12/11/2016

Quentin Bryce In High-Powered Group Calling For Coal Power To Be Phased Out

The Guardian - Katharine Murphy

Former governor general joins academics and business leaders urging Turnbull government to decarbonise energy market
Quentin Bryce is calling for an expansion of the national renewable energy target as part of the decarbonisation of the market. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP
The former governor general Quentin Bryce is part of a high-powered group of academics, business leaders, financiers and energy providers urging the Turnbull government to extend and expand the national renewable energy target and create a market mechanism to govern an orderly phase out of coal-fired power in Australia.
Representatives of the group came to Canberra on Monday to meet the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, armed with an eight-point plan to drive a sequenced decarbonisation of the national energy market.
The intervention follows weeks of political attacks by the Turnbull government on state-based renewable energy schemes and the government's continuing refusal to say whether it will use a planned review of its Direct Action policy next year to overhaul an emissions reduction framework experts say is woefully inadequate.
The leadership forum on energy transition, led by the Australian Conservation Foundation and hosted by the University of New South Wales, has used the resumption of parliament to call on the Turnbull government to establish national rules, policies, regulations, markets and a basis for investment to drive an orderly transition away from coal-fired power.
As a first step, the group says the government needs to update Australia's national electricity objective "to include a clear goal to accelerate Australia's energy transition towards net zero emissions before 2050, to fulfil our domestic policy objectives and international commitments".
It says the government should consider creating an emissions intensity standard to govern the regulated closure of highly emissions intensive power stations and legislate a market mechanism that would allow a rational sequence of closures, where the dirtiest power stations close first.
It says an alternative to a market mechanism would be an age-based regulation that tightens over time, ensuring the oldest coal-fired power stations closed first.
The group is also calling on the government to extend and expand the large-scale element of the renewable energy target scheme beyond 2020 and introduce economy-wide complementary laws, such as a carbon price, to make companies pay for their pollution.
As well as calling for a rational policy framework to ensure Australia complies with its Paris emissions reduction targets, and investors are given the policy certainty they need to bring on low-emissions technologies, the eight-point plan also emphasises the importance of transitional assistance for coal communities and help for low-income earners by way of compensation for higher power prices.
The group is chaired by Ian Jacobs, the vice chancellor of UNSW, and includes Geoff Cousins, the president of the ACF, Bryce, Jillian Broadbent, the chairwoman of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, David Thodey, the chairman of the CSIRO, financier Mark Burrows, company director and sustainability adviser Sam Mostyn and Martijn Wilder, lawyer and the chairman of the Australian renewable energy agency.
The intervention is part of positioning by a number of stakeholders ahead of the Direct Action review in 2017, and it runs in parallel to a review being led by the chief scientist, Alan Finkel, of the national energy market, for state and federal energy ministers. It also follows confirmation last Thursday that the Hazelwood coal-fired power station in Victoria's Latrobe valley will close next March.
The Finkel review was preceded by a pitched political battle between the Turnbull government, which launched a rhetorical assault on state-based renewable energy targets after a statewide power blackout in South Australia in September, and state governments, who argue the commonwealth will not be able to meet its international emissions reduction targets without the state RETs.
The South Australian government has signalled it will use the framework of the Finkel review to argue for an emissions intensity scheme for the electricity sector – a form of carbon trading.
A coalition of major business and energy users have already urged federal and state governments to work cooperatively to map out a strategic response to the decarbonisation challenge and have warned investment is at risk.

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11/11/2016

Climate Change May Be Escalating So Fast It Could Be 'Game Over', Scientists Warn

The Independent - Ian Johnston

New research suggests the Earth's climate could be more sensitive to greenhouse gases than thought, raising the spectre of an 'apocalyptic side of bad' temperature rise of more than 7C within a lifetime
If the Earth's temperature rises seven degrees Celsius, it could trigger the kind of runaway global warming that may have turned Venus from a habitable planet into a 460C version of hell
It is a vision of a future so apocalyptic that it is hard to even imagine.
But, if leading scientists writing in one of the most respected academic journals are right, planet Earth could be on course for global warming of more than seven degrees Celsius within a lifetime.
And that, according to one of the world’s most renowned climatologists, could be “game over” – particularly given the imminent presence of climate change denier Donald Trump in the White House.

