Slavery & Human Trafficking Booming Thanks To Climate Change Induced Migrations

CleanTechnica - James Ayre

Over the coming century, large portions of the most densely inhabited parts of the world will become essentially incapable of supporting human populations above very limited nomadic levels. The people living in these regions will be left with a simple choice: migrate or die.
While the current refugee crisis is certainly not a trivial matter for those most involved with it, the reality is that it represents just a trickle compared to what’s now slated to occur — owing to the greenhouse gases already released into the atmosphere to date, and also due to the widespread deforestation and topsoil erosion/exploitation that has accompanied that.
As it stands, most refugees are by and large either: people coming from war zones with enough money available to them to arrange for possible transit to safer areas; or economic migrants on the other (mostly young males coming from regions where there isn’t enough work). As the century grinds on, the “refugees” will very likely be originating more and more with the rougher portions of the societies in question (those with military or police backgrounds, etc.).


For the time being, though, most of those that are actually coming from war zones (rather than simply from economically depressed regions) are from the “middle” or “upper” classes, relatively speaking. As such, they often make easy prey for human traffickers — with a great many inevitably being sold into slavery. This is especially true of unaccompanied minors.
Estimates from the European Union’s criminal intelligence agency Europol place the number of lone migrant children that have gone missing in Europe since arrival over the last few years at +10,000. It’s no real mystery what happens to these children, though, as it’s an open secret that some of the wealthiest countries in Europe are also some of the global hot spots when it comes the slavery of foreign women and children in sex work.
The point that’s being made here is that as refugee movement and mass migrations pick up over the coming decades, human slavery is slated to continue growing as a problem … with it already being the case that criminal gangs seem to be benefiting to a large degree from the growing ease at which trafficking can occur. As it stands, it’s estimated that some 40 million people are living as slaves worldwide.


On that subject, the prominent Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi recently made some interesting comments as part of a workshop in Jordan put together by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The comments seem worth discussing here.
One of the primary points that Satyarthi made in his comments was that the refugee crisis was greatly worsening the problem of human trafficking and slavery, by making it clear to criminal gangs how profitable such activities can be. It’s now estimated, according to Satyarthi, that organized gangs now profit from slavery to the tune of an estimated $150 billion a year.
“This refugee crisis has resulted in trafficking and slavery,” stated Satyarthi, the joint-winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai, due to his work fighting child labor.
“Human trafficking, small firearms, and drugs are the 3 most organized crimes. Now they are intermingled,” he stated at the aforementioned workshop.
Reuters provides more: “India is home to more slaves than any other nation — previous global estimates put the number at 18 million — with men, women, and children trapped in forced labor and sex work. … Satyarthi said he had heard reports of Syrian refugees agreeing to child marriages for their daughters to stop them from being sold into the sex trade or other forms of slavery.

“He will meet with leaders from Jordan’s King Abdullah to Panama’s Juan Carlos Varela and various Nobel laureates and activists this month to address challenges facing children on the move, such as migrants, refugees, and trafficking victims. … Satyarthi said India’s first anti-trafficking law, which may be passed this month after being approved by cabinet last week, was a major step forward with life sentences for traffickers and a rehabilitation fund to help victims rebuild their lives.”

Obviously, while all such efforts are commendable, they aren’t enough on their own. As Satyarthi noted while speaking specifically about the situation in India: “The caste system, gender discrimination, and the apathetic attitude of government officials and corruption are the biggest hurdles.”
The situation isn’t much different elsewhere of course, though divisions always vary by region based along different ethnic, religious, identity, etc., lines.
The reason that I chose to highlight this subject is because discussions about these matters — slavery, the refugee crisis, future mass migrations, etc. — usually seem to devolve to pre-staked out positions and mischaracterization of the motives of others.

An Even-Handed Overview Of The Current Refugee Crisis & Future Mass Migrations
So, to offer a condensed view of the situation here, to those who aren’t too partisan to hear it … based on decades of international travel, related work, and an extensive reading of history:

