Our Cars Are Choking Us

Sydney Morning Herald - Editorial

Motorists sitting in the lines of traffic as they return from holidays or just try to get back to work this week will probably be irritated to learn about the federal government's draft plan to improve the quality of fuel and the efficiency of vehicles on Australia's roads. The reason: the cost of motoring may rise.
Certainly the motoring lobby would like them to get angry. Its representatives have reacted predictably to the draft proposals. As we have reported, the Australian Automobile Association, the peak body for state-based organisations such as the NRMA and RACV, is already making warning noises about costs. The motoring lobby's confidence it can block any change has some justification. On the environment, this government is an easy mark. When denialist critics savaged Canberra's plan to review (not even to alter) Australia's current inadequate response to climate change, the idea was quickly dumped.

The draft proposals cover three things: higher fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles, higher air-pollution standards, and better-quality fuel. Photo: Glenn Hunt 

That review had been announced less than 48 hours earlier by Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg who, along with the Urban Infrastructure Minister, Paul Fletcher, announced the present draft proposals. Perhaps the latter is there to give the former some backbone this time. Let us hope he succeeds, because this is a worthwhile project.
The proposals, for which the government is seeking reaction from industry and the public, cover three things: higher fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles, higher air-pollution standards, and better-quality fuel. Although they have been described as "new" standards, in fact none are new. They already apply in Europe, the United States and elsewhere – major sources of new vehicles on our roads now that the government is allowing the local motor industry to die.
Why, many will ask, should Australians accept cars, trucks and buses that are dirtier and operate to lower standards than those sold where they are made?
The same Australian Automobile Association has done both motorists and environmentalists a service by setting up real-world tests of fuel efficiency and emissions from motor vehicles. Preliminary results show cars emit noxious gases at up to four times the rate current regulations allow, and greenhouse gases 35 per cent higher, while using 35 per cent more fuel than is measured by government-mandated tests carried out in laboratories. The present testing regime, in other words, leaves a lot to be desired. It appears Volkswagen may not be the only car maker building cars deliberately to pass the test in the laboratory, but not on the road. However, even if current laboratory-based measures of vehicle performance are flawed, that is no argument against stricter standards. Clearly, if even existing standards are not being met, future standards will have to be all the stricter to bring emissions down, and to boost fuel efficiency.
Transport is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, which Australia is bound to reduce under its commitments to the Paris climate change agreement that it signed and ratified last year. The latest available figures from Australia's Department of the Environment show that in 2014 the services, construction and transport sector generated 11.5 per cent of Australia's 525 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent gases. If Australia can reduce this output by improving the efficiency of its vehicles and raising the standard of the fuel it uses, it obviously must do so.
Other critics of the proposals have also emerged – on the other side of the argument.
For health experts, the proposed changes do not go nearly far enough. Air pollution is a major cause of deaths from respiratory diseases, and about half of these are attributable to the effects of vehicle exhaust. A federal government study estimated that in 2015, 2266 deaths in Sydney and Melbourne could be attributed to air pollution. That combined total is projected to rise to 2500 by 2030 – even if the strictest fuel standards are introduced, and even higher if they are not.
We hear much about the road toll, which is shocking enough: 384 deaths in NSW. Compare that with the number – nearly twice as great – that the study suggests were poisoned or choked by fumes from motor vehicles. The price of our national obsession with petrol- and diesel-driven vehicles is written in those figures. It is far too high. The federal government is right to seek ways to stop our cars from choking us.

Links

• Stopping our cars choking us an urgent task
• Australia's most popular type of petrol could be phased out within two years
• No clear air for government's pollution proposals
• Climate Change Review 2017
• Review of Australia’s climate change policies

Thinking Globally, Suing Locally: Chelsea Activists Join Fight Against Exxon Mobil

Boston Globe - Stephanie Ebbert

Plaintiffs in the suit against Exxon Mobil include Damali Vidot, at-large city councilor in Chelsea; John Valinch; and Roseann Bongiovanni and Maria Belen Power, both from the leadership ranks of GreenRoots, an environmental organization. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff

CHELSEA — Roseann Bongiovanni was on an early morning training run for the Boston Marathon a decade ago when a stench from the Mystic River made it difficult to breathe. A Chelsea native accustomed to the industrial waterfront's malodorous scents, she recognized this whiff as different: It was diesel.
The cause turned out to be 15,000 gallons of fuel spilling from an oil terminal across the river in Everett, where tankers deliver petroleum products. Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, had failed to replace a $2 metal coupling, contributing to the spill, which resulted in criminal charges of negligence and a $6 million settlement for polluting the Island End and Mystic rivers.
The lingering memory led her to sign on to a new lawsuit alleging Exxon Mobil is neglecting to protect her community against the effects of climate change.
The first-of-its-kind lawsuit is drawing new attention as Exxon Mobil's longtime chief executive, Rex Tillerson, faces scrutiny as President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of state.
The suit's allegations shift the climate change debate from the distant domains of polar bears and the fate of future generations to the here and now. The suit claims that along the Island End River, which separates Everett and Chelsea, rising sea levels will make it more likely that Exxon's oil terminal could disgorge a toxic stew of carcinogens into residents' basements and streets. "Exxon Mobil's failure to adapt the Everett Terminal to increased precipitation, rising sea levels, and storm surges of increasing frequency and magnitude puts the facility, the public health, and the environment at great risk because a significant storm surge, rise in sea level, and/or extreme rainfall event may flood the facility and release solid and hazardous wastes into the Island End River, Mystic River, and directly onto the city streets of Everett," the suit says.
Local activists — including Bongiovanni, executive director of GreenRoots Inc., an environmental justice group — have testified about the terminal's effect on their lives, in an attempt to shore up the suit.
"What people in the national press are talking about, we feel this every single day," said Bongiovanni. "It's not just about climate change and saving polar ice caps. This is about sea levels rising and people being forced out of their houses."
The suit was filed in US District Court in Boston in September by the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation, the environmental advocacy group responsible for forcing the cleanup of Boston Harbor.
Exxon Mobil has filed a motion to dismiss it, saying the organization does not have standing to sue and has no personal interest in the terminal.
A spokesman for the company declined to speak about the allegations, calling the suit "yet another attempt to use the courts to promote a political agenda."

