? In a sense, Albanese is staying true to his words in 2009. Government gives you power that opposition does not. To really change things, you must win government.

 Labor has clearly judged that fighting the government on climate will not help it win.

Albanese is presumably hoping that voters will tire of Morrison, and that he can win on other issues. But as with Morrison, we can talk about political strategy, but we also have the right to judge Albanese against the reality of the world: he too is acting from a position of cowardice, unwilling to give Morrison the fight he wants, unwilling to face down the gas-hounds in his own party, unwilling to take a stand on the issue of our time.

Perhaps this will prove to be a smart strategic decision; if Labor wins government, and acts on climate, it might seem worth it. But Albanese should remember, too, that “you get power by exercising it”.

And if you avoid major fights for too long, eventually people forget that you can fight at all.

This idea that voters might quickly tire of the man who led them through crisis relies to some extent on historical examples, including that of Winston Churchill. The great man lost the 1945 election after leading his country through a war.

Voters, it seemed, wanted something new. But two crucial facts to remember are that Churchill’s opponents also offered something new – and that they were given help in that mission.

In 1942 the Beveridge Report was released. That report described the “five giants” blocking the road to post-war recovery – Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness – and a comprehensive program to fight them. It was a “revolutionary moment in the world's history”, the report stated, and therefore “a time for revolutions, not for patching".

Any election result has many causes, but as some historians have pointed out, while both parties backed the Beveridge Report, Churchill hedged a little. Labour backed it completely.

In Australia, if Labor chooses not to fight on climate, at this revolutionary moment, what will it fight on?

It’s interesting to consider what might take the place of the Beveridge Report – some external force that helps shift the national mood towards accepting change, and offers concrete possibilities.

One candidate is a Joe Biden presidency. If he beats Donald Trump in November, the Democrats might, in the early months of next year, help show both Australia and Labor what is possible.

Of course, he might not win; or he might win and disappoint. But he has certainly been sharp on climate lately, calling Trump a “climate arsonist”.

This week, he could as easily have said the same of Morrison and Albanese.

Links

• (AU) Morrison Says You're Either For Gas Or Against It. Of Course It's Not As Simple As That
• (AU) Critics Say Scott Morrison's New Power Plan Is A Recipe For 'Gas-Fuelled Climate Collapse'
• (AU) Scott Morrison's Power Plan Is Nothing But A Gas-Fuelled Calamity
• (AU) Forgotten Farmers, Mining And Anti-Green Invective: How The Nationals Became A Party For Coal
• (AU) Australia’s Devotion To Coal Has Come At A Huge Cost. We Need The Government To Change Course, Urgently
• (AU) Four Corners: Climate Wars
• (AU) Anthony Albanese Says Coal Mining Could Continue In Australia In A Net Zero Emissions World
• (AU) Australia’s Democracy Has Faceplanted And Labor Is Staring Down Some Disturbing Truths
• (AU) What Albanese Could Have Said: We Lied – Australian Coalmines Have No Future

(AU) Morrison Says You're Either For Gas Or Against It. Of Course It's Not As Simple As That

The Guardian - Katharine Murphy

Shifting from coal to gas would reduce emissions, but shifting from coal to renewables would reduce them much faster

‘Is picking losers, and foisting the costs of stranded assets onto taxpayers, the undeclared footnotes of Scott Morrison’s gas-led recovery manifesto?’ Photograph: Dean Lewins/EPA>

We are not going to linger excessively with politics, for reasons I’ll make clear in a minute, but we do need to step through Scott Morrison’s political calculations now he is gradually unspooling the government’s much telegraphed “gas-led” recovery.

I mentioned earlier in the week that Morrison needs to pilot the Coalition away from coal to a safe transit point that won’t generate a fresh war in the party room. That transit point is gas, a polluting fossil fuel that Liberals in the city can deal with so long as Morrison markets this exercise as “gas is the pathway to renewables”.

That message doesn’t work in the regions, so it will be a different story there. In the regions, the Coalition will be the guardians of traditional industries, the builders of pipes and hubs, because that positioning peels blue collar votes away from Labor.

