This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2017/jan/19/global-warning-live-from-the-climate-change-frontline-as-trump-becomes-president
The article has changed 42 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
Previous version
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
Next version
Version 31 | Version 32 |
---|---|
Global warning: Australia and Asia predict climate cost of Trump's agenda – live | |
(35 minutes later) | |
1.55am GMT | |
01:55 | |
Joshua Robertson | |
The business case for adapting to climate change has dawned on a growing number of organisations in Australia, including the stewards of the iconic Sydney Opera House. | |
The opera house is among the 10 best business cases in Australia to show how it could be done, according to a Griffith University report launched last month. | |
The climate change risks to the World Heritage-listed building range from underground water leaks from rising sea levels and water pressure, damage from more severe storms with high winds, and flooding from more intense rainfall and run-off. | |
The opera house has now factored in a 90cm sea level rise into its 10-yearly building renewal program. Managers told the Griffith researchers that assuming the need for climate change adaptation in its investments was a responsible “use of taxpayers’ money”. | |
Other cases include the insurer Suncorp, which sees a growing cost of natural disasters in northern Australia in the form of cyclones, floods and hail storms as “the game changer and catalyst for change and action”. | |
Over the last 7 years in Queensland alone, insurers paid out $1.44 in claims for every $1 they collected in premiums, the study said. | |
After Queensland’s costly 2011 floods, Suncorp assessed the cost of a levee to protect the flood-prone town of Roma at $11m – the same as it cost the government to provide emergency helicopter rescues for one flood. | |
“This presented a very strong business case for the [Queensland] government to fund the levee, which they did,” the study said. | |
Suncorp told the researchers that while the insurance industry has a “pretty good understanding of what the cost will look like”, this did not necessarily extend to the human costs, which are only apparent when disaster hits and insurers “turn up on the ground and start helping people rebuild their homes”. | |
“At that point, it becomes evident that there is a range of risks and damages that are not ‘carried on anyone’s balance sheet’, for instance, mental health issues,” the study said. | |
1.49am GMT | |
01:49 | |
Elle Hunt | |
AlexMourinho raises an interesting point: could the way forward from our changing climate be posed by philosophy? | |
Philosophy in school. | |
Mandatory. | |
Thinking citizens is the only way out of this mess called civilisation. | |
On the subject of science intersecting with philosophy, on Wednesday I went scuba-diving off the north shore of Sydney with Peter Godfrey-Smith, an academic philosopher who’s written a book about the consciousness of cephalopods. | |
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness is currently available in the US and due for release in the UK and Australia in February; Godfrey-Smith’s New York Times column about octopuses and ageing is a taster. | |
1.45am GMT | |
01:45 | |
Michael Safi | |
Hello from Delhi, India’s heaving capital, where, inside government ministries, plans are being devised for the largest electricity rollout in history. India will need to supply power to nearly 600m new consumers by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency. How they choose to do so matters to the entire planet. | |
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, takes climate change seriously. Extreme weather across the country, including droughts, storms, and the severest heat wave on record killed nearly 1,600 Indians, it was reported this week. Food yields are already estimated to have fallen by 6% because of higher temperatures – a phenomenon that might claim 160,000 Indian lives each year by 2050. | |
But Modi is also emphatic that climate change “is not of [India’s] making”. Historically, the country accounts for just 3% of the world’s total carbon emissions since 1890. India is unapologetic about potentially tripling its coal use by 2030 if it means connecting every village to the grid and powering new schools, jobs and homes for hundreds of millions of its citizens. | |
Averting a catastrophic increase in carbon emissions will come down to how much of that energy can be generated cleanly. India’s renewable energy target is hugely ambitious: an installed capacity of 175GW by 2022. To put that into perspective, the current capacity of India’s entire grid is around 310GW. | |
