26/12/2017

12 Frightening Results Of Climate Change That We Saw This Year

International Business Times - 

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


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

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

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

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


Massive iceberg breaks free in Antarctica.

 Arctic permafrost has started to melt
Permafrost, or the permanently frozen sections of ice, has started to thaw in the Arctic tundra. This region covers an area of 20 million sq. kilometres. Permafrost is described as ice that remains frozen throughout the year. The Arctic permafrost has been in a frozen state for thousands of years and global warming has started to gradually thaw out the ice.
This is bad news because all the dead, preserved organic matter will now start to decompose and release methane and several other carbon-based gases into the atmosphere. About 1,500 tonnes of carbon is locked up in the permafrost and its release into the atmosphere could bring about catastrophe. That is about three times as much carbon as all the forests of Earth combined.
Polar bears are exposed to between 100 and 1,000 times the estimated safe limit for long-lasting toxic chemicals in the environment, according to a study. NASA
Increasing dead zones in the oceans
Oxygen levels in the seas of the world have been steadily falling over the years and this is caused by the increasing surface temperature of water. Warm air will rise to the surface and stay there, reducing the circulation of water, exposing lesser water to the open air and cutting off the aeration effect. This creates "dead zones" in oceans – regions where mid-depth water has little to no marine life.

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

Trump bows out of the Paris Climate Agreement
US President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris agreements in June this year. By November 2017, the US became the only nation that had not ratified the Paris accords – even North Korea and Syria had signed it. Trump has been a vocal critic of climate change agreements and the world's second-largest polluter is among the few countries right now that do not see climate change as being caused by human activity, according to their official state policy.
President Donald Trump announced that the United States would pull out of the Paris climate agreement on 1 June, 2017. Win McNamee/Getty Images
Projected effects of climate change maps
Temperatures accross the world are set to increase by approximately 4-6 degrees C before 2100. Temperatures of 35°C are also likely to increase and spread in many regions of the planet, according to a new study by the Climate Impact Lab. Maps showing what will happen to the global climate were released and they do not look too good
With Paris Agreement

Without Paris agreement

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

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


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

Carbon dioxide levels highest in 800,000 years
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached record highs this year. In over 800,000 years, there has never been so much carbon in the atmosphere, noted a report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
"CO2 remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years and in the oceans for even longer. The laws of physics mean that we face a much hotter, more extreme climate in the future. There is currently no magic wand to remove this CO2 from the atmosphere," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
Nasa pointed out that the extreme El Nino season in 2015 was one of the reasons for this massive spike in CO2.
The last El Nino in 2015-16 impacted the amount of carbon dioxide that the Earth’s tropical regions released into the atmosphere, leading to the recent record spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide. The effects of El Nino were different in each region. NASA/JPL-Caltech
Greenland faces rapid melt
Greenland is melting at a rate that is higher than previously estimated and is likely to melt into the sea in about 500 years. While it will not melt away in an even manner throughout, large cracks in the ice are apparent and will lead to a lot of loss in terms of the volume of ice over the next hundred years.

Scientists issue warning to humanity
In what is probably the most sobering of all climate related news in 2017, a report titled 'World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice' was published after 15,000 scientists from 184 countries came together to say that this second notice needs to be taken seriously. If not, catastrophic biodiversity loss and widespread human misery is sure to follow.
"Scientists are in the business of analysing data and looking at the long-term consequences. Those who signed this second warning aren't just raising a false alarm. They are acknowledging the obvious signs that we are heading down an unsustainable path. We are hoping that our paper will ignite a widespread public debate about the global environment and climate," said William Ripple, one of the authors of the report.
The first notice was released in 1992, and things have only gotten a lot worse since.
The past 16 years were among the warmest on record. iStock
It is important to note that while this list is quite alarming, it is not intended to cast a sense of doom. Rather, it is a reminder of the work required in order to keep the planet sustainable.
This year has also seen quite a bit of positive change. Companies as well as governments seem to be taking steps to cut down on emission levels and are also moving towards a renewable energy-based ecosystem. Car manufacturers, for example, are slowly abandoning fossil fuel-based engines for all-electric models. In fact, the British government has said that by 2040, petrol and diesel engines will be completely banned in the UK.


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

Links
Posted by at No comments :
Labels:

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

The Conversation - 


Marcella Cheng/The Conversation
As we approach the end of the year, it’s useful to look back and forward. Now is an auspicious time, as two major energy-related reports have been released this week: the federal government’s review of their climate change policies, and a discussion paper from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) on future energy paths.
The difference between the two is striking. The AEMO paper is practical, direct and realistic. On the other hand, the climate policy review relies essentially on Australia buying lots of international carbon permits to meet our Paris target (and, implicitly, on state governments taking up the challenge their Canberra colleagues have largely abanondoned).
It’s amusing to read a document that plays with numbers in such creative ways. But it is a fairy story, and it’s no way to drive national climate policy.
I almost feel as though I could just change the dates and reprint my article reviewing prospects for energy in 2017:
2017 is the year when many long-festering energy policy problems must be addressed. Our outdated energy market model is falling apart. The gas industry is lining its pockets at the expense of Australian industry. Climate policy is urgent, but controversial among key decision-makers. Our fossil fuel exports are under threat from global forces.
But things have in fact shifted a long way – the revolution is accelerating and unstoppable. The federal government is almost irrelevant; the public statements and policies it presents are simply aimed at getting “something” through the Coalition party room, or trying to throw blame on others. It’s very sad.
The real games are being played out within state governments; in battles between energy policy agencies and regulators; by emerging industry players who do not even have formal roles in energy legisation; and by business and the community as they defend themselves from the failures around them by implementing “behind the meter” solutions and working together.

