Ukrainian Firefighters Battle Forest Fire Near Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, https://www.rferl.org/a/firefighters-battle-forest-fire-near-chernobyl/28588006.html June 30, 2017 RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Ukrainian firefighters are battling to contain a forest fire inside the irradiated exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, officials say.
The fire erupted around midday on June 29 during tree cutting works at the Lubyanskoye Forestry and spread to an area of some 25 hectares by early June 30, the emergency services said.
More than 100 firefighters and scores of trucks and aircraft were dispatched to the area, a statement said.
It is not the first wildfire to break out near the site of the 1986 reactor explosion and fire, the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster. In 2015 alone, fires engulfed some 400 hectares of forests in the exclusion zone.
July 1, 2017
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By 2060, around 1.4 bn people could be climate refugees, driven from low-lying coastal cities by sea level rise. By 2100, as the global population may have reached 11bn, there could be 2bn climate refugees.
To feed those 9 to 11 bn people expected in the second half of the century, farmers will have to grow as much food in 40 years as they have grown in the last 8,000 or so.
And in a world of accelerating sea level rise and climate change, in which farmland is being degraded and turned to desert, in which ever more land is set aside for carbon storage in the form of forest, and in which the strains of survival increase social divisions and social conflict, there is a new challenge: where will the 2bn climate refugees find new homes?
“The colliding forces of human fertility, submerging coastal zones, residential retreat, and impediments to inland resettlement are a huge problem,” said Charles Geisler, professor emeritus of development sociology at Cornell University, in New York state.
“We offer preliminary estimates of the lands unlikely to support new waves of climate refugees due to the residues of war, exhausted natural resources, declining net primary productivity, desertification, urban sprawl, land concentration, ‘paving the planet’ with roads, and greenhouse gas storage zones offsetting permafrost melt.”
Although reclaiming land from oceans has been an important human project for millennia, it seems that oceans are now ‘reclaiming’ the land”
In any concerted attempts to contain climate change and limit global warming, climate scientists have to consider two big things. One is: how to drastically reduce fossil fuel use. The other is: how to use the land surface so that it takes up atmospheric carbon dioxide most efficiently.
Professor Geisler and his co-author Ben Currens, an earth and environmental scientist at the University of Kentucky, look at the big picture of land use in the long term.
They report in the journal Land Use Policy that they considered the implications of an ever faster rate of global sea level rise, as atmospheric temperatures warm and glaciers melt.
A study in Nature Climate Change has just confirmed that the seas that in the last century were rising by on average 2.2mm a year are now rising by 3.3mm a year. “Although reclaiming land from oceans has been an important human project for millennia,” write Geisler and Currens in their study, “it seems that oceans are now ‘reclaiming’ the land.”
They start from the premise that global mean sea level rise will continue beyond 2100, and from the prediction that for every 1°C of climate warming, humans should expect an eventual 2.3 metre rise in sea levels.
Losing land
In 2000, around 630 million people lived in low-lying coastal zones. By 2060, this number could have risen to 1.4bn. In the worst case scenario, the two scientists reason, almost all who dwell on the low-lying coasts will become climate refugees.
But the land that could be used to resettle those refugees is dwindling: between 1981 and 2003, around 35 million square kilometres of the planet became “degraded” and now make up almost one fourth of the world’s drylands.
Permafrost, described in the study as “a vast and cost-free warehouse” for greenhouse gases, is thawing: as it melts, it could double the current levels of atmospheric carbon and feed back into ever-faster climate change.
Were global forests to be planted in a bid to absorb this extra carbon, they would take up more than 42 million sq km or 28% of the planet’s land surface.
No entry
The two scientists then considered the barriers that climate refugees could face as they moved from the coasts. They defined what they called depletion zones – drylands, thawing permafrost and degraded land – that would be unlikely to support human existence. They identified what they call “win-lose” zones that because of urban sprawl, landfill needs and mushrooming roadways could help in some ways but not in others.
