Hurricane-hit Caribbean states target future safe from from climate harm

TEPIC, Mexico, Dec 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A group of Caribbean nations, many devastated by recent hurricanes, will work with companies, development banks and other organisations to curb damage from climate change and grow cleanly, under an action plan launched this week.

The countries aim to restructure up to $1 billion in debt to free up cash for coastal defences, switch from costly imported fuels to cheaper green energy, and buffer their communities and economies against the effects of global warming, including rising sea levels and heavier storms and floods.

Angus Friday, Grenada's ambassador to the United States, said the idea was to "inject a new DNA", breaking away from business-as-usual and bureaucratic measures so as to be able to act faster.

"Given the next hurricane season is just seven months around the corner, it's really important we move with the speed of climate change now," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Hurricanes Maria and Irma left a trail of destruction as they crashed through the Caribbean earlier this year, and many low-lying nations fear their infrastructure and economies will be devastated by more powerful storms and encroaching seas.

With many economies in the region plagued by high levels of debt, Caribbean nations have been pushing for rich countries to help bolster their defences and in turn, protect livelihoods.

Eleven nations, including Jamaica, Grenada, Dominica and the British Virgin Islands, signed up to the plan to create a "climate-smart zone", unveiled at the "One Planet" summit in Paris on Tuesday.

The plan's backers include the World Bank, the Nature Conservancy, the Green Climate Fund, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and British businessman Richard Branson, whose Caribbean island Necker was hit by Hurricane Irma.

Branson has pushed for a scheme to help vulnerable islands, centred on replacing outdated fossil-fuel power grids with renewable energy systems that can better withstand extreme weather and boost economic development.

The Caribbean region needs $8 billion to roll out national plans to tackle climate change under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Around $1.3 billion has been pledged to help islands rebuild in the wake of the recent hurricanes, while a further $2.8 billion has been committed through longer-term investment and debt restructuring plans.

The Nature Conservancy, a U.S.-based environmental charity, wants to work with lenders and governments to find ways to restructure $1 billion in sovereign debt and free up funds to invest in the "blue economy", a statement said. More

FAO, UNDP Raise Profile of Agriculture in Climate Change Adaptation Planning

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1 September 2015: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) have launched a four-year 'Integrating Agriculture in National Adaptation Plans' (NAPs) programme, which aims to incorporate eight developing countries' agricultural sectors into NAPs in order to safeguard livelihoods, raise agricultural production and boost food security.

Funded by Germany's Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), the initiative targets Kenya, Nepal, the Philippines, Thailand, Uganda, Uruguay, Viet Nam and Zambia.

Under the programme, FAO will offer policy and technical support to ensure that climate change adaptation priorities in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors are incorporated in national adaptation planning processes. UNDP will assist countries with: managing climate risk; planning and budgeting; and strengthening information systems, project formulation and coordination between government institutions.

Building on existing FAO and UNDP country activities, the programme aims to assist countries by developing tailored responses to their needs. Examples include: increasing conservation of drought-resistant crop varieties by adopting water-conserving farming practices and promoting crop diversification in Nepal; setting up an early-warning system for climate risks in Uganda; mapping vulnerability to food insecurity due to climate change and exploring ways to scale up risk-transfer mechanisms for farming communities in the Philippines; and restoring degraded pasture lands and at-risk coastal ecosystems in Uruguay. [FAO Press Release] [Integrating Agriculture in NAPs Webpage] More

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Leonardo DiCaprio Narrates Climate Change Films Urging Shift From Fossil Fuels to Renewables

Production company Tree Media, whose mission is to inspire positive social action, has just released the first of four films in the Green World Rising series focusing on solutions to the climate crisis.

The eight-minute film, CARBON, narrated by actor and dedicated environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio, was created with support from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and in collaboration with Thom Hartmann. The film’s goal is to draw attention to how some governments are already putting a price on carbon through carbon taxes and carbon trading to encourage polluters to shift from dirty energy sources to renewables prior to the UN Climate Summit in New York on Sep. 23. All four films will be released in the next month leading up to the summit.

“97% of climate scientists agree: climate change is happening now—and humans are responsible,” said DiCaprio. “We cannot sit idly by and watch the fossil fuel industry make billions at our collective expense. We must put a price on carbon—now.”

