Is Climate Change Really Too Hard To Understand?

Washington Post - Tom Toles

Tom Toles

A lot of people wonder why we are doing so little to prevent the slow-motion catastrophe of climate change. One theory is that it’s too big a subject to understand.
It’s a big subject, all right. And a difficult one to address. But too big to understand it isn’t. Quantum physics is too big to understand. Climate change is simple. I’ll put it in one sentence: There are known heat-trapping gasses, and if we add too much of them to the atmosphere, it will cause large, foreseeable damage to humans and natural environments. That is not too big to understand.
And a majority of people understand it just fine. They are making the assumption that the political process will work normally and that the government will take the steps necessary to deal with it. Like government did with smog, and with polluted water, and with acid rain, and with ozone depletion. The thing that is hard to understand is how people in positions to do something about it do nothing. Or rather, do everything in their power to stop action.
And even this isn’t impossible to understand. People with a large financial stake in emitting heat-trapping gasses have been protecting their financial interests. People in government have allowed themselves to be swayed to inaction by these powerful financial interests.
The biggest, hardest thing to understand is how we have come to such worship of wealth that it has completely overwhelmed and paralyzed our government’s ability to do its necessary work. This is what ordinary people fail to grasp. It is this gigantic failure of ethics in the face of money that is too big to understand, because it violates everything we were taught about how government and American society work.
It is not the role of individuals to solve climate change. It is a collective-action problem, the kind of problem that governments are designed to solve. Even so, a lot of individual people have been working very hard on the climate issue. Their government has been worse than unresponsive. And now in the Trump era, government is not merely paralyzed; it is actively making it even harder for people to take action on the climate.
And government officials know full well what they are doing. Climate change is not too big to understand. Oil companies have understood it for decades. Government officials understand it, too. They. Don’t. Care. They have put short-term personal interests first. They have sold their share of Earth to the highest bidder. And your share, too.
That’s the unbelievable thing that is hard to understand.

Links

• Why have we done so little to tackle climate change?
• Shell foresaw climate dangers in 1988 and understood Big Oil’s big role
• The SEC is blunting investor activism over climate, K-Cups and gay rights
• Scott Pruitt’s job in jeopardy amid expanding ethics issues
• An alarming 10 percent of Antarctica’s coastal glaciers are now in retreat, scientists find
• The Sahara is growing, thanks in part to climate change
• Why Saudi Arabia is trying to launch an utterly massive new solar project

This All-Electric Plane Could Change Everything About Regional Air Travel

Fast Company - Adele Peters

Eviation’s Alice Commuter plane–the winner of the transportation category of Fast Company’s 2018 World Changing Ideas Awards–seats nine people and is entirely battery powered. 

[Image: Eviation]

In five years, if you want to take a trip from San Francisco to San Diego, it may be possible to do it on a small electric plane–and with a ticket that costs less than driving or taking the train.
The Israel-based startup Eviation, which is building a new all-electric, nine-seat airplane, called the Alice Commuter expects to begin making its first commercial flights in 2021 and scale up to hundreds of routes across the U.S. over the next few years.
The timing is right, the founders say, because of the current state of technology.
“There is a revolution happening in aviation, and it’s happening because of lightweight materials, energy density of batteries, the power of electric propulsion, and the computer power of managing this together,” says Omer Bar-Yohay, co-founder and CEO of Eviation, the winner of the transportation category of Fast Company‘s 2018 World Changing Ideas Awards.

[Image: Eviation]

While some other startups in the space (including Zunum Aero, which has the backing of the VC arms of JetBlue and Boeing) are focusing first on hybrid planes,  Eviation chose to go all-electric for its first plane because it thinks that’s what will make flights as affordable as possible.
“This will really be available to all, and [it will] make sense to take our aircraft and not drive,” he says.
The technology, he says, is cheaper than hybrid options both because electricity is cheaper than jet fuel and electric planes cost less to maintain.
“If you look at the numbers, the overall cost of maintaining the cost of complexity of a hybrid unit compared to just swapping batteries every two years or so–the batteries win hands down.”
Because electric batteries store less energy by weight than jet fuel, the tiny planes can only travel relatively short distances–650 nautical miles–and because they carry a small number of passengers, this won’t be replacing most large commercial flights.
But many flights do only fly short distances, and because of the competitive cost of the technology, Eviation saw it as a good place to begin.
The plane is designed to feel as steady and comfortable as flying on a standard private jet so that the small size won’t intimidate passengers.
At first, the company expects that regional operators will use the planes to fly people between smaller airports. But over time, it’s possible that big airlines could begin to use the planes for short flights, rather than using something like a 737.
They might also begin to shift away from the current hub-and-spoke model, in which most journeys require a connecting flight, to more direct flights between smaller cities.
“What we’re really giving here is a potential for a kind of high-speed rail–A to B–but from any A to any B,” says Bar-Yohav.
The startup has been building a full-scale aircraft since mid-2017 and expects to take demonstration flights in 2019. By 2021, it hopes to be certified and flying on a first proof-of-service route.
After the first plane comes to market, the next step may be a larger plane that can carry 19 passengers.
The company may also develop a smaller vertical takeoff plane for urban transportation, similar to those in development by Uber and others.
 “We’re trying to do this first with regional transportation, and then look to the edges of this huge market,” says Bar-Yohav.

