Climate Change Scepticism Is 'Political Suicide', David Attenborough Argues

UK Telegraph -  Hannah Furness

It would be 'political suicide' for party leaders to say they do no believe in climate change, Sir David Attenborough argues

Great Barrier Reef with David Attenborough Photo: BBC

It would be "political suicide" for a British political leader to admit they do not believe in global warming, Sir David Attenborough has argued.
Sir David, the broadcaster and environmental campaigner, said climate change is now widely accepted by the public, with Britain already "come round" to the idea.
He has previously spoken out extensively about the issues of climate change, conservation and population growth, last year attending a global summit in Paris.
In an interview with the Sunday Times magazine this weekend, Sir David said much progress had already been made in bringing public opinion round to confronting the problems.

David Attenborough Photo: Toby Coulson

"When I look back to some of the programmes I've made, I ended up saying, 'Look, we're wrecking the world'," he said.
"Now people believe it and understand it. The Americans have come round and this country has come round, and it didn't start that way.
"But in this country, at least, it would now be political suicide for a party leader to say, 'I don't believe in global warming.'

Sir David Attenborough filming his Great Barrier Reef series

"People say to me, 'Why do people still say it's not happening?'
"And I say, hasn't it occurred to you that it's rather nicer to say that it's not happening? You don't have to worry or spend money and your business isn't going to be in peril."
In an interview with the Telegraph in December, Sir David confessed he had experienced a feeling of "embarrassment" about being held up as a voice of authority, saying: "The awful thing is that people think you know far more than you do.

Sir David Attenborough with a replica of the titanosaur's femur Photo: BBC

"For example, I often get asked if I've actually seen climate change and I have to say, look, I could find you examples of dramatic climate change, and I could find the converse, but it's very dangerous to just pick one particular circumstance.
"You have to take the bigger view; you have to respect the findings of people who spend their lives surveying this sort of thing, and make a responsible, scientific summary of where we are."
Sir David's career will be celebrated by the BBC later this year in honour of his 90th birthday.
His latest show, Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur, will see him explore a record-breaking skeleton in Patagonia.

This Technology May Be The Future Of Solar Energy

Washington Post - Chelsea Harvey

Solar panels sit in an array at the Southwick Estate Solar Farm, operated by Primrose Solar Ltd., near Fareham, U.K., on Friday, Oct. 2, 2015. The plant, situated in 200 acres (81 hectares) of farmland, consists of 175,000 monocrystalline PV modules and has a capacity of 48 megawatts. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

In the solar energy sphere, scientists and economists alike will note that coming up with cheaper, most efficient solar cells is key to the industry’s growth. And now, many experts are arguing that an emerging type of technology, known as the “perovskite” solar cell, is the face of the future.
Solar cells, the devices that convert solar energy into electricity, only come in so many forms at the moment. Most of the ones in commercial use are made of silicon. But while these silicon cells dominate the market, they’re far from perfect — on average, they’re only able to achieve 16 to 20 percent efficiency when it comes to converting solar energy, said Michael McGehee, a professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University. And they can be expensive both to produce and to install.
As a result, researchers around the world have dedicated themselves to coming up with cheaper and more efficient solar cells. A great deal of this research is conducted by private companies and is involved with improving the existing silicon cell technology. But some researchers are focused on developing other up-and-coming types of solar cells using different materials and production techniques.
One of these emerging products is the perovskite solar cell, a cheaper product with the potential to be just as efficient — if not more-so — than traditional silicon cells, according to recent research. The word “perovskite” refers to the type of material the cell is made out of. A perovskite material has a special type of crystal structure — calcium titanium oxide is one example, but other materials can have similar structures and be referred to as perovskites.
Around 2009, researchers started trying to make solar cells using perovskite materials, said Nitin Padture, director of the Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation and professor materials science at Brown University. And while the first of these experiments only achieved an efficiency of less than 5 percent, scientists have since improved them drastically. Now, they’re recognized by some experts as one of the most promising innovations in solar research.

