What Does The Paris Agreement Mean For The World's Other 8 Million Species?

The Guardian - Jeremy Hance
In December, the world’s nations agreed on an aggressive plan to combat climate change. But what, if anything, will the landmark Paris agreement do for thousands of species already under threat from global warming?

A snorkeler encounters a whale shark. Photograph: Alamy

The word “biodiversity” is employed once in the Paris agreement’s 32 pages. “Forests” appears a few times, but “oceans”, like biodiversity, scores just a single appearance. There is no mention of extinction. Wildlife, coral reefs, birds, frogs, orchids, polar bears and pikas never show up anywhere in the document.
This is hardly surprising: the landmark agreement in Paris – the boldest yet to tackle climate change (which is saying something, but not nearly enough) – was contrived by one species for the benefit of one species. It was never meant to directly address the undeniable impacts of global warming on the world’s eight million or so other species – most of them still unnamed. But many experts say this doesn’t mean biodiversity won’t benefit from the agreement – especially if the 196 participants actually follow through on their plegdes and up their ambition quickly.

Chinstrap penguins in Half Moon Bay in the South Shetlands, Antarctica. Chinstrap penguin populations have plummeted in recent years with research pointing to climate change as a likely cause. Chinstrap penguins depend on krill populations, but these may be in decline due to less sea ice.

Photograph: Paul Goldstein/Exodus/REX/Shutterstock

“[The agreement] is critical for people and it is critical for biodiversity,” said Edward Perry, Birdlife’s climate change policy coordinator, who dubbed the passage of the Paris agreement in December “monumental.”
Most biodiversity experts concurred that the Paris agreement was an important step forward, but none thought it would be enough to counter the vast risks posed to biodiversity by global warming. Indeed a recent study in Science found that more than 5% of the world’s species will likely go extinct even if we manage to keep temperatures from rising more than 2C, the uppermost target outlined in Paris.
“[The Paris agreement] doesn’t go far enough, but that really misses the point,” said Nancy Knowlton, a coral reef expert with the Smithsonian Institution. “It moves us in the right direction, finally, and future efforts can be even more ambitious. To paraphrase Voltaire, we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Biodiversity in the oven
Scientists have identified thousands of species that have already been hit by global warming or will likely be in the near-future. For example, Edward Perry pointed to a recent scientific review by his organisation that found a quarter of the world’s most-researched birds have already been negatively impacted by climate impacts.
“According to climate projections, there will be more than twice as many losers than winners under climate change [for birds],” said Perry, who noted that, to date, scientist have pointed to 2,300 birds with traits that makes them “highly vulnerable” to global warming.
Already, climate change has disrupted some bird’s food sources, messed with the timing of fledgling and migrations, and shrunk the range of cold-loving species.
Birds are a good example of how climate change is already impacting wildlife because they are the best studied group on the planet. Yet, they aren’t the only ones feeling the heat. Climate change is also likely playing a role in the current amphibian crisis, which has seen around 200 amphibians vanish for good in recent decades.
Robin Moore, co-founder of the Amphibian Survival Alliance and author of In Search of Lost Frogs, said there is good evidence that climate change may have exacerbated the spread of the frog-killing disease, chytridiomycosis, with research has showing that warmer temperatures probably helped the disease spread across both Costa Rica and Australia. Moreover, the disease is likely able to adapt quicker to climatic changes than its victims.
“Pathogens are always smaller than their hosts, with faster metabolisms, and should therefore be able to acclimate more quickly to temperature shifts,” explained Moore. “This is a phenomenon that will not just affect amphibians!”

A southern Corroboree frog sits on the hand of Taronga zoo keeper Adam Skidmore in 2006. Once an abundant species, today it is listed as Critically Endangered due to the chytrid fungus, which may have been exacerbated by climate change. Photograph: Mark Baker/AP

Currently, habitat destruction remains the biggest threat to amphibians, making species more vulnerable to even slight climatic changes, according to Moore.
“Amphibians have survived four mass extinctions associated with major climate disturbances. What is pushing them over the edge now, I believe, is a perfect storm of lethal conditions that we have created.”
Still, no one knows for certain how climate change will impact the majority of the world’s individual species, just as we don’t even know how many species share our planet (pegged at anywhere from 3 to 100 million, though a study in 2011 came up with an estimate of 8.7 million). But we can broaden our view. Just as there are some human communities living on the front lines of climate change – such as low-lying island states or drought-prone countries – there are also particular environments that scientists view as super vulnerable to climate change.