Exxon Mobil's tanks, seen in this photo from a residential street in Everett, are a prominent part of the landscape for many residents of Chelsea and Everett. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff

Exxon Mobil is also the target of investigations by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York, who are seeking documents on the company's decades of research on climate change.
The inquiries follow last year's reports by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times that the petroleum company had studied the effects its products could have on climate as early as the 1970s but spent subsequent decades casting doubt on the certainty and legitimacy of such research.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a Jan. 11 confirmation hearing for Tillerson, at which allegations about an Exxon climate coverup could emerge.
Unlike the law enforcement probes, though, Conservation Law Foundation's suit focuses on existing environmental laws and permits, claiming Exxon Mobil is violating them daily. Any violations would be exacerbated by the rising sea levels and stronger storms associated with climate change, which Exxon has failed to make adaptations to guard against, the suit asserts.

'We're not asking them to prepare for a meteor strike. We're asking them to prepare for the conditions that their own scientists affirm are certain to come.'
Bradley Campbell, Conservation Law Foundation

"What it means, in simple terms, is that Exxon is using the Mystic River as an open sewer, rather than invest in the controls and treatment and preventive measures that this facility needs," said Bradley Campbell, the group's president.
"We're not asking them to prepare for a meteor strike," Campbell added. "We're asking them to prepare for the conditions that their own scientists affirm are certain to come, some of which are already here.
"Just as when they're operating an oil tanker, that vessel has to be prepared for sea conditions that may arise, this has to be ready for the weather conditions they know are coming."
A Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman did not directly address allegations that Exxon Mobil is violating its permits and not facing enforcement penalties. The EPA, she said, "focuses its resources on the most significant pollution problems that pose the greatest threats to public health and the environment."
In its court response so far, Exxon Mobil has said the Conservation Law Foundation's lawsuit is improperly aimed at trying to persuade the EPA to tighten regulations that do not currently require permit holders to consider "alleged climate change impacts."
In a memo supporting its motion to dismiss the case, filed in December, Exxon Mobil noted that in its EPA permit, "Nowhere does that permit mandate consideration of the speculative risks of climate change."
The Conservation Law Foundation has also seized on the company's plans to respond to an oil spill or other emergency. As it was gathering documents for the suit, the group was unable to obtain Exxon Mobil's emergency response plans, from either the company or the government, Campbell noted.
As a result, more than 160 activists descended on Exxon Mobil's Everett Terminal last month with a letter seeking the response plans. They were unsuccessful — the terminal manager wouldn't accept their letter and called the police — but they captured the awkward exchange on video.
"We wanted to send a message," said City Councilor Damali Vidot. "If a Category 1 hurricane does come, what does that mean for our community?"
Part of their message is that they're not getting the respect that another, wealthier municipality might demand from a multinational corporation.
Chelsea is a congested, low-income city of immigrants and people of color. Exxon Mobil's Everett Terminal, which runs up against an Everett neighborhood, is at the Island End River, which flows into the Mystic River. While other stretches of the Mystic are being revitalized by development — think Assembly Row in Somerville and the Wynn Resorts casino in Everett — this stretch of the waterfront is dotted with oil tanks and other industrial structures, and its few parks are disconnected. Canoes are few and far between.
"I believe that the industries in Chelsea and other neighboring communities profit off of the use of our water resources, including the Mystic and Island End rivers," Vidot said in her affidavit in support of the Conservation Law Foundation's suit, "while residents pay the price of living with and around polluted waters."

Links

• Teenagers Take the US Government to Trial Over Climate Change
• Norwegian Youths Sue Their Government Over Climate Change
• Judge: Youth Climate Change Lawsuit Against Feds Can Proceed
• Judge Sides With Kids Suing The Government Over Climate Inaction: 'These Kids Can't Wait' 
• Call for giant Arctic ice-makers to prevent climate 'catastrophe'
• Climate change scientist fears more death threats under Trump
• Trump urged to scrap Obama's climate change strategy by 24 states
• 'America's only hope' urged to defy Trump over climate change
• California says it will sue if Trump ignores climate science

Government Accused Of Policy Paralysis While Uncertainty Reigns Over Renewable Energy Targets

ABC Rural - Babs McHugh

The full moon sets behind a wind farm in the Mojave Desert in California, Januray 8, 2004. (Toby Melville: Reuters)

The bickering between state and federal governments on renewable energy targets is creating massive uncertainty, according to climate change and energy specialists.