So far, India doesn’t appear to be on track to hit the 175GW target – but that’s missing the point. In pursuit of such a bold aim, it has already added nearly 15GW in renewable capacity, and attracted billions of dollars in investment. The southern state of Tamil Nadu is now the site of the world’s largest solar power plant. India’s total renewable capacity could increase by more than 50% in the next year alone. It has already predicted it will exceed its Paris targets by nearly 60% – and do so three years early. | |
So, while the next posts will explore the threats posed by climate change to India, it’s worth remembering: there’s some cause for optimism, too. | |
1.42am GMT | |
01:42 | |
Lock the Gate is a large group of farmers and other citizens concerned about coal mining and gas extraction. They’ve successfully fought coal seam gas extraction along the East Coast of Australia, and have emerged as a force to be reckoned with. | |
The group has just released an analysis suggesting coal mining is responsible for about half the dangerous particulate pollution in New South Wales. | |
Georgina Woods is the NSW campaign coordinator at Lock the Gate and has sent this in: | |
As well as dealing with more extreme droughts as global warming worsens, regional communities in Australia are suffering localised impacts of coal mining. | |
Lock the Gate Alliance, a network of community groups protecting their land and water from coal and gas mining, has today released analysis showing coal mining is responsible for the majority of dangerous particulate air pollution in New South Wales. | |
Roughly half of this is created by five of the biggest mines. They’re all in the Hunter Valley – an important agricultural region, which is home to renowned wineries and horse studs. | |
The state’s most-polluting coal mines are choking the Hunter Valley’s skies, damaging the health of local people and their children, contributing to the hundreds of deaths in NSW that are caused every year by particulate pollution. | |
This analysis is part of Lock the Gate’s submission to the NSW’s Government’s Clean Air Plan, which closes for consultation today. | |
1.35am GMT | |
01:35 | |
Elle Hunt | |
A big-picture question posed by CassandrasVoice in the comments: how long have we got? | |
This is a question I'd love answered by any expert who wants to weigh in: | |
Since a friend who works in sustainable agriculture said to me that she thought we had a 50:50 chance of becoming grandparents (i.e., that we had perhaps another 25 years before the world stops supporting human populations) I've been trying to find anything at all that quantifies the impending disaster. And it's hard to find! I read about increasing temperatures, rising seas, the sixth extinction, but it's still hard to find anybody willing to say: according to this model, if nothing changes, we have X years left before Specific Bad Things affect our daily lives. | |
Do you think that climate scientists should team up with communications experts and find a way to paint a stark picture of how things will (may) be, day to day, in the next generation? Just like putting faces to things like the refugee crisis helps move along the appetite for political change, it might help to have snapshots of different populations and how they'll suffer? Including and especially in the west? | |
It’s a tough one, but if you’ve got thoughts or ideas, we’d love to hear them. | |
1.31am GMT | |
01:31 | |
We’ve heard about the impact of rising sea levels in Kiribati, and Guardian Australia’s Mike Bowers’ personal recollection of his visit there – now David Tong, now a campaigner at WWF in New Zealand, has written about his time in South Tarawa, an atoll of only 16 sq km of land, last September. | |
Love to Choi, Kiribati's #climate change officer, but he's wrong to say there are no deniers there. There are two. https://t.co/vK0mIgJakP | |
It’s quite a chilling account of living on the front line of rising sea waters. | |
“Climate change impacts are real and obvious. On my first day in Bairiki, I walked along the beach behind the President’s house. The sea wall was broken in several places, and the beach was littered with rubbish. I couldn’t understand where all the rubbish came from – were the broken TVs from passing cruise ships or something? | |
“My I-Kiribati colleagues explained that the rubbish on the beaches had mostly come from people’s houses. With the highest point on Tarawa only 3m above sea level, storm surges and king tides flood homes, pulling people’s property back with them. Over the following weeks and months, the sea dumps its takings back on the beaches.” | |
David Tong said that a storm surge following Cyclone Pam flooded South Tarawa’s maternity hospital, with flooding reaching hundreds of metres inland, killing pandanus trees and destroying taro pits. | |
“I heard talk of people putting sugar in their water, to counteract the salty taste. ... Already on Abiang, the nearest outlying island to Tarawa, salt water is bubbling up from the soil at king tides.” | |
