How Disappearing Sea Ice Has Put Arctic Ecosystem Under Threat

The Guardian - Robin McKie

From algae to fish and polar bears, the loss of habitat caused by global warming is affecting the food chain

An adult polar bear hunting for seals on the melting pack ice in the Arctic. Photograph: Alamy

In a few days the Arctic’s beleaguered sea ice cover is likely to set another grim record. Its coverage is on course to be the lowest winter maximum extent ever observed since satellite records began. These show that more than 2 million square kilometres of midwinter sea ice have disappeared from the Arctic in less than 40 years.
The ice’s disappearance – triggered by global warming caused by rising carbon emissions from cars and factories – is likely to have profound implications for the planet. A loss of sea ice means a loss of reflectivity of solar rays and further rises in global temperatures, warn researchers.
But there are other pressing concerns, they add. Sea ice loss is now posing serious threats to the Arctic’s indigenous species – its seals, fish, wolves, foxes and polar bears. “The Arctic food chain relies on a stable sea ice platform and that is now disappearing, putting the region’s wildlife at risk,” said marine ecologist Tom Brown, of the Scottish Association for Marine Science (Sams), in Oban.
Sea ice provides a platform from which polar bears can hunt, and it links communities of land animals such as foxes and wolves. “The sea ice cap has been retreating for decades, and as it does the animals who live on its edge have had to move north,” said Andrew Shepherd, professor of Earth observation at Leeds University.
“But that process takes them further and further away from land – and there is likely to be a limit about the distance they can tolerate.”
In fact, the erosion of sea ice strikes at the very root of the Arctic ecosystem, for it provides a surface on which algae – the basic material on which the entire food chain in the region depends – can grow. “Algae lingers on the underside of sea ice and as spring begins there is a major increase in its growth,” said Brown. “It is then eaten by tiny creatures called zooplankton, and they in turn are eaten by fish that are in turn eaten by seals, which are in turn consumed by polar bears. But if algae levels drop the whole food chain is disrupted.”
This point was backed by Professor Geraint Tarling, of the British Antarctic Survey. “The most important of the consumers of algae is a species of zooplankton called Calanus glacialis. It is rich in fats like omega-3 and is consumed by Arctic cod and baleen whales,” he said. “Crucially, in recent years levels of Calanus glacialis have been found to be declining and are retreating in their range. In its place a temperate species called Calanus finmarchicus has appeared, but it contains much less fat and that is of poorer quality. As a foodstuff it is simply inferior.”
The base of the Arctic food chain is being depleted, in other words. However, it is not the only threat to wildlife in the region. In 2015 the journal Science published a paper – by Professor Eric Post, of Penn State University and colleagues – that shows that populations of wolves and foxes are currently isolated only in summer. For most of the year these groups are connected by sea ice.
But as its sea ice coverage declines over the years, this is extending the length of time that packs are kept away from each other, which threatens to lead to diminished cross-breeding and genetic wellbeing.
Then there are the narwhals. These tusked whales – sometimes called the unicorns of the sea – are prized by Inuits who use their blubber and skin to make a traditional, chewy meal called muktuk. Narwhals can hide safely in sea ice and so avoid their natural predator, the killer whale. Robbed of that protection, narwhal numbers could dwindle dangerously, marine biologists warn.
To uncover greater details of these issues, the UK Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc) has launched a programme called PRIZE, productivity in the seasonal ice zone, which will use underwater robot craft to study how nutrient flow and other factors are changing as the Arctic sea ice retreats. It will probe variations that are occurring in zooplankton behaviour, the composition of the seabed and other factors that could influence wildlife disruption.
Other dangers facing the Arctic were highlighted by Professor Julienne Stroeve, of University College London. “Consider the example of harp seals,” she said. “They often give birth on snow mounds on sea ice. But if that sea ice is thin or formed late it breaks and the seal pups are dumped into the ocean and they drown.” In addition, Stroeve pointed to the problem of increasing numbers of warm spells during which rain falls instead of snow. “That rain then freezes on the ground and forms a hard coating that prevents reindeer and caribou from finding food under the snow,” she added.
Caribou face another danger posed by climate change. Normally they try to take advantage of a range of nutritious plants that bloom in the Arctic spring in order to help them recover from the fierce Arctic winter and to strengthen females before giving birth. But the plant species on which they rely are now blooming earlier and earlier as spring in the far north arrives sooner each year – while the caribou’s internal clock remains unchanged and locked into the wrong biological cycle. As a result, the plants on which they rely are past their best when caribou arrive and so there is less nutrition available when they give birth. As a result, fewer calves are born.
It is a problem of synchronicity. The alignment of different lifecycles is being disrupted by sea ice loss and it is affecting animals on both land and in the ocean. “It is a bit like having your breakfast time changed,” said Finlo Cottier, senior lecturer in polar oceanography , who is also based at Sams. “You are used to sleeping in to 8am, but one day breakfast is served at 6am but no one tells you. The result: you go hungry. That is what is beginning to happen all over the Arctic.”

