Climate Change Is Going To Drive Thousands Of Refugees To Cooler Countries

Futurism - Lou Del Bello

By the end of the century, climate change may drive 660,000 additional asylum seekers per year toward Europe. Growing mass migration is only one of the social and environmental consequences of increasing temperatures.

Creative Commons

Climate Threat Multiplier
Climate change doesn’t just warm the air and melt glaciers. It acts as a “threat multiplier,” playing on the vulnerabilities of ecosystems and communities in ways that we are yet to fully understand.
Migration is a case in point: the way it’s changing, and is projected to change in the future, highlights how the impacts of climate change on one place spill over to other parts of the world. A new study in Science finds that as crops fail in agricultural regions of the world, more people will seek asylum in Europe in the coming decades. If the current warming trends were to continue, the research predicts that by 2100 Europe will receive around 660,000 extra applicants each year.
The authors analyzed the relation between localized changes in weather and the number of asylum applications by that country’s migrants between 2000 and 2014, discovering that when temperatures in the source country changed from a moderate average of 20° C (68° F), applications increased.
They modeled future migration patterns by comparing present trends against the global warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They found that under a pathway where the concentration of greenhouse gases does not significantly decrease, and global temperatures increase by 4.8° C (8.6° F), asylum applications are likely to rise by 188 percent by the end of the century.



Speaking with the BBC, lead author Wolfram Schlenker, of Columbia University, acknowledged the uncertainty that comes with such models: “We basically have to assume that the relationship we uncovered between 2000 and 2014 is going to remain unchanged for the next 80 years,” he said.
He explained that “there are many reasons for why it could go either way. We could start adapting to warmer temperatures, so the impacts would be less, but if you shock people every year with the same thing, it could be much worse. We could be under or overestimating the effects.”

Breaking Point
While our resilience as a species means we can adapt to a great deal of change — by upgrading our infrastructure or breeding heat-resistant crops, among other actions — we too eventually reach a breaking point. New research in Environmental Research Letters finds that by 2100, rising temperatures combined with increased humidity will make some areas of the world uninhabitable for humans.
Humans cool their bodies by sweating. As sweat evaporates off the skin, it disperses the excess heat; but in an air thick with moisture, this process is slowed down or halted altogether. Under these conditions, organs start to fail, eventually leading to death. Previous papers have identified this upper limit as a sustained temperature of 35° C (95° F).
The new study maps the areas of the planet most at risk to experience not only greater heat but also higher density of vapor in the air. Among the regions likely to be affected are the Amazon, western and central Africa, northern India, eastern China and the southeastern part of the United States.
“It’s not just about the heat, or the number of people. It’s about how many people are poor, how many are old, who has to go outside to work, who has air conditioning,” said study coauthor Alex de Sherbinin, of Columbia’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network, in a statement. He said that even if the weather does not lead to a sudden collapse of the affected human systems, working in farms or in non air conditioned environments may lead to chronic health problems such as kidney disease — another case of climate change as a threat multiplier. It is likely that over time, many will eventually seek a new home elsewhere.
Although the science is not conclusive, there is evidence that climate change-induced drought might have exacerbated the social unrest that led to some of the most brutal conflicts of this century, including the Syrian war. The science of extreme weather attribution is developing fast, but there is still a long way to go before we can identify with certainty the role played by climate change in any extreme event.
What scientists now know is that what happens in one particular part of the planet will most likely trigger a cascade of consequences that will be felt far away. These are not only environmental consequences, but also social, and will increasingly involve the movement of large numbers of people. As mass migration is already causing tensions all over the world, leaders will have to find new strategies to manage the growing nomad communities of the future.

Links

• Devastating Climate Change Could Lead To 1m Migrants A Year Entering EU By 2100
• Climate Change Will Displace Millions In Coming Decades. Nations Should Prepare Now To Help Them
• Climate Change 'Will Create World's Biggest Refugee Crisis'
• A Proposal In New Zealand Could Trigger The Era Of ‘Climate Change Refugees’
• There Could Be 2 Billion Climate Change Refugees By 2100
• Climate Change Will Force Mass Migration Of 1 Billion By 2100
• Climate Change Could Threaten Up To 2 Billion Refugees By 2100
• Barack Obama Warns Climate Change Could Create Refugee Crisis ‘Unprecedented In Human History’
• ‘Disaster Alley’: Australia Could Be Set To Receive New Wave Of Climate Refugees
• Climate Change, Migration And Human Health

Tesla’s Enormous Battery In Australia, Just Weeks Old, Is Already Responding To Outages In ‘Record’ Time

Washington Post - Brian Fung

(Neoen/Tesla/hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au)