David Blowers from the Grattan Institute says investors, utilities, industry and householders are in the dark about what to expect in 2017.
Mr Blowers said the only certainty was that electricity prices would rise for everyone.
"Electricity prices have already been factored into next year and they're going to be higher," he said.
"Tackling a new energy system makes that inevitable.
"Replacing a lot of generation stock and infrastructure with a whole lot of new stuff is expensive, so prices will rise.

"What we'll see, if there's no agreement around Australia's climate change policy, is that for the foreseeable future, price increases will be greater than they need to be."

Mr Blowers said it might be unpalatable, but there must be give and take on both sides if politicians are to reach consensus and enable investment.
"At the moment, on the federal level, we have two sides of politics, both arguing two separate things," he said.
"It's a battle between the Federal Government and the Opposition on what they want policy to be, and at the end of the day both parties are going to have to give a little.
"Then there's the situation where state governments have introduced their own renewable energy targets, so it's hard to see [consensus] happening and I guess you'll see more of the same going forward.
"But if we have certainty and clarity around climate policy, that will give those involved in the electricity sector the confidence to make the investment that we need to have a reliable and reasonably affordable electricity sector.

"At the moment all we have is stagnation."

CSIRO stresses urgent need to have carbon change policy consensus
The CSIRO and Energy Networks Australia have submitted research called the Electricity Network Transformational Roadmap to the Finkel Review on electricity, which is scheduled to be handed down by April this year.
Paul Graham, CSIRO's chief energy economist, said policy certainty, including a price on carbon, was needed urgently.
"The reason it is so urgent is because by 2030 we want to have meet our Paris climate target, [which] will involve shifting to using a lot of low emissions electricity, he said.
"But low emissions electricity costs more. Electricity bills will rise because of the deep decarbonisation trend.
"And we want to make sure we don't spend any more than we have to. We've got to have a clear, stable carbon policy."

Electricity only one third of emissions
Mr Blowers is concerned that there is too much focus on electricity as a means of reducing emissions and decarbonising.
"I think this is a major problem," he said.
"We're spending a long time focusing on electricity generator sector, which only accounts for 30 per cent of our emissions.
"It's the biggest, but we've still got two-thirds of your emissions to deal with.
"I'm yet to see someone come up with a method of making steel or cement without burning carbon or how to stop methane gas coming off cows, pigs and sheep."

Links

• What can we expect from Australian climate politics in 2017?
• Climate change could be behind growth of bird's wing length, researchers say
• Climate change could increase number of cyclones during El Nino years
• NASA climate scientist and astronaut Piers Sellers dies at 61
• Australia's greenhouse gas emissions rising

Climate Change In 2016: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

The Guardian - John Abraham

2016 wasn’t all bad news for the climate, but it was ugly toward the end

A firefighter watches as smoke from a wildfire swirls around a stand of trees near Morgan Hill, Calif., on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016. A heat wave stifling drought-stricken California worsened the state’s wildfires in 2016. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

This past year had so many stories involving human-caused climate change – it will be forever in our memories. Here is a summary of some of the high points, from my perspective. When I say “high points” I don’t necessarily mean good. Some of these high points are bad and some are downright ugly. Let’s do the good first.

The Good
The best news of all, in my opinion, is the continued cost reductions and huge installations of clean energy both in the US and around the word. Wind, solar, and other renewables have been on an incredible run of decreasing costs and creative financing, which has made them economically competitive with dirty fossil fuels. Improvements and expansion of grid-based power storage has also advanced. These storage abilities are needed to allow intermittent power sources (like wind and solar) to play an even larger role in delivering power to the grid. In the end, clean power will win out based on simple dollars and cents – regardless of the fact they will also help save the world.
On an international scale, the US, China, and other countries ratified the Paris climate agreement, which gives us a reasonable chance at avoiding the worst effects of climate change. In the lead up to that ratification, the US took major actions domestically to reduce its own emissions through steps like the Clean Power Plan.
Emissions have been reduced in some countries like the US for a variety of reasons. First, very cheap natural gas is displacing dirtier coal-based power. Secondly, renewable energy sources like wind and solar are expanding, and people are using energy more wisely. All of this happened with a major reduction in energy costs in the US. This shows you can have clean energy that is also cheap.
In court, it was a good year. A rag-tag group of pro-bono climate scientists beat a bunch of high-paid contrarians in court. We showed that their science was nonsense and the smart judge gave a very harsh judgement to the funded deniers.
And last in this part of the list, I think this is the year we can say the climate deniers and the contrarians who downplay global warming threats finally lost the science war. In the past, there were a dwindling few scientists each year that attempted to find evidence that the world was not warming, or wasn’t warming much.
Each year, the number of scientists in this group got smaller and smaller. This year, they were virtually nonexistent. The contrarians have almost given up looking for contrarian evidence – it just isn’t there. They have ceded the scientific field because their research was found to be wrong. Now, these contrarian scientists only appear in blogs, op-eds in newspapers, sometimes in pay-for-play journals – but rarely in competitively reviewed scientific venues. After being wrong for decades, they have seemingly just given up.

