Climate Links: December 2018

You Are Stealing Our Future: Greta Thunberg, 15, Condemns the World’s Inaction on Climate Change. Democracy Now!
Dec. 13. 2018.

My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 15 years old, and I’m from Sweden. I speak on behalf of Climate Justice Now! 

Many people say that Sweden is just a small country, and it doesn’t matter what we do. But I’ve learned that you are never too small to make a difference. And if a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school, then imagine what we could all do together if we really wanted to. 

But to do that, we have to speak clearly, no matter how uncomfortable that may be. You only speak of green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children. 

But I don’t care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the living planet. 

Our civilization is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money. Our biosphere is being sacrificed so that rich people in countries like mine can live in luxury. It is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of the few. 

The year 2078, I will celebrate my 75th birthday. If I have children, maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask me about you. Maybe they will ask why you didn’t do anything while there still was time to act. You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes. 

Until you start focusing on what needs to be done, rather than what is politically possible, there is no hope. We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. We need to keep the fossil fuels in the ground, and we need to focus on equity. And if solutions within the system are so impossible to find, then maybe we should change the system itself. 

We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in the past, and you will ignore us again. We have run out of excuses, and we are running out of time. We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people. Thank you.

“Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago” says Greta Thunberg at UN conference. Anne-Sophie Garrigou, The Beam. Dec. 4, 2018.

Some people say that I should be in school instead. Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ”solve the climate crisis”. But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. 

And why should I be studying for a future that soon may be no more, when no one is doing anything to save that future? And what is the point of learning facts when the most important facts clearly mean nothing to our society? 

Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every single day. There are no politics to change that. There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground.

So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed. 

So we have not come here to beg the world leaders to care for our future. They have ignored us in the past and they will ignore us again. 

We have come here to let them know that change is coming whether they like it or not. 

The people will rise to the challenge. And since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago.

Our house is on fire, and many Albertans want more lighters. CALGARY HERALD. Dec. 29, 2018

'Brutal news': global carbon emissions jump to all-time high in 2018. Damian Carrington, Guardian. Dec. 5, 2018.

Rapid cuts needed to protect billions of people from rising emissions due to increase in use of cars and coal 

Global carbon emissions will jump to a record high in 2018, according to a report, dashing hopes a plateau of recent years would be maintained. It means emissions are heading in the opposite direction to the deep cuts urgently needed, say scientists, to fight climate change.

Global Carbon Budget. Dec. 5, 2018.

Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry have increased every decade from an average of 3.1±0.2 GtC yr-1 (11.4 GtCO2) in the 1960s to an average of 9.4±0.5 yr-1 during 2008-2017 (34.4 GtCO2). Emissions in 2017 were 9.9±0.5 (36.2 GtCO2) with a share of coal (40%), oil (35%), gas (20%), cement (4%), and flaring (1%). Global emissions in 2018 are projected to increase by more than 2% (+1.8% to +3.7%) after three years of almost no growth, reaching 10.1±0.5 GtC (37.1 GtCO2), a new record high.

Global warming will happen faster than we think. Yangyang Xu, Veerabhadran Ramanathan and David G. Victor, Nature. Dec. 5, 2018.

But the latest IPCC special report underplays another alarming fact: global warming is accelerating. Three trends — rising emissions, declining air pollution and natural climate cycles — will combine over the next 20 years to make climate change faster and more furious than anticipated. In our view, there’s a good chance that we could breach the 1.5 °C level by 2030, not by 2040 as projected in the special report.

The climate-modelling community has not grappled enough with the rapid changes that policymakers care most about, preferring to focus on longer-term trends and equilibria.

... 

Three lines of evidence suggest that global warming will be faster than projected in the recent IPCC special report.

First, greenhouse-gas emissions are still rising. In 2017, industrial carbon dioxide emissions are estimated to have reached about 37 gigatonnes2. This puts them on track with the highest emissions trajectory the IPCC has modelled so far. This dark news means that the next 25 years are poised to warm at a rate of 0.25–0.32 °C per decade3. That is faster than the 0.2 °C per decade that we have experienced since the 2000s, and which the IPCC used in its special report.