'Dangerous' climate change could arrive as early as 2050

Scientists have long tried to work out how the climate will react over the coming decades to the greenhouse gases humans are pumping into the atmosphere.
According to the current best estimate, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), if humans carry on with a “business as usual” approach using large amounts of fossil fuels, the Earth’s average temperature will rise by between 2.6 and 4.8 degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
However new research by an international team of experts who looked into how the Earth’s climate has reacted over nearly 800,000 years warns this could be a major under-estimate.
Because, they believe, the climate is more sensitive to greenhouse gases when it is warmer.
A reconstruction of the Earth's global mean temperature over the last 784,000 years, on the left of the graph, followed by a projection to 2100 based on new calculations of the climate's sensitivity to greenhouse gases (Friedrich, et al. (2016))
In  a paper in the journal Science Advances, they said the actual range could be between 4.78C to 7.36C by 2100, based on one set of calculations.
Some have dismissed the idea that the world would continue to burn fossil fuels despite obvious global warming, but emissions are still increasing despite a 1C rise in average thermometer readings since the 1880s.
And US President-elect Donald Trump has said he will rip up America’s commitments to the fight against climate change.
Professor Michael Mann, of Penn State University in the US, who led research that produced the famous “hockey stick” graph showing how humans were dramatically increasing the Earth’s temperature, told The Independent the new paper appeared "sound and the conclusions quite defensible".
“And it does indeed provide support for the notion that a Donald Trump presidency could be game over for the climate,” he wrote in an email.
“By ‘game over for the climate’, I mean game over for stabilizing warming below dangerous (ie greater than 2C) levels.
“If Trump makes good on his promises, and the US pulls out of the Paris [climate] treaty, it is difficult to see a path forward to keeping warming below those levels.”
Greenpeace UK said the new research was further evidence that urgent action was needed.
Dr Doug Parr, the environmental campaign group’s chief scientist, said: “The worrying thing is the suggestion climate sensitivity is higher [than thought] is not incompatible with higher temperatures we have been seeing this year.
“If there is science backing that up, that there’s a higher sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse gases, that puts at risk the prospect of keeping the globe at the Paris target of well below 2C.
“Anybody who understands the situation we find ourselves in would have already have realised we are in an emergency situation.”
Dr Tobias Friedrich, one of the authors of the paper, said: “Our results imply that the Earth’s sensitivity to variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide increases as the climate warms.
“Currently, our planet is in a warm phase – an interglacial period – and the associated increased climate sensitivity needs to be taken into account for future projections of warming induced by human activities.
“The only way out is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible.”
Dr Andrey Ganopolski, who was involved in the research and on the IPCC’s latest report, admitted their work was controversial with some scientists disagreeing and others agreeing with their findings.
“In our field of science, you cannot be definite by 100 per cent. There are always uncertainties and we discuss this in the paper,” he said.
“If we have more and more results of this sort, then we have more reasons to be concerned.”
Dr Ganopolski, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, suggested their findings meant it would be harder to prevent the world entering dangerous global warming of 2C or above.
“Our results mean it is not impossible to stay within 2C but it probably – if we are right and climate sensitivity is higher than this – would require even strong cuts in carbon emissions,” he said.
“Whether it’s feasible politically … I believe it is feasible technically.
“It would be really good to stay below 1.5C or close to that, whether it’s feasible I’m probably a bit sceptical about that.”
Commenting on the paper, Professor Eric Wolff, of Cambridge University, said using data from the past was a “powerful way of understanding the climate”.

Professor Brian Cox clashes with Australian climate sceptic

But he noted the authors had used different ways of estimating average global temperature, some of which had produced “a lower range of values”.
“The estimates of temperature in this paper are subject to large uncertainties, and therefore the range of estimates for 2100 is also very wide,” Professor Wolff said.
“Still, it's encouraging that it overlaps with model estimates and confirms that the emission reductions promised in Paris are essential to avoid unacceptable climate changes."
Mark Lynas laid out what would happen as the temperature rises in his award-winning book, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet.
He was shocked by the researchers’ results.
“It sounds on the apocalyptic side of bad and, in some ways, it is realistic because ‘business as usual’ just got more likely as Trump wants to rebuild the pipelines … the complete ‘fossilisation’ of the US,” he said.
“It was game over at six [degrees] to be honest. I don’t think there was much more to add, other than turning the planet into Venus.”
Nasa recently said Venus may once have been habitable before runaway global warming turned the planet into its current version of hell with temperatures of more than 460C, almost no water and an atmosphere of mainly carbon dioxide with clouds of sulphuric acid.