And they listed a set of what they call “no trespass zones”, from which refugees would be excluded either legally, or by violence, or by the risk of landmines or radioactive pollution.
They considered case studies, in China and in Florida in the US, where state officials have begun to plan for weather-induced population shifts.
And, although President Trump has declared climate change a hoax and is to take the US out of the Paris Agreement of 2015 in which the world’s nations undertook to reduce fossil fuel use and contain global warming to less than 2°C, the two authors think there is no other answer.
“The pressure is on us to contain greenhouse gas emissions at present levels. It’s the best ‘future proofing’ against climate change, sea level rise and the catastrophic consequences likely to play out on coasts, as well as inland, in the future,” said Professor Geisler. – Climate News Network
July 1, 2017
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Angela Merkel promises to tackle Donald Trump on climate change at G20 summit, ‘We cannot wait to act until the science has convinced every last doubter’, The Independent, Samuel Osborne @SamuelOsborne93 30 June 17, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the EU is “more determined than ever” to make the Paris accord against climate change a success following the US decision to withdraw from the agreement, and insisted she would not “overlook tensions” with America on Donald Trump’s first attendance at the G20.
Ms Merkel stressed in a speech to the German parliament that the EU stands fully behind its commitment to the agreement.
“We cannot expect easy discussions on climate change at the G20 summit,” she said. “Our differences with the US are clear.””
She added that “the Paris agreement is irreversible and it is not negotiable.” The German Chancellor will host the summit of leaders of the Group of 20 economic powers in Hamburg on 7 and 8 July.
Ahead of that summit, she is hosting a meeting of the European leaders who will take part in the summit later on Thursday at the chancellery in Berlin.
“We are convinced that climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, an existential challenge,” she told the German parliament. “We cannot wait to act until the science has convinced every last doubter.”
She said she had agreed a plan with France’s newly elected President Emmanuel Macron to deepen cooperation in the European Union and the Eurozone, adding that the EU needed to take on more responsibility for tackling security concerns it faced, including a threat from “terrorism”.
The bloc’s remaining members would remain united in their negotiations with Britain over its planned departure from the EU, she added in Thursday’s speech to lawmakers……http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-donald-trump-g20-summit-climate-change-germany-chancellor-us-president-trade-wilbur-a7813716.html
July 1, 2017
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Independent 29th June 2017, The Government has been strongly criticised for its lack of action on
climate change by its own independent advisers, who warned that global
warming was “happening, not waiting” and it was “neither justifiable nor
wise to delay further”.
While the UK has been at the forefront of the world’s efforts to combat the risks from the rising temperatures, the
Committee on Climate Change – chaired by former Conservative Cabinet
Minister John Gummer, now Lord Deben – said there was now a “risk of
stalling” just when the economy was poised to take advantage of the shift
to a low-carbon economy.
A new Clean Growth Plan setting out how Britain
will cut carbon emissions in the late 2020s and early 2030s was now
“urgently needed”. Such a plan was legally required to be published as soon
as possible after the Government announced new targets last year, but is
not now expected until September.
One leading environmentalist said the
CCC’s report raised a “very serious red flag” about Ministers’ inaction,
while the Government admitted “there is a need to do more”. Claire Perry,
the newly appointed Climate Change Minister, told Parliament this week that
she wanted the Clean Growth Plan to be “as ambitious, robust and clear” as
possible, describing the document as “vitally important”. The CCC’s
report said many existing Government policies were “running out” and
new ones were needed. It recommended a string of different measures
including policies to boost electric vehicle ownership, which the report
said should make up around 60 per cent of new car and van sales by 2030. To
achieve those targets, the Government needed to provide some financial
support, preferential tax rates and ensure the “effective roll-out of
charging infrastructure”. Other measures included helping to develop a
carbon capture and storage system, looking for ways to remove carbon from
the atmosphere, having a contingency plan to delays to planned project –
“for example of new nuclear power plants” – and the tight regulation
of fracking operations to ensure a rapid response to leaks.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/government-climate-change-experts-unjustifiable-lack-action-environment-global-warming-fossil-fuels-a7813741.html
July 1, 2017
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Guardian 29th June 2017, The government must reverse its opposition to new building regulations that
ensure homes, hospitals and schools do not overheat as the number of deadly
heatwaves rises, according to its official climate change advisers. The
Committee on Climate Change (CCC) recommended the new regulations in 2015
but ministers rejected the advice, citing a commitment to “reduce net
regulation on homebuilders”.
