Beyond Cayman

A Slow-Motion Climate Disaster: The Spread of Barren Land

The New York Times

3 December 2021

Climate change is intensifying droughts in Brazil’s northeast, leaving the land barren. The phenomenon, called desertification, is happening across the planet.

CARNAÚBA DOS DANTAS, Brazil — The land has sustained the Dantas family for more than 150 years, bearing fields of cotton, beanstalks up to a grown man’s hip and, when it rained enough, a river that led to a waterfall.

But on a recent day, with temperatures approaching 100 degrees, the river had run dry, the crops would not grow and the family’s 30 remaining cattle were quickly consuming the last pool of water.

“Fifty years from now, there won’t be a soul living here,” said Inácio Batista Dantas, 80, balanced in a frayed hammock. “I tell my grandchildren that things are going to get very difficult.”

His granddaughter, Hellena, 16, listened in — and pushed back. She grew up here. “I plan to work this land,” she said.

Scientists agree with her grandfather. Much of Brazil’s vast northeast is, in effect, turning into a desert — a process called desertification that is worsening across the planet.

Climate change is one culprit. But local residents, faced with harsh economic realities, have also made short-term decisions to get by — like clearing trees for livestock and extracting clay for the region’s tile industry — that have carried long-term consequences.

 
Desertification is a natural disaster playing out in slow motion in areas that are home to half a billion people, from northern China and North Africa to remote Russia and the American Southwest. Read the whole story here.

How China shapes the world's coal

BBC
2 November 2021

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Coal, the most carbon intensive fossil fuel, has come under increasing pressure from climate campaigners and communities affected by pollution from the industry. In recent years, at least 100 major banks – including the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, the European Investment Bank and many others – have divested from coal mining or coal-fired power plants.

But as many financial institutions have taken a step away from coal, some countries moved in to fill the void, such as China, South Korea and Japan. China has played a particularly big role – the country provided half of overseas public finance to coal-fired power plants between 2013 and 2018.

China's massive foreign investments in coal have given it the reputation as a lender of last resort for many African and Asian countries eager to boost power capacity to fuel economic growth. But developing countries reliant on China could now find their energy policies turned on their heads. At the UN General Assembly in September, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced plans to abandon building new coal power plants abroad.

The announcement has been seen as the "death knell" for overseas funding of coal, and its ramifications could be huge.

As of September, China was considering financing 44 new overseas coal plants across 20 countries, says Christine Shearer, programme manager for coal at the non-profit Global Energy Monitor. That represents about a third of the world's planned coal plants that have not yet been built.

In addition, Chinese state-owned power utilities and engineering companies directly own a total of 30 gigawatts (30 billion Watts) of projects outside China, according to a 2019 report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) co-authored by Shearer. That's an amount equivalent to the entire coal power capacity of Poland. 

So far, the government has provided no details on when the policy will come into play, and it is also not clear exactly what it includes.

"The ambiguity of the announcement is also the beauty of it, a Chinese financier will have to think twice before any new investments can go ahead," says Byford Tsang, senior policy advisor for China at climate think tank E3G. Read the whole story here.

'Last, best hope:' Crucial climate summit opens in Glasgow

Loop Cayman

31 October 2021

Alok Sharma, right, President of the COP26 summit shakes hands with UNGA President Abdulla Shahid as outgoing COP president Carolina Schmidt, second right, and Patricia Espinosa, UNFCCC Executive-Secretary look on during the Procedural Opening of the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Sunday, Oct. 31, 2021. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali, Pool)

The UN climate summit in Glasgow opened Sunday with appeals for action and prayers, kicking off two weeks of intense diplomatic negotiations by almost 200 countries on how to tackle the common challenge of intensifying global warming.

Following the opening gavel Sunday, leaders from around the world will gather in Scotland's biggest city Monday to lay out their countries' efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and deal with the effects of climate change. At the Vatican Sunday, Pope Francis appealed to the world's people to pray that world leaders' realize the suffering of the Earth and the poor as the climate warms.

Negotiators will push nations to ratchet up their efforts to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) this century compared with pre-industrial times.

The newly opened summit remains "our last, best hope to keep 1.5 in reach," said Alok Sharma, the British government minister chairing the Glasgow talks, known as COP26.

