The End Of The Internal Combustion Engine?

Al Jazeera - Nick Clark

It revolutionised the world, from transport to means of production, but after 160 years, a new electrical future awaits.

Muaz Kory/Al Jazeera

The internal combustion engine revolutionised human life.

It made the commonplace possible: the car, the Uber, the bus, the motorbike. We took to the skies in aircraft and spread our wings across the world. It even mobilised war with tanks, ships and submarines. Agricultural productivity soared with the development of the tractor and other farm machinery. It gave oil-producing countries unimaginable wealth.

But after 160 years of shaping the world we live in, the demise of this extraordinary force-for-change is in plain sight.

The growing push for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 means that a new revolution is upon us, one that will change the way we power our lives, in the home, in our farmers’ fields, and on the road.

Electric vehicles

While some would say that being carbon neutral by 2050 is not enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change, we can say for certain the era of the electric vehicle is upon us. From the United States to the European Union and beyond, nations are pledging to phase out the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles within 15 years.

In China, car buyers bought more plug-in vehicles in 2019 than the rest of the world combined. In Norway more than 60 percent of new cars registered in September this year were electric.

Globally, battery technology is getting cheaper. According to research by BloombergNEF, the cost of a lithium-ion battery pack for an electric car fell 87 percent from 2010 to 2019.

Right now Tesla is the most valuable carmaker in the world despite making far fewer cars than its competitors like Toyota and Volkswagen.

A Tesla charging station in California. Electric cars are becoming more popular in countries around the world. [EPA]Fossil fuels

Meanwhile, fossil fuels still account for 80 percent of the world’s energy. But as energy analyst Ramez Naam pointed out in a fascinating episode of the Outrage and Optimism podcast, fronted by Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, the balance is shifting fast.

“The cost of energy from wind power has dropped by a factor of 10. The cost of electricity from solar power has dropped by a factor of 30,” Naam said.

“None of this is happening as fast as we want. But it’s happening a lot faster than people in industry, especially in the fossil fuel industry or the automotive industry, think it’s going to happen.

“And what’s clear is the Internal Combustion Engine for ground transport is dead, dead, dead, dead.”

Challenges ahead

While car and truck tailpipe emissions slowly phase out in the coming decades, other transport sectors present an altogether more daunting challenge.

Aviation accounts for 3 percent of the world’s carbon footprint (some say more), but powering passenger planes sustainably is a tough call. Yet there is optimism that by 2050, short-haul flights at least, will be fuelled by green technology like hydrogen fuel cells.

One of the hardest areas to transition is shipping. The global merchant fleet carries 90 percent of world trade.

After moving from sail power in the mid-19th century, to coal-burning steamships, and then the modern era of heavy fuel oil, the industry now looks to natural sources of propulsion again. This is a considerable and difficult problem, especially for the colossal bulk carriers that ply our oceans.

But the transition has begun. China promises to be carbon neutral by at least 2060. US President-elect Joe Biden is proposing to make electricity production in the US carbon-free by 2035, providing millions of jobs in the process. And across the world, nations are upping their ambitions to reduce emissions.

Again, more needs to be done, but it all helps drive technological progress, in all sectors.

And in the coming years, the internal combustion engine, that extraordinary feat of scientific progress, will become a chapter of history as we quietly buzz about in our electric cars.

A portrait of Karl Benz and a copy of the patent for the world’s first car powered by a gas combustion engine, a three wheeler named “Velociped” which was issued January 29, 1886 for Benz’s invention. Internal combustion engine vehicles could soon be a thing of the past [AP]

The final word

And so you have to ask yourself ... am I the CEO of an oil and gas company or the CEO of an energy company? Because the first one is doomed. The second one, there’s massive growth, for the world’s going to use much more energy in 2050. But it’s going to be clean energy.
Ramez Naam, Energy Analyst

Links

• Electric Vehicle Outlook 2020
• The Future of Fuels (podcast)
• 'Tip of the iceberg': Aviation emissions three times larger than current estimates, scientists warn
• Climate under Trump: A blip or four lost years?
• It is time to revolutionise how we talk about the weather
• The 2020 US elections: A climate for change?
• Palm oil peril: Is your peanut butter putting primates at risk?
• How your chicken is linked to deforestation in Brazil
• Climate Scientists Turn Mount Everest Into a Lab
• Climate crisis making autumn leaves fall earlier, study finds
• Editorial: Biden’s challenge: Restoring the U.S. as a leader against global warming

Solar Panels Made From Food Waste Win Inaugural James Dyson Sustainability Award

Dezeen  - Jennifer Hahn

Engineering student Carvey Ehren Maigue has been named the James Dyson Awards first-ever global sustainability winner for his AuReus system, in which waste crops are turned into cladding that can generate clean energy from ultraviolet light.