I-Kiribati are working to develop salt-resistant crops, and President Mamau has pledged to make a plan for every community and every island. “Our choices in the rich world will decide whether that’s possible,” said David Tong, who’s returning to Kiribati in February: “The place gets under your skin.” | |
1.23am GMT | 1.23am GMT |
01:23 | 01:23 |
Calla Wahlquist | Calla Wahlquist |
Victoria, the most fire-prone state in Australia, overhauled its emergency management model following the devastating Black Saturday bushfires of 9 February 2009, which killed 173 people and destroyed two small alpine towns. | Victoria, the most fire-prone state in Australia, overhauled its emergency management model following the devastating Black Saturday bushfires of 9 February 2009, which killed 173 people and destroyed two small alpine towns. |
The result was a new control structure, Emergency Management Victoria, which operates out of the State Control Centre in Melbourne. | The result was a new control structure, Emergency Management Victoria, which operates out of the State Control Centre in Melbourne. |
On a day with a fire danger rating of extreme or above, or in the event of a natural disaster, the room fills up with the heads of Victoria’s fire and flood agencies. | On a day with a fire danger rating of extreme or above, or in the event of a natural disaster, the room fills up with the heads of Victoria’s fire and flood agencies. |
Steve Riley, manager of the centre, talked us through it. Here’s the interview: | Steve Riley, manager of the centre, talked us through it. Here’s the interview: |
1.16am GMT | 1.16am GMT |
01:16 | 01:16 |
We’re going to wrap up our Q&A with Jason Roberts in Antarctica now. Thanks to everyone for all the excellent questions. And thanks especially to Jason for taking the time out of his research down there to engage with us all. Apologies to those answers we didn’t get to. | We’re going to wrap up our Q&A with Jason Roberts in Antarctica now. Thanks to everyone for all the excellent questions. And thanks especially to Jason for taking the time out of his research down there to engage with us all. Apologies to those answers we didn’t get to. |
To close it off, here’s one last question and answer. | To close it off, here’s one last question and answer. |
@MikeySlezak Is Antarctic volume being affected by climate change. The deniers all say ant ice is increasing. | @MikeySlezak Is Antarctic volume being affected by climate change. The deniers all say ant ice is increasing. |
And Jason’s answer: | And Jason’s answer: |
This is a question that we hear often, and it’s great that people are still asking it, and want to know the answer. There is some confusion around this due to the changing amount of sea ice, and confusion between it and grounded ice. | This is a question that we hear often, and it’s great that people are still asking it, and want to know the answer. There is some confusion around this due to the changing amount of sea ice, and confusion between it and grounded ice. |
The area of sea ice is changing, due mainly to changes in the ocean currents and wind, moving the sea ice around and packing it together in areas. The ice on Antarctica (the so called grounded ice) is decreasing. | The area of sea ice is changing, due mainly to changes in the ocean currents and wind, moving the sea ice around and packing it together in areas. The ice on Antarctica (the so called grounded ice) is decreasing. |
Like any big land mass, things vary from area to area, but overall Antarctica is losing ice. We have several independent lines of evidence to support that. The most direct way is that satellites and aircraft (including the project I’m currently in Antarctica working on) measure the height of the surface of the ice sheet using lasers and radars. They show that many of the outlet glaciers and surrounding ice catchments are lowering, which can only happen if they are losing ice. The second way is that the gravitational field of the ice can be measured from space, we can “weigh the ice sheet” and it is weighing less over time. | Like any big land mass, things vary from area to area, but overall Antarctica is losing ice. We have several independent lines of evidence to support that. The most direct way is that satellites and aircraft (including the project I’m currently in Antarctica working on) measure the height of the surface of the ice sheet using lasers and radars. They show that many of the outlet glaciers and surrounding ice catchments are lowering, which can only happen if they are losing ice. The second way is that the gravitational field of the ice can be measured from space, we can “weigh the ice sheet” and it is weighing less over time. |