Coral reefs and cloud forests

Coral reefs are considered one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, and the most species-rich in the oceans. Their counterpart on land may well be cloud forests, which are high-altitude forests often blanketed in clouds – and also ridiculously rich in biodiversity. Similarly, coral reefs and cloud forests occupy very small slices of the planet: cloud forests make up only around 1% of the world’s forests and coral reefs less than 1% of the ocean’s floor. And both are feeling the heat.

Coral reef showing a diversity of corals in Fiji. Photograph: Pete Oxford/Minden Pictures/Corbis

Coral reef expert, Joshua Cinner with James Cook University, said that climate change is delivering three separate punches to coral reefs: hotter oceans lead to higher incidences of coral bleaching, ocean acidification (which, like global warming, is caused by carbon dioxide emissions) makes it more difficult for corals to build and maintain their skeletons, while more powerful storms fueled by climate change can wreck reefs.
For reefs, Cinner said, the climate crisis “isn’t something off in the far-flung future. It has already happened, and will continue to happen.”
This year, record high temperatures driven by climate change – and exacerbated by El Niño – has led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to declare only the third global coral reef bleaching event on record. The key here is global: usually bleaching events are regional or localised.
When it comes to coral reefs, Cinner called the Paris agreement “a step in the right direction,” but also pointed out that even keeping temperatures below rising 1.5C – an aspirational goal in the Paris agreement – would not be enough to avoid further damage to the world’s reefs.
“It is important to understand that it is not like 2C, or even 1.5C, is a threshold whereby everything will be OK...The point is that even with a 1.5 degree rise, we are looking at very serious problems for many coral reefs.”
Amphibian-expert Moore agreed that there was significant uncertainty about biodiversity even with the 1.5 degrees goal in the Paris Agreement.
“It’s impossible to know what a world with temperatures 1.5C above pre-industrial levels will look like...but just talking about it ad nauseam is like debating who should call the fire department whilst watching your house burn down.”
Instead, he said, it’s time for action.

Cloud forests, like coral reefs, have evolved to survive within certain temperature gradients. Already, scientists have documented cloud forests literally migrating upslope to escape warming. But, according to David Lutz, a forest ecologist with Dartmouth, cloud forest species “do not appear to be migrating as fast as they need to be to keep up” with steadily rising temperatures.

Cloud forest in the Alerce Andino National Park in Chile. Photograph: FLPA/REX Shutterstock

“As the world grows warmer – or as periodic heat waves become more fierce – these species literally have nowhere to go but heaven,” said William Laurance, a noted rainforest scientist with James Cook University. “I think we’ll lose more biodiversity from tropical mountains than anywhere else in the world.”
The situation becomes even more complicated by the fact that many of these forests won’t even be able to migrate as far as possible. Instead, as tree seedlings sprout upslope they will run into high-elevation cattle ranching, at least in the Andes.
“As trees attempt to migrate up into this grassland, they will be either eaten by cows, or burned when the pastures are intentionally burned to encourage grass growth,” said Lutz.
If strategies to allow cloud forest to migrate as far as possible aren’t developed many of them are likely to vanish, taking innumerable species found no-where else with them.

Paris and beyond
The Paris agreement noted “the importance of ensuring the integrity of all ecosystems, including oceans, and the protection of biodiversity,” but went into few details about how individual countries should, or even could, go about safeguarding imperiled species in the face of rising temperatures.
What the agreement did do, however, was acknowledge the importance of conservation in protecting carbon sinks, often referring specifically to forests.
Moore, who called this inclusion “particularly significant,” said “we cannot talk about addressing climate change without stemming the rampant loss of the world’s forests.”
Experts said they hoped the agreement would boost initiatives like REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), a UN programme that proposes to use funding from rich nations to pay developing countries to keep forests standing. Under negotiation for the better part of a decade, REDD+ projects are just beginning to launch – and the initiative made a number of important appearances at the Paris talks.
Prior to the meeting, the UK, Germany and Norway put down $5bn to reduce deforestation in the tropics, while African nations pledged to restore 100 million hectares of forest across the continent over the next 15 years. If done correctly – and with involvement by locals and indigenous groups – such programmes could go a long way toward preserving biodiversity on land.
But, some experts have become concerned not just about direct impacts on biodiversity from climate change, but how a warmer future could increasingly pit humans against wildlife.
“We have anecdotal evidence that poaching increases when droughts or floods affect food production,” explained Nikhil Advani, WWF’s senior program officer of climate change adaptation, who also noted that when hydroelectric power plants fail during droughts people often turn to forests for fuel.
He added that many of the big mammals that WWF focuses on “will be more affected by these indirect impacts from people than any direct impact of climate change.”
The international group is launching a crowdsource data campaign, WWF Climate Crowd, in order to better understand such threats.

