29/09/2019

The Week Australia Failed On Climate Change

The Saturday Paper - Rick Morton

While Scott Morrison toured Trump’s America, the world’s top climate scientists fought it out over their latest warning of the coming disaster. 
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and United States President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, as Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg addressed world leaders at a climate summit in New York, and Scott Morrison toured a McDonald’s drive-through in Chicago, some of the planet’s top climate scientists were locked in “tense” negotiations in Monaco.
History tends to happen all at once, although its parts are by no means equal.
At the Grimaldi Forum, which hugs the water in Monaco’s eastern beach quartier, more than 100 scientists from almost 40 countries met to debate the final wording of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on oceans and ice systems. It asks a critical question: What happens to the Earth’s oceans, glaciers, surface ice and permafrost – on which a latticework of ecosystems depend – if humans fail to halt warming?
The director of the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute, Professor Mark Howden, was in the room, going over the text word by word, line by line, into the early morning.
“We have got a problem,” he tells The Saturday Paper from Monaco. “Change is happening, it is happening quickly, and the implications are profound.”
That the report says as much is an achievement. All governments and scientists involved in the process must vet and ultimately approve the document before its release. Diplomatically, Howden notes there were “different views and different emphases” from various quarters.
“It was particularly true for some countries that have a vested interest in continuing to burn and sell fossil fuels,” he says.
These were the nations squarely in the sights of activist Greta Thunberg in New York.
“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones,” she told the United Nations Climate Action Summit. “People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing.
“We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
Although more strident, none of what she said was at odds with the IPCC’s expert report.
In 1170 pages, the report speaks with an urgency rarely seen in such documents. The word “unprecedented” is used 48 times.
It is “very likely”, for instance, that the levels of Arctic Sea ice have been falling by almost 13 per cent each decade, a rate scientists say has not been seen in the past 1000 years. Meanwhile, between 2006 and 2015, the rate of global mean sea-level rise hit about 3.6 millimetres each year. This is “unprecedented over the last century” and more than double the rise seen between 1901 and 1990.
Each scenario covered in the report represents its own clear and near-present threat. The finely linked feedback loops across the world operate like a Rube Goldberg machine, each change poised to nudge several others or trigger a cascading series of catastrophes, which could fall beyond the scope of human intervention.
In parts of the system, the report says, the “acceleration of ice flow and retreat in Antarctica, which has the potential to lead to sea-level rise of several metres within a few centuries, is observed”.
“… These changes may be the onset of an irreversible ice sheet instability.”
Crucially, earlier reports did not expect these sea-level rises to happen this century.
In this instance, as with dramatic and “widespread permafrost thaw”, which the report also predicts, the complex interactions between this degradation and later collapse are simply not known.
What scientists do understand, with some confidence, is that somewhere between 1460 and 1600 gigatons of organic carbon are stored within Arctic and boreal permafrost. This is almost twice the amount of all the carbon in the atmosphere, which will be released if this permafrost melts.
There will be tipping points.
As it stands, the global temperature is one degree warmer than it was in pre-industrial times. But these averages can have the unfortunate effect of masking the true scale of the extremes that are built into the calculation.
“We are seeing really devastating impacts right now at one degree of warming with regional variations of up to 10 degrees in places like northern Europe, which makes those places actually uninhabitable for some people.”
“That one-degree average is across the entire globe,” says Howden. “If you look only at the land area, that has gone up to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So immediately you can see the usefulness of relying on a worldwide figure.
“Look at the last ice age on this planet, that featured average temperatures 5 to 6 degrees colder than they are now. So now when we consider the scenarios of the future – of 3, 4 and 5 degrees – all of a sudden you are getting a feel for the scale of the change at an earth systems level.”
Climate change and its language of averages is a bell curve, which has been shifted along its axis by human emissions, totally altering the normal distribution. While the middle may not change appreciably, what was once an extreme becomes more common. Spikes, previously unseen in the data, start to emerge.
According to the IPCC, once-in-a-century events are projected to occur at least once a year by 2050, regardless of any further progress the world makes in controlling carbon output.
It is already too late, even if humans manage to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, to stop warm-water corals – such as those that form the Great Barrier Reef – from moving into the “very high risk” category with significant losses and local extinctions.
The report cites Tasmania as a case study, noting a marine heatwave that stretched for 256 days from 2015 and into 2016. This coincided with drought, fires and floods in Tasmania. The total damage bill was $US300 million.
Man-made climate change meant the duration of that heatwave was 330 times more likely and its intensity almost seven times more likely than it otherwise would have been.
This was the week into which Prime Minister Scott Morrison flew on the Australian government’s new VIP jet, an Airbus A330 his office has taken to calling “Shark One”, for a series of events with United States President Donald Trump.
Australia was not invited to speak at the climate summit in New York – along with Japan, Saudi Arabia and the US – because only those nations with ambitious emissions reduction plans were given the floor.
Morrison addressed the UN General Assembly on Thursday, after the climate summit, and said Australia is “doing our bit”.
“We are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030,” he said.
“This is a credible, fair, responsible and achievable contribution to global climate change action.”
Morrison pointed out that Australia is responsible for just 1.3 per cent of global emissions and the nation’s coal exports make up 5.5 per cent of worldwide output. Of course, the Morrison government wishes that figure were higher.
As the prime minister’s trip to the US entered full swing, freedom of information documents released to the Australian Conservation Foundation revealed the extent to which the Australian government is pushing coal exports overseas.
The background briefs for Resources Minister Matt Canavan’s August visit to Bangladesh, India and Singapore highlighted the potential of coal exports to India growing even further on the back of the nation’s investment in the Adani project in the Galilee Basin. This, despite “sensitivities” concerning environmental groups.
Ahead of Morrison’s trip to Vietnam, also in August, a briefing notes: “We strongly recommend a focus on coal exports to Vietnam as part of the Prime Minister’s planned visit.”