Less than a month after Tesla unveiled a new backup power system in South Australia, the world's largest lithium-ion battery is already being put to the test. And it appears to be far exceeding expectations: In the past three weeks alone, the Hornsdale Power Reserve has smoothed out at least two major energy outages, responding even more quickly than the coal-fired backups that were supposed to provide emergency power.
Tesla's battery last week kicked in just 0.14 seconds after one of Australia's biggest plants, the Loy Yang facility in the neighboring state of Victoria, suffered a sudden, unexplained drop in output, according to the International Business Times. And the week before that, another failure at Loy Yang prompted the Hornsdale battery to respond in as little as four seconds — or less, according to some estimates — beating other plants to the punch. State officials have called the response time “a record,” according to local media.
The effectiveness of Tesla's battery is being closely watched in a region that is in the grips of an energy crisis. The price of electricity is soaring in Australia, particularly in the state of South Australia, where a 2016 outage led 1.7 million residents to lose power in a blackout. Storms and heat waves have caused additional outages, and many Australians are bracing for more with the onset of summer in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Hornsdale battery system, which uses the same energy-storage tech found in Tesla's electric cars, is one of chief executive Elon Musk's newest projects. In March, Musk, who is known for setting high goals and only sometimes meeting them, vowed on Twitter to deliver a battery system for South Australia's struggling grid within 100 days or it would be free. By early July, the state had signed a deal with Tesla and the French-based energy company Neoen to produce the battery. And by Dec. 1, South Australia announced that it had switched on the Hornsdale battery.
Fed by wind turbines at the nearby Hornsdale wind farm, the battery stores excess energy that is produced when the demand for electricity isn't peaking. It can power up to 30,000 homes, though only for short periods — meaning that the battery must still be supported by traditional power plants in the event of a long outage.
A spokesman for Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nonetheless, the Hornsdale reserve has already shown that it can provide what's known as “contingency” service — keeping the grid stable in a crisis and easing what would otherwise be a significant power failure. And, more important, the project is the biggest proof-of-concept yet that batteries such as Tesla's can help mitigate one of renewable energy's most persistent problems: how to use it when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.
"When you think about energy storage, it's not a [power] generation resource," said Stephen Coughlin, the vice president of energy storage platforms at the Arlington-based AES Corporation, which is behind several battery projects in California, the Netherlands and several other countries. "What it's really doing is providing a much-needed injection of reliability and resiliency into the network overall."
Where it can take as much as 10 minutes to spin up a traditional turbine in a pinch, added Coughlin, it's not uncommon to see systems such as Tesla's intervene in fractions of a second.
This isn't Musk's only experiment with large-scale batteries. Last year, Tesla said it had equipped a small island in American Samoa with thousands of solar panels and batteries that could serve the area's 600 inhabitants, shifting them almost entirely off fossil fuels. In October, Musk responded to the hurricane crisis in Puerto Rico by offering to discuss building a solar grid for the island. Parts of Puerto Rico are still without power, months after Hurricane Maria ripped down power lines and other energy infrastructure.
An electric grid consisting of distributed solar panels, paired with a large battery, could prove transformative for some island economies, analysts say. Under normal circumstances, the price of imported fossil fuels can become a drain on local businesses. But the abundant sunshine at tropical latitudes makes solar energy extremely cost-efficient.
"[Big batteries] definitely can be a game changer for island or island-type economies," said Ravi Manghani, director of energy storage at GTM Research, a market analysis firm. "Hawaii, for instance, has one of the highest retail rates in the U.S. [for electricity], and that's because of the cost of shipping diesel or other fuel oils which currently are used by a lot of the existing facilities."
What's more, he added, spreading solar panels out across an island reduces the likelihood of the entire grid going down because of storms.
Other battery projects, including in the United States, have already helped manage spikes in demand. For example, a major 2015 gas leak near Los Angeles that kept some gas-fired plants from producing energy at peak times prompted Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric to announce energy storage projects that were completed earlier this year, according to Sam Wilkinson, an industry analyst at IHS.
In an April report, Wilkinson highlighted the rapid rise of China and Australia as energy storage leaders.
"For the first time Asia accounts for more than one third of the global pipeline" for energy storage, the report read. "This underscores the importance that China, Australia, South Korea and India are all predicted to have in the global market."

Links

• Hornsdale Power Reserve
• Elon Musk's massive backup battery took just 140 milliseconds to respond to crisis at power plant
• The real reasons why our power prices are going up
• Tesla powers a whole island with solar to show off its energy chops
• Power boost: How Australia will avoid summer blackouts
• Renewable energy to reach cost parity with coal by 2020

Climate Change Is Happening Faster Than Expected, and It’s More Extreme

InsideClimate News - Bob Berwyn

New research suggests human-caused emissions will lead to bigger impacts on heat and extreme weather, and sooner than the IPCC warned just three years ago.