Unlike traditional solar panels, which only work in clear conditions and must face the sun directly because they rely on visible light, the translucent AuReus material is able to harvest power from invisible UV rays that pass through clouds.

As a result, it is able to produce energy close to 50 per cent of the time according to preliminary testing, compared to 15 to 22 per cent in standard solar panels.

AuReus cladding can be applied to windows or walls

When applied as a kind of fluorescent covering to windows or facades, AuReus can capture UV rays bouncing off of pavements and the surrounding architecture, turning entire buildings into vertical solar farms.

This maximises the amount of energy that can be generated.

AuReus takes its name from the aurora borealis and is inspired by the physics that power the northern lights. Luminescent particles in the atmosphere absorb high energy particles like ultraviolet or gamma rays, before degrading and reemitting them as visible light.

The material is made using waste agricultural crops

Similarly, Maigue's system uses luminescent particles derived from waste agricultural crops. To pull out the bioluminescent particles from specific fruits and vegetables, Maigue goes through a process of crushing them and extracting their juices, which are then filtered, distilled or steeped.

The particles are suspended in resin before the resulting substrate is moulded into cladding and clamped onto walls or sandwiched between the two panes of a double glazed window.

These particles convert UV light into visible light, which is reflected to the very edges of the panel.

"The light relies on internal reflectance of the material to self-correct and guide itself towards the emitting edge," said Maigue, who is a student at Mapua University in the Filipino capital of Manila. "This can be controlled by specific laser etching patterns
as well."

This visible light can then be captured and converted into electricity by a string of regular photovoltaic (PV) cells, like the ones found in regular solar panels, which fringe the outside of the cladding.

Maigue developed the system while a student at Mapua University in Manila

With the help of integrated regulating circuits, this electricity can then either be stored or used immediately.

"In that way, it can be directly used as a stand-alone or can be connected in groups to produce a higher output," he told Dezeen. "It can also be easily integrated into existing solar photovoltaic systems since its electrical output is suitable for such systems as well."

The fruits and vegetables are crushed and filtered to extract bioluminescent particles

The crops used are sourced from local farmers, who have been affected by severe, climate change-induced weather disruptions.

Around a quarter of people in the Philippines rely on the agricultural sector for their employment but due to global warming, the industry is being affected by more frequent and extreme weather events, which damaged more than six million hectares of crops between 2006 and 2013, worth an estimated $3.8 billion.

By repurposing some of the crops that were rotting on the fields, Maigue makes use of an untapped waste stream and gives farmers a way to monetise their lost yield.

"Combatting climate change is a journey that will need several generations to complete. This means great products alone would not suffice," the engineer said.

"In the conception of AuReus, I aimed to create a future-facing solution in the form of renewable energy and at the same time integrate a present-day value-creating solution for our farmers, who are being affected negatively by the present-day effects of climate change," he continued.

"In this way, we can show people that adapting sustainability to fight climate change is something that can benefit both the present and the future generation and in doing so, we can rally more people in this fight against climate change."

Moving forwards, Maigue plans to turn the AuReus substrate into threads to form fabrics and curved plates to be attached to vehicles and aircrafts.

Maigue says the system could be applied to entire buildings such as the Montreal Convention Centre

The Sustainability Award is a new addition to the annual James Dyson Awards, equal to the competition's top prize.

This year's international winner was Spanish engineer Judit Giró Benet and her at-home breast cancer testing kit. Both she and Maigue take home £30,000 to fund the further development of their projects.

Among the 2020 national winners was the UK's Tyre Collective, with a wheel-mounted device that can capture microplastic emissions from car tyres, and an artificial voice box by Japanese engineer Takeuchi Masaki that can mimic the wearer's former voice.

Note: Images and videos are courtesy of The James Dyson Foundation.

Links

• Scientists develop synthetic leaf that turns sunlight into liquid fuel
• Spiral Tower would be world's first "climate-neutral high-rise attraction"
• Loon launches floating balloon-powered internet service in Kenya
• Dvele creates prefabricated homes that generate and store their own energy
• Solar panels form canopy over surgical facility in Uganda
• Heliogen's 1000C solar-heating technology could be key to low-emission cement
• SunUp provides a backpack-hugging solar-power solution for hikers
• Snow nanogenerator would allow solar panels to generate energy on wintry days
• Space10's SolarVille project proposes communities generate and share energy
• Photovoltaic concrete facade uses sunlight to generate energy
• Zaha Hadid Architects shares proposal for Shanghai's "greenest building"
• Hungary plans €1 billion greenhouse city powered by renewable energy
• Energy-storing concrete bricks could be key to proliferation of renewables
• Brooks + Scarpa's inflatable pavilion concept captures energy from lightning storms
• Apple now operating on 100 per cent renewable energy
• Wind farms and man-made island in the North Sea could help Europe meet renewable energy targets
• Abandoned concrete bunker converted into a green power plant by IBA Hamburg

