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In short, from a practical standpoint, as little additional warming as possible
In an interview with Reuters last week, Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said,
The climate is changing. That’s not the debate. The debate is how do we know what the ideal surface temperature is in 2100?
Pruitt of course is trying to have a strawman debate, distracting from the fact that not a certain temperature as such is better or worse, but that a change from what we are adapted to is a problem, especially a very rapid change - in either direction, cooling or warming, this causes big disruption.
We should not stray too far away from what we and the currently existing ecosystems have evolved for. That is the optimum, simply because it is what we’re highly adapted to, and any major change is going to be very painful.
There is no one perfect temperature for the earth, but there is for us humans, and that’s the temperature we’ve had over the last few thousands of years when we built our civilization, agriculture, economy, and infrastructure. Global average temperature over the last few millennia has fluctuated by a few tenths of degrees; today, it’s risen by nearly 1°C and counting.Why do we care? Because we are perfectly adapted to our current conditions. Two-thirds of the world’s largest cities are located within a metre of sea level. What happens when sea level rises a metre or more, as it’s likely to this century? We can’t pick up Shanghai or London or New York and move them. Most of our arable land is already carefully allocated and farmed.
What happens when we can no longer grow the crops we used to, as climate shifts and water becomes more scarce in many subtropical areas? We can’t just take over new land: someone else already owns it. What happens when our water resources diminish or even run out? We can’t take over someone else’s water rights without a war.We care about a changing climate because it exacerbates the risks we face today, and threatens the resources we depend on for our future.
There are some absolute temperature thresholds that are important when it comes to agriculture (particularly in tropics), coral bleaching, infectious disease, and heat stress (e.g. the tropics becoming essentially unlivable).
So while it’s difficult to say what the “ideal temperature” is, there clearly is a range of temperatures suitable for human civilization and there is a real danger that we’re pushing toward the upper limit of that range.
Of course, there is no ‘ideal’ temperature so we should not accept that framing. We have strong scientific evidence that anything above 2°C is likely to be deeply problematic. Even the roughly 1°C change we have already seen is having measurable, adverse effects.
Continue reading...Vague ambitions, such as banning new petrol cars by 2040, must be turned into solid plans, says the Committee on Climate Change
The UK will miss its legally binding carbon targets without urgent government action, official advisers have warned.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) said vague ambitions, such as banning new petrol and diesel cars by 2040, must be turned into solid plans and new policies, such as planting more trees, are needed.
Related: UK climate change masterplan – the grownups have finally won
Related: UK green energy investment halves after policy changes
Continue reading...Qantas used the two most fuel-intensive aircraft and carried the most empty seats of any transpacific airline
Qantas emits more carbon dioxide per passenger-kilometre than any other airline operating across the Pacific, according to an analysis by the International Council on Clean Transportation, the group that exposed the Volkswagen emissions scandal in 2014.
For each kilometre Qantas transports a passenger across the Pacific, it uses 64% more fuel than the two most fuel-efficient airlines operating across the Pacific: Hainan Airlines and All Nippon Airways (ANA).
Continue reading...We are destroying the world’s biodiversity. Yet debate has erupted over just what this means for the planet – and us.
Just over 250 million years ago, the planet suffered what may be described as its greatest holocaust: ninety-six percent of marine genera (plural of genus) and seventy percent of land vertebrate vanished for good. Even insects suffered a mass extinction – the only time before or since. Entire classes of animals – like trilobites – went out like a match in the wind.
But what’s arguably most fascinating about this event – known as the Permian-Triassic extinction or more poetically, the Great Dying – is the fact that anything survived at all. Life, it seems, is so ridiculously adaptable that not only did thousands of species make it through whatever killed off nearly everything (no one knows for certain though theories abound) but, somehow, after millions of years life even recovered and went on to write new tales.
Related: Frog goes extinct, media yawns
Related: Why don’t we grieve for extinct species?
Continue reading...Higher temperatures increase the number of people seeking asylum in the EU
The refugee crisis – particularly in the Mediterranean area – has received large amounts of new attention in the past few years, with people fleeing from Syria and entering the European Union emblematic of the problem. There has been some research connecting this refugee problem with changes to the climate. In particular, the years preceding the Syrian refugee crisis were characterized by a severe drought that reduced farm output and led to economic and social strife there.
