Tag Archives: Global threats

Emissions, Oceans

Ancient sea level rises may have been fairly minimal

August 12th, 2021, by Tim Radford

Maybe ancient sea level rises were not so dramatic. But they’d still have been pretty frightening.

LONDON, 12 August, 2021 − Earth scientists have measured the rising tides of a warmer world more than 100 millennia ago and found a glimmer of good news: ancient sea level rises during a warm spell in the last Ice Age were quite possibly only about 1.2 metres higher than they are today.

Since, between 128,000 and 117,000 years ago, the world was perhaps as much as 2°C warmer than it would become for most of human history, this really is encouraging. Right now, climate scientists project a rise of somewhere between 60cm and 1.5m later this century, as global temperature levels rise 2°C or more above those normal before the Industrial Revolution.

But until now, geological orthodoxy has proposed that during the last “interglacial” or sudden warming, sea levels rose by six metres or possibly even nine metres. This could only happen if the Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets had collapsed.

And although these are indeed already losing ice at an accelerating rate, it doesn’t seem possible for such a colossal quantity of ice to melt in only a handful of decades.

Missing factor

So there was a mismatch between the predictions of the world’s scientists and the apparent evidence from the past.

Now a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers a solution: calculations about past sea level heights may have been perhaps too gloomy because they did not fully factor in sea level’s other great uncertainty — the movement of the continents lapped by the sea.

This bedevils all predictions about sea level rise. Seas rise and fall with global temperatures, but so do landmasses. Right now, although sea level is creeping up at a rate measured in millimetres per year, the land under a number of great coastal cities is sinking dramatically, as humans build  ever more massive cities and abstract ever more groundwater. So predictions warn that millions could be at risk of coastal flooding.

But there is another, deeper reason for the uncertainty: as rising temperatures remove the massive burden of ice from glaciated land, and wind and rain erode mountains, so the subterranean rocks in the Earth’s mantle, far below the crust, respond by inching upwards. Even the seemingly solid rocks are elastic, subsiding under pressure and rising when the mass is removed.

“Models of ice sheets are still in their toddlerhood”

All this means that, unless researchers can make an accurate estimate of land movement as well, sea level estimates are riven with uncertainties.

So a team from Columbia University in the US has looked at evidence of sea level rise and fall preserved in fossilised reefs and dunes in just one 1200km chain of islands − the Bahamas in the Atlantic − to come up with a new set of projections.

In the next 100 years, sea levels will rise by about 1.2 metres. This could be too modest: sea levels could just possibly rise by perhaps 5.3 metres, but this doesn’t seem likely. And a nine-metre rise is highly improbable.

“To get to nine metres of sea level rise, you’d have to melt large parts of Greenland and Antarctica,” said Blake Dyer, of the university’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Tricky calculation

“This suggests that didn’t happen. So maybe we should feel not so bad about the future. On the other hand, our lower estimate is bad, and our upper one is really bad.”

At the heart of the puzzle is a phenomenon known to geophysicists as isostasy: vast tracts of continental landmass have been heaving up and down, imperceptibly, over periods of tens of thousands of years, in response to ice and erosion.

So calculating sea level rise and fall when the thing on which sea level measurements are recorded − the land − is itself always shifting becomes tricky. That has always been why climate projections of sea levels contain a range of forecasts, rather than a hard number.

The argument is that changes recorded along the north-south lie of the Bahamas would provide a new and more sophisticated way of reconstructing sea heights in the relatively recent past.

Melting not guaranteed

The study doesn’t settle the question: estimates of past sea level change on a dramatic scale come from many parts of the planet, and glaciologists still have to reconstruct the rate at which the northern ice, for instance, may have retreated while the southern ice cap continued to advance during the last interglacial: that too would have limited sea level rise.

“This is still a question. Models of ice sheets are still in their toddlerhood,” said Maureen Raymo, director of the Earth Observatory and a co-author.

Human carbon emissions are now heating the globe far more rapidly and evenly than during the last interglacial, so there is no guarantee of any melting at different rates in two hemispheres

“That makes it more difficult to apply the results to today. The easy thing to say would be, ‘Oh we showed that sea levels were not so bad, and that’s terrific.’  The harder answer, the more honest answer, is that maybe things were different then, and we’re not in the clear.” − Climate News Network

Maybe ancient sea level rises were not so dramatic. But they’d still have been pretty frightening.

LONDON, 12 August, 2021 − Earth scientists have measured the rising tides of a warmer world more than 100 millennia ago and found a glimmer of good news: ancient sea level rises during a warm spell in the last Ice Age were quite possibly only about 1.2 metres higher than they are today.

Since, between 128,000 and 117,000 years ago, the world was perhaps as much as 2°C warmer than it would become for most of human history, this really is encouraging. Right now, climate scientists project a rise of somewhere between 60cm and 1.5m later this century, as global temperature levels rise 2°C or more above those normal before the Industrial Revolution.

But until now, geological orthodoxy has proposed that during the last “interglacial” or sudden warming, sea levels rose by six metres or possibly even nine metres. This could only happen if the Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets had collapsed.

And although these are indeed already losing ice at an accelerating rate, it doesn’t seem possible for such a colossal quantity of ice to melt in only a handful of decades.

Missing factor

So there was a mismatch between the predictions of the world’s scientists and the apparent evidence from the past.

Now a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers a solution: calculations about past sea level heights may have been perhaps too gloomy because they did not fully factor in sea level’s other great uncertainty — the movement of the continents lapped by the sea.

This bedevils all predictions about sea level rise. Seas rise and fall with global temperatures, but so do landmasses. Right now, although sea level is creeping up at a rate measured in millimetres per year, the land under a number of great coastal cities is sinking dramatically, as humans build  ever more massive cities and abstract ever more groundwater. So predictions warn that millions could be at risk of coastal flooding.

But there is another, deeper reason for the uncertainty: as rising temperatures remove the massive burden of ice from glaciated land, and wind and rain erode mountains, so the subterranean rocks in the Earth’s mantle, far below the crust, respond by inching upwards. Even the seemingly solid rocks are elastic, subsiding under pressure and rising when the mass is removed.

“Models of ice sheets are still in their toddlerhood”

All this means that, unless researchers can make an accurate estimate of land movement as well, sea level estimates are riven with uncertainties.

So a team from Columbia University in the US has looked at evidence of sea level rise and fall preserved in fossilised reefs and dunes in just one 1200km chain of islands − the Bahamas in the Atlantic − to come up with a new set of projections.

In the next 100 years, sea levels will rise by about 1.2 metres. This could be too modest: sea levels could just possibly rise by perhaps 5.3 metres, but this doesn’t seem likely. And a nine-metre rise is highly improbable.

“To get to nine metres of sea level rise, you’d have to melt large parts of Greenland and Antarctica,” said Blake Dyer, of the university’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Tricky calculation

“This suggests that didn’t happen. So maybe we should feel not so bad about the future. On the other hand, our lower estimate is bad, and our upper one is really bad.”

At the heart of the puzzle is a phenomenon known to geophysicists as isostasy: vast tracts of continental landmass have been heaving up and down, imperceptibly, over periods of tens of thousands of years, in response to ice and erosion.

So calculating sea level rise and fall when the thing on which sea level measurements are recorded − the land − is itself always shifting becomes tricky. That has always been why climate projections of sea levels contain a range of forecasts, rather than a hard number.

The argument is that changes recorded along the north-south lie of the Bahamas would provide a new and more sophisticated way of reconstructing sea heights in the relatively recent past.

Melting not guaranteed

The study doesn’t settle the question: estimates of past sea level change on a dramatic scale come from many parts of the planet, and glaciologists still have to reconstruct the rate at which the northern ice, for instance, may have retreated while the southern ice cap continued to advance during the last interglacial: that too would have limited sea level rise.

“This is still a question. Models of ice sheets are still in their toddlerhood,” said Maureen Raymo, director of the Earth Observatory and a co-author.

Human carbon emissions are now heating the globe far more rapidly and evenly than during the last interglacial, so there is no guarantee of any melting at different rates in two hemispheres

“That makes it more difficult to apply the results to today. The easy thing to say would be, ‘Oh we showed that sea levels were not so bad, and that’s terrific.’  The harder answer, the more honest answer, is that maybe things were different then, and we’re not in the clear.” − Climate News Network

Emissions, Land Use

Real cost of net zero carbon could be mass hunger

August 10th, 2021, by Paul Brown

Governments and companies are happy to make net zero carbon pledges. Their real cost could be ruinous for the poor.

LONDON, 10 August, 2021 − Plans for removing carbon from the atmosphere, if they proved workable, could exact a lethal price from those least able to afford it: starvation for the world’s poorest people. Anti-poverty campaigners say implementing some net zero carbon schemes could devastate the prospects for global agriculture.