Links

• These Electric Semis Hope To Clean Up The Trucking Industry
• This Electric Highway Powers Trucks Without Recharging
• These Electric Barges Are A Cleaner Cargo Solution Than Trucks
• Announcing The Winners Of The 2018 World Changing Ideas Awards

Climate Change Litigation Rising With The Seas As Victims Revert To 'Plan B'

ABC Radio - Malcolm Sutton

Many Pacific island nations are just metres above sea level and vulnerable to rising seas. (Instagram: presidentloeak)

When they first warned more than 30 years ago that human activity could create an enhanced greenhouse effect, scientists hoped it would lead to decisive action to lower fossil fuel emissions.

Instead, levels have continued to rise to a point most scientists agree that climate change accelerated by fossil fuel emissions is changing the weather and intensifying storms.
"Plan A was the hope governments would step up and social movements would be powerful enough to put pressure on governments," University of Adelaide Law School Associate Professor Peter Burdon said.
"But that hasn't happened, so Plan B is to try the courts," he said.
Across the world a shift towards climate change litigation is gathering steam as low-lying island countries and even United States' cities take aim at governments and big oil companies for failing to act proportionately on emission reductions.
One of the most recent cases involves 21 teenagers in the US state of Oregon, who have been given judiciary permission to sue the federal government for failing to uphold their constitutional rights.

"They assert that the actions of the [US] government and their delays and failure to take meaningful action against climate change has violated their generation and their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property," Professor Burdon said.

"They've gone through several layers of hearings and at every stop, the government has sought to throw it out, and have been joined by companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron, but it was decided they had a legal case and it can be heard."
Elsewhere in the US, cities such as San Francisco and Oakland have filed lawsuits against big oil and gas companies to pay damages caused by rising seas, while in the Netherlands, Friends of the Earth have threatened litigation against Royal Dutch Shell if it doesn't bring its business in line with the Paris Agreement within eight weeks.
It follows a landmark ruling in the Hague District Court during 2015, which forced the Netherlands government to reduce emissions by 25 per cent by 2020 after it was found to be breaching a duty of care.

Modelling has predicted cities like Brisbane are on track to lose large sections to the ocean by 2100. (Supplied: Coastal Risk Australia 2100)

Drawing similarities with big tobacco cases
The Hague court accepted there was a class of greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity (anthropogenic) and therefore no dispute whether the government was contributing or causing a degree of climate change.
Professor Burdon said accusing big oil and gas companies and governments of contributing to climate change rather than blaming them outright was a similar approach to those who fought big tobacco in the past.
"That was precisely what big tobacco did in the case against them, because how do you prove that your smoking led to this particular type of cancer?" he said.
"Attribution science, drawing the link of causality between what a company did and the effect you're experiencing, is something that government and fossil fuel companies can delay or run counter arguments against.

"But if you argue that their actions perhaps didn't cause a storm event or bushfire, but exacerbated it and increased its intensity, that, I think, is a stronger argument."

The Netherlands decision of 2015 was achieved by 886 individual co-plaintiffs represented by the Urgenda Foundation, which was subsequently "inundated with requests for assistance to commence like litigations around the globe".

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The forgotten islands

The Takuu group of atolls is home to a rich and historic culture, but the resilient people and their idyllic islands face an increasingly dire threat from climate change.

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The National International Law Association (NILA) warned at the time that it had potential for a "significant ripple effect for establishing climate liability around the world and in Australia".
It acknowledged, however, that the Netherlands have a civil system and a constitutional requirement to keep the country habitable and to protect and improve the environment, as does the US.
"Australia has a common law system and any case must be founded first on an appropriate course of action," a NILA spokesperson said.
"There is no similar express constitutional requirement."

Low-lying countries with Australia in their sights
Australia's carbon footprint per capita is among the highest in the world — 15.4 tonnes during 2014 compared to 16.5 tonnes in the US, according to World Bank figures.
This means its citizens punch well above their weight even if the country's overall emissions are comparatively low when compared to the likes of the US, Russia and China.
The Pacific island country of Palau has sought an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice about whether it has a case against other countries for failing to prevent, reduce or control the risk of environmental harm to other states.
It follows threats by nearby Tuvalu in 2002 to take Australia and the US to court for failing to act on emissions.

Locals say tidal flooding events have become more frequent on Marshall Island due to rising sea levels. (ABC News)

Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg did not answer if he was concerned by litigation manoeuvres taking place overseas but said Australia's emissions per capita and per GDP were now at their lowest level in 28 years and were on track to beat its "2020 target by 294 million tonnes".
"We have ratified the Paris Agreement alongside 170 other countries and we are committed to a strong but responsible 2030 target of 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels, which will see a halving of our emission per capita," he said.
Environmental Defenders Office Queensland chief executive officer Jo Bragg said the nation's governments were taking a "huge risk" if they failed to implement measures that effectively protected or "cushioned Australian citizens from the reasonably foreseeable impacts of climate change".
"While we have not seen the breadth or number of civil suits in Australia that have been launched in other countries, government must not be complacent and assume such suits will not be run," he said.
"Certainly, over the last seven years there have been a number of legal challenges by community groups to government decision-making approval of major thermal coal mines in Queensland and New South Wales."