(USA) From Wildfires To Disease, Here Are The Top 5 Ways Climate Change Is Already Hurting Your Health

 ABC America - Ramie Fathy

Some scientists say it may have contributed to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

'It’s Not Too Late' with Ginger Zee: Climate change experts demand action

ABC's Ginger Zee breaks down the science behind climate change and why experts are calling for the climate change debate to move beyond settled science and focus on action.

With the COVID-19 pandemic dominating the headlines, President-elect Joe Biden has just released his administration's plan to address another potentially catastrophic global threat: climate change.

Scientists warn that it's not just plants and animals threatened by rising temperatures -- climate change is impacting humans as well. And for medical experts, this is particularly troubling.

"We're in it now," said Dr. Paul Auerbach, an emergency medicine physician at Stanford University and author of "Enviromedics," the pioneering book on climate change and health. "It's happening, and it all boils down to health. This is a health care issue."

Though the effects of climate change on health are numerous, they remain unfamiliar to many. Climate change has now been linked to heat-related illnesses, the spread of infectious disease, physical harm from extreme weather, health complications related to poor air quality, and other individual and public health harms.

Perhaps most importantly, climate change could become one of the main drivers of future novel outbreaks, and may have contributed to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

"The next global pandemic could be, in some capacity, due to climate change," said Dr. Jesse Bell, Professor of Health and Environment at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health.

ABC News spoke with a variety of health experts to determine the top five ways climate change is affecting human health.

Heat-related illness

As the planet gets warmer, people across the globe are beginning to feel the heat.

"Right now, the clearest effects of climate change are through heat," said Dr. Aaron Bernstein, a pediatrician and Interim Director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

"More people die each year from heat -- more than from many medical problems," Bernstein said, noting that heat waves may aggravate a wide range of illnesses, from asthma to mental health disorder to diabetes and kidney disease.

So dire is the threat to human health that Bernstein helped compile guidelines for educating medical trainees about the health effects of climate change.

"Heat waves likely kill more people in the U.S. than any other climate-related disaster, because heat waves occur everywhere across the U.S., including places as different and distant as Nebraska, Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle," said Bell.

Infectious disease

As anyone who has eaten leftovers that have been left out too long can attest, infectious agents -- and the bugs that carry them -- thrive in particular environments and conditions. And as climate change alters environmental conditions across the planet, so too does it affect the geographic distribution of infectious diseases.

"Some infectious diseases that were already present in North America, like Lyme disease, leishmaniasis, and various fungal infections, have already become an issue in areas that were previously unaffected by them," said Dr. Misha Rosenbach, a dermatologist and climate change activist at the University of Pennsylvania.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the number of Lyme cases in the U.S. has more than tripled since 1995, and rates continue to rise.

Meanwhile, climate change has also facilitated the spread of waterborne infectious diseases.

A man receives a COVID-19 vaccination from Yaquelin De La Cruz at the Research Centers of America (RCA) in Hollywood, Fla., Aug. 13, 2020. Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

"Warmer temperatures around the globe cause rising sea levels, warmer seawater, and either more frequent or increasingly severe natural disasters like hurricanes and floods," said Rosenbach. "And each of these events is associated with a range of infectious diseases, including life-threatening diarrheal disease, respiratory infections, and skin infections."

Natural disasters, such as recent hurricanes Harvey and Sandy, brought diseases like cholera and bacterial infections in their wake, according to Dr. Saul Hymes, an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics and a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at Stony Brook Children's Hospital.

Climate change is also a driving force behind "spillover" events, in which viruses leap from their animal hosts into humans, Hymes said.

"Climate change causes disruption to natural animal habitats, and also movement of people into new habitats to avoid flood regions or drought-prone areas," Hymes said. "This can bring humans and animals into more contact and lead to increased likelihood of disease crossover events like those we are seeing more often, including SARS-CoV-2."

Extreme weather events

Along with the ongoing pandemic, 2020 has also witnessed a record-breaking hurricane season as well as wildfires and floods across the globe -- and climate change is thought to be contributing to the severity of all of these extreme weather events.

Experts predict that these are not outlier events but rather the start of a new normal.

"These trends will likely continue over the next century," Bell said.