The Bad

Despite the progress above, global warming continued. In fact, 2016 marked the third year in a row that record global temperatures were set. We are well over halfway to the 2-degree mark that puts us into a real climate danger zone and we have not even come close to doubling CO2 yet (although we will).

The temperature levels reached this year don’t prove the world is warming; in fact, we never look at a single year as evidence. Rather, proof was found in the oceans. Several major studies were published this year that clearly show the world’s oceans are warming and that computer simulations have been spot-on in their predictions. Simply put, the Earth is warming and the models got it right.
But that said, reaching almost 1.5 degrees Celsius with only about a 45% increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means that the contrarians, like Roy Spencer, John Christy, Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and Judith Curry, are shown conclusively to be wrong. The rate of warming we are seeing, in both the air and ocean temperatures, is inconsistent with the fanciful and optimistic beliefs of this group.
But not only does the Earth not care about the contrarians; the weather doesn’t either. And it has been a crazy year with many climate-change induced weather events that should give us all cause for concern. We know that a warming climate will have many weather effects. For instance, in a warming world, there is increased evaporation which tends to dry out areas and make droughts worse. But, in some parts of the world, the warming air has more water vapor (higher humidity) so that heavy rainfalls occur and more flooding happens. The general rule of thumb is that areas which are currently dry will become more dry. Areas that are currently wet become wetter. And rains will occur in heavier downpours. And that is just what we are seeing.
In the United States, we have had a continuation of the terrible drought in California. We’ve had a new heat-wave drought in the southeastern part of the US and that led to terrible wildfires.
There have been terrible floods in other locations, including Maryland, West Virginia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Iowa, among others. Outside the US, there has been an incredible heat wave in the Arctic which has led to the lowest ever wintertime ice ever recorded there. The Arctic is looking very precarious for the important summertime low ice extent. We have a good chance at breaking the record (again).
Terrible flooding the UK, Myanmar, Argentina, Indonesia, Spain, and Egypt, and others. There have been simultaneous flooding and heat waves in Australia, crazy hot weather in India and the Middle East.
And typhoons and hurricanes are getting stronger because of climate change. As we warm the planet and its oceans, there is more energy available to fuel these hurricanes. According to expert Jeff Masters, 2016 saw the strongest storms ever observed in two regions. We also witnessed seven Category 5 storms, which is a huge number. Among typhoons that hit land, two of the top five occurred this year. These listed weather events, which are increasing, have been predicted to be an outcome of global warming. The scientists making these predictions got it right.

The Ugly
One of the two events in this category should come as no surprise – the election of Donald Trump. While I continue to hold out hope that Trump will take climate change seriously, he is surrounding himself with people who are not scientists – rather, they are advocates for the fossil fuel industry. Many have histories of not only denying the science but working to undermine the science and the scientists who study climate change. There is very little evidence that Trump or his administration will take climate change seriously.
However, there are rumors Trump’s daughter may be more understanding of science. There is also the possibility that Trump will realize he is in a powerful position, a Republican President with a Republican Congress. If he realizes the economic and social peril that climate change poses, he may take it upon himself to be a savior of sort for the world. If, on the other-hand, he kills climate funding, pulls us out of our international agreements, and goes backwards on our own emission reductions, we will see a devastating effect for our climate and a probable rise in energy prices. It would be so ironic if, for instance, energy prices are higher in four years than they are now.
The second ugly event is the continuation of the ubiquitous misinformation on climate change. With the reduction of responsible and professional staff and organizations, news has been abdicated to second-rate non-reporters. Some examples are David Rose from the UK who writes for The Mail on Sunday. In November he wrote an article wherein he claimed that the recent record temperatures were a result of El Niño, not global warming. His fake news article was embarrassingly wrong.
You might have thought Mr. Rose was a climate scientist by reading his article, but he ignored 7 out of 8 climate records, he focused on a portion of the atmosphere and threw out out most of the warming data, he cherry picked his data set, ignored records set without El Niño, and he omitted the entirety of the Earth’s oceans in order to get his result – and he was still wrong. But, when articles appear in newspapers, even ones like The Mail, they have a veneer of credibility. Simply put, the reason 2014, then 2015, and now 2016 are all-time records is that we have emitted heat trapping gases. Rose is full of baloney.
But misinformation wasn’t limited to the UK, it had its normal huge presence in the US. In the Wall Street Journal, contrarian Roger Pielke Jr. published an article where he described himself as a climate heretic. His name might be familiar as a former writer for Nate Silver’s 538 blog before they rapidly parted ways. Pielke claims that he was attacked by “thought police in journal, activities groups funded by billionaires, and the White House”.
What Pielke didn’t tell his readers is that he threatened colleagues who dared to confront his faulty science (For which Nate Silver apologized). He also wrote misleading pieces that discussed tsunamis, volcanoes and earthquakes as though they were weather events (or at the very least, he failed to distinguish the difference to his readers). They are not weather events. Roger Pielke Jr’s problems were of his own making by poor science and shoddy professionalism. There are many other examples including those of second rate scientists or non-scientists finding high-profile media venues to spin their fantasies. It has become harder for readers to discern the real from the fake, the low from the high quality, the good from the fodder. And this issue brings me to the end, and my hope for 2017.

