King County Superior Court Judge Hollis Hill says young petitioners deserve 'their day in court' to protect their rights
Petitioner Gabe Mandell, centre, 14, addresses media members and
supporters as he stands with other children asking Seattle court to
force state officials to adopt new rules to limit carbon emissions. Elaine Thompson/AP
Eight Seattle children should have “their day in court” to argue that Washington State and others aren't protecting them from climate change, a judge ruled.
King County Superior Court Judge Hollis Hill allowed the
young petitioners to move ahead in their case against the state, writing
that “it is time for these youth to have the opportunity to address
their concerns in a court of law, concerns raised under statute and
under the state and federal constitutions.”
The petitioners, between 12 and 16 years old, had asked the
judge last month to find the state Department of Ecology in contempt for
failing to adequately protect them and future generations from global
warming.
The judge on Monday said Ecology had complied with her
orders by adopting the Clean Air Rule within the timeline set by the
court, and so denied the youth's request to find Ecology in contempt.
But the judge allowed the young people to amend their
complaint and move ahead with their constitutional claims “so as to have
their day in court,” she wrote.
“The Court takes this action due to the emergent need for
coordinated science based action by the State of Washington to address
climate change before efforts to do so are too costly and too late,”
Hill wrote.
The petitioners can now go to court and argue that the state
has violated their rights under the state constitution and the legal
principle called the public trust doctrine, which requires the
government to protect shared resources, said Andrea Rodgers, a Western
Environmental Law Center attorney representing the youth.
All of the policies that the state has implemented in
response to climate change are not resulting in emissions reductions
that comply with state law and science, she said.
Ecology spokeswoman Camille St. Onge said the state has
adopted one of nation's most progressive carbon pollution reduction
regulations and “will continue to do our part to help slow climate
change.”
The case is part of a larger effort led by the Oregon-based
nonprofit Our Children's Trust to force governments to take action on
climate change.
Last month, a federal judge in Eugene, Oregon, allowed a
similar climate change case against President Barack Obama's
administration to proceed. In that lawsuit, 21 activists ages 9 to 20
argue that the federal government's actions violate their constitutional
rights to life, liberty, and property, and the government has violated
its obligation to hold certain natural resources in trust for future
generations.
A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Kira Morris
The judge in Seattle noted that the youth argued in their
initial petition for a rule limiting greenhouse gas emissions based on
the best available science. A rule was adopted but, the judge wrote,
Ecology agreed that it isn't intended to meet the requirements of a
state law requiring specific reductions of greenhouse gas emissions over
the next decades.
The petitioners say governments must adopt science-based
prescriptions that protect the rights of young people and future
generations to a stable climate.
The judge said she would retain jurisdiction in the case.
Climate change has
become so severe and so obvious that geologists, who typically deal on
timescales of millions of years, have hastily named a new epoch: the Anthropocene. Earth’s human-made sixth mass extinction
has altered ecosystems even as other ecosystems have been more directly
wiped out. The world has been thrown into fast forward and the whiplash
will forever change how our planet functions.
It’s
important to reiterate that the fossil fuel consumption that causes
much of global warming is hardly the only thing throwing ecological
systems into disarray. Humans also cause trouble by cutting down forests
to make way for farms and cities, polluting air and water with toxic
chemicals, and hunting and fishing animals to the brink of extinction or
worse. Climate change is more than a CO2 PPM reading.
These
human-caused changes are nothing new — we’ve been sculpting ecosystems
for tens of thousands of years. But our population has grown so
significantly and so quickly while developing tools of unprecedented
power, that we’re altering the landscape at an outrageous speed. And
when ecosystems are lost, they stay lost. Whatever we build and however
we strategically reverse engineer livable spaces, what’s gone is gone.
Here’s what we’ll lose in 2017. Precisely 100 Feet of Alaska’s North Coast
Alaska has seen a dramatic rise in rates of coastal
erosion over the past few decades. Permafrost melt is destabilizing
land and increasing runoff, while diminished sea ice cover and warmer
water are stirring up larger storms that eat away at the shore. Along
the Beaufort Sea coast, erosion rates have been calculated at up to 100 feet per year, a staggering number when considered on a geologic timescale.
The consequences of this land loss are dire for flora and fauna, including Alaskans. Nearly 200 Alaska Native villages are affected
by sea level rise and erosion, and four are in imminent danger and need
to be relocated. The move has already begun in Newtok, Alaska, where
six homes have been built at a proposed new townsite. These communities
are mostly in limbo without funds to pay for needed relocations, but the
water and the moves will come regardless. The White Rhino and Thousands of Other Species
The global rate of species extinction is pretty hard to pin down, but estimates have put the current rate of extinction
at 100 to 1,000 times the background (non-human influenced) rate, and
the background rate at between 0.1 and one extinction per million
species every year. The total number of species on Earth is an unknown
figure, with estimates ranging as wide as
8.7 million and a trillion, but we know that the ratio of extant to
extinct is changing at an alarming rate. Charismatic megafauna — next
up, the White Rhino — are regularly drafted as poster species for
ecosystem collapse, but campaigns have not resulted in systemic
protections of any notable efficacy.
