The $US2 trillions cost of climate change, as places too hot to work in
Many places ‘too hot to work’ by 2030
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/many-places-too-hot-to-work-by-2030/news-story/67761e405a9405d45d94279104016f7c Beh Lih Yi, AAP
It showed that in Southeast Asia alone, up to 20 per cent of annual work hours may already be lost in jobs with exposure to extreme heat with the figures set to double by 2050 as the effects of climate change deepen.
Across the globe, 43 countries will see a fall in their gross domestic product (GDP) due to reduced productivity, the majority of them in Asia including Indonesia, Malaysia, China, India and Bangladesh, Tord Kjellstrom, a director at the New Zealand-based Health and Environment International Trust, said. Indonesia and Thailand could see their GDP reduced by six per cent in 2030, while in China GDP could be reduced by 0.8 per cent and in India by 3.2 per cent.
Kjellstrom authored one of six papers on the impact of climate change on health that were put together by the United Nations University’s International Institute for Global Health in Kuala Lumpur and published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health.
Kjellstrom warned that the lowest-paid workers – those in heavy labour, agricultural and manufacturing – were most at risk of exposure to extreme heat.
The other papers in the series showed around 2.1 million people worldwide died between 1980 and 2012 due to nearly 21,000 natural catastrophes such as floods, mudslides, extreme heat, drought, high winds or fires.
In Asia Pacific, 1.2 billon people have been affected by 1215 disasters – mostly floods, cyclones and landslides – since 2000.
The first three months of 2016 have broken temperature records and 2015 was the planet’s warmest year since records began in the 19th century.
UK and Germany of backtracking on the spirit of the Paris climate deal, funding fossil fuels
UN criticises UK and Germany for betraying Paris climate deal
Climate change envoy singles out both countries for subsidising the fossil fuel industry and says the UK has lost its position as a climate leader, Guardian, Adam Vaughan, 18 July 16, Ban Ki-moon’s climate change envoy has accused the UK and Germany of backtracking on the spirit of the Paris climate deal by financing the fossil fuel industry through subsidies.
Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and UN special envoy on climate change and El Niño, said she had to speak out after Germany promised compensation for coal power and the UK provided tax breaks for oil and gas.
Governments in Paris last year not only pledged to phase out fossil fuels in the long term but to make flows of finance consistent with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
“They’ve [the British government] introduced new tax breaks for oil and gas in 2015 that will cost the UK taxpayer billions between 2015 and 2020, and at the same time they’ve cut support for renewables and for energy efficiency,” she told the Guardian…..
The criticism comes as Theresa May’s government has come under fire at home and abroad for its leadership on climate change after it abolished the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Senior figures such as the outgoing UN climate change chief have urged the UK not to abandon its climate commitments as it leaves the EU. “Let us remember that the Brexit vote was not about climate change,” said Christiana Figueres.
Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green party, said: “This damning indictment of the UK’s energy policy comes just days after our new prime minister scrapped the Department of Energy and Climate Change and appointed an environment secretary who has consistently voted against measures to tackle climate change.
“I urge Theresa May to listen carefully to Robinson’s remarks and start reversing the damaging policies put in place by her predecessor – like giving tax breaks to fossil fuel companies while cutting subsidies for renewables.”
Robinson said that while Germany had made some positive steps such as aiding developing countries on climate change, it was sending mixed messages.
Germany says its on track to end coal subsidies by 2018 but the German government is also introducing new mechanisms that provide payment to power companies for their ability to provide a constant supply of electricity, even if they are polluting forms, such as diesel and coal,” she said. She called on Germany to make a real commitment to get out of coal.
But she said her criticism was far from limited to the two countries. “We want all countries to end [fossil fuel] subsidies,” she said…..
The likely US Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, has said he would try to unpick the deal, but Robinson said if it was ratified by the US this year “unwinding it would be very prolonged and difficult. I sincerely hope we won’t be facing that problem.”
However Hillary Clinton would be good on climate because she had been pushed by Bernie Sanders to adopt an ambitious climate change platform, she said.