Speaking at the UN this week, Morrison appeared to direct a specific comment at Thunberg, and her fellow young climate activists.
“We should let our kids be kids, teenagers be teenagers,” he said.
Earlier, he cautioned against “needless anxiety”.
According to the world’s leading climate scientists, though, there is urgent need for alarm.
Professor Howden says the world is now “way outside the historical envelope” for intense variation in climate patterns.
The reality of climate change evolves in ways that may not be immediately obvious. New systems are challenged by the very issues they are meant to address.
Take the largest supercomputer in the southern hemisphere, for instance. Data that underpins global climate analysis for the IPCC – too big for any one nation to handle – is stored on a network around the world. The Australasian contingent is held by the Raijin installation at the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) facility located on the Australian National University campus in Canberra.
Changes to the atmosphere will mean the state-of-the-art evaporative cooling system – installed to keep this data from melting down – “will become problematic sooner” on back-up tape drives. Essentially, atmospheric changes mean the system could fail.
Researchers have raised the alarm with The Saturday Paper that there is no true offsite back-up of this data, nor any of the Bureau of Meteorology archives, Landsat images and other globally and nationally significant collections.
Despite considerable federal government funding, none of this has been designated critical infrastructure.
Located just a kilometre to the east of Black Mountain’s lowest reaches, the centre is on the edge of a bushfire-prone zone, which stops just before the ANU campus. The ACT government says these are reviewed frequently. Put bluntly though, the data that records climate change could be destroyed by climate change.
In 2003, a deadly firestorm ripped through the ACT, the worst in the territory’s history, killing four and razing almost 500 houses along Canberra’s fringe.
In the aftermath, an inquiry was asked to account for what was and what might have been. Its report noted perhaps the only thing that stopped the fires ripping across Black Mountain and into central Canberra was a blaze that had gutted large swaths of Stromlo Forest Park on Christmas Day two years earlier, burning right up to the lawns of the Australian Mint.
A spokesman for the NCI told The Saturday Paper that tape back-ups are held on two sites on the same campus with a third, much smaller site in a secret location, also in Canberra.
“For data on disk we have no other copy,” they said, adding that the NCI attempts to make the system as robust as possible. “But ultimately it is a single copy of data.”
Compare this with the data centres for the online retailer Amazon, which in Australia are located on three different flood plains with three different power supplies, among other fail-safes.
“Unfortunately, Australian research is not funded at the same levels as Amazon data centres,” the NCI spokesman said.
“A ‘simple’ replication of the system to another location would entail not only just the $70 million [currently being spent on the NCI’s upgrade] but also the associated data and cloud infrastructures, and would run to at least $100 million.”
The researchers note a “significant portion” of Australian research into earth systems and environmental issues simply could not be done without the NCI.
The implications of this research are broad.
Fiona Armstrong, executive director of the Climate and Health Alliance, says climate change is already affecting the health of hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
Take the Townsville floods earlier this year. Melioidosis, a deadly disease borne from bacteria that gets stirred up in floodwater, killed one person and left about eight in intensive care. Severe ramping at Townsville Hospital left many others in need of care that just wasn’t available in the weeks after the heatwave last summer. This led to a war of words between Queensland politicians, with the opposition claiming the state had not invested in hospital services. The Palaszczuk government rebuked this, saying it was an unprecedented event.
“That’s how climate change works. Everything about it is unpredictable and unprecedented,” Armstrong says.
“We are seeing really devastating impacts right now at one degree of warming with regional variations of up to 10 degrees in places like northern Europe, which makes those places actually uninhabitable for some people.
“There appears to be a long tail for heatwave impacts, particularly for people with chronic conditions who can suffer adverse health effects for some weeks after the main event.”
Meanwhile, faced with rising risk of climate disaster, insurance companies have become increasingly averse to covering homes in potentially hazardous regions of Australia.
Following the 2011 floods in Roma and Emerald, Suncorp stopped writing new policies for any property in those areas until a new flood levee was built.
Submissions released this week from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s inquiry into insurance in northern Australia reveal how serious insurance affordability has become, owing almost entirely to a changing climate.
“Suncorp understands in north Queensland alone there could be approximately 100,000 homes that may not meet current wind-load codes for roofs and other building features,” the insurance firm says in its submission to the inquiry.
“These homes remain vulnerable to suffering major damage in the next cyclone and as an insurer we must price for this risk.”
According to Suncorp, and almost all of the other insurers, it is simply not enough to provide government-backed subsidies to homeowners, as these would need to remain in place forever.
In its submission, Suncorp noted one home in the US state of Texas, which has been flooded and rebuilt 40 times using more than $US1 million in government aid. The house itself is worth only $72,400.
“There is a very real risk that, without appropriate planning and infrastructure, regions which are vulnerable to severe weather events, may become ‘uninsurable’,” the Insurance Australia Group says in its submission.
“Our changing climate is likely to increase hazard exposure, which will necessarily drive an increase in insurance premiums,” the Insurance Council of Australia says.
In its report on the costs of inaction earlier this year, the Climate Council found that one in 19 property owners will not be able to afford insurance by the end of the next decade.
As it stands, many homes are insured for so-called one-in-100-year events, but that will need to change to cover disasters that were previously unthinkable. Insurers must now look to one-in-500-year events and even one-in-a-thousand year disasters.
The insurance industry is built on anxiety. In this scenario, it is entirely necessary.
On their own, these are crises. The future will require all nations to deal with them at the same time, and a litany of others.
Faced with the monumental, Australia is committed to the incremental: creating a “circular plastics economy” and tackling overfishing, as Morrison spruiked at the UN, while ignoring the threat of rising emissions.
If the world follows our lead, the planet will experience 3 to 4 degrees of warming – a catastrophe in every sense of the word.
Professor Howden says there is hope, however, and that another kind of tipping point has been reached.
“The combination of climate extreme after climate extreme right across the globe…” he says. “With the climate strikes, kids, Greta and industry getting behind this, as well as the nation’s regulators, change is coming.”