A report by Oxfam International, the global campaign to end poverty, says one of the favoured schemes, planting trees, is totally unrealistic, as it would require 1.6 billion hectares of new forests, an area five times the size of India, and greater than all the existing farmland on the planet.

To prevent irreversible damage to the climate and limit temperature rise to the internationally agreed target of 1.5°C above historic levels, governments need to be on track by 2030 to cut carbon emissions by 45% from their 2010 levels, according to the UNFCCC, the United Nations climate change convention.

It says countries’ current plans to cut emissions are inadequate to limit warning to the more lenient 2°C target agreed at its meeting in Paris in 2015, let alone to the 1.5°C that scientists say is necessary. Oxfam says the current plans will achieve only a 1% reduction in emissions, a long way from the 45% that is needed.

Risky gamble

The current lack of governmental action on climate is undermining the efforts of Oxfam and many others to tackle inequality and poverty around the world, while the climate crisis is worsening the humanitarian crisis, hunger and migration.

Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International’s climate change lead, said: “‘Net zero’ should be based on ‘real zero’ targets that require drastic and genuine cuts in emissions, phasing out fossil fuels and investing in clean energy and supply chains. Instead, too many ‘net zero’ commitments provide a fig leaf for climate inaction. They are a dangerous gamble with our planet’s future.

“Nature and land-based carbon removal schemes must be pursued in a much more cautious way. Under current plans, there is simply not enough land in the world to realise them all. They could instead spark even more hunger, land grabs and human rights abuses.”

Separately Patricia Espinosa, the UNFCCC’s executive secretary, also expressed concern at what she said was governments’ failure to be realistic on net zero carbon.

Every government is supposed to have submitted its “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) by 31July, stating the emissions it plans to make to contribute to the target of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Only 110 of the 197 governments that signed up in Paris to provide one had done so by the deadline.

“Nature and land-based carbon removal schemes must be pursued in a much more cautious way”

“Recent extreme heat waves, droughts and floods across the globe are a dire warning that much more needs to be done, and much more quickly, to change our current pathway. This can only be achieved through more ambitious NDCs”, Patricia Espinosa said.

The Oxfam report says the world’s three largest carbon emitters − China, the US and the EU − have pledged to reach net zero by mid-century, but that their plans are vague and unverifiable.

Some plans − Colombia’s, for example − require reforesting on a grand scale. Its forests are still disappearing alarmingly fast, but it pledges to reforest one billion hectares of land by 2030, although there is no sign of that happening.

One-fifth of the world’s 2,000 largest public companies now have net zero goals that depend on land-based carbon sinks. Four of the world’s largest oil companies − BP, Eni, Shell and TotalEnergies − would have to forest an area of land twice the size of the UK to achieve net zero by 2050.

Trusting technology

But unlikely pledges on forests are not the only weaknesses of government and corporation planning to make net zero carbon a possibility. For example the UK, host to November’s COP-26 climate talks, relies heavily on unproven technologies that will magically be developed and built in time to reach net zero by 2050.

These include a new generation of nuclear power stations that are still at the early development stage. The UK is also relying on large-scale carbon capture and storage – a long-promised technology, many of whose bids to succeed have been abandoned as too expensive and impractical. The government hopes as well to replace fossil fuel gas with green hydrogen produced from surplus renewable energy and nuclear power – a hugely ambitious idea.

Meanwhile job-producing and much-needed plans to insulate homes and improve building standards, promised both last year and this, have been postponed again.

Although this is the quickest and easiest way of reducing the UK’s largest source of emissions, the contribution from buildings, the government has met opposition from house builders, many of whom are large donors to the ruling Conservative party’s funds. − Climate News Network

Governments and companies are happy to make net zero carbon pledges. Their real cost could be ruinous for the poor.

LONDON, 10 August, 2021 − Plans for removing carbon from the atmosphere, if they proved workable, could exact a lethal price from those least able to afford it: starvation for the world’s poorest people. Anti-poverty campaigners say implementing some net zero carbon schemes could devastate the prospects for global agriculture.

A report by Oxfam International, the global campaign to end poverty, says one of the favoured schemes, planting trees, is totally unrealistic, as it would require 1.6 billion hectares of new forests, an area five times the size of India, and greater than all the existing farmland on the planet.

To prevent irreversible damage to the climate and limit temperature rise to the internationally agreed target of 1.5°C above historic levels, governments need to be on track by 2030 to cut carbon emissions by 45% from their 2010 levels, according to the UNFCCC, the United Nations climate change convention.

It says countries’ current plans to cut emissions are inadequate to limit warning to the more lenient 2°C target agreed at its meeting in Paris in 2015, let alone to the 1.5°C that scientists say is necessary. Oxfam says the current plans will achieve only a 1% reduction in emissions, a long way from the 45% that is needed.

Risky gamble

The current lack of governmental action on climate is undermining the efforts of Oxfam and many others to tackle inequality and poverty around the world, while the climate crisis is worsening the humanitarian crisis, hunger and migration.

Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International’s climate change lead, said: “‘Net zero’ should be based on ‘real zero’ targets that require drastic and genuine cuts in emissions, phasing out fossil fuels and investing in clean energy and supply chains. Instead, too many ‘net zero’ commitments provide a fig leaf for climate inaction. They are a dangerous gamble with our planet’s future.

“Nature and land-based carbon removal schemes must be pursued in a much more cautious way. Under current plans, there is simply not enough land in the world to realise them all. They could instead spark even more hunger, land grabs and human rights abuses.”

Separately Patricia Espinosa, the UNFCCC’s executive secretary, also expressed concern at what she said was governments’ failure to be realistic on net zero carbon.

Every government is supposed to have submitted its “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) by 31July, stating the emissions it plans to make to contribute to the target of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Only 110 of the 197 governments that signed up in Paris to provide one had done so by the deadline.

“Nature and land-based carbon removal schemes must be pursued in a much more cautious way”

“Recent extreme heat waves, droughts and floods across the globe are a dire warning that much more needs to be done, and much more quickly, to change our current pathway. This can only be achieved through more ambitious NDCs”, Patricia Espinosa said.

The Oxfam report says the world’s three largest carbon emitters − China, the US and the EU − have pledged to reach net zero by mid-century, but that their plans are vague and unverifiable.

Some plans − Colombia’s, for example − require reforesting on a grand scale. Its forests are still disappearing alarmingly fast, but it pledges to reforest one billion hectares of land by 2030, although there is no sign of that happening.

One-fifth of the world’s 2,000 largest public companies now have net zero goals that depend on land-based carbon sinks. Four of the world’s largest oil companies − BP, Eni, Shell and TotalEnergies − would have to forest an area of land twice the size of the UK to achieve net zero by 2050.

Trusting technology

But unlikely pledges on forests are not the only weaknesses of government and corporation planning to make net zero carbon a possibility. For example the UK, host to November’s COP-26 climate talks, relies heavily on unproven technologies that will magically be developed and built in time to reach net zero by 2050.

These include a new generation of nuclear power stations that are still at the early development stage. The UK is also relying on large-scale carbon capture and storage – a long-promised technology, many of whose bids to succeed have been abandoned as too expensive and impractical. The government hopes as well to replace fossil fuel gas with green hydrogen produced from surplus renewable energy and nuclear power – a hugely ambitious idea.

Meanwhile job-producing and much-needed plans to insulate homes and improve building standards, promised both last year and this, have been postponed again.

Although this is the quickest and easiest way of reducing the UK’s largest source of emissions, the contribution from buildings, the government has met opposition from house builders, many of whom are large donors to the ruling Conservative party’s funds. − Climate News Network

Emissions

Gulf Stream puzzles science − but don’t panic yet

August 9th, 2021, by Tim Radford

Could an ocean circulation system − the Gulf Stream, say − sort of  shut down? And what would that do to the world’s climate?

LONDON, 9 August, 2021 − Once again, new research has warned that one of the great engines of global climate, known variously as the Atlantic conveyor belt, a current that spans the entire ocean from the surface to its lowest depths, or (not very accurately) the Gulf Stream, could be about to falter.

That is, thanks to global heating, it could be about to switch from a relatively stable state to a “critical transition” towards a much feebler regime.

If it does so, that’s bad news for Europe, because part of what oceanographers call the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is the Gulf Stream, a surface flow that brings tropical warmth to what would otherwise be chilly north-western European nations.

And it could be very bad news for billions in tropical Africa, Asia and South America, because it could trigger changes in the tropical monsoon system.

Repeated warnings

Climate scientists have been measuring indicators of possible change in the ocean circulation system for at least two decades: any shift in ocean behaviour could signal a tipping point, a serious shift in climate for the terrestrial world.

The current brings warm, dense salty water north to the Arctic, where it meets less dense meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic glaciers and dives to the ocean floor, to flow south all the way to Antarctica before it surfaces again.