People from Pacific Island nations want climate change action. (Te Mana: Litia Maiava )

Secondary effect of tarnishing reputations
Professor Burdon pointed out that climate change litigation often had the secondary effect of causing reputational damage to big oil companies.

"It's well documented now that Exxon have known about the risk that their work and their extraction processes have created for climate change for more than 30 years," Professor Burdon said.

This includes media reports in 2015 about an email written by Exxon's former climate expert Lenny Bernstein — in response to an inquiry by Ohio University — that revealed the company was aware of carbon dioxide's contribution to climate change nearly 40 years ago.

ExxonMobil runs several oil platforms in Bass Strait off the Victorian coast. (Supplied: ExxonMobil)

Mr Bernstein wrote to the university's Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics director that Exxon first became "interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia".
"Exxon needed to understand the potential for concerns about climate change to lead to regulation that would affect Natuna and other potential projects," he wrote.
"They were well ahead of the rest of the industry in this awareness; other companies, such as Mobil, only became aware of the issue in 1988 when it first became a political issue."
Professor Burdon said that bringing a suit against an organisation like ExxonMobil was also about "hoping you can cause some reputational damage to them, or it could be about trying to halt or delay a project that they're trying to get through".
Both BP Australia and the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association declined to comment on the likelihood of facing law suits in Australia.
But even if the evidence supporting anthropogenic climate change continues to increase, Professor Burdon said the primary success of court action will depend on a judge and whether or not they were the right person to understand the science.
"While they strive to be neutral, the judges are still human beings with their own political views and ideas," he said.
"It's about trying to get the perfect storm, get the right case with the right set of data with a judge who's open to the argument."

links

• Australia's most famous sites underwater in new climate modelling
• Exxon accused of misleading public on climate change
• 'My islands are sinking': Climate activist to feature at Womadelaide
• Can Climate Litigation Save The World?
• Should Climate Change Be Called Murder? What Do You Call Knowingly Killing People?
• New Climate Change Lawsuit In Colombia Part Of Growing, Worldwide Trend
• Patterns of Climate Change Litigation During Trump Era
• Landmark Case Challenges Land Clearing Based On Climate Change Impact

Aussie Renewable Investment Hits $8.5 Billion

Climate Council

Sydney Markets combined solar array of more than 3MW is one of Australia’s largest commercial rooftop systems.

Global renewable records have been smashed for 2017, with Australia’s renewable energy investment also jumping by an astonishing 147%, reaching US$ 8.5 billion, according to a new United Nations (UN) report.
The UN ‘Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2018’ report shows that the growth of renewable energy doubled that of coal, gas and nuclear combined around the world in 2017 alone. Solar power skyrocketed in popularity, with 98 gigawatts rolled out, equating to the electricity capacity of nearly 1,000 times more of Australia’s largest solar farm.
Climate Council Acting CEO Dr Martin Rice said the record global renewable energy boom shows that the technology is playing a crucial role in transitioning the world away from fossil fuels in a bid to tackle climate change.
“Australia is one of the sunniest and windiest countries in the world, so we shouldn’t be surprised that investment in renewables such as wind and solar is thriving and continues to topple new records around the world,” he said.
“If Australia maintains this momentum then we could see the phasing out of coal within the next two decades, transitioning the nation to an energy grid fit for the 21st century and one that slashes our rising greenhouse gas pollution levels."
Dr Rice said the report also highlighted that the global push towards clean, affordable and reliable renewable energy and storage technology was continuing to build significant momentum, with record breaking results.

The ‘Clean & Reliable Power: Roadmap To A Renewable Future’ report features 12 key policy principles for any national energy and climate policy framework.

“China alone is now leading the world for renewable energy, with its investment last year accounting for 45 per cent of the global total in renewables investment, reaching a staggering $126.6 billion,” he said.
The UN recognised Australia as a key contender in the worldwide renewables energy race, with solar investment climbing to $4.9 billion and wind $3.6 billion.
“The data shows that renewable energy accounted for more than 12 per cent of energy generation around the world last year. That’s equivalent to removing around 1.8 gigatonnes of carbon pollution - three times more than Australia’s entire carbon pollution levels during 2016.”
Dr Rice urged Australia to keep up the clean energy and battery storage momentum, despite the absence of credible federal climate and energy policy.
“The Federal Government’s proposed National Energy Guarantee (NEG) threatens to strangle Australia’s renewables boom,” he said.
“States and territories are leading the charge when it comes to the uptake of renewables and tackling climate change. We must continue our wind and solar surge, and move away from ageing, polluting and inefficient fossil fuels that have no place in our energy future.”
The Climate Council has created a climate and energy policy roadmap ‘Clean & Reliable Power: Roadmap to a Renewable Future’, outlining 12 key principles that are essential to tackling climate change in Australia.