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

What lies ahead
Looking forward, the coming year will be shaped by some key issues, some of which are already playing out at a frenetic pace. Consider a small sample of many recent events:
  • As mentioned, AEMO has released a discussion paper framing a very different electricity future, and including a low-carbon scenario.
  • The new battery in South Australia has delivered remarkable outcomes, helping to stabilise the grid in ways that few imagined.
  • The Victorian Essential Services Commission has proposed a new “time of day” feed-in price for rooftop solar that reaches 29 cents per kilowatt-hour in afternoons and evenings. If approved, this will be a game-changer, as adding battery storage to rooftop solar will become far more attractive.
  • The Energy Networks Association, not the gas industry, has released a zero emission gas strategy at last.
  • The annual report on the National Energy Productivity Plan (remember that?) shows we’re falling behind even the government’s weak target: not surprising given the miniscule resources allocated.
Meanwhile the federal government has released energy modelling to underpin ongoing negotiation on the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) that is simply irrelevant and embarrassing. The Energy Security Board’s involvement in this has undermined perceptions of its independence, especially when it is contrasted with the vision AEMO is discussing in its paper.
While the states have agreed to continue discussion on the NEG in April, there are some major hurdles. Primarily, states must be allowed to set and achieve their own energy targets: the federal energy minister has put the blame for problems on the states, and they now have to be seen by their voters to act.
Second, the design must ensure it does not give the dominant energy companies even more power to distort markets. Some members of the Energy Security Board seem to understand the challenges, and are optimistic they can be overcome. Time will tell.
As Turnbull has said, we live in exciting times.

Links
Posted by at No comments :
Labels:

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

Fairfax - 

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


Snowy Hydro 2.0: over budget already
The ambitious project will take longer to build and cost more than first thought, according to a study into the multi billion dollar expansion.

An annual survey by Ipsos, which has probed public opinion on climate change for the past 12 years, shows eight in 10 agree human activity is contributing to climate change – 42 per cent say humans are mainly or entirely responsible while 38 per cent believe climate change is caused partly by humans and partly by natural processes.
Just 3 per cent of respondents think there is no such thing as climate change, a share that has hardly shifted during the past decade. Another 12 per cent believe climate change is caused entirely or mostly by natural processes.
A new Ipsos poll shows only 18 per cent of Australians think the Turnbull government is doing a good job combating climate change. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Ipsos researcher Jennifer Brook said public perceptions about climate change in Australia have stabilised in recent years.
"Despite this maturation of belief in climate change, there is still confusion as to the exact causes and frustration around conflicting opinions resulting in confusion on the topic of climate change," she said.
"It is these details that still seem to be up for debate, and complicate people's understanding of the causes."

What best describes your opinion about the causes of climate change?
Base: Percentage of all respondents Source: Ipsos Climate Change Survey 2017
Energy policy has been a key political theme in 2017, with the Turnbull government unveiling major policies including the National Energy Guarantee and the expansion of Snowy Hydro.
That may have contributed to a rise in the share of Australians who think combating climate change is primarily the federal government's duty. The proportion saying climate action is mainly the federal government's responsibility was 41 per cent, the equal highest since the question was first asked in 2010.

Who should be mainly responsible for action on climate change? 
Source: Ipsos Climate Change Survey 2017
But only 3 per cent of respondents rated the federal government's response to climate change as "very good", with a further 15 per cent rating it as "fairly good." More than four in 10 rated the federal government's performance on climate change as poor or very poor.
The share of respondents who felt the international community was doing a good or very good job of tackling climate change rose to 22 per cent, 3 percentage points higher than last year.

Opinion on climate change action
Source: Ipsos Climate Change Survey 2017
Almost half of respondents (47 per cent) agreed climate change is already causing more frequent and extreme storm events, is already causing the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef (47 per cent) and that is already causing more frequent and extreme droughts (47 percent).
A slightly smaller share agreed climate change is already causing more frequent and extreme floods (45 per cent) and more frequent and extreme bushfires (44 per cent).
A clear majority (54 per cent) agreed that climate change poses a serious threat to our way of life over the next 25 years while nearly two thirds agree that climate change poses a serious threat to our way of life over the next 100 years.