Without action, the number of people dying as
a result of heat is expected to more than triple to 7,000 a year by 2040,
the CCC warns in its annual report on the UK’s pr ogress on tackling global
warming. Earlier in June, Britain experienced its longest period with
temperatures above 30C since 1976. Heatwaves are known killers in the UK
and the number of hot days is rising. On the hottest day of the year in
2016 there were almost 400 extra deaths, while a heatwave in 2006 led to
680 people dying and another in 2003 contributed to the deaths of about
2,000 people.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/29/failure-to-update-building-regulations-could-triple-heatwave-deaths-by-2040
July 1, 2017
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Independent 29th June 2017,More than 7,400 cities and local councils have signed up to a ‘Global
Covenant of Mayors’ to fight climate change, galvanised by Donald Trump’s
dismissal of scientists’ concerns for the future. “What President Trump has
done is he has – unintentionally as he does with so many things – organised
and focussed people who have been doing a number of good things in hundreds
of different places.
“Now mayors are communicating and working in a fashion
that I have not seen during my seven years in office. Mr Reed said Atlanta
had committed to be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy by 2035, among
a raft of other measures designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And
he said, regardless of Mr Trump’s policies, American cities had the power
to meet the carbon targets laid out in the Paris Agreement, which was
ratified by Barack Obama.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/donald-trump-climate-change-7400-cities-action-global-warming-environment-paris-agreement-us-a7814256.html
July 1, 2017
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World has three years to prevent dangerous climate change, warn experts Since the 1880s, the world’s temperature has risen by about 1C because of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/world-climate-change-save-humanity-experts-global-warming-rising-sea-levels-food-a7813251.html, Ian Johnston Environment Correspondent @montaukian 29 June 17 The world has three years to start making significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions or face the prospect of dangerous global warming, experts have warned in an article in the prestigious journal Nature.
Calling for world leaders to be guided by the scientific evidence rather than “hide their heads in the sand”, they said “entire ecosystems” were already beginning to collapse, summer sea ice was disappearing in the Arctic and coral reefs were dying from the heat.
The world could emit enough carbon to bust the Paris Agreementtarget of between 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius in anything from four to 26 years if current levels continue, the article said.
Global emissions had been rising rapidly but have plateaued in recent years. The experts, led by Christiana Figueres, who as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change played a key role in the Paris Agreement, said they must start to fall rapidly from 2020 at the latest.
“The year 2020 is crucially important for another reason, one that has more to do with physics than politics,” they said.
Citing a report published in April, they added: “Should emissions continue to rise beyond 2020, or even remain level, the temperature goals set in Paris become almost unattainable.
“Lowering emissions globally is a monumental task, but research tells us that it is necessary, desirable and achievable.”
The article was signed by more than 60 scientists, such as Professor Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, politicians, including former Mexican President Felipe Calderon and ex-Irish President Mary Robinson, businesspeople like Paul Polman, chief executive of Unilever, investment managers, environmental campaigners and others.
Since the 1880s, the world’s temperature has risen by about 1C because of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity – a process predicted by a Swedish Nobel Prize-winning scientist in 1895.
The Nature article laid out the effect of this sudden increase on the planet. “Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are already losing mass at an increasing rate,” it said.