Hope for 2017
After this year of fake news in US politics and elsewhere, I am hopeful that consumers of news will become much more discerning. I am hopeful that people who were duped this year will have higher standards next year. I hope that the thirst for reputable news and responsible sources will revitalize news media in the US.
In particular, I hope that we see a resurgence in real reporters. People who have a professional obligation to get things right. People who live and die by their reputations and therefore cultivate those reputations. I understand that the Washington Post is actually hiring news reporters. This is unheard of in US print media but I hope it is a harbinger of things to come.
If news consumers ask “where is this information coming from?” “Is it reputable?” “Can I double-check this article?” “What conflicts of influence might be present with this reporter of news?” Then, 2017 will be a glorious year and set us on a path of recovery.
I am also hopeful that the economic position of renewable energy continues to improve. If so, the president of the USA won’t matter. We will be on a path to a cleaner safer world just based on unstoppable economics.
Here’s to 2017!

Links

• Climate deniers, conspiracists and one-percenters: Trump's cabinet of characters
• Facts matter, and on climate change, Trump's picks get them wrong
• Republicans and Democrats alike want more clean energy
• This is not normal – climate researchers take to the streets to protect science

Yes, Some Extreme Weather Can Be Blamed On Climate Change

Scientific American - Annie Sneed

A leading scientist explains that improved computing and statistics can tie extreme events to global warming

Flood in Paris, extremely high water on the river Seine. Credit: Getty Images

Droughts, wildfires, heat waves, intense rainstorms—these are all extreme weather phenomena that occur naturally. But climate change is now increasing the frequency and magnitude of many of these events. Flooding in Paris and the Arctic heat wave are just two instances where climate change contributed to extreme weather in 2016—and there are many more examples.
Yet how do scientists know that global warming influenced a specific event? Until recently, they couldn’t answer this question, but the field of “attribution science” has made immense progress in the last five years. Researchers can now tell people how climate change impacts them, and not 50 or 100 years from now—today.
Scientific American spoke with Friederike Otto, deputy director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, about how attribution science works and why it’s a critical part of helping communities prepare for and adapt to climate change.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

What exactly is attribution science?
Whenever an extreme event happens, usually people ask, "Did climate change play a role?" We aim to provide scientific evidence to answer that question within the news time frame—so within two weeks of the event occurring.

Are researchers trying to connect specific extreme events or patterns of extreme events to climate change?
They’re doing both. My work focuses on specific extreme events—for example, the last attribution study we did was on the heat wave in the Arctic that’s currently happening.
All extreme events have different forcings [factors that influence Earth’s climate], and one of the forcings can be climate change. With this research, we can now say an event of this magnitude has been made more or less likely due to climate change, or we can say what was once a one-in-150-year event in the past is now a one-in-50-year event.

How does attribution science work on a technical level? What kind of methods do researchers use, and what kind of evidence do they look for?
It's kind of like when you roll a dice and you roll 10 sixes in a row. You become suspicious that something's wrong with that dice, but from these 10 rolls, you can’t determine that it’s a loaded dice. To be able to do that, you have to roll over and over again, do statistics on the numbers you roll, and only then will you be able to get an answer.
That’s the same way we study an extreme weather event. We simulate what is possible given the current forcings, and we figure out the likelihood of this event occurring in today's climate. Of course we don't have observations of the world that might have been without climate change—what would be the normal die. So we have to simulate that world by removing the anthropogenic warming from the climate models, or by doing statistical modeling on observations of the late 19th and early 20th century. Then we determine what would have been possible weather in a world without climate change.
If the likelihoods of the extreme weather event we're interested in are different [between these two worlds], then we can say climate change caused this difference. It can be a difference in intensity or frequency.

You said that your team can provide an answer within a news cycle. How is it possible to be so fast?
We use peer-reviewed methods, so we basically just apply the same methods used in previous studies to a new event. It's a little bit like doing a seasonal forecast. We also have all the model simulations done in advance, so that if an extreme event happens, we just need to do the analysis.

How do you separate global warming's effect from other factors, like El Niño?
In our experimental set-up, we simulate the event in today’s world, and then we remove anthropogenic emissions from the climate model's atmosphere, and do the same experiment again. So the only thing we have changed is the anthropogenic forcing. In the simulations, the world we live in and the world that might have been have the same large-scale patterns, like El Niño. So we’re asking, "Assuming everything else being equal, what is the influence of greenhouse gas emissions?"

How do scientists interpret extreme weather events where they find no climate change signal?
This result is not unexpected and not inconceivable. For example, we know that increased global mean temperature raises the risk of heat waves, just because the baseline is warmer. But it's not just the temperature that is influenced by climate change. For instance, in the recent two-year São Paulo drought, there was more precipitation and more evaporation. In the end, these two effects canceled each other out, and the drought risk itself did not change. Climate change had no impact on the overall risk of drought in this case—but it had an impact on the individual components.
We also look at what's the influence of climate change today. It may well be that for some events we don't see an influence today in a world that is one degree warmer. But just because we don't see a signal now, doesn't mean that this is an event that will never be affected by climate change.

