The Small African Region With More Refugees Than All Of Europe

The Guardian - Patrick Kingsley

Hunger follows displaced people around north-east Nigeria, as Boko Haram and climate change drive millions from their homes

Women and children queue outside a Unicef nutrition clinic in a makeshift settlement in Muna, Maiduguri, which is home to thousands of IDPs. Photograph: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty

As Ali Kawu eases his handcart to a halt on a recent morning in north-east Nigeria, it is the first time he has dared to stop walking in more than 24 hours.
A day earlier, at 8am, Boko Haram militants raided his village. Kawu, 25, escaped with what he could – his wife, their three children, and kindling for a fire. They left behind their papers, six sacks of beans, up to 15 dead neighbours, and 10 kidnapped villagers. Then they walked all day and all night.

Ali Kawu, 25, fled to the town on Monguno after being attacked by Boko Haram. The number of displaced people in this small town is comparable to the number who left north Africa for Europe so far this year. Photograph: Patrick Kingsley for the Guardian

“Every minute I would look back to see if they were following us,” Kawu says, shortly after reaching the safety of Monguno, a town recaptured from Boko Haram last year. “Walking forward, looking back, walking forward, looking back. I thought it was the end of my life.”
But safety doesn’t mean comfort. Kawu is just the latest of approximately 140,000 displaced people sheltering in this remote town of 60,000 people. North-east Nigeria has been hit by a displacement crisis that dwarfs any migration flows seen in Europe in recent years.
Since the Boko Haram insurgency began, more people have migrated to Monguno alone than left all of north Africa for Europe in the first nine months of this year.

More Africans displaced in one Nigerian town than left for Europe this year

One upshot is a food crisis that the UN warns might see hundreds of thousands die from famine next year.
About 40% more people have been displaced throughout Borno state (1.4 million) than reached Europe by boat in 2015 (1 million). Across the region, the war against Boko Haram has forced more people from their homes – 2.6 million – than there are Syrians in Turkey, the country that hosts more refugees than any other.
The comparisons mirror a wider trend across Africa. Of the world’s 17 million displaced Africans, 93.7% remain inside the continent, and just 3.3% have reached Europe, according to UN data supplied privately to the Guardian.
“No matter how many problems Europeans have, it’s nothing like this,” summarises Modu Amsami, the informal leader of Monguno’s nine camps for internally displaced people (IDP), as he strolls past Kawu’s newly erected hut. “Please, I’m appealing to Europeans to forget their minor problems. Let them come here and face our major problems.”

Barely 3% of African refugees are in Europe

For 18 months, Monguno endured its migration crisis largely alone. Amsami is an IDP but decided to run Monguno’s nine camps himself in the absence of any government officials. It was not until this June, a year and a half after the Nigerian army retook the town from Boko Haram, that aid groups and civil servants felt safe to return.
“We were shaken by what we saw,” says Mathieu Kinde, an aid worker with Alima, a medical NGO that was the first to arrive. Many people were starving, having been cut off from their farmland. There was a polio outbreak – Nigeria’s first case in two years. Just one government doctor was left in the town.
To this day, the townspeople cannot farm their fields – Boko Haram remains too close to the town’s perimeter. Aid convoys from Maiduguri, the state capital, risk ambush. Most food can arrive only by helicopter, which is how the Guardian reached the town. The number of people in a famine-like state has been slightly reduced, but every week Alima treats up to 200 new cases of malnutrition. “The situation remains alarming,” says Kinde.
About 68 miles (110km) to the south, Maiduguri seems calmer. It remains under curfew but the roads into the city are largely secure, the streets are clean and its nightlife is reportedly experiencing a tentative revival. But if you know where to look, it is a city under extreme pressure.
More than 600,000 IDPs have migrated to this city of just 1.1 million during peacetime over the past three years, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). About a quarter have been put up in half-built schools, or in housing projects intended for teachers and civil servants. The rest have been taken in by friends and relatives.

The government in Maiduguri has installed 13,000 IDPs in a housing estate originally meant for civil servants. Photograph: Patrick Kingsley for the Guardian

“It’s an amazing story,” says Toby Lanzer, the UN’s assistant secretary general for the Sahel and the Lake Chad region. According to Lanzer, the local community has in effect said: “We built that as a school, but you [IDPs can] have it. And we built that as a new neighbourhood, but we will put you lot in it. How’s that for generosity, Europe?”
But that generosity has come at a price, says the governor of Borno state, the province where the majority of the fighting and displacement has taken place. Unemployment in Maiduguri has exceeded 50% since the start of the crisis, says the governor, Kashim Shettima, while more beggars gather at the major road junctions because the IDPs have few means of alternative income.
“Health facilities are at breaking point,” he says. “All resources have become overstretched. We ask all people of conscience to help.”
Across the region, about 65,000 people are suffering from famine-like conditions. Inside a makeshift clinic run by Médecins Sans Frontières in a Maiduguri suburb, you can find some of the most dire cases. On bed after bed, about 100 skeletal babies and toddlers stare vacantly into space. Many have plastic nodules stuck to their skull, to allow the nurses to attach them to a drip. Many children are so thin their scalp is the only place a visible vein can be found.
“Getting food became so difficult after my husband was killed [by Boko Haram],” says one mother, whose malnourished three-year-old lies motionless on the bed beside her. “I would beg every day but I wouldn’t get more than 100 naira [25p] a day. And that’s how he got hungry.”