“Summer sea ice is disappearing in the Arctic and coral reefs are dying from heat stress – entire ecosystems are starting to collapse.”
And it added: “The social impacts of climate change from intensified heatwaves, droughts and sea-level rise are inexorable and affect the poorest and weakest first.”
Humanity is currently emitting about 41 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year, but if the Paris target is to be met it only has a carbon ‘budget’ of between 150 and 1,050 gigatonnes.
“If the current rate of annual emissions stays at this level, we would have to drop them almost immediately to zero once we exhaust the budget. Such a ‘jump to distress’ is in no one’s interest. A more gradual descent would allow the global economy time to adapt smoothly,” the experts wrote.
But they urged people not to abandon hope.
“The good news is that it is still possible to meet the Paris temperature goals if emissions begin to fall by 2020,” they said.
Donald Trump, the US President and climate science-denier, has pledged to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, which will take until 2020.
The Nature article urged world leaders to take the opposite approach by using science to guide policy and defending scientists.
“Those in power must stand up for science,” it said.
“French President Emmanuel Macron’s Make Our Planet Great Again campaign [a deliberate play on Mr Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan] is a compelling example.
“He has spoken out to a global audience in support of climate scientists, and invited researchers to move to France to help accelerate action and deliver on the Paris agreement.”
Any delay would pose a threat to human prosperity.
“With no time to wait, all countries should adopt plans for achieving 100 per cent renewable electricity production, while ensuring that markets can be designed to enable renewable-energy expansion,” the experts wrote.
Optimism was also important.
“Recent political events have thrown the future of our world into sharp focus,” they said. “But as before Paris, we must remember that impossible is not a fact, it’s an attitude. It is crucial that success stories are shared.
“There will always be those who hide their heads in the sand and ignore the global risks of climate change.
“But there are many more of us committed to overcoming this inertia. Let us stay optimistic and act boldly together.”
June 30, 2017
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Paris deal ‘non-negotiable’: Merkel, Herald Sun ,Deutsche Presse Agentur, June 29, 2017
The Paris climate agreement is “irreversible and non-negotiable,” Chancellor Angela Merkel says, ahead of the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg.
The European Union’s remaining 27 members have expressed their “unequivocal” commitment to the accord despite the United States’ decision to leave, Merkel told the Bundestag.
President Donald Trump announced earlier this month that the US would cease participation in the 2015 agreement to halt climate change.
In an implicit reference to Trump, Merkel said that those “who believe the problems of this world can be solved though isolationism and protectionism are sorely mistaken – only together will we manage to find the right answers to the central questions of our time.”……
Merkel is hosting the G20 summit on July 7-8, which will bring together leaders including Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/paris-deal-nonnegotiable-merkel/news-story/3c17b77023b201e41fcc16d9a7c2e1a9
June 30, 2017
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Sea level rise isn’t just happening, it’s getting faster, WP, By Chris Mooney June 26 17 In at least the third
such study published in the past year, scientists have confirmed seas are rising, and the rate of sea level rise is increasing as time passes — a sobering punchline for coastal communities that are only now beginning to prepare for a troubling future.
What was a 2.2 millimeter per year rise in 1993 was a 3.3 millimeter rise in 2014, based on estimates of the mass changes of a number of key components of sea level rise, such as the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the study in Nature Climate Change found. That’s the difference between 0.86 and 1.29 inches per decade — and the researchers suggest further sea level acceleration could be in store.
The chief cause of the acceleration was the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which went from contributing under 5 percent of all sea level rise in 1993 to contributing over 25 percent in 2014, the study found. The loss of ice in Antarctica and smaller glaciers over the same time period also contributed to quicker sea level rise.