UNDER THREAT
Caribou
As the Arctic warms, rain more frequently falls instead snow and then freezes over the ground preventing caribou and reindeer from finding food.

Harp Seals
Harp seals give birth on mounds of snow on sea ice. If this is weakened or thinned because it has formed late in the year, it can break apart, causing pups to drown.

Zooplankton
Zooplankton form a critical part of the food chain. They live off algae that form on the underside of sea ice and in turn they are eaten by fish such as Arctic cod and also be baleen whales.

Polar Bear
Polar bears use sea ice as platforms from which to hunt seals and other creatures. Male and female bears also meet on ice sheets to mate.

Narwhal
Slow swimming whales like the narwhal use sea ice to hide from predators like killer whales and could also be affected as shipping in the region increases as ice retreats.

Links

• Point-of-view camera shows how polar bears use sea ice to hunt
• Could a £400bn plan to refreeze the Arctic before the ice melts really work?
• Inuit fear they will be overwhelmed as ‘extinction tourism’ descends on Arctic
• River Dee's pearl mussels get a helping hand – or gill
• Polar bears face starvation as unlikely to adapt to a land-based diet, says report
• Call for DNA biologists to join fight against deadly new threats to wildlife
• Polar bear could be saved if emissions are cut, says new study
• Melting ice may slow global warming
• Thawing Arctic is turning oceans into graveyards
• Ice-melting temperatures forecast for Arctic midwinter

'Huge Experiment': The Continent That Climate Change Has Not Forgotten

Fairfax- Peter Hannam

It's a curious fact that should you find yourself at the bottom of the ocean almost anywhere on the planet, the water temperature will be uniformly near zero degrees.
That hasn't always been the case. Tropical seabeds 65 million years ago were about 15 degrees when temperatures were higher, says Ian Simmonds, a professor at Melbourne University's School of Earth Sciences.

The Aurora Australia does its bit for researching Antarctic sea ice. Photo: Australian Antarctic Division

During that earlier epoch, the Earth was probably free of sea ice and it was also missing the remarkable processes driven by what's known as Antarctic Bottom Water and the global conveyor belt that distributes it.
Record-low Antarctic sea ice levels reached this week are drawing renewed international attention to climate change at a time when Arctic ice extent is also reaching minimums not recorded before.

Circulation of the Southern Ocean
See underwater ocean storms generated by eddies, waterfalls of cold dense water that plummet two kilometres off the Antarctic Continental Shelf into the abyss and underwater waves hundreds of metres high. Vision: NCI

But scientists say the potential exists for much bigger shifts than demonstrated by sea ice totals alone.
"Sea ice is a canary in the coal mine," Simmonds says. "We are running this huge experiment on the planet."

'Holy grail'
The experiment goes something like this: we dig up and burn carbon trapped for millions of years, changing the chemistry of the atmosphere and the oceans. The Earth traps more of the sun's heat, and temperatures rise – so far about 1 degree. We hope other processes we set in train that we only partially understand don't lift sea levels too much or don't disrupt global-scale processes.
Antarctica looms as a critical place to watch not least because existing data is relatively scant.

NASA and University of California researchers have recently detected the speediest ongoing Western Antarctica glacial retreat rates ever observed. Photo: Getty Images

Accurate satellite coverage of sea ice, for instance, only goes back to 1979 and knowledge of ice volume remains a "holy grail" for researchers, says Jan Lieser, a sea-ice scientist at the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre.
At the surface, extreme winds and cold don't make it easy to conduct science (and Australia's Mawson Station is unhelpfully located in a type of wind tunnel). And unlike the Arctic, where submariners needed to keep accurate readings of sea-ice thickness, Antarctic waters have had little such traffic and logbooks.
Still, the overall workings of the global engine that runs from Antarctica are well understood.
Every winter as sea ice forms around Antarctica, salt is rejected from the salty seas, creating a pulse of very cold, briny water. That water flows to the bottom of the sea, eventually finding its way through to much of the world's oceans, equalising temperatures even in the tropics.
The return path, sometimes taking centuries or longer for the complete cycle, transports warmth to the poles, helping to spread equatorial heat to the higher latitudes.
This over-turning cycle, also known as the thermohaline circulation, also transports oxygenated water, helping to ventilate the oceans. It draws carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere into the oceans too.