A mother feeds her malnourished child at a nutrition clinic run by Médicins Sans Frontières in Maiduguri. Thousands of children have died of starvation and disease in Boko Haram-ravaged north-eastern Nigeria. Photograph: Sunday Alamba/AP

The international community has largely failed to help: UN funding is still 61% ($297m) short of its target. Local residents have stepped in where they can. Babakara al-Kali, a Maiduguri businessman, has given a plot of land to about 3,000 IDPs – forgoing the 10m naira (£25,000) he previously charged construction workers and mechanics to rent it every year. “If you help someone, God will help you,” Kali says. “So I decided to help them.”
Still, the conditions inside this makeshift camp are abject. Streams of slurry trickle through the site. A family mourns a child who died yesterday of hunger. Two elderly men have become blind in recent days and the camp’s elders blame the lack of food. Some residents spend their mornings collecting spilt grain at the local market; in the afternoons, they sift through them piece by piece, sorting the edible grains from the rotten ones.
“We have lost count of the number of people killed by hunger,” says Bulama Modusalim, the camp’s informal leader.
Aside from their physical problems, many of the IDPs across the region are suffering from psychological trauma. Almost every interviewee tells a story of being woken at dawn by gunfire, of emerging from their huts to find Boko Haram fighters killing their neighbours or kidnapping their relatives.

Ali Falfami, 73, had his hand removed after being shot by Boko Haram fighters. Photograph: Patrick Kingsley for the Guardian

Ali Falfami, 73, has a missing hand; it was amputated after being shot by Boko Haram. Karu Modu, 28, has a missing son – he was shot by the militants – and a missing husband: they slit his throat. Modu survived because she agreed to watch their murder. “They forced me to watch them die so that I would not be slaughtered,” she says, before breaking down in tears.
Modu was then kidnapped and held for nearly two years. After escaping with a group of fellow captives, six of their children died of thirst as they trekked to the safety of Maiduguri. On arrival, they were initially ostracised. People feared the women had become indoctrinated during their time with the extremists, and were wary of talking to or even sitting with the returnees.

Karu Modu, 28, was kidnapped and held by Boko Haram for two years. Photograph: Patrick Kingsley for the Guardian

These are not isolated experiences. The #BringBackOurGirls campaign has focused on the group of schoolgirls kidnapped from Chibok in 2014 – but away from the media spotlight, thousands of others are believed to have also been abducted in other incidents. At one point, Boko Haram controlled an area the size of Belgium and killed an estimated 20,000 people. Now the group is in retreat, but millions more still face food shortages.
“The narrative of this deepening humanitarian crisis in north-east Nigeria has been largely overlooked by the media, whose focus remains on the kidnapping of roughly 300 Chibok school girls,” says Orla Fagan, a spokesperson for UN’s office for coordination of humanitarian affairs.
“Each one of the girls who remains captivity is a minuscule representation of the millions of Nigerians who now face starvation across the north-east as a result of Boko Haram violence. They are some of the poorest, most vulnerable members of society, who also continue to struggle for their basic needs to survive each and every day.”
Many of them are being encouraged to return home where they face uncertain futures. The Nigerian army has retaken several key towns from the insurgents, and the government wants their former residents to go back to what they say are now safe areas. But the reality is more complex: the roads in and out are often still contested, as are the fields surrounding the towns. Many buildings lie in ruins and, as a result, returnees are often forced to live in IDP camps even after they have nominally reached their hometown.

Bulama Modusalim is the informal leader of a makeshift camp for IDPs displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency in north-east Nigeria. Photograph: Patrick Kingsley for the Guardian

Bulama Modusalim, the leader of the informal camp in Maiduguri, took a group of villagers back to Konduga in August, after the government assured them it was safe. “But when we went back we found that Boko Haram was still [in the surrounding area],” says Modusalim. “We went back and we found our houses were destroyed. We couldn’t go further than 1km from the town, so we couldn’t farm.”
Eventually, the situation became so desperate that they went back to Maiduguri, despite the poverty they knew they would face there. In a choice between war and starvation, they would rather risk the latter.
Amid all this misery, Boko Haram is the most obvious explanation for what has gone wrong. Nearly everyone is running from the jihadis who still control significant parts of the Lake Chad basin. But what led to the group’s rise in the first place? Local leaders say the group was initially able to present its fighters as victims of police brutality – and more generally positioned Boko Haram as a radical alternative to the high levels of regional poverty and unemployment.

