Coronavirus Shows We Are Not At All Prepared For The Security Threat Of Climate Change

The Conversation - Kate Guy

Kim Ludbrook / EPA

Kate Guy is a PHD student in International Relations at Oxford University, where she studies the intersection of climate change, national security, and global governance. She most recently worked in American politics as the Senior Policy Program Manager with the Truman National Security Project, and as assistant to the Campaign Manager of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential race.

How might a single threat, even one deemed unlikely, spiral into an evolving global crisis which challenges the foundations of global security, economic stability and democratic governance, all in the matter of a few weeks?

My research on threats to national security, governance and geopolitics has focused on exactly this question, albeit with a focus on the disruptive potential of climate change, rather than a novel coronavirus.

In recent work alongside intelligence and defence experts at the think-tank Center for Climate and Security, I analysed how future warming scenarios could disrupt security and governance worldwide throughout the 21st century.

Our culminating report, A Security Threat Assessment of Global Climate Change, was launched in Washington just as the first coronavirus cases were spreading undetected across the US.

The analysis uses future scenarios to imagine how and where regions might be increasingly vulnerable to the resource, weather and economic shocks brought about by an increasingly destabilised climate. In it, we warn:

Even at scenarios of low warming, each region of the world will face severe risks to national and global security in the next three decades. Higher levels of warming will pose catastrophic, and likely irreversible, global security risks over the course of the 21st century.

Little did we know when writing these words and imagining the rapidly evolving shocks to come, that a very similar test of our global system was already brewing as governments sputtered to contain the damage of COVID-19.

Over the first few crucial weeks of this crisis, we’ve seen world leaders take a number of actions that indicate how climate shocks could destabilise the world order. With climate change disasters, as with infectious diseases, rapid response time and global coordination are of the essence.

At this stage in the COVID-19 situation, there are three primary lessons for a climate-changing future: the immense challenge of global coordination during a crisis, the potential for authoritarian emergency responses, and the spiralling danger of compounding shocks.

An uncoordinated response

First, while the COVID-19 crisis has engendered a massive public response, governments have been largely uncoordinated in their efforts to manage the virus’s spread. According to Oxford’s COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, countries vary widely in the stringency of their policies, with no two countries implementing a synchronised course of action.

While traditionally a great power like the US might step forward to direct a collective international response, instead the Trump administration has repeatedly chosen to blindside its allies with the introduction of new limitations on trade and movement of peoples.

This mismanagement has led to each nation going on its own, despite the fact that working together would net greater gains for all. As the New York Times’s Mark Landler put it, the voices of world leaders are forming “less a choir than a cacophony”, leading to mixed global messages, undetected spread, and ongoing fights over limited resources.

Politicians have sent mixed messages. Tasos Katopodis / EPA

In the face of climate change, such a lack of coordination could be be highly destabilising to world social and economic order. The mass displacement of people, the devaluation of assets, rising seas and natural disasters will call for shared practices and common decency in the face of continued tragedy.

Many climate impacts will raise new questions the world has yet to answer. What do we do with nation-states that can no longer reside in their homeland? How do we compensate sectors for ceasing harmful practices such as fossil fuel extraction and deforestation, especially where national economies may depend on them?

We also face new global governance questions around the use of risky geoengineering technologies, which can be deployed unilaterally to alter local climates, but with the potential for vast unintended regional or even global consequences.

These are challenges which, like climate change itself, can only be solved collectively through coordinated policies and clear communication.

 The sort of wayward responses and lack of leadership in response to COVID-19 would only lead to further destruction of livelihoods and order in the decades to come.

Authoritarian agendas

This historic moment is also offering new opportunities for leaders to further dangerous, illiberal agendas. Authoritarians have long used emergency situations as a pretext to further curtail individual rights and consolidate personal power against backdrops of real or imagined public danger. We’ve seen these actions spiral worldwide in the past month in autocracies and backsliding democracies, alike.

President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines has given security services the directive to open fire on protestors while Vladimir Putin is deploying mass surveillance technologies and new criminal penalties to monitor the Russian population. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán has forced new emergency powers through parliament that muzzle political opposition and allow for his indefinite rule.

 Even the supposed democratic bastions of the US and the UK are seeing worrying signs of autocratic policies, as surveillance drones are deployed to monitor citizens, scientific expertise is undermined, and open-ended emergency powers are granted to police forces for undetermined time frames.

Police across the world have been given new powers. Yuri Kochetkov / EPA

A warming world will only result in more disaster-related events for power-hungry leaders to take advantage of in the years ahead. From the nationalisation of resources to the deployment of militaries in response to climate shocks, it can be all-too-easy for public safety needs to bleed into personal political opportunities.

The second-order effects of climate change, from supply chain instability to the migration of peoples, will also provide authoritarian leaders more fodder for their ethno-nationalist ideologies, which inflame divisions in society and could help broaden their personal appeal.