Scientists say the chances of meeting that goal, agreed to in the landmark deal closed at the 2015 Paris climate accord, are slowly slipping away. The world has already warmed by more than 1.1C and current projections based on planned emissions cuts over the next decade are for it to hit 2.7C by the year 2100.

The amount of energy unleashed by such planetary warming would melt much of the planet's ice, raise global sea levels and greatly increase the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather, experts warn.

"We can move the negotiations forward and we can launch a decade of ever increasing ambition and action," Sharma said at the opening ceremony. "We can seize the enormous opportunities for green growth for good green jobs, the cheaper, cleaner power."

He noted that China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, had just raised its climate targets somewhat.

"But of course we expected more," Sharma told the BBC earlier Sunday. Read the whole story here.

U.S. Warns Climate Poses ‘Emerging Threat’ to Financial System

The New York Times

21 October 2021

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, who leads the Financial Stability Oversight Council, released a report warning about risks to the financial system from climate change. Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Climate change is an “emerging threat” to the stability of the U.S. financial system, top federal regulators warned in a report on Thursday, setting the stage for the Biden administration to take more aggressive regulatory action to prevent climate change from upending global markets and the economy.

The report, produced by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, is the clearest expression of alarm to date about the risks that rising temperatures and seas pose to the economy and could herald sweeping changes to the kinds of investments made by banks and other financial institutions.

It was released as President Biden and senior administration officials prepare to attend the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, where the United States will try to demonstrate to the world that it is serious about addressing the climate threat. Mr. Biden’s climate agenda has stalled in Congress, leaving financial regulation as one of the few areas he can point to as evidence of his commitment on warming.

The Biden administration also released a series of reports on Thursday on the threat that climate change poses to national security, saying it increases the risks of conflict within and between countries and could potentially displace tens of millions of people around the world. Read the whole story here.

Thousands march in Brussels to demand tougher climate action

Loop Cayman
10 October 2021

A protestor holds up a sign during a climate march in Brussels, Sunday, October 10, 2021. Some 80 organisations are joining in a climate march through Brussels to demand change and push politicians to effective action in Glasgow later this month.(AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

BRUSSELS (AP) — Dressed as endangered fish or tigers or wearing toy polar bears on their heads, demonstrators marched through Brussels on Sunday to push world leaders to take bolder action to fight climate change at the UN climate summit in Glasgow starting this month.

Thousands of people and 80 organisations took part in the protest, aiming for the biggest such event in the European Union's capital since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which stopped the climate movement’s weekly marches in its tracks.

Cyclists, families with children and white-haired demonstrators filled city streets, chanting slogans demanding climate justice and waving banners in English, French and Dutch. One carried a stuffed polar bear on her head, and others were dressed as animals endangered by human-caused climate change.

“After you’ve seen all the disasters we have seen this summer, it’s really crucial that we move now. Because everybody knows what the problem is," said Xavier De Wannemaeker, a protester with Extinction Rebellion.

Scientists say there's little doubt that fuel emissions are contributing to extreme weather events like the droughts, fires, floods that have hit regions around the world this summer.

Demonstrator Lucien Dewanaga asked, “What do we do when we destroy the planet? We have nothing else. Human beings have to live in this world. And there is only one world.”

Environmentalists worry that the UN's 26th Climate Change Conference of the Parties, known as the COP26, in Glasgow starting October 31 will produce policies that don’t do enough to slash carbon emissions and slow the warming of the planet. Read the whole story here.

Climate change is biggest global problem we’ve seen since World War II, says PwC chairman

CNBC

20 September 2021

Adelie penguins stand atop a block of melting ice on a rocky shoreline at Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay, in East Antarctica  Pauline Askin | Reuters

Climate change is the most formidable challenge humanity has had to face since World War II and will require similar levels of individual mobilization and collective cooperation.

“We need 8 billion people to make this a personal cause. The world has never seen a challenge like this probably since World War II,” Robert Moritz, chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers, said Monday at Climate Week NYC.

“And the reality is that we have to mobilize the whole world,” Moritz said.

“Let me square this up for everybody: We are behind,” he said.