“We need serious action to address the most pressing issue of our time,” said Hartmann. “Communities across the world have taken action in the most direct and effective way possible by taxing and trading carbon. For us to beat this crisis, many more need to join.”

The film explains what a carbon tax and carbon trading are, how they can help us stop “using the atmosphere as a sewer,” as Joseph Romm of the Center for American Progress says in the film, and what ordinary people can do to push elected officials to act. More

Carbon

Published on Aug 20, 201 4 • CARBON is the first film in the Green World Rising Series, http:// www.greenworldrising.org "Carbon" is narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, presented by Thorn Hartmann and directed by Leila Conners. Executive Producers are George DiCaprio, Earl Katz and Roee Sharon Peled. Carbon is produced by

Mathew Schmid and was written by Thorn Hartmann, Sam Sacks, Leila Conners and Mathew Schmid. Music is composed and performed by Jean-Pascal Beintus and intro drone by Francesco Lupica. Carbon is produced by Tree Media with the support of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

© 2014

The Climate War Room

Climate War Room - Sunday 3rd. August 2014

I have today changed the name of the Cayman Institute's climate change blog to the Climate War Room.

Having collaborated with Sir Richard Branson's Carbon War Room on their Ten Island Challenge, which is a major initiative to mitigate climate change through cutting down the global carbon output, I have realized that a similar initiative is needed to to raise awareness of the necessity for a global war on climate change rather than just carbon output.

For more input on the reality of the situation a good place to start would be Makiko Sato & James Hansen's website where they ask 'What Path is the Real World Following'? Jim Hansen was the former director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies who resigned because the United States Government would not let him speak out on climate change. 'Assessing Dangerous Climate Change' makes worrying reading.

The world needs to take climate change, or as James Lovelock prefers to call it 'global heating' very seriously. Dr. Lovelock is the founder of the Gaia theory and on of the great thinkers of this century, his Cirriculum Vitae is very interesting and worth reading. Mary Midgley wrote on James Lovelock, published in the New Statesman on 14 July 2003."Lovelock is an independent scientist. Though fanatically accurate over details, he never isolates those details from a wider, more demanding vision of their background. He thinks big. Preferring, as Darwin did, to work outside the tramlines of an institution, he has supported himself since 1963 through inventions and consultancies."

 

We need to take the issue very seriously as a rapidly warming climate will change life as we know it. As Jim Hansen has tried to make us aware our children and grandchildren will effectively living on a different and not very nice planet.

I implore you to research and read up on this subject. Speak out to your friends and neighbors and contact your political representatives and make your views known to them.

Nicholas Robson - Grand Cayman - Cayman Islands

 

© 2014

Climate change will ‘cost world far more than estimated’

Lord Stern, the world’s most authoritative climate economist, has issued a stark warning that the financial damage caused by global warming will be considerably greater than current models predict.

This makes it more important than ever to take urgent and drastic action to curb climate change by reducing carbon emissions, he argues.

Lord Stern, who wrote a hugely influential review on the financial implications of climate change in 2006, says the economic models that have been used to calculate the fiscal fallout from climate change are woefully inadequate and severely underestimate the scale of the threat.

As a result, even the recent and hugely authoritative series of reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are significantly flawed, he said.

“It is extremely important to understand the severe limitations of standard economic models, such as those cited in the IPCC report, which have made assumptions that simply do not reflect current knowledge about climate change and its ... impacts on the economy,” said Lord Stern, a professor at the Grantham Institute, a research centre at the London School of Economics.

Professor Stern and his colleague Dr Simon Dietz will today publish the peer-reviewed findings of their research into climate change economic modelling in the The Economic Journal.

Their review is highly critical of established economic models which, among other things, fail to acknowledge the full breadth of climate change’s likely impact on the economy and are predicated on assumptions about global warming’s effect on output that are “without scientific foundation”.

Professor Stern, whose earlier research said it is far cheaper to tackle climate change now than in the future, added: “I hope our paper will prompt ... economists to strive for much better models [and] ... help policy-makers and the public recognise the immensity of the potential risks of unmanaged climate change.”

“Models that assume catastrophic damages are not possible fail to take account of the magnitude of the issues and the implications of the science,” he said.

Professor Stern and Dr Dietz say their findings strengthen the case for strong cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and imply that, unless this happens, living standards could even start to decline later this century.