The top five processes that Australians believe are already impacted by climate change
Source: Ipsos Climate Change Survey 2017
Those aged less than 50 are much more likely to think climate change is mostly or entirely caused by human activity than those aged over 50.
Australians are sceptical about letting market forces alone determine how much power is generated from renewable sources.
Only 27 per cent supported a deregulated, "market only" approach with no national target for the uptake of renewable energy.
Seven in 10 were in favour of the federal government setting a national target for renewable energy use (32 per cent strongly support this) with just 15 per cent opposed.
Only 5 per cent of respondents said business should be mainly responsible for climate change action, the lowest share since 2010.

Links
Posted by at No comments :
Labels:

25/12/2017

2017 Was A Terrible Year Of Climate Disasters -- And Too Many Media Outlets Failed To Tell The Story

Media Matters - Lisa Hymas

Sarah Wasko / Media Matters
From hurricanes to heat waves to wildfires and beyond, 2017 has been a terrifying year of disasters in the U.S. And too many media outlets have missed a key part of the story: These aren't just natural disasters; in many cases, they're climate disasters.

Some wildfire coverage explored the climate angle, but much of it didn't
Even before vicious wildfires tore through Southern California in December, the state had experienced its worst-ever wildfire season, which many scientists said was likely worsened by climate change.
The Los Angeles Times did a good job of explaining the climate-wildfire link in a December 6 editorial titled "While Southern California battles its wildfires, we have to start preparing for our hotter, drier future." Fires have long been a part of California ecosystems, and many factors have played a role in making the Thomas Fire and other December blazes so destructive, the editorial board noted, but underlying all of that is the brutal fact of global warming: "What should make Southern California fearful is that climate change could mean a future of more frequent and more intense wildfires."
Indeed, a number of scientific studies have linked climate change to increased wildfire risk in California. PBS's NewsHour aired a segment on December 13 that featured climate scientists explaining some of these links. "I think the science is pretty solid to indicate that wildfire risk is likely to increase in the future due to climate change," said scientist Radley Horton, a professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "I think exhibit A has to be the increase in temperature that we have observed. In California, we have seen about a 1.5-degree increase in temperature over the last century."
Unfortunately, many media outlets have not been connecting the dots between climate change and wildfires the way the L.A. Times and PBS did.
When huge fires raged through Montana and the Pacific Northwest this summer, and when fires tore through Northern California wine country in October, the major broadcast TV news programs and Sunday morning talk shows did not air a single segment discussing climate change in the context of those fires, Media Matters found. This despite the fact that scientists have determined that climate change is a major factor in forest fires in the western U.S.

Media coverage of heat waves and hurricanes often fell short
Beyond fires, many mainstream media outlets missed critical opportunities this year to discuss how other kinds of disasters are made worse by climate change.
In June, parts of the southwestern U.S. baked in a record heat wave that brought temperatures up to 119 degrees in Phoenix, so hot that certain types of small planes couldn't get off the ground. The record temperatures coincided with publication of a comprehensive peer-reviewed study that found deadly heat waves are on the rise thanks to climate change. But major television network affiliates in Phoenix and Las Vegas completely failed to discuss how climate change exacerbates heat waves like the one the region was experiencing, according to a Media Matters analysis.
News coverage of the impact of climate change on hurricanes has been sorely lacking this year, too. Even the unprecedented one-two-three punch of hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria wasn't enough to spur some key mainstream outlets to tell an increasingly obvious story.
ABC and NBC both completely failed to bring up climate change during their coverage of Hurricane Harvey, Media Matters found. So did the New York Post, one of the highest-circulation newspapers in the country, according to a report by Public Citizen. The Weather Channel, where many Americans turn when weather disasters loom, also failed to address the climate-hurricane connection during Harvey. Worse still, both Fox News and The Wall Street Journal ran more pieces that disputed a climate-hurricane link than pieces that acknowledged it. These findings by Media Matters and others inspired climate activists to launch a Twitter campaign calling on media to end the #climatesilence.
TV news showed modest improvement at connecting the dots between climate change and hurricanes during Hurricane Irma, but still came up short. And when Maria hit, much of the mainstream media didn't even give adequate coverage to the storm itself or its aftermath, let alone the climate angle, as both Media Matters and MIT Media Lab researchers found.
Climate change cannot be blamed for wholly causing any one individual weather disaster, but it effectively loads the dice in favor of abnormal and extreme weather, as climate scientist James Hansen and his colleagues have explained.
And after a weather event has occurred, scientists can analyze the extent to which climate change was a contributing factor. A new set of papers published this month found that human-caused climate change was a “significant driver” for 21 of 27 extreme weather events in 2016, including the year's record-breaking global heat. Some scientists have already done these kinds of attribution studies for 2017's hurricanes and found that climate change increased rainfall from Hurricane Harvey by between 15 and 38 percent.

