The Divisive Issue Australia Can No Longer Ignore

NEWS.com.au - Stephanie Bedo

What the warming of Antarctica means for us

AUSTRALIA, you’re being “irresponsible to the extreme”.

That’s the harsh message from leading scientists across the country, not just for our “confused, divided and backwards” government but for the everyday Aussies who believe climate change scepticism and refuse to acknowledge the state of “emergency” we face.
Climate policy was one of the catalysts for the Liberal Party rolling Malcolm Turnbull last month. In his final speech as prime minister, Mr Turnbull acknowledged the Coalition found it “very hard” to take action on climate change.
“The emissions issue and climate policy issues have the same problem within the Coalition of … bitterly entrenched views that are actually sort of more ideological views than views based, as I say, in engineering and economics,” he said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s new energy minister, Angus Taylor, has made it clear that he is focused on lower power prices and electricity reliability ahead of climate action.
“I am and have been for many years deeply sceptical of the economics of so many of the emissions reduction programs dreamed up by politicians, vested interests and technocrats around the world,” Mr Taylor said last week.
All of this leaves Australia, once again, without a meaningful plan on how to cut Australia’s carbon emissions.
As policy continues to stagnate, news.com.au contacted nearly 30 scientists across the country to get their views on the contentious issue.
Overwhelmingly they agreed Australia wasn’t doing enough about our “existential threat to civilisation”.
It sounds extreme and exaggerated, but it isn’t. The facts are all there and have been for years.
That threat lies in more extreme weather events — severe bushfires, droughts and heatwaves — and greater sea level rise, leading to the displacement of millions of people.
Yet Australia’s politicians have failed to develop a longstanding policy on what Kevin Rudd famously described in 2007 as “the great moral challenge of our generation”.
Instead, the policy has been used as a political tool to oust at least three prime ministers.
Last month Mr Turnbull was brought down for the second time over energy/climate change policy. The first time he was rolled by Tony Abbott as opposition leader. This time it cost him his job as prime minister.
Scientists have slammed the federal government for its “deliberate negligent failure” to take action to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions over the last few years.
Climate and Health Alliance president Peter Sainsbury said the Australian Government was, remarkably, still projecting an increase in carbon emissions to 2030.
“Australia is being held back by the self-interest of a few right-wing politicians and a network of highly influential companies, particularly in the fossil fuel industry, who are prepared to sacrifice other people’s health and wellbeing for their own short-term economic gain,” he said.
“Every delay, however, means that the consequences over the next 10 to 100 years will be more severe, with increased global warming, more severe and more frequent extreme weather events, more land and marine environmental destruction and more human injuries, ill-health and premature death.”
But Professor Greg Skilbeck’s words were even more sharp.

Temperature change in Australia according to a CSIRO report. CSIRO

The academic from the University of Technology, Sydney, said if we believed in science as part of the function of our everyday lives, we should believe in climate change.
“You cannot pick and choose — if you don’t accept climate change, you should not be given penicillin or painkillers or even visit a doctor,” he said.
“You should not be allowed to fly or drive a car either. But I guess that as most climate deniers also pick and choose the bits of the Bible they subscribe to as well, I should not be surprised.”
News.com.au isn’t the only media organisation to survey scientists.
The Australian Science Media Centre worked with the Australian National University to survey all scientists on the centre’s database, with more than 300 responding from all fields — not just climate scientists but also those in physics and medicine.
They found 94 per cent agreed there was solid evidence the Earth’s average temperature had been rising over the past few decades.
Not one scientist said it had not. Of the remaining scientists, 5 per cent said there was some evidence either way and under 1 per cent said they did not know.
In June, the Lowy Institute’s survey of 1200 adults found 59 per cent of Australians thought “global warming is a serious and pressing problem” about which “we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs”.

