11 November 2015

Climate Change Poised to Push 100 Million Into “Extreme Poverty” by 2030

Already, global warming is sparking higher agricultural prices; increasing ‘natural hazards’ such as heat waves, droughts and floods; and exacerbating public health issues. (photo: World Bank/Flickr)

By Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams-10 November 15

Source: Reader Supported News

Adding urgency to the call for bold emissions cuts and a radical rethinking of the global economy, a new report from the World Bank warns that human-caused climate change could push more than 100 million people into extreme poverty within just 15 years.

Entitled “Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty,” the World Bank’s study differs from previous efforts by looking at the poverty impacts of climate change at the household level, rather than at the level of national economies.

Already, global warming is sparking higher agricultural prices; increasing “natural hazards” such as heat waves, droughts and floods; and exacerbating public health issues, the report states. Without “immediate” adoption of mitigation, adaptation and emission-reduction policies, the World Bank cautions that rising greenhouse gases—and temperatures—will continue to ravage vulnerable populations, dragging them further into poverty.

The bank’s most recent estimate puts the number of people currently living in extreme poverty at 702 million or 9.6 percent of the world’s population.

“Poor people and poor countries are exposed and vulnerable to all types of climate-related shocks—natural disasters that destroy assets and livelihoods; waterborne diseases and pests that become more prevalent during heat waves, floods or droughts; crop failure from reduced rainfall; and spikes in food prices that follow extreme weather events,” it reads. “Climate-related shocks also affect those who are not poor but remain vulnerable and can drag them into poverty—for example, when a flood destroys a micro-enterprise, a drought decimates a herd or contaminated water makes a child sick.”

For example, the report states that by 2030, crop yield losses could mean that food prices would be 12 percent higher on average in Sub-Saharan Africa. “The strain on poor households, who spend as much as 60 percent of their income on food, could be acute,” the World Bank declares. Meanwhile, in India alone, an additional 45 million people could be pushed over the poverty line by 2030, primarily due to agricultural shocks and increased incidence of disease.

To combat these devastating impacts, Shock Waves recommends implementing a combination of:

rapid, inclusive and climate-informed development and targeted adaptation interventions to cope with the short-term impacts of climate change; and

pro-poor mitigation policies to limit long-term impacts and create an environment that allows for global prosperity and the sustainable eradication of poverty.

“The report demonstrates that ending poverty and fighting climate change cannot be done in isolation—the two will be much more easily achieved if they are addressed together,” said Stephane Hallegatte, a senior economist at the World Bank who led the team that prepared the report.

#Shockwaves report out! Without #ClimateSmart dev, 100mln more ppl in Poverty by 2030: wrld.bg/Ullj4 https://t.co/yD7FbDbZmW—
World Bank (@WorldBank) November 10, 2015

Among the report’s specific recommendations are to improve health care systems and access; help households at all income levels gain access to financial instruments for risk management; and provide social protections to help support poor people affected by disasters or environmental and economic shocks.

Noting that “there is still too often a disconnect between bank research and its own practices,” the head of Oxfam International’s Washington office, Nicolas Mombrial, on Monday urged the global financial institution “to heed its own warnings and support equitable, low carbon development” and “promote community resilience to climate change through its policies and programs.”

Furthermore, he said, the report adds further credence to the call for an ambitious agreement to come out of the upcoming COP21 climate talks in Paris. “Any climate deal must commit countries to making their greenhouse gas cuts more aggressive and help vulnerable countries to adapt to climate impacts,” Mombrial said. “It must also promote clean growth by dramatically increasing public finance, building on the yearly $100 billion already promised by 2020.”

“This report further highlights what Oxfam has been warning for many years: climate change is exacerbating inequality and hurting poor people first and worst,” Mombrial concluded. “To effectively solve the climate crisis we must simultaneously tackle the root causes of poverty and hunger globally.”

23 February 2015

Work of Prominent Climate Change Denier Was Funded by Energy Industry

climate change deniers4

By Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian UK, 22 February 15

Source: Reader Supported News

A prominent academic and climate change denier’s work was funded almost entirely by the energy industry, receiving more than $1.2m from companies, lobby groups and oil billionaires over more than a decade, newly released documents show.

Over the last 14 years Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, received a total of $1.25m from Exxon Mobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and a foundation run by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers, the documents obtained by Greenpeace through freedom of information filings show.