As the weather gets worse, we need our journalism to get better
We all lost big in the climate-rigged dice game this year. There were so many record-setting extreme weather incidents and disasters in 2017 that it's hard to remember them all. Consider a few you might have forgotten:
  • The hottest World Series game in history took place in Los Angeles in late October, with temperatures hitting 103 degrees and staying there past 5 p.m.
  • Hurricane Ophelia traveled farther east than any major Atlantic hurricane on record, and so far north that it went off the storm-tracking maps generated by the National Weather Service. It caused severe damage in Ireland and Scotland even after it had been downgraded from hurricane status.
  • An unprecedented and devastating drought pummelled the Northern Plains states for seven months. It laid the groundwork for vicious wildfires.
As USA Today recently put it, "From record flooding to disastrous wildfires, 2017 will go down as one of the USA's most catastrophic years ever for extreme, violent weather that disrupted the lives of millions of Americans."
But that USA Today piece neglected to note the role climate change played in juicing up 2017's count of big disasters.
Some news organizations consistently do a better job of reporting on climate change. The New York Times and The Washington Post have published strong reporting and good editorials and opinion pieces on the impact of climate change on disasters. CNN and MSNBC outperformed other TV news outlets in discussing how hurricanes Harvey and Irma were affected by climate change. In one recent segment, CNN invited climate scientist Michael Mann to explain the connection between climate change and hurricane intensity, offering a great model for other outlets:


But those kinds of segments are all too rare. Many of the most influential mainstream media outlets need to do better at reporting on the connections scientists are finding between climate change and extreme weather. When a disaster hits, that's a prime opportunity to report on climate change, a topic that at other times might not seem newsy. When a long string of unprecedented disasters hit, as happened this year, that's even more of a call for media to tell the story of global warming.
Good journalism is needed not just to help Americans understand the reality of climate change, but to inspire them to fight the problem by pushing for a rapid shift to cleaner energy, transport, and agriculture systems.
Let's hope to see more climate-focused, science-driven journalism in 2018.

 Methodology
To search for broadcast television and Sunday show coverage of the Northwest and Northern California wildfires and climate change, Media Matters searched Nexis using the term (fire! OR wildfire!) w/30 (climate change OR global warming OR changing climate OR climate warm! OR warm! climate OR warm! planet OR warm! globe OR global temperatures OR rising temperatures OR hotter temperatures).

Links
Posted by at No comments :
Labels:

Meet The Lawyer Trying To Make Big Oil Pay For Climate Change

Vice - Geoff Dembicki* | photos Adrien Leavitt

The attorney who won a $200 billion settlement from tobacco companies in the 90s has set his sights on an even bigger target.

