(ScienceAlert) Earth's Atmosphere Is Retaining Heat Twice As Fast As It Did Just 15 Years Ago

ScienceAlert - Andy Tomaswick, Universe Today

Sunset over the Indian Ocean as seen from the ISS, showing Earth's atmospheric layers. (NASA)

These days it seems you can't walk through a bookstore without bumping into a book or magazine pointing out the negative consequences of climate change. Everything from the hottest years on record to ruining astronomy can be tied to climate change.

Now some new science lays another potential problem at climate change's feet – Earth is retaining more than twice as much heat annually as it was 15 years ago.

A team from NASA and NOAA found that Earth's "energy imbalance" doubled between 2005 and 2019. The energy imbalance is simple to understand but complex in its causes and impacts. It is the difference between the amount of energy absorbed by Earth and the amount of energy emitted by it. 

Any increase in the energy imbalance means the overall Earth system is gaining energy, causing it to heat up.

Simple explanation of the energy imbalance. Credit – NASAeClips YouTube Channel
 
To quantify this change, the team used data from two separate sources – NASA's Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) and a system run by NOAA called Argo. CERES specializes in how much energy is entering and leaving Earth. 

Most of the energy entering is in the form of solar radiation, while energy leaving the system could take a variety of forms, including some of that solar radiation bouncing off of white clouds.

Argo, on the other hand, estimates the rate of temperature increase for the oceans. Ninety percent of the energy that is absorbed by the Earth system is absorbed into the oceans, so any significant energy imbalance would be seen as a heating up of the oceans.

Graph of the radiation measured as part of the experiment. (NASA/NOAA)

Data from both sensing platforms pointed to the same conclusions – that Earth was absorbing more energy than it was emitting, that energy is then stored by the ocean, and the annual amount of energy stored has increased dramatically in the recent past. All of these findings have important implications for the future of understanding and coping with climate change.

First, understanding what caused the increase in absorbed heat in order to potentially mitigate it in the near future would be helpful. The researchers cite two main causes of the increasing energy imbalance. 

First was a decrease in sea ice and clouds, the white surfaces of which increase the planet's albedo and therefore the amount of energy that is reflected back out into space. Some of that decrease in cloud coverage was caused by what is known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

In the middle of the survey period, a warm phase of this oscillation took hold, which caused a widespread reduction in cloud coverage, and thus lower albedo.

Video description of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Credit – Met Office YouTube Channel

The second cause was an increase in both greenhouse gases caused by human emissions and water vapor, which can prevent specific types of radiation from escaping, increasing the overall energy amount of the system. So our own emissions are making it harder for heat to escape Earth.

Consequences of such a change in the energy imbalance are slightly less clear, as is the case with much climate science. There is a chance that this heat-trapping effect could speed the melting of the polar ice caps, thereby speeding up the rise in sea levels that many scientists fear will occur over the next 100 years. 

Alternatively, higher ocean temperatures could mean more acidic oceans, which has its own impact on the ecosystems that are reliant on ocean chemistry.

Over the course of a year the orientation of the axis remains fixed in space, producing changes in the distribution of solar radiation. These changes in the pattern of radiation reaching earth's surface cause the succession of the seasons. (NOAA/Thomas G. Andrews)

No matter the consequences, this research is another data point in the argument that climate change is real and that humans are causing it.

It is also something we could potentially reverse in our efforts to fight climate change globally. So it is worth keeping an eye on the overall energy imbalance for the foreseeable future.

Earth as seen from the International Space Station. Credit – NASA

Links

• Earth’s Energy Imbalance Has Doubled Since 2005
• Study Finds Earth’s Energy Imbalance Has Doubled
• NASA study finds dangerous ‘energy imbalance’ on Earth
• 2020 Ties for the Hottest Year on Record
• Solar irradiance - Wikipedia
• Pacific decadal oscillation - Wikipedia
• After British Columbia’s Record-Breaking Heatwave, Here Come the Wildfires
• Iceland is a Similar Environment to Ancient Mars
• Maybe Mars Didn’t Lose its Water After All. It’s Still Trapped on the Planet

(Mashable) Scientists Reveal The Wild History Of Earth’s CO2 Since The Dinosaurs Died

Mashable - Mark Kaufman

Earth's climate began changing significantly after the dinosaur extinction. Credit: MARK GARLICK / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty Images

Big snakes, alligators, giant tortoises, and flying lemurs thrived in a balmy Arctic some 50 million years ago. It was a time when the potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide had spiked in Earth's atmosphere, making the high polar regions downright tropical.