The Andean cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruviana) male portrait showing typical crest. This species is largely found in cloud forests. Photograph: Andean Cock-of-the-rock/Flip De Nooyer/ Foto Natura / Mi

Climate change poses a unique difficulty to biologists as they have to cut through several layers of uncertainty to understand how biodiversity might respond in 10, 20 or even 100 years. But given the rising observable impacts on species – from Arctic ice melt to worsening forest fires to record droughts in the Amazon – the risks are impossible to ignore.
“I just can’t get past the nagging feeling that we’re putting off a lot of tough decisions,” said Laurance, who attended the talks in Paris and pointed to plans by India and China to keep building new coal-fired power plants despite the countries’ climate commitments.
“[We’re] essentially relying on our children and grandchildren to make even bigger sacrifices and bear heavier costs because we weren’t really willing to grapple with these issues ourselves.”
But Knowlton with the Smithsonian Institution is more optimistic.
“When social change happens it can happen very quickly – this is what gives me hope...Will climate change in ten years look like marriage equality today? I think so.”
The existence of thousands of species may well depend on it.

Links

• Zoos could become 'conservation powerhouses'
• Wild things return to Angkor Wat
• How humans are driving the sixth mass extinction

Record Hot End To 2015 For Australia As Giant El Niño Dominates

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Australia has posted its hottest end to any year as the impact of one of the biggest El Niños on record began to be felt across the continent.
Mean temperatures were 0.36 degrees above the previous record for the October to December period, capping what was Australia's fifth-hottest year since the Bureau of Meteorology began keeping national figures in 1910.

2015 was another hot year for Australia - and the hottest on record for the world. Photo: Penny Stephens

"For temperatures, it was a year of two halves - a relatively cool part of the year and then an extremely warm second half," Blair Trewin, senior climatologist at the bureau, said.

Soaking rain may be spoiling a few holidays at the start of 2016 - but many places would be glad of it. Photo: Wolter Peeters

Spring was the standout season, with the past three September-November periods comprising the hottest trio on record. Such conditions have led to a busy fire season across southern Australia with a couple of months of summer still to run.
Among the major capitals, Sydney had its third-warmest year on record, just behind the record heat in 2013 and 2014. Statewide, temperatures were 1 degree above average, making it the seventh-hottest year since records began.
Melbourne was also on the warm side, with maximum temperatures ranging between 0.5 and 1 degree above average across the city. Victoria, too, was 1 degree warmer than average for maximums, making it the seventh-hottest year.
Perth was the standout state capital for warmth, recording its equal hottest year on record for maximums, matching 2011 and 2012. Statewide temperatures lagged only 2013 for record heat.
Brisbane had near-average temperatures for the year, while statewide temperatures were the third-warmest on record.
Three big exceptional heatwaves stood out - in March across northern Australia, and in October and December across the south. Tasmania was one place to have a cool winter and late-season snow across northern NSW and into Queensland was another cold weather extreme.
For the final three months of 2015, average mean temperatures were 1.93 degrees above the 1961-90 average, easily eclipsing the previous record of anomaly 1.57 degrees set just a year earlier. October itself was 2.89 degrees above the norm - the most for any month in the 106 years of records.

Warming to come
The monster El Niño in the Pacific, which rivals the 1997-98 and 1982-83 events, appears to have peaked in recent weeks, the bureau said on Tuesday.
The event, which may not break up until the autumn, will most likely give Australian temperatures a relatively warm start to 2016 - notwithstanding the unusually cool and wet week now under way across the eastern seaboard.
In the trailing year of El Niños, "the first half of the year is often significantly warmer than average", Dr Trewin said.

For 2015 as a whole, area-averaged mean temperatures were 0.83 degrees above the 1961-90 average. Maximum temperatures were 0.96 degrees above average, the sixth hottest on record, the bureau said.

The climate change signal is evident in Australia's warming trend, building on the natural fluctuations, scientists say.
Historically, El Niños - or their opposite, La Niñas - add or subtract about 0.5 degrees to or from national temperature averages.
"The baseline you're starting from is 0.5 degrees above the 1961-90 average," Dr Trewin said.