• Current refugee flows comprise a mix of: genuine refugees coming from war zones; economic migrants; and those being trafficked into slavery of various types.
• The motivations of German Chancellor Angela Merkel — with regard to the supposedly humanitarian gesture of inviting large numbers of refugees into Europe — likely stemmed from a mixture of: the expectation that such people could make up part of the economic underclass of Germany (which Turks who were let in many decades ago still comprise a large part of), thereby helping to curtail the effects of an aging workforce; and virtue signaling to the international community.
• Truly “humanitarian” actions depend, as all other effective actions do as well, on an honest appraisal of a situation. No one who has spent much time in Germany (or Northern Europe) as a foreigner is likely to have any real illusions about the openness of the society — bringing in large numbers of people from outside of these societies was never going to lead to anything but mass-projection, conflict, scapegoating, and the balkanization of society. Putting people in such a situation is not “helping them.”
• While climate change — through the effects of droughts, water scarcity, declining crop yields, and accompanying conflict and societal breakdown — certainly represents one of the broader causes behind the current refugee flows, there is no doubt that the extensive bombing of the regions in question by foreign powers (the US and European powers primarily) is a more immediate cause. Bombing people’s countries out of existence isn’t helping them.
• To put that another way, when one country imposes its own cultural and political institutions on another in the name of idealistic universalism, which is often accomplished through wars or proxy wars (ahem…), what often enough results is a failed state.
• Much of Southern Europe is itself slated to experience desertification and rapidly increasing water stress and falling crop yields within just the next 50–100 years. In other words, mass migrations out of Southern Europe and into northern territories is pretty much a given at this point — those coming from the Near East, the Middle East, and Africa are mistaken if they think that they are going to find long-term stability in Southern Europe.
• There are substantial cultural differences between the societies of Northern Europe and Southern Europe (to greatly oversimplify the divisions) — and accompanying widespread stereotyping, projection, and scapegoating. This will only worsen as time goes by and climate weirding and warming intensifies — which will occur at the same time that global geopolitical power is shifting to Asia and away from Europe, which will intensify the cultural conflicts in question.
• The lifestyles that those in Europe have become accustomed to over recent history are an aberration, which was only possible because of fossil fuels and colonialism. As the effects of those two factors continue to diminish (as high-grade fossil fuel reserves in Europe continue to deplete, and as the “third world” grows in influence), much of the population will be forced to accept a “lower” standard of living. That is, a standard of living that’s less of an outlier from the global average. The general public will not comprehend why this is happening, and will demand that someone or some group of people be to blame. That being the case, the idea that large numbers of refugees can be accommodated isn’t credible.

Links

• What Will Happen To Indian Subcontinent’s ~2 Billion People As Temperatures Soar?
• 2 Critical Climate Change Problems Most People Don’t Know About
• Gangs exploit refugee crisis to enslave people: Nobel laureate Satyarthi
• Tackling climate change and slavery
• Climate Change Is Eco-Slavery: A Climate Future Of Australian Property Law (pdf)
• Modern Slavery, Environmental Destruction and Climate Change

