Climate Change Disaster Is Biggest Threat To Global Economy In 2016, Say Experts

The Guardian - Larry Elliott

Global warming heads top economists’ concerns for first time but large-scale forced migration seen as most likely risk to materialise

A climate activist demonstrates in Paris during the UN climate change conference in December. This year, global warming leads the WEF’s Global Risks report. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

A catastrophe caused by climate change is seen as the biggest potential threat to the global economy in 2016, according to a survey of 750 experts conducted by the World Economic Forum.
The annual assessment of risks conducted by the WEF before its annual meeting in Davos on 20-23 January showed that global warming had catapulted its way to the top of the list of concerns.
A failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation was seen as likely to have a bigger impact than the spread of weapons of mass destruction, water crises, mass involuntary migration and a severe energy price shock – the first time in the 11 years of the Global Risks report that the environment has been in first place.
The report, prepared by the WEF in collaboration with risk specialists Marsh & McLennan and Zurich Insurance Group, comes a month after the deal signed in Paris to reduce carbon emissions. The WEF said evidence was mounting that inter-connections between risks were becoming stronger. It cited links between climate change and involuntary migration or international security, noting that these often had “major and unpredictable impacts”.
Espen Barth Eide, the WEF’s head of geopolitical affairs, said there was a risk of Europe fragmenting as a result of “people on the move”.
Speaking at a press conference in London to launch the report, Eide said: “I am concerned about the continued support in national politics for keeping Europe together.”
Eide added that if enough countries decided to pursue a non-integrated approach to coping with migration it would have “profound effects on Europe’s politics and its economy”, and would have a knock-on impact on the rest of the world. “If things unravel at the core, what does it mean in other parts of the world?”
Cecilia Reyes, Zurich’s chief risk officer, said: “Climate change is exacerbating more risks than ever before in terms of water crises, food shortages, constrained economic growth, weaker societal cohesion and increased security risks.
“Meanwhile, geopolitical instability is exposing businesses to cancelled projects, revoked licences, interrupted production, damaged assets and restricted movement of funds across borders. These political conflicts are in turn making the challenge of climate change all the more insurmountable – reducing the potential for political cooperation, as well as diverting resource, innovation and time away from climate change resilience and prevention.”
The WEF said the broad range of risks – from environmental to geopolitical and economic – was unprecedented.
It added that risks appeared to be rising, with global average surface temperatures increasing by more than 1C over pre-industrial levels for the first time, and the number of forcibly displaced people at 59.5 million – almost 50% more than in 1940, when the second world war was being fought. “Data from the report appears to support the increased likelihood of risks across the board, with all 24 of the risks continuously measured since 2014 having increased their likelihood scores in the past three years,” the WEF said.

A five-year-old Kurdish boy from Iraq at a camp near Dunkirk, northern France. Involuntary mass migration is likely to increase, according to the report. Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images

When asked which risk was most likely to materialise in 2016, respondents chose large-scale involuntary migration. This follows last year’s refugee crisis, in which hundreds of thousands of people arrived in Europe fleeing conflicts in the Middle East and north Africa.
This was followed by extreme weather events, climate change, interstate conflict with regional consequences, and major natural catastrophes.
“Events such as Europe’s refugee crisis and terrorist attacks have raised global political instability to its highest level since the cold war,” said John Drzik, president of Marsh Global Risk and Specialties.
“This is widening the backdrop of uncertainty against which international firms will increasingly be forced to make their strategic decisions. The need for business leaders to consider the implications of these risks on their firm’s footprint, reputation and supply chain has never been more pressing.”
Drzik said at the press conference: “Most risks are rising. It’s a riskier world right now.”