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What It Would Really Mean If Trump Pulls The U.S. Out Of The Paris Climate Agreement

Washington Post - Chris Mooney

President-elect Donald Trump pumps his fist after giving his acceptance speech as his wife Melania Trump, right, and their son Barron Trump follow him during his election night rally in New York. (AP Photo/John Locher)
After Tuesday's U.S. election upset, climate change watchers and wonks are scrambling to assess what it would really mean if Donald Trump, true to his word, ditches or simply fails to participate in the Paris climate change agreement (which he could do through a variety of mechanisms). And it does indeed appear that the consequences for international diplomacy, and for the planet, would be considerable.
At the center of the U.S.'s role in that agreement is its ambitious pledge to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below their 2005 levels by the year 2025. Presumably, under Trump, we'd no longer see such significant cuts. Indeed, given Trump's campaign trail talk about firing up the domestic coal, oil, and gas industries, we might even see our emissions increase.

Donald Trump will enter the White House with an environmental policy agenda opposed to that of the Obama administration and many other nations that have pledged support to the Paris climate agreement. The Washington Post's Chris Mooney breaks down what a Donald Trump presidency will mean when it comes to climate change. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post) So what would it mean if the U.S. doesn't hit its Paris target, for whatever reason, due to actions taken (or not taken) under Trump?
According to an analysis shared with the Post by the D.C.-based think tank Climate Interactive (based in part on this analysis here), the effect is actually quite substantial. That's because a large percentage of the full emissions cuts produced by the Paris agreement come directly from the U.S.'s individual promise to take domestic action, said Andrew Jones, co-director of the group.
"Pulling out of the Paris agreement matters not just in leadership, but also in a direct impact on the climate," Jones said.
More specifically, Jones explained, Climate Interactive's analysis finds that the U.S. pledge amounts to the avoidance of 22 gigatons, or billion tons, of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions between the years 2016 and 2030. But all of the pledges, by all of the countries, only amount to the avoidance of a little over 100 gigatons. Thus, the U.S.accounts for around 20 percent of the total, which is not surprising, given the size of the country and the fact that it is the world's second largest emitter after China.
So what effect would that have on the Paris agreement as a whole? Noticing that one fifth of its emissions cuts have vanished, Jones said, "I think the rest of the world would be less likely to take action on their own part, and do their own share."
Granted, it is far from certain that a President Trump will be as hostile to the Paris accord as he sounded on the campaign trail — he will have to forge relationships with all these countries that want him to participate in global climate action.
"Governing is different than campaigning," said David Sandalow, a fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. "The Trump team is about to confront that.  Following through on some of his campaign climate statements would come at a cost in terms of his administration's foreign policy objectives."
Sandalow added that the U.S. dropping out of the Paris process could be a boon to its other biggest participant in terms of its emissions — China.
"If the U.S. withdraws from the Paris Agreement, that would create a strategic opportunity for China," Sandalow said. "It would gain credibility globally by sticking with its climate plans even as the U.S. withdraws, helping the Chinese government advance its objectives on a range of topics."
Meanwhile, it's not just that Donald Trump's victory has upended the move towards global climate action — and will likely set the stage for reversal of Obama climate and energy policies at home as well.
The November 8 election also saw the defeat of an initiative in Washington State that would have imposed the nation's first revenue-neutral carbon tax, assessing a $25-per-ton fee on carbon dioxide emitted in the electricity, transportation, and other sectors and then using that revenue to reduce the state sales tax.
Initiative 732, as it was called, actually saw considerable resistance from the environmental left, which felt that revenues from such a measure should be used to advance other social causes, rather than be returned to taxpayers. By the end, a strange bedfellow allegiance had arisen in which some on the left had effectively joined forces with some fossil fuel interests to oppose the carbon tax, even as many climate scientists and economists supported it.
The tough politics hurt the measure even in Washington state's populous and very liberal King County, the home to Seattle, where the initiative barely won a majority. In contrast, King voted for Hillary Clinton by 73.9 percent. Statewide, 58.1 percent of Washington voters ultimately said "no" to the carbon tax initiative.
To be sure, in the context of the bombshell election and its broader negative implications for international climate action, the loss in Washington hardly felt significant.
"In the scheme of things it doesn't really count for much, and I would say that even if it had won, because we're in for many years of backsliding on climate at a time when we really had to ramp it up," said Charles Komanoff, director of the Carbon Tax Center.