According to the documents, the biggest single funder was Southern Company, one of the country’s biggest electricity providers that relies heavily on coal.

The documents draw new attention to the industry’s efforts to block action against climate change – including President Barack Obama’s power-plant rules.

Unlike the vast majority of scientists, Soon does not accept that rising greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial age are causing climate changes. He contends climate change is driven by the sun.

In the relatively small universe of climate denial Soon, with his Harvard-Smithsonian credentials, was a sought after commodity. He was cited admiringly by Senator James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who famously called global warming a hoax. He was called to testify when Republicans in the Kansas state legislature tried to block measures promoting wind and solar power. The Heartland Institute, a hub of climate denial, gave Soon a courage award.

Soon did not enjoy such recognition from the scientific community. There were no grants from Nasa, the National Science Foundation or the other institutions which were funding his colleagues at the Center for Astrophysics. According to the documents, his work was funded almost entirely by the fossil fuel lobby.

“The question here is really: ‘What did API, ExxonMobil, Southern Company and Charles Koch see in Willie Soon? What did they get for $1m-plus,” said Kert Davies, a former Greenpeace researcher who filed the original freedom of information requests. Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center, of which Davies is the founder, shared the documents with news organisations.

“Did they simply hope he was on to research that would disprove the consensus? Or was it too enticing to be able to basically buy the nameplate Harvard-Smithsonian?”

From 2005, Southern Company gave Soon nearly $410,000. In return, Soon promised to publish research about the sun’s influence on climate change in leading journals, and to deliver lectures about his theories at national and international events, according to the correspondence.

The funding would lead to “active participations by this PI (principal investigator) of this research proposal in all national and international forums interested in promoting the basic understanding of solar variability and climate change”, Soon wrote in a report to Southern Company.

In 2012, Soon told Southern Company its grants had supported publications on polar bears, temperature changes in the Arctic and China, and rainfall patterns in the Indian monsoon.

ExxonMobil gave $335,000 but stopped funding Soon in 2010, according to the documents. The astrophysicist reportedly received $274,000 from the main oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute, and $230,000 from the Charles G Koch Foundation. He received an additional $324,000 in anonymous donations through a trust used by the Kochs and other conservative donors, the documents showed.

Greenpeace has suggested Soon also improperly concealed his funding sources for a recent article, in violation of the journal’s conflict of interest guidelines.

“The company was paying him to write peer-reviewed science and that relationship was not acknowledged in the peer-reviewed literature,” Davies said. “These proposals and contracts show debatable interventions in science literally on the behalf of Southern Company and the Kochs.”

In letters to the Internal Revenue Service and Congress, Greenpeace said Soon may have misused the grants from the Koch foundation by trying to influence legislation.

Soon did not respond to requests for comment. But he has in the past strenuously denied his industry funders had any influence over his conclusions.

“No amount of money can influence what I have to say and write, especially on my scientific quest to understand how climate works, all by itself,” he told the Boston Globe in 2013.

As is common among Harvard-Smithsonian scientists, Soon is not on a salary. He receives his compensation from outside grant money, said Christine Pulliam, a spokeswoman for the Center for Astrophysics.

The Center for Astrophysics does not require scientists to disclose their funding sources. But Pulliam acknowleged that Soon had failed to meet disclosure requirements of some of the journals that published his research. “Soon should have followed those policies,” she said.

Harvard said Soon operated outside of the university – even though he carries a Harvard ID and uses a Harvard email address.

“Willie Soon is a Smithsonian staff researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a collaboration of the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory,” a Harvard spokesman, Jeff Neal, said.

“There is no record of Soon having applied for or having been granted funds that were or are administered by the University. Soon is not an employee of Harvard.”

Both Harvard and the Smithsonian acknowledge that the climate is changing because of rising levels of greenhouse gas concentrations caused by human activities.

Pulliam cast Soon’s association with the institutions as an issue of academic freedom: “Academic freedom is critically important. The Smithsonian stands by the process by which the research results of all of its scholars are peer reviewed and vetted by other scientists. This is the way that the scientific process works. The funding entities, regardless of their affiliation, have no influence on the research.”