Between 1963 and 2005, the surface area of Lake Chad decreased from approximately 25,000 km2 to 1,350 km2

But according to several interviewees, including the local governor, this social alienation was partly fuelled by rapid climate change. North-east Nigeria borders Lake Chad, a vast inland lake that supplies water to about 70 million people in four countries – Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger. But since the 1970s, it has shrunk by 90% – from 25,000km² to less than 2,500km². And those who live near its former shores say this shrinkage is one indirect cause of violence in the region, and the subsequent displacement.
Modu Amsami, the IDP who runs the nine camps in Monguno, comes from the village of Gumnari, which was once just 2km from the lake. Now it’s 18km away.
“In the 70s, you could put this tree in the lake,” Amsami says, pointing at a nearby tree, “and you wouldn’t even see it. Now if I walked in there, the water wouldn’t even reach my chest.”
As a child, Amsami’s father would tie him to a tree to stop him entering the lake and being eaten by crocodiles. Today there would be no need. The water is nowhere in sight and it’s difficult to even see a crocodile.

Modu Amsami stands next to a tree that he says would once have been submerged by Lake Chad. Now the waters would not reach his shoulders, he says. Photograph: Patrick Kingsley for the Guardian

All this has led to unemployment for thousands of fishermen and farmers – including several people from Amsami’s family. He reckons this worsened living conditions, created a wave of unemployed and disaffected youth – and so helped fuel the anger and resentment that created Boko Haram. “If the Lake Chad water was normal,” says Amsami, “all these problems [with Boko Haram] would be eliminated economically, because nobody would have time to do all these things.”
According to the IOM, few of the roughly 35,000 Nigerians who have in Europe this year are fleeing from the insurgency in the north-east. But the west would be wise to take the Lake Chad crisis seriously, lest the millions seeking sanctuary in the region decide to move towards Europe. Lanzer says he is “willing to bet a month’s salary that the proportion of people who will arrive in Europe from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and via Niger will grow substantially”.
Shettima speaks in even starker terms: “As long as the underlying problems that precipitate the crisis are not met, then there is a risk that more Nigerians will try to go to Europe.
“At the moment, most of them are economic migrants, but if this madness is not solved, believe me you will see a mass of humanity trying to get to Europe via the Mediterranean.”

Links

• Southern Africa cries for help as El Niño and climate change savage maize harvest
• The 13 impossible crises that humanity now faces
• Hurricanes become more costly
• The new climate change story must be one of rapid transition
• Is this the beginning of the end for coal?

Carmichael Mine Jumps Another Legal Hurdle, But Litigants Are Making Headway

The Conversation - Justine Bell-James

Environmental activists rallied at Queensland’s state parliament in April. AAP Image/Nathan Paull

The Carmichael coal mine planned for Queensland’s Galilee Basin has cleared another legal hurdle, with the state’s Supreme Court dismissing a legal challenge to the validity of the Queensland government’s decision to approve the project.
The court found in favour of the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, ruling that its approval of Indian firm Adani’s proposal was within the rules.
The decision is another setback for environmentalists’ bid to stop the controversial project. But Adani does not yet have a green light to break ground on the project, and legal questions still remain, both about this project and about climate change litigation more generally.

The Supreme Court ruling
It is important to note that this was a judicial review proceeding – a narrow type of review in which the court is not permitted to consider whether or not the decision to approve the mine was “correct”. The court could only rule on whether correct procedures were followed, while accepting that the decision was at the government’s discretion.
Within this already narrow context, the argument on which the legal challenge hinged was even more constrained. It was brought by an environmental campaign group called Land Services of Coast and Country (LSCC), and was focused on a particular point of Queensland environmental law.
Queensland’s Environmental Protection Act 1994 requires that decisions are made in accordance with the Act’s objective, which is to deliver “ecologically sustainable developent”. LSCC argued that the government failed to do this in approving the coalmine.
The Supreme Court disagreed, finding that the government had considered all matters that it were obliged to consider. So in this respect, the Supreme Court’s decision is an endorsement of the process, but not necessarily the ultimate decision.

Is this the final hurdle overcome for Adani?
In short, no. The decision can be referred to Queensland’s Court of Appeal. There is also ongoing litigation against Adani in the Federal Court of Australia under federal environmental and native title laws. There are also some approvals yet to be obtained by Adani, including a groundwater licence.

Is this ruling a rejection of climate change arguments against the coal mine?
No. This case dealt specifically with the question of whether the Queensland government had complied with a particular aspect of the law. The Supreme Court did not (and was not able to) address the potential climate change impacts of the proposed mine.
These climate issues were addressed more fully by Queensland’s Land Court in the case of Adani Mining Pty Ltd v Land Services of Coast and Country Inc & Ors (2015) QLC 48.
Importantly, the Land Court in this case accepted the scientific basis for climate change, and agreed that “scope 3 emissions” (that is, the emissions produced when the coal is burned overseas) are indeed a relevant consideration in whether or not to approve the mine.
However, Adani successfully used a “market substitution” defence, arguing that if the mine is refused, coal would simply be mined elsewhere and burned regardless.