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Turnbull Government, Ignoring Trump Election, Proceeds With Paris Climate Agreement Ratification

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The Turnbull government has ratified the Paris climate agreement, formalising Australia's commitment to a global effort to curb carbon emissions and reduce the risk of dangerous climate change.
The move comes less than a day after US voters elected Donald Trump, a sceptic of climate science, to become the next president. The US is the world's second-highest carbon-dioxide emitter after China.
Climate change policy was a key difference between US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Photo: Charlie Riedel
The ratification also comes just before Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg head to Marrakech, Morocco, where a global meeting is taking place to work on the implementation of the Paris agreement.
"Almost a year from the Paris Conference, it is clear the agreement was a watershed, a turning point," Malcolm Turnbull told a media conference. "The adoption of a comprehensive strategy has galvanised the international community and spurred on global action."
The government's target of cutting 2005-level emissions 26-28 per cent by 2030 now becomes a global commitment, that "we look forward to actively and fully implementing", he said.
Australia joins more than 100 nations to ratify the global deal agreed last December in Paris.The accord, which aims to stop global temperatures rising more than 2 degrees above pre-industrial times, came into force last Friday. Temperatures have risen about one degree in the past century as CO2 levels have climbed.

Trump cloud
A cloud, however, hangs over the agreement with the Trump election. The Republican candidate and much of his party have vowed to overturn the climate policies of incumbent Barack Obama when the administration changes in January.

The state of our climate in 2016
Australia is already experiencing an increase in extreme conditions from climate change - and it's projected to get worse.

President Obama had made the US commitment to Paris an executive decision, and so is one that his successor could reverse.
Under the Paris agreement, any country signing up cannot exit within three years and must then wait another year before formally renouncing it - although a President Trump may find a faster departure route.
Hazelwood, Australia's dirtiest power station, will close next March. Photo: Eddie Jim
Australia's ratification will bring some cheer to climate negotiators in Morocco, many of whom were stunned by the US election of a climate-denying president.
One European delegate told Fairfax Media that some had become upset as the results rolled in on Wednesday.
"Shock. Terrible. Some were in tears," said the delegate, describing the reaction. "Many - like me - were blocking it out and seeking refuge in sarcasm."
Malte Mainshausen, director of Melbourne University's Climate & Energy College, said it may be best for the Paris agreement if the US withdraws given Mr Trump's anti-climate stance.
"While likely detrimental to the geopolitical interests of the US itself, that would open the door for the club of the willing to move forward...rather than being held up on that common journey by a destructive voice from within," Professor Mainshausen said.
"If Australia plays its cards correctly, it could still manage to grab the opportunity of becoming the energy superpower in a zero carbon world now that the US seems to have temporarily abandoned that contest."

'Important signal'
Erwin Jackson, deputy chief executive of The Climate Institute, said Australia's move "sends an important international signal" that nations would stick by their climate pledges.
Investors and the wider community in Australia would also take some heart the government was staying its course, he said.
"China's not going to stop decarbonising, [billionaire] Elon Musk is not going to stop building his giga-battery factory," Mr Jackson said.
Frank Jotzo, deputy director of the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, said ratification would give Australia a stronger position in the climate talks in Morocco.
"The Paris Agreement has entered into force, so part of the Marrakech meeting serves as a meeting of the parties to the agreement, Australia can now be part of that," Professor Jotzo said.
"The day after Donald Trump's election, it sends a signal that one of the United States' strongest allies remains committed to the UN climate change process," he said.

'Direct threat'
Ms Bishop also stressed the importance economic opportunities from carbon curbs.
"The global low-emissions economy is estimated to be worth around $6 trillion and is growing at some 4-5 per cent per annum," she said. "We believe, through the use of technology and research and science and innovation, there will be many opportunities for Australian businesses."
"Australia has a strong track record on international emissions reduction targets. We beat our first Kyoto target by 128 million tonnes and are on track to meet and beat our second Kyoto 2020 target by 78 million tonnes."
Mark Butler, Labor's climate spokesman, welcomed the ratification but noted Australia's commitment is not yet backed with policies, citing research by the Climate Action Tracker.
"The Turnbull Government has no policy for renewable energy investment post 2020, which is also crucial to meet our Paris obligations," Mr Butler said. "As the ACTU has also pointed out, nor does the Government have a plan for a Just Transition to a clean energy economy, as the Paris Agreement calls for."
Adam Bandt, the Greens climate change spokesman, also applauded the government's move.
"The Trump presidency is a direct threat to the Australian way of life as it makes it harder to stop runaway global warming," Mr Bandt said.
He noted President-elect Trump reportedly plans to appoint Myron Ebell, a prominent climate change denier, to head the US Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has been a key conduit of President Obama's climate policies.
"Trump has started a climate war in the United States and if he carries out his threats, there will be a rise in civil disobedience as people start taking direct action to stop new gas and oil developments in particular."

