6 November 2015, Renew Economy, Big step finally taken towards making your fridge and air-con climate friendly. It’s hard to imagine the rhetoric soaring to greater heights. “A great signal for Paris”,”a much needed shot in the arm for climate action”, “provide an example of successful international cooperation”, “provide critical momentum for the climate negotiations”, “a strong signal to the UNFCCC to adopt a robust agreement at COP 21”, “boosting global cooperation ahead of Paris to benefit the planet”… Expectations were almost palpable. “A singular opportunity for countries to take action on climate”,”would set the stage for an ambitious and durable global climate agreement”, “lay the foundation for a global agreement in Paris that will protect generations to come”, “demonstrate that governments around the world have the political will to take bold action to avert a climate catastrophe”, “potentially catalyse far-reaching action at Paris”… Stirring stuff indeed, but who’d have guessed what all the fuss was about? You’d be forgiven for missing the muted clamour anticipating a long overdue agreement on the need to respond to the science calling for international action on the world’s most powerful and rapidly growing greenhouse gases. In a much anticipated gathering of the global community of nations in Dubai over the past week, intense negotiations have been taking place. The ultimate goal of the talks, which began in 2008, is to amend the Montreal Protocol to formally address the need to address the alarmingly rapid rise of the hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, highly potent greenhouse gases used across the refrigeration and air conditioning industries. A recent NASA study reported to the meeting also confirmed that contrary to previous understanding HFCs do have a small yet significant effect on ozone depletion, a point poignantly underscored by the appearance of the third largest Ozone hole this year. Read More here
Category Archives: Impacts Observed & Projected
5 November 2015, Washington Post, A controversial NASA study says Antarctica is gaining ice. Here’s why you should be skeptical. Late last week, a study published by NASA scientists in the Journal of Glaciology made the surprising claim that the gigantic continent of Antarctica is actually gaining ice, rather than losing it, to the tune of 82 gigatons (or billion metric tons) per year from 2003 to 2008. The study has drawn massive amounts of media attention — and no wonder. It contradicts numerous prior scientific claims, including a 2012 study in Science by a small army of polar scientists, a study from earlier this year in Earth and Planetary Science Letters (which found 92 gigatons of net losses per year) and this 2014 study in Geophysical Research Letters (160 gigatons of net losses per year). It also contradicts assertions by the leading consensus body of climate science, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which stated in 2013 that Antarctica is “losing mass” and that this process is accelerating. That statement was itself based on multiple studies showing Antarctic ice loss. Not only does the new research fly in the face of all of this — if true, it also raises serious questions about our current understanding of sea level rise. If Antarctica is actually gaining ice, that means that a significant percentage of the current rise of the seas, estimated at roughly 3.22 millimeters per year by NASA itself, must be coming from elsewhere. (It takes 360 gigatons of ice to raise seas by 1 millimeter). No wonder, then, that a number of researchers have been quoted expressing skepticism about the new research, even as climate change doubters have had a field day — adding the study to an argumentative arsenal that previously included misleading claims about growing Antarctic sea ice. Read More here
4 November 2015, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Tipping points: A new landscape of global crises. Recent crises are increasingly global and follow new kinds of patterns in the past crises were often local and isolated. They left surrounding ecosystems and societies largely unaffected. This made aid and governance work easier.Today, crises are becoming more global in reach affecting more people and systems at the same time. In a recent study lead by Thomas Homer-Dixon and Brian Walker published in Ecology and Society with Centre researchers Oonsie Biggs, Anne-Sophie Crépin, Carl Folke, Garry Peterson, Johan Rockström, Will Steffen and Max Troell a framework to identify the causes, processes and outcomes of multiple interconnected crises which they term “synchronous failure” is proposed. A guide for understanding globally interconnected crises The framework shows how several stressors together can cause a crisis which can rapidly spread to become global in reach. “We have developed a framework for understanding how global crises may emerge,” says Biggs. “Our framework could be used as an initial guide for systematic analyses and identifying early-warning signals and measures for building social-ecological resilience. It can also support establishment of appropriate governance structures that can navigate the danger of synchronous failure,” she says. Causes of crises The authors argue that future crises will increasingly result from three long-term global trends: the dramatic increase in human economic activity in relation to Earth’s environment, the rapidly increasing connections across the globe, and the decreasing diversity of human cultures, institutions, practices and technologies. These three trends create several stresses and reduce the capacity of systems to deal with disturbances. Case studies from the 2008 financial-energy and food-energy crises illustrate this. In the food-energy crises four stresses seemed to have affected the systems simultaneously, sometimes enhancing the impacts on one another:
1. diminishing supply of new agricultural land of good quality
2. declining returns on intensifying agriculture through more extensive inputs
3. climate change related extreme weather such as droughts
4. consistent high demand for food in a world with a growing population. Read More here
3 November 2015, The Conversation, As drought looms, the Murray-Darling is in much healthier shape – just don’t get complacent. Melbourne Cup Day is a significant day in the history of water policy in Australia. The first Tuesday in November 2006 saw the then Prime Minister John Howard intervene decisively in the growing drought crisis in the southern Murray-Darling Basin (MDB). Nine years on, the spectre of drought is back. The Murray Darling Basin Authority’s weekly reports show inflows into the River Murray (which can be seen as a proxy for the southern MDB) during the year to end September 2015 were the among the lowest on record. And the Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate and Water Briefing last week suggests a warm and dry summer in prospect in the southern MDB, amid a still strengthening El Niño. Yet there are reasons to believe that these past nine years of stronger Commonwealth involvement have left the MDB much better placed to withstand an escalating drought. That said, there is no room for complacency, and continuing Commonwealth commitment is still needed if those hard-won gains are to be retained. Read More here