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Hotter Oceans, Wilder Weather, Less Ice: The IPCC Upgrades Projections To Catastrophic

Sydney Morning Herald - Royce Millar | Benjamin Preiss

Sea levels will rise higher and faster than previously predicted under drastically revised projections released on Wednesday night by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
A new IPCC report says inaction on climate change will likely result in sea level rise of 1.1 metres by 2100 - up from the 2013 projection of more than 90cm. Without action, the seas will be five metres higher by 2300.
Gentoo penguins stand on rocks in Antarctica. Credit: AP
Talking points
  • Global sea level rises are predicted at 110cm by 2100 and by 5m by 2300.
  • Part of the cause is rapidly melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.
  • Sea level has risen by around 15cm in the 20th century. It is now accelerating.
  • This means more coral bleaching, storms, flooding and lower fish stocks.
  • Marine heatwaves have doubled in frequency since 1982.
The IPCC report, an update of the IPCC’s 2013 oceans report, warns that already stressed coastlines face bigger waves and storm surges as oceans warm and ice melts. In particular it highlights that ice loss from Greenland and Antarctic glaciers and ice sheets is contributing to accelerating sea level rises.
Low-lying coastal communities face regular extreme flooding by mid-century with some islands and coastal settlements to be made uninhabitable. Even if political action can cap global warming to two degrees Celsius, the report warns that warming oceans and melting sea ice glaciers will raise sea levels by 30 to 60cm by 2100.
The authors of the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, released in Monaco on Wednesday night Australian time, say their findings are a stark reminder for governments of the need to slash emissions.
The report comes the same week Prime Minister Scott Morrison was under the global spotlight over his failure to attend the United Nations climate summit in New York, even though he was in the US at the time. Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley said the report highlighted the importance of addressing emissions and Australia was committed to meeting its international targets.
"Australia is a world leader in the protection and sustainable use of the ocean and we are investing in world leading marine science."

'Faster than expected'
The report highlights how the ocean and the cryosphere – the frozen parts of the planet – play a critical role for life on Earth. About 670 million people live in high mountain regions and 680 million people in low-lying coastal zones and depend directly on these systems. Scientists expect more than one billion people to live by the coast globally by 2050.
“The open sea, the Arctic, the Antarctic and the high mountains may seem far away to many people,” said Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC, “but we depend on them and are influenced by them directly and indirectly in many ways – for weather and climate, for food and water, for energy, trade, transport, recreation and tourism, for health and wellbeing, for culture and identity.
“If we reduce emissions sharply, consequences for people and their livelihoods will still be challenging , but potentially more manageable for those who are most vulnerable,” Lee said.
Scientists discuss sea level rise, tropical cyclone and wave climate projections as part of the IPCC process. Credit: Mike Muzurakis
The report notes changes are occurring faster than expected, and losses from Greenland and Antarctic glaciers and ice sheets in particular are contributing to sea level rise. It also predicts that glaciers in Europe, eastern Africa, the tropical Andes and Indonesia will lose more than 80 per cent of their current ice mass by 2100 under high emission scenarios.
With further warming, flooding events that occurred once per century in the past will occur every year by mid-century in many places.
In Australia 80 per cent of the population live within 50 kilometres of the coast. Government reports have already warned of inundation in bayside suburbs such as Elwood and Altona in Melbourne and Collaroy-Narrabeen in Sydney.
Icebergs float away as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland. Scientists are trying to understand the alarmingly rapid melting of the ice. Credit: AP
The IPCC also warns of increased coral bleaching, more storms triggering coastal flooding, declining fish stocks and threats to food security. Even if emissions are cut the Great Barrier Reef is changing.
But it also highlights the extreme conditions experienced in Tasmania in the summer of 2015-2016 as an example of the risks of marine heatwave and the impact of multiple events, including bushfire, coinciding.
That summer Tasmania’s shellfish and fisheries suffered widespread disease with economic losses to Tasmania estimated to have been about $442 million.