Researchers have warned on an almost yearly basis that as greenhouse gas emissions grow, and global temperatures creep up, the ocean currents could become less stable: Europe’s relatively mellow climate could cool; it could do so some time this century; and when it did, it would disrupt global weather patterns.

The latest study, in the journal Nature Climate Change, is partly based on long-term climate data and reconstructions of past climates, themselves based on ice cores, fossil evidence and ocean deposits.

“If AMOC shuts down, this could negatively impact the climate further afield, such as the West African monsoon system”

These suggest that AMOC can exist in a stable state, or a weak one: more to the point, as it weakens, it could suddenly shift or tip into a new circulation mode. And what could be one of the agents of sudden change might be the increasing flow of cold fresh water from the warming Arctic.

This is consistent with many of the observations of the last decade. What isn’t certain is whether a sudden change is imminent. Is the seeming weakening of the flow part of a long-term natural pattern, or does it herald a dramatic loss of stability? What is the Gulf Stream really up to?

“The difference is crucial, because the loss of dynamical stability would imply that AMOC has approached its critical threshold, beyond which a substantial and in practice likely irreversible transition to the weak mode could occur,” said Niklas Boers of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, the author of the research.

“I wouldn’t have expected that the excessive amounts of fresh water added in the course of the last century would already produce such a response in the overturning circulation.”

Winners and losers

Dr Boers calls for more and more detailed research, and for better climate models that would allow climate scientists to make a more precise judgment of the consequences of what could be a shutdown of ocean circulation. The case is not closed, and Professor Tim Palmer of the University of Oxford, UK, points out that the study is based on indirect evidence.

Direct observations of the deep ocean current do not, he says, suggest that the Atlantic conveyor belt could be close to collapse or shutdown. But he too has argued for a concerted international effort to build better computer simulations of the planetary climate system. This could help to show what is happening to the Gulf Stream.

“The Gulf Stream is forced by atmospheric winds and these will continue to blow. If the AMOC does shut down, the Gulf Stream will flow a little further south than where it flows now. This will lead to cooler temperatures over the North Atlantic and hence over Northern Europe. This may help offset the effects of climate change in these regions (and potentially help stabilise Greenland ice loss − which would be a good thing),” Professor Palmer said.

“On the other hand, if AMOC shuts down, this could negatively impact the climate further afield, such as the West African monsoon system and the moisture flow into the Amazon.” − Climate News Network

Could an ocean circulation system − the Gulf Stream, say − sort of  shut down? And what would that do to the world’s climate?

LONDON, 9 August, 2021 − Once again, new research has warned that one of the great engines of global climate, known variously as the Atlantic conveyor belt, a current that spans the entire ocean from the surface to its lowest depths, or (not very accurately) the Gulf Stream, could be about to falter.

That is, thanks to global heating, it could be about to switch from a relatively stable state to a “critical transition” towards a much feebler regime.

If it does so, that’s bad news for Europe, because part of what oceanographers call the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is the Gulf Stream, a surface flow that brings tropical warmth to what would otherwise be chilly north-western European nations.

And it could be very bad news for billions in tropical Africa, Asia and South America, because it could trigger changes in the tropical monsoon system.

Repeated warnings

Climate scientists have been measuring indicators of possible change in the ocean circulation system for at least two decades: any shift in ocean behaviour could signal a tipping point, a serious shift in climate for the terrestrial world.

The current brings warm, dense salty water north to the Arctic, where it meets less dense meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic glaciers and dives to the ocean floor, to flow south all the way to Antarctica before it surfaces again.

Researchers have warned on an almost yearly basis that as greenhouse gas emissions grow, and global temperatures creep up, the ocean currents could become less stable: Europe’s relatively mellow climate could cool; it could do so some time this century; and when it did, it would disrupt global weather patterns.

The latest study, in the journal Nature Climate Change, is partly based on long-term climate data and reconstructions of past climates, themselves based on ice cores, fossil evidence and ocean deposits.

“If AMOC shuts down, this could negatively impact the climate further afield, such as the West African monsoon system”

These suggest that AMOC can exist in a stable state, or a weak one: more to the point, as it weakens, it could suddenly shift or tip into a new circulation mode. And what could be one of the agents of sudden change might be the increasing flow of cold fresh water from the warming Arctic.

This is consistent with many of the observations of the last decade. What isn’t certain is whether a sudden change is imminent. Is the seeming weakening of the flow part of a long-term natural pattern, or does it herald a dramatic loss of stability? What is the Gulf Stream really up to?

“The difference is crucial, because the loss of dynamical stability would imply that AMOC has approached its critical threshold, beyond which a substantial and in practice likely irreversible transition to the weak mode could occur,” said Niklas Boers of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, the author of the research.

“I wouldn’t have expected that the excessive amounts of fresh water added in the course of the last century would already produce such a response in the overturning circulation.”

Winners and losers

Dr Boers calls for more and more detailed research, and for better climate models that would allow climate scientists to make a more precise judgment of the consequences of what could be a shutdown of ocean circulation. The case is not closed, and Professor Tim Palmer of the University of Oxford, UK, points out that the study is based on indirect evidence.

Direct observations of the deep ocean current do not, he says, suggest that the Atlantic conveyor belt could be close to collapse or shutdown. But he too has argued for a concerted international effort to build better computer simulations of the planetary climate system. This could help to show what is happening to the Gulf Stream.

“The Gulf Stream is forced by atmospheric winds and these will continue to blow. If the AMOC does shut down, the Gulf Stream will flow a little further south than where it flows now. This will lead to cooler temperatures over the North Atlantic and hence over Northern Europe. This may help offset the effects of climate change in these regions (and potentially help stabilise Greenland ice loss − which would be a good thing),” Professor Palmer said.

“On the other hand, if AMOC shuts down, this could negatively impact the climate further afield, such as the West African monsoon system and the moisture flow into the Amazon.” − Climate News Network

Governance, Negotiations

UK says a failure to act on the climate ‘is justified’

August 6th, 2021, by Alex Kirby

Three months before hosting the UN conference, COP-26, the UK says a failure to act on the climate treaty can be justified.

LONDON, 6 August, 2021 − In a remarkable challenge to the global consensus that the climate crisis is an urgent threat to the planet, the  United Kingdom has argued that a failure to act on the climate treaty agreed in 2015 can be justified.

Its stance is all the more bizarre as in less than three months the UK government is to host the crucial United Nations climate conference, COP-26, in the Scottish city of Glasgow, starting on 1 November.

The government’s case set out in its response to a legal action brought in May by three young Britons, Adetola Stephanie Onamade, Marina Tricks and Jerry Amokwandoh, who said their human rights were being breached by the government’s failure to act decisively on the climate crisis.

The action is also being brought by Plan B, the legal charity behind a failed attempt to block the expansion of Heathrow airport, and its director, Tim Crosland.

The government claims that it is doing enough to comply legally with the Paris Agreement, concluded six years ago in the French capital. Even if it is not, it argues, there are no grounds for the courts to intervene: it is for it alone to weigh the economic and environmental arguments.

In its reply to the claimants’ case, it says of its climate policies: “Any inadvertent and indirect discriminatory impacts would fall well within the UK’s margin of appreciation, and be objectively and reasonably justified, if they could be established by the claimants.”

“I don’t consent to my children being treated as collateral damage”

Tim Crosland said: “The Government’s real position is that the devastating, disproportionate and discriminatory impacts for the younger generation and for whole regions of the world − those who have contributed least to the crisis − can be ‘objectively and reasonably justified’.

“Presumably, that means it considers our young people ‘collateral damage’ in its pursuit of vast short-term profits for the few. But I don’t consent to my children being treated as collateral damage.”

The government claims to be responding to the advice it has received from the Climate Change Committee, an independent body advising it on progress made in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The joint foreword to the Committee’s latest report, however, tells a different story. It says: “It is hard to discern any comprehensive strategy in the climate plans we have seen [from the government] in the last 12 months. There are gaps and ambiguities  . . . We continue to blunder into high-carbon choices.

“Our planning system and other fundamental structures have not been recast to meet our legal and international climate commitments.”

Bid for recognition

The Glasgow conference will be an acutely anxious occasion for the British prime minister Boris Johnson, who is committed to making good on the UK’s attempts to be recognised as a world leader on the climate crisis.

The meeting’s main aim is to put flesh on the bones of the Paris Agreement, reached with the backing of 195 of the world’s governments. That planned a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions progressively: Glasgow’s task is to make the real progress which Paris did little more than foreshadow.

If Johnson can leave Glasgow with substantial progress assured, he will be able to lay claim to success of a sort which has eluded his predecessors for 20 years or more. If he fails, he will struggle to be taken seriously again either at home or in most foreign capitals

The United Kingdom has a record that deserves at least qualified praise, notably for its commitment, announced in April, to cut carbon emissions by 78% before 2035. That date is 15 years earlier than the target date already in place, and if the government ensures that it is achieved it really will count for something. But that is a massive “if”.