Houses leveled by the Glass Fire are viewed on a street in the Skyhawk neighborhood of Santa Rosa, Calif., Sept. 28, 2020. Noah Berger/AP

And extreme weather events have indirect health impacts by creating refugee areas.

"As with the Astrodome in Houston after Katrina, these can become overcrowded and thus are hotbeds for transmission of flu and other common person-to-person viral infections," Hymes said.

Air quality

Another way climate change affects human health is through its impact on air quality. While the burning of fossil fuels directly pollutes the air, global warming that's a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion also contributes to and exacerbates worsening air quality.

"For one, climate change has led to drought and to heat waves that have caused the California wildfires, and the smoke and particulates in the air directly harms those with respiratory issues like COPD or asthma," Hymes said.

Cars drive along the Golden Gate Bridge under an orange smoke filled sky at midday in San Francisco, Sept. 9, 2020. Harold Postic/AFP via Getty Images

Even without wildfires, rapid temperature swings and ozone depletion can exacerbate respiratory illnesses like asthma, according to Hymes.

Meanwhile, climate change can influence air quality and human disease through an intermediary: plants.

"Warmer climate and longer summers have led to alterations in pollination and flowering cycles -- some plants now undergo a second flowering in a season, for example," said Hymes. "In general, there's been either a significant increase in pollen counts or a major shift in their timing, or both. And these are often significant asthma triggers as well as affecting other allergic conditions."

Mental health and trauma

According to Bell, extreme weather events can spur mental distress.

"The psychosocial impact of extreme weather events is huge," he said. "People have their possessions and homes destroyed. They must move and rebuild and often are doing so with much of their wealth obliterated. This can cause significant mental distress, rates of depression and anxiety, as well as PTSD rise in survivors of such events."

Some researchers have already begun documenting the psychological impacts of climate change, including major depression, anxiety, PTSD and adjustment disorders, as well as increases in drug and alcohol use and domestic violence. The chronic stress caused by climate disasters has also been associated with worse cardiovascular health.

"It is absolutely imperative that we address these psychological issues because they have impacts on everything: personally, socially, economically, politically," said Dr. Lise van Susteren, a psychiatrist and environmental activist.

But to van Susteren, climate change's effects on mental health extend far beyond the individual level.

"Injuries, deaths, houses being burned down or flood, the loss of possessions and general disruption of life -- these all have a psychological toll," van Susteren said. "In turn, all of these psychological damages have an impact on our physical health, and this has repercussions on all aspects of our lives."

Though climate change has already begun to impact our health and well-being, scientists and doctors say it's not too late to take action to combat it and to mitigate its effects -- through personal choices to reduce your carbon footprint, through community action, and through smart policy.

"Realize that everything you do is part of the collective, and realize that you're setting the social norm," said van Susteren. "It all begins at home."

Links

• (AU) A Coalition Of 29 Health Groups Are Urging Climate Action In Open Letter To Scott Morrison
• (AU) Australian Doctors Accuse Government Of Failing On Climate Change
• Mapped: How Climate Change Disproportionately Affects Women’s Health
• (AU) Act Now On Wildfires, Global Climate Change, Human Health, Study Says
• (AU) Australia’s New National Preventive Health Strategy Must Include Climate Change, 30 Health Groups Say
• How climate change affects wildfires, like those in the West, and makes them worse
• Experts call for climate change debate to move beyond settled science and focus on action
• Why climate change is also a public health problem

More Than 3 Billion People Affected By Water Shortages, Data Shows

The Guardian - Fiona Harvey

UN warns about consequences of not conserving water and tackling climate crisis

A waterhole in Harare, Zimbabwe. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization found 50 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live in areas where severe drought has catastrophic impacts on cropland and pastureland once every three years. Photograph: Aaron Ufumeli/EPA

Water shortages are now affecting more than 3 billion people around the world, as the amount of fresh water available for each person has plunged by a fifth over two decades, data has shown.

About 1.5 billion people are suffering severe water scarcity or even drought, as a combination of climate breakdown, rising demand and poor management has made agriculture increasingly difficult across swathes of the globe.

The UN warned on Thursday that billions of people would face hunger and widespread chronic food shortages as a result of failures to conserve water resources, and to tackle the climate crisis.

Qu Dongyu, director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said: “We must take very seriously both water scarcity (the imbalance between supply and demand for freshwater resources) and water shortages (reflected in inadequate rainfall patterns) for they are now the reality we all live with … Water shortages and scarcity in agriculture must be addressed immediately and boldly.”

He said that the UN’s sustainable development goals, which include wiping out hunger and improving access to clean water, were still within reach but that much more needed to be done to improve farming practices around the world and to manage resources equitably.