Robinson said she been to Ethiopia recently and seen firsthand the way manmade climate change was exacerbating natural climate phenomenons such as El Niño, which brings drought to some parts of the world, and flooding to others. “I saw so many malnourished children, and it’s not tolerable.”…….https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/18/un-criticises-uk-and-german-for-betraying-the-spirit-of-the-paris-climate-deal
Montreal Protocol to be amended to phase out climate damaging hydrofluorocarbons
The world is poised to take the strongest action of this year against climate change, WP, By Chris Mooney July 18 When the world moved to phase out ozone-destroying chlorofluorcarbons, or CFCs, it solved one enormous and urgent environmental problem — but it left behind another. CFCs were bad for the ozone layer and also caused a great deal of global warming to boot. But a key substitute — hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs — spare the ozone layer but are still powerful greenhouse warming agents.
That’s why diplomats and leading national ministers have assembled in Vienna this week for negotiations under the Montreal Protocol, the treaty that led to the phaseout of CFCs and is now aiming its sights at HFCs. If an amendment to the treaty can be adopted this year, advocates say, it could represent the single largest tangible piece of climate progress in all of 2016.
[The Antarctic ozone hole has finally started to ‘heal,’ scientists report]
HFCs are used in refrigerants in car and home air conditioners, as well as in foams, solvents and other products. They are being used more and more — in large part because they are the heirs to the CFC phaseout — and when they get into the atmosphere, they are far more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the planet.
According to the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, which focuses on the issue, the “most abundant and fastest growing” of these gases, HFC-134a, remains in the atmosphere for 13.4 years (not nearly as long as carbon dioxide) but causes 1,300 times as much warming as carbon dioxide does over a span of 100 years. One recent study noted that by 2050, if nothing is done, HFC-134a could add 9 to 19 percent to the warming caused by carbon dioxide.
For the broader group of HFCs, one recent study found that HFC emissions as a whole grew from 198 million tons (as measured in carbon-dioxide equivalents) in 2007, to 275 million tons by 2012.
“The HFCs effect now is very small. The problem with the HFCs is it’s the fastest-growing greenhouse gas,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “So by banning HFCs, you prevent another disaster downstream. It could be as high as half to one degree [Celsius] by the end of the century.”
Data like these explain why diplomats and leading national ministers have assembled in Vienna this week for negotiations under the Montreal Protocol, the treaty that led to the phaseout of CFCs and is now aiming its sights at HFCs. And signs look positive that a phase-down amendment could happen this year, giving a key boost to climate-change momentum, said Durwood Zaelke, head of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development……….
Granted, an amendment to phase out HFCs is not expected to be formally adopted this month in Vienna. Rather, that is more likely to occur at a second meeting, in October, in Kigali, Rwanda, meeting observers say.
If it is successful, then when the parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change meet in Marrakesh, Morocco, in November to start the process of putting the Paris agreement into action, they will be riding a wave of accomplishment and be able to think rather optimistically about the work before them. Doniger wrote recently that achieving an HFC phaseout would represent “the biggest climate protection achievement of 2016.”
“The ozone treaty has been effectively a climate treaty also,” he said in an interview. “So it can be another win for the climate from the treaty that saved the ozone layer.”
Read more at Energy & Environment:
The world’s clouds are in different places than they were 30 years ago
Scientists think they’ve just pinpointed the key driver of ice loss in Antarctica
The diversity of life across much of Earth has plunged below ‘safe’ levels https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/07/18/this-could-do-more-to-save-the-planet-this-year-than-any-other-action/
Teresa May’s backward step in abolishing Climate Change Department
Climate change department closed by Theresa May in ‘plain stupid’ and ‘deeply worrying’
move Campaigners called for ‘urgent reassurance from the new government’ that the fight against climate change and pollution will not be ‘abandoned’ Independent Ian Johnston Environment Correspondent , 15 July 16 The decision to abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change has been variously condemned as “plain stupid”, “deeply worrying” and “terrible” by politicians, campaigners and experts.
One of Theresa May’s first acts as Prime Minister was to move responsibility for climate change to a new Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.
Only on Monday, Government advisers had warned of the need to take urgent action to prepare the UK for floods, droughts, heatwaves and food shortages caused by climate change.
The news came after the appointment of Andrea Leadsom – who revealed her first question to officials when she became Energy Minister last year was “Is climate change real? – was appointed as the new Environment Secretary……..