Links

• Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2018
• World Bank’s funding of renewable and efficient energy projects up 87 per cent
• UN-backed report shows strong performance by renewable energy sector
• UN and partners help to power education with solar panel donation

Health And Climate Change: Call For Urgent Action

Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) - Nicole MacKee

AUSTRALIA will have to contend with the health consequences of intensifying climatic extremes as heatwaves, floods, droughts and fires become more frequent, say experts who are calling for urgent action to reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.
In a Narrative Review in this week’s MJA, Professor Elizabeth Hanna, Honorary Senior Fellow at the Climate Change Institute, Australian National University, and Dr Lachlan McIver, of Médecins sans Frontières, Geneva, said that urgent action was needed to reduce emissions and to realign health services to address shifts in disease burden.
“Current trends suggest a future of increasing heatwaves, even greater rainfall variability, and more fires,” the researchers wrote, noting that current emission rates were likely to lead to a warming of 4°C by 2100.
“Additional heat is likely to generate fewer winter respiratory deaths yet more heat exposure morbidity and mortality. Further exacerbations of Australia’s extreme rainfall variability will intensify water shortages and storm and flood damage, compounded by likely societal interruptions and health challenges.”
Speaking in an MJA InSight podcast, Professor Hanna said that Australia’s status as a wealthy, resource-rich nation provided some protection from the extreme consequences of climate change, but we still faced significant challenges.
“As far as [high income] nations are concerned, we’re an outlier in being highly vulnerable,” Professor Hanna said. “We have the world’s highest natural variability in rainfall, and so further exacerbation of that is going to really stress out our water supplies and our agriculture. We’re also far hotter than most of the other [high income] countries.”
Associate Professor Grant Blashki, a GP and Associate Professor at the Nossal Institute for Global Health, and the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne, said that the MJA article was a reminder to Australian politicians of the high stakes for future generations’ health.
“Climate change poses a global threat to ongoing gains in public health, and for Australia, as a very dry continent, we are vulnerable to worsening heat waves and other extreme weather events,” said Professor Blashki, who is co-author on an article published on 5 April 2018 discussing the importance of embedding health in the climate change agenda.
“While policy makers debate and negotiate about how quickly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the fundamental scientific physical processes that drive climate change continue to raise the average global temperature and put the long term health of Australians at risk.”
Professor Shilu Tong, Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology, said that although climate change had been increasingly recognised as the biggest threat to global health in the 21st century, we were not well prepared for shifts in disease burden, for example, changing mortality patterns and increased likelihood of heat stress.
Professor Tong pointed to recent research he had conducted in this area, including a 2016 finding that increased summer temperature-related deaths were likely in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne in the coming decades.
“More action is urgently required to mitigate greenhouse gases emissions and develop public health adaptation plans to tackle the increasing health risks of climate change,” Professor Tong told MJA InSight.
The MJA authors wrote that many vector-borne diseases were climate sensitive, as mosquito densities related to rainfall and temperature, and it was possible that cases could spread to southern regions of Australia. They noted, however, that the picture for climate-sensitive vector-borne diseases remained unclear.
Professor Steven Chown, Professor of Biological Sciences at Monash University, said that the authors were right to be circumspect about the impact of climate change on the spread of vector-borne disease.
“There’s an interaction between what’s being done in the medical research area in reducing the burden of vector-borne diseases – for example, by the World Mosquito Program – and what climate change is doing to improve the situation for indigenous vectors,” Professor Chown told MJA InSight. “So, I think [the MJA authors] are right to be circumspect in the way that that’s actually going to play out.”
He said that attention to biosecurity measures was essential in keeping these risks in check.
“There’s a little mosquito species called Aedes albopictus. It’s a very effective vector of these arthropod-borne viruses [such as] dengue and Zika,” he said.
While A. albopictus was not currently in Australia, it had been detected and eliminated in both the Torres Strait Islands and in Melbourne, Professor Chown said.
“If our biosecurity systems fail and this species gets in, we could have substantial difficulty, so we have to pay very careful attention to the interaction between how the local environment is changing and how we manage the biosecurity risks to Australia.”
Professor Chown also highlighted the added climate change threat posed in Australia’s urban environment.
“Cities have huge benefits, but they also have an additional burden since they tend to be much warmer than their surrounding environments, varying from about 1° in the tropics to about 3° in temperate areas,” he said.
“Quite a few Australian cities are undertaking plans to mitigate this through tree planting, green building design and so on, but it is something to bear in mind from a human health perspective because most of the Australian population lives in cities.”
Despite the grim picture presented in the MJA article, Professors Tong and Chown said that there was some hope on the horizon.
“The central aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep any global temperature rise this century well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels,” Professor Tong said. “The good news is that 175 of 197 parties have ratified the convention. International efforts to reduce greenhouse gases emissions will undoubtedly facilitate mitigating the more severe effects of climate change on health.”
Professor Chown shared this view but noted that Australia had lagged in its commitment to tackling increasing CO₂ emissions.
“Australia has been slow in taking [action on climate change] but I think there is opportunity still to do so. It’s essentially a compound interest problem – we are going to keep compounding our difficulties into the future, if we don’t address them now,” he said.
“And every now and then, we have these amazing rays of hope here, as we saw in South Australia with significant developments in renewables and storage.”
Still, resistance to the science behind anthropogenic climate change has remained in some quarters, including the medical profession.
Professor Blashki said that the climate change issue had become a political football around the world, with varied and sometimes non-scientific perspectives. However, he said, doctors had a “long and proud history” of taking action on public health issues that affected their patients.
“For doctors who are worried about this problem, they can get involved with groups such as Doctors for the Environment, lobby their local members or explore ways to move towards making their practice a GreenClinic,” Professor Blashki said.