“The reality is, when you look at the numbers, when you look at the academic studies, at least our research would say we don’t necessarily need to double the efforts, triple the efforts, we actually have to fivefold the increase of the change we need to do to decarbonize the world that is going on right now,” Moritz said.

To do that will require collaboration and cooperation across industries, sectors, stakeholders and leaders.

“How do we pull together all of the puzzle pieces and start to connect them, sector by sector, section by section, country by country, to do this?” Moritz said. Read the whole story here.

Enough With The Climate Jargon: Scientists Aim For Clearer Messages On Global Warming

NPR
8 September 2021

A new study finds that common climate change terms can be confusing to the public. That includes phrases that describe the transition from fossil fuels to cleaner sources of energy. Here, wind turbines operate near a coal-fired power plant in Germany. (Ina Fassbender /AFP via Getty Images)

Here's a sentence that's basically unintelligible to most people: Humans must mitigate global warming by pursuing an unprecedented transition to a carbon neutral economy.

A recent study found that some of the most common terms in climate science are confusing to the general public. The study tested words that are frequently used in international climate reports, and it concluded that the most confusing terms were "mitigation," "carbon neutral" and "unprecedented transition."

"I think the main message is to avoid jargon," says Wändi Bruine de Bruin, a behavioral scientist at the University of Southern California and the lead author of the study. "That includes words that may seem like everyone should understand them."

For example, participants in the study mixed up the word "mitigation," which commonly refers to efforts that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the word "mediation," which is a way to resolve disputes. And even simple terms such as "carbon" can be misleading, the study found. Sometimes, carbon is shorthand for carbon dioxide. Other times, it's used to refer to multiple greenhouse gases. Read the whole story here.

Climate change will transform cooling effects of volcanic eruptions, study suggests

Phys.org
12 August 2021

Simulation of global sulfur gas concentrations, in present-day and high-end warming scenarios. Credit: Thomas Aubry, University of Cambridge

Researchers have shown that human-caused climate change will have important consequences for how volcanic gases interact with the atmosphere.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and the UK Met Office, say that large-magnitude eruptions will have greater effects as the climate continues to warm. However, the cooling effects of small- and medium-sized eruptions could shrink by as much as 75%. Since these smaller eruptions are far more frequent, further research is needed to determine whether the net effect will be additional warming or cooling.

Where and when a volcano erupts is not something that we can control, but as the atmosphere warms due to climate change, the plumes of ash and gas emitted by large, but infrequent, volcanic eruptions will rise ever higher. Climate change will also accelerate the transport of volcanic material—in the form of small, shiny droplets called volcanic sulfate aerosols—from the tropics to higher latitudes.

For large eruptions, the combined effect of these phenomena will cause the haze created by volcanic aerosols to block more sunlight from reaching Earth's surface, ultimately amplifying the temporary cooling caused by volcanic eruptions. The results are reported in the journal Nature Communications.

When Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, the effects were felt worldwide. The plume from the eruption—the second largest of the 20th century—reached more than 30 kilometers into the sky, forming a layer of global haze. In 1992, this haze caused global temperatures to drop by as much as 0.5 degrees Celsius. In comparison, human activities have warmed global temperatures by over 1 degree Celsius since 1850. However, the effect of volcanic aerosols only persists for one or two years, while anthropogenic greenhouse gases will affect the climate for centuries. Read the whole story here.

When turning on faucets is a source of stress: Climate change shapes where Americans relocate

Yahoo Finance

4 August 2021

Garrett and Megan Warren, with their son, Reeve, 6, decided to relocate to Portland, Ore., from Los Angeles in 2016 because of drought conditions in California.

Megan Warren, who grew up in Southern California, had lived in Los Angeles for 15 years when she decided she’d had enough.

During periods of drought, when the city tried to conserve water and added plastic balls to the reservoir to reduce evaporation, neighbors in the Miracle Mile didn’t seem to care, she says.

She’d drive down her street and see one of them hosing off his driveway and others using sprinklers on their lawns. She had removed the “brown, dry and crispy grass” and water-dependent landscaping from her lawn and replaced it with succulents and ground cover that could survive in dry conditions.