Apparently We Can Let The Stock Market Fight Climate Change

Wired - Adam Rogers

Hotlittlepotato

Fixing the effects of climate change on Earth isn’t complicated. When you get down to it, all we humans need to save the world is ingenuity, grit, cooperation, and $53 trillion.
Where is humanity supposed to come up with that kind of cash at this time of night? The International Energy Agency says Earth needs those trillions invested in energy supply and efficiency by 2035 to keep global warming below 2 degrees C. So, you could tax greenhouse gas emitters until they cry—oh, sorry, I probably meant to say “price carbon according to its real market cost.” But also, go to where the big money is—statewide or national funds, piles of assets emblazoned with names like BlackRock and Fidelity, and other institutional investors. Convince them to stop investing in carbon emitters and start investing in... anything but them.
Except, whoa there, li’l Communist, because the people who run those funds are bound by a fiduciary duty to act in the financial interests of their clients. Which is to say, legally and regulatorily, they can’t not make money—at least, not on purpose. And if you compare an asset portfolio optimized for “make all the money” to one optimized for “make all the money except if it emits carbon,” guess which one wins? “So how can we move the majority of investors to integrate environmental factors into their thinking?” asks Soh Young In, an engineering doctoral student at the Global Projects Center at Stanford. “That’s the problem. They think that environmental factors are a suboptimal decision.” In a new working paper, In and her fellow researchers hope to convince those skeptical investors otherwise.
Finance researchers and analysts have been chewing on this problem for years—how (and whether) to integrate environment, social, and governance factors, or ESG, into investment planning. Stipulate that the right-thinking humans who work in finance know climate change is an existential threat; what they don’t know is how to put that knowledge to work without sacrificing money. So lots of folks have tried to show that taking ESG into account can increase investment returns (as well as, like, save the planet or whatever).
Research into the “G” part has shown that, yes, companies that perform well on metrics for corporate governance—essentially how well a company is run—have also performed better on the market. “S” looks pretty good, too, if you look at how happy workers are. Companies with higher worker satisfaction have also done better. It’s hard to tell if those trends will continue, but at least retrospectively, it’s good stuff.
But what about the E? “The E, the jury is still out on,” says Adair Morse, a finance professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. In part, the problem may be a lack of data. Despite various projects to mandate environmental disclosures and to try to collate that data into useful metrics, those metrics are still hard to come by. Determinations of what constitutes fiduciary duty have been a decades-long process.
People touting ESG ideas argue they can have as much of an impact on bottom lines as supply chains, market size, raw material availability, and all the other stuff finance people worry about. “This movement said, look, these things are relevant for shareholders and pricing,” Morse says. “So shouldn’t we have information that’s material in the ESG factors? Shouldn’t they be disclosed?”
When they are, investors have something to act on—like Moneyball, but for money. “Portfolio managers tend to be quantitatively focused. They’re used to relying on a suite of financial data about companies and asset classes that appear on the Bloomberg terminal,” says Chris Davis, senior director of the Ceres Investor Network, a group of 150 pension funds and asset managers collectively responsible for $27 trillion. (See? I told you somebody had the money.) And Bloomberg data, for example, does indeed now include ESG metrics.
That swings us back around to In’s research. To be clear, it’s a working paper, not peer reviewed—intended, as she says, to be the beginning of a discussion and not the end. What her team brings to bear is access to a database from a company called Trucost. Established in 2000 to develop those quantitative metrics, Trucost has been tracking carbon emissions since the middle of the last decade—and not just a company’s emissions at the end of its line, but all up and down the value chain, from raw materials to transportation to the places that cough out the widgets.
So this is pretty slick, actually. In’s group took a firm’s Trucost carbon emission data and then divided it by the firm’s revenues to come up with a metric they call “carbon efficiency.” Then they used those numbers to build carbon-efficient and carbon-inefficient portfolios, and compared their returns. “It’s an investment strategy,” In says. “You’re shorting your carbon-inefficient firm stocks and longing your carbon-efficient firm stocks.”
Whoo, did that ever work. Depending on how they constructed the portfolio, from 2009 to 2015 profits ranged from 3.5 to 5.4 percent over what you’d expect from similar levels of risk, ignoring carbon. And according to their analyses, the numbers held even when they controlled for other things that often drive profits—size, value, momentum, and so on.
“So we can say we’re getting alpha on our portfolio. But we want to know why this is happening,” In says. More variables, more regression analyses. “What we find is, carbon-efficient firms tend to be good firms in terms of financial performance and corporate governance.” In other words, low-carbon firms tend to be good at other stuff, too. That’s a correlation, not a causation, but it’s also a rational, fiduciarily responsible way to build a portfolio.

'It’s an investment strategy. You’re shorting your carbon-inefficient firm stocks and longing your carbon-efficient firm stocks.'
Soh Young In, Global Projects Center, Stanford University

This is good news! “From casual conversations with investors managing institutional portfolios, they were very happy to see this kind of academic research,” In says. They’re looking for ways to see so-called green investing as within the scope of their duty. “If they want to change their portfolios, they need to have objective evidence.”
In the case of In’s working paper, that’s evidence added to a growing canon. “There are leaders and there are laggards. In our investor network, many if not most of the members, particularly the pension funds, take climate risk very seriously,” Davis says. “A number of them have done quite a bit already in reducing the carbon footprint of their portfolios and investing affirmatively in solutions.”
For example, the $209 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund audited its portfolio’s carbon footprint, says Davis, and then had the investment bank Goldman Sachs build a bespoke low-carbon index ...and put $4 billion into a fund based on it. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System put $2.5 billion into its own low-carbon index fund. The next step: “Get some quantitative criteria that can be used in risk models,” says Davis. “There’s a lot of research going on with the likes of BlackRock and State Street to try to figure out just that.”