The organisation’s State of Food and Agriculture 2020 report found that 50 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live in areas where severe drought has catastrophic effects on cropland and pastureland once every three years. More than a 10th of the world’s rainfed cropland is subject to frequent drought, as is about 14% of the world’s pastureland.

Rainfed agriculture represents 60% of global crop production, and 80% of land under cultivation, with the rest benefiting from irrigation. However, irrigation is no panacea: more than 60% of irrigated cropland around the world is highly water stressed. 

Irrigation of the wrong type can waste water, depleting non-renewable resources such as underground aquifers, and poor management can result in some farmers losing out on water resources – for instance, in the case of downstream farms, if rivers and waterways are run dry by upstream irrigation.

Small-scale and farmer-led irrigation systems are often more efficient than large-scale projects, the report found. Large-scale state-funded schemes in Asia, for instance, have relied on tapping directly into groundwater, putting excessive pressure on that resource. But small-scale farmers around the world face extra difficulties, such as a lack of secure tenure over water rights, and little access to finance and credit.

Separate research has recently shown that the world’s farmland is increasingly being concentrated in fewer hands, with large companies and international owners taking over swathes of production, while small farmers – whose farms are often run along more environmentally sustainable lines – are increasingly being pushed out. About 1% of the world’s farms operate 70% of the worlds’ farmland.

Food production must change in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and try to stave off climate breakdown, but even this is not straightforward, the FAO warned. 

“As the world aims to shift to healthy diets – often composed of relatively water-intensive foods, such as legumes, nuts, poultry and dairy products – the sustainable use of water resources will be ever more crucial,” said Qu, former vice-minister of agriculture and rural affairs in China. 

“Rainfed agriculture provides the largest share of global food production. However, for it to continue to do so, we must improve how we manage water resources from limited rainfall.”

This year’s FAO report focused on water, but much of the organisation’s work this year has been to try to stem the potential for the coronavirus pandemic to give rise to widespread food shortages. The organisation called on governments earlier this year to keep global supply chains and food markets open, despite the travel restrictions resulting from the pandemic, and these calls seem to have largely been heeded.

The world’s harvests this year have generally been good, with some exceptions, but some areas of Africa are still under threat of severe food problems.

Links

• 1.9 billion people at risk from mountain water shortages, study shows
• World must triple efforts or face catastrophic climate change, says UN
• We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN
• Water shortages to be key environmental challenge of the century, Nasa warns
• Water shortages could affect 5bn people by 2050, UN report warns
• Climate change made Lucifer heatwave far more likely, scientists find
• Statue of Liberty and Venice among sites at risk from climate change, says UN
• French minister warns of mass climate change migration if world doesn't act

(Commentary) Without Planting More Trees In The Tropics, We Can’t Fix The Climate

Mongabay - Edward Mitchard

Native tree saplings are prepared for planting in the Mantiqueria range of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. Image via The Nature Conservancy’s Tackle Climate Change Program.

Author Edward Mitchard is Professor of Global Change Mapping at the University of Edinburgh, and Chief Technical Officer of ecosystem mapping company Space Intelligence.

I don’t know whether it’s all thanks Greta Thunberg, or due to unusually strong fire seasons in Australia, North and South America, and Siberia in the past 12 months, but there appears to be an increasing realization among the world’s politicians that action on climate change is urgently needed.

We know what needs to be done.

We must cut emissions from across our power, transport and industry sectors drastically and fast. And we must stop tropical deforestation.

Key Points Planting ‘the right tree in the right place’ is key to restoring forests and halting climate change. To be effective though, planting should largely be done in the tropics, where they can grow with maximum rapidity vs northern regions (where tree planting can also add to the albedo effect, canceling out some carbon sequestration benefit). Other benefits of focusing on the tropics are those that accrue to developing nations, where tree planting can improve both local environments and economies, through projects like agroforestry.

But the basic physics and complex economics of climate change are clear that cutting emissions drastically and stopping deforestation, while necessary, are not by themselves sufficient. We need to also suck out massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, partly because emissions reductions cannot run fast enough, and partly because we’ve already emitted far too much carbon.

The only technology we have currently that can suck carbon out of the atmosphere at any kind of scale is growing trees. So tree planting and forest restoration are essential, and we need to scale up our current paltry efforts urgently.

Funding is available for this: governments are increasingly investing in ecosystem restoration both within their countries and abroad (e.g. the Bonn Challenge commitments), but we will not get near to what is needed without the financial firepower of companies. I believe companies should be encouraged to purchase carbon offsets to assist with forest protection and restoration, so called ‘Nature Based Solutions,’ but this is controversial (e.g. this recent article from Greenpeace).