Leadership material?

There are questions too over its commitment to ending the exploitation and use of fossil fuels fast enough and to improving adaptation to rising temperatures.

It is easy to criticise Johnson for the deficiencies in his climate policies, and for his patchy record in implementing many of them. He is not alone in his failure so far to act with the vision and energy the crisis demands.

But that’s what we reasonably expect from genuine leaders: an ability to be different, to step beyond business-as-usual to something so radically different that few of us can even imagine it.

If Johnson can show that sort of world-leading ability in Glasgow he will confound his critics, and make the world a little safer too. The “ifs” grow more demanding with every repetition. − Climate News Network

Three months before hosting the UN conference, COP-26, the UK says a failure to act on the climate treaty can be justified.

LONDON, 6 August, 2021 − In a remarkable challenge to the global consensus that the climate crisis is an urgent threat to the planet, the  United Kingdom has argued that a failure to act on the climate treaty agreed in 2015 can be justified.

Its stance is all the more bizarre as in less than three months the UK government is to host the crucial United Nations climate conference, COP-26, in the Scottish city of Glasgow, starting on 1 November.

The government’s case set out in its response to a legal action brought in May by three young Britons, Adetola Stephanie Onamade, Marina Tricks and Jerry Amokwandoh, who said their human rights were being breached by the government’s failure to act decisively on the climate crisis.

The action is also being brought by Plan B, the legal charity behind a failed attempt to block the expansion of Heathrow airport, and its director, Tim Crosland.

The government claims that it is doing enough to comply legally with the Paris Agreement, concluded six years ago in the French capital. Even if it is not, it argues, there are no grounds for the courts to intervene: it is for it alone to weigh the economic and environmental arguments.

In its reply to the claimants’ case, it says of its climate policies: “Any inadvertent and indirect discriminatory impacts would fall well within the UK’s margin of appreciation, and be objectively and reasonably justified, if they could be established by the claimants.”

“I don’t consent to my children being treated as collateral damage”

Tim Crosland said: “The Government’s real position is that the devastating, disproportionate and discriminatory impacts for the younger generation and for whole regions of the world − those who have contributed least to the crisis − can be ‘objectively and reasonably justified’.

“Presumably, that means it considers our young people ‘collateral damage’ in its pursuit of vast short-term profits for the few. But I don’t consent to my children being treated as collateral damage.”

The government claims to be responding to the advice it has received from the Climate Change Committee, an independent body advising it on progress made in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The joint foreword to the Committee’s latest report, however, tells a different story. It says: “It is hard to discern any comprehensive strategy in the climate plans we have seen [from the government] in the last 12 months. There are gaps and ambiguities  . . . We continue to blunder into high-carbon choices.

“Our planning system and other fundamental structures have not been recast to meet our legal and international climate commitments.”

Bid for recognition

The Glasgow conference will be an acutely anxious occasion for the British prime minister Boris Johnson, who is committed to making good on the UK’s attempts to be recognised as a world leader on the climate crisis.

The meeting’s main aim is to put flesh on the bones of the Paris Agreement, reached with the backing of 195 of the world’s governments. That planned a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions progressively: Glasgow’s task is to make the real progress which Paris did little more than foreshadow.

If Johnson can leave Glasgow with substantial progress assured, he will be able to lay claim to success of a sort which has eluded his predecessors for 20 years or more. If he fails, he will struggle to be taken seriously again either at home or in most foreign capitals

The United Kingdom has a record that deserves at least qualified praise, notably for its commitment, announced in April, to cut carbon emissions by 78% before 2035. That date is 15 years earlier than the target date already in place, and if the government ensures that it is achieved it really will count for something. But that is a massive “if”.

Leadership material?

There are questions too over its commitment to ending the exploitation and use of fossil fuels fast enough and to improving adaptation to rising temperatures.

It is easy to criticise Johnson for the deficiencies in his climate policies, and for his patchy record in implementing many of them. He is not alone in his failure so far to act with the vision and energy the crisis demands.

But that’s what we reasonably expect from genuine leaders: an ability to be different, to step beyond business-as-usual to something so radically different that few of us can even imagine it.

If Johnson can show that sort of world-leading ability in Glasgow he will confound his critics, and make the world a little safer too. The “ifs” grow more demanding with every repetition. − Climate News Network

Emissions

Flood risk will rise as climate heat intensifies

August 5th, 2021, by Tim Radford

A warmer world will be a wetter one. Ever more people will face a higher flood risk as rivers rise and city streets fill up.

LONDON, 5 August, 2021 − In a world of climate change, the flood risk will be more intense and more frequent, presenting higher danger to ever more people in a greater number of countries.

In this century alone, the global population has increased by 18%. But the number of people exposed to damage and death by rising waters has increased by more than 34%.

This finding is not based on mathematical simulations powered by weather data. It is based on direct and detailed observation. Researchers report in the journal Nature that they looked at more than 12,700 satellite images, at a resolution of 250 metres, of 913 large flood events between the years 2000 and 2015.

During those years, and those floods, water spilled from the rivers to inundate a total of 2.23 million square kilometres. This, considered as one event, would cover a total area larger than Saudi Arabia. And during those first 15 years of the century, the number of people directly affected by the floods was at least 255m, and possibly 290m.

“Governments across the world have been too slow in reducing greenhouse gas emissions . . . This, alongside the current floods in Europe, is the wake-up call we need”

In those 15 years, the numbers of people in the way of the ever more devastating floods rose by at least 58m, and possibly as many as 86m. That’s a rise of as much as 24%.

It will get worse. According to the researchers, climate change and the multiplication of human numbers will extend the reach of flood risk: 32 nations already experience ever more flooding. By 2030, another 25 countries will have joined them.

The humans caught up in the sickening flow of mud, sewage and silt spilling from the rising rivers will mostly be in south and south-east Asia − think of the Indus, Ganges-Brahmaputra and Mekong Rivers − and many of them will have migrated to the danger zones: poverty and population pressure will leave them no choice.

None of this should come as a surprise. In the past 50 years, according to a new compilation by the World Meteorological Organisation, weather, climate and water were implicated in 50% of all disasters of any kind; in 45% of all reported deaths and 74% of all economic losses. Floods have claimed 58,700 lives in the last five decades. Between them, floods and storms − the two are often linked − cost Europe at least US$377bn in economic losses.

Higher flooding frequency

And things will certainly get much worse for Europe as global average temperatures continue to rise in response to ever higher greenhouse gas emissions from ever greater use of fossil fuels. That is because what had once been relatively rare events will grow in force and frequency.

More heat means more evaporation, and a warmer atmosphere has a greater capacity to absorb water vapour. So it will rain harder. And the arrival, say researchers in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, of intense, slow-moving storms that precipitate devastating flash floods of the kind that swept Belgium and Germany this summer will by the close of the century become 14 times more frequent.

“Governments across the world have been too slow in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming continues apace,” said Hayley Fowler, a climate scientist at Newcastle University in the UK, and one of the researchers.

“This study suggests that changes to extreme storms will be significant and cause an increase in the frequency of devastating flooding across Europe. This, alongside the current floods in Europe, is the wake-up call we need.” − Climate News Network

A warmer world will be a wetter one. Ever more people will face a higher flood risk as rivers rise and city streets fill up.

LONDON, 5 August, 2021 − In a world of climate change, the flood risk will be more intense and more frequent, presenting higher danger to ever more people in a greater number of countries.

In this century alone, the global population has increased by 18%. But the number of people exposed to damage and death by rising waters has increased by more than 34%.

This finding is not based on mathematical simulations powered by weather data. It is based on direct and detailed observation. Researchers report in the journal Nature that they looked at more than 12,700 satellite images, at a resolution of 250 metres, of 913 large flood events between the years 2000 and 2015.

During those years, and those floods, water spilled from the rivers to inundate a total of 2.23 million square kilometres. This, considered as one event, would cover a total area larger than Saudi Arabia. And during those first 15 years of the century, the number of people directly affected by the floods was at least 255m, and possibly 290m.

“Governments across the world have been too slow in reducing greenhouse gas emissions . . . This, alongside the current floods in Europe, is the wake-up call we need”

In those 15 years, the numbers of people in the way of the ever more devastating floods rose by at least 58m, and possibly as many as 86m. That’s a rise of as much as 24%.

It will get worse. According to the researchers, climate change and the multiplication of human numbers will extend the reach of flood risk: 32 nations already experience ever more flooding. By 2030, another 25 countries will have joined them.

The humans caught up in the sickening flow of mud, sewage and silt spilling from the rising rivers will mostly be in south and south-east Asia − think of the Indus, Ganges-Brahmaputra and Mekong Rivers − and many of them will have migrated to the danger zones: poverty and population pressure will leave them no choice.