Slowing down 
Unfortunately, changes are afoot.
"Certainly there's very strong evidence that this conveyor belt is slowing down," Simmonds says. "It's reinforcing what the models say ... it's one of the consequences of global warming."
Andy Hogg, an associate professor at the Australian National University's Research School of Earth Sciences, works on the models that attempt to capture and project what's going on in Antarctica.
"Even though we know the bottom water is becoming warmer and slightly fresher, we still don't have reliable models that can really describe why that is happening," he says. Less saline water, though, will sink slower and create less of that pulse effect.
"The signals are small but compared with the natural variability, it's fairly clear that it's happening," Hogg says.
One source of the fresher water around Antarctica is that glacier melt is increasing, making seas near the coast less saline.

Record low
What's happening with the sea ice itself will also play a role.
Lieser likens the annual increase and retreat in sea ices to "a giant heaving monster [and] the breathing is getting more hectic and more rapid".
In a typical year, sea ice swells to about the size of Antarctica itself and then melts, losing as much as 90 per cent of its cover.
At the end of the freezing season in August 2014, sea ice extent reached record levels, a result highlighted by climate change sceptics struggling to explain a more consistent reduction in Arctic sea ice.
Two and a half years later, Antarctic sea ice has dived to more than 10 per cent below the previous record minimum, touching 2.075 million square kilometres on Thursday. It might yet sink below the 2-million mark, Lieser says.
A normal range would see coverage swell from about 4 million to 18 million square kilometres, Simmonds says.
"If that range decreased, you'd have a lot less salt rejected" and therefore a weaker pulse for the conveyor belt, he says.

Albedo effect
Matthew England, a professor of oceanography at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW, says the loss of polar sea ice at either end of the planet will have an amplifying effect on what are already among the fastest warming regions.
"The sea ice provides a nice reflective surface," he says. "If that was to go, it would have a huge impact on the climate because of the ice-albedo effect."
Absent the ice, more of the sun's energy is absorbed by the oceans, potentially curtailing the ice season at both ends.
"The Arctic has seen really rapid warming because of this loss of sea ice," England adds. "If the Antarctic were to follow suit – and 2016 is a bit of a wake-up call – we would also see an added impact on warming."
Among the concerns is that a slowing overturning mechanism will mean there is less uptake of carbon from the atmosphere but also increased risks for another of Antarctica's vulnerabilities: the ice shelves that face melting from the air above but also from warming waters below.
"The overturning circulation, when it shows down, you stop cool water invading the interior [of the ice shelves]," England says. That means waters at depths of 300-600 metres tend to get warmer.

The path of the global conveyor belt
The blue arrows indicate the path of deep, cold, dense water currents. The red arrows indicate the path of warmer, less dense surface waters. It is estimated that it can take 1000 years for a “parcel” of water to complete the journey along the global thermohaline circulation.

Antarctic bottom water. Source: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; United States Department, Wikipedia

Trigger point
If the ice shelves don't stay intact, glaciers behind them will accelerate their slide, adding yet more fresh water to surrounding seas, but also raising sea levels globally.
"We're going in the direction of a trigger point, but in a broad sense, we don't really know what the value is," Simmonds says.
The scientists caution that a range of negative feedback loops will go some way to counterbalance the forces being unleased by climate change.
If ice shelf waters become fresher, for instance, sea ice can form faster the following year. That process, though, doesn't produce the same salt rejection that drives the thermohaline system.
A slowing in the sinking of briny water also means the transport of warmer waters southwards would also be weaker, a process that may reduce the warm water impact on ice shelves.
"We probably lack the observations and models to make the call which ones are going to dominate," Hogg says.
Lieser says the potential for a slowing or changing direction of the Gulf Stream, which could bring sharply colder conditions for northern Europe, has gained a lot more public attention than what might be happening in the south.
He says it is hard to know when a tipping point might be reached, after which huge global processes will settle into new equilibria.
"There are really cascading consequences in that," Lieser says. "It's a scary thought if you really think it through."