When you want to sue the largest, most powerful companies on the planet, Steve Berman is the guy you call. He forced Jack-in-the-Box to pay $12 million for causing an E. coli outbreak that killed four children. He won a $215 million settlement against Enron for defrauding investors and wiping out employee retirement accounts. He represented auto dealers in a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Volkswagen for cheating on diesel emissions.
Berman is best known, though, for suing big tobacco in the 1990s. At the end of that fight, he helped negotiate a $206 billion settlement from cigarette makers like Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and Brown & Williamson for causing cancer. It remains the largest legal settlement of its kind in history.
But Berman is now working on a lawsuit that could be even bigger: He is suing five of the world’s most powerful oil companies for causing climate change. He represents Oakland and San Francisco in a lawsuit filed last September demanding that Exxon, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and BP pay billions for sea walls and other defenses against ocean rise.
Just like with tobacco, the case could hinge on whether these companies lied to the public about the dangers of their business model. Berman has evidence that companies like Exxon knew burning oil causes climate change as early as the 1950s. Internally, oil companies took steps to protect their offshore oil rigs and Arctic pipelines from global warming while publicly they denied the science—the same way cigarette makers did research into cancer while denying their product was harmful. “Defendants stole a page from the Big Tobacco playbook,” the lawsuit alleges.
Legally speaking, that argument might not be such a stretch. “The parallels to tobacco are quite clear,” Carroll Muffett, the president of the Washington, DC–based Center for International Environmental Law, told me.
Still, nobody has won a lawsuit like this and the oil companies I contacted didn’t seem to think Berman’s would be any different. “Should this litigation proceed,” a spokesperson for Chevron wrote in an email, “it will only serve special interests at the expense of broader policy, regulatory, and economic priorities.” Other, less biased observers also have doubts. “I’m not that sure actually,” said Martin Olszynski, a University of Calgary law professor who has researched the parallels between oil and tobacco. “It seems obvious that at some point the defendants will say, ‘But look, there was demand for our product.’”
Berman himself failed to win a similar lawsuit in 2012, when a court dismissed his attempt to hold Exxon and about two dozen other fossil fuel producers responsible for the sea rise swallowing an Alaskan village. But a lot has changed since then. Science linking individual corporations to climate change is more sophisticated. Incriminating oil company documents are surfacing. New court decisions—especially a recent ruling against lead paint companies—are removing legal barriers. Suing big oil could be one way to win real environmental gains in the Trump era. “We have the federal government claiming there’s no climate change, we have the EPA rolling back,” Berman told me in an interview from his office on the 33rd floor of a Seattle high-rise. “[We can] use the law to accomplish what politicians won’t do.”
 The reason not to dismiss Berman is that he has a history of proving doubters wrong. When he entered the legal fight against tobacco companies in the 1990s, mainstream opinion was that he would be unsuccessful. The owners of brands like Marlboro and Camel had crushed hundreds of lawsuits attempting to link cigarettes to cancer and emphysema. “No one had ever won a tobacco case,” Berman said. His own law partner was wary of getting involved. But in late 1998, the industry surrendered and agreed to pay out hundreds of billions of dollars. The People Vs. Big Tobacco, a book about the case, described Berman as one of the “crucial players.”
The stakes are even higher in his big oil lawsuit. Berman is not just trying to get oil companies to pay for seawalls in the Bay Area. In a broader sense he’s attempting to hold them responsible for endangering all human life on earth. “This is different in kind from anything else,” Timothy Crosland, the director of a UK-based climate law group called Plan B, told me. “Once you get started, you get one case that goes through, this is an avalanche. It’s got the potential really to bring down the fossil fuel companies.”
For insight into Berman’s worldview it helps to go back to his 1960s upbringing in Highland Park, a Chicago suburb. “It was a really evolutionary time,” he said. “I grew up with a mother who was one of the first women to burn her bra.” His dad wanted to be a career Army officer but grew disillusioned by the Vietnam War and ended up running an insurance company. “He kind of became liberal himself,” Berman said.
Others he knew evolved from progressive to militant. They set off bombs and ran from the law. “They were elder brothers of some of my close friends and I’ve never seen them again,” Berman said. Though he’s not sure if they officially belonged to the Weather Underground, the left-wing organization that bombed US government buildings and banks in the 1970s and broke Timothy Leary out of jail, “they were in that genre of people out there doing radical stuff.” Berman chose to embrace the law. “The way to make change is to get trained in what the establishment does and make change through the process,” he later told the publication Super Lawyers.
Berman went to law school and moved out to Seattle, where he got hired by a firm that mostly did defense work for companies in industries like insurance. Berman was part of a smaller team at the firm that sued companies instead. In 1993, he met with a parent whose child had lost a kidney after eating at Jack in the Box and getting food poisoning. “I remember sitting in the room thinking, ‘This could have been my kid,’” he said. “I was so choked up I could barely talk.” His superiors at the firm didn’t want to take the case. “So I said, ‘I’m out of here.”
Berman and a colleague Carl Hagens formed their own firm, Hagens Berman. He’d wanted to set out on his own for some time and here was the perfect excuse. Two years later they settled with Jack in the Box for $12 million.
That case was tiny compared to what came next. In 1996, Washington’s attorney general hired Berman’s new firm to represent the state in a wave of public health lawsuits against tobacco companies. Soon Berman represented 13 states. “The quiet youthful [lawyer] worked brutal hours to make up for his firm’s small size, arriving at his office at six AM and staying until nine or ten PM six days a week,” reads the book Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry. His law partner was skeptical, according to Berman. “He was afraid we would lose the case,” he said. “If we devoted all our time to a losing effort and we didn’t have any income we could go under.”
It was a legitimate concern. By then hundreds of tobacco lawsuits had failed. Cigarette makers argued smoking was a personal choice. They pointed to research—often funded by the tobacco industry —casting doubt on the link between cigarettes and cancer. But several factors aligned to make the industry vulnerable to litigation. A series of whistleblowers revealed that tobacco companies knew smoking is addictive and causes cancer. Secret corporate documents showed companies did market research on how to target children with ads and branding. Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore filed a lawsuit demanding tobacco companies pay the healthcare costs of smokers who’d become sick. And by 1998, 46 states were demanding the same.
 Berman gave the opening statement at the trial in Washington in front of hundreds of people who had crowded into a Seattle courthouse. “I had a big poster that said, ‘The Industry’s Five Big Lies,’ and I went through each one,” he recalled. By then the industry was ready to surrender. Berman, Moore and others had been holding meetings with its leaders to negotiate the terms. On November, 1998, Big tobacco officially agreed to pay $206 billion to 46 states. It received immunity from lawsuits similar to the ones led by Moore and Berman. Yet it was still a massive victory. “We were pretty damn happy,” he said.