What does this case say about climate change litigation more generally?
The latest judgement was handed down amid a series of fresh attacks on the rights of environmental groups to use Australia’s environmental laws to hold companies and governments to account. Federal Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has raised concerns about “activists … seeking to frustrate” projects with “vexatious litigation”, while Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has revived plans to amend federal environmental legislation so as to restrict standing to apply for judicial review – the so-called “lawfare” amendments.
In the wake of the new ruling, the head of the Queensland Resources Council has criticised the delays caused by litigation against mining projects.
This begs the question: is climate change litigation “vexatious”? A close analysis of Queensland court decisions would suggest the opposite. Climate change issues have been considered in a series of three key Queensland Land Court cases: Wandoan Mine in 2012, Alpha Coal Project in 2014, and the Carmichael Mine (Adani) in 2015.
The Alpha Coal matter has proceeded to the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, and leave has been sought to appeal to the High Court of Australia. Importantly, none of these cases has been dismissed as vexatious; each resulted in a lengthy judgement analysing the complex legal issues raised by the objector.
Furthermore, although objectors have not yet succeeded in stopping a mining project on the basis of climate concerns, they have nevertheless made modest strides. Most recently, President McMurdo of Queensland’s Court of Appeal found that the Land Court must consider scope 3 emissions in deciding whether a mine should be granted environmental approval. This represents significant progress, given that climate science was questioned by Queensland Courts less than ten years ago.
The only significant barrier remaining to a successful climate change case is the market substitution defence, which will be considered by the High Court if special leave is granted in the Alpha Coal matter.
Climate change litigation has also clarified other environmental and economic impacts. In the Carmichael Mine case, it was discovered that the mine site was a critical habitat for the endangered black-throated finch – evidence that was not previously available. The Land Court ordered strict conditions aimed at protecting this species. The litigation also served to clarify the significantly overstated economic benefits of the mine – particularly Adani’s estimate that it would generate more than 10,000 jobs. It was revealed in court that this figure was more likely to be 1,206 jobs in Queensland, as part of a total of 1,464 jobs in Australia.

Where to for climate change litigation?
Although the latest judgement is another setback for environmental groups, it is part of a bigger body of case law that is making real and discernible progress in ensuring that climate change is considered by decision-makers and courts.
Given that several courts have agreed on the validity of climate litigants’ arguments, it seems perverse for the federal government to try and restrict environmental groups’ right to continue raising these concerns.

Links

• Queensland’s Environmental Protection Act 1994
• Adani Mining Pty Ltd v Land Services of Coast and Country Inc & Ors (2015) QLC 48
• Turnbull wants to change Australia’s environment act - here’s what we stand to lose
• Brandis’ changes to environmental laws will defang the watchdogs
• Court challenge will test coal mining’s climate culpability
• Australia’s coal politics are undermining democratic and Indigenous rights
• Greg Hunt approves Adani’s Carmichael coal mine, again: experts respond
• There’s no precedent for stopping the Carmichael coal mine, but we should