Links

• Climate change: a brief overview of the science and health impacts for Australia
• Podcast with Dr Elizabeth Hanna
• The Political Economy of Health Co-Benefits: Embedding Health in the Climate Change Agenda
• The Role of Health Co-Benefits in the Development of Australian Climate Change Mitigation Policies
• Integration of Adaptation and Mitigation in Climate Change and Forest Policies in Indonesia and Vietnam
• Continuity and Change: Dealing with Political Volatility to Advance Climate Change Mitigation Strategies—Examples from the Transport Sector
• Co-Benefits of CO2 Mitigation for NOX Emission Reduction: A Research Based on the DICE Model
• Climate change threatens to undermine the last half century of health gains
• Adverse outcomes of climate change cannot be resolved by the health community alone
• In-Country Disparities in Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Their Significance for Politicizing a Future Global Climate Pact
• Towards a bioethics of innovation

Wipeout: Human Role In Climate Change Removed From Science Report

Reveal - Elizabeth Shogren

During 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, a massive storm surge dislodged bricks on Liberty Island in New York, home of the Statue of Liberty. In a science report on sea level rise and storm surge, National Park Service officials have deleted mention of humans’ role in causing climate change. Credit: National Park Service

National Park Service officials have deleted every mention of humans’ role in causing climate change in drafts of a long-awaited report on sea level rise and storm surge, contradicting Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s vow to Congress that his department is not censoring science.
The research for the first time projects the risks from rising seas and flooding at 118 coastal national park sites, including the National Mall, the original Jamestown settlement and the Wright Brothers National Memorial. Originally drafted in the summer of 2016 yet still not released to the public, the National Park Service report is intended to inform officials and the public about how to protect park resources and visitors from climate change.
Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting obtained and analyzed 18 versions of the scientific report. In changes dated Feb. 6, a park service official crossed out the word “anthropogenic,” the term for people’s impact on nature, in five places. Three references to “human activities” causing climate change also were removed.
The 87-page report, which was written by a University of Colorado Boulder scientist, has been held up for at least 10 months, according to documents obtained by Reveal. The delay has prevented park managers from having access to the best data in situations such as reacting to hurricane forecasts, safeguarding artifacts from floodwaters or deciding where to locate new buildings.
The omissions reflect a broader crackdown on climate science at federal agencies, including removal of references to human impacts, since President Donald Trump took office. Trump previously called climate change a Chinese hoax, took steps to withdraw from an international agreement to cut greenhouse gases and moved toward reversing President Barack Obama’s policies to regulate power plant emissions.

The word “anthropogenic,” the term for people’s impact on nature,

was removed from the executive summary of the sea level rise report for the National Park Service.

Critics say the National Park Service’s editing of the report reflects unprecedented political interference in government science at the Interior Department, which oversees the park service.
Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist and dean of the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability, said the deletions are “shocking from a scientific point of view, but also from a policy point of view.”
“To remove a very critical part of the scientific understanding is nothing short of political censorship and has no place in science,” he said. “Censorship of this kind is something you’d see in Russia or some totalitarian regime. It has no place in America.”
Several scientists said the editing appears to violate a National Park Service policy designed to protect science from political influence.
“It looks like a pretty clear-cut, blatant violation of what we generally would consider to be scientific integrity,” said Jane Lubchenco, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Obama.
National Park Service spokesman Jeffrey Olson said the agency would not comment on the editing of a report that had not yet been released. He said that it was premature to report on it and that it would be released soon.

A reference to “human activities” causing climate change was deleted from the report.

Zinke testified at a Senate committee hearing last month that the Interior Department has not changed any scientific documents.
“There is no incident, no incident at all that I know that we ever changed a comma on a document itself. Now we may have on a press release,” Zinke told the senators. “And I challenge you, any member, to find a document that we’ve actually changed on a report.”
Zinke’s press secretary said no one at the Interior Department was available to comment about the report.
A hallmark of the Trump administration is equivocation about climate change to downplay the scientific consensus that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels are warming the planet.
Columbia University’s Silencing Science Tracker  documents more than 100 instances of government trying to restrict research or public information about climate change. Among them are reports on climate change that have been stripped from government websites. Climate change was removed from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s strategic plan. Environmental Protection Agency employees were issued talking points that promote an inaccurate message about gaps in climate science and downplay the role of human activities in global warming.
The edited national parks report “is probably the biggest scientific integrity violation at the Department of Interior, by far … because this is an actual scientific report,” said Joel Clement, who was the Interior Department’s top climate change official in the Obama administration. He resigned in October after Zinke reassigned him to an oil and gas accounting office and now is a senior fellow for the Union of Concerned Scientists working on scientific integrity issues.
“By taking the words out, they are depowering the (climate change) issue,” Clement said. “It’s a horrible thing for reports to be suppressed and for the words to be changed.”