Scientists warned in 2017 that not enough has been done to protect millions of people from an expected increase in dangerous heat waves. Credit: Chris Hondros/Getty Images

In the past year, the scientific consensus shifted toward a grimmer and less uncertain picture of the risks posed by climate change.
When the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its 5th Climate Assessment in 2014, it formally declared that observed warming was "extremely likely" to be mostly caused by human activity.
This year, a major scientific update from the United States Global Change Research Program put it more bluntly: "There is no convincing alternative explanation."
Other scientific authorities have issued similar assessments:

• The Royal Society published a compendium of how the science has advanced, warning that it seems likelier that we've been underestimating the risks of warming than overestimating them.
   
• The American Meteorological Society issued its annual study of extreme weather events and said that many of those it studied this year would not have been possible without the influence of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
   
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said recent melting of the Arctic was not moderating and was more intense than at any time in recorded history.

While 2017 may not have hit a global temperature record, it is running in second or third place, and on the heels of records set in 2015 and 2016. Talk of some kind of "hiatus" seems as old as disco music.

'A Deadly Tragedy in the Making'
Some of the strongest warnings in the Royal Society update came from health researchers, who said there hasn't been nearly enough done to protect millions of vulnerable people worldwide from the expected increase in heat waves.
"It's a deadly tragedy in the making, all the worse because the same experts are saying such heat waves are eminently survivable with adequate resources to protect people," said climate researcher Eric Wolff, lead author of the Royal Society update.
Atmospheric scientist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research said climate science has progressed in all directions since the IPCC report was published in 2014. He works with a group of scientists trying to update the IPCC reporting process to make it more fluid and meaningful in real time.

"The need to build resilience is clear and missing in action," Trenberth said. "The result is we suffer the consequences at costs of hundreds of billions of dollars."
One of the starkest conclusions of the Royal Society update is that up to 350 million people in places like Karachi, Kolkota, Lagos and Shanghai are likely to face deadly heat waves every year by 2050—even if nations are able to rein in greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep the average global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as per the Paris climate agreement.
There's also an increasing chance global warming will affect a key North Atlantic current that carries ocean heat from the tropics toward western Europe, according to a 2016 study. It shows the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current weakening by 37 percent by 2100, which could have big effects on European climate and food production.

Melting Ice and Risks to Oceans and Ecosystems
The Royal Society report also notes:

• An increasing risk that ocean acidification will rapidly and significantly alter many ecosystems and food webs;
   
• A concern that crops grown in high-CO2 conditions could be less nutritious, leading to mineral deficiencies;
   
• That the commonly accepted wet-areas-wetter and dry-areas-drier scenario has regional nuances with important implications for local water management and food production planning; and,
   
• That scientists are finding more links between melting Arctic sea ice and weather extremes like heat waves, droughts and blizzards.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program, an interagency group whose work went through exhaustive peer review and emerged from the Trump administration's political review mostly unscathed, also cited several emerging conclusions that are much clearer today than five years ago.
Among them are changes in ocean ecosystems that go far beyond rising sea levels. Ocean acidification is increasing, as is oxygen loss, and scientists are more acutely aware than before of the severity of their impacts. In some U.S. coastal waters, these trends are "raising the risk of serious ecological and economic consequences," the report noted.

The most ominous of its chapters addressed the risks of surprises like "tipping points" or "compound extremes"—sucker punches, combination punches, and even knockout punches. "The more the climate changes, the greater the potential for these," it said.
"Uncertainty is not our friend here," said Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann. "We are seeing increases in extreme weather events that go well beyond what has been predicted or projected in the past. We're learning that there are factors we were not previously aware of that may be magnifying the impacts of human-caused climate change." Among those are "subtle mechanisms involving the behavior of the jet stream that may be involved in explaining the dramatic increase we've seen in floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires," he said.
"Increasingly, the science suggests that many of the impacts are occurring earlier and with greater amplitude than was predicted," Mann said, after considering new research since the milestone of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment, which served as the scientific basis for the Paris Agreement.
"We have literally, in the space of a year, doubled our assessment of the potential sea level rise we could see by the end of this century. That is simply remarkable. And it is sobering," he said.
In general, there should be more monitoring of global warming impacts, but all those programs are threatened under the current administration, Mann said. "Continued funding to support research is critical," he said, "and here, again, we encounter a very unfavorable political environment where fossil fuel-beholden politicians that run the White House and Congress are doing everything they can to defund and suppress research on climate change science and impact assessments."

