Climate Change

[Michael Scally MD]

Why Climate Change Matters for Monetary Policy and Financial Stability
Speech by Governor Brainard on why climate change matters for monetary policy and financial stability

I want to thank my colleagues at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, especially Mary Daly, Galina Hale, Òscar Jordà, and Glenn Rudebusch, for organizing this research conference. The presentations today provide important insights into the many important ways climate-related risks may affect our financial system and broader economy. Economic Research | The Economics of Climate Change

Similar to many areas around the country, we need not look far from here to see the potentially devastating effects of our changing climate. Less than a hundred miles from here, families have lost their homes and businesses, and entire communities have been devastated by the Kincade fire.

Some have described PG&E's bankruptcy as the first climate change bankruptcy. Some insurers have discontinued policies in fire-prone areas, which, in turn, is changing the costs of homeownership and the risk profiles of previously underwritten mortgages. Yet we can also see not far from here the promise of green innovation.

…



The Economics of Climate Change [Friday, November 8, 2019]
Economic Research | The Economics of Climate Change

This conference will bring together researchers from around the globe to discuss quantifying the climate risk faced by households, firms, and the financial system; measuring the economic costs and consequences of climate change; accounting for the effects of climate change on financial asset prices; and understanding the potential implications of climate change for monetary, supervisory, and trade policy.

 

[GDL]

View media item 2088

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The L. Health and climate change: making the link matter. The Lancet. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(19)32756-4


Watts N, Amann M, Arnell N, et al. The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate. The Lancet. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(19)32596-6

The Lancet Countdown is an international, multidisciplinary collaboration, dedicated to monitoring the evolving health profile of climate change, and providing an independent assessment of the delivery of commitments made by governments worldwide under the Paris Agreement.

The 2019 report presents an annual update of 41 indicators across five key domains: climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerability; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; economics and finance; and public and political engagement.

The report represents the findings and consensus of 35 leading academic institutions and UN agencies from every continent. Each year, the methods and data that underpin the Lancet Countdown's indicators are further developed and improved, with updates described at each stage of this report.

The collaboration draws on the world-class expertise of climate scientists; ecologists; mathematicians; engineers; energy, food, and transport experts; economists; social and political scientists; public health professionals; and doctors, to generate the quality and diversity of data required.

The science of climate change describes a range of possible futures, which are largely dependent on the degree of action or inaction in the face of a warming world. The policies implemented will have far-reaching effects in determining these eventualities, with the indicators tracked here monitoring both the present-day effects of climate change, as well as the worldwide response.

Understanding these decisions as a choice between one of two pathways—one that continues with the business as usual response and one that redirects to a future that remains “well below 2°C”—helps to bring the importance of recognising the effects of climate change and the necessary response to the forefront.

Evidence provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration clarifies the degree and magnitude of climate change experienced today and contextualises these two pathways.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Growing demand for fossil fuels is a wake-up call
Subscribe to read | Financial Times

Our climate is in crisis yet the world’s thirst for fossil fuels, a prime cause of the predicament, shows no signs of slackening. Experts from the International Energy Agency last week presented a sobering assessment of the state of play. WEO 2019

The world’s reliance on fossil fuels, it warned, remains “stubbornly high”. Carbon emissions are set to rise up until 2040, even if governments manage to meet their environmental targets. Its US counterpart, the Energy Information Agency, paints a similar picture. Global natural gas consumption, it predicts, will jump 40 per cent by 2050. International Energy Outlook 2019

Projections so far into the future require a degree of scepticism, but the underlying trend is clear. Despite political leaders’ stated intentions to curb greenhouse gas emissions, our continued use of sources such as oil and gas means we risk failing at the great challenge that climate change presents. The evidence in favour of more decisive action is mounting.

The IEA’s assessment comes against a backdrop of wildfires in Australia Australian bushfires: firefighters struggle to contain Hawkesbury blaze as catastrophic conditions forecast in WA, and flooding in Venice https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/venice-is-drowning-its-a-warning-of-whats-to-come/2019/11/15/bec0343a-071a-11ea-8292-c46ee8cb3dce_story.html and northern England.

It is difficult to pin single events on higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere but climate scientists are clear that more extreme weather events are linked to emissions caused by humans. If governments are serious about the targets they have set then they need to take action to cut fossil fuel demand.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries committed to keeping global warming to below 2C and ideally 1.5C. Climate scientists warn that even with a target of 2C, global emissions should already be falling each year. Last year they rose by about 2 per cent. Governments have encouraged the supply of green energy — through subsidies for renewables as well as support to encourage the take-up of electric vehicles, but progress is not yet fast enough.

There are some signs that the need for urgency is beginning to dawn. The European Investment Bank last week became the first large multilateral lender to agree to phase out lending for all traditional fossil fuel projects, including mainstream gas-fired power plants, by the end of 2021. Since 2013, the bank has lent €13.4bn to fossil fuel infrastructure, of which more than €9bn went to gas and distribution infrastructure. It also backed the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, which will bring Caspian gas to Europe.