Like miniature versions of national economies, corporations must aim to reduce their emissions to as near zero as they can, as soon as possible. This is often the source of the controversy: offsetting should not replace emission reductions. But then companies should pay to offset the residual remaining emissions.

MAX Burgers, a large Scandinavian fast food chain, was ahead of the curve in the mid-2000s when it started working to reduce emissions from its supply chain and operations as much as possible. But it still had residual emissions, which it offset through purchasing carbon credits that funded tree planting products in the developing world through the Plan Vivo carbon standard. It continues to offset its residual emissions now, in fact making its food ‘climate positive,’ offsetting more emissions through tree planting for every meal sold, than is released through their entire chain. Large Scottish brewery Brewdog recently made a similar pledge, that its beer will be ‘carbon negative’ due to reductions in supply chain and production emissions, and tree planting to more than compensate for the residual emissions.

In both cases this seems like a good thing, and if consumers think so, too, the brands will benefit along with the climate.

But there are choices about where to plant trees. I imagine MAX chose to invest in tropical tree planting projects for its offsets because they were attracted by the co-benefits such planting offers. By funding farmers to grow trees on their land, they add an additional revenue stream to some of the world’s poorest families, improve the biodiversity of these landscapes, and potentially increase the resilience of these farmers to extreme events such as storms and floods.

But Brewdog, like many others, have chosen to plant their trees closer to home (in their case in the Highlands of Scotland). There are clear reasons to want to plant trees locally – companies wish to invest in their local environment and communities. They want themselves and their customers to see their new forest, and be able to explore and enjoy it rather than just trust the company about their intangible, faraway carbon credits. And some people in public life and the media are critical of planting trees in faraway places, seeing it as ‘greenwashing’ or in other ways not the same as local carbon offsets.

Fire on the border of Kaxarari Indigenous lands in Lábrea, Amazonas state, Brazil, 17 Aug, 2020. Photo © Christian Braga/Greenpeace.

Focus on the tropics makes the most sense

However, tree planting in different locations is not created equal. Fundamentally, trees grow much faster in the tropics, and land and labor are much cheaper there.

Therefore, for a given financial investment, more trees can be planted in the tropics over a larger area, and these trees will capture carbon faster than an equivalent number outside the tropics – and far faster than in northern latitudes such as Scotland or Sweden.

These differences are not trivial: I have seen newly restored forests in tropical Peru reach 15 m height in about 6 years, whereas a Scots Pine planted in the Scottish Highlands might take 60 years to achieve that height. This will translate directly into carbon storage, suggesting per hectare carbon sequestration rates in Scotland might be just a tenth of that in the tropics.

This not only means that costs for achieving the same carbon capture in far northern latitudes are far higher, but also that the land footprint is far greater. It does not mean we should not be restoring forests in the Scottish Highlands: that has many values too, and will capture significant quantities of carbon in the longer term. But it does not seem to me to be an efficient use of financial resources for the majority of a carbon offset portfolio of a company – tropical forest restoration or agroforestry projects are more sensible from a financial and land footprint standpoint.

Students in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, planting trees. Image courtesy of Gullele Botanical Garden.

There is another complicating factor: the albedo effect. This is how reflective the Earth’s surface is, and is one of the nasty feedback loops of climate change: as the climate warms, there is less ice cover in the oceans, and less snow cover on land, meaning less heat from the sun is reflected back into space, and the Earth warms faster. This is probably the main reason the arctic is warming so much faster than the rest of the planet.

Planting trees in the tropics has little further impact on the albedo effect – non-forest and forested surfaces in the tropics have similar albedo. But in the far northern latitudes, the impact is significant: trees are much darker than the snow that would otherwise lie on the land for much of the year. Thus planting trees in northern places, while it will still (slowly) take carbon out of the atmosphere, might nonetheless actually warm the planet more than leaving things as they are.

Finally, there are clear social and biodiversity reasons to plant trees in the tropics. The money will flow to some of the poorest people on the planet, and be directly used to increase the quality of their local environment.

Trees lower the local temperature, provide shade, stabilize the ground to protect against landslides and the damage caused by heavy rain, and potentially provide non-timber products such as fruits. Companies and the consumers of their products should be delighted to be able to invest in improving the incomes and local environment of developing countries as a side effect of capturing carbon. And further, these financial and environmental benefits provide direct resilience for these communities against some of the impacts of climate change, such as the increased incidence and severity of extreme weather events.

In Sri Lanka, diverse agroforestry plots often surround dense plantings of tea. Photo by Chandni Navalkha for Mongabay.

