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TODAY'S CLIMATE AND ENERGY HEADLINES

Briefing date 11.11.2019
Australia bushfires: State of emergency declared over ‘catastrophic’ threat

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News.

Australia bushfires: State of emergency declared over 'catastrophic' threat
BBC News Read Article

There is extensive global media coverage of the wildfires ripping through large areas of New South Wales and Queensland in Australia. BBC News says that both states have now declared a state of emergency following three days of dangerous weather conditions, which have caused at least three fatalities and destroyed hundreds of homes: “Officials say the worst danger will come on Tuesday for areas around Sydney, the nation’s largest city. More than 120 bushfires are burning across the two states…Australia’s conservative government has refused to be drawn on whether climate change could have contributed to the fires, in a response that has drawn criticism.” MailOnline reports how Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister, was heckled over the weekend when visiting a fire control centre in Wauchope. “Climate change is real, can’t you see,” the heckler said, before being escorted out of the building. The Guardian has published a Q&A on the links between the bushfires and climate change. It addresses the changing weather patterns in Australia: “The year coming into the 2019-20 summer has been unusually warm and dry for large parts of Australia. Above-average temperatures now occur most years and 2019 had the fifth-driest start to the year on record, and the driest since 1970. Australia recorded its hottest month in January 2019, its third-hottest July and its hottest October day in some areas, among other temperature records.” The Sydney Morning Herald says that “soaring temperatures, extremely low humidity and gusty winds are forecast for much of NSW on Tuesday before a powerful southerly buster roars up the coast by the evening”. It adds that the Bureau of Meteorology has issued fire weather warnings for most of the state, including “catastrophic” danger for the populated regions of the Greater Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra/Shoalhaven districts.

There is a wave of commentary reacting to Australia’s wildfires. In the Sydney Morning Herald, Greg Mullins, who is a former fire and rescue commissioner and a councillor on the Climate Council, writes: “I’m confident that our national government, when the smoke and dust settles, will finally see the obvious and understand the word ‘unprecedented’. I’m sure it will then start to take decisive action to tackle the base cause – greenhouse emissions – then use the high moral ground to lean on other countries to also do the right thing.” Also writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Ian Dunlop, a former chair of the Australian Coal Association, argues that “responsible politicians would not to fall into the trap of banning protest as the prime minister proposes, not dodge an opportunity to make the case for action, but face up to the abject failure of imagination and leadership which has characterised politics around this issue for decades, and commit to a genuine emergency response, akin to wartime”. He adds: “We are not going to sit as rabbits in the headlights to be run over by the climate leviathan at the behest of self-centred politics. Expect more protest, not less.” In Guardian Australia, its political editor Katharine Murphy criticises deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, for describing people linking the bushfires to climate change as “pure, enlightened and woke capital-city greenies”. She adds: “While the Coalition really wants climate change to be a story where an apocalyptic, sneering inner-city cabal is pitted against the sensible ones in just enough electorates to maintain Scott Morrison’s continued occupation of the prime ministership – the reality eclipses the graphic novel…Worrying about climate change, worrying about whether enough is being done, worrying enough to try and do something, is not a manifestation of lunacy. Lunacy is not worrying about it.”

Meanwhile, the Guardian carries the news that a new report has judged Australia’s response to climate change to be one of the worst in the G20 with a lack of policy, reliance on fossil fuels and rising emissions leaving the country exposed “economically, politically and environmentally”. The Guardian says of the “Brown to Green” report, now in its fifth year: “some 14 non-governmental groups, thinktanks and research institutes compile the report, funded by the World Bank, the US-based ClimateWorks Foundation and Germany’s environment ministry”. (The Independent covers the same report’s conclusion that the UK is also “fall[ing] well short of what is needed to help limit global warming to 1.5C”.)

Worried by climate change, EU moves to end fossil fuel funding
Reuters Read Article

EU finance ministers have urged the European Union to phase out its funding of oil, gas and coal projects in what Reuters describes as “a move that could mark a major shift in the bloc’s efforts to combat climate change”. It adds: “It is the first time EU finance ministers have backed a declaration urging an end to fossil fuels funding altogether, having called previously only for an end to funding for coal power plants. An outright phase-out could halt multi-billion-euro financing of fossil fuel projects by the European Investment Bank (EIB), the EU’s financial arm. Last year, the EIB funded nearly €2bn ($2.10bn) of fossil fuel projects. Since 2013, such funding has amounted to €13.4bn, EIB data show.” BBC News says that “some gas projects may be excused after Hungary suggested that Croatia and Ukraine might otherwise rely on Russia, Reuters reports, citing confidential documents…The finance minsters’ request will need to be agreed by the European Investment Bank board, which meets on 14 November.”

Meanwhile, Poland’s newly elected government has announced its new cabinet line-up, which, according to Reuters, sees the break-up of “the energy ministry formerly led by coal-advocate Krzysztof Tchorzewski, raising questions about the future of Poland’s energy policy”. It adds that the new-look cabinet also sees “a new climate ministry headed by COP 24 president Michal Kurtyka, amid accelerating European efforts to fight climate change”.

Separately, Reuters reports that “the US central bank [has] signalled it may be getting ready to join international peers in incorporating climate change risk into its assessments of financial stability, and may even take it into account when setting monetary policy”.