Second, governments are cleaning up air pollution faster than the IPCC and most climate modellers have assumed. For example, China reduced sulfur dioxide emissions from its power plants by 7–14% between 2014 and 2016 (ref. 4). Mainstream climate models had expected them to rise. Lower pollution is better for crops and public health5. But aerosols, including sulfates, nitrates and organic compounds, reflect sunlight. This shield of aerosols has kept the planet cooler, possibly by as much as 0.7 °C globally6.

Third, there are signs that the planet might be entering a natural warm phase that could last for a couple of decades. The Pacific Ocean seems to be warming up, in accord with a slow climate cycle known as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation7. This cycle modulates temperatures over the equatorial Pacific and over North America. Similarly, the mixing of deep and surface waters in the Atlantic Ocean (the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) looks to have weakened since 2004, on the basis of data from drifting floats that probe the deep ocean8. Without this mixing, more heat will stay in the atmosphere rather than going into the deep oceans, as it has in the past.

These three forces reinforce each other. We estimate that rising greenhouse-gas emissions, along with declines in air pollution, bring forward the estimated date of 1.5 °C of warming

It's too late to brace for impact. Tom Lewis. Dec. 10, 2019.


Cascading regime shifts within and across scales. Juan C. Rocha, Garry Peterson, Örjan Bodin et al, Science. Dec. 21, 2018.

Abstract
Regime shifts are large, abrupt, and persistent critical transitions in the function and structure of ecosystems. Yet, it is unknown how these transitions will interact, whether the occurrence of one will increase the likelihood of another or simply correlate at distant places. We explored two types of cascading effects: Domino effects create one-way dependencies, whereas hidden feedbacks produce two-way interactions. We compare them with the control case of driver sharing, which can induce correlations. Using 30 regime shifts described as networks, we show that 45% of regime shift pairwise combinations present at least one plausible structural interdependence. The likelihood of cascading effects depends on cross-scale interactions but differs for each type. Management of regime shifts should account for potential connections.

Risks of 'domino effect' of tipping points greater than thought, study says. Jonathan Watts, Guardian. Dec. 20, 2018.

Scientists warn policymakers not to ignore links, and stress that ‘every action counts’


Policymakers have severely underestimated the risks of ecological tipping points, according to a study that shows 45% of all potential environmental collapses are interrelated and could amplify one another.

The authors said their paper, published in the journal Science, highlights how overstressed and overlapping natural systems are combining to throw up a growing number of unwelcome surprises.

“The risks are greater than assumed because the interactions are more dynamic,” said Juan Rocha of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. “The important message is to recognise the wickedness of the problem that humanity faces.”

Most Oil Sector Emissions Will Be Exempt From Federal Carbon Pricing: Report. HuffPo.ca. Dec. 10, 2018.

The report said Canada's climate framework does not include policies that adequately address oil and gas industry emissions. Therefore, any emission reductions in the plan are expected to be overwhelmed by emissions from oil and gas production increases. 

Documents obtained under freedom of information requests in Saskatchewan show oil companies advocated for delayed, weakened, and in some cases voluntary methane regulations. 

It also found that thanks to lobbying, oil and gas companies will have an average of 80 per cent of its emissions exempt from federal carbon pricing. 

The report said between now and 2030, oil sands emissions are projected to grow to become 40 per cent of Canada's total emissions.

...

Environmental Defence national program manager Dale Marshall says it is incredibly frustrating that federal and provincial governments keep throwing themselves at the industry with huge subsidies and now a $4.5-billion pipeline purchase, and yet the industry continues to claim it doesn't get any federal support.

Energy Revolution: A Global Outlook. Dr Iain Staffell, Dr Malte Jansen, Imperial College London; and Adam Chase, Eloise Cotton, Chester Lewis, E4tech. Dec. 5, 2018.

