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Climate Change Probably Added 4C To Europe's June Heatwave: Study

Lethal Heating - 5 July, 2019 - 05:00
Reuters - Susanna Twidale

LONDON - Man-made climate change probably made last month’s European heatwave, in which southern France experienced a national record 45.9 degrees Celsius (114.6 Fahrenheit), 4C (7F) hotter than it would otherwise have been, scientists said on Tuesday.
People cool off in the Trocadero fountains across from the Eiffel Tower in Paris as a heatwave hit much of the country, France, June 25, 2019. REUTERS/Charles Platiau“Climate change is no longer an abstract increase in global mean temperature, but a difference you can feel when you step outside in a heatwave,” said Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, Senior Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and one of the paper’s authors.
“The observations show ... similarly frequent heat waves would have likely been about 4C cooler a century ago,” said the report by the World Weather Attribution group of scientists.
It also said that climate change had made the record-breaking heatwave at least five times more likely.
“We experienced a heatwave whose intensity could become the norm in the middle of the century,” said Robert Vautard, senior scientist at France’s CNRS institute.
Climate scientists have long said that a warming of the earth’s surface caused mainly by industrial-era emissions of carbon-dioxide from fossil fuels will make weather events more extreme, and make those extremes - such as storms, drought and flooding - more frequent.
The World Weather Attribution group used computer models over three days from June 26-28 to calculate the temperatures they would otherwise have expected.
France’s new record modern-day temperature, registered in Gallargues-le-Montueux, in the southerly Provence region, was nearly two degrees above the previous high recorded in August 2003.
Meteorologists say a weakening of the high-level jet stream over Europe is increasingly causing weather systems to stall and leading summer temperatures to soar.
The World Meteorological Organization said on Friday that 2019 was on track to be among the world’s hottest years, and that 2015-2019 would then be the hottest five-year period on record.
It said the European heatwave was “absolutely consistent” with extremes linked to the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.

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Antarctic Sea Ice Declining ‘Precipitously’ Since 2014, Study Finds

Lethal Heating - 5 July, 2019 - 05:00
Mongabay - Mongabay.com

Sea ice in Admiralty Bay, King George Island, Antarctica. Image by Acaro via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Key Points:
  • After decades of overall increase, Antarctica’s sea ice has been rapidly decreasing since 2014, according to a new study.
  • Between 2014 and 2017, Antarctica suffered a precipitous decline, losing more yearly average sea ice in just three years than that observed in the Arctic over a period of 33 years.
  • There was a small increase in the yearly average sea ice in Antarctica from 2017 to 2018, but there has been a decline in 2019 again. Whether the small uptick in 2018 is a blip in an otherwise long-term downward trend of Antarctic sea ice extent or the start of a rebound, is difficult to say, Claire Parkinson of NASA writes.
  • Whether the changes are because of climate change or something else also remains to be seen, researchers say.
For decades, sea ice in Antarctica has increased while that in the Arctic has declined drastically. But in a puzzling turn of events, Antarctic sea ice has been decreasing rapidly since 2014, a new study has found.
Whether the changes are because of climate change or something else remains to be seen, study author Claire Parkinson of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center says.
Parkinson, who analyzed satellite measurements of Antarctic sea ice over a 40-year period from 1979 to 2018, found that the yearly average sea ice extent peaked in 2014.
But over the next three years, from 2014 to 2017, the sea ice extent hit its lowest average annual levels.
Where the yearly average sea ice extent was a record-high at 12.8 million square kilometers (5 million square miles) in 2014, it reached 10.75 million square kilometers (4 million square miles) in 2017, with a record-low average monthly sea ice extent of 2.29 million square kilometers (0.88 million square miles) in February 2017.
In fact, between 2014 and 2017, Antarctica suffered a precipitous decline, Parkinson writes, losing more yearly average sea ice in just three years than that observed in the Arctic over a period of 33 years.
Is this downward trend going to continue? Researchers aren’t sure.
“But it raises the question of why, and are we going to see some huge acceleration in the rate of decrease in the Arctic? Only the continued record will let us know,” Parkinson told the Guardian.
Despite multiple hypotheses, researchers are yet to figure out why Antarctica’s sea ice extent has generally increased since 1979.
The cause of the recent decline, too, is a mystery.
The satellite measurements, for example, showed a small increase in the yearly average sea ice in Antarctica from 2017 to 2018, but there has been a decline in 2019 again. Whether the small uptick in
2018 is a blip in an otherwise long-term downward trend of Antarctic sea ice extent or the start of a rebound, is difficult to say, Parkinson writes in the paper.
Moreover, even during the decades of overall increase in Antarctic sea ice, there have been periods of declines followed by an increase.
“There was a period in the 1970s when the Antarctic also had a huge decrease in sea ice and then increased,” Parkinson told New Scientist.
“So it could be this huge decrease over a few years [2014 to 2017] is going to reverse.”
Parkinson had previously shown that the increases in Antarctic sea ice through 2014 did not compensate for the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic.
This was because “the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice,” she told NOAA Climate.gov in March this year.

Sea ice extent in Antarctica has plunged since 2014
Annual average extent in square kilometres
Guardian graphic | Source: Parkinson, PNAS, 2019The Antarctic represents a complex system, and Parkinson says she hopes the 40-year satellite data will spur more research.
“I hope that the 40-y record discussed in this paper will encourage further studies into the atmospheric and oceanic conditions that could have led to the extremely rapid 2014-2017 decline of the Antarctic sea ice cover, the comparably rapid decline in the mid-1970s, and the uneven but overall gradual increases in Antarctic sea ice coverage in the intervening decades,” she writes in the paper.


Antarctic sea ice plunges from record high to record lows

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This Was The Hottest June In History, And Summer Is Just Getting Started

Lethal Heating - 4 July, 2019 - 05:00
Grist - 

Mustafa Yalcin / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images   If sometime during the past month you wiped sweat from your brow and thought, “Damn, it’s hot!” then congrats, your body knows what’s up. This past month was the hottest June ever recorded on planet Earth, according to the European Union’s Earth observation program, which announced the new record on Tuesday.
The unprecedented heat brought death, destruction, and misery to huge swaths of the planet. By the middle of June, more than 35 people had died as temperatures soared past 120 degrees Fahrenheit in India. France set a new national temperature record: 115 degrees. Multiple wildfires broke out in Spain, one of them, a 10,000-acre blaze, might have started when heat caused a pile of manure to burst into flames. One European heat map turned such a violent shade of red it looked like an open-mouthed skull in mid-scream (you have to see it to believe it). And, get this: Summer is just getting started.
In Europe, June temperatures were 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit higher than normal, according to the European program called Copernicus. Globally, temperatures were about a fifth of a degree higher than normal for the month, beating out the record set in 2016.
Here’s another worrisome finding from the report : If you compare the last several days of June to the average for the same several days between 1981 to 2010, temperatures this year were around 10 to 18 degrees F higher than normal over much of Western Europe — France, Germany, northern Spain, northern Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic.
Super weird that temperatures just decided to spike like that. There’s no way humans have anything to do with it, right?
Heat waves like the one that just gripped Europe are not always directly linked to anthropogenic climate change, but extreme weather events are made worse by higher concentrations of greenhouse gases.
Another report released Tuesday from World Weather Attribution found that such heat waves are happening about 10 times more often now than they were a century ago. “Every heatwave occurring in Europe today is made more likely and more intense by human-induced climate change,” the report said.
Perhaps all this sweltering weather will spur governments to fulfill their commitments to slash carbon emissions. Barring that, it’s probably time to invest in a good air conditioner (and, yes, we know that comes with plenty of problems, too).

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Heatwave - Climate Change Connections In One Simple Analogy

Lethal Heating - 4 July, 2019 - 05:00
Forbes - Marshall Shepherd

Dr. J. Marshall ShepherdDr. Marshall Shepherd is a leading international expert in weather and climate.
He was the 2013 President of American Meteorological Society (AMS) and is Director of the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Atmospheric Sciences Program.
Dr. Shepherd is the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor and hosts The Weather Channel’s Weather Geeks Podcast, which can be found at all podcast outlets. 
Prior to UGA, Dr. Shepherd spent 12 years as a Research Meteorologist at NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center and was Deputy Project Scientist for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission A devastating heatwave is happening in Europe right now. Temperature records are falling and not just by a small margin. The death toll is starting to rise and is prompting memories of the 2003 European heatwave that killed 30,000 to 50,000 people according to most estimates. The World Meteorological Organization tweeted on Friday:
For the first time on record, #France sees a temperature above 45°C. Villevieille measured 45.1°C this afternoon at 1459, topping the previous record of 44.3°C set just an hour previously, per @meteofrance  #heatwave #climatechangeAccording to meteorologists at Weather.com, a large high pressure system over Europe is the "weather" factor responsible for the heatwave.  Weather is, in part, governed by the space-time patterns of a series of waves in that fluid overhead called the atmosphere. It exhibits natural and day-to-day variability. An atmospheric "road block," if you will, near Greenland responsible for record melting there is also altering the aforementioned global wave pattern and causing extreme heat in Europe. Some voices will roll out the predictable narrative that heatwaves happen naturally. They do. However, an increasing body of scientific literature and simple common sense tells us that something else is going on too.

Oppressive heat is ravaging Europe. European Space Agency
University of Georgia atmospheric sciences professor John Knox offered one of the most compelling and clear analogies to explain why an anthropogenic climate change signal is increasingly associated with events like the European heatwave. Knox wrote:
The old record for the nation was 44.1C (111.4F), from the deadly 2003 heat wave in Europe. So, France just bested its high temperature by 3 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a lot. As with, say, 100-meter dash records in seconds, national temperature records in degrees should be broken in tenths, really hundredths--not integer values.If this were the world of track and field, a new record of this extremity would prompt immediate concerns about doping. The runner is fast, but no way is he or she THAT fast.By the way, an astute Tweet noted by @robsobs pointed out, "Note that at least 12 other “runners” beat the previous record as well, and all of this happened before the usual peak heat period."

Persistent high pressure aloft is part of the weather pattern explaining the current European heatwave. Tomer Burg's Model PageOf course, you have the small but very loud crowd that will spew cliche and irrelevant points that actual climate scientists are aware of or have long considered. For example, I saw a person imply that it is not a big deal to have a heatwave in the summer. Professor Knox agrees but points out that summer in France can be hot, but it should not be this hot and certainly not this early. Further, actual climate scientists have assessed how contemporary extreme events are linked to climate change. Previously in Forbes, I summarized the 2016 National Academy of Science report on attribution:
Confidence is greatest for extreme events related to aspects of temperature (e.g. extreme heat and lack of extreme cold events). Attribution science is relatively young but has advanced rapidly. The National Academy panel noted that attribution is most reliable when there are sound physical principles, consistent observational evidence, and the ability for numerical models to replicate the event. These "three legs of the stool" were used as benchmarks to rate the confidence.The graphic  below conveys that there is very high confidence that the "fingerprint of climate change" is smudged all over the current generation of heatwaves on Earth. Numerous studies affirm that heat waves are increasing (and will continue to) in frequency or intensity as climate changes. A 2018 study in Environmental Research Letters found that across 571 cities:
  • heatwave days increase in future climate model scenarios, particularly in southern Europe
  • the greatest heatwave temperature increases are in central Europe
Another climate zombie theory (something that keeps coming up though scientists have long disproven it) seen floating around the Internet is that all of the numbers are wrong because the thermometers are in cities or near asphalt. You will typically see some cherry-picked image of a thermometer near a road or building. I always find this one to be amusing because climate scientists are smart enough to know about urban biases. In fact, I wrote an entire article (link) about this misguided attempt to confuse people.
The current heatwave is very dangerous. The combination of record high maximum and minimum temperatures is a double whammy for humans. Warm nighttime temperatures are particularly dangerous for vulnerable populations like the elderly, children, or people without sufficient air conditioning.
As I close, it should be noted that not once did I mention a polar bear or the year 2080. These are "here and now" concerns.