Links

• The Most Accurate Climate Models Predict Greater Warming, Study Shows
• Global CO2 Emissions to Hit Record High in 2017
• How Responsible Is Each Country When an Extreme Climate Event Strikes?
• In Alaska's Thawing Permafrost, Humanity's 'Library Is on Fire'
• How Big Oil Lost Control of Its Climate Misinformation Machine
• Electric Trucks Begin Reporting for Duty, Quietly and Without All the Fumes

This Year’s Best Movies, Books, And Podcasts About Climate Change

Grist - Amelia Urry

I don’t know about you, but I spent a good portion of this year escaping. When your day job involves running fact-checks on the bizarre and short-sighted decisions that will determine the future for you and everyone you know, well, it helps to take a time-out every once in a while.
And there was some high-quality escapism on offer this year, from superhero blockbusters to dystopian page turners. But even in the fluffiest, most candy-coated realms of pop culture, our anxieties about the world have a way of creeping in. We’ve been steeping in this stuff and it shows, from the increasingly beleaguered comedians of late-night who have to keep coming up with new jokes about Paris climate talks to robo-future shoot-em-up Blade Runner 2049’s thinly veiled warnings about devastating environmental change.
So here are some of the most notable pieces of entertainment that brought the Grist staff down to earth this year:



The Leftovers
The best thing on TV in 2017, and maybe ever, was the last season of The Leftovers. The premise is that 2 percent of the population spontaneously evaporated from the earth one day, and those remaining — the leftovers, you see — have to deal with the disappearance of their loved ones. One story line follows the Guilty Remnant, a cult dedicated to remembering the event with tactics that range from annoying to emotionally terrorizing to literally terrorizing. The overwhelming public response to the Remnant is: “Leave us alone, so we can stop thinking about what we’ve lost.”
I don’t believe it’s meant to be an analogy for the climate conversation, but I saw so many similarities. Part of the resistance to acting on climate change comes from an unwillingness to acknowledge what is already lost — certain sea-level rise, locked-in temperature increases, and irreversible change to our environments. It requires a kind of reckoning, a mourning, that most people would rather not undergo. If you watch the show as a portrayal of that kind of internal struggle, it’s really jarring.
Eve Andrews, Associate Editor

Geostorm
I love disaster movies. The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, Deep Impact — give me a ridiculous global threat for our main characters to race against, and I’ll watch every rerun on SyFy. This year’s disaster flick is Geostorm. Given its 13 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, let’s just say this climapocalyptic blockbuster won’t be taking home any statues this award season.
The plot hinges on a government-run satellite system that controls all weather on Earth. Things go wrong, the satellites malfunction, and extreme weather starts leveling cities. It’s an overblown portrayal of the threat posed to life on earth by geoengineering and climate change.
Is this movie at all scientifically accurate? Nope! But if you, like me, enjoy watching people get frozen by ice storms, thrown around in tornadoes, and wiped out by skyscraper-leveling tsunamis, it’s worth a watch. Preferably in 4DX.
Cody Permenter, Social Media Manager



Science Vs
“Alternative facts” was the final straw: America has kind of lost its grip on reality. Gimlet Media’s podcast Science Vs cuts through the crap: Do vitamin supplements do anything? Is 100 percent clean energy possible? Do women’s menstrual cycles actually sync up?
The podcast’s fearless host — Australian science journalist Wendy Zukerman — combs through the latest science, chats with experts, and cracks jokes that would make your dad proud. You might not always like all the answers (listen to the organic episode, dear Grist reader). But that’s sort of the point. It’s the antidote — not the anecdote! — that America needs right now.
Kate Yoder, News Editor

Bill Nye: Science Guy
If you grew up watching Bill Nye give zany televised lessons on the fundamentals of science, you’ll probably enjoy this introduction to the man behind the bow tie. Directors David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg originally set out in 2014 to make a fun documentary about Nye’s legacy of communicating science by being irresistibly goofy. But then 2017 happened. “With the Trump administration, it became so much more serious,” Alvarado says.
The resulting film follows Nye on his quest to protect science education from creationists and climate change deniers, venturing into creation museums and theme parks to debate evolution. It’s not a purely flattering tribute, though it also delves into questions about Nye’s pedigree as a scientist (he has B.S. in mechanical engineering) and about how much he loves the limelight.
Justine Calma, Justice Fellow



Okja
This movie is deranged, in the best possible way. If you know anything about director Bong Joon Ho, that won’t surprise you at all — his last feature to hit American theaters was 2014’s Snowpiercer, a parable of class warfare and global warming set on a perpetual motion machine of a train. Talk about a plot device!
Okja takes on globalization and animal agriculture with the same off-kilter enthusiasm, pitting terrifying, twinned Tilda Swinton against a South Korean farm girl and a friendly giant of a genetically engineered pig. The filming famously turned the director vegan (at least for a few months) and having watched it, I can see why! But its charms outweigh the ick factor, largely thanks to Ahn Seo-hyun’s performance as Mija and her bond with the lovable Okja.
Amelia Urry, Associate Editor

