World leaders who deny climate change should go to mental hospital – Samoan PM https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/31/world-leaders-who-deny-climate-change-should-go-to-mental-hospital-samoan-pm
Tuilaepa Sailele berates leaders who fail to take issue seriously, singling out Australia, India, China and the US, Guardian, Kate Lyons, 31 Aug 18 The prime minister of Samoa has called climate change an “existential threat … for all our Pacific family” and said that any world leader who denied climate change’s existence should be taken to a mental hospital.
In a searing speech delivered on Thursday night during a visit to Sydney, Tuilaepa Sailele berated leaders who fail to take climate change seriously, singling out Australia, as well as India, China and the US, which he said were the “three countries that are responsible for all this disaster”.
“Any leader of those countries who believes that there is no climate change I think he ought to be taken to mental confinement, he is utter[ly] stupid and I say the same thing for any leader here who says there is no climate change.”
Speaking at the Lowy Institute, just days before the beginning of the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru, the Samoan prime minister seemed to take a swipe at Australia’s commitment to minimising the impact of climate change, which he called the “single greatest threat to the livelihood, security and wellbeing peoples of the Pacific
“While climate change may be considered a slow onset threat by some in our region, its adverse impacts are already felt by our Pacific islands peoples and communities,” said Sailele. “Greater ambition is necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade and Pacific island countries continue to urge faster action by all countries.”
Sailele said addressing climate change required “political guts” from leaders. “We all know the problem, we all know the causes, we all know the solutions. All that is left would be some political courage, some political guts to get out and tell the people of your country, ‘Do this, this, this, or there is any certainty of disaster.’”
Sailele’s speech comes as leaders of Pacific nations are preparing to meet at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru next week, where Australia is expected to face questions about its emissions targets.
Australia’s new prime minister, Scott Morrison, is under pressure from some members of his party to abandon Australia’s commitment to reducing emissions under the Paris agreement.
His immediate predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, was due to attend the forum, but Morrison has announced he is sending his new foreign minister, Marisa Payne, a move the opposition Labor party condemned as “an insult to our neighbours” as well as “a serious strategic mistake”.
Saliele’s speech also touched on China’s rising influence in the Pacific, saying the region had become “an increasingly contested space”. “The big powers are doggedly pursuing strategies to widen and extend their reach, inculcating a far-reaching sense of insecurity.”
The Global Rightward Shift on Climate Change, President Trump may be leading the rich, English-speaking world to scale back environmental policies. The Atlantic , ROBINSON MEYER, AUG 28, 2018 Last Thursday, Malcolm Turnbull was the prime minister of Australia. By the end of this week, he’ll be just another guy in Sydney.
Climate change and migration: the need for a new media narrative, Ecologist Maria Sakellari, 29th August 2018 People forced by climate change to relocate are described by the media as victims or as security threats. There is little information about vulnerable communities’ fight to secure a viable future. We need to challenge these representations to provoke policies that protect the inherent rights of people affected by climate change, argues MARIA SAKELLARI
Global warming is intensifying El Niño weather https://www.skepticalscience.com/gw-intensifying-el-nino-weather.html 29 August 2018 by John Abraham,
As humans put more and more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, the Earth warms. And the warming is causing changes that might surprise us. Not only is the warming causing long-term trends in heat, sea level rise, ice loss, etc.; it’s also making our weather more variable. It’s making otherwise natural cycles of weather more powerful.
Perhaps the most important natural fluctuation in the Earth’s climate is the El Niño process. El Niño refers to a short-term period of warm ocean surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific, basically stretching from South America towards Australia. When an El Niño happens, that region is warmer than usual. If the counterpart La Niña occurs, the region is colder than usual. Often times, neither an El Niño or La Niña is present and the waters are a normal temperature. This would be called a “neutral” state.
The ocean waters switch back and forth between El Niño and La Niña every few years. Not regularly, like a pendulum, but there is a pattern of oscillation. And regardless of which part of the cycle we are in (El Niño or La Niña), there are consequences for weather around the world. For instance, during an El Niño, we typically see cooler and wetter weather in the southern United States while it is hotter and drier in South America and Australia.
It’s really important to be able to predict El Niño/La Niña cycles in advance. It’s also important to be able to understand how these cycles will change in a warming planet. Fortunately, a study just published in Geophysical Research Letters helps answer that question. The authors include Dr. John Fasullo from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and his colleagues.
El Niño cycles have been known for a long time. Their influence around the world has also been known for almost 100 years. It was in the 1920s that the impact of El Niño on places as far away as the Indian Ocean were identified. Having observed the effects of El Niño for a century, scientists had the perspective to understand something might be changing.