How can you prove that oil dug out of the ground by Exxon is causing a tiny Alaskan village to disappear?
Berman now had a game plan for defeating powerful industries: Accuse them of misleading the public to protect revenues, then find plaintiffs who are suffering the consequences. In the late 2000s, he heard about a coastal village in Alaska called Kivalina that would have to be relocated because of rising oceans. The move could cost up to $400 million, according to his lawsuit, and the Army Corps of Engineers said climate change is to blame. Berman sued Exxon, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and 20 other fossil fuel producers on behalf of the villagers, arguing these companies spread doubt and confusion about climate change knowing communities such as Kivalina are in danger. Exxon, for instance, had run full-page New York Times ads about “unsettled science.”
“You’re not asking the court to evaluate the reasonableness of the conduct… You’re asking a court to evaluate if somebody conspired to lie,” Berman told The Atlantic at the time.
Berman flew to Kivalina at one point. The village is built on an island off the west coast of Alaska. Its 400 or so indigenous residents had watched helplessly as shoreline disappeared, winter storms got fiercer, and waves lapped closer to the school. There was a pervasive feeling of despair. “The island is sad, sad that it’s going away,” he said. The magnitude of climate change hit him on the flight home. “You could see acres of dying trees from the pine bark beetle,” he said. “That was really striking.” A federal court dismissed the lawsuit, deciding that who’s to blame for climate change is a job best left to entities like Congress or the White House. But the real issue was causation. How can you prove that oil dug out of the ground by Exxon is causing a tiny Alaskan village to disappear?
“There is no realistic possibility of tracing any particular alleged effect of global warming to any particular emissions by any specific person, entity, group at any particular point in time,” wrote US District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong. It’s a tough obstacle to surmount. “In climate change there’s a lot of diffuse actors,” said the University of Calgary’s Olszynski. “It’s not just the oil companies.”
But there are several reasons Berman’s new lawsuit against big oil could be more successful. Whereas Kivalina was filed in federal court, he wants to represent the cities of San Francisco and Oakland in California state court, which he thinks may be less likely to decide the case raises political questions outside of its jurisdiction. And, he added, “Some people believe that there are more conservative judges on the federal bench.” The defense team for big oil is fighting to get the suit heard federally. The case was “going to be mired down for the next three or four months in a procedural battle,” Berman predicted.
There have also been big leaps in climate science. Researchers like Richard Heede have calculated that close to two-thirds of greenhouse gases emitted over the last 150 years can be traced back to just 90 companies. Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips are in the top ten. “We have better science,” Berman argued. “We think causation will be easier to prove.”
Financial damages from climate change are also more quantifiable. San Francisco estimates sea-level rise could threaten $49 billion in property. “The major coastal cities in America and abroad have people worried about this,” he said. “That’s a big advancement since the Kivalina case.”
Incriminating oil industry documents, meanwhile, continue to surface. A report released in mid-November by the Center for International Environmental Law has new evidence that big oil was warned about the risks of global temperature rise nearly 50 years ago. “There seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe,” explains a 1969 study prepared for the American Petroleum Institute by two Stanford scientists. This wasn’t a one-off thing. “From the late 1960s onwards up into the 80s those warnings from their own scientists grew more and more urgent,” Muffett, the November report’s co-author, told me. An internal Exxon memo from 1981 states that carbon emissions could “produce effects which will indeed be catastrophic—at least for a substantial fraction of the earth’s population.” By then the company had calculated that reducing its carbon footprint would hurt revenues. Internally, the industry began to protect itself from climate change. Companies designed taller offshore oilrigs and pipelines able to withstand melting permafrost. “[They] had a responsibility to warn the public,” Muffett said. Instead, Exxon, BP, Chevron and Shell formed a group known as the Global Climate Coalition that argued climate science “is not well understood” into the 90s.
These are clear parallels to the cancer-denying days of big tobacco. But in recent years the comparison has become harder to make. Big oil now publicly admits the existence of climate change. “Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a global issue that requires global engagement and action,” a Chevron spokesperson wrote to me. Berman must convince a court that earlier industry denial campaigns created lasting damage. Even with better science, questions of responsibility still loom. “In the case of global climate change, a molecule of carbon is literally around the world in seven days,” Scott Segal, an attorney who defends energy companies, told the Washington Post in July. “The requisite causation needed for nuisance suits is missing and unprovable.”
That’s how the law has traditionally viewed things. Yet a recent ruling in California against lead paint companies suggests the law’s view on causation is evolving. “This may not sound like it has anything to do with climate change,” Olszynski told me, “but it does.” For 17 years, three paint companies—ConAgra, NL Industries, and Sherwin-Williams—argued in court that the lead paint they manufactured couldn’t be linked to specific houses where people got sick. But last month the California Court of Appeals ruled that their marketing “implied lead paint was safe,” even though the companies knew it was not. “That’s a really important point,” Olszynski explained. It could mean there’s a stronger case that oil companies are legally responsible for sea-rise damage in San Francisco and Oakland. They marketed and sold a product that they knew is causing climate change.
You could make the same argument about the coal industry. Or carmakers such as General Motors. “If the oil company took the barrel of oil out of the ground but it was consumed in the car, how do you apportion liability?” Olszynski asked. But he thinks that the legal fight against tobacco companies provides a case study for how these types of challenges can be beaten. “Guys like Steve were like visionaries,” he argued. “That’s an important story because it talks about the speed to which the legal system can change.”
As far as Berman is concerned the story isn’t over. On climate change he thinks it’s just getting started. If a judge decides his case can be heard—a big if, considering that no lawsuit against big oil has made it to that stage—then Berman can call on Exxon, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips and Chevron to make internal reports and research into climate change available. “[I’m] dying to get to those documents,” he said. “I’m convinced they’re going to be smoking hot.”
As our interview came to a close I asked Berman to describe the best-case scenario for all this. “Imagine if I could get ten or 15 cities to all sue and put the same pressure on the oil companies that we did with tobacco companies and create some kind of massive settlement,” he said. He acted as if it was the first time he’d thought of the idea. But I got the feeling it wasn’t.