Without clear and sturdy limits on executive power, the disruptive impacts of climate change will be used to further chip away at democratic freedoms across the world.

Overlapping shocks are the new normal

Finally, this situation is teaching the globalised world new lessons on the devastating consequences of compounding shocks. Managing a deadly global pandemic is bad enough, even before you layer on the massive unemployment, trade disruptions and economic shutdown that its mitigation sets in motion.

The months ahead will bring about additional crises – some related to the pandemic, like a massive uptick in public debt used to bail out national economies. But other near-term shocks may themselves be climate change-induced, from new forecasts for large-scale floods this spring in the central US, to a prospective repeat of 2019’s severe summer heat waves across Europe.

Recent floods in Mosul, Iraq. Can we handle climate-related disasters during a pandemic? Ammar Salih / EPA

These disasters have the potential to strike just at the time when people are being advised to shelter inside, many in at-risk areas and without adequate indoor cooling. Overlapping, historic shocks like this are becoming the new normal in our climate-changed era. As public disaster response budgets spiral and loss of life mounts each year, governments will continue to struggle to contain their compounding damage.

Scientists and security professionals alike have long warned about the devastating potential of climate change, alluding to how it might rattle our global governance systems to breaking point. But few could have expected that the fissures in our institutions would be revealed so soon, let alone on such a disturbingly large scale.

We can treat the current global crisis as a sort of “stress test” on these institutions, exposing their vulnerabilities but also providing the urgent impetus to build new resilience. In that light, we could successfully rebound from this moment with more solid global security and cooperation than we knew going into it.

Decision-makers should take a hard look at their current responses, problem-solving methods, and institutional design with future climate forecasts like our Threat Assessment in mind.

We know that even steeper and more frequent global shocks are in store, particularly without serious climate change mitigation efforts. What we don’t yet know is whether we’ll repeat current patterns of mismanagement and abuse, or if we’ll chart a more proactive and resilient course through the risks that lie ahead.

Links

• Chad is the country most vulnerable to climate change – here’s why
• Climate change is a security threat – so where is the UN Security Council?
• ‘Climate migration’ proved too political for the Paris agreement – and rightly so
• A Security Threat Assessment Of Global Climate Change: How Likely Warming Scenarios Indicate a Catastrophic Security Future
• (AU) Climate Change Is A Serious Threat To National Security
• (AU) 'Dystopian Future': Climate Change To Force Review Of Military's Role
• Could Climate Change Become A Security Issue — And Threaten Democracy?
• Climate Change Poses A ‘Direct Threat’ To Australia’s National Security. It Must Be A Political Priority

Carbon Emissions From Fossil Fuels Could Fall By 2.5bn Tonnes In 2020

The Guardian - Jillian Ambrose

Reduction of 5% would represent biggest drop in demand for industry on record

Analysts expect a slump in heavy industry to drive demand for gas and coal down by about 2.3% each. Photograph: National Geographic Image Collection/Alamy

Global carbon emissions from the fossil fuel industry could fall by a record 2.5bn tonnes this year, a reduction of 5%, as the coronavirus pandemic triggers the biggest drop in demand for fossil fuels on record.

The unprecedented restrictions on travel, work and industry due to the coronavirus is expected to cut billions of barrels of oil, trillions of cubic metres of gas and millions of tonnes of coal from the global energy system in 2020 alone, according to data commissioned by the Guardian.

The coronavirus pandemic could result in a 5% fall in global carbon emissions

Guardian graphic. Source: Global Carbon Project (GCP), Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC)

This would lead to the fossil fuel industry’s biggest drop in CO₂ emissions on record, in a single year eclipsing the carbon slumps triggered by the largest recessions of the last 50 years combined.

Climate experts expected global carbon emissions from fossil fuels and cement production to rise in 2020, from an estimated 36.8bn tonnes of carbon dioxide last year. Instead, emissions may fall by about 5%, or 2.5bn tonnes of CO₂, to its lowest levels in about a decade.

Dr Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, has warned against viewing the steep decline in emissions from fossil fuels as a climate triumph.

“This decline is happening because of the economic meltdown in which thousands of people are losing their livelihoods, not as a result of the right government decisions in terms of climate policies,” he said.

“The reason we want to see emissions decline is because we want a more livable planet and happier, healthier people.”

The fossil fuel analysis undertaken by Rystad Energy, a Norwegian energy consultancy, found a sharp contraction in GDP and the abrupt halt of flights and driving could cause the world’s oil demand to fall by more than five times the drop in demand triggered by the global financial crisis in 2008.

The analysts estimate demand for crude will fall by an average of 11m barrels of oil a day this year, or 4bn barrels in total. This alone would cut 1.8bn tonnes of CO₂ emissions, which would otherwise have contributed to the global climate crisis this year, according to Rystad.