For the study, they modified key features of the “dynamic integrated climate-economy” (Dice) model, initially devised by William Nordhaus in the 1990s. The changes take into account the latest scientific findings and some of the uncertainties about the major risks of climate change that are usually omitted.

The standard Dice model has been used in a wide range of economic studies of the potential impacts of climate change, some of which have been cited in the most recent IPCC report which has been released in three parts over the past nine months.

Dr Dietz said: “While this standard economic model has been useful for economists who estimate the potential impacts of climate change, our paper shows some major improvements are needed before it can reflect the extent of the risks indicated by the science.”

Dr Dietz said his aim was to show how a new version of the model could produce a range of results that are much more representative of the science and economics of climate change, taking into account the uncertainties.

“The new version of this standard economic model, for instance, suggests that the risks from climate change are bigger than portrayed by previous economic models and therefore strengthens the case for strong cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases,” he said.

The new model differs in that it considers a wider temperature range when estimating the impact of doubling the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases – a measure of “climate sensitivity”.

Whereas the standard model usually assumes a single temperature for climate sensitivity of about 3C, the new model uses a range of 1.5C to 6C, which the authors say more accurately reflects the scientific consensus.

The standard model also “implausibly” suggests a loss of global output of 50 per cent would only result after a rise in global average temperature of 18C, even though such warming would likely render the Earth uninhabitable for most species, including humans, Dr Dietz contends.

The new model includes the possibility that such damage could occur at much lower levels of global warming. Standard economic models rule out the possibility that global warming of 5-6C above pre-industrial levels could cause catastrophic damages, even though such temperatures have not occurred on Earth for tens of millions of years. Such an assertion, he says, is without scientific foundation and embodies a false assumption that the risks are known, with great confidence, to be small.

The new model also takes into account that climate change can damage not just economic output, but productivity. The standard model assumes that rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere only affect economic growth in a very limited way, according to Dr Dietz. More

 

 

© 2014

IPCC climate report: a route map for civilisation's greatest journey

The landmark UN report shows the affordable paths to averting a global climate catastrophe: now politicians must decide the route and who pays the fare

Jakarta traffic

If you are embarking on a long and essential journey, it really pays to book early. That is the key message from Sunday's landmark UN report that sets out the route to averting catastrophic climate change.

By starting right now to end the era of dirty fossil fuels and create a new world of clean energy, not only do you ensure you arrive at your destination – a safer world – but you also get the cheapest ticket. The report's message was as clear as a travel agent's advertisement: buy now or pay a premium later.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's chair, Rajendra Pachauri, drew on his early years as a railway engineer to drive the point home: “The high speed [carbon-cutting] train will leave very soon and all of the global community will have to be on board.”

But his IPCC colleague, Youba Sokona, a scientist from Mali and one of the trio who led the new report, was clear about the limits of the new plan: “We are the mapmakers: the [powerful] are the navigators.” He said the report is “telling truth to power”: the question now is whether the powerful want to listen.

The IPCC report sets out multiple possible routes. Some, based on renewable energy and cutting energy waste, are low-risk and comfortable, rather like a fast electric train. Other more circuitous routes, such as delaying action and then beingforced to suck carbon out of the air later, look more like a four-wheeled drive over a mountain range.

The IPCC has put a definitive map on the table and shown that the price of climate action is affordable. But the hardest choices remain in the hands of the powerful: which route to take and, even more difficult, who pays for the ticket.

The statements deleted from the final report summary, which is aimed directly at policymakers, reveal the political battles ahead. All mentions of transferring hundreds of billions of dollars a year from rich to poor nations to pay for going green were excised. Even the simple statement that 70% of all emissions come from just 10 big nations – think China and the US – was deemed too much like naming and shaming.

Nonetheless, many stark messages remain: all dirty fossil fuel use will have to end in the coming decades; huge stocks of coal, oil and gas will have to remain in the ground; countries and companies relying on fossil fuels may suffer big financial losses.

Choosing the route away from civilisation's looming climate car crash now falls to the world's leaders, with a deadline of December 2015 in Paris for a global deal. But they can no longer claim they don't know the way or can't afford the fare. As US secretary of state John Kerry put it on Sunday: “This report makes very clear we face an issue of global willpower, not capacity.” More

 

© 2014

Who Will Pay for Climate Change Consequences?