Scientists say we should move away from coal, shifting to renewable energy. David Ake AP

Almost 84 per cent supported renewables even if this meant the government investing more in infrastructure to make the system more reliable. Only 14 per cent thought the government should focus on traditional energy sources like coal and gas.
Dr Paul Read of Monash University said a “government divided is a government extremely confused”.
“If it cannot muster enough resources to get a straight answer on climate change, it has little business meddling in ultimately moot issues — economic growth, pensions, education, health, defence, technology, gender politics, gay marriage and so on — should climate change eventuate as predicted by our current world trajectories,” he said.
“The immediate impacts of a government divided on climate change means they can’t agree on what is and isn’t a priority — one big example will be lack of preparedness for the global heatwave predicted to 2022 and that trickles down to everything from public health and farming to massive bushfires.
“We will lose our food security for one. If they can’t agree on science, they can’t prepare for reality. They will leave us in the headlights of a semi-trailer getting faster and more unpredictable.”

A bushfire tearing through California last month. Scientists say climate change will bring more bushfires. Mark Ralston AFP

What Scientists Told Us

• John Quiggin, University of Queensland: The toxicity of the issue is not due, primarily, to conflicts of interest, which could be resolved through ordinary political processes. Rather the problem is that the issue has become bound up in right-wing culture wars.
• Peter Sainsbury, Climate and Health Alliance: Climate change is occurring at a rate that is far faster than anything seen in Earth’s recent history, and that it is principally due to human activity. If co-ordinated global action is not taken in the next few years to rapidly slow the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and reach zero net carbon emissions by 2050, there will be catastrophic consequences.
• Liz Hanna, Australian National University: The evidence supporting climate change exists in all areas of science, and it comes from all countries, and from all meteorological organisations. Collectively, humanity is causing the warming, so all of humanity has a responsibility to stop it, and stop it as fast as we can.
• Greg Skilbeck, University of Technology, Sydney: Scaremongering on energy prices and anything that will affect these, is seen as a very effective (political) campaigning tool, even though it has been consistently shown that rising energy prices are only about the greed of the energy companies and poor management of the infrastructure, and really nothing else.
• Chris Brown, Griffith University: Time spent debating the science on climate change delays decisions on acting to address climate change and its impacts. It is time wasted that our natural ecosystems and our economy cannot afford.

A dry cornfield in Ahlen, Germany. The German Government last month compensated thousands of farmers whose harvests had suffered as a result of this year’s extreme drought, which experts have linked to climate change. Martin Meissner AP

• Haydn Washington, UNSW Australia: They (the government) are betraying the future of future Australians and risking large parts of Australia becoming uninhabitable. This is irresponsible in the extreme.
• Dietmar Dommenget, Monash University: For the rest of the world, Australia used to be an environmental friendly place with no nuclear energy and an environment that is still beautiful and natural. But a country that is destroying its own natural wonder and does next to nothing to prevent global warming will not be popular for much longer.
• Olaf Meynecke, Griffith University: We are no longer in the position to wait or hope that the problem will solve itself. We are faced with mass extinctions, severe weather and the long-term loss of stability of our economy if climate action is delayed.
• Tom Worthington, Australian National University: There is plenty of hard science to say climate change is real. What we have to do now is help the community with what to do about it. We need to be putting in place actions now, such as investing in renewable energy, to save high costs to the community and the economy later.
• Linda Selvey, University of Queensland: This is an emergency. That is not an exaggeration, but an assertion that is backed by scientific evidence. We need to take more action than less and a divided government means that we do very little.
• Ian Lowe, Griffith University: The immediate impact of the current government policy paralysis (and mindless encouragement of new fossil fuel projects) is to accelerate the changes we are seeing — altered rainfall patterns, more extreme events, worse bushfires — as well as risking international sanctions for failing to meet our treaty obligations.