For example, in 2009–2010, intense drought and heat waves gripped the Amazon region – far greater than expected based on the moderate El Niño at the time. In addition, from 2010 to 2011, severe drought and heat waves hit the southern USA, coinciding with a La Niñaevent. Other extreme weather in the US, Australia, Central and Southern America, and Asia stronger than would be expected from El Niño’s historical behavior have raised concerns that our El Niño weather may be becoming “supercharged.”
To see if something new was happening, the authors of this paper looked at the relationship between regional climate and the El Niño/La Niña status in climate model simulations of the past and future. They found an intensification of El Niño/La Niña impacts in a warmer climate, especially for land regions in North America and Australia. Changes between El Niño/La Niña in other areas, like South America, were less clear. The intensification of weather was more prevalent over land regions.
So, what does this mean? It means if you live in an area that is affected by an El Niño or La Niña, the effect is likely becoming magnified by climate change. For instance, consider California. There, El Niño brings cool temperatures with rains; La Niña brings heat and dry weather. Future El Niños will make flooding more likely while future La Niñas will bring more drought and intensified wildfire seasons.
Unsurprisingly, we’re already seeing these effects, with record wildfires in California fueled by hot and dry weather. We are now emerging from a weak La Niña, so we would expect only a modest increase in heat and dryness in California. But the supercharging of the La Niña connection is likely making things worse. We would have California wildfires without human-caused global warming, but they wouldn’t be this bad.
Dr. Fasullo nicely summarized the findings of the paper:
Archived’ heat has reached deep into the Arctic interior, researchers say https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180829143836.htm August 29, 2018
Arctic sea ice isn’t just threatened by the melting of ice around its edges, a new study has found: Warmer water that originated hundreds of miles away has penetrated deep into the interior of the Arctic.
That “archived” heat, currently trapped below the surface, has the potential to melt the region’s entire sea-ice pack if it reaches the surface, researchers say.
The study appears online Aug. 29 in the journal Science Advances.
“We document a striking ocean warming in one of the main basins of the interior Arctic Ocean, the Canadian Basin,” said lead author Mary-Louise Timmermans, a professor of geology and geophysics at Yale University.
The upper ocean in the Canadian Basin has seen a two-fold increase in heat content over the past 30 years, the researchers said. They traced the source to waters hundreds of miles to the south, where reduced sea ice has left the surface ocean more exposed to summer solar warming. In turn, Arctic winds are driving the warmer water north, but below the surface waters.
“This means the effects of sea-ice loss are not limited to the ice-free regions themselves, but also lead to increased heat accumulation in the interior of the Arctic Ocean that can have climate effects well beyond the summer season,” Timmermans said. “Presently this heat is trapped below the surface layer. Should it be mixed up to the surface, there is enough heat to entirely melt the sea-ice pack that covers this region for most of the year.”
The co-authors of the study are John Toole and Richard Krishfield of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
The National Science Foundation Division of Polar Programs provided support for the research.
Key points:
Mr Sailele told the Lowy Institute in Sydney that climate change posed an “existential challenge” to low lying islands in the Pacific, and developed countries needed to reduce pollution in order to curb rising temperatures and sea levels.
“We all know the problem, we all know the solutions, and all that is left would be some political courage, some political guts, to tell people of your country there is a certainty of disaster,” Mr Sailele said.
The Prime Minister’s intervention came as some Coalition MPs press the new Prime Minister Scott Morrison to abandon Australia’s promise to cut carbon emissions under the Paris agreement.
New Foreign Minister Marise Payne is also expected to face questions about Australia’s climate change policies at the Pacific Islands Forum leader’s meeting in Nauru next week.
Senator Payne and Pacific leaders are set to sign the “Biketawa Plus” security agreement, which declares that climate change remains the “single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific”.
Several other leaders — including Fiji’s Prime Minster Frank Bainimarama and the Marshall Island’s President Hilda Heine — have also called on Australia to do more to cut emissions.
Mr Sailele told the audience that “greater ambition” was needed to stop the destructive impact of climate change.
“While climate change may be considered a slow onset threat by some in the region, its adverse impacts are already being felt by Island communities,” he said……… http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-31/samoan-prime-minister-hits-out-at-climate-change-sceptics/10185142
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if all other countries were to follow Australia’s current policy settings, warming could reach over 3°C and up to 4°C.
Climate Change Policy Toppled Australia’s Leader. Here’s What It Means for Others, New York Times, By Somini Sengupta Aug. 24, 2018
Climate change policy toppled the government in Australia on Friday.