The impact of the decision is modest in the wider context; but it is significant. Incoming European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has pledged to turn the EIB into a “climate bank”. The decision defied opposition from countries including Poland, which relies heavily on coal-fired power. It argues, as do many other governments, that gas should be part of a transition to cleaner energy, a stepping stone towards a renewable future.

Today’s energy system relies heavily on fossil fuels. This will not change imminently but if gas wants to retain a role it needs to clean up its act. More needs to be done to encourage the adoption of carbon-capture schemes, where gas is burnt but the CO2 produced is not allowed to enter the atmosphere. Britain’s Committee on Climate Change has said the adoption of such technology will be crucial to decarbonise key sectors, including heavy industry. It could also play a role in the manufacture of hydrogen to replace natural gas to heat buildings. Neither carbon capture nor hydrogen are currently cost competitive.

Tackling the climate crisis will require governments to be much more ambitious in their plans to curb the use of fossil fuels. For some countries it will be easier to do than for others but there is no time to start like the present.

 

[johntt44]

Climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, addressed the U.N.’s Climate Action Summit in New York City on Monday. Here’s the full transcript of Thunberg’s speech, beginning with her response to a question about the message she has for world leaders. https://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-un-climate-action-summit/

“My message is that we’ll be watching you.

“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!

“You have stolen my dreams, and my childhood, with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money, and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

“For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away, and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.

“You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.

...

Whether climate change is happening because of us or not, we should do all we can to preserve our environment either way. That's not even a question. The "Doom and Gloom" approach this girl is taking is ridiculous. Hyperbole and bullshit to be exact. Mass extinction, people dropping dead, God, what a bunch of crap! You really think climate change ruined her childhood or do you think she's been spoonfed this shit her whole life? I'd say the latter. People think shes smart, shes not. She's brainwashed is all.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

While Canadian politicians keep up their parochial posturing, a global storm is brewing.

Around the world there is early evidence of a seismic shift. Capital is moving away from fossil fuels, and regions that have let their economies become dependent on oil revenues are showing signs of authoritarian abuses of power. (Sound familiar Alberta?)

Saudi Arabia, for example, planned to sell up to five per cent of state-owned oil company Aramco in what was supposed to be the largest IPO in history, raising $100 billion to improve services and diversify the economy.

Instead, the sale has been scaled back. Only 1.5 per cent of the company will be sold, and the share offering may only raise $25 billion — enough to cover the Saudi government deficit for about six months.

The precarious balance in Saudi society is maintained through lavish government spending that has relied on oil prices of $85 a barrel to drive revenues. But Brent oil prices have not been at that level in the last five years. Saudi Arabia is running deficits of around $60 billion a year to maintain services — and head off unrest.

Former CIA director David Petraeus noted ominously, “It’s a fact that Saudi Arabia is gradually running out of money.”

Even though Aramco is the most profitable company on the planet, with proven reserves of 270 billion barrels of the world’s cheapest oil, private equity investors so far have taken a pass on the IPO. Oil is a cyclical business, but their reluctance is not due to downturn slump in the sector. The reasons investors snubbed the sale seem more existential.

If Saudi Arabia is in trouble, the rest of the oil-producing world should probably start to panic.

…

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Some of the most alarming science surrounding climate change is the discovery that it may not happen incrementally — as a steadily rising line on a graph — but in a series of lurches as various “tipping points” are passed. And now comes a new concern: These tipping points can form a cascade, with each one triggering others, creating an irreversible shift to a hotter world. A new study suggests that changes to ocean circulation could be the driver of such a cascade.

A group of researchers, led by Tim Lenton at Exeter University, England, first warned in a landmark paper 11 years ago about the risk of climate tipping points. Back then, they thought the dangers would only arise when global warming exceeded 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. But last week, Lenton and six co-authors argued in the journal Nature that the risks are now much more likely and much more imminent. Some tipping points, they said, may already have been breached at the current 1 degree C of warming.

The new warning is much starker than the forecasts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which critics say has until now played down the risks of exceeding climate tipping points, in part because they are difficult to quantify.

The potential tipping points come in three forms: runaway loss of ice sheets that accelerate sea level rise; forests and other natural carbon stores such as permafrost releasing those stores into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2), accelerating warming; and the disabling of the ocean circulation system.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

10 New Insights in Climate Science 2019
10 New Insights in Climate Science 2019 | FutureEarth

THE WORLD CONTINUES TO EMIT GREENHOUSE GASES WHILE OUR PLANET’S CLIMATE IS CHANGING FASTER THAN EVER.