The increase in the rate of sea level rise “highlights the importance and urgency of mitigating climate change and formulating coastal adaptation plans to mitigate the impacts of ongoing sea level rise,” write Xianyao Chen of the Ocean University of China and Qingdao National Laboratory of Marine Science and Technology, and colleagues. Chen’s co-authors hailed from institutions in China, Australia and the United States……
The key components of sea level rise in this equation include thermal expansion of ocean water as it heats up — previously the dominant component but, as the study notes, not any more — and the melting of Greenland, Antarctica and smaller glaciers distributed across the globe. Finally, there is terrestrial water storage or loss if, due to rainfall or other factors, the continents end up storing more water on their surfaces, or alternatively, lose it to the ocean.
The new study finds that losses of ice, and from Greenland in particular, are now becoming a bigger contributor to sea level rise than thermal expansion. And it notes rather pointedly that this contrasts with what the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the top authority on climate science, predicted would unfold across the course of the century in 2013. The more Greenland and Antarctica contribute to sea level rise, the higher it can go, since these are the two largest sources of land-based ice on the planet.
For coastal communities, Harig said, the significance of the paper is that there’s no way to avoid the reality that sea level rise acceleration, which was already expected to occur based on scientific projections, is now here.
“It’s no longer a projection, it’s now an observation,” he said. “It’s not something that they can continue to put off into the future.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/06/26/sea-level-rise-isnt-just-happening-its-getting-faster/?utm_term=.6609e7fa5219
WP, By Chris Mooney June 26 17 In at least the third such study published in the past year, scientists have confirmed seas are rising, and the rate of sea level rise is increasing as time passes — a sobering punchline for coastal communities that are only now beginning to prepare for a troubling future.
What was a 2.2 millimeter per year rise in 1993 was a 3.3 millimeter rise in 2014, based on estimates of the mass changes of a number of key components of sea level rise, such as the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the study in Nature Climate Change found. That’s the difference between 0.86 and 1.29 inches per decade — and the researchers suggest further sea level acceleration could be in store.
The chief cause of the acceleration was the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which went from contributing under 5 percent of all sea level rise in 1993 to contributing over 25 percent in 2014, the study found. The loss of ice in Antarctica and smaller glaciers over the same time period also contributed to quicker sea level rise.
The increase in the rate of sea level rise “highlights the importance and urgency of mitigating climate change and formulating coastal adaptation plans to mitigate the impacts of ongoing sea level rise,” write Xianyao Chen of the Ocean University of China and Qingdao National Laboratory of Marine Science and Technology, and colleagues. Chen’s co-authors hailed from institutions in China, Australia and the United States……
The key components of sea level rise in this equation include thermal expansion of ocean water as it heats up — previously the dominant component but, as the study notes, not any more — and the melting of Greenland, Antarctica and smaller glaciers distributed across the globe. Finally, there is terrestrial water storage or loss if, due to rainfall or other factors, the continents end up storing more water on their surfaces, or alternatively, lose it to the ocean.
The new study finds that losses of ice, and from Greenland in particular, are now becoming a bigger contributor to sea level rise than thermal expansion. And it notes rather pointedly that this contrasts with what the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the top authority on climate science, predicted would unfold across the course of the century in 2013. The more Greenland and Antarctica contribute to sea level rise, the higher it can go, since these are the two largest sources of land-based ice on the planet.
For coastal communities, Harig said, the significance of the paper is that there’s no way to avoid the reality that sea level rise acceleration, which was already expected to occur based on scientific projections, is now here.
“It’s no longer a projection, it’s now an observation,” he said. “It’s not something that they can continue to put off into the future.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/06/26/sea-level-rise-isnt-just-happening-its-getting-faster/?utm_term=.6609e7fa5219
June 28, 2017
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Melting Greenland ice now source of 25% of sea level rise, researchers say, Japan Times, AFP-JIJI, JUN 27, 2017 PARIS– Ocean levels rose 50 percent faster in 2014 than in 1993, with meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet now supplying 25 percent of total sea level increase compared with just 5 percent 20 years earlier, researchers reported Monday.