The analysts also expected a slump in electricity use and heavy industry to drive demand for gas and coal down by about 2.3% each, erasing carbon emissions from each fossil fuel by 200mtonnes and 500m tonnes respectively.

Erik Holm Reiso, a senior partner at Rystad, said: “The coronavirus pandemic is an unprecedented event for energy markets, which will have a substantial impact on the world’s total carbon emissions.

“The last time demand for oil contracted, during the financial crisis in 2008 to 2009, demand fell by 1.3m barrels of oil a day. But Covid-19 could cause oil demand to fall by more than five times as much.”

The unprecedented drop in oil demand will emerge in large part due the global aviation industry, he said. Typically there are about 99,700 commercial flights per day but the crackdown on non-essential travel to curb the spread of the virus could see air traffic fall by an average of almost a quarter over the year.

Fewer cars on the road will also dent demand for petrol and diesel by an average of 9.4% over the year, shrinking oil demand in 2020 by an average of 2.6m barrels of oil a day.

The analysts say the use of transport fuels may start recovering in the second half of the year, but found demand would lag the figures recorded last year.

Energy demand in China, the world’s biggest importer of oil, is expected to begin recovering next month, four months after the outbreak in the Wuhan province. However it will not make a full return to normal levels until September at the earliest, according to Rystad. This could stoke a slow rise in global energy demand in the second half of 2020 but a recovery to 2019 levels is not forecast for this year.

Resio said: “The real question is over the long-term impact of the virus. If we learn that remote working can work people may begin to question whether we need to take long haul flights to meet people in person. This could alter whether demand for oil ever recovers to the levels we have seen in previous years.”

However, Birol said if governments didn’t take the right measures to include support for clean energy in new economic stimulus packages “then this decline could be easily wiped out in the rebound of the economy”, once Covid-19 is brought under control.

He said: “These figures are important and impressive. But they don’t make me happy. For me it’s more important about what happens next year, and the year after that.”

Links

• Climate Change: For Big Emissions Reductions, We Need To Think Small
• (AU) Call To Integrate Post-Virus Rebuild With Land And Climate Repair
• (AU) Australia Emits 1.2 Per Cent Of The World's Greenhouse Gases. So Who Must Act To Cut Emissions?
• (AU) Scott Morrison's Menu Still Doesn't Offer An Emissions-Free Option
• The Trio Of Obstacles On Climate Change
• (AU) What Are The Full Economic Costs To Australia From Climate Change?
• Top Academics Write To Morrison Government Asking For 'Deep Cuts' To Australia's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• (AU) 'Breaking Point': Bushfires To Grow Australia' Carbon Footprint.
• Strengthen worldwide climate commitments to improve economy, study finds
• Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow postponed until 2021
• Campaigners attack Japan's 'shameful' climate plans release

Strengthen Worldwide Climate Commitments To Improve Economy, Study Finds

The Guardian - Fiona Harvey

Global economy could lose out by $600tn by end of century on current emissions targets

The study’s authors call their findings a ‘self-preservation strategy’ for government. Photograph: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images

Every country in the world would be economically better off if all could agree to strengthen their commitments on the climate crisis through international cooperation, new research has found.

But if countries go no further than their current CO₂ pledges – which are too weak to meet the goals of the Paris agreement, and would lead to dangerous levels of global heating – then they face steep economic losses.

The global economy would lose out by as much as $600tn (£476tn) by the end of the century, on current emissions targets, compared with its likely growth if countries meet the Paris goals, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

If countries fail even to implement their current plans – which would lead to an estimated 3C (5.4F) of heating, far beyond the 2C or 1.5C settled on as the limit of safety in the 2015 Paris agreement – then the outlook is even worse, with losses of up to $800tn by 2100, according to the report from a group of scientists from the Beijing Institute of Technology and other mainly Chinese institutions.

The study’s authors call their findings a “self-preservation strategy” for governments. They calculated the potential benefits by including the social welfare aspects of cutting emissions and of economic growth, which gives more weight than some other models to developing countries with large populations of poor and vulnerable people. They found that better international cooperation on emission would lead to better outcomes for such people, who are likely to be worst affected by climate breakdown.

However, their findings also show such a strategy has greater benefits for developing countries with high emissions, such as India, Indonesia, Nigeria and China, than for developed countries such as the US and the EU in the medium term, though all benefit in the longer term.

Their findings come at a critical time for governments around the world grappling with the coronavirus crisis, and its dire economic impacts. Many are under pressure to ignore or roll back previous commitments on the climate, and some stricken industries with high emissions – such as airlines and carmakers – have lobbied for a weakening of green measures. Oil producers have called a truce in their price war.