Days on the beach
Dr Kathy McInnes, a senior CSIRO scientist and co-author of the IPCC report, said communities around Australia’s southern coast faced multiple challenges.
“Rising sea levels would impact on our coastlines and projected increasing warming and wave heights in the Southern ocean are likely to exacerbate problems such as coastal erosion that are already being felt in many coastal communities along our southern coastlines.”
Dr McInnes said the special report reinforced the need to to keep global warming to well below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels while trying to limit warming to 1.5 degrees – the Paris Agreement target. She said it was now urgent that the world move to low emissions technology in en
ergy, land and ecosystems, urban and infrastructure and industry.
The Australian Conservation Foundation said the IPCC report was a timely reminder of Australia’s obligation to step up action on cutting emissions to help protect its coast.
“Australians love days on the beach and getting out on the water – 21 million of us live within 50 kilometres of the coast – runaway climate change challenges all this and more,” said Australian Conservation Foundation Chief Executive Officer, Kelly O’Shanassy. “If we continue polluting our atmosphere, the oceans will continue to cop it – and humans will bear the costs."
Australian Coastal Councils Association chair Barry Sammels said houses would “absolutely” be lost if sea levels rose by 1.1 metres. He called for urgent action from all three levels of government to tackle the impact of rising seas.
Australian National University climate experts say the new IPCC report is a “wake-up call to the world about the devastating consequences of failing to act to address climate change". Associate Professor Nerilie Abram is a lead author of the IPCC report and said that despite the grim picture the report paints for Australia’s coast, there was still time to avoid the worst scenario.
The IPCC is made up of 195 IPCC member governments. More than 100 authors from 36 countries assessed the latest scientific literature related to the ocean and cryosphere, referencing about 7000 scientific publications.
A Victorian government spokeswoman said the government would consider the IPCC report as it finalised its marine and coastal policy.
NSW Environment Minister Matthew Kean said his government was taking "decisive" action on climate change. "Our government was elected on a policy of net zero emissions by 2050 and we are working towards delivering that," he said.
"The NSW Government monitors sea levels and is providing $83.6 million to help coastal communities respond to coastal management challenges.”

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Extreme Sea Level Events ‘Will Hit Once A Year By 2050’

The Guardian - 

Climate report says intense storms and loss of marine life are already inevitable
A child walks through floodwaters near a pier in California. The climate crisis can expose millions to flooding. Photograph: Ana Venegas/AP
Quick guide
The IPCC report in numbers

5.4 metres: highest likely sea level rise by 2300, if global carbon emissions are not cut.

653bn tonnes: average ice melted in Greenland, Antarctica and mountain glaciers every year from 2006-2016, equivalent to 500 Olympic swimming pools every minute.

100-1,000 times: the increase in coastal flood damages expected in 2100 unless major adaptation efforts are made.

1.8 billion people: the number likely to be directly affected by sea level rise on low-lying coasts and melting glaciers in high mountain regions in 2050.

1,500bn tonnes: the carbon stored in permafrost, almost double all the carbon in the atmosphere.