What Australia desperately needs is not more of this but a peace treaty to end the climate and energy wars. Morrison could deliver that if he chose to. He could use his internal authority to craft some sensible policy.

Because political journalism is sometimes a triumph of hope over experience, I remain hopeful that this prime minister, the self-declared miracle worker, can get there. But the problem is the Coalition has won elections by prolonging this poisonous fight, not by looking to settle.

Let me repeat my hope that Morrison is capable of doing something constructive. But what we saw this week was a Liberal leader limbering up for the next phase of the fight that he hopes will help keep Labor out of office for another election cycle.

His political calculation is gas will cause Labor as much trouble as coal caused Labor in 2019. Based on his positioning this week, Morrison wants a binary conversation, not because the binary conversation is in the national interest, but because the binary conversation is the bedrock of the Coalition’s formula for holding power.

Again, based on the positioning this week, Morrison intends to set up a message frame where his combatants in politics will either be for gas or against it, and anybody who is deemed arbitrarily to be in the “against” column will be badged an ideologue, or a fanatic.

“There are no good and bad emissions reductions,” the prime minister said this week in the lulling tone of a travelling hypnotist. “There are only emissions reductions. Emissions reductions by different means have no greater or lesser moral qualities.”

To be clear: the only person talking about the moral dimensions of emissions was the prime minister, because that language suits his framing.

Granted, some environmentalists (and Kevin Rudd) have made it easier for the Coalition since the Abbott era to polarise the country on this issue by characterising climate change action in the language of religion rather than science – “great moral challenges” and all that. People need to understand if they keep doing that they are eroding their own fact-case and setting back the cause of climate action – but let’s not digress.

To summarise, the politics are simple: the “gas-led recovery” is shaping up as the latest “carbon tax”. Labor was punished for imposing a carbon tax (that wasn’t a tax) and Labor will be punished if it deviates from Morrison’s proselytising for the gas-led recovery (that may or may not be a tangible thing, because right now all the prime minister has bowled up is a plan for a plan).

They’re the rules the prime minister wants to set, and he’d be very pleased if the media following the circus would comply with these terms of engagement.

The problem with that is the rules are stupid. Here’s why they are stupid. This isn’t a football match, where you barrack for a team. This issue isn’t about tribal allegiance. Most sentient people are not for or against gas, they don’t think emissions have moral qualities. If they can find the facts, they look at them, and make rational decisions based on the evidence.

Here are the facts. This Coalition government signed Australia up to the Paris agreement. Australia has voluntarily agreed to reduce emissions. That’s Australia’s policy. Shifting from coal to gas will reduce emissions in relative terms, but shifting from coal to renewables will reduce emissions significantly faster.

The climate science tells us we need to move quickly, reduce emissions, and begin the process of adaptation. If we take the advice of experts, something we’ve become good at during the coronavirus, we need to decarbonise as quickly as possible. So rather than the binary proposition where you are either for gas or you are a sloganeering climate cultist or religious fanatic, the current weight of evidence actually points to a more complex set of propositions.

Let’s lay those out. It is possible that some gas will be required as we move from carbon intensive energy sources to renewables. Gas might be required for what’s called “firming”. If the balance of evidence points to some gas as the best approach, that’s what should happen.

But as my colleague Adam Morton has pointed out, the competent crew who run Australia’s energy market point out there are less polluting firming alternatives to new gas power and they are likely to be cheaper: batteries, pumped hydro, virtual power plants and demand response programs.

Gas should not be presented by Morrison or anyone else in this debate as if there are no viable alternatives – there are alternatives.

If we cut through the politicking, and ignore the assembly line of straw men the government appears to be setting up, we can distill Morrison’s “gas-led recovery” down to two possibilities. There is a version of this plan that sees no profound harm done, and perhaps some incremental progress made, and there’s another version that sees gas baked into the domestic economy for three or four decades, with Australian taxpayers expected to subsidise the last hurrah of the fossil fuel industry.