But reneging on green commitments now only stores up future problems, and will hasten climate breakdown, scientists have warned, and any respite from rising emissions caused by the crisis will be only temporary. All countries are supposed to come forward with improved national plans on curbing greenhouse gas emissions this year, before vital UN climate talks aimed at keeping the Paris agreement on track.

The UN and the UK government have been forced to delay the talks, called Cop26, until next year. That gives governments more time to improve their national plans, called nationally determined contributions in the UN jargon, but so far there is little sign they are doing so. Only Japan and Chile, the host of last year’s talks, among major countries have so far submitted fresh plans, and while Chile agreed to step up climate action, Japan’s plan showed no improvement.

A UK government spokesperson for Cop26 told the Guardian: “We welcome Chile’s climate leadership as Cop25 president in submitting a strengthened emissions reduction target, and hope to see all countries following their lead.”

Current climate plans showed that the rich world must do more, said Rachel Kennerley, climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “Budgets should be rebalanced to provide emergency finance and help poorer nations – it’s the fair and right thing to do. If we don’t pay now, this is the kind of bill that, like a person ignoring a credit card statement, will only multiply in time.

“And it’s the kind of expenditure that repays multiple benefits and should really be seen as a smart investment. As if stopping climate change isn’t enough, it will deliver a better quality of life for more people around the world, faster.”

The economic benefits of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, compared with the high costs of reneging, should spur governments to act on the climate, according to the Nature study’s authors. However, investments are needed to realise these gains, particularly from developed countries. The outlay would amount to between $5tn and $33tn for the US, and between $16tn and $105tn for the G20 countries as a whole.

The study said: “Early and quick action will provide a better chance to close the widening emissions gap, even though a large amount of abatement cost would occur in the short term.”

Links

• Carbon emissions from fossil fuels could fall by 2.5bn tonnes in 2020
• Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow postponed until 2021
• Campaigners attack Japan's 'shameful' climate plans release
• 'It's a nightmare': Fife residents demand inquiry into flaring at petrochemical plant
• EU member states call for 2030 climate target
• UN predicts above-average temperatures even without El Niño
• World may miss carbon targets unless big firms improve – Mark Carney
• JP Morgan economists warn climate crisis is threat to human race

(AU) Tackling Climate Change Is Vital For The Strongest Economic Recovery After Coronavirus

The Guardian - Patrick Suckling*

The Covid-19 pandemic is a harbinger of climate disasters to come and the resilience we need to build into our systems

“We are in both a health and economic crisis. In dealing with the former we cannot lose a generation to the latter.” Photograph: Guillaume Horcajuelo/EPA

Recovery from coronavirus must reckon with climate change. The current and urgent focus properly needs to be flattening the curve and saving lives.

Yet even as this overriding priority absorbs us, governments now need to be thinking how to support the strongest possible recovery as we emerge from this crisis.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, underscores we are in both a health and economic crisis. In dealing with the former we cannot lose a generation to the latter.

Focus on recovery must be on maximising economic growth and jobs, and ensuring this includes everyone. This was the guiding star that steered the international response to the global financial crisis.

I was advising the prime minister Kevin Rudd at that time and saw first hand just how much foresight, coordination and effort was required for success. This is much worse, and so will demand so much more.

Reckoning with climate change will support a strongest possible recovery. The threat of climate change that is driving global action against it has not gone away. Indeed, the Covid-19 pandemic is a harbinger of climate disasters to come and the resilience we need to build into our systems – including health – to deal with what we know will be the adverse impacts of climate change.

We know that unless we address this challenge, we will all be worse off; and the longer we take in addressing the challenge, the worse it will be. Just as Covid-19 requires us to act now to save lives in the next few weeks, climate change requires action now to avert a future global catastrophe. The logic of climate action has increasingly applied to global economic activity since the Paris agreement, and must continue to underpin the investment decisions governments make going forward.

Decisions that support the strongest possible recovery in growth will help to shape the future of the Australian economy. We must ensure these pathways to the future do not lock-in those that lead to damaging dead-ends: higher emissions and less climate resilience down the track to our economic, environmental and community disadvantage. Borrowing, as we are, from our kids to fund the billions in recovery stimulus, we cannot further burden them with such dead-ends.

Significantly, climate related investments in many cases will offer the best prospects for economic growth and jobs. On that basis alone they should be prioritised. The OECD report Investing in Climate, Investing in Growth demonstrated this in detail for the G20 in 2018.

For example, they provide options for major infrastructure investments which should be a bedrock of government stimulus for recovery: clean energy and new transport systems, more sustainable homes and buildings, improved agricultural practices water and waste management.

In short, if banks will not finance new coal-fired power in Australia but will lend for renewable energy and storage, which would you tend toward, and where then are the growth and jobs, and best place for stimulus?

Corporates are increasingly working this out. There were a slew of announcements over summer largely subsumed by our preoccupation with drought, bushfires and pandemic. They show business banking on climate smart investment for growth.