Again like any big area, things can change from year to year, but overall the pattern is that Antarctica is losing grounded ice, and especially the smaller (and therefore quicker to respond to any changes) West Antarctic region. | Again like any big area, things can change from year to year, but overall the pattern is that Antarctica is losing grounded ice, and especially the smaller (and therefore quicker to respond to any changes) West Antarctic region. |
1.04am GMT | 1.04am GMT |
01:04 | 01:04 |
Mike Bowers | Mike Bowers |
Kiribati: The 33 atolls and reef islands straddle the equator and are spread across an area of over 3 million square miles. The eastern Line Islands are the first place in the world to greet the sun everyday as the international date line has to bend around them so that they are on the same day as the rest of the group. | |
For the population of 100,000 the issues facing them are complex and urgent. Extreme weather events, storm surges and tides are eroding and threatening the precious land space. | |
More than half the population live on the main island of Tarawa. The delicate fresh water supplies that sit underneath most of the islands in what is called a water “lens” which is basically fresh water that floats on the denser salt water that surrounds the islands. | |
The encroaching sea is making much of this supply brackish and in some cases unusable, it is also affecting the soils and in some villages the former growing areas have become a saline desert which will not support any life. | |
Garbage and leaching from heavy metals which lie all over the islands also contaminate the precious water supplies. The infant and under 5 mortality rate sits at a shocking 56 deaths per 1000 live births (2015 UN Inter agency group) In 2014 the Kiribati Government purchased about 20 square kilometres on the island of Vanua Levu in Fiji to for Agricultural projects and fish farming. | |
For the people of Kiribati climate change is not an argument, they live with the changes every day in complex ways that make their lives difficult and their future uncertain. They seem genuinely surprised when you tell them that there are people in Australia who don’t believe that anything is happening to the climate of the world. | |
As I photographed Toani Benson standing in water on the ruins of a shop on Abaiang Island where he used to fill his scooter as a school child in the mid nineties remarked “perhaps you should bring those people here.” | |
This photograph shows children bathing in one of these shallow wells in South Tarawa. | This photograph shows children bathing in one of these shallow wells in South Tarawa. |
Updated | |
at 1.36am GMT | |
1.04am GMT | 1.04am GMT |
01:04 | 01:04 |
HOUR 18: Rounded out with a jellyfish | HOUR 18: Rounded out with a jellyfish |
Elle Hunt | Elle Hunt |
Over the last 60 minutes – | Over the last 60 minutes – |
Readers have had their sometimes fairly technical questions about Antarctica answered by Jason Roberts via email, direct from Casey Station – thanks to Jason and the Australian Antarctic Division for their contribution | Readers have had their sometimes fairly technical questions about Antarctica answered by Jason Roberts via email, direct from Casey Station – thanks to Jason and the Australian Antarctic Division for their contribution |
Roberts commented on the seasonal closure of the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley VI research station on the Brunt Ice Shelf, announced earlier this week as a result of uncertainty over cracks in the ice | Roberts commented on the seasonal closure of the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley VI research station on the Brunt Ice Shelf, announced earlier this week as a result of uncertainty over cracks in the ice |
We flagged a march in Sydney on Saturday, organised by Greenpeace Australia to coincide with Donald Trump’s inauguration | We flagged a march in Sydney on Saturday, organised by Greenpeace Australia to coincide with Donald Trump’s inauguration |
Mikey Slezak and WWF Australia together made you even more aware of penguins on Penguin Awareness Day (let us know when you’d like us to stop) | Mikey Slezak and WWF Australia together made you even more aware of penguins on Penguin Awareness Day (let us know when you’d like us to stop) |
Mikey let his professionalism give way to panic (and let me just say, if Mikey’s panicking – so should the rest of us) | Mikey let his professionalism give way to panic (and let me just say, if Mikey’s panicking – so should the rest of us) |
Responding to Eleanor Ainge Roy’s report from New Zealand, a reader shared a graph of 400,000 years’ data to show that the worst may be yet to come | Responding to Eleanor Ainge Roy’s report from New Zealand, a reader shared a graph of 400,000 years’ data to show that the worst may be yet to come |
And we heard from Lisa Gershwin about how climate change may affect jellyfish | And we heard from Lisa Gershwin about how climate change may affect jellyfish |
To come: reporting from Australia and we’ll venture into Asia. | To come: reporting from Australia and we’ll venture into Asia. |