*Geoff Dembicki is the author of Are We Screwed? How a New Generation is Fighting to Survive Climate Change.

Links
Posted by at No comments :
Labels:

Failing Our Forests: In Two Years We’ve Lost Enough Trees To Cover Spain

The Guardian - 

Fire. Oil palm. Cattle. Soy. Rubber. Wood. New data from Global Forest Watch shows that forest destruction is on the rise globally, in spite of a slate of pledges and commitments.
Burning forest is seen during “Operation Green Wave” conducted by agents of the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, or Ibama, to combat illegal logging in Apui, in the southern region of the state of Amazonas, Brazil, August 4, 2017. Photograph: Bruno Kelly/Reuters
Two years ago the world signed the Paris Agreement to combat climate change. It included specific pledges to “conserve and enhance” the world’s forests in order to combat rising temperatures. But in the last two years – 2015 and 2016 – we’ve lost enough trees to cover 493,716 square kilometres, according to satellite data recently released by Global Forest Watch (GFW). This is nearly equal to the entirety of Spain – or about four Englands.
Currently, deforestation accounts for around 10-15% of annual global carbon emissions. Even as combating deforestation has long been seen as one of the cheapest ways to tackle global warming, GFW’s data shows just how far we have to go.
“Forests are fundamentally hard to protect – they are in remote frontiers or in countries with weak governance,” said Liz Goldman, a Research Associate at GFW.
But she added that the rising forest loss “doesn’t mean deforestation pledges are not having an impact – many of these agreements are still at an early stage.”

2015 – The assault on New Guinea
In 2015, the world lost enough trees to blanket 198,295 square kilometres, an area around the size of Uganda. On the plus side, this was a slight dip from the year before. But it still represented a worldwide trend of rising deforestation since GFW started tracking tree loss in 2001 – even as governments and corporations (increasingly and repeatedly) pledged to do something about it.
Arguably, the most shocking data in 2015 came from the island of New Guinea, which is considered the third largest block of intact rainforest on the planet, after the increasingly fractured Amazon and the Congo. Deforestation on the island jumped an astounding 70% in 2015, threatening the island’s thousands of species found no-where else – think birds of paradise and tree kangaroos – and its local people who have lived closely tied to the forests around them for millennia.
The island of New Guinea is split into two distinct political entities. The western half is a remote – but large and rich in natural resources – region of Indonesia, governed by faraway Jakarta. The eastern half of the island is its own country, Papua New Guinea. Both areas, however, saw significant jumps in forest loss beginning in 2015.
Two pre-adolescent boys who are dressed for yam spirit ritual from Abelam tribe in Papua New Guinea. Taken in Maprik District, East Sepik, Momase Region, Papua New Guinea. Photograph: Donald Macdonald/GuardianWitness
“Visual inspection of the data shows that industrial agriculture and logging are the major players in Papua,” Mikaela Weisse, a Research Analyst with GFW, said. “Data from Greenpeace Indonesia shows that 48 palm oil companies have permits in Indonesian Papua, some as large as 45,000 hectares.”
The satellite imagery shows what many have long warned: that the island of New Guinea has become the newest frontier for forest destruction. Logging and palm oil companies, among others, are infiltrating the island, viewing it as a lucrative place to expand operations in an increasingly resource-scarce planet.
The numbers in 2016 were hardly any better for New Guinea. Tree loss dipped slightly in Papua New Guinea but rose in Indonesian Papua – potentially pointing to a new trend of high deforestation across one of the most intact tropical forests we have left.