Links

• Michael Bloomberg to head global taskforce on climate change
• Though climate change is a crisis, the population threat is even worse
• Did climate change help cause the Syria war?
• Prince Charles: rewire the global economy to stop climate change

A Conversation With Mary Robinson, Former President Of Ireland, On Climate Change

University of California Los Angeles - Stan Paul

Luskin Lecture Series features human rights and climate change leader on a sustainable future

Photo by: Roberto Gudino

Mary Robinson started her career with a deep passion for human rights, from economic and social to food, education, women’s rights, security and peace.
It was only later that the former president of Ireland says she saw the link between human rights and climate change, while serving as the United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Change. Her work and travels in Africa made her aware that climate changes were tied to uncertainties of drought and flooding and that “something was happening.” She heard again and again, in countries such as Liberia, that “things were getting so much worse.” In areas where the focus was traditionally on poverty or other issues, there were now areas where the climate — and planting and harvest times — could no longer be predicted.
“We needed to be talking about the injustice of climate change,” which affects the poor and most vulnerable, even the U.S., citing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the poor in the U.S., said Robinson, who served as a U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights until 2002.


Following Robinson’s January 12 Luskin Lecture in UCLA’s Charles E. Young Grand Salon, former Los Angeles Times writer and editor Jim Newton moderated a discussion and Q&A session, asking Robinson about the impact of the recent Paris Climate Agreement.
Robinson, organizer of foundations including Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative and The Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, said she was energized by the talks in Paris, which provided a new way of describing the problem, and that she was encouraged that nearly 200 countries that all agreed on individual contributions to be made toward carbon emission reduction.
“It was actually a fair agreement, not strong but fair — that was extraordinary,” said Robinson. She said that the Paris Agreement provided a new target for the world. “It put a stake in the ground.”
Even so, Robinson, citing a recent U.N. study, pointed out that if all of the countries realized their commitments to carbon reduction and climate change from the Paris Agreement, the world is still on course for a disastrous temperature increase beyond the oft-citied two-degree climate cliff.
Robinson said that more has to be done for a sustainable future, but the Paris agreement is nevertheless important because many countries would have given up, and that many small countries, island nations, will be “under water with 1.5 degrees.”
Robinson, who attended the climate talks in Paris, praised California, saying that the state was notable for its leadership in climate change and illustrating what can be done.
Prior to her presentation, co-sponsored by the Hilton Foundation and the Global Public Affairs (GPA) program at Luskin, a small group of UCLA Luskin graduate students had the chance to talk one-on-one with Robinson.
Jason Karpman, a second-year Urban Planning graduate student, said he was interested in this opportunity to talk with Robinson because of his interest in climate change, specifically carbon sequestration. “It’s the elephant in the room,” said Karpman, adding that, right now, “there are not a lot of options on the table.”
Robinson stressed to her pre-talk audience of Luskin students from Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning that the quality of leadership matters. “We need the policy decisions that are the right decisions,” and making policy more “people centered.” She added that the goal of sustainability should be to not leave anyone behind, which is what happened in the industrial revolution. She said that while the world must reduce carbon, at the same time, more than a billion people are energy poor, with no access to electricity and still burning dangerous kerosene in their homes.
“We have the gadgets,” said Robinson referring to LED lights, solar power, etc., and the ability to make payments on mobile phones via cell phone applications. “Most developing countries are interested in clean energy,” she said.
The discussion also included a range of important topics such as reforestation that is economically effective, the use of lighter materials such as carbon fiber in vehicles, technology and migration patterns. Migration patterns caused by politics and climate change are shaping up to be “one of the biggest issues worldwide,” said Robinson. “People have to move.” She said the real issue is how to manage migration in big numbers, pointing out how Syria and other countries have suffered both conflict and ongoing drought as well as the problems faced by countries due to an influx of migrants.
“They will come whether we like it or not,” she said. “We have to have leadership now.”
Robinson also has a very personal interest in the future of the planet — her grandchildren, who will be growing up in an age of severe climate change. She pointed out the intergenerational equity of the problem.
“This is about your children and grandchildren,” she said. “It’s their future.”