NSW farmer Ian Cargill inspects a dried out dam on Billaglen farm near Braidwood, NSW. Lukas Coch AAP

• Stephen Williams, James Cook University: Stop pretending there is any serious debate and start getting on with doing something rather than political grandstanding and using climate change as a scary topic to play political games. Climate change is the most serious challenge facing the world.
• Peter Rayner, University of Melbourne: It’s much better to squeeze the brakes gently than jam them on at the last minute, especially when we can see the brick wall a mile off.
• Bill Laurance, James Cook University: Australia’s political conservatives have shifted so far to the right that they’ve fallen off a cliff — and they’re dragging the rest of the country with them, consequences be damned.
• John Church, UNSW: Saying we do not want to discuss climate change and the drought is like arguing we do not care how much more Australian farmers and regional areas suffer in the future.
• Samantha Hepburn, Deakin University: As the Earth gets hotter, governments will increasingly confront tragic choices. Global climate change will cause severe food and water scarcity, resource conflict and a sea-level rise that will threaten major cities. Warming at the higher levels (5-6C) will be civilisation-altering.
• Andrew Blakers, Australian National University: Climate change is likely to become an ever more prominent political, engineering, environmental and business issue. The fact that solar and wind are both cheaper and have zero emissions virtually guarantees continued rapid growth throughout the first half of the 21st century.
• Steven Sherwood, UNSW: Division means uncertainty, which means lack of investment in new electricity hence higher electricity prices. The impact of such uncertainty on electricity prices has been vastly greater than the impact of whether we use coal, solar or wind or whatever. Eventually we will agree on climate change but it may be too late then to do very much.

A lamb stands next to its dead mother at a farm near Braidwood, NSW, as a result of the drought that’s gripping the nation — while the Government argues over climate change. Lukas Coch AAP

• Tony Matthews, Griffith University: Australia is underperforming in its response to climate change overall. The country continues to fall behind expectations in terms of emissions reductions, relative to many other developed economies.
• Peter Tangney, Flinders University: There is unequivocal evidence that the climate is changing. There is also unequivocal evidence that the climate is changing due to human interference.
• Colin Butler, Flinders University: Climate change represents an existential threat to civilisation. Catastrophe may yet be avoided, but is increasingly likely, with early signs already evident.
• Celia McMichael, University of Melbourne: Australia should be doing much more to shift to a clean economy and to urgently meet — or exceed — greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.
• Tullio Rossi, Animate Your Science: Let’s take the Great Barrier Reef situation as an example. Given the inestimable value of this wonder of the world, and the fact that we are seriously risking losing it because of climate change. Australia should be at the forefront of climate change action globally.

IMAGE

• Scott Kelly, University of Technology Sydney: While Australian politicians continue to argue between themselves, the rest of the world is going to move on and Australia will be left behind. If Australia is going to lead the way in renewable technology and build a society of the future, it can’t continue to support vested interests in old expensive technology such as coal.
• Ying Zhang, University of Sydney: We need better public engagement to increase the awareness of both risks and opportunities in responding to climate change. For example, better urban planning to accommodate more public and active transportation that could bring co-benefits of improved air quality and health status.
• Elizabeth Haworth, University of Tasmania: It is hard to explain Australia’s lack of action, considering the vulnerability of the population and business to climate change — perhaps due to lack of understanding of the scientific base, apathy due to ideology and/or being in thrall to big business rather than science.
• Jason Evans, UNSW: Australia has been increasing emissions in recent years but we need to decrease them to reach our Paris Agreement commitment. Then we need to continue decreasing them beyond that to limit the worst impacts of climate change.
• Paul Read, Monash University: We’ve lost decades of action and squandered opportunities for an economic adaptation that would have preserved a decent quality of life for future Australians.
• Anonymous: The absence of effective greenhouse gas emission reduction policies is a decision to continue high emissions from Australia. That is a decision to make climate change worse; more intense and more frequent heatwaves, greater sea level rise, reduced rainfall in southern Australia and more intense bushfires.