Links

• Antarctic sea ice 'obliterates' previous minimum record, in remarkable reverse
• Sea ice spread around Antarctica hit a record low
• The crack in this Antarctic ice shelf just grew by 17 kilometres. A break could be imminent 
• The eight weather events this year that shook world

'Clean Coal', CCS And CSG Will Not Save Fossil Fuels – Their Game Is Up

The Guardian - Ian Dunlop

As the Finkel review submission deadline arrives it’s time to accept the inevitable and fix the shambles that is our energy policy

Energy prices will rise but they will rise less with renewables than with coal. Photograph: Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images

Every few years the fossil fuel industry pressures politicians to force “clean coal”, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and more recently coal seam gas (CSG) on an increasingly sceptical community to justify its continued expansion.
This cycle started with the promotion of Adani’s massive Carmichael coalmine in Queensland, for coal export to India. The South Australian blackout followed last September when violent storms blew down transmission towers, prompting instant federal government accusations that excessive reliance on renewable energy was the cause, despite clear advice to the contrary. This also prompted a review of the energy system, led by Dr Alan Finkel, with final submissions due on Friday.
Then, when the long-overdue closure of the Hazelwood brown-coal power station was announced in November, energy security became a political battleground. In passing, Adani was to be offered a $1bn subsidy to construct the Carmichael rail line, and then a further subsidy for a new domestic coal-fired power plant at the mine was mooted to assist the development of northern Australia.
The prime minister’s National Press Club speech in January emphasised the need for “affordable, reliable and secure energy”, denounced the states for their “unrealistic” renewable targets, encouraged energy storage – and then took an evangelical swing back to coal, straight from the fossil fuel industry hymn book. Priority would be given to “clean coal, and carbon capture and storage (CCS and onshore gas (CSG)”, implying that renewables were neither affordable or reliable.
He continued: “The next incarnation of our energy policy should be technology-agnostic – it’s security and cost that matter, not how you deliver it. Policy should be ‘all of the above technologies’ working together to meet the trifecta of secure and affordable power while meeting our substantial emission reduction commitments.”
So what could possibly be wrong with such a sweeping vision? Well, pretty much everything.
Firstly, the speech skirted around the biggest risk facing Australia, namely accelerating climate change. While Australia ratified the Paris climate agreement, our emission reduction commitments are not “substantial”. They are laughable, both in comparison with our peers globally and to have any chance of making a fair contribution to the Paris objectives of holding global temperatures “well below 2C above pre-industrial conditions and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5C”.
Then, to have a realistic chance, say 90%, of meeting the Paris objectives, the world should no longer emit any carbon to the atmosphere. We still emit record amounts today and need some fossil fuels to build the new low-carbon economy, so that is not going to happen. But emissions must peak and decline rapidly. There is no space for any new fossil fuel projects – coal, oil or gas.
“Clean coal” is neither new nor clean. These technologies can reduce emissions by up to 40% relative to conventional practice but that does not solve our problem when the global carbon budget has already been exhausted. Furthermore, costs are increased by up to 30%, rendering coal even less competitive with renewables.
Years of research have failed to establish the basis for CCS expansion at scale. CCS works where emissions are stored in depleted oil and gas reservoirs, which the oil industry has practised for decades. Storage in other types of geological structures is far harder. The few commercial operations in the world today are in the former category. The substantial additional costs of CCS again reduce coal’s competitiveness, particularly if you refuse to price carbon, as the government is doing. CCS will be useful at the margin but it will not save fossil fuels from their inevitable demise.
Additionally, energy prices rose largely because our flawed regulatory framework allowed power companies to invest in unnecessary infrastructure on which they were guaranteed a return. Gas prices rose because the east coast was opened up to the higher-priced international gas market with the construction of export facilities at Gladstone. The unseemly rush into CSG resulted in substantial processing overcapacity, with economic pressure increasing as CSG production was constrained by community objection to the damage caused to arable land and water. Furthermore, high methane leakage rates result in CSG having a greater warming effect than using coal, thereby negating its supposed benefit.
Finally, there is nothing “agnostic” about choosing energy sources when the fossil fuel industry continues to enjoy a massive subsidy, far greater than renewables, through the lack of carbon pricing – a subsidy the IMF estimates to be about 60% of coal’s market price. And this is the nub of the problem. Our climate and energy policies are a disconnected and dysfunctional shambles, brought about by years of denial and inaction from federal governments of both persuasions who do not accept that climate change is happening.
But that game is up. Climate change has moved from the twilight phase of much talk and relatively limited impact. It is now turning nasty. Events are moving faster than expected as irreversible climate tipping points are crossed. The economic and social costs of inaction can no longer be swept under the carpet, with regulators here and overseas demanding action to head off a climate-induced financial crisis.
The only way we can avoid catastrophic climate impact now is to initiate emergency action, akin to being on a war footing. That will be accepted shortly as impacts bite and low-carbon technology undermines the fossil fuel industry. In the meantime the damage created by political ideologues must be minimised, so no Adani, no coal-fired power, no CSG.
Our antiquated electricity grids are undoubtedly in need of overhaul but 100% renewable energy grids are being constructed around the world in only a few years, providing genuine energy security and making traditional concepts of baseload power irrelevant. This is innovation at its best.
As for affordability, energy prices will rise, given the extent and speed of change. But they will rise less with renewables than with coal, with greater prospects of cost reduction as technology improves.
We need a new narrative, built around our potential to prosper as a low-carbon society. We have the world’s best renewable resources, the science, technology and engineering expertise to seize what is the biggest investment and job-creation opportunity this country has ever seen.
In addition, we need a taskforce which will pull together the resources and expertise required to initiate emergency action, led by statesmen and women from businesses with a concern to create a genuinely sustainable Australia. It is their future which is being thrown away by fossil fuel industry pressure forcing government to remain firmly entrenched in the 20th century.