Confidence in extreme weather events and linkages to climate change. National Academy of Science report
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It’s Time To Change The Climate Disaster Script. People Need Hope That Things Can Change

Lethal Heating - 4 July, 2019 - 05:00
The Guardian - *

The climate story must balance talk of urgency with hopeful and creative ideas if we are to inspire positive change 
‘The future of our planet – and how it is possible to save it – is a story worth telling.’ Extinction Rebellion activists in London. Photograph: Jamie Lowe/Courtesy of Extinction Rebellion “Hell  is coming,” one weather forecaster tweeted this week, warning not of further political turmoil but of the hottest heatwave in decades that’s advancing across continental Europe. Extreme weather events like this remind us that climate change is not a remote and distant threat – but a reality that is already taking an unacceptable human toll.
In recent months, Extinction Rebellion and the school climate strike have turned up the heat on the climate debate. They’ve both done an astonishing job of getting the climate change back on the public and political agendas. Their warnings of impending apocalypse, disruptive tactics and robust demands that others “tell the truth” about climate change have made huge waves. Parliament has declared a climate emergency. The Guardian has updated its own editorial guidelines to use language that accurately reflects the threat that climate change poses.
These demands and promises to tell the truth are based on a core premise: if people knew how bad this was we’d do differently. My organisation studies how we respond to and are shaped by the stories the we hear. I welcome the renewed energy within the climate movement – and the recognition of the power of language. But I fear we risk underplaying the part of “the truth” that could set us free.
Most people in the UK know climate change is a big problem. We understand it poses a grave threat to the future of our world. But we’re not trying to save ourselves – at least, we’re not trying hard enough.
Communications science offers some clues as to why we might be locked in this collective paralysis – somewhat able to see the problem but unable to deal with it. Our brains are hardwired to jump to conclusions without us noticing we’re doing it. When faced with serious and complex challenges such as climate change, we jump to “can’t be done” more readily than “let’s work through this problem and see the solutions”. While bleak, “nothing can be done” is a more rewarding conclusion because it’s quicker and easier to think.
The tendency to think fatalistically is fuelled by the stories we hear every day. The word “crisis” appears in our media dozens of times each week, appended to everything from poverty to patisseries, climate change to chick peas. It is background noise. Stating loudly that problems exist and have reached crisis point does not help us to move beyond said crises, especially if they are hard to understand and tough to tackle.
The stories we hear and tell matter. They shape how we understand the world and our part within it. Just as hearing migrants described in dehumanising ways flips a switch in our minds and creates automatic negative responses, a steady stream of wholly negative language and ideas creates mental shortcuts to despair and hopelessness.
Research is clear that to overcome fatalism and inspire change we must balance talk of urgency with talk of efficacy – the ability to get a job done. Too little urgency and “why bother?” is the default response. Too much crisis and we become overwhelmed, fatalistic or disbelieving – or a disjointed mixture of all three, which is where most of us get stuck when anyone talks about climate change.
We are all swayed by what we think other people think and what we see as normal. In post-war Rwanda a radio soap opera succeeded where other attempts to change relationships and interactions failed. By depicting positive relationships between opposing ethnic groups, the soap made these relationships seem normal and improved dynamics.
‘Extinction Rebellion and the schools climate strike have turned up the heat on the climate debate.’ Student climate protests in London. Photograph: Peter Marshall/Alamy Stock PhotoWe need to change what’s normal and what’s perceived to be normal. And at the moment we think, and are constantly told, that most people don’t care enough. And the ones who do care are often not relatable to most people. We’re led to believe that inaction is the norm and that not much can be done. Upping the ante only by doing more to illustrate the scale of inaction and the high stakes doesn’t change this, it compounds it.
When Martin Luther King inspired a nation and the world he led with the dream, not the nightmare. When JFK persuaded the American public to support the Apollo programme he balanced the need to act with the ability to do so: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.”
This is not the story being told about climate change. Instead we’re stuck in a climate disaster movie – and it’s not even a very good one. The threat is complex and can feel remote, but we’re told the chances of survival are slim. There are constant warnings but few heroes in sight. Our response is predictable: we switch off or we change the channel.
The climate story can evolve from its current emphasis on chastisement and detachment. The future of our planet – and how it is possible to save it – is a story worth telling. And retelling in ever more interesting and inspiring ways.
To help us avoid the worst effects of climate change we need a steady stream of stories that bring to life our capacity to dream big and get things done. We need high doses of creativity and ingenuity from a wide range of different voices. We need stories that show real life – and real life as it could be. We need to be able to see, feel and taste what we could do if leaders led and hope triumphed.

*Nicky Hawkins is a communications strategist for the FrameWorks Institute

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NSW Set To Fall Short Of Climate Targets But Victoria On Track

Lethal Heating - 3 July, 2019 - 05:00
Sydney Morning Herald - Nicole Hasham

NSW and Queensland appear set to fall short of their self-imposed targets for cutting greenhouse gas pollution and phasing out fossil fuels, as responsibility for climate action in the electricity sector increasingly falls to the states.
But analysis by research and advisory group Green Energy Markets found Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania are on track to hit their climate goals.
NSW and Queensland must make up ground to meet their climate targets in the electricity sector, analysis has found. Credit: Michele Mossop
Electricity is considered the most cost-effective sector of the economy in which to slash greenhouse gas pollution, largely because zero-emission wind and solar technology already exists.
However, Australia's renewable energy target peaks in 2020 and since the collapse of the National Energy Guarantee last year, the Morrison government has not had a major policy to cut emissions in the sector. This leaves state policies as the key driver of investment in renewable energy generation.
Green Energy Markets examined progress on climate targets by the five eastern-most states that make up the national electricity market.
It found the most populous state, NSW, was not on pace to meet its target of net-zero emissions from the electricity sector by 2050.
On current trends, renewables would comprise 28 per cent of NSW's total electricity use by 2030, based on expected rooftop solar uptake and new wind and solar projects. This was well below the 46 per cent renewables share needed by 2030 if NSW was to meet its 2050 target, the report said.
NSW needs almost 5000 megawatts of new renewable energy projects over the next decade to bridge the gap.
Green Energy Markets director Tristan Edis said there had been commitments to construct 2800 megawatts of renewables projects in NSW over the past three years, so the state's catch-up task was "readily achievable" by 2030.
The Queensland Labor government wants renewables to make up 50 per cent of the electricity mix by 2030. However, the state is currently tracking towards a 29 per cent renewables share, based on existing wind and solar commitments and expected rooftop solar growth.
Hydro Tasmania's Devils Gate Dam spill. The state is tracking well to meet its target for 100 per cent renewable energy, including hydro power, by 2022.

If all states achieved their targets, enough construction jobs would be created to employ 32,000 people for a year, the analysis showed.
Victoria was already close to achieving its goal of 40 per cent electricity generation from renewable sources by 2025, the report found. It required just 2000 megawatts of new projects to reach its target of 50 per cent renewables by 2030.
South Australia was on track to meet its goal that renewables comprise 73.5 per cent of electricity consumption by 2030, and Tasmania did not need any new projects to reach its 100 per cent renewables goal by 2022.
A spokeswoman for the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment said the state was “reducing emissions at one of the fastest rates in Australia”.
“The government is supporting record investment in solar and wind and, in the last five years, energy generation from these sources has tripled in NSW,” she said.
Between 2018 and 2022 the NSW government will spend $1.4 billion to drive investment in renewable energy, emerging technology and climate action.
Queensland Energy Minister Anthony Lynham said the Palaszczuk government was on track to meet its 50 per cent renewable target by 2030, citing a recent report by the Clean Energy Council that described the state as "the renewable energy construction capital of Australia".
"Despite the lack of any coherent or consistent energy policy from the commonwealth government, Queensland continues to embrace a renewable future," Dr Lynham said, adding that the states "have been left alone to do the heavy lifting on tackling climate change".

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Action Now’: The Farmers Standing Up Against ‘Wilful Ignorance’ On Climate

Lethal Heating - 3 July, 2019 - 05:00
The Guardian - 

The challenge for farmers is how to discuss global warming without scaring people out of food production