Links

• ‘Huge risk’ facing Earth’s ecosystem
• Image shows shocking Australian trend
• Ominous threat facing two Aussie cities
• Picture shows glimpse of climate chaos
• Climate link to Neanderthal disappearance
• Minister defends 'robust' climate talks 
• Morrison stands by Paris climate targets
• WA water reforms to cut climate risk 
• Image shows shocking Australian trend
• MP’s bizarre outburst sparks backlash
• Graph shows scary new milestone
• High Temperatures and Air Pollution May Increase Risk of Mental Illness, Suicide
• The Surprising Link Between Climate Change and Human Trafficking
• ‘Instability, Uncertainty and Chaos’ — How Climate Change Threatens National Security
• Kids Taking on Government: The New Normal?

Australia Tried To Water Down Climate Change Resolution At Pacific Islands Forum: Leader

The Guardian - Kate Lyons | Ben Doherty

PM of Tuvalu said a country ‘starting with capital A’ wanted qualifications made to a communique on climate change and emissions

Flags fly on Nauru for the Pacific Islands Forum. Australia attempted to resist the strong language in the Boe declaration which says climate change is the ‘single greatest threat’ to the Pacific. Photograph: Jason Oxenham/AP

Australia attempted to water down a resolution on climate change agreed by country representatives at the Pacific Islands Forum, a leader attending the event has claimed.
Pacific leaders issued the Boe declaration on Wednesday night, calling climate change “the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific” at the conclusion of the Pacific Islands Forum, which has been held in Nauru this week.
However the forum communique – which focused heavily on climate change and the need for emissions reductions – was endorsed by leaders “with qualification”.
When asked at a press conference if those qualifications came from a country “beginning with A”, Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu, confirmed that “the name of the qualifier, seeking qualifications [started] with capital A”.
Australia is the only nation in the Pacific to fit this description.
It appears Australia also did not support a section of agreement calling on the United States to return to the Paris agreement on climate change.
The communique made it clear that it was only “leaders of forum island countries” – a term that a forum spokesperson confirmed denoted all forum member countries other than Australia and New Zealand – who called on the US to return to the Paris agreement on climate change.
A spokesperson from the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said: “I can confirm that NZ absolutely supports the reference in the communique calling for the US to return to the Paris agreement.”
Guardian Australia has sought comment from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Sopoaga said it was essential the US return to the agreement and commit to reducing emissions.
“We cannot have comprehensive robust emissions reductions unless the biggest emitter is there in the process, we cannot leave the US out, they are responsible for 25% of global emissions,” he said.
The Boe declaration committed all forum countries to meeting their Paris agreement targets – a question of fierce domestic political debate in Australia.
“Leaders reaffirmed the importance of immediate urgent action to combat climate change and … called on countries, particularly large emitters, to fully implement their … mitigation targets,” the declaration said.
The president of host nation Nauru, Baron Waqa, said despite the fact the declaration included a qualification from Australia “that doesn’t make it any weaker”.
But the Australian government’s apparent ambivalence towards a low-emissions climate policy has disquieted its Pacific neighbours.
Low-lying island Pacific countries including Kiribati are forecast to be among the first on the planet to disappear underwater if rising sea levels are not arrested.
Australia’s attempts to resist the strong language in the Boe declaration fits with its past behaviour at international meetings, according to a Pacific climate change representative who has represented his nation at COP summits for the last five years.
Speaking to Guardian Australia ahead of the Pacific Islands Forum, Xavier Matsutaro, the national climate change coordinator for Palau, in the north-west Pacific, said Australia was “responsible for making our declarations weaker sometimes in the region”.
“So there’s been forums that were formulated so [Australia] won’t be involved in it, they’re not members, so that whatever language that really reflects our views and our circumstances is actually reflected in the declaration,” he said.
He also likened Australia to an "abusive spouse", saying Australia provided aid to the region to deal with the effects of global warming but undermining attempts to halt its progress.