None of this should come as a surprise. In the past 50 years, according to a new compilation by the World Meteorological Organisation, weather, climate and water were implicated in 50% of all disasters of any kind; in 45% of all reported deaths and 74% of all economic losses. Floods have claimed 58,700 lives in the last five decades. Between them, floods and storms − the two are often linked − cost Europe at least US$377bn in economic losses.

Higher flooding frequency

And things will certainly get much worse for Europe as global average temperatures continue to rise in response to ever higher greenhouse gas emissions from ever greater use of fossil fuels. That is because what had once been relatively rare events will grow in force and frequency.

More heat means more evaporation, and a warmer atmosphere has a greater capacity to absorb water vapour. So it will rain harder. And the arrival, say researchers in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, of intense, slow-moving storms that precipitate devastating flash floods of the kind that swept Belgium and Germany this summer will by the close of the century become 14 times more frequent.

“Governments across the world have been too slow in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming continues apace,” said Hayley Fowler, a climate scientist at Newcastle University in the UK, and one of the researchers.

“This study suggests that changes to extreme storms will be significant and cause an increase in the frequency of devastating flooding across Europe. This, alongside the current floods in Europe, is the wake-up call we need.” − Climate News Network

Governance, Wealth

Ailing Earth can’t cope as human demands soar

August 4th, 2021, by Tim Radford

Climate physicians who have re-checked global heating say the Earth’s condition is critical, worsening as human demands soar.

LONDON, 4 August, 2021 − Just 20 months after warning the world that climate change threatens “untold suffering” for millions, a team of scientists has checked the data and issued an even more urgent warning: all the evidence is that the climate emergency will get worse as human demands soar.

In 2019, more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries examined what they called the planet’s “vital signs” and warned that, without action, disaster threatened.

Since then, another 2,800 researchers have signed their declaration and authorities in 34 nations have declared or recognised a climate emergency. And since then, 11 of those signatories have identified an “unprecedented surge in climate-related disasters”.

Among these have been devastating floods in South America and south-east Asia, record-shattering heat waves and wildfires in Australia and the western United States, an extraordinary Atlantic hurricane season, and devastating cyclones in Africa, South Asia and the western Pacific.

“Policies to combat the climate crisis should address the root cause: human over-exploitation of the planet”

“There is also mounting evidence that we are nearing or have already crossed tipping points associated with critical parts of the Earth system, including the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, warm-water coral reefs, and the Amazon rainforest,” they warn in the journal Bioscience.

The year 2020 was the second hottest in history. The five hottest years on record have all happened since 2015. Three greenhouse gases − carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide − set records for atmospheric concentration in 2020 and again in 2021: in April of this year carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a ratio of 416 parts per million. This is the highest monthly global average ever recorded. Governments need to act urgently to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“We also need to stop treating the climate emergency as a stand-alone issue − global heating is not the sole symptom of our stressed Earth system”, said William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University in the US, who led the 2019 initiative and the latest study.

“Policies to combat the climate crisis or any other symptoms should address their root cause: human over-exploitation of the planet.”

Growing urgency

The researchers tracked 31 variable measures to find new record highs and lows in 18 of them. These included:

  • Forest loss rates in the Brazilian Amazon. These have increased in the last two years, reaching a 12-year high in 2020 with the loss of 1.11 million hectares of tree cover.
  • The global count of ruminant livestock. This has now gone past 4 billion: on the scales, the mass of sheep, cattle and so on would outweigh all humans and all wild mammals combined.
  • Global gross domestic product: this dropped by 3.6% in 2020, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, but is heading again to an all-time high.
  • Fossil fuel energy consumption fell during the pandemic months, along with carbon dioxide emissions: on present signs, these will rise and go on rising.
  • Solar and wind power consumption rose by 57% between 2018 and 2021 but is still 19 times lower than fossil fuel consumption.
  • Greenland and Antarctica: these went on losing record quantities of ice, while Arctic sea ice continues to fall to near all-time low levels each summer.
  • Glaciers are now losing 31% more snow and ice per year than they did 15 years ago.
  • The oceans: these continued to become ever more acid. Combined with higher sea temperatures, this threatens coral reefs upon which more than 500 million people depend for fisheries, tourism and storm surge protection.

The Bioscence study is only the latest in a series of increasingly urgent warnings from scientists, and from groups of scientists, who have looked at climate trends, the degradation of the planet’s ecosystems and the transformation of the Earth’s surface by human numbers and human demand.

Priority for basics

Separate studies have examined the so-called “tipping points” that could precipitate catastrophic climate change; have assessed the likelihood of an irreversible trend towards a “hothouse” Earth; and have identified a “ghastly” future for humanity in a world of ever-greater heat extremes, more violent storms and ever-rising sea levels.

And these too have all called for concerted international action to contain demand, alter economies and share resources more fairly. The latest study warns that the analysis reflects “the consequences of unrelenting business as usual”, and calls for profound changes in human behaviour, including a switch away from fossil fuels and the protection of the planet’s biodiversity − and of the wildernesses that absorb atmospheric carbon.

“All climate actions should focus on social justice by reducing inequality and prioritising basic human needs,” Professor Ripple said. “And climate change education should be included in school core curriculums around the world − that would result in greater awareness of the climate emergency and empower learners to take action.” − Climate News Network

Climate physicians who have re-checked global heating say the Earth’s condition is critical, worsening as human demands soar.

LONDON, 4 August, 2021 − Just 20 months after warning the world that climate change threatens “untold suffering” for millions, a team of scientists has checked the data and issued an even more urgent warning: all the evidence is that the climate emergency will get worse as human demands soar.

In 2019, more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries examined what they called the planet’s “vital signs” and warned that, without action, disaster threatened.

Since then, another 2,800 researchers have signed their declaration and authorities in 34 nations have declared or recognised a climate emergency. And since then, 11 of those signatories have identified an “unprecedented surge in climate-related disasters”.

Among these have been devastating floods in South America and south-east Asia, record-shattering heat waves and wildfires in Australia and the western United States, an extraordinary Atlantic hurricane season, and devastating cyclones in Africa, South Asia and the western Pacific.

“Policies to combat the climate crisis should address the root cause: human over-exploitation of the planet”

“There is also mounting evidence that we are nearing or have already crossed tipping points associated with critical parts of the Earth system, including the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, warm-water coral reefs, and the Amazon rainforest,” they warn in the journal Bioscience.

The year 2020 was the second hottest in history. The five hottest years on record have all happened since 2015. Three greenhouse gases − carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide − set records for atmospheric concentration in 2020 and again in 2021: in April of this year carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a ratio of 416 parts per million. This is the highest monthly global average ever recorded. Governments need to act urgently to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“We also need to stop treating the climate emergency as a stand-alone issue − global heating is not the sole symptom of our stressed Earth system”, said William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University in the US, who led the 2019 initiative and the latest study.

“Policies to combat the climate crisis or any other symptoms should address their root cause: human over-exploitation of the planet.”

Growing urgency

The researchers tracked 31 variable measures to find new record highs and lows in 18 of them. These included:

  • Forest loss rates in the Brazilian Amazon. These have increased in the last two years, reaching a 12-year high in 2020 with the loss of 1.11 million hectares of tree cover.
  • The global count of ruminant livestock. This has now gone past 4 billion: on the scales, the mass of sheep, cattle and so on would outweigh all humans and all wild mammals combined.
  • Global gross domestic product: this dropped by 3.6% in 2020, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, but is heading again to an all-time high.
  • Fossil fuel energy consumption fell during the pandemic months, along with carbon dioxide emissions: on present signs, these will rise and go on rising.
  • Solar and wind power consumption rose by 57% between 2018 and 2021 but is still 19 times lower than fossil fuel consumption.
  • Greenland and Antarctica: these went on losing record quantities of ice, while Arctic sea ice continues to fall to near all-time low levels each summer.
  • Glaciers are now losing 31% more snow and ice per year than they did 15 years ago.
  • The oceans: these continued to become ever more acid. Combined with higher sea temperatures, this threatens coral reefs upon which more than 500 million people depend for fisheries, tourism and storm surge protection.

The Bioscence study is only the latest in a series of increasingly urgent warnings from scientists, and from groups of scientists, who have looked at climate trends, the degradation of the planet’s ecosystems and the transformation of the Earth’s surface by human numbers and human demand.

Priority for basics

Separate studies have examined the so-called “tipping points” that could precipitate catastrophic climate change; have assessed the likelihood of an irreversible trend towards a “hothouse” Earth; and have identified a “ghastly” future for humanity in a world of ever-greater heat extremes, more violent storms and ever-rising sea levels.

And these too have all called for concerted international action to contain demand, alter economies and share resources more fairly. The latest study warns that the analysis reflects “the consequences of unrelenting business as usual”, and calls for profound changes in human behaviour, including a switch away from fossil fuels and the protection of the planet’s biodiversity − and of the wildernesses that absorb atmospheric carbon.