'Most of the markets of the world are far more comfortable with where the investment risks and opportunities are going to come from.'
Nathan Fabian, Principles for Responsible Investment

The research comes in the nick of time, if not slightly after. Not everyone thinks fiduciary duty and lack of metrics are as much of an obstacle as US investors seem to. “That data’s not perfect, but there’s sufficient data to know what the emissions profile of fossil fuel assets is, and there’s sufficient data to know what the storm risk for infrastructure and physical assets is,” says Nathan Fabian, director of policy and research for Principles for Responsible Investment. “It might take a bit more effort than simply using the portfolio return numbers or company earnings numbers you’ve used for the last decade, but the truth is, all the risk is in front of us, not behind us.”
The 1,700 signatories to PRI’s standards for ESG-based investing collectively manage $62 trillion. That’s a lot of oomph if someone could point it in the right direction. And in lots of places, people are. “The truth is, most of the markets of the world are just far more comfortable with where the investment risks and opportunities are going to come from than US regulators and the US financial sector,” Fabian says. “That’s a real competitive issue for the US over time.”
This week, Fabian says, the European Union plans to update rules to clarify how fiduciary duty can incorporate environmental, social, and governmental issues. The Chinese government is setting its financial system up to encourage green financing. “You’ve got Europe moving aggressively, China moving aggressively, and the Californians trying quite hard. But really there’s a drag on the US economy,” Fabian says.
The In team’s working paper doesn’t solve that problem. The relatively short timeframe of the Trucost database, for example, makes for a bit of a frowny face; her group hasn’t yet gotten all the data for 2016 to see if the trend continues. And the correlation between carbon efficiency and governance and performance means you have to ask what’s actually driving that performance—governance, revenues, or carbon? But something has to convince firms to get on board a transnational movement. The journey of $53 trillion must begin with a single step.


Politician and activist Al Gore answers the Internet's most searched questions about climate change.

Links

• World needs $48 trillion in investment to meet its energy needs to 2035
• Is 'Being Green' Rewarded in the Market?: An Empirical Investigation of Decarbonization Risk and Stock Returns
• NY State Comptroller DiNapoli Doubles Low Emissions Index Investment to $4 Billion
• CalSTRS Commits $2.5 Billion to Low-Carbon Index
• World Energy Investment Outlook - Special Report
• World Energy Outlook 2017 to include focus on China’s energy outlook and the natural gas revolution

Scientists Have Issued A Warning To Humanity, And It's Finally Getting A Huge Reaction

ScienceAlert - Mike McRae

Now is the time to act.

(joruba/istock)

It's been just over 25 years since 1,700 leading scientists from around the globe put their names to a document warning of a 'collision course' between humanity and the rest of the natural world.
Last year, a follow-up report was signed by more than 15,000 researchers from 184 nations. Needless to say, it wasn't exactly glowing. So much so, several months later it's still one of the most talked-about research papers in the world.
In 1992, a group of Nobel Laureates teamed up with other researchers to form the Union of Concerned Scientists. Their tagline was "science for a healthy planet and a safer world."
This union outlined the biggest environmental threats faced by our population in a report titled World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, ending it with a powerfully written call to action.
What's happened in the quarter of a century since? Not a whole lot, it seems.
The 1992 report was followed up in November last year with a paper in the journal Bioscience called "World scientists' warning to humanity: A second notice".
In what amounts to a report card you wouldn't proudly stick on the fridge, we earned one gold star for taking care of that thin patch of ozone over Antarctica ... and not much else.
So it's time for another wake-up call.
"Humanity is now being given a second notice, as illustrated by these alarming trends," the report states.
Before you think it was just a few alarmists waving their hands wildly, the article has been trending in scientist circles ever since, seeing it co-signed by a record-breaking 15,364 names from 184 countries.
If that's not impressive enough, it currently ranks 6th out of 9 million papers on the Altmetric scale, and has even inspired some high-level speeches before Israel's national assembly and Canada's BC Legislature.
"Our scientists' warning to humanity has clearly struck a chord with both the global scientific community and the public," says the paper's lead author, William Ripple from Oregon State University.
Responses to the document are also coming in thick and fast.
One paper by the University of Sydney recently published in Bioscience emphasises the need to take economics into account when guiding action.
"There are critical environmental limits to resource-dependent economic growth," the authors write.
The researchers propose two key actions that are necessary for us to turn things around.
Firstly, in awarding prizes for influential work in economics, we must acknowledge the limits of the biosphere and other environmental factors.
Secondly, carbon pricing must be expanded from its current application in some 42 countries and 25 states into a globalised system.
Economics is clearly a critical factor in our impact on the environment, and any action we take must take into account such driving factors behind our 'collision course'.
The Second Notice ends with an equally powerful call for change. "We must recognise, in our day-to-day lives and in our governing institutions, that Earth with all its life is our only home," the authors write.
Whether we'll see a third notice in 2042 or not is anybody's guess.
If we do more than just talk about the first two, we might have something we'll proudly stick on the fridge.

