How Can We Best Communicate The Impacts Of Climate Change?

Reuters - Sarah Hurtes*

How can we talk about climate without sending people into a downward spiral of depression?

A man walks through floods waters and onto the main road after surveying his property which was hit by Hurricane Harvey in Rockport, Texas, U.S. August 26, 2017. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

Between 2000 and 2016, the number of vulnerable people exposed to heat wave events has increased by approximately 125 million. This is set to get worse. Dengue fever has doubled every decade since 1990, reaching 50 to 100 million infections annually, in part because of climate change.
As I read the Lancet Countdown 2017 report sitting at my desk, with the task of having to help communicate its findings to the wider public, I can only think of one thing: basically, we're screwed. So how should I tackle my job as a so-called climate communicator, without sending those who care enough to read about this, into a downward spiral of depression?
It’s a problem many of us are struggling with. An article published in New York Magazine in the summer of 2017 entitled The Uninhabitable Earth, began: “Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: what climate change could wreck - sooner than you think”. It became last year's most widely shared article on climate change, with over 800,000 shares on social media.
Some of my friends, who never once engaged on this topic, posted it on their Facebook channel, their post was infused with panicked comments echoing my initial reaction to the Lancet Countdown report. This makes us climate communicators ask: How effective is such a piece of text in communicating climate change? It makes the issue feel more important, but on its own, it paralyses, leaving us feeling overwhelmed, disempowered.
Additionally, each and every one of us have a limited amount of concern to go round. I for one can’t think of a birthday present for my dad. For some such concerns might extend to military threats, access to contraception, or other severe daily problems that take precedence in comparison to the distant humming buzz of climate change.
This is just human nature - but climate communicators have often exacerbated the problem by focusing on events that are going to happen a long way into the future and geographically far away. When looking at NASA´s forecasts, with warnings about the Arctic Ocean likely to become ice free in the summer before mid-century, I feel concerned, but not exactly worried.
I was particularly worried when I moved to Germany, which had recently been shaken by unusual storms and flooding. That storm in Berlin which nearly smashed my window with my own plant, or those floods in the nearby area where my family lives, are a clear reality check of what's to come as extreme weather becomes the norm.
Besides, I'm only just beginning to get the extent to which extreme weather has immediate health impacts: drowning, getting injured by hitting things, catching illnesses from contaminated water and food, or mess with my own mental well-being. Such information about the potential health impacts of climate change creates a powerful way in to talking about climate change.
Health professionals are increasingly being called upon to be champions in this area, encouraged to speak out to their own patients and local policymakers on the health dangers of climate change such as asthma, allergies and the spread of certain diseases.
Organisations such as the Global Climate and Health Alliance, Health and Environment Alliance or Health Care Without Harm are important bodies that already engage with the public around such issues.
An important part of their work, however, is also to show that many of the steps we take to combat climate change have immediate health benefits. The massive increase in wind and solar energy helped prevent the premature deaths of up to 12,700 people over a nine-year period in the United States.
Despite all the interesting research out there, tweaks to language can only do so much. Even when applying the above solutions to making climate change appear relevant and urgent, it might be that the person you’re talking to just doesn't care. This is why the social science of human behaviour and communication is just as important as the science of climate change and sustainability.
In a recent book, communication experts Adam Corner and Jamie Clarke argue that using the right language is about starting a productive dialogue, not winning an argument. Using messages and telling stories that speak to people’s values.
For example in the United States, research suggests the values of ingenuity, independence, prosperity and leadership matter a great deal, while in India, togetherness, respect for nature and self-reliance are more important. Research also shows that many people intrinsically care about the wellbeing of others and the environment.
As for people like Trump, perhaps our only chance is to show them a recent report that made me laugh out loud in a meeting - “Climate Change: Good for sex, bad for sperm” - about a working paper which shows that 80 degree Fahrenheit days correspond to lowered birth rates nine months later.

*Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Links

• Talking Climate: From Research to Practice in Public Engagement
• Improving Public Engagement With Climate Change
• Five Graphics To Start A Conversation About Climate Change
• Communicating climate change: Focus on the framing, not just the facts
• What is Climate Change Communication?
• Australian Psychological Society : Climate change communication
• 12 tools for communicating climate change more effectively

Climate Journalism Focuses Too Much On Trump And Not Enough On Extreme Weather, New Reports Find

Media Matters - Evlondo Cooper

Sarah Wasko / Media Matters

Two new studies highlight different troubling trends in climate change reporting.
First, a disproportionate amount of climate journalism in 2017 was focused on the Trump administration's actions and statements, meaning that other climate stories got less coverage than they warranted. Second, media last year consistently failed to explain how events such as extreme weather are connected to climate change.
A research group at the University of Colorado-Boulder, the International Collective on Environment, Culture and Politics (ICE CaPs), produced the findings that illustrate how much climate coverage has been driven by President Donald Trump.
It examined coverage last year in five major American newspapers: The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times. In the 4,117 stories in those papers that mentioned "climate change" or "global warming," the word “Trump” appeared 19,184 times -- an average of nearly 4.7 times per article.

Credit: Boykoff, M., Andrews, K., Daly, M., Katzung, J., Luedecke, G., Maldonado, C. and Nacu-Schmidt, A. (2018) A Review of Media Coverage of Climate Change and Global Warming in 2017, Media and Climate Change Observatory, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado

The researchers argued that Trump-centric coverage can crowd out other reporting on climate change: “Media attention that would have focused on other climate-related events and issues instead was placed on Trump-related actions, leaving many other stories untold.”
Public Citizen, a non-profit organization that advocates for consumer rights, took a different approach in examining climate coverage in 2017. It searched a wide array of U.S. newspapers and TV and radio news programs for stories on extreme weather and pest-borne illness and then checked whether those stories mentioned climate change.
The vast majority did not. At the high end, 33 percent of pieces on record heat included the words "climate change" or "global warming." At the low end, just 4 percent of pieces discussing Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, or Nate mentioned climate change. Or, in other words, 96 percent of stories about 2017’s historic hurricane season did not note the role of climate change in making hurricanes more damaging.
Public Citizen's findings align with studies done by Media Matters last year that found TV news outlets repeatedly failed to report on how climate change is linked to more intense hurricanes, heat waves, and wildfires.
These two new alarming reports bolster the argument that we need better reporting on climate change. It is natural that Trump’s statements and actions as president will drive some climate journalism, particularly because his administration is unraveling a wide variety of climate protections.
But too often the focus is on Trump himself instead of the ways his administration's moves will affect millions of Americans and others around the world. And the inordinate attention given to even Trump's minor utterances and tweets displaces national discourse around important aspects of climate change, such as its impact on extreme weather.
No matter what latest Trump scandal plays out on cable news or the front pages of newspapers, climate reporters still need to focus on how climate change is happening in the real world and how climate policy affects real people. In 2017, there were too many underreported or unreported climate stories.
Will 2018 be any better?

Links

• Media Coverage of Climate Change
• Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) Monthly Summaries
• 2000-2017 Australian Newspaper Coverage of Climate Change or Global Warming
• A Review of Media Coverage of Climate Change and Global Warming in 2017
• How the U.S. Media Underreported Climate Change in 2017 (pdf)

Which Works Better: Climate Fear, Or Climate Hope? Well, It's Complicated

The Guardian - Lucia Graves

Communication is everything when it comes to the climate change debate – and there isn’t just one way to speak to people’s emotions

The Perito Moreno glacier in Los Glaciares national park, southern Argentina, breaks. ‘It seems the hope and fear camps of the climate debate are each seeing only part of the puzzle.’ Photograph: Ariel Molina/EPA

There’s a debate in climate circles about whether you should try to scare the living daylights out of people, or give them hope – think images of starving polar bears on melting ice caps on the one hand, and happy families on their bikes lined with flowers and solar-powered lights on the other.
The debate came to something of a head this year, after David Wallace-Wells lit up the internet with his 7,000-word, worst-case scenario published in New York magazine. It went viral almost instantly, and soon was the best-read story in the magazine’s history. A writer in Slate called it “the Silent Spring of our time”. But it also garnered tremendous criticism and from more than the usual denier set.
Beyond quibbles with the science, critics including the illustrious climate scientist Michael Mann took issue with the piece’s “doomist framing” because, as he wrote at the time, there’s “a danger in overstating the science in a way that presents the problem as unsolvable, and feeds a sense of doom, inevitability and hopelessness”.
But others say scaring people is the only way to make them care. Perhaps the most famous purveyor of climate scare tactics is Guy McPherson. Described by the New York Times as an “apocalyptic ecologist”, McPherson’s doomsday theory of “near-term extinction” has attracted something of a following. McPherson wrote on his website, which includes links to suicide hotlines, that the David Wallace-Wells piece “largely captures my message”.