Scientists who investigate past climates, called paleoclimatologists, have collected bounties of evidence that CO2 has long been a dominant lever on Earth's temperature. The evidence exists in chemicals stored in fossils, which indicate how much CO2 once saturated the atmosphere. Now, paleoclimate researchers have published the most comprehensive history to date of Earth's past CO2, starting after the dinosaurs went extinct some 66 million years ago (likely from an asteroid impact). The research, showing the strongest link yet between past CO2 levels and global temperatures, was recently published in the scientific journal Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

The 66 million-year geologic story shows an overall trend of gradual, naturally declining CO2 over tens of millions of years, concluding in the geologically recent ice ages. Crucially, this history also reveals the extreme, unnatural, skyrocketing rise in CO2 levels over the last 150 years.

"CO2 has of course changed before, but it's happened in slow and predicable ways," said James Rae, a paleoclimatologist from the University of St Andrews who led the new research. "What's happening now is so much faster than anything in the geologic record. There's nothing in comparison to what’s happening now."

What's happening now is humans have grown extremely proficient at digging up prodigious amounts of some of the most carbon-rich materials on Earth ("fossil fuels") and are burning them. Much of this carbon ends up in the atmosphere. "You couldn't design a better way to put more CO2 into the atmosphere," Rae said.

"You couldn't design a better way to put more CO2 into the atmosphere."

Crucially, the latest research also demonstrates a strong correspondence between CO2 levels and past reconstructions of global temperatures. In short, when CO2 levels were high, so was temperature; when CO2 levels dropped, so did temperatures.

"This paper is a tour de force, an overview of what we know about the history of CO2 over last 60 [million years] that is broad in scope and comprehensive in its level of detail," said Maureen Raymo, a paleoclimatologist and marine geologist at Columbia University. It also paints a picture of modern CO2 trends. "Humans are now a geological scale force of nature" as we exert control over the planet's climate, Raymo, who wasn't involved in the research, added.

The chart below shows the strong link between past CO2 levels and global temperatures.

The clear CO2-temperature link. Credit: Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences via James Rae

The evidence

To determine ancient climes from tens of millions of years ago, paleoclimatologists use fossilized evidence, like dead creatures preserved in ocean mud. These are called "proxies," a term that refers to preserved materials that provide clues or evidence of past environments. For a view of CO2 over the past 66 million years, researchers employed chemical evidence stored in tiny, common, and widespread fossilized shells (called foraminifera) and organic compounds (called alkenones) produced by algae.

These critters are sensitive to changes in the ocean's CO2 chemistry (including acidity), which is controlled by how much CO2 is in the atmosphere. (Oceans soak up CO2 from the air, naturally forming carbonic acid, which makes the oceans more acidic — a process that's happening as you read this.) It's a reliable way to sleuth out Earth's past climate.

"We're doing environmental forensics," explained Rae. "We're looking at the fingerprints environmental change leaves on the geologic record."

"We're doing environmental forensics."

The foraminifera are a good example. They're made mostly of calcium carbonate, similar to oysters and corals. As the shells grow in the ocean, they mix in a handful of other atoms. One of these is the element boron, which changes slightly in different ocean acidities. Evidence of a more acidic ocean, stored in the fossils, equates to higher atmospheric CO2 levels. This allows paleoclimatologists, like Rae, to construct past CO2 trends over millions of years.

Scientists can also estimate what global temperatures were once like, and compare this to CO2 levels. Past temperatures are sleuthed out by analyzing past sea levels (preserved by ancient beaches), where certain fossils are found (it was clearly quite warm when alligators flourished in the Arctic), the chemical makeup of fossilized shells, and beyond.

In this latest comprehensive research, there's a clear, compelling connection between past CO2 levels (measured by marine proxies) and global temperature.

"Rae and coauthors apply state-of-the-art understanding of how the marine CO2 proxies really work, leading to a much refined CO2 record," noted Tom Marchitto, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who had no role in the research. "Its correspondence with global temperature over the past 66 million years is very striking, and supports CO2 as the principal driver of global climate change."

Importantly, paleoclimatologists don't rely on any single proxy to reveal environmental conditions in the deep past. They use multiple proxies, like the shells and algae used in the new research.

"These two methods produce very similar results, lending confidence that they are reliable proxies for atmospheric CO2," explained Kathleen Johnson, a paleoclimatologist at the University of California, Irvine, who had no role in the study.