A number of initiatives, including the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Recovery and the University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, have been developing models to assess climate risk at various scales.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has been trying to put numbers on the cost of adaptation. The journal Nature Climate Change recently published a paper entitled “Future Flood Losses in Major Coastal Cities” full of some very sobering numbers. The World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Climate Change has developed recommendations on financing mechanisms for adaptation. These are just some of the initiatives underway to price the risks of climate-driven weather variations.

It is likely, however, that the extraordinarily complicated questions of what is at risk, what should be done about it and how much should be spent will be easier to address than the political question, who should pay and what’s their share. This is a question our clients, public and private, grapple with all the time as they consider their own risk attenuation. All but the most optimistic agree that substantial new revenue from existing sources dedicated to climate adaptation will not be forthcoming. There is hope that financial markets can develop instruments for investors that produce positive returns for adaptation investments. Without new funding sources, the best we can do is incorporate adaptation benefits into existing spending. But, how much do we spend on probabilities and what is the opportunity cost for that spend compared to existing needs? This is a very contentious political question. In politics, do we see the future considered as a constituent of decisions about the future? Sustainability demands the answer should be yes. For many, quite reasonably given the inability to know the future, the answer is largely no. But, there are future-minded companies out there that have risen above the political hubbub and recognized that protecting their assets from an uncertain, unknowable future is simply good business sense. I reached out to a few of my colleagues to get their thoughts and received some excellent examples of companies and organizations that have redefined this question in terms of sound business strategy.

The best mitigation and adaptation strategies are not stand-alone investments but part of a broader consideration of cumulative benefits.

The City of Blackpool in the UK reaped great benefits from its investment in a new seawall. It took advantage of the opportunity to reconnect the town to its famous beach; provide a better pedestrian experience; and create spaces for events, retail and community interaction. The improved community experience quickly translates into increased commercial success for neighboring businesses. Private and public sectors both win, even if the sea level doesn’t rise.

A similar story is true of the South Bay wetlands restoration in San Francisco Bay. The wetlands regeneration created significant water quality and habitat improvements that the South Bay public welcomed and was willing to invest in because the whole community loves to fish. While the public doesn’t really care about protecting itself from a fabled sea level rise and possible flooding, the wetlands generation will significantly mitigate damage in the event that this occurs.

The successful implementation of both these examples lies in their ability to articulate both public and commercial benefits that extend far beyond the simple cost/infrastructure equation.

The other compelling argument is business continuity. The study by Nature Climate Change estimates that the cost of flooding in the world’s 136 largest coastal cities could be as much as $52 billion a year over the next few decades (an increase of $46 billion a year from 2005 figures). Staggeringly, three US cities — Miami, New York City and New Orleans — could, between the three of them, be responsible for 31 percent of this total annual cost. These three cities stand out as having the most to lose given the contrast between their high wealth and the insignificant level of investment in flood protection.

Just looking at recent experience, the globe is littered with examples of catastrophic business losses in the aftermath of natural disasters. One thousand factories closed in Thailand after flooding. The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, had a serious negative impact on the Japanese economy — not only substantially reducing production in the regions directly affected, but also disrupting supply chains throughout Japan. This summer, the extensive flooding in Eastern Europe cost an estimated $18 billion in economic losses.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. My colleague Dale Sands’ response to my query was much more inspiring. He cited the example of a forward-thinking New Zealand utility enterprise that had reaped great benefit from placing adaptation considerations at the center of its business decisions.

Recognizing that earthquakes are a common occurrence in that part of the world, this company spent $6 million preparing for earthquakes. After the great earthquake of 2010, the utility realized an estimated savings of $60 million because the investments they had made in hardening their infrastructure ensured continuity of service in the wake of the disaster.

Not only did the utility company protect its own assets and revenue stream but its ability to continue functioning in adverse circumstances avoided the additional trauma the citizens of Christchurch would have experienced had they lost power, and also spurred the ability of the regional economy to recover more quickly. The brand equity such outstanding service in adverse conditions must have generated is surely a less tangible but equally important consideration for the future health of the company.

Presenting the case study at the UN Global Platform in May 2013, Roger Sutton, then CEO of the utility and now Chief Executive of Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority stated, “…despite the high cost in damages of the 2010 New Zealand earthquakes, the Christchurch economy had never stopped functioning, which was a testament to investments in disaster resilience.”