The promise of perovskites
The major appeal of perovskite solar cells is that they’re cheap — “much cheaper than something like silicon,” Padture explained. High-quality silicon crystals must be made at high temperatures using very precise processes, he said. Perovskite cells, on the other hand, can be made at nearly room temperature using simpler methods, so production is not so costly.
Of course, lower costs don’t mean much if the cells can’t compete with the efficiency of traditional silicon cells. But in the lab, at least, scientists have succeeded in producing perovskite solar cells with efficiency levels comparable to those of commercially used silicon cells — upwards of 20 percent.
Perovskite solar cells are in no way ready for commercial use yet — Padture predicts that point is still at least 5 to 10 years away — but the early promise has led researchers to explore a number of different applications for the cells. On the one hand, if their costs and efficiency levels become competitive enough, they could be used alone in solar arrays in the same way that silicon solar cells are widely used today. However, some researchers believe the real future of solar energy lies in a new experimental technique that layers perovskite solar cells on top of silicon cells in order to maximize their total efficiency.
The reason this technique seems promising is because silicon cells capture sunlight at slightly different wavelengths than perovskite materials, said McGehee, the Stanford researcher. So if you put them together, they’re able to take advantage of a bigger segment of the spectrum than either would alone.
From a business perspective, this strategy makes sense as well, McGehee added. “I think this is one of the more compelling [pathways] because it’s not going head to head with silicon, it’s partnering with silicon,” he said.
There are so many companies and so much money and research invested in silicon solar cells already that it might be hard for perovskite solar cells to break into the market alone, even if they become truly competitive, he noted. The tandem cells are a way to boost the efficiency of solar panels and help grow the solar industry in a way that benefits everyone and minimizes competition between the different types of materials.
“If silicon gets better over the next 5 to 10 years, that’s not a problem for us — if silicon gets cheaper, that means our tandems will be cheaper, and if silicon gets more efficient, that’s great — it means our tandems will be more efficient,” McGehee said. “It’s a strategic business view. I think perovskites have a better chance of success partnered with silicon in a tandem than going alone.”
But there are other promising applications as well, Padture pointed out. Unlike silicon cells, perovskite solar cells can be transparent or even made into different colors. This means they can be placed in spots that wouldn’t be appropriate for opaque silicon panels, such as windows.
So when you consider these types of applications, perovskite cells “don’t need to compete with silicon,” Padture said. “They have a niche — something unique.”

Room for improvement
Perovskites still have a long way to go before they’ll be fit for the market. For one thing, the competitive efficiency levels that have been produced in the lab wouldn’t necessarily stand up under practical conditions. That’s because most perovskite solar cells that have been produced in the lab are very small, Padture noted — less than a centimeter square. In contrast, many commercially used solar panels are a foot square or even larger.
Unfortunately, there are some challenges to producing larger perovskite solar cells with competitive efficiency levels, according to Padture. Perovskite cells are typically made by combining different chemical solutions to produce a very thin layer, called “film” — the part of the solar cell that converts sunlight into electricity.
But while the low-temperature processes used in perovskite solar cells produce high-quality films in small quantities, “the quality of the films is not very reproducible over large areas,” Padture said. When researchers try to produce larger cells, the film often comes out with defects or holes.
However, there’s been clear progress in this area. Padture and colleagues recently published research describing how they’d been able to improve efficiency in larger solar cells by using different solvents or by dissolving a certain type of gas into the film, which helps to remove defects and can later be removed.
But there are other hurdles as well. Perovskite solar cells aren’t as physically stable as silicon solar cells. “When you expose these cells to humid air, they basically degrade in a couple of days or weeks,” Padture said. In addition, perovskite solar cells typically contain a form of lead that can leach into the environment — so in order for the cells to be viable, they need to be sealed inside a kind of polymer case that protects them from exposure to air and water.
This is a field that McGehee’s lab is currently working on — and while their most recent results are not yet published, McGehee noted that “we’ve made really really nice progress at Stanford in just the last couple of months.”