7,000: the number of scientific articles considered by the 104 expert authors from 36 countries.
Extreme sea level events that used to occur once a century will strike every year on many coasts by 2050, no matter whether climate heating emissions are curbed or not, according to a landmark report by the world’s scientists.
The stark assessment of the climate crisis in the world’s oceans and ice caps concludes that many serious impacts are already inevitable, from more intense storms to melting permafrost and dwindling marine life.
But far worse impacts will hit without urgent action to cut fossil fuel emissions, including eventual sea level rise of more than 4 metres in the worst case, an outcome that would redraw the map of the world and harm billions of people.
The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and approved by its 193 member nations, says that “all people on Earth depend directly or indirectly on the ocean” and ice caps and glaciers to regulate the climate and provide water and oxygen. But it finds unprecedented and dangerous changes being driven by global heating.
Sea level rise is accelerating as losses from Greenland and Antarctica increase, and the ocean is getting hotter, more acidic and less oxygenated. All these trends will continue to the end of the century, the IPCC report said.
Half the world’s megacities, and almost 2 billion people, live on coasts. Even if heating is restricted to just 2C, scientists expect the impact of sea level rise to cause several trillion dollars of damage a year, and result in many millions of migrants.
“The future for low-lying coastal communities looks extremely bleak,” said Prof Jonathan Bamber at Bristol University in the UK, who is not one of the report’s authors. “But the consequences will be felt by all of us. There is plenty to be concerned about for the future of humanity and social order from the headlines in this report.”
The new IPCC projections of likely sea level rise by 2100 are higher than those it made in 2014, due to unexpectedly fast melting in Antarctica. Without cuts in carbon emissions, the ocean is expected to rise between 61cm and 110cm, about 10cm more than the earlier estimate. A 10cm rise means an additional 10 million people exposed to flooding, research shows. 
An iceberg floating in Antarctica’s McMurdo Sound. Photograph: Chris Larsen/AFP/Getty Images
The IPCC considers the likely range of sea level rise but not the worst-case scenario. Recent expert analysis led by Bamber concluded that up to 238cm of sea level rise remains possible by 2100, drowning many megacities around the world. “This cannot be ruled out,” said Zita Sebesvari at the United Nations University, a lead author of the IPCC report.
Even if huge cuts in emissions begin immediately, between 29cm and 59cm of sea level rise is already inevitable because the ice caps and glaciers melt slowly. Sea level will rise for centuries without action, Sebesvari warned. “The dramatic thing about sea level rise is if we accept 1 metre happening by 2100, we accept we will get about 4 metres by 2300. That is simply not an option we can risk.”
Extreme sea level impacts will be felt in many places very soon and well before 2050, Sebesvari said. The IPCC report states: “Extreme sea level events that [occur] once per century in the recent past are projected to occur at least once per year at many locations by 2050 in all scenarios.”
The heating oceans are causing more intense tropical storms to batter coasts, the IPCC report found, with stronger winds and greater deluges of rain. For example, Hurricane Harvey’s unprecedented deluge, which caused catastrophic flooding, was made three times more likely by climate change.
Ocean heating also harms kelp forests and other important ecosystems, with the marine heatwaves that sear through them like underwater wildfires having doubled in frequency in the last 40 years. They are projected to increase by at least 20 times by 2100, the IPCC reported.
Floodwaters in Houston after Hurricane Harvey struck the US. Photograph: David J. Phillip/AP
Extreme El Niño events, which see heatwaves in some regions and floods in others, are projected to occur twice as often this century whether emissions are cut or not, the report said. Coral reefs, vital nurseries for marine life, will suffer major losses and local extinctions. Across the ocean, heat, acidification and lower oxygen is set to cut fisheries by a quarter and all marine life by 15% if emissions are not slashed.
Q&A
What is the IPCC?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a body of the United Nations.
Based in Geneva, it was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme to determine the state of knowledge on climate change.
For each report, the IPCC assembles hundreds of senior scientists from across the world to assess the current state of knowledge.
It publishes major 'assessment' reports every 5–7 years, with the next, 'AR6' due in 2022, as well as producing ad hoc special reports.
The IPCC has more than 190 member countries, and its reports are drafted and reviewed in several stages to guarantee their quality, with member governments signing off the final versions.
The "Principles Governing IPCC Work" states it will assess:
  • the risk of human-induced climate change
  • potential impacts
  • possible options for prevention
In October 2018 it published a special report analysing current climate research stating that we have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, and that urgent changes are needed to cut risk of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty.
The IPCC report also records the large reduction in Arctic ice. This loss exacerbates global heating, because the exposed darker ocean absorbs more heat from the sun than highly reflective ice. On Monday, scientists announced that the Arctic sea ice in 2019 shrank to its second lowest extent in the 41-year satellite record.
The world’s high mountain glaciers, upon which almost 2 billion people rely for water, are also melting fast, the IPCC found, while landslides are expected to increase. A third of the great Himalayan range is already doomed, with two-thirds projected to vanish if emissions are not cut.
One of the most worrying alarms sounded by the IPCC report is about melting tundra and increasing wildfires in northern latitudes: “Widespread permafrost thaw is projected for this century and beyond.” A quarter is already near certain to melt, it said, and 70% or more would go if emissions are not curbed. In the latter case, hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and methane could be released, supercharging the climate emergency.
“That risks taking us beyond the point where climate change could be easily constrained,” said Richard Black, at the UK’s Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. “Nevertheless, the IPCC’s 2018 report concluded that governments can shrink emissions quickly enough to keep global warming to 1.5C if they choose. None can claim to be unaware of both the dangers of untrammelled climate change nor the feasibility of preventing it.”
Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris and chair of the C40 Cities climate coalition, said the IPCC report was shocking. “Around 1.9 billion people and over half of the world’s megacities are all in grave danger if we don’t act immediately. Several cities, home to hundreds of thousands of people, are already disappearing underwater. This is what the climate crisis looks like now.”
Taehyun Park, of Greenpeace East Asia, said: “The science is both chilling and compelling. The impacts on our oceans are on a much larger scale and happening way faster than predicted. It will require unprecedented political action to prevent the most severe consequences to our planet.”
As well as cutting fossil fuel emissions, preparing for the inevitable impacts is also vital, said Sebesvari, especially in poorer nations that lack the funds to build sea walls, move settlements or restore protective coastal marshes.
“Action is needed now to secure the coast for our children and coming generations,” she said. The pressure now being exerted by the global school strikes for climate was important, she said. “I have very strong motivation. I have two kids and we are really being tested by our kids on our actions.”

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28/09/2019

THE GRETA THUNBERG PROBLEM, So Many Men Freaking Out About The Tiny Swedish Climate Demon

The Guardian - First Dog On The Moon

Is she the brainwasher or brainwashee?



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How Does Scott Morrison's Climate Declaration At The United Nations Stack Up?

The Guardian -  |

Checking the claims: the PM trumpets Australia’s policies as ‘responsible and achievable’. But what do experts say?


Fact check: Scott Morrison's UN speech about Australia's environmental achievements

Speaking in the US, Scott Morrison said he would drastically reduce plastic pollution and strongly defended Australia’s position on climate change. Does what he said stack up?