Link

• Video of the Mary Robinson Luskin Lecture

Indigenous Australian Solar Energy Company Takes On Tesla

Gizmodo - Rae Johnston

This Queensland company’s core mission is based on the fundamental Aboriginal approach of stewardship of the earth and its resources, and this means a move away from a reliance on fossil fuels for energy. Oh, and it offers a 10kWh solar energy storage system costing 30 per cent less than the Tesla Powerwall.
AllGrid Energy‘s $11,999 WattGrid system allows households to store power produced by their solar panels during the day for use in the evening. In combination with a 3kw solar panel array the WattGrid can offer an average of 12kwh per day, or half of the average daily household average, but it can be combined with an array of up to 7kw to provide even more.
WattGrid works by utilising all stored energy before it takes from the grid, but with a larger solar array this may not even be necessary.
AllGrid is expected to start deliveries of the WattGrid in the next two to three months.
The PortaGrid is another product being produced by AllGrid, and as the name suggests it is a portable solar power solution. Designed for emergencies or remote locations off the grid, it comes with the lot — panels, inverter and battery storage.
National Parks are currently looking at the PortaGrid as a replacement for its diesel generators.
Commercial-scale systems that can power an entire remote Aboriginal community are also on the horizon.
“This would create energy wealth and energy autonomy for those remote Aboriginal communities,” A spokesperson from AllGrid said.
AllGrid manufactures its products out of Brisbane with a predominately Aboriginal workforce.
A joint effort between the Indigenous owned and operated electrical contracting firm DICE Australia and AllGrid (which is an accredited Indigenous corporation), the company has committed to directing a percentage of all company profits into creating and supporting training and employment programs for Indigenous Australian young people.

Renewable Energy Investment In Australia Way Behind Target, Analysis Finds

Fairfax - Angela Macdonald-Smith

Investment in renewable energy is running behind target. Photo: Liu Xiao

Investment in large renewable energy projects in Australia is running at just one-third of what is required to meet the 2020 Renewable Energy Target and behind countries such as Thailand and Morocco, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has found.
While spending on large-scale projects recovered slightly last year from the depths of the 2014 investment freeze, the $1.18 billion compares with a peak of $3.29 billion in 2010 and with the $3.6 billion a year that is needed to meet the target, the analysts said in a report on Thursday.
BNEF blamed the shortfall on a lingering lack of confidence in the RET policy last year as it was undermined by the Abbott government's review of the scheme.
Since the review was announced on February 17, 2014, only $15 million of investment has been driven by the RET policy, compared to more than $12 billion in the period prior to that and since the scheme was born in 2001, Sydney-based analysts Kobad Bhavnagri and Stephanie Allport found.

Seeking funding
The weak numbers stand as a contrast to the keen response to a $100 million funding program for large-scale solar prices from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), where 77 expressions of interest have been whittled down to 22 projects. Those project proponents are seeking more than three times as much funding as is on offer for projects that would cost $1.68 billion to build.
Total investment in new clean energy in Australia was $US2.97 billion ($4.3 billion) last year, a modest increase on 2014 but well down from the $US6.74 billion spent in the peak year of 2011, BNEF said in its global report.
Investment in small scale solar PV installations helped support the sector, while investment in large-scale assets "continues to stall," BNEF said. The ACT's reverse auction program for renewable projects, and grant funding from ARENA and lending from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation propped up investment, it said.
Australia's total investment in the sector placed it 12th behind other resource-intensive economies including Chile, Canada, South Africa and Brazil.
Australia's performance contrasted with the global picture, with worldwide investment in clean energy reaching a record $US329.3 billion last year, up 4 per cent on 2014. China was again the biggest investor, with a 17 per cent increase to $US110.5 billion.