The future of the industry
There are already a few companies investing in perovskite research, including Oxford PV, which was founded to commercialize technology produced by the University of Oxford. Just last week, co-founder Henry Snaith, a physics professor at Oxford, and a group of his colleagues published research in the journal Science describing a method of improving the efficiency of tandem cells involving perovskite solar cells.
Although Padture and McGehee both agree that the technology is at least five years away from commercialization, Padture said he hopes the federal government will invest more resources into its study, as research into the improvement of silicon solar cells is already well-covered by private companies.
“It doesn’t make sense for the government to invest in something like [silicon] because the companies have a motivation to reduce the cost and improve efficiency and improve durability and reliability because they’re already making money off them,” Padture said. “These still experimental [techniques] — this is where I think the government should be investing.”
In combination with other actions, such as improved systems for solar subsidies and the initiation of a carbon tax, research into emerging solar technologies can help continue to make the solar industry competitive — and, naturally, benefit the environment, according to Padture.
“I firmly believe that research into emerging materials, emerging technologies, is where the future is,” Padture said.

Links

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Paris Climate Deal Offers Flame Of Hope, Says UN Official

The Guardian - Suzanne Goldenberg*

Christiana Figueres says countries cleared multiple hurdles to reach accord, showing that ‘if we want to do something we can’

Christiana Figueres (centre) at the Paris climate change summit in December. Photograph: Francois Mori/AP

The Paris climate agreement kindled “a huge flame of hope”, establishing a new model of 21st-century diplomacy, the woman behind the deal has declared.
In her first public reflections on the climate accord signed in December, Christiana Figueres, the UN climate change official, said that after two decades of meandering negotiations, countries had at last discovered their “higher purpose” and risen to the challenge of dealing with global warming.
The Paris agreement, in which 195 countries committed to limiting the temperature increase to well below 2C, set a new standard for dealing with complex global problems, she said.
“Climate change is a very, very good example of how we are moving to a completely new social contract from the last century,” Figueres told the Guardian at a conference hosted by the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) in Abu Dhabi. “The social contract that is going to underpin the 21st century has at least five very, very different ways of dealing with challenges and very different ways of delivering solutions.
“To have Paris is a huge flame of hope. We can really take some confidence from there that if we decide we want to do something, then we can,” said Figueres, who will step down this summer after guiding the negotiations for six years. “We are not bound by situations we are confronted with. We can rise above them. It’s fantastic.”
A number of key players in the Paris climate deal attended the annual Irena conference at the weekend.
More than 80 countries committed in their climate plans in Paris to expand their use of solar and wind power as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. These countries are now looking for financing and technological assistance to make the switch to cleaner energy sources.
Figueres said countries had overcome multiple faultlines to arrive at a deal in Paris – the divide between rich and poor countries, between the public and private sector, between different regions.
Unlike other negotiations, the Paris climate talks involved governments, business leaders and campaign groups. A number of foreign policy experts have held up Paris as a new model for diplomacy, and commentators have praised the French hosts for skilfully guiding the talks to a successful resolution. “It is the way that we are going to operate increasingly in the 21st century,” Figueres said.
The agreement abandoned the idea of a traditional international treaty with clear rules and fixed obligations, in recognition that the US would never sign on to an agreement that needed approval from a Republican-controlled Senate.
Instead, the agreement relied on countries to come forward with plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and then to review those plans at regular intervals to make even deeper cuts.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former US Department of State official and president of the New America Foundation, wrote of the deal in December: “By the standards of a traditional treaty, it falls woefully short. Yet its deficits in this regard are its greatest strengths as a model for effective global governance in the 21st century. The Paris agreement is a sprawling, rolling, overlapping set of national commitments brought about by a broad conglomeration of parties and stakeholders. It is not law. It is a bold move toward public problem-solving on a global scale. And it is the only approach that could work.”
But there have also been a number of high-profile critics of the Paris agreement. James Hansen, the climate scientist, dismissed the agreement as a fraud. Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential contender, said the deal went nowhere near far enough.
Figueres said the 31-page agreement had exceeded her expectations. “The surprise for me was actually the clarity of the text and the way in which governments worked with each other to get to common ideas,” she said. “In previous negotiations, people have got so caught up with the wording itself – this comma, that comma, that verb – that they tripped over themselves and were not able to reach for the stars. In this case they first reached for the stars and then thought: how do we express that?”
She said Paris was the first time in six such climate meetings that she never had a moment when she feared it would all end in a collapse.
“At every other one there was at least one moment in which I thought we are going to lose this whole thing,” she said. “This was the first time in which it was so evident that there was overwhelming, not just political will, but political determination to actually come to an agreement.”
And not just an agreement for the sake of it, she said. “The overriding current was getting to an agreement that they could all be proud of. It wasn’t just for a photo.”