Eight out of Australia's 10 warmest years have happened since 2002, the bureau said. Only one year in the past decade was a below-average year, in 2011, during a big La Niña event.
Globally and in Australia, temperatures have risen about 0.9 degrees over the past century, with rising greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels, clearing land and agriculture among the primary causes. The warming trend prompted almost 200 nations to agree last month at the Paris climate summit to keep temperature increases to "well below 2 degrees" compared with pre-industrial times.
In coming weeks, international agencies are likely to declare 2015 to be the hottest year on record, and Britain's Met Office has said 2016 may be even warmer as the effects of the El Niño continue to influence the world's weather.
"Our research from 2015 shows that record-breaking hot temperatures over the last 15 years outnumber new cold records by a factor of 12-to-one [in Australia]," Sophie Lewis, a research fellow at the Australian National University and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, said.
"This dramatic increase in hot records in recent years is not random; it is linked to human-caused climate change," Dr Lewis said. "Combined with strong El Niño conditions, we should be prepared for hot conditions to continue in Australia in 2016."

Rainfall influences
Nationally, rainfall was about 5 per cent below average - with the distribution far from even as would be expected over the island continent.

Three areas were particularly dry: south-eastern Australia, inland Queensland and south-western Western Australia:

El Niño years are marked by drier-than-usual conditions across much of eastern and southern Australia. During El Niños, typically westward-blowing Pacific winds stall or are reversed, and rainfall patterns tend to shift eastwards away from Australia and south-east Asia.
During 2015, though, record warmth in the Indian Ocean provided a supply of moisture that helped counter the El Niño influence for winter rainfall in areas such as NSW, Dr Trewin said.
The bureau doesn't issue annual rainfall or temperature projections. A factor, though, will be whether the El Niño makes way for more neutral conditions or reverts, as some scientists predict, to a La Niña.
During La Niña years, rainfall tends to be above average for much of Australia and temperatures are cooler. Such years also typically include more tropical cyclones than usual.

Links

• What's El Nino got in store for 2016?
• What scientists discovered in Greenland could be ...

Bureau of Meteorology Annual Climate Statement 2015

Bureau of Meteorology

2015 was Australia's fifth-warmest year on record, while national rainfall was slightly below average according to data collected and analysed by the Bureau of Meteorology.

Summary

• 2015 was another warm year, especially during the last three months
• Strong El Niño, comparable to the El Niño events of 1997–98 and 1982–83
• Overall, it was Australia's fifth-warmest year on record with the annual national mean temperature 0.83 °C above average
• Warmest October on record nationally, for both maxima and minima, with the largest mean temperature anomaly on record for any month
• Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, and New South Wales ranked in the ten warmest years on record
• Nationally-averaged rainfall 5% below average for the year, at 443.7 mm (1961–1990 average 465.2 mm)
• Rainfall below average for parts of the Top End, most of Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, southeast and western South Australia, and southwest Western Australia
• Rainfall above average for the Gascoyne and Pilbara in Western Australia, most of the central Northern Territory, northeastern South Australia, and northwestern New South Wales

Overview

2015 was Australia's fifth-warmest year on record (national observations commence in 1910). Above average temperatures were persistent throughout the year, with several periods of record warmth.
The Australian area-averaged mean temperature for 2015 was 0.83 °C above the 1961–1990 average. Maximum temperatures were 0.96 °C above average, and minimum temperatures were 0.69 °C above average; both the sixth-warmest on record respectively.
Looking at recent years more broadly, eight of Australia's ten warmest years on record have occurred since 2002. The 10-year mean temperature for 2006–2015 was the second highest on record at 0.53 °C above average (and just behind 2005–2014). Only one year in the past ten was cooler than average: 2011.
Annual mean temperatures for 2015 were above to very much above average for the majority of Australia, although much of the central Northern Territory and northwest of the Kimberley in Western Australia observed a near-average annual mean temperature.
After a near miss in 2014, El Niño became established during May and strengthened to become one of the strongest on record (alongside 1972–73, 1982–83 and 1997–98). The combination of El Niño and background warming led to very warm temperatures globally throughout 2015, and contributed to Australia's warm year.
 El Niño also led to below average rainfall over much of eastern Australia, although record-warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Indian Ocean initially moderated the effect of the El Niño. Between late August and mid-November a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) had the opposite effect, reinforcing drying over much of Australia as the flow of moisture from the Indian Ocean was reduced.
The Australian mean rainfall for 2015 was 5% below the 1961–1990 climatological average of 465.2 mm. 2015 was Australia's 57th-driest year on record, with an area-average total of 443.7 mm—close to the median.
Annual rainfall was below average across most of Queensland and parts of the Northern Territory's Top End; Victoria and southeast South Australia; Tasmania; the western half of South Australia and the far southwest of the Northern Territory; and the southwest of Western Australia. Rainfall was above average for the Gascoyne and Pilbara in Western Australia; areas of the Northern Territory stretching from the western Top End, across the central region, through the southeast of the Northern Territory and across northeastern South Australia, into northwestern New South Wales; and also for small parts of the east coast between southeastern Queensland and East Gippsland in Victoria.