Are scientists more confident of climate change's contribution to certain types of extreme weather events versus others?
There are events where we expect to see an increase, like heat waves and extreme rainfall. In particular, the signal is already quite large with heat waves. Other events are much more complicated. With droughts, for example, the feedback with the land surface plays a huge role, and the atmospheric circulation plays a much more important role. There are also events like hurricanes, where you need very high-resolution models to be able to say something about it—that’s a situation where the technology is just not there yet.

I’ve heard scientists say that 20 years ago they couldn’t answer the attribution question. What has allowed the field to advance?
The science really only came into existence within the last five years. We first had a technical breakthrough—you need to be able to simulate weather over and over again, and that was technically impossible even in the 1990s. Only in the 2000s did it become an option because of greater computing power.
Then in 2003 the methodology to do this kind of research was suggested—the idea that we could use advanced computing power to look at extreme events in this way. But it still needed some conceptual work. In the last five years, we really had a conceptual breakthrough.

What’s next for attribution science?
The next big challenge is to work on disaster-risk reduction, and on the impacts of extreme events. Because the question people ask is not, “What is the risk of three-day rainfall in Paris?” The question they ask is, "What's the risk of flooding in Paris?" And that depends not only on the meteorological event, but also on other factors, like the size of the river catchment, the management of the river, and all these aspects of vulnerability and exposure.

This may seem obvious, but why is attribution research important?
Three things: one is that we don't currently know very well what the actual impacts of climate change today are. We can predict the large-scale changes, but global average temperature increase does not kill people. What kills people are extreme weather events. This research allows us to get a more comprehensive picture of what climate change actually means.
Second, it provides scientific evidence to the public discourse. When extreme events happen, people ask if climate change played a role. Quite often in the past it has been a politician who has answered that question, and it was completely independent of any scientific evidence.
This research also allows us to make better planning decisions. When we know a drought is becoming more likely by a factor of 10 because of climate change, then we know we need to focus our adaptation efforts on that.

What extreme event in 2016 had the clearest connection to climate change? 
The heat wave in the Arctic that’s ongoing. It has been made orders of magnitude more likely due to climate change.

Links

• Accepting the Reality of Climate Change Is Good for Business
• 4 Critical Energy Issues to Watch in 2017
• The Astonishing Climate-Changing Power of Plate Tectonics
• The Search Is on for Pulling Carbon from the Air
• Troubling Signs for Science under Trump
• North Pole Temperatures May Soar to 50 Degrees Above Normal
• Politicians' Most Bogus Science-Related Claims of 2016
• El Niño and Global Warming Blamed for Zika Spread

Australian Climate Politics In 2017: A Guide For The Perplexed

The Conversation - Marc Hudson

The climate debate can give you a headache at the best of times. Confused person image from www.shutterstock.com

If you thought the climate debate has been ugly, you haven’t seen anything yet. In 2017 Australia will review its climate policies, and the process is not off to a good start.
To recap: with the release of the climate review’s terms of reference at the end of 2016, the federal environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, appeared to place on the table an emissions intensity scheme (a widely supported form of carbon pricing). He then wisely went to Antarctica.
After its day in the sun, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull swiftly backtracked in part due to pressure from conservatives within the Coalition. By allowing a small group of politicians to take the most cost-effective policy off the table at the outset, Turnbull has made the coming year(s) that much harder to manage.
In the same week, Chief Scientist Alan Finkel reported his initial findings on the security of the National Electricity Market. He stated that his review “will continue to analyse all the options to ensure future security of power supply and compliance with climate obligations”.
And that was only 2016…

Reviews galore
The Finkel review of the National Electricity Market will be released in 2017. At the same time, the government will begin its climate policy review.
Unless the political circumstances change dramatically, the review will conclude by the end of this year.
Every step of the way will see protests, media stunts, hostile leaking and lobbying – public and private – by big actors. Climate and energy will consume the national news agenda, which will leave voters and viewers exhausted.
The terms of reference state that the review will look into:

• the role of international carbon permits in reaching targets
• a long-term emissions-reduction goal after 2030
• asking the department to look at the impact of state-based policies, including the states’ own ambitious renewable energy targets, and whether this helps or hinders the national approach
• the impact of policies on jobs, investment, trade competitiveness, households and regional Australia
• Turnbull’s move to combine the energy and environment portfolios and whether this is the best way to tackle climate policy.

That there is nothing in this about an expanded and lengthened Renewable Energy Target will mean nothing to groups who want it discussed.

What can the government actually achieve now?
Now the government has ruled out the most promising policy option, who will be willing to lead the hamstrung review? Watch this space.
And what is left on the policy table? There are a couple of options:

• expanding the large-scale Renewable Energy Target (RET) – this seems unlikely, given the amount of grief Turnbull and Frydenberg have been giving South Australia and Queensland over their own renewable targets of late
• regulating the closure of coal-fired power stations – this seems unlikely too, given the failure of the “cash for closures” scheme under the Gillard Labor government
• further restrictions on land use (unlikely to make the National Party very happy) and research into methane reductions from livestock (cue headlines about cow farts).