'Vital step'
Simon Bradshaw, Oxfam Australia's climate change adviser, said the government now had to introduce policies so the promised targets could be achieved.
"While ratification is a vital step and should be celebrated, the government is yet to do the math on what the agreement means for Australia and the scale of action we must take if we're to do our part and help avoid a much more dangerous future," Dr Bradshaw said.
The ratification, though, was not without its critics.
Prior to Thursday's announcement, One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts took to social media to call for the government to drop its plans:
IMAGE

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10/11/2016

Global 'Greening' Has Slowed Rise Of CO2 In The Atmosphere, Study Finds

The Guardian - 

Increased growth of plants fertilised by higher CO2 levels is only partly offsetting emissions and will not halt dangerous warming, scientists conclude
Natural vegetation absorbs about a quarter of the carbon emissions created by burning fossil fuels. Photograph: Kuni Takahashi/Getty Images
A global “greening” of the planet has significantly slowed the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the start of the century, according to new research.
More plants have been growing due to higher CO2 levels in the air and warming temperatures that cut the CO2 emitted by plants via respiration. The effects led the proportion of annual carbon emissions remaining in the air to fall from about 50% to 40% in the last decade.
However, this greening is only offsetting a small amount of the billions of tonnes of CO2 emitted from fossil fuel burning and other human activities and will not halt dangerous global warming. “Unfortunately, this increase is nowhere near enough to stop climate change,” said Dr Trevor Keenan, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US, who led the new work.
The absolute level of CO2 in the atmosphere is continuing to rise, breaking the milestone of 400 parts per million (ppm) in 2015, and rising temperatures continue to surpass records.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) warned on Tuesday that 2011-15 was the hottest five-year period ever recorded and that climate change had increased the risk of half of extreme weather events, with some heatwaves made 10 times more likely by global warming.
The new study on global greening is published in Nature Communications by an international team of scientists who concluded cutting carbon emissions remains vital to preventing severe climate change.
“Enhanced carbon uptake by the biosphere to date has slowed the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 and our results [suggest] uptake has been especially strong recently,” they wrote. “Without effective reduction of global CO2 emissions, however, future climate change remains a stark reality.”
Prof Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre at the University of East Anglia, who was not part of the new research, said: “Natural vegetation is a fantastic help in slowing down climate change by absorbing about a quarter of our carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.
“Fundamentally though, this help is not enough to stop the planet warming – far from it – carbon emissions have to drop to almost zero to stop global warming.”
The scientists used extensive land, air and satellite data to assess how carbon uptake by plants has changed over recent decades and used modelling to help untangle the different factors underlying the changes. It has been unclear whether the fertilisation effect of higher CO2 levels for plants is outweighed by the harm caused to them by warming and droughts.
The researchers found that between 1960 and 2000 the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere was increasing every year, but that after 2000 the rate slowed to about the same increase every year. They found that the main factor was the higher CO2 levels, which were just 290ppm at the start of the last century, compared to 400ppm today.
Another factor was the slower rate of global temperature increase after 2000, the so-called “pause” during which more of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases went into the oceans than the air. This meant the increasing respiration of plants driven by rising heat was curbed, trapping more carbon.
Prof Chris Rapley, at University College London, said: “The researchers make it clear that this effect is almost certainly temporary. The ‘greening’ effect of CO2 will ultimately be overwhelmed by the plants’ own respiration and decay, which will cause even more CO2 to be released.”
The research also shows the importance of preserving forests and other ecosystems that absorb carbon, said Prof Dave Reay, at the University of Edinburgh: “The land and oceans have been bailing us out of dangerous climate change for decades. Unless key carbon sinks such as forests are better protected, the delicate green veil that has saved our worst climate blushes will be in tatters.”
The WMO submitted its new report to the UN climate change summit taking place in Morocco. “We just had the hottest five-year period on record, with 2015 claiming the title of hottest individual year. Even that record is likely to be beaten in 2016,” said WMO secretary-general, Petteri Taalas.
“The effects of climate change have been consistently visible on the global scale since the 1980s: rising global temperature, both over land and in the ocean; sea-level rise; and the widespread melting of ice,” he said. “It has increased the risks of extreme events such as heatwaves, drought, record rainfall and damaging floods.”

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Radical Overhaul Needed To Halt Earth’s Sixth Great Extinction Event

The Conversation -  | 

The great grey owl is imperiled by intensive logging of northern-hemisphere forests. Copyright Ondrej Prosicky/Shutterstock.
Life has existed on Earth for roughly 3.7 billion years. During that time we know of five mass extinction events — dramatic episodes when many, if not most, life forms vanished in a geological heartbeat. The most recent of these was the global calamity that claimed the dinosaurs and myriad other species around 66 million years ago.
Growing numbers of scientists have asserted that our planet might soon see a sixth massive extinction — one driven by the escalating impacts of humanity. Others, such as the Swedish economist Bjørn Lomborg, have characterised such claims as ill-informed fearmongering.
We argue emphatically that the jury is in and the debate is over: Earth’s sixth great extinction has arrived.