*Suzanne Goldenberg’s trip to the conference in Abu Dhabi was funded by Irena, the International Renewable Energy Agency.

Links

• Rapid switch to renewable energy can put Paris climate goals within reach
• World leaders hail Paris climate deal as 'major leap for mankind'
• Paris climate talks: Bishop hails 'historic' day as nearly 200 countries sign deal
• Paris climate talks: governments adopt historic deal – as it happened

Confidence In Renewable Energy Sector 'Evaporated' After Abbott Cut: Bloomberg

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Investment in large-scale renewable energy in Australia remains stagnant almost two years after the Abbott government began a review of the sector, according to an annual survey by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Investors spent just $15 million since February 2014 on big wind, solar or other clean energy projects that were not otherwise supported by government programs such as the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

The renewable energy industry's outlook is still clouded in Australia. Photo: Glen McCurtayne

The Abbott government's repeal of the carbon tax in July 2014 – which removed long-term price support – and a mishandled review that led ultimately to a cut of about one-fifth in the 2020 Renewable Energy Target (RET) meant "confidence evaporated" in the sector, said Kobad Bhavnagri, head of Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Australia.
"It can't be understated that the actions of the Abbott government have destroyed confidence in the renewable energy market," Mr Bhavnagri said. "Lenders in the market are almost all of the view that the political risks in the RET … have made it too risky to invest in."
The picture is not all gloomy, however, with the capacity of new rooftop solar photovoltaic systems rising in 2015.

Wind turbines stand behind a solar power park at Werder, Germany. Photo: Sean Gallup

Solar energy on rooftops is the bright spot in the Australian clean energy sector. Photo: Glenn Hunt

Other bright spots included the Australian Capital Territory's reverse auction program and grants from federal government-owned ARENA and the Clean Energy Finance Corp – two agencies still slated for abolition by the Turnbull government.
When investments related to those programs are added to the total investment, financing of large-scale renewable energy rose slightly to $1.18 billion "from the depths of the 2014 investment freeze", Bloomberg said.
Still, Australia will need to triple that amount to the annual sum of $3.6 billion needed to meet even the lowered RET goal of 33,000 gigawatt-hours of clean energy a year by 2020.
Reaching that 2020 goal "looks to very challenging" after two years in the doldrums, Mr Bhavnagri said.

A spokesman for Environment Minister Greg Hunt said investment for 400 megawatts of new capacity had been announced since the new RET target was settled.
"Significant additional investment is expected to be announced or approved over the coming 12 months," the spokesman said.
"The revised target was supported by the renewable energy sector as it is both achievable and sustainable," he said, adding the goal amounts to a doubling of large-scale renewable energy over the next five years.
The Greens, though, said the policy had been undermined by the big parties and major companies.
"The Liberal and Labor deal to cut the RET has enabled the big three energy retailers [AGL, Origin and EnergyAustralia] to prolong uncertainty for this vital industry," said Richard Di Natale, the Greens leader. "So in the first half of 2016, it's important we see some real commitment that they're serious about signing up for renewable energy projects.
"In the absence of a strong RET, the [CEFC and ARENA] are even more important, but it's still Liberal policy to abolish them both," Senator Di Natale said, adding the Greens' policy calls for 90 per cent of Australia's electricity to come from renewables by 2030.
Labor wants the renewable energy share to rise to 50 per cent by 2030.
"Australia has some of the best renewable energy resources in the world, and while the industry recognises that meeting the [RET] will be a challenge, we are up to the task," said Mark Bretherton, spokesman for the Clean Energy Council.
"Negotiating contracts to buy the renewable energy generated by major projects simply takes time, and we are expecting more projects to proceed in the first two quarters of 2016," he said, adding that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull "seems committed to restoring confidence" in the sector.