Rather than treat emotions as levers to be pulled, they should be seen as part of a dynamic interplay

Both sides are wrong, from a psychological standpoint. Emotions are complicated and can vary tremendously from person to person. Trying to crudely manipulate them doesn’t work.
That’s the conclusion from behavioral scientists at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Daniel Chapman, Brian Lickel and Ezra Markowitz, who, in a recent paper published in Nature Climate Change, seek to bring the lessons of psychology to bear on communicating the importance climate change.

A still from a recent video showing a starving polar bear. Photograph: National Geographic

To attempt to either scare or inspire people “simultaneously oversimplifies the rich base of research on emotion while overcomplicating the very real communications challenge advocates face by demanding that each message have the right ‘emotional recipe’ to maximize effectiveness”, they write.
Climate experts, after all, are not experts on human behavior and the people who are say there are better ways to communicate the climate problem. Rather than treat emotions as levers to be pulled for a desired effect, they should be seen as part of a dynamic interplay among factors that shape our behavior, exquisitely specific to the human being inhabiting them.
What’s more, since the vast majority of us are not very good at getting people to feel the way we want them to based on the words coming out of our mouths alone, the best approach, it would seem, is one of humility – that is, to spend more time listening, and also, to know our own limits.
“Practitioners in different fields have varying perspectives on the issue,” Chapman told me. “In general, I think we need researchers and practitioners attending in an honest way to what research does and does not tell us about how to engage the public with climate change.”
For those intent on communicating climate change in psychologically adept ways, there are some takeaways from the science.
For instance, though we’ve been conditioned to think of anger as an undesirable emotion, research has shown it to be an important emotion for motivating action in the face of social injustice. And the pairing of certain feelings, like fear and efficacy, can be helpful too.
Like a patient who’s given both a diagnosis and a course of treatment, people respond better to risks when given both a reason and a way to act. In this sense, it seems the hope and fear camps of the climate debate are each seeing only part of the puzzle.
But even in places where the science is relatively strong, researchers caution against simplistic applications. Rote formulas like “three parts hope to one part scary” won’t translate from one person to another. Indeed, to use such information responsibly requires, if not some level of sophistication, then at least considerable forethought, as well as a concerted, ongoing effort to meet people where they are.
That means, above all, knowing your audience and what’s relevant to them. Are they considering chopping down a nearby forest or putting their houses up on stilts? Do they need to rebuild or relocate? Parsing people’s needs and sensitivities is critical in any form of communication, but particularly when it comes to talking about climate science, with its great technical complexity, profound personal impact, and tremendous political polarization.
Above all, it means remembering that climate change is a very big story. It isn’t monolithic, and communication of it looks like many things – be it climate scientists talking to lay-people or Leonardo DiCaprio making a movie.
The overwhelming problem in climate communication, after all, isn’t how it’s talked about so much as whether it’s being talked about at all. A 2016 report from Yale’s programme on climate communication found one in four Americans say they “never” hear someone discussing it.
Looked at that way, David Wallace-Wells’ apocalyptic horror story cum viral sensation is the best thing that’s happened in climate communication some time.

Links

• Checkmate: how do climate science deniers' predictions stack up?
• What is Climate Change Communication?
• Communicating climate change: Focus on the framing, not just the facts
• Climate Change Communication | Climate Change Institute
• 12 tools for communicating climate change more effectively
• Australian Psychological Society : Climate change communication
• What's the best way to communicate about climate change?
• Communication resources - Climate Change in Australia

Leaked Draft Of Landmark Climate Change Report Pours Cold Water On 1.5°C Goal

Futurism - Lou Del Bello

Creative Commons

Missed Targets
Bar a concerted global effort to reduce emissions and remove carbon from the atmosphere, the world is highly likely to exceed the most ambitious climate goal set by the Paris Agreement by the 2040s, according to a leaked draft of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report obtained by Reuters.
The IPCC is expected to release the final version of their highly anticipated Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C in October. The preliminary version obtained by Reuters was submitted to a small group of experts and government officials for review and was not meant for public release.
Every few years, the IPCC publishes an Assessment Report containing the available research about the current state of climate change. This year’s special report is the first focused on what is possibly the Paris Agreement’s most controversial climate goal: limiting global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.