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas described the decision as “deeply worrying”.
“Climate change is the biggest challenge we face, and it must not be an afterthought for the Government,” she said.
“Dealing with climate change requires a dedicated Minister at the Cabinet table. To throw it into the basement of another Whitehall department, looks like a serious backwards step.”
She said she would work with any Minister “willing to take climate change seriously”, but added she would seek to hold Government to account for “any backpeddling on our climate change commitments”.
Craig Bennett, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, pointed out that a major report into the effects of climate change on Britain had made clear that it was already happening.
“This is shocking news. Less than a day into the job and it appears that the new Prime Minister has already downgraded action to tackle climate change, one of the biggest threats we face,” he said…….
A letter by DECC’s permanent secretary, Alex Chisholm, to staff in his department, which was leaked to Civil Service World, confirmed that its responsibilities were being transferred to the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, under its new Secretary, Greg Clark…….http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-department-killed-off-by-theresa-may-in-plain-stupid-and-deeply-worrying-move-a7137166.html
New Zealand set to get stream of refugees: Pacific atolls ‘could be underwater by 2050
Pacific atolls ‘could be underwater by 2050 Radio New Zealand Chris Bramwell, Deputy Political Editor – @chrisbramwell, 15 July 16 The government is being warned to prepare for an impending stream of refugees from the Pacific as low-lying atolls are swamped by sea-level rise over the coming decades.
Labour is also calling for the government to take a humanitarian approach to people from the region
who are overstayers in New Zealand.
United Nations warns if sea level rise continues at the current rate, the Pacific atolls of Kiribati and Tuvalu could be completely submerged within decades……
Labour’s Su’a William Sio said the people of the Pacific were fighting a losing battle. The government could take a more sympathetic approach to overstayers from Kiribati and Tuvalu and not send them back to islands already under pressure, he said.
“The main islands they’ve got issues not just with climate change, but with population growth and waste on both Tuvalu and Kiribati, so I think we’ve got to seriously look at what we do with that, and my view is that we need to adopt a humanitarian stance with the overstayers that are here.”
Climate change refugees might not be a serious issue now, but they would become one, he said.
“The overwhelming scientific evidence is telling us these islands will be underwater by 2050 or 2070, so we actually do need to have a strategic long term plan in preparation to help these islanders because we can’t just sit around once those islands are underwater.”…..http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/308703/pacific-atolls-could-be-underwater-by-2050
Britain’s new Government axes climate department
Government axes climate department By Paul RinconScience editor, BBC News website, 14 July 16, The government has axed the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) in a major departmental shake-up.
The brief will be folded into an expanded Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy under Greg Clark.
Ed Miliband, the former energy and climate secretary under Labour, called the move “plain stupid”.
It comes at a time when campaigners are urging the government to ratify the Paris climate change deal…….One of the most pressing items on the environment agenda is the ratification of the Paris climate deal, which was inked last year.
The climate “sceptic” group Global Warming Policy Forum has long demanded the demise of Decc, so alarm bells are ringing loudly for some green groups……
The Green Party and Friends of the Earth, for instance, see the move as potentially a major downgrade for climate as a government priority.
Decc has made the UK a world leader in climate policy, and scrapping the department removes the words “climate change” from the title of any department. Out of sight, out of mind, in the basement, perhaps…….http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36788162
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to stymie climate action?
TIP proposal casts doubt on G20 climate pledge, leaked EU draft shows Draft proposal reveals new loopholes on a pledge to phase out fossil fuel subsidies within a decade, Guardian, Arthur Neslen, 13 July 16, Trade negotiators in Brussels are proposing new loopholes on a G20 pledge to phase out fossil fuel subsidies within a decade, in the latest leaked TTIP proposalsseen by the Guardian.
The EU’s draft text for a trade and sustainable development chapter also appears to draw an equivalence between the need to prevent trade distortions and the fight against climate change.
The leak will provide fresh ammunition to critics of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade deal, who fear that its provisions could undermine hard-won climate commitments.