International gain
The outlook is more promising on the international front, with total investment in renewable energy rising 4 per cent in 2015 to a record $US329.3 billion ($474 billion), according to BNEF. (See chart below in US dollars.)

The rise came despite falling costs for new solar panels and a plunge in prices of fossil fuels, including a drop of 67 per cent dive in Brent crude prices over the past 18 months.
For large-scale clean energy investment, Australia ranked 12th largest in the world in 2015 behind other resource-rich nations such as Chile (11th) and South Africa (8th), Bloomberg said.
For small-scale solar, Australia was the fifth largest, with $2.17 billion, nudging ahead of Germany but trailing nations such as Britain and Japan.
Renewable energy should continue to grow even with cheap fossil fuels, particularly after the global climate agreement reached late last year, Mr Bhavnagri said.
"Paris certainly creates momentum," he said. "Paris sets the objectives and it is up to countries to set their own policies to get there."

Link

• How will solar batteries change the household?

Power Sector Carbon Emissions Jumped 3.8 Million Tonnes In 2015: Pitt & Sherry

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Power sector emissions are rising, making carbon goals harder to hit. Photo: Paul Jones

Australia's greenhouse gases from its power sector jumped by 3.8 million tonnes in 2015, potentially making it harder to meet the country's international promises to cut total emissions.
Pollution from power stations - which account for about a third of Australia's total carbon emissions - was up 2.4 per cent compared with 2014, according to data compiled by Pitt & Sherry and The Australia Institute.
Emissions from electricity production, which was the prime target of the carbon tax, are now 5.1 per cent higher than in June 2014 - just before the scheme was scrapped by the Abbott government:

The rise in emissions is being driven in part by a switch back to coal-fired power as more gas gets diverted to offshore markets. The share of gas in the National Electricity Market, which supplies about 80 per cent of Australia's population, fell to 11.2 per cent in December, its lowest proportion since mid-2010.
Australia's total emissions rose 1.3 per cent in the year to June 2015, the first full year after the carbon tax's demise, the government reported just before Christmas.
An increase in electricity use is also nudging emissions higher, with demand for power notching the first annual increase since 2010.
A stalling in new renewable energy investments because of political uncertainty over the 2020 Renewable Energy Target has also curbed the rise of wind power. Its share in December was unchanged from a year earlier at 5.7 per cent.
In December, black and brown coal accounted for 75.9 per cent of the NEM's output.

Australia is likely to meet its 2020 target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent of 2000 levels in large part because of surplus credits from a reduction in land clearing, particularly in Queensland and NSW.
The longer-term goal of reducing emissions by 19 per cent of 2000 levels by 2030 - as committed by the Turnbull government at the Paris climate summit late last year - will require an average annual reduction of about 11 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent emissions from now. Compared with 2005 levels, the cut is 26-28 per cent.
That target will be increasingly difficult without a change in policy, particularly towards curbing emissions from the energy sector, Hugh Saddler, Pitt & Sherry's principal consultant, said.
"Australia is still largely dependent on coal for its electricity supply and, assuming electricity demand continues to rise, Australia's carbon emissions will continue to rise," Dr Saddler said.
The 2015 increase in emissions might have been higher but for a slight rise in hydro electricity towards the end of the year.
The extra hydro input, though, will probably be hard to sustain without good rains, particularly for Hydro Tasmania.
"Tasmania ... is now facing a significant challenge as energy storage levels fell to below 24 per cent at the end of December as a consequence of an abnormally dry winter," Pitt & Sherry said in its latest Cedex report.