Captain Cook's Detailed 1778 Records Confirm Global Warming Today In The Arctic

Phys.org - Sandi Doughton, The Seattle Times

Mosaic of images of the Arctic by MODIS. Credit: NASA

Passengers simmered in Jacuzzis and feasted on gourmet cuisine this summer as the 850-foot cruise ship Crystal Serenity moved through the Northwest Passage.
But in the summer of 1778, when Capt. James Cook tried to find a Western entrance to the route, his men toiled on frost-slicked decks and complained about having to supplement dwindling rations with walrus meat.
The British expedition was halted north of the Bering Strait by "ice which was as compact as a wall and seemed to be 10 or 12 feet high at least," according to the captain's journal. Cook's ships followed the ice edge all the way to Siberia in their futile search for an opening, sometimes guided through fog by the braying of the unpalatable creatures the crew called Sea Horses.
More than two centuries later, scientists are mining meticulous records kept by Cook and his crew for a new perspective on the warming that has opened the Arctic in a way the 18th century explorer could never have imagined.
Working with maps and logs from Cook's voyage and other historical records and satellite imagery, University of Washington mathematician Harry Stern has tracked changes in ice cover in the Chukchi Sea, between Alaska and Russia, over nearly 240 years.
The results, published this month in the journal Polar Geography, confirm the significant shrinkage of the summer ice cap and shed new light on the timing of the transformation. The analysis also extends the historical picture back nearly 75 years, building on previous work with ships' records from the 1850s.
"This old data helps us look at what conditions were like before we started global warming, and what the natural variability was," said Jim Overland, a Seattle-based oceanographer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who was not involved in Stern's project.
Though earlier explorers ventured into the frigid waters off Alaska, Cook was the first to map the ice edge, Stern said. Cook undertook the voyage, which also covered the Northwest coast, on orders from King George III to seek a shorter trading route between Europe and the Far East across the top of the world.
Stymied by the ice, Cook headed for the winter to Hawaii, where he was killed by native people.
Stern's analysis found that for more than 200 years after Cook's visit the summer ice cover in the Chukchi Sea fluctuated, but generally extended south to near where Cook encountered it.
"Basically, from the time of Cook until the 1990s, you more or less could count on hitting the ice somewhere around 70 degrees north in August," Stern said. "Now the ice edge is hundreds of miles farther north."
That meshes with modern observations that confirm rapid shrinkage of the Arctic ice pack over the past three decades, Overland said. The total volume of ice in summer is now 60 to 70 percent lower than it was in the 1980s, while Arctic temperatures have increased at twice the rate of the rest of the planet as a result of rising greenhouse-gas levels.
"That's probably the largest indicator that global warming is a real phenomenon," Overland said.
With more melting in the summer and delayed freezing in the fall, the once-elusive Northwest Passage is now navigable for private yachts and vessels like the Crystal Serenity, which made the 7,300-mile trip from Alaska to New York in 32 days. The transformation has also triggered a rush to drill for oil in previously ice-choked watersm and an international power struggle over control of the route and resources.
The tensions are similar to those in Cook's day, Stern pointed out. Nations then were eager to find and claim a Northwest Passage, while whalers and fur traders scrambled to exploit the newly opened frontier.
But the data from Cook and other explorers show there were no similar warm periods in their times, said UW climatologist Kevin Wood. "It tells you that what's happening now is a fairly unique and extreme case."
Wood helps run a project called Old Weather, which relies on citizen scientists to transcribe and digitize old ship's logs. Since the effort began five years ago, thousands of volunteers have processed 1 million handwritten pages from whalers, fishing vessels and U.S. revenue cutters.
The data are being used to re-create past weather patterns and improve climate models.
Historical ice measurements are especially valuable, Wood said, because existing models don't seem to do a good job of forecasting ice cover.
While models predict the Arctic won't be ice-free in summer until 2050 or later, the current pace of change suggests it will happen much sooner.
Cook's ice observations are also of interest to historians.
David Nicandri, former director of the Washington State Historical Society, is finishing a book in which he argues that Cook - who is usually associated with Hawaii and Tahiti - was the original polar scientist.
Cook also explored southern polar waters, searching for a rumored continent. Though he never found Antarctica, the experience led Cook to question the conventional wisdom of the time that held that oceans couldn't freeze and that sea ice originated in rivers.
"Cook never fully got it right, but he realized there was too much ice to have flowed out of any set of rivers," said Nicandri, who was also co-editor of a series of essays entitled "Arctic Ambitions: Captain Cook and the Northwest Passage" where some of Stern's analysis was originally published.
Cook also described different types of sea ice and suggested that thick walls and ridges, like those he saw in the Arctic, must represent multiple years of accumulation.
"He's never given credit for his pioneering work in polar climatology," Nicandri said.

Links

• Overheated Arctic sign of climate change 'vicious circle'
• Volunteers use historic US ship logbooks to uncover Arctic climate data
• New study reveals when West Antarctica's largest glacier started retreating
• Study sheds new insights into global warming 'hiatus'
• Citizen-science climate project adds logs from historic Arctic whaling ships

'Remarkable Year': What's Behind The Record Low Sea Ice In Antarctica

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

It was in early August this year when Phil Reid, a climatologist with the Bureau of Meteorology, first noticed something odd happening to the ice around Antarctica.
An area of ice had started to melt in the eastern Weddell Sea even though the region was still in darkness and air temperatures below freezing.

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.

Confirmed later as a rare sighting of the Weddell polynya – as such melts are known – abnormal sea ice activity began showing up in other regions off the southern continent.
Having set records for area covered by sea ice just over two years ago, the ice has rapidly retreated since late August to set new marks for record-low coverage for this time of year.
"It's been a pretty remarkable year," Dr Reid said, adding sea ice now totalled about 12.8 million square kilometres, or more than 2 million below average for November. (See chart, with the red line showing the departure from the 1979-2015 norm.)

  This year will certainly go down as a stunning one for polar ice. In the Arctic, sea ice growth in the lead-up to winter stalled at record low levels in November amid temperatures 20 degrees above normal that  some commentators described as "insane" and a clarion call of global warming.
With less ice to reflect the sun's radiation to space, more heat is absorbed by the oceans, added to the warming.

Polynya appears
But in Antarctica, the relative lack of instruments and complexity added by the continent mean it could be a while before scientists get a clear view of why sea ice extent bounced from record highs to lows so rapidly.
The Weddell polynya indicates there were unusually warm waters beneath, but researchers won't know for sure until they can retrieve and analyse data from floats, Dr Reid said.
Some extreme weather, which also brought in warmer air from the north, may have helped corral the thinning ice into smaller areas. "That atmospheric pattern exacerbated the regions of lower-than-normal sea ice," he said.

Sea ice off West Antarctica, as viewed from NASA Operation IceBridge. Photo: Mario Tama, Getty Images

Mark Brandon, a polar oceanographer and blogger at the UK's Open University, said the ice was noticeably compacting in three areas – the Ross Sea, the Cosmonauts Sea, and in the Bellingshausen and Weddell seas.
(See tweet map of ice for August 5, 2016 below. Blue shades imply an increased sea ice extent compared with a five-year mean for 1989-93, with reds implying a decreased sea ice extent.)