Though some countries are in strong support of taking action to ensure the world meets this climate goal, research has shown that we are highly unlikely to do so.
The draft of the special report obtained by Reuters seems to confirm this low probability of success: “There is very high risk that […] global warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels [should emissions continue at the current pace].”
The draft also states that meeting the climate goal would require an “unprecedented” leap from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy and extensive reforms everywhere from industry to agriculture.
Additionally, while curbing global temperatures would help reduce some of the worst impacts of climate change, including sea level rise and droughts, it would not be enough to protect the planet’s most fragile ecosystems, including polar ice caps and coral reefs.

Political Motives?
While the findings currently included in the report confirm what the public may consider the worst-case scenario, scientists who have read the report are not surprised by its contents.
“The report is unexceptional,” Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at the University of Cambridge, told Futurism. “It was already clear to every climate scientist that a 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit would be breached by 2050 (in fact, probably much earlier) in the absence of drastic carbon capture measures.”
Gabriel Marty, a climate change analyst and former U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) delegate for France, told Futurism that it’s too soon to speculate on the content of the final report.
However, once it is released, he said readers should note the treatment of the uncertainties and risks of the so-called “bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)” technologies designed to suck carbon emissions out of the atmosphere.



“The risks associated [with heavily relying on these technologies] must be clearly outlined,” said Marty. “They do not exist yet, the scale that would be needed would be enormous, and the adverse impacts on land and water resources would likely be huge.”
According to sources familiar with the IPCC’s proceedings, the panel has been criticized in the past for being too coy about the limitations of BECCS and for understating their risks in order to present the 2 degrees Celsius target as “still viable.”
Wadhams also mentioned the possibility that the IPCC’s hesitation to release the special report itself could be politically motivated.
“The IPCC has long since become a political rather than a scientific organization, so their secretiveness and sensitivity about a perfectly ordinary report has some political motive,” he told Futurism.
“A lot could still change between now and the final version.”

Buildings are seen in heavy smog during a polluted day in Jinan, Shandong province, China, December 20, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer

Roz Pidcock, head of communications for the IPCC Working Group 1, told Futurism that that’s not the case. She said the fact that the special report is currently confidential has nothing to do with a lack of transparency on the part of the panel — they simply aren’t finished with it yet.
“All of the expert and government review comments that come in over the next few weeks are taken on board […] Just to give an idea of what that involves, the first draft of this report received 12,895 comments from nearly 500 expert reviewers around the world,” said Pidcock. “A lot could still change between now and the final version.”
We will need to wait until October for the IPCC’s final take on the viability of the extremely ambitious 1.5 degrees Celsius limit, but whatever the contents of the report, we can’t let it discourage us from taking the strongest action possible to prevent further damage to our planet.

Links

• Warming set to breach Paris accord's toughest limit by mid century: draft
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Global Warming of 1.5 °C
• For Coastal Communities, the 1.5C Climate Goal Is a Matter of Life or Death
• Study Shows Earth is Already in a Dire Warming Crisis
• By 2040, Hundreds of Millions May Be Affected By River Floods Across the World
• Marine Food Webs Are on the Brink of Collapse Because of Climate Change

Act Now To Protect Millions From Floods — Study

Deutsche Welle - Ruby Russell

Scientists say millions more are at risk of flooding over the decades to come based on climate change already in the pipeline. In order to survive, the time to adapt is now.

Peru suffered devastating flooding in March, displacing hundreds of thousands of people

 When we think of climate catastrophes, flooding is pretty high on the list of nightmare scenarios. But it's not just rising sea levels that are threatening communities with inundation: New research shows that ever more of us are at risk from rivers bursting their banks.
As the global temperature rises, water evaporates into the air, humidity increases, clouds form — and what goes up must come down. It's among the laws of physics: Warmer air holds more moisture, meaning bigger clouds that can travel further, resulting in even more extreme storms.
Since the mid-1980s, climate scientists have recorded a 20 percent increase in record-breaking rainfall around the world — with devastating consequences.
In 2017, flooding across India, Bangladesh and Nepal affected 40 million people, and more than 1,200 died. In flooding in Sierra Leone, more than 1,100 people perished. As Peru recorded 10 times the normal level of rainfall, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and at least 70 killed.
To round out the inventory of flooding's impact for last year, lives were also lost to flooding in China, the Philippines, Italy, and Vietnam, among other locations.
And 2018 has carried the trend forward. This week, at least 17 people were killed as dramatic storms swept California. Roads looked like rivers and homes were destroyed.