Farmers across Australia are trying to deal with increased risk by finding new income streams, and changing their cropping and stock management plans. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian The last election may have left the impression with voters that farmers and rural people in general do not accept climate science because there was no seismic shift of seats.
Yet this week the agricultural thinktank, the Australian Farm Institute, gathered farmers and their advocacy groups to talk about the impacts of global warming on the already risky business of farming.
Speaker after speaker described how their businesses were trying to deal with increased risk by finding new income streams, changing their cropping and stock management plans and still sometimes being blindsided.
Australia’s largest and oldest continuing pastoral company, AACo, owns 7m hectares of land or roughly 1% of Australia’s land mass.
After the loss of 43,000 head of cattle in record flooding in the Gulf of Carpentaria, AACo boss Hugh Killen’s message to the audience was clear.
“The direct effects of climate are real for us – we come to this discussion with first hand experience and a commitment to find a way forward comes from the heart,” Killen said.
“Slight changes to fire, flood and drought patterns can shift a very delicate balance. Increased flood, drought and fire can disrupt everything we do in their own right, as with risks we have seen in the gulf.
“Changing patterns can also tip the balance in favour of harmful flora and fauna and it can tip the balance away from replenishment of nutrients in the soil.”
He decried the tribal nature of politics and then he urged the room to act and engage on the subject, in spite of the noisy political debate.
“Those who call themselves believers demand action now,” Killen said. “We need to show them we share their conviction about the dangers that we all face.
“They need to know that we care, we take the science seriously and that we are taking action where we can to manage climate risks daily.”
It was an unusual conference because since Tony Abbott dismantled the carbon price in 2013, the largely conservative industry has tiptoed around the issue – a point recognised by the National Farmers’ Federation president, Fiona Simson, last year when she declared climate change was making drought worse.
Long-time climate campaigner and Boggabilla farmer Pete Mailler said there was a “widespread wilful ignorance” about climate change and that was creating the impasse on public policy responses.
Pete Mailler says ‘I can’t stand by and let people glibly talk up agriculture if they are not prepared to start tackling the hard issues now’. “There’s this big issue that says we can’t really admit to climate change because that means we have to change all these other things and that’s really hard, we don’t really want to shut down coal-fired power stations,” Mailler said.
“The reality is I can’t stand by and let people glibly talk up agriculture if they are not prepared to start tackling the hard issues now. Because if we set the next generation up to walk off into the sunset and say ‘here you go’, it’s a great opportunity and if we don’t start to tackle these problems now we are setting them up to fail.”
Yet the challenge for farmers and their representative bodies is always how to discuss global warming without scaring people out of food production.
Verity Morgan-Schmidt, of Farmers for Climate Action, said no farmer wanted to be intentionally negative but there was a need to stare the challenges “in the face”.
“It’s a huge step forward for the industry to have such a trusted respected research organisation actively engage on the issue and raise the challenges,” she said. “We all want the industry to have vibrant future but we don’t want to sell people up the river.”
The National Farmers’ Federation chief executive, Tony Mahar, said climate change was increasing risk to the sector through more intense and severe droughts, high water prices, increased volatility of farm income, loss of productive land and relocation of industries.
The NFF declared its “priority ask” was a $1bn eco-systems services fund, following on from a $30m biodiversity stewardship fund announced in the federal election that would develop a framework to pay farmers to improve landscape and capture carbon.
National Farmers’ Federation CEO Tony Mahar, centre, says climate change is increasing risk to the sector through more intense and severe droughts, high water prices, increased volatility of farm income, loss of productive land and relocation of industries. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP Mahar echoed the Craik report, which also recommended the government introduce “market-based” National Biodiversity Conservation Trust fund for eco-services.
“We are talking about this as the new Landcare and being a system that will recognise, reward, and put a value on some of the systems and services and land management processes that farmers undertake every day, every year, and have done for decades but haven’t been able to get an income stream from that.”
The World Wildlife Fund has backed has backed the principle of paying farmers for good environment practices.
The WWF’s Ian McConnel said farmer payments for eco-system work would be an important driver for positive change.
“We need to reward people when they are adopting practices, especially when those practices don’t come as a win-win to production,” McConnel. “We need to prove there’s a biodiversity measurement. There’s a whole range of challenges around that, but we need to have very good models based on data that says if you do this practice, we see this improvement.”
McConnel said the WWF had already designed farm practices applicable to Germany where farmers could choose from a range of works from restoring wetlands to vegetation connectivity and get paid a premium.
McConnel said while planting and retaining trees was certainly “the easier way” to improve environmental outcomes, capturing soil carbon was potentially a longer term solution for farmers.
The NFF’s $1bn target was “absolutely” achievable, he said, and could come from a mix of government funding and private investors.
“The world needs pretty large-scale investment if we are going to turn the head on biodiversity loss and carbon so we are going to have to see some pretty big investment in that space and I think the willingness is there from both the public and private to invest,” McConnel said.

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Australia Won't Reach Paris Target Without Action On Transport, LNG And Coal, Expert Says

Lethal Heating - 3 July, 2019 - 05:00
The Guardian - 

Morrison government urged to address where greenhouse gas emissions are rising substantially
Emissions released during LNG processing and coalmining have jumped 55%, which will impact Australia’s Paris target, an Australia Institute report says.The challenge the Morrison government faces in meeting future climate targets without new policies is underlined by an analysis that breaks down how significantly greenhouse gas emissions are increasing from transport, natural gas and coalmining.
Since 2005, the year against which the government has chosen to benchmark its Paris target, Australia’s emissions from transport are up 23%.
Pollution from burning fossil fuels – mainly natural gas, but also coal – in manufacturing, construction and domestic heating has risen 30%. “Fugitive” emissions released during liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing and coalmining have jumped 55%.



Other parts of the economy are getting cleaner – emissions from electricity generation, which is still the biggest chunk of national emissions at about a third, are down 10%. There have been smaller cuts from agriculture, waste and industrial processes.
But the analysis of government data by Hugh Saddler, an energy consultant and ANU honorary associate professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, suggests Australia cannot meet the target it set at the Paris climate summit without policies to address where emissions are rising substantially.
He said at the moment the government does not have any.
“They absolutely don’t have any policy to stop emissions rising from transport and in the other areas such as LNG and coal exports the policy is to actually encourage them to grow – the government would like to think they would keep going up and up,” Saddler said.
The data is contained in Saddler’s latest national emissions audit, which is published by progressive research and lobby group the Australia Institute.
Australia’s total emissions are now estimated to be 12.7% less than they were in 2005. They have increased each year since 2015, when they were 14.5% below the benchmark year. The Coalition’s target is a 26-28% cut by 2030.
Saddler said it showed why the Morrison government was pushing hard to use what are known as carryover credits to meet its Paris target. The credits represent the amount Australia expects to finish ahead of its 2020 target under the previous climate deal, the Kyoto Protocol.
Several countries – notably members of the Association of Small Island States such as Tuvalu – challenged Australia at United Nations climate talks in Bonn, Germany last week over its plan to use carryover credits. The European Union and New Zealand are among others opposed to their use.
Opponents say using carryover credits would effectively reduce Australia’s 2030 target to a 16% cut.
They say carryover credits are merely a reflection that Australia set easy-to-meet targets under the Kyoto Protocol – a pollution increase between 1990 and 2010, then a 5% cut between 2000 and 2020 – and that all countries will need to drop accounting tricks and make much deeper cuts if the world is to limit global heating to as close to 1.5C as possible.
Richie Merzian, the Australia Institute’s climate and energy program director, said using carryover credits was the most egregious example of the Coalition government’s contempt for the international climate system. “Australia is isolated as the only OECD country pushing to exploit this loophole,” he said.
A recent policy brief by the Investor Group on Climate Change says carryover credits were included in the initial Kyoto deal as an incentive for ambitious countries to go beyond their formal targets. In reality, it has just rewarded countries that set weak targets, such as Australia and Russia.
It is still unclear how carryover credits will be treated under the Paris deal. Countries are expected to explain how they will meet their targets and – unless there is a unanimous agreement to ban carryover credits – they could technically just include them. But they would be likely to face increasing criticism.
The Paris agreement also says countries will become more ambitious over time and that their commitments will reflect their “highest possible ambition”. Opponents say carryover credits do not fit this definition as they transparently weaken a target.
When asked about carryover credits, the government says Australia has made “responsible, achievable and balanced commitments” to reduce emissions and has a strong track record in meeting and beating its targets.
The minister for emissions reduction, Angus Taylor, has also argued that the growth in emissions from Australia’s rapidly expanding LNG industry should be seen as a positive as the gas would be reducing the amount of coal burned in Asia. The Saddler report suggests this makes little sense given the government is also supporting a significant expansion of coalmining in Queensland.
Saddler said there was a possibility that emissions could be reduced where they are currently growing through state government and city-based policies and changes in technology and on international markets. He gives the example of electric vehicles, which are expected to be cost competitive with petrol cars by 2025.
“One of the things we can hope for is that technological change comes along in the absence of any government policy,” he said.
A government policy document released before the election estimated by 2030 about 100m tonnes of emissions reduction would come from unspecified “technology improvements and other sources of abatement”.
Other trends in the report include:
  • Queensland has the highest emissions in the country. Emissions grew in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory between 2014 and 2017 while falling everywhere else.
  • National emissions would have been expected to increase even more this year were it not for the devastating drought and floods in eastern Australia that killed huge numbers of sheep and cattle.
  • Diesel fuel emissions surged 50% between 2011 and 2018, increasing significantly both on the road and in power generation at mining sites.
  • But diesel use has fallen each month since December despite no obvious change in policy. If that continues for the rest of the year, it will be the first time it has happened since 1990-91 – the low point of Australia’s last economic recession.
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Fears Northern Australian Mangrove Forests Could 'Drown' Due To Rising Seas

Lethal Heating - 2 July, 2019 - 05:00
ABC News - Nick Hose

Northern Australia's mangroves could be under threat by rising sea levels. (ABC News: Nick Hose) Key Points:
  • Mangroves could be wiped out by the end of the century, researchers say
  • Research is being done to work out how the ecosystem will cope with rising seas
  • Sea level rise is happening at a faster rate in northern Australia than in the south
It's low tide on a sunny, dry season afternoon in the mangrove forest at East Arm in Darwin Harbour.
As the tide laps at the dense tangle of roots that run for thousands of hectares along northern Australia's pristine coastline, it's hard to comprehend these forests could be wiped out by the end of the century.
"They're definitely vulnerable," said Madeline Goddard, a PhD candidate at Charles Darwin University.
Ms Goddard is studying mangroves to see how they will adapt to rising sea levels.

Mangroves could drown
"Across the world the sea level is rising, increasing the amount of time mangroves spend underwater, potentially flooding and killing these valuable forests," Ms Goddard said.
The Bureau of Meteorology has been monitoring sea level rise and found it is happening at a faster rate in northern Australia than in the south.
"We've seen for the last 7,000 years the water level has slowly risen and that mangroves have persisted, they are really resilient," Ms Goddard said.
"But they can't keep up with our really dramatic projected rise."Charles Darwin University PhD candidate Madeline Goddard (right) studies mangroves in northern Australia (ABC News: Nick Hose)
 
It is a fear shared by the Australian Marine Conservation Society.
Northern Territory manager Jason Fowler said the mangroves could drown because sediment was accumulating slower than the rate that the sea level was rising.
"So the mangroves will literally run out of mud, slowly get flooded, and drown out," he said."We've already seen that mangroves are vulnerable to climate change after one of the worst instances of mangrove forest dieback struck Australia's Gulf of Carpentaria in the summer of 2016."

Carbon-storing superpowers
Ms Goddard said there was a huge amount of carbon that mangroves store in the mud.
"But also in the forest themselves," she said.
It's a superpower that could prove crucial in the fight against climate change.
"Mangroves store a lot of carbon — upwards of 50 times more than identical areas of rainforest," Ms Goddard said.

Mangroves in northern Australia are under threat. (ABC News: Nick Hose)
 
Best hope of survival could lie in careful planning
Ms Goddard said mangroves might be able to adapt to sea level rise if they have space to grow."What's really critical is they can also move landward," Ms Goddard said.She said many coastlines in northern Australia were not developed, which would leave new habitat for mangroves to move into.
"As you get elevated sea level rise you get increased flooding times, and so the area behind the mangroves has potential for them to move into," she said.

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Kids Suing Governments About Climate: It's A Global Trend

Lethal Heating - 2 July, 2019 - 05:00
National Geographic - Laura Parker

From Colombia to Pakistan to the Netherlands, kids are claiming a right to a clean environment—and sometimes winning.
People demonstrate in support of the plaintiffs in the climate change lawsuit Juliana v. U.S. in front of the Wayne L. Morse Courthouse in Eugene, Oregon. Photograph by Terray Sylvester, VWPics via APWhen young people in the Netherlands sued their government for inaction on climate change, they unexpectedly won. In a decision noted for its bluntness, the court ordered the government to curb carbon emissions 25 percent by next year.
Another ground-breaking success emerged last year in Colombia, where 25 young people won their lawsuit against the government for failing to protect the Colombian Amazon rainforest. The court concluded that deforestation violated the rights of both the youths and the rainforest and ordered the government to reduce it to net zero by 2020.
And a seven-year-old girl in Pakistan gained the right to proceed with her climate change lawsuit on its merits—establishing, in a first for Pakistan, the rights of a minor to sue in court.
This trio of courtroom victories on three continents has become the foundation of a global legal movement to compel governments to step up and save the planet before it’s too late. Citizens are raising constitutional claims to gain recognition of the fundamental right to live in a healthy environment. Court decisions defending that right have been made in more than 50 nations, where governments have been faulted for a host of environmental sins that range from climate-risky pension fund investments to simply failing to live up to commitments made in the Paris climate agreement.
Legal experts anticipate that the number of new lawsuits will only grow as the scientific prognosis for the impacts of climate change becomes increasingly dire.
“This is a direct response to the fact that we are waking up to the magnitude of the global crisis,” says David Boyd, a law professor at the University of British Columbia and a United Nations special rapporteur on human rights.
Boyd, who specializes in environmental rights, catalogued legal actions among UN member states and concluded that no other social or economic right has spread as quickly through the world.
                            A People’s Right to a Healthy EnvironmentThere are three mechanisms by which a country can recognize its citizens’ right to a clean environment:
       1. constitutional guarantees;
       2. national legislation; and
       3. adherence to international conventions.
On this map we show how many of these mechanisms are available in each country. Countries with none are shown in white and include some of the largest democracies. But a total of 112 countries recognize environmental rights in their constitutions—the strongest guarantee.