The most significant example was BlackRock announcing a game-changing move to place sustainability at the centre of its investment approach because the returns to investors will be greater. BlackRock manages over US$7 trillion of assets, meaning other large asset managers will follow, as happened days after the announcement when State Street– managing US$3 trillion - went the same way.

As corporates are now integrating climate change as core business strategy, so should governments as core economic strategy, not least for recovery.

We know where such investments can be made. They are not hypothetical, whether outlined in CSIRO’s excellent technology roadmap for a low-emissions Australian economy, or Ross Garnaut’s recent excellent book on the growth opportunities Superpower: Australia’s Low Carbon Opportunity or last week’s inspiring report by Climate Works on de-carbonising Australia’s future, or presumably in the Government’s forthcoming low-emissions technology roadmap for Australia.

We are not short on ideas, including on climate resilience.

An obvious starting point could be a nation-building stimulus investment around our decrepit energy system. By now the federal and state governments have a much stronger grasp of what we need for success, encouragingly evident on the recent $2bn federal-NSW government package for better access, security and affordability.

Turbocharging this with a stimulus package for more renewable energy and flexible storage of all sorts (including hydrogen), accompanying transmission and security technologies for our electricity grid, and investment in dramatically improving energy efficiency would – literally and figuratively – power our economy forward.

Not just for the growth and jobs in this sector alone but in the scope provided to power other sectors for growth, such as electrifying transport across the country – which stimulus could also spur.

In the aftermath of our drought and bushfires, another obvious area for nation-building investment is our land sector. Farm productivity can be dramatically improved by precision agriculture and regenerative farming technologies while building resilience to drought.

New sources of revenue for farmers can be created through soil carbon and forest carbon farming – with carbon trading from these activities internationally set to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming decade. These solutions and sources of growth and jobs can be harvested now with a little government support, keeping farmers on their land and regional communities thriving.

In these times of despair this prospect holds out great hope. Showing it is not a dream, the EU has already said its recovery stimulus will invest in climate for growth and jobs. We should too.

*Patrick Suckling was Australia’s ambassador for the environment, is a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute and senior partner at Pollination, a specialist climate investment and advisory firm.

Links

• Australia can be a better, fairer place after the coronavirus, if we're willing to fight for it
• It's not too early to start thinking about Australia after the crisis
• Investing in Climate, Investing in Growth (pdf)
• (AU) Climate Scientists Say Coronavirus Could Be Australia's Golden Opportunity
• It’s Important To Keep Talking About Climate Change Now
• How Coronavirus Could Help Us Fight Climate Change: Lessons From The Pandemic
• Here’s What The Coronavirus Pandemic Can Teach Us About Tackling Climate Change
• Low Emissions Technology Roadmap
• Pathways to deep decarbonisation in 2050: how Australia can prosper in a low carbon world

Arctic Climate Change – It’s Recent Carbon Emissions We Should Fear, Not Ancient Methane ‘Time Bombs’

The Conversation - Joshua Dean

Joshua Dean, Author provided

Joshua Dean is Lecturer in Biogeochemical Cycles, University of Liverpool. He has 12 years experience in the global carbon cycle since completing his PhD on water resources. Joshua Dean has worked on carbon cycling in the Canadian and Siberian Arctic, peatlands in the UK, and urban waterways in Europe.

The Arctic is predicted to warm faster than anywhere else in the world this century, perhaps by as much as 7°C. These rising temperatures threaten one of the largest long-term stores of carbon on land: permafrost.

Permafrost is permanently frozen soil. The generally cold temperatures in the Arctic keep soils there frozen year-on-year. Plants grow in the uppermost soil layers during the short summers and then decay into soil, which freezes when the winter snow arrives.

Over thousands of years, carbon has built up in these frozen soils, and they’re now estimated to contain twice the carbon currently in the atmosphere. Some of this carbon is more than 50,000 years old, which means the plants that decomposed to produce that soil grew over 50,000 years ago. These soil deposits are known as “Yedoma”, which are mainly found in the East Siberian Arctic, but also in parts of Alaska and Canada.

As the region warms, the permafrost is thawing, and this frozen carbon is being released to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane. Methane release is particularly worrying, as it’s a highly potent greenhouse gas.

Arctic landscapes are changing rapidly as the region warms. Joshua Dean, Author provided

But a recent study suggested that the release of methane from ancient carbon sources – sometimes referred to as the Arctic methane “bomb” – didn’t contribute much to the warming that occurred during the last deglaciation – the period after the last ice age.

This occurred 18,000 to 8,000 years ago, a period that climate scientists study intently, as it’s the last time global temperatures rose by 4°C, which is roughly what is predicted for the world by 2100.

This study suggested to many that ancient methane emissions are not something we should be worried about this century. But in new research, we found that this optimism may be misplaced.