So I would encourage politicians, NGOs and others to encourage companies to get themselves to net zero fast. They should do this by removing emissions from their supply chain as much as possible, and all hints of new deforestation. And the residual emissions should be offset, and I believe these offsets should come mostly through a massive expansion in agroforestry and forest restoration projects across tropical regions.

Some of this can be natural regeneration of previously cleared land and some agroforestry: plantations should be expanded in the tropics too to provide timber products, but are not good at directly capturing carbon in the long term. And some offsets could happen closer to home for these companies: but tree planting outside the tropics may not actually be climate positive, and other projects such as peatland restoration may offer greater benefits.

Links

• (AU) Deforestation In Australia: How Does Your State (Or Territory) Compare?
• Why We Believe Planting 1 Trillion Trees Can Save The Planet
• Are Young Trees Or Old Forests More Important For Slowing Climate Change?
• 15 Astounding Facts About Trees
• Fast-Growing Mini-Forests Spring Up In Europe To Aid Climate
• The African Country That Inspired More And More Countries To Plant Billions Of Trees
• Pakistan Combats Massive Unemployment By Hiring People To Plant 10 Billion Trees
• 20 Things You Didn't Know About ... Trees
• Australian Forest Study May Challenge Climate Change Optimism
• (AU) We Must Fight Climate Change Like It’s World War III – Here Are 4 Potent Weapons To Deploy
• (UK) Climate Change: Will Planting Millions Of Trees Really Save The Planet?
• (AU) Ancient Australian Trees Face Uncertain Future Under Climate Change, Study Finds 

These Places Will Flood If Climate Change Isn’t Mitigated

Nerdist - Matthew Hart

There’s a real possibility that sea levels, rising due to climate change, will lead to coastal flooding across the globe. And, because people form settlements near coasts, that may mean hundreds of millions of people, if not more, will be displaced this century.

To understand the problem’s magnitude, YouTuber, Atlas Pro, has made a video showing just how bad the situation could become. And yes, worst-case scenario is an absolute nightmare.

Lands That Will FLOOD in Our Lifetime. Atlas Pro

Atlas Pro, a geographer and scientist who’s made numerous videos discussing the effects of climate change before, focused on flooding for this video.

And while it’s 20 minutes long, and provides predictions that are downright depressing, the video gives a good sense of how climate change may ultimately uproot a massive portion of humanity.

The main driver of the problem, as Atlas Pro notes, is that people love to settle near river deltas; that is, the mouths of rivers containing large amounts of sediment built up into land masses.

Some examples of the largest deltas include the Mekong delta, in Vietnam and Cambodia; the Ganges-Brahmaptura delta in Bangladesh and India; and the Mississippi Delta in the U.S.

Geography of the Ice Age. Atlas Pro

Around the world, hundreds of millions of people have settled around these deltas thanks to their providing ample resources (fresh water, fish, etc.) as well as their super-fertile lands. Unfortunately, however, because deltas are at—or even below—sea level, that means if ocean levels rise even slightly, they’re in trouble.

As for the specific areas most in trouble in the U.S., both coasts, west of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and east of the Appalachian Mountains respectively, are at serious risk. Flooding, for example, could wipe out Delaware, as well as parts of Maryland and Virginia, on the east coast. On the west coast, water pushing in through the San Francisco Bay could inundate California’s Central Valley.

In regards to the rest of Earth, flooding could displace hundreds of millions in India and China, and millions in Australia and South America. (Java, a small island in Indonesia at great risk of flooding, has 140 million people itself.) Africa, however, seems like it’ll fare best out of all the continents thanks to its steep coastline. Although, to be fair, people there will have to worry about plenty of heartbreaking issues this century too.

Links

• Sentinel-6: 'Dog Kennel' Satellite Blasts Off On Ocean Mission
• Why Scientists Are So Worried About Antarctica's Doomsday Glacier
• How Many People Will Migrate Due To Rising Sea Levels? Our Best Guesses Aren’t Good Enough
• Melting Antarctic Ice Will Raise Sea Level By 2.5 Metres – Even If Paris Climate Goals Are Met, Study Finds
• More Than Half Of World's Oceans Already Being Affected By Climate Change
• The Undeniable Link Between Weather Disasters And Climate Change
• (AU) El Nino Lulls Lead To Harsh Floods, Fires And Droughts: Study
• (AU) Flooding Could Occur Daily In Sydney By The End Of This Century Because Of Climate Change
• Monsoon Floods, Landslides Kill At Least 221 In India, Nepal And Bangladesh
• ’A Life Too Often Lived Underwater’: How Tidal Flooding Is Wreaking Havoc In Bangladesh
• Extreme Sea Level Events ‘Will Hit Once A Year By 2050’
• Conflict And Disaster Force Millions From Their Homes
• Scientists Say These 10 Major Cities Could Become Unlivable Within 80 Years

(AU) John Hewson: The Morrison Government Has Abrogated Responsibility For The Climate Crisis To The States

The Guardian - John Hewson

It has fallen to the states to lead with more realistic targets, strategies and attempted policy responses

Scott Morrison is ‘wasting even more time trying to wedge the opposition and the states’, writes John Hewson. Photograph: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

Author Dr John Hewson AM is an honorary professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, and is a former leader of the Liberal party.