A very conservative estimate would suggest that
several hundred species will be wiped off the Earth in 2017, but the
real number (again, unknowable because many will never have been
“discovered) will be way higher. Almost all, if not all, will escape
unnoticed, before even being given a scientific name. Likely at least
one of the three remaining northern white rhinoceroses will make it
through the year, as they are guarded 24/7 by armed guards, though the
rhinos are possibly extinct already in the wild.
Climate change can’t be blamed for all of this — humans have had a role in the end of species
long before we mastered the art of turning fossil fuels into useful
energy. But add increasingly chaotic weather patterns to habitat loss,
pollution, and poaching, and you have a recipe for mass extinction. 1000 Square Miles of Surface Water
Recent research found that about 35,000 square miles of permanent surface water was lost
around the world over the past 32 years, a rate of more than 1,000
square miles each year. The cause of these losses was largely drought
and poorly managed withdrawals for agriculture and human uses. The study
also found that twice that much water surface area was added over the
same timeframe, from damning, reservoir filling, and increased glacier
melt and precipitation due to climate change. But the addition of water
reserves doesn’t simply balance out the losses in places that lack.
The Aral Sea, which lies on the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, has shrunk by 60 percent
in three decades. It used to be the fourth-largest lake in the world.
The water was diverted to turn desert into cropland, which was great for
a while until the water started running out. Now, the water that’s left
is salty and polluted with agricultural runoff. Contaminated dust from
the barren lakebed blows through the region, degrading soil and air
quality. The lake’s weather moderating effects have subsided, resulting
in hotter and drier summers and colder winters. 1,000,000,000,000 Square Feet of Arctic Ice
A recent study found a clear correlation
between the amount of greenhouse gas pumped into the atmosphere and the
loss of Arctic sea ice. For every metric tonne of Carbon dioxide humans
release, 32 square feet of ice is lost. Assuming world emissions stay
flat, in 2017 we’ll lose more than a trillion square feet of Arctic ice —
an area about the size of Indiana.
By these
calculations, we’ll see an Arctic that is seasonally completely ice free
by 2045, or maybe sooner. That hasn’t happened in at least 100,000
years. Polar bears will go hungry longer, and Arctic nations will
squabble over who has rights to prospect these newly open seas for
riches. An ice-free Arctic also contributes to further warming, since
open water absorbs more heat than white snow and ice. And a warmer
Arctic has consequences for the rest of the world, too — it has been
linked to more persistent weather patterns, which means more flooding
but also more drought.
World temperatures are likely to dip next year from a sizzling record
high in 2016, when man-made global warming was slightly boosted by a
natural El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean, scientists said on Tuesday.
It is still likely to be the third warmest since records began.
Greenhouse gases: not just a bunch of hot air From tracing the exact source of CO2 in our atmosphere to measuring the earth's "carbon budget", the scientists studying climate change know a lot more about the greenhouse effect than you might think.
The year-on-year decline will coincide with the first year of
Donald Trump's presidency. He has sometimes dismissed as a hoax the idea
that global warming is caused by human activity.
"Next year is
not likely to be a record but it will still be a very warm year,"
Professor Adam Scaife of the British Met Office told Reuters of a report
on Tuesday based on new computer data.
Scientists say 2017 will be the third hottest year on record. Photo: Dallas Kilponen
He said it would be wrong for anyone who doubts that climate change
is caused by humans to interpret the expected 2017 dip, prompted by the
end of El Nino, which released heat from the Pacific Ocean, as a sign of
an end to the long-term trend of global warming.
The Met Office
projected that 2017 was likely to be the third warmest year since
records began in the mid-19th century, behind 2016 and 2015.
Among signs of warming, sea ice in both the Arctic Ocean and around
Antarctica is at record lows, according to mid-December data by the
US National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Global average temperatures
for 2017 would be about 0.75 degree Celsius above the long-term
1961-1990 average of 14.0 C, the Met Office said.
The El Nino near its height at the end of 2015, with unusually warm
surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. Photo: NASA
This year is so far 0.86 C above average, matching a forecast made in
2016, Scaife said. El Nino accounted for about 0.2 C of the warming in
2016, far less than the extra heat from human-generated greenhouse
gases.
Separately, the Geneva-based World Meteorological
Organisation (WMO) said 2016 was on track to be the warmest on record,
ahead of 2015, with data from November confirming projections issued a
month ago.
"2016 has been remarkable for all the wrong reasons," WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis said of the heat.