Predicting disaster
But according to scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research (PIK) in Germany, this is just the beginning. Around the world, many millions of people who have so far stayed safe and dry will face flooding unless action is taken to protect them, the researchers say.
In a bid to quantify the problem, PIK researchers created computer models based on existing data from rivers around the world to predict how important increased flood protection will become over the coming two decades.
"The findings should be a warning to decision-makers," one of the report's authors, Anders Levermann, said in a press release. "If they choose to ignore the issue, sadly enough, disaster will come. Doing nothing will be dangerous."
PIK found the areas that need to adapt most are in Indonesia — where the National Disaster Mitigation Agency reported 787 floods last year — along with India, Africa, the United States and even Western Europe, including the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
Authorities in these countries will need to build dikes, improve flood management systems, put new building regulations in place or even relocate entire communities, the study says.

Flooding in Jakarta last year. The PIK study ranked Indonesia among countries with the greatest need for adaptation

Rich countries also at risk
"More than half of the United States must at least double its protection level within the next two decades if they want to avoid a dramatic increase in river flood risks," the study's lead author, Sven Willen, said.
Sabine Minninger of nongovernmental organization Bread for the World said she hoped the report would serve as a wake-up call to United States President Donald Trump, who has withdrawn his country's support for climate change adaptation.
"The report comes at just the right moment to show that climate change doesn't know borders," said Minninger. "No one is immune to its impacts."
The study found that richer countries with higher levels of protection would have to invest a lot to maintain their current levels of protection.
The number of North Americans threatened by the worst 10 percent of flooding will increase from 100,000 to 1 million, the study said.
"With respect to climate change adaptation, not just poor countries but also rich countries, like Germany where we are sitting, have much to do," Leverman told DW.
The report comes in the wake of intense flooding on the Rhine River, as a result of heavy rainfall.

Floods sweep across Germany: Life on the edge
The rise in water levels is not only a threat to urban areas but also to low-lying fields and nature. The habitat of animals is just as much in jeopardy as that of humans, with floods sometimes resulting in irreparable damages to the eco-system. With climate change causing natural catastrophes more frequently, even the most developed countries can be caught off-guard when disaster strikes. Sertan Sanderson 

Millions more at risk
In Germany, where the overflow of rivers this past week across the country halted boat traffic, inundating streets and monuments, 700,000 people could be at risk from flooding in the next two decades.
But compared to figures for other the risks of European countries, that isn't even so bad. The study found that number of Brits threatened by flooding will increase 28-fold. In France, a 15-fold increase is predicted.
In South America, the number of people threatened by flooding is expected to rise from 6 million to 12 million, in Africa from 25 to 34 million, and in Asia from 70 to 156 million.
And these estimates do not take population growth or increasing urbanization into account — the final numbers could be substantially higher.
Minninger said those most affected by floods today are those in the poorest parts of the world who already struggle to survive. They need to adapt not just to the future risk predicted by PIK, but also to protect people from the very real climate change impacts they are already suffering.
"If even the richest countries need to double their protection, why aren't they providing finance for the rest of the world to adapt?" Minninger said.

The Addicks Resevoir reached capacity during Hurricane Harvey, flooding west Houston

Far-reaching impacts
For the world's poorest people, the dangers of rivers overflowing can go way beyond the immediate inundation of homes and destruction of infrastructure.
"Flood events were the main cause of internal displacement in 2008 to 2015," Sven Harmeling of international aid group Care told DW, saying there was no guarantee they would ever be able to return home as many poor people lack clear legal rights to their land.
Outbreak of disease is an immediate risk, but there are also longer-term health impacts, including psychological.
"Flood catastrophes may tear apart families and separate children from their parents," Harmeling said. "Sometimes thousands of children are acutely malnourished over weeks, which may have long-term adverse health consequences."