2015 annual mean temperatures compared to historical temperature observations. See also maxima and minima.

2015 annual rainfall compared to historical rainfall observations. See definition of deciles.

Links

• Full Report
• Annual statements for Australian States
• View or download climate highlights as a PDF

What Scientists Just Discovered In Greenland Could Be Making Sea-Level Rise Even Worse

Washington Post - Chelsea Harvey

Water is seen on part of the glacial ice sheet that covers about 80 percent of Greenland. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Rising global temperatures may be affecting the Greenland ice sheet — and its contribution to sea-level rise — in more serious ways that scientists imagined, a new study finds. Recent changes to the island's snow and ice cover appear to have affected its ability to store excess water, meaning more melting ice may be running off into the ocean than previously thought.
That's worrying news for the precarious Greenland ice sheet, which scientists say has already lost more than 9 trillions tons of ice in the past century — and whose melting rate only continues to increase as temperatures keep warming up. NASA estimates that the Greenland ice sheet is losing about 287 billion tons of ice every year, partly due to surface melting and partly due to the calving of large chunks of ice. Because of the ice sheet's potential to significantly raise sea levels as it runs into the ocean, scientists have been keeping a close eye on it — and anything that might affect how fast it's melting.
The new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, focuses on a part of the ice sheet known as "firn" — a porous layer of built-up snow that slowly freezes into ice over time. It's considered an important part of the ice sheet because of its ability to trap and store excess water before it's able to run off the surface of the glacier, an essential service that helps mitigate the sea-level rise that would otherwise be caused by the runoff water.
"As this layer is porous and the pores are connected, theoretically all the pore space in this firn layer can be used to store meltwater percolating into the firn whenever melt occurs at the surface," said the new paper's lead author, Horst Machguth of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, in an email to The Washington Post. Over time, the percolating meltwater trickles down through the firn and refreezes.

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Until recently, many scientists have assumed that most of Greenland's firn space is still available for trapping meltwater. But the new research shows that this is likely no longer the case. Through on-the-ground observations, the scientists have shown that the recent formation of dense ice layers near the ice sheet's surface are making it more difficult for liquid water to percolate into the firn — meaning it's forced to run off instead.
"If you look at some of the other studies which have been arguing that you have unlimited capacity for retention of water in the firn, this study shows that that is not the case," said Kurt Kjær, a curator and researcher at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, who has studied glacier dynamics on the Greenland ice sheet but was not involved in the study.
The researchers conducted their study by examining ice cores drilled into West Greenland's firn between 2009 and 2015. They wanted to find out how a series of particularly warm summers, which caused especially significant melting events in 2010 and 2012, might have affected the ice sheet.
"I think the most notable result of our study is showing that the firn reacts faster to an atmospheric warming than expected," Machguth said in his email. By examining the cores, the researchers found that the deluge of meltwater in recent years had trickled into the firn and frozen into chunks called "ice lenses." These lenses then began to hinder any additional liquid water from trickling down through the firn, meaning the meltwater began to accumulate and freeze near the surface, increasing the number and thickness of the existing lenses in a kind of vicious cycle.
The cores suggested that the lenses thickened quickly between 2009 and 2012, Machguth said. Then, starting in 2012, another change took place.
"At our main field site the very intense melt of summer 2012 did not result in a strong increase of the ice layer as the layer was already in place," he wrote to The Post. "Instead, at the main field site we could observe how the ice layer forced the meltwater to run off along the surface."
This effect was most pronounced at lower elevations in West Greenland, where the water first ran down the ice sheet and accumulated. But Machguth and his colleagues predict that the same ice lens formation process will continue to occur at higher and higher elevations — and the amount of meltwater forced to run off the glacier, having no available firn to trickle into, will only increase.
This is not only a concern on the basis of its possible contribution to sea-level rise — the researchers also suggest that an increase in runoff could lead to certain feedback processes that will cause even more melt to occur in the future. Runoff water can carve channels into the ice sheet's surface and create slushy areas, they note in the paper, which can cause a reduction in albedo — the ability of the ice sheet to reflect sunlight away from its surface. With more sunlight being absorbed, rather than reflected, surface temperatures could become even warmer and cause melt rates to accelerate.
And these changes to the firn are largely irreversible. While new firn can form as more snow falls and accumulates on Greenland's surface, the process can take decades — and might not be able to occur at all in a warming climate. This particular study was only conducted in West Greenland, so the scientists can't say for sure whether their findings apply to the entire island. It would be enlightening to conduct similar studies elsewhere on the ice sheet, Machguth noted.
But in the meantime, the observations represent an important step forward in understanding the processes affecting Greenland, and could help scientists improve the simulations they use to make predictions about what will happen to the ice sheet in the future. "When you get this kind of dataset, a new kind of knowledge, of course it should be put into the models," said Kjær, the Natural History Museum scientist.