The global energy revolution 

As a contribution to COP24, this report informs the debate on decarbonising the global energy system, evaluating how rapidly nations are transforming their energy systems, and what lessons can be learned from the leading countries across five energy sectors. 

It was commissioned by power utility Drax Group, and delivered independently by researchers from Imperial College London and E4tech. 

Clean power 

• Several countries have lowered the carbon content of their electricity by 100 g/kWh over the last decade. The UK is alone in achieving more than double this pace, prompted by strong carbon pricing. 
• China is cleaning up its power sector faster than most of Europe, however several Asian countries are moving towards higher-carbon electricity.
• Germany has added nearly 1 kW of renewable capacity per person over the last decade. Northern Europe leads the way, followed by Japan, the US and China. In absolute terms, China has 2.5 times more renewable capacity than the US. 

Fossil fuels 

• Two-fifths of the world’s electricity comes from coal. The share of coal generation is a key driver for the best and worst performing countries in clean power.
• Coal’s share of electricity generation has fallen by one-fifth in the US and one-sixth in China over the last decade. Denmark and the UK are leading the way. Some major Asian nations are back-sliding.
• Many European citizens pay out $100 per person per year in fossil fuel subsidies, substantially more than in the US or China. These subsidies are growing in more countries than they are falling. 

Electric vehicles 

• In ten countries, more than 1 in 50 new vehicles sold are now electric. China is pushing ahead with nearly 1 in 25 new vehicles being electric and Norway is in a league of its own with 1 in 2 new vehicles now electric, thanks to strong subsidies and wealthy consumers.
• There are now over 4.5 million electric vehicles worldwide. Two thirds of these are battery electric, one third are plug-in hybrids. China and the US together have two-thirds of the world’s electric vehicles and half of the 300,000 charging points. 

Carbon capture and storage 

• Sufficient storage capacity has been identified for global CCS roll-out to meet climate targets, but large-scale CO2 capture only exists in 6 countries.
• Worldwide, 5 kg of CO2 can be captured per person per year. The planned pipeline of CCS facilities will double this, but much greater scale-up is needed as this represents only one-thousandth of the global average person’s carbon footprint of 5 tonnes per year. 

Efficiency 

• Global progress on energy intensity is mixed, as some countries improve efficiency, while others increase consumption as their population become wealthier.
• Residential and transport changes over the last decade are mostly linked to the global recession and technological improvements, rather than behavioural shift.
• BRICS countries consume the most energy per $ of output from industry. This is linked to the composition of their industry sectors (i.e. greater manufacturing and mining activity compared to construction and agriculture).

Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogs for near-future climates. K. D. Burke, et al, PNAS. Dec. 10, 2018.

Significance 

The expected departure of future climates from those experienced in human history challenges efforts to adapt. Possible analogs to climates from deep in Earth’s geological past have been suggested but not formally assessed. We compare climates of the coming decades with climates drawn from six geological and historical periods spanning the past 50 My. Our study suggests that climates like those of the Pliocene will prevail as soon as 2030 CE and persist under climate stabilization scenarios. Unmitigated scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions produce climates like those of the Eocene, which suggests that we are effectively rewinding the climate clock by approximately 50 My, reversing a multimillion year cooling trend in less than two centuries. 

Abstract 

As the world warms due to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, the Earth system moves toward climate states without societal precedent, challenging adaptation. Past Earth system states offer possible model systems for the warming world of the coming decades. These include the climate states of the Early Eocene (ca. 50 Ma), the Mid-Pliocene (3.3–3.0 Ma), the Last Interglacial (129–116 ka), the Mid-Holocene (6 ka), preindustrial (ca. 1850 CE), and the 20th century. Here, we quantitatively assess the similarity of future projected climate states to these six geohistorical benchmarks using simulations from the Hadley Centre Coupled Model Version 3 (HadCM3), the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Model E2-R (GISS), and the Community Climate System Model, Versions 3 and 4 (CCSM) Earth system models. Under the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) emission scenario, by 2030 CE, future climates most closely resemble Mid-Pliocene climates, and by 2150 CE, they most closely resemble Eocene climates. Under RCP4.5, climate stabilizes at Pliocene-like conditions by 2040 CE. Pliocene-like and Eocene-like climates emerge first in continental interiors and then expand outward. Geologically novel climates are uncommon in RCP4.5 (<1%) but reach 8.7% of the globe under RCP8.5, characterized by high temperatures and precipitation. Hence, RCP4.5 is roughly equivalent to stabilizing at Pliocene-like climates, while unmitigated emission trajectories, such as RCP8.5, are similar to reversing millions of years of long-term cooling on the scale of a few human generations. Both the emergence of geologically novel climates and the rapid reversion to Eocene-like climates may be outside the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity.