CLAIM: Australia will ban exports of plastic, paper and glass waste starting in 2020 and is leading on practical research and development into recycling.
  • REALITY: Morrison has made dealing with plastic waste the defining environmental issue of his prime ministership, having flagged the export ban in August. Jeff Angel, the director of the Total Environment Centre, says the PM’s interest and apparent commitment to the issue is unprecedented for an Australian leader.
    But experts say Australia is not yet a leader in recycling research and development (for evidence of leadership, try Finland). Most of Morrison’s commitments are aspirational ahead of a meeting of environment ministers in November. The government has promised $167m in recycling investment, but at last count just 12% of Australian plastic waste is recycled, according to government analysis.
CLAIM: Australia is taking real action on climate change. One piece of evidence: in 2012, it was estimated Australia would release 693m tonnes of emissions in 2020. As of 2018, this estimate had fallen to 540m tonnes.
  • REALITY: Projections of what Australia will emit have fallen, not actual emissions. Projections are estimates by government officials of how much carbon dioxide will be emitted at a certain date. Their estimate for 2020 has changed. That reduction has nothing to do with national policy.
    Actual emissions have gone up in almost every sector of Australia’s economy, with the exception of electricity generation (down 15.7% over a decade in the national grid covering the eastern states, as Morrison pointed out). Total national emissions have been rising year-on-year since the Coalition repealed the carbon price scheme in 2014.
CLAIM: Australia is responsible for just 1.3% of global emissions.
CLAIM: Australia will exceed its targets under the Kyoto Protocol and meet the commitment it made in Paris. It is making a “credible, fair, responsible and achievable contribution to global climate change action”.
  • REALITY: Australia is on track to meet its Kyoto targets, but this is more about setting unchallenging goals and using tricks of accounting than genuine emissions reduction. Its first Kyoto target was an 8% increase in emissions between 1990 and 2010. Its second target is a 5% cut below 2000 levels by 2020. Neither target was consistent with what scientists said Australia should be doing to play its part in addressing the problem.
    The same is true of the 2030 target, a 26-28% cut below 2005 levels. The government’s Climate Change Authority recommended     a minimum 45% cut over that timeframe if Australia was to play its part in a deal to limit global warming to less than 2C.
    Several analyses, including one from the government, have found Australia is not on track to meet even its existing Paris target.
CLAIM: Australia has reduced emissions by 367m tonnes of carbon dioxide more than required to meet our 2020 target under the Kyoto deal.
  • REALITY: This is true thanks to the government’s use of carryover credits from Australia beating its first Kyoto target (the 8% increase).
    Simply put, Australia set itself a target that allowed it to increase emissions and accepted a credit towards the next period of the Kyoto Protocol for staying below that increase.
    It now plans to use credits from the second Kyoto period towards meeting its Paris target. This is not allowed for in the Paris agreement and opposed by a number of countries, including New Zealand and European Union members.
CLAIM: Australia has the highest per capita investment in clean energy technologies of anywhere in the world. One in five Australian households has rooftop solar systems.
  • FACT: True on both counts, but there are signs Australia’s surging clean energy investment is falling off.
    Researchers from the Australian National University recently reported the per capita growth in clean energy in recent times has been nearly three times faster than the next fastest country, Germany.
    But recent data from industry group the Clean Energy Council and consultants at Bloomberg New Energy Finance show a drop in spending commitments this year.
    Dylan McConnell, from the University of Melbourne, says the boom in clean energy spending over the past two years has been largely driven by the 2020 renewable energy target. Most of the investment came in a rush at the end because the Coalition under Tony Abbott considered abolishing and ultimately reduced the target. Uncertainty over its future stalled investment for the better part of two years. Now the target has been met and the government does not plan to extend or replace it.
    Tristan Edis, a clean energy consultant and analyst, says the government has spent much of its time in power working against clean energy, having tried to abolish support for it under Abbott and deposing Malcolm Turnbull as leader when he tried to introduce a modest policy, the national energy guarantee, to extend support beyond 2020.
CLAIM: Australia is “doing the right thing by our neighbours” on the climate crisis, having committed to investing a further $500m over five years from 2020 for “renewable energy, climate change and resilience in the Pacific”.
  • FACT: Australia did commit $500m to climate projects in the region at the recent Pacific Islands Forum, though whether it qualifies as “further” is contestable: the money was drawn from the existing aid budget.
    Morrison’s claim that Australia is doing the right thing by the Pacific is not shared by several leaders at the forum in Tuvalu. Australia was repeatedly publicly rebuked over its stance on climate change during and after the talks, which almost collapsed due to Australia’s strong resistance to the final communique including references to phasing out coal, limiting global heating to 1.5C and announcing a strategy for zero emissions by 2050 from the final communique.
CLAIM: The Great Barrier Reef “remains one of the world’s most pristine areas of natural beauty” and Australia’s $2bn 2050 reef plan is based on the best available science.
  • REALITY: A recent five-year reef report by government scientists at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority found the outlook for the natural wonder had deteriorated from poor to very poor due to a range of threats, particularly record-breaking sea surface temperatures.
    Mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 led to widespread and unprecedented coral loss in the north and central sections of the reef. Habitat loss and degradation is affecting fish, turtles and seabirds. The authority has warned that without urgent global and national action on the climate crisis – the single greatest threat facing the natural wonder – the reef’s plight will not improve. But it is true that the parts of the 2300km reef ecosystem that have escaped coral bleaching, cyclones and outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish are in good condition.
    The 2050 plan is based on thorough, decades-old science and sets out the challenges: the reefs face a “worrying outlook” if countries fail to limit global warming to 1.5-2C.
    It names climate change as the biggest threat to the reef’s future, but includes no additional plans to address what causes it, or to lift Australia’s climate target to what scientists say is necessary.
CLAIM: The argument between the major parties over whether you need to take action on climate change is settled in Australian politics.
  • FACT: Where to begin? Even casual observers of Australian politics are aware of the historic, decade-long divisions over what should be done in response to climate change, both between and within the parties. They remain.
    Countries including Britain, France, Germany and Chile, and the biggest state in the US, California, are promising net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. Labor also remains committed to this goal, though its pathway to get there is being reviewed after its election loss in May    .