“Every time I turned on the faucet to wash my dishes, it was really a source of stress for me,” she says. “I just wanted to go to a place where I could take a shower without worrying about water.”

As she explored her options, the Pacific Northwest seemed like a “dreamland."

“There's plentiful water, and everything is green and lush and growing," she says. "And they have four seasons, and it's beautiful."

In 2016, her family picked Portland, Oregon, as their new home because the city had made ecological advances such as composting 67% of its waste, offered great public transportation options and had residents who seemed environmentally conscious.
Warren is among a growing number of Americans who may be starting to factor climate change into decisions about where they live. Read the whole story here.

Scientists predict climate change will cause more intense storms across Europe

CTV News

17 July 2021

Flooding in Hagen Germany, July 2021 (Photo credit: Floodlist)

As rescue workers race to save people from devastating floods in Germany and Belgium, climate experts are sounding the alarm over predictions that intense, slow-moving storms will increase significantly across Europe by the end of the century.

According to a new study by scientists at Newcastle University in the U.K. and the country’s national weather service, the slow-moving pace of some storms can increase the amount of rainfall that accumulates in one particular region, which then raises the risk of flash floods.

Scientists suggest the cause of this severe weather is linked to climate changeand their findings were recently published in the journal, Geophysical Research Letters.

"This study shows that in addition to the intensification of rainfall with global warming, we can also expect a big increase in slow-moving storms which have the potential for high rainfall accumulations,” Lizzie Kendon, science fellow at the Met Office and professor at Bristol University, said in a statement. “This is very relevant to the recent flooding seen in Germany and Belgium, which highlights the devastating impacts of slow-moving storms.”

She added, "Our finding that slow-moving intense rainstorms could be 14 times more frequent by the end of the century under the high emissions RCP8.5 scenario shows the serious impacts that we may expect across Europe if we do not curb our emissions of greenhouse gases." Read the whole story here.

Factbox: How central banks are responding to climate change

Reuters
18 June 2021

The headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Germany,
March 12, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo

The Bank of Japan unveiled a plan on Friday to boost funding for fighting climate change, a surprise move underscoring the growing importance of the issue for central banks.

Following is a snapshot of how some of the world's biggest central banks are addressing risks related to climate change and in some cases helping to tackle it, as well as their thinking on how much more they should be doing...

...EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK - The ECB is already using supervisory powers to force banks to own up to their role in financing polluters, and it will conduct a climate stress test next year. Initial findings show around 90% of banks do not yet follow ECB guidelines in assessing climate risk.

The ECB is also looking at tailoring monetary policy to favour companies working to reduce their carbon footprint or to punish polluters. Options under consideration include skewing asset purchases to favour companies with low emissions or those who make a concerted effort to transform their business.

The bank is considering modifying rules to make it harder for lenders to fund polluting projects. As commercial banks sit on over 2 trillion euros ($2.4 trillion) worth of ECB loans, raising collateral requirements on brown assets could quickly raise funding costs. Read the whole story here.

Climate Change Batters the West Before Summer Even Begins

The New York Times
17 June 2021

Photo courtesty of L.A. Times

A heat dome is baking Arizona and Nevada, where temperatures have soared past 115 degrees this week and doctors are warning that people can get third-degree burns from the sizzling asphalt.

At Lake Mead, which supplies water for 25 million people in three southwestern states and Mexico, water levels have plunged to their lowest point since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s. In California, farmers are abandoning their thirstiest crops to save others, and communities are debating whether to ration tap water.

In Texas, electricity grids are under strain as residents crank their air-conditioners, with utilities begging customers to turn off appliances to help avert blackouts. In Arizona, Montana and Utah, wildfires are blazing.

And it’s not even summer yet.

“We’re still a long way out from the peak of the wildfire season and the peak of the dry season,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Things are likely to get worse before they get better.”

Global warming, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, has been heating up and drying out the American West for years. Now the region is broiling under a combination of a drought that is the worst in two decades and a record-breaking heat wave.

“The Southwest is getting hammered by climate change harder than almost any other part of the country, apart from perhaps coastal cities,” said Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan. “And as bad as it might seem today, this is about as good as it’s going to get if we don’t get global warming under control.” Read the whole story here.