‘Young’ versus ‘old’ carbon

We went to the East Siberian Arctic to compare the age of different forms of carbon found in the ponds, rivers and lakes.

These waters thaw during the summer and leak greenhouse gases from the surrounding permafrost.

We measured the age of the carbon dioxide, methane and organic matter found in these waters using radiocarbon dating and found that most of the carbon released to the atmosphere was overwhelmingly “young”.

Where there was intense permafrost thaw, we found that the oldest methane was 4,800 years old, and the oldest carbon dioxide was 6,000 years old. But over this vast Arctic landscape, the carbon released was mainly from young plant organic matter.

This means that the carbon produced by plants growing during each summer growing season is rapidly released over the next few summers. This rapid turnover releases much more carbon than the thaw of older permafrost, even where severe thaw is occurring.

So what does this mean for future climate change? It means that carbon emissions from a warming Arctic may not be driven by the thawing of an ancient frozen carbon bomb, as it’s often described. Instead, most emissions may be relatively new carbon that is produced by plants that grew fairly recently.

Arctic lakes are growing sources of methane emissions to the atmosphere. Joshua Dean, Author provided

What this shows is that the age of the carbon released from the warming Arctic is less important than the amount and form it takes.

Methane is 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas over a 100-year timeframe.
The East Siberian Arctic is a generally flat and wet landscape, and these are conditions which produce lots of methane, as there’s less oxygen in soils which might otherwise create carbon dioxide during thaws instead. As a result, potent methane could well dominate the greenhouse gas emissions from the region.

Since most of the emissions from the Arctic this century will likely be from “young” carbon, we may not need to worry about ancient permafrost adding substantially to modern climate change.

But the Arctic will still be a huge source of carbon emissions, as carbon that was soil or plant matter only a few hundred years ago leaches to the atmosphere. That will increase as warmer temperatures lengthen growing seasons in the Arctic summer.

The fading spectre of an ancient methane time bomb is cold comfort. The new research should urge the world to act boldly on climate change, to limit how much natural processes in the Arctic can contribute to the problem.

Links

• The Arctic is turning brown because of weird weather – and it could accelerate climate change
• Little influence of Arctic amplification on mid-latitude climate
• Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release
• Old carbon reservoirs were not important in the deglacial methane budget
• Global temperatures on track for 3-5 degree rise by 2100: U.N.
• East Siberian Arctic inland waters emit mostly contemporary carbon
• Methane Feedbacks to the Global Climate System in a Warmer World

While We Fixate On Coronavirus, Earth Is Hurtling Towards A Catastrophe Worse Than The Dinosaur Extinction

The Conversation - Andrew Glikson

Pixabay 

Andrew Glikson Dr Andrew Glikson, a Earth and paleoclimate scientist, is a Visiting Fellow at the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, where he is reviewing the effects of climate on prehistoric human evolution. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Center for Excellence in Geothermal Research, The University of Queensland, and is affiliated with the Climate Change Institute and the Planetary Science Institute, Australian National University.

At several points in the history of our planet, increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have caused extreme global warming, prompting the majority of species on Earth to die out.

In the past, these events were triggered by a huge volcanic eruption or asteroid impact. Now, Earth is heading for another mass extinction – and human activity is to blame.

I am an Earth and Paleo-climate scientist and have researched the relationships between asteroid impacts, volcanism, climate changes and mass extinctions of species.

My research suggests the current growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions is faster than those which triggered two previous mass extinctions, including the event that wiped out the dinosaurs.

The world’s gaze may be focused on COVID-19 right now. But the risks to nature from human-made global warming – and the imperative to act – remain clear.

The current rate of CO2 emissions is a major event in the recorded history of Earth. EPA

Past mass extinctions

Many species can adapt to slow, or even moderate, environmental changes. But Earth’s history shows that extreme shifts in the climate can cause many species to become extinct.

For example, about 66 million years ago an asteroid hit Earth. The subsequent smashed rocks and widespread fires released massive amounts of carbon dioxide over about 10,000 years. Global temperatures soared, sea levels rose and oceans became acidic. About 80% of species, including the dinosaurs, were wiped out.

And about 55 million years ago, global temperatures spiked again, over 100,000 years or so. The cause of this event, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, is not entirely clear. One theory, known as the “methane burp” hypothesis, posits that a massive volcanic eruption triggered the sudden release of methane from ocean sediments, making oceans more acidic and killing off many species.

So is life on Earth now headed for the same fate?

Comparing greenhouse gas levels

Before industrial times began at the end of the 18th century, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere sat at around 300 parts per million. This means that for every one million molecules of gas in the atmosphere, 300 were carbon dioxide.

In February this year, atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 414.1 parts per million. Total greenhouse gas level – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide combined – reached almost 500 parts per million of carbon dioxide-equivalent.