Chasing Coral
Many people I know are truly scared to watch this documentary because they think it is all doom and gloom, and we’ve got enough of that going around as it is. But Chasing Coral is more than that — it’s luminous, honest, funny, and moving, a love letter to the magic of nature and the joy that we get from exploring the world. The filmmakers take us underwater to some of the most exquisite coral reefs and fish communities remaining on the planet, giving us a front-row seat to climate change in action.
I’m going to host a showing of the film for friends in the new year. Eulogy or wake-up call, I think it’s worth being moved by the stunning and humbling complexity of our oceans and the coral that has been its seedbed.
Kate Jackson, Director of Networks



Sourdough
Sourdough is a ridiculous and playful novel by Robin Sloan (who, full disclosure, wrote a blurb for one of my books). I mean, c’mon, it’s about sentient sourdough starter. It’s also the most realistic and compelling guide to the modern food debate I’ve encountered.
The story takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area, the scene of an ongoing struggle between two very different versions of foodie utopia. On one side is an Alice Waters–like character who champions tradition, artisanal labor, and the flavors of nature. On the other side there’s a Soylent-inspired company promoting exploration, efficiency, and new creation. According to the classic sci-fi formula, the story would be about how technological advancement creates a monster that must be defeated. But this book refuses to take sides. Like most of us, the novel values culture and tradition, but also yearns for newness and exploration. Like most of us, it’s wonderstruck by technology while also skeptical of it.
If everyone engaged in making a more equitable and sustainable food system took the lessons in Sourdough to heart, I think the partisan debate would end. It’s the techie-hippie divide that’s unnatural — most of us want a bit of everything.
Nathanael Johnson, Senior Writer

S-Town
If you haven’t heard 2017 breakout podcast S-Town, please tell me what rock you’ve been living under so I can build a nuclear bunker there that would make John B. proud. The story, from the producers of This American Life and Serial, documents the life of one disillusioned, brilliant, misanthropic horologist as he alternately despairs and rejoices in the human capacity to muck up the best intentions. And, yes, that means he talks about climate change A LOT. As narrator Brian Reed laments, that doesn’t always make for uplifting conversation. (SORRY for boring you, Brian.) But it does make for some pretty gripping radio.
Amelia Urry, Associate Editor

Terrestrial
Terrestrial is an environmental podcast like you’ve never heard (case in point: Its unofficial tagline is “We’re fucked. Now what?”). Currently in its second season, the show profiles individuals making tough choices in the face of climate change, like a conservative hunter who breaks rank to defend public lands or a teenage girl who joins a group suing the government over climate inaction. The show tackles big issues — like climate change, air pollution, and environmental justice — and tells those stories in a way listeners can relate to.
Jesse Nichols, Contributing Assistant Video Producer

Thor: Ragnarok
I was worried about the planet turning into a giant garbage patch where violent cage matches serve as the only distraction from pollution and massive income inequality. Then, I watched Thor: Ragnarok. Now, I’m thrilled about our planet turning into a giant garbage patch where violent cage matches serve as the only distraction from pollution and massive income inequality, as overseen by emperor Jeff Goldblum. Now there’s a magnetic personality!
Darby Minow Smith, Senior Managing Editor



Links

• From hotumn to meatmares: The words that defined our planet this year
• Here’s the good news about Earth from this year
• 2017 will be the warmest year in history without an El Niño
• Coastal cities are in serious jeopardy, new sea-level rise study shows
• Trump’s lawyers tried (and probably failed) to throw out the kids’ climate lawsuit

12 Frightening Results Of Climate Change That We Saw This Year

International Business Times - Immanuel Jotham

There is a lot of work ahead of us in preserving what is left of our planet.


World leaders gathered in Paris for climate summit, except for Donald Trump. Newsweek

Climate change, or global warming, is a subject that received a lot of attention this year. 2017 has seen erratic weather patterns, including massive storms and fires, and disheartening news from the scientific community about the state of the planet.
Here is IBTimes UK's list of the most important climate-based news in 2017. This list is by no means complete and does not include every single climate-based event this year, but is rather only a highlight reel. Also, the list has been in arranged in order of occurrence, starting in January 2017, and is not ranked by significance or importance.

2016 hottest year on record
The year started with the announcement that 2016 was the hottest one on record. Since climate levels first started being recorded in 1850, there has been no hotter year than 2016. Later in 2017, even the global warming hiatus was debunked. Scientists have found that temperatures have been steadily rising as a result of global warming.
Incidentally, before 2016, 2015 was the warmest year on record.

The largest ice shelf to ever break off into the sea: Larsen C
The story of Larsen C was in the news at the beginning of 2017 when it was reported that an ice shelf, one-quarter the size of Wales, was about to break off from Antarctica. In January, a report said that when it does break, it will be the largest iceberg in the region, about 5,000 km in size.
By July, it was just about to break off from the ice shelf and set itself adrift into the southern ocean. ESA called its size "biblical". It was expected to extend almost 210 metres into the sea as it floated like an island.
On 12 July, 2017, the 5,000 km ice berg finally broke off – that's a trillion tonnes of freshwater added to the sea.