One of these was a pledge in May to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies by 2025 – which currently run at $10m (£7.5m) a minute – by G7 ministers at a summit in Japan……..https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/13/ttip-proposal-casts-doubt-on-g20-climate-pledge-leaked-eu-draft-shows
If Amazon forest catches fire, world climate will be in even bigger trouble
Researchers are increasingly concerned that the Amazon rain forest — the world’s largest tropical forest, a huge repository of carbon and a vital cycler of water into rainfall across much of South America — will soon burn in a way that has not been seen in many years.
The reason is the lingering effect of the recent El Nino event. Forecasts from NASA and the University of California-Irvine, and from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society suggest that because of how El Nino reduced precipitation in the region earlier this year, the Amazon is far drier than usual, and primed to burn once the dry season reaches its height this summer (the fire season runs from June through November with a September peak).
According to the NASA/U.C. Irvine forecast, the Amazon is currently “far drier than 2005 and 2010 — the last years when the region experienced drought.” The years 2005 and 2010 also saw major blazes in the Amazon.
Indeed, the NASA/U.C. Irvine researchers shared data suggesting that the storage of water in the Amazon in March of 2016, as measured by NASA’s twin GRACE satellites (which detect gravitational anomalies at the Earth’s surface), is far lower now than it was in March during these prior years.
“We have the possibility of killing hundreds of thousands of trees in the Amazon in 2016, if you let these fires start,” says Paulo Brando, an Amazon fire expert at the Woods Hole Research Center and Ipam (the Amazon Environmental Research Institute).
If these forecasts are verified, there will be a great deal at stake. It isn’t just that huge, dangerous clouds of smoke could reach major urban areas ranging from Manaus to Rio. It’s that the fires risk helping to tip the Amazon into a new state that scientists fear — one in which it will be drier, store less carbon, cycle less water and generate less rainfall.
That would be disastrous for the Earth’s climate overall. The Amazon alone stores an enormous amount of carbon, 120 billion tons worth. Put that stuff in the atmosphere and the result would be justly termed catastrophic………
It is important to note that so far, what we are looking at are bad fire forecasts for this summer in the Amazon — but not a catastrophe at this point. The forecasts may not be realized. (That happens!) And the forecasts could also drive at least some action in Brazil and other Amazon countries to take steps to prevent people from starting fires, blunting the potential consequences of drought.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that scientists continue to talk about the Amazon in the same way they talk about, say, West Antarctica or the overturning circulation of the Atlantic Ocean — as a delicate system that we could tip, with enormous consequences. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/07/12/the-ultimate-forest-fire-whatll-happen-when-the-amazon-burns/
Democratic Senators naming and blaming the funders of climate science denial
US Senators detail a climate science “web of denial” but the impacts go well beyond their borders
Australians have been both helpers and victims of the fossil fuelled web of climate science denial being detailed in the U.S Senate, Guardian, Graham Readfearn, 12 July 16, By the middle of this week, about 20 Democratic Senators in the US will have stood up before their congress to talk about the fossil fuelled machinery of climate science denial.
The Senators are naming the fossil fuel funders, describing the machinery and calling out the characters that make up a “web of denial”.
“The web is so big, because it has so much to protect,” said the Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who bookended the first evening of speeches.
The senate heard how fossil fuel companies such as ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy and the billionaire oil brothers Charles and David Koch had funnelled millions into groups that had spread doubt about the causes of climate change.
In a resolution also being tabled, the upper house will be asked to acknowledge that the fossil fuel industry had done just what the tobacco industry had done – “developed a sophisticated and deceitful campaign that funded think tanks and front groups, and paid public relations firms to deny, counter, and obfuscate peer-reviewed research” and “used that misinformation campaign to mislead the public and cast doubt in order to protect their financial interest.”
Groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Heartland Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and many, many others are under scrutiny for the way they have attacked the science linking fossil fuel burning to climate change while accepting cash from fossil fuel interests.
Whitehouse also took time to describe the large body of work in peer-reviewed journals that have examined the funding, the networks and the tactics of organised climate science denial. Climate science denial is itself a live area of academic research.
But the impact of climate science denial – the decades of policy delays, the confusion among the general public and the deliberate politicization of the science – does not stop at the US border. Continue reading
Record 9 hottest years in a row
We just broke the record for hottest year, nine straight times http://www.skepticalscience.com/broke-hottest-year-record-9-straight-times.html 11 July 2016 by dana1981
2014 and 2015 each set the record for hottest calendar year since we began measuringsurface temperatures over 150 years ago, and 2016 is almost certain to break the record once again. It will be without precedent: the first time that we’ve seen three consecutive record-breaking hot years.