Welcome to the Eocene, where ice sheets turn into swamps. Eric Holthaus, Grist. Dec. 11, 2018.

The private sector’s climate change risk and adaptation blind spots. Allie Goldstein, Will R. Turner, Jillian Gladstone & David G. Hole,  Nature Climate Change. Dec. 10, 2018.

Abstract

The private sector is already experiencing the impacts of climate change, from increased operational costs to disrupted production. Investors are increasingly asking companies to disclose these risks as the physical consequences of climate change become financially material. In reviewing more than 1,600 corporate adaptation strategies, we find significant blind spots in companies’ assessments of climate change impacts and in their development of strategies for managing them. Adaptation approaches that consider broader climate change risks to supply chains, customers and employees, and that integrate ecosystem-based strategies, could limit the ‘tragedy of the horizon’ characterized by inadequate and too-late action.

Beef-eating 'must fall drastically' as world population grows. Damian Carrington, Guardian. Dec. 5, 2018.

Current food habits will lead to destruction of all forests and catastrophic climate change by 2050, report finds

Creating a Sustainable Food Future. World Resources Institute.

By 2050, nearly 10 billion people will live on the planet. Can we produce enough food sustainably? 

The synthesis report of the World Resources Report: Creating a Sustainable Food Future shows that it is possible – but there is no silver bullet. This report offers a five-course menu of solutions to ensure we can feed everyone without increasing emissions, fueling deforestation or exacerbating poverty. Intensive research and modeling examining the nexus of the food system, economic development, and the environment show why each of the 22 items on the menu is important and quantifies how far each solution can get us. 

Creating a Sustainable Food Future has been produced by World Resources Institute in partnership with the World Bank, UN Environment, UN Development Programme, and the French agricultural research agencies CIRAD and INRA.

You, too, are in denial of climate change. David Wallace-Wells. intelligencer, nymag. Dec. 14, 2018.

You, too, are in denial.

We all are, nearly every single one of us as individuals, even those of us who are following the bad news that suggests “the climate change problem is starting to look too big to solve”; every nation, almost none of them meeting their climate commitments, and most (not just the United States) publicly downplaying the threat; and even many of the alliances and organizations, like the IPCC, endeavoring to solve the crisis. At the moment, negotiations at the organization’s COP24 conference, meant to formalize the commitments made in the Paris accords two years ago, are “a huge mess,” perhaps poised to collapse. Last month, scientists warned that we had only about 12 years to cut global emissions in half and that doing so would require a worldwide mobilization on the scale of that for World War II. The U.N. secretary general has warned that we have only about a year to get started. Instead, on Election Day, voters in deep-blue Washington rejected a modest carbon tax and those in crunchy Colorado rejected a slowdown of oil and gas projects. In France — conservative America’s cartoon of unchecked left-wing-ism — the worst protests in 50 years were provoked by a proposal to increase the gasoline tax. If communities like these won’t take action on climate, who, in the next dozen years, will?

Winter Solstice 2018. George Mobus, Question Everything. Dec. 21, 2018.

What I had thought to do was to remind everyone why our societies, western and eastern, northern and southern alike are failing in providing a meaningful life for all humans without destroying the ecosystem. We are in a no-win scenario. Most people on the planet are either already in poverty or many are headed in that direction with the pace accelerating.  