Links

• Australia signs declaration saying climate change 'single greatest threat' to Pacific
• Australia relationship with Pacific on climate change 'dysfunctional' and 'abusive'
• Australia’s authority in Pacific 'being eroded by refusal to address climate change'
• Pacific Islands Forum: what is it and why have some media been banned?
• Nauru child health crisis threatens to overshadow Pacific Islands Forum
• Nauru's asylum seeker tents demolished ahead of Pacific Islands Forum
• Australia must not be afraid of its obligations to Pacific climate migrants
• Pacific leaders voice frustration over Australia's position on climate change

BBC Admits ‘We Get Climate Change Coverage Wrong Too Often’

The Guardian - Damian Carrington

Briefing sent to editorial staff on global warming says ‘you do not need a denier to balance the debate’

The BBC has been criticised for interviews with the former chancellor Nigel Lawson, a noted climate denier. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

The BBC has accepted it gets coverage of climate change “wrong too often” and told staff: “You do not need a ‘denier’ to balance the debate.”
In a briefing note sent to all staff warning them to be aware of false balance, the corporation has offered a training course on how to report on global warming. The move follows a series of apologies and censures for failing to challenge climate sceptics during interviews, including Nigel Lawson.
The briefing note, obtained by the website Carbon Brief, was sent on Thursday by Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s director of news and current affairs. It includes a statement of BBC editorial policy that begins: “Climate change has been a difficult subject for the BBC, and we get coverage of it wrong too often.”
It then states: “Manmade climate change exists: If the science proves it we should report it.” In the section warning on false balance it says: “To achieve impartiality, you do not need to include outright deniers of climate change in BBC coverage, in the same way you would not have someone denying that Manchester United won 2-0 last Saturday. The referee has spoken.”
The Guardian revealed in October that the BBC had apologised for an interview with Lord Lawson on the Radio 4 Today programme after admitting it had breached its own editorial guidelines for allowing him to claim that global temperatures have not risen in the past decade. The regulator Ofcom subsequently ruled the BBC had breached broadcasting rules.
The Today programme was also censured by the BBC complaints unit for an interview with Lawson in February 2014 and has been criticised for failing to implement fully the findings of the BBC Trust’s 2011 review into the “accuracy of the BBC’s coverage of science”.
The four-page briefing note sent by Unsworth starts with a blunt statement on the science: “Climate change IS happening.” It also covers the implications of global warming: “There is a general consensus that it could be devastating in many different ways.” It ends with “common misconceptions” used to deny manmade warming, including that “not all scientists think manmade climate change is real” and “climate change has happened before”.
The briefing note does not completely rule out including climate sceptics in BBC coverage: “There are occasions where contrarians and sceptics should be included. These may include, for instance, debating the speed and intensity of what will happen in the future, or what policies government should adopt.”
But it adds: “Journalists need to be aware of the guest’s viewpoint and how to challenge it effectively. As with all topics, we must make clear to the audience which organisation the speaker represents, potentially how that group is funded and whether they are speaking with authority from a scientific perspective.” Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation does not disclose its source of funding.
Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank and a former BBC environment correspondent, said: “The creation of this course is welcome news. The BBC was wrong in my view to scrap the science seminars that it set up in 2011 – very few producers and presenters have a science background.
“The course will be criticised by some – words like ‘stifling the debate’ – but those voices are decreasingly important in the country. I think the real takeaway from this is that the BBC has decided it no longer cares about evidence-free allegations of ‘bias’. It’s to be commended for putting its mojo on display.”
Prof Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, said: “This set of BBC guidelines is long overdue. There have been too many occasions when the BBC’s audience has been misled over the realities of climate change.”
Hawkins analysed the briefing note for Carbon Brief saying: “The ‘editorial policy’ could be more explicit about what would constitute false balance in its coverage. In the past, too many inaccurate statements made about climate science have not been effectively challenged by the interviewer.”
In August, 57 prominent environmentalists, including Jonathon Porritt and Caroline Lucas, wrote to the Guardian declaring: “We will no longer debate those who deny that human-caused climate change is real. There are plenty of vital debates to be had around climate chaos and what to do about it; this is simply no longer one of them. We urge broadcasters to move on, as we are doing.”
The BBC declined to offer further comment.