But it’s just happenstance that the calendar year begins in January, and so it’s also informative to compare all yearlong periods. In doing so, it becomes clear that we’re living in astonishingly hot times.
June 2015 through May 2016 was the hottest 12-month period on record. That was also true of May 2015 through April 2016, and the 12 months ending in March 2016. In fact, it’s true for every 12 months going all the way back to the period ending in September 2015, according to global surface temperature data compiled by Kevin Cowtan and Robert Way. We just set the record for hottest year in each of the past 9 months.
These record temperatures have been assisted by a very strong El Niño event, which brought warm water to the ocean surface, temporarily warming global surface temperatures. But today’s temperatures are only record-setting because the El Niño was superimposed on top of human-caused global warming.
For comparison, 1997–1998 saw a very similar monster El Niño event. And similarly, the 12-month hottest temperature record was set in each month from October 1997 through August 1998. That was likewise a case of El Niño and global warming teaming up to shatter previous temperature records.
The difference is that while September 1997–August 1998 was the hottest 12-month period on record at the time; it’s now in 60th place. It’s been surpassed by yearlong periods in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015, and 2016. Many of those years weren’t even aided by El Niño events; unassisted global warming made them hotter than 1998.
Global surface temperatures are now more than 0.3°C hotter than they were in 1997–1998. That’s a remarkable rise over just 18 years, in comparison to the 1°C the Earth’s average surface temperatures have risen since the Industrial Revolution began.
This has all happened during a time when ‘no significant warming in 18 years’ has been one of the rallying cries of climate denial. In reality, when we compare apples to apples – El Niño years to El Niño years – we’ve seen more than 0.3°C global surface warming over the past 18 years, which is in line with climate model predictions. ‘Climate models are wrong’ has been another now-debunked climate denial rallying cry.
Now that the past year’s El Niño event is over, the streak of record-breaking yearlong periods appears to have ended. Nevertheless, 2016 remains on track to break that record for the hottest calendar year, for an unprecedented third consecutive year, following record years in 2010 and 2005 as well.
With the Earth warming dangerously rapidly, at a rate 20–50 times faster than the fastest rate of natural global warming, one can’t help but wonder when the influence of the small minority of disproportionately powerful climate denial groups will wane.
195 countries pledged to curb their carbon pollution in the tremendously successful Parisclimate negotiations, but climate denial is still predominant in one of America’s two political parties, and may be gaining foothold in other regions of the Anglosphere like the UK and Australia. Fortunately, many other countries like China, India, and Canada seem to be moving in the right direction with their climate and energy policies.
Warning to Teresa May on climate threats to Brexit Britain
May warned on climate threats to Brexit Britain Climate Home 12/07/2016, The incoming government must prepare for floods and heatwaves even as EU negotiations dominate politics, say advisers By Megan Darby
When Theresa May takes over as prime minister of Britain on Wednesday, climate change might not be top of her agenda.
The former home secretary has to renegotiate relations with the EU, the rest of the world and heal a divided country. But the impacts of global warming are not going away, a report by the independent Committee on Climate Change (CCC) warns.
Heatwaves like the one that killed an estimated 2,000 British citizens in 2003 are projected to become the norm by the 2040s. To prevent more excess summer deaths, government needs to regulate for cooler buildings today, the CCC advises.
It is one of six priorities for action, in a review of evidence pulled together by 80 authors over three years.
Many of the issues are unchanged since the CCC last undertook a similar assessment five years ago.
Flooding remains at the top of the list, a status only reinforced by hundreds of millions of pounds worth of damage wreaked by storms in Cumbria last December. “The risks don’t change because of Brexit,” said Lord Krebs, chair of the adaptation sub-committee. But he added: “Some of the legislation that might underpin our resilience and preparation for future climate changes is EU legislation and therefore there will be a need in due course to replace that with national legislation.”
Meanwhile, the uncertainty is denting confidence for investment in resilient infrastructure, said report co-author Swenja Surminski, from the London School of Economics………
While May has not been vocal on the issue, as a member of the National Security Council, she was involved in a 2015 review that outlined how global warming could trigger political instability, conflict and migration.