How much does that really matter?
It is certain to keep Australia from meeting its emissions targets under the Paris climate agreement.
It’s also a glimpse into what a potent political issue climate change and energy policy can be in a handful of countries with powerful fossil fuel lobbies, namely Australia, Canada and the United States.
In Australia, the world’s largest exporter of coal, climate and energy policy have infused politics for a decade, helping to bring down both liberal and conservative lawmakers.
This week, the failure to pass legislation that would have reined in greenhouse gas emissions precipitated Malcolm Turnbull’s ouster as prime minister. He was elbowed out by Scott Morrison, an ardent champion of the Australian coal industry who is known for having brought a lump of the stuff to Parliament.
It could be a bellwether for next year’s Canadian elections, expected in October, in which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces a powerful challenge from politicians aligned with the country’s oil industry. Conservatives have pledged to undo Mr. Trudeau’s plans to put a price on carbon nationwide if they take power. At the provincial level, conservatives won a majority in Ontario after campaigning against the province’s newly enacted cap-and-trade program.
The Australian parallels with the United States are striking. The Trump administration has promised to revive the coal industry, rolled back fuel emissions standards and announced the country’s exit from the Paris pact altogether. Climate change is not a driving issue in the United States midterm election campaign, though it is for liberal Democrats, a recent study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has shown.
Environmental policy and global warming are top priorities for those who describe themselves as liberal Democrats, the study found, after health care and gun control.
……… Robert C. Orr, dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, pointed to another parallel: In both Australia and the United States, local leaders have embraced renewable energy even as national politicians promote fossil fuels.
“Australia is a lot like the U.S.,” said Dr. Orr, who is also the special adviser on climate change to the United Nations secretary general. “Climate policy has really been driven from below, from the state, local and business level. That is not going to change.”
Most Australian states have renewable energy targets, and Australians are powering their houses with solar energy at one of the highest rates in the world. But Australia’s emissions have continued to rise.
Australia is among several industrialized nations that are not on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius as the Paris accord promises, according to independent analyses.
Climate Action Tracker, an alliance of European think tanks that tracks countries’ climate pledges under the agreement, concluded recently that “if all other countries were to follow Australia’s current policy settings, warming could reach over 3°C and up to 4°C.” Those are levels that climate scientists consider “highly insufficient” to stop the worst effects of climate change. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/climate/australia-climate-change.html
Climate change is melting the French Alps, say mountaineers
Permafrost ‘cement’ is evaporating, making rocks unstable and prone to collapse with many trails now deemed too dangerous to use, Guardian, Simon Birch, 24 Aug 18, For the tourists thronging the streets and pavement cafes of Chamonix, the neck-craning view of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, is as dazzling as ever.
But the mountaineers who climb among the snowy peaks know that it is far from business as usual – due to a warming climate, the familiar landscape is rapidly changing.
“Global climate change has serious and directly observable consequences in high mountains,” says Vincent Neirinck from Mountain Wilderness, a campaign group that works to preserve mountain environments around the world.
One of the consequences of climate change is the ongoing retreat of glaciers. “In the Alps, the glacier surfaces have shrunk by half between 1900 and 2012 with a strong acceleration of the melting processes since the 1980s,” says Jacques Mourey, a climber and scientist who is researching the impact of climate change on the mountains above Chamonix.
The most dramatic demonstration of glacial retreat is shown by the Mer de Glace, the biggest glacier in France and one of Chamonix’s biggest tourist hotspots which would now be unrecognisable to the Edwardian tourists who first flocked there.
“The Mer de Glace is now melting at the rate of around 40 metres a year and has lost 80m in depth over the last 20 years alone,” says glaciologist Luc Moreau.
A stark consequence of the melting Mer de Glace is that 100m of ladders have now been bolted onto the newly exposed vertical rock walls for mountaineers to climb down onto the glacier.
Another key impact of climate change in the mountains is that it is leading to an increase in the number of rockfalls; more than 550 occurred in the Mont Blanc massif alone between 2007 and 2015.
Another key impact of climate change in the mountains is that it is leading to an increase in the number of rockfalls; more than 550 occurred in the Mont Blanc massif alone between 2007 and 2015……..https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/24/climate-change-is-melting-the-french-alps-say-mountaineers
S&P Global 20th Aug 2018 , Delayed reactor returns slash French nuclear availability nearly 9 GW. Available nuclear 
power generating capacity in France fell sharply by almost 9 GW after EDF delayed the return of multiple nuclear plants, while high temperatures continued to restrict production at its Saint Alban power station, the operator said. This amounted to a total nuclear output loss of around 2.37 TWh, according to S&P Global Platts calculations.