                           Legal recognitions of environmental rights: 

NG Staff Source: David R.Boyd University Of British ColumbiaInstitute For Resources, Environment, And SustainabilityOnce dismissed as a “novel perspective,” the right to a healthy environment is now considered legally established around the world, he says. It is enshrined in the constitutions of more than 100 nations and has been incorporated in legislation, treaties or in other documents of at least 155 nations. Of the court cases based on a constitutional right to a healthy environment, the majority are winning. And, in the cases brought by young people, courts are receptive to recognizing that right for future generations.
“What you see in this rising tide, led by children—who have the greatest stake—of people saying to their governments: ‘You have failed. We have rights and you need to abide by and protect those rights,’” says Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law, based in Washington and Geneva.

Influential cases
The seven-year-old’s case in Pakistan builds on the successful outcome of an earlier lawsuit filed by a farmer who claimed Pakistan’s failure to carry out its climate commitments cost him his livelihood. The court found that “the delay and lethargy of the State in implementing [climate policy] offend the fundamental rights of citizens.” The court also ordered the creation of a Climate Change Commission to monitor the government’s progress.
The Netherlands case eventually involved almost 900 Dutch citizen plaintiffs from multiple generations. In 2015 the judges swiftly and overwhelmingly rejected the government’s claim that near-term climate action would be too expensive. The court-ordered remedy requires the government, within a year, to make nearly twice the carbon emission cuts made since 1990. To meet that target, the government has said it would shut down a coal-fired power plant in Amsterdam, slated for closure at the end of 2024, by the end of this year. Meanwhile it has appealed the decision to the Dutch supreme court.
The Dutch case has became the model for similarly fashioned lawsuits in Belgium, Ireland, and Canada, and it has inspired other climate cases in countries as far flung as Uganda, New Zealand, Australia, and Norway. The Colombia case has had a similar impact. When the youths there won their case, Boyd says, “Let me tell you, there were lawyers in 100 other countries saying: how can we emulate that decision? We’ve never had such a globally connected system.”
The exception may be the case in the United States, where judges are traditionally immune from influence from international cases. Juliana v. United States, named for lead plaintiff Kelsey Juliana, now a 23-year-old University of Oregon student, was filed against the Obama administration in 2015, around the same time the Netherlands case was decided. It’s being closely watched for the possibility that it may write new precedents if it survives.

Litigation not always successful
If some see climate litigation as the last chance to slow global warming, critics argue that turning policy and lawmaking over to judges is misguided and will accomplish little more than to spawn the very flood of litigation that advocates predict.
Michael Burger, executive director and CEO of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University Law School in New York, says the swelling wave of lawsuits should surprise no one, given the lumbering pace of government action. At the moment, the center is tracking 1,039 cases ongoing in the United States and 283 in other countries. The majority of them, unlike the youth cases, involve enforcing existing environmental regulations and law.
“People are taking to the courts because governments are falling short and when you have nowhere else to go, you go to court,” he says.
There are other drawbacks to litigation. Lawsuits move slowly too. The Belgian case stalled for three years over arguments about whether to proceed in Dutch or French; the parties finally agreed on French. Court-ordered solutions can be ineffective or unenforceable.
The decision last year in Colombia, for example, is considered one of the most progressive and powerful in the region. But the court-ordered plan to curb deforestation has so far generated more publicity than government action, says Cesar Rodrigues-Garavito, the plaintiffs' lawyer and founder of Dejusticia, a Colombian human rights group. He has called for his clients to mobilize to prod the government to move ahead.
Most of the countries with constitutional protections of environmental rights are developing nations with newer constitutions, Boyd says. Many are still emerging from the legacies of colonialism or military dictatorship and struggling to deliver basic services to their citizens. Those factors increase the odds against a court ordering a climate remedy, say, that is actually enforced.
Even in Norway, where the constitution, which dates to 1814, is the world’s second-oldest after that of the United States, protected rights don’t always win the day. Norway’s constitution clearly details the right to a healthy environment and that it be “safeguarded for future generations.”
Yet a Norway court dismissed efforts by Nordic youth and two non-governmental organizations to prevent the government from granting licenses for oil and gas exploration in the Barents Sea. The plaintiffs had argued that the licenses would violate Norway’s commitment under the Paris climate agreement as well as the Norwegian constitution. Although the court agreed that the right to a healthy environment is a claimable right, it concluded that the licenses would not violate it.
“Sometimes judges make bad decisions. They said this can’t be a violation of Norway’s right to a healthy environment because the oil will be exported,” Boyd says. “This case has a chance on appeal, which will be heard this fall.”

New legal ground
The constitutional question is at the center of the U.S. case. Government lawyers for both the Obama and Trump administrations have argued from the start that no such constitutional right exists, and the Trump administration has repeatedly tried to have the case thrown out of court.
The United States is one of 38 UN member states lacking expressly stated constitutional protections to a healthy environment. The youths say such language is not necessary for courts to find in their favor. They claim the federal government’s promotion of the production of fossil fuels and indifference to the risks posed by greenhouse gas emissions have created a “dangerous destabilizing climate system” that threatens their rights to life, liberty and property, which are contained in the Constitution. U.S. District Court Judge Anne Aiken agreed with their claim and ordered the case to be tried.
Recognizing environmental rights in that context would elevate the case into the realm of historic cases, including Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision that declared segregation of public schools unconstitutional, and Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that recognized a constitutional right to access to abortion.
In arguments before a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier in June, Jeffrey Clark, a U.S. assistant attorney general, called the lawsuit a “dagger at the separation of powers.”
He added: “This is a suit that is designed to circumvent a whole bunch of statutes.”
In an animated, hour-long hearing, the three-judge panel conveyed their skepticism to both Clark and Julia Olson, the youths’ lead attorney.
“Look, you’re arguing for us to break new ground,” Judge Andrew Hurwitz told Olson. “I’m sympathetic to the problems you point out. But you shouldn’t say this is an ordinary suit… You’re asking us to do a lot of new stuff.”

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Tiny Nations Challenge Australia's Carbon 'Carryover Credits'

Lethal Heating - 2 July, 2019 - 05:00
Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

Nations from Senegal to Tuvalu have used a United Nations climate conference to challenge the Morrison government's use of carbon "carryover credits" to virtually halve Australia's abatement ambition out to 2030.
The conference that wrapped up at the end of last week in Bonn, Germany, debated among other things, the rules of the Paris Agreement.
Climate issues, including how Australia counts its emissions, aren't going away. Credit: John Veage
The discussions included whether nations including Australia should be allowed to count the surplus it expects to generate during the Kyoto Protocol period that runs to 2020.
On the government's projections, 328 million tonnes of Australia's pledged cut of about 695 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent could be met by counting the Kyoto surplus for the Paris pledge over the decade from 2021-2030.
Among the nations that opposed the use of "carryover credits" at the Bonn conference included the Association of Small Island states, including Tuvalu.
South Korea, the European Union and New Zealand were also against using Kyoto surplus, according to Kate Dooley, a researcher with the the Climate and Energy College at the University of Melbourne, who was an observer at the Bonn conference.
"Discussions here in Bonn have made it clear that most countries do not accept the carry-over of Kyoto units into the Paris Agreement," Dr Dooley said.
"The world’s most vulnerable countries have spoken out to say that accounting tricks, such as those the Australian government intends to use, are not consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees."
Angus Taylor, the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, though, defended Australia's stance.
"We have made responsible, achievable and balanced commitments to reduce our emissions and we have a strong track record in meeting and beating our targets," Mr Taylor said.
"We will meet our Paris commitment to reduce emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and we will do this while growing the economy, creating jobs, protecting our environment and keeping power prices down."
The 367 million tonne Kyoto credit more than halves Australia's total carbon abatement effort for the 2021-30 decade - that will be costly to make up if the surplus plan falls through. Credit: The Australia Institute, using projections by Tim Baxter, University of Melbourne."We have already over-achieved on our commitment under the Kyoto Protocol, exceeding our 2012 targets and expecting to exceed our 2020 targets by 328 million tonnes - something few countries have done," Mr Taylor said.
The Bonn talks were largely focused on preparing the rules for Article 6 of the Paris Agreement ahead of a Conference of the Parties (COP25) summit in Santiago, Chile later this year. The article is one of the main unresolved issues from the pact signed in Paris in 2015.
The Carbon Pulse newswire said while the new text agreed at Bonn had the potential to scupper Australia's plans to use Kyoto credits without a specific prohibition in place they would still be able to be banked.
Still, the newswire quoted Gilles Dufrasne of Carbon Market Watch as raising the issue of how such credits had undermined nations' abatement efforts.
"We have seen how damaging this has been under the Kyoto Protocol and we cannot afford to repeat the experience under the Paris Agreement," Mr Dufrasne said. "It is very important that [Kyoto Protocol] units are not allowed for use towards [national targets}."

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When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Met Greta Thunberg: 'Hope Is Contagious'

Lethal Heating - 1 July, 2019 - 05:00
The Guardian - 

One is America’s youngest-ever congresswoman, the other a Swedish schoolgirl. Two of the most powerful voices on the climate speak for the first time
 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg. Photograph: Stephen Voss, Anna Schori/The Guardian Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez enters a boardroom at her constituency office in Queens, New York, after a short delay which, a political aide hopes, hasn’t been caused by a constituent waylaying her in the corridor. (“They can get really excited to meet her.”) Greta Thunberg is in her home in Sweden, her father testing the technology for the video link while the teenager waits in the background. The activists have never met nor spoken but, as two of the most visible climate campaigners in the world, they are keenly aware of each other.
Thunberg, now 16, catapulted to fame last year for skipping school every Friday to stand outside the Swedish parliament, protesting against political inaction over the climate crisis and sparking an international movement, the school strike for climate, in which millions of other children followed suit. Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district is, at 29, the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress, whose election over a well-funded incumbent in 2018 was a huge upset to politics-as-usual. She has been in office for less than a year, which seems extraordinary given the amount of coverage she has generated. In February, Ocasio-Cortez submitted the Green New Deal to the US House of Representatives, calling for, among other things, the achievement of “net-zero” greenhouse gases within a decade and “a full transition off fossil fuels”, as well as retrofitting all buildings in the US to meet new energy efficient standards.
The Green New Deal, while garnering support from Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar, was mocked by speaker Nancy Pelosi (“the green dream or whatever they call it”), and defeated in the Senate by Republicans. Like Thunberg, however, Ocasio-Cortez gives every appearance of being galvanised by opposition, and has the kind of energy that has won her 4.41 million Twitter followers and makes establishment politicians in her path very nervous.
In the course of their conversation, Ocasio-Cortez and Thunberg discuss what it is like to be dismissed for their age, how depressed we should be about the future, and what tactics, as an activist, really work. Ocasio-Cortez speaks with her customary snap and brilliance that, held up against the general waffle of political discourse, seems startlingly direct. Thunberg, meanwhile, is phenomenally articulate, well-informed and self-assured, holding her own in conversation with an elected official nearly twice her age and speaking in deliberate, thoughtful English. They are, in some ways, as different as two campaigners can get – the politician working the system with Washington polish, and the teenager in her socks and leggings, working from her bedroom to reach the rest of the world. There is something very moving about the conversation between these young women, a sense of generational rise that, as we know from every precedent from the Renaissance onwards, has the power to ignite movements and change history.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez It’s such an honour to meet you!