I don’t know yet whether it will be the former or the latter, because there’s not enough evidence in the public domain to reach a considered conclusion.

It really is kind of incredible that Morrison could bowl up a set of sweeping propositions, as he did this week, ranging from taxpayers being involved in a new gas-fired power plant in New South Wales, to a Henry Hub-style LNG behemoth in Queensland, possibly with new infrastructure that the commonwealth might be involved with somehow – a “vision thing” with no modelling, no costings, no measure of the climate change impacts – and be feted in many quarters for doing it.

Now, I raised the “carbon tax” history a moment ago because that history is salient. It is branded on my consciousness forever, not only because short-term corporate self-interest and hyper-partisan politics triumphed over the interests of the Australian people, but because large sections of the Australian media allowed that to happen.

“Allowed” is probably too passive, actually. During the carbon wars, large sections of the Australian media were enablers and disseminators of outright nonsense; content to be players, or to get played.

The media becomes enablers of nonsense when it passively accepts the terms of engagement set by the government of the day; when a policy issue as important as climate change and energy policy is not substance but fuel for the daily theatre criticism.

Because of the excruciating history of the last decade or so, reporters have been wired to hear the words climate, energy, or emissions reduction and then leap straight to political intrigue, or default instantly to moustache twirling punditry about who is the genius, who is about to be flattened by the genius.

I mean seriously. What a debacle. Perhaps we could twirl our collective moustaches while also getting to the substance? Perhaps we could atone for past failure by asking a bunch of questions, like what exactly is this gas plan? Who influenced it, and do they have any conflicts? How much will this cost taxpayers? How is this plan consistent with the government’s climate commitments?

What is the case for constant government intervention in energy rather than creating a coherent policy framework and letting the market decide which approach is best for the transition?

One bright spark from my Canberra team mused at one point during the week that maybe governments had now moved from picking winners to picking losers. Is picking losers, and foisting the costs of stranded assets onto taxpayers, the undeclared footnotes of this gas-led recovery manifesto?

Perhaps if we do that, dive deep as well as pontificate mightily across the rip, we will be worthy of the trust of our readers.

Links

• Advice to government contradicts Coalition claim over Liddell coal plant closure
• Angus Taylor's gas plan is an astoundingly bad idea, on so many levels
• Scott Morrison's power plan is nothing but a gas-fuelled calamity
• Gas industry donates millions to Australian political parties
• Scott Morrison’s ‘gas-led recovery’: what is it and will it really make energy cheaper?
• Katharine Murphy and Adam Morton on the government's gas plan 
• Morrison casts dark shadow over energy transition with massive gas intervention
• Why Morrison is stepping on the gas

World Failed To Meet A Single Goal To Save Nature: UN Biodiversity Report

EcoWatch - Olivia Rosane

Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. JOAO LAET / AFP via Getty Images

In 2010, representatives of 196 countries met in Japan and agreed to 20 targets to protect Earth's imperiled biodiversity by 2020.

That year has come, and not a single target has been met, according to a major UN assessment released Tuesday, as CNN reported.

"Many good things are happening around the world and these should be celebrated and encouraged," UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) Executive Secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema said in a press release.

"Nevertheless, the rate of biodiversity loss is unprecedented in human history and pressures are intensifying. Earth's living systems as a whole are being compromised.

And the more humanity exploits nature in unsustainable ways and undermines its contributions to people, the more we undermine our own wellbeing, security and prosperity."



The report comes amidst a growing awareness that biodiversity loss threatens human well-being as much as the climate crisis.

A major study published last week found that human activity had led to a 68 percent drop in wildlife populations in the last 50 years.

And both the coronavirus pandemic and the wildfires devastating the Western U.S. are examples of what happens when humans develop without taking nature into consideration.

"These things are a sign of what is to come," report author and CBD Deputy Executive Secretary David Cooper told The New York Times. "These things will only get worse if we don't change course."