Wind, tidal conditions force Pilgrim plant to half capacity, http://www.patriotledger.com/news/20180823/wind-tidal-conditions-force-pilgrim-plant-to-half-capacity- By Joe DiFazio
The Patriot Ledger PLYMOUTH — The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station entered its fourth day at half capacity Thursday due to wind and tidal conditions.
Sea water helps cool the station and the plant’s spokesperson Pat O’Brien said that wind was blowing the warm water that leaves the station over toward the station’s intake.
The reduced power, he said, keeps the water leaving the station cooler.
“We can only take in water at 75 degrees and we reduce power to stay well below that,” said O’Brien.
Neil Sheehan, spokesperson for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that tidal conditions also played a factor in the capacity reduction and pointed out that Cape Cod Bay’s water is generally warmer this time of year.
The power reduction, Sheehan said, should not have any impact on New England’s grid.
ISO New England, the region’s grid operator, said that nuclear power made up one quarter of the system’s fuel Thursday afternoon. New England has one other nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire.
Pilgrim was offline for 43 days earlier this year to replace a startup transformer, said O’Brien. Winter storms and other repairs also put the station offline for several days.The beleaguered 45-year-old Pilgrim is the only station in the country’s lowest performance category for nuclear power plants due to technical problems and intermittent shutdowns. Pilgrim’s performance triggered additional federal oversight.
The plant is scheduled to go offline June 2019.
More than a dozen local environmental groups from coast to coast have organized the Freedom to Breathe Tour, where journalists, activists, and environmental-justice experts will present vulnerable communities with their case for swift and dramatic action on climate change. The 21-day tour, which begins August 25 and will traverse the entirety of the American South and Southwest, will illustrate the current climate realities for communities of color in the nation’s most marginalized places.
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The Victims of Climate Change Are Already Here With a new global summit approaching, communities in the southern United States are calling attention to the disaster scenarios they currently face., VANN R. NEWKIRK II |
BANNG 22nd Aug 2018 , Fake news has arrived on the shores of the Blackwater estuary!! It takes
the form of the recent, widely distributed CGN/EDF glossy and upbeat
‘Community’ Newsletter, which gives information about what is happening
at the site of the proposed Bradwell B new nuclear power station.
The Blackwater Against New Nuclear Group (BANNG) feels compelled to respond to
this Newsletter, which it considers to be a partial and misleading piece of
smooth ‘nuke speak’ that gives all the upsides and none of the
downsides of a new nuclear power station at Bradwell.
So what does the Newsletter actually tell us? It says ‘The project is at an early
stage’. But nowhere is there the slightest hint that Bradwell B might not
go ahead. In fact, early stage or not, so sure is CGN/EDF of success that
an indicative project timeline is provided, showing that construction
‘begins’ in 5 – 7 years from now. It tells us that comments can be
made on the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) process.
But the new Blackwater Nuclear Community might well ask if there is any point in commenting on
this given the obvious confidence of CGN/EDF that the Hualong 1000 reactor,
not yet in use anywhere in the world, will pass the regulators’ tests.
BANNG thinks that there is every point in commenting and would encourage
our fellow residents of the new Blackwater Nuclear Community to do so. If
you find a GDA process difficult to comment on (and who doesn’t?), simply
draw attention to the fact that all the digging of boreholes and marine
surveys cannot disguise the fact that the site is in Flood Zone 3 and,
therefore, totally unsuitable for potentially dangerous new nuclear
reactors.
Words such as ‘flooding’, storm surges’, ‘other coastal
processes’, ‘all predicted to get worse with climate change’,
‘madness’ could be woven into your comments, along with ‘the
Blackwater is a Marine Conservation Zone’ and ‘potential harm to marine
and human life’.
Sweden calls for nuclear reactors to be shielded from hot weather, Business Times, AUG 21, 2018
[OSLO]Sweden’s nuclear energy regulator SSM has asked plant operators to produce plans in the coming months to shield their reactors from harmful hot weather, its director told Reuters on Monday.A number of Swedish reactors had to shut down or reduce output as the summer heatwave sent temperatures to record highs in July, with the sea water that is used to cool them becoming much warmer than normal, exceeding safety levels. The last time that SSM, the Swedish radiation safety authority, asked operators to produce plans to modify their reactors was after Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011. The cost of those changes, which are due by 2020, was in the hundreds of millions of euros.
“We really have to take into consideration what happened this summer … We have asked them orally to come with suggestions. Of course there will be a cost. I do not know how much at this stage,” said SSM chief Mats Persson said.