Author provided/The Conversation, CC BY-ND

Carbon dioxide is now pouring into the atmosphere at a rate of two to three parts per million each year.

Using carbon records stored in fossils and organic matter, I have determined that current carbon emissions constitute an extreme event in the recorded history of Earth.

My research has demonstrated that annual carbon dioxide emissions are now faster than after both the asteroid impact that eradicated the dinosaurs (about 0.18 parts per million CO2 per year), and the thermal maximum 55 million years ago (about 0.11 parts per million CO2 per year).

An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Shutterstock

The next mass extinction has begun

Current atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are not yet at the levels seen 55 million and 65 million years ago. But the massive influx of carbon dioxide means the climate is changing faster than many plant and animal species can adapt.

A major United Nations report released last year warned around one million animal and plant species were threatened with extinction. Climate change was listed as one of five key drivers.

The report said the distributions of 47% of land-based flightless mammals, and almost 25% of threatened birds, may already have been negatively affected by climate change.

Many researchers fear the climate system is approaching a tipping point - a threshold beyond which rapid and irreversible changes will occur. This will create a cascade of devastating effects.

There are already signs tipping points have been reached. For example, rising Arctic temperatures have led to major ice melt, and weakened the Arctic jet stream – a powerful band of westerly winds.

A diagram showing the weakening Arctic jet stream, and subsequent movements of warm and cold air. NASA

This allows north-moving warm air to cross the polar boundary, and cold fronts emanating from the poles to intrude south into Siberia, Europe and Canada.A shift in climate zones is also causing the tropics to expand and migrate toward the poles, at a rate of about 56 to 111 kilometres per decade. The tracks of tropical and extra-tropical cyclones are likewise shifting toward the poles. Australia is highly vulnerable to this shift.

Uncharted future climate territory

Research released in 2016 showed just what a massive impact humans are having on the planet. It said while the Earth might naturally have entered the next ice age in about 20,000 years’ time, the heating produced by carbon dioxide would result in a period of super-tropical conditions, delaying the next ice age to about 50,000 years from now.

During this period, chaotic high-energy stormy conditions would prevail over much of the Earth. My research suggests humans are likely to survive best in sub-polar regions and sheltered mountain valleys, where cooler conditions would allow flora and fauna to persist.

Earth’s next mass extinction is avoidable – if carbon dioxide emissions are dramatically curbed and we develop and deploy technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But on the current trajectory, human activity threatens to make large parts of the Earth uninhabitable - a planetary tragedy of our own making.

Links

• NOAA's Annual Greenhouse Gas Index
• Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
• UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’
• Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene
• Earth system analysis for sustainability (pdf)
• Our options for global C02 drawdown (pdf)
• Here's what the coronavirus pandemic can teach us about tackling climate change
• Curious Kids: What effect did the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs have on plants and trees?

'Most Of The Men Are Your Enemies': One Woman's Crusade In Somalia

The Guardian - Neha Wadekar | Will Swanson

Ibado Mohammed Abdulle is a counsellor, friend and campaigner for women who have been made refugees in their own country by the impact of the climate crisis

Ibado Mohammed Abdulle, who oversees three displacement camps in Somalia’s Sool region, works to prevent violence against displaced women. Photograph: Will Swanson

Oog, Somalia - The long, black hem of Ibado Mohammed Abdulle’s diya drags in the sand, creating mini tornadoes of dust under her sandals.

At a circular fence of waist-high thorny bushes, she knocks on the metal sheet serving as a makeshift door. A woman’s face, partially hidden by a bright green hijab, appears. “Salaam Alaikum,” Abdulle says, “peace be upon you.”

Holding up a hand to the armed guards tasked with accompanying the visiting charity staff following her around the displacement camp, she instructs them to stay outside.

“We don’t want to scare her,” she says.

Abdulle, 48, was living in the desert town of Oog in northern Somalia in 2016 when drought turned the region to dust, driving thousands of families from their homes. Now she makes daily visits to one of three sprawling displacement camps outside the town to campaign for vulnerable women and girls. Once a climate refugee herself, she knows what their lives are like.

“I tell them to gather in groups when they go out,” Abdulle says. “That most of the men are your enemies, so don’t go out alone so you can be safe from the violence and the rape, especially at night-time.”

In Somalia, climate change is driving rape, sexual violence and intimate partner violence. Droughts linked to climate change ravage the landscape with increasing frequency, hurting families who depend on farming and herding animals.

The spike in regional violence against women and girls takes two forms: domestic violence against women who have become family breadwinners , and sexual violence against women and girls who have migrated to camps near crowded urban centres.

Halima, 20, lived with her elderly husband in rural Somaliland. When he died she was left destitute and travelled to Oog, in Sool region, for help. Photograph: Will Swanson

Abdulle came from a pastoralist family, displaced by drought and conflict during Somalia’s civil war in the 80s. After a nomadic life with her family, Abdulle was sent to the capital city, Mogadishu, for her education. She returned first to her parents in northern Somalia, and then moved to Oog.