Links

• 15,000 scientists in 184 countries warn about negative global environmental trends
• Largest Ever Group of Scientists Issues Humanity an Urgent Warning: Time Is Running Out 
• Scientists' warning to humanity 'most talked about paper'
• Epoch-defining study pinpoints when humans came to dominate planet Earth
• 1992 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity

Federal Judge Demands Unprecedented 5-Hour Climate Change Lesson

Mashable - Mark Kaufman

Sea level rise exacerbates high-tide flooding in Miami, Florida. Image: Getty Images

San Francisco and Oakland are battling the world's oil giants in federal court for knowingly producing fossil fuels whose emissions have triggered sea level rise. The two coastal cities argue that oil companies — including BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell — should foot the bill for hugely expensive infrastructure defenses to hold back rising waters — such as formidable sea walls.
And now — for the first time — a federal judge will listen as both sides present their understanding of climate science and the causes of global warming before the court. The hearing, referred to by the judge as a "tutorial," will address at least 14 specific questions that U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup asked both sides on Feb. 27.
"To my knowledge, no court has asked for this sort of presentation on climate science," said Justin Gundlach, a climate lawyer at Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, in an interview.
"This is an odd procedure, but one that makes sense," Gundlach said.
Oil companies and the cities have fundamental disagreements about climate science findings, so settling on some foundational realities about the effects of sending massive amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere could give Alsup an improved idea of how to rule in the case.
"What’s interesting about this request is that it does seem that an inevitable outcome is a list of stipulations about climate science — things all reasonable people should agree on," said Gundlach.
"That’s not to say that the parties are going to agree," he added.

The rate of global sea level rise has been accelerating, according to a new study using NASA data

Judge Alsup wrote a court notice asking that a "tutorial" be provided over the course of five hours, in which both sides will be given 60 minutes to present on each of two subjects:

1. Tracing "the history of scientific study of climate change, beginning with scientific inquiry into the formation and melting of the ice ages, periods of historical cooling and warming, smog, ozone, nuclear winter, volcanoes, and global warming."
2. Setting forth "the best science now available on global warming, glacier melt, sea rise, and coastal flooding."

While Gundlach said he's not sure what approach the oil companies will choose to take when describing climate science, he speculated that they may "emphasize uncertainties about how climate change will affect the future" as a way to avoid responsibilities for effects like sea level rise.
The lawyers for San Francisco and Oakland will likely present evidence that, as early as the 1970s, scientists within the oil industry were well aware of the effects carbon emissions would have on the global climate.
"Defendants took these stark warnings and proceeded to double-down on fossil fuels," San Francisco and Oakland's lawyers stated in their complaint, filed in September 2017.
"Even at this time, with the global warming danger level at a critical phase, defendants continue to engage in massive fossil fuel production and execute long-term business plans to continue and even expand their fossil fuel production for decades into the future,” the complaint states.
Already, climate scientists are working to crowdsource answers to Alsup's climate science questions. Many of these questions are elementary to climate scientists and are not up for much debate in the climate science community — such as the causes of ice ages.
Beyond addressing these basic tenants of climate science, it's possible both sides may look at recent research attempting to gauge each oil corporations' responsibility for historic carbon emissions — meaning who's responsible for what fraction of the world's total emissions from burning oil and gas.
"I would think the fight would be over that — to the extent that there’s a fight," said Gundlach.
This lawsuit is part of a wave of legal actions taken by everyone from 21 young Americans to New York City to try to force the oil industry and the federal government to recognize the scientific consensus on the subject and take action to address climate change.

Links

• New York City is suing big oil for global warming
• Patterns of Climate Change Litigation During Trump Era
• Landmark Case Challenges Land Clearing Based On Climate Change Impact
• US Government Can Be Sued By Children Over Climate Change: Court
• Seven Climate Change Myths That Big Oil Continues To Perpetuate
• Why The World Is Looking To The Philippines For Climate Justice
• Environmental Activists Are Suing Governments Over Climate Change — And Winning
• 'Sloppy And Careless': Courts Call Out Trump Blitzkrieg On Environmental Rules
• If Climate Change Wrecks Your City, Can It Sue Exxon?

