10 May, The Guardian, Headlines ‘exaggerated’ climate link to sinking of Pacific islands. Links between climate change and the sinking of five islands in the Pacific Ocean have been exaggerated, the author of a widely reported new study has said. The report, published on Friday, tracked the shapeshifting of 33 reef islands in the Solomon Islands between 1947 and 2014. It found that five had been washed away completely and six more had been severely eroded. The study blamed the loss on a combination of sea-level rise and high wave energy. Many media outlets, including the Guardian, jumped to the conclusion that the islands were lost to climate change. But this largely misinterprets the science, according to the study’s author, Dr Simon Albert. “All these headlines are certainly pushing things a bit towards the ‘climate change has made islands vanish’ angle. I would prefer slightly more moderate titles that focus on sea-level rise being the driver rather than simply ‘climate change’,” Albert told the Guardian. The major misunderstanding stems from the conflation of sea-level rise with climate change. As a scientifically robust and potentially destructive articulation of climate change, sea-level rise has become almost synonymous with the warming of the planet. However, as Albert’s paper points out, the ocean has been rising in the Solomon Islands at 7mm per year, more than double the global average. Since the 1990s, trade winds in the Pacific have been particularly intense. This has been driven partly by global warming and partly by climatic cycles – in particular the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. “These trade winds have basically pushed water up into western Pacific and have driven these exceptionally high rates of [sea-level rise] in the Solomons,” said Albert. “The trade winds are partly a natural cycle but also the recent intensification is related to atmospheric warming.” The proportion of the extra rise driven by climate change was not considered by Albert’s study. Read More here
Yearly Archives: 2016
10 May 2016, The Hill, Oil companies abandon Arctic drilling rights. Major oil companies have abandoned hundreds of leases for offshore drilling rights in the United States’s portion of the Arctic Ocean. Federal government documents obtained by environmental group Oceana show that ConocoPhillips Co., Italy’s Eni and Iona Energy, Inc., abandoned all their leases in the Chukchi Sea, to the north and west of Alaska. Royal Dutch Shell has abandoned numerous leases and said it plans to relinquish all but one. Oil companies have, in total, abandoned 2.2 million acres of Arctic drilling rights, Oceana said, and 80 percent of all area in the American Arctic leased in a 2008 sale has been or will be abandoned. For Shell and ConocoPhillips, the decisions came just before a May 1 deadline to pay millions of dollars to keep its leases active. Shell spokesman Curtis Smith confirmed Oceana’s account, saying the decision came “after extensive consideration and evaluation.” Shell spent about $2.5 billion over seven years in preparation to drill a single exploratory well last summer in the Chukchi following a disastrous attempt in 2012. It concluded after drilling that the exploration was not worth the costs of drilling in the remote area, so it decided to abandon Arctic drilling for the foreseeable future. Read More here
7 May 2016, The Conversation, Sea-level rise has claimed five whole islands in the Pacific: first scientific evidence. Sea-level rise, erosion and coastal flooding are some of the greatest challenges facing humanity from climate change. Recently at least five reef islands in the remote Solomon Islands have been lost completely to sea-level rise and coastal erosion, and a further six islands have been severely eroded. These islands lost to the sea range in size from one to five hectares. They supported dense tropical vegetation that was at least 300 years old. Nuatambu Island, home to 25 families, has lost more than half of its habitable area, with 11 houses washed into the sea since 2011. This is the first scientific evidence, published in Environmental Research Letters, that confirms the numerous anecdotal accounts from across the Pacific of the dramatic impacts of climate change on coastlines and people. A warning for the world Previous studies examining the risk of coastal inundation in the Pacific region have found that islands can actually keep pace with sea-level riseand sometimes even expand. However, these studies have been conducted in areas of the Pacific with rates of sea level rise of 3-5 mm per year – broadly in line with the global average of 3 mm per year. For the past 20 years, the Solomon Islands have been a hotspot for sea-level rise. Here the sea has risen at almost three times the global average, around 7-10 mm per year since 1993. This higher local rate is partly the result of natural climate variability. These higher rates are in line with what we can expect across much of the Pacific in the second half of this century as a result of human-induced sea-level rise. Many areas will experience long-term rates of sea-level rise similar to that already experienced in Solomon Islands in all but the very lowest-emission scenarios. Read More here
6 May 2016, The Guardian, Greg Hunt: no definite link between coal from Adani mine and climate change. The federal environment minister has argued in court that coal from Australia’s largest coalmine would have no “substantial” impact on climate change and as a result he did not need to consider whether it would affect the Great Barrier Reef. The Australian Conservation Foundation challenged Greg Hunt’s approval ofAdani’s Carmichael mine, alleging he failed to consider the impacts the burning of the coal from the mine would have on climate change and hence on the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists have found the current mass bleaching event affecting 93% of the reefwas made 175 times more likely by climate change and would become a biennial event within 20 years. After that point, the continued existence of the reef would be in doubt. In federal court documents obtained by Guardian Australia, Hunt denied he failed to consider the impacts of coal on the reef. In the outline of submissions filed on behalf of the minister, the Australian government solicitor explains that the minister did not think the burning of the coal “would be a substantial cause of climate change effects” and would have “no impact on matters of national environmental significance”. Read More here