The
WMO says the build-up of human-created greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere is causing ever more harmful heatwaves, droughts, floods and a
rise in global sea levels of about 20cm in the past century.
El
Ninos happen every few years and can disrupt weather worldwide. After a
powerful El Nino in 1998, it took until 2005 for a year to match that
year's record heat.
If Santa really lived at the North Pole his sleigh would run the risk
of falling through the ice this week, empty or fully laden.
Temperatures
in the high Arctic will approach melting point on Thursday, including
near the North Pole, a massive 30 degrees or more above average for this
time of the year.
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.
Wide departures from temperature norms – usually on the warm
side – have been a feature for a long while in the Arctic but this
year's extremes qualify the region as home to probably this
year's world's weirdest weather.
The polar extremes are part of
what is highly likely to be declared as the hottest year in records
going back to the 1880s. And so, with 2016 eclipsing both 2015 and 2014,
the world would have set a new high mark for three years in a row.
At risk: shrinking Arctic ice is bad news for polar bears - and the planet.
Here are some of this year's outstanding weather and climate events:
Extreme ice melt
This week's bizarre temperature forecasts for the North Pole have
been a regular – if usually less extreme – feature of 2016 for the
Arctic.
Many northerly regions, such as in the Canadian provinces of Quebec
and Ontario, were 20 degrees above normal for the first half of
November, for instance.
(See below for the coming abnormal heat over the North Pole, via The Washington Post.)
As a result of warmer air and sea temperatures than normal, Arctic
sea ice was 17.7 per cent below the 1981-2010 average in November, and
the smallest extent for the month since the satellite era began in 1979,
the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says.
Less
sea ice means that there will be less reflection of solar radiation
when the sun returns to the far north, and therefore, more heat being
absorbed by the now exposed oceans.
A similar retreat of sea ice is underway at the other end of the planet.
Last
month, the extent of the Antarctic sea ice was 11.1 per cent below the
1981-2010 average, also the lowest for this time of year in 37 years of
records. The Antarctic story, though, is more complex given the impact of the great southern continent on the climate, with wind strengths one factor in shifting sea-ice totals.
Still,
the spring sea-ice melt in the south is running about two weeks earlier
than average and one week earlier the previous rapid melt, Blair
Trewin, senior climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said.
Early storms
Tropical cyclones had an unusually early start for the year, with
Hurricane Pali becoming the earliest such storm on record for the
central Pacific basin when it formed on January 11.
Only two other January cyclones had formed in the basin since 1949 data began, Weather.com said.
Two
days later, on January 13, Hurricane Alex formed in the North Atlantic,
the first such storm for the month in that basin since 1938, the NOAA,
said.
Later in January, the north-eastern US copped Winter Storm
Jonas, which dumped 70 centimetres (27.5 inches) of snow on New York
City, the most since records began in 1868, NOAA said. Scientists have drawn links between the loss of Arctic sea ice
(see above) and longer winters across eastern North America as the
polar vortex zone of frigid air encircling the Arctic weakens and
buckles, sending ice blasts far to the south.
Coral bleaching could have been worse
Coral bleaching caused by extreme warmth at Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef. Photo: Climate Council
El Nino events in the Pacific typically produce unusually warm
sea-surface temperatures, which, when overlaid on the background heating
from climate change, push coral beyond key tolerance thresholds.
For the Great Barrier Reef, the extreme warmth resulted in its worst bleaching event, with more than 22 per cent of the corals dying. Many other reefs around the world also suffered bleaching.
Tourism
authorities and governments were relieved that the impacts were mostly
confined to the northern reefs away from the more accessible corals near
Cairns and further to the south.
In fact, they have a monster
storm to thank for that, with the powerful category-5 Cyclone Winston
moving over southern Queensland after devastating Fiji and Tonga with
its 285km/h winds in February.
The storm worked to cool the waters
of the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef long enough and just in
time, to prevent worse coral mortality.
Extreme heat records
Death Valley National Park in California is one of the world's hottest spots. Photo: Alamy
Global warming sceptics like to highlight long-standing heat records.
But hot-day records are in fact falling much faster than cold day ones.
In
Australia since 2000, for instance, a record hot day is now occurring
12 times faster than record cold days. During the first half of the 20th
century, the ratio was roughly one-to-one, the Bureau of Meteorology
says.
In 2016, though, the world has also had some bouts of
remarkable daily heat, including the 54 degrees recorded in Mitribah,
Kuwait, on July 16.
According to the Weather Underground blog, it was the hottest on record outside Death Valley in California.
The
latter, at the aptly named Furnace Creek Ranch, was 56.7 degrees,
recorded on July 10, 1913, although historians debate that high mark.