Massive iceberg breaks free in Antarctica.

Arctic permafrost has started to melt
Permafrost, or the permanently frozen sections of ice, has started to thaw in the Arctic tundra. This region covers an area of 20 million sq. kilometres. Permafrost is described as ice that remains frozen throughout the year. The Arctic permafrost has been in a frozen state for thousands of years and global warming has started to gradually thaw out the ice.
This is bad news because all the dead, preserved organic matter will now start to decompose and release methane and several other carbon-based gases into the atmosphere. About 1,500 tonnes of carbon is locked up in the permafrost and its release into the atmosphere could bring about catastrophe. That is about three times as much carbon as all the forests of Earth combined.

Polar bears are exposed to between 100 and 1,000 times the estimated safe limit for long-lasting toxic chemicals in the environment, according to a study. NASA

Increasing dead zones in the oceans
Oxygen levels in the seas of the world have been steadily falling over the years and this is caused by the increasing surface temperature of water. Warm air will rise to the surface and stay there, reducing the circulation of water, exposing lesser water to the open air and cutting off the aeration effect. This creates "dead zones" in oceans – regions where mid-depth water has little to no marine life.

Antarctica record temperature
Antarctica has recorded temperatures as high as 17.5 degrees C (63.5 degrees F). While the tempreature was recorded in 2015, it was only published this year. Since then, warm water has been found melting out the underside of many shelves in Antarctica. The increased temperature of the air has been melting down the icy continent rapidly as well. The ice shelves in Antarctica are even more fragile than was first believed and things don't seem to be getting better there.

Trump bows out of the Paris Climate Agreement
US President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris agreements in June this year. By November 2017, the US became the only nation that had not ratified the Paris accords – even North Korea and Syria had signed it. Trump has been a vocal critic of climate change agreements and the world's second-largest polluter is among the few countries right now that do not see climate change as being caused by human activity, according to their official state policy.

President Donald Trump announced that the United States would pull out of the Paris climate agreement on 1 June, 2017. Win McNamee/Getty Images

Projected effects of climate change maps
Temperatures accross the world are set to increase by approximately 4-6 degrees C before 2100. Temperatures of 35°C are also likely to increase and spread in many regions of the planet, according to a new study by the Climate Impact Lab. Maps showing what will happen to the global climate were released and they do not look too good

With Paris Agreement

Without Paris agreement

Sixth mass extinction underway
Scientists have declared that the world is facing its sixth mass extinction as several vertebrate species of animal life are disappearing fast. The loss of biodiversity in the Earth is a pressing problem. In fact, over the last century, it has been estimated that 200 species of vertebrates have gone extinct, which is roughly about two species every year. These losses continue to happen and are irreversible. The report was published by the PNAS.

Hurricanes rattled the world this year as well
The 2017 hurricane season was the second most expensive on record in the US, only behind the year 2005, that brought Katrina, Dennis, and Cindy, noted a report by Time. This year, Harvey, Irma, and Jose caused an estimated damage of over $150-$200 billion. Harvey made landfall in August, Irma followed soon after and Jose came after it. These three hurricanes were caused by warmer climates intensifying the effects of the storm, scientists said. Super storms are likely to increase in number and ferocity in the coming years.


2017 Hurricanes and Aerosols Simulation. NASA
How can you see the atmosphere? By tracking what is carried on the wind.  Tiny aerosol particles such as smoke, dust, and sea salt are transported across the globe, making visible weather patterns and other normally invisible physical processes.

Carbon dioxide levels highest in 800,000 years
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached record highs this year. In over 800,000 years, there has never been so much carbon in the atmosphere, noted a report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
"CO2 remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years and in the oceans for even longer. The laws of physics mean that we face a much hotter, more extreme climate in the future. There is currently no magic wand to remove this CO2 from the atmosphere," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
Nasa pointed out that the extreme El Nino season in 2015 was one of the reasons for this massive spike in CO2.

The last El Nino in 2015-16 impacted the amount of carbon dioxide that the Earth’s tropical regions released into the atmosphere, leading to the recent record spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide. The effects of El Nino were different in each region. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Greenland faces rapid melt
Greenland is melting at a rate that is higher than previously estimated and is likely to melt into the sea in about 500 years. While it will not melt away in an even manner throughout, large cracks in the ice are apparent and will lead to a lot of loss in terms of the volume of ice over the next hundred years.

Scientists issue warning to humanity
In what is probably the most sobering of all climate related news in 2017, a report titled 'World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice' was published after 15,000 scientists from 184 countries came together to say that this second notice needs to be taken seriously. If not, catastrophic biodiversity loss and widespread human misery is sure to follow.
"Scientists are in the business of analysing data and looking at the long-term consequences. Those who signed this second warning aren't just raising a false alarm. They are acknowledging the obvious signs that we are heading down an unsustainable path. We are hoping that our paper will ignite a widespread public debate about the global environment and climate," said William Ripple, one of the authors of the report.
The first notice was released in 1992, and things have only gotten a lot worse since.