Links

• The Canberra Coal Club ignores what most people know: the future will be clean and smart
• Infrastructure fund lacks transparency on Adani plans, warns thinktank
• Big tourism must demand action to save the reef – its business depends on it
• Energy positive: how Denmark's Samsø island switched to zero carbon
• Australian consortium launches world-first digital energy marketplace for rooftop solar
• David v Goliath: how self-funded eco documentaries are taking the fight to the masses

White House Eyes Plan To Cut EPA Staff By One-Fifth, Eliminating Key Programs

Washington Post - Juliet Eilperin | Brady Dennis

Environmental Protection Agency headquarters (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

The White House has proposed deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget that would reduce the agency’s staff by one-fifth in the first year and eliminate dozens of programs, according to details of a plan reviewed by The Washington Post.
While administration officials had already indicated that they intended to increase defense spending at the expense of other discretionary funding, the plan spells out exactly how this new approach will affect long- standing federal programs that have a direct impact on Americans’ everyday lives.
“The administration’s 2018 budget blueprint will prioritize rebuilding the military and making critical investments in the nation’s security,” the document says. “It will also identify the savings and efficiencies needed to keep the nation on a responsible fiscal path.”
The funding level proposed, which the document says “highlights the trade-offs and choices inherent in pursuing these goals,” could have a significant impact on the agency. Its annual budget would drop from $8.2 billion a year to $6.1 billion. And because much of that funding already goes to states and localities in the form of grants, such cuts could have an even more significant effect on the EPA’s core functions.
Though President Trump professes to care strongly about clean air and clean water, almost no other federal department or agency is as much in the crosshairs at the moment. As a candidate, he vowed to get rid of the EPA “in almost every form,” leaving only “little tidbits” intact. The man he chose to lead the agency, former Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt, sued it more than a dozen times in recent years, challenging its legal authority to regulate such things as mercury pollution, smog and carbon emissions from power plants.
The plan reflects those past sentiments. As proposed, the EPA’s staff would be slashed from its current level of 15,000 to 12,000. Grants to states, as well as its air and water programs, would be cut by 30 percent. The massive Chesapeake Bay cleanup project would receive only $5 million in the next fiscal year, down from its current $73 million.
In addition, 38 separate programs would be eliminated entirely. Grants to clean up brownfields, or abandoned industrial sites, would be gone. Also zeroed out: the radon program, climate change initiatives and funding for Alaskan native villages.

The agency’s Office of Research and Development could lose up to 42 percent of its budget, according to an individual apprised of the administration’s plans. And the document eliminates funding altogether for the office’s “contribution to the U.S. Global Change Research Program,” a climate initiative that President George H.W. Bush launched in 1989.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 25 in Oxon Hill, Md. (The Washington Post) 