The cost of post-Fukushima modifications to Swedish nuclear plants reached as much as 100 million euros (S$155 million) per reactor, Persson said……..https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/energy-commodities/sweden-calls-for-nuclear-reactors-to-be-shielded-from-hot-weather
Leaving no stone unturned in heatstroke battle at nuclear plant http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201808180033.htmlBy HIROSHI ISHIZUKA/ Staff Writer , 18 Aug 18 OKUMA, Fukushima Prefecture–How to avert a heatstroke is more pressing than usual in Japan this summer as the archipelago bakes in a record heat wave.
It’s not just sun-worshipers, children, the elderly and the infirm who should worry.
Spare a thought for the 5,000 or so workers who toil at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to get it ready for decommissioning.
They have to work outside in protective gear, with limited access to water and other resources.
At 5 a.m. on Aug. 6, a manager reminded a 20-strong group from IHI Plant Construction Co., which was contracted by Tokyo Electric Power Co., of the importance of adhering strictly to work rules.
“Please limit your efforts to shifts of less than 90 minutes,” the manager told the assembled workers in a lounge at the plant as he checked the complexion of each individual to gauge their health condition.
The workers are installing storage tanks for radioactive water that is accumulating at the plant.
They are not permitted to take food and beverages with them because of the risk of internal radiation exposure if the perishables are contaminated while they are working.
Water stations have been set up, but workers generally don’t bother to quench their thirst as it means they have to change out of their work gear to reach the sites.
During the morning meeting, the manager also checked each worker’s alcohol level and made sure that everybody had water from oral rehydration solution. After that, workers put a cold insulator in their vests and headed to the work site.
The Fukushima plant complex has about 900 tanks set up. IHI Plant Construction installed about 20 percent of them.
The workers’ primary responsibility in recent weeks is to inspect the condition of covers put in place to stop rainwater from accumulating around the tanks.
The workers are spared from the scorching sun as they work under cover, but coping with 90 to 95 percent humidity is a formidable challenge.
Junichi Ono, the head of the IHI Plant Construction’s task force assigned to the plant, said his company has tried to take every precaution against heatstroke.
“We need to pay attention because we work in a humid environment,” he said. “If a worker falls sick, we will lose valuable time taking that person to the doctor.”
According to TEPCO, 23 workers suffered heatstroke in the summer of 2011, shortly after the nuclear crisis unfolded at the plant.
Learning a lesson from that, workers were later instructed to start their tasks early in the morning and not work outdoors in principle between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. in July and August, the hottest part of the day.
The “summer time” schedule appears to be paying off.
In fiscal 2014, the number of workers afflicted with heatstroke at the plant stood at 15.
It dropped to four in fiscal 2016, but went back up to six in fiscal 2017 despite it being a relatively cool summer that year.
Although this year’s heat wave is unprecedented, only four workers have suffered heatstroke at the plant this summer.
The Japan Meteorological Agency forecast blistering summer heat in the coming week after a respite this weekend.
Take unprecedented action or bear the consequences, says eminent scientist and advisor, REneweconomy, “Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences.”Those are the challenging words from Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, for twenty years the head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and a senior advisor to Pope Francis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Union.
In the foreword to a new report, Schellnhuber says the issue now “is the very survival of our civilisation, where conventional means of analysis may become useless”.
The report, What Lies Beneath: The understatement of existential climate risk, is released today by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration.
Schellnhuber describes climate warming as an “existential risk”, and says the report highlights crucial insights which may lurk at the fringes of conventional policy analysis but which have a new resonance in today’s circumstances, “a unique situation with no precise historic analogue” in which “the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is now greater, and the Earth warmer, than human beings have ever experienced”.
He says it is hardly surprising that a trend towards “erring on the side of least drama” and an understatement of risks has emerged in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) after delivering their five Assessment Reports over the last three decades.
This he attributes, in part, to the statistical “probability obsession” of orthodox science, where repeating the same experiment on an object many, many times can identify the likelihood of various outcomes.
He says that if this were applied literally to climate warming:
Strictly speaking, we would have to redo the Industrial Revolution and the greenhouse-gas emissions it triggered a thousand times or so, always starting with the Earth system in its 1750 pre-industrial state. Then calculate the averaged observed outcome of that planetary experiment in terms of mean surface-temperature rise, global biological productivity, total number of climate refugees, and many other variables. This is a nonsensical notion.
Schellnhuber argues that calculating probabilities makes little sense in the most critical instances, such as the methane-release dynamics in thawing permafrost areas or the potential failing of entire states in the climate crisis. ……..
What Lies Beneath analyses why:
26 September – International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
