The Week in Climate Change
Oct. 30 — Nov. 5, 2017
First things first — COP23, the 23rd annual UNFCCC gathering to address climate change, kicks of Monday. I’m looking forward to hearing speeches from representatives of the youth/civil society delegations. Amidst all of the wheel spinning and disappointment that happens at these meetings year after year, it’s always encouraging to watch them convey the urgency of these issues straight to the people tasked with dealing with them.
The Paris agreement set out principles, but not the details, with one diplomat likening it to having a brilliant new smartphone but no operating system. The Bonn meeting will be vital in building the rules that will enable the Paris deal to work.
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One COP veteran said: “The mood on the ground is it is going to be OK: the US is not going to be a pain in the arse. They still don’t know what they actually want.” Nazhat Shameem Khan, Fiji’s chief negotiator was even less diplomatic when asked about dealing with the US: “You can have a dialogue [even] with somebody who is an axe murderer.”
Science/Effects
The climate report, obtained by NPR, notes that the past 115 years are “the warmest in the history of modern civilization.” The global average temperature has increased by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over that period. Greenhouse gases from industry and agriculture are by far the biggest contributor to warming.
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The report has been submitted to the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. Trump has yet to choose anyone to run that office; it remains one of the last unfilled senior positions in the White House staff.
More and more of the predicted impacts of global warming are now becoming a reality.
For instance, the 2014 assessment forecast that coastal cities would see more flooding in the coming years as sea levels rose. That’s no longer theoretical: Scientists have now documented a record number of “nuisance flooding” events during high tides. In 2014, nearly half of residents in Hampton Roads, Va., could not get out of their neighborhoods at least once because of tidal flooding.
“If someone is already not on board with climate science or is just disengaged and feels like it doesn’t matter, more information about ocean acidification or attribution of extreme weather events isn’t going to change their minds,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a professor of political science at Texas Tech University who contributed to the federal climate report.
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One major disconnect she has found is that many people don’t think climate change will affect them personally. A recent survey by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that the majority of Americans think that global warming will negatively affect the country, but only a small minority thought that they themselves would suffer.
For some perspective of where we currently are in the minefield, Mann notes that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have increased from pre-industrial levels of about 280 parts per million to just over 410 parts per million — a level that is “unprecedented over millions of years.”
“If that number crosses 450 parts per million, we most likely commit to catastrophic warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius,” he says. “Once we warm the planet more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit, relative to the pre-industrial, that’s when we start to run into the most dangerous mines.”
“If Europe thinks they have a problem with migration today … wait 20 years,” said retired US military corps brigadier general Stephen Cheney. “See what happens when climate change drives people out of Africa — the Sahel [sub-Saharan area] especially — and we’re talking now not just one or two million, but 10 or 20 [million]. They are not going to south Africa, they are going across the Mediterranean.”
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Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, told the EJF: “What we are talking about here is an existential threat to our civilisation in the longer term. In the short term, it carries all sorts of risks as well and it requires a human response on a scale that has never been achieved before.”
Politics
Cases where the negative effects of carbon emissions are central, not tagged on to more direct environmental damage, such as oil spills or the release of noxious chemicals, are on the rise.
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The Carbon Majors Database, compiled by Richard Heede, a geographer, tallies historical emissions by fossil-fuel firms and other heavy carbon emitters such as cement-makers. He finds that just 90 belched out 63% of all greenhouse gases between 1751 and 2010. Campaigners seek to argue that these deep-pocketed firms, and not their customers, are ultimately responsible for the emissions, just as cigarette-makers were held liable for their products whereas retailers who sold them on to consumers were not.
“As reporters consider the impact of climate change on local communities, it’s crucial that they provide context and examine how previous social, racial, and economic policies shaped those communities to date. They should listen to, and tell, the stories of marginalized communities through an intersectional lens by adjusting for the multiple spaces people occupy. The shifting demographics of a neighborhood may be indicative of climate change’s impact. They should not be ignored.”
Energy
To have a good chance of avoiding 2C warming, global emissions need to peak some time in the next few years and decline very rapidly thereafter. If global emissions had peaked around the year 2000, it would have been possible to gradually reduce emissions by only 1–3% per year and still avoid 2C warming. In 2016, however, a sizable portion of the remaining carbon budget had already been used up.
If global emissions peak in 2017, they need to decline by 4–8% per year. If the world waits until 2025 to start reducing emissions, reductions would have to be a massive 8% or more per year.
The program is billed as a discussion of how American energy resources, particularly fossil fuels, can help poor countries meet electricity needs and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Entitled “The Role of Cleaner and More Efficient Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power in Climate Mitigation,” it will feature speakers from Peabody Energy, a coal company; NuScale Power, a nuclear engineering firm; and Tellurian, a liquefied natural gas exporter.
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“It’s embarrassing,” said Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a Democrat. “After forfeiting international leadership on climate, the Trump White House is compounding their error with a silly stunt. Fossil fuel companies are not clean energy companies, and no amount of spin will change that.”
Activism
Despite countless global studies that attest to women’s unique vulnerabilities and life-saving ingenuity in the face of climate change impacts, CNN and Media Matters have reported that only 15 percent of those interviewed in the media coverage of climate change have been women.