The staffing reductions, which could be accomplished through a buyout offer as well as layoffs, were among several changes to which the EPA staff was asked to react by the close of business Wednesday. Multiple individuals briefed on the plan confirmed the request by the Office of Management and Budget, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The document acknowledges that the cuts “will create many challenges” but suggests that “by looking ahead and focusing on clean water, clean air and other core responsibilities, rather than activities that are not required by law, EPA will be able to effectively achieve its mission.”
Any cuts would have to be codified through the congressional appropriations process and would probably face resistance from some lawmakers. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), a former chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on interior, environment and related agencies, said he did not think Congress would approve such a steep drop in funding.
“There’s not that much in the EPA, for crying out loud,” he said, noting that Republicans had already reduced the agency’s budget dramatically in recent years.
Jennifer Hing, a spokeswoman for the House Appropriations Committee, declined to comment Wednesday on the cuts targeted but said in an email that the panel “will carefully look at the budget proposal once it is sent to Congress.”
The EPA also would not comment on the budget proposal. But its new administrator cautioned this week that the particulars of the budget remain in flux.
“I am concerned about the grants that have been targeted, especially around water infrastructure, and those very important state revolving funds,” Pruitt told the publication E&E News after Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday. He said he already had spoken with OMB Director Mick Mulvaney about the agency’s funding.
“What’s important for us is to educate OMB on what the priorities of the agency are, from water infrastructure to Superfund, providing some of those tangible benefits to our citizens,” he said, “while at the same time making sure that we reallocate, re-prioritize in our agency to do regulatory reform to get back within the bounds of Congress.”
It is unclear whether Pruitt’s appeal would produce any ­changes: The document states that any requests from agencies to increase or reallocate funds must be accompanied by budgetary offsets. Those could include “alternative funding cuts, balance cancellations or viable user fees.”
It instructs agency officials to “make sure any appeal is consistent with campaigns or other policy statements.”
Agencies must submit any alternative budget proposals to OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs by Friday, the document states, and OMB will convene a meeting April 15 to discuss the “initial draft of the workforce reduction plan.”
As details of the blueprint emerged, environmental advocates and the EPA’s most recent administrator blasted the White House proposal.
“This budget is a fantasy if the administration believes it will preserve EPA’s mission to protect public health,” Gina McCarthy, who served as the agency’s leader from 2013 through the end of the Obama administration, said in a statement Wednesday.
“It ignores the need to invest in science and to implement the law,” she said. “It ignores the lessons of history that led to EPA’s creation 46 years ago. And it ignores the American people calling for its continued support.”
S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, said in an email that the proposed budget would devastate critical federal financial support for communities across the country.
“These cuts, if enacted by Congress, will rip the heart and soul out of the national air pollution control program and jeopardize the health and welfare of tens of millions of people around the country,” Becker said.
The instructions to the EPA signal how the new administration plans to delegate many responsibilities to the states even as it decreases the money they will receive from the federal government.
The document directs the agency to get states “to assume more active enforcement roles” when it comes to federal environmental standards. In ­addition, it says, the agency should curtail its compliance-monitoring activities.
“Basically, the direction is to reduce enforcement, which is already pretty strained,” said Eric Shaeffer, head of the Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group, and a former head of the EPA’s Office of Regulatory Enforcement. He noted that state programs are often “woefully underfunded” and at the mercy of state politics and pressure from large companies.
Environmental justice activists are particularly alarmed at what they may face with the new administration.
The document states that it supports the idea of environmental justice, but it would eliminate that EPA office and “assumes any future EJ specific policy work can be transferred to the Office of Policy.”
On the South Side of Chicago, the neighborhood where Cheryl Johnson lives is known as “the toxic doughnut” because of the 200 leaking underground storage tanks and 50 landfills there.
The EPA office has given People for Community Recovery, for which Johnson is the executive director, and other organizations money to conduct technical assessment of local facilities and provide training to educate residents. And, Johnson added, it also has provided a place where residents could appeal to force local polluters to come into compliance with federal standards.
Losing that resource “would devastate a community like mine,” she said. It would be “like putting us in a chamber, to be disposed of.”

Links

• Pruitt to EPA employees: ‘We don’t have to choose’ between jobs and the environment
• Trump to propose 10 percent spike in defense spending, major cuts to other agencies
• Hundreds of current, former EPA employees urge Senate to reject Trump’s nominee for the agency
• Scott Pruitt, longtime adversary of EPA, confirmed to lead the agency
• Trump EPA official juggles two jobs in two Washingtons, and it hasn’t gone well

Public-Owned Australian Power Grid Could Solve Energy Issues, Paper Argues

The Guardian - Australian Associated Press

Economist says national electricity market has been crippled by design flaws and a failure to take climate change into account

Australia needs a nationalised power grid to deal with the current and future energy supply challenges. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

Australia’s electricity woes could be solved through a unified and publicly owned national power grid, a discussion paper has said.
The paper authored by University of Queensland economist Prof John Quiggin says the creation of the national electricity market in the 1990s has failed to lower power prices and improve system reliability or environmental sustainability.
It argues the electricity grid, including physical transmission networks in each state and interconnectors linking them, should instead be publicly owned.
And it says that “renationalised” grid should be responsible for maintaining a secure power supply and moving towards a zero emissions industry.
Quiggin said minor changes to the current national electricity market would not be able to resolve the “energy instability” that was holding Australia back.