Links

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95% Consensus Of Expert Economists: Cut Carbon Pollution

The Guardian - Dana Nuccitelli

A survey of economists with climate expertise finds a consensus that climate change is expensive and carbon pollution cuts are needed

Republican U.S. presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio listens to a question during a town hall meeting in Waterloo, Iowa, December 29, 2015. 95% of economics experts disagree with Rubio's claims that cutting carbon pollution will hurt the economy. Photograph: Scott Morgan/Reuters

The Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University (NYU) School of Law recently published a report summarizing a survey of economists with climate expertise. The report was a follow-up and expansion of a similar survey conducted in 2009 by the same institute. The key finding: there's a strong consensus among climate economics experts that we should put a price on carbon pollution to curb the expensive costs of climate change.
The survey participants included economists who have published papers related to climate change "in a highly ranked, peer-reviewed economics or environmental economics journal since 1994." Overall, 365 participants completed the survey, which established the consensus of expert climate economists on a number of important questions.

Carbon pollution cuts are needed regardless of what other countries do
In the 2009 version of the survey, the respondents were asked under what conditions the United States should commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 57% answered that the US should cut its emissions no matter what actions other countries take, while another 38% said that American emissions cuts would be warranted if many or all other countries commit to reducing theirs (as just happened in the Paris international negotiations).
In the 2015 survey, the number of expert economists saying that the US should cut its emissions no matter what rose to 77%. A further 18% said that if other countries agree to cut their emissions, the US should follow suit. In other words, there is a 95% consensus among expert climate economists that the US should follow through with its pledges to cut carbon pollution in the wake of the Paris international climate negotiations, and more than three out of four agreed that the US should take action to curb global warming no matter what.

Figure 9 from 'Expert Consensus on the Economics of Climate Change' 2015 report by the NYU Institute for Policy Integrity.

This expert consensus is in stark contrast to conservative political opposition to the Paris accord. For example, Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio said of the agreement,

This kind of unilateral disarmament in our economy is reckless, and it is hurting the American Dream

Quite obviously an international agreement made by 195 nations around the world is the antithesis of unilateral action. However, 77% of expert economists agree that unilateral action would be appropriate in any case, directly contradicting Rubio's comments. Additionally, 82% of the experts agreed that by implementing climate policies, the US could strategically induce other countries to cut their carbon pollution.

Climate change is already hurting the global economy
When asked at what date climate change will have a net negative impact on the global economy, the median survey response was 2025. In the recent past, climate change likely had a net positive impact on the global economy, due primarily to the effect of carbon fertilization on crops and other plant life. However, even contrarian economists agree, when accounting for the vulnerability of poorer countries to climate impacts, global warming has been hurting the global economy since about 1980.
The NYU survey asked when the economic benefits we experienced up to 1980 would be completely wiped out; 41% of respondents said that's already happened. Another 25% answered that it would happen within a decade, and 26% said we'd see net negative economic impacts by 2050. If we continue with business-as-usual pollution and warming, on average the experts predicted a GDP loss of about 10% by the end of the century, and that there would be a 20% chance of a "catastrophic" loss of one-quarter of global GDP.

Figure 5 from 'Expert Consensus on the Economics of Climate Change' 2015 report by the NYU Institute for Policy Integrity.