“All climate actions should focus on social justice by reducing inequality and prioritising basic human needs,” Professor Ripple said. “And climate change education should be included in school core curriculums around the world − that would result in greater awareness of the climate emergency and empower learners to take action.” − Climate News Network

Health, Heat

Extreme heat and cold kill five million every year

July 9th, 2021, by Tim Radford

Five million people die annually of ever more extreme temperatures. And this is happening now on five continents.

LONDON, 9 July, 2021 − Extremes of hot and cold weather now claim around five million lives a year worldwide. Deaths related to heatwaves have been on the increase this century, and global heating driven by fossil fuel combustion will make things worse, according to new research.

A second study in the same journal warns that, even in Europe, there will be a rapid increase in heat-related mortality − unless mitigation measures are introduced immediately.

In the first study, scientists in China, Australia, the UK and Moldova report in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health that they looked at death statistics and temperature readings from 570 locations in 43 nations on five continents between the years 2000 and 2019, a period when average global temperatures rose by 0.26°C a decade.

They found that 9.43% of global deaths could be attributed to either very hot or very cold temperatures: that means 74 excess deaths for every 100,000 people. During that time, cold-related deaths fell by 0.51%; heat-related deaths increased by 0.21%. Worldwide, they estimate, the statistics translate to 5,083,173 deaths per year.

“The total number of temperature-attributable deaths will stabilise in the coming years, but … this will be followed by a very sharp increase”

The last 20 years have been the hottest since records began. The news comes close upon lethal heat extremes in Canada, and Oregon and Utah,  and other parts of the US southwest.

High temperatures can and do kill: one group counted 27 ways to die of rising temperatures. Nor should such calculations come as a surprise: researchers have repeatedly warned of potentially murderous extremes linked to global heating driven by ever-rising ratios of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

These extremes will last longer, extend over wider regions and reach more intense temperatures in the coming decades.

More than half of all deaths linked to abnormal temperatures were in Asia, but Europe had the highest excess death rates per 100,000 people due to heat exposure.

Mediterranean at risk

A second study in The Lancet Planetary Health confirms the hazard even in a climate zone usually considered temperate. Researchers from Spain, France and Switzerland looked at death and temperature data for 16 European countries between 1998 and 2012, to conclude that more than 7% of all deaths registered during this period could be linked to temperature: extreme cold was 10 times more likely to kill than extreme heat.

But, the scientists warn, by mid-century this trend could be reversed. A disproportionate number of people in the Mediterranean basin could be especially at risk, according to projections based on three different climate scenarios.

“All of the models show a progressive increase in temperatures and, consequently, a decrease in cold-attributable mortality and an increase in heat-attributable deaths,” said Èrica Martínez, of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, who led the research.

“The difference between the scenarios lies in the rate at which heat-related deaths increase. The data suggest that the total number of temperature-attributable deaths will stabilise and even decrease in the coming years, but that this will be followed by a very sharp increase, which could occur some time between the middle and the end of the century, depending on greenhouse gas emissions.” − Climate News Network

Five million people die annually of ever more extreme temperatures. And this is happening now on five continents.

LONDON, 9 July, 2021 − Extremes of hot and cold weather now claim around five million lives a year worldwide. Deaths related to heatwaves have been on the increase this century, and global heating driven by fossil fuel combustion will make things worse, according to new research.

A second study in the same journal warns that, even in Europe, there will be a rapid increase in heat-related mortality − unless mitigation measures are introduced immediately.

In the first study, scientists in China, Australia, the UK and Moldova report in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health that they looked at death statistics and temperature readings from 570 locations in 43 nations on five continents between the years 2000 and 2019, a period when average global temperatures rose by 0.26°C a decade.

They found that 9.43% of global deaths could be attributed to either very hot or very cold temperatures: that means 74 excess deaths for every 100,000 people. During that time, cold-related deaths fell by 0.51%; heat-related deaths increased by 0.21%. Worldwide, they estimate, the statistics translate to 5,083,173 deaths per year.

“The total number of temperature-attributable deaths will stabilise in the coming years, but … this will be followed by a very sharp increase”

The last 20 years have been the hottest since records began. The news comes close upon lethal heat extremes in Canada, and Oregon and Utah,  and other parts of the US southwest.

High temperatures can and do kill: one group counted 27 ways to die of rising temperatures. Nor should such calculations come as a surprise: researchers have repeatedly warned of potentially murderous extremes linked to global heating driven by ever-rising ratios of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

These extremes will last longer, extend over wider regions and reach more intense temperatures in the coming decades.

More than half of all deaths linked to abnormal temperatures were in Asia, but Europe had the highest excess death rates per 100,000 people due to heat exposure.

Mediterranean at risk

A second study in The Lancet Planetary Health confirms the hazard even in a climate zone usually considered temperate. Researchers from Spain, France and Switzerland looked at death and temperature data for 16 European countries between 1998 and 2012, to conclude that more than 7% of all deaths registered during this period could be linked to temperature: extreme cold was 10 times more likely to kill than extreme heat.

But, the scientists warn, by mid-century this trend could be reversed. A disproportionate number of people in the Mediterranean basin could be especially at risk, according to projections based on three different climate scenarios.

“All of the models show a progressive increase in temperatures and, consequently, a decrease in cold-attributable mortality and an increase in heat-attributable deaths,” said Èrica Martínez, of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, who led the research.

“The difference between the scenarios lies in the rate at which heat-related deaths increase. The data suggest that the total number of temperature-attributable deaths will stabilise and even decrease in the coming years, but that this will be followed by a very sharp increase, which could occur some time between the middle and the end of the century, depending on greenhouse gas emissions.” − Climate News Network

Plastic

Waste plastic deluge could soon prove irreversible

July 8th, 2021, by Tim Radford

The waste plastic deluge fouling the world’s beaches could be more than just an eyesore. It could be a toxic timebomb.

LONDON, 8 July, 2021 − European researchers have warned that the wave of pollution engulfing the globe could be nearing a tipping point. The waste plastic deluge could become an irreversible crisis.

Somewhere between 9 and 23 million tonnes of polymers get into the rivers, lakes and seas of the world every year. Even more may be getting into the terrestrial soils and by 2025 − unless the world changes its ways − these levels of pollution will have doubled.

And, the researchers warn, the uncertain and as yet unknown effects of weathering on such volumes of plastic could bring what has been called “a global toxicity debt” as drinking bottles, bits of fishing gear, coffee cups and carrier bags become covered with microbial life; as plastic particles foul the sea’s surface, become suspended in the water column, and build up in the sediments of the ocean.

Plastic waste has now been found everywhere: on the world’s highest mountains, in the deepest oceanic trenches, on the beaches of desolate islands in the Southern Ocean, in the Arctic ice, and in the tissues of living creatures, from seabirds to whales.

Worsening climate crisis

“Right now we are loading up the environment with increasing amounts of poorly reversible plastic pollution. So far we don’t see widespread evidence of bad consequences but if weathering plastic triggers a really bad effect we are not likely to be able to reverse it,” said Matthew Macleod of Stockholm University in Sweden.

“The cost of ignoring the accumulation of persistent plastic pollution in the environment could be enormous. The rational thing to do is act as quickly as we can to reduce emissions of plastic into the environment.”

Professor Macleod and colleagues warn in the journal Science that alongside threats to wildlife, and the potential hazard of environmental poisoning, there could be a number of other hypothetical consequences.

Plastic pollutants could exacerbate climate change by disrupting the traffic of carbon between the natural world and the atmosphere, and they could heighten biodiversity loss in the already over-fished oceans.

Researchers do not yet know of the long-term non-toxicological effects of plastic pollution on carbon and nutrient cycles, soil and sediment fertility, and biodiversity. Nor has there been any assessment of the potential for delayed toxic effects as the plastic polymers are altered by weathering.

“The rational thing to do is act as quickly as we can to reduce emissions of plastic into the environment”

And if there are such effects, then they could persist, to trigger what the scientists call a “tipping point”, long after people have stopped discarding plastic waste into the environment.

“The world promotes technological solutions for recycling and to remove plastic from the environment. As consumers, we believe that when we properly separate our plastic trash, all of it will magically be recycled,” said Mine Tekman, of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, and a co-author.

“Technologically, recycling of plastic has many limitations, and countries that have good infrastructures have been exporting their plastic waste to countries with worse facilities. Reducing emissions requires drastic actions, like capping the production of virgin plastic to increase the value of recycled plastic, and banning the export of plastic waste unless it is to a country with better recycling.”

And her colleague Annika Jahnke of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany warned: “In remote environments, plastic debris cannot be removed by cleanups, and weathering of large plastic items will inevitably result in the generation of large numbers of micro- and nano-plastic particles as well as leaching of chemicals that were intentionally added to the plastic and other chemicals that break off the plastic polymer backbone.