Other
extreme heat in 2016 included 51 degrees recorded in Phalodi,
Rajasthan, in India on May 19, making it the hottest day of record
for that country.
The previous record of 50.6 degrees was set in
May 1886, although a similar and perhaps more reliable reading was also
recorded in 1956, the website said.
Among
the year's most significant heatwaves was one that swept across
southern Africa in January, Dr Trewin said. Temperatures reached 43
degrees in Pretoria and 39 degrees in Johannesburg, both cities located
more than 1000 metres above sea level, and breaking previous records by
about 3 degrees.
"They are very high temperatures for such high locations," Dr Trewin said.
Whether known as Typhoon Meranti or Ferdie, this tropical cyclone was the most powerful in 2016 when it emerged in September.
The Joint Typhoon Warning Centre estimated the storm had
one-minute sustained winds reaching 305km/h at its peak as it crossed
the Philippines island of Itbayat. More than 10,000 people were
affected.
It was still powerful when it reached the Chinese
mainland, becoming the most powerful storm to hit Fujian province in at
least 67 years when standard records began, Agence France Presse
reported.
Hurricane Matthew was another significant storm, leaving
at least 550 dead in the Caribbean nation of Haiti, before causing
widespread flooding along the US south-eastern states in October.
Typhoon
Lionrock at the end of August was also a major event, described as the
worst natural disaster for North Korea in that state's history.
Big wet
As in every year, there were more than a few candidates for large-scale flood events.
The
US provided several, including severe floods in May in Texas, and the
widespread heavy falls along the eastern seaboard in September when
Hurricane Hermine became the first hurricane to make landfall in Florida
in 11 years and then hugged the coast as it moved northwards.
The
most costly floods, though, probably came in the Yangtze River region
of China, where sustained rains caused a damage bill of more than $10
billion and left hundreds dead.
Central and western Europe also saw big floods in Paris in June.
Australia, though, warrants a mention because of the share scale and sustained nature of much of the rainfall.
It
was officially Australia's second-wettest winter, but taking the five
months from May, the big wet was even more notable, especially for the
eastern half of the country which had record rain.
(See chart below of how much of Australia had very much above or record levels of rain for May-September.)
Awaiting some wet relief are regions that were hard hit by drought during the El Nino of 2015-2016.
These
include south-east Asia and southern Africa. While the latter region
has had reasonable summer rains recently, the region has a long way to
go before the dry years of 2014-15 and 2015-16 are made up, Dr Trewin
said.
One positive in 2016 was a good monsoon in the sub-continent after a couple dry years.
Hottest month
Surfers out early at Tamarama on a hot December day. Photo: Jessica Hromas
From a climate point of view July is typically the hottest month of
the year. Temperatures over land fluctuate more than over water, and
during northern summers more land is facing the sun than in southern
summers so the mercury is higher than in January.
And so, with the lingering effects of the El Nino, this past July was the hottest month recorded, according to NOAA.
Average
temperatures were 16.67 degrees across the planet that month, beating
the previous July – then a record – by 0.06 degrees.
The biggest
departure from the norm, though, came earlier in 2016. March was 1.23
degrees higher than the 20th century average, pipping the previous month
for the record.
Of the 15 warmest monthly anomalies for global
temperatures, all but one of them – January 2007 – have occurred since
the start of 2015, NOAA says.
And
if you were wondering when the last below-average month was globally,
you have to go back to December 1984. Assuming December 2016 doesn't
freeze over in the next week, the tally of above-average months in a row
will be 384 by year's end.
Hottest year
With so many warm months in both 2016 and 2015, this year is likely to only just edge out last year as the hottest on record.
Gavin
Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, tells
Fairfax Media this year will come in at about 0.14 degrees warmer than
2015.
NOAA, which includes less of the exceptional warming in the
Arctic than NASA, will probably report a narrower margin of about 0.04
degrees, he estimates.
IMAGE
While both years were boosted by an El Nino, a weather pattern in the
Pacific that results in less heat being absorbed into the ocean
compared with neutral years.
That said, it is notable that both
2015 and 2016 will be about one-third of a degree warmer than the year
of the biggest El Nino event on record, which sharply lifted
temperatures in 1998. (See NOAA chart below.)
Britain's Met Office this week estimated temperatures will ease back in 2017 as any lingering El Nino boost dissipates.
Still,
next year is likely to come in as third warmest, underscoring the
warming trend in the climate as greenhouse gas concentrations climb ever
higher.
And there will be more extreme weather events to come.
As
the year ends, The New York Times asked reporters who have focused on
climate change, global warming and the environment to choose the news
they reported on that was the most memorable. These are their
selections, ranging from sea level rise to the phenomenon of "rolling
coal" to local actions to confront a warming planet.