Climate change: Airlines accused of 'putting profit before planet'
BBC News Read Article

An investigation by BBC Panorama has found that British Airways’ fleet of aircraft generated an extra 18,000 tonnes of CO2 last year through an industry practice known as “fuel tankering”. This is when planes deliberately carry extra weight by filling with extra fuel, usually to avoid paying higher prices for refuelling at their destination airports. In turn, this heavier load results in more emissions. BBC News says: “Cost savings made on a single flight can be as small as just over £10 – though savings can run to hundreds of pounds. Researchers have estimated that one in five of all European flights involve some element of fuel tankering. The practice on European routes could result in additional annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to that produced by a town of 100,000 people.” It adds: “BA boasts it even prints its in-flight magazine on lighter paper to save weight. Yet BBC Panorama has seen dozens of internal BA documents that show up to six tonnes of extra fuel have been loaded onto planes in this way. It has also seen evidence that Easyjet carries extra fuel in this way.” The Guardian also covers the story. “Panorama: Can Flying Go Green?” airs on BBC One tonight at 8.30pm.

Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph reports that, according to Virgin Trains, “record numbers of people are taking trains over planes to get from London to Scotland as a ‘flight shaming’ movement urges travellers to cut their carbon footprint”. It adds: “Some 35% of people travelling between the English capital and Glasgow and Edinburgh went by rail rather than air in the year to July, Virgin Trains said. The figure, up 1% from the previous year, is the biggest proportion of people using trains over planes on the routes ever recorded by the company.” Reuters reports that Qantas Airways has pledged to slash its carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050, matching the same pledge made by British Airways’s owners IAG last month. Reuters adds: “Qantas said it was looking to cap net emissions at 2020 levels and will invest A$50m ($34.3m) over 10 years to develop sustainable fuel to help lower carbon emissions by 80% compared with traditional jet fuel.” The Guardian says that carbon offsetting has seen a fourfold increase over the past 18 months: “[G]rowing concern about the climate crisis and the ‘Greta Thunberg effect’ are driving huge increases in individuals and businesses choosing to offset their emissions by investing in carbon-reducing projects in developing countries.”

Separately, the Financial Times says that “plans to cut the greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s shipping fleet will be discussed in London this week as the industry comes under renewed pressure to clean up its act”. It adds that the International Maritime Organization, a UN agency that regulates shipping, will study proposals from countries including France and Japan that “would have a significant impact on global trade flows over the next decade”. Measures would include so-called “slow steaming” – a French plan to implement a speed limit on tankers and bulk carriers that is one knot below current average speeds by 2025. BBC News and BusinessGreen also cover the story.

Comment.

How scientists got climate change so wrong
Eugene Linden, The New York Times Read Article

Writing in the New York Times, the veteran US non-fiction writer Eugene Linden walks through the evidence showing how climate scientists have repeatedly “lowballed” their estimates “of the consequences of the greenhouse gases we continue to emit into the atmosphere”. Whether it is sea level rise, permafrost thawing or heatwaves, Linden says the net result is the scientists’s “deliberation has been accompanied by inertia born of bureaucratic caution and politics”. He adds: “Science is a process of discovery. It can move slowly as the pieces of a puzzle fall together and scientists refine their investigative tools…This has had severe consequences, diluting what should have been a sense of urgency and vastly understating the looming costs of adaptation and dislocation as the planet continues to warm…Which makes you wonder whether the projected risks of further warming, dire as they are, might still be understated. How bad will things get?”

Climategate 10 years on: what lessons have we learned?
Robin McKie, The Observer Read Article

The Observer’s science editor Robin McKie looks back to November 2009 when thousands of emails exchanged between climate scientists were stolen from a server at the University of East Anglia and selectively released and shared online by climate sceptics. The episode was dubbed “Climategate” and McKie speaks to a range of people to assess the impact. Ultimately, he concludes that it had little impact on international policymaking and that the attacks on the science failed with the decade since seeing eight of the hottest years on record. However, he quotes Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, who says: “Rightwing politicians, allied with fossil fuel companies, used their influence to spread false claims about the emails and to argue against policies to cut fossil fuel use. That propaganda campaign still continues today.” In a separate piece for the Observer, McKie zooms in on the comments of Prof Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, whose emails were heavily quote-mined by climate sceptics and lobbyists. Mann says that 10 years on from Climategate, the “battle between climate change deniers and the environment movement has entered a new, pernicious phase”. He adds: “There is an attempt being made by them to deflect attention away from finding policy solutions to global warming towards promoting individual behaviour changes that affect people’s diets, travel choices and other personal behaviour. This is a deflection campaign and a lot of well-meaning people have been taken in by it.”

Science.

Projected increase in the spatial extent of contiguous US summer heatwaves and associated attributes
Environmental Research Letters Read Article

The spatial extent of heatwaves in the US could increase “substantially” by 2050 as temperatures rise, a new study finds. The scale of heatwaves would increase under any degree of future global warming, but the increase would be “generally less for ‘RCP4.5’, as expected”, the authors say. “RCP4.5” is a simulated future scenario that assumes that greenhouse gas emissions will level off around the middle of this century.

Integrate risk from climate change in China under global warming of 1.5C and 2C
Earth's Future Read Article

The economic losses from climate hazards in China would double if global warming reaches 2C rather than 1.5C, a new study says. An extra half a degree of warming could also cause the population exposed to severe heatwaves to rise by 60%, the research finds. The authors say: “Under the integrate effects of multiple disasters, the regions with high population and economic risks would be concentrated in eastern China.”

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