Links

• I won’t go on the BBC if it supplies climate change deniers as ‘balance’
• Climate change is real. We must not offer credibility to those who deny it
• BBC apologises over interview with climate denier Lord Lawson
• BBC climate coverage is evolving, but too slowly
• Times's climate change coverage 'distorted' and 'poor quality'
• MPs criticise BBC for 'false balance' in climate change coverage
• BBC coverage criticised for favouring climate change sceptics
• BBC coverage of IPCC climate report criticised for sceptics' airtime
• Climate change? Try catastrophic climate breakdown

Climate Change Could Affect Human Evolution. Here's How.

NBC News - Scott Solomon*

Climate change could reduce racial differences, in part, by triggering massive migrations. NBCU News Group

As climate change brings rising temperatures, droughts, shifting patterns of precipitation and longer growing seasons, plants and animals are evolving to keep pace.

Biologists have observed squirrels and salmon developing at an accelerated pace, causing them to reproduce at a younger age. Earlier summers have caused some flowers to bloom earlier in the year. And corals are forging new relationships with microscopic algae to survive in warmer, more acidic seas.
As the planet continues to warm, evolutionary changes are expected in other species as well — including Homo sapiens. Climate change will alter the internal workings of our bodies in subtle but significant ways and will likely cause a noticeable shift in our appearance.

Inside the body
A warmer climate means malaria, West Nile virus and other diseases long confined primarily to the tropics will spread into temperate zones. As a result, people living in the U.S. and other developed nations will be exposed to these illnesses, and our immune systems will be forced to evolve new defenses. That, in turn, could cause other, noninfectious diseases.
Two blood disorders — sickle cell and thalassemia — arose and continue to exist because they have a beneficial side effect: resistance to malaria. Such disorders, or new ones, may soon appear if malaria moves into populated areas of North America, East Asia and Europe.
Similarly, our digestive systems will evolve in response to shifts in food availability — where crops and livestock can be cultivated. The ability to digest milk in adulthood evolved among groups in the Middle East and North Africa that began raising cattle. Future generations may evolve better abilities to tolerate sugar or fat.
Changing diets will also trigger changes in our microbiomes — the bacteria and other microorganisms that live in our guts and help to keep us healthy. Vegetarians tend to harbor a different mix of bacteria than meat eaters, and these changes could be exaggerated if prolonged droughts make it too costly to raise livestock for meat.

External changes
While these changes will be of enormous interest to biologists, they will be largely invisible. But as we change on the inside, we'll also be changing on the outside. Evidence suggests that a warming planet could melt away differences between human races — or population groups, as scientists more accurately call them.
The reason why climate change could reduce racial differences is that it will trigger massive migrations. In recent decades the world has become more urbanized, with people moving into large cities in coastal areas. But as polar ice melts and sea levels rise, large numbers of people will be forced to flee the coasts. And as droughts become more common and more severe, people living in more arid areas will have to move to places with more reliable sources of water.

Environment

These migrations will erode the geographic barriers that once separated human populations. In fact, this process is already underway. As of 2017, 258 million people were living in a country other than the one they were born in — an increase of 49 percent since 2000, according to a report from the United Nations. A World Bank report released in March predicts that climate change will cause 140 million people to migrate by 2050, with those now living in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America especially likely to migrate.
One consequence of large-scale migrations is what biologists call gene flow, a type of evolution caused by the blending of genes between populations. When people from different populations mate and reproduce, their genes intermingle in their children. That can lead to combinations of traits not seen in either parent or in the populations they come from — like the dark skin and blue eyes of Cape Verde islanders, the result of interbreeding between Portuguese and West Africans.