Floods can have long-lasting damaging effects, also on infrastructure

More money for adaptation
Yet Minninger said countries like the US could learn from poorer parts of the world, which are already dealing with dangerous new climatic conditions.
"In communities have no resources to protect themselves, for example in the Bangladeshi delta which are regularly flooded, concepts of community-based disaster prevention and management are applied and working very well — the people have learned to protect themselves with joint community-based efforts, for example in building dams," she said.
Environmental and development groups say not nearly enough progress is being made on raising the funds promised for adaptation by the Paris Agreement.
And unless we speed up measures to slow down global warming, the bill to prepare for the worst will keep going up.

2017 Devastating effects of climate change: Deadly combination
Armed conflicts are pushing millions of people to leave their homes or live in terribly precarious situations — and climate change is making it worse. A lack of natural resources increases the risk of conflict and makes life even harder for refugees. South Sudanese families, for instance, are escaping to neighboring countries like Uganda and Kenya — countries already suffering from drought.

Links

• Weather and climate disasters made 2017 costliest year for US
• Deadly Philippines superstorm triggers mudslides and flooding, killing scores
• Investors outperform nations at Paris climate summit
• Sierra Leone: Flood survivors stuck in temporary shelters
• Death toll in Greek floods hits 19
• How climate change is aggravating Pakistan's water crisis
• Vietnam: Dozens killed by floods and landslides
• Italy floods kill at least six after rainstorms
• Poor preparedness caused flood disaster in India
• Mudslide rolls through Montecito, California
• Floods sweep across Germany
• 2017: Devastating effects of climate change

Here Are All The Ways Climate Change Presents A Threat To National Security

Pacific Standard - Candace Butera

Donald Trump's decision to omit climate change from his National Defense Authorization Act caused quite a stir.

President Donald Trump speaks before signing the National Defense Authorization Act, on December 12th, 2017, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Over 100 bipartisan members of the House of Representatives urged President Donald Trump to reconsider the omission of climate change as a national security threat in his 2018 National Defense Authorization Act.
In the letter, sent on Thursday, the members called Trump's omission "a significant step backwards" in recognizing the "geopolitical threat" of climate change.
The Trump administration's stance marks a significant divergence from the Obama White House, which in 2013 created a Climate Action Plan in an effort to curb rising emissions levels. Evidence continues to mount that climate change not only exists, but is having a detrimental effect on public health, the environment, and world economies.
In their letter, the House members wrote that fluctuating and erratic temperatures have affected communities worldwide, along with eroding beaches and pieces of land chipped away by rising sea levels. "Landscape military installations and our communities are increasingly at risk of devastation," they wrote. "Climate change is indeed a direct threat to America's national security and to the stability of the world at large."
With the Trump administration ushering in an era of climate skepticism (and in some cases climate denial), the White House has significantly loosened policies and legislation addressing the environmental impact of climate change, leaving citizens and communities even more vulnerable to the inevitable consequences of pollution.
Here are just a few ramifications and growing potential climate-change threats already on their way:

• Potential health risks are estimated to rise significantly due to higher temperatures and complications of natural disasters. An estimated additional 250,000 people will die every year between 2030 and 2050 as a result of these health risks, according to the World Health Organization.

• Climate change-induced malnutrition could affect nearly half a million adults globally by 2050 due to food and nutrition scarcity.

• The economies of the states in the South, Midwest, and mid-Atlantic are expected to suffer from predicted gross domestic product losses of up to 28 percent due to greenhouse-gas emissions effects on field production.

• Women and girls in developing regions may be impacted more from global warming than men and boys, due to social and economic inequalities.

• A potential decline in profit for marine fisheries globally, which have been estimated to support the livelihoods of 10 to 12 percent of the world's population.

• Islands, inhabited by hundreds of residents, such as the Tangier Islands in the Chesapeake bay, could be entirely consumed by rising sea levels by 2050, or sooner.

• Even minor climate change-caused flooding leads to road closures, plumbing failure and other significant daily disruptions.

• Rising climate disruption could bring about new global poverty, possibly resulting in an "additional 100 million people living in extreme poverty by 2030."

• Species' failure to adapt to human-caused environmental changes will result in extinction and many species' disappearance. Other species, such as birds in North America and sea animals, will change habitats over the next several decades.