Obama Says Fighting Climate Change Is Good For Business—Except For The Oil Business

Quartz - Ana Campoy

Advancing wind—and solar. (Reuters/Larry Downing)

US president Barack Obama has a message for climate-change naysayers: Don’t look at fighting global warming as saving the world, but as a promising business.
During his eighth and last State of the Union address, Obama called upon the nation to not “pass up the chance for American businesses to produce and sell the energy of the future.”
Investments in alternative energy such as wind and solar have already slashed energy costs and utility bills, and boosted wages for energy workers, he said during the speech.
More needs to be spent on alternative energy, he went on, and less on subsidizing fossil fuels. As part of that goal, Obama vowed to change how oil and coal are managed “so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet.” That would inject money into local economies and help the nation build a “21st-century transportation system,” he said.
To some observers, that sounded remarkably close to a carbon tax, something academics and environmentalists have long pushed as a mechanism to curb global-warming emissions.
Whatever the president has in mind, the oil industry doesn’t appear to like the sound of it. API, the US’s main oil-industry trade group, responded to the speech with a statement saying Obama should avoid “bombarding our economy with duplicative, job-crushing new regulations.”
“The goals of environmental progress and energy production are not mutually exclusive,” API’s CEO, Jack Gerard, said in the statement. “Our nation’s new status as the world’s leading producer of oil and natural gas is saving American families and businesses billions in energy costs.”

Baby Fish May Get Lost In Silent Oceans As Carbon Dioxide Rises

ABC Science - Rachel Sullivan

Rising CO2 in oceans may make it harder for some species of juvenile fish to navigate using sound. (Getty Images)

Key points: Study shows area around ocean vent releasing CO2 that mimics projected climate change models is quieter Fish larvae exposed to same CO2 conditions in laboratory did not respond to sound In future, marine animals may need to rely on other cues such as smell and vision to navigate

Future oceans will be much quieter places, making it harder for young marine animals that navigate using sound to find their way back home, new research has found.
Under acidification levels predicted for the end of the century, fish larvae will cease to respond to the auditory cues that present-day species use to orient themselves, scientists reported in the journal Biology Letters.
While ocean acidification is known to affect a wide range of marine organisms and processes such as smell, until now its effect on marine soundscapes and impact on the larvae of marine animals was unknown.
The ocean is filled with sounds that carry information about location and habitat quality, study co-author Sir Ivan Nagelkerken said.
"Along with chemical and other cues, because of sound's ability to travel long distances underwater, it is used as a navigational beacon by marine animals, particularly larvae," Dr Nagelkerken said.
"More than 95 per cent of marine animals have a dispersive larval stage, where larvae drift with the currents for anywhere from a few days to a year, before returning to settle in their adult habitat near where they were spawned."
To understand how acidification affects these marine animals, the team led by PhD student Tullio Rossi travelled to a naturally occurring carbon dioxide vent near White Island in New Zealand, where ocean acidification levels are similar to those predicted for the end of the century under business-as-usual conditions.
"This natural laboratory gave us a peek into the future," Dr Nagelkerken said.

[Animals] that rely on sound as an orientation cue will be heavily impacted, limiting their ability to survive and contribute to the population. Associate Professor Sir Ivan Nagelkerken 

"We recorded the soundscape around the vent, then compared the loudness and composition of sounds with control sites a few hundred metres away."
The area around the vent was much quieter, the team found.
"There could be a number of explanations for the decrease in sound," Dr Nagelkerken said.
"For example, as acidification increases, kelp forests may be replaced by turf algae. This results in changing abundance of the animals that produce sounds, such as snapping shrimp whose ubiquitous crackle forms the backdrop to present-day ocean soundscapes."

Higher CO2 changes fish larvae behaviour
To understand how acidification affects marine animals' auditory preferences, the researchers studied the impact of increased carbon dioxide levels on settlement-stage mulloway (Argyrosomus japonicas), a common temperate fish species.
They found that the 25- to 28-day-old larvae that had been exposed to higher carbon dioxide concentrations deliberately avoided present-day acoustic habitat cues recorded near White Island, while fish reared in present-day carbon dioxide levels responded positively.
Neither group of fish responded to the "future" soundscape recorded around the vent, despite the hearing of the normal fish being unimpaired.
Ocean acidification is known to increase the size of otoliths — fish ear bones — used for hearing, orientation and balance.
It has been hypothesised that bigger ear bones would increase the hearing range of larval fish, but the hearing in fish reared in future carbon dioxide levels was negatively impacted by ocean acidification, even though they had larger ear bones.
Dr Nagelkerken said the findings suggested that in the future, affected species would have to use other, potentially less reliable cues to help them navigate, even though other senses such as vision and smell are also negatively impacted by ocean acidification.
"Finding a home is the key to population sustainability," Dr Nagelkerken said.
"Those that rely on sound as an orientation cue will be heavily impacted, limiting their ability to survive and contribute to the population."