“When my family [lived] in the countryside, we had a drought like this one [in 2016],” Abdulle says. “The people were helped. Some were educated, some worked and some of them went abroad. I know something about the droughts. When the droughts come, there can be good change for the people, especially for women.”

In 2016, when waves of displaced pastoralist families streamed into Oog, looking for healthcare, food, water and shelter, Abdulle felt compelled to document the crisis and to protect and empower women and girls. She recorded videos to send to the government and the Somali diaspora, requesting support for the overwhelming need.

Abdulle’s no-nonsense attitude and unrelenting commitment encouraged the community to approach the local government to request she be put in charge of their welfare. Holding a paid leadership position overseeing men is an usual responsibility for a woman in Somalia’s male-dominated society.

“The surprising thing is that the three male heads of the three IDP camps are … happy that Ibado is above them,” said Muna Hussein, a gender officer at Oxfam, who works closely with Abdulle. “They listen to her.”

Huda, 35, stands in her home at a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Oog, in Somaliland. Photograph: Will Swanson

Camp conditions are hazardous for women: there is no lighting at night, and no doors or fences to keep out opportunistic criminals and predators. As drought continued in 2017 and 2018, the population in Oog’s camps boomed. And crimes against women and girls mounted.

While updated statistics are hard to come by, at least 25% of Somali women have experienced gender-based violence exacerbated by conflict and displacement due to the climate emergency, World Bank data shows. Much of this violence happens in displaced communities.

Research from Oxfam suggests women in Somalia are most at risk when walking to collect water and firewood, using outdoor toilets and sleeping in makeshift huts that lack doors and lighting. The perpetrators come from both inside and outside the camps. The government, fragile and under-resourced, cannot provide protection and services to the nearly 2.6 million Somalis already displaced.

Abdulle has sought to help local women and girls protect themselves by organising groups to collect water and firewood. She has also coordinated forums, groups of volunteers who meet to learn how to campaign for their needs and rights. She also acts as a counsellor and friend for women who have been attacked.

“If a girl who was raped came to me, I would start by speaking with her,” Abdulle says. “Then, I would take her to the hospital for any treatment. And I would take her to the nearest police station immediately to arrest the perpetrator of this crime.”

Sukhra Idris, says she was abused by her husband because she tried to find work, take her children and leave him when he refused to provide for the family. Photograph: Will Swanson

In the blazing afternoon sun, with strong winds kicking up fierce dust storms, the makeshift tents in the displacement camp look identical: round huts propped up by sticks and covered in a patchwork of faded, old cloth. But Abdulle knows the women living in each one and navigates between the huts with ease.

Sukhra Idris, her name changed to protect her privacy, lives alone in this camp with her two children. When Abdulle enters, she greets her with a hug.

The lines around her eyes make Idris look older than her 23 years. She was married at 17 to a man from a wealthy family.

“I met a boy and fell in love and felt I was ready for marriage,” Idris says, pulling up the bright green hijab as her young child tugs from her head. “I was in a hurry for that because I was very young.”

When the 2016 drought hit, the couple’s livestock transportation business was ruined. . According to experts, men unable to provide for their families often become more prone to domestic violence. Idris says her husband began to abuse her, slamming her against a wall, punching and slapping her.“I told him to do his own work because we didn’t have enough to eat and needed to support old people like my mom and dad,” said Idris. “At that time, he was beating me if I asked him to bring milk for his kids.”

Abduallhi Isa Hamdulle, 81, stands with his sheep and goats in a rural part of Somaliland. Photograph: Will Swanson

Idris tried several times to leave, but social stigma pressed her to return. It was only with Abdulle’s support that Idris was able to leave for good. She struggles to survive with her children in the displacement camp and one has died from diarrhoea.

After a long day, Abdulle visits Oog’s only hotel to sit beneath the shade of a tree and sip a cup of camel milk tea. With climate change intensifying and droughts increasing in the region, Abdulle knows she alone cannot meet the overwhelming needs of all Somali women and girls. Her greatest hope is that the displaced women she is helping to train and empower will pick up the fight.

Links

• Debt relief allows Somalia to rejoin global economy after 30-year exile
• India's Women Seaweed Divers Swim Against The Tide Of Climate Change
• Women Shouldering The Burden Of Climate Crisis Need Action, Not Speeches
• Women Fighting Climate Change Are Targets For Misogynists
• Want To Go For Inclusive Climate Action? Then Start With Integrating Gender Equality Into Climate Finance
• Why The Climate Crisis Is Harming Women More Than Men
• 'You Need To Act Now': Meet 4 Girls Working To Save The Warming World
• Women In Climate Change Hotspots Face Greater Burdens When Under Environmental Stress