Greta Thunberg You, too!

AOC Thank you. I’m so excited to be having this conversation. I remember first hearing your speech a few months ago – I was hanging out with a friend in Harlem, who said, “Have you listened to this young woman?” And I heard your speech and was thrilled, because here in the United States, even when I was running, people were saying there’s no need to convey this kind of urgency [about the climate], and it’s radical, and it’s unnecessary. To hear you articulate the belief that I’ve had as well is so exciting and validating. So I wanted to thank you for your work and your advocacy.

GT Thank you so much for standing up and offering hope to so many people, even here in Sweden.
People say, 'Don’t politicise young people.' It’s almost a taboo. I find it very condescending
AOC One of the things I’m interested in hearing from you is that often people say, “Don’t politicise young people.” It’s almost a taboo. That to have someone as young as you coming out in favour of political positions is manipulative or wrong. I find it very condescending, as though, especially in this day and age with the access to information we have, you can’t form your own opinions and advocate for yourself. I’m interested in how you approach that – if anyone brings that up with you?

GT That happens all the time. That’s basically all I hear. The most common criticism I get is that I’m being manipulated and you shouldn’t use children in political ways, because that is abuse, and I can’t think for myself and so on. And I think that is so annoying! I’m also allowed to have a say – why shouldn’t I be able to form my own opinion and try to change people’s minds?
But I’m sure you hear that a lot, too; that you’re too young and too inexperienced. When I see all the hate you receive for that, I honestly can’t believe how you manage to stay so strong.

AOC I think the thing that people sometimes don’t realise is that here in the United States, because of the gap between the rich and the poor, people really identify Wall Street as a very potent political force. With our rules, politicians are allowed to accept campaign contributions on a level that is probably beyond what happens in other parts of the world.
But what people don’t recognise is how strong the fossil fuel lobby is. The Koch brothers in the US have essentially purchased the entire Republican party, but people forget they made their money off oil and gas. That is where their fortune comes from. And I think that’s what we’re up against. So the severity of the pushback indicates the power that we are challenging. You can look at that with despair, or you can look at it with hope. That’s how strong we are: we’re so strong that we’re able to take this on credibly and actually build a movement against it.
‘Why should we argue about who or what needs to change first? Why not take the leading role?’ Photograph: Stephen Voss, Anna Schori/The Guardian GT Yes, I mean, the oil lobby is huge in the US, and we also have that kind of lobby in Sweden. Not as much, but...

AOC What is the most effective tactic in gaining attention for the environmental movement? What have you done, or what have been the practices that have been most galvanising?

GT I think this whole movement in which I just sat down in front of the parliament, alone – I think that had a huge impact, because people saw it and were moved, and became emotional. Millions of children around the world, striking and saying, “Why should we study for a future that may not exist any more?” This is not only me, but everyone in the movement.

AOC Another question I have for you is that a lot of people talk about Sweden and other Nordic countries as an inspiration. People say that [advanced thinking around the climate crisis] could never happen in the US, because we’re a multiracial democracy – the fact that Sweden and other places are more homogenous means they’re able to get along better. That because of the racial diversity here, and issues with immigration and so on, there’s no way we can come together in order to combat this. I’m interested in what you say in response to that.

GT Many people, especially in the US, see countries like Sweden or Norway or Finland as role models – we have such a clean energy sector, and so on. That may be true, but we are not role models. Sweden is one of the top 10 countries in the world when it comes to the highest ecological footprints, according to the WWF – if you count the consumer index, then we are among the worst per capita.
In Sweden, the most common argument that we shouldn’t act is that we are such a small country with only 10 million inhabitants – we should focus more on helping other countries. That is so incredibly frustrating, because why should we argue about who or what needs to change first? Why not take the leading role?

AOC We hear the same exact argument here. And this is the United States of America! People say, “Well, we should wait for China to do something.” There’s this political culture of people trying to say America First – that the US is the best nation in the world, yet at the same time they’re saying, “Well, China’s not doing it, why should we?”
And I think it’s the same argument: are we going to choose to lead, or are we going to sit on our hands? It seems as if they take pride in leading on fracking, on being the number one in oil, in consumption, in single-use plastics. But they don’t seem to want to take pride in leading on the environment and leading for our children.

GT Yes. I mean, countries like Sweden or the US, since we are rich countries, need to go first. Because people in poor countries need to be able to raise their standard of living. We have a duty to lead when we already have, basically, everything.
People think of leadership as this glamorous, powerful thing. But leadership is a responsibility. Leadership is not fun


AOC Yes. People think of leadership as this glamorous, powerful thing. To be a leader is to come first, to set the agenda. But what people don’t realise is that leadership is also enormously difficult. Leadership is a responsibility. Leadership is not fun. Leadership is about doing things before anybody else does them. Leadership is about taking risks. Leadership is about taking decisions when you don’t know 100% what the outcome is going to be.
It’s enormously easy to follow – it’s the easiest thing in the world. And there are detriments to following. You are too late. You do not control your destiny. You are not in control, period. You are often under the thumb of someone else. But it is enormously easy because you don’t have to determine the future. It seems as if, really, it’s a decision on whether we’re going to lead or not.
I wonder what, to you, is encouraging, and what keeps you going? There’s a school of thought – I personally disagree with it – that says if you educate people too much [about the climate] they’re going to think it’s too late and they’re going to wallow in despair and not act at all. So I’m curious, given how daunting the issue is, why aren’t you so filled with despair that you’re staying on your couch every day, and just waiting for the apocalypse? [Laughs]

GT Before I started school striking, I was like that. I was so depressed and I didn’t want to do anything, basically. But what I find encouraging is having all these people who are fighting on different sides in different ways, to create a better future and to make us avoid catastrophic climate breakdown.
The school-striking children, when I see them – that is very hopeful. And also the fact that people are very unaware of the climate crisis. I mean, people aren’t continuing like this and not doing anything because they are evil, or because they don’t want to. We aren’t destroying the biosphere because we are selfish. We are doing it simply because we are unaware. I think that is very hopeful, because once we know, once we realise, then we change, then we act.

AOC I had a similar tipping point, although it had more to do with income inequality. Many people know that several years ago I was working in a restaurant, and I had gone to college, and I had worked on so many things, but my family had fallen in to a lot of misfortune – my father had gotten sick and so on. And I was working in this restaurant and I would go, day in and day out, and I was so depressed. I felt so powerless, and as though there was nothing I could do that could effectively counter the enormous number of societal structures that are designed in the US to keep the working class poor, and to keep the rich, richer.
‘Hope is not something that you have. Hope is something that you create, with your actions.’ Photograph: Stephen Voss, Anna Schori/The Guardian I was really wallowing in despair for a while: what do I do? Is this my life? Just showing up, working, knowing that things are so difficult, then going home and doing it again. And I think what was profoundly liberating was engaging in my first action – when I went to Standing Rock, in the Dakotas, to fight against a fracking pipeline. It seemed impossible at the time. It was just normal people, showing up, just standing on the land to prevent this pipeline from going through. And it made me feel extremely powerful, even though we had nothing, materially – just the act of standing up to some of the most powerful corporations in the world.
From there I learned that hope is not something that you have. Hope is something that you create, with your actions. Hope is something you have to manifest into the world, and once one person has hope, it can be contagious. Other people start acting in a way that has more hope.

I remember the first day I was school-striking outside the Swedish parliament, I felt so alone. But I was hopefulGT Yeah. I know so many people who feel hopeless, and they ask me, “What should I do?” And I say: “Act. Do something.” Because that is the best medicine against sadness and depression. I remember the first day I was school-striking outside the Swedish parliament, I felt so alone, because everyone went straight past, no one even looked at me. But at the same time I was hopeful.

AOC It’s true that people don’t know when those small actions can manifest into something. I’ve seen it even in office. There’s so much cynicism about, how powerful can this be? Just me showing up?
I think sometimes we’re so obsessed with measurement. What does me standing outside of parliament with a sign do? It doesn’t lower any carbon emissions immediately. It doesn’t change any laws directly. But what it does is make powerful people feel something, and people underestimate the power of that. It is becoming harder and harder for elected officials to look people in the eye.
Just this morning I was sent a picture of an older gentleman from the midwest, which has just seen some catastrophic flooding – we’re starting to see flooding in the US where there was never flooding before. In the midwest there’s a disaster package that’s not getting passed, and he was just there with a sign saying, “Do you care about me?” He stood outside the congressional building, knowing that members are going to have to pass him by, and it’s very much inspired, I would say, by the actions that you’ve taken.
The biggest weapon people have is to try to make you think that you don’t matter. It is to say, “This doesn’t change anything.” Because if you can convince people that it doesn’t matter, then they won’t do it and people can go on as though it’s business as usual. We are no longer at the point of preventing [climate disaster] from happening entirely – we are now at the point of minimising the damage. And as these floods and storms are here, I think more and more people are going to be willing to stand up for themselves.

GT I have a question. I have heard about how bad the situation is in the US with climate denialism, but I find it very hard to believe. It’s bad here in Sweden – but I have seen reports of how little the US media mentions the climate crisis and how it is treated. How bad is it really?