Our challenge as creators of the built environment is to help our clients recognize that disaster preparation is not an incremental investment but a fundamental element of the core investment strategy. We know that a unit of planning will reduce response actions by four to seven units of expenditure. We also know that the frequency of natural disasters is increasing, and that the majority of the losses are uninsured. Some companies will not put an emphasis on business continuity planning while others will. Some companies will survive and flourish while others will not. Healthy companies cannot thrive in stricken cities any more than a city can flourish without a robust economy. More

 

Climate Change Worse Than We Thought, Likely To Be 'Catastrophic Rather Than Simply Dangerous'

Climate change may be far worse than scientists thought, causing global temperatures to rise by at least 4 degrees Celsius by 2100, or about 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a new study.

The study, published in the journal Nature, takes a fresh look at clouds' effect on the planet, according to a report by The Guardian. The research found that as the planet heats, fewer sunlight-reflecting clouds form, causing temperatures to rise further in an upward spiral.

That number is double what many governments agree is the threshold for dangerous warming. Aside from dramatic environmental shifts like melting sea ice, many of the ills of the modern world -- starvation, poverty, war and disease -- are likely to get worse as the planet warms.

"4C would likely be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous," lead researcher Steven Sherwood told the Guardian. "For example, it would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics, and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet."

Another report released earlier this month said the abrupt changes caused by rapid warming should be cause for concern, as many of climate change's biggest threats are those we aren't ready for.

In September, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said it was "extremely likely" that human activity was the dominant cause of global warming, or about 95 percent certain -- often the gold standard in scientific accuracy.

"If this isn't an alarm bell, then I don't know what one is. If ever there were an issue that demanded greater cooperation, partnership, and committed diplomacy, this is it," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said after the IPCC report was released. More

 

The Coming Carbon Asset Bubble

After the credit crisis and Great Recession, it seemed ridiculous to have thought that investing in subprime mortgages was a good idea. As with most market "bubbles," the risk of giving 7.5 million mortgages to people who couldn't possibly pay them off was somehow invisible to many investors at the time.

One reason such bubbles form is the tendency by many investors to confuse "risk" with "uncertainty." As the economist Frank Knight established, there is a subtle but crucial distinction between the two: Uncertainty is what good investors usually fear the most, because it cannot be measured or priced as risk can be. But when investors mislabel risk as uncertainty, they become vulnerable to the assumption that since it cannot be measured, they might as well ignore it.

That is exactly what is happening with the subprime carbon asset bubble: It is still growing because most market participants are mistakenly treating carbon risk as an uncertainty, and are thus failing to incorporate it in investment analyses. By overlooking a known material-risk factor, investors are exposing their portfolios to an externality that should be integrated into the capital allocation process.

Here is the relevance of carbon to investing: There is consensus within the scientific community that increasing the global temperature by more than 2°C will likely cause devastating and irreversible damage to the planet. Reliable measurements make it clear that we will easily cross this threshold in the near term at our current rate of CO2 emissions. So in an effort to avoid it, the International Energy Agency has calculated a global "Carbon Budget" that accommodates the burning of merely one-third of existing fossil fuel reserves by 2050. Put differently, at least two-thirds of fossil fuel reserves will not be monetized if we are to stay below 2°C of warming—creating "stranded carbon assets."

A stranded asset is one that loses economic value well ahead of its anticipated useful life. Stranded carbon assets include fossil fuels, as well as those assets which, given their dependence on fossil fuels, are also CO2-emissions intensive. Not all carbon-intensive assets are created equal, and it is reasonable to assume that in carbon-constrained scenarios the projects with the highest break-even costs and emissions profile (e.g., tar sands and coal) will be stranded first.

Many investors cite what we believe is a misinformed view that carbon assets will not be vulnerable to stranding until a meaningful carbon price is enforced by a global accord. While a global price on carbon certainly would be important, we believe that investors are mistaken to assume that is the only path to stranding carbon assets. We believe that any such strategy is unwise and increasingly reckless—because of three broad risks:

First is regulation that could strand assets in several ways: direct regulation on carbon led by authorities at the local, national, regional, or global level; indirect regulation through increased pollution controls, constraints on water usage, or policies targeting health concerns; and mandates on renewable energy adoption and efficiency standards. Even the threat of impending regulation creates uncertainty for long-lived carbon-intensive assets.