But asides from not making environmentalists particularly happy, these will not resolve the questions of grid security and energy pricing, both of which have the potential to cause political and economic mayhem.

Sharpen the pitchforks
Labor will use climate as a “wedge issue”, perhaps more gingerly and cautiously than Kevin Rudd did ahead of the 2007 election.
The government’s relations with the state governments will stay fraught. South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has mooted a states-based emissions intensity scheme, but there is little appetite from other states, and business appears unenthusiastic
However, Weatherill may now be tempted to deflect blame for any South Australian energy problems onto Turnbull, who has made himself into a piñata.
Business is fuming and some odd coalitions are forming. The policy uncertainty (caused of course in no small part by the business sector’s failure to defend Gillard’s carbon tax) is aggravating them and scaring away investment. The worst possible outcome for business – a patchwork of state laws causing more work and less profit – is a distinct possibility.
Meanwhile, the gas industry has had its beady eye on electricity generation for well over a decade. It wants some sort of emissions trading scheme badly, so it can be in pole position as lots of coal-fired plants are closing soon.
Expect to see a “gas versus coal” battle, with coal pointing to gas prices rising, because it fetches more on the international market. The question of reservation policy – hated by many – may attract some strange allies.
The environmental movement will struggle over this. They are still bruised over the Rudd and Gillard policy battles, and an emissions intensity scheme is numbingly technical. In her excellent PhD thesis at the University of New South Wales, Rebecca Pearse argued that many activists have moved on to either supporting community-based renewables or contesting fossil-fuel infrastructure projects.
Of course, anti-green groups will also be hard at work, perhaps led by Coalition MPs Cory Bernardi and George Christensen and the Institute of Public Affairs. All have argued that Australia should do much less on climate change.

Expect anything
Finkel’s final electricity review is due in March. It will be interesting to see if the attacks that have happened to other scientists involved in climate and energy happen to him.
At some point in 2017 Al Gore will release a sequel to his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Expect to see reactions to that.
The next big international negotiations, chaired by Fiji but hosted by Germany, will take place in November 2017.
Will President Trump have taken the United States out of the Paris Agreement by then? Will the US pull out of the entire climate convention? Or will Trump settle for just sending the office junior to the negotiations, while gutting his Environmental Protection Authority?
Nobody knows, probably not even the president-elect himself. A recent ANU study points to Trump-style disaffection taking hold in Australian politics.
There’s a hoary old Machiavelli quote that gets dragged out in articles like these about the political pain that transitions cause:

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

In these dire times, it is unclear who could call an end – or a ceasefire – to what Guardian journalist Lenore Taylor calls “the stupid barren years of the carbon wars”. It’s what some public policy theorists call a “hurting stalemate”.
This is going to be bloody.

Links

• Can Malcolm Turnbull do climate and energy policy now?
• Emissions trading for electricity is the sensible way forward
• Ten years of backflips over emissions trading leave climate policy in the lurch
• Australia needs a fresh start on climate policy: authority

The Five Innovations That Shaped Sustainability In 2016

The Guardian - Laura Parker

From edible cutlery to drone vaccines, we celebrate the technologies and innovations that promise to advance sustainability efforts in the years ahead

Drones could soon be employed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to help endangered ferret species. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

It’s been a rollercoaster of a year. In the world of sustainability alone, we saw the landmark Paris climate change agreement come into force; learned how rising temperatures in the Arctic are negatively impacting local residents; and watched as the world’s top conservationists mourned the declining state of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
And then, a bombshell: a certain “short-fingered vulgarian” won the US presidential race and called into question everything from America’s basic environmental protection to Nasa’s ongoing climate change research. Corporate America took evasive action, signing a letter telling Donald Trump it is serious about sustainability, while others began unpacking Trump’s emphasis on “clean coal” and what it really means for the future of energy in the US.
But it hasn’t all been doom and gloom. While the rest of the world struggled to come to terms with the aforementioned craziness, innovators, scientists and tech heads worked quietly from the sidelines to come up with solutions. And some succeeded: from a trashcan that sucks up ocean garbage to a drone that delivers vaccines to endangered ferrets, here are our top picks for this year’s best sustainable tech.

A trashcan for the ocean

Peter Ceglinski, left, and Andrew Turton invented the Seabin device, which traps garbage floating around marinas and docks. Photograph: Seabin

It’s no secret that our oceans are turning into swirling garbage dumps. There are some 5.25tn pieces of floating plastic debris in the oceans right now, and it’s estimated that some 8m metric tons of plastic waste enter global waters every year.
Earlier this year, Peter Ceglinski and Andrew Turton, two surfers from Australia, came up with a device they’re calling the Seabin – a kind of submersible garbage can that captures floating trash. Picture a cylinder, with the upper opening just below the surface of the water. An electric pump draws water through the bottom of the cylinder, creating a vortex around the upper edge that pulls in water and floating trash. A bag filter, made of natural material, collects the trash and allows water to pass through.
After raising more than $267,000 in an Indiegogo campaign to help build the device, Ceglinski and Turton are keen to start selling the Seabin to marinas around the world. First stop: Miami, Florida, where Miami Beach’s marinas manager wants to start using the Seabin in 2017 to counter the bags, bottles, paper plates and forks found daily in the water.