Censored words and phrases
The report, titled, “Sea Level Rise and Storm Surge Projections for the National Park Service,” reveals that national treasures will face severe flooding if global greenhouse gases keep increasing. Some of its projections, according to the drafts, include:

• In North Carolina, the Wright Brothers National Memorial has the highest projected increase in sea level among parks nationwide – 2.69 feet by 2100 under a scenario of high growth of greenhouse gases. Along with Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras national seashores, the memorial could face significant permanent flooding. “Future storm surges will be exacerbated by future sea level rise nationwide; this could be especially dangerous for the Southeast Region where they already experience hurricane-strength storms,” the report says.
• In Virginia, three parks – Colonial National Historical Park, home of Historic Jamestowne; Fort Monroe National Monument; and Petersburg National Battlefield – face the biggest potential sea level increases in the park service’s Northeast region – 2.66 feet by 2100.
• Parks in the Washington, D.C., region could experience some of the greatest sea level increases – 2.62 feet by 2100. “Storm surge flooding on top of this sea level rise would have widespread impacts,” the report says.
• If a Category 2 hurricane hit Florida’s Everglades National Park, the entire park could be flooded, with most of it under several feet of water.

Reveal obtained almost 2,000 pages of drafts of the report showing tracked changes and dating back to August 2016 – along with dozens of pages of other documents about the report and preparations to release it – in response to a public records request to the state of Colorado.
The lead author, University of Colorado geological sciences research associate Maria Caffrey, worked full time on the report on contract with the park service from 2013 through 2017.
Caffrey declined to discuss the editing and long delay in releasing her report, instead referring questions to the park service. Asked whether she has been pressured to delete the terms “anthropogenic” and “human activities,” she replied, “I don’t really want to get into that today.”
“I would be very disappointed if there were words being attributed to me that I didn’t write,” she said. “I don’t think politics should come into this in any way.”
Although references to human-induced change were deleted, data and maps showing the severity of impacts on the parks were unchanged.
In drafts dated January 2017 to May 2017, the executive summary starts: “Changing relative sea levels and the potential for increasing storm surges due to anthropogenic climate change present challenges to national park managers.”
But editing dated Feb. 6, 2018, changed that to: “Ongoing changes in relative sea levels and the potential for increasing storm surges present challenges to national park managers.”
In a section about 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, one of the costliest storms to hit the U.S., this sentence was deleted: “This single storm cannot be attributed to anthropogenic climate change, but the storm surge occurred over a sea whose level had risen due to climate change.”

An entire sentence was removed from the report’s section on Hurricane Sandy.

The introduction also was substantially altered in February. These two sentences were deleted: “While sea levels have been gradually rising since the last glacial maximum approximately 21,000 years ago, anthropogenic climate change has significantly increased the rate of global sea level rise. Human activities continue to release carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, causing the Earth’s atmosphere to warm.”
Other scientists who reviewed the draft reports said the deletions about the cause of climate change were alarming.
“It’s hiding from the public the reality of the causes and the possible options to
choose or influence what scenario plays out,” Lubchenco said.
Some of the editing apparently remained in play. Caffrey has pushed back on at least some of the deletions, according to a March draft.
Editing notes in a draft obtained by Reveal indicate that many of the deletions were made by Larry Perez, a career public information officer who coordinates the park service’s climate change response program.
Perez declined to comment on why the changes were made. Watchdog groups say that in some cases, career officials within the administration may be self-censoring to avoid angering Trump appointees. In others cases, they may be responding to verbal orders from superiors who have been told to avoid creating records that eventually could be made public.
The National Park Service’s scientific integrity policy prohibits managers from engaging in “dishonesty, fraud, misrepresentation, coercive manipulation, censorship, or other misconduct that alters the content, veracity, or meaning or that may affect the planning, conduct, reporting, or application of scientific and scholarly activities.” It also requires employees to differentiate between their opinions or assumptions and solid science.
Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, said “the edits are glaringly in violation” of the science cited in the report and “such alterations violate” the policy.
“The individual who edited the document is making a personal opinion/assumption that runs counter to the scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions responsible for sea level rise are of anthropogenic origin and that the threat to the National Park Service assets arises primarily from human activities,” said McNutt, who led the U.S. Geological Survey, the Interior Department’s main scientific agency, from 2009 to 2013.
Clement, who worked for seven years as a high-ranking director in the Interior Department, said it would be unusual for such editing to occur without an order from a top supervisor.
“I can’t imagine a career man or woman would take those steps without some sort of direction,” he said.
The editing seemed to cross a line that Zinke drew during last month’s hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, pressed Zinke about censoring science. She asked him about department officials deleting this line from a press release about a newly published scientific article: “Global climate change drives sea-level rise, increasing the frequency of coastal flooding.”
In his testimony, Zinke differentiated editing press releases from altering scientific reports. He also rebuffed suggestions that he considers references to climate change unacceptable, saying “man has been an influencer” on the warming climate.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska and the committee’s chairwoman, summarized Zinke’s comments: “I think you were pretty clear … that within the department, you’re not altering the reports that are coming out from the agencies.”