“The price increases of the past decades and the series of recent breakdowns reflect systemic design flaws, exacerbated by the failure to take appropriate account of the implications of climate change,” he said in a statement on Friday.
He said some believed a publicly owned power grid was “unthinkable” but recent political upheavals were proof unthinkable ideas should not be dismissed.
“It is the only coherent response to the failure of neoliberal electricity reform, just as the establishment of a publicly owned national broadband network was the only feasible response to the failure of telecommunications reform,” he said.
The director of Flinders University’s Australian industrial transformation institute, which has released the paper, said it laid down a challenge to governments of all persuasions to create a policy in the nation’s interest.
“It is clear that the current system is unreliable and untenable,” Prof John Spoehr said. “This is a discussion we have to have, as a catalyst for genuine, nation building reform.”

Links

• High energy bills here to stay but jobs heading overseas, industry group warns
• Energy suppliers, business and consumer groups call for climate policy certainty
• Manufacturing union calls for land and tax deals for industry to help transition from coal
• Malcolm Turnbull was told gas plant shut down before South Australia blackout
• NSW could face power shortages as temperature rises on energy policy
• Australia should invest in coal power to reduce emissions, minister says
• Greg Hunt offers Alcoa new power station in bid to save Portland smelter
• Closure of Hazelwood power station to add $78 a year to power bills
• Opposition to public funding for Adani rail link outweighs support, poll finds

Deputy governor of Bank of Canada warns about climate change, touts pricing carbon

CBC News - Aaron Wherry

Climate change could cost Canada as much as $43B each year, Timothy Lane notes

The central bank's deputy governor Timothy Lane noted that Canada could 'face annual costs of between $21 billion and $43 billion by the 2050s' if action is not taken to mitigate global warming. (Dan Riedlhuber/Reuters) 

The deputy governor of the Bank of Canada touted the case for pricing carbon during a speech in Montreal on Thursday, warning that climate change and actions to address it will have "material and pervasive effects on Canada's economy and financial system."
Citing estimates by the now defunct National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, a former federal agency that was disbanded by Stephen Harper's Conservative government, Timothy Lane noted that Canada could "face annual costs of between $21 billion and $43 billion by the 2050s" if action is not taken to mitigate global warming.
Noting that climate change is associated with extreme weather events, Lane pointed to the wildfires in Alberta that reduced Canada's GDP by one per cent in the second quarter of 2016.
Lane said moving to a low-carbon economy will require profound structural changes to the Canadian economy.
In terms of addressing climate change, Lane focused on two options for policymakers: pricing carbon and financing green initiatives.
A price on carbon can be established through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, but "either way, we create incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the most efficient way."

Climate change costs
Pricing carbon is a central element of the Liberal government's national framework on climate change. Federal Conservatives and Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall have loudly criticized the Trudeau government's plan to establish a price.
"In economic terms, climate change is a negative externality. Any individual or company that engages in activities that generate greenhouse gases imposes a cost on everyone else by contributing to climate change," Lane said. "Establishing a price for carbon emissions forces polluters to bear those wider social costs."
Despite the skepticism of some, Lane said, price incentives work to change behaviour, pointing to an estimate that emissions have been reduced in British Columbia as a result of that province's carbon tax.
The deputy governor acknowledged that it can be costly for businesses and households to reduce their carbon footprint, but he noted that the revenue a government receives from pricing carbon can be used to lower other taxes and assist industries and families.
In the prepared text of his remarks, Lane also noted that pricing mechanisms can be designed to address competitiveness concerns that trade-exposed industries might have.

Links

• Thermometer Rising—Climate Change and Canada’s Economic Future
• Tax cuts over carbon pricing up to province, Justin Trudeau says
• Trudeau says climate plan will be measured by emissions trend in 2019
• Justin Trudeau's climate deal means more arguing down the road

Climate Change’s Signature Was Writ Large On Australia’s Crazy Summer Of 2017

The Conversation - Andrew King | David Karoly | Geert Jan van Oldenborgh | Matthew Hale | Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick

Sydney’s summer was the hottest on record. AAP Image/Dean Lewins

Australia’s summer is officially over, and it’s certainly been a weird one. The centre and east of the continent have had severe heat with many temperature records falling, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland.
For much of the country, the heat peaked on the weekend of February 11-12, when many places hit the high 40s. That heatwave, which mainly affected NSW, was quickly attributed to climate change. But can we say whether the whole summer bore the fingerprint of human-induced climate change?
Overall, Australia experienced its 12th-hottest summer on record. NSW had its hottest recorded summer.

