Global temperatures in March were highest on record, Climate change will fuel terrorism recruitment, report for German foreign office says, & more

20.04.17

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Global temperatures in March were highest on record

Earth’s temperatures in March were the most above normal on record without an El Nino spiking temperatures. Associated Press says scientists are calling this a “clear sign of a warming world”. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has calculated that the average global temperature in March was 13.8C, only behind last year’s “El Nino-goosed” record. France, Germany and other parts of Europe saw record heat while most of the Arctic – except Alaska and Canada – was unusually warm, says NOAA climate scientist Ahira Sanchez-Lugo. It’s the first time the Earth was more than 1C warmer than normal without an El Nino.

Climate change will fuel terrorism recruitment, report for German foreign office says

The Guardian

Climate change will fuel acts of terrorism and strengthen recruiting efforts by terrorist groups such as Islamic State and Boko Haram, a report commissioned by the German foreign office has found. Terrorist groups will exploit the natural disasters and water and food shortages expected to result from climate change and allow them to recruit more easily, operate more freely and control civilian populations, argues the report by Berlin thinktank Adelphi. The Adelphi report cites several examples where the impacts of climate change are already spurring or exacerbating terrorism, such as Lake Chad. The reports author tells the Guardian climate change alone did not cause terrorism, but “creates an environment where terrorism can thrive” and exacerbates existing tensions and conflicts. Separately, the New York Times has published a graphic showing, “How a Warming Planet Drives Human Migration”. It adds: “Climate displacement is becoming one of the world’s most powerful — and destabilising — geopolitical forces.”

Emissions Credits Likely Worthless in Reducing Emissions, Study Says

Inside Climate News

A new report from the European Commission casts serious doubts about international emissions credits, concluding that the vast majority of them likely fail to actually reduce emissions. The report, which was written last year but not published until this April, concludes that buying and selling emissions credits for overseas projects should be limited to a select list that meet rigorous standards, and used only as part of a transition to more effective policies for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Inside Climate News adds: “The study examined the Clean Development Mechanism, created under the Kyoto Protocol to allow countries to offset emissions by purchasing credits linked to green-energy projects on an international market. The system allows a power plant in Germany, for example, to buy credits for the emissions savings from a wind farm in India.”

Energy companies donated millions to Trump’s inauguration

The Hill

Energy companies and their executives donated at least $7m to President Trump’s inauguration committee, according to newly released inaugural committee reports. Companies and executives in oil, natural gas and coal were some of the largest donors to Trump’s inauguration, which raised a total of $106.7 million, according to the committee’s Federal Elections Commission filing. Inside Climate News also covers the story. It adds: “Among the big donors were Chevron, which gave $525,000; Exxon, BP and Citgo Petroleum, which each donated $500,000; and the Ohio-based coal company Murray Energy, which contributed $300,000. Kelcy Warren, the chief executive of Energy Transfer Partners, developer of the Dakota Access pipeline, gave $250,000. Continental Resources, the Oklahoma-based fracking company whose chief executive Harold Hamm was an early Trump supporter, gave $100,000.” Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that Exxon Mobil has applied to the Treasury Department for a waiver from US sanctions on Russia in a bid to resume its joint venture with state oil giant PAO Rosneft. Rex Tillerson, Exxon’s former CEO, is now the US secretary of state under Trump.

May could SLASH overseas spending in big election pledge

The Express

The Express is among the many right-wing newspapers enthusiastically reporting that Theresa May is facing internal party pressure to end David Cameron’s commitment to spend 0.7% of the UK’s income on foreign aid. As Carbon Brief has explained previously, the lion’s share of the UK’s international climate finance pledge comes for this budget. BBC News reports that Bill Gates has intervened, stressing that the UK’s 0.7% commitment is “proof of its goodwill and humanity”.

Green Investment Bank to be sold off in £2.3bn deal

The Guardian

The government has agreed a £2.3bn sale of the Green Investment Bank to the Australian bank Macquarie, according to sources close to the process. The privatisation of the bank was expected in January but signoff was delayed in the face of stiff political opposition and wrangling over the final price. Theresa May’s decision to call a snap election and political concerns that the deadlock could become a campaign issue may have broken the stalemate. An official announcement is expected to be made today by Nick Hurd, the climate minister. Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green party have criticised the sale, questioning Macquarie’s track record and commitment to green energy.