AOC I would say that it has historically been very, very bad. But it’s actually getting much better.
In the 1970s, ExxonMobil had internal science that not only definitively proved that climate change was real, but they themselves, the oil company, invested in modelling to see how bad it was going to be. Some of their models were so sophisticated that, back in the 70s, they were predicting our weather patterns as far out as 2012 – and many of them were accurate. They knew exactly what was happening.
So what they did, starting the year I was born, around 1989, was to start funding a lot of media and lobbying campaigns. They knew they couldn’t fund campaigns outright saying climate change is not real. But they could fund campaigns sowing confusion. So they would run campaigns saying we need to see more science, to sow doubt around the consensus. For a very long time it worked, and it got very bad. We came very close to acting on the climate in 1989, but the lobbying was so powerful that they effectively prevented action – we had almost 40% of Republican voters not believing that climate change was settled fact.
But I think because of our advocacy and our movement, those numbers have been dropping precipitously in just the last few years. And in the last year especially, with our push for a Green New Deal, connecting everything that is happening to climate change. People who cover increasingly worse hurricanes as though they are accidents, or just things that happen – now, every time a storm comes, we talk about climate change. The other piece of it is not just acknowledging that it’s real, but prioritising it as a top issue. We just received some very encouraging numbers yesterday – a year or two years ago, only 20% of Democratic voters, the more liberal voters in the country, saw climate change as a top issue. With our action, and the youth organising that’s going on now, it has surged. We’ve seen in very early voting states, something like 70% of Democratic voters think that a Green New Deal should be a top issue, and that they would support candidates who support it, and not supporting it is a red flag for many voters. I think we’re moving, but it takes this radical action to move it.
We have historically had an issue with media coverage of the climate crisis – I think they don’t realise that not covering it is just as bad as denying it. We have issues because much of our media is profit-driven, and if it doesn’t drive ratings they will not cover it as much. But we simply don’t have a choice. We have to do this.

GT I saw very recent numbers, I think it was yesterday, that suggested about 2% of Sweden’s population don’t believe in the climate crisis. Here it’s not as acceptable to not believe in it. Everyone accepts that it’s a fact. But still we aren’t talking about it, and it’s not a priority. We are just treating it like any other issue.

AOC Why do you think young people have been more powerful and persuasive on this issue, in particular?

GT Many reasons, but I think the main one is that it is our future that is at risk. Most of us know that this is going to affect us in our lifetimes – it’s not just something that might happen in the future. It’s already here and it’s going to get worse, and many of us understand that this is going to make our lives much worse. And also that as young people, we aren’t as used to the system. We don’t say, “It’s always been like this, we can’t change anything.”

AOC I’ve always said to people that youth is a mindset. And young people, we tend to come in and almost take that mindset for granted because as you said, we haven’t seen the world before, this is our first path, and so we have a tendency to question all of the nonsensical things that have just gone on for reasons of outdated logic. I have three- and four-year-old nieces and nephews, and they’re always asking, “Why, why, why, why?” For a lot of people it can be somewhat irritating. But I think sometimes it’s irritating because they don’t have the answers.
You can be much older and still part of a youth movement, if you refuse to do things just because that’s the way they’ve always been done. I believe that young people just have a natural distillation of the world that is so pure. I’ve always felt that social movements, and youth movements in particular, should continue to be the moral compass that guides our vision.

GT Yes, it always reminds me a lot of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Everyone believes in this lie, that only a child dares to question.

AOC Right. When I was first running [for office], people often mocked me as a child. I’m much older than you! But I was still very young for someone who was running for such a powerful seat. People would say, “But don’t you know this is how it’s always been done? He has so much money, and power. There’s no reason you should challenge someone in your own party – we should challenge people in other parties.” And so on and so forth. And they were all veiled ways of saying I was too inexperienced, too naive, too young, and too powerless.
I think the mere refusal to accept that can change our world. That’s exactly what you’ve done.

GT I think we’ve both done that.

GT I don’t fly for climate reasons so it’s not 100% yet, but we are figuring it out. It’s very hard, but I think it should be possible.

AOC That’s incredible. I’m so excited to follow that. Let us know how we can help from over here. I think one of the things that we need to start communicating is that this a global struggle, and it’s not about what is Sweden doing, and what is the US doing – it’s about what are all of us doing, as one movement? I think the power of that is very real. I wish you well, and I know many members of Congress who would be thrilled to meet you.

GT Thank you so much.

AOC Thank you so much, Greta. Be sure to let us know when you have an arrival date. If you land in New York, we will give you a Queens’ welcome!

Greta Thunberg says that she is planning to travel to the US in August, so she can attend the UN Climate Action summit on 23 September.

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As G-20 Reaffirms Fight Against Climate Change, Trump Again Stands Apart

Lethal Heating - 1 July, 2019 - 05:00
Washington Post - Simon Denyer | Brady Dennis

Protesters wearing masks of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, and President Trump march against coal use as Group of 20 leaders met in Osaka, Japan, n June 28, 2019. (Pak Yiu/AFP/Getty Images)OSAKA, Japan — Leaders from the Group of 20 nations renewed their vow to take action to curb climate change on Saturday, as the United States once again stood apart and at odds with the rest of the world.
President Trump — who at times appeared not to grasp the difference between global warming and air pollution — dismissed the worldwide push for climate action and denied that any aggressive response to curb the world’s greenhouse gas emissions was necessary.
“We have the cleanest water we have ever had. We have the cleanest air we’ve ever had, but I’m not willing to sacrifice the tremendous power of what we’ve built up over a long period of time and what I’ve enhanced and revived,” Trump told a news conference at the end of the two-day G-20 summit here .
The United States was the lone dissenting voice in the final communique, in which 18 countries and the European Union underlined that the Paris climate accord is irreversible, and reiterated their commitment to its full implementation.
The modest language adopted by G-20 leaders was greeted as dangerously complacent by some environmental groups. But it displayed a common voice on the urgency of tackling climate change.
The final statement hung in the balance until the final hours of the meeting, with Brazil, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all wavering, officials said.


Scientists on May 6 released a landmark United Nations report on the damage done by modern civilization to the natural world. (Reuters)

The United States, as it has since Trump took power, reiterated its decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement “because it disadvantages American workers and taxpayers,” and boasted that it had reduced its energy-related emissions by 14 percent between 2005 and 2017.
“I’m not sure that I agree with certain countries with what they are doing. They are losing a lot of power. I am talking about the powering of a plant,” Trump continued.
“It doesn’t always work with a windmill. When the wind goes off, the plant isn’t working. It doesn’t always work with solar because solar [is] just not strong enough, and a lot of them want to go to wind, which has caused a lot of problems.
“Wind doesn’t work for the most part without subsidy. The United States is paying tremendous amounts of subsidies for wind. I don’t like it. I don’t like it.”
French President Emmanuel Macron had threatened before the meeting not to sign the final communique unless there was a strong commitment to climate change action. But he said leaders had at least managed to prevent a backsliding on climate change, “clarifying Brazil’s position on climate change and biodiversity,” and preventing Turkey from withdrawing from the Paris agreement.
Macron said his “red line” had not been crossed.
Saudi Arabia, which takes over the presidency of the G-20 in November, has also questioned the science behind an authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on global warming in discussions at the United Nations.
“While other leaders managed to hold the line on the Paris agreement, it’s unfortunate that they have to continually fight this rear-guard action against Trump denialism instead of devoting their energies to scaling up global action,” said Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.
“Trump is ignoring not only science but the growing demands of the U.S. public and U.S. companies for decisive action. As even the Chamber of Commerce recently declared, inaction is not an option.”
Paul Bledsoe, a lecturer at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy and a Clinton administration climate adviser, called the communique’s language touting its environmental record a “travesty” as the Trump administration was rolling back domestic laws and providing cover for countries like China to raise their greenhouse gas emissions.
“Climate should be a headliner right up with trade, but instead is largely an afterthought,” he said of the G-20 summit.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has vowed firm leadership to tackle climate change in his role as host and president of the G-20, but in the end was forced to defend a relatively modest agreement — which did not even include one of the major culprits in the United States.
“Despite the differences, all countries, including Japan, the United States, the countries in the E.U. and developing countries share a common basic understanding that we are aiming to leave a better world to the next generation,” Abe said. “Also, it is important to actually produce outcomes.”

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Climate Change Could Ruin Archeological Sites Before We Get The Chance To Study Them

Lethal Heating - 1 July, 2019 - 05:00
Grist - 

lost in the sands of the times Mihajlo Maricic / EyeEm If you like clams, you’re not alone. For the past 164,000 years, people have used shellfish as a food source. We know this thanks to shell middens found on shorelines around the world. By studying these mounds, scientists can say a lot about the history of early humans— from their dietary preferences to migration paths.
But this window into humankind’s past is shutting down because of — you guessed it — climate change. Rising sea levels, thawing permafrost, and vegetation increases are destroying archeological sites everywhere.
The latest findings come from scientists studying over 3,000 prehistoric shell midden sites on the Farasan Islands in the Red Sea some 30 miles offshore from Saudi Arabia. For 7,500 years, these sites have experienced a naturally fluctuating shoreline, giving the research team a perfect opportunity to assess the effects of such changes. Usually well-preserved at archaeological sites, shells are now being washed away by rising sea levels.
“Whilst there are many very negative connotations with sea-level rise for global society in general, the issue is already having severe impacts on cultural heritage world wide,” archaeologist Matthew Meredith-Williams, who co-authored the paper, told Grist.
And sea-level rise could be having an even greater impact on the archaeological record in the Arctic. Last year, scientists studied national cultural heritage databases and determined that there are at least 180,000 archeological sites in the Arctic. These sites are being lost to climate change faster than sites elsewhere, according to the paper published in the Antiquity journal.
Among endangered sites are Paleolithic excavations in the lower reaches of the Yana River in eastern Russia that show the life of ancient humans who settled the Arctic about 30,000 years ago. Ivory was found there with carved patterns that gave a glimpse of symbolic and ritual activities of early Siberians. Today, the Yana site is facing threat of destruction — part of it was already washed away as a result of erosion.
Even increased vegetation caused by a warmer climate threatens heritage sites. As boreal forests expand into the Arctic tundra, roots exploit the soil for water and nutrients — it could cause physical damage to organic archaeological material and disturb the archaeological stratigraphy, which is crucial to site interpretations.
“The problem is very serious,” Jørgen Hollesen, senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark, and co-author of the study in Antiquity told Grist. “Very few of the Arctic sites have been visited in recent times and therefore we know little about their current state of preservation. Currently we are working in the Nuuk region of Greenland. Here our newest results show that we could lose up to 70 percent of the organic content within this century.”
And there are problems in the continental U.S., too. Scientists announced in a 2017 study that almost 20,000 recorded archaeological sites along the coastline from Maryland to Louisiana are in danger of being destroyed by a sea-level rise of only 3 feet.
One of the endangered sites is Fort Sumter where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. The low-elevation island it’s located on would be lost by 3 feet of sea-level rise. Even the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials in Washington, D.C., are at risk because the Potomac River would experience higher tides and more frequent flooding as a result of climate change.
“For sites along the Pacific Coast, rising seawater and the intensity of storms threatens to destroy many significant coastal sites from Baja up to the Alaskan seashore,” anthropologist Sara Gonzalez from the University of Washington told Grist. “In Washington, Oregon, and California, sites are not only being impacted by coastal erosion, the increase in large, catastrophic fires is also creating significant dangers for the heritage.”
In a weird twist the same thing that threatens world heritage also can help uncover it. Since the 1990s, the discoveries include Viking artifacts in Norway, ancient weapons in Canada, and human remains in South America. For years scientists didn’t consider sub-Arctic areas as places worth digging but ice and permafrost created a perfect environment for preserving organic materials of ancient nomadic civilizations. Until, of course, climate change struck.
“If we do not protect the sites, we will lose irreplaceable human and environmental records of the past,” Jørgen Hollesen said. “It would be a great shame if future generations will not have this opportunity to learn from the past as we have.”