“So, plastic in the environment is a constantly moving target of increasing complexity and mobility. Where it accumulates and what effects it may cause are challenging or maybe even impossible to predict.” − Climate News Network

The waste plastic deluge fouling the world’s beaches could be more than just an eyesore. It could be a toxic timebomb.

LONDON, 8 July, 2021 − European researchers have warned that the wave of pollution engulfing the globe could be nearing a tipping point. The waste plastic deluge could become an irreversible crisis.

Somewhere between 9 and 23 million tonnes of polymers get into the rivers, lakes and seas of the world every year. Even more may be getting into the terrestrial soils and by 2025 − unless the world changes its ways − these levels of pollution will have doubled.

And, the researchers warn, the uncertain and as yet unknown effects of weathering on such volumes of plastic could bring what has been called “a global toxicity debt” as drinking bottles, bits of fishing gear, coffee cups and carrier bags become covered with microbial life; as plastic particles foul the sea’s surface, become suspended in the water column, and build up in the sediments of the ocean.

Plastic waste has now been found everywhere: on the world’s highest mountains, in the deepest oceanic trenches, on the beaches of desolate islands in the Southern Ocean, in the Arctic ice, and in the tissues of living creatures, from seabirds to whales.

Worsening climate crisis

“Right now we are loading up the environment with increasing amounts of poorly reversible plastic pollution. So far we don’t see widespread evidence of bad consequences but if weathering plastic triggers a really bad effect we are not likely to be able to reverse it,” said Matthew Macleod of Stockholm University in Sweden.

“The cost of ignoring the accumulation of persistent plastic pollution in the environment could be enormous. The rational thing to do is act as quickly as we can to reduce emissions of plastic into the environment.”

Professor Macleod and colleagues warn in the journal Science that alongside threats to wildlife, and the potential hazard of environmental poisoning, there could be a number of other hypothetical consequences.

Plastic pollutants could exacerbate climate change by disrupting the traffic of carbon between the natural world and the atmosphere, and they could heighten biodiversity loss in the already over-fished oceans.

Researchers do not yet know of the long-term non-toxicological effects of plastic pollution on carbon and nutrient cycles, soil and sediment fertility, and biodiversity. Nor has there been any assessment of the potential for delayed toxic effects as the plastic polymers are altered by weathering.

“The rational thing to do is act as quickly as we can to reduce emissions of plastic into the environment”

And if there are such effects, then they could persist, to trigger what the scientists call a “tipping point”, long after people have stopped discarding plastic waste into the environment.

“The world promotes technological solutions for recycling and to remove plastic from the environment. As consumers, we believe that when we properly separate our plastic trash, all of it will magically be recycled,” said Mine Tekman, of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, and a co-author.

“Technologically, recycling of plastic has many limitations, and countries that have good infrastructures have been exporting their plastic waste to countries with worse facilities. Reducing emissions requires drastic actions, like capping the production of virgin plastic to increase the value of recycled plastic, and banning the export of plastic waste unless it is to a country with better recycling.”

And her colleague Annika Jahnke of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany warned: “In remote environments, plastic debris cannot be removed by cleanups, and weathering of large plastic items will inevitably result in the generation of large numbers of micro- and nano-plastic particles as well as leaching of chemicals that were intentionally added to the plastic and other chemicals that break off the plastic polymer backbone.

“So, plastic in the environment is a constantly moving target of increasing complexity and mobility. Where it accumulates and what effects it may cause are challenging or maybe even impossible to predict.” − Climate News Network

Oceans, Polar

Polar concerns rise as ice now melts ever faster

June 15th, 2021, by Tim Radford

An Antarctic glacier gathers pace. In the north, the Arctic ice thins faster. Racing climate heat is feeding polar concerns.

LONDON, 15 June, 2021 − An Antarctic glacier has begun to move more quickly towards the open ocean, as the shelf of sea ice that once held it back starts to collapse. The water in that one glacier is enough to raise global sea levels by half a metre. And that’s not all that’s raising polar concerns across the scientific world.

At the other end of the Earth global heating is accelerating the loss of Arctic ice. A new study reports that the thinning of sea ice in three separate coastal regions could now be happening twice as fast.

Both findings are linked to the inexorable rise in global average temperatures as the profligate use of fossil fuels heightens the ratio of greenhouse gases in the planet’s atmosphere.

Antarctic scientists have been worrying about warming in Antarctica for years. And they have been anxiously watching the Pine Island glacier in West Antarctica for decades.

Glaciers move at the proverbial glacial pace towards the sea, to be held in check, in the polar oceans, by vast shelves of sea ice. Between 2017 and 2020 the ice shelves have undergone a series of collapses and lost one fifth of their area, possibly because the glacier has been accelerating.

“The thickness of the sea ice is a sensitive indicator of the health of the Arctic”

“We may not have the luxury of waiting for slow changes on Pine Island; things could actually go much quicker than expected,” said Ian Joughin, of the University of Washington in the US.

“The processes we’d been studying in this region were leading to an irreversible collapse, but at a fairly measured pace. Things could be much more abrupt if we lose the rest of that ice shelf.”

He and his colleagues report in the journal Science Advances that the Pine Island glacier has already become Antarctica’s biggest contributor to sea level rise. The pace of flow remained fairly steady from 2009 to 2017, but they found that data from Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel satellite system showed an acceleration of 12% in the past three years.

The Pine Island glacier contains roughly 180 trillion tonnes of ice, enough to raise global sea levels by 0.5 metres. Researchers had calculated that it might take a century or more for slowly-warming polar waters to thin the ice shelves to the point where they could no longer stem the glacier flow. But it now seems that the big player in the shelf ice collapse is the glacier itself, as the flow rate increases.

“The loss of Pine Island’s ice shelf now looks possibly like it could occur in the next decade or two, as opposed to the melt-driven sub-surface change playing out over more than 100 or more years,” said Pierre Dutrieux of the British Antarctic Survey, a co-author. “So it’s a potentially much more rapid and abrupt change.”

Snow fall dwindles

Abrupt change, too, may be on the way in the Arctic Ocean. British researchers used a new computer simulation to explore measurements from Europe’s CryoSat-2 satellite. The scientists report in the journal The Cryosphere that the thinning of ice in the Laptev and Kara Seas north of Siberia, and the Chukchi Sea between Siberia and Alaska, has stepped up by 70%, 98% and 110% respectively.

Sea ice diminishes each summer and forms again each winter; each successive summer reveals an ever-greater loss, as the ice itself thins and the area covered by ice dwindles.

Calculations of ice thickness have always allowed for the falls of fresh winter snow. But since the formation of sea ice has been later every year, there has been less time for the snow to accumulate. Such things make a difference.

“The thickness of the sea ice is a sensitive indicator of the health of the Arctic,” said Robbie Mallett, of University College London.

“It is important as thicker ice acts as an insulating blanket, stopping the ocean from warming up the atmosphere in winter, and protecting the ocean from sunshine in summer. Thinner ice is also less likely to survive the summer melt.” − Climate News Network

An Antarctic glacier gathers pace. In the north, the Arctic ice thins faster. Racing climate heat is feeding polar concerns.

LONDON, 15 June, 2021 − An Antarctic glacier has begun to move more quickly towards the open ocean, as the shelf of sea ice that once held it back starts to collapse. The water in that one glacier is enough to raise global sea levels by half a metre. And that’s not all that’s raising polar concerns across the scientific world.

At the other end of the Earth global heating is accelerating the loss of Arctic ice. A new study reports that the thinning of sea ice in three separate coastal regions could now be happening twice as fast.

Both findings are linked to the inexorable rise in global average temperatures as the profligate use of fossil fuels heightens the ratio of greenhouse gases in the planet’s atmosphere.

Antarctic scientists have been worrying about warming in Antarctica for years. And they have been anxiously watching the Pine Island glacier in West Antarctica for decades.

Glaciers move at the proverbial glacial pace towards the sea, to be held in check, in the polar oceans, by vast shelves of sea ice. Between 2017 and 2020 the ice shelves have undergone a series of collapses and lost one fifth of their area, possibly because the glacier has been accelerating.

“The thickness of the sea ice is a sensitive indicator of the health of the Arctic”

“We may not have the luxury of waiting for slow changes on Pine Island; things could actually go much quicker than expected,” said Ian Joughin, of the University of Washington in the US.

“The processes we’d been studying in this region were leading to an irreversible collapse, but at a fairly measured pace. Things could be much more abrupt if we lose the rest of that ice shelf.”

He and his colleagues report in the journal Science Advances that the Pine Island glacier has already become Antarctica’s biggest contributor to sea level rise. The pace of flow remained fairly steady from 2009 to 2017, but they found that data from Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel satellite system showed an acceleration of 12% in the past three years.