Collapse of biodiversity
Mass extinctions involve a catastrophic loss of biodiversity, but what many people fail to appreciate is just what “biodiversity” means. A shorthand way of talking about biodiversity is simply to count species. For instance, if a species goes extinct without being replaced, then we are losing biodiversity.
But there’s much more to biodiversity than just species. Within each species there usually are substantial amounts of genetic, demographic, behavioural and geographic variation. Much of this variation involves adaptations to local environmental conditions, increasing the biological fitness of the individual organism and its population.
Natural variation within two species of sea snails. Upper row: Littorina sitkana. Lower row: Littorina obtusata. Copyright David Reid/Ray Society.
And there’s also an enormous amount of biodiversity that involves interactions among different species and their physical environment.
Many plants rely on animals for pollination and seed dispersal. Competing species adapt to one another, as do predators and their prey. Pathogens and their hosts also interact and evolve together, sometimes with remarkable speed, whereas our internal digestive systems host trillions of helpful, benign or malicious microbes.
Hence, ecosystems themselves are a mélange of different species that are continually competing, combating, cooperating, hiding, fooling, cheating, robbing and consuming one another in a mind-boggling variety of ways.
All of this, then, is biodiversity - from genes to ecosystems and everything in between.

The modern extinction spasm
No matter how you measure it, a mass extinction has arrived. A 2015 study that one of us (Ehrlich) coauthored used conservative assumptions to estimate the natural, or background rate of species extinctions for various groups of vertebrates. The study then compared these background rates to the pace of species losses since the beginning of the 20th century.
Cumulative vertebrate species extinctions since 1500 compared to the ‘background’ rate of species losses. G. Ceballos et al. (2015) Scientific Advances.
Even assuming conservatively high background rates, species have been disappearing far faster than before. Since 1900, reptiles are vanishing 24 times faster, birds 34 times faster, mammals and fishes about 55 times faster, and amphibians 100 times faster than they have in the past.
For all vertebrate groups together, the average rate of species loss is 53 times higher than the background rate.

Extinction filters
To make matters worse, these modern extinctions ignore the many human-caused species losses before 1900. It has been estimated, for instance, that Polynesians wiped out around 1,800 species of endemic island birds as they colonised the Pacific over the past two millennia.
And long before then, early human hunter-gatherers drove a blitzkrieg of species extinctions — especially of megafauna such as mastodons, moas, elephant birds and giant ground sloths — as they migrated from Africa to the other continents.
In Australia, for instance, the arrival of humans at least 50,000 years ago was soon followed by the disappearance of massive goannas and pythons, predatory kangaroos, the marsupial “lion”, and the hippo-sized Diprotodon among others.
Changes in climate could have contributed, but humans with their hunting and fires were almost certainly the death knell for many of these species.
As a result of these pre-1900 extinctions, most ecosystems worldwide went through an “extinction filter”: the most vulnerable species vanished, leaving relatively more resilient or less conspicuous species behind.
Giant ground sloths such as this elephant-sized Megatherium vanished soon after humans arrived in the New World. Copyright Catmando.
And it’s the loss of these survivors that we are seeing now. The tally of all species driven to extinction by humans from prehistory to today would be far greater than many people realise.