Link

• Investor confidence in renewable energy 'evaporated'

Cancer and Climate Change

New York Times - Piers J. Sellers*

Tatsuro Kiuchi

I'M a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
This diagnosis puts me in an interesting position. I've spent much of my professional life thinking about the science of climate change, which is best viewed through a multidecadal lens. At some level I was sure that, even at my present age of 60, I would live to see the most critical part of the problem, and its possible solutions, play out in my lifetime. Now that my personal horizon has been steeply foreshortened, I was forced to decide how to spend my remaining time. Was continuing to think about climate change worth the bother?
After handling the immediate business associated with the medical news — informing family, friends, work; tidying up some finances; putting out stacks of unread New York Times Book Reviews to recycle; and throwing a large "Limited Edition" holiday party, complete with butlers, I had some time to sit at my kitchen table and draw up the bucket list.
Very quickly, I found out that I had no desire to jostle with wealthy tourists on Mount Everest, or fight for some yardage on a beautiful and exclusive beach, or all those other things one toys with on a boring January afternoon. Instead, I concluded that all I really wanted to do was spend more time with the people I know and love, and get back to my office as quickly as possible.
I work for NASA, managing a large group of expert scientists doing research on the whole Earth system (I should mention that the views in this article are my own, not NASA's). This involves studies of climate and weather using space-based observations and powerful computer models. These models describe how the planet works, and what can happen as we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The work is complex, exacting, highly relevant and fascinating.
Last year was the warmest year on record, by far. I think that future generations will look back on 2015 as an important but not decisive year in the struggle to align politics and policy with science. This is an incredibly hard thing to do. On the science side, there has been a steady accumulation of evidence over the last 15 years that climate change is real and that its trajectory could lead us to a very uncomfortable, if not dangerous, place. On the policy side, the just-concluded climate conference in Paris set a goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels.
While many have mocked this accord as being toothless and unenforceable, it is noteworthy that the policy makers settled on a number that is based on the best science available and is within the predictive capability of our computer models.
It's doubtful that we'll hold the line at 2 degrees Celsius, but we need to give it our best shot. With scenarios that exceed that target, we are talking about enormous changes in global precipitation and temperature patterns, huge impacts on water and food security, and significant sea level rise. As the predicted temperature rises, model uncertainty grows, increasing the likelihood of unforeseen, disastrous events.
All this as the world's population is expected to crest at around 9.5 billion by 2050 from the current seven billion. Pope Francis and a think tank of retired military officers have drawn roughly the same conclusion from computer model predictions: The worst impacts will be felt by the world's poorest, who are already under immense stress and have meager resources to help them adapt to the changes. They will see themselves as innocent victims of the developed world's excesses. Looking back, the causes of the 1789 French Revolution are not a mystery to historians; looking forward, the pressure cooker for increased radicalism, of all flavors, and conflict could get hotter along with the global temperature.
Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part of this whole business.
The initial heavy lifting will have to be done by policy makers. I feel for them. It's hard to take a tough stand on an important but long-term issue in the face of so many near-term problems, amid worries that reducing emissions will weaken our global economic position and fears that other countries may cheat on their emissions targets.
Where science can help is to keep track of changes in the Earth system — this is a research and monitoring job, led by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and their counterparts elsewhere in the world — and use our increasingly powerful computer models to explore possible futures associated with proposed policies. The models will help us decide which approaches are practicable, trading off near-term impacts to the economy against longer-term impacts to the climate.
Ultimately, though, it will be up to the engineers and industrialists of the world to save us. They must come up with the new technologies and the means of implementing them. The technical and organizational challenges of solving the problems of clean energy generation, storage and distribution are enormous, and they must be solved within a few decades with minimum disruption to the global economy. This will likely entail a major switch to nuclear, solar and other renewable power, with an electrification of our transport system to the maximum extent possible. These engineers and industrialists are fully up to the job, given the right incentives and investments. You have only to look at what they achieved during World War II: American technology and production catapulted over what would have taken decades to do under ordinary conditions and presented us with a world in 1945 that was completely different from the late 1930s.
What should the rest of us do? Two things come to mind. First, we should brace for change. It is inevitable. It will appear in changes to the climate and to the way we generate and use energy. Second, we should be prepared to absorb these with appropriate sang-froid. Some will be difficult to deal with, like rising seas, but many others could be positive. New technologies have a way of bettering our lives in ways we cannot anticipate. There is no convincing, demonstrated reason to believe that our evolving future will be worse than our present, assuming careful management of the challenges and risks. History is replete with examples of us humans getting out of tight spots. The winners tended to be realistic, pragmatic and flexible; the losers were often in denial of the threat.
As for me, I've no complaints. I'm very grateful for the experiences I've had on this planet. As an astronaut I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. Floating alongside the International Space Station, I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God's-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I'm hopeful for its future.
And so, I'm going to work tomorrow.