IMAGE

Dr  Brandon said that the increased mobility of the ice implies there is less of it, so volume has probably dropped too.
"We have no long-term wide geographical ranging measurements of sea ice thickness in the Antarctic that are comparable to what we have in the Arctic," he said. "For various technical reasons we don't have [satellite data] – yet – either.
"But with the evidence in the Weddell Sea I would be surprised if the volume is constant given the pack is not being compressed against the coast," he said.
Dr Brandon also posted this animation on Twitter showing the sea ice changes over time:

Ice loss spread around
For John Turner, variability climatologist at the British Antarctic Survey, the sea ice anomalies as of November 22 were spread around most of the continent, and so are not merely the result of compaction. (See chart below of the region compared with the average over 2005-15.)

A gauge of the relative strength of the westerly winds that circumnavigate Antarctic – known as the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) – had also turned negative in November.
That means higher-than-usual pressure over the continent and lower pressure at mid-latitudes, a set-up conducive to a hot, dry start to summer, the bureau said this week.
"It's well known that a negative SAM is associated with less sea ice, so it seems likely that this has played a part in the decrease of ice during November," Dr Turner said.
The bureau's Dr Reid said the big El Nino in the Pacific – rated third strongest during the satellite era – was also a factor in making sea ice behaviour down south a more complicated tale than at the North Pole.
"The recent decrease of sea ice is well documented as associated with climate change but there's more uncertainty about the role [of global warming] in the Antarctic," he said.

Links

• The North Pole is an insane 20C warmer than normal as winter descends
• 'Nowhere on earth safe' from climate change as survival challenge grows
• NASA chief slaps down climate sceptic Malcolm Roberts
• 'Time to act': Damage to Great Barrier Reef worse than thought, surveys find

'Time To Act': Damage To Great Barrier Reef Worse Than Thought, Surveys Find

Fairfax - Adam Morton

The government agency responsible for the Great Barrier Reef says urgent action is needed to save the world heritage site after yet-to-be-published surveys found the record coral bleaching damage earlier this year was even worse than initially thought.
A Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority director also says it appears unlikely that national targets to improve water quality on the reef - currently assessed as poor in areas close to the coast - would be met.

The reef diving industry
John Edmondson from Wavelength Reef Cruises talks about what coral bleaching means for the diving industry.

Authority director for reef recovery David Wachenfeld​ said pressures on the reef were increasing, particularly due to global warming, but that the reef could be returned to health through concerted effort by industry, the community and governments.
"People need to be determined. This is the time to act to save the Great Barrier Reef," he said.
While reef surveys are yet to be completed, Dr Wachenfeld said the rate of coral death following bleaching due to high ocean temperatures last summer would be greater than the initial estimate of 22 per cent.
"Essentially, this is confirming that this is the worst bleaching event that the reef has seen by a very, very long way," he said.
The bleaching was not uniform. Inner and middle shelf reefs north of Port Douglas were badly affected, but southern reefs were barely touched after the tail-end of cyclone Winston reduced temperatures in February.
Dr Wachenfeld, a trained coral reef ecologist, said the damage was unquestionably linked to climate change.

A diver at Opal Reef, off Port Douglas. Photo: Jason South

"It just re-emphasises ... the absolutely critical need for us to implement the climate agreement that was reached in Paris a year ago," he said.
Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg​ met with his Queensland counterpart Steven Miles on Friday to finalise an update to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre on progress in improving the reef's health.

Coral bleaching at Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef. Photo: Climate Council

The United Nations body last year decided against listing the reef as "world heritage in danger", and gave the government five years to halt its deteriorating health. The Australian government is due to update the centre by December 1.
The ministers announced $45 million funding to reduce gully erosion, which dumps sediment into rivers that empty on to the reef.

Plate coral on the Great Barrier Reef. Photo: Jason South

Mr  Frydenberg said the governments were "only getting started" on improving the plight of the reef, and that climate change was a factor. But he said Australia was doing its part under the Paris deal by setting a target to cut emissions by 26-28 per cent emissions by 2030.
"I'm very confident with the mechanisms we have in place that, despite that bleaching event, the Barrier Reef will continue to remain strong, healthy, resilient for future generations of Australians," he said.

Divers looking at fish and coral life on the Great Barrier Reef. Photo: Jason South