From One Hottest Year Into the Next
Clockwise from top left:
flooding in Alexandria, Va., in June; a house raised on temporary
supports in Norfolk, Va.; flooding in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in May;
drought conditions at Lake Purdy in Alabama in October.Credit Clockwise
from top left: Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times; Eliot Dudik
for The New York Times; Eranga Jayawardena, via Associated Press; Brynn
Anderson, via Associated Press
The year in climate news began with a theme that is growing familiar: word that 2015 had been the warmest year on record, just beating out 2014.
The
immediate cause in both cases was a powerful climate pattern, known as
El Niño, in which the tropical Pacific Ocean poured an enormous amount
of heat into the global atmosphere, disrupting weather patterns
on every continent. But scientists said the back-to- back heat records
would not have occurred without an underlying trend of global warming
caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases.
That physical reality does not seem to be making much of an impression in the United StatesCongress,
where a large number of lawmakers continue to claim that the warming
trend is somehow not real, or is even the product of a global scientific hoax.
But in the real world, the effects are starting to be felt as never
before. As land ice melts the world over and heat absorption causes
ocean water to expand, the sea level is rising. Coastal communities from
Norfolk, Va., to Miami are being forced to reckon with the consequences.
A
small detail: Tidal flooding is becoming so common that towns are
posting "No Wake" signs on the streets, where vehicles driving a little
too fast through a foot or two of seawater can send damaging waves
crashing against nearby property.
The
extreme burst of global temperature records waned late in the year as
the cooler La Niña weather pattern replaced El Niño in the tropical
Pacific. But even so, the World Meteorological Organization predicted in November that 2016 would most likely beat 2015 to become the record-warmest year, the first time such a global temperature record will have been set three years in a row. — Justin Gillis
Countering Denial by Being Nice
Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University.Credit Lexey Swall for The New York Times
How do you talk about climate change during a presidential administration that denies it's happening?
President-elect
Donald J. Trump has called climate change a hoax, and he has declared
he will try to reverse the Obama administration's environmental efforts
on matters ranging from the 2015 Paris climate agreement to the landmark Clean Power Plan, intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But while administrations change, one thing appears to be stable: Most Americans already know that climate change is real and that human activity since the Industrial Age is the major cause. Polls by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
found that more than half of those surveyed said that global warming is
real, and only one in five disagree. But these same surveys show that
Americans tend to rank the issue rather low in their priorities of
urgent need for action.
The
question for those trying to fight climate change, then, is how best to
build on the degree of agreement that already exists and to encourage
action by governments, businesses and individuals. For a very long time,
these issues have been hashed out in fiery arguments between those who
deny the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate science and those
who try to explain the science and the reasons for strong measures. I
dealt with that important question in an article about Katharine Hayhoe,
a climate scientist at Texas Tech University who uses a gentle approach
to reach the large number of Americans who are in the potentially
persuadable middle. There is room for every kind of discourse, from
raucous to gentle, when it comes to telling Americans about warming. But
I came away from that piece with a thought that initially seemed banal,
but ended up feeling profound: niceness works. — John Schwartz
Local Responses to a Changing Global Climate
A house with solar panels in Ashton Hayes, England.Credit Elizabeth Dalziel for The New York Times
Most
people who think that climate change is really happening also
acknowledge that humans have caused it. But getting people to actually
do something about it may be the next phase in the battle to prevent
catastrophic warming.
Over
the course of the last year, I've spoken with people in different
communities around the world who are trying to do what they can to make a
difference, even if they can't see the effects.
In a small village in the English countryside, residents have been working for 10 years to make their community carbon neutral
— they've insulated their homes, hung laundry out to dry and installed
solar panels. Part of their success has been in their approach: This
should be fun, and it should involve all of us, because all of us stand
to benefit from staving off the worst effects of climate change.
They
have tried to connect the global problem of climate change to normal
life, because it's not always about the melting polar ice caps or
apocalyptic drought. Yes, climate change is about those things, but it
is also about the ways that life in the 21st century makes most people,
especially those in the developed world, part of the problem.
How are your own habits connected to larger environmental problems? How much power are you still using even when you've switched off your devices? How many plastic bottles of water do you drink every week, and how does that affect the environment and other people around you?
In
the wake of the Paris agreement, most countries are involved in the
fight against climate change. And while governments and power companies
may make the most difference, what the rest of us — all seven billion of
us — are doing matters, too. — Tatiana Schlossberg
Engines of Environmental Backlash
An Illini State Pullers event at the McHenry County Fair in August in Woodstock, Ill.Credit David Kasnic for The New York Times
If there is one phenomenon that epitomizes the contempt for regulations —
particularly those designed to protect the environment — among some
Americans, it might be "rolling coal."
It's
a fad among some diesel truck owners who soup up their engines and
remove their emissions controls to belch black smoke at pedestrians,
cyclists and even unsuspecting Prius drivers.