A foraminifera shell as seen through a microscope. Credit: University of St Andrews

But why stop this particular CO2 investigation at 66 million years ago (for now, anyway)? Well, as you know, Earth experienced a dramatic extinction event at the time, significantly altering ecosystems and the life therein. Famously, the dinosaurs disappeared. Researchers simply have a much better understanding of life (like foraminifera shells) since that dramatic, asteroid-triggered environmental change on Earth, explained Rae. But 65 or 66 million years is more than enough time to establish what's largely controlled the planet's climate. As Mashable previously reported:

"CO2 levels were extremely elevated during the age of the dinosaurs (which ended 65 million years ago), perhaps at some 2,000 to 4,000 ppm. Tremendous CO2 emissions, from incessant and extreme volcanism, heated Earth and allowed dinosaurs to roam a sultry Antarctic. But over millions of years, Earth’s natural processes (specifically the slow, grinding, but potent process of rocks absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere, dubbed 'the rock thermostat') gradually reduced CO2 levels."

Eventually, by the start of the Industrial Revolution, CO2 levels hovered around a stable 280 parts per million, or ppm. Since then, they've shot up to around 416 ppm. That quick jump is unprecedented in the geologic record.

"We have become a geologic force."

"Geologic records like this one present us with some loud warnings," said Marchitto, noting that today's CO2 levels are the highest they've been in some 3 million years. (Sea levels then were some 30 feet higher than today, but possibly much more). "The history of the human race has never seen anything like this, and it continues to climb," Marchitto said.

What's more, the rate of atmospheric CO2 is rising much faster than at any point since the dinosaurs died. How much faster? "We can confidently say that the rate of anthropogenic CO2 rise is around 10 times faster than the fastest natural CO2 change seen over the last 66 million years," said Johnson.

Humanity's having a potent influence.

"We have become a geologic force," said Marchitto.

Links

• What Earth was like last time CO2 levels were this high
• Atmospheric CO2 over the Past 66 Million Years from Marine Archives
• Seasonal variability in Arctic temperatures during early Eocene time
• High-fidelity record of Earth’s climate history puts current changes in context
• Information from Paleoclimate Archives (pdf)
• Since the first Earth Day, the planet’s CO2 levels have gone off the rails
• Paleoclimate Research

(SMH) Southern Australian Sharks And Rays Being ‘Cornered’ By Climate Change

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

Southern Australia’s sharks and rays face mounting threats as warmer waters push more tropical species southwards and habitats change, exacerbating threats to critically endangered species.

A study aimed at identifying the risks to some 132 different species found in waters ranging from south-west Western Australia to NSW has been published in the Fish and Fisheries journal. It seeks to give authorities a method to prepare for the threats of overfishing and climate change.

A grey nurse shark, one of the shark species in Australian waters that is already endangered before the impacts of climate change take effect. Credit: Erik Schlögl

“This is the first time we’re actually bringing them together as a risk assessment,” said Terence Walker, a research fellow at both Melbourne and Monash universities and lead author of the paper. “The challenges for fisheries managers are growing all the time.”

While tighter controls on commercial fishing since the early 2000s had arrested the decline of many shark, ray and chimaera species such as elephant fish, those gains could be eroded as more tropical species such as tiger and bull sharks extend their ranges southwards, the researchers said.

Region covered by fisheries study

Source: Fish and Fisheries

The East Australian Current, which shifts tropical water southwards, is strengthening and making the Tasman Sea one of the world’s warming hot spots as sea-surface temperatures rise at about four times the global rate. The Leeuwin Current, which flows south along the WA coast, is also

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Extreme weather

From drying rainforests to heavier downpours,
Australia’s climate is changing

“Global warming is literally going to push southern sharks and rays into a corner, because they can only go so far south and west,” said Leonardo Guida, a shark scientist with the Australian Marine Conservation Society and a co-author of the paper.

“Everything points to an urgent need to rapidly adjust how fisheries work.”

The paper also found that at present fishing levels, as many as six species already assessed as endangered including the school shark and maugean skate will have their recovery hampered by southward-migrating rivals.

Richard Reina, a marine ecologist at Monash University and another of the paper’s authors said southern Australian waters were changing faster than other parts of the country and it was also the most heavily fished by commercial firms.

The endangered Maugean Skate which has an extremely narrow distribution. It is closely related to a Gondwana ancestor which lived off southern Australia some 80 million years ago. Credit: CSIRO

While fisheries had made major efforts to monitor fish stocks and modify approved take accordingly, they were already struggling to adjust to “the southward movement of so many species ... everybody’s moving south”, Professor Reina said.

An elephant fish in Victoria’s Westernport Bay. The animal is among those at risk as waters warm and northern species move in. Credit: Kelvin Aitken

Those sharks and rays that breed or feed in shallow waters “will struggle to establish themselves if they get pushed off the [continental] shelf into deeper waters”, he said.

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Sharks

What do sharks want – and why do they bite?