Tuesday's report, the Global Biodiversity Outlook 5, tracked the world's progress on the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. It found that the signatories had failed to make progress in several key areas. (The U.S. was not included in the assessment because it did not sign the initial agreement.)

Among the many failures, countries did not halve the loss of natural habitats like rainforests, halve the money spent subsidizing harmful industries like fossil fuels, find a way to manage fish stocks sustainably or reduce plastic pollution to levels that don't harm the environment, The Guardian reported.

On the bright side, six targets were partially achieved. Governments increased the percentage of biodiversity hotspots under protection from 29 percent in 2000 to 44 percent today and successfully eradicated around 200 invasive species on remote islands.

Included in the report were findings from a study last week concluding conservation efforts had saved 28 to 48 birds and mammals from extinction since 1993.

"If you put in place the policies, they do work," Cooper told The New York Times.

Countries are now in the process of negotiating new targets, The Guardian reported. The next meeting of the CBD was supposed to take place in Kunming, China next month, but was delayed because of the coronavirus until May of 2021.

To set humanity on the right track, the report recommended eight transitions to improve our relationship with nature and protect Earth's and our own wellbeing.

They are:

1. Protecting forests and other undisturbed ecosystems
2. Making agriculture sustainable
3. Making the food system sustainable by, among other things, shifting from meat and fish to plant-based foods and reducing waste
4. Protecting oceans and fish populations
5. Making cities and infrastructure greener and more sustainable
6. Protecting freshwater ecosystems and drinking water
7. Acting on climate change by preserving natural carbon sinks and phasing out fossil-fuel use
8. Managing ecosystems to improve human and nonhuman health

"As we emerge from the immediate impacts of the pandemic, we have an unprecedented opportunity to 'build back better,' incorporating the transitions outlined in this Outlook and embodied in an ambitious plan to put the world on track to achieve the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity," UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in the press release.

Links

• Humans Are Destroying Wildlife at an Unprecedented Rate, New Report Warns
• Scientists Warn Worse Pandemics Are on the Way if We Don’t Protect Nature
• UN Biodiversity Chief: Humans Risk Living in an 'Empty World' With 'Catastrophic' Consequences
• Coronavirus Pandemic Linked to Destruction of Wildlife and World's Ecosystems
• Why Biodiversity Loss Hurts Humans as Much as Climate Change Does
• Sir David Attenborough Delivers Stark Warning In BBC Doc 'Extinction: The Facts'
• The World Lost Two-Thirds Of Its Wildlife In 50 Years. We Are To Blame
• World’s Largest Falcon Faces A Threat It Can’t Flee: Climate Change
• (AU) Climate Change Threat To Tropical Plants
• Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss And Other Global Ills Share Root Causes
• The Internet Of Wild Things: Technology And The Battle Against Biodiversity Loss And Climate Change

Briefs: Scientists Find New Way Climate Change Can Ruin Life As We Know It

Haaretz - Ruth Schuster

T-Rex would have liked having the heat return to dinosaur territory, and other ironies of global warming in this week’s Haaretz climate change briefs

Tibetan prayer flags Credit: Ng Han Guan / AP

The canary in the phosphorus mine

Violent shrieking storms, record-breaking wildfires, floods, mega-droughts, heatstroke – and phosphorus depletion? Accelerating climate change is changing life as we know it and now scientists warn of another potentially worrying aspect. Phosphorus is 100 percent necessary to 100 percent of plants, and Tibet – which is warming up to 4 times faster than elsewhere – is a good place to study how warming is affecting it.

So: After meticulously analyzing the phosphorus cycle along a 2,300-meter-high gradient from Tibet’s plateau (cold because it’s high) to the (warmer) lowlands, scientists from China’s Lanzhou University and colleagues conclude that over time, global warming can deplete soil phosphorus of the type plants can use.

The 'Great Nutrient Collapse'

This follows on the 2017 Harvard paper “The Great Nutrient Collapse,” explaining that rising CO2 levels are depleting protein levels in crops. By 2050, barley protein will decrease by over 14 percent and in wheat and rice by nearly 8 percent, they predict. Why? Because with more CO2 the plants make more sugars. Yum? Maybe. Good? Not good: their protein manufacturing and therefore their nutritional value to us decreases, as Politico explains.