“Our long-term objective is to strengthen the resilience of poor and fragile countries to disasters, shocks and climate change,” it concluded. “This will save lives and reduce the risk of instability.” http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/07/12/may-warned-on-climate-threats-to-brexit-britain/
Frivolous lawsuits aimed to attack climate scientists
Climate scientists are under attack from frivolous lawsuits, Skeptical Science Lauren Kurtz 7 July 2016 Today’s climate scientists have a lot more to worry about than peer review. Organizations with perverse financial incentives harass scientists with lawsuit after lawsuit, obstructing research and seeking to embarrass them with disclosures of private information.
On June 14th, an Arizona court ruled that thousands of emails from two prominent climatescientists must be turned over to the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E), a group that disputes the 97% expert consensus on human-caused climate change and argues against action to confront it. E&E and its attorneys are funded by Peabody Coal, Arch Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources, coal corporations with billions of dollars in revenue.
Formerly named the American Tradition Institute, E&E has been described as “filing nuisance suits to disrupt important academic research.”
E&E originally attacked Dr. Michael Mann, whose research shows a dramatic increase in recent temperatures in a graph popularly known as the “hockey stick.” In 2011, the group sued under Virginia open records laws to obtain six years of Dr. Mann’s emails from the University of Virginia—over 10,000 messages in total. The Virginia Supreme Court denied E&E’s claims and ruled that academic research correspondence should be protected because release would cause “harm to university-wide research efforts, damage to faculty recruitment and retention, undermining of faculty expectations of privacy and confidentiality, and impairment of free thought and expression.”
E&E did not relent. Despite losing in Virginia, the group brought another open records case in Arizona to demand the same six years of emails—this time from Dr. Mann’s coauthor, University of Arizona professor Dr. Malcolm Hughes. Additionally, E&E sued for thirteen years of emails from UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) leadauthor Dr. Jonathan Overpeck, also at the University of Arizona.
In court filings, E&E acknowledges it seeks emails that, in its words, “embarrass both Professors Hughes and Overpeck and the University.” These smear tactics serve no role in scientific discourse, but are an attempt to distract, disrupt, and intimidate legitimate researchers.
n an ongoing federal case, the conservative group Judicial Watch—which claims climatescience is a “fraud science”—has sued the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for thousands of climate scientists’ emails related to a 2015 climate change study published in Science. Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), who accusedNOAA of having an “extreme climate change agenda,” unsuccessfully sought the same emails last year.
In addition to the Arizona case, E&E attorney Christopher Horner paired with another fossil fuel industry funded-group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to sue for the emails of climate communications professor Dr. Edward Maibach. While Dr. Maibach sought to intervene in the litigation, the judge ruled that he lacked jurisdiction. Thousands of pages of Dr. Maibach’s emails were released, and plaintiffs posted them to the internet with quotes pulled out of context and commentary calling him and other climateresearchers “frauds,” “snake oil salesman,” and worse.
Click here to read the rest http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-scientists-under-attack-frivolous-lawsuits.html
USA media keeps the issue of climate change off the political agenda
Climate change: the missing issue of the 2016 campaign, Guardian 5 July 16
Guardian US survey reveals anger of voters as election year debate fails to deal with concerns over the gathering global disaster by Ed Pilkington and Mona Chalabi The race for the White House is failing to grapple with the key issues of the day, especially the urgent need to combat climate change before atmospheric changes become irreversible, a slice of the American electorate believes.
As the primary election season turns toward a head-to-head between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, there is increasing anger and frustration over the nature of the contest. A Guardian call-out to online readers in the US asking them to reflect on the race so far was met by a barrage of criticism on the tone and substance of the world’s most important election – with the two main parties, individual candidates and the media all coming under heavy fire.
The Guardian asked readers to identify the “one issue that affects your life you wish the presidential candidates were discussing more”. Resoundingly, the largest group of participants pointed to climate change………
The concerns of voters came to light as part of the Guardian’s Voices of America series which aims to highlight the way key issues have been ignored or under-played during a primary season when trivial personal attacks seemed to take precedence over substantial debate of issues that matter.