The findings add to growing concern among scientists that the global watermark is climbing more rapidly than forecast only a few years ago, with potentially devastating consequences.
Hundreds of millions of people around the world live in low-lying deltas that are vulnerable, especially when rising seas are combined with land sinking due to depleted water tables, or a lack of ground-forming silt held back by dams.
Major coastal cities are also threatened, while some small island states are already laying plans for the day their drowning nations will no longer be livable.
“This result is important because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)” — the U.N. science advisory body — “makes a very conservative projection of total sea level rise by the end of the century,” at 60 to 90 cm (24 to 35 inches), said Peter Wadhams, a professor of ocean physics at the University of Oxford who did not take part in the research.
That estimate, he added, assumes that the rate at which ocean levels rise will remain constant.
“Yet there is convincing evidence — including accelerating losses of mass from Greenland and Antarctica — that the rate is actually increasing, and increasing exponentially.”….
“This is a major warning about the dangers of a sea level rise that will continue for many centuries, even after global warming is stopped,” said Brian Hoskins, chair of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/06/27/world/science-health-world/melting-greenland-ice-now-source-25-sea-level-rise-researchers-say/#.WVGy2lMrJAY
June 28, 2017
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Rising seas could result in 2 billion refugees by 2100, Lindsey Hadlock via Cornell University June 26, 2017
http://www.enn.com/climate/article/51644 In the year 2100, 2 billion people – about one-fifth of the world’s population – could become climate change refugees due to rising ocean levels. Those who once lived on coastlines will face displacement and resettlement bottlenecks as they seek habitable places inland, according to Cornell University research.
“We’re going to have more people on less land and sooner that we think,” said lead author Charles Geisler, professor emeritus of development sociology at Cornell. “The future rise in global mean sea level probably won’t be gradual. Yet few policy makers are taking stock of the significant barriers to entry that coastal climate refugees, like other refugees, will encounter when they migrate to higher ground.”
Earth’s escalating population is expected to top 9 billion people by 2050 and climb to 11 billion people by 2100, according to a United Nations report. Feeding that population will require more arable land even as swelling oceans consume fertile coastal zones and river deltas, driving people to seek new places to dwell.
By 2060, about 1.4 billion people could be climate change refugees, according to the paper. Geisler extrapolated that number to 2 billion by 2100.
Continue reading at Cornell University
June 28, 2017
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UNESCO warns climate change means time is running out for World Heritage Great Barrier Reef http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/unesco-warns-climate-change-means-time-is-running-out-for-world-heritage-great-barrier-reef/news-story/4765a338156dd9e5b9b2c1d2b357d655?nk=ba26857f63080120cbd5fc74c94d3959-1498465693, Daryl Passmore, The Courier-Mail June 25, 2017
THE Great Barrier Reef will be dead by the end of this century without a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a world-first study warns.
The threat to Australia’s natural wonder is detailed in the first global assessment of climate change impacts on coral, released yesterday by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
It comes just a month before the World Heritage Committee meets in Poland to consider the condition of the Great Barrier Reef and the effectiveness of a management plan introduced by the Queensland and federal governments to protect it.
“Soaring ocean temperatures in the past three years have subjected 21 of 29 World Heritage reefs to severe and/or repeated heat stress, and caused some of the worst bleaching ever observed at iconic sites like the Great Barrier Reef,’’ it says.
“The analysis predicts that all 29 coral-containing World Heritage sites would cease to exist as functioning coral reef ecosystems by the end of this century under a business-as-usual emissions scenario.”
The report calls on all countries with World Heritage coral reefs to act to reduce net greenhouse emissions to zero in order to save them.
On current trends, the assessment predicts, global warming will increase by 4.3C by 2100.
Under that scenario, the Great Barrier Reef would suffer severe coral bleaching twice a decade by 2035 – “a frequency that will rapidly kill most corals present and prevent successful reproduction necessary for recovery of corals.’’