Vanishing populations
The sixth great extinction is playing out in other ways too, especially in the widespread annihilation of millions (perhaps billions) of animal and plant populations. Just as species can go extinct, so can their individual populations, reducing both the genetic diversity and long-term survival prospects of the species.
For example, the Asian two-horned rhinoceros once ranged widely across Southeast Asia and Indochina. Today it survives only in tiny pockets comprising perhaps 3% of its original geographic range.
Three-quarters of the world’s largest carnivores, including big cats, bears, otters and wolves, are declining in number. Half of these species have lost at least 50% of their former range.
Likewise, except in certain wilderness areas, populations of large, long-lived trees are falling dramatically in abundance.
WWF’s 2016 Living Planet Report summarises long-term trends in over 14,000 populations of more than 3,700 vertebrate species. Its conclusion: in just the last four decades, the population sizes of monitored mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have shrunk by an average of 58% worldwide.
And as populations of many species collapse, their crucial ecological functions decline with them, potentially creating ripple effects that can alter entire ecosystems.
Hence, disappearing species can cease to play an ecological role long before they actually go extinct.
Once a widespread and dominating predator, the tiger today is vanishingly rare across most of its former range. Copyright Matt Gibson
Paying the extinction debt
Everything we know about conservation biology tells us that species whose populations are in freefall are increasingly vulnerable to extinction.
Extinctions rarely happen instantly, but the conspiracy of declining numbers, population fragmentation, inbreeding and reduced genetic variation can lead to a fatal “extinction vortex”. In this sense, our planet is currently accumulating a large extinction debt that must eventually be paid.
And we’re not just talking about losing cute animals; human civilisation relies on biodiversity for its very existence. The plants, animals and microorganisms with which we share the Earth supply us with vital ecosystem services. These include regulating the climate, supplying clean water, limiting floods, running nutrient cycles essential to agriculture and forestry, controlling serious crop pests and carriers of diseases, and providing beauty, spiritual and recreational benefits.
Are we preaching doom? Far from it. What we’re saying, however, is that life on Earth is ultimately a zero-sum game. Humans cannot keep growing in number and consuming ever more land, water and natural resources and expect all to be well.
Limiting harmful climate change has become a catchphrase for battling such maladies. But solutions to the modern extinction crisis must go well beyond this.
We also have to move urgently to slow human population growth, reduce overconsumption and overhunting, save remaining wilderness areas, expand and better protect our nature reserves, invest in conserving critically endangered species, and vote for leaders who make these issues a priority.
Without decisive action, we are likely to hack off vital limbs of the tree of life that could take millions of years to recover.
The Slow Loris, a primitive primate, is a denizen of intact rainforests in southern Asia. Copyright hkhtt hj
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‘Critical Moment’ as UN Climate Talks Resume