Mr  Frydenberg said the coral death due to bleaching followed a 19 per cent increase in cover in recent years.
But Terry Hughes, head of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said the minister appeared to have misinterpreted a report by the Australian Institute of Marine Science that found there had been a 3.2 per cent increase in coral before the bleaching event.
In the north, the area worst hit, the coral cover had actually declined by 4.8 per cent before being affected by bleaching.
Professor Hughes said the most likely scenario was that the next serious bleaching event would be in about five years, when climate change combined with the next El Nino event to inflate Pacific Ocean temperatures.
"We could be lucky and it could be later, or it could be sooner," he said. "By 2030, under business as usual emissions, we could see annual bleaching events."
Dr Wachenfeld said the reef remained one of the best protected marine ecosystems in the world and was "very, very far from dead". But it would be dramatically changed under projections based on existing climate pledges of 2.8 degrees global warming this century.
"At that temperature it doesn't look anything like it does today," he said. "There will be very little coral left, it will have lost a lot of its biodiversity and, in particular, it will have lost its value to people."
Poor water quality, largely due to agricultural run-off, is considered the second biggest threat facing the reef. Estimates of the cost of addressing it range from $8.2 billion to $10 billion.
Dr Wachenfeld said governments and farmers started working on improving water quality 13 years ago and should be proud of their early progress, but results had tailed off.
"We still haven't met the targets that we set ourselves and on our current trajectory it doesn't look like we will," he said. "And some of the progress on reducing pollutants has kind of flatlined."
Targets include a 50 per cent cut in nitrogen run-off from fertiliser use by 2018, increasing to 80 per cent by 2025. Nitrogen is linked to outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish, which feed on coral.
A government report card released last month based on 2015 data found the inner reef area was in poor condition.
An analysis by environment groups under the banner Fight for the Reef found Australia had made progress on some of its commitments to UNESCO - banning sea-dumping of industrial dredge spoil and limiting port development - but had fallen behind on others.
They said the country risked being called back before the World Heritage Committee next year unless it did more to stop tree clearing, improve water pollution and lifted its response to climate change.
Legislation to reduce tree clearing recently failed to pass the Queensland Parliament after being blocked by the Liberal National Party and crossbenchers.

Links

• Enough PR spin: we need a real plan for the Reef
• And yes, the sky really is falling because of climate change
• Northern Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching damage worse: scientists
• Queensland's Great Barrier Beer pours funds into helping the reef

Peruvian Farmer Sues German Energy Firm RWE

Deutsche Welle

A court case brought by a Peruvian farmer against energy firm RWE started today in Germany. Melting glaciers are threatening his home and city. The causes are climate change and RWE's huge carbon emissions, he alleges.

A Peruvian farmer and mountain guide is suing German energy firm RWE, alleging its contribution to climate change is threatening his home, in a trial which began today in the District Court of Essen, Germany.
Saúl Lliuya hails from Huaraz, a city located in the Andean Mountains in western Peru, and says his family and a large part of the city are facing catastrophic flooding as global warming melts a nearby glacier.
As a result, water levels in the mountain lake above the city are increasing, meaning that his family home could be swept away by a 30-meter high flood wave. "It's a time bomb," said lawyer Roda Verheyen.
RWE's coal power emissions contribute to around 0.5 percent of global climate change, so the company should have to pay around half a percent of the measures required for protecting Lliyua's home and the area, alleges the plaintiff, who is being supported by environmental organization, GermanWatch.

The glacial lake above the city of Huaraz. Melting and collapsing glaciers are threatening a flooding catastrophe

RWE rejects claims 
The 36-year-old father of three is calling on RWE to take on financial responsibility for the damage. In concrete terms, the farmer is asking the court to rule that RWE must bear the cost of future safeguards in accordance with its share of CO2 emissions.
Safeguards include decreasing water levels in the glacial lake to lessen the risk of flooding. Lliyua is calling for a contribution of 17,000 euros ($18,000) for the municipality to undertake such work, as well as 6,300 euros ($6,700) for protective works already undertaken on his own house.
RWE says the case is groundless and has no legal basis. The alleged danger of flooding has not been sufficiently demonstrated and there is no direct link connecting CO2 emissions to the danger of flooding, says the company.
Furthermore, emitting CO2 in this case is not illegal as RWE has authorization under carbon emissions trading laws, adds the energy giant. RWE states the case is also unwarranted because climate change is a global problem that has to be solved on a state and international level. That means individual companies should not be held responsible.

Success on the horizon? 

Small farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya at his home. Today a court in the German city of Essen will begin hearing his case against RWE

From a legal standpoint, a victory for the plaintiff seems unlikely. Similar cases have failed in the past on account of a lack of evidence showing the defendant is specifically responsible for possible damages.
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a case brought by the city of Kivalina in Alaska against ExxonMobil. The plaintiffs believed the oil company should pay damages, alleging it was partly responsible for rising sea levels and the threat of flooding.
Still, Lliyua's David and Goliath fight is happening at a time when many states are increasingly taking a critical view of the use of fossil fuels. During the climate conference in Paris a year ago and the latest summit in Marrakech in November, the vast majority of delegates agreed that the world should move away from coal, oil and gas.
The court will make an announcement in December. The case is attracting considerable public interest, as it could set a precedent in Europe. It is the first time a German civil court has been asked to rule on whether a company contributing to climate change can be held responsible for costs relating to it.

Links

• Washington State Youth Sue Government Over Climate Change
• Climate Lawsuit Awaits President Trump
• Company Directors To Face Penalties For Ignoring Climate Change
• US Court Says Animals Can Be Listed As Threatened If Climate Change Poses A Risk

Trump Or NASA – Who’s Really Politicising Climate Science?