The diversity of life on reefs has led to them being been dubbed the “rainforests of the sea”. Covering less than 0.1 per cent of the ocean floor, they host more than a quarter of all marine fish species.
Australian Marine Conservation Society spokeswoman Imogen Zethoven said the Great Barrier Reef and other World Heritage reefs were in grave danger from climate change, mainly driven by the burning of coal.
“Yet the Australian government appears hell-bent on making the problem worse by pushing ahead with Adani’s monstrous coal mine (planned for central Queensland), talking up a coal-fired power station next to the Great barrier Reef and failing to do its fair share of global pollution reduction,” she said.
“The Australian government is not only placing our Great Barrier Reef and the 70,000 jobs that depend on it at grave risk, it is endangering the future of World Heritage coral reefs around the world,” Ms Zethoven said.
“The majority of Australians believe the state of our reef is a national emergency, but the Australian government doesn’t care.”
June 26, 2017
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AUSTRALIA, climate change |
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Al Gore: The Green Revolution Is ‘Unstoppable’, Despite a tough political climate, the environmental activist is still optimistic. National Geographic Magazine By Brian Clark Howard, 25 June 17, With his 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, former U.S. vice president Al Gore drew public attention to the threat of climate change. This July, An Inconvenient Sequel opens in theaters. Gore, 69, says the stakes are higher now but the solutions are clearer.
What do you think the public misunderstands about climate change?
I think the overwhelming majority of the public understands very well that climate change is an extremely important challenge, that human beings are responsible for it, and that we need to act quickly and decisively to solve it. The most persuasive arguments have come from Mother Nature. Climate-related extreme weather events are now so numerous and severe that it’s hard to dismiss what’s happening. But even those who don’t want to use the words “global warming” or “climate crisis” are finding other ways to say, “Yes, we’ve got to move on solar, wind, batteries, electric cars, and so on.” We have so much at risk…….
What is your goal with the new film, An Inconvenient Sequel?
My main goal is to add to the momentum. One hundred percent of the profits I would otherwise get from the movie, and book we’re doing, will go into training more climate activists. That was true with the first movie as well…….
What scares you most about the future?
While we are winning, we are not yet winning fast enough. The continued accumulation of manmade global warming pollution in the atmosphere adds to the damage that we will pass on to the future. Some of the changes are not recoverable. We can’t just turn a switch and reverse the melting of big ice sheets.
What gives you hope for the future?
There are so many people working around the world on this that I am extremely optimistic. It would certainly be helpful to have policies and laws that speed up our response. But market forces are working in our favor. Solar, wind, and other technologies are getting cheaper and better. More cities and companies are pledging to go 100 percent renewable. I believe the sustainability revolution is unstoppable. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/07/3-questions-al-gore-climate-change/
June 26, 2017
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climate change, Resources -audiovicual, World |
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The World’s Largest Coal Mining Company Is Closing 37 Sites https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzqdme/the-worlds-largest-coal-mining-company-is-closing-37-sites,ANKITA RAO, Jun 23 2017,
As solar energy becomes cheaper than coal, India’s growth will depend on renewables.
Coal India—a government-back coal company–is reportedly closing 37 of its “unviable” mines in the next year to cut back on losses.
India is primed for an energy revolution. The country’s ongoing economic growth has been powered by fossil fuels in the past, making it one of the top five largest energy consumers in the world. But it has also invested heavily in renewables, and the cost of solar power is now cheaper than ever. In some instances, villages in India have avoided coal-powered electricity altogether, and “leapfrogged” straight to solar power.