Of course, ideally we would have stopped warming the planet in 1980 to preserve the economic benefits of global warming to that date. At this point it's a question of just how much damage climate change will do to the global economy, and the economic experts are worried that the results could be catastrophic.

Climate change will hurt economic growth
78% of the survey participants said that it's likely (36%) or extremely likely (42%) that climate change will have a long-term negative impact on the growth rate of the global economy. That's an important point, because most current integrated economic-climate assessment models assume that economic growth will continue regardless of climate change impacts. There's been a growing body of research indicating that as you might expect, that won't be the case.
The results of this survey question show that most expert economists agree, climate change will hurt global economic growth. That also suggests that past model-based studies likely significantly underestimated the costs of climate change. Along the same lines, 51% of the experts answered that the US government's estimate for the "social cost of carbon" ($37 per metric ton), which is largely based on estimates from these models, is too low. 18% of the experts said that value is about right, and just 8% said it's too high.

Carbon pricing is an efficient way to cut pollution
The survey also asked the experts about the most economically efficient method of reducing carbon pollution. 81% said a market-based system (carbon tax or cap and trade system) would be most efficient, while 13% answered that coordinated performance standards and programs that prioritize cleaner fuels and energy efficiency would be most efficient.
In the US, President Obama's Clean Power Plan is closer to the latter system of performance standards, although the president has said he would prefer the type of market-based system favored by 81% of economic experts. Implementing a carbon tax or cap and trade system would require bipartisan congressional action, but over the past several years, Republican Party leaders have shown scant interest in crafting the efficient climate policies favored by economic experts and by their own voters.

Consensus of economic experts: cut carbon pollution
The NYU survey reveals a clear economic consensus on global warming. The experts agree: climate change is hurting the global economy, we should mitigate those costs by cutting carbon pollution, and the most efficient way to do that is with a market-based system like a carbon tax or cap and trade system.
This expert consensus clearly contradicts the arguments made by Republican Party leaders and other opponents of climate policies – that taking these actions will cripple the economy. In reality, economists are worried that if we fail to cut carbon pollution and instead continue with business-as-usual, it will badly stunt economic growth and may potentially lead to catastrophic economic consequences.
However, we can still solve the problem while creating jobs and growing the economy, if our political leaders will listen to the economic experts and their voters. So far, convincing Republican Party leaders to listen to an expert climate consensus has been a fruitless task, but there are signs that the party is starting to move in the right direction.

Links

• Why we need the next-to-impossible 1.5°C temperature target
• The strong economics of wind energy
• The best of climate science and humanity come together at AGU
• Haitians are noticing climate change impacts on extreme weather and agriculture

India's Solar Surge May Slash Coal Imports

Fairfax - Angela Macdonald-Smith

Solar power appears to be rapidly overtaking thermal coal imports in competitiveness for power generation in India. Photo: Adam Ferguson

Dramatic cost declines in solar power tenders in India have shaken up expectations on pricing for the renewable fuel and have triggered warnings that the country's need for thermal coal imports will be much lower than some are banking on.
Huge solar power contracts awarded by Indian states to global players in November and December have been priced at levels more than 20 per cent below 12 months ago and point to solar power rapidly overtaking thermal coal imports in competitiveness for power generation.
The figures signal that forecasts for growth in thethermal coal trading market by the International Energy Agency are too bullish even though they were cut back in December, according to Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, which supports renewable energy.
Mr Buckley said coal miners such as Adani and BHP Billiton were guilty of "ingrained thinking" in pressing ahead with coal expansion plans.
"A company that denies a technology change is real makes mistakes," Mr Buckley said. "The implication is for coal mining, coal railways and coal ports."
India's Minister for Energy, Piyush Goyal​, has said India should be able to end thermal coal imports by 2017.
Others doubt this target can be met, however. Melbourne-based Project Monitor describes the assumptions underlying claims from environmental groups that renewable energy growth would damp India's coal demand as "tenuous". It points out the problem of intermittent power generation from solar and wind, and casts doubt on India's ambitions to meet its 2020 coal production target.
"The confidence expressed by some that, over the next decade, coal demand will slow significantly and imports will drop to near-zero is almost certain not to be realised," the consultancy said.
A win by US-based solar major SunEdison of a $US500 million, 500-megawatt solar auction in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in November shocked the market with its pricing of 4.63 rupees per kilowatt-hour (US7.1¢/kWh), 10 per cent below the previous record low set three months earlier.
That pricing was regarded by many as irrational and as an aggressive chase for market share in the fast-growing market, until the award of a 350 MW contract in December to a consortium led by Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank at the same price.
The contracts should act as a warning to Australian coal exporters not to rely on IEA forecasts, Mr Buckley said.
India's ambitious National Solar Mission is targeting 100 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2022, and several solar majors are committing huge investments there, helping drive down costs.
IEEFA is forecasting reductions in solar tariffs will run at 5 per cent a year in India over the next decade, making solar cheaper than power generated even from domestic coal.
In its latest coal outlook report in December, the IEA pointed to India as one of the few remaining major growth markets for thermal coal exports, along with south-east Asia.
The IEA is forecasting the world's seaborne thermal coal market will reach 1.06 billion tonnes by 2020, a reduction from its previous forecast, but still above many other analysts. It assumes India will increase its thermal coal imports to 204 million tonnes by the end of the decade, representing an increase of 73 million tonnes from 2014.
Macquarie Research puts the market size in 2020 at 25 per cent less, but still assumes a modest increase in traded thermal coal volumes. Macquarie described the IEA's forecast for Indian coal imports as "staggering", saying it expected the increased demand for thermal coal to be met mostly from domestic sources.