And
depending on whom you ask, the fad is a juvenile prank, a health
hazard, a stand against rampant environmentalism or a brazen show of
American freedom. I've seen rolling coal called the "open carry" of the
anti-environmentalism movement.
"Why
don't you go live in Sweden and get the heck out of our country. I will
continue to roll coal anytime I feel like and fog your stupid
eco-cars," one angry Illinois voter wrote to a local state
representative who has proposed a $5,000 fine on anyone who removes or
alters emissions equipment.
At
its core, rolling coal seems to me to be a symptom of a backlash
against the notion that we should seek to minimize the human footprint
on earth, for the sake of the environment.
It
is not the only such act. Since 2007, activists have drawn attention to
the environment with a call to switch off appliances worldwide during
an annual Earth Hour. But since 2009, the libertarian Competitive
Enterprise Institute — home base of Myron Ebell,
who Trump tapped for the transition at the Environmental Protection
Agency — has countered with Human Achievement Hour, a call to spend that
same hour keeping things on in defense of humankind's "basic human
right to use energy."
Still,
rolling coal goes too far even for some at the institute. Coal rollers
who use their trucks for harassment, as opposed to celebration, "aren't
being rebellious," said Michelle Minton, who is a fellow there. "They
are just being jerks." — Hiroko Tabuchi
A Costly Effort to Make Coal Cleaner
The Kemper County coal power plant in Mississippi.Credit Josh Haner/The New York Times
In the deeply poor, rural county of Kemper, Mississippi, there is a project to build a first-of-its-kind power plant using technology that has been heralded as the answer to many of our climate change woes.
A poster child for the promise of so-called clean coal,
the troubled plant has occupied a central role in the Obama
administration's plans to counter climate change. The technology the
plant is supposed to showcase is also at the center of President-elect
Trump's vision for many of our energy and environmental challenges.
Producing
roughly 45 percent of the emissions that cause climate change, coal is a
dirty fuel source. Yet the world still relies on it for power. The
Kemper project was supposed to provide a model for a new version of
carbon-capture technology that could be replicated around the world.
But
the Kemper power plant is more than two years past deadline and more
than $4 billion over budget. The plant's owner faces credit downgrades,
multiple lawsuits and an investigation by the Securities and Exchange
Commission.
The investigation of this project
unveiled an almost Shakespearean tale. In one arc we followed the
prevailing public perception of the project as it shifted from hope to
skepticism. In another arc we saw an engineer's personal journey from
project pitchman to plant whistle-blower. Along the way, we watched a
steady upward creep in the project's cost, shifting explanations the
company and regulators gave for delays, and a growing intensity in the
warnings from workers on site.
It
all added up to more questions than answers: Did the plant's owner
intentionally mislead the public, investors and regulators about the
cost and timetable of the project? Why have 23 of the poorest counties
in the country been saddled with costs connected to the most expensive
power plant in American history? Can clean coal be replicated and built
affordably and quickly enough to make it worth the investment? These
questions remain. — Ian Urbina
California's Drought Is Not Over
Erin Stacy was among the scientists measuring the snowpack in Yosemite in California in April.Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Parts
of California were relatively wet last winter, leading to a much larger
snowpack in the Sierra Nevada than the year before, along with rising
optimism that the state might eventually see an end to severe drought
conditions that have lingered for four years.
But
when I visited Yosemite National Park in April for an article about the
snowpack, high spring temperatures were already melting it quickly. And
there were other worrisome signs of the effects of climate change —
more rain and less snow at higher elevations.
Since
then, California has seen some improvement. Only 21 percent of the
state is in "exceptional" drought, down from 45 percent a year ago, as
reported by the U.S. Drought Monitor, and there are even areas in the northwestern part of the state that are drought free.
But
California is still in the grip of a prolonged drought, and the outlook
— for the state and more broadly for the Southwest — is not promising.
Forecasters say that in the short term, drier conditions may return this
winter because of the weather phenomenon called La Niña. But it is the
long-term situation that should be sobering for anyone who lives, or is
thinking of living, in the region. Scientists say climate change has
increased the risk of megadroughts, long dry periods that could make the
current drought seem mild by comparison. — Henry Fountain
Climate Change and NASA's Mission on Earth
Participants during NASA's Icescape mission in the Arctic Ocean in 2011.Credit NASA/Reuters
It is not easy to find out what's happening in the Arctic Ocean. If you
have a few months to spare, you can board an icebreaker and chug across a
small section of the sea, taking measurements. Alternatively, you can
pore through the images of the North Pole that have been captured by
satellites over the past few decades.
Those images
tell a startling story. While month-to-month measurements can be jumpy,
the overall trend has been clearly heading down. Last month, satellites
measured the lowest extent of Arctic sea ice for November since
satellites started keeping records in 1979.