 The Coalition has no national target beyond 2030. Morrison said in the US he has no plan to change this.

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Morrison’s Colossal Bullshit

Climate Council*

Prime Minister Scott Morrison: UN Climate Change Speech "long on spin and short on fact".
Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie: “Scott Morrison’s speech and his claim that Australia was doing enough on climate change was colossal bullshit."
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has taken to the global stage delivering a speech to the United Nations in New York which was long on spin and short on fact.
“Scott Morrison’s speech and his claim that Australia was doing enough on climate change was colossal bullshit,” said the CEO of the Climate Council, Amanda McKenzie.
“Over the winter we saw bushfires burning across Australia while the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic were on fire. A major new report shows that suburbs in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne could experience serious sea level disasters every year on our current trajectory. Meanwhile, on this government’s watch, Australia’s pollution is rising year on year. To suggest we are doing enough is ludicrous and dangerous,” she said.
“Mr Morrison is out of touch with what is happening all around us. He is also out of touch with Australians who are really worried,” said Ms McKenzie.
“Mr Morrison told the United Nations that our children have a right to optimism. Perhaps they would feel more optimistic if he started to take the problem of climate change seriously,” she said.

FACT-CHECKING MORRISON’S SPEECH

 Morrison statement: “Now, Australia is also taking real action on climate change and we are getting results. We are successfully balancing our global responsibilities with sensible and practical policies to secure our environmental and our economic future.”
  • Fact-check: Australia’s Paris target is to reduce our emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030. This is one of the weakest targets amongst developed countries. If other countries adopted Australia’s target the world would be heading for catastrophic climate damage. Rising emissions and worsening climate impacts are placing Australian lives, our economy and the natural environment at risk.
Morrison statement: “Australia is responsible for just 1.3 per cent of global emissions. Australia is doing our bit on climate change and we reject any suggestion to the contrary.”
  • Fact-check: Australia is the 17th largest polluter in the world, bigger than 175 countries.  We are the third largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world. 
Morrison statement: “By 2020 Australia will have overachieved on our Kyoto commitments, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 367 million tonnes more than required to meet our 2020 Kyoto target. Now there are few member countries, whether at this forum or the OECD who can make this claim.”
  • Fact-check: The reason for this is that Australia’s Kyoto targets were the second weakest in the world for the first commitment period (a target to increase emissions by 8% above 1990 levels) and the weakest in the world for the second commitment period (a target to reduce emissions by just 5% below 2000 levels by 2020). It isn’t hard to overachieve on dismal targets. The reality is today our emissions are going up and up – according to the government’s own data.
Morrison statement: “Our latest estimates show both emissions per person and the emissions intensity of the economy are at their lowest levels in 29 years.”
  • Fact-check:  Australia has the highest emissions per capita in the developed world. It is true that Australia’s emissions per capita have fallen more than most countries, but this is from an extraordinarily high baseline, and has largely been driven by rapid population growth. Even with this drop, we still have the highest per capita emissions in the developed world. Our emissions per capita are higher than Saudi Arabia, a country not known for its action on climate change. Ultimately, our international targets are not based on per capita emissions. 
Morrison statement: “Australia’s electricity sector is producing less emissions. In the year to March 2019, emissions from Australia’s electricity sector were 15.7% lower than the peak recorded in the year to June 2009.”
  • Fact-check: This is cherry picking. There are 47 sectors in the Australian economy, almost all of them are going up. This figure of 15.7% is only correct for the electricity sector in the east coast of Australia, not all of Australia. While emissions from electricity are down, and this is good news, this is despite the best efforts of the Federal Government to undermine the renewable energy sector. Also, emissions from electricity production account for only 33% of our total emissions. Overall, there has been a rise in emissions from other sectors such as transport. Australia’s emissions are increasing and have been for five years in a row. 
Morrison statement: “…it is important to note that Australia only accounts for around 5.5 per cent of the world’s coal production.”
  • Fact-check: This is spin, as it makes Australia’s contribution to climate change seem much smaller than it is. In reality, if you include Australia’s fossil fuel exports, we are the fifth largest emitter on the planet, after the US, China, EU and India. Australia is the world’s second largest coal exporter.
Morrison statement: “We are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.”
  • Fact-check:  This is woefully inadequate and not aligned to what the science says is necessary to tackle climate change. Australia’s emissions have risen every year for the past five years, across almost every sector of the economy. The Government’s commitment on paper might be 26-28%, but cheating with Kyoto credits effectively reduces our emissions reduction target to just 15%. 
Morrison statement: “And our Great Barrier Reef remains one of the world’s most pristine areas of natural beauty. Feel free to visit it. Our reef is vibrant and resilient and protected under the world’s most comprehensive reef management plan.”
  • Fact-check: In 2016 and 2017, the Great Barrier Reef was severely damaged through back-to-back bleaching events which killed half of all corals on the planet’s largest living structure. Australia’s current goal, if followed by other countries, would sign the death warrant of the Great Barrier Reef. 

 * The Climate Council is a community-funded climate change communications organisation. It  provides evidence-based advice on climate change to journalists, policymakers, and the wider Australian community.

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27/09/2019

Could Climate Change Fuel The Rise Of Right-Wing Nationalism?