A colleague commented to me recently: “Where would we be without the states leading and driving the response to Covid-19?”

It made me think. To cut through all the spin, point-scoring and blame-shifting. Sure, there was the national cabinet and Scott Morrison’s attempt to forge a national, collaborative response, but so much of the heavy lifting was actually done by the states.

Even in areas where our national government has traditionally had clear, overarching responsibility, such as quarantine and aged care, Morrison stepped back, finding it easier to concede, criticise and blame, rather than act.

Of course mistakes are made, and finger-pointing is easy, but none of this “argie- bargie” is in the national interest.

So it is too with the response to a far more significant challenge: climate. Again it has fallen to the states to lead with more realistic targets, strategies and attempted policy responses.

Of course, it would be preferable to have a coordinated national response, but the Morrison government has ignored the significance and urgency of the challenge and abrogated this responsibility. It has again created a leadership vacuum, which the states, rightly or wrongly, are attempting to fill.

Energy is the current political focus, with states such as New South Wales and Victoria forging ahead with net zero emissions targets and various strategies to accelerate the transition to renewables, but causing disquiet with the regulators, major industry players, as well as the Morrison government.

In recent days we have seen the national energy minister Angus Taylor pushing for the states to be “transparent” with their energy plans, industry players crying about “market distortions” (which of course they have been more than happy to exploit), and regulators seeking clear “market principles” and more detail as to transition strategies.

The outcome? A hotchpotch of market forces, regulation, vested interests and confusion, pretty much as was generated against the former South Australian government led by Jay Weatherill, or in the tortuous process around the national energy guarantee, with the result being unreliability of supply and households and businesses overcharged.

Clearly, if the Morrison government were true to its ideological roots, claiming to be “conservative” (believing in small government, limited regulation and market forces), they would step back, develop an appropriate framework for the market to set a “price on carbon”, with a commitment to address the “transition frictions” in certain communities, and let the industry players get on to deliver the transition to cheaper, low emissions, dispatchable renewables with cost-effective storage.

Yet the government prefers to play politics, threatens “big sticks”, falsely claims easy achievement of its modest Paris commitments, and resists longer-term targets and commitments, all while promising cheap and reliable power. Such behaviour guarantees the continuation of our global status as a “laggard”. They hide behind their slogan “Technology Not Taxes” when, ironically, their technology roadmap would be more believable, accelerated and more effective with a carbon price.

The NSW proposals for power infrastructure – renewable energy zones to house a range of renewable energy generation and storage projects, with consumer protections, “reverse auctions” to provide off-take certainty to power generators, and supportive grants – are understandable and have some merit, but raise serious questions as to the “fit” with the grid, the inflexibility and cost of pumped hydro storage, general uncertainty as to how the system will actually work, and whether it will be cost-effective and reliable for consumers.

Meanwhile, the Morrison government and its fossil fuel mates are off on a completely different track, pretending that there is a viable case for more new coal-fired power, and still a case for new gas generation as a “transition”, even though renewables are much cheaper, major banks are reluctant to finance, major insurers are reluctant to insure such projects and investors suspect they will be stranded assets within a decade.

The Morrison government is also committed to storage via Snowy Hydro 2.0 even though it just doesn’t stack up commercially, according to Aemo wouldn’t be needed until about 2042, and is geographically inflexible relative to a sensible and cost-effective development of storage along the grid.

Clearly, there is an urgent imperative for national leadership on not only the transition to renewables in the power sector, but also the essential transitions across all the emitting sectors, especially transport, agriculture, buildings and industrial processes.

This leadership must start with an honest assessment of the climate challenge for a country such as Australia ranking as the 5th or 6th largest global emitter when our fossil fuel exports are taken into account. Our Paris commitments are about half what was recommended by the Climate Change Authority – we need to roughly halve emissions by 2030, and again by 2040, to get near net zero emissions by 2050.

The essential transitions can be effectively and fairly planned and managed over the next three decades. With Joe Biden as the new US president the global pace will quicken markedly. It is grossly irresponsible for Morrison to duck this responsibility, wasting even more time trying to wedge the opposition and the states.

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