Why the deletions matter
Caffrey, the park service report’s lead author, said it’s crucial that the report address the human role in climate change. One of her key findings is that decisions about reducing greenhouse gases will determine how much peril the coastal national parks face from sea level rise and storm surge.
The report calculates projected sea level rise in 2030, 2050 and 2100 under four scenarios for global emissions. For instance, projections for the National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington in 2100 range from 1.74 feet to 2.62 feet. The low end envisions a future in which people burn significantly less coal and other fossil fuels, while the upper number reflects increases in use.
“What scenario we choose to follow in the future will have a significant impact on how we protect our resources, like the National Park Service resources,” Caffrey said. “I feel it’s an important part to include in the report because it’s an essential part of those findings.”
In an October 2016 webinar for park staff about her research, Caffrey showed an aerial photo that depicts Washington in 2100 if global emissions rise and a Category 3 hurricane hits the city. The National Mall and Constitution Avenue are flooded. Water surrounds museums.

This rendering depicts an aerial view of a flooded National Mall area in Washington, D.C., in 2100 if global emissions rise and a Category 3 hurricane hits the city. It was included in an October 2016 webinar by University of Colorado Boulder’s Maria Caffrey, the lead author of the sea level rise report for the National Park Service. Credit: Courtesy of Maria Caffrey

“We can see the results could potentially be quite catastrophic,” Caffrey said in an interview.
The report is intended to be released with an interactive website that would allow the public and park managers to visualize rising waters in their favorite parks.
“You can zoom in and move around and see the underlying infrastructure and see what’s at risk,” said William Manley, a University of Colorado Boulder research scientist who worked on data, maps and the online viewer.
“The data and the viewer, if released, would help park decision-makers to see more clearly what decisions they should make to avoid costly mistakes,” he said. In addition, “the maps and information would be helpful to resource managers in preparation for any storms that were forecasted.”

Destruction from last summer’s Hurricane Irma includes wrecked boats on St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands. If a long-delayed National Park Service science report had been released last year, it might have helped park managers know which areas were likely to flood. Credit: National Park Service

For instance, if the report had been released by late last summer, park managers could have consulted it when Hurricanes Irma and Maria, both Category 5 storms, headed toward the U.S. Virgin Islands in September. The storm surge maps for Virgin Islands National Park could have shown managers which areas were likely to flood. The interactive viewer possibly could have helped evacuation planning.
“It’s becoming clearer and clearer to most Americans that weather patterns are changing, climate change is a real phenomenon, and it’s affecting things they care about, people they love and places that they love,” said Lubchenco, the former NOAA administrator.
“I think what we are seeing is an effort to undermine that realization in a very subtle way. And it’s very dangerous. It’s counter to the best interests of a fully democratic society.”

Links

• The Center for Investigative Reporting
• Democrats ask Interior to investigate climate change edits
• Oversight Hearing, "Policy Priorities at the Department of the Interior and the Administration's Fiscal Year 2019 Budget Proposal"
• Trump nominees have history of climate change denial, industry bias
• Empty seats: Trump’s top science jobs vacant; others tied to industry
• Countless archaeological sites at risk in Trump oil and gas auction
• EPA swaps top science advisers with industry allies

Consumers Are Sick Of Coalition’s Coal Fantasy: They Are Going Solar

RenewEconomy - Giles Parkinson

Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull may have done more for renewable energy in Australia than he is given credit for.
Turnbull’s refusal to tackle the climate deniers and the fossil fuel ideologues within his own Coalition government has helped spark the biggest rush to rooftop solar the world has seen, and a powerful economic force that will quickly unravel the business model of so-called baseload coal.
Since Turnbull came into power in late 2015 – after unseating Tony Abbott, but not his predecessor’s climate and energy policies – the rate of uptake of rooftop solar in Australia has more than doubled.
It is now running at record levels of around 120MW a month, with 18,000 new installations on households and businesses around the country in March, and a total of 55,000 installations, and a record 351MW of capacity installed on rooftops in the first three months of the year.