Dr Guida said it was vital Australia and other nations cut greenhouse gas emissions that was driving the hotter climate. In the meantime, fisheries managers should start to use the new methods to assess risk.

In some cases, that will involve increasing the areas where fishing is restricted or banned to give the at-risk species a chance of survival.

Many sharks in particular sit at the top of the food chains, keeping ocean ecosystems stable.

“If you look after sharks and rays, you’re looking after our broader food chains,” Dr Guida said. “It affects what fish ends up on your table – if it gets there at all.”

A great white shark approaching a huge school of salmon close to shore at Tamarama Beach. Credit: Dronesharkapp.com

Links

• (NPR) Heat Wave Killed An Estimated 1 Billion Sea Creatures, And Scientists Fear Even Worse
• Shark Conservation is Essential to Tackle Climate Change
• An assessment of how Australian fisheries management plans account for climate change impacts
• Maintaining sustainable fisheries in a changing climate
• Australia announces $100 million initiative to protect our oceans
• Study first to explore combined impacts of fishing and ocean warming on fish populations
• Going Fishing in a Changing Climate
• Climate change: underwater forest decline
• Like in ‘Postapocalyptic Movies’: Heat Wave Killed Marine Wildlife en Masse

(SMH) Crunch Time Looming For Morrison On Climate As The World Looks To Australia To Act

Sydney Morning Herald - Marian Wilkinson

Author Marian Wilkinson is an Australian journalist and author. She has won two Walkley Awards, and was the first female executive producer of Four Corners. She has been a deputy editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, a Washington correspondent for The National Times, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, as well as a senior reporter for The Australian. As of April 2017, she is a senior reporter at Four Corners.

Professor Lesley Hughes doesn’t get a lot of invitations from the Morrison government to sit at the top table.

The high-profile climate scientist was unceremoniously sacked, along with the entire Climate Commission, shortly after Tony Abbott became prime minister.

His successors have shunned her advice ever since. So it was surprising to see Hughes on stage in Sydney as a guest speaker at a climate leadership event organised by the British consulate-general to celebrate this year’s International Women’s Day.

As the invitees tucked into breakfast at The Mint museum, Hughes was quizzed on the looming climate crisis by Sam Mostyn, president of Chief Executive Women and networker extraordinaire. Joining them on stage were a feisty grassroots climate activist and the CEO of a start-up that offsets personal carbon footprints.

The historic arrangement reach in Paris Saturday night have wide-ranging impacts for Australia's targets and economy. Courtesy ABC News 24.

It was a small but revealing display of British diplomacy in the lead-up to November’s critical United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26). And Hughes was happy to be part of it. “It’s soft pressure, obviously,” she said later, “but it’s nonetheless a demonstration of the importance of the issue.”

Hughes was a lead author on the landmark Fifth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report helped guide the Paris Agreement and its aim to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably to 1.5, compared to pre-industrial levels.

Hughes now regularly issues warnings about the climate crisis through the Climate Council – an independent body known for its sharp criticism of the Morrison government’s unambitious targets to cut Australia’s greenhouse emissions.

The professor’s appearance at the British event was just one more line item in Britain’s effort to pull off the world’s most ambitious climate summit yet in Glasgow. The measure of the summit’s success will not just be a commitment to reach a global target of net-zero emissions by 2050.

To make that target credible, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his cabinet colleague Alok Sharma, COP26 president-designate, want all countries – especially developed countries such as Australia – to commit to ambitious targets for 2030, just nine years away. That outcome is also a top priority for US President Joe Biden.

Australia’s approach to climate change is coming under increasing pressure globally in the lead up to the Glasgow summit. Credit: Getty

“We’ve asked all countries coming to Glasgow to be ambitious,” British High Commissioner Vicki Treadell said in an interview with Australian Foreign Affairs.

“We’re pleased to see the changing language here in Australia and certainly the commitment from Prime Minister Morrison that they recognise the need to get to net zero, in his words, preferably by 2050,” she said, but added pointedly, “What we do want to understand is how people are going to measure their success and the way they are going to get there with the initial plans for 2030. And then between 2030 and 2050, what that final push will be.”

Since last December, Scott Morrison has crab-walked towards a net zero by 2050 target. But he is coming under serious pressure from Australia’s most important allies to put up a credible 2030 target in Glasgow. Morrison has been unwilling to do that.

Morrison’s determination to stick to Australia’s weak, increasingly implausible 2030 target was thrust into the international spotlight at Biden’s climate summit in April. The prime minister was one of 40 world leaders, including Xi Jinping, who attended the virtual gathering.