Partly because of this shift, Coal India, which produced 554.13 million tonnes of coal in the 2016-2017 fiscal year (for comparison, the largest company in the US produced about 175 million in 2015) saw demand dip in recent months. This is not the first sign that coal is no longer the most economic option for emerging economies like India and China. Earlier this year, the heavily industrial state of Gujarat cancelled its proposed coal power plants. And a few weeks ago The Hindu reported that Coal India had identified another 65 mines in losses.
ndia’s energy situation is changing so fast that even expert predictions about its switch to renewables are wildly off: A study from last year claimed India would be building more than 300 coal plants in the next 10 years, but experts said the data was already outdated by the time the report was published, and that India would be moving toward renewables instead.
We are collectively moving away from fossil fuels“For the first time, solar is cheaper than coal in India and the implications this has for transforming global energy markets are profound,” said Tim Buckley, Director of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) in a statement. The decline of Coal India, which produces 80 percent of the country’s domestic coal output, is more evidence that we are collectively moving away from fossil fuels as cleaner, renewable technologies become more widely available. This reality is important to grasp in every country where coal used to be king. Even as Donald Trump promises coal jobs, let’s remember that those jobs don’t are unlikely to come back.
“One of the most popular mines today employs [a couple hundred people] who are doing the work that used to be done by thousands,” Jerome Scott, a left-leaning activist with the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, said at the Left Forum earlier this month in Manhattan. “That’s the fundamental contradiction within capitalism—it’s being disrupted because they’re able to hire fewer and fewer workers.”
And for countries like India, where companies like Coal India employ more than 300,000 people, training people to work in more viable energy markets will be increasingly important to provide sustainable livelihoods. Luckily, it looks like the solar industry will have some job openings.
June 26, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, climate change, India |
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From heatwaves to hurricanes, floods to famine: seven climate change hotspots
Global warming will not affect everyone equally. Here we look at seven key regions to see how each is tackling the consequences of climate change, Guardian, John Vidal, 23 June 17, It could have been the edge of the Sahara or even Death Valley, but it was the remains of a large orchard in the hills above the city of Murcia in southern Spain last year. The soil had broken down into fine white, lifeless sand, and a landscape of rock and dying orange and lemon trees stretched into the distance.
A long drought, the second in a few years, had devastated the harvest after city authorities had restricted water supplies and farmers were protesting in the street. It was a foretaste of what may happen if temperatures in the Mediterranean basin continue to rise and desertification grows.
All round the world, farmers, city authorities and scientists have observed changing patterns of rainfall, temperature rises and floods. Fifteen of the 16 hottest years have been recorded since 2000. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions steadily climb. Oceans are warming and glaciers, ice caps and sea ice are melting faster than expected. Meanwhile, heat and rainfall records tumble.
The evidence for the onset of climate change is compelling. But who and where is it hitting the hardest? How fast will it come to Africa, or the US? What will be its impact on tropical cities, forests or farming? On the poor, or the old? When it comes to details, much is uncertain.
Mapping the world’s climate hotspots and identifying where the impacts will be the greatest is increasingly important for governments, advocacy groups and others who need to prioritise resources, set goals and adapt to a warming world.
But lack of data and different priorities make it hard. Should scientists pinpoint the places most likely to see faster than average warming or wetter winters, or should they combine expected physical changes with countries’ vulnerability? Some hot-spot models use population data. Others seek to portray the impacts of a warming world on water resources or megacities. Global bodies want to know how climate might exacerbate natural hazards like floods and droughts. Economists want to know its impacts on resources. Charities want to know how it will affect women or the poorest.
What follows is a subjective appraisal of the seven most important climate hotspots, based on analysis of numerous scientific models and personal experience of observing climate change in a variety of places. Delta regions, semi-arid countries, and glacier- and snowpack-dependent river basins are all in the frontline. But so, too, are tropical coastal regions and some of the world’s greatest forests and cities.
Murcia, Spain……… Dhaka, Bangladesh…… Mphampha, Malawi…..Longyearbyen, Norway….. Manaus, Brazil….. New York, US…. Manila, Philippines…..
The bottom line
June 24, 2017
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
2 WORLD, climate change |
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