There are too many of us. Our access to free energy is being strangled. The pollution from our prior use of energy is converting our climate into a nightmare. Water is becoming a serious issue in many places. Climate-forced conflict and migration has become plainly visible. And on and on. 

Over the last three decades I developed a true systems analysis process (which I will publish in my next book) and applied it to the human social system and its subsystems. And I applied it to humanity itself. What I have found is a species embedded in a cultural cocoon that has broken free of the normal bounds for living systems in ecosystems. 

But also, a species that has just recently undergone a transition to what I think is the next stage of evolution - from the great apes to a sapient (or perhaps pre-sapient) but clever one capable of creating and developing more powerful ways to extract material goods from the environment. We are an evolutionary experiment that could go either way. 

One thing I am sure of. The socioeconomic system we currently have is completely unsustainable. But there will have to be some further development in the human brain in order for a species of humans to regroup and have any kind of society at all. 

Meanwhile I have a book recommendation. Tyler Volk's "Quarks to Culture: How We Came to Be" is one of the best systems books I have ever read.

Winter Solstice. Sabine Hossenfelder, Back Reaction.

The clock says 3:30 am. Is that early or late? Wrapped in a blanket I go into the living room. I open the door and step onto the patio. It’s too warm for December. An almost full moon blurs into the clouds. In the distance, the highway hums. 

Somewhere, someone dies. 

For everyone who dies, two people are born. 7.5 billion and counting. 

We came to dominate planet Earth because, compared to other animals, we learned fast and collaborated well. We used resources efficiently. We developed tools to use more resources, and then employed those tools to use even more resources. But no longer. It’s 2018, and we are failing. 

That’s what I think every day when I read the news. We are failing. 

Throughout history, humans improved how to exchange and act on information held by only a few. Speech, writing, politics, economics, social and cultural norms, TV, telephones, the internet. These are all methods of communication. It’s what enabled us to collectively learn and make continuous progress. But now that we have networks connecting billions of people, we have reached our limits. 

Fake news, Russian trolls, shame storms. Some dude’s dick in the wrong place. That’s what we talk about.

And buried below the viral videos and memes there’s the information that was not where it was supposed to be. 

Hurricane Katrina? The problem was known. The 2008 financial crisis? The problem was known. That Icelandic volcano whose ashes, in 2010, grounded flight traffic? Utterly unsurprising. Iceland has active volcanoes. Sometimes the wind blows South-East. Btw, it will happen again. And California is due for a tsunami. The problems are known.  

But that’s not how it will end. 

20 years ago I had a car accident. I was on a busy freeway. It was raining heavily and the driver in front of me suddenly braked. Only later did I learn someone had cut his way. I hit the brakes. And then I watched a pair of red lights coming closer.  

They say time slows if you fear for your life. It does. 

I came to a stop one inch before slamming into the other car. I breathed out. Then a heavy BMW slammed into my back.  

Human civilization will go like that. If we don’t keep moving, problems now behind us will slam into our back. 

Climate change, environmental pollution, antibiotic resistance, the persistent risk of nuclear war, for just to mention a few – you know the list. We will have to deal with those sooner or later. Not now. Oh, no. Not us, not now, not here. But our children. Or their children. If we stop learning, if we stop improving our technologies, it’ll catch up with them, sooner or later.  

Having to deal with long-postponed problems will eat up resources. Those resources, then, will not be available for further technological development, which will create further problems, which will eat up more resources. 

Modern technologies will become increasingly expensive until most people no longer can afford them. 

Infrastructures will crumble. Education will decay. It’s a downward spiral. A long, unpreventable and disease-ridden, regress.  

Those artificial intelligences you were banking on? Not going to happen. All the money in the world will not lead to scientific breakthroughs if we don’t have sufficiently many people with the sufficient education. 

Who is to blame? No one, really. We are just too stupid to organize our living together on a global scale. We will not make it to the next level of evolutionary development. We don’t have the mental faculties. We do not comprehend. We do not act because we cannot. We don’t know how. We will fail and, maybe, in a million years or so, another species will try again.

Are we there yet?