A handheld cancer-detecting device

A startup has invented a DNA analyzer that could potentially revolutionize healthcare in the developing world. Photograph: QuantuMDx

Earlier this year, British-based tech firm QuantuMDx developed a new, low-cost diagnostic DNA analyzer the size of a smartphone which is being billed as a “handheld lab”. The device – called Q-Poc – can accurately diagnose everything from cancers to infectious diseases in minutes. Although it is currently in alpha testing stage, the company hopes to get the product in the hands of doctors by early 2018.
Q-Poc runs on a solar-powered battery and it’s designed to read biological samples submitted via a credit card-size cartridge. It can work with a range of sample types: swabs can be used to detect sexually-transmitted infections, while saliva is used to detect tuberculosis. (Tests for other diseases will be added at a later date.) The device uses mobile technology, enabling the test results to be geo-stamped and shared in real time.
The prospect of a speedy diagnosis at a patient’s side is exciting, particularly in countries where access to medical care is a challenge. Subject to regulatory approval by the World Health Organization (WHO), QuantuMDx hopes to initially roll out the Q-Poc unit in South Africa, before expanding to other markets.

Stuff you can eat (instead of throwing it away)

Even if the spoons aren’t eaten, once used, they can decompose in a few days. Photograph: Bakeys

It was a big year for edible everyday items, like cutlery and beer cans. First up, an Indian cutlery company, Bakeys, invented cutlery that you can eat as a way to tackle plastic waste in oceans and landfill. (Welcome to a new geological epoch of trash – scientists are calling it the manmade Anthropocene.)
Plastic cutlery significantly contributes to this problem – estimates suggest the US alone uses 40bn plastic utensils a year. Hence the need for edible versions. Bakeys makes vegan-friendly cutlery from rice, wheat and an ancient grain called sorghum, which was picked because it doesn’t go soggy when immersed in liquid.
The cutlery comes in three flavors: savory (salt and cumin); sweet (sugar); and plain. And, if you’re wondering – it kind of tastes like a dry cracker.
Why not wash down the cutlery with an edible beer holder? Americans are consuming more beer it seems – 67bn beer cans each year, apparently. According to the Brewers Association, this number is expected to grow significantly as craft breweries get more popular.
The problem is that plastic beer can holders pose a threat to fish and marine wildlife when they end up in the ocean. Saltwater Brewery, based in Florida, has come up with a solution: biodegradable, edible beer pack rings made from wheat and barley waste. The rings disintegrate within two hours of being in the ocean, which prevents fish or other sea animals getting stuck. They’re also harmless if ingested by curious fish.
More than 50 craft breweries have already contacted Saltwater expressing an interest in using the edible rings. The brewery is now developing metal molds capable of making 400,000 rings per month and hopes to build a centralized production facility by 2017.

A drone that helps endangered species

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) hope to bombard a ferret habitat in Montana with a vaccine administered via specially designed drones. Photograph: Will Singleton/AP

One of 2016’s most heartwarming stories revolved around a cunning plan by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to bombard a ferret habitat in Montana with a vaccine administered via specially designed drones that can “shoot” pellets in three directions at the same time.
All this in a bid to save the endangered black-footed ferret. The vaccine pellets are actually intended for the prairie dog population inside the habitat at the UL Bend National Wildlife Refuge. The ferrets are dependent upon prairie dogs for food and shelter, but a flea-borne disease called sylvatic plague has slowly been killing the prairie dogs off.
The FWS came up with a “glorified gumball machine” to spit out the vaccine pellets. The machine which can be attached to a drone which uses GPS to drop the pellets throughout the habitat. Oh, and if you’re wondering: the FWS said lab tests show that prairie dogs find the bait in the vaccines “delicious”.

Using 3D printers to eliminate plastic waste

A report by a leading markets analyst predicted the 3D printing materials market would grow by nearly 266% over the next five years. Photograph: Alamy 

As we’ve established, humans produce a lot of trash – apparently of the more than 300m tons of plastic produced globally every year, one refuse truck’s worth ends up in our waters, landfills and streets every minute.
One of our favorite stories this year came from India, where a local entrepreneur has set up a production facility at a local rubbish dump, where waste pickers convert high-density polyethylene (HPDE) – mostly used for plastic bottles – into 3D printing filament to eventually be sold to 3D printing companies.
The market for 3D printing filament – the majority of which is made from virgin plastic – is growing rapidly. A recent report predicted the 3D printing materials market will grow by nearly 266% in the next five years.
And, while the market for ethical filament is still relatively small, the greatest potential 3D printing seems to be offering the developing world is employment – there are an estimated 15 million people globally who currently make their living from waste picking, for example.

Links

• US advances on clean energy with first offshore wind farm
• Donald Trump supports 'clean coal' – but does it really have a future?
• What businesses want Trump to know about climate change
• Trump's influence on the future of clean energy is less clear than you think
• The Guardian view on climate change: good news – but not yet good enough
• Can our need for a carbon-free future override our fears of nuclear energy?