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No System Of Government Designed By Human Beings Can Survive What The Climate Crisis Will Bring

Lethal Heating - 30 June, 2019 - 04:00
Esquire - Charles P. Pierce

The window to prevent the worst of it is closing. Fast.ARUN SANKAR Getty ImagesIt is a long held belief here in the shebeen that, thanks to those clever Chinese climate hoaxsters, the next world wars are going to be fought not over oil, but over water. This is especially true in places like India, which is currently in the middle of a murderous heat wave in which temperatures regularly top out at 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and where hugely populated cities are running out of water. From the BBC: Residents have had to stand in line for hours to get water from government tanks, and restaurants have closed due to the lack of water. "Only rain can save Chennai from this situation," an official told BBC Tamil.
The city, which, according to the 2011 census, is India's sixth largest, has been in the grip of a severe water shortage for weeks now.
As the reservoirs started to run dry, many hotels and restaurants shut down temporarily.
The Chennai metro has turned off air conditioning in the stations, while offices have asked staff to work from home in a bid to conserve water...
The water crisis has also meant that most of the city has to depend solely on Chennai's water department, which has been distributing water through government trucks across neighborhoods.
"The destruction has just begun," an official said. "If the rain fails us this year too, we are totally destroyed."And, as the Times of London reports, the combination of heat and drought not only is killing people, but also is emptying villages in the northern part of India. (Gee, I wonder where everyone will go and how welcome they'll be when they get there?) And things among the people who have stayed so far are getting ugly.In the worst-hit areas many villages starved of water have been abandoned until the arrival of the monsoon brings relief, after weeks of temperatures topping 50 degrees.
In the northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan fighting has broken out over scarce water supplies, with police deployed to protect water trucks and wells.Water levels in the four main reservoirs in Chennai has fallen to one of its lowest levels in 70 years, according to Indian media reports, with the current levels amounting to only 1.3 percent of full capacity. ARUN SANKAR Getty ImagesThis is a part of the new normal, and it's coming soon to a theater near you. But, not to worry. According to this guy, if we don't turn things around on those clever Chinese climate hoaxsters in the next half-decade, we're all screwed anyway. From those noted tree-hugging libs at Forbes:"We have exquisite information about what that state is, because we have a paleo record going back millions of years, when the earth had no ice at either pole. There was almost no temperature difference between the equator and the pole," said James Anderson, a Harvard University professor of atmospheric chemistry best known for establishing that chlorofluorocarbons were damaging the Ozone Layer.
"The ocean was running almost 10ºC warmer all the way to the bottom than it is today," Anderson said of this once-and-future climate, "and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere would have meant that storm systems would be violent in the extreme, because water vapor, which is an exponential function of water temperature, is the gasoline that fuels the frequency and intensity of storm systems."...
People have the misapprehension that we can recover from this state just by reducing carbon emissions, Anderson said in an appearance at the University of Chicago.
Recovery is all but impossible, he argued, without a World War II-style transformation of industry—an acceleration of the effort to halt carbon pollution and remove it from the atmosphere, and a new effort to reflect sunlight away from the earth's poles.
This has to be done, Anderson added, within the next five years.
"The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero," Anderson said, with 75 to 80 percent of permanent ice having melted already in the last 35 years.No system of government devised by human beings can withstand what's coming, any more than overbuilt coastal enclaves can.
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New Temperature Record Set As France Swelters Through June Heatwave

Lethal Heating - 30 June, 2019 - 04:00
ABC News - Reuters


As the mercury climbed, Europeans were doing all they could to beat the heat (Photo: AP). (ABC News)

Key points:
  • The previous highest temperature record in France was set in 2003
  • Wildfires are being fought in northeast Spain, which firefighters said could easily quadruple in size
  • A 93-year-old man in central Spain collapsed and died from the extreme heat
France has registered its highest temperature since records began as the death toll rose from a heatwave suffocating much of Europe.The mercury hit 45.9 degrees Celsius in Villevieille, in the southerly Provence region, the weather forecaster Meteo France said, almost two degrees above the previous high of 44.1 Celsius recorded in August 2003.
The World Meteorological Organisation said that 2019 was on track to be among the world's hottest years, and that 2015-2019 would then be the hottest five-year period on record.
It said the European heatwave was "absolutely consistent" with extremes linked to the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.
Four administrative departments in France were placed on red alert, signalling temperatures of "dangerous intensity" that are more typical of Saudi Arabia.

Deaths and injuries reported due to extreme heat
Temperatures in parts of Spain were expected to hit a new June record of 43 degrees.
Since 1975, Spain has registered nine heatwaves in June. Five of them, however, have been in the past decade, according to the Spanish meteorological office.
In Catalonia, in north-east Spain, bushfires were raging across 60 square kilometres of land, but firefighters said that area could quadruple.
Farmers were asked to stop all work across the region for 48 hours.
Lakes have proven to be a welcome reprieve during the heatwave. (AP: Thomas Warnack)In the city of Valladolid in central Spain, a 93-year-old man collapsed and died due to the heat, police said.
And in a small town outside Cordoba, a 17-year-old died of heat-related effects after jumping into a swimming pool to cool off after a day working in the fields, regional health authorities said.
In France, one boy was seriously hurt when he was thrown back by a jet of water from a fire hydrant.
Some 4,000 schools were either closed or running a limited service to help working parents unable to stay at home.
French families with elderly relatives who were ill or living alone were advised to call or visit them twice a day and take them to cool places, while the state-run rail operator SNCF offered free cancellations or exchanges on long-distance trips.
The greater Paris region, Ile de France, had already banned more than half of cars from its roads as the stifling heat worsened air pollution, the toughest restriction provided for — although all cars were to be allowed to leave the city as school holidays began.
The cities of Lyon, Strasbourg and Marseille have also restricted traffic.
The unusually high temperatures are forecast to last until early next week.
France's many canals have become a popular way for people to cool down. (AP: Lewis Joly)
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Is Climate Change Causing Europe’s Intense Heat? A Scientist Weighs In

Lethal Heating - 30 June, 2019 - 04:00
Science News - Carolyn Gramling

Karsten Haustein talks about what is driving extreme heat in Europe and South Asia
SUN SHELTER  A brief, but intense, heat wave is baking much of mainland Europe, including Paris, shown in this photograph taken June 26. Researchers are working to determine how this heat wave might be linked to human-caused climate change. Dr Karsten HausteinDr Haustein is a climate scientist at the School of Geography and Environment, Oxford University, and a member of the World Weather Attribution Network, an international scientific consortium.
Dr Karsten interests include climate modelling and atmospheric aerosol research. Mainland Europe has sweltered for days under record-breaking temperatures, prompting researchers to try to untangle how much of the heat wave can be linked to climate change.
A report on that, by an international consortium of scientists called the World Weather Attribution Network, is expected to be released on July 2.
Previous heat records for many parts of Europe were set in the summer of 2003, when temperatures soared to 44.1° Celsius (111.4° Fahrenheit) in the southern French town of Conqueyrac.
That extreme heat killed more than 70,000 people across the continent — a death toll  that researchers determined was amplified by climate change (SN: 9/3/16, p. 5).
As another heat wave in 2018 baked Europe for three months, the consortium conducted a rapid assessment that determined it could not have happened without anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change.
Such events could occur yearly if global temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, the researchers found. If global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, though, such events were predicted every two out of three years.
This year’s event, which began in mid-June, is expected to be shorter. But it is intense. On June 28, temperatures in Gallargues-le-Montueux, a city in southern France, hit 45.9° C (114.6° F), smashing temperature records for the country.
But Europe isn’t the only part of the world dealing with dangerous heat levels. India and Pakistan have been suffering since mid-May under one of the longest-lasting heat waves in its recent history. In June, temperatures in New Delhi soared to 48° C (118.4° F), the highest ever recorded for the month in the Indian capital. By June 21, at least 180 people reportedly had died from heat-related causes.
Science News spoke with Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford in England who is affiliated with the consortium, about what’s behind these deadly events and how scientists determine in real time whether a particular heat wave can be attributed to climate change. His comments have been edited for clarity and brevity.

SN: Why was the World Weather Attribution Network created?
Haustein: The idea was that we would look at any given extreme events while they’re happening and try to scientifically attribute the climate change factor. For example, has it become a more likely event or not [due to climate change]? We define the event, put it into historic context — for example, is it a 1-in-100-year event? — and determine if it’s setting records or getting media attention. And then we do the model analyses to isolate the climate signal. We’re also teaching other researchers, in places including Kenya, South Africa and Australia, how to use our methods.

SN: Why are you analyzing the current Europe heat wave?
Haustein: This current heat wave just started 10 days ago. [By June 24], it was already shaping up to be pretty extreme, so we went for it.
The all-time maximum temperature in France was 44.1° C, from August 2003. That was a really bad one. There are chances we’ll get up to 45° C, which would be quite a new record. [A few hours after this interview, that milestone was reached on June 28.] For June, that’s pretty epic. Germany’s temperatures will peak on Sunday [June 30], and probably Monday [July 1] in Austria. And then there are two cold fronts that will be pushing through.

SN: What atmospheric conditions are causing the intense heat?
Haustein: To get a heat wave going, you need warm air in the upper level [of the atmosphere]. That comes from the south, from Africa. We actually set a record [on June 27] for temperatures at 1.5 kilometers above Earth’s surface, reaching 25.5° C.
How those upper-level air masses translate into temperatures on the surface is a different story. In simple terms, the jet stream where it sits across Europe divides colder air in the north from warmer air in the south. Sometimes [this fast current of air above the Northern Hemisphere] becomes very wiggly, with big loops going far to the north and all the way down to northern Africa. That can transport really hot air from Africa to Europe. If it sits over Europe for several days, it can heat the surface.
What’s causing that wiggly jet stream is contentious. Some people have suggested it’s linked to increasing temperatures in the Arctic. But we don’t really know. All we can say is that, over the last 10 days, there’s been a tendency to have this pattern: We see the jet stream digging farther south, and Europe is sitting in this warm air.
⬤ ⬤ ⬤Blistering heat
Extreme temperatures scorched much of India and Pakistan from mid-May through June 2019. NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System, a global atmospheric climate simulation, created this map of air temperatures across the region on June 10. Several factors contributed to the heat wave, including a delayed monsoon. The health impacts of South Asia’s rising temperatures are unclear, though, due to other factors that can impact health, including higher humidity and air pollution levels in the region. And it’s also not yet clear if the region has been seeing an overall trend of increasing maximum air temperatures since the 1970s.
NASA Earth Observatory
⬤ ⬤ ⬤
SN: What about the heat wave in South Asia?
Haustein: As far as climate attribution, it’s similar to work we did on the 2016 heat wave in India. [That heat wave included a record-breaking temperature of 51° C in the western state of Rajasthan.] India’s 2019 temperatures appear to be due to natural year-to-year variability. We did a brief analysis that found that maximum temperatures across India in the hottest months aren’t clearly increasing.

SN: What did the consortium learn in analyzing the 2018 European heat wave?
Haustein: We know that the frequency and intensity of heat waves are increasing globally. Heat waves in Europe, such as the one in 2018, are at least twice as likely to occur now as a result of climate change.