The Conversation -  | 

When people feel threatened, they’re more receptive to politicians who espouse xenophobic rhetoric. Trybex/Shutterstock.com
Two trends have defined the past decade and both have been on display at this year’s session of the United Nations General Assembly.
One has been the escalating effects of climate change, which were the focus of the United Nations’ Climate Action Summit. Forest fires, floods and hurricanes are all rising in their frequency and severity. Eight of the last 10 years have been the warmest on record. Marine biologists warned that coral reefs in the U.S. could disappear entirely by the 2040s.
The other trend has been the surge of right-wing nationalist politics across Western nations, which includes Donald Trump’s election in the U.S., and the rise of nationalist political parties around the world.
Indeed, the first four speeches of the United Nations general debate were given by Brazilian right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro, Trump, Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and far-right Turkish President Recep Erdogan.
These two trends are rarely discussed together. When they are, their correlation is sometimes viewed as an unfortunate coincidence, since many nationalist politicians actively obstruct climate change solutions.
However, our new research suggests that these two trends may be closely related, and not in the way you might think. The effects of climate change – and the way it makes societies feel threatened – may be one of the elements fueling the rise of right-wing nationalism.

How climate shapes culture
To understand how climate shapes culture, it’s important to step away from current events and consider the way the climate has influenced societies throughout human history.
Cultures can vary in what’s called their “tightness” – the strictness or flexibility of their rules and traditions, and the severity of their punishments for rule breakers.
The Fellahin people of Egypt, for example, were one of the tightest cultures that we analyzed. For centuries, they’ve enforced strict gender norms and strong expectations for how children should be raised.
When cultures feel threatened – whether by war, disease or economic upheaval – they tend to become tighter.
But ecological threats can be just as strongly connected to tightening.
In one analysis, we showed that rates of famine and land scarcity predicted cultural tightness in historical societies. The Fellahin people have faced a constant threat of flooding, and have endured frequent earthquakes, sand storms and rockslides.
The Fellahin have weathered centuries of environmental disaster. Brooklyn Museum
Centuries of climate catastrophe can also predict differences in the cultural tightness in societies today. In another study we found that nations that have endured the highest rates of drought, food scarcity, natural disaster and climate instability have the tightest cultures today.
Even within the U.S., the states most vulnerable to climate disasters have the tightest cultures. A 2014 study found that states like Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama – which have the highest criminal execution rates and corporal punishment rates in schools – also have the highest historical rates of natural disasters such as tornadoes, floods and hurricanes.
Evolutionary analyses suggest that cultural tightness can be functional – even necessary – in the face of climate disaster. It can make people more cooperative, and more likely to follow protocols, like rationing, during a drought.
But our latest studies examined a darker side of cultural tightness. We wanted to know whether tightness also made people less tolerant of minority religions, ethnicities or sexual orientation. In other words, we explored whether prejudice thrives in tighter societies.
This dynamic would have serious consequences for our understanding of geopolitical events. If climate anomalies such as hurricanes and forest fires have a “tightening” effect on cultures – and these catastrophes are happening more frequently – it might be driving more people toward politicians who espouse xenophobic, homophobic or racist rhetoric.

Environmental threat and prejudice
To test these ideas, we brought together a group of 19 researchers from eight different nations. With expertise in economics, psychology and anthropology, our team was well-suited to study the effect of environmental threats and culture on prejudice and political nationalism.
We ended up studying 86 historical societies, 25 modern nations and the 50 U.S. states, analyzing data on more than 3 million people.
The results were strikingly consistent across these populations. The cultures most vulnerable to climate threats had the strictest cultural norms, and the highest levels of prejudice against minorities. For example, in American states with histories of climate threat and cultural tightness, white respondents reported the highest levels of aversion to marrying someone who was black, Asian or Hispanic. Turkey and South Korea had the tightest cultures, and also showed the most aversion to living near someone who was a different ethnicity, sexuality or religion.
We next tested whether we could cultivate these social and political attitudes in a laboratory setting. We recruited 1,000 people from around the world. We had some write about a threatening event in their environment, including – but not restricted to – climate. Others wrote about a threatening event in their personal life. The final group wrote about what they had for breakfast.
Subjects who wrote about a threatening event in their environment reported the highest support for stricter societal rules and regulations. These same people also reported the most prejudice toward ethnic minorities. This study showed that even brief reminders of an ecological threat could have an effect on people’s political leanings and make them less tolerant.
Finally, we explored how these issues tied into modern elections. We recruited American and French individuals during their respective countries’ most recent presidential elections.
We found that voters who felt the most threatened were most likely to support harsher punishments for rule-breakers, more adherence to traditional norms and expressed the highest levels of prejudice. Voters who felt threatened were also most likely to vote for Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen, each of whom ran on law-and-order, anti-immigration platforms.

One feeds the other
According to just about every estimate, climate change will only worsen. Without serious and immediate reform, temperatures and sea levels will continue to rise, along with the risk of destabilizing climatic events.
The natural perils of climate change are evident to many people already. But our research underscores a less visible geopolitical peril. As climate change increases the level of environmental threat, cultures around the world may become tighter, and the exclusionary rhetoric of far-right nationalist politicians may sound more and more appealing.
Since far-right nationalists are notorious for ignoring climate change, the rise of these politicians may also exacerbate the effects of environmental threat. This may create a vicious cycle, in which the threat of climate disaster and far-right nationalism encourage one another over time.
In this way, bipartisan action on climate change may not just be necessary to save the environment. It may also be an important way to ensure values like free speech and tolerance are preserved in countries and cultures around the world.

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