The Pine Island glacier contains roughly 180 trillion tonnes of ice, enough to raise global sea levels by 0.5 metres. Researchers had calculated that it might take a century or more for slowly-warming polar waters to thin the ice shelves to the point where they could no longer stem the glacier flow. But it now seems that the big player in the shelf ice collapse is the glacier itself, as the flow rate increases.

“The loss of Pine Island’s ice shelf now looks possibly like it could occur in the next decade or two, as opposed to the melt-driven sub-surface change playing out over more than 100 or more years,” said Pierre Dutrieux of the British Antarctic Survey, a co-author. “So it’s a potentially much more rapid and abrupt change.”

Snow fall dwindles

Abrupt change, too, may be on the way in the Arctic Ocean. British researchers used a new computer simulation to explore measurements from Europe’s CryoSat-2 satellite. The scientists report in the journal The Cryosphere that the thinning of ice in the Laptev and Kara Seas north of Siberia, and the Chukchi Sea between Siberia and Alaska, has stepped up by 70%, 98% and 110% respectively.

Sea ice diminishes each summer and forms again each winter; each successive summer reveals an ever-greater loss, as the ice itself thins and the area covered by ice dwindles.

Calculations of ice thickness have always allowed for the falls of fresh winter snow. But since the formation of sea ice has been later every year, there has been less time for the snow to accumulate. Such things make a difference.

“The thickness of the sea ice is a sensitive indicator of the health of the Arctic,” said Robbie Mallett, of University College London.

“It is important as thicker ice acts as an insulating blanket, stopping the ocean from warming up the atmosphere in winter, and protecting the ocean from sunshine in summer. Thinner ice is also less likely to survive the summer melt.” − Climate News Network

Health

Maggot burgers can help to solve world hunger

June 14th, 2021, by Paul Brown

Fancy maggot burgers for dinner? Eating animals and plants which revolt many of us could cut hunger caused by climate change.

LONDON, 14 June, 2021 − A diet of maggot burgers, green slime and seaweed may not appeal to most people, but scientists say it will be essential if the world is to avoid widespread malnutrition.

These “novel foods”, as the researchers beguilingly call them, may sound disgusting to some cultures, but the idea behind them is strictly serious. It does not recommend eating the ingredients raw, or even cooked, but processed into more familiar foods.

It has been developed by a team at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge, UK, who accept that knowing what a recipe contains is a potential barrier to novel foods, so “consideration must be given to (people’s) gastronomic preferences.” Their research is published in the journal Nature Food.

One way to sidestep the problem of repugnance could be to make pasta, burgers, energy bars and similar foods to look and taste just as they always do, while containing insect larvae or micro- and macro-algae.

“Foods like sugar kelp, flies, mealworms and single-celled algae such as chlorella, have the potential to provide healthy, risk-resilient diets that can address malnutrition around the world,” said Dr Asaf Tzachor, first author of the report.

Millions at risk

“Our current food system is vulnerable. It’s exposed to a litany of risks − floods and frosts, droughts and dry spells, pathogens and parasites − which marginal improvements in productivity won’t change. To future-proof our food supply we need to integrate completely new ways of farming into the current system.”

The team says the recent shock of the Covid-19 pandemic, coupled with wildfires and droughts in North America, outbreaks of African swine fever affecting pigs in Asia and Europe, and swarms of desert locusts in East Africa, has shown how vulnerable the world’s harvests and distribution networks are to events beyond human control – and how increasing millions of people will suffer unless we adopt novel foods. The problem will only grow as climate heating intensifies.

These new foods can be grown in controlled environments in huge quantities almost anywhere, because they are not weather-dependent. This means they could be produced where malnutrition is already prevalent, improving the diet of children who suffer stunted growth.

Currently two billion people endure food insecurity, with 690 million more undernourished, among them 340 million children fed a poor diet.

Algae, seaweed and the larvae of soldier flies, mealworms and houseflies can be grown in closed environments in containers stacked one on another. Although each species has slightly different needs insect and algae farms, once established, could use multiple containers and automatic systems. They would also offer the added benefit of using organic waste as a food stock for both flies and algae.

“Our current food system is vulnerable. It’s exposed to a litany of risks”

They would avoid the problems of adverse weather suffered by other farming systems, and would eliminate food poisoning like salmonella. Proper management would let growers adjust production to meet changing demand.

One other advantage is that these systems could operate in any climate, so could be used in parts of the world where the food was to be consumed, cutting down the need for long supply chains. This would be particularly important in places like the Pacific islands where, the researchers say, “feeble agriculture and consumption of nutrient-poor foods contribute to stunting in children, and iron-deficiency anaemia in women of reproductive age.”

However, even though these new systems do not depend on weather or even light, they do need other stable conditions, particularly good electricity supplies. So it would be important to make sure that the novel food factories were set up in places where management was protected from sudden outside shocks and interruptions of supply. They would also have to be shielded from potential contamination.

The researchers urge “scientists, engineers, investors and policymakers to consider future foods as a malnutrition mitigation pathway.” Catherine Richards, a doctoral researcher at CSER, said: “Advances in technology open up many possibilities for alternative food supply systems that are more risk-resilient, and can efficiently supply sustainable nutrition to billions of people.

“The coronavirus pandemic is just one example of increasing threats to our globalised food system. Diversifying our diet with these future foods will be important in achieving food security for all.” − Climate News Network

Fancy maggot burgers for dinner? Eating animals and plants which revolt many of us could cut hunger caused by climate change.

LONDON, 14 June, 2021 − A diet of maggot burgers, green slime and seaweed may not appeal to most people, but scientists say it will be essential if the world is to avoid widespread malnutrition.

These “novel foods”, as the researchers beguilingly call them, may sound disgusting to some cultures, but the idea behind them is strictly serious. It does not recommend eating the ingredients raw, or even cooked, but processed into more familiar foods.

It has been developed by a team at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge, UK, who accept that knowing what a recipe contains is a potential barrier to novel foods, so “consideration must be given to (people’s) gastronomic preferences.” Their research is published in the journal Nature Food.

One way to sidestep the problem of repugnance could be to make pasta, burgers, energy bars and similar foods to look and taste just as they always do, while containing insect larvae or micro- and macro-algae.

“Foods like sugar kelp, flies, mealworms and single-celled algae such as chlorella, have the potential to provide healthy, risk-resilient diets that can address malnutrition around the world,” said Dr Asaf Tzachor, first author of the report.

Millions at risk

“Our current food system is vulnerable. It’s exposed to a litany of risks − floods and frosts, droughts and dry spells, pathogens and parasites − which marginal improvements in productivity won’t change. To future-proof our food supply we need to integrate completely new ways of farming into the current system.”

The team says the recent shock of the Covid-19 pandemic, coupled with wildfires and droughts in North America, outbreaks of African swine fever affecting pigs in Asia and Europe, and swarms of desert locusts in East Africa, has shown how vulnerable the world’s harvests and distribution networks are to events beyond human control – and how increasing millions of people will suffer unless we adopt novel foods. The problem will only grow as climate heating intensifies.

These new foods can be grown in controlled environments in huge quantities almost anywhere, because they are not weather-dependent. This means they could be produced where malnutrition is already prevalent, improving the diet of children who suffer stunted growth.

Currently two billion people endure food insecurity, with 690 million more undernourished, among them 340 million children fed a poor diet.

Algae, seaweed and the larvae of soldier flies, mealworms and houseflies can be grown in closed environments in containers stacked one on another. Although each species has slightly different needs insect and algae farms, once established, could use multiple containers and automatic systems. They would also offer the added benefit of using organic waste as a food stock for both flies and algae.

“Our current food system is vulnerable. It’s exposed to a litany of risks”

They would avoid the problems of adverse weather suffered by other farming systems, and would eliminate food poisoning like salmonella. Proper management would let growers adjust production to meet changing demand.

One other advantage is that these systems could operate in any climate, so could be used in parts of the world where the food was to be consumed, cutting down the need for long supply chains. This would be particularly important in places like the Pacific islands where, the researchers say, “feeble agriculture and consumption of nutrient-poor foods contribute to stunting in children, and iron-deficiency anaemia in women of reproductive age.”

However, even though these new systems do not depend on weather or even light, they do need other stable conditions, particularly good electricity supplies. So it would be important to make sure that the novel food factories were set up in places where management was protected from sudden outside shocks and interruptions of supply. They would also have to be shielded from potential contamination.

The researchers urge “scientists, engineers, investors and policymakers to consider future foods as a malnutrition mitigation pathway.” Catherine Richards, a doctoral researcher at CSER, said: “Advances in technology open up many possibilities for alternative food supply systems that are more risk-resilient, and can efficiently supply sustainable nutrition to billions of people.

“The coronavirus pandemic is just one example of increasing threats to our globalised food system. Diversifying our diet with these future foods will be important in achieving food security for all.” − Climate News Network