Shifting skin color
One of the most obvious effects of gene flow may be greater similarity in skin color.
Skin color differences came about a result of natural selection in different human populations. The pigment eumelanin makes skin darker, which helps protect against harsh sunlight. But too much eumelanin can make it hard for the body to produce vitamin D, which is needed to build healthy bones. So over many thousands of years, human populations evolved varying levels of skin pigmentation as they spread across the globe, with natural selection balancing the cost of having too much eumelanin (which can indirectly cause bone deformities) versus having too little (which can lead to cancer and birth defects).
As a result, skin color came to closely match the intensity of sunlight in different regions — darker near the equator and lighter near the poles.
But in today's world, with sunscreen and vitamin supplements, natural selection is less relevant to ongoing changes in human skin pigmentation than gene flow. Because skin color is controlled by many genes, parents whose skin color differs tend to have children with intermediate skin tones. And so in five to 10 generations (125 to 250 years), we may see fewer people with dark skin or pale skin and more with a brown or olive complexion. Having both dark skin and light eyes may become more common.
Blending of races is already well underway in ethnically diverse countries like Brazil, Singapore and the U.S. A Pew report from 2017 found that the number of multiracial births in the U.S. rose from 1 percent in 1970 to 10 percent in 2013. And the increase will continue — the multiracial population is projected to grow by 174 percent over the next four decades.
The bottom line? As people around the world become more physically similar to one another, it's possible that racism might slowly fade.

*Scott Solomon teaches ecology, evolution and scientific communication at Rice University. He is the author of "Future Humans: Inside the Science of Our Continuing Evolution."

Links

• 'Allergy explosion' across much of the country linked to climate change
• Scientists sound the alarm about climate change amid global heat wave
• Climate Change Already Hurting Our Health and Economy, Report Warns
• Rising seas could knock out the internet — and sooner than scientists thought
• Can we turn carbon dioxide to stone to fight climate change?
• Antarctica is melting faster than we knew. Here's what it will take to save it.

Climate Change May Have Contributed To The Extinction Of Neanderthals And Rise Of Modern Humans

Forbes - David Bressan

A research team of the University of Cologne in Germany has published an open access paper arguing that a series of cold, dry phases during the last European ice-age triggered the demise and finally lead to the extinction of Neanderthals in Europe.

The oldest evidence of any hominids in Europe date back 700,000 to 600,000 years ago. At the time, Europe was covered in forests, with many large animals, like elephants, rhinoceroses, horses, deer and large bovines, roaming free.
As prey species were abundant, different subspecies of the genus Homo coexisted contemporarily. From 350,000 to 40,000 years ago Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis) were the dominant  human species in Europe.

Skullcap of H. neanderthalensis from Central Europe.D.Bressan

As during the ice-age, starting some 100,000 years ago, the climate cooled and Central Europe became inhospitable, they survived in refugial areas located along the southern borders of the European continent.In the next 60,000 years the climate oscillated between long, cold phases and short warm intervals. Pollen analysis shows that during the cold phases the forests, covering the continent during the warm intervals, were quickly replaced by an almost tree-free tundra.
Some 43,000 to 40,000 years ago sites with artifacts by Neanderthals disappear from the archaeological record, to be replaced by the culture of the Aurignacian, characterized by artifacts (like stone tools, prehistoric art and even musical instruments) attributed to the modern human species H. sapiens.
Analyzing the annually deposited layers of stalagmites from two caves in modern Romania, the scientists were able to reconstruct the climate in Central and Eastern Europe between 44,000 and 40,000 years ago.

In this 2013 photo provided by Bogdan Onac, researcher Vasile Ersek stands in the Ascunsa Cave in Romania, one of the studied sites. B.Onac

Chemical changes in the deposited layers suggest that the climate got more unstable and deteriorated, going from warm and humid to cold and dry. In response, as happened previously, the forests covering most of the continent were quickly replaced by a tree-free tundra.
The last traces of Neanderthals are found before this cold phase. During the cold phase, any signs of human activity disappear completely. When the climate warms again new artifacts appear in the archaeological record, attributed to modern humans.
The research argues that in the cold, dry tundra also large animals were rare. Neanderthals, a society of specialized hunters, would have faced a hard time to survive without large preys to hunt. Unlike previous cold phases, also this time the southern refugial areas were occupied by a new human species, as modern humans were migrating from the Near East into Europe.
The already small populations of Neanderthals were forced to stay in the tundra and unable to hunt there large prey, they numbers quickly dwindled.
Finally Neanderthals went extinct 40,000 years ago. The now empty landscape was quickly claimed by modern humans, migrating from the southern borders into the heart of Europe, as the climate became more hospitable again 40,000 to 35,000 years ago.