The past 16 years were among the warmest on record. iStock

It is important to note that while this list is quite alarming, it is not intended to cast a sense of doom. Rather, it is a reminder of the work required in order to keep the planet sustainable.
This year has also seen quite a bit of positive change. Companies as well as governments seem to be taking steps to cut down on emission levels and are also moving towards a renewable energy-based ecosystem. Car manufacturers, for example, are slowly abandoning fossil fuel-based engines for all-electric models. In fact, the British government has said that by 2040, petrol and diesel engines will be completely banned in the UK.


Here are nine ways climate change is destroying the planet. IBTimesUK/Wochit

Links

• Antarctic ice melt: Calculating the actual extent of sea level rise may not be possible until 2060
• One Planet Summit: World Bank will soon stop financing oil and gas exploration
• Man-made climate change was the sole cause of 2016's heat waves

Turnbull Has Politicked Himself Into Irrelevance On Energy And Climate In 2018

The Conversation - Alan Pears

Marcella Cheng/The Conversation

As we approach the end of the year, it’s useful to look back and forward. Now is an auspicious time, as two major energy-related reports have been released this week: the federal government’s review of their climate change policies, and a discussion paper from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) on future energy paths.
The difference between the two is striking. The AEMO paper is practical, direct and realistic. On the other hand, the climate policy review relies essentially on Australia buying lots of international carbon permits to meet our Paris target (and, implicitly, on state governments taking up the challenge their Canberra colleagues have largely abanondoned).
It’s amusing to read a document that plays with numbers in such creative ways. But it is a fairy story, and it’s no way to drive national climate policy.
I almost feel as though I could just change the dates and reprint my article reviewing prospects for energy in 2017:

2017 is the year when many long-festering energy policy problems must be addressed. Our outdated energy market model is falling apart. The gas industry is lining its pockets at the expense of Australian industry. Climate policy is urgent, but controversial among key decision-makers. Our fossil fuel exports are under threat from global forces.

But things have in fact shifted a long way – the revolution is accelerating and unstoppable. The federal government is almost irrelevant; the public statements and policies it presents are simply aimed at getting “something” through the Coalition party room, or trying to throw blame on others. It’s very sad.
The real games are being played out within state governments; in battles between energy policy agencies and regulators; by emerging industry players who do not even have formal roles in energy legisation; and by business and the community as they defend themselves from the failures around them by implementing “behind the meter” solutions and working together.

The real heavy lifters
Medals of Valour should be awarded to Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, AEMO chief executive Audrey Zibelman, and South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill.
The government’s response to this year’s Finkel Review showed that no amount of compromise would allow a sensible energy and climate policy to pass through the minefield of the Coalition party room. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, both of whom know what they need to do, simply have too little political capital within that place to drive realistic energy policy.
But the Finkel Review also successfully recommended many changes that will help to fix the physical operation of the grid. Innovation and the laws of physics have finally begun to triumph over market politics and ideology.
AEMO worked out a way to get around the glacial and obstructive tactics of the Australian Energy Market Commission on demand-side action by setting up a “pilot project” to drive demand response. It has been clear for decades that this is a very cost-effective tool. Zibelman has been a voice of practical reality and clear understanding of the future of energy, including the demand side, and AEMO’s future energy paths reflects that.
Weatherill has weathered a storm of abuse over his state’s innovative energy strategy. His government has shown how a diversified approach can transform an energy system in little more than a year. But he needs to put more effort into long term energy efficiency and energy productivity improvement measures integrated with renewables and storage, to reduce pressure on electricity systems over time. For example, home cooling comprises a third of South Australia’s peak electricity demand, but could be slashed by efficient buildings and cooling equipment.

What lies ahead
Looking forward, the coming year will be shaped by some key issues, some of which are already playing out at a frenetic pace. Consider a small sample of many recent events:

• As mentioned, AEMO has released a discussion paper framing a very different electricity future, and including a low-carbon scenario.
• The new battery in South Australia has delivered remarkable outcomes, helping to stabilise the grid in ways that few imagined.
• The Victorian Essential Services Commission has proposed a new “time of day” feed-in price for rooftop solar that reaches 29 cents per kilowatt-hour in afternoons and evenings. If approved, this will be a game-changer, as adding battery storage to rooftop solar will become far more attractive.
• The Energy Networks Association, not the gas industry, has released a zero emission gas strategy at last.
• The annual report on the National Energy Productivity Plan (remember that?) shows we’re falling behind even the government’s weak target: not surprising given the miniscule resources allocated.