Second, stranding may occur as a result of market forces. Renewable technologies are already economically competitive with fossil fuels in a number of countries without subsidies. This cost competitiveness, combined with the ability to secure stable long-term prices for power, and an increase in distributed electricity models, could continue to shift capital allocation way from fossil fuels.

Third, sociopolitical pressures (e.g., fossil-fuel divestment campaigns, environmental advocacy, grass-roots protests and changing public opinion) could create an environment in which carbon-intensive businesses could lose their "license to operate," thereby stranding assets.

Delaying action to mitigate climate change will not delay climate change itself. As such, investors can strand fossil-fuel energy assets today, or absorb the cost of inaction by causing a much larger stranding across industries and asset classes in the future. The case to incorporate carbon risk into both equity and debt valuations now is one of short- and long-term prudent risk management. There are four principal ways investors can do this:

First, identify carbon asset risks across portfolios. At a minimum, investors should determine the extent to which carbon risk is embedded in current and future investments. This can be achieved by, for example, considering the key drivers of a company's current and future asset base in the context of carbon risks and developing tools that quantify risks for valuations. Note that passive, index tracking funds should also identify their exposure to carbon risks since they too are vulnerable to stranding as fossil fuel-dependent assets make up roughly 10%-30% of most major exchanges.

Second, engage corporate boards and executives on plans to mitigate and disclose carbon risks. Investors should ask questions like: Do companies have a shadow price on carbon (if not, why not?) and how does it impact their cash position? What is the amount of carbon they plan to burn and how does it relate to their long-term strategic plan? Investors should pressure executive teams to divert cash flow away from capital expenditures on developing fossil fuels and toward more productive uses in the context of a transition to a low carbon economy.

Third, diversify investments into opportunities positioned to succeed in a low-carbon economy. Investors should tilt portfolios away from assets with embedded carbon risks and toward assets with low or no carbon emissions. Investors have the opportunity to capitalize on emerging solutions such as: energy generation (e.g., solar, wind, geothermal); buildings (e.g., insulating materials, lighting, metering); and transport (e.g., engines, electric vehicles, fleet logistics). This hedging strategy will buffer the impact an extreme carbon risk event might have on a portfolio while potentially capturing the upside of the transition away from fossil fuel assets.

Fourth, divest fossil fuel assets. This is certainly the surest way to reduce carbon risk, though we fully recognize that divesting can be complicated and may be difficult for many asset owners. Such a transition could be phased in over several years, and there are gradations; early and easy progress can be made by at least divesting from the most emissions-intensive forms of energy—especially since they are likely to face stranding well ahead of less carbon-intensive fossil fuels.

In the words of President John F. Kennedy, "There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction." The transition to a low carbon future will revolutionize the global economy and present significant opportunities for superior investment returns. However, investors must also acknowledge that carbon risk is real and growing. Inaction is no longer prudent. More

 

Native Tribes' Traditional Knowledge Can Help US Adapt to Climate Change

That's the conclusion of more than 50 researchers at Dartmouth and elsewhere in a special issue of the journal Climatic Change. It is the first time a peer-reviewed journal has focused exclusively on climate change's impacts on U.S. tribes and how they are responding to the changing environments. Dartmouth also will host an Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Working Group meeting Nov. 4- 5.

The special issue, which includes 13 articles, concludes that tribes' traditional ecological knowledge can play a key role in developing scientific solutions to adapt to the impacts. "The partnerships between tribal peoples and their non-tribal research allies give us a model for responsible and respectful international collaboration," the authors say.

Dartmouth assistant professors Nicholas Reo and Angela Parker, whose article is titled "Re-thinking colonialism to prepare for the impacts of rapid environmental change," said New England settlers created a cascade of environmental and human changes that spread across North America, including human diseases, invasive species, deforestation and overharvest.

The researchers identified social and ecological tipping points and feedback loops that amplify and mitigate environmental change. For example, prior to the arrival of Europeans, old growth deciduous forests were rich with animal and plant resources and covered more than 80 percent of New England. Native peoples helped to sustain this bountiful biodiversity for centuries through their land practices.