Links

• Impact of climate change on the transition of Neanderthals to modern humans in Europe
• Climate Change Could Drastically Change Ecosystems Around the World
• 6 Unexpected Effects of Climate Change
• Past and future global transformation of terrestrial ecosystems under climate change

Weatherwatch: Charles Keeling's CO2 Curve Shows Drastic Rise In 60 Years

The Guardian - Jeremy Plester

Scientist’s measurements begun 60 years ago show relentless rise of CO2 in the atmosphere

Mauna Loa weather observatory, at 3,400 metres, which measures weather and atmospheric CO2. Photograph: James L. Amos/Getty Images 

A remarkable run of observations began 60 years ago at a weather station high on a volcano in Hawaii.
Charles Keeling began monitoring carbon dioxide in the clean air at 3,400 metres (11,150ft) on Mauna Loa, far away from vegetation and urban pollution.
His first measurements in 1958 showed 315 parts per million (ppm) of CO₂ in the atmosphere, and what caught him by surprise was that every year after that the levels of CO₂ rose relentlessly in an upward curve, thanks to the carbon pollution pumped into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Now the CO₂ has reached more than 400ppm, probably the highest for 800,000 years.
It sounds a tiny amount of extra CO₂, but it is having a huge impact on the climate by trapping more heat on Earth, driving world temperatures upwards.
CO₂ in the air is now so plentiful that plants are growing fewer leaf pores to absorb the gas than they did centuries ago, and more CO₂ is being absorbed into the world’s seas, making them more acidic.
Keeling’s curve of rising CO₂ levels is a shocking picture of how much the world’s atmosphere has changed in 60 years, with no end in sight.

Links

• Europe's extreme June heat clearly linked to climate change, research shows
• Weatherwatch: 'dead water' makes ships seem dead in the water
• World weatherwatch: Hurricane Lane brings severe flooding to Hawaii
• Weatherwatch: climate change raises flood risks for river communities
• Weatherwatch: the relentless summer of 1976

Interactive Map: Climate In 2050

The Revelator - Dipika Kadaba

How will rising temperatures affect your community? We mapped what the world will look like under current climate change projections.

The past few summers have brought some of the hottest months on record. Unfortunately, things are only projected to get worse as climate change continues to push temperatures up around the world.
The global impacts of rising temperatures — including more hurricanes, sea-level rise and drought — will probably sound familiar. But a temperature change of just a couple of degrees can also have dramatic effects locally. Studies have shown that a single-degree rise in temperature can increase local levels of air pollution, allow disease-carrying ticks to expand into an area, cause the local extinction of native species and even cause enough heat stress to increase rates of mental illness.
How bad could things become where you live if we continue on our current trajectory? Explore the map below to see how temperatures will change in your area — and around the world — by the year 2050.

LARGE INTERACTIVE MAP

Sources and methods:

World Temperature Change 2050 Scenario: CCSM4 model under Scenario 8.5 by ESRI.

Temperature change is calculated between historical levels and the year 2050 under Scenario 8.5, which represents a high-end emissions scenario if global emissions remain unmitigated. The amount of uncertainty in projections increases at smaller geographic scales. While broad regional trends can be robustly projected, some variation from these averaged projections should be expected at local levels.
Global administrative boundaries data by GADM.
Temperature change data were averaged by administrative boundaries. Abrupt changes between adjacent areas can be seen in some cases since natural gradients present in the raw data are smoothed in this averaging process.
Data were analyzed using ArcGIS Pro.

Links

• High Temperatures and Air Pollution May Increase Risk of Mental Illness, Suicide
• The Surprising Link Between Climate Change and Human Trafficking
• ‘Instability, Uncertainty and Chaos’ — How Climate Change Threatens National Security
• Kids Taking on Government: The New Normal?