*Piers J. Sellers is the deputy director of Sciences and Exploration at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and acting director of its Earth Sciences Division. As an astronaut, he visited the International Space Station three times and walked in space six times.

Link

• Building Visions of Humanity’s Climate Future – in Fiction and on Campus

Crop Failure and Fading Food Supplies: Climate Change's Lasting Impact

Live Science - Marlene Cimons*

As prolonged drought and extreme temperatures have taken their terrible toll on food crops in recent years, nations have tended to focus on regional episodes, such as a single drought-afflicted state or region. Now, scientists have assessed the global scale of food crop disasters for the first time — and the news is not good.
In a new study, researchers from Canada and the United Kingdom estimate that cereal harvests — including rice, wheat and maize — decreased by an average of 9 to10 percent during droughts and heat waves between 1964 and 2007, with the worst effects seen in North America, Europe, and Australia and its neighboring islands. Furthermore, the impact has grown larger in recent years. With climate change likely to exacerbate extreme weather and make it more common in the future, the study is perhaps the most comprehensive examination yet of the historic impact of extreme weather on global crop production.

Fading food supplies
The researchers' work builds on an accumulating body of research and reports that consistently warn of the devastating effects extreme weather is having on agriculture. And the effects will continue, with consequences including drastic food shortages, experts say. Studies from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Niger have shown that children have increased wasting and stunting rates after a flood or drought, according to the United Nations World Food Programme. For example, children in Niger born during a drought are more than twice as likely to be malnourished between the ages of 1 and 2. Moreover, the U.N. food program estimates that hunger and child malnutrition could increase by as much as 20 percent by 2050 as a result of climate change. [Food Prices, Global Hunger to Skyrocket by 2030, Oxfam Warns]
Extreme weather causes crop production losses, but until now, scientists "did not know exactly how much global production was lost to extreme weather events and how they varied by different regions of the world," said Navin Ramankutty, a professor of global food security and sustainability at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia, and one of the study authors.
The researchers, whose work appears in a recent issue of the journal Nature, also include Corey Lesk, of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, and Pedram Rowhani, a lecturer in geography and international development at the University of Sussex.

Keeping food on the table
While shortages don't necessarily spell extinction for your morning bowl of cornflakes, cereal could end up costing you a lot more. More important, because cereal grains are a staple of the global diet, the situation could have a catastrophic impact on farmers and the world's hungry.
"I think most Americans are relatively able to withstand food price shocks," said Lesk, first author of the study. "But the most vulnerable people, both in the United States and elsewhere, can be forced into dangerous situations by these disasters. I think it's important for Americans to keep these people in mind, especially because these disasters are likely to become more common in the future."
Those crises could mean lost income for American commercial farmers, as well as food shortages for poorer subsistence farmers, who rely on their crops to feed themselves and their families, Lesk said.
Food insecurity still persists in the United States; an estimated 14 percent of American households (17.4 million), were food "insecure" in 2014, meaning they had difficulty at some point during the year providing enough food for their families due to a lack of resources, according to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The findings from the new research may help guide agricultural priorities in international disaster risk reduction, as well as adaptation efforts. "We can avoid a worsening food-security situation if we invest in adapting our crops to these extremes immediately, and especially if we step up and make solid commitments to avoid further climate change," Lesk said.

