7 August 2017, New York Times, Scientists Fear Trump Will Dismiss Blunt Climate Report. The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years, according to a sweeping federal climate change report awaiting approval by the Trump administration. The draft report by scientists from 13 federal agencies concludes that Americans are feeling the effects of climate change right now. It directly contradicts claims by President Trump and members of his cabinet who say that the human contribution to climate change is uncertain, and that the ability to predict the effects is limited. “Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” a draft of the report states. It was uploaded to a nonprofit internet digital library in January but received little attention until it was published by The New York Times. The authors note that thousands of studies, conducted by tens of thousands of scientists, have documented climate changes on land and in the air. “Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change,” they wrote. Read More here
Monthly Archives: August 2017
4 August 2017, Inside Climate News, Keystone XL: Low Oil Prices, Tar Sands Pullout Could Kill Pipeline Plan. It will be close to three years, at least, before oil could possibly be moving through the controversial Keystone XL pipeline—if the pipeline is completed at all. Company officials now concede that after battling protests and regulatory hurdles for nearly a decade, market forces could scuttle the project. Canadian pipeline giant TransCanada first proposed the 1,700-mile project in 2008 to ship tar sands oil from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. The half-built project was halted by President Obama in 2015 only to be revived through an executive order signed by President Trump soon after he took office. The company has spent $3 billion on the project, mostly for pipe but also for land rights and other costs of lobbying for its proposal. During the prolonged dispute, the price of oil fell from more than $130 a barrel to roughly $45 a barrel today, undercutting the prospects for production growth in the Canadian tar sands, which were used to justify the Keystone XL project at its outset. Along with changing market conditions, the emergence of competing pipelines scattered TransCanada’s customer base. Now it’s uncertain whether the company can sign enough new commitments from Alberta’s beleaguered oil patch to move forward. Read More here
4 August 2017, The Conversation, Another attack on the Bureau, but top politicians have stopped listening to climate change denial. Has the Australian climate change debate changed? You could be forgiven for thinking the answer is no. Just this week The Australian has run a series of articles attacking the Bureau of Meteorology’s weather observations. Meanwhile, the federal and Queensland governments continue to promote Adani’s planned coal mine, despite considerable environmental and economic obstacles. And Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions are rising again. So far, so familiar. But something has changed. Those at the top of Australian politics are no longer debating the existence of climate change and its causes. Instead, four years after the Coalition was first elected, the big political issues are rising power prices and the electricity market. What’s happening? Read More here
4 August 2017, The Conversation, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions soar in latest figures. Figures reveal trend of increasing emissions since the carbon tax was repealed in 2014 and cast doubt on whether Australia can meet cuts in Paris agreement. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising to the highest figures seen in years, according to official government figures, increasing 1.6% in the last quarter and 1% in the past year. The country’s emissions in the year to March 2017 are the highest on record at 550.3m tonnes of CO2 equivalent when emissions from land use change are excluded – a sector where the government says its figures have a high degree of uncertainty. The country’s emissions rose by 1.6m tonnes in the quarter to March 2017, or by 1.1% – a figure that is the same whether estimations of land use emissions are taken into account or not. After adjusting for seasonal effects, the department of environment and energy says the rise amounts to a 1.6% rise in the quarter. The rise is particularly striking given emissions almost always drop in the March quarter. The only other March rise was more than a decade ago and by 0.4m tonnes. The figures reveal a clear trend of increasing greenhouse gas emissions since the carbon tax was repealed in 2014 – a trend that runs counter to Australia’s international commitments. Superimposed on promised cuts to emissions made after the Paris climate agreement, Australia appears to be moving further away from being able to meet them – a trend that was predicted by the government’s own projections earlier in the year, which found emissions would continue to rise for decades to come. Read More here