Climate Central - 

Leaders of nations overwhelmed by fallouts from wars and ravaged by political divisions are gathering in western Morocco, where they will attempt during the next two weeks to unite around a cooperative new approach to easing the worsening ravages of global warming.
Ahead of the first major United Nations climate negotiations since an aspirational agreement was struck in Paris last December, the world’s greatest greenhouse gas polluters, China and the U.S., have signaled that they will continue to try to lead the world toward ambitious climate action following decades of inaction.
The meetings in Marrakesh began Monday amid uncertainty over the direction of the U.S. after its election on Tuesday. The presidential candidates hold polar views on the importance of slowing climate change. Like President Obama, Democrat Hillary Clinton is supportive of the Paris climate agreement; Republican Donald Trump is derisive.
Senior U.N. climate officials at the opening ceremony of a new round of United Nations climate talks. Credit: UNFCCC/flickr
“The Paris Agreement was a turning point in terms of setting in place a framework, an international framework for action,” John Morton, director for energy and climate change at the National Security Council, a White House body, told reporters last week. “We intend to really intensify our work in turning toward implementation.”
Even as Tuesday’s election rattles climate negotiators, China and the U.S. have been doubling down on their growing commitments to fighting climate change. China has announced a new goal for easing its dependence on fossil fuels by 2020. During the Marrakesh meetings, the U.S. will publish ideas for eliminating most of the carbon pollution from its economy by 2050.
“We’re at an unprecedented stage in climate negotiations,” Morton said. “2016 has been a truly historic year for international climate action.”
Following a week of networking and low-level talks, senior government officials will begin four days of high-level negotiations on Nov. 15. They will haggle over rules about the information governments should share about progress toward reducing climate impacts. The Paris agreement features non-binding national climate pledges, and rules will be considered for improving those pledges over time. Timelines and bookkeeping rules will be drafted.
Poor and developing countries will pressure those nations that got rich by burning fossil fuels to make good on their promises of helping them meet costs of deploying solar and wind energy and adapting to climate change’s impacts.
Since 2009, Western governments have been pledging the “mobilizing” of $100 billion a year in climate financing by 2020 for poorer nations, though the Paris agreement failed to lay out rules for ensuring those promises are kept.
“The money that was promised is only being delivered in a trickle,” said Saleem Huq, a climate change fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development, a group based in London that promotes sustainable development. “We need to open the spigots in Marrakesh.”
The meetings are being held near the end of what will be the third consecutive year of record-breaking heat worldwide. Rising temperatures from greenhouse gases are powering typhoons and hurricanes, and stoking wildfires across the American West.
Amid the heat, corals are bleaching and dying through the tropics. Rising seas are killing forests and flooding roads and neighborhoods along the East and Gulf coasts. Heat waves are killing more people and reshaping ecosystems.
These riverside trees in coastal New Jersey were killed by the effects of rising seas. Credit: Ted Blanco/Climate Central
The Paris agreement was swiftly ratified by governments as temperatures continued to rise this year, and as prices for clean energy continued to fall. The agreement legally took effect on Friday, surprising climate negotiators and campaigners accustomed to slower progress on climate diplomacy. It formally covers greenhouse gas pollution released during the 2020s.
“The success of the Paris agreement depends on its effective implementation, and that’s where the focus is turning now,” said Elliot Diringer of the American nonprofit Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. “We’re entering a new phase that isn’t quite as exciting, but is just as critical.”
The Paris agreement involves nearly 200 countries, but it was largely fostered through climate agreements struck between the U.S and China in 2014 and 2015. Those countries are the world’s greatest climate polluters, but they had previously been reluctant to tackle warming. That left Europe and vulnerable countries toiling for years as lonely champions of an insipid quest to protect the climate.
“We’re at a critical moment, in the sense that we finally have all countries on board committing to do their best,” Diringer said. “Now we need to make sure we put in place the rules to hold them to that.”
After a 1997 U.N. climate agreement failed to slow warming, and after a round of climate talks collapsed in 2009, American diplomats began urging their counterparts abroad to abandon long-running efforts to force countries to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. Instead, governments are now unifying around an untested voluntary approach to reducing pollution, with non-binding pledges underpinning the pact agreed upon in Paris.
The Marrakesh talks will test that global unity at a time when unity in much of the world seems fragile and elusive.
“U.S. standing in the world will be bruised by the U.S. election, no matter who wins; Britain’s ability to lead will be undermined by Brexit,” said University of California, San Diego international relations professor David Victor.
“To some degree, the world is always being rocked by events,” Victor said. “That’s one reason why climate change is such a hard topic to address. It’s the quintessential long-term problem, and most of politics is about managing quintessential short-term problems and crises.”
Determining success in Marrakesh will be difficult, with grunt work on rulemaking largely replacing the diplomatic showmanship that dominated the Paris talks last year.
“I don't see any major successes likely,” Victor said, warning of problems if divisions on financial issues or other vexing topics prevent decisions from being made. “That would be a big setback and would blood the waters with talk of the Paris agenda failing.”
Westerners angered by migration and trade are embracing nativist leaders and causes, just as years of climate diplomacy culminates in the makings of a cooperative strategy for tackling warming. The divisiveness defining America’s presidential election is echoing a brawl in the UK over a withdrawal from the European Union.
Wars are tearing up the Middle East, fueling a global refugee crisis. Turkey has been imprisoning teachers and journalists. The leader of the Philippines may break long-standing militaries ties with the U.S.
Climate change has played a substantial role in worsening wildfire seasons in the American West. Credit: Russ Allison Loar/flickr
Officials from China, France and Brazil have lashed out at Trump over his opposition to the Paris agreement. Amid condemnation of its atrocities in Syria and its invasion of Ukrainian territory, Russia, which promised nothing meaningful under its Paris climate pledge, has been accused of using espionage to help get Trump elected.
Against this backdrop, the climate talks could be an “oasis of civility,” said Harvard economics professor Robert Stavins, who heads the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements — “a temporary hiatus from the troubling issues that government officials and civil society are now confronting on a seemingly daily basis.”
If Trump is elected, or if the outcome of the presidential election remains in doubt, however, Stavins warned the talks would probably be held in a “depressed” state.
The Paris agreement aims to keep warming to “well below” 2°C (3.6F). The planet has already warmed nearly half that much since pre-Industrial times. In February and March it got so hot that the Paris agreement’s headier goal of preventing 1.5°C of warming was briefly blown, before global temperatures eased slightly, even as monthly temperature records continued to tumble through the summer and fall.
Carbon dioxide emissions may have finally stabilized on a year-to-year basis following decades of rapid growth, but they have plateaued at a dangerously high rate. A rapid decline in yearly emissions would be needed to achieve the Paris agreement’s goals, but there have been no robust signs of decline.
“It's quite possible, even likely, that emissions will rise further,” said Stanford professor Robert Jackson, a scientist with the Global Carbon Project, which tallies climate pollution. “I doubt we'll ever see sustained growth again the way we did for the past decade.”
Even if all countries meet the pledges they made under the Paris agreement, fossil fuel burning wouldn’t be phased out quickly enough to achieve the goals of the agreement. Rules will be debated in Marrakesh designed to hurriedly improve those national pledges, testing the world’s current appetite for aggressively tackling warming.
“The heart of the accord is the process it establishes to periodically review countries’ progress toward meeting their commitments, and to ratchet up ambition over time,” said Alex Hanafi, a climate expert with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. “The goal of the Marrakesh gathering is to maintain the strong momentum on climate action.”

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