"But when indigenous communities were decimated by disease and eventually alienated from their known environments, land tenure innovations based on deep, local ecological knowledge, disappeared," the researchers say. "Colonists, and their extractive systems aimed at key animal and plant species, became the new shapers of cultural landscapes. Rapid ecological degradation subsequently ensued, and New Englanders created a difficult project of stewarding a far less resilient landscape without help from indigenous land managers who would have known best how to enact ecological restoration measures."

Today's tribal members who work with natural resources, such as fisherman, farmers and land managers, can play key roles in devising local and regional strategies to adapt to climate change, the researchers say. More

 

Climate change to have double impact - study

As the world awaits the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) latest verdict on the state of the climate, new research out this year finds that climate change could have double the impact previously thought.

The peer-reviewed study published in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Societyargues that conventional conclusions on climate sensitivity - the extent to which global temperatures respond to greenhouse gas emissions - underestimate the role of some amplifying feedbacks that may intensify climate impacts in ways that many models tend to overlook.

Traditional estimates of climate sensitivity such as that adopted by the IPCC focus on "fast feedbacks" like water vapour, natural aerosols, clouds, and snow cover, but do not sufficiently account for slower feedbacks including "surface albedo feedbacks from changes in continental ice sheets and vegetation", and climate greenhouse gas feedbacks "from changes in natural (land and ocean) carbon sinks."

These types of feedbacks refer to self-reinforcing process which, once human-induced emissions create a change in a particular eco-system, lead to further changes beyond the initial human forcing as different parts of the system continue to respond. With 'albedo', for instance, the reduction of snow and ice cover due to melting induced by global warming means less surfaces reflecting sunlight back into the atmosphere, and thus more absorption of heat, which leads to further melting - and potentially a self-reinforcing cycle that contributes further to overall warming.

With 'carbon sinks', as the oceans absorb CO2 and excess heat due to global warming, they could reach a saturation point where their ability to absorb is continually reduced, in turn allowing global warming to accelerate - eventually, the oceans themselves could become an increasing source of CO2 if this process continues.

Climate sensitivity estimates based on fast feedbacks alone, ignoring the above processes, average out at suggesting a doubling of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would lead to a global temperature rise of about 3C. However, the new paper by a multidisciplinary team led by Columbia University's Earth Institute, notes that ice sheet and vegetation surface have wrongly been assumed to be irrelevant "based on the long-standing notion that continental ice sheet changes occur so slowly (over several millennia)."

The paper cites "evidence from the palaeoclimatic record for sea-level changes of several metres per century" as well as "present-day observations of increasing melt and overall mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica", which together "imply that ice sheet changes can occur more rapidly than previously recognized." They also point to several studies indicating that "significant vegetation response can occur on decadal-to centennial time-scales." Taking these processes into account gives an estimate known as the 'Earth system sensitivity', which the study finds is double that of other estimates at between 6 to 8C. The dramatic changes that this higher sensitivity implies would occur over "several centuries to about a millennium", if not "several millennia."

Despite that long time-scale, unfortunately some early impacts could still be seen this century. The study warns:

"The higher Earth system sensitivity thus implies a real possibility of exceeding the 2C global warming threshold if atmospheric GHG concentrations are sustained at or above present-day levels. This needs to be communicated clearly to policymakers and to the general public in order to ensure appropriately informed decisions about future GHG stabilization."

The difficulties in estimating the Earth system sensitivity, the paper points out, are due to "the lack of palaeo-analogues for the present-day anthropogenic forcing" as well as because "current models are unable to adequately simulate the physics of ice sheet decay and certain aspects of the natural carbon and nitrogen cycles." More

 

A Climate Alarm, Too Muted for Some

This month, the world will get a new report from a United Nations panel about the science of climate change. Scientists will soon meet in Stockholm to put the finishing touches on the document, and behind the scenes, two big fights are brewing.

In one case, we have a lot of mainstream science that says if human society keeps burning fossil fuels with abandon, considerable land ice could melt and the ocean could rise as much as three feet by the year 2100. We have some outlier science that says the problem could be quite a bit worse than that, with a maximum rise exceeding five feet.

The drafters of the report went with the lower numbers, choosing to treat the outlier science as not very credible.

In the second case, we have mainstream science that says if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles, which is well on its way to happening, the long-term rise in the temperature of the earth will be at least 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, but more likely above 5 degrees. We have outlier science that says the rise could come in well below 3 degrees.