Meanwhile the federal government has released energy modelling to underpin ongoing negotiation on the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) that is simply irrelevant and embarrassing. The Energy Security Board’s involvement in this has undermined perceptions of its independence, especially when it is contrasted with the vision AEMO is discussing in its paper.
While the states have agreed to continue discussion on the NEG in April, there are some major hurdles. Primarily, states must be allowed to set and achieve their own energy targets: the federal energy minister has put the blame for problems on the states, and they now have to be seen by their voters to act.
Second, the design must ensure it does not give the dominant energy companies even more power to distort markets. Some members of the Energy Security Board seem to understand the challenges, and are optimistic they can be overcome. Time will tell.
As Turnbull has said, we live in exciting times.

Links

• The federal Climate Policy Review: a recipe for business as usual
• The Finkel Review at a glance
• Yes, SA’s battery is a massive battery, but it can do much more besides
• A gas shortage next year is unlikely, but that’s the only good news
• Climate change will displace millions in coming decades. Nations should prepare now to help them
• Sydney’s closer to being a zero-carbon city than you think
• The federal Climate Policy Review: a recipe for business as usual

Ipsos Poll: Only 18 Per Cent Think Turnbull Government Is Doing A Good Job On Climate Change

Fairfax - Matt Wade

One in two Australians believe climate change is already damaging the Great Barrier Reef and causing more extreme storms, floods and droughts.
But only 18 per cent think the Turnbull government is doing a good job tackling global warming, a new poll has found.

Snowy Hydro 2.0: over budget already

The ambitious project will take longer to build and cost more than first thought, according to a study into the multi billion dollar expansion.

An annual survey by Ipsos, which has probed public opinion on climate change for the past 12 years, shows eight in 10 agree human activity is contributing to climate change – 42 per cent say humans are mainly or entirely responsible while 38 per cent believe climate change is caused partly by humans and partly by natural processes.
Just 3 per cent of respondents think there is no such thing as climate change, a share that has hardly shifted during the past decade. Another 12 per cent believe climate change is caused entirely or mostly by natural processes.

A new Ipsos poll shows only 18 per cent of Australians think the Turnbull government is doing a good job combating climate change. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Ipsos researcher Jennifer Brook said public perceptions about climate change in Australia have stabilised in recent years.
"Despite this maturation of belief in climate change, there is still confusion as to the exact causes and frustration around conflicting opinions resulting in confusion on the topic of climate change," she said.
"It is these details that still seem to be up for debate, and complicate people's understanding of the causes."

What best describes your opinion about the causes of climate change?

Base: Percentage of all respondents Source: Ipsos Climate Change Survey 2017

Energy policy has been a key political theme in 2017, with the Turnbull government unveiling major policies including the National Energy Guarantee and the expansion of Snowy Hydro.
That may have contributed to a rise in the share of Australians who think combating climate change is primarily the federal government's duty. The proportion saying climate action is mainly the federal government's responsibility was 41 per cent, the equal highest since the question was first asked in 2010.

Who should be mainly responsible for action on climate change? 

Source: Ipsos Climate Change Survey 2017

But only 3 per cent of respondents rated the federal government's response to climate change as "very good", with a further 15 per cent rating it as "fairly good." More than four in 10 rated the federal government's performance on climate change as poor or very poor.
The share of respondents who felt the international community was doing a good or very good job of tackling climate change rose to 22 per cent, 3 percentage points higher than last year.

Opinion on climate change action

Source: Ipsos Climate Change Survey 2017

Almost half of respondents (47 per cent) agreed climate change is already causing more frequent and extreme storm events, is already causing the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef (47 per cent) and that is already causing more frequent and extreme droughts (47 percent).
A slightly smaller share agreed climate change is already causing more frequent and extreme floods (45 per cent) and more frequent and extreme bushfires (44 per cent).
A clear majority (54 per cent) agreed that climate change poses a serious threat to our way of life over the next 25 years while nearly two thirds agree that climate change poses a serious threat to our way of life over the next 100 years.

The top five processes that Australians believe are already impacted by climate change

Source: Ipsos Climate Change Survey 2017

Those aged less than 50 are much more likely to think climate change is mostly or entirely caused by human activity than those aged over 50.
Australians are sceptical about letting market forces alone determine how much power is generated from renewable sources.
Only 27 per cent supported a deregulated, "market only" approach with no national target for the uptake of renewable energy.
Seven in 10 were in favour of the federal government setting a national target for renewable energy use (32 per cent strongly support this) with just 15 per cent opposed.
Only 5 per cent of respondents said business should be mainly responsible for climate change action, the lowest share since 2010.

Links

• The 2017 Ipsos Climate Change Report
• PM disappoints public on climate change
• Snowy Hydro expansion could hit nearly $12 billion
• 'Snowy 2.0' will go ahead but costs blow out by billions
• National energy guarantee only guarantees more confusion