The Conversation - John Cook

NASA has a long history of conducting climate science. Here, a NASA camera captures a storm over South Australia. NASA

Climate research conducted at NASA had been “heavily politicised”, said Robert Walker, a senior adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump.
This has led him to recommend stripping funding for climate research at NASA.
Walker’s claim comes with a great deal of irony. Over the past few decades, climate science has indeed become heavily politicised. But it is ideological partisans cut from the same cloth as Walker who engineered such a polarised situation.
Believe it or not, climate change used to be a bipartisan issue. In 1988, Republican George H.W. Bush pledged to “fight the greenhouse effect with the White House effect”.
Since those idealistic days when conservatives and liberals marched hand-in-hand towards a safer climate future, the level of public discourse has deteriorated.
Surveys of the US public over the past few decades show Democrats and Republicans growing further apart in their attitudes and beliefs about climate change.
For example, when asked whether most scientists agree on global warming, perceived consensus among Democrats has steadily increased over the last two decades. In contrast, perceived consensus among Republicans has been in stasis at around 50%.

Polarisation of perceived consensus among Republicans and Democrats. Dunlap et al. (2016)

How is it that party affiliation has become such a strong driver of people’s views about scientific topics?
In the early 1990s, conservative think-tanks sprang to life on this issue. These are organisations promoting conservative ideals such as unregulated free markets and limited government.
Their goal was to delay government regulation of polluting industries such as fossil fuel companies. Their main tactic was to cast doubt on climate science.
Using a constant stream of books, newspaper editorials and media appearances, they generated a glut of misinformation about climate science and scientists.
The conservative think-tanks were assisted by corporate funding from the fossil fuel industry – a partnership that Naomi Oreskes poetically describes as an “unholy alliance”.
Over the past few decades, conservative organisations that receive corporate funding have grown much more prolific in publishing polarising misinformation compared to groups that didn’t receive corporate funding.

Politicising the scientific consensus
Robert Walker also brought up the topic of agreement among climatologists. The scientific consensus on human-caused global warming is a topic I’ve been rather heavily involved in over the past few years.
In 2013, I was part of a team that analysed 21 years worth of peer-reviewed climate papers. We found that among papers stating a position on human-caused global warming, 97% endorsed the consensus.
Our 97% consensus paper has been incessantly critiqued by Republican senators, right-wing think-tanks, Republican congressmen and contrarian blogs promoting a conservative agenda (eagle-eyed readers might detect a pattern here).
This led us to publish a follow-up paper summarising the many different studies into consensus. A number of surveys and analyses independently found around 90% to 100% scientific agreement on human-caused global warming, with multiple studies converging on 97% consensus.

Summary of consensus studies. Skeptical Science

Raising doubt about the scientific consensus has been an integral part of the conservative strategy to polarise climate change. A clear articulation of this strategy came from an infamous memo drafted by Republican strategist Frank Luntz. He recommended that Republicans win the public debate about climate change by casting doubt on the scientific consensus:

Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming in the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.

Conservatives dutifully heeded the market-research-driven recommendations from Luntz. One of the most common arguments against climate change in conservative opinion pieces has been “there is no consensus”.
Their persistence has paid off. There continues to be a huge gap between public perception of consensus and the actual 97% consensus among climate scientists (although new data indicates the consensus gap is closing).
In the following graph, taken from my own research into public perceptions of consensus, the horizontal axis is a measure of political ideology, with liberals to the left and conservatives to the right.
The slope in the curve visualises the polarisation of climate perceptions. While perceived consensus is lower for more conservative groups, there is a significant gap between perceived consensus and the 97% reality even among liberals.
This “liberal consensus gap” has two contributing factors: a lack of awareness of the 97% consensus, or the impact of misinformation.

The consensus gap: the divide between public perception of consensus and the 97% consensus. Skeptical Science

This data, consistent with Riley Dunlap’s polarisation data mentioned at the start of this article, indicates that many conservatives think the consensus is around 50%. This matches what Walker claimed to The Guardian:

Walker, however, claimed that doubt over the role of human activity in climate change “is a view shared by half the climatologists in the world”.

Given the multitude of studies finding consensus between 90% and 100%, where does this 50% figure come from? Further clues come from an interview on Canadian radio where Walker again claims that only half of climatologists agree that humans are causing global warming.
The source for Walker’s consensus figure seems to be the National Association of Scholars, a conservative group that lists “multiculturalism”, “diversity” and “sustainability” in academia as sources of concerns. A press release on the group’s website includes the following excerpt:

S. Fred Singer said in an interview with the National Association of Scholars (NAS) that “the number of sceptical qualified scientists has been growing steadily; I would guess it is about 40% now”.

Multiple studies have measured the consensus among climatologists by diverse methods including examining their papers, looking at their public statements, and simply asking them.
But Walker doesn’t appear to be interested in evidence. Instead, he seems to be relying on an unsupported guess by retired physicist S. Fred Singer.
It’s telling that Walker cites conservative sources in his efforts to manufacture doubt about the scientific consensus. If there is any politicising of science going on, it appears to be by Walker, not by the scientists.

Links

• Broad consensus on climate change across American states
• It’s true: 97% of research papers say climate change is happening
• Please, Donald Trump, don’t send climate science back to the pre-satellite era
• Consensus confirmed: over 90% of climate scientists believe we’re causing global warming