This Dire Ocean Scenario Is A Stark Reminder Of Why The World Is Trying To Stop Climate Change

Washington Post - Chris Mooney

Rolling waves driven by Cyclone Christian appear in the Elbe estuary near the North Sea close to Brunsbuettel, northern Germany, on Oct. 28, 2013. (Christian Charisius/European Pressphoto Agency)

Scientists on Thursday published an alarming scenario for what could happen to the planet’s oceans and fisheries by the year 2300 if very high levels of global warming are allowed to continue.
The good news is that it’s eminently avoidable and a very long way off from happening. The bad news is that, according to the concerned authors, it highlights a new vulnerability that could arise in a severely disrupted climate system — and becomes a real possibility if rampant global warming continues well beyond this century.
The study finds that in a future world of extreme warming, after Antarctic sea ice collapses and oceans are altered, large volumes of essential nutrients could become trapped in the Southern Ocean. That could impair the growth of tiny marine organisms that form the base of the food chain in other parts of the world ocean, thus triggering a 20 percent decline in fishery yields overall, including a 60 percent drop in the Atlantic.
This would occur because the Southern Ocean near Antarctica is a key site of “upwelling,” in which deep ocean waters, which have picked up such nutrients as phosphorous and nitrogen from the depths (which end up there after marine organisms die and their bodies sink), rise and deliver that biological bounty to the surface. Then, the nutrients enter the global ocean circulation and are carried northward to more moderate climes.
But if warming gets severe enough, Southern Ocean upwelling can be suppressed by warm ocean surface waters. Meanwhile, many of the nutrients that do manage to rise will be consumed by the increasingly active biology of the mostly ice-free ocean around Antarctica — leaving far fewer nutrients for the rest of the world.
In this case, as organisms in the Southern Ocean die, more nutrients again sink to the bottom of that ocean, and stay there.
“So you have nutrients building up in the deep ocean, down where the biology can’t use them or get to them,” said Keith Moore, the lead author of the study in Science and a professor at the University of California at Irvine.
The researchers concede that the picture they paint is dire — and requires very high levels of warming that might never materialize. The temperature of the Antarctic Ocean in the scenario, for instance, would be 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it is now, and the sea ice ringing Antarctica would be almost entirely gone.
The computer modeling study also uses a worst-case scenario for the burning of fossil fuels to the year 2100 and even beyond it, ultimately triggering atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide just below 2,000 parts per million. That’s far in excess of the current level around 410 parts per million. It’s questionable that humanity would let things get that bad, and growing numbers of wind and solar installations and electric cars suggest that in future decades, we’ll be powering key aspects of life without fossil fuels.
Still, the authors said, it’s worth probing such extremes to understand how the climate system works, and they noted that for now, a high emissions scenario remains possible.
“These simulations paint a fairly dire picture of what I think will be catastrophic changes in the context of unmitigated climate warming,” said Matthew Long, one of the study’s authors and an oceanographer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “Along the path to those very catastrophic events, we may cross thresholds that we don’t know about. And so, I think it’s important for people to reflect on the impact we’re having on the world’s ocean and consider that in the context of action to mitigate climate warming.”
A researcher who was not involved in the study but reviewed it for The Washington Post, oceanographer Lynne Talley of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said she found the scenario plausible if warming is strong enough.
“Maybe they’ve got an extreme answer here, but all the pieces are what you’d expect to happen in a more moderate forcing,” Talley said.
An accompanying essay in Science, by ocean experts Charlotte Laufkotter and Nicolas Gruber of the University of Bern and ETH Zurich, respectively, in Switzerland, added that “the mere possibility of a future Southern Ocean nutrient-trapping scenario is highly concerning, warranting dedicated efforts to further our understanding of the unique role of the Southern Ocean in the global climate system.”
Fortunately, the study assumes as its premise a level of global warming that we in the present have ample opportunity to prevent.
If you think that the Paris climate agreement will work, holding the warming of the planet to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and bringing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations back down before they get much past 450 parts per million, then you can safely assume that such things will not occur.
On the other hand, if you don’t think the world can manage economic and population growth in the coming decades without a continual or even growing reliance on fossil fuels, this extreme scenario may be hard to get out of your mind.
Moore also said that he thinks the scenario presented in the study could at least begin to kick in at a lower temperature than the extreme ones in the paper. He said he’ll start to worry at a global temperature rise around 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit), when a lot of floating Antarctic sea ice could start to go.
“We don’t know exactly where that tipping point is,” Moore said. The study thus reinforces the importance of the Paris climate goals.
In the end, Long said, there is a value in describing what the worst-case scenario actually is — even if it is never actually realized.
“Human-driven climate warming is driving changes in the ocean that are epic in the context of Earth history,” he said. “They’re commensurate with some of the biggest, most fundamental reorganizations of the life support system of the planet. The scenario is unlikely, yet action remains stalled.”