The Guardian call-out was not a poll, and as such was not a controlled survey of opinion. But it does illuminate a largely hidden depth of concern, particularly among liberal Americans, about a gathering global disaster that has tended to be discussed, if at all, at the fringes of the presidential debate…….
The climatologist Michael Mann, who is director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, said he did believe that Clinton and Sanders had engaged in meaningful dialogue about climate change, and pointed the finger of blame at the media for failing fully to reflect that. He added that as the general election gets underway he hoped there would be more focus on “substantive and critical differences in the views of the candidates, and less focus on frivolous and prurient matters that serve as little more than distraction and misdirection”.
Mann said: “The American people could not have a starker choice before them between a presumptive candidate of one of the two parties who recognizes the risk posted by human-caused climate change and articulates solutions, and the presumptive candidate of the other party, who denies that climate change is even real.”……..https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/05/climate-change-voters-2016-election-issues?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco
New climate change strategy adopted by Small Pacific Island States
Small Island States adopt new climate change strategy http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/307877/small-island-states-adopt-new-climate-change-strategy The Forum Secretariat’s Alfred Schuster, 4 July 16 The Small Island States of the Pacific Islands Forum have adopted a new climate change strategy to ensure their vulnerabilities are addressed as part of the regional policy agenda.
The strategy was agreed to by leaders from the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau and Tuvalu at a meeting last week in Palau.
The Forum Secretariat’s Development Co-operation Advisor, Alfred Schuster, says addressing climate change is one of the top priorities of the strategy.
He says the Small Island States want to band together when applying for climate change mitigation funding from the United Nations.
“It’ll be a new approach, from what we understand a joint proposal of countries and governments hasn’t yet been brought to the attention of the Green Climate Fund. But we’d like to think it’s a much more strategic way in light of the administrative burden and administrative requirements of the Green Climate Fund to generate the sort of revenue that’s required by the SIS.”
Pacific Island of Kiribati faces eventual inundation, as searises
A Remote Pacific Nation,Threatened by Rising Seas
Text by MIKE IVES Photographs and video by JOSH HANERJULY 2, 2016“…..For years, scientists have been predicting that much of Kiribati may become uninhabitable within decades because of an onslaught of environmental problems linked to climate change. And for just as long, many here have paid little heed. But while scientists are reluctant to attribute any specific weather or tidal event to rising sea levels, the tidal surge last winter, known as a king tide, was a chilling wake-up call.
Pacific island nations are among the world’s most physically and economically vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events like floods, earthquakes and tropical cyclones, the World Bank said in a 2013 report. While world powers have summit meetings to negotiate treaties on how to reduce and mitigate carbon emissions, residents of tiny Kiribati, a former British colony with 110,000 people, are debating how to respond before it is too late.
Much of Kiribati, a collection of 33 coral atolls and reef islands scattered across a swath of the Pacific Ocean about twice the size of Alaska, lies no higher than six feet above sea level. The latest climate models predict that the world’s oceans could rise five to six feet by 2100. The prospects of rising seas and intensifying storms “threaten the very existence and livelihoods of large segments of the population,” the government told the United Nations in a report last year. Half of the 6,500-person village of Bikenibeu, for instance, could be inundated by 2050 by sea-level rises and storm surges,according to a World Bank study.
The study lays out Kiribati’s future in apocalyptic detail. ……
a 2011 government-commissioned report cast doubt on whether the World Bank project helped Kiribati prepare for climate change. And while the mangroves and water management plans have helped, a 2014 study said the first round of sea walls, made of sandbags, had proved counterproductive and caused more erosion.
“Adaptation is just this long, ugly, hard slog,” said the study’s lead author, Simon Donner, a professor of geography at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. “The idea that an outside organization can just come in with money, expertise and ideas and implement something easily is naïve. What you need is consistent, long-term funding — the type of stuff that’s hard to pull off with development aid.”….
migration may become increasingly important. Mr. Tong said he hoped to prepare his people to move with job-training programs that would meet standards recognized in Australia and New Zealand. “The science of climate change is not 100 percent precise,” he said in the interview. “But we know without any argument that, in time, our people will have to relocate unless there are very, very significant resources committed to maintain the integrity of the land…..”http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/world/asia/climate-NYT, change-kiribati.html?
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