Parts of eastern Australia had their hottest summer on record, but it was a different story in the west. Bureau of Meteorology, Author provided

The NSW record average summer temperatures can indeed be linked directly to climate change. We have reached this conclusion using two separate methods of analysis.
First, using coupled model simulations from a paper led by climatologist Sophie Lewis, we see that the extreme heat over the season is at least 50 times more likely in the current climate compared to a modelled world without human influences.
We also carried out an analysis based on current and past observations (similar to previous analyses used for record heat in the Arctic in 2016 and central England in 2014), comparing the likelihood of this record in today’s climate with the likelihood of it happening in the climate of 1910 (the beginning of reliable weather observations).
Again, we found at least a 50-fold increase in the likelihood of this hot summer due to the influence of human factors on the climate.

New South Wales had its hottest summer since at least 1910 when reliable national records began. Bureau of Meteorology, Author provided

It is clear that human-induced climate change is greatly increasing the likelihood of record hot summers in NSW and Australia as a whole.
When we look at record summer heat, as represented by average maximum temperatures, we again find a clear human fingerprint on the NSW record.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme summer heat (high average maximum temperatures) in New South Wales. Climate Central, Author provided

The Sydney and Canberra heat
So what about when we dig down to the local scale and look at those severe heatwaves? Can we still see the hand of climate change in those events?
As climate varies more on local scales than it does across an entire state like NSW, it can be harder to pick out the effect of climate change from the noise of the weather. On the other hand, it is the local temperature that people feel and is perhaps most meaningful.
In Canberra, we saw extreme heat with temperatures hitting 36℃ on February 9 and then topping 40℃ for the following two days. For that heatwave, we looked at the role of climate change, again by using the Weather@home model and by comparing past and present weather observations.
Both of these methods show that climate change has increased the likelihood of this kind of bout of extreme heat. The Weather@home results point to at least a 50% increase in the likelihood of this kind of heatwave.
For Sydney, which also had extreme temperatures, especially in the western suburbs, the effect of climate change on this heatwave is less clear. The observations show that it is likely that climate change increased the probability of such a heatwave occurring. The model shows the same, but the high year-to-year variability makes identifying the human influence more difficult at this location.

A sign of things to come?
We are seeing more frequent and intense heatwaves across Australia as the climate warms. While the characteristics of these weather events vary a great deal from year to year, the recent heat over eastern Australia has been exceptional. These trends are projected to continue in the coming decades, meaning that the climate change signal in these events will strengthen as conditions diverge further from historical averages.
Traditionally, Sydney’s central business district has had about three days a year above 35℃, averaged over the period 1981-2010. Over the decades from 2021 to 2040 we expect that number to average four a year instead.
To put this summer into context, we have seen a record 11 days hitting the 35℃ mark in Sydney.
It is a similar story for Canberra, where days above 35℃ tend to be more common (seven per year on average for 1981-2010) and are projected to increase to 12 per year for 2021-40. This summer, Canberra had 18 days above 35℃.
All of these results point to problems in the future as climate change causes heatwaves like this summer’s to become more common. This has many implications, not least for our health as many of us struggle to cope with the effects of excessive heat.

Some of our more unusual records
While the east battled record-breaking heat, the west battled extreme weather of a very different sort. Widespread heavy rains on February 9-11 caused flooding in parts of Western Australia. And on February 9 Perth experienced its coldest February day on record, peaking at just 17.4℃.
Back east, and just over a week after the extreme heat in Canberra, the capital’s airport experienced its coldest February morning on record (albeit after a weather station move in 2008). Temperatures dipped below 3℃ on the morning of February 21.
The past few months have given us more than our fair share of newsworthy weather. But the standout event has been the persistent and extreme heat in parts of eastern Australia – and that’s something we’re set to see plenty more of in the years to come.

Data were provided by the Bureau of Meteorology through its collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. This article was co-authored by Heidi Cullen, chief scientist with Climate Central.

Links

• Climate Council: heatwaves are getting hotter and more frequent
• Human hands are all over Australia’s hottest ever year
• It’s a scorcher: new site tracks heatwaves across Australia
• Climate change doubled the likelihood of the New South Wales heatwave