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Political Change Is The First Step To Stopping The Climate Crisis

Lethal Heating - 29 June, 2019 - 05:00
Independent Australia - Climate News Network

Every answer has a cost. Every choice exacts a penalty. A new book reminds readers there are no easy answers to the climate crisis.
The first step to fixing our climate crisis is targeting corporate greed and profiteering (Image via Flickr)LONDON − Resolving the climate crisis demands radical political change, a British author argues: the end of free market capitalism.
You could turn the entire United Kingdom into a giant wind farm and it still wouldn’t generate all of the UK’s current energy demand. That is because only 2% of the solar energy that slams into and powers the whole planet on a daily basis is converted into wind and most of that is either high in the jet stream or far out to sea.
Hydropower could, in theory, supply most of or perhaps even all the energy needs of 7 billion humans, but only if every drop that falls as rain was saved to power the most perfectly efficient turbines.
And that, too, is wildly unrealistic, says Mike Berners-Lee in his thoughtful and stimulating new paperback, ‘There Is No Planet B’. He adds: ‘Thank goodness, as it would mean totally doing away with mountain streams and even, if you really think about it, hillsides.’
Great interview on @thewireradio with IA's executive editor @vmp9. Listen here:https://t.co/jL3Epi0mla— IndependentAustralia (@independentaus) June 20, 2019This is a book for people who really want to think about the state of the world, how to get to zero-carbon emissions as swiftly as possible and in a way that preserves a decent life for the 11 billion or so who will people the planet by 2050. And, of course, everything boils down to energy

Enough for everyone
The sun delivers around 16,300 kilowatts to the Earth’s surface for every person on the planet — enough, he says, to boil an Olympic-sized swimming pool of water for each and every one.
Solar panels that covered just 0.1% of the total land surface (think of a small country just 366 kilometres square) could meet all of today’s human energy needs. But human demand for energy is growing at 2.4% a year. If this goes on, then in 300 years human demand would need solar panels over every square metre of land surface.
The message from every page of this book is that we need to think and think again. We could, of course, think about using the energy we have more efficiently, but history suggests there might be a catch.
The catch is now called the Jevons Paradox, after William Stanley Jevons who in 1863 (he was thinking at the time about the exploitation of coal) pointed out that energy efficiency tends to lead to increases in demand, because that’s how humans respond to plenty — they want even more of it.



So we don’t just have to think again, we have to rethink the whole basis of human behaviour. This means switching to vegetarian or vegan diets, abandoning plastic packaging and cutting down on air travel (powered by biofuels, if we must, but the biofuel business is lunacy – he uses the word “bonkers” – in energy terms).
But these are small things. The big and not necessarily entirely popular message of the book is that we must change politically. Free market capitalism or neoliberalism or any pursuit entirely and only for profit cannot deliver answers to the coming climate crisis.
Professor Berners-Lee takes a lesson from simple physics: wealth is, or ought to be, shared the way kinetic energy is shared around the planet.
When molecules of a gas collide, they redistribute energy; just as when people catch a bus or buy a sandwich, they redistribute wealth. The Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution law says that you rarely get one atom or molecule with more than ten times the average energy and almost never with more than 20 times the average energy.
And if human wealth was distributed according to the same law, the total wealth would not change and some people would still be richer than others, but the median wealth – the income of the person right in the middle – would be a massive 79% of the mean or average. That’s better than the share of wealth in the fair nation of Iceland. So it would be a manifestly fairer world.



Fairer resource-sharing
If the world shared its wealth (and wealth is a proxy for energy resources) more fairly, then it might be a great deal easier to be sure of democratic assent and international co-operation for radical shifts in the way we manage our food, water, transport and our precarious natural wealth in the form of biodiversity: all the wild birds, mammals, fish amphibians, reptiles, plants, fungi and microbes on which humankind ultimately depends.
The above is just a small sample of a rich, thought-provoking and easy-to-enjoy text. Berners-Lee doesn’t have all the answers and admits as much, but he does know how to frame a lot of questions in illuminating ways.
He has packed his book with explanatory notes, supporting evidence and definitions, one of them being the case for democracy in the world of the Anthropocene.
‘Fit for purpose democracy,’ he warns, ‘entails not just voting but accurate information, and a widespread sense of responsibility for the common good’. A book like this could help us get there.
Should we become vegetarians? Is it OK to fly? Mike Berners-Lee, the author of There Is No Planet B, A Handbook for the Make or Break Years, answers the big questions https://t.co/tGS6ECReCA— Maeve Bruce (@MaeveBruce) March 28, 2019‘There Is No Planet B’ is available fromThe Book Depository for $18.95 (paperback) RRP.

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Europe Heatwave Sees Temperatures Soar To Record Highs As Wildfires Take Hold In Spain

Lethal Heating - 29 June, 2019 - 05:00
ABC News - ABC | wire

Although heatwaves are not uncommon in Europe, experts say climate change is increasing their frequency and intensity. (AFP: Alberto Pizzoli) Key points:
  • Temperatures climbed towards 44 degrees Celsius in parts of Spain and France
  • Calls to emergency services are on the rise in France
  • An intense wildfire in Spain is thought to have started after chicken poo combusted
An intense heatwave has sent temperatures across Europe soaring to record highs, with central Europe forecast to hit the mid-40s on Friday
New records have already been set in Poland and the Czech Republic, which both reached their highest temperatures for June on Wednesday, while Austria expects to have its warmest June on record — 4.5 degrees Celsius above the long-term average.In Germany, 51 observing stations broke their June temperature records this week, according to the World Meteorology Organization, but there has been some relief for northern Germany with Berlin dropping from 37C on Wednesday down to just 21C on Thursday
Across the continent, zookeepers struggled to keep animals cool, feeding frozen treats to animals and providing water tubs and hoses to cool down elephants and primates.
Temperatures have climbed past 44C in northern Spain and southern France, driving people to seek refuge in the sea or nearby rivers, with it predicted to rise even higher on Friday.
French authorities put restrictions on vehicles to reduce pollution and schools have been closed.
French Health Minister Agnes Buzyn said the conditions were unprecedented and emergency services were overwhelmed with patients.
Temperatures forecast to top 40°C in parts of Spain and France today amid widespread #heatwave warnings in Europe. Follow national advice. Protect your health and the environment against #wildfires https://t.co/qMe9ublyZz pic.twitter.com/juCVKC3Pra— WMO | OMM (@WMO) June 27, 2019
Chicken manure wildfire takes hold in Spain
Spanish firefighters are battling wildfires in Catalonia, the worst the state has seen in two decades, according to the local government.
Hundreds of firefighters have struggled to contain the blaze in north-eastern Spain, with it already spreading over 5,500 hectares and forcing the evacuation of 53 residents.
Firefighters say high temperatures and a drop in humidity will likely fan the flames in Spain. (AP: Jordi Borras)Miquel Buch, the Regional Interior Minister, said 20,000 hectares were under threat.
Mr Buch said authorities suspected the cause of the outbreak was a deposit of improperly stored chicken manure at a farm in the village of Torre de l'Espanyol that high temperatures caused to combust.
Firefighters said high temperatures, low humidity and high winds fanned the flames.
Television images showed horses and sheep incinerated on a farm that had stood in the path of the fire.

Emergency service calls 'on the rise'
Temperatures soared towards 44 degrees Celsius in parts of Spain and France. (AP: Alvaro Barrientos)As temperatures climbed towards 44 degrees in parts of central Europe, French authorities extended restrictions on vehicles, already imposed in Paris and Lyon, to Marseille and Strasbourg in an effort to curb air pollution.
Some schools postponed summer exams, and parts of northern France were put on drought alert, with water supplies to businesses, farmers and ordinary residents restricted.
French Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume announced a ban on the transportation of animals until the heatwave had ended.
Grid operator RTE said French electricity demand on Thursday (local time) was close to a summer record seen two years ago, as people turned on fans and coolers to full blast for relief from the scorching temperatures.
Hot air from Africa is bringing a heatwave to Europe, prompting health warnings and exceptionally high temperatures in Spain. (AP: Alvaro Barrientos)"Calls to the emergency services are on the rise nationwide," said Jerome Saloman, head of national public health.
"We are seeing the beginning of a clear impact of the heatwave. For us, the worst is still to come."Mr Saloman said four drownings had been recorded in France since the start of the week directly linked to the heatwave as people try to cool themselves.
However, the full toll directly linked to the heatwave would only be known in the days or weeks ahead.

Regions placed on red alert
This heatwave is unprecedented and exceptional in its intensity, the French Health Minister says. (AP: Alessandra Tarantino)Ms Buzyn said four administrative regions in southern France had been placed on red alert, the highest crisis level, with 76 others on orange alert.
This heatwave was unprecedented and exceptional in its intensity, the Health Minister told a news conference.
The red alert would mean school outings, outdoor sport and other festive activities are suspended or postponed. Ms Buzyn cautioned joggers and other sport lovers to curb their activities.
The unusually hot weather in June is caused by a swathe of warm air from Africa.
Although heatwaves are not uncommon in Europe, experts say climate change is increasing their frequency and intensity.
"This increase in heat extremes is just as predicted by climate science as a consequence of global warming caused by the increasing greenhouse gases from burning coal, oil, and gas," said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climatologist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.


European zoo animals try to beat the heatwave (ABC News)

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Letter: Doctors Against Climate Catastrophe

Lethal Heating - 29 June, 2019 - 05:00
The Guardian - Letters

‘The diagnosis is clear and the treatment urgent. Yet politicians prevaricate and global emissions still rise’ 
An Extinction Rebellion protest in Camden, London, earlier this month. Photograph: Ollie Millington/Getty Images We are qualified medical doctors united by our distress at the minimal response to looming environmental disaster. We sympathise with current widespread protest, notably by children who will be most affected. We urge government and media to respond immediately and proportionately.
As caring professionals we cannot countenance current policies that push the world’s most vulnerable towards environmental catastrophe. We are particularly alarmed by the effects of rising temperatures on health and heed predictions of societal collapse and consequent mass migration. Such collapse risks damage to physical and mental health on an unprecedented scale.
Present policies and responses are woefully inadequate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that we have only 11 years to halve global emissions to meet their 1.5C target, yet last year our global emissions rose yet again. It will be a massive task to avoid catastrophic warming and we need radical action now. Our unchecked consumption, dependence on fossil fuels and decimation of ecosystems continue. The diagnosis is clear and the treatment urgent. Yet politicians prevaricate and global emissions still rise.
Governments abrogate their responsibility when pursuing grossly inadequate policies that risk environmental collapse. Non-violent direct action then becomes the reasonable choice for responsible individuals.
We support the following key demands, which parallel those made by Extinction Rebellion:
  • governments and media should be honest about the challenges and urgency of tackling ecological disaster;
  • governments should effect carbon neutrality within the IPCC timeframe;
  • governments should establish and be led by Citizens’ Assemblies to enable climate and ecological justice.
Signatories
  • James Underwood
    Past president, Royal College of Pathologists

  • Professor John Middleton
    President, UK Faculty of Public Health

  • Professor David Pencheon
    Honorary professor of health and sustainable development, University of Exeter, UK

  • Dr Bing Jones
    Retired associate specialist in haematology

  • Dr Terry Kemple
    Past president, Royal College of General Practitioners
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