Links

• Sustained climate warming drives declining marine biological productivity
• Marine Trackers Show How Warming Waters Affect Australian Sea Life And Beyond
• Climate Change Is Suffocating Large Parts Of The Ocean
• 'Maximum Damage': What's Going Wrong In Our Deep Blue And Warming Sea
• Climate Change Could Drive Coastal Food Webs To Collapse
• 'First Hint' Of A Puzzling Change In Southern Ocean Revealed By CSIRO
• In 2017, The Oceans Were By Far The Hottest Ever Recorded
• Climate Change Has Quadrupled Ocean 'Dead Zones,' Researchers Warn
• If Oceans Stopped Absorbing Heat From Climate Change, Life On Land Would Average 122°F
• Ocean Acidification Research Makes A Strong Case For Limiting Climate Change
• 'First Hint' Of A Puzzling Change In Southern Ocean Revealed By CSIRO
• Expect More 'Complete Surprises' From Climate Change: NASA's Schmidt
• Climate Change Impact On Antarctica Becomes Clearer As Scientists Make Progress
• Many Of The World’s Coasts Would Become Unviable If Antarctic Ice Continues To Melt Into Sea
• Climate Scientists Explore Hidden Ocean Beneath Antarctica’s Largest Ice Shelf
• As NASA Reveals Stunning Images, Antarctica Had Record Low Sea-Ice Coverage In 2017

We Can’t Fix Climate Change Without Fixing Gender Equality

Huffington Post - Liz Hutchins

When women are allowed a seat at the table, we all benefit

MATHILDE BELLENGER via Getty Images

2018 marks 100 years since most British women were granted the right to vote. Right now, a global movement is growing to expose the horrific scale of sexual assault around the world. #MeToo has become a shout of shared experience and a call to arms. The crescendo of women’s voices clamouring for change is loud, urgent, and powerful.
While the world stutters to respond to women saying “Time’s up”, we also face another stark and urgent challenge: climate change.
The impacts of climate change are not felt equally. Whilst poverty and geography are important dividing lines, so too is gender. Climate-change induced disasters disproportionately affect women. When disaster strikes, women, who still often play the primary role of looking after children and the elderly, are the last to evacuate; leading to higher female death tolls. Around 90% of the 150,000 people killed in the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone were women. They typically have less access to emergency response information and if they do survive, women, especially in poor or marginalised communities, are often less able to rebuild and recover.
Solutions to climate change need to work for everyone – yet women’s voices and needs are still often excluded from the decision-making table. The problem of climate change is simply too big to overlook half the world’s population and ignore female talent.
We can’t fix climate change without fixing gender equality but thankfully, there are already some amazing women stepping-up and leading the charge for a more equal, more sustainable world.
From Rachel Carson, the American marine biologist who, through her 1962 book Silent Spring, changed the way we think about the environment. To Berta Cáceres, the murdered Honduran environmental activist who successfully forced the world’s largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam. To Christiana Figueres - a driving force in negotiating the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Negotiating the agreement was a feat that many said couldn’t be done. It commits the world to pursue efforts to keep global temperature rises to1.5°C, and if honoured, it will save countless millions of lives – in the coming decades and in generations to come.
Equality and sustainability are two sides of the same story. The global economic system’s “business-as-usual” has had terrible consequences for our environment; as we use more and more of the earth’s resources with little care for what happens next. It has also led to huge inequality. It’s time to reimagine, and create, a different kind of world, with equality and sustainability at its heart. Where both resources and power are shared fairly.
When women are allowed a seat at the table, we all benefit. It’s becoming well-known that companies with women on their boards perform better, the same is true for women and climate change.There are already examples from around the world which have shown the positive impact that involving women can have on mitigating climate change and dealing with disasters.
The urgency of the climate crisis is real and acute, but we cannot focus on climate activism, without also working to create a fairer, more equal society.
In 2018, as we celebrate those who fought for a woman’s right to vote, we need to capture some of the spirit of the great women who came before us and with hope, passion and perseverance, together we can build a better world.
Why women will save the planet- the pioneering new book from Friends of the Earth and C40 Cities is available now from Zed books.