2016 – World aflame
As bad as 2015 was for the world’s forests, last year was far, far worse. In 2016, tree loss jumped 51% globally from the year before taking out a total of 297,000 square kilometres.
“Clearly this is a sign that we need to do more,” said Goldman.
Experts at GFW say the jump in 2016 was driven largely by one thing: fire. In temperate forests, fire is often a natural part of the ecosystem’s life cycle and can even bring about renewal to forests. But fire has no place in tropical forests where it is nearly always caused by humans trying to clear land for planting.
Smoke rising from burning areas near agricultural plantations in Rokan Hilir, Riau province, Indonesia, 17 June 2013. Photograph: STRINGER/EPA
 “These large-scale fires [in the tropics]…damage the forests’ natural structure, affect the habitats of plant and wildlife, and release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air,” said Goldman.
Such fires can even lead to international crises. In 2015, blazes across Indonesia resulted in a toxic haze that at times covered several Southeast Asian neighbours, cost up to $35 billion and, according to one analysis, likely lead to the premature deaths of 100,000 people due to respiratory issues.
Indonesia– which has taken the unenviable spot of the world’s largest forest destroyer from Brazil –has tried for years to combat such fires. In 2011 Indonesia installed a moratorium on new logging or plantation concessions on primary forest and peatlands. But it’s not proven as successful as hoped, according to many experts.
“Our data show that the moratorium has not had much of an impact on forest protection,” said Weisse. “Forest loss within moratorium areas has continued to increase in 2015 in all areas except Sumatra, which [has] little primary forest left.”
She added the moratorium may be ineffectual because it’s essentially toothless. Companies defying the moratorium don’t face “legal consequences,” according to Weisse. Already, some are warning that Indonesia won’t be able to meet its climate pledges which hinge largely on reducing deforestation.
Today, even fires in temperate areas – see California’s epic conflagrations this year – appear to be exacerbated by rising temperatures worldwide.
“There is mounting scientific evidence that climate change is heating up our forests,” Goldman said.
Hotter, drier forests are more prone to fire and harder to put out. It was no coincidence that 2016 was not only a major fire year, but also the warmest year on record. Moreover, the constant cuts we are making into intact forests are leaving them more vulnerable. Decades of research shows that forest fragments are hotter, drier and more prone to fire than intact forests.
“There is increasing evidence that climate change, coupled with land use change and fire could lead to forest dieback in places like the Amazon,” said Goldman.
Already, we have lost around one third of the Amazon Rainforest to deforesters like the cattle and soy industries. Experts increasingly believe that regional rainfall in Brazil is being negatively impacted by carving away at the world’s greatest tropical forest.
After peaking in 2004, deforestation slowed in Brazil. Indeed, Brazil’s successful efforts in stemming deforestation have long been pointed to as one of the major wins in combating climate change and protecting forests. 2016 changed that. A new government in Brazil views the Amazon not as a region worth protecting, but largely as a resource to exploit. Last year saw forest destruction rise in Brazil to the highest level yet measured by GFW, easily eclipsing 2004. Whether this is a one-off incident or a new trend remains to be seen.
Together Brazil and Indonesia accounted for nearly a quarter of all forest loss last year.

Prioritising forests
GFW – which is run by a partnership of University of Maryland, Google and the World Resources Institute – analyses satellite data to track tree loss worldwide at a scale of 30x30 metres. They state that they do not measure true deforestation – the loss of forest to human activities – but tree loss.
“We refer to the data on GFW as tree cover loss because it can’t distinguish plantations from natural forest, or human-caused forest loss from natural loss,” said Weisse.
In other words, to a satellite natural forests and plantations look the same. So, when a plantation is cleared, GFW measures that as tree loss, even though it will shortly be replanted.
However, GFW is working on changing how to tracks tree loss. The group has developed a map of primary forests versus plantations for Indonesia in order to come up with more accurate numbers of forest destruction in the country.
Despite current limitations, the GFW has become instrumental in measuring our impact on the world’s forests, even in near real-time in some places.
The Food and Agriculture Organization also tracks deforestation, claiming in 2015 that deforestation had slowed worldwide. However the FAO, a UN agency, depends on self-reporting from each country, leading to different measurements in different places and a dependence on self-reporting. The FAO also counts monoculture plantations – such as pulp and paper and rubber (though not oil palm) – as forest, despite the fact that ecologists have been arguing for years that monoculture plantations are in no-way true forests.
“They’re about as biologically similar to native forests as my front lawn,” William Laurence, a forest ecologist at James Cook University, said last year in Ensia.
Plantations contain fewer species, retain significantly less carbon, and often result in soil erosion and water pollution from inputs of herbicides and pesticides.
“The truth is that neither GFW nor FAO is perfect or complete, and each has their strengths and shortcomings,” said Weisse. “Rather than see the two systems as contradictory, we believe that we need to rely on both sources to have a complete understanding of the world’s forests.”
Aerial view of deforestated landscape in Madagascar. Home to some of the world’s weirdest and most wonderful species, Madagascar has little of its historic forest left. Photograph: Inaki Relanzon/NPL/Alamy 
The ongoing scale of forest loss means that far more action is required, according to Goldman and Weisse. They say that nations and corporations need to speed up the process of decoupling deforestation from commodity supply chains like beef, palm oil, rubber and wood. At the same time, governments must increase enforcement efforts on-the-ground and make sure companies that defy laws and regulations are adequately punished. Finally, local and indigenous communities need to be given rights to their traditional land. Research has shown that the best forest protectors are indigenous groups – so long as they have secure rights to the forests they depend on.
But first the world really has to make forests a priority, and not just another issue drowned in meetings, proposals and pledges. Governments have to stop paying lip service while turning a blind eye and more forest funding is needed from wealthy nations.
“We want to do more than watch [forests] disappear,” said Weisse. “Our hope is that governments, companies, and civil society organisations can use the information we provide on when and where forests are changing to make better decisions.”

 Links 
Posted by at No comments :
Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )

Lethal Heating is a citizens' initiative