4 November 2014

UN-IPCC Report: Climate change is happening

Report says world has until 2100 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero or face ‘irreversible’ consequences

Climate change is happening, it’s almost entirely man’s fault and limiting its impacts will require reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero this century, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a report published Sunday.

“Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message. Leaders must act. Time is not on our side,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the report’s launch in Copenhagen.

The report is meant to serve as a scientific roadmap for U.N. climate negotiations, which continue next month in Lima, Peru. The meeting will be the last major conference on the issue before a 2015 summit in Paris, where a global agreement on climate action is supposed to be adopted.

Governments can keep climate change in check at manageable costs, but will have to cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2100 to limit the risk of irreversible damage, the U.N. report said.

The biggest hurdle is deciding who should do what, with developed countries calling on China and other major developing countries to take on ambitious targets, and developing countries saying the already developed have a historical responsibility to lead the fight against global warming and to help poorer nations cope with its impacts. The IPCC carefully avoided taking sides on the issue, saying the risks of climate change “are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development.”

The report, which was the fourth and final installment in the IPCC’s climate assessment, summed up 5,000 pages of work by 800 scientists who concluded that global warming was now causing more heat extremes, downpours, acidifying the oceans and raising sea levels.

Failure to reduce greenhouse gas output, produced by the burning of fossil fuels, to zero this century might lock the world on a trajectory with “irreversible” impacts on people and the environment, the report said.

Amid its grim projections, the report also offered hope, saying the tools needed to set the world on a low-emissions path – such as solar and wind energy generators – already exist.

“We have the means to limit climate change,” IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said. “All we need is the will to change, which we trust will be motivated by knowledge and an understanding of the science of climate change.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called the report “another canary in the coalmine.”

“The bottom line is that our planet is warming due to human actions, the damage is already visible, and the challenge requires ambitious, decisive and immediate action,” Kerry said in a statement. “Those who choose to ignore or dispute the science so clearly laid out in this report do so at great risk for all of us and for our kids and grandkids.”

Pointing to solutions, the IPCC said the costs associated with mitigation action, such as shifting energy systems to solar and wind power and other renewable sources, would reduce economic growth only by 0.06 percent annually.

Pachauri of the IPCC said that cost should be measured against the implications of doing nothing, putting “all species that live on this planet” at peril.

Source: Reader Supported News – By Al Jazeera America

2 April 2014

Tar Sands Emissions Linked to Serious Health Problems in Alberta

By Andy Rowell, Oil Change International, 02 April 14

In a landmark report to Alberta’s energy regulator, a panel of experts has concluded that odors from a controversial tar sands processing plant are linked to human health impacts.

The report, which was published yesterday, examined the emissions from Baytex Energy’s Peace River plant, which has been the subject of a number of health complaints from local residents over the last few years. The situation has been so bad that seven families have been forced to leave.

The residents have complained that the plant—which essentially boils bitumen—has been making them sick, and they have been suffering symptoms such as severe headaches, dizziness, sinus problems, vomiting, muscle spasms and fatigue, amongst others.

Now the report by the Albertan Energy Regulator (AER) has called on the odors to be stopped. The report concludes: “odors caused by heavy oil operations in the Peace River area need to be eliminated to the extent possible as they have the potential to cause some of the health symptoms of area residents.”

The Panel also recommended “that further study be conducted to examine linkages between odors and emissions and health effects.”

Meanwhile the report gives the company four months to capture all the odors.

It has been welcomed by local landowners who have been experiencing health problems. “This validates what we have been saying for years—that the tank-top emissions are causing health problems,” said one such landowner Brian Labrecque. “It’s been a very long road and we are relieved the AER is showing some teeth and holding industry accountable.”

He is backed up by environmental groups. Mike Hudema of Greenpeace said the panel’s report “reaffirms what the local residents have known for years—that the emissions were part of the reasons the families were getting sick.”

However Baytex’s spokesman Andrew Loosley belligerently replied that studies undertaken by the company “tell us the air is safe,” although the company is moving to install technology that captures the odors.

Environmental groups are also now calling for technologies to ensure that odors are captured to be applied across the wider tar sands region. Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute told the Globe and Mail, “The same technological solution can be used to prevent odors, health risks and greenhouse-gas emissions throughout the province.”

Meanwhile legal action against the plant trying to force a temporary injunction also continues. A judgement is expected sometime this month.

Source: Reader Supported News

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