Links

• Why Women Will Save the Planet
• Climate Change 'Impacts Women More Than Men'
• Women Key To Fight Against Climate Change
• When Environmental Crises Hit Homes, Women Suffer The Most
• To Stop Climate Change, Educate Girls And Give Them Birth Control
• Lack Of Women In Energy ‘Holding Back Fight Against Climate Change’
• Bringing Women Together To Fight Climate Change
• 5 Ways Climate Change Is A Women’s Rights Issue
• Women Are Breaking The Climate Taboo And Questioning Whether To Have Kids In Such A World
• Mark Ruffalo, Noam Chomsky and Sir David Attenborough Join Forces for Climate Change Documentary
• Why Women Matter For Effective Climate Change Solutions – Analysis
• With Women At The Top, UN Climate Body Has Chance For Real Change

Tourism Is The Australian Industry Least Prepared For Climate Change, Report Says

The Guardian - Adam Morton

Beaches, wildlife, the Great Barrier Reef, unspoilt natural wilderness and national parks all considered threatened

A Climate Council report says not enough is being done to prepare for damage to Australia’s greatest tourism drawcards. Photograph: Greg Torda/Arc Centre Coral Reef Studies/EPA 

Tourism is Australia’s most vulnerable and least prepared industry to deal with climate change despite the fact it is already feeling its effects, according to an advocacy group report.
The report by the Climate Council, based on 200 source documents and articles, says while tourism is growing at an extraordinary pace – an 8% jump in visitors last financial year – not enough is being done to prepare for damage to the country’s greatest drawcards.
The five biggest attractions as reported by Tourism Australia – in order: beaches, wildlife, the Great Barrier Reef, unspoilt natural wilderness, national parks including rainforests and other forests – are all considered threatened by climate change.
The report says federal and state governments have mostly underplayed or ignored the risk to tourism. The government’s national Tourism 2020 plan makes no mention of the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions or improve sustainability in the industry.
Last month, the head of Queensland’s Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators, Col McKenzie, called climate scientist Terry Hughes “a dick” and urged the federal government to cut research funding due to his public comments about rising water temperatures harming the reef. McKenzie said it had turned tourists away.
Ecologist and report co-author Prof Lesley Hughes said it should not be controversial to discuss the threat climate change posed to the industry.
Beyond the often cited back-to-back years of bleaching on the reef in 2016 and 2017, she cited as examples beach erosion due to rising sea levels and a projected accelerating growth in extremely hot days in the red centre and the Top End across this century.
“Most government and industry plans on tourism are focused on growth but they don’t also look at the other side of the coin, which is the risks,” she said. “When people come here they might do other things – cultural things such as visiting the Sydney Opera House – but really the overwhelming attractions are natural icons and it’s very clear they are all already being affected.”
Government data cited in the report underlines the extent of the tourism boom. International visitors spent $40.6bn last financial year and were served by a tourism industry that employs 580,200 people, 5% of the country’s total workforce. The government estimates that, for every dollar generated by the tourism industry, a further 90c is spent elsewhere in the economy.
New Zealand provided the most visitors, though Austrade expects it will be overtaken by second-placed China this year. Britain, the United States and Singapore round out the top five. Tourism Australia this week launched a major advertising campaign in the US during the Super Bowl based on the Crocodile Dundee movie franchise. Starring actors Chris Hemsworth and Danny McBride, the campaign emphasises Australia’s natural beauty.
The industry’s growth has made tourism Australia’s second-largest export after iron ore. It is a significantly larger employer than coalmining or oil and gas extraction, which in 2014-15 employed 39,000 and 22,000 people respectively.
Hughes said, despite this, the future of fossil fuel industries and jobs received far more attention in the national conversation. “It’s cognitive dissonance at its most extreme,” she said.
Examples of industries already being affected by global warming include ski tourism, which has seen a trend of increasing reliance on artificial snow as seasons she shortened over the past 25 years.
“That’s a classic illustration that tourism industries will need to adapt and diversify to find other ways to bring people to those regions,” Hughes said.
The report highlights some hotels, resorts, airlines and zoos have taken steps to cut pollution but says a national plan is lacking. Hughes called on more tourism operators to lobby governments to help the industry adapt and diversify.
“I would also like to see operators be part of the lobby for better climate and energy policy,” she said.

Links

• 'Everything is made into a political issue': rethinking Australia's environmental laws
• Australia's emissions are rising. It's time for this government to quit pretending
• Melting ice sheets are hastening sea level rise, satellite data confirms
• Met Office warns of global temperature rise exceeding 1.5C limit
• World Bank to end financial support for oil and gas extraction
• Why climate change is creating a new generation of child bride
• Labour vows to factor climate change risk into economic forecasts
• UK climate change masterplan – the grownups have finally won
• Theresa May speaks out against Trump climate change stance at UN
• Climate deniers want to protect the status quo that made them rich