Harvesting the data
Lesk and his colleagues analyzed national agricultural-production data from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization for 16 cereals in 177 countries. They also examined 2,800 international weather disasters from 1964 to 2007.
They found that cereal harvests decreased due to both droughts and extreme heat, and production levels in North America, Europe and Australasia dropped by an average of 19.9 percent from droughts alone — roughly double the global average.
Moreover, the average impact of recent droughts — those between 1985 and 2007 — was a 13.7 percent loss, which is 7 percent greater than the 6.7 percent impact during droughts that occurred earlier, between 1964 and 1984. The reasons for this are not clear.
"We found that the average impact of drought disasters on crops has gotten worse," Lesk said. "But it is still debated whether droughts themselves have gotten more severe, so another explanation could be that crops have gotten more susceptible to drought over the decades. That could mean, speculatively, that we're already on the wrong path with regard to adapting our crops to a changing climate.
"The thinking is that, if crop responses to drought have gotten bigger, but there is no clear signal that the droughts have gotten worse, then that supports the alternative explanation that crops themselves have gotten more sensitive," he added. "And if they have gotten more sensitive already, that bodes ill for future crop performance in a world of worse droughts."

Crop failure
The researchers found that production losses due to droughts were associated with a reduction in both harvested area and yields, whereas extreme heat mainly decreased yields.
Harvested area refers to the planted cropland area that is harvested in a given year.
"It takes time, energy and money to harvest crops from a field, and if crops are severely enough damaged, then farmers may choose not to harvest at all," Lesk said. "You could call this a 'total crop failure,' and it shows up in the data as a drop in harvested area. Yield is the mass of grain harvest per unit area harvested — in other words, the productivity of the crops on an area basis. If a crop fails completely and is not harvested, then it doesn't end up in the yield calculations, so you have to consider both metrics to get a full picture."
The scientists concluded that droughts caused partial and total damage to crops, resulting in drops in both yield and harvested area. Heat waves, in contrast, only resulted in yield declines. "Droughts can cause more complete crop failures, possibly because they can last so long and damage crops so severely that farmers don't bother harvesting," Lesk said. "Another aspect is that longer droughts might discourage planting altogether, possibly because farmers have run out of water for irrigation or money for seeds."
The scientists did not specifically analyze any price or trade effects, but they have "come up with a quick, rough estimate for the 9 to 10 percent in annual dollar terms," Lesk said. "About $10 billion worth of crops per year, globally, has been lost to drought and heat waves," Lesk said.
The researchers did not find any impacts from floods or extreme cold. Also, in one optimistic result, their analysis found that extreme weather events had no lasting impact on agricultural production in the years that followed the disasters.
Nevertheless, the work provides another compelling argument "to start scaling up the myriad climate change mitigation strategies that already exist — green subsidies and investment, carbon taxes and markets, and especially ending fossil fuel subsidies," Lesk said. "Climate change poses a colossal economic risk to the world — tens to hundreds of trillions of dollars in damage, by some estimates. Spending now to avoid it is truly an excellent investment."

*Marlene Cimons is a Washington, D.C. based freelance writer who specializes in science, health and the environment. Her work frequently appears in, among other outlets, The Washington Post, Microbe Magazine, and Climate Progress. She also writes for Climate Nexus, a nonprofit that aims to tell the climate story in innovative ways that raise awareness of, dispel misinformation about and showcase solutions to climate change and energy issues in the United States. She contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Links

• Can 'Meatless Mondays' and Improved Farming Counter Climate Change? (Op-Ed)
• Climate Change Scrambles Arctic Food Chain
• Climate Change Can Spark War