It was designed to vault the United States into a leadership role in the global climate negotiations, and in his opening remarks Biden made it absolutely clear he wanted deep global emissions cuts by 2030. “This is the decade we must make decisions that will avoid the worst consequences of a climate crisis,” Biden said. “We must try to keep the Earth’s temperature to an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

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Emissions

We can’t wait for this government. Let’s beat emissions together

Biden used his summit to unveil a new US 2030 target of 50–52 per cent reductions in emissions. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga offered up a 46 per cent reduction target and Canada’s Justin Trudeau put up 40–45 per cent.

All were close to double Australia’s 2030 target. But Morrison again declined to commit even to a net zero by 2050 target, let alone change Australia’s 2030 target.

Before Morrison could put his case to the summit, a senior US administration official was briefing the media, suggesting Australia’s strategy was unsustainable.

“At the moment I think our colleagues in Australia recognise there is going to have to be a shift,” the official said. “It’s insufficient to follow the existing trajectory and hope that they will be on a course to deep decarbonisation and getting to net zero emissions by mid-century.”

But when Morrison spoke, he stuck to the “technology not taxes” mantra and Australia’s slower approach to reducing emissions.

“Australia is on the pathway to net zero,” he said. “Our goal is to get there as soon as we possibly can, through technology that enables and transforms our industries, not taxes that eliminate them and the jobs and livelihoods they support and create, especially in our regions. For Australia, it is not a question of if or even by when for net zero, but importantly, how.”

To back up his argument, Morrison invoked Dr Alan Finkel, noting that the former chief scientist was now the government’s special adviser on low-emissions technology and the roadmap. But as one former insider put it, Morrison cannot use Finkel as a human shield for his policy.

Morrison’s argument of “how” not “when” Australia gets to net zero missed the point. For Biden, it is a question of when as well as how. This is not just about the climate science. The United States sees itself in a race against China for clean energy supremacy in the net-zero emissions world. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made this clear shortly before the Biden summit.

PM avoids putting timeframe on zero emissions target at virtual summit.

“It’s difficult to imagine the United States winning the long-term strategic competition with China if we cannot lead the renewable energy revolution,” Blinken told reporters. “Right now, we’re falling behind.

China is the largest producer and exporter of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles. It holds nearly a third of the world’s renewable energy patents. If we don’t catch up, America will miss the chance to shape the world’s climate future in a way that reflects our interests and values, and we’ll lose out on countless jobs for the American people.”

Biden, like the Europeans, wants to spend big to back the rapid shift to clean energy. US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm underscored the new urgency in Washington when she announced at the summit a US goal to slash the cost of “clean renewable hydrogen” by 80 per cent by 2030, making it competitive with natural gas.

Australia risks being overrun in this clean energy race. If green hydrogen becomes competitive with natural gas by the end of the decade, the oil and gas industry will react by slashing prices, and Australian liquefied natural gas prices will plummet. As Fortescue Metals’ chairman Twiggy Forrest put it colourfully in his Boyer lecture, the result will be “like a knife fight in a telephone box”.

For now, the Morrison government is making a strategic bet that the energy transformation won’t happen this fast. It does not believe that China, let alone India, will be able to radically shift course this decade. This will put the 1.5 Celsius plans out of reach and curb the enthusiasm in developed countries for ambitious targets to cut emissions.

The message from Morrison and his Energy and Emissions Reduction minister, Angus Taylor, is that Australia’s big exports of liquefied natural gas and coal will continue for decades to come.

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Paris Agreement

International Energy Agency calls last drinks on fossil fuels

The latest International Energy Agency review gives some comfort for this view. Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions are on course to surge again in 2021, the second-largest increase in history, reversing most of the pandemic’s decline.

This year’s expected rise in coal use dwarfs that of renewables. Some 80 per cent of the projected growth in coal demand is expected to come from Asia, led by China. As IEA chief Fatih Birol put it: “We remain on a path of dangerous levels of global warming.”

But the IEA also released its own roadmap in May, warning that if the world wanted to keep to the 1.5 Celsius goal, there could be no new oil and gas fields approved for development beyond 2021, and no new coalmines or mine extensions. The IEA roadmap, “Net Zero by 2050”, flew in the face of both Labor and Coalition support for new fossil fuel developments.

Labor’s muted response to the Biden summit and the 1.5-degree goal has reinforced the view in the government that its current policy is the right course politically. But outside Australia, there is a growing belief that China’s clean energy transition will speed up, due to its capacity for innovation and its need to compete with the US.

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Mining

Forrest’s Fortescue fast-tracks carbon cuts with 2030 ‘net zero’ goal

Former Australian diplomat Dean Bialek, who is now advising Britain on preparations for COP26, believes there is a chance that China will bring more to Glasgow than Xi’s net zero by 2060 pledge.