In this case, the drafters of the report lowered the bottom end in a range of temperatures for how much the earth could warm, treating the outlier science as credible.

Climate change skeptics often disparage these periodic reports from the United Nations, claiming that the panel writing them routinely stretches the boundaries of scientific evidence to make the problem look as dire as possible. So it is interesting to see that in these two important cases, the panel seems to be bending over backward to be scientifically conservative.

Is it right to throw out bleeding-edge science in the one case while keeping it in the other? That is hard to judge for anybody who is not a working climate scientist. After all, we pay them for their expertise, just as we pay doctors to advise us if we are diagnosed with cancer. And we are talking about two distinct issues here, each with its own specialized body of research.

The group making these decisions is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a worldwide committee of several hundred scientists knowledgeable in the complex field of climatology. It won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, along with Al Gore, for helping to alert the public to the risks that are being run with the unchecked combustion of fossil fuels.

The group’s decisions will not be final until the official report is released on Sept. 27. We know about them only because a secret draft was leaked ahead of the final editing session coming up in Stockholm. Scientists from a few countries have raised objections to the preliminary decisions on sea level and temperature, and they could well change in the final report.

Perhaps they should; there are climate scientists not serving on the committee this year who think so. Their fear is that the intergovernmental panel might be pulling punches.

It turns out that the Nobel Prize, welcome as it might have been back in 2007, served the same function it has for many other scientists who have won it over the years: it painted a fat target on the committee’s back. The group has been subjected to attack in recent years by climate skeptics. The intimidation tactics have included abusive language on blogs, comparisons to the Unabomber, e-mail hacking and even occasional death threats.

Who could blame the panel if it wound up erring on the side of scientific conservatism? Yet most citizens surely want something else from the group: an unvarnished analysis of the risks they face.

To be clear, even if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ends up sticking with the lowball numbers in these two instances, they are worrisome enough. As best scientists can tell, the question with sea level is not whether it is going to get to three feet and then five feet of increase, but merely whether it will happen in this century or the next.

Likewise, with temperature, the panel is saying only that the lowball numbers are possible, not that they are likely. In fact, the metric used in the scientific literature, the temperature effect of doubled carbon dioxide, is merely a convenient way of comparing studies. Many people make the mistake of thinking that is how much of a global temperature increase will actually occur. More

 

Climate change mainstreaming guide now available - SPREP

The Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project has launched a comprehensive practical guide to mainstreaming climate change adaptation in the Pacific. A key output of the project, the guide represents a significant step forward in incorporating climate risks into development planning and practice in the region.

"Climate change actually threatens all aspects of development," says PACC Project Manager, Taito Nakalevu. "That's why we need to take it into account for all policy development, as well as projects on the ground. This mainstreaming guide shows people how to do that."

The guide follows standard project and policy cycles and shows how climate change risks can be incorporated at each step in the process. For example, when analysing a situation ahead of designing a project, climate projections can be included to understand how the future climate might impact the project. Vulnerability assessments can be carried out in light of possible changes in climate, and activities can be oriented towards reducing these vulnerabilities.

The guide includes case studies from the region, many of them drawn from the PACC project itself. PACC has pilot projects in 14 Pacific island countries, demonstrating best practice in three key climate-sensitive areas: food production and food security, coastal zone management, and water resources management.

"The aim is to have climate risks included as a matter of course in all decision making at all levels," explains Taito. "The PACC Project is addressing this from the bottom up, through the demonstration projects, and also from the top down through efforts to mainstream at the highest policy levels. It's a new approach, and we are pleased with the results so far."

The mainstreaming guide is aimed at country practitioners, regional governments and organisations, and development partners. The PACC team hopes to collect experiences and lessons learned over the next few years and use these to review and revise the guide over time.

The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) is the implementing partner of the PACC project, which is funded by the Global Environment Facility and the Australian Government, with the United Nations Development Programme as the implementing agency. More

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Sir John Beddington warns of major global crisis by 2030

One of Britain's leading scientists is warning that the growth of the world's population will reach crisis point by the year 2030.

John Beddington, the UK government's chief scientific adviser, says food and water supplies will come under severe pressure as the Earth's population swells to 8.5 billion people.

 

He says the answer is in embracing new agricultural technology.

 

Harry Smith reports.