Global
warming is a driving force behind this change. As we pump more carbon
into the atmosphere, scientists warn that the Arctic will lose even more
ice. In a matter of decades, scientists estimated this year, the Arctic Ocean may become ice-free in the summer.
The
disappearance of Arctic ice is already having a huge impact on the
ocean's ecosystem. In November, a team of scientists published a new analysis of satellite data,
finding that the ocean has been increasing its production of algae by
some 47 percent since 1997. Scientists suspect that the size and timing
of this bloom is altering the entire Arctic food web, and they're now
gathering data to find out what exactly is happening.
This
study was carried out as part of NASA's Earth Science program, using
data largely supplied by NASA's satellites. Shortly after the it was
published, reports came out that President-elect Trump's advisers are
pushing to shut down NASA's study of our own planet.
If
we let our Earth-monitoring satellites wink out, the planet will not
stop changing. The only thing that will change is our own ability to
understand the Earth. — Carl Zimmer
Arctic temperatures have been 20C above normal. The ice cap is shrinking. And Trump and Putin may see it as an advantage
A fisherman drives a boat near the Arctic Circle in Ilulissat,
Greenland. 'Sea ice has shrunk to levels that scientists describe as
'off the scale'.
Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
Temperatures
in the Arctic in the last two months have hit more than 20C above
normal for the time of year. Temperatures that unusual in the UK and
Europe would produce 45C summers. As a result, sea ice has shrunk to
levels that scientists describe as "off the scale".
Mapping the changes to the extent of sea ice over the last 40 years
confirms that: on a graph, the lines are clustered together like threads
in a hank of silk, warming and cooling in line with each other – until
this year. This year's line drops down like a thin thread dangling into the void.
Extrapolating data from a single year must be done with caution. When
El Niño boosted global temperatures to make 1998 the hottest year on
record, a position it held until 2014, deniers claimed that this showed that global warming had "paused".
In fact, several years after 1998 came within 0.3C of the record. The
rise of a huge 20C over normal in the Arctic, the region that acts as
one of the most important regulators in the global climate system, means
that all expectations must now be rewritten.
Arctic snow and ice reflect heat back into space – the albedo effect.
When there is less ice, less sunlight is reflected and the sea, newly
exposed, absorbs more heat, which melts more ice, and so on in a cycle.
This is of vital importance: it could represent a tipping point, beyond
which the Arctic ice cap, by some projections, might soon disappear
altogether in summer. This is not the only crucial climate role the Arctic
plays. Sea and air currents swirling over and under the ice cool the
globe and affect weather systems on the other side of the world,
sometimes in ways that are still not fully understood.
Arctic sea ice extent shrank to its second lowest record this year, and is unusually low this winter. Guardian graphic Source: National Snow & Ice Data Center
Arctic sea ice has recovered in extent from previous lows. But that
does not tell the whole story. When temperatures are less volatile, sea
ice forms in layers over multiple years to a thick and solid mass. Ice
that forms under this year's conditions is likely to be thinner and less
stable than what it replaces, more vulnerable to another year's warming
and less effective as a temperature regulator. For these reasons, the
current drastic melting of the Arctic cannot be regarded merely as an
outlier. While the effects of an ice-free Arctic on global weather
systems are still in the realm of known unknowns, it is a known known
that they will be disruptive. The current Arctic temperature and sea ice
charts look like the beginning of a whole new trend, one that could
change the global climate system for ever.
The imperative for action is therefore overwhelming. Reducing carbon dioxide is vital, and it is encouraging that annual emissions have been flat for three years. But now it is necessary to move further, faster.
Some experts advocate cutting the amount of black, unburnt carbon –
soot – as a matter of urgency. Much of this soot is borne by air
currents to the Arctic, depositing it on pristine snow that turns black,
and so more heat-absorbent. Some measures to stop soot, like capping
coal-fired power stations and banning agricultural burning, are
relatively easy. Others – cleaner vehicles and spreading the use of
solar cookers in developing countries – might take longer.
Getting rid of potent hydrofluorocarbon gases, commonly used in refrigeration, has the broad backing of governments and industry, and will buy time. Methane, often a byproduct of fossil fuel exploration, should be used as an energy source, or at least flared, which is less harmful. Cutting these "short-lived climate pollutants" could prevent 0.5C of warming over the next 30 years, the research suggests. These are opportunities that must be taken; they are necessary, though not sufficient. So governments should also convene an Arctic council to explore other ways of protecting the region.