Separating out the influences of climate change from general social instability may be impossible, because they are intimately linked. But we do know that climate change can cause social and economic instability. We also know that these instabilities can boil over into larger problems that lead to mass exodus. The problem isn’t knowing the connection between climate and refugees exists – rather the problem is quantifying it.
There is an emerging literature linking various sectoral outcomes in a country to weather shocks (conflict, agricultural yields, energy demand, mortality, labor productivity, labor supply, etc.). Using temperature shocks is ideal from a statistical perspective; our statistical model is not new, but well established.
The significance of our paper is that we are not looking at impacts in particular countries, but spillovers in the form of asylum applications. Most economic damage assessments examine the direct impact on a country, but countries are interlinked. So even if most of the economic damages occur in developing countries, there might be repercussions for developed countries.
There is an existing literature on migration and refugees, but previous studies usually focus on one country at the time. We use data from all over the world (103 source countries that list asylum applications to the EU in every year 2000–2014) to systematically examine the relationship. We picked the European Union as destination country since it receives almost half of the asylum applications.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Many of the country’s most famous ancient sites, from Holyrood Park to the Neolithic village of Skara Brae, need urgent protection, say experts
Dozens of Scotland’s most famous historic sites are at very high risk of being badly damaged by climate change and need urgent protection, an expert survey has found.
Historic Environment Scotland (HES), the agency which oversees nearly 340 of the country’s most important castles, abbeys, Neolithic sites and ruins, has for the first time issued red warnings for nearly a fifth of its sites and put amber, high risk warnings against another 70%.
Continue reading...The planned investment is significantly higher than the previously announced target of $4.5bn by 2020
Ford Motor Co will significantly increase its planned investments in electric vehicles to $11bn by 2022 and have 40 hybrid and fully electric vehicles in its model line-up, the company’s chairman, Bill Ford, said on Sunday at the Detroit auto show.
The investment figure is sharply higher than a previously announced target of $4.5bn by 2020, Ford executives said, and includes the costs of developing dedicated electric vehicle architectures.
Related: Detroit's auto giants take fight to big tech as largest US car show kicks into gear
Related: How green are electric cars?
Continue reading...Vast 1.8m sq km fishing-free zone would protect species, such as penguins, leopard seals and whales, and help mitigate the effects of climate change
A global campaign is being launched to turn a huge tract of the seas around the Antarctic into the world’s biggest sanctuary, protecting wildlife and helping the fight against climate change.
The huge 1.8m sq km reserve – five times the size of Germany – would ban all fishing in a vast area of the Weddell Sea and around the Antarctic Peninsula, safeguarding species including penguins, killer whales, leopard seals and blue whales.
Related: Penguins starving to death is a sign that something’s very wrong in the Antarctic | John Sauven
Continue reading...Col McKenzie calls on government to stop funding work of Terry Hughes, saying tourists ‘won’t do long-haul trips when they think the reef is dead’
A Queensland tourism representative has called one of the Great Barrier Reef’s leading researchers “a dick”, blaming the professor for a downturn in tourism growth at the state’s greatest natural asset.
Col McKenzie, the head of the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators, a group that represents more than 100 businesses in the Great Barrier Reef, has written to the federal government asking it to stop funding the work of Professor Terry Hughes, claiming his comments were “misleading” and damaging the tourism industry.
Related: Coral reef bleaching 'the new normal' and a fatal threat to ecosystems
People won’t do long-haul trips when they think the reef is dead
Related: The Great Barrier Reef: a catastrophe laid bare
Related: Tourism award winner in Queensland rejects Adani-sponsored prize
Continue reading...Economists say city’s status as financial and cultural giant means move to sever ties with fossil fuel will catalyze others in US and around the world to follow
New York City’s decision to sever ties with its fossil fuel investments is set to prove a catalyst to other cities in the face of the Trump administration’s staunch support for coal, oil and gas interests, according to several leading economists.
On Wednesday, city officials announced that New York was to divest its pension funds of about $5bn in fossil fuel-linked money over the next five years. New York’s total pension fund for its teachers, firefighters and other city workers is worth about $189bn.
Related: New York City plans to divest $5bn from fossil fuels and sue oil companies
Divestment is the opposite of investment. It's the shifting of stocks, bonds or funds from certain businesses or sectors.
Related: $306bn in one year: US bill for natural disasters smashes record
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