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A new study finds strong agreement that flood risks in central and western Europe are rising due to global warming.
As humans continue to emit greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, the world continues to warm. We see that warming everywhere – in the atmosphere, in the oceans, with rising sea levels, and melting ice. But while we know conclusively that humans are causing the warming, an equally important question is, “so what?” Really, we want to know the consequences of warming so that we can make informed decisions about what to do about it. We really have only three choices: mitigate, adapt, or ignore and suffer the consequences.
A very new study was just published that helps answer this question of “so what?” The research was conducted by lead author Lorenzo Alfieri (European Commission – Joint Research Centre, Italy), Richard Betts (University of Exeter and Met Office, UK), and their colleagues.
1. Is it possible to identify trends that are consistent among the models to help Europe prepare for changes to flood risk?
2. Are there differences in the models and if so, why?
Our results give the clearest picture yet of climate change increasing the risk of flooding. We did two new sets of model calculations and compared them with a third set from previous work. With all three methods, the result is higher flood risk in Western and Central Europe under a warmer climate, even at just 1.5 degrees C global warming.
In support to Richard’s statements, the strength of our results comes from the variety of climate projections, methods and models included in this comparison work. The three studies we have considered cover a wide range of variability in projections of flood impacts, thanks to the use of 11 independent climate scenarios, 11 hydrological models, 3 inundation models and 2 impact models. Nevertheless, they all agree on a significant increase in flood risk in most European countries, at all global warming levels.
Continue reading...EPA administrator says ‘There are assumptions made that because the climate is warming that necessarily is a bad thing’
Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has suggested that global warming may be beneficial to humans, in his latest departure from mainstream climate science.
Pruitt, who has previously erred by denying that carbon dioxide is a key driver of climate change, has again caused consternation among scientists by suggesting that warming temperatures could benefit civilization.
Related: Scott Pruitt insincerely asked what's Earth's ideal temperature. Scientists answer | Dana Nuccitelli
Related: Climate change threatens half of US bases worldwide, Pentagon report finds
Continue reading...Slash CEO income, bring more women on board and go low carbon, Church Investors Group tells companies
The Church Investors Group has warned some of Britain’s biggest companies it intends to take a hard line over failings on executive pay, gender diversity and climate change in the forthcoming annual meeting season.
The group, which represents church organisations with combined investment assets of about £17bn, has told companies listed on the FTSE 350 index it will refuse to re-elect directors at firms failing to make sufficient progress in key areas.
Related: Gender equality at work is a matter of respect, not just money | Gaby Hinsliff
Continue reading...Beaches, wildlife, the Great Barrier Reef, unspoilt natural wilderness and national parks all considered threatened
Tourism is Australia’s most vulnerable and least prepared industry to deal with climate change despite the fact it is already feeling its effects, according to an advocacy group report.
The report by the Climate Council, based on 200 source documents and articles, says while tourism is growing at an extraordinary pace – an 8% jump in visitors last financial year – not enough is being done to prepare for damage to the country’s greatest drawcards.
Related: 'Everything is made into a political issue': rethinking Australia's environmental laws
Continue reading...Case brought by group from Hunter Valley town, which it says has been devastated by Peabody Energy’s Wilpinjong mine
In what is described as a landmark case, a New South Wales court will be asked to overturn a decision to extend the life of a coalmine on the grounds the state government failed to properly consider the impact on the climate.
The case is brought by a community group from the tiny Hunter Valley village of Wollar, which it says has been devastated by the development and gradual expansion of the Wilpinjong coalmine over the past decade.
Related: Labor pushes for federal investigation into Adani
Related: Peabody's Australian mines in jeopardy despite minister's advice, says lawyer
Continue reading...As Day Zero looms and the South African city gets set to run out of water, experts say lessons learned during Melbourne’s brush with a similar fate may help avert a global crisis
In December 2017, Seona Candy drove through the vineyards of the Franschhoek Valley near Cape Town towards the banks of the Sonderend river. In the late 1970s, the waterway was dammed to create the biggest reservoir in South Africa’s Western Cape. Behind the thick walls of the Theewaterskloof dam lay the capacity to hold 480 million cubic metres of water, nearly half of Cape Town’s water supply.
“When I got there, it was mostly dust,” Candy says.
Related: Cape Town faces Day Zero: what happens when the city turns off the taps?
Related: Climate change: 90% of rural Australians say their lives are already affected
Urban water scarcity is a problem produced by social institutions. It is an issue of transition
Related: Day Zero: how Cape Town is running out of water
Related: Let Cape Town revolutionise the way we think about water | Anne Van Loon
Continue reading...• Skiing industry in Scotland could be finished within 50 years• Cricket hit by increased rainfall while links suffer coastal erosion
The future of snowsports is under threat, according to a report into the impact of climate change on grassroots and elite sport.
Related: Cape Town faces Day Zero: what happens when the city turns off the taps?
Continue reading...Boss says his industry is changing but ‘the world is going to need oil and gas for decades’
BP has declared it is looking to acquire more green energy firms, as the British oil giant pledged to set carbon targets for its operations.
However, while the chief executive, Bob Dudley, said the industry was in a period of major change, he made clear that hydrocarbons would remain the core of BP’s business.
Continue reading...Move makes it the largest university fund in the UK to ditch all coal, oil and gas holdings, following a long student campaign
The University of Edinburgh is dumping all its fossil fuel investments, making it the largest UK university endowment fund to be completely free of all coal, oil and gas holdings.
The decision was announced on Monday and followed a long student campaign. More than 60 UK universities have now divested from fossil fuels, with the University of Sussex the latest to make the move.
Related: Security guard filmed appearing to assault student at Edinburgh University divestment protest
Continue reading...A new paper shows that climate myths consistently fail critical thinking tests
Climate myths are often contradictory – it’s not warming, though it’s warming because of the sun, and really it’s all just an ocean cycle – but they all seem to share one thing in common: logical fallacies and reasoning errors.
John Cook, Peter Ellerton, and David Kinkead have just published a paper in Environmental Research Letters in which they examined 42 common climate myths and found that every single one demonstrates fallacious reasoning. For example, the authors made a video breaking down the logical flaws in the myth ‘climate changed naturally in the past so current climate change is natural.’
We hope our work will act as a building block for developing educational and social media resources, which teach and encourage critical thinking through the examination of both misinformation and fallacious reasoning.
Our critical thinking process is a useful tool that scientists, educators, and communicators can employ to identify fallacies in misinformation, which they can use to create inoculating messages that neutralize the myths. This approach is practical, achievable and potentially impactful in both the short-term (e.g., in social media applications) and long-term (incorporating this kind of content into curriculum). Misinformation needs short, sharp, immediate inoculation. Our paper provides a blueprint into how to write these inoculations.
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