Much of the world gets its protein from crops, not animals. Apropos, cows also become sicker and less productive the hotter it gets and dairy farmers for one have known this forever. Anyway much of the world gets its protein from crops, not animals. Israeli dairy farmers counsel cooling the cows, which is more sustainably done using mist and fans than by air conditioning.

T-Rex might like it: Heat returning to dinosaur territory

Over the last 50 million years the global temperature has trended downward, as a pretty graph from the University of California, Santa Cruz shows in Science. The pretty graph also projects the future if we do nothing – and behold: In one violent swing, we may return to the dinosaur age. Assuming greenhouse gas emissions don’t diminish (they’re still growing, coronavirus be damned) and assuming they are not stabilized before 2250, Earth could revert to the hothouse world of the early Eocene (about 50 million years ago) by 2300.

Carbon dioxide in atmosphere over 66 million years: Returning to dinosaur territory. Credit: Westerhold et al. / CENOGRID

Man in T-Rex costume plying a paddle board during Italian heat wave.Credit: GUGLIELMO MANGIAPANE/REUTERS

Europeans are getting sicker

Pollution and climate change are making Europeans sicker, the European Environment Agency warns: One in eight deaths there these days are due to climate vagaries and pollution. In the year 2012 alone, the agency counts 630,000 deaths in the 27 EU member states (and Britain) because of pollution and climate. At this point the leading environmental threat is pollution, which is causing more than 400,000 premature deaths a year in Europe. It bears adding that atrocious environmental conditions in Bosnia and Herzegovina jack up the statistics, with a 27 percent death rate due to environmental factors. In short, the coronavirus is less of a killer than environmental destruction, the agency concludes.

The great pyramids of Sudan in danger – from flooding

Okay now this is the planet saying: Hold my beer. Ancient pyramids, palaces and sundry precious ruins in the Sudan from the time of the Meroitic Empire over 2,300 years ago are in danger of water damage. Why? The Nile flooding – a seasonal event on which northeast Africa depends – is breaking records. Over 100 people in Sudan have drowned and tens of thousands lost their homes as flooding followed unusually torrential rains. With the rains scheduled to continue to the end of September, Sudan has declared a three-month state of emergency.

Yay, parasitic wasps and flies are adapting

In another episode of the planet handing you its beer while it frolics, wouldn’t you know that one of the most horrifying life forms of all is adapting just fine to climate change. So far. We refer of course to parasitic wasps and flies, notorious for laying their eggs, typically, in another insect which they then paralyze – not kill. God forbid the wasp/fly hatchlings eat rotting cockroach. Nobody wants that.


Parasitic wasps. Credit: National Geographic

The Arctic climate is warming twice as fast as elsewhere (other than Tibet…) and what are the parasitic wasps/flies doing? They’re moving with their meals. As warmth-loving butterflies creep northward, so do their pests. “We have found that the proportion of parasitoids preying on warmth-loving butterflies is especially in areas where summer temperatures in particular have risen in recent decades. By contrast, winter-time warming is reflected in a large representation of parasitoid species feeding on Diptera” – i.e., flies, says Tuomas Kankaanpää, of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki.

Before you hate on parasitoid wasps and flies, and we admit they are pretty heart-stopping, note that the dearly beloved Alien franchise monster does exactly the same thing. Also, without these parasites, the vast team involved here notes, we’d hardly have any green plants because the insects would have eaten them.