Driving progress demands just the kind of leadership that looks very much to have disappeared from the global scene. Vladimir Putin's Russia has been laying claim to vast Arctic areas, anticipating the realms of new possibility for commerce – new shipping lanes, cutting thousands of miles from current journeys – as well as oil and gas exploration that an ice-free Arctic would open up. For Donald Trump, such an unfrozen Arctic might allow the US to control key shipping routes, and find new oilfields and gas fields. Mr Trump's choice of Rex Tillerson, former head of Exxon Mobil and cheerleader for Mr Putin, as secretary of state is deeply worrying. Two friendly world leaders facing one an other across a vanishing Arctic ice cap. The thawing of the cold war is no longer a metaphor.
A female Aedes aegypti mosquito in the process
of acquiring blood from a human host. (James Gathany/Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention via AP)
In a world characterized by rising
temperatures, deforestation and other human influences on the
environment, the spread of infectious disease is a hot topic. Many
recent studies suggest that environmental changes can affect the
transmission of everything from malaria to the Zika virus — and it’s
increasingly important to understand these links, scientists say.
This week, a new study
has provided new evidence that environmental changes can increase the
threat of disease. It concludes that unusually warm temperatures caused
by 2015’s severe El Niño event — probably compounded by ongoing climate
change — may have aided in the rapid spread of the Zika virus in South
America that year. And while there are many complex factors at play in
the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, the study may help scientists
better prepare for the kinds of future effects we might see in our
warming world.
“The start
of the mission was simple — trying to address where the risk will be,
where is it going to move next, where could Zika happen on the planet on
a global scale,” said Cyril Caminade,
a research fellow at the University of Liverpool and the new study’s
lead author. To that end, the authors designed a study that would help
them determine how climatic changes have impacted the mosquito-borne
transmission of Zika.
There
are two main species of mosquito known to carry the Zika virus — Aedes
aegypti, or the yellow fever mosquito, which is widespread in the
tropics; and Aedes albopictus, or the Asian tiger mosquito, which
lives in both tropical and temperate regions of the world. Scientists
also believe Zika can be sexually transmitted, but the new study focused
only on mosquito transmission.
For
the study, the researchers collected published information on the
distribution of these two mosquito species and how temperature
variations can affect them. Studies suggest, for instance, that up to a
certain point, rising temperatures can cause mosquitoes to bite more
frequently. The researchers also collected global historical climate
data from the past few decades and used all the information to build a
model of Zika transmission worldwide.
The
model produced an unusually high disease transmission potential in the
tropics for the year 2015, including in Colombia and Brazil, the
countries hit hardest by Zika. Similar results occurred between 1997 and
1998, one of the only other times on record to experience such a brutal
El Niño event.
“[O]ur
model indicates that the 2015 El Niño event, superimposed on the
long-term global warming trend, has had an important amplification
effect,” the researchers note in the paper.
The
model also helped the researchers identify the ideal seasonal climate
conditions for Zika transmission around the world. In South America, for
instance, the model suggests that the potential for transmission should
peak in the winter and spring.
In
the southeastern U.S., on the other hand, summer is ideal. In fact, the
model suggests this region has a high potential for disease
transmission during this time, due partly to the high temperatures and
partly to the fact that both mosquito species are found there.
That
said, reports of Zika have been limited in the U.S. so far — and this
speaks to the complexity of vector-borne disease transmission, Caminade
said. Climate can certainly play a significant role in setting up the
right conditions for an outbreak, but epidemics also depend on many
other factors, including population density, access to healthcare and
the use of pesticides and other anti-mosquito interventions in any given
location. Some of these factors — which were not accounted for in the
new study — can probably explain why there hasn’t been much Zika
transmission in the U.S. so far.
Caminade
also pointed out that after a population has been exposed to a
mosquito-borne disease like Zika, a phenomenon called “herd immunity”
often occurs — this happens when so many people have already been
exposed, and developed an immunity, that there aren’t enough new people
left to infect to continue the epidemic. This is the probably part of
the reason we didn’t see Zika epidemics in other tropical parts of the
world in 2015, despite the new study’s results. And some experts have
suggested that herd immunity will likely cause the current situation in
South America to burn itself out within a few more years.
But
Caminade cautions that there’s still the potential for Zika outbreaks
in other parts of the world where the conditions are right, including
the United States and even southern Europe. The result would likely be
milder than what’s been experienced in South America in the past year,
but there’s “still risk,” he said.
According
to Caminade, one of the study’s major takeaway points is that extreme
climate conditions can lead to all kinds of unusual events — droughts,
floods and wildfires are only a few examples — and disease outbreak is
just one more potential disaster scientists should be looking out for
when these conditions occur.
And
such events may only be exacerbated by future climate change. Some
studies have suggested that the kinds of “monster” El Niño events seen
in 1997 and 2015 may be more likely in a warmer world, Caminade pointed
out. But he added that scientists wishing to make more precise
predictions about the future spread of disease must take a wide variety
of factors into account — climate is just one of them.
“I
won’t overplay the role of climate for the future,” he said. “It’s
still a disease, and there are still parameters which are going to be
very important.”