“I think the Chinese could do it if they wanted. I think their current policy positions are intended to leave a bit of negotiating room this year. Both on the net zero timeline but also in terms of where they can get to by 2030,” said Bialek.

“And indeed whether they could potentially look at bringing forward the current target on peaking of emissions – which is currently expressed as ‘around 2030’ – to a much earlier date, to 2025, is one that has been bandied around.”

The need for China, India and other big emitters in the developing world to ramp up their ambition in Glasgow explains why the US and Britain are so exercised about Australia’s 2030 target. As a rich developed country with abundant renewable resources, Australia’s weak target will give diplomatic succour to other carbon-intensive economies wanting to slow the pace of change, such as Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Johnson invited Morrison to Cornwall for the G7 meeting in June in part because of this. His other special guests were India, South Africa and South Korea.

In their final communique, the G7 leaders reaffirmed their commitment to reach net zero no later than 2050 and to halve their collective emissions by 2030. They also called for international investment in unabated coal-power generation to stop, committing to end new government support for it by the close of this year.

The message to Morrison from the entire G7 leadership was that big-emitting economies such as Australia needed to bring their highest possible ambition to cut emissions to Glasgow. But Morrison baulked again at the G7, refusing to give either Biden or Johnson a commitment to reach net zero by 2050 or to agree to an ambitious 2030 target. Instead he kicked the decision down the road.

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Climate policy

PM stands by climate policy as G7 nations pledge to step up action

In Canberra, where the climate wars still haunt politicians on both sides, the goal of keeping to 1.5 degrees is still seen by many as the naive aspiration of climate scientists, activists and school strikers.

Morrison is certainly trapped in this mentality, quipping to the Business Council dinner this year: “We’re not going to achieve net zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities.”

Morrison has never accepted the urgency of the science on climate change, but he is increasingly becoming an outlier among world leaders.

Between now and November, he has a decision to make: whether he will join those leaders who see the Glasgow summit as the world’s last best hope to get the clean energy transition on track – or side with those whose aim is to derail it.

NOTE: This is an edited extract of Marian Wilkinson’s essay “The Outlier” from the current issue of Australian Foreign Affairs, Feeling the Heat: Australia Under Climate Pressure, published today.

Links

• Lethal Heating Scott Morrison Posts
• Morrison’s long walk to net zero
• Net Zero by 2050 - A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector
• Industry key to Australia’s emissions target, not ‘inner city dinner parties’: PM
• (AU The Guardian) Net Zero By 2050? Over Our Dead Body, Bolshie Nationals Tell Scott Morrison
• (AU The Guardian) Wealthy Countries’ Climate Shift Leaves Australia Isolated From Closest Allies
• (AU Canberra Times) Scott Morrison And G7+ Leaders Implored To Act On Climate Change As 'Colossal' Risk To Humanity
• (AU Canberra Times) John Hewson: Reckless Morrison Government Must Move On Climate Change

(NPR) Heat Wave Killed An Estimated 1 Billion Sea Creatures, And Scientists Fear Even Worse

NPR - Deepa Shivaram

Marine biologist Christopher Harley from the University of British Columbia says he has found hundreds of thousands of dead mussels on one beach alone. Christopher Harley/University of British Columbia

With the Pacific region hitting record-setting temperatures in the last few weeks, a new study from Canada shows the heat waves' enormous impact on marine life: An estimated 1 billion sea creatures on the coast of Vancouver have died as a result of the heat, a researcher said.

But that number is likely to be much higher, said professor Christopher Harley from the University of British Columbia.

"I've been working in the Pacific Northwest for most of the past 25 years, and I have not seen anything like this here," he said. "This is far more extensive than anything I've ever seen."

Harley has been tracking mussels and other sea creatures in the aftermath of the heat wave that hit the Pacific Northwest. Christopher Harley/University of British Columbia

Harley reaches his estimates by counting the number of sea creatures, mostly mussels, in a section that he said is representative of an entire beach. He varies measuring some beaches that are rocky and some that are not to get a full estimate for the entire ecosystem.

"This is a preliminary estimate based on good data, but I'm honestly worried that it's a substantial underestimate," Harley told NPR from a beach in British Columbia, where he continues to survey the casualties from the most recent heat wave.

"I'm also looking for all these dead barnacles. I've been hearing from people about dead clams and crabs and intertidal anemones and sea stars. And once you really start factoring in all these different species, it's been a huge catastrophe for marine life," he said. 