In Pitiful Animal Die-Offs Across The Globe — From Antelopes To Bees To Seabirds — Climate Change May Be Culprit

Washington Post - Sarah Kaplan


Officials in India say more than 80 whales are stranded off the country's southern coast. Officials had rescued and taken at least 36 of the mammals back to sea. (AP)

On the chilly shores of Alaska’s Prince William Sound, tens of thousands of battered bird carcasses are washing up. The birds, all members of a species known as the common murre, appear to have starved to death, wildlife officials said Tuesday. Their black and white bodies lie strewn across the slick rock, or else bob in the shallow waters nearby.

Seven thousand miles away, on a sandy beach in southern India, more than 100 whales were discovered mysteriously stranded on shore this week. Already at least 45 of them are dead, according to the BBC, dried out and overheated by exposure to the sun. More may soon die if they can’t be safely returned to the ocean. The area hasn’t seen this big a stranding in more than 40 years.

These are two isolated incidents, but they’re not unlike others that have been reported in the past year — unexplained die-offs, abnormally large strandings, a worldwide coral bleaching bigger than almost anything else on record. Around the world, animal populations are vulnerable. Huge groups might be killed in a matter of days or weeks. In Kazakhstan in May of last year, more half of the world’s entire population of saiga antelope vanished in less than a month.

Incidents like these are often mysteries to be unraveled, with scientists sorting through various explanations — hunger, habitat loss, disease, disorientation — for the mass deaths. But in a swath of recent cases, many of the die-offs boil down to a common problem: the animals’ environments are changing, and they’re struggling to keep up.

Take the murres dying in Alaska. The seabirds are washing ashore with empty stomachs, Robb Kaler, a seabird biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, told The Washington Post Tuesday. It’s likely that they’re having trouble finding their normal food source — herring and other small fish — because of the region’s recent unusual weather and the abnormally high temperature of water in the sound.

In this Jan. 7, 2016 photo, dead common murres lie washed up on a rocky beach in Whittier, Alaska. Federal scientists in Alaska are looking for the cause of a massive die-off of one of the Arctic’s most abundant seabirds. (Mark Thiessen/AP)

Though large murre die-offs have happened before, this one is on a scale most experts have never seen before, former Fish and Wildlife Service biologist David Irons told KTVA-TV.

“Seabird biologists say seabirds are indicators of the health of the ecosystem,” he said. “Now they’re dying, and that is telling us something.”

Bad weather and warm waters are also thought to be the culprit behind the global coral bleaching event that scientists say is going on right now. Though coral looks like simply a colorful rock, it actually comprises many millions of tiny tentacled creatures living in a symbiotic relationship with brightly-colored algae, which give the corals both their color and their nutrients. When water temperatures rise — as they have this year, researchers say, due to a combination of climate change, a powerful El Nino and the Pacific’s weird warm “blob” — the corals become stressed and expel their algae partners, losing their vibrancy and the source of nutrients they need to survive. The ghostly white structures that remains are still alive, but they’re weakened, and the reef will lose much of its biodiversity until the algae can return. If they don’t, the corals are likely to die.

This is a bleaching, and the world’s reefs are in the midst of only the third global bleaching event in recorded history.

Far from any ocean, on the arid shrubgrass steppe of central Kazakhstan, more than 200,000 corpses of the endangered saiga antelope species were discovered scattered across the grassland last May. According to Scientific American, 70 percent of the world’s saigas — strange, Dr. Seuss-looking creatures with spindly legs and a huge protruding snout — were killed in a matter of weeks. And no one knew why.