Links

• Climate Change: How Do We Know?
• Soil phosphorus accumulation changes with decreasing temperature along a 2300 m altitude gradient
• The Great Nutrient Collapse
• Tackling pollution and climate change in Europe will improve health and well-being, especially for the most vulnerable
• Record Flooding Threatens Millennia-Old Pyramids in Sudan
• Climate change recasts the insect communities of the Arctic
• Hot in the Holy City: Jerusalem Breaks 120-year Record
• When Earth Warmed Between Ice Ages, Mastodons Migrated North
• How Cold Was the Last Ice Age? The Answer May Surprise You

NASA-Led Ice Melt Study Makes A Terrifying Prediction About Rising Sea Levels

SlashGear - Chris Davies

Unchecked greenhouse gas emissions could lead to more than a 15-inch rise in sea levels, scientists have concluded, using NASA data to issue a stark warning about melting ice sheets. The huge rise would lead to dramatic flooding in coastal regions around the world, and create a potentially apocalyptic chain reaction of consequences.

Warming conditions on Earth are already being blamed for existing melting of ice, and rising sea levels. However according to the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project (ISMIP6), led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, there’s even further melting to be considered.

It saw more than 60 specialists on ice, ocean, and atmospheric research – from three dozen different international institutions from around the world – come together to figure out just what happens if Greenland and Antarctica’s ice sheets melt. The results of the two studies, published in journal The Cryosphere, make for ominous reading.

By the year 2100, they concluded, and if greenhouse emissions are curtailed from their current levels, the combined ice sheet melt could lead to more than 15-inches of global sea level increase. Meltwater from those ice sheets is believed to account for around a third of total global sea level rise. Earlier studies have suggested that, even if we make changes now, sea levels will rise by around a quarter-inch by 2100.



“One of the biggest uncertainties when it comes to how much sea level will rise in the future is how much the ice sheets will contribute,” Sophie Nowicki, now at the University at Buffalo, and formerly at NASA Goddard, and project leader of the study, said today. “And how much the ice sheets contribute is really dependent on what the climate will do.”

The challenge is that there’s a double impact causing ice sheets at the north and south poles to shrink, and in the process release huge amounts of water. On the one hand, air temperatures are increasing, which melts surface level ice. At the same time, ocean temperatures are also increasing, causing glaciers to shrink and retreat. A study in August predicted that unexpectedly precarious ice shelves in the Antarctic could be prone to shearing away, in the process dramatically ramping up the pace at which the ice melts.

This latest study examined two possibilities. On the positive side, the team modeled a lower emissions scenario, where carbon emissions were dramatically curtailed. That still saw global sea levels increase by approximately 1.3 inches.



The other model took a more pessimistic view, where emissions increased with little in the way of attempts to check their output. There, they concluded, melting ice sheets could add around 3.5 inches to the already rising oceans.

Lending further complexity is the fact that the changes and melt-rates aren’t consistent across all areas. Some regions are more sensitive to warmer oceans and differences in currents: the Amundsen Sea sector in West Antarctica, and Wilkes Land in East Antarctica, for example, are cited as being the most vulnerable to changes in the simulations.

“With these new results, we can focus our efforts in the correct direction and know what needs to be worked on to continue improving the projections,” Hélène Seroussi, an ice scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and lead on the Antarctic ice sheet modeling, explains.

Links

• Greenland's ice is melting much faster than we thought - that's a huge problem
• NASA says Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting six times faster than in the '90s
• Melting faster than expected, this vast glacier could raise seas by 5 feet
• Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Is Starting To Crack
• Antarctica: 60% Of Ice Shelves At Risk Of Fracture, Research Suggests
• Greenland's Ice Sheet Melted Away At Record Levels In 2019, Scientists Fear It Will Continue
• More Than Half Of World's Oceans Already Being Affected By Climate Change
• (AU) Flooding Could Occur Daily In Sydney By The End Of This Century Because Of Climate Change
• (AU) Unwelcome Sea Change: New Research Finds Coastal Flooding May Cost Up To 20% Of Global Economy By 2100
• (AU) We Can't Beat The Planet Into Submission. We Can Retreat
• (AU) Wamberal Beach Erosion: Seawall Would Deliver No Net Benefit, Study Finds
• (AU) How Coastal Communities On Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula Are Dealing With The Reality Of Sea Level Rises
• Biggest Ice Sheet On Earth More Vulnerable To Melting Than Thought