Environment

Carbon Dioxide, Which Drives Climate Change, Reaches Highest Level In 4 Million Years

Though heat waves have affected marine life in the past, Harley said temperatures reaching more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit like they did last weekend in the Pacific Northwest are "exceptionally rare."

But with climate change, he's seen estimates from other scientists that similar heat waves could start occurring once every five to 10 years.
"If it happens that frequently, the system won't have time to recover in between the die-offs," he said.

The die-off could have ripple effects beyond the shore

Malin Pinsky, an associate professor of marine biology at Rutgers University, said the extreme heat contributes to a "massive reorganization of ocean life."

"Species are shifting towards the poles of the Earth at about 60 kilometers [37 miles] per decade, and it doesn't happen slowly, bit by bit. It often happens in these extreme events, where a large population of something like mussels can die," Pinsky said.

Mussels dying off at such a high rate will have a massive effect on both marine and terrestrial animals, biologists say. Christopher Harley/University of British Columbia

But the overarching problem, marine biologists point out, is that the impact of climate change on the oceans is still treated as out of mind, out of sight. Pinsky also agrees that Harley's estimate of 1 billion creatures dead is likely an undercount.   

"The craziest thing is that it's just the tip of the iceberg," Pinksy said. "We can see the mussels because they're on the shoreline, but to a large extent, oceans are out of sight, out of mind, so we're likely to learn the magnitude of what's happening only much later."

Weather

Canada Battles More Than 180 Wildfires With Hundreds Dead In Heat Wave

That many sea creatures dying at once not only affects ocean life but terrestrial creatures as well — from birds who feed on sea life to humans running fisheries and consuming seafood.   

"[Mussels] are what's known as a foundation species because a lot of the ecosystem depends upon them ... so losing the mussel bed would be losing all the apartment buildings in a city core," Harley said.

In the meantime, he's is still counting dead mussels on the seashore.

On Thursday, from Porteau Cove, just north of Vancouver, he estimated 600,000 dead mussels in 164 feet of beach — a distance Harley said he can walk in a minute.

"Not every shore will be this bad, but this is a fair amount worse than I was expecting," he said.

Harley spent Thursday at British Columbia's Porteau Cove, a 30-minute drive north of Vancouver, and he says he's now worried his initial count of 1 billion dead creatures is too low. Christopher Harley/University of British Columbia 

Links

• Climate Change Is Devastating Marine Life as the World’s Oceans Warm: Report
• How is life in the sea affected by climate change?
• These tiny plants and giant animals are helping to store vast amounts of CO2 in our oceans
• Three Ways Climate Change is Harming Marine Species
• Coastal and Marine Ecosystems & Global Climate Change
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The Guardian - First Dog On The Moon

IT IS THE MONTHLY BOARD MEETING OF THE COALBASTARDS CORPORATION

Cartoon by First Dog on the Moon

LARGE IMAGE

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(SMH) Power To Change: Why The US And China Must Work Together On The Climate Crisis

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

Can these two great rivals quarantine climate change from their broader competition for supremacy and work together to confront the threat?

Can the US and China work together to tackle climate change? Credit: Fairfax

A satellite image shows the new forest spreading in a thick band from China’s northern borders with Russia and Mongolia to the south and west, towards the Gobi desert.

By the time the planting is finished in 2050, the Three-North Shelter Forest Program will cover about 35 million hectares, an area about the size of Germany. It will be the largest environmental project ever undertaken on Earth.

Though launched in 1978 to stop the spreading desert from unleashing sandstorms into rapidly expanding cities, the program is a key part of Chinese domestic efforts to address climate change.

Forest workers in a tree farm in Yichun City in north-east China’s Heilongjiang Province in June 2021. Credit: Getty Images

By cartographical ledger, China is greener today than it was a generation ago.

But that isn’t the whole story.

The project is emblematic of the country’s strengths in tackling such a complex problem as climate change, says Li Shuo – who is based in Beijing and directs Greenpeace’s climate and energy policy in east Asia – but it’s also emblematic of its weaknesses.

Its sheer scale and ambition is almost difficult to comprehend for those used to the efforts of Western nations. But because it was first shaped by centralised planning departments rather than by ecologists and scientists, much of the energy expended was wasted, particularly in the early years.

The Green Great Wall
The Three-North Shelter Forest Program

Officials directed the planting of swathes of fast-growing poplar trees and the resultant monoculture did little for biodiversity and left the new forests prone to pest infestation and erosion.

In the years since, science and leadership have improved and so has the forest.

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Analysis 
Superpower showdown

Robots, electric cars and face-scanners: China and the US vie to build the future

China, meanwhile, performed its economic miracle, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and placing itself at the heart of global manufacturing.