Winning World War III, Climate Change Edition

CleanTechnica - Tina Casey

The impacts of climate change have long crossed the line of plausible deniability and we are now deep into a period that has all the hallmarks of a world war in terms of human suffering and the destruction of infrastructure and resources. So, if you were to ask us something like “what are the policies that governments should take to encourage public-private partnership and enable the private sector to develop the goods and services necessary for a global transition to a low-carbon economy by 2030,” we would say that government should require itself to speak with a unified voice on climate change, just as it would answer any other human threat to its existence.
Is that so hard?

Public-Private Partnerships For Climate Change Action
The aforementioned question comes to us from the Masdar 2016 Engage Blogging Contest. The topic of public-private partnerships is of critical interest to Masdar, which is a subsidiary of the company Mubadala, which is this:

In 2002, Mubadala – the Arabic word for ‘exchange’ – was established by the Government of Abu Dhabi as a principal agent in the diversification of Abu Dhabi’s economy.

[snip]

Mubadala was established to strengthen Abu Dhabi’s growth potential, and to help the government meet its socioeconomic targets…

While Mubadala’s first major venture involved natural gas production and transportation, in 2006 it created Masdar as a subsidiary, which quickly went to work and formed a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007 to create the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology.
The Masdar Institute should ring plenty of bells with CleanTechnica readers. We’ve been following Masdar’s work on solar energy, including last summer’s opening of the new “Masdar Solar Hub” R&D facility.
Masdar has also been active in the field of aviation biofuel, focusing on salt-loving plants that can thrive in arid conditions, including a “closed loop” system that integrates biofuel crops with food production.

One For All, All For Climate Change Action…Or Not
In an early piece on Masdar back in 2011, CleanTechnica referenced the institute’s work on the energy-nexus in an article titled “U.S. Fiddles While Others Work For New Energy Future,” and that brings us to the point.
The U.S. stacks up pretty well when it comes to developing strategies for transitioning to a low carbon economy by forming public-private partnerships, but there is one key difference.  The economic value of the sustainability policies being pursued by the Obama Administration has been drowned out by an aggressive public relations effort in support of the fossil fuel industry, spearheaded by powerful federal legislators such as Senator James Inhofe and Senator Ted Cruz, who is currently running for the Republican nomination for president under a platform that includes abolishing the Department of Energy, and abetted by state legislators and executives such as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (yes, this guy), who is also running for the Republican nomination.
The problem is that the experience of climate change has already crossed the barrier from theory to reality, so while government policy has enabled the development of the necessary technology, the pace of progress has been slowed artificially, by the fossil lobby.
In a “free” market nation like the U.S., the missing piece needed to accelerate the pace of change is the engagement and enthusiasm of consumers at every level, as individuals, businesses, institutions and government agencies.
The last time that happened was during World War II under a unified government campaign in support of the war effort, which was coincidentally the last time that the U.S. was attacked on its own shores by another sovereign nation.

Links

• EV Incentives: Economists vs Economists (& Climate Hawks)
• Economics of Wind Energy, 4 Keys To Stopping Global Warming… (Solar Energy & Wind Energy News)
• Tesla Model X Hitting Showrooms This Month, Our Autonomous Future… (EV & Clean Transport News & Views)