• Entirely new climates and weather patterns introduced to ecosystems will cause a shuffling of biodiversity and animal communities.

The effects of climate change are not myths. In fact, the consequences of climate change are already in motion.

Links

• Is There Really a Link Between Climate Change and National Security?
• Why It's Vital for the U.N. to Agree on a Plan for Loss and Damage
• The Frightening Link Between Climate Change and Malnutrition
• Four Ways Climate Change Affects Women More Than Men
• The Economic Impact of Climate Change on Global Fisheries Could Be Even Worse Than We Thought
• Climate Change Could Push 100 Million Back Into Poverty by 2030
• Climate Change Is Killing Some Species Before They Even Have a Chance to Adapt
• Catastrophic Consequences of Climate Change

Climate Change: Another Record Coming That We Don't Want To Break

The Age - Editorial

When the Australian Research Council awarded its funding plans in mid-2017, one recipient of the highly competitive seven-year grants was the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes.
While building on the work of the previous Climate System Science centre, the new hub represents more than a name change.

The death of half of the Great Barrier Reef's corals during two summers – according to preliminary estimates – probably failed to interrupt barbecue banter for most Australians. Photo: AAP

The centre – grouping leading scientists from the Australian National University, Monash, Melbourne, and Tasmania universities – is the first in the world "with an unambiguous focus on the science behind climate extremes", according to its director, Professor Andy Pitman.
The Turnbull government and particularly Simon Birmingham, as the responsible minister, deserve credit for increasing the centre's capacity by 10 per cent over its predecessor – presumably against the views of a rump within the Coalition that denies climate change is a serious threat.
The hub's aim is to understand better the physics behind extremes and to improve predictions.

Such forecasts will be useful for incoming weather but also for showing how extremes will play out in a climate that continues to warm primarily because of rising emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activity.
In recent months, Australians have had more than a few bursts of unusual heat to remind them why extremes matter.
In November, Victoria and Tasmania were baked in a late-spring heatwave that delivered a record 12 days above 30 degrees for Melburnians that month.
Last weekend brought a relatively short spike in temperatures for most of south-eastern Australia. Yet the temperature still managed to hit 47.3 degrees in Sydney's Penrith, near the foothills of the Blue Mountains.
Indeed, Penrith's maximum was hotter than anywhere recorded in 2017 in Western Australia or the Northern Territory. It rivalled Birdsville's 47.4 degrees, which marked Queensland's hottest location for the year.
Such events tend to be masked by the averages – as important as they are for tracking how Australia and the world continue to warm at a rate at the high end of climate models.
Just as extremes shouldn't be ignored, nor should the annual reckonings.
In coming weeks, the World Meteorological Organisation (will probably declare 2017 as the second or third-warmest year on record. The records go back to the final decades of the 19th century.
For Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology this week declared 2017 trailed only 2013 and 2005 as the country's hottest year for mean temperatures. Taking maximums, only 2013 was hotter.
Globally, no year on record has been hotter than 2017 without the boost of an El Nino in the Pacific
The yearly readings serve as an important reminder of the background creep of climate change that humans may not notice but nature cannot ignore.
As Australian scientists highlighted this month, there has been a fivefold increase in the likelihood of coral bleaching since the 1980s.
Neutral conditions in the Pacific – neither an El Nino nor its opposite, La Nina – are now warmer than an El Nino three decades or so ago, they found.
But while the death of half of the Great Barrier Reef's corals during two summers – according to preliminary estimates – probably failed to interrupt the barbecue banter for most Australians, extreme heat events may grab our attention.
As demonstrated in the early-2018 heatwave, services we take for granted, such as electricity, are vulnerable even in a climate that has warmed in Australia – and globally – by 1 degree since the industrial era began.
No wonder, then, that scientists are ramping up efforts to understand what will happen to extremes with the next degree of warming that our past emissions have all but locked in. And, of course, the risks from any further heating we foolishly experiment with.

Links

• Stand by, Australia, for the electric car revolution
• A future without coal-fired power stations is inevitable
• Australia Swelters Through Third Warmest Year On Record
• 'Quite surprising': Near-record hot 2017, heat burst point to warming world
• 'Rather startling': Study finds rapid increase in frequency of coral bleaching