As a result, in 2006 it surpassed the United States as the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide and it remains so today. Industrialisation has been as destructive to Chinese environments as it had been to others before them. And to the Earth’s atmosphere.

By the time the world met to thrash out what became the Paris Climate Accord in 2015, a few things were obvious. Each nation needed to do its bit. But if an agreement was to be reached, developed nations had to make deeper emissions cuts than emerging economies.

It was also clear that if the world had any chance at all of staving off the worst impacts of climate change, the United States and China would have to work together.

The US is the greatest historical source of emissions. Most of the greenhouse gasses it produced during its global rise are still heating the planet. Together, the US and China account for 40 per cent of today’s global emissions.

 
After the failure of world climate talks in 2009, the US and China were determined to ensure the Paris talks would not fail the same way.

Months before the Paris summit began, the two nations shocked the world by announcing their own climate deal. China agreed to peak emissions in 2030; the US to reduce its emissions by between 26 and 28 per cent by 2025. Climate laggards would not be able to use the failure of these giant economies as cover for their own Paris targets.

But with Donald Trump’s victory, the US abandoned its efforts and the relationship between the two nations deteriorated.

A new green deal

Under President Joe Biden, the US is again determined to act. Biden has announced an even bolder target - reducing US emissions by 50-52 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030. He is now using the entire machinery of American diplomacy to drive the world towards agreeing to drastic action at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow in November.

At the same time though, US domestic climate policy is hostage to Republicans in the Senate.

This boom-and-bust cycle of American urgency and inaction has not inspired confidence in China, says Li.

John Kerry, who led the pre-Paris secret diplomatic mission from the US, is again leading negotiations between the two countries. Before Biden’s climate conference in April, China and the US made a joint statement saying that climate change “must be addressed with the seriousness and urgency that it demands”, suggesting there was hope the two powers could quarantine the issue from their broader competition.

50 years of friendship and feuds

Looking back at half a century of China-US relations

Video by Tom Compagnoni

9m14s

Bernice Lee, research director for futures at the London-based foreign policy think tank Chatham House, notes that although President Xi Jinping does not confront the same pressures as democratic leaders, he is not immune from political gravity.

Xi may have invested political capital in climate action, but he confronts the same imperatives to maintain prosperity and employment as his Western peers. Meanwhile, some Chinese provincial leaders ramp up coal production and coal plant construction reflexively as economic stimulus.

Lee also believes that China now sees action on climate as linked to its broader and growing international power and prestige.

Professor Bill Hare, a lead author on the fourth assessment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and chief executive of Climate Analytics, says China is reducing the carbon intensity of its coal-heavy power sector faster than many nations, including Australia. Even as it opens new coal mines, he notes, it is closing older, less efficient ones.



He agrees that Xi and much of the Chinese Communist Party leadership view climate change as a potentially existential threat, particularly as crop yields shrink and water supplies fall under threat due to climate pressures.

How far China is willing to go will become clearer in the months leading up to the Glasgow talks, he says. 

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Superpower showdown 

How to win friends and influence nations: China and the US battle it out 

Climate Analytics data is used to build the Climate Action Tracker, which judges the progress nations are making towards the globally agreed aim of holding warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, and pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.

It makes for grim reading. Australian policies are judged as “insufficient”, China’s as “highly insufficient”.

US efforts fall into the worst category, “critically insufficient”.

Hare explains this is a reflection of the Trump administration’s abandonment of the issue, and new rankings taking in analysis of the impacts of Biden-era policies will soon be published.



Li believes that China’s actions may not be made clear at the Glasgow talks, where any concessions could be chalked up as a diplomatic victory for the US. Rather, he says, announcements could be made domestically or in other settings, such as G20 meetings or at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Asked which nation he believes has done more to address what many see as the defining issue of our time, Li says that both have failed so far.

Looking back over their records, he says, provides data about the past but not answers to inform our future.

Pushed to forecast, Li says despite his concerns about China’s mixed messages on climate, the issue has not become as politically polarising in Beijing as it has in Washington.

While America’s climate plan will be tested at the polls again in 2024, China’s leaders, for good or ill, will dictate the course for the next three decades.

In that light, says Li, there is some reason to believe Chinese climate policy may improve more rapidly and predictably than America’s.

Links

• A signal of hope as US and China find common ground in climate crisis
• Opinion: Dear progressives: You can’t fight climate change by going soft on China
• U.S.-China Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis 
• Biden’s new Cold War with China will result in climate collapse, progressives warn
• China and US pledge climate change commitment
• Commentary: Cooperation between US, China at global climate summit could yield significant benefits