Plugging in six electric cars may cause local power cuts

The Times

Electric cars could cause local power shortages if just six vehicles are plugged in to charge on the same street, a leading think tank has warned. The UK’s energy networks are unprepared for the growing numbers of electric cars and solar panels and ministers must intervene to prevent a “disaster” of “rising bills, blackout risk and angry consumers”, the Green Alliance said. BusinessGreen has covers the story.

Scientists have discovered vast systems of flowing water in Antarctica. And that worries them.

Washington Post

The surface of the remote Antarctic ice sheet may be a far more dynamic place than scientists imagined, new research suggests. The Washington Post reports that decades of satellite imagery and aerial photography have revealed an extensive network of lakes and rivers transporting liquid meltwater across the continent’s ice shelves — nearly 700 systems of connected pools and streams in total. “The new research suggest that the transport of moving water onto and across Antarctica’s ice shelves could make them increasingly vulnerable to collapse as melt rates accelerate under future climate change.”

Comment

Europe’s Coal Power Is Going up in Smoke – Fast

Jessica Shankleman Tino Andresen & Mathew Carr, Bloomberg

“The long goodbye for coal in Europe is accelerating as the cost of shifting to green energy plunges,” argues a Bloomberg feature. It adds: “Companies including Drax Group Plc, Steag GmbH to Uniper SE are closing or converting coal-burning generators at a record pace from Austria to the U.K., made obsolete by competition from cheaper wind and solar power…The pace of coal-plant closures means that this year solar capacity will overtake coal for the first time in Western Europe, according to Pira Energy.”

Surprise us, Mr. President, and embrace the Paris climate agreement

Editorial, Los Angeles Times

The LA Times urges Trump to keep the US in the Paris Agreement: “The president is in a position to prove his critics wrong — to demonstrate that he can weigh (actual, not alternative) facts and frame positions based on reality and in the best interests of the nation. We invite him to do so by sticking with the Paris agreement and the Clean Power Plan, and by directing the government to find ways to reduce US emissions even further. Those are steps that a sagacious and respected world leader would take. We hope Trump moves in that direction, away from his reckless campaign stance on this enormously important issue.”

Highway From the Endangerment Zone

Editorial, Wall Street Journal

The WSJ argues, reluctantly, that Scott Pruitt, Trump’s EPA administrator, is right to avoid a fight over the so-called endangerment finding which ruled in 2009 that carbon dioxide be regulated as a pollutant: “Mr Pruitt is already taking on difficult and controversial challenges, so better for the Administration to use scarce political capital where it will make a difference instead of burning it on a doomed mission…A future Democratic President could use the endangerment finding to revive something like CPP, but then that same Administration could restore endangerment too.”

We need to get rid of carbon in the atmosphere, not just reduce emissions

Eelco Rohling, The Conversation

Rohling, a professor of ocean and climate Change at the Australian National University, says that “analysis by my colleagues and me suggests that staying within safe warming levels now requires removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions”. He proposes a range of technological fixes, but adds: “We need to do more than develop new technology. We also need new international legal, policy, and ethical frameworks to deal with its widespread use, including the inevitable environmental impacts.”

Science

Uncertainty assessment for climate change impact on intense precipitation: how many model runs do we need?

International Journal of Climatology

Precipitation projections are typically obtained from general circulation model (GCM) outputs under different future scenarios, note the authors. They then investigate the uncertainties related to GCMs, GCM initial conditions and representative concentration pathways (RCPs). They conclude: “Albeit the choice of GCM is the major contributor (up to 65% for some cases) to intense precipitation change uncertainty for all return periods (1 year, 10 years) and aggregation levels (1-, 5-, 10-, 15- and 30-day), uncertainties related to the GCM initial conditions and RCPs of up to 38 and 23%, respectively, are found in some cases. The sensitivity analysis reveals that the GCM, RCP and GCM initial condition uncertainties are greatly influenced by the set of climate model runs considered, especially for more extreme precipitation at finer time scales.”

Climate variability drives recent tree mortality in Europe

Global Change Biology

Tree death remains one of the least understood processes of forest dynamics, say the authors. So they identifying recent mortality hotspots in southern and northern Europe byt analysing 925,462 annual observations of 235,895 trees between 2000 and 2012. They find that “warm summers as well as high seasonal variability in precipitation increased the likelihood of tree death. However, our data also suggest that reduced cold-induced mortality could compensate increased mortality related to peak temperatures in a warming climate.”

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