The 10 New Insights in Climate Science 2019 (full report) intends to take up the latest and most essential scientific findings published in an extraordinary year – the climate science year in review. https://futureearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/10-New-Insights-in-Climate-Science-2019.pdf

1. The world is not on track
2. Climate change is faster and stronger than expected
3. Climate change leaves no mountain summit behind
4. Forests are under threat, with global consequences
5. Weather Extremes – a “new normal” in 2019
6. Biodiversity – threatened guardian of Earth’s resilience
7. Climate change threatens food security and the health of hundreds of millions
8. Most vulnerable and poor hardest hit by climate change
9. Equity and equality pivotal to successful climate change mitigation and adaptation
10. Time may have come for social tipping points on climate action

 

[Michael Scally MD]

[ It's the same temperature in Miami and **Antarctica** today.]

Just days after the earth saw its warmest January on record, Antarctica has broken its warmest temperature ever recorded. A reading of 65 degrees was taken Thursday at Esperanza Base along Antarctica’s Trinity Peninsula, making it the ordinarily frigid continent’s highest measured temperature in history.

The Argentine research base is on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Randy Cerveny, who tracks extremes for the World Meteorological Organization, called Thursday’s reading a “likely record,” although the mark will still have to be officially reviewed and certified.

The balmy reading beats out the previous record of 63.5 degrees, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/03/27/antarctica-may-have-set-highest-temperature-ever-recorded-tuesday/ (which occurred March 24, 2015).

The Antarctic Peninsula, on which Thursday’s anomaly was recorded, is one of the fastest-warming regions in the world. In just the past 50 years, temperatures have surged a staggering 5 degrees in response to earth’s swiftly warming climate. Around 87 percent of glaciers along the peninsula’s west coast have retreated in that time, the majority doing so at an accelerated pace since 2008.

 

[master.on]

There's no climate change "science"
it's all a RELIGION. Either you believe in it or you don't but there's no scientific evidence to back it up.

All those "scientists" are loser teachers who just repeat what they are told to, otherwise they'll be fired from IPC and they have no real skills to support themselves in the real world.

 

[rpbb]

[ It's the same temperature in Miami and **Antarctica** today.]

Just days after the earth saw its warmest January on record, Antarctica has broken its warmest temperature ever recorded. A reading of 65 degrees was taken Thursday at Esperanza Base along Antarctica’s Trinity Peninsula, making it the ordinarily frigid continent’s highest measured temperature in history.

The Argentine research base is on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Randy Cerveny, who tracks extremes for the World Meteorological Organization, called Thursday’s reading a “likely record,” although the mark will still have to be officially reviewed and certified.

The balmy reading beats out the previous record of 63.5 degrees, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/03/27/antarctica-may-have-set-highest-temperature-ever-recorded-tuesday/ (which occurred March 24, 2015).

The Antarctic Peninsula, on which Thursday’s anomaly was recorded, is one of the fastest-warming regions in the world. In just the past 50 years, temperatures have surged a staggering 5 degrees in response to earth’s swiftly warming climate. Around 87 percent of glaciers along the peninsula’s west coast have retreated in that time, the majority doing so at an accelerated pace since 2008.

Why don't you call your buddies Clinton and gore for not putting in any environmental safeguards when they created the trade agreements which skyrocketed global carbon emissions.

 

[GDL]

There's no climate change "science"
it's all a RELIGION. Either you believe in it or you don't but there's no scientific evidence to back it up.

All those "scientists" are loser teachers who just repeat what they are told to, otherwise they'll be fired from IPC and they have no real skills to support themselves in the real world.

Exactly.
Follow the money and you’ll see they will parrot anything asked of them.
I cannot believe anything proported by a news source.
They lie horribly bad.

I also wish people would stop thinking co2 is a pollutant. Fuck, that is the plant food, from which all life lives off of. No plants no life.

I bet even if we keep pounding out co2 we will likely never get it past 1000 ppm. And at that level every plant on the planet will be in its perfect co2 growing condition.

Already it is provable by actual data to show that severity of storms are reducing. As green house gasses increase, the weather will become more stable, as fluctuations from our major heat source will not be as drastic.

Anyhow one needs to decide if they will find it easier to live with higher water levels and more temperate temperatures, or standing on top of a mile of ice.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The persistent march of a warming climate is seen across a multitude of continuous, incremental changes. CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Ocean heat content. Global sea level rise. Each creeps up year after year, fuelled by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

And while climate records are being routinely broken, the cumulative impact of these changes could also cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically and irreversibly.

These “tipping points” are thresholds where a tiny change could push a system into a completely new state.

In this article, Carbon Brief explores nine key tipping points across the Earth system, from collapsing ice sheets and thawing permafrost, to shifting monsoons and forest dieback.

And, over the coming week, Carbon Brief will be publishing guest articles from experts in four of the tipping points covered here.

Tipping towers

Irreversible change?

1. Shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

2. West Antarctic ice sheet disintegration

3. Amazon rainforest dieback

4. West African monsoon shift

5. Permafrost and methane hydrates

6. Coral reef die-off

7. Indian monsoon shift

8. Greenland ice sheet disintegration

9. Boreal forest shift

Other tipping points

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[rpbb]

Call China and India

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]