Dead Saiga antelopes lie In a field in the Zholoba area of the Kostanay region IN Kazakhstan, in this handout photo provided on May 20, 2015 by Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Agriculture. More than half of the world’s total saiga population was killed in a mass die-off last year. (Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Agriculture/Handout via Reuters)

In November, researchers in Uzbekistan presented their best guess: an abnormally wet spring induced by climate change transformed some normally harmless pathogens that ordinarily live in the saigas’ guts. The suddenly lethal pathogens swept through Kazakhstan’s herds. Once sickened, the animals died in a matter of hours.

“This is really not biologically normal,” Richard A. Kock, of the Royal Veterinary College in London, told the New York Times last year. “I’ve worked in wildlife disease all my life, and I thought I’d seen some pretty grim things. But this takes the biscuit.”

Back in the U.S., the Los Angeles Times reported last August that the drought that has plagued western states for four years was causing a major die-off of vital fish populations like salmon, steelhead and the endangered delta smelt. Water levels were too low, and what’s more, water temperatures were too warm for fish and their offspring to survive.

The smelt numbers had diminished to “the last of the last,” UC Davis professor emeritus Peter Moyle, a leading authority on California’s native fish, told the LA Times. “It would be a major extinction event.”

A bumblebee. (David Goulson, Stirling University/AP)

And last July, researchers reported that global warming is working to “crush bumblebees in a kind of climate vice,” according to Nature.

“Bumblebee species across Europe and North America are declining at continental scales,” Jeremy Kerr, a biodiversity researcher at the University of Ottawa in Canada, told the scientific journal. “Our data suggest that climate change plays a leading, or perhaps the leading, role in this trend.”

It’s not only animals that are at risk. Researchers believe that the western drought killed 12 million trees in California’s forests, and estimated 58 million are so dry they’ve reached the brink of death, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. A study released that last month predicted that climate change would cause massive die-offs of the American southwest’s coniferous trees, like junipers and pinon pines, within the next half century.

Not every die-off of the past year can be blamed on climate change. Two “unusual mortality events” involving endangered Guadelupe fur seals — which were being stranded at eight times the normal rate on California’s central coast — and large whales in Alaska — where scientists have found the decomposing carcasses of more than 30 unlucky animals — have been loosely linked to that weird warm “blob” out in the Pacific. And the causes of other incidents — the recent whale stranding in India, for example — remain undetermined. Typically mass stranding6s are linked to toxic algae blooms, disease and trauma, and changes to the animals’ habitat, marine mammal expert Darlene Ketten told Scientific American in 2009.

In many ways, die-offs are an inevitable aspect of life on Earth. The ebb and flow of species’ success is part of the background noise of existence that drives evolution. Populations have risen and declined long before humans existed. They’re likely to continue to do so long after we’re gone.

But a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year suggests that the number of animal die-offs has gotten worse in recent years. And the researchers weren’t talking about small scale problems like the murres deaths or even the saiga die-offs either. They looked at more than 700 mass mortality events in which either 90 percent of the species was wiped out, more than a billion individuals were killed or 700 million tons (nearly 2,000 Empire State Buildings) worth of biomatter was destroyed.

What they found was not heartening. Mass Mortality Events (MMEs) are “rarely placed in a broader context,” the study’s authors reported. But they seem to be happening at an increased rate for birds, marine invertebrates and fish since the 1940s — even when researchers took into account that such events are more likely to be reported now than they were 75 years ago.

These die-offs matter not just because of the inherent value of the creatures involved, the authors said, but because whole ecosystems may depend on that species to survive.

MMEs, they wrote, “can reshape the ecological and evolutionary trajectories of life on Earth.”

Links

• Mysterious mass deaths of Alaskan birds baffles scientists
• Earth is on brink of a sixth mass extinction, scientists say, and it’s humans’ fault