Photo courtesy Springers Solar

The boom is occurring around the country, which now has 6.8GW of rooftop solar (systems under 100kW) and a total of 1.85 million different homes and businesses.
At this rate, it will exceed even the most optimistic official forecasts of more than 21GW of rooftop solar by 2035, and will likely be closer to forecasts such as Bloomberg new Energy Finance, which sees 33GW by 2040, when it will provide 25 per cent of total demand.
Eddie Springer, the project manager at the family-owned Springers Solar in Brisbane, says the rush to solar is mostly economics, and partly driven by politics.
“The more the media talk about the pushback on renewables, the more people want it,” he tells RenewEconomy. “The more it is in the media, whether good, bad or indifferent, it’s all good publicity, because the economics stack up.”
Springer says a recent installation at a Brisbane furniture warehouse will deliver a three year payback, and even accountancy firms are getting in on the act.
“If you can sell solar to an accountant, you can sell it to anyone. They (the accountants) are starting to spread the word, tell their clients, and we are getting referrals from them.”
The shift should not be surprising. The political deadlock and the lack of any clear policy division has contributed to a huge surge in electricity prices since the Coalition scrapped the carbon price.
Households can comfortably get a four-to-six year payback, and they are looking to take a leaf out of Turnbull’s playbook and put as much solar as they can on the roof, with an eye to the future (storage and electric vehicles), and because it makes financial sense.
Even a top quality system translates into a cost of no more than 10c/kWh, while most consumers are paying close to 40c/kWh for their power, depending on the scale of fixed network charges and their level of consumption. So the purchase makes sense even when it is exporting most of the capacity to the grid.
The consequences are clear: the rapid and accelerating uptake of rooftop solar by Australian households and business will accelerate the very transition that the coal boosters and ideologues are trying to stop.

And that transition is the shift to distributed generation, where rooftop solar, battery storage, the ability to share energy and operate demand management becomes the dominant part of the energy system.
This shift to distributed generation has been a feature of recent landmark studies, such as those by the CSIRO and network owners, and by chief scientist Alan Finkel. It is now a major theme among even the conservative energy institutions that run Australia’s grid, and set the rules and regulate it.
The Australian Energy Market Operator, for instance, says that by 2050, up to 45 per cent of all demand in Australia will be served by distributed generation – primarily rooftop solar and battery storage but also demand response. Networks owners and generators agree. BNEF sees that level by 2040.

This is not a market in which coal-fired generation, new or old, can prosper. Not only is coal fired generation dirty and increasingly expensive, it is hopelessly inflexible.
“These changes in the load profile result in an economic and operating challenge for continuous baseload,” AEMO notes in a recent report, adding that what is needed to accommodate this transition is highly flexible capacity, and new rules to encourage it.
The fact that the coal boosters are scoring a massive own goal should not be surprising.
Their push for new coal generation, or even extending the life of existing coal generators, is based on a stunning mix of lies, ignorance and ideology.
There is a refusal to accept the basic economics of renewables versus fossil fuels, and an inability to comprehend how this can be integrated into the system and ultimately deliver a smarter, cleaner and cheaper grid.
And of course, climate change and other environmental impacts are completely ignored. It is what what Ian Dunlop, the former chair of the Australian Coal Association, laments as “pigheaded arrogance and failure of imagination.”
Consumers, large and small, now know better – whether it be the new owners of the Whyalla steelworks, the biggest telco company in the country, the biggest brewer, or owners of zinc refiners, massive greenhouses, or smaller manufacturing facilities.
Still, the right wing rails against battery storage, against demand management, and even electric vehicles, even as AEMO’s own conclusions suggest a smarter, faster and cheaper grid, if the rules can be adapted.
It’s somewhat ironic that households are taking a leaf out of Turnbull’s own playbook. Systems are getting larger – they now average 7kW, and the 10kW to 20kW sector is the fastest growing in the country, and these are going on households, farms and small businesses.
According to Warwick Johnston from SunWiz, around one in eight new solar systems were accompanied by battery storage in 2017, and one in six will add battery storage in 2018.
A total of 33,000 battery storage systems are expected in 2018, but this number will surge in coming years as costs fall, an inevitable result of the support being shown for large scale rollouts of storage and virtual power plants.

Turnbull has installed 14kW of rooftop solar on his Point Piper home and also has about 14kWh of battery storage, masterminded by his son. Many households are going a similar route, not just because the economics are clear, but ahead of new technologies such as storage and electric vehicles.
Were does this rush to rooftop solar leave us? With a highly distributed grid and less room for inflexible coal plants. The business model for coal is being destroyed faster than the Coalition and the fossil fuel industry can think of ways to prop it up.
And the public has lost faith – in the politics, and its stench of ideology and vested interests, and they are rapidly losing faith in big corporations, represented in this industry by the big utilities, and their overpowering greed.
The biggest risk is highlighted by the network owners themselves. If the market does not adapt, and embrace renewables and change the rules to allow for this smarter, faster, cleaner technology, and deliver the cost reductions it promises, then the current trend of load defection will translate into grid defection.

Links

• Australian rooftop solar boom rolls on – 351MW in first quarter
• IAN DUNLOP. The Monash Forum – of Coal & Horses.
• Malcolm Turnbull has battery storage installed in Point Piper home
• Abbott refused free solar panels, but Turnbull has already bought his
• ANU announces new leader of battery storage program
• Three-wheeling towards a poor energy policy outcome